Let me just say it: those beige influencer pics in a linen robe sipping overpriced mushroom coffee with a caption like “healing is not linear ☁️” are more fake than faking depression.

The world is burning, my rent is due, and my brain is a flooded basement of anxiety and emotional hangovers. But sure. Let’s pretend your five-minute journaling routine fixed your generational trauma.

This is why I read alt-lit. Because comfort is a con.

Let’s call it what it is. Hygge culture : that Scandi soft-core lifestyle porn of warm socks, minimalist furniture, and chamomile peace. it is just capitalism wearing an oatmeal sweater. It sells the illusion of inner peace while the world outside your Himalayan salt lamp is actively falling apart.

Real characters won't wake up and meditate. They'd scroll endlessly, disassociate in Whole Foods, and have conversations that sound like iMessages between two people slowly dissolving. A temp worker spiraling into apathy, hating everyone and everything, especially herself, while still trying to “get it together.” If he had a Pinterest board, it would just be empty folders labeled "someday."

These are books where people are not “healing.” They’re cracking. Quietly. Weirdly. Hilariously. And it’s real.

Alt-Lit and the Rawness

Alt-lit doesn’t offer you healing. It hands you a mirror at 3am and says, “Yeah, you do look like that. Now what?”

Instagram therapy pages, you know the ones, keep telling us to romanticize life. Romanticize your coffee.Romanticize your 9-5. Bro, I’m romanticizing my nervous breakdown. That’s the only way I’m surviving. If crying in the shower with Fiona Apple on repeat isn’t aesthetic, then I don’t want it.

What I love about introspective fiction is that it doesn’t sanitize the mess. It marinates in it. There’s no glow-up montage. There’s just a person sitting on their couch, trying to figure out if their cat hates them or if they’re projecting. These books aren’t about becoming better. They’re about noticing how weird everything already is.

And isn’t that what we need? Not more influencers telling us to drink chlorophyll, but weird little books that make us feel seen in our disillusionment?

Alt-lit says: screw the scented candles, here’s the void. You can laugh into it.

So the next time someone tells me to “just light a candle and breathe,” I’ll light a copy of their “manifest your dreams” planner and re-read Shoplifting from American Apparel instead. Because honestly, it’s not about escaping discomfort.

It’s about learning to vibe with it.

#InfluencerReality #MentalHealthMatters #WellnessDiscussion #AltLit #Authenticity