Doomer

A doomer is someone who believes in doomerism, a philosophy and mindset that believes global problems—including but not limited to ecological exhaustion, such as overpopulation, peak oil, climate change, and pollution—will inevitably cause the collapse of civilization, significant losses in human population, and potentially lead to eventual human extinction.[1] The mindset may be defined in opposition to more optimistic outlooks on the future of civilization. Doomers also typically believe that government corruption, civilian apathy, and/or structural oppression are unfixable or immaterial.[2]

Not to be confused with Baby boomers.

Common themes

Doomers tend to express feelings of despair and hopelessness about their own lives. The subreddit r/doomer was created in 2009 as a place for doomers to express their feelings and thoughts. A post written by Redditor u/newdoomr on 18 January 2020 titled "notes from a doomer" lists the doomer frustrations to the public at-large, questioning how they "are not all walking around in a state of pure unquellable panic." Expressed within the text of the post is a determination that doomers are "awake" to the knowledge that the world is a cruel, sick, and meaningless place, that humans are only capable of destroying the natural world, and that even if doomers could "ascend" past their anxieties, it would be pointless, as the world is faced with inevitable collapse. The moderators of r/doomer pinned the post, and as of 8 August 2020, it had received 207 upvotes.[3]

History

Peaknik subculture

The term "doomer" was reported in 2008 as being used in early internet peaknik communities, notably on internet forums where members discussed the theorized point in time when oil extraction would stop due to lack of resources, followed by societal collapse. Doomers of the mid-aughts subscribed to various ideas on how to face this impending collapse, including doomsday prepping, as well as more contemporary feelings of resignation and defeat.[4]

Canadian Doomer Paul Chefurka hosted a website where he encouraged his readers to eat lower on the food chain, modify their homes for the apocalypse, and to consider not to bring children into the world.[4] He focused on research that had demonstrated that having one fewer child and eating a plant-based diet were both effective methods to reduce green house gas emissions.[5] Eating lower on the food chain through a plant-based diet is more ecologically efficient because energy transfers through trophic levels cause significant energy loss.[6]

Notably, unlike modern doomers, some of these peaknik doomers did not subscribe to such fatalist strategies. U.S. Army Ranger Chris Lake, when writing recommendations on how to survive the societal collapse, suggested that his fellow doomers "adopt a positive attitude," because, as he put it, "Hard times don't last, hard people do."[4]

Wojak "Doomer" internet meme
See also: Wojak § Doomer

By 2018, 4chan users had begun creating Wojak caricatures with the -oomer suffix to mock various groups online, the first of which was titled the "30-year-old Boomer," a criticism of Millennials who had a similar outlook and ideas as Baby Boomers. This is the same trend that popularized the term "Zoomer" when referring to members of Generation Z.[7] Three of these caricatures were referred to as "Bloomers", "Gloomers" and "Doomers".[8]

All three of these characters were created as gradients of the same 20-something Zoomer. "Bloomers", in this context, are Zoomers who are well-adjusted adults, "Gloomers" are Zoomers who are depressed because they aren't as well-adjusted. Doomers, in contrast, were Zoomers who "simply stopped trying". As Kaitlyn Tiffany, a social media journalist from The Atlantic observed, 2018 Doomers were "no longer pursuing friendships or relationships, and get no joy from anything because they know that the world is coming to an end."[8]

Use in media

The term "doomer" was later brought into popular use in the commentary surrounding Jonathan Franzen's 2019 essay in The New Yorker titled "What if We Stopped Pretending". The piece made an argument against the possibility of averting climatic catastrophe. In addition to popularizing the term among general audiences, Franzen's piece was highly popular among online Doomer communities, including the Facebook groups Near Term Human Extinction Support Group and Abrupt Climate Change.[9]

In an article in the BBC, Jem Bendell's self-published paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy was described as "the closest thing to a manifesto for a generation of self-described 'climate doomers'". As of March 2020, the paper had been a downloaded more than a half million times. In it, Bendell claims there is no chance to avert a near-term breakdown in human civilization, but that people must instead prepare to live with and prepare for the effects of climate change. As the BBC review also noted, "Prof Michael Mann, one of the world's most renowned [climate scientists], describes Bendell's paper as 'pseudo-scientific nonsense'".[10]

