in 2026 protein is everywhere. protein coffee, protein cereal, protein ice cream, functional matcha, recovery water, chicken with a large sticker reminding you that chicken contains protein. eventually they will put it on eggs, just in case the public has forgotten what an egg is.

calling this a food trend feels too innocent. food trends are about taste, novelty, maybe some minor collective psychosis involving pistachio cream. the protein obsession is bigger. it is the visible surface of a cultural and economic shift, another moment when a very normal human desire gets packaged into a lifestyle and sold back to us at a premium.

this time the desire is health.

and once again, we are being sold some bullshit.

1. health has entered the chat

after covid everyone suddenly had a body again, and the body was pissed.

backs hurt. sleep was broken. people had gained weight, lost muscle, developed strange relationships with alcohol, screens, food and time. two years of sitting indoors turned the human skeleton into a badly assembled ikea chair. even people who had never thought about health started noticing that the body keeps receipts.

the culture reacted quickly. mental health was already becoming exhausted as a consumer category. there were only so many anxiety candles, therapy tote bags and boundary setting carousels a person could buy before the whole thing began to feel like an hr department with softer lighting.

so the algorithm moved on.

now everyone talks about cortisol, glucose spikes, gut health, creatine, sleep scores, recovery windows and longevity. people who were recommending manifestation journals three years ago are explaining metabolic health into a small microphone attached to their sports bra.

health has become the current language of being a good person.

you wake up early. you run. you eat enough protein. you drink electrolytes. you track your sleep. you take a cold shower, although nobody has ever looked genuinely happy while doing one. you are disciplined, clean, optimised and somehow always carrying a very expensive bottle.

the body has become the latest personal project.

2. a recession friendly personality

the timing is perfect.

restaurants are expensive. travel is expensive. nightlife is expensive, and also slightly depressing after the age of thirty. a certain version of leisure has started to feel financially irresponsible, which is probably why culture is suddenly telling us that the best things in life are free.

go outside. run through a forest. drink water. sleep eight hours. become one with nature.

but first, buy the adidas adizero x satisfy collaboration.

health is an ideal aspiration for a period when people have less disposable money. it can be framed as simple, moral and almost free. running costs nothing, apart from the shoes, watch, socks, hydration vest, sunglasses, recovery tool, subscription app and the small pouch of powder you are supposed to pour into water before performing the radical act of moving your legs.

we have entered a strange economic mood where consumption has to pretend it is self improvement.

buying a handbag looks frivolous. buying a wearable that tells you your nervous system is ruined looks responsible. a weekend in paris is indulgent. a three hundred euro running jacket is an investment in yourself.

the old status symbols have not disappeared. they have simply learned to breathe through the nose.

this is why health works so well as a lifestyle. it carries none of the guilt of ordinary consumption. you are not shopping, you are taking care of yourself. you are not following fashion, you are supporting performance. you are not buying another object you will forget in six months, you are investing in longevity.

the receipt is basically a medical document.

3. they are selling the idea, not the result

the market rarely sells health itself because actual health is slow, boring and difficult to photograph.

it involves sleep. routine. decent food. movement. less stress. time. relationships that do not make your nervous system feel like a fire alarm. sometimes it involves doctors, medication and accepting that the body is not a startup.

none of this looks especially good in a fifteen second video.

so health gets translated into objects.

a green powder for the morning. a black bottle for after the gym. a ring that judges your sleep. a yoghurt with PROTEIN written across the lid. a functional drink containing ingredients normally discussed by men who keep spreadsheets about their resting heart rate.

these products offer something more emotionally useful than nutrition. they offer the feeling that you are doing something.

the world is unstable, work is draining, your attention is gone and the future looks like an expensive subscription. but you consumed twenty grams of protein before 10 am. the dashboard is green. for a moment, you are in control.

this has happened before.

minimalism sold peace through new storage boxes. hyper productivity sold meaning through calendars, habit trackers and morning routines. consumer mental health sold emotional stability through apps, candles and sweatshirts with diagnostic language in a cute font.

each era finds a real anxiety, simplifies it, builds an aesthetic around it and opens a checkout page.

now it is health’s turn.

4. the slopification of the body

the protein era belongs perfectly to slop culture.

everything has to be consumed faster. news becomes a screenshot. politics becomes a meme. psychology becomes a carousel. an entire relationship becomes a thirty second story told by someone eating noodles in their car.

fitness follows the same logic.

a tiktok begins with a stupid hook, usually something like “stop doing cardio immediately” or “three foods that are destroying your hormones.” within thirty seconds you receive a complete programme for losing weight, building muscle, fixing your posture, balancing cortisol and becoming some kind of emotionally regulated terminator by september.

coaches used to spend years learning how bodies work. then they spent months adjusting programmes for individual clients, watching movement, tracking progress and correcting mistakes. now a nineteen year old with a ring light explains the female endocrine system between two affiliate links.

the speed is the product.

the video does not need to make you healthier. it needs to make you feel that health has finally been explained in a form your damaged attention span can tolerate.

eat this.

avoid that.

walk exactly ten thousand steps.

take this supplement.

never eat after 7 pm, unless another video says eating before sleep improves muscle recovery, in which case definately do that.

the contradictions do not matter because the content disappears before the brain can compare anything. each reel replaces the previous one. health becomes an endless series of micro instructions, delivered with the confidence of religious law and the shelf life of yoghurt.

protein fits perfectly because it is simple and measurable. grams look scientific. numbers feel serious. the word can be printed in enormous letters and understood without context.

sleep is complicated. stress is complicated. metabolism is complicated. protein is twenty grams.

that is enough for the front of the package.

5. made in america

the purest version of this logic comes from the united states, where health is constantly presented as a private consumer task.

you can see the entire ideology from a suburban road. six lanes of traffic, no pavement, a drive through on one side and a billboard advertising a weight loss injection on the other. the person inside the pickup truck has not walked anywhere, but the coffee in the cup holder contains added protein and is called active.

this is almost too perfect.

american daily life has spent decades removing ordinary movement from the day. homes are separated from shops, shops are separated from offices, everything is connected by roads wide enough to make crossing them feel like a political protest. walking becomes exercise because it is no longer transportation.

then the market sells movement back as a specialised hobby.

you need the correct shoes, the correct watch, the correct fuel, the correct recovery drink. the ordinary act of using your own legs gets transformed into a premium identity.

the same logic appears in healthcare. treating health as a public good would require politics, taxation, infrastructure and some basic agreement that a sick person should not also receive a financial crisis. selling a functional yoghurt requires a graphic designer and shelf space.

one is obviously easier.

it is easier to put protein in a black container than to build a pavement. easier to sell sleep supplements than to question working hours. easier to release a cortisol drink than to create a life in which people are not permanently stressed.

this is the essence of fast health.

the conditions remain the same. the individual receives another product to manage their reaction to them.

you sit all day, so buy a standing desk.

you are exhausted, so buy an energy drink.

you cannot sleep, so buy magnesium.

you have no time to cook, so buy a protein cookie with the texture of building material.

the solution always fits inside a shopping basket. very convenient for everyone involved except the human body.

and of course this culture travels. american consumer anxiety is one of the country’s most successful exports, somewhere between marvel films and oversized cars.

6. imported without the original problem

in europe we receive the trend slightly later, usually after it has been polished by tiktok and given nicer typography.

in vilnius, protein coffee appears beside perfectly normal coffee. functional drinks sit in refrigerators next to kefyras. ordinary dairy products are repackaged in black cups with english words like strong, active and performance.

the language arrives before the need.

lithuania has spent centuries exploring every possible state of milk. varškė, kefyras, pasukos, grūdėta varškė, sour cream with several competing levels of emotional heaviness. our supermarkets already contain entire refrigerated corridors of cheap protein, although none of it looks like it owns a garmin.

nobody had to explain to a lithuanian grandmother that cottage cheese contains protein. she did not need a neon label or a tiktok nutritionist. she simply put it on the table and watched you eat it with the emotional warmth of a prison guard.

now the same basic product returns in an elegant container at twice the price.

this is the magic of imported lifestyle culture. something local and ordinary becomes desirable only after it loses its memory, receives an english name and starts looking like it was developed in los angeles.

varškė becomes a protein bowl.

kefyras becomes a gut health drink.

a walk becomes zone two cardio.

sleep becomes recovery.

eating lunch becomes fuelling.

the activity barely changes. the consumer identity does.

we are not only buying products. we are buying the visual language of someone who has their life together. the shoes by the door. the stainless steel bottle. the running app screenshot. the 6:14 am selfie from a grey street with a tiny caption about discipline.

health has become content, and content needs props.

7. i am also in the cult, obviously

i should admit that i use protein powder.

i train, and i put Daily Spoon protein into a smoothie because it is convenient. muscles, sadly, do not grow from reading sociology and complaining about consumer culture.

protein supplements are useful. sometimes people need them. sometimes you have no time to cook. sometimes a bar prevents you from eating a petrol station croissant at 4 pm and feeling spiritually empty for the rest of the day.

my problem is not with the existence of the product.

i am tired of the total simplifcation around it. the way a practical sports supplement has expanded into a complete theory of health. the way every snack needs to perform wellness, every drink needs a function, every breakfast needs measurable output.

even chicken now needs to announce that it contains protein, as if the animal spent its life building a personal brand.

the whole thing speaks to adults like they are distracted children.

this one makes you strong.

this one gives you energy.

this one is good.

this one is bad.

do not think about the full diet, your routine, your sleep or why you feel terrible. just look for the word in the biggest font.

consume faster. think less. scan the barcode.

8. the next word is already coming

the protein era will pass.

all lifestyle trends do, especially once they reach petrol stations and office vending machines. the functional drinks will eventually sit in the discount section beside seasonal kombucha and whatever remained of the labubu economy.

another word will replace protein.

maybe cortisol. maybe inflammation. maybe longevity. maybe mitochondrial health, which already sounds expensive.

the basic promise will remain the same. your body is a problem, the solution is available in a new flavour.

there will always be another metric to track, another powder to mix, another object that proves you are taking care of yourself. health will keep changing outfits because the desire underneath it is real.

people want to feel better. they want control. they want a future.

the market just gets there first and puts it in a matte black bottle.

by then the chicken will probably be labelled longevity.

good for her.

soy.vilnius xo

author’s note: this post was originally written in my own words and later polished with AI to improve clarity and grammar in a foreign language. all ideas are mine.

it’s more like anthropological confusion. who the fuck are all these people ordering 18 euro starters on a random tuesday night? where do they work? who is financing this entire city-wide performance of discretionary income?

because statistically this makes no sense. vilnius is not monaco. we do not have this many wealthy people. and yet bistros are full, we have more new pilates studios than mommies, miu miu ballet flats and acne studios on people casually queueing for functional protein coffee, while they discuss layoffs, inflation, drones, and ai replacing white-collar jobs.

the vibe is financially impossible.

for a while i thought maybe i underestimated how rich people became after covid. maybe everyone secretly works in fintech. maybe the baltics accidentally unlocked a hidden economic miracle between soy milk decaf flat whites and salomon sneakers.

but the more i looked at it, the more obvious it became that the opposite is probably true.

people are not spending because they feel financially secure.

people are spending because long-term financial logic itself started collapsing psychologically.

the old modern contract barely functions anymore. you know the one:
study hard, work hard, buy property, build a family, save money, retire peacefully somewhere near pine trees and a lake.

this entire sequence now feels like outdated software from 2006 trying to run on a broken operating system.

especially here.

in our part of europe, instability is never fully abstract. it sits inside the wallpaper. people here still remember economic collapse physically. parents still keep random plastic bags full of other plastic bags because somewhere deep in their nervous system scarcity never left. but now there’s a newer layer on top of that memory. a colder one.

war nearby. housing prices detached from salaries. permanent inflation. burnout economies. ai panic. climate dread humming quietly in the background like refrigerator noise.

this week was the first time some people in vilnius actually went down into shelters because of a drone alert.

and after that you’re supposed to open notion and continue budgeting for a 30-year mortgage like a psychologically stable citizen?

be serious.

i think a lot of contemporary consumption is actually grief management disguised as lifestyle.

because once property stops feeling attainable, something strange happens to desire itself. people stop organizing their lives around delayed gratification. the future no longer feels concrete enough to sacrifice for. and when that happens, consumption mutates.

suddenly the expensive dinner becomes emotionally rational.

the designer bag becomes rational.

the impulsive trip to milan becomes rational.

not rational financially. rational existentially.

if the future feels unstable, abstract, or potentially catastrophic, then pleasure today starts outperforming security tomorrow.

doom spending is probably the most honest economic behavior of our era.

economists always talk about “consumer confidence” like it’s a clean metric. but what if hyper-consumption is actually a confidence collapse? what if packed restaurants and luxury skincare routines are less signs of prosperity and more symptoms of collective fatalism?

because honestly, some parts of vilnius right now feel less like a wealthy city and more like a beautifully curated waiting room before turbulence.

and social media made all of this infinitely worse.

people talk about instagram making everyone jealous, but i think the real damage is more structural than emotional. algorithms destroyed class distance.

twenty years ago you occasionally saw rich people. maybe in magazines. maybe on vacation somewhere. now upper-class aesthetics enter your brain before breakfast every single day. seamlessly. endlessly. you wake up and immediately absorb someone’s lisbon apartment, someone’s copenhagen ceramics, someone’s “casual” 400 euro dinner reservation, someone’s quiet luxury apartment with beige walls and indirect lighting designed specifically for depressive northern europeans.

after enough exposure your brain quietly recalibrates what normal life is supposed to look like.

people now consume one or two tax brackets above their actual reality because algorithmic exposure flattened aspirational culture into everyday life.

everyone performs affluence now.

especially gen z.

honestly i don’t even blame them. millennials at least inherited the fantasy of eventual stability. there was still some lingering belief that suffering early in life would eventually unlock something later. a house. a pension. permanence. some coherent adult narrative.

gen z inherited permanent crisis instead.

2008. covid. war. inflation. climate anxiety. ai threatening entire industries before some of them even entered the workforce. they grew up online watching rich people monetize their morning routines while simultaneously being told home ownership is unrealistic and the planet is dying.

of course they spend money like the future barely exists.

the future barely markets itself anymore.

and i think this is the part older generations fundamentally misunderstand when they talk about “financial irresponsibility.” because traditional financial advice only works if people believe stability is achievable.

save for what exactly?

a one-bedroom apartment that costs 15 years of your salary?

retirement in a collapsing pension economy?

children you cannot emotionally or financially sustain?

sometimes i sit in these hyper-designed cafés in vilnius surrounded by beautiful exhausted people softly performing wellness and i have this strange thought that luxury consumption has partially replaced traditional adulthood itself.

people cannot access older markers of stability anymore, so adulthood mutates into aesthetics.

instead of houses:
ceramics.

instead of families:
travel content.

instead of permanence:
small controlled pleasures.

matcha. skincare. linen shirts. natural wine. expensive tiny plates served on rocks.

a curated life replacing a stable one.

which sounds cynical when written out like this, but honestly i think most people intuitively understand the exchange already.

nobody really believes the future will become easier.

they just want something nice before the next notification arrives.

soy xo.

author’s note: this post was originally written in my own words and later polished with AI to improve clarity and grammar in a foreign language. all ideas are mine.

It has been more than a year since our last conversation. From what I can see, a lot has changed — from a niche meme account with around 8,000 followers, you’ve become something of an internet phenomenon. Besides gaining over 45,000 new followers, what else has happened during this time?

time flies, it feels like we talked just last winter, but it’s actually been over a year. In that time, a lot of ‘iconic’ things have happened: we put memes on billboards, dropped several merch collections, ran creative giveaways (my favorite was the lottery-style one), hosted a soy.vilnius birthday party, and even appeared in fashion magazines. Crazy.

on Instagram, I kept doing memes, and somehow it started getting worldwide recognition – the audience shifted from mostly local to global, although Vilnius still dominates. it’s honestly super funny to see my memes being used as templates. it feels like I’m actually contributing to the culture.

Your union also includes two Polish accounts: pysznestopy.pl and concept_talerzykowy — well known in Poland, but still relatively undiscovered in Lithuania (which is a shame — highly recommend following them!). How do they see their activity and whether they can already call themselves a “phenomenon”?

concept_talerzykowy:
In major Polish cities, small-plate concepts are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. Some places create perfect conditions for sharing food with others, while others feel like a complete scam — overpriced, low-quality food, poor service. After yet another visit to a place like that, where I felt slightly ripped off, I created Concept Talerzykowy as a somewhat ironic outlet for that frustration.

I thought it would be a small, temporary project, but now it’s about to turn one year old and has gathered thousands of people who are also tired of expensive, overcomplicated gastronomy. At this point, I don’t just comment on food anymore, but on urban culture in general — and it brings me a lot of joy, because I try to combine a bit of humor with a bit of love for art and culture in what I create.

pysznestopy.pl:
It’s hard to say how much of a “phenomenon” my work on the internet really is. I don’t want to downplay it, but I also don’t want to exaggerate and elevate still fairly niche images to the level of “phenomenon” or “discourse,” whatever that means.

What shows me that what I do stays with people is the fact that over the past few years, various initiatives and cultural institutions I consider important have reached out to collaborate – museums, educational programs, cultural centers, magazines. Also, I’m a Leo, so I won’t lie, it’s sweet when someone messages you saying they like what you do, or shares your work. To answer in a more clickbait way: yes, sometimes people recognize me in the city. No, I haven’t been on Pudelek.

As for the name of the account, the story behind it is so mundane and uninteresting that I’ll keep it a mystery. Trust me, there’s no deep philosophy behind it, and it’s not a reference to any of my bodily preferences (I know it might seem that way). If anyone comes up with an alternative origin story for “pysznestopy,” I’ll gladly lie and use it in future interviews. DM me.

Vilnius is soy — we already know that. But what kind of milk would Warsaw be?

pysznestopy.pl:
To answer that question, I had to make one of the most embarrassing search queries of recent times: “which non-dairy milk has the most protein?” It turns out — paradoxically — it’s soy milk as well. So that would probably be my answer too.

That said, Warsaw is definitely not “soy” in the colloquial sense of the word. It’s not soft or weak — above all, it’s efficient and calculated. I feel like Warsaw is a city of constant internal constraints and a kind of ongoing “me versus the world” struggle. Somehow, it has become the most spiritually Protestant Catholic city — and I can’t really explain why.

