The Workbench Dispatch: 009

"The Vibe Shift"

Jan 24, 2025

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Scattered Thoughts On David Lynch

Rest in peace to one of the greatest to ever do it. Before the term “worldbuilding” became a buzzword used to sell weak bullshit, Lynch actually did it to its absolute maximum. His worlds can be isolated, smothering, grating, haunting, bleak, warm, familiar, alien, all at once. They are never dull and they are never someone else’s. Never sacrificing his weirdness, his staunch outlooks on life, or his vision, you can feel his fingerprints on everything he made, because nobody else possibly could have. Sometimes annoying with how opaquely abstract they can be, but never in a cynical way. He had a laser precise understanding of his control over an audience, and explored all the extremes that come with that. He wove dark, brutal, sometimes cruel tapestries of our own psyches and displayed them back to us with white glove care. He presented images and vignettes that seem to never fully leave your brain from the first time you experience them. When I watched Eraserhead as a teenager, I had no idea that something could feel so desolate, so anxious and gnawing, while also hauntingly optimistic. Through all the labyrinthian psychological layers, all the grisly darkness, a soul always shined through. Despite being viewed as abstract or avant garde, there is an inescapable Americana to his work, with all of its horrific blemishes and stunning beauty, hand in hand just like the country itself. This rich duality that flows through all of his creations takes the feelings of grappling with ideas, with creation, with how you know to see life in America, and distills it into its sludgiest, rawest form. Equal parts volatile and delicate, cerebral but sincere. The evil beneath the surface is just as real as the good above it. Maybe that’s why we always want to return to that eerie mountain town every autumn. In 2025 it’s almost impossible to believe that something so dense, dark, and enigmatic as Twin Peaks could be a mainstay in popular culture. Average joes sitting down every week to try and piece apart actively challenging art. Full experimentation in and of the mainstream is something I wonder if we’ll ever get to see at that level again. People like Lynch or John Waters having to fight with streamers and studios to get things made while being as established and legendary as they are can’t help but feel like a grim sign of where we’re at. To the conglomerates, art may not seem to be enough, even though we know it always is. Lynch’s art is uncomfortable, uncompromising, but never uncaring. Frigid surreality that could only be a product of warm humanity. Darkness will always coupled with light. After all, nightmares are still dreams.

-ms

“The Vibe Shift”
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The Vibe Shift

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of talk about a sudden “Vibe Shift” occurring in the greater cultural zeitgeist. Something in the air that turned sour seemingly overnight and cast a foreboding haze on the future. Whether it’s Rick Ross and Snoop performing for Trump’s inauguration, the full-tilt embrace of regressive language on all sides, conservatism penetrating young people’s beliefs in ways they aren’t even privy to yet, a reign of unregulated governmental terror threatening to brutalize the lives of those least protected or helped to begin with, or any other of the notable and alarming “anomalous” mutations that have sprung up, people are starting to voice their concern that things are rapidly slipping into dangerous territories. However, for some of us with our ears firmly cupped to the ground, this is something that has been building for years, finally cresting and becoming too prevalent to just ignore anymore. Although the “vibes” have most definitely tangibly shifted, it was not the unexpected overnight change that people seem to perceive it to be, and eventually we will have to come to terms with the tough fact that yes, we did this to ourselves.

