november11–24, 2019 | newyork 61
AUG 03
The ElPaso
shooter’s
manifesto
revealsan
obsessionwith
climateand
immigration.
AUG 04
A man tweets
about the
30 to50 feral
ho gsin his
ya rd,creating
one ofthe
year’sbiggest
memes.
AUG 04
Afteronetoo
manyshootings,
extremist
messageboard
8chanis cut
offbyitshosts.
AUG 09
Rumors
circulateofa
revivedSaudi
AramcoIPO.
PHOTOGRAPHS: CASPAR HAARLØV, INTO THE ICE VIA AP
The Right Will Stop
Denying Climate
Change, and We’ll
Wish It Hadn’t
FOR A WHILE, things will go justaswe’d
learned to expect. Tides will rise higher,fires
burn wider. We will alert our friends tothesci
entists’pleasandwatchwindsweptreportersin
waterlogged streets. When those firstforsaken
places see their taps run dry, we willmarch
downtown and wave clever signs. Therewillbe
no denials left: Everyone will believeEarthis
growing nasty, brutish, and hot. But: Wewillbe
too. Strangely, the death of denial willcreate
more problems than it solves. Our institutions
of unbounded cooperation—all thoseglobal
supply chains and united nations—were built
atop the presumption of endless plenty.But
the rising tides will drown all growth.Andthe
demagogues will shout the shamefulthought
we never spoke: that solidarity is for suckerson
a sinking ship with so few lifeboats. Theeco
fascists will be here, and they will makeusnos
talgic for the denialists. —ERICLEVITZ
We Will Have Meme
Folklorists
AS AN INTERNET LINGUIST, I often hearfrom
people marveling at the tendency of internet
ish generations to “speak in memes”—tohave
conversations so densely layered withinternet
cultural references that they’re impossiblefor
an outsider to follow. It’s true that thesecon
versations happen, but thick layers ofcultural
re ferences aren’t new at all. You get thesame
shock of unfamiliarity when you meetsome
one else’s family and stumble into a decades
old quarrel or when you spend the firstweek
at a new job drowning in a sea of jargon.Ear
lier waves of technology had their lores,spread
th rough faxes and photocopiers, chainletters
and emails. It’s more that we don’t callthem
memes when they happen in physicalspace.
Talking about memes as folklore putsthem
into context for both the past and thefuture.
There’s one key difference: In an oral culture,to
transmit something, you must create itafresh.
Our squishy meatbrains aren’t good at perform
ing a song or story the exact same way twice.But
in a world of copypaste and screenshots,wecan
just share or forward verbatim. Yet we createnew
versions of memes anyway, just forfun.I’m
ex cited to find out what future historiansthink
about them. —GRETCHEN McCULLOCH
Ex tremists Will Scatter
to 32Chan, Then 64Chan,
Then 128Chan
Oil Companies Will Get Welfare—
Or Ransom Payments
SAUDI ROYAL OIL OUTFIT Aramco toyed
againwithanIPOoverthecourseof 2019,
oddly considering public funds in a year when
the world seemed finally to be waking up to just
what a suicidal—or maybe kamikaze—business
fossilfuel companies are engaged in. One
interpretation of the move is that Aramco
doesn’t care about the damage done, only the
money to be made. Another is that it believes it
can hold the world ransom—by negotiating
some massive global “Keep it in the ground”
settlement or by extracting enormous public
subsidies for carbon capture technology that
could make the industry “carbon neutral” going
forward. If the lawsuits aimed at bankrupting
it don’t get there first, that is.
You Won’t Ever
Talk in Stores
or Restaurants
CHIPOTLE CEO BRIAN NICCOL attributes the
company’s strong recent financial perfor
mance in large part to onlineordering initia
tives that remove “frictions” from the customer
experience. By “friction,” he mostly seems to
mean the need for customers to talk to Chipo
tle employees. Instead, customers order online
and pick up their food from an unmanned
shelf or a drivethrough, or they receive deliv
ery through DoorDash and need only to grunt
“Thank you” to the deliveryperson. (Don’t for
get to tip!)
It’s not just Chipotle, and it’s not just restau
rants. Airlines and hotel chains have repeatedly
strengthened their smartphone apps, reducing
the likelihood you’ll ever need to speak with a
phone agent. (United’s app is particularly good
at letting you manage complicated rebookings
without ever talking to a human.) The move
toward zero fees on stock trades is only possible
because of the virtual abolition of human stock
brokers. As Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol says,
Chipotlane is “the future of how people will
want to interact with restaurant companies.”
That is, quietly. —JOSH BARRO
AUG 10
In midtown
Atlanta, Chipotle
prepares
to open a
second pilot
“Chipotlane”—
a digital-only
drive-through.
