Yes, Do you need it? Sometimes.
Sometimes no. Yeah, they like listening.
Yeah, sometimes I like to hear it.
They'll. Read.
They'll read. The stream, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I've gotten piss mugged before, you know, I wrote
a thread about it. Real ones, no.
Really. Yeah, wow, like when someone
pisses next to you and they have like a bigger stream.
Oh, I'm sure. It's pretty brutal.
Welcome back to posting through it.
I'm Jared. And I'm Mike.
Patreon shout out off the top. We've got 1 today in the
platinum tier. Please read Worm by wild Bo.
Is the username OK? I guess it's a book, I don't
know. Yeah, let's do it and quick plug
my article. Who the fuck are these men?
Which sounds like a posting through it title, which I
didn't. I didn't make the title,
actually. Jared this, the editor does
that. And Mother Jones this.
This spring issue of Mother Jones is out, and there's a
digital copy out now, and you can learn all about all the
radical right activity that has been brewing in Idaho since
Trump's resurgence. There will be a link to that in
the description. The other link in the
description from us is this week's listener Submitted Music.
This is from Nathaniel S who listens to posting through it,
but it's also in a band called Loon, the band from their band
camp. They describe themselves as
plain quote twanged up rock'n'roll that is inspired by
punk rock and Hard Knocks. So the transition music you'll
hear today is their track called Indiana.
Yeah, and the other thing to plug is in on April 11th in
Washington, DC at Politics and Prose.
You can we'll, we'll put a link to this in the description too,
right, Jared? Oh yeah.
I am doing a book event for Strange people on the Hill, my
first book, which comes out on April 7th.
And I believe if you go to Head Chat's website, you can still
get a discount of 20% with this with the code Strange 20.
And we are, we are thinking about possibly doing some
posting through it live stuff or something, some event in
connection with that. So if you are anywhere near the
Washington, DC area, you can potentially start thinking about
how you can be there that Saturday and get to know us.
We'll be books maxing. Oh no.
Yeah. Oh shit.
Well, you already know what this about.
Probably also probably when you clicked on the on the
description. Jared has already.
He hasn't done it yet but has created some beautiful image
that lets you know this is about looks maxing.
Yeah, today we're going to, somewhat reluctantly, I'm being
honest, talk about looks, Maxing.
We thought we might cover something else this week, but I
kind of feel like our hands have been forced, you know?
Mainstream media outlets are taking a sudden interest in one
Looks Maxine influencer in particular.
His name is Brayden Peters, but he's better known by his online
handle Clavicular. Lots of people are adopting the
Looks, Maxine rhetoric, slang, lingo, whatever you want to call
it, sometimes ironically and sometimes in a way where it's
kind of hard to tell. Most of the people who are
writing and analyzing this looks maxing trend right now are men,
full stop. Our guest today, Annie Kelly, is
a researcher of online trends related to misogyny, conspiracy
theories of far right. And she is not a man and we
really wanted her perspective for that reason.
Clavicular is essentially the Michael Jordan of looks Maxing.
He represents pockets of men online on places like TikTok and
Instagram, as well as these specialized forums that are
hyper obsessed with their physical appearance,
particularly their their face. And also we yeah, their body
too, like weight lifting, potentially with steroids,
etcetera. Yeah, they obsessed.
So for the geometry of their physiques in the minutiae of
their bodies, you know, thinking they can sum it down into
mathematic formulas to derive an idealized beauty standard.
How symmetrical is your face? How wide are your shoulders
compared to your waist? How strong is your jawline?
There's a softer side to these discussions, too, you know,
mental. In these spaces, we'll talk
about skin care, diets, their workouts, but there's also a
darker and harder side where men, like you said, Mike, are
encouraging people to use steroids, adopt disordered
eating habits, seek out surgical procedures.
Some of them even claim to hit themselves in the face with
hammers, AKA bone smashing, in the hopes that their jaws will
grow back stronger and fuller. You know if they are doing that.
The audience for this content by all appearances, seems to be
male, of course, but they're also alarmingly young and white,
which is why critics associated with eugenics.
Some of the content pushed around in these specific in
these spaces specifically targets teenage boys as they're
developing through puberty. Not good.
By the way, many of the influencers in this movement are
younger too. Clavicular is just 20 years old.
He's a, he's a, he's a mere pup. So what about Clavicular?
He's having a moment right now, but it's still debatable how big
his reaches beyond this really loud wall of traditional and
social media hype. And, you know, we kind of wonder
how long this will, how long this can last.
Earlier this month, The New York Times published a profile that
called him the Quote UN Quote First star born out of the looks
Maxine community online. Mike really hated this article.
You want to explain why? Jared, you know, I don't even
think I mentioned this to you before, but actually it wasn't
just me. You hated it.
I taught this because I'm, because I, I teach journalism
students and, and my, my classes happens to be young women, like
they're like all 1819 and I, they're doing their next
assignment is a profile. So I was like, well, let's look
at all kinds of profiles and have them look at this.
I was, I was surprised to find that they all had a very similar
reaction to me, which is why is this in the New York Times?
Why is what they they wanted to know?
And they're and they're of Clavicular's age.
So they're just like, I don't understand why this is in the
New York Times. And I don't think this was very
clearly established in the story.
Joe Bernstein wrote it and Joe has wrote some very impactful
stories on the far right, one of which is about Sam Hyde.
The comedian was associated with the neo Nazi movement and other
things. And you know, he became a target
of a lot of bullying online bullying from from far right
extremists and things like that. And you know, I will tell you
he's not going to be getting very much bullying from this
because maybe he is, I don't know, to be clear.
But like, I don't think he would get it the same way he did for
the stories that he wrote back in the day early on and
BuzzFeed, because it doesn't really throw a punch at all.
And that is what concerns me. The tone is written to me like
it was it's like 1994 and you're you're profiling Trend Reznor of
Nine Inch Nails. This is the kind of thing that
takes Clavicular from being a sort of freak fringe Internet
celebrity into kind of mega stardom with glossy photos and
so forth. The other thing it doesn't do
Jared for me is he doesn't, he doesn't dig up any dirt on
Clavicular. Clavicular presumably had no
anxiety about this coming out. He doesn't.
He doesn't talk to like anybody really from his high school, or
at least they're not profiled who could tell, like what he was
like before he became clavicular and stuff like that.
We don't hear about his parents who basically fought through,
who allegedly gave up on trying to stop him from this.
What did they think of this? Because if it were my son, I
would be pretty disgusted. So yeah, this one really
bothered me because I don't think clavicular warrants this
kind of treatment. But this particular show is
about criticism. Ours, you know, we are, we are
critical as well as reporting. And I think it's important to
look with a critical eye on why everyone is talking about this,
not only on social media but also in apparently in
traditional media as well. We called out the New York Times
story, but it's not alone. Clavicular has also been
featured by GQ. He's appeared on Pierce Morgan's
program, The Adam Friedland Show recently, and others.
