You’re making your way down a bustling metropolitan street on a Friday night. All around you are sounds of perfectly inconvenient Uber arrivals and/or departures that enrage the remaining drivers as they find themselves stuck in late night traffic. General confusion is in the air with sporadic outbursts of excitement and/or frustration. It isn’t easy to tell them apart. Up ahead you see a long line of people dressed up in their finest, shivering, waiting for their chance at a dimly lit door. The fluorescent sign above says:

“GET IT”

You wonder what IT is? And what exactly are you missing out on? FOMO snatches your attention and sharpens your senses.

As you get closer the murmurs begin to emerge as exacerbated statements:

“I just can’t deal with her anymore, she’s too much”

“Right?”

“Ugh, I just wanna go in and get a drink already! I am so done. This is taking forever”

Just across the street stands a half empty bar with rows upon rows of various alcohol bottles clearly visible on display. 

The shivering line does not budge. Gazes fixed on the concrete beneath their feet, each person is desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone around them. Bursts of conversation bubble up and dissipate between small cliques like the gentlest puffs of geyser. The general atmosphere is lukewarm with a light steam of frustrated anticipation floating in the air. Anticipation of what exactly? You really begin to wonder, what are these people here for?

Hypothesis 1: To have a good time.

That’s a tricky one. Seeing how time is neither good or bad, but rather a dimension of our reality. Time is a concept we create in our heads to make sense of the flowing river of “nows” that we are constantly a part of. We really can’t possess time, if anything it possesses us. Or rather, we are time. 

But I guess to avoid being pretentious, you can infer that colloquially “a good time” means: time well spent. In the context of a busy Friday night, it usually also implies “time well spent with others.” 

OK. And yet you don’t see any evidence of this here. As an honest scientist of your own experience, you clearly witness and feel people NOT having a good time. Anxious and gossiping, scared and isolated or even worse: scared and arrogant. Lashing out, screaming, calling for help, for attention, for connection. But nothing comes. Nothing gives. Fear dominates the atmosphere, and slowly infects everyone around, including you.

What are these fears?

Do I fit in? Is this the place for me? What do they think of me? Am I cool? Did I wear the right clothes? Is my hair looking ok? Are they going to be there? What about her? Do I smell ok?

Enough. You decide there isn’t much to understand from the outside, so when a “magical” opening appears and the bouncer opens that heavy metal door and lets in the next barrage of shivering humans, you pile in behind them.

Hypothesis 2: To have a conversation? 

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Can I see ID please”

“Sure”

“Ok, go in”

After a brief and intense identification process, you squeeze inside like a pair of socks atop an overstuffed travel bag. And zip!

You feel, well…warmer for one. But that’s where the pleasant feelings begin to fade. 

Inside, you see…well you don’t. You can’t really see much. In a fog of darkness, the sporadic penetration of strobe lights help you make out a half empty club. People wander aimlessly to and from the bar with tiny overpriced drinks in their hands. Everyone is looking for something, but can’t seem to find it. People are speaking into each other’s ears while the ears are only pretending to hear them.

You try not to stand out, so you order a drink. 

“Could I get a gin and tonic?”

“What?”

“A gin and tonic.”

The bartender nods as loud thuds coming from the dance floor intensify. You try making some sort of comment about the space to the man ordering a drink right beside you.

“Good music, eh?”

He doesn’t hear you, you awkwardly smile and walk away. 

If you are looking to have a conversation, why the fuck are you in a club?

Hypothesis 3: To dance!

You go to a club to dance, duh... To unwind, to move and to release energy! And so you begin to move. You allow your body’s weight to play a game with gravity. You’re feeling out your limbs as they weave and bob to the rhythm of the music. You lean from side to side as you bounce up and down. Freedom. At last. As you’re enjoying the music you don’t even realize that you closed your eyes. 

So then you open them again.

In front of you is the back of a phone, taking a video. What?

No, not of you, no, good. 

Of something behind you? But what’s behind you?

