Everest: The Longest Line of Selfish Egotists on Earth
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.30823
Summary
In this episode, we take a deep dive into why climbing Mount Everest is a terrible thing to do, and why you should not do it. In the first half of the episode, I interview the man who climbed the highest mountain in the world, but he's gay. Right after the break, we have an interview with the guy who climbed Mount Everest.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
right after the break we're going to interview eric wyhenmayer who climbed the highest mountain
00:00:05.260
in the world mount everest but he's gay i mean he's gay excuse me he's blind so we'll hear about
00:00:11.800
that coming okay as we head to the break a look at the six o'clock uh the best the best piece of
00:00:19.760
news reporting ever done in my opinion but on the topic of you have to be a complete garbage
00:00:29.140
dookie soul of a human being to do this you're an emotional fucking cripple your soul is dog shit
00:00:35.040
every single fucking thing about you is ugly and in this episode we are going to be laying this out
00:00:41.080
uh only garbage human beings climb everest and you could be like oh no this is the direct attack and
00:00:47.940
yeah it is a direct attack if you did this you're a shitty human being and but not for the typical
00:00:53.560
reasons and here i will post a guy who makes one of the typical arguments against claiming everest
00:01:00.360
oh yeah which is just sherpas die and are forced to do this and that is bad and then at the end of
00:01:10.220
the video i will explain why that is a terrible argument that claiming everest is immoral real
00:01:15.560
issue behind climbing everest these days which is the fact that if you climbed everest in 2023
00:01:20.960
you essentially sacrificed the lives of six local people in order to do so the season began with
00:01:28.880
three deaths of sherpas who were carrying ropes and gear through the kumbu ice ball fixing lines
00:01:33.820
and ladders through the glacier that is a task that has to be completed each year if anyone is going to
00:01:39.860
climb the mountain on the regular route the deceased local workers can expect to receive only about ten
00:01:44.820
thousand dollars as a payout from life insurance ridiculous to put that into perspective ten thousand us
00:01:50.240
dollars is barely enough to cover the rising costs of living for a small family in nepal one estimate
00:01:55.920
i read was that 10k is enough to only keep the family afloat for about two years now there were
00:02:03.940
seven nepali deaths on the mountain this year six of them were working all of them sherpas because it's
00:02:10.220
not a very good argument when you actually look at the statistics they have some credence to it but
00:02:14.560
pretty pretty pretty low for me the core reason why climbing everest is so selfish was elucidated
00:02:24.700
very loudly when i was talking to my dad we're talking i think about inherent values or something
00:02:29.520
like that yeah i was talking about like what do you live for like like what's a good life to you
00:02:33.840
etc yeah i was arguing that he focuses a lot on trying to maximize the aesthetics of being an area
00:02:43.500
type person or some sort of aesthetic version of who he is and when he's making decisions he is making
00:02:50.680
them based on how they change his internal perspective on himself instead of how they impact the world around
00:02:59.200
him and i view this as a very very selfish way to live you were like and i'm doing this research for
00:03:04.560
an episode on how terrible it is to climb mount everest and i'm like well at least mount everest is
00:03:09.120
the highest mountain this is not like kilimanjaro that's just like complete trash like the view is
00:03:13.860
nothing for just walking up a dirty mountain like across like gross you know you need like separate
00:03:20.140
shoes just for like the bathrooms because there's poop smeared everywhere just a disgusting experience
00:03:25.420
and you're just shuffling your way up because the the guides don't let you walk quickly or anything
00:03:30.480
so it's incredibly boring and he's like oh no i've i've summoned mount uh kilimanjaro like and i was
00:03:37.420
like oh no i mean then it was like you know this time i i told him i was like but dad like why would
00:03:44.620
you do that like what good does this bring to the world this seems to be entirely based on masturbating
00:03:50.660
sort of a self-image of yourself so he immediately goes no i didn't do it for that reason he couldn't
00:03:55.880
come up with another reason he had done it no he said i didn't do it for that reason he said well
00:03:59.940
the one other reason he came up with was you do it to experience hardship and i was like bitch you're
00:04:05.080
