2025’s Biggest Vibe Shift
Decorum is dead
One year of Trump II has utterly demolished the role of decorum in American life. The teacher is out, the substitute teacher sat on a tack and ran out of the classroom crying, and the president is doing his class clown impressions of both to howls of laughter.
No one’s really in charge anymore, creating a power vacuum that allowed for the rise of Zohran Mamdani. It’s a rare moment full of possibility; but all the A-students of the classroom can see is how against the rules this all is.
They have no one to blame but themselves.
The teacher — Congress, political party leaders, the major media — abdicated her power, calling in sick so she could binge watch Law and Order re-runs. Is that really any less serious than a political party repeatedly nominating 70-year-olds who are literally dying (including three such cases in 2025 alone)?
No battering ram was necessary for Trump to break down the palace gate; the wood was so rotted through it just kind of fell apart. And now anyone can walk through it — including you.
The classroom students, to continue the metaphor, are not just Trump supporter MAGA-types. It’s everyone who, like myself, could not stand the pomp and circumstance performed by a political system that cannot provide the most basic necessities like housing, healthcare and security to its citizens. Trump won’t deliver any of those things, of course; but he has ushered in the death knell for decorum, and nowhere is that clearer than in the state of social media.
In 2025:
Thousands of Facebook moms descended on UnitedHealthcare’s post about its slain CEO to clown on him with laugh emojis and snarky comments (“Hope his ambulance was in-network!”)
Trump replaced Joe Biden’s White House portrait with a picture of an autopen, and more recently cracked wise about the murder of actor Rob Reiner (which Trump said it was “due to the the anger he caused others through ... a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”)
President Joe Biden’s official White House portrait Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket called her state’s paraplegic leader, Greg Abbot, “Governor Hot Wheels.”
And most recently, there is a tsunami of Charlie Kirk memes mocking the murdered commentator
No one is taking down these posts or apologizing; nor is there much of any attempt to “de-platform” or “cancel” them.
Decorum is dead, floating face down in the backed up sewage of a decade of bullshit about showing respect to politicians and public figures and government officials who would never show any to you. There’s a lot of good in that. But there’s an ugly side, too.
In 2022, Kanye West was banned by Twitter / X for his antisemitic post declaring “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” CEO Elon Musk repeatedly defended the ban. But this year, his music video titled “Nigga Heil Hitler” (that’s literally the chorus) not only didn’t result in his ban, it’s still up all over the platform.
No word from Elon this time.
Also this year, Meta (Facebook / Instagram / Threads) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a sweeping rollback of content restrictions for the social media giant. Zuckerberg in a public address apologized for what he said was “too much censorship” by the platform, including by its third-party fact-checking program, which was ended.
The reason, Zuck said, was the vibe shift I’m describing here, which he saw Trump’s election victory as embodying.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s time to get back to our roots of free expression on Facebook and Instagram.”
This is a profound change. Just five years ago, one day after January 6, Facebook and Instagram banned then-President Trump’s accounts in response to his praise of those who’d stormed the Capitol.
“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Zuckerberg said at the time.
I know that these social media giants are acting on their own interests. But this is also a battle for control of the social media feed and who gets to decide what appears in it: the A-student, fact checker types, or you, the user.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this year notes that centralized fact checking is “increasingly viewed with skepticism by segments of the public.” Presumably that is why so many major platforms have moved away from it. The study cites experimental results showing community notes-style fact checking being just as effective as “professional,” centralized fact-checkers, which says a lot about the seriousness of that profession.
The vibe shift I’m describing extends beyond just the social media platforms. “Cancel culture” is a term I haven’t seen in the wild in months.
Liberal commentators like Matt Yglesias now awkwardly use the word “retard” — which, according to Google Trends, spiked in 2025 (its first rise in years).
The Department of Homeland Security’s official social media accounts are almost daily posting memes cracking jokes about deportations.
It’s all gone so far that it’s drawing unease from some of the most unlikely quarters, like the populist comedian Shane Gillis who on the Joe Rogan show last week expressed discomfort with the memes.
“Yeah, sure, illegal immigration, we should fix that — [but] don’t fucking make it funny,” Gillis said. “It’s a serious thing you’re doing.”
From Donald Trump humiliating Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office (even declaring it “great television”!) to Zohran Mamdani saying he would not visit Israel, the supposedly immutable laws of what you can and cannot say in politics no longer apply.
Forget touching the third rail: now you can do yoga poses on it. I know I will be. And what more sacred cow is there than national security?
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Totally agree, but there absolutely is/was a concerted effort to “cancel” people over Charlie Kirk memes. Many lost their jobs. There is sort of a growing “wokeness” on the right, with the same people who built their careers crying about cancel culture now advocating cancelation.
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