Dear 2120,
Four years have gone by since my last letter. Apologies. The years have been eventful. I have two kids now, and a bunch of other things eating up my time here in late-stage capitalism, rendering unpaid writing, ruminating on the state of the world, outside of my immediate priorities. Still, I managed to squeeze in this message from early 2025 to let you know how I’m doing.
I hope you’re hanging in there. Chances are you might not be hanging in there. If the recent trajectory maintains its exponential nosedive, the letter I’m currently writing will find you in some sort of next-level chaos that our tiny minds can’t even begin to comprehend. To put it bluntly, we’re doing a spectacularly shitty job of protecting the future. I don’t mean to sound needy or act all weird about it, but I genuinely hope you’re okay.
As I type these words into an oligarch-powered digital void, the world’s dominant superpower is getting hijacked by power-hungry techno-authoritarians. It’s very intimidating, but not without its farcical, clown-like elements; it weirdly feels like we’re stuck in some future comedy sketch about the 2020s — with Trump playing the cartoonish capitalist villain, all filtered through whatever distorted, misremembering history books you guys have left.
And that’s just politics. We’ve got a polycrisis on our hands:
- Oceans being killed
- Forests vanishing
- Soil turning to dust
- Big animals being wiped out
- Insects disappearing
- Mass extinctions accelerating
- Plastic literally in our bloodstreams
- Climate scientists basically screaming into the void
- Endless wars and genocide
Oh, and did I mention the asteroid coming to kills us all, or the methane bubble in the Arctic that might burst, annihilating every living thing in its wake like some flatulent sleeper assassin the size of a small country? Some academics are even saying that AI could mean the end of civilization. I mean…why not throw a flesh-eating, zombie-virus into the mix to keep things interesting?
The whole thing feels like whoever’s running this simulation suddenly got bored and started throwing random disasters at us. Like, ‘Let’s make Elon go off the rails! Send a hot, weird girl his way, make her break up with him and see what happens.’
Well, it worked, simulation overlords. I gotta say, though, in reference to Roy Logan in Succession: you’re not serious people. It feels like you’re just making shit up at this point. You’ve got him doing Nazi salutes, stirring up far-right chaos in Europe, and stealing social security numbers from senior citizens with the help of over-caffeinated teenage bros. X, formerly Twitter, the social media he bought for a cajilion dollars to spread his misinformation, is calling him “Hurt Copain” now, offering a little comic relief in dark and tumultuous times.
What isn’t funny, are the accelerationist aspirations of Curtis Yarvin, the rising idealogue whispering his ‘dark enlightenment’ talking points into Vice president JD Vance’s ears. According to the Guardian:
‘Yarvin, who considers liberal democracy as a decadent enemy to be dismantled, is intellectually influential on vice president-elect JD Vance and close to several proposed Trump appointees. The aftermath of Trump’s election victory has seen actions and rhetoric from Trump and his lieutenants that closely resemble Yarvin’s public proposals for taking autocratic power in America.’
My initial action to these extremist fringe ideas occupying such a pivotal position in contemporary geopolitics were shock and surprise. However, having thought about it for a little while, my more considered stance is that it sort of makes sense. I don’t agree with any of it, of course. But in a world so utterly disenchanted by hollow consumerism, whoever dares to champion the grand narrative, while turning up the amp on the pomp & populism, stands to gain everything. We’re essentially numb from too much information and starved from too little meaning—and we’ll watch whatever trauma-pornographic Netflix show that ‘s on offer or latch onto any seemingly meaningful movement to feel something, anything.
In The Crisis of Narration, Byung Chul Han argues that our information-saturated society has undermined a fundamental human practice: narration.
While therapists practicing cognitive behavioral therapy encourage patients to examine their internal narratives, and politicians craft storylines to maintain their base, Han contends these are narratives in name only—lacking the profound world-shaping quality of myths or religious ceremonies. Genuine narration, according to Han, “combines events and objects, even seemingly trivial, minor, or random things, into a coherent story.” Put differently, true narration infuses our surroundings with meaning.
To sum up: neoliberalism and its digital byproduct, the relentless cascade of online information distributed via social media, has drained the world of color, leaving us begging for meager scraps from the numbing entertainment matrix, as well as apathetic, directionless and susceptible to domination.
I’m tempted to call this a non-stop tragicomical clusterfuck with no end in sight. Nobody has a clue where we’re heading, even if they pretend otherwise. It’s probably gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
Or I don’t know…maybe this cartoon villany will come crashing down sooner than expected. They’ve certainly proved their glaring and goofy incompetence on more than one occasion. Let’s hope these are the last, somewhat bizarre, death throes of a dying paradigm.
Wish you could send something back. You know how it plays out. I don’t have the slightest idea. Maybe those UFO-sightings in New Jersey were you trying to get through to us?
In any case, it’s getting weird out here.
Letters to 2120 