[Kamilah Hauptmann]

The history of the 'gestures broadly at everything' meme, the perfect shorthand for our bad times.

Part of the reason the phrase caught on, though, is that there’s a gesture of solidarity buried beneath the pessimism. Yes, so many things have gone so badly wrong that it would be a waste of time to list them, but the other reason it would be a waste of time is that most people already know which things have gone wrong, because we’re all wading through the same shit together. What’s more, since a frightening number of people have decided to respond to the ongoing collapses by sticking their fingers in their ears and denying anything is going wrong, it’s a compliment (sort of—the bar has been lowered to the center of the earth) to assume you’re speaking to someone who acknowledges objective reality. That belief—that we’re not alone in this, that other people can see what’s happening and will fight against it—is the foundation the future will have to be built upon.