Did We All Traumatize Elmo?
This week, Elmo got a crash course in Millennial trauma
This isn’t the post I was originally planning to write, but when it happened, I knew that I wanted to examine it more.
On Monday, everybody’s favorite Sesame Street resident, Elmo tweeted the most innocent question a preschool aged red furry monster could ask.
“Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” he asked. And oh boy, no one could have anticipated the response.
Elmo’s Twitter account was flooded with a bunch of chronically online Millennials “trauma dumping” their shit onto that poor baby monster. Thankfully Elmo is only a puppet and an adult runs his Twitter account. Because holy shit. It was a rollercoaster ride. I’m only going to share a few responses because once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all honestly.
“It's been a tough time since we left the street and entered the workforce, Elmo.”
“Elmo I’m suffering from existential dread over here.”
“Not gonna lie.....I'm tired, Elmo. A lot's going on, little Red.”
“Elmo I’ve got to level with you baby we are fighting for our lives.”
…you get the gist.
The responses to Elmo were so stepped in utter despair that the official Sesame Street Twitter account had to tweet some mental health resources. You know it’s bad when the real grownups step in. And I don’t think any of this is for the sake of the bit or to get Twitter famous. We’re really out here struggling, and the smallest bit of kindness, even if it’s coming from a monster puppet on the most hellish social media platform, will open up the floodgates. And boy did it. For a solid 24 hours, people just laid their troubles at Elmo’s feet. No one was asking him to alleviate their burdens, they were just happy that someone cared enough to ask. I think it’s really beautiful, and I also think it speaks to something really interesting about us and where we’re at collectively.
We’re approaching four years since everything shut down for months and we were stuck with nothing but each other and our own thoughts. It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years — somehow it feels like an eternity and a blink all at the same time. There was a time where we could equate the pandemic with lockdown, but that ship quickly sailed. The pandemic rages on even as we continue to be out and about in the world. Lockdown was its own special brand of hell, but this constant state of low vibrating anxiety that we’ve had since we slowly started to emerge is on another level.
Over the last four years, we’ve learned that kindness is a lost art. People have emerged from the worst of lockdown worse for the wear in so many ways, but empathy and kindness are by far the WORST. I get it, we were all just trying to survive for so long that it became hard to remember how to care about other people’s feelings. Not just strangers’ feelings, even the feelings of the people we care about. Sometimes I was so bogged down by my own ennui that I couldn’t be present enough to check in with my friends. I knew that doing so would make me feel better, but it felt like a level of effort I couldn’t muster.
It’s stuff like that that makes the Elmo trauma dump make sense. Even those of us who haven’t lost our ability to be kind and empathize have forgotten how significant asking someone how they are can be. I think sometimes, as much as we want to, we know the question is so loaded and we simply don’t think we have the capacity to take that on. When we talk about mental health, we often say “don’t forget to check in on your strongest friends,” but so many of us have been strong for so long, we’re all each other’s strongest friend. And as much as we all want to check in on each other and be there, the battery is drained. We’re all emotionally depleted, and we need to hand that off to someone who can take it on without causing them more trauma. Elmo isn’t real, he isn’t actually going to read all 70k responses to the question. Even the 20 something social media manager who runs the account probably stopped reading after the tenth tweet saying “I’m not okay.”
People didn’t respond with the expectations of an answer. They just wanted to give voice to their pain. Elmo is a safe space; he always has been.
That’s another big component of my fascination with the great Elmo trauma dump of 2024. What about Elmo asking the question led to such a response? There’s something to say about the safety of nostalgia, especially the things that brought us comfort as children. Elmo has been a character on Sesame Street since 1980, and he became a regular fixture on the street in 1985. That means if you’re under the age of 45, you likely don’t know a world without Elmo. I wasn’t really a Sesame Street kid because we had cable when I was a preschooler, but Elmo was always my favorite character on the show (followed quickly by Cookie Monster, Grover and Oscar the Grouch). His innocence touched something in me, even as I lost my own. I knew that no matter how much I grew and changed, Elmo would always be the same three-year-old monster that referred to himself in the third person and had that laugh. You know the one — you can hear it right now, can’t you? Isn’t that so comforting to know that there’s something you can always return to and have it be the same?
Adulthood is fucking WILD y’all. I mean, you all already know that because you’re adults too! But sometimes, you just need to hear someone else say it. It’s validating. But anyways, being an adult, especially for Millennials, feels like a goddamn mindfuck. I wrote this recently, but because of all the shit we’ve dealt with (9/11, the 2008 recession, COVID, the multiple housing crises, inflation, joblessness) we’re in fucking arrested development. I’m firmly in my late 30s, I have a family, a 2-bedroom apartment I can’t afford, an obscene amount of pets, and most of the time, I feel like I’m still a little kid playing house. Let me tell you, this isn’t the life I thought I’d have after all those games of MASH in middle school.
This arrested development is why we seek out comfort so much. Elmo has always been there for us, but he’s not the only one. Thanks to streaming, all of the shows we love are there for us too. If you look at my Hulu, most of the shows have been off the air for 20 years. Why? There are new shows! But when I’ve had a bad day, or I need to go soft brained and melt into my couch, the only people who can save me are Dorothy, Blance, Rose and Sophia. Or Khadijah, Max, Synclaire and Regine. Or Hank, Bill, Dale and Boomhauer. I recently started introducing my kiddo to my favorite old school cartoons like Rugrats and Hey Arnold. Life was so much easier when my day revolved around these characters and their shenanigans. It’s like Angelica Pickles said, “I don’t want no responsabilaries.”
The last time we saw something like the Elmo moment was when Steve Burns came back to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Blue’s Clues in 2021. I was way too old to watch Blue and Steve, but I did occasionally tune in because my niece and my little cousin loved it. I remember when Steve went off to “college” and how sad it felt that he moved on. And seeing him in front of that familiar wall in that green striped shirt, even though now he wears glasses and has no hair, brought back an overwhelming flood of nostalgia. Then he started talking.
September 2021 was still a tough time. We were slowly shaking off the dust of lockdown as vaccines became available. My son turned eight and went back to school for the first time since he was six, this time with masks and weekly self-administered COVID tests. I had recently started my dream job and it was slowly turning into a nightmare. So to see Steve’s face pop up on my Twitter feed brought a sense of comfort. And then he started talking about all of the things that have happened since he left the show. About growing up and becoming an adult, and going through the hard stuff.
“I never forgot you…ever,” he said, and I could barely keep it together. Even now writing about it, I’m ready to cry. It’s that childhood comfort again. There was Steve telling me that he was proud of all the things we’ve accomplished over the years. He was validating that adulting is fucking HARD. The timing could not have been better.
This is why thousands of people dumped their trauma on a three-year-old puppet. Because sometimes you need the thing that made you feel safe as a kid to make you feel safe again. Nostalgia and comfort are intrinsically tied y’all. And I think that’s great.
You are on fire.