The internet’s superiority complex

We know that being online can make us feel worse about ourselves – but we also do so to inflate our egos.

Illustration by Harry Haysom / Ikon Images

It’s easy to scroll through social media and feel ugly, fat, poor, stupid and lonely – to screenshot a celebrity’s ribs or wonder how an old friend is taking once-in-a-lifetime trips every three months. The effects of the internet on our self-esteem are documented by scientists and debated in parliaments, and I’m not going to argue with my own opening sentence: the online world can make us feel very bad. And yet simultaneously, the opposite is also happening. I think an abundance of people are going online every single day and finding someone they feel superior to. They are making themselves feel great by making others feel worse.

How hard is it, do you think, to log on to the entirety of the world wide web and find someone who is ignorant and wrong? Not very hard at all, obviously – if it was your job, you could do it in minutes. And yet every day, without fail, the internet picks someone to pick on. As one 2019 tweet from a user named @maplecocaine put it, “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.”

Main characters, as they’re called, are usually selected because of their bad takes – opinions so spurious or silly that everyone gathers round to point and laugh. But it’s not just Twitter/X; plenty of other apps and websites are seemingly used as superiority-generating machines.

Take, for example, this comment under a TikTok video of a woman plating up her dinner: “It would never enter my head to have more than two sausages. Four for one person is wild.” Here’s a person opining under a newspaper article about insomnia: “What kind of weirdo needs an app to know if they are getting enough sleep?” There are numerous subreddits that invite you to judge other people’s behaviour; there are Facebook forums where people rip reality TV contestants to shreds. Even people who don’t post anything publicly have probably sent links to their friends in private chats, relishing the opportunity to critique others: “Can you believe she said or did that?”

Then there are writers and public personas whose entire online output amounts to, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” We pretend we do this in the name of justice, in the name of righteousness – and sure, sometimes that’s the case. But often it isn’t. Often it’s just a way to make ourselves feel good.

In short, many of us use the internet as a window into other people’s worlds and conclude: “I’m better.” I can already imagine the response to this article; I can hear the sound of the self-righteous keyboard clicks. “Um, no. I don’t do that. I would never do that.” Bad news, buddy! That’s what you’re doing right now!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the internet as a superiority generator after the tragic passing of the pop star Liam Payne. Before his death, people online made “cringe compilations” mocking his missteps; together they accumulated millions of views. Nobody knows if Payne saw these videos – nobody knows how they made him feel. But what we do know is how they made us feel. They made us laugh. They made us feel good.

While I doubt many people watched these videos and consciously thought, “I am better than him”, I do think that is at least partly what was happening subconsciously. No matter how terrible we feel about ourselves, we can log on every day and see someone that allows us to think, at least I’m not them, at least I don’t do that. Many people go on to turn these thoughts into posts, accumulating hundreds of thousands of likes and bolstering their own egos by belittling others. Then someone dies and posts are quietly deleted. Someone dies and we realise how bad we really are.

Not for long, though. Our collective guilt never lasts a day, and before long there’s someone else to dunk on, drag, ratio – Inuits may not really have a thousand words for snow, but we have plenty for tearing each other down. I think it’s an embarrassing way to act (not least because the people behind these posts are often teenagers). Of course you can find someone on the internet who has said or done something stupid today. Of course you can find someone to feel better than. Why bother? Why do you keep doing it?

Aha! You’ve got me. I feel superior to those who go online and act superior; I think they’re smug and incurious, I think I’m better than them! I am also using the internet as a superiority machine. I am a hypocrite! This entire article is one big self-satisfied scolding!

Let’s slow down and recognise this as an impulse we all have. (Not you though, never you.) I don’t actually think the internet is turning us into judgemental, sneering people, but rather that it is a playground for our worst impulses. It is, ironically, stopping us from being better. When you can plug yourself into an ego machine every day, you spend less time scrutinising yourself. When you say, “Look at this idiot,” day after day after day, your finger can always point away.

But maybe that’s not quite true either – psychologists have long theorised that superiority complexes are defence mechanisms caused by feelings of inferiority. Maybe we feel ugly/fat/poor/stupid/lonely when we see a celebrity’s ribs underneath their bikini on their once-in-every-three-months amazing holiday and that’s when we’re most likely to go find someone else to look down on. We aren’t using the machine; we are the machine.

I’m not saying you can never roll your eyes at an ignorant tweet or laugh at a mean-spirited video ever again. I just think that if you do this every single day of every single week, you should question your relationship with the internet – and what it’s turning you into.