#924 - William Costello - What Netflix’s “Adolescence” Got Wrong

26:47Yeah, they're just muggles. Yeah. But the red pill actually think, oh, you kind of could see what it's like, but you're choosing to not see the full truth. Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree. And a cursory look at some of the research would have informed that. And do you know if they had a consultant psychologist? Like, why the fuck were you not called up to? I don't know. but specifically with regard to the government now paying a lot of close attention to this topic. We actually were commissioned by the UK Government Committee for Countering Extremism to do the largest in -cell study in the world.

27:22And we presented this to the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament. That's all online for people to see. And some of those findings would have informed a more accurate depiction of the show, or certainly should be reviewed again in light of looking into this topic again. But no, we weren't consulted, and I'm not gonna get annoyed about that. But as far as I know, no insult researcher was, no research team. I have heard, and I can't know how verified this is, I heard it from the Tin Man George, so I'm throwing him under the bus. Good. Now he says in his initial research into the show that they had a school psychologist and a child psychologist, And that could be for the welfare of the child actors, or it could be to inform the child actor portrayal, or the school portrayal, which on that front, I think they did a pretty good job.

28:12But one in salary searcher could have fixed all of this. But also would have made pretty massive changes to this rep. You know, these wouldn't have been minor changes. Yes. On a direction. Like you could have built in the mental health problem, the nihilism of the black pill differently. differently. One thing that was, you could say depicted Jamie's misogyny was what I called the low -mate value theory of misogyny. The show actually kind of depicted that a little bit. It depicted Jamie seeking to make a romantic play for Katie, the girl in his class, when he describes her as feeling weak. So he says her nudes have just been leaked by another misogyny boy in the class who described her as flat -chested, and Jamie chooses that time to opportunistically try and capitalize on this attack towards the self -esteem.

29:01That's precisely how I hypothesize the low -made value theory of misogyny to work. It's kind of like an analog from within relationships where low -made value men in relationships try to attack their partner's self -esteem in order to lower their self -procive made value so they don't feel like they can leave the relationship. They say things like, who would have you accept me? Things like that. I hypothesized that in cells misogyny or male misogyny from outside of a relationship is just that strategy trying to lower women's self -esteem There's also the aspect of In cells in particular it could be a very very sneaky strategy to try and encourage your rival males to stop trying Nobody knows who these in cells on the other end of the screen are They're just disposing this ideology to others online hoping that some of them buy into it and give up, take the black pill, meanwhile they could be out trying to capitalize on their massage.

29:55That's interesting. So there's two tandem kind of strategies that would work very complementary to each other. Yeah. But by the same token, I really do believe most in cells I've interviewed or talked with, they really do seem to believe it. So I don't know, maybe there are some really chest with this. Yeah, maybe there's some really dark triad in cells that are doing this or dark triad men, because you needn't be an insult to do this, you could just anonymously participate in this. And it's kind of like a free rider concept of your free riding on the effectiveness of their collective misogyny, but not getting any of the bad reputation yourself because it's anonymous.

30:31Yeah, and also not dragging yourself down in your own sort of sense of hope. It only works if you create a sense of consensus in the woman that most men think like this. And if you think about the misogyny of in -sales, it does seem almost like functionally designed And to achieve this, it reminds women of their poor mating choices. Oh, you can't tell that Chad is going to end up beating you up, reminding them that they're going to hit the wall. Their mate Trali is going to expire quite sharply. Reminder basically trying to function to help them lower their standards, which is kind of what you might expect.

31:05If you're getting the cues that you're on cue to be an in -sell, you might activate some of the psychology. on the 4D chest thing, there's an interesting take from Bill Burware, he says, ladies, if you could only support the WNBA, the way that you support a fat chick who's given up on her diet and is no longer a threat to you. And what he's pointing out is a really fucking fascinating insight about intersexual competition, where you could say some less gracious areas of psychology research may say that one of the reasons that women are so in support of the body positivity movement is that it causes certain women to eat their way out of the mating competence, right?

31:42They size themselves up and out. It's like, no, darling, please go on. Like, you look beautiful as you are. Meanwhile, I'm not going to adhere to the same body shape and size that you are, which means that you're at whatever level and I'm going to be at a level which is more typically attractive. And you could see the same if you did have the 5D chess guys in there that like, yeah, women don't want you. They're all sluts. They're gonna break your heart. I lost all of my stuff in a divorce. Yeah. Meanwhile, they can actually go out. It's like, get yourself out of the mating pool other men that are potentially in my competition.

32:11And it's important that you do that by coordinated condemnation. So you have to create the sense of consensus. Oh, it's not just me that thinks like this. Now that might backfire in very modern environments because modern women get enough positive reinforcement probably to coordinate every man in Austin. Right. And 20 DMs a day from people saying, how hot you look, it's probably going to backfire. But imagine in our ancestral environment, if you could create consensus that, oh, hey, every guy in the tribe thinks that you're getting too big for your boots and you're not settling down fast enough or something like that.

32:47I argue with my supervisor about this because he thinks, oh, I don't know, there weren't many single women with two highest standards in our ancestral environment. They were all married up pretty quick. But I think it could be a strategy that modern men pursue. Let's talk about young male syndrome and the male sedation hypothesis, which you guys very kindly put into a paper recently. What commentary, what contribution do you think the show makes to that? It kind of doesn't really speak to it that much, so the male sedation hypothesis suggests that in -sale violence or sexless young men violence isn't as big a threat as we might expect it to be.

33:30you should expect the rise in sexlessness to also correspond with the rise in violent crime. And that doesn't seem to be happening so clearly. And our hypothesis was that while young men are actually spending time catartically or being pacified in online worlds, not just pornography, but online worlds themselves. And the show kind of does the opposite that it suggests, oh, we thought they were safe in their room on their computer. And yes, there are dangers to being online and there are problems associated with that and dangerous content you can access, but you almost certainly are safer in your room rather than out causing trouble in the streets.

34:12Now, and that's not for me to say, oh, I think it's good that young men aren't getting out into the world, but it may be a case of choose your poison that if we didn't have these kind of online outlets, online status games, and that could be buffering against the real world violence. I think so massively. I mean, this is my whole thing that where is all of the in -self violence at? Is a great question to ask, you know? And the show, psychologically, I think, does kind of a poor job of creating... Maybe it's more shocking. It's the thing, you don't know whether it's 70 chess from the writers or if it's not.

34:49And I guess again, that's the beauty of art, right? It's open to interpretation. But if you come from a good family, if you have relatively good grades in school, you've got two real world friends that you hang about with outside of the house. So you're not a stay -at -home basement dweller. You actually have these things. There was some stuff about you tried to do sports and you struggled with that and you didn't have typical masculine pursuits and things. But largely, if you're from a good family and you don't have any of the sort of prototypical predictors of this kind of violence, it suggests that the online influence is a bigger deal.

