A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - “Alpha Males” Are Making Men Lonelier (with Ryan Broderick)

00:00:00.000 Patrick Bateman, if he had been born in like 2004, could have been such a great

00:00:04.700 like alpha male, get rich quick TikToker.

00:00:12.960 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein. I'm so happy that you're here.

00:00:19.560 On March 22nd, just under a month ago, I was scrolling on Twitter when I came across a video,

00:00:25.920 When you came across a video, when we all came across a video of an Instagram influencer I had never heard of before, even though he already had at this point 8 million followers, now, by the way, up to 14 million, named Ashton Hall.

00:00:41.800 Ashton is an extremely fit 29-year-old man living, apparently, in an ultra-modern, barely-furnished Miami apartment.

00:00:52.340 The video, which you probably know, was of his alleged morning routine, which begins at a crisp 3.54 a.m.

00:01:01.180 Minute by minute, he chronicles his many morning tasks.

00:01:04.420 I mean, kind of. It's unclear why you need five hours to do exactly what he's doing here, but not the point.

00:01:12.280 He does push-ups on the balcony of his apartment.

00:01:14.920 He drinks many bottles of Saratoga water, meditates for a few minutes, journals briefly,

00:01:20.360 watches some church preacher Instagram reels, inexplicably dunks his head in a bowl of ice

00:01:26.520 water handed to him by the hands of a woman who is otherwise disembodied. She'd also later hand

00:01:32.440 him food, to which he says thank you without looking up from his computer to acknowledge her.

00:01:36.940 He eats a banana and then rubs the peel on his face, some sort of biohacky skincare.

00:01:42.660 He hops on a Zoom call and in what is the only time in this morning routine video that we hear

00:01:48.320 his voice says quote so looking at it bro we gotta go ahead and get in at least 10 000 unclear as to

00:01:54.200 what we're talking about there ashton hall's instagram bio touts you can reinvent your life

00:02:00.720 in one year and his website offers personal training programs that range in price from

00:02:06.240 3 300 to 8 250 a year when ashton hall's morning routine went viral it was basically entirely 0.67

00:02:14.580 because of people dunking on him for how ridiculous it was.

00:02:18.480 And Ashton quickly leaned into the joke,

00:02:20.780 amping up the amount of Saratoga ice water head dunks in his content,

00:02:25.220 which continued to explode in popularity.

00:02:27.220 He's gained 6 million Instagram followers in the last month.

00:02:30.260 But I saw this and I was like immediately transfixed.

00:02:33.960 And sad.

00:02:35.500 For reasons I couldn't yet describe.

00:02:37.320 Not for Ashton.

00:02:38.220 He's fine. 0.99

00:02:39.020 He's a little bit of a troll, a little bit of a scammer. 0.97

00:02:41.440 And the banana peel, for what it's worth, seems to be doing his skin good. 0.94

00:02:45.160 But I felt sad for the consumers of this type of content, mainly young men.

00:02:50.540 And I say this type because people will quickly point out that Ashton's content is engagement bait, meant to be as absurd as possible.

00:02:58.220 But isn't part of why it connected with us because it taps into a type of bro culture that most of us, especially those of us who are very online, are already familiar with?

00:03:08.020 you know, the biohacking, life hacking, self-optimizing, divinely enlightened worlds

00:03:14.400 of Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman, and honestly, maybe even Andrew Tate. An article about the

00:03:20.520 morning routine video was written in The Cut and asked, are men okay? And the answer is,

00:03:25.960 I think we'd all agree, no. But I wanted to interrogate why. What is this modern masculine

00:03:32.220 obsession with self quote unquote improvement and constant quote unquote productivity doing

00:03:40.080 to young men? Is it actually, as some people have told me, just an emphasis on self-care

00:03:45.720 that could actually be good? Or is something more nefarious at play? These are the questions

00:03:51.280 I want to get into in today's episode. And to help me do that, I have, I plucked one

00:03:57.440 out a straight heterosexual man because the last time I did an episode about young men with Taylor

00:04:04.280 Lorenz a lot of people were very angry with me that neither of us were a straight man and so

00:04:10.540 today I have Ryan Broderick who is the writer of the Webby award-winning newsletter Garbage Day

00:04:16.660 host of the Panic World podcast covers tech politics the internet Ryan welcome to a bit

00:04:23.900 fruity and thank you for helping me hit my dei quota for straight guys on this podcast happy to

00:04:29.580 be here i will definitely pretend like i know things about masculinity happy to be the expert

00:04:34.100 here i guess well i mean one of us has to yep i'm a very strong powerful masculine man happy

00:04:41.460 happy to be here before we get into today's episode if you would like more of the show

00:04:46.040 or to support the show we are on patreon i have a new bonus episode that's about to come out on

00:04:52.820 Patreon about Arielle Scarcella, the right wing lesbian YouTuber who is formative to LGBTQ YouTube

00:04:58.900 in the early days and has since gone on a MAGA pivot doing that with Kat Tenbarge. That'll be 0.71

00:05:03.620 up shortly. And if you would like to hang out live coming up very soon, less than a month,

00:05:10.120 I am doing a bunch of live shows in. Let me get my notes up because last time I said I had a show

00:05:15.980 in Boston and a lot of people asked me where the link was to tickets for the Boston show. And in

00:05:20.480 fact, there is no Boston show. I have shows coming up in Toronto, Chicago, Philly, Brooklyn, Seattle,

00:05:28.440 LA, San Francisco, and Portland. If you would like to come to any of those, the link for tickets will

00:05:33.880 also be in the episode description. Okay, Ryan. Yes. When you first came across Ashton Hall's

00:05:40.660 video, what goes through your mind? I was like, wow, our morning routines are identical. That's

00:05:45.120 so exciting yes and so are your so are your apartments judging by the background yes i have

00:05:51.880 a very empty miami apartment that i'm currently podcasting from no i i didn't totally clock that

00:05:59.060 this was crazy only because i've seen so many men make these kinds of videos so for me it was sort

00:06:05.000 of just like a checklist of all the tropes you know like waking up before four doing like weird

00:06:09.820 product placement stuff. There's like a religious undertone, like all the guys on Instagram are

00:06:15.580 doing these kinds of videos. But I feel like this guy hit every single one so precisely that

00:06:21.180 obviously, like it kind of blew up. I have teased out some ideas that I have about this and sort of

00:06:26.360 the darker side of it. And a lot of people will be like, this guy's obviously a troll. And it 0.62

00:06:32.340 doesn't really matter, like I said, because he's tapping into a culture that is very real and full

00:06:37.720 of people who are not trolls but for what it's worth just to speculate just to start off do you

00:06:42.580 think he is a troll absolutely not no way um like i went through all those videos if he's a troll

00:06:48.420 he's like deeply unwell because he's been at this for a very long time i mean he does videos where

00:06:54.420 he talks about all this stuff and it's it's very genuine he i mean the production quality alone

00:06:59.180 like there's videos of him like racing a car and stuff like he also is a physical trainer i believe

00:07:03.620 or like is in that world to some capacity so like most things on instagram i think this is just an

00:07:08.640 ad like like most influencers now i think are just making like mildly pornographic clips to

00:07:15.180 advertise some other kind of service and which i would put this as being part of that so you think

00:07:20.100 that the sort of trolling was like a retroactive like oh i can lean into this because people think

00:07:24.940 it's funny so i can lean into it being funny yeah i would say so i mean he's clearly trying to like

00:07:30.400 deal with the attention and he's trying to figure out like what that attention means

00:07:34.840 because you know anybody who makes their living on a meta product and i've interviewed i've heard

00:07:39.740 this a lot from facebook creators who like you know that is the worst kind of creator you could

00:07:43.580 be because like facebook hates you they're always trying to figure out how genuine they're supposed

00:07:49.480 to be like you know uh the people who make gross food videos they used to say this stuff where it's

00:07:53.640 like well it's a joke and it's like well is it a joke because you do it all day long all the time

00:07:58.700 So I think he's just kind of trying to rationalize what has just happened to him in the most recent videos he's put out.

00:08:05.160 I have to say, like, I did have this immediate reaction to this video where it was like, I felt like the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.

00:08:12.740 And again, like, I didn't really know why that was at the time.

00:08:16.000 And I've basically spent the last three weeks trying to hone in on what that was, which brings us to where we are today.

00:08:21.440 I mean, I think the most explicitly chilling detail of this video is this like disembodied

00:08:28.240 woman who's handing him things.

00:08:29.900 Oh, yeah. 0.97

00:08:30.440 Yeah. 1.00

00:08:30.840 His use of like a woman as a prop, I think, is a little better than the other guys I've 1.00

00:08:35.300 seen. 0.92

00:08:35.700 Like there was there's like one guy that like makes a woman like bow to him consistently

00:08:39.080 in his videos.

00:08:40.180 But there is always this kind of idea of a superfluous woman in these videos, because

00:08:46.680 I think the best way to think about this entire world and possibly like all I don't 0.99

00:08:50.740 want to say men's rights stuff because I don't think this is that but sort of like hyper masculine

00:08:54.940 internet content is of I think of it as a form of pornography it is it is aspirational it is like

00:09:00.080 you can have this life and I can promise you this life and part of the life that they're promising

00:09:05.120 is not just that you're a giant muscle man action figure but that you also just like have like a

00:09:09.920 beautiful woman slave that like lives in your house and like doesn't speak like that it's it's

00:09:14.920 all reinforcing those ideas so it is always really funny when you just like see this woman's hand

00:09:20.000 reach out a frame because it's clearly part of it. You wrote a piece about this video, which is why

00:09:26.820 I actually reached out to you initially, because I thought it was a really good piece. You said in

00:09:31.400 that piece that you think this type of content is pornographic. And you also put like the trad

00:09:36.800 wife content, which we talked about a lot on this podcast in that I think category as well.

