nihilism has been practically adopted as an aesthetic. Nothing captures this mood quite like the cult Instagram account @casual.nihilism, which features endless posts with phrases like: “I’m gonna go nap. I’m not tired. I just don’t want to be awake.”

“Take the boom in reality shows, the rise of the ‘dissociative pout’ or the fact young people are smoking again as examples of ways we’re detaching ourselves from the emotional burdens of modern society.”

People were losing excitement about the internet, starting to articulate a set of new truisms. Facebook had become tedious, trivial, exhausting. Instagram seemed better, but would soon reveal its underlying function as a three-ring circus of happiness and popularity and success. Twitter, for all its discursive promise, was where everyone tweeted

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