1275: Incels | Skeptical Sunday

25:22His parents hired life coaches for him and counselors, all kinds of stuff. You know, he had all kinds of family support. This is 100 % not an example of someone who did not have any opportunity to lead a normal life. He had everything going for him. Everyone was trying to help him out before he decided he was going to kill people. Was he part of the incel community in any meaningful way? I mean, it's one thing to be a crazy guy with a manifesto. I'm assuming he had one of those because rampage killers usually do, especially narcissistic ones. Yeah, he did. He wanted to put women in concentration camps for artificial insemination and create a world where most men did not even know about the existence of women.

26:02That's so disturbing, to say the least. And so weird. So weird. Like, this thing triggers me because I can't have a girlfriend. Thus, let's put them in concentration camps and dot, dot, dot, handmaid's tale, the whole thing. It's like, and you think about that as a normal guy and you're like, nah, part of like the highlight of my day is hanging out with my beautiful daughter and my wife. and like seeing young couples having a good time and like looking at attractive women and being like, wow, life is great. Isn't it amazing over? Like, and he's the complete opposite of that. It's scary that there's people like that out there, honestly.

26:35Yeah, it's also kind of comical. I mean, it's like, this is something out of a William Burroughs novel. On the one hand, yeah, it's super twisted, but on the other hand, it's sort of like darkly hilarious that he put this in a manifesto as if this had like this is not going to happen right you know this is never going to happen right right and he's sitting there you know like he's ted kaczynski the unabomber right there's your unabomber reference for the episode writing this brilliant well-crafted deeply thought out manifesto that's what he thinks he's doing here and it's like it is disturbing on one level but But on another level, it's like this is funny because it's so bizarre.

27:19It sounds made up. Yeah. It's like if you were writing this guy as a character in a movie, I'd be like, eh, it's a little on the nose. Right. It wouldn't sound believable. If this was an episode of Law & Order, you would be like, man, they went a little overboard this week. But then it's Law & Order and you're like, eh, typical Law & Order episode. But anyway, who writes these things? But he was connected to the incel community, right? He wasn't just some lone nut who couldn't get laid and finally snapped because of a host of psychological problems totally unrelated to his lack of success with women.

27:47Yeah, he posted a lot on PUA hate, which you mentioned. And Forever Alone. Both of those are Intel forums. Great branding on Forever Alone. Surprised that domain was available. Although then again, who wants to name their company that? So there's that. He bizarrely reached out for support at the bodybuilding.com forum. Oh, God. Why? I really don't know what he was thinking there because that place has all the compassion and support of a high school football team. Yes. Locker room. I need help with women. Like, of course you do. You freaking loser. I mean, I would just be terrified to post anything there.

28:20And I'm 45. Like the one big success story they had was I wrote about this ages ago, but it was this dude who's whose handle on there was wet breasts. And he was like he was like my 600 pound life bariatric bed obese. and they like bullied him into losing 400 plus pounds and he was able to go lead a normal life and then i think he scammed a bunch of people out of money went to jail oh okay but he did lose a ton of weight because the bodybuilding.com forum guys were like you know mocked him until he lost weight so that's their benevolent contribution to the world i suppose uh but yeah so he does all this and then he goes and he kills six people elliot roger yeah yeah now web press elliot roger killed six people.

29:04Two of them were his roommates. Two of them were members of a sorority that he targeted in his plans. And one of them was a friend of his roommate. And one of them was some random dude at a deli. And the irony here is that he killed more men than women, especially if you include himself. You know, he shot himself when he was done, as they often do. Yeah, of course, the peak level of cowardice always called sort of capped with that. Pardon the pun. So this is an extreme case, but it's also the most famous. Are there other similar examples of, I guess, incel violence on this scale? There's a specific category of terrorism called, not so surprisingly, misogynist terrorism.

