Gary Shteyngart

But so there is this, I mean, the way you talk about eating a bowl of pasta, it's fundamentally erotic.

Right.

So often in a bar I'll see people who are together, they're on some kind of a date, a married couple or a non-married couple, I don't know, and they're both looking at their phones.

Mm-hmm.

And there is something about a very unfulfilling but very compulsive world, like beckoning, that I think is an enemy of enjoyment.

There's a lot in there.

So verbaling is very hard for members of younger generations.

I know COVID messed them up as well.

Obviously, people in Generation Alpha, my son's generation, they...

That didn't help, obviously, but I think verbaling is just, well, it is what it is.

Letting sounds come out of your mouth as communication is very hard for people to do, much harder than obviously sending emojis or shortened text messages, etc., stuff like that.

And I think it's interesting when you look at someone who is, for example, doing looks maxing, who is using a hammer.

Talk about the opposite of joy.

This anti-even joy.

You're hammering your cheekbone in to make it a certain metric.

And you feel like this is how you make yourself attractive to women.

But the real way to make, and this, I learned this as a small furry immigrant without a great deal of good looks, you know, you attract women by verbaling with them and saying interesting things, being an interesting human being, listening to them.

And then

getting into conversations with them, having any kind of charisma that allows you to actually interact with somebody of the opposite or the same sex, whatever your preference is.

And this is like, no, we can't do that.