Diogenes & the Hollow Hustler
Diogenes & the Hollow Hustler
The barista didn't even cap the milk jug before Diogenes shifted his gaze to the corner table of the coffee shop—the unofficial throne of the Hollow Hustler.
Three screens. Four phones. Zero stillness. He’d been there since sunrise when Diogenes walked in, had to get “his seat”. Toggling between apps, crypto charts, and red-pill TikToks, preaching “discipline” to nobody and everyone. Mental masturbation is a pandemic in the early 21st century.
He paused only to yelp something sexist at the barista wiping tables. She ignored him. He grinned like he’d won something.
Diogenes stood there silently, lantern lifted, the glow slowly intensifying.
“What are you supposed to be?” the Hustler scoffed, spotting the old man.
“Some kind of homeless monk?”
“No,” Diogenes replied. “Just free.”
“You look broke.”
“And you look owned.”
The Hustler giggled, waving him off like a troll in his comment section.
“Bro, I grind. I work while others sleep. I know the game. I’m alpha.”
“You’re loud.”
“I’m a leader. I’ve got over ten thousand followers.”
“And not one honest friend,” Diogenes said, tapping the lantern as the glow changed to a brief strobe.
“You scream at women online and call it strength.
You mock compassion and call it alpha.
You’re not building a life, you’re farming attention. Negative, positive, it doesn't matter to you. As long as it's attention.
The Hustler tilted his head like he was cracking his neck but nothing cracked. His fingers hovered over his keyboard, unsure whether to draft a comeback or launch a thread.
Diogenes didn’t flinch. He stepped closer.
“You're not dangerous,” he said. “You're just loud. Not because you’re strong—but because you're afraid of being unheard.”
Every post you make is bait. Every ‘alpha’ quote is a wall you built around a boy who once wanted to be seen—before he learned that being cruel got more likes than being kind.”
He forced out a giggle. His jaw twitched—the Adderall and cheap pre-workout he choked down this morning, like that laugh, must’ve been kicking in.
“You perform masculinity like it's a role in a play that only men with no fathers audition for.
You shout about ‘truth,’ but you haven’t sat still with your own truth for years. You are not free. You’re terrified.”
You’re terrified that if you stop yelling,stoop flexing, stop grinding…
…there might not be anything left.”
Diogenes leaned in just slightly—his voice low, not angry, but surgical.
“But there is something left.
There’s still a person under all this armor.
And he’s exhausted, isn’t he?
That part of you that remembers silence?
That wants to be touched—not followed?
That wants to rest—not win?”
The Hustler stared, blinking very fast, like someone abruptly woken and pulled from a dark room into blinding sunlight. The kind of light that doesn’t just reveal, but exposes.
Diogenes gently lowered his lantern. The glow dimmed between them.
“Talk to that person inside sometime,” he said. He’s the only one who ever was.”
Then he turned, leaving the Hustler with his screens, his swagger, and maybe for the first time in years, a moment of actual stillness.