Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019 Page 17G
oodbye bad news. I’ve
had enough of the bleak
headlines and divisive poli-
tics, dark TV dramas and
hate-filled social media. I’membracing a new movement with
a slightly ridiculous name and a
single mission, to make the world
a better place. It’s called
‘hopepunk’.
Hopepunk is a spirit or a mood. It isn’t
an actual thing. It is a feeling. It is the
Scandinavian concept of ‘hygge’ or ‘cozi-
ness’ of the mind. It is a warm, happy,
charming, uplifting concept that leaves
you with a fuzzy feeling in your tummy. It
is a glass half full, rose-tinted glasses
that celebrate triumph over adversity.
If you’ve never encountered hopepunk
before, I promise you’re going to hear a
lot more about it over the next couple of
months. The trend is sweeping through
the TV world in which I work. It’s the
word on everyone’s lips and it’s going to
influence just about everything you
watch and read.
Think of it as healthy eating for the
brain. Instead of constantly snacking on
tidbits that make us ill, we can choose
good, nourishing entertainment that
leaves us feeling better and stronger.
you could be forgiven for thinking that
I’ve gone a bit hippy-dippy or succumbed
to some piece of air-headed millennial
nonsense. on the contrary, I’ve been
thinking about this change seriously for
at least six months, and I’ve applied it to
all the books, TV shows and social media
that I consume.
Hopepunk works. Try it and I guarantee
you will feel better — and so will the peo-
ple around you. It’s positively infectious.
I’m a naturally upbeat person. Friends
sometimes compare me to a labrador
puppy, and I take that as a great compli-
ment. I love life, I love people and I’ve got
loads of energy right up to the moment
when I’m suddenly asleep.
but over the past few years I’ve been
conscious of a sort of spiritual fog that
can descend. It’s full of bitterness and
anger, and I don’t believe those are my
natural emotions. I’ve got so much to be
thankful for in life — a wonderful family,
rewarding career, the blessings of good
health. bitterness and anger shouldn’t
have any business with me.
At first, I blamed the divisiveness of the
times. Political life was becoming more
polarised and the internet swirled with
anger. I thought I couldn’t help being
affected by the mood of the world.
T
Hen I realised it was partly my
own fault. no one was making me
watch those shows, buy those
books or read online comments.
no one was forcing me to watch those
terrifying news videos.
I’m a prolific consumer of social media
via Twitter and Instagram, at least when
I’m filming anywhere in the world with a
wifi signal — which these days is practi-
cally every place on the planet.
even though the tornado of vitriol swirl- Laughter really is the best medicine: Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer in Gone Fishing
by Ben
Fogle
ing on social websites has some-
times driven me to log off in horror,
I always went back... and suffered
another onslaught of their cyni-
cism and fury.
So I made a decision. I deter-
mined to seek out more cheerful
shows to watch, more upbeat books
to read, and to wallow less in social
media. As an experiment, my wife
and I began watching the gooily
romantic First dates on C4 — it’s
not the sort of programme that I
ever thought could interest a gung-
ho chap like me, but I soon found
that at the end of every episode I
was smiling, almost floating.
If you’ve never seen First dates,
it’s sweet and frothy and served
with elegance which suits its
setting, an upmarket restaurant in
London, where people in search of
romance meet for the first time.
Almost always one of them has a
story of adversity overcome to
relate: an illness, a heartbreak, a
bereavement. each lover might be
damaged but not defeated.
Though I didn’t know it, that’s
the very definition of hopepunk.
Then, over on bbC2, I got hooked
by Gone Fishing. I love the defiance
of bob Mortimer and Paul
Whitehouse, two very funny men
determined to fight back from
heart disease... with fishing rods.
My policy of avoiding negativity
seemed to have an immediate
effect. I felt happier. Slept better.
The fog retreated and it quickly
became easier to stay away from
swamps of negativity on the inter-
net. Soon after that, quite unex-pectedly, I realised I wasn’t the
only person feeling like this. Count-
less thousands around the world
shared my need to make a stand
against the torrents of anger and
hate. That’s when I heard an edi-
tor in a commissioning meeting
first use the word ‘hopepunk’.
