We rolled into Mendocino, California on a cloudy May afternoon. We knew little of what to expect, other than it being one of the most highly considered stops for anyone driving south along the famous Highway 1. We had been struggling through a treacherous drive along what is aptly called the Lost Coast for most of the day. Even the roads were exhausted by the isolation and erosion, with multiple construction projects impeding our progress. The journey drained us, and we were desperate for a beacon of respite when we rolled into Mendocino.

The village is tucked between the highway and a series of stark cliffs that lead directly into the Pacific Ocean. The surrounding land was just as devoid of trees as you would expect of a former logging area, which chopped and sold most of its nearby bounty to the larger developments in the San Francisco Bay since the town’s founding in the mid-1800s. The extraction was noticeable for us given where we were coming from. A few days in our home state of Oregon and Redwood National Park, the coasts of which remained filled with the toughest of trees, capable of braving the region’s stony cliffs and strong winds. We hiked among them with joy. Here, most of that was gone. What stood in its place was a modest gathering of buildings, no more than a mile across, many of them still looked to be from the logging era that collapsed in the 1930s.

It felt miraculous that artists from the Bay Area discovered this village and reclaimed it as an enclave about 50 years ago. Those hands were ready for the work and they didn’t mind the dust. The land must have been cheap, but for good reason. The buildings looked as if a strong gust or a great wave would take them into the sea at any moment. Nothing about the village felt permanent, but in that precariousness, something beautiful came into shape. Artists came, craftsmen came, and they built something miraculous. Many of those artistic pioneers still live there today, boasting white hair, walking sticks and wrinkled skin. They tended beautiful gardens and fostered a wonderful community along these inhospitable cliffs.

It brings me little joy to say that their creation can now be looked at today by an outsider as an overpriced paradise for yuppies.

Before I get into my salacious point, it’s worth noting that many of the original artists who re-founded the city in the 50s and 60s were by no means destitute. Back then, you had to have some degree of privilege to feed yourself as an artist, let alone seek abandoned towns far from the opportunities of the city. You had to be crazy and funded enough to leave steady work, city services and community that had been built up over decades. It was a brave thing to do, but nobody who worried about their next meal would choose such a foolish pursuit. They were noble artists and stewards of an all-important counterculture, but they too were enabled by the excesses and growth of American industry. We all are, even today.

After paying $25 for a personal pizza, the thought occurred to me that this town was now peddling itself for people of means and status, of which I was not. Art galleries, design studios and boutique hotels littered the narrow streets. Fashionable young people parked their Teslas and Audis along the alleyways, leaving barely enough room for us to creep by. My Levi jeans and thrifted flannel felt increasingly out of place among the well-dressed visitors. The restaurants were mostly available by reservation only, leaving us with the consolation of enjoying our expensive takeout in a garden-based pop up. The outward-facing beauty of the town was there for me to see, but I would see little else during my time here. The parking was free, access to the cliffs were free, but the rest of it was made for visitors in a different income bracket.

Maybe it had to be this way. Most of the attractions in this high-priced village were hosted in original buildings that were overflowing with character. It was a joy to walk among them, considering how much work and wealth went into keeping them preserved. Most of the landmarks in the village, including the awe-inspiring Presbyterian church, are worth holding onto for as long as possible. I imagine there are citizens who have lived in Mendocino since they purchased the land for next to nothing. Now, the costs were rising. Population is starting to dip, and tourism is increasingly important. The village has to import its drinking water by truck, mainly due to an aquifer failure in 2021. It is a town holding onto a dying spirit by any means necessary. Even if that means repulsing and rejecting someone like me.

So, to anyone looking at Mendocino as a great escape, you will find it if you have the means to afford it. For me, I was eager to leave the town behind to seek my counterculture elsewhere. I’ll spend the rest of the trip searching for my own hollowed out town that would be worthy of a rebuild. There are thousands of them all across this nation, desperate for new energy, sweat and vision. With the village in my rear-view mirror, I was struck with the thought that more of us should consider starting something new, rather than overspend for a piece of the wreckage left by a previous generation’s reclamation project.

To drift in the Sea of Slop may be as good as it gets. Every fascination and every distraction is waiting for me. It may be heaven, in a strange way. I need only sit back and use a remote or swipe a finger, but soon even that won’t be necessary. My eyeballs give everything away. Every blink is a new metric, always being optimized. It has become quite easy to enjoy this heavenly sea that is designed just for you and me.

But wait, I wish to create, not just consume. To tell a tale. To debate. Does the sea still have a place for me? It does. The sea is warm to the touch, eagerly welcoming creators like me to dive deeper. To join millions of those who are posting, sharing and promoting. Now, this is in fact heaven. To create and consume in one vast sea, connecting people like you and people like me.

But the sea is so large, and there are so many of us probing the depths in search of something entirely undefined. What starts out as pure quickly becomes frantic. People are snatching at my attention now, and there is not enough of it. Like starving sharks in search of their next meal, they swarm. I want to join in. It is a competition after all, and that is how an ecosystem works. Do I not want to be seen? Those that make this bargain find a number of ways to thrive. They condense their prose. They exaggerate their truth. They play to the audience in whatever way that engages. Over time, the creator is no longer holding the strings. They are drowning now in this wicked sea that is designed for you and me.

The creator takes their ideas and turns them into words. Those dense words sink to the ocean floor, so some turn to video. The videos get shorter and shorter, rising to the surface as they engage and attract. Next, they take videos and turn them into audio so we can enjoy them while we work. Whatever it takes. The audience is hungry for it, and creators are hungry too. It is a perfect match for the Sea of Slop. The water rises.

Soon, the sea can provide for itself. Machines are here now that can generate anything. Just write a prompt and watch it flow into the sea. Can it fascinate like a human can? Time will tell. The sea is thriving now. We float with the tide. Some of us forget that we are in the water at all. The creators, the audiences, the algorithms and the corporations are all in a symbiotic dance across this wide sea.

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This ocean has always existed, even if the sea level is rising higher than ever before. I have swam in it for years, creating and consuming. But I wish to sail across this water, not drown in it.

Luckily, there is another way. I have built a boat. This boat exists in my mind through a combination helpful habits and stubbornness. With that boat, and this boat alone, I can navigate the vast, endless sea without losing my voice. I can enter and exit the sea at will. I can fish from the sea, sustaining myself. I even swim in the sea, for swimming in the sea can be useful, fun even. But to live in the sea is to be lost to it, spending my days treading water as life passes overhead.

Thanks to my boat I can leave the sea, moving up river, reaching uncharted land masses that must be explored on foot. By walking across the sparse landscape, I can find ancient ideas that have been neglected by the sea. I can discover forgotten stories that are hard to digest. Content that challenges. Ideas that provoke. Across many miles I can walk, not knowing what waits at the destination. In that walking, I gain the time to unearth my own thoughts, rather than drowning in the opinions of others. With patience and effort, I leave my own trail behind for other travelers.

Cheers to those travelers that wish to leave the sea, even for a time. How lucky are we.

Dear Reader,

Contrary to the output of this newsletter, I have been writing a lot. In fact, I’ve been writing more than I ever have before. This trend feels fantastic, but an update seems necessary before any of that hits your feed.

Last week, I was listening to NYU writing professor Ocean Vuong, who lingered on the idea that we should write sentences that no one has ever read before. That goal has been sitting with me for a few days, because I have never attempted to do such a thing, much less achieve it.

My background in journalism got me started on this strange journey of writing as self expression, which wasn’t a bad place to start. In fact, it was the same for famed authors such as Hemingway, Márquez and Didion. Journalism teaches us the basics of narrative. The who, what, when, where and why of it all. However, it specifically teaches against what many would call creative writing. It has a strict style, an aversion to opinion, and it tries its best to make the author invisible to the reader. The same can be said for marketing, which is where I’ve earned a paycheck as of late.

At a certain point, these writers took massive turns. They rejected established dogma and the demands of their profession to pursue something new. That pursuit is what allowed them to write sentences that no one has ever read before. Those sentences created stories that were closer to being from their soul than from their mind. These former journalists spurned a world filled with noisy media and content to eventually become literary titans. I have little interest in joining them all the way up there, but I know that I am ready to make that turn toward a destination unknown.

Culture is in a weird place. Creatives are terrified of AI, new Harry Potter remakes, corporate consolidation in Hollywood, and the fact that very few people under 25 are reading books. For all this and more, a demoralization has crept over the entire artistic world. The good news for me is that I am not part of that world. I have a very small readership, my posts get little attention, and I am not employed by anyone willing to pay me for my creative work. I agree that the concerns of paid artists are real, but that demoralization doesn’t need to concern me, for I have nothing that is being taken from me. The safe, established methods of monetizing art are under attack, but I am just as free to dive deeper in pursuit of the new, like others before me.

I know how it sounds, but really, this has come across as a relief! I no longer feel a need to play it safe. Why should I? So my work eventually sounds just like what Claude would write? These trends in the world have, in a way, unshackled me from the desire to optimize the measured writing that I learned in journalism school. What I have to offer as a different form of writer is completely unknown, and because of that, I know that AI companies don’t have access to it. I plan to outrun these modern concerns by experimenting with my flawed human mind, which an LLM can’t know anything about. It doesn’t exist in a creative writing class or a college syllabus, either. This realization means that I can do more, and feel comfort in knowing that what I create is authentic. I can neglect the need to comment on current events, or even read about them. I can write, quite literally, whatever I want.

It has taken me almost 10 years to come to this understanding, but that is better than spending a lifetime in shallow waters. So, to whoever is out there reading this thing. First of all, thank you. Many of you are dear friends who have been very supportive over the years. Second of all, the writing you see from me may soon be quite different. Some of it will be strange, difficult or silly. Just know that I am where I want to be, and hopefully, you have some fun with it too.

Sincerely,

Nick

Every network is composed of nodes. Nodes are all of us. Individuals who contribute to the strength, security and quality of the network. Without helpful nodes, the network withers. An individual’s impact is difficult to measure, but it’s there. The network is stronger when nodes are aligned and weaker when the nodes splinter or harm each other.

So why does it seem like our networks aren’t so healthy? I have a few theories:

• Networks are expanding much too quickly for the average node to comprehend

• Nodes would rather leave a network than fix it

• Nodes are failing to grasp the level of agency they can enact upon the network

• Technology has flattened the small and mid-size networks that would typically teach us how to be good nodes

The network size problem

While networks have always existed, it is new to see centralized networks the size of Facebook, X or Reddit. Many of us find it easier to thrive in smaller networks, and we have some tools in our DNA that speak to that. What the Internet has enabled is something entirely new.

Perhaps the last time this happened was when the Gutenberg press was invented in the 1440’s. Networks expanded due to the creation of mass market printed materials, and a whole new bunch of nodes came online, one in particular by the name of Martin Luther. His works were so turbulent that Europe would eventually explode in conflicts known as the Thirty Years’ War, which remade the continent. Let me tell you, Martin Luther was an impactful node.

But even that network expansion, which ended in so much violence and turmoil, is dwarfed by the expanding networks we have now. On the political side, we have BRICS, NATO and the UN, along with powerful nation states such as the US and China. Layered above those, our media and financial networks are massive, diverse, increasingly consequential and easily manipulated. Many nodes, myself included, don’t know how to act in networks such as this.

