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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3189 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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We've talked about Anthony Bourdain here a few times.

Here's this travel writer's account of following in his footsteps and after Bourdain finally meets with her and validates her, she has a bit of an identity crisis when she realizes he's a sad loser.

Firstly, being a travel journalist is not as glamorous as it looks, having tossed her cookies after eating token cooked goat brain and local fruit

The fast life always slows down, but not how you’d expect. After enough time, you just get used to the pace, then it doesn’t seem so fast.

The next day, I spent the entire afternoon curled up at the base of the porcelain throne, praying for salvation from the unwashed melon. I was going to stop doing drugs, I told myself. Nothing was worth the panic of a comedown. Then again, I’d said that several times before.

I began to realize that going to different countries wasn’t a solution to a life. I had stopped being able to outrun my problems. Eventually, life on the road just becomes regular life. Whereas most people escape for adventure, when you’re a travel writer, you start craving an escape to stability. But people keep telling you that you have a dream job.

With my head over the toilet, I came up with a plan to kill myself. It wasn’t about the fruit. It was about the fact that I was living out my dreams and I couldn’t feel anything. Life was meaningless and I saw only one way out. I was going to get a gun. I wasn’t going to leave a note.

But also, at some point she comes across an episode where Bourdain interviews Iggy Pop, the godfather of punk and his personal idol, and finds that an older and more mellow Iggy had come there from the gym, orders one drink, has the shrimp. Talks about how love and relationships are what sustain him now. It seems to crush Bourdain, who realizes the guy who invented live fast die young was just putting on an act, not leaving an instruction manual to be taken seriously.

Bourdain, who grappled with drug addiction and depression, kills himself at 61 during a bout of unrequited love.

I can't help but make the connection that the punk ethos and the travel-slutting ethos of taking the highs and the peaks and dodging the responsibilities and commitments, they might be a sign of enlightenment, or making the best of a cold uncaring world where nothing means anything, but probably it's an appealing outlet to the mentally ill and we should be skeptical of attempting to romanticize this kind of transience.

Quote our local @coffee_enjoyer back in 2024:

Here is the liberal-individualist boomer par excellence. He tours the world and waxes poetic on the quaint social life, yet considers himself above their primitive family and social ties. He sits down with large families to eat, he attends their communal festivals, and he transmits this all to the solitary Americans in their living room. He is the rootless cosmopolitan, an omni-tourist, an enjoyer of spectacle over substance. Seeing all these wonders of the world, he’s yet unable to internalize their moral significance and necessity. He is self-worshipping; he cooked himself an identity in Kitchen Confidential and was too blinded by pride to ever revise it. Bourdain wanted to be the cool Western individualist loner, enjoyer of all but adherent to none. He attended every place’s ritual meal — each one a eucharist, essential, consuming God — but only as the aloof tourist, the narrator. It was this pride and absence of self-reflection (one’s real needs and obligations) which is the deepest reason. He let his heart be captured by an exotic woman to fulfill his own self-image, the idol he worshipped, which led to his demise.

I am mostly unable to convince people in the progressive sphere that Bourdain's mental illness had anything to do with his lifestyle. Even Claude refuses to admit it. And adding the detail and sober account from this travel writer is met with the similar rejection. Mental illness just happens to people and living like a transient and dropping out of society and rejecting connection is just like, a totally valid way to live and says nothing about the mental state of the people living it, don'tchaknow? I just don't buy it, I guess.

I enjoyed travel slutting (and by this I mean extended tourism) and while I never identified with punk, for awhile I did the psychedelic Timothy Leary adjacent thing of trying to take drugs with numbers in their name and break out of default living, but ... it's kind of hard. And neither of these things are all that fulfilling at length. I'm not sure what's going through the heads of people who say they could just happily tour Europe or drop acid for forever. The fact that Bourdain is not a fringe figure but like a progressive hero meant to be celebrated and emulated is wild.

