Hi, Joseph. Thank you for your nice meaningful comment (and for opening the discussion).

I agree that nihilism has a negative connotation because it's mostly used by the type of teenagers as you mentioned. I think the "gloom" happened because, as paradoxical as it may seem, these people (or at least the ones I knew) also believed "meaning" serves some important functions in human lives (and that's what the crowd keep saying to them), so them seeing life as "meaningless" does more harm than good because they're not satisfied with life and think that life is just not, never enough for them.