Life in the hive favors those who most naturally orient toward external cues rather than toward one’s own thoughts, feelings, values, and sense of personal identity. When considered from the vantage point of the self-other balance, positive social comparisons are just as pernicious as negative comparisons. Both are substitutes for the “hard bargain” of carving out a self that is capable of reciprocity rather than fusion. Whether the needle moves up or down, social comparison is the flywheel that powers the closed loop between the inclination toward the social mirror and its reinforcement. Both ego gratification and ego injury drive the chase for more external cues.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1479