Let’s say you’re playing an RPG. It starts easy in some small village with friendly houses and cute people. Someone is guarding the only gate and warning you for what you will find outside. You still go because that’s why you’re playing. The first challenges are doable but the curve is upward. You’re still having fun because you’re slowly but steadily making progess. You selected a pretty tough difficulty level which makes it worth it and creates a feeling of accomplishment when you’ve completed another stage.

The next day at the office coffee machine a colleague tells you they’ve last night completed the entire game in a single go, even casting judgement over the way you’re playing. At first you are impressed, thinking that their skills must be better than yours and you respect them for it. But then they tell you that they selected the easiest, the lowest difficulty rating to play the game. You can’t help but smile when they explain how they went about finishing the game. "That’s cute," you think.

Yesterday, when I was cycling home, I saw another one of those ugly black electric fatbikes that seem to pop up on any bike lane these days. Riding it were two young girls, lazy for using an electic bike instead of putting in the effort of peddling themselves, their eyes glued not to the road but to the phones in their hands.

I’ve read that if you’re a white sis-gender hetereosexual male, like me, you are playing the RPG of live at the lowest difficulty level. Anyone not like you is having a harder time accomplishing the same as you.

"That’s cute," I imagine those girls think, seeing the judgement in my eyes. They don’t though. They ignore me.

Good on them.