I also get the sense that Warsaw went through a long, soft, hipster phase — one I’d associate with oat milk — which has been shrinking in inverse proportion to the number of skyscrapers rising in the city center. These days, you can’t really be an unemployed artist living in Śródmieście anymore — now everyone goes to the gym and, of course, sets up LinkedIn accounts.

The initiator of this iconic collaboration is the founder of the concept_talerzykowy account. We asked about how the collaboration began, she says:

concept_talerzykowy:
I’ve been following soy.vilnius for a long time — I really like the content, it’s intelligent and funny, and some of the themes also appear in Concept Talerzykowy. So one day I simply thought it would be nice to do something together. I sent a message to soy.vilnius. The person running the account suggested inviting pysznestopy.pl to join the collab as well (also intelligent and funny content that I’ve been following for a long time) – and that’s how the three of us ended up making memes together.

By the way, it’s amazing that you can just meet someone online and, without any doubts at all, unanimously decide to create something fun together.

On March 24, your Instagram post said: “March 24, 2026 will be remembered as Lublin Union 2.0” — where did the idea for this collaboration come from?

for me, it’s more about why we didn’t do it earlier. we all knew about each other, we chatted, supported each other’s content.

the turning point was when I collaborated with a New York account, @thefakerothko. after that, I got a message from @concept_talerzykowy like, “I’ve noticed a few Polish references and thought we could do something together.”

a few moments later, I created a chat on Instagram, invited @pysznestopy pl and called it “rzeczpospolita but memes”. Everything else is history.

pysznestopy.pl:
I’ll say right away that in this collaboration I was the least proactive party, since the original idea came from the admin of concept_talerzykowy, who invited soy.vilnius, and my friend from Vilnius happened to think of me – for which I’m very grateful…

I should also mention that I’ve been following the Lithuanian page for a long time, and thinking about it now, I don’t even know why this idea hadn’t occurred to me earlier. In general, I’ve been considering more unconventional collaborations for a while, but I’m still not sure where that will lead me.

For example, some friends of mine from Poznań are organizing a party at a club called Ślina, sponsored by a regional dairy cooperative from Koło — and honestly, I almost teared up when I found out about it. The internet can sometimes be a beautiful place.

Despite the fact that our countries are right next to each other, over the years I’ve spent in Warsaw — and over a dozen years in Vilnius — I’ve noticed that interest in our geographical neighbors is minimal.

Of course, it’s not surprising that we don’t constantly think about each other — shockingly. We also rarely create space for grassroots initiatives, outside of institutional or political cooperation — and yet it’s exactly this kind of bottom-up collaboration, driven by our own initiative, that we need most if Poland and Lithuania are to become — to paraphrase — “two brothers.” On the topic of how we think about our neighbors, I also asked my interviewees.

What is Poland to someone living in Lithuania?

hmm… I think it’s different for everyone – for some, it’s trips for cheap goods and fuel, for others, it’s family, shared history, or simply a neighboring country. for me, Poland has always been associated with friends who live there. I just wish I could see them more often.

And what is Lithuania to someone living in Poland?

concept_talerzykowy:
Exactly! I don’t know! For the past few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about Lithuania — and also about other countries that are more central and eastern in Europe. I’ve been so focused on the West until now that I somehow overlooked our neighbors from other directions.

Lithuania is mainly associated with Pan Tadeusz and with cuisine very similar to what you’d find in Podlasie. Some people probably also associate it with cigarette smuggling, but that’s not really my topic — I don’t smoke.

Lithuania also won the European Tree of the Year competition, which some Poles will definitely remember for a long time (we’ve gotten used to winning that contest!).

pysznestopy.pl:
I think my perception of Lithuania in Poland is somewhat non-standard, mainly because I grew up outside of Poland, in a family of people who were raised in the USSR. Because of that, the association with the Lublin Union isn’t as obvious to me as the fact that my ancestors lived in the same country as the older generation of Lithuanians.

From my parents’ stories, Lithuania — and the Baltic states in general — were always seen as a kind of unreachable oasis within the Soviet Union. It was always better there, richer, more “European.”

I assume local readers might not agree with that — but don’t blame the messenger, blame the game. I also have very clear memories connected to several well-known people from Lithuania, each from a completely different world.

First of all, from childhood I remember the name Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė — she became my first window into anything Baltic. I remember she played a supporting role in the controversial Soviet film Intergirl, and later became very well known in post-Soviet cinema.

Aside from that, a few years ago, during one long night of deep-diving on the internet, I came across the music of DJ Nevykele — and ever since then, she has appeared on my most-listened-to artists list every year. By the way, my first conversation with soy.vilnius happened when I messaged him asking what locals think about her.

And despite making that post, I’ve actually never been to Lithuania — although now I feel like I’m obliged to go. No more excuses.

Hania, some time ago you posted about the Lithuanian cold beet soup festival — what made you discover it? Where did this fascination come from?

concept_talerzykowy:
After I had already agreed with soy.vilnius and pysznestopy.pl that we would do a joint post, I started digging around online looking for inspiration — and came across a photo from that event. I more or less know what food festivals in Poland usually look like (typically quite basic), so I was really impressed by how this one was presented. I would love to see it in person — luckily, there are direct flights from Gdańsk, so maybe I’ll visit Vilnius later this year.

Napoleon once wanted to move St. Anne’s Church to France. But what do you personally like about Warsaw? What would you bring from “Pyszne stopy” — if anything — to your own city?

first of all, I’d move because of the people. a lot of my friends live in Warsaw, and I’m sure there are many more wonderful people there. from a city perspective, I’m not sure a bigger city is really my vibe. I prefer slower, smaller, more walkable places. but a big city like Warsaw definitely has its advantages – there’s always something happening, plenty of great food spots to explore, and lots of events to attend. for example, I’m quite often jealous of how many more concerts Warsaw gets.

