Everyone tries to hide that they are depressed

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Never before in human history has there been higher recorded rates of depression.

[00:00:06]And yet it feels like to me people have never been more performatively happy on average. And it's truly exhausting because what sort of happens is if you are someone who is depressed, which is okay to feel that way, you go out into public or in the world and everyone else seems like they're having a grand old time and they're enjoying their life and then it makes you feel worse. But in reality, you probably could connect with a lot of other people if you were just honest. And that's what sucks. And there's this weird like it seems like the conversation is fake. The narrative is fake amongst our communities, right? Like everyone is trying to appear mentally okay. And I think along the lines of that, people are also trying to curate evidence that their life is meaningful.

[00:00:56]and privately they're actually disconnecting from it because what happens is humans correlate happiness or um joy or positive emotions with fulfillment or meaning.

[00:01:07]And so if you appear as though you're sad to the rest of the world, it makes it seem like you don't have meaning. And there's a lot of shame in that. That's kind of like the ultimate like why am I here on earth? Oh, it's for my purpose or my meaning. And so it there there's just a lot of shame that's felt with that. And then if you sort of do the opposite, if you're just real, everyone online, I I've experienced this so much where people will be like, "Oh, you're laring or you're pretending to be like the sad, depressed guy. You're not actually lonely. You don't actually like live in your parents' basement. You don't do that." And it it's funny because I was on the phone with some people that that know me decently well the other day and they were like laughing because they're like, "Dude, all the time we see online people that are saying that you're you're faking that you don't have friends or that you're sad or whatever." And they're like, "But we know because we know you that like you never, you know, get on PlayStation or you never do this stuff cuz you're always like working. You actually are alone." And I'm like, "Yeah, dude. It's because anytime you commit to any one aesthetic there are so many people in society that will hate on you and the they're the people that are the I call them floaters. They sort of float around.

[00:02:16]They don't take any real stance. They don't ever have skin in the game. And these are the most insufferable people because they're also the ones that pretend to be happy when in reality it's like they are out of everyone they're the most desperate for a sense of belonging and a sense of meaning or purpose. But you just get shamed no matter what you do nowadays. You know what I mean? And I also don't want to get it twisted. I think there are many people that actually are happy, but what you'll realize is often times happy people when they go out in public, they're almost neutral and then they have like moments of like they're laughing, they're smiling, stuff like that, but they're not like walking around where they're like like you know what I mean? Or they're not like insufferably laughing like out loud and like all this stuff. It just feels performative in that sense. All the people that I guess you can never know if someone's truly happy to be fair, but a lot of people that I know that that seem content and have told me that they enjoy their life when they go out, it's peaceful. It's not like, oh, I need to be extra about all this stuff.

[00:03:19]And those people are enjoyable to be around. But these there's like this epidemic of individuals who have this need of being like, well, I'm like a bum loser if I don't prove to everyone that I'm happy, so I'm going to do this or that. And it's like, bro, it's okay to admit the ups and downs of life. I do it all the time on my channel. You know, last these past few days have been a huge up for me, but before it's been really down, and I've gone through periods of time in my life where I'm very depressed and other periods of time in my life where I'm happy. And that is just being human.

[00:03:48]That is okay. you don't have to constantly show everyone that you're just so happy all the time. You know, I had this job um about a year and a half ago and it was like a a retail store sales job and I didn't really like it that much and I never I just never pretended to like it.

[00:04:07]I was like on most of my other jobs I would pretend to be happy but this job I was like I'm not going to do it anymore and it felt so free and it felt relieving to be like oh I don't have to prove to my co-workers that I'm happy to be here. On the contrary, you know, I would just be super brutally honest.

[00:04:21]Like if a day was going good, I'd be like, "Yeah, today wasn't, you know, I didn't have to do much work and I enjoyed it." On other days, it's like, "Yeah, it's been a pain in the butt."

[00:04:27]And that's okay. That's life. That's okay to admit that. You know what I mean? Now, there are some people that have I don't think it's performative happiness. I think it's a a they're trying to force a mentality of optimism on themselves, which I think is a net positive actually. Like, I'm not shaming that at all. There are some people that will you see this really common with women like normally like middle-aged women where they try to be like super like um how don't what's I don't even know what the right word for it would be but they're like they're full of glee and happiness and they're just they're just like yeah like it's okay like that's fine that's life whatever and like on the surface level it does seem performative but then you realize that is kind of their way of like trying to kick themselves into enjoying life and stuff like that. So there you got to have nuance when you go and meet people cuz some are performative, some aren't.

