In recent years, a constellation of practices and narratives that revolve around the idea of ”maximizing oneself” has spread, especially on TikTok and other social networks (self-optimization) through the intentional reduction of social distractions, with creators and influencers chronicling and glorifying a life without partners and friends. In this context, the phenomenon emerges that can be defined as “solo maxxing”: a form of aestheticization of isolation in which loneliness is no longer just a condition, but an active project of personal improvement.
From Elrich Beck’s “structural individualization” to Zigmunt Bauman’s analyses, this article explores the phenomenon as an extreme expression of neoliberal modernity, in which the individual simultaneously becomes a project, an enterprise and a measure of one’s own value.
Loneliness as a historically variable form of social regulation
Sociological and anthropological literature shows that loneliness is not a stable category, but a socio-historical construction. In pre-modern contexts, isolation was predominantly associated with marginality or exclusion, with ascetic or religious life practices, or with rituals in which the suspension of social life constituted a transition in status, such as entry into adulthood for young people.
In the latter case, solitude itself operated as a technique of discontinuity in an individual’s life, aimed at redefining social status.
In contemporary modernity, we can observe a radical change in the perception and use of solitude. This device, in fact, undergoes a process of functional secularization, that is, its ritual or ascetic function is taken away and a new one is assigned to it: isolation seems to lose its transcendental value, but is reinstated as a tool to achieve and regulate attention, productivity or self-control.
From this perspective, we can read the emerging phenomenon that is becoming popular on TikTok, Youtube and Instagram, in which contents that celebrate solitude as a conscious and desirable choice are multiplying. In these videos people spend Saturday evenings alone, go entire days without having social interactions, training and studying alone.
It is precisely within this universe of re-signification of solitude that the term “solo maxxing” emerged: used to describe the choice to dedicate time and energy almost exclusively to personal improvement, limiting relationships, outings and activities considered unproductive.
Structural individualization and construction of the self
To understand the success of maxxing alone it is useful to look at some of the main changes that have characterized contemporary societies.
According to sociologist Elrich Beck (1992), we live in an era of increasing individualization, called by Beck and Gernsheim (2002) “structural individualization”, in which once relatively predictable life paths (study, work, marriage, family) have become increasingly flexible and less determined by typical social expectations. Individuals thus find themselves having to independently build their own identity and path, taking on a responsibility that in the past was shared with institutions and communities.
Similarly, Anthony Giddens, in Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), describes modernity as a context in which the self becomes a real “project”. It is no longer enough to live your life: you need to plan it, improve it, monitor it and make it consistent with the goals you have set for yourself.
It is precisely within this context that “just maxxing” acquires meaning. The choice to reduce social interactions to a minimum is interpreted as a way to recover time, energy and concentration to invest in oneself.
When being alone becomes aesthetic
One of the most interesting aspects of “solo maxxing” is that it doesn’t just promote solitude, but turns it into a real aesthetic. Videos of dawn wake-ups, solo workouts, late-night study sessions, walks with headphones and well-planned rigorous solo routines proliferate on social media.
It is therefore not simply shown someone who is alone, but someone who uses solitude in a “virtuous” and productive way.
The sociologist Goffman offers an interesting interpretation in that, in his study entitled The presentation of oneself in every day (1959), argued that in social life individuals tend to “enact” versions of themselves in front of others. In the case of “solo maxxing”, the performance staged concerns self-sufficiency: that is, the ability to be disciplined, concentrated and independent from others, which becomes a trait to be exhibited and valorised.
Paradoxically, therefore, isolation is not experienced away from the gaze of others, but through it. Solitude becomes a content to be shared, a test of personal strength and a form of social recognition.
In this sense, “solo maxxing” is not simply about being alone, but about turning loneliness into a symbol of success and self-control.
Structural paradox: isolation as a form of mediated sociality
“Maxxing alone” therefore highlights a paradox typical of hyper-individualized societies: the reduction of direct interaction does not imply a reduction of sociality, but produces a different form of sociality, more indirect and mediated.
Even when daily interactions are reduced, loneliness, through digital content and platforms, is continuously observed, talked about and compared.
In this sense, the analyzes of the sociologist Zigmunt Bauman (2000) help to clarify the paradox: in contemporary societies social ties become increasingly “liquid”, that is, unstable and flexible, but no less influential. Even isolation, apparently an escape from ties, remains within this fluid logic of continuous connections and comparisons.
The result is that “just maxxing” does not eliminate the social dimension, but reconfigures it. Solitude is never completely private: it becomes a form of experience that acquires value precisely because it is recognized, imitated and discussed within a collective space. In this paradox we can clearly see: in the attempt to maximize the “isolated self”, the social dimension continues to be inevitably present.
