‘100 Happy Days’ Is The Worst Thing Ever

Yes, this is still a thing.

6 years ago

You know that song ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ by Wizzard? Of course you do, it’s a festive classic. Some slightly creepy bearded guys sing about how great Christmas is and how, as the title suggests, they wish it could happen every day.

Lilo found a piece of a burger on her sweatshirt #100happydays pic.twitter.com/Ix3gn4YYrL

— Molly (@mollyliebman) November 6, 2015

It’s a great premise on paper. You would get a tonne of presents, eat endless Christmas dinners, never have to work. Trouble is when you look further into it the whole concept kinda unravels. Imagine the chaos as all the shops stay closed forever. The economy crumbles as people spend all their money on presents, Christmas loses all meaning, turkeys go extinct within two weeks.

100 Happy Days is a similar thing. It tells Facebook and Instagram users to post pictures of things which made their day ‘happy’ for one hundred (seriously, a whole hundred) days in a row. Let’s be realistic here, you physically cannot be happy for 100 days in a row, so people end up scraping the barrel mere days into this. Innocent people are being subjected to a barrage of social media terribleness, and it needs to stop.

When it's finally the weekend #100happydays 39/100 pic.twitter.com/R4CAOuzMqM

— Kirsten Newbrough (@knewbro) October 30, 2015

Yes, people are still doing this. It’s 2015, almost 2016, and this is still a thing that exists. Who does this? One (maybe two if you’re like reeeeeeeally interesting) Instagram post a week is acceptable, but posting daily is borderline sociopathic. Has anyone ever completed the 100 days? It’s impossible to know, seeing as 100% of people will unfollow you within the first two weeks leaving no witnesses.

It might seem like a fun way to make the most of life, but that is not the message you’re sending out to people.

You know when someone you know is clearly upset so you ask them if they’re ok and they aggressively shout “I’M FINE” even though they’re clearly not fine? 100 happy days is you screaming “I’M HAPPY” at everyone you know when we all know you’re slowly dying inside despite the fact that you just had a ‘delicious brunch with the girlies’.

100 happy days is like when your stepmum took you and your siblings out for the first time. You clearly didn’t want to go, she was doing it because she felt guilty and the whole thing was bound to end in disaster. But there you were, feeding the ducks in the park while she asks “Isn’t this fun?!?” Forced fun is not fun, and forced happiness is definitely not actual happiness.

Looking #$wag in my new #primark sweatpants with my #puma #socks #100happydays

A photo posted by Joel Foreman (@joelforeman95) on Mar 21, 2014 at 12:15pm PDT

100 Happy Days basically has the effect of devaluing happiness. Just look at the state of this. This guy has bought some joggers from Primark and apparently this is enough to constitute a happy day. Why on earth would this justify a whole Instagram post? If this is a what you call a happy day, you’d better be prepared to literally explode with happiness when your first child is born, because you’re setting a very low bar for yourself.

Late post for yesterday – day 44 of #100happydays – this is so me! Still so pumped from the weekend but feeling a bit swungover now!

This girl literally uses the fact that she related to a meme to claim that she had a happy day. A meme. An actual meme. One of those things that was funny for a while in 2010, and is now used by your aunt on Facebook to convey vaguely Islamophobic messages. There are people out there getting their dream jobs, going on holidays, climbing actual mountains, and here you are, buzzing because you liked a meme. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be happy, but come on, don’t spoil happiness for the rest of us.

People seem to use 100 Happy Days to prove that they are happy ALL the time. According to a quick google search it was Laurell K. Harrington who said “There is no light without dark”. I prefer Syndrome from the Incredibles’ timeless classic “When everyone’s super, no one will be”, but the message is the same. Blocking something out doesn’t increase the opposite thing, it erases it. Being constantly happy means you can never truly be happy (didn’t mean for that to sound as dark as it does).

Happiness should come naturally, should counteract our bad days. Life’s about ups and downs, we can’t just crudely crowbar it into a flat line of permanent, denial-scented happiness.

My lunch time buddies – grown by @myaroo #ifonlytheycouldtalk #100happydays

A photo posted by Zane Germane (@zanegermane) on Nov 9, 2015 at 3:18am PST

You’re probably thinking “Who the hell is this guy to tell me when I can and can’t have a good day?” and to be honest I can’t really answer that. Thing is, by committing to 100 Happy Days you’re letting a random internet trend do exactly that instead. If you can be genuinely happy for 100 days in a row then that’s great (feel free to share your methods with me too), just don’t force it. Putting on a brave face is fine sometimes, but it can also prevent you from tackling problems and hurt you in the long run.

Just like how it can’t be Christmas every day, sometimes you can’t be happy every day. But that makes you appreciate the good even more, and that’s pretty cool (sorry Wizzard).