There’s a massive cultural shift happening behind the scenes and it’s so complicated that I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Yesterday I passed by a group of about 20 people, sitting outside, on the grass, in a park, talking, laughing. No phone in hand. None. They were literally just touching grass. I stood there and stared for a while. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it since the early 2000s.
Then I remembered something else: my IG feed keeps showing me these people from the 80s, tanned, relaxed, and big-haired, having a great time with each other, outside, on the curb, at golden hour. Sometimes they have water fights, but usually they just laugh with these beautiful pearly teeth.
I’m not going to lie — it looks amazing. I thought it must just be me, because I have a thing for the 80s and the algorithm must have picked it up, as it usually does. But then I took a step back and reassessed: it’s bigger than that.
It’s not about the 80s, it’s not about melancholia. It’s about people opting out of the online life.
Have you noticed more and more people read real books lately? Real paper books, out in public. Seriously.
Just look around — they’re the new wave of people trying to break free of this brave new tech-heavy AI-ridden world.
They read physical books on public transport. They own a camera that isn’t a phone. They don’t know what went viral yesterday, and they’re not apologizing for it.
They seem, somehow, calmer than everyone else — less reactive, less hollow-eyed, less like someone who just survived a war they didn’t sign up for.
They’re not off the grid in any dramatic, survivalist sense. They don’t announce it from the mountaintops. They’re just… not that online. And increasingly, that’s the most interesting thing a person can be.
We’re living through a status inversion, and most people haven’t consciously registered it yet. But they feel it. The same way you feel a shift in temperature before you look at a thermometer.
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