29:41And there are 12 of these since 1984. I hate using Wikipedia as a source, but they have a page on misogynist terrorism and there's 12 incidents listed on it. That's all of the ones that the editors knew about. It's not just the ones with articles. So I'm kind of like, okay with using 12 as the number because I couldn't find another comprehensive list of it. But if people have it, you know, I'm, I'm always willing to be corrected. 12 is of course, 12 too many. But when someone starts talking about incel terrorism, keep in mind that we're talking about 12 incidents in the entire world over a span of 40 years.

30:21I don't think we need to get into the nasty weeds of each and every incidents, but yes, Isla Vista Massacre. No one really is self-identifying as an incel after this unless they have some deeply messed up feelings about women in general. Like, it's not a thing that like, oh, I'm a sad, lonely man. I'm an incel. You don't see that after Elliot Rodger. It's all just like, you know, put women in concentration camps because I can't get a date. Right. It's like the most psycho level of stuff. OK, so what are some of the messed up attitudes that you mentioned messed up attitudes that these guys have or messed up feelings?

30:59Tell me more about that. And, man, I do feel like you're right, though. It also goes beyond just negative attitudes about women because there's some pretty toxic stuff in there about men while we're on the subject. But can you unpack that a little? Yeah, I think it's fair to say this is a more all-encompassing toxic belief system that extends beyond just women. At its core, incel, involuntary celibate, you know, this just means that you're not having sex, but you wish that you were. And like, there's lots of terms that mean more than their literal dictionary definition. And incel is one of them.

31:34You know, there's the dictionary definition of it. It's like, well, but really, it kind of means these sketchy guys who hate women. the deeper theory and ideology here is that dating is monopolized by chads like you know you i say chad you think some tall buff blonde guy and stacy's and she's his you know beautiful perfect girlfriend and these are the beautiful people and they don't date down in terms of look so you're just out of luck got it anyone again who's ever known a really funny fat dude with a smoke show for a girlfriend just knows that this is not true going back to my buddy jordan from high school like he just didn't need to be tall or attractive physically really at all yeah we all know that guy he's an outlier but the point remains like i think men are much more likely to choose a partner based on looks yeah and women are more into what you would call status or aura or riz like they have something going for them beyond just being attractive it could be money whatever like there's tons of starving artists out there with super hot wives and girlfriends and it's not because women are gold diggers and they only go for guys with money you know it's like if these guys are talented artists that counts you know that's it like i'm in love with him because he makes this wonderful art or he like you know drives a cool car like you know what i mean like hopefully not that shallow but yeah right but my point is you know you get my point that like your friend isn't she's not just like oh he has a wonderful personality it's like No, he he's like an over the top, larger than life.

33:09Yeah. Insanely charismatic. Everyone liked everybody. Right. Everybody likes him, you know, and it's like and yeah, for some guys, they have that kind of personality for other guys is they're in the band for other guys. It's this or it's or it's that being a good looking man is generally not enough to get a hot girl friend. You usually have to have like and I don't think it really is ever enough because I don't think it's the thing that really attracts women like they might go. yeah, he's a good looking guy, but like, so what? The world's filled with them. What else does he have kind of going on under the hood?

33:42Chad's and Stacy's. This is going to be another one of those weird online subcultures with a lot of inside terminology. Are there key terms that they use that might be helpful for us to understand them? Well, I told you about Foy's. Black pill isn't exclusive to the incel community, but it basically means a nihilistic worldview. In the case of incels that nihilistic worldview would be that genetics just determine everything. And if you're not, you know, a Chad by nature, you're doomed to a life of loneliness, or you need to spend all your time and energy trying to attain it by smashing your jaw with a hammer and cutting the fat out of your cheeks with an X-Acto knife or whatever.

34:21I got to wonder how much of their attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy for these guys, right? Like if you believe that, are you really going to try to beat that? No, right? You're not going to try and like learn riz and be social and like lose a little bit of weight because you're you're just going to go, well, I'm not tall enough and I'm not I'm not a ched. So why bother? Yeah. And you're totally right. Of course, in the incel community, it sometimes is a badge of pride to be blackpilled. Like you're accepting the reality of despair rather than pying for this supposedly unrealistic dream of, you know, getting your girlfriend one day.

