Okay, I will tell you what the damn vibe shift is around Trump. It isn't that vast majorities are supporting him in a landslide, it's that the internal composition of the two US parties has changed. Notice how Trump got lifelong environmentalist liberal RFK Jr and Bush era anti-war liberal Tulsi Gabbard to stump for him, which would have been unthinkable in 2016? Those people represent voter bases that have shifted since 2020 into, if not being actual conservatives, holding their nose and voting for Trump or at least not voting for Biden. Look at the Republican shift in cities if you don't believe me, areas which overall voted for Biden but saw significant shifts towards Trump compared to their usual heavy blue-down-the-ticket voting behavior. These are people who aren't normally swing voters but got alienated from the Democratic party for one or another reason since 2020, whether that was draconian covid lockdowns/vax mandates, DEI, cancel culture (more a woke thing than a Democrat thing, but Democrats have spouted too much woke jargon to separate much from them), crime, the economy - the issue isn't just that Democrat performance sucked, but a perception that Democrats (and their aligned media) are a group that deliberately ignores the concerns of people like them. This influx of new people into the Trump camp, both regular voters and politicians like RFK, is probably going to make the second Trump Administration very different from the first one.
Gary Gerstle's 2022 book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order is the best piece of analysis on the vibeshift that I have read so far. It is a good piece of history writing. Sweeping, subtle, and pretty compelling.
In his telling, the New Deal Order ruled American culture until the 70's when the neoliberal order started to take hold. In the last 15 years or so, Gerstle describes how we have rejected not just the economic side of neoliberalism, but also the cosmopolitanism and critical-theoretic egalitarianism that he argues were its cultural foundations.
But surely this is not just a US phenomenon. Mood at Davos is a little bleak I hear.
Defining a vibe shift and supporting it with research defeats the purpose of proclaiming a vibe shift. They're antithetical. The other thing about vibe shifts is that it's fun to say something big is changing without feeling the need to support your claim, and you can do that with vibe shifts, because everyone implicitly understands that it might all be bullshit. This is basically like when Trump says something ridiculous and people make the mistake of taking him seriously, which then ends up making his claim a reality. You just throw things out there until one thing sticks, and then you make that your thing, memeing it into existence.
With all due respect, you are listening/reading Ezra Klein. And that’s your problem. I don’t know any serious writer and intellectual who takes him seriously.
I want something to reallly, really be something bigger and more concrete, because the idea that it’s near, nuanced and disappointingly uncertain terrifies me.
Great piece! I’d suggest a concise definition of a “vibe” not as public opinion but as elite opinion. Elites are less numerous, more tightly connected to each other, and obsessively use very low-friction social networks prone to discontinuous phase changes.
So elite opinion can shift a lot based on not that much of a stimulus from the outside world. I think it’s done so here, far more than public opinion did, and not necessarily even in the same directions.
I followed Kyla Scanlon, who popularized the term ‘vibecession’ back in 2022, and let me just say that while at the time her articles on the subject were soothing and appealing to my inner mystic, as it were, I also came away from them feeling like they were psychobabble, or an impressionistic sketch. I suppose that’s just her specialty, since there are plenty of political economy writers who have a more lucid or blunt style (e.g. Krugman, Tooze, The American Prospect staff). She may be more ‘writerly’, the latter are more ‘economic’. I think that’s a factor into how exactly the vibes came about. (What the vibes are, I’m guessing, are a broader awareness of economic inequality and polycrisis, which Trump and Sanders conjured out of the background in 2016.)
By the way, I came here from the big Ross Barkan-Rick Perlstein beef. (Or is it the Freddie deBoer-John Ganz beef?) I’m impressed with the article. I’m on your side
If we can agree that young people disproportionately shape and affect broad cultural "vibes," and we observe that today 53% of people ages 18 to 29 have a favorable view of Trump (a 23-point increase from January 2017), then we can say there is strong evidence for a shift in vibes.
