This troper went to school with a guy like this. Straight-A's, superb athlete, handsome as sin, you name it. He wasn't a JerkJock, much, but he didn't ''have'' to say "I'm better than you in absolutely everything" because it was true. He was killed in a car accident a few years after graduation (which this troper actually felt bad about, since we kind of got along in our senior year), leading to our 5-year reunion becoming essentially a memorial gathering, overshadowing any of the other students' post-grad achievements.

That's creepy. Almost the exact same thing happened to a similar guy this troper went to high school with. Being in mostly honors classes meant you got pretty acquainted with the other smart kids throughout school, and the AlwaysSomeoneBetter in question was at the top since junior high, at least. Rather than treat him like a rival, this troper respected him because he was also inhumanly, genuinely nice and fun to be around. He graduated valedictorian, went to college in hopes of eventually helping people as a doctor, but died during college from one of those bizarre sports collapses. I wonder what ''our'' 5-year reunion will be like. :/

Being an artist in general, I've found this to be so. As you work on your talents and improve, you may surpass people you once admired wide-eyed. But you will always stumble across someone better who blows your mind and makes you look like a kindergartner with a crayon. Time to get back to improving!

This troper is very glad for this, as it's the main force behind all artistic improvement.

This troper can attest. If you're in a good class with artists who generally have positive attitudes, then there will be a lot of "Oh my god, you're so much better than I am at X!" going around. Add this to the tendency of artists to make something and think it ''sucks'' so hard, and you have a lot of ''perceived'' but necessarily actual AlwaysSomeoneBetter.

This trope is the reason why I have often considered giving up being an artist and/or writer. I mean, what's the point if I'm not going to be on top? No matter how hard I try, the voice in my head always finds something wrong and tells me that it's absolute shit on par with {{Sonichu}} (art) or Literature/{{Twilight}} (writing [although this doesn't happen often]) and that all I have to look forward to is 40 or so years as a hack. It's the reason why I don't interact with other artists-- whether in real life or on DeviantArt-- that much, unless it's to gain knowledge from them or to buy their works: a worthless piece of trash like me has no right to even be in the presence of gods. It's also the reason why I think everyone who's ever given me a compliment is either lying or incapable of looking at things with a critical eye. And yet, I keep trying, if only because I don't know what to do otherwise.

This troper thought he invented what have became YouTube and Wikipedia. He did. Someone else got there first. This troper has always been 2nd smartest in his class, no challenge though.

This troper has a twin sister...you can probably see where this is going. Her sister is generally better then her at everything, has better grades, more friends, and is generally well liked. This troper isn't mean, but people don't seem to like her and tend to avoid her (Might have something to do with the Loners are Freaks trope). This troper and her twin have a lot in common, so she would assume it's just that her twin is much more outgoing.

This troper was always good at just about everything growing up and was probably this to a lot of people. And then this troper met a certain other person.... and then another one... and another one... and has, as such, occasionally turned into an inwardly frothing mess of screaming rage, pride and envy. Sometimes despair.

This troper, an avid gamer by anyone's standards and a staunch believer in Murphy's Law, has come to realise that no matter what game you play, no matter the genre or the size of the fanbase, there is ''always'' someone better at the game than you. He has made it his personal mission, if only for the self-satisfaction, to become one of the best there is at a halfway popular title.

This troper remembers that back in high school he started as a freshman in an Algebra II class. He was the only one and was almost revered school-wide for being really smart for being a year ahead in math. Sophomore year another student in my grade transferred in and was in Pre-calc with me. He was smart and he did create some friendly competition. Junior year rolls around and we were in Calculus together but there was a new girl who was in our class. She was a '''FRESHMAN'''. She made everyone else in the class look like they had peanuts for brains (for example, she pointed out a major flaw in my final project basically proving the I had completely missed the point of a major concept) but she was so nice you couldn't get mad at her. Luckily I came to terms with it shortly. I don't know how the other guy did. I think he dropped the class.

