Late on Tuesday night, the comedian Alex Edelman asked a poignant question on social media: “I know we’ve never had to ask this before tonight, but what’s the opposite of doomscrolling?”

I don’t have a definitive answer to that, though I did offer the term “boomscrolling”, accompanied by a gif of the social media sensation and Costco enthusiast Big Boom AJ.

AJ and his son became famous for yelling “Boom!” after biting down on revolting, sodium-infused food from Costco’s food court while flexing meaty biceps.

It strikes me as an apt illustration of how we all felt as election day unspooled before us. After every miraculous call, I couldn’t help but flex my muscles and let out a howl to the heavens. How is this real? Boom, indeed.

Those of us who consider ourselves liberal or left or progressive or whatever buzzword my media colleagues want to ascribe to general human decency were left somewhat incapable of making literal sense of what we were witnessing on Tuesday night. Texas and Iowa and Kansas? Mississippi and Alaska in play?

It’s like a democracy simulation game spit up an outcome so improbable that you start to wonder if it’s glitching out. The soaring, optimistic oration from Jon Ossoff and James Talarico had us crying. At least I was. I’m a large baby-man who cries when a bonus curly fry accidentally lands in my takeout........

© The Guardian