upworthy
Joy

10 things that made us smile this week

Upworthy's weekly roundup of joy.

man and kitten playing guitar, kid in Bowser costume singing at piano, flying squirrel playing dead under broom handle

This week's list of delights includes some award-worthy performances.

What do you get when you combine a beautiful gentle parenting interaction, a whole school singing along with a 7-year-old performing "Peaches" in a Bowser costume and a flying squirrel pretending to be attacked by a broom?

You get this week's 10 things that made us smile, of course.

We hope you get as much joy and delight from these fabulous finds as we did. Enjoy!


1. 7-year-old performs 'Peaches' from 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' and the crowd went wild

The song was originally performed by Jack Black, and it shot up the charts. Love how the kid played off the audience's enthusiasm.

2. Mom shares her autistic son's joy at attending a 'sensory friendly' showing of "The Little Mermaid"

Sometimes inclusivity means welcoming everyone into a space and sometimes it means creating spaces where everyone can feel welcome. Find out more about sensory-friendly film showings from major theater chains here.

3. Story of a troubled kid transformed by kindness and art holds important lessons for us all

Swipe through to read the whole story. A good reminder that hurt people hurt people, and that sometimes "bad" kids need people to see the good in them and to help them see it themselves.

4. Man reunites with firefighter who saved his life when he was 2 years old and introduces him to his own 2-year-old son

A beautiful full-circle moment. Read the full story here.

5. Flying squirrel repeatedly fakes its own death by broom handle

Not a headline you see every day, but that's the only way to describe it. Absolutely an Oscar-worthy performance. Read the full story here.

6. Someone captured a dad creating a core childhood memory for his daughter at a concert

Here's to the dedicated dads who delight in dancing with their daughters.

7. This owl's legs. That is all.

Owls look so dignified and regal until you see the silly pantalooned legs they're hiding under their feathers.

8. Woman has the best response to people telling her she was too old for outfits she was trying on

@jessicabuwick

Thank you for coming #graudation #graduationdresses #formaldresses

Jessica Buwick's initial video was a comical showing of outfits that didn't work either because they were too short or tight or the style was too confusing to wear, and some people decided to be critical of her choices…of the things she didn't wear. Both videos are hilarious. See the full story here.

9. Mom shares a beautiful example of 'connection then correction' with her 4-year-old who was acting out

Gentle, conscious parenting for the win.

10. Kitten-on-a-guitar needs to be a whole new musical genre

@xiagopluscami

Practicando con thiaguin. #thiago #xiagopluscami #gatitobebe #algocontigo #cover #acustico #algocontigoritapayes #guitarra #naranjito #

I don't know about you, but I would pay good money to see this concert.

That's it for this week! If you don't want to go searching for these posts each week and would like them delivered right to you instead, sign up for our free newsletter, The Upworthiest, here.

Joy

5 things that made us smile this week

People supporting thousands of local charities? Yes, please.

True


Good news—you know we love it. And we know you love it, too. Which is why we’ve searched the internet high and low for things guaranteed to brighten up your work week, such as:

This former cheerleader busting a movie

You're only as old as you feel—at least, that’s what Michigan woman Ilagene Doehring seems to think. Now 97, Doerhing was reminiscing about her time as a high school cheerleader 80 years ago at Merrill High School—a squad she helped create after noticing her school didn’t have one of their own. Caretakers at her nursing home reached out on social media to see if someone had an old uniform Doehring could wear one last time—and the current cheer coach at Merrill High School, Jena Glazer, went above and beyond. Glazier and the entire cheer team showed up to her assisted living facility to deliver the uniform and perform a cheer with the current team.

This company's way to support hometown charities

The annual Subaru Share the Love® Event is a chance to help local communities in a big way. Subaru and its retailers will donate at least $300 to local charities for every new Subaru purchased or leased through January 2nd, 2025—and by the end of 2024 (their 17th year of hosting this event), they’ll have donated nearly $320 million to charities across the nation. We love seeing local communities getting the support they deserve!

