Sabrina Carpenter and AI Outrage, Staged Protests, Reality and Vacations are Broken | Episode 294
58:24 Share

July 18th, I'm going to be in Winnipeg, Canada at the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival. That's July. I'm also coming to a bunch of cities in the fall, so you know what to do. Okay, let's get to the news. Let's go. Here's the thing, though. When you talk about the news now, I think you have to say what news is on every platform, because we don't have universal news anymore. So here's the news. According to Twitter, the news is we are in World War III. According to TikTok...

The new best-selling dress is one that you can wear six ways, even though two of the ways may lead you to accidentally hang yourself. According to Facebook, Marjorie Taylor Greene is currently the sitting president. According to Threads, every immigrant has been set on fire by Donald Trump personally. And according to YouTube, we are in a simulation built by aliens and the dinosaurs built the pyramids.

But Bigfoot may or may not have helped. So I don't know what your news is currently, but mine is mostly about how Sabrina Carpenter has set back women 60,000 years with her new album. People are very upset. The feminists are mad at Sabrina Carpenter because currently feminism, you know, means that women should be able to do whatever they want unless it's that unless it's that.

We don't see gender, but we want women to be equal. Also, we kind of hate women who lean into any kind of socially constructed femininity or do anything that could be perceived as male gaze because that means you want validation from men, which would mean technically that you're insecure and possibly damaged and you're not allowed to be insecure or damaged. You have to be unscathed and perfect at all times. And you certainly can't make mistakes in your 20s. Just FYI. What are we? What? When did this? When did feminism turn into this?

If you don't like someone's work or their album or photos, just say you don't like it. Just say you don't like it. You don't have to say she's setting back women or like exacerbating a trope. Don't say trope. Don't say trope at all. So if Sabrina Carpenter with her new album, if she's like strengthening a stereotype that women are supposed to be hot for men, well...

you're strengthening an even worse one, which is that women are catty and they talk when they shouldn't. And they hate other women. Can you just send Sabrina Carpenter an edible arrangement if you're so mad at her? Because if you have a criticism for a celebrity, how else would you get to be superior? I understand that the Lolita, there's like a Lolita inspo in the album. It's, look, Lolita the book is a bummer. Okay. Yeah.

I hate its guts. Can we go after the guy that wrote it?

Dead. Good. Where's his grave? Not dead enough for this guy. Is Sabrina doing satire? I don't know. Does she think Lolita the story is awesome? Does she think that an old head creep being into a teenager is cool? Probably not. But does she maybe identify as Lolita because she was a child star? Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe. Can we just give child stars the benefit of the doubt at some point? We don't get to bully child actors because we were complicit in their trauma. Okay? We don't get to be mad at child actors that we helped traumatize by watching their, you know, blizzards and...

Montana. Wizards of Montana place. I don't know. Whatever the things are. People are like, Sabrina's reinforcing the male gaze, which has been the main TV aesthetic for 20 years. She doesn't know that. She was a child star. She didn't watch TV. She has no idea what's been on TV because she was the TV. She had to be on TV because there are people out there who, for some reason, care and are emotionally invested in what's going on in a fake teenager's life.

Okay, so this is where you and I differ on the Sabrina Carpenter drama. You think she made her new album art too sexual. And I think anyone over 20 who watched her act on a TV show when she was 13 should be in jail. That's where we differ.

That's how we see the world differently. Let's be mad at the producers who thought she was a hot kid and put her in the pictures. If you're a child actor or like one of those like Disney kids, I think in their mind, they're like, I'm sick of being seen as a little kid. You know, I want to be sexy. So here's the thing.

Let's just not tell her that I'm sure a lot of people found her way sexier before this. Okay, she may not realize that a lot of her fans find her now in a push-up bra kneeling at a man's foot unsexy because she's doing it at the old age of 25.

can we just let her think this is the first time she's ever been thought of as sexy to people? Can we just let her think this is the first time she's been sexualized and that it's on her terms? Can we just let her have this one? Miley Cyrus did the exact same thing. She went super sexual, like right after she was a child star. And honestly, I think this is the best case scenario of a child actor's aftermath. Like, can we just...

Imagine being a child actor where you had people like putting on your makeup and doing your hair and picking your clothes and telling you like stand here and stand there and, you know, pretend that guy's your dad. And your real dad is like, do it. Tell that stranger you love him so we can get a new house that you'll never get to live in because you're always on set with a bunch of adults inhaling wet paint and having a pretend personality even though you haven't developed a real one yet. Also stop eating. It's going to ruin your lip liner, sweetheart. Yeah.

There's nothing sicker than this girl's... We agree that being a child performer is traumatic, but then if there are any signs or ostensible signs of trauma that don't make us feel better about ourselves, we shame them for it. We're only okay with people having trauma symptoms if it's like addiction, getting arrested, but if it's like super high functioning and a person getting successful and then tries to do something like satirical or controversial, that may be self-sabotage, maybe, or may just genuinely be the direction she wants to go in.

You know what? Maybe she wants less fans. How else do you get less famous? If you are famous, you can't undo fame. The best case scenario is to at least get rid of the annoying fans.

That's like the only thing she can really do. Maybe she wants less fans and to be less famous and weed out the people who want her to be their own personal doll that they can control with their reaction TikToks. Maybe this is on purpose. I don't know. But child acting, it's traumatic and you don't get to decide you don't like the trauma response. Some people don't like her response to being sexualized as a kid that she continues to think that's her thing.

thing as an adult. Like you don't get to be traumatized but also like pretty.

