Varn Vlog
Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Cultural Shifts in the Age of Social Media from Art Bell to TikTok with Katherine Dee
Katherine Dee, the writer behind the "Default Blog" on Substack, joins us to explore the unexpected legacy of Art Bell and how his non-political, free-form radio style contrasts with today's charged conspiracy culture. Discover the intriguing intersections between Bell's approach and modern figures like Joe Rogan and Alex Jones, and how these dynamics have shaped contemporary internet culture. We reflect on the transition from Bell's open dialogue to a more politically saturated landscape, offering insights into how these shifts impact cultural narratives.
Our conversation navigates the evolving world of internet fame, where politics and media collide, shaping a new breed of celebrity akin to fan communities. Katherine provides a fresh perspective on the younger right-wing culture, drawing parallels between political affiliations and fandoms that drive emotional engagement in today's discourse. We discuss the transformative role of social media platforms like X in molding public opinion, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these platforms reveal the ever-changing American zeitgeist.
From gender dynamics to parenting challenges, we tackle a wide array of social phenomena affecting our cultural landscape. We probe into the shifting perceptions of "wokeness," the complexities of dating culture, and the commodification of mental health. We also delve into the unique dynamics within religious communities, the contrasting experiences of different generations, and the unexpected resistance to traditional political spaces. Whether it's examining the aspirational aspects of therapy culture or the rise of unconventional cultural trends, this episode offers a comprehensive look at the ever-evolving interplay between politics, media, and society.
Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake
Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn
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twitter: @varnvlog
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Hello, welcome to VarmBlog, and today I'm with Catherine D, a culture reporter for a lot of different places and author of the Substack Default blog and Art Bell fan. And while we're going to talk about internet culture in general today and what it says about a lot of different things, I want to start off with kind of an understanding of Art Bell. I used to listen to Art Bell when I was I don't know probably in my teens actually, because it was on really late, and I am of the generation that would have heard him at midnight to three in the morning On a radio in Georgia, and he's often seen as a precursor to a lot of conspiracy culture. But I actually kind of think it's a misreading, and I think you do too. So how do you think people misunderstand the art bell phenomenon and in what way is he kind of a precursor to internet culture today?
Speaker 2:so, um, I think people like to compare him to alex jones a lot. Um, alex jones actually got his start on coast to coast, or I guess not his start, but he was. He was a regular, he'd call in all the time and I don't know if maybe, like the misunderstanding comes from there, just sort of like some broad strokes. It's both conspiracies, um, but he wasn't as much of a libertarian as he was. He wasn't political in the same way as um an info wars became. He, he certainly um wasn't. Uh, he, he, he didn't like the same spectacle, I guess. Right, and so I think it's. It was a very different kind of of media. It was much closer to you know I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it much closer to you know, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was closer to Joe Rogan maybe, than like an InfoWars.
Speaker 1:Well to to go there, since my audience is largely left wing. How is Joe Rogan different than InfoWars, cause a lot of my audience probably doesn't listen to it, either one of them, sure.
Speaker 2:So I, as that was coming out of my mouth, I realized like maybe that needs some qualifications too. Um, joe, I mean Joe Rogan, obviously has a political slant, particularly now. He didn't always, it wasn't he. He wasn't always this outgrowth of, like the heterodox center moving into, uh, you know, kind of the light, right, you know, like he's, he's obviously not like like full right wing, but he's, he's the entry, he's the door into it.
Speaker 2:Um, I happen, you know, I happen to agree with that analysis, um, but you know, like when I was listening to Joe Rogan, like years and years and years ago, I like I thought of him as like you just have anybody on, they just shoot the shit, talk about issues of the day, things that maybe weren't always socially sanctioned, or like seemed even a little bit goofy. He doesn't do like paranormal stuff. He never did, but it was like very free flowing, kind of just like paranormal stuff. I mean, he never did, but it was like very free flowing, um, kind of just like all topics, and I guess over time, right, it's become much more uh, political, uh, info wars. On the other hand, um started in a similar space, Um, but Alex Jones has always loved spectacle.
Speaker 2:He's always loved to cause problems. Early days he got into trouble with the city of Austin all the time because he was constantly starting drama it's the end of the world, basically. He was yelling fire in a crowded theater in different ways and that wasn't the Art Bell ethos at all. Art Bell was more like let's have Willie Nelson on and you know, just talk about ghosts, right, it was a very different vibe.
Speaker 1:Um, what I find interesting about Art Bell is that, as a person who came into internet culture probably in the aughts, um, uh, I mean, I was exposed to it in the nineties but it was such a small part of life and I didn't even always have a computer at home.
Speaker 1:So, um, it is interesting how that world both overlapped and differed from, uh, the kind of world you saw developing online in the aughts and even into the early aught teens, and conspiracism was common, but often, at least initially, it wasn't particularly political. And I find that show is sort of interesting as a kind of litmus test to an ignored part of the culture that often in re-articulations about problems that we have today I remember the liberal panics about misinformation around 2016, for example it's ignored, as if a lot of the problems on the internet are new, when they aren't at all and they're not always as pernicious as they're being portrayed either. I don't think Art Bell was particularly culturally damaging, for example, at all, you know, even though it was sometimes quite weird. Fast forward to today. How do you think this? You know you're an art bell fan. In what ways do you think like that is reflective of where the culture moved to when you started writing about it um so like, how did it change from, uh, the coast to coast, glory days?
Speaker 1:yeah, and to whatever we see, whenever they held the internet, I mean like we're living.
Speaker 2:We're not living in art bell's world, right, we're living in bill cooper's world and I think that's sort of like the one sentence, uh, sort of you know um that, and I think that's the big and bill cooper sort of famously hated art bell because he was too sanitized. He, you know, he believed the official story about 9-11, right, the kinds of problems that Art Bell had with the government were like, uh, they, they weren't, they didn't uh believe in climate change enough, uh, he was for, uh, like, uh, marijuana legalization, things like this. So like he, like this sort of like soft libertarianism where, whereas like a bill cooper was like really anti-establishment, um, and really conspiratorial, and people were after him, the government was out, I mean within, you know the narrative universe of his mind and maybe in reality, who knows um and much, much more, much more out there, um, like, if I had to do like a, like a spectrum, I'd say like on the, the far, like the super crazy right, you have someone like a william luther pierce who did the turner diaries and a cosmo theism. Art bell had him on, gave him a fair shake and then was like sorry, dude, I'm not not buying what you're selling.
Speaker 2:Then you have like a bill cooper and you have an art bell who's I mean he's entertainment, right, he's not trying to make you suspicious, he's trying to like kind of creep you out and maybe, you know, hear out some strange stories, like when he has like Father Malachi Martin on you know who, like very famously, was this like exorcist. That's not to make you think like, uh, bill clinton at the time is possessed by demons. It's like you know, maybe when you're you're home alone at night, that bump in the night, maybe that's it, that is a demon, right, and I think that's the the big, the big difference. Everything became became political, even in spaces that were already, in their own way, political, became political in a different way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that seems to be my experience of it. I remember when Cooper died, and for a lot of my audiences this would probably be not a realm of the world that they're used to, but you know, cooper died, I think, in November of 2001. And he was charged with aggregated assault, a shootout with the, uh, a pouch of kenny sheriff deputies, which is definitely more of living the life that he was projecting, you know, um, but I always think about alex jones, uh too, because alex jones seems to be like the mutant love child of of art bell and bill Cooper and a lot of ways, and there's, and his spectacle has always been to both build on and differentiate himself from that. I think. What's your take on that? I mean, it's interesting, cause I think bill Cooper is almost a forgotten figure and yet I agree with you that we we do live in his world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know what?
Speaker 1:really a forgotten figure.
