Why does everything seem to be made into some kind of competition?

[I'm With Stupid]

Since I entered my 30s I've stopped giving a fuck about all of that stuff. I buy a pack of 10 white t-shirts and 10 black t-shirts off Amazon and that's me done for the year, I have a shitey bog standard phone and I don't own really anything other than a guitar I've had since I was 15. My girlfriend thinks I'm mad but I genuinely don't want anything else in my life and I'm the happiest I've ever been

You go through 20 t-shirts in a year? What do you do to them?

 

[SebastianBlue]

It's Nature, like stags butting heads, chimps scrapping or lions wrestling we have adapted the animal need for one to gain dominance as leader into more pathetic trivial goals

To be fair, that specific adaptation is one of the reasons we are the dominate species on earth (for better or worse).

 

[melrose40yarder]

Fuck me!
Every six years?
Had one set of Calloway irons for decades.
Bought a new driver two years ago, getting a new putter this year.

Custom fit every 6 yrs and choose what the pro reccomends.As you get older you need different shafts to enable u to play to your handicap.

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

I remember reading Grayson Perry's book about men (I forget the title) and he said that was one of the defining features of being a man, that you will find an area to be competitive in. Even men who think they're not competitive because they aren't with things like sports or board games will have something they are competitive about. Take something as mundane as hipster culture. On the surface, it seems like a rejection of the mainstream, but in reality, it then becomes a competition about who knows the most about various obscure references. Even on forums like this (but particularly hobbyist pages, like photography and so on) there will always be one bloke (and it is always a bloke) who has tens of thousands of posts and revels in their status as a respected member of their little corner of the internet. Hell, half of religious bigotry comes from people competing to be the most devout. Things like Twitter supercharge this, where people get followers for being a 'virtuous' person, and actively look for things to be offended by in order to show what a sensitive and enlightened little flower they are. It's certainly not just a male thing, but I think men are more likely to engage in it.

Hell, even on this thread, we risk having a competition to compare who is the most 'above' this sort of material competitiveness thing.

You are spot on. That feeling of purpose is built on ideas of superiority. I was put on the earth to throw rocks the furthest, or to run the fastest, or to know the most about the 1983 Manchester City squad.

While we don’t consciously think these things, our monkey brains are acting on them all the time.

We might be able to confine competition to a more healthy space (e.g. sport or art rather than wealth) but likely we’ll never be rid of it.

 

[Tuearts right boot]

You go through 20 t-shirts in a year? What do you do to them?

Obviously doesn't wash them

 

[sir baconface]

I reckon this sort of thing is what fuelled homosapiens to outcompete previous human species.

Always striving to improve things and do things better than the last person and better than your neighbour is how we went from hunting and gathering nuts and berries to putting rovers on Mars.

It’s a human trait.

4,000 year old mummies found in Central Asia had colourful clothing with feathers in hats and beads in their hair. Otzi the Iceman, a 12,000 year old mummy preserved in ice was found to have tattoos. Everything we may always have done as a species links to how we appear to other people.

Although, not just human. Across the animal kingdom, there are examples of those who put on the best displays and dances and have the most colourful feathers or the thickest manes determines who gets the mate. Those who don’t have the best display or dance or feathers or manes get left behind and their genes don’t get passed on.

Maybe it’s a natural thing as an animal to show that you have the best things?

This. It used to be that the best hunters or the best warriors won the highest status. That’s still true in much of the animal kingdom only, in our own case, wealth and/or fame have superseded oven-ready mammoths or heads on pikes.

 

[sir baconface]

Does this go some way towards explaining it?

 

[ColinBellsjockstrap]

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

For me it started at Wilbraham junior school in year 7 with the pissing up the wall competitions in the outside urinals.
I couldn’t compete then and now I just dribble.

The dribble is a tragic realisation of aging isn’t it.

 

[Sir peace frog]

people are obsessed with looks and likes, you see them on twitter and tiktok , the younger generation are fucked, it's about time us foc had a cull of the young twats,
:)