00:51:15.300Maybe I'm rolling that out a bit too early, but I get a sense he knows that I have no power in this relationship.
00:51:22.260The hay is like the dog-eared corner of a page, right?
00:51:28.120And on the page is written an experience that he hasn't had yet.
00:51:31.920And the experience is pick him up with one arm and take him up in his bed without saying a word and turn the lights off and close the door and let him cry for five to ten minutes.
00:51:42.020And then pick him up and without letting him respond, say, I'm taking you downstairs and if you don't eat your dinner, you're coming right back up here and I'm not going to get you back again.
00:52:23.480like i think it's well within the bounds of reason that someone with down syndrome would
00:52:33.800fear a gun and i think we could extrapolate based on that that they could understand
00:52:38.000a verbal gun so if you have a down syndrome toddler just threaten them with a gun
00:52:44.040show them the gun let them know you have the gun i'm not saying do anything that'll get the gun
00:52:50.620taken away don't fire it in the air don't start spinning it around but let them know you have it
00:52:57.100this is not real retard parenting advice do not do this warning warning incoming irony
00:53:07.560also i don't want to be misconstrued i'm not saying threaten the child i'm saying threaten0.97
00:53:13.060its mother okay point the point the gun at your wife's head and say do you love mommy right0.99
00:53:19.720she's not going to be around anymore yeah if you don't pick up your toys and then you say i'm gay0.99
00:53:27.940she's not going to be around anymore if you don't put your podcast equipment away1.00
00:53:34.840you fucking three-year-old won't turn his podcast off0.99
00:53:40.140he he can't he can't turn off his tens of thousands of fans wouldn't it be funny though1.00
00:53:47.480if like our kids start a podcast that's more successful shit where do you stand on the0.89
00:53:54.920technology thing i don't know if anyone finds this interesting but i am curious where because0.88
00:53:58.440your your children are older than me like do you are they on youtube are they on kids youtube or
00:54:05.100no no what do you what do you think about all that they own the only screens that they get
00:54:09.540are old school television and it's shows that we select it's like three shows like peppa pig is one
00:54:15.960of them uh octonauts from bbc which is like kind of a learning show and blippy i think those are
00:54:22.660the only three right now and aside from that there's no screens for them no phones no youtube
00:54:26.380especially certainly nothing that they can access and control my eldest is she could she could0.98
00:54:31.980manipulate it like she could use these things if i taught her how and at some point i'm gonna have
00:54:36.020to teach her but at this point no just it's not it's off limits i'll tell you what i liked i
00:54:40.900remember as a kid and this is kind of for me it's informing things that i remember that i maybe
00:54:45.080remember them wrong like it was a really great experience that i had my me and my brother had
00:54:48.620our favorite movies and we just watched them on repeat but then i realized what that was that was
00:54:52.480my parents being sick of us and just letting us sit in front of a crt for six hours with the same
00:54:57.940vhs um because like with the girls they'll watch they'll have a favorite movie they'll watch it
00:55:04.640once and then they'll ask for it they want to watch again and i'm like well then i don't have
00:55:08.060to vet another film you like this one that's fine but if they watch it three times that's all they
00:55:11.960want to watch and they cry if they can't watch it and it starts to become part of their personality
00:55:16.020like even my eldest has been watching octonauts which one of the three shows and now everything's
00:55:22.060about octonauts and she's putting everything in the context of octonauts like we're going for food0.58
00:55:25.600she's talking about fucking octonauts and i'm like all right i'm trying to teach her the idea0.95
00:55:29.100that this is a television show it's rotting your brain they're not real characters you know the0.98
00:55:33.460things that are in fairness there is real things in it because it's about like aqua biology and0.98
00:55:38.240but like the point is is like stop fucking talking about aquanaut so we're punishing her0.68
00:55:42.960when she brings up the tv shows say we don't want to talk about tv shows right i have some pretty0.96
00:55:49.100vivid memories of when i was very very young and it seems that they seem to crystallize as i get
00:55:55.080older but i remember there was this strange like coming online moment where you know when i was
00:56:02.180growing up whenever you're at someone's house there was always just a disney movie playing in
00:56:06.500like the family room that they would park you in front of it seemed like for huge swathes of my0.99
00:56:11.460life like there's always just a fuck some disney fucking thing playing and you would just sit there0.97
00:56:15.940and you would watch it and the reason and i remember thinking this i remember being a kid0.99
00:56:20.980and the little mermaid was on and i was just like in a room watching it i remember thinking to
00:56:26.740myself and this is so clear thinking that i've seen this movie so many times but i don't remember
00:56:32.980what happens in it i remember i remember wanting like knowing i watched this movie but i just i
00:56:39.080that feeling of like i know what i know what comprehension is i comprehend what comprehension
00:56:44.380is i'm aware that i know this movie is but i forget i don't know the sequence of events i
00:56:49.640don't know what happens and that was such a weird realization for me but that's how kids see things
00:56:54.940like they don't they remember scenes they don't know how they go together and to this day like
00:56:59.840i've never watched that like old um that disney robin hood movie with the foxes remember that0.63
00:57:07.260yeah yeah like i i know that movie i know the songs i'm like what the fuck is that movie about
00:57:11.080i don't know what happens in that movie but i just like remember experiencing it that's such
00:57:17.220a weird thing to realize oh that's how kids see the world they don't even comprehend time
00:57:21.700they kind of comprehend experiences but and they know enough about permanence to prefer things but
00:57:28.500they don't know the details of it as they're experiencing it anyway that's just that was like
00:57:32.800a mindfuck for me realizing you you really you really it's weird because it's like your kids
00:57:37.020get smart and you're thinking oh man they're so smart they can take on so much but at the same0.99
00:57:40.740time you really do have to like hijack them and ride them um psychologically and make sure they're
00:57:47.840always going in the right direction you can't take for granted just because like they're learning to
00:57:51.960they're learning to talk and they're learning to read and to do math um they literally don't
00:57:56.600understand very very basic comments sorry concepts about humanity about people right so stuff like
00:58:04.000you just said like about time time management just the concept of the concept of the five day
00:58:09.280work week and and where you space things and put things within your day like i never i didn't get0.79
00:58:16.160that until i was in my fucking 20s so i'm hoping i can my kids will understand it by the time they're0.92
00:58:21.48018 but i can't imagine them even understanding when they're 12 so when they're 12 you're still0.93
00:58:25.980going to have to be ordering that part of their life right and i see a lot of people are like
00:58:30.860my kids are so smart and at five they were already doing this for themselves it's like
00:58:35.160oh man you should not be letting them do that for themselves yeah like there is no for themselves
00:58:40.540like they can they're it's good that they're mimicking you it's good that they can because
00:58:44.360remember when we discussed on the show the society of mine by marvin minsky uh that was um a
00:58:50.660fascinating book and one of the what they were doing was paying very close attention to babies
00:58:55.820and infants and how they build their mind um and the mechanics of how you start from simple motor
00:59:02.160functions and you use that to build up to larger motor functions um and if you this is what's so
00:59:07.660fascinating especially if you're a man and a father you could pay close attention and watch
00:59:13.740your kid learn things and if you go into it like listen to our episode on society of mind
00:59:18.780and think of them building their their mental faculties like you would build an operating
00:59:24.620system like all the work that goes into them learning how to pincer grasp with their thumb
00:59:31.580and forefinger like you can watch them learn how to do that once they learn how to do that that's
00:59:36.220like a level up and then they can manipulate things and then their manipulation switch gets
00:59:41.440turned and then like you watch them learn how to like because you can get like babies to do things
00:59:47.180that look like they're like stacking blocks but it's like accidental but you'll notice when they
00:59:52.160actually do start stacking blocks it usually start by showing them how to knock down blocks
00:59:57.520you show them how to destroy something which is easy to do but it's hard to focus and destroy
01:00:03.260something but then they start to build things and you can watch them learn how to start building
01:00:08.140things and sometimes it'll be accidental like i i've seen my son watching them learn to crawl
01:00:14.260is fascinating because learn to crawl occurs in phases and they have to learn how to like jerk
01:00:19.200their legs forward and watching him like he can hold himself up jerk his leg under and go from a
01:00:25.000crawling position to a seated position that was like seven different functions that he had to
01:00:31.180learn bit by bit to do this one task and i saw him the first time he did he looked at me like what
01:00:37.300the fuck did i just do no absolutely i think fascinating in like the 19th century term of
01:00:42.860fascinating like something that something that holds your attention and fills you up right and0.98
01:00:47.840it's it's like um it's in it's in that sense i guess now now we say that's rewarding but uh the0.64
01:00:54.480idea that fuck how was i going to describe it the idea that it's an achievement you need to like
01:01:01.180even just year by year month by month it's an achievement it's like learning a skill it's like1.00
01:01:06.780somebody you know we always joke about it that like uh blacks don't understand why white people
01:01:10.580climb mountains and then we climb mountains and it's like you got to be there man like if you
01:01:14.000haven't done it you wouldn't understand but if you're the person who does it you're like i need
01:01:17.300to do this again this was the most fun i've ever had and it's like that like it's it's an experience
01:01:22.520it's a fascination it's an achievement it's rewarding like there's a lot of ways to describe
01:01:26.720it but you really have to be there you really have to do it it's great i was i wanted to say
01:01:31.540again about about the sleep thing because you're talking about learning and the way that like they
01:01:34.980just figure stuff out and it's so novel my observation this could be wrong my observation
01:01:39.420with my kids is that is the sleep regression like you said he learns to sit up and it blows his mind0.94
01:01:46.500that he can now sit up under his own power that night he can't fucking sleep because what is he
01:01:51.180doing that's the point he's sitting up and a lot of people don't know that when they learn a new0.95
01:01:55.800thing sometimes like if you some people can do this with a like a baby monitor if it's just an
01:02:01.180audio monitor but we actually have a camera uh over the you know we're a bit much we're a bit
01:02:07.400extra but we got it's called a nanicab so we can actually watch him when he's sleeping you'll see
01:02:12.640them like wake up in the middle of the night quietly and just start practicing it it's like
01:02:18.360the weirdest thing in the world we've got that too like my my eldest right she's turning four soon
01:02:22.620and she's creative and she has great grasp of english so she's to the point now just in the
01:02:29.120past month where she's got taken an interest in like making up stories and writing songs
01:02:33.260so she's always making up little songs they're all like using pieces of words from songs that
01:02:37.940i've taught her and then making up stories about people that she knows but that's the same thing
01:02:42.460like she can't sleep and she's always telling me she's like dad i can't sleep i can't sleep i'm
01:02:45.840like you you have to tell her you have to close your eyes she doesn't get it you have to close0.99
01:02:49.520your eyes and you have to quit fucking singing you can't sleep and sing she honestly didn't get0.99
01:02:55.000that like it blew her mind it's like because otherwise i'm watching her on the camera i put1.00
01:02:59.200her to bed and as soon as i leave the room because she knows she's not supposed to she starts singing
01:03:03.120and then she's waking her sister up because she's singing or she's telling a story or she's got
01:03:07.520little toys in her bed and she's doing a little diorama on the pillow at like one in the morning
01:03:12.220like you know what i mean but again with the sleep regression that's the reason that you have to keep
01:03:17.860i bet you have to keep i remember being told by my dad at 13 to go back to bed and i think it's0.97
01:03:24.420the same shit like whatever it is you learn during the day is going to keep you up and i think0.92
01:03:29.180everybody everybody struggles some people struggle with that in adulthood so it's interesting because0.99
01:03:34.040you watch them do it from birth up until they're adults yeah and i think you're looking at it and
01:03:39.940i don't like to um you know i was on a stream just last night with this really interesting
01:03:45.960guy named american elitist people can go catch that stream on his channel american elitist
01:03:50.620we'll be having that uh interview on this show not this episode not the next one because
01:03:57.060this episode we have uh disgraced propagandist very interesting interview next episode it's
01:04:03.740gonna be e michael jones one after that will be american elitist and then we might that might
01:04:10.980round out the year i think uh for for episodes and we have to start again fresh in 2024 but um
01:04:17.000here's a funny thing i didn't get to mention um so my wife you know she pays attention to all the
01:04:23.780mom stuff so the experience that every single woman is going to get is that once you have a kid
01:04:29.840whatever algorithms that she's plugged into will immediately start serving her mom stuff and only
01:04:36.740mom stuff so she's like i used to like fashion i used to like other things but now it's just
01:04:43.120fucking baby dips whatever but um one and so you get exposed to the momosphere and one thing0.87
01:04:51.340that she had been exposed to was women judge each other in all kinds of wild different ways1.00
01:04:57.320one of them was that apparently the mothers who have only boys only sons they're called they
01:05:04.460call those boy moms there's apparently some hierarchy where they feel like they're superior
01:05:10.600to other moms have you heard about that have you experienced that at all like they feel like they
