1.25pm - Tuesday 10th March 2026 416

This week we talk raw milk and Tradwives, episode on all the usual streaming platforms.

Social media has a way of pushing us toward extremes.
On one side, there’s the rise of the “perfect trad wife” aesthetic beautifully shot kitchens, homemade sourdough, peaceful farm mornings and slow, wholesome living. It’s visually comforting and aspirational, but it rarely shows the full reality behind it.

Real farming and family life can also mean exhaustion, financial pressure, messy homes, long days and unpredictability. When only the polished moments are shared, people end up comparing their messy everyday lives to someone else’s carefully curated highlights.

But on the other end of the spectrum, there’s another trend that can be just as complicated where mental health struggles, chronic crisis content or victimhood become part of an online identity. While raising awareness about mental health is incredibly important, social media can sometimes reward the performance of suffering. When pain becomes content and engagement is driven by crisis narratives, it can unintentionally reinforce the idea that identity is defined by struggle.
Both of these trends may look completely different, but they are shaped by the same environment. Social media algorithms tend to reward strong, emotional narratives. Perfection performs well. Crisis performs well. Nuance rarely does.
The result is that ordinary life US the messy, imperfect, in-between reality most of us live in disappears from the conversation.

we’re often comparing our behind the scenes reality to someone else’s edited storyline.
Real life usually exists somewhere in the middle.

#socialmedia #onlineculture #mentalhealthconversation #digitalwellbeing #reallife