Like you just can't like you need to shave your head. You need to chase paparazzi with an umbrella like Britney did. If you're going to be blonde and pretty, you have to shave your head or else we cannot allow you to have had trauma. We just don't. We don't. It doesn't. Dude, once Amanda Bynes dyed her hair black, everyone was like, oh, this poor. What do they do to this girl? The dark side. I know. Do you know? I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure defending Sabrina Carpenter is going to get me in trouble somehow. But guess what?

I'm not the person who gussied her up. I'm not the person that did contour on toddlers' faces and filmed her entire childhood for money. So I feel like I should be off the hook, okay? I am filming some of my own toddler's childhood, but that's more to have it in my back pocket if I ever need to make a cameo in Family Court. There's an argument to be made that if you are putting your kid on social media, you're making your kid like a child star or something, I lose money, right?

Posting my kid. Okay. When you post your child, everyone is mad at you. People are like, Whitney, you can't have him outside without shoes. And look at that. That diaper brand is toxic. Meanwhile, my exes are like, hey, you seem really happy. Congrats. I'm like, it's a dark day when your exes are nicer to you than a mom influencer.

We've always done that. We've always showed photographs of our kids. It's fine. It's fine. I don't know how long I'll put them on social media, but it's fine. This is the best case scenario. We used to show people photos of our kids with our wallets. That was way weirder. It's so much less weird and so much less dangerous to post a kid on social media than what we used to do, which was take him to Olin Mills in the mall, put him in a room with a guy who signed up to photograph kids for a living.

Who doesn't have his own kids? Who's probably the mall Santa. He's keeping track of all the kids in the area. In the local area. He's like, just put your address down. I could always just meet you at the playground if you want. Take some pictures in action. I could hand them off. I'll print a bunch in every size. Every size.

I give you like a six by three. What? No one wants any of these. You know someone who's printing photos of a kid, printing them that small. That is a... You want them even smaller? Do you want them in missing person size?

He just makes it so it fits right on the milk carton. He's like, well, I'm just going to make sure that you can at least pretend to look for your kid, even though we know where he is. Like, why would they make sizes so tiny? It's already a kid. I already know he's small. You need to be small. How small do you need him, sir? Locket size. Ah!

So I can wear your kid against my chest. I just want to join your child in my locket that I sleep in at night, get it tangled in my chest hair. Any version of showing anyone your kid is weird. You mind if I do an extra fridge magnet out of this one?

Just so I could eat a banana while staring at your child? Like, what? I just tell every... You can't have any documentation of your kid without it being weird. Like, I mean, is it not weird to go to Things Remembered and have someone engrave your kid's face in a piece of glass so your child looks like he's trapped in a piece of ice? Like...

Yeah, I post my kid on social media. At least I don't make art where he looks like he's stuck under a frozen pond. That glass thing with your baby etched in it is not childproof. I cannot take the risk that my own child will get concussed by a giant hunk of glass with his own face on it.

We got to get back to the news that may or may not be true because there's truly no way of knowing anymore. So I was reluctant to weigh in on the L.A. downtown protests. I was right to be reluctant, but I, you know me.

Said it anyway. Did it anyway. Look, Pat did give us some intel last time that it felt a little bit performative. And Pat is right about everything except that Dropbox should be used in a professional setting. That is just emotional abuse. Full stop. There is a video where it appears that a photographer and a protester are like modeling something.

staging a photo shoot. To watch this video does break the last part of my brain that was somewhat functioning normally. Like, here's what is so annoying about this video. My brain went to, well, what if this is staged? This is the problem. We are so far gone with...

with not being able to trust our reality. When I saw the video of a journalist photographer and a protester staging a photo, I was like, well, that's probably staged. That kind of looks like an actor pretending to be a journalist staging a photo shoot. So I don't know. I don't know how the truth works anymore. Honestly, I'm at the point where I crave a fake chat GPT photo. At least I know it's fake. Honestly, that's the only kind of dignity anybody can have anymore. Can you just tell me I'm about to be lied to? I will go along with it.

I agree. You should lie to me. I have such bad ADD that you have to lie to me to get me to keep watching your thing. You actually do. I'm not going to watch your channel or your news unless you lie to me and exaggerate. We both agree that if you don't lie to me, I will probably go do something else. I will walk around my yard and hope that I fall by accident and get it caught on the ring camera so I have some content.

We have other stuff to do. Okay. We can't give you our attention because we're too busy trying to get attention. So you're going to have to lie to me to keep me captivated. We both know this. So honestly, the news being fake is so, it's kind of heartbreaking. It's actually so much more about their insecurity at this point. Like the fact that journalists are like news people need to lie. It either means, of course, they're being controlled by a corporation, which is like so embarrassing. Like you're a grown man. Yeah.

Or it means that anyone who does know the truth or would be an on-the-record source who could tell you the truth to relay to us won't call you back because they don't respect you. Or you need to lie to make people watch your journalism. Every version is pathetic and sad. And now I feel like a bully. I mean, so anyway, if this photo from the L.A. protest was staged...

Why not just make a chat GPT version? Is this how they get us? Is this, did it just happen? This will not be a problem. We will easily know what is fake because the fake one will be the one we like more. That's how we'll know. Whichever one we like more, that's the fake one. Can we stop pretending that we don't prefer fake over real? What if photos are fake?

First of all, photos have always been fake. They've always been just knowing a camera is there. You're going to be fake. You're going to pose a certain. Is this a natural way that anyone stands not on camera? As soon as someone sees a camera, they just arch their back and like put like that. We lose our minds and turn into fake people. As soon as someone even holds a camera, people will send me photos. I mean, like, Whitney, look at this fake photo of you. That was Photoshopped. It was on ChatGPT. Like every photo of me is fake.

Truly every photo, every photo of me that exists. I'm wearing truly cock and grout shellac on my face. All right. I've got brown goop on my eyelashes to make it look like they even exist. I'm unclear why. It's also waterproof, which is truly crazy that we're expected to stay looking like a lady of the night in the ocean.

