Explain Like I'm 35: Is It Over, Or Are We Back? (April 2, 2023)

Life, we're often told, is full of ups and downs. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, we graduate from the school of hard knocks. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and sometimes it's all a blessing in disguise.

All these many, many tired and hackneyed phrases are here to tell us one thing: it gets better, even if it doesn't feel like it's going to. Thank you Dan Savage, for inventing that sentence when Millennials were still young and impressionable. Internet dwellers have a reputation for being serial pessimists, though, especially on the likes of Twitter or TikTok. So, it was about time that we invented a phrase of our own that represented our tormented and chronically overstimulated hivemind. It was time we brought a touch of existential despair into the equation.

Such is the guiding philosophy of It's Over/We're Back. In four tiny memeable syllables, the human condition has been totally summarized. The phrase has spread in popularity on Twitter since 2021, often accompanying photos of an object or individual looking at their worst, and then their best. Online culture has long posited the question: why do we need gray areas? Things are only one certain, permanent and immovable way, and anyone who says anything different is lying. The result comes in the forms of these two modes, which of course can be triggered by the most minor of events. Throw away that emotion wheel, you don't need to get to know yourself better. All that matters are the two states of Good and Bad, and there's nothing in between.

Posted by Ally Perry