“BEAUTY HAS BEEN STOLEN FROM THE PEOPLE AND IS BEING SOLD BACK TO THEM UNDER THE CONCEPT OF LUXURY” - YE

“I WAS LIKE, CLOSE TO ROCK BOTTOM…BUT I STILL DIDN’T EQUATE LIKE, HEY - DRINKING AND DRUG USE IS VERY PROBLEMATIC. I MOVED TO ISRAEL, JUST TO TRY AND GET AWAY, TO START FRESH. I WAS PASSED OUT UNDER A BUS BENCH ON A MAIN STREET IN TEL AVIV AND I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING TO LIKE, THE HORNS OF BUSES, MOUTH COMPLETELY DRY, SUN BEATING DOWN ON ME AND THAT WAS WHEN I WAS LIKE, ‘WHAT…THE FUCK…AM I DOING HERE? - OTHERSHIP™ FOUNDER ROBBIE BENT

“EVERYBODY LOVES SHILAJIT, BUT IT’S KIND OF A HASSLE, LET’S BE HONEST. YOU CAN’T REALLY BE ON-THE-GO AND HAVE ACCESS TO SHILAJIT…” - CHERVIN JAFARIEH, “LIFE LONG SEEKER OF TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE” AND CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER OF CYMBIOTIKA™, A WELLNESS + SUPPLEMENT BRAND

OK - THIS IS A LONG ONE.

OPEN IT ON THE SUBSTACK APP OR YOUR BROWSER BEFORE YOU EVEN BEGIN TO READ IT.

NAMASTE™.

I’ve never been to Tulum. I’ve heard a lot about it though—how it has become a kind of Mecca for a particular type of person: someone who might check into a “bucket-listed” yoga retreat center during the day and reserve a booth with bottle service at an EDM™ nightclub that same evening. The type of person who puts chia seeds and peanut butter on their scrambled eggs (is this called “Australian style”? Who cares - thats what it’s called now) and might make a Reel™ documenting their participation in a cacao or temazcal ceremony after sorting out their hangover or comedown with some Cosmic Sound Healing™, before putting in a few hours of digitally nomadic laptop work at the DigitalJungle™ co-work hub.

I don’t think its for me.

I grew up with a guy who moved to California after going to Burning Man™ and became a millionaire selling male grooming products to insecure men with weak chins and pathetic jawlines. He started hanging out in high places, flying on private jets with deeply suspicious high-profile individuals who probably don’t actually know who pays their bills. Eventually he lost his mind, threw all his belongings into the ocean and wandered through the forest naked for weeks. He found his mind again in Tulum, at a rehab facility and wellness retreat. And then, a year later, he lost it again in Tulum during an ayahuasca ceremony at a “conscious-minded EDM festival.” His entire trip was in black and white. I don’t know where he is now. Our antennas no longer pick up the same frequencies.

I sometimes wonder what kind of person I would have been had I been a young man in 1967-68. What would I have thought of the hippies? Would I have gotten along with them? It’s highly unlikely, as I hate being touched, I’ll never step outside my house barefoot (or without 7 inch cuban heels for that matter) and my mother told me to never sit on the ground outside as it will ruin my nice clothes. I would have probably been a really pretentious bohemian-layabout-pseudo-intellectual-east-coast-type-of-smartass who wore only leather and was into White Light/White Heat and Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures. Maybe I would have been a 450-lb greek guy carving Gyro meat somewhere in uptown Manhattan, blissfully unaware of the existence of both Warhol’s Factory and the Scene™ at Haight Ashbury™. Maybe I am both of those things right now?

If I could choose, however, I’d probably go back in time and become a CIA asset who conducts the most heinous, immoral and absurd mind experiments on these flower-power children out of absolute spite and as advanced payback for the culture that they would eventually leave behind for us when they and their offspring would all turn into neoliberal tech swine a few decades later.

“I’VE GOT IT…IT MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH POST-FORDISM”

Have you ever heard of the term “GENCH”? It’s Pronounced: “JEN-CH”…as in “GENTRIFICATION”.

If you’ve heard this term, chances are you’ve been hanging in or around people from Toronto or New York City over the last five years. You may have even added the word into your lexicon and started using it as shorthand to describe a very specific feeling, attitude, or atmosphere that currently surrounds you.

Before I get into talking about what GENCH means, I’m going to formally announce to the world that I AM THE INDIVIDUAL WHO CAME UP WITH THIS WORD. Don’t ever try to suggest otherwise. That being said, as it usually goes with new concepts, its definition, philosophical charge, cultural connotations, and layered meanings continue to be teased out and expanded through conversation and use.

Here’s where it comes from:

In 2019, I was a touring musician traveling through America in a large, decadent van. Long drives, late nights, early mornings, etc. Being big-city metropolitan elitists, my friends and I quickly found ourselves sick and tired of the omnipresent trash food and sewage-water coffee from the likes of Starbucks™, McDonald’s™, or whatever gas station chain happened to be near the hotel we were staying at the night before.

One morning in Omaha, Nebraska, the decision was made to look for “better coffee”, even if that meant having to stop, find parking, enter a café, and stand in line while listening to songs by Milky Chance™ pour out of a Bluetooth™ speaker while waiting 25 minutes for a young Liberal™ who is halfway through their MFA and $250,000 in student debt to take our order, charge us $16 per coffee, and jovially ask us for our names before sending us to the waiting area where another Young Liberal™ and recent MFA grad with the same amount of debt and a seapunk blue, cubist haircut miserably over-steams oat milk, whisks matcha, and poorly pulls overcooked shots of Fairtrade™ Ethiopian espresso that supposedly tastes like blueberries, pectin-forward strawberry, and dandelion stems but in reality taste like the liquified output of a burnt-down microchip that powers a Froot Loop™–flavored vape pen.

A new ritual. It became a game. We would start looking for “fancy coffee shops” two cities ahead of our stops, searching for the most ridiculous spots we could find.

“Better coffee” became “fancy coffee,” which quickly turned into “gentrified coffee.”

“Let’s get a gentrified coffee.”

And then I said it: “I need a gench americano.”

And then it became: “Let’s gench up.”

My friend, the great cinematographer Tristan Clarke-McMurchy, was on tour with us, documenting the trip on film. He was sitting beside me when I first heard myself utter the phrase, and I saw him smile—he knew exactly what it meant. Truthfully, I must share the credit I claim for the word with him, because if he wasn’t there beside me to both verify that this phrase did indeed need to exist and extrapolate further on what it could possibly mean, it might not have become a thing. He Activated™ it.

So what exactly does GENCH mean?

Linguistically, it’s a short-form version of “gentrified.”

“Gentrified”, meaning: “having undergone the process of gentrification in which a historically lower-income, marginalized, or working-class neighborhood undergoes a transformation that converts it into a more desirable area through the flooding of capital and increased development, leading to an influx of new residents and businesses.”

Etymologically, the term “gentrification” blossomed out of the word “gentry,” an old-fashioned noun describing “people of good social position” or “well-born, genteel and well-bred people of high social class.”

I’m gonna copy and paste that again because its crucial that you understand this for the rest of today’s lecture/diatribe:

Etymologically, the term “gentrification” blossomed out of the word “gentry,” an old-fashioned noun describing “people of good social position” or “well-born, genteel and well-bred people of high social class.”

The term “gentrification” was first used in the early 1960s by people like the British sociologist Ruth Glass, who observed aspirant middle-class people invading the working-class neighborhoods around Islington in London. They outpriced and displaced the entire demographic, erasing its cultural and social characteristics with the imposition of their gaudy, “elegant” architectural aesthetics.

In terms of aesthetics and cultural expression, gench is the nexus point where Hustle Culture™, Big Tech™, and the Wellness-Industrial Complex™ converge. Common tropes include a branding emphasis on personalization-as-premium, customizability, maximization of potential, self-optimization, performative productivity, wellness as capital, the gamification of success, entrepreneurial idealism, the concept of the self as a brand, toxic positivity, arch individualism, the commodification of healing, therapy-speak, meditation as a productivity tool, and subscription-as-identity.

Common gench visual tropes are the use of minimalist, flat design often bereft of shadows, gradients, or skeuomorphic design elements, vector-style graphics in the stupidly named “Corporate Memphis” style, gently muted pastel color swatches, sans serif fonts, rounded packaging, medical-style typography, and ultra-clean layouts.

“GENCH” is a term that describes certain aesthetic dimensions, codes, and modes of expression that pervade and define late-stage Identity Capitalism™.

“GENCH” is a word that communicates a particular feeling about the way that culture looks, sounds, tastes, and feels in a world where all facets of the human experience have been brought into the domain of the market.

“GENCH” is about customizability: how You™ need it, when You™ need it, where You™ need it, even when You™ don’t.

“GENCH” is a Mindset™ and Personality™ trait.

“GENCH” is usually just normal stuff, but “Elevated™.”

“GENCH” describes a constellation of symbols and signifiers that are utilized by the logic of lifestyle branding to charge products and services with an aura of luxury and assure their consumers, users, and audience members that they are arbiters of discerning Taste™, Self-Care™, and Well-Being™.

When this term first came about, I was living with my friend Sam. One day he walked out of his room wearing a beautiful 80’s Yohji Yamamoto shirt and said “I think I’ve got it…it might have something to do with Post-Fordism™”.

Gench that is, of course.

It’s all very California™, which makes sense, since hustle culture, big tech, and the wellness-industrial complex are all running on the same philosophical software: The Californian Ideology.

FUNKY NATURAL ORANGE WINE™, A STACK OF WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE MAGAZINES AND A LOST FILM REEL OF MARGARET THATCHER FUCKING RONALD REAGAN IN AN ABANDONED COAL MINE PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND AT A PERFORMANCE SAUNA™ WHERE GROUP SEX IS TAKING PLACE BETWEEN A POLYCULE. AN AUDIOBOOK OF ATLAS SHRUGGED NARRATED BY ANDREW HUBERMAN PLAYS AT 2X SPEED THROUGH A $10,000 AUDIOPHILE SOUND SYSTEM.

Sunny California™: the radiant terminus where Manifest Destiny™ hits the Pacific and turns inward. The conquest confronts its final geographical coordinates; the frontier impulse sublimates, inverts, mutates. The colonization of new terrains becomes the annexation of inner space. Energy is deathless, eternal returning, ceaseless and onward. Energy transmutes, transforms and transcends.

The Californian Ideology is a concept explored in an essay of the same name by two English media theorists in the mid-1990s: Andy Cameron and Richard Barbrook. Exploring the then-emerging “global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics,” the essay is a critique of the Silicon Valley mythology that propagates a message of technological utopianism through the seemingly-paradoxical merging of countercultural hippie values with technological determinism and free-market fundamentalism.

The Californian Ideology = 1960s Acid Individualism™ + Silicon Valley Libertarianism™ + free-market techno-utopianism.

The Californian Ideology = the Individual™ over the collective.

The Californian Ideology = You™ are the protagonist; Liberation™ happens at the personal level.

The Californian Ideology = “the market is the engine of Freedom™.”

The Californian Ideology = group sex and Natural Wine™ with a polycule in a Performance Sauna™ or private ice-plunge pool while an audiobook of Atlas Shrugged narrated by Andrew Huberman plays at 2x speed through a $10,000 audiophile sound system.

The Californian Ideology = the government is dumb, slow and bureaucratic, private enterprise over all.

The Californian Ideology = socially progressive but pro-market.

The Californian Ideology = a stack of Whole Earth Catalogue magazines + a lost film reel of Margaret Thatcher fucking Ronald Reagan in an abandoned coal mine.

The Californian Ideology = Vibes™ not politics.

The Californian Ideology = social problems are business Opportunities™.

The Californian Ideology = technological progress is God™.

The Californian Ideology = all problems are technological at root.

The Californian Ideology = liberation through entrepreneurship, innovation and self-expression, not through politics or collective action.

The Californian Ideology = consumption and personal branding as politics; you are what you Feed™.

The Californian Ideology = the Entrepreneur™ as the heroic figure of late-stage capitalism.

The Californian Ideology = fetishizing the concept of the sovereign individual™: the Founder™, the Hacker™, the Self-Made Woman™.

The Californian Ideology = neoliberal capitalism as empowerment.

The Californian Ideology sees technology as destiny. It’s the unwavering belief that technology will inevitably create a freer, more efficient society. It is a philosophy obsessed with radical individualism and the concept of free enterprise above all; a system of libertarian beliefs that asserts that technology possesses the power to dismantle the bureaucratic limitations of the state which stifle innovation and progress. It is marked by a meritocratic mysticism that sees power as belonging to those who “deserve it,” based on their Hustle™, Ingenuity™ and ability to Innovate™ with absolute efficiency.

“You Are Your Own Startup™.”

This ideological shift set the stage for what would become the Wellness-Industrial Complex™, the multi-trillion-dollar industry comprised of self-improvement regimes, spiritual technologies, lifestyle brands, and data-driven biohacks and bespoke services that focus on individualistic solutions to systemic issues. The Wellness-Industrial Complex™ co-opts the aesthetics of rebellion and mysticism to sell conformity.

As the health and physical education department of its outward institutional manifestation, the Wellness-Industrial Complex™ is one of the Californian Ideology’s most seductive incarnations. With its roots in the therapeutic turn of postwar culture and the neoliberalism of the late twentieth century, the Wellness-Industrial Complex™ further propagates and proselytizes the core ethoses of its parent ideology: the privatization of responsibility, the fetishization of optimization, the religious worship of technology-as-savior, and the view of the self as a project whose value is tied to the individual’s ability to self-regulate, self-improve, and self-heal.

Wellness™ is gench. They are almost synonymous terms. Any product, service, term, or concept that comes out of the Wellness-Industrial Complex™ can be described as Gench.

The following are all real products, services or institutions currently available to help you get to Your Best State™.

Click the names of each one to be sent where you can purchase or learn more, should you feel so inclined:

LYMA™ Supplement — “the ultimate supplement for sleep and stress” made up of “11 gold-standard nutraceutical ingredients” and “high-tech delivery systems to optimize bioavailability.” Offering “benefits that make a difference,” at a cost of $370.00 USD per month, the starter kit includes a free hand-hammered copper storage vessel. “Because there’s no feeling better than feeling your best.”

Hapbee™ Smart Neckband — a wearable collar that uses Hapbee™’s patented technology to “boost mood, improve focus, enhance sleep and reduce stress” using “low-frequency signals.” It works by “recording unique electromagnetic ‘signatures’ present in every single molecule in your body” using “advanced sensors,” and turning them into “digital files” which are then “played back as ultra-low-frequency magnetic fields that interact with your cells, creating effects similar to the original molecule.” The website claims it can enhance sleep, increase energy and productivity, and “help you power through long work days, intense workouts or creative deep-dives without the jitters, crashes or brain-fog of traditional performance enhancers.” All of this for $399.00 USD. According to its “How It Works” page, the technology could even help cure brain tumors.

Neuro™ Neurogum — a “sugar-free nootropic cognitive brain performance supplement” chewing gum powered with “natural caffeine, balanced with L-Theanine and infused with B-vitamins.” Claiming to enhance attention, cognition and productivity, the product is “science-backed” for “optimal performance.” $24.99 USD per pack. Four flavor options.

Sensate™ — a “non-invasive device placed on your chest” that “emits infrasonic waves through the body via bone conduction.” The product claims to calm the nervous system in “just ten minutes” to help you become “more resilient,” “strengthen your nervous system,” “improve emotional regulation,” and “bounce back faster.” $463 USD.

CYMBIOTIKA™ Mineral Shilajit — a branded “mineral resin formed in the decomposition of plant matter and earth with the help of microorganisms”. “studies show” that it has the ability to “enhance detoxification, increase blood flow and circulation and provide the body with nutrients that support cellular energy.” $88.00 USD per pack, plus shipping.

The HumanCharger™ — a portable headset device that “mimics natural sunlight to stimulate the brain.” Designed to “improve wellness, health and performance.” $229.00 USD.

Moon Juice™ Brain Dust — an “alchemical nootropic blend” of “adaptogens, superherbs, super mushrooms and minerals” designed to “enhance your being throughout the day.” $54.00 USD for 1.5 oz.

AG1 Athletic Greens™ — the “‘clinically-backed’ Daily Health Drink” endorsed by podcasters Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman that “combines your multivitamin, pre-and-probiotics, superfoods and antioxidants into one deliciously simple scoop” to “support your health journey.” Subscriptions starting at $90+ USD per month.

HeatHealer™ Infrared Sauna Blanket — a “sauna” in a sleeping bag with “far infrared for deep tissue penetration” and “jade and tourmaline” for “perfect heat distribution.” Supposedly “soothes mind and body” and helps to “improve wellbeing.” $650.00 USD.

Upgrade Labs™ Human Upgrade Centre — “the world’s first Human Upgrade™ centre.” Founded by biohacker Dave Asprey, where “science, data, and advanced technology come together to help you feel better, get stronger, and perform at your best.” It claims it is “not a gym or med spa” but “a complete suite of personalized services that support your recovery, energy, strength and longevity.” There are no personal trainers; instead, there are “Biohacker Technicians” who guide you through various optimization practices such as cryotherapy, red light therapy and neurofeedback. Membership costs around $450.00 USD per month.

Continuum™ Wellness Club — a private, exclusive, invite-only mansion that is “making wellness a science” in New York. According to their website, Continuum™ is “a single source of truth and execution for personalized health and wellness,” eliminating guesswork through expertise and data-driven precision. “Rooted in science. Refined by AI. Realized by experts.” Continuum™ “meets you where you are, leveraging data and expert insights to propel you toward your ideal state,” resulting in “clarity, energy and personal elevation” through biometric technology, IV drips, nap pods, hyperbaric chambers and genetic profiling. Estimated $300.00 USD per visit.

Eight Sleep™ Pod-5 — an AI-powered mattress cover and computer hub that tracks biometrics with embedded sensors to “detect your sleeping patterns,” heart rate and more with clinical-grade precision. Eight Sleep is a self-described “sleep fitness company” made up of “builders, engineers and innovators” who are “bringing advanced technology to your bed, transforming the way you sleep.” Power users include Elon Musk, Scarlett Johansson and Sidney Crosby. $2,999.00 USD, with optional upgrades: a $1,950.00 USD adjustable “Base” that “elevates for sleeping, reading and relaxing,” “mitigates snoring automatically,” and “plays soundscapes via integrated speaker,” or a $1,000.00 USD “Blanket” to “create a fully immersive temperature experience.” A $33.00 USD per month “Autopilot” app subscription unlocks “custom sleep optimizations.” When a bed just isn’t enough…

Erewhon’s Activated Coffee™ — an “invigorating coffee blend” featuring “regenerative drip coffee combined with creamy ghee, nourishing MCT oil and collagen for a smooth and rich texture.” You can “enjoy the organic goodness and a balanced flavor profile that will awaken your senses” for around $14.00 USD per cup after tax and tip (be nice, we are in a recession).

Live Organic Food’s Activated Nuts and Seeds — raw nuts and seeds that have been “soaked in a salt water solution for a period of time to stimulate the early germination and sprouting process,” an “ancient practice” that is “believed to make the nuts more bio-active.” $5.75 USD per 75 grams.

Can you imagine just how Elevated™ your life could be with this stuff?

Genchness, or the colonization of the self: an ongoing project concerned with the taming, beautification, and optimization of one’s inner life according to consumer logic.

MY MAIDEN VOYAGE

Tristan and I were recently in New York City at the same time this summer. He told me he had a free pass to a new “gench sauna” and asked if I’d like to join. My experience with saunas had been quite limited. Notably, I’d been to the legendary Russian & Turkish Baths on 10th Street several times and assumed this would be similar. I was wrong.

This place was located at 23 West 20th Street in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. I had decided that the quickest way to get there from the Lower East Side on this particularly blazing hot day would be to rent an electric Citi Bike™ and whip up 1st Avenue, across 20th to somewhere near 5th, park the bike and walk. I was wrong.

I had forgotten that this was the day of the Pride Parade™ in New York City. So I found myself confronted with massive crowds, barricades and various obstructions that turned what I assumed would be a 15-minute journey into a 45-minute trek. Whatever. I found a place to dock the electric bike and started walking to the location where I was to meet Tristan. I was nearby and just had to cross 5th Avenue, so I told him I would be there in 5 minutes. I was wrong.

The Pride Parade™ was happening on 5th Avenue and there was no way to cross the street as it was blocked off by steel barricades as far as the eye could see. So I waited for ten minutes and watched thousands of people marching to loud Gaga, saw many, many, many corporate-sponsored Rainbow Flags™, Rainbow Banners™, Rainbow Signs™ and Rainbow Everything™. I looked down at the ground and found a pamphlet depicting the eggplant emoji and a QR code in front of a soft-hued rainbow backdrop in a Corporate Memphis aesthetic. It read: “PENIS FILLER — THICK WITH PRIDE — ADD VOLUME WHERE IT COUNTS.” After a few more minutes standing, waiting, and scrolling through my Feed™, I noticed that finally the cop guarding the barricade was walking over to let traffic cross during a break in the parade. I was right.

I made my way across the street, cut a left, turned right onto 20th, and made my way to our meeting place: Othership™.

Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Maybe you’ve been?

You enter through a front door into a wood-paneled reception area that apparently doubles as a sort of gift shop selling stuff like branded sauna hats and “premium incense” that is “hand-dipped in ship” and “hand-rolled with intention to guide you on an inward journey”. It is sold in quantities of 11 (angel numbers… repeating digits, ya dig?).

I gave my name to the attendant at the counter, answered NO when they asked me if I had ever been there before, I probably signed a waiver I did not read, and was handed a couple of frilly, weighty, terracotta-colored towels and a rubber wristband that signified that I was a first-timer.

I entered the dimly lit, overcrowded men’s changeroom and found myself a small area to get into my bathing suit before making my way toward the bathroom, past a dozen men who were removing Apple™ watches who talking loudly about baseball and investment metrics.

I found a toilet with the seat up and tried to maneuver my bare feet (they enforce a barefoot policy there) so as to avoid the piss puddles on the gorgeous flooring that is apparently made of sliced river rocks to help create the “sensation of a midnight nature walk.”

I walked out of the changeroom and entered the “Tea Room™” which is the common meeting area at Othership™. The first thing I see is a large glass cenotaph-shaped fireplace shooting out of the ground, up through a massive glowing halo, into the ceiling. The room is dimly lit and surrounded by soft upholstered bleachers. Directly ahead there is a self-serve tea station offering a variety of herbal teas, etc. etc. etc. The first thing I feel is the sluggish throb of a downtempo kick drum pulsing out a steady beat through the sound system.

A gench, overfilled sauna with a bangin’ sound system playing downtempo EDM™?

Fuck me.

I stood there beside Tristan with my towel around my neck, mystified, trying to gather myself together, analyzing the data being piped into my various sensory ducts. What exactly is this? What kind of people are in here? Why are they here? What are they doing? Is this a party? Are these people influencers? What’s the capacity in this place? Am I fat? Am I too skinny? Should I get jacked again? Why do men get jacked? Where is the sauna? What is that gorgeous scent? What the hell kind of music is this? Is this chopped-and-screwed EDM™? Is this sub-tropical dubstep? What came after EDM™? Did EDM™ ever die? Did Daft Punk invent EDM™ when they started portraying themselves as anime characters come to life or whatever the fuck? Is Discovery (2001) the foundational, seminal text for the worst music so far this century? Is Discovery (2001) any good? Did I ever even like Discovery (2001)? Do I like Discovery (2001) now? I can’t believe those French pricks somehow managed to turn one of the last great American avant-garde art forms of the twentieth century into infantilized cartoon music. Fuck Discovery (2001). R.I.P. Romanthony. Definitely fuck Random Access Memories (2013) — half of that album sounds like Contemporary Christian Rock™ and that Giorgio Moroder song is really, really, really fucking annoying. Damn. I’m usually the guy defending Thomas and Guy-Man. Fuck me. How many times am I going to be asked if I saw the Alive 2007™ tour? No, I wasn’t there. I don’t do cartoons. “Anime isn’t ‘cartoons’.” Well then what the fuck is it? Is there somewhere to get a litre of cold water to drink in here? Hot tea in a hot a sauna? I don’t want to drink hot tea in a cedar inferno, ya dig? Is this Wellness™? Is this what it’s like in Tulum?

“Hey there. My name is Law and I’m your Guide™. Is this your maiden voyage?”

“Hey, uh. I’m Tony and yes it is.” I point at my rubber wristband.

“Wonderful, a First Journeyer™. Welcome to Othership™.”

“Glad to be here!!”

“Let me give you the rundown: That over there is our Performance Sauna™. I recommend hitting that for a while to unwind. It can reach up to 185 degrees, so no presh. Follow your comfort. Over there to the left of the Tea Room are the showers leading to the Ice Baths™. You are now embarking on a Free-Flow 75 Minute Self-Guided Journey™. In about an hour or so I will make an announcement in the Performance Sauna™ to let you know that you are approaching the end of your Journey™ and remind you that we will unwind with five minutes of Breathwork™, which is totally optional, dude. No presh.”

During the entirety of this exchange I was trying to NOT look at Tristan, so as to avoid giggling - either out of discomfort, cringe or mutual gench-awarness. I once got detention in grade 7 for laughing too much in class with my friend Corey. Criminal. We both had to sit in an empty classroom after school and stare at walls on opposite sides of the room in total silence. Guess what happened? We laughed the whole time. God forbid. That teacher was a miserable warthog of a woman. I wonder what her Spotify Wrapped™ looked like last year.

We then headed to the tea station. The kick drum throbbed us along. Pause. I waited my turn for tea. A girl smiled at me. A guy smiled at me. Another girl smiled at me. Law smiled at me and nodded upwards. What are you all smiling at exactly? Happy, are you? Happy about what, exactly? Am I some kind of clown? Do I amuse you?

I got a tea. I don’t remember what kind. They have markers so you can write your name on the cup.

We opened the door, entered the Performance Sauna™. It was big inside. It was hot inside. There were lots of people inside. Too many. It was fucking slammed.

There are three levels of seating that all face the hot sauna rocks. Some people are meditating, some people are lying down, and most people are chatting loudly about things like dating apps, crypto, romance conundrums and dropping terms they learned in therapy like “avoidant” or “holding space”. There are a few groups of “bros” laughing really loud, treating half of the sauna like their own personal booth at a whack-ass nightclub. Pink light radiated through the slots in the wooden bleachers, splattering up the wall. It’s purple, then it’s blue, green, whatever. At this point I’m sitting there in half lotus position on my towel on the top row, in the corner of the sauna beside Tristan and I’m starting to melt. The atmosphere in there was very social, clubby, quite annoyingly loud and very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very fucking gench.

Look — I could sit here, as I currently am in this uncomfortable but aesthetically significant postmodern black leather chair from Sweden, sifting through my mind to find sexy adjectives to continue describing what these places look like, but it’s 2025, I have instant access to thousands of professionally shot images of the interior of this place, I am feeling lazy, I have a heavy metal migraine coming on and I don’t really want to bother trying to flex my pen to impress you today, so let’s just look at this place together so I can get to my point quicker:

Get the picture? What do you think?

Nice innit?

It kinda reminds of this nightclub on King St. West that I once helped build with my father when i was younger called COBRA. My job there was to glue 500 GOLD SKULLS to the wall:

At some point, Law re-enters the Performance Sauna™ with a towel around his waist and a microphone headset. He is holding a massive snowball and explains that it’s soaked with Othership™’s custom blend of several cedar oils and orange (if my memory is correct). He stretches his body out into a “warrior two” yoga position, stretches the arm that’s holding the snowball backward and, with an elongated arching motion, jumps in the air and throws the snowball into the sauna’s rocks where it immediately fizzles into an ecstatic olfactory bouquet of woody vapors. He puts his hands into a prayer position and bows before us before taking the towel off his waist and commencing a full-blown towel dance ceremony where he whips the steam vapors around the room. Trying to NOT look at Tristan out of an internalized fear that I might end up in detention for laughing, staring at a wall again, I wonder to myself: what the fuck is this place? What is this dance? Is this like, African? Polynesian? What the fuck is this?

It’s called Aufguss, actually, Tony, you uncultured, sarcastic, sassy mutt. It’s a GERMAN sauna ritual where a SAUNA MASTER™ pours oil-infused water onto hot sauna stones and spins a towel over their head to circulate the fragrant air around the room.

Oh.

The music chugged along — the best way to describe it would be to call it something like Globestep™.

Globestep™ is a sort of post-EDM™ mood programming, a bloodless, sexless, godless form of sonic fodder; corporate downtempo Wellness™ atmospheres compiled to imbue a space with a sense of transcendent hipness. Sometimes its beatless, ambient sonic incense. When it grooves, it’s slow, like 85–100 BPM. There are no dynamics; everything just thumps and ticks along. Sometimes it’s basically “stomp and clap” rubbish. It’s a form of music concerned with surfaces: Middle Eastern scales, Arabic chants, Southeast Asian rhythms, African highlife guitar quotations, tropical bass vibrations. It speaks in shallow signifiers borrowed from Buddha Bar™ compilations (whatever that sounds like, keep me out of it), Khruangbin doing dub (whatever that sounds like, keep me out of it), worldbeat music (whatever that means, keep me out of it), 90s chill-out electronica (whatever that means, keep me out of it), and ambient dub techno (Basic Channel is all I’ll ever need; as for the rest — keep me out of it). Bali™ meets Berlin™. It’s Exotica for Burners™. The soundtrack to an HR-approved Ayahuasca retreat™ for your marketing department. Is this what it’s like in Tulum?

There is an Othership™ playlist on Spotify™ called, Othership™: House Of Transformation, should you feel so inclined. The song that best summarizes the Globestep™ sound from this playlist is the one below. Skim Through it:

Another wild find from this playlist is the blonde-dreadlocked Reggae™ artist Marcus Gad. I found myself watching one of his music videos with my jaw on the floor. The video starts off with him making some sort of psychedelic potion in a Steampunk™-y laboratory, which he then proceeds to drink before being blasted into an AI-generated psych-out trip in an Arabian desert complete with shapeshifting Indians/Arabs, an unattainable woman in a white dress in the distance etc. This shit is CRAZY.

Some lyrics from the song:

“Who be like a flower that a grow up ina dung
Some see say dem a surfer, reality dem a drifter
Some want fi reach without the taste of the bitter
It a reality but on Netflix look s better
Watch it create a brand new human behaviour”

“All we a lost is a must to recover
Deep down, deep ground, seed it a push up
No chip a fit under me skin man a live up
No meat a fit ina me meal me nah eat up
When di wicked man a come attack me nah give up”

It’s unclear if when Marcus says “no chip a fit under me skin man” he is talking in Jamaican patois about someone causing him anger by getting under his skin, or if he is referring to the widespread conspiracy theory that Covid-19 vaccinations implemented a small microchip under peoples skin. I don’t know which reading would be more absurd.

Anyways: I hit my limit and decided it was time to exit the Performance Sauna™ so out I went. I hit the shower for a rinse down and walked over to the dark, stony ice bath section where I fully immersed myself into a tub full of ice water. I stared ahead at a clock while someone made sounds with bowls and bells. Sometimes they bang a gong. I don’t struggle with ice baths; for some reason I love it. As a matter of fact, I’m craving it right now as I write this.

We do this twice — sauna, ice. Law tells us that our time is running down and we are about to commence five minutes of Breathwork™ in the Performance Sauna™. I resume the half lotus position on my towel. Music cuts off. He guides us through five minutes of guided breathing, meditation and positive affirmations. Some people are taking it really seriously, some are not participating at all.

You’ll never guess what happens next.

A guy walks in with a microphone and starts to rap.

A Wellness™ rap.

“Breathing”

“Love”

“Light”

People are clapping along.

He keeps going.

And going.

He finally finishes and everyone claps.

The music returns and it’s a version of “Clair de Lune” with a steady tech house beat ticking behind it. I look at Tristan and he giggles: “Gench Debussy?!”

My first Othership™ experience left me feeling many things: bewildered, luxurious, dubious, annealed, irked, radiant, uneasy, rejuvenated, suspicious.

Was that relaxing? Was it supposed to be? How can I hate an immaculately designed modern bathhouse? Why did they kick us out after 75 minutes? Maybe I was just getting started? What is wrong with me? Should I be embarrassed to tell people that I went there? Am I pretentious for being so critical of that place? Am I a snob? Why am I a snob? Was Ram Dass C.I.A.? Why did I feel so uncomfortable in an environment that was purportedly designed to make me feel the opposite? Did I belong there? Who does? Is this place above me? Would I recommend this to someone? What kind of person would I recommend it to? A fucking tech house remix of “Clair de Lune”?

They’re trying to tell me something, but what?

Why are white people like this?

I couldn’t help but feel as though there was some tenebrous energy of suggestion circulating throughout Othership™; its atmosphere charged with subliminal intent. That was a scripted experience.

Is this what it’s like in Tulum?

A HERO’S JOURNEY: FROM UNDERNEATH A BENCH IN ISRAEL TO MAKING PEOPLE CRY IN AN ICE BATH ON THE COOLEST STREET IN TORONTO™

Ok, so: what the hell was that?

Here’s the abstract:

Othership™ describes itself as an “immersive sauna and ice-bath experience,” offering a mix of Cirque du Soleil and a group therapy session that functions as “a Trojan horse for helping people experience their emotions.” The company was founded in Toronto in the early 2020s after CEO Robbie Bent and friends discovered that a DIY sauna-and-ice-bath experiment on Bent’s Geary Ave. property might not only spark a bangin’ business opportunity in the Health and Wellness™ space, but also, as Founding Partners™ Amanda Laine and Harry Taylor put it, fulfill their dream of “doing something that would help people and make the world a better place.”

Robbie Bent has made several Hustlepreneur™ podcast appearances this year to talk about Othership™’s expansion into the New York market. The general gist of his origin story goes like this: a young Canadian man grows up in a culture that suggests Happiness™ is derived from professional and financial success, and works hard in school to impress his parents. Figuring that finance is the quickest route to prestige, this young Canadian man enters the world of high finance after university. He lands a job at an investment bank, moves over to a hedge fund, and Puts In The Work™, often logging 90 Hours Per Week™. As his wealth increases, he begins to feel a hollowness of core, realizing he is now held hostage by the once-desired lifestyle of decadence and luxury, bound by what he has referred to as “golden handcuffs.”

Then 2008 happens. Bam. Goodbye hedge fund, hello existential uncertainty. At the age of 24, driven by a still-persistent urge to hustle his way toward Abundance™ and Freedom™, our protagonist does exactly what you’d expect: he launches a startup. And the startup goes exactly how you’d expect: poorly. On the far side of this failed virtual-SIM-card marketplace business endeavor, the young Canadian man finds himself living in his parents’ basement in Guelph, Ontario, feeling like a failure, a letdown, and a bum. His predilection for certain illicit substances and alcohol begins to escalate.

The non-Jewish young Canadian man decides it’s time to find himself, so he does something you might not expect but also something that kinda makes complete sense: he moves to Israel, where he hits Rock Bottom™, waking up under a park bench after a bender in Tel Aviv. Our protagonist then meditates for 100 hours during a 10-day Vipassana retreat in the so-called Holy Land™, toys with Psychedelics™, and receives the message he has apparently been seeking his whole life:

“Young man, you have a lot of Trauma™ to Process™. You should realize, here in Israel, that your violent lust for entrepreneurial rock stardom does not come from any innate inner drive but from a gaping hole inside your soul. You do not Love Yourself™. This is also why you use illicit substances, young man. If you stop abusing the Devil’s Nectar™ and stop shoveling snow into your nostrils, you can rebuild your life. You might marry your wife, move to the Bay Area™, find yourself working in the biggest ecosystems in Tech™ and Crypto™, and eventually discover your place within the Wellness Industrial Complex™ where you might make millions. You are Wellness™ incarnate.”

Guess what happens next…?

It’s A Hero’s Journey™…

Who’s gonna play this guy in the biopic?

Fast forward to 2019-ish, somewhere around the bloodless, sexless, godless interiors of the “Geary Ave.™” area in Toronto — or, as it’s now referred to, “Toronto’s Coolest Street™” (fuck off). Bent is now living here with his wife, Emily. They install a horse trough in their backyard. This trough is not there to hold slop and feed the bloodless, sexless, godless pale swine that populate this strip and spend their nights dancing to House Music™ while sipping on Natty Wine™ or inside of Boutique Small-Batch Craft Breweries™ managed by angry short men with severe cocaine problems, untamable hockey-jock rage, and meaningless neck tattoos from the suburbs. No — this trough is to be filled with 80 bags of ice per day and function as a Cold Plunge™ for Bent and co.

Not too long afterward — apparently only two weeks later — Bent and co. spend a measly $80,000 converting a three-car garage in one of the most expensive cities in North America into Inward™, the name they gave to the ice bath, tea room, and sauna they created in said garage. A WhatsApp group is started. Bam. Neighbors start showing up, donations are accepted. Bam. Suddenly hundreds are in the group. Bam. A thousand. Bam. Suddenly there is nightly programming with classes and activities including drum circles, group therapy sessions, and saunas in total darkness where men scream out their rage. Bam. Bam. Bam.

And then someone in China eats bat soup and ruins everything.

2020™.

Lockdown™.

“SHIFT YOUR STATE + REGULATE™”

It was during the pandemic that Bent and Co. steered their locked-down Community™ toward Guided Breathwork™ classes over Zoom™, the popularity of which led to the launch of the Breathwork™ app. For those of you blessedly unaware, Breathwork™ is an umbrella term for various breathing practices in which the conscious control of breathing patterns supposedly improves Mental, Emotional, and Physical Well-Being™. Some of these practices include diaphragmatic breathing, box breathing, holotropic breathwork, the Wim Hof Method™, and the ancient practice of pranayama.

Breathwork™ has become a thing in modern Wellness Spaces™, which is to say: it’s been genched.

As the term is now generally used, it refers to a form of Alternative Medicine™ popularized in the 1970s that has since evolved into a kind of spectacular therapy-porn or secular sacrament—where “Facilitators™” with no clinical training beyond a few months spent living as Digital Nomads™ doing spiritual tourism in Peru conduct hollow pseudo-shamanic rituals that leave their clients shrieking in agony as they reach Catharsis™. Maybe you’ve seen those videos where a tattooed white person lies on the floor screaming in emotional pain while their Guide™, another tattooed white person, hovers over their chest to exorcise their Trauma™ demons? I implore you to watch these with the sound up:

According to their website, the Othership™ Breathwork™ app “helps you regulate your emotions and nervous system through guided Breathwork™.”

“GUIDED. MUSIC-BACKED. IMMEDIATE RESULTS. 500+ SESSIONS.”

“SHIFT YOUR STATE + REGULATE.”

“REDUCE STRESS. BE A TOP PERFORMER. EXPERIENCE MINDFULNESS.”

Under the Meet Your Guides section, we are introduced to two of the aforementioned Founders™:

LET PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS AND DANCE IN DARK ROOMS. FUCK OFF.

All of this led to the opening of the first Othership™ location at the corner of Adelaide and Brant in Toronto, at the former site of the nightclub Footwork — a prominent underground club Bent used to frequent in his party days.

As you might gather, Sobriety™ is a crucial component to the Othership™ story. A large party of the Bent’s intentions with the endeavor was to create an alternative space for people to congregate and socialize that did not involve the necessity or pressures to engage in drinking alcohol or drugs. In reference to taking over the former Footwork space, he stated that it “felt so powerful to reclaim the place for something restorative.”

He stated that it “felt so powerful to reclaim the place for something restorative.”

He stated that it “felt so powerful to reclaim the place for something restorative.”

He stated that it “felt so powerful to reclaim the place for something restorative.”

He stated that it “felt so powerful to reclaim the place for something restorative.”

Restorative for who? Let people take drugs and dance in dark rooms. Fuck off.

Wait. Confession time: I’m actually in agreeance here with Robbie. I think we should annihilate ALL of the hotbeds of underground electronic music culture in Toronto and replace them with sober-curious gentrifier crypto-sauna Safe Spaces™ owned by tech gurus from Geary Ave. and The Bay Area™ who want to impose upon our city their sanctimonious Restorative, Responsible Alternative Nightlife™ concepts and the dreadful fucking Burner™ aesthetics they imported from their Ayahuasca Ceremony and Yoga Retreats™ abroad in the Orient™. That’s what we actually need.

Let him “reclaim” these spaces and make them “restorative”.

I actually didn’t realize I felt this way until my life was changed at Othership™. I was living under the oppressive boot of Hustle™, lost in the mayhem of City Life™, shrouded by the darkness of nightlife hedonism. I was so stuck in my online bubble, unable to see in full color… until I found myself enlightened, moistened, and bedazzled by the towel-dancing saviors and rappers at Othership™.

And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Namaste™.

The Wellness-Industrial Complex is booming, and the Luxury Bathhouse Space™ is getting increasingly crowded. Othership™ insists it is different in several key ways:

1. Emotional Experiences™, Not Just Heat & Cold
   They claim to offer “rituals” and “emotional journeys” rather than a standard bathhouse focused on physical benefits.

2. Spaces Where People Can Cry™
   Bent has repeatedly said he wants Othership™ to be a place where people can “cry” and engage with emotional states they “might otherwise avoid.”

3. A Clubhouse™, Not a Business™
   They frame Othership™ as a community hub aiming to foster deep connection, relationship-building, and vulnerability-on-demand rather than a sauna.

4. Performance-Driven™ Experiences
   Their classes are inspired by Cirque du Soleil and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, designed as theatrical “performances” rather than simple sauna experiences or wellness sessions.

5. Guides™, Not Staff
   Sessions are led by trained Guides™ who memorize scripts and use language borrowed from parts work and psychotherapy. Othership™ views their guides as “mirrors” rather than “coaches”, meaning they are trained to ask questions and reflect on what they hear rather than give advice. This is an intentional deviation away from what Bent considers traditional fitness instruction that favors motivational advice. He feels that it’s best to “make someone feel heard”.

According to their website, they offer several class types:

Free Flow:
“A 75-minute self-guided journey to explore the sauna to sweat, ice baths to drop in, and a commons to be yourself with others. During Free Flows you have the freedom to chart your own course through the elements, while our experienced guides are available for those seeking one-on-one support.”

Quieter Free Flow:
“A (quieter) 75-minute self-guided journey to explore the sauna to sweat, ice baths to drop in, and a commons to be yourself with others. Soft-spoken interactions, minimal guidance, and a zenned-out playlist will keep you chilled out in more ways than one.”

Evening Social:
“Consider this our icy-fresh take on an evening out with friends. A 2-hour sober-curious gathering to connect with others over a shared sense of play and aliveness. Together, we unite to shift our state and build belonging from a place of open receptivity.”

Some of their other classes function as singles nights. Sometimes they have dance parties with live music and shirtless DJs, as seen above.

Alot of work goes into the creation of these classes. In a recent podcast, Bent explains that it took 200 hours to build their “Gratitude” class. Founder™ Harry started by listening to an Andrew Huberman podcast, then proceeded to read every single research paper referenced in the episode to “analyze the science of how gratitude is built into the body” and incorporate those findings into the class. Hours are spent selecting which essential oils and music match the emotions and themes before training guides on how to conduct the session.

“We look at dropping a new class like dropping an album or a single.”

Fuck.

FEEL GOOD NOW ™

Here are some lines, phrases and descriptions on the Othership™ website:

“Otherworldly sauna and ice baths experiences for human beings to feel good now”

“Othership is a modern bathhouse to regulate your nervous system, process emotions and connect meaningfully with other human beings”

“Everything you need to sweat and drop-in”

“Social self-care in the city”

“Immersive wellness that’s actually fun”

“Your ship, your journey”

“Creating space to shift states through peak experiences”

“Our awe-inspiring performance saunas are designed to provide a clean, fresh heat up to 85c/185F, with aromatic snowballs providing a relaxing + restorative humidity”

“Get cool and stay cooler with out custom designed ice baths. Drop-in with out private ice baths that kept icy-cold between 0-4C/32-40F”.

“A place for healthy community to gather. Together, we unite to shift our state and build belonging from a place of open receptivity”

“Our music-driven breath work app designed to help you shift your state one breath at a time. Transformation in your hands”

“We don’t have all the answers, but we have some”

“Confronting yourself isn’t easy work. But it can lead to transformation. Mental, physical and spiritual obstacles abound. But we believe that learning how to regulate yourself - and your emotions - in a world that cant be regulated can and should be a memorable voyage. Maybe even an adventure. And it’s one way you can serve the world. To discover infinite connection, we first must create a relationship with ourselves and others”

“Othership creates spaces to shift emotional, physical and mental states through peak experiences. We see and understand possibility.”

“Beyond what, let us tell you why: we lead with purpose and measure our success against it. No matter who sits on our team today or tomorrow, our purpose aligns our work: to serve as a house transformation for all.

“Othership understands that transformation should and could be available to all regardless of income, race, ability, sexual orientation or gender identity. In the spirit of honoring our sameness and our uniqueness, we create spaces both IRL and URL to pay attention so we may be open to the interconnectivity that animates the human experience for a more joy-filled life and living.

“To ensure our shared journey is one that is both equitable and accessible we orient all of our decisions, conversations and actions toward the following core values:

Sense of awe: we’re here because we feel a connection to something beyond ourselves. It is an honor to share this offering with community. But make no mistake, this isn’t an awe-made-real by signature incense or ambient music. Our offerings are rooted in ancient wisdom, research and a meticulously curated experience that’s as safe as it is exhilarating.

Cellular commitment: This work isn’t easy. It requires commitment right down to the level of our cells and has the potential to be deeply rewarding. The intensity of the ice bath. The hammering heat of the sauna. It all requires cellular commitment. So we don’t shy away from the hard work, but we maintain a spirit of generosity, patience and support knowing everyone will move at their own pace. With that, we invite you to commit to relinquishing all material bias, implicit or explicit, as you join us in our house of transformation. You’ll encounter all sorts of bodies, personalities and identities. We invite you to seek to understand and commit to curiosity where you go, even within yourself.

Building belonging: Othership welcomes all. The original of the word alone is all one. In a world that feels more connected than ever, it’s staggering that the epidemic of our time is loneliness. We believe one way to combat loneliness and discover infinite connection is through relationship. We know that life happens in relationship. When we make contact with others there is potential for understanding and insight. When we allow ourselves to see and be seen, our collective field of awareness expands. In the resonance of expanded awareness we may accept that not all of us start the same place. Some of us have face more obstacles than others due to circumstance, identity, trauma and systemic design. Othership commits to understanding the lived experiences barriers to entry with a willingness to evolve - together.”

AHEM…

I’ll interrupt myself here and cut my hand through the incense smoke, turn down the Human Resources recruitment speech saturated in sanctimonious rehab codswallop to remind you: this place is just a fucking sauna that was started by a couple of pale, hoodie-wearing crypto + wellness folx who admittedly listen to Spotify™ playlists called “Zen Vibes” in their backyard on Geary Ave. five years ago.

Want more?

No?

You’ve had enough?

Do you smoke? Are you jonesing for one? You should quit.

Do you need to use the bathroom?

Have you had a glass of water lately?

You’re already 8000+ words into this Journey™ my friend… read on:

“Appreciation rather than appropriation: we carry deep respect and humility in regards to sacred and cultural practices that harness the power of hot+cold.

“Restorative rather than punitive: We believe in dialogue and nuance and create space to learn, unlearn and transform. Instead of cancel culture we seek to understand while upholding and embodying our core values outlined above”

“Representation rather than tokenism: We commit to fostering a community that is inclusive and accepting of all and action this through our hiring practices, programming and marketing materials. We commit to representation across all levels of community: full time staff, part time facilitators, guides, stewards, management positions, and most importantly - journeyers. We stand in solidarity with historically underserved communities and work with a DEI/belonging/accomindations community leader to ensure out commitment to this work remands a process held up by relationship building, trust and care”

“Accessibility rather than distance: our physical space is fully wheel-chair accessible and we are open to discussing any accommodations to support your journey. We recognize capitalist privilege and the determinants of what it means to be financially well and offer pop-up reduced rate community classes and partially subsidized offerings as a commitment to financial accessibility.

“Trauma-informed rather than trauma-ignorant: through individual and collective training we practice guided and interacting from a trauma informed place recognizing the presence of trauma symptoms and the role that trauma plays in any individual’s life.”

Fuck. me.

Ok. You can now go for that smoke, drink that water, take that piss, check IG, etc.

Done?

Now I command you to watch the video below. This will act as a summary of this Journey™ that we have been on for the past however many thousands of words. This video was posted by Robbie Bent on X™ on September 15^th, 2025 with the follow message:

Watch it until the end. I dare you:

I FOUND GOD BY THE LATTE AND BONE BROTH BAR AT THE WELLNESS CHURCH™

In a recent interview with Megan Bruneau, someone self-described as “therapist, executive coach, and your guide through the messy, beautiful journey of building something meaningful”, Robbie Bent was asked to describe Othership™ for her audience.

His response: “In it’s most simple form, it’s a sauna and ice bath space, um, for human beings to feel good now. Like, this instant. In its most complicated form, it has a lot of the hallmarks of a new religion.” He explains how Andrew Huberman’s podcasts about gratitude and the realization that “processing your emotions is very important” has led him to believe that his startup can actually replace “what, like, traditionally, a religion would allow you to do”.

Othership™: where a 75 minute paid visit to luxury sauna located in two of the most expensive cities in North America with a custom Spotify™ playlist littered with downtempo EDM™ exotica and a guy waving a towel around while he spews rehearsed lines about “holding space” can actually do for you what a religion would allow you to do, like, traditionally.

Not even 90 seconds after extolling the holy virtues of his company’s soul-saving services and salvific intentions, he lays it bare. After acknowledging that the “sauna and ice bath for health” mega-trend has been beaten to death, noting a supposed decrease in drinking among people in their 20s and 30s, and observing a widespread desire for “new ways to socialize,” he admits that when it comes to marketing his ideas to the general public, the “hot and cold, and the place feeling ‘cool’ is kind of a Trojan horse to bring the 99% of people who aren’t doing therapy into the space. They think they’re coming for something else and all of a sudden they’re feeling their emotions and like — ‘whoa. What just happened?’… religion used to do that.”

It’s clear watching this interview (and every other one) that besides saving humankind from the cruelty of the Hustle™, Bent’s main concerns for Othership™ are differentiating the brand from the emerging plethora of luxury saunas that are also riding the most recent wave of the Wellness™ boom and finding a way to keep customers returning for more. He seems to believe that the way to achieve the latter is to break people down both physically and mentally, getting them to dig inward and expose their vulnerabilities in ways that would be inappropriate in other social settings.

Bent explains in one of these interviews that the first main segment of a more social-leaning 75 minute Journey™ is all about “the show”: he compares the Performance Sauna™ experience as a “Cirque Du Soleil style show” that is “inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy” and features towel waving, aromatherapy and guided visualizations. The next segment is all about the ice baths. He admits that they designed their ice baths to hold two people as a means of intentionally foster feelings of discomfort and peer pressure that pushes people “beyond where they think they can go”, intentionally putting people into “hard and fearful experiences” as means of “creating trust and syncing the nervous systems of the group”. The moment immediately following the return from a journey over the threshold of discomfort is the moment that Bent wants to “capitalize” on, which is the purpose of a Journey’s™ third segment that takes its inspiration from “Group Therapy™" and Psychedelic Work™”. Once back in the sauna, Journeyers™ are pushed to share their emotions and reveal “what came up” that day with each other. Some of their classes focus less on socialization and focus on technique to produce a “nervous system reset”. I believe they still do one of those mens-only classes where you sit in a sauna with the lights out along with a group of strangers and scream your guts out.

Lol.

You can watch the rest of the interview over on Megan Bruneau’s YouTube Channel, along with other videos with titles like:

“Turning $25K Into $100M and why her kidneys shutting down saved her life with ILIA Beauty’s founder”

“How His Dyslexia fueled the mindset that led him to RXBAR, then sold it for $600 Million Dollars”

“He Gave Up Luxury and decided to save millions of lives instead. Here’s why.”

“The Father of Biohacking Dave Asprey on Getting Kicked Out of Bulletproof and Spotting Narcissists”

“Scaling a franchise to 77 locations and how to be a leader while dealing with strong emotions”

“Investors called her business a “hobby”. She scaled it to nearly $100 Million.

And more.

In another recent interview on a podcast hosted by Adam Metwally, whose Instagram bio line reads : “Investor * DJ”, Bent admits that he eventually “kinda wants to” build a “new age church that’s not about religion” where there are sermons about gratitude, and how to be a good person, opportunities “not to pray, but say what you’re struggling with”, “amazing music” and a “little latte and bone broth bar” a “cool place” that is “church-y but not about god…more about being a good person.”

You can watch the rest of the interview over on Adam’s YouTube Channel, along with other videos that purportedly bridge the gap between “health, hustle & happiness” with titles like:

“How The European Kid Became Rich By Pretending To Be Rich”

“How Solitary Confinement and Fasting Made Gary Lineham Learn The Secrets To Aging”

“Why are 66% of Men Single - And Who is To Blame?”

“How To Travel The World For Free, Make Money and Gain Millions Of Followers”

“MBA’s are Useless, Money Hacks & Bank Robberies”

“I Interviewed The Modern Day Da Vinci”

“Do Women Get More Out oF Therapy Than Men?”

“Leading Women’s AI Coach: How Girls Can Get RICH in the New Era of AI”

“The Wellness Doctor for Billionaires: ‘Drinking Alcohol is Safer Than Being Alone’”

And more.

THE CULT AS AESTHETIC

When Mr. Bent says in the above tweet that “haters will say it’s culty,” I can’t help but imagine him winking at me through my phone screen. Or at least I hope he is — because any sincere suggestion that the countless accusations of Othership™ being “culty” or “cult-like” are unwarranted, unwanted, or not explicitly provoked by the very nature of the enterprise is risible and absurd.

The concept of Othership™ is nothing if not “the cult as aesthetic”. Its entire identity as a brand depends on this idea — borrowing the visual language, emotional choreography, and ritual structure of cults in order to manufacture a sense of depth, intensity, and spiritual gravitas that the actual product or service they sell cannot organically supply. I mean, how could it? It’s a goddamned bathhouse that literally kicks you out after your 75 minutes is up. The space relies on the visual semiotics of “initiation,” creating the suggestion that you are crossing into a sacred order rather than a commercial wellness environment. The emotional arc of an Othership™ visit is likewise modeled on cultic psychodynamics: disorientation, vulnerability, catharsis, communal synchrony, integration.

Of course Othership™ is not a cult: its a fucking luxury sauna located in two of the most expensive cities in North America with a custom Spotify™ playlist littered with downtempo EDM™ exotica and a guy waving a towel around while he spews rehearsed lines about “holding space”. It’s a pantomime of countercultural gestures and wellness slogans whose primary purpose, no matter what the mission statements about nervous systems, community, and “state change” might claim, is to produce in its customers a sense of instantaneous transformation, performative self-satisfaction, and belonging and keep them coming back for more.

None of this is new. The entire ritualized spectacle — the engineered discomfort → emotional breakthrough arc, the use of group pressure and synchronized emotional states to provoke vulnerability, the public breakdown-and-bonding sessions, the scream classes — has its roots in the controversial, fringe, semi-psychological group-intensity experiments and the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Spend ten minutes Googling™ Esalen Institute, Synanon, and Primal Scream therapy and it becomes immediately obvious that Othership™’s entire brand identity and programming is little more than a genched, luxury-branded Remix™ of the Human Potential Movement for the terminally online, chronically overworked, oat-milk-addicted, Microdosing™, post–Burning Man™, neo-bohemian, marketing-department city-dwellers of the gig-economy generation.

Othership™ compresses and commodifies these emotional technologies into a purchasable time block that follows a pre-choreographed, scripted arc insisting that transformation is a consumable, on-demand commodity. It retools the emotional mechanics and external surfaces associated with cults, repackaging them as a Premium Wellness Experience™.

Their reliance on therapy-speak and scientific terminology with no clinical grounding props up a veneer of profundity and legitimacy, while their co-opting of concepts, terminology, and aesthetics from the fringe countercultural and cult movements of the 60s and 70s positions their brand as a unique, hip, “deeper” alternative in an increasingly crowded field.

It’s gench as fuck and I hate EVERYTHING about it.

But I also kinda wanna go back right now.

EVERYTHING THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO PR

Can Othership™ make the world a better place?

Can 25$ brain performance-enhancing chewing gum make you a better entrepreneur?

Can a $7000 AI-powered bed optimize your hustle?

Can a $15 coffee unlock the secrets to success?

Or is it simply true that everything that is solid melts into PR?

Maybe Robbie Bent is right when he says that Othership™ has all the makings of a new religion. Maybe Othership™ is an actually temple for the Religion of The Self™.

A new flavor of religion: salvation through subscription, finding purpose at Erewhon™, Soulcycle™ and Othership™ as church. Microdose™ your way past Christ.

What Othership™ actually offers: a 75 minute lease on luxury where inside of its sanctified chambers you can watch yourself Transform™ into a better version of Yourself™, worshipping the curated spectacle of your own becoming before congratulating yourself for your resilience and genuflecting before the altar of optimized Individuality™.

A Journey™ at Othership™ is a journey into the heart of Gench: an ancient, commonplace practice inflated into an “elevated experience” through sheer force of branding and aesthetic overproduction. The ordinary is sold at a premium, charged with the promise of wholeness, restoration, transcendence, optimization, release, agency, and belonging.

Genchness exploits the very conditions of precarity that it helps reproduce. It’s a con that privatizes stress, outsourcing systemic problems onto the individual—convincing you that your suffering is yours alone, then sells back to you things that were once free: community, ritual, leisure, beauty, silence, attention. It packages temporary relief as transformation. Its marketing peddles aspiration, optimization, and rebirth, but the business model depends on providing short-lived solutions to insoluble problems. Its end goal is not enlightenment; it’s recurring revenue.

The Californian Ideology propagated the belief that technology would inevitably liberate us from political constraints, dissolving old hierarchies and letting us become the sovereign architects of our own destinies. That was the ambient promise surrounding my generation—the first to grow up inside the internet. But this isn’t how things unfolded. Those visions of cybernetic individualism, libertarian freedom, and decentralized utopia never truly materialized.

What did materialize was something else: the complete integration of life into a technological grid. The Californian Ideology may have failed as a project of personal emancipation, but it succeeded in becoming the default operating system of the contemporary world—an infrastructure increasingly managed, segmented, and optimized in service of the machine rather than the individual.

The result is a new constellation of paradoxes: maximum connectivity paired with minimum agency; interfaces that feel frictionless but systems that feel suffocating; endless avenues for self-expression alongside the near impossibility of self-determination. A strange ideological inversion: individuals who are “free,” but only within frameworks that are tightly governed and pre-scripted.

The Wellness™-Industrial Complex is, in many ways, also the Californian Ideology turned inside out. Where freedom was once imagined as a technological condition, it is now framed as an internal discipline, a therapeutic mandate of self-regulation and psychic optimization. The ideology has collapsed back onto the individual. It’s no longer about hacking the system; it’s about hacking Yourself™.

What remains of 90s techno-utopianism is little more than an aesthetic residue—a Vibe™, a regime of “feeling”. Our culture is saturated with the empty signifiers of that lost optimism, now repurposed to manage the burnout and psychic strain generated by the very system the original ideology helped create and still quietly sustains.

It’s unclear whether Robbie Bent fully understands how Othership™ has positioned itself in the lineage of the cult-adjacent movements of the late 1960s, or whether any of this is even intentional. It’s entirely possible he believes he’s doing something novel, even generous, that he has stumbled onto a breakthrough in emotional wellness, unaware that the emotional choreography he’s selling was perfected half a century ago at Esalen, in Synanon’s Game, and in Primal Scream therapy. But I guess that’s the big point we’ve taken so many fucking words to get to: the Californian Ideology and its sprawling ecosystem of self-help literature, startup podcasts, breathwork gurus, and biohacking influencers have so thoroughly metabolized these earlier movements that Founders™ now absorb them by osmosis. Bent doesn’t need to consciously reference the 60s; the 60s are already alive inside the aesthetic and emotional grammar of modern Hustle™ culture and genchness.

It’s hard for me not to see Othership™ as the apex of Gench. After listening to Robbie Bent speak for hours on various Hustle Culture™ podcasts, I can’t shake the feeling that this is a guy who, after years of clawing his way toward the Top™, finally discovered how to monetize existential pain — saw a cultural vacuum and filled it with branded, purchasable transcendence. Othership™ isn’t about spiritual awakening; it’s about scale, repetition, and retention.

But what the fuck do I know?

Maybe Othership™ can change the world.

Maybe the Founders™ really are well-intentioned, well-resourced people with a genuine sense of mission. Maybe it’s not ego. Maybe it’s not delusion.

Maybe I’m just a cynical metropolitan pinko hedonist hater who is reading too much into this.

Maybe I’m an asshole who hasn’t hit rock bottom and don’t actually know how badly I need to put down this glass of Fernet, get a tattoo and do some god damned Breathwork™.

I need to top up on my Othership™ cedar incense too.

Maybe I need to Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out™.

Anyone have a copy of Be Here Now™ I can borrow?

Speaking of which, you should open ChatGPT and ask it the following question:

“What is the nature of the connection between the CIA, Ram Daas, Timothy Leary, Ronald Stark and the Mellon family?”

We’re 12,459 words into this, and I still don’t know why exactly I needed that $7 Americano on tour. Why didn’t the $1 McDonald’s coffee do the trick?

Why do I hate almost everything about Othership™ yet still kinda want to go back — to cringe, to mock it, to sweat in the cedar and hit the ice bath?

What does that say about me?

Am I a bully?

Am I gench?

Can you even not be gench at this point?

Is opposition to spectacle just the Spectacle of Opposition™?

I don’t fucking know.

I need an ice bath and a goddamned $19 iced matcha latte with oat milk and maple syrup and maybe some shilajit.

I need to do some Men’s Work™ in a dark sauna and I need to scream and growl, BADLY.

Light the incense and Cue the gench Debussy.