Global Shrug: How ‘Nobody Wants This’ Became the World’s Shared Mantra
Nobody Wants This—But the Planet Keeps Getting It Anyway
By Our Man in the Departures Lounge
GENEVA—At precisely 14:03 Central European Time, the latest global consensus was delivered via diplomatic cable, subtitled tweet, and a half-hearted Slack emoji: “Nobody wants this.” The memo, drafted in six languages and one exhausted sigh, refers to everything from 3 a.m. amber alerts to yet another streaming-service password-change email. Yet, like a stubborn houseguest who outstays the wine, the unwanted keeps arriving—overnight, across borders, and with customs forms filled out in triplicate.
Start with the obvious: inflation, war, algorithmic pop music. Zoom out and you’ll find the same refrain ricocheting from Lagos boardrooms to Lapland saunas. In Tokyo, commuters boarding the Yamanote Line now perform a collective shoulder shrug so synchronized it could be an Olympic demonstration sport. Over in São Paulo, street vendors report brisk sales of “Ninguém pediu isso” stickers, slapped indiscriminately on QR codes, parking tickets, and the lower backs of unsuspecting influencers. The world, it seems, has achieved the rarest of diplomatic feats: unanimous, multilingual annoyance.
Consider the supply chain—our era’s iron-jawed deity that giveth two-day shipping and taketh away human dignity. Nobody asked for container ships the length of small nations to idle off Los Angeles like bored whales, or for Sri Lankan mothers to queue six hours for cooking gas so that someone in Ohio can impulse-buy a self-stirring mug. Yet the maritime ballet continues, choreographed by the invisible hand of somebody else’s spreadsheet. The hand, naturally, is gloved in nitrile because nobody wants that virus either, but here we are.
Financial markets, those finely tuned anxiety engines, have priced in the apocalypse with the enthusiasm of a Black Friday crowd. European bankers now speak of “recession chic,” a lifestyle trend in which artisanal poverty is marketed at premium margins. Meanwhile, crypto bros in Dubai bunkers still insist the future is decentralized—right up until the future freezes their assets faster than you can say “regulatory clarity.” Nobody requested a 21st-century gold rush built on cartoon apes, yet the JPEGs multiply like digital bedbugs, scuttling across blockchains we can’t even pronounce.
Climate diplomacy offers its own tragicomic subplot. Delegates at COP-after-COP applaud themselves for agreeing to agree later, then fly home in planes fueled by the very molecules they just denounced. Pacific island representatives, whose nations are literally submerging beneath each round of applause, have begun distributing waterproof business cards that read, “We didn’t order the rising seas, but thanks for the souvenir.” Dark humor is the last life raft when the ocean gate-crashes your living room.
Technology, that shimmering promise wrapped in planned obsolescence, keeps gifting us miracles we never prayed for. South Korean schoolchildren now compete for top scores in AI-generated art contests judged by AI critics, because apparently human disappointment needed an upgrade. Scandinavian parents receive push notifications when their toddlers’ serotonin dips below brand-partnership thresholds. And somewhere in Silicon Valley, a team is beta-testing a gratitude app that auto-replies “nobody wants this” on your behalf—efficiency at last.
Even love has been optimized into swipable units nobody remembers requesting. Dating-app algorithms in Buenos Aires have started ghosting users preemptively to “reduce future emotional overhead.” A Berlin startup offers heartbreak insurance; the premium is calculated in Instagram stories and paid in exposure. Romance, once the final refuge from market logic, now arrives gift-wrapped in push notifications and a 30-second unskippable ad for better self-worth.
So what’s the broader significance of this planetary shrug? Simply put: the infrastructure of modernity has become a prank so elaborate no one can find the off switch. Each unwanted parcel—be it a microplastics-laden polar bear or another season of reality TV—lands on our collective doorstep with the smug certainty of an Amazon courier who knows you’re home. We are simultaneously the customer, the product, and the return label nobody filled out correctly.
The takeaway, dear reader, is as elegantly simple as it is bleak: “Nobody wants this” is now the lingua franca of globalization. It unites us in exquisite resignation, a shared sigh that crosses time zones faster than the virus du jour. And until someone locates the cosmic complaint department—currently experiencing higher than usual call volume—expect the unwanted to keep piling up, COD, with no returns accepted.
In the meantime, the flight boards are flashing “delayed indefinitely,” the lounge bar just ran out of gin, and the Wi-Fi password is “NobodyWantsThis2024!”—all lowercase, naturally. Drink up; the next unwanted thing is already on final approach.