What could residents of our cities learn from each other?

what else you can do with a potato, and what other strange soup you can come up with. on a more serious note, Warsaw residents could learn how to chill and slow down, while Vilnius residents could learn how to hustle a bit more and maybe keep shops open after 5 pm. it’s really annoying when everything closes before I even finish my full-time job. but at least grocery stores are open on Sundays!

pysznestopy.pl:
I’m a rare example of a Warsaw resident who loves the city even for the things that most people find annoying — so many people will probably disagree with me. One thing I’d like to bring from Warsaw to other cities is the fact that — I’ll say it in English — people in Warsaw always get the job done. I don’t mean local political actors, but rather the internal philosophy most people seem to have.

I have this feeling that in Warsaw things are rarely postponed or canceled — something is always happening, and you can be sure you’ll never find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to do.

Is this driven by the pressure of a FOMO epidemic (Fear of Missing Out)? Yes.
Am I also a victim of it? Also yes — but for now, I clearly enjoy being a social masochist.

You joke that this is the return of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth — what, besides a turbulent history, still connects us? Is there room to “bury the hatchet” and build Polish–Lithuanian (including meme) alliances? Or does that hatchet not really exist anymore?

actually, I find a lot of similarities in our temperament and the way we see life. for example, both nations can seem a bit grumpy, don’t really like small talk, and often answer “I’m normal”, but deep inside we’re very warm, welcoming, and passionate.

as for history, to me it’s just a series of events shaped by a group of people from the past. I don’t really see why it should define our relationships today. and who knows maybe in the future, someone will look at our memes and think “what were they even thinking?”

concept_talerzykowy:
I don’t really feel this “turbulent history” at all, especially given the current geopolitical situation in the region. From history classes, what I mainly remember is that we once shared a state, despite later conflicts — over Vilnius, identity, culture.

But time passes, and I’m not someone who dwells on the past, so I focus on the fact that today our countries are together in the European Union and NATO, that we’ve developed significantly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and that we do have some good shared history — and that’s what we should be building this relationship on.

pysznestopy.pl:
There are a few things that, in my opinion, connect Poland and Lithuania, but above all it’s the fact that both countries, in geopolitical, cultural, and even psychological terms, exist somewhere between Western and Eastern Europe. This largely creates a situation where both places appear on lists of potential destinations for investment and migration — both from the “West” and the “East.”

For Western countries, our states are another source of relatively cheap but educated labor, while for migrants from the East (for example, myself), it’s close and “almost like home.” I won’t comment on the accuracy of the second statement or the ethics of the first — but that’s the reality.

Both countries can simultaneously appear on the cover of a Sad Russian Post Punk playlist (for some reason) and on lists of the best places to grow a business (for slightly more obvious reasons).

It’s surreal — but maybe that’s exactly why we’re able to notice the absurdities of contemporary big-city life so accurately.

So, can we joke about the history of Poland and Lithuania? And how can we do it in a balanced way?

my approach to life has always been simple – it’s better to laugh than to cry. I might be repeating myself, but I don’t think we should be too bothered or triggered by things that happened centuries ago. it’s better to focus on the positive and on what can bring us together.

that said, I understand that this topic can be personal and sensitive for some people and families. others might interpret this kind of content as something political or even extreme.

to those people, I’d either like to apologize or gently remind them that our content is meant for entertainment and making people feel good. we’ve never had the intention to offend anyone or, you know, anything my lawyers would tell me to say here, lol.

concept_talerzykowy:
I believe you can laugh about almost anything, as long as there’s a sense of irony combined with mutual respect, and no one feels ridiculed. We laughed about the positive parts of our shared history, and it turned out to be genuinely uplifting.

I’m not sure, however, whether we’re ready to joke, for example, about the “taking” of Vilnius — I don’t know if that’s still a sensitive topic in Lithuania. I’ll do some research, and maybe that will be the next round of memes — who knows?

Or perhaps, out of respect for unresolved wounds, this is still something that should be left out of humor for now. Sensitivity comes from knowledge — you simply have to educate yourself, even before publishing more jokes.

pysznestopy.pl:
I’m not sure to what extent I’m in a position to answer this question, since I grew up in a city located closer to Istanbul than to Poland’s southern border. It seems to me that reinterpreting the basic facts of events from a fairly distant past is something acceptable.

A lot of cultural commentary is based on subversion, reinterpretation, and a kind of masquerade between historical fact and fiction.

But let’s be honest — none of us is trying to present ourselves as a great expert on specific historical facts. Let’s leave that to professionals and dedicated nerds.

If we’ve encouraged someone to recall what the Lublin Union even was, I think our job is done.

You both create content that acts as commentary — on the city, its residents, society, and trends. Comparing your profiles, it seems that people in Vilnius and Warsaw are not that different. Is this because of… gentrification? Or something else? How do you see it?

it’s funny, because today, after seeing the post, a friend from Warsaw texted me with an interesting observation. he pointed out the difference between our cities through the way we create content. he finds my meme templates cleaner and more minimal, while Polish ones tend to be more visually heavy. and I’d agree, there is a difference in visual language across cities, and it definitely influences us.

but to answer your question from a more urban-anthropologic perspective, I think the problems modern cities face are actually quite similar. that probably also explains why I have a lot of followers from places like New York, London, and Berlin.

pysznestopy.pl:
You’re right — and to be honest, I keep thinking about this all the time. Similar, and sometimes even identical, patterns and stereotypes are relevant in almost every major urban center.

I’d like to recommend the meme page of my friend @canariafemcel, who makes great memes about Uruguay. If we replaced Montevideo with Warsaw, every single one of her posts could easily appear on my page — and you wouldn’t notice the difference.

At its core, it all comes down to the fact that, in the context of massive globalization, it’s becoming increasingly clear that class is, to a large extent, a stronger marker of society than culture.

What difference does it make which language you were educated in or what cartoons you watched as a child, if, in the end, hipster capitalism leads people in capital cities to the same Copenhagen-style breakfast anyway?

It’s important to understand that residents of Vilnius with higher material and cultural capital (meaning: those who can afford matcha and who were able to spend their student years supported by their parents, reading the philosophical ramblings of bald French men) may better understand jokes about being a creative director in Poland than people living 60 kilometers outside Warsaw who didn’t have those privileges.