He's reportedly making more than $100,000 a month.
That's $1.2 million a year, folks.
A little quick math there. Live streaming on a platform
called Kik. He walked in New York Fashion
Week and he's steadily earning fans among right wing social
media personalities like Brett Cooper.
She flew to New York City to watch him in that Fashion Week
show. That's kind of an insane life
for a 20 year old to lead. I don't know what you were doing
at 20. I was.
I was probably stoned and seeing movies at the Angelica and Film
Forum like I was at NYU, so that's what I remember.
Yeah, people who know me in real life listen to this show.
I'm not going to talk about what I was up to when I was 20.
If you've been in line the last month or two, you've you've seen
too much of this, this fucking content on your face and
everybody is talking in the looks, maxing slang and it's
it's completely outlandish and over the top and people are
doing it for a cheap laugh. I don't know, I'm not
particularly crazy about the trend.
Not I'm not. I'm not looks maxing, but just
ironic looks maxing posting. I don't like taking their their
culture and making it our costume, whatever you would say.
Yeah. It's loaded with slang terms and
weird personalities that some of which we'll probably get into
with Annie. Yeah, You know, I think the
point we want to make on this episode is that this hyper
curated facade, and I mean that in like a extremely literal
sense, we're talking about looks maxing, right?
This this pursuit of aesthetic perfection in your bodily
appearance is outlandish. It's cartoonish.
It's attention grabbing, you know, just by how absurd it is.
But beneath the surface is a political and social movement
that's actually quite sinister. Joining the show, we have Annie
Kelly, an award-winning journalist and researcher who
covers digital culture related to topics like anti feminism,
conspiracy theories and the far right.
She is the UK correspondent for the QAA podcast, so if we have
crossover listeners, you may have heard her there.
And he has a new podcast with QAA that series worth checking
out called Truly Traply Deeply. We're excited to have her on
today to talk about Look Maxing. Looks Maxing.
It's an honor to be invited. Thank you so much for having me.
What prompted this episode is all of this media interest in
looks Maxine, specifically Clavicular, which is like the
stand out influencer of this space.
But this has been around for years and years, right?
The New York Times did a big glossy profile of Clavicular.
But you know, here's earlier they had done a piece about
looks Maxine as an online movement.
So I you know, where does this come from?
How deep is that history? Yeah.
I mean, I have been finding a lot of the coverage actually of
clavicular a little bit shallow. And maybe this is unfair because
maybe I'm expecting kind of a genealogy of manosphere
subcultures go stretching back further than a journalist
writing a 1500 word piece can really justify.
Having said that, I think it's very important to understand the
ideology because looks maxing and the looks maxing subculture
is not just trying to make yourself look good to attract
women and to understand that, I think we do need to go back to
where it starts, which is with pickup artists in early
noughties online culture. These were some of the earliest
Internet boards essentially kind of dedicated to swapping tips
and strategies for chatting up women.
A little bit of lore about myself was I basically stumbled
across this stuff when I was in my early teens because I wanted
to know what dating would be like.
So I have first hand experience of these spaces and I don't want
to sound like I'm justifying them because obviously they were
they were cesspools of misogyny back then.
But I think if you go back compared to what the manosphere
looks like now, it was very mild in comparison.
A site that was born out of this space though, that had a
grievance with the pickup artist sphere was called Pickup Artist
Hate. And this was essentially a site
for users who had tried the pickup artist techniques and had
found that they were lacking in some way, that they they didn't
work, they weren't suddenly becoming irresistible to women
overnight. You mean nagging is there?
Is it? Do you?
Mean nagging doesn't work with girls when you walk up.
To a girl and say in a bar you. Mean a woman in a bar and you're
like you're like your nose is a little funny you mean she's
surprisingly she doesn't like to go home with you that's.
So weird. I wouldn't.
That's not that's not intuitive at all.
Who would? I guess approaching romance like
a chess game that you have a cheat code for would not pan
out. Yeah.
I mean, I don't think the cruel fact of a lot of pick up artist
tricks is many of them will work if you are already a fairly
charismatic person who's nice to hang around with.
Do you know, many of them will kind of are sort of social
strategies that, you know, if you have a good or even decent
kind of social sense. And yeah, you know, sometimes
women do like it when you kind of playfully make fun of them.
Maybe you don't mean bad it, but, you know, stuff like that,
things like that. But you have to have a sense
already, I think of where. But the line is a good set, a
good sense of social intuition. And unsurprisingly, there's
actually quite a large section of people who are looking up
this stuff who do not have that and therefore find that this
stuff is actually just making them blunder and embarrass
themselves. And Pick Up Artist Tape was a
site that was made for people who had found that, but it
didn't really, its focus of Aya wasn't really pick up artists as
such, despite the name being called Pick Up Artist Tape.
It was women because they hadn't worked the way that the pick up
artists had told them they would.
And so an ideology developed out of this forum which said that it
was actually there was actually nothing that you could do as a
person to become more attractive to women because essentially
your destiny was written in stone based on what you looked
like. And this was one of the early
kind of in cell forums. As a result, people there
started identifying as involuntarily celibate and very
much viewed this as something that could not be changed.
In fact, infamously, Elliot Rodger, the mass shooter who
came out of this forum, was the reason that it was actually shut
down because he was a known poster there.
And then it became something called slut hate, which, yeah,
speaks for itself. And I think from then on, it
branched out into something called Lux ISM, which again, was
this kind of ideology that everything essentially is
determined by how good, how good looking you are, what you look
like. And so this is where then the
subculture of looks maxing comes from, which essentially kind of
comes to this ideology, which says that, yeah, it's nothing to
do with how nice you are. It's nothing to do with how
funny you are. Your success, not just with
women, but in life in general, will be determined by what you
look like. It therefore is imperative for
you to go to extreme measures to be as good looking as possible.
But I think we've got to remember this undercurrent of
misogyny that comes out of it because I think sometimes when
people hear about lux maxing or writes about lux maxing, they
still very much have the attitude that these are guys who
want to be good, looking to attract women.
I actually think it's better. And kind of you will find the
subculture much less confusing if you think of it as a
subculture that's about becoming better, looking to reject women,
to humiliate women and to dominate women.
Can you explain that? More, I think it's probably.
Plausible that the reason a lot of young guys will find
themselves in this space in the 1st place is because they want
to become better looking. Because they are aware and we
should be. We can be honest.