This mom’s “magic answer” to her kid’s Tooth Fairy and Santa questions

Most parents dread the moment when their kids start asking about mythical creatures like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus—but it turns out you can preserve the magic of childhood while also being honest with your kids. TikTok creator KC Davis, who is also a licensed therapist, showed this perfectly when she shared about the time her 4-year-old asked if the tooth fairy was real. She asked them “Do you want the magic answer, or the grownup answer?” Utter perfection. (Her daughter chose the magic answer, by the way.)

This guy who drove 11 hours to be with his grandma

@jodiegarner12 @TheModernGolfer drove 11.5 hours to surprise his queen as it was her late husband’s birthday today. Never forgotten and will always look after his grandmother ❤️🌹#loyalty #family @Rosalie Gessey ♬ These Memories - Hollow Coves

Holidays can be painful when you’re dealing with the loss of a loved one. Which is why on the anniversary of his late grandfather’s birthday, professional golfer Jordie Garner drove eleven hours to spend time with his grandmother so she wouldn’t have to be alone. This adorable video shows Jordie showing up to surprise his grandmother, with flowers and a present in hand. Now that’s true love.

This mom's sweet "I love you" surprise

@goodnewscorrespondent

Daughter is surprised when her mom, who is non-verbal with Alzheimers, replies I LOVE YOU! ❤️ As a daughter of a mom with ALZ, this had me in tears. 😭💞 Cherish these moments. @momolarks800

♬ original sound - Good News Correspondent

Tiktok user @momolarks80 caught an unexpected (and heartwarming) message when she filmed herself and her mother saying hello. Living with Alzheimer’s and mostly nonverbal, her mother surprised her with a rare “I love you”—to which the daughter responds by planting a kiss on her cheek. Talk about wholesome.

For more reasons to smile, check out all the ways Subaru is sharing the love this holiday season, here.

Teachers

I asked dozens of teachers why they're quitting. Their answers are heartbreaking.

These are teachers who love kids and love teaching. We need to listen to them.

When I was a child, I used to line up my dolls and stuffed animals on my bedroom floor, pull out my mini-chalkboard and in my best teacher's voice, “teach” them reading, writing and arithmetic. Pretending to be a teacher was my favorite kind of imaginative play. In college, I majored in Secondary Education and English and became an actual teacher. I loved teaching, but when I started having kids of my own, I quit to stay home with them. When they got to school age, I decided to homeschool and never went back to a traditional classroom.

I kept my foot in the proverbial school door, however. Over the years, I’ve followed the education world closely, listened to teacher friends talk about their varied experiences and written countless articles advocating for better pay and support for teachers. I've seen a teacher burnout crisis brewing for a while. Then the pandemic hit, and it was like a hurricane hitting a house of cards. Teachers are not OK, folks. Many weren’t OK before the pandemic, but they’re really not OK now.

A recent poll from the National Education Association found that 90% of its members say that feeling burned out is a serious problem, 86% have seen more teachers quitting or retiring early since the pandemic began and 80% say that job openings that remain unfilled have added to the workload of those who are still teaching. And more than half of teachers say they will leave the profession earlier than they had planned.

I checked in with several dozen teachers who have quit recently or are close to quitting, and the response was overwhelming. Over and over I heard the same sentiments: I went into teaching because I enjoy working with kids and I want to make a difference. I love teaching. I love my students. These are teachers who throw their whole heart into their work.

So why are they quitting? The reasons are plentiful—and heartbreaking.

Low pay is an issue many of us think of when it comes to teachers, but it's not the main thing pushing teachers to quit. One teacher told me that in his school district, garbage collectors make $10K more per year and have better benefits than teachers with graduate degrees and a decade of experience, but that wasn't his primary reason for wanting to leave. There’s no question teachers deserve to be paid more—a lot more—but teachers don’t choose to become teachers for the money, and most don’t quit because of the money, either. It’s the issues that make the wages not worth it.

One of those issues is a lack of recognition that teachers are actually highly skilled professionals. “Paying teachers like we are professionals would go a long way,” says Bonny D., an educator in Idaho, “but really it's about trusting us to be able to do our work. Many teachers have Master's degrees or have been teaching for many years, but still aren't listened to or considered experts when it comes to helping students succeed.”

