Recently I discovered a Chinese word that is laser accurate in it's description of a phenomenon/issue I've observed for a long time, that only seems to be getting worse and worse. "内卷" or "neijuan". Ignore the literal translation of the word, I won't bore you with the etymology of the word, but when Chinese use it these days, they're talking about the perpetual state of hyper-competitiveness in every facet of life, including basic necessities. Increased effort, increased competition, but the rewards are no better. Imagine a race where everyone is running faster and faster, yet the finish line isn't getting any closer. People are becoming turbo tryhards not even to get ahead, but simply to avoid falling behind. I know there's english words/phrases like "rat race" and "hustle culture" but none of them quite fit the bill like "neijuan". To make a sports analogy, it's like weight cutting in combat sports. Every fighter who fights at "145lbs" walks around 180lbs or more. Fighters will starve and dehydrate themselves before a weigh-in because everyone wants to fight the smallest opponents they possibly can. It's extremely unhealthy, and it's caused serious medical problems and even some deaths, and it doesn't even make the sport any better, yet everyone (aside from heavyweights) HAS to do it because everyone else is and if you don't, you'll lose every fight very quickly.
A few weeks ago, I remember having a conversation with a (now former) coworker, keep in mind I work in fast food. He said that he not only lied on his resume to get the job, but he also did research online and memorized a bunch of factoids and terminology related to fast food, some of which seems to be extremely esoteric, anachronistic, or shit only managers know about, because I never heard a lot of the terms he said. I remember when he first got hired he used those terms a bunch and we were all confused. He said he used those terms in his old (fictional) job. He ended up getting another job lined up, so I guess that's why he felt safe admitting this all to me. Now I know lying on resumes is nothing new, and people lie a lot in general, but this guy went through all this fucking trouble to get and keep a minimum wage part time job. Crazy thing is, he probably wouldn't have gotten the job if he didn't lie on his resume. I mentioned this before but people apply at my job everyday. We don't hire 90+ percent of the people who apply. I remember the first fast food job I got. I showed up wearing ghetto ass street clothes, they interviewed me on the spot, and hired me. Now this job requires applicants to do two interviews, and we don't even interview half the people who apply. With every job now, including fast food, you send them your resume, wait, get your first interview scheduled, then if you're one of the lucky ones, you'll move onto the second interview, then finally get hired (again, if you're lucky). I'm burnt out on working in fast food (and I REALLY hate one of the managers) and I've been applying for other jobs, that are equally low pay or very slightly higher, and I've had no luck. I remember a while back I was at an interview for a dish washing job, there were a bunch of people waiting to be interviewed before/after me, and when the lady interviewed me, she flipped through a thick stack of resumes trying to find mine. Yet boomers say there's a "labor shortage", just lol.
Also related to the job market (and neijuan) is what's happened with education. Today more young people have degrees than at any point in history. Having a higher educated population sounds good on paper, and in a hypothetical post-capitalist utopia it would be great, but in practice it's been disastrous for everyone except for employers. First, due to increased demand, tuition skyrocketed. Now so many graduates have a massive student loan debt. But now that more people have a degree, the value of having a bachelor's degree has tanked. It used to be that having a 4 year degree was pretty much a guaranteed ticket to the middle class (unless you picked a useless major) but that hasn't been the case for a very long time now. And now a lot of jobs that didn't require a degree 20 years ago, now require one. A 4 year degree is the new high school diploma, and no degree is the new registered sex offender. So it's a catch-22 if you're a young person deciding if you should go to college or not. Either you go to college, get saddled with a huge amount of student loan debt, and MAYBE eventually get into the middle class if you're lucky, or don't go to college and accept you'll be trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder for your entire life. And before anyone goes full boomer and suggests "MUH TRAAAADES!" the trades have become just as oversaturated as almost every other field. A lot of young impressionable people took this boomer advice to heart, trade schools increased their fees and many have a long wait list, and many can't find a job after getting certified. One of my coworkers is an electrician who owns his own business, I actually looked it up to see if he was bullshitting me and he's telling the truth. He said it would pay well and he wouldn't have to work this job if he could get enough clients but he can't because there's too much competition. It's feast or famine, like so many other things in life.
