RadixJournal - The Zoomer Problem

00:00:00.000 I have heard of Fresh and Fit, and I think I learned a little bit about them when Hannah Pearl Davis, we talked about last Thursday, was on their program.

00:00:15.280 And I've seen highlights.

00:00:16.900 I mean, one thing that I have noticed is that there is this new genre of, how do I put it into words, normie sex talk with edgy, outrageous commentary?

00:00:33.500 Is that the right, you know what I'm talking about, the whatever podcast, which I've never listened to a full podcast.

00:00:40.380 I couldn't even imagine doing it, but I'll see these clips on Twitter of, you know, whatever, and black Helvetica letters in the background.

00:00:49.040 And then they'll have like an OnlyFans girl, and she'll be like, yeah, you know, I'm earning so much money.

00:00:55.760 And then they'll have a, like, Christian dad, or like young Christian dad who'll be like, let me mansplain this to you, all right? 0.81

00:01:05.400 Doing porn is not good, and that's going to come back to bite you. 0.86

00:01:09.060 I'm just saying, many men aren't cool with that. 0.99

00:01:11.920 And then they'll have like an obese transsexual who'll be like, I'm a 10 or something. 1.00

00:01:18.260 And I think it's just there to kind of generate content and generate commentary and so on.

00:01:25.340 That seems to be a fair and accurate representation of what that genre is.

00:01:30.780 Mars, on a previous conversation, Mars, I thought it had a pretty good summary of the trend.

00:01:36.760 He said, you know, previously, the big, like, you know, standard video was liberals getting destroyed with facts and logic.

00:01:44.920 Now it seems to be, the current trend seems to be women getting destroyed with facts and logic. 1.00

00:01:50.280 I thought he was really onto something.

00:01:52.220 Yeah.

00:01:52.340 But, you know, sorry, I'm jumping into interpretation here, and I'll let AA have his due as well.

00:01:59.120 But on some level, it is mansplaining.

00:02:02.340 And what I mean by that is that, okay, these guys are saying, you know, you're not going to get a good beta Christian husband and get a house in the suburbs.

00:02:15.100 These chicks probably don't want that. 1.00

00:02:19.380 And, you know, I know that OnlyFans, like a lot of things, is effectively a tournament.

00:02:25.580 That is, there are one or a dozen or maybe a hundred winners, and then everyone else is a loser.

00:02:33.760 And so there's, you know, thousands of girls on OnlyFans.

00:02:36.940 And you hear these stories of them earning $20,000 a month or $200,000 a month.

00:02:42.600 I've heard all of it.

00:02:44.300 But the reality is that the vast majority probably, there's probably an 80-20 rule, and then there's an 80-20 rule within the 20%.

00:02:52.560 The vast majority are earning 20 bucks a month at most, but giving the same product.

00:03:00.200 They just haven't won the tournament.

00:03:01.140 I think the average is sub 200 bucks, is what I've heard.

00:03:04.660 Right.

00:03:04.920 But that's an average.

00:03:07.020 Average is a very deceptive thing, as many people said.

00:03:10.320 Like, if there's a bar with six people in it, and then Bill Gates walks into the bar, the average income is now $100 million, but no one is richer.

00:03:20.640 So it would be interesting to look at, like, you know, median or 80, you know, look at, like, what are 80% of the, what is the average of 80% of OnlyFans?

00:03:29.820 And I would presume it's actually quite low.

00:03:31.680 The average is 100.

00:03:32.440 I bet the average of 80% of them is, like, $7.

00:03:37.100 But anyway, Nick went on a program, like, I presume that Fresh and Fit is like that to a large degree, though it has a manosphere quality to it.

00:03:47.660 But here is my kind of ironic defense of Nick Fuentes.

00:03:54.180 I think this is the best Nick Fuentes, because he's just being this elfin comedian and talking about how he's an uber Catholic and he loves Hitler and Putin is based.

00:04:09.320 And it's kind of funny.

00:04:12.620 I do think that Nick can actually have a hot take, so to speak.

00:04:21.140 I think he can bring a perspective to contemporary politics that isn't just, you know, rah-rah team.

00:04:28.100 I think he is actually capable of that, to give him credit.

00:04:32.020 But maybe he's best at being this, like, crazy little Zoomer kid wearing a sweatshirt talking about Hitler and how he wants to marry a 12-year-old or whatever. 0.71

00:04:42.940 I mean, as off-putting as all of that is, maybe that's kind of, like, the best Nick.

00:04:48.880 What do you think?

00:04:52.180 Yeah, A.A., why don't you grab that?

00:04:56.380 I mean, in a way, Richard, I think it's the only Nick.

00:05:06.720 And I think that, I mean, among several other things on Twitter, I'm probably known by some people for being, like, relentless in my dunking of Zoomers. 0.60

00:05:18.880 Right?

00:05:19.220 I have a pretty low opinion of the Zoomer.

00:05:21.860 And I think that Nick Fuentes is, in some way, emblematic of this.

00:05:27.960 You know, this kind of kid who's essentially got nothing to say.

00:05:32.240 See, this is the thing that I find kind of simultaneously kind of fascinating, depressing, and infuriating,

00:05:42.180 is that, you know, the Internet has kind of democratized and leveled the playing field when it comes to anybody with a microphone now has a voice.

00:05:54.440 Yes.

00:05:54.740 But the Zoomers, for me, are kind of like a, they're like a unique ground, like a kind of cultural and historical ground zero. 1.00

00:06:07.600 Okay.

00:06:07.960 So, you know, we talk about the Boomers.

00:06:10.720 The Boomers had their own ground zero, right? 0.81

00:06:13.480 I mean, I remember growing up in the 80s and the 90s, I was surrounded by boomer 60s culture.

00:06:20.740 Yes.

00:06:20.860 And I remember reading, like, Rolling Stone and things like that.

00:06:23.780 And they were right in such a way that it was like, oh, the world was boring and gray.

00:06:29.720 And there was just, like, Frank Sinatra and old crooners.

00:06:34.120 And then it was Bob Dylan and the Beatles and rock and roll and the 60s had, like, invented culture.

00:06:40.940 You know, there's that kind of boomer version of the ground zero, right?

00:06:45.400 But even the boomer version of the ground zero had some semblance of connection with context.

00:06:53.220 You know, like...

00:06:53.780 Yeah, don't you think they were almost right in a way?

00:06:56.340 I mean, not that we shouldn't criticize them, but there actually was something edgy and kind of creative about that period.

00:07:03.560 Yeah, there's something happening here, right?

00:07:06.080 But you don't know what it is, Mr. Jones, or whatever.

00:07:08.760 Or, you know, you can just see it in the songs, like, Roll Over, Beethoven, or whatever.

00:07:14.240 There was an element of self-consciousness that was going on with the boomers,

00:07:21.180 because they at least had the privilege, I guess, looking back, of living in a time and place

00:07:29.540 that was only just beginning to fall apart, you could say.

00:07:32.500 And from the European perspective, certainly, was also trying to put itself back together

00:07:38.840 after the tragedy of World War II, right?

00:07:43.760 I mean, whichever side your country was on in that conflict,

00:07:49.600 it was just absolutely devastating to the world order as it existed before 1945. 0.93

00:07:54.940 And so a lot of what happened in the 60s can be seen as a kind of an attempt to find...

00:08:01.280 I mean, in politics, they called it a post-war settlement, right?

00:08:04.340 But that kind of happened on a cultural level as well.

00:08:07.280 And there's all sorts of interesting things you can say about boomers.

00:08:09.520 But for me, the Zoomer, each individual Zoomer is like their own grand zero.

00:08:19.860 Yeah.

00:08:20.200 But unlike the boomer, who was doing something kind of interestingly countercultural, 0.71

00:08:30.780 the Zoomer...

00:08:32.500 And where's this going out to, Richard?

00:08:34.680 I want to be hesitant of the language I want to use.

00:08:37.260 I know the R word is banned on a lot of platforms.

00:08:41.460 I don't want to...

00:08:41.960 Oh, I think we're good.

00:08:44.120 And because I do some light editing, I can just do a little bleep or something.

00:08:49.280 If you get too hardcore on us here, just... 0.98

00:08:53.100 I think I'll be safe with saying the average Zoomer is so moronic 1.00

00:08:58.940 and so lacking in even the basics of what I would call basic cultural and historical knowledge 0.96

00:09:09.820 that any context of what they are doing socially and culturally is always already lost.

00:09:18.420 And there's lots of interesting ways in which this manifests itself

00:09:22.520 with a phenomenon like Fuentes, which I'll get back to in a second.

00:09:26.220 But, I mean, just to go off on a brief tangent in a minute,

00:09:29.480 I don't want to monologue too much, but I remember a few years ago,

00:09:34.620 you know, back when I was teaching in universities and so on,

00:09:37.580 I had to design my courses.

00:09:38.820 I had to design all of my courses in such a way that would essentially fill in all of the history

00:09:44.800 that the students should have learned at school because they just don't have it, right?

00:09:50.640 So anyone of our generation, Richard, has a kind of a basic idea, right?

00:09:55.160 Well, you know, the Elizabethan hero was here.

