Wasting Away Again in the New Margaritaville

Notes on Consumption, Constraint, and the Stories We Swallow

There was a time when "consumption" meant the wasting sickness. Now it means something else entirely. It means bumper stickers on electric cars and coffee orders that double as moral positioning. It means curated playlists, and algorithm-fed cravings, and sometimes a quiet shame about what ends up in our carts.

But for many, the choices are less aesthetic than existential. There are neighborhoods where the grocery store closed a decade ago. Places where you don’t pick what to consume—you take what’s left. And then the world reads you through it.

We still die of consumption. Not quickly, not romantically, but quietly—through exhaustion, through disconnection, through systems that waste us to keep the machine moving.

Some of us decorate the decline. Some of us just try to survive it.

The Wasting Sickness

Before consumption was a marketing metric or a cultural style guide, it was a diagnosis. A death sentence, slow and poetic. The 19th century called tuberculosis “consumption” because it seemed to eat a person from the inside out—gradually, elegantly, fatally. It left people pale, delicate, sometimes feverishly inspired. The kind of illness that made you interesting before it made you disappear.

Sanatoriums sprouted in the mountains, all fresh air and white linens. Poets, painters, and heiresses went there to die among the pines, to write a final letter, to breathe what little they could while the disease hollowed them from within. In an era of industrial soot and urban overcrowding, it was the disease of sensitivity. A wasting that could be witnessed. A performance of vanishing.

And there was a strange prestige in that. Dying slowly allowed for reflection, for myth-making. It was tragic, yes—but it also made you seen.

Now the word “consumption” means something else entirely. Not being consumed—but consuming. And yet, the root feeling lingers. That something inside us is being hollowed. That something vital is slipping away while we perform ourselves in public.

The disease has changed. The symptoms haven’t.

The Tesla Driver with a Disclaimer

In the New Margaritaville, every bumper sticker is a clarifying footnote. “I bought this before Elon.” “Not a fan, just paid off.” “Yes, I know.” These aren’t slogans—they’re alibis. Little paper umbrellas stuck in the piña colada of late-stage consumerism.

Once upon a time, driving a Tesla said something sleek and futuristic. Now it says something else. Something more complicated. So we rewrite the meaning with a sticker, hoping people in the Whole Foods parking lot understand that we are not that kind of tech bro. We are thoughtful. We are reluctantly complicit. We have read at least one article.

But let’s pause here.

Because behind the wink, there’s often a second story:
This car was a stretch.
This car replaced the one that broke down on the side of I-5 three times last year.
This car was supposed to last ten years.

Not everyone driving a status symbol is signaling status. Some are signaling exhaustion, or practicality, or “please don’t read me wrong.” The electric car can be a virtue flex—or it can be a reluctant battery-powered compromise.

The disclaimer, then, is doing more than just posturing. It’s trying to reclaim some agency. To remind the world that a consumer is not the same as a believer. That buying something doesn’t mean becoming someone.

But the truth is, in this economy of image, we all get scanned before we speak. The car speaks first. The sticker tries to translate.

Aisle Three, No Produce

There are neighborhoods where the grocery store left and never came back. Where the closest thing to “fresh” is a bruised banana in a corner mart cooler, wedged between tallboys and lottery tickets. Where “organic” is a word from another language, spoken on cooking shows and cereal boxes you can’t find here.

This is what they call a food desert, though the term is misleading. Deserts are ecosystems. This is an abandonment.

If you live here, your consumption isn’t curated—it’s constrained. You don’t signal with your purchases, you survive with them. Dinner comes in a box, a bag, or a wrapper. Breakfast is shelf-stable, or nothing. And yet the world still tries to read you by your cart. As if the scarcity were a lifestyle choice.

There’s a deep cruelty in that:
That someone eating processed food is judged as lazy,
While someone drinking ethically sourced oat milk is seen as virtuous,
When both are products of what they can reach—and what reaches them.

Consumption, in this context, is not an identity—it’s a symptom. A record of what was made available. A receipt for what systems deemed sufficient. You are what you consume, they say. But what if you never had a say in what was on the shelf?