But you have to do waterproof mascara because if your mascara runs and your guy thinks it's hot, you have to like call the authorities. It's like trying to just avoid that nightmare. In truly any photo of me recently, I've sprayed on my hairline. Okay, because my baby vampire ate my hair follicles in utero because he clearly does not want a sibling. He wanted to make sure that I was bald so no man would ever impregnate me again. I don't know. A lot of the times that you see me, I'm wearing someone else's hair on my head.

It might not even be someone else's hair. It might be fake someone else's hair. This is how gone we are as a species. We're like these fake videos and these fake photos. Humans started gluing other people's hair to their own heads and we just kept moving.

These aren't even like doll people that do it. It's like, it's people that like leave their house with someone else's hair on their head and that's just okay. We have fake nails. My real nails honestly look like they have special effects makeup on them from Blumhouse to look like the bundle of sticks in the Blair Witch Project movie. I'm going for buried alive. The other day, my son saw my nails without press on like or gel nails. It made him cry. He went, oh no. Oh no.

I said the video. The truth is traumatic, you see. No one wants to see it. It's a bummer. I have to gorilla glue fake nails so my son doesn't get traumatized by reality. All right. To be upset about fake pictures is hilarious to me because we've also accepted way wilder things being fake. We're fine with fake food, but photos suck.

is where we draw the line. We eat food where the ingredients are just colors and no one cares. When ruts were invented, no one was upset. No one was like, I don't know about this fake food. Like a fake banana made out of bleached sugar, which again, fake sugar. And like, what's in a rut? Like nail polish? I don't know. Sherwin-Williams?

And like red number five, I don't know what a run even is. Tastes like shampoo. No one is upset. No one got mad. Even real fruit is fake now. It's got GMOs on them. Bill Gates has got a shmegma coating on it. What goes in your body is fake. Okay, people only eat real fruit if a doctor makes them. Like we draw the line at pictures being fake. Can we all stop pretending we care if anything's fake? We love it. You know when you compliment someone on their purse and they're like, it's fake.

you're like oh my god you have like a burqa bag it's like it's fake like bragging about the fact that is it people want fake they get excited to tell you you're like oh my god look at your air maze bag they're like fake fake fake fake like and we're supposed to be like that's so awesome it's fake like you got a fake one you're not dumb enough to get a real one like you want the fake purse even though you know a real kid made it that's the only real thing about any of this

half of celebrities now have fake teeth and we're just letting that slide. Honestly, I look forward to the day I can use AI to say, hey, I want to watch this movie, but can we make the lead actress not look like she has a pottery barn headboard in her face?

This is a movie about the Civil War. The women should not have veneers. Can someone just... Okay, hey, AI, can you put wrinkles on the 55-year-old woman in the movie, please? Hey, AI, can you make everyone in this movie look their actual age? It's weird that the mom and the daughter look the same age. Can you make the people who look fake from surgery and Botox look real so I can buy into this reality from the...

AI will honestly probably be used to make fake things look real at this point.

Hey, AI, I want to watch this movie, but can you make the actor not be covered in self-tanner? And can you remove his calf implants? It's kind of distracting in a movie about the Spanish flu. I just, I hope AI goes for it. Hey, AI, can you make the person next to me's perfume stop giving me a migraine because they wanted to pretend to smell like vanilla and cedar? People want to smell fake.

We fake our smell and no one thought, no one thought it was weird when perfume rolled out onto the market. Like, AI is going to be as normal to us in 10 years as it is normal for us now to spray ourselves to smell like anything except a real human. AI fake photos is way less weird than paying money to smell like a sugar cookie. Like, you're basically identifying as a sugar cookie and we all have to participate. Like,

Like, we want to be fake. We hate everything about us that is real. We hate. And then when there's a photo that's fake, we're like, I don't know. Like, this is the... Our favorite days of the year are as follows. First is a holiday where we pretend a fake man from the North Pole gives us presents, followed by a holiday where we all dress up in costumes to be fake vampires and slutty soldiers.

followed by Easter where I'll pretend a giant bunny is leaving eggs everywhere. Then we fake we don't know where we hid them. Then we eat candy eggs that are full of chemicals and poison that kill our real eggs. And now fertility is down, which I do believe is a real statistic. That might be one of the only real things. The happiest place on earth is Disneyland.

Because it's all fake. You can't be against fake photos and AI making things fake and then go to Disneyland and drop 300 bucks on a pair of ears to make you look like a sexy mouse. We have to pick a lane. You don't get to take a bunch of photos with a Hooters waitress, not even pretending to be a real princess. It's not a girl pretending to be Meghan Markle, who is kind of a fake princess, but also kind of real. Meghan Markle, actress.

We spend fake money with credit cards. Have you ever seen a resume? Everything's fake. I have three Russian movers in my home right now. Have you ever asked a friend to help you move? Your friends are fake. Vegas has the most tourism of any city. No one wants to go see the real Eiffel Tower. They don't speak American over there. We don't want it. Okay, we will survive the fake photo apocalypse. We've always had fake photos. It used to just be called art.

Remember? A painting is a fake photo of a real thing. And we hang that in a museum. They're worth millions of dollars. They're worth a fake amount of money. I prefer a computer doing my fake photos at least and not some guy in

in the 1800s asking a 10-year-old ballerina to pose so their body can be sculpted by them? Can we not with Degas and his ballerinas? I know this is a deep cut, but I just really feel the need to trash this guy. The only thing that was real was the trauma to those 10-year-old kids trying to be sculpted by this weirdo who was like, these kids won't stay still. I'm just going to sculpt a 10-year-old's body so they can't run away. Forever 10. Before Forever 21, there was Forever 10.