00:09:41.760 Yeah, I mean, actually, it's part of a larger theory I've had for several years now that like

00:09:45.480 Essentially, all online video content becomes pornography if you like optimize it enough, like in the same way that like everyone is like combining like brother and stepsister stuff and like a dishwasher and like random costumes.

00:09:59.420 Like if you if you spend time at like the bottom barrel of digital video, it's trying to provoke a reaction, typically a physical one from you.

00:10:07.740 And it does so by combining tropes.

00:10:09.760 So like, if you go back through Ashton Hall's previous videos, you can like watch him in

00:10:14.160 real time, figure out the formula for the video that went viral last month.

00:10:18.640 Like he's, he's realizing like, okay, I use Saratoga.

00:10:21.340 I don't use Pellegrino or I use a banana peel, but I don't eat the banana.

00:10:25.580 And this is just sort of a symptom of the way platforms force people to make content

00:10:30.020 for them.

00:10:30.900 You know, a TikToker is doing the same math in their head.

00:10:33.420 They're going like, okay, this input creates that output creates this engagement.

00:10:37.500 But then, you know, there's also like the broader social and political dimensions to this where, like I said, he's promising a lifestyle.

00:10:44.820 He's and if you look at his bio, I think it's still in there where it's like you can like take classes with him to like learn how to be him.

00:10:51.680 Yes, they all they all sell courses.

00:10:53.320 They love courses.

00:10:54.400 They love courses. 0.96

00:10:55.280 They love books on Gumroad and all that crap.

00:10:57.980 And so it's all I mean, it is the exact same funnel as an OnlyFans model.

00:11:02.320 It's the exact same funnel as like a crypto influencer.

00:11:05.920 It's all the same stuff.

00:11:07.000 And they're doing the same kind of production and the same kind of thinking about it.

00:11:10.500 I have a crypto influencer who we're going to talk about, but not yet.

00:11:13.460 Cool.

00:11:13.960 So, okay, I had so many reactions to this video, and I'm trying to keep it focused.

00:11:17.540 But my actual primary initial reaction before I even got to the dark stuff was like, I, you know, I was born in 1998.

00:11:26.380 And when I was growing up in the 2000s, like this was metro sexual behavior, which is not a word that we use anymore.

00:11:34.600 Right.

00:11:36.080 Not really.

00:11:37.000 it was a word that plagued me growing up because it was metrosexual for those of you

00:11:42.200 very young among us was basically it it referred to a straight man who took care of himself basically 0.98

00:11:50.020 yes that's pretty much it any level of hygiene you gave a shit yeah it was like and it was a 0.93

00:11:55.800 it was pejorative well uh or at least that was my experience growing up was like if you were called 0.96

00:12:01.720 like metros like i i love my mom and i know she listens to these sometimes but i remember

00:12:07.060 one time i was like i don't know i picked out like a pair of shoes at dsw or something and

00:12:12.020 she was like those are a little metro i was like sure i was like what because they're red

00:12:16.880 i was born in 1989 so when metrosexual stuff hit i was like just becoming a teenager and i do

00:12:23.140 remember like i remember a today show segment that was like playing when i was getting ready

00:12:27.460 for school and i believe it was the cast of the first version of queer eye for the straight guy

00:12:33.100 and i think that there was like a whole segment where they were like teaching men how to like 0.71

00:12:37.000 find out if their pants fit and like how to like wear shoes like basic shit like that

00:12:43.340 it was not pejorative it was more like actually you know what it was if this is coming back to

00:12:49.160 me now it was part of the larger like early 2000s pickup artist movement there was this whole wave

00:12:54.800 of like straight men who because of like, I honestly think it's like because of like post

00:12:59.660 feminist hookup culture in the 2000s, there was this idea that like men now had to like actually

00:13:04.320 try to like meet women. And so like every couple months in the early 2000s, there would just be 0.96

00:13:09.600 like another thing on the news being like, men are trying to look good. Why is that happening?

00:13:15.820 It became pejorative because like everything sort of curdles, right? But I don't remember

00:13:20.900 being super negative to begin with well and i also think that in certain contexts as was the

00:13:26.800 case for me like it could just be a way to call someone gay 100 and that's when it became almost

00:13:31.800 overnight like yeah and and especially like the level of hygiene i mean i don't even know if you

00:13:38.040 could call what ashton hall does hygiene because it's not actually hygienic it's just performative

00:13:42.280 nonsense but like that level of performative hygiene would get you called metrosexual or gay

00:13:48.880 or whatever and i was watching this and i was like wait this is now being sold and packaged as like

00:13:55.180 alpha male behavior that was such a signal to me that like there is a broad broad shift and even

00:14:00.820 though this is like a caricature of a caricature of it like something has changed and i need to

00:14:05.820 understand it well i think the key difference is like this is not to get women and like it's

00:14:10.100 explicitly not to get women like if you're going to compare it to like metrosexuality as like a

00:14:15.060 fashion movement in the 2000s, like that was explicitly to like attract women and to like

00:14:21.040 look better. This is saying, no, you can just like be a jacked up muscle man and like do like

00:14:26.500 B2B e-commerce sales and make a lot of money. And like women will have to come to you. 0.99

00:14:32.380 And I think that that is the sort of darker shift here. And like, I will say like, I don't think he

00:14:38.100 talks much about women, which is also interesting, but like there is not an expectation that you are

00:14:44.140 bettering yourself for other people you're bettering yourself for yourself and then other

00:14:48.320 people gravitate towards you that's what all these men's right guys sort of talk about a hundred

00:14:51.960 percent a hundred percent and even though as you mentioned like he doesn't necessarily talk that

00:14:57.020 much about like he doesn't do this like andrew tate style like and women are subservient he has

00:15:02.720 little ways of showing that's basically how he thinks about women again this is a later part of

00:15:07.860 my outline but i do think this feeds into basically the same place that's that's maybe my big claim

00:15:13.880 yeah i think it attracts the same kind of viewers too i'd be curious like what this guy what ashton

00:15:19.540 hall's like demographics look like like on his instagram page or whatever like i'm i'm fascinated

00:15:23.340 like who his audience is but let's assume it's young men i mean i don't i don't know who else

00:15:28.620 would be watching it so let's assume it's young men like yeah he is definitely tapping into the

00:15:33.060 same vein that andrew tate tapped into early before like andrew tate went full like you know

00:15:37.300 andrew tate has was always bad but he's like out of control now but like you know it's the same

00:15:41.760 kind of uh strategy kind of positioning yourself as a king yeah i would say so that yeah i am the

00:15:47.060 king of this empty apartment block in miami that that's that's what you're promising who among us

00:15:52.780 does not have similar aspirations i think it's just so fascinating that like influencers have

00:15:56.540 completely empty apartments it's like a thing that i've noticed on tiktok and i'm mesmerized by this

00:16:01.020 like grim empty mcmansion thing that they're all like doing dances in it's like it's very dark

00:16:06.300 actually it is and it's like i now am old enough to have been online for like several iterations of

00:16:13.700 famous a-list internet celebrities and i remember in the mid-2000s especially among beauty gurus

00:16:19.860 because that's what i was really paying attention to at the time sure they all had white homes

00:16:23.980 yeah it's very like the you know like james charles apartment or like like the dolan twin

00:16:29.160 like they all had these beautiful like white marble void of personality homes but it's reached

00:16:35.360 like a fever pitch i think with this new crop of internet celebrities where it literally does like

00:16:40.660 they live in like furniture lists like steel boxes my original theory was that like they're

00:16:46.700 they're leasing like really nice apartments that they can't actually afford to furnish based on

00:16:51.760 an influencer salary totally which might still be true but now i'm also wondering if it's just

00:16:56.320 like a filming strategy so it's like you just never furnish your apartment so you don't have

00:16:59.900 to clean it so you can like shoot videos all over i mean i talk a lot on this podcast about

00:17:04.200 how easy it is relatively to feign wealth especially on like instagram or tiktok like

00:17:09.640 you can just film a tiktok in a hotel lobby or a hotel room you can go to a car dealership or a car

00:17:17.280 show and like take photos with the maserati it doesn't mean you own any of these things which

00:17:21.680 i just think is really funny but we'll get into all of that the other thing i kind of just wanted

00:17:27.060 to nip in the bud while we're still on the ashton hall video because like in so many of my podcast

00:17:32.160 episodes we're going to do kind of a reverse funnel here where we start with ashton hall and

00:17:36.420 then we get to the bigger picture by the end sure okay i love a reverse funnel oh it's the best

00:17:40.740 it's what we learned in high school journalism it's the best you know when i posted about like

00:17:45.660 hey guys i have a bad feeling about this type of like self-optimization content a lot of people

00:17:51.880 were just like hey it's not so bad at least they're washing themselves now referring to men

00:17:56.660 and i'm like yeah the bar's low i guess you're right but also this is not self-care i was reading

00:18:02.580 a reddit thread right before we started recording this morning called am i overreacting my husband

00:18:07.480 keeps pooping his pants and so i do think it's important to point out that like that's the world

00:18:14.080 that we're in right now is that like men like there are adult men walking this earth who think

00:18:17.940 it's totally fine to just like sit on the couch and poop themselves so i can't say it's bad that

00:18:23.900 like there are people out there being like hey you should like wake up at four in the morning to

00:18:27.580 work out and clean yourself but yes i agree there is a there is a darkness here to me it's like the

00:18:32.700 aesthetic of self-care you know we're doing our skin care we're working out but it's the aesthetic

00:18:38.080 of self-care to mask what is ultimately just another version of like male competition this

00:18:43.760 time over productivity i would even be hesitant to call this self-care this is not peaceful or

00:18:50.700 like reaffirming. This is not like centering. He's doing weird shit that he saw in other

00:18:56.060 people's videos. I don't find this very genuine in any way. I think he was like a former football 0.99

00:19:01.800 player too. So he's like a former football player that's like transitioned into some sort of like

00:19:05.580 personal fitness guy. And so all of this to me is just like overly performative.