The node connection problem

What if the Loneliness Epidemic is a network problem? Loneliness is a sign of someone that either lacks a strong network, or doesn’t know how to participate in the networks that surround them. We’ve been experiencing this trend since COVID, and are just now beginning to find the language to describe it.

As we’ve adapted to more powerful forms of technology that bring a larger amount of people together, we have lost touch with the mid-size networks that taught us how to actually be part of something. Bowling leagues, churches, and social clubs have all deteriorated, despite being exposed to technology that should enhance their connectivity. Heck, even remote work is a trend that decreases connectivity. As nice as it has been to work from home, I can testify that an office community can be a welcome thing.

Technology has gotten better, but connections have gotten worse. In part because technology has also made it easy for us to form splintered and narrow networks. Niche fan group communities, obscure hobby forums, secret group chats, all of them formed by people who didn’t feel comfortable participating in a larger network.

The problem is that these Internet networks can easily become echo chambers, and they create a shocking amount of fragility. Nodes should be contributing to networks of all sizes, not just the safe or convenient ones. We can’t isolate ourselves, exclude others and improve the world at the same time.

The agency problem

Networks can be noisy, and sometimes, they take on a life of their own. For an individual node, that can have a dampening effect. Average people eventually lose faith that they can play an active role in the network.

When networks are filled with nodes who no longer attempt to influence the network, the network weakens. Often, this leads the network to be dominated by a small group of nodes that don’t represent the entire group well. Sounds a bit like Twitter to me.

Social media networks are a particularly vexing issue, because they are dominated by illusions. These illusions are created by misaligned incentives between nodes and the network owners. Millions of us contribute to these networks freely, motivated by an effort to connect with others, but some have learned how to monetize their contributions by being more ‘engaging’ than others.

You see this today in the form of social media influencers, who have so well optimized for attention that they now dominate what most people see on social media. What started as a way to keep in touch with classmates and family became a path for entrepreneurs, celebrities and politicians to increase their wealth and status. Combine this trend with corporations that optimize for engagement, you end up with a funhouse mirror, instead of a network that accurately reflects all of the contributing nodes.

So what can we do? Enact authenticity upon the network

These issues explain why I’ve spent most of my life as an internet lurker. I curate my algorithm, the people I follow, and have made an effort to avoid participating in these engagement games. Lately, I am doing things differently because I noticed that I am not seeing as many nuanced conversations as I once enjoyed. In fact, things are going in the opposite direction.

By adding my voice to the network, I hope to remedy this in a small way, and encourage others to see another path. We don’t have to be constantly trying to win a conversation, a debate or a news event. We can avoid slipping into conversations filled with convenient opinions, moral righteousness, or emotional thinking. Maybe this is a token gesture from one node, but if enough nodes act upon a network in a similar way, things begin to shift.

We applaud high agency characters in books and films, perhaps because they can influence their network in ways that we feel that we can’t. But those stories teach us that it’s important to try. The alternative only creates a mixture of ignorance and apathy.

No matter what your ambitions are, everything depends on your ability to influence the network. Want to get famous? Build your network. Want to save the environment? Realign the network. Want to be a better friend? You guessed it.

This post is my first attempt at contributing to a vast network that I have been part of for most of my life. I hope it will be beneficial when it’s all said and done. My guiding principles:

Open the aperture to gain perspective

The world is a vast place, and the more we explore it, the more we are able to connect disparate ideas, strengthen our bond with others and change our mind based on new information. We should widen the frame to gain a three-dimensional view of the world and determine what we really think.

Empower personal curiosity

We are often told to specialize and conform to make life easier, but along the way, many of us have lost the ability to listen to our gut and chase unique ideas. We should reject herd-like thinking and follow whatever inspires individual curiosity, even if it leads down some strange paths.

Be skeptical of certainty

Overconfidence in our opinions often ends conversations, and instead, we should be hoping to start them. Reaching consensus is not easy, especially when one group thinks their way is right beyond all shadow of a doubt. We almost always act on incomplete information, so skepticism is a valuable tool.

Search for agreement, not disqualification

Building a better society will always require the integration of people you initially disagreed with. We are running out of time to come together on a slew of issues, and disqualifying people or ignoring them has proven to be boring and ineffective. I want to focus more on what unites us and celebrate diversity of thought to get us moving in a positive direction.

It won’t be easy to make these principles more popular than they are today. For a multitude of reasons, we are swimming upstream. Let’s get started.

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I looked back on my 2023 list, and I felt a pang of regret when I skipped this tradition in 2024. We all consume more content than ever, and attention is a valuable resource. I want to log how I spent it each year, even if it’s joining a sea of similar content. I like the idea of checking these lists in a decade and analyzing how they compare to what was consensus at the time.

Favorite New Film: The Secret Agent

It has been a good year for films, but my favorites often deviate from the norm. Set in 1977 Brazil, The Secret Agent is at first a simple story of a man on the run from his past, but its ambition accelerates the experience into something memorable. The story managed to be touching, funny and audacious, all while engaging in powerful character and political work. I don’t know many who have seen this film, so that is how this earns my recommendation.

Honorable Mentions: Some combination of Marty Supreme, Sinners and One Battle After Another. I’m betting that Sinners is the most impactful on our culture, but I personally favored the other two.

Favorite New Show: Death By Lightning

There weren’t many new shows that I fell in love with, except for this one. I have gripes with the critical darlings such as Pluribus and The Studio, but Death By Lightning was a succinct and thoughtful mini-series that deserves recognition for spotlighting a footnote in our nation’s history.

Honorable Mention: The Lowdown was a fun and unique story that balanced modernity and nostalgia in a fun way.

Favorite Reality Show: Alone

I despise reality TV, so being this captivated by Alone surprised me. The show is set up as a survival contest, or something that may only be appreciated by preppers and outdoorsmen. But when you send 10 survivalists into the woods to live alone and film themselves for 2-3 months, you see parts of the human condition that we like to forget about. You learn about practical things such as hunting, foraging and indigenous practices, but you also encounter deeply personal experiences with loneliness, trauma and regret. If you can stomach watching someone skin a squirrel, then you would get a lot out of this show.

Favorite Non-Fiction Book: American Serengeti by Dan Flores.

I didn’t cover enough of this during my Montana and Wyoming travel log, but the natural beauty I encountered on that roadtrip was incredible. Seeing my first bison took my breath away, and I couldn’t help but wonder about the time when millions of these creatures roamed the middle of America. I was captivated by this book, which covers the history of the great plains through the eyes of the animals that we have displaced since American settlement began. If this topic is also a blind spot for you, I’d recommend brushing up on it.

Favorite Fiction Book: Stoner by John Williams

This book benefitted from a viral social media resurgence in 2025, but I am grateful for it. In the world of highly visible influencers and millionaires, our culture is losing sight of what a small life is, even though that is the life that most of us will experience. Full of small battles and small victories, it was refreshing to follow the life of a soft-spoken midwestern professor for a few hundred pages.

Favorite Song: Nose on the Grindstone by Tyler Childers

Tyler Childers continue to bring the heat with Snipe Hunter, a fun and heart-wrenching album. Give it a listen!

Honorable Mention: Yamaha by Dijon

Favorite Podcast: Wisdom of Crowds

Wisdom of Crowds is great at a few things that most podcasts are bad at:

• Being topical without being stuck in the news cycle

• Modeling healthy disagreements and letting the audience decide

• Doing the homework (reading the guest’s book, researching topics, etc.)

Check them out if you’re looking for thinkers to take you away from the algorithm for an hour or two.

Favorite Short-form Video: N/A

While I have cultivated my algorithm to feed me the occasional helpful laugh, tip or insight, I can’t remember a single short-form video for more than a few days. I keep this category here to remind everyone that this content is not designed to stick with us as well as books, movies or music. When it comes to reclaiming your attention, I would encourage you to focus your eyes elsewhere.

Favorite Long-Form Video: Andrej Karpathy — “We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals”

While this is technically a podcast, I enjoyed the video version because I was able to observe the points of confusion and disagreement between guest and host. Dwarkesh Patel has become tech’s biggest interviewer, and Karpathy is one of tech’s most prominent problem solvers. It’s easy to either say that AI will change the world or it’s a dangerous slop-generating tool. I chose the middle path by listening to conversations like this, where people within the industry poke massive holes in the narratives and headlines we encountered in 2025.

Favorite Substack Post: James Baldwin Was Not Your Figurehead by Freddie deBoer

I don’t know if I should Substack about Substacks, so I won’t say much about these essays. I found them both thought provoking, so just give them a read and let me know what you think.

• Runner Up: Against the City of Noise by Justin Lee

Favorite Human Interest Piece: The Story of Riley Walz

The world is certainly getting weirder and scarier, but also more interesting. That was the takeaway from this feature on a Gen Z hacker who is the true definition of chaotic good. These are the types of young people that can make an outsized impact on our digital world, and I appreciated the chance to understand Riley a bit better.

Favorite Video Game: Claire Obscure: Expedition 33

I spent more time playing various strategy games, which have been useful to keep the mind sharp, but Expedition 33 was the most inventive gaming experience of the year. Set in a fantastical world where humans are eternally trapped by a cruel, omnipotent creator, the world imagined by this independent gaming studio is incredible. It evokes the experience of playing Final Fantasy or Persona, but with a heaping amount of originality given to its characters and mechanics. It offers the rare trifecta of art, storytelling and gameplay that creates true verisimilitude.

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Our family ritual has become quite simple. The bleak Oregon weather pulls us indoors and we spend a few days decorating, much in the way our parents did. We assemble a humble holiday village, chop down a Christmas tree, place a few hundred feet of stringed lights. Wreathes and garlands are hung, along with embroidered stockings.

By the end of it, we’ve accepted that we won’t be seeing many visits from the sun until spring. We then spend the next few weeks idling, basking in the slowness that the winter brings. Our sources of warmth become almost entirely man-made, forcing us to be deliberate with the light and relationships we encounter.

Not much has changed in this ritual, except for one piece of technology: the humble smart plug. My increasingly dark Pacific Northwest afternoons have been forever changed by this invention. With it, my patterns are most dutifully tracked by the illumination of Christmas lights and warm lamps to set a positive mood.

Darkness invites despair and a longing for the sun, but these plugs have made it so every room welcomes us. They function much in the way a comforting storefront or coffee shop would. In each room, we are invited in as if we are meant to be there, like someone else is taking care of us.

In these brief moments, I can feel some innocence return. I think not of the pain, fear and uncertainty that technology has brought us, only of these magical plugs. In patterns of my design, my holiday village lights up. First the schoolhouse, then the old mill. In a few years, I’ll probably add a small train running on the hour. All thanks to this tiny piece of technology. A simple diorama, running reliably.

There is of course a part of me that rails against these technological encroachments with whatever is left of my will. I hold the competing ideas in my head, largely because moments of joy aren’t allowed to stay too long. All too easily, we return to the negative.

“These devices are making us dumber, and more reliant on vulnerable Internet networks and surveillance.”

“We’re buying new ways to complicate our lives.”

“Wouldn’t I be better off living in the woods?”

The luddites would be proud.

We all have a complicated relationship with technology. We lament the habits that have overtaken us, such as arguing with strangers on social media or wasting away days watching any movie we can think of.