Say what you will about the lame conformity of marrying your sweetheart and having 2.3 kids and buying the house with a white picket fence and your thrills are drinking a beer, smoking a brisket and giving your wife a creampie every Saturday, but after seeing friends die so young or losing their minds or never really being able to hold a marriage together, to say nothing of the grim meathook reality I've seen traveling the third world, that lame conformist life looks more like a precious gift and I feel sorry for people who get conned into rejecting it.

For what reason do you think Iggy Pop was putting on an act? I don't know much about him but it seems his punk self-identity was genuine.

The linked article doesn't quite imply it, more that he mellowed as he aged:

Personally, I always return to the Miami episode, which aired three years before Bourdain’s death, where he gets lunch with Iggy Pop.

In an interview about the episode, Bourdain says of Iggy: “His music was incredibly important to me from early on. Responsible for—in many ways—many of the things that went wrong in my life.”

But when he gets to Miami, Bourdain finds a healthy Pop. At lunch, they share one glass of white wine each. Iggy orders the shrimp.

You get the sense that Bourdain has come to this interview as a pilgrim comes to their guru on top of a mountain. The duo sits near a window with Venetian blinds. The sun is shining.

“As far as looking after my health,” Bourdain starts, grinning, “your music early on was a negative example.”

“I hear you,” Iggy Pop looks down and smiles.

“And looking at my own life and career, I’m pretty much known for traveling around the world and recklessly drinking and eating to excess.” He’s incredibly animated as he speaks. “What does it say about us that we are now sitting in a healthy restaurant—I just came from the gym—and we’re in Florida?”

Iggy Pop takes a minute to answer, like he’s been searching himself with this same question. But he’s not tortured about it. His eyes are clear and blue and he looks directly at Bourdain.

“Listen, if you just flame out, you’re in such voluminous and undistinguished company. And then all your works will flame out quicker with you.”

Eerily, the YouTube clip freezes at this moment. You never see Bourdain’s reaction to his hero’s proclamation.

But if you keep watching the episode, there are a few clues about how Bourdain may have felt.

As Iggy keeps talking about simple pleasures, Bourdain’s adam’s apple jumps. His eyes dart around as he asks his hero, “You’re the template for the rockstar. Other rock stars look to you to figure out ‘How should I behave?’ [...] Given that, what thrills you?”

Iggy smiles. “The nicest stuff right now, it’s really embarrassing,” he says, completely serene yet almost sheepish. “It’s being loved and actually appreciating the people that are giving that to me.”

And is it just me—or does Bourdain’s face fall?

Great post. I have my own thoughts about the specific catalyst that prompted Bourdain to kill himself. Pleased to see that @coffee_enjoyer seconded it in the linked post (before I changed my handle).

I've met some of these people who are addicted to "wanderlust", and they often seem rather unstable and unreliable. They remind me of a Reddit thread I once read about underrated red flags, and one comment said if a person often says "I used to have this friend..." (Good example, even if I felt a little personally attacked by it.) Or one of de la Rochefoucald's maxims (I'm paraphrasing): we get excited by making new friends because we feel we aren't sufficiently admired by our existing ones, and hope that our new friend will admire us as much as we feel we deserve. Living your life on the road is advantageous for dysfunctional people, as all the people you meet will only know you long enough to learn about your good qualities: you don't plan on sticking around long enough for them to find out that you're bad with money, short-tempered or have a bad relationship with your family. As Chuck Palahniuk would say, they're single-serving friends.

People who struggle with long-term intimate relationships instead opt for short flings and holiday romances, but it's a vicious circle, because the longer you spend behaving this way, the less practice you're getting at the skills you'll need for actual relationships. By the time you decide you're getting too old for this shit and want to form a real relationship and settle down with someone, you may find yourself wholly at a loss for how to comport yourself in this context. Habitual womanisers know exactly what to say to get a woman into bed within a few hours of meeting her, but don't have a clue how to express their affection for her in the context of an actual romance. This is equally true of platonic relationships: I bet Anthony Bourdain would seem effortlessly charming the first time you met him, but I imagine people who'd known him for years might say he was a bit of a shitty friend.

It's not unlike how socially awkward people find social situations stressful and emotionally taxing, so instead they retreat into video games and social media – but the longer they spend in those spaces instead of in the real world, the more stressful and emotionally taxing they find social situations in real life, causing them to retreat...

