Who gives a fuck? Who gives a damn?
A love letter to every rogue neuron screaming, pleading, demanding "let me live!".
i. prologue
I’m Antonio (hello!)—war-spawn from Bosnia, paper-clipped into Austrian bureaucracy. ADHD brain a busted neon sign: flicker-flicker—BURN—blackout—flicker again. Day job? Marketing. Translation: rearranging buzzwords so CEOs can expense new fancy-pantsy cars. Mental health problems thicker than my pay-stub.
And so, cigarette dangling, dead-serious: Who. Gives. A. Fuck.
ii. commandments
Work hard, play later.
Later is a lie. Cemeteries are stacked with loyal employees still wearing company lanyards.Buy property.
Chain yourself to thirty, forty, fifty years of interest so some landlord can ski in St. Moritz.Hustle 24/7.
Burnout is the new patriotism. Wear your eyebags like medals.Leave a legacy.
The sun will swallow the Earth in five billion years; your “legacy” is dust.
Leave these scribbled on sticky notes above your desk. HR will think it’s neat. Bless their sweet little empty souls.
iii. cool shit
Refuse official Friday drinks—walk at dusk with punk rock shaking your ear drums like sacrificial pyres.
Answer emails in verse: “Dear Barbara, synergy blooms / in spreadsheets soaked with digital fumes / I have found regret / have you considered? Best regards, Antonio”.
Wear a weird hat to meetings.
Torrent Marxist audiobooks on corporate Wi-Fi—seed generously.
Talk to dogs (they understand).
Ghost the corporate group chat for a week; send a selfie of you eating pizza on a mountain ridge captioned productivity review: 10/10 serotonin.
Enough busted rivets and the contraption wheezes, judders, dies. Take it step by step.
You find yourself in the blessed position of enjoying this masterpiece of art and literature and human expression and philosophy for free. However, I like coffee and nicotine. So feel free to support my addictions (I’m also addicted to paying rent—I JUST CAN’T STOP PAYING RENT, MAN) with a small tip via Stripe.
The best way to support me is by becoming a paid subscriber though. So, if you can:
iv. the philosophy bit (“substance”)
Camus gave us absurdity; Žižek gave us spit-flecked chaos; Graeber gave us the term bullshit jobs (“marketing”), Ligotti gave us horror, many others gave as many more things. Together:
Life is meaningless. (And mostly shite interrupted by brief periods of non-shite.)
Capital turns that life-vacuum into product lines.
We can also just turn it into a playground.
Meaning is hacked together from rained-on cigarette ends, stolen library PDFs, the way your partner mispronounces “Worcestershire.”
Capital wants hierarchy—predictable seals clapping on cue. Absurdism wants buying funny balloons for yourself at 33, writing a book at 47, surfing in Montenegro at 53 and then spending two weeks in a hospital, going to your first techno festival at 68, adopting a feral wolf—loving him, caring, regretting the inevitable breakdown in what you thought was mutualism.
v. on aging & standards
Thirty hit like tear gas: mind slower, hangovers biblical—but also liberation. Other People™ became static. Each birthday gifts one extra not-given-fuck. Not caring so much what others think & perceive is happiness. You are not responsible for the happiness of others, you are not responsible for your parents. Find a few good people and keep them close.
My old goal was “publish a novel by 30.” New goal: “still breathe, still love, torch delusions, do funny shit before lunch.” Feels lighter. Try it.
vi. the beautiful apocalypse
I’m cautiously horny for AI. Not the VC hype— the possibility that algorithms will automate every email shuffle, forcing society to admit most jobs are ornamental handcuffs. Imagine millions freed to garden, code games, do philosophy, cook food, whatever. CEOs screeching while profit graphs flatline; capitalism cannot sustain liberation. Chef’s kiss. Humanity itself might realize that it’s not so special and consciousness nothing mysterious—all the better.
Climate’s still tanking, fascists still marching—but tech leveling the labor field? That’s entertaining at least. Collapse with Wi-Fi may be survivable; collapse with cubicles is hell. White collar? Blue collar? No collar!
vii. radical gentleness
Hug your partner in public, keep hugging for like five minutes.
Tip your barista 50 % when you can; happiness via espresso.
Offer strangers cigarettes and books on existential philosophy.
Tell your inner critic to take unpaid leave until 2070.
Kindness is anarchic in a culture of monetized anxiety.
viii. coda: still the beach
Sous les pavés, la plage! is tattooed on my forearm—a reminder that concrete is costume. Dig. Sand is right there, stupid-soft, waiting, form that shit into whatever you want.
Dig with sarcasm, crayons, union cards, the profane act of doing whatever the fuck you actually want. Overseers will call it laziness, madness, “terrorism of morale.” Let them. While they draft another KPI, wave from the shoreline they swore didn’t exist.
Who gives a fuck?
I do—about every stubborn heartbeat refusing to sync to the corporate metronome.
Now go: break something, build something, kiss something.
All the judgement is meaningless. All expectations are fake.
Time is a scam. Spend it wrong on purpose.
Antonio
Give stupid big tips. Esp if they were rude. Put together a nice lunch for that bum outside the grocery store. Call your landlord a bitch
This was such a wonderful thing to read this morning!