Wide Awake Around the World: How Planet Earth Became the Ultimate Insomniac Game
The Planet That Stays Up Past Its Bedtime
By Our Correspondent in a Time Zone That No Longer Matters
Somewhere between the 3 a.m. TikTok scroll in São Paulo and the 4 a.m. doom-scroll in Seoul, humanity has quietly declared itself a nocturnal species. The game, if you can call it that, is insomnia—and the rules are being rewritten on every glowing rectangle from Lagos to Luleå. Welcome to the global pastime of Insomniac Games, a pastime that, like most modern innovations, began as a glitch and has since become a feature.
The statistics are almost charming in their bleakness: the World Health Organization now lists “poor sleep” as a worldwide epidemic, right below climate change and just above the inexplicable popularity of oat-milk lattes. One in three adults on six continents reports insufficient rest; the seventh, Antarctica, is populated entirely by scientists too caffeinated to notice they’re freezing. From the call centers of Manila—where graveyard-shift agents soothe irate American cable customers—to the night buses of Nairobi, where conductors blast reggaetón to keep both passengers and themselves awake, sleeplessness has become the great equalizer. Borders dissolve in the shared hallucination of 5 a.m. light.
Multinationals, ever the opportunists, have gamified the disorder. South Korean tech giants sell “sleep coaching” apps that ping you every hour to remind you you’re failing at unconsciousness. Swedish furniture behemoths offer modular bedroom pods that look like panic rooms redesigned by Marie Kondo. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley startups hawk “digital sunset glasses”—amber lenses that promise to block the blue light their own devices emit. It’s the corporate equivalent of selling both cigarettes and nicotine patches, and we applaud the efficiency.
Governments have taken note, mostly to tax it. India’s proposed “Sleeplessness Levy” would surcharge streaming services that auto-play another episode at 2 a.m. The EU is debating a “Circadian Border Adjustment,” theoretically preventing French civil servants from answering emails after 10 p.m., a measure already circumvented by everyone named Pierre with a work phone. Even the Vatican has weighed in: Pope Francis recently warned that “the Devil never sleeps, but neither should you—unless in God’s time zone,” which theologians agree is UTC+Grace.
The geopolitical implications are deliciously absurd. China’s Belt and Road Initiative now includes “Midnight Silk Road” pop-up bazaars in Tashkent and Tehran, hawking melatonin gummies and counterfeit NyQuil to Belt-and-Road construction crews pulling double shifts. Russia, never one to miss an arms race, is rumored to be weaponizing tinnitus: an experimental “white-noise cannon” that keeps enemy troops awake with looping accordion music. NATO’s response, according to leaked memos, is a classified project codenamed Operation Counting Sheep, details still redacted but believed to involve inflatable ewes and aerosolized chamomile.
Back on the civilian front, international insomnia has birthed a shadow economy. Freelance “sleep doulas” in Buenos Aires charge by the yawn; Manila’s gig workers sell curated Spotify playlists titled “Existential Dread Bossa Nova.” In Berlin clubs, the latest craze is “Insomniac Raves” that start at 6 a.m. and end promptly at breakfast, because even nihilists have day jobs now. The black market, naturally, has kept pace: counterfeit CPAP machines from Shenzhen, Turkish knock-off lavender oil distilled from actual Turkish prisons, and—this just in—deep-fake lullabies voiced by AI Scarlett Johansson. (Legal action pending; Ms. Johansson reportedly “needs her beauty rest.”)
Yet amid the dystopian carnival, a perverse solidarity emerges. At any given moment, 1.2 billion people are simultaneously staring at ceilings, inventing worst-case scenarios about tomorrow’s meetings, mortgage rates, or melting ice caps. The shared insomnia becomes a silent, planet-wide group chat—no replies necessary, just blue ticks of exhaustion. We are, all of us, players in the same bleak tournament where the grand prize is merely making it to sunrise without Googling “early heart attack symptoms.”
And so the game continues. The world spins, slower each night, heavy-lidded but unblinking. Tomorrow, or whatever we choose to call the next increment of consciousness, will find us again—eyes red, coffee cold, screens bright—locked in a stalemate against the one opponent we can never outrun: ourselves, armed with nothing but another notification and the stubborn hope that maybe, just maybe, tonight we’ll finally get some rest.
Spoiler: we won’t. But at least the leaderboard is global.
