Too bored to give a fuck
Red Scare and the cult of calculated apathy
5 June 2025
Red Scare, the cultural commentary podcast hosted by Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova, emerged in 2018 from the labyrinthine world of New York’s indie media and the so-called “dirtbag left.” Initially embraced by segments of the left for its caustic critique of neoliberal capitalism and mainstream feminism, the show has since swerved catastrophically to the hard right. It makes more than $30,000 a month through Patreon subscriptions, and has carved out a niche blending irreverent humor, provocative takes, and a distinctive performative lethargy. Yet this blend is less a radical intervention and more an elaborate pose.
White privilege
The collective IQ of Khachiyan and Nekrasova is less than that of a senile hedgehog. To call their vapid musings, incoherent rants, and fatuous one-liners sophomoric would be to endow them with a dignity they have neither earned nor sought. Their conversations meander like half-formed undergrad essays scribbled after three glasses of cheap wine — full of vague allusions, half-remembered scraps of Derrida, and a pathological fear of clarity. Listening to them is like watching two narcissists mistaking their own reflections for intellectual depth.
Their favourite word is “retarded”. Vice signalling has been central to the podcast’s countercultural allure: instead of sharing pronouns and employing the approved nomenclature (“unhoused,” “Latinx”), Khachiyan and Nekrasova have revived insults like “gay” and “mummy’s boy” (or, in the crass parlance that passes for English in the former colonies, “mommy’s boy”). It is not hard to detect the cruelty and contempt that lie just beneath the surface. Their sneering jokes about homeless people (“is it politically correct to call them vagrants?” they ask at one point, while collapsing in fits of canned laughter) aren’t subversive — they’re reactionary, haughty, and, all too often, performatively racist (they have described Chinese as an “autistic language” and Chinese people as “autistic coded”). Saying the unsayable only has teeth when it punctures power; in the mouths of these two airheads, it merely kicks downwards, ridiculing the already marginalised while pretending this somehow constitutes bravery. What they offer is not resistance, but reheated nihilism in vintage wrapping, a performance of edge that ends up reinforcing the very hierarchies they claim to scorn. This is contrarianism as fashion statement.
The decision by Khachiyan and Nekrasova to release merchandise in 2018 riffing on the banner of Islamic State (Daesh) wasn’t just tasteless — it was a masterclass in vapid, shock-jock opportunism masquerading as satire. The design — a near-replica of the black-and-white flag used by Daesh, which features the Islamic shahada (testimony of faith) — “There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet” — complete with a faux-Arabic “Red Scare” inscribed in the place of the words “Muhammad is His Prophet” — wasn’t clever, wasn’t subversive, and wasn’t even particularly original. It was the podcast equivalent of spray-painting a swastika on a tote bag and calling it fashion. That the items sold out in under 24 hours only confirms that irony, in this corner of the internet, has degenerated into little more than a dismal currency of cultural clout, purchased through cheap gestures and cloaked in plausible deniability.
Defenders claimed the shirts were meant to mock ISIS, not Islam. But mockery requires moral clarity and rhetorical precision — neither of which Khachiyan and Nekrasova have ever shown much interest in. Their aesthetic is defined not by critique but by provocation for provocation’s sake: a kind of edge-lording that mistakes transgression for depth. To use the shahada — the central declaration of Muslim faith — as a punchline is not satire; it’s lazy desecration, and it speaks volumes about the insulated privilege that allows two white women from New York to indulge in terrorist cosplay without consequence. As Muslim and Arab critics rightly pointed out, wearing such a shirt in an airport or on the subway would invite scrutiny, hostility, or even violence — for them. For the Red Scare hosts and their mostly white, irony-poisoned fanbase, on the other hand, it’s just another in-joke. In their world, there is no risk, only aesthetic posturing. And in that sense, their parody is not of ISIS at all, but of the liberal order that allows them to play with symbols of death without ever having to confront the realities they represent.
Irony
Red Scare is so laced with irony that it’s impossible to tell whether Khachiyan and Nekrasova are dismantling the system or auditioning to run it. But don’t confuse this with the sophisticated post-irony of David Foster Wallace; it is more like the smug deflection of two mean girls in a philosophy seminar, laughing at everything because taking anything seriously might expose how little they actually understand. Their irony isn’t a tool for critique — it’s a manic defence against fragility.
The podcast trafficks in the kind of endless snark that blurs the line between cultural commentary and snobbish inside joke, offering critiques of capitalism and feminism that often circle back to an ambiguous place somewhere between endorsement and childish parody. This ambiguity has allowed the podcast to evolve beyond its original “dirtbag left” roots, attracting a paradoxical audience that includes certain factions of the so-called “dissident right,” especially those fascinated by the subcultural banality of Dimes Square and other pseudo-bohemian enclaves.
For those not in the know, Dimes Square is a “micro-neighbourhood” in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The name is a play on “Times Square”, and refers to Dimes, a restaurant located at the intersection of Canal Street and Division Street. It has recently become a metonym for a number of associated reactionary movements centered in the area. The glitterati of the Dimes Square scene congregate like birds of paradise at Sovereign House, an event venue linked to Peter Thiel, each one desperate to out-preen the next in a mating ritual of irony, ennui, and self-regard. Sovereign House has hosted a variety of religious conservative speakers, as well as Steve Sailer, a far-right proponent of “scientific racism” — or, as they like to call it these days, “human biodiversity”. It has elevated pretentiousness into an art form.
Faith
Nekrasova calls herself “Catholic, like Andy Warhol.” The reference to Warhol, the self-proclaimed “deeply superficial” pop artist, suggests that her Catholicism is just another provocation. “Catholicism is nice,” she pontificates, while gravely pronouncing all popes since Pope John XXIII to be invalid. “What’s so great about faith”, she adds, “is that it doesn’t have to be grounded in rational thought. We are seeing a lot of people return to religion because everything feels so senseless and pointless, so why not be a Catholic?” QED.