00:09:58.460 Then you have like the English Civil War, the Restoration,

00:10:02.520 you know, then something like the Enlightenment happened.

00:10:04.860 And then you've got the industrial, like we've got kind of vague map of the shape of history

00:10:10.600 in our minds, at least like which epoch goes where, you know, there's antiquity followed by the medieval era

00:10:18.700 or something like that.

00:10:20.440 But because of the way that a lot of history is taught in schools,

00:10:25.160 which is very kind of modular, it's very modular,

00:10:29.660 I found that students just didn't even have a basic kind of sense of that, you know,

00:10:37.800 that, oh, you know, at this point you have the War of the Roses

00:10:42.160 and at that point you have the Tudors.

00:10:44.640 And it just doesn't exist.

00:10:46.400 They don't have the map.

00:10:47.560 Because essentially, I mean, certainly in British schools, they study periods in isolation.

00:10:54.780 It's like you'll study the Nazis on their own, and then you'll do another module 0.78

00:11:00.960 and you'll study like, I don't know, Henry VIII on his own.

00:11:06.020 All right.

00:11:06.260 So there's a very little sense of history being joined up in that way.

00:11:10.580 There might be some virtue to doing that, to be overly fair here.

00:11:16.760 But I think what you're talking about is that the lack of a master narrative,

00:11:23.040 even if it's one that you want to go and deconstruct, you know,

00:11:26.680 it's like, what's the origin of the Enlightenment?

00:11:29.460 Is it, you know, 18th century French philosophers?

00:11:32.480 No, actually, you can go into the Middle Ages and find it, you know.

00:11:36.720 Exactly.

00:11:37.040 But that's the kind, you have to do that after.

00:11:39.500 And this is an argument I actually used to have with colleagues and things,

00:11:44.060 which is that essentially you cannot be postmodern, right?

00:11:50.200 You cannot appreciate what the postmodern is if you can't even walk.

00:11:57.660 Right.

00:11:58.160 You can't run before you've learned to even crawl.

00:12:03.300 And this is another, I mean, part of it goes back to the way courses are constructed and things.

00:12:08.740 I mean, I had radical feminist colleagues who were trying to, like, deconstruct the, I don't know, 1.00

00:12:15.900 they were trying to teach, like, the medieval literature was written by lesbian women

00:12:19.940 before these kids had even done, like, Chaucer or something.

00:12:22.820 It's like, well, this is going to mean nothing.

00:12:24.580 Like, if you haven't done Shakespeare and Marlowe and so on,

00:12:28.440 nobody's going to care about Lady Mary Roth.

00:12:30.780 They just don't have a, in order to see something as transgressive or as challenging,

00:12:35.700 you have to have a sense of what the status quo is.

00:12:39.100 And my general comment is that I think the Zoomers are so lacking in any of those things 1.00

00:12:46.780 that things that are just kind of bog-standard reactions that we might have,

00:12:53.260 social transgressions, taboos, they just don't have it.

00:12:57.940 They just don't have any, like, there's no filth.

00:13:00.040 So when we see somebody like Nick Fuentes being outrageous and saying, like, crazy things 1.00

00:13:06.000 and so on, it doesn't, like, it's like the Zoomers are so stupid, 0.99

00:13:11.340 they don't even know what they're doing in a way, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. 0.99

00:13:15.980 Like, they're immune to what I call, like, boomer truth regime, kind of,

00:13:20.780 they don't have any of the haloed stuff around World War II and, you know,

00:13:25.060 the mid-century Germans and so on.

00:13:27.460 But on the other hand, it's like, well, you might as well be dealing with a chimpanzee or something.

00:13:35.260 It's just like, it's like you're dealing with a caged animal who has no sense of anything.

00:13:41.200 You can just poke them around and they'll jump about and you can laugh at them.

00:13:45.200 This is my honest view.

00:13:46.940 I mean, to give you an example, Richard, I have a set of tweets I do sometimes where, you know,

00:13:56.420 sometimes on Twitter, you're just kind of talking and you'll throw out a reference to something.

00:14:00.960 You know, I might casually mention Al Pacino or something.

00:14:04.200 And then what I've started doing is I follow that up with a tweet that says,

00:14:10.360 for Zoomers, Al Pacino is an actor.

00:14:12.560 And what I'll do is I'll mix in, obviously, false information with kind of well-known things.

00:14:19.760 Right.

00:14:20.320 As a kind, right.

00:14:21.880 And then what is stunning about these?

00:14:24.700 Because obviously to me or to you, these would be like kind of funny little tweets that,

00:14:30.540 because you know who Al Pacino is.

00:14:31.360 You're like Al Pacino, former prime minister of Italy.

00:14:34.780 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:36.580 During the first world war.

00:14:37.800 I made a, there was a, there was a story with the Rolling Stones the other day. 0.76

00:14:42.840 Because Mick Jagger's now going out with like an 18 year old or something ridiculous like that.

00:14:46.540 Yeah. 0.71

00:14:46.840 Or like some girl in her 20s.

00:14:48.720 Yeah.

00:14:48.920 And I just quote tweeted and said, you know, maybe gives his satisfaction.

00:14:52.420 And then I said, well, for Zoomers, tweet is a pun. 0.99

00:14:55.800 Mick Jagger is in a band called the Rolling Stones.

00:14:58.460 One of their famous songs is Satisfaction. 0.78

00:15:01.120 Satisfaction is when you have sex. 0.99

00:15:02.940 Sex is something done between two consulting adults that you've only seen in porn. 0.96

00:15:06.600 A pun is a play on words.

00:15:08.140 You understand that kind of basic formula.

00:15:10.280 Wow.

00:15:10.460 What's incredible about these tweets is that Zoomers then, without any sense of irony or 0.99

00:15:18.040 self-awareness or anything, reply saying, oh, I think I knew that.

00:15:23.880 Or, oh, thanks for telling me.

00:15:25.060 I've never heard of Mick Jagger.

00:15:26.800 It's just like, I mean, it's just like, it's kind of mind blowing.

00:15:30.300 I just don't like, and I'm not talking about, you know, you can say, well, all right,

00:15:34.920 I wasn't, I wasn't born in, in the 80s.

00:15:38.080 So I don't know who, I don't know, the second member of Wham is or something.

00:15:43.460 Right.

00:15:43.980 But I'm talking about like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Marlon Brando, you know, just like basic,

00:15:51.460 basic stuff that everybody knows that they just don't.

00:15:54.780 And to me, that makes them simultaneously like fascinating, sad, and also terrifying because

00:16:04.540 they just, they just don't react to anything in the way that you might expect because they're

00:16:10.340 just not fully socialized.

00:16:12.720 And it's, it's, it's, it's kind of like a systematic failure.

00:16:15.460 You've got a generation of people who just essentially aren't finished.

00:16:19.800 And I, and I think that Nick Fuentes is, I think the reason that he's, he's popular only

00:16:25.640 really with those people.

00:16:26.880 I don't think he has any crossover to anybody who comes from the before times.

00:16:31.880 He's like a pure creature of Zoomer internet who speaks really only to Zoomers. 0.99

00:16:39.220 And I mean, this is my base, this is my basic take in a nutshell.

00:16:43.260 I've talked a lot, so I'll, I'll hand over to someone else.

00:16:46.120 Well, yeah, look, look, I fully agree with you.

00:16:49.020 I mean, I, I remember when I was reading, I think I was reading Harper's Monthly.

00:16:53.920 This was like at least 20 years ago.

00:16:55.800 And they, they published an article, they, they would often have these, um, uh, kind of

00:17:02.600 funny and ironic, uh, uh, snippets from things in the beginning of the magazine.

00:17:08.560 And they published an article where a high school teacher combined, um, like misapprehensions

00:17:16.840 of history into one narrative.

00:17:19.440 And so it really was like Jesus, an American was born in 1900, you know, like it just, it

00:17:28.480 was so wild that it just became absolutely hilarious.

00:17:31.860 It was like when Jesus killed Hitler or, you know, and then, and then Thomas, then he made 0.96

00:17:37.300 Thomas Jefferson president.

00:17:38.680 It was just hilarious and absurd, but I mean, this was taken from these things.

00:17:43.540 I remember visiting Paul Godfrey, um, in, uh, he was a, uh, this is, uh, at least I think

00:17:51.200 it was 15 years ago.

00:17:52.020 And he was, he was a professor at Elizabethtown.

00:17:54.420 I imagine he's retired at this point from that position, but he's, he's at a Lutheran 1.00

00:18:00.140 college and they don't know who Martin Luther is.

00:18:05.180 These are college students.

00:18:07.360 So, I mean, it's, it's one thing, you know, when we imagine like, oh, there's some kid in

00:18:12.720 the hood who, who, whose dad is elsewhere and whose stepdad is beating him and his mom's

00:18:19.360 on drugs and he witnessed a murder, you know, it's like, it's almost like entirely forgivable

00:18:24.760 that, you know, this Tyrone character doesn't know much about history, it being that his

00:18:29.980 situation is so poor.

00:18:31.640 These are middle-class kids from the burbs attending a college, Lutheran college.

00:18:38.660 And it's like, oh, who was Luther?

00:18:40.620 What is that?

00:18:41.080 What is that?

00:18:41.500 Protestantism.

