The Zuck is not much older than I am. Which meant that I was in the group of college students who had Facebook all to themselves for a while: only college kids allowed! Oh, the early day of social media. Even then it was pretty silly and everyone knew it, but it also very clearly had its advantages in being able to keep in touch with friends and organize events, and so forth. And then Facebook was opened up to the public at large, and all the parents and grandparents of these millennial kids hopped on board, and the internet was forever altered.

And probably not for the better, although I hate to suggest that’s due to the older generations. No, I’d rather put all the blame on Facebook, whether strictly deserved or not. Facebook has plenty of other things to be held accountable for, and opening up the platform, at least, proved to be a very wise business decision.

Suddenly it was no longer the happy-go-lucky space to share silly things with friends. And suddenly, I found I was getting depressed looking through my Facebook feed. It took me a while to realize why, encapsulated in three little words: live, laugh, love. So many tacky uplifting and inspirational quotes over pretty landscapes and sunrises. I was vindicated and made unreasonably happy when I discovered the term for my negative reaction to all these things: toxic positivity. I began to wonder about the people who were posting such things. Many of those people were older, but the younger generations are not immune to spreading it. To my kinda cynical mind, I began to figure that these positivity posts were not being shared for the group’s benefit, but for the benefit of that individual. And I wished they’d keep it to themselves…

I have noticed at different points in my life that my taste in music and movie genres shift. I observed that when I was feeling happy and satisfied with how my life was going, I gravitated toward the dark and the weird, even the violent in my media consumption. And conversely if I was feeling depressed, I needed comedies, and unchallenging music. (What comes immediately to mind, actually, are Tove Jansson's Moomins. I needed the Moomins.) During those times, however, the last thing I wanted was for someone to tell me, in effect, to smile more. All those positivity memes; so much empty nourishment, so much salt water aboard a ship at sea. It always seemed to indicate a lack of empathy and authenticity; something perhaps even performative about it. Someone who only posts super positive BS must be working through some shit: that's what I always understood that to mean.

Give me stories.

Give me, yes, somewhere safe to escape to and exist within for a while. A good book, movie, or video game, but give me fictional people’s problems to puzzle over. Don’t leave me to contemplate the idea that maybe I should feel bad about myself if I'm not in a constant state of live, laugh, love.

Is any of this a case for healthy negativity? That's kinda like the phrase everything in moderation, which really just means that too much of anything is, by definition, too much. So if your brand of negativity is somehow healthy? Go for it. Let your cynicism save the world, or at least let it help get you through the day a little bit better than otherwise.

My point is that none of this is easy, this life. I didn't even mean to get that deep and psychological. Shit's complicated and it doesn't help to pretend otherwise. Toxic positivity ain't good, neither is anything toxic, so, you know...

Everything in moderation. And maybe indulge in a story or two.