I was thinking on the train today about how, although I basically despise social media, I still use it somewhat regularly. However, I don’t use it in as much as I don’t post on it or interact in any way but liking things. The thing I use social media for is finding happysad, and it seems to me that the algorithms (mostly of instagram, youtube, and tiktok) are good places to look.

happysad is the faith in humanity emotion. It’s the feeling I get when I watch a video of a man taking photos of strangers on the street, slowly learning their language and doing his best to communicate with them. It’s the feeling I get when I see a doting father post a video of his friendship with his daughter and their shared love of a song. It’s the feeling I get when I see someone sit down and have tea in the park with an old woman, letting her tell her story and share it with all those watching. Or when a man offers strangers $100 to cook for him until he finds a charismatic Austrian man in orange who invites him into his beautiful home to do just that. It’s a feeling of warmth in my heart, and faith in the world. But it makes me want to (and sometimes I do) cry.

Part of me associates the feeling with nostalgia, but that doesn’t feel right because to me nostalgia is sad. Nostalgia might be felt looking back at old photos and remembering happy times, yes, but it’s also a feeling of loss for those same times. A feeling of separation maybe? It’s similar to the feeling I get listening to a large choir singing together, often some hymn or another, full of harmony but sometimes just singing along as a big group. An aside here, I recommend Nearer My God to Thee by the BYU Vocal Group, or Space Oddity by Choir Choir Choir (the 500+ people version), or (I know I’m going on a bit here) the video of the crowd singing Bohemian Rhapsody before the Green Day concert in Hyde Park in 2017.

I’m still not sure what exactly causes happysad to occur for me personally, but I know it’s something I seek out. I love finding videos in Instagram Reels that evoke it for me. I find it a very cathartic feeling and often feel positive, uplifted, optimistic. I appreciate that I have access to platforms that give me access to such content.

P.S. I thought of another instance of lots of people singing, the Kentucky State Choir sing the American national anthem every year (I think) and the 2013 version is stunning.