01:05:17.040have a harder time and it's a bigger burden yeah they feel like it's a harder time being a woman
01:05:20.960raising sons they feel like they're they have a harder go which means they're better at absolutely1.00
01:05:26.560absolutely it's a total it's a total bitch move too yeah yeah so but my my wife was like because0.99
01:05:34.240we have one son and you're hoping for a girl like maybe it'd be nice to balance it out but then1.00
01:05:39.280she had started saying like you know what i'd i'd be okay with two sons because she started
01:05:44.060getting into the idea of like oh he's got a brother you know they can be like the two boys
01:05:48.940and she's kind of become acclimated to raising a boy she's walked through the fire because raising
01:05:54.500a boy is a lot harder it's a lot more energetic they're a lot stronger and wilder not to say
01:06:00.440girls aren't it's just boys tend to be a bit more the edge case of the whole the mother-son thing
01:06:05.380where it's really obvious is either single mothers of sons or mothers of sons who have a husband but
01:06:13.360they're like the the henpecked husband like it's like the dominant mom like my mom was essentially
01:06:18.600the mother with sons like she did that like she would tell other people about how i remember
01:06:23.240meeting people as an adult and hearing from them how awful i was as a kid and thinking like what0.99
01:06:29.900the like really what yeah let's spend some time on this i want to hear this i knew this fucking guy0.84
01:06:35.540this this was a long time this was probably about 10 years ago but this guy was a guy from my church0.92
01:06:41.340and uh he was a guy that my mom had been working with on a bunch of projects and apparently through
01:06:49.120talking and like working together at the church she had been like spilling the beans about how
01:06:54.240like rotten i was and how hard it was for her to raise me and my brother um and then one day
01:07:00.740he just took it upon himself because he a bunch of people from the church were over and then they
01:07:05.560had like for coffee and stuff they'd left and he was the last one there we were just sitting there
01:07:09.060and he starts like laying into me about how you know you should treat your mother better and
01:07:12.820you shouldn't have done all these things and like at this time i'm like 23 you know he's talking0.94
01:07:17.460about shit i must have done when i was shit i must have done when i was like 11 and i i guess0.94
01:07:22.600he doesn't know that because like he's just getting it from my mom and i'm just i don't know0.88
01:07:27.000i forget what i said i think no but it is funny the idea of him hearing stories about when you
01:07:31.380were 11 and thinking it was you as a 22 year old doing it yeah yeah you're tracking mud everywhere
01:07:36.980you're eating all the cookies you're a grown man this guy was half retarded like he worked in the0.59
01:07:44.460he worked in like the lcbo warehouse or something like he wasn't not a bright guy so i think he
01:07:48.960probably just missed a lot of cues but still the fact that like the fact is as a result of that i
01:07:54.040know my mom is out there telling people how hard and awful it was to be raising two boys and again
01:07:59.960saying oh raising two boys on my own well i mean mom we were both in high school by the time you
01:08:04.880got divorced so it wasn't like you know what i bet there's a lot of that i bet there's like0.98
01:08:10.080no one understands what i'm going through because you know you you it's not like you were fucking0.98
01:08:16.760in and out of jail it's not like you were like like stealing cars and shit no you know we kind0.96
01:08:22.720of got in i was a very well-behaved kid compared to most other kids in my cohort i've always been0.99
01:08:28.380under the radar of conservative kid but i just gave her lip why because i'm a fucking kid0.98
01:08:33.920like what do you want oh i i stayed out late and i didn't call back oh i'm such an awful kid0.99
01:08:40.360fucking christ and the worst thing about your brother is that he just never leaves his room0.98
01:08:44.300like what's your brother getting into like literally nothing yeah yeah well he's a neat0.99
01:08:48.780now and i like i've said a million times like it's essentially it's largely her fault that he
01:08:52.100is that way so yeah it's anyway there's uh an interesting archetype there as the you know what
01:08:58.940and here's another thing i don't want to spend too long on this because we have to get to other
01:09:01.820stuff but i find that and i see this around people my age and i don't know if it's more in women or
01:09:09.440whatnot but there's there's so much more secret resentment than you would expect in even well-off
01:09:17.600families like there's so much like secret resentment between mothers and fathers that the
01:09:23.140mother like a lot of dads feel you know they leave a lot of the parenting to their wives
01:09:28.420and i don't think they understand how much the mothers hate that and harbor that against them
01:09:34.400not all women but a lot do i think all women i think all women to varying degrees like we've
01:09:40.140actually you know my wife is wonderful but we've talked about that we've been married for a long
01:09:43.900time too so it's kind of easier for us to to get through it but like we've talked about that and
01:09:47.720like as a man i guess as a man or maybe it's my personality but i think it's a masculine thing i
01:09:53.180don't even notice it like i we have to talk about it and i genuinely am like wow i i didn't think of
01:09:59.040it that way so now i know i'm glad we were able to talk about it yeah and this stuff will like
01:10:04.420simmer up over time it leads to divorce leads to like taking it out on the kids and there's all
01:10:09.220kinds of sometimes resentments between the mothers and like if they have a bad relationship with the
01:10:13.840father then they have a bad relationship with the son because they see the father in the son there's
01:10:17.800all kinds of strange shit that happens um and and sometimes it gets wallpapered over in time but
01:10:24.820like especially when the kids are very young you can see a lot of this stuff jump to the surface0.78
01:10:28.960because you know your relationship dynamic changes forever a lot of people don't really understand
01:10:34.800that um and i don't know like it's just an interesting thing like these these these secret
01:10:40.520resentments that build up over the course of like 30 40 years and i never get resolved and sometimes
01:10:45.300just explode or turn into like we hear about like dysfunctional or toxic families you know that gets
01:10:51.040overused a lot like oh every family is dysfunctional true but there's some really really bad ones
01:10:55.880because people have like the wrong idea of what relationships should be or something not not all
01:11:01.760not all marriages are created equal like i don't like to rain on on specific people i don't you
01:11:06.600know you get in a situation and you have to make hard decisions but like if you can't if you have
01:11:11.120a spouse who you're supposed to like you're you're you're a trad con and you have a spouse
01:11:15.680who you're supposed to spend your whole life with and raise a family and you have something some
01:11:19.500niggling thing that you want to tell her that you won't tell her for like more than a month let alone
01:11:24.660a year or five years that you have a that is i know that sounds like a small thing that's not0.96
01:11:29.540a small that's the biggest fucking thing that is that is divorce time is what you're talking about0.96
01:11:34.020not now but eventually that's cancer that's cancer you have to resolve that you should be0.99
01:11:40.060able to talk about it when you hear about older couples who are like i hate my wife that's how
01:11:44.840you get there you actually like and when they say i i hate my wife i hate my husband it's like
01:11:49.560no believe them they probably do because they've had you know they've been having an imaginary
01:11:54.720argument in their head every day for like 20 years seriously i this is how i see it you talk
01:12:01.360about it as hard as it is to talk about it because what's the worst what's the worst case scenario is0.99
01:12:05.740you talk about it and you end up after days of argument you can't agree and you get a fucking0.89
01:12:10.340divorce well guess what if you don't talk about it you are absolutely going to have a divorce0.98
01:12:16.280because after two years or 10 years of the two of you having a quiet argument in your head
01:12:21.820straw manning the other spouse's position you're never going to be able to disentangle that because
01:12:27.140you're not even on the same pluck you're not in the same playing field anymore when you actually
01:12:30.640finally hash that argument out you've got years of pent-up rage and a million little arguments0.97
01:12:35.300that only you understand in the nuance of your own fucking brain you have to and it comes up the0.99
01:12:40.360best thing you can do is just fucking talk about it and if you are a normal young married couple1.00
01:12:47.500the talking about it is going to result in you screaming at each other and somebody running out0.99
01:12:51.840of the room that's fine that's not a divorce that's a fight okay you can come back to it in
01:12:57.360the evening you can come back to it the next morning but don't come back to it in 10 years
01:13:02.160if you come back to it in 10 years you may as well just get divorced now yeah it's so funny that i've
01:13:06.680caught myself a couple times doing that where you get to know someone a lot over the course of being
01:13:11.420with them and uh you can kind of predict what they're going to say to things and you just know
01:13:16.940like oh i did this and they're going to be pissed off and you know what i bet they're going to say
01:13:20.600this and when they say that here's what i'm going to say you start preparing you're having a
01:13:25.140conversation in your mind and preparing your line of attack for what you assume they're going to say
01:13:29.340when they you know notice something or they they do something you hear them like sigh angrily it's
01:13:35.000like oh i bet they're upset about this and you you go off into this like fiction in your mind
01:13:40.340and then when you confront it it turns out they weren't upset about that at all so you spent all1.00
01:13:45.080this time writing a script that you wasted your time you're a fucking moron and then you have to1.00
01:13:50.680ask okay where did that come from why did i do that that's fucked up that i did that it's fucked1.00
01:13:54.860up that i had i brought myself to like a screaming match in my mind that didn't manifest like what0.95
01:14:01.360so it's important that sometimes to look on yourself like okay maybe i'm the villain in
01:14:06.000this situation what let me sort that out and you know you think about that process right like you
01:14:10.400have an opponent and you're thinking in your head okay what is my opponent going to do i'm going to
01:14:14.060play out like a bunch of scenarios and if they say this i'll say this and maybe they're thinking
01:14:17.240this and but the framing that you've got there is this person is an antagonist this is somebody who
01:14:22.660is not on your side they want to destroy you and you have to launch a preemptive strike but i like
01:14:28.540again hold on a second who are we talking about again this isn't the school bully that's where
01:14:32.740you learn the pattern by the way or an older brother who would harass you or an abusive parent
01:14:37.280this is your spouse this is somebody you voluntarily chose to spend your life with
01:14:41.920so the starting assumption should be this person is on your side and has your best interests at
01:14:47.360heart now if you don't actually believe that this is kind of a different discussion but if you do
01:14:51.600actually think that you understand that then you need to and this is something that i learned
01:14:58.040after many fights with my wife for a long time was that you have to look at it in the context of
01:15:05.140we are disagreeing but each of us wants the same thing we both want the family to survive
01:15:12.520the marriage to survive and we have goals that are roughly in line and we just need to work out
01:15:17.640where the differences are so that we can find a compromise it's not the same thing as i have a big
01:15:23.480competitive match with my nemesis tomorrow morning and i have to say exactly the right thing or they
01:15:29.440will crush me if you enter an argument with your spouse with that attitude it's going to be either
01:15:34.820a divorce or a call to the police or both like why i don't even know why you would do why you
01:15:39.680would do that by the way like there's no referee here there's no actual points being kept like if
01:15:44.360you crush your spouse like it's not gonna work out well for you yeah yeah oh yeah you're gonna
01:15:49.680crush your spouse how's that gonna work out for you oh yeah you don't have a marriage anymore1.00
01:15:53.100why don't you just save the why don't you just go to the fucking lawyer and don't have the argument1.00
01:15:56.920honestly serious i'm being fucking totally serious if that's the way you're approaching it don't even0.99
01:16:01.440have the argument just go to the fucking lawyer and get your divorce papers because like it doesn't0.97
01:16:05.680make any fucking sense man but again this is it's all it's very emotional in the moment um and i1.00
01:16:10.860don't i'm saying all this you i don't think you can teach this shit you just have to do it and0.99
01:16:15.120then hopefully you your marriage survives it and then you learn the lesson there's been lots of0.99
01:16:19.600arguments where i won with facts and logic and i flipped the script on her i proved that oh the
01:16:25.020thing that you're mad at me about you do that too i did i did the whole thing yeah and i didn't
01:16:30.560there's no point going anywhere i don't get them don't win you don't win i don't there's no buzzer
01:16:37.660and this the buzzer is you get divorced it's a really different thing and that's a difficult
01:16:41.580thing to think of because you'll get locked into these things especially when it's kids too
01:16:44.860and then that like that changes your dynamic like that's what's interesting about kids like you can
01:16:49.000be locked in the worst fight of your life but then if the baby's crying you'll both like get to work
01:16:55.360on the baby and you'll actually pretend to like each other for a little minute there in front of
01:17:00.100the kid if you're it's like hey like and the kids sometimes will remind you that you do like each
01:17:05.880other because you have this thing that's not the main reason but it kind of does help and i do i
01:17:12.180pull that trick very snakely on my wife like if she's mad at me my son looks like identical to me
01:17:19.400so like she'll be mad if she's mad at me i'll hold i'll hold him up with his head beside my head
01:17:26.400yeah i'm like look it's that guy you like1.00
01:17:28.980and then ha ha gotcha bitch i'm going to use that for as long as i can0.86
01:17:36.360um we'll be moving on to the actual oh this book i wanted to talk about it's fascinating book but0.96
01:17:42.700leading into that um to set the stage there's this uh article that i had come across which i
01:17:50.220found very interesting um a lot of people i think had the wrong read on it but i'll explain why
01:17:56.960This is an article I found in VDare, vdare.com.
