The world didn't flip overnight. It wasn't one election, one leader, one crisis, or one moment when everything "went bad." What really happened is way less dramatic and way more messed up: the entire vibe of reality shifted because the way we see and share information got hacked, twisted, and super-charged.
Most people can feel it. They just can't put the reasons into words. Here's the simple breakdown of what actually changed and why everything suddenly feels like the rules broke.
1. Reality itself became blurred — and nobody warned us
Right now, you can't trust what you see anymore. Not even a little bit.
We've got deepfakes that look real. AI-written articles that sound human. AI-generated photos that never happened. Bots pretending to be people. Fake screenshots. Fake testimony. Fake outrage. Fake grassroots movements.
In 2015, if you saw a photo, you mostly believed it. In 2020, you started asking questions. In 2025, you assume it's fake until proven otherwise.
That shift — from "trust by default" to "doubt everything" — changes how your brain works. It makes you tired. Paranoid. Exhausted from having to verify every single thing before you can even begin to form an opinion about it.
Once reality starts to wobble, everything else feels apocalyptic. Because if you can't trust your own eyes, what the hell CAN you trust?
2. The internet stopped being useful and turned into a firehose of chaos
Around 2014–2016, every major social platform made the same choice: they killed the chronological timeline and replaced it with algorithmic feeds designed to maximize one thing: engagement.
Not truth. Not usefulness. Not community. Just: did this make you react?
And what makes people react the hardest?
- Anger
- Fear
- Drama
- Conflict
- Extreme opinions
- Shit that makes you go "WHAT?!"
So the apps started feeding everyone a non-stop stream of the worst, most divisive, most rage-inducing content they could find. Not because anyone sat in a room and said "let's destroy society." But because anger keeps people scrolling, and scrolling makes money.
That design choice alone melted millions of people's grip on reality.
3. Misinformation didn't just increase — it industrialized
Once social media became a rage-amplification machine, fake information didn't just spread faster. It became a business model.
We're not talking about some guy sharing a bad rumor. We're talking about:
- Foreign governments running influence operations
- Marketing firms creating fake personas
- AI tools that can generate thousands of convincing fake articles in an hour
- Entire websites designed to look like real news outlets
- Coordinated networks of bots amplifying specific narratives
In 2010, if you wanted to spread misinformation, you had to work for it. In 2025, you can automate the entire operation and scale it globally for pennies.
This isn't just "people believe dumb stuff." This is information warfare being waged against regular people who just wanted to check Facebook and see what their cousin's kids are up to.
4. Leaders figured out the cheat code and started playing to the algorithm
When rage-engagement became the currency of attention, politicians noticed something: the algorithm doesn't reward nuance, plans, or competence. It rewards spectacle.
So leaders around the world — across all political systems — realized: "If I shout the loudest and say the wildest shit, I win."
Suddenly politics stopped being about governing and started being about performing. It's not about solutions anymore. It's about making noise. Creating moments. Going viral. "Owning" the other side.
And once one person figures out this works, everyone else has to follow or get drowned out completely.
Now every political moment feels like a reality show instead of leadership. Because in a very real sense, that's exactly what it became.
5. Institutions were already broken, and the internet just made it obvious
People didn't suddenly stop trusting the media, Congress, corporations, or experts in 2016. That erosion started decades earlier:
- Watergate shattered trust in government in the '70s
- The Iraq War revealed intelligence agencies could be catastrophically wrong
- The 2008 financial crisis proved the "smartest guys in the room" could destroy the economy while enriching themselves
- Corporate scandals, from Enron to opioid manufacturers, showed profit beats ethics every time
Trust was already crumbling. But once the internet weaponized that distrust and politicians learned to exploit it, the cracks turned into canyons.
Now nobody trusts:
- News media
- Scientists
- Elections
- Courts
- Experts
- Institutions
- Each other
And when trust dies, society doesn't just feel unstable — it becomes unstable.
6. Too many crises hit at the same damn time
It wasn't one apocalypse. It was twenty of them, stacked on top of each other:
- Global pandemics
- Economic collapse and recovery and inflation
- Wars that won't end
- Climate disasters getting worse every year
- Mass migration creating tension everywhere
- Rapid technological change nobody was ready for
- Political extremism rising globally
- AI exploding into existence and changing everything
People used to process crises one at a time. You'd have a recession, deal with it, recover, move on. Or a war would end. Or a disaster would happen and then rebuilding would start.
Now it's ALL happening at once, all the time, with no breaks. The fear is layered. The stress is constant. The confusion never stops.
The world feels unstable because everyone is exhausted, overloaded, and running on fumes.
So what actually changed?
Not the amount of evil in the world. Not the number of bad people. Not "the end times."
The environment changed. The information infrastructure changed. Trust collapsed. The speed became impossible to keep up with.
And we're all living inside the fallout.
The world didn't necessarily get worse — but the filter between us and the world got ripped away. What's left is raw, unprocessed, overwhelming, and way too loud.
We're not doomed. But we are in a fundamentally new era. And pretending things are "normal" is exactly what makes people feel like they're going crazy.
What do we actually do about this?
You can't fix the whole system. But you can adjust how you navigate it:
Assume everything you see online is designed to make you react. Then consciously decide if you want to give it that power.
Follow fewer accounts. Read longer articles. If something can't be explained in more than 280 characters, it's probably not worth your attention.
Talk to real humans in person. The algorithm can't optimize face-to-face conversations. Yet.
Verify before you share. Just once. Check the source. Google the claim. See if anyone credible is reporting it. It takes 30 seconds.
Protect your attention like it's money. Because to these platforms, it literally is.
The global vibe shifted because the way we experience reality shifted. That's not paranoia. That's just what happened.
Now we gotta figure out how to live in a world where "truth" has competition — and the lies have billion-dollar marketing budgets.
The first step is simple: Call it what it is.
The second step is harder: Don't let it break you.