This may just be further anecdata, but: I do think the overall tenor of popular culture has 'shifted' (gag me lol) in such a way that does align with Trump, or perhaps Trumpiness, is a better way of putting it. I'm thinking of the Tom Brady roast on Netflix last year, which was hugely popular, and where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe peddled his brand of offensive, sub-Andrew Dice Clay comedy. And he went on to speak at Trump's MSG rally. Plus, the seemingly-overnight acceptance of legalized gambling by the sports industry, where ads bombard you from every screen, at all hours of the day and night. Trump embodies gambling culture, owing to his years in Atlantic City and all over the world really, and the more our country feels like a casino, the more, consequently, it feels like Trump.
vibes is colloquial for affect theory. vibes is a consumers measured predisposition to the brand. in a culture saturated by commerce, marketing and money; vibes are the polls, the vox pops, the ‘debates’, the political theatre, the candidates charisma. i remember in 2016 chuck todd saying when he interviewed trump straight after the interview trump watched it, with the sound off. trumps a salesman, he instinctively understands vibes.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say/guess that a set of assumptions held in common by a certain group of (establishment?) elites have been demolished. There’s also been empirical research on trust, both interpersonal and of government - not ‘vibe’ per se, but changes in who and what people trust does result in something. Attitudes, maybe.
Good on you for freeing yourself from social media. It is the way hyper-capitalism monetizes our brains by addicting us to trivial meaninglessness. It is so sad to see people walking down the street not looking at life all around them but staring into a screen.
Talking vibe shift is cool way to do lazy reporting. Reporters got to write/podcast something, right? Much easier than talking to people to find out something you didn’t know is looking at social media and declaring some bs like vibe shift. The elite writing about the elite.
A 'vibe' is a miniature Zeitgeist...
Okay, I will tell you what the damn vibe shift is around Trump. It isn't that vast majorities are supporting him in a landslide, it's that the internal composition of the two US parties has changed. Notice how Trump got lifelong environmentalist liberal RFK Jr and Bush era anti-war liberal Tulsi Gabbard to stump for him, which would have been unthinkable in 2016? Those people represent voter bases that have shifted since 2020 into, if not being actual conservatives, holding their nose and voting for Trump or at least not voting for Biden. Look at the Republican shift in cities if you don't believe me, areas which overall voted for Biden but saw significant shifts towards Trump compared to their usual heavy blue-down-the-ticket voting behavior. These are people who aren't normally swing voters but got alienated from the Democratic party for one or another reason since 2020, whether that was draconian covid lockdowns/vax mandates, DEI, cancel culture (more a woke thing than a Democrat thing, but Democrats have spouted too much woke jargon to separate much from them), crime, the economy - the issue isn't just that Democrat performance sucked, but a perception that Democrats (and their aligned media) are a group that deliberately ignores the concerns of people like them. This influx of new people into the Trump camp, both regular voters and politicians like RFK, is probably going to make the second Trump Administration very different from the first one.
Gary Gerstle's 2022 book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order is the best piece of analysis on the vibeshift that I have read so far. It is a good piece of history writing. Sweeping, subtle, and pretty compelling.
In his telling, the New Deal Order ruled American culture until the 70's when the neoliberal order started to take hold. In the last 15 years or so, Gerstle describes how we have rejected not just the economic side of neoliberalism, but also the cosmopolitanism and critical-theoretic egalitarianism that he argues were its cultural foundations.
But surely this is not just a US phenomenon. Mood at Davos is a little bleak I hear.
Defining a vibe shift and supporting it with research defeats the purpose of proclaiming a vibe shift. They're antithetical. The other thing about vibe shifts is that it's fun to say something big is changing without feeling the need to support your claim, and you can do that with vibe shifts, because everyone implicitly understands that it might all be bullshit. This is basically like when Trump says something ridiculous and people make the mistake of taking him seriously, which then ends up making his claim a reality. You just throw things out there until one thing sticks, and then you make that your thing, memeing it into existence.
