I mean what the hell is this bullshit? I demand another.
As days pass and I’m still astounded by just how close politicians were to being rounded up for summary execution by conspiracy theorists, I’ve come to a conclusion:
This apocalypse? It’s very dumb. I would like another.
*deepest of sighs*
Now now, I don’t want to be one of those blackpilled fucks who are always dooming and glooming about how it’s all gonna come crashing down. But I will entertain some of those notions for a while since Things – are you familiar with Things? Things is Bad right now. And Things could get Worse. Things could get Better. Things could make us think they’re getting better for a couple years before suckerpunching us all in the jaw with an apocalypse needle drop.
But. Should the end of America be on the horizon, I would like to go on the record that this is the dumbest way it could have happened and I want my money back, Life. I’m talking to Life. Give me my money back for that nonexistent ticket you nonexistently sold me.
I was promised Zombies, goddammit. Or aliens. Or at the very least, nukes.
I was raised on a steady media diet of apocalypses
Now this… this is more like it!
They all promised it would be fun. Or at least mean something. At least 28 Days Later has shooting zombies in the face. At least the Fallout Universe has super mutants and jazz and exploding lasers and themes of rebuilding society and the resilience of humanity in a world made hostile by our own avarice. At least Stephen King’s The Stand is about a struggle between the literal physical incarnations of good and evil in our ruined world. Hell, at least that Christian fiction asswipe of a series, Left Behind, is a good ol’ family values romp through ruined raptured hellscapes.
But no. This apocalypse is no fun because I think I’m going to be stuck inside even after it’s all come apart. Have you seen the rate they’re distributing the goddamn vaccine in Los Angeles? Instead of something “meaningful”, we get the dumbest fascists on the face of the planet who loudly announce all of their plans on social media for everyone to see and just get to like, do whatever, man, because the cops are on their side.
(as I was revising, I realized that somewhere around this point I became the Joker and uh… consider this a Doom™ warning, it’s going to get real cynical real quick)
Hahaha the ICUs are at capacity in Los Angeles because our city refuses to shut down the way we did in April. It could have something to do with the budget being insolvent and no money being in unemployment because it all goes to the LAPD who are superspreaders and oh yeah businesses lobbied really hard to stay open IT’S GREAT I’M HAVING A GREAT TIME IN THIS APOCALYPSE.
Death by conspiracy theory
The big tech companies may finally be getting serious about stemming the tide of misinformation, but it’s too little far far too late. So many countries have been savaged by Facebook’s algorithm which prioritizes emotional reaction over truth (take a look at Myanmar) and it looks like we’ll be next.
No leaving the home, just alone with the misinformation machine which is more than happy to provide you with all the Crank Content™ you could desire. And this is the result: We get a large chunk of Americans who think that the Biden campaign somehow manifested extra votes from thin air. We get hospital workers who don’t want to take the vaccine. But who can really blame them? The government has fucked up this crisis so badly, why wouldn’t they fuck up the vaccine too? We have people actively trying to sabotage the distribution of vaccines. We have people waiting for the Great Awakening – soon, Trump will expose the cabal and arrest all those pedophiles… soon… soon…
Every time I go into work, I need to nudge my boss away from some new grifter she finds compelling lest I come into work to find she’s ordered a thousand-dollar prepper kit without meaning to and now I’ve got to figure out how to get a refund for it. A friend told me his grandmother fell deep into a QAnon hole and doesn’t know what to do to get her out. Dear friends and family have tested positive at an alarming rate even though all of us are so careful.
The fact that all of this is objectively hilarious only makes me loathe this apocalypse more.
While I was driving home from a job where the doorman wears an American flag pin with a little golden “Q” engraved in it, I saw a guy with a sign on the side of the road that read: “My Father Was Killed by COVID 19”, I just thought to myself: “Man. This is depressing. So depressing that my only real way of coping is writing a manic blogpost of such blithering insincerity that it boomerangs back around and might be the most sincere fucking thing I’ve ever written.”
I’m out. I can’t take seeing articles talking about how Bezos had a record year for his net worth right next to ones about how theft in grocery stores is up due to people having difficulty affording food.
Baby diapers are one of the items that have become most frequently shoplifted. There’s some Doom™ for you.
Not knowing how much longer it’s all going to last is killing me. At this vaccination rate, the pandemic could go on for another year. The collapse into fascism feels inevitable and it could explode in a week or cook over the course of years with steadily boosting escalation until the sight of Proud Boy chuds waving automatic weapons becomes quaint. Big fan of how Biden wants to reach across the aisle to these very reasonable people.
Just send in the Tripod Aliens with heat rays and get it over with.
…is how I want to conclude. But I can’t bring myself to be so blithe when the truth is that no apocalypse was never going to be “fun” or “mean something”.
That’s the thing about apocalypse fiction. There’s a narrative and a narrative is about something. History is a narrative, to some degree.
The thing is, the meanings woven in the narrative of history can only be gleaned in hindsight. Living through it is chaotic, and as it’s playing out there are various threads of meaning being tugged in various directions, but the threads are easy to snap and new ones can be teased out.
One day, I will be able to look back on this period and be able to assign meaning to it. Hell, even be able to see the “fun” in all of this with enough time and distance.
And I know this isn’t really apocalypse or even a full state collapse. Nevertheless, it feels like a prelude, and even though a tipping point hasn’t been tumbled over yet, I can feel myself trying to make sense of what all this patently ridiculous, yet at the same time, horrible nonsense is and… I just can’t.
I just can’t.
Anyway, I can’t end things that bleakly so enjoy this Archie photoshop I laugh maniacally at at least once a week:
