How America Got "Platform-Pilled"
The Internet’s Role in Recent Elections and the Aestheticization of Politics
I’m writing this introduction on the morning of November 6th, 2024, just hours after Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States. If I had to capture the prevailing mood today in a single word, it would be recrudescence—the unsettling return of an unwelcome condition.
Let me first state the obvious: I’m not American. But you don’t need to be American to feel the weight of this election’s outcome and its implications. I want to set the stage with some words from Hunter S. Thompson, written promptly after 9/11:
We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for “a very long time.”
Generals and military scholars will tell you that 8 or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history—which is no doubt true—but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.
That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th Century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks.1
His words capture the global sense of weariness that I, along with many others, felt upon waking this morning. The grief, sadness, anger, and disappointment doesn’t arise from the Democratic party’s loss alone, but from what Trump’s victory symbolizes: the values, morals, and principles that a significant portion of the United States have now chosen to endorse. I’m not here to preach my own beliefs—you likely don’t want them, and frankly, I doubt it would change much. Instead, I’ll focus on what I’m equipped to discuss: media—the role it played in this election, its implications, and where it leaves us now.
