The Matt Walsh Show - August 06, 2026


Ep. 1818 - DEEP DIVE： The Complicated and Sordid History of Looksmaxxing (It’s Not What You Think)


Episode Stats


Length

41 minutes

Words per minute

159.44

Word count

6,581

Sentence count

392


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Nobody wakes up excited to deal with Medicare, and yet it is one of the most consequential financial decisions you'll make.
00:00:06.500 So maybe give it more than five minutes. Here's the part that should make you angry.
00:00:10.080 Insurance companies are out there paying agents to steer you into specific plans, whether those plans fit you or not.
00:00:16.520 Nobody's telling you that. Most people assume they've seen all their options. They haven't, not even close.
00:00:21.780 Chapter is different. They don't work for big insurance. They work for you.
00:00:25.180 They're the only Medicare advisors that compare every plan nationwide, every single one.
00:00:30.200 They look at your doctors, your prescriptions, your actual situation, and they give you a straight answer.
00:00:34.540 No angle, no agenda.
00:00:36.400 If you're on the right plan, they will tell you.
00:00:38.420 If not, they'll help you switch.
00:00:40.000 People who've found new plans through Chapter have saved over $1,100 a year on average.
00:00:46.080 It's free, under 20 minutes.
00:00:47.380 You'll get a straight answer, which is more than Medicare has ever given you.
00:00:50.420 Visit dailywire.com slash chapter today.
00:00:54.540 It wasn't too long ago that doctors made an alarming finding.
00:00:57.780 Colon cancer among young adults is surging.
00:01:00.540 In fact, since 1994, colon cancer has become 50% more common.
00:01:04.840 And you've almost certainly heard this data by now.
00:01:07.040 It's been covered by every major media organization.
00:01:09.820 It's all over social media.
00:01:11.680 Everyone has a theory as to why it's happening, from diet to environmental factors to the COVID shot or all the above.
00:01:17.540 We all recognize that it's important to figure out what's going on here because it's having a catastrophic effect on many young lives.
00:01:23.540 obviously. By the same token, there's been a lot of discussion about the massive increase
00:01:27.620 in the number of young adults who have been diagnosed with depression and ADHD and autism
00:01:32.240 and a host of other alleged mental disorders. There's been a debate, which we're now winning,
00:01:37.820 about whether it's a great idea to administer psychoactive drugs to treat any child who
00:01:42.720 supposedly presents with one of these disorders. Answer, it's not a great idea. It's a horrifically
00:01:47.900 awful idea, as it turns out. But there's one trend in the medical field that's just as stark
00:01:53.300 and yet it's not discussed very often by anyone. I'm talking about a trend that's clearly relevant
00:01:59.440 to the future of civilization and our ability to propagate the species, which is that men
00:02:05.220 are seeking out cosmetic procedures, plastic surgery, to a degree that would have been unheard
00:02:11.020 of and inconceivable just a decade ago. Women are also going under the knife for plastic surgery at
00:02:16.820 unprecedented levels, and this is a surge that cuts across both sexes, no pun intended, but
00:02:23.240 the massive uptick in plastic surgery for young men is especially interesting and especially
00:02:29.000 troubling. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, from 2019 to 2022, the total
00:02:34.160 number of cosmetic procedures performed on men increased by more than 200 percent. Procedures
00:02:40.960 that are characterized as minimally invasive increased by more than 250 percent. In total,
00:02:46.760 more than 1.3 million cosmetic procedures of some kind are now performed on men every single year.
00:02:53.840 This includes ab implants, liposuctions, nose jobs, facelifts, and so on. So if you combine the
00:03:01.780 populations of San Francisco and Miami, you wouldn't have the number of men who are getting
00:03:07.920 cosmetic surgery every year, just to put things in perspective. Now, the biggest increase in this
00:03:14.020 period was for cheek implants where demand among men increased by 80% in this period. Then there's
00:03:21.580 dermal fillers, which are gel-like medical substances injected beneath the skin to restore
00:03:25.560 lost volume and smooth wrinkles. Demand for these fillers increased by 70% among men from 2019 to
00:03:32.220 2022. Meanwhile, Botox injections went up by 65%. They're up 400% overall since 2000. Demand for
00:03:41.540 sclerotherapy, which is used to treat varicose veins and spider veins, increased by 54% among
00:03:47.180 men. Chin augmentations went up by 32%. Lower body lifts by 61%. And what's more, in addition
00:03:55.860 to liposuction, which remains the single most popular male cosmetic surgery, men are now
00:04:00.740 increasingly seeking out male breast reduction surgery. In fact, some medical practices report
00:04:05.680 that demand for male breast reduction has increased by more than 35% in recent years.
00:04:11.920 Now, in fairness, some of these procedures are treating actual medical conditions.
00:04:16.800 You know, most men who get breast reduction are suffering from gynecomastia, which is
00:04:21.780 an enlargement in breast tissue in men.
00:04:24.780 Now, frankly, if I had that condition, I'd probably get the surgery too.