I would argue that the core tenets of the average American consumer mindset in 2025, the perfect encapsulations of the noxious attitudes that led us to where we are now, come in the form of two particular phrases that have been parroted ad nauseam the last few years. The first of which is the classic, “Let people enjoy things.” Deconstructing it, it really defines the entire first half of the decade in more ways than one. An invisible straw-man evil big Other that somehow controls whether or not people can “have fun”, a childish temper tantrum thrown by people still getting what they want caused by having to face any form of critical thinking for doing so, a shrieking demand for more pacification, it really has it all. Is it fine for people to have hobbies and interests and passions that don’t align with yours? Absolutely. However, we are now seeing the effects of what becoming totally detached and passive about things we care about and letting people operate completely unchecked can lead to. There is a large, crucial difference between “letting someone” enjoy something, and negligently allowing something toxic to fester and gradually spread untreated like ignored black mold. Our modern narcissism and individualism have made people so entrenched in their demands for consumption, that it’s hard to imagine who even is not letting people enjoy things at this point. What evil malevolent force haunts those that want to numb their brain with their choice of instant gratification? The all-but-hedonistic behavior of our modern day certainly doesn’t reflect a culture of people not being allowed to enjoy things, but rather one that wants to be able to enjoy things without having to think about it. Any sort of opposing belief, or conscious step back from the raging maw of consumption is met with complete indignation, as if their right to slop is being infringed upon. Alternatively, chances for maturation or growth get flippantly put off for some other time that never comes, a complete refusal to actually analyze our relationship to the way we operate. The idea of the wailing, waddling, pissy adult child has emerged from its proverbial basement dwelling and planted itself front and center in our mainstream culture as the new default archetype and mode of operation. Maybe as times get tougher and the threat of climate disaster, economic destabilization, social regression, and more loom over us, turning into raging adolescent-minded tyrants reigning over the realm of fandoms, delivery apps, and products gives people a sense of control over something.

This brings us to the second defining phrase of the times that I’d like to break down, one that is constantly coupled with the former, the oft-repeated, aggressively vapid, “It’s not that deep.” Personally, I don’t think a single sequence of 4.5 words has caused as much damage to the way people behave the last few years as this one. Part reaction to the supposed “intellectualism” and woke-ism of the 2010s, part rejection of personal responsibility for one’s own habits and actions, it most succinctly sums up the prevailing attitudes that have dictated the course of the Biden and now Trump 2.0 years. If our beautiful and twisted history has taught us anything, it’s that things are usually always that deep, but somehow we’ve began plugging our ears to that fact. It is a frankly dangerous indicator of the median population’s attitude towards growth or challenging oneself in any way. We see it in our media diets, with how things are discussed, with our thoughts on the future, we really, really don’t want to think. Without getting too “slippery slope” about it, I believe that this attitude has directly contributed to and supported the degradation of overall quality of a lot of our experiences the last few years. Consumers think less about what they’re ingesting (in every sense of the word), so producers think less about it in turn, creating a vicious cycle where the bare minimum is shaved smaller and smaller with every submissive gulp of Product and Content we take without objection. In the realm of media, this rejection of the inherent depth of things has completely altered people’s understanding about those things. If one’s own scope of something is minimized, anything outside of that scope is easier to be written off as antagonistic, foreign, pretentious, or any other label that leads to dismissal. Valid, formal criticism, (sometimes even from a place of love!), gets brushed off as “hating” because the idea that someone thought about something in a deeper way and wasn’t pleased with what they found is abrasive to those unwilling to explore that same level of depth. This blurring of the line between criticism and “blind attacks” is an absolutely reckless standard to set, and further contributes to the homogenization of all aspects of culture. Our tastes dull, and only crave more of the same, never learning the value of what lies outside our own comfort zones. Additionally, this phrase has been the perfect excuse as evil rhetorics are unconsciously spread through seemingly innocuous or lighthearted means. “It’s just a meme, it’s not that deep.” quickly turns to “How did this propaganda spread so fast?”. Through the first 5 years of our decade, we have gradually let it become defined by half gestures and “meh” reactions, a drab grey monocultural sludge, and then have the audacity to wonder how it got that way. We let it slip away ourselves through embracing memetic psyops, “gotta hand it to ‘em”s and "letting people have fun”. Well now they’re having their fun, the question is, do you think they’ll return that favor to you?

