WTF Happened In 1971?

If you’ve ventured on to Crypto Twitter this year, you may have seen a tweet from the meme account WTF Happened in 1971?

Created in March, the account posts numerous times a week to its fast growing fanbase of 10,500 followers. A typical post features a graph that shows how inequality has grown in recent years, inflation has skyrocketed and how ordinary people are being priced out of houses and stocks due to low wage growth. Somewhere on the chart there will be a little arrow pointing at 1971, which highlights when the rot set in.

And it invariably poses a question like: “WTF happened to wages in 1971?” Or, on a chart showing ever-widening political polarization: “WTF happened in 1971 that led to such a divergence in political thought?”

WTF happened in 1971 (and why the f**k it matters so much right now)