00:19:10.480 You're not going to feel good living like this, I don't think. I mean, I've never dunked my face

00:19:13.800 in Saratoga's sparkling water before. So maybe that's the secret. Things that look like self

00:19:18.020 care to your point aren't always i think part of the point of self-care is that you're feeling good

00:19:21.780 you're relaxing your mind i mean what we see in not just ashton hall's videos but kind of this

00:19:26.300 entire brand of like biohacking self-optimization content it's like suffering as a virtue and like

00:19:34.340 look how much i can do on you know how little sleep i get you know and it's all about like

00:19:39.940 punishing yourself and that's supposed to like translate to like proving your masculinity it's

00:19:45.180 fascinating because it's so uniquely American. I write about this a lot, but I've spent a lot of

00:19:48.480 time living outside of America and like this kind of stuff is like uniquely American. And I think

00:19:53.660 it kind of gives us a hint towards like what's actually happening here. And my two theories are

00:19:58.420 one, because of the lack of healthcare in this country, there's like a really weird personalization

00:20:03.640 of wellness that has happened. So like we believe that like our health is our responsibility and

00:20:09.640 the internet sort of obviously inflames that feeling. And then I think the second one is like

00:20:13.660 the ultimate american sickness of all which is like the protestant work ethic so like what happens

00:20:17.400 when you take like the productivity guilt that lives inside of every american and you apply it

00:20:21.960 to like a people who can't get health care it's like oh i have to be militant about my wellness

00:20:27.120 and about my body and about my life because that's all that i've got so that's i think that

00:20:33.520 also goes on to sort of explain like all the other sort of health pseudoscience stuff that's flying

00:20:37.180 around the web right now in this country because it's like people want to believe that there's a

00:20:41.280 personalized way to deal with these things. And guys like Ashton Hall slot right in there where

00:20:46.280 it's like, if you believe in Jesus and you wake up at four in the morning and rub bananas on your

00:20:49.960 face, you're going to be a muscle man. Everything in this podcast always comes down to we just

00:20:55.980 need to tax billionaires and get healthcare. Honestly, it would solve about 80% of our

00:21:00.440 social problems. I truly believe that. But the internet obviously is, I think, a larger force

00:21:05.720 here where it allows you to transmit your ideas to other people, see their ideas, combine them

00:21:12.640 with yours. It spreads. It acts like a trend. So this stuff becomes really inescapable on Instagram

00:21:17.620 because it's trying to target you. I learned to cook during the winter and I got really good at

00:21:22.760 it. So I gained a lot of weight. So now I'm on a diet plan. And now my YouTube, yeah, not to humble

00:21:27.440 brag, but then my YouTube and my Instagram have totally turned against me and are now just trying

00:21:32.580 to give me an eating disorder because like it's looking for those kinds of signals so like i

00:21:37.440 google something about like protein shakes or something and then my youtube just becomes

00:21:41.180 a nightmare and and that's just the way the internet is constructed right now i wonder if

00:21:45.380 i did a study where it's like you make an account with zero search history and you just start

00:21:49.940 searching like protein shakes like how quick how quickly does that get you to andrew tate so i

00:21:55.960 didn't experiment with that on facebook like about 10 years ago and i got i got yelled at by facebook

00:22:01.000 for writing about it. But basically, I did make a new account and just started liking pages to

00:22:05.340 see where it would take me. And it took about a week to get from liking the RNC's page to Alex

00:22:12.640 Jones being actively recommended in my newsfeed. Like Sandy Hook shooting was fake. Yeah, exactly.

00:22:18.960 All that stuff. I don't think much has changed in that way, except maybe it's actually gotten

00:22:23.700 faster because TikTok sort of created the world where what you watch immediately changes your

00:22:29.620 newsfeed. Like newsfeeds didn't change immediately before TikTok. And now Instagram has sort of like

00:22:34.720 copied that feature from TikTok. So like you look at one dog video on Instagram, you open your

00:22:39.860 Instagram again, it's all dog videos. And that is new. So I'm thinking that this effect is much

00:22:44.620 more pronounced than it was 10 years ago. Quick shout out to Rocket Money for sponsoring this

00:22:51.220 episode. One thing that has really gotten to me lately is every time you hear about a new show

00:22:57.360 that you might be interested in,

00:22:59.000 it is somehow on a streaming service

00:23:01.220 that you don't have yet.

00:23:02.640 Even though you already have all of them.

00:23:04.040 Nope, just kidding.

00:23:05.080 There's a new one and you don't have it.

00:23:06.580 This new show's on WeeWoo,

00:23:08.220 new spinoff series on Mubi Premium.

00:23:10.960 It bothers me, but clearly not enough

00:23:13.420 that I don't keep signing up for all of them,

00:23:15.940 at least not for one month at a time

00:23:17.680 because I, unfortunately, will follow RuPaul

00:23:20.760 wherever she forces me to go.

00:23:22.180 But it gets hard to keep track of monthly expenses

00:23:25.560 and remember which things I've canceled

00:23:27.400 and which things I might accidentally still be paying for

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00:24:19.840 so another one of my immediate reactions to the ashton hall video was that it reminded me of the

00:24:28.120 patrick bateman morning routine are you familiar with the american psycho yes i am familiar with

00:24:34.700 american psycho and i would agree uh it's very similar i don't think ashton hall kills women

00:24:38.980 uh but uh other than that it's pretty much he's got it down i think american psycho guy is kind 0.64

00:24:43.480 of cooler about it i think patrick bateman's kind of doing a cooler job but yeah uh very similar so

00:24:47.820 obviously American Psycho movie about a psychopathic serial killer played by Christian

00:24:52.520 Bale I actually I rewatched his morning routine it there's a there's a sort of an opening scene

00:24:58.260 where Patrick Bateman the protagonist gives his morning routine and it's like Patrick Bateman

00:25:02.540 if he had been born in like 2004 could have been such a great like alpha male get rich quick

00:25:08.100 tiktoker I saw this really funny I think it was a tweet or something that was like if Patrick

00:25:12.540 bateman was gen z he would be like a girl on tiktok and it would be the exact same monologue

00:25:17.900 yes he would be like a yeah like not a trad wife but like a like a dime square fashy girly doing

00:25:25.180 like a weird morning routine thing yeah i uh copy and pasted the morning routine monologue into the

00:25:32.840 doc do you want to do your best patrick bateman impression i've waited my entire life for someone

00:25:37.100 to ask me to do this thank you very much this is what you get when you invite a straight white guy

00:25:42.300 in your podcast i'm gonna do the patrick morning routine monologue here we go i actually invited

00:25:47.540 you here as a humiliation ritual no that's fine that's i i that's that's great uh this is exactly

00:25:52.440 my thing my name is patrick bateman i'm 27 years old i believe in taking care of myself and a

00:25:57.420 balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine in the morning if my face is a little puffy i'll put

00:26:02.500 on an ice pack while doing my stomach crunches i can do a thousand now after i remove the ice pack

00:26:07.420 i use a deep pore cleanser lotion in the shower i use a water activated gel cleanser then a honey

00:26:13.340 almond butter scrub and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub then i apply an herb mint facial mask

00:26:19.700 which i leave on for 10 minutes while i prepare the rest of my routine i always use an after

00:26:24.060 shave lotion with little or no alcohol because alcohol dries your face out it makes you look

00:26:28.120 older then moisturizer an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective

00:26:33.160 lotion there's an idea of a patrick bateman some kind of abstraction but there is no real me only

00:26:39.400 an entity something illusory and though i can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel

00:26:44.700 flesh gripping yours and maybe even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable i am simply

00:26:49.740 not there i actually believe that you've been waiting your life to do that thank you yeah like

00:26:55.720 it's it's it's giving like you say that before bed every night it was a little too good i uh

00:27:01.380 invite women over from tinder and then i just perform that for them and i say okay you can

00:27:05.580 you can leave now i've got what i need so you can go i've done i've done the monologue this is an

00:27:10.440 incredible document to read now because like i have literally just heard people do like an upbeat

00:27:15.680 version of this on tiktok like this is just a normal thing yeah it's it's literally this with

00:27:21.540 like it was like gail playing in the background or something yeah there's like a there's like a

00:27:26.540 Gracie Abrams song playing in the background and you're just like being like oh wait hold on be

00:27:30.160 like my name is Patrick Bateman I'm 27 years old and I believe in taking care of myself

00:27:34.500 and a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine you know and then you just start lifting

00:27:38.100 your moisturizers and it's like yeah this is just like how beauty influencers talk well and and the

00:27:43.720 thing with American Psycho and this scene in particular is it's parodying the excesses of

00:27:49.320 consumerism but it's also parodying this like that this behavior is like antisocial well yeah it's

00:27:56.080 filling a deep void inside of him because he doesn't exist as a human being. We're in a very

00:28:02.380 similar time to when American Psycho was set. It's set in the height of the Reagan 80s.

