70% of Gen Z Incorporates a Mental Illness Into Their Identity
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Summary
Mental illness is an important part of our identity, yet only 27% of millennials identify with a mental illness as a major part of their identity compared to 67% of males and 56% of females. Why is this happening?
Transcript
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73% of boomer males. No matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me.
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72% of Gen Z females. Mental illness is an important part of my identity.
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This chart right here that we're looking at is absolutely shocking to me. What it's looking at
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is, quote, mental health challenges are an important part of my identity, end quote.
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And then it's looking at how this has changed over time, where if you look at males who are boomers,
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only 27% would say that mental health challenges are an important part of their identity.
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Whereas if you look at Gen Z females, a full 72% say mental illness is an important part of my identity.
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Now, I want to point out here, not even 72% of the population has a mental illness or a real mental
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illness, I guess I should say. And yet, 72% of young women are identifying with a mental illness as an
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important aspect of who they are. And I really wanted to dive deep on the negative psychological
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effects of this to an individual, why this is a really dangerous thing that this is happening,
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how this comes downstream from the destruction of our religious systems and understanding.
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Because I think for a lot of people, as they destroyed and eroded the concept of a soul,
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they needed something to replace it. Something that described who they were and that they could
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identify with in sort of a deeper sense. And I think for many people that became either gender
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or a mental illness, or gender and a mental illness.
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Well, or you could say intersectional identity and victimhood as well.
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Yes. And for people who are like, well, how bad is it for males? 67% of males in Gen Z identify
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with a mental illness as a major part of their personality. If you were looking at millennials,
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it's 67% of women. So the same as Gen Z males. And for males, 56%.
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Now, this is interesting to me. Even if you're talking about millennial males,
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over half of them identify with a mental illness as being a primary part of their identity.
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That checks out given the younger people that we've spoken with and people in our own generation.
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Yeah. And where was the big jump here? Well, the big jump started with Gen X. So our generation.
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No, no, no. Just above our generation is Gen X. We're millennials. And then below us is...
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Yeah. Gen X is... So we have the greatest generation. These are the people who fought
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in World War II. The lost generation. This is the generation that was too young to fight in World
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War II in the United States. Then we have the boomers, who were the children of the World War II
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war heroes. Then we have Gen X, which came after the boomers. Then we have millennials. Then we have...
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Okay. Well, then in our older generation, there was a big jump from boomers to Gen X, where it went from
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in boomers, 27% of males to 47% of male Gen X. And then for boomer females, it was 34% to 53% of
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female Gen X. So already within women of our generation, you're seeing this set. And I would put
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all of this was in the caveat of, Simone, you are autistic. You've been diagnosed with autism
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much, much later in life, not as a young person. But what basically happened is we took one of our
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sons in to get diagnosed. They were like, oh, here is why he's autistic. And then Simone was like,
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those aren't autism symptoms. Those are all normal things. And then they're like, have you ever been
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tested for autism? And then they tested you and you were like, oh, I guess I am. And before
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autism, you thought you had OCD. I have been clinically diagnosed with OCD.
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But did you ever make the OCD or autism diagnoses a major part of your identity?
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Like would you have answered mental illness is an important part of my identity?
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Mm-hmm. Okay. So first I want to talk about, I think, partially why this is happening. And this
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comes from something that I noticed. We have another episode where we go over this, like the
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turning of gender into a concept of a soul, where especially when you have these huge ranges of
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genders that you can identify with. And when you talk to somebody about this, you're like, well, what
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is this thing that you're calling gender? Because clearly it's not like what I mean when I think
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gender. I'm like, do they have a penis? Like, that's what I'm asking when I say gender, right?
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They mean something else when they say gender. And they're like, well, it's like the way you
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relate to reality. It's the way you see yourself. And I'm like, oh, so it's like your genetic,
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like sociological profile, right? Like you mean, and they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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You can't be, yeah, because then the people who, you know, then you become what they call a
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true scum is the term. This means that you can only consider yourself trans, i.e. choose your
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gender if you have a form of dysphoria. And if you don't have a form of dysphoria, you, you,
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they basically see it as like a form of gatekeeping. And the anti-true scum movement has largely won,
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which means anyone can identify whatever you want. So they're like, oh, it's not genetic. And then I'm
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like, oh, so it's like your personal preference. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not a
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preference either. Okay. That's a very offensive thing to say. And I go, okay, so it's not a
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preference, but it's not like genetic. And it's not something that I can like put my finger on.
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And it's like core to how you self-identify you've like reinvented the soul, but like gendered it.
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And I think that mental health issues for people who aren't fortunate enough to be able to decide.
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And when I say fortunate enough, I mean, this was, you know, within this generational context where
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this is like sort of an elite class that gets access to special privileges.
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And I would say that having a formal mental health diagnosis is a product of privilege because the
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amount of money you have to pay to get one is, is quite high. We spent a lot of money just to get an
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autism diagnosis for our sons. And yeah, but I'm sure you could do it through state services.
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I would, I would actually go so far as to say that the mental health diagnoses these days are a form of
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a separate type of privilege, which is, yes, it might be a monetary privilege, but I think that the
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bigger privilege is having a mental illness at all within this new cultural context equates you as
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higher status than people who don't have mental illnesses. And I think that that is partially why
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individuals have chosen to identify with them. And if you say, well, what do you mean by higher
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status? You know, I, I would say that you have the ability to shut down other people's one
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criticism of you within certain areas. You can say, well, I'm autistic. You know, you don't get to say
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I'm not allowed to act this way. So basically if you look historically, like if I go to like court
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culture or something like that, status was largely like, what are the things that I'm allowed to do that
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other people aren't allowed to do? You know? Yeah, no, very true. Yeah. Pulling rank. Pulling
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rank. Yes. And it gives you the ability to pull rank. It gives you the ability to do things that
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are like socially shunned by other people. Right. It gives you the ability to pressure other people
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into things they're not comfortable with. This is very much where you see the, you know, oh, you're not
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sleeping with me. Are you ex phobic? Yes. You often see, you know, the trans community pulling,
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for example, and that's a form of privilege. You're basically saying, well, my class outranks your
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class and to deny me what I am asking you to is a offense to someone within my class. Like, like you
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saying no to me is not something that's allowed. Yeah. And, and so I think that having a mental illness
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in an ironic way within our current context is a privilege. Fortunately, we seem to only create
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autistic children. So far, all of them that have been old enough to be diagnosed have been
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diagnosed with autism. So that, that maybe, maybe we're breeding true. The people who don't know
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what breeding true means is when two dogs of the same breed are having children, but I've never
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been diagnosed with autism. And I don't, I don't think I have many autism symptoms or. No. Yeah. No.
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So, and I, by the way, have reached out to the people who did this. If anyone here knows anyone
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in this group, they're called the skeptic.com and they ran a 2024 presidential election study,
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which is where this data came from. And I really want to split this data further. I want to split
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it along political lines. I want to split it along religious affiliation. I want to split it along
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whether someone's a parent, because I'd be very interested to see, you know, where this, this is,
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is, is coming from. But I also want to point out that there also has been a huge explosion in
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mental health diagnoses recently. So from 2012 to 2018, there was a 34.6% increase in the prevalence
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of mental illness diagnosis in the United States. In 2021, 22.8% of U.S. adults experienced a mental
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illness. Now this is where this gets really interesting. In 2021, 22.8% of adults are listed
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as having a mental illness. Yet, even in these lower demographics, 47, so this is in Gen X, 47% of men
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are identifying with a mental illness strongly. And 53% of women are. Or in millennial, 56% of males
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are. And 67% of females are. So much more basically discussed online. Most of the people who are talking
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about having a mental condition of some sort or special mental status are self-diagnosed.
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Even people who really heavily talk about it. I remember at one point on Red Scare, Ana and Dasha
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had a guy, there was an entire episode on autism. And it turns out this guy is completely self-diagnosed.
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I mean, maybe he was really autistic. Who knows, right? But it's one of those things where
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a lot of people who are extra vociferous about it also seem to be self-diagnosed. I don't,
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it's a double-edged sword because on, on one hand, it's incredibly expensive to be diagnosed
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for things. How expensive does the state not cover this? Like how much cover this? It doesn't
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cover this for our children. So unless we were on completely state supported health insurance or
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healthcare, how, how, how much per kid you're just giving around $500 per kid. That is, that is not a lot
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of money these days. $500 per child. Who is $500? Simone, for a class status, $500, even for somebody
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without a ton of money is not this big, keep in mind, you're not talking about like, this is
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something you need to have done every year or every month. This is something you need to have done once
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in your life. $500. I'm sorry. I don't buy that. That is not that's expensive. I think it's
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expensive. That is not getting people out of this for economic. There are also in some cases up to
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six month waits. Now I think after the pandemic ceased, this has become a lot easy. It's for
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example, it was easier for us to book an appointment for our second son to be evaluated than for our first
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son. So I do think that it is easier to get a diagnosis now than it was before, but most people are
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still just not bothering and they're choosing perhaps because they're worried that they wouldn't
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receive a professional diagnosis. I'm going to push back. I don't think these numbers are real.
