What we witnessed in 2024 was the culmination and confirmation of several cultural trends that began to come into focus in the early 2020s. In the plague year of 2020, over 350,000 Americans died from COVID-19. The World Health Organization estimated that over 3 million people died from COVID-19 worldwide that year. This pandemic, along with the murder of George Floyd, rocked the United States and the world into uprising. The following year was marked by an uprising from the other side–a violent far-right insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, encouraged by President Donald Trump. The next few years under President Joe Biden felt–at least for a while–eerily normal, but this normalcy was merely an illusion. While the political establishment applauded the restoration of democratic norms, culture continued to move rightward. 

2022 and 2023 saw the rise of what Canadian-British science-fiction author and journalist Cory Doctorow termed “enshittification,” referring to the worsening of social media platforms.

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die,” Doctorow wrote. “I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, holds each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

Enshittification can be seen on sites like Google and Amazon, but most apparently on Facebook and Twitter. In 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter (and renamed it “X”) for many billions of dollars, and not only did functionality worsen almost immediately, but Musk began boosting far-right propaganda on feeds, shedding advertisers. Empty-headed bot activity has skyrocketed, alongside deliberately placed misinformation. On Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg (who also renamed his site to “Meta”) touted a new AI cybersphere, which I remember looking a bit like Wii Sports. On the site proper, bot accounts churn out nonsensical AI imagery. Since AI has not yet shown, at least in an artistic context, that it fully comprehends human anatomy, it often spits out sketches of figures with far too many or too few fingers, or someone with an ear coming out of their neck, or something like that. The result is Cronenbergian. Occasionally, one can spot themes or subjects that recur across posts, such as Jesus Christ, the U.S. military, and lions, suggesting a vague interest on the AI’s part in a fascist iconography. 

Considering that one of the key factors in the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike that majorly upended television and film production in Hollywood last year was combatting the dumb allure of implementing AI to eventually replace writers, actors, and/or visual effects artists with this shiny new technology, AI evidently still has quite the hold on the entertainment industry. In June, the Tribeca Festival programmed nine short films made with OpenAI technology. The festival, previously known as the Tribeca Film Festival, dropped the operative word from its name in 2020–apparently fine with rebranding as a festival for “content.” 

Ahead of the intensely-hyped release of Francis Ford Coppola’s work of White Elephant art, Megalopolis, a deeply earnest, confounding, and ultimately entertaining picture which the filmmaker personally bankrolled with over $100 million of his own money, a trailer appeared for the film quoting respected film critics and their previous pans of Coppola’s earlier films. As jabs at The Godfather and Apocalypse Now from the likes of Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert flash on the screen, a very dramatic voiceover from Laurence Fishburne reminds the viewer that true genius is not recognized as such in its time. By claiming that even the die-hard cinephile critics were once turned off by these now-canonical masterpieces, it seemed that the trailer was hoping to pre-empt any criticism that had already been getting out about the uneven and ambitious film. There was just one problem: the quotes used in the trailer didn’t exist. In fact, several of the critics cited had written positive reviews of those films, not negative ones. After people caught on to this, an investigation was launched by the Lionsgate, the film’s production company, that determined AI had been used to manufacture blurbs in the style of these film critics. 

In Gaza, Israel’s genocide continues to fall to new depths of depravity each day, and people turned to their screens for escapism. But what those screens were showing was not just escapism–but total illusion. In May, an image with the phrase “All Eyes on Rafah,” referring to the Palestinian city being besieged by the Israeli army, began to spread on social media. 47 million people, including celebrities such as Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid, shared the image. But the image was not a real depiction of Rafah. Unlike the haunting images pouring onto feeds from the ground of annihilation and devastation, this image was devoid of any human suffering–any humanity at all, or any actual detail. It was AI-generated. 

Susan Sontag wrote in her 2003 book Regarding the Pain of Others:

Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood. No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia. There now exists a vast repository of images that make it harder to maintain this kind of moral defectiveness. Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing–may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.