Speaker 2:And yet I agree with you that we we do live in his world. Yeah, I mean, you know what really pissed me off, and I mean for no reason, I don't know why it took so personally, but when, on on X or Twitter or whatever you know, I think it was like Tucker Carlson went like super viral by saying Alex Jones vindicated about a 9-11. You know, alex jones has been right the whole time. Nobody in that space liked alex jones. Uh, because he was always. He was always like copying their shit and making it more sensational. Even bill cooper, right, I'm like, what do you? What do you mean? Alex jones vindicated. If anyone's vindicated, it's it's. You know, it's it's Bill Cooper who's vindicated.
Speaker 2:I, I agree that, uh, Jones is like the mutant love child of the two um, because he, he used to, he used to be a lot more eccentric and a lot not less political. But it wasn't it, it, he, it. It wasn't in the same way. Like, I remember an episode of info wars, um, where, like he was doing like candle magic, right, like I, would he ever do that today? I mean, I don't. I haven't watched info wars since pre Trump, but like, um, like probably not right, like that would be the completely out of of the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1:I'm sure, I'm sure with his, with his new expanded audience um, yeah, I mean one of the things that I've noticed as a person who has popped in and out of the alex jones world to like get a feel for certain elements of that culture. That culture and I, I should be clear I come out of uh, I know that I I'm a marxist podcaster, but, um, I actually come out of a pretty far right milieu and I knew a lot of people in the 90s who were in the bill cooper slash, um alex jones, space and alex jones was always kind of treated as a gateway drug. But what I have seen, like following his career from, like when he would go on and do stuff, no one like he would be the weird guy in the link later movie and the early to today is that he's become a much less fun, much more conventional, if, if, conspiratorial pundit in a way that was not true of that world or even his own part of it, like 10, 15 years ago oh yeah, absolutely, I mean.
Speaker 2:no, I mean I can't, I can't, I can't agree enough. I think a lot of the the fun has been stuck out of this stuff and like, even when it kind of like every now and then I'll see like a far right commentator, like gesture to like lemuria or something you know, just like something that was a little bit more light-hearted, and it's always in this like smug, like own the libs kind of way, like even when it comes back, it's like not, it's curious or playful or even entertaining, it's it's, it's, it is all very serious. Um, and yeah, I mean I, I, I completely agree with you and that's why I brought up the candle magic thing, because it's like could you imagine the you know the info wars of trump's second administration doing candle magic just to see what happens? I mean, it's like it sounds like no, that's not him, right, but it was like a decade or more ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing is not that most of these figures weren't religious, but the Alex Prune world has become more particularly religious in weird but not interesting ways. I don't know, Weird but not interesting is a strange way to phrase it. But there is a religiosity to him that's increased over time, but it's incredibly predictable and also not entirely he and also not entirely. He's also not like a normal evangelical. There's weird stuff in there, but it's usually like his enemies are demons. Basically, that's what you're going to get, and I find that also to be joyless, and he even sounds joyless doing it. He doesn't not to psychoanalyze him, but listening to him. Now he doesn't seem like he's having fun either. But how do you like? Why do you think there is such an obsession with the Alex Jones world from people on the left? Because I think it often. They often misread it pretty profoundly yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2:I mean, part of it has to be his audience is huge, right? Um, you know, you, you, you walk in on like your dad streaming, streaming info wars onto the, the tv in the living room, when you're like, well, what is this Right? And they do? They do say some like kooky stuff and encourage some some some kooky things. I don't think there. I think we both agree it's not dangerous in the precise way the left thinks, but it is a, you know, a sideshow if you're used to traditional cable news, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also find that for a lot of well-meaning, well-educated white progressive people, it's their exposure to parts of, say say, religious culture. Are our fringe elements of the south and the exurbs or stuff like that that they just don't know at all, like um, and even though it's coming through this weird conspiracy lens, like when people act like the alex jones prepper, our supplement culture is new, I just kind of of laugh at them. I'm like no, that's pretty common and both you know, as a person who was born and raised mostly in Georgia and now lives in Utah, that stuff has been ubiquitous my entire life.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, Well, there's a huge class element to it? Yes, yeah, which which, which you, you, yes, which you see also when there's this like hipster fascination with it. It's like the hipster who, like quote-unquote, ironically likes Alex Jones. It's like the same thing as like wearing the trucker hat, or like purposely liking like the cheaper beer. It's all the same, it's all the same thing. But now there's this political veneer and it seems like edgier in a way. The trucker hat never did.
Speaker 1:Why do you think the appearance of politics is so important to the culture now? And I say appearance of politics for, you know, advisedly, because I think a lot of this stuff doesn't actually have that much effect on actual power.
Speaker 2:but there's a few reasons. I mean I sort of the obvious one, a sense of meaning, a sense of you're doing something important. But also I think it's kind of the last place you could be really famous, it's the last place where there's real celebrity. So everyone's kind of jockeying for status through politics. And you know, there's obviously like a milieu that accepts like, oh, they're never going to be the influencer, but they're going to be part of like.
Speaker 2:You know the side that was right and I mean it's just, it's an amplification of like, why it's always appealed to people but it gets turbocharged by like's kind of dead. The influencer. Market's oversaturated politics can't really go away, or at least it's. It seems like that, um, it's it like if you you know, if you're just um a podcaster, right, like uh, that's, that's a very different thing than like you're a podcaster who gets to have audience with biden or or trump, you know, there's something it's, it's something to work towards, it's a different kind of fame that feels more durable or more real I think there's a lot of truth to that, as a person who's running both a cultural podcast and a political podcast and just ended up smashing the two together because no one listened to the cultural podcast.
Speaker 1:um, I I feel that just putting the veneer of politics on things and is often a way to to appeal to fame, and yet I do think it because of that, it also now has a subcultural apparatus. It's more like music scenes or art scenes than it is actual political influence, and that seems to confuse people pretty profoundly. I don't know what you make of that, because you watch this more closely than me.
Speaker 2:I totally agree, and I get into fights with people about this all the time and they're like, well, it's always been this way. You know, people are actually more politically engaged. Like, why aren't they going to music scenes? It's because, like, streaming killed music. No one's having house shows anymore. But, like you know, it's streaming didn't kill streamers, right, you know, it's like it's a part of it. Is that the technology changed?
Speaker 2:I think COVID definitely accelerated things for two reasons right, it drove everyone inside and it also like people felt like they were like waking up. You know, like all that kind of percolating stuff from like Gamergate, you know, people getting red pilled when, when trump was was president, um, all that's like a whole new cohort of people were like, oh, like this, this covid stuff is wacky, like you know, and it it was like a city that had, that had been in a blackout, like all the lights going on at once, right, um, so I I mean, I think those are the reasons why it's so, it's so big right now so, um, one of the things I wanted to to pivot to, but I I will tie it back into our first discussion about art bell and politicization of everything, um is that I find that your writing about American culture is pretty accurate.
Speaker 1:from taking a temperature about where social media is or where streamers are, et cetera, without reading it through the narratives put on it by a lot of more conventional punditry, and one of your more obvious predictions is that everyone is claiming that in particularly on the left, but even in liberal media, and I and I do make a distinction um that that X is not reflective of the American zeitgeist.
Speaker 1:And I do think, while X does promote some really antisocial variants of American thought, I've always seen it as like, even if the engagement's inorganic, it's where I can find the id of certain tendencies in American thought, like whatever people are probably projecting about their wants, they're going to state it on X, probably more than even a lot of other social media platforms, and you've made the same argument that a lot of people ignored what was going on there in ways that led them to completely misread the culture. What about the situation around X? Slash Twitter has for people who still call it that I'm still not used to calling it X. It's such a bad name but makes it so telling about where the culture is going, because I will also say it's not really the most mass form of social media at all. It really is sort of the id of influencers and political figures and whatnot.
Speaker 2:So my theory has always been wherever journalists are and I think this is sort of expanding to other, uh, you know other types of gatekeepers or tastemakers um, where they, where they spend the most time, is where you'll be able to predict where culture is going. Um, and I think, like you know, to, to some extent now it's like where tech people are. The power never left Twitter, and it's a weird thing because journalists are so often wrong, but I think they, like, they don't realize the waters that they're swimming in. Almost so, like tumblr, I think, had so much power because the, the cult, you know, the, the taste makers were on on tumblr.
