The Vibe Shift's Been Over: We're in an Entirely New Era

Before we focus on the new era that recently dawned (or the vibe shift that ended), let’s look at three different timelines for context.

Eras

The Post-War Era (1946-1951) 5 years

The Eisenhower Era (1952-1959) 7 years

The Camelot Era (1960-1963) 3 years

1964 VIBE SHIFT (between Kennedy-era optimism and Vietnam-era dissidence)

The Vietnam Era (1965-1973) 8 years

The Sleaze Era (1974-1979) 5 years

The Reagan Era (1980-1988) 8 years

Pax Americana (1989-1994) 5 years

1995 and 1996 VIBE SHIFT (the Internet was slowly becoming mainstream, setting the stage for the Y2K era)

Y2K (1997-2001) 4 years/the last era of empire; the rest are post-empire

2002 VIBE SHIFT (between 9/11 patriotism and Iraq War-era skepticism)

The Iraq War Era (2003-2008) 5 years ¹

The Obama Era (2009-2015) 6 years

The #resistance Era (2016-2020) 4 years

2021 and 2022 VIBE SHIFT

The Big Gap (2023-?)

The Boomers grew up during the Camelot era, the Vietnam era and the sleaze era. Gen X became more vocal in the Reagan era, Pax Americana and Y2K. Y2K was also when Millennials first became relevant: the overlap of decades in Y2K matches the overlapping of the generational influence. The Iraq War era, the Obama Era and the #resistance era fully belonged to the Millennials. One of the first major characteristics of this decade’s vibe shift was how Gen Z’s influence became dominant, going of course into what I call the big gap (I will explain the term later).

Youth Countercultures

Beatniks: began in postwar era but became prominent during the Eisenhower era; compared to what followed, they were a minor youth counterculture, their influence peaking in 1956 and quickly dwindling by the Camelot era.

Hippies: major youth counterculture that began during the Vietnam era and had continued, if fading, relevance, all the way to 1976 (when Jimmy Carter got elected for quoting Bob Dylan) and 1977 (when Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours was a blockbuster album); in the sleaze era, there was a diminished punk presence in America compared to the UK; disco did not have the identification/worship that rock had; the Reagan era was a weak time for youth countercultures, many of them fragmented into subcultures like goth, punk, metal and hip-hop; dance pop had cross-generational appeal; Boomers loved the pop music of the Reagan ‘80s, influencing many aging hippies like Crosby, Stills and Nash to adopt the sound and even use the same songwriters (Cher using Diane Warren, for example).

Slackers: like the beatniks that expressed dissatisfaction with postwar America and especially with Eisenhower-era culture, the slackers were largely skeptical and apathetic re: Pax Americana, and America’s Cold War victory; the working class was getting gutted and consumerism was more suspect than ever; unlike any other counterculture on here, one man — Kurt Cobain — clearly signaled the beginning of the movement (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”) and the end (his suicide); the slackers were the minor youth culture that preceded and influenced the hipsters, much like the beatniks did with the hippies.

Hipsters: first major youth counterculture since the hippies; while their musical icons, by design, did not have widespread appeal, the hipster aesthetic was everywhere; the hipster revolution, in keeping with the alternative rock philosophy in general, was primarily aesthetic, less about politics or even values; primarily relevant during the Iraq War era and the first half of the Obama era, with the second half’s emphasis on poptimism ensuring that the hipster influence would diminish in movies, music, etc. and would primarily be felt in the design world for the remainder of the 2010s.

NOTE: The tweetniks (“tweetnik” is a neologism I coined to describe the hashtag activist youth that I also called “hashtag hippies” in older posts on this Substack) were a major force in the #resistance era. I do not consider them a counterculture simply because most of what they demanded through Twitter (more LGBTQ representation in movies, etc.) was accomplished pretty quickly and smoothly by institutional media. What’s more, they were more interested in changing mainstream pop culture demographically than in either offering an alternative to the mainstream or even a different aesthetic altogether. Or, as

Sean Monahan

recently said:

The identitarian left certainly thought it was an avant-garde, but that was a movement which dared not speak its own name. Can you imagine the outrage if a museum did a retrospective on ‘woke art’? What no one wants to admit is that you cannot produce an avant-garde in a climate of fear.

