"Good vibes" and "bad vibes" are much more digestible and shareable, not just on social media but in face to face contact too. Detailing specific feelings makes us vulnerable, risks alienation, the dreaded sense of *Oh No, I'm the only one experiencing this*. But vibes are universal.
I think the recient revival of the "vibes" concept also has to do with the lack of objective truth. A lot of the time all we have to go on is the vibe an idea has
Vibes seem to be what’s left when meaning starts to lose its structure under constant optimization. As systems become more complex and less transparent, intuition becomes the easiest way to navigate them. But our language hasn’t caught up to these shifts, so we’re left describing real structural changes in vague, atmospheric terms. So we are sensing something real without having the words for it yet.
I like that this touches on the idea that vibes are two interrelated concepts: 1) the larger feeling of the world around us/environment (digital or physical) we find ourselves in but ALSO 2) something closer to "taste." (It feels like "taste" is becoming the new "vibe," to a degree.) Not all of the conversations I've seen recently about taste acknowledge how much it's shaped by the exact external factors you talk about here — how social media categorizes and crystalizes our preferences, and how much in-group status or aspirational in-group status plays a role. Vibes and taste can both be bent and commoditized. They're both appealing to the "background intuition" we have — which isn't formed in a vacuum.
On 18 July 1966, the Beach Boys released 'Wouldn't it be nice?'. I was seven. On 10 October, they released 'Good Vibrations'. I had just turned eight. I'm now 67, old and decrepit, separated and ill, on 12 May likely to be made homeless (again).
Good Vibrations takes me back to my relatively carefree youth, when it seems the sun shone, the soft airs wafted through the hair that back then covered my scalp, my future life stretched out before me, like a gently plucked A-string reverberating softly on my well-tuned guitar.
Now, consumed by harsher notes, by my regrets, by grief, wearied by the passing of the many years of tears, all I can do is to recall wistfully the vibrating colours and melodies of my youth.
Adam, I love your writing. I gravitated toward your explanation for how you feel out social media trends. How are you able to stay on Tik Tok and also have a writing practice? I like TT but I find that it fries my attention span and makes it harder to focus on my creative pursuits.
Vibe is a word used to relate feeling ambiguity. One could say, "The party had a bad vibe." Transmitted: Something negative was impacting the experience. Ok, now one could continue with the story. It's a yada yada. It neglects the specifics. At first I thought it was a laziness or lack of vocabulary. But now I think it is an attempt to be unoffensive. Because one could say, "The party vibe was bad because there were zombies." Now you've offended zombies. Safer to stick with bad vibes. Nobody can be offended most importantly present company.
Vibe also externalizes experience. I’m not bad! No, the vibe is bad. There is nothing wrong here. I sense bad vibes and we all agree bad is bad and vibe is legit. Now that’s sorted out and we can agree the party had a bad vibe and it wasn’t me at all… You can continue to vibe with me!
You know, I didn’t make the connection earlier, but you make an interesting point about how technology is returning to a more analog centric worldview with AI after spending decades in the discrete/digital landscape (aka concrete categories). Ironically enough, I think people generally put analog on a pedestal, like with record players or original film, which is justified because discrete is lossy, so in a way we’re going back to a much more human centric experience (although we’re running into a classic human-robot interaction problem which is a whole research field in itself). I should also add that “explainable AI” was supposed to grant us the ability to audit and tune recommendations in greater detail, and to some degree we can, but strangely it doesn’t seem to have been as prioritized as other things, although some part of the challenge is at least UI related.
Very interesting analysis, particularly the part you mention how we turn to emotion and uncertainty in a world where logic is escaping our grasp. I'm sorry to say i'm vibing with this article
Do you have any sources on this or related themes? I'd like to read more about it
We are almost certainly vibing too much. Every time I see ‘vibes’ on an ad or hear it from a human I feel my mouth curl involuntarily into a slight wince. I feel similar about ‘passion’ and its derivatives. Always reminds me of this absolute gold: https://youtu.be/Bz2-49q6DOI?si=wz_r4gm8EuYnkPN2
To tell you something new, this is my in-between epifirst and protherd visit here, my second time around, to make our acquaintance perfect, complete and logic in it’s absents. And I have Dutch. Been born into it, I must say I never felt any urge to do away with Dutch. Because the Dutch are, at least were during the 17th century, the first global nation state that enjoyed a good brawl for breakfast, then swept the battleground for left, lost or for anyone other’s reason obsolete turned scrappy wearables for manual dissection.
