What Is “vibration Change” and Should I Be Concerned About It?

Do you feel it? East wind, fog is approaching – something seems to be brewing ? Has something changed seismically, as this iconic pre-pandemic tweet predicted ? Is a storm coming? Well, sort of yes. According to Allison P. Davies , writing for The Cut, ” A change of atmosphere is coming .”

Yesterday, Twitter picked up the phrase “vibe shift” and included it in the list of trends, discussing and ridiculing the phrase during the day’s conversation. Even if you’re not chained to what’s trending on Twitter (teach me please), you may have heard someone toss this phrase. How about a sentence that might scare your grandmother: “Vibe Shift went viral.”

At a time when the word “viral” has never been more vague, perhaps the true marker of so-called virality is that a piece of content manages to reach the eyes, ears, and minds of people who are not so painfully online. all the time as your obedient servant. I think the term “mood change” that appeared in the Evening Standard headline about the Bank of England is out of your typical Twitter-level discourse, and that’s why it’s gone legitimately viral. So what is vibration change and why should you care?

Detecting a trend before it appears

To really ground yourself, you need to read Davis’ article on changing the atmosphere . But here’s the gist: Davis didn’t invent the title vibration shift; that credit goes to trend forecaster Sean Monahan , whom Davis interviews. Simply put, “vibration shift” describes the precise time frame in which a cultural moment changes. Poodle skirts are replaced by miniskirts; skinny jeans with slits at the legs. This is normal, tastes change with the wind of the marketing machine. But, as a lot of people have tweeted, celebrating a change of atmosphere is like identifying a trend when you don’t yet know what the new trend really is; it is a feeling of insecurity, a feeling that something has changed. It bridges the gap between Millennials and Generation Z, a gap wide open by the pandemic. For Davis, the puzzle at the heart of the shifting vibration problem is to ask yourself:

Do I try to pick any trend that comes next, or do I prefer to accept that my last two good years were spent on my couch, guzzling down antidepressants and wearing “cute house pants” and UGGs?

However, instead of honestly answering any of the questions in the article, social media has taken to reacting to whether the author should have asked them in the first place.

Vibration is changing or are you?

Reactions online have ranged from jokes that viewed the change in vibration as a natural disaster , to serious concern about the very premise of the change in atmosphere . Most of the negative reactions came down to some version of the latter: there is no such thing as a “change in vibration” as the masses say; The author describes growing up. It’s not a problem, it’s a quirky way of talking about the simple (albeit painful) facts of aging and loss of cultural significance. It’s not the atmosphere that changes – it’s you who grows old from what is “inside”.

An easier way to think about it is if “vibe” refers to “trendy”, then “shift” refers to “the cruel, relentless ravages of time”.

Here’s where I might lose you: I liked the essay. I think the idea of ​​a vibration shift reflects something important in the collective nature of history, and not just in the circumstances of individual aging. And I think that the rejection of the term “vibration change” does not exempt you from it. In any case, deliberately ignoring the change in vibrations will widen the already sharp gap between generations that exists right now.

Changing the atmosphere is more than just aesthetics

Of course, outgrowing what’s trendy is actually part of getting older (or it should be, keeping up with this shit is exhausting). But why does this make the phenomenon unworthy of study? What a given generation finds fashionable is a reflection of its collective ideals and worldview. It has been argued that the idea of ​​generational groups is flawed , but we can’t stop thinking in this way so that we could look deeper and think about what we can learn along the way. Does this mean I’m suggesting that the return of low-rise jeans is a mechanism to overcome the nihilism associated with the pandemic? Maybe.

No matter what the specific aesthetic trends are, changing the atmosphere is a useful tool to try and capture, say, how Gen Z is coping with growing up in a time of global upheaval that their elders haven’t had to deal with. at their age.

Each generation thinks they are the most unique, that the previous generation uniquely doomed them, and the next generation has unique rights. But some generations are more right about this than others: History will always take the lost generation of World War I more seriously than, say, Generation X. Losing faith in the political system and the looming reality of climate change just to scrape the surface?

Vibration change is here

I should point out one part of Davies’ article that made me raise my eyebrows: the prediction of a “return to irony”. Yes … the irony has not gone away. To understand one good meme, you must already understand four old memes that it evokes and makes fun of. Everyone under 25 is at least good at irony, unless it’s the only language they speak. Irony is by no means “returning”, but I agree that it will remain.

However, I like it when the world uses the term “vibration change”. This accurately describes the understanding that we are not all going to return to the pre-pandemic world. If you’ve read The Cut article and come to the conclusion that Davis sounds like a victim, you’ve missed the point. Modern media literacy always seems to underestimate the author, suggesting that they cannot write with self-awareness, nuance, or irony. Yes, I agree that the author is struggling with aging. Guess what? The act of anti-aging is not completely separate from the change in vibration. Trends are cyclical, patterns emerge, and maybe, just maybe, some aspects of the pre-pandemic world will not (and should not) survive the changing atmosphere.

Why Vibration Change is Important to You

It’s easy to take the “if you don’t understand it, it doesn’t apply to you” attitude. This is how my grandmother reacted to the advent of email, and this lucky woman never had to deal with the stress of a backup mailbox. But the effects of atmospheric change may be harder to ignore.

Let’s not discount “vibration change” as overthinking the simple act of aging. It’s a self-conscious, ironic wink at the fact that a highly nihilistic generation is trying to find its footing in a pre-post-pandemic world. And whether you believe it or not, the change of atmosphere is already in full swing.