The Ruins Are Gorgeous in Golden Hour
The bombs have dropped, the grids are down, the grocery shelves are bare,
But Kylie has a ring of light and exceptional hair.
The civilization we constructed over several thousand years
Has crumbled into rubble, ash, and structurally unsound veneers,
And yet, and yet, and YET, my friends, through smoke and spectral doom,
There's a woman in the wreckage setting up a filming room.
She found a slightly tilted wall that catches killer light,
She's going live at eight PM. Well, eight-ish, maybe night,
The concept of "PM" is admittedly hard to pin
When society has ended and the wolves have wandered in,
But the wolves have decent bone structure so she's tagging them regardless,
Her caption reads: "new friends" which is simultaneously accurate and heartless.
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel, smash that subscribe,
Today we're doing a haul but more of a survival-of-the-fittest vibe,
I found these canned goods in a bunker underneath a bank,
Full review below, I'll give the peaches a solid rank,
The bunker had a vibe, it was moody, it was chic,
Three stars on ambiance but the corpses were antique.
Now Madison is grinding, she has grind in her DNA,
She pivoted to "doomsday content" on a very productive Thursday,
Her niche is "cosy apocalypse"—soft lighting, ruins, tea,
She films herself doing breathwork while the cities fall with glee,
Her thumbnails show her smiling with a crumbling spire behind her,
Her engagement rate is soaring, which the algorithm will remind her.
This week's video is sponsored by a bunker—Bunker Pro,
Use code MADISON for ten percent off your subterranean chateau,
They've got reinforced concrete and a really nice aesthetic,
The air filtration system is, I kid you not, poetic,
I am not personally responsible for the collapse of western thought,
But here's an affiliate link for a hazmat suit I bought.
Then there is Brandon, twenty-three, from somewhere near Des Moines,
Who's doing "survival hacks" while everything disjoint and disjoins,
He says you can start a fire with a phone screen and some soap,
He says you can purify water with influenza and rope,
He is confidently incorrect in seventeen languages,
And his comment section treats this like a series of advantages.
Bro dropped this FIRE hack says TylerNotActuallyFire99,
I tried the water trick and now I can see through walls, says someone called Ryne,
King behaviour, says a person using only skull emojis,
I did not survive, says GhostOfDave, which nobody notices.
Oh the metrics! Oh the metrics! They are beautiful and pure!
The engagement on an extinction event is something to endure,
For every burning building there's a reaction face to pull,
And every mass migration is content that's gloriously full,
"I followed a refugee column for thirty miles in crocs,"
"Subscribe for part two where I explain the blisters and the shocks."
Evangelina, call her Eva, she insists, it's her brand—
Has launched a merch line from the wasteland, isn't that just grand?
Hoodies reading APOCALYPSE BADDIE in a distressed font,
Available in seven colour ways which is seven more than you want,
The cotton is ethically sourced, she was very specific about this,
The factory is now a crater but let's not dwell in the abyss.
Her unboxing video for ration packs has forty million views,
She ASMR'd the sound of crackers, which was oddly good news,
The crinkle of the packaging, the scrape of tinned despair,
Three and a half stars for flavour, five stars for the flair,
"I'm not saying it's good good," she said, "but it's content good,"
Which is a distinction that the ancient Greeks never understood.
Now a word from our partners at Glow Eternal Skin,
Even in the end times, babe, you've got to let the light in,
Their SPF one thousand blocks both UVA and gamma rays,
It won't stop the horsemen but it'll slow the skin's malaise,
Use code APOCALYPSE for a discount which expires never,
Because time itself has ended and the code is good forever.
There is a man named Jaxon, yes, with an X, we know,
Who livestreamed the collapse of Parliament as a slow-burn flow,
He said, "This is giving very Roman Empire, very fall,"
He said, "The aesthetic is giving crumbling, giving call,"
He said, "Okay so the Prime Minister is technically on fire,"
"But I've got a ring light and a lav mic, so let's not retire."