00:18:42.360 What is that?

00:18:43.200 They have no clue.

00:18:45.720 And so, yeah, I mean, I, I think we have definitely like evaporated all narratives and they are

00:18:51.320 a test case of pure post-modernism in the sense that they're, even if people like you or I want

00:18:57.800 to deconstruct the narrative, they're not even there.

00:19:02.200 There, there, there's no way of making sense of the world and, and your place in it.

00:19:08.820 And I think this is also confounded by something which I've, I've talked about before on these

00:19:16.660 episodes where I've, I think I've leveled it sludge or anti-culture or you, you can, you

00:19:24.260 know, pick whatever name for it you want.

00:19:27.140 Um, I am a fan of the free flowing format, like exactly like what we're doing today.

00:19:35.480 I, I love a good podcast where you have intelligent people and it's better in a way than an essay

00:19:41.200 because you can kind of pick up threads and go someplace you didn't expect to.

00:19:46.240 And there, there, there is content that is great content.

00:19:51.000 In fact, that is possible in this kind of situation.

00:19:54.700 It reminds me of the, the best kind of seminar that I ever took at say you Chicago, where

00:20:01.040 we would start with a text and then we would begin discussion.

00:20:05.000 We'd end up someplace.

00:20:06.360 And, and I, I do like that, but that's really at the best case.

00:20:11.480 I think there's this new genre of entertainment, I guess, which is quickly replacing the mainstream

00:20:20.300 media and films, et cetera, which is like hanging out with your friends as content in this parasocial

00:20:29.120 relationship where there's a streamer sitting in a gamer chair with fluorescent lights behind

00:20:36.180 her.

00:20:36.640 And you can see just enough, enough of the cleavage and maybe she's wearing nerd glasses just to 1.00

00:20:43.700 add a little spice to her look. 1.00

00:20:47.760 And she's responding to questions, many of which are outlandish or meant to be taken unseriously.

00:20:56.000 And they're talking really about nothing for hours on end.

00:21:02.360 And they, you know, when I was Nick Fuentes's age, I mean, again, it is, I, I sound like an old

00:21:10.200 man, like get off my lawn or something.

00:21:11.760 But when I was Nick Fuentes's age, I was reading books, like reading a magazine, uh, traveling around,

00:21:20.720 you know, on, on very little income, but just kind of having fun.

00:21:24.820 But basically I was, I was consuming or imbibing is probably a better way of things.

00:21:30.020 You know, I, I read, um, I actually was an English, uh, English and music major.

00:21:35.000 I studied a lot of English, uh, Elizabethan literature, et cetera.

00:21:39.700 I actually hadn't really read the ancients when I was in Germany and like 2002, uh, I read

00:21:46.740 Plato real serious.

00:21:48.640 I probably read him before, but I'd read him seriously for the first time.

00:21:51.420 I, I read Virgil, I just sat down and read it was just imbibing all of these stuff.

00:21:56.580 They're not imbibing their, their, their vomiting.

00:22:00.920 And so the, it's just, yeah, I mean, what could they possibly have to say?

00:22:06.060 It's the right, exactly.

00:22:07.660 Like it's just this, and there's no excuse not to vomit.

00:22:11.080 Like you, you can, you can do a live stream when you're sick in bed.

00:22:16.820 I mean, you can just endlessly generate the sludge.

00:22:19.700 I mean, to give Nick, Nick some credit, I do find, I I've never watched an entire stream

00:22:26.880 of my life of his, and I doubt I ever will, but to give him some credit, I do find some

00:22:32.540 of his like riffs for lack of a better word, pretty hilarious. 0.97

00:22:37.240 Like this to have sex with a woman is gay or what I'm, I'm just like, all right, this 1.00

00:22:42.420 guy is so ridiculous. 1.00

00:22:44.340 Like I kind of like him. 1.00

00:22:46.040 It's so stupid. 1.00

00:22:47.160 All right. 1.00

00:22:47.340 Remember one time, this is years ago.

00:22:49.460 He was like, people say the Bible is crazy, but like, all right, let me do an imitation.

00:22:54.880 People, they, they say the Bible's crazy, but then they want us to believe that large reptilian

00:23:00.520 monsters roamed the earth called the dinosaurs. 0.69

00:23:03.580 Now, now tell me who's more, who's more outlandish, who's more ridiculous science or the Bible

00:23:08.420 rest my case, you know, like he's denying dinosaurs.

00:23:12.740 And I'm just like, I cannot believe it's funny to give him credit, but I cannot believe I am

00:23:21.160 listening to this, you know?

00:23:23.620 And so I, I think that's where they are and their lives really are on, you know, in the

00:23:30.180 media.

00:23:30.420 So I, I remember there's a line from a pretty good film from, you know, a decade ago, like

00:23:35.900 the social network.

00:23:36.840 And it was, um, it was said by that, uh, that like musician come actor, I forgetting his name

00:23:45.080 at the moment.

00:23:45.500 Um, and he was like, you know, uh, at, at one, uh, what did he say?

00:23:50.980 He was like, um, Facebook is helping us.

00:23:53.740 We're, we're entering cyberspace so that we will now, you know, we will now be living in

00:24:00.220 cyberspace.

00:24:01.120 Like we're, we're fully plugged in where, what happens in the real world no longer matters.

00:24:06.160 It wasn't Andrew Garfield, but don't, don't, it doesn't, it's neither here nor there.

00:24:10.580 Someone mentioned that in the chat.

00:24:12.480 Um, and, uh, I think that that was silly.

00:24:17.400 And I think there was something kind of heady and ambitious about that idea of, you know,

00:24:21.380 plugging into the web.

00:24:23.320 Justin Timberlake was the guy who said it.

00:24:24.940 Yeah.

00:24:25.020 I can't remember his character.

00:24:26.060 I haven't seen it in a while.

00:24:27.160 He's a, he's a like singer pop star or whatever.

00:24:30.360 And he's also an actor anyway.

00:24:31.980 Um, but I think it actually happened and, but it didn't quite happen in the way that

00:24:38.640 we thought, like, I think we, we imagined like kids in the nineties or something plugging

00:24:43.540 into the internet, you know, it's like the matrix or, you know, you plug in and you're,

00:24:49.700 you're in, you're, you're in like a Tron like universe and everything's cool and kind of 1.00

00:24:54.980 dangerous and, uh, deceptive, but you're, you're, you're expanding your boundaries.

00:25:00.580 And so I think these, this was kind of the fantasy, but the reality of being plugged into

00:25:05.260 the internet is it's almost more mundane than real life.

00:25:09.880 Like it's sitting in a gamer chair talking about like maybe dating, I don't know, or video

00:25:19.080 game playing.

00:25:19.780 It's, it's more, it's weirdly more mundane than the real world in this shocking way, but,

00:25:27.720 but they do live there.

00:25:29.000 So their social lives are digital.

00:25:31.940 Their sex lives are digital, which is really remarkable.

00:25:36.460 Uh, they're, they're, they're friends.

00:25:39.080 Like they're, they're a better, they probably know more about that weird streamer girl that

00:25:46.020 they watch hours upon hours.

00:25:48.080 Then they know about members of their own family or certainly friends.

00:25:51.940 Yeah.

00:25:52.240 I mean, you know, I've, I've, I've certainly had the experience a number of times where

00:25:56.680 somebody casually mentioned they've got a girlfriend or they're seeing someone or whatever.

00:26:02.040 And then I, and then I find out actually they're living across the other side of the world and

00:26:06.260 they've only ever talked to each other on discord.

00:26:07.860 And I'm like, that's not really, you don't really have a girlfriend.

00:26:11.240 I mean, you've never even met each other.

00:26:13.640 Do you know what I mean? 0.82

00:26:14.620 But have you, have you, what is your, have you mutually masturbated with one another over 0.96

00:26:18.860 zoom? 0.92

00:26:19.240 Like even that, and it, I'm, I'm not trying to be vulgar or outlandish here.

00:26:24.320 It's like, that would almost be the ultimate culmination of it where you have this digital

00:26:29.880 connection, but then you're ultimately solipsistically stuck inside yourself. 0.96

00:26:34.920 Maybe literally in this case, um, you know, you're, you're just, you're jerking off together.

00:26:42.440 And so you're not actually creating a connection and needless to say, um, you're not going to

00:26:50.500 reproduce yourself that way, but that's almost like the ultimate, like expression of this

00:26:57.080 would be a relationship of that style.

00:27:00.120 Yeah.

00:27:00.340 And it kind of, I do think that it manifests itself in all sorts of interesting ways.

00:27:05.260 Like, I mean, you know, on the subject of Nick Fuentes, you know, I think one of the famous

00:27:09.220 memes is about the cat boy, right?

00:27:10.840 But I, I mean, I don't know, I don't know if you've noticed Richard, but in recent years,

00:27:15.540 just the sheer number of, um, anime avatar, right-wing transsexuals is enormous. 1.00

00:27:25.620 It's just, I mean, it's like the, I would say it's more than, it's more than one in 10 of

00:27:33.740 posts that I see now are from accounts of that, you know, of that sort of nature.