01:18:01.720It's concerning a man named Alex Karp, and he's the CEO of an organization called Palantir.
01:18:10.960Co-founded by Peter Thiel back in 2003, its mission, providing software that customers use to integrate volumes of data from images to spreadsheets into a central platform where it can then be securely analyzed and interpreted.
01:18:26.260News of Palantir's plans to go public, as well as its recent announcement that it will be relocating its headquarters from Palo Alto to Denver, has put the secretive software company in the spotlight.
01:18:37.140Best known for its work with U.S. government agencies like the CIA, the Department of Defense, and most controversially, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the company was founded following 9-11 with the goal of defending American interests.
01:18:48.560The core mission of our company always was to make the West, especially America, the strongest in the world for the sake of global peace and prosperity.
01:18:57.720But in recent years, Palantir has also courted customers like Airbus, Chrysler and BP.
01:19:02.900Commercial customers now make up about 50 percent of the company's revenue, a number that's trended upwards over the past decade.
01:38:52.120And then it's through electricity and through constant exposure, it's like forcing us together and like recreating this idea that like we're all connect, not even in like a hippie sort of way.
01:39:04.480but it's like we're all aware and all connected to each other at the same time
01:39:08.220and we don't really like it it's an alien feeling to us we still rebel against it but that's
01:39:13.040like this feeling is what most tribes feel at all times and we're experiencing what a lot of
01:39:19.000oral cultures feel at all times which i thought was an interesting way of looking at it as you
01:39:24.400predicted that the world was becoming a global village we're going back into the bicameral mind
01:39:30.060which is tribal collective without any individual consciousness but it seems dr. McLuhan that this
01:39:38.460this this tribal world is not friendly oh no tribal people one of their main kinds of sport
01:39:45.180is a sort of butchering each other it's you know it's a it's a full-time sport in tribal societies
01:39:50.460but i had some ideas we got global and tribal we you know we were going to come the closer you get
01:39:54.940together the more you like each other yeah there's no evidence of that in any situation that we we've
01:39:59.820ever heard of that when people get close together they get more and more savagely uh impatient with
01:40:06.380these well why is that because of the nature of man or his tolerance is tested in that in those
01:40:11.660narrow circumstances very much village people aren't that much in love with each other
01:40:17.820we're no more prepared to encounter radio and tv in our literate milieu by literate what i was
01:40:23.340talking about before about just like the strict one-to-one you know rationalistic reader mind
01:40:29.340Then the native of Ghana is able to cope with literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and breaches him into individual isolation, which is more familiar to the Western mind.
01:40:41.800I'll say one thing that I disagreed on the book, and some people can push back on this before.
01:40:46.960He had said that this is an interesting thing to say, but he had said that like literacy, in a sense, is almost a prison.
01:40:55.580Like there's many times in the book where he talks about the more universalist oral cultures as if they're superior.
01:41:03.440And I think we might have talked with this before, but there's this idea of the cognitive tradeoff hypothesis.
01:41:10.200Cognitive tradeoff hypothesis is this idea that when apes, great apes, human ancestors, they had higher cognitive abilities to do more mental calculations.
01:41:24.160they didn't they were lacking literacy they were lacking individual but they could
01:41:29.060view the jungle they could view what was going on and do more impressive instant calculations
01:41:35.020based on what they were seeing and as we gained literacy as we gained more advanced communications
01:41:41.940we lost those cognitive faculties and so in that sense he would say like oh the oral culture is
01:41:48.820like they're able to think on their feet more they're maybe better to adapt to situations
01:41:53.820and uh there are a few times in the book where he makes it sound like the literate mind was like
01:41:59.980like we were domesticated by words or we're lesser because of our literate minds and i just disagree
01:42:06.000with that and he also made a point in the book that he said that um he said that the japanese
01:42:11.480mind was able to retribalize more than the western mind and that's because the western mind had
01:42:20.200literacy for much longer and i mean if you look it up the japanese written the written japanese
01:42:28.260language is i think only a couple centuries later than the earliest you know uh anglo european
01:42:35.820languages so like i don't know there's little things like that where i think he's reaching
01:42:40.040where he says oh obviously the japanese can retribalize and get a more universal thing
01:42:45.080not it doesn't matter like we're both equally literate or we both had a written language for
01:42:50.840around the same amount of time anyway um there might be some ways you can pick that apart because
01:42:56.760maybe the japanese language is a bit more pictorial i don't know but that's just one thing that i
01:43:01.980disagree with i welcome people to push back on that um and like he was saying here um specialist
01:43:08.180technologies detribalize the non-specialist electric technology retribalizes myth is the
01:43:15.940contraction or implosion of any process and the instant speed of electricity confers the mythic
01:43:21.480dimension on ordinary industrial and social action today we live mythically but continue to think
01:43:27.220fragmentarily and on single planes you kind of see what i'm talking about like this is a direct quote
01:43:32.080from the book he speaks in very esoteric mythological language some people like that
01:43:37.040i like that i can see why that might be difficult for some people i'm also taking like huge chunks
01:43:43.660and also reading them so maybe some of this needs proper build-up but i'm trying to collect these
01:43:48.120ideas as succinctly as i can because there's quite a bit to cover and i want to make sure i give it
01:43:54.100its due even though we've talked about it before um he says here's here's a line here the electric
01:44:00.100implosion now brings oral and tribal ear culture to the literate west not only does the visual
01:57:15.520and he contrasts this against the tribal man
01:57:20.220He says, tribal cultures cannot entertain the possibility of the individual or of the separate citizen.
01:57:26.260Their ideas of spaces and times are neither continuous nor uniform, but compassionate and compositional in their intensity.
01:57:36.500Oral cultures act and react at the same time.
01:57:40.040Phonetic culture endows men with the means of repressing their feelings and emotions when engaged in action.
01:57:46.320so that's sort of like the universalism of being that we don't have access to which we're kind of
01:57:52.620re-emerging into now and how does that function work well it goes into a bit more detail he says
01:57:58.320the written word spells out in sequence what is quick or implicit in the spoken word
01:58:03.800that's why reading is so mentally taxing compared to speaking it is the extension of man in speech
01:58:11.480that enables the intellect to detach itself from the vaster wider reality language does for
01:58:17.220intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body it enables them to move from one thing
01:58:23.020from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement as an extension or
01:58:28.720uttering or outering of our senses at once language has always been held to be man's richest art form
01:58:34.760it can be argued then that the phonetic alphabet alone is the technology that has been the means
01:58:40.820of creating civilized man the separate individuals equal before the written code of law and this is
01:58:47.300kind of the thread that's been going through a lot of the past few episodes and the next one as well
01:58:53.260when we discuss the concept of logos about the the relevance and the importance of the written word
01:58:59.060not just in as a form of communication but how you actually define yourself and find your place
01:59:06.000within reality like the western man compared to the oral tradition or or the ancient man
01:59:13.200can actually position himself differently in reality than they could like they they can't
01:59:18.300even understand the concept of a man apart from nature which is why it's so difficult to deal
01:59:24.220with them now he says to sum all this up pictographic and hieroglyphic writing as used
01:59:31.200in Babylon, Mayan, and Chinese cultures represents an extension of the visual sense for storing
01:59:38.060and expediting access to human experience.
01:59:41.620All of these forms give pictorial expression to oral meanings.
01:59:45.680As such, they approximate the animated cartoon and are extremely unwieldy, requiring many
01:59:51.080signs for an infinity of data and operations of social action.
01:59:55.000That's why they're kind of difficult to use.
01:59:56.820in contrast the phonetic alphabet by a few letters only was able to encompass all languages
02:00:02.620such an achievement however involved the separation of both signs and sounds from
02:00:07.620their semantic and dramatic meanings no other system of writing has accomplished this feat
02:00:12.160and how does that separate us he says to understand such effects it's necessary to see
02:00:18.480literacy as a typographic technology applied not only to the rationalization of entire procedures
02:00:25.240and marketing but to law and education and city planning the principles of continuity
02:00:31.340uniformity and repeatability derived from print technology have in england and america long
02:00:37.920permeate permeated every phase of communal life so here's where like the entire idea of
02:00:44.020replication and automation that not only means we can manufacture products that that's the stamp of
02:00:50.980your entire being another example he gives here is literate people tend to think of cause and
02:00:57.460effect as sequential as if one thing pushed another by physical force non-literate people
02:01:03.080register very little interest in this kind of efficient cause and effect but are fascinated
02:01:08.120by hidden forms that produce magical results inner rather than outer and this is why the
02:01:14.220literate west sees the rest of the world is caught up in a seamless web of superstition
02:01:18.900this is kind of runs counter to what he was saying before because he'll alternate occasionally in the
02:01:23.100book by saying that the non-literate world is superior to the litter minor very obviously
02:01:28.960caught up in a web of just magic and superstition and he gives an example of the machine he says
02:01:34.200as contrasted with the mere tool because a tool or a media is an extension of extension of a sense
02:01:40.260or an action the machine is an extension or outering of an entire process a complex sequence
02:01:46.460the tool extends the fists the nails the teeth the arms the wheel extends the feet in rotation and
02:01:52.560sequential movement printing the first complete mechanization of a handicraft breaks up the
02:01:58.260movement of the hand into a series of discrete steps that are repeatable from this analytic
02:02:04.160sequence came the assembly line principle but the assembly line is now obsolete and the electric
02:02:09.200gauge because synchronization is no longer sequential by electric tapes synchronization
02:02:14.780of any number of different acts can be simultaneous plurality of times succeeds uniformity of time
02:02:21.920and that's just another example i was saying before about the simultaneousness of this
02:02:27.060existence that i don't think i still think we're trying to you know i said this before that
02:02:32.380the ideologies that we're most familiar with this would be liberalism fashion and fascism
02:02:40.960and communism marxism that emerged in my mind from liberalism as uh responses to it they like
02:02:48.440like it's it's like if you read marx and you read a lot of these early communist thinkers it seems
02:02:53.060that their thinking was so tied to the industrial revolution and awareness of commodity markets and
02:02:58.980capital and whatnot but that was very much of its time and by still having a fascination and trying
02:03:06.840to employ these ideologies, we are trying to employ an industrial revolution styled ideology
02:03:12.500in a cybernetic world. That's why fascism and communism struggle to map onto our lived experience
02:03:19.460now, because they're very process driven. It's very, I don't want to say reductive, but somewhat
02:03:24.440low resolution compared to our awareness of how things functions now. And I had said that there's
02:03:29.840been no ideology, even if you don't like ideology, I don't give a shit, but you're aware that
02:03:35.700ideologies emerge from various constraints historical periods and whatnot i don't think
02:03:43.320there's been one ideology or one comprehensive reaction to the information age or the cybernetic
02:03:51.160age maybe like this is as close as you get and sometimes you get like the techno futurist type
02:03:57.700stuff but even then it's it's kind of cartoony it doesn't feel like a full-fledged intellectual
02:04:03.820reaction or an addressing of how like the the information revolution has fucking broken our
02:04:11.340minds and we we we're still picking up the pieces right now um and more than anything that could be
02:04:17.020the response for so many people like depressed and losing their minds as well and before when
02:04:23.560we were talking about implosion there was this concept of like what's the difference when an
02:04:27.260explosion of technology versus sort of this metaphysical implosion that technology caused
02:04:32.840He said, in the implosion of the electric age, the separation of thought and feeling has come to seem as strange as the departmentalization of knowledge in schools and universities.
02:04:46.140It was precisely the power to separate thought and feeling and to be able to act without reciting that split literate man out of the tribal world of close family bonds and private and social life.
02:04:59.120Like the technology doesn't actually increase your boundaries.
02:05:02.640it's kind of collapsing you back into this familiar world of interconnectivity and it's it's our we're
02:05:08.800constantly sort of oscillating between those two beliefs of what's actually happening he says it
02:05:14.400here education is ideally uh the civil defense against media fallout yet western man has had so
02:05:21.120far no education or equipment for meeting any of the new media on their own terms litter a man is
02:05:27.840not only numb and vague in the presence of film or video but he intensifies his ineptness by a
02:05:34.160defense of arrogance and condensation to pop culture and mass entertainment it was this spirit
02:05:40.560of bulldog opacity that the scholastic philosophers failed to meet the challenge of the printed book
02:05:47.040in the 16th century all meaning alters with acceleration because all patterns of personal
02:05:53.520and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information um
02:06:01.120and one point he makes here as the speed of information increases like we just said the
02:06:05.600tendency is for politics to move away from representation and delegation of constituents
02:06:11.360towards immediate involvement of the entire community in the central axis decision when
02:06:16.800the electric speed is introduced into such a delegated organization the organization can
02:06:22.640can only be made to function by series of subterfuges and makeshifts these strike some
02:06:27.560observers as base betrayals of the original aims and purposes of the established forms
02:06:31.520and i guess that's a point i love that you know politics i used to be more of a one-to-one0.96
02:06:38.540relationship but the idea that a politician is no they don't really give a shit about their0.92
02:06:42.840individual constituents they give a shit about sort of this concept of the abstract public that0.94
02:06:48.820they can interface with directly instantaneously through media manipulation or analysis or graphs0.91
02:06:56.520or whatever so like the the public the people have necessarily been abstracted by electricity0.98
02:07:02.420so politicians they don't give a shit about people they give a shit about graphs and that's0.89
02:07:07.600how that happened it's just as much to do with the instantaneous information as it is like0.98
02:07:12.600their distance physically from the people um he says to the student of media it is difficult to
02:07:19.660explain the human indifference to social effects of these radical forces the phonetic alphabet and
02:07:25.680the printed word that exploded the closed tribal world into the open society of fragmented functions
02:07:31.420and specialist knowledge and action have never been studied in their roles as a magical transformer
02:07:37.600The antithetic electric power of instant information that reverses social explosion into implosion, private enterprise into organized man, and expanding empires into common markets has attained as little recognition as the written word.
02:07:54.420The power of radio to re-tribalize mankind, its almost instant reversal of individualism into collectivism, fascist or Marxist, has gone unnoticed.
02:08:05.300um there's a few things i'll just end with this because there's a lot we could talk about i know
02:08:12.880we gotta get going soon i think i've covered a lot of what i wanted to cover um it says
02:08:18.740if delegated change a chain of command authority won't work by telephone but only by written
02:08:24.220instruction what sort of authority does come into play um on the telephone only the authority of
02:08:32.980knowledge will work delegated authority is linear visual and hierarchical the authority of knowledge
02:08:39.140is non-linear non-visual and inclusive um and he breaks it down here how the medium kind of breaks
02:08:45.460down these walls he says the telephone is speech without walls the phonograph is the music hall
02:08:50.460without walls the photograph is the museum without walls the electric light is space without walls
02:08:55.820the movie radio and tv is a classroom without walls and man the food gatherer reappears
02:09:01.860incongruously as an information gatherer um so i i talked about a lot there's a lot i that i gave
02:09:08.500you right there some of it's been discussed in previous episodes um i'm curious to hear i know
02:09:13.300we have to get going soon but what are your thoughts on all of that i know it threw a lot
02:09:17.340at you and a lot of it might have sounded a bit obtuse but what do you think it is a lot uh i
02:09:22.760think what you'd said at the beginning that people don't generally understand the depth of
02:09:28.440medium is the message and i'm i feel like i'm grasping it a little bit more now
02:09:34.040um especially as it relates to the things we were talking about before about like last i think it
02:09:38.740was last episode or on the stream about that people don't have the the mental machinery to
02:09:43.300even understand certain concepts until you teach them something so based on the way that people's
02:09:47.940cultures work and their languages work a certain media with the same like objective message can
02:09:54.880have a totally different impact on that person so it's it's there's there's a lot going on there
02:10:00.260yeah because the interplay once again it's like okay what is speed you know literacy
02:10:06.360the written word is a carrier for speech that is the medium but that medium necessarily changes
02:10:15.020speech itself and it changes who is writing it as well so it's this like constant feedback loop
02:10:23.760of development and that's that's more the relationship he's talking about that a media
02:10:28.000is just an extension of something of the body that's where it starts with maybe some people
02:10:32.880disagree with that but that's the framework that he's using so and every extension we do that uses
02:10:39.040to extend our sight our sound our touch feel whatever anything that is trying to either
02:10:45.440protect or amplify the human body it simultaneously numbs it but also changes our understanding of it
02:10:52.720it and our understanding of ourselves and also it's unavoidable you know i mean it's like this
02:10:58.020isn't something that you get to once you're aware of radio it'll have a profound effect on you and
02:11:03.880just like electricity like you don't know how much the electrical or the information revolution
02:11:09.200changed how you think about how you think processes operate and we have such a dynamic
02:11:15.900understanding of the interconnectivity of things that might not have been apparent to0.98
02:11:20.960people centuries ago not to say that they're stupid not to say that's an iq thing not that
02:11:27.720they're like cavemen but it's just a different way to view the world that i i don't think has0.84
02:11:33.340really been acknowledged by anyone really and this was written by marshall mcclew and how many
02:11:39.120decades ago but still we still grapple with 21st century ideas with 20th century language
02:11:44.920and we're trying to grasp the in the information revolution with industrial revolution
02:11:50.460concepts i think that's why we're all there's this tension there um anyway i'm just gonna end
02:11:57.000up repeating myself i know we gotta get going soon but we'll probably return to this in the future
02:12:00.940because um there's a lot i would recommend people read this book because it's kind of fun like it's
02:12:07.900not dense it's not um full of like you you can read it very i don't want to say casually but
02:12:15.020it's very energetic it's very even the stuff you disagree with you'll find interesting and it's
02:12:21.080written in pretty plain language um anyway that's nothing but good notes on that cool
02:12:26.920all right all right i'll talk we'll talk to you next week yeah no worries man i'll see you
02:12:30.840I'm here. I'm very, very excited about this episode. I'm here with someone I'm very fascinated
02:12:52.540with because he is one of the rare individuals who can speak to my professional field while0.51
02:12:59.120also being involved in it and not just speculating and bullshitting i'm here with disgraced propagandist
02:13:05.040now you can find him as the creator of the carousel the carousel.substack.com he's also
02:13:11.040on twitter at or x at disgraced prop and perhaps most relevant to this discussion he is the i will
02:13:18.560call the founder of will the agency you can find that at will the agency.com i would describe it
02:13:25.360to people as a marketing and advertising and also a branding agency that seeks to do work with this
02:13:33.500broad sector called the dissident, right? And I think unless I'm mistaken, you did some work
02:13:39.740recently with Charles Haywood. Is that correct? Yeah, we did a little work with Charles Haywood.
