- Internet access (and better telecommunications in general) means you're competing with the whole world. Every day you see many people who are more successful than you, which lowers your perception of your own social status. Testosterone is believed to increase status-seeking behavior. If such behavior persistently fails, maybe testosterone production is reduced to avoid pointless risk.
That's an interesting hypothesis. I do feel that as the amount of content online increases, it becomes harder and harder to feel like any output you have matters. Be it writing a blog or open source software, there's competition everywhere. It's also harder to make it a say, a musician, when you consider the amount of music that everyone can access on Spotify for example. Any amount of creative output that someone can output is somewhat diluted.
I find it much harder to motivate myself to produce anything than I did 10 years ago. I might just be older, but I do think that content dilution has something to do with it as well. How do you free yourself from that?
I struggle with similar feelings as an aging amateur musician, particularly in genres like jazz where it sometimes feels like there is almost no point putting something out there unless it's world-class technically... which I'll never be.
Something I realized recently - and admittedly this hasn't changed any behaviors for me yet, but maybe it will help you - is that a lot of the music I listen to is objectively not the best in the world in terms of technical skill, originality, popularity, etc. and yet I enjoy and appreciate it anyway. So maybe it's OK for me to make music that's also not the best in the world - someone might find it and like it anyway. And if not, no harm!
Go offline I suppose? Talk more openly to people in real-life, to build a real-life community of like-minded people? Easier said than done, I know.
But we have kind of inadvertently let the internet shape our lives. There is nothing stopping us from living like it is the 80s + using the internet only where it makes our lives actually better.
- Internet access (and better telecommunications in general) means you're competing with the whole world. Every day you see many people who are more successful than you, which lowers your perception of your own social status. Testosterone is believed to increase status-seeking behavior. If such behavior persistently fails, maybe testosterone production is reduced to avoid pointless risk.