On Monday the X account for Elmo, the fuzzy red monster from “Sesame Street” posed a softball question to its 457,000 followers: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
In thousands of responses, social media users let Elmo know that no, actually, they were not doing too hot.
“Elmo I’m depressed and broke,” one wrote. Others told Elmo that they had been laid off, that they were anxious about the 2024 election, or that their dog had rolled around in goose feces.
“Elmo each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror,” read a response posted by Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet, essayist and contributor to The New York Times. “One that was previously unfathomable in nature. Our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years, or months, now accelerates in hours, even minutes.”
The response continued: “However I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking.”
According to X’s metrics, Elmo’s question was seen more than 140 million times. Samantha Maltin, the executive vice president, chief marketing and brand officer of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street,” said that Elmo might not have been prepared for all the emotional fatigue shared in response.
