Things that are over

The definitive list of things that are no longer a thing

Reading is over. Feel free to listen to the audio recording here:

Sometimes things overstay their welcome because people don’t realize when it’s time to let them go. It’s easy for these things to persist in culture and evade ouster when there is no credible source for facts and news outlets waste time covering sensational topics like wars, the machinations of populist dictators, and the climate crisis. This publication will do the more important, thankless work of listing for you the things that are over so that you can grow as a person this year.

Lest this list be void of nuance, there are some things that are almost over, other things that have been over for quite some time but are still inexplicably out there (like Tyra Banks), and many things that have just now hit their peak of overness.

As such, this list is divided into three distinct sections. Things that are almost over, things that are long past over, and things that are over.

Things that are almost over:

Public pop-up yoga activations sponsored by Alo Yoga. Just when you thought you were driving into the parking lot of a gallery-cum-coffee shop in Wynnwood or walking onto a side street in Soho in the middle of the day on Tuesday, you encounter 100 people who don’t work wearing leggings and sports bras in a downward facing dog being remote-controlled by an Instagram influencer cooing into a TED talk headset, all provided by Alo Yoga. We probably have one more summer of this before a progressive group who believe that yoga is cultural appropriation and attacks an Alo Yoga congregation with vegan paintball guns.

Open Relationships. Openly sleeping with other people while maintaining the semblance of a committed relationship became a thing during the pandemic, when no one did anything and groups of friends retreated to AirBnB houses in Santa Barbara and suddenly started hooking up with one another, creating a slightly merrier The Ice Storm vibe. Open relationships have persisted thanks to Esther Perel, who endorsed them to help drive sales of her board game, which helps struggling couples in open relationships be more vulnerable about how much they hate being in an open relationship. The chaos created by open relationships will become untenable in the chaos of the 2024 global election cycle.

Democracy. It’s been real, but unless journalists stop trying to win clicks by writing about how far ahead Trump is of Biden, and unless progressives stop invoking the g-word to describe Biden’s conditional support of Israel’s effort to end Hamas and unconditional support of Israel’s right to exist, and unless spiritual post-economic Burners stop crooning about the wisdom of Robert Kennedy, and unless Cornel West awakes from his fever dream, and unless everyone who has not yet had a lobotomy votes, democracy will end on or about November 5, 2024.

Things that are long past over:

“You do you.” Everyone caught on around 2020 that you do you was passive aggressive code for go fuck yourself, you are very bad at that, or how are you not mortified by your very existence, but it persisted in the vernacular until an extremely poorly rated Netflix movie co-opted this expression as its title earlier this year, thus dousing you-do-you in kerosene and setting it ablaze with a blowtorch.

Kale. Kale is a semi-poisonous invasive weed that farmers couldn’t control, so they consulted with the first crop (pun!) of early-Internet wellness influencers, who positioned it on their AOL websites as an indigestible alternative to spinach that blended well with cacao, avocado and soy milk (which could not possibly be more over) in a Vitamix. The taste, somewhere in between earth and lawn, was justified by the supposed nutritional benefits, but AG1 has made all form of vegetation irrelevant.

Hats. GQ wrote a salivatory article in 2015 about Nick Fouquet, who since 2011 had been putting very expensive, bespoke, match-adorned hats onto the heads of the cognoscenti and automaton celebrities with cognoscenti stylists. The article put him and large, flat-brimmed, American West-via-Venice Beach hats onto the map of slightly annoying people, and by 2021 hats had become the icon of extremely annoying people who had achieved wisdom through ayahuasca. It took another year to make the connection between this variety of hat and women from Austin who go to Nashville for boozy bachelorette parties wearing 700 different shades of beige cashmere and cried when they couldn’t get tickets to the Eras Tour (and cried again when their fiancés surprised them with tickets), but Amy Shumer connected the dots with her SNL sketch in November 2022, which coincided with a similar evisceration of hats on this newsletter. Whether because of the significant financial investment, force of habit, or the addition of optical height, some people are still wearing hats despite the fact that they are so very over that second-rate buskers in tertiary subway stations won’t even use them to collect pennies.

