The year began mid-sentence, mid-scroll, mid-hangover. Nobody really noticed. There was no decisive break between what came before and after; just a gradual thickening of atmosphere. People move quickly but without any speed. A strange fatigue dressed as productivity.
Conversations looping back into themselves. Events accumulated without resolution. Maybe we’re only the tabs we’ve left open at this point. Nothing climaxed. Nothing concluded.
We’ve been living inside a permanent prelude. A system update is always around the corner. A better user experience is always promised.
Right to Left: 1. Zuck, 2. Orban, 3. The people (in blue) getting drooled on,
Top to Bottom: 4. Trump meme-coin, 5. Trump, 6. Jeffrey Epstein with his crown, 7. Johnson’s Baby Oil
The decade no longer produces ideologies. It produces interfaces that simulate them. Belief survives only as branding architecture: shared values, mission statements, community guidelines. Prayer, too, is more than anything a posture optimized for the cameras now.
Everything must appear harmless. Politics merges with platform design. Corporations develop moral vocabularies. Every scandal is aestheticized. Every injury becomes graphic material. And bodies become content faster than they can become subjects.
Right to Left: 1. watchful J.D Vance in a wig, 2. Chinese Winnie the Pooh resting comfortably in a pipe bowl, 3. Joan Didion’s head on Brando’s body
Top to Bottom: 4. Salacious old man with the Dalai Llama’s tongue (from that time he licked a child), 5. Loompa Charlie Kirk
[…] More like a constant low-level wanting that attached itself to everything and nothing.
Food, drugs, attention, novelty, intimacy, distraction. Each briefly convincing. None sufficient. Consumption lost its drama. Pleasure lost its edge. Excess became routine, folded into the daily. The extraordinary downgraded itself into maintenance. The forbidden became logistical.
You can feel intelligence dulling under the weight of constant satisfaction. You’re lying if you don’t. A slow erosion disguised as comfort.
Nothing is allowed to remain private long enough to develop meaning.
Everything is processed into imagery before it can become memory.
And the language of growth continues long after the sensation of growth has disappeared.
Right to Left: 1. Low Battery, 2. Tariffs, 3. Pistachio, 4. Oil-Rig Blowout, 5. Stanley cups drenched in pistachio cream, 6. Baby boy Reagan, 7. Labubu, 8. B.P logo ( broken promises of green energy despite constant promotion of such since 2020 fyi)
Production continues. Content multiplies. You wake, refresh, continue.
Optimism survives as a design choice rather than a conviction. Once a culture begins presenting itself as permanently young, it also begins quietly preparing for decline. Systems persist out of habit. People do too. A civilization maintained the way a device is.
The year did not end with a crash. It ended mid-scroll, mid-sentence, mid-hangover.
The screen dims but does not turn off.