Usually when someone uses this trope, it has to do with your "rival", or whatever. For this troper, who is a freshman in high school, this is not the case. You see, being a guitarist, I walked into my music theory class, thinking i was going to school everyone in there. I didn't. Not only was litterally everyone better than me, they're so far ahead of me that if I were to call them my rival, I'd get laughed at. Sometimes it's pretty sad.

This trope is the reason why @/DarkInsanity13 gave up on her pursuits in visual arts (as well as an increasing decline in interest), but it's also the reason why she refuses to give up on writing. There has never been any particular rival, just a massive case of self-esteem issues when comparing self to online friends.

I get accused of having low self-esteem- or worse, fishing for compliments- when I say somebody's better than me at something. My usual response is a don't-be-stupid look. If they really annoy me, I explain.

A girl who was in my class last year was a superb athlete, an A+ student, an amazing artist, very friendly, popular '''and''' pretty. Similar to the first poster, only in girl form.

This troper (who is very competitive) had the good fortune to spend some time with a girl she had previously thought of as almost ridiculously TheAce. She outshone me in everything I tried, and for a long time, I was terribly jealous. But after getting to know her, I came to realize that yes, there was a person under there as real and sensitive and multi-dimensional as I am. (Or-- oh, hell, more so.) Her skills were still intimidatingly superior, but I can't bring myself to dislike her for it at all. Other people, however... well, basically we've set up a little chain of AlwaysSomeoneBetter. Alice looks up to Bob, who looks up to me, who looks up to Danielle, who looks up to Edward, and Edward looks up to Frances. And Frances believes that AGodAmI.

This troper was one of the higher-achieving students at her high school. And then she went to college and found that she was one of the dumb kids. Apparently this sort of thing happens a lot.

This troper once thought ''she'' was smart, geeky, talented and thoughtful enough. Then she found an anime fandom website by an absolutely AMAZING web designer and fanfic writer, who apart from Xtreme Webdesign Skillz can literally blend psychological theory, and anime into a fanfic which ''works'', and the list of books/anime/whatever she has read is literally too long to fit anywhere. We have since became Internet buddies, though.

I and a boy at my school have ALWAYS been this way, but it slips between us depending on the subject. I'm always better at English, he at Maths, and we got exactly the same mark in our second year science test - joint first. My mother says that it's been like that ever since Primary One, and his mother agrees. When I was younger I decided that I was going to marry him, and even now, even though I'm one of the few girls that he doesn't flirt with, my friends refuse to stop shipping us. It's also inverted between me and another girl, because she never gets higher marks than me, but often is only a few marks away from it. I feel kind of sorry for her, especially as we're quite friendly and she was clearly accustomed to being top dog at primary school.

When I was at summer camp, we took tennis lessons as part of our schedule every day. I was second best behind a kid named Chris (who was actually Asian). We had a drill called "rally with the pro" (or volley, I forget), where the point was to keep a rally with the coach going as long as possible. Chris held the record of 18 for literally over a year... and then one day I beat it, getting 19. His ''very next turn'', Chris scored 32. This was a decade and a half ago, and Chris probably still has that record...

Nearly everyone on my course I swear. I used to be super smart at college and now I'm nothing :p Or there's one of my best mates who is very similar to me but more popular despite him being less responsible and putting no effort into his appearance whatsoever. Might be because I'm "edgier" (read: serious sometimes) and more stand-offish. But we have so much of our humour and whatnot in common it's annoying. I'm only better academically.

Carthestian here. I have an interesting case of this trope in action. Owing to what kind of person I am, troper, meme-spouter, anime fan, person learning how to draw (there's a difference), tennis player, and MilitaryBrat (knower of random trivia), my ability to talk with genuinely above-average intelligence people is considerably higher than most. The problem is that most of these people, at least in my area, are female. This isn't so bad in and of itself, except that they tend to be better at just about everything I'm interested in, owing either to parents that encourage them, that they've enjoyed X activity longer, or are just... well, this trope.

