How to Live a More Whimsical Life ✨
Lessons from a weekend in New York
Over the last week or so, I’ve read a lot of pieces from veteran writers with a similar theme: Always Be Blogging.
More specifically, that was the name of an actual post from Nate Silver (the founder and former editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight), who’s now all-in on his own independent publication. He made the case that to become a better writer, you can’t just helicopter in with a new blog once or twice a month—even if that blog is a “banger,” a word I’d never thought I’d read in a Nate Silver column. You have to make space to live life and gain perspective, then dedicate the consistent time necessary to sit down and produce new work.
As someone who’s a bit of a perfectionist, I prefer to save my energy and focus for more impactful, larger-scale projects, keeping the rest of my thoughts and ideas for myself. This blog has been an exercise in pushing past my comfort zone and sharing the “raw copy” every week, all in the pursuit of offering a more regular lens into my worldview.
I’ve kept things relatively low-scale and similar over these last fifteen weeks. But I am curious: Would you want to read a second, regular letter from me? Let me know in the poll below—and hit reply (or leave a comment) with any feedback regarding what you’d like to see.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, I wrote about poetic justice, why real life doesn’t have to be a movie, and why the best movies reflect real life. If you missed it, check it out here.
P.P.S. I’ll be in Chicago next week. If you’re in the city, feel free to reach out—I’d love to say hi!
I think the secret to living a more whimsical life is really quite simple. There’s something so distinct about arriving in Manhattan by train.
Watching as thousands (if not tens of thousands) of NPCs spawn as you take the escalator up into Penn Station. Smelling the exhaust from an endless line of yellow taxi cabs, and the rotten food as trash bags pile outside of Madison Square Garden. Stepping on a half-eaten, bone-in chicken drumstick as you finally orient yourself and begin walking down Eighth Avenue.*
As all of this occurs, you begin to ask yourself an important, poignant question:
Why does everyone pay so much to live here again?
In all seriousness, I love New York. As a kid, I used to get overwhelmed when my family would come visit around the holidays, and it wasn’t until my sister went to university in Boston that I realized not all cities look like Times Square. In my 20s, however, I’ve found the go-go-go electricity to be intoxicating (if only ever for a weekend).
There’s never a dull moment here—even in the little things. Like spotting a bodega cat chase a rat out onto the sidewalk before slinking back into her vaunted territory. Or watching a man in Washington Square Park corral a flock of birds onto his head like he’s Pigeon Jesus. Or attending a boxing match between a local superhero and the anonymous supervillain who emerged to challenge his throne.
I’ve written about the antics of YouTube creator Anthony Po a lot lately, so I won’t belabor the point here too much. Anthony did, indeed, triumph in the ring, defeating (and promptly unmasking) his archnemesis, the Cornhead Killer—aka Andrew Levitt, an on-the-rise creator himself.
What I was curious to see for myself, though, is why. Why has all of this—the lookalike contest, the cheeseballs—resonated so much? Is there something in the water in New York, the mystical substance that supposedly makes the pizza and bagels so damn good? Is there a deeper layer here? Or are people, at the end of the day, just looking to embrace the silliness and have a good time?
Roughly a couple hundred folks showed up to the fight, so I spent some time talking with those lining up outside Church Street Boxing as they waited to get in. One patron, a dogwalker from New Jersey, told me that things can get pretty mundane during the day-to-day, and he really just appreciated the randomness of Cheeseball Man when he stumbled upon the first event on Instagram Reels. He was bummed he couldn’t attend (and eat a banana) at the Banana Boy meetup,** so he traveled into the city via bus for an hour-and-a-half to ensure he didn’t miss out this time around.
Inside, a different patron was in costume, going by the alias of High Five Man. He shared that he finds most of his conversations with peers turn pretty negative these days, as many struggle with depression. “We really need this right now,” he told me, pointing at the boxing ring. “I have so much fun dressing up and pretending to be a superhero for a bit.” He was drawn to this event for the same reason he’s working on a film project and likes to go paint at nearby parks—maintaining a positive outlook is easier when you spend your free time organizing creativity-focused activities with friends.
While these anecdotal responses may answer some of the questions I’ve posed, it all seems a little too cut-and-dry, doesn’t it? Humans are social creatures. Of course we want to go where other people are, and sometimes people are watching a man eat cheeseballs before he knocks another man wearing a corn-themed mask to the ground.
But maybe the grand answer to all this is even simpler than that. According to Hannah Bondalo—one of Anthony’s friends, and an organizer of this event—the key to living a more whimsical life comes down to this idea:
“If a thought comes into your head, you [say], ‘Ah, I’m just gonna go do it.’”
Overthinking is out, dear reader. Just go do the thing.
