ThirstyFish

"Everyone I know is brokenhearted" by Joshua Ellis is among the most honest essays that I have recently read. I often wonder if it's me, or if it's the world around me that's gone bonkers. I am now almost convinced, it's the world. Something's happening:

• The music sucks. The movies suck - I mean, they didn't suck the first time they came out, in the 1980s, but the remakes and gritty reboots and decades-past-their-sell-by-date sequels suck ... There's no magic left. It's just another company figuring out a way to suck the very last molecules of profit out of the things we cherish.
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• Everything is branded. Even people. People are "personal brands", despite the fact that, by and large, you can't figure out what most of them are actually even good for. They just exist to be snarky and post selfies and demand that you buy something, anything, with their picture on it.
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• Everything they told you about how to live in the world when you were a kid is a lie. Education doesn't matter, not even on paper. Being ethical doesn't matter. Being a good person doesn't matter. What matters now is that you're endlessly capable of the hustle, of bringing in that long green, of being entertaining to enough people that somebody will want to give you money or fuck you or fund your startup. We're all sharks now; if we stop swimming for just a little too long, we die. We lose followers. We're lame. We're not worth funding, or fucking.
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• And that's where we are. You, me, we're trapped, between being nothing more than consumers, every aspect of our lives quantified and turned into demographic data, or being fucking Amish cavemen drifting into increasing irrelevancy. Because it really does feel like there's no middle ground anymore, doesn't it? There's no way to stay an active, informed citizen of the world without some motherfucker figuring out a way to squirm into your life to try and get a dollar out of you.