This makes it easy to co-opt -- eventually, a journalist-figure comes along to manufacture and publish a pieced-together origin-story.
We could say that this is what Monahan's Substack trend forecast did to the "vibe shift" that Paul's online community experienced.
And a full 8 months after that, The Cut surprised us with an article replicating the phenomenon at the level of mass media.
The article, like Monahan's essay, uses the term to describe a trend.
It writes "the vibe shift" into formal history -- the paper of record -- leaving the lore in the dust.
The term has joined a Google-able lexicon, its meaning tied to a broadly-legible story bearing no relation to the one it emerged from.
Having triggered the anxiety Monahan wrote about back in June on a new, viral scale, "Vibe Shift" even has its own Know Your Meme entry now.
As of late February, the wiki credits Monahan as originator.
Those who render the unreadable readable are rewarded.
I guess it's fitting that the articles exclude the raw material behind the "vibe shift" lore.
The in-group posts that Paul cites rely on context that simply doesn't translate.
Lore isn't written in stone like the calcified records of official history you'll find in static media.
It's traced in sand, its form ephemeral and its meaning malleable.
Reading the internet is moving through information that's siuational, emerging in fleeting snippets.
The Lore Zone — How to Read the Internet