Speaker 2:Journalists, uh, it girls, models, actresses, right, uh, fandom, and the same thing is sort of true on Twitter. I think, like we underestimate how many people are influenced by, in this case, right wing and ons, and it's what's interesting is like it's not all of the online right, it's that, that's that's influential. It's like the type, the strain that's on Twitter is the influence, because journalists are internalizing this stuff and people in tech are internalizing this stuff and then it filters out into, like TikTok, and then it seems, and then, once it's filtered out in other places, then it seems really, really big.
Speaker 1:Right by the time it gets on Facebook and Instagram. You know it's already gone through a whole lot of permutations, through everything else, Right.
Speaker 1:By the time it gets on Facebook and Instagram. You know it's already gone through a whole lot of permutations through everything else. Yeah, so this leads me to something that like things that you have been talking about and I want to get into your logic for some of them. I recently read one of your posts checking on Default Blog's positions, right, and you called some things that other people don't call, and it's funny to me because some things that you say I'm just going to read the title here true, but so obvious as to be insulting to your audience to consider it a prediction. I was reading this. I was like a lot of people would have not thought this was obvious, so I wanted to get into that a little bit.
Speaker 1:It seems like we've gone through several rounds and you've been writing a lot about this, about gender and gender norms as manifested through social media, and I think that drives a lot of your predictions um so um. I wanted to get into this because I think also, this is not talked about much in politics, and not to accuse the entire world of sexism, but because a lot of this is the domain of women, so it's not like picked up in the same way, such as the rise and fall of Tradwives, which was something that I like. Only, I live in Utah and I, like, know a little bit about it, but it's not something that I even really caught onto because it wasn't in my spirit, even though most of the Tradwife creators were probably literally down the street from me. Um so, and when, when? When this stuff finally starts getting a satirized and b makes the news you already know, it's kind of dead um so like people are talking about trad wife as a phenomenon now it's probably been dead for two years.
Speaker 1:Like most of the stuff I see about trad wives is people making fun of it like um. So why do you think so much of this is missed in mainstream punditry? And we'll go into some specific things, but particularly stuff around um the backlash against dating app, the glamorization of sex work, the expansion and contraction of of things like only fans. Why do you think that is not really dealt with in in like in talking about why that would move people politically or why things like you know, all women are more liberal. That you hear in the punditry is actually probably a bad way to understand actual existing politics.
Speaker 2:I think part of it is you need to just be watching these spaces all the time to start picking up on patterns, and so a lot of people just miss it. If it's not like relevant to their age cohort People in media might miss it because it's just not happening. You know around them, right? They're not, they don't have the time to be so online. They don't have the time to be watching all these people. So I don't think it's like necessarily always like you know, people like hand wave it away, it's too online, it's too it's. You know people like hand wave it away, it's too online, it's too it's. You know it's too irrelevant. Whatever I think they, I think sometimes they just don't see it, because you do need to just be like staring at people all day to to put two and two together sometimes.
Speaker 1:So one of the reasons why I think I even know about any of this is I'm a high school teacher, so I am sometimes entirely too online just to understand what the fuck my students are talking about, which is why I often have a different read on things. But I would yeah, I wouldn't do this either. I mean, like, why would these algorithms even show a lot of this stuff to me? I'm a 40-year-old dude. Why would these algorithms even show a lot of this stuff to me? I'm a 40-year-old dude. I'm just the wrong demographic for it, unless I try to seek it out. But I want to get into some of these political or quasi-political things that you talk about. You talk about things that are so obviously true as to be insulting. And yet I would also say to a lot of people, like, if you were to listen to, even like like Slate's culture blog or something and I talk about dating apps they seem clueless about this stuff, probably for the reasons that you're saying. But, for example, the backlash, backlash water it down a place.
Speaker 2:The other piece of this is they might know, but they have to water it down so they could expand their audience. You get two in the weeds. Uh, no one's going to know what you're talking about, even if you're talking about things they're experiencing, which is sort of a weird fit like Like it seems contradictory, but in a way it's not like people can't recognize trends If we're too deep into it. It's much easier to recognize a trend once you're far away from it.
Speaker 1:All right, um so, so. So one of the things that you you are an early adopter on um is politics as fandom, and I say that because you were talking about it in 2020. It's even on the left. It's become common to talk about around along my circle around 2021, 2022. I've actually been thinking about it since about 2018, but I was not smart enough to just say it, and yet I would agree with you. Now it's obvious. But how did that happen? Why did the politics as fandom thing become such a thing and why were you onto it before a lot of other people?
Speaker 2:I don't know where I get these ideas right. Um, I just noticed that, like you know, political groups just looked and acted like fandoms. Right it was. It was that that simple, like like when I, when I start, twitter is always slanted politically and I and the last time before Twitter, I was like super, super online.
Speaker 2:I was really into Tumblr, which is all fandom and I was like, oh well, the group dynamics are exactly the same, are kind of acting like this everywhere. Um, I I tend to think like fandom is how you it's just how you organize yourself um online. Um, everything is is very like emotionally driven um also everything's sort of like intellectual property in this way, where it feels like everything's fan fiction, it's so much easier to um be like, you know, have like creative output around like a politician you really love and then like books or movies. You know, especially for people who are not already in like a fandom mode, I feel like there's like so much like fan fiction and fan and different kinds of fan art that that are created in the political space, even if it doesn't look like that immediately. But but yeah, I mean, I think we just like the way things are organized. It's just like around media properties and personalities and then the, the communication structure is through these works of fan worship.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. One of the reasons why I've been sort of my gut has been telling me that Trump was going to win since about 2022, which is a weird thing to say, but then my head has been always arguing against that. Not out of hopes, Cause I actually don't have. I mean, I think Trump's winning might have some negative. Well, I know it's going to have negative repercussions for some groups I care about, but it's not been. I've been unhappy with the Democrats for a long time, but one of the things that I was thinking about it is when we talk about these fandoms. I was like where is there a democratic fandom right now?
Speaker 1:like there is not like there's no cult of personality. There's no like like people complain about the K-Hive but we all know they weren't really real like um it was very, very anemic.
Speaker 2:Um but, and here's the thing about trump like democrats weren't fans of kamala, they were anti-fans of trump, so the whole fandom space was just absorbed by by trump. So the whole fandom space was just absorbed by Trump.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because, to go back to the Art Bell time period, that was a time period where movement conservatism dominated. What liberals were doing, or triangulating, was based on responding to movement conservatism, but that was not really about fandoms in the same way I mean. Yet today it seems like this, like nebulous vibes around Trump. It is vibes, I mean. We could get into technicalities like what people think Trump believes. People project all sorts of things onto him.
Speaker 1:That's not new politically. I don't want to sound like it. I don't want to be naive and it's naive and like, oh, this is something we've never seen before. That's, of course, not true. We've seen that with political leaders forever, but there's something about the fandom nature of that that actually like, also coalesces people in a way that they're not really seeing what other people are projecting onto this person. Um, even within the fan base, I don't just mean like amongst the enemies, I mean like a lot of people who like trump, like trump for contradictory reasons, which is an interesting thing to see, um, but you predicted that he was going to win the election a little early. Uh, why? What were you seeing about? That was just a lack of any positive fandom and the democrats. I mean what? What do you think was going on there?
