The cake is a lie but this blog post is real.
If, like me, you‘ve been online for a bit longer, at least since the 00s, you will also have come to notice that with broader access, standards have been slipping and the Internet is getting both uncontrollably dumber and controllably more restricted and sanitized by the second and it‘s not a bug but a feature. People have knowledge at their hand more easily available than ever before in human history and they‘re still choosing ignorance as they congregate on the very few, closely monitored platforms. The stuff I get to read nowadays and the overall behavior are dumber than 10 years ago. The amount of people in their mid twenties behaving like people in their mid teens is absurd. Worse, you can‘t even call this out. The very few online platforms we have nowadays are so sanitized people keep spouting low IQ drivel but you can‘t even call it that anymore or else you‘ll get admonished in one way or another. Saying stupid shit is encouraged, saying “stupid shit“ frowned upon. I used to think the kids screeching insults in Call of Duty lobbies were the lowest of intelligence we got, nowadays they‘re more like the last bastion of freedom fighters. You think these kids are less intelligent than soccer moms sharing Buzzfeed top 10s on Facebook? The average twitter user trying to make you commit social suicide for pointing out the new norm of antisocial? They are stimulus response machines reacting to key words and phrases with pre-programmed vitrol.
It is precisely in these controlled social media environments where opinions become content and discussions become algorithm-driven rage encounters that certain tendencies and trends become all too visible. And one of them is the ever-growing process of infantilization, not only but especially painfully so in regard to politics.
We‘ve been through several crises in the last years and I‘ve come to notice a pattern: that people treat these as a story arc. And they know all the story arcs from their favorite media.
The need to classify reality through the lens of fiction is the next step of infantilization. And we‘re already part of it.
People treat Russia‘s war of aggression with all sorts of crimes against humanity against Ukraine as a soccer game. You pick a team and start cheering. I have seen Star Wars references amongst others. The intellectuals of our times used to measure bad things in units of Hitler and I‘m starting to miss those times. Because once you start to apply Darth Vader references to explain how evil Putin is, I‘m beginning to wonder if moronic boomer parents didn‘t have a point when they pointed at gaming and TV consumption and said “kids these days can‘t separate real life from fiction anymore!“ The kids are grown-ups now and it turns out they really fucking can‘t. It‘s all a simulation to these people.
The current situation in Europe has demonstrated the need to compare actual atrocities to That Thing I’ve Seen In That Thing I Consume A Lot all too much. Russia’s war on Ukraine is absolutely horrid but apparently not horrid enough to go without… pop culture references. The failed Russian coup was, at the end of the day, not seldomly characterized as “They went from Game of Thrones Season 1 to Season 8 within a single day, what a letdown“.
Mind you, both Russia and Ukraine do this too. Ukraine has an official account that essentially does nothing but post war memes. The difference is that Ukranians are allowed to do this because they are the victims here and whatever it takes to boost the country‘s morale is just good enough. You aren‘t and subsequently shouldn‘t do any of this bullshit. It also illustrates a very sad point – Ukraine has long since realized that they must do this. People don‘t watch wars. They watch TV shows. The worst thing that could happen for Ukraine is that everyone gets bored and moves on. There are several wars in Europe going on that we simply don‘t care about. The moment the Millennial Ally, TikTok Zoomer Cyber Soldier and Wine Mom Who Is So Appalled She Dropped Her Glass In Shock stop caring, so do governments. When your survival hinges upon on how emotionally invested people in other countries behind a screen are in your story arc of survival, you know things are dire. In a way, how we treat the Ukraine war is the story of our times.
War happens on TikTok too. You can watch soldiers being killed with edgy teen music playing in the background right inbetween a funny cat video and one about a feminist getting owned. YouTubers have found a way to commercialize the war through reaction videos and propaganda. The 5 minute hate has become available anywhere and everywhere.
Not much better is the Internet’s bubble building, wherein everyone repeats the tired and worn out established canon of approved jokes that anyone with a bit of common sense should have already gotten tired of. I swear, if I get to read “HAHAHAHA GUESS WHO NEEDS TO BE MINDFUL OF OPEN WINDOWS NOW :DDDDDD“ one more time. But they‘ll never stop. Because this is an act of self-validation. The biggest tragedy in this war to some of these jesters would not be running out of people but running out of windows.
And so come the jokes until they, too, become self-referential and part of the audience game. Reference spamming is anti-intellectualism at its finest anyway, it’s formalism distilled to its lowest form so it‘s no surprise the people who combine this with politics lack the intellectual capacities to understand why what they‘re doing is imbecilic and tasteless. It also adheres to the formula of “more of the same“, something that people are familiar with and that‘s comfortable and validating. It‘s the “just turn your brain off“ of Internet behavior, if you will.
We’ve hit a new high in performative infantilization and we can see this every day on the Internet. Just look at the shit that’s trendy on twitter. When I realized that adults in droves are watching the Barbie movie ironically and unironically, I figured that everyone else must have become crazy. But this is the new normal. Oh, but don‘t you worry, it‘s a critical darling because it has Internet feminist talking points. That‘s right, people are getting their politics validated from a Barbie movie now. I thought the entire “OH EM GEE, Oppenheimer and Barbie are airing on the same day? Even though they have nothing in common?!“ concept was the worst thing I had seen on twitter last month but this? This absolute low IQ behavior? I‘m just waiting for the next political debate to come up and someone saying in baited breath “Holy shit… this is just like the Barbie movie“.
Also, on an unrelated sidenote, before I can finally put this topic to a rest: if your main thought after going into Barbie is “I‘ve learnt a lot about men today“ and your main thought after going into Oppenheimer is “I‘ve learnt nothing about the struggle of the Japanese today“, I‘m sorry to tell you but you‘re probably incapable of the act of learning in general.
