Think the ForeverMag or Sean Thor Conroe types, who should be right up my alley. But I don’t want my literature to just sound like posts and tweets, and I don’t want the scope of its concern to be just narcissism and the mythologizing of the scene they’re part of…it feels like these parties and mags are just full of people who want to be influencers and be part of a cool social club.

I wasn’t around for original ‘alt lit’ but that seemed overall self-indulgent and lame too, and it seems like nobody learned any lessons from it and it’s just the same thing but in today’s internet-speak.

I get what they’re supposedly rebelling against (obnoxious literary establishment writing obvious and pandering books for rich liberals) but isn’t all of this just as self-congratulatory and predictable? The only options can’t just be mainstream middlebrow MFA crap or self-obsessed internet-sounding sentences from soft boys and TikTok girls right?

Does anyone else feel like this or am I just turning into an old crank early? I know that’s totally possible.