The death of optimisation: how we're learning to be human again

One of my favourite Substackers What’s Anu published such a beautifully insightful analysis of our current culture and what’s to come that I just can’t not write about it.

The thesis of their report, a “Q1 Macrotrend Update”, is a return to soulfulness. This is different from the aspirational humanity we all talk about: the return to messy, human-made as a premium luxury thanks to AI. Instead, it's a culmination of all things human. The return to analog, the gritty, anti-aspirational, algorithmic evasion, and sensorial potency. These themes all highlight a shift toward raw, unoptimised human experiences. Redefining luxury as imperfect, messy, and authentically human.

Human-made is a rebellion against optimisation, AI and the algorithm. Not a marketing gimmick, but something that shows up in our brands and behaviours as real data.

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The transition from performance to presence

For the last decade, we have worked endlessly to attempt to live without friction. Minimalism, SaaS, and now AI-curated aesthetics. But in a world that feels increasingly surreal and algorithmic, the “optimised” life becomes less appealing. Friction is what keeps us competent and resilient in the real world.

Our lives without resistance now lack traction. The constant search for convenience pushes us to chase immediate shallow pleasures. But really, we love the textures of life that provide actual richness and joy. These optimisation tools seem like they’re keeping us productive and making life easier. But we’re atrophying our skills, our feelings, and our capability to handle large, inevitable setbacks.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is, for whatever one of these reasons, or multiple, or all, we’ve hit "optimisation fatigue". Soulfulness, in Anu’s thesis, is not a style, but the presence of friction. It’s the biproduct of being forced to be robots for the last however long.

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Algorithmic evasion and the new mystery

Sometimes the algorithm feels like the f*cking Eye of Sauron, watching our every move so it can spit the essence of your humanness back out at you. Therefore, if the algorithm can predict what you like, what you’re doing, what you’re wearing and eating and what makes you laugh, the only way to feel "soulful" again is to find things it can’t see.

This is why we’re seeing the resurgence of gritty aesthetics, underground subcultures, and un-googleable experiences. Dark Forest and their private internets, Perfectly Imperfect's whole social platform dedicated to recreating the ethos of “the old internet” and even shoppers seeking asylum from the style trap are creating “whisper networks” – invite-only groups on Substack and WhatsApp as rebellion.

It’s incredible how creative people become when escaping the box they’ve been shoved into. Privacy and unpredictability are becoming the ultimate luxury goods in the era of algorithmic evasion.

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Sensorial potency and the analogue rebound

AI can mimic art, and our visuals, sure. But it can’t mimic a scent, a texture, the weight of an object, the feel of it on your fingertips. This is where we start to see high-sensory environments emerge, moving from screens to scenes. Granting us the ability to fully immerse ourselves in something that reminds us we’re alive, and human, and that this is still reality.

Last year, London’s Barbican Centre created Feel the Sound, an immersive exhibition exploring how sound shapes memories and emotions, while IKEA’s Wherever Life Goes campaign centred the emotional narrative of its products rather than functionality, with imagery you could almost reach out and feel.

We’re experimenting with contrast therapy, with witchcraft, with anything that offers a potent sense of self-reflection and a realisation: that soulfulness is found in the things you must be physically present to experience.

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Anti-aspirationalism and the beauty of the mess

Remember the era of flat lays and over-curated feeds that were so far from reality it was almost nauseating? I’m glad to say the pendulum has swung far, far away from there and toward something more visceral and honest.

Because nobody looks f*cking picture ready at any given second of the day, nobody’s home looks like a showroom 24/7 and we don’t all just sit around looking perfect all day and taking photos. We want to see gritty, and lived in, and intentionally imperfect - and a girl like me loves to see it.

Life is not a product, it is a process. Let’s embrace that.

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The ghost in the machine

As we edge further into 2026, the definition of luxury is fragmenting and being rewritten. It’s no longer about the smoothest interface or the most curated life. It’s about the things that can’t be automated, replicated, or predicted.

Anu’s "Return to Soulfulness" reminds us that while AI can give us the answers, it can’t give us the feeling. It can’t give us the shaky hand-drawn line, the static on a vinyl record, or the weird, niche "whisper network" that only ten people know about.

We’ve spent the last decade trying to become gods of our own perfectly optimised universes, only to realise that being human, in all its friction-filled, messy, gritty glory, feels so much better for the soul. The future isn't a sleek, silver sci-fi movie. It’s a dinner party where someone spills wine on the rug, the music is a bit too loud, and nobody’s phone is on the table.

It’s unoptimised. It’s unpredictable. And thank God for that.

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