Around 7 months ago, Sean Monahan declared the arrival of a new “vibe shift.”
This matters because Monahan is the guy who, with Emily Segal, named a trend called “normcore.”
Normcore was a gift. It identified and clarified something changing the fundamentals of contemporary culture. It allows us to glimpse the “what” and the “how” of a decline in the old status systems, conspicuous consumption, and upward mobility. We were richer and smarter for normcore.
Has Monahan done it again? Has he spotted a new vibe shift?
I don’t know. Maybe.
That’s not my question.
My question is: are vibe shifts still a thing?
Or put it another way: are things still a thing? Are vibe shifts still possible?
Here’s why it matters. If vibe shifts are endangered, we’re in trouble. They were essential to our ability to create and survive change.
If vibe shifts are dying, something deep inside our culture is broken.
And that would make culture very much the problem.
Here’s what vibe shifts did for us. They allowed us:
1) to experiment culturally, finding better ways to configure ourselves and the world.
2) to bring this experiment from the margin to the center.
3) to vote on it, scorning the bad ideas and embracing the “new now.”
4) to dump that and make way for the “next now.”
This was noble work. Western cultures have been, as we said in 001, feverishly changeable. Vibe shifts were one of the mechanisms of this change, a secret to how we both made change and survived change.
Hey presto, sometime in the 1970s, hip hop emerged. And in almost no time this vibe shift shaped our culture. People looked at it and said, “Exactly.” Hip hop changed music, art, style of life, patterns of influence, movie making, the very lens through which we see the city.
Change all this and you change the culture. Change all this and you are the culture.
Hey presto, sometime in the 1970s, the artisanal revolution emerged. It too colonized our culture with astonishing speed, changing farming, restaurants, eating, mixology spirits and bars, capitalist production, consumer expectation, Brooklyn, Boulder, and thousands of small towns across the America. (For more, see my new book, Return of the Artisan.)
But hey that was 50 years ago! Hip hop and the artisanal revolution are still vital and they are changing.
But are they shifting? What will replace them? Where’s the new new?
Monahan claims to have discovered a new vibe shift, and bless him if he has. We could use a new cultural assembly. Especially post COVID. Especially in this period of superheated politics. Especially with international chaos now beckoning. We could use a new new that snapped together diverse pieces of our culture and said, “there you go. You’re welcome.”
But there’s a good chance vibe shifts are over. And that would cost us an essential means of invention, voting, dynamism, and adaptation.
All of us suffer when vibe shifts fall silent.
We need these little vessels to survive the larger storms.
Without them we might be dead in the water. (Hyperbole alert in full effect.)
Ok, let’s review our progress so far:
On the question: “what if culture is the problem”
post 001 says yes: our “coming of age” rituals for young men appear to be broken
post 002 says yes: our ability to produce vibe shifts may be broken.
I know this looks grim. Not to worry. There is good news coming. Culture is also the answer to what ails us and there are wonderful experiments now underway. Watch this space.
Post script.
Last post (001) we talked about FTL (Failure to Launch) kids. Could the decline of vibe shifts be part of their difficulty? Most young people have ridden vibe shifts as if they were the big waves on the North Shore of Oahu. Committing to the new culture is one of the most interesting things you do with your youth. It’s certainly the most fun. In any case, it’s the thing that defines and propels you. Maybe the end of vibe shifts is one of the reasons so many young men are FTL.
Reading
See Allison Davis’ excellent piece on Monahan in The Cut.
And here’s the original piece by Monahan (subscription required but worth it).
There is another kind of Loss of mores problem in India- communication between the sexes and roles that has been brought about by an anarchy in lifestyle, shaken bottom up by a changing economy which is changing the culture.