Seinfeld has been given the weird title of being a show about nothing. Recently during a hike with some friends I noticed that I really enjoyed the conversations that were about exactly that, nothing. Of course, the nature and hiking were relaxing, but the super easy conversations in between were actually the best.
The hike is a useful laboratory. With phones mostly ignored, without the ability to look things up, conversations are forced to stay inside the human skull and something remarkable happens. Arguments become explorations. Nobody wins because nobody can prove anything. You spend twenty minutes genuinely wondering whether fish feel cold, whether anyone has ever counted all the words in a language, whether a hot dog is legally a sandwich and what that means for tacos.
And because nobody can Google their way to a winner, you start building your own references instead. You make way more inside jokes, all callbacks to things you've seen and heard during the hike. The context is not the entire internet, it's just you, the people around you, and the environment. I've noticed that inside jokes make people laugh the hardest, and I think it's because of the social connection, not the joke itself. Even a crappy pun gets laughs, as long as it references some shared moment.
What I notice in the behavior of some young people I encounter is that there is always a need for highlights. People seem shaped by a sharing culture that carries a permanent obligation to be interesting. Especially people who consume a lot of short-form content seem to believe that everything has to be edited fast, snappy, and consumable. Everything is about them as a main character and has to build toward something meaningful, namely the story of growth. I think this must be exhausting to keep up, and for many young people, it is.
It also makes shortcuts more attractive. If you are in constant need of a highlight, the people, apps, and businesses that offer cheap versions of one will always find an audience.
The hike works because it removes exactly that pressure. Nobody is performing. Nobody is building toward anything. The conversations go nowhere, produce nothing shareable, and end with everyone quietly satisfied in a way they can't quite explain.
That's not nothing. That's the whole point.