Now you have a wine app on your phone. And it's fine
July 2, 2018 3:54 PM   Subscribe

I myself am probably too washed to pinpoint the moment that “washed”—an existential description that has become ubiquitous in the past few years, as the American empire ebbs and exhaustion sets in—first entered the culture. It's not quite “washed up,” with its connotations of lounge singers in Vegas reflecting on their glory days. It's more about that transitive moment: There you are in the train station of life, waving goodbye to your edge and your youth as they depart. You are Eli Manning, and you are no longer a plausible NFL starter in the eyes of some, but you are not yet ready to go to the bench. You haven't been to that particular new restaurant yet, but you've heard it's nice. People tend to use the word “washed” as a pejorative, or as a mild, self-deprecating admission of defeat. But I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect the word describes something far more ecstatic: In Praise of Being Washed
posted by not_the_water (41 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Meh
posted by CheapB at 4:01 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


As the Internet grinds on, every single facet of experience will eventually be named and given its heyday among the first few writers in the lineup that are ready to surf the wave of whatever trend piece trend comes along. Then everyone will share them and we'll all digest everything as quick as we do a film or Netflix show, chewing it to sawdust in less than a week.

And we'll continue sanding the edges off of human existence until any experience or insight has cataloged, stuffed, tagged and stuck on a shelf with every other one, every possible observation worn as smooth as a billiard ball.

I read this whole thing and I'm sickened with myself. I don't know why I was expecting something insightful and funny about becoming less interesting, but here we are.
posted by chinese_fashion at 4:02 PM on July 2, 2018 [22 favorites]


One of my favorite songs this year is 'Shelved' from the Mountain Goats album 'Goths,' about what becomes of old Goth stars. Which, ah, seems appropriate.
I wanna flash my pastel colors by the rail
On a windy day at Pimlico
Don't want to write songs with this clown they set me up with
In a Los Angeles rehearsal studio

Not gonna tour with Trent Reznor
Third of three, bottom of the bill
You can't pay me to make that kind of music
Not gonna swallow that pill

The ride's over
I know
But I'm not ready to go

Maybe dad is right
I'm still young
And I can write C++ just as good as anyone
I know this guy at Lucasarts
He says they're looking for hands
In fifteen years I'll be throwing back beers
With my feet in the sand
posted by kaibutsu at 4:11 PM on July 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


The best thing about that song is that Peter Hughes wrote the optimistic coda to complete John Danielle's original melancholy lyric. Which seems fitting in all kinds of ways.
posted by howfar at 4:15 PM on July 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


"Turns out I like a bunch of things people who look and act exactly like me have enjoyed for thousands of years"
posted by zerolives at 4:16 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


yep, for us white men, our late thirties is the time to really lean in to that privilege we never exactly earned
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:19 PM on July 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


I don't want to be too mean about this article. I mean, yes, it's a lot of waffle about a white man's barely concealed panic over his encroaching middle age, which is hardly new ground, but if this is the worst thing he does during his midlife crisis, we're all getting off lightly.
posted by howfar at 4:21 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I should have previewed. Curse that octorok!
posted by howfar at 4:22 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


(Oddly, I didn't realize that "writing C++" was the new career direction until looking up the lyrics just now. I couldn't make it out, but just assumed he was joining the video game soundtrack career path, which is a very different kind of compromise...)
posted by kaibutsu at 4:24 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I have literally never heard this term used in the way the writer is, even once, and it makes the entire article really difficult to understand, and I don't have the patience to scrutinize every line to figure out the defintion. Tell me, please, does he ever define "washed"? I am trying to form an understanding by the things he refers to as "washed" but I am not able to tie them all together: getting married, home cooking, crossword puzzles, getting into red wine, daily exercise, pottery, astronomy, Jay-Z in general, waking up early, taking walks, tending the garden, golf. Also, is it gendered? He only talks about washed men. Can women be washed? Or is it a thing specific to men?
posted by brook horse at 4:34 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Tell me, please, does he ever define "washed"?

well,

It's not quite “washed up,”

it is precisely "washed up."

