The 20-year nostalgia cycle, climate-change nihilism, information saturation, streaming-era content overload, and our collective Long COVID of the soul have converged in a tidal wave of tackiness. What we’re dealing with is a full-blown cultural moment. But what we’re witnessing goes far beyond cool teens and the extremely online to encompass anyone with free time, disposable income, and internet access. Trendspotters have glommed on to the Y2K nostalgia and end-times decadence in Gen Z’s nascent aesthetic sensibility (see: the skimpy, iridescent fashions of Euphoria). Certainly, there is a youthful element to this bad-taste renaissance. We have entered an era of exuberant, even apocalyptic, bad taste. The most salient new sound in recent years is hyperpop, a dizzyingly hooky, wildly referential microgenre that has been described by one of Spotify’s influential “data alchemists” as “ebullient electro-maximalism.” After a boom in scripted programming, trashy reality TV is surging, in a resurgence fueled by self-consciously trashy shows like Selling Sunset and FBoy Island. Designers are hawking hot-pink suits, belt-length skirts, and logo-plastered handbags. Everything is suddenly bigger, brighter, louder, raunchier.