Meanwhile, on college campuses, students showed actual human solidarity with Palestinians and mobilized in condemnation of their universities having financial ties to pro-Zionist corporations. City governments unleashed armies of militarized police and SWAT teams onto college campuses over nonviolent protests. Despite several world courts concluding that Israel had been engaged in genocidal actions against Palestine for the past year, the Biden administration made no attempt whatsoever to even entertain the idea of taking punitive action against Israel. At most, the President and his State Department would feign outrage, while keeping the money and weapons flowing to the genociders. The Biden administration’s perspective has appeared to be that the scale and source of Palestinian suffering is merely, like the vacuous AI Instagram-friendly interpretation of sandy Rafah, a mirage–or worse, an antisemitic spectre.

The Biden administration’s habit of waving away Americans’ concerns with a whisper of “nothing to see here, folks” reached its breaking point in late June. Amidst a great deal of criticism about his age, stemming largely from his noted verbal missteps and gaffes, the President faced off in a televised debate against his opponent Donald Trump (not much of a gifted orator by comparison) on CNN, months before the debates would usually be aired. What transpired that evening would have serious ramifications for the political race and for Biden’s presidency as whole. It was astonishing and stomach-churning. It’s my pick for the film of the year. Biden was hoarse and vacant. His mouth hung open the entire time. From just his walk up to the podium and saying hello, something about his demeanor felt like a punch to the stomach. Trump seized the opportunity and openly lied for the entire evening. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on live television. Following the debate, there were immediate calls for Biden to step down. On July 12, he gave a press conference where he stubbornly refused to do so, and the very second he went off-teleprompter, he referred to a “Vice President Trump.” 

The next day, “Vice President Trump” was giving a rally in Pennsylvania. As he was speaking, eight shots were fired from the roof of a warehouse near the grounds. Three audience members were hit, along with Donald Trump, who was seemingly nicked in the ear. Trump grimaced and grabbed his ear, and then was pushed to the floor of the stage by his Secret Service agents. Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper shot back at the attacker, killing him. Trump emerged from behind the podium with a small stripe of blood on his face. “Fight, fight, fight!,” he mouthed to his audience, pumping his fist, before being taken away to safety. The shooter was a pimply twenty-year-old. He mortally wounded a former fire chief named Corey Comperatore. By the end of July, Joe Biden stepped out of the race for President. Now it was Vice President Kamala Harris’s time to shine. 

Around the time of the Biden-Trump debate, the British pop musician Charli XCX released her sixth studio album, brat. The album was a rather personal one, but what resonated even more with audiences than the content of brat was its style. The cover was a garish neon green, featuring only the title in a simple, Arial-style typeface. The artist stated that the design had been inspired by the opening credits of the 2007 film Smiley Face by New Queer Cinema icon Gregg Araki. Suddenly, brat green was absolutely everywhere, just as Barbie pink had been the year prior. Charli XCX had achieved cultural domination. Therefore, the pop songstress used her considerable platform to make a statement in the new light of Kamala Harris’s campaign for President. On July 21st, she took to an enshittified Twitter and stated: “kamala IS brat.” This post received 62 million views. A CNN headline two days later read: “Charli XCX called Kamala Harris 'brat.' Here's why that's a strong endorsement.” In a statement, Charli responded, “I’m happy to prevent democracy from failing forever,” but added, “I’m not Bob Dylan and I’ve never pretended to be… My music is not political.” By autumn, some in the political establishment soured on the connection. An October Newsweek headline read: “Kamala Harris criticized by former Obama aides: "Brat to flat.”

The Harris-Walz campaign that burst forth from a decaying Joe Biden was a puzzled one indeed. It essentially met Donald Trump on the right when it came to matters such as immigration. It touted endorsements from Liz Cheney. The Democratic Party, in the face of fascism, shifted its rhetoric and focus decidedly rightward in a desperate attempt to peel off would-be fascist enablers. Voters, evidently, did not want Diet Republicanism–they wanted the Real Thing. So they elected Donald Trump, again, to the Presidency. Not only that, but Republicans would control the House and Senate, and his fiercest lackeys would control the judiciary. The era of neoliberalism has ended. What lies ahead is an era of barbarism.