> [Nihilists] deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them.

It resonates even more with people who would prefer those issues be brought front and center, people who dream of achieving social acceptance but can't swallow the apparent disregard for larger issues that casual society demands. That the powerful and confident Rick openly addresses their fears is validating; that he manages to be blasé about them is reassuring. They are tired of feeling weak next to their peers who seem strong (or, preferably, stupid) enough to work at forging confident and polished versions of themselves that aren't marred by of the horribleness of the world. Rick provides an alternative model of strength that includes adolescent disillusionments front and center instead of sweeping them under the rug; Morty to Rick presents an alternative route to competent adulthood.

And of course it seems "nihilistic" to them even though it is nothing of the sort. Nihilism is a natural fascination for socially isolated adolescents, because they feel all of their illusions being stripped away and wonder what will be left when the illusions are gone. (Adolescents who feel socially connected don't feel a gaping nothing waiting to swallow them up when when their childhood illusions are gone. That's why some kids are able to gloss over it as an occasional terror, while it feels like an essential aspect of reality to others.) "Rick and Morty" is leading them along, season by season, to the discovery that there is something left, and, like math, you don't understand it so much as get used to it. The more weird and amazing things you learn, the more you learn that you are going to have an ordinary life even if you also have an extraordinary one, and to go one step further into painful territory, even if you don't.

Eh? Do you mean nihilist in the (meta) sense that the show "is about nothing" and has no inherent meaning? Because none of the characters on Seinfeld strike me as nihilist either.

That's not to say I disagree with your point about Rick and Morty having nihilist characters; I don't think Rick is a nihilist, but I also don't think nihilism translates well to film and television. It's difficult to maintain compelling character development that can bring in a large viewership if a character is truly nihilist, in my opinion.

For my purposes I don't believe it's enough to have a character profess adherence to existential nihilism - I don't agree a character is nihilist unless they also act like it, and that is fundamentally difficult to do convincingly. I very often see writers use stoicism, ruthless utilitarianism, (dysfunctional) cynicism and even atheism as proxies to demonstrate a character is nihilistic, but none of those really hits it on the mark. I consider it like free will: you can make extremely compelling arguments that free will (in the sense of the capacity for non-deterministic decision making) simply doesn't exist (or is at best implausible), but there's not really a convincing framework for altering your behavior even if you claim to believe that. This is unlike atheism or agnosticism, which do have clear behavioral proxies when you abstract them away from considerations of intrinsic meaning - simply don't participate in religious communities, gatherings or activities for its own sake.

It's a profoundly nihilistic show, in a way that Rick and Morty doesn't even really touch.

Rick can travel between dimensions and meet infinite alternate Ricks and infinite alternate Mortys. The show informs us that he knows any one Morty or any one Beth doesn't actually matter. And Rick still occasionally cares about them. The subtext of Rick and Morty is almost anti-nihilist.

The nihilism in Seinfeld is presented realistically and non-fantastically and is so unsettling that people have a hard time even recognizing it for what it is.

Your first paragraph is a really good set of examples, so I can see now how the characters can be perceived as nihilists. But my personal conception of how nihilism would operate in real life is that it would be intrinsically erratic and dysfunctional, with the nihilist continually struggling against an inherent lack of motivation and a biological drive for self-preservation. In that sense I consider nihilism to the functional equivalent of absurdism and pessimism. Absurdism has essentially the same core tenets as nihilism, but its literature reacts to a lack of intrinsic meaning with flippancy and a declaration that people should ignore that and continually strive for meaning anyway (which is inherent dissonant, but basically don't think about it and live on). From there, nihilism appears to be, in my opinion, what happens when someone encounters the dissonance of 1) no intrinsic motivation anymore, brought about by intellectually grappling with existential despair, and 2) instead of leaving that state, whether through traditional existentialism/religion (Kierkegaard) or through tucking it away and forgetting about it, lives on with it and doesn't commit suicide out of biological necessity.

In contrast I think the examples you posed about Seinfeld's characters are more like deep self-absorption or narcissism, and maybe outright sociopathy. In a certain sense it seems like a much more implicit form of the unsettling indifference portrayed in a Brett Easton Ellis novel.

To that point, I'd observe that the show's most unhinged character is also the one with the most humanity and alertness to the world around him. What is the show trying to say about life by suggesting that you'd have to be like Kramer to escape the gravity well of self-absorption around Elaine, George, and, most of all Jerry, the character you're most meant to identify with?

There's only one somewhat-serious moment in the entire series, and it's when Jerry tells Elaine he doesn't want to get back together.

It's really brilliant and stands the test of time so well. But yes, definitely nihilistic.

I found Rust from the first season of True Detective to be a refreshing exception to that rule

Meanwhile: in what possible way is George Costanza not a nihilist?

