“Delulu is Solulu”. Don’t panic, it’s not a new language. It is the phrase repeated on TikTok (more than 5 billion times) among young people of generation Z, born between 1995 and 2000. The “delulu is the solulu” has already become a philosophy of life, a mantra to what young people embrace who don’t have it easy in the world they have to live in, as an escape route to escape reality and gain self-confidence. Everything to feel better about themselves and to escape from day to day and from a reality in which they see no future.
How is this done? Assuming in that virtual world that in this life there is nothing impossible, that they can achieve and be whatever they want. Knowing, most of them, that nothing is true. But dreaming is free. The translation of the sentence says it all. “The term delulu comes from the English delusional, delirious in Catalan, and the definition would be something like ‘self-delusion is the solution'”, says Maria Dolors Mas Delblanch, health psychologist and specialist in child and youth psychology.
Do you need to relax? If this is nothing more than imagining or dreaming impossible things to be happier, there would be no problem. But if this mantra is believed blindly, things change. Then the emotional blow can be very painful, when those young people come back to reality and realize that the TikTok universe is an invention and you don’t always get everything you want.
To better understand the origin of the term and the trend, you need to go back to 2014. The word delulu was born to refer to Korean K-pop fans. Teenagers who were convinced – delusional – that they would end up having an intimate relationship with those music stars. Something, a priori, unattainable, but these and those young people were happy just imagining that that dream could be fulfilled.
Now the delulus have expanded their radius of action. It is intended to be happy by imagining that one can be what one sets out to be in all areas of life. And this is how these young people express it – they feed each other – in their posts on TikTok. It’s like a self-esteem injection. Maria Dolors Mas interprets it as follows: “They believe that self-deception is the solution to achieve success, fortune or even love, which will arrive by magic; that all this will happen only if they believe it is possible”. Just imagining they are already happier. Without taking into account, adds this psychologist, that “not everything is so easy and that just wanting things is not enough to achieve anything, since there are factors such as contextual, social or interpersonal that, many times , they do not depend on our will”.
To better understand this phenomenon, Mas Delblanch turns to the book The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, in which the “law of attraction” is discussed. Basically this work said that if you focused your life on what you wanted to achieve, it would eventually materialize. He believes that delulu is nothing more than the renewed version of that “law of attraction” and young people need today more than ever to dream about the impossible in order to be happy. In addition, a social network like TikTok serves up a quick consumption of that injection of optimism.
Why this channel to post impossible dreams? Ferran Lalueza answers, professor of Communication at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and social media researcher of the GAME group. “The approach is naive enough so that more adult users do not feel identified with it, at least not in a majority way. Surely, experience ends up becoming the best antidote against this type of magical thinking. And the fact that it is focused on TikTok is due to the majority age profile on this network and the fact that, in some way, it still retains part of the harmless and inconsequential nature that characterized it in its origins”, he says.
No one denies that the “delulu era” has entered that channel. the test? The videos and messages uploaded with the label “delulu és salulu” (more than 5,000 million posts) are accompanied by phrases such as: “If you don’t like your life, change it; if your ex doesn’t love you anymore, he will love you again; you don’t like your image, think you’re someone else…
“This is more than a trend, it’s already a philosophy of life among these young generation Z”, says Elena Drapá, clinical psychologist. And why does it work? That delusional idea to achieve something, a priori impossible, “releases hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine, generators of well-being. They are very powerful”, answers this psychologist.
Lalueza points out, on this issue, that the delulu phenomenon has two relevant features. “The first is that it constitutes an ironic metaphor for the functioning of social networks, which show an unreal, idealized and idyllic world, because there we tend to show only the kindest part and the successes of our existence”. And the second trait, he adds, “is that it shows that the younger people are so disgusted by the frustrating world we are bequeathing them – and they are right – that they need to take refuge in an alternative reality in which everything is possible”.
Embracing this philosophy can inject doses of self-confidence. And it helps to get out of the comfort zone to take steps that we would not otherwise take, which can help to achieve things that before entering that world they did not even imagine, however impossible. He is the friendliest face of Delulu. In the list of positive things, Maria Dolors Mas points out that “this philosophy will be beneficial if it increases self-confidence; believing in one’s abilities is a powerful tool to overcome great challenges”.
Elena Drapá shares it. “If these dreams or aspirations are evaluated well, being a delulu can help us believe with more determination that we can achieve things that we previously saw as unattainable. This should not, in principle, be harmful, as it will increase self-esteem”, says this psychologist. But, alert, one should never lose sight of the north, “such as proposing, for example, to do work with a computer when we don’t have the computer”, adds Drapá.
Why is Delulu heritage for Generation Z? “These young people are increasingly talking about opposite terms, such as impostor syndrome (believing that they have less ability than the evidence shows) and live in a world where job and life insecurity generates a series of uncertainties that other generations have not had to face”, points out Mas. So that “trust in one or oneself can lead these young people, in view of the black panorama that awaits them, to self-efficacy, to believe in the ability to carry out tasks and achieve specific goals”.
This is a generation, shares Elena Drapá, “that shows very little stability and with a hidden pessimism that paints a black future for them, in other words that having delusional ideas would be like an exhaust valve”.
Advices? You need to know how to differentiate between what it is to nurture an optimistic and positive attitude towards life’s challenges and what is clearly self-deception or delusion. Even if lying to oneself is one of the main premises of delulu, which seeks happiness with a priori impossible dreams, problems – and we can already see cases in psychologist consultations – come when the public display of desire is it turns to the conviction that the longed-for goal will never be achieved. If this happens, “frustration and depression sets in”, agree the two psychologists.