This is where the term Going Dutch was coined, because it were them whom innovated the near unused arms and other militaria with just some minor readjusting needed by the new owner or some intermediate fellow trader in scrap metals as main source of income, be it semi periodical, depending the captain’s geolocator pointed him to. Following him in his footsteps was difficult midsummertime and in midwinter. Firstly because of some strange time difference between the seasons. Every time a devotee from the The Wholesome Church of the Flying SpaghettiMonster landed among the Dutchbatlers, it was if either he left them an hour to add to the light of day. Or he appeared to’ve been coming to take it away again. At first the Dutch complied, because fearful believers as they were, the Devotee made them known that they were about to be assimilated. “resistance is futile.” At the same instance, a terrible eery scream was made by a local futurevisionista. Famous in the whole country of the United Low Lands was she for it, and feared to. She had feet, so large in size, that she for at least two centuries after her fatally last half-pipe jump, was celebrated for being the first woman whom won a leaded medal during the try-outs of the winter games at mount Olympus in Greece. Lead was not disappointing at all in those days, because the games were sponsored by Big Alchemy, based in Germany. Everything they single handedly (they all only had one hand, the other one demanded from them by strangers dressed in white coats while wearing a headband with some kind of round shaped mirror thing on their head. It got noticed that one, exceptionally big whitecoat seeably had an unclear seat of the frontal cortex. His brain was circularly pressed in and it could only return to its former shape by continuously producing nanoshakings. Set aside that it produced a blurry eyesight when looked at him and he at you, nobody understood the concept of nanoshakes. Supposedly a fallen banned spaghetti monster predicted the infamous last words “Husain, we have a problem.” And boldly continued interchanging all future leaded medals into golden ones. As soon as the fearful Dutch learned about this, they all simulated to have fallen ill because of it. The story, according to later vanished and before unknown clerical archives, spread cold vibes among many people who were warned not to pay attention to (….). Brrrr… 🫣
Makes me think about all the algorithms from then to now that assume I will be interested in what they have to sell or offer, from whatever public data they have on me plus any searches I’ve done. They are invariably wrong. No, I’m not that age. No, I’m not that gender. Just because I looked up something I was curious about today, doesn’t mean I’ll be curious about it tomorrow. One thing google ai is good for though, has nothing to do with vibes. That’s answering specific questions about how to do something. The ai summaries plus links to tutorials are usually really good.
Wow you’ve given me multiple existential crisis material to turn over. And a new phrase with /increasingly vexed/ and maybe the key to my tt strategy, so 🥲 thanks for that. Excellent post
"Good vibes" and "bad vibes" are much more digestible and shareable, not just on social media but in face to face contact too. Detailing specific feelings makes us vulnerable, risks alienation, the dreaded sense of *Oh No, I'm the only one experiencing this*. But vibes are universal.
I think the recient revival of the "vibes" concept also has to do with the lack of objective truth. A lot of the time all we have to go on is the vibe an idea has
Vibes seem to be what’s left when meaning starts to lose its structure under constant optimization. As systems become more complex and less transparent, intuition becomes the easiest way to navigate them. But our language hasn’t caught up to these shifts, so we’re left describing real structural changes in vague, atmospheric terms. So we are sensing something real without having the words for it yet.
worth looking into deleuze and guattari for this!!
OMG i wrote about the recent uptick in "vibes" and traced our modern tech use of the word back to the hippies in my september 2025 blog post too: https://sophiawliu.com/goodbye-babe/blog.phia/bad-vibes/
what's crazy is that i actually cite and mention adam, but this was 6 months before his own post about it!
I like that this touches on the idea that vibes are two interrelated concepts: 1) the larger feeling of the world around us/environment (digital or physical) we find ourselves in but ALSO 2) something closer to "taste." (It feels like "taste" is becoming the new "vibe," to a degree.) Not all of the conversations I've seen recently about taste acknowledge how much it's shaped by the exact external factors you talk about here — how social media categorizes and crystalizes our preferences, and how much in-group status or aspirational in-group status plays a role. Vibes and taste can both be bent and commoditized. They're both appealing to the "background intuition" we have — which isn't formed in a vacuum.
On 18 July 1966, the Beach Boys released 'Wouldn't it be nice?'. I was seven. On 10 October, they released 'Good Vibrations'. I had just turned eight. I'm now 67, old and decrepit, separated and ill, on 12 May likely to be made homeless (again).
Good Vibrations takes me back to my relatively carefree youth, when it seems the sun shone, the soft airs wafted through the hair that back then covered my scalp, my future life stretched out before me, like a gently plucked A-string reverberating softly on my well-tuned guitar.
Now, consumed by harsher notes, by my regrets, by grief, wearied by the passing of the many years of tears, all I can do is to recall wistfully the vibrating colours and melodies of my youth.
Adam, I love your writing. I gravitated toward your explanation for how you feel out social media trends. How are you able to stay on Tik Tok and also have a writing practice? I like TT but I find that it fries my attention span and makes it harder to focus on my creative pursuits.
Vibe is a word used to relate feeling ambiguity. One could say, "The party had a bad vibe." Transmitted: Something negative was impacting the experience. Ok, now one could continue with the story. It's a yada yada. It neglects the specifics. At first I thought it was a laziness or lack of vocabulary. But now I think it is an attempt to be unoffensive. Because one could say, "The party vibe was bad because there were zombies." Now you've offended zombies. Safer to stick with bad vibes. Nobody can be offended most importantly present company.
