Remote Workers Of The World, Disband
An Oral History Of The Digital Nomad Revolution
2020 — Covid
Ashwin, 24: I still remember where I was when my office shut down.
Jennifer, 26: It was really scary—the news, the Rudi Gobert NBA thing, the Tom Hanks / Rita Wilson of it all.
Tom, 28: I had to move home back with my parents immediately.
Ashwin: I moved home immediately.
Jennifer: Bullet. Gun. I moved home so fast.
Tom: My parents live in Westchester, so it was pretty easy, and they have a big house, so I had lots of space. It was honestly sort of nice to reconnect with them and get to know them as adults.
Ashwin: Saratoga, California. Huge house. Massive. I loved getting to know them as an adult, and recontextualize our relationship that way.
Jennifer: My parents live in this amazing palazzo in Connecticut, and we have our places in Aspen and the Hamptons too, so it was definitely nice to have those intimate family moments where I felt like I just got to “hang out” with them, and get to know them as an adult.
Ashwin: My parents basically became my best friends. It was awesome. We used to sit around and play FIFA and talk about all the girls we wanted to hook up with—even my mom!
Tom: Oh yeah, my parents got really into games. We used to play Fuck, Marry, Kill every day.
Jennifer: But towards the end of that year, I began to really miss my “real life”— going out every night to an annoying bar where I posted a dumb photo, backstabbing my friends when they needed something that didn’t align with the most convenient thing for me in a given moment, traveling every weekend with seemingly unlimited sums of money that seemed unexplainable to all the people I knew. It was time to leave the nest again.
Ashwin: But I remember thinking, do I really want to go back to San Francisco?
Tom: Did I really want to go back to my small LES apartment?
Jennifer: It’s a big world, and now that I could work from anywhere: did I really want to go back to Akron?
2021 — CDMX
Jennifer: I began hearing from people on Instagram that I’d met once that Mexico City was awesome.
Tom: Mexico City—everyone just started posting about it. I knew I had to go.
Ashwin: I will basically do anything that other people are doing. And it seemed like they didn’t really give a fuck about Covid down there, at least not the rich people, so that kinda rocked.
Jennifer: Yeah, at this point, Covid was
Tom: I thought Mexico City was awesome, other than the intense, insane Puking and Shitting that I had to do weekly.
Ashwin: I lowkey got snatched AF from Puking and Shitting so much. I think I genuinely saw my brain in the toilet one time.
Jennifer: At first, I hated the Puking and Shitting—but after a while, I realized it’s just another thing I loved about this beautiful, magnificent, exciting, dynamic city.
Ashwin: I love Mexico City—and the best part is how small and community-like it is! It’s just two neighborhoods—Roma and Condesa, and then this tiny village that’s a cheap Uber ride away called Coyoacan, where you can go take photos with Frida Kahlo’s house while forgetting all of the history of her life.
Jennifer: I felt like I was part of this beautiful intentional community of expats, all just finding peace and joy and community in Roma and Condesa.
Tom: One time, I went on Tinder, and I found it scary (many Mexicans I didn’t know or have mutuals with), but then, I went on Hinge, and it was awesome (white and Asian girls that went to the same 15 schools as everyone else).
Jennifer: But then, someone I know that’s kind of ugly posted that they were going to live in CDMX for 3 months, and I realized that Mexico City was
2022 — Lisbon
Jennifer: Lisbon was this crazy hidden gem in this country in Europe called Portugal.
Tom: They speak so messed up there. Couldn’t understand a word. Didn’t matter though—everyone was just American anyway.
Ashwin: Lisbon is awesome. There are so many restaurants you have to wait for for a really long time, which is the best thing ever about it.
Tom: It’s so cheap! Insanely cheap. I got this huge Airbnb apartment, and everyone else that grew up in the building would spit on me every day for good luck—just one of those traditions, I guess.
Jennifer: The crumbling infrastructure, the political corruption, it’s all so charming and Old World and European.
Ashwin: I loved the Adidas store, because I could get new shoes there.
Jennifer: My happy place in Lisbon is this really really cute restaurant called Chipotle.
Tom: One day, I looked around, and I didn’t see the young global elite—I saw a bunch of tourists from the Midwest, including people in their 50s without a good tan. And it was at that moment that I understood: Lisbon was
2023 — Tokyo
Tom: I knew I had to go to Tokyo, because other people I knew had also gone recently, which is how I know to go places.
Jennifer: There’s just something about Tokyo that seemed really appealing to me.
Ashwin: The flights are so cheap!
Jennifer: This was really different than CDMX and Lisbon for me, because they have this beautiful concept called “Gaijin” which means “Friend.”
Ashwin: Oh, I thought friend was “Mellon.” You know, like “speak, friend, and enter.”
Jennifer: Are we in the same room right now? I was under the impression that we were being interviewed separately and then the editors would sort of structure and cull our quotes to appear in conversation with one another, but you responded pretty directly to me.
Ashwin: No, we’re being interviewed separately—the editors just found quotes that really worked to create this little conversation flow. It’s weird to think that I said this outside of the context of where it’s being read, but I promise I did.
Tom: Are we noticing that the letters in Tokyo are really hard to read? Everyone has weird-ass handwriting.
Jennifer: I started reading all these Substacks, and I noticed that Blackbird Spyplane was always posting about slappy jawns in Tokyo.
Tom: I kept asking about where to find the slappiest jawns. People were confused—and I ended up with sloppy joes instead.
Ashwin: I realized after a while that the locals had too much wealth and cultural elitism to let us totally run roughshod over their entire city and make it our playgrounds like we did with the last two places, so I decided then and there that Tokyo was lowkey
2024 — Los Angeles
Tom: I discovered this amazing hidden gem with incredible food.
Jennifer: Amazing, hidden gem of a city.
Ashwin: Yessss. Loved LA. No notes.
Jennifer: But then I realized everyone here was hotter and more talented at getting attention than me, and I began to tell myself that LA was
2025 — Ulaanbaatar
Tom: Би хээрээс олон морь, найз олов
Jennifer: Өвөг дээдсийнхээ үнэ цэнийг би ойлгосон
Ashwin: Гурав дахь давалгааны маш сайн кофе шопууд байдаг
Tom: Гэхдээ дараа нь би ойлгосон: би өтгөн, алхах боломжтой нийгэмд амьдрахыг хүссэн, энэ нь тийм гэсэн үг юм
2026 — Bangalore
Tom: Lots of… people.
Jennifer: Hella.. people here.
Ashwin: Too many Indians. Not my vibe. Hundred percent
202? — Funny Text Exchange Wherein I Came Up With The Idea For This One, but There Was Such A Good Joke Made By My Friend That I Wanted To Include It Here. Maybe You Guys Won’t Like It, But It Made Me Laugh.
Nabeel’s Footnote
Feeling kind of left out on this one. One of those ones where maybe I’d have something to offer—my skill set seems particularly apt for this type of thing, etc. But the nature of our process is such that one of us writes something (this time late) with no input from the other, and then we kind of just comment on it in a wry manner before we ship it out. Leaves no room for real creative collaboration IMO. And on days like today? When I see the spots I could’ve jumped in on, punched up?Golly, do I wish we did things differently. But that’s life, you know? It’s hard being at the top. Everyone’s got a Substack now. Everyone is funny in the same way. Everyone is trying to buy the URL “fart.gold” from us. We need to innovate. Come up with something genuinely subversive. Otherwise we risk getting lapped by all these new money clowns.
Anyway—here you go. Eat it up. We’ll be back next week, I guess.
this is funny