35:25Look, it could happen to your boy too. You don't know what he's up. You think he's just going and playing tennis on the weekend and hanging out with his friends during the week and his grades in school are good, but this is how nefarious the online content is that it could turn even your boy into a cold blooded. That's my reading of it as well. and interviews of Red from Jack Thorn. He talks about how phones are the new cigarettes. And he does, to be fair to him, he says, 90 % or 99 % of boys who are exposed to this content would never take it as far as Jamie. But he does also, in the same breaths, suggest if you think the mating market is organized in this way, anyone takes it to its logical end.

36:07I'm not thinking, that's a huge leap to make that the only move you have if you buy into Insel ideology is to turn violent to level the playing field. I also remember, I don't think that doing sales talk about 80 -20 that much. They do a little bit to be fair and they increasingly move the goals. I was going to say, I think it would be like 90 -10 or 95 -5. There are more extreme. I've noticed an extreme, um, Martin Bailey tactic among Insel's recently whereby they used to suggest, Well, it's impossible for not very physically attractive men to attract any partners. And a lot of people would just come back to that and say, well, look around you.

36:47What about all these physically unattractive men who have partners? How does that happen? They obviously seem to pull it off. So in cells of now, shifted in what I've seen towards, well, they can't inspire genuine desire in the woman. And that's a very unfalseifiable kind of claim, because who knows if they can or if they can. I had this written down, the concept creep of Insaldom. Yeah, you know, it's the same as people from the right that were pushing back against sort of woke overreach over the last few years. It's like, well, if everything's racism, nothing's racist. It's like, you know, if this minor in discretion, if you joining a different queue, or you know, it's something that's kind of open to interpretation, well, this is my truth.

37:31Yeah. I know that she's not truly, and given that most relationships end up breaking up, it actually does end up kind of predicting the fact, well, look, she never really liked it. And you go, I mean, you've made this point previously, which is, in cells, if the point was simply to get sex, prostitutes exist in every city on the planet. Yeah. That you can go and pay for sex. Yeah. But it's not that it's the desire to be desired, right? The big difference between paying a sex worker and being sexually selected in terms of status, so that's one thing. but you're right, now, in cells now have moved that even if they found themselves into a relationship, their pathology is so extreme that they would never even accept it.

38:09And that may be a future problem we're going to have to look at is what happens to in cells once they form relationships or if they ascend. And I had a little back and forth with the administrator of the main in cell forum, and I wasn't trying to antagonize them. I genuinely was interested in this. How would he know? How would he define an in cell who's ascended, who's no longer an insolute, formed a relationship, how would he know if he has or has not inspired genuine desire? How can anyone know? Was there an answer to that? He just said, pointed to some data that dead bedrooms suggest that this is a massively pervasive problem.

38:45And now his evidence was from a Reddit forum for dead bedrooms, which is self -report, which is sometimes selectively scrupulous about. But I just quickly sent him back evidence about deadbedrooms being not that pervasive of a problem for most people. Most people, when they're in relationships, have sex, I think, on average at least once a week. Manny have more than that. So it's not like there's an issue that that was a five -year -old study. Like five years old in the game. Like, things have changed? Yeah, exactly. Yes. A quick aside, if you're struggling to fall asleep on a nighttime, stay asleep throughout the night, or not waking up feeling rested and revitalized in the morning, momentous is magnesium L3Nate is one of my favorite products, which I use every single night before bed.

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40:01We're heading to livemomentus .com, slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom, a checkout that's live, m -o -m -e -n -t -o -s .com, slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom, a checkout. Anyway, I think one thing that I wanted to find out from you is what have the Insel community made of this series? Like have they had some sort of a reaction to it? Have you seen any commentary? In classic Insel trolling character, they're at first just happy that the 80 -20 rule is being mainstreamed. And they think it will blackpill a lot of people, but I don't think that's very likely. They do see it as a demonization, making them a boogeyman, and perhaps they have a little bit of a point that it may be used as the catalyst to bring in pretty draconian online safety bill measures.

40:56Often very excessive control measures are brought in with the guys of keeping you safe and protect the children. So I think that's their take on it. But other than that, they've just been bringing home the point that there hasn't been this epidemic of violence. They do bang the drum about my mental health findings about in cells, which is also self -report. So it's strange that they believe them when it suits them and the political views of in cells. They believe that, but anything else self -report they don't really buy into. That's interesting. At least there's a degree of defense, as opposed to, is there been any other mannisfree reaction stuff to this?

41:39I haven't seen anything. I was totally offline. When this went out, I was in the middle of a night one, not a night I went on Rogan and then went straight to SF to do the Navale episode. So I was ball -steep in prep. I only got to finish the series last night, like weeks after it had come out. I haven't seen any other reaction from the broader men talking on the internet community. I think it's backfiring in a lot of ways, though. There's a lot of people, the reaction to it is, oh, it's a miscasting the race and really fixating on that racial component. Which I think there is a fair enough argument to make on that front.

42:17I'll raise another argument the genuine epidemic of grooming gang violence. There's a Netflix show about that called Three Girls. Why aren't they showing that in parliament? Why don't they show that in schools? Perhaps too heavy, but you know, that's a genuine thing that happened on a mass scale in cities all around the country. Rather than a fiction suit. No, it's a dramatization, but there is documentaries too. but there's a really good dramatization called Three Girls that depicts it fairly accurately. And this is a genuine issue that verified has happened. So people are pointing out that, people are pointing out that it might be used for draconian overreach in terms of internet safety.

42:58But even on the left, I've seen a lot of people like that petition that I talked about.

43:10That's sparked that. So I think it is backfiring a lot because it's asking a lot of teachers. It's a really knee jerk and it's not research -backed and I think people are really, they see it as a bit of a PR stunt. I mean, I watched LBC this morning and Camille Badenock was raked over the coals because she hasn't seen it yet. And that's, it's kind of just crazy that a politician is being chastised for not watching a Netflix show. That just seems like we're living in Clownland. Yeah, as if this is the most seminal piece of work that you, it's just a window into exactly what's going on. Again, it's people getting confused between this being fiction and this being trading it as a documentary.

43:53I haven't heard anybody talk about even you yet. The guy in the DIY store, in episode four. So he is the final, and I don't know how many people would have picked up on this, but he said like, if you need to put a crowd funder together for good quality legal support, there's lots of us out there that would support him. And that suggests to me, this would be nods to, he's kind of autism -y. He sort of immediately went asked how would I get paint off the side of a van? He sort of goes into this road memorization of exactly what you need. He's got odd eye contact. He seems to be socially very awkward.