HTH
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:36 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I posted this to Facebook years ago, it was the moment I realized I’m washed.

Friday, February 28, 2014 at 9:11pm CST

The internet is a perpetual reminder that everything I have ever thought might be apt and clever has not only been already pondered, but has been perfected, polished and discussed to the point that it renders my perception of myself as clever into a fine-ground glassy dust googled right back into my face.

posted by nikaspark at 4:37 PM on July 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


I have literally never heard this term used in the way the writer is

Stop trying to make 'washed' happen. It's not going to happen.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:02 PM on July 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


I can't believe the writer says that he's "washed" at 35. It's a really stupid way to look at life.
posted by JamesBay at 5:22 PM on July 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yeah, just wait till 45
posted by kokaku at 5:32 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Tell me, please, does he ever define "washed"?

Urban dictionary tells me that this is a real thing and he didn't just make it up for this essay. I'm turning 54 this week and that means that I'm long past worrying about such things and just worry about staying employed until I'm 67. It probably also explains why I've never heard of this term that's allegedly ubiquitous.
posted by octothorpe at 5:40 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Um, grown up?
posted by k8t at 5:41 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah a lot of this read like an adult figuring out adult life. I remember spending my 25th birthday miserable because I was a quarter of a century and hadn’t done anything interesting/amazing/noteworthy. I decided I never wanted to feel that way again, so I didn’t. I still haven’t done much interesting/amazing/noteworthy, but I let myself off the hook for curing cancer and the like. I do whatever the hell I want now. I don’t have a wine app, but I do have a gin one and I like it. No shame. No ragrets.
posted by greermahoney at 5:52 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm turning 54 this week and that means that I'm long past worrying about such things and just worry about staying employed until I'm 67.

Seriously. I will be 55 in August, and I have been washed, rinsed, spun, tumbled and hung out to dry. This writer has no idea what's next.
posted by briank at 6:01 PM on July 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


chinese_fashion, thank you for so artfully summing up something that I've been angsting about internally for years but haven't really found a way to articulate, or found articulated for me in a way that I was quite satisfied with. Until now. There's something actually harmful about this sort of thing, something bad for the soul. Worn smooth as a billard ball indeed.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:18 PM on July 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I am washed in the Gulf Stream once a year, whether I need it or not.
posted by Divine_Wino at 6:46 PM on July 2, 2018


Since we have a Simpsons thread going...

Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool, not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:19 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


~I can't believe the writer says that he's "washed" at 35. It's a really stupid way to look at life.
~Yeah, just wait till 45.


I’m 60. I’m scrubbed.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:51 PM on July 2, 2018


Yeah, just wait till 45

I turn 47 this year. TBH I think middle age is the most interesting time of life. I really wish there were more books and movies about middle age, and not necessarily about a "mid-life crisis", either. The Sopranos, for the first couple of seasons, was good at this.
posted by JamesBay at 8:00 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Washed. Like white-washed distressed denim. Well, that's OK. I wouldn't wear it, but, fine.

But wait till you're 65 and have a pension! (OK, aside from us city/county/state/federal employees, that's unlikely.) Paradise. You don't have to worry about a thing. Aside from human extinction due to climate change, which you hope doesn't wreak havoc on your children and their children.
posted by kozad at 8:20 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's going to be more and more of these articles as millennials hit middle age.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:48 PM on July 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yeah but has this guy been to Ibiza?
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:24 PM on July 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


There's going to be more and more of these articles as millennials hit middle age.

