Idolspize

"We all have them, those close friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances or complete strangers whose lives and careers exist -- it seems to us -- solely as a rebuke to our own. We respect them, admire them from afar, maybe even love them -- but with a twinge of . . . what exactly? Jealousy? Envy? White-knuckled rage? They're the people who are constantly reminding us that we'll never quite measure up. They're the valedictorians to our salutatorians, the bestsellers to our mid-listers, the mid-listers to our never-published, the homecoming queens to our also-rans. They seem to have sprung fully formed from our ugliest competitive streaks, our egos at their most fragile, our deepest self-loathing. They are our own squandered potential, fully realized."

A new word has been coined to describe the people we admire but we also hate because we are so envious of them: we idolspize them.

The writer goes on to explain that idolspizing is not the equivalent to 'frenemies' because you can idolspize a stranger. You cannot idolspize celebrities. For someone to be "idolspicable, [they] must be thisclose to your own age, background, educational achievement and career, and they must be of your gender and general situation in life."

There are a couple of people I could call frenemies, but I don't idolspize anyone I'm close to. Maybe I'll idolspize Ben when his book gets published, but other than that, the closest I've come to idolspizing was a few people from my undergraduate experience. The stunningly well-dressed, rich, fashionable hipsters who already had things published, or were just so cool and in-the-know and always surrounded by equally cool people who went to cool happenings around Boston, whose parents were bigwigs in the movie or music industry.

Emerson College was a breeding ground for idolspizing. Everyone hated everyone else for having a successful comedy show, being in a play, getting a gig at a popular bar, making a celebrity networking connection. I'm surprised an Emerson alum didn't create the word.