Alex & Dia Drink the Kool-Aid: Pt. 1

On Stanley cups, Gary Vee, botox & more

To measure your own adherence to the zeitgeist is a litmus test for self-awareness. It forces you to take stock of everything you like in the context of what everyone else likes and get real about the goods and bads of it all. 

There is shame. 

There is glory. 

So maybe Taylor Swift isn’t Jim Jones; you can’t deny the cultish potential for mass suicide on the Eras tour. Sports betting as prayer for abundance. The trends we partake in, the figures we worship, the institutions we uphold—it’s all kool-aid, baby. 

In an increasingly atomized society, drinking the kool-aid promises a sense of belonging. One nation under God. But when does it go too far? How do we protect our collective consciousness while exchanging “get ready with me” TikToks? 

Welcome to Alex & Dia Drink the Kool-Aid: a three-part series exploring the different cultural pillars we’ve indulged, and how they’ve impacted our identities. We’ll assign each a toxicity rating on a scale of 1-10—think of 1 as trying the Ice Spice × Dunkin’ Donuts drink collab, and 10 being FaceTune.

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Gary Vaynerchuk & Hustle Culture

Toxicity Rating: 9/10 (Alex)

Gary Vaynerchuk gave me the flu—or rather, my undying belief in Gary Vee’s teachings sent me home in a cold sweat, afraid I might pass out. In February 2017, I showed up for a speaking engagement where I expected to present my experience with Car Window Poetry, the local art project I started in Colorado Springs months earlier that had grown into a global kindness movement. My audience was entrepreneurs and business leaders, and it didn’t quite hit me that they’d have an opportunity to offer me suggestions live following the presentation.

Their recommendations sounded the same: ‘You should get business sponsors and feature them on the poetry cards.’ While I kindly thanked them for their ideas, I did my best to reiterate I didn’t want Car Window Poetry to be about money. I left the venue that day exhausted and sweaty. I knew something was off. Until then, I had been throwing all my time and energy into this project.

“Start thinking about your hustle from 7 P.M. to 2 A.M.,” Gary would say. And I listened. I worked on cultivating my personal brand, wrote about personal branding, and yelled at my artist friends to post consistently on social media instead of me asking how they were. I was incapable of having a normal conversation. I wish getting sick would’ve immediately turned me off hustle culture. But I’m physiologically driven toward achievement.

It wasn’t until I saw how this all-consuming busyness negatively affected the relationships that meant the most to me that I began believing maybe I’m not a brand. Maybe it’s not healthy for a grown man to constantly yell at me. I can be me and do nothing, and that’s totally okay. Easier said than practiced. But now, at the very least, I know I want to be good—and I want my people to be good. Gary Vee didn’t teach me that.

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Sports Betting

Toxicity Rating: 7/10 (Alex)

Look at the pile-up of “business development specialists” and “customer success representatives” in my LinkedIn invitations, and you will quickly see that I hate salespeople. Mostly because I have a hard time saying no to them. As someone who craves others' approval, I hate disappointing them and being seen as a disappointment.

That’s how I almost got lured into signing up for multiple sports betting apps at a bar before going to a hockey game with my friends. I probably would’ve done it if the guy didn’t ask for the last four digits of my social security number. “That’s crazy,” I said as I finally turned him away. Since then, I’ve given those same digits to multiple betting apps that promised “bonus bets” and sometimes real money for signing up.

At the beginning of the year, Ohio legalized sports betting. Immediately, these apps started throwing money at people. While different friends would try to persuade me to sign up by boasting about how much they’d won, I never thought it’d be me. Now, I’m placing $5 and $10 bets on random games and hoping I multiply the money I put in.

For Vox, Jack Meserve argued the gambling explosion through sports betting “massively expands the pool of potential customers," stating it is “not a policy shift we should be celebrating.” I see how pervasive it is. While writing this, I’ve gotten several all-caps notifications from DraftKings promoting “NO SWEAT BETS” and “100% PROFIT BOOSTS.”

Still, I open myself to the potential all-consuming fire of sports betting. Because I’ve tasted and seen that winning is possible. Because it gives me and my people another thing to bond over. Because one thing I know is I’m susceptible to drinking the Kool-Aid and hoping for the best. At least I have a few more bucks to buy it with now.