44:28He's sort of leaning in his body language is a little bit odd. And I think that he is supposed to be a nod to a much more typical in -cell type person. That's interesting. I didn't pick up on the autism bit, but that's plausible. But definitely it's a nod to the shadowy other part of the internet, the conspiracy theorist. We know that, like, how can there be any, yeah, exactly. There were stab wounds where there's no guy than a quite normal looking teenager to a little bit less of a flattering look than whoever the actor was that played that guy. Yeah, that's what I think the show tried to do was throw out a hint at a lot of themes of these problems associated with online, modern generation that adults are confused about and how intentional that confusion was and how much they meant to depict it that way or whether they are genuinely just confused themselves in some ways.

45:27But that, yeah, that for me, he was meant to point to the shadowy conspiracy theorists, maybe anti -vax type thing over anti -establishment. But one point I made to you when we were coming up the stairs, art has typically been used to subvert the establishment. Stand up comedy, film, music, has had kind of protest political themes. It's very strange to see right from the top, number 10, Prime Minister endorsed art, right to your Netflix. That just seems strange. It seems like a weaponized tool for the government now, and that's kind of new. Do you think it made any interesting points about masculinity?

46:08There's an episode three where he's sort of in this long conversation with a psychiatrist, a criminal psychiatrist. And she's asking a lot about what does a man mean to you, what does masculinity mean to you, what are the typical traits of a man? Do you think that it's important to be so that it's actually successful? Do you think that people think you're good -looking, etc., etc.? What did you think about the commentary on the masculinity question in the modern world? Yeah, I think that they made totally valid points about that, and I think it's very sophisticated that they depicted that the in -cell insult being one that can be levied against you, does put an extra pressure on young men.

46:44Like they made a very important point that the detective says, well, what 13 year old boy isn't an in -sell? But that's the point, is that younger and younger men, maybe because of manosphere content, maybe just increasingly because of porn for a million different reasons, they're feeling that pressure to present as actually successful earlier and earlier and to a greater degree. And that perhaps is a real fear, but again, that's not quantified. We don't know if they're feeling intense pressure to present as sexually successful. That's plausible to me, but I'm not aware of any research on that, but yeah, I mean, somebody would probably criticize me now for asking for citation about everything.

47:23Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is the word, like, in cell a powerful insult? I think so, yes. To derogate anyone's particularly a man's ability to attract that they're preferred sex is a derogation tactic. While it's not, you wouldn't say the same insult towards a woman. It would be the opposite, they're called, they derogate their promiscuity slots. So it absolutely, your ability to attract women is an implicit cue of your status. It's absolutely important and it becomes very concerning to young men as they become a teenager. And like I've said to you lots of times before, the mating market is something you're just thrown into deep end when you become a teenager and you get no training for it, no one guides you, and the only people perhaps offering some semblance of guidance in this arena are the red pill pickup artists guys and they will only train you how to achieve a very shallow superficial short term mating success.

48:22And something I've spoken about before that I'd be interested to get your take on is that I think there's an opportunity to make a credible role model intervention out of the developmental trajectory of a lot of these pickup artists. So take someone like Neil Strauss, Tucker Maxx, even Dan Bilzerian. They have this reliably developmental trajectory that they climb the mountain top. They achieve all the short term mating success, all the fast cars, the money. They get to the top and they realize it's not what I want. It's not fulfilling. And actually, what I want is a flourishing relationship. We didn't have the tape redemption archaea.

48:57Well, maybe I don't know about him, but there's opportunity there because what's very important in these interventions is the credible role model. A guy coming in with a modern take on masculinity, how he's going to show you how it's real masculinity to be a feminist and they can see right through it. They don't buy it. These young guys, what you, but no one could say that about someone like Neil Strauss, who's been there and done that. One, at the game that they're selling and say it's actually hollow. That's a more powerful story to point to in my view. It's complex though. It's way more, I mean, it's great.

49:35There are some guys who climb that mountain top and realize, actually, it's great. I fucking love it up here. Yeah, exactly. Come and join me. Yeah. Join my course. Yeah, I, I mean, you know, Neil's been on the show, Tucker's been on the show, Dan's been on the show, Andrew's been on the show, even though I didn't publish it. A lot of these guys, they've got very interesting stories. I think Tucker's got a wonderful arc to him. He'll kneel's arcs a little bit more complex. But I wonder whether, I wonder what the story that a young boy, young man, would take away from that. What my body is telling me is I want more, I want more sex, I want more attention, I want more status I won't want women to like me, I'm uncertain about myself.

50:18And you're saying that I need to like transcend this thing that I've owned this dynamic that I've only just begun to become aware of. Yeah. I feel like I mean, look, some guys mature very quickly. My ex -business partner from when I was running Nightlife met his to -be wife in the start of second year. I remember dropping him off outside of a house when we were 19. They were together for six years, got married, dog, dogs, kid, kid, you know, and now they're 37 and still married together. Yeah. So, you know, it's some people just kind of get that sense of where they're going. They have that level of emotional sort of self -awareness.

50:57I thought that was something very important that was hinted at in the show too. In the final episode, the father, Stephen Graham's character, they tell the story of how he met Jamie's mother, the wife. And Stephen Graham, I hope he won't mind me saying, he's not exactly the most physically attractive guy. I think he's pretty short like me and not exactly Chad, what would we say? But he describes being very, very funny and very popular in school. And he met his wife there and they stayed together. And that's a much simpler time, right, compared to what Jamie's dating environment and he's graduating into from being a young man.

51:35It's way more complex. And I think a lot of adults are kind of floundering because it's so novel to them. Yeah, I mean, that confusion, like I say, that there is some real poetic irony in the fact that the reception of the show has as much confusion about the messaging of the show as the adults in the show do and that everybody is just, So, one interesting point I guess is, how did it have been a mixed race family? How did it have been somebody from a broken home? How did it have been somebody from an obvious, sort of, underclass background? I think the headlines would be very different, especially if it had been a black boy that had done this to, especially a white girl, it would have been uproar.

52:21This would have been playing into racist tropes. This would have been sort of completely unacceptable. And then if it was, this is one thing Rob Henderson said that would have been really interesting if they'd done it this way, if the boy had come from a single father home. Interesting. That would have been super, super fascinating. Okay, so what does this mean? Oh, well, we're now getting into sort of role models, young men's role models within the house, that you have one that isn't absent, but actually have one that stuck about more, maybe you would say, in some ways than a father that stays in an intact home.

