The monitor is a weekly column dedicated to everything that happens in the world of WIRED culture, from movies to memes, through television and Twitter.
Earlier this week, it seemed inevitable that this column had something to do with President Trump’s second removal. In a week in which Republicans compared the removal of the president to a “cancellation” and said that Twitter that started Trump was similar to censorship, it was tempting to be interested. (If freedom of speech is being stifled, how is it possible that everything is I have news in all the major media in the world? How?) But I rambled. Because? Sea songs.
To keep everyone up to date, the marine singers are the smiling wife of the Distracted Boyfriend meme; they distract you from your attention, no matter how busy your time is. Originating from 18th-century merchant navy ships, the songs, intended to help sailors with their chores, began to take off on the TikTok after a 26-year-old Scottish postman named Nathan Evans posted a video singing a song called “Soon May The Wellerman Come” (sometimes just titled “Wellerman”) in the last week of 2020. Since then it has been cheated thousands of times and has become an online obsession. displaced r / seashanties, you really should).
Because? Why, in the midst of a political crisis in the United States and a global pandemic, has everyone devoted themselves to songs that sound like what the Decemberists were trying to be? The conclusion that has reached most people is that sea songs are a respite. This at a time when people have to be very separated, joining the song, even above the TikTok, feels like a moment of coexistence or socially distant karaoke. (God, I miss karaoke.) “They’re unifying, survival songs, designed to transform a huge group of people into a collective body,” Kathryn VanArendonk wrote for Vulture, “working together to keep the ship afloat.” to floatation “. Similarly, as Amanda Petrusich pointed out in The New Yorker, “It seems possible that after almost a year of loneliness and collective self-exile, and of overwhelming restrictions on travel and adventure, blackmail is offering a brief insight into a different and more exciting way of life. , a world of maritime air and pirates and yellow, of many people singing in unison, of being free to take off bravely for what Melville called the “true places,” the uninterrupted views that are not they can locate on any map. ”(As for the spelling discrepancies between“ shantytown ”and“ blackmail, ”your guess is as good as mine.)
These things are certainly true. After almost a year of quarantine and fear, it’s welcome to have something simple for you to sing about, even if you’re halfway there. The ironic embrace of something that feels old and ethereal also fits the spirit of TikTok. But at the same time, the consumption of collective culture has been one of the distinguishing features of the pandemic, based on a collective obsession with Tiger king a “WAP”. Not to mention, players sang songs while playing Sea of thieves long before the pandemic arrived. Yes, part of that popularity came courtesy of Longest Johns, the a cappella folk band that released a version of “Wellerman” in 2018, but still.