Is it Hopium or Hope Porn?

I have heard the term ‘hopium’ used since my earliest days as a doomer.  ‘Hope’ + ‘opium’ = ‘hopium.’ Hope as an opiate drug that numbs the mind and keeps us believing the delusion that a future without collapse is possible. Hope as a belief that there is a plan that could work. Hope as the blue pill, staying in Plato’s cave, blissful ignorance. Hope as willful blindness to reality. Hope as deceptive expectations, as I wrote in this essay.

According to Gail Zawacki in her “Universal Map of Doom,” hopium was originally defined as follows:

Hopium – arguably coined by Lonewolf back in 2000 on the Survival Acres forum, designating that deranged condition in which a person is deluded into thinking humanity will survive omnicide.

Hopium is the word used by doomers and climate realists to mock public statements that exhibit irriational optimism about humanity’s current predicament. In particular, hopium is often ascribed to statements that are optimistic about wind and solar expansion, geoengineering, carbon sequestration and other specific remedies.

Hopium also applies to aspirational goals, for example, reducing methane 30% by 2030 (the Glasgow Compact) or keeping the global mean temperature anomaly below 1.5°C (the Paris Accord). Hopium also applies to anything else that falls under the category of Sam Mitchell’s catchphrase, “Ain’t Gonna Happen.”

Hopium is specifically directed towards aspirational remedies or technological pathways for which there is some claim of benefit toward the continued growth of global industrial civilization.

Hopium is the “Everything is Fine” cartoon you are surely familiar with. It is a way of challenging views that ignore a future that is already locked and views that understate the speed with which collapse is happening. Hopium is a way of acknowledging that the changes that are needed are both too radical and too painful to ever happen in a world that is marching steadily backwards from these goals.

But mostly, ‘hopium’ is a rhetorical device that brings a sense of community to the user. Its use is core to the vernacular of doomers, collapsitarians and climate realists. By using the word ‘hopium,’ the person gains a sense of belonging to a group with a similar world view. That these are end times for global industrial civilization, that there is no hope for humanity, and that we all know this with certainty. In that sense, the word can be theraputic as well.

By contrast, the term ‘hope porn’ is new to me, and appears to be a novelty in the context of climate change. It hit me hard when I first saw it used just a few days ago, when it appeared in the title of an extraordinary essay by George Tsakraklides, published on January 9, 2026 on his SubStack, titled “Detoxing from the Hope Porn: Why Collapse Realism is the New Activism.”

We should all follow Tsakraklides advice and divorce ourselves from this necrocapitalist dystopia,

I’m following nature’s example and removing myself as much as I can from the toxic experience of being a modern human living in a late-stage necrocapitalist dystopia, forced to have relationships with these beings. 

As I read the essay, I was looking foward to getting to his definition of ‘hope porn.’ Unfortunatley, the only time ‘hope porn’ appeared in his essay was in the title. There was no definition or futher clarification.

I then went to Google to look for a definition and typed in ‘hope porn’ to the search bar hoping that the Urban Dictionary would return something. Well, you can imagine what that search brought. I encourage you not to try it. Spoiler: I found zero mentions that were not directly linked to pornography and porn websites. I quickly cleared my browser history after the search.

But the term ‘hope porn’ rang true for me for reasons I couldn’t easily articulate at the time. So I ventured a new posting meme on social media. Instead of daily ‘doom quotes’ that I’ve been posting for several years, I started posting daily ‘hope porn’ quotes.

Here are two early ‘hope porn’ quotes with a link to the Twitter post:

But always remember: this is a battle against the forces of destruction to save something of this achingly beautiful, utterly miraculous world for our children.
— Genevieve Gunther  (Twitter Link)

Together, we can do this. We must–we inescapably hold the fate of our children’s future in our hands. We are the growing solution. Every person is needed to help make this great cultural transition. Will you join us?
— Taylor Hawke (Twitter Link)

From these quotes, you can see that I was drawn to defining ‘hope porn’ as having to do with keeping global industrial civilization alive, growing and healthy “for the children.” But there is no fix claimed in these quotes, no agenda, no method, no thing that “Ain’t Gonna Happen.” These quotes were not about policy or politics or personality. They just proclaim in the emptiest of terms that there is something abstractly good that is possible in the future for human children.

But these particular quotes are also burdened by guilt, that somehow children are innocent, that humans come as a blank slate, that good is possible “for the children” regardless of millennia of human suffering and abuse that proves the opposite. And that I am to blame, in particular, if that future doesn’t come to pass.

To put it bluntly, saving the world “for the children” is not a reason to save the world. Children become adults. Adults consume and destroy and reproduce more children. A cancer cell, no matter its age, is still a cancer cell.

From these two, however, I started gaining confidence in a definition of ‘hope porn’ and understanding why I was drawn to certain statements as being ‘hope porn’ instead of ‘hopium.’

Here are two recent ‘hope porn’ quotes:

Together, we are a climate citizenry. We wade collectively through the paralysis of fear, grief, shame, and hopelessness and into action that brings feelings of strength, possibility, and even joy.
— Katharine K. Wilkinson (Twitter Link)

Truth is on the side of those of you who are most affected by the crisis. Morality is on your side. Justice is on your side. I urge you to raise your voices and demand what you are owed.
— Greta Thunberg (Twitter Link)

By contrast with ‘hopium’ the term ‘hope porn’ carries with it a dangerous, insulting, shocking and contemptuous edge. Any reference to ‘porn’ is viewed by some as exploitative and morally repugnant and I’ve gotten direct feedback in the comments to my posts saying as much.

By using the term ‘hope porn’ I am suggesting something voyeuristic and indulgent, but ultimately empty of meaning. Climate ‘hope porn’ delivers a temporary emotional high, it feels good while you’re reading or hearing it, but it leaves you with nothing after its over except for the memory of the experience.

But ‘hope porn’ is larger than just quotes about saving the world for our children or wading collectively through paralysis or the particular side that truth is on. ‘Hope porn’ is about masquerading a philosophy of continued growth of global industrial civilization as empowerment and moral uplift. It is about changing absolutely nothing at all while feeling good about yourself for a fleeting moment.

In any moral sense, ‘hope porn’ is much worse than ‘hopium.’ It doesn’t even attempt to offer substance. It just does its best to look sexy and lure you for a moment, to lie about its desire for a relationship with you, even to exploit children at times, and then to leave you alone and empty and wondering what that was.

Both ‘hopium’ and ‘hope porn’ are sharp and cynical labels to bring into climate conversations. They target overly optimistic and hopeful mainstream messaging. They both show frustration as they try to push the conversation beyond the mid-point of the bell curve towards worse case outcomes. The easiest way to distinguish between them is to observe that ‘hopium’ targets substance while ‘hope porn’ targets desire. And so here it is, my attempt at the definition (this may be subject to change):

Hope Porn – likely coined by George Tsakraklides in January, 2026 on his SubStack, ‘hope porn’ refers to feel-good optimistic climate messaging that delivers a temporary emotional high by invoking beauty, miracles, strength, possibility, children, morality or other positive-themed motivational rhetoric, but provides no clear goal, details or actionable path.

We live in a rapidly deteriorating biosphere in a late-stage necrocapitalist dystopia forced to have a relationship with hope. To paraphrase Socrates, unexamined hope is like an unexamined life. Not worth living.