There is a fancy name for everything these days. Skipped breakfast? Congratulations, you are intermittently fasting. Ate some vegetables? Turns out you are eating clean. Chewed those vegetables slowly while thinking about life, the universe and everything? Look at you, practising mindfulness!

Have you spent the past few months desperately hoping this pandemic would go away, but in the meantime you have become a fantastically wealthy novelist? Well, you may have been “manifesting”.

All the cool kids are “manifesting” these days, apparently: Vox has called it the “latest internet wellness craze”. Google searches for the term have rocketed during the pandemic; videos about it are all over TikTok; manifesting influencers abound. But what exactly does “manifesting” mean? It is a good question – with few straightforward answers. According to a recent article in British Vogue by Giselle La Pompe-Moore: “Manifesting is the materialisation of a thought or belief into physical form, based on the idea that our mind is a powerful tool for creation.” In other words, it is daydreaming while being deluded that those daydreams might come true.

It does not take a genius to figure out why manifesting, which was popularised in the 2006 self-help bestseller The Secret, is having a moment. When the world feels as if it is spinning out of control, the idea that we might be able simply to think our way to better circumstances is alluring. And, to be fair, it is not implausible. There is plenty of evidence, for example, that placebo pills can be effective; indeed, a 2011 study found that half of German doctors prescribe placebos. However, while it appears possible to manifest lower blood pressure, it is impossible to think your way to a world in which Donald Trump loses the US election to Jane Fonda and Boris Johnson retires from public life to paint model buses. Believe me, I have been trying.

• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist