Beyond the Neon Masks

The Era of Universal Madness

We live in a time of total madness and meaningless showing off. The entire world, without exception or age concessions, has plunged into a race for external glitter. Schoolchildren walk around with fancy smartphones they only need for games. Under-qualified managers with tiny salaries pay off loans for premium cars. Village residents throw weddings in the best traditions of 19th-century Caucasian celebrations — hundreds of guests, tons of food, days of celebration... And all of this — purely for show.

Scrolling through social media feeds, you see the same things: manicures, silicon, internet-connected coffee makers, fully-loaded cars, and Wi-Fi-enabled baby strollers. We've forgotten how to think — it's too exhausting. We've stopped asking questions — we'll only get lies in response anyway. Instead of real life — we have a surrogate of happiness and a chase for likes.

Showing off has become contagious. If a schoolchild is the only one in class without an iPhone — they're an outcast. If an office worker posts photos from their dacha instead of the Maldives — they're labeled poor. We evaluate ourselves through others' eyes, allowing our self-esteem to depend on strangers' opinions.

Remember childhood? Searching for imaginary treasures, scraped knees, first fights for truth, night walks, and songs with guitar? Today's generation is deprived of this. Children grow up on tablets, youth is obsessed with external polish, and real values are forgotten.

The system deliberately imposes this consumption race on us. To mass-sell unnecessary things, you need to convince people that owning them is a sign of success. Those in power don't care about common people, and public opinion is controlled by bloggers, freaks, and hysterical influencers.

But here's what's interesting: truly successful and self-sufficient people never try to increase their significance in others' eyes. They don't brag about possessions, don't treat service staff rudely, don't assert themselves at others' expense. Because they look not down — at those they've risen above, but up — at new goals and development opportunities.

To break free from this vicious circle, we need to rid ourselves of dependency on others' opinions. Stop living for show. Start spending money and time not on showing off, but on self-development. And then you'll notice that respect in others' eyes hasn't decreased, but rather increased. Because true values are always visible even through the most modest packaging.

Perhaps soon the world will reach a boiling point, and this whole system will collapse under its own weight. And then we'll again start valuing people for their true essence, not for their beautiful wrapper. But for now — we should at least try to preserve within ourselves a person capable of thinking, feeling, and distinguishing the real behind the veil of superficial glitter.