52:52Yeah, there's lots of different directions that could have gone with it. But yeah, there's a lot of more questions than answers after the show. And for me, I'm going to turn it real art critic now. But for me, there were too many un -fired check -offs guns. Are you familiar with check -offs gun? No. So check -offs is this Russian author, and he says, if there's a gun in the first scene on the wall, by the end of the third act, it has to be fired. Otherwise, what's the point in having it? So for me, there were elements like The young black girl who was acting out, the friend of Katie, a lot of hints at her storyline and would it be significant?

53:27Didn't really go anywhere. Where did Jamie get the knife? Didn't really come into play that much. Was he seen going home? A lot of things just kind of unanswered. But yeah, whether that was strategic by the writers or not, I don't know. Hmm. Well, I think looking at the motivation of this kid to kill the girl, if you removed the couple of scenes that refer to online manuscript content, what you end up with is a boy who stabs his bully. Yes, yeah. And that was bold of the show to depict the victim as the bully and specifically about somehow culpable, or at least initiating that because up until the point of which Jamie confronts her and has an iPhone in, she's in the wrong.

54:14Right, yeah. And again, there is no amount of bullying that justifies getting stabbed. a fictional girl being stabbed by a fictional boy in a fictional series. For either right. Who just a thing? But what you've got is a girl, what seems to be a kind of popular girl, coordinating an online bullying attack for a lower status boy. Yes. Yeah. And that's what I mean when I say it's plausible that this perceived slight about a such an important feature of your masculinity in front of all your friends online and they get the ability to ratchet up that the like on it. So he gets the perception, wow, everyone's believing what she's saying, I have to sort this out.

54:55And it just, he clumsily had a night. He made my masculine it. Yes. And he initially tried to make a play for her romantically when she was feeling low. But yeah, that's what I mean. This idea of young men receiving a perceived slight and having to sort it out, that actually is a plausible trigger for a lot of young male violence. Now, young male violence towards young women is the lowest category of all young male violence. It's typically young men against other young men. Very rare for an actual instance like Jamie. And certainly there's been no instance like Jamie inspired by ManaSphere, nothing like that.

55:32Yeah, well, I mean, the young male syndrome and sort of male sedation thing of, at some point there will be some incident, which can be referred back to, whether it's in one month or ten months or ten years, there will be something that could be sort of related back to them. And the sort of figure pointing to Sandra complex can come out appropriately. Rather than the show, perhaps maybe being gullible and inspiring something like that, they'll probably say, we told you so. And let's get this straight. There is not like a hidden epidemic of in -cell violence that we're just not picking up on. The media are all over this stuff.

56:10I told you before coming on air, the reasons why in -cell content is so captivating to us. It takes a lot of... Yeah, why do people cast so much about in -cells? Yes, this is an important point. And I just recently on the back of the show, wrote to a former professor of mine, Alberto Acherbi, who has this model of cognitive attraction rules. So types of content that are really, really attractive to humans and Incells ticks every box and we're hoping to write a paper on that because it's important to understand why this content is so appealing and why we put it all over the News all the time so the point that made me get onto this was the media are not missing Incell violence they're on it anything that's even loosely connected in cell violence.

56:53They're connected in it So for example, I saw that Southport killing I think was reported on that But the parents said they have fears about how Andrew Tate, the headline was, parents fear that Andrew Tate may have been influential in the killing. And I read the article, an important kind of sentence, it says, there is no evidence of him accessing and rotate content, or this being an influential factor in doing what he done. So the media is already clamoring for in -cell violence. So back to the attraction rules. So the specific rules for attractive content, it has to be about sex. It has to cue the idea of a threat.

57:35It has to be minimally counterintuitive. So for Incells, the idea that this group of men on the internet forming an identity around such a peculiar aspect, it has to activate the tribal other psychology, be very negative. All these rules in cell violence, it also piggybacks on and are evolved protective instinct about women. It's often framed as the potential violence and harm against women. Steve Stewart Williams has a really cool paper on the harm hypothesis and he talks about all the women are wonderful effect findings that we have that both sexes seem to just prefer women, have pro women biases in a whole host of different ways.

58:16Sentencing, just general preferences, is really encourage people to read their paper, but this, that's an example of it. The insul, the attention, the grabbing nature of insul narratives piggybacks on that as well. That's why this story's made such a splash. It takes all the boxes, it's attractive to us. Temperature plays a huge role in how well you sleep, but traditional bedding often falls short. Just add the brand new pod for ultra to your mattress like a fitted sheet and it will automatically cool down or warm up each side of your bed up to 20 degrees plus it's got integrated sensors that track your sleep time in your sleep phases and your HIV and your snoring and your heart rate with 99 % accuracy.

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59:29A checkout that's e -i -g -t sleep .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. Is this turning into a moral panic? I think so to some degree, the extent to which I'm quite happy that the show is being used to spark a dialogue and all that, but the extent to which it's being taken seriously and being used as a catalyst for what seemingly is policy change, that's pretty troubling than the extent to which it seems like it's not research -backed and how the government seem to be latching on to this creative piece of performance art rather than the research, clamoring to charities who as far as I'm aware haven't done research in this area either.

1:00:13It just all seems a little bit much and just the machine that has kicked into gear in terms of promoting it so fast is very disconcerting. Yeah, yeah. It's a surprise, certainly I think. I don't know, I mean, the way that it shot, the one shot thing is really fascinating. And because of that, you don't get as much content per minute as you would if it was quick cut because you have to track where the camera's going. And that means that there's way more check -offs guns lying around, there's unclosed loops all over the storyline. But I, similar to you, I'm like, okay, so what are the policies? If the policies were something similar to what Australia's got, so social media ban for into 16s, I don't think that's a particularly bad idea.

1:01:02I think I'd probably be in support of that. Or at least fund more research into it. There's no real consensus. I mean, John Tinhai, I don't know, you've had him on, has made a massive splash with the social media kind of findings, but they're not uncontroversial within that kind of thing. He gets pushed back a lot. A lot, right? So it's not a question. What's the current state of that? How much do you know about it? I'm not as familiar. I know Christopher Ferguson had some really interesting meta -analyses finding small or null effects. Theoretically very plausible idea, all these reasons why social media would be harmful.

1:01:37The empirical data is less clear. But yeah, it's worth looking into more and don't make knee -jerk policy decisions on it until you have a bit more consensus in the science rather than I'd never say settle science but you can have consensus. What would be some of the worst policy proposals that you could think of? I don't know, I just think I'm pretty libertarian in my sensibilities that I'm not keen for this idea of bands, banning phones and I don't know, maybe bands of the phones while they're in school could be okay but I think the horse is kind of bolstered on that. I don't know, I'm fucked.