00:27:40.840 It's kind of ambiguous as to, well, is this a girl or a boy is clearly a man because of

00:27:48.660 their typing style, but they present themselves as a woman and, you know, they've got their

00:27:54.260 strange terms like booning and so on and so forth.

00:27:58.540 But it's like, how much of that is real?

00:28:03.240 How much, like, how much of that is just a projection?

00:28:06.620 I mean, I've said it before.

00:28:08.040 I, I, I remember I had a tweet of a while back that really angered a lot of people.

00:28:13.360 And in my experience, when you anger a lot of people, I'm sure you're going to agree

00:28:16.700 with this.

00:28:17.460 You're probably over the target somewhere, right?

00:28:19.360 Yeah.

00:28:19.560 If you probably, if you get real pushback, you probably hit on a nerve.

00:28:24.060 Um, I remember saying that making your own character in an RPG game is like one step on

00:28:31.780 the slippery slope to becoming a transsexual. 0.86

00:28:33.860 Yeah.

00:28:34.340 And, um, but that is basically what it is.

00:28:38.040 It is the, the presenting yourself as a transsexual on Twitter is really, because you're not, well, 1.00

00:28:50.360 I guess what I'm trying to say is these people aren't really dressing up and going out and 0.97

00:28:54.940 having like gay sex or something like this. 0.99

00:28:57.160 They're not doing any of those things. 1.00

00:28:58.880 They're just sitting in their bedrooms.

00:29:00.620 Yeah.

00:29:01.100 They're projecting an image of themselves onto the world, just like we used to make our

00:29:05.280 Facebook profiles, but it's now in the, it's now much more in the realm of like fantasy

00:29:11.540 and character creation.

00:29:13.580 And it's like, I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of interesting, but also like deeply tragic

00:29:20.060 and sad at the same time.

00:29:21.700 Um, but I, I think this can also, it, it, it's weird when it spills over into the real world.

00:29:28.860 And I, I do think that the, the alt right as a movement was that spilling over into the

00:29:37.340 real world and people would bring memes into real life.

00:29:41.840 Um, there, there was actually someone I remember who, who's a genuinely tragic case.

00:29:47.100 Uh, he, he was someone who was a, um, successful engineer, uh, uh, of, of some regard who was

00:29:54.780 at Charlottesville.

00:29:55.980 And when you saw him, he was just dressed up in the memes.

00:29:59.840 I mean, keep in mind when I got punched on camera, I was wearing a little Pepe pin and

00:30:05.920 it was just kind of like, Oh, isn't this cool?

00:30:08.240 I'm, I'm hip with the, uh, with the kids, you know, kind of thing.

00:30:12.260 And then obviously, you know, there's a dose of reality given to, uh, yours truly.

00:30:17.340 Um, but, but this, this person who was at Charlottesville, he was dressed up and all the

00:30:21.640 memes.

00:30:22.020 He was, he was like a character, like a mascot.

00:30:25.140 And, um, he was, he, it became real for him and became too real.

00:30:30.940 And he was doxxed and he eventually, um, uh, uh, committed suicide because it was just

00:30:39.100 too real.

00:30:39.780 I think, but the alt-right was a kind of spilling over of things.

00:30:43.620 I mean, Nick Fuentes is a connecting thread in all this.

00:30:47.420 Um, I mean, what was J6?

00:30:49.620 I mean, I think it was a lot of things and I do think there was a, you know, there was

00:30:54.180 a legal theory there.

00:30:55.640 There was some machinations going on with the electors and Trump wanted to stay in office.

00:31:00.800 Obviously, uh, but fundamentally it was a, it kind of like spilling over of the internet

00:31:08.240 into real life where all of those people had been connected through the internet and had

00:31:16.840 created a kind of quasi religious system that, that bore striking resemblances to Christianity

00:31:24.240 kind of had the structure of Christianity, but, but wasn't Christianity, obviously, but

00:31:29.200 it, and it kind of spilled over to this point where they, when it was in real life, they

00:31:35.200 didn't understand what was happening.

00:31:37.520 I mean, one of the defenses of J6 is that they were just walking around the Capitol like deer

00:31:44.080 in headlights, which they were, but, but it's a weird defense.

00:31:47.860 It's like, they know not what they do, but they do it anyway.

00:31:51.480 And I, I'm one of my, I'll let you talk in just one day.

00:31:55.180 One of my favorite moments was a woman who was like middle age, probably my age. 0.98

00:32:00.260 And she was, she, she went over to a camera and she was complaining and she was like, oh, 0.99

00:32:04.680 I got tear gassed.

00:32:06.060 And, and, and they were like, oh, well, you know what, what happened?

00:32:09.300 And she goes, well, it's a revolution.

00:32:11.080 You know, it's like, yeah, uh, tear gas is going to be the least of your worry worries

00:32:17.060 if you're engaging in revolution, my friend.

00:32:19.560 Uh, but I think that, that expressed that kind of like unconscious quality to them of,

00:32:26.780 of, of the, the digital world, like flowing into real life.

00:32:30.680 But, but go ahead.

00:32:32.100 No, I mean, I was going to say that, uh, you know, they say like the first time is tragedy.

00:32:37.020 The second time is fast.

00:32:38.120 Right.

00:32:38.400 I do think there's a difference between Charlottesville and what was, what happened

00:32:45.440 in that moment.

00:32:47.240 And this thing that we've been, this thing that we've been talking about with the

00:32:50.640 Fuentes phenomenon and so on, which is that, you know, for, for, for better or for worse

00:32:57.460 back in 2016, 2017, when you put that Pepe frog on, there was a degree of self-awareness

00:33:04.440 going on with you.

00:33:06.520 Okay.

00:33:07.000 You're a man who's grown up watching Seinfeld or whatever.

00:33:11.200 Like you understand, like you have a degree of sophistication where you actually understood

00:33:16.400 to some extent what was happening and the social, political, and cultural context of that.

00:33:23.500 And that when you're transgressing, you're at, you're actually know why.

00:33:29.900 And, you know, what, like, if something is edgy, you know what that line is and why you're

00:33:36.680 crossing it for better or for worse.

00:33:38.900 Okay.

00:33:39.180 Now, now the, the, the, the Nick crowd, I do not believe has that level of awareness.

00:33:49.580 I just don't think they know what they're doing.

00:33:51.880 It's like, you think they're not ironic and some weird, but I just don't, I just don't

00:33:57.440 think they have any concept of what, of any of those things.

00:34:03.540 They just lack the necessary knowledge basically to understand what they're actually doing.

00:34:10.840 Now, now the actual effect when, when Louis Theroux puts Nick Fuentes on a BBC documentary and

00:34:18.420 middle-class women in bloody, you know, Kent, um, listen, listen to him saying that women 1.00

00:34:25.640 shouldn't have the vote and all this sort of stuff.

00:34:27.840 Right.

00:34:28.460 That is probably very traumatizing to them.

00:34:30.960 But I just don't, I just don't know if Fuentes understands why that reaction would happen.

00:34:40.840 Right.

00:34:41.420 I mean, maybe he does, maybe I'm not giving him enough credit, but I just don't get the, I

00:34:45.700 just don't get the impression that there's the ability to distinguish between a kind of

00:34:52.480 edgelord online space and just the real world.

00:34:56.960 And it's real taboos and it's, and you know, actual, actual moral values that people have.

00:35:04.960 Um, you know, I, I've talked a lot, my next book is going to be called the boomer truth

00:35:08.540 regime.

00:35:09.300 Yeah.

00:35:10.220 And, and, you know, I'm going to talk about like, well, this is a kind of mental prison

00:35:13.860 in a way for boomers and gen Xers and, and, and millennials who, who have all lived their

00:35:19.300 lives in this kind of ideological kind of post-World War II bubble that in, in some ways

00:35:25.700 is kind of liberal and free, but in other ways, extremely brittle.

00:35:29.600 Yeah.

00:35:29.840 Okay.

00:35:30.040 I mean, there are whole topic areas that we, that we can't even talk about without getting

00:35:34.620 into trouble.

00:35:35.100 Right.

00:35:35.420 Well, I think, I think that you're onto something because the, okay.

00:35:39.700 So if we, if we briefly describe the, the, the generations, you, obviously the boomers

00:35:45.800 had this very unique perspective of being born after the second world war and, and experiencing

00:35:53.480 its benefits and kind of developing the, the taboo, which might've existed previously

00:35:59.580 to some extent, but, but really develop, you know, Hitler is the worst thing ever. 0.83

00:36:04.020 The Holocaust is the most kind of profound event that we could think about liberalism's 0.61

00:36:10.820 good, you know, and so on.

00:36:13.160 Gen Xers, we kind of reacted against that as their, as their children, where it's, it's 0.58

00:36:20.380 the kind of Christopher Hitchens, you know, well, okay, but you, you know, Israel just uses 0.94

00:36:26.380 the Holocaust so they can oppress Palestinians, like, like, we had a little sense of, and 0.68

00:36:30.640 I'm a young Gen Xer, but I am a Gen Xer, but we, we kind of had a sense of, of irony.

00:36:37.100 The millennials almost like reinstated the boomer truth regime in a kind of funny way. 0.76

00:36:44.800 Gen Xers, I mean, I call it the Gen X Daria. 1.00

00:36:47.540 Do you remember that show Daria?

