Society Got Jacked by the Joneses

The American dream became the American scam.

The Debt Machine Runs on Blood

I was standing in a Target parking lot in suburban Nashville when I realized everyone around me was dying. Not the quick death. The slow kind. The kind where you bleed out over thirty years making payments on things that were supposed to make you happy.

The woman loading groceries into her Escalade. Financed. The guy checking his phone by the cart return, designer sneakers worth more than my weekly grocery bill. Credit card. The family arguing by their minivan about whether they could afford the vacation they already booked. Already broke. Already dead. They just haven’t stopped moving yet.

We are all participating in a game nobody remembers agreeing to play.

The rules appeared in our childhood like a virus in the bloodstream. Get the right stuff. Live in the right place. Drive the right car. The infection spreads through every conversation, every commercial, every carefully curated Instagram post showing you what your life is supposed to look like if you were winning.

But nobody’s winning. We’re all just bleeding at different rates.

The Joneses Are a Myth We Keep Killing Ourselves For

Let me tell you about the Joneses. They don’t exist. They’re a hallucination we’ve collectively agreed to chase. A phantom constructed from credit reports and mortgage applications and the desperate need to not look like we’re failing in front of our neighbors.

The Joneses have a new truck in the driveway. Seven years financed at 6.9% APR. They just got back from Cancun. Still paying for it six months later with a credit card that charges 24% interest. Their kids are in every activity. Because if your kids aren’t in every activity, what kind of parent are you?

The Joneses are drowning. And so are you. And so am I. We’re all drowning in the same polluted water while pretending we’re swimming.

The American middle class has become a performance art piece where we’re all method actors who forgot we were acting. We play wealthy people. We dress like wealthy people. We buy shit like wealthy people. But look at the bank accounts. Look at the credit card statements. Look at the sleep we’re not getting while we calculate whether we can make the minimum payment this month.

Consumer debt in America: $4.6 trillion. That’s not a number. That’s a weapon. That’s a meat grinder disguised as a shopping mall.

The Comparison Engine Runs 24/7 Now

Instagram didn’t invent envy. It just gave it a neural interface. Now the comparison runs in real-time. Every scroll. Every swipe. Every perfectly lit photo of someone’s avocado toast telling you your breakfast isn’t good enough.

You’re not competing with your neighbors anymore. You’re competing with everyone’s highlight reel. Everyone’s best angle. Everyone’s most expensive moment. The girl from high school posting photos from Italy. The guy from college who “made it” with his startup. The influencer selling you the dream of a life you can’t afford to imitate.

The pressure used to be local. Now it’s omnipresent. Now it follows you into your bedroom through the phone you’re financing.

The algorithm knows what you want before you do. It shows you the things you can’t have. The places you’re not going. The life you’re not living. Then it sells you the products that promise to bridge the gap.

They Weaponized Your Inadequacy

The corporations figured out the cheat code decades ago. Edward Bernays, the father of PR, called it “engineering consent.” Convince people they need things they never wanted. Make them feel incomplete without your product. Turn human insecurity into quarterly earnings.

They’re not selling cars. They’re selling status. They’re not selling clothes. They’re selling confidence. They’re not selling houses. They’re selling the illusion that you’ve made it.

Every commercial is designed to make you feel like you’re failing. Every ad implies your current life is insufficient. Every sale creates artificial urgency around shit you didn’t care about five minutes ago.

The machine runs on your fear of not measuring up. It feeds on your desperation to look successful. It grows fat on your credit card debt.

And it never stops eating.

What We Sacrificed at the Altar

While we’re performing success, we’re missing actual life. Real conversations with people we love get traded for overtime shifts to pay for things we bought to impress people we don’t even like. Experiences get replaced with objects. Time gets converted into money gets converted into stuff gets converted into regret.

You’re working a job you tolerate to afford a house you’re never in to impress neighbors you don’t know to maintain a lifestyle that’s crushing you.

The math doesn’t work. It was never supposed to work. The system was designed to keep you running. Keep you scared. Keep you buying.

The Exit Is Always There

Here’s the thing they don’t want you to know. You can leave. Any time. The door’s been open the whole time. You just have to be willing to walk through it while everyone else keeps running the race.

Stop keeping up. Stop performing. Stop buying the lie that your worth is measured in car payments and square footage and whether your vacation photos got enough likes.

What if enough was actually enough? What if the paid-off Honda felt better than the financed BMW? What if cooking dinner at home was more satisfying than posting photos of expensive restaurants? What if freedom mattered more than the appearance of success?

Redefine the win condition. Measure wealth by the debt you don’t have, not the stuff you do. Calculate success by the time you own, not the things you’re making payments on. Count your wins by the stress you’re not carrying, not the status you’re not displaying.

Some People Already Left

There are folks who opted out. Bought smaller houses. Drive older cars. Choose experiences over objects. They’re paying off debt instead of accumulating it. They’re sleeping better than the Joneses ever will.

They discovered the secret the marketers buried. Contentment doesn’t require a purchase. Security comes from spending less than you make, not looking like you make more than you spend. Freedom lives in the gap between what you earn and what you owe.

The algorithm doesn’t want you to know this. The corporations certainly don’t. The entire economic system depends on you staying on the treadmill, chasing the phantom, bleeding slowly.

Your Move

The Joneses will keep running. Keep buying. Keep performing. Keep drowning in the polluted water while smiling for the camera.

You don’t have to.

The exit is always open. The question is whether you’re brave enough to walk through it while everyone else stays in the machine.

The debt machine runs on blood. But only if you keep feeding it yours.