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that's exactly it. Like there there was the. It was too anemic, there was no there, all of the energy was directed towards trump, whether it was against Trump or for Trump, and to to win it. You can't really do like. It's not that people were like so against. Uh, kamala right, it was just that, like she was, she was kind of like a void, she was like a black hole and I think, if, if there's no, if there's nothing to to get emotionally invested in, to emotionally anchor in, you're just not going to do it. I mean that's why Biden felt so kind of surprising and astroturfed. I won't get into the like was the election stolen discourse or anything, but it's because, like, where's the energy around him? Where's like, who's interested? Even negatively, even in a negative sense, it just wasn't there.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, my own understanding of the Biden situation was that the center of the Democratic Party couldn't find anything and they all stepped aside and put the old guy in front, basically like strategically, and um, and it was a moment of panic and I actually, you know, not even to get into the my, my ongoing theory that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but it's like if the pandemic hadn't happened. I, which is a big counterfactual I don't think the Democrats win that election, no matter what Like, and I think that probably makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But I think you know that created the space for a whole lot of movement that I didn't entirely see although I probably should have from following these people for a long time which is that the anti-woke elements of the center were going to follow in the footsteps of the IDW and move more and more white ring. What indicated that to you and why? I mean you said it was obvious and I think it's obvious in hindsight, but I don't know that it was obvious at the time.
Speaker 2:So I'm always thinking about who's your audience, what are you selling? And a lot of my analysis it just boils down to mostly those questions. Right, there's a couple of other others that guide it and it's like where are they gonna go? Right, like something I was wrong about, is I thought well, make like an option, is maybe we see more of like a richard hanania type, you, this sort of post-right, you know fuck the chuds kind of figure, um, but that doesn't really seem to appeal to people as much. We're getting more and more, um, polarized. So where does? Where does the anti-woke center go? They can't go. They can't stay in the center, they can't go to the left, I certainly. So they're gonna. They're gonna keep moving further, further right as people continue to novelty seek and as polarization increases.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things that I saw was this attempt to build an anti-woke left, and that was like dead on arrival. Why do you think that was?
Speaker 2:um, I don't, you know, I, I don't know, I I will say I'm noticing these elements, I don't want to say elements of the left, maybe just refloating elements right, um, who are leftists, who seem, who are woke, but in this self-critical way and that seems to be appealing to people. Um, I think, I don't know, maybe people are too precious about identity politics, maybe it's something like it wasn't clearly enough differentiated from the right are, but, like in the, in the masses, no one's really talking about policy or theory. So you know, you need some, you need something to, something easy and simplified for people to hook into I, I, uh, I mean, I think that's right.
Speaker 1:I mean, we. One of the things that I hear today is you know, politics is all vibes and and I think that unfortunately for liberal democracies, politics has always been all vibes. I do think things are different. But, like, and I do think policy is different. But that's why we actually kind of talk about policy as a separate thing from politics in many, many ways, because it's never been what people respond to when voting. For the most part, even when they say that they're responding on policy, they often aren't.
Speaker 2:It's a weird thing. It's like hard to articulate because I always feel like I feel so dumb when I say cause it's like, I know, like, like well, it's. You know, there's so many examples, like even in recent history, of sort of these cults of personality, but it still feels different and it's really hard to articulate why it's different. But it kind of is palpably and obviously different, but then like I don't know what the I, but then I don't know what the language is to describe it. Maybe it's the scale of the emotional investment, it's something about people creating media products around these things, the sceney nature of it, the fact there's nothing else.
Speaker 1:What do you think? I've been watching some pretty Reciprocist liberal responses to the loss of Kamala Harris Almost shocking, even mirroring Deport all the Latins and all this which has been a little bit like whoa, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's as common as we're seeing on social media, because these things are so shocking that people are sharing them, like it's like um, but uh, what do you think that says about the rope that you know, the, I mean I, I think everybody is sort of like wokeness as we understood it, and the ought teens is kind of dead. But what do you think that says about that strategy? Because there are some old media heads who are about my age who don't want to drop it, and academics don't want to drop it either. The, the identity way of explaining everything, and the current election really makes that harder to maintain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I definitely, you know, I don't think the even joking about mass deportation is that common right, although I have seen things like that, both shared as like memes and just like firsthand people posting like that. But what's interesting there is, like people have always sort of had, like, have always had that reaction, and it's it's always been pointed out as hypocritical. Um, yeah, I'm not totally convinced, though, that that wokeness is is going to go away on the left. Okay, um, I encounter it in in real life all the time, um, and it it does. I think it's going to take a it's sort of it.
Speaker 2:It's it's getting easier, like it's harder to cancel people or to shame people. I think that's true. But I mean the. I don't want to, I don't want to say that I always feel uncomfortable saying like the left, because I I don't really like what I I'm talking about, just like ordinary progressives, um, but like you know, democrats, that I know still like, I still feel like I have to be careful. Like they don't want to hear, you know they, they get, they get offended. It's it's just that the, the, the like, the sharp reaction is gone, but that doesn't that maybe it's because it's been normalized Right and people also aren't trying to be offensive and we're also again more polarized. So right-wingers are hanging out with right-wingers and left-wingers are hanging out with left-wingers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is odd to be in a situation like I am. Where I live, in Gomorrah, aka Salt Lake City, which is a very liberal, progressive place, you can't move and have friends here without knowing very conservative Mormons and you kind of have to be friends with them, but it is rare. This is actually one of the few places where that still happens a lot, and that's partly because of religious, cultural issues, and actually, I'll get to that. You talk about Mormons specifically in this predictions, and I'll get to that. You talk about Mormons specifically In these predictions, and I'll get to that in a minute, because that was one of the predictions you made. That I was actually like duh, there are people going to be obsessed with that. But one thing I wanted to To talk about, though, is like Do you think that that these politeness codes Is partly a function of education and educational capital?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't actually know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, because I do, like, when I was talking to someone about stuff like DI initiatives, I'm like that'll go away in corporate culture way faster than it will in academia. It's going to take a long time for academics to drop that. And so much of our liberal friends. I mean, as was shown in the light, the enormity progressives are. They're upper middle class, white educated people. I mean that was like the only growth demographic for the Democratic Party too. So well, I shouldn't say upper middle class. They're middle class and upper middle class, white educated people, people with a college degree, and so I always think about what that means and also like the meaning of woke has gotten so hard to pin down. But I agree with you, parts of it just seemed to be normalized, like, like when I think about things that even I would have said in the two thousands that I wouldn't have thought what it was a fence and now I'm like, oh, should I do that? That is different and it is internalized now.
Speaker 2:What I think is also happening is that like and I I'd love to hear your take on this as a high school teacher you know like when I encounter adolescents, they're this weird comment they've internalized a lot of things about wokeness or you know, whatever you want to call it, but they still want to be rebels and push the envelope.
Speaker 2:So, like you'll see, like a discord and I reported on this recently because it's just so strange to me a discord server where people are like lionizing Adam Lanza and dropping in bombs and calling each other retard and whatever right, because those are all big school shooters, racial slurs, you know, br slur, right, like big no-nos and you would get in serious trouble if you mention any of those in the physical world. But then they purged the server of anyone who seemed right, like seemed zionist. So it's like okay, so it's like they and they still, they'll still do like content warnings on stuff and like be very precious about respecting certain parts of people's identity, but at the same, by the same token, it's like oh, I said, you know this insane racial slur at school today, and like everyone was scandalized. It's a really weird thing to see like what, what got internalized and what they're going to be like naughty about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually I would. I would say one of the things that I've noticed is they don't bully each other in public, but they bully each other online, which also is probably why they don't bully each other in public. Um and the there is a weird incoherence of both, like compassion towards what they people who are viewed as marginalized groups and total transgression. At the same time, with the younger Gen Zers and the older generation Alpha kids that I encounter, they want to be transgressive and they'll say edgelord stuff, but then they'll also be like but there's certain things we just don't do. It's very strange, it's weird.