I believe the #resistance era, for this reason, will have less nostalgia than the very similar early ‘70s portion of the Vietnam era, which also was idpol heavy with a Republican president in power. The difference of course being that every recorded art form in the early ‘70s reached quantum leaps in development and sophistication.

I will get into what I think this decade’s counterculture will be later.

Scenesters: what I call the Dimes Square people, thanks to

Nick Dove

‘s comment on a recent Note of mine; a minor youth counterculture, primarily consisting of the dissident right as well as dirtbag leftists (much of their sensibility informed by the post-internet art and alt-lit of the early 2010s) whose years of relevance were from 2019 to 2024; they peaked during this decade’s vibe shift, expressing skepticism with Biden that almost no other creative figures expressed; already had fading relevance during 2023 and became redundant after Trump’s victory.

For much of this piece, I was influenced by

Matthew Gasda

’s recent article for Wisdom of Crowds. Particularly, how he updates Bret Easton Ellis’s paradigm of Empire-era culture (postwar to 9/11) and Post-Empire (after 9/11). Gasda, unlike Ellis, sees potential in Post-Empire culture (I agree) because of Trump (this is where we part; I have more faith in a counterculture than a counter-elite). I was particularly fascinated with the graphic he included below:

Let’s use this graph for the third timeline.

The Vibe Shift vs. The Big Gap

The Vibe Shift

Joe Rogan

GameStop

Thiel Fellowship

Britney emancipated

Andruil, Palantir

Elon's Memes

Travis Scott's Astroworld

X

The Big Gap

Trump's Rallies

Citizen Journalism

Substack

Tucker Carlson

Jon Stewart returning to The Daily Show

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Now let’s zoom in on this decade. 2020 was the last year of the #resistance era. In that year, the “resistance” resembled the establishment too closely. Tweetniks, wagging their fingers at anyone who questioned the World Health Organization narrative, or even Big Pharma, during COVID, from the comfort of their work-from-home laptop jobs, lost what little countercultural credibility they could have had. The height of absurdity and hypocrisy of course was when going to a party was considered a clear infraction against the “stop the spread” movement, but rioting for George Floyd was democracy in action.

The term “vibe shift” has been a widely-contested term, especially during the vibe shift itself. I am not interested in who coined the term: Angelicism or

Sean Monahan

. Also I do not wish to use the term “vibe shift” for every single cultural/aesthetic change that trends through the news cycle. The vibe shift of 2021-2022 was a time of transition between the #resistance era and our current one, which I will get into shortly. We already touched on how the vibe shift was marked by fading Millennial relevance. While some may have been relieved that Trump was banned on Twitter and Facebook in 2021, after January 6th, the #resistance crowd’s Trump Derangement Syndrome was more pronounced than ever. Here he was, out of office and with no social media outlet, but the tweetniks and the mainstream center-left press kept highlighting Trump’s court cases and alleged collusion with Russia — all while ignoring newly-elected Joe Biden's many gaffes. The kind of mistakes that were widely publicized and mocked when George W. Bush was in office. COVID restrictions were increasingly flouted and idpol cashgrab reboots kept bombing at the box office. This being, of course, the worst decade for Hollywood in history. It wasn’t only Gen Z that had more power during the Vibe Shift; online networked media, first through Twitter, then through TikTok, became more trusted and engaged with than official news sources. Mainstream media of course insisted that this was a prime cause of misinformation. The same mainstream media that insisted that Biden’s senescence was a conspiracy theory.