Things that are over:

Avocado toast. It’s a testament to the allure of Australia that a bland, overpriced, fickle fruit controlled by an actual cartel that is only edible for one day of its existence can be pulverized onto a charred slab of carbohydrate, drizzled with the cheapest variety of olive oil, flecked with sodium and sold to consumers for about the same price as Eggs Benedict. It’s extraordinary that a basic brunch order that requires absolutely no culinary skill to prepare has achieved SaaS margins. The squandered creativity of line cooks, who turn avocado flesh into edible origami, amplified in the Instagram stories of stay-at-home girlfriends in Orange County (and the fact that it aesthetically pairs well with their matcha ritual), is largely responsible for the endurance of Avocado toast, but now it is time to send Avo brekkie back to the land of belligerent Kangaroos, untreated basal cell carcinoma, and recreational bar fights and go back to ordering herbed omelets and buttermilk pancakes like the independent, free thinkers that we are. Avo toast is over.

Shibari. We know you weren’t swaddled enough as an infant, and we know that you make more than your boyfriend, but that does not justify posting tasteful photos to your close-friends IG group of you in soft lighting and a red thong tied up and hanging like a soppressata from the ceiling of your dom’s basement-level apartment in Williamsburg. Shibari is over.

The Question Mark. There was a time when ending a sentence with a question mark (?) meant that you were asking a question. Today, it is a declaration of nuclear war. Even if it is mollified by heart and flower emojis, the question mark is too high a caliber of punctuation for anyone under the age of 50, and it can be triggering for a younger person who has at some point in their lives been asked a question that gave them persecute-y feels. The ? is over.

Getting a dog. Before it was impossible to traverse twenty feet of urban sidewalk without stepping on an impressionist swirl of half-curbed poop or to exist without hearing a dog bark, getting a Doodle or a Pug or a Frenchie or whatever was cause for much mirth and celebration. Long ago, when children grew up to be adults who could not only care for themselves but also other animate things, people loved to hear that you were having a three-week-old golden retriever that cost a bit more than a Ducati flown to you from a gun-toting MAGA breeder in central Florida. Puppies used to represent possibility and suggested that their owners were not entirely heartless. To get a puppy was to cultivate the seed of 12ish years of constant, loyal companionship and to be assured at least two one-night stands with someone who pet your puppy at the farmers market. Now that there is no such thing as a fully-formed, responsible adult, getting a dog represents a contribution to chaos, noise pollution, and the stress of overworked dog walkers. Given the ubiquity of dogs, the only breed that has retained its ability to get their owners laid are Siberian Samoyeds, because they are a tacit income statement. So, unless you’re buying a Samoyed, don’t get a dog, because getting a dog is over.

Dying your hair blue, purple, or green. Surely there are more attractive ways to tell the world that you sat alone in the lunch room, own a cat, read your horoscope daily, have two roommates, are vegan, amassed an exceptionally large collection of sex toys long before losing your virginity as the third in a threesome at a floor party, have multiple piercings that are not immediately visible, are never not saving up for another tattoo, are the least favored member in a polycule but you bake (vegan) for everyone so they keep you around, call yourself a “leftie” and an anti-fascist on your Feeld profile, and recreationally join protests. Dying your hair anything other than earth tones is over.

Feeld. Feeld was an app where people who are not conventionally attractive and have made compensatory body piercing and tattoo decisions could find one another to embark on short-term ethically non-monogamous relationships and perform all manner of bewildering kinks on one another in studio apartments in Astoria, Hackney Wick, and Oakland. Today, as a result of an app “re-launch” and “re-brand” that will one day be studied by third-tier online MBA programs as the single greatest failure in the history of consumer technology, it is simply an app that creates even more misery than seeing photos of a pouting, obese, cis-gender man - who has renounced gender-based pronouns and showering - in a tight dress, an Amazon.com bowler hat, and messy mascara (which is over). Feeld is no longer a dating app, because any kind of dating requires consistently available features to find, match, and chat with another human, and the app no longer provides these capabilities, perhaps because their only engineer majored in feminist literature at a community college in Portland. For about the same sum of money they sank into making aggressively suggestive and progressive mood videos and hosting a very large party featuring a narcissistic MC and a horrendous DJ in a past-its-prime subterranean Manhattan venue, they could have hired a respectable offshore backend engineering team, which could have saved their business. Feeld, thanks to their own hubris and incompetence, is no longer a thing.

