NIHILISM, THEY SAY, IS WHY THE WORLD IS BAD NOW.
That may not exactly be right, but the word trends every few months because it increasingly is the gray tint filling in for the rose-colored lenses we once viewed the world through. A "post-ironic fatalism," as Charlie Warzel described in The Atlantic, now paints the internet. Or: the present world is flirting with fatalism, welcoming killers proud to have no reason (Ahem, Tyler "Bella Ciao" Robinson) and a Christian right increasingly lacking a philosophy other than "owning the libs." Our words are losing meaning too, not because we're plugging our ears and ignoring each other but because some words — 67, skibidi, eefoc — intentionally mean nothing. The end really has no end.
Much of this is internet leakage, techno rot, because these online domains were once tools to help us, enabling the closure of physical space so that we can share ideas and play with ease. Now? It's largely all a point of sale as everyone and everything is content, something to be consumed by any and all lenses, be that by your mother or a friend, the police state or whatever alien life is watching us from above. "Smile! You're on camera :)" is now a panoptic threat given Ring to your NSA agent monitors you so they can become you, a bribe where your autonomy is wagered against someone holding you hostage to participate in mandatory fun for their profit. Our language reflects this too, with "rage bait" and "hallucinate" and "parasocial" and "brain rot" and "enshittification" defining the era. Perhaps a negativity bias, sure, but also: damn, bitch, you live like this? Looking around these slums of slop, it's true.
None of this is fun, which is why people are posting less and quitting social media — and also why politics just like our personal lives are a steady drip of bile. The arts are being killed by AI as are our minds, our skills, our connections. "For thousands of years, people have been very much interested in people," the actor Stellan Skarsgård said of this moment in relation to film. "The concentration of capital is the problem for every industry, for humanity. AI is nothing without the men behind it. AI is owned by the tech barons standing right behind power." "This used to be my playground," I cry as I haunt the dead links I once visited, my favorite sites now shuttered, taken over by slop, squatted by posting farms, pillaged by private equity. My kingdom for an NFT instead of a god damned horse.
"What was it all for?" we wonder, Millennials and those above and below who knew a better life and time. This isn't a MAGA-friendly nostalgia but a deep understanding of quality lost, notions that Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison defined in Super Normal, items and objects and ideas that threaten to be invisible because they do such a good job doing what they do. And yet: everything in life because of — or in spite of — tech is noisy. Everything squeals and squeaks, clunking with a crudeness that suggests everything proceeded this moment was a joke. For what? A video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt over Jeffrey Epstein? Jesus wept, as did I.