There Are No Vibe Shifts, Just Endless Change

Somewhere or another I said that I sold my new book in May of 2022, but could not have sold it in May of 2021. Not to a major publishing house and not for that advance, anyway. Which has gotten several people to ask me if we have indeed seen a “vibe shift” in the past year or two - have we moved on from the social justice norms that colonized academia, then media, then nonprofits and government agencies, then corporations in turn, in the 2010s? Have we entered a new era? I mean, sure. And absolutely not. Yes and no. No and yes?

Is “the vibe” different? Yes. Is it a return to the pre-2010s vibe? No. Is the vibe more conservative/more transgressive/less “woke,” whatever those things mean, than it was three years ago? I don’t think that’s a coherent question.