Social media had an honesty filter?

Mirror selfies at the gym, but the filter says, “Didn’t even make it past the door.”

By Tiya Chugh

Some nights you’re working late. Or at least that’s what your story says. A dim-lit laptop, a mug with three dried coffee stains, and the constant ever-faithful caption, “Grind never stops, work mode on.” Pun intended, because the only thing grinding is your will to survive (by adding filters).

But what if your phone had a filter that screamed ‘honesty’? Your post would politely update to: “Have been staring at this Google Document for 42 minutes. So far, have typed ‘Hey.’ Then opened Zomato.” And when you wanted to quote Beyoncé’s ‘I woke up like this’ ,but your filter says, “Took 80 minutes, two YouTube tutorials, and a minor meltdown.”

Take away the filters, and suddenly your curated life looks like a blooper reel nobody asked for. You’d probably skip posting altogether, if the filter quietly added your struggle to it. That carefully framed ‘work from café’ post? Now with a tag: “Actually just here for the Wi-Fi and a taste of better AC.”

“I once posted a mirror selfie at the gym with ‘back to the grind,’ but I left right after because I forgot my earbuds,” laughs Mrityunjay Mudgal, a 32-year-old businessman from Gurugram. “The honesty filter would’ve called me out before I even made it to the treadmill,” he adds.

“I’ve posted ‘new year, new me’ so many times that if a filter like this existed, then it would’ve revealed my entire procrastination schedule, ” says Tanishka Mehra, a 20-year-old student of Textile Design at Pearl Academy, Delhi. “Let’s be real, there’s no ‘new you’ when the year starts. It’s just for the gram” she adds.

So, what’s the takeaway? The filter would expose us as procrastinators, stress-eaters, and experts in ‘How to pretend you’re busy when you’re really not’ . But honestly, maybe that’s not a bad thing. The world would be a lot more tolerable if we just owned the chaos, laughed at our mess, and stopped pretending, we have it all figured out. Real life doesn’t need filters and, it’s a damn good thing it doesn’t.