LinkedIn posts. Everything posted on LinkedIn is some form of peacocking — flustered expressions of humility about being named to an elite list (thanks to the efforts of an elite publicist), longwinded summaries of learnings following either a startup exit or a startup failure, overt announcements about promotions or cryptic hints about an exciting new career door that has opened. All of this content is the professional equivalent of a fish gape selfie. Posting on LinkedIn is no longer a thing.

Fish gape. The fish gape is that sultry, mouth ajar, vacant-eyed expression that a certain type of person makes in a certain type of photograph. The moment a facial expression has been named (e.g., duck face), it is over. A useful alternative to facial expressions that will inevitably spark ridicule once they go viral is to authentically express whatever emotion feels appropriate in the moment that a photograph is being taken. Emotions (aka feels) are things that people feel that inspire or inform a decision or an action. They can be useful as long as they are governed by prescriptive medication. Fish gapes are over.

Ondalinda. Ondalinda is Burning Man for people who don’t want to pretend to be roughing it and enjoy pretending that they are not aware that they they are being professionally photographed in moments of performative tranquility or ecstasy. The Internet can only tolerate one month of muting photo torrents of mildly attractive, mostly naked gyrating people who don’t work and subsist on green juice, ketamine, and MDMA, and that month is September. Ondalinda is over.

Raya. For a while, it was fun for men to match with face-tuned fish-gaping IG models named Yelena who live in Bratislava who are somehow traveling from Miami to Aspen, and women enjoyed receiving suggestive direct requests from mid-level finance executives and the founders of single-employee tech companies who are trying to look like international DJs, but it turns out that actually going out on a date with someone on Raya is impossible, because it’s difficult to go on a date with someone who is in Kiev but planning to move to LA, is never not on their friend’s married boyfriend’s boat, or is only seeking Emma Watson. Raya seems to be aware of these challenges, because they quietly launched Raya Places, which aggregates the hospitality destinations that Raya members have added to their place-dropping list on their dating profiles and allows users to search them by location. These locations include Gerlach, Lucien, Malibu Beach House, and The Mandrake Hotel. It’s like Google Maps for people from LA who take fish gape selfies wearing Capote sunglasses pretending to eat avocado toast on their friend’s married boyfriend’s boat off the coast of Careyes during Ondalinda.

Place-dropping. Everyone knows that your favorite bar in Aspen is Cloud 9, that you know the best place in Paris for croissants, that you have a super reliable yacht charter guy in Tortola, that you’re sad about Santa Teresa becoming almost as bad as Tulum, and that you missed Delta Diamond by like $2,000 dollars even though you flew first class to Cape Town for New Years. We can tell all of this by your Capote sunglasses. Place-dropping is over.

Capote sunglasses. The Matrix franchise isn’t coming back, and you can only wear Rick Owens so many times a week. Capote sunglasses are over.

LA. If it were possible to find someone who lives in LA who isn’t perpetually traveling elsewhere or to find a native Los Angeleno who could say they love LA while passing a lie detector test, LA might not be on this list. LA is basically like Miami with people poop, zero crypto wealth, an even lower collective IQ, much higher taxes, and a beach that is only good for posting photos with captions like, “I love living on the beach,” even though you live in a 1-bedroom apartment in Brentwood that came with vertical blinds and beige wall-to-wall carpeting. LA exists only as a foil to New York City, as a storage unit for people who are into mid century modern furniture, and as a conduit for kale until the last kale farm converts to cannabis. LA is over.