I think I know what my next upload will be about. I collected a lot of great interviews and footage from this fight, and I can’t wait to share more in the near future.
I think the rise of reality TV explains a lot about our modern world. I finished Cue the Sun! (2024) last week, a delightful deep dive into the reality genre by New Yorker writer Emily Nussbaum. It’s quite the ride: featuring over three hundred interviews with industry workers, Nussbaum takes us from Candid Microphone (a 1940s radio show that served as a precursor to Candid Camera) all the way up to the invention of Queer Eye and The Bachelor. The book builds towards a final analysis of The Apprentice, which took a “sexual predator” and “failed tycoon…too risky for almost any bank to lend to” and “made him look attractive enough to elect as president of the United States” (“That was a coup, even if no [producers] could brag about it,” Nussbaum writes).
What really struck me, however, was how she described the social contract between creators, audiences, and the perception of “authenticity.” By now, plenty of fans have accepted that the inner machinations of reality shows are entirely different animals than the end product shown on screen. Contestants used to be wide-eyed Joe Schmoes; today, they’re aspiring influencers angling to present themselves a certain way. Producers pressure their editors to cut the most salacious soundbite possible; sometimes, that means stitching together audio from separate occasions (a “Frankenbite”) or helping a contestant get a littttle too drunk.
“Any qualms about the medium had faded, long ago,” Nussbaum observes. “The most successful reality show had it all: a titillating flash of the authentic, framed by the dark glitter of the fake, like a dash of salt in dark chocolate. No taste was harder to resist.”
Therefore…
…I think this is the exact reason why influencer culture has overtaken culture. Media is no longer an opaque black box like it once was. Many people know someone from their high school who’s now a creator, or at least an aspiring one. Advertising runs the internet; building an audience means packaging that audience and selling it to advertisers. Stay in the game long enough, and you might have a lucrative career—plus a new energy drink to hock.
But it’s all still so damn effective because For You algorithms sell the idea that anyone can become an influencer—dismissing the notion that looks, wealth, or genuine talent could ever possibly play a role. Distanced celebrity is out; relatability is in. We cheer on the “normal” people doing their first ad read because we see ourselves in them. It’s the modern American Dream.
Further, apolitical individuals flock to people like Joe Rogan or Alex Cooper precisely because they don’t normally discuss hoity-toity topics like politics. That’s the reason why Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went on JRE and Call Her Daddy, respectively—their audiences of potential non-voters are the exact audience necessary to flip and win an election.
If you want to influence culture, too, why pay for traditional ads anymore (or even more modern cudgels, like bots)? “Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” Renee DiResta, a researcher and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, recently tweeted.
Were people better off when they didn’t know how the sausage gets made? It’s up for debate. Millions of viewers still tune into The Bachelor every week. Parasocial relationships are only deepening. It appears like most of us seem at peace with that social contract.
At least we know the decline of American civilization will be an entertaining ride when the authors are well-versed in reality TV. And if you’re looking for a good birthday present for a friend or family member, consider a Cameo from an out-of-work, former politician named Matt Gaetz.***
I think I lost the plot a bit. Originally, I wanted to reserve room to share how some creators are using their platforms to bring people together in third spaces—Anthony being one, and Adam Chase being another.****
It’s a topic near-and-dear to my heart. But maybe I’ll have to save it for next week.
For now, I’ll follow Hannah’s proverb: “If a thought comes into your head, you [say], ‘Ah, I’m just gonna go do it.’” In this case, it’s shutting off my laptop and going to a birthday dinner for my mom.
Happy birthday, Mom!
A lot has changed over the last couple of years. Yet a lot of things have stayed consistent, too. I remain just as committed to making a career off of my creativity, and I’m still amazed when I look back at my writing from college and see how far I’ve come.
I still have a long way to go. I have a couple big projects to close out before the end of the year, as well as a big piece of news to share this upcoming week. For now, I just want to say I greatly appreciate you for tuning in and reading my work—it truly means the world, and I can’t wait to see what this space becomes.
Thanks for reading! Shoot me a reply or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—I respond to them all.
* Yes, this happened to me almost immediately last weekend.
** Man, there really is a lot of lore here by now, huh?
*** I’m sorry, but “I know you were bummed out when the news broke that I wouldn't be the next Attorney General” has got to be the funniest f**cking Cameo message of all time.
**** I saw Adam during my trip to New York, and we talked about Cue the Sun! (among other things) because he himself is the co-creator of a reality competition show. He brought up the idea of society needing a public return to morality, a conversation that tracked for two Ezra Klein-pilled white guys to be having while walking around Brooklyn.
This idea led me to write essays three and four instead of one about how his new card game is encouraging people to venture out into the real world with friends. Tl;Dr—blame Adam.