2016 is going down as one of the greatest shitshows on record, and it’s only July. In times of great turmoil, bloggers turn to new phrases to capture the despair of that we’re not familiar with.
For the year of 2016 and Trump, it seems that description is dumpster fire.
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You’re not going to find it in the pages of the NYT, but if you’ve been reading around the internet lately, you’ve probably come across something described as a dumpster fire, garbage fire or trash fire. It’s not just your imagination: as first pointed out on Twitter, mentions of dumpster fires have been growing steadily since 2013.
As far as I can work out, there has been no actual increase in dumpster fires during that time.
There are signs that we may be approaching peak dumpster fire. The Huffington Post has already posted a multi-thousand-word essay documenting the rise of dumpsters and dumpster fires. An internal memo from Gawker Media Executive Editor John Cook banned the use of the phrase (or derivatives) across all Gawker sites, as being too passé.
We are also in the midst of the Republican National Convention, which after Melania Trump’s dumpster-fire of a speech has potential to be the greatest political dumpster fire of the year.
So how long will dumpster fire last in the popular vernacular? Difficult to know, but some Republican senators have already begun describing Trump as a dumpster fire. I give it until Hillary chimes in for the meme to be truly dead.
