THE BIG SOCIAL SHIFT - WHY DOES EVERYTHING FEEL DIFFERENT NOW
- Lainey Molnar
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
As I sat down with my business manager to map out the direction for work for this year, I was filling her in on my most recent epiphanies. Mostly that it feels like everything has changed socially and culturally the past few years.
This is what I personally experienced as a woman of a certain demographic, as someone who works in social media and has an 8+ hour screentime daily, and a small business owner, so obviously this is somewhat niche, but feel free to share your opinions in a reply!
2020-2023
COVID has disrupted so much of what we believed to be the “order”. From the aftermath of isolation, the need to work from home, our purchasing patterns, to our screen time and reliance on digital connection. But what I’d like to focus on is that for women, it was revolutionary. I went viral and started my career as a women’s empowerment illustrator in late 2020 as fourth wave feminism became mainstream, awakening women en masse. We learned what the patriarchy was, how it harms all human beings, we disassembled patterns around our body image, self-worth, and personal freedom. So much awareness was raised about standards in dating and self-love. We pivoted to intersectionality and standing for all living beings. People marched on the streets for social justice all over the world.
We created communities and supported each other, because it felt so incredibly hopeful that a new world could be born through the awakened and liberated feminine course correcting about 10,000 years of masculine dysfunction. If something, the tragedy of a global pandemic made us believe that anything structural and solid has the ability to shift. That change is possible, even if it has a price.
Business as usual, but with an added bonus of hope. We should all be feminists and the world shall be changed.
From a spiritual point of view, everyone murmured about the Age of Aquarius ushering in the power to the people. New Earth, changing of the guards, empires falling, and so on. Most predicted a few years or decades of mayhem until the old structures fell, yes. It’s all a part of it. The only way out is through!
2024-2026
Honestly, what the fuck was the past two years? Baptism by fire, because it seems like the world drove off a cliff and it rearranged so much for us socially and culturally.
Not necessarily in a bad way, bear with me.
We have lived through despots elected, women’s bodily autonomy taken, revolutions, wars, genocides, corruption, human rights abuses, leading figures openly n*zi saluting, body cam shots of people being murdered, the entire youth swallowing the red pill. Topped off with a prolonged, crippling cost-of-living and financial crisis. We are so desensitized to bad news, tragedies, and suffering and so goddamn tired of celebrities, rich influencers, and advertisements.
The feminism we ushered in before 2024, the art I used to make was deeply critical of the system, of men, of women tearing other women down. Because an awakening stage comes with becoming aware of how deep the shit is, before we can strategize to dig it up. I “abandoned” this post and activism because I moved past this phase of perpetual angry victimhood and tearing things down and into building, and I always said that the collective shall follow suit. No, not because I am “better than”, but because it is the natural process of said awakening. But I never thought we would be forced to move forward because there is too much hardship in the world to process and we don’t have the capacity to tie our womanhood to even more of it. I’m watching as my engagement plummets when I draw about injustice or female victimhood and I’m watching how the tone changes all over social media.
I think we are ready to become.
Pre-2024 we had a wave of “relatable” and empowering female influencers rise up who showed us cellulite, pores, bloating, and the struggles of parenting. But the needle of relatable has moved. People respond to radical vulnerability. We crave radical vulnerability. Women now talk about how itchy it really is to grow your bush out, live tweet their crashouts, free bleed in the grass, and post 20-part storytimes about leaving abusive marriages. I love that this is happening. I love that we don’t give a fuck anymore to be digestable and in the process feel so violently seen.
Stories are being told, like they used to be around fires.
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Also, we all need to dissociate from the horrors, but escapism became soft. One of the reasons is because as the collective purchasing power got tackled by a recession, many people took their eyes off capitalism naturally. We need funny, cute, and gentle. Knitting. Gay hockey. Cats being assholes. Unfollowing news accounts. People refurbishing Facebook marketplace furniture. Thrift hauls. Video essays about moon phases.
Much of the past decade-and-half was spent following celebrities, red carpets, glossy magazines, girlbossing, leaning in, hustling, getting abs, saving up for status symbols, watching influencer unboxings and press trips, but we genuinely just want to feel safe, soft, and joyful now - within ourselves. Neurodivergence is trending and no longer a taboo, overconsumption is embarrassing, we get excited about new recipes and hobbies, and subcultures and (live) music are thriving. Small businesses are trending, unique self-expression became important, the discussions about the longevity of the objects we buy and free home health remedies like traditional chinese medicine or lymphatic drainage are ongoing.
We also see how when the mainstream becomes the counterculture, it starts pushing back aggressively. This is why we see celebrities getting brand new $150,000 faces and dissolving into skeletons with Ozempic. Famous influencers rubbing Tom Brady’s back on a yacht in St. Barths, or getting their jaws broken in half by professional boxers on live tv, pushing the pipeline from civilian to 1%-er as aspirational and quite normal. After all, 37% of Gen Alpha polled would like to become an influencer. Do not be fooled though, just because the tip of the iceberg is incredibly well documented, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an entire mountain underwater, getting ready to flip this shit over.
Most importantly, the way we connect with each other is shifting. Many people crave intimate belonging over communities, fandoms, or large gatherings. Dinner parties, board game nights, themed girly house parties (I love the “wear something you own and have had no occasion to wear” videos), painting portraits of each other with your partner. The conversations around friendships are getting just as loud as the ones around romantic relationships. When capitalist consumer culture breaks down, the idea of external validation through status also becomes less important and belonging becomes about genuine connections.
It is ironic how when billionaires manufacture scarcity for us peasants to take more for themselves, they wipe out the culture that fetishizes their existence. Because how fucking embarrassing it is to be mega-wealthy right now? Even if you are Becca Bloom… just saying.
And lastly - self-development and education has taken a turn too. The covid-era was the golden age of therapy, healing, learning new things, and working on ourselves, these being the only things we could control and progress in in a world that was stalling and uncertain. So many of us experienced incredible breakthroughs and it was so needed. But by now, we are fucking tired. Tired of everything going on, but also tired of being a “work in progress”, of taking responsibility for so much - for our triggers, growth, circumstances, relationships, or parenting. What I see is that instead of the forward motion (sometimes through digging out the past) that defined the last few years, what people yearn for is wellbeing in the present moment. Finding our voices, our power, our magic, our creative outlets, functional coping mechanisms, re-examining our belief systems, keeping our peace, becoming more loving and compassionate - towards ourselves and others, being able to rest. It’s more about being than doing. It’s more inwards than forwards.
It’s not temporary. It’s the skillset needed to learn to be in the present and be secure and balanced, regardless of external circumstances.
As the world is growing increasingly hostile and as systems and authorities fail us, many of us learn that we are already good enough and already complete and regardless of our qualifications, traumas, or shortcomings, we can find security and peace inside. Then bring it outside, into our relationships, families, and communities.
So I do understand things may seem absolutely doomed, dark, and hopeless. I also understand that it may seem like the majority of people are still hung up on the old ways, or are actively contributing to the hellscape. But nobody is immune to the undercurrents of the collective. Neither to the previous (feminism, awakening, activism, and self-development), nor to the current ones. Those who recognize these shifts, intuitively or consciously, are ahead of everyone. In personal growth, in creating businesses, services, or building relationships. Because all of these changes are the foundations of a sustainable future.
So maybe we should just lean in, even though shit’s on fire. It seems like the hope is still strong.
Ps. I don’t wish to feed this into ChatGPT to correct the grammar, because I think we should inhabit the Earth for a bit longer, so please just roll with the imperfections
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