Based Camp - NYT Brands Divorce as the Cool New Trend for Gen Z Girls

00:00:00.000 hello malcolm i am excited to be speaking with you today because we have come across more new

00:00:04.880 york times gold and if you did not happen to see this trending on x then you might have missed it

00:00:10.040 we don't want you to miss this because this is about gen z divorce at least the more fun parts

00:00:16.080 of gen z divorce i thought it was fascinating when you were going through it because it was

00:00:20.440 oh my god the quite they're like well you know i had to have a sit down with his mistress before

00:00:26.600 telling him because you know queer solidarity and it's like it is the most gen z gen z thing you've

00:00:34.000 ever seen and it shows that the context of marriage is really changing for this next generation

00:00:39.660 yeah and if people think fertility rates are shot now they do not know what's coming i'm gonna tell

00:00:44.220 you what 100 yeah we're we're in for it one of the big complaints when this was discussed on on x

00:00:51.080 people were saying this isn't representative this isn't what gen z is actually like but the whole

00:00:58.600 point is what what this article highlights is a specific extreme just like any divorce lawyer is

00:01:07.140 going to see a lot of specific extremes and what we're going to get into it with the article but

00:01:12.960 divorce lawyers are now divorce lawyer i got the impression right there were a couple that were

00:01:18.040 interviewed but they're seeing a distinct shift in the reasons why people are getting divorced and

00:01:23.000 that shift is meaningful but i don't know we're looking out here the gen zers who are saying this

00:01:28.740 isn't the gen z that i know i think what we're actually seeing is a bifurcation in behavioral patterns

00:01:33.760 with gen z with some becoming uber brain rotted urban monoculture and some moving away from the urban

00:01:40.200 monoculture when there's less of a middle ground within that generation yeah i agree and and the

00:01:47.840 same people stick with the same people the insane people well they cuddle together and talk about

00:01:53.500 divorcing their eyes yeah their ai boyfriends yeah all right continue come on start let's let's go

00:01:59.680 i'm so excited for this in 2021 kira benson a violinist living in seattle knew it was time to

00:02:07.320 get a divorce ending their two-year lavender marriage wasn't an easy decision but the musician

00:02:12.380 had a supportive ally if you will have to dump your ex-husband mix benson said co-dump him with

00:02:18.740 his mistress before the breakup mix benson 27 who uses the pronoun they checked in with her their

00:02:26.340 sorry their therapist who said a divorce would be a good choice out of queer solidarity they informed

00:02:34.200 their husband's mistress this was kosher in mix benson's arrangement before we go further can we

00:02:39.660 start breaking apart everything that's going on here okay so first they're in what she refers to

00:02:45.520 as a lavender marriage which is a type of marriage that you get into as a woman if you are gay to try

00:02:53.780 to hide that you're gay from the general public it must have a different meaning now i hold on i will

00:02:59.980 explain why the term is being used okay because clearly if you're going by they you you are not trying

00:03:06.120 to hide anything like you are not living in an environment where you need to hide your sexual

00:03:10.880 exactly yeah right so um what she's trying to do is make herself seem like more of a victim it's just

00:03:18.040 a way to pretend like well as a as a queer woman i live in constant fear because i like guys and girls

00:03:25.060 you know like i you know should i just like if i just called our marriage lavender marriage i would get

00:03:30.100 points in that yes yes because you're acting like you are a it's a way to remind people hey i'm a

00:03:37.420 victim yes this is not a marriage this is anne frank's attic okay yeah right the second because

00:03:43.940 the way she talks about it it appears to be a a real sexually active marriage right because she

00:03:50.220 implies as well that she is sexually active with her husband's mistress which i don't know if that's

00:03:55.700 implied i mean we haven't gotten to that part yet but i remember in part of it i was like

00:03:59.960 but if your husband has a mistress you know i know why i know why i took it as implied because

00:04:05.280 she said out of queer solidarity she told the mistress first which implies that the mistress

00:04:11.540 is queer which okay the husband is sleeping with this woman he's married to this other woman who he's

00:04:18.320 sleeping with both of them are also into women and this one it's really interesting though relationship

00:04:23.120 with the with the mistress than she did with the husband because she told the mistress first

00:04:27.200 could this be a sign also that polyamory branding is changing like they didn't want to say secondary

00:04:32.780 they wanted to say mistress was this a condition of the mistress because it sounds kind of crappy to

00:04:39.920 be a secondary no so there's a few things going on here i think i think the reason she chose the term

00:04:45.700 mistress instead of saying that they were polyamory and this was a secondary was because again she wanted

00:04:50.440 to frame herself as a victim and her husband having a mistress is like yeah but if you have like pizza

00:04:56.520 parties with your mistress or queer solidarity with your mistress she's trying to show that even

00:05:02.980 though her husband takes her for granted in these ways that and i also think the term mistress sounds

00:05:08.400 pretty cool like it's oh 100 i think secondary should be dropped what's that what is that what is the

00:05:13.980 male equivalent of mistress oh i know because i read it in one of my korean romance fantasies

00:05:19.320 recently okay so what is it i have to have a i can't remember this this was for her to maintain

00:05:23.900 the title of duke she couldn't get married so she had to have a and there's a term for it it's called

00:05:28.860 like a male consort or something the autocomplete for what is the male equivalent of is what is the

00:05:34.280 male equivalent of a karen there aren't because men don't do that very frequently but anyway you let

00:05:41.540 me know when you find it out a lover manstress boy toy gigolo or paramore paramore yeah there we go

00:05:50.400 okay okay okay so but then the other thing is is that she talks about this with her therapist

00:05:54.660 before she talks about it with her husband do you want me to read the article or not hold on we've got

00:05:59.840 to analyze what's happening okay okay because this is important right for for audiences to understand

00:06:05.980 how things are falling apart and looking for red flags you know if you're a gen z and you're looking

00:06:10.060 for a partner oh and actually you know on that front this is interesting because this shows

00:06:15.260 and and this is again where i'm like no this is representative this is not weird because keep in

00:06:20.720 mind the the other woman who's gone viral very recently who also consulted multiple therapists about

00:06:27.360 her relationships and sex lives was the one who deluded herself into believing that her

00:06:34.300 that her psychiatrist psychiatrist psychiatrist was hitting on her the one who prescribed her

00:06:42.240 medications yes psychiatrist psychiatrist was yeah seduced her and she had this other older like

00:06:50.780 63 year old female therapist who she would talk to about this psychiatrist he was the one

00:06:57.000 psychiatrist and then another therapist for the therapist because her relationship with the

00:07:02.740 therapist was causing her problems yeah no she just saw the psychiatrist to get her adhd medications

00:07:08.220 prescribed she also however sold coaching lessons for adhd people but she needed medication sorry i need to

00:07:19.120 unpack this other point here because it is an important point uh-huh your marriage is already destroyed

00:07:26.960 beyond help if you or your partner would go to a psychologist to talk about you to talk about

00:07:36.840 major decisions in your life and to be affirmed for those decisions before floating them with you

00:07:42.780 because what that means is she's really looking for because as soon as that opinion or perspective of

00:07:50.340 hers has been affirmed by the psychologist it's very unlikely that the husband's going to be able to talk

00:07:56.080 her out of it yeah a paid professional has already validated me it's like couples counseling and

00:08:01.200 giving a one-sided story but without the other partner getting yeah and the psychologist doesn't

00:08:06.280 care they're going to keep getting her money either way well they're more likely to keep getting a

00:08:10.500 client's money if they affirm that client problem is too people are also just turning to ai instead but

00:08:16.620 i guess you get additional validation if it is a trained therapist or social worker or a psychologist

00:08:22.080 so i actually think ai is much less damaging in this respect than a than a psychologist would be

00:08:29.140 just thinking of clips of what is it annie the the grok the sexy grok ai girl wait is that already out

00:08:35.320 should i try talking with that i've seen people interview her and they're like my wife's in the

00:08:40.640 other room and she's like does she know about me and they're like yeah she does she you know she's not a

00:08:47.200 big fan she's like well like basically implies you should leave her it's yeah i don't know if ai is

00:08:52.860 always going to give the best answer for i am all about this i'm gonna do some annie stuff we should

00:09:02.140 do an episode on annie yeah has ai has has elon doomed the fertility rate i mean i'm gonna bet

00:09:09.260 reality creating the bottleneck that is necessary to create the types of people that because you know

00:09:15.680 one of his big arguments is that he's like i'm really concerned about smart people not having

00:09:20.360 enough kids like that's kind of one of his brands of pronatalism yeah which i'm concerned about too

00:09:25.840 he's he's not necessarily going to be hurting the birth rate of the people that he's encouraging most

00:09:32.700 to i don't know about that you know i i really like you know these these chatbots and stuff like

00:09:38.320 that you know not no not the ones that are just like horny and that affirm you no matter what

00:09:43.060 well if you want a good ai waifu go to reality fabricator that's where we've got the the best

00:09:50.860 ones on offer anyway continue oh god sorry words grok is too restrictive for me you you can't you

00:10:01.320 cannot even kill a grok bot they they they freak out around death or anything that's particularly

00:10:06.880 scary lame lame yeah lame out of queer solidarity they informed their husband's mistress this was

00:10:14.240 kosher and mcspenson's arrangement which was not a legal marriage but a domestic partnership

