We're in the F**k Around and Find Out phase of democracy

Daily Maverick

06-05-2025

To F**k Around and Find Out (FAFO) is a modern proverb, born from meme culture but rich in truth: test the limits of someone or something and eventually the consequences will arrive. Often spectacularly.
It's a phrase that perfectly captures the global democratic moment we find ourselves in. Because let's be honest, we've entered the FAFO phase of democracy. The era where years of democratic backsliding, unchecked corporate capture and digital disinformation are finally colliding with reality. Where playing games with truth, law and public trust now carries a cost.
We are living the consequences.
Authoritarian nostalgia has gone mainstream, from Trump's teetering comeback in the US to Modi's hypernationalist project in India and South Africa's own flirtations with populist grievance politics.
Right-wing influencers repackage fascist ideas in TikTok-friendly language. Entire political platforms are built on vibes, victimhood and vague conspiracy theories. And tech bros? They've stopped pretending. Their libertarian fantasies are now openly hostile to regulation, human rights and democracy itself.
All this chaos has a digital architecture. Years of f**king around with algorithms that reward outrage over accuracy, polarisation over nuance and profit over public interest have left us swimming in misinformation, drowning in noise and unsure of what's even real. The civic space has become gamified. Electoral trust eroded. And the truth, poor thing, no longer trends.
But FAFO isn't just a threat. It's a reckoning.
A reckoning with the limits of our collective denial. A reckoning with the people we allowed to amass unchecked power, whether they wear suits or hoodies.
And this reckoning is not abstract.
It's the disillusioned voter who believed the conspiracy theories and now faces a crumbling healthcare system. It's the journalist in Johannesburg or Delhi dodging death threats and online mobs for daring to expose corruption. It's the young activist in Hong Kong or Myanmar, imprisoned for a single tweet that challenged the narrative. It's the whistle-blower inside the belly of a tech giant, leaking documents that reveal how profits consistently trumped ethics.
The Find Out phase is brutal because it forces us to confront what we tried to ignore: the slow dismantling of democratic guardrails; the transformation of truth into a commodity; the arrogance of those who thought they could endlessly game the system without consequences.
In South Africa, we recently commemorated Freedom Day, an occasion that, while historic and hard-won, now feels uneasy against the backdrop of state failure, institutional decay and deliberate digital manipulation. Disinformation campaigns here have not only sought to rewrite our history but to rig our future, distorting the collective memory needed to build a just society.
Yet here's the thing about FAFO: it cuts both ways.
Power is finding out that the public can only be pacified for so long. That rage, when dismissed, does not disappear, it organises. That civil society, though often underfunded and under siege, persists. That journalists and whistle-blowers, despite being demonised and targeted, continue to shine a light where darkness thrives. And that young people, often written off as politically apathetic, are forging new vocabularies of justice, participation and resistance.
Democracy, in this phase, is not tidy. It is jagged. It is chaotic. It is painful. But it is not defeated.
What we are witnessing is not democracy's end, but perhaps its refusal to go gently into the good night. The Find Out phase, though tough in many ways, is also a crucible. It is where illusions shatter. It is where false gods are exposed. It is where the hard, necessary work of rebuilding must begin.
There is no guarantee that we will emerge stronger. The stakes are enormous and the forces aligned against democracy are powerful and deeply entrenched. But there is also no inevitability to collapse. History has shown that when people organise, when they refuse to be cowed and when they demand better, cracks can be forced open even in the most fortified walls.
So, here's to the FAFO phase.
May it break what must be broken – greed, lies, authoritarianism – and may it spare what still has value: solidarity, courage, accountability and the stubborn belief that democracy, despite everything, remains worth fighting for. DM