Read this text, otherwise you will go to hell! Paula Irmschler’s rant on social media.
The other day I tried to declare it dead, but maybe it’s worth a little 2016 revival – in the form of good old rants, which were around a lot back then. A decade ago they were probably at their peak or trough, depending on where you look at it. Mostly it was about some phenomenon that other people represented: gentrification phenomena, things that people ate, drank, read, listened to, dressed, how they looked, and so on.
The rant had to blow things up so much that the people in question were made into a group in the first place and could then be held responsible for everything that could be worse. Of course, it was often playful, but also a sign that it is sometimes easier to smear each other than to smear the really powerful people and their structures.
Prove to each other how shitty you are!
So, here’s a rant. Of course, it starts with a good old everyday observation.
It’s breakfast time, around 11 or so. “Darling” (name changed) is already sitting at the table, which is already set (the things have been peppered onto the table). I see the person I love and think to myself: Oh, how sweet, sit down now. Thought, done – we sit there, the rolls, the cold cuts, the stuff, the coffee, everything! “Honey” reads around on the cell phone, messages, chats, I don’t know. I know that there are a lot of people who forbid themselves from talking on their cell phones in the morning – that’s always a topic in the media. I don’t have to do that because I can’t cognitively imagine how you’d want to go straight to your cell phone in the morning. First I have to stand in my apartment and think: Ah yes, apartment. Table, chair, window, water, pop music, hands, feet and so on. Then at some point you can paddle in here and there. This dopamine thing that people talk about a lot, I don’t really have it anymore, I don’t know. I’m only addicted to social media in exceptional circumstances, when I fall into the hole. But not really in everyday life – too much to do with the table, chair, hands and so on.
But it’s not supposed to be about me – rants are about other people.
So “sweetheart” is on the cell phone, FROM ME, I generously think. But then there’s something on the internet that must be bad, because I hear a “Oh no, right!” from the site. I notice how often I now sit next to people who shoot these curses at their screens:
They’re not serious!
Come on!
Please what?
Oh shit!
Wow, that’s stupid!
I know that you rarely say that while you’re on Spiegel, Tagesschau or Reddit, but mostly on Insta and Co. Because you saw a picture there with a saying on it. And the saying is CRAZY. It’s an unbelievable statement from someone or a so-called fact or an unbelievable event in font size 20 or something – at least an absolute outrage, either on a face or a photo of something.
I also know this because I am sometimes that person who shoots words onto my cell phone. This morning I am that person just 10 minutes later because someone uploaded a screenshot of a headline in my work chat. And I’m like, “Oh shit, yeah, heads should roll!” Or something like that. In any case, totally embarrassingly affected, like a torch march.
You see these things on your cell phone without asking because they are thrown in your face. Because someone made it, you get nervous and even angry and only then can you find out what’s behind it. Link in bio, google it yourself and stuff like that – if you have the time for it. But some people simply don’t do that at all out of principle, like the saying image, post it straight away, take a screenshot of it, start shitstorms and spend the day with it. Who can blame them?
We let it drive us stupid
Okay, this is a rant. I blame you. Well, to be honest (come on, it’s 2026) I begrudge US. We let it drive us stupid. We really need to reject this wherever we can. Impulse control thisthat. See what it’s really about. Only when we have a little more time to surf the World Wide Web. It shouldn’t be the case that we completely lose our minds just because the word – let’s say: “anti-Semitism scandal” – is floating around somewhere on a face that some people have categorized as sleazy or dangerous, and we don’t look further into what’s going on and how we want to classify it.
But the structures… YES. Editors should stop squeezing out particularly megalomaniacal statements from what is being said. Something like this: “Do you think you should be president of the world? That would be funny!” And the person answers a bit ironically: “Oh, why not! If you’re going to ask me that!” And the next day it says everywhere: THIS WOMAN THINKS HERSELF IS THE BOSS OF THE WORLD. Faces are literally framed. And often you don’t have the time to look at what’s behind it, what the person really said and so on. But it’s already burned in while scrolling. And then at some point you see the face again and think: Ah yes, that’s the boss of anti-Semitism. There was something there.
In general, everything on social media is now very much based on rage baiting. The competitive conditions in capitalism encourage us to interpret everything as poorly as possible because we are supposed to be enemies in the fight to be on top. Celebrities, politicians, artists and all other visible people are actually secretly arrogant and depraved – and we just have to tease it out and detect it because we’re supposed to expose each other as if we were cops. But no one who’s cool wants to be a cop. (Except maybe a little cute child because he doesn’t know that much yet.)
So we can do it differently. And we can do this entirely without the police and the like. We don’t always have to wait, push or hope for social media bans. We don’t have to fear them either. We don’t have to accept what the corporations throw at us and we don’t have to leave the solutions to those politicians who are too close to the corporations. We can think of something of our own. Better social media, for example. We’ll do something together! You are invited to my breakfast table. Feel free to use the ham picker (vegan).
That was the rant!
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