1:02:17There's a, I remember I brought this up. Maybe a year ago, I think I told Rogan about this where it was like, they've had to ban vapes in schools as if that wasn't something that kind of should have already been banned. But I mean, you and me both went to school when I think I got my first Nokia bullshit at four to 15. I don't, there's no way I would have even taken it to school. Yeah, like I wasn't texting anybody off of it. I wasn't like using it to call people. Yeah, so Yeah, I think I just guess what the interventions the danger is it brings a lot of attention to it that might not have already been there like we look at those figures of how Popular is and rotate among young people fairly low and so you potentially have made it really cool to be popular to be into this stuff And that's a that's a question.

1:03:10I would have guessed Has anybody looked at why Andri Tate isn't more popular among young boys? And this isn't mean so I can't believe it. But I don't know, I get the sense, what was it like 12, 13 % of white boys? Maybe they don't resonate with the messaging. So much, maybe they're way more mature than I give those sort of young kids credit for. maybe there's sufficiently immature that that messaging doesn't yet land, that like Bugatti's and Sparkling Water and the bitches and stuff like isn't really hitting home. So that's kind of interesting. But I guess I'd just be reluctant to come down too hard and condemn any type of intervention, but I would condemn the knee jerk non -research -backed interventions.

1:04:02That any interventions that are even trialed should be informed by research and rolled out fairly slowly, don't have every school in the UK now has to follow this intervention path. That's almost unheard of. Yeah. I mean, the coordination, thankfully, I think we're protected at least in the UK, in that the government is so useless that they wouldn't be able to get this together. So the rollout just straight away wouldn't happen. I mean, there was a healthy masculinity. Was this thing that me and George from the Tin Man were talking about where they'd, And schools had realized, or at least some of the people that were talking about this, had realized that using the word toxic masculinity had kind of become a meme of itself, kind of like referring to something as feminism, when it covers a whole range of sins, or toxic feminism or whatever.

1:04:52Toxic masculinity was used, so they changed being against toxic masculinity to being for healthy masculinity. Being pro something is probably more galvanizing than against. Maybe the problem is it's the exact same set of policies. And like being pro healthy masculinity was just being anti what they called toxic masculinity. Yeah. So I'll be very interested. I don't even think that the wire young boys struggling and where are all of the good male role models at conversation has got off the ground yet. Yeah. You know, I was listening to an interview with the director Thorn. Or is he one of the writers?

1:05:31So the writer, the writer, sorry. And it was one of those classic BBC channel, like Radio 5 type interview shows, went on for about half an hour. And one of the ladies that was on the panel said, you know, there's a lot of women that feel quite upset about this conversation around how men are struggling because they're thinking and they had to bleep it. It was the only swear word that was said in the entire interview, which is about 30 minutes long. Fucking hell, you know, we've only just had a bit of attention paid to us. How long ago was me too? And I'm like, 2012, 2014, and the world moves pretty quick.

1:06:07So it was almost the end of the year or some either. Yeah, the attention that's being paid to boys that are falling behind, somehow takes away from girls that are outstripping them. So that just really gave me another, I don't know, every time that I think ground has been broken and that sort of progress has been made, and that maybe we're getting a really nicely balanced sense of what, how the world sees the struggles of everybody. Right? But specifically with my interests, those boys and men. And every time I'm like, I mean, it's just, it's self -evident. Like, you even look at, I would bet if you look at six form colleges in Rollmans, and you don't even go to universities.

1:06:48Look at six form colleges. You're going to start to see that sex ratio skewed. I would imagine it's going to be 55, 45, maybe 60, 40, something like that. By the end of this decade, it's going to be two thirds to one third. Yeah. A women to men on every pretty much campus. I think you raised an important point. I do believe in the positive male role model thing that getting that conversation off the ground could be effective. And there are good ones out there. I'd count you among the good male role models out there. You encourage people to quit alcohol for a thousand days. You're getting people to sperm count checked.

1:07:18You're doing force for good, right? But have you had your own stun? Not yet, I'm on the case. The girlfriend is, her husband is jumping away. Yeah, it's not the positive role, right? But I do think these interventions, they need to be real. So I'll give an example. I just watched a debate about this topic in an Irish debate channel on primetime RTE. And there was two very polarized depictions of masculinity. There was one guy who was very, very traditional masculinity, who described masculinity to him as being protector and protect the women in his life and very, very kind of old school, but not kind of crazy stuff.

1:07:59And then you had the very modern guy in a man -born, who's a teacher, and he literally said, and it was kind of a comedic incident. He said, I hope that masculinity doesn't mean that I'm expected to take care of the women in my life and protect them. And it scans to the audience. Very pretty girl. It just goes, it was like you couldn't write comedy like that. But that channel shows there has to be somewhere in between, but they have to be credible. They have to be seen as credible to young people. I don't think the guy with the man bun speaking about this softer gentler masculinity is gonna inspire a guy who's already down the rabbit hole of Andrew Tate.

1:08:37I did, I was encouraged to hear Scott Galloway, who I think speaks a lot of sense on this topic. He was on with Stephen Bartlett and the diary of the CEO. And he speaks about that idea that I talk about the dating market. You're untrained for it and you get no coaching. And he speaks about the need for credible male role models. And that's something like sexual education in schools. As far as I know, it doesn't include how to actually become attractive to your preferred sex. Yeah, I can tell you what the urethra is, but I have no idea what how mating dynamics work. Right. So maybe there's pretty benign how to build a dating app that's appealing to the other sex.

1:09:13type of workshop. How did you agree with somebody in a partnership? Yeah. How did I build a flourishing relationship? I mean, I think, you know, so much of the modern, whether it's cosmopolitan or L magazine or whatever that they're talking about, women's sex positions, you know, whether it's the sort of new flurry that we're seeing of attachments and childhood issues that are coming up and how to heal these things and what anxious attachment. And a lot of that, I think, is providing adults with the education they would have given as children. Yes, very important. And I thought it was bold of Galway to make this point.

1:09:49He said that it was in his own personal experience, learning and someone telling him that actually developing yourself as a man, achieving more stages, getting an education, is succeeding in work, that that actually can help you be more attractive to women. That's a very empowering message. There's nothing more motivating to young men than doing this will help you be more attractive to women It will be in school every day I was gonna say if you're looking to try and fix the neat problem of boys dropping out of school Remind them that it doesn't even need to be for their education It doesn't even need to be for their ownings.

1:10:24Yeah, but it can be for their future partner and their sort of eligibility to the women Absolutely. Yeah, but the problem is when you Attach the goal of becoming attractive to women to any sort of male self -development And it gives this impression that it's misogynistic. I've spoke to you about Barack Obama's autobiography where he said he was reading different types of literature to attract different types of women. And that's kind of intuitive to young men is get the goal, get the girl, you kind of develop yourself, you succeed at a contest and you get the prize. Maybe people think that framing is very misogynistic.

