TGIF and “The Fat Jewish:” Why we should look forward to Mondays

TGIF.

The four letter word that everyone seems to love.

In reality, it’s an acronym. Yet its incessant chanting from desks, water coolers and lunch tables has eliminated the need to pause and remember “Thank God It’s Friday’s” longer form. Having morphed into a cultural symbol, people speak and swallow TGIF without hesitation. As a high school student I often heard, used and embraced the phrase, feeling my entire existence hinge on the coming of the weekend and the conclusion of my Friday afternoon math class. However as I entered college and the work force through internships, I began to reevaluate our cultural obsession with its underlying sentiment.

I found that in its emphasis on the glorious weekend, TGIF discounts and scorns the workweek. Work and play become mutually and steadfastly exclusive while the former becomes synonymous with intellectual stagnation. Scrolling through my Instagram feed I became hyperaware of how mainstream and accepted this attitude really was. Before I never would have reconsidered the TGIF meme below. However recently it and similar memes actually makes me pause my aimless scanning to acknowledge their demarcation of life’s experiences. Portrayed through illustration, tedious week and thriving weekend stand at incompatible odds.

So what about this graphic made me pause? It fails to acknowledge the rationale behind our Monday dread and Friday euphoria. In fact the majority of social media fails to do so. Popular social media accounts, especially on Instagram, have gained massive audiences from marketing this apathetic mentality. One account, @unspirational, publishes emphatically un-motivational quotes and in doing so, has attracted over 300,000 followers. Another popular Instagrammer, “thefatjewish” (4.5 million followers) regularly publishes content that belittles vocational or social aspiration.

Receiving an average of 175,000 likes and 25,000 comments, these sentiments boast sizable social approval. The bulk of the comments consist of users tagging their friends, drawing attention to the message and solidifying their shared agreement. So what are these visuals’ underlying scripts? It’s cool to not care. Ever compare @thefatjewish’s exponential popularity to the derision accompanying a well-meaning motivational post? The discrepancy couldn’t be clearer. In fact the tendency to belittle ambition and individual success has recently been labeled: “Demotivation.” Acquiring an indisputably cynical persona, images featuring quotes such as “started from the bottom…still at the bottom” and “success is just failure that hasn’t happened yet” brazenly subvert well-known motivational phrases.

A symbol of all “demotivational” refrains, TGIF normalizes dissatisfaction and provides an accepted and unproductive avenue for expressing that discontent. While it is implausible every person will always love his or her work, the popularity of such a disaffected phrase perpetuates the belief that one should not strive to enjoy work or school. Indeed the increasing popularity of overt cynicism in social media reveals a larger trend in popular culture – and one that might have negative consequences.

These posts’ negative sentiment gives their viewers an excuse to lack ambition and provides them the path to escape failure by never attempting success. The popularity exhibited by accounts such as @unspirational and @thefatjewish reflect a prestige on those who reject aspiration and humorously embrace mediocrity. At colleges around the United States there are a great number of students that are lucky to be taking engaging classes and learning material that excites them. However with TGIF’s ubiquity it is possible some students’ enthusiastic behaviors are suppressed by the urge to fit the mainstream, apathetic mold.

This is not to say that pursuing a simpler life is necessarily worse. However upon further analysis, the apathy advocated by the demotivation trend veers self-centered and actually targets a privileged demographic. In addition to Instagramming “uninspirational” quotes, @thefatjewish embraces a lavish jet-setting lifestyle replete with excessive amounts of champagne and visits to New York Fashion Week and Cannes Film Festival. Other accounts including @betches (1.9 million followers) combine Instagrams about the Hamptons and excessive drinking with memes about aversion to work and the inability to wake up in the morning. The combination of these two attitudes reveals an unnerving correlation between apathy and privilege. To even view these images one assumedly has access to a smartphone and the leisure time to check social media. So why is this relationship important? Because this association could explain demotivation’s rising popularity. It’s altogether possible that “demotivation” acts as a coping mechanism against the pressure and stress young adults and students grapple with in the pursuit of a successful GPA and career. Privileged students are often aware of the high expectations and success markers set by their fellow peers, elite institutions and driven parents. Comically rejecting those standards through social media memes about Netflix binge watching certainly makes a statement, but ultimately proves problematic. While on occasion one can truly “Thank God It’s Friday,” accepting elite demographics’ dispirited approach to work could carry negative repercussions. Encouraging a celebrated tradition surrounding this dispirited mentality will prove detrimental for a satisfied work force and a high quality of life. Surely students and young adults, privileged or otherwise, grapple with the pressure to succeed, but using TGIF as an accepted, even lauded approach towards work is a futile method of managing that anxiety. Instead, understanding “demotivation’s” followers’ pervasive unsatisfaction, and potentially even addressing its root causes would create a more robust system than a quick, cynical chuckle from an Instagram stating, “I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.”