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I was sitting at my desk this morning — third coffee, first cigarette, zero patience — when I watched a woman on the sidewalk outside spend eleven minutes filming herself walking into a CVS. Not walking out. Not finding a deal, not confronting a shoplifter, not discovering a new species of pharmacy beetle. Just walking in. The automatic doors opened. She walked in. The end. Eleven minutes of footage, three different angles, a voiceover about "embracing the journey of errand-running." She uploaded it before she bought her toothpaste. The toothpaste probably has a higher engagement rate.
I sat there wondering when, exactly, we decided that our own business wasn't interesting enough to mind anymore. Then I remembered: we didn't decide. We just stopped being told "no."
There used to be a phrase for this. "Mind your own beeswax." It was stupid. Nobody knew what beeswax had to do with boundaries, but everyone understood the assignment: stay in your lane, tend your garden, don't stick your nose where it isn't paying rent. It was a social contract written in crayon and it worked. Your neighbor didn't know what you had for lunch unless the smell drifted over the fence. Your aunt's political opinions remained safely trapped at Thanksgiving. The guy at the bus stop kept his mole-astrology theories to himself, because the social penalty for unsolicited monologuing was a well-deserved blank stare and, if necessary, a window seat elsewhere.
Now? Now we've got seven billion people running around like they're the protagonist of a Netflix limited series nobody greenlit. And here's the real joke: we're all the director and the unwilling audience. You can't log off because logging off is the only thing that would actually qualify as minding your own business, and we've collectively decided that's a form of emotional abandonment. The algorithm agrees. The algorithm is a snitch.
Take LinkedIn. LinkedIn used to be a place where you lied about your proficiency in Excel and occasionally accepted a connection request from a guy who definitely sells counterfeit sunglasses out of a storage unit. Now it's a 24-hour telethon of personal revelation. "Today I was fired. Here's what it taught me about resilience." Fifteen thousand likes. "I cried in a Target parking lot and it made me a better CEO." Forty thousand impressions. "My goldfish died and I'm channeling that grief into agile methodology." Someone in the comments is recommending a mindfulness app. The goldfish is still dead. No one is hiring anyone. It's just a support group for people who can't experience an emotion without turning it into a slide deck with animations.
And it's not even the big emotions anymore. That's what kills me. We've industrialized the mundane. I saw a post last week — pinned, verified, trending — of a man documenting his entire process of choosing a new belt. Not a special belt. A belt. "6:47 AM: Initial audit of current waist situation." "7:15 AM: Arrived at Marshalls. The lighting here is honest. Brutally honest." "7:42 AM: Narrowed to two options. One speaks to my aspirational self. The other knows what I did in Tijuana." Seventy-two slides. Seventy-two. I counted. The man has the storytelling economy of a municipal zoning hearing and the audience of a Netflix special. This is what we've done to ourselves. We've turned the belt section of a discount clothing store into a three-act narrative arc with a redemption beat. I need a cigarette and I don't even smoke indoors. Much.
Don't even get me started on the gym. People used to go to the gym, sweat in shame, and leave. Now it's a content studio with squat racks. Every deadlift is a cinematic event scored to yacht rock. Every treadmill mile gets a motivational caption about "grinding while they sleep." Buddy, it's 2 PM on a Tuesday. Everyone's awake. The only person sleeping is you, spiritually. You're not outworking the haters; you're outworking the concept of dignity, and dignity is filing a formal complaint. I watched a guy film himself filling his water bottle last month. Four takes. He kept adjusting the angle so the gym logo was visible. The water bottle was empty the whole time. He wasn't hydrating. He was branding. He posted it with the caption "Stay thirsty." He wasn't thirsty. He was thirsty for content.