00:04:28.280 So the fact that there's an increase in those surgeries tells us probably there's an increase
00:04:32.180 in that condition, which tells us something about hormones and other things that are going
00:04:37.200 on with men, which is also important. And then there are other procedures, which might be called
00:04:41.760 cosmetic, that are meant to address medical conditions. I wouldn't put those in the same
00:04:47.600 category as something like cheek implants or a nose job. Now, the most concerning part of the
00:04:54.440 story is that this is a generational shift. Young people are driving it. Gen Z, people who are 29
00:05:00.000 years old and younger, account for 37% of rhinoplasties, which are nose jobs. They account
00:05:08.900 for 25% of all cheek implants. This is a demographic that overall only accounts for around 6% of all
00:05:16.560 cosmetic surgeries. So young people are more preoccupied with their appearance, particularly
00:05:22.220 the appearance of their face, to the point that they're undergoing surgery to correct the problem.
00:05:27.020 And many, many more young people are considering surgery as well. A survey by the American Academy
00:05:33.260 of Facial, Plastic, and Reconstructive Surgery found that millennials account for 58% of men
00:05:39.060 who are interested in getting a cosmetic procedure, while Gen Z accounts for 35%.
00:05:44.180 Now, to the extent that men were ever interested in these procedures in the past, at least in
00:05:48.620 modern history, it was overwhelmingly because of older people who were unhappy with how they
00:05:54.220 were aging. Older people tend to have the money to afford these surgeries. They're also aging.
00:06:00.180 Their looks are changing. So the whole industry was marketed towards them for many years. But now
00:06:06.700 we have a scenario where the demand curve has suddenly flipped. Young people are increasingly
00:06:11.380 insecure about their own appearance, and they're willing to stretch their budgets to do something
00:06:16.540 about it. Now, if you ask the American Society for Plastic Surgeons, they'll tell you that
00:06:20.380 the new demand for plastic surgery is closely related to the fact that young people aren't
00:06:25.140 starting families anymore, which is actually close to a real explanation, although of course they
00:06:29.820 try to put a positive spin on it. Quote, a new analysis of data by Pew Research Center that
00:06:34.660 shows millennials are taking a different path in forming or not forming families compared to their
00:06:38.780 counterparts, Gen X. The analysis concludes that millennials trail previous generations of the same
00:06:44.040 age. I think a lot of these unique elements to this generation, coupled with the exposure to
00:06:48.280 the internet and the various facets of social media will create this whole new generation of
00:06:52.960 plastic surgery patients, said Dr. Ryan Neinstein. With the waiting for families that is a regular
00:06:59.980 occurrence amongst these ages 27 to 42 comes an increase in education and therefore a higher
00:07:04.780 income. According to Ashley Amalfi, the affluence that this younger generation has allows them to
00:07:10.700 feel like I can afford to do this and I want to do this for myself. And they're taking that back
00:07:15.240 and doing what it is that they need to do to feel well about themselves rather than waiting around
00:07:20.640 until after they have kids like previous generations. Now, somewhere in that statement
00:07:26.020 is an acknowledgment of the fact that when young people get married and start families, demand for
00:07:31.000 cosmetic surgery tends to plummet among young people in particular. And indeed, even if you
00:07:37.280 only look at this from a practical perspective, there's not a lot of time in your life to be
00:07:42.400 vain about your appearance and to wallow in your own narcissism when you're trying to raise kids.
00:07:46.560 There's not a lot of time for it, even if you want to. And yes, even if you're solely looking
00:07:52.360 at the finances, it wouldn't make a lot of sense. You'd have to be a criminally negligent father to
00:07:58.100 spend $10,000 on a nose job for yourself instead of saving for the future of your own children.
00:08:03.660 But really, they have the causation backwards here. It's not the fact that young people,
00:08:08.940 when they have no kids suddenly want to spend money on themselves in a narcissistic, self-absorbed
00:08:14.180 manner, as an explanation, that doesn't really make sense. The actual issue is that when young
00:08:19.240 people become more narcissistic and self-absorbed, as well as more socially isolated, they're much
00:08:25.920 less likely to start families in the first place. So how exactly did that happen? What caused this
00:08:33.100 transformation? Well, to answer that question, we have to talk about a 20-year-old internet
00:08:38.040 personality by the name of Brayden Eric Peters, who's better known by his stage name of Clavicular.
00:08:44.560 Now, if you have not heard of Clavicular, I can guarantee that your children have. He's pretty
00:08:49.620 hard to miss if you spend any amount of time online. Clavicular shot to fame out of nowhere.
00:08:56.140 He was a complete unknown as recently as like nine months ago. But then in late December of 2025,
00:09:01.020 right around Christmas Eve, millions of people were talking about him. And the reason is that
00:09:06.060 he ran somebody over with a cyber truck or at least that was the story and it was all caught
00:09:12.660 on video clavicular was being harassed by some other social media character who jumped on his
00:09:18.120 truck and clavicular as the narrative goes calmly hit the accelerator and mowed him down watch
00:09:25.340 Is he dead?