the one who just spent all day complaining about our house being too cold that is an area where we
00:04:10.380
are creating hardship for ourselves but saving money which can go to making the world a better place
00:04:16.720
whereas you can't endure the minor hardships of daily life which make the world a better place
00:04:21.160
but are able to undergo big performative hardships that end up costing a lot of money and time that
00:04:26.180
you could spend on improving the world but then he goes talking about his wife they were in aspen and
00:04:31.840
she bragged to him about going for quite a few kilometers at a high altitude and he's like well
00:04:37.700
but have you gone 100 kilometers at this higher altitude and she's like i don't even know where
00:04:44.020
you would do that and and then he's like well now kilimanjaro which i played three times and i was
00:04:49.260
like dad you just argued to me that you didn't do this just for signaling purposes and literally in
00:04:54.020
the next sentence you go off on a tangent about how you don't don't somebody in a signaling manner
00:05:02.440
for climbing the mouth it is very clear you only did this to signal to yourself to one type of person
00:05:08.540
you are yeah and that's you one's own wife which is not even like who are you like you don't need to
00:05:13.140
like what do you married you it's for right one yeah and so before we get further in this this is
00:05:17.840
my core complaint about this is that it has such high costs it will go over all of the high costs
00:05:25.200
whether they are to yourself or to the environment or to uh money that you are not spending on making
00:05:31.980
the world a better place for such trivial differential benefits and by here a differential
00:05:40.240
benefit is that somebody goes well what about the hardship of climbing mount everest and i'm like
00:05:44.240
there are hardships that you can endure equivalent to climbing mount everest that don't put random
00:05:49.980
people's lives at risk don't waste tons of money that don't waste years of your life that simply make
00:05:56.620
the world a better place you you so why did you choose this hardship over those hardships because
00:06:03.280
of the signaling ability it gave you or they'll say well what about like the views it's like well you
00:06:08.980
can look at a picture or go in a br simulation we have those these days and they're like it's not the
00:06:14.720
same and i'm like yeah it's not the same because you're not freezing your butt off you're not undergoing
00:06:19.000
permanent brain damage which by the way you do undergo almost everyone who claims that everest
00:06:26.180
undergoes permanent brain damage i'm going to put two studies on screen here only one in 13 everest
00:06:32.720
climbers had normal mri scales so you have a less than 10 probability of not undergoing permanent brain
00:06:40.620
damage and this wow i didn't know that so you're really screwing yourself up by going oh yeah you're not
00:06:47.660
just wasting tons of money you're not just putting other people's lives at risk you are permanently
00:06:51.620
fucking up your brain and this was true three years later they didn't follow up scams on these people
00:06:56.740
um so permanent damage permanent damage almost like everyone who goes specifically you have frontal
00:07:04.380
subcortical legions you have micro hemorrhages you have cortical atrophy the loss of brain tissue
00:07:10.000
you have enlargement of the vericarobin spaces fluid filled spaces surrounding blood vessels you have
00:07:16.280
subcortical lesions white matter hyper intensities you have reduced white matter density and volume
00:07:21.920
reduced gray matter density and volume in specific regions of the brain and what does this up looking
00:07:28.320
like you typically have a loss of memory both short-term and long-term and barbius psychia which is a
00:07:37.260
slowness of thoughts so you think slower afterwards so you are you are slightly retarding yourself
00:07:45.000
for the rest of your life just to be able to tell people that you climb that Everest and a lot of
00:07:51.080
people are willing to do that i mean you already have to be so damaged other people slides at risk
00:07:55.640
slightly retarding themselves for the rest of their life and they're not even showing that they have
00:08:00.700
done anything of particular difficulty anymore aside you spend a lot of money yeah you could just spend a
00:08:07.120
ton of money and you know there's been instances that we'll talk about like
00:08:10.880
i kid you not that guy you just saw being carried down from Everest in a sack that guy is the same guy
00:08:26.320
who you're about to see on tour and during this he didn't even thank the sherpa who took him down
00:08:33.120
t ravi chandran intends to proudly wave the jalo gamilang flag at the summit of all the world's