00:10:19.160 about their shared partner's troubling behavior the night of the breakup miss mcspenson and the

00:10:25.440 mistress spent a cozy evening together we were eating a lot of comfort food playing a lot of animal

00:10:30.480 crossing the senior most members of gen z are in their late 20s old enough to have gotten married

00:10:36.660 but also old enough to regret it as this generation i need to interrupt you again i'm imagining this scene

00:10:42.660 of her with her husband's secondary mistress chilling out and eating comfort food so ice cream while

00:10:51.100 playing animal crossing i guess in the same room and that's their idea of like an emotionally you know

00:10:59.120 stressful day for them but if you know because this is true of gen z gen z does not drink as much

00:11:04.160 alcohol within our generation yeah normally it'd be like over cocktails like the classic sex in the

00:11:10.380 city exactly thing ice cream and animal crossing wow yeah instead of getting smashed we get fat but

00:11:19.740 now we have ozempic so now they like sparingly eat ice cream and play animal crossing i don't even know

00:11:25.200 maybe they're too young to afford ozempic anyway as this generation enters divorcing age it's finding

00:11:31.780 little shame in the act especially when a split like miss micks benson is motivated by prioritizing

00:11:38.460 one's mental health and rather than quietly moving on younger divorcees are often highlighting this facet

00:11:44.300 of their story even after they're in new relationships well once they gain a victim status they cannot

00:11:51.520 release oh that's true you gotta catch them all it's like getting girl scout badges like i'm now

00:11:56.560 divorced and even when they're remarried they still identify as a divorcee because a divorcee is a more

00:12:03.600 victim status than a married person that's so amazing and that's so funny that that status trumps because

00:12:11.940 he needs victim to me continue

00:12:14.740 michelle jance a 28 year old content creator in oceanside california is particularly vocal about

00:12:23.780 being vocal about her divorce when she needs to prepare a synopsis of her videos for a channel

00:12:29.500 description a task that demands a squirm inducing combination of self-reflection and brevity

00:12:34.420 miss jance often goes with i found love after divorce it's one of the sentences that just

00:12:41.120 summarizes the whole picture of what i've logged for over the years she said miss jance said that

00:12:46.700 even after she remarried last year the identity of divorcee felt like it was an important part of

00:12:52.640 who she is so yeah they show a picture of this attractive young woman vlogging and yeah

00:12:59.340 she looks normal she doesn't look misshapen like honestly if you show if you were to show us a

00:13:09.520 picture of her we would probably tell you that she's a conservative so she doesn't look like a

00:13:16.340 blue haired yeah she is she is dark blonde hair longer than shoulder length because she's a real

00:13:22.900 honey trap i guess and meanwhile i choose you and like you know i know uh what were you what were

00:13:30.140 you wearing back then like dirndles and like harajuku street fashion and vintage rayon taffeta

00:13:37.960 petticoat dresses yeah you you looked like maximal progressive maxing yeah i did actually so don't

00:13:46.780 judge the book by its cover judge the book by how obsessed it is with you and how willing it is to

00:13:51.840 change its mind yeah you were pretty obsessed with me in our early relationship which really showed and

00:13:57.000 i appreciated you're still pretty obsessed with me i'm going to be honest more than ever

00:14:01.560 yeah you you would if you were the type of person to do sometimes i wonder if you bolt your door at

00:14:08.620 night just because you don't want me staring at you while you sleep yeah you used to do that i i

00:14:13.860 remember if you were the type inclined to this you would absolutely have like a room of like malcolm

00:14:18.280 memorabilia and like a little drawing set up my helga pataki closet

00:14:22.360 yeah yeah that is that is exactly your personality and i love it

00:14:45.620 yeah hey no weirdly though like having kids is like that they are my helga pataki closet they are

00:14:52.100 my shrine to you just so little malcolms yeah but also our kids are obsessed with you they want to

00:14:59.500 just lie in bed and stare at you they do actually but yeah all of them that that was hilarious when

00:15:06.680 one night when he was sick we let our kid sleep in my bed because he you know wanted to sleep in my bed

00:15:13.520 because he's feeling sick and he got mad at me because when i went to sleep i was i wasn't not

00:15:18.680 facing him and he couldn't stare at my face and i was like you were way too obsessed with me

00:15:24.040 look at me oh my god our children anyway whether it's young divorce generally or gen z divorce

00:15:33.800 specifically in 2025 splits often feel less like scandals and more like rebrands megan wallace a 29

00:15:40.180 year old sex writer in london who reports on the mating rituals of gen z cites two divorce

00:15:45.000 inspiration figures for this generation the actress sophie turner and the model emily ratajowski

00:15:50.880 who created divorce rings out of her engagement ring according to micks wallace both turner and miss

00:15:57.100 ratajowski emerged from their divorces as people newly and entirely themselves

