That she could float on
And the beautiful lies never stop
For the girl in the bubble
The pink shiny bubble
It's time for her bubble to pop
For the popular girl
High in the bubble
Isn't it high time
For her bubble to pop?
Everyone is currently busy excavating their 2016 digital corpses for the sake of a trend. They are posting grainy photos of themselves in chokers and flower crown filters, pretending that a decade ago was some halcyon era of innocence. I am staying firmly in the shadows. I cannot participate in the nostalgia because for me, 2016 was not a vintage aesthetic; it was a moral catastrophe I helped facilitate.
I did not even vote, a fact that in hindsight feels like a special kind of cowardice. Instead, I spent my energy as an outspoken digital foot soldier for a populist "strongman" who promised to hose down the country like a septic tank. I was a DDS. I say that now with the same physical revulsion one feels when remembering a particularly embarrassing haircut — except this one has a body count. I cheered for the aggressive "fist," convinced that my anger was a form of patriotism.
The fever did not break gradually. It shattered in August 2017 with the news of Kian Delos Santos. Reading about a seventeen-year-old being dragged into a dark alley by the very forces I had spent a year defending was the end of the line. The "peace and order" fantasy I had been peddling was not just wrong. It was lethal. I traded the propaganda for the cold reality of the headlines, and I have spent the years since as a vocal critic of the very dynasty I once championed.
Yet, in moving from one side of the political aisle to the other, I have discovered a quieter, more stinging irony. The world of progressivism I now inhabit is often just as inhospitable as the one I left. We have entered an era of "moral virginity," where political evolution is treated like a permanent biohazard. There is a specific brand of gatekeeping that demands the masses wake up, only to punish them the moment they open their eyes.
This is the central failure of modern "woke" culture: the refusal to allow for the messiness of human change. We claim to want a better world, yet we spend our time sniffing out "receipts" from a decade ago to prove that a newcomer is not pure enough for the clubhouse. If you were not born with the correct set of opinions, or if you did not emerge from the womb fully enlightened and clutching a manifesto, you are treated with a lingering suspicion that no amount of subsequent work can wash away.
Growth becomes impossible when the people around you keep weaponizing the version of you that doesn't exist anymore. It turns out that both the populist cult and the purity-test culture operate on the same "with us or against us" frequency. Both are deeply uncomfortable with the humiliating reality of a human being admitting they were a fool. We have traded the physical violence of the old regime for a digital guillotine that executes the reformed just as readily as the enemy.
I cannot participate in your 2016 throwback because that year is a crime scene for me. But I also find it hard to fully celebrate a culture of "enlightenment" that feels like a perpetual audition for the approval of the infallible. Growth is not a filter you can slap onto a photo to make it look better. It is a slow, painful process of unlearning. What is the point of a revolution if it functions like a private club for the perpetually pure? If we exclude those who have actually learned something, we’re not really moving forward. We’re just masturbating in front of a mirror.