Do I really like what I like?

On my way home from work, I passed a bakery I had seen repeatedly on social media. I had never tasted its famous pastries, yet I knew how the cream would spill out when it is cut and which angles make the best photograph.

I almost joined the line. Then I wondered: Did I want the pastry, or did I want to become someone who had tried it?

A first paycheck offers more than purchasing power. It lets young workers decide what to wear, where to go and what kind of life to build. Yet that freedom arrives just as many are unsure how an employed adult is supposed to live. The search for guidance begins innocently: office clothes, appropriate bags, savings plans, after-work routines. Soon, information becomes a template for identity.

Sociologist Erving Goffman described everyday interaction as a performance in which people manage impressions. Social media did not invent that performance. It enlarged the stage, multiplied the audience and turned self-presentation into a continuous activity.

An old Korean folktale offers an unsettling metaphor. A rat eats a person’s discarded fingernail and toenail clippings, assumes that person’s appearance and takes the owner’s place at home. The family eventually trusts the impostor more than the original.

The rat does not consume a whole person. It begins with fragments.

Social media serves up similar fragments: a colleague’s lunch, a stranger’s workout, a spotless desk, a weekend trip, a book beside a cup of coffee. These images need not be false. But they are not complete lives. Spliced together, they produce an impossible model of adulthood: someone who works hard, exercises daily, invests wisely, travels often and consumes with impeccable taste.

Anthony Minghella’s "The Talented Mr. Ripley" pushes this logic to a criminal extreme. Tom Ripley studies wealthy Dickie Greenleaf’s jazz, clothes and mannerisms. At first, Tom likes what Dickie likes. Then he wants Dickie’s life. Finally, he wants Dickie’s identity.

Ordinary consumption is not murder or identity theft. But Ripley exposes a familiar movement of desire. We admire running shoes, then envy the person who runs every morning. We see a travel photograph, then want to be someone who travels. The object remains the same; the destination of desire changes.

Borrowed tastes are not necessarily fake. A friend’s music can become a lifelong favorite. Exercise begun for appearances can become genuine pleasure. The more useful question is not where a preference originated, but what now controls the next choice.

At first, our tastes describe us. Eventually, the version of ourselves assembled through purchases and posts may begin selecting our tastes for us.

The pastry may indeed be delicious. Discovering it online would not make that pleasure false. But occasionally choosing something that does not fit our established image may be a necessary form of freedom.

We are not only the person our choices have already described. We are also the person who has not yet decided what to love.

A professional educator in Seoul, Park Myung-kwan examines the intersection of humanities and modern education.