Friend,
The world feels like it's buffering, doesn't it? And not in some metaphorical way. I mean LITERALLY buffering.
You still click the buttons. Headlines still flood in. People still talk. But underneath it all something's OFF. Something's lagging and we all know it.
You feel it too. I know you do. That feeling that doesn't show up in anybody's data but walks right beside you when you're at the park with your kid, only half-present, wondering how the hell we got HERE.
It's in the way you hesitate before checking your phone in the morning. That split-second where you weigh whether knowing the latest crisis is worth the weight it'll put on your day. It's in the sigh before you join another video call. The strange guilty relief when plans get canceled. The way we've all become professional compartmentalizers - crisis in Ukraine, check email, school shooting, order lunch, climate report, schedule dentist appointment. Like we're all just SWITCHING TABS in our minds all day long.
I notice it in conversations. People talking too fast. Performing opinions they haven't earned. Spitting out scripted responses before they've even heard the question. I see it in headlines that say opposite things on the same day. In politicians promising safety while they crank up the fear machine.
And I see it in MYSELF too. The way I sometimes catch myself on autopilot - nodding along to conversations while my mind is elsewhere, scrolling mindlessly while my wife is trying to show me something ACTUALLY AMAZING. The way I find myself PERFORMING for invisible audiences even when I'm alone. We're all doing it.
Last month I was in Istanbul, walking alone at dusk. Sky was that tired orange color. Phone buzzes—Trump, markets, trials, whatever. I looked up. Simple scene: boy feeding pigeons on a side street, old man watching from a doorway. QUIET. So damn quiet.
And it hit me: the system has ALREADY collapsed and life is just... continuing anyway.
That moment stayed with me. For one second the noise stopped and I could feel TIME again. Not the frantic, parceled time we sell to each other. But deep time. The kind that reminds you that humans have been watching sunsets and feeding birds for thousands of years, regardless of which empire was rising or falling around them.
Look, numbing out is easy. Seeing clearly hurts.
Most days I disappear into tasks too. Optimize, build, chase progress. Not because I believe in where it's going, but because movement feels better than stillness. Stillness feels like failure.
I fill my calendar. I make my lists. I measure my steps and my sleep and my screen time. I check the boxes, I hit the metrics, I use all the productivity apps. I do the things that RESPONSIBLE ADULTS do in 2025. I'm EFFICIENT.
But I'm trying to be honest about what this is: ESCAPE. A socially acceptable form with project management apps and productivity hacks. But still—escape.
Remember: WHAT WE CHOOSE TO SEE BECOMES OUR RESISTANCE.
Seeing clearly isn't just observation. It's participation. It's actually being HERE. It's choosing to WITNESS what's happening rather than distracting yourself from it. It's the difference between watching the highlights and sitting through the whole damn game - rain delays, injuries, and all.
The glitch isn't just out there. It's in us too.
I feel it in my body. The constant pulse of "shoulds." The jaw tension after reading news. The shallow breath when I think about the future. That fear that whispers: "If you slow down, you'll fall behind. And if you fall behind, you won't matter."
My shoulders live somewhere near my ears these days. I wake up EXHAUSTED from dreams where I'm trying to send important messages but the letters keep changing on the screen. The system is glitching INSIDE ME.
A Friend's son asks: "Why are people always fighting on the screen?"
He sees it too. And we owe him more than answers. We owe him my presence. Our honesty. ESPECIALLY when I don't know.
Because what if our kids are the only ones seeing this clearly? What if they're watching us all pretend everything's normal while the system corrupts in real-time? What if they're the ones who will have to live in whatever comes after the glitch?
Sometimes I take the long way home. Not to save time—to STRETCH it. To remember what a real step feels like. To see something—anything—that isn't engineered to manipulate me.
I stop at the bakery where the old woman knows my order but asks anyway. I watch construction workers repair a sidewalk. I count birds. I touch tree bark. I feel wind. I try to remember what we did before we were all so CONNECTED to everything except what's right in front of us.
The glitch is everywhere. But so is the real world. You just have to slow down enough to notice it.
If the system is glitching, maybe we're finally seeing it for what it IS.
I used to think we could fix everything by building faster and smarter. More AI, more apps, more automation, more OPTIMIZATION. Now I know the fix might start with LESS.
Less fakery. Less optimizing for others' approval. More honest questions. More uncomfortable truths. More reality—even when it hurts.
Here's what I'm trying: One hour making food with my wife instead of ordering delivery. Letting silence sit in a conversation instead of filling it with noise. Choosing presence over performance. Admitting when I don't know instead of faking certainty. Allowing myself to feel sad about the state of things instead of immediately looking for the silver lining. Just BEING with what IS.
None of this is scalable. None of this gets you followers. None of this fits in a TED talk or looks good on LinkedIn. But all of it feels HUMAN.
And that's exactly what we need right now.
There's a strange hope in this moment—not the flashy kind they're selling. But the kind that lives in your chest when you notice light breaking through the cracks in something that's falling apart.
The world we knew is glitching. But something new is trying to emerge.
If you're feeling lost, exhausted, uncertain—YOU'RE NOT BROKEN. YOU'RE AWAKE.
Don't look away. Don't scroll past. Don't numb it out.
When the next layer breaks, ask yourself—WHO WILL I BECOME IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWS?
The answer matters more than you know. It matters more than all the metrics and algorithms and optimizations. It matters more than keeping up or looking good or staying relevant.
Because when the system finishes glitching—when it either resets or transforms into something else entirely—the only thing that will matter is whether we remembered how to be human through it all.
Stay awake,
Malte