India’s Gen Z Is Finding Hope in These Viral Affirmations

In a year where many of us began to associate the word “positive” with the terror of that dreaded COVID-19 test result, it’s easy to see why our opinions and outlooks may be peppered with pessimism. For many in India, the apocalyptic second wave prompted feelings of anxiety, despair and FOMO for what life could’ve been. Almost overnight, the magnetic optimism that once powered the future of Gen Z and millennials came crumbling down. Many young Indians found it difficult, even infuriating, to stay positive. 

Yet, in the deluge of dark days, hope sprung up as absurd affirmations all over Instagram. 

Splashed with the deep fried meme format of grainy, washed out stock images set against distorted neon text, absurd affirmations first blew up thanks to Instagram accounts like @afffirmations, a Norway-based page that has built an audience of more than half a million followers. A cross between the fairy comments and manifestations trends that kicked off on TikTok, the global movement of affirmations has now inspired pages in India that are curating positive quotes, but with a desi twist. 

“We use early 2000’s Bollywood imagery, stock photos and the plethora of ‘good morning’ WhatsApp [forwards],” the admins of Desi Affirmations, an Instagram page that has gained almost 18,000 followers within two months, told VICE. “A lot of our content are inspirational quotes from Facebook and Tumblr that used to deeply motivate us as teenagers. But now, life is not as good as it used to be, so the same format has become a joke.” 

Themes of nostalgia, irony and humour, paired with imagery that encapsulate the desi experience, power the Instagram account. 

“From ‘I Am Amul Macho’ to ‘My Life Will Be Jinga Lala’ (famous Indian ads), we pick up iconic Indian references and turn them into affirmations.” 

Affirmations refer to an attitude of positive thinking that believes we can grasp success and happiness, if we repeatedly tell ourselves we can grasp success and happiness. This format has long been relegated to corny quotes on Facebook, or the pages of Boomer-approved books like The Secret that almost any self-respecting Zoomer would avoid like the plague. 

But as we find ourselves in a (sort of) plague we literally can’t avoid, the stale self-help format has mutated into a meme-like entity that imbibes equal parts reassurance and ridiculousness to pass the Gen Z vibe check.

You’ve probably seen affirmations like, “Wow, this Monday has been great” or “Actually, I am not extremely depressed.” This hyperbolic and seemingly banal advice sets the tone: Irony and humour are our tools to get through 2021.  

Desi Affirmations  is run by a group of anonymous admins who believe that protecting their identities is key to curating content that speaks for itself, and don’t want to profit off the playful positivity. The admins are also Zillennials, the generation caught between Gen Z and millennials, and, true to form, don’t like labels. 

“The account is not a self-help page or a meme page,” they said. “It is completely open to interpretation. If ‘I Am Magic Pencil’ makes you laugh, great. If it makes you feel motivated, that’s great too. People should take ‘positivity’ in whichever way it is meaningful to them.” 

Desi Affirmations, like its global counterparts, is a far cry from the mental health or self-help carousels that have become commonplace on Instagram.

“These days it is very easy for people to push content in the name of ‘self-help’ and ‘mental health’ without even being qualified to do so,” the admins pointed out. “The internet has podcasters and self-help motivational speakers that even get a bit toxic with the kind of positivity they promote. The belief that no matter how bad a situation is, one should maintain a positive outlook towards life tends to deny any human emotion that isn't strictly ‘positive’.” 

But even as they try to steer clear of the self-help tag, there’s no denying that their followers find the affirmations cathartic, even transformative. 

“We’ve received many DMs on how this page has helped them become more positive towards life and how it makes them laugh,” said the admins. “But the weirdest one was from this follower who claimed that the affirmations we post are somehow connected to the events of his/her life and thus we should be ‘careful’.”  

According to admins, they also get DMs from people dealing with feelings of depression, who thank them for making them feel slightly more optimistic. A quick scroll through their comments section also shows that almost every follower tries to get in on the inside joke with their own manifestation. 

While Desi Affirmations is so far the most popular page capturing this trend in India, accounts like Desi Influencer Affirmations, Ashoka Affirmations and ironicaffirmationz, are also taking part in the hype.

“It’s almost as if Gen Z is suggesting that self-help affirmations are superficial, and that just by saying ‘I am successful’, I will not become successful,” Divija Bhasin, a 24-year-old counselling psychologist, told VICE. 

For Bhasin, a psychologist who is also an Instagram content creator trying to break the stigma around mental health in India, the affirmations trend is a sarcastic commentary on one’s suffering instead of positive self-talk. 

“It won’t solve your problems but it might make you feel that you aren’t alone in feeling the way you do. There is comfort in that feeling.”

Since the pandemic first struck last year, dark humour drenched with irony emerged as an important coping mechanism to deal with the unprecedented crisis. A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing also concluded that people who use dark humour tend to resist negative feelings, and replace them with positive ones. In that way, these affirmations, though cheeky and loaded with satire, can inspire a sense of optimism for a generation that feels theirs is dwindling. 

“This can be a form of optimism for Gen Z in an environment where they’ve lost hope,” Arushi Sethi, co-founder of mental health care and wellness center Trijog, told VICE. 

Sethi explained that these affirmations can actually manifest reality through the thoughts, feeling and acceptance (TFA) cycle, which tracks how our thoughts can turn into feelings of acceptance. 

“If you think ‘I am a magic pencil’, it can make you feel like you can achieve anything in the world. If you say ‘I am caffeine inspiration rush,’ it can give you an energetic feeling and push you to be more action-oriented. It is a soft way of spreading messages in a light-hearted way that everyone can identify with.”

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