Like it is true that the better looking you are, the more
attractive you will be to women, to men, to whoever, whoever you
want to attract. You know, there's a kind of like
underlying logic to it, even if they obviously take it to
extremes. But because this subculture is
born out of in cell subculture, it also has a great deal of
resentment towards women for having to do this in the 1st
place. You know, the in cell subculture
kind of doesn't really view women wanting women desiring
attractive men, straight women desiring attractive men.
I should say that a lot of this is just kind of completely
heteronormative. So I apologize if I'm talking in
a kind of heteronormative way as I describe it.
They don't really view that as a as a rational impulse or an
understandable one. It's very much viewed as a
insult and as one of the reasons that women are essentially
inferior to men. So there is kind of a great deal
of resentment built up in this ideology around women's
attraction to men. And even if you essentially are
the stereotypical teenager who wants to who wants to get chicks
and gets kind of drawn into this as Clavicular and his biography
seems to suggest that he was, I don't think it seems that you
likely that you will stay that way.
If you become very ingrained in the subculture, It becomes much
more about what they call ascending.
You're trying to look as good as possible to press other men to
attract women. But also I think you know, to
you want to attract them not because you want to like date
them or because you actually enjoy being around them.
It's because of the level of status that that will give you
that attraction will give you. Having the having actually
watched a few clavicular streams, it seems something that
a lot of journalists seem to be missing is that these dates and
interactions that he has with women that are live streamed, he
largely insults them. You know, they ask him for a
rating and he says to, you know, beautiful young girl, he's my
club. Your mid face is too wide and
your I don't know, your nasolabial area is recessed and
all of this kind of stuff. And I think there's a real
savage pleasure and his audience, it looks maxing
audience that are are living vicariously through that and
presumably. Some of them haven't hammered
their faces like he has or whatever to try to get whatever
look he has not yet. But they may just enjoy seeing,
you know, in the same way I like to watch Juan Soto of the New
York Mets, like hit a home run. I can't do it.
They can watch this guy who's like, you know, there there's
he's on the battlefield of dating.
They can watch their favorite dater go and insult these women
and show off how he is. I want to ask you a question
that I had written a component that I don't, I did not, I have
not seen addressed in any of the profiles about it or anything
about it, which is this idea that, you know, looks or a
science. And that is what women respond
to. And I'm bisexual, but, you know,
so I have a little bit of a, you know, more of a thing, you know,
but women in my in my, in my experience, much more than men
do not necessarily go for, oh, the face is symmetrical or this.
And I'll give you one example of that, you know, that has been on
my mind recently. The French singer Serge
Gainsbour, right, who's like kind of funny looking, but
literally could walk in anywhere in France in like 1971.
And like, you know, women would be just all over him because of
his tremendous charisma, his humor, his ability, his
songwriting ability, his his captivating stage presence.
And it's like I, I, to me, it feels it's so foreign to actual,
you know, sex pairings between men and women.
It just doesn't seem like at all how it works.
You know, I don't know if you could weigh in on that.
Yeah. Yeah, well, I I saw quite a
fascinating little bit of dialogue between Quavicular and
the comedian talk show host Adam Friedland.
Adam Friedland essentially raised this point to him.
Do you know, he said, I don't get it.
I I see, you know, I see beautiful women with not that
attractive men all the time. And I think I had a couple of
answers for this, which are both standard in the manosphere and
also kind of contradict each other, which is to be expected,
I think from ideology, which kind of just revolves around
resentment towards women and then kind of picks your answers
for that. So he said, well, yeah, you
know, it's not necessarily looks, looks at just the just
one very important part of the puzzle.
But if you have enough money, if you have enough resources, then
sure, you'll, you'll be beautiful women will will still
throw themselves at you. It's just harder to do that than
it is to become beautiful. But then he also had a point
where he said, which I found really fascinating because I
think this comes back to the really deep ideological nature
of Luke's maxing, which a lot of people miss, where he said, Oh,
well, actually those women aren't that beautiful.
That if you, if you actually assess them according to this
objective scale that we've developed on our forums, you
would see actually, you know, that they're probably looks
matched with the guy that they're dating.
But we just think that they're beautiful because because we're
attracted to them, Which I, I think it's a really hard thing
to get your head around if you haven't spent a lot of time on
these forums. Because we think, well, I'm
attracted to them. They're probably good looking as
a result. But because they have this
mathematical scale by which they are supposedly can rate any any
human being, you know, This is why he ends up, I think, saying
that Sidney Sweeney, for instance, the actress is
actually only a three but men meant because they're so
attracted to her because of her body, they don't notice this so.
I have a question for you. I was just curious your take
this idea of that there is this attainable mathematical
perfection that a male can achieve in his appearance right?
I mean, this archetype is muscular to a degree.
It had, you know, they talk about the rate, how far apart
are your mouth and your eyes? How wide is your face?
How strong is your jawline? And how does that compare to
your shoulders and that sort of thing.
Underneath all of that, that image is also white, right?
In nearly every context. In fact, there's been people of
color in this community that have been chased off in the past
and attacked saying, well, you can never achieve this because
you're you're not a white person.
Do you? Think it would be fair to also,
when we're talking about the ideology undergirding this
online movement, to also think about it in the terms of it
being eugenicist? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think it's very explicitly eugenicist.
Lots and lots of in cell writing will often kind of talk about
the, yeah, I think in quite sort of fatalistic terms.
I mean, this is this is what they call black Pilling, right?
And we can talk a little bit maybe about later about the in
cell influence on digital language, which I've always
found fascinating. The way so much Internet slang
actually just dates to back to in cell forums.
But yeah, the the kind of the black pill, essentially that it
would be better if you'd never been born, if you were born
below a certain level of attractiveness, which quite
explicitly correlates to race, as you're right to point out.
Jared, I mean, one thing I hesitate to call insole
subculture what supremacist is because it is actually very,
very diverse. A lot of insole users aren't
white. And I think this creates a kind
of interesting dialectic on insole forums as a result, in
which users will often be bemoaning the fact that they
live in a society where there is a white beauty standard which
they, as you point out, will never, never live up to, while
at the same time kind of also buying into that white beauty
standard as an objective scale. So, yeah, all I can say is,
yeah, I think it's an interesting contradiction that
exists in in cell subculture and largely in the manosphere in
general, which has diversified a lot over the last 10 years.
So we see a lot. Of different women on these
streams, I got to say like some of it really reminds me of pro
wrestling. Like it does not seem real.
Right. And I feel like there's just.
Like, OK, there's a lot of things going on here.
I I will cop to finding that guy androgynic, whatever that
gigantic looks maxer like. I do find the, the, the, the
videos, the clips that people share of him, like just going
out hunting the ASU frat leader or whatever it was for people
who don't know this, it was an I mean, I, I can't even explain it
because I'll I'll get it wrong and someone will.
