Breathe
By Graciela Rock
The immediacy of the networks and the evident worsening of the global situation drown us in a flood of news and catastrophic images, full of horror, pain and fear that follow one after the other without pause. No wonder nihilism has become the fashionable aesthetic.
In social networks, the "nihilist girl era" is presented as an attitude of cool apathy: there is no future, nothing matters, so better to immerse oneself in irony and indifference. This is the digital version of the protagonist of Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, who decides to sleep for a whole year as a kind of resistance to evade the reality that demands her to be productive, social and happy. But while cynicism seems a natural response to collective exhaustion, are we not falling into the trap of resignation disguised as empowerment?
This trend, although modern in its expression, is not new. In the late 19th century, Sofia Kovalévskaya (the first woman to earn a PhD in mathematics, by the way) published Nihilist Girl, where she tells the story of Vera Barantsova, a young Russian aristocrat who embraces nihilism as an act of rebellion against an unjust world. In tsarist Russia, nihilism was not a trend on TikTok or a meme about ignoring the world's problems with a glass of wine in hand; it was a movement that sought to transform society, even at the cost of personal sacrifice. Vera rejects the expectations imposed on her as a woman and fights for collective liberation. However, her story also exposes the limits of nihilism; when it does not build new forms of resistance it becomes only destruction.
Today, in the face of information overload and widespread cynicism, it is easy to become indifferent. Wars, democratic crisis, violence and climate collapse seem too big a problem to address with hope. But apathy is not a solution; it is a privilege we cannot all afford. While some can afford to disconnect from the world, others continue to face violence with no option to close their eyes and "rest" from reality.
In this context, pop culture reinforces the idea that the best response to chaos is total detachment. Movies, series and books have romanticized the idea of cold, distant and emotionally unreachable people. The figure of the "cool girl" has evolved into the "nihilist girl," where the absence of feelings is presented as a form of power. However, this pose not only perpetuates emotional disconnection, but also distances us from the possibility of generating real collective change. Apathy is not empowerment, it is a defense mechanism in a world that has taught us that vulnerability is weakness.
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