Pearl - July 30, 2026


The American Dream Is Dead For Gen Z w⧸ @hexumlitee


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

195.1

Word count

1,658

Sentence count

25

Harmful content

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Yeah, you may be on paper, like, worse off, but you're not, like, some Indian that's, like, genuinely, like, coming from a place where people shit in the streets, like, but now I'm finally making money on social media, I think, so I think I'm chilling, but. 0.99
00:00:11.960 Yeah, no, I, I actually, I could see you being on social media, you have the right personality, just based on what I've seen of your content, I could see you making it a full-time thing. 0.99
00:00:23.020 i was just too lazy to like monetize it like i've been just too lazy you know what i mean like
00:00:27.920 i i don't know it just sucks like i hate work in general like i just i just dislike it like
00:00:32.420 i like working on things that i enjoy but like i don't like you know i mean like generating value
00:00:36.520 to the world i just do you think like why do you think gen z sees working so differently than
00:00:43.180 previous generations um because the older if you talk to older generations they think that gen z
00:00:48.160 just lazy could you maybe um from your point of view tell me why you think it's different than
00:00:55.440 before it's because it's fruitless like at least when you worked in the past it was like you got
00:01:02.240 something out of it you know what i mean like if you worked a job you were able to like provide
00:01:08.400 buy a house actually for a reasonable amount of money have money like vacations have a wife that
00:01:14.640 actually like you know who's decent and you know have the american dream but the american dream
00:01:22.480 now i think is like an average of like what like three million dollars or something of the store
00:01:26.720 some crazy number like the traditional american dream in most like states so it's like you're
00:01:33.120 never gonna achieve that you're gonna likely like there's so many landmines of life like getting
00:01:38.160 pulled over getting tickets getting into an accident health shit happening getting fired 0.98
00:01:44.480 like you're not gonna keep your job anymore because like you're gonna get fired bullshit's 0.98
00:01:51.200 gonna happen you know so it just doesn't make sense it doesn't it literally if you are going
00:01:57.920 to school work it just doesn't make sense and i i mean i fell for it but um i think it's just like
00:02:04.640 it's almost like a comical thing at that point.
00:02:06.900 Like if you genuinely go into corporate for one,
00:02:10.500 like no girl's going to want to look at you,
00:02:12.080 like unless you're like super physically attractive,
00:02:13.960 but if you're like a normie,
00:02:15.480 there's nothing,
00:02:17.800 there's never been a romance novel ever written about a guy that works as a 0.99
00:02:21.420 fucking accountant ever. 0.99
00:02:23.200 I don't think so. 1.00
00:02:24.340 Unless he's like some psychopath or some shit, 1.00
00:02:27.060 but so you're just like non like sexually appealing to girls. 1.00
00:02:31.920 You have no money. 0.99
00:02:33.320 You have nothing. 1.00
00:02:34.100 like just working your whole life in an office your life sucks like i might as well just like 0.98
00:02:40.420 have nothing and move to like thailand and like have a job and responsibilities in the us you
00:02:46.420 know what i mean do you think that's common like do a lot of your friends have the same mindset
00:02:52.420 with the people that you know i think there's like an iq and like emotional intelligence barrier to
00:02:58.420 that i think there's a most people don't think the way i do i think uh i think most people think
00:03:06.660 like are like like i said i think 90 of human beings are just not really sentient
00:03:10.980 like if you just like really look across all societies like on the earth like most of the
00:03:16.340 humans are just like slobs they're stuck in their ways they're just like genuinely just like meant
00:03:23.620 to be slaves kind of like aristotle said and it's kind of the uncomfortable truth that people don't
00:03:27.700 don't want to hear and so i think most people my age are like getting jobs working and doing things
00:03:34.560 but i think it's like kind of a growing subsect that it's kind of seen like okay well hey it's
00:03:43.600 not taking it like five years ago it would have taken like more intellect i think and more
00:03:48.600 experience to see that this was the case but now it's kind of becoming like blatantly obvious as
00:03:54.620 american like you know it's it's kind of like in your face like for me it really wasn't even my
00:04:00.840 choice to come to the conclusion it was like literally i applied to like a thousand jobs
00:04:05.960 had like an excel spreadsheet of my applications created a personal website did projects all that
00:04:12.640 shit to try and like and it just wasn't working like i was kind of like pushing the boulder up 0.64
