There is a trend of home decorating which prominently involves plastering one’s home with signage written in cursive fonts, with a prominent one reading “Live, Laugh, Love.” Other common ones are “Gather” or “Coffee” etc. It’s a symptom of stage IV basic bitchery and/or karenism.
See also Rae Dunn ceramics, distressed chalk paint, and beige.
My parents wanted me to design a dining room hutch for them, and looking around at examples led me into a study of basic bitchery. Stacks of carefully arranged Rae Dunn pottery around the word “gather” in jigsaw cut cursive, a ceramic pig and one of those calendars made of two blocks of wood with just enough numbers on them to be able to be 1-31 on them that you’d have to manually change each day, usually accompanied by fake plants and a rusty flour sifter or something else “farmhousey” are all signs she’s in the late stages of the disease.
It’s plastered all over painted blocks of wood for $40 at mildly up-scale places (or places trying to appear up scale), along with other “gems” of wisdom.
It’s not so much the cornyness, but the posh posturing and sheer stupidity of having vapid expressions on expensive blocks of wood.
It reeks of toxic positivity, its associated with privileged, usually white, usually christian, suburban and boomer wives/moms who get to sit around at home all day, in a home, whilst doing nothing, who often admonish their own children for not being positive and grateful enough, and also invent tons of problems about meaningless bs, while said children have worked far harder than they have, and are more educated than them, but will likely never own a home.
Every time I see the phrase “toxic positivity” my first instinct to contest it, because my first experiences with the phrase were a misapplication (that being positive is somehow toxic,) but so far on Lemmy, I’ve only seen it used in ways that make sense (the toxic expectation that others will be exclusively positive.)
In a lot of uh, fast food social media (Insta, Tiktok, Twitter) ‘toxic positivity’ is basically used anytime anyone commits a single offense of being too optimistic or endearing in a way that gives someone an instant knee jerk ‘ick’ or something, when they’re in a bad mood and just wanted someone to also be as angry or depressed as them, in the moment.
…People who do not have narcissistic personality disorder understand that there’s a bit more to it than that, namely long, established, continuous patterns in someone’s behavior which indicate that this person has an enormous amount of privilege, does not realize this, to the point that they become blind to serious concerns and problems, and then those problems become worse and worse because of the toxicly positive person’s nonsensical advice being detrimental and time wasting, or just vapid meaningless platitudes.
And then also, the privileged person often become overwhelmed when anyone lays out the basic facts of their reality compared to the privileged person, and then also they usually then get angry with the less privileged person for pointing this out, and now its your fault that you made me feel bad.
This can also happen at a large scale, where an entire organization or group acts like this.
Anyways, I don’t see why this has to be a matter of high privilege vs. low privilege. There’s definitely a correlation, but depressed rich people and happy poor people aren’t uncommon. Also, not all questions of positivity vs. negativity are in contexts that relate to privilege. It could be about the direction of a media series, for example, which is where I’ve heard it misused.
You absolutely could be toxicly positive from a position of basically 0 privilege, such as maybe an ascetic who thinks that the solution to the problems of poverty is to actually embrace or accept suffering, and not do anything to change it.
We do seem to agree though that toxic positivity is a persistent attitude and mindset, at least.
Its associated with karens. To me personally its a 100 percent truth. My sisters name is karen and she had this on her wall when I broke contact. To give this a little more perspective the last time my kids and I ate at a restaurant with her. My parents and her did what they always did. Complained so loudly they got a discount. They made the server cry. This incident occurred pre karen meme. My only regret of going no contact is I wasn’t there when she pulled that shit and someone called her a karen and she couldn’t figure out how they knew her name.
There was a family that lived next to my parents that lost their house in the 08 crash because they were sold a shitty loan. They were the sweetest people. I happened to be visiting when they had a huge blowout family party on their last day there. I was hoping it was using the money that was supposed to go to the banks. They were the epitome of what I think the original intent was of that saying. The world sucks, fr, but you have to live anyway. It’s not toxic positivity if you live it. That’s my take anyway.
Is there any particular hate against ‘live, laugh, love’ that I am missing, besides the phrase just being a bit cheesy?
There is a trend of home decorating which prominently involves plastering one’s home with signage written in cursive fonts, with a prominent one reading “Live, Laugh, Love.” Other common ones are “Gather” or “Coffee” etc. It’s a symptom of stage IV basic bitchery and/or karenism.
See also Rae Dunn ceramics, distressed chalk paint, and beige.
Thank you for that.
My parents wanted me to design a dining room hutch for them, and looking around at examples led me into a study of basic bitchery. Stacks of carefully arranged Rae Dunn pottery around the word “gather” in jigsaw cut cursive, a ceramic pig and one of those calendars made of two blocks of wood with just enough numbers on them to be able to be 1-31 on them that you’d have to manually change each day, usually accompanied by fake plants and a rusty flour sifter or something else “farmhousey” are all signs she’s in the late stages of the disease.
It’s the poster child of vapid consumerism. Pseudo-deep “words of wisdom” often bought by the most shallow people you can think of.