Jessica C. has taught middle and high school English in three different states and resigned in December. She says she loved working with kids and designing curriculum, but she finally left after seeing more and more teacher autonomy get stripped away as standardized testing became the primary focus.

“Despite my years of experience across multiple states and my two graduate degrees in education, I felt like nobody with any real power believed I was actually competent at my job,” she says. “I saw evidence that my students were growing as readers and writers, but at the end of the day the only thing that mattered was hitting a certain number on those state assessments. It was really disheartening to feel like nothing else mattered but that test, and that even though the test itself doesn't resemble any real-world reading or writing skills in any way, it was supposed to be the focus of all of my instruction.

“But let's not forget,” she added, “I also wasn't allowed to look at it at all or even really know what was on it or how it would be scored.”

California elementary school teacher Ann B. shared a similar sentiment: “Teaching over the past decade has lost its charm and sparkle. So many mandates, broken systems, top-down management from people who haven’t spent much time in the classroom made it difficult.“

Sarah K. teaches high school history and AP psychology in Tennessee. Unlike most of the teachers I spoke to, she is having one of the best school years of her career, but she shares concern for the state of public education in general. “I think a lot of teachers feel attacked and are afraid and are feeling like the job can't be done anymore,” she told me. “As a society, we have lost our ability to trust each other, and it is manifesting itself in not trusting teachers to teach, do their jobs and follow our hearts to love and inspire kids.”

In addition to micromanagement from administrators, classroom control from legislators and demonization from parents, I had two teachers share with me that they’d been through a school shooting. ESL teachers from different states shared that their school districts refused to put resources toward programs that would help their students succeed and basically told them that those students didn’t matter. Other teachers feel like their own lives don’t even matter.

“A teacher passed away from COVID in January in a different building,” says Jenn M., a 14-year veteran teacher from Pennsylvania. “The kids had the day off. The teachers came in and had no directive of what to do. We got tested for COVID, and that was it. I literally feel like if I die, nobody in the district would care about me. I want to feel important and impactful at work.”

And then there's the mental load that has always existed for teachers but has definitely been exacerbated by the pandemic. Teaching is not 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with the summers and holiday breaks off. That’s just not how it works; not for any teacher I’ve ever known. And it's taxing work on every level. You’re working with dozens if not hundreds of kids every day. You care about them and their well-being, you’re trying to teach them whatever your subject is but also helping nurture them into fully functional human beings. You have constantly changing expectations coming from every side.

“Teaching is all-encompassing,” says an elementary school teacher from New Mexico who wishes to remain anonymous. “It is seriously draining emotionally and physically. It's not just a job that is easily turned off at the end of the day when you go home.

“Everything falls on the teachers,” she adds. “We are stuck in a no-win situation in the middle of a societal crisis. Schools have been pushing higher academics at earlier ages and the need to teach basic social skills, norms and niceties is higher than ever. Our roles and the demands on us are just increasing.”

Bonny D. agrees. “There is a mental load that goes with teaching,” she says. “It's very difficult to specifically identify. It's the workload, it's the constant changing of what's required of us as legislation changes, it's the restrictions on what we can teach, the expectation that we will work outside of the paid contract hours, the fact that it's easier to go to work sick than make sub plans, it's micromanaging teenagers, doing extra things in the school with no extra pay, the low morale created by parents who want to dictate what we do in the classroom without ever discussing it with us or volunteering in the classroom themselves.”

And so much of what's expected of teachers is self-contradictory, as Jessica C. points out in a bullet list summary of what teachers have been asked to do over the past few years:

- Differentiate your instruction for every child, but don't deviate from what the textbook says to teach.

- Teach directly from the textbook, word for word and page for page whenever possible, but also spend hours of your time designing a unit plan (even though one is provided in the textbook company's supplementary materials).

- Turn in detailed weekly lesson plans, even though we really just want you to turn the page and read what it says every day.

- Hold every child to high expectations and keep all your instruction and assessment on grade level, but make sure none of them fail, even if they come into your room drastically below grade level.

- Attend regular PLC meetings, but the principal is going to set the agenda and run the whole meeting and you won't really be asked to contribute anything at all. (Again, we're going to ignore that year-long training you got in your last district about the PLC model and just assume you don't know that we're deviating from the model completely.)