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These numbers just aren't real. It's not that these are people who are going undiagnosed because they
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don't have the money. There is no way 72% of women in Gen Z have a mental health condition.
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Well, but again, I guess I could push back and say the DSM really isn't about like, oh, do you have
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something that's broken? It's more about behaviors that deviate from societal norms. And maybe we are
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receiving a surge of behaviors that deviate from societal norms.
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This is interesting. And I actually think that this is part of what's going on here
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is that people are saying, in what ways am I different from what I think society expects of me?
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Hmm. And then they're defining that the things about them that are different from societal
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expectations. Oh, as being the thing that makes them them as a mental illness. But it's also just
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to, you know, previous generations, it's just, this is how I'm unique. Right. But to them,
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how they're unique needs to be medicalized because through medicalizing it, it is given tangibility.
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Yeah. So clinically depressed is the new emo. You used to just be goth and now you're just
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depressed. It's I'm depressed, but I'm depressed like as an aesthetic, because I think they mean
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something more than what it meant historically. Historically, it would be like, okay, this might
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color like some of your choices. I think now a lot of these mental illnesses are associated with
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fashion, with music choices, with, it is a subculture. And let's talk about why this is
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desperately unhealthy. First of all, you, when you medicalize the ways that you are different from
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mainstream society, you remove personal responsibility from them and you remove your
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ability to modulate them or choose among them. And I think that this is actually really critical
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because, you know, I can, for example, be like, Hey, I am an incredibly confident person,
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for example, but being an incredibly confident person can lead me to sometimes doing things which
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inconvenience other people or cause damage in social situations. Now, if I've medicalized my
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confidence, I get to now say, well, I don't need to address the negative externalities of this
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personality feature because it's a medical condition and therefore no one can say, don't do it.
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Yeah. If anything, you should accommodate it. You as the average person around you.
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But also in the way that we relate to our own challenges in life. So you look at something
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like anxiety and let's see 43% of adults say they feel more anxious than the previous year in 2024.
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This is up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022. So like, look at something like anxiety, right?
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If I say that I, as a personality have anxiety sometimes, and I categorize anxiety as something
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that I don't want and that isn't effective in my daily life, I would just work on ways to be less
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anxious. If I have an anxiety disorder, now the anxiety is, and as I said, an important part of
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who they are to remove the anxiety is to genocide this community in their minds, to genocide the
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community of the anxious, of the medically anxious. Yeah. Well, actually this is something
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that I felt when I was first diagnosed with OCD and then told that I could medicate it.
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I was really against the idea because I didn't want to remove what I considered to be part of myself.
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Like if I didn't have the things I did that were categorized as OCD by clinicians,
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I felt like it wouldn't be me. And I mean, I think, you know, you could probably actually agree
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with the fact that if I suddenly stopped doing all the things that we now know are associated with
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my autism, I would be a very different person. Would you? Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say that I
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would be dramatically more worried about you as a wife. I mean, one of the good things about your
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situation is that there really is no risk of you ever cheating on me or even having a desire to
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cheat on me because she doesn't like when people touch her other than me. Or ever getting fat.
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Or ever getting fat. Well, that's a big one. Yeah. I have a, and I've mentioned this on other
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podcasts, but it is, I think one of my greatest personality flaws, which is an instinctual,
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really high level of disgust towards fat people. Well, I'm also unlikely to ever get unfit because
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my, my manifestation, my autistic manifest manifestation of stimming has apparently always
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been some form of exercise. And when I was a teen, it was just constantly swimming and not stopping.
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And now it's just constantly walking and not stopping, which is why I have my treadmill desk.
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So again, like this is, if suddenly all of these things disappeared, I would become a very
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different person. So I don't know if you're, if these people are wrong in equating elements of,
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but I mean, I also see the other side. So let's say that you choose to identify with your anxiety.