Anti-capitalism. Because they share natural crystal deodorant, pool their tofu, and are generally anti- all of the tested conventions that have led to the entirety of human civilization, most polyamorous households are anti-capitalist, and they communicate this within the first line of their Feeld profile. People who are anti-capitalist have been unable to thrive in a merit-based, capitalist system. Because being a somatic breath shaman with an undiscovered niche OnlyFans account in our current supply-and-demand economy doesn’t provide them with a consistent enough income to pay the admission fee at House of Yes once a week, they want to end capitalism and evolve to a system that provides them with financial abundance for performing services that are not valuable to 99.998% of the world’s population. Even if these people actually intellectually understood what they were saying with the anti-capitalism button (next to the pronoun button) on the taupe denim jacket they purchased at L Train Vintage, being anti-capitalist as an ideological position is flawed, because evidence of the misery and general drabness inflicted by communism and socialism is only a quick Google search away. Also, being anti- something only works when one is for something, and the sorts of people who lead with what they are against have proposed nothing other than maintaining multiple concurrent sex partners and public weeping as a form of therapy. Anti-capitalism is over.

Heterosexuality. Ten years ago, the only people who could express same-sex interest without being immediately labeled as gay were women at liberal arts colleges in the PNW and Northeast. Today, no one believes that anyone is actually entirely straight, and telling someone that you are heterosexual is tantamount to telling them you are a fascist. Heterosexuality is over.

Robot Heart sunglasses. These Burning Man tchotchkes, gifted post-coitus at dawn by post-economic tech founders wearing robes, make you look like you are never not coming down from molly. They don’t quite conceal evidence that you definitely should have worn more sunblock in your early 20s, and they suggest that you have hearing damage from dancing on top of Funktion-One speakers. The upside of wearing these heart-shaped sunglasses is that everyone will know that you always keep an emergency Z-pak handy. Robot Heart sunglasses are no longer a thing.

Mario Bellini sofas. The Mario Bellini sofa is the avocado toast of furniture: it’s worth far less than it costs, and it’s far better on Instagram than it is in reality. Studies have shown that 31% of fish gape selfies are captured on a Mario Bellini sofa, and 79% of sexual encounters on Mario Bellini sofas do not culminate with an authentic orgasm. Plus, they fail at their one essential job, which is to be comfortable. Mario Bellini sofas are over.

Body positivity. Body positivity was invented by beauty companies that wanted to increase their revenue by selling beauty products to the increasingly large (pun!) population of people who, because of their obesity, are not beautiful. Obesity kills at least 2.8 million adults each year, and 44% of the diabetes burden, 23% of the ischaemic heart disease burden and between 7% and 41% of certain cancer burdens are attributable to being overweight. For anyone who googles “how many people die because of obesity,” you will see that the italicized text was plagiarized, but Harvard has made plagiarism great again. It’s time for obese people to lift themselves from their asymmetrically worn sofas and go for a light jog, and to drive past fast food drive-throughs and maybe hit a farmers market for some broccoli. Let’s be honest - not all fat people have a thyroid condition, and if Adele can shed some weight in a country where chips are considered a vegetable, so can half of America. Body positivity is over.

Harvard. Once a university that consistently produced hedge fund managers, conglomerate CEOs, and trust-funded non-profit leaders, Harvard is now imploding. This is because it became ashamed to be an elite university that accepted only objectively gifted, hardworking students who wanted to use their talents to rise to the top of society (and legacies with surnames on newer university buildings), and it appointed an under-qualified leader and used the color of her skin and gender as a hollow attempt to make the Harvard vibe less elitist and ivory-towery and to deflect the vitriol of progressives, who wish to dismantle any competitive system in which they cannot compete. Harvard is over, because Princeton, which is an even better university, has figured out how to be diverse, inclusive, and progressive without being sanctimonious, pandering, and tedious. Harvard is no longer a thing.

Moroccan poufs. Ever wonder why everyone is sitting on your couch, on your floor, on your face, and literally everywhere else in your home but never - not even once - on the Moroccan pouf that you say you found in the souk in Fes but actually bought on Wayfair? This is because your Moroccan pouf is not only uncomfortable but also unattractive and not in keeping with your attempt at a quiet luxury design motif, and people feel bad about themselves and the world when they sit on it. Moroccan poufs are over.

