I am in no way endorsing the book behind it, but I like this quote:

One was Ronald Purser, who is professor of management at San Francisco State University. He introduced me to an idea I hadn't heard before--a concept named "cruel optimism." This is when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture--like obesity, or depression, or addiction--and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. It sounds optimistic, because you are telling them that the problem can be solved, and soon--but it is, in fact, cruel, because the solution you are offering is so limited, and so blind to the deeper causes, that for most people, it will fail.

However, when I look up "cruel optimism", it seems like it's from a 2011 book that conceived it a little differently:

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life--with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy--despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives "add up to something."

Or as one of the commenters - a Doctor Moss - at the Amazon link puts it:

Lauren Berlant characterizes the term "cruel optimism" in various ways, but the one that spoke most clearly to me is "a projection of sustaining but unworkable fantasy."

The idea behind cruel optimism is a condition in which the happiness we've subscribed to as an ideal, when attained, isn't happiness and yet we continue to subscribe to it. A circle of frustration that seals its own exits.

The turn of phrase fits more neatly to the Ronald Purser version, but both versions are interesting to think about.

Two things that freak me out:

1. The next generation of cell phones will make it extremely easy to modify photos however you want.

2. What happens when official accounts are modified/cleaned up/distorted from what actually occurred?

I would love a clear-headed reason why I shouldn't panic.