44 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
44 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "happysad"
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date: 2025-07-30
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draft: false
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---
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I was thinking on the train today about how, although I basically despise social
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media, I still use it somewhat regularly. However, I don't use it in as much as
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I don't post on it or interact in any way but liking things. The thing I use
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social media for is finding happysad, and it seems to me that the algorithms
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(mostly of instagram, youtube, and tiktok) are good places to look.
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happysad is the faith in humanity emotion. It's the feeling I get when I watch
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a video of a man taking photos of strangers on the street, slowly learning their
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language and doing his best to communicate with them. It's the feeling I get
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when I see a doting father post a video of his friendship with his daughter and
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their shared love of a song. It's the feeling I get when I see someone sit down
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and have tea in the park with an old woman, letting her tell her story and share
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it with all those watching. Or when a man offers strangers $100 to cook for him
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until he finds a charismatic Austrian man in orange who invites him into his
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beautiful home to do just that. It's a feeling of warmth in my heart, and faith
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in the world. But it makes me want to (and sometimes I do) cry.
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Part of me associates the feeling with nostalgia, but that doesn't feel right
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because to me nostalgia _is_ sad. Nostalgia might be felt looking back at old
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photos and remembering happy times, yes, but it's also a feeling of loss for
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those same times. A feeling of separation maybe? It's similar to the feeling
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I get listening to a large choir singing together, often some hymn or another,
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full of harmony but sometimes just singing along as a big group. An aside here,
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I recommend Nearer My God to Thee by the BYU Vocal Group, or Space Oddity by
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Choir Choir Choir (the 500+ people version), or (I know I'm going on a bit here)
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the video of the crowd singing Bohemian Rhapsody before the Green Day concert in
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Hyde Park in 2017.
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I'm still not sure what exactly causes happysad to occur for me personally, but
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I know it's something I seek out. I love finding videos in Instagram Reels that
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evoke it for me. I find it a very cathartic feeling and often feel positive,
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uplifted, optimistic. I appreciate that I have access to platforms that give me
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access to such content.
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P.S. I thought of another instance of lots of people singing, the Kentucky State
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Choir sing the American national anthem every year (I think) and the 2013
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version is stunning.
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