Quarantine Envy Got You Down? You're Not Alone

[Mike B 625]

By Nancy Wartik

When the coronavirus hit France, Leila Slimani, a popular French-Moroccan novelist, and her family left Paris for their country home. Once there, Ms. Slimani began writing a quarantine diary for the newspaper Le Monde. The response, especially from people in teeny Parisian apartments, was so scathing, she apparently abandoned the series. When the billionaire David Geffen posted photos of his mega-yacht on Instagram while he quarantined in the Grenadines, the backlash led him to turn his account private.

Quarantine envy: If it’s not a widespread term yet, it should be. Envy, of course, is the joy-devouring emotion of craving what others have. Even before the pandemic, social media was linked to rising levels of the emotion. “Social media magnifies and creates instant, destructive envy,” said Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Warwick in England, and a co-author of a study on whether envy is societally harmful (short answer: yes). “There’s a globalization of envy and in the longer run, we have to regulate it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/smarter-living/quarantine-envy-pandemic.html?referringSource=articleShare