[00:05:21]But as a whole, especially with the youth, with my generation, Gen Z, it feels so exhausting when you go out and you're like maybe you're catching up with people from your hometown or whatever and they're like, "Yeah, man.

[00:05:36]Life has been going great, man." And and I'm just so excited about my new job and it's like, "What's your job?" "Oh, I'm going to be like a finance guy at an insurance company. I'm going to crunch numbers." and you're like, "Dude, if you I respect you for working a job, you don't have to lie to me and say that you're going to like that." Like, it it feels a little bit disrespectful because it's like, "Hey, yeah, man. I need to like prove that you you basically need to be doing X, Y, and Z and be happy in life just to be meaningful." Or I I don't know. It's it's kind of like a a hierarchy where you just think you're higher on the hierarchy if you're happy in life, which is just stupid because some of the most influential people in human history. I think of like the Nicola Teslas. I think of many conquerors like Napoleon or whatever, whether you like them or not, they were very they lived very very meaningful lives. And many of them were extremely depressed. A lot of your favorite artists, I think of a Kanye West, I think of a Vincent Van Gogh, they were extremely mentally challenged and that's how they created such beautiful and such meaningful works of art. And so there's a false correlation that I just see online where it's like people are just kind of mediocre and then they feel a need to like prove to every like okay my my family does this all the time where they act like my family I've said this before but they no one in my family believes that they have a dream. Like I've asked them what's your dream and they're all like no like I'm I'm think like if my life went perfect I'd be you know working this job that I work right now. My entire family works for an insurance company. I'm like, I don't understand why you feel this need to like lie to me. Like, I'm not going to think any less of you just because you don't like your job. As a matter of fact, I think there's a sense of pride in in going through hard things to for the greater good, you know, like you got to support your family, you got to work this job. I think I understand. I respect that. But, man, it's just so annoying where when everywhere that you go, you got to deal with this like culture that gives endless ways to avoid confronting a harsh reality and then it's like everyone online is so dep like it's so like as a content creator I see this more than most people. Everyone online is miserable. They just they're so miserable. And yeah, maybe it's a sort of cherrypicking because the only type of people that are going to leave comments or that or that are going to leave hate DMs are going to be people that are experiencing a lot of bad stuff in their life. But man, it's like I just I've seen so much negativity and hate.

[00:08:01]If you go on Tik Tok, it's like the worst app ever. Everyone on there is so miserable and they're so hateful. They clearly do not like their lives. And it's just such a stark contrast to real life where everyone acts like they got it going on and they're enjoying things.

[00:08:14]And the only time someone posts on their Instagram is when they've had some good life event or they feel a need to prove to everyone and get social validation that they're doing something with their life. But once again, it always just goes back, in my opinion, to some sense of happiness.

[00:08:30]And I think this over time has compounded to where it makes everyone feel like crap because if you're not living up to that standard, which let's be clear, no one is living up to the standard that's put on on that's put on social media by other people, like even the very people that post the stuff themselves are they're like showing a fake highlight reel almost. So no one lives up to that.

[00:08:51]So then everyone internally feels bad, but because you only know your perspective, you think that you're the odd man out. You think, "Oh no, everyone else is doing better." And so then all of a sudden you have an entire society or generation of people that that are ruminating on the fact that their life isn't as good as everyone else is displaying. And it's like if we just address and were honest, I think everyone else would feel better and more people would feel encouraged to try to change things in their life because they think that it's more possible to, you know, be experiencing a more opportune existence.

[00:09:28]But yeah, it's like it's so I know I'm getting mononous, but it is it's just truly exhausting. And it's like I feel like every time I open my phone, every time I talk to someone that I am not like personal or close with, there is a barrier. It's like a filter that they're talking through where it's like, oh, don't make don't make myself like don't expose the real dark truth about, you know, who I am or what I'm experiencing and like let other people know that it's like, yeah, like you know, I like what I'm doing and and I'm doing this and I'm and it's like it's so not based in reality. And how are we supposed to connect when no one's being authentic?

[00:10:07]And I'm also not saying you should go on the extreme other end of this miserable life sucks and everyone's against me and I'm just suffering 24/7 and constantly like you shouldn't do that. You you and maybe that is your reality that you've experienced, but you need to still have a positive outlook at the end of the day. You know what I mean? But there it requires a lot of nuance I feel like to understand exactly what I'm talking about in terms of like you this isn't like true for every single person but I think on average is more what I'm talking about. So those are my thoughts.

[00:10:42]Thank you guys for watching.