The free fall of context: What does anything actually mean now?

We’re free fallin’.

And not in the way Tom Petty or John Mayer sing about. I mean the way that descends us into some kind of collective madness. The cultural condition we’re living in right now is what I’d call the free fall of context. Where meaning itself doesn’t last long enough to matter. Every scroll resets the stage: luxury sits next to suffering, irony next to sincerity, progress next to regression. Contradictions stack up so quickly there’s no chance to resolve them.

You’re not just overstimulated, you’re context-switching at a pace no brain was designed to withstand.

The result is that nothing means anything. The first contextual collapse indicator for me is realising language itself has left the chat. Words don’t even bother to pretend anymore. “Unalived”. “Aura”. “Rizz”. “Vibe mogging". Half-ironic, half-serious, all unmoored. Then there’s the pure nonsense: “SDIYBT”, “67”, “eefoc”, “U Din Din Din Din Dun". These aren’t words, they’re in-jokes with the shelf life of a mayfly. They emerge from comment sections, bounce through group chats and get memed into oblivion. Eventually they mean nothing at all except “I know this, and maybe you don’t, but if you do: ayyyyy we lit”.

Language is supposed to help us make sense of the world. Online, it’s just more churn. More noise. We’ve kind of been here before though, Postmodernism in the late 20th century thrived on irony, parody, and remix. But even when it was cheeky, it was still playing with meaning. Irony only works if there’s something underneath to twist. Today feels different. We’ve moved past irony into something closer to nihilistic churn. Nothing has time to stabilise into meaning before it’s flipped, memed, or contradicted. Baudrillard’s “simulacra” (images without originals) or Debord’s “spectacle” (a society organised around appearances) feel almost quaint now. At least their exhibitions had some coherence. We’re living in a remix of remixes, where reference has replaced reality, and then collapsed into pure noise.

So, a question for brands: is this where you want to go?

Here’s the uncomfortable part. Brands, or what you could call our cultural avatars of capital, are right in the middle of this collapse. You see the nonsense, and the temptation is obvious: jump in, speak the language of chaos, ride the algorithm and stay relevant. You don’t want to miss the joke, so you perform it. But be for real, when brands embrace meaninglessness, they don’t just “join the conversation”. They accelerate the noise, and therefore the collapse.

Every hollow in-joke in the name of “engagement” makes the cultural free fall a little faster, a little emptier. And that raises the bigger question: is this really how you want to show up? Because when you join the nonsense, I can promise you this, it does not humanise you, it hollows you out.

But fear not! There is another path.

Yes, the primary job of a brand is to make money. But how you do it matters. What you contribute to culture matters. In a timeline where commerce and culture are completely blurred, the choice isn’t neutral. You can feed the churn, or you can resist it. Resisting doesn’t mean being boring or humorless. It means offering something beyond the endless spiral of nonsense:

• Slow culture. Make things people return to: campaigns, ideas, or experiences that last longer than 24 hours.

• Durable communities. Focus less on viral reach, more on creating spaces where people actually stick around.

• Plain speech. Say what you mean. Don’t parrot vibespeak if you don’t believe in it. In a world of slippery words, clarity is radical.

Because here’s the power play: when meaning is collapsing all around us, the most relevant thing a brand can do is to make meaning matter again.

-Sophie Randell, Writer