About

Vibe Shift refers to a slang term used in a February 2022 article in The Cut that describes a dramatic cultural change that makes current trends feel dated as a wave of new trends are ushered in. The piece went viral on Twitter as the author dramatically wondered "will any of us survive" a supposedly incoming "vibe shift," leading to parodies using the term as a catchphrase online.

Origin

On February 16th, 2022, The Cut author Allison P. Davis published an article titled, "A Vibe Shift Is Coming Will any of us survive it?"^[1] In the piece, Davis describes coming across a prediction from trends writer Sean Monahan (who, as the founder of the trendcasting group K-Hole, coined the term "normcore") in which he predicts pop culture is due for a "vibe shift." Monahan identifies three "vibe shifts" in the past 20 years, which are described by Davis thusly:

Hipster/Indie Music (ca. 2003–9), or peak Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, high-waisted Cheap Mondays, Williamsburg, bespoke-cocktail bars; Post-Internet/Techno Revival (ca. 2010–16), or the Blood Orange era, normcore, dressing like The Matrix, Kinfolk the club, not Kinfolk the magazine; and Hypebeast/Woke (ca. 2016–20), or Drake at his Drakest, the Nike SNKRS app, sneaker flipping, virtue signaling, Donald Trump, protests not brunch.

Monahan notes that "some people don't survive" a vibe shift, meaning they stick with trends of the previous era rather than adapt to the current one. This led Davis to fret that she may soon become obsolete due to her allegiance to trends of her youth.

Spread

Davis' piece generated discussion on social media in mid-February 2022, as some users found it funny and accurate, while others felt fretting about trends was a poor way to look at life. In the former camp, Twitter user @Choire^[2] wrote, "this is extremely convincing, i mean i can feel it in my bones, and also the first time a trend piece has been written when we don't know what the trend is yet," gaining over 30 retweets and 580 likes (shown below, left). On the negative side, user @bulkUSBchargers^[3] wrote, "I mean this sincerely, I think it is bad for your brain to think this much and this way about where you stand in culture. You are just describing getting older, which is fine, and you could not do anything about it if it wasn't," gaining over 200 retweets and 3,000 likes (shown below, right).

The discourse around the article soon led users to begin parodying the discussion in various ways over the following days. For example, on February 16th, 2022, user @ErnieLies^[4] posted a still of Robert Pattinson in Tenet saying "This whole operation was a vibe shift," gaining over 170 retweets and 2,300 likes (shown below, left). User KoslofskySpeaks^[5] posted an image of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in The Master with the phrase that same day, gaining over 240 retweets and 2,800 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References