Vibe also externalizes experience. I’m not bad! No, the vibe is bad. There is nothing wrong here. I sense bad vibes and we all agree bad is bad and vibe is legit. Now that’s sorted out and we can agree the party had a bad vibe and it wasn’t me at all… You can continue to vibe with me!
You know, I didn’t make the connection earlier, but you make an interesting point about how technology is returning to a more analog centric worldview with AI after spending decades in the discrete/digital landscape (aka concrete categories). Ironically enough, I think people generally put analog on a pedestal, like with record players or original film, which is justified because discrete is lossy, so in a way we’re going back to a much more human centric experience (although we’re running into a classic human-robot interaction problem which is a whole research field in itself). I should also add that “explainable AI” was supposed to grant us the ability to audit and tune recommendations in greater detail, and to some degree we can, but strangely it doesn’t seem to have been as prioritized as other things, although some part of the challenge is at least UI related.
Very interesting analysis, particularly the part you mention how we turn to emotion and uncertainty in a world where logic is escaping our grasp. I'm sorry to say i'm vibing with this article
Do you have any sources on this or related themes? I'd like to read more about it
We are almost certainly vibing too much. Every time I see ‘vibes’ on an ad or hear it from a human I feel my mouth curl involuntarily into a slight wince. I feel similar about ‘passion’ and its derivatives. Always reminds me of this absolute gold: https://youtu.be/Bz2-49q6DOI?si=wz_r4gm8EuYnkPN2
Vibes, or the way of perfect logic…
Hi!
To tell you something new, this is my in-between epifirst and protherd visit here, my second time around, to make our acquaintance perfect, complete and logic in it’s absents. And I have Dutch. Been born into it, I must say I never felt any urge to do away with Dutch. Because the Dutch are, at least were during the 17th century, the first global nation state that enjoyed a good brawl for breakfast, then swept the battleground for left, lost or for anyone other’s reason obsolete turned scrappy wearables for manual dissection.
This is where the term Going Dutch was coined, because it were them whom innovated the near unused arms and other militaria with just some minor readjusting needed by the new owner or some intermediate fellow trader in scrap metals as main source of income, be it semi periodical, depending the captain’s geolocator pointed him to. Following him in his footsteps was difficult midsummertime and in midwinter. Firstly because of some strange time difference between the seasons. Every time a devotee from the The Wholesome Church of the Flying SpaghettiMonster landed among the Dutchbatlers, it was if either he left them an hour to add to the light of day. Or he appeared to’ve been coming to take it away again. At first the Dutch complied, because fearful believers as they were, the Devotee made them known that they were about to be assimilated. “resistance is futile.” At the same instance, a terrible eery scream was made by a local futurevisionista. Famous in the whole country of the United Low Lands was she for it, and feared to. She had feet, so large in size, that she for at least two centuries after her fatally last half-pipe jump, was celebrated for being the first woman whom won a leaded medal during the try-outs of the winter games at mount Olympus in Greece. Lead was not disappointing at all in those days, because the games were sponsored by Big Alchemy, based in Germany. Everything they single handedly (they all only had one hand, the other one demanded from them by strangers dressed in white coats while wearing a headband with some kind of round shaped mirror thing on their head. It got noticed that one, exceptionally big whitecoat seeably had an unclear seat of the frontal cortex. His brain was circularly pressed in and it could only return to its former shape by continuously producing nanoshakings. Set aside that it produced a blurry eyesight when looked at him and he at you, nobody understood the concept of nanoshakes. Supposedly a fallen banned spaghetti monster predicted the infamous last words “Husain, we have a problem.” And boldly continued interchanging all future leaded medals into golden ones. As soon as the fearful Dutch learned about this, they all simulated to have fallen ill because of it. The story, according to later vanished and before unknown clerical archives, spread cold vibes among many people who were warned not to pay attention to (….). Brrrr… 🫣
Makes me think about all the algorithms from then to now that assume I will be interested in what they have to sell or offer, from whatever public data they have on me plus any searches I’ve done. They are invariably wrong. No, I’m not that age. No, I’m not that gender. Just because I looked up something I was curious about today, doesn’t mean I’ll be curious about it tomorrow. One thing google ai is good for though, has nothing to do with vibes. That’s answering specific questions about how to do something. The ai summaries plus links to tutorials are usually really good.
And if you're old enough to remember a time before chatbots and algorithms, the propaganda that preceeded the technology to complicate it further.
Wow you’ve given me multiple existential crisis material to turn over. And a new phrase with /increasingly vexed/ and maybe the key to my tt strategy, so 🥲 thanks for that. Excellent post
Not going to remember anything from this post but you called that guy an unc professor and i thought that was funny