on vibing

While seemingly open-ended and allowing for an infinite recombination of elements, the idea of “vibes” is reductive. It discourages the more difficult work of interpretation and the search for meaning that defines human experience. It diverts attention away from narrative and moral implications in favor of foregrounding the idea of affect as inexpl... See more

In our present technological era, humans have also needed a new framework to avoid drowning in the daily firehose of entertainment, media, and information. Given this setting of increasing complexity, it becomes more appealing to use an associative concept like “vibes” as a simplifying framework for understanding or self-expression. If we can’t mak... See more

Some might call this concatenation of elements a “vibe”: something that’s difficult to pin down precisely in words but that’s evoked by a loose collection of ideas, concepts, things that can be identified by intuition rather than by a prescribed logic.

The idea of “vibes” discourages the more difficult work of interpretation, foregrounding the idea of affect as inexplicable, ineffable

I think rituals are important, rituals that mark the passage of time. Well, it’s just time, I hear you say, just a man-made construct. Our lives run in tandem with a certain perception of time as backdrop — for most of us, that’s “clock time”. Even then, that has been quite forcefully upended by the proliferation of async communication channels of ... See more