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We live in a strange world right now.
A world where a lot of people live in two universes that really don’t have anything to do with each other: reality and the social media world.
And I think the social media world has made a lot of folks into armchair psychologists who have to comment on every post they see with words of encouragement.
But has it become a little too generic and taken away the meaning of phrases that look good on paper but maybe don’t really mean much?
People took to AskReddit to discuss whether generic feel-good phrases just make people feel even worse.
Let’s see what they had to say.
1. Hang on tight…
“Seriously, there seems to be a trend among some parts of the internet and real life to just flash faux motivational feel-good phrases like these to get cheap emotional responses from people who are truly desperate enough to believe that somewhere on the internet or in their vague proximity there is a person who actually genuinely cares about them.
Sorry to break it to you, but they probably can’t. How can you care about someone you don’t even know personally? They have no idea who you are and you have no idea who they are. You are therefore completely blind to any reasons why you are truly loved by anyone, which makes perceiving this feeling as genuine extremely difficult, and impossible for me.
The sort of people who would actually unironically find these phrases motivational are so devoid of any positive social interaction (which I am not saying NEVER happens but is such a desperate situation) that any string of words vaguely resembling a heartfelt compliment brightens their day. The trouble is that these phrases masquerade as heartfelt compliments but are such cheap emotional signalling that anyone utilising a sliver of their human observation and reasoning can see that they are being emotionally manipulated.
The other day at school, I saw a message scribbled on my desk that said “Whoever sits at this seat, know that you are loved #SpreadPositivity”. The vagueness in the wording baffled me. If someone sits at this seat, by virtue of just being there, they are loved, and I, sitting in another spot, am no longer told that I’m loved?
If I am truly loved by anyone in particular, then the message would have been a lot more personal, and due to the circumstances in which that message is being presented, it could not be. That message would have had some positive effect on me if that were the seat I was assigned to (which would make the message take on a new meaning, hence why here it was used so generically), but no, it was a classroom shared by 4 grades above and below mine and due to COVID we have free seating.
The message is not personal; I don’t think the writer even knows who I am, and even if they did, it was not targeted at me, so I cannot personally feel good about anything in the message. If anything, seeing that message made me upset, knowing that my feelings have been pandered to in an attempt to have a cheap emotional response elicited from me.
I felt manipulated. It was insulting, too; I do not need anyone to remind me that I am loved, especially not from an anonymous entity I don’t even know. The message implies that the only criterion that I have to fulfil to be loved is to sit at that particular seat, which makes me feel that I do not actually deserve the praise, since I have not done anything worthy of that praise.
I have to work my a** off to get the grades to make my teachers and parents happy, be funny and genuine with my friends to make them happy, and meticulously plan every encounter to make my girlfriend happy. I know that in order to be loved you must be willing to put in the effort, and any “free love” you get is not at all genuine.
Consider this to be akin to an infinite fountain of counterfeit cash: while you can take as much as you want, all you get in the end is some free paper in case you run out of tissue or toilet roll.
This is a wider problem on the internet, where out-of-touch celebrities, influencers and even some of you on Reddit collectively tell us that we matter or that we are loved blah blah blah. Alright then, if we truly matter, then we don’t need you to tell us that we do because we should be able to feel that every day! If our feelings need to be validated in such a way, would that not suggest that we are in fact not loved by many or do not matter to all but one or two?
I do not feel any better after reading your post, nor do I appreciate that somehow I am targeted to be emotionally pacified. You only use such generic phrases because you are sure that it would apply to everyone, just as if you were tasked with buying me a shirt without knowing who I am you would probably just buy a plain black or white V-neck because it’s such a safe choice, with no polarising or remarkable elements.
I have no interest in what you say about me without knowing who I am. I do not deserve to be loved simply because I exist, I should be loved because of who I am and what I do, and if being who I am means that I will grind more people’s gears, so be it. Being who I am is expressing my personality. Existing is not a personality.
A big part of what makes a compliment special is how personal it is. I cannot be made to believe that any celebrity, any influencer, or even that Redditor I have never interacted with before know me enough to genuinely compliment me.
I know your intentions: You want to scribble something in real life or online, in the hope that someone would stumble upon it and you would brighten their day. But you did not brighten their day. It’s an insulting, condescending and frankly manipulative genre of phrase that serves absolutely no purpose.
Anyway, I am by no means saying that we should just stop spreading any form of positivity and self-love. I understand some people are going through tough times in their life and need any emotional support they can get. In that case, establish connections with them in private, make them feel like you give a s**t (even if you don’t!), DM them, make them feel better as a person with lived experiences, not a publicity stuntman because you either want some Internet brownie points or just want to demonstrate to the world how virtuous and caring you are.