02:13:44.660Yes. Yeah, it's really interesting stuff. And I've been a fan of your sub stack, as I said,
02:13:51.100the carousel and there's a few things i would like to point people to uh maybe we'll discuss
02:13:56.200it on this episode as well maybe we won't get around to it because there's a lot i'd love to
02:13:59.260talk about but the the pieces that i could recommend the most uh there's a series you did
02:14:05.080on the road to consumer nationalism what parts one two and three uh there's also there's four
02:14:11.200four action okay i only read the first three um another one vibe shift to destroy marketing world
02:14:45.580even though, you know, that is not my favorite type of stuff to write, but I have, or, you know,
02:14:51.560it's actually easier for me to write, but I, I'm not, you know, this type of big brain think piece
02:14:58.640is, I've done some of this and the things that I've done my big brain think pieces on have
02:15:05.940essentially been to all answer the same question, which is the why behind woke marketing. And I
02:15:14.480think that I got really lucky because I sort of started on that project shortly before Bud Light
02:15:21.880happened. And I think Bud Light was such a massive global moment that we're still seeing the results
02:15:30.480of, frankly. And so, yeah, that's been kind of my beat, at least as a analytical thinker,
02:15:38.380which is really only a small part of what I do. But yeah, that's been my beat for a little while.
02:15:43.180And I was curious because I was saying before the show, and listeners of the show will be familiar with my background, but I've worked in agencies, primarily in the Toronto area. I don't live there anymore. But when I live there, a lot of agencies, large and medium size, I've also worked client side in their marketing departments, and with startups as well. And you have a lot of stories on your sub stack and a lot of insight.
02:16:09.640And I was just curious if you wanted to maybe go into, and this is one of those annoying
02:16:14.300questions you would get in a boardroom, but like, tell us your story, you know, like what
02:16:18.420I'm very interested to hear your odyssey in the world of marketing.
02:16:37.280um so uh i should do live though i do have the ability to do live i just haven't gotten that
02:16:44.760part set up yet some people prefer recorded um because sometimes they prefer later on they'll
02:16:51.420say oh can you remove this or i said something i want censored and then they have the chance to but
02:16:56.320i don't think you have anything to worry about no i'm not worried about at all i was actually
02:17:00.480just wondering but um i yeah i i've tried experimented with the live a little bit and i
02:17:07.040really i just don't like it it's like not i think some people really thrive on the live i i don't
02:17:13.380like also that's why i like audio only because i know there's a lot of people who do video but i
02:17:18.600noticed that uh a wave of relief seems to hit them when they know they don't need to put on
02:17:23.600the fancy shirt or do their hair or whatever yeah right definitely definitely yeah especially with1.00
02:17:29.480the female i i've noticed in uh in recording my podcast that women cancel like 10 times more than
02:17:40.120men i don't know if you've ever had women on this podcast yeah it's amazing it's like when i have an
02:17:45.020upcoming like recording with a man there's probably you know eight out of ten chance that he's gonna
02:17:51.180show up maybe even nine out of ten if i have an upcoming show scheduled with a woman there's like
02:17:57.140three out of chance the three out of 10 chance that they will come to the first recording that
02:18:04.360we have scheduled they'll always reschedule it like a couple of times and you know what i've
02:18:08.840been ghosted by a couple of women i'm not going to name their names but i did notice that more
02:18:13.380often and i'm i'm gonna take an extra step here and say i've noticed that even with professional
02:18:19.100meetings as well now that i think about it yeah yeah yeah it's weird it's a when i think a big
02:18:26.240part of that is as you just said it's like i think women feel the pressure to like get ready
02:18:29.960for it you know and so they if like a woman isn't feeling like uh like they're looking good or if
02:18:37.000they've like done their makeup or whatever enough uh i think that they're probably more likely to0.79
02:18:43.160not ready to step into the autistic thunderdome with the rest of us yeah right right dude your
02:18:48.880voice sounds a lot so much like do you know who last things is yep i actually uh i spoke of them
02:18:55.420recently for his uh uh last picture show oh you were on it first time i'd ever really talked to
02:19:01.260him too but i i did notice that dude you guys's voices are like identical there's a few guys in
02:19:07.640our space that are like that actually who's like we have weird like voice physiognomy like
02:19:12.960similarities and i also think it comes from for me it's it's years of listening to yourself in
02:19:19.920post-production i think when people are forced to listen to their own voice they kind of self-correct
02:19:25.120And maybe we all start self-correcting to this sort of, you know, very self-aware, not like, not like a transatlantic draw, but whatever the podcast version of that is.
02:19:40.620So, yeah, we're talking about your history in the world of marketing because you also had another sub stack about like the longhouse and working around females and stuff.
02:19:52.500Well, that was actually not by me. That was a guest post from a friend of mine laboring in the longhouse. But yes, I have written quite a bit about this. So yeah, I'll tell you my story. So I went to law school and then I graduated law school. I graduated pretty close to the top of my class. I was on law review, which is sort of like the best thing you can be in law school.
02:20:22.500um but i realized kind of halfway through that i i mean i really really did not want to practice law
02:20:30.560um and it was like killing me like it was like literally like eating me up like i don't let me
02:20:36.000ask you what was it about that because a lot of people you hear like oh i should have become a
02:20:39.680lawyer because i'm good at arguing or something but what would you say was what kind of drove you
02:20:45.560from it well i'm not just good at arguing i'm great at arguing uh so i'm i'm like extremely
02:20:52.140good at arguing, particularly in the written form. I'm much better in writing than I am
02:20:58.500in talking because I get too angry and like uncontrolled in talking. Whereas you really
02:21:04.720need to, to be a great verbal talking arguer, you really need to have a calm disposition,
02:21:09.800which I don't have. But in writing, I was really good. I was, you know, I got, I think maybe the
02:21:16.760best grade in my class or the second best grade in legal writing, which is quite difficult.
02:21:21.720In American law school, American law school is a extremely difficult intellectual challenge.
02:21:28.360And I really like, you know, figured out how to do that well.
02:21:36.160And so what sucks about law, though, is really just the lifestyle of it to me seemed so absurdly horrible.
02:22:34.940And I would sit there all day, and I was supposed to, you know,
02:22:40.280like do stuff on the computer and read stuff and write arguments
02:22:44.380and fill out paperwork. And, you know, I was supposed to do that for like 12 hours a day.
02:22:49.720Like if you're going to succeed in law, you're supposed to be one of these. I mean,
02:22:55.180this is kind of dying because meritocracy is dying in general. Right. So it's probably like
02:23:01.58050% easier to be a lawyer today than back when I was doing it, at least in most areas,
02:23:07.400probably in New Orleans for sure, because it's like not a top legal market. But law was like
02:23:13.120finance and where it was like, uh, a pie eating contest where the, uh, reward is more pie. It was
02:23:20.940like, you know, it was like, um, if you want to be a great lawyer, you got to get in there at six0.97
02:23:28.920in the morning and fucking, you know, be on call at all times. And it was a lot of like performative0.96
02:23:35.080hard working right um and i was not only did i not want to do it i was literally incapable of
02:23:43.800doing i i couldn't i like could not do it i would sit down and i would like you know it'd be a0.94
02:23:49.880friday or thursday and i would like think about sitting in this fucking chair all day0.63
02:23:54.540and i and till you know for 12 hours like doing citations in a fluorescently lit room like0.95
02:24:00.740just sitting there and I was like, I can't do this. I was like, I'm not going to spend my life
02:24:05.960doing this. It's just not a fucking option. You know, like I needed, I had to move around. I had0.99
02:24:10.760to like move my body around, you know, like I couldn't, I couldn't just fucking sit there.0.74
02:24:15.520It was like not possible for me to do it. I probably could do it now just because, you know,0.61
02:24:20.100I'm, I'm so much older and I, you know, you, you kind of relax and become more sedentary and more,
02:24:27.140able to do that stuff. But at 25 years old, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't sit and play
02:24:35.160that game. So I pretty much fucked off. I mean, after I made Law Review, I pretty much fucked1.00
02:24:40.760off for two years. I spent all my time at those fancy law firms flirting with girls, playing0.99
02:24:46.920hooky, going and drinking during the day and smoking weed with people. I pretty much just
02:24:52.020abandoned my role there. I was ranked very last on the law review because I just never
02:25:00.240did anything for it once I made it. Because you don't have to. Once you make it, there's
02:25:04.840no point in even participating because it doesn't get you anything. So anyway, I just
02:25:11.800hated it. I absolutely hated it. And I had kind of like a, I don't want to say a mental
02:25:17.660breakdown. I didn't have a mental breakdown, but I definitely had a little bit of a mental
02:25:22.620break-ish. I mean, like, it's not like I, I pretty much had like three months of feeling
02:25:31.160totally horrible. Like the worst I've ever felt in my entire life. Like really, like emergency
02:25:37.080level terrible. And the way I got out of that was by sort of mentally committing to being a writer.
02:25:47.660to being a like a you know not just a legal writer but a creative writer whether that
02:25:53.040you know fiction or not but i mean i was gonna say just your just your last point this is something
02:25:58.200i talked to a couple of people about because i've spoken to people in my own circles who have felt
02:26:03.620what you were feeling and they're around the same age you'd have been as well i'm in my mid-30s so
02:26:08.380that's basically 75 in this scene um but the idea the feet they're like why do i feel this way i'm
02:26:14.820like well usually when you get into doing something at the start it's chaotic and it's interesting but
02:26:19.660they're everyone has a moment where they kind of peek their head over the trenches and they realize
02:26:24.940oh i'm actually going to do this for the next 50 years even parents get that too parent if you if
02:26:30.540anyone has any kids like once you once you have a kid it's crazy crazy but after like eight nine
02:26:35.680months like you get used to it and then you stop and it's like oh my god this i'm actually i'm
02:26:39.720gonna do this for another like 17 years yeah and then something happens sometimes something breaks
02:26:44.740you're like holy shit what the fuck am i gonna do yeah and same thing happened but and the idea is0.98
02:26:49.120that i guess you got to pick something where you enjoy the shittiest part of it because i before i0.99
02:26:55.060got into marketing i worked in restaurants so i went to culinary school and i was just like i and
02:27:00.640i worked in fine dining i worked in diners everything in between and i'm like i felt the
02:27:04.540same thing i'm like i can't fucking do this i'm going to kill myself eventually yeah and there's
02:27:09.380Some people that love it and bet like the Matty Mathesons of the world, it's good for them.0.98
02:27:14.220But if it ain't in you, it's like it'll it'll destroy you.
02:27:19.160Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it will destroy you.
02:27:21.600I think like, again, I like I remember talking to the number two on the law review, who is this guy named Mark, who Tulane Law is a like graveyard.
02:27:39.380of broken musical dreams because it's in new orleans so like you know new orleans is like a
02:27:47.040music destination it's kind of like a you know like a third rate nashville type of thing and uh
02:27:54.600so a lot of musicians who are like real you know basically giving up on being a musician and going
02:28:02.780and being a lawyer because they're you know like upper middle class white people and that's just
02:28:08.460like what they do. And they don't have the balls to actually go all the way, right? So a lot of0.98
02:28:14.720those people are there. And the number two guy on the Law Review, like one of the best, you know,
02:28:19.160the standout of our class, I really wonder what he's doing now. I was just endlessly complaining
02:28:25.300about being on Law Review. And I was just endlessly like saying, even what I'm saying now
02:28:29.360to people, which was like, how do you do this? Like, how do you literally go in there day after
02:28:35.920day, sit there for 14 hours, and then go home. Like, I couldn't, how do you live that way? Like,
02:28:41.980I don't even understand how you do it. And he kind of pulled me aside and said, look, man,
02:28:46.000the key is to do something you don't like, but just trick yourself into thinking you do like it,
02:28:55.080right? And that, his advice really bothered me, largely because in a sense, he's right,
02:29:04.440You know, like in a sense, a strong person learns how to take the difficult parts of what they're doing on a day-to-day basis and to love them, to find some, you know, I do all kinds of shit I hate doing, but I try and find a way to like it anyway.
