Soothing

Once I watched a trailer, I knew I had to have it right away. I’d never needed to pressure-wash the side of a house myself; I was unaware that there was a whole genre of A.S.M.R.-adjacent YouTube videos dedicated to such activities.

‘PDF TO BRAINROT’ STUDY TOOLS ARE A STRANGE ITERATION ON A TIKTOK TREND , techcrunch

AI-based study tools like Coconote and Study Fetch are capitalizing on the “PDF to Brainrot” trend, which involves reading text from documents over “oddly satisfying” videos, like ASMR clips or gameplay footage from Subway Surfers . Why read a textbook if you can... See more

Now, it feels like anything bad that happens anywhere in the world is somehow relevant to me and my responsibility. It’s like, I’m not allowed to be happy as long as someone, somewhere, is having a bad time.

Especially with global problems, it’s like, how are you allowed to smile when there’s climate change? These problems are really bad, but you

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The internet has also made us all acutely aware of crises in the world. We're bombarded with a firehose of information every day as algorithms amplify the most inflammatory and disturbing content. There is no going back to the pre-2016 state of ignorance that many people, especially upper middle class white people, were immersed in.

A new Harvard study finds that Gen Z adults are struggling more than any other age group across 22 countries, with 18–29-year-olds reporting “unprecedented” levels of unhappiness, poor mental health, and a lack of purpose.

But regardless of my use in any given week, what’s important is that the small thing has led to a bigger thing: realizing I have much more agency than I thought I did, and that corporations are built on the back of us thinking we don’t have any.

Ann: There's sort of something in the atmosphere—an aura as the days get closer. It's very different than last year. It's getting a little bit more intense. We've had a shooting and a man hunt. And also the election. I think there's a little bit of an edginess.

Glen: The second I put on the suit, people are just like, 'Santa!' They're so relieved to... See more

The machinery for learning new things becomes creaky. It’s not easy or comfortable to get that old mainframe up and running again. So many things in life are not easy or comfortable already! Why opt in to another one? And do I even have room in my brain, on my calendar, for another thing that I do ?

In the book, I quote Amanda Montell, who explains this perfectly in Cultish : “Modern cultish groups feel comforting in part because they help alleviate the anxious mayhem of living in a world that presents almost too many possibilities for who to be.”