Peaknik subculture The term
doomer was reported in 2008 as being used in early internet peaknik communities, as on
internet forums where members discussed the theorized point in time when oil extraction would stop due to lack of resources, followed by
societal collapse. Mid-2000s doomers embraced various ideas on how to face this impending collapse, including
doomsday prepping, as well as more contemporary feelings of
resignation and defeat. Canadian self-identified doomer Paul Chefurka hosted a website where he encouraged his readers to eat
lower on the food chain, modify their homes for the apocalypse, and to consider not having children. Not all "peakniks" subscribed to a fatalist outlook. U.S. Army Ranger Chris Lisle, when writing recommendations on how to survive the societal collapse, suggested that fellow doomers "adopt a positive attitude," because, as he put it, "Hard times don't last, hard people do."
Internet meme By 2018,
4chan users had begun creating
Wojak caricatures with the
-oomer suffix, derived from
"boomer", to mock various groups online. One of these caricatures was the "Doomer", a 20-something who had "simply stopped trying". The meme first appeared on 4chan's /r9k/ board in September 2018. The image typically depicts the wojak character in dark clothing, including a dark beanie, smoking a cigarette. "Doomer"-themed playlists, featuring this wojak along with slowed down music edits (often involving post-punk or rock) reached popularity on YouTube, especially during the Covid-19 lockdowns. The archetype often embodies
nihilism and despair, with a belief in the incipient
end of the world to causes ranging from
climate apocalypse to
peak oil to (more locally)
opioid addiction. Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in
The Atlantic that the doomer meme depicts young men who "are no longer pursuing friendships or relationships, and get no joy from anything because they know that the world is coming to an end." A related meme format, "doomer girl", began appearing on
4chan in January 2020, and it soon moved to other online communities, including
Reddit,
Twitter, and
Tumblr, often by women claiming it from its
4chan origins. This format is described by
The Atlantic as "a quickly sketched cartoon woman with black hair, black clothes, and sad eyes ringed with red makeup". The doomer girl character often appears in
image macros interacting with the original doomer character. The format is often compared to
rage comics.
Doomer wave Doomer wave (also known as
doomerwave or simply
doomer) is an online music
microgenre coined by anonymous users on
4chan in 2018 to describe an offshoot of the
Wojak meme known as "doomer wojak". The style was originally associated with
slowed down versions of depressive tracks as inspired by the
vaporwave microgenre. In 2020, Belarusian post-punk band
Molchat Doma garnered
internet virality through
online memes and
playlists which referred to them as "Russian doomer music" or "doomer wave". (Despite the band's Belarusian origin) The
BBC describes sustainability professor Jem Bendell's self-published paper
Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy as "the closest thing to a manifesto for a generation of self-described 'climate doomers. As of March 2020, the paper had been downloaded more than a half-million times. In it, Bendell claims there is no chance to avert a near-term breakdown in human civilization, but that people must instead prepare to live with and prepare for the
effects of climate change. Climate scientist
Michael E. Mann described Bendell's paper as "pseudo-scientific nonsense", saying Bendell's "doomist framing" was a "dangerous new strain of crypto-denialism" that would "lead us down the very same path of inaction as outright
climate change denial". An essay published on
OpenDemocracy argues that the paper is an example of "climate doomism" that "relies heavily on misinterpreted climate science". Michael Mann has also listed
David Wallace Wells's framing of the climate crisis, which he presents in "
The Uninhabitable Earth" and
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, as being among "the prominent doomist narratives."
Uncivilization: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, published in 2009 by
Paul Kingsnorth and
Dougald Hine to signal the beginning of the artists' group the Dark Mountain Project, critiques the idea of progress. According to
The New York Times, critics called Kingsnorth and his sympathizers "doomers", "
nihilists", and "crazy polypiarians". Kate Knibbs, writing in
Wired, described the development of a popular and growing strain of "doomer"
climate fiction, in contrast to the typically optimistic undertones of the genre. Amy Brady, a climate fiction columnist for the
Chicago Review of Books, says the genre has moved from future scenarios to near-past and present stories. == See also ==