Just Log Off?

Over the most recent holiday there was a lot of conversation about the amount of wealth and materialism being displayed online, from expensive trips to Israel and luxury hotels to elaborate sukkahs, beautiful homes, tables, clothes and meals. Some Jewish social media accounts were even featuring wealthy people's sukkahs as content, and while that may have been what started this particular conversation, I don't think this is really a “Sukkot in Israel” issue at all. It is part of a much bigger conversation that I've discussed before about materialism, social media and how comfortable we have become putting everything we have on display.

We share everything online these days: our vacations, our homes, our renovations, our kids, our marriages, our clothes, our restaurants, our parties, our weddings and the hotels we're staying in. We document expensive purchases, grocery runs, who drop offs and give people tours of spaces that most of them would otherwise never see. I don't think all of these things are inherently wrong to share (some, yes), and I don't think the answer is that people can never share anything about their lives or feel guilty for enjoying what they have. But I do think it is reasonable to question a culture in which displaying so much of what we have has become completely normal, especially when so much of what gets attention online is tied to money and consumption.

In response to this conversation, I saw some people saying that if seeing other people's lives make you feel badly about your own life, you should simply log off. Don't look. People are allowed to enjoy their money, people are allowed to share their joy, and nobody is responsible for managing someone else's jealousy or insecurity. There is obviously some truth to that. We are responsible for our own relationship with social media, and if following certain people consistently makes us miserable, we should probably stop following them. We cannot expect everyone else to make sure we never see something we cannot afford or never encounter someone whose life looks easier, nicer or more exciting than ours.

What bothers me is when that becomes the entire answer, because it places all of the responsibility on the person consuming the content and none on the person creating it. “Just log off” turns a conversation about what we've normalized online into “this is your problem,” as though the only possible reason someone might be uncomfortable with constant showiness and displays of wealth in particular is because they are jealous or can't handle seeing someone else have something they don't.

I also think there is something lacking in empathy about that response. No, we are not responsible for managing everyone else's feelings, and we cannot possibly anticipate how every person will react to everything we share. But that doesn't mean we have no responsibility to be tactful, modest, and sensitive to other people. Caring about how what we put out into the world might affect others is not the same thing as taking responsibility for their feelings. We can expect people to manage their own social media consumption while also expecting ourselves to have some awareness of what we're putting out there.

This feels particularly important when we talk so much about the financial pressures in our community. We talk about how unaffordable Jewish life is becoming, from the cost of tuition to making simchas and the pressure to dress a certain way, to the houses people feel they need, the vacations their children hear about and the increasingly elaborate standards around holidays and celebrations. We also talk about people spending money they don't actually have because they feel as though everyone around them is living at a level they cannot keep up with. Social media did not create all of those problems, but it would be strange to pretend that constantly broadcasting the most expensive parts of people's lives has nothing to do with the culture in which those pressures exist.

The materialism we complain about and the materialism we celebrate are connected. We can't complain about materialism while refusing to look at the ways we participate in it and even glorify it. When we constantly showcase expensive homes, extravagant simchas, luxury vacations and lifestyles available to a very small percentage of people, we are contributing to the very culture we then turn around and say has gotten “completely out of hand.”

What we are repeatedly exposed to influences us, and what publications choose to feature has an impact. What we see reposted and presented as aspirational tells us something about what we value, and over time it shapes what starts to feel normal. An extravagant vacation that would once have been understood as something available to a very small percentage of people can start to feel commonplace when you see ten families posting from the same luxury destination. An over the top, expensive wedding can begin to look like the standard when those are the weddings that fill our feeds. None of this means that the individual person who posts a picture of a vacation is responsible for someone else's financial decisions, but it does mean that all of us are participating in setting the bar that we are all complaining about.

I also think we have lost some appreciation for discretion, or “tzniut,” which extends beyond how we dress. Having something beautiful does not automatically mean everyone needs to see it, and enjoying something does not require turning it into content. There are things we can buy, places we can travel, celebrations we can make and experiences we can have that can simply belong to us and the people who are actually there. That doesn't mean we can never share anything nice, but I think there is value in occasionally asking ourselves why we want to share something and whether everything we enjoy needs an audience.

This is also why I struggle with the response that when people are sharing their holiday tables, trips, clothes or elaborate catered menus they are simply “sharing Jewish joy” or “showing the beauty of Judaism.” Of course we should share Jewish joy, and of course there is tremendous beauty in Jewish life, in celebrating our holidays and traditions with our families and communities, and in traveling through and supporting Israel. But we should be able to recognize the difference between sharing that beauty and constantly showcasing the most expensive versions of those experiences. When what we're showing is luxury hotels, extravagant bar mitzvah parties, expensive trips and so much of everything, we can't pretend that the wealth is irrelevant to what is being displayed.

There are endless ways to show the beauty of Judaism that have nothing to do with money. The beauty of Jewish life is not better represented by a massive sukkah at a multimillion-dollar home filled with every big Rebbe and current “cool” Jewish singer than it is by a family eating together in a sukkah in New Jersey. It isn't more beautiful because the table is professionally designed, the food is catered or the family flew business class to spend Yom Tov in Israel. Jewish joy and Jewish beauty are not measured by how much they cost.

There is also something uncomfortable (and tacky) about taking the lifestyles of extremely wealthy people and presenting them as entertainment for the rest of the community. I don't think we need tours of every wealthy person's home, sukkah, vacation or celebration simply because people will click on them. If we are concerned about how materialistic our culture has become, then we should be looking not only at the people consuming this content but also at the people and publications producing and amplifying it.

None of this is to say we need to police one another's Instagram accounts or create arbitrary rules about what people are allowed to post. I don't think someone needs to calculate whether a hotel is too expensive to photograph or whether their kitchen is too beautiful to appear in the background of a video. That would be absurd and would miss the point entirely. The point is that “I'm allowed to post it” and “you can log off if you don't like it” are not particularly thoughtful responses to a conversation about communal culture.

We can do better for ourselves without making anyone responsible for somebody else's feelings. The person scrolling can think about what they consume, whom they follow and whether social media is distorting their perception of what is normal, while the person posting can think about what they choose to display, why they are displaying it and what they may be contributing to. Those responsibilities don't cancel each other out, and acknowledging one does not absolve the other.

I don't think the answer to materialism is pretending nobody has nice things, and I don't think the answer to social comparison is expecting the world to hide anything we might be jealous of. I do think there is something to examine about a culture in which so much of our private consumption has become public performance and where questioning that is so quickly dismissed as jealousy.

We can't only ask, “Why are you looking at something that makes you feel bad?” We also need to ask, “Why do we feel the need to show so much of what we have?” Both questions require us to take some responsibility for the online culture we participate in.

“Just log off” is easy. What is harder is being willing to look at what we're contributing to and ask whether a culture that increasingly celebrates wealth, consumption and displaying it all actually reflects the values we say we want our community to have.