Wine is Boring
On burnout, narcissism, social media, and nihilism
Ettore and I went to Venice for his annual birthday trip two weeks ago. Venice is lovely off-season. It is not highly touristed, and in the low winter light that comes with the season, the colors seem more vivid and mesmerizing, and at night, the water in the canals sparkles like golden Christmas lights. It feels like a dream. People are generally much more pleasant in Venice than in Rome because gruffness and menefreghismo are personality traits. So, I have gotten used to people in the service industry having an edge. It doesn't really phase me anymore. But. Male sommeliers in restaurants. Natural wine is a personality trait rather than an interest. This combination can be fatal.
Usually, when we travel, I make the restaurant arrangements because I want to drink wines that don't make me get heartburn or feel like my throat is burning after half a glass. So, I made reservations at a well-known natural wine establishment that came highly recommended by friends and the Raisin app. I was excited to go because I had read such great reviews. We arrived for our reservations. It is a tiny place, just a short distance from Piazza San Marco. Most places in Venice are tiny. This place was claustrophobic. The wine list was a tome. Great, there is going to be some great wine to choose from. And there were. The place's owner had us taste a pet nat from the Veneto, which was initially gracious. It wasn't. I'll come back to that. The sommelier brought the wine, and unfortunately, it was corked. How did I know it was corked you may be asking, what authority do I have to determine this? I think almost 20 years of working in or with wine, multiple certifications and diplomas, years and years of wine seminars, education, and tastings. Hell, I have even visited a cork factory. All of this to say, I know what a corked wine is. But mainly because the wine was flat and smelled and tasted of wet cardboard. It was corked. No big deal, right? It is something to be expected every once in a while. But not in Italy. And not if a woman points it out. He argued with me instead of doing the job of a sommelier, taking the bottle away, and bringing a new one. "No, signora," he smelled the cork, "This is not corked."
Hmmmm, it tastes like wet cardboard, but ok. He then brings over the owner, and they make a huge scene in front of all the other patrons about how it can't possibly be corked. Pressuring me into keeping the bottle. When I said I didn't want to drink a corked bottle, it was implied that I didn't understand or know natural wine. Really? If you are in natural wine and trying to convince your patrons that flaws are normal and even something to be enjoyed, you are doing a disservice to the wine, your establishment, and the winemaker, who I believe would like to know she has faulty corks. As I refused, they finally caved, only to push this bottle of pet nat the owner was pouring for everyone in the establishment. It was a decent but boring wine, different from the wine I wanted with the food I ordered. He was pushing this wine on everyone in the restaurant. It was as if he had bought too many cases and needed to unload them on us. It was a disappointing experience that triggered something more visceral in me.
Wine people are boring. Especially men in wine. And I don't mean winemakers. I mean the gasbags who think they are philosopher poets gasbagging about wine, thinking they are recreating a Socratic seminar when it is the furthest thing from that. Wine is a point, but it isn't the point. I am so tired of these men who so obviously think a woman can't possibly know anything about wine. They talk at me, over me, and refuse to be gentlemen. I know from conversations that this attitude isn't limited to wine. If you are in the world of art, they do the same. And especially in natural wine, they use it as a personality trait, or rather to cover up the fact that they don't have a personality. I'm here to tell you that wine is not a personality! I've seen their soft, pink, manicured hands. They couldn't hack a day in the vineyard. They've barely touched a potted plant. They go on and on and on about wine and terroir but have yet to spend a minute working on a farm or garden. Or develop a personality. Gasbags. But for me, it's the gaslighting.
Some weak-chinned piece of shit talking over me, at me, trying to invalidate what I am saying and what I know is true. It could be corked wine one day or about a particular vintage the next. Only they have this sacred knowledge about these limited and special bottles; if you even dare to be their equal, they become rabid. Do men know they are like this? I don't see them doing it as much to other men because I think in the case of wine, prattling on about wine bottles is the same as those gross dudes trying to out-dick each other with bigger and bigger trucks. With other men, they are trying to prove themselves worthy as men; with women, they are trying to establish themselves as superior. It's boring. Wine is boring, Men are boring. And as I said, this is not the case with most winemakers. People who work with and respect the earth and her gifts don't tend to need to one up. Up. They are down to earth. When you visit them on their farms, they dig. They want to show you where their wine is born. It isn't born in a sterile bottle but in the dirt.