02:40:27.980Two, any organization not explicitly right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.
02:40:34.200And three, the behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
02:40:43.120So the third one is very difficult to understand, and we don't even need to get rid of it, into it.
02:40:48.000But the first and second, everyone is reactionary about what they know best and any organization
02:40:52.920not explicitly right wing will sooner or later become left wing.
02:40:57.420What he's trying to get at there, what he's trying to like unpack is just the nature of
02:41:04.200institutions and the nature of institutions is what happens, right?
02:41:10.560They're launched by a founder who really cares about the mission and he has his people with
02:41:16.460him who really care about the mission. But then over time, that institution gets filled up with
02:41:25.620people who aren't intimate with the thing, right? They're not intimate with the topic of the
02:41:31.240institution. They're just, you know, inevitably they're coming from further outside the mission,
02:41:37.940right? Like if it's Budweiser, you know, the Bud family used to wean its babies. The first thing
02:41:44.860they would give them was a little bit of beer, right? Like that family knew everything about
02:41:49.860beer. But over time, more and more people enter the company that don't know about that thing.
02:41:54.640Sometimes they seek them out. Like we need a new mind behind this. So we'll find someone who's
02:41:59.260almost hostile towards the company itself. Exactly. And that's why people become
02:42:04.540non-reactionary, non-conservative about the things that they're supposedly in charge of.
02:42:10.120And then that's why the second law comes in, which is that after a while, any institution that doesn't specifically say we are right wing in its bylaws, right, will inevitably become left wing.
02:42:27.420And the reason for that is essentially this communist instinct, right?
02:42:31.400If you, it's an agency problem. If you are in control of a bunch of money or of a mission or of something that really is not involving you, right? Like if you're in control of a institution that the destiny of that institution doesn't really have anything to do with you personally, inevitably it's going to move left forever because the people just don't have the mission of keeping it non-egalitarian.
02:43:01.400right like it's the institution is just going to sort of dissolve into this egalitarian like
02:43:08.720resource giveaway zone you know yeah it's almost like just this entropic force some people would
02:43:15.600call a lot of the left wing that dysgenic force but without getting in to the biology and certainly
02:43:19.880an entropic force and i'm reminded of two books we covered on the show a while ago one is bowling
02:43:25.620alone but more specifically i was thinking of exit voice and loyalty by albert hirschman
02:43:30.060and that interesting phenomena that says that when you start to see the scenario you're outlining
02:43:36.080there's a lot of high functioning individuals in the organization like the smartest people
02:43:41.320will start to see the way things are going and oftentimes it's the most competent and most
02:43:47.660skilled people who might be the first to leave and you see this and not only in firms but also
02:43:52.920neighborhoods and oftentimes because they'll see which way the winds are changing say well i'm
02:43:57.020going to get out while the getting's good to be the first of the door but that causes a chain
02:44:00.780reaction and eventually the types of people who would have otherwise been capable of fighting this
02:44:06.720change are just gone so all you have left are this sort of like middle glut who are kind of
02:44:11.580unhappy but they don't actually have the ambition or verbal competency or whatever to plead a case
02:44:17.540And then it's just them in the sort of the anti-force.
02:44:34.180A lot of individuals, they lack the communication skills to really establish what it is they believe.
02:44:43.460They know that they believe something.
02:44:44.960um you can even see this in like devout religious individuals if they are asked to
02:44:49.620outright plead the case for why they are correct or why they believe what they believe
02:44:54.040they might have good reasons but they just can't communicate it they've never done it before and
02:44:58.240it's almost not natural for most people to be asked that and same thing when i give an example
02:45:02.900i'm like you know if if you the average person goes up against a highly competent flat earther
02:45:08.520you're probably going to lose the flat earther just because they have that toolbox that you don't
02:45:13.180have yeah yeah yeah yeah wait but what but hold on but who was what does this have to do what was
02:45:20.280the book that you were mentioning that this oh it's called uh actually this is something i got
02:45:24.040from uh curtis yarvin it's a exit voice and loyalty it's a short book voice and loyalty
02:45:30.960so what is the point of it what does it say the voice was kind of tracking the what he calls the
02:45:35.440decline in firms and he says that um when individuals are presented with the truth they
02:45:41.280kind of have three ways to control a situation and call it a a vote or whatever it's like you
02:45:47.500have you can choose to exit the system uh that's one way to control what happens or you can exact
02:45:53.600your voice uh within that system to try and change it some people just don't exact their voice um
02:45:59.560and actually you know what there's this other book that we covered just recently this is very cool
02:46:04.020yeah this is like very much in the same discussion we're having you'd like there's this other one
02:46:08.800that's even more interesting it's called in groups by wilfrid bion this is more of a psychology book
02:46:16.060but this guy this was back in the 60s right um and he was a very student of freud and everything
02:46:22.580like that but he he made the case that in psychology and psychotherapy it's usually on a
02:46:28.480one-to-one basis but he said that's not how human beings operate we operate as members of groups
02:46:33.360and so he was a pioneer of group therapy how do people behave when they're in a group what's their
02:46:38.380group identity instead of just being a one-to-one individual thing which is how most psychology is
02:46:43.760treated and so he did all these experiments with the military and actually with the tavistock
02:46:48.360institute for people who know who that is dun dun dun but he um did a series of experiments he
02:46:53.980doesn't go into detail because he can't but he'll just he kind of refers these stories and these
02:46:58.600things he learned from working with different types of groups and how people behave and he said
02:47:04.360you know a couple interesting phenomena are it's like groups tend to emerge no matter what um
02:47:12.060you're people very rarely exist as an individual a group forms almost as if it's its own thing
02:47:16.540he's he made this really interesting point and you might find this fascinating he said
02:47:19.700that the you're you are a member of a group in a sense even if you reject yourself from the group
02:47:25.680you know i mean like you are always existing context of that group like if you run into the
02:47:30.440woods right and and go off grid and abandon society you are still in a sense connected to
02:47:36.120that group because you're defined by it you're defining yourself by your proximity away from it
02:47:40.900so like there's this idea of your group identity even existing if you're not a member of it
02:47:46.140anyway the point being that uh when he talked he's talking about leadership and how within groups
02:47:51.180leaders tend to emerge seems organically oftentimes although he did make a point that
02:47:56.120oftentimes the most mentally imbalanced imbalanced one will be elected as a leader but anyway um he
02:48:02.320had made a point that i said typically i won't get off in too much the details here but basically he
02:48:07.500said you know usually even if if it's that whole um argument what is it um silence is compliance
02:48:13.980or silence is consent something like that where basically if you just go along with a leader says
02:48:19.320psychologically you actually do kind of agree with what they're saying and a lot of people just
02:48:24.240lack the ability to rise up against the voice to do the voice part yeah they just don't know how
02:48:30.980to do votes try and kind of solve for that but most people they don't know how to argue they
02:48:36.540don't know how to express themselves they almost need a leader to fight a leader most people aren't
02:48:41.500leaders so you'll kind of fall to whoever the leader is almost like organically yeah that's
02:48:48.460very true you know and you see these uh you see these phenomenon happening like right like without
02:48:55.940anyone really trying this is just how people organize themselves i think it is fascinating to
02:49:01.120to like yeah like people who don't have the voice simply just revert to to loyalty right because they
02:49:12.640yeah i don't know i yeah it's i i have no idea what the theory here is but yeah it's it's cool
02:49:17.420Read the book. I think a mind like yours can really probably come away with something even a bit more intricate. But you see that a lot in society, too. Like a lot of people just go along with it. You know, even on our side of the political milieu, people often talk about like, what would it take for a proper revolution? You know, hypothetically, like a 20th century solid revolution. And I think a lot of people have pointed out that, well, the problem is a lot of people are just very comfortable.
02:49:44.460you know a lot of people they have not felt the compulsion to break away to create a schism from
02:49:51.640society and maybe in the 21st century like the 20th century rules don't apply to the 21st century
02:49:57.800maybe maybe i completely agree with that yeah it's the age of aquarius thing right my my friend
02:50:04.780astral has a great uh podcast on this which is um you know about how the age of pisces ended
02:50:13.080the age of the fish which is the end of the zodiac and now we're in the age of aquarius and
02:50:20.160the thing about the age of aquarius is like everything is totally upside down it's like
02:50:25.180the new start right like there's no nothing is related to the past because the zodiac has like
02:50:31.080started over so all the rules that we've had for all these past times which is in my mind like
02:50:38.020rules about scarcity um you know rules about um sort of distance uh the way that human beings
02:50:48.980have structured themselves it's all of those things except like run in reverse like now the
02:50:55.000problem is not scarcity it's over abundance just as an example um it's not like lack of connection
02:51:03.060it's over connection. And so, yeah, I do think that like this new world that we're in, it's like
02:51:08.660a whole new set of problems. And we don't even really know what heroes and villains look like
02:51:15.360yet, because it's just so early on in this like new underwater world where everything's upside
02:51:20.800down. Yeah. And you made a really great point there. And this is something I've said before.
02:51:26.980I think a lot of people would agree with the basic premise when I say that a lot of the
02:51:32.400political ideologies of the 19th and 20th century emerged due to the industrial revolution right yeah
02:51:38.480um and i don't think and i've looked into this pretty bit i don't think we have seen
02:51:44.040a similar dominant ideology that has emerged from the information revolution not yet the closest i
02:51:51.000could see is something like nick land like a lot of the nrx guys were like getting into that like
02:51:57.400the idea you know i'm who was i reading it might have been marshall mccluhan
02:52:01.080where he was talking about how really the industrial revolution and the development of
02:52:05.260these new media changed how we think in processes and the idea of multiplication of processes.
02:52:10.740That's like a new way of approaching the world. And a lot of new ideas came from that.
02:52:15.440But he said, even McLuhan said, the dawn of electricity granted the idea that everything
02:52:21.560is connected and instantaneous. Instead of a linear process, it's like everything operating
02:52:26.540at once and the digital revolution like i don't think it's birthed like a new really a new ideology
02:52:32.980yet to grapple with how fucking insane it is that there's that's such an information overload and an
02:52:38.340overabundance yeah we're still kind of talking about like communism and fascism and these
02:52:43.160century ideas like the workers of the world and like what no one knows what that means anymore
02:52:48.740and to i guess the main point a lot of that is a marketing problem like people just fall in love
02:52:54.020with the aesthetics and the slogans and like the imagery or they almost fall in love with
02:53:00.100commercials of world war ii if that makes any sense yeah because they understand that it's
02:53:06.760familiar to them and it's almost i think that's right yeah i think that's a very good point you're
02:53:11.320making it's like right like communism and fascism sort of grew up uh to react against the uh bane
02:53:19.780of liberalism that had created the industrial revolution and now we really like the whole
02:53:26.420thing got completely blown up and now we're in this totally different completely different world
02:53:32.080um yeah like almost communism was obsessed with automation and we're at the point where
02:53:37.220with ai we're automating automation that's kind of fucking crazy right right right right and that
02:53:43.900You mean like AI is automating automation?
02:54:13.900I don't think we covered on the last episode.
02:54:16.240It was like this collection of essays from like professors and academics about neurotechnology.