34:56I think that this gets at the very core of why people get into this subculture, it provides a very simple answer to their very complex pain. Yeah, right. And at the same time, it also says that they don't really have to do anything about the situation because it's outside their ability to change. Well, there's looks maxing, right? The going to extreme measures to improve your looks, but kind of the only solution that they offer for the most part, because they do bake into the, even the ones who are like, oh yeah, I'm going to chase after it. You know, it's baked into their analysis that like the only way that you can get a girlfriend is to get super ripped and get, you know, change your appearance basically.

35:37And PS change your appearance to meet this very, very narrow definition of what all women find attractive. And it's like, you know, I can tell you that much like men, women are all different people and some of them find some things attractive and some of them don't find things attractive. There's no like one guy who's attractive to every woman on planet Earth. There's girls who are into chubby guys. There's guys who think short guys are hot. You know, there's girls who are into bald guys. There's all over the place what women are into. There's not like you're not just going to look like you're a men's fitness cover model.

36:14And that's the only way that you're ever going to meet a girl who finds you attractive. It's just this is not how it works. I get what you're saying, but you're not really doing a lot to dissuade me from the idea that these guys are all violent losers in their parents' basement online and bitter about the fact that they can't get laid. Most of them are just mad on the internet. I mean, the violence is really the exception. Okay. I also don't think it's fair to say that they're only mad about sex. I think when you get down to it, they feel excluded. And there's possibly, quite probably in many other cases, a very good reason why they're being excluded.

36:48They're probably weird and awkward and unlikable. Yeah, it's harsh, but yeah, I get it. I've gone through intense periods of loneliness in my life and never once did I feel the need to start an account on incel forums like PUA hate and talk about putting women in concentration camps. Yeah, same. That's fair. That is fair. But again, this is a fixable problem. Stop being such a weirdo. Take an interest in other people. Join a club, learn a new skill, get offline and meet people in the real world. Focus less on getting chicks and more on just being an interesting, engaged and likable person. You know, none of this happens overnight, but I suspect that like Elliot Roger, a lot of these guys get enraged when they're not lining up dates with strippers and porn stars after their first Brazilian jujitsu class.

37:43Some of them may be socially engaged. They're just bad with women. Like, you know, you ran an entire business for guys who were who had a social life, but they just weren't very good at talking to women. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't these specific guys. It was my clients were very much more normal. Right. Yeah. Yeah, no, your guys were different because they accepted responsibility for the situation and they decided to do something about it that, you know, to some degree required a hard look at themselves and their own shortcomings and a willingness to do something about them. And it wasn't just, oh, I'm going to go to the gym and get 20 inch arms and women are going to be fainting in my presence.

38:21Or I'm going to just go on a on some Internet forum and vent my spleen about how the world is unfair because I'm five foot three. If your idol is a mass murderer, maybe it's time to pick new hobbies. We'll be right back.

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40:33All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Is there a connection between mental health and the incel phenomena? Because with our Elliot Rodger example, there's clearly something wrong with this guy that just he could have gotten a girlfriend by some miracle a day later. And it just he's not going to get fixed. Right. This is not going to fix the problem. How common is that phenomenon that it's not just a problem with women per se or like the guys are just unattractive and they don't want to.

41:05It seems like it's an overall mental health problem where there's like a set of mental health problems in the incel community. I think you're right. But the issue is that it's hard to kind of quantify the overlap here. I mean, you can say on the one hand that guys who take to incel forums to deal with this problem have mental health issues. And I think you're probably right. But not everyone who has the incel problem does that. And not everyone with mental health issues is an incel. I mean, Elliot Rogers had some kind of autism spectrum disorder. And there are tons of people, millions of people on the autism spectrum who are, as we speak, leading very fulfilling and engaged lives.

