The IDGAF wars

Mood of the moment.

10 Aug

Michelle Santiago Cortés on a popular meme “of contemporary interest.” 

It’s easy to overstate the importance of a meme. But on principle, a meme only exists because it’s widely circulated, remixed, recreated, coopted, and ultimately, cosigned. A popular meme might not be of totalling accuracy, but it is undoubtedly relevant or, as the dictionary would say, “of contemporary interest.” The ubiquity of the IDGAF wars meme means that this particular meme is of exceptional contemporary interest.

The “IDGAF wars” are cresting through the air to meet a series of pop cultural, political, and even sartorial references of equally ardent disregard. It’s rare for a meme to be such an on-the-nose descriptor for a particular mood–especially one about not giving a fuck–but as it darts through space, it’s opening a portal to another way of understanding this moment

The “IDGAF war” is basically a game of chicken: Victory goes to whomever witholds their fucks, hides their concern, or feigns disinterest the longest. Losers cave first–they care too much and fail to keep their cool. If you check your ex’s Instagram stories, you lost the IDGAF wars. The IDGAF war is grueling and not for the faint of heart.

One of the earliest IDGAF war memes was attached to Sydney Sweeney’s 2021 Call of Duty ad, where she’s seen relaxing on the beach while bombs go off in the background. She doesn’t flinch or move: IDGAF war winner. Online, it’s increasingly popular to acknowledge celebrities for successfully enduring their own little IDGAF wars: Evan Ross Katz proclaimed Kim Cattrall to be “the absolute winner of her IDGAF war” after taking home a fat check for less than a day of shooting And Just Like That.

Other notable celebrity IDGAF war moments include: Keke Palmer’s response to her baby daddy’s weird Tweets, SZA declaring the death of people-pleasing, Doja Cat’s rejection of her fans, Ariana Grande’s dating life. Winners go out of their way to show off how little they care–about what their peers, the public, or even their fans might think.

One of this year’s biggest moments in reality television was the Battle of Gettysburg for IDGAFers. The eyes of the trash TV-loving world were on the Vanderpump Rules reunion, where Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval were seen on television for the first time since they aired the public revelation that he cheated on her with her best friend. She wore a red cutout revenge dress to the reunion, and spoke in clear and cutting remarks. She also made a million dollars in merch sales and brand deals like TV commercials for Uber One and Duracell in which she pokes fun at her ex. Battle after battle, Madix launched moneybag grenades into Sandoval’s dirty trenches. Thus, she ascended to super-stardom as the rise-above-it every girl.

A similar attitude has been observed in how young people think and talk about their finances online. Writer and financial educator Kyla Scanlon recently wrote about “economic sentiment” and how the way many of us feel about the economy doesn’t reflect that, according to most metrics, the economy is doing alright. But this feeling that the economy can never repay us what we’ve given it, is reason to lose hope and slip into despair, or what she calls “financial nihilism.”

After microdosing universal basic income via stimulus checks, the post-pandemic reality has been a rude awakening. The state is rolling back essential rights and services while bending over backwards to ensure the private sector stays healthy. For many, there is no reason to care. They’d rather fuck around and find out. Play chicken with student loan repayments, travel instead of save, there’s no guarantee you’ll ever be able to afford a house anyway. Scanlon told me she read a recent Bloomberg article that details how the US government will have to write off billions of dollars from borrowers who died in the pandemic. “What are we doing here?” Kyla told me over the phone, “when we talk about the IDGAF wars, if the only way you can escape something like [debt] is to die, of course you’re going to play chicken with it.”

As Eric Adams once said, “You can be so used to getting the L’s that you just wake up every day and hope you’re getting the L.” (I’ll take this opportunity to crown Eric Adams, New York City Mayor and socialite, the Prince of the IDGAF-ocracy.) On the topic of folks about town, TikTok’s @subwaysessions went viral just last week for her eccentric outfits–common IDGAF war armor. You might’ve seen her on your FYP, she’s best known for wearing folded basketball shorts and a scrotal lace negligé layered over her torso. She garnered attention because most people hated the looks and nevertheless she persisted posting them. For lessons on IDGAF style, look to @subwaysessions.

But internet fashion scholar Rian Phin detects a different flow of care (fucks being given) at play here: “I think everyone cares, but about different things,” she tells me over email. “That weird eclectic style of dressing to me symbolizes caring about speaking to other weird fashion people and hoping that what you're ‘saying’ is legible or challenging–you still care, but about something different than most.” In other words, @subwaysessions might not care about what the negative commenters say, or what she imagines the fine people of Queens and Harlem might think about her attire, but her outfits tell the world she cares about something. Phin questions if it’s even possible to dress for the IDGAF wars: “I think the idea of DGAF dressing is a fallacy because people like @subwaysessions have to be reasonably conscientious of existing fashion rules in order to intentionally break them, for example, rather than wearing what may be most comfortable or natural to them.” Similarly, it’s not possible to IDGAF about a debt without acknowledging the power it has over your future, or go on TV to spite an ex without performing for the GAF gaze.

Proud IDGAF war losers tell the world they are hopeless romantics, weaklings, sentimentalists–they’re transparent and earnest. Winners, on the other hand, are just posturing. In claiming they don’t care… about that, they betray the existence of a this, which they care about deeply, in fact. They might care about impressing a small section of the population, of proving something to themselves or others, or gaining the upper hand. Their concern might be focused elsewhere, far from everyone else’s sight. In any case, even the victors give a fuck about something.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

  • Doreen St. Felix interviews Sudan Archives (New Yorker)

  • Billy Porter said he has to sell his house due to the strike (Evening Standard) “So, to the person who said, ‘We’re going to starve them out until they have to sell their apartments,’ you’ve already starved me out”

  • Netflix does not currently pay residuals to South Korean actors (LA Times)

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

  • Finding Erewhon (Mold) A History of “America’s Most Expensive Grocery Store”

  • From our Discord: An interview with Aqua (The Guardian)

  • Tim Blanks x Cathy Horyn (System Magazine) “Now, the aspiration isn’t simply to have the little dress or the little designer bag, it’s to have the private jet to walk onto holding that bag or wearing that dress.”

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