00:09:55.340 Now, pretty much everyone took this particular stunt at face value for some reason.
00:10:04.660 Nobody asked why the police didn't file charges or why we never actually see what happens to the guy he hit.
00:10:11.600 Instead, he gained a legion of new fans, none of whom wondered whether they were being played by a guy who, until five minutes ago, they had never heard of.
00:10:19.800 And conveniently enough, the video was uploaded at the end of December, well outside of any major news cycle.
00:10:25.340 It's a very striking example of how easily people can be manipulated online and how social media stars are just generated out of thin air, out of nothing.
00:10:36.340 Really, the PR operation, whoever was behind it, could not have been more effective.
00:10:40.860 And virtually overnight, Clavicular was famous.
00:10:44.940 But more importantly, his whole philosophy, the idea of looks maxing, which generally means that you should go to extreme or unusual lengths to optimize your physical appearance.
00:10:53.860 that also went mainstream. So here's how the BBC elaborates on the the meaning of looks maxing
00:11:00.380 quote looks maxing claims to be about the maximization of one's appearance the aim of
00:11:06.780 looks maxing is becoming the most attractive one can possibly look according to a set of prescribed
00:11:11.080 criteria with particular importance given to jawlines eyes and physique including hunter eyes
00:11:15.840 angled slightly upward toward the temple a positive canthal tilt the trend has existed for at least a
00:11:22.320 decade, but has recently been popularized and redefined on TikTok, where it's reaching a
00:11:26.320 widening demographic of teenage boys algorithmically predisposed to the manosphere subculture.
00:11:32.180 Looksmaxing attaches scores to aspects of male appearance, focusing particularly on jawline,
00:11:37.700 muscularity, and skin. Now, by itself, when it's defined like that, it's not hard to understand
00:11:43.900 how looksmaxing would be popular in some circles. It's a little over the top of the score system,
00:11:49.260 Yeah, but there's no question that society would be improved to a significant degree
00:11:55.700 if more people put some basic effort into their physical appearance.
00:11:59.740 You know, when you go to the airport or grocery store or some other public place
00:12:03.920 and everybody's wearing sweatpants and smells like marijuana,
00:12:06.920 it's obviously a demoralizing and tedious experience.
00:12:11.400 So it's natural and appropriate to want to be around people
00:12:14.900 who haven't visibly given up on themselves.
00:12:17.540 Your physical appearance does matter.
00:12:20.100 We're not going to say it doesn't matter.
00:12:21.600 And not just when you're single either, but when you're married too.
00:12:24.300 It's not really fair to your spouse to lock them down and then immediately devolve into a fat, greasy slob.
00:12:31.980 The problem is that, as the name implies, looks-maxing is more about a relentless, obsessive fixation with your physical appearance and the appearance of others.
00:12:40.140 It's an ongoing sense of profound discomfort with things that are completely normal.
00:12:45.160 You know, reminiscent of what the DSM calls dysphoria
00:12:48.300 And it leads to all kinds of unnecessary procedures
00:12:51.040 Like the ones that clavicular has undergone
00:12:53.860 So here's just one side-by-side of the transformation
00:12:56.920 He's been advertising on social media
00:12:58.760 After multiple cosmetic surgeries
00:13:00.540 Obviously, there was nothing that needed to be corrected before
00:13:03.680 He probably looked better before, if we're being honest
00:13:07.020 His nose was arguably straighter
00:13:08.720 It's just, when people do this to their face
00:13:11.980 They start to look uncanny
00:13:15.160 which is why almost everybody looks better before they start doing this. You look uncanny. You look
00:13:20.520 unnatural. There's something about it that isn't human. It isn't quite right. But the point is that
00:13:25.880 with this mindset, he's obviously never going to be satisfied with his appearance, no matter how
00:13:30.520 many surgeries he has. That's not ever going to happen. And he's not just doing surgeries,
00:13:35.840 by the way. He's also popularizing bone smashing, which is defined as, quote,
00:13:39.980 hitting facial or collarbone areas with a small hammer or hard object in a misguided attempt to
00:13:46.100 trigger bone growth through micro fractures. Now, as with anything else concerning this guy,
00:13:51.920 there's always the possibility that this is fake. Is he really sitting around when he's not on camera
00:13:56.920 smashing himself in the face with a hammer? Who knows? You know, his rise to fame was completely
00:14:02.740 contrived. Most everything about him is contrived. Even his face is now contrived. So there's no
00:14:07.480 reason to take anything he does or says or claims to do at face value. But if he is doing this
00:14:13.980 retarded bone smashing thing, then again, he's inflicting irreversible damage on his body in
00:14:18.440 service of a delusion. And he's doing it with the support of a movement that's affirming those
00:14:23.420 delusions every step of the way. Now, if that sounds strikingly familiar, it's because this
00:14:28.800 is a preoccupation that in many ways echoes the behavior of many people who identify as transgender.
00:14:34.740 There are entire online communities in which trans-identified people talk about undergoing various surgeries and operations, constantly affirming one another, even as they cause very obvious, irreversible damage to their bodies.