From http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/

"While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history"

and

"It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence." (I think this actually fits a lot of Rust's character traits - even if I do agree that he is a moral character, but one struggling to justify those morals, and with self-destructive behaviors as a consequence)

So I agree that a rejection of morality is the much more central point of the concept of nihilism, but since it comes from radical scepticism, then rejection of religion, metaphysics, and anything else that requires faith, is an unavoidable side effect.

On a more personal note: I believe that extreme skepticism will put you in a place that's not sustainable for a mind to be in, and you'll eventually move on from it into 1) Embracing the pointlessness and its destructiveness and derive a sort of purpose from that, aka nihilism 2) Rejecting the pointlessness but acknowledging the fact that the morals you use to escape it are a social construct and not divinely given (aka Sartre's brand of existentialism) or 3) reject the pure skepticism and find meaning in religion after all (Kirkegaard's brand of existentialism). I'd say that Rust as a character is in the deliberation state between these outcomes (and I'd say he seems to go in a sort of 3)-ish way, though maybe more Buddhist than Christian). So no, not nihilist, but brushing up against it nonetheless

Nihilists aren't "super atheists".

In existential nihilism, the only real requirement is that the nihilist rejects any notion of intrinsic meaning to life and existence (at least if I'm not mistaken, I'm rusty on these things). Moral nihilism is a natural extension of that which just requires a rejection of intrinsic morality.

I would broadly say that it's really difficult to actually be a nihilist, just as I said elsewhere in this thread that it's hard to realistically disbelieve in free will, even if you intellectually process the arguments and agree with them. There's certainly a hard threshold to pass, but I disagree that it has anything to do with morality or principles. As far as I'm aware, constructing personal moral rules from first principles as a pragmatic matter is allowed so long as the nihilist 1) acknowledges that those principles are arbitrarily chosen and 2) not representative of, or descending from, any objective laws that can be gleaned from the world via deduction or induction.

Basically, I'm saying utilitarianism is a valid moral framework, and utilitarianism is compatible with nihilism. The nihilist will face significant challenges in actually living day to day life in congruence with nihilism (i.e. not really believing in anything), but the nihilist can still as a separate matter construct a moral framework that at least seems rational and internally consistent for the purposes of self-preservation.

Frankly this seems like sort of a rabbit hole. I can accept a stronger view of nihilism that disallows adherence to any moral framework, but how does that allow a nihilist to behave at all consistently or continue to function? If we take away the word "moral" and instead abstract away the terminology to, "a set of personally principles, consistently applied", what does a nihilist look like who simply doesn't have that?

If we go back to Rust, he does have moral principles, but his behavior and words are congruent with the core of existential nihilism: he rejects the notion of meaning in life and existence and admits that he attempted suicide in despair but simply couldn't out of cowardice. From that perspective it seems like nihilism plus a set of consistent principles could coexist as the continual dissonance between conscious hyper-intellectualism (existential despair) and unconscious biological drives (self-preservation).

How about Marvin from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? (granted it's a book, but it has been adapted for TV and cinema and Marvin is, in my opinion at least, the best character in those particular adaptations).

Nitpick. HHGTG was first a radio show, then a novel, then a TV series. Some think the TV series is actually closer to the radio show than the books…

The show is so quotable and relatable even almost 20 years later. Friends also does a pretty good job of this, but my problem with Friends is that you're supposed to like the characters (except Ross maybe) and they're all pretty terrible people. Seinfeld doesn't try and hide how terrible its characters are.

Game of Thrones is way more nihilist than Rick and Morty or Seinfeld. At least when it comes to morality, ethics, and humanity in general.

Rick and Seinfeld do some scummy things out of pure self interest (or disinterest), but Game of Thrones is 100% about taking the training wheels off and letting characters rape and murder each other. Rick doesn't take slaves. Jerry doesn't have his rivals killed.

What's more, fans of Game of Thrones often root against the non-nihilist characters for not being "smarter". "Dumb" characters are often guilty of loyalty or romance or honor.

I say this as someone who enjoys the show. But I enjoy it as a thought experiment of a different society with different rules and culture.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism

Sorry for spoiling the fun, but I honestly didn't get it at first.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/to-be-fair-you-have-to-have-a-...

https://twitter.com/Doc_Destructo/status/917103509387882496

> rick and morty has given a generation of extremely sad and utterly unlikable men the idea their shit is charming and funny

Do you know most nihilists personally?

Do you know a single one for that matter?

At least, it used to have witty dialogue. Now 95% of the conversation is:

Rick: "*Shut-uurp the f### up Morty you piece of s###"

Morty: "Y-y-y-y-y-you know Rick, not everybody likes the way things are going around here, Rick!"

Morty: "Aw jeez..."