Damn. That is one of the most articulate well thought out arguments I have seen in my 6 years on Reddit. I had to read it 3 times to understand it and it makes perfect sense to me as that is what’s happening around us.

But it leaves me asking why the majority of us continue to let this dictate our lives. I know it’s instinctively in us to compare but we continue to compare ourselves to lives that we know are false or not attainable.

Not sure what your taste in music is but this makes me think of a song called propaganda by Dax. There is a powerful scene in the video when he goes to check on a friend he hasn’t heard from. That friend is sitting in a recliner staring at the news on a TV in a almost comatose state. While there is a huge white beam of energy shooting in him from that TV. It goes on to say that the news ticker at the bottom of the screen is called a news feed and we are a product of what we feed our brain.

When I learned about stoicism and the fact that we have virtually no control of the things that happen around and to us only how we react to it I was able to see things differently. Comparing my life to others made less sense after internalizing that. Instead of comparing myself to others I break down each day by contrasting my actions against the virtues I believe to be important and if I took the correct steps to live my best life that day. This is not to say that I don’t find myself doing exactly what you explained at times but it helps center me when I do.

Of course there are personalities and personas comparisons on Reddit or Discord. Probably more so as we now have to introduce the complete anonymity of these sites into the equation. Using Facebook, Instagram or the like you are at least dealing with a person that has some degree of accountability to some people in their lives because they aren’t anonymous. That user tends to leave out all the bad or embarrassing parts of their lives mostly choosing to add or expound the good parts of their lives.

Now let’s factor in anonymity. We have people hiding behind a keyboard and monitor. I’m speaking in generalities but we get the people who are looking for attention as well. They just tend to do it the opposite way with negativity. The trolls who say and act in ways they lack the courage to do in real life. Now one could look at that two ways. I could think I’m such a great person because I don’t say or act like the internet trolls hiding in anonymity. Or I could think that the world is really worse than it is because the trolls paint it that way. Either way it is human nature to compare things but we need to have an accurate picture to compare ourselves too and an edited or unreal personality is not the way to do it in a healthy manner. Here are the choices. Compare oneself to all of the fake beautiful perfect lives on social media that aren’t anonymous or the depths of negativity with people that don’t act or say those things that are on anonymous social media. Or we can recognize that our instinct is to compare and just make better choices of what we compare ourselves too. Looking inward at our own moral compass and virtues. Looking in the mirror daily and comparing our actions of the day to the person we want to be.

I am not really sure we needed neuroscientists and philosophers to understand that by comparing anything in your life to the edited personas of someone else’s life that is carefully crafted to look as good as possible for their “followers/friends” is not good for us.

Their lives are just as screwed up as the rest of us they are just better at hiding it. -David Goggins.