I'd say "don't you threaten us!!", but imagine how much worse it was when the boomers started hitting that stage in the 60's - 80's...
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:10 PM on July 2, 2018


I want something bad to happen to this guy for the first time in his life.
posted by Segundus at 11:22 PM on July 2, 2018


Such as, say, being scathingly reviewed by Mefites?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:26 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


This doesn’t seem like a particularly negative article to me.
posted by gucci mane at 11:35 PM on July 2, 2018


I guess we're even, I don't know what washed means and he doesn't know what ubiquitous means.
posted by biffa at 12:25 AM on July 3, 2018 [9 favorites]


I tell you what. I'm not going to read this article. Instead I'm going to get on with the real work of being middle-aged: taking someone beloved to their chemo appointment, trying to finish an article that was due last week despite having to take someone I love to their chemo appointment, making sure I get at least a few minutes in the gym when all that's done and dusted, so I don't lose the plot completely, and getting home in time to help with dinner.

I'm willing to bet I'll feel better at the end of all that than I would have had I indulged myself in the ostensibly ecstatic experience of privileged ennui on offer here. It's not often I explicitly counsel not RingTFA, but this'll just have to be one of them.
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:50 AM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


Greg_Ace: "There's going to be more and more of these articles as millennials hit middle age.

I'd say "don't you threaten us!!", but imagine how much worse it was when the boomers started hitting that stage in the 60's - 80's...
"

"Baby Boomers Turn 40" was the Time cover story on 5/19/1986. That's just one example but there was a whole industry of articles and books about boomers becoming middle-aged.
posted by octothorpe at 3:42 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


Hey middle-aged white men, just read John Cheever's The Swimmer from 1964 and then move on to the next pool.
posted by chavenet at 5:29 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


I am enjoying the fact that I am graduating from talking in circles around Karl Marx with others to just reading Karl Marx for myself and no one else.
posted by Typhoon Jim at 9:04 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm old enough now (I'm 58) that anything that I like is automatically uncool. And I'm okay with that.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 10:44 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've been pretty much automatically uncool all of my life because what I've liked personally has always differed from what the purported "cool people" like. So while I have plenty of complaints about the aging process, "a growing irrelevancy" doesn't happen to be one of them.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:21 AM on July 3, 2018


The internet is a perpetual reminder that everything I have ever thought might be apt and clever has not only been already pondered, but has been perfected, polished and discussed to the point that it renders my perception of myself as clever into a fine-ground glassy dust googled right back into my face.

If the brain is how the body thinks about itself, then the internet is how society thinks about itself. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, one little neuron doesn't matter all that much. But by the same token, ranking neurons in terms of importance kind of misses the point. You're a part of the hivemind. You contribute by interacting. You filter and polish ideas without realizing, and that information feeds back into the system and eventually becomes insight. It takes a swarm.
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:42 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


I really liked this article and found it thought-provoking, so thanks to not_the_water for posting it. Sure, it's a universal experience and has been written about before, but so is "first love" and it's not like we stopped with Romeo and Juliet. The connection to the slang term "washed" is a little forced, but that's what started his train of thought. For me, the insight is that eventually one has to give up on the pursuit of coolness, because nobody who gives a shit is watching. You can then just do mundane stuff you enjoy doing, but it's still a disappointment to feel like you're retreating from the struggle for socially-validated self-improvement that once was so important.

When I was a college student I neither desired nor feared turning into my father -- it didn't even seem like a possible outcome, because I couldn't see how his "washed"-ness was on the end of the road I'd selected for myself: reading deep thinkers and trying to become a profound intellectual, listening to difficult music and trying to become a more sophisticated critic, backpacking & youth-hostelling and trying to become a savvy cosmopolitan citizen-of-the-world. My immediate role models were cool, hip young men in their mid-20s, and the final target was, like... Edward Abbey, or Robert Christgau, or Jack Kerouac. It was hard to see (from the perspective of late adolescence) how anyone headed in that cool direction could end up as Dopey Old Dad. This article does a good job of showing how the author eventually gets tired of struggling through the weeds as that road peters out and the signs grow faint.

But hey, John Cheever's pretty great too.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:47 PM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


You filter and polish ideas without realizing, and that information feeds back into the system and eventually becomes insight. It takes a swarm.

I read The Nexus Trilogy last year and that converted me solidly into a transgender posthuman activist lol.
posted by nikaspark at 12:11 AM on July 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


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