Zaid Khan has spent most of his life on the internet, and despite his self-proclaimed optimist nature, scrolling through news stories and being bombarded by fatal content online can make That natural positivity is hard to maintain. “I think it’s just a rabbit hole that’s easy to fall down when you’re on the internet — feeling like, ‘Oh my god, things suck, we’re all doomed,’” Khan, 25 age, said.
But by the end of 2022, he noticed a new trend emerging on TikTokoften accompanied by hashtags like #hopecore and #antinihilism, providing a different perspective, promoting a kind of radical optimism.
Trends take many forms: a series of inspirational sports clips or video game scene put together; show quotes, tweets or web comics; or Front camera video shows some hopeful ideas. like core trend Previously, this format used images or videos to evoke emotional responses in viewers, ranging from profound to emotional.
IN One video, one user replied to “I hate to live” with the caption: “All my loved ones rejoice in the day that God made.” In another, a man looking at the camera with the words of the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus writing above: “In the depths of winter I have at last learned that within me there is an invincible summer.” Appreciative comments on the videos showed that the message was impressive. “This trend is really helping me because it’s been really hard lately,” one person commented on Camus’ video. “We all will,” wrote another.
In November, Khan decided to make my own video in this new genre, post a 14-second slide show of uplifting messages overlaid with video footage of him playing one of his original piano pieces. He captioned it “against fear,” and it became the first of his “anti-nihilist” TikTok series, which has since garnered tens of thousands of views.
Nice weather Hopecore hashtag has over 700 million views on TikTok and overlap with other hashtags like #hopeposting and #optimisticnihilism, as well as more recent trends like #weaving and #active slideshows.
Part of the success of this trend comes from its ability to acknowledge difficulty while encouraging viewers to persevere. Carolyn Fan, creator of another anti-nilism series on TikToksays it’s important to her that her content doesn’t advocate a “toxic positive” mindset that refuses to acknowledge real suffering.
“I don’t want to be in a situation where everything is great and everything will be fine,” Fan said, adding, “I think despite all the things that are happening in the world, we can still choose to carve out these gaps.
Part of the appeal of pessimism, Fan says, lies in its perceived intellectual reliability. “I think sometimes, negativity or negative things are taken as more serious or justifiable, because if you know what’s going on, why aren’t you scared and upset and desperate? But if you take this approach to recognizing those negatives but also recognizing the positive dynamics in our lives, you will feel a little less lonely, a little less hopeless. “
In the most recent trend, the online tension between optimism and pessimism has been evident. Previous binaries, like memes about “perisher“pessimists and”BloomThe optimists point to these philosophical differences. Now, one of the most popular meme formats to come out of the genre puts the tension between despair and hope at its heart, in the form of an epic battle in which “The indomitable spirit of man” victory over “the indifferent cruelty of the universe” like the song “Viva La Vida” of Coldplay plays in the background.
The balance between optimism and pessimism is often a healthier approach, says Whitney Goodman, a therapist with more than 500,000 followers. Instagram and author of Toxic positivity: Keeping it real in a happiness-obsessed world.
Goodman says that instead of focusing on our feelings of helplessness and resignation, it’s better to look at the problem: “What is my personal strength or responsibility in this situation to help improve this situation?” This?”
This conflict is not new. Optimism and pessimism often carry important political and cultural aspects, the pendulum swinging between them over time. In the 19th century, debates between nihilists and anti-nihilists raged in the pages of several Russian novels, including Ivan Turgenev’s novel. dad and sonin which young nihilists oppose the liberal and traditionalist standards represented by their parents’ generation.
Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief of Know Your Meme, said that when it comes to internet nihilism, online sentiment has sometimes changed during the election of former President Donald Trump. When Caldwell joined the site more than 12 years ago, the “healthy meme” was popular, and the videos went viral like “David Sau Dentist” And “Zombie Kid Likes Tortoise“often more silly than cynical.
“The rise of Trump marked 2016 as “the pivotal year for internet culture to get a little darker,” Caldwell said. The term “sane meme” has gained popularity as a way to distinguish upbeat content from the new default meme language characterized by irony and edgy.
For 18-year-old Mia Cole, the trend of online despair lasted most of her teenage years. On his YouTube channel, Cole creates video essays discussing cultural trends, including videos on social media and nihilism in which she examines the pros and cons of posting on the internet.
Cole said she feels a “hidden sense of doom” among her colleagues, especially online. ONE recent CDC report reflects her experience: From 2017 to 2021, high school girls reported a “persistent feeling of sadness or hopelessness” increased 16% while boys increased 8%. Other reports show a increase screen time for most age groups, and more lonely among adolescents during the pandemic.
Dr Jaclyn Halpern, psychologist and director of the SOAR Psychotherapy Program, who also works with adolescents, says young people are also “prone to the strong emotions of the internet” society, whether positive or negative. Dr Halpern said positive interactions can boost self-esteem, but negative content can also create strong emotional responses, especially in adolescents, whose brains are still developing. develop.
“As a result, they may find themselves looking longer, spending more time diving into holes that could lead them to positively connect with people who share their backgrounds and belief systems, and create create a positive environment for them, or vice versa. , attracting them to more negative content can seriously damage their health,” says Dr. Halpern.
Although he’s also been a victim of a rollover in the past, Khan notes that his time on TikTok has helped him “deprogram a lot of the turmoil and negativity” he often encounters. on the Internet. It also helps him find a voice online and connect with like-minded users, he said.
Despite the many good reasons young people should despair, Cole also believes that there is still room for hope. She said: “Being out there looks bad to us, and the point is, when you’re young, there’s simply not much you can do about it. “But I think it’s the ‘indomitable spirit of man’, right? No matter what challenge is presented to us, we always have to accept it and overcome it.”
For Matt Hershberger, a freelance writer and creator of a anti-despair reading list series on TikTok, being a father and seeing the world through the eyes of his young children helped him eventually change the way he navigates the Internet and embrace optimism.
“For most of my early adulthood, I was extremely pessimistic about the trajectory of our civilization. And then I had children, and I started to realize that I no longer felt the luxury of being resigned and skeptical about the future,” he said. Surfing social media often makes him feel depressed and at least one recent research have shown that obsessively scrolling or searching for negative information online is associated with lower psychological distress and life satisfaction.
Hershberger’s new reading list swaps out the bleak conspiracies he’s enjoyed in the past for titles like Hope in the dark by Rebecca Solnit, Then what should we do? by Gar AlperovitzAnd Why does civil resistance work by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.
Moving towards hope can be difficult, but it can also start new ideas and directions. For Fan, her anti-nihilist series influenced her PhD work. student in public health, causing her to focus on the “strengths and assets” of the marginalized communities she studies in her research project, rather than just looking at the challenges and their difficulties.
For Khan, who quit his tech job in January after suffering burnout, the trend has encouraged him to imagine new possibilities in his career and life, including recording a new one. Studio album featuring alt-pop music. “I certainly have had this awakening or discovery over the last few months that life is short and I feel like we all owe it to ourselves, if we have the means, to really explore. more than our passions and the things we really care about. back,” he said.
Internet spaces, like life, are what you make of them, and Khan said he’s grateful for the hopeful video stream that helped shape his new perspective. In recent months, he also sees this trend growing, exploring not only hope but other concepts such as grief, friendship and loneliness but with a sensitive, existential perspective. similar.
“I’m pretty optimistic,” says Khan, “and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that interacting and staying visible with this type of content actually affects your mood, outside, in the real world, is a coincidence. coincidental.”