00:14:48.640 Now, in response to Clavicular in particular, the commentator using the name Raw Egg Nationalist offered this theory as to what's going on.
00:14:57.460 And I think this is interesting.
00:14:58.820 One of my firm beliefs is that the spread of the front-facing camera designed in Asia to flatter Asian facial features is responsible for the massive wave of disastrous facial treatments being undertaken by women and increasingly men in the West.
00:15:12.260 We're seeing a kind of mass psychosis, a fracturing of the self caused by a camera device that by design distorts the facial features of European people.
00:15:21.660 there's a lot of truth to that and you'll find various names for this phenomenon in research
00:15:27.760 papers selfie dysmorphia snapchat dysmorphia zoom dysmorphia and so on there's no question that
00:15:34.340 with this with the rise of smartphones and now ai filters combined with front-facing cameras and
00:15:41.720 social media young people are seeing close-up shots of their faces and the faces of other people
00:15:47.960 more often than ever. And the problem clearly predates smartphones and AI. I mean, I often
00:15:55.660 think about the fact that most humans through history grew up and lived their lives hardly
00:16:02.180 ever seeing what they looked like. They would have gone days, weeks, months, years, and never
00:16:09.500 seen themselves. Glass mirrors didn't become popular household items until the late 19th
00:16:15.320 century. And now with lives dominated by screens, we see ourselves constantly. We are spectators
00:16:23.500 of our own selves in a way that would have been impossible and impossible to comprehend
00:16:30.100 for most humans through history. This constant minute-by-minute physical, not to mention
00:16:36.740 emotional, mental, with all the therapeutic nonsense, self-analysis is I think driving
00:16:44.640 people insane. Spending every day scrutinizing what they look like and also scrutinizing how
00:16:51.400 they feel and what they're thinking. Just this constant, the gaze constantly flipped around
00:16:58.520 and focused back on the self in a way that, again, would have been totally alien to our ancestors.
00:17:08.220 There's something very unnatural and unhuman about it.
00:17:12.860 Humans are not capable of coping with this level of self-scrutiny.
00:17:18.140 That's why looks-maxing is rooted in a very deep sense of insecurity and inner frustration,
00:17:22.940 which is related to the fact that Clavicular is known for taking hard drugs, sometimes on camera.
00:17:29.080 But if you watch corporate media outlets, they'll criticize Clavicular from a different angle.
00:17:33.700 In fact, they'll miss the point entirely, as they so often do.
00:17:37.340 Instead of addressing looks-maxing on its own terms, these outlets will try to smear clavicular by association.
00:17:44.140 They'll make political attacks without admitting it.
00:17:46.880 And that's what happened in his viral 60 Minutes interview.
00:17:50.440 Rather, it's a 60 Minutes Australia interview, for example.
00:17:54.280 Watch.
00:17:55.260 He was born out of the incel community and movement.
00:18:00.680 Do you identify with that group?
00:18:03.460 how do you feel about being linked to that group of people?
00:18:09.900 Do I identify as an incel?
00:18:13.100 I mean, how could you ask me that question as a follow-up
00:18:17.120 after you asked me about my relationships to women?
00:18:21.100 I mean, that's quite literally the worst sequence of questions
00:18:25.120 I think I've ever heard.
00:18:26.700 Well, let me rephrase it then.
00:18:29.060 Looks maxing was obviously a term created by the incel community.
00:18:32.720 how do you feel about being linked to that group I'm not linked to that group
00:18:39.560 in any way looks maxing a self-improvement right so it's about
00:18:45.100 potentially even ascending out of that category and so that's that would be
00:18:50.240 kind of one of the goals is to disassociate from being an incel and
00:18:54.200 overcome that so that doesn't make sense you've obviously shared company
00:19:01.040 with Andrew Tate and other, dare I say, rather controversial figures, why do you spend time
00:19:10.460 with people like that?
00:19:13.280 Are you trying to, I see you want to make this political.
00:19:17.880 Not at all, not at all.
00:19:18.880 I'm just curious.
00:19:19.880 No, that's what you want to do is you know you have to.
00:19:22.800 Don't try to go down that line of questioning with me, all right, because I'm not doing
00:19:28.040 any political.
00:19:29.040 I'm not married, but I was simply only asking because obviously you've been
00:19:34.440 filmed with these people.
00:19:36.440 So I could teach you about looks, Max, and then maybe you could switch that up.
00:19:40.940 But thanks for the time.
00:19:42.240 Appreciate the interview.
00:19:43.640 All right.
00:19:49.140 All right.
00:19:49.640 What's that done?
00:19:50.640 Yeah.
00:19:54.140 Thank you, guys.
00:19:59.040 So talk about an interview where you just want everybody involved
00:20:02.000 to be banished from the Earth and deported to Jupiter.
00:20:05.280 There are just no winners, nobody to root for.
00:20:08.760 Very bleak, extraordinarily bleak content there.