- You should be focusing on instruction, not wasting a minute of class time, but we're also going to expect you to collect T-shirt order forms, and fundraiser money, and take your kids down to the cafeteria for school pictures, and fill in for colleagues on your planning period. Oh, and you'll have to stay late several times a grading period so that you can work the gates at athletic events, because your professional performance review will be based on how much you gave to the school above and beyond your job description and contractual obligations.

The pandemic, of course, has made everything worse. Teachers have borne the brunt of all the upheaval in education, not only in having to completely change the way they teach and implement new technologies overnight, but also in dealing with the emotional and developmental challenges their students are facing throughout all of this. The pandemic has also exacerbated and highlighted issues of inequity in education that were already there.

Catlin G. is an intervention specialist who has taught for 18 years, primarily in schools in under-resourced communities. She says that what many districts are now dealing with—attendance and staffing issues, high variability in children's academic growth, a lack of resources—are all too familiar to her and the students she has worked with.

"The pandemic drew a lot of attention to the role of education, but much of it has been focused on issues such as CRT or masking, which have deflected from bigger, long-term problems in schools, such as low literacy rates and crumbling infrastructure. I hope that people don't simply forget about education issues once their kids no longer have to wear masks to school, and begin to think about how we can make education better for all kids."

Some teachers cite student behavioral issues as contributing to their burnout, but most of the teachers I heard from held on in the classroom as long as they felt they could for their students' sake. After all, teachers generally go into teaching because they love kids and want to work with them.

“I never wanted to leave," an elementary school teacher from Washington who quit this year told me. "I cried with my students during my last week in the classroom. Their outpouring of love and understanding melted my heart. I had never felt so conflicted in a decision because I loved the students and my job.”

Between the pandemic throwing classroom teaching into chaos, parents and legislators dictating how and what teachers teach, and increasing assessments and top-down administration creating micromanagement issues, teachers feel like they aren't able to do the jobs they love and signed up for. They're not quitting because they hate teaching—they're quitting because they can't teach under these conditions. It's tragic, truly, and it's up to all of us to throw our support behind educators to stem the crisis a mass exodus of teachers will lead to.


This article originally appeared three years ago.

From Your Site Articles
@EliMcCann

Eli McCann's husband works on his garden while a friend keeps him company.

As you get older, it gets harder and harder to maintain friendships. It’s hard to make time for them as your family grows, bills pile up, and responsibilities keep cramming into your free time. It’s fairly common for plans to get canceled because you have chores that need to get done. However, a buzzworthy post on X stumbled upon a possible solution: invite your friends over for a “chore hang.”

Lawyer and humor columnist Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) shared online that his husband needed to get some gardening done, but wanted to catch up with friends at the same time. So he just invited them over in shifts! Not to ask them to pitch in, but to just keep him company and enjoy a popsicle as he weeded and planted in his yard.

This inspired hundreds of comments on X and Instagram:

“I love this! I’ve needed to go through a costly storage unit for years, but it’s creepy to go alone. So I haven’t done it. I don’t even want help. Just company 😆”

“We all need a friend who will just keep us company while we do our drudgery.”

“This is so me. Like please, sit in the kitchen area while I cook. No, you don’t need to do anything. Not a single thing but exist with me.”

This idea of hanging out with one friend while getting some needed errands or house work done comes at an era of mass loneliness in the United States. A 2024 poll by the American Psychiatry Association showed that one in three Americans are lonely every week. A study from Colorado State University showed that 40% of Americans that were surveyed didn’t feel as close to their friends as they wanted to be. In part, this is due to the fact, according to MSNBC and other sources, that most Americans are overworked, needing multiple jobs to make ends meet and using whatever little free time they have on necessary home tasks rather than leisure or hanging out with friends.

But we need to make time for our friends, not just to make us feel better emotionally and psychologically, but for our physical health, too. A 2023 study from the U.S. Surgeon General showed that a lack of social connection can negatively impact your heart and blood pressure while also increasing your risk of a stroke. That same study compared the lack of social connection as unhealthy as smoking 15 cigarettes per day!