The dating market is another example of something impacted by neijuan. We all know about juggernaut law. We've all seen the dating website/app experiments where they use pictures of a morbidly obese woman, or a granny, and it still gets lots of likes/messages, some of which are from HTNs and even chadlites. Ironically the mentality of the guys chasing these women is "there will be less competition" only to create even more of the competition they tried to avoid. You simply can't avoid the fierce competition, you can't avoid neijuan. We see it with lookmaxxing too. Looksmaxxing is pretty mainstream with zoomers. My zoomer coworkers have talked about it numerous times despite the fact that they hate incels and use the word as a catch-all insult for anyone they don't like. They're all gymmaxxing too. What was originally crated by incels as a means of escaping sub5dom/inceldom, is now a tool for chads/chadlites to mog even harder.
The most pathetic example of neijuan is probably online gaming. EVERY game, no matter how "casual" it appears at surface level, is full of turbo tryhards. Every game is sweaty as fuck. Even in non-ranked games people are playing like there's a fucking cash prize on the line. There are simply no more "casual" multiplayer games, and there are certainly no casual PVP games anymore. Too many zoomers are "locked-in" playing the game for hours and hours everyday. Everyone is farming for exp, clips, or stream views thinking they'll be the next big streamer. Everyone is doing a bunch of research on what the "meta" is, memorizing maps, frame data, matchups etc. What's supposed to be escapism has turned into an autistic tryhard-fest that resembles a second job (that you don't get paid for) rather than a fun hobby. It's gotten so bad that a lot of gamers have just quit playing online games altogether and just play single player games. That includes me. After a long day of stressful work and getting shouted at by a neurotic manager, the last thing I want to do is get spawn killed repeatedly and 1 shot across the map in an FPS, zerg rushed in an RTS, or juggled with a long ass combo that goes 65 percent damage. That's just an exercise in masochism.
What annoys me is there's a lot of (almost always male) "influencers" who advocate for even HIGHER levels of neijuan. WORK 16 HOURS A DAY! WAKE UP AT 4AM. QUIT ALL HOBBIES. MONK MODE. YOUR LIFE SHOULD BE JUST WORK AND GYM! LIFE AS A MAN IS SUPPOSED TO BE A NONSTOP STRUGGLE, YOUR CORTISOL SHOULD ALWAYS BE MAXXED, BE A STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIC SLAVE. Of course a lot of the "influencers" advocating for this live a life of hedonism, but you're supposed to ignore that. A lot of zoomers are internalizing this messaging it seems. I've noticed zoomers, ESPECIALLY male zoomers, tend to have a hyper-competitive mindset about everything. I could give plenty more examples of neijuan, but I think you guys get the point now and this post is TL;DR already and will no doubt be replied to with "DNR". And of course anytime anyone even alludes to this issue, they're bombarded with "SKILL ISSUE SKILL ISSUE, GIT GUD!".
None of this is to say that hyper-competitiveness is inherently bad. It's needed for innovation. But it's not something that should be everywhere all the time. In a world where every man is trying to be number 1, the least capable men suffer the most. I think part of the issue is that society has become hyper-introverted and a lot of time that would have been spent socializing decades ago is now invested in "grinding". Also less men are in relationships and less are getting married and having children, so the energy that would have been put into relationships and raising kids goes to tryharding instead. Society has also become increasingly low trust, which makes people even more inclined to look at each other as competitors. I don't see any realistic solutions coming anytime soon. Hopefully one day we'll have ASI and AI will automate everything and we'll be able to get UBI and have AI gfs. But until then, neijuan, perpetual and ubiquitous hyper-competitiveness, will remain inescapable.
