Economy of voyeurism

WITH every year that passes, there are fewer and fewer people who remember a time before social media. In those bygone days, gossip was largely transmitted via people. Busybodies would dish the dirt on one family for the benefit of another, and spools of speculation and wonder would be unrolled into tangled threads of truths and lies. I mention this only because the human penchant for judging the lives of others and comparing them, consciously or subconsciously, with one’s own has existed for just as long as humans have themselves.