41:47They have friends, they have girlfriends, wives, they're good parents, they're active in their communities. So I don't know, like it's so difficult to quantify that overlap. And we have no idea who these guys are on these forums because they're anonymous or pseudonymous. Yeah. Is there any kind of data on who is using incel forums, like anything at all? We have one study of any significance, and it was conducted by the British Home Office. It provides a very broad demographic view of these guys and who they are, but not much else. Everything that you're about to hear, anytime I'm quoting a number, a statistic, it's from this one study in the British Home Office.

42:29The average age is 26. About half of them live with their folks, but 26 % live alone. these are very high statistics for their age cohort to be either living alone or with their parents and a whopping 25 percent of them screened positive for autism spectrum disorder traits that does not mean that they have an autism spectrum disorder it means that they they had traits of autism spectrum disorders what's the racial dynamic like because i know in most people's minds. This is a bunch of white dudes, right? The racial demographics of the UK are much different than they are in the United States. But the home office study found that only 58 % were white and 42 % were non-white.

43:17I have to admit I'm surprised by this, but this is in the UK, right? So maybe it's just a lot different here and that's skewing my perspective. Or I'm wrong. That is possible. Off the top of my head, I believe the UK is significantly whiter than the United States. Yes. That would, it would be even more mixed here. Right. We don't have the data on, you know, the side of the pond, as they say. There is this weird racial dimension to the incel thing where everyone is convinced that they're in the race that's not getting any girls, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, whatever. Everyone is convinced that their race is a curse.

43:54Like that's the thing that's preventing them from getting a girlfriend. Is there any political dimension to it? I know that the manosphere is pretty right-coded these days, and it seems like there's an extreme or extremist masculine supremacist dimension to all this. Well, there might be, but this study from the U.K. shows us actually most of these guys identify as moderately left. So the Labour Party mainstream, basically, the political culture of the U.K. is somewhat different from the United States. But to put it in terms, you know, listeners in the United States, who I'm assuming most of the listeners can understand, they're just like they're moderate Democrats, according to how they self-report.

44:40You know, self-reporting is always limited because it's based on self-perception, which is not as accurate. But that's how they reported in this British study. Yeah. You always have to be careful with it. Again, our Dick episode, we were like, oh, this study says, oh, it's all self-reported. Well, throw this thing in the trash. Yeah. Like no man would ever lie about the size of his penis, would they? No. OK. I mean, why would you even do a study like that? Anyway, go on. Yeah. But I mean, the only way you would really do it is by like, I mean, it would be a whole other study where you'd ask them like 100 questions about what they think about this or that.

45:10Politics, maybe you could suss it out. I think for what the the whole dick thing was a little more straightforward and no pun into again, no pun intended. I didn't see a breakdown of how many identified as moderately left in the study. It was either many or most. It was really vague. Many could mean 16 out of a thousand. I think I saw it represented both ways. There was one thing I read about, it said many and one said most. So who knows? I think the takeaway here is that this is much more complicated. And also, I think that to a certain extent, these guys are siloing off the incel thing from the rest of their lives.

45:51I'm guessing that most of these guys are going to be broke as a joke, but you're about to tell me that they're all rich tech entrepreneurs or something. All my stereotypes that I thought I had nailed were way off on this. The British Home Office study doesn't provide any information about their income, but we do know that 80 % of them are not employed or in education full time. Okay. So they may not be NEATs, but they're not full time employed or full time in education. Got it. Only 4 % of them are in full-time employment. But this is another chicken-egg thing. Are they awkward creeps because they're not working full-time?

46:29Or are they not working full-time because they're awkward creeps? That is pretty bleak, man. And I know you mentioned NEETs. I know we have this segment of the population in the U.S. as well. To be clear, it's called NEET, N-E-E-T, not in education, employment, or training, a.k.a. not really going anywhere, probably living in their parents' basement kind of thing. Like, they're just not moving forward. Nothing. And they're not doing anything. And it's disturbing because it's actually not a small number of people. They're going nowhere. They're aimless. And a bunch of aimless men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, that is potentially a very dangerous segment of society.

