How Do We Get Out?

Imagining a marketing campaign for reality.

In my day job as a strategist, I read a lot of trend reports.

Usually, I find them insufferable. Microtrends with cutesy names: “Generation Sell.” “The New Satisficing.” “From Media Snacking to Media Dieting.” Shudder.

Today, though, I saw one that was making predictions about how people will be feeling in 2026, and it was telling.

This one didn’t feel like the others.

In place of leisure trends and the expectation that this — this — will be the year when VR finally becomes popular, the headline was basically:

“Life is meaningless now and people are starting to notice.”

Seriously.

Their “trends” include: how technology is making everything feel pointless; racism and bigotry are increasingly popular; work is awful; there are altogether too many trends (thank you for that, trend report!); and we are all lonely as fuck.

Finally a future trends report I can believe in.

I can’t share the actual report with you because it lives inside a gated service my work pays for.

But the specifics aren’t that important.

What does feel vital to me is that a company whose job it is to forecast trends in order to help capitalist companies and the marketing agencies that work for them sell more shit is basically saying: nobody wants anything anymore.

They just want this to stop.

And I will say this: that is correct.

I’ve been wondering about this idly for the last little while: is there a way to start a movement around this exhaustion?

Can we get people “buying in” to not buying things anymore?

Turning off their devices?

Maybe throwing them into a body of water?

And then sharing what they have with one another. Hanging out together in real life.

Maybe everyone brings a snack and something to drink? A sort of pot… luck?

It’s called “hanging out.” And apparently it’s free?

I know it sounds like I’m pitching some kind of paid lifestyle club, but I don’t think I am.

Most of us have heard about the anthropological research that says human beings evolved to live in a community with and “know” a maximum of about 150 people.

That’s how early communities worked. People weren’t members of nations; they were members of tribes.

Those tribes did most things together, because they had to. There was no infrastructure layer to build roads or provide services or charge taxes.

Instead, it actually did take a village to raise a child. Or a barn.

Or really to do anything at all.

I’m sure life wasn’t idyllic all the time in those situations. There was probably a lot of incurable disease and death. People were no doubt immensely less comfortable than we are. Privacy would have been nearly impossible to come by.

But then, I look around at all the insanity that makes up modern life — a life in which we are all working very hard to afford to buy products we don’t need whose manufacture is literally rendering the earth unlivable for our children and grandchildren while staring at little rectangles of light with the primary purpose of selling us more of that selfsame stuff — and I wonder.

This isn’t working.

I’m sure the trend report will be used by agencies like mine to convince clients to run campaigns and take other actions that make people feel seen in their helplessness.

It might even work for some of them.

“Oh, that brand really gets it. Things are bleak. And I could go for a diet soda.”

I’d like to consider how those who are sickened by that idea (which I’d wager is most of us, if we pause to think for a moment) might do instead.

Could we come together to help people in need?

Could we demand that our governments stop funding genocide and war and death?

Could we dance together and make music without spending money?

Could we talk to one another while making eye contact? (Not like excessive eye contact. But also no phones.)

Could we make some really great food and share it with anyone who’s hungry?

Yes we could. Will we?

The answer to every one of these questions is “of course.”

But I myself don’t do these things.

Instead, I look at my glowing rectangle of light and see if it has anything new to show me.

I do talk to friends through the rectangle, and that’s good. But maybe it would be better if I spoke to them and heard their voices instead.

I also go to marches. Sometimes. I want to do more of that.

But what I’d really love is some help with all this.

I want someone to show me easier ways to live a real, valuable life.

A life that connects me to other people in a way that benefits me and them, not in a financial sense (although sharing things we already own might do just that!) but in the sense of making us more alive.

A life that makes memories not because it’s been carefully engineered to do so by a brand or an expert, but because we humans are natural memory-making machines.

I want to escape from this insane thicket of digital garbage that we’ve built around ourselves, and stand together, dazed, in natural light. Then, once we’ve caught our breath, I want us to high five and get on with it.

What’s the pitch?

If you’re reading this and any of this resonates: what does it mean to you?

If you were trying to advertise real life to people — not as a way to sell something else; as a way to get people to really live — how might you do it?

I think reality is actually sexier than the sexiest ad campaign ever made.

I think we are all desperately hungry to drink from the well of real human connection without needing to tap our card before grabbing the bucket.

Marketing has made me want a lot of stuff throughout my life.

I’d love to see if it can make me want something I actually need.

How about you?