00:36:48.680 Oh yeah.

00:36:49.500 Yeah, yeah, I do.

00:36:50.380 You know how she was like cynical and she'd be like always kind of psychoanalyzing her parents 0.98

00:36:55.700 and, you know, she'd never be impressed with it.

00:36:58.040 I mean, that's very stereotypical kind of Gen X. 0.95

00:37:01.200 Yeah.

00:37:02.980 It's Bill Murray, basically, you know.

00:37:05.000 Yeah.

00:37:05.540 But then like millennials almost reinstated it in this kind of cutesy way.

00:37:10.860 And then, but then I think Gen Z, they're, they're almost like, they really are.

00:37:17.200 Because if you look at the, the, the like political profile of millennials and zoomers, 1.00

00:37:22.520 it's actually very similar in terms of like, do you support gay marriage?

00:37:27.520 Do you, you know, do you support abortion?

00:37:31.040 Do you support taxes or whatever it's, they're actually very similar and they're, they're very

00:37:34.960 left-wing, but I think there might be a profound difference that polling misses where it's like

00:37:40.660 someone like pearly things or Nick Fuentes, where they're just like, yeah, women shouldn't 1.00

00:37:45.940 vote. 0.81

00:37:46.360 Women have no value. 1.00

00:37:47.340 They, they're, they're just saying this directly unadulterated on social media. 0.97

00:37:55.540 That's a difference.

00:37:56.700 I don't think it's millennial would do that.

00:37:58.960 No, I mean, millennials were extremely, I taught a lot of millennials and they were extremely

00:38:03.240 earnest and, you know, it's difficult for, I mean, I was, uh, I'm kind of on the cusp,

00:38:08.900 you know, I'm either a late gen X or an early, early, uh, millennial, millennial, you call

00:38:14.100 it the, the, the, the Xennial, right.

00:38:16.420 Yeah.

00:38:16.580 Kind of unique and early, I was born in the early eighties.

00:38:19.900 Um, but the, the, the kind of certainly the later millennials, they don't deal with ambiguity

00:38:25.180 very well.

00:38:26.040 You know, I remember teaching Shakespeare and they wanted to know like who were the good guys

00:38:29.740 and who were the bad guys.

00:38:30.640 I'm like, you can't approach Shakespeare like it's Harry Potter, you know, but they almost

00:38:35.120 wanted to make everything Harry Potter, like genuinely a battle of good against evil, which

00:38:40.640 is interesting in all sorts of ways.

00:38:42.840 Harry Potter and Marvel movies.

00:38:44.980 That, that is the, yeah.

00:38:46.920 Um, the, the, the, the, the, the gen, the, the gen Z, the, the, the zoomers, as we we've

00:38:53.200 been talking about, I think what it is, is that they, I genuinely don't think they have

00:38:58.160 any sense of what you might call the sacred, right?

00:39:02.880 Now, like you and I, we might start to, uh, question some of the, like you, like you mentioned,

00:39:11.440 like the uses of the Holocaust, um, in kind of post-World War II myths, something like

00:39:17.700 that.

00:39:17.980 And you can, you can, we can look at it with a kind of jaundiced eye, but we also will have

00:39:24.360 an acute sense, especially if you're just talking to a, you know, Joe Normie, member

00:39:28.260 of the public, that this is an absolute kind of sacred symbol at the center of the system.

00:39:33.660 Um, and that you have to tread really carefully around that because, you know, people can,

00:39:39.440 if you tread on their sacred symbol, they can go absolutely apeshit.

00:39:43.760 And, you know, when it comes to that particular issue, you know, it's, uh, you know, you're,

00:39:50.640 you're dealing with some pretty, pretty untouchable areas.

00:39:55.000 Right.

00:39:55.500 Um, but I don't feel like the typical zoomer and certainly not Nick.

00:40:01.100 I don't think he gets that.

00:40:02.900 I don't think he gets that when he's making his cookie jokes or whatever, that this is

00:40:06.900 going to be like, I mean, it has the effect, like he probably sees the horrified reactions

00:40:13.560 and so on and thinks they're funny or whatever, but I don't think he, he quite understands the,

00:40:19.060 the depth of how sacred that value is.

00:40:21.800 Or like, I don't know, women's votes or something like that. 1.00

00:40:24.920 Like, so, I mean, in a, you see, it's a weird thing because in a strange way, it's liberating.

00:40:29.980 Right.

00:40:31.100 But they're almost trying to achieve what I want to achieve with my, with my boomer 0.88

00:40:35.000 truth, uh, stuff just in the most retarded way possible. 0.95

00:40:39.100 They're just doing it by being retarded, not by, not by any kind of, uh, kind of knowing 0.99

00:40:46.620 deconstruction.

00:40:47.460 And I find myself kind of torn because in a strange way, I also like want to, how can I

00:40:53.540 put it?

00:40:53.780 Like, as I tear, I want to tear down the world the boomer's built. 0.92

00:40:57.840 I want to, I also want to kind of retain some part of it or appreciate some part of it

00:41:03.480 because it's the world we grew up in.

00:41:05.340 Right.

00:41:05.840 But they just don't have any semblance of any of it.

00:41:08.180 They were, I mean, another attitude I come across a lot from the zoomers is that, oh, 1.00

00:41:13.820 we live in such a, like a morally bankrupt world.

00:41:16.360 Um, basically all, all art produced after the war is degenerate.

00:41:22.420 You know, you'll talk about a movie or something.

00:41:24.760 Oh, well, why would I need to know that?

00:41:26.580 It's, it's degenerate.

00:41:28.080 It's degenerate. 0.85

00:41:29.120 You know, it's a Jewish author.

00:41:30.940 Like, oh yeah, I don't, I'm glad I don't have to read that book.

00:41:34.420 So you, you essentially get zoomers justifying their own ignorance of everything. 1.00

00:41:41.180 It's like they're proud of not knowing anything, which is a very, uh, so that's one thing.

00:41:49.600 And their sacred objects come from the internet.

00:41:52.620 So this is, this is the other thing that Richard, this lack of a sense of what is sacred.

00:41:58.480 Okay.

00:41:59.440 Also means you get ridiculous road to Damascus conversions every six weeks.

00:42:06.020 You know, I'm a, I'm a pagan Nietzschean six weeks later.

00:42:12.040 Now I'm a devout Catholic six weeks later.

00:42:14.980 Now, now I'm a, now I've joined the, um, Orthodox church.

00:42:20.040 It's just like, do you understand the magnitude of these declarations you're making?

00:42:25.080 You know, I remember that like Thomas Carlyle says, the most important thing about a man

00:42:29.240 is his religion, right?

00:42:30.760 Yeah.

00:42:31.300 But these people wear them like clothes and they declare them to the world and they, they

00:42:36.520 change the, you know, they, they, they change their avatars and they get into all of the

00:42:41.080 quote, you know, all of the ortho bro talk.

00:42:44.680 And then six weeks later, they're onto something else.

00:42:47.500 Yeah.

00:42:48.640 So anyway, yeah, if I may jump in.

00:42:52.200 Um, so I think that, you know, the criticism.

00:42:55.080 Of Nick, that he's only appealing to his humor audience.

00:42:58.560 I'm not even sure that he would receive that as a criticism.

00:43:01.160 I think he would be like, well, you know, they're the, they're the new generation.

00:43:05.020 They're the young blood. 1.00

00:43:06.120 So they're the relevant audience.

00:43:08.340 And he's not totally incorrect in that assessment.

00:43:10.820 I mean, you know, ideally you want to be speaking to the youth or the next generation.

00:43:14.940 You want to be influencing the next generation.

00:43:16.860 So I think he's correct in that regard, uh, to a degree.

00:43:20.460 Um, I don't think that, I think he has successfully alienated other groups though, which is probably

00:43:27.640 not ideal.

00:43:28.540 And, but maybe it's something that, you know, as he matures, uh, he'll be able to make adjustments.

00:43:35.200 I don't know.

00:43:36.180 You know what I mean?

00:43:36.620 And I, I, I, um, uh, when it comes to Nick, I'm pretty ambivalent in terms of, uh, you know,

00:43:43.620 um, how his movement in particular turns out, I mean, I, it could have some positive side

00:43:49.060 effects.

00:43:49.400 I'll admit, um, because some taboos I think need to be shaken.

00:43:54.400 And I think that, um, and in, maybe it allows people like us to come in and be like, okay,

00:44:01.360 well, you know, here's a more reasonable approach to things, right.

00:44:06.120 Where, um, you know, we're not, we, we're not necessarily going to be, um, insulting these

00:44:12.220 sacred cows, but we may be saying, well, listen, um, they are sacred cows that should be looked

00:44:17.920 at in a critical way, uh, and reassessed.

00:44:20.700 Right.

00:44:21.100 Um, so I don't, I think that, you know, I mean, that's one, there's a possible positive kind

00:44:27.400 of side effect, I think, to a movement like Nick's, um, uh, potentially, but I, in what

00:44:33.980 we're describing though, in terms of the generation gap, um, you know, I think that I, it is a kind

00:44:40.980 of cliche that, you know, the, uh, generations will be at odds with one another and they'll

00:44:46.040 disagree or not see things the same.

