Spotlight Effect

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I traveled to Miami a couple of months ago for a conference. For those who haven't been, Miami is a blast. The beaches are beautiful. The Cuban cuisine is delicious. And the nightlife is insane.

On my last night in town, the conference organizers held a party at someone's mansion. I have no idea whose mansion it was, but that doesn't matter all that much. All I know is that this was the nicest house I have ever visited. I'm talking Tony Stark's mansion from Iron Man 2. The event must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The back of the mansion overlooked a bay, and the residence's infinity pool had temporarily been covered by platforms to create a dance floor for the event. Bartenders were serving cocktails made of the highest quality liquors, free of charge. Bands and entertainers performed all through the night. At one point, a woman wearing a jetpack hovered just beyond the edge of the pool deck and performed an entire flamethrower routine. The type of stuff you only see at events when the organizers run out of other stuff to spend money on.

This party was one hell of a flex.

It was a who's who of venture capitalists and tech personalities, as well as people who desperately wanted to be associated with a who's who of venture capitalists and tech personalities. All mixing and mingling, laughing and drinking.

I noticed something at this party that I've noticed a dozen times before, but this particular night it seemed so much more pronounced.

Hundreds of partygoers were trying their hardest to show hundreds of others just how much fun they were having.

At first glance you don't notice it. Between the lights and the music and the drinks, everything blends together like a Van Gogh.

But when you focus on the details and the individuals, the facade disappears. Everywhere I looked, people were laughing a bit too hard. The gestures were a bit too exaggerated. The photos were a bit too forced.

Their actions said, "I'm having the time of my life."

Their faces said, "I'm miserable."

At this one mansion, there were two parties. Those enjoying the festivities, and those desperate to show everyone that they were enjoying the festivities.

A mezcla of joy and misery.

You can only notice this paradox in real-time. By the next day, it's gone forever.

When Jim from accounting asks about your weekend in Miami, you tell him, "Dude it was a blast. I saw ____, and _____, and a girl with a jet pack and a flamethrower. The mansion looked like Tony Stark's Malibu residence in Iron Man. The music was insane, best weekend ever!"

You don't tell Jim from accounting that you were sweaty and barely talked to anyone, because you attended the party alone and the music was too loud to have a conversation. You don't tell Jim from accounting that you returned to the bar 27 times that night because the only thing worse than not talking to anyone is not talking to anyone while also being empty-handed.

You made sure to take some phenomenal pictures from the party, that way you can show your Instagram followers just how much fun you had. You come up with a witty caption. "Miami was a Movie" or something cliche like that.

Very cool.

Maybe you tag someone much richer and more famous than you in the background, or maybe you actually got a picture with someone much richer and more famous than you. Because clout!

Anyone who hears about the party afterward will think you had the time of your life. And maybe you try to convince yourself that you had the time of your life. But you didn't. And you know you didn't. And plenty of other people at that party felt the same way, but you didn't notice, because they were playing the same game as you.

On the surface, everyone at that party had the same out-of-this-world experience.

In reality, half of the attendees loathed it. Hated it. And they hated the fact that they hated it.

A house mansion party in Miami is an interesting place to have a philosophical insight, but it does seem like our most brilliant ideas appear in the most unsuspecting places.

I thought a lot about this realization after I got home, and I realized that this phenomenon of us making decisions to impress others isn't just an entertainment thing, a social thing, a nightlife thing.

This is a life thing.

This happens in our careers and relationships just as much as in our weekend festivities.

What we don't realize is that when our primary motivation for making decisions is to impress others, we are letting the rest of the world dictate how we live our lives.

When you spend your Saturday night at a party that you hate just to show the world how much fun you're supposedly having, you are letting the world determine your weekend activities.

When you continue working in a career field that you hate because of the prestige that your job conveys, you are letting the world determine what you do for a living.

When you date someone that you don't necessarily want to date because the outside world thinks that you are the perfect couple, you are letting strangers dictate your most intimate relationship.

We do these things because we want to fit in, and we are hyper-aware of what others may think of us.

There is something in psychology known as the “spotlight effect.” This is the phenomenon where people tend to overestimate how much others notice aspects of one's appearance or behavior.

Tim Urban illustrates this well in a blog post. According to Tim, this is how we think things are:

But this is how they really are.

An interesting phenomenon, isn't it? Agonizing over the public perception of every decision that we make...

"If I don't go to this event, am I lame?"

"If I do go to this event, will people think that I'm cool?"

"If I quit this respectable job, people are going to judge me!"

"What is everyone going to think if I start dating this person?"

While the public rarely perceives us at all.

We think that by making the most publicly acceptable decisions, we will be propelled to the upper echelons of society. Or at the very least, we'll fit in. But that's not how any of this works.

Do you know what other people think when you make decisions based on their opinions?

They don't think anything at all. They rarely even notice. At most, they toss your Instagram picture a *like.* Maybe they comment and say, "Fun!"

Other people aren't thinking about you, because they, like you, are too busy thinking about what everyone else is thinking of them.

We have a world of eight billion people agonizing over the opinions of others without realizing that everyone else is also agonizing over the opinions of others.

So now we have a society full of people making all sorts of decisions, big and small, based on the perception of other people who aren't even perceiving them at all!

You don't believe me?

A question to ponder: how much time have you spent thinking about the actions taken by a specific person, other than yourself or your significant other, over the last 24 hours? Five minutes, maybe? And that was probably the asshole who cut you off in traffic or a coworker who keeps telling the same awful joke over and over again.

Can you tell me what outfit any of your friends wore last weekend? What party your roommate went to last month? Assuming that they're making enough money to pay the bills, do you really care all-that-much what anyone in your social group does for a living?

No.

We haven't thought about any of these things, with regard to other people. And yet, we allow these other people who aren't thinking of us to control our decisions.

A bit redundant, isn't it?

We can live our entire lives like this. Just doing the things that we're supposed to do to impress people who don't even notice what we're doing.

You aren't thinking about anyone else.

And no one else is thinking about you.

And that's a good thing.

If you realized that no one else actually cared what you were doing, would you continue to do the same things?

- Jack

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