The Mainstreaming of Loserdom

On staying home v. going out, brat summer, and the ethics of rotting

I know the title is provocative, but let me make my case first. Over the past few years, something has shifted in the perception of acceptable recreational behavior, or the way people talk about their hobbies: people are gleeful to admit they have no hobbies, no interests, no verve. Somehow, one of the main “hobbies” accepted by the masses is staying home, laying in bed, scrolling on their phones and watching television.

What happened?

Not to channel my queen Lexi Featherstone from “Splat!” (One of the most memorable episodes of Sex and the City ) but it does seem like no one’s fun anymore online. Earlier this month, Charli XCX had a birthday party as part of Brat Summer and thousands of chronically online Twitter users rushed to proclaim that they never partied as a weird form of moral superiority.

75,000 people agreed with this 😔

A TikTok of a woman saying her favorite place to be was in bed got 28 million views, with thousands of people agreeing that all they cared about was being home/being in bed. Another TikToker stated that his favorite place in the world to be was in bed watching television, and he didn’t need to go to the club at all.

My issue isn’t with the action, per se (although when soothsayer Glamdemon2004 said “name three hobbies you have outside of media consumption” three years ago people went absolutely nuts and bullied her off TikTok) it’s with the perception of it. In the nineties, going out was the height of glamour. The SATC girls were always partying. The characters on Buffy and Charmed were always at the club. The culture yearned for Brat Summer because we’ve been fossilized, idolizing being at home. It was clear twenty years ago that someone who rarely engaged with their peers, didn’t really have friends, and didn’t really leave their house wasn’t aspirational: they were odd. 

Shot, chaser.

I know what people are going to say: not everyone drinks, not everyone parties, we have social anxiety, everything is too expensive (a future Substack is about our current Economic Crisis and the performance of poverty online). I don’t want to blame the phones, but I will say: the dating apps are in crisis. People aren’t meeting in person. There’s a singles wall in New York City, famously one of the easiest cities to be single in. People are taking up running to meet one another. We’re in a loneliness crisis. People simply aren’t connecting the way they used to, and I won’t be the bad guy for pointing out that it doesn’t surprise me that people are desperately lonely while also saying their favorite hobby is… staying home.

I’ll also defend myself preemptively and say not everyone has the same threshold for social interaction, which again, is fine. My issue is that I do not believe that the millions of people engaging with these posts all have very literal tolerance for social interaction. There is the issue of an individualistic culture and declining social etiquette (posts about people stating “I hate my coworkers and I hate small talk and I refuse to engage in any conversation outside my job” routinely go viral, and I think that’s a failing of etiquette, sorry!) allowing people to state these opinions without shame, but it does feel like a larger societal failing that the activity people crave the most is scrolling on their phones, watching other people live their lives.

Not all is lost: some of Gen Z realize something is going on.

I’ve been on the internet for twenty years: I’ve been on fanfiction.net, I’ve been on Livejournal, I’ve been on Tumblr. I was surrounded by people who spent time alone, but they were creating. They were writing, they were generating, they were knitting and sewing and painting and dreaming. The specific activity I’m talking about is a lack of any of this. The people screaming from their rooftops about how they don’t go anywhere and don’t have any friends aren’t the same people writing 70,000 words of Harry/Draco smut, I’m sorry! I know my people, and this feels different. It feels more sinister. Posting fanfiction online is a bid for community. Scrolling on your phone is not.

The discourse around Brat Summer was fascinating. Someone tweeted that Charli probably didn’t party the way she claimed to in her music, that she had a 15 step skincare routine and went to bed by 9. It was a joke, but it was also a failure of imagination: people couldn’t believe that she was actually partying. People couldn’t believe she was outside for real. When a video surfaced of her doing drugs at a rave, Gen Z melted down. How could she? (I will point out that the most repeated lyric in “365” is bumping that, another lyrics asks should we do a little key? Should we have a little line?)  

Shot, chaser v2.

Another viral post asked if Brat Summer was just about watching rich people have fun, with some saying “they’re not actually having fun, they wish they were on their phones”. I promise you, some people are actually having fun! There is fun to be found outside of the phone!

There are some signs of life from the younger generation. I recently saw a post asking why people were shaming others who did enjoy going to the club, while this post asked if she was the only 24 year old who didn’t enjoy going to be at 9 PM and dressing like someone’s aunt. It feels like a psyop: the people who are out partying aren’t online, so the online folks have coordinated this mass push to make us believe partying is bad and staying home alone is the solution.

On social media, we’ve seen this belief that once you get a partner or turn 25 the “adult” thing to do is to be home with them every night, and that going out is childish. On Twitter a few weeks ago, someone was saying that this is an odd belief: there are entire jobs that rely on people networking, going out, and “partying”, well into higher levels of responsibility. I’ve been to my fair share of literary events, I’ve worked at advertising agencies, I’ve seen people much older than me getting down. It’s not looked down upon because it’s part of the job, and the people hired for those roles are much more inclined to crave that level of social interaction. There isn’t some switch that flips when you turn 25 that makes you believe leaving your house is ungodly. 

Putting all of this together, I do think a combination of loneliness, social anxiety, unlimited internet access and economic crisis are possibly combining into something. We have viral TikToks of saying “people think I’m depressed because I’m always in bed” and a viral tweet of people clamoring for an oddly shaped couch bed, promising they’d never leave their house if they could own it (“96,000 of you are Jack Russell terriers” made me laugh out loud). I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility. If someone is saying the only thing they want to do is sleep, it’s not strange to wonder if something else might be going on. As Buffy once said, “I didn’t jump to conclusions. I simply took a step and there conclusions were.”

I promise I’m not attacking: I’m questioning. I do think an over-identification with the introvert label (as both Millennials and Gen Z are wont to do) and the rise of bed rotting and the ease of opting out of society has created an illusory community around… not doing anything. I don’t think these people need to be shamed (I’m sorry for the title of this post, but it’s too good to change) but I wonder if they need to be brought into community. People aren’t going to church, they aren’t joining civic groups, they think posting online is activism, they aren’t making friends, or their friends live too far away, or their friends are married, etc. When I wrote about situationships, I came to the same conclusion: loneliness makes us do strange things. Whether staying with someone who treats your heart like garbage or creating an online campaign to make us believe being home is the answer, I think a lot of posting is a genuine cry for the warmth of other people. 

If you need me, I’ll be outside.