00:20:13.140 And it overlooks something important, which is that
00:20:15.840 if you go back far enough in history,
00:20:19.360 so-called looks-maxing doesn't have anything to do with Andrew Tate
00:20:23.020 or incels or whatever.
00:20:25.220 Looks-maxing actually does go back to the ancients.
00:20:29.040 they wouldn't have called it that, obviously. But, you know, it wasn't always rooted just in
00:20:34.520 narcissism because, again, people weren't constantly looking at themselves in the way
00:20:38.380 that they do now. So to give just one example, ancient Egyptian men, everybody from laborers
00:20:43.280 to the pharaohs wore eyeliner. They called it coal. And it was made from ground minerals and
00:20:49.500 soot. And as you can see, it gave people kind of a cat eye look, which was very distinctive among
00:20:56.500 Egyptians who worshipped cats. But it wasn't just for decoration. Like any good looks-maxing
00:21:01.900 technique, it was also a biohack as well, although again, they would not have called it that.
00:21:07.360 It served multiple purposes, reducing glare from the sun, repelling flies, and even supposedly
00:21:11.900 safeguarding the eyes from inflammation, particularly when the Nile was flooding.
00:21:16.500 And there was a religious component to it, of course, too, in that the cat eye look was
00:21:20.400 seen as kind of a tribute to the gods. Now, the ancient Egyptians had elaborate skin care
00:21:26.160 routines as well. As the legend goes, Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk. They created paste with
00:21:32.000 clay or ash mixed with olive oil, rubbed it all over their bodies. Archaeologists found papyrus
00:21:37.860 records dating back to the 1500 BC that described how they would use a mixture of animal and
00:21:42.320 vegetable oils with alkaline salts to cleanse their skin. And there are also more militaristic
00:21:48.900 examples from ancient times, like Herodotus describing Spartan warriors combing their hair
00:21:55.000 before battle, while there were others who were working out naked. This is from Herodotus' history
00:22:00.840 when he described the lead-up to the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, and later Plutarch offered
00:22:08.500 this explanation for the Spartans' custom, quote, in time of war too, they relaxed the severity of
00:22:13.260 the young men's discipline and permitted them to beautify their hair and ornament their arms and
00:22:17.380 clothing, rejoicing to see them like horses prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore, they wore
00:22:23.460 their hair long as soon as they ceased to be youths and especially in times of danger they
00:22:27.720 took pains to have it glossy and well combed remembering a certain saying that a fine head
00:22:32.180 of hair made the handsome more comely still and the ugly more terrible so the ancients if we're
00:22:38.880 being honest could be a little effeminate by modern standards which of course we can't apply
00:22:44.220 retroactively to ancient times but none of these behaviors were disordered in the manner of modern
00:22:49.520 looks-maxing because, for one thing, in many cases at least, they weren't causing self-harm.
00:22:56.040 And for another, the so-called looks-maxing back in those days tended to be about maintaining
00:23:02.980 customs and traditions and building social cohesion. It wasn't solely about improving
00:23:08.340 individual attractiveness as part of a competition. And thousands of years later, along came the
00:23:14.380 Americans. And while early Americans had some standards for looks and dress, once again,
00:23:19.180 it was more about customs and manners and etiquette than being seen as highly attractive.
00:23:27.220 As a boy, George Washington famously hand copied a document called The Rules of Civility and Decent
00:23:32.080 Behavior in Company and Conversation, which contained dozens of rules covering everything
00:23:36.720 from posture to dress to manners. It didn't say anything about smashing your bones with a hammer,
00:23:42.440 but maybe that part of it was lost to time. Who knows? The slippery slope into modern
00:23:47.780 looks maxing began with TV and bodybuilding culture, which was born out of modernity and
00:23:53.500 boredom. After all, people who work on the farm all day, you know, if you have reasons in your
00:23:59.320 everyday life to lift heavy things, you have no reason to go to a gym. And they wouldn't have had
00:24:05.540 time, even if they wanted to. But beginning in the early 20th century, in a post-industrial society,
00:24:10.980 that started to change. Vince Garanda, the iron guru, opened up a gym in North Hollywood in the
00:24:17.320 1940s. Decades later, he famously told Arnold Schwarzenegger that he was too fat and needed
00:24:21.780 to lose about 30 pounds. Schwarzenegger, as we all know, then leveraged his bodybuilding career
00:24:26.160 into Hollywood stardom. Bodybuilders, men with frankly cartoonish physiques, played well on
00:24:33.180 television and in theaters. They were bankable because millions of people looked up to them,
00:24:38.300 along with professional athletes. And it's part of the reason why in the 1980s, steroids exploded
00:24:43.520 in popularity. By 1988, one in 15 male high school seniors reported using steroids at
00:24:50.700 one point. Gym culture, which obviously still exists today and is arguably bigger than ever
00:24:58.180 today, can become narcissistic and effeminate after a certain point. Now, there's nothing
00:25:03.900 wrong with going to the gym. That's a positive habit, or it should be. Men should be getting
00:25:09.860 physical exercise. They should have visible muscles rather than being weak and flabby.