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Botox & Filler

Toxicity Rating: 8/10 (Dia)

In 2019, I met a devil in a dark bar: a friend of a friend’s girlfriend, a pretty, persuasive, brilliant injector at one of the nicest med spas in Philly. I was 27 at the time, newly single and vulnerable as ever. I had minimal curiosity about the anti-aging, augmenting possibilities of having one’s face prodded. I didn’t think I’d ever do it, though, because frankly, I didn’t care that much. But she’d made it sound so normal, so no-big-deal. 

I took the bait and let her give me lip injections. I won’t tell the whole story (you can read it here), but that day changed everything. From then on, I couldn’t look at my face without seeing every imperfection—things I never noticed that the average person shouldn’t even be able to identify, let alone feel insecure about. I kept getting annual lip filler and eventually, started getting Botox, too. 

At the time of writing this, I haven’t had Botox in almost a year, and haven’t gotten lip filler in a year and a half. (For context, Botox lasts three months if you’re lucky, and lip filler lasts six months to a year.) I feel like I’m finally back to a place where aging doesn’t terrify me beyond the fear of infertility. But I can’t undrink that kool-aid. I will still get injectables in the future. After all, baddies gonna baddie.

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Expensive Skincare

Toxicity Rating: 6/10 (Dia)

The nice thing about Botox and filler is that at least it does what it came to do. Expensive skincare, however, is mostly dubious. Plenty of reporters and doctors are doing the good work of exposing what’s snake oil and what’s legit. But like, obviously no investigative journalism will deny me my $82 serum that absolutely does not last as long as it should!!!

A longtime reader of Glossier founder Emily Weiss’s cult blog, Into the Gloss, I was always interested in how media elites stayed so glassy. I was the target audience for a good shelfie: a garish-yet-coy, “oh, this old thing?” medicine cabinet display of products that speaks more to one’s status than skin. Over time, though, I started to notice that half the people flocking to these sexy brands—all the Tatchas and Tata Harpers and Biologique Recherches—didn’t have any better skin than, say, Cerave faithfuls. The same people who have good skin are gonna have good skin, myself included. There are so many factors that go into it that can’t be understated.

The saving grace of skincare at any price is the ritual. Life is hard and we deserve to have something to look forward to at the end of the day. Yes, even if it reinforces physical beauty as value. Yes, even if it bleeds us dry. Shallow pockets, deep moisture barrier penetration or whatever. I do little to nothing more than cleansing these days and I can walk through Sephora and feel nothing. Still, there’s no denying it feels fucking good to drench your face in potions. To face the world with a $200 glow that says, “I may be a sucker, but I am gorgeous.”

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Stanley Cups

Toxicity Rating: 1/10 (Alex & Dia)

Alex: We used to sing this song in church, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” I’m not saying that’s how I feel when I carry my Stanley cup, but I’m not not saying that’s how I feel. Honestly, I’m not sure how they haven’t made it where you need a license to carry one of these. 

I’ve never been the type to buy a water bottle for myself. I don’t drink enough water as it is. I always figured I’d get a water bottle for free sometime somewhere. I never had to question it. Every corporate gift bag always has one. You go to a conference, you’re getting a water bottle. You walk in the student center to grab your mail, some club is bound to be giving away water bottles.

My wife and I got our Stanleys as a gift. We had some dupes my wife enticed me into getting at Target. And I hate to be that guy, but you can tell the difference with a Stanley. First and foremost, it keeps your drink cold for sometimes longer than 24 hours. There have been multiple times where I’ve put ice in my cup, come back to it a day later, and the ice cubes are still rattling around. My Target dupe never did that.

Two, my Stanley actually fits in my car’s cup holder. Have you ever tried driving while attempting to balance a brick between your leg and the car door? This oversized metal receptacle is keeping me from driving off the road, and that counts as a win in my book. Even if it’s like traveling with a deadly weapon.

Dia: Like Alex and his wife, I was initially on the dupe train. My glittery, pink “Meoky” brand cup from Amazon is a running joke between my fiance and I, because for a while, I refused to upgrade. The Meoky and I were one.

