What's Your Status?
The symbols that define us are shifting.
News on Tap: Green Tea is the New Rolex
Silicon Valley is all in on sobriety, and while we aren’t ones to align with the digital longevity-obsessed overlords, we get it. From a recent article in The Economist, the nonalcoholic lifestyle has become a prestige marker of tech bros.
“Elites seem especially likely to snub the bottle. In Silicon Valley, temperance is a status symbol. Marc Andreessen, an investor, quit alcohol in 2022. Sam Altman of OpenAI writes about ‘how much changed when people stopped drinking alcohol all day’. Elon Musk refers to alcohol as a ‘legacy drug’. Dinner meetings with founders are fueled by green tea.” (The Economist)
The tea on tea:
🍵 Is the Teahouse the Future of Nightlife in L.A.? (LA Times, tysm Allyson)
🎍 Michael Kors and Adidas brew Chinese teahouse experiences (Jing Daily)
🥂 Sparkling Tea Is the Nonalcoholic Drink Trend That’s Ready to Bubble Over (Vogue)
💵 Speaking of status symbols: What’s more coveted than sitting in seats that are hard to sit in? We’re talking about floor seats at the Knicks (will they stay alive tonight???), and a box at the French Open. Apparently, younger people care about these expensive experiences and their symbolism much more than paying a mortgage. Michael Scanlon, Chief Creative Officer at Chandelier sums it up when talking about the food scene:
Skin Deep: Nothing to Hide
Sober icon Bella Hadid, co-founder of Kin Euphorics, got the internet baddies scrambling for Weleda’s deeply nourishing Skin Food after saying she went through 8 tubes a month in a Vogue beauty GRWM.
Glowy skin is its own flex. It says: “I sleep. I hydrate. I know what tret is. I have nothing to cover up—physically or emotionally.” Here are some other flex’s that we hate/don’t hate ⤵️
🚰 Sobriety: “I’ve done the work” (love obvi ✔️)
🕰️ Time freedom: “I’m not tied to the 9-to-5” (le sigh 😮💨)
🍓 Hyper-local produce: “Are these strawberries from Mt. Rainier?” (gag, but yum 😋)
💵 Paid Subscriber “I can forward you that Puck piece” (jelz 🙏🏼)
Status Tatts: Set Yourself Free
We’ve talked a lot on the pod about how saying you’re sober often implies you have a past. Skeletons in the closet. Stories to hide. A bad decision or two or three...like that finger tattoo 🙋🏻♀️. Or tramp stamp (which, btw, is back in an empowered Gen Z way).
But not all ink is chaos-coded. It’s about control—marking your healing era in tiny glyphs. Fine-line script on the inside wrist. Your sobriety date. A snake shedding its skin. Tattoos as a form of personal PR: proof you’ve metabolized something and lived to tell (or not tell) the tale.
Label Agnostic: Let Them
We talk a lot about labels—capital S Sober, capital A Addict, lower case m microdose, and the spectrum of being alcohol-free. Is being label-agnostic the Loro Piana hat of sobriety?
Maybe people are building their identities around what they do (sleep trackers, forest bathers, tea heads) rather than what they don’t (booze, drugs, sex—if you believe what they’re saying about Gen Z).
Sobriety used to come with a narrative arc: Hit bottom. Get help. Share story. Now you can step away from drinking, no big reveal. No label required.
This isn’t to say labels don’t matter—if a name helps you feel seen, tethered, grounded, awesome. But if it makes you feel boxed in, set yourself free and go stealth.
If Chrissy Tiegan decided to go off-label all together, we all could have been spared a few press releases.
Last Call: Sirens is Addictive
But it’s okay because the main character is sober. (Ed note: We may also be addicted to the show category labeled “wealth porn.” See: Succession, White Lotus, Your Friends & Neighbors, etc). We binged the soapy Netflix show Sirens and found Meghann Fahy’s flawed character Devon to be a complicated and sympathetic mess who doesn’t drink (go her!) but definitely has other issues…like licking.
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