Speaker 2:This things we just don't do, why it's very strange. It's it's weird and, like you know, like this discord server I'm referring to, it's like, and you know, like the. The punchline is pretty much everyone on that server was, uh, latin or they're from from latin america. So it's like a bunch of brown kids saying horrendous evil things about black people, and then they're, but they, they're really like this, like have strong feelings about Palestine and mental health. I mean, it's just like. It's just a really strange mix where I think they don't they don't even know what they're for.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I would say and I don't want to racially essentialize here, but I actually do think there actually is both class and race stuff that makes this really interesting. Um, conservative and liberal white students who are upper middle class or middle class actually have weirdly similar norms, um, with the exception on how they feel about gender stuff. But even then, a lot of conservative, uh kids who will say like pretty horrible things, um, uh, if you like, look, if you like, get their text for some reason about gender will. Then they won't allow anyone to bully their trans friends and they'll roll their eyes at their parents. It's a very strange like dynamic there too, and there has been both an increase for a while and a decrease of people identifying as they like that was increasing, I probably till about 2022. Lately I don't see it a lot, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:I the the gender war stuff takes seems to be really lucrative, and I mean that both in the way it's politicized between right and left and the way it's politicized between men and women, and a lot of kids are picking that up, but they don't really have the context for it. I mean it's very interesting because another thing I can say about, at least out here in Utah, kids barely date, but they talk about like dating stuff all the time, and that's a very interesting thing to see as well. So like they're not really dating each other. They're not on dating apps, as far as I can tell the ones that are old enough to be on it Former students of mine will talk to me about it and yet also like this gender war stuff really has a lot of appeal to them, and you talked about the gender war issues.
Speaker 1:I mean you've been talking about it a lot as it manifests on the internet and even that it's like something essential to the internet itself. In fact, you wrote a whole piece on that. Why do you think that part of like people focus on Andrew Tate, for example I mean I've even guilty of this but they don't look at the larger milieu in which that is happening? What do you think is going on there and why is it being manifested online so thoroughly?
Speaker 2:And it seems to be that younger people are very split and kind of have a bunch of different consciousnesses at once on how they handle it. So it seems like it's this weird thing that's sort of always underpinned the internet. So my theory about part of why this happened is so after the sexual revolution, you start seeing the rise of like pickup artistry. I don't know if it was because of the sexual revolution, but this is roughly around when this becomes sort of like a cottage industry and there's some of the first people online, right. So they and there's also feminists online and sort of they've sort of been in dialogue with one another and like snowballing and evolving through each iteration, getting more and more extreme for decades. So it's like one weird weird thing. You see like and I think they're just constantly reacting to one another and ping-ponging off one another and getting you know more, and and they're also there's also like internal reactions, right. So like you have a wave of sex positivity um, everyone's put you know, dipping their toes into being a sugar baby or whatever, and then there's a bunch of horror stories that come out and so you have like a wave of like people who are adopting second wave feminism and kind of playing with being a rad femme and sex negative. And you see it on the and you see it with men too, where you have a bunch of red pillar pickup artists and you know they're sleeping with drunk girls and being horrible. And then there's some small cohort of guys who aren't successful there and, um, they react to that and they become incels, right, like the. The incel movement as it's it exists today, the incelosphere comes out of failed Pua, right, so it's.
Speaker 2:And it's really easy to internalize this stuff and start convincing yourself that you are undateable Like you might. You might find this stuff by accident, but once you go down the rabbit hole, I mean, it's it, it's, I don't think it's like you you get radicalized, but you, you it just. It just gives you like tunnel vision somehow, um, and it's also very, it's also very inclusive. So you can, you know it's, it's like it's giving you some sort of answer for your loneliness, for your problems. It's like like, very like. It's like addictive in a way, and so I think multiple things are happening at once. I don't know if that explanation made any sense at all.
Speaker 1:No, it makes a ton of sense to me and I want to take, you know, being a dirty communist. I wanted to talk about the class element of this a little bit, because one thing I don't see talked about a lot that a lot of this gender war stuff explicitly touches on is that blue collar working class men of all races are dating less and less, marrying less and less, having fewer and fewer children. And yes, that's true of everybody, but it's like pronouncedly more true of them. I think it's something I was reading like one in four working class men between the ages of 25 and 55 have never been married, don't have a girlfriend and don't even report having many friends. And when you look at PUA culture and and in cell culture, I mean it seems like a lot of these people would be primed for that. Uh, both of them actually, um, uh, and I also feel like I've gone through several cycles of sex positivity and sex negativity, like I.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember the 90s when you were having, like adriana dorklin, like arguing against um, oh, what's her? I can't remember her name now, uh, uh, I'll pick a more popular one like camille paglia. Um, and that going pretty poorly. Uh, it seems like we see that like every four years now, like yeah, because I remember. You know, I remember when female chauvinist pigs came out at the end of the aughts, we had a raise of sex negativity. Then we had a raise of sex positivity again. Then the Me Too movement happened. We're back in sex negative land. Then there was a response to that. It seems like we've gone through five cycles of that in maybe 15 years.
Speaker 2:I totally agree and I like I know it sounds so reductive, but I think such a big part of it is just like people get burnt out and there's like an incentive to sell something new, and so it's really just like moving around to like, oh, I'm bored, I'm bored of this, I want, I want someone who's saying something fresh. I mean, there's also actual problems that exist within, you know, both frames, and especially when it's like getting more and more sensationalized and it's increasingly designed to validate, you know, things that you already kind of believe. To go back to the class thing, though, something that's always been really interesting to me and I haven't figured out how to articulate it in the right way is, you know, after the Moynihan report came out, you kind of see the emergence and people always are like you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, but it's I'm pretty sure I'm right on this of what you could describe as a Black manosphere, right, and you get all the way to like someone like Shaharazad Ali, who is basically, you know, early 90s a Black woman who's saying exactly what Pearl Davis said, and what she's addressing is. There were some the Moynihan Report was addressing, you know, some real issues.
Speaker 2:Maybe it wasn't expressed in the best way, and there are a lot of Black people who felt like, okay, we do suffer. You know, we do struggle with fatherlessness in our communities. We don't like the way our mothers are treating their sons and so they start going to these sort of manosphere-esque both man and you know, both male and and female figures, um, who are giving their prescriptions for these are these very extreme, um, sometimes even hateful things, um. So when you bring up the class element, I'm like maybe it's just, it's the same sort of thing. It's like one way to react to real or imagined fatherlessness, just to give one example, is these types of influencers or media personalities.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting with this in regards to what is really an older person scandal, but the Dave Chappelle scandal from you know, I guess now almost four years ago, around trans issues and me going you know, because I do a lot of work in various black communities me going like I don't think you realize how much cultural cachet this is actually going to have, because there's this narrative about that it's not even totally invalid. Coming after the Monaghan report about the feminization of black men and the both feminization to remove them and also other forms of black masculinity being quoted as dangerous and that this could cut in a lot of ways, that I don't think people are particularly. I don't think well-meaning upper-rural class white progressives are particularly willing to hear and I also think in general that's kind of happening in, uh, in just general circles about blue collar working class men of all races. Because I remember what you know, I'm not a huge fan of natalie win but like uh, we blocked each other on facebook, uh, before she was famous. Um, but that little bit of gossip aside, when Natalie said we had to talk about, like, some positive vision for men on the left and the response to that was like getting shouted down by nearly everybody on the left. I was pretty shocked because I was like well, it seems obvious to me that, like you have to deal with the left.
Speaker 1:I was pretty shocked because I was like well, it seems obvious to me that, like you, have to deal with the fact that, um, uh, I don't know about 49% of the population is affected by this, and, and when we're talking about blue collar men, they're an increasingly large portion of society actually. So I mean less and less men are going to college period, society actually. So I mean less and less men are going to college period. Um, it seems like maybe we should say something about that. And that got like laughed out of the room.
Speaker 1:And it does seem like that leads to a lot of leftist being clueless about what's happening in a lot of these spheres, like when people like oh, why are, why are young men being so reactionary?
Speaker 1:And one, they're actually not as reactionary as they're being portrayed now that people noticed it. But two, a lot of it does have to do with this gender war and disenfranchisement and dating as war stuff. And that leads to another thing that you talked about and you made predictions about. That I do think was a little bit obvious Is that dating app culture exacerbated this, particularly in starting in the middle of the odd teens like um, because, whether for whatever reason, over time dating apps reflected more and more quote traditional gender roles, even when people who do not say that they believe in traditional gender roles um, I mean, maybe you disagree with me with that, but, like men as pursuers, became a more common and common trope on on that technology, to the point that it became unpleasant for everybody, right? Um, yeah, I. How do you think that's being dealt with now, cause a lot of those dating apps seem to be dying?
