When you scroll through your smartphone feeds on any given day—perhaps especially in an election year—two things become immediately clear.
First, people no longer seem to value logical coherence and aren’t phased by obvious inconsistencies. Earlier this year in a piece I wrote on metamodernism, I observed this as a concerning symptom of our cultural moment: “Many metamoderns don’t flinch when their illogical views are pointed out. They aren’t bothered by the internal incoherence of their contradictory stances.” Life online is rampant with cognitive dissonance—but we don’t experience it as dissonance anymore. We’ve made peace with incoherence. It’s how we live in the internet age.
Second, something new has emerged as the most salient feature of scrolling life; it has the most power to grab our attention or lead us to take an action (click, view, listen, purchase). What is it? Vibes.
Vibes are the currency of our time, given and received a million times a minute on screens everywhere. The vibe world is Memes over messages. Aesthetics over arguments. Relatability over rightness. Feelings over facts. Mood over meaning. Vibes are fluid, subjective, and immune to criticism or definition. You can’t articulate, replicate, or invalidate a vibe.
The vibe world: Memes over messages. Aesthetics over arguments. Relatability over rightness. Feelings over facts. Mood over meaning.
On the giving side, vibes are only partially within our control. You can do your best to “give off” vibes that will appeal to those you seek to reach, but the vibe’s appeal is in its authenticity, and it can’t be micromanaged into existence. Vibe shifts can be observed, but they cannot be manufactured.
Thus, to attempt to conjure the right “vibe” via some alchemy of A/B testing, focus groups, and market research is self-defeating. Vibes are only good when they happen organically, authentically, and serendipitously. To self-consciously build a campaign around “good vibes” is a questionable strategy. If you have to draw attention to the fact that you have a good vibe (much like calling yourself “relevant”), your vibe isn’t good.
On the receiving end, vibes are the engine of agency for consumers: the subjective senses, intuitions, and gut reactions that lead us to give or withhold our attention, follow or unfollow, accept or reject. In an algorithmic world of consumer surveillance, with an ever more dialed-in sense of who we are and what we want, our “vibe radar” is a powerful weapon of resistance. We may have lost the ability to fact check. But we can vibe check.
The triumph of vibes isn’t generally a good development. But it’s where we are. Christian wisdom in a vibe-driven world starts with awareness of how the very structure of the internet got us here.
Internet Wired for Incoherence
Initially framed as a net gain for humanity, the internet’s open-source, democratized nature has ended up leading not to enlightenment but rather to a “post-truth” world of informational chaos. The sheer glut of information, coming at us from all directions at all times, is mostly unvetted and contains no clear distinctions between expert and nonexpert, fact or opinion, and (increasingly) human or AI. We naturally grow suspicious of almost everything we see on screens. Information overload renders all information suspect.
The “everything, everywhere, all at once” structure of internet life also explains why we’ve grown accustomed to incoherence. We’re constantly confronted with disconnected fragments, contradictory ideas, dueling opinions, and the whiplash of narratives that drastically change in real time (e.g., 2019’s Jussie Smollett hoax or this year’s KateGate).
Byung-Chul Han is correct to point to this “deluge of information” as the cause of our “narrative crisis.” It’s no surprise that, detached from bigger pictures and swimming in a sea of fragments, we’re losing our ability to be bothered by or even notice inconsistencies. When incoherence is all our mind encounters, it doesn’t register as an aberration.
When incoherence is all our mind encounters, it doesn’t register as an aberration.
Digital media “does not reward the presentation of a coherent, contextual whole,” argues Antón Barba-Kay, such that “the gotcha accusation of inconsistency matters less.” This is why politicians aren’t as harmed today by accusations of “flip-flopping” contradictions as much as they were, say, in John Kerry’s 2004 candidacy. Barba-Kay notes that Donald Trump’s political savvy involves his recognition that “logical consistency is of little importance within our online media environment.”
It may in fact work to politicians’ advantage to have a wild, scattershot array of ever-changing views. This approach works because it mimics the internet, where users know they can find whatever they want to find and conveniently ignore whatever they don’t like. If I care about issue X and can find evidence a certain candidate somewhere, at some point, said he shared my view on issue X, I can permit myself to support that candidate (even if elsewhere he said he doesn’t support issue X, or said he supports issue Y that contradicts issue X). Incoherence is an electoral asset in the internet age.
What matters more than coherent views is a compelling vibe. Politicians know this. They have little incentive to bother communicating policy positions. This has become abundantly clear in modern televised presidential debates. If a debate moves the needle for any voters, it won’t be because of policy substance; it’ll be because certain vibes resonated with—or repulsed—them.
