INS & OUTS 2026

Here we go again!

My favorite time of year to give incendiary takes.

OUT:
ChatGPT
ocean vuong discourse
performative male discourse
beli
champagne & shackles
mediocre blonde celebrities with regressive politics (re: sydney sweeney, taylor swift)
people who don’t dance at society parties!!!
pining, yearning
diptyque candles, aesop handsoap, le labo fragrance, etc.
making your company/job/return offer your whole personality (don’t you have real hobbies??)
glazing your corporate yacht party/michelin dinner/intern bonding event (don’t you have real friends??)
van cleef, louis vuitton, hermes, “rich people who rich right”
jenny han
“panopticon” for things that are actually totally unrelated to mass surveillance & the carceral system (the elm is not panoptical; prison is)
nostalgia
white males who make self-aware jokes about being a white male
using self-awareness as a redemptive trait, generally speaking
yale time, i.e. being 5-7 minutes late to everything :(
asian american women writers married to XXXXX XXX (re: celine song, r.f. kuang, weike wang)
treating trader joe’s like an indie local business and not a literal twenty-billion-dollar company
venmo requesting friends for anything <$10
making your 10k/half/marathon a personality trait
oatmilk
people who think they’re smart for being on substack

IN:
being good at math #hot
sunglasses & wool coat & cashmere scarf combo in winter
being excited about your thesis! and your friends’ theses!!
parties that commit super seriously to a theme
CHINA, but only in relation to chinese people
village mentality
disagreeing w people in seminar/conversation (make discourse interesting again!)
shakespeareee
being overly melodramatic about graduation
inviting people to activities (museums, walks, plays) instead of meals
single-photo instagram posts
academic/intellectual power couples (kaveh akbar & paige lewis, achille mbembe & sarah nuttall, timothy snyder & marci shore)
buying & eating an entire pack of berries whenever ur sad
spontaneous tattoos, piercings
a really good pair of levi’s
jasmine milk tea
sidequesting on ur gap year & then getting a doctorate #hot
getting unreasonably competitive over rudy’s trivia/kahoot/mafia/etc w friends
checking out books irl from the stacks
guys who ask questions
texting people essay/song/book recs that remind you of them!!
three sheets marg pitcher, heidi’s beer pitcher, kumo scorpion bowl, & other giant shareable drinks
THE 1975 COMEBACK
handwritten cards & notes
the hannah arendt/toni morrison/james baldwin genre of long-form interviews
chalant lecturers
forgiving people & forgiving yourself
glasses, but only when they’re real