Speaker 2:I think people are, are are trying to, to find alternatives. I mean, there's a lot of attempts at like matchmaking and and and personal ads on very local, small scales. I'm seeing a lot of like flyers. I mean this is and this is really an intro to like for like speed dating and things like that A lot of sub stacks I subscribe to do like speed dating events in whatever city they're based in. But another solution to this that I think Gen Z talks about a lot amongst themselves but it's not talked about so much kind of in public with millennials is e-dating right. So not app-based dating, but internet-based dating without the app. So like sliding into DMs on Instagram and Twitter. I see so many like Discord and Twitter marriages. I think that's a huge thing, um, and I think a lot of people are um having like some of their first sexual encounters completely mediated yeah, that's that doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1:I, I think I've seen that even in like, uh, other marginal communities, uh but by marginal here I don't mean oppressed, I mean like just not huge such as certain norms like polyamory spaces and stuff like that, which they were super happy to be accepted on the dating apps.
Speaker 1:Now they're running away from them, and I find that very fascinating.
Speaker 1:I also find that that that leads to a lot of misunderstanding about what's going on right now.
Speaker 1:I also think, maybe, like a lot of people thought, maybe we'd see the end of marriage and and I don't see that happening um, uh, I think, you know, I we see less and, like I was talking about with blue collar men, we do see less and less of them marrying, but people are still marrying and, in fact, um, in some ways, a traditional uh, for a little while, a traditional lifestyle was considered like a cultural good, but there also seems to be a backlash emerging against that too, which I don't think people are watching very closely and I don't know what it means. So how much do you think we can explain a lot of the political stuff that we see based around these conceptions of gender and relations? Like, I think this is like really kind of when people talk about it, they talk about it and like such obvious ways that they're missing nuances, like, oh, we talk about incels. You know driving extremity, political extremism or whatever, but I think it's probably explanatory for a lot of stuff we're seeing. What do you make of that?
Speaker 2:I think so too. Um, I I also. I mean, it's, it's not it's. I've never liked the driving extremism line, but what I do think is true.
Speaker 2:Um is maybe sort of a milder version of that, where men feel um, both on, well, explicitly unwelcome, but also like um, that these spaces just like aren't like they're, they're boring or like hostile to their, their interests, and it aesthetically hostile, so the right has more space for them, and the same is kind of true on, you know, on the right, with women. I think that I think that's changing over time and it's changed a lot since like 2022, maybe, um, where it's like you go to a right-wing event or you want to learn about some kind of right-wing issue, or there's like um, there's, there's, there's some, there's a right-wing influencer and it's very high. It up until pretty recently, it's pretty hostile to women, and so the, the, the people, the people in places who most appealed to women were on the left and the, the people in places who most appealed to women were on the left and the people in places who most appealed to men were on the right, and if everything's based on vibes, which I happen to agree with, it could be just that simple.
Speaker 1:You know what I find interesting about that, though, as a person on the far left? Um, uh, we're a dude space weirdly, um, but it's a hobby.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, it's, it is, it's it is the the right, it's, it that's, and that's that's why. Because, like you guys, you people aren't just showing up to well. I don't know if you have like meetings or you're talking about discords or whatever, they're not. Wherever it is, they're not just showing up because, oh, it seems cool and there's cultural cachet. It's not a vibe-based space. There's a barrier to entry.
Speaker 1:There's an extreme barrier to entry actually.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:The way we often talk and I actually complain about this a lot is you have to have a lot of prior investment to even know what the fuck we're saying. Um, uh, and to it's. It's a space that I've complained a lot about. That's like it's not hostile to women and families culturally, but it is effectively because of that barrier to entry. Um, and then on the left, on the far left, there's also this, this kind of duality that a lot of people have observed. I'm not the only person to observe it by far, but if you're in left media spaces, it's a hobby and it's mostly men. If you're an activist basis, it's a hobby, but it is a lot more women. It's still kind of a hobby and it's probably a lot of queer women, but it's a lot more women. Like you go to. You go to like something dealing with a homeless encampment and in 2019, it's probably going to be 60% women who are helping out.
Speaker 1:And if you were just listening to a lecture or a space, even a space that like if, if a space has, like they have a female co-host or whatever they're like, oh we're. You know, the DSA has a problem too. We're projecting female power. I don't know if you've ever been to a DSA meeting, if you look at the leadership and what they project to the public, you would think it was like 80% women. It's the opposite, it's 80% young men, usually right out of college, at least in my experience. It's not as true in hub cities like New York and California, but it is true in these places that are not those big cultural capitals, and I think that's an interesting problem, but it shouldn't surprise us.
Speaker 1:But do you think these spaces are going to stay hostile to women? I mean, I've been sort of thinking about, like, the lack of ability, like like there was this narrative that oh, I mean you know as a person who is an unfortunate pundit there was this narrative that like, basically, women were going to save the democratic election this year and that didn't really happen and there's a lot of backlash to that. Is that because the right is just becoming less hostile to women, or is there something else going on there? What do you think is going on there?
Speaker 2:It's. It's definitely less hostile to women and that feels very recent. There is like a cool factor to it now, um, that I don't think was there, um, even like. What's interesting is like even some like far right space you, there's like far right spaces, to my knowledge and I'm not like an expert on it or anything but it was like male dominated, and then, like every now and then you'd get like a femme boy who like like quote-unquote, like counted as a girl, right um, and then like maybe you're odd like completely loony bin woman. There's like a lot more women in far-right spaces now too, um, which is, which is, you know, something that people on on the far right have noted, and I and I wonder what's, uh, what's behind that? But the more like uh, you know not the far right the the, the more like normie, acceptable, right um, is. It definitely seems like there's some sort of it factor there right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen it, even in strange ways that were kind of ephemeral, like on the far left, the rise and fall very quickly within months of the Hegelian e-girl. But I think the kind of rightward trajectory of shows like, uh, red, red scare, actually do indicate that there was something there that that you know, um, uh, which again, media, media aspirations, et cetera. But but there does seem to be some kind of cultural cache there that like isn't in other places, cultural cachet there that isn't in other places. There's some other kind of weird stuff. You've noticed that. I've noticed too. As a person who lives in Utah, I've been fascinated with the rise, fall and rise of aspirational Mormon culture and then I started noticing because I follow that that the algorithm started giving me Amish stuff, which is fascinating because I don't associate those two groups together at all. Why do you think that is happening? What does that say about, like this weird intersection between traditionalism and technology, which is something you do write about?
Speaker 2:quite a bit. Yeah, I think it's the same reason people are attracted to nationalism. Right, it's. It's it's a vision of stability and it's not quite. It doesn't have the baggage that, like nationalism has. It's. It's like look at these, these nice people with good teeth who are baking. And they're also even though we're viewing it through the lens of TikToks and Instagram Reels they're not like sullied by technology in the same way, like it's this place. It's like almost like this picture beyond the dystopia we either live in or think we live in. Beyond the dystopia we either live in or think we live in, they don't have the same concerns about sex. They're having children, they're physically doing things. There's a sense of community. There's a sense that people know one another.
Speaker 1:There's a sense of purpose well, uh, I bring that up. I mean, the, the lds uh thing is actually interesting in that there is a decline in them having children, um, yeah, uh, but that isn't what you see, uh, but there are some weird social phenomena out here that are different than even other western states in our immediate proximity, because the way the church ward system is set up, um, if you're an lds person, you actually do know people from multiple class backgrounds and that's not true for evangelical christians are secular people for the most part. It's just not, um, it's a little bit more true for catholics, but even that's a little questionable, and that does lead to some social cohesion, but also some social tension that a lot of the rest of the country doesn't have, and our politics in Utah is very different because of it. The homage thing I think, though, is an even more like you know, that's even less modern, right. I mean, like you know, mormons still look like normal, normal people, even though they have nice teeth and break bread and make bread, but the amish are almost often exoticized the way we exoticize, like, the way people in the 60s and 70s would exoticize, like asian religions, um, as something completely uncorrupted by western uh, you know, insult, insert whatever vibe you want to insert there, um, and I find that fascinating, although I also find it interesting that a lot of the influencers who are who are showing amish culture, are not, are ex-amish, they're not amish and they're kind of just like are they mennonites?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're mennonites, yeah, yeah, exactly, you see a lot.
