Social Comparison: The Joneses Were Never Real

The phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" comes from a 1913 comic strip drawn by a cartoonist who nearly went broke trying to match his wealthy neighbors and the Joneses themselves never once appeared in it.

This episode covers where the phrase came from, how mid-century advertisers like Chevrolet used it directly in ad copy, how the same mechanism scaled into influencer marketing and social media, and what the psychological research says about what constant comparison actually costs people.

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