I read and skimmed the latest Joan Westenberg blog post and am left wondering two things: are most people as clueless about what’s important in life as she seems to think they are and why is she wasting her time writing pieces they’ll never read?

Although I usually enjoy Joan Westenberg’s blog, reading the first quarter of today’s post reminded me that a lot of people just don’t get it. She’s describing people I know exist — people who focus their lives on trying to impress others or follow the advice of social media “influencers” rather than pursue what really matters in life. I can’t understand or identify with these people and I have to hope that they aren’t as prevalent as she makes it seem.

The Problem

The problem she’s describing is that too many people are paying attention to and focusing their lives around the advice of advertisers and

…Instagram meal-prep influencers, YouTubers waxing poetic about minimalism from $4,000 Herman Miller chairs, and Twitter productivity gurus who wake up at 4:30 a.m. to drink bulletproof coffee and document their sense of superiority.

She quotes someone named Jean Baudrillard (without a link to the reference; I had to look him up, which makes me think she believes all of her readers should know who this long-dead French philosopher is), saying:

Jean Baudrillard summed it up:

“We are at the point where consumption is laying hold of the whole of life, where all activities are sequenced in the same combinatorial mode, where the course of satisfaction is outlined in advance, hour by hour, where the ‘environment’ is total—fully air-conditioned, organized, culturalized. The beneficiary of the consumer miracle also sets in place a whole array of sham objects, of characteristic signs of happiness, and then waits (wars desperately a moralist would say) for that happiness to alight.”

She goes on to describe something we called “conspicuous consumption” back in the 1980s (when I was in my 20s). My favorite example of this was going to a friend’s apartment — or maybe it was a friend of a friend? — and being shown their brand new bedroom set, which we were led to believe was very costly. I didn’t like it at all; it was more ostentatious than practical. I liked it even less when they said that they bought it because some friends of theirs had bought the same thing.

What? Why would anyone buy something just because someone else they knew had bought it? It was something my 23- or 24-year-old brain couldn’t wrap itself around.

She also touches upon the role of social media influencers and influencer wannabes:

We’ve turned living into editing. When every bite is a performance, every outfit a brand decision, every hobby a pitch, there’s no space left for boredom. Or rest. Or actual pleasure. We scroll through each other’s highlight reels while quietly assembling our own, haunted by the suspicion that everyone else is doing it better—and forgetting to live in any of it.

And later, her awakening:

One night, I just sat on the floor and thought: none of this is working. None of this is helping. I’ve done everything modern culture told me to do to be happy, successful, fulfilled. I was tracking everything but feeling nothing. That was the moment something cracked open in a quiet, defeated realization: I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want my life to be a performance. I don’t want to be optimized. I just want to feel human again. I want to be messy. Boring. Unimpressive. Real.

I don’t know how old she is, but I hope she figured this out before she hit 40. I had this figured out in my 20s. Of course, social media and influencers didn’t exist back then. I guess I’m just lucky — or maybe smart enough? — that I never fell for social media influencer snake oil.

I read this first part of the post in detail, mostly to try to understand the way people think these days. She makes it sound as if everyone except herself (and me, I guess) is chasing down happiness by spending money on shit they don’t need or really even want, putting their lives online to build a fanbase and become an influencer, or brainlessly following the advice of a social media personality with tons of “followers.”

Is it really that bad? Are a lot of people really like that? Is that why the world is going to hell at breakneck speeds these days? No one can think for themselves and if they can, they’re too distracted by advertisers and social media influencers telling us what will make us happy?

Her Solution

She then goes on in detail to describe her philosophy about all of this:

The Ordinary Sacred is my idea for a philosophy of presence without spectacle. A life without audience. A refusal to curate the self into something consumable. It honors sufficiency over scale, texture over narrative, and experience over optics. It says: the real, unpolished, unposted life is enough—and always was.

And this is where she lost me. You see, she’s preaching to the choir. I read the first few paragraphs and thought, duh. I know this stuff and I don’t need some newly enlightened wordsmith, who is trying to make a living spouting philosophy like this, to tell me what I already know. I skimmed the rest of her sermon — all 4,341 words of it. When I was finished and realized that about half of those words were a repetition of what came before, I was left wondering why she was spending her time writing this kind of stuff.

Yes, the message does need to go out to people who aren’t enlightened yet. But does anyone honestly believe that the people who need to learn about this will spend the time necessary to read all 5,243 words of it? For Pete’s sake, that’s 1/10 the length of a short novel. If these people are so sucked into the world of social media and influencers, do you think they’re going to waste time reading something that might help them when TikTok and Instagram are waiting for them with short bursts of dopamine?

I think she’d get her message across a lot better if she’d cut the word count in her posts. The kind of people she is trying to reach with her good advice are the same kind of people who can’t be bothered spending more than a minute or two reading something. That’s if they read at all.

The Irony

I don’t think she sees the irony in what she’s written. Here’s someone who charges a minimum of $50/year for the privilege of commenting on one of her blog posts. There’s a message at the bottom of each one explaining that she wants to make this her full-time gig. Yet early in the piece, when she discusses her awakening, she says:

What if I stopped managing my life like a brand? What if I let it be messy, private, low-stakes? What if that was enough?