While there are large society-based issues that need to be tackled to resolve this problem, there are small solutions that you can do to improve any loneliness you feel, increase your quality time with friends, get your stuff done, and decrease your risk of a heart attack. Similar to the “errand dates” trend on TikTok, a “chore hang” or whatever you’d like to call it can help achieve all of those issues.

If you have to get your clothes clean, grab a friend and give them a coffee to chat with while you wait for the dryer. If you need to clean out your shed, get a six-pack to share with a bud and offer them any items you were going to put up at a garage sale. Make a pizza and share it with a few friends friends while you dust and clean the rest of the apartment. The worst that could happen is that they politely decline and you end up doing your tasks alone anyway.

Life is a team sport, no matter how much of a solo journey it can become. All it takes to improve isolation is an invitation.

Kids at Seattle Center during Bumbershoot, 1973

A lot has changed since the 1970s. If you took a 20-year-old from 2024 and put them in a time machine back to 1974, they’d have a hard time figuring out how to use a telephone, get a good picture on the television set with rabbit ears, or buy tickets for the Pink Floyd or Jackson 5 concert.

They’d also probably be appalled by the number of people who smoke, the massive amount of litter on the streets, and the general lack of concern for the safety of children. In certain cities, they’d also be blown away by the amount of smog in the air.

A Reddit user directing a production that takes place in the '70s wanted to learn what life was like in the “Me Decade,” so they asked the AkkReddit forum for “some behaviors from that time that have disappeared,” and he received over 2,400 responses.

Some were bittersweet remembrances of a carefree and unsupervised childhood. At the same time, others recalled a time when children were often the targets of abuse and subject to many traumatic experiences that they were discouraged from speaking about.

We looked at the thread and chose the 17 best responses to behaviors from the ‘70s that “have disappeared.”



1. Playing with the phone cord

"Fidgeting with the long coiled cord while talking on the phone—like twirling your finger into the coil."

"We had a long cord that you could swing like a jump rope."

"Answering every phone call with some variation of '<last name> residence, <first name> speaking.'"

2. Smelling cigarette smoke

"Smoking everywhere all the time."

"I remember the teachers lounge in my grammar school oozing smoke."

"4 hour drives to see Nannie, all windows closed, both mom and dad smoking. Think of it, three 3 small kids getting poisioned from the 2nd hand smoke, pleading to stop or open the window and Dad saying 'get used to it, the world smokes' andMom saying the cracked open wi dow was 'too noisy'. Breathing through our coat sleeves with the arms opening under their car seats, where the fresh air came out. Four hours of constant nausea and illness that lingerd for 30 min after."

3. Soda cans for candy

"Returning soda bottles to the store and getting enough money back to buy a candy bar."

"Yes, having work and save up for the candy bar or pack of gum. Or being lucky enough to find a penny for the gum ball machine outside the grocery store. "

4. Clothes lasted forever

"The lengths everyone went to make things last, all our clothes were patched or sewn up and handed down. New clothes shopping was maybe once a year. Or whenever the Sears catalog came out."



5. Payphones

"Checking the change slot in the phone booths in case people forgot their coins. I also remember when phone calls were a dime!"

6. Calling the Time Lady

"367-1234. At the time the time will be 11:22 and 20 seconds — beep”

7. Playing outside all day

"When being sent outside to play meant you were given a radius to stay in like 'our neighboorhood,' and a time to be home was 'when the street lights come on.'"

8. TV was appointment viewing

"Reading TV Guide for program times."

"There was no way to record a show until VCRs came came out, so you watched a show when it was scheduled to be broadcast, and missed it if you didn’t turn it on at the time it started. So, families had to negotiate if there was more than one show on that people wanted to watch. Prime time was a big deal because that was when the three networks played their top shows."



9. Rabbit ears

"Wrapping tin foil squares on 'rabbit ear' antennas."

"When the picture got fuzzy, slapping the side of the TV set to correct the picture."

10. The phone book had many uses

"That big phone book was the booster seat for the youngest kid at the table."

11. CB radios

"References the cb radio culture during normal conversations. Everyone understood."

"Ten four"

"Breaker, breaker"

"You got that right, good buddy."

12. Long distance was pricey

"Making local calls vs long distance calls. Had to keep calls short to relatives because they were long distance. Making collect calls."