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As most of my readers have connected with me via social media, you may have noticed I am no longer around. I would say the ick started to flow in me over the summer. I was chronically connected, and it seemed like the people I wanted to know about were also. I felt like I had to keep up, share everything to be relevant, and use social media for business to get people to join tours, tastings, or lunches. As a person with ADHD, social media seems like it was made just for me. We are very prone to seek out novelty. Research has shown that people with ADHD tend to have low levels of dopamine in the brain.
According to Anne Lembeck, author of Dopamine Nation:
Social media apps use AI algorithms to govern and personalize newsfeeds, constantly learning from user actions to suggest content that is predicted to keep them engaged. This creates a personalized experience that is difficult to resist.
The quantification of social interactions on social media, such as likes and views, reinforces the addiction and triggers the release of dopamine, leading to a pleasurable feeling. These factors combine to create a highly addictive product accessible to most people through their pockets.
Constant exposure to social media can significantly impact mental health and well-being, leading to feelings of comparison, low self-esteem, and depression.
I personally felt that social media was really harmful to my mental health. We are at the peak of narcissistic personality disorder as a society. Narcissists are made, not born. We all need validation, and ideally, that validation is given to us as children. Our parents give us the skills we need to self-validate, but that is increasingly uncommon as we reach peak late-stage capitalism and children are raised in the nuclear family, which is about as natural to human evolution as tits on a boar hog. We are social animals, yet we live in a loneliness epidemic. We desire to connect and feel seen and heard, and this rise in internet narcissism has risen from this basic premise. We all feel unheard and unseen, unable to express our true selves. Social media allows us to curate ourselves, but it is performative, it is narrative. Sometimes it is trauma porn, sometimes it is unrealistic beauty standards. But there is so much lurking in the shadows. We are betting against ourselves and our self-worth; we are giving these giant corporations free content and information they use to sell back to us in the form of an algorithm that sells products.
In my case, I get sold coaching programs on permaculture or beekeeping or how to be a dog trainer. Everything we do is meant to be monetized. Going out with friends and sharing a meal is now content. Restaurant lighting is designed with Instagram in mind. Bottle bottle bottles. If I hadn't shared this rare natural wine I enjoyed, did I even drink it? When did the world need to know about my vacations? Holidays used to be about getting away, not bringing everyone with you. And then there are children. Once people are born hell, even as fetuses, they are online. We see them in their ultrasound images. People are online before they can consent to being online, and we've normalized this. It isn't normal. It's actually harmful. I really should not know much about your two-year-old if I haven't met you in real life. It is so easy for predators to find information about children now because parents freely divulge this shit online. On the first day of school, they put their children next to whiteboards that tell me their age, where they go to school, their favorite toy, food, and subject. That doesn't seem safe, but I am not a parent, so what do I know. I feel like even our friendships are curated for social. I see several people with huge accounts who don't seem to have meaningful friendships, and it's like they invite people (like me) around as a photo op so they look more human. Like I am a prop.
I am just so over it. It's like a huge circle jerk between competitive friends and being a product for multinational corporations as the reward. I started thinking, wait a minute, I am a punker from the early 90s; how the fuck did I end up here, addicted to social media and propagandized to believe I need to be on it to be a member of modern society? Ettore doesn't use it; he is a freelancer and highly sought after as a guide. It is a time waster that doesn't add any real value to my life; in fact, it has made me more depressed, more anti-social, and more anxious. Because if it isn't making me feel like I am not doing enough with my life and monetizing every interest, it's making me feel left out when I see friends out without me, it makes me feel ugly when accounts pop up with beauty routines I can't possibly follow (or even care to), and it has made me uninterested in the things I have always valued. I have no attention span anymore! And if it isn't about what's happening to me, it's making me feel totally impotent to all the horrors going on in the world. There is only so much trauma porn one can view before feeling numb or impotent. And does anyone really need to know what I eat or drink, where I swim, or anything about my cats or dogs? Nobody cares, I don't care.
