Name: Sadfishing: The English We Speak
Uploaded: 2026-01-06T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 2 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello and welcome to the English We Speak.

Now, Fei Fei, can you help me with this social media post I'm trying to write?

Well, I want to post something about how tired I am

because I've been working so hard and how I just can't go on.

It looks like you're looking for sympathy.

I just want to tell people how exhausted I am because I'm so hard working.

When someone is sadfishing, they're exaggerating their emotional problems,

particularly via social media, so they get sympathy or attention from others.

Right, well, I'm going to send my post now.

He got lots of likes for his post about having no friends, but

I don't know if Heidi really has a problem with her skin.

I think she's just sadfishing and wants attention.

Some people say there's a growing trend for sadfishing and people just share their worries online to get noticed.

This is the English We Speak from BBC Learning English.

And we're talking about the expression sadfishing,

which describes when someone exaggerates their emotional problems,

particularly on social media, to get sympathy or attention.

I'm just telling people about my terrible life so they understand.

Oh, and look, I've received a comment already.

He says, "Stop moaning. I work even harder every weekend and every evening.

Trying to get someone to say something good about him.

No, he's just sad. Working at the weekends.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Sadfishing: The English We Speak

expression

exaggerate

completely

describe