A fun interesting read. My question for everyone is, what recession indicators (jokey or not jokey) are you paying attention to? For me, the big ones I've noticed are 1) Five Guys offering a combo meal now and 2) a lot of my friends are considering going back to school to pursue nursing.
Oh I well know it. Good news for me: I work at a law school. Bad news for me… everything else. Also the Trump admins fight with the aba and legal profession and law in general - not good,
The part that scares me is we’re also facing economic changes in employment. AI, Quantum, and robotics are rapidly changing the game even in legal and medical professions.
Quantum computers can solve problems historically thought of as “off limits” for ordinary computers because of lack of computational power (a normal transistor can only be in one of two states while a qubit has many possible states). Once these computers are common there will be A LOT more computational power available. They won’t necessarily be a fix to any one problem, they will just act as accelerators.
There are some really cool case studies online from IBM and I want to say D-Wave who offer their quantum mainframe computers for contract services. I think we're a way off from mass commercial usage, but once it's feasible? Current Cybersecurity is obsolete overnight. There's a reason big banks are heavily investing in quantum tech. They have a lot of sensitive data to protect.
During 08/09, it was a way to fill an employment gap on your resume if you were going on 6-18 months without a job. Easy to explain if you're in school.
Wait so if there’s a recession, you still have to act like not having a job was your fault in job interviews? It really is every man for himself over there
Oh yes! For all kinds of reasons such as: you might have been a low performer so that's why you were laid off, or the longer you go not working then your skills aren't as sharp. When people are unemployed and do get a job, employers low ball their salary because they know their current income is $0. So many people were underpaid for a long time after that, because they were terrified of making a move and losing what terrible salary they had and jobs were hard to come by.
Those young enough to not remember 08/09 in the US probably don't have that trauma lol. But, I was just entering college and it changed what I studied. I was fighting people with masters degrees for just above minimum wage jobs. Couldn't get hired for the summer anywhere and had to call a family friend just to get a waitressing job. Even years later, I picked my current employer because of how they discussed that era and their pivot afterwards.
Which is funny because that's the same time I scrapped my plan to go to law school because I was seriously worried about being able to pay that kind of money back. I did not have parents that could help in any fashion.
A bunch of those law grads wound up applying to be military JAGs when they graduated and realized the loans were huge and the job opportunities were minimal…
Makes sense, one of the few “solid” graduate programs that doesn’t have pre-req. solid is in quotes because there aren’t enough jobs for everyone who goes to law school. But if you manage to get one of the jobs, you’ll do alright.
Everyone is talking about recession. Everyone. Like at a grocery store over the weekend I was walking down an aisle and a couple was talking about how much canned goods they should buy with them buying more because they were on sale and they wanted to stock up before the recession. Like, the woman actually said that and the husband agreed with her as they grabbed more cans.
At a certain point, if everyone believes a recession is coming, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Just the consumer spending pulling back can cause issues.
Also, dammit. Going back to school for nursing is MY recession plan too! We’re finally going to get that nursing surplus!
It’s always interesting to me because I’m 32, so I was becoming politically lucid around the first (well, the FIRST would be the Depression I guess haha) one in 08, and the economy has not really ever been “good” in my entire adult/working life. There’s been at least five times now since 08 that they’ve been banging on about a recession and it’s not that I dismiss it out of hand or anything, it’s just that it’s like.. when was there ever said to be a boom period? Like yeah, things are total shit for basically anyone who’s not rich. Tale as old as time. Although obviously now the conditions are much different and much more ridiculous
So recession is basically growth (or lack of!) of GDP. So you can have a good economy with growing income inequality making it no better for the median person (in real terms wages have been stagnant since the 70s, though in some way the median person has still done better (much cheaper manufactured goods!) and in some ways worse (more expensive housing around major cities). But even the median person suffered a lot during the 08 recession, because there is a huge difference between "having a job" and "not having a job" amongst other things.
I guess that’s why they say that GDP is a terrible indicator for a recession because I was a new university graduate then and so were all of my friends. It’s crazy to say that 2009 was a good year for the economy while people were spending months and even years looking for work.
LOL right? I graduated college in 2013 and my first employer pulled the "with the state of the economy" as to why raises were 1% across the board that year. I had studied economics so I knew the recession technically ended years prior, but that didn't mean anything in real terms lol.
