Grab an ice cold Bud Lixt. In the chaotic, lightning-fast, amnesic realm of the internet, culture war dramas rarely last longer than a day or two, but people have been screaming about a transsexual Bud Light can for over four weeks. Why? Right on the ground floor, the story really does have something for everyone: a wildly famous trans “girl” influencer documenting her “second puberty” before an audience of millions, a “woke” Bud Light marketing executive, a right wing boycott, a left wing boycott, Kid Rock with an assault rifle, several corporate firings, and a small class of the most influential political talking heads in the country, every one of whom believes they are oppressed because of their conservative politics, shamelessly amplifying this purportedly dangerous spectacle to the country. But as fun as all of this is (and thank you, everyone, great work this month in the genre of Clown World bullshit), the intensity of this culture war backlash is revelatory of something actually important: there is a critical incompatibility between any kind of stabile mainstream culture, and social media at scale.

The structure of our social internet not only amplifies the most extreme possible positions on every topic, it invites a struggle for consensus on such fundamentally incompatible positions among hundreds of millions of people. In other words, our platforms are designed, even if inadvertently, to drive us all crazy. Counterintuitively, it seems any future internet that doesn’t help us get away from each other, to meet and live in our own, weird little spaces full of weirdos just like us, will irreparably drive this country apart. I think the internet can still be fixed, and there are some positive signs in this direction. But first, in accordance with the Law of Clown, grab yourself an ice cold Bud Lixt, and take a seat. It’s time to talk about this gender bending beer from TikTok Hell.

On April 1st, in celebration of March Madness, Bud Light sent trans mega-influencer Dylan Mulvaney a handful of commemorative cans emblazoned with her face. Dylan released a little commercial for the company on Instagram, jokingly noted she had no idea what sports were, and the internet lost its mind. Standard issue shitposters, always here for any drama, immediately uncovered the name of the marketing executive responsible for the trans can, along with a very unfortunate interview in which the executive criticized the only consumers who actually drank her product (frat boys, she said, and ignorant olds). Then she outlined a plan to tap a series of left-coded political values in service of making Bud Light more popular among the cast of HBO’s Euphoria.