cells committing mass suicide.”
Internet humor is primarily based on find-
ing the specific absurdities in everyday life
and spinning it into something everyone can
relate to on a certain level. In the case of @
jovanmhill, who has 115 followers, a lot of
that humor is based on the way he laments
disturbing truths about his personal life. For
better or worse, joking about mental health
has become a primary avenue for people to
forge an online community of shared suf-
fering, much like with finstas. The only dif-
ference is that everyone’s sadness becomes
much more publicized and therefore harder
to contain.
“At first, it acts as a net where you feel
validated and stand up for yourself more,”
Merritt said. “But at the same time, when
you transfer how you feel to this online com-
munity, you sort of alienate yourself in a way
from the rest of the world. It turns from, ‘This
community understands me’ to, ‘No one else
does.’”
“It helps to see that other people are going
through similar things and provides expo-
sure and perspective to it,” Brandon com-
mented. “But at the same time, it kind of
enables it because I think there’s definitely a
way in which we can romanticize it.”
Having a strong internet presence relies
a lot on not only maintaining a brand, but a
banter with followers. Twitter is particularly
intriguing in how it breeds conversations
between different accounts that share similar
interests or, in this particular context, a col-
lective misery.
“The only reason you’re connected is
because of your problems and they want to
maintain that community,” Merritt said. “If
you all of a sudden are like, ‘Oh, I’m better, I
had an excellent day,’ you’re no longer relat-
able.”
LSA senior Regina whose name has been
changed to protect her social media accounts
offered a slightly different perspective about
how Twitter feels like the only reliable source
of comfort for many.
“Social media is one of the only places to
connect to people like you about how sad it
all is. If you do that in real life, people around
you tend to get more upset than you neces-
sarily want them to be,” Regina said. “It feels
better to just like, joke about it on the inter-
net, to commiserate in our mutual fucking
misery. Sure there are tangible solutions, but
I think we forget how inaccessible and stig-
matized therapy and medicine really are for
a lot of people.”
As Regina noted, a lack of access to therapy
and medicines can play a huge role in why
people are prone to expressing their sadness
so explicitly on Twitter, especially since the
internet provides not only a safe space for
those struggling with trauma or mental ill-
ness, but a free one.
Still, the line between genuinely express-
ing sadness online versus performing sad-
ness for a phantom audience continues to be
blurred. As Susannah Chandhok, a second-
year doctoral student studying social psy-
chology at the University of Michigan, points
out, this issue is intrinsic to the way Twitter
and social media in general is structured.
“The psychological distance that exists
online can facilitate being more open and
making saying things you wouldn’t want to
say face-to-face,” Chandhok said. “But then
at the same time, it can also facilitate more
confrontation because there’s more distance
and people aren’t picking up on verbal cues as
much as you would be with nonverbal cues.”
The almost uninhibited amount of per-
sonal autonomy that Twitter affords its
users makes me wonder what lengths people
are willing to take to talk about their issues
before it becomes a serious situation — and if
we, as members of the online community, are
willing to take the responsibility for the con-
sequences that come with it.
Picking up on these cues are a huge marker
for differentiating the tone of a tweet from the
intention, especially in one recent instance
where rapper Elizabeth Harris, known by
her stage name Cupcakke, tweeted on Jan. 8:
“im about to commit suicide.” Known for her
more raunchy posts, Harris’s alarming tweet
provoked confusion and unease from her
fans. After being hospitalized, Harris issued
an update on Twitter the following day: “I’ve
been fighting with depression for the longest
..sorry that I did it public last night but I’m
ok.”
Harris’ tweet is a rare and harrowing case
in which someone’s sadness on Twitter is not
only fully and completely displayed, but done
so without the heightened pretense of com-
edy.
W
hile Twitter seems preoccu-
pied with turning communal
sadness into a fun and often
juvenile social space, Facebook seems more
concerned with making collective sadness an
aggressively earnest force. It’s a place where
people can band together for the greater good
of humanity over the most recent and rel-
evant tragedy, whether individual or collec-
tive, on a local scale or global scale.
“For one reason or another, it’s sort of
developed as a cultural norm to express
important events online,” Merritt said. “Peo-
ple feel this obligation almost that if someone
important dies, they have to show that they
were important, to show their followers that
they’re grieving about it. They had to leave a
last memento.”
