It's cool to care

Alex W. Chan has published an essay titled "It’s cool to care" about a trip to New York to see the musical Operation Mincemeat, and it has been reported that he attended a dress rehearsal and an opening preview after following the show from London to Broadway. The piece reads like a travel note crossed with a love letter to live theatre: small coffee shop, snow outside, the quiet thrill of being in a crowd that knows every line. The musical’s improbable origin — four friends, a tiny London stage, a wardrobe of hats — is a tidy mirror for the author’s bigger point about how unlikely things start when people actually care.

A fandom that became a family

Chan describes how a routine trip to stage door — to say thank you to the cast — spun out into something bigger. What began as a few repeat viewings turned into chats, then a Twitter community, then Discord and WhatsApp, fan art, merch swaps, and New Year’s Eves spent laughing on someone’s floor about a bowl of limes. The emotional center of the essay is that friendship: that small, unforced joy of finding people who get you. He acknowledges the obvious — the privilege of time and money that lets some people drop everything and follow a show across an ocean — but also insists that the privilege doesn’t cheapen the affection.

A small rebellion against cynicism

The kicker? Chan rejects the modern pressure to be cool about things. Enthusiasm, he argues, has been branded cringe; sincerity mistaken for weakness. His retort is blunt: "Well, fuck that." It’s both a personal manifesto and a cultural nudge — a reminder that caring can be radical in an age of curated indifference. Whether you treat theatre as high art or weekend fun, the essay asks a simple question: why apologize for joy? Apparently, some of us still think it’s worth crossing the Atlantic to find out.

Sources: alexwlchan.net, Hacker News