Promoting love and positivity only works well if there is even a façade of reciprocity. If you were talking to a friend in great mental distress, your magnum opus surely would not be such a simple phrase overused to s**t. So, treat people online as you would people in real life. Have a genuine two-sided conversation and step outside the box of virtue-signalling.
This new genre of feel-good phrases just doesn’t work for me, and I’m very sure many other people feel the same way. I just don’t see the majority of the Internet agreeing with this though (with all the positivity movements and s**t), but hey, that’s why I’m here ranting and you’re here reading (hopefully).”
2. It was all BS.
“When I was in a school a kid attempted s**cide then left the school due to constant bu**ying.
So a bunch of students started doing stuff like putting letters in all the lockers with “you matter”, “speak out against bu**ying”. Loads of posters with similar sentiments went up. Except the people taking this so seriously where the same people who bu**ied him.
This wasn’t getting beaten up bu**ying, it was just constant and consistent abuse and name calling from most of our year group. The people who did the whole positivity thing didn’t even realise they where contributing to the bu**ying. (Just justified it as banter).
It was all just bulls**t so they could feel good about themselves. Nothing actually changed in anyone’s attitudes and you would get mocked for all the usual teenager mishaps that happened same as before.”
3. Here’s a term.
“I learned a term recently that describes this phenomenon- “Toxic Positivity”.
Another related concept is “weaponized positivity” where it’s like “be happy…….or else” like….positivity is the only choice.”
4. Didn’t work.
“Back in high school, there was a poster that read “through these halls walk through the greatest students in the world”. My best friend got expelled and hit rock bottom.
He said part of the reason he was depressed was the school’s culture that every student was exceptional just by attending. My friend said “if they treated me like one of the best students in the world, and cast me out, what does that make me now?””
5. Moral superiority.
“I never really made a connection to people who say these empty complements as being bu**ies, but it makes perfect sense.
Bu**ies tend to want to assert control or superiority. Moral superiority is a pretty effective means of control.”
6. Not the only one.
“I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who doesn’t like these “I don’t know whose hearing this, but I love you” type of posts. Like you don’t know me, you don’t even know my name.
My biggest insecurity is that once people get to know me they’ll h**e and be annoyed by me. So it’s not helpful. Just seems like they want to feel better than make someone else feel better.”
7. The psychological angle.
“This is so important. An important lesson from psychology that is well documented by research is that people generally feel worse when they get compliments that they don’t believe are true.
So someone who doesn’t feel loved, and who feel like they don’t matter, will probably not feel better from a post like that. They will just (subconsciously) think “No, I’m not loved. No, I don’t matter”, and therefore feel even worse than before. And then you feel bad because someone wishes you well but you still feel like s**t, so something must be wrong with you.
The only people who feel good from those posts are the ones that feel good from before. So these posts are kicking down at the people who need help the most, and lifting up people who don’t need it.”
8. Meaningless.
“I find the phrases meaningless, spread by plastic celebrities. But I am burned out at home because i am always too hard on myself. So I started listening to positive affirmations during my walk and in the morning.
A lot better than the negative and mistake magnifying thinking I have going on. I have to train my brain to think more positively and it kind of works.”
9. Oops.
“Whenever people tell me I am loved i just say “by who?”. They just look shocked and walk away without answering.
I mean are you gonna tell me you love me? No? Cool then don’t tell me I’m loved.
It’s fine when it’s from somebody who actually loves me, but from somebody who doesn’t it’s f**king insulting.”
10. A real problem.
“Toxic Positivity is a real problem…
It’s not so much even a thought about manipulation but also a way to absolve the speaker of any attempt to actually do something.
They can easily say “See, I tried!” and that’s about it.
It’s not just about those meaningless “compliments” either…
All those godsforsaken times when someone aggressively “finds” a silverlining to something, it’s just aggravating.
Seriously, no, there is nothing good losing a job or a loved one! “Now you have time to find your real passion” get f**ked! “At least you were lucky to have known them/have memories with them”, I’d rather have the person with me… f**k off!
We aren’t allowed to be sad… not just men. No one is allowed, everything MUST HAVE a silver lining and not accepting that makes you WANT to be sad and be a bad person.”
11. Good point.
“I always thought they were reminders, more so than a “I care about you” kind of thing.
“You matter” – to me I read that as that’s not to say that the person who wrote this gives a s**t about you, but to someone on earth you do matter. Even if neither of you know it.
Perhaps you bump into someone while getting a coffee, and that stops them from being hit by a car. I mean sure there might be cases of people that genuinely do not matter to anyone, but most people matter to someone. Even if it’s just their own mothers.”
What do you think about this?
Talk to us in the comments and let us know.
We look forward to it!