The term “vibe shift” has been used to describe the aesthetic change in posting around 2021, and I agree that this is relevant. Virtue signalling became less common already as shitposting and absurdist irony, with some shock humor here and there, became more common. This environment of course becoming the perfect tinderbox for Trump and Musk’s ascent the past few months.

As you may have seen in my first timeline above, I marked several vibe shifts before the one in this decade. I define a “vibe shift” as a transitional time between eras, after a major cataclysmic event. 1964 was the vibe shift after Kennedy was assassinated; 1995 and 1996 the vibe shift period after the World Wide Web was introduced into households; 2002 the vibe shift after 9/11; the 2021-2022 vibe shift of course being between COVID and our current era.

I am typically proud of the terms I have coined here (“mesoculture”; “tweetnik”: etc.). My label for the new era from 2023 to now, “The Big Gap” is an ugly placeholder that is meant to be replaced by a way better term by myself or a smarter commenter. Having said that, it is functional, having many different meanings and applications. The most obvious one is the big generation gap between Gen Z and older generations. October 2023 saw the schism between the online youth and legacy media thanks to the youth’s support of Gaza and the legacy media’s unwavering support, in both left and right leaning outlets, of Israel.

From the linked article:

Were it not for legacy media slavishly trying to synchronize itself with the moves of Twitter teens, today’s rift between cultural progressives online and behind a news desk would have never happened.

One side-effect: a devaluation of social justice morality. Celebrities pink washing the Gaza conflict, saying that Palestinians would kill gays and transgender people, did not change minds. Now the social justice celebrities had enemies with the youth and the right.

It was at this time that black square, #resistance era morality resembled nothing more than Victorian morality, especially in its punishing strictness and hypocrisy. There were clear parallels between the fainting couch prudishness of Victorian scolds and the pronoun-policing of the #resistance SJWs.

What’s worthy of note is that the morality of the #resistance era had its roots in the ‘60s New Left, but became bowdlerized, defanged of any serious critique of capitalism or imperialism, by the ‘70s. Like Victorian morality, this progressive morality began as an expression of empire. Just like the Victorians wished to educate the masses and the recently-colonized natives about proper morality, sitcoms like Diff’rent Strokes were meant to educate the youth about how racism was wrong and, more importantly, how America is not a racist country.

This morality became more prevalent in the Obama era. Despite the fact that it gained momentum after the empire, it was meant to be a rebranding exercise for America, increasing its soft power globally.

The big gap will be an era, then, that can potentially be not only similar to the ‘60s, with a major youth counterculture, but like the 1920s as well, with its widespread impatience with staid Victorian attitudes. ² Two concrete examples of this: pro-Gaza youths do not fear being labelled anti-Semites; Luigi Mangione sympathizers did not take the bait when they were accused of liking him for being white, as if he would have been less popular if he were black. If the anti-Semitic card has declined in value, why wouldn’t the race card?

This is the biggest generation gap since the ‘60s. Not to say there was no generation gap between the Millennials and the Boomers. Yes, Boomers said Millennials were spoiled. Pretty generic, standard generational criticism. It would take a decrease in technological progress for any elder generation to say otherwise. Millennials might have had tension with the increasingly right-leaning Boomers in their families that were ranting on Facebook about how their pronouns were “Blow/Me.” But the Boomer Liberal Elite ³ took their cues from Millennials and their social media etiquette guidelines as dutifully as possible.

The gap between the older generations and Gen Z is beyond any optics or phrasing. It is about values. Older people on the left and right may agree with Gen Z’s causes (ending blanket support to Israel, not letting health insurance companies run riot) but the methods they often support (Hamas fighting back, shooting CEOs) are what alienate them. Again, this goes back to values: Gen Z sees no difference between Muslim terrorists and IDF terrorists, or between Mangione’s (alleged) murder of Brian Thompson and the deaths that Thompson’s company was responsible for. These are deep-seated ethical disagreements. No gender-swap reboot can address these issues.