02:54:23.400And what do we do about neurotechnology and what neurotechnology is like any technology that boosts your brain power.
02:54:29.320And that could be, you know, chips in your brain.
02:54:31.160That could be like neurotoxins because they're looking at like we can use this to either boost our capabilities or use as a weapon against our enemies, like introducing like weird toxins to like make people confused and stuff.
02:54:43.200And this is a very serious book. This isn't a conspiracy theory book. This was like policy guys saying in very academic and government bureaucratic language, like, okay, this is going to happen. We need a code of ethics. And one thing they had mentioned, this is kind of what I'm getting at, was they said a lot of the innovations of the 19th and 20th century, they were kind of pioneered by the government and then released to the public.
02:55:07.880You know, that's the story of the internet. That's the story of a lot of things. But he said, as we've gone through time, we've noticed that the technological development that we're doing on the state side is happening in tandem with the public. And one example they gave was the development of like drones. They're like, you know, we were developing drone technology the exact same time a lot of like private companies were. So they're like, okay, the problem with AI is that we're developing it and we're trying to be responsible, but everyone else is developing it as well.
02:55:34.880and it's not gonna be one mega mine but it could be like you can make ai designed to like fuck
02:55:40.660things up and in unforeseeable ways it's kind of like the third the three body problem where it's
02:55:46.420like if you have two bodies orbiting each other you can predict what they're going to do you throw
02:55:49.980in a third body in the orbit eventually collapses so i think what they're like so the the three body
02:55:55.780problem is the name of the vietnamese or sorry vietnamese the chinese sci-fi book right yeah
02:56:02.540that's right but it's named after a real uh problem in um astrophysics where so what is the
02:56:08.060what is the real problem because i i equate third body problem with the dark forest what is it the
02:56:14.780dark forest yeah yeah that's the the trilogy basically the three by problem is it's a part
02:56:20.060of the book so the three body problem is if you have like two things in space like two planets
02:56:24.920or two asteroids whatever and they're kind of in each other's orbit a stable orbit you can predict
02:56:29.580what they're going to do how that orbit is going to do forever the problem is if you introduce a
02:56:35.120third object into that orbit and that third object orbits random you can your ability to predict how
02:56:42.100it's going to orbit just goes to shit and there's that one extra variable is like a throw eventually
02:56:48.060they collide or they spin off it's it's eventually unstable and in the book um that's the story is0.91
02:56:54.600that there's like an alien world that's orbiting around three suns and it's all fucked up and the
02:57:00.260alien race there is trying to figure out how to go to earth so it sounds like a cool story just
02:57:04.520like that the level of complexity by the third body introduced makes it impossible to predict
02:57:10.840the behavior yeah it's something too and i think you could even take like a metaphysical approach
02:57:16.060that if you wanted to where it's like the the yin and the yang two things can be stable three
02:57:21.540things fuck you can say that about relationships the argument against uh polyamory basically yeah0.74
02:57:27.860like the third there's something about us um i think i was every three i was reading something0.98
02:57:34.700like a lot of the old guys too they noticed that oh you know even in rome sometimes they're like0.67
02:57:38.560two emperors there's something about two that seems to be you know fuck who was it i was reading
02:57:43.920something it might have been like hans morgenthau i think politics among nations but he was saying
02:57:51.020that like you know we talk about the left right axis as if it's this unique american thing like
02:57:56.960why is there left and the right you know they should have more a multiplicity of parties and
02:58:01.020we do have that in canada and have that in europe but what you notice is those parties somehow still
02:58:06.260seem to fall along the left right axis and i think i think it was morgan thou or someone one of the
02:58:12.060geopolitical guys that said you know the left right oh you know who it was it was the book the
02:58:16.120network state anyway the left right axis is just a function of government and you could have as
02:58:21.000many parties as you want but they still seem to fall they find a way to follow along this axis
02:58:26.360no matter what so it's almost like in whatever human endeavor or human human organization you
02:58:32.060have it's gonna fall along this sort of duality now i don't know if that's completely true but
02:58:38.040it's it sound interesting and true enough i'm going off in a lot of different directions here
02:58:42.620but i'm drawing a lot of lines dude that's what i've learned is that that what that's what makes
02:58:47.160a good podcast you know i've been doing this for a long time and i think i just realized i just like
02:58:53.920understood that a great talk podcast is all about embracing the uh embracing the tangents
02:59:02.520you know that's that's really what makes a good talk pod getting back to you i did want to know
02:59:08.480about what what is it like we talked about your his your story in law and now you're in marketing
02:59:14.220and advertising. Are you happier here? Are you more fulfilled? And what do you like about it?
02:59:19.620A million, zillion times. I mean, I, you know, so just to get back to my story. So, so I, uh,
02:59:27.120graduated law school. I passed the California bar. So I still finished, you know, I still
02:59:31.900finished up and I wish I could say that it was like, you know, hindsight 2020. It's very obvious
02:59:38.700to me now that I hated it so much I could have never done it. But back then I was still unsure.
02:59:45.060You know, I was kind of like, well, maybe I should do it. Maybe I shouldn't. And those were
02:59:47.720really the worst years. The worst years, you can pretty much deal with anything or I can
02:59:53.860besides uncertainty. Uncertainty is really just a killer for me. So the worst days even still,
03:00:02.160or the worst times of my life were when I wasn't sure, right?
03:00:06.760So those first years, at least career-wise, I was still unsure.
03:00:11.860I didn't know, you know, I tried to get a job in law, by the way.
03:00:14.080It's not like I moved to LA and, you know, bar passage in hand,
03:00:19.320I didn't just immediately say screw law.
03:00:23.100I tried kind of tacitly, like not super hard, but I tried to apply to firms.
03:00:28.720I mean, it was 2012, so it was like the worst year of legal hiring, I think, ever.
03:00:33.300So it's not like I had people, it's not like I had jobs right there.
03:00:37.100But, you know, had I had an easy, high-paying corporate lawyer job, I probably would have taken it, to be honest.
03:00:45.120And then a quick tangent, did you notice a huge cultural shift between New Orleans and L.A. from a legal perspective?
03:00:53.840I mean, I wouldn't even know, right, because I never worked at a firm here.0.84
03:00:56.940You know, I went to like a few Beverly Hills Bar Association meetings, you know, and saw those disgusting, horrible people there.
03:01:04.040But, you know, that certainly don't exist in New Orleans.
03:01:07.140But no, I mean, like, look, I never even really practiced.
03:01:10.740So what happened was I – to make a long story super short, the first job – I stumbled into a job here.
03:01:19.100First job was as an assistant, a personal assistant to a gay, very powerful agent who worked out of a house in the Hollywood Hills, which is very rare, and had like a tribe of like six gay dudes who worked in this house with him.
03:01:39.660and i was like the one straight dude i show up i have a law degree and i'm me so they make the
03:01:47.640huge mistake of hiring me and i make the huge mistake of accepting this job because i'm
03:01:52.580desperate i'm literally fucking desperate you know i have no jobs i have no money like i so i take
03:01:57.440this like 40 000 a year job as a personal assistant to this guy who's like the the agent
03:02:04.040of huge celebrities but only for their advertising deals so this was actually my first foray into
03:02:10.280advertising really um it's pure evil this was my first my first entree to hollywood and it was i'm
03:02:16.540super glad that i did it now because i saw hollywood you know you i saw the guts of hollywood
03:02:22.300and like that sounds like something i would make up like a story of hollywood yeah i worked in like
03:02:26.400a gay agent's house it's full of gay it was unbelievable and it was so unbelievably evil0.96
03:02:33.280Like it was exactly as horrible as you would imagine.0.99
03:02:36.860I feel like we could spend three hours just in this alone.
03:29:16.620That's how you know. You know, you can just tell. Whereas you're not like, oh, wow, this had a brand lift of X amount. That's not a hit. That doesn't count. You know, that's not real. And so, yeah, I think you really should, hopefully all this will revert to people just caring about, you know, the actual quality and the actual response from the ads.
03:29:43.000Yeah. Or have employing minds that understand what it takes to hit. And you have this article on the carousel that I thought was interesting, The Vibe Shift to Destroy a Marketing World. And it's all about the hype dad. And you described the archetype of so many creative directors that I'd seen in my career.
03:30:03.400and and the overall uh gist of the article was that you know these people are finding themselves
03:30:09.300out of luck as the vibe is shifting and they were sort of the cool woke older usually white guys but
03:30:15.820now that's not cool anymore now they're out and there's so many of those types of creative
03:30:20.120directors who just don't seem to understand what's cool anymore would that be a correct assessment
03:30:26.900well so this notion of hype dads it was sort of an extension of an idea that my friend sean
03:30:34.740monahan had so sean monahan speaking of strategists is like the world's best advertising strategist
03:30:40.740although he doesn't think of himself that way he's really an artist but he came up with norm
03:30:44.980core he's kind of famous he used to run this thing called um uh k-hole that in the advertising
03:30:52.040world like when i was at 72 everybody was obsessed with k-hole which were these kind of like
03:30:55.940you know uh culture reports you know about trends and things and he had a short little blurb on
03:31:05.120so you've heard of the vibe shift right i wanted you to explain that because i'd heard of it then
03:31:11.160i got it from uh your article here but for people who have heard it but don't really know what it is
03:31:16.660would you be able to explain it so the vibe shift effectively refers to so sean and monaghan also
03:31:24.300came up with the vibe shift. So about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago,
03:31:31.160something happened in culture where we had been hegemonically blindly left all the way down to
03:31:42.740the edge of culture. So the cool kids, even the coolest of the cool kids, were still 100% left
03:31:51.220wing, right? Like, there was nothing cool about being right wing at all for a long time. You know,
03:31:58.720people kind of forget this. I mean, maybe dating back to punk rock, the early, you know, Joy
03:32:04.280Division kind of Nazi signaling stuff. Culture since the 80s had been just going further and
03:32:11.760further and left for a really long time. And there weren't cool figures on the right. It was still,
03:32:18.360you know people viewed the right wing as a bunch of you know neocons basically but as we all know
03:32:26.660as you know frog twitter had been boiling up had been kind of like happening for for a little while
03:32:33.940right the and you know there'd been this slight swing going on in sort of a separated parallel
03:32:43.160universe. The vibe shift in a very, very broad stroke way, even though many people have
03:32:50.020misunderstood it, was something that happened when essentially cool culture, so the edge of
03:32:57.820culture, largely in Manhattan, shifted right a little bit. And Red Scare is the best example of
03:33:06.300this. I've actually cited them before because they've been on a lot of people's radar for a
03:33:11.880while and noticing their shift from just like open i would say it went from like either kind of
03:33:18.200anime socialist or straight up like you know zzak style communism but to something like
03:33:25.320almost like trad cath now but like i roll trad cath whatever you might call that
03:33:30.260yep that's a good way to put it yeah so all the kids started signaling you know oh i'm becoming
03:33:37.980Eastern Orthodox, all the girls who are rich Jewish girls are becoming actually Catholic.