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I mean, the problem is the, the, it seems practically speaking, the best way to deal with
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your anxiety is you just learn to care about something else a little bit more and face the
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thing that makes you anxious. And as you get used to it, you'll discover it's not so bad. And if you
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instead act as though your anxiety is something that just like is a signal that has to be listened
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to in, in the form of, Oh, don't do this. Therefore, then the anxiety will only get worse
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and you will, will your circle of life will become smaller and smaller until literally you're choked
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out of existence. And I know this because I have dealt with anxiety in both ways. And right now we're
00:17:32.060
in the, Oh, you're anxious about this thing. Let's do way more of it. Turn the volume up to 11.
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Whereas before it used to be, Oh, I just won't do this thing.
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Well, and I've noticed with your own, you know, mental proclivities that they have
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significantly decreased as your responsibilities have increased. Yeah.
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We pull this stuff has on you is intrinsically higher when you are in environments that are
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more privileged, which is, I think, and a lot of these people don't realize how privileged their
00:18:00.760
environments are because they don't realize how little real work they do. Because I just don't
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think that they know how much people who work hard actually work. I think that's one of the big
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things in society these days is, you know, we, for example, like you and I, I was thinking how
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blessed I was earlier today that we get to eat a meal every day and other people would be like a meal
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every day. Surely you have more than one meal a day. And it's like, not even from a diet perspective,
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like who has the time to have two meals in a day, let alone three, you know, or, you know,
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when I wake up, I wake up at 2am to 1am every morning and people are like, Oh, well, you must
00:18:42.000
take long. I take like 30 minute naps. So to an hour nap sometimes during the day, but you know,
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not even every day. And I feel like I have to do all this. And I'm also really strict with Simone
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about any sort of indulgent activity, whether that is cleaning and people are like, wait,
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cleaning you see as an indulgent activity. I'm like, yes, cleaning is an indulgent activity.
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It can always be done faster. It can be batched and it's not necessary all the time. And I think
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that a lot of these people who are dealing with these issues just have so much genuine, when I say
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free time, I don't mean totally free time, but like your brain finds ways to occupy the tasks that are
00:19:19.680
allotted to you. And as you take on more tasks, your schedule, I think naturally finds a way to
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accommodate them. And the thing that is most pushed out is the mental discomfort and second guessing and
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anxiety and stuff like that. Yeah. You could think of your life as a vase and the anxiety that you have
00:19:44.160
are all of your, your worry as sand. And if you just fill your vase with really large rocks first,
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like much bigger things and more important things to care about, there's less room to put sand in.
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And if you just like throw in one or two rocks, your vase is full of sand. Like I just, if you just
00:20:00.160
crowd it out, it seems to make a big difference. Well, and I think that, I mean, so for people also
00:20:05.700
keep in mind, you know, we have four kids right now, you know, so we're at this stage where kids just
00:20:10.800
don't give you a lot of time to indulge in these emotional states. And I think also as a parent,
00:20:15.740
you're likely undergo some biological changes, which lower things like anxiety and stuff like
00:20:20.580
that. I don't know. I've seen some parents who are really anxious, but they usually have like one or
00:20:23.780
two kids. I don't know if I've ever seen a parent with a ton of kids be super anxious or like
00:20:28.700
helicopter. Yeah. Most of the parents that I know who have a lot of kids seem relaxed. If anything
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negative, it's just exhausted, but not even, not even mad because they're just too tired to be
00:20:43.160
mad. Yeah. They're also less judgy as people. This is another thing I've noticed. They're very much
00:20:47.580
less judgy of other people. The ones I know, like other people that I, it might be because they're
00:20:53.840
like intrinsically, they understand like the high school social game just doesn't matter to them
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anymore. Like once you get to like five kids or whatever, four kids. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
00:21:05.060
I think a lot of it's because also you have this huge social network within your own house and
00:21:08.800
there's enough politics to kind of keep you occupied there, but yeah. But okay. So, so,
00:21:13.900
so going back to identifying with your mental illness, I do agree that, that when you choose
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to identify with it rather than see it as just, ah, here's this thing that maybe I have to deal with.
