Toxic Positivity

All Kinds of Wrong

Toxic Positivity can perhaps be most instructively viewed as an act of violence being perpetrated on today's young minds by themselves as well as by the "adults in the room".

For those preparing to contribute to the worlds of engineering, computer science, innovation, and entrepreneurship, unchecked optimism will almost certainly be an approach that works against the implicit goals of these industries. In an era when so many are paying so much lip-service to supporting mental health, it's surprising to see blind positivity as a core tenet, since it, arguably, serves to disengage and weaken minds rather than expand and strengthen them.

The film Whiplash provides a snapshot of what it looks like to push and critique an individual beyond their breaking point, but this extreme is not even close to the scenarios faced by most young people today. The extreme, as seen in the film, is, of course, toxic, but the more moderate version of it — finding someone who is deeply invested in your success — is a rare occurrence, indeed. This is a mentally-taxing middle-ground so few are willing to inhabit.

It's just easier to say "Let's F*cking Go" or any other toxic non-feedback phrases like "Good Job". These are types of thoughtless and uncritical "encouragement" and "feedback" that serve no purpose other than to further fuel a dopamine addiction. They succinctly engage and instantaneously disengage with a person, never having truly cared for them or the questions they are implicitly struggling with. Meaningless phrases and superficial interactions are the real-life equivalents of emoticons or emojis, performative short-hands that are often hollow at the core.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, "social media" is the likely root of these false support structures and the thin candy shells people hide beneath, needing "Good Vibes Only". If someone is looking for "Good Vibes Only", they are either just bragging or "manifesting". They are rarely hoping that others will authentically engage and become invested in their process or success. Good Vibes Only is the approach of a person who has developed a strategy of sharing that specifically demands Toxic Positivity from others.

I once received a message from an adult human who was hyping up his new (quite ill-defined, buzz-word-bingo-laden) startup idea, and he ended by saying "Will imperatively seek the best wishes from you Friends". Sorry, but I do not send best wishes; I send wishes that someone will push you and provoke you to find a more excellent approach to working on something worth dedicating years of your life to. I hope someone helps complicate your thinking, expand your vision, and refine your ideas, rather than just say "Congratulations" (as everyone in the group chat, reflexively, did).

While other social media platforms have been raked across the coals, the most toxic offender of the 2020s seems to have inexplicably escaped broad scrutiny: BeReal. It's the most problematic of them all. As the name indicates you're supposed to "Be Real" whenever the app tells you to take two photos, one picture of yourself and a second of the world around you. In actuality, it causes people to be the least real and is fuelled by FOMO.

I took a group of students to Mumbai in 2024, and for whatever reason, they were all infected with the BeReal virus, and that was the least "real" experience I've ever seen students have in 10 years of visiting Mumbai. Students would have normal emotional states throughout the day, ups and downs, but as soon as BeReal told them to "Be Real", they would suddenly scurry to pretend to be living the most amazing life to keep their "streak" and not disappear from the "in" group. This is not mentally healthy.

"Being Real" is just that, being real. There is no need for an app. There is no need to post your life to social media in real-time. Be Real. Have emotions. Capture things you care about. Capture images. Record video. Record sounds. Draw. Write. Create memories. Have experiences. Share them with the people you care about and who care about you. Be Real. Have JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out) on all the nonsense that social media brings. Build a streak, in real life, of having provocative thoughts and interesting conversations. Don't craft artificial snapshots of your life to attempt to create FOMO in others and extract dopamine hits from your network.

If your goal is to be an "Influencer" or a consultant, then ignore everything I just said; you're on the right track for a smooth brain.

However, if you're hoping to engage with challenges in the world that require deep and sustained use of your brain, toxic positivity is just that, toxic. It doesn't help establish a mode of inquiry that leads to novel ideas and approaches to problem solving that the world demands of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. We are a critical bunch, out of necessity. No airplane ever came into existence through the sheer force of blind positivity. No bridge has stood the test of time because the engineers demanded "Good Vibes Only" from their colleagues in a Design Review. Be Real. Critical thinking is the key.

Your job as a contributor of excellence to humanity is to critically assess ideas with the goal of arriving at more complete and sophisticated thinking on a subject. Your duty is to engage with your own ideas in this way, as well as with the ideas of others. This is what the secret society of critical thinkers demands of its members.

Further Reading

1. Pre-Mortem "is a managerial strategy in which a project team imagines that a project or organization has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project or organization."
2. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain "is a 2012 nonfiction book written by American author and speaker Susan Cain. Cain argues that modern Western culture misunderstands and undervalues the traits and capabilities of introverted people, leading to "a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness."
3. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman "is a 2011 popular science book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. The book's main thesis is a differentiation between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical."
4. Type 2 Fun. "Type 2 fun is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect." This is what the world needs from you.

Bonus - Here are a few tips for how best to erode mental health if considering establishing a new educational institution:

1. Hang posters all over your campus, telling staff and students that their mental health matters.
2. Establish an office dedicated to supporting mental health.
3. Host events in support of mental health.
4. Hand out branded collateral / SWAG on a regular basis.
5. Tell everyone to have a good work-life balance, modeled after career academic administrators, not scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators.
6. Embrace toxic positivity.
7. Celebrate superficial engagement with ideas.
8. Encourage the formation of toothless committees and inane policies.
9. Change the parking policy at least once per year, preferably twice.
10. Celebrate individuals who have demonstrated the ability to be busy for the sake of appearing busy; that's what high-status individuals look like.
11. Never critique the ideas of others; always say "Good Job".
12. Conduct "backup electrical generator" testing mid-morning on weekdays to maximize chaos.
13. Conduct "e-mail phishing tests" at the most stress-inducing moments of the semesters.
14. Conduct fire drills during instructional time, hopefully interrupting exams. (Do this, knowing that the majority of actual fires are likely to occur in the evenings while students are in their residences, ensuring students are minimally prepared to escape their high-rises of death)
15. Establish a minimum Grade Point Average (GPA) required to partake in a program; change the requirement mid-stream, or, if possible, after students have already applied to the program.
16. Tell students that their first-year grades are "covered" and surprise them later with the fact that this was a lie.
17. Change graduation requirements mid-stream and force currently-enrolled students to instantaneously comply.
18. Establish a healthy grey-zone between on-campus rules and external law enforcement. Slowly erode that buffer.
19. Establish an environment that allows for broad-spectrum freedom of expression. Slowly erode this without notice.