Is everything lame?

or am I just 31.

Apr 03, 2026

Even though it was 76 and sunny on Wednesday, I was at odds with everything.

I signed up for a yoga class to try to shake it off, connect with some deeper part of myself. Then, on the walk over, 10 different people tried to sell me counterfeit Gucci wallets.

The other day, a friend sent me a Complex post announcing a KFC pickle jacket that you can drink from. Like, a puffer jacket, filled with pickle juice.

Lately things have been feeling like one long unboxing video, superhero threequel, rotating AI-generated advertisement.

Get ready with me, ICE is at the airports, all your friends are in Ibiza (wearing the same swimsuit), and Carbone is opening in space.

Am I just in my 30s, or is everything actually just — for lack of a better word — lame?

I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, what would make things the opposite of lame. I think I just wish things were not so obviously contrived. And I wish that all the contrived things weren’t actually working. And I wish saying this out loud didn’t make me sound like so much of a pick-me contrarian.

I brought it up with some friends, one of them said, “well, maybe we’re too obsessed with individuality.”

I turned that over in my mind. I’m not sure if it’s lack of novelty that I’m struggling with so much as a sort of hollowness. “I’m less interested in originality and more interested in humanity,” I said.

I want reality. Real stories from actual humans. I want timelessness. I want raw creativity. I want tangibility. I want truth. I want connection. I want to believe that a meaningful number of people agree with me. That enough of us are looking for substance that we’ll actually create it.

I don’t have a clean ending for you all on this one. Here, instead, are some things I encountered this week that are not lame –