Is there something beautiful in this similarity?

as always, the more similarities there are, the fewer conflicts we have. But similarity becomes meaningful only when there is still some difference. without “the other,” we wouldn’t even notice what makes us us. I think the beauty is exactly in that balance – when we’re similar enough to understand each other, but still different enough to stay interesting. Šaltibarščiai and Chłodnik <3.

pysznestopy.pl:
That’s a good question. If I said that current development trends — including gentrification — don’t appeal to me at all, I’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world, because I obviously benefit from living in the kind of Warsaw I live in.

At the same time — would I give up my soy milk matcha latte for a city with more local, grassroots initiatives, ones that better reflect its own microculture rather than, say, the previously mentioned Copenhagen-style one? Of course I would.

That’s why I think criticism and even mockery of big-city lifestyle should always exist alongside it. It’s very easy to lose touch with the actual reality around you — and with the things that truly matter — if you keep going to the same gallery openings every week.

On the other hand, I’m also convinced that a certain similarity in everyday life across large cities serves as a kind of entry point for exploring them more deeply and engaging with their culture on a more advanced level.

I’m not sure I would have become interested in the neighborhoods of Vilnius if I hadn’t seen that I could map them onto those of Warsaw.

Looking at the comments under the post, people seem really impressed — how do you evaluate this reaction? Did you expect it?

it’s always nice to see such a positive reaction. but I wouldn’t lie and pretend it was all unexpected, a lot of things are actually quite calculated. when you’ve been doing projects like this for a while, you start to understand your audience, how it behaves, and even get a sense of how the algorithms work. so you naturally begin to optimize and prepare for success. for example, to boost engagement and signal it to the algorithm, I added that “bobr kurwa” counter in the comments.

concept_talerzykowy:
I didn’t expect such a strong response — and definitely not such active engagement from Polish audiences. It makes me really happy, especially since the comments are very positive.

I’m glad that we can simply make an ironic post about two neighboring countries and not trigger any negative emotions — that’s genuinely uplifting.

This is exactly why I pay my internet bills!

pysznestopy.pl:
We’re very happy! It’s incredibly sweet that such a spontaneous idea turned into something that resonated so positively.

I was especially amused by the discussion about the role of Belarus in the context of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the sheer number of historical dates and facts appearing in the comments.

Our audience seems to be more knowledgeable about the topic than we are — so it looks like I should probably read up on it in my free time, because it’s a bit embarrassing.

Is this collaboration just a one-off post, or the beginning of something bigger?

empires don’t fall in days. we’re planning to last at least 226 years. then we’ll probably try to unite again. maybe fail. follow us to find out.

concept_talerzykowy:
Time will tell — stay tuned.

pysznestopy.pl:
Great question — judging by how enthusiastic our followers are, it seems like we’ll definitely have to do this again winks towards Vilnius. Maybe after I visit Vilnius or soy.vilnius comes to Warsaw, we’ll create something together again… stay tuned.

And to wrap things up, let’s let our imagination run free: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 2.0 — who would rule this kingdom, and what would its colors and emblem be?

it would be a woman, 100%. enough of men leading the world closer to the apocalypse. the colors would be either matcha latte green or natural wine orange. as for the symbol, we could keep it mostly the same, just replace the weapons and other sharp elements with cute HAY cutlery. I’m a 6’0 feminist, by the way.

concept_talerzykowy:
There should be two rulers (or two queens!). The colors could be a combination of the current national colors, and for the emblem, I’d love to see a hussar with a machine gun!

pysznestopy.pl:
I’ll say right away that I’m probably a bit too woke, so I don’t really want to imagine a kingdom or a local ruler, even as a joke. There’s already too much of that in the world right now.

In my ideal Commonwealth, things would look a bit different, I’d recommend the poem “I Want a President” by Zoe Leonard.

It would be nice if we had a different “royal” every day — alternating between someone from Poland and someone from Lithuania.

As for the flag, it’s hard to come up with anything better than a gradient from white to green (either matcha latte, or a blend of the Polish and Lithuanian flag colors).

And the emblem? Let it be a giant QR code that takes you to a picture of Adam Mickiewicz.

I captioned it: antakalnis poke bowl.

it became the most liked story in the entire history of soy.vilnius.

at first I thought it was just a dumb joke that hit the algorithm right. but then i realized it was a strange kind of social proof that the city might actually be getting tired of the small plates lifestyle. over the past months two small plates natural wine places in vilnius quietly closed: saduto tuto and tummo. saduto tuto, to be fair, was almost a pioneer of the genre here. baby squid, shrimp, little hummus bowls, orange wine. tummo, what to say…it didn’t even last a year. at some point it became obvious that nobody was going to regularly pay nine euros for a boiled egg.

the funny thing is that these places always felt like copies of copies. first something appears in copenhagen or london, then berlin adopts it, and two years later it lands in vilnius almost unchanged. stainless steel counters, small plates to share, tartare, potatoes, hummus, roasted eggplant. you don’t even need to read the menu. you already know it.

this is a pretty normal phase for a city that suddenly reopened to the west in the 1990s. lithuania basically opened the cultural floodgates and spent the next three decades importing ways of living. first the american phase: pizza places, bowling alleys, burgers, craft beer. eating a burger in an industrial, loft interior in 2014 felt like participating in the global present.

eventually america faded and the cultural compass moved north. scandinavia became the new reference point. fermentation, natural wine, minimal interiors, small plates. a whole lifestyle kit that could be replicated from city to city.

the problem with imported cultural formats is that they travel much faster than the desires they’re supposed to satisfy.

people still go to these ‘bistro’ places. they photograph the plates, drink orange wine, tag their friends. but the emotional register is thin. you look at a tartare served with fries in a metal bowl and think: nu labai soy.vilnius, – and then 5 minutes of taking pics with a flash for instagram

but you’re not necessarily excited to eat it.

then you see a plate of mashed potatoes with a mišrainė and suddenly something clicks. people look at it and think: this is food of the gods.

the reaction is almost always nostalgic. it’s about childhood memory, grandmother kitchens, the kind of food that never tried to perform sophistication.

there’s also a much simpler explanation: money.

small plates are a beautiful late-capitalist trick. you pay 17 euros for tartare, 9 euros for an egg, 5 euros for bread, and you’re told it’s a concept. also it’s for sharing, please order more. by the end of the evening the bill is 79 euros and you’re still slightly hungry, trying to remember what exactly you just ate.

