Toxic Positivity

All Kinds of Wrong

Toxic Positivity is an act of violence being perpetrated on today's young minds by themselves as well as the "adults in the room". For those preparing to enter the worlds of engineering, computer science, innovation, and entrepreneurship, it's almost certainly an approach that will work against the implicit goals of those industries. In an era when so many are paying so much lip-service to supporting mental health, it's surprising to see blind positivity as a core tenet, as it, arguably, serves to disengage and weaken minds rather than strengthen them.

The film Whiplash provides a snapshot of what it looks like to push and critique an individual beyond the breaking point, but this is not even close to the scenarios faced by most people today. The extreme, as seen in the film, is, of course, toxic, but the more moderate version of finding someone who is deeply invested in your success is a rare occurrence, indeed. This is a middle-ground so few are willing to inhabit. It's just easier to say "Let's F-ing Go" or the most toxic non-feedback, "Good Job". These are types of thoughtless and uncritical "encouragement" and "feedback" that serve no purpose other than fueling a dopamine addiction. They serve to succinctly engage and instantaneously disengage with a person, never having truly cared for them. They are the real-life equivalent of a social-media emoticon, performative and hollow to the core.

Social media is the likely root of this false support structure and soft candy shell of needing "Good Vibes Only". If someone is looking for "Good Vibes Only", they are just bragging or "manifesting", not actually hoping that others will authentically engage and become invested in their success. Good Vibes Only is the approach of a person who has developed a strategy of sharing that specifically demands Toxic Positivity from others. I once received a message from an adult human hyping up his new (quite ill-defined, buzz-word bingo) startup idea that ended with the statement "Will imperatively seek the best wishes from you Friends". Sorry, but I do not send best wishes; I send wishes that someone will push you and provoke you to find a more excellent approach to working on something worth dedicating years of your life to. I hope someone helps complicate your thinking, expand your vision, and refine your ideas, rather than just saying, "Congratulations" (as everyone in the group chat, reflexively, did).

While other social media platforms have been raked across the coals, the most toxic offender seems to have escaped broad scrutiny: BeReal. It's the most problematic of them all. As the name indicates you're supposed to "Be Real" whenever the app tells you to take two photos, a picture of yourself and one of the world around you. In actuality, it causes people to be the least real. I took a group of students to Mumbai in 2024, and for whatever reason, they were all infected with the BeReal virus, and that was the least "real" experience I've ever seen students have in 10 years of visiting Mumbai. Students would have normal emotional states throughout the day, ups and downs, but as soon as BeReal told them to "Be Real", they would suddenly scurry to pretend to be living the most amazing life to keep their "streak" and not disappear from the "in" group. This is not mentally healthy.

"Being Real" is just that, being real. There is no need for an app. There is no need to post your life to social media in real-time. Be Real. Have emotions. Capture things you care about. Capture images. Record video. Record sounds. Draw. Write. Create memories. Have experiences. Share them with the people you care about and who care about you. Be Real. Have JOMO - the Joy Of Missing Out on all the nonsense that social media brings. Build a streak, in real life, of having provocative thoughts and interesting conversations. Don't craft artificial snapshots of your life to attempt to create FOMO in others and extract dopamine hits from your network.

If your goal is to be an "Influencer" or a consultant, then ignore everything I just said; you're on the right track for a smooth brain.

However, if you're hoping to engage with challenges in the world that require deep and sustained use of your brain, toxic positivity is just that, toxic. It doesn't help establish a mode of inquiry that leads to novel ideas and approaches to problem solving that the world demands of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. We are a critical bunch, out of necessity. No airplane ever came into existence through the sheer force of blind positivity. No bridge has stood the test of time because the engineers demanded "Good Vibes Only" from their colleagues in a Design Review. Be Real. Critical thinking is the key.

Your job as a good engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, or innovator, is to critically assess ideas with the goal of arriving at more complete and sophisticated thinking on a subject. Your duty is to engage with your own ideas in this way, as well as with the ideas of others. This is what the secret society of critical thinkers demands of its members.

Bonus - Here are a few tips for how best to erode mental health if considering establishing a new educational institution:

1. Hang posters all over your campus, telling staff and students that their mental health matters.
2. Establish an office dedicated to supporting mental health.
3. Host events in support of mental health.
4. Hand out branded collateral / SWAG on a regular basis.
5. Tell everyone to have a good work-life balance.
6. Embrace toxic positivity.
7. Never critique the ideas of others; always say "Good Job".
8. Conduct "backup electrical generator" testing mid-morning on weekdays to maximize chaos.
9. Conduct fire drills during instructional time, hopefully interrupting exams. (Do this, knowing that the majority of actual fires are likely to occur in the evenings while students are in their residences, ensuring students are minimally prepared to escape their high-rises of death)
10. Establish a minimum Grade Point Average (GPA) required to partake in a program; change the requirement mid-stream, or, if possible, after students have already applied to the program.
11. Tell students that their first-year grades are "covered" and surprise them later with the fact that this was a lie.
12. Change graduation requirements mid-stream and force currently-enrolled students to instantaneously comply.
13. Establish a healthy grey-zone between on-campus rules and external law enforcement. Slowly erode that buffer.
14. Establish an environment that allows for broad-spectrum freedom of expression. Slowly erode this without notice.