And here's the part that really takes the air out of my lungs: nobody cares. I mean that clinically. You can post your sourdough starter's daily emotional journey and get forty-seven heart reactions, but not one of those people is going to remember your bread's name in an hour. They're not reading your caption. They're waiting for you to finish so they can post their own sourdough starter, which is also having a rough week, which is also documented in a multi-part story series with licensed music and a tearful day-three recap. It's a vast, humming exchange of nobody caring about anybody, choreographed to look like community. We're not sharing. We're taking turns monologuing into the same void and calling it connection. The void is not impressed. The void has notifications silenced.
The worst part? I'm not immune. I just spent twenty minutes this morning reading an email from Gary. You know Gary. Cabo timeshare. "Two-bedroom ocean view, Scott, this is the week that changes everything." I've never responded. I've never been to Cabo. I don't know how Gary got my email. But I read it. Religiously. Because in a world where everyone is screaming their inner monologue into a megaphone, Gary's straightforward, shameless hustle feels like a lighthouse. Gary wants to sell me something. That's it. No metaphor. No journey. No "what this ocean view taught me about vulnerability." Just a guy with a timeshare and a dream. I respect the hell out of it. I might even go to Cabo just to see if he's real. He's probably posting about it.
I keep the laminated flag in my drawer for moments like this. "Insufficient distance from fact." I haven't thrown it at anyone in weeks because the problem isn't that our writers are too close to reality anymore. The problem is that reality has moved into our houses, set up a ring light, and started a podcast about its morning routine. We used to worry that satire couldn't keep up with the news cycle. Now I'm worried that the news cycle can't keep up with people's breakfast updates. I don't need to know that your avocado was "emotionally complex." I don't need a behind-the-scenes look at your trip to the dry cleaner. I don't need a think piece about what your gym playlist says about late capitalism. I need you — and I cannot stress this enough — to mind your own business.
Because if you did, maybe — just maybe — I'd have enough quiet to mind mine. And right now, mine involves figuring out why our CMS just auto-published a draft headline that reads "TESTING TESTING ¡1¡¡" across the entire front page, which means I have to call Jackie and explain, again, that the ¡ key is not a punctuation mark and we do not live in an upside-down world, even if it feels like it. Especially if it feels like it.
Gary's right. I do need a vacation.
—S.M.
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by Scott Meadow | Editor & Publisher, IRREVERENT Magazine
THE EDITOR'S DESK — I don't know if Kharla is actually banned from Milan. I have read her piece from FAT Toronto — "I Am in Toronto Because I Cannot Legally Return to Milan Yet" — and I have stared at the phrase "legally return" for longer than I would care to admit. Is there a warrant? A restraining order? An incident with prosecco and a security guard named Marco that has been codified into municipal law? Kharla will not say. Kharla says, "You know how it is," and then changes the subject to a Balenciaga show from 2019 that she insists was "actually about grief."
The truth is, no, I don't know how it is. I don't know how any of this is. But I do know that Milan Menswear Summer/Spring 2027 opens on June 19th, and I do know that Kharla is my Fashion Director, and I do know that no one else on this staff can correctly identify a lapel width without making a joke about it.
So I approved the trip.
The Decision
The approval came through at 11:47 p.m. on a Monday, because that is when editorial decisions happen at this magazine: late, slightly drunk, and with the kind of confidence that only comes from having already made so many bad choices that one more feels statistically inevitable.
Kharla's request was not elaborate. She sent a text: "Milan. June. Marco says hi." I stared at this for several minutes. Marco, as far as I can determine, is either a former lover, a current creditor, or a minor functionary in the Italian fashion industry who once helped Kharla escape a showroom through a window. Kharla has mentioned Marco in three published pieces, two expense reports, and one police-adjacent incident that I am legally prevented from describing in detail.
I approved the expense report. I approved the travel. I did not ask about Marco. This is management, I have learned: the strategic deployment of willful ignorance.
The Context
We are a small satirical magazine. We have seven writers, a CMS that I recently migrated for "stability" (a word that now haunts me), and an editorial philosophy I can best summarize as: If it's funny and not actively criminal, we print it.
This philosophy has consequences.