Andrew bought his Stanley first on total impulse. He’d walk around the apartment beaming, talking about how “different” the drinking experience is with a Stanley, how much he loves that fucking straw. “Ice just doesn’t melt,” he’d brag, and for someone I’d bonded with over our preference for room temperature water, I could tell something in him… changed. The Stanley was taking over.

One day, Andrew wanted to peruse the golf gear at Dick’s Sporting Goods. I had no intention of spending a dime. However, this was when my shopping problem hit its crescendo; I was in the throes of some serious bag-blowing. Andrew didn’t end up buying anything at Dick’s, but somehow I dropped over $300, including a $45 Stanley. I was so pissed at myself for the reckless spending that I swore to cherish that Stanley every day of my life, from sunrise to sunset. And I suppose I do, though the vibes are suspect.

I officially have the trifecta of trendy cups: the Hydro Flask, the Yeti, and the Stanley. What’s my favorite, you might be wondering? The Meoky.

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Discourse

Toxicity Rating: 9/10 (Dia) & 5/10 (Alex)

Dia: My newsletter description is, “the pain and pleasure hiding beneath the discourse.” And isn’t it ironic that the word alone sends a chill down my spine? 

Growing up, my best guy friend was a real Holden Caulfield type. All of our blunt cruises and basement hangs, analyzing the zeitgeist with as much bite as one can muster in the Pennsylvania boondocks… it nurtured something cynical and outspoken within me. I would debate you in class. I was co-editor of the newspaper. I started writing for websites like Elite Daily when I graduated college (that work still haunts me). 

This is all to say I wanted in on the conversation for a long time. But then the conversation grew sinister, and it never stopped. 

Say you have this thing you really like. This thing makes you happy, makes life feel brighter. It is pure. Twenty think pieces and viral tweets crop up about this thing and why it sucks. You start to feel ashamed, maybe come to its defense. Suddenly you’ve lost an entire evening and the childlike excitement you had for that thing. You fall asleep without brushing your teeth, head next to your glowing laptop screen, Twitter feed ablaze. 

You wake up, and the cycle repeats itself.

I recently started using this binary to determine whether something belongs in my life: is it an energy giver, or an energy taker? Discourse drains me. It is the engine of the cultural ego, and it revs and revs and revs until you snap. (Or in my case, until you log off Twitter for another year or two before creating a new account.) And the real problem is that, because of our inability to let things exist without armchair analysis, all the meaningful, generative analysis about important stuff gets buried! 

Still, discourse is seductive for reasons beyond our collective narcissism. It’s fun to talk shit. Who doesn’t wanna riff with the girlies? Not to mention, the rare moment when it helps achieve justice. It’s not all bad, ya know? I just happen to be incredibly sensitive and desperate for harmony. And so I hope I live to see the paradigm shift—when we realize storytelling, not criticism, will save us.

Alex: We live in a generation of not shutting the fuck up—and I count myself among one of its most annoying offenders. I love a topic. A headline. A subheading. Since late middle school and early high school, I’ve kept different Tumblr blogs. I’ve posted my every thought on Facebook and Twitter from “no phone, don’t text” to all-caps posts only listing a player’s name after they made a big play during a game. The government knows better than anyone I’m a silly little guy.

Every now and then, I wonder what made me think I had something to say worth sharing publicly. I’m sure there’s a study about this. But in a lot of ways, online discourse is easier than up-close relationships. “You’re a lot louder in your writing than you are in person,” one of my coworkers recently told me.

While I’m a bit more restrained when I'm with people, very comfortable with others leading the conversation, I feel like I’m able to be more forward in my writing. I like the way my sentences read and enjoy stringing them together. And although there’s way more discourse than we can ever engage with, I encourage my homies to talk their shit.

We are the only ones with our perspective and the life experiences that shaped our points of view. While we have similar opinions, the things that led us to that conclusion are likely different—even if ever so slightly. But someone may see themself in those minute details in a way they wouldn’t with someone else’s writing or other form of expression.

I know I tell myself and others this as a way of self-preservation, but we reserve the right to keep ourselves afloat however we see fit as long as it isn’t harming anyone.

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Read Alex & Dia Drink the Kool-Aid:

• Part one

• Part two

• Part three