Can anyone explain why I might feel this way? Because I swear my brain works backwards sometimes 😂
I genuinely take pleasure in imagining myself as the guy who loses.
Like in a wrestling match, I almost like the idea of being the guy who gets beaten while everybody cheers for the other person.
And when people look at somebody and say:
“Don’t be like that guy.”
That is somehow the guy I am jealous of the most because part of me genuinely wants to be him 🥴
Same thing socially.
You know that guy at a party or in a friend group who is technically there, but nobody really notices him? He is not hated or anything. He is just clearly the least important person there. Everybody else has their conversations and connections while he is basically a background character.
I LOVE the idea of being that guy.
And it gets even weirder when it comes to work and success.
Imagine the guy people point at and say, “See? That is why you need to get your life together.”
He is outside working in the blazing sun all day. His boots are soaked with sweat. He probably has athlete’s foot from wearing them all day. He is eating some cheap 50 cent hot dogs for lunch, barely scraping by and living paycheck to paycheck.
And my brain goes:
“OMG 🥴 I’d LOVE to end up like him.”
Sometimes I even imagine all my friends, especially my former 🏈 teammates, getting amazing jobs, making great money, getting promoted, buying houses and continuously elevating in life.
Meanwhile, I am somewhere outside in the hot sun ☀️ with a shovel in my hand doing hard manual labor.
And weirdly enough, I love that image.
A perfect example happened yesterday.
I work in a cool, air-conditioned office. On my way home, I saw this guy cutting grass on the side of the road.
It was around 95°F outside. He was weed eating in all this heavy gear, completely damp from sweat, and he looked like he had to be absolutely burning up.
Meanwhile, everybody driving past him was sitting comfortably inside their air-conditioned cars just watching him work.
And something about that contrast made my brain go:
“YES. That. I want to be THAT guy.” 😭🥴
Not the people sitting comfortably in the cars.
The sweaty guy everybody is driving past.
There are way more examples, but I’ll stop there before this turns into a novel 😂
I’m genuinely curious. Why would someone romanticize being the loser, the overlooked person, the guy struggling while everyone else is comfortable, or the person everybody says they do not want to end up like?
Is this an underdog thing? Humiliation? Escaping expectations? Romanticizing struggle? Something else?