Ah yes, another day, another social media trend designed to keep us scrolling while pretending it’s deeply meaningful. This time, it’s all about the so-called Ghibli-fication of our lives. People are posting dreamy, nostalgia-drenched clips of mundane activities, dubbing them “Ghibli moments.”
Yes, Karen, your coffee foam isn’t “magical realism,” it’s just slightly over-frothed (and possibly by an additive your body isn’t thanking you for..).
But let’s not kid ourselves, this isn’t about embracing the whimsy of life. It’s about the algorithm. Because if there’s one thing social media platforms love, it’s making you believe you’re curating your digital existence by being bang on trend, when in reality, they’re just squeezing you into the latest aesthetic mould for engagement points.
At its heart, Ghibli films capture nostalgia, serenity, and wonder. But social media platforms don’t actually care about your personal journey of rediscovering childlike awe. What they do care about is keeping you glued to their app, obsessing over whether the video of your shadow dancing on a cobblestone street is ethereal enough to get likes or even go viral.
And let’s not forget the brand opportunists who have wasted no time cashing in. Watch as fast food chains suddenly declare their soggy fries are whimsical like a Ghibli meal! or skincare brands slap a Totoro-esque aesthetic on their serums, promising you’ll glow like you live in a sun-dappled meadow instead of a dimly lit flat overlooking Clapham Junction.
Let’s be real: No one’s landlord is Hayao Miyazaki; there is no poetic charm in your rent reminder email. Your morning commute does not have the soft orchestral backing of Joe Hisaishi, it has an overworked bus driver muttering under his breath while a guy named Steve eats an aggressively odorous breakfast burrito next to you and some City gent’s crotch is far to close to your hip than you would like.
And that’s fine. You don’t need to romanticize your dishwashing experience by filming the soap bubbles with soft piano music. You just need to wash the dishes…
While you’re busy filming a slow-motion clip of dandelion seeds floating in the wind, the clock is still ticking on your actual existence. That 45-minute process of capturing, editing, and filtering your “Ghibli moment” could have been spent, oh, I don’t know, doing literally anything else like reading a book, calling your mother, contemplating why you didn’t believe your 12 year old son telling you Bitcoins were a solid investment. But nope, instead, we’re all out here hyper-curating our own fake nostalgia while life speeds by in real time, unfiltered and unforgiving.
Social media has essentially turned into a digital vanity press, where everyone gets to play journalist, storyteller, and cultural critic without the hassle of, well, actual journalism. Platforms know that deep down, we all want to feel like our thoughts and observations are important, so they dangle trends like this in front of us, whispering, “Yes, you too can be an esteemed documentarian of modern life.” In reality, we’re just unpaid content creators, feeding the machine with our microwaved profundity while Big Tech owners book another long weekend in Verbier; gotta grab that last black run before the snow melts.
The Ghibli-fication of social media is just the latest example of platforms turning human experience into content for engagement. They don’t want you to find beauty in everyday life, they want you to post about it so they can sell more ads while you wonder if your cup of tea looks mysteriously magical enough…
So go ahead, enjoy the wind rustling through the trees, the glow of streetlights on wet pavement, or the steam rising from your coffee, but do it for yourself. Not for the algorithm.
Photo by Héctor Achautla
