by Friday means wrapping up the week’s chaos into coherent articles, which is like trying to organize a tornado. Today’s assignment portfolio includes people who smell weird, people who believe their beverages are haunted, and people who own too many bags. American culture in three sentences.
First: people who smell like Etsy. This is my investigation into Americans who’ve made “natural living” such an aggressive part of their personality that you can smell them coming from three blocks away. Patchouli, lavender, sandalwood, and what I can only describe as “earnest intentions.” One woman I interviewed makes her own deodorant from coconut oil and “positive energy.” It doesn’t work. She smells like disappointment and overpriced essential oils.
The piece explores how wellness culture has become so extreme that basic hygiene is now considered “unnatural.” Regular deodorant has aluminum! Shampoo has chemicals! Never mind that water is a chemical and you’re literally made of chemicals. These people have rejected science in favor of smelling like a Renaissance faire.
This connects beautifully to people who believe their kombucha is haunted. Because of course it does. The overlap between people who make their own deodorant and people who think their fermented tea has a ghost in it is basically a circle. One man in Portland insisted his kombucha SCOBY (the fermentation starter) contains the spirit of his dead grandmother. I asked how he knows. He said, “The bubbles told me.” I have no follow-up questions because there are no rational answers.
The haunted kombucha article is peak American spirituality: taking something with a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation (fermentation produces bubbles) and deciding it must be supernatural. We’ve rejected both religion and science in favor of making up our own insane belief systems based on vibes and TikTok videos. One woman told me her kombucha is “definitely haunted” because it ferments faster than the recipe says it should. That’s not ghosts, that’s warm weather. But sure, your grandmother is living in your probiotic drink.
Between smell and supernatural coverage, I worked on people who own too many tote bags. This started as a joke pitch but became a genuine investigation into consumer behavior. Americans own an average of forty-seven tote bags. FORTY-SEVEN. Most of them are free promotional bags from events they don’t remember attending. One woman showed me her tote bag collection: 127 bags. She’s never used most of them. They just exist as textile proof that she went places and received free things.
The tote bag phenomenon connects to my earlier work on childhood issues as brand identity. Collecting tote bags is the physical manifestation of trying to construct an identity through consumption. Each bag represents a version of yourself you thought you’d become: the person who shops at farmers markets, the person who attends literary festivals, the person who goes to museums. But you’re none of those people. You’re just someone with 127 tote bags full of other tote bags.
I also circled back to emotional support houseplants because someone sent me a photo of their “emotional support tote bag” that they carry everywhere for comfort. It’s a bag. It holds things. But apparently, it also provides psychological support? The bag cannot respond to you. The bag cannot validate your feelings. The bag is cotton and screenprint. But in 2025 America, that’s enough.
Marcus loved all of today’s pieces. “This is anthropology disguised as satire,” he said. I corrected him: “This is satire that accidentally became anthropology because Americans have lost their minds.” We’re documenting a civilization in decline, one haunted kombucha and promotional tote bag at a time.
Tonight I’m exhausted from a week of covering technological disasters, federal incompetence, aviation chaos, and people who think their beverages contain ghosts. My mother called from Lagos. “How is America?” she asked. “Haunted,” I replied. “And it smells like Etsy.”
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