In David Foster Wallace‘s The Pale King, the character becomes aware of how bad his nihilism is when he becomes aware that he is sitting on a couch, watching “As the World Turns,” and on every commercial, which happen quite frequently, the television man announces “You are watching ‘As the World Turns.'” The multiple layers of rich irony are too rich as Wallace himself points out. I was reading and realized that’s how I sit too, but I am such a nihilist, I don’t even make the choice to be a nihilist – Someone who truly doesn’t exist in a world that doesn’t exist.

I don’t watch soap operas. I love to watch race cars go round and round or wind their way here and there on road courses and rather than admit I’m doing nothing, I pretend and feel as though I am spectating great human drama and am gaining great insight into the nature of man and his machines. I never get to use this insight, so I presume I am doing nothing.