Live More 90s

Bad posture of the spirit

Hello again,

I have been talking a lot about a premise to adopt for a generally better quality of life with a friend of mine, Monica. The working title of the premise is: Live more 1990s. (Yes, Rachel and Monica in the 1990s. We need to make a friend called Chandler.) I thought I’d share it with you here.

The basic idea is that some of the unpleasantness of being alive right now is due to everyone being on their phone and/or the computer too much, and then being malsocialised because of it. And also just that the computer gives people a general aura of hunched backs and grey pallors and so on. Both physically and spiritually. Think of it as bad posture of the spirit.

There’s other stuff in here too. I think the notion that it is a good thing to be able to sit in your house and order everything to your door cheaply, thanks to the frantic labour of people being exploited in ever more creative ways, has contributed to malsocialisation. I think there is too much indulgence of slop and anti-intellectualism because it is always argued that nobody has even five minutes of attention span left anymore. And that convenience culture in general means everyone is surrounded by badly made crap which doesn’t make them happy. There is just way too much stuff which shouldn’t exist. I read that Shein adds between 2,000 and 10,000 new styles of clothing to its offering every day. Even if this was somehow made ethically (how?), this number alone is grotesque and indefensible.

How many new types of clothing should one single clothing retailer post to its website every day? I actually think one is too many. This constant deluge of pointless stuff is killing the planet. I also think it’s killing our creativity. Have you ever been to Dungeness? Or any other large flat expanse of land? Do you remember your dreams the night after? Mine are always so strange and vivid anytime I go somewhere with no clutter on the horizon. Shein is the opposite of Dungeness. This is a totally unscientifically supported and woo woo statement, but I believe this feeling of being surrounded all the time by all this stupid rubbish is making us all feel claustrophobic and stressed constantly.

So I have started making a list of ways to live more 1990s.

This is not meant to be historically accurate. And if you are the kind of person who reads this so far and thinks “I need to tell her that society was less socially progressive in the 1990s than it is now” then this was always the wrong substack for you and you shouldn’t be here.

• Turn your phone off while watching TV and reading and certainly in the cinema. Commit to just doing one entertainment activity at a time. So many people complain about their attention span being ruined by social media, but you do have the power to do something about it. At least commit your full and proper attention to entertainment, if nothing else.

• Turn your phone off regularly. At least once a day for one hour. Get someone to hide it for you if you don’t think you can. What will happen in that time if it is off? Who will die?

• No food from Deliveroo or other food delivery apps. If you want takeout go to the restaurant or wherever in person and speak to the human beings who are working there.

• Don’t buy new clothes. Everything is badly made now, even top end designer brands. Buy second hand and find a tailor and a cobbler in your area and take your things there to be mended. Go to the same one and build a relationship with the human being who works there and they will probably give you discounts. It’s also just fun and interesting to speak to the people who work in these places, they meet all kinds of people every day.

• Go to the same coffee shops and so on in your neighborhood and chat to the human beings who work there without being annoying.

• Pay for more creative work. Perhaps this substack could be a start.

• Death to weird parasocial relationships. If you follow someone on social media and you have never met them, whatever you think of them, you don’t know them. If you have met them twice and spoken to them for five minutes each time, you don’t know them. Any relationship you feel you have with this person or impression you have of them is entirely your projection. It is all invented by you, it is a fantasy. If this is negative that is your fantasy, if it is positive that is your fantasy. You shouldn’t be talking regularly about the life of someone you have met once or twice. You shouldn’t be talking to people about things you have imagined or invented about another person as if these inventions are real (doesn’t that sound like the definition of madness?). You shouldn’t be keeping obsessive tabs on someone you have never met or you’ve spoken to once. Develop healthy low stakes grudges against coworkers who bump around the office being annoying with their tupperware and the like instead.

• There are negative elements of contemporary dating that you personally can’t do much to change. We live in a patriarchy and that isn’t new. Apps do seem to have introduced a new suite of neurosis. (I’ve written about this before quite a few times). But you can choose to be governed by that neurosis or to try and step outside of it. Make an active effort to speak to strangers in bars and in the queue and coffee shops and so on. Just say hello, comment on the weather, get used to talking to strangers and making eye contact. I was talking to a person slightly younger than me about their dating struggles recently. (Single for a few years, actively dating but not had more than 3 dates with any one person. Has had, by their own admission, bad sex twice in that time).