When Did We All Get So Extra?

From bedside tables holding the entire Booker Prize longlist totaking on casual social-media challenges like running 100km in a month, taking hobbies to the extreme has become second nature. With the stakes raised, and the humblebrag becoming a new benchmark, what’s the cost to your health?

- Gemma Aksham

The second half of March was... Weird. Toilet paper was suddenly a covetable commodity, news programs became the new Netflix, and society was engaged in a real-time social experiment to determine whether we could live our lives entirely through Instagram Stories and Houseparty.

The first few days of lockdown were fairly easy-going and, for those nonessential workers, potentially liberating: we’re talking cats perched on laptops, seeing your boss manhandle their kids during video calls and trying creative recipes making the most of tinned beans.

It was around a week into lockdown when confinement became competitive. How hours spent self-isolating were filled – decluttering the house from top to bottom, creating tablescapes worthy of an award, enrolling in e-courses and committing to daily fitness challenges – morphed into collective one-upmanship.

MAJOR LEAGUE

The reactions spawned by enforced social distancing indicate that we’re living in an age of extremes. If this more-is-more attitude is pervading your workouts, it’s also infecting your free time – or what’s left of it.

A recent report by Henley Business School in the UK found that 37 percent of those aged between 25 and 34 run a side hustle alongside their day job, such as a craft business, an e-commerce site, or a blog. Even reading, once the most inconspicuous of bedtime activities, is now a competitive discipline.

There are over 1.5 million posts using the hashtag #readinglist on Instagram, where users share their progress with the uncontained excitement of someone who’s just found R100 in the pocket of an old jacket. But, beyond a bolstered social following, is taking everything to extremes actually doing you any good?