Doomer


A doomer is someone who believes that global problems—including but not limited to ecological exhaustion, such as overpopulation, peak oil, climate change, and pollution—will cause the collapse of civilization, significant human population die-off, and potentially lead to eventual human extinction. The ideology is defined in opposition to more optimistic outlooks on life. Doomers believe that government corruption, civilian apathy, and/or structural oppression are unfixable.

Common themes

Self-identified doomers identify with a wide range of political and cultural values, but tend to fall on the far-right or the far-left. Those on the far-right often cite the effects of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory and degrading cultural institutions, while those on the far-left reference the effects of late capitalism, ecological collapse and growing corporate control.

Media

The term "doomer" was popularized in the commentary surrounding Jonathan Franzen's 2019 essay in The New Yorker titled "What if We Stopped Pretending". The piece made an argument against the possibility of averting climatic catastrophe. In addition to popularizing the term among general audiences, Franzen's piece was highly popular among online "doomer" communities, including the Facebook groups Near Term Human Extinction Support Group and Abrupt Climate Change.
In an article in the BBC, Jem Bendell's self-published paper ' was described as "the closest thing to a manifesto for a generation of self-described 'climate doomers'". As of March 2020, the paper had been a downloaded more than a half million times. In it, Bendell claims there is no chance to avert a near-term breakdown in human civilization. As the BBC review also noted, "Prof Michael Mann, one of the world's most renowned, describes Bendell's paper as 'pseudo-scientific nonsense'".
The New York Times notes that supporters of ' have been described as "doomers" for the reckless nature of the text's message. The manifesto critiques the idea of progress, having been published by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine to signal the beginning of the artists' group the Dark Mountain Project.
In February 2020, Kate Knibbs of Wired noted the development of a popular and growing strain of "doomer" climate fiction, in contrast to the typically optimistic undertones of the genre. In addition, Amy Brady, a climate fiction columnist for the Chicago Review of Books, notes that the genre has moved from future scenarios to near-past and present stories.