I didn't know Bourdain apart from his reputation as a chef, and let's face it, celebrity chefs are not role models for stable, happy lives.

But this seems to be rather harsh on the guy - "he's a sad loser"? Whatever his mental state or situation, he ended up killing himself. Let's not piss on the grave. You can criticise the globe-trotting lifestyle as much as you like, but we don't know the man's last moments.

Read his books. He was heavily suicidal even while basking in the Kitchen confidential success. There are a lot of stories there.

He was extremely sad. For loser - it is not a good description. But how can you call a man that achieved tremendous success in things he didn't care about, and failed in everything he desired.

But how can you call a man that achieved tremendous success in things he didn't care about, and failed in everything he desired.

A tragedy.

It's known that he killed himself mere hours after learning that Asia Argento, the woman he loved (to whom he'd offered generous financial assistance by paying off the man threatening to sue Argento for sexually exploiting him when he was a young boy) was fucking someone else, and that she had so little respect for Bourdain that she didn't even bother being discreet about it. I don't know Bourdain, but it wouldn't surprise me if he thought of himself as a sad loser.

She sure seems to be a lot of trouble.

Say what you will about the lame conformity of marrying....

Have you tried it? I can well believe it's the way to go on net, but it's not like nobody has ever felt overpowered by quiet desperation on that path either.

Also I'm skeptical about the one creampie every Saturday part.

I think the picket-fence life works better than the alternative for the vast majority of people, and that you should not gamble on being in the minority unless you have a very good reason to believe otherwise.

Good point. I'm feeling this one lately, though in terms socio-economic rather than romantic. Not that the romance is going all that well, mind you.

I've always been odd, first tried and failed to find an alternate way of life, then buckled down hard on trying to make it somewhat conventionally. And now, at the meridian of middle age, I suspect I'm meeting my limits. The conventional ways aren't working out. But there aren't any promising alternatives either.

I'll just let Comac McCarthy speak for me here.

Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the ashes. The kid didn’t answer. The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didn’t make it to suit everybody, did he?

I don’t believe he much had me in mind.

Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world’s he seen that he liked better?

I can think of better places and better ways.

Can ye make it be?

No.

No. It’s a mystery. A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don’t want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It ain’t the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it.

I'm feeling this one lately, though in terms socio-economic rather than romantic. Not that the romance is going all that well, mind you.

I understand why you feel the latter way. If you don't mind my asking, why do you feel the socioeconomic path you've taken isn't working out for you?

A lot of the more eccentric socioeconomic paths fizzle as you get older. The old careers have dealt with the problem of people aging up, if even their solutions aren’t always well-suited to the modern world. It’s recognised that there are a bunch of 50/60 year old bankers around who aren’t hotshots and people have some idea what to do with them.

If you do something newer and weirder, like NFT transaction consultancy, then when NFTs fall out of fashion you have to pull a new career together for yourself while all the traditional ones are already full of the people working their way up the old fashioned way.

Because he's living in Germany, I assume.

Man, they really trained the LLMs on that coffee_enjoyer post.

Interesting that your experiences diverge so much from mine. If you ask me, travel slutting is a totally different experience if you're a man and also not a celebrity, in that you actually have to plan everything and pay for things yourself (I'll be honest, I did once have my debit card stop working in Antwerp and had to pull an Italian girl to get dinner and a bed). Self-reliant backpacking, in my experience, teaches you the exact opposite skillset and vibe, an upbeat cynicism that always ends in a yearning for the familiar bed back home. Things change a lot when you introduce enough drugs, though. At a certain point, you start thinking "wouldn't it be nice if I had the resources for me and my best friends to get a beautiful rental, spend a weekend rocketing through the psychosphere, and then go home to routine - so, how do I make this happen".

As a wise man once said: when you get the message, put down the phone.

In my imo I feel like it's pretty clear that his lifestyle is a result of his mental state and not the other way around. Doing that shit won't make you mentally ill, but most of the people doing that had mental illness before they started.

In my imo

In my in my opinion?

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