So tired of how competitive people are

[darknessontheedgeoftown]

This seems to be getting worse and worse. People putting in ever longer hours at ever more stressful jobs, raising the bar if expectations for everyone else. People competing over how academic/funny/sporting their children are, why they have/don't have children. Facebook is essentially a competition for who has the most, best friends and the best life. All social media is bullshit, people take the piss out of others to enhance their own relative status and then, especially in the UK, hide behind humour "it's only banter/a joke". I'm beginning to wonder if we are getting close to the Black Mirror dystopia where everyone has a social popularity/success score and spends their whole life obsessed with raising it. Why can't people just calm down a bit, not work so hard, let others catch up and allow a bit more happiness for everyone.I'm really down and fed up about this.

I hear you, although you can opt out of it. I tend to unfollow anyone on FB who does irritating or upsetting things, like posting endless gushing fluff about their relationship, or non stop baby pictures or whatever. You have to make social media work for you. It can be a good thing - for me, it allows me to stay in touch with loads of people that I wouldn't have stayed in touch with by phone or email because life is too busy. Hide the stuff that gets you down, and focus on the good stuff you do get out of it. Some people choose to opt out of social media altogether, and that may work for you

I only went on fb recently. Only did it so I wouldn't miss out on nct meet ups.

I had one former classmate who I had to unfriend because literally every day she was posting love messages to her boyfriend. Really personal stuff too about their sex life eeewww. I just didn't want to read it!

Just unfriend the people who piss you off.

True. For me, using FB messenger only seems to be the key. The rest of it is competitive drivel. How come if it is real life and in real life so many people including me have depression, that no one ever refers to it? But it isn't just social media. It is like people have been brainwashed. In London, right now, this is a chronic and mostly unspoken problem. I get so much more out of painful admissions that I am down or depressed or in some other way life is not perfect than I do out of the BS. But so many people are addicted to the BS. FFS it doesn't matter how successful and popular you are, you're still going to die one day. I am so so totally fed up with this and just want to find somewhere where people think like me, maybe Scandinavia or somewhere?

just want to find somewhere where people think like me
They're just not on Facebook! eg my whole family, including teenagers. Just be happy, and don't care about all that.

I came off all social media about 5 months ago and it shut out all that competitive 'noise'. It's so freeing and I haven't missed it at all. In fact the more time I spend away from it the more bizarre it all seems.

Social media is being used as people personal media assistant. It's mostly fake. People are able to edit the bad bits of there life out and only post what makes them look good.

Th perfect exotic holiday pictures funded on the credit card with no idea how to pay for it.

The picture in front of the expensive new car....it's a hire car on a business trip.

It's all a false image which fuels competition

I am beginning to wonder if people are actually mostly not very nice, or does hyper competitive modern life make them this way?

I have come off FB for this very reason. I may go back on at some point and delete the vast majority of people. I only really joined to keep in touch with my old uni friends and we have a whatsapp group going for that now anyway. As pp said, I feel much freer without that 'noise'.

For me, I think for the sake of my mental health, I need to step back and just concentrate on the things that are important to me and bother less about what other people are doing and what other people think. Not being on FB makes this process much easier. Plus I have more time on my hands when I'm not on mumsnet

It's one of those pointless 'quotes' I read on Facebook but it said "don't compare someone's highlight reel to your behind the scenes"

I hardly post anything on FB but you if someone posting their happy/proud moments is having a negative effect on your feelings, then the onus is on you to find out why you have an issue with someone else's 'success'.

Maybe you are a lot more competitive than you realise.

Someone posting pictures of their children or great holiday photos has absolutely no effect on me other than great photos.

Facebook is hardly the place to judge - it has just become corrupt in that matter. And there is hardly any cure, apart from avoiding it altogether.

I recently moved from the private school system in England to Australia with my DD and family.

I found the pressure in England for kids at some private schools to get into Oxbridge just too much. I found the exam stress too much for kids. I hated it.

My DD's school is great in Australia. If you're academic - they push you. If you're not, they let you do vocational courses in years 10-12, such as vet nursing, mechanics etc.. which I think is great.

Nobody cares if you have a "blue collar job" and it's just not snobby. I met a fabulous woman recently who I play sports with. She is just gorgeous and fit and great personality. I thought she must be a high powered PR for a glam company. Turns out she packs groceries for online deliveries between 7pm and 3am every night. But nobody cares! In England, I feel she would have been 'judged'....not here. A job is a job.

I'd have felt embarrassed to tell the mums at the school gate in England that I packed in my stressful city job to be a check-out lady. But not here. I just feel that it's way less judgemental and I like that. Also, the pressure of not facing GCSEs is ENORMOUS. Just my two pennies. I love England though... don't mean to sound negative. I just think we need to value blue collar jobs more.

What Vagabond says is true, my oldest DS is very bright, able,high achiever, school tried to persuade him to apply for Cambridge, but all he has wanted to do since 2 years old is be a train driver, which he happily does!
When I have told friends and/or family of his career he (and me indirectly) is judged, as he has what is considered a "manual" job. (it is fact a very responsible and skilled job) but as its not white collar it is looked down on.

Vagabond in fairness, you are talking about the private school crowd. My DDs went to the local comprehensive and plenty of mums were dinner ladies, worked on a checkout, cleaned & their partners were similar/tradespeople. You can't extrapolate a teeny private school bubble ( you do know only a small minority of kids go private?) to the rest of the country.

ithakabythesea - my DC went to the local Comp too, and whilst there are plenty doing blue collar jobs, there are many more who are university-educated and VERY snobby about academic achievement.