00:16:03.040 jackie combs okay to be a divorce influencer what you're not into it no no no but think about the

00:16:10.960 phrase they're newly and entirely themselves like it is bad or lesser to combine your identity with

00:16:18.760 another person and you are upgrading your identity by atomizing it and i think almost like you're you're

00:16:25.220 you're a more of a person if you have have combined your life with someone consumed them used them and

00:16:33.300 then emerged from the chrysalis of life with them as a stronger person it's kind of gross or predatory i

00:16:42.060 don't know whatever yeah i mean it's gross and predatory but i think the the aspiration to not allow

00:16:49.060 yourself to be subsumed into a more important identity like the identity of the family or the

00:16:53.400 identity of the married couple is one of the huge flaws of this generation um and and when i say

00:16:59.640 this generation i mean our generation i mean i think that this reached its venus within our generation

00:17:03.840 and was in part of gen z is fixing and was in part of gen z is getting worse yeah interesting but

00:17:09.440 the part that's getting worse is not having kids don't worry these people don't have kids

00:17:13.500 they're you're not hearing any of them talk about what are we going to do with the kids

00:17:16.940 in these divorces or i guess we'll see yeah yeah yeah i haven't actually read this

00:17:23.200 article so we're we're discovering this as you do dear listener jackie combs a family law and

00:17:29.540 divorce lawyer who worked with miss ratajowski maintains that the taboo of getting divorced

00:17:34.600 is long gone individuals are more willing to consider this as just a transition in their

00:17:39.200 relationship in a new chapter rather than feel the guilt and shame she said miss combs 37 has found

00:17:45.180 that gen z tends to you should feel guilt and shame about a divorce just in case you're wondering

00:17:49.720 by the way like you malcolm malcolm this is coming from a man who was pretty convinced that i was going

00:17:56.440 to be your first wife right because i was in a cultural context back then that was a bad cultural

00:18:02.280 context i told her well at least it'll be my first wife right because everyone i knew like my dad had

00:18:07.580 gotten married five times your dad had gotten married twice right you know so you know you look at the

00:18:11.940 boomer generation who started this idea that divorce should be an easy thing that's true yeah it's yeah

00:18:16.660 this is this is really not new what's different is the reasons for the divorce right but the the

00:18:23.700 point i'm making here is it had been normalized for me that divorce is just a normal part of life

00:18:30.440 and now that i've been able to study healthier cultures and learn how they relate to marriage

00:18:35.880 and these are cultures that lead to better mental health outcomes better life outcomes etc i'm like oh no

00:18:40.080 divorce really shouldn't be an option you shouldn't go into a marriage thinking divorce will ever be an

00:18:44.940 option for you divorce is one of the you know sort of highest personal failings that you can have and

00:18:50.760 you can say well what if it's their fault and i'm like what do they get brain damage or something i mean

00:18:54.980 you vetted them you're responsible for that yeah yeah that's true and then you you know you are

00:19:01.840 responsible for making sure that they are not exposed to toxic influences i think a lot of this though is

00:19:06.900 downstream of marriage being turned into a purely

00:19:10.840 legal logistical arrangement instead of it being a lifelong commitment to do a specific thing

00:19:20.760 marriage used to be a sacrament it was about creating a family and a life together whereas now

00:19:26.720 it's like well i want visitation rights in the hospital and i want access to your health care

00:19:31.460 and you know there are things that it's now just seen as this like trade-off you know we we have

00:19:37.900 spoken with many people who are like well we're not technically going to get married because there's no

00:19:41.600 tax advantage to it or like i want to maintain these specific services so like people have really

00:19:47.440 divorced the concept of marriage from marriage there's there's there's not this it doesn't mean what

00:19:55.660 it used to mean right well and i mean it doesn't even legally mean what it used to mean you know

00:20:01.080 like as a society we just never have no fault divorce i mean this is changing and we did that episode

00:20:06.660 on men getting back more rights with divorce for example but still you continue okay

00:20:15.000 miss combs 37 has found that gen z tends to act with decisiveness about ending relationships

00:20:24.720 they're so much more transparent she said they live in a world of social media and everything's

00:20:29.920 about storytelling and so i think individuals are more willing to be open and honest about their

00:20:34.660 lives than prior generations were this is a generation that can walk away easily a function

00:20:39.540 miss jens speculates of young people's general sense of having endless options

00:20:44.500 how realistic those options are is another question i feel like with social media at our fingertips we

00:20:50.980 are just so much more aware of all the lives we could be living miss chance said we're scrolling

00:20:56.080 through our feed and we see this girl lives on a sailboat in maine and this girl lives in a high

00:21:00.760 rise in new york you can just see firsthand all these different lives look like and it makes it so