Continuing: What's bad is that these people are the kind of people that I would date without hesitation except for Envy, that ubiquitous little bugger. My most recent attempt to get rid of him was simply to get better at everything, which worked for a few years until I met somebody else like this. So it's not that I'm strange socially or have some fear of trying, it's that it's easier for all involved if the relationships I have with people like this are platonic at most. If anybody can tell me how to fix this, I would be much obliged ^^.

This Troper knows a girl in her class that is like this. Let's see, she's president of the National Honor Society, environmental club, Key Club, Spanish Honor Society, Spanish Club, Science Olympiad, and another charity club. She's also a member of National Art Honor Society (But I'm the president ;p) and our campus ministry. She gets almost perfect grades (Like between 97 and 100%) and is up every night until 1 or 2 AM working on homework. When she's not busy with school, she works at a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, does roadside cleanup, and plays the violin for elderly people at a senior center. She has awards coming out the wazoo for her intelligence and charity. Her entire family is extremely Catholic, and she never curses and is always sweet and charming. I cannot bring myself to hate her because she's so nice, but she's so pure and kind that it makes me want to barf. Believe me when I say I cannot make this shit up. Part of me wants to see her crack, actually.

This troper knew a chick like that back in high school. Among other things, she was on almost every committee, she was in the student council and was a class officer, was voted "Outstanding Leader" in our senior class favorites, got good grades, and somehow managed to maintain a healthy social life in spite of (or perhaps ''because'' of) all the stuff that she was doing. A few years later, when I first started substitute teaching, I noticed that someone had put up a magazine article about her in my high school's mail room, and it talked about some prestigious job she had. I honestly believe a person like that is physically incapable of cracking.

This Troper's roommate and crush in senior year of high school was this. We had the same general appearance, but he had better grades, better popularity, and he ended up happier than I did.

A girl in this troper's grade got perfect scores on the SAT ''and'' ACT, took more honors and AP courses than any one human should, started college-level math in I think junior year, took the highest level of Latin possible from 7-12th ''and'' doubled up with Spanish sometime during high school, and ''heavily'' invested her time in Model UN. This troper is pretty sure she was a class officer senior year too. She got into Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Yale and ended up going to Harvard. We figured out she was going to be our valedictorian somewhere around 8th grade. The thing was, as far as this troper knows nobody even seriously disliked her, much less hated her. We all just accepted her ''utter genius'' and moved right on.

My older sister, who's two years older than me, is like this with me in that she's the "smart one". She always had better grades at my age than I did. Even though she apologised for it, I will always remember getting home a school report (wasn't that bad, A's and B's with a few C's) and my mum, really enthusiastic, saying "If you keep this up, you'll get as good as your sister". She realised what a bitchy thing to say it was, and she did apologise, but still...that stings. It gets worse in that my sister recently found that she hadn't gotten as many points in college as she wanted, which makes me think: If my genius older sister "failed", what chance do I have of even getting into college, let alone passing it?

I played Minnesota Fats to one of my childhood friends for years without knowing it. I was just a little better than she was in school, and she was very resentful about it, but she never said anything, and it wound up ruining what I thought was going to be a lifelong friendship. The moral of the story is to voice things that upset you before they have a chance to ruin your friendships.

This troper has found this to be an added major problem for his already low self esteem and few social skills. I find many many people who make me feel like I am inadequate at anything I do. I get told I'm sweet, good at drawing, or fun, well there is always someone who is sweeter, more fun to be around, or a better more interesting artist than me, or sometimes a combination. I feel like sometimes the only thing I have is useless trivia. I also apply it to a real situation where I feel like my so called best friend is replacing me for someone else who is sweeter and more fun than me.

This troper feels this way with two sisters, one older and the other younger than I. While I can kind of consider myself creative in sketches of backgrounds and in writing, my elder sister can do so many different kinds of art, including sculpting and painting, while the younger is awesome at conventional things such as mini-architecture and precise projects like origami. Heck they even beat me at videogames. It also doesn't help that I consider my grades very low compared to the rest of the class. And I consider myself TheScrappy of said class, as I'm easily forgettable. ... And I have moodswings.

