At eighteen, insomnia stopped being an eccentric quirk and turned into a medical file. I was prescribed Zopiclone, and when that didn’t work, Seroquel – the tranquilizer they slip to people who see hallucinations, not just people who like to scroll at 3 a.m. And with this new drug  came a kind of velvet sleep: dense and narcotic, like slipping underwater. That was until the next day, when fourteen hours later, I was disoriented. Eyes gummy, brain full of static, I was ashamed that the very cure meant to improve my sleep made me feel more broken than the illness itself.

For three years, I circled that drug like a toxic relationship: sometimes surrendering, sometimes resisting, never able to predict whether I’d wake up on time or at all. Last week, in a fit of impatience, I double dosed on a Sunday night. I started the next day at four in the afternoon, having missed two lectures and staggering around my apartment like a zombie. When I finally caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror – greasy hair and vacant eyes looking back at me – I flushed the pills for good.

The irony is that while I was dragging myself half-conscious to classes and jobs, the world around me was busy fetishizing “eight solid hours.” Sleep has become less about survival and more about branding – another thing to optimize, display, and measure. Think of sleep tracking devices marketing their “sleep scores” as a badge of wellness, or mattresses selling minimalism as though they were iPhones, packaging rest itself as a lifestyle brand. What I’ve realized is that deep sleep has been reframed as a performance of privilege, wellness, and control; becoming one of the sharpest new markers of status in late-stage capitalism.

Before the industrial clock colonized our nights, sleep was less an eight-hour block and more a social pastime with intermissions. Historian A. Roger Ekirch notes that for centuries, Europeans practiced “first sleep” and “second sleep”– dozing off after dusk, waking around midnight to pray, gossip with neighbors, or even sneak over to a lover’s house before curling back into bed until dawn. Night had its own culture then, a looseness that feels almost illicit compared to today’s rigid sleep-hygiene commandments. Imagine waking at 1 a.m. because it was simply the rhythm of life – your body in sync with darkness instead of productivity. What’s striking is how ordinary that was, and how bizarre our modern obsession with “unbroken deep sleep” might look in comparison: not a natural state, but a demand engineered to serve factories, and the punch-in-clock. The eight-hour sleep model neatly mirrors the eight-hour workday, disciplining bodies into predictable cycles that fit assembly lines and office hours — and now, in its latest reincarnation, it feeds the wellness economy, where even rest is expected to be a performance.

By the twentieth century, sleep had been drafted into the workforce. It was no longer just something your body did, but something scientists could measure, optimize, and discipline. Sleep labs sprang up to quantify REM cycles, transforming rest into a unit of efficiency. Mattress companies followed with promises that the right springs or memory foam would deliver not just a better night, but a better self with Sealy and Tempur-Pedic selling tranquility like it was a kitchen appliance. Now, in the wellness era, sleep has become the crown jewel of lifestyle optimization: blue-light glasses, melatonin gummies, the Calm app’s celebrity bedtime stories, Oura rings that score your unconscious. Art critic and essayist Jonathan Crary points out that in a culture where every second must be monetized, sleep stands out as the last barrier to 24/7 capitalism – Yet even here, the market has found a way in: our dreams themselves are packaged as content, whether through apps that narrate fantasies with celebrity voices or tech that tracks and gamifies REM cycles. Crary warns that this intrusion represents the ultimate commodification of human interiority—sleep and dreaming, once the most private recesses of life, reimagined as another frontier of productivity and consumption.

Contemporary sleep discourse likes to present eight hours as a common denominator, but the data shows otherwise. Research by clinical psychologist Aric Prather demonstrates a consistent correlation between socioeconomic status and sleep quality. Shorter sleep duration, more interruptions, and a higher risk of insomnia are all tied to material disadvantage rather than individual “bad habits”. The sleek world of sleep tech – noise-canceling sleep pods and blackout curtains – only amplifies this divide. Access to these technologies and the quiet, stable environments they provide  is unevenly distributed. Working-class sleepers in cramped apartments or shift workers facing irregular hours simply don’t have the same opportunities for “restorative sleep”. Meanwhile, Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology and the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley New York Times’ best-selling book Why We Sleep promotes an ideal of “optimal sleep” as universally attainable through discipline and good hygiene. This sidesteps structural inequities that make such optimization a luxury. The cultural script around sleep continues to frame exhaustion as a personal failure, even though its very distribution reflects deeper social fault lines.

