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I CAN’T PINPOINT when or why exactly it started, but Instagram and the current trend of people we might follow running a highlight reel at the end of each month are stealing any ounce of joy left in my life.
The posts always start around the first of each month and do a recap of the previous weeks. They usually have some holiday pics, glamorous evenings, expensive new purchases and endless captions about how amazing and fulfilling the month was, the targets they smashed and how excited they are for the next month.
At the other end of the scale, I barely register the end of the month and need four or five days to adjust to the new one, mentally calculating each time how far away Christmas is.
I might be feeling fairly proud that I didn’t forget a bin collection last week, or I have found a sandwich filler that my kids will actually eat at lunch, and then I scroll past something which upends me.
What am I doing wrong? What kind of jobs do these people have? Where can I apply? Social media is supposed to be an easy way to pass five minutes with some empty mindlessly scrolling. It’s not supposed to make me feel terrible about where I am in life. I actively go out of my way to avoid anything that makes me feel terrible.
I Marie Kondo’d my feed last year and removed almost every influencer. I unfollowed and muted anyone who was intent on only showing perfection. I don’t need that in my life. It doesn’t bring any joy. It only brings misery. I mean, good for them, but also, no thank you.
I don’t want to compare myself to someone whose job is to look perfect.
Since social comparison theory first emerged in 1954, it has been argued that humans have an innate drive to make evaluations about themselves based on comparison with others. It makes sense that we would need to know who has the most resources, or who might pose a significant threat.
And for previous generations, this might not have meant much. My grandparents might have snuck a look over their neighbour’s fence to see how the other half lived, but I can see inside wardrobes, fridges and cupboards. I see people prepare breakfasts decorated with colourful fruits and flowers, while I sit bleary-eyed over a bowl of Rice Krispies. I get to watch the family vacations, but only the small snippets of everyone smiling and laughing. We share so much more with each other through social media, and it’s only ever the good stuff.
When our parents were parenting, they had no idea about how other people were living and they also had much more realistic standards. They might have seen the odd glimpse of the ideal and ‘perfect’ family life through TV shows but it was always very clear that this was scripted, and filmed on a set, and that no one actually was expected to live like this. No one was hot glueing their own Halloween decorations.
In fact, I don’t remember a single Halloween decoration! All the kids were black bin bag witches with sooty noses, all of the sweets came from the local shop, and everyone used the white plastic bags to carry their sweets.
I am usually good at spotting things that have been filtered or designed to make me feel inadequate so that I buy something. But we have to remember that there is a sneaky little algorithm at work behind it all, and it knows how to draw me back in, every single time.
Parenting. More specifically, if I am doing enough for my kids.
I just want them to have a happy childhood, with lovely memories to think back. But no matter how much I do, everyone else seems to do so much more. And they have the nerve to make it look so effortless.
My feeds are filled with ‘spooky snack ideas’ and ‘how to create a Halloween balloon arch for your front door’. Who has this the time, in all honesty? And the worst part, the absolute very worst part, is that it works. Every single time.
I spent my Saturday sticking 70-something Halloween bats up along our stairs (if our landlord is reading this, no I didn’t). All because I saw a video of an influencer from The States, and her staircase was like something from a movie set. Before I was even aware of what was happening, I had bought the items on Amazon.
The chain of misery reminds me of when I was first using the internet, back in the early 2000s using dial-up on a monstrous device in the kitchen. Inboxes were filled with chain mail. You remember them, forward to 15 people or something terrible will happen. It’s like we have come full circle back to these.
Someone makes a post, I feel like a terrible parent and worry my kids will have a brutal childhood if I don’t follow suit, I stick bats around the house till my fingers bleed, post the picture on my story where it targets other unsuspecting parents, and the cycle continues. I have forwarded the chain mail.
I always forwarded them back in the day too, just in case. So I really don’t know why I have all of this adult anxiety.
Sometimes I feel like the only person who isn’t waking up at 5 am to run 5K, blend a smoothie, make the kids a fresh organic breakfast and sing like the von Trapps as we head out the door. I feel like the only parent struggling to explain a housing crisis to my kids. I feel like the overwhelming thoughts of climate change and the kind of world we are leaving to our kids are mine alone.
