Do you hate Jia Tolentino, or do you hate yourself?

Approach this with an open heart

It’s sometimes said that America is the country of youth. I’m not so sure. Real young people are engaged in moving toward the future…not enclosing themselves in the complacent resignation that’s been assigned to them.

Simone de Beauvoir

I recently joked to a friend that, as my carbon footprint is low, I can go see Michael. Since I moved from America to Europe, it’s gone down by at least half. That is a noble deed. I think I deserve a cheat meal.

Though truthfully, I did not leave America over a carbon footprint. But I did move for objectively moral reasons. I lived in Palestine from 2022 to 2023: an experience bookended by bombs. While there, I realized that I could not justify immediately resuming my life in the country that supplied the bombs. However, when deciding to leave America, I also had to admit to myself that I had always known of America supplying these bombs. I needed America’s behavior to affect me personally, to shape the contours of my experience, for me to change my own. I also knew that if I really wanted to do my big one, moving to Europe wouldn’t cut it. My big one would be moving to the middle of nowhere Kazakhstan where I’d have no WiFi and you’d never hear from me again.

Living in Palestine forced me to understand these contradictions as not only part of who I was, but as motivation to improve my behavior. A war zone makes you cut the bullshit! It was not always comfortable. But at the time, I had hope: embarking on another immigration process intimidated me, but my residency in Europe would begin with graduate school in a leftist academic department. They’d know my struggle.

This is what actually happened: by chance, I left Palestine just before October 7th, 2023 and the ensuing obliteration of Gaza. Most of my self-fashioned radical professors responded to these happenings by refusing to speak publicly about Palestine; directing no departmental resources towards Gazan organizations or academics; and failing to even write the word “Palestine” within official emails about the “current events.” They only mentioned Palestine during private seminars, during which they threw about decolonial buzzwords and lectured us about the genocide as though we had caused it. I also spent hours sitting through condescending appointments with these professors, who spoke to me about my research on Palestine as though I was stupid, and as though their knowledge of Palestine was not limited to their laptops.

To my horror, I could not speak to most of my professors about my own struggles, because they did not have these struggles at all. Though they’d built their careers on radical beliefs, they did not actually practice them when the moment required it. But they still used their beliefs as both a cudgel and a tool of self-actualization. Does any of this behavior sound familiar?

I am of course referring to ShopliftingGate—and the Jia Tolentino of it all.

Y’all weren’t ready for this conversation

On April 22nd, The New York Times released a podcast entitled “‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’” and subtitled “Why petty theft might be the new political protest.” You know where this is going. The conversation concerned morality struggles, and particularly those faced by the leftist upper class; the speakers included The New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, streamer Hasan Piker and NYT culture editor Nadja Spiegelman. During the whirlwind episode, Tolentino, Piker and Spiegelman described shoplifting—or “microlooting”—as an act that contained political multitudes, and Tolentino admitted to “microlooting” several lemons from Whole Foods. Tolentino additionally described “getting iced coffee in a plastic cup” as a “profoundly selfish, immoral, collectively destructive action”—though she regularly partakes anyways, because that’s life. A tidal wave of criticism followed.

I personally did not devote much thought towards Tolentino’s “microlooting.” I cared more that Tolentino had previously defended her parents’ morally questionable (and, as Eris has explored, allegedly human-trafficking-tinged) foreign-workers-for-hire business; I cared more that in October 2025, Tolentino vowed not to write opinions for the NYT until the newspaper humanized its coverage of Palestinians, and then hopped on an NYT podcast six months later anyways to flex about stealing Whole Foods lemons. But alas, the internet was too busy performatively dogging Tolentino over the lemons to consider these things. This moral showboating—of the podcasters, of Tolentino specifically and of her detractors—troubled me. But I’d seen all this before, and I cried more than enough tears over it during graduate school. Thus, I pushed the debacle aside.

Until I read an article about the New York City Botox epidemic.

Walk with me now.

Sigh

Two days after the NYT podcast episode’s release, progressive women’s magazine The Cut published an article entitled “The Year All My Friends Got Botox.” This article—which explored Botox use amongst young women—is not unique for The Cut; it is one of many volumes in their years-long quest to normalize invasive cosmetic procedures. But this time, the article’s author Emmeline Cline interviewed non-Botox users, one of whom was essayist Haley Nahman, and as Nahman later wrote, the finished piece minimized her input. In doing so, it pushed a narrative that Botox use is widespread, when only around 4% of American women partake. Nahman questioned what motivated the article’s obfuscation of this fact. Her essay highlighted the following quote from a Botox’d The Cut interviewee:

“Cass, a 31-year-old friend, said that while she sees her Botox purchases as ‘a failure to enact the political convictions that I hold,’ that is ultimately ‘a pretty common experience if you’re living in the U.S. in 2026.’”