Facebook users seemed to have adopted
an unspoken agreement, wherein folks often
commemorate the death of a family member
in a lengthy post or sometimes with a simple,
sentence-length caption along with a picture.
By and large, their friends will like or com-
ment on the post. The same is usually done
on Instagram. Because both platforms are
known for upholding more positive shared
news or experiences, disclosing the despair
that fosters from someone’s death or a nation-
al calamity is sometimes the only way in
which someone can lay their soul bare.
But given that Facebook is built on giv-
ing our friends updates on our lives, there
is a kind of social pressure that comes with
partaking in the discourse surrounding seri-
ous subject matter. If you don’t show support
for someone who has lost a relative, it comes
off as insensitive. If you don’t acknowledge
a mass shooting or a death of a pop culture
figure, it’s almost like you aren’t part of the
conversation or are uninterested in partici-
pating in it. The same goes for Instagram,
where announcing the death of a loved one or
memorializing the anniversary of a national
tragedy becomes expected. Once again, our
sadness becomes a spectacle, an easy and
accessible way to manage the shock of sudden
disruptions in our lives.
There’s another cost that comes with shar-
ing a bevy of negative information on Face-
book, particularly for those who have clinical
depression.
According to a 2016 research study con-
ducted by members of the Department of
Psychology at the University, depression was
found to be positively correlated with social
support from Facebook networks when par-
ticipants disclosed negative information, but
negatively correlated with how much social
support participants thought they received
from their Facebook network.
“People with depression actually do
receive more social support on Facebook, but
they perceive less, so there’s a mismatch,”
Chandhok said. “Social media can be a place
where people find support, can reach out for
help, but there might be a lack of seeing that
support, perceiving and being able to benefit
from it.”
W
hich brings me to my final
question: Do social media and
technology make us sadder and
more vulnerable or simply expose how sad
and vulnerable we actually are?
Along with the aforementioned paper, a
recent study conducted by the University
of Pennsylvania suggests the former, con-
tending that social media use — particu-
larly on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat
— increases levels of depression and loneli-
ness. But another recent survey reported by
NBC News indicates that at least 90 percent
of teens and young adults with symptoms of
depression go online for information about
mental health issues, using social media as a
expository for a therapist.
Perhaps it goes even deeper than the way
we express sadness. Tim Schwartz, an L.A.-
based artist and digital strategist, figures that
some of the melancholy we experience online
stems from the shift in format of the technol-
ogy we use today and our narcissistic obses-
sion with digital technology. He cited the
“digital Dark Age” as the reason why.
“The digital Dark Age is the idea that if you
write or print something on paper, paper can
last 500 years,” Schwartz said. “If you record
something on film, it can last for a couple hun-
dred years. But we have no long-term backup
systems for digital information. Hard drives
last five years. DVDs last 20 years. In order
to keep information around for a long time, it
takes a lot of upkeep for digital and we don’t
actually have standards for how to do it.”
“My thought is that because we’re living in
this state of euphoric production of informa-
tion,” Schwartz continued, “We just kind of
don’t worry about the fact that it’s all lost or
we just kind of internalize it and it’s just there
and we’ve already decided that we don’t care
that our things are saved.”
When we are confronted with our emo-
tions, the internet primes us to compartmen-
talize them. The online world becomes our
coping mechanism, but also a way for us to
make the transience of the sad moments in
our lives feel permanent. Perhaps the reason
online sadness is such a strange phenomenon
is because there already is a sense of loss built
into it.
We are constantly seeking the temporary
gratification that social media provides us
because there is something missing within
us. As a result, we latch onto whatever we can
to make us feel better, whether that’s paint-
ing a happy, flawless portrait of our life online
or giving the online world the ugliest parts
of ourselves. It’s a slightly unfortunate real-
ity, but I’d like to think that moderating our
happiness with our sadness is the best way
to reconcile with that missing part and hope-
fully leave an imprint that will last forever.
I
t’s no secret that the happy moments
we post onto the internet are often a
façade for the sadness we hide from
ourselves and the rest of the world. Whether
it’s posting about a job acceptance on Face-
book, a video of partying at a nightclub on
Snapchat or a photo at an exotic resort on Ins-
tagram, social media acts as a sort of smoke
screen for our unfulfilled desires. We attempt
to construct an idealistic, perfected image
online in order to replace the gritty, flawed
one that exists in real life.
