A trend of pandemic proportions
This week: vaxxies, shanties, screenshots, an enormously hateable man, link rot, TherapyTok and the QAnon shaman
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Between the near-collapse of American democracy, the second impeachment and the Great Deplatforming Debate™ , you could be forgiven for temporarily forgetting about the pandemic. (Our other shared national tragedy!) But you can’t forget it, I’d wager, regardless of your news consumption. Because every time you open any kind of social app, there are doctors and nurses and teachers and seniors smizing above masks with their sleeves rolled up.
Someone has christened this phenomenon the “vaxxie,” I am sorry to report, and it appears some recipients believe their vaccine won’t work unless/until they post one. (Not the most egregious form of vaccine disinfo going around, admittedly, but certainly a common one.) The vaxxies tend to follow one of two formats, depending, presumably, on the subject’s willingness to whip his or her phone out mid-immunization:
Type 1 — The action vaxxie, taken with needle in deltoid, sometimes backgrounded by linoleum floors or cinderblock walls or hospital privacy curtains; the vaccinator looks away, an extra on-set; the receiver smiles or raises eyebrows in a “holy shit?!” expression.
Type 2 — The aftermath vaxxie, usually snapped in the more flattering light of a hospital hallway or parked car; mask down because it’s safe and also maybe ‘cause it’s cuter; thumbs-ups and peace signs on full display, along with — and this is risky, please don’t do this? — unredacted vaccination record cards.
Some hospitals, healthcare systems and other vaccination centers have actively encouraged the vaxxie trend, hopeful that it might educate the skeptical and/or nudge the hesitant. This is surely one of the more altruistic justifications for self-portraiture I’ve ever heard, and there’s some evidence supporting it. Vaccination photo shoots are a get-out-the-vax strategy dating back to Elvis’ heyday. And a 2013 study of Facebook profile photos concluded that pictures overlaid with “I Voted” text actually got people to polling places.
But the line between educating and boasting is admittedly thin, on social media and off it; and vaxxies, to me, risk becoming one of those many well-intentioned internet things torpedoed by narcissists.
Take a scroll through Instagram’s “vaccine selfie” page: You’ll find many, many posters making earnest efforts to spread hope and accurate vaccine information. You’ll *also* find veiled humble-brags, glamor shots, tone-deaf musings about newly possible social plans and vacations, and cringey insinuations that the poster is more essential, in our now ubiquitous pandemic parlance, than the millions of people waiting months for their immunizations.
“With the pandemic there’s been fewer opportunities for selfies — no travel, no gatherings,” one cardiologist told The Cut. “This is a fun time to show off.” Uhhhh, I dunno — is it?
Three physicians recently wrote a takedown of vaxxies for the Toronto Star, and I found their argument persuasive. Far from providing hope or battling anti-vax sentiment, they argue, vaxxies might further discourage people who haven’t gotten the vaccine — particularly if they, through government incompetence or disenfranchisement, are never “lucky”/“blessed” enough to get the first wave of any medical intervention.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough, so here’s one vaxxie we can all agree on. Truly, none of us are as #blessed as this bespectacled floofy dog.
If you read anything this weekend
This profile of maybe the most hate-able dude I’ve ever had the displeasure to read about. I know, I know — that’s an exceedingly high bar right now. But David Lesh is the kind of guy who sets literal and figurative fires, shits into protected lakes (ish) for the gram, and says things like “post[ing] fake things to the Internet … is my fucking right as an American.” (Reading this, I was reminded of a line from Ben Smith’s column on Baked Alaska this week, also worth a glance: “You always think that evil is going to come from movie villain evil, and then you’re like — oh no, evil can just start with bad jokes and nihilistic behavior that is fueled by positive reinforcement on various platforms.”) [Nick Paumgarten / The New Yorker]
These twin explorations of the unsettling ties between far-right conspiracies and the wellness/New Age movements. First up: How Q overtook the corner of Instagram home to crystal healers and detox teas. Second: a deep dive into the psyche of the “Q shaman,” Jake Angeli. [Clio Chang / Cosmopolitan & Jules Evans / Gen]
This surprisingly educational romp through … ugh, sigh … shanties. I told myself I would feature no pieces on shantytok, the TikTok subculture dujour, because it exhausts me to watch so many writers wring it for meaning/angles. Alas, Amanda Petrusich is in on the joke, and also knows a LOT about sea shanties as a folk genre (?!), and so this charmed me in spite of myself/I will have “The Scotsman” in my head for hours. [Amanda Petrusich / The New Yorker]
This essay on screenshots and how they mediate our relationship to screens. I appreciate Real Life for consistently shaking/screwing up my understanding of everyday digital activities. “When I take a screenshot, it feels like a tiny rejection of the logic of the contemporary corporate internet. Instead of offering up fragments of my photographic life to the computer gods, the screenshot feels like I’m stealing something back from the computational world for my own uses” (!). [Kelly Pendergrast / Real Life]
This very grim coda to the “Mostly Harmless” hiker mystery. Read this first if you weren’t following the made-for-Law-&-Order saga — and all its internet sleuths — already. [Nicholas Thompson / Wired]
And now for something completely different
Postscripts
How the pandemic improved online dating. How woke “stopped being a Black word.” The ultimate case of link rot and a movie critic matchmaker. Why your voice sounds so weird on video chat. When OnlyFans doesn’t pay the bills. I don’t *often* trawl Wikipedia talk pages, but this — on the use of “coup” vs. “insurrection” vs. “sedition” — enlightened.
This week in ‘Toks: TherapyTok; real estate tok; African water tok. (That last one is pretty good.) A vision for better online spaces. “Relaxation” drinks: big, if true. America’s long history of doxing racists. The study that predicted a “violent upheaval” last year. Last/not least, the heirs apparent to Parler, which fell to a comp sci 101-level “bug”: MeWe, Telegram & Signal.
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In all seriousness, one of the coolest things about writing this newsletter is getting out-of-office emails in an ever-surprising diversity of languages. Oh god, I miss the rest of the world. Shout out to my readers living in countries that haven’t completely botched the pandemic. THANK YOU to Arobase/Alexandre & everyone else who shares this newsletter, even if I have to use Google Translate to determine if you’re being cool. Your referrals are the main way it finds new readers!!
— Caitlin