Stranger Things Started as a Triumph of Trauma Bonding. It Ended as a Casualty of the Franchise Machine

Think back to the summer of 2016. Britain had just voted to leave the European Union, and the world was reeling. Barack Obama was still president, and Donald Trump hadn’t yet been elected. Most experts predicted a Hillary Clinton win, even with a tense election filled with heated arguments and constant news about her emails – a win that was expected to maintain the usual standards of democracy. Twitter was still known as Twitter, and the idea that people could be radicalized through platforms like Facebook and YouTube seemed unlikely. Tragically, on July 14th, a terrorist attack during a Bastille Day celebration in Nice left 86 people dead.








