A rant about Anthony Bourdain.

Also, 2025 feelings.

Whenever people say they can’t believe Anthony Bourdain killed himself, because his life was so perfect, I want to scream: PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE WHY HE KILLED HIMSELF. This take doesn’t make me popular at parties, but it still pours out of me like a leaking keg.

I recently was blitzed by an Instagram thread discussing this photo of Bourdain looking cunty in his little sunglasses:

While a few top commenters lamented his death and how much they miss him, most of comments functioned as a cloying fan fiction about his lifestyle. The general consensus was that it made no sense to be depressed if you were Anthony Bourdain.

“I can’t believe he would ever kill himself, he had it all!”

“If I was him, I’d simply stay alive and be awesome forever.”

“I can’t believe he died before he could give me the keys!!!”

“Ugh hot people shouldn’t be depressed.”

Of course, I know a lot of people are being hyperbolic and joking. I personally am too serious and intellectual to ever make a joke in public, BUT I’ve read extensively about the phenomenon, and can imagine jokes are edifying for those involved.

But even with the concept of jokes in mind, there’s a haunting amount of low EQ fan projection onto Bourdain’s life and death, specifically when it comes to depression and addiction. There’s the mind-numbingly dense idea that if you just Mario-hop yourself onto enough money and fame blocks, you’re impervious to human pain. It’s a compelling fantasy, I mean who doesn’t crave a neatly packaged utopia you can simply hustle toward? Who doesn’t want to be Mario speeding away in his little hat? Who doesn’t wanna find go meet Mario and Luigi’s mom MAMA MARIO and eat pasta and gossip while being a cartoon immune to all human suffering?

I got a little distracted thinking about Mario’s family, and how good the family home smells when Mama Mario crushes garlic in the kitchen, but imagine our Mario Kart is back on the track of projected utopias, and how people don’t understand Bourdain’s depression.

Undoubtedly, Bourdain materially had an easier life than many people, even with his demons. Commenters aren’t wrong that he had resources ($$$), connections (man knew EVERYONE), and experiences (unfettered global travel) most don’t have keys to. In his final years, he was bolstered by an immense privilege, a forcefield of Whiteness, a masculinity so specifically heralded by button-up bros and Zine lesbians alike (my people), and a fandom that transcended culture.

But he also suffered from an ailment that only amplifies the larger your stage: a culture of reactive projection and horrible listening skills. When I visualize the cage of fame, I imagine the worst elements of daily conversation heightened to 1000. People aren’t listening to the words you’re saying, they’re waiting for their turn to talk. They’re not clocking your micro-expressions, they’re assigning feelings to your face based on their own insecurities or obsession with the idea of you. An idea, while glorious and useful as a sketch, a doorway, a shiny frame, will always flatten the reality of a person.

When people say they can’t imagine Bourdain being depressed or killing himself, I don’t simply hear a deep misunderstanding of mental health, I hear an insidious lack of curiosity about other people’s complexities. I hear the echo of a sociocultural illness that feels perforated by the quick-fix AI era of dopamine mining. This illness is the inability to listen, to read a moment and hear past the surface, to scratch an image for the smell, to recognize that projecting your life (which is radically different than sharing or relating experiences) onto the image of someone else erases both of you in the process.

It’s lonely to be in a conversation where the other person is half-there, to notice someone nodding off-beat as if to betray their complete absence as you attempt Being Present. In these one-way conversations, you could divulge the untimely death of your entire family and they’d simply insert a filler like “oh that’s crazy man” or “hilarious” before slowly realizing you’re now on the ground, rocking yourself in the fetal position. Other genres of half-conversations are more engaged, there’s energy in the air, but that’s simply the momentum of your conversation partner counting beats in their head while you talk until they can turn it back to themselves, or repeat a mantra from a trending podcast clip about fibermaxxing.

In theory, famous people have a more captive adoring audience of listeners than the rest of us. But I don’t see it that way, I think that’s the PR of smoke and mirrors masking the dehumanization of being pedestaled into an object. Possessing the cultural cool where people want to Be You (as Bourdain did) sounds a bit wretched, like everyone has rehearsed their lines to yell At You, with no space to experience the contradictions of your personhood.

