The cult of the dissociative pout

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.”

In the end, the irony of meta-cringe lies in our generation's consistent demand for community and social integration during a period dominated by loneliness. Yet we continue to dismiss any signs, symbols, or spaces that could potentially foster this sense of connection as overdone and passé. The tension between wanting to be an individual and wanti... See more

I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.

The term “cynical romantic” might seem odd, since cynicism and romanticism are typically regarded as opposites. Whereas romantics are devoted to pursuing aesthetic beauty, sentimentality and the sublime, cynics deride everything and everyone as motivated purely by self-interest; they reject all contrary evidence as fatal stupidity or risible hypocr

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