Crying myself to sleep on the biggest cruise ship ever | The Atlantic:

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

My main takeaway from this piece is a reconfirmation of my several-decades-long stance than I cannot stand Gary Shteyngart’s writing style.

It’s just so cloying and desperately, pleadingly self-aware. It feels like a deliberately crafted stance.

It reads as fake and I don’t buy any of it. Dollars to donuts the dude had a fantastic time on the cruise, but writing about that would be off-brand.