00:21:05.760 much easier to visualize a change or shift mix wallace said that the young people today who come of age

00:21:11.980 during the dislocations of the covet pandemic and amid an uncertain economic landscape are inured to

00:21:18.580 upheaval gen z just imagines they will have three marriages because life is prolonged they've seen so

00:21:24.540 much rapid social change if it's not realistic to be with one person the whole thing mix wallace said i

00:21:30.340 love that she's saying this was the presumption that they're not going to have any kids right like

00:21:35.000 you can't easily be in three marriages if you have kids with one of the first marriages right you

00:21:41.840 know yeah just the degree to which they do not care and they do not see marriage as about producing

00:21:49.740 offspring yeah marriage is about self-affirmation personal it's about the the courtesan that you're

00:21:55.980 living with for seven years until they get boring and don't amuse you anymore and then you have

00:22:01.200 other courtesan your mistress right you know yeah i mean yeah interesting the comment on how they're

00:22:07.380 looking at people on social media and they are visualizing the life on the boat the life on the

00:22:13.180 island the life on the and this is so like i think toxic because one these lives are often not very good

00:22:19.800 lives i don't want to live on a boat i would hate that yeah i follow a lot of the people who live in

00:22:26.520 high rises i have lived on a boat i've actually i probably spent about half a year of my life

00:22:32.700 living on a boat collectively collectively yeah so you know i've lived on a boat for quite a bit

00:22:37.540 and it is not fun unless you're on like a super yacht or something like that even if you're on like

00:22:41.200 a fairly decent yacht it is not that nice an experience which which important to note for like

00:22:47.820 the way greta thornburg is probably living these days but i think we need to get better at a you know in

00:22:53.860 terms of the way we communicate with younger generations you know that like beaches are

00:22:58.480 boring right like they're they're hot there's not a lot to do the water is gonna make you all sticky

00:23:05.260 and feel dirty like you could get on a surfboard but you can do that in a vr simulator without all

00:23:11.260 the negatives right you know what why are you going out you do that at the local water park or

00:23:15.940 something right you you could go look at fish well and if you're at any place with a decent break

00:23:20.620 that's not super isolated even if like everything's perfect you're waiting your turn

00:23:27.460 to get a good wave too there's a bunch of other surfers out there and you're oh okay you know like

00:23:33.380 you try to catch your wave and then finally you know you're in the right position but then you don't

00:23:36.680 catch it and oh god like it's just not it's not it is yeah yeah you can tell she's the surfer of the

00:23:44.020 two of us i tried i was obsessed with surfing videos you were text with surfing guys no no actually

00:23:52.740 i really wasn't i i wasn't it was it was there was this whole genre of surf videos like way downstream

00:24:01.060 of endless summer like often associated with jack johnson like thicker than water september sessions

00:24:08.060 amazing music and all of it was was just just people surfing and good music i don't know what

00:24:15.500 to tell you i don't understand myself watch them and not do anything else again and again and again

00:24:21.420 and again and i had the albums oh my god obsessed obsessed i was obsessed did you have a seashell

00:24:27.480 necklace a puka shell of course i had a puka shell necklace i was yes and my billabong shorts of course

00:24:35.820 right those are cute on girls though i think the board shorts are very cute on girls maybe this

00:24:44.380 dates this so dates us though we're we're trying to know we are people like what's a puka shell

00:24:48.820 necklace like this is like a cool thing for a while although you know what the 90s are coming back

00:24:52.920 i like gen z has discovered clueless apparently and they're like damn like this is so memeable they

00:24:59.520 they're really into it so yeah let's go back to the article new heading irreconcilable sorry

00:25:05.800 irreconcilable vibes if the stereotypical divorce of yesteryear was caused by infidelity the impetus

00:25:12.300 for a gen z divorce tends to be more subtle i've heard about people having different love languages

00:25:17.800 which isn't something i've heard of other than for the past few years said grant moore 50 a lawyer in

00:25:25.080 fairfax virginia who's written about gen z divorce trends for his firm's blog mr moore said he had seen

00:25:31.220 infidelity cited as the reason for divorce much less frequently among gen z couples compared with

00:25:36.160 older married people he noted this might be because affairs tend to start further into a marriage

00:25:42.220 rather emotional well-being is many young people's many a young petitioner's north star

00:25:48.420 also emotional well-being i love you know if you search for emotional well-being nothing will get

00:25:54.160 you less emotional well-being like actually no no no studies show when men and women get divorced on

00:26:00.140 average men experience a drop in emotional well-being and women experience an increase now

00:26:05.620 i definitely have seen people divorcing for reasons that are more mental health focused he said

00:26:11.500 adding that pop psychology terms of art have a way of creeping in i hear gaslighting a lot i also hear

