Yet, instead of just avoiding the 24-hour traumatic news cycle, some people are affixing this nihilism to their world view entirely; there is a sense of not caring about our futures, careers, or anything in general. This mindset is becoming increasingly prevalent among younger generations.

in a country where childcare costs over £7,000 a year, for just a part-time nursery place. It’s little wonder that we have turned to frivolous spending on a micro level (termed ‘treat brain’) we can afford. So, yes, that means our bottomless brunches and trips to Ibiza and online shopping binges. Let us blow what we can, on what we can.

Welcome to 'What's the point?' syndrome: a collective exhaustion, a cross-generational yawning nihilism in the face of what feels like an insurmountable barrage of bad news. 

In a highlights reel of the past six years we’ve had: #MeToo, Brexit, Trump, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, the Capitol riots, Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of living crisis, #partygate, the protests against SARS in Nigeria, the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Taliban... See more

nihilism has been practically adopted as an aesthetic. Nothing captures this mood quite like the cult Instagram account @casual.nihilism, which features endless posts with phrases like: “I’m gonna go nap. I’m not tired. I just don’t want to be awake.”

“Take the boom in reality shows, the rise of the ‘dissociative pout’ or the fact young people are smoking again as examples of ways we’re detaching ourselves from the emotional burdens of modern society.”

“Just look at the return of indie sleaze,” she says. “This gauche aesthetic is a symptom of our cultural transition from taste to tastelessness. Where pre-pandemic style was defined by the careful curation of cool, young people are now pushing back against refinement by reclaiming the carelessness that comes with being chaotic, tacky and anarchic.”

“Where we once justified our daily anxieties by doom scrolling through bad news, we now post memes that epitomise our sense of mass existentialism, taking part in a sort of performative negativity that, as a result, protects us against reality,” says Holly Friend, deputy foresight editor at futures consultancy, The Future Laboratory.