I'm Tired Of Reading About Red Flags, And You Should Too

Why are we obsessed with negativity?

Adaeze Sherleen Ilo
6 min readNov 9, 2021

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Image by CrafCraf from Pixabay

Once upon a time, the emergence of the red flag discussion was a breath of fresh air. Thanks to the broad reach of social media, more people began to share their experiences with narcissistic partners and how they got out of toxic relationships.

Platforms like Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram gave people the courage to speak up and warn others of what to look out for so they don't make the same mistake.

Phrases like love-bombing, gaslighting, stonewalling, toxic, narcissist, and red flags became the latest buzzword— for good reason, of course. I mean, reading articles that explored these hot topics helped me at some point in my life.

Sadly, though, like everything else, humans tend to stretch to the limit, the topic of red flags is beginning to run its course. And frankly, it's getting old.

Every year red flags seem to be a trending topic. It usually starts from someone on Twitter putting up a red flag emoji and then going ahead to list what they deem to be a red flag. Then it gets thousands of retweets, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon putting their own spin on it.

Image from Twitter.

It got to the point where seeing these tweets and memes made out of something that shouldn't be taken lightly began to give me a headache and a dismal view on love and relationships.

Why? Well, because nowadays, everything is considered a red flag.

It caused me to ask myself why we worship at the throne of negativity. Do we enjoy reading about negative things because it somehow makes us feel less terrible about our lives? Maybe the answer is yes. But I will tell you this for free — constantly feeding your mind with negativity will keep you jaded and chuck filled with anxiety.

I was done with filling my mind and heart with helpful pointers that had over time become soul-eating poison. But while I was keeping these articles and tweets at bay, I was also exploring why it seems humans would rather share bad news than the good.

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Adaeze Sherleen Ilo

Adaeze is a social worker in training who recently embraced her writing super powers. Now she writes to make up for lost time.