00:25:15.840 You know, I'm in the gym myself multiple times a week, so I'm not going to judge anybody for that.
00:25:19.920 But when a healthy focus on strength and fitness turns into an obsessive, overwhelming
00:25:24.920 preoccupation with appearance, like when a man is spending multiple hours a day every day trying
00:25:32.280 to maintain or improve his physical appearance, and when it's the appearance that motivates him
00:25:38.280 far more than a desire to be strong and fit, then a healthy habit has mutated into an expression of
00:25:46.580 vanity. Nobody wakes up excited to deal with Medicare, and yet it is one of the most consequential
00:25:52.900 financial decisions you'll make. So maybe give it more than five minutes. Here's the part that
00:25:56.860 should make you angry. Insurance companies are out there paying agents to steer you into specific
00:26:01.320 plans, whether those plans fit you or not. Nobody's telling you that. Most people assume they've seen
00:26:06.760 all their options. They haven't, not even close. Chapter is different. They don't work for big
00:26:11.760 insurance. They work for you. They're the only Medicare advisors that compare every plan
00:26:15.940 nationwide, every single one. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions, your actual situation,
00:26:20.520 and they give you a straight answer. No angle, no agenda. If you're on the right plan, they will
00:26:25.640 tell you. If not, they'll help you switch. People who've found new plans through Chapter have saved
00:26:30.800 over $1,100 a year on average. It's free under 20 minutes. You'll get a straight answer, which is
00:26:36.480 more than Medicare has ever given you. Visit dailywire.com slash chapter today.
00:26:43.080 It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced
00:26:48.480 merchandise. Two days only. Monday, August 10th and Tuesday, August 11th. Open your PC Optimum
00:26:54.760 app to get your coupon. But whether you go to the gym or not, it's hard to not lapse into vanity
00:27:03.960 in our culture. As a culture, it seems that we are living in a society designed to make people
00:27:12.220 as vain as humanly possible. Social media and the internet took what TV started and
00:27:17.880 made it much, much worse. We have a generation raised on social media and smartphones that seem
00:27:23.460 to have developed this kind of disconnected, disembodied sense of self. For my job, I'm
00:27:31.840 obviously on camera every day. I see myself on video a lot. I've even sat in a movie theater
00:27:37.260 when M.I. Racist came out and watched myself on a giant movie screen for an hour and a half,
00:27:41.360 which is very disconcerting, especially when you're ugly like me. But I'm in the business of,
00:27:47.400 you know, quote, content creation, as much as I hate that term. And, you know, when you're in
00:27:52.260 this business, you are the content, or at least you're the person presenting the content. So it's
00:27:56.820 very easy in this line of work for people to become absolutely psychotically narcissistic
00:28:04.660 and egomaniacal. And at the same time, it's very easy to become disconnected from yourself as you
00:28:10.380 begin to see yourself as content or worse as a brand rather than a human. And this combination
00:28:17.040 of feeling disconnected within yourself while also narcissistic and self-obsessed drives a lot
00:28:22.100 of people in this space insane. So if you're wondering why so many, quote, content creators
00:28:27.120 are lunatics, this is why. And yet it's occurred to me more and more recently that this entire
00:28:33.900 experience I'm describing, maybe aside from the movie theater part of it, is not really all that
00:28:39.580 unique to, quote, content creators or people in media or people in Hollywood anymore. I mean,
00:28:44.860 the fact is that everybody is on social media. Everybody takes videos and pictures of themselves
00:28:48.680 all the time. Everyone has made themselves into a public spectacle to some extent.
00:28:55.120 And young people have been doing that, or when they were very young, it was done to them,
00:29:01.100 practically since birth. Everyone has the out-of-body experience of viewing themselves
00:29:07.360 as content, as a product to be consumed by others. And so the narcissism and psychosis that used to
00:29:15.720 be contained to people in media and the entertainment industry has broken containment.
00:29:21.960 Now it's everywhere. And that is just one aspect of the problem. Also, young men today often lack,
00:29:28.940 and sometimes completely lack, masculine male role models. The fatherlessness epidemic is
00:29:36.140 obviously the core of this problem. And if a young man doesn't have a father to model himself
00:29:42.020 after, or if he does have a father, but his father is weak and absent and unimpressive or some
00:29:47.880 combination of those, then where else is he going to look for guidance on how to live and conduct
00:29:53.260 himself? There are very few masculine figures on TV, not even cartoonish ones, at least in the
00:30:00.220 important category of white male fathers. You know, for many years now, Hollywood and the networks have
00:30:04.300 cast total buffoons into these roles that would have been masculine a generation ago. And consider
00:30:11.400 the common, often cited example of sitcom fathers, the character who, in basically every sitcom for
00:30:16.060 30 years, never does anything right. It's completely outshined by his comparatively
00:30:20.820 impressive wife. And this, in case it's not obvious, is a form of propaganda, but it's also
00:30:25.680 a reflection of our current situation. And of course, young men today aren't generally watching
00:30:30.580 network sitcoms. I don't know who's watching sitcoms anymore. Instead, they're watching
00:30:34.560 influencers like Clavicular, who makes the oafish sitcom dad look like a paragon of masculine virtue
00:30:42.060 by comparison. The result of all these factors has been not just narcissism and self-obsession
00:30:49.100 and a collective feeling of being alienated in your own body, but also despondency on a large
00:30:55.700 scale. And nothing exacerbated this despondency and this isolation more than the COVID lockdowns,
00:31:02.640 More than any other modern development, the COVID lockdowns permanently warped the perspectives and goals and social development of young people.
