Evangelical Christianity was still very strong in those days, especially in Texas, and Left Behind blew up by putting Christian eschatology into page-turning airport-bookstore-novel form.
asserted
Left → blow → form
People really believed that the stories in those novels weren’t just stories — they were glimpses of a very real future event.
asserted
they → believe → event
The Rapture — Jesus Christ’s gathering of the faithful to Heaven before the end of the world — is something that believers expect is going to happen one of these days.
asserted
believers → expect → days
Sometimes, these days, I feel as if it’s already happened.
asserted
it → feel → ?
I look around at American culture and I wonder: Where did everybody go?
asserted
everybody → look → culture
The mass culture of my youth is long gone.
asserted
culture → go → youth
76 million people watched the last episode of Seinfeld in 1998; fewer than 20 million watched the last episode of Game of Thrones two decades later.
asserted
million → watch → Thrones
Right now I can’t even think of what an appropriate comparison would be.
asserted
comparison → think → ?
What’s the show that everyone watches?
asserted
everyone → ’ → that
In the 2010s, mass culture was replaced by meme culture.
asserted
culture → replace → culture
Everyone knew this photo and what it represented:
asserted
it → know → what
Social media feeds — Twitter and the Facebook wall — turned American society into a sort of digital hive mind.
asserted
feeds → turn → mind
Feeling yourself being absorbed into that great unified consciousness could be an agonizing experience — mobs constantly punished any deviation from conformity, quirky unique subcultures were devoured and metabolized, everyone was forced into a cell with people they had spent their lives trying to escape.
uncertain
they → feel → lives
Viral memes were the thoughts that drifted through the mind of the social media Borg.
asserted
that → drift → Borg
For so many years there was a steady drumbeat of images and phrases that people passed around among each other ad infinitum; now, I can’t even think of the last one that really made the rounds.
asserted
that → be → rounds
Twitter — now X — has not died but is diminished in scope and relevance.
asserted
Twitter → die → scope
At times it feels like a ghost town.
asserted
it → feel → town
Where did everybody go?
asserted
everybody → go → ?
I would like to think that they’re offline, living as we lived in the Before Times, running through sunlit fields blasting each other with Super Soakers or playing Dungeons and Dragons in their living rooms.
asserted
we → like → rooms
Or perhaps they’re in Signal and WhatsApp chats and Discord channels, talking with their friends in the comfort and safety of privacy.
asserted
they → ’re → privacy
I would like to think that they rejected the digital hive mind for the ancient ways of individuality and Dunbar’s Number.
asserted
they → like → individuality
But my bet is that they’re just watching short form video.
asserted
they → watch → video
Over the last few years, the entire internet has steadily carcinized into a single type of app/website/media/entertainment — a vertically scrolling feed full of short video clips.
asserted
internet → carcinize → clips
Vine invented it, TikTok popularized it, and now every other site has copied this one dominant, all-conquering format.
asserted
site → invent → format
Already, vertical short-form video feeds are more dominant than every form of media except for social media itself:
But even this significantly understates the change.
asserted
this → understate → change
The term “social media” used to mean people writing things to each other or sending images on Facebook or Twitter; now, it’s mostly used to mean people watching videos:
asserted
it → use → videos
Even the long-form video sites, like YouTube, are increasingly just short-form sites showing a bunch of clips.
asserted
sites → show → clips
This shift has basically killed the original use of social media, turning it from a town square or conversation room into a form of purely passive entertainment:
I am not part of this trend.
asserted
I → kill → trend
I had TikTok on my phone for a year or so, but I could never get into it; in 2021 I deleted the app.
uncertain
I → have → app
The videos all felt like some kind of bland snack that you keep eating even though you don’t really like it — everything seemed optimized to make you swipe to the next thing, like the programming in those hundreds of channels that only existed so that satellite TV could brag that it had 700 channels.
uncertain
it → feel → channels
Short-form video feels to me like anesthesia; the swiping is the point, not the content.
asserted
swiping → feel → anesthesia
As Jerry Seinfeld once said, “Men don’t care what’s on TV.
asserted
what → say → TV
They only care what else is on TV.”
asserted
what → care → TV
I suppose I’m the exception.
asserted
I → suppose → ?
I feel like one of the people from the Left Behind series, waking up to find most of the people around me taken to digital Heaven.
asserted
most → feel → Heaven
Have you ever heard of “heavenbanning”?
asserted
you → hear → heavenbanning
It’s not a real thing…yet.
asserted
It → ’ → ?
It’s the hypothetical idea that social media platforms could neutralize obstreperous users by replacing their entire feed with AI content that flatters and agrees with them.
uncertain
that → ’ → them
You’d think you’re interacting with other human beings, and that everybody just happens to love you and think you’re brilliant, while in reality you’re in solitary confinement with an LLM.
asserted
you → think → LLM
It’s possible to think of vertical short-form video feeds as a kind of heavenbanning.
asserted
It → ’ → heavenbanning
…and 35 more, not listed.
The Aporia
