If you spend enough time scrolling through any social media platform long enough, you’ll see a pattern. 

How often do you see viral posts on any platform say ‘Things are good, and I’m doing okay’?

Rather, they say  ‘I almost quit’ or ‘I put in sixteen hours a day at work,’ or more often, ‘I had nothing, but look at where I am now.’

Exhaustion has become proof of value, and struggle has become proof of effort.

Success in today's highly visible digital economy often requires adversity to feel genuine. The expectation that you must publicly display struggle to gain credibility, admiration, or validation is known as the ‘Performance of Poverty’ 

We don't realise how much it's costing us.

 

What Is the Performance of Poverty?

 

Financial difficulties are not the only aspect of The Performance of Poverty. It's about using hardship, sacrifice, and scarcity as evidence of your true success.

It manifests when people feel driven to share their struggles, burnout, and mental health issues. In a culture that rewards dramatic resilience, progress made in solitude begins to feel illegitimate.

This leads to a risky equation from the standpoint of mental health, that is, pain equals value.

 

How the Digital Reward Loop Fuels This

Visibility is essential for digital platforms. Emotion is what makes visibility thrive. And nothing is more effective for visibility than hardship.

Stories that adhere to well-known patterns - the fall, the grind, the comeback - are favoured by algorithms. Because of the instant dopamine hit, these stories are easy to identify, consume, and reward. They eventually adopt the standard script when discussing success.

This is a system.

People learn what to emphasise when posts about struggles receive more interaction than those about balance. People learn to exaggerate pain when being vulnerable is only rewarded when it is dramatic.

This results in something called a feedback loop.

Attention is drawn to visible struggle → Attention is validated → Behaviour is reinforced by validation → Exhaustion soon ceases to be a cause for concern. 

 

Templatisation and the Cost to Mental Health

Templatisation is one of this culture's most subtle effects.

Even firsthand accounts start to sound alike. The same words. identical arcs, the same lessons discovered. This isn't because people aren't creative, but rather because templates seem to provide more security for success. 

This is because templatisation reduces complexity. It condenses complex lives into easily understood stories. Anxiety also appears when your reality deviates from the model.

Did you truly deserve to suffer if it wasn't obvious? Is your journey impressive enough if it was steady? Is it worth sharing at all if your progress wasn't noticeable?

Sometimes people start doubting themselves because they didn't fail loudly enough, rather than because they failed.

 

The Guilt of Private Success

There is a peculiar kind of guilt associated with private success.

In hustle-driven environments and cultures, people who place a high value on process, stability, and sustainability frequently feel alienated. They are reluctant to celebrate achievements, and they downplay accomplishments. Disclaimers accompany their victories.

‘I got lucky,’
‘It wasn't that hard’
Or ‘I still have so much to do.’

This is not humility, this guilt. It is comparison-shaped anxiety. People assess their value based on social cues. Ease and comfort start to feel unfair when the dominant cue states that true success hurts.

However, rest ≄laziness—stability ≄ inefficiency. 

 

Performative Exhaustion and the Nervous System

The nervous system remains active when the person is constantly in performance mode.

People never get enough sleep when they believe they must appear busy, struggling, or overwhelmed to be relevant. Even idle time can be productive. Even healing leads to contentment.

This is a form of performative exhaustion, where you are exhausted not just by your work but also by the effort of displaying your fatigue.

This deteriorates mental health over time. As a result, anxiety rises. Burnout intensifies. Additionally, because rest feels dangerous or unacknowledged, the body continues to operate in survival mode.

Ironically, a system designed to honour resilience ultimately undermines it.

 

Reframing Success

It is necessary to consciously redefine success to escape the Performance of Poverty.

Rather than thinking ‘How visible is my struggle?’ or ‘How sustainable is my life?’, we recommend measuring your value in terms of consistency rather than likes, in terms of health, and in your capacity to arrive tomorrow without crumbling.

Internal metrics are most important. Ask yourself, ‘Do you have a sense of grounding?’ ‘Do you still have energy?’ ‘Is there room for joy in your work?’

Stability is produced by internal validation. Dependency is produced by external validation.

This does not imply that ambition should be rejected. It entails redefining it.

 

The Dignity of the Process

There is dignity in working quietly. In slow growth that happens in solitude. At home. In the office. By yourself. With your team. In consistency. In new ideas. In rest. 

Resilient systems are not dramatic; they are reliable. They do not shine brightly and collapse; they last over time, with rest and endurance.

The most radical thing you can do in a culture that monetises exhaustion is to refuse to perform it.

 

Choosing Not to Perform Struggle

Your suffering is not something you owe the world as evidence of your hard work. You also do not need to narrate pain to validate progress. And you do not need to exhaust yourself to be worthy of success.

The Performance of Poverty, the social media algorithms, and viral content tell us that struggle must be visible to count. But now you know otherwise. 

And choosing it is not a weak choice.
It is wisdom.

Very often, we get caught in the loop of lack of rest, exhaustion, and performative struggles. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The life coaches at iDare will help guide you towards a happier, more balanced life filled with internal validation. Book your session on the iDare app now!

Image Credits: UnSplash