It is easy to to take the good parts of our technological advancement for granted and focus on the problems. I’m sure that we’ve always been this way throughout history. We must advance and strive, and that makes gratitude difficult. Perspective is something reserved for the few.

It strikes me that my parents likely had different types of technology that struck them with fear and awe, and their parents before them. But when it comes to smart plugs, they simply see the magic.

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I hope that your holiday season is a warm one filled with joyful vignettes like the one I’ve written about here. Oh, and if you share any fondness or tips to enhance the small magic of smart plugs, I’d love to hear about it.

In April, I hit my five-year anniversary at my corporate gig, and the milestone created a spiral of sorts. Where had the last five years gone and what would the next five years look like? Should I be grateful for this level of stability, or frightened by it? To answer these questions and more, I needed to get a few miles under my feet. It was time to hit the road to see some of our nation’s finest national parks with my wife and dog, fishing and camping where we could along the way.

2,000 miles later and we’re back in Oregon with a whole heap of thoughts about cultural booms and busts in the west.

Me More Cowboy Than You

I remember changing half of my wardrobe during our European honeymoon just to feel like less of an American. I ended up looking like a slightly better dressed American that trusted linen pants a bit more than he should. I wouldn’t recommend it.

I’ve been tracking the cultural vibe shift away from liberal cities towards small towns. It’s bleeding into our politics, our culture, and unsurprisingly, the tourism rates in rural America. No better place summarizes this shift than Jackson, Wyoming, where true hunters, farmers and cowboys looked to be in short supply.

Situated just south of Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone, Jackson is nestled between some of the most vibrant mountains in the country. For that reason, it has become the new playground for wealthy coastal elites looking to forget where their wealth and status came from while enjoying the slopes. You can see their impact on the town everywhere, most notably in the real estate prices.

It’s easy to see that everyone wants to fit in. The Brudi Brothers, recent TikTok stars, would be proud of their song if they spent a few hours in Jackson. The wealthy families invading that town have turned it into some mix between Aspen and West Hollywood. Cowboy culture is hawked and appropriated as much as possible. I predicted this in my post about how culture is shifting rightward, but seeing it reflected in the real world was a different type of confirmation.

Whatever remained of the western spirit was isolated to a single bar in the center of town. While mostly a tourist trap now, it was clear that the bar had a history that locals were still proud of. We sat and enjoyed the idea of the town and its past, rather than what it had become. The pursuit was marked by a filled room of tourists, and the few residents who sought to hold back the tide of change flowing through their county.

The city center was reminiscent of Santa Fe, filled with its high-end boutique stores, art galleries and a selection of national brands selling clothes that normal people can’t afford. I expected this popularity, but I was surprised at the coastal sensibilities that had infected the place. We even found a $12 pressed juice shop, which would have done just as well in the gentrified neighborhoods of Portland or San Francisco.

The lost soul of the first stop on our journey put a damper on things. I didn’t expect quite so many nepo babies and members of the Lululemon loyalty program on my trek through the land of the bison and the grizzly bear. I left with the sense that the town’s culture would not survive the property taxes and outsider influence for much longer.

Ruthless Upheaval in the Marketplace of States

Now I will admit, I came to these states with a long-held appreciation for the myths of the American west. Perhaps that makes me part of the problem. I wanted to see a few states that were unabashedly American, especially during a time when it has been hard to feel patriotic. Rural America is unique among the western world due to its size and untouched wilderness, and it’s something to feel proud of. We don’t have trains and tightly packed villages separating our population centers like most of Europe. We have two lane highways, truck stops and an excessive supply of open air.

We found a bit more of that in Montana, powered by a hostility toward any outsiders that looked to change the spirit of Big Sky Country. The residents had a firmer grip on what makes their state special among the other 49. It struck me that the harsh winters were likely an ally for locals, with not many coastal types prepared for the rugged and isolating snow season.

Still, with so many dollars floating around for the top 1% of Americans, the narrative that attaches itself to your home state becomes a bullseye. Build a culture that others envy and you’ll find those looking to change it knocking on your door. Leave your culture up to the whims of modernity and you’ll find yourself looking like every other strip mall-laden town along the interstate. This reality struck me twice as hard given my upbringing in Hawaii, a place that became too expensive for me as the state increasingly hawked its culture to foreign and domestic visitors.

As a gentrification refugee, I feel for these towns. I have an immense respect for the locals that can tolerate tourism while protecting their neighborhoods. When I visit these places, I do my best to leave space for the locals and lend my dollar to the businesses that stick to what makes the place great. Better to support the cash only dive bars, the 6-table diners, the laundromats and local fly shops rather than the upscale, investor-funded money traps that came in after the boom. The competitive marketplace in tourist towns can be brutal because of these outside influences. I hope that these original proprietors can maintain the personality that sustains the unique towns across our country.

How Natural Wonder Can Cut Through Pessimism

Not enough can be said of the natural beauty along our route. The influx of cheap representations and fast tourism created a bittersweet experience in every town. But whenever we got away from people, the trip took on a different flavor.

The vistas were breathtaking, the waterways were clear and filled with fish, and the trails invited a true sense of excitement. We encountered grizzlies, bison, elk and pronghorn along the way, each bringing immense awe to the road trip. The fishing spots and campgrounds were infinite, creating adventure wherever we stopped for the night. In this, I found much of what I was looking for out of the journey.

I don’t know what the next few years will be like in America. Even our small towns are becoming dominated by wealth and privilege, while our big cities become stagnant and combative. Our political system is constantly teetering on the edge of oligarchy and it shows no signs of reversing.

But this trip still made me optimistic by its end. The wilderness of America is one of our last remaining vestiges of excellence. Thanks to a proud and patriotic mix of rangers, guides, indigenous elders and locals, we’re all able to benefit from the feeling of an open sky and a clean river. For anyone who is suffering from a lack of pride in being an American right now, nature and a few thousand miles on the highway would be my prescription.

Every time we open our phones, we make a choice.

Previous generations had to accept media as the closest view of reality other than what they could perceive with their own eyes. Nowadays, the Internet can show you content on any topic, from any perspective. The reality we see is in our own hands, and we can bend it each day, often without even knowing what we’re doing.

It is for this reason that managing your content diet is one of the most important parts of being a human in the digital age. We owe it to ourselves to wield the near infinite amount of books, movies, shows, articles and posts to our own advantage, not to the advantage of politicians, social media platforms or Hollywood studio companies. This becomes even more important in an age AI, where the costs of content generation go down and algorithms get better at appealing to our base instincts.

So, what makes a good content diet? There is no simple answer to that, but similar to nutritional diets, diversity is key. Media is capable of doing incredible things for our minds as a supplementary part of our daily existence. At the minimum, it should prepare you, inform you and challenge your preconceived biases. When you’re doing it right, it can also surprise, inspire and connect you with some of the most potent thinkers to have ever lived. A good content diet should not be predictable and it cannot be left to chance.

The alternative is frightening, and we’re already beginning to see it in our personal lives. An unmanaged content diet is likely to make you fearful, depressed and angry. Algorithms designed to engage you at any cost will quickly turn you into a conspiratorial thinker, a nihilist, or worse than that, someone who only listens to AI-generated Spotify playlists.

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I’ve seen this happen to a handful of friends and family members, and it’s often too late at that point. Your content diet is very personal, meaning that nobody else can address it for you or even tell you that you’re off track.

So, you are hopefully wondering about how you can ensure that your content diet is keeping you mentally fit for whatever comes next in this world. Here is a short list of what you should seek out.

1. The content you consume should cater to the full range of human emotions, and not be overly focused on activating ones such as fear or anger.

2. Content sources should surface diverse perspectives and topics, avoiding the trap of media that confirms your biases or confines your interests.

3. Your content diet should be made up of different media types of various lengths and intensities, avoiding a reliance on tweets, TikTok videos or anything else.

4. The breadth of content you seek out should include short, medium and long term time horizons, helping you to avoid doom loops and reactionary responses to shifting news cycles.

5. Your content diet should not perfectly mirror your real-world persona or lifestyle, because media is the best tool we have to understand different people and entertain different ideas.

I’ll be expanding on this list over time, perhaps with some content examples that I think are underrepresented in our social media age. Perhaps we should work together on building a better content diet. Think of it like sharing a new healthy weeknight dinner recipe, just for media. Curation folks, it’s important.

Is your content diet something you intentionally manage? How do you go about it? Let’s chat. As always, thank you for reading.

Mad Men recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of its final episode, which is as good a reason as any to re-position it as a central piece of TV culture. It was one of the first “prestige” shows and it won a whole heap of awards, but that’s not why we should keep it around.

If any show effectively showcased and deconstructed modern America, I’d argue it was Mad Men. It sets up many of the deep issues that our country still struggles with today. I could put thousands of words into why that’s true, but the core of it is this:

Modern Americans don’t know what they want unless other people tell them.

Pre-WWII America was defined by its struggles. Whether they were gaining independence from England, colonizing the frontier, grappling with slavery, or dealing with the depression, there was always a sense of upheaval that kept everyone focused on survival. As anyone who understands Maslow's hierarchy of needs would tell you, this means that self-actualization was fairly far away for the Average American.

Since survival was all that mattered, we held survivors in the highest esteem, and that was a core part of the national identity. When WWII ended, however, we entered into a vastly different economic and cultural situation. The old world was a pile of rubble, Americans were heroes, and times at home were relatively easy. Everyone got a job, a house, a community, and most importantly, discretionary spending. While we can certainly muddy the good vibes by discussing Vietnam, the Cold War and 9/11, the reality is that by Maslow’s standards Americans had it good.

This level of economic and geopolitical success is historically rare and we often neglect to consider how it has negatively impacted America’s resilience today. Because once you’re no longer struggling to survive, you begin to struggle in unpredictable ways.

With life getting easier for the rising middle class, we began to see the explosion of consumerism and advertising, which is now upstream of how people define themselves today. We find our identity in the vacations we take, the products we buy and the brands we support. This form of identity has overtaken community, religion, and sometimes, even politics. In this era, self-actualization could appear to come from your spending habits, which wasn’t true, but it felt nice.

This pattern of buying your way to happiness was ultimately damaging for the average Americans that ad agencies worked to influence. But Mad Men also showed how it impacted everyone who worked there, including Don Draper. While talented and charismatic, he drifted through life without knowing what he wanted, redefining himself based on what was thrown at him and using that journey to better sell engaging narratives to his clients.

“Life Sims” and Self-Actualization as a Product

Let’s return to 2025, where life simulators are one of the fastest-growing video game genres. In these types of games, players can simulate aspects of reality in a low stakes, simplified environment. Whether they are recreating an entire human’s life like they can in The Sims and Animal Crossing, or taking on the role of a long-haul truck driver in American Truck Simulator, the end result is hours spent on a screen playing out an imagined version of what their future could be.

Many people just play these games for fun, and I’m not here to denigrate that. However, subcultures around these games indicate that their most devoted fans tend to replace real-world actualization with a virtual replica.

This trend could be caused by numerous economic, technologic and cultural barriers. Dreams have never felt harder to accomplish for Gen Z and millennials. The timing makes sense, and the benefits are obvious. In these games, the friction is removed. You don’t need to obtain certifications, get hired, build an audience, or any of the other hurdles that exist for people trying to make their real-world dreams come true.

