the damn penguin
am i dense that i don't understand the hype or is the internet overplaying it because everyone has an opinion?
this post may or may not be a part 2 to the i’m not nerdy enough to understand post.
i didn’t ask for a penguin to become my moral compass.
and yet here we are.
the most exhausting thing about the internet right now is that nothing is allowed to just exist.
a single clip: a group of penguins waddling in one direction, neat and obedient, like commuters who trust google maps too much, and then one of them veers off. suddenly, the penguin is not a penguin anymore; it’s a symbol, a warning, a mirror, a thinkpiece with flippers. everyone is staring at this tiny bird like it personally owes them a lesson about life.
this is the part that makes me feel out of place: i don’t want to decode it. i don’t want to search for the hidden meaning or pretend this clip unlocked some deep emotional truth inside me. i don’t want to say “this is so me” or “this represents society” or “this healed something in me.” i just want to say: that is a penguin walking away from other penguins. end of sentence.
i promise this is not like one of those posts that’s an unnecessarily basic take on a pop culture trend. i am genuinely surprised that the internet has collectively decided to typecast a penguin for being rebellious.
the worst part is that the video itself is painfully ordinary without a clear ending. just a penguin walking away while the rest of the group keeps going. but the internet doesn’t work like that anymore. everything has to be content, and content has to be commentary, and commentary has to be clever. if you’re not extracting a moral from a three-second clip, you’re apparently doing it wrong. watching something without transforming it into insight is treated like wasted potential.
why does there need to be a meaning in everything? if you don’t know about the penguin, you’re behind. if you don’t care about the penguin, you’re shallow. if you don’t immediately feel a deep emotional response to the penguin, you “don’t get it.”
and of course, people are already using him as motivation. what gets me is how confidently everyone agrees that there must be meaning. not “maybe.” not “it could be.” but must. like randomness is no longer acceptable. like the world isn’t allowed to be messy or pointless or unsatisfying. a wrong turn can’t just be a wrong turn. it has to be a message. where is your appreciation and respect for entropy? why must there be order and reason for everything?
“be the penguin who takes a different route.”
“don’t follow the crowd.”
“choose your own path.”
it’s strange how quickly we romanticise bad decisions when they look symbolic enough. how easily self-sabotage turns into bravery when you slap a sad song on it. how fast a confused animal becomes a mascot for existential struggle. the penguin is now standing in for everything: burnout, nonconformity, depression, capitalism, and whatever people felt that morning before their coffee. somehow, one confused animal is now carrying the emotional weight of half the internet. people perform meaning instead. they announce the clip instead of simply watching it and package it into a caption, turning it into a statement. and suddenly, the trend isn’t about the penguin at all. it’s about the people and how fast they can turn observation into personality.
so now my life choices have been reduced to bird logic. am i the penguin who stays with the group? or the penguin who walks away?
why is my identity a decision tree with flippers?
what bothers me is the pressure to participate rather than the metaphorising. the sense that i’m supposed to join in and pick a side: brave penguin or stupid penguin. conformist or individualist. group or rebel. as if a bird drifting off-screen is a multiple-choice question about my soul.
i don’t want to answer it.
i don’t want to live in a world where every clip is a test of how deeply i can interpret it. i don’t want to prove that i “get it” and compete in who can be the most emotionally articulate about a random video. i don’t want to turn watching into work.
maybe this is me being tired. maybe this is me wanting a break from constant analysis. maybe this is me wanting the freedom to not have a take. but i genuinely don’t feel the need to participate in this trend, and not because i’m above it or smarter than it, but because i don’t want to search for meaning where i don’t feel any.
i don’t want to treat every moment like a riddle and pretend that confusion is wisdom. i’m also most definitely not interested in turning chance into destiny just because it looks poetic enough on my feed.
sometimes a penguin is just a penguin.
and i think it should be okay to watch something, feel nothing profound, and move on. the internet pretends this is depth, but it’s really just projection with better lighting. we saw a creature make a wrong turn and decided it was about us. we decided it was art. we decided it was culture. we decided it was a lesson.
maybe it isn’t. maybe it’s just a penguin who messed up.
but the algorithm doesn’t care about that. it will show me the penguin again. and again. and again. it will show me thinkpieces about the penguin. edits about the penguin. girls crying over the penguin. men saying the penguin changed their lives. hot takes layered on top of other hot takes until the original bird is buried under meaning.
and i will watch. because what if this is the version that finally makes sense? what if this angle cracks the code? what if this penguin is the one reference i can’t afford to miss? what if i accidentally ignore the historic moment when everyone agrees one this one grunge and camp take on the whole penguin thing and i am forced to find out through some secondary or tertiary source?
so the cycle continues: me. the feed. and a small bird walking confidently into symbolic death.
honestly, the penguin isn’t the problem. we are. because we saw an animal get lost and said, that’s a personality.
some posts that you may or may not read to understand the concept of the nihilistic penguin (personally haven’t read these, i just did a search on substack and sharing the links that came first) (this is NOT a list of references)
internet digs out rabbit holes on shit that shouldn't be metaphorised at all. I mean sure you get to have your take but now that people are getting influenced in a microsecond, it's insane. It's so cutthroat out there, you cannot step out if you don't have a view, and honestly there should be no view; on a damn animal that too.
I literally haven't opened my Instagram in three days because I was so fed up of the feed, and now when I read about it through writers, I feel like it's a virus clinging onto us. I wonder if the penguin knows? If he (I suppose) is considered a medal made of statement for the world in the moment. So many what ifs and not enough periods to end shit like it should be.
Loved the post though!!!!
i find it really funny that everyone is romanticising that penguin when its probably dead bc of the route it chose