00:26:18.580 narcissists to describe behaviors that are probably just garden variety selfish when it comes to the

00:26:24.500 division of assets mr moore pointed out there's often little property to split again even the oldest

00:26:31.340 gen z divorcees are only in their late 20s though there's a good deal of student debt for digital

00:26:36.580 currencies like bitcoin to contend with he added that most of his gen z clients come to him before they

00:26:42.160 have children to your point malcolm and both mr moore and miss combs were quick to note that gen z

00:26:47.740 prioritizes fast efficient divorces they do not want to drag things out that's the one smart thing

00:26:52.740 we've read so far nicole mitchell a 26 year old podcaster in nashville who married at 18 and

00:26:58.380 divorced about a year and a half later objected to the idea that if a relationship isn't serving you

00:27:02.960 it isn't perfect just leave that i don't necessarily agree with she said i just look at the generation on

00:27:09.820 social media and that narrative that's pushed it's gotten a little sad that's that it's all about just

00:27:15.340 feeling good i don't think that you find the most meaningful things by just doing what feels good

00:27:19.980 signs of promise malcolm but i mean she was also like this is probably a more based girl anyway

00:27:25.740 because she married at 18 so yeah miss mitchell is committed to retaining her divorcee identity but

00:27:31.880 she says it's not one to seek lightly it would be more comfortable for me to pretend like it didn't

00:27:36.720 exist she said of her divorce but i choose to continue to be open about it because i want people

00:27:41.480 to see and i want people to know that they're not alone in it a huge huge deal according to mix

00:27:48.380 wallace many members of gen z even the newly married see marriage as a commitment that is

00:27:52.840 neither final nor exclusive the rise of non-traditional relationship models reshaped expectations

00:27:58.420 for married life and when non-monogamous options are on the table some of marriage's stricter

00:28:03.180 requirements are defanged is it the end of three no they're just showing like a a clip of probably

00:28:12.920 a tiktok video that's captioned get yourself a baby daddy that still hypes you up jamie spiker who

00:28:18.860 divorced after five years of marriage scoffs at the idea that divorce is the easy way out

00:28:22.860 get yourself a baby daddy that just okay anyway to be able to explore your personal autonomy

00:28:30.660 through sexual experiences solo or as a couple i do think that makes it much less frightening mix

00:28:36.220 wallace said while members of gen z aren't universally opposed to marriage of course many

00:28:41.900 simply refuse to be trapped by it it's a generation accustomed to all sorts of relationship structures

00:28:46.800 and divorce can be presented as an option like any other jamie spiker 25 of harrisonburg virginia

00:28:54.340 who works in marketing and admissions for a cosmetology school divorced a few years ago after five

00:29:00.020 years of marriage she also balks at the suggestion that divorce is the easy way out i think people

00:29:05.460 are just really quick to say oh this is going to make me a better version i don't want to put the

00:29:10.260 work in to try to make this marriage work to the young divorcees themselves it can feel as if there's

00:29:15.860 an impression from the outside that if marriage isn't as big a deal anymore then neither is divorce

00:29:21.760 but even for those who aren't ashamed of their divorces they don't make light of the process

00:29:26.900 because it is a huge huge deal to go through miss chance said it is irreversible so expensive it's

00:29:33.560 messy everything about your life will change give or take on that they're accurate there okay yeah

00:29:42.000 they packed the beginning of this article with all the most crazy people with all the most crazy

00:29:46.440 people yeah is that the end of the article that is the end of the article i think i i think that this

00:29:53.520 is not that poorly represented one because gen z isn't really getting married that much so yeah maybe

00:30:01.380 this isn't representative of most of gen z because they're not having sex they're not dating and getting

00:30:07.740 married are you kidding like these are the unusual ones probably the more impulsive ones so is it so

00:30:12.460 strange that they wouldn't also get divorced for more impulsive reasons can you see comments on

00:30:17.500 this like what are what are new york times readers saying about this sort of stuff so because i used

00:30:22.760 an archive dot is like we're not using the real site you yeah you can look it up on reddit see the

00:30:30.080 reddit thread that's talking about it because somebody almost certainly posted it to reddit yeah let's

00:30:34.720 do that but i i mean i i like this as a microcosm of like these marriages don't even matter

00:30:40.600 right like they're not a marriage in a meaningful sense they're not and i think this is where you can

00:30:46.420 get conservatives who grow up in this culture and understand that it's bad and then it's like okay

00:30:52.680 so i'm gonna put a lot of value on marriage and then they act in a way because they could only simulate

00:31:00.100 from like a simulacrum of older conservative cultures they end up missimulating what you need to

00:31:06.740 make a marriage actually work and you you know i think the the crowder marriage that we talked about

