The End of Envy Culture

We all have something we'd like to see waiting for us at the end of this godforsaken tunnel we're all in.

For me, it's--I'd like everyone to be alive.

But if I had to pick a second thing, it would be--

I'd love to see this be the death of Envy Culture.

One of my new favorite podcasts recently gave me the best phrase I've heard in a long time in regards to all this--

"Now that we've stripped away everything we use to tell ourselves we have value, let's learn to love ourselves anyway."

The hosts of the podcast went on to talk about FOMO and how they don't miss it, but when you really break down what's happened as the result of this crisis, it's this--

We've all lost the ability to make other people feel bad about their lives.

I know it sounds really harsh when you put it that way, and I can already hear people who love Coachella screaming at me that their excessive documentation of the event is just them documenting their lives.

But...no.

I mean, you can take photos and leave them in your camera roll or upload them to the cloud and look at them privately as much as you want.

When you post on social media, you're attempting to create a narrative of your life that is....usually exaggerated at best.

It's not your fault.

I do it too.

Most of us do.

But we rarely address the real objective of it, because it sounds so...mean.

It's just a bunch of people trying to make other people feel bad.

About our bodies.

About how much money we have.

About how many people like us.

Very little of it is as simple as documentation.  Some of it--the best of it--usually has to be self-deprecating just to be bearable.

Social media has many, many advantages, so this is not a social-media-bashing hot take.  Social media is like a second cousin to me at this point.  I shall not slander it.

But now that I've ventured much deeper into different platforms, especially Twitter and Instagram, I'm shocked by how much of it revolves around the basest of our human traits and how much outright fraud is rewarded by people who--seem to know it's fraud but don't care?

Again, I can get behind that.  I grew up being a pro-wrestling fan.  Loving the lie is not difficult for me, but loving wrestling (yes, we're going with this) gave me a community, made me laugh, and more importantly, made me feel good.

Envy culture does not.

It's not about making me feel good.

The only way I feel good by posting about how I'm killing it is by knowing that maybe I made someone else envy me.  And that's just another way of saying "By making sure I hurt someone else" because envy isn't a good feeling.  Wanting people to be jealous of you is not the objective of good people.

Now, are there people who just like to keep track of each other's lives in the hope of seeing their friends or family or even people they don't know be successful?

Sure.  Totally.  That's why we have grandparents.

And why we need to PROTECT our grandparents.  (You knew I was sneaking that one in.)

But the reality is--that's not why most of us are using it.

How many of you are friends with or following someone on social media that you don't like just because you want that person to see you living your best life that doesn't really exist?

::  Raises Both My Hands and The Hands of Everyone Near Me But Not Really Because I'm Not Touching Anyone Again For The Next Twelve Years Or So ::

That's why we stay friends with exes.

That's why we get mad when someone we're not friends with unfriends us.

That's us taking "The best revenge is living well" and transforming it into a lifestyle instead of just a quaint expression that should never travel further than a fortune cookie.

It is a culture of influencers and thirst traps and people who are currently--and shamelessly--trying to brand themselves in the middle of a pandemic so they come out of it with a development deal and wind up in an article on Vulture two months from now that says "_____ really established themselves as an exciting voice in the midst of tragedy, and their Quibi show will be out in two days."

Those of us who feel like a break from all this is wonderful even if it took something this awful to make it happen are also secretly hoping we don't have to go back to it.

Admit it--it was an exhausting way of life.

Nobody really misses it except the people who benefited from it, and I'm going to try and say this kindly, but most of those people were...con artists.

Charlatans.

Actual thieves.

You see these people spiraling, right?

I mean, we're all spiraling, but...

They're not spiraling for the same reason the rest of us are spiraling.

They're spiraling because we have taken away all the tools they use to make themselves feel good, and those tools are designed to make the rest of us feel bad.

They feel bad because they can't feel good, because they can't make the rest of us feel bad.

Again--not their fault (sort of), it's a cultural, systemic problem.

But it is a problem.

And for now-it's solved.

The only reason we would revive the problem is because some of us might (mistakenly) think that we could one day be as good at conning people as the top con artists on Instagram.

That is not a goal anybody should have for themselves.

That is the reason we have a culture obsessed with work.  Because it's not really about work.  It's about working so you can have money so you can buy things and flex or go places and flex that you went to them or dress up and take pictures of yourself in the clothing or work out constantly to look good so other people will want to have sex with you because that makes you feel good.

Listen, I've heard the "I work out for my mental health" argument, and I'm not saying I don't believe it.  I'm just saying that working out might make you feel good, but posting photos of you working out has nothing to do with your mental health.  If your mental health revolves around other people approving of how you look after your workouts, then you need to examine what the foundation of your mental health is, and see if you can start shifting it to something more stable.  Believe me, I'm asking myself the same hard questions.  I'm not loving the answers, but I'm going to have to deal with them as soon as I un-ball myself and crawl out of the bathtub.

If the documentation-validation cycle is the only thing that makes you feel good, then please, please, please, use this time to a) keep yourself healthy and safe and b) find something (ANYTHING) else that can do that.  You used to have something else.  I promise you, you did.

I've loved using this time to rediscover the things that made me feel good before all that made me feel good was social validation.  Did you know I used to love cartoons?  I used to LOVE cartoons.  And wrestling.  And crossword puzzles.

But flexing online became all-consuming, because that's just the nature of the beast.  It pushes out everything that won't result in someone else wishing they could be your friend, hating you for how good you have it, or lusting after you--or all three.

I'm not saying eliminate social media from your life--especially not now--but to rethink how you use it.  It is a great way to build community.  I've connected with so many friends lately, but in what feels like authentic, no bs ways that involve actually caring about how they're doing and vice versa where nobody cares what anybody is WORKING on, and it is glorious.

I can't wait for all this to be over, and all the things we love can come back, but I hope Envy Culture never does.

One of the things that's heartened me during all this is finding out how many people truly care about each other and their well-being when they don't have to worry about where they currently fall in the social hierarchy.

It turns out we never wanted to be the people we've become, but the good news is, it's up to us if we ever want to be those people again.