seeking a vibe (for the end of the world)

live doc and sillabus for in-progress video essay

This Is the Way the World Ends

🛑(draft)

***seeking a vibe at the end of the world***

i wanted to start this by saying that “i’ve been thinking about the end of the world lately” but it's hard to make that sound not… dramatic. pretentious. but it is true (though not the ‘lately’ bit). i've been here a long time. not so much thinking about the fact of the world ending, but the peri

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” The critic and novelist Namwali Serpell told me that the quotation appeals to her in this moment, even though Žižek’s translation is slightly unfaithful to the original. The phrase “now is the time of monsters,” Serpell said, “allows us to think about the... See more

Kyle Chayka • The Terrible Twenties? The Assholocene? What to Call Our Chaotic Era

It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

This quote isn’t that funny anymore once you realize that it is our reality. Economism has pervaded not only politics (economic growth goal) or our private lives (e.g. self-optimization) but also future thinking: Everything has to have a business case now! Visions of a dystopian... See more

Thomas Klaffke • Unframing the Future

‘End of the World Vibes’: Why Culture Can’t Stop Thinking About Apocalypse

Dorian Lynskey theguardian.com

As awful as these events have been, I am no longer struck by their horror. They all seem to be the near-inevitable, direct effects of how we are running our political economies. I am more struck by our slow ability to react.

Spencer R. Scott • End the Horror, Let the Crisis Change You

Now the 1990s seem like a period when the world was starting to go crazy, but not so crazy that it was unmanageable or irreparable. It was the end of the twentieth century, but also the end to an age when we controlled technology more than technology controlled us. People played by the old rules, despite a growing recognition that t

Chuck Klosterman • The Nineties: A Book

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