00:31:12.340 They did so much damage that we will never be able to fully assess the extent of it.
00:31:19.260 One of the causalities of these lockdowns was Clavicular himself.
00:31:23.680 Recently, footage of Clavicular's graduation from middle school surfaced online.
00:31:27.360 This was a remote graduation because children weren't allowed to interact with one another or go outside, all to protect them, quote unquote, from a virus that posed zero risk to them.
00:31:40.780 Teachers and parents tried to pretend that children wouldn't be harmed by these lockdowns.
00:31:44.880 They obeyed the marching orders from the criminals in the teachers union who just wanted a vacation, as well as the marching orders from the criminals in the federal government like Tony Fauci.
00:31:53.840 And through it all, parents and teachers pretended that they were doing the right thing.
00:31:58.800 So here's what Clavicula's graduation looked like.
00:32:02.280 And you can see his demeanor and then also his parents.
00:32:07.800 Watch.
00:32:08.780 Our next graduate is Brayden Peters.
00:32:17.600 Congratulations.
00:32:18.280 So it's an extraordinarily sad piece of footage because we know that millions of other children
00:32:24.520 experienced the same profound lack of social connection with anyone, the same frustration
00:32:30.080 with how fake and sterile everything was. Many of these children, after being forced to endure
00:32:35.300 isolation for so long, never recovered. They never became functioning adults. Many of them
00:32:42.480 began identifying as transgender to the point that transgenderism became a social contagion.
00:32:46.700 but even the children who didn't deny the reality of their sex nevertheless found other biological
00:32:51.700 realities to deny. What's happening today, what we're seeing with clavicular and the millions of
00:32:57.360 young men getting nose jobs and cheek implants and everything else, and the millions of women
00:33:00.980 young and old injecting themselves with Botox and lip fillers and everything else, is you might say
00:33:06.480 a kind of intra-sex transgenderism. Male to male, female to female. That's the best way to describe
00:33:13.440 it. You know, a trans-identified person is somebody who hates their God-given body,
00:33:19.020 fundamentally rejects their own selves, seeks instead to remake themselves, not in the image
00:33:25.220 of God, but in the foggy, ever-shifting image of some kind of ambiguous ideal they've concocted in
00:33:32.560 their own heads. Well, clavicular is doing the exact same thing. Many people, young and old,
00:33:37.300 but especially young, are doing the exact same thing. Everybody loves small business until they
00:33:44.360 ask for a loan. Then suddenly the people who are always talking about supporting entrepreneurs
00:33:48.600 become a lot harder to find. Well, if you've ever tried to get financing through a traditional bank,
00:33:53.380 you know the routine. Paperwork, waiting around, followed by more paperwork, and then maybe you'll
00:33:57.960 get an answer. Just maybe. Meanwhile, you're trying to run a business, not spend your week
00:34:02.400 chasing signatures and checking your inbox. That's why I want to tell you about Cardiff.
00:34:06.280 Cardiff is the largest privately held small business lender in the country.
00:34:10.380 Since 2004, they've funded more than $12 billion to businesses like yours.
00:34:14.520 So if you want bank-level rates without the bank-level delays, you need to check out cardiff.co.wals.
00:34:21.040 The application takes less than five minutes.
00:34:23.600 It won't touch your personal credit.
00:34:24.960 Businesses can be approved in minutes and funded the very same day.
00:34:28.420 Whether you're hiring, buying inventory, expanding, or financing equipment,
00:34:32.560 Cardiff gets you the capital so you can get back to doing what you actually do best, which is running your business.
00:34:38.660 Banks try to lock out small businesses. Cardiff has the key.
00:34:41.440 Big banks may not want to approve your business loans, but Cardiff does.
00:34:46.020 If you've been in business for at least a year and are pulling in $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co.walsh.
00:34:55.780 Again, that's cardiff.co.walsh. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.
00:35:01.780 Most books are forgotten, and only a few survive for a generation.
00:35:05.460 Very, very few are still being read nearly 3,000 years after they were written.
00:35:10.260 It doesn't happen by accident.
00:35:11.920 It happens because those books understand something, something permanent about human nature.
00:35:16.800 And that's why people still read Homer's Odyssey.
00:35:19.020 It's more than an adventure story.
00:35:20.680 It's about courage, leadership, temptation, perseverance, and ultimately,
00:35:24.320 why home and family are worth more than comfort or glory.
00:35:27.820 Those questions haven't changed.
00:35:29.460 Neither have the answers.
00:35:30.440 That's why Hillsdale College is offering a free online course on the Odyssey, taught by Professor Benedict Whelan.
