Toxic America

 I heard an argument that as bad as everything seems to be right now, it's not as bad as the 2000s. The logic - and it's sound - is that 9/11 was so traumatic we don't even talk about the anthrax scare. We fought two somewhat pointless wars. We had the 2008 financial crisis. 

Yeah, that's a lot.

There does seem to be an accelerating toxicity to America though. Part of it is just the relentless stupidity of the people in charge. Dubya Bush was pretty thick, but these idiots are just spectacularly dumb. Kash Patel chugging beers with the men's hockey team...I mean what are we doing here?

Something else caught my eye that I think is emblematic of how awful things are. 

HBO released A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, with the last episode airing last night. It's great. It masterfully moves tonally from incredibly funny to moving to tragically sad. It's "small" compared to Game of Thrones, but that's the point. Anyway, the penultimate episode was amazing and was briefly ranked on IMDB as one of the best episodes of TV...ever. OK, it probably wasn't THAT good, but who freaking cares?

Apparently fans of Breaking Bad care, because they began to review bomb IMDB to drive down the rating for that episode to preserve "Ozymandias", an ep of Breaking Bad, as the top episode of all time. When last night's show came out, Breaking Bad fans mobbed IMDB to drive down the score before the episode had concluded. 

This is all very, very silly, stupid and petty. However, it does demonstrate something about America in 2026. I would posit that the rise of the internet has created this, both by democratizing taste and elevating hostility. Democratizing taste isn't terrible, but we've seen fanbases basically revolt because the story artists are telling wasn't the story they wanted to be told. That isn't the point of storytelling. What happens is a relentless whining about the end of Lost or Game of Thrones or The Sopranos or Seinfeld. It's the dynamic of "Your Favorite Band Sucks, Actually" but amplified across a dozen online platforms.

In the end it sucks the joy out of life. It makes the incessant howling of the self-centered the medium of cultural discourse. What's more, AI is coming to force this everywhere. Didn't like the ending of Game of Thrones? You can burn 5 gigawatts and a rainforest's water supply for AI to make you an ending that suits your taste. It will suck for everyone but you, but congrats, you have made a soulless piece of crap to soothe your raging id.

I love the fact that last night I could quickly find an answer to the question "Should you feed your dog leftover pesto?" (The answer is no.) The internet can be a great facilitator of knowledge - once you know how to use it and once you are aware of its limits. The churn of social media, the imperative of the algorithm that prioritizes "engagement" is absolutely toxic, and it has its roots in the Oughts and the chatrooms. It's now everywhere and it sucks.