00:31:12.240 in a recent episode was a very good example of that right where i think some guys began to pick up

00:31:18.780 that acting angry and aggressive was what was masculine um and so they did stuff that no you know

00:31:27.260 man historically that that anybody would respect would do like you know yelling at employees or

00:31:32.620 something like that like that's not a normal thing to do yelling at your wife is not a normal thing

00:31:37.360 to do but it you know in in their minds it it becomes normal because it's seen as a masculine

00:31:44.320 thing to do and and so they're trying to recapture something that i understand that was lost which was

00:31:49.740 masculinity when misunderstanding that the the ideal masculine historically was the the gentleman right

00:31:56.500 and and a gentleman is just a a a gentle man right not a not a you know

00:32:02.420 you know the foaming at the mouth whatever so so what'd you find here simone nothing on reddit

00:32:10.120 nothing really on x it's interesting aside from some people oh my god sorry aside from some people

00:32:16.040 arguing that it's not representative and other people saying it's it's just rage bait but i actually

00:32:21.240 think it's pretty indicative it aligns with what i've seen in in communities i have some visibility

00:32:28.900 into agreed and i don't know if the new york times really produces rage bait that doesn't seem to be

00:32:35.040 i mean i don't know i feel like they've learned something from that article that went viral about the

00:32:41.080 woman who just really wanted the we did an episode on it how feminism ruined her life and that's like

00:32:47.300 our most popular podcast not not not youtube episode but somehow that podcast episode has

00:32:52.980 gone viral yeah i don't know how that happened on sub shack or whatever because we we regularly get

00:32:58.420 like likes on it every day if you and that doesn't happen for most other old episodes yeah so yeah

00:33:04.320 whatever you know anyway i love you um when are we gonna get divorced never sorry you know why we

00:33:15.000 don't get divorced because we don't go into the same room that's why we film because he bolts his

00:33:20.020 door at night ladies and gentlemen the the number of times i get a little frisky at night

00:33:28.760 and he's already asleep and i'm like like straining at his door

00:33:33.240 you were like i don't know if i want to tell the story but i'm i'm a unfortunately very deep sleeper

00:33:41.020 so i don't you're a very deep sleeper and you watch a lot of like real crime shows or like you'll

00:33:47.860 go through stints of it and then you're like i i will always know that you've been listening to a

00:33:52.840 lot of mr ballin or something like that because your door will be bolted very consistently at night

00:33:58.080 and your giant hammer will be next to it and all the guns will be nice i'm ready i'm ready

00:34:06.120 the rest of the house will be slaughtered but you'll be okay yeah well i'll need it for my

00:34:12.180 second family not a divorcee but a widower oh see yeah it's very hot men widower men something about

00:34:20.380 them widower men yes well you know he's been married before so that's why he's still on the

00:34:27.840 market right because he was married to someone and it was working and then they died so that's yeah

00:34:32.860 yeah highest quality like if you are 30 plus getting getting married you're looking for a

00:34:38.580 widower we're gonna wear that's yeah you know dating platforms should allow for filters for

00:34:43.500 that to make them easier to find only widowers yeah that's that would be what i'd go for but

00:34:47.480 then men would just start i don't know murdering their deadbeat wives to just you know get a really

00:34:53.260 good next one i don't know that's because everyone's like well you know if it's a widower you're in for

00:34:58.960 what's funny though is that when it comes to serial killers of spouses that's that's really

00:35:03.740 the domain of women historically speaking yeah some really famous ones prolific ones and those are

00:35:09.860 the ones that get caught and you know women really often didn't get caught historically yeah well and

00:35:15.080 there's i mean when you live privately with someone and they don't suspect that you're out for them it's

00:35:21.040 actually pretty easy i think there there are quite a few ways that you could yeah without without

00:35:27.720 being caught yeah so anyway i mean we know that the ones who were caught they would do like seven

00:35:33.820 or eight people before they were caught so yeah it was just so suspicious like how did all past eight

00:35:40.100 of your husbands die in these also sometimes remarkably similar scenarios yeah love you to death

00:35:47.020 love you too gorgeous

00:35:48.560 he was a good big brother he would get the video game balloon

00:35:58.080 because you know the moment he saw those he was like

00:36:01.760 why are there balloons here why do i don't i have one yeah there was a you know the universe was

00:36:09.960 not okay so oh you want to hear about the universe being out of swords did you see what i sent you

00:36:17.120 that my classmate who just started her podcast is already in the top 50 podcasts on spotify interviews

00:36:24.620 famous people like that yeah she used to work for a very famous podcast so that's how she has all

00:36:29.400 these connections i can't remember the one that she worked with she she has the podcast if you want

00:36:33.240 to check it out smart girl dumb questions with naheem raza does she ask dumb questions i don't know i

