Who are you? Tips for building a solid and not-pervasive online identity

They called him “Edulcorante”

September 2019.

A year before this date, I overcame my rejection of social media platforms and decided to launch my first online project: an Instagram urbex page called “Edulcorante per Veleni”.

Urbex: short for urban exploration, is the exploration of artificial structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment.

After a year of posting photos, while having absolutely no idea what I was doing, on September 2019 I was invited to an exhibition in Milan, where my urbex videos projected in a small movie theater.

And to me that was magic.

After exhibition

If my first exhibition experience was gold, what came after was even better.

All together around a table, finally enjoying a typical cotoletta alla milanese and putting faces to the I’ve been talking to online for months.

Even though we had introduced ourselves earlier, suddenly I realized something.

“I’m here with Edulcorante!” “Look, Edulcorante is here! Come!”

My project ate my identity - I became The Project

It really happened.

At that time, I didn’t pay much attention to it. And not only: I was even proud of it.

I thought I had finally found something I was good at, something for which I would be recognized.

But after a while, I realized that my project was actually consuming my identity. I had to fit its limits, follow its tone, obey its rules. And I couldn’t even start something new — I was too afraid of contaminating what I had become and of stepping outside the cage of expectations.

Something I learned - unrequested tips

1. Doing many different things is fine

It might sound obvious, but in the era of hyper-specialization it’s easy to fall into this trap.

We don’t have to always focus on just a single thing. You can have multiple interests, different projects and they don’t all need to connect perfectly.

If you think that this might be a form of lack of coherence, well, it is not.

2. Cultivate your work, but cultivate yourself too

Read. Watch movies. Go for a walk.

Put distance between you and your work from time to time.

Feed your mind and give yourself a break when everything is overwelming. It won’t harm, it will heal.

3. Go out

IIt’s technically part of point no. 2, but it deserves its own space.

Nothing resets your perspective like stepping outside. Even a short walk, a conversation, a random detail on the street — these moments reconnect you to the world outside your own head. That’s where new ideas start.

All good and new things are coming from outside.

My attempt

In the end, I’ve isolated the identity in which i found myself — and I made it mine. I stopped fighting the label and started reshaping it, opening space for new directions and different paths - not every time clear ones. Every day, I still fight against the absence of meaning, against that familiar sense of being lost. But maybe that’s what makes all of this alive.

And if what I create may seem disconnected, fragmented, or not always coherent… well, that’s exactly what I am.

That’s what we all are.