The Hidden Vulnerabilities of @SoSadToday

The Twitter account @SoSadToday first appeared in 2012, relaying the thoughts of an unnamed young woman with a pronounced anxiety disorder and a dark sense of humor about it. Topics like depression, panic attacks, and feelings of romantic doom all served as fodder for the creator’s stylized expressions of feminine despair: “sometimes i remember i exist and i’m just like ‘gross’ ”; “every ten seconds a girl feels insecure and that girl is me.” She hid sudden emotional escalations inside disaffected quips (“excited to get over you by being obsessed with someone else who doesn’t want me”) and paired Internet slang ironically with feel-good clichés: “forgive and forget jk.” She celebrated cues of femininity even as she mocked them, like a taste for Diet Coke or shopping as a form of self-care. (“maybe if i buy this shit i don’t need i’ll be a whole person.”) She warped the lyrics of popular songs and inverted brand slogans to reflect her self-loathing: “maybe she’s born with it, maybe she’s comparing her insides to other people’s outsides.” Bolstered by replies from celebrities like Katy Perry, the account picked up legions of online fans. At last count @SoSadToday had more than three hundred thousand followers.