I’ve learned a lot from video games, so a final disclaimer is warranted. Self-actualization may indeed be supported by these simulations. For example, someone could turn an interest in Stardew Valley into a career in agriculture. Maybe a high schooler gets the courage to ask out their crush after testing it out on their computer. This trend doesn’t have to be as dystopian as it sounds.

Another possibility is that technology catches up to this behavior by turning some of our careers into coordination games between AI agents that we manage for economic purposes. As Peter Drucker once said: “The future of work is not about jobs, but about doing things we like to do in the way we like to do them. In the future, work will look more like what people do on weekends.” Maybe he is right, and our jobs will look a lot like video games in the future.

However, we should consider the opportunity cost in relying on these forms entertainment rather than building our own unique path in life. For the most part, these are still consumer products, not tools designed to enlighten us.

The stakes are high to align our culture toward better paths to build an authentic identity. Young people today face rising levels of loneliness, depression and addiction, which can all be symptoms of a self-actualization journey stuck in neutral.

Calibrating for Curiosity and Authenticity

The primary issue is that true self-actualization is hard. The modern world has made it simple to avoid the long work of authoring our own lives. For example, you could pursue what your parents want for your future. Or maybe you end up sidetracked by vices such as gambling, gaming and fentanyl. If you’re successful but uncreative, you could be enticed to copy and paste the identity of a popular influencer that sells a lifestyle to you online.

These shortcuts are everywhere, and nobody has an incentive to discover unique alternatives. Your authentic self will not be presented to you in a box. Avoid the short-term satisfaction of chasing phony self-actualization!

Marketing, celebrities and media helps to obfuscate what we see and who we idolize. With technology, this often goes a step further. Social media algorithms often suppress individuals who do their own thing. People who don’t optimize content for engagement can be deprioritized until they disappear from our feeds, and eventually our lives. For these people, and others looking to learn more from the individuality of others, it will appear as if true individuals don’t exist.

Resisting this onslaught of other people telling you what you should want is a life-long battle, but there is joy to be found in that fight. For all of us, self-actualization could look like any combination of paths presented to us through books, culture, and yes, even advertising. The value is in making that mix as unique as possible.

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To encourage this process more, I’d like to share a bit about what I’ve been reading. Got a book recommendation? I’d love to hear it.

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Abundance: A hopeful vision marred by myopia

I typically try to avoid political books that I have a likelihood to agree with based on the synopsis. However, I let my echo chamber aversion go for this one, as I think both Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein have a rare status among liberals. I anticipate this book to be picked up by political leaders and that makes it worth following.

Their thesis is pretty simple. Leaders on the left have increasingly become the defenders of inefficiency and anonymous bureaucracy. Klein and Thompson argue that government should be enabled to do more, eventually helping them fight the powers of big business and conservatism. Through numerous examples, they advocate for a government that builds, and a politics based on abundance rather than scarcity. They accomplish this well enough in chapters that probably started out as essays.

What I found lacking was the authors’ ability to tell a complete picture of how things got this bad. They tackled the way democrats added red tape over time, but neglected to tackle how (and why) conservatives did the same. They avoided diving into topics such as lobbying and regulatory capture, which has done more to stifle innovation than zoning reform ever has. They picked convenient enemies, like those to the left of them, rather than address culprits such as local governments, public unions and non-profits who often stoke to the problems they want to address.

As a book designed to reorganize the left, I think it fails to unify a group that is in desperate need of unification. It still offers a better vision than anything I’ve seen from democrats in the last decade, and for that I say it’s worth the read.

They receive bonus points for citing Gary Gerstle’s Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, a book I thoroughly enjoyed in 2023!

Cryptonomicon: A complex, chaotic romp for the increasingly rare technology fan

I don’t know many people who I can recommend this book to. Every technology person seems to be either reading non-fiction as part of an efficiency-fueled frenzy, or they’re instead reading ChatGPT summaries of every piece of literature that they hear about at parties. Conversely, traditional fiction people seem to be increasingly anti-technology, favoring dystopian writings and certainly avoiding anything with the word crypto in it.

Luckily for them, this book is primarily about information warfare and cryptography rather than it is about cryptocurrency. Released in 1999, the story follows a cast of characters in two periods: World War II and modern day. Codebreakers such as the great Alan Turing make an appearance, as we learn a bit more about about the types of people that helped the allies gain information supremacy over the axis powers.

It is decidedly pro-technology, loosely tracking the invention of the computer and the Internet innovators who got us to where we are today. That said, it can feel like a bit of a “bro” story. I believe it failed the Bechdel test, but perhaps it can be forgiven due to the nature of it following codebreakers, hackers and soldiers in the pre-2000s technology scene.

Despite the computer references sounding dated in 2025, I think this story largely holds up. It effectively set the foundation for what computers would become, and what they would be used for. It tackled big ideas around privacy, freedom and information asymmetry. It also featured a few characters and lines of dialogue that I will remember for quite some time. I found it to be an enjoyable read. It would make a good movie, if not for the time jumps. I will be checking out more of Stephenson’s work.

Hell’s Angels: An action-packed reminder of how perception creates reality

Hunter S. Thompson is incapable of being boring. This book was certainly filled with memorable stories from his time embedded with the Hell’s Angels. What I didn’t expect was its admirable take-down of celebrity culture, journalism and government overreach. Although the peak of motorcycle club culture is behind us, I think these outlaws represented something that will never go away in America. For that, this was a fun and insightful read.

Freedom can be taken to extremes, and we will always have a fringe that lives an existence much wilder than we can handle. But Americans love their outlaws. It is what separates us from the Old World, for better or for worse. We envy those free enough to drift from town to town, even if they have to cheat and steal to pay for gas money.

Thompson effectively built up these bikers and tore them down in equal measure. He highlighted their unique spirit, community and isolation from society. He also wrote deeply about where our collective imaginations ran wild about the Hell’s Angels. Something that we still do today in our newspapers and social media feeds about other groups. I found it an enjoyable walk down memory lane, even though a few chapters contained the darkest and most depressing pages I’ve read this year.

Let’s face it, social media algorithms suck. At least they have so far.

Algorithms have oversimplified and encrypted the Internet, and with that, people have seen fewer ideas and less connectivity over time. The growth of algorithms has correlated with a decade-long erosion of what many believed the Internet could be. The good news is that the core experience hasn’t changed, only the doorways and windows that limit what most people can see.

The problem is that current algorithm design has left many of us searching for the sense of optimism, collaboration and authenticity that was present in the web’s early years. But we can’t go back, and we can’t completely avoid algorithms. Even Substack, a place for the eccentric curators and outcasts, is now experimenting with one for its Notes feature. If they need to do this, I really want them to get it right.

5 Rules for Doing Algorithms Better than Social Media

1) Algorithms should remember and reward diversity of thought from its users.

Algorithms oversimplify our interests, and we hate being put into a box. The only way to align with this reality is to avoid short term recommendation loops in favor of constructing multiple, long-term threads that can more effectively follow someone’s varied and evolving interests. This would help avoid your feed assuming too much, which causes algorithms to hide off large parts of the Internet from us. We are in need of an algorithm that rewards individuality, not conformity.

2) Algorithms should optimize for replies and saved posts rather than likes and reposts.

“I really don’t want to forget this.”

“I want to refer back to this for something else I am working on.”

“I know a friend who would love this.”

This one is simple. More of this type of user experience would make Substack’s algorithm a powerful tool for knowledge management and connection.

3) Algorithms should connect individuals of similar network size, and limit broadcasting its largest voices.

Current algorithms have an inequality issue. There are a top percentile of posters who dominate “For You” feeds and then there are the rest of us. Now, I’m not conceited enough to think that Substack should give me an algorithmic boost. Quite the opposite. The algorithm should surface my work to other people who are shouting into the void in a similar way. Those people would be more likely to follow back, or have an open conversation in the comments. This is a necessary prerequisite for developing small online communities, and it would give Substack something unique from other platforms.

4) Algorithms should be as customizable as possible, and this customization should be encouraged by the platform.

The option to see more of one thing or less of another is as far as most social media algorithms have gotten on this topic, and it rarely works that well. If algorithms are based on user activity parameters, why not give users the option to further tweak what they’re seeing? This sense of ownership would increase platform loyalty, and engineers will learn even more about user preferences. Think video game settings, but more robust!

5) Algorithms should be disposable and transportable.

I don’t expect this rule to win over anyone who holds a business degree, but algorithms are our digital echoes, and we should be able to reset them, or apply them to other platforms, without being punished. A single business cannot own your virtual shadow. The pro-business way of looking at it is simple. Instead of optimizing for user addiction which is a chaotic and zero sum game, you would simply compete on different battlefields.

Did I miss a rule? How are you curating your social media algorithms today? Is Substack making a mistake by becoming too much like other platforms? Let me know in the comments.

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Today’s polarized discourse has really ruined my favorite hobby: Starting interesting conversations that are only tangential to current events. This habit is useless now, unless I meet a weirdo like me, because once I know how you voted in the last election, I can often predict the way that you want to talk about tariffs, free trade, manufacturing and America’s role in the world. This conversation would all be downstream of the media sources you consume, the perspectives you’ve chosen to avoid, and the talking points your side wants to get out. The problem is, I can read all of that in the news, so why go there?

Since I have limited access to weirdos in my personal life, I figured Substack is the best place to archive these conversation starters. Let me know if these topics interest you. Maybe we can chat in the comments, or I can flesh out one of these in a full essay? As always, thanks for reading!

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1. America as a Service/Knowledge Economy: I am a winner in the transition of America towards a technology & services economy, but that’s not the case for everyone. Are we sure the balance is in a good place to benefit all Americans?

2. Hearts and Minds: How can politicians generally convince average, working class Americans that 40 years of free trade was good for them? So far, they’re failing.

3. Global Shipping and Climate Change: Are we sure that reliance on global trade is a good move for the climate? Are there environmental efficiencies to be gained by producing domestic goods rather than importing them from the other side of the globe?

4. Underconsumption, Cottagecore and How Young People Have Grown Used to Scarcity: With most young people struggling to afford assets, we’ve seen natural trends away from consumption. Are younger generations more prepared for an economic tidal change than most would expect?

5. Cheap New Goods vs. Vintage Old Goods: Why is it that the vintage movement in America is surging while cheap goods from China flood our shores? What does it say about our attachments to items of quality and the way things used to be?

6. America’s Software Exports: Is software the safest industry in a trade war, and isn’t America best positioned to benefit from that?

7. Working Class Power: Union membership is down, and we are more sensitive to manufacturing delays in other country than our own. Has the offshoring of manufacturing reduced elite reliance on working class issues? Would a return to domestic production help revitalize a labor movement in need of a spark?

8. The Post WW2 Order: Was the manufacturing prosperity in America just an outlier caused by most of the world being forced to rely on us to rebuild? Are we hopelessly chasing something unrealistic by harkening back to those economic times?

9. Skepticism of the Stock Market’s Recent Success: For the last few years, the majority of the stock market has been based on big tech companies. Is the current market volatility part of a much-needed repricing due to the relative weakness of non-tech companies?

10. Isolationist Economies and War: Was incentivized global trade the pin holding back geopolitical conflict? Are we heading toward a more violent world by reducing interdependency?