00:28:08.260 He's a finance guy. He doesn't care about anything other than material wealth and the

00:28:13.620 appearance of material wealth. We're in the second Trump administration. There are a lot of people in

00:28:19.220 this country who only care about, as you said, filming a Maserati at a car dealership on Instagram

00:28:24.260 to make it look like you're wealthy like these things are cyclical and we are absolutely in

00:28:28.680 Patrick Bateman's America right now although I don't think Patrick Bateman would have social

00:28:31.720 media I feel like he'd be really weird about social media like it's too it's too like self

00:28:36.580 effacing to open the camera on yourself this brings me into the next portion of my outline

00:28:40.580 which I just called isolationist and asocial masculinity and this is kind of where I get

00:28:46.200 into some of the meat of what that Ashton Hall video made me feel and what I think it's

00:28:52.020 tapping into insofar as like the troubling nature of being like a young male online today the more

00:28:58.700 I read about these types of videos and the influencers who make them the more I zeroed in

00:29:03.520 on what about Ashton Hall's video so harrowing to me which is loneliness male loneliness you might

00:29:10.620 say oh no oh no I mentioned male loneliness the comments are already getting angry from all sides

00:29:16.120 but you know i put something on my instagram stories about this ashton hall video and i was

00:29:22.320 like i am so transfixed and i find this so dark and i got a lot of different replies but one

00:29:28.780 really stuck with me someone just replied to my instagram story this isn't the worst thing ever

00:29:34.160 it just seems very lonely to me i'd be unhappy if i were him i need family not me yeah you'd be

00:29:41.860 fulfilled i i love being completely alone so okay i think the loneliness dimension is important here

00:29:48.480 but before we get there i do think there's a there's a weird aesthetic thing with influencers

00:29:52.680 where they're clearly shooting in like liminal spaces early in the morning or like you know

00:29:59.380 alone in their apartment and so their videos do feel very isolating and i have to imagine they're

00:30:05.400 not living their lives that way like this guy has like a team like you can see them sometimes in the

00:30:10.740 videos. But because of the fact that like, you know, there's so many people like Ashton Hall

00:30:15.760 doing effectively amateur video shoots all the time. And they don't want people in those videos.

00:30:22.240 It's like the, like the Stark influencer, like European monument shoot. Like the influencer

00:30:28.940 goes like the Trevi fountain at like four in the morning to make sure there's no one else in the

00:30:32.700 photo. And like, that is really strange. Like that's a really strange hallmark of modern internet

00:30:39.500 content. But yes, also by the nature of that, you do get a lot of men who are very isolated being

00:30:45.240 like, oh, like that guy lives in complete isolation as well. That's, but he seems really

00:30:49.240 jacked. So like, that seems cool to me. So yes, I think there's, there's a couple of things

00:30:53.620 happening here, but I, I agree with you that, you know, it's women's responsibility to fix

00:30:57.740 male loneliness. I think, you know, don't listen to your commenters. Yeah. Your, your, your,

00:31:05.020 your government mandated girlfriend no uh there is you are a straight man on the gay podcast

00:31:10.000 they're not going to sense the sarcasm ryan we have to be very clear about what the intonation 0.74

00:31:15.140 is here uh no there there is there is something very pathological about kind of the men who seek

00:31:21.800 out content to make them feel more isolated it's a it's a very weird feedback loop that you can see

00:31:26.980 them sort of talking about on like incel forums and stuff which like i've frequented for for work

00:31:31.080 to be very clear yeah like for work they're weirdly self-aware like these guys are weirdly

00:31:38.540 self-aware that's why i spent like a year of my life thinking and researching and talking about

00:31:43.400 by sister the beauty guru scandal for work sure no that's totally a normal thing yeah but yeah no

00:31:51.200 so they're they're these already very lonely men that seek out content to sort of reaffirm their

00:31:55.900 loneliness because to cure their loneliness is like so horrifying to them that like they can't

00:32:00.580 imagine it. I was reading an essay by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic that was very widely

00:32:05.400 circulated called The Antisocial Century. Did you read this? I have. Yeah. Derek Thompson's great.

00:32:10.640 The Antisocial Century is this essay just basically about how we're choosing to isolate ourselves more

00:32:16.300 than ever. And he talked a little bit specifically about the morning routine video, not this one from

00:32:22.760 Ashton Hall. Interestingly, the essay was published months before the Ashton Hall video went viral.

00:32:26.960 but like i said this is a genre of content right very i think it's very very like rogan adjacent

00:32:33.100 and he wrote this if the protagonist is a man he is typically handsome and rich we see him wake up

00:32:39.760 we see him meditate we see him write in his journal we see him exercise take supplements

00:32:45.140 take a cold plunge it's actually like prophetic that the ashton hall video would go viral like

00:32:50.420 after this was published but what is most striking about these videos however is the element they

00:32:55.440 typically lack? Other people. In these little movies of a life well spent, the protagonists

00:33:01.320 generally wake up alone and stay that way. We usually see no friends, no spouse, no children.

00:33:08.020 These videos are advertisements for luxurious form of modern monasticism that treats the presence of

00:33:14.160 other people as, at best, an unwelcome distraction and, at worst, an unhealthy indulgence that is

00:33:20.920 ideally avoided like porn perhaps or pop tarts so where do you think loneliness and isolation

00:33:27.880 sort of fit into the lifestyle sales pitch these influencers are making because you mentioned

00:33:32.720 earlier like this is not to get women right or maybe it is to get women but it's not to attract

00:33:38.120 them no maybe you get them as an end result because you're so powerful and godly but you're

00:33:43.500 not doing this to make yourself flattering to women it's fascinating and it's fascinating to

00:33:47.460 look back at the shift you know like if you think about the earliest forms of kind of like what we

00:33:52.400 would call influencer content like in the myspace era i mean if you imagine it in your head it's

00:33:57.160 like it's like blurry party photos like you're bragging that you're surrounded by people and

00:34:01.240 this is even true of like men's rights stuff where the like the pickup artist guys who i would sort

00:34:05.680 of say are like the beginnings of what ashton hall is now kind of doing the photos of them are like

00:34:09.880 at bars surrounded by women sure it's like the hunter moore hunter moore would be the the worst

00:34:15.480 example of this yeah or like um dan balzerian dan balzerian is actually a fantastic sort of 0.95

00:34:21.120 middle ground here where okay okay thank you let me stop guessing let me stop guessing you have a

00:34:25.840 much bad yeah you know all the bad guys okay so like if you think about if you think about like

00:34:30.660 uh tucker max hope hope they serve beer in hell wait what don't even worry about it it's just a

00:34:35.220 it was a new york times bestseller and it it's a part of our history that we should just never

00:34:39.100 think about again sure but like if you if you think about the early pickup artist days it's like

00:34:42.620 similar to the MySpace influencer stuff where it's like, look, I'm bragging because I'm in a

00:34:47.000 cool club and I'm surrounded by people. And then you think about the middle ground between where

00:34:51.440 we are now and then, which would be Dan Blazerian, which is I'm surrounded by women, but I'm 1.00

00:34:55.520 surrounded by women on private jets. I'm surrounded by women in small hotel suites. I'm surrounded by 1.00

00:35:00.420 women in these very antiseptic environments that I've created. You're starting to become 1.00

00:35:06.640 more hyper real. And now you're getting to the point, and I think COVID is probably part of this,

00:35:11.260 where it's like, I'm not surrounded by anybody. I am just a muscle man in an empty house.

00:35:16.800 I think COVID is part of that, but that evolution was already happening without COVID. This desire

00:35:23.080 to just make it totally focused on yourself. I don't know if that's an algorithmic change over

00:35:28.280 time. I don't know if that's just, we're all lonelier, so we're gravitating towards more

00:35:32.500 isolating content, but it is something that has been evolving since the early 2000s.

00:35:37.520 I think it's a political worldview, though, too.

00:35:40.160 what do you mean making everything about the individual versus the collective

00:35:44.700 i think when i saw that ashton hall video and i was so like honestly like kind of shaken by it

00:35:52.320 not to be like dramatic not to be like you know but yeah what i read into all of this type of

00:35:58.700 content the biohacking the wellness the whatever especially with the masculine angle because 0.83

00:36:03.700 there's a there's a women's version of all of this right with like the trad wife culture and 0.99

00:36:08.640 crystals and like how that leads into a far right pipeline of its own that we've talked about in 0.98

00:36:13.520 other episodes but i think especially with the masculine angle this um emphasis on stoicism and

00:36:18.700 what some people call broicism but it's like you can't depend on anybody so it's not worth investing

00:36:24.640 in anybody right you can't depend on friends you can't depend on relationships you can't depend on

00:36:30.100 family you can only depend on yourself and so you should spend all of your time investing in

00:36:36.320 yourself. And when I posted about this stuff, and I was reading a lot of replies, a word that came

00:36:42.800 up a lot was narcissism. And I think that can apply, but it's also just so lonely. And I think

00:36:49.200 it ties into what you said about like, the fact that we don't have health care, so that health

00:36:53.600 care becomes an individual project that you take into your own hands. And that these influencers

00:36:58.820 like, you know, are exploiting that fundamental lack that all these men have and, you know,

00:37:04.040 sneak in there to sell you something. I think the selling you something thing is really crucial

00:37:08.340 here too, where it's like social media as it exists now is effectively just like a series of

00:37:12.580 casinos, right? And it's a casino for attention. It's a casino for actual money, for power,

00:37:18.300 for political influence. And so all day long, you're posting stuff on something like Instagram,

00:37:23.460 I think being one of the worst here, where you are posting something, hoping the algorithm chooses

00:37:27.780 you. And then all of a sudden you've been chosen and you get money and you get access and all the

00:37:31.020 rest of it. And so when you're in a world like ours right now, where there's so much financial

00:37:35.940 and social inequality, instead of having some sort of collective response to that, the social

00:37:40.960 media platforms are saying, actually, no, if you continue to compete in this marketplace that we've

00:37:46.640 set up for attention and for money and for whatever it is, you won't even have to play the

