Trapped in the Vibecession
Social Media
Emily scrolled through her Instagram feed in the passenger seat of her new BMW, waiting for Leona and Valerie to arrive at the parking lot behind Starbucks. The car still smelled like leather and possibility, a sixteenth birthday gift her parents had presented with such obvious pride that she’d felt obligated to cry. She had cried, actually. Just not for the reasons they thought.
On her screen, Madison Wilder posed against a matte black Lamborghini Urus, her teeth impossibly white, her waist impossibly narrow. Sweet 16 came through, the caption read. Dad said I could pick any color. The post had 2.3 million likes.
Emily looked up at her own dashboard, at the BMW logo that had seemed so exciting three weeks ago. Now it just looked ordinary. Basic, even.
A Honda Civic pulled into the spot beside her, and Leona emerged with her reusable coffee cup and her “Tax the Rich” tote bag, which Emily found privately ironic given that Leona’s father was a thoracic surgeon. Valerie’s white Mercedes appeared moments later, sliding into place with mechanical precision.
“God, I hate this car,” Leona announced, slamming her door. “It’s so boring. My mom drives the same one.”
“At least yours is paid off,” Valerie said. “My parents are leasing mine. They made a whole speech about teaching me financial responsibility.” She made air quotes around the last two words.
They migrated to their usual table inside, the one near the window where they could watch the parking lot and judge other people’s vehicles. Emily ordered a venti caramel macchiato with oat milk and an extra shot, which cost eleven dollars and change. She didn’t think about the price. None of them ever did.
“So what did everyone get besides cars?” Leona asked. “My parents gave me this necklace.” She held up a thin gold chain with a small diamond pendant. “It’s supposed to be, like, meaningful or whatever. My grandmother had one just like it.”
“It’s pretty,” Emily said.
“It’s tiny. Did you see what Bella Thornton got? A custom Van Cleef set. The whole thing.” Leona pulled up the post on her phone, tilting the screen so they could all see. Bella Thornton smiled in soft lighting, dripping in jewelry that cost more than most people’s annual salaries.
Valerie leaned in. “I follow this girl, she’s like a trad influencer, and for her birthday her boyfriend bought her an entire house. In cash. Twenty-two years old.”
“That’s not real,” Emily said. “Nobody actually lives like that.”
“People do, though.” Valerie’s voice carried that edge it always did when they wandered too close to politics. “We just don’t.”
Emily stared into her macchiato. Her parents were both lawyers at respected firms. They owned their house outright, took international vacations, funded her college savings account every year. By any reasonable measure, she lived a life of extraordinary privilege. She knew this intellectually.
But knowing it didn’t change how she felt. Every time she opened her phone, she saw evidence of lives that made hers look shabby by comparison. Yachts and private jets and Birkin bags handed out like party favors. Kitchens bigger than her entire first floor. Birthday parties that cost more than houses.
“What would actually make you happy?” she asked suddenly. “Like, if you could have anything.”
Leona didn’t hesitate. “Burn the whole system down. Redistribute everything. Did you know that if we just took corporate assets and divided them equally, every adult American would get like five hundred thousand dollars? I read it in this article. Five hundred eighty-seven thousand, actually. I could be happy with that. I could finally stop feeling like I’m always behind.”
“And then what?” Valerie asked. “Everyone has money, so money means nothing, and we’re right back where we started.” She straightened in her chair, assuming the posture she’d learned from her mother’s Junior League meetings. “I think the answer is opting out entirely. Find someone successful, build a home, focus on family instead of competition. The tradwife thing is the way to go.”
“That’s just giving up,” Leona said.
“It’s choosing peace.”
They both looked at Emily, expecting her to pick a side. She’d always been the mediator, the one who found common ground between Leona’s revolutionary fervor and Valerie’s conservative pragmatism.
But she was thinking about something else. She was thinking about the way her thumb moved automatically to her phone every time the conversation paused. The way she felt worse after every scroll, every peek into someone else’s manufactured perfection. The way nothing in her actual life, her real life, could compete with the curated fantasy on her screen.
“I’m going to delete it,” she said. “Instagram. TikTok. All of it.”
Leona laughed, then stopped when she saw Emily’s face. “Wait, seriously?”
“Nobody’s going to text you,” Valerie said. “You know that, right? You’ll miss, like, everything.”
“Maybe.” Emily pulled out her phone, her finger hovering over the Instagram icon. “But I already miss everything. I miss liking things. I miss my car being exciting. I miss feeling like what I have is enough.”
She pressed down. Delete app?
Her thumb trembled slightly.
Delete.