people are not stupid. even people with money run quiet comparisons in their head. especially now, with post-covid inflation slowly eroding everyone’s tolerance for bullshit.

i’ve had many evenings where after one of these natural wine bistros i ended up at hesburger and honestly enjoyed it more. not gastronomically (soy tortilla slaps tho). emotionally. the math simply made more sense.

this is why i keep thinking that the most successful restaurant format in vilnius might end up being something extremely simple. a bar with homemade infusions. horseradish vodka. open sandwiches. basic salads. normal prices. a place that doesn’t pretend to be copenhagen.

because these small plate temples will probably disappear the same way all those identical burger joints quietly did a few years ago.

cepelinai, meanwhile, will survive all of it.

sometimes a person just needs to eat one massive potato object and temporarily exit the cultural economy.

soy.vilnius xo

author’s note: this post was originally written in my own words and later polished with AI to improve clarity and grammar in a foreign language. all ideas are mine.

last weekend i was walking on the ice toward Trakai Castle and the wind was biting my face like it had a personal issue with me. and i had this very simple thought: why am i outside? people used to survive winter by staying inside. they did not need to go outside, because they sat in the office the whole week and needed to move.

the castle looked beautiful. medieval. defensive. built for endurance. definitely not for winter. and especially not for productivity. nobody in the 14th century was like: perfect season to reinvent myself.

winter was contraction. brutal, yes. smoke in your lungs. salted meat. darkness. but also limits. there was a natural ceiling to activity. you repaired tools. you mended clothes. you told stories. you waited. survival, not expansion.

summer was the violence. harvest, labor, sunburn, urgency. bodies moving because they had to. because winter is coming.

industrialization turned that inside out. the factory didn’t care about snow. it cared about shifts. the clock replaced the sun. winter stopped being an argument. it became just another quarter.

and now we have laptops (writing on my corporate one btw)

i can move pixels in vilnius in february exactly the same way i move pixels in july. central heating. LED light. my specialty coffee from sunny countries i’ll likely never visit. weather becomes aesthetic background, not structural condition. for white-collar bodies, seasonality is downgraded to mood.

january, biologically the most depleted month, is marketed as rebirth. new year, new you. bouldering gym memberships. vibe coding. corporate kickoffs. in IT, january and february are strategy decks and performance reviews. you haven’t seen the sun in three weeks (you wake up it’s dark, you go home it’s dark) and someone is asking about your growth trajectory.

this is insane.

we moralized productivity precisely when the body wants to shrink. if you are tired in february, it’s framed as a mindset problem. maybe you need supplements. maybe a better morning routine. maybe cold showers. nobody says: maybe it’s minus fifteen and the sun sets at 16:00 and your nervous system is not designed for expansion.

capitalism didn’t just colonize circadian rhythm. it colonized seasonality. it erased the legitimacy of winter. and now ai enters like the next promise of freedom.

as promised, ai was supposed to unshackle us. automate the boring tasks. give us time. maybe even return winter. imagine: machines handle the repetitive work, humans hibernate, think, repair, read, cook soup.

but we know how this goes. the factory standardized time. the computer dissolved space. ai will optimize labor. not abolish it. dashboards predicting your “seasonal engagement dip.” performance metrics adjusted in real time. hibernation, but tracked.

until, maybe, it overshoots. until ai replaces enough of us that work itself becomes scarce. and then what? do we return to something medieval? agriculture for some, redundancy for others? summer becomes intense again. winter becomes waiting.

there’s something almost comforting about that image. not the poverty. not the plague. just the permission to align with darkness.

i’m not romanticizing hunger, no. i’m just tired of pretending february is for ambition.

walking on that ice, with my face burning, i felt the absurdity physically. the body in survival landscape. the inbox in growth mode.

maybe winter is not meant to be optimized. maybe it’s meant to be endured without shame.

maybe the radical move is smaller than revolution.

maybe in february you keep the fire alive.

and that’s enough.

soy.vilnius xo

every week someone online decides we’re “basically in 2016 again. like if we repeat the number enough times — 2016, 2016, 2016 — maybe the future will stop moving. like the timeline will politely reverse itself and put us back in a world where nothing was quite broken yet.

the funny part is that half of what people mean by “2016” isn’t even from 2016. it’s 2013 tumblr max, it’s an aesthetic hallucination. nobody remembers the year. they remember the feeling of being less scared.

because “2016” isn’t a year anymore. it’s a panic room.

people talk about it like it was simpler, like it was the last good summer before the apocalypse DLC dropped. but 2016 wasn’t peaceful. it wasn’t clean. it was brexit. it was trump and his campaign. it was ukraine, syria, aleppo – the world shattering in real time while everyone still acted like the shattering was just politics, just discourse, just another news cycle.

so what are we trying to go back to, exactly?

not the events. not the headlines. i think what people are nostalgic for is something kind of embarrassing: the feeling that the future was still possible. that history was still a straight line. that you could make plans without them sounding like science fiction.

the obsession with 2016 doesn’t feel like nostalgia. it feels like a refusal. a refusal of futurity. retro-fatalism. repetition as shelter.

in my algorithmic corner of the internet (the left-liberal bubble curated for people who drink overpriced coffee in concepts stores) the fixation has its own undertone. it was one of the last moments when europe still believed in its own stability. vilnius was polishing itself, the EU felt permanent, and progress still seemed like a lifestyle trajectory: craft beer bars, early third-wave coffee, veganism as something slightly radical and hopeful. grybauskaitė was still president. politics was background noise, not something that could rearrange the map. history was supposed to stay in museums.