Do you guys ever notice, like what's the deal about how the same headline can sound completely different depending on where you read it? Ground News is an app and a website that compares how stories are covered across political perspectives. It shows you how many outlets are covering a topic, their bias rating, and how the framing shifts between the left, the right, the center.

And all the sides. You can also use the bias bar to see how attention is distributed. And the blind spot feed, it shows you what stories are being ignored by what side of the spectrum entirely. Wow. For example, like the Greenland Space Force base story was covered very differently depending on the outlet. Probably because some dyslexic people work there.

That was hard. Ground News lets you line them up side by side. Try it out. Go to groundnews.com slash Whitney. That's ground, G-R-O-U-N-D dot news slash Whitney. You'll get 40% off the Vantage plan. Go do it and stop getting your news from me. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp. Holding it together all the time is exhausting, which is why I don't. As you demonstrate.

Even if nothing's wrong, you know, it just gets exhausting just pretending you're not hanging by a thread. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform. It connects users with licensed mental health professionals, not the guy who works out of his car. Sessions happen via video phone or messaging. You can switch therapists at any time. There are over 35,000 therapists that are available online.

Through this platform, more than 5 million users have used it. If we could get like a dating app in BetterHelp of just the people who are actually getting therapy, I would appreciate it. The app is rated 4.9 out of 5 from over 1.7 million reviews. Listeners can get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash Whitney. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Whitney. What is this cancel campaign on fake things? I'm relieved when I hear something is fake. When I heard that the moon landing might be fake, I was like...

Thank God. That would have been dangerous. Remember the one that went up with the teacher in it, the challenger, and didn't. Can we just only do fake from now on? This feels like reckless. It is so irresponsible to send a bunch of people up into space with no plan.

50 years ago? Are you loco, dude? You sent them up there to film content? Hold on. You were going to go look at the moon and your priority was content, not whatever was up there? Like, is there water? Is there life? At least go. They just went up. Go to the moon. Fine. And then fake the footage later like an adult.

So they can just, you don't do your wedding photos at the wedding. You do it at like two before you fake them. There's other things that you should be doing up there besides banking content. You can't send a bunch of dads up to the moon to get selfies. I prefer that the moon landing is fake. Okay. Then I will be like, okay, the government at least cares about the people that are, that work for them doing brave things. Okay. I'm like, we don't ask soldiers to get selfies. Okay.

When they go to war, we're not like, can you just get like a...

some hot content. It's a dangerous thing. Okay. I respect if the moon is fake, that is such better news to me. Like I'm like, okay, our government knows how to sell a lie. So the Russian China think we went there. They can stop their shenanigans. It's like how in the cold war, Russia had cardboard tanks that were just for the TV. A cardboard tank is perfect for people being in it. Like a Trojan horse. Some, when something is fake, like it's so much scarier. Like,

If we told the world right now, hey guys, the moon landing, we faked it. Everyone would be like, let's think twice about messing with them. They'll just lie about it. That's thug. That is thug behavior. People love cheaters. Lance Armstrong has a fund now. People go, that guy's amazing at lying. Let's give him a bunch of money.

Okay. I just think that fake is sometimes perfectly acceptable. And when I breastfed my son, he had to accept it too. Fake's not always terrible. I mean, look, we do know now that Biden was not mentally available for quite a while, right? And the government kept running. Wasn't that a relief? We're like, wait, hold on. Does this mean the president's kind of like a fake job? Oh, thank God.

There seem to be some serious people in there who kind of keep the trains running on time. And the president's kind of like a mascot. Isn't that good news? I guess it's like our obsession with fake photos. Like what is the difference between a fake photo and being fake in a photo? I think that your guys' outrage about AI is fake. How about that? You don't care.

You do it because outrage boosts your post and the more people see it, if you say that you're negative about something, more people want to see it. You know what? I'll do you in worse. The fake bots who are liking your fake outrage post about fake photos, they're boosting your post, but they're fake. So we're all just shadowboxing fake people for fake lies, saying how much we want things to be real. Can someone just put me in a facility? Because I think I've lost my own brain.

I can't take the outrage about AI because people think that negativity is intelligence and it's not. You're not smarter than me because you don't like something. And if you don't like something, the implication is you have assessed. Critical thinker. That's what I'm saying. You've assessed all the dangers and all the angles and you've made your decision based on being all knowing. No, you don't know anything.

You're not going to trick me into thinking you know everything and have decided this is a bad idea. Also, documentaries aren't books. This is the same person. It's like, I watched this documentary last night. Why did you say it like you're better than me? It was about a hot blonde getting murdered. You didn't read a book. Also, by the way, documentaries, not real.

Sorry. I'm just saying we love fake things, you guys. We're going to love AI. But we also love hating something we're about to love. It's every rom-com. She hates the guy and then she's like, I'm sorry. I'm a divorced lawyer and I'm scared of love. I'm sorry I was mean to you, but now that I'm at this airport and you're late for your flight, I love you.

I do have good news though. Bad AI is making us like reality more and appreciate reality more. It's like the great Kendrick Lamar said, show me something natural like a tush with some stretch marks. Now you are craving reality. This is just going to change what we consume and it's going to be less highly produced, which I appreciate. I love a lo-fi real person.

Because reality shows aren't even real, right? They're curated and they get everybody drunk and it's cut together and it's scripted and they know they're on camera and they're performing, whatever. Now, regular people get to be the entertainers. And I do believe regular, which is not an insult, just non-entertainers are so much more entertaining at this point. So I finally get to fulfill my kink, which is watch non-entertainers. Why do you think I go to the airport so early? So I can just watch people.