This troper has been having to deal with this on a musical level since 3rd grade. Even though I've been playing trombone since 6th grade and singing since ''3rd'' (and been good at both, I was accepted in the prestigious Houston Boy Choir and have been in the top band every year since 7th grade) there always seems to be that ''one'' person who is better than me. I'm from a small town, and really should be creaming just about everybody but the teachers at the arts. But in both band and choir, there has always been that ONE person who is better than me and is going to go on to be and Opera Singer or a Music Major or something. I was okay with this freshman year in band, as the guy who was better than me was a Senior. But then my Sophomore year, a freshman comes in... and he's at least 3 times better than me. To add insult to injury, last year's outgoing Band Director made him section leader for this year's (Junior) low brass marching section over me. GSJKASJGHG. (But outside band we're pretty tight. He's a nice guy.) Also, the choir thing doesn't really bother me that much, although now my band rival is joining choir too. At least I can sight-read better than him.

This is this Troper's main motivation for not doing anything. If there's always someone better, then why bother?

This troper has this a lot. It's a big reason why I've got no self-esteem to speak of:

My second cousin is my age. We are/were both swimmers, both into fandom, both fairly good academically, and both interested in linguistics. Difference? She still swims, when I quit a while ago. She is superior in every academic subject you can think of. She's one of the top mathematicians our age in the country, and an internationally-renowned debater. We're both first-generation Russian-Americans, but she knows Russian way better than I do, and is in fact learning Korean and French on the side, while I only take Spanish. This is made even worse by the fact that we're both applying to college now--her SAT scores are far better than mine.

When I did swim, I was in direct competition with a girl named Isa (my name is Lisa). We were both butterfly swimmers, but I was three years older. Our times were almost identical in all fly events. To improve, I began training 20 hours a week, while her training dwindled to ''never.'' And yet, no matter how much I improved, she could show up to a swim meet with no preparation and kick my ass. This, combined with a few other Always Someones Better, led to me quitting swimming altogether.

Last year, I was in drama class. I was one of the best people in that class, although to be fair there were only thirteen people in that class. Anyway, this new transfer student named Zack joins our class. In less then a week he quickly becomes the more popular kid, Gained the attention of all the girls in that class and essentially became the teacher's favorite.

However, this was also when he began to slip up, he was always going on about how "He would become a famous actor", and reveled his massive ego. He tried to down play it, but it wasn't until me and a few other students called him out, and he quickly became one of the most disliked guys in the school. He transfered to another school, for its "Superior Acting Classes." I did think he was rather good, but his ego ruined any chance for him.

This troper ''never'' gets cast in plays because there is AlwaysSomeoneBetter at acting or singing or movement or... anyways, I've begun to believe my acting is worse than a tree's...

I now avoid looking at artwork on DeviantArt for this very reason. The sight of greatly superior masterpieces created by artists several years younger than me is discouraging, to the point where my own drawing ability has grown rusty and disused.

This troper was an intellectual god in elementary school until about 6th grade. This one girl was in my class. Not only did she get better grades than me, she seemed to be better than me in every way I could think of. She was pretty, fashionable, and skinny, where I was chubby, awkward, and dressed in kindergartner clothes. She had many friends, where I barely had acquaintances. She was more creative than I was in the arts, especially writing. My writing had been praised for years, but now was completely upstaged. As I later learned, though, not many kids actually liked her because she always held an air of superiority around them.

What's that? Beat all of your friends effortlessly in so much you'd honestly believe yourself one of the top players? Here comes the Internet, ready to tell you how inferior you are to ''thousands of other people''. Your high score barely scratches the top players' scores and nothing you do ever brings you an inkling closer. Things like this have severely discouraged this Troper, but at least he is the best of his friends...

I have a semi-friend in College. I'm a film production student with a love of 80's movies. Said guy is the best student in the class (specifically in the areas i have a flair for) and knows even more about 80's films than me (we're the only ones in the class who like them). He's also extremely charismatic and able to get his points across better than I can. My lecturer has said that I have better concepts than him, but he can bullshit and manipulate people into siding with him. What's worse? He has the same name as me.