These inequities are not only environmental, but also embodied and intergenerational. Studies in social epidemiology show that chronic stress from financial insecurity, racial discrimination, and precarious work rewires sleep patterns at a neurological level, making rest both lighter and more fragile. Health disparities compound this effect: sleep apnea, asthma, obesity, and untreated chronic pain – all more prevalent among the working poor – interfere with rest in ways that no blackout curtain can solve. Even knowledge of “sleep hygiene” functions as a kind of cultural capital: families with stable routines and private bedrooms pass down practices that normalize early bedtimes and quiet, while others inherit habits formed under conditions of scarcity and vigilance. Historically, too, class has shaped sleep. In his book The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life anthropologist Matthew J Wolf-Meyer notes that the Industrial Revolution restructured night into labour and leisure, factory whistles dictating when bodies could rest. The eight-hour movement recognized sleep as a labour right before medicine reframed it as a lifestyle choice. In that sense, the modern obsession with “optimal sleep” revives a much older story: that the ability to sleep well has always been unevenly distributed and politicized.

Recent surveys make the generational angle explicit. Surveys show that only about 54% of Gen Z Americans (ages 12-26) feel they get enough sleep on an average weekday, while nearly 40% of Gen Z and Millennials in Canada report that financial worries are harming their sleep and mental health. The reasons go far beyond “too much TikTok”: financial precarity, pandemic disruptions, and a world of gig work and constant surveillance leave young people disproportionately restless. What looks like a generation “choosing” late nights and fractured circadian rhythms is often just the embodiment of structural pressures such as student debt, housing insecurity, and precarious labor that make efficient  rest nearly impossible. In that sense, Gen Z isn’t uniquely bad at sleep; they are simply the most visible evidence demonstrating how uneven rest is distributed in a society that still insists sleep  should be a matter of personal discipline.

I know this script because I’ve been cast in it. I’ve tried aromatherapy, crystals, not scrolling in bed, meditation, giving up caffeine and nicotine after 1 p.m.,  the list is endless. I even got a watch that tracks my sleep for my birthday. But no matter what I do, my sleeping grades always hover in the seventies, because in addition to being an insomniac, my walls are thin, my rent is high, and the city never shuts up. Psychologist Aric Prather’s research confirms what I already feel in my bones: poorer material conditions mean poorer sleep. But the cultural script still frames exhaustion as a personal failure. As anthropologist Matthew J Wolf-Meyer warns, the very invention of a rigid sleep norm turns rest into a test of character; one you’re bound to fail if your circumstances don’t fit the mold. Historian A. Roger Ekirch reminds us that sleep wasn’t always this way. Before capitalism sanded it down to eight identical hours, it was once flexible and communal. And as art critic and essayist Jonathan Crary observes, even our failures at sleep are now folded back into systems of surveillance and optimization, as if the unconscious itself could be turned into a report card.

This means that every time I wake up groggy, ashamed by another failed night or from the chemical hangover of Seroquel, I’m not just failing myself, I’m failing a social fantasy. And what’s more exhausting than that?

The post “Dream Privilege” appeared first on The McGill Daily.

A few months later, back home, I was flipping through channels — just an innocent middle schooler looking to fry my brain — when I landed on the E! Network. There she was again: the woman from the billboard, this time with two women, who I quickly deciphered as her sisters, all yelling at each other. I was instantly mesmerized.

Ten years later, I found myself emotionally invested in people who had no idea I existed.
Like most decade-long relationships, my relationship with the Kardashians has evolved. As a child, I secretly binged the show whenever my parents weren’t home, fully aware that my fascination would be met with disapproval. Even then, I understood that the Kardashians were controversial; I knew they were not the kind of public figures my parents would like me to engage with. Furthermore, I knew that watching reality TV was societally looked down upon. I was aware that engaging in such a low-brow activity would be met with disappointment. But that only made them more intriguing.

