You’ve all seen this video recently. “The Nihilist Penguin” has gained social media virality in 2026, even though the documentary featuring this penguin was shot in 2007. This post isn’t about the penguin, but the reaction of people seeing this penguin online. It’s my two cents on why people relate to this penguin, the idea of Nihilism, and what it means about life.
Everyone’s friend, colleague, mom, dad, and uncle have been posting about the nihilist penguin on social media, about how this penguin is bravely marching toward its death. It is abandoning its group in search of inner peace and not worrying about who is following it, thereby setting its own path.
But what does “Nihilist” mean? Nihilism is the belief that nothing in the world has a real existence, life is meaningless, moral values are baseless, and that knowledge is impossible. A true nihilist doesn’t care about rules, does not conform to societal standards, rejects common morals and values, believes that truth is an illusion, and overall, that “life is meaningless”.
Is life meaningless? Yes, it is. “Wait a second, I thought this was a post about the hypocrisy of nihilism?”, you might ask. It is, but one thing needs to be acknowledged. Life is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Think about it this way, this world has been up and running for 4.6 billion years. The average human is alive for 80 years; your presence is merely a speck of dirt in the timeline of this planet. This planet is a grain of sand in this galaxy, this galaxy is just a part of our local group, and the local group is nothing but a tiny sliver of the observable universe.
So, literally speaking, our existence is nothing but a microscopic particle compared to this vast cosmos. We are nothing but an electron to the universe, as the electron is to a human being. But these electrons make up atoms, atoms make up elements, elements make up matter, and matter makes up this universe. So as much as the electron wanes in comparison to the universe, it is fundamentally what creates it.
Let’s leave all of this universe talk out for a moment. Humans make up society. Your life may be insignificant at a macro scale, but the decisions you make on a daily basis affect people in the micro scale. We do the things we do, to make the people we want to be happy, happy. We are conscious, we make decisions purposefully. If we make decisions purposefully, all the time, on a daily basis, then why is life meaningless? Your meaning is obvious with every single decision you take; who you are as a person and what you want to achieve is just a result of this series of micro-decisions you take over a long period of time.
Ok, life has meaning, sure. But Nihilism talks about not conforming to society. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry on Instagram wants to be a Nihilist because of this penguin. If everyone isn’t conforming to society, doesn’t that mean that everyone shares the same view, meaning everyone is conforming to society at the same time? It’s paradoxical, but having Nihilists together is the same as not having any Nihilists at all. The road not taken becomes the most popular road if everyone wants to take the same road.
I believe this huge explosion in this meme is because of all the “Matrix” talk in recent times. “All of us are slaves, living in the matrix, struggling for something we don’t even know what it’s about. We should aim to break this matrix, and rise above it, because breaking through the matrix is the only way we can realise about life truly”. First of all, if all of us realise we are in the matrix, are we really in the matrix?
If everyone tries to break out of the matrix, what happens to the matrix? If the rat race is replaced by people trying to break out of the rat race, does it become the “people trying to break out” race? You are replacing one rat race with another. The moment anyone in society does anything together, it no longer becomes Nihilism. If life is meaningless, and the truth is an illusion, doesn’t that mean that life is not meaningless?
Anyways, what I am trying to say is: People inherently want to be special. People want to stand out. But we don’t see a lot of people standing out, simply because of its hypocrisy. If more people stand out, the more common the person standing out will be. If everyone leaves the classroom, you haven’t left the class, you’ve just shifted where class happens.
Nihilism is the same thing, if everyone denies something, then everyone accepts the denial, meaning everyone is accepting the same thing. A Nihilist will only work if there are no other Nihilists with him, the moment he becomes the majority, he becomes the exact person he swore to destroy.
Life is weird, and so is philosophy. Be a Nihilist, or don’t be one, I don’t care. But be who you want to be, do what you want to do. The fact that you want to do something itself means that you want to be someone, and that means that you want to live life in a meaningful way. It may not be apparent in the macro scale, but tiny meaningful actions over time build to who you are, and who you will be.
Also, turns out the penguin was mentally ill, I don’t know what that adds to this conversation, but I thought you should know.
Have a nice day,
Ciao