Modern Illusions: Global Social Comparison

It used to be that social comparison was limited to your immediate environment—your neighbors, friends, coworkers. You could see what people around you had or did, and there was a natural limit to how far comparison could go. If the family next door bought a new car, you’d notice, but you knew their circumstances, their lifestyle, their struggles. This grounded your sense of what was appropriate, attainable, and realistic.

Now, we live in a globalized society, where social media has shattered that local bubble. We can compare ourselves not just to the people in our immediate community, but to anyone—celebrities, influencers, strangers—often without the necessary context. We only see their curated highlight reels, which are stripped of the complexities of their real lives. What’s more, social media encourages this behavior by feeding us a constant stream of “perfect” moments, making it harder to resist.

Take a recent Reddit post that caught my attention: a man wrote about his wife requesting a “push present” after the birth of their child. At first, he assumed she was joking. But soon, he realized she was serious—and she wasn’t asking for something small. Influenced by social media posts, where women flaunted gifts like cars, vacations, and even body tattoos, his wife felt entitled to a grand gesture. And why not? If others are receiving these things, why shouldn’t she?

But this points to something deeper: the wife had seen these extravagant gifts and accepted them as the new normal, without contextualizing her own situation. She wasn’t comparing herself to the people around her—she was comparing herself to social media personalities whose lives and circumstances may be vastly different from her own.

This is the new reality of keeping up with the Joneses. It’s not about looking next door anymore—it’s about looking at the digital next door and digital views of what’s normal, what’s deserved, and what’s valuable. The natural hierarchy of a community, where only so many people can be the top tier family, no longer exists. Instead, everyone is comparing themselves to an unrealistic, global standard that has warped social expectations.

Materialism, ever on the rise, has been amplified by social media’s glamorization of short-term gratification. The push for consumption—newer gadgets, shinier toys, or grand gestures like push presents—has become a way of life for many. People now seek validation not from the intrinsic value of their actions, such as childbirth, but from external markers of worth, often in the form of material possessions or social approval.

In this story, the act of childbirth, a naturally meaningful and profound experience, became secondary to the social construct of a push present. In today’s digital world, social norms rapidly evolve, and our material desires rise to the comparisons we see online. The woman’s desire for a push present isn’t unusual, today—it’s an evolution of social comparison. Personal milestones, like having a child, have become mixed with social pressures, making it hard to separate our natural desires from our unnatural expectations.

Short Term Distraction, Long Term Uncertainty

It’s easy to claim the life we live is surrounded by distractions. There’s more stimulus than ever, with technology competing for our attention day and night. It’s not unusual for us to grab our phones first and last thing each day, as we go to and get out of bed. Some argue blue light addiction is what is killing us all. I even wrote about The Digital Divide previously, and how we’ve become farther the more connected we’ve become.

There are pros and cons to everything. The benefits of technology are obvious, allowing us luxuries such as globalism, the internet, social media, smart-technology, and more. We’re on the cusp of incredible technology as well, with nascent developments in artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, supercomputers, and more. The obvious downsides of technology are described in aspects such as the digital divide, technology addiction, and old knowledge becoming obsolete.

There’s a much deeper issue than just the pros and cons of technology: it is our cultural behavior and acceptance towards technology. We’ve seen tech companies rise, spawn, and compete with each other for what ideas and apps are valuable and to manifest what they believe to be important to us. We’ve seen pushback from audiences asking for those who grew in prominence to hold more responsibility. As our culture adapts and accepts new avenues, new laws and regulations are placed upon them.

That’s easy to see from the conglomerates point of view. But what about the people using the technology day to day? How have we become affected outside of the direct benefits?

I’ve previously written about the change in our dialogue, and how generations before the internet have different conversation skills with those after the internet; the same goes for smartphones. Communication is just one avenue.

Another is our forecasting of the future. As technology transforms more rapidly in front of our eyes, the amount of lifetimes it requires to see dramatic change reduces. When it once took several generations to go from ocean travel to sky travel, it’s taken remarkably less time to go to space travel. The same goes for our ability to communicate. When it used to be one village, it then went to one country, and now we can speak to anyone in the world quickly.

Rapid changes to developing industries is not a new demon. There’s always been early adapters of technology and there’s always been schools or groups dedicated to honing crafts by any means, including forward-facing technology. Yet as technology grows faster and faster, these changes are harder to implement. In my college days, professors could not teach the most current material but they would at least acknowledge its existence. It was difficult for just a few professors to quickly change the pipeline of education, so no matter how fast technology grew or changed, the academics would be lagging behind, struggling to catch up.

There in lies the most uncertain future we’ve ever seen. I graduated college 10 years ago and life is only changing more quickly. It is true some things never change. Yet it is also true that what works today may not work tomorrow. We’ve seen megacompanies fall to the wayside by refusing to grow with the digital era and we’ve seen companies that are less than 10, 20 years old become the wealthiest and most powerful companies ever. It is already taking less than one generation’s lifetime to see our lives change more than our parents could expect. Soon, it’ll change faster than the current generation can expect. From there, how can we be certain of any future?

Distraction comes from the Latin roots of “dis” meaning apart, and “trahere” to drag. We are dragged apart from our duties when we are distracted. Yet what are our duties if the future is uncertain? All the stimulus we react to may not actually be such a distraction. In times of survival, when our lives were most uncertain, hyper-attention to any stimulus may be the only thing saving us from a tiger in the jungle. The anxieties was face today are boundless by society and boundless by arriving technology. Is it all a distraction? Or are we just trying to survive?