Oh, the DJ booth! A podium of epic proportions creating a focal point – a stage – behind which you can barely make out a little human wearing  headphones. An entire room of people are taking videos of strobe lights penetrating the darkness and a little hat. As if they are all going to go home and play this back before they go to sleep. The videos are taken for those who are not there. But the people taking them are not there either.

So who is?

The DJ is…there, bobbing, a glorified playlist rider. Nothing risked, nothing gained. If DJing is a spectrum from fine-dining to fast food, this is Burger King.

Is it danceable, sure it is! To a person passionate about movement, a good clap can get the body moving. But no one is dancing. Everyone is paralyzed. The majority of people are facing the DJ, gently bobbing their heads and gripping their phones like children grasping onto their mothers skirt at the zoo. Fear. Even here, we are unable to let go. To experience freedom. To feel as though we are enough in our own bodies. 

The whole setup appeals so perfectly to our western desire for entertainment, for a spectacle. To be a passive audience, to be entertained. To observe from a distance. To not participate. To have life happen to you rather than shaping your own existence. To show other people that you are having a grand time, even if you yourself are not even sure what that is anymore.

Are we honest about what we seek? Are we scientific with our own inquiry into our everyday experience? 

Are these practices serving me? Am I having a good time? Am I able to connect with people? Am I feeling heard, witnessed. Am I capable of listening to others? Am I capable of empathy?

No? So then, what you’re dealing with is something else completely.

What you are dealing with is hype.

All look, no substances. An empty shell. A ghost. A virus.

 — 

So what is hype?

Where does it live?

And what does it feed on? 

As any virus, it feeds on the living. It feeds on the flesh and blood of the everyday. The mundane, the regular, a response to the boring and the uncomfortable. 

Hype feeds on honest dreams and aspirations. On our sexual dreams and desires. On grief or a broken heart. On the crisis of not fitting in. On racism. On socio economic injustice. A false prophet trumpeting a call of relief. Leading us ahead, forward, at neck-breaking speeds.

Go on! Push your way through, move up. Over your family, your friends, your loved ones. Over those right in front of you.

Over their decaying limbs and bodies, screaming as you scale up higher. Higher. A little higher! Don’t listen, don’t look back. Go!

…but where?

A place where you won’t hear the screams anymore? Or at least won’t be able to tell them apart. Who is screaming? Is that me? My friends? That random guy I yelled at? 

A place where suffering ceases to exist in the muteness of SUCCESS, or more like its evil twin. A form of success where you no longer desire anything (no not like Buddha). You are no longer responsible for anything, and hey — may be it’s for the best since now you are no longer capable of anything. On an island, in a mansion, with servants, on a beach, with champagne, vegetating. Is this success? Is this the existence of a successful wealthy human being?

Riddled with illness and disappointment.

In isolation, living in fear, living in pain.

The ultimate illusion. Delusional in methods, unrealistic in claims. 

Unsustainable.

Hype culture is everywhere we look. It’s in our food, our water, hype is in our blood.

Hype is easy. It requires no work on the part of the hyped. You have the right to be angry, to be shitty, righteous, blind. They did this to you, so now all bets are off. The gloves come off. No restraints. No empathy. 

Hype calls to action, but does not take action. For hype is not action. It is anti-action. It’s the anticipation. But constant anticipation is just constipation.

Shit.

Hype hates nuance. Hype creates the black and white of our polarized world.

Social hype is built on excitement, political hype is built on righteousness. 

It’s an Instagram account of a person. A legend, a ghost, an idea. 

Our world functions on hype. It is the dysfunctional measure of capacity and capability in the post-too-late-capitalist world. Of desirability and attractiveness. Hot new start-up. Up-and-coming edgy artist. The politician who “tells it how it is.”

Hype is the emperor's clothes. The invisible, mind-imagined potential for wealth. It works exclusively on taking. 

Pay up! Money now, value later. 

Taking your attention, your loyalty, your time, your energy, your capacity for love. Tiring you out with its desperate claims to grandeur, to the righteous path, its speeches, its importance. Hype never gives because it has nothing to give. To give is to be wealthy, to be in wealth, in power and in good fortune. 

