The Internet Obsession With Theorizing
Severance is really good, but the fandom highlights how weird the internet has made us
The second season of Severance on Apple TV+ just wrapped, and I very much enjoyed it. The show combines a beautiful eye with a compelling sci-fi story, some mystery, a pinch of corporate/religious critique, a skosh of humor, and a lot of dense characters who happen to share the same body, adding to the fun.
But, this is a Substack about complaining! So, while I have enjoyed watching the show episodically at the same time every week (what a concept), I do think the structure of the show and its weekly releases has revealed something about our internet-addled brains that’s been irking me: the obsession with theorizing.
Severance is obviously a show that invites scrutiny, and it certainly has a mystery that it wants to unfold on its own time. But do a quick Google search or peruse the show’s subreddit/short-form writing platform of your choice and you’ll find almost nothing but an obsession with being the first to solve it. After an absolutely incredible finale that featured one of the better endings to a season of television I can remember and quite a few iconic moments, GQ quickly had an article up listing “All of the unanswered fan theories,” as if it were the writers responsibility to address all of the batshit predictions people on TikTok made. A couple of these theories that apparently demanded answers are:
That one of the show’s main characters is actually a goat
That two of the show’s characters who have never interacted are actually lesbian lovers
And these are among the more tame theories I’ve seen gaining traction on the information super-highway.
I was lucky enough to be college-aged during the modern “Golden Age” of television and blessed with the kind of downtime only afforded to a public school journalism major to have watched shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones (the good seasons) while they aired. For proof, here’s a photo of me in college I took alone, wearing a hoodie as pants and posing like Walter White for some reason.
During the airing of these shows, people certainly did discuss how they thought they would end, but I remember the majority of discussion being around what actually happened on a week-to-week basis, not this sort of scorekeeping on which theories were correct.
Now, I’m not here to police how people watch TV, but I do think it reveals something about the internet has rewired our brains. Almost all cultural discourse seems to obsessively look forward and never back. It’s littered with people trying to find the “one simple trick” that will explain how everything is going to turn out. The internet offers us the opportunity for time-stamped proof that we were right all along, that we are smart, that we understand how the world works, and it’s a tempting offer to take. There’s a reward for predictions, but not so much for retrospection.
One glaring example comes during election season, where conversation has become utterly dominated by reporters and consumers trying to find the “canary in the coal mine” that shows who will win and why. This poll in Iowa six months before the election has been predictive since 2004, or this statehouse election result in the suburbs of Virginia has always told us which party will win the White House. I enjoy election data more than most, but we seem to be in a race to see who is right about who will win and gets to brag for four years.
In sports, you see a lot of the same. NFL fans have become obsessed with the league’s “script.” What was originally a joke has become an unironic belief online, where the league has dictated an outcome so explicitly that they’re putting the Super Bowl teams’ colors in the games logo itself an entire year ahead of time.
In the NBA, Scoopsters like Adrian Wojnarowski and Shams Charania have made millions upon millions of dollars simply for being known to tell fans about a trade about three minutes before the teams press release goes out. Hell, Woj was even brought on to the ESPN broadcast of the NBA draft to tell you who was going to be picked right before it happened.
Music fandom might be the strangest example of them all. Instead of doing what folks used to do — listen to an album a lot, maybe put a poster on your wall and see a few concerts — to be a true [insert artist here] enjoyer, you have to have complex theories. I don’t normally like to dunk on the Swifties, but they have so many predictions on Taylor’s album releases and public appearance to the point that they require a monthly theory megathread on Reddit, with thousands of comments detailing how they expect her PR team to roll out a record that may or may not even exist. Similarly, in the days following album releases, Kendrick Lamar fans could not simply listen to it. They have, on multiple occasions, worked themselves into a tizzy trying to explain why there is actually a SECOND album coming.
I’m sorry, but this shit is all weird.
Alas, this is the internet influence in our age. The entertainment product isn’t enough. There’s no need to even digest it, let alone enjoy it, because the REAL entertainment is going online and talking about what comes next before the thing has even made it’s way down your gullet.
To quote Severance: "Hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination. The bad news is whatever humans can imagine they can usually create."
Yours Truly,
The Nut From The Observer