00:37:51.720 game anymore. And this is something the writer Max Reed wrote about after Kamala Harris lost last

00:37:57.520 year. A theory that he's put forward that I think is pretty riveting is the amount of influencers

00:38:03.440 that think like small business owners now means that like the Democrats have like a serious

00:38:07.080 political problem because like anyone making their money on the internet is either an LLC

00:38:11.380 or an S corp or whatever it is. And they think like the petite bourgeoisie, they think like a

00:38:16.380 small business owner, which is an inherently conservative mindset. You want to say a little

00:38:20.640 more about that? Absolutely. Like you might hate Trump all you want as an influencer, but if he

00:38:25.260 says, I'm going to get rid of income tax and you're living on a margin of like 1% as a social

00:38:29.240 media influencer, a part of you is like, I would love to not have to pay income tax because like

00:38:34.500 the margins for influencers are very small. And most of these people are making money off of

00:38:40.240 multiple services strapped together that are all confusing come tax day. We're recording this on

00:38:44.940 tax day. And so there's an inherently conservative and I make my money on the internet and every tax

00:38:51.060 season, I'm like, do I really need to have like drinking water and like sidewalks? And like,

00:38:56.200 do I, you know, like there's that, there's that dark part of you because you're part of this

00:38:59.760 system. And whenever there's a new social ill to deal with in America, it's really hard to talk

00:39:05.940 about it online because what if you just sort of like went so viral, you never had to think about

00:39:10.360 it again. And that is kind of the promise of every platform right now, a promise that Ashton Hall is

00:39:14.980 tapping directly into, which is if you do this to the exact degree that I'm doing it, you'll be so

00:39:20.940 powerful and wealthy and physically fit that you won't have to worry about a single problem in this

00:39:25.440 country ever again. And it's not true. Of course it's not true. Yeah. I know. Well, I just feel

00:39:30.060 the need to say that. I'm not yelling at you. I'm just saying, yeah, of course it's not true.

00:39:32.680 Yell at me, Ryan. I dream of being yelled at by a straight man. Look, I've done the Patrick

00:39:36.620 Bateman monologue, and now I'm going to yell at you about taxes. You've invited a 35-year-old

00:39:40.480 man onto your podcast. This is how it's going to work. To yell at me in the Patrick Bateman voice,

00:39:44.600 it taps into something I've been needing since I was a small boy.

00:39:47.560 In the antisocial century, Derek Thompson also talks about this idea that men, young men, especially are experiencing what he calls needlessness, which is this idea, right, that like men, like all people, you want to have purpose and you want to feel needed by the people around you.

00:40:05.640 You know, you want to feel like you're filling some void, whether it is financially taking care of your family or, you know, looking after friends or kids or what have you, which, by the way, I'm sympathetic to the idea of needlessness and wanting to be needed, right?

00:40:20.900 We all want a purpose, regardless of gender, regardless of sexuality.

00:40:24.460 I know that me personally, like, I find weirdly a lot of purpose in being a queer person in like a very homophobic time in American politics, right?

00:40:34.200 I find purpose in a lot of things.

00:40:35.460 I find purpose in, obviously, on a personal level, I find purpose in my relationships, in my family, in my interest in, like, pop culture and politics, which I indulge greatly and have, you know, created a work around.

00:40:47.160 But I also find, like, a fundamental purpose in, like, justice and wanting justice for, you know, queer people and for, like, my community.

00:40:55.540 I'm really sympathetic to the idea that, like, it could be very hard and strange, especially to be, like, a teenager and not understand what your purpose is.

00:41:03.380 But as Derek Thompson discusses in this essay, being needed requires having people around

00:41:09.480 you to need you.

00:41:11.500 And he wrote, but building these bridges to community takes energy.

00:41:15.340 And today's young men do not seem to be constructing these relationships in the same way they used

00:41:19.560 to.

00:41:20.180 In place of neededness, despair is creeping in.

00:41:23.360 And I feel like that ties into this type of like self-optimization content too, because

00:41:29.020 it's like well screw all that neededness screw all the relationships and community building let's 0.91

00:41:34.720 just make it all about you and like you said ryan like optimize your health and your wellness and

00:41:39.920 your aesthetic and your everything to a place where like none of it ever has to matter again

00:41:44.040 it's like trying to escape the mortifying ordeal of being perceived as tumblr would say

00:41:48.660 um so wow the tumblr deep cut yeah no but but that's it like my podcast panic world is doing

00:41:55.800 an episode this week about the show adolescence. So we're talking about similar topics. And in that

00:42:01.420 episode, I was talking about how my dad is 40 years older than me. So when I grew up as a little

00:42:07.660 boy, learning what being a man would be eventually, some of that stuff was good. And some of that

00:42:11.940 stuff was 40 years out of date for a world that no longer existed by the time that I was 18 or 19.

00:42:17.540 And a lot of the early men's rights stuff I was covering and reporting on in the early 2010s 0.61

00:42:22.820 was focusing on that, which was like the world that the boomer men had promised the millennial

00:42:27.600 men was gone. So what do we do? And a normal, not psychotic person would be like, well,

00:42:33.100 I guess I have to adapt, but it's much more seductive and it's much easier to listen to a

00:42:38.220 bunch of like violent men on the internet say, actually, no, they have to return what we were

00:42:43.440 promised. That is a through line that goes all the way to Andrew Tate. Now, you know, it goes

00:42:47.820 all the way to Donald Trump. It is the easy way out because the much harder question is, okay,

00:42:52.020 I'm in a world where the things that I was told would be needed of me don't exist.

00:42:59.000 I've never considered a world where my partner wouldn't work.

00:43:02.640 One, I can't afford that.

00:43:03.940 And two, that just seems really boring for everybody.

00:43:06.920 And so you have to figure out what need looks like.

00:43:10.940 And if you don't want to do that, which is hard work and scary and requires some real introspection, you can just not.

00:43:17.480 You can just pretend like that's never going to be a problem and you try to escape the game, I guess, the system.

00:43:23.400 You're a straight man.

00:43:24.460 What did you do about loneliness and needlessness?

00:43:29.300 This is why I had you on.

00:43:31.080 So ChatGPT has custom instructions now.

00:43:33.800 I load it in.

00:43:38.100 Okay, well, so I think my point of view is a little unique here where I spent the last 10 years living in some form or another outside of America.

00:43:45.340 I lived for four years in London, came back for a year during COVID, then spent another

00:43:50.900 four years living in Brazil.

00:43:51.800 So I've traveled a lot and my friendships are like wide, you know, like they're not

00:43:57.340 like, I've never really been an experience where I could like walk down the street, like

00:44:00.540 see a neighbor, you know, uh, I'm beginning to get that now being back in New York.

00:44:04.420 And I will say like, I'm in the process of building my relationships back up because

00:44:08.600 I've been here since August.

00:44:09.840 And I want that experience finally, as someone who can like pop down the street and like

00:44:14.680 see a friend you know i want that and i will say it is extremely daunting as a 35 year old man

00:44:19.480 because like there isn't really like a roadmap for like how to not be like oh how do i say this

00:44:26.540 it is there is like not a roadmap for like how to not be weird as an adult man being like do you

00:44:32.680 want to be my friend like that is just it is a it is a complicated issue and i i to put it very

00:44:38.860 simply uh i have just been asking people to do stuff uh and just be like hey do you want to hang

00:44:43.380 out and like building those relationships which is mortifying but you have to do it because like

00:44:47.400 if not you go crazy and like being lonely is bad yeah i think it just takes work it takes work

00:44:52.880 and that is sometimes embarrassing which is i think what life effectively is embarrassing

00:44:58.720 interpersonal work i'll be your friend thank you i live uptown but i'll be your friend wait

00:45:03.460 how far uptown this is why we have the male loneliness crisis because i'm in i'm in brooklyn 1.00

00:45:10.220 so like i don't know if that's gonna work men in brooklyn you know what fuck fuck your male 0.99

00:45:14.620 loneliness crisis men and men in brooklyn don't even want to come uptown anymore oh yeah i tried 0.99

00:45:20.180 to date a girl who's living in the upper east side once and that i mean i might as well just

00:45:24.180 been doing a long distance from like a different country at that point it's just it's tough see

00:45:28.440 just as i'm starting to like get my sympathetic claws into into the into the male loneliness

00:45:34.140 crisis you tell me you don't want to travel 30 minutes to see a woman ryan what do you want me

00:45:38.740 to do here uh no but in all seriousness i think it is just you just have to you have to take the

00:45:43.740 initiative and a lot of men on the internet are terrified to do that quick break from the show

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00:47:15.120 for 15% off your first order. That is blueland.com slash fruity. Thank you so much to Blueland. And

00:47:22.940 now let's get back to the show. Another thing that I can already, I like that I construct these

00:47:29.260 episodes now around like what pushback i think i will get and then trying to proactively combat

00:47:35.280 that pushback i was gonna say your listeners are intense i i don't i don't get i don't get this

00:47:40.320 kind of thing for my audience this is wild to to be a part of i i i i'm trying not to mess with you

00:47:45.140 actually because i like i want to see the pitch works but i'll i'll be polite no i'm kidding i

00:47:51.000 mean we got a good group here we do we do i want to vouch i want to vouch for anyone who listens

00:47:56.720 to this podcast i appreciate you please don't come for me i'm very sensitive please don't do that

00:48:01.620 it's honestly though it's not even people who listen to this podcast it's like people who end

00:48:06.120 up listening to this podcast because of like some algorithm like for example i made this whole

00:48:10.980 episode about how like gwen stefani is promoting this like peter teal funded anti-abortion prayer 0.98

