I've come back to this article 3 times over the past few weeks, such a good one!
A friend of mine recently shared a WGSN trend report that highlighted John Koenig's concept of "witherwill" (the longing to be free of responsibility) from his book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as key emotion moving into 2027. Feels akin to #7! Definitely a communal cry to put words to the feelings around this idea :)
That untethered future one in particular... whoosh
How about that special kind of attention deficit that is ambitious enough to want to read the Substack post, enthusiastic enough to get a third of the way through, and intellectually engaged enough to hold the thought of the post firmly in mind for an extended period of time while nevertheless inevitably tagging it to the "saved" bin which is similarly full of hundreds of other cherished yet unfinished thought experiences.
The cozy yet illusory feeling that posting something to social media, designing a website or engaging in a chatroom, gives the user - a misapplied sense of validation, vindication or productivity; the notion that they’ve done something, are doing something, are an important voice in some wider conversation and their work and ideas are being or will be seen and appreciated and as a result wide acclaim is invariably on the horizon.
The twinned, bookended complete emotion of writing an amazing post on some social platform, feeling like it is might be your finest opinionated literary hour only to return many days, weeks or months later in order to revel in that incredible thing you remember saying to find that not even you can understand what you were getting at.
I've come back to this article 3 times over the past few weeks, such a good one!
A friend of mine recently shared a WGSN trend report that highlighted John Koenig's concept of "witherwill" (the longing to be free of responsibility) from his book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as key emotion moving into 2027. Feels akin to #7! Definitely a communal cry to put words to the feelings around this idea :)
As always, this was such a good reading. Great work!
As a big fan of neologisms, this is great.
That untethered future one in particular... whoosh
How about that special kind of attention deficit that is ambitious enough to want to read the Substack post, enthusiastic enough to get a third of the way through, and intellectually engaged enough to hold the thought of the post firmly in mind for an extended period of time while nevertheless inevitably tagging it to the "saved" bin which is similarly full of hundreds of other cherished yet unfinished thought experiences.
Or this one:
The cozy yet illusory feeling that posting something to social media, designing a website or engaging in a chatroom, gives the user - a misapplied sense of validation, vindication or productivity; the notion that they’ve done something, are doing something, are an important voice in some wider conversation and their work and ideas are being or will be seen and appreciated and as a result wide acclaim is invariably on the horizon.
Or this one:
The twinned, bookended complete emotion of writing an amazing post on some social platform, feeling like it is might be your finest opinionated literary hour only to return many days, weeks or months later in order to revel in that incredible thing you remember saying to find that not even you can understand what you were getting at.