The idea that young individuals, who are the most at risk of being affected by social media in this new digital age we are in, are experiencing mental problems and deficient performances in professional aspects of their lives makes this a very real issue to me. It isn’t something that sounds that bad on paper, in fact it almost sounds like it’s petty or whiny. If someone were to say ‘I feel upset because I’m not special’ that would almost be seen as bratty or pampered behavior, but the reality is this is an innate desire for humanity that isn’t being tended to, and the result is incredibly negative for humanity, which is why I chose to bring some light onto it.
I don’t even mean to speak of this problem as something that I or those around my age are above; I and all of my friends are college students. I also experience this lack of uniqueness problem on a daily or at least weekly basis. As of recently I’ve been required to start using the internet far more than I used to because of some creative endeavors I’ve begun working on with people around the world. Through working on this online community I have ran into genuinely dozens of people that share some kind of grand creative vision just like me, and despite that fact that we all see each other as friends, this issue of desiring to be special plagues all of us.
Whenever anyone posts a new video, or makes a new book, short story, or anything else, like friends we are of course happy for each other. We applaud them when they succeed, as they of course deserved it, they worked just as hard as any of the rest of us did. But ironically, this human desire to be unique and special makes most people in that space quite jealous. These aren’t people that are rude, mean, or anything that I would typically ascribe to someone that I call jealous, but yet, they can’t help feel jealous of the other person’s success.
Very recently, a voice actor that I know got put onto a roster. For those of you who do not know what that means, a roster is a professional agency lineup of voice actors, and if a show comes out that needs voice acting, someone from a roster is more likely to be chosen than an independent actor. Anyway, this friend got onto a roster, and when he said that another one of our friends congratulated him, but then started going on a rant about how the industry is so hostile and toxic to new voice actors.
Voice acting, much like any social media or internet driven job, is highly competitive, he was correct about that. He had been working in the industry independently for 4 years, and despite being, in my opinion at least, quite skilled, he never got any signings for paid work, nor did he got onto a roster despite years of applying. This was a bit of a long way to say that in that industry, being on a roster is what makes you special. It proves that you are more unique and worthy of the job than any of your peers. And so, despite everyone in that group being friends, all of them wanted to be the one to get on the roster, to be the one that was more special than the others, to prove that they were unique and accomplished.
This… is a horrendous mindset to have quite frankly. It speaks wonders about how the world is and how the people in it react to competition. Humans are competitive creatures, competition is in the lifeblood of practically everything we do. When you’re in school you compete with grades for positions like valedictorian, when you apply for college you compete for spots and scholarships, my voice actors friends competed for spots on a roster, and so much more in life is a competition. The reason I bring this up is because I believe competition is directly caused by the desire to be special.
When I was applying for college, I (honestly shamefully) admit that I applied to a few Ivy League schools. However, I never had any intention of going to them, even if I got in. I already knew I wanted to do something in nursing, and USF was always going to be my main choice because it was close to home. Yet for some reason, I still wanted to see if I could get into those high level schools. In the end, I got accepted to Princeton, and I can’t lie, just that fact on its own had me feeling special. It was proof to me that my work in school and in life had in fact paid off. Of course, as I stated, I never wanted to go, and I didn’t, but it is a fun fact I can bring up to people now that I am proud of. Along with that, this is something I even feel bad about looking back because I did it for pride, even though me getting in meant someone else who may have wanted to attend the school genuinely didn’t get in. That realization was a major formative moment in my current thought process concerning human competitiveness.
Despite what I’ve said already, I could see an argument that the above paragraphs are impersonal. The voice actor story involves more work associates than anything, and getting into an Ivy League is just something that affects strangers, not anyone I know. I do have one more experience though which made me truly realize how bad this desire to feel special was for people, and how damaging it could be when not achieved. Me and my best friend have been creatives our whole life. We’ve both written for years, but my best friend is a youtube who has been trying to make it for a decade now. One day I decided to make an audio drama and put it on youtube. The first episode of this audio drama got 2,000 views, and my friend was really happy, but he openly admitted that for a while it made him mad. He had been working for a decade with a few videos that were around the level of what I had just released on my first try. To that end, I was actually jealous of him when he had his first few successes. We are still best friends, but that is something I think about a lot, because it speaks to just how strong that competitive desire can be, even in close friends.
In all of these cases, the people who felt slighted ended up in a rut. After my audio drama succeeded, my best friend didn’t write for a few months. After the voice actor got on the roster, my other voice actor friend couldn’t even bring himself to voice act for almost 4 months. That encapsulates both why I chose this issue and why it’s important. It is a hidden poison, the desire to feel unique, and when humans can’t feed the desire, this poison seeps through and causes issues. Most people just call it pride or jealousy, and that is true, but these things stem from this desire. That’s why I want to bring attention to it, because there ought to be enough credit to go around to prove that everyone is special in their own way, and that can be enough to help them not feel dejected or depressed.
Overall, the major learning to take away from this is that wanting to be special is not a bad thing. It is a feeling that is tugged at in this digital age, with social media existing to make people struggle to make a unique identity. It is harder than ever to make a strong identity, especially a strong digital identity, because so many people are trying to do the same thing. All you can do though is realize what the social media is doing to you, and try not to let it consume you, while working towards your own goals, realizing that you have your own special flare about you, and if you lean into that, it doesn’t really matter if other people believe you have a unique identity, because you do.