Novelist Gary Shteyngart wrote a dystopia in 2010 where people were ranked by attractiveness and credit scores. He says we now live in it.
On The Ezra Klein Show, Shteyngart argued that our culture has traded actual living for data-driven optimization. Influencers prioritize heart rate variability over the pleasure of a meal. Some men use hammers to ‘smash’ their cheekbones for better facial metrics. The body becomes a corporation to manage, not a vessel for experience. When every action requires a return on investment, spontaneous joy disappears.
"This optimization creates a feedback loop where the pursuit of a perfect life prevents the living of one."
- Gary Shteyngart, The Ezra Klein Show
Shteyngart links this to a specifically Protestant, work-obsessed sickness: we live to work, treating rest only as recovery for future productivity. He sees the effect in creative output. Over the last twenty years, his students’ writing has shifted from the ‘horny’ energy of mid-century novelists to ‘sad girl novels’ driven by neurosis and digital collapse. Constant screen use has ‘destroyed’ his own ability to write introspectively. Face-to-face conversation, or ‘verbaling,’ is becoming a lost art, dissolving the human ‘village’ into isolated shouts into algorithms.
The wealth paradox is acute. While Mississippi is statistically richer than most European states, Shteyngart compares the ‘exhausted’ high-tech culture of South Korea to the communal richness of Andalusia. In Spain, midday meals and social connections are celebrated; in America, even ‘centimillionaires’ live in dread, viewing children as mini-corporations competing for a shrinking pie. He argues the American pursuit of efficiency, praised by tech and policy, annihilates the drift and friction essential for beauty.
"Shteyngart suggests that 'sensualism' - the radical act of enjoying architecture, smells, and food - is the only defense against this drain."
- Gary Shteyngart, The Ezra Klein Show
His prescription is happiness through present-moment living: not denying simple pleasures like a Negroni alone at a bar, and appreciating accessible, non-positional beauty from immigrant cuisines to Uzbek architecture. Without a return to appreciative, bodily pleasure, we surrender our humanity to the algorithms.