Aside from certain fashion choices, I wasn’t watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians for inspiration: I was watching for the drama, the absurdity, the larger-than-life spectacle of it all. Over time, my relationship with them shifted from guilty pleasure to slight obsession, from mindless entertainment to critical analysis. Eventually, I found myself caring less than I ever had before. Before I got to that point, however, I went through every stage of the parasocial rollercoaster.

A parasocial interaction refers to how audiences engage and form connections with celebrities, often perceiving this one-sided relationship as mutual. These interactions are illusionary; media audiences may feel they are building a real connection with personas — such as talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, and social media influencers — while, in reality, the celebrity remains completely unaware of their existence. In a sense, the Kardashians became this “friend” I followed for years. The parasocial dynamic allows audiences to project their own narratives onto celebrities, shaping their perceptions based on personal beliefs, values, and cultural context. For some, the Kardashians represent a refreshing take on the “American Dream”: a matriarchal, multiracial, “modern” family that has achieved remarkable success. For others, they symbolize late-capitalist greed, influencer shallowness, and cultural appropriation. To me, they became a lens through which I analyzed feminism, capitalism, and even race. Undeniably, they became part of my cultural narrative.

At age ten, the Kardashian world was a lot simpler; their lives appeared to be a fantasy of wealth, fame and drama. But as I got older, I began to realize that beneath the glamour and perfectly curated drama, there was a darker undercurrent to their story. In retrospect, the early seasons weren’t all lavish vacations and lighthearted sister fights. Beneath the designer handbags and catchphrases were some surprisingly dark storylines. There was the leaked sex tape that started it all. Kourtney’s struggles with an eating disorder. Her unexpected pregnancy. Khloe’s DUI. An extortion attempt that led to FBI involvement — an incident immortalized in the now-iconic meme of Kris Jenner solemnly declaring, “This is a case for the FBI.” Not to mention Scott Disick’s spiralling substance abuse. And that’s just off the top of my head. The thing is, I was invested. In the early stages of our parasocial bond, I felt myself rooting for them.

As I transitioned into my brooding teenage years, “keeping up” with the Kardashians became more socially acceptable. Kim and Kanye’s relationship catapulted the family into a new era of stardom, and suddenly, I wasn’t the only one watching. No longer hiding from them, my parents — though disapproving — would occasionally tune in, and for the first time, I had friends my age who also kept up.

Kylie Jenner, just a few years older than me, became an undeniable aesthetic influence on my generation. By 2015, her enhanced lips became a spectacle, fueling media buzz and public curiosity. That year, an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians aired in which she finally admitted to getting lip fillers, confirming long-standing speculation. Before this revelation, she had insisted that her plumper lips were simply the result of overlining with lip liner. This only intensified public fascination, sparking the “Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge,” a viral trend where people suctioned their lips into small glasses to create temporary swelling (despite no evidence that Jenner herself had ever used this method). I remember walking into class and seeing girls with bruised lips, victims of the infamous challenge.

It seemed like everywhere I looked, I could see Kylie’s influence: Snapchat filters that mimicked her appearance, blue hair becoming the “look of the moment,” and a collective obsession with overlining your lips. Even beyond Kylie, the family’s overall impact became undeniable. They were no longer just reflecting trends in fashion, wellness, and plastic surgery — they were creating them.

With the rise of influencer culture and the shifting dynamics of social media in the early-to-mid 2010s, there was now more than one way to keep up with the Kardashians. The show was no longer the only access point. Fans could now watch the drama unfold in real time through Twitter feuds and Instagram stories before waiting for the show’s polished recap. This shift meant that fans were no longer passive viewers but active participants in the Kardashian narrative. The boundaries between celebrity and audience blurred as social media fostered a sense of direct access, making interactions feel personal, even when they weren’t. At one point, there were Karjenner apps, one for each sister. Their constant stream of content gave my friends and me plenty to talk about. It was the perfect gossip ecosystem: juicy, dramatic, and — the best part of a parasocial relationship — no one was actually getting hurt.

Kardashian-isms infiltrated our vocabulary, “bible,” “iconic,” and “tragic” seamlessly becoming part of my lexicon. Their business ventures, scandals, and feuds somehow felt relevant to my actual life. Who remembers their boutique, Dash? Kim’s coffee table book of selfies, Selfish? The Life of Pablo era? Kimoji?

