The New Yorker:

We participate in political memes to express our anxiety that whatever is coming next might be even more chaotic than what is already happening.

By Kyle Chayka

Earlier this month, Tesla, the Elon Musk-led car company, staged a publicity stunt in front of the White House. A row of electric vehicles, including an angular stainless-steel Cybertruck, was arranged for Donald Trump to inspect before a fleet of news cameras. As far as photo opportunities go, it was absurd enough, turning the supposedly august Presidential residence into something resembling the set of a car-dealership commercial. (In its jarring clash of high-and-low symbolism, it recalled the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference that Rudy Giuliani hosted on Trump’s behalf after the 2020 election.) Trump, playing the role of the discerning shopper, stepped into a gleaming red Tesla Model S. Musk circled the car, ready to assist his faux client, and pointed out the brake and the accelerator. “It’s like driving a golf cart,” he said. Trump, presumably admiring the touch screen that the car has in lieu of buttons, exclaimed, “Wow! That’s beautiful. . . . Everything’s computer!”

The event was a transparent attempt to lift Tesla’s stock price, which has suffered recently in large part owing to mounting anti-Musk public sentiment. But it was Trump’s brief utterance that stole the show. He has always had a genius for contagious coinages—even, occasionally, when the language is accidental. (Remember “covfefe”?) “Everything’s computer,” with its compressed and fractured syntax, perfectly evokes the befuddling era we find ourselves in: technology is infiltrating every aspect of our lives—even, with Musk’s doge rampage, the workings of the federal government. Tesla is computer; artificial intelligence is computer; politics is computer. Am I computer, too? The phrase instantly became a meme, used to caption everything from clips of “The Matrix” and “Star Wars” to images of Kim Kardashian with a humanoid Tesla robot with which she has lately been staging scenes.

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