1:10:59I don't know. I think if you don't use that type of motivation to young men, you're going to lose them to the manosphere. Yeah, I... There's something odd, I guess, that what women are supposed to be looking for is an honest signal of who you really are. So when I first started working on my diction for the show, I worked at the speech coach. And I remember thinking I was like kind of surprised at the reaction of some of my friends when I started doing it. I'm like, hey, I'm working with this speech coach. Got a TEDx talk coming up later this year and I'm going to start doing this thing, like why?

1:11:34You speak fantastic. I'm like, well, I think I can speak sort of more accurately, there's certain conventions when it comes to communication that I think I'm going to be able to improve on. So, well, just make sure that you don't lose your character. And I was like, it took ages. It took like three or four years for me to actually realize what they meant. What they mean is there is a sense of self very closely tied to the way that you speak, to the presentation of your thoughts. And for some reason, getting something like a speech coach doesn't feel disingenuous, but it feels like you're changing something that's very sort of inelien connected to who you really are.

1:12:14Okay. But for instance, if you were to say, I'm a saxophone player, and I take lessons to become better at saxophone, and someone stepped in and said, but what about your true real saxophone ability? Don't be worried about, you know, What if they get rid of that? And you go, well, they're objectively sort of better and worse ways to do this. Nobody looks at their saxophone playing ability or their football kicking ability as sort of a sense of self. So they're able to improve on it in this kind of a way. And I think that there's an equivalent when it comes to the way that men attract women. I think that what you're supposed to be doing is having a natural outgrowth, which is a reliable signal of your real humor, your real charisma, your real conscientiousness, and if you game this system by becoming better at these things through a conscious process, that actually makes your signal less reliable.

1:13:06Yeah, so you and I spoke about this white pill vision of a dystopian future where young men use AI to track themselves to be better. But I wonder whether that's another downstream unintended consequence that the very fact of having to practice will be seen as lowering your status and it would be seen up about it. Well, that's it. Practice and the rock or something I spoke with Elliott about on his show was that it will come across as a bit more inauthentic. It's kind of like when people use the tricks of saying your name too much or you know, it does come across as that inauthentic. That's an interesting kind of perspective.

1:13:43But yeah, those are the kind of brave new worlds we're going to find ourselves in. But yeah, it's interesting that I wonder whether where women or people in particular are aware that sexual selection is that filtering effect and they don't want too much artificial training on it. So you can get a low -mate value male. They almost have an ache about him learning how to improve his attractiveness acumen. Yeah, but it's so strange. I just want to sort of sit on this a little longer and try and work on what are the areas in which this doesn't matter because is it the same for a puny guy to go to the jiktos?

1:14:22That was me when I went to university. I was like 65. I remember when I was 20 years old and I was living in Edinburgh. I spent about six months in Scotland running doing my placement year with my business partner. I remember the day that I hit 70 kilos. I was like, I am fucking huge. Remembering that now I'm close to sort of 86. So I've gained since then probably a kilo a year, pretty much linearly. And I remember thinking that's, but then if you look at it, you go, okay, well, what about your true 65 kilo self? You know, going to the gym in many ways is sort of gaming that. You can even start to adjust facial structure, the thickness of your neck.

1:15:00Yeah. As a really big impact, I think on how attractive a lot of men look, that sort of much more, yeah, that's what about when your beard comes in? What if you die your beard? Yeah. What girls can die that have? What about girls that wear makeup? But there's no one would look at a girl that wears makeup and say, that's an unfair signal, it's just most societally accepted. But then we also see those videos of surprisingly normal -looking girls that turn into supermodels, you know, the transformation, and they painted on with all of this sort of stuff. Really good point. I saw on Twitter this morning, actually, an account, I don't know his real name, actually, but nuance and joy are often post some really interesting stuff.

1:15:37and he spoke about how looks -maxing actually might be more realistic for a lot of unattractive young men than fundamentally changing your personality like a lot of people kind of think oh, it's not all about looks in cells You can just cultivate a real winning personality. That's not that easy at the best of times It's a lot easier when you're perceived as attractive anyway Oh, you lead with the way that you look lead with the way you look and you can actually probably like the gym for example Unfortunately, your height isn't one you can change much. But yeah, you can fundamentally change your look.

1:16:10You can hire a stylist to kick you out in the right gear. The gym can transform you. So it actually is plausible that you could improve your mid -value by looks, looks maxing more than changing your personality. There's not enough a lot of personality change interventions that reliably work. Neuroticism is one you can slightly change with the rest of your life. If you're talking about status as well, I would say that it's not easy to acquire, but it's not impossible either. And really, one of the main things there is just consistency. That if you keep hammering away on anything for long enough, you'll probably accrue some degree of it.

1:16:43And if we're going to say that status is a non -insignificant predictor of how successful a man's going to be in the mating market, what you end up with is, well, for women, it's just like youth and fertility cues, right? Like it's sort of the typical beauty stuff, which is much more fucking ruthless. Like, yeah, sure, you can use enhancement and cosmetic surgery and stuff like that to kind of stave off this entropy. But for a guy, I would say that if you were a low -value male, you are in a better position to increase your likelihood of becoming sort of higher -value than if you're a woman. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because, frankly, I'm dependent on it for the last three years.

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1:18:39That's what it is. It's the young male syndrome is I'll go to war. I'll go do whatever. Take a massive risk for a win big and change my trajectory. But yeah, you're right. But it's interesting that the mating market is there's a certain type of person that wants to pretend it's completely opaque. And even when I use language like the mating market, people say, oh, it's not a market, it doesn't, that's icky to do that. You are selected in it, you compete in it, you're chosen a long -rank order, you have value in it, it's completely behave like the market trades. Yeah, I think, you know, your point about masculinity and sort of where we're at with that is a really good one.

1:19:18And this is something that I had this debate, it never got shown, I know where the, I got flown all the way to Ketmar. I think I was talking to you. I remember, yeah, yeah, yeah. We did a prep for it. I did this big debate in Qatar. I flew from LA to Qatar, which is 16 and a half hours and was put up for a bunch of days. And I did this debate and it's really interesting. And all this stuff happened. Never got shown or at least hasn't been shown yet. And in it, my interlocutor mentioned that he felt like masculinity was in two types of a box. And if you have two types of a box, it meant that somebody like him who was into performing arts and dance when he was a young gay Lebanese man, which I was like, just want to kind of recognize that's probably not an easy circle to square somehow, that it didn't allow him to conform to any version of masculinity and his goal was to blow the box open.

