The indomitable human spirit
The internet isn’t particularly the best place in the universe. It has garnered a rather bad name when it comes to the way it can seriously affect one’s mental and to some extent, physical health.
I think one of the contributing factors which has led to our sometimes adversarial and hostile treatment towards the internet (social media to be exact) are the trends that crop up from this sphere. They’re not always good as you probably know – harmful even. However, at the end of every dark and grimy pixelated tunnel is an uplifting trend. If you’ve been lucky enough to be around the peak social media era, which I like to believe is between 2010-2017, you would’ve seen many variations of them, I’m sure. From the ice bucket challenge which helped raise awareness for ALS to the keep calm and move on posts and more.
Recently, the indomitable human spirit trend has made its mark on TikTok. It’s a positive twist on the 'girl blogger aka sad quotes' trend because it’s really just the same format but instead of a slideshow containing depressive takes on life accompanied by a Mitski or Phoebe Bridgers song, the IHS trend features memes, pictures and quotes embracing the beauty of existing. It revitalises hope and promotes the idea of living simply for the joy of living. I think they call it positive or optimistic nihilism. Instead of questioning what is there to life, we should just focus on actually experiencing it.
It came about at a really good time or at least maybe the algorithm could sense I was going through a not particularly good phase at the time and decided to give me a boost of hope and serotonin. I also think that following a pretty gnarly period these past few years with harrowing news flooding our timeline, being reminded that there’s still goodness to life is so important. Reading all the hopeful comments under these posts made me sure of that.
So, it’s one of those things that social media did right. It’s a very rare occurrence and I’m glad I caught a glimpse of it while it’s still trending. I can only hope that social media continues to create a positive impact in our lives.