The New York Times notes that supporters of Uncivilization: The Dark Mountain Manifesto have been described as "doomers" for the reckless nature of the text's message. The manifesto critiques the idea of progress, having been published by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine to signal the beginning of the artists' group the Dark Mountain Project.[11]

In February 2020, Kate Knibbs of Wired noted the development of a popular and growing strain of "doomer" climate fiction, in contrast to the typically optimistic undertones of the genre. In addition, Amy Brady, a climate fiction columnist for the Chicago Review of Books, notes that the genre has moved from future scenarios to near-past and present stories.[12]

Criticism

In the context of a critique of Bendell's work, climate scientist Michael Mann described doomerism as a "dangerous new strain of crypto-denialism", stating that doomer ideas "will lead us down the very same path of inaction as outright climate change denial. Fossil fuel interests love this framing."[10] A critique of Bendell's Deep Adaptation in OpenDemocracy argues that "[Bendell's] claim that runaway climate change has made societal collapse inevitable is not only wrong, but that it undermines the cause of the climate movement." It instead argues that whilst "there are real reasons for despair... the choice to believe in an inevitable collapse is itself a luxury, a form of escapism only available to those with the time and resources to plan for its consequences."[13]

On 6 February 2021, Reddit user /u/Warpon submitted a post titled "Reddit and 'doomerism': are Redditors more likely to promote ideas of pessimism, despair, and hopelessness? Future anxiety, 'doom and gloom', negative subreddits, COVID impact on mental health and social media, doomscrolling, etc."[14] to the subreddit /r/TheoryOfReddit, a community that studies the social media platform Reddit. The post highlighted an increase in the "doomerism" ideology and "doomer news" on the website, claiming a large presence of a negativist mentality. The post further criticized "negative subreddits" for creating echo chambers and negative feedback loops that reinforced doomer beliefs, partly blamed the COVID-19 Pandemic for the growth in this trend, and stated optimism for the future. The post was well received and attracted discussion, with a 92% upvote rate and 84 comments as of 8 February 2021.

See also

References
  1. Read, Max (2019-08-01). "Is Andrew Yang the Doomer Candidate?". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  2. "4chan's 'Doomer' Memes Are a Strange Frontier in Online Extremism". MEL Magazine. 2019-05-02. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  3. newdoomr. "notes from a doomer". Reddit. Reddit. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  4. White, Patrick. "Life after the oil crash". The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  5. Wynes, Seth; Nicholas, Kimberly A (2017-07-01). "The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions". Environmental Research Letters. 12 (7): 074024. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541. ISSN 1748-9326.
  6. "How Does Being a Vegetarian Conserve Overall Energy in Trophic Levels?". Sciencing. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  7. "zoomer". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  8. Tiffany, Kaitlyn. "The Misogynistic Joke That Became a Goth-Meme Fairy Tale". The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  9. Purtill, James (7 November 2019). "Breaking up over climate change: My deep dark journey into doomer Facebook". ABC AU. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  10. Hunter, Jack (16 March 2020). "The 'climate doomers' preparing for society to fall apart". BBC News. Retrieved 20 April 2020. Bendell, a professor in sustainable leadership at the University of Cumbria, is the author of an academic article, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, which has become the closest thing to a manifesto for a generation of self-described "climate doomers".
  11. Smith, Daniel (17 April 2014). "It's the End of the World as We Know It . . . and He Feels Fine". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  12. Knibbs, Kate (17 February 2020). "The Hottest New Literary Genre Is 'Doomer Lit'". Wired. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  13. Nicholas, Thomas; Hall, Galen; Schmidt, Colleen (14 July 2020). "The faulty science, doomism, and flawed conclusions of Deep Adaptation". OpenDemocracy. Retrieved 18 Aug 2020.
  14. Warpon (6 February 2021). "Reddit and 'doomerism': are Redditors more likely to promote ideas of pessimism, despair, and hopelessness? Future anxiety, 'doom and gloom', negative subreddits, COVID impact on mental health and social media, doomscrolling, etc". Reddit. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
  • Doomsters(sic) - A journal article discussing peak oil and "Doomsters"
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