It's so stupid. Don't even don't even if you
haven't heard it, don't worry about it.
But like there's this gigantic looks Maxer who is like 6 foot
5. And I want to point out
something very quickly about that guy does not seem
attractive. There is nothing soft about him.
He's like a hunter. It's he looks like a Terminator
or something, right, which is not not usually something that
you want to like go to bed with. And he's just like, you know,
walking around it. It looks like pro wrestling to
me. Like you're like, oh, I like
androgynic. He's like 6 foot 5 and like I
like clavicular. He's like the slightly, you
know, I don't know, Twinkie, like pretty guy who goes after
her like these these girls. And then the ASU flat, flat
leader whose body looks really strange to me, by the way, like
just too much muscle. Whatever's going on there with
steroids or whatever. I don't know what it is, OK,
whatever, but it looks like pro wrestling where you bring out a
bunch of different guys and they fight, but without the
wrestling. Like they're just sort of like
they're kind of just stand next. To each other, yeah.
They try and attempt to frame mug each other, yes.
And then there are these women that kind of appear on these
streams. And to me, I have like an
ongoing debate in my head about how much they could even really
want these guys. And I don't want to be in denial
and be like, well, he is A now unfortunately like becoming a
sort of B list celebrity called vicular.
So that may be attractive to people.
And according to this, he makes like a like $1,000,000 a year in
streaming already. And he's 20.
So that may be attractive to people.
But I I can't help but think these women want to access the
stream like wannabe streamers themselves or want to be seen on
a stream or become celebrities and that's why they're there.
And there's this clip of this, you know, recent one of a guy
who he claims, you know, that that that he's been dating this
girl for a year. And O Clavicular, please give me
my girl back and it to me it sounds fake.
Jared, do you have the clip of that?
Can we play it? It's Valentine's Day, bro.
You my girl. You're a good guy.
I know you're a good guy. Valentine's Day, The kindness of
your heart. You're a good guy.
I know you're a good guy, brother. 18 minutes ago
Valentine's Day ended, so you're going to have to fuck off.
All I do is win, win, win. Sounds like the worst time
anyone's ever had to be. I know I can't.
Believe they're still playing that song in clubs.
That was weakest song they were playing when I was going out,
hitting the club on. Valentine's Day, Worst clubs
ever. Get down with.
DJ Khaled I'm. Sure, I'm sure would spike his
quarters all levels if he went to the kind of club that I
prefer. But, you know, they, I guess my
question, my question is, is any like, well, maybe some of it's
real, but I mean, is it fair to say that some of this is fake?
Because that doesn't that that whole interaction seemed, it
just doesn't seem like people, the way humans interact.
Yeah, I, I. I have to agree.
I mean, I, I, I don't have any insight and knowledge on that
clip, but I also saw it and thought, yeah, that's not real.
And it's very common for these, I think they're called IRL
streamers on Kik, these people who stream themselves for like
16 hours a day, just going around their day, going about
their day to, to set things up to have an entourage A-Team who
will essentially kind of, you know, these people won't, will
be, won't necessarily be like paid actors or anything kind of
really super formal. But there'll be people there in
the club and they say, hey, do you want to act out this scene
for us? You know, we've got so and so
many subscribers, things like that to kind of, you know, a bit
of a bit of play acting, a little bit of drama.
My guess is that's probably what was happening there.
But I think it's, it's worth pointing out because I think
this is a, an interesting development in the manosphere in
general, which is when I did my PhD about the manosphere and
when I was writing about it, it was largely text based.
And it was also not a super comfortable place for women to
be involved. There were always, you know,
women involved in the manosphere, female figures, but
it was, it was hard. Do you know, it was hard to have
that level of scrutiny in your, in your personal life, that kind
of level of hostility towards women in your fan base and to
scrape by unscathed? And there's a great many women
who tried and kind of eventually ended up bowing out.
One thing that I have found interesting with the rise of
platforms like like Twitch and Kik, but also things like Only
Fans, is that there has become a much more monetary incentive to
be a woman involved in the manosphere.
And you can actually now monetize the humiliation in a
way that the women I was writing about never really could.
I'll give an example from a different sphere, but a podcast
like Fresh and Fit or the Whatever podcast have created
this model, which I'm still a little bit astonished by and how
successful it is, where they will have usually one or two
male hosts and then they will get on weekly a new set of
women. Some are only fans models, some
are Instagram influencers, some are aspiring trick Twitch
streamers and stuff like that. And for hours, literally hours,
they will sit around and dissect their personal lives.
They'll call them sluts. They'll, you know, laugh at
them, they'll mock them, they'll degrade them.
They'll encourage their audience to send in donations so they
can, you know, do text to speech and read out things, calling
them hoes and things like that. But it obviously benefits these
women to sort of sit and kind of just, you know, take it and kind
of act, act a little bit offended and things like that.
But they're laughing all the way to the bank because, you know,
that's at the end of the day, their subscribers will go up.
And so there's a kind of interesting dynamic here, I
think going on, which is that it's actually the manosphere has
become more profitable all round, but it's actually become
more profitable to become one of the manospheres villains for a
woman. And I think probably with at
least some of these women who are going up to Clovic here and
saying, oh, rape me, rape me. I think I'm a 10.
And then he kind of gives her a dressing down and says, so
actually, you know, according to the objective scale, you're
barely worth my attention. My guess is there is also an
element of what's the wrestling term, kayfabe.
Kayfabe. Completely slit my mind going on
here where that women actually didn't really, really want to
hit on Clovic that will have him rape her or something like that.
But she's aware that this will become a clippable moment, that
there's actually nothing his audience and indeed social media
in general, wants to see more than him dressing down a pretty
young woman. There are no. 10s, I think,
yeah, there. Are no 10s he's like he he.
It's an impossible standard, I think.
Remember when Trump used to? Say the wall, he'd be like the
wall just got 10 feet higher, he used to say back when he.
Back when he used to pretend. That there was he was going to
build a wall. He'd be like, the wall just got
20 feet higher or whatever. It's like 10.
You know, it's, you know, we're talking about some sort of weird
ethereal being that doesn't exist and, like, glows in the
dark, right? It's not even a real person
because he's he's looking at Audrey Hepburn or whatever, and
he's like, she's a six. Like, yeah.
Yeah, I think obviously it's constantly getting updated the
the scale with new, new celebrities.
But I think last thing I saw they were saying that Timothy
Chalamet was a four, which which feels a little bit harsh, you
know. But yeah, you know, I so I think
there's, there's an incentive essentially, if you're a woman
kind of trying to trying to launch your career to get your
face out there, even if it is on one of these interminable,
interminable streams. Because I have to say one thing
I was really struck by when I first started watching these
clips and then then the streams, and maybe I shouldn't have been
at all. Looking back on Pravicula's life
story, it's just how awkward and bad talking to people he is.
