These romanticized depictions seem alarmingly more dedicated to 'flexing' one's internal turmoil through likes and follows.
A quick search of #depressed on Instagram brings up over 12 million posts. Interspersed between black and white photos and gifs of crying cartoons are pictures of pretty girls smoking and the occasional sadboi-with-tattoo overlaid with text like"Help me" and"I want to go far away … forever."
The trend appeared on Tumblr over a decade ago, but has spread to platforms like Instagram. Full accounts like @sadthoughts_1 and @__depressionquotes, which have thousands of followers, are dedicated solely to this type of content. With ain adults aged 18-25 during the last 10 years, the trend of falsely portraying the mentally ill experience threatens the already fragile well-being of more young people than ever before.
While the internet offers the opportunity for people to build community around shared mental struggles like never before, these romanticized depictions seem alarmingly more dedicated to “flexing” one’s internal turmoil through likes and follows than seeding said community. Especially since some mental illnesses have been pronounced flex-worthy and some not, which can isolate those with the less “popularized” disorders like bipolar, borderline personality, or schizophrenia.
This trend of “beautiful suffering” innately splits mental illnesses into “cool” and “uncool,” creating a schism that pushes the mental illnesses deemed too taboo for aesthetic appropriation further into the abyss.
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