World Mental Health Day is coming up on Tuesday 10 October, and I am going to use this one as an NCT. Obviously not the kind of NCT that ruins my mental and financial health, but one to just check in on how I am doing. Because if I’m not aware of my own weaknesses, then the algorithm will get me every time. And while panic buying 764 bats with express delivery might not appear on any list of symptoms, it’s probably something I should explore.
I don’t compare myself to influencers in an everyday sense, and I shouldn’t compare my parenting either.
I don’t want to make decisions from a place of feeling inferior. I don’t want to live a life of consumerism in a time of climate crisis (and I promise to reuse every single bat, each year, for as long as the planet will have me). I don’t have the answers for how we manage the impact of social media, or how to move towards portraying more authentic lives, and maybe we never will.
I know it’s easy to say ‘shut the phone down, delete the apps’ and that’s a fair point. Believe me, I’ve done it and held on for some time until the FOMO creeps in or there’s some reason to check in on something. I’m working on it, but for now, I can pay more attention to what I am looking at and the impact it has on me. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to lose my credit card for a few weeks, at least until Halloween and dare I say, Christmas madness passes.
Margaret Lynch is a busy, working mum of two, living in Kildare and wondering if Adulthood is really for her.
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And a half a million people going to see the pope. HAHA
@Decko Kelly: Pope this and Pope that. People are quick to forget that if it wasn’t for the catholic church, we wouldn’t have one of the most educated work forces in the world.
@B-Tech Roadman: Ye good point. Once people are educated it’s ok to abuse children.
@Decko Kelly: But shur I know that. Lets not forget the good they did. Can’t be all bad
@B-Tech Roadman: say that to the victims and their families.
@B-Tech Roadman: how naive of you to think that a secular society would operate without schools. Governments fund schools religious or not. We unfortunately trusted them to care for our children for a few generations but that is changing.
@B-Tech Roadman: we have a well educated workforce. Don’t lose the run of yourself.
If we didn’t allow the church to run our schools then we would have had state run schools instead. The curriculum is set by the department of education so I think we would have been fine. Probably even better than our high standard now as students wouldn’t have wasted hundreds of hours learning prayers and backwards teachings.
When the “bad” that happened was as extreme as what that evil organisation did and then intentionally tried to cover up, then yes, we can forget about any good which they did.
The RCC is a scourge on the Irish people. The sooner the better they are completely separated from any state roles (eg education).
@Daveinson: We hadn’t a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out before the 1970′s.
@Decko Kelly: Never confuse the messenger with the message.
@Noel Tate: Tell us how you really feel, don’t sugar coat it! There’s waiting lists to get into many of the Catholic high schools in the Boston area. Individuals, myself included, if we had to do it over, wouldn’t even think of not attending a RCC high school! The education is years ahead of the public school zoos!
@Noel Tate: Tell us how you really feel, don’t sugar coat it! There’s waiting lists to get into many of the Catholic high schools in the Boston area. Individuals, myself included, if we had to do it over, wouldn’t even think of not attending a RCC high school! The education is years ahead.
@Noel Tate: the state and society (No matter how much they feign innocence) were happy for the church to take these roles, no one else would.
@Richard W. Kendall: it must be the colour of your religion.
@B-Tech Roadman: your clown mate !
@Noel Tate: you really don’t understand how poor we were. There would have been no schools or hospitals if the church didn’t provide them back in the day. Ireland wasn’t always like this.
@B-Tech Roadman: f##k off
@Richard W. Kendall: I never said the education wasn’t good. They are teaching a curriculum set by the department of education. They are not “years” ahead of non religious run schools.
The fact that people may be queueing for catholic run schools in Boston has zero to do with my point which was; when an organisation has committed as much sexual abuse, rape of children, murder of babies and toddlers, phycological abuse, child neglect and intentionally tried to cover it up, regardless of what good they have done they no longer have any place within our state education system.
@GClare: that
1: Doesn’t have any affect on my point and
2: Doesn’t change the fact that priests in Ireland raped hundreds (if not thousands) of children in Ireland and intentionally tried to cover it up. They still raped children, even IF people knew about it.