1:20:08And as with the racism question, as with the misogyny question, if everything is masculinity, then nothing is masculinity. It's really a good point. And what you're saying to young men, if you say, well, you can define masculinity for yourself. That is the exact same as you get no guidance on how to be a person. Because defining from first principles, discarding the wisdom of fucking thousands of years and going, yeah, work this one out for yourself. It's like, hey, I don't have to do that when it comes to tying my shoes. I didn't have to come up with my own knot to tie my shoes with. I'm trying to give a charitable interpretation of how you would achieve what he's going far with still providing some kind of guardrails and guidance for young men.

1:20:54So maybe something like positive masculinity is locus of control or agency. So that gives space for whatever your vision of success is, masculinity is your ability to cultivate enough agency to achieve that. That includes everyone. That's true, but there's only one very small portion of a much a bigger map that you want to get in there. You need to be about mass, maybe about competition, what about the need for aggression, the need for protection. I had a comment actually on my Instagram, this was this mother who watched my episode with George the Tin Men with her daughter and tried to suggest that you need to train men to not be competitive with each other.

1:21:34And I was thinking, well, first of all, women select on status a lot. So there's no point lying to them about that. human's form status hierarchies, it's an absolute crime to convince someone that they don't. Imagine what a hamstring you give your son if you tell him you don't need to compete in any way with others in society. I think you're really setting them up for a loss. Something tells me that the woman who commented on your Instagram does not have a son. Right. She may have a different intuition if you had a son. Yeah. Because if you had a son, you go, well, I can do the whole luxury beliefs thing.

1:22:12a rules for the, but not for me and my progeny. But I, well, you can do, you can do, you can permanently fucking tie your son's hand behind his back and say, yeah, you don't need to compete, you don't need to be bothered about that. But yeah, just the fundamental point is that if there's any positive masculinity to be pushed, we have to go post -walk on this. The days of describing Jim Brol culture as being far right, bright wing, that has to just die. We have to go for whatever the opposite of that is. And that's just never gonna catch on. Yeah, wait, you know, we've had a bunch of artistic interpretations of this.

1:22:48Was it Don't Worry Darling? Oh, yeah, yeah. How to character that was based on this in -sell god, your in -sell king or something. They've done beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Red Skull as well, you remember? Yeah. Yeah, so we've I've had a few of these and I do kind of get the sense that Tate is perhaps a slightly orthogonal successor to that position that you have a group that is traditionally in a position of preference and authority and some degrees of privilege. But you know, that Christine Embararticle from about 18 months ago just fucking hits the nail on the head with this way. She says modern and men are being made to pay for the sins of a patriarchy they no longer feel apart of.

1:23:34And you think, well, who is it? If you're going to use the Andrii Tates of the world to say, look at how they, all of this money and all of this power and all of this eternity with their brothers and kin. And you think, well, yeah, but what about the 14 million men in America who are like out of a Nicholas Eberstatt sort of silent generation of worthless men, 50 % of which are spending almost every day on some form of recreational or Prescription drug, you know, these guys and then another thing that George talks about, you know We've got suicide stats the number of men the number of more men that killed themselves from 1999 until about 2020 was half a million right more than women Yeah, right?

1:24:21So we would have had the same number of men that died in world war two here had that have not happened But even when you look at the suicide statistics, one of the things that's missing is deaths of despair overdose that are like, was this a, you know, did he just take a bit much on purpose or not? And a lot of the time that isn't that's just a accidental death. It's a drug overdose as opposed to a, you know, like the amount of death by cop death by drug. But yeah, checking out of society for omitence and purposes and dying at the end of the way. Yeah, that's really, it's really sad and harrowing figures.

1:24:52But I hate when people hear those and make it the zero -some response that you have to say well What about women and they're only getting their Attention taken away from them. We have to stop that zero -some thinking for sure Hmm a Jake Paul and Logan Paul hit the limits of the manosphere Again, do they this is demeaning the term manosphere the term manosphere and the term in cell are being Demeaned and bastardized left, right, and center and it becomes no longer useful It's Jake Paul who in cells and red pill pick up our disguise, lampoon him for being too much of a cocked wife guy, right? Is it Jake or Logan?

1:25:30Both at what once engaged ones married. Right. They're lampooned by the certain corners of the manosphere. So it speaks to this total lack of familiarity with the nuances of the manosphere, but yeah, just quick to put it on a headline. Wait, it seems like a term now that has sort of firmly got its... Do you know where it came from? Do you know where the original origin of it was? I don't, but it's a pretty nebulous term now. It catches all... Like, to include in it, in cells, pick up artists, so different from the other. Andrei Tey, men's right activists. They're just so different in meaningful ways that it needs to be discarded.

1:26:07I think I heard Richard Reath saying that the term needs to be discarded, and I'd probably agree with them. Dude, we can't get rid of toxic masculinity. You're not getting rid of the manosphere. It literally just became popular. Right, yeah. Three weeks ago. And we're in the academic manosphere. The academic manosphere, right here. Yeah, yeah. Look, I am fucking really sort of close to this. It's interesting. I've been thinking for a while, we know, whatever, fucking an hour and 20. And I can talk about my deepest darkest plans. Been thinking for a while about pitching a limited series

1:26:41documentary about masculinity. I think I mentioned this to you briefly that I think protector, provider, payer of attention, or at least provide a procreate, a payer of attention will be an interesting sort of three part to do it. And the reason being you would be able to really tap into what's happening with men in work, socio -economically, what's happening with mating, and what's happening with sort of personality and the role of men and overall like payer of attention would be the third one. The reason I don't like protector is that role was outsourced to the police like fucking 500 years ago.

1:27:16Like you don't really need that anymore. And this has been something that's like been bandied around I guess internally for a little while and I'm like, fuck, that's gonna be really cool. Great team of people that I'd love to film it where if I could some of the best documentaries on the planet. You've got all the tools. And now I'm like, how much fucking unwinding, How much of Netflix's adolescence am I going to have to refer to in order to be able to get us to the stage? Like basically, is this a net positive or a net negative? And I In real world impact, I genuinely would probably say net negative.

1:27:53I think I Don't know what it's drawing attention to. Like it's drawing attention to the plight of young boys Well, is it the plight or is it the danger? Because if it's throwing attention to the danger, the dangers are mischaracterized. And if it's throwing attention to the plight, it's unsympathetic. Oh, it's throwing attention to the risk of the online ecosystems. You go, well, it didn't close those loops particularly well. Now, it's throwing attention to the risks of childhood bullying. It's like, well, the blame wasn't placed at the feet of the victim. And if it was about bullying, then why would you leave the...

