Told a False Story

“Everyone listening to this will know someone who works really hard, at a job they hate, to buy a load of shit they don’t need, that they display on social media to get people to go “OMG so jealous”, and then they feel a peculiar emptiness, because they’ve done what they’re meant to do. They’ve worked really hard, they’ve bought the shit they see in adverts, they’ve displayed it on social media, but they feel terrible. So what happens? … They work even harder, they buy even more shit that they display even more aggressively on social media. We’re in these cycles – we’ve been told a false story about what it is to be human, we’ve been told a false story about what it is to be happy.”

Johann Hari on the Making Sense Podcast #142