i’m on a quest to defeat the oligarchy.

the modern lifestyle is a trap designed by billionaires.

if you pay close attention, almost every aspect of our daily lives has been colonized by a few greedy corporations. the soap in your bathroom, the apps tracking your attention, the bank holding your paycheck, and the industrial food systems feeding our families are all owned by the exact same monopolies. they use plastic convenience and pretty packaging to hide the destruction, exploitation, and waste behind it.

i’m over it.

as a hobbit at heart, i want nothing more than a quiet, simple life with good food, “longbottom leaf”, cozy home filled with books, and did i say good food?

but we can’t enjoy a peaceful shire while we're actively funding mordor. the corporate machine only exists because we give it our data, attention, and cash every single day. when we stop participating, their leverage collapses.
i’m done feeding the machine, and i'm looking for a fellowship to embark on this quest with me.

concerning hobbits...

i'm katy. i’m an eco-minimalist, a mom, and hobbit. if you've read tolkien, you know hobbits naturally love peace, quiet, good earth, and simple things which is me in a nutshell. my resistance to this garbage system started long before i had the words for it. i was the kid who never felt fully comfortable with the way things were, but like everyone else, i eventually got swept up in the machine. i bought the trends, the lies, and the myth that we could consume our way to happiness. it took years of painful unlearning to realize how deep this shit actually goes (and i'm still learning). once you see the trail of suffering and greed behind nearly everything we buy, eat, or throw away, you just can't unsee it.

my path here wasn't a clean, perfect line. i grew up in reston, virginia, the daughter of hard working parents, one a sicilian immigrant. i dropped out of college, built a successful pet sitting business from scratch, and then shocked my entire family by selling everything to move to los angeles completely alone. i became a yoga teacher, navigated abusive relationships, and worked whatever odd jobs i could find just to get by.

at the same time the pandemic hit and shut down the yoga studios, i went through a big break up. i started over from scratch and shifted my focus entirely on my other passion: earth. i founded ethikli sustainable market to prove that low waste, billionaire free living is possible. i grew it from a pile of boxes in my apartment into a real, brick and mortar, worker owned shop. then i became a single mom, stepped away from the business, and started over again.

today, i live slowly and intentionally for my son and for anyone else trying to raise decent humans in a system that makes it so damn hard. i’m not perfect. i procrastinate by aggressively reorganizing and decluttering my house for fun, i enjoy good ganja, and i say no a lot. "katy imp" is where i share the raw, unfiltered truth of what's helping me live with less harm and more purpose: everything from ethical product swaps to thoughts on motherhood, healing, and burning down cycles of burnout. if you're ready to stop feeding the machine, you're in the right place. welcome to the fellowship.

the lore: why this is an epic journey

i use lord of the rings framing around here because tolkien hated industrialization and corporate style greed just as much as i do. but, you don't need to care about elves or wizards to see that our current world is broken. you just have to look at the parallels between the story and the modern corporate empire.

consider what we're actually fighting every single day:

the one ring = frictionless convenience: the ring tempted all creatures big and small. that's the modern one click consumer trap. mega corporations hook our brains on dopamine so we stay completely dependent on their networks and never question their control.

saruman’s engines = corporate extraction: saruman hacked down ancient, living forests just to feed his underground furnaces and scale his war machine. that's the exact blueprint of factory farming, fast fashion, and oil monopolies. they treat living, sentient beings and the earth as cheap, disposable inputs for next quarter's shareholder profits.

the Palantír = big tech surveillance: in the books, the seeing stones let the enemy look directly inside your head, tracking your fears and feeding you curated illusions to make you give up. the irony here is so wild it almost sounds fake, but tech billionaire peter thiel literally named his massive, multi billion dollar military surveillance and data mining corporation "palantir technologies" because that is exactly what it does. that's the smartphone in your palm right now. tech monopolies track your data to figure out exactly when your emotional defenses are down so they can flash a hyper targeted ad.

the best part of the story? the world was saved by ordinary hobbits who just wanted good soil (and herb), clean food, community, and quiet.

that's us. we are the free peoples.

we change the future through the act of daily non-participation.

our guiding compass

this space isn't for lecturing, toxic positivity, or impossible lifestyle standards. i practice imperfect eco-minimalism because ideological purity tests are a trap. if you're exhausted and you have to panic buy something from a target on a terrible day, you didn't fail the quest. that's just real life. we don't need a few people resisting perfectly: we need millions of us doing it messily and intentionally.

but while our daily actions are messy, our direction is clear. we use a four-point compass to guide every single swap we recommend and system we build here.
the compass is the unchanging north star we always steer toward:

north = non-exploitation (vegan and human first) a direct strike against factory farming and sweatshop labor. if a living, sentient being (human or animal) was abused, commodified, or exploited to create a product, it has no place in our halls. we choose total respect for life.

south = circularity (zero to low-waste and high utility) a direct strike against single use plastics and planned corporate obsolescence. we refuse to feed the landfills. everything we bring into our lives must either be built to last a lifetime, secondhand, easily mended, or designed to safely return to the soil.

east = economic non-participation (billionaire-free and local) a direct strike against monopolies and wall street mega banks. we starve the corporate parent companies by diverting our cash to independent, human creators, local farmers, and member owned credit unions.

west = digital autonomy (privacy first) a direct strike against surveillance capitalism and ai data scraping. we reclaim our attention, our data, and our minds by using independent, encrypted tech stacks and refusing to let predatory algorithms manipulate our behavior.

how to embark on the quest

the enemy has a massive head start and trillions of dollars, but you don't have to take the first step alone.

i've mapped out our exact entry point: the free peoples’ guide to defeating the oligarchy.

it’s a completely free guide that walks you through the stages of the quest. instead of trying to overhaul your entire life overnight, it breaks the journey down phase by phase. you’ll learn how to build a digital privacy wall to block predatory algorithms, how to use the 72 hour rule to break the impulse buy spell, and how to strip the corporate junk out of your cupboards without losing your mind.

when you join the fellowship (any tier), you'll get access to the free guide immediately. and, if you choose to fund the quest (the fellowship tier), you'll also get access to the live anti-oligarchy product swap database so you have a place to look when you do need to purchase something.

the oligarchy exists because we hand over our attention, our data, and our money every single day. let's stop giving it to them.

sign up below, grab the guide, and let's start rebuilding the shire together.