I was sitting at my desk this morning — third coffee, first cigarette, zero patience — when I watched a woman on the sidewalk outside spend eleven minutes filming herself walking into a CVS. Not walking out. Not finding a deal, not confronting a shoplifter, not discovering a new species of pharmacy beetle. Just walking in. The automatic doors opened. She walked in. The end. Eleven minutes of footage, three different angles, a voiceover about "embracing the journey of errand-running." She uploaded it before she bought her toothpaste. The toothpaste probably has a higher engagement rate.
I sat there wondering when, exactly, we decided that our own business wasn't interesting enough to mind anymore. Then I remembered: we didn't decide. We just stopped being told "no."
There used to be a phrase for this. "Mind your own beeswax." It was stupid. Nobody knew what beeswax had to do with boundaries, but everyone understood the assignment: stay in your lane, tend your garden, don't stick your nose where it isn't paying rent. It was a social contract written in crayon and it worked. Your neighbor didn't know what you had for lunch unless the smell drifted over the fence. Your aunt's political opinions remained safely trapped at Thanksgiving. The guy at the bus stop kept his mole-astrology theories to himself, because the social penalty for unsolicited monologuing was a well-deserved blank stare and, if necessary, a window seat elsewhere.
Now? Now we've got seven billion people running around like they're the protagonist of a Netflix limited series nobody greenlit. And here's the real joke: we're all the director and the unwilling audience. You can't log off because logging off is the only thing that would actually qualify as minding your own business, and we've collectively decided that's a form of emotional abandonment. The algorithm agrees. The algorithm is a snitch.
Take LinkedIn. LinkedIn used to be a place where you lied about your proficiency in Excel and occasionally accepted a connection request from a guy who definitely sells counterfeit sunglasses out of a storage unit. Now it's a 24-hour telethon of personal revelation. "Today I was fired. Here's what it taught me about resilience." Fifteen thousand likes. "I cried in a Target parking lot and it made me a better CEO." Forty thousand impressions. "My goldfish died and I'm channeling that grief into agile methodology." Someone in the comments is recommending a mindfulness app. The goldfish is still dead. No one is hiring anyone. It's just a support group for people who can't experience an emotion without turning it into a slide deck with animations.
And it's not even the big emotions anymore. That's what kills me. We've industrialized the mundane. I saw a post last week — pinned, verified, trending — of a man documenting his entire process of choosing a new belt. Not a special belt. A belt. "6:47 AM: Initial audit of current waist situation." "7:15 AM: Arrived at Marshalls. The lighting here is honest. Brutally honest." "7:42 AM: Narrowed to two options. One speaks to my aspirational self. The other knows what I did in Tijuana." Seventy-two slides. Seventy-two. I counted. The man has the storytelling economy of a municipal zoning hearing and the audience of a Netflix special. This is what we've done to ourselves. We've turned the belt section of a discount clothing store into a three-act narrative arc with a redemption beat. I need a cigarette and I don't even smoke indoors. Much.
Don't even get me started on the gym. People used to go to the gym, sweat in shame, and leave. Now it's a content studio with squat racks. Every deadlift is a cinematic event scored to yacht rock. Every treadmill mile gets a motivational caption about "grinding while they sleep." Buddy, it's 2 PM on a Tuesday. Everyone's awake. The only person sleeping is you, spiritually. You're not outworking the haters; you're outworking the concept of dignity, and dignity is filing a formal complaint. I watched a guy film himself filling his water bottle last month. Four takes. He kept adjusting the angle so the gym logo was visible. The water bottle was empty the whole time. He wasn't hydrating. He was branding. He posted it with the caption "Stay thirsty." He wasn't thirsty. He was thirsty for content.
And here's the part that really takes the air out of my lungs: nobody cares. I mean that clinically. You can post your sourdough starter's daily emotional journey and get forty-seven heart reactions, but not one of those people is going to remember your bread's name in an hour. They're not reading your caption. They're waiting for you to finish so they can post their own sourdough starter, which is also having a rough week, which is also documented in a multi-part story series with licensed music and a tearful day-three recap. It's a vast, humming exchange of nobody caring about anybody, choreographed to look like community. We're not sharing. We're taking turns monologuing into the same void and calling it connection. The void is not impressed. The void has notifications silenced.
The worst part? I'm not immune. I just spent twenty minutes this morning reading an email from Gary. You know Gary. Cabo timeshare. "Two-bedroom ocean view, Scott, this is the week that changes everything." I've never responded. I've never been to Cabo. I don't know how Gary got my email. But I read it. Religiously. Because in a world where everyone is screaming their inner monologue into a megaphone, Gary's straightforward, shameless hustle feels like a lighthouse. Gary wants to sell me something. That's it. No metaphor. No journey. No "what this ocean view taught me about vulnerability." Just a guy with a timeshare and a dream. I respect the hell out of it. I might even go to Cabo just to see if he's real. He's probably posting about it.
I keep the laminated flag in my drawer for moments like this. "Insufficient distance from fact." I haven't thrown it at anyone in weeks because the problem isn't that our writers are too close to reality anymore. The problem is that reality has moved into our houses, set up a ring light, and started a podcast about its morning routine. We used to worry that satire couldn't keep up with the news cycle. Now I'm worried that the news cycle can't keep up with people's breakfast updates. I don't need to know that your avocado was "emotionally complex." I don't need a behind-the-scenes look at your trip to the dry cleaner. I don't need a think piece about what your gym playlist says about late capitalism. I need you — and I cannot stress this enough — to mind your own business.
Because if you did, maybe — just maybe — I'd have enough quiet to mind mine. And right now, mine involves figuring out why our CMS just auto-published a draft headline that reads "TESTING TESTING ¡1¡¡" across the entire front page, which means I have to call Jackie and explain, again, that the ¡ key is not a punctuation mark and we do not live in an upside-down world, even if it feels like it. Especially if it feels like it.
Gary's right. I do need a vacation.
—S.M.