It’s All About ‘Impressions’ Now
The rise of vibes is in part a response to the overwhelming cognitive demands placed on us in the information flood. Even if we weren’t so skeptical of the integrity of information, the sheer amount is too much for our brains to handle. Going on the vibe (like tribal herding) is a coping mechanism for our mental exhaustion. We have neither the time nor the capacity to research each claim or sort through all the contradictions. Whether we’re “feeling something” or not is easier to know than whether we fully understand or agree with something. As T. S. Eliot observed over a century ago, “When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.”
Advertisers and politicians know we’re mentally exhausted, our attention is increasingly hard to gain, and we’re probably too tired to read (or watch) the entirety of anything. So they focus on quick impressions that have affective rather than cerebral appeal: photos that will stand out in our feeds and cause us to linger a second longer, emotive headlines that communicate all they want us to know, lurid words or imagery that can’t help but stop us in our tracks.
“Clickbait” is an outdated term because now advertisers are satisfied if we mentally register an impression, knowing that enough impressions over time might lead prospects to take a consumer action. “Reach” and “clicks” used to be the chief metrics of advertising success online. Now it’s impressions. And you don’t make an impression with substance or arguments. You make an impression with vibes.
Consider how this all plays out in online dating. This is a world decidedly driven by impressions and vibes. Single men and women swipe through options of potential future mates as quickly as they scroll through TikTok or X. Naturally, the difference between swiping left or swiping right boils down to the quick, superficial impression a profile makes. Singles don’t wade through the dating pool by carefully investigating the values and convictions of potential suitors. They go on vibes. Does his or her profile make you blush or does it give you “the ick”?
The rise of “the ick” as new slang is evidence of the vibes era. What exactly constitutes “the ick” response in dating isn’t articulable; it’s just a feeling one gets, a visceral impulse to cut and run. There’s probably a corollary to “the ick” that exists beyond the dating world. It’s a response of repulsion when someone we normally like does or says something on social media that we dislike (e.g., a friend surprises us by “liking” a political post on Instagram that we find abhorrent). Our “ick” response can be enough to unfollow or mute.
The rise of ‘the ick’ as new slang is evidence of the vibes era.
Examples abound. Consider a recent clip of a college student, Naima, debating Charlie Kirk on abortion. At one point, Kirk asks Naima to define “fetus,” which leaves her somewhat flustered. Instead of answering, she immediately pivots to a vibe-oriented comment by saying Kirk’s smile is “creepy,” which gets applause from the audience. It’s a brief but instructive moment that reveals the rhetorical power of “the ick.” When our arguments don’t hold sway, we appeal to the good vibe or bad vibe given off by our interlocutor: appearance, tone, intelligence, age (“OK boomer”). It’s an argument-averting move that increasingly works in a vibe-driven world.
Wisdom in a World of Vibes
How do we live wisely as Christians in a world of vibes?
One key must be an awareness of how deceiving “vibes” and quick impressions can be. We must analyze our own impressions and ask if our passing perceptions are rightly ordered. It’s the old “don’t judge a book by its cover” advice: don’t fall into the foolishness of being deceived by appearances (see 1 Sam. 16:7, Prov. 31:30).
We need to slow down to audit our impressions. Before you click on something, pause to ask yourself why you’re clicking. Add an iota of friction between an impression and your actions. This can be the difference between being foolishly duped or being wisely discerning. In our overstimulated, cognitively overwhelming age, wisdom enables us to make “click or no click” judgments on the scrolling fly.
Consider how Proverbs 26 advises us to respond to fools (which are everywhere in our daily feeds). At first glance, the advice seems contradictory. Verse 4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” This is immediately followed in verse 5 with “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” So which is it? When someone says or does something obviously foolish on social media, do we speak up or not?
Add an iota of friction between an impression and your actions. This can be the difference between being foolishly duped or being wisely discerning.
Rather than being contradictory, Proverbs 26:4–5 is getting at wisdom’s nuanced, situational nature. Wisdom assesses the moment and responds in the right way. It’s nimble and adaptive rather than formulaic and prescribed. Wisdom is a reservoir of whole-person congruence with God’s truth that finds expression in our words (what we say and don’t say), our actions, and—importantly in a world of vibes—our intuitions.
So how can you position yourself to be faithful and truthful in a world of vibes? Feed your soul in such a way that nourishes your wisdom. Surround yourself with people who care about integrity and who reinforce your habits of wisdom. We’ll likely need more specific tactics in the years ahead as we undertake discipleship and navigate spiritual challenges in a vibes-dominant world. But we’ll never need less than biblical wisdom. So start there.