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00:00:57.800Long-time fans of this show will remember the daily cancellation segment, which was unceremoniously disbanded some months ago.
00:01:05.320We've always intended to bring the segment back as a weekly installment, where once a week we cancel whichever person, place, or thing most richly deserves it, according to me.
00:01:15.540And it's taken us a few months to launch the new segment because we've been deliberating over what to call it.
00:01:20.420And finally, after many weeks of heated debate and many sleepless nights and fervent prayers, a moment of inspiration at last came to me.
00:01:28.380We should call the Weekly Cancellation the Weekly Cancellation.
00:01:39.880They wept with joy and hailed my genius, which they're contractually obligated to do in response to any of my suggestions as a condition of their employment.
00:01:47.380But anyway, our inaugural weekly cancellation must go to Arizona State University.
00:01:54.340Now, ASU earns this prestigious honor after announcing that it will be the first major university to offer a degree in being an influencer.
00:02:03.380As Yahoo Finance reports, the university has introduced a new Bachelor of Arts in content creation through its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication,
00:02:13.040giving students the opportunity to earn a four-year degree focused on becoming professional
00:02:17.420content creators, digital storytellers, and influencers. Now, there's no word on who will
00:02:22.840be teaching this course. Perhaps we can expect to see Professor Clavicular, Professor Sneko.
00:02:28.480It's been clear for years that most universities don't have a policy prohibiting the mentally
00:02:32.200handicapped from getting jobs on the faculty, so Sneko shouldn't run into any problems.
00:02:36.820There are also obviously no policies against Muslim communists, but I repeat myself.0.64
00:02:40.860And all these mentions of Snego raise the obvious question, which is, who the hell is that?0.84
00:02:45.160And the answer is that it doesn't matter.1.00
00:02:47.080Swap in any random influencer with the IQ of Parmesan cheese, and you get the point that this is a very stupid idea.0.99
00:02:55.320CNN reports that Syracuse University is launching its own interdisciplinary minor designed to prepare students for careers in content creation,
00:03:03.100digital entrepreneurship, and the broader ecosystem supporting creators and online businesses.
00:03:09.080But ASU was apparently the first school to offer students the opportunity to major in influencerdom.
00:03:15.180Various articles on the subject insist that this new degree path makes sense because half of Gen Z aspires to be influencers.
00:03:23.360The influencer economy, which is a phrase that I sadly did not make up, is growing rapidly, we're told.
00:03:29.340The Yahoo Finance report informs us that annual influencer marketing budgets have grown 171% since last year.
00:03:38.140the average influencer today earns apparently more than $90,000 a year, roughly on par with
00:03:44.340the average salary of a registered nurse. And as COVID showed us, the average nurse wants to0.88
00:03:50.440be an influencer too, but you don't need a bachelor's degree to be a nurse. So if any
00:03:55.580nurse wants to make the career jump to becoming a full-time influencer, they'll need to go back1.00
00:04:00.540to school for a few more years. At least that's how it'll work if ASU has its way.1.00
00:10:45.360Maybe come back for a second bachelor's or a third, which is exactly what millions of people do.
00:10:49.800And that's why 50% of all federal student loan debt is held by graduate students.
00:10:54.500The university system wants you to keep crawling back on hands and knees for an education that is worth less and less with each passing year.
00:11:02.560It is just a matter of statistical reality now to say that college degrees have never cost more or been worth less.
00:11:11.760Tuition rates have gone up on average by 100% over the past couple of decades.
00:11:17.200Meanwhile, record numbers of young college graduates are unemployed or underemployed.
00:11:21.46035% of college graduates of all age groups are working jobs that don't require any bachelor's
00:11:28.220degree. And for recent college graduates, that number is closer to half. Now, you might hope
00:11:33.420that fortunes will change for those recent college grads. But according to one prominent study, 73%
00:11:38.600of college grads who start out underemployed will remain underemployed a decade after graduating.
00:11:44.740And those numbers are also trending in the wrong direction. Now, could any other business
00:11:48.660get away with selling a product that has plummeted in effectiveness while skyrocketing
00:11:54.720in price at the exact same time? Well, you might argue that certain businesses have gotten away
00:11:59.400with exactly that, such as basically all businesses. And you'd probably be right,
00:12:04.400but none of those businesses, aside from maybe gambling sites, are making their money
00:12:08.140by plunging 18-year-olds into a lifetime of six-figure debt. I mean, this is a Bernie
00:12:13.580Madoff-level scam being run by almost every university in the country to the tune of trillions
00:12:19.940of dollars. So it's actually a Bernie Madoff-level scam times about a million, give or take. Now,
00:12:25.200some will say that a college education isn't just about getting a job. It's also something that has
00:12:30.600value for its own sake, right? But, you know, that excuse doesn't work because the education itself,
00:12:36.320when judged just as an education and not as a career strategy, is still garbage. A recent survey0.97
00:12:42.580they found that a large preponderance of college students failed to answer basic questions about
00:12:47.640U.S. history and civics, such as identifying the length of terms for U.S. senators, naming the
00:12:53.900father of the U.S. Constitution, explaining what the 13th Amendment accomplished. A larger
00:12:58.720preponderance probably can't tell you what the word preponderance means. I mean, college students
00:13:02.280and college graduates now possess a level of ignorance that should be unacceptable for third
00:13:08.300graders, much less grown adults, who've been in formal schooling for a decade and a half.
