What Bullying Taught Mark Manson About Human Nature I Dr.Michael Gervais

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-08

[00:00:00]There was one guy who used to bully me, but then he got a girlfriend, and his girlfriend liked me. So, when his girlfriend was around, he was really nice to me. But, it wasn't like a fake nice. It wasn't like a mean nice. Like, he just kind of chilled out, and he was like, "Oh, yeah, Mark's all right." And then as soon as his girlfriend was gone and his buddies were around, he'd be a dick again. And it just made me realize that people are very multifaceted. Like, he wasn't being manipulative in either context. It was just that ultimately he was optimizing for social approval. And social approval when his girlfriend was around meant being nice to me, and social approval when the football players were around meant being a dick to me. And I I saw this in a lot of different places. So, I grew up, I went to church very frequently. My parents were both very involved in the church, and I was always very analytical, and so I read the Bible, and and I would listen to the preacher, and then I would watch my parents hang out with their church friends at lunch or in the afternoon, and they were behaving completely oppositely of like everything we just heard in the church sermon. And so, of course, as like a a 10-year-old, I'm like, "What's going on? Why are you guys acting this way?" And so, I think from a very young age, because I grew up in that environment and because of my personality, I was exposed at a very young age to a lot of displays of inauthenticity, I guess you would call it just seeking social validation. And I developed a pretty intense distaste of it.