It’s the battle cry of the suburban Karen, the mantra of the soccer mom.
Often combined with the consumption of rigorous amounts of wine and sings declaring how hilarious this socially accepted alcoholism is.
It’s plastered all over painted blocks of wood for $40 at mildly up-scale places (or places trying to appear up scale), along with other “gems” of wisdom.
It’s not so much the cornyness, but the posh posturing and sheer stupidity of having vapid expressions on expensive blocks of wood.
that’s it for me. okay, you want to decorate your house, great. but “live laugh love” is really the best you can find?
Vapid, banal expressions have some power. Whatever makes us go through life a little more positively is an asset in my book
It’s bumper stickers for your house, but pretending to be fancy.
It’s wine-mom boomer-humor. It’s not particularly funny, the same vein as “i hate my wife” “jokes”
It reeks of toxic positivity, its associated with privileged, usually white, usually christian, suburban and boomer wives/moms who get to sit around at home all day, in a home, whilst doing nothing, who often admonish their own children for not being positive and grateful enough, and also invent tons of problems about meaningless bs, while said children have worked far harder than they have, and are more educated than them, but will likely never own a home.
Spetrals mom has an LLL sign.
Gee how could you tell rofl.
Every time I see the phrase “toxic positivity” my first instinct to contest it, because my first experiences with the phrase were a misapplication (that being positive is somehow toxic,) but so far on Lemmy, I’ve only seen it used in ways that make sense (the toxic expectation that others will be exclusively positive.)
In a lot of uh, fast food social media (Insta, Tiktok, Twitter) ‘toxic positivity’ is basically used anytime anyone commits a single offense of being too optimistic or endearing in a way that gives someone an instant knee jerk ‘ick’ or something, when they’re in a bad mood and just wanted someone to also be as angry or depressed as them, in the moment.
…People who do not have narcissistic personality disorder understand that there’s a bit more to it than that, namely long, established, continuous patterns in someone’s behavior which indicate that this person has an enormous amount of privilege, does not realize this, to the point that they become blind to serious concerns and problems, and then those problems become worse and worse because of the toxicly positive person’s nonsensical advice being detrimental and time wasting, or just vapid meaningless platitudes.
And then also, the privileged person often become overwhelmed when anyone lays out the basic facts of their reality compared to the privileged person, and then also they usually then get angry with the less privileged person for pointing this out, and now its your fault that you made me feel bad.
This can also happen at a large scale, where an entire organization or group acts like this.
Fast food social media. Nice term there.
Anyways, I don’t see why this has to be a matter of high privilege vs. low privilege. There’s definitely a correlation, but depressed rich people and happy poor people aren’t uncommon. Also, not all questions of positivity vs. negativity are in contexts that relate to privilege. It could be about the direction of a media series, for example, which is where I’ve heard it misused.
You know, you are correct.
You absolutely could be toxicly positive from a position of basically 0 privilege, such as maybe an ascetic who thinks that the solution to the problems of poverty is to actually embrace or accept suffering, and not do anything to change it.
We do seem to agree though that toxic positivity is a persistent attitude and mindset, at least.
Fuck you :)
I know this is a joke but my autism is on a roll:
This is an example of passive aggressive behavior, not toxic positivity.
Actually I would call that aggressive passive, because it’s very upfront and aggressive, but in a not actually very aggressive way.
Sure thing sweetie :)
(lol)
I like how you needed to demonstrate that you know what passive aggression is.
Autism works in mysterious ways.
… That or I’m still working through an astounding amount of gaslighting from being surrounded by malignant narcissists for a very long time.
Probably both.
Bless your heart.
Now we see if you know southern passive aggressive.
I can recognize it, but am not fluent enough to respond in kind.
Cross stitch. There’s an element of mysogyny too, as this is statement vapid women make, so its safer for men to laugh at than the vapid shit we say
Its associated with karens. To me personally its a 100 percent truth. My sisters name is karen and she had this on her wall when I broke contact. To give this a little more perspective the last time my kids and I ate at a restaurant with her. My parents and her did what they always did. Complained so loudly they got a discount. They made the server cry. This incident occurred pre karen meme. My only regret of going no contact is I wasn’t there when she pulled that shit and someone called her a karen and she couldn’t figure out how they knew her name.
That’s… that’s beautiful. I wish it was televised.
I don’t know it happened but its a high probability event.
They should have sent a poet.
It’s the art of choice for those who cannot tolerate self-reflection.
I call it a narcissist smoke screen.
you could add ‘Live Laugh Love’ text onto any photo in the news of the last few years, and let me know how hilariously tone deaf it feels.
There was a family that lived next to my parents that lost their house in the 08 crash because they were sold a shitty loan. They were the sweetest people. I happened to be visiting when they had a huge blowout family party on their last day there. I was hoping it was using the money that was supposed to go to the banks. They were the epitome of what I think the original intent was of that saying. The world sucks, fr, but you have to live anyway. It’s not toxic positivity if you live it. That’s my take anyway.
Not tone deaf, just… doesn’t really make sense in context.