11. Modern Factories: While nobody can dispute China’s dominance in human-oriented factories, the game is wide open when it comes to robot-oriented factories. Isn’t it better for humans and better for the world if we’re transitioning these jobs away from humans as much as possible? Isn’t America better positioned to lead on this based on the technology required and our manpower limitations?

12. Consumerism in China: China is currently dependent on American consumers. No other nation in the world imports as much, but perhaps that could change. What would China look like if it began to encourage more domestic consumption to fill the gaps from a trade war?

13. Political Realignment: This tweet highlighted how leftists in the 90s would be more likely to cheer on the destruction of the exploitative, global trade system that destroyed unions and hurt the poor. Is today’s political switch really just about Trump or have loyalties shifted underneath the surface?

14. Free Trade for Thee, but Not for Me: The US should definitely take the loss for promoting free trade before these tariffs, but what about the anti-competitive laws in other nations that are designed to protect their own industries at the expense of the US?

If you’re a consumer of online content, you’re seeing a lot of predictions right now. As a casual writer of online content, I have been tempted to add to the pile.

Here is the thing. Predictions are hard, folks. Most of these predictions you read will be wrong. The world is changing rapidly, and I don’t pretend to know where it is heading next. I do enjoy thinking of predictions as a thought exercise, but I’ll leave the articles to the professional content generators. After all, they do have bills to pay based on the attention you give to them.

I happen to value your attention, which is what I felt inclined to write about as we start the year. In this effort to be helpful rather than predictive, I am following in the footstep of , who wrote a very helpful article this week about 25 ideas that you may find useful in 2025. I will stick with one idea, and it is this:

Your attention is your most valuable resource.

Some of you may have heard about the attention economy, and to quote Aldo Raine, “cousin, business is booming.” There have never been more competitors for your time and attention. In a single day, a curious person is likely to encounter at least a handful of these industries hoping to get you to focus on them for a few hours at the expense of the others:

• Social media: “You like to follow me because I’m just like you, except my livelihood is based on my ability to get as much engagement with this post as possible.”

• Mainstream media: “Please watch these pharmaceutical ads for 3 minutes. When we’re back, we’ll tell you today’s latest example of how your political enemy is stupid and evil.”

• Podcasts: “The truth is out there, let’s spend the next 90 minutes going back and forth about truth, fiction and how you can build your ideal website with Squarespace.”

• YouTube and Twitch: “You know that thing you like to do? Why don’t you watch 17 videos related to that thing instead? Please like and subscribe!”

• Streaming platforms: “Just spend 6 hours on one more mini-series led by an Oscar-winning actor! You know you want to.”

• Sports (and sports betting): “Can Josh Allen throw a touchdown to get this 4-leg parlay to hit? Tune in to find out.”

• Advertising: “Everything you do on your phone makes it easier for me to tell you which product to buy next. Thanks for playing!”

• Cryptocurrency: “Don’t look away, or you will miss the next Fartcoin.”

The attention game is getting so competitive that even Netflix is beginning to alter its writing to make it easier for people to multitask. All of these businesses are trying to survive, and they can only do so by capturing more and more of your waking consciousness. I believe that this is going to reach its limit and we are entering some sort of attention bubble.

Human beings can only consume so much, before they are tempted to create, or perhaps simply exist. You should absolutely spend more time creating, existing, or giving attention to your loved ones. That is where our meaningful moments come from. In order to do that, we must learn to safeguard our attention from those incentivized to take it for their own gain.

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Rebalance your active vs. passive attention

Most of the above examples are passive sources of attention vampirism. They are there for you whenever you need to take a break, but they are also designed to suck away your attention at the expense of whatever you were doing in the first place. At the end of the day, you’ll see that you spent 3 hours on your phone and have very little to show for it.

We all fall victim to this, and I’m sure there are many other ways to avoid this behavioral pattern. For my part, I would simply challenge you to rebalance your free time toward undertakings that require your active attention.

These tasks are inherently more difficult. In many cases, there is a skill involved that you need to improve at, or it introduces the possibility of failure. Regardless of how they look, they have an innate ability to improve your mental health and create personal growth opportunities. All you need to do is invest in them and reap the rewards. Isn’t that what we strive to do in our standard New Year’s resolutions?

Here are just a few examples of tasks that require your active attention:

• Reading a book

• Going on a walk with your partner

• Writing in your journal (or on Substack)

• Designing your ideal living space

• Reaching out to a friend that you’ve lost touch with

• Sitting in silence and seeing whatever naturally comes to mind

It is my belief that pursuing these sorts of activities will not only make you happier, but it will also better prepare you for the challenges that the world will bring you. Passive attention only prepares you for more passivity until you convert it into active attention. For example, even if you have watched 6 hours of content about surviving in the woods, you are not ready for the energy grid to go down. You must actively invest your attention by putting those teachings to practice in the real world for that knowledge to crystalize.

I hope this suggestion offers an enticing reset for some of you, but in many ways I have written this for myself. Regardless, I hope each of you have a great year ahead, and I appreciate you if you’ve read this far.

We have more cowboy-coded media today than at any other point in my life. About a year ago, I wanted to understand why these tropes are returning, and what it meant for American culture. What I did not expect was to find a direct line to a wider vibe shift that played a prominent role in the election of Donald Trump.

My grandfather was obsessed with America’s first explosion of westerns. He loved the optimistic storylines where the hero kills the villain and saves the town. They were fairy tales, in many ways, but that is what America wanted to see at the time. They were popular, and Hollywood milked that cash cow for decades.

Eventually, this trend became oversaturated in the late 60s. The Vietnam War would make a serious dent in America’s sense of patriotism and the conservative cultural strength that kept these shows in fashion. The western era came to an end, but the right would continue their cultural and political dominance. There were only a few TV channels after all, and it was quite easy to project conservative viewpoints to the populace.

This would only begin to swing left in the 90s, when the Internet and cable TV would enable an explosion of alternative worldviews to take shape in Hollywood. Grunge, hip hop and pop music would foreshadow the left’s surge to popularity. At the same time, wealthy, conservative media magnates lost touch with average Americans, who wanted to break from the current paradigm. Cultural consumers were seeing more diversity than they had ever seen before and they liked it a lot more than my grandpa’s favorite shows.

Fast forward to the last decade and you’ll observe that coastal, progressive viewers have enjoyed an explosion of high-brow television and film. This content has grown to dominate mainstream Hollywood studios, conversations and awards and these stories are firmly made in the progressive worldview. The content is often critical of capitalism, American imperialism, police officers, colonizers, etc. In many ways, shows such as Succession, House of Cards and Veep highlight the corruption and greed throughout our country.

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Gone were the simple fairy tales of my grandfather’s era of television. In fact, most left-aligned content went the opposite direction, hoping to “wake up” and disturb audiences about the inconvenient truths of our society. And I will say truths, despite what I am about to say next.

The problem with this truth is that it only appealed to a fraction of the country, and content was perceived to be so one-sided that conservatives publicly lamented that Hollywood had grown too political. In the process, Hollywood lost influence. A majority of the country claimed that movies and TV shows intentionally suppressed the viewpoints of everyday Americans. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s content machine, largely driven by progressive artists, conditioned itself to play towards this left-aligned audience at the expense of the flyover states.

Culture, which is upstream of politics, is driven by a number of factors. The left seems to understand the importance of cultural dominance, even if I am now arguing that their foothold has lost ground. We have thousands of left-aligned books in the windows of metropolitan book stores. Left-aligned shows are featured on flagship streaming platforms. Left-aligned professors on college campuses are the dominant faction.

So, how did all of this begin to change? It’s actually simple. Hollywood isn’t making enough money. Its ideas have grown stale, with studios lacking original ideas and leaning on sequels to keep modest amounts of cash coming in. The industry is getting increasingly desperate, and that is where we found ourselves before conservative-coded content inched its way back into the mainstream.

Don’t believe me? Just watch this trailer for Twisters, one of the year’s top blockbusters. Notice the music choice, cowboy hats and ridicule of liberal intellectuals. Oh, and Little House on the Prairie is coming back. My grandpa would be proud.

The “Sheridan-verse” and its pioneering dominance

There is one man that saw this coming and kicked this cultural shift into action. His name is Taylor Sheridan. As a writer and producer, his creations have exploded onto movie screens and home televisions. He is now the architect of what some call the “Sheridan-verse” in his series of Yellowstone spinoffs.

In a few short years, he leap-frogged thousands of talented, left-aligned screenwriters in Hollywood who have been cranking out shows that have followed the recent playbook. How has he done this? Rather than write for those same coastal media critics or Hollywood executives, he wrote for middle America.

What’s interesting about Sheridan is that he is not your average conservative. If you look closely, you’ll see that his worldview is an updated version of my grandpa’s Americana. He is not a ruthless fascist or a gleeful colonizer. Those who ignored his rise to fame likely assumed that his stories were simple recreations of the fairy tales my grandpa enjoyed such as Bonanza. But once you watch some of the content for yourself, you realize that he breaks with that tradition to share an updated vision that breaks with mainstream conservatism and therefore feels interesting to middle America without feeling overly progressive. Some highlights of his stories include:

• Indigenous People: A respect of native cultures, including blunt examples of how they were betrayed by America and how their strength and knowledge was intentionally wiped out by ruthless institutions headed by greedy white men

• Environmentalism: How delicate the balance we have with our environment is, often highlighted by the ways that we damage nature for the sake of progress and growth

• Anti-Corporate: Stories of how impersonal bureaucracies and shareholder capitalism have destroyed the dynamism of small-knit communities and the American individual

• Diversity: His characters come from various racial and class backgrounds, and you can argue that he has more capably adopted the diverse representation trends than many left-aligned creators have

He is also critical of centralized government, and the misguided campaigns they’ve conducted in the name of power, critiquing things such as the War on Drugs and Wall Street. Even his latest show, dubbed Landman, is more of an apologetic look at the people keeping our oil-based society running. His conservative audience agrees with him on many of these themes, highlighting the cultural progress that the left has gained since conservatives last controlled the airwaves. But more importantly, he has actually cemented new touchstones in conservative-coded culture. Touchstones that you may even call progressive.

That said, he knows when to kick nuance to the curb by including a ham-fisted scene where a character hops in their obscenely large pickup truck to put the liberals in their place about the tangible environmental costs of veganism. People like their entertainment!

The Creation of the Left’s Cultural Echo Chamber

The critical shows that left-wing Americans love have astounding cultural influence within their own echo chamber, but “normie” viewership and their influence on the right is at a low point. Let’s look at a head-to-head comparison. Succession, which was dominant on the coasts while Yellowstone dominated overall viewership. This sets up the financial issues in Hollywood, as you can only get so far creating content for a minority of the country, and cost-conscious executives are beginning to realize it.

The economic uncertainty of Hollywood isn’t necessarily a problem for those on the left, until they lose an election and find themselves shocked at the country they live in. It turns out that the left’s deepening echo chamber painted a different picture about America, and fewer people are looking at that picture than they thought.

What should scare progressives is what comes next. The existence of an increasingly divergent echo chamber will weaken its participants over time. For example, Disney has experienced flop after flop in its various properties such as Star Wars and Marvel because they focused their scripts and marketing on stories written for coastal progressives and not middle America. These disappointments have spawned their own culture war conflicts, but the reality is that they were nowhere near as impactful and profitable as the original Star Wars, Disney and Marvel movies that made billions by appealing to all types of Americans.

