Thursday, July 17, 2014

Popularity: A fresh perspective

I have realized after several years of denial, that your popularity and your ability to be at the right place at the right time determine most things in life.

It's not about quality.
It's not about persistence or hard work or diligence.
It's not the least bit about virtues or ethics.

It's always about making yourself known and popular, which means of course, likeable. No one cares how genuine you are. The shallower the better, because it is easier to be likeable then.

I have come to accept that one of the very important things (among others) that parents should teach their children, especially if they are naturally shy or withdrawn or introverted, is the social skills to be confident, to promote oneself, and to learn the strategies of how to make oneself be noticed. It might be tiring and even incredibly difficult, but to survive in today's world, one needs to absolutely have these qualities.

If one has true talent with popularity, the sky is the limit, or rather, the end of the Universe is their limit.

3 comments:

SecondSight said...

You sound really pissed off :).

But isn't that what the majority's opinion has always been? Most people would rather avoid confrontation, being forced to think, act with intention, etc.

The other crucial part, I think, is that strong ethics and a deep-rooted commitment -- to anything -- rarely develop in the midst of a crowd that all agree with each other.

Traits that make one superficially likable or popular are, frankly, much easier to learn than the traits that make a strong character. So it's not surprising that some parents focus on the latter, and trust that their kids will learn to sell their talents when they need to ;)

Neeraja said...

No, I am not pissed :). I have resignedly accepted it, finally. Yeah that's the majority's opinion, but something that I tried to rebel against.

True, learning strong character is harder, but sometimes it's a little late in life to learn how to sell yourself if you have always been taught not to!

With kids that don't have a natural tendency towards these aspects, I think it's practical to try and inculcate them along with other stuff on character training :)

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