This, obviously, is gonzo stuff, the kind of thing that makes me feel smug and superior, like those cell phone jokes. But here, once again, is the trouble: many of Wolf’s words, however untethered from reality, tap into something true. Because there is a lifelessness and anomie to modern cities, and it did deepen during the pandemic—there is a way in which many of us feel we are indeed becoming less alive, less present, lonelier. It’s not the vaccine that has done this; it’s the stress and the speed and the screens and the anxieties that are all by-products of capitalism in its necro-techno
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