Fuckonomics

A report

The Miser by Gainsborough Dupont

Costs of groceries, healthcare, energy, housing, and other goods and commodities have risen dramatically in recent years. With the dollar having less purchasing power, the economy is leaving Americans feeling financially squeezed.

But there’s another area where people have been hit just as hard: the fuckonomy. People are running out of fucks to give, with many reporting that their fuck banks are nearly, or even completely, empty.

This is indicative of the decline in the Gross National Fucks (GNF) rate. As a reminder, the GNF doesn’t exist in a vacuum; generally, it tends to move in lockstep with the Domestic Shittiness Index (DSI). The shittier things are going, the more things we tend to give a fuck about.

In especially troubling times, however, these figures have an inverse correlation. Over the past six years, the DSI has risen a staggering 57%, while the GNF has dropped 29%. In laymen’s terms, things have gotten so shitty that we’ve found ourselves giving a lot more fucks about a lot more things than we typically do. Unfortunately, that leaves us with a dearth of fucks to give about the newest fuckworthy developments, which keep accruing at a considerable pace.

This puts us in the most serious fuckcession we’ve seen since the early 1970s, causing a great deal of anxiety among Americans.

Janet Thornton is a wildlife biologist from Ketchum, Idaho. At 46, she’s given her fair share of fucks. A lot of those are dedicated to animal rights and the environment, causes she feels passionately about.

In 2020, as the world started to go haywire, she found herself giving fucks at a brisk rate. Issues regarding masks, toilet paper, and vaccines rapidly diminished her fuck bank.

Thornton isn’t alone. The Bureau of Fuckonomic Analysis (BFA) reports that the COVID-19 pandemic kickstarted a flurry of fuck spending, which has continued to increase with shitty domestic and international news.

Unfortunately for Thornton, she now wants to give a fuck about the war in Iran, along with other issues she considers alarming, but finds herself unable to do so.

“If I could go back, I’d hold onto a few fucks for emergencies,” she says. “I certainly wouldn’t have gotten so worked up about Lindsey Graham if I knew how that was going to turn out.”

Then there’s Alan Frost, a 62-year-old civil rights attorney from Nutley, New Jersey. With his days spent fighting social injustice, it’s fair to think of Frost as a professional fuck-giver. Naturally, as his caseload has grown, so have his outgoing fucks.

Issues involving Patriot Front and other white nationalist groups have left his fuck account in the red, causing him to have to borrow a cache of fucks from overseas just to coach his son’s soccer team and support his wife’s side-hustle as an aspiring wellness influencer.

“Thank God for the Nordic countries,” Frost says. “They don’t have as many fuckworthy issues, so they have a healthy surplus. Well, except for Denmark, with the whole Greenland thing.”

Thornton and Frost feel they’ve spent most of their fucks wisely, but countless others now regret the issues to which they gave so many of theirs.

Tammy Bauer is one of them. “I’m ashamed to say it, but I squandered my fucks,” says the 32-year-old office manager from Horace, North Dakota. Bauer reports that she was recently diagnosed with Celebrity Parasocial Relationship Syndrome (CPRS). “I literally spent my last fuck defending Blake Lively on Reddit. That was it—I was out. When Taylor got married, I didn’t look at more than like two pictures, let alone post a congratulatory video. I just couldn’t give a fuck anymore.”

The fact that Bauer’s worldview has broadened as a result is a mixed blessing. “I’ve been reading more about what’s going on in the world, and I don’t know if you know this, but there’s some crazy stuff happening. Like, measles are back. And we can’t eat lettuce now or something? I really want to give a fuck about these things, so I’m hoping I can claw back some of the fucks I spent on Bennifer.”

Gary Walsh, a 47-year-old diner owner in Joplin, Missouri, feels similarly remorseful. “If I told you how many fucks I gave about Pizzagate, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says. “I feel so fucking stupid. And Hillary’s emails—I still think what she did was wrong, but it was like jaywalking compared to this Epstein files shit. And here I am with no fucks left in my account.”

Like Bauer, Walsh hopes to reclaim a few of the fucks he’s previously expended. “Monster trucks, snakes, de-sleeving my t-shirts—I love that shit, but did I need to, like, build my whole identity around them? Probably not.”

As these cases illustrate, it’s important to be mindful of relative fuckworthiness and to be discerning when meting out our fucks if we’re to avoid further deficits. Especially if current forecasts hold.

The latest BFA report predicts continued growth in shittiness, with the DSI expected to climb as much as an additional 20% by the midterms. If GNF levels continue to fall, experts fear that the lack of available fucks will result in a period of unprecedented fuckflation. In that event, the majority of people will be incapable of giving a fuck about these anticipated shit storms.

Then we’ll all be well and truly fucked.

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