As I got older, the Kardashians stopped being just entertainment. I was analyzing them like they were a thesis topic. Superficial, seemingly talentless, and famous simply for being famous, they somehow remained oddly relatable. Their sibling feuds, messy divorces, and pregnancies played out before us in vivid detail, blurring the line between spectacle and authenticity. What was real and what was performance? I was never quite sure. They were no longer just celebrities; they had become a cultural phenomenon.

In an era where everyday life is staged for public consumption, this hyper-visible family reflects the world we inhabit. They move between reality and curation, between experience and image — holding up a mirror to how we, too, exist in both digital and physical realms.

As their fame and wealth grew, so did the exaggeration of their image: gaudier aesthetics, hyper-curated personas, increasingly contrived plotlines. The Kardashians I once kept up with were gone, replaced by caricatures of their former selves. To some extent, I justified my continued obsession as critical engagement. I told myself I was watching Keeping Up to keep up with the discourse, not just for entertainment. At least, that’s what I liked to believe.

However, as time passed, it became harder to maintain the konnection I once felt with the Kardashians. I mean, what do I have in common with billionaires? At first, I tried to bridge that gap by intellectualizing them — if I couldn’t relate to them, I could at least analyze them. But over time, that excuse started to crumble. Analyzing the Kardashians stopped being fun. As I began to grow up, so did the stakes. What was once a harmless spectacle — frivolous drama, over-the-top antics, and family feuds played out for entertainment — was now something more insidious. Their controversies were no longer just tabloid fodder; they had real-world implications. Whether it was their role in perpetuating unattainable beauty standards or their casual appropriation of Black culture, it became harder to laugh it off. And yet, the faker they became — the more hyper-curated, Face-Tuned, and self-aware — the harder they were to ignore. It was no longer about keeping up with the Kardashians, but keeping up with the consequences of their influence. The line between entertainment and influence had blurred, their impact feeling impossible to dismiss.

Inevitably, I burnt out. The Kardashians don’t know I exist and they never will. The spectacle began to fade. They transitioned from captivating figures to purveyors of a toxic, hyper-commercialized lifestyle, one I no longer found relatable or intriguing. What once was intellectually stimulating and fun now had depressive undertones. Beauty standards, appropriation, and the commodification of culture became central to their narrative, revealing the harmful, manipulative side of their empire. I once enjoyed dissecting their every business move. I used the incessant media surrounding the family to draw conclusions about society, the entertainment industry, and the cult of celebrity. I could write think pieces about their effect on the media landscape. Now? I can’t even keep track. (Kylie has a vodka brand now?)

This realization hit me recently when my friend and I tuned in to the Season Six premiere of The Kardashians, the Hulu redux of their flagship reality show, backed by a reported nine-figure deal. At this point, I had not kept up with the show for a year. In the episode, we watched Khloé reunite with her ex-husband, Lamar Odom. A few years ago, I would have been emotionally invested, hanging onto every awkward interaction. This time, I felt nothing but mild indifference.

What was once a fizzy, fun, and occasionally sombering glimpse inside the lives of America’s most notable socialites has become a glossy, heavily curated ad reel overflowing with product placement, calculated brand promotions, and strategic stinginess about what’s actually revealed to the public. Any real drama feels like an afterthought, carefully repackaged and monetized for maximum engagement. The Kardashian phenomenon was once a mirror of my adolescent fascination with fame and celebrity, but now, I see them as an exaggerated reflection of a world I no longer wish to participate in.

Ten years later, the memory of that Kim Kardashian billboard still lingers, but the billboard itself is long gone, faded, replaced, or simply forgotten like so many headlines that came after it. And as I sat there watching the new season, only half-paying attention, it hit me: my life has changed more than theirs ever will. They will always be rich, famous, and problematic. The only difference now is that I finally don’t care.

The post Keeping Up With My Delusions appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I was taken aback. Nothing about our situation seemed complicated. We were long-distance friends who happened to hook up whenever we were in the same city. No dreadful “situationship.” Nothing overwhelming, at least to me. It started to sink in that this was the end of what I’d found to be a rather enjoyable tryst.

“Do you want to hook up one last time?” I asked, internally devastated.

