you love him and miss him / and wonder if you'll hear from him again
A crying girl sad post.
You send the message at 11:58pm, then watch the three dots appear, disappear, and appear again. They never become a reply. You put the phone face down, then face up, then face down. Someone's song comes on the radio in the car. It isn't even a good song. You pull over, in a layby, and give it the full four minutes. Every opinion you hold is correct and nobody is listening. You post it in the group chat. Three people react with a thumbs up, one of them is your mum. The room is dark and the light is on. You are warm, comfortable and entirely at peace, apart from the six feet of cold floor between you and the switch. You lie there and negotiate. **Why it caught on:** the picture shows a woman with her hand pressed to her forehead, eyes closed and a tear running down her cheek. People captioned it with small, self-inflicted or entirely trivial misfortunes, from slow downloads to a light switch out of reach, and the contrast between the full-blown anguish and the tiny problem is what made it work. It spread because almost anyone can match it to a petty sorrow of their own.