People compare things that are close together in some way. You compare yourself to your neighbors or family, or to your colleagues at work, or to people that do similar work as you do in other companies.
Isn’t one pervasive problem today that many people compare themselves to those they see on social media, often including influencers with a very different lifestyle? So it seems to me that comparisons that are not so local are in fact often made, it primarily depends on what you’re exposed to—which to some degree is indeed the people around you, but nowadays more and more also includes the skewed images people on the internet, who often don’t even know you exist, broadcast to the world.
But maybe this is also partially your point. Maybe it would theoretically help to expose people a lot to “the reality of the 90s” or something, but I guess it’s a bit of an anti-meme and hence hard to do.
I agree that telling people how well off they are on certain scales is probably not super effective, but I’m still sometimes glad these perspectives exist and I can take them into consideration during tough times.
I think that “fake local comparison” is a real problem. Relatable influencers living lives much different than yours feel like your neighbors, even though they are not. It’s one of the many reasons why I think that we should regulate social media into oblivion. I’ll write something about that in another post.
Isn’t one pervasive problem today that many people compare themselves to those they see on social media, often including influencers with a very different lifestyle? So it seems to me that comparisons that are not so local are in fact often made, it primarily depends on what you’re exposed to—which to some degree is indeed the people around you, but nowadays more and more also includes the skewed images people on the internet, who often don’t even know you exist, broadcast to the world.
But maybe this is also partially your point. Maybe it would theoretically help to expose people a lot to “the reality of the 90s” or something, but I guess it’s a bit of an anti-meme and hence hard to do.
I agree that telling people how well off they are on certain scales is probably not super effective, but I’m still sometimes glad these perspectives exist and I can take them into consideration during tough times.
I think that “fake local comparison” is a real problem. Relatable influencers living lives much different than yours feel like your neighbors, even though they are not. It’s one of the many reasons why I think that we should regulate social media into oblivion. I’ll write something about that in another post.