Bradley Snipes, our Entertainment Correspondent, is currently homeless in L.A. He lost his passport at a Eurovision afterparty or at the custom's desk and has since filed three dispatches from something called "a sound bowl circle." I have yet to approve all three. The last one contained a meditation on the geopolitical implications of wind chimes, and it made me laugh at 2 a.m.
Sam Turge, our Political Correspondent, is filing from Room 614 of a mid-tier Manhattan hotel that he has slowly convinced himself is the Watergate for reasons I can't (won't) understand. He refers to the minibar as "the evidence locker." His last piece on Tulsi Gabbard's resignation contained a two-paragraph digression on the minibar, and it was the best political writing I have read this year.
Julian Cross reviewed a Brooklyn omakase restaurant while actively dismissing a CDC raw fish warning, and the piece was so good that the restaurant had to hire bouncers. Madison Garcia unboxed a smart-toilet at CES and the podcast it apparently started about her butt I will not search for. Tuck Chimes wrote 2,000 words on Nebraska's teen social media ID law and framed it as Schumpeterian economics, and he was — I am still not sure about this — completely sincere.
And Kharla — Kharla, who insists she is 29 despite having covered fashion weeks since 2007 — is legally barred from Milan, and I have just approved her flight.
The Justification
The easy answer is that I am a bad manager. This may be true. I have never taken a management course. My qualifications for running this magazine consist of: having read a lot of magazines, having written for several that folded, and having, at age something, inherited a small amount of money that I immediately spent on a domain name and a writer who turned out to be Kharla.
The harder answer is that there is a difference between responsible publishing and memorable journalism, and I have chosen, every time, to privilege the latter. Not because I am brave. Not because I am reckless. But because I have read enough "responsible" journalism to know that it is often forgettable, and I have read enough irresponsible journalism to know that it is often the only thing that makes us feel something.
Kharla in Milan is a risk. She may be detained. She may be deported. She may have another incident with Marco that I will learn about via text message at 3 a.m., accompanied by a photo of a prosecco bottle and no further explanation.
But she will also file a dispatch that no other magazine would publish. She will describe a menswear show with the kind of catty, melancholic, self-aggrandizing precision that makes our readers — who are smarter than I usually give them credit for — feel like they have seen something true.
That is the trade. That has always been the trade.
The Fallout
I have not told Kharla about this column. She will read it when it publishes, and she will text me within minutes. The text will say something like: "You make me sound insane. I love it. Marco says you're brave."
And I will not ask which Marco she means, because there may be more than one, and because I have learned that some questions are better left unasked when you are running a magazine that operates on the knife-edge of chaos.
Our legal counsel — a patient man named David who I pay monthly and who sends me emails with subject lines like "Re: The Kharla Situation (Again)" — has suggested that I include a disclaimer. So here it is: IRREVERENT Magazine does not condone illegal activity. We do, however, condone journalism that requires its practitioners to occupy legal gray zones, provided that the resulting prose meets our editorial standards, which are high, arbitrary, and enforced by me, at 11:47 p.m., with a glass of something I should not be drinking on a Tuesday.
Kharla flies to Milan on June 18th. The show opens on the 19th. I will be at my desk, refreshing the CMS, waiting for her dispatch, and wondering — as I always wonder — whether this is the piece that finally gets us sued, or gets her detained, or gets me that email from David with the subject line "We Need to Talk."
Probably all three. Probably before the espresso.
But until then: the coverage is approved. The expense report is signed. And my Fashion Director, who cannot legally return to Milan, is going back to Milan, because the menswear is non-negotiable and the prose is worth more than the risk.
This is what leadership looks like at IRREVERENT. It looks like insomnia. It looks like bad decisions made for good reasons. And it looks, if I am being completely honest, a little bit like love.
Il Secondo.
Scott Meadow is the Editor & Publisher of IRREVERENT Magazine. He recently migrated the CMS. He regrets this.