Being delulu is one of the latest trends among young people of the so-called generation Z, born after 1995 and impacted by the 2008 crisis and the recent pandemic. With a high unemployment rate (30%), aware of the climate future (72% believe that global warming has been caused by human activity) and gender inequality, they are more distrustful and daring than their predecessors (millennials). .
Social networks – especially TikTok – are your “refuge” where you can imagine a big life (thinking big). For them, being delulu is the new solulu. Delulu comes from the English delusional, which means delirious, and as they explain in the thousands of videos that circulate, “for us, everything is possible because we are the best.” Freud, in The Future of an Illusion (1927), conceived religion as a set of ideas, presented as dogmas, which are nothing but illusions based on ancient, intense and compelling desires. He clarified that an illusion is not an error and compared it to a delirium based on the satisfaction of a desire.
Social networks – and many of their celebrities (Musk, Trump) – undoubtedly have a very pronounced delusional component. Like some AI applications and programs, which promise to talk to the dead (griefbots), clone humans in virtual mode or marry a hologram. Narcissism is exacerbated by that illusion that knows no limits and that recycles any rejection (work, sentimental or family) to translate it into “I’m too much for him and that’s why he doesn’t love me.” The aforementioned Musk and Trump are masters of that art.
Does this mean that we are witnessing a new epidemic of mental disorders due to this viralization of lulu? As some TikTokers rightly point out, the key is to say it and not believe it completely, that it is a somewhat fake delusion. Their disbelief in each other’s promises serves as an example for them not to fully trust their own delusion. That does not exclude that some are lost in the game. The symptomatic thing about this phenomenon is that today it is difficult to distinguish between delirium and belief or knowledge.
Lacan referred to this – following in Freud’s footsteps – when he pronounced his phrase “everyone is crazy, that is, delusional”, not to universalize psychosis, but to show how in the face of uncertainty and perplexity (that is why young people They know a lot) each one invents their delusional theses to give meaning to their existence. They are not (all) crazy, they are young people left to the risk of digital delirium.