Let's take game development as one example. You can feel mediocre because you wrongfully compare your progress and success against outliers like Minecraft. However I don't think most people who want to be good at game development are ignorant of what an outlier is. It doesn't take much to learn how big the climb is once you start.

The real difficulty is that the tools have been democratized. The market is flooded with games from developers of all skill levels. Even the most niche games have so many options that most games have trouble distinguishing themselves from the competition. It can be disheartening to realize that your most unique and amazing idea is not unique or novel in most respects and that it will be competing in a pool of several thousand games with similar ideas.

The other difficult factor is that the greatest games make the appearance of being simple and effortless. We only see the end result... not the 200 games the developer made before releasing the one we noticed. The myth that genius is a gift you are born with can certainly make most of us feel mediocre.

That's even before we get to fear of failure, social pressure, and market pressure! Many people want to be good game developers but they also want to feed their family and give their kids a good education... so they only have so much time in their lives to dedicate to improving and developing. Even if they are full-time game developers many of the same fears apply.

It's the tyranny of being just smart enough to know how much you don't know. It can also be a comfort though if you're not worried about being the stand-out genius and just like doing good work.

This is why you should only make stuff that you want for yourself. The second you get caught up in making money and comparing yourself its now work and good luck sticking with it.

I always turn this around and think what i don't like about the big successful games. Then once you take out what you don't like it the game no longer seems totally overwhelming with features.

For example,

Uncharted = Press X to climb walls 90% of the game.

Witcher 3 = spend 90% of the game talking to tons of intricately modeled quest characters you have no idea who or what they are doing in the game since nothing makes sense.

This is absolutely not true. See the recent hugely successful release of Stardew Valley for just one example when you take a fairly popular genre (Harvest Moon-likes) that's completely unavailable on PC, and release a well-crafted modern game to serve that niche.

The mobile and PC games markets are flooded with shit and utter mediocrity. You do have to make something good to stand out, but that's far from impossible.

You don't have to look very far to find more under-served niches. What are some of the highest rated games on the 3DS or PS Vita? Fire Emblem, Persona 4. Anything like those titles available on PC? Nope!

Perhaps because I don't use FB, IG, YouTube, Twitter, etc... I only see the real-world reflection of social media and it looks miserable.

For example, when I visit Key West people can stand in line for upwards of an hour to take a photo in front of the "Southern Most Point". I mean these people are in paradise and have the look of misery on their face, all just so they can put on a fake smile for a selfie, presumably just so they can post this "highlight" to social media. Instantly when the photo is done the smile disappears and they start swiping thru the results of their photos just hoping they got at least one that conveys whatever image they are hoping to convey (I am good looking, I am happy, I am in front of this famous landmark). This is not to say there are not life experiences worth a wait in line, and may be the juice is worth the squeeze with social media, but the real world counter-part just looks sad.

Without these photos, whether posted to Facebook, Instagram, or a family photo album, we tend to forget about wonderful experiences over time. A little work in the moment isn't such a high price pay as long as it doesn't consume you.

From the other end it's not all bad either. When I see my friends and family sharing pictures of their vacations, kids, and successes, it makes me genuinely happy for them. That's the only reason that I still check Facebook every few days. We don't all need to make life a contest.

Kids pictures? Jesus, it makes me want to stab myself to death with overcooked frankfurters.

(In case there is any doubt, this is not my definition of happyness.)

Today, I was watching a cycling race, and there was a couple, who had been waiting for the racers to arrive for several hours. Did they watch them when they came? Did they encourage them? No, nothing like that. They turned their back on the racers and made a selfie (with a tablet...) with themselves in the foreground and the racers in the background. And they almost caused an accident, as often. And it is like this all the time now.

There was a period when people would not live the event or experience the landscape/architecture and witness it through their own eye because they were too busy photographing or filming it. But now, it has been taken one step further: the event/landscape is only a background decoration for the real important subject: their high self.

And the easiness of taking photos, multiplied by the easiness of taking self pictures is also multiplied by the easiness of spreading them, which means the change in nature is also increased by the change in volume; the result is a fair amount of orders of magnitude higher than in film (or Kodak) time.

Now 1000000000 do that. Every fucking moment (e.g. Instagraming your food).

For what it's worth, I love food and cooking and I'm delighted when my friends post food pictures on Instagram and Facebook. It inspires my hobby.

http://hikinginthesmokys.blogspot.com/2011/01/great-smoky-mo...

The population is doubling every 33 years, and that means everything is getting a lot more congested, because new landmarks aren't being created at anything like those rates.