1:28:24So, fantastic pieces of art, because obviously it's generating all of this intrigue and all of the loops are open. I think Stephen Graham's quoted as even saying, I just hope it sparks conversation. And that's fantastic. But the problem is if the conversations can never fucking agree on what anybody takes away from it, you end up kind of just tying up mind cycles. Yeah. It's not like I'm coming to a fusion. A positive male role model like yourself can't be unanimously agreed upon to be championed. That's right, unanimously agreed on me. I mean, I don't know. That guy who quit drinking for a thousand days does all this positive stuff doesn't lie to young men is earnest is seen as credible.

1:29:05I don't know what other kind of CV you'd need for this role, but you know, I spoke to Rogan about this the other week and said, uh, but that might be enough to dam you right going on Rogan. Oh yeah, I'm doing a lot of it. Yeah, it's what I was killed by association. I'm sure I'm only going to go on the podcast that could reach the most amount of young men in the world. Yeah, that maybe influenced the outcome of the US election. And it looked, I think it's very easy to castigate and sort of smear entire groups, especially when you've got a cool term that's kind of very badly defined and pretty nebulous like minus fear.

1:29:41And I'm sure, you know, to fucking fly the flag for the other side, I'm sure that well -meaning feminists like Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, Frey or India, all of whom I guess would consider themselves some version of some kind of feminist would hate the fact that they're lumped in with a bunch of fucking screeching blue head, you know, like zero some man hating people who don't care about women all that much or maybe some of them aren't even women. I don't think that they would appreciate that either. Actually, that's an interesting one. I wonder whether there's any women that are part of the manosphere.

1:30:15Oh, I wonder. You know what I mean? Because you I mean, I mean, the original red pill documentary was Cassie, yeah, it's a bit of a Cassie. I feel like that might be a porn star, isn't it? Cassie something, for sure, had the red pill documentary, which was about her investigations into the men's rights activism corners, and really powerful documentary. Well, wasn't the term in Sal originally coined by a female as well? Yeah, absolutely. A lesbian woman, actually. And it's obviously... Goddamn it, women, just give it up. I mean, give it up more easily. You're making the women's suffer, you're making the men's suffer.

1:30:50One final point, well, I think of it, is on the idea of role models and I've said they need to be credible. One really important source to look to, I think, is a positive in -cell forum, in -cell exit. It's full of stories of former in -cells who navigated their way out of it and how they're managing their new relationships and all the problems that go with that. That's very rarely spoken about. It gets a lot fewer bits of attention is paid to that. And it's very important. That's cool. Have you looked at, I think it's, Married Red Pill? I haven't. I want to say Married Red Pill. I might have got that wrong.

1:31:26But it's basically guys in committed, I think. I think I might have, it might have got totally toxic and fucking useless. But guys in committed relationships using insights from EP and mating dynamics to kind of enhance their relationship. That sounds fucking great to me. That sounds like a book, Jeffrey Miller would write. That is like correct. I think that's the next thing that Jeffrey should do. Because for the people that never read it, because it was criminally uncirculated, mate to become the man women want, is probably the best men's dating advice book of all time. Yeah, I think. And Jeffrey used to run like an online call -in show with Tucker Maxx and Karen Parallel, who used to be an R -lab.

1:32:06So those were like the early days of trying to help young men. 2012, 2014, there's a huge podcast you can go back and listen to all of those. But I think that what would be, especially in this sort of new era, an equivalent that's like those insights, but for long term relationships, I know that Diana's got how to train your boyfriend coming out soon, which I guess is the sort of female to male equivalent of that. But yeah, I think that a reverse version of male to female thing, if that would just be like, it would be great. And Jeffrey, to be fair to him, he's been at the cold face of trying to wrestle evolutionary psychology away from red pill or darker corners of the manosphere for the best part of a decade.

1:32:48So, you know, kudos to him on that one. With limited or zero success. Just one other point, while I remember it, we recently had a paper out that was kind of a white pill type paper where we found that in cells massively overestimate the animosity that society has for them and underestimate the sympathy. Now caveat that wasn't true for feminist women, they actually were pretty accurate at detecting the amount of animosity they hold them in, which is perhaps understandable. But that's kind of important points to show, is like that society does have sympathy for these people. But in that paper, I had to write, we must take this all with a pinch of salt because because in cells do encounter a lot of hostility online.

1:33:34So take, for example, the amount of them that report to have childhood bullying, 60 % plus compared to roughly 30 % in the general population. Now, it's hard to know, you know, you take everything in cells, say, with a pinch of salt, they're very victim oriented, they're very rejection sensitive. But you can look online now for real examples of the bullying. So, for example, another forum is Insel Tier, which is literally a forum for bullying in cells. It literally recruits people to share stories of ridiculing in cells. And in cells are very performatively antagonistic and try and encourage criticism online, for sure.

1:34:15But this forum got so bad that they had to instantiate a rule. I wrote this in our paper that they had to instantiate a rule saying no more encouraging of suicide for in cells, please. That's rule number one in this forum. So they do encounter, right? Really, real hostility. So, yeah. Yeah, it's a real, the term in cell is one that I don't think anybody is ever going to call you out for using. Right. You know, it's the perfect balance of comedy, ridiculousness, and cutting. Yeah. You know what I mean? I can use it to advertise that they could never be seen that way. Oh ridiculous. So I would never call myself in fail.

1:34:59Yeah, I think actually Cucked is probably the exact same, but both of those are around men. And I don't know, I don't know if there's an equivalent for women that would work in the same way. You couldn't call a girl a slut. You're gonna get a lot of pushback against that. Like who the fuck do you think you are calling her a slut? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, people can't really mean about it. So I've given talks in academic settings where I bring up the suicideality figures and honestly, some scholars in the audience, depending on the type of group, come back to me with almost, coming so close to saying who cares, are almost, you know, and they never, like the idea that mental health can explain the misogyny because, but that's true.

1:35:46Mental health looks ugly sometimes, really poor mental health looks really ugly. It looks like Kanye West acting out, right? That's poor mental health. It looks it doesn't look nice and warm and fluffy Of opening up about your feelings and getting in touch with your masculinity in a more healthy way Yes, it could but more often for young men looks like aggression lashing out and that's a great bitterness Yeah, yeah So it's a kind of a naivety I would say for people to think that the misogyny can't be explained at least partially by the mental health William Costella ladies and gentlemen, William you're great.

1:36:18I appreciate the fuck out of you Where should people go? Don't only keep up to date with everyone. I'm still spending far too much time on X, so that's the main place I'm hanging out these days at Costello William, but if you're interested in our academic work, go to my research gate profile or my Google scholar and our email mail me and I'll send you whatever with that. Fuck me, we need to get you a website, dude. So bad. Maybe before next time. Yes. Appreciate you. Very good.