This investigation by Rachel Handler is a depressing look into late-stage capitalism, a deep dive into a single subject, and a source of incredible sentences: “The Chocolate Conspiracy.” (Subhead: “Everyone in my life agreed: It tastes different now. I ventured into the molten belly of our crumbling world to find out why.”)
Some incredible sentences:
It was a classic American story about men and the things they will do to cheat death (betray their fathers) and how, with enough drugs, you could lose the ability to taste or feel things.
Perhaps for Hershey—or anyone—it’s easier to smile and pretend nothing has changed and nothing will change, that we were experiencing endless moments of goodness. That everything was the same balance of chocolate and peanut butter it had always been. I understood and empathized with this reality; it was one I visited whenever I ate a combo THC-CBD gummy and watched Emily in Paris.
Eating [faux chocolate] evoked in me powerful dystopian fantasies. I imagined Sam Altman’s grandson’s buxom AI servant handing it to me to tide me over as I waited on a line thousands of people long, flames licking my face from a nearby data-center fire, to bid on a bed in his Tesla-sponsored underground-bunker pop-up.