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It can cause you to not attempt to overcome it with the rigor you otherwise would, right? That's the
00:21:35.980
issue. Well, yeah. And I think that we choose what our primary identity is. And I think that anything
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that you are born with, choosing that as your primary identity, identifying with something that
00:21:48.300
you didn't choose, I think is always intrinsically toxic. So whether it is an identity that you have
00:21:55.300
gotten because you think, oh, I have these personality characteristics, which are associated
00:21:59.060
with this mental illness in my mind, or I am white and therefore being white is a core part of my
00:22:04.760
identity, I think is really not because these things fundamentally aren't really who you are,
00:22:12.940
who you are, are the things you chose to believe. And for that reason, I think that the core identity
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that people should be choosing in terms of like who they are is threefold. I would say one is what
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you believe about the world. I think that's a really important category of identity. This can be
00:22:33.400
religion, or it can be a set of philosophical beliefs, or it can be a way of ordering your thoughts.
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I think having that as a core mechanism of identity is meaningful because it's what you chose,
00:22:44.880
right? So it is really you, unless you didn't choose it. And some people are just sort of born
00:22:52.180
into a tradition and don't really take any ownership of it. And in that case, maybe I think it makes
00:22:57.360
sense to make it. The other thing I'd say is your cultural ancestry or a chosen cultural ancestry
00:23:05.480
being part of your identity. I've seen people who choose some degree of cultural ancestry. And no,
00:23:12.920
this isn't necessarily an ethnic ancestry. So for example, when people look at my cultural
00:23:18.640
ancestry and I am choosing a cultural identity, they will note in terms of the naming of my kids
00:23:23.880
or myself, I do a lot of Roman stuff, Roman and Greek, classical Greek and Rome. And this is not
00:23:30.760
who I am. I am not Greek or Roman, but I identify with those cultures because I want to continue to
00:23:42.740
build on the greatness that they achieved. And so it's sort of like, what Lego set am I playing
00:23:48.940
with? Am I continuing to build upon? I'm choosing that as an aspect of the way I see myself. And the,
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the final one I would say is with your family and people can be like, well, why is that so important?
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I think that, and this is my, my core core identity is as a member of like, I don't really see myself as
00:24:14.180
a different independent entity than you anymore or the kids. I am sort of like one part of a pie chart,
00:24:21.840
I guess you'd say in terms of my identity. And I think that kids really struggle with this when
00:24:29.920
they're younger because they have this instinct to rebel and create their own new pie chart. And it
00:24:36.780
can cause them to undervalue what they can draw from their parents and grandparents and great
00:24:46.620
grandparents, what they went through. Yet I think as a young person, seeing yourself as an
00:24:51.560
intergenerational entity is also very mentally healthy. And a lot of people are like, oh no,
00:24:55.300
how could you say that? You know, putting so much. And I'm like, not really. I mean,
00:25:00.560
it's just true one. And then two, it explained things about yourself. I think one of the most
00:25:07.440
important things that I learned from seeing myself as an intergenerational entity is it makes it easier
00:25:12.580
to look at things that your parents do that through different eyes, you don't want to repeat.
00:25:17.180
And you're like, ah, I must have that tendency in me as well. How do I circumvent it?
00:25:29.060
I still defer to the form of self-identity creation that we outline in the Pragmatist Guide to Life,
00:25:37.440
where we basically say, choose your objective function. That is to say, choose that thing or
00:25:43.100
that collection of things that you wish to maximize with your existence. Then set out your
00:25:48.760
ideology, which is a series of hypotheses on how you think you can maximize that thing or those things.
00:25:54.400
And then three, based on what you've been dealt, that is to say, your body, your circumstances,
00:26:01.140
your appearance, your intelligence, your connections, whatever it may be, using those tools and those
00:26:06.320
materials, craft an identity that will maximize your objective function per your ideology.
00:26:14.800
And that seems to me the most practical thing to do.
00:26:20.260
I think you're right. I'll hold to that. I'll hold to that.
00:26:21.840
It doesn't have to do with, and of course, for us, seeing ourselves as part of an unbroken
00:26:28.000
family chain certainly plays into that objective function and also the way we see the world,
00:26:32.700
because our ideology is one of technopuritanism, of future worship, of long-termism and pronatalism.
00:26:42.460
So yeah, it makes sense for you to do that, but I don't know if it makes sense for everyone to do
00:26:46.700
that. It depends on everyone's unique set of objective functions and ideology.
00:26:49.000
I guess this is where I've changed since writing the Pragmatist Guide to Life,
00:26:53.340
is that I think that having more structure that somebody else just gives you is important for a
00:26:58.840
large part of the population. People like you and me, we are capable of,
00:27:02.700
rethinking everything from scratch with every possible challenge that we come across.