Speaker 2:They're faking it and they're not. They're not.
Speaker 1:Amish and they're kind of just like Are they Mennonites? Yeah, they're Mennonites, yeah, yeah, exactly, or you know what you see a lot they're faking it and they're not the above.
Speaker 2:There's been a couple of scandals, which is really weird.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is not something I would have put in my 2024 bingo cards would be fake Amish influencers, but it almost has to be the case. So I want to go into this section of we've been talking actually pulling from your predictions. I've been pulling from true but non-obvious, but true but non-obvious, but still kind of getting easy to see. You talked about stuff that you think that you see that's a lot harder to talk about and these are big. Interestingly, all these are a little bit bigger issues, but you're talking about the return of human biodiversity as a culture war focus, which is an old culture war focus. It's actually almost a 90s culture war focus and it came kind of back in the lead up to Trump, but ironically, the first Trump administration actually led to it going away. Do you think it's coming back and what are the counter indicators? Because you seem very unclear about whether or not you think that one's on the way back up.
Speaker 2:I, I thought it was coming back Because you were seeing it move more into the center and like there was, like you know, steve Saylor's rehabilitation tour and there I mean there's, there's also there. There's all sorts of like, at least to me, and I I'm like I I spend all my time marinating in right-wing media, so I might be wrong here, right, and that's part of my um, my lack of clarity, like it. Just it feels like people are, are talking about it more um, and you're seeing it in more and more mainstream right-wing venues. But then it's like I, like to me, like I don't think that, uh, steve saylor, especially at this point, is that scandalous? But maybe, like, some of your listeners are hearing me sort of like blithely reference him and they're like what the fuck is this?
Speaker 2:Who is this girl? Like, what is she talking about? Right, yeah, I can't, I can't really, I can't really tell like I, I I thought we were getting to a point where, like, maybe it's back on the, the discourse menu, you know who knows um, but it's, it's hard, it's hard for me to to take a temperature on that historically, since that term has been developed.
Speaker 1:Whenever, frankly, whenever there's a liberal administration towards the end of it, you start seeing it coming back up. Um, I mean, you know even the term. Although the term is interesting, right, because it's origins are actually a left-wing anthropological term that was immediately co-opted by right-wingers. Um but um, it is interesting to think about. The one thing that I think pushes against it, even on the right, is the right wing seems to be more of a multiracial coalition than it was even 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, I don't think that makes a difference necessarily. I don't think that makes a difference necessarily. I don't think that. I mean maybe from like, there are people who might think like, oh, this isn't good optically, but I don't think that HBD is something that only appeals to certain races, right? I think it's sort of everyone. Everyone who's interested in it is interested in it.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I mean? Right, I mean right, yeah, no, I get it. Um, one thing that you saw, that I thought was going to become a non-partisan issue, and because I started seeing porn addiction talked about a lot, um, even amongst normies and that used to be only an evangelical talking point was, uh, you know, porn brain being talked about more in the general culture, and it seems to almost have started. But I agree with you, I can't say if it's coming up or not. What? What is the discourse around porn amongst younger people these days? I actually don't. I'm a teacher.
Speaker 2:They're not going to talk to me about something that you know I'm too like um, it seems like people feel really damaged by porn, like they almost feel like they were like molested by it. Um, like when I do, um, and I you know I'm interviewing people who are a little bit older, but like if I'm talking to a 23 year old, um, or a 25 year old, they're like I wish I didn't start looking at porn at 11. And I hear, I hear a lot of that, and so there's this sense that they were exposed to it too early. There's also this sort of ambient sense that it's causing erectile dysfunction.
Speaker 2:I've looked into that extensively and it, it, it doesn't, it's, it's unclear how true that, how true. That is my, my pet theory about porn is that, like, our brains are super plastic and if you stop watch, if you, if you detox from it, you'll be fine. It's just whether or not you'll relapse for whatever reasons we're pushing you towards it. But yeah, I mean it just, it just seems like people like they, they just, yeah, they feel like they uh were kind of unhinged about their own own use and they're kind of reacting to themselves well, one of the the the things that made me think about this and you said you made this prediction in 2001.
Speaker 1:But I was thinking also about the left backlash towards Billy Eilish, of all people, about a quote about feeling attacked by porn, and I was surprised that the left was so like, responded to that as if it was like this big cultural no, no, and I you know cause.
Speaker 1:I actually don't know why leftists would necessarily think that even separate from sex work. I actually think we could separate that out, that we should be defending the exposure to porn to children as non-damaging. So I was just I was interested, but then that whole discourse, also the backlash to Billy Ivers, only lasted about a week and then it completely went away. So it also the backlash, didn't stick either. So I was just sort of interested in that because it does seem like a low-key, growing cultural concern that just also doesn't ever fully manifest itself. Another thing that you predict that I actually think is true and might be very long-term is a pushback against the medicalization and the psychologicalization of everyday life and my corners of the far left that is definitely true, weirdly, but we're kind of out of step with with more normie progressives on that? What do you think that was coming from and why do you think it's unclear if that's going to be a trend?
Speaker 2:You know, on the, on the one hand, I'm seeing it, I'm seeing it everywhere, right it's, I mean, it's clear, it's. So the pipeline is so clear. Like you, you get labeled as something so you could be sold something, right. And when it gets to the point where the thing you're being sold as a pill, as an antidepressant, um, or you know whatever, an expensive therapy course or something, it's damaging and I think it also can be annoying and it alienates you from other people.
Speaker 2:I think part of the rise of like ketamine and psychedelic therapy is or at least part of the appeal to people is like okay, maybe, like I don't feel great, but this is a lot less of a commit. You know, it's not the commitment that getting on zoloft is, um, the something about like the medicalization of everything. Also, just like you, if you turn everything into a problem that can be solved with a pill, like what is, what is the problem that can be solved through connection, I mean it's, it's very like basic point, but it I I've been seeing people sort of everywhere kind of complaining about it. The reason I don't know if it's actually gonna, if if we're, if we've actually reached the tipping point with that, is because there are so many people who you know are uncomfortable or really suffering and who are, who are already sort of in this, this framework of like I, this, this is anxiety. I take a pill for anxiety. I go to, I talk to my therapist and they can't, they're not in a position to push back on it yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:One thing I've been thinking about is how is this going to be complicated by the fact that the medical system seems to kind of be falling apart at the moment?
Speaker 2:well, this stuff is like btc, right, like that's a, that's a big, a big part of it. It's like you you get whatever pill you want from you know circle medicine or whatever it is, and then, like you see some like cheapo therapist that's true actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have talked a lot about both aspirational around therapy culture and while therapy is still kind of expensive usually I mean, if you're paying at retail probably 70 to 100 dollars a session it's still it's not as expensive as it used to be, as it used to be, and it's it's becoming much more ubiquitous, even a non upper middle class circles Like I. Just it's, but it's interesting to me because there was a pushback on that with young men who were getting tired of being told to go to therapy all the time and they'd be like it's expensive and so you know, which is fair actually, um, so I'm wondering where that's gonna go. Um, and I don't mean to imply that people shouldn't go to therapy, or it's all cultural, but like some of it seems to be cultural and and the medicalization thing seems to be very thorough. But the other thing that I'm seeing and I don't see this so much on on X slash Twitter, but I do see it on Tik TOK is aspirational therapy.
