Lens | Our Obsession With Self-Optimization Is Hindering Our Quality of Life

A few days ago, I was on the hamster dopamine wheel (AKA Twitter) when I stumbled on entrepreneur Jon Clemon’s essay, “Be Interesting.” Clemon argues there are two types of people: The interesting and the boring. According to him, the majority of people you’ll meet fall into the boring category—they’re “losers” who aren’t “worth the energy to meet” because their knowledge is “shallow and untested” (ouch). The essay made a splash on Twitter, receiving glowing comments such as “This is the way,” and “No words.” And listen, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to meet cool people. But something seems sinister about Clemon’s suggestion that because people who aren’t “interesting” can’t forward your career or intellectuality, they intrinsically have no value. Though questionable (to me at least), Clemon’s ideas aren’t new. They’re part of our culture’s obsession with self-optimization, where, as Alexandra Schwartz writes in The New Yorker, “we are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts o

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• Isamar Vega