Every Thursday, when I finish the latest episode of Severance, I immediately cram my shame into a locker, throw away the key, and go on Reddit to read people’s theories about what it all means. I’m well aware that this is not the point of the show, a mystery box that seeks first and foremost to examine the diamond-like facets of its characters, not goats or clones or whatever. But I can’t help myself; it’s fun, and at the very least, the Severance subreddit hivemind is good at identifying details I missed during my own viewing. The same cannot be said of the Severance fandom on Threads.
I don’t regularly log in to Threads, for I am neither a brand nor a cop. But Instagram, which I do spend a regrettable amount of time on, contains a Threads widget that is algorithmically tailored to users’ tastes. Mine figured out that I like Severance. Lulled into a scrolling daze, I first began to prod at these posts because I thought there might be additional crumbs of intrigue hidden in the back of Meta’s dust-strewn pantry.
Soon, though, I came to realize that Threads’ Severance theories – like everything else about the little Twitter-alike that couldn’t and, at this point, never will – exist in a bubble that causes even basic powers of observation to go completely haywire. Many theories demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding not just of what Severance is about thematically, but of what has occurred on screen. It is difficult to tell where media illiteracy ends and engagement bait begins. All you can be certain of is that these dual forces click together, Lego-like, to form a perfect, self-sustaining engine. There is an endless supply of these theories, each somehow wronger than the last.
Then you have the additional layer of what Threads represents in the grander scheme of social media: a hypersanitized island cut off from the remaining pockets of actual posters on Bluesky and Twitter, the internet’s own severed floor. So basically, we get to see how Severance, a show that in its strongest moments satirizes tech-powered corporate culture, would be discussed on the kind of social media platform fictional company Lumon would create to quash anti-company satire and other forms of dissent. Oh, and all the people carrying on these discussions are Ricken Hale. What a time to be alive.
For these reasons, I find Threads’ Severance community fascinating. It’s almost a social experiment without intending to be. I’ve spent the past month screenshotting my favorite theories, and now, because misery loves company, I’m sharing them with you. Each category corresponds to the specific way in which theories are self-evidently wrong, or at least incredibly wrongheaded. Also, I’ve censored people’s names because I don’t want to direct derision to any specific person, as what they’re doing here is ultimately harmless – more indicative of the vapid culture Meta has cultivated than anything else.
Directly Contradicts What We’ve Already Seen/Been Told
It’s Just Not That Kind Of Show, Man
This Isn’t Eighth-Grade English Class
Yep
???
Fair Enough
