Summary: You need to be aware of your instinctual behavior to content available online/all the knowledge you achieve; or it will give you a superiority complex you won't be able to get out of.

This is a series on the 'male hamsters' or how we tend to fall back because of our own flaws.

A big underlying flaw in all humans is the inherent need to 'one-up' each other. It is because we want to move up a rank or two during social situations when we are insecure about our position in the 'tribe' (A huge concept in evolutionary theory).

The only ones who don't do it are either the ones that think they are already high ranked in the tribe, or are mature enough to rise above the whole 'ranking' thing.

What exactly is one-upping? Well, trying to show off your knowledge, trying to call people out when they try to give certain advice but you think you know much more than the person so you deny his perspective altogether. Examples? On reddit, say calling people out on their 'circlejerking'/the topic that is already going on; complaining about how the world's going to end and OMG HOW DARE THE PEOPLE AROUND ME DON'T SEE IT I SEE THE LIGHT CLEARLY MATRIX yadda yadda yadda... You have the conspiracy theorists trying to prove their wit through insights that he/she thinks the 'normal' people don't have, or the people who say witty jokes (which is actually a great thing, unless you are trying too hard to make people laugh). All these things are applicable in social situations too!

Amplify this feeling of pseudo-superiority and you get the Us VS Them Mentality, and say a person called Jason has it, we will call him Jason the UVM (Not Universal Verification Methodology by the way).

Jason the UVM is the person who falls for all the normal marketing gimmicks there exist. I'll take the best example here: PUA. If a person has to basically prove that he is the best guru out of them all, he just has to tell them how Cold Approach Pickup is the best religion there is, that women are all to take for him if he doesn't take Cold Approach Pickup/insert method here. Some of them are trying to help young people genuinely, yes; and there is amazing content on social dynamics that you can find there. But most of it is keyboard warriors. The sooner you understand it the better.

But cue the bullshit about how the rest can't 'see' the truth! Just spam approach and you will be amazing in no time, and all your friends complaining about their relationships are 'below' you, and you are above them for trying to improve this section of your life. You have Jason falling into the trap of the 'Most People' Syndrome. I get it, you wanna state that most people are mediocre in what they do and that's true! But if you are using it all the time you will make Jason UVM, how? 'Most people eat like shit, dwelve themselves into stupid mainstream media etc. etc. etc. You are under me buddy! You are safe! You know how to become better/superior! cue the inherent need for men for a stupid gang'

No, most people are actually trying to improve their lives, and people who are bad with girls don't jerk off at midnight and sleep themselves to depression (some may do, but most have a better purpose in life than 'fertilizing women' and they are happy about it); no the politician you are attacking is not weaker/stronger intellectually than you. No, mainstream media and stuff is not full of shit, it is there because people DO NOT HAVE AS MUCH TIME TO ANALYZE AND DISCUSS EVERY SINGLE THING THEY SEE! There are light hearted comedies that have bad jokes/simple pop songs because people don't have time to spew through all that crap and analyze it on forums everytime they see something. You have judges and executioners a.k.a. the ones who analyze shit and the ones who make it. And if you really want to make it as a man, you have to enter the latter stage, be the producer or learn how to monetize your judgements.

If your time on the internet is spent complaining about politics, government, situations, environment etc. then you are part of the problem. You need to find yourself, or you will jump into the vicious cycle of superiority/inferiority cycle, trying to identify your place in the endless stereotypes people make about stuff generally. Find a purpose, better shit to do. Yes, I know how your primary teacher told you that you are special and you will do amazing shit in life, well guess what? You CAN do it! Just learn how to FOCUS! If you are a person who has like 40 tabs opened on his chrome, dude your problem is your extremely short attention span! Focus on one problem for a whole day! Rewire your fucking brain! You are grilling it up with all this bullshit!

Once you start seeing through the marketing for what it is, you realize how much bullshit people generally spew when they comment/fall for the shit. read Ryan Holiday's book (forgot the name) for how sometimes the news you listen to is meant to only market shit. The key word here is 'sometimes'.

The world is grey, there are two sides. It's up to you what you want to focus on. There are people doing incredibly amazing shit, and no they don't feel like total crap if they didn't get laid enough (boo hoo), nor do they try to think too much about their weaknesses. There is bad shit that happens to people, yes. The only thing you can do about it is to be AWARE of it, that's it.

Coming back to our jolly ole friend Jason, he is trying to figure out what's wrong with him all over the internet. Spoiler: There is nothing wrong with him, he's just a confused kid who needs to focus on life for what it is. There are thousands of websites who are offering the SAME knowledge, rehashed in a different language and yet you hear their comments on how other websites are spewing bullshit and how you shall 'come to me' to see the light.

That's what I love about the internet. People love to play the 'Most People' thing to join their 'cult' so most directionless idiots who visit them feel like they are gods among men who will take them to the right goals. Thing is, all advice is great, and all people are offering the same thing, calling each other off etc. You see this shit in fitness. A regular dude decides to have abs, and he visits this website with a workout plan. No matter how well laid that plan is, he will always try to fill that void of that 'one exercise' that will give him those abs in MINUTES! Yes, that's the threshold of patience people have these days, sadly. Marketers know how to make the most of their short attention spans, and then they sell a somewhat distorted, difficult version of a plank that will give you the abs. Remember, the job of marketers is not to give what you NEED which is a fire in the ass, they give you what you WANT. They know very well how you will try that exercise once, and then they will stop. And people who try the big 4 in the gym every single day will not even think about it as their abs shine through. Once the magic pill doesn't manifest itself, they start to identify themselves as victims, and that's where the real problem starts.

Jason the UVM just failed at abs, and now he is reading every single website on fitness advice, downloading books, watching videos on the science of fitness. Which is useless since that one workout plan would have been enough for him, and he doesn't need to do phD in the chemical composition of abdominal muscles, just TAKE ACTION AND FOLLOW THE FUCKING WORKOUT PLAN. His patience then goes away and he starts entering the victim mode of life, where he becomes this advice junkie, offering advice left and right that becomes his way of 'one-upping' people, and the dissonance between the info in his head and his own body just makes it hard to take him seriously. In self help this type of a dude is known as a 'self help' junkie, too much mental masturbation will paralyze you.

Which will then lead to you believing this lie that the secret, esoteric knowledge you have about fitness, about girls will somehow help you in achieving something. You will derive complacency from just the knowledge itself, sitting on your back believing that you can use that knowledge any day now to obtain much better level of success than your peers, 'we' at 'insert website/forum/group' are much better than the mediocre normalcy, and we deserve it all coming to us. The mediocre people will put whatever they know to ACTION while you sit around feeling proud of that esoteric knowledge, and they will obtain the results quicker than you do thanks to that.

The only way to stop it is to be aware of your instincts and your beliefs that the market WILL exploit no matter what. No thoughts are your own, I hope you know that by now. So allow the good ones in so you can help yourselves for what it's worth. All the problems you have are not unique, they feel unique because they are a combination of many sub problems, the solutions to which are simple enough. Find a better purpose than complaining online and you may achieve the purpose you so long for.

Lessons Learned: Execution is way better than analysis, and the people who are using all the knowledge are using it in a nitpicking-whatever-helps-me-reach-there-quicker way, not the omg-this-is-the-bible-quran-I-need-to-tell-my-friends-about-this way.