Don’t scoff: Researchers say more and more terms for these “neo-emotions” are appearing online, describing new dimensions and aspects of emotion. velvetmist was one main example In a journal article about the incident published in July 2025. But most neo-emotions imo are not inventions of artificial intelligence. Humans come with them, and they’re part of a larger shift in the way researchers think about emotions, emphasizing how people constantly come up with new emotions in response to a changing world.
VelvetMist may be a one-off chatbot, but it is not unique. sociologist marci cottingham-whom 2024 paper This vein of neo-sense research was initiated – citing many more new words in circulation. There is “black joy” (Black people celebrating embodied joy as a form of political resistance), “trans euphoria” (the joy of affirming and celebrating one’s gender identity), “eco-anxiety” (the looming fear of climate disaster), “hypernormalization” (the unrealistic pressure to continue mundane life and labor under capitalism during a global pandemic or fascist takeover), and “doomers”. Feelings of “doomsday” (one who is constantly pessimistic) or “doomscrolling” (glued to an endless feed of bad news in a constant state of apathy and fear).
Of course, emotional vocabulary is always evolving. During the Civil War, doctors used the centuries-old word “nostalgia,” combining the Greek words for “returning home” and “pain,” to describe the sometimes fatal set of symptoms suffered by soldiers—a condition we would probably describe today as post-traumatic stress disorder. Now the meaning of nostalgia has softened and has become a gentle affection for an old cultural product or a lost way of life. And people constantly import emotional words from other cultures when they are convenient or evocative. Hyge (Danish word for friendly comfort) or Cavell (A Jewish word for joyful pride).
Cottingham believes that neo-emotions are on the rise as people spend more of their lives online. These coins help us connect with each other and understand our experiences, and they get a lot of engagement on social media. So while a neo-emotion is just a subtle variation or combination on existing emotions, being hyper-specific about those emotions helps us reflect and connect with other people. “These are potential signals that tell us about our place in the world,” she says.
