Nothing made sense this year unless you were on the internet.
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Welcome toThe View,yall.
And the mad cherry on top?
Surreal, distressing, stupid.
It made total sense.
When it closed just days after it had opened, she texted me, Im a full widow.
Soon, the entire cultural life force of the city would be drained.
There would be no more live studio audiences.
But it would have been naive to think culture had ended.
It simply moved into the rabbit holes of the internet.
Quar brain and quar culture had commenced.
During the early days of the pandemic, Ling Mas 2018 novel,Severance,enjoyed a resurgence.
In its fictional New York City, a fast-acting virus called Shen Fever tears through the world.
The afflicted turn into zombies, only they arent the violent, teeth-gnashing variety.
Theyre victims of nostalgia.
The novels prescience comes from this understanding of human behavior.
The etymology of the wordnostalgiais a combination of the Greekalgos,meaning pain, andnostos,meaning homecoming.
They didnt want to seem out of touch with the world, but they inherently are.
Nobody wanted to watch a show to process our daily horrors.
See our full list of winners.
Still, funny, challenging, inventive work was everywhere, if you knew where to go.
Creativity burst intoVerzuzbattles,Fortniteconcerts,Animal Crossingworld-building.
Virtual reality was a reality freshly poured from someones brain onto your screen.
The internet became more internet an ever-thickening soup of private derangements and niche dramas.
He could just be funny.
It lost its sense of immediacy, which meant it was already dated.
In place of top-down decision-making, a more horizontal body collaborative in an accidental and serendipitous way appeared.
TikToks went on Twitter, which went on Instagram.
; How this email found me; What isntXbut feelsX?
For instance: A user clips a moment ofRaven-Symone cackling to herself after an Instagram Live conversation.
The audio of the best recreation then gets looped back onto the original video.
(And you know what?
)Madonnamade bizarre pronouncementsfrom her bathtub.
The real entertainment came afterward in the flood of jokes and memes that surfaced.
Out of this constant churn came a broader view of the world and ourselves.
This wasnt representation in the basic sense; it was a feeling of recognition.
The current moment echoes another.
It would encompass everything and nothing a laugh in the face of social collapse.
Formally, the Dadaists embraced chaos and nonsense.
A common refrain was Everybody can Dada.
As the disparity between common sense and governance has only widened, online culture has grown more disruptive.
(Hence,Copalamemes.)
Theres more shitposting, trolling, Warholian obscenity, and an unironic love for bad things.
Various interests cross-pollinate: anime meets hip-hop meets cartoons meets porn.
All are part of the local parlance.
News headlines read likeMad Libs.Nonsense makes sense.
Rome is burning while Nero is out golfing.
Gal Gadot is singing the world a sincere lullaby, and Rudy Giuliani is yelling.
Theres a stench of fatalism in the air:Who cares?
Everything is stupid, so lets make stupid art.
