An unintended reflection on the "vibe shift"

I sat down to write with a completely different idea in mind. Forget what it was now. Three sentences in, I hit a thought – two goth girls pointing at an isopod and saying "that’s you, bro,” I think it was – that sent this piece spiraling into an entirely different direction. It is what it is.

The consensus seems to be that we can say things like that again, things like it is what it is and I said what I said. One symptom of the thoroughly dissected vibe shift is that we've stopped feeling the need to keep a calculated distance between how we feel and what we say.

Indeed, irony has died for the umpteenth time since 9/11. Post-irony, for its part, failed to convince enough people that a strict adherence to cynicism was clever or cool. Meanwhile, meta-irony is off in the corner, overdosing on its own detachment. We're tired of unraveling layers; we want the score without second-guessing whether three times one equals three. Haha, it actually equals your mom. Exhausting!

So we're sincere at scale again, maybe for the first time since 2009, after it became clear that Hope was for fools and Change wasn't coming (thanks, Obama!), thus ushering in the Great Disillusionment. Some distanced themselves from sincere expressions because they felt vulnerable or exposed—and insisted everyone else should too.

Obviously, language was policed, and yes, it was briefly uncouth to call someone a pussy when they did something cowardly. Now imagine hearing someone say, “Actually, vaginas are extremely strong and can push out tiny humans” in today's climate and see that such hang-ups don't matter anymore.

But if a revival of saying things straight indicates the advent of some sort of grand correction – Santiago Pliego claims (don't click that) the vibe shift is fundamentally “a return to Reality"– what do we call it when, say, the American president blames Ukraine for starting the war only to be sanewashed by a broad segment of society as "speaking previously unspeakable truths"? The vibe shift is a boon to those who don’t care to distinguish between sincerity and sewage. Even with shit for brains one can speak from the gut.

Discourse frontliners often use the inclusive pronoun "we” to convey a sense of shared experience, as though even a Turkmen melon farmer will have been affected by the changing cultural signal in "our" "society." I'd wager that 95% of the world's population has no idea what I'm even referring to. Maybe most of you don't either. This is a good thing. In the absence of knowing, all is possible.

I find it amazing that we share a planet with living things that do nothing but eat light to survive while others write sentences like "The Vibe Shift is laughing at those trying to demonize men and cheerfully proclaiming ‘Dudes rock.'" (Pliego again). And still others read those sentences and even reflect on and republish them. In all sincerity: Shame on me. I sometimes wish I was algae.

Speaking of which: There's an older man on the boardwalk below where I'm writing from, watching the waves move in and out over a scatter of green-streaked sea stones. Try telling him there’s been a vibe shift and he’ll refer you to the ancient, changeless rhythm of the tide. When has the sea been anything but sincere?

Better yet, tell a friend from your hometown that they can “trust [their] eyes and ears again” and no longer have to “subordinate [themselves] and [their] family to the whims and anxieties of activists and bureaucrats.” (Yup: Pliego). They might call you retarded for suggesting it was ever otherwise. And they'll mean it, just like they always did.

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