The End of ‘Brat Summer’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think

Charli XCX said it, so it must be true: Brat Summer is over. In a tweet so echoey it got several news hits, the club rat/pop girl said goodbye to the season that may come to define her career—and America’s political future. It was September 2, 87 days after Charli released the album Brat and 43 days after she declared that Vice President Kamala Harris “IS brat.” Normally, the fall, spooky end-of-summer vibes don’t really start until, like, the end of the month, but being online has always been a surefire way to warp one’s sense of time.

This year, though, that warp comes at warp speed. As Bethy Squires pointed out at Vulture this week, the internet seems to be “starting spooky season early.” Perhaps Demure Autumn didn’t give people enough of what they needed; maybe everyone just wants to get in a lot of Halloween before everyone has to start preparing for the holidays on October 1(ish). A few TikTokkers are advocating for a fall dedicated to Magdelena Bay’s album Imaginal Disk.

More than that, though, I’d say this all has something to do with the fact that being extremely online means observing one’s own calendar, one slightly aligned with the Gregorian one but with its own set of holidays and traditions.

You already know them: Galentine’s Day, Beyoncé’s birthday (which was just honored on Wednesday), that time in spring when everyone starts posting “It’s gonna be May” with an image macro of Justin Timberlake’s grinning mug. Right now, perhaps a bit early, Spooktober and a new Pumpkin Spice Latte/PSL Season is upon us. Like many others, that last one, similar to National Doughnut Day, is one that while perhaps not entirely the product of a corporate marketing whiz, is definitely one that benefits Starbucks. #Brands like hopping on #trends. Now, when they know there’s a surefire way to be a part of something, like Pride Month, they put it on a calendar and roll out a whole campaign.

This is perhaps how things got here in the first place. Everyone from Gen Z TikTokers to the Dunkin’ social media manager needs to know when to get on the trend and when to get off. Presumably this is why the Kamala HQ X account has already removed its Brat Green hue. As my colleague Leah Feiger discussed with writer Hunter Harris a few weeks back, as the US gets closer to Election Day in November, the pop culture moment around Harris will likely shift back to a more political one.

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to TikTok.