99 things you don't have to care about
I think it's high time for another big long list
It’s been like three weeks since I wrote a big long list, so I wrote another big long list.
I was in the Strand with my then-boyfriend Matt as he attempted to sell some books. This was in 2018, when Trump made headlines daily and we went to protests all the time and they totally worked and now everything is fixed. It was so Important at the time to Notice and Have An Opinion on everything. While the book-buyer looked through the stack Matt had taken from work to flip for profit #grindneverstops, Matt looked around and picked up, seemingly at random, a nearby book. I remember that it was by Meghan McCain and had “sexy” in the title. And believe it or not, I can’t pinpoint what book it was, because she has two that fit the criteria.
Matt turned and held the book up for me. There was a scoff implied. There was a “look at this bullshit” implied. There was a wordless but crystal clear “can you believe this absolute perversion of female empowerment?”
I replied (out loud), “I don’t care about that.”
This was an epiphany for Matt. He didn’t have to get upset about the cover of Meghan McCain’s book and what it said about AMERICA! He didn’t have to care about it at all! We had a moment like this again in our relationship when he smelled a candle at a store and it smelled awful and he said, “Lizzie, come smell this, it’s awful” and I said “I don’t want to smell something awful.” A true a-ha moment for Matt, who is actually a very intelligent person. You do not have to seek out, engage with or otherwise pay attention to things that are upsetting but not immediately relevant to you.
You don’t have to care.
I know! I know. I know who I sound like…
…but hear me out.
In our culture, Caring is Good. Sharing is caring, it’s cool to care, there are bears all about this. You could say society is in the pocket of Big Caring. And that’s probably mostly good. But there’s a point at which caring collapses into worrying, which accomplishes nothing but depleting your own inner resources.
There’s a term for what happens when you care too much all day: compassion fatigue. It’s technically what exhausts nurses and other care providers, but I think it can be applied more broadly. If you expend massive amounts of energy over, say, a war on the other side of the world that’s totally important but not actually of immediate concern to you and you can’t do anything about it anyway, you have less energy for, say, your actual family members. Let’s be real: we get through the day by ignoring most stuff, and desensitizing ourselves. And personally I think we should do more of it! I think we should care deeply about one or two things and three or four people and let the world take care of the rest because all our rage and sorrow makes very little difference except that it bums us the fuck out.
As I type this, I am actively ignoring everything to do with the Dalai Lama licking a boy or whatever that was. I don’t know. I don’t care! It’s not something I need to devote brain space to. I can’t worry about that!
Now, I can’t in good conscience tell you which Real Issues not to care about, but I can pinpoint some Discourses and Rage Baits that are just annoying enough to capture a person’s attention and take up their whole day before they realize it doesn’t fucking matter. In the worst cases, people actually try to Make A Thing out of these topics, which is not only much more annoying than the issues themselves, but also annoying and I don’t wanna hear about it!
And so my gift to you, dear readers, is a list of 99 things I give you complete permission to Not Care About. Or even think about. If there’s anything on this list you haven’t heard of, congrats! You’re already on your way to better mental health. May we all know such peace.
MrBeast
Kanye
Oscar nominations and wins
People who clap when the plane lands
What other people wear
What other people buy to wear
Twitter Blue
Spoilers
Meghan McCain’s Whole Deal
How characters in TV shows afford their apartments/lifestyles
If ya have a little wrinkle on ya face
A series finale “ruining” the series
The existence of ghosts
What teens are up to
Federal interest rates (I know some people have to care about this for their “job” but consider that I have no idea what it is or how it works and I still have pretty good credit)
By the same token, the debt ceiling
If it’s good or bad that people meet on dating apps
Screenshots from dating apps that go viral
People’s reactions to screenshots from dating apps that go viral
What goes on pizza
What counts as a sandwich
What fat people buy at the grocery store
If it’s pronounced gif or gif
Bad poetry
The genders of the other people in the bathroom. Why are you looking so closely? This is the bathroom.
Someone showing too much skin
Posting tweets to Instagram
Aesop hand soap
If bored housewives wanna make a big gross meal and film it
The cost of a cup of coffee these days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When a book that isn’t good makes a lot of money and sells a lot of copies
Babies with pierced ears
Adults who only read YA
Disney remakes that change the races of the characters
Skincare
People who were briefly famous in the 90s and are now super conservative
When a book becomes a movie/TV show and they publish an edition of the book with the poster or a picture from the movie/show on the cover
When couples put “jokes” in their pregnancy announcement alluding to the sex they had to make the baby
How most people use “jealous” when they really mean “envious” (they are not synonymous). This is mostly a reminder to me. I am trying to get better at not doing this in my writing and conversation, but that doesn’t mean it has to matter to other people, and when they do it I shouldn’t correct or even notice.
Ben Shapiro
Fonts!!!!!! (h/t Ice T)
If a streaming show is “really more of a half-hour drama” or “actually, it’s an hour-long black comedy”
All the books you bought and never read but won’t get rid of
Dumb trendy names
WaterTok
Insane things people say on podcasts
Anything being “overrated”
Plot holes
Lip fillers
Calories
The having or not having of body hair
People who travel instead of having a job
Wine
Models
If actors relate to their characters in real life
Lists, including this one
Bernie Sanders (sorry)
What other people do or do not wash in the shower
Whether people who do not live in your building wear shoes in their homes
Eyebrow thickness
C-list celebrities who cheat
Flags of the world
Relatives who have motion smoothing on
Lining up for your boarding group
A song you thought was original actually being a cover
Commercials and who is in them
Astrology
Crystals
Keto
An awkward thing you said to a stranger
Having nice fingernails
The quality of SNL w/r/t previous seasons
The quality of The Simpsons w/r/t previous seasons
Keeping a diary
What type of jeans are in
The dangerous evils of drag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cleanses
Pranks
Barstool Sports and its cabal
How people do or don’t season their food
Something being older than you expected, which makes you feel old
OnlyFans
The fact that the situations Alanis Morissette describes in “Ironic” aren’t technically ironic
The fact that the people who play teenagers on TV don’t look like teenagers
Harvard!
Lea Michele’s Whole Thing
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Whole Thing
Continuity errors
Not knowing how to play an instrument
Not knowing a second language
Folding a fitted sheet
The comments section
Commonly misquoted lines and idioms
The logic of time travel in stories
Understanding modern art
If it’s problematic when a vampire is technically much older than his love interest but he became a vampire when he was the age his love interest is now, because vampires don’t exist so it’s fine, I checked
Vocal fry
When Lady Gaga had a weird Italian accent in House of Gucci because that character would actually have been speaking Italian, not English with an accent, so it’s like, how could it be accurate? Accurate to what? And when other actors have the same problem
The National Anthem
Feel free to add your own! I’ve been listening to Hilary Duff’s discography while I do my taxes, so I’m pretty much unflappable.
Things I’ve gotten free this week:
Collagen supplements from Vida Glow
A blue lingerie set from Intimissimi
With care,
Lizzie