CHICAGO, IL — Local man Jared Fine, 28, claimed this week that his persistent sense of disconnection and emotional despair is the result of late-stage capitalist alienation — though sources confirm it may also have something to do with the grayish, hardened state of his bedsheets.
“I just think modern society isolates us in these artificial productivity structures that fracture human connection,” said Jared, vaping indoors and gesturing toward a bookshelf stacked with unread leftist theory and multiple empty LaCroix cans. “It’s not that I’m lonely — it’s that the means of relation have been commodified.”
Roommates, however, point to other possible factors, such as Jared’s insistence on speaking in Marxist jargon during casual conversations, the thin film of grime on his stovetop, and the fact that his bed looks like it was excavated from an archeological site.
“He keeps saying he can’t find intimacy under capitalism,” said roommate Dan. “But also his room smells like a thrift store crawlspace and he tried to start a situationship with someone by explaining alienated labor during Andor.”
When asked how long it had been since he changed his sheets, Jared replied, “It’s all a cycle of consumption anyway,” before adding that he “doesn’t believe in artificial domestic routines dictated by corporate detergent marketing.”
Friends report that while Jared speaks eloquently about “the psychosocial costs of neoliberal atomization,” he also refuses to RSVP to anything, forgets birthdays, and once brought a Tinder date to a protest because he ‘didn’t want to reschedule.’
At press time, Jared was lying in bed doomscrolling through memes about alienation, cradling a single sock that used to be white.