00:27:07.480
I don't think that the average human has the capacity to do this effectively.
00:27:12.420
And I think that if you, it reminds me of the Pragmatist Guide to Life, where people go through
00:27:16.240
it and they come to like the dumbest objective function, which is generally utilitarianism.
00:27:19.900
And I'm like, oh, that's the obviously wrong choice. But they're like, this is what the book is
00:27:24.820
arguing for, right? And it's like, if you give somebody too many choices, if you force them to think
00:27:29.400
through too many things, they default to the societal norm. And for that reason, I think it
00:27:34.660
is useful to lay out, yeah, but at the end of the day, these identities are probably going to be best
00:27:42.900
Yeah. I somewhat agree. I mean, I do think some, well, I mean, so I would say if you're part of a
00:27:54.460
culture or religion that gives you preset templates that are already aligned with your objective
00:28:00.540
function and that already match with what you've been dealt. For example, if you were a Mormon,
00:28:07.120
you're given an objective function or a series of objective functions, you're given ideologies
00:28:12.680
and based on who you are, for example, a man or a woman, you're given a clear identity to which you
00:28:19.000
are kind of expected to conform. So you know who to be and you know what to identify with. And none of
00:28:25.320
Well, that's why I'm saying like, as we build a system for our kids, I don't think the right thing
00:28:31.880
is to tell our kids, you need to figure all this out on your own, your identity, everything like that
00:28:36.380
to maximize your objective function. I think giving them frameworks before that is going to be more
00:28:42.780
effective and then allowing them to modify those frameworks to create the optimal one for their
00:28:48.760
objective function. It depends for those kids of ours who really opt in to and really like our family
00:28:57.700
culture. Absolutely. We'll be like, well, you know, this is the way you can go with our family culture.
00:29:02.820
But for those who want to explore their own thing, I think we should give them the tool set to do that
00:29:07.300
adequately, instead of just encouraging them to randomly go on to other toxic things.
00:29:14.340
No, I think that makes sense. You know, and I think having a great deal of family shame for
00:29:18.420
capitulating to the urban monoculture value set in these forms of identity is really important to
00:29:25.140
protecting and warding them and warding our children against them being, being placed on them.
00:29:32.020
What I wanted to get to here was something that I think humans have an addictive tendency towards
00:29:39.420
doing this, or like a really strong mental tendency towards doing this. And we write about it in some of
00:29:44.280
our books and we mentioned on some of our podcasts, but I can't, I cannot help but restate it is that
00:29:49.080
people want to be told who they are. This is just something you see over and over and over again.
00:29:54.680
Yeah. Horoscopes, blood types, blood types by the way. Sorry, you were saying what was the next one?
00:30:03.080
Myers-Briggs profiles. Oh yeah. Myers-Briggs profiles. So zodiac signs. And these are always more common
00:30:09.880
women among women. Women seem to have an intrinsic desire to be told what their identity is.
00:30:19.480
And some men do as well, but it's just obviously stronger in the data we presented here. And in,
00:30:24.440
in, in, you know, if you know, zodiac sign people, they're usually women. If you know,
00:30:27.480
blood type people, they're usually women. If you know Myers-Briggs profile people, maybe a few more
00:30:32.840
autistic men, but with women in the EA community seem to care a lot more about it than men do.
00:30:37.720
Men mostly use it for dating purposes, but why is this the case? I don't know. I suspected something
00:30:46.440
that sort of wrong was maybe our mental coding is a, we expect society to tell us who we are
00:30:54.360
and what our roles are. And when society doesn't, when society says, choose anything, you know,
00:30:59.320
you do a sex in the city quiz and you're a Samantha and that's who you are for the rest of your life.
00:31:04.040
You know, you, you choose to, and I think that this is actually, when you look at books that do
00:31:08.840
well, like the Harry Potter books, I think they explicitly do well because they presented a
00:31:12.120
framework like this, like the house selection process and everything like that. There is an
00:31:15.960
escapist fantasy to be told and categorized by who you are. I mean, this is something you keep
00:31:22.120
seeing in girl teen dystopias that are targeted at women primarily. Are you a X or are you a Y? And
00:31:28.360
that's how we know. When you were a kid, Simone, did you ever fantasize about like being told who
00:31:34.280
you were or any of these worlds where they, they give you an identity?
