Essay · January 31, 2026 · 17:51
Everything We're Leaving in 2025... (and bringing to 2026)
The Signal
After a bruising 2025, Threadguy declares 2026 the year of full commitment, offline hobbies, dressed-up nightlife, serious markets, and unapologetic effort. The deliberately exaggerated ins-and-outs list rejects performative luxury, short-form limbo, streetwear, self-help, and casual day trading in favor of a barbell: be fully online at the frontier or genuinely live offline.
Key Takeaways
- 01
Half-participation is out
The organizing idea is “all in online or all in IRL.” Posting an experience mainly to look active online is out; deep internet work and genuine offline life are both in.
- 02
Try hard and say so
Nonchalance gives way to belief, optimism, long work weeks, and getting unusually good at one main pursuit. Marty Supreme becomes the cultural mascot for ambition without embarrassment.
- 03
Hobbies should stay hobbies
Batting cages, pottery, sewing, hiking, reading fiction, cycling, and cooking are valued precisely because they need not become side hustles. Threadguy calls the monetization pendulum overextended.
- 04
Status gets less polished
Beater SUVs, diners, dive bars, cash, dress shoes, and home-cooked meals replace luxury cars, expensive restaurants, streetwear, and Instagram-story performance.
On the Record
“I feel like we rode the horse of make money on a side hustle as far as humanly possible. That pendulum shifts back.”
“If you're watching content that isn't making you smart or helping you get rich, turn it off. You're wasting your time.”
“This is the year of getting really, really smart, jacked, healthy, and really, really good at your main thing, and everything else having nothing to do with your main thing.”
The Breakdown
From the coliseum to the roaring twenties
Threadguy remembers 2025 as a heavy sequence of life-changing events — a man-versus-man slugfest where only one fighter leaves the arena. His imagined 2026 is lighter, faster, and more social: parties, movies, rap, green charts, and Timothée Chalamet. The list is less prediction model than declaration of intent.
The online-offline barbell
The first rule is to stop hovering. Twenty-four-hour internet participation remains valid, as does a life genuinely removed from the feed; performative outings designed to manufacture posts do not. Nonchalance is replaced by visible effort and belief. At the same time, non-monetizable hobbies return — Threadguy chooses batting cages — because not every interest needs to become a revenue stream.
Nineties-maxing and anti-luxury
Dress shoes, collared shirts, bicycles, dive bars, pool halls, cash, old SUVs, and home cooking form a nostalgic alternative to streetwear, Uruses, scooters, and $500 dinners staged for Instagram. Fiction replaces generic self-improvement books; iron weights replace fashionable fitness; relationships replace dating-app optimization. Some calls are knowingly contradictory — he declares HYROX dead while preparing to compete in one — and the excess is part of the performance.
Markets without the casino
Financial and political streamers are in; brain-rot reactions and gambling influencers are out. Threadguy romanticizes the trading pits, long work weeks, concentrated conviction, and learning how markets actually function, while rejecting mines games, online casinos, and habitual day trading. The same distinction runs through the entire list: serious commitment is welcome, frictionless consumption is not.
A year for doing the main thing
The final synthesis combines health, work, religion, patriotism, house parties, and a return to New York. Food delivery, OnlyFans, polyester, Nike socks, and texting while driving join the reject pile. Beneath the deliberately ridiculous specificity is a simple resolution as Threadguy approaches 24: excel at the central pursuit, protect a separate life around it, and stop turning every experience into content or commerce.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
