One can constantly argue about the pros and cons of social media, as it sure has both. I have now come to talk about yet another downside of it: how having a simple, normal life is now considered boring and not enough today.

Everything started a couple of days ago, as I was browsing through the comments of a blogger, whom I have been watching for years now, truly enjoying her cozy content. And I was shocked to find lots of negative comments about how boring her life is and how small and not exciting her world is. People were mocking her for not doing anything grandiose, staying home instead of traveling the world or clubbing every other day, preferring to stay local and often going to the same places or doing similar activities. She was being called lazy, slop and many other words I can’t remember now.

That made me wonder: since when a simple life has become something to be mocked for? Why should a person feel ashamed to live how they want? The blogger I’m talking about is quite rich and if she wanted to, she could be, for instance, travel non-stop and do all these fun and crazy activities everyone is now showing off online. But instead she prefers her ordinary life, spending quality time with her children, family and friends, doing what she likes and enjoying her hobbies, so why isn’t that enough? And this isn’t the first case I’ve witnessed a simple life being made fun of.

Somehow we’ve reached the point where we have to have this luxurious life to impress others. All those fancy influencers convinced us that we should be constantly out there, doing something huge, that we should be living in perfectly renovated and clean houses that look Pinterest-worthy, wear a new outfit every single day, go to expensive restaurants, drink wine, eat exceptionally healthy and pretentious food, have cool cars and the latest iPhones… Everything other than that is considered lame, boring and not good enough. And somehow we took the bait, became manipulated to think that’s what a happy and successful life looks like.

I understand where that comes from. People always subconsciously expect an approval from others. We want to be accepted and loved because we’re social beings and that’s how our psychology works. Even if we claim that we don’t care what others think of us, to some extent we actually do, and that’s normal. But the thing is that years and decades ago, the group of people we had to “impress” was very small – relatives, friends, colleagues, maybe some neighbors and a few random acquaintances, and that’s it. Now, with the rise of social media, we have to impress the whole world, people that are no longer in our lives, and, most importantly, strangers we’ve never seen and will hardly ever do. If before people were mentally competing with, let’s say, their one cousin or schoolmate who was doing great in life, now we’re becoming “rivals” with popular influencers who present the image of a perfect life. Isn’t that weird? Or should I say pathetic?

And don’t think I’m this smart and flawless person who’s judging others. Absolutely not, I’m actually in the same boat. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that what I do is not enough because someone out there who’s my age or even younger is doing something bigger. Sometimes I even start imagining what if others look through my content and think my life is boring, just because I mostly post stuff from home or my nature walks, and I don’t have photos with millions of friends, at clubs or different fun events every weekend. I know it’s ridiculous. That’s when I start having these inner battles with my own self, when the “slightly wiser part of me” starts scolding the “idiot me” for thinking stupid things. And worrying about people I don’t know, people who don’t even care about me. The funny thing is that I actually enjoy my “boring” life. I love my job, I love having my own little rituals, the hobbies that fill my spare time, the days I spend alone and the ones I spend with my close people. And that really should be enough because that’s what matters the most. But the image of that successful and acceptable life created by social media keeps knocking on the door and trying to disturb my peace. And surely not just mine.

There is, however, a some positive change lately, and I’m actually glad that many people have started to realize the absurdity of this. There are now bloggers that romanticize the normal, slow life that consists of little moments and isn’t about something huge. These trends show life how it is, without the Instagram or Pinterest filters without playing pretend and promoting their fake perfect lives. Instead people show their ordinary houses that can look messy, old outfits and fun hobbies, talk about simple things that bring them joy. And I truly love it.

At the same time I understand how weird it is that we’ve reached the point where we are normalizing something that was initially normal. That we have to convince ourselves and others that “normal is normal” (sorry for overusing the word). That we post our personal moments and feel guilty about them not being perfect for the social media.

But it is what it is, that’s where our evolution as a humankind takes us, at least for now. And instead of fighting or complaining about how things are now, we should learn to live in harmony with the current reality, make mistakes, learn on those mistakes and become smarter no matter how hard it seems.