I'm on the edge of my seat, okay? My current favorite TV show is just surveillance footage from like museums. So this guy went to a museum in Verona, I want to say. He sat on a chair that was art and it was covered in crystals. I could not, I just could not be happier about this video, okay? I am just so excited that the dumbest people on the planet get to be our celebrities now.

Okay, I just, celebrities got too self-aware. Entertainers, there's just like something so fake. We're going to move toward our main form of entertainment being ring camera and surveillance footage of people breaking things and hurting themselves, not on purpose, like in dumb ways. And it's going to be so much better because AI would never think to do something this dumb, right?

Okay, so humans are going to get even more fun to watch because AI would never think to take a selfie with a bear in the wild and get its head eaten off. So we're going to get to see more of that, all right? We're going to get to watch your cousin get his head eaten off in GoPro footage. Like this is the entertainment I've been waiting for. Also, this guy, okay, this guy sitting in a bedazzled chair in a museum

Him thinking that's going to be a good photo to send his friend, that's art. This is what you guys aren't getting, okay? You can't make art on purpose, I don't think. What he's doing is a good photo. Him thinking it's a good photo, that's... I have not seen a good photograph in years. Everyone's so rehearsed. They're so self-aware. They're posed. They're filtered. This dude is in under art. This is like a Diane Arbus...

piece of work they are trying to capture. He's in his Under Armour outlet, olive green shirt that he for sure swims in also. He's got like a crossbody, like Bluetooth headset, like some sharper image, sail rack contraption. Kate, this uncle, he is the most uncle dude I've seen in my life. Him thinking sitting in this chair is going to be the thing that gets him out of...

Facebook algorithm jail because he posted too many memes about Michelle Obama being a man is so much better than looking at this chair. You cannot be an artist who studies the human condition, depicts allegory about human nature and the complexities of life and think this chair is what anyone wants to see. Artists are supposed to understand on some level the human condition. Okay. They're supposed to read a room. If you bedazzle a chair,

and think people are going to pay money to go see it in this economy. You hate us. Who do you hate? Yourself? Us? If you bedazzle a chair, that's not art. That's Etsy. We've got Etsy. We've got Pinterest. Okay. Everyone's bedazzling chairs. Everyone. I live in Los Angeles. A bedazzled chair is in every chair in every strip club in LA. Okay. If you're bedazzling a chair and putting in a museum, that's not art. That's a dare. Okay.

If you're bedazzling chairs, also, you have no friends. No one's telling you the truth. You don't know how people work. You don't know what people want to do. Nobody benefits from seeing that chair in person unless they leave with a photo or a lawsuit or a good story. Okay. Okay. So Pat, tell me right now that you went to a museum and saw a bedazzled chair this weekend.

So what'd you do this weekend? Well, it was father's day. Oh, cool. So obviously packed up the kids. There's a bedazzled chair in the South Bay of Los Angeles. It was very bedazzled. She went and saw a chair. Yeah. It was shaped like a chair. I didn't, I didn't see anybody sitting in it.

why did you do that? Like when you tell someone this is what you did this weekend, it just ruins, like, I don't want to work with you anymore. Like this doesn't, someone going to see this chair and then telling their coworkers or friends about it ruins their life. Okay. People talk about how comedy is changing, how entertainment is changing and commerce and whatever. Listen, art's only value at this point is to build tension.

If you can create an environment where a normal person would ruin it, that is the only version of this to be interesting. Okay. Homer Simpson over here, who just drove the value of this chair up like a Billy Buccos by sitting in it. Now it's valuable because something interesting happened to it. Broken things have more value. I've been trying to explain this to my therapist so I don't have to fix myself. Broken things are better. Unbroken.

Unbroken things are boring. It's over. What are we doing? Okay. We don't need to see your perfect chair. We get to be perfect now on social media. We get to bedazzle our faces with a filter, one swipe. It's not interesting anymore. You have to change it. Artists need to stop with this bullshit. Also, I know people are going like, but this was based on Van Gogh.

Van Gogh. Van Gogh. Van Gogh was fine. All right, he cut his ear off, got him good press. I had my ear bitten off, my entire head. No one puts my standup specials in a museum.

I don't even know how you watch my standup specials, frankly. HBO Max? HBO Go? No Go? 2B Roku? Whatever. You guys wouldn't even enjoy my six standup specials at this point because I thought them through. I practiced them. Why do I have to like art more if the person who did it was mentally ill? I'm not falling for this.

Can I just do a podcast without being mad at someone from 100 years ago for once? Look, there's a lot of things in life where you're expected to perform under pressure. Some of them are just not optional, like the St. Jules.

Blue Chew is a service that delivers chewable tablets containing the active ingredients found in Viagra and Cialis. These are prescribed online. They're shipped directly to your door so you stay hard. Blue Chew Max is their option that combines both ingredients into a single chewable tablet. No in-person visits. See Chris Cole. You don't need to go in person. No pharmacy lines. Just making fun of a legend. No eye contact required. By the way,

you don't have to just put duct tape over my mouth anymore in order to get an erection. You can just take a blue chew. Consultation is handled online with a licensed service provider. What if like the online is like, hi. Yeah.

We never stop trying. Your first month is free with promo code Whitney. You just pay five per dollar shipping. Go to Bluetooth.com. That's Bluetooth, B-L-U-E-C-H-E-W.com. Promo code Whitney. Although I did hear a story from a guy friend of mine who took it a little too early. Like he just like went to a girl's house on like a third hang and like took it in the car and they just like talked for five hours. So just like time it. Time it well, guys.