00:44:49.540 Uh, now, of course, I mean, ultimately this is ultimately, ideally there's a kind of continuation

00:44:54.840 between the generations.

00:44:56.880 Um, even, uh, uh, you know, veneration of elders and wisdom and this sort of thing in,

00:45:02.000 maybe you find that in more traditional societies, but I think that that it's not even, you know,

00:45:07.060 I don't think it requires us, you know, deciding that we have to go back to medieval Europe

00:45:11.700 to, um, you know, adopt more of that kind of psychology, uh, in the modern world.

00:45:18.200 I think that that there is, there is a healthy aspect to that.

00:45:21.360 I think, and I think it's ultimately a balance.

00:45:23.780 I mean, evidently our ancestors failed in some things.

00:45:26.860 So the past does require a kind of critical analysis to see where things went wrong.

00:45:31.400 Um, but at the same time, I think that there is, you know, you, people who are, who have

00:45:37.340 lived in the world longer than you, um, no more and, or wiser.

00:45:41.860 I mean, I, you know, in, in, in, they might have ultimately come to wrong or incorrect conclusions.

00:45:48.380 Um, but I, I think that one of the problems, uh, because I, you know, the way, the way that

00:45:55.180 I see Nick's movement is I see him, I think he's having success, but he's basically having

00:46:00.200 success off a cliff.

00:46:01.880 Like, I don't think it, it ultimately goes anywhere good is, is my feeling.

00:46:06.520 I, and again, it might have, it might have beneficial effects to, uh, movements, um, uh,

00:46:12.860 that Richard and I are, are promoting.

00:46:14.600 But, um, I, I think that for his own movement, I think it has a kind of, I think it has a kind

00:46:21.660 of disastrous future.

00:46:24.300 And, you know, in, I, in, I'm in a way I'm kind of giving free advice here, but I know it's

00:46:29.380 also advice that they won't take, um, uh, which is, you know, because they'll see me

00:46:35.140 as concern trolling.

00:46:36.380 And I think that there is a kind of, um, you know, you, when you do get advice from, especially

00:46:41.860 someone who might be a rival or you might, you know, might perceive could be a rival,

00:46:46.700 uh, they could even sort of unconsciously give you bad advice.

00:46:49.800 So I understand the instinct for them not to want to listen to me.

00:46:53.180 Um, but when I see, you know, some of these young zoomer guys who are kind of e-celebs 1.00

00:46:58.940 or, you know, leaders in this, in our movement or sort of adjacent movements, it's probably

00:47:04.340 the better way of describing it.

00:47:06.400 Um, there is a lack of wisdom there ultimately.

00:47:12.240 Well, I think Richard has to step away for a second.

00:47:17.160 Okay.

00:47:17.520 So, yeah, but that's fine.

00:47:18.900 He's, he's just going to be gone for 10 minutes, but, um, you know, I'll let you speak in a

00:47:23.020 second here because I see you jumping on a, but, um, I, in one thing is one thing I've

00:47:28.300 noticed is that, you know, they'll, I mean, it'll be like some 24 year old guy and they

00:47:34.320 haven't read Nietzsche.

00:47:35.240 They haven't read the philosophers, but they are themselves a philosopher or, or consider

00:47:39.340 themselves to be philosophers.

00:47:40.600 And they don't actually, you know, they haven't read them.

00:47:45.040 They don't understand it.

00:47:46.440 And you see them and you see yourself at that age and you understand why they're thinking

00:47:52.760 in the way that they are, but they're, they're, they just haven't like gone further long enough

00:47:58.440 down the road to kind of reach better conclusions.

00:48:00.980 Right.

00:48:01.740 And maybe not, maybe they're not objectively better conclusions, but you see where they

00:48:05.100 are and you're, you're much further along.

00:48:08.080 You've already kind of considered the things that they've considered and sort of gone through

00:48:11.840 this sort of logical considerations that they're going through now.

00:48:16.140 Um, I think you understand my point.

00:48:18.860 Um, but anyways, why don't, why don't you jump in?

00:48:21.760 I mean, I mean, just on that last point, Mark, it's like, yeah, I made all my mistakes and

00:48:30.180 I did all my reading and I would, you know, did the whole Richard laid out earlier on where

00:48:34.940 you, you go back and you kind of teach yourself the classics type thing.

00:48:40.480 I mean, a lot of learning is learning that you do to yourself.

00:48:43.740 Right.

00:48:44.320 Uh, um, not necessarily a formal education.

00:48:47.380 It's just your, you know, the reading that you do in your own time, but also, you know,

00:48:51.700 as a young, as a young 20 something, I was absolutely insufferable. 0.88

00:48:55.640 Um, I mean, even more than I am now, I mean, like you think I'm a wanker now, you should 0.73

00:49:01.060 have seen me when I was like, you know, how arrogant I was when I was 20 or 21 or something. 0.77

00:49:05.100 Oh yeah.

00:49:05.860 Um, but the difference was I wasn't doing that in front of an audience of thousands and the

00:49:12.080 effect of an audience means that you're much less likely to back down.

00:49:17.540 And I mean, I, I, you know, some of my, some of the, uh, books I've written in the past

00:49:22.680 have been about, um, you know, like thinking fast and slow and Jonathan Haidt and the way

00:49:28.400 that, uh, you know, uh, most of our thinking is intuitive as opposed to reasoned out.

00:49:35.480 Right.

00:49:36.220 One of the, one of the persistent phenomena is confirmation bias.

00:49:40.920 Once you have a view and you're seen as being entrenched in that view, it's very difficult

00:49:47.260 to back down from it.

00:49:49.500 Well, of course it's much easier to do that if you've never really told anyone about it,

00:49:55.080 if it's just your own notes or if you, you just kind of privately think, oh, well, maybe

00:50:00.060 I'm not that much into car marks or something as, as, as I was a few months, you know, a few

00:50:06.440 weeks ago.

00:50:06.940 But if you're doing it in front of an audience of like 20, 30, 100,000 people, it's a lot

00:50:13.080 more difficult to, uh, it's a lot more difficult to kind of change your mind.

00:50:18.800 So yeah.

00:50:19.880 And also their, their bad ideas go viral, right?

00:50:23.080 So they'll have a bad idea that will go viral and they'll see it as related to their success

00:50:27.980 and popularity.

00:50:29.000 So the, the instinct or desire will be to double down on these sort of bad ideas because they

00:50:35.320 see it as kind of, um, uh, primary or part of their success, right?

00:50:41.400 So the, the early success becomes a kind of curse, uh, potentially right now, theoretically,

00:50:47.280 I think that some learning can also occur then as well.

00:50:51.320 But I think that often, uh, you know, a guy like Nick, um, you know, he probably, he would 0.99

00:50:57.800 listen to a podcast like this and be like, you know, who the fuck are these guys? 0.98

00:51:00.840 I've made millions of dollars. 0.98

00:51:02.040 I'm the leader of, you know, DR or whatever, right?

00:51:05.000 So I'm right.

00:51:05.980 They're wrong.

00:51:06.540 Right.

00:51:06.880 And that, and that would be sort of the conclusion he he'll reach.

00:51:10.540 Um, so I see where, so maybe you understand what I'm saying is that that ends up being

00:51:15.140 a kind of curse for the guy, you know, he doesn't, he no longer thinks that he can learn anything

00:51:19.860 and that he kind of knew everything out of the gate.

00:51:22.820 Yeah.

00:51:23.220 Um, and I, I see, oh, please super serious second, uh, the Mark, the thing I really worry

00:51:30.020 about, I don't want to come across like an old woman or something here, but I mean, okay.

00:51:34.760 So he's a, you know, there are these, uh, fairly naive kids who are making their mistakes

00:51:40.140 in public and they're not quite, they're not quite sure what they're doing and they have

00:51:43.960 a certain degree of success that they can get drunk on.

00:51:46.400 Um, now the, you know, the government, the regime, as we call them, you know, um, the

00:51:53.340 U S government, the British government who, who basically have an agenda.

00:51:57.440 I mean, I've read their intelligence documents.

00:52:00.580 Um, I've read, you know, what they're pushing at the moment, which is basically the idea of,

00:52:06.620 uh, quote unquote, far right extremism.

00:52:09.180 Uh, you know, they, in some sense, they want to create kind of moral panic around these

00:52:16.040 things.

00:52:17.160 And one of the things I, I worry about basically is that, um, and I'm not, I'm not suggesting

00:52:24.040 here that Fuentes himself is a malicious actor, by the way, I'm just saying that the, the things

00:52:30.680 that we've been describing have a real use for the government because they can, I mean,

00:52:37.020 let's say in a sea, in a sea of, uh, people making kind of on online content.

00:52:42.780 Okay.

00:52:43.600 You've got one who's got no filter. 0.99

00:52:45.500 You've got one who's basically a clown, right? 0.96

00:52:48.220 Well, they can reach into that sea of people and just elevate the one that fits their narrative. 0.93

00:52:54.980 The one that's the most edgy, the one that's the most extreme.

00:52:58.700 And that's the one that they're going to feature on their documentary.

00:53:01.660 That's the one that they're going to put on their website and in their intelligence documents

00:53:04.960 and so on.