My friends are getting laid off left and right. That’s my indicator. Just had 3 friends laid off and 1 is waiting to find out every day if today is the day
It's really easy to book tattoos. Booked a famous artist who's usually booked out for months if not years on a couple of weeks' notice. Every artist I know is quiet.
Beyoncé sales are way down and people I knew who saw Renaissance several times are not going to see Cowboy Carter. For reference, I live in an affluent area where, generally speaking, people have money to waste. Say what you will about Beyonce, but the fact that many of her die hard fans aren’t shelling out the money this time is telling.
Also, we recently went on a trip to Europe as a family of 4 and I felt like we got more negativity and “wow, you’re fortunate” reactions than we have in the past. I get it; many people are struggling and the idea of spending thousands to go to Europe is unconscionable.
That doesn't make you part of the problem. It's just that nursing is an incredibly high demand field so much so that in America in the past we have imported nurses from other countries like the Philippines to fill the need. So it just makes sense that when people aren't sure what to do or how to make money to survive they turn to that field.
It's just a very hard job, made far more difficult by the profit-at-all-cost hospital systems. We were already spread too thin before covid, and then during covid, you could almost see the real-time experimentation with how much the hospitals could get away with. And of course, after the pandemic started to ease off, they never brought staffing or supplies back to where they were before. And you get to watch people suffer for it.
Yeah, it's just so hard to convey fully what a 12-hour shift of physically and mentally exhausting labor is like. You almost can't know until you've done it. Which I don't recommend people do, lolol
Is private equity behind it? In the wake of a certain shooting a few articles came out about how private equity bought hospitals and shut them down after extracting every ounce of money
more people driving around with obviously damaged cars
more people on Reddit asking about FIFO mining work (this one is very particular to my hometown). In my experience, the more people asking, the fewer jobs going and an indicator of recession.
> In a follow-up essay that Lau co-wrote, he argued that the startup boom of the two-thousands created a culture of convenience and an appearance of innovation that has now dwindled: “A generation of youth are experiencing a brutal realization that nobody is coming to rescue them.”
I hate the wilderness survival videos. I already survived wilderness therapy, and one of the most brutal at that. In a dark moment I tried to recall that knowledge- how do I make a piece of wood suitable for busting a coal again? How do I bend a branch into a permanent u frame to make a backpack?
I don’t want to remember these skills that I was forced to learn before the first recession as a child. I hope to god none of us need them because there were so many times I could have died out there. The staff barely knew more than the kids.
See, it was so long ago I totally forgot the word bow drill. I have an ex who went to a survivalist camp every summer from age 8-12, and sent him a pic of what I was trying to do- he sent me back a picture of the proper set up.
My mom still has my wilderness tools. I could get them if I really felt like I needed this skill- but I don’t want to ever speak to her again after she’s said for the past two decades that she has no regrets and she’d do it again. How many kids have to die for her to get it could have been me, and no amount of legal expertise would have gotten justice?
I don’t even remember the 2008 recession. I turned 18 and they put me under a conservatorship. I spent the next few years between homeless Lite (couch surfing and sleeping in cars) and programs. By the time I had legal autonomy over myself it had been 3 years and I was on disability. I just figured everyone had it hard back then, but when other incomes stabilized I still had to make $750 a month suffice for a decade until my dad retired. Rent goes up, disabled living arrangements often focus on the elderly, and I ended up in abusive relationship after abusive relationship just to keep a roof over my head… including living with my mom a few times.
That’s all the recession taught me last time, that a roof over your head is worth having to deal with unfathomable evil from people who say they love you- but I learned that first in treatment.
On April 9th, Luke Marion, a gardener and seed purveyor who runs the YouTube channel MIgardener, posted a video that recommended planting particular crops for a “RECESSION PROOF Garden.” “We’re going to talk about twenty-one varieties that you need to add to your garden to survive the oncoming recession,” Marion narrates in a foreboding tone, standing with a rake over a back-yard planter. He continues, “The time to learn to swim is not once you’re swept out to sea from a riptide.” He suggests garlic, cabbage, tomatoes, and kale, among other vegetables—produce that will cut down on your grocery bills if you grow it yourself. Marion’s video, which has more than eighty thousand views, came in the midst of President Trump’s whipsawing global tariff announcements, which headlines predicted could kick off said recession. Marion wasn’t alone in offering agricultural solutions: “Having a vegetable garden can soften the blow of an economic downturn,” another gardening YouTuber advised last week. Others proposed foraging stinging nettles as “recession prep” or building a “Hydroponic & Aquaponic Survival Garden.”
Anecdotally, signs of a recession are already here. Hairdressers are reporting that their clients are ordering less expensive treatments. “I’ve been eliminated from their budget,” one aesthetician told Bloomberg. Young people are hosting home cafés, making their own cappuccinos and iced matchas in lieu of patronizing coffee shops. (The price of coffee is increasing under the new tariffs, and cafés are raising prices in turn.) In Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the nation, applications to law school are up precipitously, a classic indicator that previously freewheeling young people are seeking more secure employment. Georgetown University reported a twenty-five-per-cent increase in the size of its applicant pool. Even if investors are slightly more confident this week, after Trump backed off most of his harshest tariff rates, the changes in people’s life-style habits serve as their own kind of affective barometer. The vibes are off; Americans are panicky and confused. In their addled state of mind, any unusual consumer behavior or trend seems like it might foretell a coming crash.
On social media, identifying “recession indicators” has become a meme. A Dunkin’ closing in downtown Boston, in the chain’s home state, is a recession indicator. As is Leslie Odom, Jr., reprising his original role in “Hamilton,” no doubt a lucrative gig. As are Coachella 2025 ticket buyers taking on debt with payment plans to afford their admission. Other recession indicators call back mordantly to the era of the 2008 financial crisis: a new album from the d.j. and producer Skrillex, a fixture of recession dance music; the return of the flash mob, an example of which was recently spotted in Los Angeles celebrating a single drop by the rapper Doechii; reinvigorated interest in “American Idol,” the peak form of two-thousands kitsch. (According to my parents, this season is better than ever.) Fresh music from OK Go and Bon Iver, who also released a co-branded tinned fish with the direct-to-consumer brand Fishwife, is a throwback, as is “The Pitt,” the latest hot streaming show, a hospital drama starring Noah Wyle, of “E.R.” fame. The retreat to comfortingly familiar entertainment might be a variation of the “hemline index,” in which skirts are supposed to become shorter when times are good and longer when they are bad.
Bon Iver did not plan an album drop around Trump’s tariff plans, of course. Most of these indicators are meant as jokes, but like many internet memes they hint toward a collective psychological state that’s reaffirmed with each Like and Share. Could a recession evoke feelings of nostalgia, recalling memories of the previous financial crisis, when the economy and labor force endured major damage but at least the international democratic coalition didn’t seem so shaky? For millennials who came into adulthood around 2008, the current atmosphere of pessimism triggers a kind of déjà vu. My college cohort graduated into a decimated job market, desperately seeking internships that were likely to be unpaid and casting about for gigs working in bars or cafés. There was some wan satisfaction to be found in the fact that youth culture at the time glamorized lo-fi grit: wearing plaid, drinking draft beer out of mason jars, Instagramming dive-bar photos with heavy filters that smoothed out any visual defects. In retrospect, there was a clarity to the Great Recession that is missing from our current moment. Now we’re confronting tides of artificial-intelligence slop and misinformation, with fewer strong media institutions to provide a sense of authority and a barely shared understanding of our political realities. We are more aware of the ways in which social crises (whether a global recession or a global pandemic) tend to benefit the already wealthy. The plethora of seeming indicators hints at the fact that we still don’t know precisely what’s coming down the line. Trump’s penchant for sudden policy reversals may mean that our 401(k)s will be fine, but what about the damage to our country’s reputation? The uncertainty being felt is not only economic. The recession is in our national character, too.
In January, a culture strategist named Edmond Lau posted a brief essay and graphic on X identifying a “dark mode shift” in culture and branding. In both form and content, the trend is toward the nihilistic. “If nothing matters, then everything - no matter how dark - is fair game,” Lau wrote. A mood board that he compiled showed how Charli XCX’s bouncy album “Brat” has been replaced as the musical style du jour by FKA Twigs’s gothic “Eusexua”; how a grinning Joe Biden has been swapped for a glowering, vengeful Trump in news coverage; how wellness culture has taken the warped shape of “American Psycho”-esque ads for Equinox. Lau’s observations went viral, inciting a wave of responses embracing the label “dark mode” with an attitude of ecstatic negativity. Like pointing out recession indicators, recognizing a dark-mode micro-trend reflects a state of hypervigilance: if we can detect the vibe shift first, then we might just survive it. In a follow-up essay that Lau co-wrote, he argued that the startup boom of the two-thousands created a culture of convenience and an appearance of innovation that has now dwindled: “A generation of youth are experiencing a brutal realization that nobody is coming to rescue them.” Hence, a turn toward self-reliance, whether in the form of back-yard gardening or ruthless self-optimization that anticipates Darwinian competition amid crisis. Regardless of whether there’s officially a recession, any collective sense of stability is out the window. As the essay notes, “Acceptance of unknowing is integral.”
We could call our looming moment a Content Recession: whatever form it takes, it’ll be an economic downturn in which victims are tacitly encouraged to document their suffering on social media and become hardship influencers, romanticizing cooking meals at home, canning vegetables, and finding alternatives to careerist achievement. Goodbye, corporate girlies; hello, budget-conscious cottagecore. (So far, smartphones are exempt from Trump’s tariffs, the better to keep documenting ourselves, and TikTok, thank goodness, hasn’t been banned.) Growing your own produce was a popular pastime during the pandemic as well; the tools are probably still hanging out in our closets, ready to get dirty again. The only problem is that planting much of a garden requires having a home with a back yard, a comfort that many millennials gave up on ever achieving around 2008. Luckily, there is another viable form of influencer content that requires fewer resources: wilderness-survival videos. ♦
[OP] needtousereddit | 6 months ago
A fun interesting read. My question for everyone is, what recession indicators (jokey or not jokey) are you paying attention to? For me, the big ones I've noticed are 1) Five Guys offering a combo meal now and 2) a lot of my friends are considering going back to school to pursue nursing.
W8andC77 | 6 months ago
Law school applications are up.
misspcv1996 | 6 months ago
That’s a massive recession indicator. I’m not even kidding, there was a massive spike around 2008 as well.
W8andC77 | 6 months ago
Oh I well know it. Good news for me: I work at a law school. Bad news for me… everything else. Also the Trump admins fight with the aba and legal profession and law in general - not good,
FatherofPugz | 6 months ago
The part that scares me is we’re also facing economic changes in employment. AI, Quantum, and robotics are rapidly changing the game even in legal and medical professions.
Astralglamour | 6 months ago
Yep. And the tuition costs are massive. Going to be a lot of people on the hook for giant loans who can’t find work as lawyers.
HairyGorilla666 | 6 months ago
Quantum? What tangible difference has quantum made?
pinksporsst | 6 months ago
Quantum computers can solve problems historically thought of as “off limits” for ordinary computers because of lack of computational power (a normal transistor can only be in one of two states while a qubit has many possible states). Once these computers are common there will be A LOT more computational power available. They won’t necessarily be a fix to any one problem, they will just act as accelerators.
_satisfied | 6 months ago
It’s fun to say
iridescent-shimmer | 6 months ago
There are some really cool case studies online from IBM and I want to say D-Wave who offer their quantum mainframe computers for contract services. I think we're a way off from mass commercial usage, but once it's feasible? Current Cybersecurity is obsolete overnight. There's a reason big banks are heavily investing in quantum tech. They have a lot of sensitive data to protect.
PartyPorpoise | 6 months ago
Why do people go to law school during a recession? Do they think it’s a more stable career path?
misspcv1996 | 6 months ago
Maybe. There’s also just a higher number of unemployed people who have a hard time finding work and feel the need to do something.
iridescent-shimmer | 6 months ago
During 08/09, it was a way to fill an employment gap on your resume if you were going on 6-18 months without a job. Easy to explain if you're in school.
Mightyshawarma | 6 months ago
Wait so if there’s a recession, you still have to act like not having a job was your fault in job interviews? It really is every man for himself over there
iridescent-shimmer | 6 months ago
Oh yes! For all kinds of reasons such as: you might have been a low performer so that's why you were laid off, or the longer you go not working then your skills aren't as sharp. When people are unemployed and do get a job, employers low ball their salary because they know their current income is $0. So many people were underpaid for a long time after that, because they were terrified of making a move and losing what terrible salary they had and jobs were hard to come by.
Those young enough to not remember 08/09 in the US probably don't have that trauma lol. But, I was just entering college and it changed what I studied. I was fighting people with masters degrees for just above minimum wage jobs. Couldn't get hired for the summer anywhere and had to call a family friend just to get a waitressing job. Even years later, I picked my current employer because of how they discussed that era and their pivot afterwards.
Bamorvia | 6 months ago
As someone who graduated in 2007, you do until you have 3-4 jobs between you and the gap. It's rough.
Zaidswith | 6 months ago
Which is funny because that's the same time I scrapped my plan to go to law school because I was seriously worried about being able to pay that kind of money back. I did not have parents that could help in any fashion.
Tamihera | 6 months ago
A bunch of those law grads wound up applying to be military JAGs when they graduated and realized the loans were huge and the job opportunities were minimal…
dorian_gayy | 6 months ago
I started 2020, and I remember the “applied due to Covid” class below me was demonstrably more corporate minded (and had higher medians, too).
FabianFox | 6 months ago
Makes sense, one of the few “solid” graduate programs that doesn’t have pre-req. solid is in quotes because there aren’t enough jobs for everyone who goes to law school. But if you manage to get one of the jobs, you’ll do alright.
eamesa | 6 months ago
MBAs too!
jaderust | 6 months ago
Everyone is talking about recession. Everyone. Like at a grocery store over the weekend I was walking down an aisle and a couple was talking about how much canned goods they should buy with them buying more because they were on sale and they wanted to stock up before the recession. Like, the woman actually said that and the husband agreed with her as they grabbed more cans.
At a certain point, if everyone believes a recession is coming, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Just the consumer spending pulling back can cause issues.
Also, dammit. Going back to school for nursing is MY recession plan too! We’re finally going to get that nursing surplus!
Medium-Escape-8449 | 6 months ago
It’s always interesting to me because I’m 32, so I was becoming politically lucid around the first (well, the FIRST would be the Depression I guess haha) one in 08, and the economy has not really ever been “good” in my entire adult/working life. There’s been at least five times now since 08 that they’ve been banging on about a recession and it’s not that I dismiss it out of hand or anything, it’s just that it’s like.. when was there ever said to be a boom period? Like yeah, things are total shit for basically anyone who’s not rich. Tale as old as time. Although obviously now the conditions are much different and much more ridiculous
aerothorn | 6 months ago
So recession is basically growth (or lack of!) of GDP. So you can have a good economy with growing income inequality making it no better for the median person (in real terms wages have been stagnant since the 70s, though in some way the median person has still done better (much cheaper manufactured goods!) and in some ways worse (more expensive housing around major cities). But even the median person suffered a lot during the 08 recession, because there is a huge difference between "having a job" and "not having a job" amongst other things.
But I feel you
Medium-Escape-8449 | 6 months ago
Wow, it’s wild I never actually knew this, but that does make sense! Good explanation, thanks!
InnerKookaburra | 6 months ago
2009-2024 was a definite boom period, except for a blip for the pandemic.
The problem with good economic times is they look kind of boring and people don't notice.
substantial_schemer | 6 months ago
2009? lol
MPLS_Poppy | 6 months ago
2009? During the housing market crisis? Um, no.
ImDonaldDunn | 6 months ago
At least in GDP terms, that’s when the recovery began. It just took years for normal people to recover.
MPLS_Poppy | 6 months ago
I guess that’s why they say that GDP is a terrible indicator for a recession because I was a new university graduate then and so were all of my friends. It’s crazy to say that 2009 was a good year for the economy while people were spending months and even years looking for work.
iridescent-shimmer | 6 months ago
LOL right? I graduated college in 2013 and my first employer pulled the "with the state of the economy" as to why raises were 1% across the board that year. I had studied economics so I knew the recession technically ended years prior, but that didn't mean anything in real terms lol.
flaming-framing | 6 months ago
My friends are getting laid off left and right. That’s my indicator. Just had 3 friends laid off and 1 is waiting to find out every day if today is the day
Dear_Expression1368 | 6 months ago
This. None of my friends can get jobs. It doesn't matter what their degree is in.
PopComRob | 6 months ago
It's really easy to book tattoos. Booked a famous artist who's usually booked out for months if not years on a couple of weeks' notice. Every artist I know is quiet.
CactusBoyScout | 6 months ago
Just had two roommates in a row move out to go to grad school.
cakeit-tilyoumakeit | 6 months ago
Beyoncé sales are way down and people I knew who saw Renaissance several times are not going to see Cowboy Carter. For reference, I live in an affluent area where, generally speaking, people have money to waste. Say what you will about Beyonce, but the fact that many of her die hard fans aren’t shelling out the money this time is telling.
Also, we recently went on a trip to Europe as a family of 4 and I felt like we got more negativity and “wow, you’re fortunate” reactions than we have in the past. I get it; many people are struggling and the idea of spending thousands to go to Europe is unconscionable.
bonesrentalagency | 6 months ago
Wait is my desire to become a nurse a recession indicator? Damn I’m part of the problem
daretoeatapeach | 6 months ago
That doesn't make you part of the problem. It's just that nursing is an incredibly high demand field so much so that in America in the past we have imported nurses from other countries like the Philippines to fill the need. So it just makes sense that when people aren't sure what to do or how to make money to survive they turn to that field.
MoreausCat | 6 months ago
> a lot of my friends are considering going back to school to pursue nursing.
Don't let them do it.
Love,
a former RN
nicershoelaces | 6 months ago
Can you elaborate plz? 🥲
MoreausCat | 6 months ago
It's just a very hard job, made far more difficult by the profit-at-all-cost hospital systems. We were already spread too thin before covid, and then during covid, you could almost see the real-time experimentation with how much the hospitals could get away with. And of course, after the pandemic started to ease off, they never brought staffing or supplies back to where they were before. And you get to watch people suffer for it.
No_Preference3709 | 6 months ago
It can be a very very hard job. I don't think many realize exactly what they are getting into.
MoreausCat | 6 months ago
Yeah, it's just so hard to convey fully what a 12-hour shift of physically and mentally exhausting labor is like. You almost can't know until you've done it. Which I don't recommend people do, lolol
One-Breakfast6345 | 6 months ago
Is private equity behind it? In the wake of a certain shooting a few articles came out about how private equity bought hospitals and shut them down after extracting every ounce of money
QuickStreet4161 | 6 months ago
I got a book of coupons for local restaurants and business (tire place, landscaping, etc) in the mail. It reminded me a lot of 2008.
FutureRealHousewife | 6 months ago
Like a ValPak? I remember those being a thing in the late 90s
QuickStreet4161 | 6 months ago
Yes! Just like that. I hadn’t seen one in a long time.
wendellnebbin | 6 months ago
I just went through one of those booklets for the first time in decades.
spinningcolours | 6 months ago
The sex workers indicator is always accurate.
AH2112 | 6 months ago
more people driving around with obviously damaged cars
more people on Reddit asking about FIFO mining work (this one is very particular to my hometown). In my experience, the more people asking, the fewer jobs going and an indicator of recession.
MalsAU | 6 months ago
Thinking about getting my MBA is my personal recession indicator.
PartyPorpoise | 6 months ago
Fashion trends! I’m curious as to how the recession will affect what people buy and how they style.
Zaidswith | 6 months ago
Skinny jeans again.
Level_Effective3702 | 6 months ago
there's always a sales bump in little luxuries like designer lipstick during recessions.
purpleplatapi | 6 months ago
There won't be if they're made in China.
BowensCourt | 6 months ago
Law school apps are up.
boutthatbread | 6 months ago
that pickles are trending. Depression era ahh snack.
nemerosanike | 6 months ago
The ads for dying hair at home.
CringeCoyote | 6 months ago
> In a follow-up essay that Lau co-wrote, he argued that the startup boom of the two-thousands created a culture of convenience and an appearance of innovation that has now dwindled: “A generation of youth are experiencing a brutal realization that nobody is coming to rescue them.”
Goddamn this line hit me hard.
VanzVXX | 6 months ago
Not only that, the racist woman who raised 500k after saying racial insults to a CHILD is giving me goosebumps. All the swamp is wide open now.
FloridaMan_69 | 6 months ago
That's really got me thinking that I should make a deal with my neighbors to tombstone their kids on camera to see how much money we can make.
ImDonaldDunn | 6 months ago
It’s wild how so many people are struggling yet racist assholes can raise half a million for calling a child the n word.
nicershoelaces | 6 months ago
That whole situation makes me nauseous to think about
jvttlus | 6 months ago
https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/recession-indicators-are-everywhere
Gadzookie2 | 6 months ago
Always like Kyle Chaykas pieces
thefaehost | 6 months ago
I hate the wilderness survival videos. I already survived wilderness therapy, and one of the most brutal at that. In a dark moment I tried to recall that knowledge- how do I make a piece of wood suitable for busting a coal again? How do I bend a branch into a permanent u frame to make a backpack?
I don’t want to remember these skills that I was forced to learn before the first recession as a child. I hope to god none of us need them because there were so many times I could have died out there. The staff barely knew more than the kids.
nemerosanike | 6 months ago
I see you survivor, fellow TTI survivor here and so many people talk about just surviving off the land or being homeless and don’t really know.
I genuinely thought about busting again but flint is better than our old bow drill sets, easier too ;)
thefaehost | 6 months ago
See, it was so long ago I totally forgot the word bow drill. I have an ex who went to a survivalist camp every summer from age 8-12, and sent him a pic of what I was trying to do- he sent me back a picture of the proper set up.
My mom still has my wilderness tools. I could get them if I really felt like I needed this skill- but I don’t want to ever speak to her again after she’s said for the past two decades that she has no regrets and she’d do it again. How many kids have to die for her to get it could have been me, and no amount of legal expertise would have gotten justice?
I don’t even remember the 2008 recession. I turned 18 and they put me under a conservatorship. I spent the next few years between homeless Lite (couch surfing and sleeping in cars) and programs. By the time I had legal autonomy over myself it had been 3 years and I was on disability. I just figured everyone had it hard back then, but when other incomes stabilized I still had to make $750 a month suffice for a decade until my dad retired. Rent goes up, disabled living arrangements often focus on the elderly, and I ended up in abusive relationship after abusive relationship just to keep a roof over my head… including living with my mom a few times.
That’s all the recession taught me last time, that a roof over your head is worth having to deal with unfathomable evil from people who say they love you- but I learned that first in treatment.
Sullyville | 6 months ago
myself, im watching old x files episodes as a nostalgic comfort. its soothing.
AffectionateTune9251 | 6 months ago
Archive link please
jvttlus | 6 months ago
On April 9th, Luke Marion, a gardener and seed purveyor who runs the YouTube channel MIgardener, posted a video that recommended planting particular crops for a “RECESSION PROOF Garden.” “We’re going to talk about twenty-one varieties that you need to add to your garden to survive the oncoming recession,” Marion narrates in a foreboding tone, standing with a rake over a back-yard planter. He continues, “The time to learn to swim is not once you’re swept out to sea from a riptide.” He suggests garlic, cabbage, tomatoes, and kale, among other vegetables—produce that will cut down on your grocery bills if you grow it yourself. Marion’s video, which has more than eighty thousand views, came in the midst of President Trump’s whipsawing global tariff announcements, which headlines predicted could kick off said recession. Marion wasn’t alone in offering agricultural solutions: “Having a vegetable garden can soften the blow of an economic downturn,” another gardening YouTuber advised last week. Others proposed foraging stinging nettles as “recession prep” or building a “Hydroponic & Aquaponic Survival Garden.”
Anecdotally, signs of a recession are already here. Hairdressers are reporting that their clients are ordering less expensive treatments. “I’ve been eliminated from their budget,” one aesthetician told Bloomberg. Young people are hosting home cafés, making their own cappuccinos and iced matchas in lieu of patronizing coffee shops. (The price of coffee is increasing under the new tariffs, and cafés are raising prices in turn.) In Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the nation, applications to law school are up precipitously, a classic indicator that previously freewheeling young people are seeking more secure employment. Georgetown University reported a twenty-five-per-cent increase in the size of its applicant pool. Even if investors are slightly more confident this week, after Trump backed off most of his harshest tariff rates, the changes in people’s life-style habits serve as their own kind of affective barometer. The vibes are off; Americans are panicky and confused. In their addled state of mind, any unusual consumer behavior or trend seems like it might foretell a coming crash.
On social media, identifying “recession indicators” has become a meme. A Dunkin’ closing in downtown Boston, in the chain’s home state, is a recession indicator. As is Leslie Odom, Jr., reprising his original role in “Hamilton,” no doubt a lucrative gig. As are Coachella 2025 ticket buyers taking on debt with payment plans to afford their admission. Other recession indicators call back mordantly to the era of the 2008 financial crisis: a new album from the d.j. and producer Skrillex, a fixture of recession dance music; the return of the flash mob, an example of which was recently spotted in Los Angeles celebrating a single drop by the rapper Doechii; reinvigorated interest in “American Idol,” the peak form of two-thousands kitsch. (According to my parents, this season is better than ever.) Fresh music from OK Go and Bon Iver, who also released a co-branded tinned fish with the direct-to-consumer brand Fishwife, is a throwback, as is “The Pitt,” the latest hot streaming show, a hospital drama starring Noah Wyle, of “E.R.” fame. The retreat to comfortingly familiar entertainment might be a variation of the “hemline index,” in which skirts are supposed to become shorter when times are good and longer when they are bad.
