Afternoon Joe Eight days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and after a year of pivoting events, Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. @DifficultPatty posted a question to X: Thirst for answers“Which wines are best suited to these unprecedented times?”
“All of them,” one user replied.
“Apocalypse IPA,” said another. “It’s the real deal.”
The situation we are facing all the time is also real. Everything is full of devastation and anxiety. At least, that is the atmosphere these days. Every week, a new historical benchmark appears with surprise, and across social media, there is a constant atmosphere that we are living in “unprecedented times.”
The phrase, now a staple of the zeitgeist, was originally Shot The phrase first became popular around 2015 during President Trump’s first presidential campaign, a campaign that, as you may recall, tapped into the uniquely American appetite for political instigation. Since then, it has become shorthand for the relentless cycle of everyday reality. Soon after, as the COVID-19 pandemic upended work and home life, the phrase further entrenched itself in our shared vocabulary, recast as a convenient expression for an increasingly inconvenient future.
a Conducting the survey According to a 2020 study by The New York Times and research firm Sentieo, the phrase saw a 70,830 percent increase in use in corporate presentations over the previous year (surpassing buzzwords like “the new normal” and “you’re on mute”). “Surviving and thriving in unprecedented times” CEO and business school alumna Christa Babcock advised entrepreneurs to embrace the challenges ahead: “Expect things to never be the same, and be excited about it.”
But for us, constant and unpleasant change Was problem.
The phrase has been gaining attention both offline and online: “The only difference between millennials and Gen Z is how many ‘unprecedented times’ we can survive before climate change engulfs our homes” @bocxtop Tweeted In February 2022, when X was still called Twitter. That same year, 19 students were shot at a rural elementary school in Texas, and California Record unemployment Food prices at grocery stores across the country It rose steadily As a result of the war in Ukraine.
Today, the phrase has been stretched beyond its actual meaning to become a cheesy symbol of our unsettled cultural mood, uniformly used to describe nearly every new hellish event that emerges, from the US election and the Gaza conflict to the threat of climate disaster. Living in “unprecedented times” has become our new normal on social media.
Congestion pricing in NYC? “We are living in unprecedented times” – Jared from @TransitTalks said The same is true for TikTok Giant spider, Tenacious D tour canceled, Breakdown of relationshipsand its elucidation Social anxiety This is all an unprecedented event in the UK.
