Everyone loves a dash of positive energy to brighten their day. Practising manifestation, or the ‘law of attraction,’ encourages you to seek this positive energy in your daily life, often keeping an eye out for signs that the universe is sending you good vibes. Seeing a post claiming to give you a ‘day of good luck’ or, sometimes more dramatically, ‘the best few hours of your life’ in return for a mere like, share, or comment is a classic, prevalent example of this.
This is simply another form of the many superstitions we use to try to improve our ‘luck’ over situations beyond our control. Most of us are constantly guilty of ‘touching wood’, crossing our fingers, or avoiding the cracks between the pavement to ward off bad luck or general evil energy. I’ll always like a post that says I’m ‘about to have the greatest week of my life’ due to the particular positioning of Mercury and Venus, or insists that ‘positive energy’ is mysteriously coming my way; I believe that these simple posts are harmless and actually beneficial to mood if you’re having a rough day.
However, it’s a different kind of these posts you tend to see on social media that can have a truly insidious nature. The problem lies with the videos that make ominous, often outlandish statements along the lines of: “use this sound, or you will have the worst month of your life”, or “something terrible will happen tomorrow, unclaim by liking this post.” I’ve even seen a comment saying, “like this, or your family will die next month.”
For the sake of a few likes or shares, throwing around these ideas is truly insensitive. It can be unnecessarily harmful to those suffering from mental health conditions such as anxiety or OCD, easily triggering a spiral of negative, compulsive, and ultimately debilitating thought processes. Doomscrolling is detrimental enough for your mental state; if you sprinkle in the notion of self-inflicted impending doom, your well-meaning ‘scroll break’ will leave you in a state of pure panic.
Admittedly, to the person behind the account, who is desperately trying to drive traffic to their page, this may not be immediately obvious. Either way, it’s exploitative to put out such malicious content; these posts serve no rational purpose and only emit negativity.
Let’s stick to horoscopes and good-luck charms for now…
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash