As an aesthetic doomerism is over. What once was a delightful tongue and cheek way to explain the reality of the world has effectively been turned into a death cult and a liberal cudgel. Without a clear purpose doomerism in general online spaces is simply another meme based commodity form whose entertainment value undermines any unique world view or political education value it provided previously. In short, it's over, go home.
The progression of doomerism to a death cult has been the most obvious one. It's meme value has shifted from being lived experience of lower class people in a capitalist hellscape to pure copium whose ultimate argument is that you the meme consumer, can die happy knowing you're right. That's it's only current use. The stories have all been told. Doomerism used to explicate the inherent alienation in our modern world, the difficulties in relating to an ever changing world that is always changing seemingly for the worse in unexciting and seemingly permanent ways. Today it's political valence is closer to various anti-civilization anarkiddies, preppers, and the ultra-rich who are burning their cash before the atmosphere rightfully chokes the life out of their lungs.
What doomer has given the craven center left is a lovely thought terminating cliche to defend themselves against accusations of ineptitude. If I'm a center-left presidential candidate who has tons of policy wonks and "documents", but no real plans, doomer is so useful. If anyone asks me:
- You said couldn't be done before what changed?
- You want to do , but what are you going to do against the overwhelming capital opposition?
- Your plan doesn't account for the reality on the ground and it might not even be effective because of that, how can you push this?
I can simply smirk and say "Well I believe that change is possible doomer". I've noticed this a lot of with people whose personalities are often a pastrami sandwich of thinly layered commodity-forms. That anything that is against their toxic optimism is "doomer". Anything that forces them to think critically about how things are, and what we should do? Doomer. Anything statement/art/position that is hard or challenging regardless of any other valence is doomer. Doomer is effectively a cudgel primarily used by cosmopolitan liberals to label you a party pooper.
This creates a ratchet effect for belief systems, in the same sense that Democrats are a rachet for the US government. The more doomerism is used in this way, the less effect political change has, the more problems fester, the underlying problems become harder, prompting a much lower bar for allegations of doomerism in the next cycle.