The Line Between Delulu and Denial "Delulu is the solulu" was never really a joke. Underneath the irony, it was a real philosophy: believe something so hard that reality eventually catches up. For a while, that worked — as a mood, as a meme, as a way to survive a decade that gave people plenty of reasons not to believe in anything. But somewhere in the last year, the joke started curdling. The internet is now calling delulu "dead", not because people stopped being delusional, but because the fantasy stopped protecting anyone. Vision boards don't pay rent. Manifesting a better boss doesn't get you one. And a generation that got very good at ironic self-belief is now asking a harder question: how do I know if I'm building myself up, or just lying to myself more elaborately? I've written before about the value of productive self-delusion — the Head Chef mindset, believing in your work before it's earned belief. I still stand by that. But I wan...