The Reasonable Middle

From a clip I can no longer find, Joe Rogan talks about our political divide and how extremists from both sides of the aisle have forsaken a large majority of the population, the reasonable middle, in favor of activating the far-wing agendas.

This happens for several reasons.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Or the vocal minority is louder than the silent majority. And reporting bias as well, those who wish to speak up tend to have something to say. We see this in Yelp reviews and product reviews. Are polarizing reviews and beliefs the best way to incite change?

Unfortunately, yes. Political extremism is a great negotiating tactic in which a partisan issue is brought up as strongly and as extremely as possible, all the while being ready to settle with a much lower bargain. Much like starting with an absurdly high dollar amount to leverage the highest barter, political issues too can be gassed up in the hopes that any gain is made.

Reasonable, grounded conversation is sensibly had in the first couple dialogues exchanged. With complex issues, time, innovation, or procedure usually dictate the natural pacing. But with unreasonable, ungrounded conversation, dialogue can go on indefinitely, with very little regard to innovation or procedure. Unreasonable conversations and bad actors can engage far longer than what is socially acceptable on controversial topics.

Without watching the context of this image, we can identify a familiar composition on news television. Grabbing the opinion of several pundits, the network frames varied exchanges and dialogues that range from one side of the aisle to the other. It doesn’t matter what the headline or topic could be, this format works with any regard as long as the network is able to find a contrarian to any viewpoint.

The reason this format is popular is because it spans a lot of time, which daytime television is in abundance of. The format caters to everyone’s opinion regardless of the validity or extremism of it. And as for the reasonable middle population which holds little opinion on the topic, they are not so concerned with the issue to begin with that they would naturally spend lengthy amounts of time watching the topic on the news in the first place. This is why the news is becoming both more polarizing and more willing to engage with controversial topics. It caters to the most passionate, the ones who would spend the most time watching and engaging with the content. This in turn damages the experience for the reasonable middle, the silent majority.

In my personal life, I find it a strength of mine to be able to extend an intellectual hand to the other side of a conversation and to be able to understand their point and reflect on which parts resonated and which parts don’t. As the scale of the conversation grows larger and the viewpoints become more extreme, it seems that the ability to hold genuine dialogue fails as the media, the consumers, and the investors all battle for a part in a nonsensical exchange.

We see this happening with social media, with split-offs from our larger traditional platforms of Twitter and YouTube to smaller, less restrictive, platforms like TRUTH Social or Rumble.

This is partly due to a mass communication and the ability for a completely random person to post their opinion online and for that opinion to carry some, more, or any weight compared to other opinions, when previously this was nearly impossible. Just one generation ago, the likelihood that anyone could write a movie review or share a political view and for that piece of writing to get even 100 people to read it was astronomically smaller than what it is today. Going back further, it is even more dramatic. Because people know they can be heard, they also believe they should be heard. Which, to be honest, not everyone’s opinion should be heard.

While there is a lot more to discuss about the reasonable middle and the extreme ends, I’ve also touched on the topic of gatekeeping and how the internet has allowed everyone universal access to services ranging from sharing opinions to selling products. In future writing, I’ll expand more on both topics.

Distancing the Mind

In 2015, I started taking my Super Smash Bros. Melee career a lot more seriously, attending and hosting hundreds of events. At its peak, I was attending 8 tournaments a week, one each evening of the week and two on Sunday. It was a rush having an event to practice for and to compete at each evening. Even when the stakes were small, the volume of events and the endless grind took a toll on my emotional and spiritual mood.

I use those terms because my performance was indirectly affected by my mood, but more largely affected by my discipline and my decision making. I always thought of myself as a poor discipline, poor execution player, with a creative mind and edge over my opponent. Whenever I was able to handle my execution, tournaments were exceptionally easy. When I wasn’t able to handle my technical abilities, I would crumble.

Warriors of the past would meditate before serene pastures, silencing their mind as if sharpening a blade.

There were times I would walk myself out of a tournament venue, sit outside or in my car. If the venue ever served food or had a bar, I would pace the timing of my tournament games around food and beverage. It was unwise to eat too close to the end of the tournament, the most stressful time. But it was also unwise to lose steam early into the tournament, especially since there was a tournament tomorrow and a tournament the day before.

The most powerful drug we all possess in our pocket is our smartphone and its ability to connect to any piece of information at any time. It’s easy to find ourselves passively scrolling news feeds, social media feeds, or forums and zoning out from the world around us. What is most interesting is what we choose to scroll through and where we choose to send our minds to when we are not present.

I am not a very sentimental person, especially when I was growing up. However, long nights of going to new and old venues had me preferring my offline content over what I found on social media. Connecting with images of my cat or the girl I was dating at the time kept me connected to the dream I was chasing and the life I was building.

It seems cheesy and cliché to appreciate family photos at work. The warmth sentimental photos provide now live parallel to social media access. I could look at my cat, or I could look at all the cats and all the cute dogs and those interesting new moments. Both offer powerful tools for distancing the mind and finding relaxation.

In a future post, I’ll cover how top players at tournaments operate by a hurry up and wait M.O., similar to soldiers in the military. When stress is segmented and delayed, training and best practices are enforced to ensure that the user can persist and achieve victory. One way users can wait is by practicing, keeping their skills sharp and their mind ready. The other way is to simply wait. Wait, relax, and distance the mind. For soon, the battle begins.