Lucky Girl Syndrome: The Newest Viral Gen Z Bug of Internalised Delusion
Can mantras solve all of Gen z’s problems? Culture Editor Laurelle Laryea looks into the newest variation of the pseudoscience of manifestation—the Lucky Girl Syndrome
“The power of positive thinking” was the Boomer mantra.
Before them, the 19th century ‘New Thought’ movement was synonymous with “mind cure”. Several generations throughout time have created their own versions of the same affirmative self-belief systems. These systems of positive thinking have made their way into mainstream culture, and for its latest manifestation, it is Gen Z’s Lucky Girl Syndrome.
It is pseudoscience. Some psychiatrists believe the virality of manifestation is disillusioned. But it is also often—and maybe wrongly—conflated with “magical thinking”. Annelie Helgelin from Brandwatch, a digital consumer intelligence group tells me that out of the online conversations primarily on TikTok and Twitter, surrounding the Lucky Girl Syndrome, 55% of mentions are negative, while only 39% view the phenomenon positively.
Of course, the data cannot yet consider sarcastic sentiments and slang, says Helgelin.
The term ‘lucky girl syndrome’ was popularised by 22-year-old social media influencer, Laura Galebe, who employs a scripting method in the form of the memoir—that is, writing a memoir of the life you would like to manifest as though it had already happened. It is a complete belief in the idea that all the things you want are already chosen for you—stuff of ideals.
Lucky girl syndrome requires a more complex dedication though than just wishful thinking—Galebe evidently does not rid the habit even in this interview with Wales online. To be a bonafide ‘lucky girl’, one must be ruminative in their belief that they are lucky, an introspective state that borders on delusion. But that is exactly the ripe state for successfully manifesting the syndrome.
I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
Notable words from the poem ‘Invictus’ written by William Ernest Henley and, more famously, Nelson Mandela’s positive affirmations during his time in prison. When Henley wrote this poem, he was recovering from multiple surgeries on his one remaining leg, in an infirmary. The poem has since become a cultural icon for showing the exemplary stiff upper lip of discipline, the manly virtue of Victorian stoicism.
Henley lived past the fate of an amputee which, at the time, was fatal. Mandela became President. Martin Luther King affirmed his dreams. Henry Ford famously quoted Confucius, “He who says he can, and he who says he can’t, are usually both right.”
It may be no new argument, but it’s in the name—this is for the girls.
Making lemonade with luck
Newton was lucky that the apple fell on no one else’s but his head. If art indeed imitates life, an apple falling on another head could have meant that the gods must be crazy. Yet Newton’s apple-falling event turned out to be the “shining emblem of Enlightenment rationality”, and the serendipitous birth of the Law of Gravity. Not even the “Newtonian Worldview” was entirely mechanical—he himself believed in a divine controlling force, and in magic. The implication: that science and pseudoscience (and superstition) may overlap in coming years, as they did during Enlightenment, with the growing disparity between religion and spirituality (see: SBNR- -spiritual but not religious).
We shouldn’t assume that the Lucky Girl Syndrome, and the broader practice of manifestation leaves fate to passive chance. The magnitude of mantras should not be oversimplified as delusion as it mimics archaic burning at the stake.
Female hysteria, demonic possession, and Middle Age write-offs
The paranoia surrounding apparent “dangers” of manifestation techniques, and especially the Lucky Girl Syndrome, are understandable, but arguable. The Devil makes a workshop of idle hands, and a Lucky Girl who supposedly waits around for thunderstrike is only going to be possessed by resentment, disappointment and maybe depression. Again, there is a recurring (read: whiny) theme of insinuating that women expect too much, for apparently too little. (Reader, consider the “female delusion calculator”).
The word ‘mantra’, rooted in Sanskrit, translates literally to man-mind, and tra- protect.
It’s no excuse that because manifestation practices exist, and have existed throughout history, that the movement is less harmful or vapid. The recent trend obviously stems from desperate attempts at hacking The Algorithm to reap engagements. The benefits to the mind, however, should outweigh the scepticism. Don’t doubt that mantras improve your wellbeing. To a fair extent, presence of mind, mental stimulation, breath control, can be worth a bit of delusion.
We are lucky to be vibrational beings, such that focused repetitions can ease our anxieties towards the things we yearn for. Even if unrealistic, it is better to be delusional than anxious and self-destructive.
Even pop icon and Afro Gen Z general Ayra Starr sings of an ‘Espiritu Fortuna’—Spirit of Fortune, and who knows better than the sabi girl? Exactly. 😌