47:05I think the term Nick would use is powder keg. Am I wrong? No, it is. It's absolutely powder keg. Like, yeah, the military fighting age men who don't feel like they have any stake in society have no hope for the future and nothing to live for you do not want a bunch of these guys in your society right it is not safe socially to have too many of these guys sitting around because they get attracted to extremism and you know like the extreme of the extreme do dangerous things it's dangerous i suspect that there's this kind of feedback loop with a lot of these guys who are neats or neat adjacent. They have trouble finding a job because they're a little awkward, but they get more and more awkward the longer that they don't have a job because they're not out being around people having to be normal.

47:56You won't be surprised to hear that 86 % of the men in the British study reported having been bullied, but hey, I've been bullied and I'm not an incel. Okay, Nick Sexhaver Pell over here. Yeah, put that on my tombstone, buddy. So this is probably the most depressing stat, but one in five, that's 20 percent, reported having daily suicidal ideation over the last two weeks. That seriously sucks. And you're making me feel bad for incels, which, you know, I kind of didn't really want to do on the episode. But yeah, that's really dark. Yeah, it's sad. I think there's a happy medium you can come to and say that this is tragic, but their biggest problem is that they can't get out of their own way.

48:41Like I said earlier, you know, assume they have an autism spectrum disorder. So do millions of other people who aren't just leading functional lives. They're leading vibrant, exciting, fulfilling lives. Having an autism spectrum disorder or major depressive disorder or some other, you know, non-trivial problem is not an excuse to give up and become a loser who spends all day on PUA hate talking about how much he hates foids. If you want help, you know an incel or somebody you think is trending in that direction, give them a little tough love, get them to log off, and maybe bully them to find some other less antisocial use of their time.

49:28Why do you think these guys seek help on internet forums rather than through more traditionally and potentially more helpful resources? Because it seems like if you're circling this drain, go get a therapist, for God's sake. I think that there are some people who are so socially maladjusted that they don't know what's the proper way to seek help and what isn't. And beyond that, you can recite the usual litany of reasons people don't seek professional help for mental health issues. They don't have the resources. They're afraid of the stigma against seeking help. They reject the concept of therapy in general.

50:02What kind of hope is there for these people once they get, you know, I don't want to say trapped in these communities because obviously they're the ones who are doing it and they have agency. But I think that once you cross that line, it's a bit like quicksand where you just you get sucked in. Is that a fair assessment of the situation? Yeah, I think that's more or less fair. In general, I'm sort of curious about how much of the incel phenomenon is just guys punching the wall online. I mentioned, are they siloing this off from the rest of their lives? I think in a lot of cases, they probably are.

50:35They go online, they punch the wall, they rage, and then they go back to being normal as soon as they close their laptop. top. I really think a non-trivial portion of these guys go log on, rage, log off, and then touch grass and kind of act semi-normal for the rest of their time on earth. And hey, you know, what people are just sort of barely waking up to is that the entire internet is one big echo chamber. The algorithm is curated to show you what you think you want at any given moment. And it turns out that a lot of what you want to see is rage bait. Do you know what Twitter shows me more than anything?

51:14What does X, formerly known as Twitter, show you more than anything? Anti-Semitic leftists. Sure. Protestants who really, really hate Catholics. Okay. And people who are still following COVID protocols, like they're the last imperial Japanese soldier in the jungles of the Philippines fighting for the glory of the emperor in 1965. 65. Like that's what Twitter wants to show me because it knows that that's what pisses me off. The algorithm shows you what you engage with and what you engage with is probably going to be something that makes you mad. I built an entire career around this at one point in my life.

51:54So this is not really news to me, but some people still need to be told or at least reminded. Yeah. But how did that work out for you? Well, about as well as crying on an incel forum is working out for these guys. Right. OK, fine. The other thing is that there's a sense of being in an in-group and having a shared jargon. Probably the closest thing to the incel phenomenon is the QAnon movement. The blackpilling aspect, there's the whole us versus them, the weird inside code. Mostly, I think the common denominator is that you have no agency and everything is just fated to happen a certain way. And it explains everything.