I think often about Justine Bateman’s book Fame: The Hijacking of Reality, and how well she describes the dissociative nature of the flashing cameras, and the melted faces reaching for a fog that’s not really you.

She describes it as: “this sort of cloud that's covering over you - and that's what people want to touch. It's not even really you.”

Many “adult children” struggle with transitioning into a grown relationship with their parents, because of the painful gap between the projected child-version the parents see, and the reality of their adult feelings and identity. This is a specific, and very different emotional phenomenon than fame.

But the parallel thread I’m squinting at (imagine me bent over a sewing machine) is the alienation of someone reaching for a face that is no longer, or never was there. The illusions of fame, a large stage, means looking out onto a crowd who have rewritten you in their own heads, and despite your best efforts, might never listen to the you that fully exists.

This is to say, when someone says they can’t imagine why Anthony Bourdain would kill himself, I just assume they’re a bad listener with little curiosity about the people they regularly encounter. I make assumptions based on this statement. I become a meta version of my own pet peeve, projecting a reality back onto the Instagram commenters, the stranger at the party, and simultaneously, onto Bourdain himself. I am simply trying to get to Mama Mario’s house via my own route, but it’s still a fantasy of sorts.

My New Years resolution for 2025 was: Don’t give up.

It’s incredibly dramatic, I’m a drama queen, but unfortunately, I meant it. Don’t give up was to be applied to many endeavors: writing, performing comedy, showing up for protests and political actions, and initiating IRL hangouts in friendships and my relationships.

I started 2025 feeling like a crab, wanting to retreat. I felt a deep shame about my failures, about my giant google Doc full of rejections. I knew, on some level, the shame was a form of self-importance, a narcissistic indulgence in itself, and I wanted to correct that by taking up less space, AKA, fueling the shame by passively stepping back. I deeply loved my decade in NYC, but one of the double-sided blessing-curses of being a creative in one of the Major Hubs is that you inevitably brush shoulders with people who sky-rocket to Fame (do you notice a theme) and while it can be incredibly sexy and life-affirming to see someone you got drunk with at Happyfun Hideaway get their glow on, it’s also hard to not feel sad and left behind at times. Especially as years of effort roll on.

This is to say, it can be quite corrosive and humiliating to put yourself out there. And ironically, the more you get on stage, write things, and tell people in plain words that you love them, the less others think you’re brave, and the more it's assumed you’re an attention addict or simply wired that way.

So at the beginning of last year, my brain was smoking a cigarette with her nips out (they have tassles on them), and she said:

“Babe just give up. Stop trying. No one wants it, your opinions and stories don’t fucking matter and if they did you’d know it by now. And no one needs your angry ass to talk about politics.”

I’d counter my brain by sipping my coffee, and putting on my best Hallmark Movie character voice to triumphantly say:

“My stories don’t NEED to matter, I just need to write them down to feel sane. There’s no need for an audience, we have to write ourselves into existence, that’s the evolutionary power of language.”

Then my brain would crack her knuckles (they’re really dry, btw), and she’d ash her cigarette on my arm and say:

“What the hell are you talking about, have you been taking those 25MG Sativa edibles again?!”

So, in my final protest, I resolved to Not Give Up in 2025, and trust me, I know how naked and embarrassing it is to admit. I’m only being this transparent because I know my feelings are common! I know how isolating the End Of Year Accomplishment recaps can feel when you’re in a dark hole with your chain-smoking brain.

I know how deeply soul-crushing global politics are, and believing in positive change can feel like a fool’s errand, so it’s easier to throw the cynic’s towel in then tap your community’s corner of involvement. I know pushing your own weird little projects out into the world can feel so small and scary full of stakes, like you’re reaching your hands into a bowl of knifes and then acting shocked then you get cut.

In 2025, I needed that corny resolution to keep my engine chugging, and I had to actively tap the sign when I wanted to bail on people, plans, projects, and go curl up in a ball of avoidant shame and deep depression.

But I’m glad I didn’t, because now — as of today, I know that Mario has a mom named Mama Mario, and my resolution for 2026 is to GO MEET HER.