2026 doesn’t offer that fantasy. 2026 offers war, hardened borders, resurgent right-wing aesthetics, open fascisation, the feeling that history has stopped pretending. so “2016” becomes a readable chapter before the genre changed.

but millennials aren’t the only ones doing this.

the other engine behind 2016 nostalgia is gen z, who have grown up and realised that they are cooked.

no house. no stable job. a labour market that feels like a prank. a planet doing weird things. an AI industry promising, with unnerving cheerfulness, to automate the last remaining reasons to develop a self. for them, 2016 isn’t politics. it’s infancy. it’s the last time you could still ask what you wanted to be when you grew up without the question sounding like satire.

for them, 2016 is ipad air light on a bedroom wall. the first release of overwatch. tumblr before it died. twitter before it turned into whatever the hell it is now. childhood as interface. the last version of the world where projection still felt possible.

and that’s why the trend is so telling. because it’s not even true.

nobody is remembering anything. they’re just making collages. a decade gets flattened into “2016” because it’s easier than dealing with whatever comes next.

for me, 2016 wasn’t conceptual. it was specific. it was bones and yung lean bleeding into garage punk and mac demarco, oscillating between suicideboys nihilism and dumb lo-fi softness. so my return, if i ever returned, wouldn’t be to “2016.” it would be to that. something tangible. something with fingerprints.

the collective fixation is different because it isn’t tangible. it’s not about a return. it’s about not moving forward.

2016 is not a year people want back.

it’s a future people can’t bear to imagine.

and maybe that’s the real trend. not the fashion, not the playlists, not the tumblr screenshots, not the instagram algorithm. just the collective shrug that projecting into the future has become too harsh, too jagged, too degrading. and that it’s easier to scroll back into a year that never actually existed in the first place.

soy.vilnius xo

the trend doesn’t appear out of nowhere. it grows alongside the rise of far-right parties across europe, the ongoing fascisation of political discourse in the united states, and a continent that has once again learned how close war can feel. in this context, fashion stops being playful. it starts acting like a nervous system.

militarisation in european fashion today isn’t an ideological statement. it’s more of a symptom. a mix of unease and self-reassurance. uniforms communicate anxiety, but they also suggest control. they imply that strength, order and unity are still imaginable. like most trends, they offer cohesion. a visual idea of europe holding itself together.

the choice of uniform matters. the napoleonic army was not conservative. it was revolutionary, modern and oriented toward the future. its uniforms were designed to break with the past, not romanticise it. they stood for rationality, discipline and equality, at least in theory, and for a rejection of inherited hierarchies.

this is where the contrast becomes interesting. contemporary right-wing movements also speak the language of modern politics. they focus on strength, sovereignty, borders, leadership. their idea of order is selective and exclusionary, but it is still modern. the response from leftish progressive fashion circles doesn’t mirror this language directly. instead, it reaches for a different image of order, one that feels universal, rational and detached from identity politics.

this doesn’t happen consciously. no one is marching or saluting. but under political pressure, progressive cultures often aestheticise order. when reactionary movements mobilise resentment and instability, the left-liberal reflex is to lean into structure, institutions and rational systems. eventually, this extends to visual discipline.

hence the hussar jacket.

what makes this even more revealing is how these jackets are actually worn. rarely buttoned up. rarely disciplined. more often folded into indie sleaze aesthetics. loose styling, casual layers, intentional carelessness. the uniform appears, but its authority is immediately softened. order shows up, but only half-accepted.

this detail matters. it suggests that the trend is not about embracing discipline, but about keeping it within reach. the jacket functions as a symbol of preparedness rather than obedience. a way of saying: we know the world has hardened, but we are not ready to live fully inside that logic.

this hesitation mirrors a wider european condition. threats are acknowledged, money is being moved, structures are being talked into existence. but there is no shared readiness, no collective agreement on what being “prepared” actually means. the response remains fragmented and reactive. the jacket fits into this moment perfectly. it looks like readiness without requiring commitment. form without mobilisation.

the contexts where these jackets appear make everything funnier. beyond instagram and runway shows, they appear in very specific places: specialty coffee shops, small-plates natty wine bistros, strange fusion restaurants with menus that feel slightly overthought. these are exactly the environments that maga-adjacent culture loves to mock as soft, “soy”, or terminally liberal.

this is the contradiction of the moment. the same spaces criticised for their comfort and moral sensitivity are now casually wearing the aesthetics of revolutionary militarism. not for battle, but for dinner.

this isn’t hypocrisy. it’s a coping strategy.

the hussar jacket allows progressive europe to feel serious without becoming reactionary. militant without violence. unified without nationalism. it offers a symbolic rehearsal of strength that remains culturally safe, well-lit and paired with decent orange wine.

seen this way, the trend has little to do with nostalgia. it reflects a fear that the future feels less stable than it used to, and a hope that order, modern and forward-looking order, can still be performed into existence.

fashion can’t stop fascism. but it can show what societies are quietly worried about. and right now, europe seems worried enough to dress like a revolutionary army, just not worried enough to skip brunch.

soy.vilnius xo

introduction
the western subject arrives carrying three things: winter fatigue, disposable income, and a vague dissatisfaction they insist is metaphysical. this dissatisfaction is immediately reinterpreted as depth. bali is not encountered as a place, but as a solution. the island functions less as geography and more as a conceptual object: warmth, slowness, healing, priced affordably.

methodology
the dominant mode of engagement is short-term immersion. belief systems are sampled rather than inhabited. practices are adopted without lineage, context, or long-term obligation. this is not ignorance, but efficiency. the goal is not understanding, but optimisation of the self under improved environmental conditions.

theoretical framework
classical spirituality relies on duration, repetition and discomfort. these qualities conflict directly with tourist visas and content calendars. therefore, depth is compressed into routine. language shifts from functional to decorative: words like “energy”, “alignment”, and “integration” circulate without fixed meaning, operating instead as social markers of arrival. spirituality becomes an interface rather than a commitment.

economic implications
local economies adapt with impressive speed. silence becomes bookable. ritual becomes service. authenticity is preserved just enough to remain marketable. this is not exploitation in the traditional sense, but cooperation under asymmetrical desire. meaning is supplied in formats compatible with western nervous systems.

discussion
unlike earlier forms of colonialism, no land is claimed. instead, atmosphere is extracted. slowness, calm, and symbolic legitimacy are consumed, repackaged, and exported back to colder cities as proof of transformation. this process is self-justifying: the subject feels changed, therefore the practice is validated.

conclusion
colonialism v3 does not conquer territory. it rents it briefly, tags it emotionally, and moves on. spirituality remains intact, but only as a transferable asset. the island stays. the awakening updates.

footnotes
¹ awakening defined here as “feeling different in better weather”
² depth operationalised as “something that cannot be completed in three weeks”
³ further research pending better wi-fi

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