@Liam Doyle: I do, I know the role which the RCC played in running our education system and health care. However that doesn’t change the fact that they abused their power. They raped children, the murdered babies and toddlers and attempted to cover it all up.
My point that any good they done does not outweigh all the child rape and murder which they committed still stands.
@Liam Doyle: I’m very disheartened to see that both you and ‘B-Tech Roadman’ have been failed by the incredible Catholic Education you both clearly received, it’s almost as if both you somehow completely lost the capacity to think, and research for yourselves.
Contrary to your ignorant statement, quote; “There would have been no schools or hospitals if the church didn’t provide them back in the day.”
There was a school and hospital system in Ireland ‘back in the day’, from 1831 in fact, and it was far more tolerant and advanced than the Catholic School system we have today.
‘National schools, established by the British Government with the Stanley Letter in 1831, were originally multi-denominational. The schools were controlled by a State body, the National Board of Education, with a six-member board consisting of two Roman Catholics, two Church of Ireland, and two Presbyterians.’
@B-Tech Roadman: Look up Vere Foster.
The churches are masters at painting a face for themselves as veibg selfless and tireless toilers when in fact they hijacked resources in collusion with the state, and squeezed the poor with blackmail and threats. All with sanctimonious espousals. Sickening. However, the chickens are coming home to roost. The ground is shifting. One can smell panic from the liars, and this pope’s visit has backfired. In a big way.
@Gaius Gracchus: Good man Gaius!
@Gaius Gracchus: Well you can’t use semicolons or quote correctly so I’ll not lose sleep. I’m well able to think for myself and I’ve done so.
Regardless of how it started, the catholic church still had a fundamental part to play in our education. Whether your massive ego likes it or not.
@PV Nevin: You’re gone into tinfoil hat territory good sir
@B-Tech Roadman: bull sh it
@Gaius Gracchus: there were some slight political and economic changes circa 1922. Is your assumption that because the British could provide education & healthcare to a select, wealthy few in the 1830s then the impoverished Irish state could automatically provide same for all from independence onwards? Where did you fail to be educated exactly?
@B-Tech Roadman: man you are some
@B-Tech Roadman: Lunatic
Yes, but is the movie any good?
@Dave Slater: Perhaps. What this article doesn’t mention is the film grossed $1.4M worldwide in the opening weekend. The $618 was only in the US – limited to 11 cinemas / 14 showings. So a fair few people globally must have thought it looked worth going to see.
@Dave Slater: not great to be honest
@Dave Slater: It is not bad actually. I liked it.
@Shane Corry: The witch-hunts developing around Spacey et al is a very, very dangerous phenomenon.
“First they came for Weinstein. Now they will come for you”.
Why are comments allowed on this article but not on the #metoo article about he sex pest female actor? ???
Huh?
@andyearley: because it’s not about a legal case, the other one is.
@Dave O Keeffe: yeah but there are legal cases going on with spacey too. So comments about those cases could be published on this article.
@andyearley: and they will be removed but as the legal cases are not the subject it removes the liability from the publishers.
@Dave O Keeffe: OK man. As least I can stop being outraged and just do the washing up now. Maybe
@andyearley: because females aren’t sex pest!!!!!
@andyearley: The Denis O’Brien article two days ago had comments closed also – and it nothing to do with any court case.
@GClare: well yer one clearly was
@Clear And Graphic: The man who must not be named
@andyearley: who gives a feck
Is there any nudity in it?
@Do the Bort man: you mean like one of those French films?
@Do the Bort man: only if your Ma makes a cameo in it
Shame he’s a sex pest now, his acting skills are a loss to Hollywood
@Ciarān: accused but not proven or charged.
@B9xiRspG: Yeah I agree just accused of being a sex pest by a number of credible sources. Either way his career is over and Hollywood is minus a great actor regardless of what crimes he did or didn’t do
@Ciarān: so much for innocent until proven guilty. All you need is some creditable sources, just zero proof.
@Ciarān: ah he always a bit odd. Played that part in The Usual Suspects a bit too well if you ask me
@B9xiRspG: Calm down there it’s not me accusing him lol
@Ciarān: shame yeah .. hahaha
@Ciarān: Your Ma’s a sex pest
Old news
@Mr Grumble: brand new to me.
They released it on video in July. They are backwards over there.
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