Gaming has come up before in this blog, and I find I keep learning little life lessons from my experiences in gaming.
A little background to make a point: sometimes I like to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in short bursts to train my aim in first-person shooters. There are maps where you can train weapons quite efficiently.
Sometimes, I’ll do this practicing in the middle of the day, when I could be working. Historically, when I’ve done this, I’ve made sure to go “offline” in Steam and Discord in an effort to hide the fact that I’m playing games in the middle of the day.
And the thought hit me… Why am I hiding it? Why don’t I want people to know?
Well, it’s because I don’t want people to see me as irresponsible and unable to stay focused on work. That would be weakness.
And then I thought… What if I reframed it, and wanted to “show off” that I have a job where I have the option of playing games in the middle of the day? Suddenly, it seems like a positive thing. In fact, it seems like the exact type of thing I see people sharing on social media all the time. If I cared about such things, I might even do it myself.
I realized that the reason for both reactions is that I want to hide my weaknesses from others and yet display my strengths. Almost universally. People might post negative things on Facebook, but they rarely reveal actual weaknesses.
Someone might post, “I’ve had a really hard year” but never, “I’ve been really irresponsible and and suffered as a result”. Because having a difficult year but sticking through it is a strength. And people love sharing that.
I’m sure there are lots of social reasons why this is the case. Social status is important, and inflating your public image improves your social status. But that’s for a social scientist to really explain.
I can’t help but think, though, that all social media and public communication is inherently dishonest as a result. You’re only ever getting half of the picture.
You see everyone’s strengths but they are hiding all of their weaknesses. This might be one of the biggest reasons social media is making people so unhappy. We already know that people see the lives of others, and can’t help but compare them with their own lives.
I feel like now I understand why that’s so damaging. You’re literally being bombarded by the best of everyone, and none of the bad. I guess in today’s day and age, you have to suffer alone, thinking you are the only one with weaknesses and actual problems.
It also makes it all the more meaningful when someone actual opens up and is honest enough to share their weaknesses. They are no longer trying to inflate their social standing in front of you.
Maybe it’s not even others that are the biggest problem. Maybe people aren’t even honest with themselves, and hide all of their own weaknesses with themselves with rationalization or even just willful ignorance or delusions.
That’s a very interesting thought to me. There are lots of repercussions of that.
Everyone not only wants to actually have high social standing, they want to feel like they have it. They want to feel like the are great, and have lots of strengths and are generally doing better than average. And for many people (half of all people, technically), that’s going to involve some self-deception.
It also can explain a lot of behavior. Like, (to bring things back to games) take cheaters in video games. Cheating in many games is rampant. To many of us, it seems completely pointless. Yeah you win, but… You cheated. You didn’t demonstrate better skill, and by all accounts, you are in fact worse.
And yet people do it. I think it’s because it still feels good. They can trick themselves into feeling the same way others do when they win fairly. They feel the same sense of accomplishment and strength that others do by actually demonstrating their strength. They are willing to completely ignore the fact that they don’t deserve it.
There are tons of areas this could address, but I think I’ll stop here for today and leave it for another post.