Why everything feels like a crisis (when it isn't)

In 2024, 56% of Americans believed they were in a recession.

Unemployment was near a fifty-year low. GDP was growing. The stock market was up 24%.

They were not in a recession.

So what were they in?

This video is about the gap between what the data says and what your gut says - and why that gap is getting wider every year. It's about what happens when the algorithm learns that your outrage is worth more than your attention. When the For You page replaces the news anchor. When a fringe movement of 800 people can make an entire country feel like civilisation is ending by Sunday morning.

Economists called it a vibecession. I think it's something bigger. I think we've quietly, collectively made a trade - swapping data for feeling, evidence for atmosphere, what is for how it seems. And most of us didn't notice it happening.

In this video I explore:

• Why the algorithm is structurally designed to make you feel worse ↳ The psychology of concept creep - and why a generation is diagnosing itself through TikTok
• What the Britain First march in Manchester tells us about how we process threat
• Why the 2024 US election stopped being about policy - and what that means for democracy ↳ And what Stoic philosophy has to say about living inside a world governed by vibes
  
  This isn't a video about politics. It's not a video about economics. It's a video about your nervous system, the feed that's colonising it, and whether you can still trust your own perception of reality.
  
  The world is often better than the algorithm wants you to believe. This video is about why it needs you to think otherwise.