Without a doubt, the most dangerous consequence of the “It’s not that deep” and “Let people enjoy things” mindset is how it has gradually influenced people’s cognitive behaviors and habits. At the time of writing this, Tiktok has been banned and subsequently hours later unbanned, all with Donald Trump’s name fully plastered over the entire ordeal, in what can only come across as a very obvious ploy to swing more gullible idiots into supporting him. The problem with this blatant grab to try and become a hero of a ban that he initially pushed for however, is that it’s working scarily well. The tectonic shift that has been building steadily throughout the course of the failure of the Biden era has finally come for its biggest payoff yet. Capitalizing on people’s COVID fried, goldfish sized memories in order to continue to innocuously shift people right into submission. The consequences of that “It’s not that deep” mentality have finally arrived en masse. We have let waves of “based” (sorry Lil B) troglodytes pepper nearly every social media app now, slapping their bellies like seals at the prospect of saying an outdated slur, or clinging to some abstract “hell yeah bro” masculinity. Giant swaths of the population have both figuratively and literally thrown their masks away, and are perfectly dumbed down and pacified to be absolutely steamrolled by a whole new wave of regression and recession. The biggest takeaway from the election and gradual Vibe Shift is the powers that be realizing they had more numbers than they thought, that the middle of the bell curve is infinitely more manipulatable than expected. Either directly through propaganda, or indirectly through desensitization via prolonged exposure to the most concentrated, hallucinogenic stupidity available. Everyone wanted that early 2000s nostalgia so badly, well here it is. As Trump’s second reign begins, as the power of critical thinking and deeper discussion becomes more crucial than ever, the median population is turning to Peter Griffin for art criticism. It’s hard not to feel worried that the next four years will be an exponentially concentrated degradation of thought much like the first time around.

Those that are supposedly on the side of art, criticism, and deeper cultural thinking are also not immune to the consequences of these phrases. For some reason, one of the biggest reactions to this clear and palpable shift in the vibes is an outright refusal of it happening. When talks of a Vibe Shift hit social media, people were quick to debate semantics over the wording into oblivion. Too preoccupied with infighting and specifying that being right wing isn’t “cool” versus addressing the fact that many young, malleable brains were and are being pulled to that side at an alarming rate. We saw early signs with sigma male grifters like Andrew Tate, exploitative streamers like Adin Ross, and the continued rise of Trump 2.0, and yet we were more concerned with convincing ourselves that as long as they weren’t cool, they’d be powerless. They may not be cool to us, but ignoring the continued surge in those beliefs, and the rapid evidence piling up that they’re clearly cool to enough impressionable people to make a difference, is absolutely negligent and reckless. If a gun were being pointed in our face, why would we argue that it’s only harmful if someone pulled the trigger. I think that for a lot of people, an admission of this shift in attitude and behavior amongst the mainstream (specifically not the cutting edge of cool) is an admission of some type of failure of influence. Something that bruises the ego to admit, so they would rather try to pretend they don’t see anything. Even I am not innocent to this, using Twitter the last 2 years trying to fight the surge on a micro scale, and then eventually cutting my losses when the writing was on the wall.

Another noticeable symptom of this mode of behavior we have fallen into is the warping of what used to be considered “playing devil’s advocate”, and how it has impacted the way we digest and talk about art. Similar to the attitudes surrounding fast fashion, somewhere along the line people stopped caring about trying to be better than the Mall, even going so far as to fight on the Mall’s behalf out of pure, empty contrarianism. Popularity took the reins as the de-facto measurement of quality, the belief was planted that the mainstream has our artistic best interests in mind, and people militantly ride for that belief despite decades of proof of the opposite. Not knowing nor caring that they’re secretly advocating for overall worse quality of experiences for themselves. Everyone knew someone growing up that seemed to only live for conflict. Ears perking up at voices rising, tension in the air, and did everything they could to stoke the fire and make things worse, relishing in the instigation with cruel pleasure. That seems to be the blueprint for the modern pseudocontrarian. Nothing to gain, no actual input to provide, just there to stir shit for the sport of it. The biggest proponent of those above phrases that got us to where we are now. It gets exhausting, and at a certain point (which I would argue is right now), you have to cut them off and disregard what they have to say entirely. They had their chances to provide something of worth. Too many people want to play devil’s advocate but don’t possess the depth of knowledge, the insight, or nuance to do so, so they wind up just playing devil instead, blindly defending degradation rather than express a bit of concern for the way things are going. It has brought us to where we are now, a legion of people ready to die on the hill of slop, so as not to make any ripples, without even wanting to know if there can be anything better than the lowest common denominator what was shoved down their throats. Taking the sides of the rich people and giant brands that want to give the consumer nothing above mediocrity. These people and places don’t deserve our benefit of the doubt, because they’ve already won.