00:48:17.980 app and how she went from this like quasi-feminist figure in the late 90s early 2000s to like 0.98

00:48:23.260 participating in the project of american fascism today sure and then like a tweet went viral about

00:48:28.240 that episode from some like christian who was just like this you know this gay guy talked for 0.67

00:48:33.900 an hour and a half about how gwen stefani is a fascist because she's catholic and i'm like 0.68

00:48:39.240 this is what i have to contend with yeah so anyway something that i know that people will comment on

00:48:45.640 this video especially young men are people being like what's wrong with wanting to wake up early

00:48:50.880 what's wrong with wanting to squeeze productivity out of every day what you know whatever and my

00:48:55.840 answer to that is nothing nothing is wrong with those things i try to get the most out of every

00:49:00.980 day i forgo maybe like the banana peel rubbing i looked it up it doesn't do anything it's a total

00:49:06.020 misunderstanding of how antioxidants work wait actually interlude what is that about what's the

00:49:10.420 banana peel about there's a tiktok bit of misinfo that's been spreading for months that you can

00:49:14.640 absorb antioxidants through your skin nice so they eat the banana and then they rub the peel over the

00:49:19.260 face to like get extra antioxidants but actually if you want those antioxidants you can just freeze

00:49:24.320 the banana and then blend the whole thing uh that's what i do it works pretty well yeah we love

00:49:28.620 a banana smoothie yeah but you eat it with the peel you blend it with the peel it's very sweet

00:49:32.740 but you know what having a banana smoothie does not make people feel like they're biohacking it

00:49:37.220 doesn't look good on camera either it's very boring what i want to point out here is just that 0.98

00:49:41.820 there's nothing wrong with doing any of these things even if you want to like squeeze a fucking 0.99

00:49:45.880 banana all over your skin i honestly don't care i honestly am happy for you kinky but the problem 0.96

00:49:52.100 comes in with the framing i think of a lot of this type of content and the people who disseminate it

00:49:57.620 and one term that you'll see come up a lot with regard to the framing is high value man

00:50:04.420 are you familiar with the high value man hvm baby yep do you identify as a high value man

00:50:10.060 absolutely not okay okay i mean it's all part of like the weird incel uh habit of like ranking

00:50:18.200 men types you know like sigma male alpha male like they love they love categorizing they love sort of

00:50:24.240 like figuring out where they are in the hierarchy of the world that they've envisioned so high value

00:50:28.600 man is like very important for them and what is a high value man i was trying to figure out like

00:50:32.680 which came first whether this is an always sunny in philadelphia reference that has been lost to

00:50:37.660 time or if the always sunny in philadelphia episode was referencing the internet thing and

00:50:42.300 i can't actually figure out which is which but the high value chicken or egg i believe this is

00:50:48.260 in some way a reference to the dentist system and demonstrating value but what i can't remember is

00:50:54.100 if that is making fun of a thing that already existed at the time online but for those who

00:50:58.460 haven't seen it uh dennis reynolds has like an extremely predatory system for meeting women

00:51:02.600 And the number one on the list is demonstrating value.

00:51:06.800 Basically, the idea is like you have like attributes that are extremely valuable in

00:51:12.540 the sexual marketplace.

00:51:13.420 Because once again, this is all sort of about fitting a capitalistic model over attraction.

00:51:18.440 Like ultimately, that is still the rubric that these guys are using, even if they've

00:51:21.620 sort of lost interest with women, which is very funny.

00:51:24.740 So if you're a high value man, you are a man who is rich.

00:51:27.600 You are powerful.

00:51:29.260 You are stoic.

00:51:30.640 You don't care about life.

00:51:32.600 because you've won life. It's that idea. And if you're a low value man, you have friendships and

00:51:38.140 relationships with people and are a beta cuck, essentially. Cuck. Yeah. Those are the two types 0.98

00:51:45.760 of men. I love tapping into incel language. It does, unfortunately, feel sometimes pretty good

00:51:50.820 to call someone a cuck. Calling J.D. Vance a cuck feels really good, and I like doing it. 0.97

00:51:55.580 And we have to introspect about why that is. I know. As I mentioned, there's nothing wrong with

00:52:00.560 wanting to like wake up early and like squeeze the juice out of your morning routine whatever

00:52:04.680 but so much of this content what it's selling young men is the idea that doing this will make

00:52:11.380 you a high value man which implies that there are low value men right these influencers are

00:52:18.920 conning you into believing that like doing this type of stuff makes you better than other people

00:52:24.200 that other people who aren't as like disciplined as you are with your crazy morning routine or

00:52:29.400 your crazy gym routine or your crazy whatever christian journaling rituals whatever they're

00:52:34.980 beneath you and that if you don't do it then you are also not reaching some like imaginary potential

00:52:40.880 as a man right and i think it's it's a worldview that makes you meaner to others and then also to

00:52:48.220 yourself it's inherently fascist i would say say more i think it's an inherently fascist worldview

00:52:53.140 i mean to imagine that you are superior and that people are inferior and then you're going to

00:52:57.200 codify that. I mean, that is literally just, it's a very authoritarian fascist mindset. And to see

00:53:02.560 it sort of applied to gender is so interesting because what we are talking about is sort of

00:53:07.780 gender extremism, whether it's trad wives on one side or muscle men on Instagram on the other side

00:53:13.680 or whatever you want to call them. And to sort of categorize them based on the quality that you are, 0.52

00:53:20.200 I mean, yeah, that is just like Aryan brotherhood bullshit 2.0. I think the simple test is like, 1.00

00:53:25.100 if you are here's the like am i being fascist test i think simple uh if you are ranking the

00:53:32.420 quality of people based on attributes that they cannot change you have found yourself in a very

00:53:38.360 dark and fascist place so if you are saying like there are certain kinds of men and we can categorize

00:53:44.460 all of them and then we can rank them based on qualities that they cannot change about themselves

00:53:48.480 or if they have to change them like they have to change them to the way we want them want them to 0.92

00:53:53.300 change congrats you are you are at best a fascist and at worst possibly talking about eugenics like 0.99

00:53:59.840 you are you are out of control and you are also just a weird person like that's a really weird 0.99

00:54:04.720 bad thing to be doing all day long on the internet so if you see that kind of language you should say

00:54:10.120 like i don't know i don't know about this one but that way of thinking right is i mean tell me if

00:54:16.920 i'm wrong or tell me if i'm being too like dramatic but like that way of thinking underpins

00:54:21.080 so much of this like content not specifically from ashton hall but from all of this like

00:54:26.360 this is this is a huge ecosystem of content i mean i've seen it in astrology videos this is

00:54:32.940 so baked into the way social media in 2025 functions part of it is like the identity

00:54:39.440 not identity politics but sort of the emphasis on identity in the 2010s where you like you have

00:54:44.820 like you know what kind of person are you quizzes right and so there was this real fascination

00:54:48.560 on social media with like your identity but over time the identities that we were creating for

00:54:54.400 ourselves i'm a 90s kid i'm an 80s kid like all that crap i'm a disney adult you know all of that

00:54:59.640 has boiled the three genders yeah the three genders but all that stuff over time has curdled

00:55:06.000 and and boiled down to effectively just like men and women and now you just have huge chunks of

00:55:12.100 the internet talking about the kind of men and women you are and it's a very strange place to

00:55:17.200 be in. And I see it like in all kinds of contexts that 10 years ago, you just wouldn't see that kind

00:55:23.080 of stuff. But we've become very gender essentialists post COVID, it seems like, but I'm

00:55:28.580 hesitant to blame it on lockdown. I don't know why it sort of lines up that way. But something

00:55:33.080 happened. Something happened in the last five years. Now, the whole internet is sort of bifurcated

00:55:36.840 in this very bizarrely, like gender authoritarian way that is, I don't know, I don't get it,

00:55:43.120 to be honest. Well, and between the financial incentives for small business owner-esque

00:55:50.280 influencers to become Trump supporters and this sort of like gender essentialist, high value,

00:55:57.620 low value ranking of men, the vast majority of the types of male influencers making,

00:56:04.400 you know, self-optimized content are outspoken Trump supporters.

00:56:08.360 100%.

00:56:09.020 And like, that's not a coincidence.

00:56:11.440 No, I've, I've struggled over the last couple months to sort of define the Trump political

00:56:17.160 project because like, he doesn't really have one.

00:56:19.460 He's not very coherent, but in the last couple of weeks, I feel like I've sort of come into

00:56:23.880 this understanding that like, there's effectively a pyramid scheme, like a, an MLM that's running

00:56:30.020 with Trump at the very, very top and essentially like gender essentialism running all the way

00:56:35.320 through it.

00:56:35.880 So like the fact that like Trump, you know, this month is trying to use the tariffs to like redesign the global economy to be whatever he wants it to be. And the idea that you can like invest in his meme coin to like support him and like, you can like apply for this course to learn how to be strong and masculine.

00:56:52.120 like it's like we've taken gender and turned it into this like sociopolitical pyramid scheme that

00:56:57.360 is so everywhere so ubiquitous and trump is at the top of it effectively which is so weird because

00:57:02.860 he's like not i mean he's masculine for a certain kind of generation i suppose but like the man

00:57:06.680 looks like he wears a diaper like you know he's not i mean yes and like not to be like a little

00:57:12.800 too libbed out but like the spray tans are constant we have gotten to crypto we've gotten

00:57:18.280 to meme coins and i have another video for you cool this is another video that popped up for me

00:57:25.360 on twitter that also completely stopped me in my tracks i was i honestly wasn't even giggling i was

00:57:31.740 just disturbed so i'm gonna play it i really am so dramatic but like this type of stuff gets me

00:57:37.840 i'm like i know young straight men don't want or need my sympathy or concern but while i was never

00:57:44.800 you know a young straight man i was a young closeted man trying to be a man and that was

00:57:51.160 painful yeah that was hard i bet yeah not just because i was in the closet but because like i

00:57:56.100 was dealing with all the things that these other boys were dealing with like we all just wanted to

00:57:59.560 be real men right and when i see these like con artist influencers exploiting that insecurity

00:58:08.060 and that despair as someone who now feels pretty firmly on the other side of that struggle as like

00:58:14.100 and out and proud, you know, 26-year-old queer person who's like found my own purpose, right?