He's just really, really bad at it.
He's just a dope. Yeah.
I mean, it's an element of, it feels a bit like, like a
Victorian morality story, you know, about the dangers of, of
focusing on vanity without cultivating any other virtues.
You know, I feel there's something kind of like wildy
into it, watching him kind of stumble through conversations
with young women where he's just kind of just referencing memes
and kind of just sort of, you know, saying just the kind of
same sort of like Gen. Gen.
Z sort of slang, just sort of stump string together a
sentence. It sort of feels a bit like, I
don't know. Again, I don't want to sound
like I'm really nostalgic for the the good old days of pickup
artistry, but I do sort of look back to, you know, the early
naughties pickup artist scene. And I do think, well, even if it
didn't really work for a lot of people, it was to a certain
extent trying to teach men to be fun, to be around, to be do you
know, to to be good company in a sense, Yeah.
I mean. It's like when you give, you
know, people a recipe and you get a good cook and they make a
fantastic meal and then you give it to somebody who can't cook
or, or, or is really not well practiced and it tastes like
crap. It, you know, the ingredients
aren't necessarily good. But you brought up that thing
about about negging where it can be fun.
Yeah, I've actually had. I've had women tease me, right?
Where it would be like sort of like make fun of like, I'm like,
oh, wow, you really like that band, huh?
Or something, you know, like that's a nag.
And then, you know, but I know it's also like I'm being, I also
know they're flirting with me. And it is very disarming, right?
It's like, it's like that. But then if you have somebody
come up and be like, you know, that band sucks.
And so do you like, you know, like a guy saying that it's like
they're not going to work. So yeah, I mean, at least there
was an attempt. I don't know.
I don't want to now. I feel like I'm crediting.
I don't want to credit. I don't credit the I.
Genuinely do feel. Like we, we it was, it was a
scummy subculture, but we we did compared to what came
afterwards. We didn't know how good we had
it trying to. Communicate this thing where
it's sort of like, you know, that men have issues of
confidence, I think in part because of this sort of
patriarchal structure of the culture, right?
Where they're under tremendous pressure.
They're like, you know, men are dying fast and like feeling
tremendous. Very proud of partly because the
world men created for themselves and they're trying to figure out
how to crack the code and just get a, you know, somebody to be
cozy with and watch TV and have a little kiss every once in a
while, you know, so they can feel better.
So like, yeah, this feels different.
And the other thing about it and I, I, you know, I, I don't, I, I
think it's very easy to just look at this and be like, this
is gay. You know, this feels really gay
to me. But it does feel, I, I must say,
it does feel like it is it almost like taking the woman out
of the heterosexual equation, which is why I think people are
quickly saying this is gay, You know, people who are critical of
it online. I'm talking about not not
talking about like, you know, refined leftist critics, but
like the average person online who's a sports guy, be like, OK,
this stuff's gay. You know, you'll see them in the
replies all the time. And I think it's like, it does
feel like a little bit like that to me.
Like it just like males focusing on males with the woman as a
prop. Yeah, I.
Mean, it's funny because there's so much of the manosphere that,
as you say, will eventually come under this level of scrutiny.
And I think when people call it gay, I think what they are
mistaking for gay is actually a political fetishization of
masculinity and men. Of of.
Like male supremacy of male. Supremacy.
Exactly. Yeah.
I mean, it's funny because sometimes it can really, it
really does kind of come across as an erotic fetishization as
well. But I think it is, it is
ultimately, you know, if you kind of want to go back to old
second wave feminist theory, there's actually kind of nothing
gay about this kind of the heteronormative, heterodominant
kind of valorization of masculinity.
But certainly some of the ways that it plays out when you sort
of take that logic, that kind of heterosexual logic to its utter
extreme, I mean, it can be really comical.
I remember reading a thread and some old bodybuilding forums
which are another huge influence in in cell culture, which kind
of had the same devolution as the pickup artist culture.
You know, guys who want to get ripped to pick up women
ultimately find that that doesn't actually isn't just like
The Secret Life hack to romantic success and then devolve into
misogyny. And I and Bronze Age pervert
came out of this scene. Yeah.
Is that a? Guy Yeah, I remember 1.
There's one thread that just has always struck with me where a
bunch of users from this bodybuilding slash incel slash
manosphere forum all get together and start talking about
how objectively, if you take away all sexual attraction,
women aren't actually that beautiful and men are much more
beautiful. You know, they sort of say,
well, obviously we're just kind of program that's just sort of,
you know, that kind of chip in our brain that wants us to
reproduce that isn't, you know, mistake clouding our judgment
and making us think that the female form is beautiful.
When actually, if you think about it, it's kind of soft,
it's squishy. It's nothing like these kind of
clean, masculine like hard lines which you find in the male body,
which obviously objectively superior.
And I, I find it really interesting because it's the
philosopher clouds Tivolate and his book Male Fantasies kind of
really drills down into this impulse in proto fascist
literature in Germany. It's a, yeah, male supremacist
impulse, but it's ultimately kind of a fascist one as well,
which has so elevated the kind of masculine, the strong, the
dominant over what is seen as kind of the feminine and the
weak that it ultimately, despite being extremely homophobic,
extremely politically OK, opposed to LGBT people, also has
this element of male Eroticism, do you think?
That could be a reason why it feels like this stuff's getting
pick up lately. I mean, the especially in the
United States, I mean, we're in a fascist hellscape, you know,
with federal agents murdering people in the street.
Just the nastiness in our political and social culture
right now is so bleak and so poisonous.
I mean, even in Clavicular's case, we look at who he's
hanging around. It's people like Andrew Tate,
It's people like Nick Fuentes. He lives in a condo owned by
Aidan Ross. All of these guys are like
hardcore, you know, it have have very far right politics.
Even though Clavicular claims to be a political, you know, this
is who he surrounds himself with.
This is the pocket that he's in. Do you think there is a
relationship between the rise of far right politics and the
visibility of this kind of stuff?
I mean, do you see that as connected 100?
Percent. And yeah, on the Nick Fuentes
point, my colleague on the QA podcast live has actually just
put out an episode for us about Quavicular.
And one thing that she points out is that Nick Fuentes was
actually pretty instrumental in his rise as a as an influencer.
And that's not coincidental. Do you know, like even though
Clivic, the kind of yeah has sort of disavowed politics and
says, Oh yeah, I, I don't care about that at all politics.
Is gesture. It's just.
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's clear that Fuentes sees, I
think sees the appeal of someone like Clavicular and I think
probably, well both of them I would say are the only
influences, essentials, you know, popular influences to kind
of come out of the in cell space.