This issue has echoed across many sectors of Hollywood, and I think we will be experiencing a change in how blockbuster films are made in the coming years. If this takes place, one of the institutions that the left has relied upon, will be playing a different tune for a different crowd.

There are venues where this echo chamber breaks down, and some instances of echo chambers being created on the right that can be just as damaging for conservative goals. Perhaps I’ll save this for a future essay on other aspects of the right’s cultural successes in the last decade. It will be a multi-dimensional piece that looks into the rise of self-help content, long-form podcasts, new media, Elon Musk, sports and hustle culture. For now, please give a read to ’s excellent piece on Joe Rogan, which does a good job at outlining the political opportunities that liberals missed due to their own echo chamber.

The American Saga

Joe Rogan Isn’t a Right-Winger -- He’s a Swing Voter

In the past month, a popular podcast host described the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris like this…

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a year ago · 77 likes · 19 comments · Zaid Jilani

What’s Next for Left-aligned Media?

This isn’t one of those pundit moments where I simply ask the most progressive voices to sit back and be grateful for what they’ve gained since 1990. I am also not saying that creators should start making fun of LGBTQ people to earn a quick buck. However, accepting this lost cultural influence can serve as a valuable first step to recalibrating political and cultural messaging.

It is not easy to move culture in a progressive direction. You are fighting against decades of history and comforting fairy tales. To actually move the needle on social issues through art, these stories need to speak to middle America and coastal progressives in a way that is not patronizing or scolding. They should also be entertaining and unique if you can accomplish it! If you need an example of this, look no further than the previously mentioned Sheridan, who has actually moved more conservatives left on issues of capitalism, colonialism and America’s foreign policy than anyone writing for Succession has.

The last few years contain many lessons that will help progressives understand why they lost both cultural influence and the 2024 election. I am intrigued to see whether these lessons are heeded, and who among this cohort can take advantage of the opportunity. I foresee this to be be a challenging time for many creative figures, because the same people who enjoyed their moment at the top of the cultural pyramid are not necessarily the people who can reclaim that spot from below.

As a child, I always found myself terrified of funhouse mirrors at the county fair. No matter which way I turned, I would find my own appearance constantly waxing and waning. The claustrophobic environment would easily induce panic, even if I was just looking at a convex reflection of myself. American politics are feeling a bit like that today, especially when we’re stuck looking at something frightening that we all know to be real. Not only real, but a reflection of what we have created.

America has a billionaire problem. But what that problem looks like depends greatly on which media sources you consume and which ideological tent you call home. Are you concerned about Elon Musk, the tech mogul who loves trolling and antagonizing the Woke Mind Virus on his social media platform? Or perhaps you on the right, which would mean you are worried about Bill Gates, the former Microsoft CEO who has been funding questionable pharmaceutical initiatives and purchasing up American farmland in bulk?

There are dozens of billionaires and billionaire-funded political groups. Industries pay to influence what we see and how we vote. Voters on both the right and the left hate this reality, except for when these influences are working for the home team.

We could spend a lifetime conducting an exhaustive breakdown of how monied interests truly stack up against each other in elections. That may actually be fun to do as a type of fantasy football draft. Would the left’s Reid Hoffman be able to outperform the Koch brothers if you grab him in the first round? Is George Soros past his prime, or could he muster up some value as a late round pick due to his experience in the influence game? Can the crypto billionaires make a mark as political rookies? Maybe this is how ESPN can bolster their ratings.

In many ways, the 2024 election was one elaborate billionaire matchup. Chris Hedges saw this election as the battle between corporate and oligarchic power. I’m inclined to agree with his framing. This is why it’s harder for me to feel incensed about Elon Musk’s influence when you consider how right-aligned voters felt about the left’s influencers in 2008 and 2020. The same should be obvious for an increasing amount of blue-collar workers cheering on Musk because he chose the GOP. These billionaires matter more than ever, and we should look at their efforts on both sides of the political spectrum.

Kamala Harris’ campaign outspent Trump’s, but key contributions from Musk turned out to be quite influential in his victory. If this is what our democracy is driven by, I think we owe it to ourselves to stare the process in the mirror and reject the convenient narratives. The ones that say our opponents are bought and paid for while the billionaires funding our side are enlightened and self-sacrificing. This sort of worldview ends up turning us all into hypocritical patsies.

I have seen way too many on the left rail against Musk this week, only to conveniently forget when big tech platforms supposedly helped Trump win in 2016, only for them to swing left in 2020. Heck, the left was downright excited when these oligarchs colluded with the democrats to limit conservative political speech during COVID. There are many examples of this sort of cognitive dissonance. When you only see the boogiemen where you want to see them, you do the elites a favor and become easy to manipulate.

I am not interested in campaigning for either team of billionaires. All I hope is that my opinions end up impacted by billionaires as little as possible. That is core to my skepticism of mainstream media, and it should be core your skepticism as well. Because no matter which candidate you backed or what you read in the news today, you are downstream of a wealthy person’s influence. Let’s face that with clear eyes.

As someone who rarely feels comfortable in an ideological camp, the 4th of July confirms my lack of a tribe. I feel more patriotic than most of my colleagues on the left, while my friends on the right equally concern me with their red, white and blue overalls and the “WTF is a Kilometer” t-shirts.

I need to check in on the American project in my own way, perhaps as a milestone before what could be the end of democracy, depending on who you ask. To contextualize my thinking, here are 5 truths about America that I like to keep in mind. These truths are not inherently positive or negative. If America fails it will be due to these truths not being understood or utilized by our leaders. And if America succeeds, it will be because we wield these truths to our advantage.

America is a Society of Individuals, not a Nation of Collectivists

The United States of America should also be perceived as the United People of America. Our political and economic system is designed to empower the freedom of the individual at the cost of the group. Designed to counter the collectivist pressures of the old world, America became a place where immigrants could become anything they wanted. This has been confirmed time and time again, especially during historical moments when theocracy, communism and other collectivist politics took hold elsewhere in the world. Everyone here is free to think what they want, and that has allowed the country to change an immense amount in a relatively short span of time.

This is a difficult tradition to put back in the bottle, and one that particularly angers the religious right and the communist left. Americans view a club that can supposedly solve all their problems with skepticism or scorn. This creates unique political challenges for those attempting to change the status quo, but it also makes us resilient in ways that few countries can match.

America is Built on Competition

As a nation of individuals, everyone in America is taught to focus on getting theirs. This is how businesses operate, and how individuals often approach their lives. The creation of wealth through competitive enterprise gives people the power to change the country and the world. Is it elite driven? Absolutely. Is it less elite driven than any other form of society in history? 100% yes. Skeptics will call this a lottery ticket, but our system still gives the average person better odds than the old world, which is filled with entrenched elites that still stem from land ownership and aristocracy.

My favorite example of this is America’s westward expansion. Despite numerous ethical and logistic challenges, the government basically created a free-for-all to settle the western states. It created chaos, violence, wealth and fresh starts for millions of immigrants. The competitive souls survived and thrived. Those who lost or avoided competition would fade away. These traditions are engrained in our culture, whether we like it or not.

America is a Capitalist Experiment

Sorry socialists, this is an unfortunate truth for you. Because of this competitive ethos, America has been shaped in a way that makes wealth accumulation and pro-business policies the norm. Now, wealthy individuals and corporations hold an outsized sway over the nation’s politics and media. This should not be surprising for anyone. This is also how things work in every other country. America just offers that “lottery ticket” that I mentioned earlier, which gives people the perception of a true meritocracy. We aren’t there, but we’re closer than most.

However, America is an odd mix of socialism and capitalism that still impresses me. We have plenty of welfare in place for the elderly and the poor. When circumstances have gotten bad enough for workers, they’ve largely gotten better wages and conditions. Those workers have also experienced numerous quality of life improvements driven by technological innovation and lower costs. When businesses go too far, they often fail, even if they’ve corrupted government officials along the way. We are far from an Anarcho-Capitalist state, and that can concern you or comfort you, depending on where you sit.

America is a Nation of Immigrants

Okay, it is time to upset the conservatives. Immigration has been America’s primary path to success. We have used it to collect scientists, inventors, capitalists, laborers from all over the world. Some were fleeing collectivist societies run amok, while others were simply greedy. The result is largely the same, a more dynamic society that improves our standing in the world. A vast majority of the top companies in America are run by immigrants who chose to come here, creating domestic wealth and influence for them and their employees.

The day America ceases to be a place where people go to build a better life is the day that our experiment begins to fail. Immigrants have saved this country more times than I can count, and we have room for plenty more of them. If you believe in competition and ambition as part of America’s success, you should welcome new entrants that bring new ideas into the fold. This truth also enhances our individualist nature, as these immigrants bring their own culture and ideas. Immigrants make us ideologically resistant to groupthink and totalitarianism.

America is the Most Dynamic Society on Earth

In less than 300 years, America has become history’s most powerful empire. We have been on the winning side of two of the world’s most terrible wars. We have landed on the moon. We invented the Internet, blue jeans and, unfortunately, pickleball. Our political leaders have avoided nuclear disaster, while also displacing and destroying millions of lives through proxy wars and conflicts. We are a mixed bag of genius and stupidity. Benevolence and malevolence.

We are also the most propagandized people on earth. Political elites, foreign powers, and New York ad executives have highly motivated interests in changing the way we think. This works on an enormous amount of us. Citizens vote against their own best interests, and they buy things they can’t afford. The American individual, love it or hate it, is flawed. But this individualism has created a dynamism that’s solved more problems than it has created.

How is the American Experiment Working Out?

This is a question I revisit often, and I could think differently in a matter of months. My gut tells me that we are at the end of the Neoliberal order that took hold in the 1980’s. Our elites are much too wealthy, old and out of touch. This will surely lead to some turbulence, but history makes me confident in America’s ability to pivot. We have countless advantages over the next 50 years. Because of this, I am not a doomsayer. That said, we have plenty of chances to screw this experiment up, so let’s keep thinking, discussing and debating where we’re going next.

Good evening, America. You have no doubt experienced the culture wars, but as the battles have raged on, I regret to inform you that the conflict has expanded. And what’s up for grabs? The opinions of normal people, who would rather focus on their own lives. However, turning these individuals into rabid, ideological participants is the fuel that keeps the conflict going, until it can result in real-world consequences.

These are the Influence Wars, where left and right fights for the soul of America. Will one side win decisively on this memetic battlefield, or will the stalemate lead to upticks in violence and authoritarianism? Find out in our latest correspondence from Link Klickmann.

Link, what can you tell us what you see from where you stand as an embedded journalist in the Influence Wars?

Well, the conflict is surely heating up. Both sides are pushing on multiple fronts to get an edge in November, which may serve as a crucial victory. That said, both camps said the same thing four years ago and here we are. The good news is that most of the conflicts are isolated to digital battlefields. While it’s certainly challenging for me to be on the frontlines each day, the lives of many Americans haven’t been directly impacted.

But surely, Americans know the how large the war effort is to determine who holds sway over the various cultural spaces in this country?

Oh, they get bits and pieces of it, sure! An Instagram story here, a Tweet there. Everyone knows a few family members who are actively waging this war on Facebook every day. Their politicians are influenced by it, but it rarely translates to legislation.

