The Internet Has Made Us Afraid to Be Ordinary

For most of human history, the default was an ordinary life. What’s changed?

Sunrise in Gig Harbor, WA 2022 - The morning my husband proposed to me

Being ordinary wasn’t something to fear back in the day. Most people lived relatively simple lives. They worked, raised families, knew their neighbors, grew older, and then died and disappeared from memory. Their lives weren’t meticulously documented or compared against millions of strangers. Nobody gave a shit what their haircare routine was, or what they ate for breakfast or nighttime face creams they used. And for the most part, nobody really woke up wondering whether they were living an interesting enough life. There wasn’t an audience waiting on the edge of their seats to decide whether your vacation was worth taking or if your Saturday night looked meaningful enough. They defined and graded their own experiences.

When the internet arrived, all of a sudden, we were all thrust into the lives of everyone else. The remarkable became visible everywhere, inevitably losing its remarkableness over time. We saw people doing ALL the things — traveling the world, building companies, becoming famous, transforming their bodies, writing books, buying beautiful houses we can’t afford, and turning some of the most intimate moments of their lives into content. The extraordinary stopped feeling extraordinary because we saw it every minute, of every hour, of every day. And naturally, we began to measure our boring, ordinary lives against someone else’s best moments that took a hundred takes before it was perfect.

The internet didn’t simply just show us what was possible though. It changed what we believed to be normal. An ordinary Wednesday sitting at home, going to work, making dinner, watching TV, and going to bed, feels as though we have somehow failed at life because Tiktok star Jessica is spending that same Wednesday in Italy. We know intellectually that social media is curated. We know people don’t post their arguments, their boredom, their debt, their loneliness, their less than favorable moments or the six hours they spent staring at the ceiling in crippling depression. And yet knowledge doesn’t seem to protect us from comparison. We’re social creatures, and comparison is one of the oldest ways we understand our place in the world. The main difference is that our village used to contain a few hundred people. Now it contains millions. This means, there’ll always be someone younger, richer, more attractive, more successful, more adventurous, more productive, and more interesting than you. The internet has made comparison practically infinite, and no human being was designed to win an infinite comparison. As an aging Xennial, I feel this in my bones some days.

It’s really created a lot of anxiety around being ordinary. I’ve observed that a lot of people don’t just want to be happy anymore, they want their happiness to look significant. They don’t just want to take a vacation, they want the vacation to be fucking epic. So epic producers will be begging to do a documentary on it. This also bleeds into our relationships. We don’t just want a relationship, we want a relationship that proves something about us, and that we’re never bored of, that’s exciting…always. Even our hobbies have become somewhat performative. Reading a book is not quite enough anymore – we need to post a stack of books instead! We’ve started turning experiences into evidence. Evidence of what though? That we are successful? That we are interesting, or proving we put our money where our mouths are? That we exist and we’re worth knowing? And beneath all of it is this aching fear. What if my life isn’t special? What if nobody is watching? What if nothing about my Wednesday deserves to be remembered?

I think having an unremarkable life is deeply human. A meaningful life doesn’t necessarily have to be an impressive one. The parent who reads the same bedtime story for the hundredth time isn’t living an inferior life because nobody’s watching. The person who spends thirty years at the same company, loves the same person, knows every street in their neighborhood, and spends Sunday mornings drinking coffee with friends has not necessarily failed to maximize their potential. There is dignity in repetition. There is beauty in familiarity and consistency. Some of the best parts of life are valuable precisely because they aren’t extraordinary. Knowing how someone takes their coffee, hearing the same joke from your Dad every time you see him, watching a child become taller year by year, sitting in the same chair at the end of the day to unwind with a cup of tea in the same cup you’ve used for 16 years. These moments don’t go viral. They’re not impressive whatsoever. They’re just... life. Maybe we’ve become so obsessed with documenting our existence that we’ve forgotten how to experience it without someone watching?

Perhaps the real rebellion today isn’t becoming extraordinary, but rather, becoming comfortable with just being ordinary. To have a life that doesn’t need to be envied all the fucking time. To do things that will never become content – just moments you keep for yourself or with someone you love. To enjoy something without photographing it. Going to a live concert and not watching it though the screen of your phone. Just sitting there, absorbing every note and feeling every beat of the drum. Even closing your eyes and letting the music reach you at a cellular level. Life can be deeply meaningful without being particularly interesting to anyone else. I’d even go as far to say it’s more meaningful when it’s kept private.

A picture of my son and I as we soaked up the view from a mountain hike in Phoenix, AR

The internet has given us unprecedented access to other people’s lives, but it’s also given us a distorted idea of what a life is supposed to look like. We don’t need to become more remarkable to escape that distortion either. We just need to stop treating ordinary as an insult. Because when you remove the audience, the algorithm, and the endless comparisons, you’re left with a much older and more difficult question.

Are you actually happy with your life, even if nobody else would be impressed by it?

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~Eevie