Another major gap in the big gap era: between the public and the institutions. From COVID on, the mainstream narrative has been less and less easy to swallow. Consider the recent attack in New Orleans. After 9/11, it took perhaps five years for truther conspiracies to become widespread. As soon as the New Orleans incident happened, many claimed it was an opp to give Trump carte blanche to write a blank check to Israel. Even the California wildfires have spawned enough conspiracies that, for the first time ever, God is not the primary suspect during a natural disaster.

The big gap is not just domestic, incidentally. It is global.

Venkatesh Rao

:

So the question is, of course, why would there be a major youth counterculture barely ten years after another one ended? One major difference: while in the hipster era, the Internet helped lead to more widespread exposure, today Internet exposure is an end in itself. When hipsters were “in,” the Internet helped provide the majors with actors, comedians and musicians that would help lock in an educated, affluent audience. ⁴ Now, the Internet helps institutional media lock in an audience.

From the “vibe shift” article that popularized the term in 2022:

“Those were still real years. People’s opinions were changing, things were happening. It was just that, you know, culture and pop culture were not really putting out bangers during most of the pandemic,” says [Sean] Monahan when we speak by phone in an attempt to truly decode the vibe shift.

In other words, the Internet took over during COVID. As celebrities dutifully followed stay-at-home orders, they posted Instagram videos of themselves trying to get through another day in their lonely mansions. Similar to how Hollywood took over cinema after France was besieged during The Great War, the Internet became the center of entertainment after years of COVID lockdown and strikes affected Hollywood’s output.

Despite Gen Z’s fragmented nature, I think there can be a sizable counterculture of Tech Skeptics and Alt Dirtbags that can combine together. I would temporarily call this counterculture Dirtbags for now, if only because they seem to valorize Arab freedom fighters and corporate assassins. Very at home in the criminal element. That’s as anti-establishment as it gets.

What will the music be like? I see a similarity between the AM/FM split of the ‘60s. Mainstream channels will continue to push dance-pop much like ‘60s AM carried water for jazz-pop crooners like Frank Sinatra. The musical acts that are popular on Substacks, podcasts, certain online magazines, etc., will be like similar to the ‘60s counterculture icons that were more popular on FM radio. I do not think the music will explicitly carry anti-establishment messages. Neither did many ‘60s FM rock songs. I do think that the pop of this decade will carry a normie stigma to it that the counterculture will hate, unlike some poptimist hipsters in the ‘00s that loved Justin Timberlake. Like

Dudley Newright

said on The Upheaval, (via

Prester John Andrews

), Millennials “stan” dance pop currently. As if they are the ‘80s Boomers who loved Madonna. Or the aging GI Generation that loved Dean Martin in the ‘60s. We’ll see which side of the dial wins.

While I did say that the scenester movement is pretty much done, don’t be surprised to see some scenesters adapt and join the potential dirtbag counterculture, if and when it happens. Beatniks like Allen Ginsberg became hippies. Slackers like Robert Pollard became hipsters, etc.

If the TikTok ban does not go through, X and Instagram are just right-wing coded platforms that alt-leftists and perhaps the new counterculture in general (if it ever comes) avoid, in favor of TikTok. A ban can and will backfire, making X and the newly right-coded Instagram what a commenter on

Aidan Walker

‘s excellent video below called “state-run social media.”

@aidanetceterathe reason zuck ended content moderation #markzuckerberg

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One last big gap to consider: the gap between man and machine. See, as I have said before, we have had a clear break from postmodernism since 2023. But I was wrong about the turning point. The Sydney Bing controversy of February 2023 was the moment of the break, not October 7th. That’s right; 2023 was not only the dawn of a new era but the end of an old age.

One more timeline? Please? ⁵

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Ages

The Romantic Age (1798-1851)

The Victorian Age (1837-1901)

The Modernist Age (1870-1968)

The Postmodern Age (1966-2023)⁶

The Posthuman Age (2007-?)

