DE Weekly: Cynicism, Meaning, & Smiling Friends
Below is an archived email originally sent on July 28, 2025.
Cynicism, Meaning, & Smiling Friends
There are many roads that lead to existentialism. What piqued my interest at first was how the philosophy presented itself to me during what I would call my “quarter-life crisis.” I had a feeling of listlessness, uncertainty, and dread about how my life was going to unfold in the years to come.
For me, what I saw in existentialism offered hope: a way out and a way forward of this hopelessness I was feeling.
For others, a draw to existentialism is less inspiring. It appeals to them for its negative aspects, its lurking cynicism. If not carefully navigated, this road can lead to nihilism.
Last year, I wrote a newsletter about the adult cartoon Rick and Morty, specifically how the show embraces cynicism and nihilism, both of which pervade our society in terrible ways today.
Today, I’ll introduce you to another adult cartoon called Smiling Friends. I’m going to focus on one episode in particular, titled “Frowning Friends.”
Smiling Friends follows a group of characters who work for a company called Smiling Friends Inc., whose mission is to bring happiness to the world and make people smile.
In the “Frowning Friends” episode, a competing company called Frowning Friends moves right across the street from their office, and their mission is to––you guessed it––bring frowns to people’s faces and make them sad.
The company even employs the exact opposites of the two of the main characters Pim and Charlie, a duo of evildoers named Grim and Gnarly.
Throughout the episode, Pim and Charlie try to make up for lost business by approaching strangers and trying to make them smile. Unfortunately, the Frowning Friends got there first, and these people are resigned to misery.
As they lament their situation, Charlie tells Pim that he understands these people are the “Bizarro” versions of them, but what’s their end game? What is the point of all this?
If you listen to the Frowning Friends, there is no point. “It doesn’t matter because you will die one day,” says Grim.
All the while this is happening, Pim and Charlie’s boss (aptly named Mr. Boss) slowly goes mad thinking how he can save his business and put the Frowning Friends out of business.
Ultimately, he lands on killing them.
In the last sequence of the episode, as Grim and Gnarly stand on the balcony of the Frowning Friends’ office building, he tells a crowd of spectators, “And that is why you shouldn’t try to better your life––because you might fail. So it’s easier to frown!”
He then plays a video on a projector screen behind him of horrible things in the world: armies marching, deformed and diseased people, famine, disasters…
He’s coaxing the crowd into the nihilism he espouses, which equates to: “How can you smile when bad things happen?”
“Nothing matters because we’re all going to die someday!,” he exclaims.
When Grim says this, Mr. Boss busts open the door behind him, rifle in hand, ready to shoot and kill Grim and Gnarly.
When Mr. Boss points his gun at Grim, Grim starts crying, sobbing, and begging not to be killed. He soils himself for good measure.
Upon seeing this, the crowd, just a few moments ago ready to embrace nihilism, notices the hypocrisy of Grim’s pleading not to die.
After all, wasn’t it true that nothing mattered? That we are all going to die, so what’s the point anyway? The crowd angrily disperses.
Instead of killing Grim, Mr. Boss manages to calm him down by telling him what a good idea his company was. It was so good that it made him snap with jealousy and try to kill him.
Once they hear this, Grim and Gnarly realize that Mr. Boss is right, and they crack a smile. In their smiling stupor, they are then fatally shot with arrows by a group of knights on horseback called the Renaissance Men.
So, what’s the moral in all this? Aside from the absurdity of the episode’s plot, what does its resolution tell us?
There’s an adage that goes, “The simplest argument to refute a moral nihilist is to kill them.”
It may sound tongue in cheek, but the quote seeks to make nihilists stand behind their own beliefs. If they think everything is so bad and that nothing matters because we’ll all die one day, then what’s the big holdup? Why be afraid to die?
The truth is, I think nihilists are searching for the same thing we all are. It’s the same thing I was searching for when I first discovered existentialism.
Meaning.
Meaning is the antidote to nihilism, the opposite of apathy. To admit you think there is a meaning to life, a meaning to it all, is to admit that you are brave enough to stay in this world to try and figure it out.
To reject the sadness and the evil and the despair and not give in to it.
To try and fail, and try again. To search and search for the good things in life, to roll with the bad things and know that you will see them through. I don’t know how cynics and nihilists can exist when there is another option that is so much better.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
My younger brother first showed me Smiling Friends, so that’s how I ended up writing about this. It’s a weird, weird show.
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