00:53:06.120 That's the one that's going to make it into the, um, into the soap opera, you know, that's

00:53:11.280 worrying about, uh, there was this ridiculous storyline in a soap here about, um, black pill

00:53:17.880 in cells.

00:53:18.760 That's how they, that's how they talked about it in, in, in the show.

00:53:21.840 And I, I just wonder, I just worry about the structural role that somebody like Fuentes

00:53:28.800 plays for the system, because the ultimately, if you understand the way the government always

00:53:36.720 operates, it basically elevates somebody like that to bring in some sort of ruling that they

00:53:44.260 want in this country, it's called the online harms bill in America.

00:53:47.860 They'll, they'll find a different way to do it, to get around the, uh, the constitution

00:53:51.940 or, or whatever in Europe, it will be, you know, something even more draconian and they

00:53:57.940 will use people like Fuentes to justify those sorts of crackdowns.

00:54:02.920 Um, I mean, in a way, if it, if it wasn't him, it'll be someone else.

00:54:08.860 It, I just find it a little bit frustrating that, you know, considering all the stuff we saw

00:54:14.540 for some of the events of 2017 and, uh, even, even, uh, 2021 that no, it seems like nobody's

00:54:22.260 just learned anything at all, but you still get this, you're basically gifting them the

00:54:26.880 exact narrative that they want.

00:54:29.360 And, um, you know, I just wish it could be otherwise, but yeah.

00:54:34.200 I mean, you know, to your point, whether or not the government is looking at a guy like

00:54:38.400 Nick and saying, okay, well let's allow this movement, you know, to grow or, or let's kind

00:54:43.880 of, you know, even support it in this way or that, I, you know, we don't know if that's

00:54:48.300 happening and I, I tend, I actually don't have any reason to believe that that's happening.

00:54:53.460 Um, you know, it's something that Richard and I have talked about, um, is that I think

00:54:59.000 that, you know, Nick, um, but we would say this also, Richard and I would say this about,

00:55:03.740 uh, Christianity in general, right.

00:55:06.220 Which is a kind of more radical thesis, I suppose, but that it ultimately represents a false

00:55:10.440 opposition or kind of false opposition.

00:55:12.240 I think this is Adam Green has kind of come around to this position as well.

00:55:15.620 It seems, um, maybe simultaneously or at the same time that we have.

00:55:19.780 Um, but, um, so I, I think that he's, he's unwittingly in that role, but I don't think

00:55:26.780 that he is consciously in that role.

00:55:29.340 Uh, but ultimately it doesn't matter whether he's unwitting or he's conscious, uh, only that

00:55:35.300 he's, you know, serving a kind of negative or bad end that ends up ultimately being a

00:55:40.620 kind of synthetic opposition might be a better way of describing it.

00:55:44.300 Um, so I take your point.

00:55:47.040 Um, I mean, and I, and I think though, and I, and this is, you know, sort of the piece

00:55:53.520 of advice that I, again, I, again, I can be confident in giving and know that they won't

00:55:57.580 take, uh, so therefore I will give it.

00:56:00.160 Um, but the, the Christianity thing too, I mean, he's, you know, I mean, when you think

00:56:07.660 about the way that, um, Nick uses Catholicism right now, he's kind of manifestation of Catholicism

00:56:16.740 is absurd, right?

00:56:17.680 It has nothing to do with Christianity.

00:56:20.000 It has nothing to do with Christianity on a scriptural level, but let's say you're a Catholic 0.68

00:56:24.620 and you're less concerned about scripture.

00:56:27.120 Uh, ostensibly you're following the Pope or you're following the church more generally.

00:56:31.380 It has nothing to do with the Catholic church.

00:56:34.000 You know, his whole movement would be, uh, viewed as completely repugnant by mainstream

00:56:39.520 Christianity generally, right?

00:56:41.140 It has nothing to do with Christianity.

00:56:43.640 Um, so, but he, it does have, it does by him using Christianity as a kind of instrument

00:56:50.200 in his movement, it does give it a kind of mystical power, um, that I think has at least a

00:56:55.620 kind of short term benefit.

00:56:57.360 One of the benefits too, is I think it's allowed in, I don't, you can call this a benefit or

00:57:02.040 a flaw.

00:57:02.860 And I think it is ultimately a flaw, but one of the things that it does too, is it allows

00:57:07.460 his movement to become more multicultural and it allows him to talk, you know, uh, he allows

00:57:13.680 him to relate to guys on fresh and fit.

00:57:15.960 For example, I guess one of the guys is a Muslim.

00:57:17.860 Um, but if it's about God, you know, if it's, if it becomes a movement about God, basically

00:57:24.040 against the Jews is which, which is how it's kind of manifest manifesting, it seems.

00:57:29.180 Um, then it also become, it may also become a multicultural movement.

00:57:33.460 Right.

00:57:34.060 And in that's, I think that's happened in that kind of direction.

00:57:37.160 Right.

00:57:38.380 Uh, with, uh, Nick, uh, you know, so it, and now I think Nick will say, well, you know,

00:57:44.120 I, I'm, I'm personally against race mixing and he might ultimately have a kind of, you 1.00

00:57:49.920 know, a separatist agenda.

00:57:52.200 I don't know exactly how it manifests itself.

00:57:54.880 Uh, he, I know that he's called himself a majoritarian in the past.

00:57:58.640 That I think is an incoherent view.

00:58:00.880 I mean, it's that you, you know, you're either, you're either a separatist and you want an

00:58:05.360 ethno state or you're not, uh, or you're a multiculturalist ultimately on some level, uh, at least as it

00:58:11.780 concerns states and territories.

00:58:13.380 Right.

00:58:14.460 Um, uh, but in, in less, you know, but that's not necessarily connected.

00:58:21.920 You could have a different sense of peoplehood where you have a sense of separation as, you

00:58:28.000 know, certain elements of, uh, Judaism have that separation or that sense of peoplehood.

00:58:34.380 Um, but you know, that position ultimately a majoritarian position is not, you know, it's

00:58:40.640 not really a tenable position.

00:58:42.060 I mean, it's, you know, uh, demographics change one way or the other, right?

00:58:46.500 So demographics will either become less white or they'll become more white.

00:58:50.720 Right.

00:58:51.080 Uh, so to say you're a majoritarian is, is, you know, maybe it's a kind of, from his perspective,

00:58:56.120 it's kind of rhetorical device, but ultimately it doesn't, you know, because his movement

00:59:01.680 is Catholic or Christian, it's not a racialist movement.

00:59:06.040 Um, you know, I mean, and he does put that, he does, uh, indicate that that is his sort

00:59:10.420 of highest, you know, um, banner is Christianity.

00:59:15.080 Uh, and Christianity is not racialist in any way.

00:59:18.640 I mean, in fact, we're, we're kind of, it's, his movement is kind of manifesting, uh, in

00:59:25.700 a way that's kind of true to the creed of Christianity in the sense that it is, it is, uh, multiracial,

00:59:32.040 uh, and it has a kind of, at least, um, it has a kind of, uh, um, uh, exoteric, um, anti-Semitism.

00:59:45.040 It's not a genuine anti-Semitism.

00:59:47.400 Now, I think in, in, uh, Nick's case, it could be a genuine anti-Semitism, which would also

00:59:51.920 not make it a Christian movement, right?

00:59:54.120 Christian, Christianity is not an anti-Semitic movement.

00:59:57.000 That's just false.

00:59:58.040 When you read the gospels, Jesus is trying to convert the Jews.

01:00:01.500 Um, it's true.

01:00:03.720 There are Jewish bad guys in the gospel, but the good guys are also Jews. 0.99

01:00:08.200 They're, they're the apostles through Jesus and everything.

01:00:10.780 Right.

01:00:11.580 Um, and it's understood as a kind of continuation of Judaism.

01:00:14.840 It's the new covenant.

01:00:16.760 Um, but in any case, so his movement is not Christian by any like meaningful metric.

01:00:23.720 Um, uh, and yet on another level, it is in the sense that it's multiracial, right?

01:00:30.140 Uh, it's not in terms of it's, it's sort of, uh, it's ethos of behavior and conduct.

01:00:36.360 It is not Christian. 1.00

01:00:37.700 Uh, but in terms of, uh, developing in a multiracial direction, it is Christian.

01:00:43.100 Um, yeah, I, I, but so my advice actually to him, because I think that he is a talented,

01:00:50.120 um, speaker and I think he is charismatic.

01:00:53.600 I mean, evidently, uh, he's, he's a person that has of certain talents.

01:00:58.320 Um, my advice to, to him would be to tone down that Christian element. 1.00

01:01:03.840 Um, I think it's, it can only be a liability in the long run.

01:01:07.120 Now, I think that he's gained, I think he's gained some energy from it.

01:01:11.920 Uh, and because a lot of this is crazy.

01:01:14.540 He, I think he has this sort of zeal at core that are Catholics, right?

01:01:18.540 So the idea that he would move away from Catholicism, uh, right now is probably just something that's

01:01:24.040 unthinkable.

01:01:24.540 That's the core of his movement.

01:01:25.900 And he probably understands it as the core of his movement.

