An At Best Half-Baked Theory of ‘What the Fuck Are You Talking About’

But not so much anymore. The theory, such as it is, is this: the effect of WTFAYTA is diminishing toward zero. As social media (X in particular) has cooked countless brains, and the dominant political party has embraced an up-is-down style of Opposite Day uber-lie, they have not been met with any sort of equivalent escalation of pushback. No one who needs to hear the question does, and few who do hear it interpret it appropriately.

Thinking back to those earlier Twitter days — pre-Musk, pre-Trump1 even — there was a familiar rhythm to this. Someone who posted an absurdity amongst otherwise reasonable conversation would be told, again and again, that the take had so little merit as to be genuinely distressing and off-putting to the ostensibly normal people they said it to. This, quite often really, could descend into meanness and pile-ons and all the things people have complained about for closing in on two decades — but it also functioned to let some people know (not all — there are true freaks in any era) that they really were teetering out over the deep end.

But the easy access of so many people to those bad takes, for years and years, took the edge off the WTFAYTA response. For some, the ones who faced this barrage of WTFAYTA routinely, it became just that — routine. So much so, really, that the combination of potential embarrassment, shame, questioning, defensiveness, and other potential emotions a relatively normal person might feel the first few times such a mass reply happens just started to fade. Like a rock hammer worn down to the nub, the questioning stopped sounding like reasonable, coherent, and unified criticism. If I’m always being asked WTFAYTA, that’s just how things are. I’m not THAT wrong THAT often.

Over this same period, Donald Trump showed up in politics. His primary innovation, I would argue, is that telling lies to the public does not need to be restricted to the genteel, exaggeration-based versions politicians have favored for centuries. Even faced with outright proof to the contrary, right there in front of you — think inauguration crowds, or hurricane sharpies, or the January 6 “day of love” — you can just… say things. Anything. It doesn’t matter. The press, itself still clinging to the Way Things Were to an extent the politicians it covers long since abandoned (one side anyway) does not have the appetite, generally speaking, to consistently offer even the sanded down version of WTFAYTA. Say the absurdly untrue thing enough times, and the only people who matter to you will absorb it as gospel.

This has trickled outward from the Big Damp Boy in the Oval Office, such that the entire right-wing ecosystem is filled with people Just Saying Things all the time. “There’s no traffic in LA anymore because of the deportations,” says Benny Johnson to a sitting Congressman; “I view Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation at this point,” says billionaire egg Marc Andreesen to a group chat of like-minded babies. In their insulated spaces, no one is around to ask WTFAYTA; on X, where they still hang out, most of the reasonable people have left and the algorithm has been thoroughly skewed, so instead of the pile-on they get the pile-with, and the median spewer of such nonsense now has 15 years of experience to help them dismiss the stray WTFAYTA crowd anyway.

There are exceptions, of course. Take ABC’s Jon Karl recently refusing to accept Kevin Hassett’s stammered explanations of a tariff on Brazil in the face of a trade surplus with that country, rather than a deficit — a three-minute clip of, politely stated, “WTFAYTA, Kevin?” But even then, to what end? Every Trump orbit television appearance is just a signal to the Big Guy that you’re toeing the line, no matter how ridiculous; where in previous eras there may have been some effect — a change in policy or at least its rhetorical description, all the way up to personnel changes — now Hassett can go home secure with the knowledge that not even Pete “Nobody was texting war plans” Hegseth still has his job. 

This is not intended as some grand How Did We Get Here treatise, though it fits the broader project. The churn of a social media cesspool, the singular reliance on lying of one dominant political figure, their marriage and subsequent decade-long positive reinforcement cycle — a lot of contemporary life can probably be explained, in one sense or another and better than I’m managing here, by that malodorous stew. The WTFAYTA of it all is maybe best understood as one little corner of that broader explanatory foundation, a small but meaningful check on slipping into outright — and often meaningfully damaging as we look out the window today — absurdity.