Teenage Angst is so over. That’s the basic premise of the wealth of accounts which form “Existential Twitter,” a darkly humorous, tragically ridiculous black hole of anti-comedy and self loathing that is fast becoming the popular face of social anxiety and low self esteem. The breakout star of this online sub culture is undoubtedly @sosadtoday, who’s parlayed her unique brand of self-absorbed nihilism into a quarter of a million online followers, celebrity friends, a Vice column, and coming in March 2016, a book of personal essays. God only knows what depths of tragic narcissism this long form format will allow her to reach. A typical @sosadtoday tweet goes something like this:
don’t forget to never forgive your parents
— so sad today (@sosadtoday) July 17, 2015
Extreme narcissism, self hatred, resentment and a jealousy, a penchant for overstatement. It’s all there in those seven words, those 42 characters. It’s both incredibly evocative and entirely meaningless, a passing thought given form, a mild grievance stretched into a manifesto. And the account averages just under ten of these throughout each day, meaning your miserable crisis of confidence or bout of insomnia need never be without external validation again.
The account and its extraordinary popularity has spawned a crop of enthusiastically depressed, equally anonymous imitators:
‘I believe you,’ I sensually whisper into the ear of a butter alternative.
— K. WORDS (@KhrisWords) July 8, 2015
eternal oblivion has a ring to it
— insane (@deIuge) July 19, 2015
sharpening all of your pencils as self-care
— lilies abounded (@petfurniture) July 17, 2015
is the body of christ gluten free
— green iced tea (@nurserycrimes) July 12, 2015
We see the hallmarks of delusion, obsession with their own mental anguish, the absolute, stifling isolation and self absorption that perceives nothing else except their own incessant internal monologue. And it’s hilarious because it rings so true.
It’s the ultimate comment on the social media age. It’s angst performed in quotation marks, determined isolation as spectacle. They pretend as if no one understands them, airing extracts from a mentally unstable teenager’s diary so that hundreds of thousands of like-minded individuals can read them, favourite them, retweet them, branding themselves through association with this shared isolation. It’s aspirational anguish – the end point of adolescent suburban ennui in this age of oversharing. A knowing wink to our morbid teenage selves.
The inherent ridiculousness of the spectacle is acknoweldged. Each tweet is ruthlessly crafted to go viral, to spread across twitter like a languorous plague. @sosadtoday routinely plays on meme culture and pop phenomena:
my spirit animal is a closed door
— so sad today (@sosadtoday) July 15, 2015
walk into the club like therapy isn’t working
— so sad today (@sosadtoday) July 14, 2015
bitch better have my self-esteem
— so sad today (@sosadtoday) July 4, 2015
The repetitive frameworks and constant allusions to the same singers, feelings, formats creates the sense of unending downward spirals of negative thoughts and emotions. The feeds as a whole are self aware online performance art about the nature of existence in an online world.
Interviewed by Rolling Stone, perhaps the clearest indicator of @sosadtoday‘s pop cultural relevance, the brains behind the feed denied any shrewd calculation, claiming “Sadness is universal. Sadness is not a meme.” Her feed begs to differ, and this denial, and its obvious falsity, is perfectly on brand. Self aware self absorption.
The writers behind “existential twitter” have not emerged from a vacuum. They owe debts to the wider “weird twitter” subculture and its free form expression, which has produced real life literary stars such as @tao_lin. Perhaps @yokoono‘s twitter feed can be seen as a forerunner to these narcissistic performers. She regularly tweets abstract thought exercises from her recent book Acorn, which takes its root from as far back as the 1964 publication of her book ‘Grapefruit.’ Examples include:
Whisper all your secret thoughts to a pachinko ball.
— Yoko Ono (@yokoono) July 10, 2015
Take a tape of the voices of fish on the night of a full moon. Take it until dawn.
— Yoko Ono (@yokoono) June 27, 2015
Get a telephone that only echoes back your voice. Call every day and talk about many things.
— Yoko Ono (@yokoono) June 26, 2015
It too is impenetrable and bizarre, turning the outward experience into a reflection on an inner experience. But where Yoko retains a boundless positivity for the capacity of humankind, @sosadtoday and her ilk are determinedly, impossibly moribund. Perhaps some proceeds from her book can go towards paying for what I imagine are her reader’s endless Cognitive Behavioural Therapy bills.