I'd even go so far as to say all people are average, in some aspect or another. Nobody is the top of every single aspect. Nobody. Not even Elon Musk :)

He's not even the top investor, inventor, industrialist or generally the top of anything that is his core competency.

That said I think he is very good at communications, he has managed to carve his own style in that arena.

Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show.

And the rumor of his parties and the orgies on his yacht!

Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he's got.

One friend is president of a 200 person top rated game dev company. Another is head of 20+ people on the graphics tech division of one of the top video game series. Another was the lead architect of one of the latest generation game consoles. Two other friends have successful 30+ person game companies. Another 4 have successful 5-10 person indie game companies. Other is now a CTO at a popular international gaming PC company. Another is a famous game professor at a top university.

Of course I'm only listing the standouts. Most friends are living more average lives.

Then theres my failing at relationships where others have lovers and families something I can't seem to manage to find a match for. Of course I don't envy all of them only the ones that seem to be doing well.

None of that has anything to do with social media.

(Unless you can stand watching shows where people have outstanding jobs, and seemingly endless amounts of free time.)

The insidiousness of social media is that EVERYBODY is on social media, it's the same medium, there is no difference between a video shared by your friend and a video shared by an olympian or a world class musician or even an adult beginner that due to genetic blessings is learning things way faster than you, this breaks the wall between you and them and as much as it's good in some ways (pre internet you would never be able to have a discussion with a pro musician unless you personally knew them) it is bad in many others, leading people to misjudge what average is

It also does not help that so many people when discussing what they do always say that "if you want it enough and work hard for it you can do everything", which feeds into the "I am not as good as social media person X at doing Y, therefore I must not be working hard enough, what's wrong with me" while in the end to be at the top yes you need to work hard, but you need to be lucky to have the genetics to be there too.

If pre internet you saw 10 of your friends try something, you had a good idea what "average" was, and calibrated your self esteem accordingly: all of you being average, you all had something you were better at than the group, and something to fall back on to feel good about when you didn't do well at something else

Now all you see on social media is either the top of the field being so much better than you at everything that it feels impossible to be able to get from where you are to where they are, or average people made fun of because they "suck" (even if they are just average in the end), this IMHO is what's causing a lot of problems in terms of depression and general lack of happiness

TV, social media, Netflix, gaming, gambling, drinking and other drugs - it's all consumption and escapism. The best option is to minimise those and focus on creating stuff.

EDIT: It may sound like a ridiculous idea, but I think it would make for a great social experiment.

The European Central Bank's refinancing interest rate is currently a negative -0.4%. If I could have a line of credit at that rate, I would take all I could -- for every million euros I borrow, they would pay me 4000 € / year in interest!

I had to quit social media altogether because it was driving me insane with frustration, anger and envy. I was in a real dark place and it seemed that everyone else around me was living in a completely different world than I was, quitting facebook and the like was the best thing I've ever done for my mental health.

Thankfully things are much better now, unfortunately I had to sacrifice a lot of relationships who relied exclusively on social media as a means of contact.

>In other words, don't worry too much about it.

I will have to disagree on this, at least when it comes to being a developer. I think the bar has been raised so high by the startup culture and the Google's and Amazons of the world that it feels like if you want to get hired nowadays you have to be above average, as a proof look at the current hiring process for developers.Being a mediocre hard worker is not gonna cut it. It seems like EVERYONE wants to hire nothing but the best of the best: you need to be a "Ninja", a "Rockstar", code in your free time, as well as know all kinds of algorithms like the back of your hand....As a mediocre, slow-witted developer I tried really hard to stay afloat even taking on desperate meassures like pumping myself full of adderall in order to study for interviews.Frankly I am now burned out, I find this environment so toxic that I'm seriously considering leaving development once my current contract has finished.

After reading lots of hacker news and Slashdot, following my friends in the Valley, and getting rejected by Google 3 times, I too thought that I was worthless if not a Ninja or Rockstar who does all those things you mentioned.

But recently I had a recruiter friend pass my resume around and my current office has begun hiring. I've since learned that there is a huge section of established corporations with projects that just need enough 1xers to get the job done. They'll pay competitive rates without even seeing a Github portfolio of outstanding breakthroughs in machine learning.

Anyway, I think you've been focusing on the same small circle of hiring that needs the best of the best to turn their crap idea into the next Google through spectacular algorithm design, or Google themselves, who has so many applicants they have to reject all but the very best just to whittle down the pile of applicants to manageable size, but like everyone else has been discussing, mediocrity is still the norm out there; there's a whole world of mediocre developers making mediocre progress on non-earth-shattering stuff that still needs getting done.

Or, because they can curate exactly what you see on Facebook or Instagram, and they make it look like they are at the top of the league.