00:58:19.400 Generally speaking, I just get like, I get scared for these boys when I see these types of videos.

00:58:24.580 So here is the video.

00:58:44.100 Or Mele?

00:58:45.100 Trump.

00:58:46.100 Bali or Thailand?

00:58:47.100 Thailand. 1.00

00:58:48.100 Agree.

00:58:49.100 AI or personal brand?

00:58:51.100 AI.

00:58:52.100 AI, personal brand.

00:58:55.100 Email or SMS?

00:58:56.100 Telegram.

00:58:57.100 Really?

00:58:58.100 Absolutely, bro.

00:58:59.100 Telegrams.

00:59:00.100 You think your Telegram channel is more valuable than your email?

00:59:02.100 100%.

00:59:03.100 Wow.

00:59:04.100 Remote work or in person?

00:59:05.100 In person.

00:59:06.100 In person.

00:59:07.100 Interesting.

00:59:08.100 YouTube or Instagram?

00:59:09.100 YouTube.

00:59:10.100 Messi or Ronaldo?

00:59:13.100 messy rolex or paddock rolex rolex or richard mill rolex king solomon or leonardo da vinci 0.96

00:59:22.060 king solomon wisdom or wealth wisdom messy or maradona messy 100 yo that's so fucking tight 0.98

00:59:31.740 bro that's so sick king solomon so drippy bro paddock or rolex bro oh my god i am listen i am 0.98

00:59:41.740 arguably self-aware enough to know that i'm saying this in front of like 0.88

00:59:46.060 a mic that i bought myself and a camera that i bought myself to make a podcast

00:59:50.340 that i make myself but like we need we need to do something about the

00:59:56.380 microphone epidemic i know we gotta take them away from

00:59:59.660 these guys who are these like 20 year olds talking

01:00:03.740 about like which brand of luxury watch is better and

01:00:07.200 like wealth or wisdom and like what it's i yeah wow i gotta stop matthew bring it down

01:00:15.660 temperature is boiling i feel like i've written about this guy before oh yes should i should i

01:00:21.420 talk a little about who this is i think you should absolutely the guy answering the questions here

01:00:25.700 is luke belmar he is he's actually an immigrant from argentina which is interesting he lives in

01:00:32.480 the us though i believe and he's just like another one of these get rich quick influencers in his

01:00:38.300 20s he has over 600 000 followers on instagram and on twitter he sells a course called capital club

01:00:46.440 hell yeah the names are always so funny it reminds me like it's so sick the names are always so funny

01:00:53.700 in the episode i did with taylor lorenz and kat tenbarge about how conservatism is uh is kind of

01:01:00.040 infiltrating pop culture we talked about this like old money aesthetic instagram content club

01:01:06.840 called the tuxedo club uh-huh the names are just always very on the nose yeah so so talk about

01:01:13.760 what's going on here and what you see in that video it's just a run through of like every

01:01:17.160 meme in the crypto world i used to cover crypto for like a couple of finance magazines during like 0.95

01:01:22.980 the early pandemic era and all these guys are obsessed with dumb bullshit that like does not 0.93

01:01:28.780 matter and they use it to kind of virtue signal to each other and all of his answers are like 0.94

01:01:33.600 just a run through of that like the fact is from argentina is interesting because like

01:01:38.000 he says that he likes uh javier mille the like anarcho-capitalist that is running argentina

01:01:44.720 into the ground right now yeah these guys are just like they're effectively gamblers they're

01:01:49.620 effectively just like degenerate gamblers that use crypto as a way to sort of like

01:01:52.960 elevate that a bit and they all are just they all talk the same weird way too like hey yeah look

01:01:59.040 welcome to a bit fruity yeah

01:02:03.180 they have just like dead shark eyes and they're always like dressed like a professional snowboarder

01:02:09.660 at like crypto conferences being like i love dogecoin a lot and i think it's sick to like

01:02:15.380 work in latin america and yeah it's really strange it's a really weird vibe i tweeted

01:02:21.100 about this the same time i tweeted about the ashton hall video i wrote similarly can't stop

01:02:25.820 thinking about not to read my own tweet i know that's like do it like i just felt i don't know

01:02:31.080 i still feel that these questions that i felt when i tweeted this but i wrote can't stop thinking

01:02:36.100 about this what is masculinity now a fixation on the personal brand cosplaying wealth none of these

01:02:41.620 people actually have pseudo intellectualism feels like a direct result of rogan and trump and might

01:02:47.520 to add luke belmar outspoken trump supporter he posted just the other day actually last night i

01:02:55.000 was on his twitter and he posted a photo of trump shaking hands with the president of el salvador

01:03:00.840 where they were discussing of course putting american residents into salvadorian prison camps

01:03:06.360 without trial luke belmar wrote dream team question mark and it's just so it's so dark

01:03:14.500 because luke belmar isn't even talking about women no he's not talking about like women in

01:03:20.560 the way that andrew tate is but it's politically resulting in the same place but even andrew tate

01:03:27.320 interesting enough has sort of abstracted the women out of a lot of his work i imagine it's

01:03:31.760 because he's also trying to downplay like charges of human trafficking in a romanian court right now

01:03:35.900 but all of these guys have realized that okay so my theory is that like these guys are slowly

01:03:42.300 abstracting what they're doing away from getting women while also becoming more outwardly

01:03:47.740 conservative because the outward conservatism sort of answers the women question right like

01:03:54.880 like this was a huge thing around the tariffs where like all these guys on x were being like 0.70

01:03:58.580 with tariffs we can crash the economy so women can't work anymore so they have to marry us

01:04:02.800 oh we we don't say x on the a bit fruity podcast i'm so sorry i unfortunately i have to just for

01:04:08.520 like journalism rules i won't hear but i normally do just so i can because i also like to differentiate

01:04:14.060 between twitter and x because they to me they're different websites but that's okay oh sure actually

01:04:18.020 yes luke belmar is firmly using x that's what that's true that's true all right sorry go on

01:04:22.860 it's okay yeah no some people are passionate about it it's totally fine but for me i'm always like

01:04:26.700 okay twitter was a thing it's not that thing anymore passionate dead namer of elon musk's

01:04:30.960 website yes it's you know it's just complicated so yeah so like you saw all these guys on x like

01:04:36.240 being like oh the tariffs are good because they'll crash the global economy and then women won't be

01:04:39.480 able to work anymore and they'll have to marry us and like i saw you know hundreds and hundreds of 0.99

01:04:45.080 posts like about this and i think that that sort of ties into the kind of lack of women in this

01:04:50.280 kind of content which is like you don't really need to promise men a way to to meet women if

01:04:55.280 you can just hijack the planet and force women to date them or be with them or whatever so yeah you

01:05:01.040 can focus on meme coins you have more time to focus on crypto the things that really matter

01:05:05.120 right dogecoin and you know luke belmar is also at least according to instagram comments

01:05:10.820 friends with ashton hall incredible i was on luke belmar's instagram last night just like you know

01:05:16.680 prepping my notes and on his instagram video from a week ago ashton hall has the top comment with

01:05:22.820 the goat emoji so small world i guess what a twist what what an excellent twist in this whole thing

01:05:29.940 you know i love narrative yeah no that's good that's that's really good oh thank you so yeah

01:05:34.520 I mean, the next part of my outline that I had was I just called these guys sneaky place in the

01:05:39.420 manosphere, which is something we've been tapping into throughout the episode. We talk a lot on this

01:05:43.800 podcast about the manosphere, which people usually associate with people like Andrew Tate and this

01:05:48.280 like naked hatred for women and queer people for what it's worth. I think I just want to make the 0.89

01:05:53.240 case that like the Ashton Halls and Luke Belmars of the world feed, like I said, directly into the

01:05:59.040 same belief system of Andrew Tate and, you know, Donald Trump. And I actually think they have the

01:06:03.840 capacity to do it to way more young men because the obviously unsavory parts of the manosphere

01:06:10.200 aren't immediately presented in this type of content can i quote your essay yes sure but

01:06:16.580 thank you for asking yeah no problem because sometimes it feels really weird i totally get

01:06:21.020 it subscribe to garbage day everyone uh link in the episode description guys like hall are everywhere

01:06:26.900 With vast libraries of masculinity porn meant to soothe your sad man brain, non-sexual, usually, gender-based content like the Tradwives of TikTok target your desires in the same way normal porn does. 0.59

01:06:40.960 Unrealistic and temporarily fulfilling facsimiles of facsimiles that come in different flavors depending on what you're into. 0.97

01:06:47.780 There's a guy who soaks his feet in coke.

01:06:49.960 A guy who claims he goes to a gun range at six in the morning.