“Say more.” This expression is used when someone who is only performatively listening in a conversation and then suddenly realizes that they have been asked a question. Saying say more is a way to force someone to repeat themselves in simpler wording while simultaneously making them feel like they are the dumb one. “Say more” is over.

“Say less.” This expression is used by someone who hears something that does not align with their narrow world view and is a sort of warning shot prior to cancelation. Say less is often accompanied by a raised hand and looking away, which ended in the mid-90s. “Say less” is over.

Pants. Apparently women have forsaken not only bras but also pants, because why wear pants when you don’t have to. Not much more to say about this other than 👏.

Canceling. Some people do such stupid or horrible things that society cancels them in the form of legal prosecution. Some people do or say things that don’t conform to someone else's views or accidentally misgenders someone, and petulant idiots try to cancel these people through reputation demolition on social media. Cancel culture is basically the same as authoritarianism: cancel culture people and authoritarian dictators are alike in that they have fragile temperaments, don’t read books, and are reviled by history. Canceling someone is over.

Shouty activists. Science has proven that shouting is not an effective form of behavior modification for dogs, children, and significant others, so the people who shout baseless, biased propaganda into bullhorns, stage protests that simply inconvenience bystanders and accomplish nothing, and attempt to cancel people who don’t hold their identical views are no longer a thing.

Activations. An activation is an effort put forth by attractive but unqualified people with theatre degrees to make nothing – an adaptogen beverage, a micro-boutique hotel in Cabo owned by a mid-tier American venture capitalist who lives in Austin, the nonprofit arm of a Burning Man camp, etc – into a thing. Activations are rarely successful, because the only people who attend IRL activations are other people who are endeavoring their own activations and become jealous of competitive activations. The biggest reason why activations are no longer a thing, though, is because it’s annoying to hear someone in a flat-brimmed hat at an expensive coffee shop use the word activation with all their haughty, emphatic enthusiasm. Activations are over.

Nail art. If someone is looking closely enough at your hands to notice the anthropomorphized marijuana leaf on your pinky nail, you are either using sign language or whatever you are saying with spoken language is super boring. Nail art is no longer a thing.

Spinning. Spinning is over, because not only are people tired of looking entirely ridiculous for only a partial workout, but also because spinning instructors have mortifying taste in music and have convinced their disciples that an upright pushup compensates for the total inactivity of the upper body. Upright pushups on a stationary bike is one step below mall-walking, and doing an upright pushup makes someone look even more ridiculous than they already look while racing towards nowhere, what with their bobbing heads and stationary ennui. “I feel like I look like a sweaty pigeon,” said someone in a spinning class probably at some point. Spinning is over.

Onewheel electric skateboards. For a few minutes when they first came out, it was kind of cool to see skinny startup geeks have their Marty McFly moment zipping around San Francisco and Bushwick on those single-wheel scooter-skateboard Frankensteins. Then they were suddenly everywhere, and the smugness of their owners, what with their death-defying disdain for helmets and circus performer balance, led pedestrians to hope they’d wipe out and leave behind a few of their IYKYK tattoos on the pavement. Thanks to a company-imposed product recall, these devices are already on their own way out, but lest their be a modicum of doubt: Oneweel electric skateboards are over.

“This is a growth opportunity.” When something bad but not quite terrible happens to an overly privileged person, it is called a growth opportunity. For instance, the lover that your DJ friend met at Burning Man, with whom they expected to occasionally sleep until the manifestation of their soulmate, unexpectedly breaks up with them at Ondalinda. This is a growth opportunity. The mildly effervescent functional elixir company that your friend from USC founded with 10% of their trust fund fails after 14 months of Instagram posts and “R&D” in Belize. This is a growth opportunity. The Reno TSA confiscates $1,700 worth of your liquid molly because it’s just a smidge over 3 ounces. This is a growth opportunity. Growth opportunities are no longer a thing, because the people who are given these growth opportunities don’t actually grow; they just continue to do silly things that end badly, thus creating an endless cycle of squandered growth opportunities. Growth opportunities are over.