03:33:43.660You know, it was this moment in culture where you could kind of feel that things had changed,
03:33:51.340right? You could feel that people had sort of stopped wanting to play by the rules of
03:34:01.040wokeness anymore. And a lot of people who were formerly left-wing, like the Red Scale
03:34:06.540Girls, God bless them, made it cool to be right wing. They made it hot, really. They made it hot0.56
03:34:13.820more than cool, right? They made it okay to be a dorky, right-leaning girl who takes thirst trap0.75
03:34:20.480pictures of her tits and is hot, right? And for me, actually, the vibe shift was deeply important0.99
03:34:28.060because I decided to launch Will for real, you know, as ostensibly a based agency right when I
03:34:38.480saw the vibe shift happening. And I saw the vibe shift happening because I went, you know, I'd been
03:34:45.600languishing in this right-wing sphere forever, kind of coming in and out. You know, I've been
03:34:51.400friends with Delicious Tacos, who I don't know if you know who that is, but he's kind of like,
03:34:55.240do you know Delicious Tacos? Yeah. So I'd been friends with him forever, man. And I'd been
03:34:59.720promoting him forever. You know, I've been promoting Delicious Tacos since 2016. And we'd
03:35:04.680been friends, you know, we've been like in real life friends. And, you know, I had, I'd been like
03:35:09.280a booster of his forever, you know, saying that he's the best and blah, blah, blah. And we'd held
03:35:15.260many readings with him for years. And it was always a bunch of fucking angry dudes, people who0.99
03:35:22.960didn't really know who anybody was. You know, we'd been working on this forever. And of course,0.99
03:35:28.880once I left the scene and went deep into branding, was like, fuck this whole thing.0.99
03:35:34.040As I was gone, the cool needle shifted unbeknownst to me to the right. And I only learned this0.99
03:35:44.900because i like tacos invited me to a reading of his and i'd never been invited to a tacos
03:35:53.520reading before ever and i'd been you know he'd never had a reading here and i was like what
03:35:59.340like this is weird i've never heard of tacos doing a reading that i didn't organize for him
03:36:03.700and so i'm like all right i'll go to this reading and it's at the ace hotel which is like you know
03:36:09.140funnily enough where I bartended and I was like weird this sounds like really advanced
03:36:15.700and I show up at this reading this is like two years ago maybe a year and a half ago yeah this
03:36:22.740is like a year and a half ago like not this summer but last summer and I'm thinking oh yeah there's
03:36:30.380gonna be a handful of people you know like how I used to always do it a few nerds and it is
03:36:36.720mobbed. There's like 120 people there listening to Tacos read, listening to these few other kind
03:36:45.260of like scene story guys read. And I'm just like, what the fuck happened? Like how did culture,0.99
03:36:54.600culture had like shifted so that now all these hot girls were watching Tacos read. Whereas before1.00
03:37:01.780these guys were just complete internet nerds. You know, they had no real following. I mean,
03:37:05.640they had no following outside of like a bunch of angry guys online you know you know it's interesting
03:37:10.240so just before you go on a similar anecdote is that there's a friend of mine who i chat with
03:37:15.760by the name of arno uh he's a yeah straight up communist but he also complains about black
03:37:22.540people so he's like you know he's in the strange space right but he had made a comment because0.94
03:37:27.120he's always kind of getting on the distant right complaining about them for being chuds and whatnot1.00
03:37:31.680but he made a comment um about how you know this is what just what all the idiots are into now and0.99
03:37:37.880that's where like it's easy money i'm like whoa hold on are you saying we're popular now like0.99
03:37:43.720something had happened i didn't even know something happening but it sounds like when i hear
03:37:47.240the left complain about us they're complaining about us because we're where the money is0.84
03:37:51.520we're where the trendy shit is happening which i was like money is we're not where the money is0.90
03:37:56.700i'll tell you i'll tell you that it's definitely not where the money is well here's the thing0.88
03:38:00.560that might be changing that there is there might be a sea shift as more quote unquote cool people
03:38:08.420get involved then the money follows because if it's just a bunch of like you know true like
03:38:13.620anti-social guys maybe that is the larger trend that's going i had some people like leftists
03:38:19.380always complain they think the fascists are in control they think the right wing is making all0.86
03:38:23.940the money they're obviously wrong that's because they're insane and it's completely like when you0.98
03:38:28.480listen to like fucking like sam cedar or someone they're like well obviously all of the right wing0.70
03:38:33.560is making billions of dollars i'm like yeah and well but when and when they say right wing though0.93
03:38:37.800what they actually mean is left wing they just don't you know they don't understand that but
03:38:44.440anyway yeah sorry but there is like a shift that occurred where like think like you'd said
03:38:49.220the vibe shift occurred let me ask you this do we have an indication on what caused the vibe shift
03:38:55.420can some can we pin something like a vide shift on a cause or is it just generative do you think
03:39:01.440i mean what what do you mean generative is it just is it so complicated and intricate it's
03:39:09.220because some people will say like oh this shift is natural they'll say it's like a pendulum swing
03:39:13.480things went too far left and then they're right and they're going right now i'm not sure i believe
03:39:19.440it's just going back and forth forever i do think there's some kind of cause like was there a
03:39:26.520movement that made the right cool or you know what do you mean it's not just back and forth
03:39:32.040forever like what do you what do you think it well people there seems to be this belief especially
03:39:35.940with gen xers i think where they're like oh it went too far left politically and now it has to
03:39:41.180go too far right and once it goes too far right then it'll go too far left like it's inevitable
03:39:45.080i'm not sure it's just this pendulum swinging left and right forever you know there can be a
03:39:51.700point where maybe the pendulum stops and things are just right wing but i don't know like it
03:39:55.360is it maybe it's not that case in america because maybe i think this is getting into a kind of a
03:40:01.260there's this idea in um what what what there's this idea in empire and communications by harold
03:40:09.240innis if you um his is about language and media and he said if you conceptualize society sort of
03:40:16.880like in a dejuvenalian way like you know academic agents always about this but the center of power
03:40:21.100and the periphery of power the center of power would be like the emperor government whatever
03:40:24.880then there's the intermediate sphere which is like institutions and stuff then there's the people on
03:40:29.540the outside then there's the fringes of society and there's um a model that can explain how media
03:40:36.660developed across time where a lot of new media is adopted by the periphery then it's absorbed
03:40:43.580into the center eventually but that kind of makes it static and dead but then there's always new
03:40:48.740things generated within the periphery now the model if we transpose it onto the modern day
03:40:56.100that's almost saying like okay the periphery of society will always adopt the opposite
03:41:01.960political ideas of whatever the mainstream is and maybe that so it's always going to be
03:41:07.660if the mainstream is left then the the cool periphery because this is where the cool ideas
03:41:13.000happen this is where the innovative ideas happen and kind of the fringes it will just be the
03:41:17.260opposite of whatever the mainstream is now is that the case i don't know that almost seems
03:41:21.620too low resolution but maybe it's not i don't know it just i i i'm hesitant to accept the model where
03:41:28.480it's like well you know woke got too powerful so now everyone needs to go far right i'm trying to
03:41:32.860think like is there something within these ideas though that make them attractive rather than just
03:41:37.860rebellion for the sake of rebellion i guess that's trying to learn what i'm getting at um i mean
03:41:44.880okay so the dime square girls right the the girls of dime square the anas and the dashes
03:41:54.180the, particularly these like kind of mini Gertrude Stein, rich Jewish girls who like run
03:42:01.100forever magazine, for example, who, you know, again, God bless all these people. I'm certainly
03:42:06.520not criticizing them because without them, I'd be way worse off. Right. I mean, these, these people
03:42:11.040are the crucibles. I don't even really know what that word means, but I think the crucibles of,
03:42:16.020of the reason why we're like in business, you know, like we're in business and they're the
03:42:21.240reason why. So I, you know, I certainly can't say anything bad about them, but I believe that, yes,
03:42:27.340they are doing it solely because it's the opposite of what their parents want them to do, right? I
03:42:34.260mean, it's, edginess is edginess, and edginess has to, in order to be edgy today, you pretty much
03:42:42.140have two choices. Either you go ever so slightly right, right? Which is like barely right. You
03:42:52.480know, we're talking about just the tiniest little bit right. Or you go so far left that you're
03:43:00.080getting face tattoos and getting your dick chopped off, right? So it's like, those are your two1.00
03:43:05.280choices. Either you go like so deep into chaos that you're unrecognizable or you toy around with
03:43:12.000like the slightest modicum of racist or traditional thoughts you know what i mean yeah and so like
03:43:21.220we've been so well trained to think of racism as evil that still the majority of people are more0.88
03:43:29.600willing to chop their dick off than be thought of as racist literally but in reality if you really0.98
03:43:35.340think about it is it really that bad to be racist is that really that terrible you know what i mean0.99
03:43:43.240like like sure acting on it is bad but is it really that bad to have a racist thought like no0.98
03:43:50.420it's not bad who cares we all have fucking racist thoughts everybody in the history of the world has0.89
03:43:55.540it's not that bad you know what i mean but we've been trained to think of it as like the most0.98
03:44:02.960satanic thing imaginable. So, you know, I think that in that sense, it is just rebellion. You
03:44:10.180know, I think that we've been pushed so far. The hegemonicness of the left and the extremity of it
03:44:17.040has gone so, so far. And I blame this on the longhouse, by the way. But, you know, that's
03:44:23.520kind of a different conversation. That, of course, if you're going to make it impossible,
03:44:30.060like so forbidden to be right wing at all the kids are gonna be right wing it's just the0.70
03:44:36.820fucking way that it is you know i mean this is the beauty of humanity right i mean this is what0.94
03:44:41.680we do so well as it bounces back and forth the larger question of you know the socio-political0.98
03:44:49.700development of liberalism over centuries of which fascism and communism were both reactions as you've
03:44:58.060already said the question of liberalism as the as the core of our lives that's a very good question
03:45:07.140and and that's something that is really going to be in my opinion like the age of aquarius right
03:45:13.020that's going to be the fundamental question that's answered in these next 2 000 years
03:45:18.580the next 2 000 years are going to be about the battle of liberalism global liberalism so globalism
03:45:26.520right like a single liberal global government versus tradition nationalism localism that's
03:45:36.420the the next uh two centuries are going to be uh dedicated to that right um and we're just starting
03:45:44.060i mean that that battle is just gearing up you know we haven't even had one i mean you know in
03:45:49.600a way, Russia is kind of like the first hot conflict of that battle. I mean, I'm sure people
03:45:57.540who know foreign affairs, I mean, maybe like Serbia, right? I guess, yeah, NATO bombing Serbia
03:46:04.260maybe would be really the first one. But, you know, again, I'm not an international, I'm certainly not
03:46:11.500a war expert. I'm not an international affairs expert. But this is just kind of how I see the
03:46:16.280landscape that's a very fascinating opinion and appraisal of situation i think you're essentially
03:46:23.340correct on that as well um and unfortunately i do think i need to put a hard stop on the
03:46:29.060interview right now because i do need to get going because i i know we could keep going on
03:46:34.540this for three hours i'd love to have you back or talk to you again however you'd like to because
03:46:38.680we didn't even breach really breach the service and all the stuff i wanted to talk about on the
03:46:43.480articles that i had read um so i love to talk about this there's a lot of good stuff on the
03:46:48.440carousel um and i just want to remind people to check that out at thecarousel.substack.com
03:46:55.300you can also find uh the disgraced propagandist on twitter or x at disgraced prop and for those
03:47:02.520who are more interested in the hard branding agency side of this check out will the agency