If the cozying up by politicians across the spectrum with tech oligarchs and 1%er reactions to the Italian Stallion Luigi has (or should have) taught us anything, it’s that this Vibe Shift is happening rapidly in real time, and in some ways out of our control. The class divide is permanent, more glaring than ever, and with a wall being erected on site. Those with the money and power to do so are leaving the commoners behind and preparing for the worst as illness, climate disaster, and economic turmoil begin to wreak more havoc this decade. More discouraging however is the fact that a large swath of the now-vibe-shifted population is siding with that 1%, the very same people keen on discarding them the second things go south. There is a nasty, shameless, desperate greed in the air as people clamber over each other to siphon enough runoff capital from the scraps and garbage water left over from this latest late stage of capitalism. I mean the president has a fucking meme cryptocurrency, there isn’t really a better way to sum it up than that. The years of the first Trump term feel like a fever dream now. Countless (alleged in hindsight) countermovements and outcries from notable celebrities, news outlets, and the population, a refusal to succumb to the deterioration and straight up fascism presented in front of us. It is genuinely hard to imagine that the culture at large now would have anywhere near that same (be it remedial even at the time) level of spine.

That isn’t to say it isn’t possible however. It may be very, very discouraging times we live in, but we can learn from the past. There have been plenty of instances in history when the mainstream culture felt like a suffocating monocultural vacuum built on pacification and homogenization, all of which led to rebellious counter movements that birthed entirely new ways of engaging with and thinking about art. Punk under Nixon and Ford, Rap and Post-Punk under Reagan and Thatcher, the indie and hipster boom under Bush. The first step in moving forward is admitting that yes, the vibes have shifted drastically. Now that that’s the case, and the mainstream populous has fully embraced regression, one can only predict (or hope) that the counter to it will be doubling down on progression. Vehemently and vocally rejecting that mainstream and embracing what we know to actually be cool. The time for passivity is over, because this continued sliding by the mainstream is active. We know we can be smarter, more conscious consumers, aware of what’s better than the mall or the radio or the pointed propagandized memes on tiktok. We know there’s more rich experiences to be had, art to discover, statements to make, ways to expand our thought that will not be presented to us on a silver platter by giant corporations or industry machines. We can speak with our eyes, ears, voices, and most importantly wallets. If something sucks, say it and stand on it, because it is far too easy now to succumb to the “well everybody’s doing it” mentality. My tolerance for bad faith devil’s advocate arguments that only contribute to spin the wheels of progress in place is gone. We have only a short amount of time on this earth and I don’t intend to waste it watching that window of opportunity be pissed away by someone else. By laziness of thought and sticking up for the greed of the elite of a sputtering nation in hopes that one day it will be you on the other side of that dynamic. I refuse to stand for that shit anymore, and you shouldn’t either. Every time you open your mouth is an opportunity to say something new, something of worth, and I do not want to waste even one moment. It’s time to get serious and realize yes it is that deep. It always has been. I can’t say for certain exactly what this counter-culture will manifest as or even look like specifically, but I do have faith that something can and will emerge. There is far too much talent, energy, emotion, conviction, and spirit out there to not. Who knows, maybe as actually believing in something becomes subversive and “cool” again, the FOMO will start to creep in for the general public, and we can shift the vibes somewhere better ourselves.

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