When foreseeable yet no less devastating political events hit, the comment I see most often posted is “*surprised Pikachu face*“. Well, aren‘t you smart with your stupid shit. Everything either is or has to be communicated through a meme nowadays.
The worst part is that we let Mr. Meme-Man believe he‘s an intellectual. So now he‘s become self-righteous.
The thing about meme children is that they understand the process of growing up not as ditching the memes and learning to articulate themselves like proper human beings but as now applying memes to serious topics as well. You are the equivalent to Shakespeare emoji books.
This is not surprising. Articles have been written about the participation trophy culture even 20 years ago and we are now seeing the consequences in many different forms. We‘ve replaced “Grow up“ with “Just be yourself“. The problem is that the recipients of that message took that literally and have remained the same as they were back then.
If you want to know how my generation is doing, half of the Internet is text barely longer than 8 words plastered in big fat letters over a Spongebob Squarepants image. These have not seldomly replaced the use of language in debates itself and are oftentimes the political arguments people have nowadays. That and “delete yourself“. I liked it more when I was the teen and we just jokingly said “kill yourself“. But we can‘t have that anymore for aforementioned sanitization reasons. Gotta be sterile with our authoritarian lack of creativity after all.
Seeking validity through conformation approval in media is something that has already grown parasocial relationships. I‘ve seen people squealingly share clips of Vtubers teasing same sex tendencies because these actors – which is what they are – know this is a business model and yet somehow this gets treated as revolutionary progress. Wow, such representation when the actresses behind cute anime girl avatars with animal ears fake high-pitched or nasal voices and pretend to have a lesbian moment so the dudes watching it can create as much fanart before they jerk off to it, promoting the brand. This lesbian thing where they giggle at each other is totally just like real life. Which is just like anime in my glorious pop culture world. Sexual orientation has become pop culture too.
Usually, fiction takes from reality. District 9 is an allegory on South Africa‘s immigration policies. The Ascent recontextualizes Jesus and Judas through the war of Nazi Germany against Russia. These days, it‘s the other way around. We have now reached an age wherein reality needs to take from fiction to be any interesting. “So you‘re telling me NATO is like… THE AVENGERS???!! O_O“
Infantilization and reference dropping, which go hand in hand, have come a long way. Video gaming journalists, people who most certainly don‘t deserve the title journalist, are grown men and women who couldn‘t, for two years, resist to calling anything the “Dark Souls of X“. “I‘m in my 40s now but eating salad still is the Dark Souls of food. -_- #adulting“ People play Persona 5 to find things out about society. This is what happens when you start analyzing reality through escapism. The desire to establish comparisons to express the severity of anything ultimately toppled in someone calling The Last Of Us 2 the Schindler‘s List of video games. The fact that it took the equation of a popcorn video game to a depiction of the holocaust for people to realize that that is messed up is telling.
Of course these people need to rely on references from the things they‘ve played, seen or watched. That‘s the damage their world of consumption has done to them. They can‘t live without. Everything is a big shopping mall or giant amusement park nowadays.
This all reminds me of an image edit of young protestors throwing something at riot police except in the edit, that something was Harry Potter books and the riot police was yelling “CAREFUL! THEY HAVE WISDOM!“
If anything, you take a look at the state of self-ascertained young people spewing politics like a toddler insists he’s right and it reminds me of the “He will not divide us“ protests after Trump won.
These are technically adults, mind you. Almost a literal echo chamber, all in unison. And that mirrors the Internet a lot.
I‘ve come to notice that the aforementioned fiction reference dropping behavior is something that happens with young academic leftist liberal circles the most, which largely depend on something I‘d like to call “the low end of education“. Adults quoting teenage fiction for clarity and interpretation of these troubling times in our complex world, even for the most simple of matters, reflects that much appropriately.
Not that the right doesn‘t do this, oh no. They have turned 1984 into a pop culture reference. Heck, the more you look into American‘s rendition of Christianity, specifically the caricatures of human beings that are the bible humpers, the more it becomes obvious they‘ve even turned the bible into a pop culture reference.
The TV hosts and late night show masters play into the infantilism. This is their thing. Remember when John Oliver thought he had found the greatest way to defeat Trump by revealing that he‘s got German ancestry and then started calling him “Drumpf“? Yeah, that worked out so well. Sorry to tell you, but with that kind of childish nonsense, you at best contribute to the other side. People like Steven Colbert certainly aren’t revolutionaries, they just give the machine what it wants. I also remember a journalist on twitter revealing after Biden got voted into office that for the entire duration of the Trump presidency, he only ever wore the same black tie as a means of silent protest. The resistence fighters of our time, folks. Reality has become a tool for meaningless symbolism. We’re currently back to the silly nicknames again with the infantilized form of non-contribution to serious issues by calling Putin “Putler“. What an epic Internet win for the reddit brainworms inside of our heads, they‘ll be so happy we could feed them with such good food, fellow brothers and sisters.
Long story short, if you can‘t do anything proper and can‘t believe in anything proper, I suppose all you‘ve got left in your non-committing ways are these silly little rituals.
Maybe the TV host comparison isn‘t so bad in a meta sense. Perhaps the meme commentators and pop culture reference droppers implicitly understand themselves as hosts of some kind of show as well. It would certainly explain a lot of behavior.
I‘m sick and tired of listening to their annoying and downright repetitive and incestual laugh tracks to things that aren‘t remotely funny however.
Beyond The Mountain Lies A World Of Frills 