The emotional state of many Americans is apparently so frail that an innocent tweet from Elmo has everyone telling the Sesame Street Muppet their entire life story.
On Monday, an X account for Elmo posted a simple tweet — “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
Whoever runs the account probably wasn’t expecting the tweet to go viral or for its comment section to be bombarded with people telling Elmo that well, they’re not doing so well.
The responses ranged from funny to downright existential.
“Suffering,” an Among Us account replied.
“Every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep. Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come. Every single day and every single week for life,” another comment notes.
“Elmo we are tired,” another person wrote.
“You know what seasonal depression is?? It’s like that but just all year round,” another X user wrote.
The Elmo tweet gathered more than 80,000 likes and nearly 10,000 comments within 24 hours, drawing responses from celebrities and even public health figures — and sparking a conversation about mental health on the platform.
Some high-profile users took the opportunity to be candid about their own mental health and struggles — and, in a way, Elmo’s tweet helped people feel seen. Many users were suddenly treating Elmo like a therapist or a journal.
West Side Story actress Rachel Zegler was one, noting in an X post that she was “resisting the urge to tell elmo that I am kinda sad.”
“I’m just looking for somebody to talk to and show me some love if you know what I mean,” singer and hip hop artist T-Pain told Elmo.
Writer Hanif Abdurraqib used his talent to encapsulate many people’s existential fears and mental health woes: “Elmo each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. One that was previously unfathomable in nature. Our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years, or months, now accelerates in hours, even minutes. However I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking.”
Most notably, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — who has used the platform to discuss the mental health crisis and the loneliness epidemic — replied to Elmo himself.
The massive amount of replies — many of them dark and concerning — prompted the official Sesame Street X account to post out a link to mental health resources.
“Elmo is glad he asked!” Elmo wrote in response. “Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.”
“We started this year… by trauma dumping so hard on Elmo the official Sesame Street account had to tweet out mental health resources,” X user @BeccaLizz wrote. “God help us.”
In 2021, Murthy released an advisory officially declaring a mental health crisis among young people in the U.S., given the rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two years later, Murthy released another advisory — this time highlighting isolation and loneliness as an epidemic and public health threat.
Even as the U.S. public is plagued with high rates of mental health issues and loneliness, the mental health sphere has experienced a shortage of providers and trained therapists — leading to long wait times, disrupted care and lack of access for many patients.
Some believe the Elmo internet occurrence went deeper than a joke and reflected the shaky state of mental health in the U.S amid the crisis and provider shortages.
“I really hope someone writes in a thoughtful way about why this tweet went viral,” noted Meg Pillow in an X post. “Because our world is filled with such judgment and cruelty and Elmo spoke with love to our inner child, and we all clung to it like a life raft.”
Whether Sesame Street asked for it or not, it seems the internet is now clinging to its characters as mental health ambassadors of sorts — with characters like Ernie, Bert and even Cookie Monster offering words of support under the hashtag #EmotionalWellBeing.
