What people (should) mean when they say "get a life"

self-esteem diversity.

Of course, this seems remarkably simple, but it's not. When most people say "get a life" they mean "get a social life."

That's problematic.

If some person who is used to evaluating himself based on how good he is at various things and that person constantly hears "get a life" (even if he has a life) he will hear another area he is not good in. So what does he do? He goes ultra-bro and treats party invitations like conquests. He reads the Pickup Artist literature, and suddenly he has a GirlCount added to his Having a Life stat.

But even if you are invited to parties every weekend and have managed to bed several dozen women you still will be missing the point because most people don't actually respond with "get a life" because they think you aren't skilled in social adaptation. They say that because skill in some obscure activity looks as if you care too much -- that your self-esteem is so terrible in so many areas that the only area where it's not terrible is in some obscure activity, so you hoard accomplishments in that activity.

We know that's false. Many people on this website are brilliant, accomplished, or both. But the accomplishment hoarding factor is the essence of what's causing people to think you "need a life," and we definitely have that here too. It's a corrosive mental process.

So I'm saying that if you're like,

You have not really gained "a life". You have RPGified your life to match the effect of having a life, but not the cause. Your self-esteem is still adversarial and your view of yourself depends on other people to be below you. That is not a sustainable method of believing you're a worthwhile person. People are far more complicated than semi-quantitative constructs you create to convince yourself that you can be "better" than someone. Only when you release yourself from this sort of thinking will your "life" come naturally.