I'm guilty of buying into this behavior too. Whenever I see somebody sharing their event or advertising their show on Facebook I start thinking about their motives or how good it's going to be. This is much more innocent than typical 13 year old behavior, of course, as I didn't throw stink bombs at them or call them gay, but that stuff goes away with maturity. The general attitude is still inside me somewhere, and even though this is hard to admit, I kinda want them to fail.
It's terribly shitty of me, I know. There's no part of me that defends this kind of thinking, but I need to acknowledge it. People want other people to fail. Trying to do something is just a little bit annoying. I can only blame my teenage self for these behaviors. It is not human nature to hate effort.
This attitude isn't in children, I don't think. Little kids don't give a fuck. Give them an activity and they go all in. The worse thing you can do in the eyes of a child is to not try at all. At some point in our development everything changed. We started to take a step back and insult anybody who gave a shit. Not caring was cool. Apathy is almost the defining trait of adolescence.
It doesn't seem like human nature to not try as a teen, though. From an evolutionary standpoint, there is no way that humans who lounged around and rolled their eyes at everything from the years of 12-16 were the most successful tribe with the most successful genes. I doubt that caveman teenagers returning to camp with a bunch of food were called "tryhards" and kicked in the balls.
So why is the attitude seemingly everywhere? I have a couple of theories.
My first idea I like to call the "Cringe-Fail theory." Dumb name, I know, but hear me out. The basic idea is that we hate watching people do badly, so we try our best to make sure they never get a chance to fail by berating them and lowering their ambitions. For our own selfish, insecure reasons, we cannot bare the sight of somebody giving their all and coming short. Obviously, failure is the first step towards success, but as moody teenagers we can't think that far ahead and instead just turn the tide on the person trying to prevent them ever doing it again.
That leads me to my next theory, which we can call the "Social authority theory." The idea is that we want power and influence among our peers, so the best way to gain power is to seize it from other people. Whenever we see somebody make themselves trying their best (In turn making themselves vulnerable) we have a tendency to use that opportunity to make ourselves appear more powerful. Unless the person is a booming success, joking at the "try-er's" expense is usually a good maneuver. The more power a person has in a social circle, the more successful his attempts to bring people down becomes. To put it another way, the rich get richer.
Another theory is the "Jealousy backlash" theory and it's not much more complicated than that. Everybody wants to do well, and watching somebody else do well is painful. In turn, we try to make ourselves feel better by framing that person as a loser, try-hard, or virgin. At some point, we catch on to the fact that effort leads to success, so instead of bettering ourselves by trying a little harder, we take the easier route and tend to our fragile egos.
Finally, we have my favorite theory of all. I like to call it the "Accidental Nihilist Theory." I'm coming up on a full page, so I'm going to write about this tomorrow.
Until then, take care.
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