When I was on the phone with a trusted professor over the weekend, she said something that I had recently been circling around in in my thoughts: “We are seeing the downfall of the American empire.” To hear someone say it out loud, someone with a perspective I admired and sought for, made me falter. I had been attributing a lot of my fear and worries about the current state of the nation to my youth, citing the mistakes of previous generations. The mistakes of previous generations, I realize now, are part of a cascading effect that has been occurring for years. Life on Earth is increasingly unsustainable due to humans wanting, needing, begging for more.
More will be the death of the American economy. Living in the United States right now is a nearly dystopian world where people are forced to live dual lives in reality and cyberspace. Aside from continuing to consume the traditional media sources, we are also asked to live as Avatars in an online society, posting to receive validation. Continuous self-produced content is being pushed in our faces and shoved down our throats; we scream as we choke ourselves, the modern-day ouroboros.
Because there is so much media, there is virtually no communication. Complex algorithms produce echo chambers where online users shout into the void, receiving opinions back in slightly different verbiage and calling it diversity of thought. Academic appellations become meaningless terms, worn out from overuse. The latest trio of prose victims now ironically trend on the internet, demanding other users “gatekeep, gaslight, and girlboss.” Although I personally disagree with the inclusion of girlboss due to wanting to alleviate the debt of female equality in subconscious vernacular association, the point stands (and I reinforce overcomplicating concepts by overusing Academic Language). Gatekeep, gaslight, and girlboss are all used to refer to commonly occurring behaviors that are increasingly being called out on social media.
Does it mean anything that all three terms are used to identify behaviors used by those who wish to oppress another? Gatekeep identifies the concept of keeping something (vernacular, resources, trends, etc.) from another. Gaslight refers to when someone makes you question your core beliefs. If you were stupid enough to believe that, you should seriously consider that you’re part of the problem. Like so. Girlboss, arguably the most complex term of the three, is a classification of women who are agents of the patriarchy and achieve success by immoral, capitalistic means. It frightens me, and should frighten you, that those terms are being retired due to excessive overuse.
By overusing these terms, those behaviors become normalized. With the normalization of those behaviors, it becomes all too easy to allow those behaviors to happen more for fear of being mocked for calling it out. I genuinely believe the United States society is heading into a dystopian state — no one can resist the cycle of trauma inflicted upon us by the corruption of the United States government and maybe this is the way it always has been and I had just created an escapist fantasy in my mind and am finally waking up into a The Matrix-level nightmare?
When will they realize that I’ve waken up and am not supposed to be here?
If you critically analyze The Matrix as a commentary on capitalism and realize that the corruption of our leaders allows us to only exist if we choose to ignore and behave peacefully, you can understand this feeling. Further, if you view The Matrix feminist film and realize that Neo’s experience is representative of the realization of the trauma inflicted onto the female population, you can identify on an even deeper level.
One of the easiest ways that you can identify the dire effects that the state of overcommodification present in the United States is the treatment of women by men. Women have long been identified as products that men can work to achieve under the guise of capitalism — if you are wealthy, you have earned a beautiful wife. Along with the intense self-objectification that social media projects onto the lives of heavy users, a heavy male-biased environment has been created in the dating world. And to make it worse, they’ve recruited girls desperate for validation to tell women how to “hack the system” by playing into the system in a futile attempt to seem “cool” and “low-maintenance”. Cue the Gone Girl monologue. Women who listen to Barstool Sports, this is for you.
Statements like that are generally flipped to accuse the writer of being biased against other women. If you are ignoring a valid criticism by deflecting and accusing me of anti-feminism, I urge you to take a look at how you allow men to treat you and wonder if you are happy. The only way to defeat the system is by refusing be complicit and play into the patriarchal narratives that have been constructed to oppress women!
However, it is incredibly hard to identify what aspects of your identity have been shaped by the patriarchy. It has been particularly hard for members of the generations who grew up on social media. Social media has become insidiously pervasive in our lives and has placed the lens of male gaze over our society as a whole. This is why no one in our generation is able to relax, even in the comfort of our own homes (and why the pandemic has worsened the mental health epidemic).