52:32You know, it just explains everything for you. These kind of Internet cults around conspiracy theories are surprisingly common online. So what makes this relevant to the rest of us? If it's a niche Internet cult, will any of us normies ever even come into contact with these folks or their beliefs outside of 4chan? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I think it's kind of the bleeding radical edge of what people have called the male loneliness epidemic. I know some people, including your listeners, will dispute that such a thing exists. but I do know that a lot of guys, at least subjectively, feel lonely.

53:08And guess what? If you feel lonely, you're lonely. That's what loneliness is. Yeah, it's a feeling. It's a feeling. I think the risk of violence is small, but the violence is, I think, disproportionate in scale to their numbers. As I mentioned earlier, having multiple generations of fighting age men who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose is an absolute powder keg. People have literally no idea how dangerous this phenomenon can be because they're used to living in these safe, secure, affluent, liberal, democratic Western societies that they very much take for granted. And you should not because there are multiple examples of stable societies of broad middle classes and nice places to live to kind of boil it down.

54:03They were like that one week and the next week they were hell on earth. And there is nothing special about where you live that prevents it from being that. With regard to the incel phenomenon, tying it back to this, the more hopeless men you have, the more incels you're going to have. And the radical edge of this, these are the guys who are going to start acting like Hezbollah in Beirut, not the guys who just mope back and forth to and from work every day. You know, like, oh, radicalization, and it's like 35 people. 35 people could break a lot of dishes if they're motivated enough. That's the issue.

54:41And so, yeah, I think society has a stake in there being fewer of these guys around. But you don't think there's a lot of hope for the guys on the forums, from the sound of it. You don't see any way out for them, really. So what's there to be done about any of this? I mean, we're not going to have state-mandated girlfriends. No, no, we're not. I think some of someone proposed that, but I'm sure they did. Yeah. There are ex incels out there, but you don't hear about them because first of all, who the hell wants to be the spokesman of for the ex incel community? And second of all, because they're almost by definition leading normal lives that aren't really all that remarkable or interesting.

55:22They build social skills. They join communities. They get some kind of purpose in their life that isn't plastering the Internet with toxicity for 17 hours a day and they move on. It's like this weird, embarrassing thing that they used to be into. You know, fitness, therapy, religion, mentorship, hobbies. These are all very low hanging fruit. Can anybody become handsome? No, but I do suspect there's some truth to the idea that you're not ugly. You're just poor. meaning what exactly i mean look at elon musk before he had bunny his hair plugs went a long way so much of what makes someone attractive is how they present what they have so the looks maxers are on to something if you take care of your skin you get a better haircut hit the gym give yourself six months to a year and boom tons of people probably won't even recognize you beyond that your problem with women is probably not even your looks it's probably that you lack social skills or maybe you just lack social skills as they apply to women there is a different set of social skills for chumming it up with the guys because i'm gonna you know let everybody in on a very controversial secret men and women are different fire up those angry emails people Can't say that anymore.

56:43Yeah, women are not just men with boobs. Sorry, people. I think mocking incels can backfire, but if you're friends with one of these dudes, I mean, I don't know, man. I had this friend who was, like, practicing Germanic paganism and doing, like, weird rituals to Thor and stuff, and I, like, I bullied the crap out of him about it. And he's an Orthodox Christian now, so. The Jordan Harbinger Show does not endorse bullying your friends into or out of different religions. OK, bullying them to get off the computer. Fine. Bullying them out of a cult. Probably also fine. Bullying them into your cult.

57:23Slow down, folks. I mean, bullying may be the wrong word, but yeah, men respond to disapproval from other men, especially when it's men that they respect or admire. I don't think it's at all inappropriate to apply a little negative reinforcement on a friend who has decided to wallow in his own misery with a total lack of self-reflection. I mean, let your conscience be your guide here. Sure. I think you're right about that. There's mean bullying where you're just terrorizing somebody. And then there's like giving your buddy a hard time about something that you should absolutely be giving him a hard time about to motivate him to get his shit together.