One wonders what Nekrasova would make of Kierkegaard’s classic work, Either/Or (1843). The book dramatizes the existential necessity of Christianity by staging a philosophical and psychological confrontation between two non-Christian modes of life: the aesthetic and the ethical.
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Kierkegaard’s genius in this work lies in his indirect communication. Rather than preach Christianity, he sets up a choice (the “either/or”) between:
- A: the aesthetic life, embodied by the reflective, ironic, pleasure-seeking “A” (often read as a stand-in for romantic or artistic nihilism a la Red Scare), and:
- B: the ethical life, presented by Judge Wilhelm, who calls for commitment, responsibility, and personal development within social and moral frameworks.
Neither of these figures explicitly endorses Christianity, but Kierkegaard’s deeper aim is to lead the reader to the brink of despair in both modes, especially the aesthetic, and to suggest that only Christianity can ultimately redeem human existence. In this way, Either/Or subtly sets up Christianity as a third alternative — not simply a moral improvement, but a radical transformation of selfhood through faith.
This method of indirect communication, of showing rather than telling, is what makes Either/Or not just a philosophical treatise but a carefully orchestrated existential trap — one that gently, or not so gently, nudges the reader toward faith as the only true resolution to the human condition.
Which brings us back to Nekrasova, whose invocation of Catholicism bears none of this existential weight. Her “faith” is not the hard-won resolution of a spiritual crisis but an accessory — a vaguely gothic affectation draped over an otherwise secular irony-core persona. When she says, “why not be a Catholic?” she reduces the profound anguish of Kierkegaard’s leap of faith to the level of brunch-table whimsy, as if choosing a creed were no different from choosing a fragrance or a filter. There is no trace of dread, of struggle, of the anguished “sickness unto death” that Kierkegaard saw as the necessary prelude to religious awakening. Instead, we get the faint aroma of incense mixed with performative boredom and adolescent contrarianism. Her Catholicism, like Warhol’s, may well be “deeply superficial” — but without Warhol’s rigour, discipline, or haunting sense of the sacred. What we are left with is not faith at all, but a hollow pose in ecclesiastical drag, a flirtation with transcendence that never dares risk the soul.
Languid
To call Khachiyan and Nekrasova languid doesn’t do them justice; they are positively sedated. For these two hipsters, enthusiasm is a vulgarity best left to amateurs. They sound so laid back that you’d think having an opinion was more painful than giving birth; they are far too posh to push. The real work is carefully hidden; never has so much hard labour been expended on feigning apathy.
Some people allegedly find Red Scare humorous; others suspect it’s performance art for the terminally indifferent. The world-weariness of Khachiyan and Nekrasova is so artificial, so over-rehearsed, it’s like listening to a teenager impersonate Nietzsche after overdosing on Mogadon. Their carefully curated ennui masquerades as insight, a veneer of sophistication hiding a fundamental disengagement from the pressing realities they claim to critique.
In England, this kind of tone is associated with aristocratic wannabes and Oscar Wilde impersonators. But the haughty nonchalance that Wilde achieved so effortlessly — delightfully displayed in aphorisms such as “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying” — was underpinned by wit, precision, and a genuine disdain for mediocrity. In the Bay Area and Dimes Square, the incels, poseurs, and wannabe autists who call themselves “the dissident right” ape the jaded tones of the English aristocracy by articulating their words with jaws so slack that even Cletus the Yokel would gape in awe, and rasping their vowels with all the sex appeal of a chain smoker with emphysema. Their Manhattan drawls are so off-putting that listening to them drone on in their turgid podcast for more than two minutes makes you want to slash your wrists.
My worst nightmare is being trapped in conversation with them at a cocktail party, forced to endure an endless monologue about Bronze Age Pervert, René Girard, or some obscure Austrian economist they’ve skimmed on Substack. They mumble like failed philosophy majors on quaaludes, pausing only to sneer at anyone who’s ever worked a real job or expressed an earnest opinion. Irony is their only register, and even that’s poorly tuned — not the sharp, slicing irony of Wilde or Dorothy Parker, but a soggy, self-conscious sarcasm that mistakes boredom for insight and self-loathing for sophistication.
Zeitgeist
The popularity of Red Scare is itself a telling symptom of the current cultural Zeitgeist. In an era marked by political polarization, economic uncertainty, and a pervasive sense of disillusionment with grand narratives, the podcast’s blend of detachment and provocation resonates with a generation wary of earnestness and overwhelmed by complexity. Its appeal lies less in substantive critique and more in its performance of cool resignation — a shrug at a world too complicated, too broken, or simply too exhausting to engage with sincerely.
This cultural moment prizes irony as a defense mechanism, a way to signal sophistication without committing to concrete beliefs or actions. Red Scare offers its listeners a paradoxical refuge: a space where one can rail against capitalism and feminism, yet do so with the blasé indifference of someone who’s already checked out. It embodies a form of nihilism dressed as intellectualism, where cynicism replaces hope, and irony becomes a substitute for meaning.
In this way, Red Scare is less a podcast and more a mirror held up to a fractured, restless cultural milieu — one where seriousness is suspect, authenticity is elusive, and the line between critique and complicity perilously thin. Far from shaking up the cultural order, it often reinforces the very alienation and performative detachment it claims to expose.
What Red Scare ultimately offers is not critique, not comedy, not cultural insight — but a sustained performance of disaffection so total, it begins to feel like a cry for help dressed up as a knowing smirk. Will someone please put these two whiners out of their misery?
