NYC is no longer a city, it is an algorithm.
If you live in, say, Cincinnati, when you go to get ice cream with your friends, you really are just going to get ice cream with your friends.
In NYC, this is not possible. You cannot just go to get ice cream, because, against your will, you are very self-consciously “someone who lives in NYC, going to get ice cream with their friends, in NYC.”
You are never able to achieve full presence of mind because you are constantly placing yourself inside a chapter in some made up, schizophrenic and highly disorienting book.
Put another way, as a New Yorker, you do not live in a city, but a massive, procedurally generated simulation of one. You are nothing more than a vapid unit of flesh and bone trapped since a Baudrillardian infinity mirror, where the references have their own references.
You become more of a vague concept than a real person—some strange, soulless mix of ambition and violent/sexual impulses—and in your constant confusion you fail to ever become a true subject.
You pay $17 for the ice cream cone. Then, you pull out your list of saved Instagram Reels which tell you where to get reservations for pasta later.
When you arrive, you find yourself stuck in yet another long line, with people who look just like you.
The longer you wait in lines like these, the harder it becomes to ever recover the soul of the person you were before you moved into your East Village studio.
The question you asked was exactly what I asked myself when I first entered the University of Ilorin campus as a 100-level student. I looked at the road stretching from the school gate to the academic area, twisting and turning, and I wondered: "Why stress us?
Why didn't they just pave a straight line that would link us directly to the Faculty of Education?" Several people gave me funny responses. In fact, some even said it was for aesthetics, others said it was to prevent overspeeding.
It wasn't until I got to 300-level and was introduced to Engineering Survey that I got the answer. It's a technique called Gradient Management.
If you build a road straight up a steep hill like that, the slope becomes too sharp. A car engine has limits. If the road is too steep, vehicles will struggle to climb, and heavy trucks will roll back. Coming down is even more dangerous because gravity will pull you down so fast that your brakes might fail.
To fix this, we intentionally make the road longer and windy to reduce the steepness. Think of it this way: It is easier to walk up a gentle ramp that wraps around a building than to climb a straight ladder. Winding the road spreads the height over a longer distance, making the climb gradual and safe for engines.
Also, a straight line through a mountain means you have to blast through solid rock or fill up deep valleys, which costs billions. And as you know, following the natural contours of the land is not only safer; it is way cheaper.
So in short, we are just using Geometry to defeat Gravity. You get?
If you have facts that you have been placed on this list in error, send it to [email protected] so I can stop slandering these young men or insulting their families.
Feel free to add anyone who was nasty in your mentions over the past three years.