There was a time when being available meant being relevant. Missed calls were failures. Late replies were suspicious. Silence required explanation.
That time is over.
In 2025, being unreachable has become one of the clearest signals of status.
Availability Is No Longer Neutral
Constant accessibility used to signify importance. Now it signals exposure. The people who reply instantly are often the people with the least control over their time. The people who disappear, delay, or remain silent project something else entirely: autonomy.
Silence has become aspirational.
Not dramatic silence. Not announced detox silence. Quiet, unbranded absence.
From Visibility to Selectivity
The internet rewarded presence for years. Post often. React faster. Be seen everywhere. Eventually, the logic collapsed under its own weight. Everyone was visible. Nothing felt special.
Now selectivity is the currency.
Artists release less. Executives post nothing. Public figures communicate only through rare gestures. Silence is no longer emptiness — it is framing.
This shift mirrors how contemporary visual culture has moved toward restraint and ambiguity, favoring suggestion over explanation. Even playful interventions like Ursus Wehrli’s reordering of familiar artworks work precisely because they remove noise instead of adding meaning.
Silence Requires Power
Of course, silence is not equally available to everyone. For some, being unreachable means being forgotten. For others, it means being untouchable.
That difference is crucial.
Silence as luxury exposes existing hierarchies rather than dissolving them. The ability to opt out without consequence is itself a form of privilege.
Cultural theorists have begun noting this inversion of visibility and authority, especially in analyses of digital withdrawal and power structures, such as contemporary studies on attention and status.
Why Noise Feels Cheap Now
Oversharing exhausted itself. Opinion inflation devalued expression. When everyone speaks constantly, speech loses weight.
Silence, by contrast, suggests deliberation. It implies someone who does not need to compete for attention because attention will arrive anyway.
That implication is powerful.
The New Signal
Being unreachable doesn’t mean being disengaged. It means choosing when and how to appear.
In a culture addicted to immediacy, delay feels almost aristocratic.
Silence is no longer absence.
It is authorship.
