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It is fascinating how threads go viral on social media, and it is surprisingly hard to predict what will set off a collective firestorm of comments. Arguably, the most pleasant viral threads are humor-based ones, as the virtual community comes together to laugh at a particular event or meme.
Sometimes, the threads are driven by collective outrage or shock. But the most interesting ones are when a thread taps into an emotional wellspring lurking unseen but, once ruptured, leads to a large collective poignant outpouring.
In the past week, an unremarkable X (formerly known as Twitter) post from Elmo, the Sesame Street character known for its particularly sweet-voiced innocence and optimism, went viral: “Elmo is checking in. How is everybody doing?”
Elmo had posted numerous similar routine posts on its X thread before. Still, this inquiry came at the end of a long, especially dreary January, after a long, especially dreary set of events at the end of 2023 (such as the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anxiety over the upcoming U.S. presidential election in the wake of growing legal charges against a major candidate, the ongoing aftermath of the recent pandemic, etc.).
Elmo’s question triggered what can only be described as a torrent of raw anguish from the general public, seemingly mainly from midlife adults. The answers ranged from the heartbreaking to the cynical to the tragicomic, with people weighing in on their personal debacles due to depression, poverty, anxiety, etc. Elmo had to urgently respond with a public health advocacy announcement labeled with the hashtag “emotional wellbeing,” asking people to attend to their mental health needs.
Only about a week later, the Grammy Awards came on TV, and again, numerous social-media posts shared people’s deeply emotional responses (i.e., crying) after several of the performances. The largest response was to the re-emergence of Tracy Chapman, the unique and talented folk auteur and previous Grammy winner who has kept a low profile in recent years.
She performed a duet with country singer Luke Combs, who had scored a hit covering Chapman’s song "Fast Car." People were moved by Combs’ visible respect and joy while playing with Chapman, who herself appeared steady and serene as ever and flawless in tone. Numerous posts noted people unexpectedly bursting into tears while watching the performance.
Some people also tried to process what caused their crying. Some noted the performance exhibited a moment of racial harmony and connection through music lacking in the increasingly fractured and divided nature of the country’s recent discourse. Others noted that Chapman herself was the artist we needed right now, with her calm, substantive, mature presence and lack of shallow showiness and spectacle for its own sake.
In a society that now feels uncertain and increasingly chaotic relative to our youth, knowing Chapman that still looks and sounds the same, other than grayer locks, provides a balm to our anxiety. Others noted the wistfulness of the "FastCar" lyrics, especially when listening to it in midlife, as her original Gen X and older millennial fans are now. The lyrics describe two people conversing about their dreams to escape poverty and generational dysfunction despite being trapped by the realities of their lives. For those in midlife listening now to the song, amid growing socioeconomic gaps in our country, we may feel the bitterness of those youthful hopes having been extinguished.
Another performance, by one of the original folk artists, Joni Mitchell—now 80 and having bravely come back from the physical sequelae of a brain aneurysmal rupture in 2015—of another wistful tune from the 1960s, "Both Sides Now," also left many in tears. Seeing the strength within her frailty was a powerful experience. Our society often shies away from the realities of aging and mortality, especially in its celebrities and stars. Still, Mitchell fully embodied the gentle beauty of those realities and the need to accept them.
The song, in some ways like "Fast Car," poignantly contrasts the sense of youthful dreams and idealism with the darker realities of the other side after heartbreak and loss. But as she notes, “Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.” It is loss that strengthens the definition of love and life, and we cannot ignore or pretend such losses will not happen as part of our lives.
For those of us in middle age, this decade has been a reckoning with that other side, as we watch our parents’ generation begin their goodbyes, as we see our youthful exuberance fade into regret and compromise, with the backdrop of ever-increasing geopolitical, climatologic, socioeconomic, and biomedical uncertainty. Our chickens are now visibly coming home to roost, and we do not have the luxury of the naïve solipsism that characterized our late 20th-century days (or the great music from that period, covers aside).
Our powerful reactions to Elmo’s simple question and the Grammys likely reflect our raw, unprocessed trauma from the dark realizations of this decade thus far. We are in mourning and owe it to ourselves to let it out. We should continue to talk more, individually and collectively, about how much our hearts are breaking, to grow and heal again.