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Apologies to

Ross Barkan

,

Ted Gioia

,

Jon Baskin

,

John Pistelli

and any of my other Substack compatriots who believe that we may be headed into another Romantic age. Lovely and inspiring as that sounds, I fear that

Katherine Dee

is right: our defining conflict will be whether we will be replaced and/or ruled by machines.

For almost two years now, I have brayed like a jackass about a counterculture that might come, but never came. Shit, I did it a few paragraphs ago. “Dirtbags”? Ha! Maybe this is it. Maybe zombie media is all there will ever be. As human musicians sample the same songs, as human directors respawn the same IPs, as autofiction writers drone on about all the sex that leaves them empty (not so empty that they can’t write about how they hit, of course), perhaps watching Luigi Manguione in AI form give the Grinch a knee surgery is all that’s left. Is “brain rot” a side effect of the fatigue of…everything? Is our cultural impotence akin to our impotence in the face of assured environmental doom?

@adamrapsThis is how terminator and the matrix started. Most expensive city in the world being destroyed by tech and corporate greed. What are we doing?? #ai #tech #matrix #sanfrancisco #decolonize

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For now, there seems to be a lack of rage against the machine because we’re in a digital daze. The ban might snap us out. It should also be remembered that two of the defining issues of our time, Gaza and healthcare, are directly tied to AI. Israel’s Lavender AI machine guiding Israel’s indiscriminate bombing as well as insurance companies using AI to deny healthcare to patients. Will this rage lead to attacks on data centers, as

Aidan Walker

says on his 2025 bingo card?

@aidanetceteramy 2025 bingo card #newyears #bingocard #2025bingocard #memes

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See that’s the thing about fighting the establishment. It’s one thing to knock down the already-struggling news media. What about Big Tech? Will enough people want to even fight it? Some say we live in an anti-social century, meaning not only is there a loneliness epidemic, it seems like no one wants to talk to other people. They prefer to stay at home and communicate with AI, as the linked Atlantic article says. From the 2000s, when players retreated into Second Life, to now, with AI therapists, friends and lovers, Big Tech has made its money off young people fearing life.

Perhaps enough people won’t want to fight the overlords. But there has been a bunch of chatter on TikTok — folks saying they want to quit social after the app and touch grass. Seems like fuel for another pipe dream, right?

Ross Barkan

did compare our moment in tech to the ‘70s, when people began to quit smoking, even though at the time it was everywhere; supermarkets, airplanes, etc. Comedian Chris Distefano recently said on a podcast that his daughter looks at him scrolling on social with disdain, with the hosts citing that the kids see the effects on their parents.

@kfcradioScrolling is cheugy @Chris Distefano

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I will refrain from hijacking this piece and making it another breathless manifesto. But we must not forget that, when the youth stopped watching TV in the ‘60s, since they saw it as a symbol of Plastic America, TV changed to fit their interests. If you are young and reading this, know that your attention is more prized than healthcare; than oil; than life even. Where you direct your gaze is the most fundamental issue that drives the machine. Or, as I said regarding Luigi Mangione recently, “There is a large generation gap to be sure: again, the largest one since the ‘60s. But the whole culture succumbed to audience capture back then. And those dirty bums didn’t even have the Internet.”

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1. The Iraq War officially ended in 2011 but the election of Barack Obama confirmed the unpopularity of the war and the widespread skepticism of its role in the War on Terror

2. Racist and homophobic language will remain taboo now and in the future, much like “fuck” and “cunt” became taboo during the Victorian era and can still get you fired from a job today if you say them during a meeting.

3. Another neologism I’m proud of

4. Much like Fred Silverman got rid of hit CBS shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies” at the height of their popularity so they could lock in the affluent hippie audience, that was going to PBS, with shows like “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H*.”

5. It’s a free Substack.

6. I was wrong about when postmodernism began. Sorry to the two people that read No PoMo.