Hype is always in trouble. Hype is unlucky, clumsy and angry. It never has enough. It is always insecure. It blames others for its own failures and attributes all victories to itself. An oversized soap bubble ready to burst. But not with Irish Spring freshness, but with decay, with the sheer rotting emptiness that lies inside. The short change that you discover when you have a run-on-the-bank. A come-to-daddy moment. 

Who are you really? When I look you in the eyes, when I am in front of you and I demand your presence, are you really there? 

Are you a human being capable of awareness, of gratitude, of respect? 

Hype attracts by the threat of exclusion. By FOMO, missing out, not fitting in. If you don’t do this, then…

Hype calls out but has no integrity to call in. To integrate. To overcome. To heal. To process. To sit with the mess we are all in. Everyone, the hyped and the un-hyped, the Jew and the gentile, the poor and the rich.

Hype is worried about what other people think. Do they think it’s hype enough? At its root, hype is insecure, it has to over-exert itself to compensate for the gaping hole. The wormhole abyss of not being enough. 

Hype is powerful, but just as powerful as we allow it to be. Are we regulating and developing our ability to sense value? Are we nurturing our intuition, or are we reacting to Instagram stories? Are we reading actual books and doing research on topics that move us? Do we understand full well that we will never fully understand this incredibly complex and beautiful world? Or are we sharing cynical memes?

Hype guarantees and promises. Reality is far more humbling. 

Hype is not trusting yourself. Hype is trusting that someone else knows what’s good for you. Someone else decides what’s valuable to you.

When will we decide what’s valuable for ourselves?

When will we hear the cries of our bodies, our friends, our lovers? When will we hear the screams of our one and only mother — Earth?

Will it be when we retire? When our business takes off? When we get that next degree or the fancy next job? When we make it to Top 40 and finish-off our world tour? When hype comes to its completion? 

Well, I am sorry to break it to you, friend. Hype never will.

Hype is infertile. Hype is barren. A dead-end. A cancer. Its growth will only put you further and further away from value until you lose the capacity to create and perceive any value at all. Soul-death. Depression. Numbness. Nihilism. 

As many of my close friends know, I’ve been obsessed with the term “hype” for the last few years and I have definitely infused it with my own meaning. So when I use the word today, this is what I mean. 

But isn’t there good hype? Sure there is, but I guess I wouldn’t call it hype then. Real value radiates, shining through its circumstance. It’s the feeling you get when you experience or learn about something and feel compelled to share it with your friend. A powerful song, a beautiful spot in the park, a new favourite restaurant or a book that changed your life. I don’t have a word for this other than value-sharing. It’s what we are inspired to do. Hype is outsourcing this job to someone else, but it’s also so much more than that. It is the poisoned carrot at the end of the stick. Hype is a manic grasping for that which we have no experience of, but so vicious in its pull, that it blinds you to everything else around you. 

The biggest weapon you have against hype is always right there in front of you, under your feet. It lies tucked in deeply into every breath of awareness, of appreciation and love for the now. For that which what you are, for that which is divine. 

The opposite of hype isn’t good marketing, it’s love. It is actual value creation, which is infectious and inspiring in all the ways that hype only wishes to be.

I felt compelled to write this because I am hurt. Because I’ve lost close friends to hype, because I have lost myself and many years of my life to hype. I write this because I feel that we continue to lose the world to hype. I write this because I care. 

I call you to sharpen your loving attention. Don’t sell it short. Become masters of play, brilliant surfers of the unknown. Set your compass to your true north and don’t let hype lead you astray.

No, it’s not an easy path, but it’s your path.

The few things we can never avoid in this world aren’t just death or taxes. It’s also the vast ocean of the unknown, surrounding us everyday, and the deep fear that it inevitably brings. 

That ocean is not going anywhere no matter if you are a billionaire, a rockstar, or a particularly devout Catholic. We all must learn to ride its waves. The question is: how will you do it? How will you craft your surfboard? What colour will it be? Will it have a sharp nose or a more rounded one? Will it have stripes? 

These are the details that matter and these are the details I wish to focus on. All I can hope is that I inspire you to do the same.

Much love,
Sanya

May, 2022