With all due respect, you are listening/reading Ezra Klein. And that’s your problem. I don’t know any serious writer and intellectual who takes him seriously.
That's a lot of words just to say that you don't like the vibeshift
I want something to reallly, really be something bigger and more concrete, because the idea that it’s near, nuanced and disappointingly uncertain terrifies me.
So I hide behind a vibeshift.
Great piece! I’d suggest a concise definition of a “vibe” not as public opinion but as elite opinion. Elites are less numerous, more tightly connected to each other, and obsessively use very low-friction social networks prone to discontinuous phase changes.
So elite opinion can shift a lot based on not that much of a stimulus from the outside world. I think it’s done so here, far more than public opinion did, and not necessarily even in the same directions.
I followed Kyla Scanlon, who popularized the term ‘vibecession’ back in 2022, and let me just say that while at the time her articles on the subject were soothing and appealing to my inner mystic, as it were, I also came away from them feeling like they were psychobabble, or an impressionistic sketch. I suppose that’s just her specialty, since there are plenty of political economy writers who have a more lucid or blunt style (e.g. Krugman, Tooze, The American Prospect staff). She may be more ‘writerly’, the latter are more ‘economic’. I think that’s a factor into how exactly the vibes came about. (What the vibes are, I’m guessing, are a broader awareness of economic inequality and polycrisis, which Trump and Sanders conjured out of the background in 2016.)
By the way, I came here from the big Ross Barkan-Rick Perlstein beef. (Or is it the Freddie deBoer-John Ganz beef?) I’m impressed with the article. I’m on your side
If we can agree that young people disproportionately shape and affect broad cultural "vibes," and we observe that today 53% of people ages 18 to 29 have a favorable view of Trump (a 23-point increase from January 2017), then we can say there is strong evidence for a shift in vibes.
This may just be further anecdata, but: I do think the overall tenor of popular culture has 'shifted' (gag me lol) in such a way that does align with Trump, or perhaps Trumpiness, is a better way of putting it. I'm thinking of the Tom Brady roast on Netflix last year, which was hugely popular, and where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe peddled his brand of offensive, sub-Andrew Dice Clay comedy. And he went on to speak at Trump's MSG rally. Plus, the seemingly-overnight acceptance of legalized gambling by the sports industry, where ads bombard you from every screen, at all hours of the day and night. Trump embodies gambling culture, owing to his years in Atlantic City and all over the world really, and the more our country feels like a casino, the more, consequently, it feels like Trump.
Your last sentence is spot-on.
Becca, do you know Lindsay Waters, formerly of Harvard University Press. I ran into him recently carrying your book. He's a huge fan.
vibes is colloquial for affect theory. vibes is a consumers measured predisposition to the brand. in a culture saturated by commerce, marketing and money; vibes are the polls, the vox pops, the ‘debates’, the political theatre, the candidates charisma. i remember in 2016 chuck todd saying when he interviewed trump straight after the interview trump watched it, with the sound off. trumps a salesman, he instinctively understands vibes.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say/guess that a set of assumptions held in common by a certain group of (establishment?) elites have been demolished. There’s also been empirical research on trust, both interpersonal and of government - not ‘vibe’ per se, but changes in who and what people trust does result in something. Attitudes, maybe.
Good on you for freeing yourself from social media. It is the way hyper-capitalism monetizes our brains by addicting us to trivial meaninglessness. It is so sad to see people walking down the street not looking at life all around them but staring into a screen.
Talking vibe shift is cool way to do lazy reporting. Reporters got to write/podcast something, right? Much easier than talking to people to find out something you didn’t know is looking at social media and declaring some bs like vibe shift. The elite writing about the elite.
The very nature of a vibe is something unquantifiable and ephemeral. A vibe is like a gut feeling projected onto space