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Alexia: Hi! I’m Alexia Bailey, a sophomore here at CU Boulder. While I may just be in my second year, I’m here to share everything I’ve picked up so far, which is a surprising amount of information. “What’s Eating at Alexia” is my unofficial and unfiltered guide to some of the things that being a CU Boulder Buff brings. Think of it as your guide to navigating everything that makes CU Boulder, well, CU Boulder. Whether you’re a freshman finding your footing or a senior with “no body, no crime” level grievances about finals week, I’m here to share my takes, tips and honest observations on everything from the sometimes-unpredictable Buff Bus system to navigating campus protests (or dodging them entirely). College is a wild, unforgettable ride, and “What’s eating at Alexia” is here to make sense of some of it, one opinion at a time.
As October comes to a close, we are getting closer and closer to the holiday season. And with it come so many fun things, such as going home for the holidays, presents, thankfulness and lastly, seasonal depression.
Seasonal depression is, according to Mayo Clinic, “a type of depression that’s related to changes in seasons.” It’s often related to the lack of sunlight exposure that happens during the warm months and a disrupted circadian rhythm, both of which can increase feelings of depression. A 2022 study done by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) found that seasonal depression, or “the winter blues,” affects roughly 38%, or 126 million, of Americans during winter.
Even we Buffs are not immune to this, and I’m already seeing decreased attendance in my classes.
Now, I am not here to lecture you on going to class. Obviously, you should go to class. You might just find that the routine of going might even make you feel better when you’re down. But let’s be honest, most of us don’t cope by journaling or going to class. We cope by scrolling. And lately, the internet has turned sadness into a full-blown aesthetic. One minute you’re watching a dog video, and the next you’re knee-deep in “sad girl autumn” edits set to Phoebe Bridgers.
I’m not saying that this approach is inherently bad. In my opinion, there’s something strangely comforting about scrolling through TikTok at 2 a.m. and seeing someone else romanticize their misery. The dim lighting, the cigarette smoke curling like a question mark and the caption that reads “we were just kids” over a Lana Del Rey track—it’s not new, but it’s everywhere. It’s all aesthetic now.
The internet obviously didn’t invent melancholy, but it sure as hell monetized it. What used to be diary entries are now photo dumps of blurry sunsets and mascara tears. On Instagram, sadness gets filtered and color-graded until it’s cinematic. On TikTok, users pair their heartbreak with trending audio so the algorithm can give their grief a fighting chance. Even Spotify playlists have joined the genre: “songs to stare out the window and pretend it’s raining” has millions of followers. And it doesn’t stop there. Every facet of the internet has somewhere for you to get in your feelings.
We’ve reached a point where being sad online isn’t just normalized, it’s curated. You can buy clothes, candles and posters that match your preferred brand of emotional despair. Whether it’s “coquette sadness,” “grunge heartbreak” or “clean-girl depression,” there’s a corner of the internet ready to validate your vibe. But here’s the catch: aesthetic sadness often leaves out the ugly parts. Real depression doesn’t come with good lighting or poetic captions. It’s dishes in the sink, unanswered texts and days spent doing nothing because the world feels too heavy. Yet that kind of sadness doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t fit the algorithm’s preferred ratio of pretty and pitiful.
I, myself, enjoy the glorification of sadness, but only when I’m actually sad. There’s something oddly comforting about seeing a TikTok that mirrors what you’re feeling in real time. The rain, the piano music and the girl crying in her car—it’s validation, not voyeurism. But on days when I’m doing okay, when I open TikTok just to relax, it hits differently. Suddenly, my “for you page” decides to remind me that someone out there thinks the world would be better off without them. And it doesn’t go away when I scroll. The algorithm doesn’t forget. Once you linger on one video a little too long, it clocks you as “emotionally available for sadness” and keeps feeding it back to you. Before you know it, your entire feed has transformed into a grayscale therapy session, except no one’s actually getting better. A “depression room” is becoming the aesthetic norm, and it normalizes dangerous behaviors often associated with mental disorders.
The more we aestheticize this sadness, the harder it becomes to talk about it honestly. When every emotion is a performance, real vulnerability feels off-brand. People start to compare their pain, asking questions like “Why doesn’t my sadness look like that?” And the cycle continues. It’s emotional capitalism disguised as self-expression.
Of course, art has always drawn from pain. Vincent Van Gogh was severely depressed; Sylvia Plath was too. The greatest art of our generation could very well come out of this aesthetic of depression, if it’s not artificially made. But the difference now is that our art lives under the constant pressure of engagement metrics. We no longer create for catharsis; we create for clicks. And that shift changes everything.
So maybe it’s time to stop romanticizing our suffering and start recognizing it. Post the ugly crying selfies if you must, but not because they look good. Post them because they’re real. Because at the end of the day, sadness isn’t an aesthetic. It’s an emotion. And it deserves more than a filter and a hashtag, and you do too.
Contact CU Independent Opinion Editor Alexia Bailey at alexia.bailey@colorado.edu
