Two Ways to Understand the "Vibe Shift"

Twitter was real life after all

The conservative “vibe shift” has become a hot topic of conversation. See Yglesias, Nate Silver, and Niall Ferguson, among others. Observers have noticed that Trump didn’t just win an election. Conservatives have cultural cachet for the first time in a while. Sydney Sweeney’s boobs are out, and the other day I saw a commercial with an all-white cast. Until a few years ago, conservatives considered Big Tech an implacably hostile force, right up there with Hollywood and the universities as one of the bastions of the enemy. But now Trump’s inauguration looks like this.

What is going on? A 1.5-point popular vote victory shouldn’t feel this culturally consequential. Will the culture continue shifting right, or are we reading too much into a president winning a narrow victory and getting a fairly typical, and in fact not all that impressive, honeymoon period?

Below, I’m going to put forward two ways to understand the conservative vibe shift, and share a few thoughts as to where we go from here.