01:06:53.420 a guy who brings a physical book into his home sauna i watched that one by the way the book's

01:06:59.360 gonna get damp right like that's what would happen in a sauna i actually tried to read a book in a

01:07:03.960 sauna once because i was feeling like really it was it was like a leftist political book but i

01:07:08.460 was feeling really well sure what by the way not to cut up this essay quote but what happens when

01:07:15.200 you try to read a book in a sauna the book does not get damp like on its own but your sweat drips

01:07:21.800 on it you get damp i see okay yeah you get damp and your sweat drips on it and so the ink started

01:07:27.820 like dribbling down the page because my sweat was dripping incredible i'm so sorry naomi klein

01:07:34.720 so to continue a guy who's really into these infrared sleep masks and appears to have some

01:07:43.520 kind of slave woman who has to bow to him every morning before he takes it off a guy who does the

01:07:48.780 face dunk with San Pellegrino rather than Saratoga. An infinitely expanding universe of muscle men 0.74

01:07:54.760 who want to convince you that everything in your life can be fixed if you start waking up at 4am

01:07:59.440 to journal, buy those puffy running shoes, live in a barely furnished Miami penthouse, have no real 0.99

01:08:05.380 connections in your life, especially with women. And of course, as Hall tells his followers often

01:08:11.340 on Instagram, buy their course or ebook or seminar or whatever to learn the real secrets to success.

01:08:18.780 And then I want to tack on a quote here from Sarah Manavis in The Guardian.

01:08:23.800 Oh, she's great.

01:08:24.480 Her stuff about Andrew Tate is so good.

01:08:26.720 It's great.

01:08:27.280 She wrote,

01:08:27.800 While many men may be turned off by the overtness of Tate, this doesn't mean they are turned

01:08:33.160 off to a world defined by masculine dominance.

01:08:36.180 Content like this plays into an egocentric male fantasy that glorifies the impossible

01:08:41.340 image of a perfectly sculpted physique and encourages men to hustle and grind to meet

01:08:46.520 an austere success obsessed brand of individualism. Like I made a joke about it in this episode,

01:08:52.240 but I think like a lot of times when you reach this point, you know, in the conversation about

01:08:57.760 this, it's like, okay, who, what do we do? Like who, whose responsibility is this? And

01:09:03.060 like, it is to me, so obviously just other men's responsibility. Like that's, that's how this

01:09:08.280 works. And the thing that I sort of think about is that like, this is sort of a weird world that

01:09:13.240 we're in now where there aren't a lot of what I would say, like cool male role models that are

01:09:18.960 not deranged fascists. Like this is a weird modern problem. Like growing up, like this sounds so

01:09:25.620 lame and I'm just going to accept that it's lame and you can say it's lame and it's fine.

01:09:29.540 But when I grew up and I was like 13 or 14 years old, 15 years old, learning like what masculinity

01:09:35.260 looked like and felt like, yeah, there were all kinds of like hyper masculine. This was the Bush 0.84

01:09:40.060 era. So like, yeah, conservatism was everywhere. In the midst of a conservative administration,

01:09:45.440 you know, I was gravitating towards things like American Idiot dropped by Green Day. And I was 0.97

01:09:49.120 like, holy shit. You know, Jon Stewart was like, you know, fighting with Tucker Carlson on Comedy 0.99

01:09:53.840 Central. I was like, whoa, okay, cool. Anthony Bourdain, when I was in college, I was like,

01:09:57.340 oh, this is interesting, right? And unfortunately, yeah, they are all straight white guys. This was

01:10:01.660 like peak TV world. But there were famous, outspokenly liberal and sometimes leftist men

01:10:08.000 in pop culture in the two thousands that I could look at and say, that could be a type of masculinity

01:10:14.260 that I could, I could be, I could, I I'm lanky and skinny fat. I could do that. And so in an

01:10:21.220 internet run media environment now where anyone can be a role model for 10 minutes by accident

01:10:26.820 and just become the most famous person on earth, the main character of the web, you know, for a

01:10:30.220 week, we don't have that anymore. I don't know. Like, I don't know what a 13 year old or 14 year

01:10:36.700 old boy aside from screaming about chicken jockey at the minecraft movie would really see no idea

01:10:43.280 what just came out of your mouth there's a it doesn't matter sure so basically like i don't

01:10:47.720 know what a young man young boy right now could could see in the world and be like okay like that

01:10:52.980 could be an alternative to ashton hall for me and maybe they exist and i don't know about them and

01:10:57.280 that's cool and if people are listening and you do know that they exist please let me know that

01:11:01.300 seems like something that would be good to know but like we are inundated by the ashton halls and

01:11:06.460 the andrew tates and we don't i mean this was the whole uh argument around like who is the um

01:11:10.880 leftist joe rogan uh which you know we're we're no closer to kind of figuring out but we need to

01:11:18.560 figure it out that that's what i would say is like we just have to figure out like alternative role

01:11:22.940 models men have to figure it out yeah and yeah right because i have my role models i have my

01:11:28.820 my pop divas but i don't think i don't think you young straight men want them so that's fine but

01:11:33.880 find me wrong hey stranger things have happened like that could be maybe that's we just need to

01:11:39.040 get these guys into drag all these insane internet men you just got to get them into rupaul's drag

01:11:43.260 race and just like chill them out you need to watch music videos on youtube with a whole group

01:11:48.600 of friends every friday and just like then chill out there's this great video of rupaul actually

01:11:53.780 this might just be something that rupaul says a lot but he's always just like you know men just

01:11:58.800 in the quiet of the night put on a pair of heels put on a wig see what feelings come up see

01:12:03.820 how it makes you feel and i honestly think that that could be the antidote here i think that's

01:12:08.640 exactly right um i think literally anything other than what they're currently doing would be better

01:12:13.240 uh in in a lot of ways because like they're not we're not fixing it currently i also just want

01:12:17.780 to say on a on a personal living life advice kind of level like i am not that type of person

01:12:23.760 with that type of podcast who's like you know mel robbins like this is how you should go out and

01:12:28.520 live your life to be the happiest version of yourself like i don't think i or frankly anyone

01:12:34.700 has the authority to like tell other people how to live i do but but well that's why you guys can

01:12:41.140 all listen to ryan's podcast no big deal i do i don't have any sadness in my life i'm good i'm

01:12:45.660 fine uh no i agree with you uh it's complicated but what i will say what i will say on the note

01:12:51.360 of loneliness with regard to this type of content that men are pushing out and that is doing

01:12:57.380 extremely well among young men and shaping the way that they view themselves and their place in the

01:13:03.080 world and their place in having relationships and community or not having community or

01:13:07.360 relationships at all the antidote here to me is like relinquishing this idea that like you have

01:13:14.140 to do it all by yourself and that you will prove yourself as a man by like forcing yourself to

01:13:20.560 struggle and finding some imaginary virtue in that by like waking up at whatever time and like

01:13:25.500 pushing yourself however hard at the gym, like invest in friendships. Like you said, Ryan,

01:13:29.640 like just text somebody. It's hard. It's hard. You can go to the gym with other people. You're

01:13:36.380 allowed to do that. If you want to go to men, listen to this. If you want to work out, you can

01:13:41.120 work out with other people. It's totally fine. You can do that. It's no one can stop you from

01:13:45.240 doing that. Actually. I was like brainstorming ideas at like one in the morning last night when

01:13:50.560 I was finishing up this outline and I was like, what should I tell people to do? What should I

01:13:53.540 tell these young men to do and i have like play a sport question mark which is such a strange piece

01:13:59.760 of advice that i never thought i'd give but like being social is good you know i think actually

01:14:06.100 back to something i really liked your insight at the beginning about how like what portion of this

01:14:11.220 can just be attributed to the fact that like we don't have health care and so optimizing your body

01:14:16.460 has to become this like individual hacking task that we all like look on instagram and tiktok and

01:14:22.120 podcasts for like advice about to do like the most creatively find the thing that nobody else

01:14:26.200 knows about and it's like you want health care you want love and community and those are hard big

01:14:33.260 things to want to engage with but we have to just start by like abandoning this idea that we're all

01:14:38.720 in it for ourselves all the time because it it turns you into patrick bateman unironically

01:14:44.380 maybe without the murder ideally but you know i agree and i think i think the the one liner i've

01:14:50.100 guy here is basically any person that tells you any person on the internet that tells you that

01:14:55.520 one there's like one simple thing you can do to fix all of your problems they're lying and two

01:15:01.000 if they tell you that that simple thing is inside of yourself nine times out of ten it's actually

01:15:08.940 not it's actually the opposite they're giving you the easy way out and it's okay to be

01:15:16.020 uncomfortable actually uh and it's okay to feel cringy and embarrassed and when you feel those

01:15:22.880 feelings most often those are actually good signals and you should follow those you should

01:15:28.820 do something that makes you uncomfortable with other people not okay wait that sounds weird but

01:15:32.900 you know what i mean you understand what you understand what i'm saying yes you understand

01:15:36.460 what i'm saying okay i do i mean hey but yeah that would be my that would be my sort of my

01:15:42.020 my main thought i think ryan i have one last question for you before we wrap up the podcast

01:15:47.220 sure rolex or padek i wear an apple watch that has a decibel so it has a decibel alert on it

01:15:55.180 and so it lets me know if the room i'm in is too loud that's what i mainly use it for

01:16:01.420 that's great that's great that's great yeah thank you so much for for joining today for

01:16:10.740 shedding your your straight guy insight happy to help where can people find more of you my newsletter

01:16:17.420 garbage day you can find it garbage day dot email my podcast panic world is on any app you use for

01:16:24.360 podcasts and you can find me on blue sky and instagram under the name ryan hates this thank

01:16:29.880 you so much for making it this far in today's episode i hope you enjoyed i hope you could laugh

01:16:36.460 a little bit about how absurd everything has gotten, but also maybe that we can learn something

01:16:41.320 together and that we can maybe share a little bit of hope. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I'm being

01:16:46.420 too optimistic. Who knows? I love you. And until next time, stay fruity. Nice. Yeah, that was great.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - April 18, 2025

“Alpha Males” Are Making Men Lonelier (with Ryan Broderick)

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