But what happens when we do broadcast
that gritty, flawed image online? What hap-
pens when we expose the part of ourselves
we are so scared to share in the real world
within our digital communities? How do we
reckon with being vulnerable and open about
our sadness without seeming performative?
Through my own deductions from hav-
ing spent a considerable amount of time on
the internet, there seem to be at least three
patterns of communicating sadness online.
The first, most commonly found on Twit-
ter and finstas, comes in the form of dark
humor, where irony and self-deprecation are
employed as a vehicle for discussing mental
health, unrequited love and personal insecu-
rities through unfiltered posts and tongue-in-
cheek memes. The second, most commonly
found on Facebook and Instagram, comes in
the form of melancholic sincerity, in which
the loss of a loved one, the death of an impor-
tant figure in pop culture or the news of a
national tragedy are commemorated through
a series of heartfelt, essay-like paragraphs.
The third, most commonly found on Tumblr,
aestheticizes sadness under the guise of GIFs
and pictures that juxtapose intense poems
and quotes about loneliness and anxiety with
attractive people crying alone, drinking alco-
hol or smoking cigarettes.
I
n her experience using Tumblr, LSA
sophomore Rachael Merritt believes
this third type of online sadness is
especially unhealthy and toxic.
“On Tumblr, a lot of the time, (people) will
make something disturbing sound beautiful
or put a romanticized twist on it,” Merritt
said. “There are so many pictures of roses on
Tumblr, roses with blood.”
“Lana Del Rey shit,” I interjected during
our conversation. “Oh my God, so much,” she
replied.
I reference singer-songwriter Lana Del
Rey simply because her vintage Americana
aesthetic and gloomy lyrics about love and
loss are not only perpetuated to a fault on
Tumblr but are also fetishized, stylized and
celebrated among her devoted online fan
base. The artist grew into popularity after
the release of her 2012 major label debut Born
to Die, right around the time Tumblr became
a viral sensation among high school teens.
Though Del Rey’s music has matured since
then, her wistful, edgy artistic sensibility,
matched with the glamorized heartache she
exuded on Born to Die, left a long-standing
impact on how internet users perceived their
own sadness.
By branding sadness through this aesthet-
ic, Del Rey’s nostalgia-heavy iconography
and other images like it have allowed people,
not just teen girls, to buy into the idea that
their sadness is not only valid, but also func-
tions as a kind of cool accessory. People on
Tumblr who experience mental illness, self-
harm and eating disorders no longer had to
feel ashamed due to the relatability of the sad
aesthetic associated with Del Rey embedded
within that space.
Merritt cited Effy Stonem, a character
from the popular British TV series “Skins,” as
another example of how sad culture on Tum-
blr exploits its users by appealing to their
desire for validation.
“I’ll see a picture of Effy (on Tumblr) and
she’ll be crying, tears running down her
face,” Merritt said. “But at the same time, you
want her life because you idealize her. It’s this
bizarre thing where you see all these people
doing negative things, things you relate to
depression or mental illness or sadness or
destructive behavior, and kind of glamorizes
it.”
Tumblr’s obsession with Effy goes beyond
basic depictions of her expressing grief and
sadness. There’s a whole subculture dedicat-
ed to her, from fan art to style blogs to com-
prehensive commentary on the psychology
behind her character’s actions.
As a cultural touchstone that represented
teenagers who experience depression, anxi-
ety and suicidal ideation, “Skins” as a whole
remains a prominent source of romanticized
sad fodder on Tumblr. Along with Effy, the
show incorporated other characters who
were known to defy social conventions, which
included experimenting with drugs and alco-
hol, engaging in casual sex and exhibiting
antisocial behavior. Like with Del Rey, sub-
communities on Tumblr reframed the insta-
bility of Effy’s and other “Skins” characters’
lives into something attractive and exciting
through which people can live vicariously.
Since Tumblr is known as a platform for
escapism, pop culture is often used as a can-
vas for those who are most vulnerable and
misguided to project their anxieties and
emotions. Tumblr users don’t have to feel as
ashamed about the darker elements of their
suffering. Instead, they can find solace in
their own misery through someone else’s,
which inevitably realigns their perception of
sadness from being a seemingly inescapable
terror to an illusory spectacle.
