Incoherency Manifest: Edmund Fitzgerald Fall

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Today is November 10th, we’ve moved past Brat summer, past the season of scares and skeletons and have now entered the month of seasonal depression. A somber time for many, at least for me, one of my favourite times of year. What's not to love about bitter cold and a lack of leaves but a similar lack of snow! Although we are now a bit past the prime of it, we are still characteristically in the period of Christian Girl Autumn. It is not hard to still find some specialty pumpkin spice drinks or snacks at the abundance of chain coffee shops, with pumps of synthetic spices that leave a disgruntled taste in the mouth. While Christian Girl Autumn is by no means a new idea of phenomenon, originally coined by a white woman (and surprisingly profound trans ally) back in 2019, it has gone from a seasonal staple this year to absolutely thrown and forgotten by a new trend, Edmund Fitzgerald.

If you have also been swept up in this trend, mainly focused on Tik Tok, but also seen on other platforms such as Instagram, or have any sort of age or general awareness in life, you likely know who, or more correctly what the Edmund Fitzergald was. Setting sail in mid 1958, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, affectionately known as the Mighty Fitz by the sailors and watchers of the great lakes, was at one point the largest vessel on the lakes, serving as a bulk freighter for iron ore for nearly 2 decades. In her service life, she was famous for her speed, size and various antics on the lakes (I recommend you read further on this if you are curious, as I will not be talking about it further) and later known for the song of the same name by the late Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk singer. The reason I note the date at the very start of this article is the fact that today is the 49th anniversary of her sinking on Lake Superior when she got caught in the change of the seasons on her final trip of the season and disappeared under the waves with all hands. 

The sinking of the Fitz is a tale that lives on due to a variety of reasons, be it the somber nature of losing 29 crew so quickly and largely without a trace and the effects it had for morale on the lakeside communities and families, or as a reminder of the true strength of nature and the helpless of man against it. The recent trend of Edmund Fitzgerald fall has taken to, in an odd way, remember both these points. The trend largely entails younger men drinking in remembrance of the crew, with some going as far as drinking a beer per crewman lost. This is often accompanied with, especially on Tik Tok, the use of the Gordon Lightfoot song as a backing track, with roughly 9500 uses of the audio on the platform. As far as I can determine in my research, the trend sprung forth relatively quickly and recently on the 1st of the month spurred forward by a user named Roselle (@rose.nym) whose posts in the last 8 days has reached just shy of five hundred thousand views and seventy thousand likes. There wasn’t much else posted alongside the audio for a few days until about the 4th when several accounts posted specific and new AMV style edits of historical footage of the Fitz along with the song, most of which emphasise this past week leading up to today as a time of solace and inwards reflection about the disaster instead of spending that same time “at the club” (@author_eloramaxwell).

here often is a side effect of quick and short lived trends based on around historical events that the importance of the event itself is swept aside for a quick laugh or more usually, an easy win for the content farms, and of course there is a degree to which it is accept to create humour out of all things (9/11 IS FUNNY CHANGE MY MIND), it can often be twisted far beyond an acceptable degree. A recent such example that springs to mind is the pair of hurricanes that hit the US this past month, where some parts of the internet content mill used the opportunity to Florida man it up, this is pretty distinctly not the case with Fitz fall. Some of the more humorous and popular posts in the trend have not just involved drinking in memory of the 29 lost, but also a rage and want to ‘get back’ at Lake Superior. We the audience know obviously that a guy stabbing a lake with a box cutter (@case_si_h) will do nothing to bring them back mainly because its a big fuck off lake, but also that Superior never gives up her dead.

Gordon Lightfoot originally wrote his folk hit in 1975 only two weeks after the sinking because of what he thought was a slight against the crew, and that the general public did not care enough about such a tragedy. I think that if Gord had lived just a bit longer to see this trend in swing that he would not be upset even in the slightest way. These silly 30 second videos of a ship who has been underwater for nearly half a century is performing a similar service to his song in that they are once again reminding us, the public, about both the tragedy itself and the unrelenting force and sadness of nature and how we are powerless to stop it as much as we would like to try.

If you liked this article or my other articles covering insignificant social media trends with surface level analysis, let me know! If you have any ideas for something else you’d like to see me talk about feel free to reach out at any time either @emsmulders on instagram or email me at [email protected]!