00:08:39.620
tallest mountains it does not matter if the mountain is steep or if he has to squeeze in between
00:08:45.960
narrow crevices he will not forget to carry the malaysian flag with him the first thing that we put
00:08:51.740
on our tent is the jalo gamilang so it's about pride he hopes the government will recognize his
00:08:59.800
contributions to the nation and will call on him to say a few words on medeca day
00:09:04.540
wow look how far i climbed and i'm not even tired wake up you lazy sherpas we've got a mountain to climb
00:09:27.360
bikini la so there's the one instance that i learned about last year who this is a 2012 instance
00:09:33.860
of sharia shah chlorphine who was a canadian who basically had no reason to have anyone permit her
00:09:43.460
to climb mount Everest in terms of her experience and her training but she just basically paid so
00:09:49.140
much to an outfit that was like yeah sure well whatever you're saying you want to pay that much
00:09:54.520
okay let's do this because you can always get someone you know who's going to be like
00:09:58.400
you know everyone has a price and that's the problem is now i think Everest is really full
00:10:02.980
of unscrupulous um climbing outfits they will just take about anyone and she by the way perished in in
00:10:10.520
the dead zone on her way back down from the top on a uniquely crowded day because she ran out of
00:10:15.540
oxygen because she used up way too much because she wasn't fit to climb this mountain um so that's
00:10:21.740
the other problem other people have made it down but have like screwed up other people's assist so
00:10:26.640
there was another influencer ravi shandra who was also found in the dead zone he apparently was by
00:10:32.800
himself there and some other team had to abandon their ascent to pick him up and bring him down and
00:10:38.640
he ended up not even thanking them thinking like his insurance company and sponsors and like
00:10:43.120
pretending that didn't happen and like his tour about his climb but he made it to the top and if you
00:10:49.600
look at the pictures of this and i'll play some video of this camp 2 where i witnessed the most
00:10:53.780
extreme and large lines of the entire season as we were at camp 2 we could see every single team that
00:11:00.500
was ahead of us moving up from camp 3 to camp 4 i mean my teammate tyler described it as a black mamba
00:11:07.480
and there's just no other better way to describe that thing if you saw a viral video of lines on
00:11:12.540
Everest this year this is most likely where it took place and these same people went up to the summit
00:11:17.760
together and that just created even more lines which were all documented as well
00:11:30.820
and then there get to be so many people that they make fast pass
00:11:35.720
you stand in line to get a ticket to stand in line later
00:11:38.500
then there's lines for the bathrooms, lines for the drinks, lines for cantagoras and rare cantagula things
00:11:43.980
it's just lines and lines it's a it's a it's a corporatized thing
00:11:49.160
you are going to the top to wait in line for an hour to spend a few seconds on the top of a mountain
00:11:56.720
lon what makes things worse is the inexperienced climbers make the line run
00:12:02.640
yeah uh and you're risking your potential life and any other good you could do with your life
00:12:08.420
one to two percent of climbers who attempt to summit die
00:12:11.680
so you're risking your life you're blowing tons of money
00:12:18.860
although the sort of median range is $50,000 to $60,000 per a cent
00:12:25.480
that you know a good like year spent doing some really fun studying in a gorgeous place
00:12:34.140
well if you just want to do something indulgent
00:12:38.780
I would respect somebody more who spent that money just partying for a year
00:12:48.820
more interesting than I waited in line for ages
00:38:58.820
to get off it's called auto erotic asphyxiation
00:48:59.780
out your name risk their lives for hollow gain frostbite thoughts and freezing pain
00:49:08.280
climbing everest to nowhere while the world is crying we ain't there
00:49:15.780
dollar signs in hollow air risking laughs for glories clear
00:49:22.780
in the valley hear the cries hungry hands and angel eyes
00:49:34.200
thousands could be fed and warm yet we climb into the storm
00:49:41.160
is it worth it look around glory in a mountain shroud life is precious not a game
00:49:52.160
chasing peaks is just insane climbing everest to nowhere while the world is crying we ain't there
00:50:03.860
dollar signs in hollow air risking lives for glories clear
00:50:10.680
cleaning everest to nowhere while the world is crying we ain't there
00:50:28.240
while the world is crying we ain't there dollar signs in hollow air risking lives for glories clear