Last night I was scrolling on my phone, as one does, and I came across an Instagram post from The A.V. Club about the season 3 premiere of Abbott Elementary. I love Quinta Brunson’s show following the faculty of a Philadelphia public school. I love The A.V. Club, a publication for which I used to freelance. But I have to admit I sort of blanched at the first sentence of the caption here:
Everything? Everything is going to hell? I understand this is tongue in cheek to some extent—Abbott Elementary really is a warm, delightful show in the mold of previous feel-good mockumentaries like The Office and Parks and Recreation. It’s exactly the sort of pick-me-up that many people, myself included, want to immerse themselves in after a tough and tiring day. It’s just that pushing “pick-me-up” and “tough day” to “respite” from “everything going to hell” gives me unironic “the world is on fire” vibes as opposed to wink-wink vibes.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t truly concerning global issues in the year 2024—and I’m going global because that’s what “everything” suggests. Pick your hot topic, starting with a literal read of the world being on fire. The surface temperature of our planet continues to increase at an unsustainable pace. There is not one, but two ongoing wars with implications felt across the globe. There’s been a disturbing rise in populist movements both at home and abroad for some time now. These developments are absolutely not nothing. They absolutely call for action. It is absolutely understandable to want the occasional break from their seemingly persistent forward march.
And yet. At the risk of sounding privileged, because I am, I have to wonder: why do I hear that everything is going to shit so often when, exactly because I am privileged, I am surrounded primarily by other privileged people? My friends and family. My media diet. Genuinely, my day-to-day life. For the most part, I am informed that this is a terrible time to be alive by people whose lives are on the whole quite good. We don’t live in Ukraine or Gaza. We exist during the lowest period of extreme poverty in the (recorded) history of the world. Generally speaking, spectacularly brutal violence is not a pervasive threat to us. There’s still a long way to go to reach utopia—there always is—but we’re several degrees removed, by time or distance or both, from a truly nightmarish existence that would qualify as hell. We’re just increasingly fed a steady diet that plays on our tendency toward apocalyptic anxiety, and it feels pretty bad no matter how much our therapists remind us to return to the present, where we are sitting in a comfortable room, close to a functional bathroom and more snacks than we could ever need.
It’s not a revelation to say that the media thrives on sensationalism, and populist figures are at their best when they can prey easily off of collective discontent to make things even worse for the people they purport to help. Nor is it new to feel like past times were better, the present sucks, and the future is bleak. What could, however, be somewhat novel is a gut check whenever the doom noise gets so loud it’s paralyzing—especially our own contribution to it. Ask yourself: is the episode of Abbott Elementary you’re about to start a critical oasis in the otherwise fiery inferno that is life? Or is it a 22-minute, single camera sitcom that you’re about to enjoy after a tiring day in a pretty comfortable existence?