I just don't care anymore. Ettore often asked me, "What is the meaning of life?" And for years, I have said, "Eat, shit, die." and I stand by those words. They motivate me. What is happening between eating, shitting, and dying? That is where life happens. I want to lean into intimate friendships, not little snippets of my life that can be marketed. I want to spend time with my mum before she dies. I want to be present for my niece. I want to be a better reader. I want to be a better reader! I don't care what people think of me; that's their business. Everything just started feeling so fake and convoluted.
Sound bites. Virtue signaling. Trauma porn. The ever-present self-promotion. And it hits like this over and over again. I felt like I was in a time loop or warp. It made me feel alone. I am not going to lie; I felt like I was going to have a mental breakdown. And I started to understand how people end up down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. Being constantly connected breaks the mind from reality. When we are regularly exposed to and repeatedly see the same ideas and images, we can start to believe them. I have been on the brink of believing we are in a simulation. But now I see I dove straight into this madness without thinking about it. Facebook is for political rants, Instagram is for self-promotion, and Twitter is for trolling. And men online are horrible. The amount of unsolicited dicks pics I have received over the years told me what an awful person I am for stating that women are people or calling out misogynists; the violent threats are just normalized. Is this the price I have to pay for being a person online? It isn't worth it. I found myself becoming less and less interesting. And less interested.
Because I was in this time warp, all the interests I had become the product, became things I needed to monetize, or it was like they weren't real. But that's not me. That's curated me. I forgot why I even cared about the things I cared about. My interests, as were my beliefs and morals, were curated. It made me dumb. And for what? Nothing that matters. I was so burnt out I completely stopped wanting to see anyone; I didn't want to organize events or meet-ups. I wanted to avoid traveling, reading, and gardening. It all felt like too much.
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than an impulse to destroy.
That was what I was becoming. I began to think nothing mattered, especially that I did not matter. When we all joined social media, we joined with good intentions. I remembered reading that the bosses and managers at social media companies know that, psychologically, they are selling us a very addictive substance, and they often do not have their own accounts or allow their children to have accounts, just as a drug dealer wouldn't get high on their own product. It's all so very dystopic, and it is by design.
I wanted out.
Every New Year, I list the books I want to read for the coming year. I usually have about 50 books on that list, and ten years ago, that was an easy goal. I've been an avid reader since pre-school. I used to read. I used to write. Books of poetry, short stories, essays, recipes, wine reviews, interviews. Over the years, as I started reading less and less, I started writing less and less. I wasn't making time for reading because of my social media addiction. That was taking up my time. I would cringe when someone introduced me as a writer because I barely publish anything. I barely keep a journal these days. In the first days of taking those apps off my phone, I was compulsively looking at my phone, wanting to scroll. I would go on a webpage, explaining to myself that I needed to look for writing jobs. As if I had anything interesting to say that someone would buy. And then it clicked. he compulsion subsided. I could hear my breath. I started reading again and was completely immersed in what I was reading without needing to check my phone every 5 minutes. I woke up one morning and started writing like I used to. Walking the dogs feels like an adventure instead of a chore. I'm lifting weights and doing yoga. Having my passion for books return made me feel like myself again. After two months of not being on social media, I feel like a real person. What matters to me isn't what gives me the most validation but what cultivates my empathy and what holds my interest. I am simply more present, and for that, I am grateful.
It turns out wine isn't boring. Content is boring. Men with no personalities are boring. When I was in San Diego this past November, my friends and mentors from Los Pilares took me hiking in the backcountry near their vineyard to understand the terroir better. I still get excited when
newsletter shows up in my inbox because she is a person with substance and a fantastic writer. I made a few wine trips in October with and . It was in these conversations with these bright young (to me) women in the car or over food that I held on to because, through them, I have come to see some people have a sense of responsibility, love to learn for the sake of learning and use wine as a thread that connects us to culture, science, biology, geology, history, gastronomy.A plague on the house of the gas bags.
Kudos on learning the only social media lesson which is to leave social media.
Wishing the best for you in 2024. Thinking of you and hoping for peace and tranquility for you and the world