It's plastered all over painted blocks of wood for $40 at mildly up-scale places (or places trying to appear up scale), along with other "gems" of wisdom.
It's not so much the cornyness, but the posh posturing and sheer stupidity of having vapid expressions on expensive blocks of wood.
It reeks of toxic positivity, its associated with privileged, usually white, usually christian, suburban and boomer wives/moms who get to sit around at home all day, in a home, whilst doing nothing, who often admonish their own children for not being positive and grateful enough, and also invent tons of problems about meaningless bs, while said children have worked far harder than they have, and are more educated than them, but will likely never own a home.
Every time I see the phrase "toxic positivity" my first instinct to contest it, because my first experiences with the phrase were a misapplication (that being positive is somehow toxic,) but so far on Lemmy, I've only seen it used in ways that make sense (the toxic expectation that others will be exclusively positive.)
Its associated with karens. To me personally its a 100 percent truth. My sisters name is karen and she had this on her wall when I broke contact. To give this a little more perspective the last time my kids and I ate at a restaurant with her. My parents and her did what they always did. Complained so loudly they got a discount. They made the server cry. This incident occurred pre karen meme. My only regret of going no contact is I wasn't there when she pulled that shit and someone called her a karen and she couldn't figure out how they knew her name.
There is a trend of home decorating which prominently involves plastering one's home with signage written in cursive fonts, with a prominent one reading "Live, Laugh, Love." Other common ones are "Gather" or "Coffee" etc. It's a symptom of stage IV basic bitchery and/or karenism.
See also Rae Dunn ceramics, distressed chalk paint, and beige.
There was a family that lived next to my parents that lost their house in the 08 crash because they were sold a shitty loan. They were the sweetest people. I happened to be visiting when they had a huge blowout family party on their last day there. I was hoping it was using the money that was supposed to go to the banks. They were the epitome of what I think the original intent was of that saying. The world sucks, fr, but you have to live anyway. It's not toxic positivity if you live it. That's my take anyway.