Alex Francavilla - Week 7 - Come celebrate life’s indescribable natural beauty and joy with me twin ❤️🩹
The “nonchalant” personality was popularized over the past year, originating on TikTok and spreading like wildfire across the United States and beyond. Being nonchalant in this day and age entails forgoing any outward expression of emotion, particularly in intense situations that would call for at least some form of emotion, to appear effortlessly cool, probably to impress someone one is interested in. Although there definitely are many nonchalant people who are truly indifferent to the whims of life, many of the nonchalant personas simply imitate the next best imitator to put on a mask of being cool.
Despite there being nearly 4,000 emojis in Unicode 17.0, the most recent update to the total number of characters able to be typed on the Internet, modern Internet unironic emoji usage is limited to just a handful. Two emojis stand out in particular: the broken heart emoji (💔) and the wilted rose emoji (🥀), both primarily used to signify laughter or light-hearted mockery. For a period of time, other emojis were used in conjunction with these, often, but not always, ironically—low battery (🪫), falling leaves (🍂), and chains (⛓️), to name a few.
If you hadn’t already noticed, these trends symbolize a sense of nihilism that is all too common in the younger generations. The epidemic of popular discontent and indifference reflect how In contrast to “older” emojis for laughter like 😂 and 😭 (crying laughing), or 💀 (dead from laughter), the new emojis convey dissatisfaction and almost a sense of giving up. And I wouldn’t blame them. Living in a world where pressure is placed on Gen Z and Gen Alpha to “fix” the world which was damaged by the hedonistic and careless actions of generations past (which, by the way, are still alive and running the US government in a frankly disheartening majority) would cause any sane person to become slightly less sane.
But lately, it seems something has changed. The nonchalant personality is being outcompeted by its counterpart of “chalant” (a back-formation of nonchalant; other examples include underwhelming from overwhelming, euthanize from euthanasia, and edit from editor), which popularizes instead the free outward expression of emotion (Wow, what an absolutely preposterous idea!). Tangentially, the term “niche” to describe someone who does things or consumes media which is non-mainstream has also evolved as a positive descriptor, often for someone who is chalant. Now—and, to an extent, during its popularity—💔 and 🥀 have seen parallel usage with ❤️🩹 and 🌹. Even though this in particular may be a result of comedy through the subversion of the expectation of the usage of 💔 and 🥀, they nonetheless create an atmosphere of healing and growth quite rare for the Internet’s current state.
Is this a clear-cut sign that “omg the internet is healing!!!!”? Probably not. But it is comforting to see a widespread fight back against nihilism on some of the largest collections of negative thought on the Internet.
Randall Munroe is one of the greatest and most inspiring cartoonists of our time
To me, the sheer apathy demonstrated by internet denizens is the result of the deep-seated fear of humiliation or embarrassment. Showing vulnerability means opening oneself to countless people online, most of which are not going to be strictly benevolent. When someone neglects to mask themselves in 927382 layers of irony, they necessarily open themselves up to be publicly shamed in response to their heartfelt beliefs. How terrifying it is to be seen as “cringe”!
ReplyDeleteThe “nonchalant” movement seems to be the response to this fear; it offers a solution to cringe—simply don’t show emotion and everything will be okay!! But in typical Internet Fashion, backlash to the backlash was quick to emerge, and the “chalant” individual was born. I see this as ultimately connected to the “hopecore” movement online, which champions the value of experiencing life and feeling emotions. Maybe we are finally realizing that neglecting to show any emotion online and being rude and callous under the guise of humor isn’t the best idea. I, for one, can be seen embracing hopecore online. Even if it’s a simple fad, it belies something much deeper: that perhaps we’re learning to be even a little more vulnerable online.
The internet has undoubtedly and fundamentally changed the way we communicate in a wide variety of ways—for example, it has led to the creation of so many new words and phrases! Through no other means would we become as language-pilled, hopecore, and media-maxxing as we are today. I think the use of emojis is also a fascinating impact of the internet, especially the recent trends you noted. This proliferation of new language has also become a trend in itself, with many jokes revolving around the syntactic reduction of language (‘ts’ being an abbreviation of ‘this’) and creating ‘new slang.’ These emojis, notably the drained battery [🪫] and fallen leaves [🍂] that you mentioned, seem to come from this desire to move the language forward. Due to the nature of social media, however, platforms want you to align with the media you see; it is consequently possible that many users online began echoing these sentiments as a result of media trends and not necessarily as a fully honest manifestation of their feelings. Even if that is the case, it is undoubtedly a (possibly inflated) reflection of the perspective of young people. I’m personally glad that more optimistic and expressive trends have become popular; as simple as the rose [🌹] emoji may be, it serves as a reminder that our perspective matters. Oftentimes, we can choose to focus on the beauty and joy of life—having picked up this perspective from my friends years ago, it has certainly made my life better.
ReplyDeleteHi Alex! You definitely caught most of us when you pulled out the broken heart and wilted rose emoji. It’s so interesting to see in real time how emojis become really popular for a certain amount of time and then kind of die down like the skull emoji in the 2020s (it’s still used a lot, but less often).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree that times are seemingly changing for the better, I think part of the reason why the “nonchalant” personality changed is also due to how trends work on the Internet nowadays. Users especially on TikTok and Instagram do not (and I mean ever) stick to trends for a long period of time. There’s always a constant demand for new content and once a catchy sound or dance is found, give it a few weeks and everyone will either forget about it or hate on it. Cupid from Fifty Fifty? It was too overplayed. KPOP Demon Hunters? It’s old and cringy.
Needless to say, that does mean that our attention spans are getting much worse by the day. It’s interesting to see these trends in motion especially like you mentioned with emojis, and they can even extend to music or fashion, like how “performative” outfits started to arise or how y2k and gyaru aesthetics became popular. Thank you for this relatable blog!