During the last few months of 2025, I was on Instagram constantly. Once I passed the scattered posts of my friends posing in snow-dusted yards and reminiscing over highlights of the year past, my scrolling sessions inevitably diverted my attention toward content that instilled in me a lingering sense of hopelessness — reels of hulking and masked strangers ripping innocent families from each other’s arms. Emaciated children begging for food. Steroid-addled cryptocurrency worshippers declaring ownership over women’s bodies. Reports detailing the president’s latest half-baked schemes of destruction for countries to which he does not belong, a planet he does not respect and lives he does not value.
The tones of these posts had little overarching variation, but the comment sections somehow always managed a more extreme degree of monotony — one characterized by the resounding conclusion that the world as we know it is doomed. That belief, while understandably within casual reach of the average doomscroller, is dangerously wrong.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary loosely defines doomerism as a fatalistic philosophical attitude that has become increasingly prevalent in internet culture. To be a doomer is to believe that the future is irredeemably bleak and those who pretend otherwise haven’t yet succumbed to the same reality of despair.
To be exposed to horrors like global warming, genocide and authoritarianism and feel hopeless as a result is understandable. However, to follow through with that resignation and inform others of the pointlessness of trying to make change is not only a choice informed by apathy but also by privilege.
Millions of people have been negatively impacted by United States legislation to some extent in the last year, but the blows haven’t landed equally. For some, giving up simply means the difference between political ignorance and awareness. For others, giving up might mean losing an entire way of living. The people affected by today’s political atmosphere the most aren’t liking “we’re cooked” comments on Instagram because giving up comes with material consequences.
The U.S. government is actively choosing to accelerate environmental pollution, strip individuals of their fundamental rights and restrict its people from the means to support themselves by way of healthcare, employment, education and more. The U.S. has become a country where innocent people like Renee Nicole Good can be murdered on camera for exercising their freedom of speech, a country where bands of glorified human traffickers in federal uniforms can stalk neighborhoods in search of taxpayers, law-abiders, legal citizens and children based on their skin color.
Reality is inarguably bleak right now. But in accordance with Robert K. Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy phenomenon, doom only becomes more possible when people believe in it. By claiming and acting as though nothing can be done about these terrible circumstances — about the lives lost, missing and forever damaged — one lessens the chance they will improve.
In 2022, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders posted a short video to his personal YouTube account entitled, “We can’t give in to doomerism.” Created as a generalized response to letters he received about political despair, the video holds more significance today in the context of an additional four years of political turmoil. It begins with Sanders citing some of the major obstacles the U.S. faced in the 20th century, including the Great Depression and 1940s Nazism. He reasons that the U.S. overcame tremendous opposition, so it can again, ending with, “All we can continue to do is to keep fighting.”
Sanders’ message, regardless of his politics, echoes the sentiments of figures who historically fought for and succeeded in making the conditions of struggling people better.
In 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “Keep Moving from This Mountain” address at Spelman College. In the speech, King speaks about the dangers of stagnant complacency regarding desegregation, ending with the line, “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”
Resistance doesn’t have to be loud, big or complete because small acts accumulate. To keep moving is the only appropriate response in the face of today’s harsh realities. For some people, it’s the only way to continue living.
Fascist governments feed on discouraged populations because the likelihood of receiving resistance is smaller. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini all maintained power through intense tactics of oppression in countries defined by hardship and stress. To sit idly behind a phone screen and proclaim that we are doomed or that nobody is doing anything to solve things is the exact behavior the Trump administration needs from the U.S. populace to continue down its current path.
People are fighting back against injustice, and to suggest otherwise due to a distorted virtual window of information is an insult to real-world resistance.
Filming the violent activities of Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents has become common practice among bystanders across the country, pinning a small fraction of accountability onto the predators behind the masks. People have begun developing ICE tracking networks in cities where immigration crackdowns occur, employing solidarity tactics to protect more vulnerable community members. Passionate protests, like those that enlivened downtown Boone in mid-November, consistently flare up nationwide, helping political dissenters build connections and gain greater media visibility.
These examples are all steps any regular person can take to participate in a growing and ever-present culture of political resistance.
To choose hope over despair is to make positive change real. Hope exists in an endless stream of possibilities and is strongest when shared with others. Resistance by way of protest, community gathering, knowledge exchange — any action that peacefully opposes oppressive federal measures — is a worthy and important endeavor.
When I feel hopeless after scrolling for a while, I go outside. I think about the people I love and strangers I don’t know who deserve my compassion and respect equally. I think about how lucky I am to be able to continue comfortably living my life the same as I did a year ago, when others haven’t been so lucky.
For me, choosing hope over despair is simple because I know my fellow humans and the planet we share are worth it. Because I know nobody is ultimately immune to the abuses of right-wing extremism. Because I believe things can get better.
Stay informed, but when discouragement creeps in, turn the screens off and step outside. Find someone to have a conversation with. Protect your mental health and remind yourself where real change happens, because the revolution will not be posted on Instagram reels.
