On Stupidity

The question isn't how things got so dumb, but who?

Medicine!

It’s an odd historical irony that informational gluts tend to make us dumber rather than smarter, at least in the short term. Something about the overconsumption of content turns us feverish and droolingly gullible, like wasting disease in deer except with calf implants and crypto scams instead of lethargy and wandering into traffic.

It’s worth remembering that after all the wonders of the Enlightenment, from hospitals and observatories to calculus and the steam engine, Romantic-era Europeans went happily stampeding back to quackery like phrenology, weapon-salving—in which wounds were treated by rubbing ointment on the implements that inflicted them, like fighting bunions by massaging your shoes—and Mesmerism, wherein a fey German doctor in gold slippers and a lilac robe named Franz Mesmer would fine-tune your invisible universal energy using only the force of his “animal magnetism” (a term he coined). The French aristocracy in particular loved it, preferring Mesmerism to treat everything from cavities to gout, and the good doctor was a feature of the best salons of 1800s Paris, where he’d wave his hands and waggle his brow and send various Vicomtes and Duchesses into swaying trances, which is also where we get the word “mesmerized.”

But Mesmer was also properly, internationally famous, arguably the world’s first wellness influencer, the scale and reach of his popularity only possible thanks to advancements in mass media at the time, from harder-working and more durable iron printing presses to the sudden availability of cheap pulp paper to the creation of standardized mail routes. The result was a booming fast-twitch pamphleteering economy full of global hot takes, celebrity news, political smack talk, and “just asking questions” broadsides that, not coincidentally, also helped stoke the American and French revolutions. When drowning in content, the more reactionary naturally cling to anything with the psychological buoyancy of the intuitive and familiar, from naturalism to naturopathy to ethnonationalism, and very often all three at once.

Sound familiar? From Elizabeth Holmes to the Liver King to the current Grifter-in-Chief and his hordes of febrile morons screeching and crashing through every level of government in a pogrom against expertise and professionalism, we’re in a golden age of Stupid. The mesmerizing effects of the infinite scroll all seemed fun and harmless for a while, but now we’re experiencing the revolting, society-wide aftereffects of our gluttony—of pretending that ingesting cheap, snackable slop was the same as consuming high-quality information the way we once gleefully mistook fast food for food, and with similarly inflammatory effects. We’re at Peak Gullible, in a debilitating epidemic of diabetes of the brain.

Eventually, the fever breaks. The Romantics, for all their treacly poetry and thumping nationalism, at least managed to fuck off to the woods for a while and learn how to be bored again, which, as we can all appreciate, is no small thing. The war for our attention—which is to say the war for mastery over our own minds—is never-ending, ludicrously well-funded, and accelerating, and it requires work to counteract the brain rot. Luckily, the best antidotes are as simple as reading a book, putting on a record, going for a walk—no earbuds, no podcasts—or just staring out the window for a while doing nothing. These sound like small, inconsequential things, but in such small things lay the very seeds of our humanity. The greed-mad technofascists want you to trade yours for TikTok dances and fitness influencers’ videos commenting on other fitness influencers’ videos in a puerile, never-ending ouroboros of stupid.

Just remember: You can opt out at any time.

A Cool New Thing

I mostly gave up cologne years ago, having developed a particular sensitivity that translated even expensively-produced scents into a pervasive low-level headache, but I was recently extremely impressed with the new Réservation Parfums, which is both unique in concept and, for me, light enough to be headache-free.

Created by Palm Angels founder and former Moncler creative director Francesco Ragazzi, the idea is an Italian’s dream of California told through a collection of seven intertwined scents. Released together, they take the wearer through a day at an imaginary, sun-drenched hotel, from walking through the jasmine gardens on the way to breakfast to tucking in for the evening wrapped in the crisp, unmistakable scent of fresh hotel sheets. My favorite, Bleu Piscine, with its notes of juniper and geranium, evokes lounging poolside with a gin and tonic; there’s even a scent for check-out, the citrusy Riviera Californienne, with an unmistakable coffee note—a whiff of your to-go cup as you continue your road trip through the Golden West.

(There’s also a distinct French connection, with Ragazzi tapping Frédérique Obin, former brand director at hip Parisian getaway Hôtel Costes, as artistic director, and nose Yann Vasnier, who has created scents for Arquiste, Tom Ford, and Comme des Garçons.)

Full 3.4 fl. oz. bottles are priced from $280 to $320 (for the signature Suite 909 scent) but for those who want the whole experience without dropping thousands, there’s also the “Discovery Set” of seven 0.5 fl. oz. bottles for $450—an especially attractive option considering the scents are subtle, unisex, and complimentary, even able to be layered over the course of the day. Coming across a unified fragrance “collection” is one of those “Why didn’t anyone think of that before?” moments, and Ragazzi, as he did so successfully at Moncler, effortlessly conjures both the wider world of his vision and all of the details that add contour, contrast, and color.

Wristy Business

The new Unimatic U2-GMT “World Timer” ($964, limited to 300 pieces) is a banger and needs to be added to the permanent collection, along with the U4-GMT. Unimatic models tend to look like Howitzers in pictures, and they’re certainly substantial, but the minimalist design combined with absolutely perfect proportions—and the fact that many of them, including my murdered-out U2 CN—are actually just 38 or 38.5 mm means they wear quite reasonably on the wrist.

Permanent collection, please. That is all.