Why I Check My View Count in the Shadow of Mortality

On Terror Management Theory, evolutionary hardwiring, and the quiet obsession with digital echoes in retirement.

Deep down, I know an article’s impression score will not survive my death or matter when I am gone—for when I leave, I leave. Yet tracking the metric offers a momentary, artificial sense of expansion, significance, and presence while I am here.

Arun Kumar

We discussed how our ability to stitch together an extended temporal window, while an evolutionary advantage, also gave us an awareness of our own mortality. Further, although we never personally experience our own death, we do observe that all biological life forms eventually come to an end. These observations lead us to extrapolate that our own life will inevitably end as well, grounding the awareness of mortality in observed fact.

Somewhere deep inside, we also know that all the baggage and possessions we carry through life are ultimately left behind. Yet so much of how we live directly contradicts this awareness of mortality and its sweeping implications. The friction generated by the contradiction between what mortality means and how we carry ourselves leads to paradoxes of the human condition.

One such paradox is the desire to check the number of impressions, reactions, reads, and views on various online forums where I am active, even though none of them will matter when I cross the threshold of death.

The sequence follows a familiar playbook in the middle of a mundane afternoon: I hit "publish" on a piece I wrote purely for the quiet joy of writing. Being retired, there is no editor to answer to, no career ladder left to climb. An hour later, while making tea or watering a plant, a sudden cue fires in the mind. An idle thought drifts in: How many impressions has it received? Has the counter moved since I checked an hour ago?

In retirement, when the imperative to build a resume has dissolved and the awareness of finite time grows clearer, logic suggests I should feel a serene detachment from such urges. For me, social media and online platforms are meant to be an idle pastime, a shield against boredom, and a way to stay engaged. And yet, the sudden urge to refresh statistics persists.

What are the origins of this paradox and the urge to check the statistics related to my posts? How can I frame this tension between the awareness of mortality and trivial metrics?

In one perspective, this paradox owes its existence to the fact that the awareness of mortality gets overridden by the innate desire to win the evolutionary race, to procreate, to ensure our lineage, and to satisfy the deep psychological imperatives with which we are burdened.

Throughout our evolutionary history, survival depended on our standing within the tribe to which we belonged. Higher social status meant better access to resources, protection, and mates. The human brain was hardwired over millennia to seek social proof, visibility, and group recognition as proxies for safety and belonging. In the modern context, statistics counters are simply a digital translation of ancient urges. Every view, like, or read is interpreted deep in our brain as a nod of acceptance, reassuring us that I am still seen, still valued, and still safe within the village, even if that village is composed of invisible internet strangers.

Another answer lies in the neurochemistry of anticipation—the mechanics of the dopamine loop [Link1, Link2].

Dopamine is not primarily the reward chemical; it is the molecule of anticipation, driving the urge to search, forage, and discover. In an evolutionary sense, this mechanism kept early humans scanning the horizon for fruit or tracking signs of game, ensuring our ancestors stayed motivated in a harsh environment. In the world of digital feeds, the unpredictable reward structure—never knowing if refreshing the screen will yield one view or fifty—triggers the exact same loop. The mere act of checking offers a quick spike of anticipation, pulling me away from the abstraction of mortality and locking me into an immediate chemical sequence: a cue, followed by action, in anticipation of a reward.

But that is not all. I can also look at the same paradox through a few other lenses.

Although we intellectually recognize the finality of biological death, we compulsively seek digital, symbolic, or social permanence to buffer against that reality. Checking impressions is an indirect pursuit of the immortality project. In his seminal work on Terror Management Theory, Ernest Becker argued that human culture and individual achievement are largely subconscious mechanisms designed to defend against the existential terror of our own mortality. Deep down, I know an article’s impression score will not survive my death or matter when I am gone—for when I leave, I leave. Yet tracking the metric offers a momentary, artificial sense of expansion, significance, and presence while I am here. It is a tiny, quantifiable proof of impact that says: I was here, and I left a ripple.

The logical conclusion of knowing that metrics do not matter should be calm detachment. However, we default to chasing artificial scorecards to fill the quiet void of human existence.

And finally, mortality is distant; checking an impression count is immediate. The human mind consistently favors the immediate over the abstract, and the immediate feedback loop of the present almost always overpowers the distant reality of the future.

Faced with so many adversaries, I invariably find myself drawn to the quiet attraction of numbers.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.