Generation Z lists their emotional crises and turns them into infographics
We recently described the Wrapped that have been born in the shadow of Spotify as real monstersand no wonder: companies in principle so barely linked to the recreational use that we give to Spotify, such as Linkedin or Wetransfer, reminding us that during the year, essentially, we have worked more than necessary. But summaries of the year, made by individuals and seen with a little irony and constructive criticism, can be very good. And so we come to the Crying Wrapped or summaries of crying of the year. #llanterawrapped. On TikTok, thousands of users (mostly Generation Z girls) are documenting all the tantrums they’ve had during the year. He hashtag #cryingwrappedand also #crywrapped They accumulate millions of views with videos that present, in PowerPoint presentation format or Spotify-style infographics, personal statistics on how many times they cried in 2025 (and also the year before), where they did it, at what time of day, what caused it and what their “highlight crying episodes of the year” were. Gloriously detailed. The categories include “crying due to personal relationships”, “crying in the office bathroom”, “crying while driving”, “crying caused by episodes of series”, or even rankings of songs that generated the most tears, because (and this is the important thing) we are not facing a list of misfortunes, but rather a fun and original form of emotional overexposure. There are bar graphs with the monthly evolution of the crises, others identify their “peak month of crying”… Following in the wake of the mythical viral video of user @rachel_ginterthis trend turns suffering into gamified content, making vulnerability hide behind the corporate and mechanical language of viral videos and power points. The Wrapped phenomenon. In 2016, Spotify launched its first Wrappedan experiment that would end up redefining how digital brands interact with their users. The streaming platform took the millions of listening data from each user (artists, songs, genres, total minutes) and transformed them into a visual narrative, designed to function as content on social networks. The result was remarkable: in 2024 More than 2 million people already expressed the desire for the feature to arrive in early November, almost two weeks before its official launch. The key to success, as Sprinklr tells it, lies in having converted individual information into “shareable entertainment based on personal data.” Wrapped not only reflects musical tastes: it is a statement of identity, and Spotify understood that, at the same time as giving it the attack on physical formatsunderstood that sharing music has always been a social act. Epidemic Wrapped. Spotify’s success created a domino effect that has transformed December into the month of personalized digital digests. Letterboxd, Duolingo, Reddit, Hulu, all the block streaming services… until the users themselves decided to start creating their own summaries. With Google Sheets, Canva templates to design infographics and apps like Notion To document each crying episode, these users have built emotional monitoring systems. And with this, they have turned Wrapped into viral language. The reality after the tantrum. Behind this epidemic of crying (funny because they themselves take it as a joke, of course), there is a not so funny reality: we are facing a generation going through a mental health crisis without historical precedent. He McKinsey Health Institute global study with more than 42,000 respondents in 26 countries revealed that 18% of Generation Z rate their mental health as poor or very poor. And to this is added that Gen Z’s relationship with social networks is deeply paradoxical: the same study says that this generation is the most likely to report negative effects of the use of digital platforms, but simultaneously more than half identify benefits such as self-expression and social connectivity. The same apps that fuel toxicity and anxiety are also spaces for identity and community construction. Humor as therapy. This is interesting UCLA analysis of dark humor on TikTokwhich analyzed hundreds of comments on videos about trauma, grief and existential crises, and came to the conclusion that for Generation Z these jokes function as “language of solidarity.” They do not trivialize suffering: they make it bearable by laughing at it. While the millennials Using sarcasm to create distance, Gen Z mixes irony with sincerity, adopting a confessional style that embraces vulnerability. But there is a dark side to this mechanism: this analysis explains that there is a fine line between humor as catharsis and the normalization of destructive thought patterns. Cry Wrapped operates exactly in that ambiguity: emotional processing or transformation of suffering into social capital? In Xataka | Someone believes that part of Drake’s 37 billion Spotify streams are fake. And it’s impossible to know