"Right, and you might add the cost of long distance calls was X amount per minute. Also, moving into a new place required a call to the telephone company to have a phone installed in various rooms and you had to preorder the types and colors."

"If you wanted to make an overseas call, you had to call the international operator at least a couple of hours before the call to schedule it."



13. Fake collect calls

"Making fake collect calls to your parents to come pick you up. 'You have received a collect call from … ‘we’re done and out front!’… do you wish to accept the call? Nope. Already got the message."

14. Before scrolling, we read

"Reading. Reading the newspaper. Reading the cereal boxes at breakfast. Reading on the toilet. Doing crosswords and word games. Before phones, you had to engage more with what was around."

"If there was no Reader’s Digest in the bathroom, you had to read the shampoo ingredients. Sodium laurel sulfate, etc."

15. The bank line

"When Friday rolled around, and you needed money for the weekend, you went to the bank, stood in line and made a withdrawal."
"We took our checks to the bank on Friday to be cashed, some for the checking account and some for spending cause everything was paid for with cash."

16. Unsafe seating in trucks

"No seatbelts, but drivers could get in trouble if car was overfilled, so a mom would yell 'duck' if she saw a cop. This would be a Volkswagen Bug with 7-8 kids piled up going to the beach or park. Totally normal to pile kids in the bed of a pickup truck - sometimes with folding chairs. Also common to grab the back of a car while you were skateboarding (there was a word for this I don't remember)."

17. Staring at the sky

"Laying down in the grass and looking at the sky. Leisure time died when portable entertainment became a thing, particularly nobile phones. The level of disconnection that's required to just stare at clouds or stars (and be happy doing it) is sorely missing nowadays. At least I miss it."


This article originally appeared last September.
El Hormiguero|Flickr and Canva

Tom Holland recently broke up a fight in grocery store

Tom Holland has captured the hearts of people across the globe in his portrayal of Spider-Man in the Marvel Universe movies. He had big webs to fill and he has exceeded people's expectations making it difficult for the character to be played by someone else. But it wasn't just what he can do in the blue and red suit hanging from buildings while fighting fictional bad guys. Holland seems to be a genuinely kind human being.

Audiences get to see his kindness play out in candid moments with fans and the seemingly storybook romance he has with longterm girlfriend, Zendaya. You often see him not only being gentle with the Disney alum and fellow Spider-Man co-star, but you see how protective he is when paparazzi is getting too close. People swoon over how he steps back from the spotlight during her events so the moment isn't about them as a couple but focused on her.

But there seems to be even more that further shows his kind, protective nature that some may not expect. In a recent interview with Men's Health where the celebrity covered a range of topics from his British accent annoying his parents to going grocery shopping, Holland spilled a little unexpected information.

Captain America Hello GIFGiphy

Yes, he can still do a backflip but as he's pushing 30 he fears he may not be able to do that much longer. The last time he indulged the curiosity of his young cousin by proving he can still defy gravity, he pulled all the muscles in his stomach and couldn't laugh for a week. Turns out Spider-Man is becoming a little more human with age, soon he'll be on the ground more often than not like the rest of us mortals.

Tom Holland Dancing GIF by Spider-ManGiphy

The biggest surprising revelation from the lengthy interview was that Holland not only does his own grocery shopping at Whole Foods like the rest of us, but he channels his Marvel alter ego when needed. On one of his recent shopping trips, the youngest Avenger notices a commotion behind him only to realize it's two men fighting. Instead of backing away or alerting authorities, Holland jumps right in the mix and pulls one of the men away.

"They’re like going at it, right behind me," he tells Men's Health. "I can see that he’s recognized me immediately, and you could see the wheels turning, like, I’m really angry, but Spider-Man is telling me to calm down."

You Betcha Tonight Show GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonGiphy

The experience must've been surreal for the guy Holland pulled away from the fight. How exactly do you explain that Spider-Man pulled you away from a fight without sounding like you're making it up? But Holland is known by those close to him for being someone that deeply cares for others.