He rated the collapse four out of five, lost a star for pacing,
He said the third act dragged and could've used some better placing,
His editor cut a transition over the cavalry charge,
His thumbnails showed him pointing at a tank that was quite large,
His face was doing shock but in a way that felt curated,
Which is the face you make when horror has been thoroughly calibrated.
The influencers of cooking pivoted with very little friction,
They'd been doing "five ingredients" as their long-term addiction,
Now it was: five ingredients, a bunker, and existential dread,
I'm making a souffle with uranium and questionable bread,
The recipe cards updated, the Reels kept right on rolling,
The mushroom clouds made gorgeous backgrounds, blossoming and swelling.
And Bella, sweet, sweet Bella, she was doing "day in my life,"
She documented breakfast, then the encroaching general strife,
Her morning routine: SPF, a latte made from rain,
Twelve minutes of manifestation, brief surrender to the pain,
Her "get ready with me" ran an hour and a half,
The civilization ended at the forty-minute mark—then a laugh.
Wait wait wait, she said, something's happening outside,
Oh wow, okay, the sky is like a really interesting ride,
I'm gonna keep my mic on because this feels very shareable,
Do you think this counts as a natural disaster? Is this declarable?
Anyway I'm using the Fenty Beauty Apocalypse Palette,
The shade is called "Rubble" and honestly I'd call it stellar.
The comments poured in like a beautiful digital flood:
Slaying through the rapture,
Not her surviving through the blood,
GRWM but make it Armageddon, love your energy queen,
I literally cannot stop watching, what does this even mean?
Oh Internet, Oh Internet, you beautiful strange beast,
You turned the death of everything into a branded feast,
You took the four horsemen and gave them brand deals, gave them reach,
You had Pestilence collab with a vitamin C brand called Peach,
War got a podcast, Death got a newsletter on Substack,
Famine got a cookbook called Lean Living: There's no going back.
The Reel of the apocalypse got boosted by the algorithm,
Because it showed good face and had a hook within the first film,
The first three seconds: fire. The middle eight: despair.
The final frame: a wink. The music: something with a flair.
Fifteen seconds, end of days, a swipe away from a dog tutorial.
The attention span of humankind: its truest obituarial.
Now let us not forget the ones who did the "hot take thread,"
Who typed two thousand words about the nuance of the dead,
The discourse around the collapse has been really quite reductive,
I think we need to sit with the complexity, be more constructive,
The real apocalypse was the parasocial bonds we made along the way,
This got four hundred thousand likes and was forgotten the same day.
And there was one brave soul, let's call him Greg, who said,
"Perhaps we shouldn't film ourselves while everything is dead,
Perhaps the ring light is not necessary in the nuclear winter,
Perhaps the caption 'can't stop won't stop' should give us a splinter,"
Greg got ratio'd into oblivion before the sentence finished,
His follower count fell sharply, his credibility diminished.
Poor Greg, sweet Greg, last Greg, he walked into the smoke,
Without a single subscriber, without a final spoke
Of content in the wheel of content, just a man alone,
With nothing but his thoughts and silence and a crumbled phone.
He is the only one among them who won't be remembered,
Which means, in influencer terms, he never really existed, come December.
And so the ruins glow with ring lights and the rubble gets its close-up,
And every crumbling arch becomes the backdrop for a promo,
The hashtag #ApocalypseVibes has seven billion uses,
The hashtag #WeAreAllGonnaDie is one that nobody chooses,
Because the algorithm deprioritizes doom without a hook,
And nobody goes viral for just standing there and looking.
Last slide of the carousel: subscribe for weekly hacks,
How to build a shelter from your influencer merch racks,
How to monetise your trauma in a gentle, healing way,
How to rate the end of history, I gave it a solid eight,
Lost two points for logistics and the general loss of hope,
But the aesthetic was immaculate and I'm learning how to cope.
And so, dear friends, when everything has finally crumbled down,
When every city's rubble and there's ash where there was town,
When the last great human institution breathes its final breath,
When we have managed, comprehensively, to market even Death,
There will be someone in the ashes with a gimbal and a glow,
Who'll say: Don't forget to like and share before you go.