01:01:28.420 But if you took like this sort of, you know, if you understand, I mean, already you're

01:01:34.480 dealing with politics that, you know, they say that there, there are things that you're

01:01:37.440 not supposed to discuss in polite company, that cliche one is politics.

01:01:40.960 The other is religion, right? 0.89

01:01:42.920 So you're kind of opening two fronts.

01:01:44.900 You're fighting a two front war when you, you, you're both a, uh, religious movement and

01:01:50.360 a political move.

01:01:52.060 Um, and I think that one of those fronts is kind of unnecessary.

01:01:54.860 It's, it's, it's, but the position that he's in, because

01:01:58.060 his brand of Catholicism is so weird.

01:02:01.920 And so obviously not Christian, at least on a kind of ethical level. 0.97

01:02:07.060 Um, and yet it is Christian in these other ways.

01:02:10.760 Um, you know, Paul also was an incel and you couldn't make an argument that it, Christianity 0.87

01:02:16.360 does promote insults, right?

01:02:18.520 And it's multiracial.

01:02:20.100 So it is, it is Christian in those ways, but it's so weird. 0.96

01:02:24.060 And there's in there kind of so much in their own little weird echo chamber, uh, that it's,

01:02:30.780 you know, I mean, people, uh, we can think of a famous example with, um, uh, Romney where

01:02:38.280 people were, you know, Christians were kind of looking askance at him because he was a Mormon.

01:02:43.260 Now take that and times it by like a thousand with this sort of weird, uh, you know, Catholicism 0.97

01:02:50.940 that, um, uh, Nick has generated and you see the problem, right?

01:02:56.520 It's, it makes him politically unviable, this weird brand of Catholicism.

01:03:02.820 But it's a double-edged sword.

01:03:04.300 I mean, I would.

01:03:05.060 You know what it is?

01:03:05.680 I, I, I, I admitted that Nick.

01:03:07.460 Yeah.

01:03:07.740 Well, I'm taking the Nick position here.

01:03:11.520 I admit that I'm taking the, I'm taking the Nick position.

01:03:14.840 I, I think it should be if he doesn't want to accomplish what we want to accomplish.

01:03:19.860 And I would, even though I get academic agent and I, we, we, we have disagreements or something,

01:03:25.560 but I would actually put him in the crowd.

01:03:28.460 He wants political success though, Richard.

01:03:30.580 He does.

01:03:30.840 He does.

01:03:31.500 And, and I think he's, I think he's tapping into something. 0.99

01:03:34.740 I mean, as, as stupid and unsuccessful as the yay movement ultimately was, it did tap 0.99

01:03:43.180 in to the contradictions of the zoomers in so many ways, the black rap star being a Nazi 0.99

01:03:53.320 and ultimately being this pious Christian, even though he's, you know, last week he was 0.97

01:04:00.380 involved in some drug field orgy.

01:04:02.720 I mean, it, it, it kind of got at that contradiction, uh, that you, you kind of need actually to

01:04:11.240 be successful in this way that they want to be successful, uh, which is popular among 0.99

01:04:18.320 these zoomer morons. 1.00

01:04:21.220 That's what they want. 1.00

01:04:22.560 That's not what we want.

01:04:23.860 And so I would tell him to tone up the Catholicism. 0.99

01:04:28.340 And I, I think that, I mean, I might have my own hidden motivations for suggesting him

01:04:34.420 to do that.

01:04:35.820 Um, but now he's going to wonder who's giving him the bad, bad, who's going to wonder.

01:04:42.340 Guys, I'm going to, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to jump off, but just before

01:04:45.920 I go, I saw, I saw an image of Fuentes doing the rounds of Fuentes standing in the middle

01:04:53.400 surrounded by like rather large black women flanked by either side of the, what was that 1.00

01:05:01.640 about?

01:05:01.860 Big but beautiful is the term.

01:05:03.120 Big but beautiful.

01:05:04.220 Oh yeah.

01:05:04.920 Right.

01:05:05.320 What was that about?

01:05:06.840 Cause that happened like this, just this, this past week.

01:05:08.920 Like, was it you Mark who, uh, who shared that image?

01:05:12.060 Yeah.

01:05:12.500 So it's related to this.

01:05:14.060 Um, he was, uh, Richard was describing it earlier and I don't really know much about

01:05:18.540 this show, but it's, it's of that category that Richard was describing earlier where it's,

01:05:22.580 um, these guys, they get a bunch of girls, uh, who are kind of dolled up and guys kind

01:05:28.780 of give them manosphere talking points and talk about how like their body count is going

01:05:33.540 to make sure that they, uh, end up only fans or whatever the case may be.

01:05:37.280 Right.

01:05:37.380 Like some, you know, it's, it's very kind of only fans is the ultimate, you know, you'll

01:05:44.060 only have fans at the end of the day.

01:05:46.100 Yes.

01:05:46.860 Yeah.

01:05:47.140 Yeah.

01:05:47.600 Um, and, uh, so it's one of these shows of that love of that sort of low level.

01:05:54.180 I think we can fairly say, um, and, uh, it's fit and fresh was this one's called fit and

01:06:00.760 fresh and it's kind of the more diverse version of the more popular one that you see that goes

01:06:05.220 viral on Twitter.

01:06:06.100 Uh, what is it called?

01:06:07.780 Whatever is it?

01:06:08.700 Whatever.

01:06:09.100 Yeah.

01:06:09.600 Yeah.

01:06:09.820 Yeah.

01:06:10.120 So it's, it's kind of like the non-white version of whatever it's, um, uh, or one of the guys

01:06:16.180 is a Muslim.

01:06:16.760 I don't know from what country is dark. 0.61

01:06:18.740 Uh, the other guy is a black guy and the fit guy is, um, is Muslim apparently.

01:06:23.220 Um, but they talk about how women, you know, if their thoughts, they're going to be consequences, 1.00

01:06:29.520 this sort of thing.

01:06:30.680 And, um, but I think they generate a ton of views.

01:06:33.320 It's something that, you know, I mean, these are, they're sort of breaking these taboos and,

01:06:37.060 but the, the latest taboo is talking about the Holocaust and talking about Jews, right?

01:06:41.580 Um, so, uh, Nick was on there, uh, because Nick is part of this sort of, he's, he's, I

01:06:48.260 think he, he's still kind of a black sheep in this sort of constellation of like East 0.89

01:06:52.500 celebs, but he's like in there.

01:06:54.680 He's like a player in the sort of East lab game.

01:06:57.900 And, uh, but, and, you know, he says controversial and taboo things so that that's a way of, it's

01:07:04.580 a, it's a double-edged sword.

01:07:05.900 It's a way of drawing audiences, but it's also a way of, um, potentially getting deep

01:07:10.760 platformed or censored from a platform.

01:07:12.940 And I don't know what's going to happen with rumble, uh, that, you know, they have to

01:07:16.760 be even on rumble.

01:07:18.120 I think that they would have to be careful about, um, having the sort of debates that they've

01:07:21.940 been having with Nick, but I don't know.

01:07:23.480 I mean, maybe that is a kind of relatively open platform.

01:07:26.940 Uh, I mean, to, to, to me, the, the image of a, of a skinny kind of twink, like Nick

01:07:33.180 Fuentes surrounded by 300 pound black women is a almost perfect encapsulation of where 1.00

01:07:40.200 we are kind of absurd. 0.98

01:07:41.780 Yeah.

01:07:42.220 It's kind of like a reverse image of the blacked kind of thing, but I won't even go there 1.00

01:07:47.880 further, but doesn't this get at the, the contradictions of it all?

01:07:52.440 Like the zoomers aren't having sex yet. 1.00

01:07:55.520 They're exposed to sexual imagery beyond the imagination, like no generation before.

01:08:02.480 I mean, they're, they're living on the internet.

01:08:05.140 They're living in a constant sex dungeon yet. 0.95

01:08:09.240 Yet they're not achieving orgasm with another human being, you know? 0.96

01:08:14.200 So it's, it's this weird con, you know, it's like they're, they're, they, they're, they're 0.54

01:08:19.280 Christians and they're like demanding purity and, you know, uh, shaming women and all this 1.00

01:08:25.240 kind of stuff.

01:08:25.640 Yet they're ultimately sexless and thus kind of understandably like attracted to this notion 0.99

01:08:33.240 of a girl with the big tits and booty and who's available. 1.00

01:08:37.280 I mean, it's getting at the contradiction that is their existence. 0.99

01:08:43.380 And, and so that's why I think it is successful. 1.00

01:08:45.560 I mean, it's absolutely stupid. 1.00

01:08:46.960 I'll, I'll watch a clip here and there. 0.99

01:08:49.400 I couldn't imagine like patronizing this kind of content, but, but it's real for them.

01:08:55.020 Like, this is the authenticity that they have is like a Hitler loving Catholic woman shamer 1.00

01:09:01.760 being blacked by a big booty train, you know, like that's it.

01:09:09.520 Do you think the attraction goes the other way?

01:09:11.780 Do you think the booty train is like, Ooh, this is quite a little, they're like, he, he bad.

01:09:17.600 Yeah.

01:09:17.720 He bad.

RadixJournal - July 12, 2023

The Zoomer Problem

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