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Narcissist parents competing with other narcissist parents to be the best parents in the universe. Social media caters to their twisted world view where everyone is living a polished life of perfection so why not them and their perfect high-success family.

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yeah but they don’t know that competition is for losers, you compete away all the profits while PE firms laugh all the way to the bank.

's/narcissist/desperately insecure/', perhaps? To a lot of Americans, the future really doesn't look so good if you fall out of the top 10%...1%...0.1%...

Do sports help in a bleak future world? I think if people really believed that, they'd focus more on the kid's practical skills.

From a number of "what people did, trying to get their kid into Harvard"-themed articles in the past few years, I think it's a pretty common belief that awesome athletic extracurriculars are a secret sauce.

Though I suspect that lizard-brain emotions play a bigger role. Both self-medication attempts to get success by proxy, and also visually demonstrating (to themselves and their peer parents) that their kid is a Success Story at something.

Narcissists are fundamentally insecure people. They have a self-esteem entirely driven by outside perception so they engage in behaviors to get external validation.

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