What were you doing when you felt most offline this year?

Dropping acid, swimming with sharks, and drinking at cash-only bars.

Good morning everyone. Free letter today.

Earlier this month, I was talking to my friends Krithika Varagur and Jeannie about what I was going to write today. I was going back and forth between a few questions that I could ask a group of people that would warrant interesting answers. Jeannie, an endlessly curious filmmaker, suggested the following: What were you doing when you felt most offline this year?

Perfect.

I have two answers. One was a weeklong retreat I did with my sister at Golden Door, which I still haven’t fully written about because it was such a strange and wonderful experience. You arrive at this luxury retreat in the mountains of California with a group of twenty other women (Palm Beach divorcées, celebrities, wives of tech moguls) and spend a week together hiking, meditating, eating lunch and dinner (you have breakfast alone in your room), getting daily facials and massages, and working on general spiritual alignment. I used my phone and computer for about two hours a day. Maybe an extra hour on the day that Charlie Kirk was shot, when everyone around the retreat went from asking who Charlie Kirk was at lunch to being experts on him by dinner. This morning I asked my sister how she’d describe the whole experience. “The place to go when you’re ready to go inward,” she said.

Second answer: the warm evenings I spent alone at this little beach house I rented last summer. My husband came out on the weekends, so I was mostly alone during the week. I’d get into my car barefoot after I sent the letter and feel gravel between my toes and the gas pedal and listen to Country Top 100 on the eight minute drive to the ocean where I’d swim and read. In the afternoons, I’d go for a long walk, and on Fridays I’d pick up my husband from the train station and go sit at a bar somewhere in town for dinner. It felt like a monthlong honeymoon.

I asked a specific group of people, from Evan Spiegel to donald boat, for their answer to the question. I’d like to hear yours in the comment section.

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What were you doing when you felt most offline this year?

“Doing a 3 day silent meditation retreat.” - Lenny Rachitsky, Lenny’s Letter

“When I was diving. There was a moment swimming with a school of hammerheads when a giant humpback whale passed by overhead. Totally awe-inspiring and very offline.” - Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap

“Meeting my baby goddaughter for the first time and using her bathtime to explain the parallels between the Bethenny Frankel-Jill Zarin friendship breakup and the Bethenny Frankel-Carole Radziwill friendship breakup.” - Hunter Harris, Hung Up

“This was the year that I was reintroduced to the wonders of two-wheeled transit, which by their nature require you to look up from the demon hive mind portal (iPhone) and to pay actual attention to your surroundings. E-biking in New York, Paris, Mexico City, Rome; renting a scooter (or, okay, letting my boyfriend rent the scooter) and cavorting around Puerto Escondido or Nassau with nary a complex thought in the brain — bliss. I didn’t realize how much time I spend looking at my phone or thinking about what I should do on my phone when otherwise on public transit, or in a car. “Sure but what about walking, surely you are offline while you walk around New York?” Dude no. You and I both know we can crush a 10,000-word longform article and send 15 emails between home and the bodega. Bike is freedom. Bike is life.” - Delia Cai, Deez Links

“​​What I was doing this year when I felt most offline was recognizing that feeling offline was a concerted effort. I was usually in the back of a car looking out the window, trying to have a meaningful thought, feeling good that I at least wasn’t looking at my phone, if nothing else.” - Audrey Hobert, musician

“I wrote an essay at Blackbird Spyplane earlier this month on this exact subject: I started to feel so online that even when I was offline there were times I still felt online, like my phone was in front of my face framing everything, even when it wasn’t. So for several weeks in the fall I started every morning reading Swann’s Way for about an hour before sunrise. I’d never read it before but always meant to. It’s a lovely novel and in no way “difficult,” but the sentences are so long, and what they describe is so interior, you really have to decelerate and lock in or the book ejects you. Doing that first thing, in the dark and quiet, was fantastic, and the slower cadence and sense of focus stayed with me throughout the day, to the point that I’ve kept up the ritual with other books every morning since. A lot of other people feel the same way, it seems, because it became one of the most popular things we published this year.” - Jonah Weiner, Blackbird Spyplane

“Go to a bar full of cranky old guys, cash only, burgers rancid. They’re from a different time. They’ll clown your dumbass if you clickety-clack on your cellular. Get a twenty from the ATM and play the jukebox game, in which you must sit and there and soak in their highly phlegmatic whiskey-peanut musk, observe the gaps between their whiskers and the fluff above their ears and try to figure out the songs, major or minor, of their entire life. It will take a great deal of trial and error. I suggest “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” or “Ruby Tuesday.” If you score correctly you’ll never pay for a drink again. Do you know what it’s like to get the “You’re alright, kid?” There’s a finite amount left, limited edition, like Pokémon cards. Go and get them while you still can.” - donald boat

“A few months ago, a few of us were riding in this tiny coastal California town. We headed toward a very steep gravel hill, a climb that requires every ounce of effort and every bit of attention. Pull too hard on the handlebars and you’ll rip the bike off the rocks. So we were moving, slowly, carefully, quietly. The bike slid out from underneath me and I hit the ground. I stood up, brushed myself off, and we kept climbing. At certain points, the trail wove between cow pastures and redwoods, two of the most intensely opposite landscapes imaginable. At that height, the trees closed in, the air dropping ten degrees when we rode through their net, their trunks heavy with water. Then we burst into dazzling sunlight, cows sleeping next to the dirt path, tails lazily flicking away flies. Short grass, wide sky. For miles, we threaded two worlds. There was nothing else to think about.” - kyla scanlon, Kyla’s Newsletter

“The internet has always made me feel crowded and pissed off but I’ve found, and continue to find, that staring at bodies of water makes me totally devoted to the whole world and (sadly only temporarily) breaks bad habits I get from my phone. I can read for hours by the water. Nature in general just obliterates the internet for me. I don’t even like taking pictures of trees.” - Brace Belden, co-host of TrueAnon

“Last January hanging out with friends in Mumbai. We walked around all day, got food, hung out at my friend’s apartment. Not only did my phone have basically no service, but because of time zones, daytime there is nighttime in most of America. The combination of not checking my phone and also not feeling like I was missing anything currently happening in the U.S. was the best escape I’ve had in years.” - Taylor Lorenz, User Mag

“I always feel the most offline in transit. I miss the days of no WiFi on the flights. Luckily train WiFi is still atrocious. My most offline moments this year were spent creaking along the Hudson River aboard Amtrak’s Empire Service, watching the surfers bob offshore from California’s appropriately named Surfliner, and speeding beneath the English Channel in the Eurostar. For those seeking a digital detox I suggest the slow travel option. The extra long trip (in the United States, at least) becomes a feature not a bug.” - Sean Monahan, 8Ball

“This is probably not the cheeriest answer you’ll get, but the most offline I felt in 2025 was while kneeling next to my mother’s hospital bed, holding her hand, and telling her I loved her, as the gaps between her breaths got longer and longer — twenty seconds, thirty, until there came a gap so long it still hasn’t ended. Being online is a lifeless way of being, but it’s also deathless. Everything’s smooth there. The real world is not so nice.” - Sam Kriss, Numb at the Lodge

“Truffle hunting on acid in Barbaresco. After leaving Genoa — the birthplace of pesto — and wandering through a museum with unbelievable 16th-century denim religious canvases you’d never believe exist, we drove through the vineyards of Piedmont to go truffle hunting with a third-generation trifulau. We followed a man and his adorable dog through rolling meadows, watching an ancient collaboration unfold, until nearly two hours later (truffles are hard to find!), the dog stopped and dug deeply. He unearthed a massive white truffle and we ate it shaved over fresh bread with local Nebbiolo. It was pure bliss —completely offline, slightly otherworldly on acid, and certainly aided by the fact that truffle dogs are cuter than you could imagine. Send me a message on IG if you want to go — happy to send recommendations.” - Cami Téllez, founder of Parade and executive creative director of L’eggs

“I wish my answer to this question involved some transcendent travel experience, but the moments I’ve felt most offline usually happen at home, where it’s easier to put my phone farther than arm’s reach away. This year I resumed subscribing to physical magazines and it feels surprisingly good to read an article on the couch knowing it’s not part of a content feed that I’m going to click away from every 15 seconds (sorry Substack!)” - Drew Austin, Kneeling Bus

“I’ve been thinking hard about this question since you asked me, and realized that most of my deeply offline moments come inside of movie theaters. It’s been on my mind a lot lately with Warner Brothers Discovery in play, and Netflix inching closer to snapping up the studio.

I’m what you call a purist, the annoying Letterboxd account-holding film nerd who grew up sneaking into 2-3 R-rated movies a week. I fully cop to being a cornball who considers movie theaters sacred spaces, the kind of place where you specifically cannot be on your phone for two hours while losing yourself in a story. And I fight to enforce those norms; I have long been very comfortable yelling at people who open their phones in theaters (even if it makes things awkward for my non-confrontational companions).

So if you’re reading this, Ted Sarandos, I’m begging you: Please don’t kill theatrical runs. I know myself well enough that if I’m at home watching the latest Fincher release on my couch, I will absolutely ruin it for myself by fucking around on my phone. Let me have this remaining communal refuge, one that keeps me from damaging my brain with Twitter for at least a few hours a week.” - Mike Isaac, The New York Times

“Spending a few days in the hospital this month with my wife Jess, who delivered our baby boy Jules and recovered from the C-section. It’s a cliché, or maybe archetypal, answer, but it was a life-changing experience. We were cut off from the world but totally supported by teams of nurses who could care less about memes or X trends. I hope next year continues to prove that there’s a deeper reality beneath the buzzing feeds, one that more people are seeking, whether at a dinner party or a grocery store or a concert, with loves, friends, and family.” - Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker

“I wrote out a couple long answers to this and then realized that often when I’m doing a classic “extremely offline” activity like baking banana bread in a cabin or hiking a mountain trail, the novel offline-ness of the activity is a very present part of the experience — i.e. I am actively thinking the whole time about how cool it is that I’m not online, and therefore still centering the internet in the activity. An activity built in opposition to something is still built with the enemy object in mind. Therefore I think the most offline I’ve actually felt this year is whenever I‘ve had one of those great conversations with my friends that lasts for hours and hours and makes you genuinely forget your phone is there. Like when you finally check it you’ve realized you’ve missed a million texts and calls and have to send out frantic apologies. THAT’S offline, to me, even if it takes place at Funny Bar.” - rayne fisher-quann, Internet Princess

“When I was cooking. The more involved the prep, the better. This year, that was probably when I was making Sue Li’s Gingery Cabbage Rolls with Pork and Rice. The recipe kept my hands rolling and folding — not scrolling. It’s delicious too.” - Rachel Karten, Link in Bio

“I know I threw a good party when I wake up the next day to barely any social posts about it. I had a giant Uno tournament earlier this year that basically was a phantom. That means people were having too much fun to even look at their phones. We didn’t feel offline, we just forgot to even be on.” - Jess Graves, The Love List

“My parents have a beach house off the coast of Savannah. I like to wake up before the sunrise walk down to the beach and walk around the island until the sun rises then I’ll go get breakfast with the locals. That’s when I feel offline.” - My good friend Casey

“Trying to socialize the two feral kittens that my husband and I are fostering. The rescue agency named them Parma and Alfredo, because they were found in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant. They’re adorable and they hate me. I have spent untold hours dragging a toy mouse along the floor trying to get them not to fear the hand of man. I can’t be on my phone when I’m with them because the hand movements required to operate it make them freak out. Please adopt them.” - Anna Silman, Feed Me’s managing editor

“A night out on Amsterdam Ave with my new friends from journalism school. I was so used to talking about the news with them that hanging out with them for the first time at a bar felt surreal. We had so much fun telling each other about our college experiences, our love lives, and drinking beer that we forgot to go home.” - Cami Fateh, Feed Me’s associate editor

“Giving a toast, watching two of my best friends from college get married to each other, and dancing all night wearing a powdered wig.” - Teddy Kim, Feed Me columnist

“Chelsea Piers driving range 8am weekends when in town. Out of town whenever I stepped inside the boundaries of the Adirondack Park.” - Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert

“I’ve been trying to think of something but I think I’ve been very online all year! The most offline I’ve been all year is probably while getting a haircut or asleep.” - J Lee, host of Feed Me’s Expense Account

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• I’m putting a nicotine pouch vending machine in the Feed Me office.

• If you can’t get off the waitlist for Chez Margaux, you can spend $120 on their slippers.

• 2026 might be the year How Long Gone pivots to video. Today we get to watch their 2025 Year in Review on YouTube. “This is a concept we have been working on for a long time,” Chris Black told me this morning. “Talk Soup meets ‘Weekend Update.’ Something that moves quickly and provides images for context feels like the right way for How Long Gone to talk about culture while pushing into video. It was produced by Ian Wheeler (Talkhouse) and Joe Lewis (Amplify Pictures), who is responsible for Fleabag, Transparent, 100 Foot Wave, and Tosh.0. We shot it right before Christmas at a funny little studio in Burbank and then locked in with our director, Andrew Theodore Balasia, over the holidays to get it tight.”

• And based on this week’s media job listings, in 2026 your feed will be loaded with podcast video clips:

  • Vox is hiring a supervising producer for a new “politically-focused” video podcast.

  • The New York Times is hiring a senior video journalist for Popcast. “Must be open to experimenting with new ideas.”

  • Barstool is hiring a producer to turn around clips from Wake Up Barstool, their daily live morning show.

  • WSJ is hiring a personal finance enthusiast to host a new video podcast.

  • Red Seat Ventures (whose client list includes Bari Weiss, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson) is hiring a director of podcast marketing.

• Mid-level lawyers (who tend to be in their 20s and early 30s) at some US Big Law firms got $300k bonuses this year.

• A lot of people think they’re slick with bedazzled Oura ring covers like this $897 diamond ring (it’s like a ring on a ring?) and this “ring jacket.” This UAE-based jewelry brand is also selling diamond “Oura ring clips,” starting at 4500 dirhams, which is equal to around $1,200.

• The administrator of an Instagram account that documents London Pubs published an op-ed in the New York Times. He’s arguing that London’s pubs are becoming homogenous (too many quarter-zips!) as the pub scene shrinks altogether.

• Expect to see a lot of unnecessary caviar if you’re out in the city tonight. We’ve been covering the Gilded Age-ification of NYC dining for a while, but with New Year’s approaching, we wanted to ask some of the city’s top caviar purveyors whether they’ve actually seen sales rise along with the new glut of viral caviar-topped foods and caviar bump Tiktoks. Christian Savaglia, Director of Caviar Kaspia in The Mark Hotel, and Danielle Zaslavskaya, VP of US Brand Partnerships at Marky’s Caviar, both told Feed Me they’ve experienced a notable spike this holiday season, but also across the board. “People aren’t just ordering it for special occasions anymore,” said Savaglia. “Of course, it still shows up for celebrations—birthdays, anniversaries, New Year’s—but what’s changed is how casually people are enjoying it… That shift feels very new.”