Speaker 1:Tik TOK isn't going away either, Like there's still plenty of that content, Like it's actually still everywhere. So I find that there just seems to be like an interesting tension there and I don't know what's going to win out. I want to go to two predictions you made that were wrong, but not to like chastise you, because I want to start with the ones I thought were also going to be true, One of which was I thought that we would see. For example, I thought we'd see a lot of younger millennial women having children, and we haven't seen that. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2:They're single. I think that's part of it. They can't afford it. I something I get really pissed off. The right is like, well, your grandparents did it right. And it's like, well, you know, my at least in my case like my grandmother like made. Her clothing and food was higher quality. Her clothing and food was higher quality and it was like it wasn't easier to be poor, but it was a different.
Speaker 1:It was being poor was a lot different and it was probably easier to have children while not being very particularly wealthy yeah, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not quite sure your age, but I could just tell you that my grandparents having kids was actually an economic at least neutral thing, as opposed to just a cost, because you know they worked. I find that part of that's just not talked about and I also agree with you yeah, people made their own clothes. The society was less complex, so replicating that society was less complex. So replicating that society was less complex. And today children are just. I mean, I don't want to. I'm sure people love their kids. I don't want to sound like they don't, um, but there are costs, there are big costs. That's why even cultures that really value them, like the lds they're you're seeing less and less of them.
Speaker 2:Uh, um, you know, an lds culture used to be pretty normal to teach kids who had like six, seven siblings, and now it's, you know, three or two is more normal, because who can afford six to eight kids Like I mean the other thing is like you don't know anyone in your community and like you don't want to hire a stranger or send your child to a daycare where they like might get molested or something, and that might not even be a real risk. But you but, as I'm a parent and as you know I've been so inculcated with, like you know, everyone is a potential molester. And here's this terrifying story of a baby who died by accident in daycare and it's like it's. It's very hard right To have this information, even if it's completely imaginary Cause, like walking these places not knowing anyone at all.
Speaker 1:Well, that's actually one of the things I always think about when I listen to the right. As a person who's interested in anthropology, I'm like there used to be a lot more allo parents too, and I'm just using a technical term for the adults that you trusted in your community who would help you raise your kids. Like, who has that now? Like, um, you know, we don't even trust people who are, who are like, certified to do it, for both good and bad reasons. You know, um, I don't want to say that all that parents fears are made up because they're actually not, uh, but there's, there's just things that we, we don't, we're not honest about. Also, there's, like kids aren't allowed in public spaces anymore. You could actually get in legal trouble for some of it. There's just a lot of stuff that aren't that isn't dealt with in this at all.
Speaker 1:Um, another thing that you uh, you said that, uh, I thought was going to be true and that isn't is I thought the woke, anti-woke stuff was going to be dead. Already I really did, um, I was like, can we get over this? This is so alike, and while there seems to be more reflexivity or, like you know, more introspection around identity politics and what culture on the left. It definitely isn't going away. Why is that? Why do you think that is? Why were both you and I wrong about that and why did that seem like where we were headed, like two or three years ago?
Speaker 2:it because I think it's it's what we discussed earlier like things became internalized and also like the punishment doesn't feel as sharp um, but it's, I mean, it still clearly exists, right.
Speaker 2:Like people still get get punished for crossing certain like to use like again like a very mild example. Like there are certain like publications where I feel like I can't pitch, or certain places where I don't feel welcome because I'm too right coded and I'm not someone who's saying anything controversial or that you wouldn't be able to say on like cable TV. But there's something about, like my vibe that is just a little bit too right wing and but, but I've just internalized, that's true. So I'm like I'm not even going to try anymore, and I think that's kind of what happened with everyone and that creates the illusion that it's actually that it's dying down, when it's actually not. And I also think the right has become a little bit louder and a little bit more visible. I mean, what's? I think what's really going on is like it's it, more people are just going to the right and fuck it well, yeah, I mean this.
Speaker 1:This is part of why canceling people doesn't really work now is because you just become a right winger and have an audience immediately. Um and I do think you know this isn't tale as old as time, or at least as old as whittaker chambers, but, like the I left the left, but is is is not going to go away anytime soon. Um, uh, even if we don't even really know, I mean I'll tell you as a person who studies the left, i'm'm not sure I know what it is anymore. Like, uh, as separate from from the democratic party. It's like a Hydra of, like vibes that don't really get along, and I have my own class analysis and all that, but that's not something that's easily, you know, like transferred into a culture in any way.
Speaker 1:One other thing that I thought was going to be interesting I thought that Mastodon was not going to be super popular, because when I tried to use it myself, I'm like this is really confusing and hard and everyone who tells me it isn't seems to be lying. But I thought that you'd see journalists move to other mediums than X, because they all threatened to do it, and some did move to Blue Sky for a little while. But Blue Sky, weirdly, has kind of become a progressive echo chamber. That's also very small, like it doesn't? It's just not, like there's not a lot going on over there and I can also say it's a progressive echo chamber. That makes that even. I'm like I don't know man, I don't want to get scolded for like talking about crime rates ever. So it's just it doesn't. It didn't seem to have the same appeal so I thought maybe you see stuff going to text, to talk or Instagram, but we haven't. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2:Harder to use, harder to set up an audience. I think it's very discouraging, like if you have like 300,000 followers on X, to move to Tik TOK with a zero and then like maybe 2000 follow you over and you feel like a doofus trying to like you don't know, you're not used to looking at yourself on video, right, or like, or you know whatever it is. I think some people were smart and every time a new platform would start to uh, you know, pick up steam, would, would hop on and build their audience, and some people are just better on on some platforms than others. It's humiliating and time-consuming.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, even though I'm a YouTuber, I have tried occasionally to do reels on Instagram to see if I could pivot over to TikTok, and I'm just like no, I'm not that person, I'm just not. So I do think Now this is a point to kind of pivot towards A little bit about what we haven't talked about. Where do you see A lot of this going? I mean, particularly, one of the things that fascinates me is you are right-coded, but I've never read anything from you that's explicitly right-wing, and I find it interesting that certain people won't talk to you just because you're interested in right-wing stuff, not because you're. And I would be like well, don't we want to know what our opposition thinks? And I guess the answer is no. Like well, don't we want to know what our opposition thinks? And I guess the answer is no.
Speaker 2:Why do you think that is well so? Like for me personally, I think it there is. I think there there's, there's vibes that you, you just can't. There's certain things you just can't do, and I don't know if it's just, it's even partially, just to make an order, um, like I, I I'm a contributing editor at the blaze, um, and that might be like a step too far.
Speaker 2:I've written, for I am 1776, I've written for the american mind, um, and even if I I've never said anything explicitly, um, it's, those associations just make it seem like oh, she's not one of us, right? So it doesn't, I think. But what's interesting is, because I'm, I'm, I keep a lot of my beliefs like close to the vest. People on the right are like, why are you writing for the American mind? We don't really like are you, are you a leftist? What's your, what's your deal? Um, so I, I, I mean, I think, I think it's just a categorization thing. People want to know what's what. There's nothing to do with, like not knowing what. I guess it's true, you don't want to know what your opposition thinks, but I think in my case it's some separate thing of like oh, there needs to be a cleaner label. What's going on here? Why isn't she rooting for the home team?
Speaker 1:Right Makes sense. It is interesting to me when I think about that, when I'm like okay, but we need to understand this culture and it's very hard to get people to do it. But I know this. I know, for example, even a source that publishes both left and right wing. If I was to publish an article in compact magazine, I would lose probably about a tenth of my subscribers overnight, you know I know that, um, uh, and, and that's despite the fact people know, I know, so have amari, so it's just it's.
Speaker 1:It's a weird. It's a weird dynamic right now, but I think you're probably right. It might be both personal and this larger cultural phenomenon. I want to thank you for coming on. Is there anything you'd like to plug?
Speaker 2:Just just my blog defaultblog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I I think people should should read it. I'm fascinated by it actually, and it's interesting to get at it. The younger parts of right-wing culture I am not. I feel like I'm too old to even fake to get in there. I just don't even know how I do it. So it's good to read someone writing about it. Thank you so much, catherine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on. Thanks.
