I see immediately why you thought of it. It's exactly the same theme, identifying the same developments, the same critique, same everything. But - It is not the same. Ha! I've been there!

Whatever the author is talking about can't be the same. Retrospectively, 2017 was infinitely more hopeful. He must be getting all raged up over merely a bow wave in the fog, a neighbor's new baby hippopotamus pet, the rape of Kathleen Maddox, that persistent cough, a first hottest summer.

All the developments were present already, but nobody could have foreseen the sick then. A quick fix: You take every observation in the article and add bath salts.

So, let's make a collage!

> Premium mediocre is food that Instagrams better than it tastes. <

> The essence of premium mediocrity is being optimistically prepared for success by at least being in the right place at the right time <

> But the demographic at the very heart of the phenomenon is the young, gentrifier class of Blue Bicoastal Millennials. The rent-over-own, everything-as-a-service class of precarious young professionals auditioning for a shot at the neourban American dream, sans condo ownership somewhere at a reasonable distance from both the nearest meth lab and minority ghetto. <

Venkatesh, gentrification is over. The minority ghetto became unaffordable all by itself. Oh, and the meth lab got acquired by Big Fentanyl. Must be popular, draws more people to the sidewalk than a Supreme store.

Oh dear! We're not faking enjoyment for our friends on Instagram anymore. We either made it early in the business of exploiting teenage insecurities, or we aspire for the Girl-Boss Dream on OnlyFans. On C-SPAN, Mark Zuckerberg is telling the judge, a child's suicide wasn't his fault. You can pretend you care, read about it behind the New York Times paywall, or retweet the trending blue check antisemitism spin on X, for free. X is what you called Twitter in 2017. But, you know, on bath salts. Anyway. Or... you come watch me unbox this gift from my sponsor Bad Dragon! You do this for me and I get under the knife for you. Backyard fillers minimum. Instagrams better than it feels, to be honest.

(BTW, I think you can buy optimism on BetterHelp, now. Link in the description.)

Everthing-as-a-service used to mean Office365 and outsourcing corporate infrastructure to The Cloud.. in 2024 we mean a paid subscription for a calculator app.

If you're ugly then there is only the option of a full stack bootcamp, the one in eight billion chance of creating your own means of extraction.

> It is a class for which I have profound affection, and one whose eventual success I am sincerely rooting for. <

Yeah. Because you haven't mentioned climate change even once, Venkatesh...

> Premium mediocrity is in part a theater put on by Maya Millennial in part to spare the feelings of parents. Inter-generational love, not inter-generational war. <

> the consumers of premium mediocre things are generally strongly and acutely self-aware about what they are doing.

... well, now best we can offer is this peace deal: We get the house and all the pre-war money left - and until you're dead, you will carry the sorrow, Daddy! Or, you know, next pandemic we won't stay home.

> That leaves the cryptocurrency lottery as the only documented way up open to all, regardless of skills. <

Crypto is over, so that's it, huh?

> Unlike a covered call, which is about promising to sell what you actually own, a naked call is about promising to sell what you don’t actually own. <

Rhetrotorical question. Funniest thing, you don't have to explain naked options in 2024! Lol.

If your parents death isn't that promising, you better haven't held the $GME and $TSLA bag, but got lucky with $NVDA or $RHM instead. Why Nvidia? Oh, boy!

> You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do. <

Why Rheinmetall?

Yeah...

Okay, lastly, our collage gets a center piece: A 2017 truth remaining faithful and a 2017 wish becoming true ...

> The public markets are no longer reliable wealth builders, while the private markets exclude almost everybody who isn’t already wealthy. <

> Because you see, while it is somewhat important that everybody drink some kool-aid, it is absolutely crucial that the leaders drink a lot of their own kool-aid. <

Underneath we put picture of Peter Thiel's survival bunker in New Zealand.

Nauseating nostalgia. I would really, really, really love a follow-up by the author!