Other than a few awkward holiday conversations, or some lawn signs, most Americans can close their phones and forget the conflict.

Isn’t that a good thing, Mr. Klickmann? Shouldn’t we want most Americans to live their lives as normally as possible?

Well sure, it does sound nice to focus on yourself and your loved ones, rather than the ever-divisive Influence Wars. I sure wish I could do that, but it’s too late for me. My family left me months ago because of this job! I am simply too online.

The same can be said for the war’s most ardent fighters. However, both war camps are increasingly adamant that this conflict won’t come to an end until everyone has chosen a side. In their eyes, the only way to get anything done is to shame and subjugate the other half of the country. To do that, they need everyone influencing, commenting and posting as much as possible.

Well, that’s certainly one way to put it, Link. Anyways, where do both of those sides sit in the cultural conflict today?

We’ve certainly seen some surprises. With both sides unenthused by their generals for November’s skirmish, I’ve tracked many indirect movements that saw each side attempting to galvanize and gain support in new ways.

For example, the right has made a strong push into the technology sector, hoping to gather fans among those who have been common punching bags for the left. They’ve even landed a few advancements in television and movies, with last year’s success of Yellowstone and Top Gun. That said, those wins can only stand out due to some struggles on the left, with numerous left-aligned theatrical and TV releases failing to reach the audiences that they hoped for.

The left, meanwhile, has had a shocking win in the world of sports with Taylor Swift making inroads among NFL fans and Middle America. Her tour has been the hottest ticket in town, and her romance with a super bowl champion has helped her garner more power than ever in the Influence Wars.

We have also seen a surprising retreat on the social media front. The left has increasingly abandoned X, formerly known as Twitter, due to being convinced it was losing relevance. On a platform the left once held sway over, the right is regaining a foothold on a medium that was once pushing them to the fringe. Instead, warriors on the left have fallen back to Mastodon, Threads or BlueSky, platforms where mainstream influence isn’t even up for grabs.

Well that is surprising. Can you remind us where each side is strongest?

The left still still operates from headquarters in media, education and among residents of big cities. And of those in the big cities, their rising economic power is apparent. So many of them benefit from technology clusters and post-graduate education, helping them out earn many on the right. In terms of political donations, the left has continued to outspend the right by activating their base for fundraising efforts.

The right is strong in rural, law enforcement, and religious sectors. This combination of conversion and enforcement helps them tighten their influence over small towns and suburbanites that see liberal city mismanagement everywhere on the web. The right has also firmly won over a majority of trade workers, completing a multi-decade reversal kicked off by the loss of unions and those individuals feeling increasing amounts of scorn or neglect from left. This is one battle that doesn’t seem impacted by policy, but rather what the online warriors dub as “vibes.”

And which sectors look like ones to watch ahead of November?

Comedy continues to be anyone’s to win, with jokesters on both sides rising in their ability to influence others. Joe Rogan appears headed to a Trump or third-party vote as the world’s most popular comedic podcaster. Meanwhile, Jon Stewart returned to Comedy Central in time to strengthen the left’s ability to make people laugh. As a recent upstart, Shane Gillis feels like a wild card, with him succeeding among blue collar workers and the Saturday Night Live audience alike.

I’ve also got my eye on the right’s grasp on local news and the always-weird crypto sector as battles that could play a role in this election before it’s all said and done.

Okay, Link, last question before you sign off. Who is actually winning? Who wields the strongest influence over Americans?

Oh, that’s impossible to tell! Laughable to think of really. I’ve fully given up on trying to make sense of it. Every day brings something new and the impact of each battle gets smaller and smaller. Online warriors are increasingly rabid, and some may even call them mentally unwell. Yet most of the conflicts are invisible to the average citizen, so their energy is spent on increasingly ideological spaces that are unlikely to bring new converts.

Quite frankly, the masses seem more disengaged than ever. It may turn out to be a healthy thing for Americans, but it makes it increasingly hard for me to understand how this war will be won. The most rabid of supporters on each side continue to stir themselves up into a frenzy, but it’s hard to know how many Americans are listening, and of those, how many are convinced by the online engagements at all.

For Nuance Node, this is Link Klickmann signing off. Until next time!

Sometimes, he’d see another family’s winnings from the Great American Game, and that stuff seemed pretty good. Some of them had beach houses, vacations and the nicest cars. That was Easy America. As the eldest in a family of renters, single parents and welfare, Hard America was all he knew, but perhaps that could change that if he played the game correctly. If his version of America was going to be easier, he had to figure some things out.

From those around him and those on the news, he started to see that it was a rigged game, but he would play it the best he can. For he was motivated. The rules weren’t complex, and he’d encountered enough people to know that anyone could do well at it. He just needed to get more money, and then America would get easier. Simple.

He was decent enough at school to get some much-needed wisdom and skills. The young man got his first job at the age of 16, after he was rejected from working at the drug store at 15 for being too young. He worked under the table for cash shortly after he learned what taxes were. He was making progress.

Some of those mentors told him he needed a degree, or else he’d be stuck doing physical labor for his wages. They told him to take out debt to get this degree. That scared him, so he went a safer route. He pinched pennies at a community college, and kept that miserly mindset through his last two years at university. A college graduate. Neat. Did he make it to Easy America that quickly?

It would be many years later before he realized that these weren’t the kinds of colleges that guaranteed access into Easy America. That came from the kinds of schools that were much further away, and much more expensive. Also, nobody told him that he should have studied one of a handful of degrees that led directly into high-paying careers. So his humanities degree wouldn’t blow anyone away, but still, a college graduate!

That gets you something, right? Sort of.

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The degree got him through his first few doors, but he would now need to string together a decade of momentum. Luckily he was able to do so, and by all standards he was ahead of where he thought he would be. He’d avoided every obstacle that slowed down his classmates. Student debt? None. Work experience? He had plenty. Nihilism? He was too busy for that.

But still, he wasn’t getting anywhere easily. Every step forward was hard-earned, and it always had a cost. Friendships faded. Hobbies were forgotten. Vices were adopted. Health was inconsistent at best. He was starting to doubt if it was all worth it.

He had more money, which told him that he was playing the game so well. But at the same time, so many others were playing an easier game and getting a helluva lot farther than him. Some even had trust funds, or high-paying jobs waiting for them at 22. It felt tiresome to compete with.

But the Great American Game is not always an enemy. Sometimes, it brings good fortune, and this man was ready to make the most of it.

Things got better in a short span of time. A better job was secured. A life partner was met. Finances got stable, for the first time in his life. He learned about the stock market, which was apparently a hobby for people living it up in Easy America. He understood why quickly, as his investments doubled in value in the span of a few months. He started thinking long term for the first time and it was both thrilling and terrifying.

Success was just a few months away. He was buying a home. This is what everyone told him was the ticket into Easy America. The effort paid off, even if he had seen it not pay off for so many people around him. Sometimes, he thought that he had earned it more than them. In reality, he got lucky and then he didn’t screw it up.

At least he didn’t screw it up yet. He’d heard stories about people who lost it all after achieving so much. The game giveth and it taketh away. He had to be careful. His time in Hard America made him paranoid and scared, like his house of cards could crumble at any moment.

He always believed that Easy America should be accessible to more people, but there wasn’t much he could do about that problem. No matter what he accomplished, it wasn’t going to improve the situation for anyone else. His kids, maybe, if he could just keep it up.

For that to happen, his 30-year mortgage would have to be paid off, and he’ll need to leverage his newfound equity to start a business, or improve his home. But this was all dependent on his home retaining its value. Otherwise, he’d be holding the bag on a heavy amount of debt for a home that his family could outgrow someday.

He also realized that he had been born at the wrong time. In 2015, his same home cost half as much as it did in 2024. Less than a decade earlier, his ticket into Easy America would have been much easier to achieve. The boundaries that separated Easy America from Hard America started to appear quite arbitrary.

Regardless, this man was now a rooting part in the system that created the two different types of America in the first place. He needed stability. He needed others to achieve what he had, but without devaluing his own achievements. At the edge of Easy America, the situation felt precarious. Maybe Easy America isn’t comfortable enough. Maybe he would need to keep striving for something even easier rather than help others get a ticket for themselves.

Millions of people like him will answer this question for years to come: Which way to Easy America?

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I’ve been looking for thinkers that could contextualize this moment and the late Alvin Toffler’s name came up. Future Shock is one man’s attempt at contextualizing the double-edged sword of technological progress. Toffler defines “future shock” as a condition involving psychological stress and personal disorientation that is brought about by the rapid rate of technological and social change in society. If this sounds familiar to you, just wait.

Toffler certainly has his fans, and he has been given some credit by those who remember the novel, yet it has mostly faded to history. We should revisit this book because it attempted to define a shocking amount of the social and cultural issues that we grapple with today under a single umbrella while trying to propose some mitigation techniques that could be useful to us. For no matter how smart we are, or how adaptable we think we may be, future shock can manifest in various ways. We’ve seen it often with ourselves, our loved ones and certainly with random people on social media.

As a disclaimer, there are certainly a few chapters that don’t age well from a politically correct sense, but in true Nuance Node fashion I want to surface some core takeaways that have stuck with me. I hope you’ll find these as interesting as I do, as I think the book is well worth your time in 2024.

Transience is the new norm

The death of permanence is a key theme in Toffler’s thought process on future shock, partly because he grew up in a world where permanence was the status quo. He started in a world where someone would live, work and die in a small radius, to one where travel and migration was commonplace for middle class people. Products also lasted a lot longer in Toffler’s youth compared to how disposable objects have become today. Based on that and more, he predicted the transition to a society more based on transience.

Transience is not just about our fading relationship to objects, but how these changes would go on to shatter many aspects of a stable life that people relied on. Some examples of transience that we are all familiar with:

• Frequent instances of people moving from where they are born to new cities due to work and other opportunities, including the rise of digital nomads

• More volatile swings in the stock market, leading to increasing amounts of recessions, layoffs and job switching

• Boom and bust experiences with cultural trends and fads that constantly shift around us

• The kaleidoscopic explosion of various devoted subcultures and lifestyles

• Software and products that are constantly improving and adapting, faster than many can keep up with

All of these can be summed up by a rising level of transience in our lives. It is a key component of the overwhelming instances of future shock that many people are dealing with today.

Industrialism vs. Super-industrialism

Toffler’s worldview is based on the transition of our economy to one that is more specialized and knowledge-based, something he dubbed to be super-industrialism. The internet was not yet invented, but it would go on to enable the type of economy he envisioned, at least in the majority of the west. It was his view that this new economy would create new lifestyles and migration patterns, radically shifting how our society operates.

By moving from an agricultural and factory based economy to a knowledge based one, super-industrialism has largely taken shape today. The workers in this group, understood more often today as the professional-managerial class, do indeed make up an increasing percentage of the middle class. They live interesting lifestyles. They either live in cultural hubs or as remote workers, and their lifestyle would easily be described as utopian if you were to ask someone from the early 20th century.

Imagine explaining to an early steel worker how today’s middle class technology worker doesn’t even need to commute to work? This growing section of the economy can do their tasks virtually and on their own time, all while having time to pick their kids up from school or order dinner to their doorstop on their smartphone. Oh, and they have more benefits than ever, such as paid family leave, unlimited PTO and subsidized gym memberships. Toffler saw large parts of this shift, and predicted that it would be a radical change for society. Spurred on by COVID, super-industrialism is in full swing, and we can’t know how far it goes from here.