So I think that's quite significant.
Yeah. In terms of its sort of salience
for the political moment, yes. I mean, one thing when I was
working on my series about trad wives that I couldn't stop
noticing once I started researching it was that there
was this element of super politicized fraud wives, fraud
wives who are, you know, kind of clearly commenting on every
every little feature that comes out of the culture war in every
part of the new cycle. And, you know, kind of, yeah,
clearly news junkies, essentially.
But there was a much bigger portion of them that I thought
were much more passively inculcating right wing values by
that they would often, Yeah, do a similar kind of dance,
disavowing politics. That's not really my thing.
I'm not interested in that. I just think I want to focus
just on me and my little family, and I think it'll make you
happier just to focus on you and your little family, too.
When I look at people like Clavicular and all of the kind
of bodybuilding looks maxing side of the right wing, I kind
of see something similar which is.
Essentially. Kind of telling that audience to
drop out to, to stop paying attention to the news, to stop
paying attention to the cycle, to kind of just let things flow
as they may and just serve all of their attention to.
Well, in women's case, it was like the home, but in men's case
it's much more often just their bodies.
I find it a funny parallel to some of the most egregious, some
pop feminism of the 20 tens, which was kind of doing a
similar thing of saying, you know, self-care is is so
important as a woman. In fact, it's revolutionary for
you to buy the shampoo. And you know, there seems to be
something, something similar going on, which is in some of
the kind of bodybuilding spaces, which is saying, you know, it's,
it's so important that, you know, they, the powers that be
are so afraid of a strong alpha male populace that can, that
can, you know, take, take, take on the government anytime they
want. So therefore you need to be
spending all of your free time at the gym and pushing steroids
and taking and researching vitamin supplements and things
like that. And I sort of think like, well,
actually, if I were the powers that be, I would feel intensely
relaxed about a huge section of the population just focusing,
turning all of their attention into themselves.
Do you know, I, I couldn't think of anything that would be more
liberatory for me. The yeah, great evil woke powers
that be frankly interesting. Too, I just want to point out
that like in addition to wanting to throw out that like women,
women want to sleep with the staff, the podcaster, women want
to sleep with Jack Black and like because they think they're
funny and cool and they like their thing.
And sometimes it also doesn't have to do with money.
Also, sometimes it's a guy who works hard and is just cool and
not necessarily the, you know, mind blowing it.
It's just it, it is so weird, but it's it, it feels like we've
come as a culture beyond just it.
It obviously being, to me, it's obviously it has to be a symptom
of fascism that somebody with with absolutely zero talent,
like is like famous for like hammering his jaw to look a
certain way. I mean, I don't need, you know,
I'd go back in time and throw that in the mix up like, Oh no,
fascism happens in the future. But yeah, I just.
Just to interrupt, I'm not totally convinced he was doing
the the jaw smashing thing. It may not have.
Been I don't know, I, I I. I get a bit of a sense that
again, I I, I don't this is good.
I like yeah, interjecting us. It is here's my conspiracy.
I kind of sense that he has a bit of a, you know, not to yeah,
largely talentless, but I think he actually has a bit of a flair
for self promotion and kind of saying exaggerating all of the
extreme things that he's doing. I think probably initially to
gain just a bit, you know, attention and excitement on the
looks maxing forums that he was on.
And then I think sort of taking it, taking it to social media
and things like that. It's yeah, I, I just sort of
sometimes get a bit of a sense that that he has an, he kind of
has a canny understanding essentially for stuff that's a
little bit shocking, a little bit outrageous.
And that sometimes that might be what's going on with the I'm
going to get double jaw surgery or I'm going to, yeah, get break
my legs so I can be an inch taller and, and things like
that. You know that is.
Fair. And I and I sometimes overlook
the talent of self promotion, which is something I could do
not possess, partly maybe because I don't have it.
I'm like this guy don't have no talent.
Like, Oh yeah, are you in the New York Times, Mike?
But like, you know, I, I don't know if this is a question, but
maybe the talking point or whatever.
I was like when I, I'm, I'm 4046 when I, you know, was first
sexually active or whatever, be like the 90s, right, mid 90s and
now view like sex as like 3 reasons for, there are like 3
main things here we're going on. One is to have children in some
cases, but not for everybody. Like there's a sort of spiritual
sort of comfort, kind of the Marvin Gaye sexual healing
aspect of it. Very important for some people,
very important for maybe. And the other is just pleasure,
right? It's just for pleasure, right?
Same reason we enjoy going to the, the cinema.
Same reason we enjoy reading a book, right?
It's like it's pleasurable and you know, obviously, like
during, you know, when I first discovered I'm I was interested
in all the things that you could do after after she consents,
right, right. You know, it's like what think
about all look at all the different things we can do, like
all this. Look at this, can we do that?
That's crazy after consent, right?
And it seems like the culture, like the sort of the sort of
Trumpy, you know, fascist male culture these days is completely
removes the pleasure part of it. It's either just or I mean, or
the sexual healing. It's just like about getting
there. Some sometimes removes consent
too. That's very important part of
it. Like let's let's be honest, but
it's really just like she has the babies and whatever and like
I get in the door and he quite he actually says like that's sex
enough for me to know that she could do it.
I find that completely insane. And maybe that's the most
fascist thing of all that to to not want to experience that.
Right. What what even is that?
What what is the where's the pleasure in that?
Just to me, it seems like a really creepy world for young
boys to grow up in. Yeah.
Absolutely. I think again, this is where
trying to strip looks, maxing of its roots in the manosphere and
so subculture unnecessarily leads to a kind of impoverished
understanding of what's going on, what's going on.
When Clavicular says, you know, I'd rather actually not have
sex, It's it's a just waste of my my time and energy.
It's enough to know that that she wants to that I could
because I think again, that comes back to this
understanding. And even though we were being
nice at the about the old pick up artists 10 minutes ago, let's
be real, they they started this in a sense, at least in an
Internet cultural sense. I can't can't say that they pick
up artists started patriarchy in general, but they they did start
this kind of understanding of the sex as an act of domination
essentially. And what often emerged out of
these spaces, which, yeah, again, I think there's actually
not really anything necessarily wrong.
I think with thinking, hey, I'm. I'd like to, I'd like to be more
attractive to the opposite sex. I'm going to look up tips on how
to do that. Like, I don't think that as an
impulse is a bad thing. What I think was so damaging
about so many of these cultures was how once you get enough
people with this idea together and kind of get them talking is
how often they would come up with these ideologies.
