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The monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything that happens in the world of WIRED culture, from movies to memes, from TV to Twitter.
Earlier this week, it seemed inevitable that this column had something to do with President Trump’s second impeachment. In a week when Republicans compared the president’s impeachment to a “cancellation” and claimed that Twitter’s start-up on Trump was akin to censorship, it was tempting to weigh in. (If free speech is stifled, how is it possible that everything is I hear about in all the major media around the world? How? ‘Or’ What?) But I digressed. Why? Chanteys of the sea.
To keep everyone in the know, Songs of the Sea are the smiling wife of the Distraced Boyfriend meme – they distract your attention no matter what should be occupying your time. Coming from merchant navy ships in the 18th century, the songs – intended to aid sailors in their tasks – began to take off on TikTok after 26-year-old Scottish mailman Nathan Evans posted a video of himself singing a song called “Soon May the Wellerman Come” (sometimes simply titled “Wellerman”) in the last week of 2020. It has been dubbed thousands of times since and has become an online obsession. (If you haven’t scrolled through r / seashanties yet, you really should.)
Why? Why, in the midst of a political crisis in the United States and a global pandemic, has everyone turned to songs that sound like what the Decemberists were trying to be? The conclusion that most people have come to is that sea chanteys are a respite. At a time when people need to be far apart, coming together in a song – even on TikTok – feels like a time of conviviality or socially distant karaoke. (God I miss karaoke.) “These are unifying, survival songs, designed to transform a huge group of people into one collective body,” Kathryn VanArendonk wrote for Vulture, “working all together to keep the ship at bay. flow. ” Likewise, as Amanda Petrusich noted in The New Yorker, “It seems possible that after nearly a year of loneliness and collective self-banishment, and overwhelming restrictions on travel and adventure, the chantey could provide a brief glimpse into a different way of life, more exciting, a world of sea air and pirates and grogs, many people singing in unison, to be free to boldly take off for what Melville called the ‘real places’, the uncorrupted vistas that cannot not be located on any map. (As for the spelling differences between “slum” and “chantey,” your guess is as good as mine.)
These things are undoubtedly true. After nearly a year of quarantine and fear, having something simple that you can sing about even if you’re half-deaf is welcome. The unironic embrace of something that feels old and ethereal also fits perfectly into the spirit of TikTok. But at the same time, collective cultural consumption has been one of the hallmarks of the pandemic, which grew out of a collective obsession King tiger to “WAP”. Not to mention, players sang chanteys while playing Sea of Thieves long before the pandemic struck. Yes, part of that popularity came thanks to the Longest Johns, the a cappella folk group that released a version of “Wellerman” in 2018, but still.
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