The Great Lock In

is a psyop

Author

Boys Club
September 12, 2025

Bonjour,

Something to think about:

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ily,

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Billions flow through Polygon.

There’s a chill in the air and according to tech Twitter that only means one thing:

Locking in is usually tied to work, exercise, diet, and/or money, but it always comes back to goal-oriented habits taken to the extreme.

The internet’s obsession with this concept is nothing new:

And the best to ever do it will always be this guy:

@strongmindofficial

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The saying always runs the spectrum from genuinely earnest, LinkedIn-coded public goal-setting to a tidy meme format.

But The Great Lock In of 2025 is a bit different. The San Francisco tech trend not only reflects a spiritual shift from September to December, when people get extremely disciplined about their things. But this year comes with an urgency we have yet to see.

And along with this year’s fear-mongering about AGI coming for your job, and the idea that you have only three months to amass enough wealth to survive, comes the birth of the 996 “movement” in San Francisco.

The concept that you work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Which, ironically, originated and also already failed in China in the late 2010s.

996 was largely vibes based, with dudes flexing on the timeline.

But then the corporate credit card company Ramp released a study attempting to back up the movement’s existence with data that showed excessive corporate spending in San Francisco on Saturdays.

To the unobservant, scrolling eye, one might think, damn, time to lock in. But thank God for those who paid attention and pointed out that the ratios in this chart are minuscule and the data doesn’t back up much of anything.

To which I thought, OKAY this is all a psyop.