A woman told me once that she didn't have any money left because she bought Zyns. She said it was absolutely worth it and she'd do it every time.
I thought she should be my financial advisor.
I think about this woman a lot. She had no money left and was completely satisfied with the transaction. She's so real for that. I would like to know everything she buys.
I want to know what she dreams about.
Somewhere on Wall Street there's a guy making $400,000 a year trying to understand the American consumer. He has a research department, a PowerPoint presentation and a gay little survey asking people how optimistic they feel about the economy.
I met a woman who spent her last money on nicotine pouches and was looking forward to doing it again.
I think she knows something.
My edge is that I live here.
I bought a Supreme Fiji tee. I bought a hoodie without shoulders. I bought an expensive VR headset because I didn't want to sign into Facebook. I bought Habbo Hotel NFTs. I've spent enormous amounts of money obtaining things that have absolutely no business existing.
I want a Supreme brick.
Have you seen the Supreme crowbar? Baller shit.
I feel tapped into the collective unconscious of people who spend money. There's some big invisible machinery operating inside everybody and occasionally it spits out a purchase.
A woman buys a handbag. A guy buys a sword. Somebody buys a digital watch that tells the time considerably worse than the phone in his pocket.
I understand all of them. I would like to see the sword.
The stupider something seems, the more personal I suspect it is.
Cars are pretty normie. But maybe some guy has wanted a particular car since he was eight years old. Maybe he worked on one with his dad. Maybe he's spent thirty years carrying around a picture of a car in his head and one day he's going to drive it home.
That's not transportation. That's a man trying to physically enter a memory.
I get it.
A Supreme brick is a little harder to explain to your wife. I don't have a wife. I would like the brick.
People love explaining that these things have no intrinsic value. Thank you. The guy buying $3,000 gloves in Counter-Strike was not under the impression they would help him be better in game.
He wanted the gloves.
People are embarrassed by how much they want things. They invent explanations. It's an investment. It's good quality. It's going to appreciate. It's a collectible. It's a hedge against inflation.
Sometimes you just want to own the fucking thing.
I don't need a guy who would never buy the brick explaining why nobody should pay $500 for something that costs $4 to manufacture.
I want to know why somebody would pay $1,000.
There's an entire financial industry trying to locate the American consumer with spreadsheets and satellite data.
He's at the gas station. He's buying something with an anime girl on it.
Does he want the anime girl? Does he want to be the anime girl? Maybe he's already the anime girl. Maybe he's an anime girl on Twitter with 8,000 followers and very strong opinions about monetary policy.
At the gas station he's a guy buying a drink. On the internet he's a beautiful woman discussing bond yields.
Which one of them is buying the drink?
This guy understands the economy better than anybody in his general area. He might be one of the top 10,000 understanders of money in the entire world. He knows what the Bank of Japan is doing. He understands collateral. He has a very serious opinion about the dollar.
He wants to be an anime girl.
Maybe he wants to be a cat.
Fuck it. He's a cat. Look at the art he commissioned.
He spent $300 having somebody draw him as a beautiful cat. The cat has his own clothes. The cat has a little apartment. The cat might have a gf. He's been posting as the cat for six years and everybody knows him as the cat.
I don't know what to tell you. He's a cat.
Somebody made $300 drawing that cat. The cat needs new clothes. Somebody gets paid to draw those too. He might want a new apartment. He might commission a picture with his girlfriend. The cat has an economy.
I don't know how to classify any of this. Is he buying art? Is he buying a girlfriend? Is he buying himself?
Maybe he wants to fuck the anime girl. Maybe he wants to be her. Maybe he wants to fuck somebody who thinks he's her.
I understand all three. I would like to see his room.
One day you're eight years old wanting a car. Twenty years later you're sitting in it at a red light buying a pack of Zyns.
You've made it.
Or maybe you haven't. Maybe you still want something else. Maybe you want a house with a pool. Maybe you want a discontinued Japanese television. Maybe you want to be an anime girl. Maybe you want a brick.
You can tell me why a purchase is stupid. I probably agree with you. I would still like to know where you got it.
I don't think the woman with the Zyns needs financial advice from me. I need financial advice from her.
She showed me what she buys when she has no money.
I want to know what she'd buy if she were rich.
I want to know what she'd buy if she were the last person on Earth.
I think she'd still buy the Zyns.