Ketamine lozenges. Ketamine lozenges were an attempt to deal an illegal recreational drug to users through the guise of therapy. Several companies that provided CPG ketamine simultaneously emerged in 2020, each founded by a mildly successful tech bro who married a woman with generational wealth, all based in Miami, and none run with any regard for regulatory concern. After jumping through a hoop or two imposed by a digital doctor with a degree from a Caribbean medical school, patients customers received a supply of ketamine lozenges, which they would consume at parties rather than a sensory deprivation tank or whatever, and the FDA realized this and said maybe stop doing that or we will incarcerate you, bro. Rather than being in a CRM database that will be imminently seized by the authorities, just ask someone who lives in Miami, Brooklyn, Shoreditch or Venice Beach for the name of their dealer and call it a day. Ketamine lozenges are over.

The Girl with the Giant Headphones. A modern, budget sequel to that Vermeer painting, The Girl with the Giant Headphones is in her mid-20s, wears a vintage bomber and black leggings, and makes no eye contact under any circumstances. We understand that getting hit on constantly is taxing, and that those giant headphones are a useful deterrent, but we also know that you’re listening to Skrillex, who is just as over as being The Girl with the Giant Headphones.

Skrillex. Skrillex is over, because there is no earthly reason why a DJ should ever have such a long and emo Wikipedia entry. DJs, like the British royal family, should never express any form of public emotion. Skrillex is over.

The Pill. When the human body was still a mystery, when it was not known that conception could only happen in a short window, and when a small group of big pharma men wanted to profit from a growing society of liberated women, there was The Pill. Now that period-having-people (calling period-having-people “women” is apparently no longer a thing) can download an app to track their periods and wear an semi-stylish Oura ring to track their body temperature to know exactly when they are ovulating, taking chemicals to induce a semi-pregnant prophylactic state is no longer necessary. The Pill is over.

Ignoring someone. Children who were not cool in elementary school grow up to be childish adults who ignore attractive, popular people whom they have repeatedly met. Ignoring someone is an insecurity-driven flex for people who still wear hats. Here’s an example: the founder of an adaptogen elixir startup funded by their parents who also moonlights as a life coach, glides into a floor party wearing a robe they bought in Bali and a crystal necklace they were gifted in Rishikesh at a very expensive coaching workshop led by an American ex-pat with a manbun who was an early employee at Uber. Let’s call her Lucy. Lucy spots Zadie, who is younger, more attractive, and was recently placed on Forbes’ 30-under-30 list of Burning Man entrepreneurs in Greenpoint for building a venture-backed adaptogen startup. Lucy and Zadie met on a catamaran in Holbox in 2021, and Zadie later gently declined Lucy’s offer to coach her for $300 an hour while Lucy was galavanting around Europe and Zadie was working 12 hours a day in a lab in Nevada. Lucy is still annoyed about this, so she ignores Zadie when she makes direct eye contact, smiles, and waves. When Zadie walks up and says, “hi, we’ve met a bunch of times, and you keep ignoring me every time I see you at a floor party or at Burning Man,” Lucy smiles and says, “babe, it’s just that so many people know me, I forget who I know.” This kind of thing isn’t a thing any longer. Just smile and say hello to the people you know who know you know them. Ignoring people because they’re cooler than you because you’re trying to be cooler than them by ignoring them is over.

Coaches. Coaches are people who don’t want to do the work of getting a degree in psychology but also want to charge a lot more money per hour than a psychologist. Most coaches justify their rates through earnest eye contact, making introductions to psychedelic healers/dealers, and asking questions like, “do you think you’re holding on too tightly to an outcome?” or “have you thought about how you could reframe that conversation?” Coaches are over.

Palo Santo. It seems to be doing a reasonably good job of receding from culture as a result of its endangerment, but lest their be any doubt — Palo Santo – along with the three-part ritual of solemnly lighting it with an ornamental match, gently blowing on it to coax the ember on the end into a steady burn, and languidly waving it around the room in people’s faces – is no longer a thing. Time to go back to burning less scented wood inside of a fireplace.

