“Delulu is the solulu.” Don’t worry, it’s not a new language. It is the phrase embraced and 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 embraced by those young people who do not have it easy at all in the world they have lived in, as an escape route to escape from reality and win in self-confidence. All to feel better about themselves and escape from everyday life and a reality in which they see no future.
How do you do this? Assuming in that virtual world that in this life there is nothing impossible, that they can achieve and be whatever they want. Knowing, for the most part, that nothing is true. But dreaming is free. The coined translation of the phrase says it all.
“The term delulu comes from the English delusional, delirious in Spanish, and the definition would be something like ‘self-deception is the solution’,” says Maria Dolors Mas Delblanch, health psychologist and specialist in child and adolescent psychology.
Is there anything to worry about? If it’s all about imagining or dreaming impossible things to be happier, there would be no problem. If that mantra is believed, however, things change at face value. Then the emotional setback can be very painful, when these young people return to reality and realize that this 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, we must go back to 2014. The word delulu was born to refer to Korean K-pop fans. Teenagers who were convinced – they were delirious – that they would end up having an intimate relationship with those music stars. Something, a priori, unattainable, but these young people were happy just by imagining that dream could come true.
Now the “delulus” have expanded their radius of action. We seek to be happy by imagining that one can be whatever one wants in all areas of life. And this is what these young people express – they feed each other – in their posts on TikTok. It’s like a shot of self-esteem.
Maria Dolors Mas interprets it like this: “They believe that self-deception is the solution to achieving success, fortune, or even love that will arrive by magic; that all this will happen just by believing that it is possible.” Just by imagining they are happier. Without noticing, this psychologist adds, “not everything is so easy and just wanting is not enough to achieve anything, since there are factors such as contextual, social or interpersonal factors that, many times, do not depend on our will.”
But Delblanch turns, to better understand this phenomenon, to the book The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, where she talks about the “law of attraction.” Basically that work said that “if you focused your life on what you wanted to achieve, it would finally materialize.” He considers that delulu is nothing more than the renewed version of that “law of attraction” and young people need today more than ever to dream impossible to be happy. Furthermore, a social network like TikTok serves up quick consumption of that shot of optimism on a platter.
Why this channel to publish impossible dreams? Responds Ferran Lalueza, professor of Communication at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and social media researcher at the GAME group. “The approach is naive enough that more adult users do not feel identified with it, at least not in the majority. Surely, experience ends up becoming the best antidote to this type of magical thinking. And the fact that it focuses 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 innocuous and inconsequential attitude that characterized it in its origins,” he says.
Nobody denies that this channel has entered the “delulu era.” The proof? The videos and messages posted there with the tag “delulu es salulu” (more than 5,000 million publications) are accompanied by phrases such as: “If you don’t like your life, change it; If your ex doesn’t love you anymore, she will love you again; You don’t like your image, think you are someone else…
“This is more than a trend, it is already a philosophy of life among these young people of Generation Z,” says Elena Drapa, clinical psychologist. And why does it work? That delusional idea to achieve something, a priori impossible, “releases hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine, which generate well-being. They are very powerful,” responds this psychologist.
Lalueza points out, in this regard, 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 in them we tend to show only the kindest and most successful side of our existence.” And the second feature, he adds, “is that it shows that the youngest people dislike the frustrating world that we bequeath them so much – they would be right – that they need to take refuge in an alternative reality in which everything is possible.”
Embracing that 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 were impossible to imagine before entering that world. It is the friendliest face of the 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 your own abilities is a powerful tool to overcome great challenges.”
Elena Drapá shares it. “If those 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. That should not be, in principle, harmful, since self-esteem will skyrocket,” says this psychologist. But, be careful! You must never lose your way, “like setting out, for example, to do work with a computer when we don’t have a computer,” adds Drapà.
Why is the delulu the heritage of generation Z? “These young people increasingly speak of opposite terms, such as imposter syndrome (believing that they have less capabilities than the evidence shows) and they live in a world where job and life precariousness generates a series of uncertainties that they have not faced before.” generations,” says Mas. So “confidence in oneself can lead these young people, faced with their dark outlook, to self-efficacy, to believe in the ability to carry out tasks and achieve specific objectives.”
This is a generation, shares Elena Drapá, “that feels very little stability and with a hidden pessimism that paints a dark future for them, so having delusional ideas would be like an escape valve.”
Tips? You have to know how to differentiate between what is nurturing an optimistic and positive attitude towards life’s challenges and what is clearly self-deception or delusion. Although lying to oneself is one of the main premises of delulu, which seeks happiness with a priori impossible dreams, the problems – and cases are already seen in psychologists’ consultations – arise when the public display of desire turns to conviction. that the desired goal will never be achieved. If that happens, “frustration and depression come,” the two psychologists agree.
