So there you are, all positive vibes. Telling yourself today’s the day, carpe diem. Open your email, all bated breath, and there it is—your umpteenth rejection. Now, some anonymous assistant to the assistant editor has knocked your dick in the dirt. It’s another existential crisis.

A few times a year, I meet up with some of my college friends ($80k annual tuition) from a seminar called Poverty and Inequality. We bonded over a group project where we had to create a PowerPoint about where we think that the Poverty Line should be drawn. (Are you living in poverty if you don’t have WiFi? What if you’re just off the grid?)

After a few $21 martinis, the same conversation always comes up. The perennial riddle: is there a such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism?

The room was festooned with garlands and tinsel. Pinecones and sprigs of holly were taped to the walls, and a foamy blanket of fake snow covered the teacher’s desk. On the chalkboard was a crude drawing of a late-model SUV, along with some dollar signs and percentages.

On the dating app called Gotcha, the tag line reads connecting the unusual, but the mechanics are the same as Tinder or Raya or Grindr. You swipe right for yes, left for no, send winks and pokes and pics. The app has a map thingy that helps you echolocate your date like a bat when you’re matched. This is what Nate did the night he met Peta, following a green line along Des Moines Avenue, all the way to Charlie’s Kitchen, where his destiny awaited.

“Dude, dysentery is a bitch!” Matt Cooper squinted at the rudimentary picture of an ox and wagon, and then shifted his hazy gaze to his friend Snake, laying on the floor.

“What’s that?” Snake asked, pointing up with one hand while reaching blindly for the paper plate of gooey brownies behind his head with the other.

“It means I shit myself to death.” Matt replied before dissolving into laughter.