Bon Iver did not plan an album drop around Trump’s tariff plans, of course. Most of these indicators are meant as jokes, but like many internet memes they hint toward a collective psychological state that’s reaffirmed with each Like and Share. Could a recession evoke feelings of nostalgia, recalling memories of the previous financial crisis, when the economy and labor force endured major damage but at least the international democratic coalition didn’t seem so shaky? For millennials who came into adulthood around 2008, the current atmosphere of pessimism triggers a kind of déjà vu. My college cohort graduated into a decimated job market, desperately seeking internships that were likely to be unpaid and casting about for gigs working in bars or cafés. There was some wan satisfaction to be found in the fact that youth culture at the time glamorized lo-fi grit: wearing plaid, drinking draft beer out of mason jars, Instagramming dive-bar photos with heavy filters that smoothed out any visual defects. In retrospect, there was a clarity to the Great Recession that is missing from our current moment. Now we’re confronting tides of artificial-intelligence slop and misinformation, with fewer strong media institutions to provide a sense of authority and a barely shared understanding of our political realities. We are more aware of the ways in which social crises (whether a global recession or a global pandemic) tend to benefit the already wealthy. The plethora of seeming indicators hints at the fact that we still don’t know precisely what’s coming down the line. Trump’s penchant for sudden policy reversals may mean that our 401(k)s will be fine, but what about the damage to our country’s reputation? The uncertainty being felt is not only economic. The recession is in our national character, too.
In January, a culture strategist named Edmond Lau posted a brief essay and graphic on X identifying a “dark mode shift” in culture and branding. In both form and content, the trend is toward the nihilistic. “If nothing matters, then everything - no matter how dark - is fair game,” Lau wrote. A mood board that he compiled showed how Charli XCX’s bouncy album “Brat” has been replaced as the musical style du jour by FKA Twigs’s gothic “Eusexua”; how a grinning Joe Biden has been swapped for a glowering, vengeful Trump in news coverage; how wellness culture has taken the warped shape of “American Psycho”-esque ads for Equinox. Lau’s observations went viral, inciting a wave of responses embracing the label “dark mode” with an attitude of ecstatic negativity. Like pointing out recession indicators, recognizing a dark-mode micro-trend reflects a state of hypervigilance: if we can detect the vibe shift first, then we might just survive it. In a follow-up essay that Lau co-wrote, he argued that the startup boom of the two-thousands created a culture of convenience and an appearance of innovation that has now dwindled: “A generation of youth are experiencing a brutal realization that nobody is coming to rescue them.” Hence, a turn toward self-reliance, whether in the form of back-yard gardening or ruthless self-optimization that anticipates Darwinian competition amid crisis. Regardless of whether there’s officially a recession, any collective sense of stability is out the window. As the essay notes, “Acceptance of unknowing is integral.”
We could call our looming moment a Content Recession: whatever form it takes, it’ll be an economic downturn in which victims are tacitly encouraged to document their suffering on social media and become hardship influencers, romanticizing cooking meals at home, canning vegetables, and finding alternatives to careerist achievement. Goodbye, corporate girlies; hello, budget-conscious cottagecore. (So far, smartphones are exempt from Trump’s tariffs, the better to keep documenting ourselves, and TikTok, thank goodness, hasn’t been banned.) Growing your own produce was a popular pastime during the pandemic as well; the tools are probably still hanging out in our closets, ready to get dirty again. The only problem is that planting much of a garden requires having a home with a back yard, a comfort that many millennials gave up on ever achieving around 2008. Luckily, there is another viable form of influencer content that requires fewer resources: wilderness-survival videos. ♦
PartyPorpoise | 6 months ago
“Hardship influencer” makes me try to think about what social media influencers would’ve been like if they were around during the Great Depression.
AffectionateTune9251 | 6 months ago
Ty
Shortymac09 | 6 months ago
I love Migardner
healthcare_foreva | 6 months ago
That I’m not working
sakuragi59357 | 6 months ago
Calls