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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/17/tiktoks-lucky-girl-syndrome-isnt-new-and-it-has-a-dark-side>
"“Everything always works out in my favour.”
“Everything just always works for us.”
“I always get what I want!”
If you’ve opened TikTok this resolution season, you may well have encountered a
slew of young women making demands like they’ve got platinum credit cards in
hand, and the universe is their beleaguered retail worker. This gimme rhetoric
– mainly used for hotness, getting the bedroom you want or, in one video,
winning $900 on Sportsbet – has catchy new moniker: “Lucky Girl syndrome”.
Being a lucky girl essentially means telling yourself everything will work out
in your favour. Then, through the power of putting it out into the universe,
you watch it come true.
The hashtag #luckygirlsyndrome has more than 100m views on TikTok but
affirmations are nothing new.
Whether you call it the law of attraction, the law of assumption or simply
manifesting, the tantalising idea that you have the power to shape reality
simply by getting your vibes right is not a secret (it is, however,
The
Secret).
With origins in the early 20th century New Thought movement, the most extreme
interpretation of this kind of manifestation practise is the most literal: that
positive thought is a genuine force in the universe – like gravity or entropy –
and that you, as an individual, have the power to harness it.
This idea has no scientific basis. While that should probably go without
saying, it cannot. Mostly because of how many manifestation proselytisers –
from Louise Hay to
The Secret – publish claims about how effective their
ideas are against cancer.
It is not clear how many lucky girls believe their own luck this concretely –
hopefully not many, given the layers of irony and nodding winks to
“self-delusion” present in plenty of the TikTok content. But the wrong kind of
positive thinking can still be pretty toxic, even when it’s not taken to
extremes.
Manifestation’s flipside is as insidious as it is pervasive: the idea that you
get what you deserve."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
