I want to say something and I want to mean it genuinely.
I am not angry about the content. I am not bitter. I am not sitting here in a dark café — well, I am sitting in a dark café, but that's beside the point — seething at the people posting perfect lives on the internet.
I am entertained. Deeply, consistently, magnificently entertained.
My feed lately has been extraordinary. A cinematic universe built entirely on selective cropping, strategic lighting, and the collective agreement to never mention anything that doesn't look good in portrait mode.
Let me walk you through some recent highlights.
The Rooftop Guy
There is a man — there is always a man — editing content on a rooftop somewhere in Bali at golden hour. White linen shirt. Hair that has achieved the specific texture that suggests both effortlessness and forty minutes of work. Laptop open. Expression of someone who has definitely never had to explain to a client at 4pm on a Friday why the deliverable is going to be late because the wifi went down and the backup café was full and the third option had a children's birthday party happening at full volume next to the only power socket.
The caption says something about freedom. It says something about choosing your own hours. It says something about the laptop lifestyle being available to anyone willing to take the leap.
It does not say anything about the ring light just outside the frame. It does not say anything about the three previous rooftop setups that didn't get the right angle. It does not say anything about the sponsored VPN deal that is paying for this particular afternoon of freedom.
I watched this video twice. It was genuinely beautiful. Technically accomplished. The golden hour light was real and it was good.
It was also a commercial. For a life that exists primarily in the parts of the frame you're not being shown.
The Morning Routine
5am. Cold shower. Meditation. Journaling. Thirty minutes of reading something improving. Green juice — God knows where the green juice comes from in the city this person is supposedly living in spontaneously, but there it is. One hour of deep focused work before the distractions kick in.
The video is twelve minutes long. It is beautifully shot. There is ambient music. Everything is linen and wood and the specific kind of soft morning light that suggests the camera operator was also up at 5am and equally committed to the aesthetic.
Here is what I do at 5am in Southeast Asia. I listen to a motorbike outside my window. I consider getting up. I do not get up. I go back to sleep for an hour and a half and then start work feeling vaguely guilty about the green juice I did not make and the meditation I did not do and the journal that remains, as always, empty.
I am still getting the work done. I am still here. I am still functioning.
The morning routine video has 340,000 views. My approach to mornings remains, mercifully, unfilmed.
The Couple Who Left Everything Behind
They left everything behind. Their corporate jobs. Their apartment. Their sense of a stable future. Everything.
Everything behind, in this context, means the salaries, not the ring light. Not the camera equipment. Not the editing setup. Not the brand partnerships that were already in place before the leaving-everything-behind video was shot.
The comments say inspiring. The comments say goals. The comments say this is exactly what I needed to see today.
And maybe it is. Maybe someone watching that video is going to make a decision that genuinely improves their life. That happens. I am not ruling it out.
But I do wish, occasionally, that the leaving-everything-behind video came with a footnote. Something small. Something like: sponsored by. Or: we had savings. Or: the channel was already monetised before we quit.
Not to diminish it. Just to make it useful information rather than pure aspiration.
Why I Find This Funny Rather Than Infuriating
I have been here long enough to remember when this content didn't exist at a scale that required its own cultural analysis.
The laptop lifestyle existed before it was a content category. People were working remotely in Southeast Asia when nobody was filming it because there was no audience for the film. They were doing it because it worked for them, not because it made a good thumbnail.
Now it is an industry. The content about the life has become as large as the life itself. Maybe larger.
And I find that genuinely funny. Not in a mean way — in a this-is-what-humans-do way. We narrativise. We curate. We show the golden hour and not the four previous setups. We have been doing this since we figured out how to paint on cave walls. The medium has changed. The instinct is ancient.
The difference is that people are making significant life decisions based on the curated version. Moving countries. Quitting jobs. Spending savings. Based on content that has been optimised for engagement rather than accuracy.
That part is less funny.
The Bit That's Actually Worth Saying
The life is real. The freedom is real. Southeast Asia is genuinely good value, genuinely interesting, and genuinely a workable base if you approach it with accurate information and reasonable expectations.
The wifi is slower than advertised. The visa situation is more complicated than a fifteen second clip suggests. The loneliness is real and rarely mentioned. The cost of living is higher than the fantasy and lower than where you came from.
It is still worth it. Most days. For most people who try it with open eyes.
Just don't let a rooftop linen shirt be your primary data source.
The data is available. It's just less photogenic.
Andrew — No Refunds •••