Or Are We All Frat Boys?

We are living through strange times, like bizarre times. It feels, more and more, like the 80s. Or at least the 80s in the version I was told about. I’m talking culturally here, not politically, but those things are correlated. If the Raegan 80s was a backlash to the progressivism of the 60s, we’re in a similar place. This whole vibe feels like a backlash to the late aughts and early 2010s.

The vibes aren’t exactly new, they’re more of an acceleration of the previous vibes. In the same way that hair metal wasn’t new in the eighties, it was an acceleration.

Consider Shark Week, which was always an aggressive proposal. I like to imagine it began with a coked-out marketing exec blasting into the Discovery Channel offices and demanding a week of nonstop sharks. And at the beginning, the shows were mostly research-oriented, but not anymore. Now the vibes have gone off-the-rails, the proposal is no longer let’s talk about sharks, it’s now we hired John Cena for a week and we’re gonna see if he can punch a hammerhead underwater.

This acceleration is a cultural phenomenon. And I’m not advocating deference as a virtue — that’s a grinchy lame take — but deference has gone out the window. Everything is pro wrestling. There’s gonna be a UFC fight at the White House. Recent tickets to the Savannah Bananas cost more than tickets to a Dodgers-Yankees World Series rematch. I am writing this from a trashy East Coast beach town and there’s a mid-forties woman dancing atop the beach bar in an saggy American flag bikini. In itself, that’s not odd, it’s common behavior in trashy beach towns on the 5th of July. But it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and nobody seems to notice. I feel a bit like the protagonist in The Castle, constantly walking around pointing at the castle on the hill only to be constantly told that the castle is always there, and could you just shut up about it already. Stop being sketch.

Yes, the vibes are on fire and I hope I’m not coming off pissy about this. I’m too young/apathetic to be pissy about the state of the world. And I’m not saying the accelerated vibes are ubiquitous. You can easily escape — you’re not going to get this in Manhattan or Santa Barbara. But drive outside your bubble and baby it’s wild out here. The woman atop the bar is now doing a beer chug out of a pink yard flamingo. Good for her, but vibes remain off-the-rails.

This whole notion struck me when I was listening to Shane Gillis’ podcast the other week and the co-host Matt McCusker made this observation about a drive-on beach in Texas:

It was kind of sick. Just like, you just bop around on golf carts, faded on a golf cart, blasting. Trump flags everywhere. Got me thinking, it’s like nobody parties under the Biden banner. People party under the Trump flag. I’ve never seen someone just get down under a Biden flag.

And he’s right. You’re not going to go to a party with a Biden flag but every single drive-on beach in America — at least on the East Coast — is flying those Trump flags. When is the last time there was a political movement that sold itself as “having a good time”? I can’t think of any. And maybe that’s when the vibes went off the rails.

But the important thing is that this is the dominant cultural attitude. There’s nothing subversive about it anymore. And I don’t think this acceleration is slowing down anytime soon.