57:59Right. And you also offer support. You know, hey, why don't you come to the gym with me? I'll let's sign up for a karate class together. Let's go to the driving range on Saturday and hit some balls or go on a hike or whatever. I think men tend to do better with activity centered hangs and that's you do that and then they start, you know, opening up through the course of those hangs on a long hike or something. these are also the kinds of things that can get them involved in other communities that are probably not just healthier but a lot more fulfilling for them personally than endlessly posting on forever alone so like hiking is a kind of a lazy example but like yeah you know like i found a passion for hiking because my friend dragged me on a number of hikes and now i'm in this trail runner group and oh whoa would you know it there's girls that are into this too or just like other guys that I can become friends with.

58:49And that boosts my confidence and gets me off of PUA hate for the day. I absolutely detest and abhor these attempts to like reframe masculinity and like turn guys into these domesticated liberal house pets. So this is some kind of like new masculinity. But at the same time, masculinity is definitely not about whining on a forum and throwing your life away while you tunnel deeper and deeper into this pit of self-pity and complete despair. I think the main takeaway here is that not all these guys are monsters or memes. They're just lonely guys who have a very toxic way to explain why they're lonely and a very toxic community that reinforces both their feelings of loneliness and their antisocial explanation of why they're lonely in the first place.

59:39At the same time, dating is now difficult, man. You used to meet people through friends or family or even through shared activities, now someone is going to decide in half a second if they want to swipe right on you or if they want to move on to one of the other 500 ,000 people in their area that they could be dating. And that means a lot of people, men and women, are struggling to figure out how to find partners that might make their lives more fulfilling. The problem isn't living in that reality. We all do. The problem is when you abdicate agency for how that reality impacts your life and then you start blaming other people for your problems.

1:00:13Are chiseled, jacked billionaires always going to have desirable partners? Probably. But that doesn't mean you can't find someone to be happy with that will enrich your life. And ultimately, that's what this is all about. It's not about celibacy as such. It's about guys feeling super lonely and pursuing terrible pseudo-solutions in their quest to do something about that loneliness. Thanks, as always, to writer and researcher Nick Pell for helping me separate the rejection from the radicalization. Thanks, Nick. And thanks to you all for listening. topic suggestions for future episodes of skeptical Sunday to Jordan at Jordan harbinger.com.

1:00:46That's me advertisers deals discounts ways to support the show all searchable and clickable at Jordan harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show it's created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen harbinger Jace Sanderson Tata Sidlowskis Robert Fogarty Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. I might be a lawyer, but I'm sure not your lawyer. Also, we try to get these episodes as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. So consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being.

1:01:21Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. What if everything you've been told about building wealth is total BS? Scott Galloway joins me to dismantle the myths and lay out a brutally honest roadmap to financial security in today's economy. The greatest bump in mortality for men is one, when their spouse dies and two, when they stop working.

1:01:54And when they lose their social fabric and their purpose, they get inactive, sometimes depressed. And when you get inactive and depressed, your brain kind of sends out a hormone or a message saying, oh, it's time to die. This person isn't adding any value. you. Supposedly for every additional year you work, your life expectancy actually goes up. So what they don't teach you is the smart thing to do is the moment you have assets, start diversifying. And here's the thing, you don't need to be a hero. You don't need to find the needle in the haystack. Figure out what you're good at. Find a way to save more than you spend.

1:02:28Realize how fast time is going to go and diversify. This is what you become passionate about is when you get to our age, you become really passionate about taking care of your kids. You become really passionate about taking care of your parents and being able to take your spouse to really wonderful places. You become passionate about the absence of stress from your relationships that not having economic security injects into every relationship. Success in entrepreneurship is your ability to endure rejection, ability to endure failure. And entrepreneurship is really just a synonym for salespeople.

1:02:59Don't be an idiot. Follow these simple equations and you're going to be fine. Develop economic security for you and your family by finding something you're great at. Make some money, save some money, understand how fast time is going to go and diversify. If you've ever wondered why working hard isn't enough, check out episode 1074 with Scott Galloway.