00:35:37.060 The course explores one of the greatest works in the Western tradition and explains why it continues to shape the way we think nearly three millennia later.
00:35:44.600 Enrollment is completely free and you can work through the lectures at your own pace.
00:35:48.500 Go to hillsdale.edu slash Walsh to enroll.
00:35:51.560 It's totally free. Start reading, learn the classics, rediscover the West.
00:35:55.840 Start right now at hillsdale.edu slash Walsh.
00:35:58.940 In that light, the trans phenomenon has not disappeared, really. Although the trans cult has obviously been defeated at almost every level, politically, legally, culturally. Instead, in truth, the trans phenomenon has dispersed widely. It's taken new forms.
00:36:16.440 And really, we should have expected that to happen.
00:36:21.260 A generation raised on social media and smartphones, which spent more than a year locked down at home for no reason, was invariably going to develop this very disconnected, disembodied sense of self that we've discussed.
00:36:35.520 What's now becoming clear is that gender confusion is only one aspect of this disconnect.
00:36:40.380 It's just one manifestation of a much deeper issue, one pathology among many, most of them still undiscovered.
00:36:50.100 But as the children of the lockdown era become the leaders of this country, which won't be very long from now, God help us, those pathologies won't remain undiscovered for long.
00:37:03.760 well thanks for watching today and before i go um i would be remiss if i didn't mention that
00:37:11.260 daily wire is coming out with a new movie it's called run hide fight infidels it streams next
00:37:15.660 month and we have a first look at the trailer here it is check it out your country is beneath
00:37:22.820 contempt we who love and serve allah fought back against the americans and the zionists
00:37:31.200 from the scourge of secularism and the lands of unbelief.
00:37:41.360 Anyone going to listen to Captain Saunders tomorrow?
00:37:43.480 The retired Delta IV soldier with a new book out.
00:37:47.080 He's the polar opposite of those brain-dead protesters.
00:37:50.120 Given the current climate, should Clay Saunders even be allowed on campus?
00:37:53.360 Mr. Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman.
00:37:56.120 This is a decision I cannot find.
00:37:57.760 There are three ways Islam will conquer the West.
00:38:02.540 Through immigration, through the wombs of our women,
00:38:08.980 and by using our nation's freedoms against us.
00:38:16.680 Are you paying attention?
00:38:24.320 Listen carefully.
00:38:27.760 the great satan america will fall
00:38:32.560 you are infidels the bodies of women are not pure and the men's souls are unclean
00:38:43.700 what makes them so dangerous their goals are not in this life but the next
00:38:51.680 I need one
00:38:55.560 We got friends here
00:38:56.800 I can't just leave
00:38:57.420 Listen to me
00:38:58.200 In the law
00:38:59.600 We cannot run or hide
00:39:02.180 From what is coming
00:39:03.660 We have to fight
00:39:05.420 I will be rewarded 10,000 times
00:39:07.940 In the next life
00:39:08.860 When you die
00:39:09.980 You are nothing
00:39:11.260 Only one way to find out
00:39:12.580 That's the American way
00:39:21.680 so there's the trailer and look it looks i haven't seen the movie yet i'll tell you but
00:39:33.180 just based on the trailer alone it looks uh kind of psychotic in the best way
00:39:38.720 and like a fun action movie which you know i think we need a lot more of those
00:39:42.940 um so stay tuned for that and uh speaking of staying tuned we also have some bonus content
00:39:47.520 this weekend that you don't want to miss the daily cancellation is coming back in a new and
00:39:50.860 improved form or maybe just new. I don't know about improved. It can't be improved. It was
00:39:55.380 already perfect. Uh, and plus I watched the new Spider-Man movie for some ungodly reason. And,
00:40:00.780 uh, I have some opinions about it that I will share. You'll never guess if I liked it or not.
00:40:06.440 You'll never, you'll never guess what my opinion was, uh, all that coming up this weekend until
00:40:11.680 then, Godspeed.
00:40:20.240 Once upon a time, there was a country.
00:40:23.600 Not just a country, but a big one, an empire.
00:40:26.600 And in that empire, there was an upper middle class family, where two boys were raised by
00:40:31.560 their mother, loved books, Uncle Tom's cabin, and the Bible.
00:40:35.960 Their father admired the country's leaders, were patriotic and happy.
00:40:40.360 Both sons went to universities where they were radicalized.
00:40:43.960 One of the brothers read a book and convinced him to try to shoot the country's leader.
00:40:47.840 He was hanged.
00:40:49.200 The other brother read the same books, but decided to lead a movement.
00:40:53.540 First they came from the universities, and no one seemed to care.
00:40:57.060 Then they took over the unions, and again, no one seemed to care.
00:40:59.820 Then they created their own media organizations and took over the cities.
00:41:03.160 And again, most people just ignored it.
00:41:05.440 Change, after all, was something they could believe in.
00:41:08.540 Until it was too late.
00:41:09.480 Sound familiar? This is the real history of communism in the Russian Revolution.