Depression Impressions

I've been thinking about depression lately - not because I am currently depressed, but because I can't seem to get away from people talking about it.

You see a few different threads of thought about depression floating around on the internet. And while a full taxonomy of every opinion would be both boring and useless, there are two trends that I keep seeing pop up and want to address.

The first is depression as a lifestlye, and it's something that seems to pop up a lot in the memesphere. Now, I like memes. Dank memes, normie memes, overused memes, whatever. Taking five minutes to binge on meme dumps on imgur used to be one of my favorite daily rituals. It was a great way to shut off my brain and chuckle at some funny pictures. Kind of like how the comics page of the newspaper used to be.

I say "used to be" because over the last few years, memes about depression as a lifestyle are taking up more and more of the memespace (at least on imgur). I see traces of this on other platforms as well - Facebook and Twitter friends talking incessantly about how they don't have the will to live, Tumblerinas joking about suicide, and so on.

Now the "why" of all this would be an interesting topic - many people claim it's because Boomers destroyed the economy for Millenials or because CIA bots are spreading demoralizing memes as a psy-op, or because depressed people spend a disproportionate amount of time on the internet. But that's not what we're going to talk about today.

What interests me is that people are curating their collections of memes around a topic like depression. Living with depression, dealing with depression, being depressed, etc. It seems less like a disease that they are forced to live with (the memes about cancer I see are more about "kicking cancer's ass" or otherwise supporting cancer patients) than a lifestyle they identify with.

This is nothing new - anyone who lived through the '90s and '00s internet had a few friends who whined about depression. But even in that context, the depression was claimed more as a super special thing that meant other people should give them attention. It was a bad, yet super-special important thing that you should pay attention to.

The latter day wave of internet depressives treat it less as a disease or attention-grabbing device and more as a part of their core identity. It's treated as part of a joke - sometimes as punchline, sometimes as setup, but only rarely as something unusual.

On the polar opposite end of this is a thread you see in self-help/positive thinking/mindset and related circles. This one doesn't require as much space to describe, since it can be summed up in one sentence: depression doesn't really exist. "Depression" is a fake disease that people use to excuse their failures and self-hatred.

Now, I was one of those depressed internet kids in the 90s and 00s. While I did display my mental damage on the internet for sympathy points, I wasn't faking it. I really was deeply mentally fucked up.

There was a performative aspect to my depression and related fuckeduppednesses, writing poetry for Teen Open Diary and setting Linkin Park lyrics as my AIM away message. Once I learned that I could get sympathy and other forms of positive attention by being open about my damage, it encouraged me to express it in new and increasingly dramatic ways.

However, thinking and writing about my depression had a secondary effect: I started to learn about it. I figured out that a bout of depression could start without any particular reason and then end without any particular reason. I could experience depression when in the middle of the most fun and fulfilling times of my life and not experience it when watching 14 hours of TV a day instead of interacting with humans.

Bit by bit, all of the time spent recording and analyzing my depression taught me something: depression is a lie that your brain tells you. Depression is your brain telling you to feel bad even when there is no objective reason to. Something is causing it - just not anything rational. It's a chemical fuck up in your brain that can be triggered at any time for no particular reason. It will last for some period of time and then goes away for no particular reason.

Having this realization had two effects. First, my depressive episodes started getting shorter and further apart. Knowing that these emotions were being caused by my brain fucking up made it easier and easier to ignore what my brain was telling me.

Second, it killed my interest in depression. I stopped enjoying entertainment (music, movies, etc) that glorified in depression. Most emo songs are now as stimulating to me as songs bitching about allergies.

Many people with depression complain about people who say depression isn't "a thing" or that it "doesn't really exist." And they're right to do so. Depression is definitely "a thing," and a different thing than simply being sad or disappointed in life. Denying its existence is dangerous because it must be managed differently than negative emotions that arise as a response to negative life experiences.

But there is also a danger in glorifying depression, making it into part of your identity. It is simply a condition to be managed and, when possible, overcome. When I spent a lot of time thinking about depression, I would also get a perverse sense of pleasure from depressive episodes. It would "prove" that my depression was real, validating my emotional experiences. Getting validation from depression, basing your identity on a mental condition can encourage you to cling to your sickness instead of managing it.

I haven't had a major depressive episode in years (though I have struggled with anxiety) - or at least I don't think I have. The last few I can remember were more like an annoyance than an existential crisis; a migraine, not a brain tumor.