When I read this quote, I got out my pen. Because this quote not only illuminates Cass’s talent for shifting blame for her Botox—nor is it a far cry from the thrust of Tolentino’s arguments. It also casts a necessary light on many of Cass’s and Tolentino’s harshest critics.

A prevalent mode of self-understanding permeates politically-minded Western middle and upper class circles: though I don’t agree with it, everyone is doing it, so I might as well too—but it doesn’t fundamentally affect who I am. Whilst Nahman’s piece addressed these tensions, the NYT podcast superficially danced around them. And how bizarre, as Tolentino has made a career off admitting to self-delusion—this is likely why Spiegelman invited her onto a podcast to discuss how she “[does] so many immoral things every day!”

And yes, I was a critic after I heard that podcast too. When Spiegelman professed guilt over the act of ordering food when it’s raining, I thought about how my income requires I walk my ass through the rain or starve. Meanwhile, Tolentino loses sleep over the “fundamentally immoral action” of purchasing iced coffee in plastic cups—these days, a latte can run you 6 euros; I make mine at home.

But my moral behavior is also partially determined by my tax bracket. Though I find ordering out to be unethical, I hope to one day be able to choose not to do it. And then, what matters more: my abstaining, or the swelling of my salary to the detriment of everyone below me? I am not solely culpable for systemic injustice. Corporations do more harm than little old me. But corporations are also composed of people, many of them progressive. This fact is minimized by our acceptance of the idea that we are reflections of what we believe, rather than of what we do. Thus, leftists can go manage funds that worsen the housing crisis, build algorithms for Meta, sponcon with Airbnb (a company I personally watched normalize violent land expropriation), or program rockets at Lockheed Martin—and as long as they watch some political TikToks before bed, the Universe will neutralize their misdeeds.

Okay

Relatedly, this culture of faux-ccountability enables us to disproportionately assign morality to arbitrary acts. For example, when Michael was recently released in cinemas, some media people reported that either they didn’t see Michael because they wanted to support Michael Jackson’s alleged victims, or implied they only saw Michael because their employer put a gun to their head. A valiant expression of progressive politics! However, I wager that some of the people who did not put 12 U.S. dollars towards a Michael ticket have funneled thousands—or millions—of U.S. dollars into arguably harmful and/or exploitative behaviors such as: having gig workers deliver their food; excessive consumption of goods and services they do not need; foregoing available public transportation for Ubers; invasive cosmetic procedures; and renting or purchasing expensive urban real estate, which drives up local prices and often explicitly contributes to gentrification.

These acts do not all have the same weight. But I find it odd that we elevate our small sacrifices above regular, repeated behaviors; that sporadic actions define our senses of selves more than long-term, cumulatively massive investments. But I guess you can just minimize these costs as “the costs of modern life”—or, if you’re honest, the costs of your social circles. And then you can write it all off with a Michael boycott. With attending a protest. With writing an essay. With sharing an infographic. With a vote. With clowning Jia Tolentino.

Thank you for your service.

I’ve wagged my finger enough. Frankly, aspects of my life make it hard for me to live with myself. I am trying desperately to change those within my control. I think I can do it, and I welcome your suggestions (and job opportunities). On this note, I believe we should all expect—and help—each other to be better people. Self-delusion feels rotten. Honesty is excruciating, but its sensation far outranks that of lying—as does self-actualizing through sacrifices that align with one’s beliefs. But most importantly, self-awareness is not just a prerequisite for self-betterment; it is a prerequisite for one’s bettering of the world.

The people dog Tolentino. But most of the people are interchangeable with Tolentino. Most of the people are also interchangeable with their political opponents. So by all means, join the Tolentino dogpile. But your dogpile is as performative as Tolentino’s tears over plastic cups. I think you know that. I also think you can do better. As can she. As can I.

Maybe that is delusional too. But I don’t think so.

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For further reading on moral posturing:

Black women wouldn't get near this sh*t

THE DRAMA is a documentary. About me