Over the summer, I had the exquisite pleasure of becoming my little sister’s acting chauffeur. Volleyball practices? Tutoring? School? Sleepovers? Don’t worry. Your older sister is on call 24 hours, seven days per week. Never mind the fact that she doesn’t want to be dragged out of bed at 6 a.m. and immediately operate a motor vehicle, nor that she has work to do for her internship and her car playlist is going to be subject to intense criticism. I digress. The point here is that I spent a lot of time in close quarters talking to — or attempting to talk to — a member of the younger generation (God, I feel old.) who patently did not want to talk back to me. Naturally, I pestered her until she responded. After my third inquisition into why she never wore anything other than sweatpants or pajama pants to school, my sister finally graced me with an answer: “I don’t want to look like I care.” She gave the same response when I offered to braid her hair for the first day of school, and then added, “Ew, that’s embarrassing.”
Therein lies the crux of the issue. Somewhere along the way, caring about things has become decidedly uncool. Worse, it isn’t just a teenage phenomenon. Enter “nonchalance,” the internet’s new favorite buzzword. The best thing someone can be now is nonchalant — unbothered, unfazed, above it all. Nobody who’s anybody would ever show their feelings. This rampant ideal has contributed to a decidedly unfeeling culture among teenagers and young adults. Even in jest, it’s glorified to be unenthusiastic. It all feels so inauthentic.
It feels impossible to exist anymore without being critiqued, which is exactly what drives people to avidly attempt to avoid looking like they care. It takes risk to be public about your interests. If you care about something, it opens you up to all kinds of distress if the object of your interest is being criticized. Better not to care at all, then, so that nobody can tell where to hit to hurt you the most.
As someone with an unfortunately longstanding online presence, I remember that before nonchalance, there was cringe. Cringe culture has caused irreparable damage to those of us unfortunate enough to grow up on the internet — something which has become increasingly unavoidable. When you’re online all the time, consuming and judging other people’s lives, it becomes easy to feel like your own life is being consumed and judged by everyone around you. Comment sections overflow with hate, ridicule and mockery of anything deemed awkward, embarrassing or outside of the mainstream. Sure, like everyone else, I laughed at the TikTok fairy comments, but we’ve all gotten far too comfortable sharing our opinions with strangers on the internet, particularly to demean and belittle them for completely harmless things. The natural response, it seems, is for everyone to shut up about themselves and lash out at those who don’t. God forbid anything you do is cringe. But, you know what? I think that not caring is cringe.
Joking about nonchalance is one thing. But when the idea is so prevalent throughout the internet (looking at you, TikTok), younger generations especially are disproportionately affected — and during their more formative years. There’s so much shame there, shame in caring or in even appearing to care. Shame in sharing anything about yourself other than a cookie cutter, impassable, stoic persona. A word of advice: You may be thinking about yourself a lot (as is your right to), but nobody else is thinking about you that much. In general, people care a lot less about what you’re doing — and whether it’s embarrassing or not — than you might expect. So stop feeling ashamed of literally everything you do, shed that facade of nonchalance and find a hobby. One that you don’t have to hide because you’re afraid of being judged for it.
For all those older siblings out there, doing their best to mold their younger siblings into adequately-functioning members of society, nonchalance is a plague and a curse. It fosters a desire to conform that is detrimental to your development as an individual. So, moving forward, I’d like to advocate chalantness. Vulnerability is so important. Caring about things is a completely normal, human thing to do! It’s not embarrassing to have interests. It’s not humiliating to fail at something when you’re first starting out, or even when you aren’t first starting out. As someone who cares a bit too much, which my journal can attest to, I’m making a promise to myself to keep caring when it’s cringe. Even if, in the words of my sister, ew, that’s embarrassing.
Melissa Moon is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at mmoon@cornellsun.com.
Hater Friday runs on Fridays and centers around critiquing media or culture.
Melissa Moon is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is an Assistant Arts & Culture Editor on the 143rd Editorial Board. She can be reached at mmoon@cornellsun.com.