My DS is reasonably academic, did A levels, now at uni. My DD less academic, got a string of Cs at GCSE (plus some D's) and now doing a Business BTEC. Friends who are near neighbours are so snobby - anything below A* is crap (luckily they have bright kids) - which means that my DD is worthless in their eyes!!

How do I know - because the eldest is going out with a girl he met online, she got Cs and Ds like my daughter last summer. The day after results, his mum told me "she only got Cs and Ds", with an underlying attitude of 'that girl is so not good enough for my academic son'. Horrendous.

Wish we lived in Oz!!!

Really interesting to hear about Australia. I was especially interested to hear about the gorgeous friend packing groceries.It seems there is a correlation almost demanded between physical attractiveness and doing a socially approved(by the competitive brigade) job, preferably one with the word "consultant" or "analyst" in it. I do think what happens is the competers push non competers away so it can seem to others like there are only competers around. I really think people should just stop and pause and realise and acknowledge what they are doing for a minute though.

I have a reasonably small number of friends on Facebook.

Can think of 5 instantly who post regularly about their own MH issues and MH support in general.
2 of them have very serious issues (depression for one and bipolar for the other) which have led to hospitalisation. They regularly post about how difficult they are finding life.

Yeah, other friends will post a big old boast when their child does something they're proud of. I like to see it. I care about them, I care about their kids. Same person next day will post and say "shit - is it a dress up day tomorrow then? Anyone got spare "
Plenty of self deprecating humour.

Just choose who you have on Facebook.

I think it's a bit naïve to say "Scandinavia, maybe?". There are loads of great people in the UK with lovely attitudes. I daresay there are some competitive show offs in FI, NO, DK, SE...

Not sure how comparable UK and Australian private school systems are. Aren't the Australian ones far more common place and cheaper? That's going to skew the profile of the families and personalities using them.

I know 3 people working in Sydney who have all said the long hours culture in their offices far exceeds the companies they worked for back in the UK - all large international corporates, but not banking.

OP, you're not going to move to a Scandinavian country or Australia in the short term I presume? Don't fall into a trap of expecting some untrue stereotype of everyone in the UK. There are people like you and not like you in every country.

Strip Facebook back to your genuine friends - and be happy for them for their happy posts.

The grass is greener where you water it.

Yes. It's why I came off Facebook. Everyone enjoying their so called amazing Lives.

OP are you me? You are pondering the same things I do...

Where to start with Facebook and the vacuousness of it all. I stopped updating my status a little while ago now. Found that sharing my "thoughts" wasn't really bringing about any meaningful connections. So stopped doing it!

I think it depends, FB doesn't have to be like that. I have thought for a while it would be really interesting to read an article where two people swapped FB feeds for the day and commented on how they were different, but you'd have to get permission from all your friends I guess and then they might change what they posted for a few days so it wouldn't work.

I use FB to stay in touch with family and friends, and while every so often someone might share something that makes me sigh, mostly I don't recognise this social media world that everyone talks about.

This is why I abandoned social media recently. And the work thing is why I'm currently signed off for two weeks. I can't handle the pressure of working culture in the UK these days. I'm a deputy headteacher and it's killing me. I'm this close to packing it in. I don't want to feel like this any more. When did we decide that our jobs had to own us?

Vego I might just be..I haven't FB status updated in years and years. But it is the psychology behind the need to be better than everyone else which interests me.

The ones that always seem to talk about how much they are in love crack me up...because we all know it's a case of she "doth protest too much". Being "better than everyone else" is definitely a social media plague for sure...but most of it is bullshit x

Fulberoo , that sounds rotten. I have family in teaching and my best bud is a head teacher at a challenging school so this sounds all too familiar, sadly. If work is making you sick - is there a way out of teaching for you? I appreciate we all need to pay the bills so please take this in the spirit it is meant, but no job is worth making yourself ill for.

Ellisandra I can't copy and paste on here but your last two points are absolutely spot on. Thank you.

fulberoo I was a middle management in teaching and I did pack it in..a few months ago before it killed me. Teaching and especially management level teaching is a slow suicide it seems. Really sad. Employers have exploited spiralling living costs and people's innate desire to want to prove themselves with the result that many have horrible stressful lives. In teaching you have loads of 25-35 year olds who all think they are going to revolutionise the profession and shake things up. They are desperate for promotion and work almost hours. Heads and governors rub their hands in glee as the normal expected productivity soars for everyone. No one wants to be seen as a slacker and many worry about their livelihoods. I really don't know why it has come to this.

"Today 14:03 EagleIsland

Social media is being used as people personal media assistant. It's mostly fake. People are able to edit the bad bits of there life out and only post what makes them look good.

Th perfect exotic holiday pictures funded on the credit card with no idea how to pay for it.

The picture in front of the expensive new car....it's a hire car on a business trip.

It's all a false image which fuels competition"

Do you really know a large number of people who do this? Lie about their lives? (Excluding the holiday on the credit card because well, who cares if it's on a credit card, they're still on holiday) but creating a false
Image? Ie insinuating they own cars they don't? That's very weird

My FB is generally full of people talking about the weather or good books/ tv. And politics. Not some weird alternate reality where people I know lie about their lives. I suspect you have weird friends (or maybe are one of those people who have like 400 friends?)