‘I think I like this little life’ is the latest TikTok trend that started as a wholesome expression of gratitude and turned into a sarcastic mess
Though the TikTokers who first participated in the “I think I like this little life” audio trend used the sound clip to demonstrate the beauty in our daily lives, more recent posts have taken a darker turn. It’s just the latest trend to go from earnest to absurd over time.
The audio, which comes from the song “Little Life” by Cordelia, has been used in more than 328,000 videos. In November 2023, the creators began pairing the song with footage of sincere slice-of-life videos. Some of the most popular posts show an infant skating around with her hockey player father, a dinner party among friends and a woman comparing bedtime with her wife to a “sleepover every night.”
“This song makes me so nostalgic and cry about how beautiful life can be,” TikToker @elsa.evelyn captioned a video of two friends sitting by a fire.
How the ‘this little life’ trend took on a sarcastic and even absurdist edge
While many of the videos have been arguably down-to-shots, several users pointed out that the trend seems to be a way for people to show off their wealth. In the comments of a video that showed images of gorgeous houses and luxurious pools in Provence, France, users commented “this little life is too expensive” and “this is not a little life.”
It’s similar to another recent TikTok trend, in which people were dancing to “Murder on the Dancefloor,” a song from the movie Saltburn, while showing off their enormous houses in what appears to be a misunderstanding of the film’s apparent critique of wealth.
“Wow everyone’s little lives feature lavish dinner parties in architectural digest approved mid century loft apartments,” wrote TikToker Maggie Zhou. Others have pointed out that these so-called little lives appear manicured, funded by generational wealth and unobtainable.
Another corner of the internet has gone absurdist over the trend, ironically using the song to post about things in their lives that they don’t actually enjoy, like bad driving or the struggle to get a purse to fit over a puffy jacket.
Cordelia wrote in a TikTok that she thinks it’s “genuinely so funny” that her song has caused so much commotion.
“The internet is crazy one minute you’re writing a song about learning to enjoy the little things in life and the next minute you’ve got tiktok teens literally baying for your blood in the comments,” she wrote in a second post, referencing the hate that the trend has brought to her page despite having nothing to do with the trend’s evolution.
But TikTokers aren’t just critiquing the way the song is being used to promote consumerism and wealth. They’ve also leaned into their exhaustion with the trend and begun going after the way it sounds. Users shared their disdain for the vocals by chaotically screaming the word “I” and mumbling the rest of the lyrics to parody Cordelia’s delivery. Some poked fun at the way the artist seems to be “singing in cursive” — a raspy and strained tone with poor enunciation that was popular among 2000s singer-songwriters like Regina Spektor and Amy Winehouse, but is now considered cringey.
A victim of trend fatigue?
So why did the trend go from a heartfelt celebration of the mundane to a misunderstood display of wealth to a lightning rod for sarcasm? It appears to be following the same pattern that many TikTok trends follow now, thanks to the way the For You page works. The app’s algorithm, which is designed to detect what content you enjoy and serve you more of it, can expose users to trends so relentlessly that they get tired of them faster than they might on another social media site.
Gen Z is exceptionally sensitive to manufactured authenticity on TikTok, when, for example, posts meant to celebrate life’s mundane moments seem staged. That can happen when trends seem overused, as well. Sometimes the natural response from an avid social media user is participating in a trend in the weirdest or most contrarian way. That’s arguably what’s behind the rise of recent chaotic content.
One of the most recent instances of a trend becoming a caricature of its original form is the popularity of bows in the TikTok-famous “coquette” aesthetic. As light pink hairbows appeared more in fashion trends and social media posts, TikTokers began tying bows around everything from toilet paper to pickles. After a year of discourse about ultra-pink Barbiecore fashion and “girl dinner,” the trend was immediately overexposed, and some of the extremely online jokesters of TikTok started to tie bows around ice cubes in revolt. But as one such user told the New York Times, it’s just a “large-scale inside joke.”
Whether overloading their videos with slang or putting something bizarre on an in/out list, social media users are signaling that they’re aware of trends, and possibly tired of them, but still down to joke about it.