Using Culture Shock as a lens for understanding Future Shock

When we sit down in a well-populated cafe and find everyone looking down at a screen, it can be disorienting. The same can be said of working all day in front of a screen, or having that screen be your only connection to a loved one. In many ways it’s similar to the feeling of getting off a ship in a foreign country, experiencing the unfamiliar hustle and bustle of a city port. We all know the latter as Culture Shock, but we have failed to coalesce around similar language for the former. How much easier would it be if we could just say to our friend that we are struggling with a case of future shock?

We can explore the linguistic opportunity further. The term “culture shock” has helped countless people accept and adapt to being in strange places or among unfamiliar people. Simply by connecting their experience to a term that could be shared and understood by others, we have progressed our understanding of the world and each other. If we ever meet aliens, we will do so based on an understanding of culture shock, and that will equip us to deal with them more thoughtfully. At least I hope so.

The vital role of the futurist

The futurists of old can easily be perceived as a wacky bunch. They may have wrongly predicted flying cars or humankind’s ability to live underwater, but they had a tendency to think in ways that we should appreciate. It’s not what they got wrong that we should focus on, but what they got right and why. For example, Toffler predicted things such as:

• The rise of the experience economy that follows a surge in cheap, commoditized goods

• The concept of decision paralysis in a technological world, dubbed by him as “overchoice”

• Rising levels of stress and anxiety due to productivity improvements and high pace of living

• The increasing cases of information overload, and its negative effects on humans who can’t adapt to the addictive power at our fingertips

The best part about seeing those predictions today is realizing that Toffler made them over 50 years ago. It’s comforting to know that at least some of this crazy world was predicted, for it smooths out our collective frame of reference. If we have been on this path since 1970 in a way that Toffler predicted, then we are on a path today that will surely lead us toward 2070. It is still true that few people can see that path today, but there are likely a few like Toffler who can, and that’s reassuring.

These types of thinkers clearly march to the beat of their own drum, a trait I’ve grown to appreciate as the world increasingly descends into political bipolarity. Both ends of that horseshoe peddle on the idea that the world is ending if we don’t radically change the path that we are on. The futurist can be equal parts optimist and pessimist, rather than someone looking to radically change society’s path.

Can a non-political manifesto reach wide audiences anymore?

The worst part about enjoying this book so much is seeing how little it has been recommended, despite a culture that is increasingly questioning technology’s role in society. Perhaps we need to do a bit more scholarship to find people like Toffler who saw some of today’s problems coming.

The term manifesto brings to mind something else. Can a newly written manifesto ever achieve critical mass in the way Future Shock did in 1970? It was clearly a success at the time, selling 5 million copies and spawning multiple followups, inspiring artists and businesspeople alike. Looking back on it today, I’m sure he’d be disappointed to see that none of his predictions or terminology really caught on in the mainstream technology discourse of the 2020s. That said, I’m sure his followers are out there, if I just scour the web enough. I’d like to meet a few of them.

I live in a city where it’s hard to take a walk to the coffee shop in a hip neighborhood without seeing Marxist rhetoric and I can’t check the news without seeing Capitalist doctrines made manifest. And I don’t mean to harp on these worldviews. In fact, I think Adam Smith and Karl Marx were futurists in their own time. They envisioned a better world, and parts of their vision came true just as it did for Toffler. But by being so prescriptive and oversimplifying the world into one grand ideology, those manifestos have had an exceedingly large impact on the world. They’ve become religious texts in many ways.

In contrast, I think Future Shock can be read by someone on the left or on the right today without much protest from either. And maybe that’s why anyone born after 1980 hasn’t heard of it. You could argue that Toffler should have gone full ideologue so his followers could advocate for his teachings in similar ways to how capitalist or communist texts have done. Like reasonable arguments online or a newsletter focused on nuance, the political flexibility of his manifesto may have been Toffler’s cultural undoing.

It is a bold thought to believe that whatever politics we found tantalizing in the industrial age would not last forever, so he was by no means completely neutral. Toffler simply implies that the battle between capitalism and communism wouldn’t last forever, and instead new possibilities would have to emerge. For according to him, we are now in an era of super industrialism and the same rules that inspired people of the gilded age no longer apply.

Based on where I sit today, I would have to say that he has a point. These two ideologies have had their moments in the sun, and created untold examples of both positive and negative outcomes. But unless we are thrown back in time, we must figure out what makes sense for the next 100 years, not the last 100 years. Labor is different. Government is different. Capital is different. The capabilities of a single human are radically different, for better and for worse. These questions, and many more, can’t be answered by those who reference books from hundreds of years ago, and they can’t be answered by Toffler either. He seems to recognize this better than most manifesto authors, or their increasingly rabid followers.

I’ve increasingly perceived the played-out ideologies of today as becoming a means to an end. For cynics, they are a tool for power. For idealists, they are a tool to achieve utopia. As a normal person, you have the impossible task of recognizing the cynic or the idealist for who they are, rather than being blinded by the virtues espoused by their text of choice. Either way, these ideologies are corrupted by human nature from the starting line. Isn’t it more interesting to take the path that Toffler did? For those ideological arguments were still raging in his time, and instead he looked forward. Maybe we should do more of the same.

As you can see I had a lot to say about this book. It’s provided a great start to 2024 as I try to focus on deeper ideas to keep the noisy world of news at bay. Let me know if I convinced you to check it out.

I want to create more content than I consume in 2024. However, consumption is still a primary way that I engage with ideas. It is likely the same for you, so hopefully you can take something useful from this list. Curation is an important part of how we fix our content diets and find new things that challenge us, so let me know if you have any recommendations of your own.

But first, the disclaimer I still feel obligated to write. I don’t agree with everything I consume online. Actually, far from it. I don’t align myself with any of the content below or their creators. Ideological diversity makes life interesting and helps you avoid blind spots. Without further ado, let’s get to the content.

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Favorite Show: Slow Horses

I thought I was done with being hooked on spy thrillers. That was until I encountered Jackson Lamb played by Gary Oldman. Unique characters and tight writing have turned this into our favorite show. It gets better each season, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

• Runner-Up: How To with John Wilson

• Secondary Runner-Up: The Bear

Favorite Movie: Barbie

A lot has been said about this movie, but I think we’ll be talking about its impact for years to come. I took something out of it about societal roles that was profound, especially given that it was a Hollywood blockbuster and not an arthouse film. Go see it if you haven’t.

• Runner-Up: They Cloned Tyrone

Favorite Song: DANCER by IDLES

• Runner-Up: Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore (An oldie, but highly relevant.)

Favorite Long-Form Video: 2,851 Miles

My favorite long-form video is from a group that I disagreed with a lot this year. While the Venture Capital culture is full of blind spots, this talk on the perils of regulatory capture from Bill Gurley was an interesting reminder that our interventionist economy has often made corruption easier, not harder.

• Runner-Up: “I Almost Ended My Life Because Of The Corrupt & Rigged Beef Industry"

Favorite Short-Form Video: Dark Fantasy AI Storyboards

Art created by AI has been hard to avoid this year, for better and for worse. This was my favorite use of it by far. One person with a clear vision uses Midjourney to create evocative dark fantasy slideshows. Your imagination fills in the gaps and you end up with a clever and compelling piece of storytelling. It really made me believe that human creativity is endless, and AI will only help us push further. Enjoy.

• Runner-Up: Yuval Noah Harari — Money is the best story ever told

• Comedy Winner: Parallel Lines: An Eternal Beef

Favorite News Podcast: Big Technology Podcast

I dove deep on the world of technology this year, and I have learned how quickly that community can get ideological and obtuse. Fortunately, Alex Kantrowitz balances this well, bringing tech news, insight and fair discussion to the forefront without losing the listener on complex rants or purity tests.

• Runner-Up: Plain English with Derek Thompson

Favorite Interview Podcast: Keen On with Andrew Keen

In a world where everyone on an interview podcast has a book to promote, Andrew Keen stuck out this year for giving no quarter. Premises are challenged often, sometimes to the point of being uncomfortable. But the end result is a better examination of the guest and their ideas. The topics are wide-ranging and he seems to follow his interests, rather than whatever the current zeitgeist mandates.

• Runner-Up: Conversations with Tyler

Favorite Non-Fiction Book: The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle

This is a great read for someone who knows when and why America turned south, but not quite how. The sequence of events, key players and turning points are all outlined here without much editorial from Gerstle himself. It’s a good reminder of political cycles, and how we are coming to the end of the neoliberal order. What comes next?

• Runner-Up: What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

Favorite Fiction Book: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Weir returns to form in this sci-fi page turner that inspires and provokes. The universe is filled with challenges and possibilities, and this story captures it all through the eyes of a single science teacher.

• Runner-Up: Interior Chinatown

Favorite Essay: Thinking Is Risky

Both this essay, and the runner up are well worth the read. Just do it, please. Both of these authors are grasping at ideas that have stuck with me since I read them. I hope to create something this thought provoking before I hang up my keyboard.

• Runner-Up: The Three-City Problem of Modern Life

Favorite News Article: Controlled Burns Help Prevent Wildfires, Experts Say. But Regulations Have Made It Nearly Impossible to Do These Burns

Can we please stop shooting ourselves in the foot on this?

• Runner-Up: New York’s Airbnb Ban Is Descending Into Pure Chaos

Favorite Technology Article: TikTok is a Time Bomb

Why we only have ourselves to blame if the algorithms undo us.

• Runner-Up: How to Blow Up a Timeline

Favorite Political Article: Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyone’s Bracing for Apocalypse

A long but intriguing look at those individuals looking for what comes after the existing world order crashes and burns.

• Runner-Up: How the Right and the Left Switched Sides on Big Business

• Second Runner-Up: What does Gen Z really think about work?

Favorite App: Readwise

How did I keep track of all this content you may ask? Readwise. It’s given me the ability to track and retain information better than any app I’ve tried. With highlights tools that sync with my Kindle I can keep all of my takeaways in one place. It also improves readability compared to most media sites these days, saving me time and energy.

• Runner-Up: Artifact

Favorite Video Game: Victoria 3

Games are getting quite good at simulating complex systems and immersing you in history. Enter Victoria 3, a grand strategy game where you control a country from 1836 to 1936, a dynamic period of industrialization, colonization and geopolitics. Will you subjugate your enemies or become a multicultural utopia? This game is a blast for nerds like me, whether you want to change history or recreate. Just be ready to spend at least a dozen hours on tutorials.

• Runner-Up: Baldur’s Gate 3

Honorable Mention: The Time Wasters

That said, not everything I consumed this year was useful or thought provoking. We all have our guilty pleasures. My wife and I watched plenty of NBA basketball, Justified, Succession and Bake Off throughout the year. I also fell back into World of Warcraft as a way to unwind in the winter months. We listened to a lot of old music, and rewatched our fair share of movies. Content can sometimes just be a comfort, and that’s okay.

Next year will surely be interesting, frustrating and perhaps even scary. In the new year, it is my wish that you make a new friend or reconnect with a loved one. Whatever we face in 2024, it will be easier to do if we aren’t alone. Until next year.