Afterwards, Ben walked me to work. We hugged as we went our separate ways – I cherished every second, hanging on for a few moments longer than our usual goodbyes. I was crushed.

I didn’t understand what went wrong. We seemed to have a good thing going on. Ben and I had been friends for a little over a year. Our affair started when he kissed me at a music festival, which led to a longer make-out session. While I found it funny, sources told me Ben had found it stressful.

We hooked up later during Thanksgiving weekend. I remember flirting with Ben all night, only to be met with little reciprocation. I was upset, frustrated and felt rejected. After all, he had kissed me first.
It was only at the end of the night that Ben seemed to get over his internal conflict — and that’s when it really began.

We saw each other periodically, but rarely talked in between. I guess it felt awkward to try to change our dynamic. He had just moved to Toronto; I was in Montreal. We couldn’t hang out regularly anymore, and we rarely texted. In hindsight, maybe I was too scared to get closer to him. Maybe I knew that I would catch feelings.

As I spiralled in the moments after our goodbye, I began to wonder why I was so devastated. Was I not a fun, casual hookup? Even worse, was I so gutted by this loss because I… had a crush on Ben? Had I had feelings all along?

I began to rewind and realized it had been a minute since I last had a proper crush, with my last crush being my math tutor in the fall of 2023. It’s no secret that the “crush economy” has been low. Soon I was feeling that familiar rush of euphoria I hadn’t felt in a really long time. I was excited, flustered, and eager. Suddenly, Ben was the perfect man for me and no one else could compare. In an instant, it seemed like he was one of the most nuanced, intelligent, sexy, and soulful people I had ever met. But then the harshness of my reality set in. After all, what was there to be eager about if Ben had just broken off our relationship? My heart was shattered.

Amidst my heartbreak, I began to scramble for a solution. What could I possibly do to keep him in my life? That’s when I realized I had to tell him — and the nausea set in. Should I wait to tell him in person? No, that wouldn’t be for another month. I had to tell him right then and there.

So, I decided to send him a text: “I think there might be some feelings I’ve been suppressing, and I think I really like you…”

I was ready to throw up at any second. In retrospect, writing that line made me feel irredeemably tacky.

I sent it. Then I waited.

Waiting for a text back is quite possibly one of the worst feelings of all time. I felt dread, adrenaline, and a weird sense of giddiness. I began to fantasize about what it would mean if Ben liked me back. After all, there was already a mutual attraction between us. What if when he said he didn’t want to be casual, he actually meant he wanted to be exclusive? Would he want to be my boyfriend? I’m aware I was leaping when I should’ve at most tip-toed. My God, my crush had led me to reach a point of lunacy.

“…I think I just see you as a friend, but I admit the circumstances and the distance led me to never really consider anything else, so I’m sorry about that,” he wrote back.

I felt it then: the beautiful feeling of release. Truly, Ben’s reply felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Not only was I immediately okay with it, I also felt relieved. As I analyzed my feelings, I found this sense of relief to be both refreshingly depressing and surprisingly hilarious. I had expected further heartbreak, pain, and sorrow if things hadn’t gone my way. I didn’t want to go home and bang my head against the wall to forget his existence. In fact, I felt grateful for it. And then I realized: this was the first time in my life I had ever told anyone that I liked them.

Though I hadn’t experienced a crush in a long time, thanks to the current dismal “crush economy,” this brief experience reminded me of the unique thrill that comes with liking someone. The butterflies, the “what-ifs,” and even the heartache are all a beautiful part of being human.

In the end, I highly recommend telling someone you like them — it’s a liberating act of honesty. As adults, it’s no longer cute (or sustainable) to silently destroy ourselves over the fear of rejection. Handling romantic rejection well means embracing the vulnerability of putting your feelings out there, accepting outcomes beyond your control, and finding gratitude in the growth that comes from the experience. With this newfound wisdom, I can only hope Ben and I have a strong enough foundation to continue our friendship. After all, love isn’t a conquest, and nothing truly belongs to us. All we can do is appreciate the connections we’ve had and the lessons they teach us.

After reflecting on my experience, I absent-mindedly checked the time. It was 4:53 p.m. Ben and I had left my apartment at 1:00 p.m. My crush had only lasted four hours.

The post My Four-Hour Long Crush appeared first on The McGill Daily.