‘What’s the point?’ syndrome, and why we all feel so disconnected right now

Life has gotten very chaotic incredibly quickly. It has become increasingly difficult to parse anything from the static. People started coping with this lack of meaning through a kind of ironic detachment (which is very much still around), but it has matured into a pervasive cultural apathy, a permeating numbness. This isn’t nihilism per se. (Even ... See more

Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain emotionally removed from any given person, place, or ev... See more

Nihilism, the belief that life is meaningless, is not something we typically associate with millennials who have grown up in the age of the side hustle, the “be the change you want to see” #inspo and sometimes toxic #girlboss culture. But for Syfret, the idea that life could have no point gave her the perspective she needed to become happy, and as ... See more

Despite all the crises we face – the cost of living, climate change, AI – any of which should surely be enough material to inspire real and meaningful art, the overwhelm of information paired with exhausting post-capitalist forces has created an atmosphere that is nihilistic and excruciatingly mid.