Apparently it isn’t enough — after all, she’s trying to monetize her brand.

I’m not knocking someone trying to earn a living from what they write. I did it for more than 20 years and still get paid for some of what I write. I also write a shit-ton I don’t get paid for. (I’ll never say no to reader support, but I’m not going to require a paid membership for commenting on what I write here or elsewhere.) But her writing is definitely brand-building and she is the brand. To say that she wants to stop managing her life as a brand is, frankly, bullshit.

But that’s just my opinion. Another blogger throwing thoughts out onto the void.

Happiness is Easy — and Possible without Hypocrisy

Addressing the problem of people trying (and failing) to find happiness while blindly following the advice of advertisers and social media influencers, the answer is pretty easy:

First, wake the fuck up. These people are not trying to help you. They’re trying to earn a buck off you.

Advertisers want you to buy their product, whether it’s a new face cream, cheap clothing that falls apart after two trips through the laundry, a pair of overpriced sneakers (that’ll likely get even costlier when tariffs on goods from Asia kick in), or a “luxury” car that’ll turn heads and make other idiots jealous. (How do you think Cybertruck owners feel about their purchase decision? People were ridiculing them even before Elon Musk revealed what an enormous asshole he is.)

Social media influencers want clicks and views and likes so they can secure deals with — guess who? Advertisers. They try to do this by being more outrageous than everyone else, chasing down that viral video moment. They want fame to boost their oversized egos. They want to think they’re important when, in reality, they’re mostly blood-sucking leeches, often misleading their followers with bad (or paid-for) advice.

As for trying to become an influencer, do you really want to deal with that shit? That’s what Joan is saying early on in her piece, when she starts coming to the realization that it’s all futile bullshit (not her words; my translation). You can work your ass off to develop a brand or a following and get nowhere. Heck, I got sucked in on my helicopter YouTube channel. It was bringing in real money for a while and that motivated me to spend too much time making more videos. When I realized that the harder I worked, the more revenues dropped off, I woke the fuck up and realized I could better spend my time doing things I wanted to do.

It’s idiotic to live your life in an effort to impress other people. News flash: no one who matters really cares. It’s up to you to decide who really matters. I hope you’ll choose yourself, family you love, and close (AKA real) friends. Those are the people you should be pleasing — not some stranger on social media who’s so bored with his own life that he wastes his time following others’. That’s how you reach true happiness.

And that doesn’t mean you need to feel guilty about buying yourself something you want or need. God knows I do — and I have been since I’ve been able to afford to. Whether it’s a $45 scarf that I saw in a SeaTac airport shop three times before I finally bought it or a boat that qualifies as a second residence, these things honestly make me happy. The scarf is beautiful and warm and red, which is a color I really like. The boat was a wonderful, life-changing challenge to cruise thousands of miles in, seeing new things and meeting new people along the way. (It’s red, too, but that’s a coincidence.) These things make me happy because of the way they make me feel when I use them. Like the little red (not a coincidence) Honda in my garage — I call it my “joy machine” for a reason.

What you want to avoid is buying or doing something because you want to impress other people in one way or another. (Screw the latest moronic TikTok challenge!) Or because some influencer said it makes them feel good or be healthier or whatever. It’s not about them. It’s not about others at all. It’s about you and the people who matter to you.

Tuning Out Social Media

I’ve talked a lot recently about social media and feel as if I’ve finally fully woken the fuck up about that, too. I’ve blogged about it quite a bit. Here are some relatively recent posts charting my progression — or maybe awakening? Maybe some of these will strike a chord with you:

• The Joys of Social Media – Nov 22 2022
• Is Social Media Destroying Your Mind? July 26 2024
• My Growing Dissatisfaction with Social Media – Feb 1 2025
• Social Media Posts I Didn’t Share Today, March 21, 2025 Edition – Mar 21 2025
• Social Media Posts I Didn’t Share Today, March 22, 2025 Edition – Mar 23 2025

If you’re sharing your whole life on social media, ask yourself: why? I know why I share what I share: I want people to see that the world is big and show them my view of it. It’s one of the reasons I blog and publish videos on YouTube. I like to think that some of what I share interests or educates people. Maybe it does. I don’t expect (or want) to become yet another cheesy influencer. I don’t even want to impress people. Mostly when I share something a bit outrageous, it’s to prove that the thing is possible. Yes, a 60-something year old woman (with Covid) can tow a 23,000 pound wide load from Chicago to Seattle accompanied by just two small dogs.

If you feel as if you might be sucked into the world of social media and influencers and you want to understand why and how to fix it, I recommend that you read Joan’s post. Do it when you have some time to really think about. Stick with it until the end. Maybe the next time you’re in a coffee shop, instead of scrolling Instagram and Facebook or watching TikTok videos or sharing photos of the fancy foam on your latte — what is the story with that? — use your phone to learn something, maybe about yourself.

‘Nuff said.

I’m Done

As for Joan’s blog, I think it’s time to get it out of my feed reader. I can’t see spending time (or money) to follow a blog that neither entertains nor educates me. And frankly, I’m tired of reading sermons not meant for me.

I wish her luck.