You Will Die Mid-Scroll

The vibes are off

Allegory of Fire by Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1608

I. Mark Zuckerberg

You will die mid-scroll. Think about it: what’s the second most time-consuming activity you do every day after sleeping (if you’re not an insomniac)? Work? You gotta be kidding me; unless you’re a skipjack tuna fisherman tuning in on this blog from the Indian Ocean, or a newborn nurse on her seventh delivery tonight (that’s my brave, hard-working girlfriend right there), or a chess prodigy on your road to becoming a grandmaster (I’m binge-watching Magnus Carlsen’s matches), the truth is you’re working much less than you’d admit to your boss or your friends, and surely to me.

The label “fake email job” is not a dunk on people’s lack of ambition or willpower (I do work one, and it takes a substantial amount of determination to endure the perpetual hype machine), but an honest reflection of the office-centered service economy: most of us are being indirectly subsidized by the government’s need to keep us employed. We are proof that universal basic income works insofar as it’s well concealed, like a placebo but for work. So no, after sleeping, the thing you do most often isn’t work.

Let me check my phone: “Monday, September 22th. Screen time: 5 hours and 55 minutes. Substack (1h, 38min), X (1h, 27min), YouTube (49min), WhatsApp (42min), see all sites.” This is it. Almost…