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THE MILLENNIUM

began lousy.

There was no Y2K bug.

There were no fucking catastrophes.

The thing is, the citizens of the Western world had been looking forward to something finally happening after the hopelessly dull 1990s. Something not tied to a financial crisis; those only offered a bit of titillation for investment bankers as their bodies plunged the last few meters toward impact on the pavement and they wondered: Will my super sculpted body splatter on the sidewalk just like some fat, white, loser’s body? Or will it bounce back up into the air?

The new millennium had a title. It was. ADHD. And beneath the title, in italics, stood: WE’RE RESTRUCTURING SHIT.

It was the era when Facebook got big. When a lot of older people thought that idiotic site was the internet.

It was the era of mass hoaxes, mass manipulation. Unbelievably quickly, people became addicted to Likes from strangers. Even more quickly, young people got addicted to a kind of excitement made up of a mix of bullying, violence, sex, and bullshit.

It was the era when genuine human cruelty was supplemented virtually.

When the yearning for understanding gave way to the rage of the ignorant.

Never before had there been so many conspiracy theories spreading online like wildfire. The Vatican, the Koch brothers, the Mont Pelerin Society, the Club of Rome, the reptilian elite, the flat-earthers—with the complications of the world seemingly increasing by the day, so too did the population’s desire for a god of thunder.

It was the era before something.

It’s always the era before something.

Then later, after the new millennium had gotten warmed up a bit, there had indeed been a collective event that united people in a sense of excitement: an airplane flew into the Pentagon and left a large hole in the building that looked like someone had dug a tunnel in a sand castle with a wet hand. Two other planes landed in skyscrapers. The skyscrapers imploded, and again people jumped out of windows.

It was the millennium during which doubt overcame the global population. And it became normal to mistrust the state and intelligence services, the press and academics, the weather, books, vaccines, scientists, and women.

The new millennium brought an array of unbeatable benefits for people lucky enough to have been born just then. All over the globe, people’s lives improved. Or so it was said. People lived longer and more happily, more received education, infants survived infancy. Markets had made it all happen. Hooray for markets.