About

Vibecession, also spelled Vibe Cession, is a slang term and economics concept coined by content creator Kyla Scanlon to describe attitudes around the American economy in 2023. According to Scanlon and others, the "vibe cession" consists of widespread gloom and negative sentiment about the economy despite most indicators showing that the economy is improving. The vibecession sparked viral debates on X / Twitter, TikTok and other platforms in late 2023 as posters argued about whether the economy actually was doing well or if it was even real.

Origin

Scanlon coined the term in a June 30th, 2023, Substack post, titled "The Vibecession: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," which received almost 150 likes over the course of six months.^[1] Scanlon posted about the vibecession on her other social media accounts as well on TikTok and X (shown below). She defined the term as:

Vibecession — A period of temporary vibe decline where economic data such as trade and industrial activity are relatively okay but people feel bad. it’s mainly a disconnect between consumer sentiment and economic data.

Scanlon told Know Your Meme that she came up with the concept while "riding my bike" and that while vibes preexisted social media and "this concept has always been around — reflexivity, animal spirits, etc … it's exacerbated because we are constantly tuned into each other."

Spread

In the fall and winter of 2023, the "vibecession" term began to gain more traction in mainstream media conversations as it spread online. The New York Times published an editorial describing the "vibe-cession" on December 6th, 2023.^[4] Many commentators described it as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other cultural traumas, including X user @deleteevelyn on December 4th, 2023, who received over 17,000 likes in three days for identifying the vibecession as a response to COVID (seen below).^[5]

The vibecession term notably encapsulated a debate on X that raged throughout the summer. Left-leaning online commentator Will Stancil had for years been talking about vibes, arguing that much discourse online was shaped by perception more than reality.

Stancil's series of posts then attracted attention from others observing it from afar, including X user @JosephPolitano on August 31st who received 1,500 likes in three months for sharing screenshots of one of Stancil's many debates (seen below).^[2]

The overall debate reached a fever pitch when a user supposedly working at a bar where Stancil dined posted a photo of a check showing that Stancil purportedly ate a single hot dog and a side of fries alone. The original exchange between Stancil and the poster was later deleted, but X user @francisxwolf posted about this incident on November 30th, 2023 (seen below), receiving over 3,000 likes in roughly a week.^[3]

Various Examples

External References