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Post-apocalyptic entertainment took off like a rocket in the early 2000s and never slowed down. Decaying cities and nuclear wastelands. This aesthetic has dominated the cultural consciousness and will continue to because apocalypse isn't just a genre, it's secretly a fantasy.
Everyone secretly craves an abrupt end to the mundane, purposeless current running through modern life. Today we are driven almost entirely by leisurely concerns. There's nothing real at stake.
We have to artificially spike our adrenaline with video games and tv shows where we vicariously live through characters that are actually driven by a purpose beyond money and social status.
We're fucking bored. We construct cultural myths and personal narratives, low level tribal conflicts, artificial arcs of hardship and success to distract ourselves from the bone-deep craving for something real. None of it ever satisfies.
But the lust for apocalypse goes even deeper. The industrial revolution haunts us like a spectre. Ugly, brutal art is the corpse it left behind and as it decomposes the stench is becoming unbearable.
You may have detected an undercurrent running through Gen Z and the late millenials. A desire to return to nature. A looming feeling that maybe the technocratic utopia the silicon overlords have in mind for us is not the way forward. Maybe total collapse is preferable.
There's a certain shared intuition that has been dormant for a while but is starting to wake. We've been thoroughly atomized by corporate interests and subconsciously searching for the cure. New tribes will be formed. Online and offline, in that order.
Fallout understood this.
