One More Day Up in the Canyons

This is officially “last post of the year” week, which for many of us means recapping the preceding 12 months, teasing out the dominant narratives and—if we’re feeling ambitious—situating the year within some broader historical arc. While I enjoy the tradition and always like to read others’ contributions, I feel more hesitant to venture my own this time around. 2022 was a year that overexamined itself from start to finish, a phenomenon best exemplified by the increasingly fractal, TikTok-fueled proliferation of perceived trends and microtrends, the “vibe shift” concept (which was coined in 2021 but went viral this past February), and mirage-like memes such as Dimes Square, which appear substantial at a distance but recede or dissipate as one tries to approach them. Sometime in the last year or two, we seem to have finally reached peak internet—a saturation point of cultural self-consciousness that represents the fullest possible synthesis of reality and our digitally mediated perception of it. With two days left in the year, we might at least ask, what overarching patterns are left to describe that we haven’t already beaten to death, that don’t rehash this accumulated glut of thinkpieces or add to the nauseating content surplus?