I have found my person and he's a skateboarder, which I did not see coming because honestly, that is the thing I've made fun of the most in my life. But I want to work on the relationship and I don't always know how because people are like, relationships take work. And I'm like, what am I supposed to be doing? Like popping your zits, like tweezing your eyebrows. Like I didn't know what work meant. And I'm also so bad at,

Like, I don't know what to ask him about because...

he is the famous skateboarder. And I'm like, so what got you into skateboarding? Like, it's like, it's like a guy asking me how I got into comedy, you know? So he actually initiated this because he heard, we talked about the podcast, the paired app. Okay. So the copy says most couples don't fall apart because one big thing, it's usually the little stuff they stop doing. Paired is a relationship app for couples. Yeah. Okay. So you download the app and you pair together. Okay. So every day I get a question. We both get the same question.

But I'll get the question. He's already answered it, but I can't see his response. Like in order to unlock his response, I have to. And so it's things like, what did we get the other day? Like what smell reminds you of Chris? Grip tape.

From an infected ankle. The lack of cartilage. Stitches. The ER. It's really fun and cute. I don't know. Anyway, go to get the app. Save your relationship if you're into that kind of thing. Go to paired.com slash Whitney. Get a seven-day free trial and 25% off a subscription. That's paired. P-A-I-R-E-D dot com slash Whitney. How come all my sponsors are like BetterHelp, Paired, Fix Your Relationship, Fix Your Brain? Work on it.

Okay, enough. Enough, enough, enough. Let's just, let's get back. How's your summer going?

let's get back by the way this is I do want to talk about this because that's the question hey everyone's like so how's your summer going like what are you my high school bully the first day of school how's your summer what is this question it's like how is your flight you don't care you know how was my flight you know it was bad you want me to recap the whole thing we're not summertime stresses me out because everyone's like there's so much pressure

You know, like everyone needs summer. I'm not I'm not a big summer guy. I'm not a big I don't know. I never know what month it is. People like, how's your summer? I'm like, I don't know. I don't go outside.

That's not something your boy can do. I'm diaphanous. I did tanning beds literally twice a day from the ages of 14 to 17. So honestly, if I leave my house during the day more than three times before I die, I will look like a stucco building in Orlando. I just start changing. So I don't know. And also, I'm stuck in California. It's always summer when your backyard is on fire. I just... I'm glad everyone's into the summer, but it feels like we're really pushing the summer agenda this year. You know what I mean? Everyone's just like...

Summer is not my... It's just too much pressure to have fun. It's like New Year's Eve. You have to show your legs. I'm just not... Also, now that Mariah Carey said she doesn't believe in time, nothing is off the table for me. Mariah Carey says she does not believe in time. Somebody had to say it. Here's the thing. I did try. I tried to go on a vacation a couple weeks ago. Not like the...

kind where I break up. You guys know that when I have realized a relationship is over, I do overpay for a hut where me and my lover's relationship will go into hospice care. Wasn't that. Didn't want to do anything dramatic. I went down, like drove down to San Diego, got the hats. I got the lip balm, did the whole thing. Strapless bras because I'm on vacation. Like the person you become when you're going to go to the beach for an hour, like

is so funny to me anyway here's the thing though I told people I was going on I'm like I'm gonna go on a vacation I'm gonna go on a little you know thing no one told me that vacations are over like I knew about Blockbuster Video and Barnes and Noble but like vacations are close like I didn't know to think

that I could go somewhere in 2025 and relax and recharge. Honestly, I am actually worried about my ability to perceive reality. What kind of delusional cosplay from 2018 was I engaging in? Packing a bag with a straw hat, flip-flops, sunscreen, to think I was going to put on sunscreen and protect myself from the sun's rays when I think we're going to war?

SPF 20. How about SPF AK 47? What is the proper SPF to protect yourself from an atomic explosion, maybe? What did I think I was going to do? Just sit by a pool with all that's going on? Just like sitting duck? Honestly, the most relaxing place I could be is not the Bahamas. It's truly a bunker at this point. So if bunkers could offer a four-day, three-night package, that...

Vacations feel weird. And am I wrong? There's like nothing to celebrate. Like to think anyone is capable of relaxing ever again is so delusional. If you think relaxation is an emotion or activity that is still on the table, you should admit yourself to an institution. Your options right now are fight or flight. Those are the only way we can all survive this daily nightmare of opening our phones to all this like buck wild madness going on in the world. Like vacations at this point are truly...

Just...

time to process all the things we've been able to ignore by some miracle. Vacations, at this point, it's the downtime you finally have to process the horror of our existence. Like, we're able to ignore the truly, like, uncountable, horrific things that happen every day by, like, disassociating with work and the phone and shopping and telling celebrities they suck and YouTube comments and video games or whippets or whatever you do, you know, to keep yourself busy and distracted. But vacations...

This is when all the horrific things you've avoided just catch up to you. I sat on a poolside lounger and I was like, I'm going to relax. And it just was like, wait, hold on. Zoom has been filming us this whole time to train the robots when we just... Do I need to start reading the agreements? Wait, hold on. Hunter Biden's real? Wait, that whole thing? He's selling the paintings? Like...

