This, however, does not mean there are no rules regarding self-expression on the Internet. It might be a wild space, but it’s not a lawless one.

The first is that talking about yourself on the Internet—pre-mood, even pre-social media—has always involved a degree of self-consciousness.

Take MSN Messenger’s status function (remember that?). It was an invitation to express yourself, but that didn’t mean you spilled your feelings for the world to see. If you were feeling a certain way and wanted people to know about it, without needing to be asked, said feelings still had to be couched with a certain amount of obliqueness.

If you were sad, for example, you said it with a carefully chosen My Chemical Romance lyric, and prayed that someone would get the hint.

In the age of mood, this coyness has only increased. Life is far more complicated and messy than we ever communicate on social media, and what makes it there is often simplified or carefully reframed.

For instance, let’s say someone posts a photo of a fishbowl of wine, with the caption mood AF. Ostensibly, this says: I had a bad day. But what does this mean? They could be drained or exhausted or frustrated or bitter or blue or vulnerable, or some combination of all of these.

Yet the photo of wine doesn’t really capture this at all. In fact, it’s arguably less about saying ‘I’m feeling down’ than ‘Wine is the best coping mechanism lol, haven’t we all been there?’

Images, GIFs, and expanded character counts should have given us endless options, but paradoxically, moods only exist at extremes. The possibilities are at once infinite and more limited than when we only had words to draw on.

The key is to be ironic, self-deprecating, and above all, funny. In other words, all moods are feelings, but not all feelings get to be moods.