Posted on 05/22/2022 at 8:11 p.m.,
Reading 2 mins.
Expressing emotions is nothing new on social media. But for some time now, sadness, disarray, even anguish, have been in the spotlight. This is sadfishing, which would allow influencers to arouse the interest – and therefore the commitment – of users.
Bella Hadid was talked about last November after posting a long post on Instagram about her discomfort, accompanied by several selfies featuring her eyes reddened with tears. The goal? Remind your community that “social networks are not reality”in other words that her supposed dream life does not exempt her, like everyone else, from feeling bad.
The result was not long in coming: 2.5 million likes, and nearly 23,000 comments. If the influencer with 50 million subscribers was probably not looking for such interest – she does not need it – it is clear that this post was much more successful than the previous ones, and the following ones.
The quest for a certain authenticity
The notions of happiness and optimism have taken quite a beating. Laughter and smiles aren’t driving engagement on Instagram, Snapchat, and other TikTok lately, but crying. Filming yourself in close-up crying over a breakup, death, or distressing time would earn influencers and other celebrities sympathy — and likes — from followers. This is the very definition, although not official, of the sadfishing. And the more statements – and negative emotions – are exaggerated, the greater the success.
It is to the journalist Rebecca Reid that we attribute this term, and this from 2019. And it would not be so much a question of staging her sadness, but of accentuating it to arouse interest on social networks. Adele, Travis Scott, or even Kendall Jenner are among the celebrities who have put themselves in such a situation, while many influencers follow one another today on these platforms to reveal themselves in videos, each more tearful than the next. .
Full of contrasts, social networks today oscillate between a certain ideal of perfection and a quest for authenticity; the sadfishing being supposed to fit into the second category, like a snub to the first. And the trend continues to grow on social networks, to the point that hashtags #divorce and #anxietywhich make it possible to find this type of video, today accumulate more than 7 and 14 billion views, respectively.