Chelsea Clinton interviewed the Geico Gecko for NBC News 15 years ago. No one can. Shirley Temple was in blackface to the water line. I want to go home. I hate it here. Can you put me back on the hamster wheel, please? Yeah, totally. Like this is a nightmare. It just everything comes like crashing down. Vacations used to be what you would do to relax. But now vacations are where you have to face the reality of

that it's impossible to relax. The concept of a vacation broke because a vacation, that would require the people that work at a hotel or a resort to be able to accommodate a guest or have the capacity to help other people. And no one can do that right now because we're all in an existential crisis. None of these people that work at these hotels are available to make you feel better and relaxed, okay? Because they're in a state of

existential dread. Okay? They don't know how to help you relax. By the way, nor should they help you relax. We should be on high alert at all times. To help someone relax at this point is frankly sabotage. If someone is like, hey, you know, lie down, relax, call the, literally that's what Bill Cosby said. Okay? Why do you, why do you want me to relax so badly? Hmm? Why do you want me, why do you want me to have this, yeah, why do you want me to have this champagne on, by this pool? Hmm?

to fall asleep so bad so you can take my crypto password that's tattooed on my lower back like what are you also i think that people have like a senioritis right now it's hard to explain like like everyone's telling us ai is about to take your job so all these people who used to be there to comfort you and and help you relax they're in a state of mental collapse so frankly when we go to a hotel at this point you should go up to the front desk and be like how can i help you

Are you okay? Do you need anything? Like, what's your plan? Do you honestly, do you want to take my room and I'll work up here so you can figure out your plan B? The people that work at a hotel front desk at this point, like they used to like welcome you and like be excited to see you. It was like, how can I make your stay better? Now you walk up and they're just like, hey, yeah, we can't find your reservation. You don't exist. Right.

We don't exist either. We're not, this is over. What are you doing here? Like literally they're like, I need your confirmation number and you don't exist in our system. And I'm like, okay, well, I can't get the confirmation number because I can't get my emails because your wifi, I can't get on your wifi to get my confirmation number. Do you guys need more time? You don't let us check in till four. You have to, you've had the whole day to know I was coming in. The fact, by the way, I've never been able to

Enjoy a vacation in any capacity because check-in is at four. At four. So the first day of your vacation, all day, you're just waiting to check in. You're just waiting to check in. You're coming in early. You're coming in early.

They're like, can we take your luggage? You're like, you can't even find my name in the computer. You want me to give you my luggage? I have 22 dresses in here that I have never worn and will never wear again just for this trip that I cannot lose because how else am I going to look like a tropical ghost? No, I'm not giving you my luggage anyway. The haunting has begun.

Okay. I get there. Okay. I get to this hotel. So they give me the amount of the room. In addition to the price of their room, there was a resort fee. Okay. I'm going to read this verbatim. A resort fee is an extra charge imposed by hotels typically in addition to the base room rate to cover the cost of various amenities and services. These fees can vary significantly, blah, blah. They often include things like Wi-Fi access. Okay.

Okay. First of all, resort fee was $500 a day. Okay. Covers Wi-Fi access. Why? I don't want this. They're like, you're going to pay the cable bill for June. No, no. I'm on vacation. I don't want Wi-Fi. I can't even handle emails from people when I'm not on vacation. The whole point of coming here was that I don't have Wi-Fi. All right. If on vacation, I get an email and

and it comes in and there's a quote on the end of it, I'm suing your business. Okay? You know, like everyone's got a quote on their email sign off now. It's like their name and then it's like some quote. Like it's supposed to make me think I think you read or something. I'm not going to change my mind about what I wrote. If your email sign off is some quote, like always detach from things not meant for you.

You managed to attach that invoice just fine. Maybe detach the invoice if you're going to detach. You're also overcharging me. So maybe put down the Brene Brown book real quick and do the thing I paid you for. I don't know. When you're supposed to be doing work, can you just not remind me

that your life philosophy is how little work matters in life. I don't know. Also, you don't get to make another person's quote your entire personality. Like choosing a good quote, it doesn't make you smart. Also, the person who said the quote should have to agree that you have chosen it to represent your whole ethos. Like I...

Hate Oscar Wilde now only because of the people who use his quotes. Does he know you're closing out all of your emails? Remember when the brand Dooney and Burke asked Snooki to stop carrying their purses? We'll pay you. Like, can you please stop? The only thing that was worse, though, than someone putting a quote in their email sign-off that's like a famous person is someone you've never heard of. You definitely don't get to do that. Okay? You don't get to, like, you know...

have some inspirational quote in some person I've never heard. I'm not going to take your email sign off quote seriously, but I don't know who said it. It depends on who said it. Okay. If the quote is like the best way to work hard is to rest. Like I like this quote. If Steve Jobs said it. My third grade teacher. Yeah. No, no. If Steve Jobs said, oh, the key to success is resting. That's interesting. Coming from a workaholic. Like I like this perspective, you know, who worked so hard and realized it was pointless. Yeah.

It depends on who said it. Also, don't give me more work at work. Now I have to go Google this person?

I have to go Google someone to figure out what your personality is? Stop trying to enlighten people without their permission at work. We don't want to be enlightened at work. We need to stay in a zone of all that matters is money and we have to just, like, this is America. We can't get, we can't stop believing in money right now. Today? Also, you say per my last email. Where do you get off?

You just responded thanks to 19 people on a chain. Power move. Also, this resort fee, I asked them, I was like, what is this cover? They were like, well, also the fitness center. I'm like, I'm on vacation. When did resorts stop understanding what a vacation is? Okay. We have the business center, the Wi-Fi, the gym.

I know. Look, having, first of all, having Wi-Fi is bad enough. It takes away our excuses of not responding. The whole point of coming here is to be able to tell people, oh, the resort didn't have Wi-Fi. I would pay you the resort fee to have no Wi-Fi so that when people Google where I am, it says this has no Wi-Fi so I actually can be offline. I will literally pay that if it means.

that I will break an addiction from my home. People need to be able to say the place I'm saying doesn't have Wi-Fi. Corporations are run by people who don't use their own products. That's why they put poison in them. That's why they put gyms in resorts. They don't go to their own hotels. They have no idea what real people want. They have an island. They have boats where laws don't apply to them. They're on international waters.

