Gary Shteyngart

Just enjoy the fat, you know.

But sometimes this greater meaning combines with this egotistical impulse to have more and more and more, and to not die is one of those almost Protestant kind of extension of everything and striving.

Why should the striving ever end?

Well, there's the search for greater meaning, then there's where you're searching for it.

I mean, one of the fundamental things about SuperSAD that feels like a fundamental thing in modern life is everybody's looking for it in a screen.

And one of the fun fill-ups of the book is that talking to other people is called verbaling.

You've needed to create a different linguistic category for what it is we're doing when we have a conversation.

And, you know, screens are made by corporations.

Yes, yes.

Corporations have their own incentives and their own things they're trying to do.

And what they're trying to do is not make you happy.

They're trying to make you keep coming back.

And nothing keeps you coming back like a ranking.

There was a funny tweet I saw today.

And it said, you know, Sisyphus's life would have been much better if every time he got the rock to the top, he got some points.

And if he could then exchange those points for stickers.

Stickers that he could put on the rock, right?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Oh my God.

Now that is really, really smart.