Drinking alcohol. Alcohol was invented and ritualized as an aphrodisiac, a numbing agent, and a scapegoat when there was no such thing as deodorant, pharmaceutical-grade recreational drugs with predictable highs, and the temporary insanity plea. The only reason alcohol has survived this long is to serve as first date for people who can’t muster a better suggestion than, “let’s get a drink,” even though there are plenty of ways to evaluate top-of-funnel dating prospects that don’t lead to obesity, liver damage, and dry skin. Alcohol is over.

Soft launches. A soft launch is when someone posts a photo of themselves and a new significant other (without tagging them) as an Instagram story to their close-friends group and blocks the story from that one person they are sleeping with and those three they consider viable backup plans for when the soft-launched relationship inevitably hard-ends. Soft launches are over.

Skinny jeans on guys. It turns out that all the hand-wringing that scientists and doctors have been doing about dropping male fertility rates is due to skinny jeans. Lower fertility rates are a comorbidity of being emo, and being emo leads to becoming The Girl with the Giant Headphones, which leads to Skrillex. Give your bits more room, and you could become a successful podcast host with a show about non-toxic masculinity. Skinny jeans on guys are over.

Western guilt. Progressive liberals are attempting to destroy America by being so grating and irrational that moderates look at the Democratic party and say, “well, fuck that,” and vote for Trump. Progressives’ resentment of America comes from the fact that the country was shaped by colonists, just like every single country in the history of the world except for Japan, Ethiopia*, and Thailand. Progressives use Western guilt as an excuse to be unproductive members of society, and they impose their views onto every single conflict in the world, boiling them down to oppressors and the oppressed without any regard for history, context, or morality. If it were up to them, progressive liberals would dismantle every country and return their lands to whomever was there first, which is kind of like trying to remove the dominant (oppressive) breed in a mutt while it is still alive. Western guilt, with all of its futile, societal-suicide stupidity, is over.

Working remotely. Before the pandemic, knowledge workers were paid to go to an office, where they surreptitiously ate the Indian takeout leftovers that their coworkers stored in the communal fridge, feigned attention in performative meetings, and spent most of their time doom-scrolling Instagram sitting on industrial toilets in florescent-lit bathrooms finished in outdated beige and brown tile. The pandemic liberated these Workers of Knowledge, turning them into global nomads and distributing them and their excessive pay into much less expensive places that had beaches and jungles and intricately decorated açaí bowls (which are over). The advent of Zoom allowed these people to digitally join performative meetings that required even less performance. Thus was created remote work. Now that the pandemic has been replaced by the omnipresent threat of a recession, people have been forced to go to offices again and sometimes even do things within these offices in order to be paid, like PDFing documents, sending and recalling emails, and never finishing PowerPoint decks. Remote work was a beautiful glimpse at what a post-work economy with universal income could be, but until we are met with another pandemic, it is no longer a thing. In the words of Antoine Dodson, hide your Tandoori chicken, because working remotely is no longer a thing.

Manifesting. “I’m manifesting it,” said everyone who wants something but is not willing to work for it. “I manifested it,” said everyone who got lucky and got it. Manifesting is over.

Newsletters. Like memoir book authors, the writers of newsletters are usually narcissists who spend more time looking into the mirror than they do out into the world. There are too many newsletters and too few people with anything worthwhile to say. If you think this newsletter is worthwhile, please subscribe, like this post and share it with a few friends so that I don’t wonder why I write this stuff instead of binging on Netflix (ok fine I do that too).

If I’ve missed anything that is almost over, way past over, or peak over, please mention them in the comments so that we can evolve together.

*Edit note: I’ve been told by a more learned friend that Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1909-1945 counts as colonialism, and that Korea should be replaced by Ethiopia as examples of countries that have not been shaped by colonialism. Turns out that having smart readers is useful after all.

Special thanks to Alex, Lola, Zoë, and V for contributing to this list, and specialist of special thanks to Alex for always listening. Happy birthday, MM - time to get serious about eye cream, fiber, and Cialis.