That would sort of breed resentment about the fact that
they had to do that. Anger about the fact it wasn't
working, and would try and find ways to essentially denigrate
women for having having forced them into this position in the
1st place. And I think there's a
interesting economic basis for why the manosphere has exploded
in the Internet era. And I think it's because we're
actually at a slightly unprecedented moment in human
history where increasingly for women, getting a male partner is
no longer an act of survival, which it was for a very, very
long time. Even for working class women,
who obviously always had jobs pre the feminist movement, free
women's and liberation, a lot of those jobs were not well paid
enough for you to be able to survive by yourself, let alone
support children. Yeah, I mean it.
Really. Wasn't that long ago that women
became able to get credit cards in their own name, right?
Right. I mean.
It's just everything was stacked
against them. They had to be married.
They had to have. They had to be.
They had to. Basically have a sponsor, yeah.
And you know, with the removal of a lot of these, that basic
incent, survival incentives to be with a male partner that has
come at A at a loss for a lot of straight men.
Do you know, a lot of straight men have just frankly lost out
from that? Some people will say, you know,
well, men don't lose anything from feminism.
It's not a 0 sum game. But actually that is that is a
lost, you know, it's, it's now harder for them to get a partner
than it was in the times when it was by the sticking with him or
destitution. And I think that it's, we can
often forget when we're kind of talking about Internet
subcultures, the way that some forum came out of another forum,
the way that this ideology, this way that this language
developed, that I think there is actually just like quite a like
hard material factor in the way that a lot of this stuff has
taken off this kind of desire to be attractive to women, but
also, you know, this very deep anger towards women.
A lot of the stuff constantly revolves around the idea that
women are too picky these days. Women have got an inflated sense
of of their own worth and they'll attribute this to
various factors, to dating apps, to social media, the fact that,
you know, that lots of women get lots of likes if they post a
bikini picture on Instagram and things like that.
But I think they actually might be speaking to a much more
brutal economic fact, which is that for many women, it's not an
act of survival anymore to have a male partner.
And that has disempowered, I think men, heterosexual men on
the dating scene. And I, I think that a lot of
this manosphere anger comes comes from that too.
Bad. Now you have to actually be of
some value to her in a way that is to actually.
Be a pleasant person you have to you.
Have to you have to provide company that she enjoys and and
have to be a good kisser and and have to have to be able to share
meals together that that she enjoys.
Tough tough for you. Sorry.
So just ramping up here. You know, this type of stuff is
certainly grown in its profile, right?
I I mean this clavicular guy, stupid name I can't pronounce.
You know, he's getting he's on Adam Friedland show, He's
getting the New York Times profile.
He's with Piers Morgan. GQ did a write up.
Is this stuff actually exploding online?
Is it actually like certainly the stuff is getting more
visible, but do you see this as a movement or, or a subgroup of
the larger like manosphere movement that is gaining
traction? Because if that's the case,
seems like like there's obviously the ideological risk,
but this also seems, you know, if it is the type of thing that
they're advocating bone smashing, taking steroids and,
and, you know, mixing these cocktails of various nutritional
supplements and, you know, extreme fasting, disordered
eating, all of that to an audience that is largely
comprised of teenagers and young men.
Aside from ideology, it also seems insanely dangerous.
Some of the things. That get recommended could kill
people. Right.
And I feel like. That's been missing from a lot
of the coverage. But, you know, as we wrap up
here, I'm curious, as somebody who spent so much time looking
into this issue, when you see these stories and see these
features and stuff, do you get a sense of like, oh, finally
people are catching up to this? People are talking about this,
or do you feel something else? Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think sometimes the focus on the most absurd
examples of it, the most absurd, absurd examples of a phenomenon.
I mean, there's so much that's absurd about quavicular.
It's absurd that he pretends or actually does smash his face
with a hammer. Whatever he does, the language
that is deliberately used around him is deliberately comic.
It's deliberately absurd because yeah, as I said before, the
there's always been a real fascination within cell language
and you know, a lot of a lot of words that we kind of use in an
Internet slang, things like something maxing or
blackpelling, doomer, ISM, chads, beaters, all the rest of
it, you know, it's all it all come comes back from in cell
forums. They really have an incredible
amount of influence on on digital slang.
So I think there's always been this level of fascination, but
the focus on the most absurd examples I think might mask the
fact that there is something going on.
You know, that I think eating disorders and young men are
massively rising. I think they're still not on
level with eating disorders with the young women, but I think we
have we are basically seeing slightly unprecedented levels in
terms of how many young men are getting diagnosed with things
like anorexia and orthorexia, which to me suggests, I know
that these are complex psychological phenomenon and I
don't want to simply attribute them to you know, 11 trend or
another. But to me suggest that there is
something slightly emblematic, even if deliberately exaggerated
to the most distorted extremes, and someone like Clavicular that
there are body image pressures on young men.
With social media, with even just dating apps, you know,
things like Tinder and Hinge and all the rest of it, which are
all solely image based, I think probably there are a lot more
pressure on young men to look a certain way.
And it wouldn't surprise me essentially if as a result, you
were seeing kind of influences and people giving advice, but
essentially kind of raising in their profile, the more extreme
they advise you to go kind of similar to the old.
Well, they they probably still exist now, but the old kind of
pro Anna blogs and forums and kind of the 20 tens and things
like that. The kind of more out extreme,
the more kind of outrageous, you know, the more upstream, the
kind of images were, the more extreme the advice would be
given on on starving yourself and things like that.
The more followers those but those blogs would get.
And it's kind of easy, I think, when you're seeing it about
young women to understand that that is a result of a, a, a
culture which is demanding kind of ever increasing sort of
perfection from female bodies. But I think we might be starting
to see kind of something similar with men.
And that probably is what the fascination with figures like
Clavicular are representing. I have just one.
Last question, which is this you can, you can be as wrong as
possible. We won't know right now.
Where? Where do you see Clavicular?
His name is Braden Peters, right?
Braden Peters. I hate his stupid name so much.
I know we've used it throughout this whole thing.
Where do you see Mr. Peters in 1020 years.
I I just I asked that because it is this is a young man's game
and I'm just curious like what you think will happen to this
guy because I, you know, I have my thoughts, but I just want to
hear yours. I mean, you could never.
Have like a normal life after this?
No, definitely. Not a nun, I mean, yeah, as you
say, it's a young man's game. I am not really convinced that
he is charismatic or funny or charming enough to kind of move
into something else after he's been been frame mocked by a
younger man. Having said that, you know I
don't, I don't want to be on fat you.
He's only 20 years old. I probably wasn't super
fascinating when I was 20 years old.
We do, you know, people, people develop, people cultivate kind
of different aspects of themselves as they age.
I don't want to, I don't want to write off the, the poor young
man right now. Maybe, maybe, who knows?
Maybe he'll write the next Great American novel.
Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to go ahead and say
I'm going to take the under on that one.
If there's a Poly market odds, I'm ready to vote.
I'm right at that now. I think he says.
Reading spikes his cortisol levels or something, so he says
something like that, I don't remember.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, as, as I
understand that, you know, he he streams sort of like 15 hours a
day and then spends the rest of his time either sleeping or
watching clips of himself to see what he can do better.
I mean, there is. And obviously injecting peptides
or whatever next and steroids or whatever.
And to himself. I mean, there is something to be
said about just how, and I kind of mentioned this before, how
kind of autocannibalistic this culture is.
It's so focused on the self. It's so focused on the the
image. Kind of hard to imagine moving
on to anything else. Again, this will this will kind
of maybe sound like I'm praising other terrible manosphere
influences and things like that. But the Quinters or Andrew Tate
or people like that, they are kind of at least amusing.
Do you know, they have like a comic talent, They're kind of
delivery and things like that. They're performers and I guess
yeah, I sort of don't really see that in clavicular so much as
somebody who is kind of willingly being a kind of live
streamed. I want to say freak show that
that sounds kind of too mean. I don't mean in the sense that
he's a freak, but I don't think it's too.
Mean, I just want to, I don't think it's too mean if I can
just throw it because it's, I have a phone.
You can tell. So there, there was a like a gay
identified account who said that like back in the 60s, late 60s
or whatever early, you know, he would have been part of Andy
Warhol's Factory and he would have, you know, he would have
had some sort of an affair with like one guy or whatever.
And he would have been murdered at like age, whatever.
Yeah. And it, it spoke to something
that I, you know, someone said, I said, I said this guy's going
to be dead and like, whatever. I'm not predicting that because
I don't want to predict that for anybody.
It's terrible. It's terrible vibes.
But there is one of the reasons it's a dead end is because it's
so superficial and so contrary to the nature of of of
development. My part of my beard is most of
my beard is white, actually. Now taking a look at it.
OK, that's yeah. I haven't looked at him like
deeply. Look, it's part of, you know,
it's part of it, right. I just saw, I just saw Wallace
Shawn perform the fever in in Greenwich Village.
He was amazing at age 82. Part of part of aging with the
Betty Friedan. Betty Friedan thing about like
she has a whole book about aging.
Like, you know, it, it's, that's what it's about.
It's about, you know, I mean, it's it's about letting go of
that. And he is, he has created a
culture around not letting go of certain youthful appearance, you
know, aspects. And I, I, to me, it's just like,
what is there? You know, if it, if it's not
death in a little literal sense, it's death in the cultural sense
for him or in a, in a influencer sense.
I don't know how what do you do? You can't keep your you can't.
It's like the guy who, who's that weird tech guy Jared, who
like wants to keep himself alive forever and he's aging
backwards. This stuff is insane to me.
All this you got. People have to accept death and
accept aging. One person.
I mean, I really agree. I mean, I'll sound very guru
like here, dispensing my my pulse of wisdom.
Is it Brian Johnson? By the way, something like that,
yeah. That's right.
It's always seemed to me, and I'm glad I grasped this quite
early, it's always seemed to me like a huge, huge mistake to
really, really value your youth and your beauty, to place a high
premium on that because it's the one thing that you're constantly
running out of. Do you know, like, so I think I
just sort of grasp quite early on, even when I was very young,
I think that it wasn't a good idea to become enamoured with
being young because it felt like a bit of a losing, a losing
strategy for life. It's a way to make yourself
miserable. Yeah.
I actually now I'm a parent and I kind of think a bit about
being a parent as well. It can.
There's a certain seductive pull to kind of, you know, getting
attached to to your baby and thinking how sweet and baby like
they are and oh, I wish they could just stay like this
forever. But if you think that if you
start to, you know, kind of like dwell on that and think that
then you are making the act of parenting become miserable
because they're not staying a baby forever by and you know
that they're always growing. And I I think I see a bit of
that and I wish I could just say it was the the freak shows like
clavicular. Honestly, I see a lot of it in
Gen. Z social media culture just in
general kind of terror of aging. And and this isn't in just
general kind of what me and my colleague on truly tried deeply.
Megan called the the girl Internet, you know, focus on
anti aging products age 23 and things like that.
Here's how I look so young, age 25, stuff like that.
It it seemed to me like a very dangerous and quite miserable
way to live. Again, I kind of speculate in a
slightly vulgar, materialist sense that it's something to do
with a demo age demographic where aging doesn't necessarily
equal status and material gains. Maybe in a way that it would
have the previous generations where they might have viewed as
a bit of a trade offshore. I have Gray hairs now, but I'm a
bit more economically stable. I've got a house maybe for
generations where that is no longer the promise of aging.
Maybe aging becomes more terrifying itself.
I don't know. Yeah, as I say, it's just pure
speculation on my part, but I see a lot of it everywhere.
And I I think it's very sad. Yeah, I've.
I've. Always thought well, I haven't
always thought, but for a while have have kind come to
understand the temperance of life, the end of it right from
the second year before and you start dying right.
And that's what makes it worth it.
That's what makes it vivid and beautiful and it gives you a
reason to engage with the world around you and to appreciate
things as they come. And this format, this incentive
structure, I guess, if you will, of these online cultures, I
think kind of Rob's life of the things that can make it
beautiful. But on that big note, as I put
down my comically sized bong here and tuck it, tuck it behind
my desk. We've been talking to Annie
Kelly. Thanks so much for joining us.
Last question, guests, get this on posting through it.
What kind of music you fucking with?
Because this is a music podcast first and foremost.
Oh nice. So I like a lot of modern kind
of western music. Actually.
I inherited it from my dad, who's Irish and American guy.
I don't have Americans know this, but Irish people love
country and western music I think.
I actually did not I actually. Did not know that, yeah.
Yeah, it's really New York New. Yorkers like The Pogues, if
that's. Like a nice trade.
Off we can have that. We can have that, yeah, I think.
That's something to do with maybe a kind of a similar
musical heritage happening there, which kind of branched
off at one point anyway. Yeah, So I, I grew up listening
to old style country and Western things like Johnny Cash and
Dolly Parton and things like that.
And yeah, as a result, I kind of, I don't know, when I'm just
trying to zone out, I like to listen to music that makes me
feel like I'm a cowboy riding through New Mexico or something
like that. I did not.
Expect this answer, but I love it.
Yeah, I. Think this is the first guest
who's recommended some country music on this show.
All right. Well, Andy, thanks so much for
joining us. We'll talk to you soon.
Thanks so much for having. Me.
It's been so much fun. Thank you, Cornfield.
'S. Planted on the graves of native
peoples that we've always the Deep South of north.