It was coined in 2017 by a fantasy
writer called Alexandra Rowland,
who said: ‘Hopepunk says that
kindness and softness don’t equal
weakness, and that, in this world
of brutal cynicism and nihilism,
being kind is a political act.
‘Kindness can mean standing up
for someone who is being bullied.
Kindness is something you can go
out and fight for.’
That sounds good to me. We’ve
become so used to unkindness inthe past 20 years or so. If there’s an
army intent on turning the tide, I
am ready to join up.
Social media has unleashed a
great deal of nastiness. The
concept of ‘trolling’, or being
maliciously unpleasant to a com-
plete stranger, was unknown
before the arrival of the World Wide
Web. now it’s an official word in
the oxford english dictionary.
Hopepunk is the antithesis of
that. It’s about celebration rather
than cynicism, being upbeat
instead of outraged.
My policy of reading books with
an uplifting message led me to
former Google executive Mo
Gawdat’s 2016 self-help manual,
Solve For Happy. Mo’s life was
shattered when he lost his son, Ali,aged 21, who died during a routine
operation. Struggling with depres-
sion, Mo tried to use computer
algorithms to work out what would
make him happy... and realised
happiness is our default mood.
That makes sense, because
babies and small children are
naturally happy unless something
specific makes them sad — hunger,
lack of sleep and so on. We’re
happy until something external
knocks us off course.
And too often, we invite those
negative external factors into our
lives. We switch on the television
and gobble up arguments, divisive-
ness, anger and darkness.
I’m not denying the world can be
a sad, tough place. I’m saying that
instead of succumbing we need to
make a stand. That’s the spirit of
hopepunk.S
TATISTICALLy, there is
more good in the world than
evil, but news tends to be
slanted to the negative. For
every negative news story, there
must be 100 good things that we
never get to hear about.
Imagine if you switched on the
radio to hear the announcer tell
you about a new vaccine, a clever
invention, a great new album, a
daring rescue and a random act of
kindness. How much better that
would be than the litany of murders
and political mayhem.
Hopepunk is TV shows like Queer
eye For The Straight Guy. It is fes-
tivals like the Good Life experi-
ence. It is books like A Man Called
ove. It is podcasts Kind World,
and films like The Greatest Show-
man. It is triumph over adversity
and standing up to bullies.
Inspired by this thought, I posted
a photograph of myself on Insta-
gram, standing in a river with my
tweed trousers rolled up. I can’t
explain why, but it made me smile.
I wanted to share that smile.
The river was freezing cold, by
the way. That didn’t bother me...
I’m a hopepunk warrior!I’ve found the
formula for
happiness...
by watching
shows like
this
EUREKA
1. THE GREAT BRITISH
BAKE OFF (C4)
Nadiya Hussain’s victory in
2016, overcoming her
anxiety, is the very
definition of hopepunk. ‘I’m
never gonna say: “I don’t
think I can,”’ she vowed. ‘I
can and I will!’- GLOW (NETFLIX)
In their spangly leotards,
the Glamorous Ladies Of
Wrestling take all those
gloomy feelings and
bodyslam them to the
canvas. Upbeat escapism. - GOOD OMENS
(AMAZON PRIME)
From the novel co-written
by Terry Pratchett and Neil
Gaiman, this is the story of
an angel and a demon who
join forces to avert the end
of the world. Hopepunk
personified. - FEARNE COTTON’S HAPPY
PLACE (PODCAST)
In each episode, she chats to
celebs from Dawn French to
Gary Barlow about the things
that make them happy. - KIND WORLD (PODCAST)
Bite-sized reports on acts of
inspirational kindness —
such as the six-year-old girl
who helped her 84-year-old
neighbour recover from
bereavement by visiting
him with her mother
every Sunday.
‘HOPEPUNK’
FAVOURITES