How To Be Cool in 2026

In which we discover that being perceived is simply a tax on the poor.

There was a specific, tragic season.

Let us carbon-date it to the “millennial pink” fugue state of 2016, when the “Hard Launch” of a relationship on Instagram was considered a form of social currency. It was a loud, sweaty declaration of solvency, a way of saying: I have been chosen, here is the bearded evidence, please clap.

In the cold, clinical light …