Consumerism

“The exhaustion experienced in burnout combines an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can’t be silenced,” Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst specializing in burnout, writes. “You feel burnout when you’ve exhausted all your... See more

Cheer, according to Hampton, isn’t what it used to be. The cheap version we know today, a ploy for selling beer and breakfast cereal and political candidates, is the result of mass consumerism. In his telling, “modern marketing culture” ruined cheerfulness and remade it into a flimsy commodity.

Feeling spontaneously, genuinely cheerful no longer matters—if it ever did. What’s crucial is that you put on a convincing show, for others as much as for yourself. As Hampton explains, modern life has stripped away cheer’s authenticity and made it fully performative: “To act cheerful is what it means to be cheerful.”