Nutritionists recommend that every adult receive at least 20 grams of woe per day. Traditional hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies often received twice the required allowance simply through the activities of daily living and dying. Especially the dying. Well, the living was also bad.
In any case, the modern Western lifestyle does not provide nearly enough woe. The widespread deficiency of this vital nutrient has led to endemic optimism, consumerism, materialism, narcissism, utopianism, and other syndromes throughout our population. Rather than enjoy a healthy lifestyle of contemplating the inevitable death of all men, or the vicissitudes of fate that befall even the great, we feast on unhealthy snacks like Dodo videos, TikTok dances, and Instagram likes.
That’s why doctors recommend you subscribe to the Tree of Woe. Each week, we will deliver a series of essays, blog posts, news links, and other features designed to provide you with the despair, doom, and pessimism you might be lacking. Do you think you’re free? Do you expect the future to be bright? Do you hold out hope for humanity? Then you should read every word we’ve written.
Even if you are already absorbing a healthy amount of woe from internet media and your mother-in-law, you might still be missing vital doses of microdespair that can serve to balance the dopamine and serotonin in your Lexapro. In that case, you should read no more than one article per month. If your mood doesn’t get worse, you can always read more.
Contemplations on the Tree of Woe: Our guarantee of woe is so good that you’ll be happy if we’re wrong.