I
n contrast to how people on Tumblr
channel their sadness through glam-
orized aesthetics, people with fin-
sta accounts advertise their sadness through
unfiltered journal entries. “Finstas” — a port-
manteau of “fake” and “Insta” — refer to an
exclusive Instagram account users create to
share a more vulnerable side of themselves
only for their closest friends to see.
Like an updated version of LiveJournal
from the mid-aughts, finstas operate as a sort
of secret haven, where people can talk about
their most intimate thoughts, ranging from
newly developed romantic crushes and fam-
ily issues to frustrations with friends and
mental health. They can also be a fun way for
the select group of people who follows you
to see your flaws without fear of judgment,
a reassuring alternative to Instagram, where
the quantity of likes and comments tend to
dictate self-worth. But similar to Tumblr’s
detrimental reinforcement of one’s sadness,
there is a drawback that comes with finstas
if they’re used for the sole purpose of getting
something off your chest.
I discovered finstas at the beginning of
sophomore year, right about when they
started trending on campus. Seeing that my
friends had their own finstas, I decided to
make one for myself. For two years, I created
a litany of posts with lengthy captions about
getting rejected, complaining about my heavy
load of homework, venting about my fraught
emotional well-being and my frustrations
with my family. Sometimes, these posts were
laced with irony and self-deprecation. Other
times, they were much more open and honest.
There were some posts that contained a mix
of both humor and sincerity.
Even though I knew deep down that the
constant reinforcement wasn’t good for me,
getting a like on my finsta meant more to me
than getting a like on an Instagram post. A
like on a finsta post meant that people were
actually seeing me for me, as opposed to the
“me” I built on my real Instagram. A com-
ment was an even greater gift. It meant that
someone was compelled enough to reveal
themself and acknowledge this hidden facet
of my inner world.
Toward the end of junior year, I accepted
the fact that perhaps I was oversharing a bit
on my finsta and took a break from posting.
Despite the attention that comes with shame-
lessly telling secrets to a small group of close
friends, there’s only so much you can share
about yourself to the point where you no
longer feel like you’re doing this just for you.
You become aware of the fact that there is an
audience of people you trust examining your
posts and expecting you to churn out a spe-
cific type of content. It almost feels a bit like
schadenfreude, but even more twisted and
sadistic. People take pleasure from watching
you joke about your pain, just as much as you
take pleasure from giving them that satisfac-
tion. It is no longer just an ephemeral form of
catharsis, but rather a comfortable self-indul-
gence.
“Over time, you get a community of people
who slowly understand you and that you feel
supported by, but that doesn’t necessarily
fix anything,” Merritt mentioned. “They’re
there to comfort you always, but it’s not like a
real sort of comfort that helps you.”
Sadness can be a wonderful thing when
we recognize it as a shared, universal expe-
rience. But as evidenced by Tumblr and fin-
stas, online sadness can be tricky and messy
based on how it distorts the way we deal with
our demons. The constant tension between
the real feelings we put out into the digital
world and the artifice of the digital world
itself presents a troubling question: Can we
ever truly be genuine about our sadness if
the medium through which we express it is
manufactured?
W
hich brings me to Twitter, per-
haps the most fascinating and
depressing online space for
expressing sadness. In the same way that fin-
stas allow people to rid themselves of their
deepest, darkest thoughts, the anonymity of
Twitter gives users a platform to eradicate
those icky feelings to the extreme, sometimes
without any repercussions.
“I’m always surprised by how willing peo-
ple are to share,” LSA senior Brandon whose
name has been changed to protect his social
media accounts said. “I see people tweeting
about being back at some mental health insti-
tution or, ‘Yeah, I just took some pills.’ It’s
kind of insane.”
Brandon is referring to a subculture on
Twitter that circulates provocative and often
risqué tweets regarding issues of mental
health.
Popular Twitter user @jovanmhill, whose
account is now disabled, is known for being
unabashedly vocal about his bipolar disorder
and mining wry humor from it. One example
of his style is shown through an Oct. 5, 2018
tweet when he reposted a video from TikTok
user Enoch True with the caption “my brain
It’s cool to be sad: the search to understand
online grief and digital melancholy
Wednesday, February 20. 2019 // The Statement
4B
5B
BY SAMUEL ROSENBERG, DAILY ARTS WRITER
ILLUSTRATION BY MICHELLE FAN
”
Wednesday,February 20, 2019 // The Statement