Culture

Emma Camp | 8.4.2025 8:00 AM

Are you feeling bad? Sad? Lonely? Despondent about your life? Anxious about politics? Angry about the state of the world? The gurus and influencers and deep thinkers of the internet have identified the culprit, the reason, the overarching explanation for why everything, everywhere sucks all the time. 

"Do you feel horrible? That's capitalism, baby!" says the wildly popular mental health influencer TherapyJeff in a TikTok with nearly 50,000 likes. "Is your self-worth based on who you are or what you do? If it's what you do and the value you create, that's internalized capitalism." 

In another video on the platform, two attractive 20-something women discuss how "late-stage capitalism" has affected their social lives and complain that there's a lack of public "third spaces." The video was filmed in what appears to be a public park. 

In another video, this time with over 14,500 likes, a young woman declares that "capitalism is the root of all evil" before adding, "I'm also a business owner. But fuck capitalism, right?"

Do you feel horrible? That's capitalism, baby! #capitalism #america #mentalhealth #therapy #therapytok #therapist #burnout

♬ original sound - TherapyJeff

Online, "capitalism" has become a shorthand for just about every disliked cultural trend, no matter how universal or eternal. Unrealistic beauty standards? Capitalism. Monogamy? Capitalism. People not wanting to give you a ride to the airport? Capitalism.  

Capitalism gets conflated with everything from consumerism and government corruption to the concept of work itself. Online anticapitalism is not so much a reaction against economic reality as a reaction against, well, reality. It's the all-purpose villain ruining everything that should be good about modern life. 

if ur my friend and ur seeing this lets b radical anticapitalists together while you drive me home from LAX ???? #wlw #friends #friendship #20s #femalefriends #friendgroup

♬ original sound - Amelia

Hatred of capitalism has coincided with a boom in popularity for socialism and even communism. In a recent Pew poll, only 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds had a positive view of capitalism, while 44 percent viewed socialism positively. In another poll, 34 percent of young people reported a favorable view of communism, which in Josef Stalin's Soviet Union killed millions of people from famine alone. 

This sort of thinking has already had real-world political consequences. In June, self-identified socialist Zohran Mamdani handily won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary on a platform of state-run grocery stores and a rent freeze. Some polls now indicate he's the front-runner for the city's top elected office. 

It's hard not to read this shift as downstream of a real malaise among many Americans, especially young adults. Surveys consistently find that young people

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