Not every cart tells a story. Some are just inventory.

And still, the neon flickers above the aisles, and the checkout scanner sings its little dirge. The system hums on, indifferent. Someone loads up another week of sodium and starch and swipes their EBT. Behind them, the energy drink fridge buzzes. Outside, the sidewalk cracks.

The Buffet of Exhaustion

Served Daily ‘Til We Close

Welcome to the New Margaritaville. Check your worries at the door—but not your devices. Our resort is powered by anxiety and soft automation. Your meal plan includes endless scrolling, optional outrage, and half a serving of joy.

This is the buffet line of the modern world. Not food, necessarily—though that’s part of it. We’re talking about the psychic buffet. The one where your attention is the main course. The one where leisure is marketed but never truly served.

Here, everything is curated for maximum stimulation and minimum satisfaction. Shows autoplay. Algorithms refill your plate. Ads whisper: Just one more bite. And we do—because we’re tired, because it’s easier, because the system is designed that way.

Even our rest becomes another form of consumption. We earn it. We optimize it. We track it with a sleep score. It’s not a nap—it’s recovery. It’s not a walk—it’s mindfulness. It’s not idleness—it’s self-care, performed under pressure.

No one tells you how expensive exhaustion can be. How it makes cheap things feel like a relief. How you trade real rest for convenience until convenience becomes your only ritual.

The Buffet of Exhaustion is open 24/7. There’s always a little more to chew, a little more to do, a little more to become.

But if you’re lucky, you find a small plate of silence, and you take it to a quiet corner, and you eat it slowly, with your eyes closed, and nobody watching.

Quiet Consumption

Broadcast on an Empty Carrier Wave

Not everyone wants to be seen.

Not everyone walks through the world with a sticker on their water bottle or a slogan on their tote. Some of us have learned to speak softly. Some of us never had the megaphone to begin with. And so, we consume quietly—without performance, without defense, without commentary.

This kind of consumption doesn’t show up in thinkpieces or trend forecasts.
It doesn’t beg to be noticed.
It’s a cardigan worn thin. A bowl reheated from last night. A show watched all the way through with no tweet about it.
It’s choosing the off-brand soap because it’s familiar.
It’s not a statement. It’s a rhythm. A persistence.

The culture of signaling assumes participation. It assumes that silence means agreement or ignorance or shame. But sometimes silence is the choice. Sometimes the signal is deliberately blank—a low, empty carrier wave broadcasting nothing but presence.

And there’s a dignity in that.
In refusing to perform taste.
In not translating every choice into personality.
In consuming without broadcasting.

Quiet consumption is still a kind of story—it’s just told in parentheses.
In what’s not worn. In what’s not captioned.
In the radio silence that says: I’m still here, I’m just not answering your prompt.

It doesn’t scale. It doesn’t sell.
It just hums gently beneath the resort soundtrack, waiting for anyone who knows how to listen.

A Plastic Cup of Something Sweet

Played at Golden Hour, Just After the Sprinklers

The sun’s low. The air smells like cut grass and reheated asphalt.
You’re walking the dog—same loop, same cracks in the sidewalk.
She pauses, noses a hedge, moves on.
You pass a neighbor in a patio chair,
reading a paperback with the cover bent back just right.
They nod. You nod. That’s it. That’s enough.

You’re holding a plastic cup of something sweet—not quite juice, not quite soda.
But it’s cold, and it tastes like something from a memory.

And in this moment—no branding, no signaling, no irony—just the gentle rituals that stitch a life together.

The consumption here isn’t hollow.
It’s modest.It’s particular.
It’s shared, if quietly.

Not all survival is spectacle.
Not all presence needs to be performed.
Sometimes it’s enough to walk the dog, nod at the neighbor, and drink something cold while the day winds down.

The New Margaritaville isn’t paradise,
but sometimes, if you squint,
you catch a soft shimmer of the old one—right there in the warmth of the sidewalk,
the sigh of the dog,
the end of a chapter,
and the last sip of something sweet.