00:13:14.020The average four-year education in America, when you factor in living expenses on top of tuition,
00:13:19.540now costs just north of $160,000 in total. So if the value of an education is going to primarily
00:13:26.800be the education itself, if the idea is general enlightenment and knowledge, it cannot cost the
00:13:34.260equivalent of three years of the average American salary without even factoring an interest on the
00:13:39.740loan. That is far too high a premium to put on education for its own sake, especially when the
00:13:44.860education is so shoddy, and even more especially when every book ever written and all of the
00:13:49.740accumulated knowledge of mankind is available to anyone who wants it anytime. But the most
00:13:54.940important point here isn't that the university system is a godforsaken scam. That does need to
00:13:59.740be said, but if you've followed my work for a while, you know that I've already said that many
00:14:04.060times over for good reason. In terms of villains in the Matt Wall Show universe, colleges rank just
00:14:10.020below trans activists and Christopher Nolan. So that ground is well trodden. We've been over it.
00:14:17.280The most important point for our purposes today is that college degree or not, being an influencer
00:14:23.380is not a profession that anybody should actively pursue. So the fact that half of Gen Z aspires
00:14:29.540to be influencers is perhaps the most deeply depressing fact about a generation that is0.83
00:14:34.620constantly providing us with new reasons to be deeply depressed. And I realize, I realize that
00:14:40.240some will see this as ironic considering the source. I might be accused of being an influencer
00:14:45.940myself. Now, I believe I'm innocent of that charge. If we arrive at a day when influencers are being
00:14:52.580hunted down, arrested, put on trial, executed, and I'm not saying I want that to happen.
00:14:58.020I'm also not saying that I don't want that to happen
00:15:00.860Then I'm confident that my innocence will be easily established in a court of law
00:15:05.040I can be exonerated simply based on the fact that I have a well-established long-running disdain for selfies
00:15:10.400Which are the number one tool of the influencer trade
00:15:13.180I've never even taken a selfie in my entire life. Not once
00:15:16.640Aside from pictures I snap with the fish that I catch, but
00:15:19.860That doesn't count as a selfie at worst. They're like selfies in name, but not in spirit
00:15:24.160And aside from that i'm much too cynical and ill-tempered to be an influencer
00:15:27.760Okay, influencers as a species are bubbly, enthusiastic, excitable, retarded, and I am0.90
00:15:34.900none of those things, or most only one of them. So I don't fit the psychological profile,0.89
00:15:39.200and I should be acquitted on all charges, I think. But whether you indict me as an influencer or not,
00:15:44.140the point remains, this is not a career path. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to have
00:15:49.600influence, but influence should be a byproduct of excellence. It should be the sort of gravitational
00:15:56.840pull that naturally comes from doing something substantial and doing it well. And the irony is
00:16:02.840that people who pursue influence for its own sake will never actually have very much influence at
00:16:08.040all. I mean, that's the dirty little secret. That's not really a secret about influencers.
00:16:11.220They have no influence, or at least they have very little influence. I mean, for the most part,
00:16:15.300their influence is an illusion. They're able to sell that illusion to sponsors and advertisers
00:16:19.840for profit, but it's like a bubble. And in a weird way, the influencer bubble is so thin
00:16:25.060and so imaginary that it feels paradoxically indestructible. Because how can a bubble pop
00:16:31.600when it doesn't exist to begin with? And none of this bothers the influencers because, as it turns
00:16:36.620out, influencers don't actually desire influence. What they desire is attention. Now, in our culture,
00:16:43.180we conflate influence with attention, which is an understandable mistake. After all, in order to
00:16:47.700influence someone, you first need to get their attention. It stands to reason that a person who
00:16:52.800gets a lot of attention must wield a lot of influence, but the attention attracted by
00:16:57.320influencers is of such a fractured and fleeting variety that there is but scant influence attached
00:17:03.400to it. You know, an influencer might get the public's attention for a million cumulative
00:17:07.320hours in a given month or year or whatever, but that chunk of time is divided into tiny pieces
00:17:12.660among millions of people. Each person only engages with them for a few seconds at a time.
00:17:17.680So the influencer is just one meaningless piece of content in an endless stream of content.
00:17:22.800And that's how you end up with influencers