Zoom in. Planet Google Earth. With your fingers. Europe, Germany. 52.35957702017085, 9.78567418604722. Can you see me now? Waldhotel Bischofshol. At the edge of the forest, next to the Autobahn. The satellites should be able to penetrate the windowfront of the breakfast room. Zoom in. Can you see me okay? I am on my phone. I am in my phone.
Anthropomorphic fruits cheat on each other. A toothpaste tube is shouting at me. An AI-generated blueberry is eating its kids. The objects speak. A friendly lizard launches rockets. I like the hissing sound they make. Again and again. Another rocket. Already on its way. It shines bright like a diamond. Plastic minifigures have decided to kill.
In 2023, philosopher Mark Satta popularised the concept of epistemic exhaustion—a state in which people become so cognitively and emotionally overwhelmed by persistent information overload and contested truth claims that they begin to disengage from evaluating what is true, relevant, or even worth attention. No arguments. Just affect, and drama, and scroll.
As Jacqueline Fendt argues, we are entering a vibocracy: a condition in which public life is no longer organized around shared facts or even shared disagreements, but around resonance—what feels right, what spreads, what sticks.
Shrimp Jesus, a dancing president, and a Lego missile trigger the same engagement loops and demand the same cognitive posture: affect before evaluation, atmosphere before argument. Under epistemic exhaustion, distinctions begin to blur. Ambiguity is not resolved; it is absorbed.
We swipe, swipe, tap, like, scroll. The absurd, the political, the violent, the trivial. They circulate through the same feeds, are processed through the same gestures, and are felt in the same way. Reality does not disappear. It dissolves into circulation—no longer able to stabilize meaning.
As evaluation recedes, persuasion begins to change form. It no longer relies on convincing arguments or coherent narratives, but on participation, imitation, and affective alignment. Content does not need to persuade; it needs to be picked up, remixed, and circulated. Visibility follows vibe.
What emerges is not the absence of politics, but its transformation. Affective infrastructures begin to replace deliberative discourse. Legitimacy is less often negotiated through shared standards, and more often enacted through resonance. The feed does not distinguish between entertainment and propaganda. It is no longer clear that we do.
I am still here. At the edge of the forest. The Autobahn nearby. A rushing hum. Ambient. Not cars, but a current. The forest softens it. It is always there, until it disappears into the background. The glass cannot hold it back.