00:31:41.080
Probably, but I don't have any distinct memories of it. And I imagine you never did because you're
00:31:52.840
I would kind of, especially as a teen, if I could be told you're an X house, like you're a Slytherin,
00:32:00.440
now have pride in being a Slytherin. I would love that. And I think that, okay,
00:32:08.280
I think what we're seeing here is because we have erased people's pride in their family
00:32:15.720
and in their own cultural history, people can't say, I'm a Scotch-Irish, you know,
00:32:27.880
I said, oh, whatever. You know, they, they, they, they don't have anything to have pride in
00:32:35.160
or any cultural group to identify in with when historically you would have, you know,
00:32:39.560
if you were growing up in Manhattan, you would have been like, oh, they're the X group and
00:32:42.360
they're the Y group and they're the Z group. Or if you were growing up in, in, you know,
00:32:45.880
rural Scotland, it would have been like, well, that's X clan and that's Y clan and that's Z clan.
00:32:50.040
And they're like this and they're like this and they're like this. And I think that when we took
00:32:54.920
that away from people, they needed to create new clan identities. And this is, is part of what
00:33:01.080
we're seeing here because at the end of the day, while there are some cultures that are
00:33:06.200
truly individualist, I think the clan cultures have always been sort of a bit more common.
00:33:10.920
And when you take away the right to identify with your family and cultural group, you sort of force
00:33:17.240
the need to identify with something new and have pride in it and have immediate kinship with people
00:33:27.320
within it. And you've made this argument, for example, about Q groups as well, that it's like
00:33:32.040
the last group of, if you want to have some form of white pride, you just choose to identify.
00:33:37.400
Yeah. We've watched our video laundering of white pride, but I'm like, they, they,
00:33:41.400
they took the white pride parades and they dropped the word white, but they, they have changed nothing
00:33:46.200
else. This is not as much as they will pretend like this culture is downstream of like native
00:33:51.720
culture or something. It is not, it is a purely derivative of European cultural groups and they are
00:33:56.600
celebrating European cultural conquest of native individuals or recent immigrants when they, they
00:34:03.560
make these celebrations. Any final thoughts, Simone? People really love it when you say things,
00:34:07.480
because you're the smart one. How are you going to keep our kids from identifying as autistic?
00:34:11.480
I, I am not against the idea of identifying with a mental illness. When you identify with that mental
00:34:21.320
illness in a way where you like lean into it, into a strength. So I think that mental illness
00:34:26.760
identification is a double edged sword and I am all for unholstering your autism. As long as you use it
00:34:33.080
as a deadly weapon for good. I think most people unholster their autism or whatever, and they shoot
00:34:37.960
themselves in the head. If you just instead do something meaningful with it, that's amazing. And I think
00:34:44.840
that there are plenty of fictional characters even that show autistic people using their autism in a
00:34:53.400
way that, that bestows them with superpowers. Like Monk? Monk's a great example of this actually.
00:34:59.400
Monk, like Lisbeth Salander from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. She's highly autistic and
00:35:06.920
definitely like a superpowered female. So I, yeah, I don't, I don't think that these things have to
00:35:18.360
be toxic. And that's why I feel very conflicted about this. I think, I think that they are. If
00:35:23.960
it's not something you chose, don't identify with it. Identify was maybe an iteration of it,
00:35:28.520
but always keep it positive. When you identify with something that's a cage, you are building a cage
00:35:33.960
around yourself. Well, sure. And I, I, it's hard for me to think of scenarios, for example,
00:35:41.880
in which people identified with their anxiety and it went well for them, for example.
00:35:46.600
So I understand that, but I think you have to think about these things tactically and
00:35:54.360
go back to our whole argument about constructing a strong identity. It has to have
00:35:59.480
very good virtues and very good vices. And you cannot have a complete public identity without
00:36:06.680
very clear vices. And sometimes a vice is a mental illness and I, you know, that's okay. You know,
00:36:16.200
I think it's okay to have, and you need to have vices or you're not believable. You're not seen as
00:36:20.120
consistent. You're not seen as trustworthy. If people don't know immediately and clearly what is wrong with
00:36:25.720
you. So I don't agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll agree with that.
00:36:35.160
What was the Churchill line? He has all of the virtues I detest and none of the vices. I love
00:36:40.120
something like that. I'm a big vice person. I love a good vice on someone, a potty mouth, a weird,
00:36:46.920
a weird disorder, a tick, you know, weird overjudgmental behavior, over the top behavior.
