Why are thousands of netizens relating to a penguin walking towards certain death? It could be because humans need to attach meaning to everything
Representational Image
The penguin does not rush. It pauses, turns its head, looks back at the dark mass of its colony, and then continues walking, alone, towards the mountains. In Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World (2007), the moment lasts only a few seconds. Herzog’s voiceover is calm, almost clinical, until it lands on a line that now feels prophetic in the age of the Internet. “He [the penguin] would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice nor return to the colony. With 5000 kilometres ahead of him, he’s heading towards certain death.” Then came the question that has since escaped the film and taken on a life of its own online — but why?
In Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World documentary, a penguin detaches itself from its colony and walks away towards distant mountains, leaving viewers asking themselves “But why?”. PIC/INSTAGRAM@ifp.world
The video, despite being released almost 20 years ago, is trending on social media now as the “nihilist penguin” meme. The penguin’s actions have been decoded thousands of times, often with absolute certainty. “The penguin is depressed. The penguin is rebelling. The penguin is tired of the system. The penguin is us.” With melancholic music on top, the clip has become a vessel for nihilism, freedom, burnout, and radical independence.
For Kritagya Saxena, a 21-year-old computer science student, the first impression was far less loaded. He encountered the clip on YouTube Shorts, stripped of context. “My first instinct was not to see it as getting away from the colony,” he says, pointing out that many versions show only a single penguin on ice. It was only later, after watching extended edits, that the narrative of abandonment became clear.
Kritagya Saxena
A film enthusiast, Kritagya saw the penguin less as a symbol of despair and more as an explorer suspended in uncertainty. “I understand geography — that penguin won’t survive much on mountains — but he is not there yet,” he explains. “It does not conclude anything. It felt like someone who just needs a break or exploration.” For him, the pull of the clip lay as much in the stark beauty of Herzog’s cinematography as in the animal itself. “If it was just the video, I don’t think people would look so deeply into it,” he adds. “But when you put background music and edits, it starts sticking with you, with the narrative it is trying to portray.”
Penguins at the Byculla zoo. File pic
That narrative hunger, according to adman Rahul daCunha, has as much to do with how we now relate to each other as it does with algorithms. “We live in a time where real interactions don’t have the same fulfillment as something outside of us,” he says. “You can detach from your own emotions. With a real person, you have to deal with a real person. Social media brings you a sense of detachment.”
Trends, he notes, are built to feel meaningful in the moment and disposable soon after. “Every time there is a challenge or a trend, it seems to have some sort of meaning in that moment, but it fades away next week.” He also wonders whether the resonance says something about the collective mood. “As people are getting more isolated and perhaps mental health is affected, are we finding meaning where none may actually exist”
Podcaster Kautuk Srivastava takes this a step further, placing the penguin firmly inside humanity’s long tradition of myth-making. “Human beings are meaning-making animals,” he says. “You look at a cloud and see a horse. You look at the night sky and see hunters and bears.” To him, the clip almost feels animated. “It looked like a Pixar film come to life,” he says, noting how deeply penguins are culturally coded as communal creatures. A lone penguin, simply by behaving differently, becomes narratively irresistible.
Dr Sanjay Kumawat, Kautuk Srivastava, Rahul daCunha and Abhishek Satam
The truth, he reminds us, is unknowable. “It could literally be that the penguin got pressure really quickly and thought, ‘I don’t want to do it in front of everybody else.’ But we’ll always find our own meaning to put on things.” Edits, he says, do most of the emotional work. “Every edit is an edit into reality. If you put sad music, it becomes sad. If you put happy music, it becomes happy.” He laughs at how quickly seriousness collapses. “I eventually saw the video and thought it was hilarious.” The penguin, in his view, is just the latest in a line of Internet animal protagonists. “Every so often, we choose one animal to become the Internet hero of the month.”
Part of that appeal, Srivastava suggests, lies in trust. “With people online, it’s such a disingenuous place. You never know their motive. With animals, there is nothing like that. They feel like a purer form of being.” They are what they are, animals. But when identification with isolation becomes intense or repeated, psychologists urge some caution. Dr Sanjay Kumawat, consultant psychologist at Fortis Hospital Mulund, traces part of this impulse back to the pandemic.
“During COVID, our social life was totally fried,” he says. Social media became a substitute form of connection, a “cognitive exercise” that offered security against loneliness. For some, especially those shaped by trauma, bullying, or abuse, going “anti-social” becomes a form of resistance. “They develop disregard for rules and authority,” he explains. Visibility then becomes a way to reclaim identity. “Being different gives them pleasure. It gives them a sense that ‘I am somebody’.”
Seen from this angle, identifying with symbols of isolation can be a metaphor but it can also signal a desire to be seen precisely through standing apart. Biologically, however, the penguin’s behaviour is far less dramatic than the Internet would have us believe. “It’s not unique,” says zoo biologist Abhishek Satam at the Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Udyan in Byculla. Penguins may walk away from a group out of curiosity, attraction to food, or simple disorientation. Climate change, he adds, has also affected navigation patterns. “Sometimes they show such behaviour. It’s a pretty common thing.”
Our reaction, he suggests, is shaped by cuteness and memory. “Since childhood, we’ve seen penguins as cartoon characters. People connect that way.” Perhaps that is the most we can take away. The penguin may not be searching for meaning at all. The meaning belongs to us as it is stitched together from edits, music, timing, and a world eager to see itself reflected, even in a bird walking quietly into the ice.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