Okay, these workaholics who started a corporate hotel, they're like, we got to make sure that there's Wi-Fi because we're not on vacation. That's when you get the most work done, you know? No, you work on vacation because you're a money obsessed dork who needed to get very rich so you'd have friends because no one, stop charging us money on our vacations for things that only you would use while on vacation because your family doesn't want to talk to you. And then now you're going to charge us extra. Yeah.

to do the thing that we don't even want to do. Like, know me less, right? It is now illegal for hotels to charge it at the end. They have to disclose it at the beginning to just make sure your whole vacation is ruined. Honestly, again, it's like the AI thing. If you're going to charge me this fee, tell me at the end. Certainly don't tell me on the first, at four o'clock when I'm checking in. Honestly, I'd rather arrive and you just spit in my face. Is that an option? Can I do that instead? So, of course, my whole trip was about this fee. Yeah.

And I was like, okay, I got to like figure out how to waive this fee. There's got to be a way to waive this fee. So, right. So that I can talk about on the podcast and tell everyone like how to get around this fee. Right. So this fee is only waived. They said this to my face with a serious, without laughing. They said, you can get this fee waived if you are a member of the resort point system.

can we stop with the hotel and airline cult programs? We know what you're doing. Stop trapping us into your loyalty, bro. Just be a good hotel and we'll keep coming back. We're creatures of habit. The algorithm will just give it right back to us if we liked it before. I'm not getting the Delta app.

I'm not joining your clubhouse. My home screen is literally texts, emails, dating app, Bumble. I mean, I'm with someone, but you know, we just, we want to keep, we don't want to log out. Two paired accounts. Two paired where I work on my relationship with my man. Okay. Delta doesn't go on there. Okay. I'm also not putting photos of your planes in my, my photo albums or my scrapbooks. Okay.

Okay, we're not together. All right, how about all you airlines just start landing the planes and we'll keep coming back. I already have to pick a political party, an NFL team. I have to pick a Kelsey. I have to pick an iPhone or Samsung. I'm not siding with one tube of farts over the other tube of farts. I'm not picking a fart tube to go on forever. Honestly, I made fun of polyamory once and I got...

And now I would like to apologize and say, I get it now. I'm polyamorous with hotels and airlines. I cannot get all of my needs met from one airline. If you guys believe about relationships the way I believe about airlines, I was wrong and I am sorry. All right. And by the way, hey, airlines and your 500 emails is not going to get, that's not what's going to seal the deal. Right.

I can't even check my email anymore. It's all like a brand that I already ordered from. It was like, hey, where'd you go? Like I got, I spent, I already bought something I didn't need from you, dude. Give an inch, man. Hey, hey, hey, you know that shirt you got? You want to get it in a different color? No, I want it in this color. I'm like, what, I'm going to wear the same shirt in different colors? Like Pottery Barn's like, hey, hey, we have a sale. I'm like,

I already bought all my, I got all the furniture. How do you think I'm checking your email about your sale on the desk I bought from you? I got you, I got one. I won't need new furniture for like 10 years. All right. I already bought it at full price. Now you're going to tell me there's a sale? Is that, and you wonder why I don't want to join your barn point system? I'm also, by the way,

I'm talking about a big chain that did this resort fee thing. I did leave this hotel because it was just... I don't want to pass the gym on the way to the pool. It ruins the whole deal. It just makes me feel bad. Like I'm in a bathing suit. I'm already like... So I did leave that one. And then I went to this place in Encinitas called Alila Marea. Am I saying it right? Excellent. No resort fee. The beach had no sand. No.

It was magical. My only problem with the beach is the sand, so. And they spit in your face. They fix it. And they spit in my face instead. I'm relaxed now, as you can tell. It really, I really got a nice reset. And I was able to kind of escape some negativity about everything that's going on in the world when I was on this. It's not a vacation. I was informed that when you have a kid, it's never a vacation. It's a trip. Yeah.

Yeah. So I went on a trip. I think calling it a vacation was my first mistake because words matter, guys. And look,

I kind of sat there and I went through all the horrific things happening in the world and, you know, couldn't really go in the water much because there's still apparently toxic flame retardant that comes down from LA. So you can't actually go in the ocean. And I just think it's interesting how optimistic we actually are as people. You might say stupid. I like to say optimistic. Like I think most people are inherently positive to the point of being delusional.

I don't think because people are so negative now. I actually think it's the opposite. The people that you see on Twitter and in the comment section, yes, of course, that's like a very small sample of people. But I think most people are actually like way more open-minded than they're not. We just hear from the most negative people. Just remember, we are a species who spat in a tube, gave our DNA away in hopes of meeting our real dads.

The dads that didn't even want to meet us. If that's not optimistic, I don't know what is. We willingly give Silicon Valley our periods. We just let them track our period. We send naked photos of ourselves over text. Jeff Bezos had a text leak. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for the rest of us? Okay, we're actually very trusting people. So I just, after going through all this and, you know, kind of just like...

being, you know, a silly goose about things. I just want to remind everyone, like, we're actually a very trusting, loving species. Half of all marriages end and it's still our number one goal in life. I think that after looking at all this bad news, processing it on my trip, I really came out of it just being like, look at us.

Look at us. The more bad news we get, the more positive we become. So I just I feel like I want to just end on like kind of a positive note because, you know, I don't think we are all buying our own negativity at this point. I think it's just like high school. It's cool to be negative. It's cool to skip school. It's cool to think everything sucks.

Like no one is living as if everything is bad, is as bad as they're saying it is. People will be on a boat like, oh, everything's falling apart. An orca is about to sink your boat and you're just out there. We're not. I just think we all need to look at our behavior instead of what's being said online. Because our behavior, Elon Musk is like, we're in a simulation. This is all fake. Then why do you keep having more and more kids? Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's the most negative people I know are not living as if any of the things they say they're scared of are actually going to happen. If you do a vacation, the number one thing you don't do is ride elephants ever.