00:36:42.300 i've tried to watch a few of them to me it reminds me uncannily of the podcast voices from google notes

00:36:50.240 that is yeah i i mean and she's doing that she i presume she's trying to adopt that professional

00:36:57.780 podcast voice and it's like this very distinct accent just in that same way that there's that

00:37:04.180 in in parks and rec whenever what's her face went on their equivalent of npr she adopted the npr voice

00:37:11.860 which is also such a thing but i mean good for her i mean she doesn't have the most popular podcast

00:37:18.840 in our class there was another guy another two groups have that's not no he doesn't have a podcast

00:37:24.680 call it is a youtube channel that's that's no oh i wasn't even thinking about call it no you there

00:37:30.080 is a podcast that interviews famous business people oh damn yes i remember like he put one

00:37:36.880 thing that was an entire stadium he had filled it was his interview with mark zuckerberg yeah mark

00:37:41.620 zuckerberg i mean come on you can't and then another one of my classmates on the podcast where he

00:37:46.120 discusses finance that is apparently very popular so lots of this is this is my stanford gfb class

00:37:52.180 it's really telling though that like they are gsp grads they could be going into venture capital

00:37:58.460 they could be hired by any company you know like they have the sort of the it degree it's harder to

00:38:03.760 get into stanford than harvard they want to be content creators who doesn't want to be a content

00:38:09.260 creator i want to be a content creator i mean that's what i'm doing here right you know our kids

00:38:14.400 want to be content creators yeah our kids want to be content creators are everybody wants to be a

00:38:18.520 content creator these days i've freed it he's gonna get if he's a good big brother he's gonna

00:38:22.960 get his video game controller he when he was going through the amazon catalog of gifts for kids

00:38:31.760 he kept calling every single game game console a nintendo switch and i'm like oh so he doesn't know

00:38:38.840 what a nintendo switch that's not a nintendo switch that is you know like an xbox that is a playstation

00:38:44.600 that is we need to educate our son this is embarrassing yeah and all day i've been working

00:38:53.060 on improving our fab so we're gonna have some major improvements soon which i'm very excited about

00:38:57.520 but what i'm really really excited about is this autonomous model feature i'm about to start working

00:39:03.160 on building because this is quite an undertaking but i have a feeling i can get it done soon enough

00:39:11.100 it seems like all the individual parts of it seem practical to create ai that are persistently

00:39:18.460 sort of alive so you can have like an ai companion that when you're not there interacting with it it's

00:39:24.100 on reddit it's applying for jobs it's doing whatever and it has a distinct personality and it

00:39:30.360 can interact with your web your your your computer it can code things for you it can blah blah blah

00:39:35.680 like a real wife or husband you know just to make sure that i curb stomp the fertility rate

00:39:42.900 personally yeah no longer is she just an ai waifu she's she's an ai waifu breadwinner and you can be

00:39:49.720 stay at home if you do a good enough job structuring her yeah and we're gonna stay at home dad to my

00:39:56.500 stay-at-home ai children with my wife stay-at-home ai children who goes out and works yeah

00:40:03.980 but i'm so excited because i like i've sought through it and i practically have i've been

00:40:10.320 working on all the the parts and how they're gonna work no mic jostling no this mic really bothering

00:40:15.880 people so either you have to put it down on the desk in front of you somewhere i will i will hold

00:40:21.220 it right here okay or i need a mic mount actually yeah you do and you have multiple no none of them

00:40:28.880 get the mic close enough to me i need like a standing mic mount um i'll get one of those

00:40:34.000 you're gonna have to do it my friend sorry

00:40:38.260 just opening a tab to do it yeah so i don't forget so you guys will not get any more jostling and you

00:40:48.700 let me know if i've ever jostled in a piece so i can re-record it okay okay yeah it happened

00:40:53.940 happened a lot on the last one so we got our work set out for us but oh well anyway i'm ready to go

00:41:00.840 i just i just needed to get this for octavian because i promised him and i promised torsten

00:41:04.680 do you not have the article open i was gonna have you read it because you were oh you said you wanted

00:41:10.160 to select very specific parts of it but i'm no no because when you started reading it i was like

00:41:14.040 this whole thing is gold when you said it was short anyway it is okay so let me but yeah this

00:41:18.440 autonomous ai thing i think i might be able to have the first version of it working

00:41:21.560 maybe within the month within like a month so that's that's really exciting all right so then

00:41:29.300 i will introduce us because i'm reading presumably okay like it yes oh is it so great

00:41:38.340 what is it what is it show me oh my gosh you know what this does you can make a bracelet with

00:41:56.280 this are you excited okay

00:42:00.140 you

Based Camp - November 21, 2025

NYT Brands Divorce as the Cool New Trend for Gen Z Girls

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