The dead-eyed smile is the giveaway. LTT is similar. Cult followings for charismatic narcissist douchebags is a frustratingly common and ancient phenomenon.
Travel is great if that's your thing. But I've always despised privileged entitled douchebags who use travel as a big flex, and a metric to judge others with.
A couple of book recommendations for people worried about this kind of thing.
"Bonk" by Mary Roach. She's a very good science communicator and is also quite funny. There's a lot of good info in here.
"A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships" by Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas. This book is not rigorous science, but it is no total junk. It is also informative and entertaining. A tidbit of generalized info: men tend to think about dicks and look at dicks way more than women do.
Some of us have moved on from atheism to post-theism. In part, because some atheists can be very annoying. (Thanks a lot, four horsemen of the dorkalypse).
To your point, I do sometimes miss the music, rituals, fellowship, and liturgy of my old church. It was a mostly wholesome experience, and many of the people were very good people. In particular I miss being a member of the choir.
It was interesting (and revealing) when I left the church to experience which of my old friends from that church were very accepting of my walking away, and which ones wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
Anyway, I have found that my table top gaming groups (mostly RPG games) have helped a lot with social needs. Not a full replacement for a church, of course. But it is an activity that creates interpersonal bonds and encourages folks to be vulnerable around each other at times. And, a little bit like churches and temples, the quality of the experience can vary greatly from one group to another.
It is a generic name for a variety of materials, usually PVC or PU, which are essentially maintenance-free other than occasional cleaning with warm soapy water. Avoid prolonged exposure to UV and abrasion. Should last a very long time.
If it's a more exotic faux leather made from biodegradables / renewables it's going to break down over time because it's meant to.
In short, it's very unlikely you need to regularly condition it like real leather.
Some Americans "peak" in high school. They were popular and/or good at something like sports. After they moved on to university or their first job, they found out the larger world isn't impressed with their high school accomplishments.
It's good for fast food, but that bar is very, very low. My spouse used to love it, but we stopped going there years ago. And you're right, it has a cult following like Starbucks and other places have had from time to time.
Yup. At my job it's fairly common for annoying "urgent" requests to come in late afternoon on Fridays. Often from some of the upper management folks who do very little work. They finally realize "whoops, the weekend is almost here!" They suddenly want to check a box somewhere to make it look like they actually did something this week. And, of course, the requests are always a hand-off to someone in my department to do the actual work (which the requestor will take full credit for after we close the ticket).
https://youtu.be/40MvjFaTVzE