Julio Vincent Gambuto didn’t write a trend piece.
He detonated a cultural pressure valve.
Back in April 2020, four weeks into the global pandemic shutdown, Gambuto sat down to write an essay for about 100 friends. It was called “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting.” It warned that the pandemic would be used not as a reset, but as a marketing ploy. He believed corporations would rush to restore the pre-COVID status quo—before we had time to ask whether it was even worth restoring.
That essay reached 21 million readers in 48 hours.
The Book That Followed the Boom
That viral moment became the foundation for his book, Please Unsubscribe, Thanks, subtitled:
How to Take Back Our Time, Attention, and Purpose in a Relentless World.
Gambuto’s premise is simple: the problem isn’t that we’re overwhelmed; it’s that we were designed to be overwhelmed. And worse, we’ve been tricked into thinking the answer is a better app, a new morning routine, or a self-help productivity hack.
The Systemic Lie of Individual Solutions
A core theme in Gambuto’s work is that we’ve been sold a lie: that burnout is your fault. That distraction is a personal weakness. That every problem can be solved with the right purchase.
Gambuto draws a line between corporate marketing and the disempowerment of individuals. It’s not just manipulation. It’s systemic gaslighting.
He invokes the underfunded FTC, corporate impunity, and even Adam Smith, whose original advocacy for public welfare was later stripped out by the Chicago School.
Democracy Doesn’t Require Agreement—It Requires Alignment
One of Gambuto’s sharpest observations lands on the myth that democracy needs consensus. It doesn’t.
The proper function of democracy, he argues, is alignment, not agreement. But what we have instead is a chorus of chaos, engineered by platforms that benefit from division.
“It’s like everyone has the conch shell from Lord of the Flies. Everyone’s talking, but no one’s listening.”
Living the Message: Analog Moves in a Digital Age
Gambuto didn’t stop at diagnosis. He modeled recovery.
Yes, that’s Homer Simpson smashing a phone.
No, that’s not a reflection of Julio Vincent Gambuto—he’s got a book, a brain, and far better posture. We used Homer because honestly, same.
This isn’t about going off-grid. It’s about reclaiming attention as a finite, sacred resource.
It’s about treating presence as a privilege.
“The social fabric is fraying. The least we can do is say hello again.”
The Unsubscribe Movement Is Already Happening And Reddit Proves It
The unsubscribe movement isn’t an ad trend. It’s a quiet mass exodus. People are opting out of a system that gaslights them, sells them panic, and then blames them for being exhausted.
Gambuto describes this moment as perfect: a world designed to bury us in noise, burnout, and illusion. While he didn’t reference Reddit directly, the behavior he describes is unfolding in real-time on the platform, especially in r/Anticonsumption.
I reviewed the discussion in this thread:
Walmart, Target, and other companies warn about consumers cutting back
The comments didn’t sound like economic panic. They sounded like people waking up:
“I started cooking more.”
“I wear what I already own.”
“I realized I don’t need any of this.”
That’s not temporary belt-tightening.
That’s disillusionment.
And no retargeting campaign can fix it.
To better understand what was happening, I scraped and categorized over 400 comments across similar threads. Then I built this pie chart:
Here’s what people are saying:
42% no longer trust legacy brands
28% reject pricing games and fake “deals”
26% are confused on purpose—and know it
21% expect customer service to fail
18% distrust brands for backpedaling on values
This isn’t just sentiment. It’s signal.
People aren’t waiting for companies to change.
They’re quietly changing their behavior, cutting out what doesn’t serve them, refusing to be manipulated, and choosing less over being sold more.
Reddit didn’t invent this shift.
But it’s documenting it - raw, unfiltered, and in real time.
Gambuto just gave it a name.
And if you’re still refreshing your dashboard?
You’ve already missed the exit.
Stop the Bullshit, Start the Repair
“This isn’t about writing the next book. It’s about living the first one.” — Gambuto
We’ve reached the unsubscribe moment.
Not just from spam. From noise. From manipulation. From the false promise that better branding can solve real pain.
If you work in marketing, the question isn’t what campaign you’re running next.
It’s what you’re still pretending is working when it isn’t.
Want More Sanity? Start Here.
If any part of this hit a nerve—if you’ve felt the noise, the burnout, the creeping sense that none of this makes sense anymore—read Please Unsubscribe, Thanks by Julio Vincent Gambuto.
It’s not another “life hack” book. It’s a systems-level sanity check.
You won’t get a 10-step morning routine.
You’ll get clarity on why the world feels broken—and how to reclaim your time, energy, and purpose from a machine designed to keep you busy and distracted.
“Self-help where self-help meets the system.”
— Julio Vincent Gambuto
Get the book here:
👉 Amazon
👉 Bookshop.org (supports local bookstores)
👉 Julio's Site
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