"Tom is somebody who cares a lot about other people. He has a sense of responsibility and duty," Director Joe Russo who co-directed Captain America: Civil War tells the magazine before adding more later. "The thing that impresses me the most is that he has become an international movie star from the time we met him until now. He is hounded by the press. He’s in a very high-profile relationship. And he has remained exactly the same through all of it. Completely genuine, completely earnest, and as lovable as he was the day he first walked into our office for his first audition.”

There you have it. Holland has always been a kind person that sincerely cares about other people, so it's unsurprising that he stepped in the deescalate a physical altercation.

Humor

Adults are spoofing college acceptance reactions & proving you don't need a reason to celebrate

This is me waiting for the coffee maker to finish brewing in the morning.

khimburlie/TikTok & rachel_defore/TikTok

One of the more heart-warming genres of social media video you're likely to find is the college acceptance reaction video. Hopeful teenagers opening up college acceptance or rejection letters used to be a private, emotion-packed moment for families. Now it's common to film it and put it up on Instagram or TikTok — and people love them. Some of the videos are really amazing and emotional to watch; you can see the exact moment someone's biggest dream comes true.

Because this is the Internet we're talking about, people are now spoofing these videos. The trend started with people doing fake reaction videos in the vein of "Pretending I got into Harvard because I'm bored." But the spoof trend quickly took an interesting turn.

The newest trend on TikTok is gathering your friends and family around you so you can all react together to the most silly, mundane bits of positive news imaginable.

That's right, people are making up reasons to celebrate and we're all for it.

One family posted their 'reaction' to looking up their local Mexican restaurant online and finding that it's open on Christmas Eve.

Not only does everyone get to show off their acting chops (keep an eye on the brother, who weeps tears of joy in an Oscar-worthy performance), commenters had to admit the faux joy was contagious.

"Same reaction when they brought out the large queso in a gallon sized bowl" commented one user.

"why am i crying for you guys" said another.

Congratulations to Rachel and her family for this amazing turn of good fortune.

@rachel_defore

Please watch everyone separately😭#merrychristmas #fyp #christmaseve

Another family wept tears of joy when the Domino's pizza tracker indicated their order was in the oven.

This viral video even got the attention of Dominos, who wrote "I'm so proud of you, you’ve worked so hard for this moment"

Commenters on this one had their own ideas for achievements that might get them to celebrate like this:

Me, when my package says out for delivery

Me but “dasher has picked up your order”

I once read that the key to happiness is to always be waiting on a package. The excitement, the anticipation. It makes getting out of bed in the morning worth it. This video? Same vibes.

@khimburlie

we’re a family of big backs #fyp #siblings #pizza #dominos #collegeacceptance

This woman gathered her friends to watch her reveal her first flan cake, sparking a huge reaction when it turned out!

The build up is epic. And so is the cake.

@queen_bee_mari_mar

My first strawberry flan cake #chocoflan #collegerevealparody #collegeacceptance #firstflan #flan


One noteworthy observation about the trendy videos? They're mostly being made by adults who have left college acceptances behind.

Adults have been bemoaning the lack of holidays and celebrations in their lives for years. Once you've graduated college, gotten married, and maybe had a couple of kids, there really aren't a lot of occasions where your whole family gathers around to celebrate you. Birthdays lose their luster as you get older and your social circle shrinks; they can even make you sad because you're afraid of getting older or feeling bad that you haven't achieved more. It's called the birthday blues. Your Christmas presents get more and more boring with every passing year (tools and kitchen gadgets, anyone?)

In short, the older we get, the fewer reasons we have to celebrate. (And most of us never got to film our own college acceptance reaction because video cameras had to be shoulder-mounted). I know this TikTok trend started as a spoof and is mostly for laughs, but I like that it bucks the tradition of feeling like there are no exciting, anticipation-fueled moments in adulthood. I like that people are creating those moments for themselves, even if they are ridiculous.

I can't help but think of the ending of the movie Sideways, where the main character has been saving an incredibly nice bottle of wine to open on a special occasion. Someone tells him that the day he opens it, that's the real occasion. In the end, he opens the wine and drinks it out of a paper cup at a fast food restaurant, signaling his willingness to start finding joy in them mundanity of day to day life.

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into some silly TikTok videos, but either way, you should watch a few — you'll definitely enjoy the laughs.