00:36:57.400
Vices are the new virtue, but only if they're managed in a way that is not genuinely disruptive
00:37:07.240
or annoying. So it's, it's, this is a dangerous road to travel.
00:37:12.760
Well, I love you to death, Simone. You are a very special woman.
00:37:21.400
I love you too. No. So stable diffusion is one of these models where I'm actually running it locally
00:37:27.480
on my computer. Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't know it did that. And I can use lots of different like sub
00:37:34.280
models that I can put on top of it. So I can use it to create much less filtered images, i.e. like,
00:37:41.880
because, you know, that's a huge problem whenever we're creating title cards because we do spicy
00:37:45.320
topics and they're always like, oh, Microsoft, oh, you're disparaging someone or this looks naughty
00:37:51.480
or violent. And that gets me into trouble. But with stable diffusion, because a lot of people use it
00:37:56.600
for not safe for work content. Oh, they do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's done locally on my GPU.
00:38:01.960
Yeah. Oh, I see. So they're not afraid of being sued or something because of their...
00:38:08.280
Yeah. Yeah. So you can get looser models and then models that are trained on different things.
00:38:11.800
Anyway, so it gives me a good opportunity to expand the types of title cards that we're putting
00:38:18.680
together. By the way, for anyone who wonders what I use for title cards, typically if it's a cartoony
00:38:23.720
one, I'm using Microsoft Studio, which is one of the best for that.
00:38:28.360
The DeviantArt one does the more artsy styles or more stylized things. It actually turns out that,
00:38:35.560
however, for the 1950s atomic style, you know, with like the housewives and stuff,
00:38:39.800
Microsoft Studio is best for that. Oh, I bet. Yeah. DeviantArt can't really do it.
00:38:43.320
Black Forest can't really do it. Black Forest I use for a lot of stuff whenever I'm doing something
00:38:47.640
realistic, but it's not really good at anything non-realistic. Like it can't take a concept and
00:38:52.760
make something, you know, but Microsoft is very good at that. But we'll see if I can bring stable
00:38:58.280
diffusion into my repertoire because it should also because I can load different models that sort of
00:39:03.560
change its presumptive training structure. It's going to give me more precision in terms of the
00:39:11.000
types of images I'm creating. And I eventually want to get to a point where I can even do training
00:39:15.880
myself because I would really like to train a model. And if any of our fans know how to do this
00:39:21.400
and can do it for me on 1950s atomic style images. Yes.
00:39:25.560
You know, like advertisers in 1950s, like housewives and stuff like that. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:39:30.200
I think that I could create a really interesting one. And I'd prefer to just go with that style for
00:39:34.840
all our images if I could. Just always, always. I don't know.
00:39:39.320
Just always housewives. Yes. Always, no, always 1950s atomic optimism.
00:39:47.000
Well, I, yeah, I like their, their future optimism in that time period.
00:39:52.120
Yeah. Technofuturism or no, what it was a retrofuturism. That's the term. Do you remember
00:39:56.680
the old blog retrofuturism? Did you ever follow it? It was a great, well, like from we'll say
00:40:13.240
That was a nice old blog. I remember the age of blogs, by the way, Simone, where you had,
00:40:19.160
God, what was the one that I loved so much? And it's so woke now. I can't even remember. I used to
00:40:24.840
remember when I can has cheeseburger worth was a thing. The guy who founded I can't has cheeseburger,
00:40:30.520
by the way, deep. Eric Nakagawa. Yeah. And Simone was an advisor in our first startup,
00:40:36.520
Art Corgi. And we met with him a lot and he's a really cool guy. Oh yeah. We've since,
00:40:41.320
at least I saw him at ETH Denver because now he works in, or at least when I saw him at ETH Denver,
00:40:47.240
like two years ago, he works in crypto, worked in crypto. I think he still does. Yeah.
00:40:53.160
That's what? From memes to meme coins, I guess. Makes sense.
00:40:58.840
And by the way, I decided to look up to see if they had 1950s style creators and they do.
00:41:04.920
So I might be able to see if I can get one of these to work. Well, that would be really exciting.
00:41:11.320
Start your engines, Malcolm. Well, if I can make, if I can make better title cards,
00:41:17.400
more thematic title cards, more iconic title cards, I am going to be very, very excited.