00:04:17.060 the hill like that meme so i just quit like i just okay i'm like fighting a losing battle here 0.98
00:04:23.780 So for me, it was more so I had to be kind of beaten into submission in order to do this.
00:04:27.980 I wanted to provide value.
00:04:29.400 Like, I kind of have like a worker mindset.
00:04:31.240 I'm not really that smart.
00:04:32.740 I'm like, I'm not that smart.
00:04:34.540 I'm like, I probably have an IQ of like, maybe like a standard deviation or so above average.
00:04:39.760 It's not like, I'm not like some crazy hyper genius.
00:04:43.100 I don't know.
00:04:43.780 I just kind of, you know what I mean?
00:04:45.000 Like, I just kind of got beaten into submission by life.
00:04:48.400 Do you think you were discriminated against because you were a young white guy?
00:04:51.660 do you think that had part to do with it or do you do not you know i thought so like okay so like
00:05:00.300 like yeah you have to put your race on every application i mean theoretically i am half jewish
00:05:05.820 so that should help me like you know theoretically according to some people like i don't know like
00:05:11.020 it's i mean i think it was just really like am i someone who can be taken advantage of like
00:05:18.700 Like, it's not really that, like, they don't want to hire white people.
00:05:22.380 It's more so, I think, that hiring someone who's, like, foreign or, like, desperate. 0.55
00:05:28.140 Because, like, people think these, like, companies, like, Amazon, like, don't have access to your data when they, like, go to look at your application. 0.74
00:05:35.520 Like, bro, like, they can see if you're from, like, a single family, first gen, if you have money.
00:05:41.980 Like, they're not going to hire someone that's going to, like, expect a lot from them.
00:05:46.780 Like, they're going to hire someone who's desperate.
00:05:48.200 it and so i always say like just being white and being in america like yeah you may be on paper 0.97
00:05:54.700 like worse off but you're not like some indian that's like genuinely like coming from a place 1.00
00:06:00.180 where people shit in the streets like you're not going to put up with the same amount of bullshit 1.00
00:06:03.880 for that job that he's willing to put up with so like or like a ukrainian that's trying to escape 0.97
00:06:09.860 the draft by like working a job so these companies really aren't like i don't think they're like
00:06:15.900 just like they'd rather hire whites like i've talked to like a lot of the people like
00:06:20.260 the white like like one white man like like they what they do is they hire like 10 indians and
00:06:26.100 they hire one white man to be the product manager of those 10 indians you see what i'm saying yeah
00:06:31.780 so 10 indians are getting hired and one white guy's in charge basically yeah he's the product
00:06:36.800 manager he's like the like okay like we need to build this out like have one white guy like direct
00:06:41.820 it we're like and then like you know it's funny that's how my dad built his business a bunch of
00:06:46.940 yeah yeah it's like yeah and it's that's kind of the the strat right now you get like cheap labor
00:06:54.140 people are willing to work like 100 hours for like pennies and then you just like and then
00:06:58.460 and then ai too because especially in software that's outsourced a lot of it right yeah
00:07:05.980 i don't i don't know the industry that well but that's just what my dad says well it's like ai
00:07:10.860 didn't like make your job easier just make the expectation higher you know what i'm saying
00:07:15.420 yeah that's like the new bar like like it also made like commodities like knowing certain like
00:07:22.700 frameworks kind of like less valuable i think in my opinion like with ai you don't really need to
00:07:28.300 understand like the python language to like write a script you know what i mean like you know a
00:07:34.380 little bit but like these like minuscule things that went a long way in the past like understanding
00:07:39.980 like specific syntax and like it doesn't really matter much anymore i feel like it's more so
00:07:46.380 like i don't know i just yeah i did all i did was just increased expectation like
00:07:52.300 at least for me and i that's why another thing i would set the bar really low whenever i'd work
00:07:56.380 like i had a i i was i i messed up in the beginning i wanted to like do a lot to impress
00:08:02.540 my superiors and like and all that made them do is just expect more of me like i had a co-worker
00:08:09.660 that did nothing and they were always like i'm astounded whenever you do something and it was
00:08:14.940 like huge and i was like bro i could have done that in like 20 minutes like you know it took
00:08:18.060 him the whole like two days and he's like bro it's like set the expectations low like what are
00:08:22.140 you doing you're like only making your life harder so yeah like setting the expectations
00:08:27.420 is huge. But AI makes it hard.