<story><title>Why obsessively following successful people online is dangerous</title><url>https://durmonski.com/life-advice/following-people-online-is-dangerous/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>randycupertino</author><text>I have a friend who is going through a harrowing divorce, cheating on both sides, lots of family drama, she tried to light his car on fire, police called by neighbors for fighting, etc.&lt;p&gt;On Instagram he and his (soon to be ex) wife just tagged themselves this weekend putting up Halloween decorations, all smiley buying pumpkins and cooking truffle mac and cheese, liking each other&amp;#x27;s posts.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come sleep on our couch.  I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I don&amp;#x27;t want to offend him.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tombert</author><text>Obviously I don&amp;#x27;t know your friend, but as someone who has dealt with depression and whatnot constantly for most of my life, and intermittently since I started medication four years ago, I can tell you that it&amp;#x27;s not terribly hard to make yourself seem happy and content online.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s almost &lt;i&gt;easier&lt;/i&gt; to appear happy online when you know you&amp;#x27;re not; you don&amp;#x27;t want people to try and offer you unsolicited advice about how &amp;quot;exercise worked for them&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;changing to this particular diet changed my life&amp;quot; or crap like that, so you fake it [1].  You only post things that you think are interesting, you minimize how much you talk about your personal life, and when you do it&amp;#x27;s only to flex about something cool you did. Whenever I &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; open up to friends later about my mental health stuff, they were always really surprised to hear it, and that was by design.&lt;p&gt;[1] To be clear, I&amp;#x27;m not knocking diet and exercise.  If you&amp;#x27;re feeling depressed, eating healthier and getting regular exercise is probably the best (and cheapest) place to start, and offers a bunch of other benefits too.  My life &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; improve when I stopped eating Taco Bell ever day.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why obsessively following successful people online is dangerous</title><url>https://durmonski.com/life-advice/following-people-online-is-dangerous/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>randycupertino</author><text>I have a friend who is going through a harrowing divorce, cheating on both sides, lots of family drama, she tried to light his car on fire, police called by neighbors for fighting, etc.&lt;p&gt;On Instagram he and his (soon to be ex) wife just tagged themselves this weekend putting up Halloween decorations, all smiley buying pumpkins and cooking truffle mac and cheese, liking each other&amp;#x27;s posts.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come sleep on our couch.  I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I don&amp;#x27;t want to offend him.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bhouston</author><text>Perfect Instagram is a skill you can deploy and unrelated to whether you are actually happy.  Case in point: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sltrib.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;police-compare-notes&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.sltrib.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;police-compare-notes&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;. There were multiple photogenic posts of smiling people in the weeks leading up to the murder, when they were fighting a lot of the time.</text></comment>