#732 - Mary Harrington - Why You Shouldn’t Share Your Private Life Online
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What's I mean, people, welcome back to the show. What my yesterday is mary harrington, she's writer column and an author. N everyone has the temptation to share their life on the internet, but where does the line of sharing stop and over sharing begin? How has our performance for the crowd crapped into our morals and changed the way that we see the role of privacy around our personal lives?

Expect to learn what digital modesty is, why liberals would be more likely to date and only fans worker than an only fans subscriber if there is a crisis with both masculinity and femininity in our culture. Merry thoughts on the surrogacy industry, why women need to develop a strategy for not getting what they want and much more. Mary is so fun.

I love her writing her book. Feminism against progress was really great. And SHE is part of the bed british women squad, along with Louis parian, nana power and stuff.

So few funds of them. You will love this one today. Other things I am going to la to not know, go to vegas tonight. And I ve got a very big episode tomorrow, and then i'm in L A friday and saturday recording even more big ones with some massive returning guests and some huge first times. I can't way for this.

It's nice to be back in the rythm of doing the modernism cna episodes and I can't way to release them and really super, super fight up for this year. I wish I can tell you all the different guests that we ve got that are coming on. But until that recorded and on the hard drive, don't account my chickens before they've goosed whatever it's called.

But yes, make sure that you subscribed is the only way that you can never miss an episode. And the next few months, again, we massive plus IT helps to support the show. So good to IT.

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Tell leon has everything you need whenever you need IT. Find your push, find your power. Tell us on at one peloton that com. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome mary hering ton.

What do you mean by digital modesty?

Oh yeah, that's that's an idea i've been playing with a lot recently, which is really just about where we've got to with the exposure of everything on the internet. This is something I find myself thinking about a lot more. And the more the more I found myself writing in public and speaking in public and really sort of being present online, whether it's on twitter or whatever, which is is, is there anything that we shouldn't be posting?

And the more I think about that, the more the more I conclude that, yes, there are absolutely things that we shouted be posting or rather if there are things which if, if if we do share them, we should expect negative consequences to follow from that. I mean, i've the more I thought I i've i've derived a set, I guess, of basic principles for what I won't post. I won't post selfish online.

I mean, i'll my faces all over the internet, right? But in the context of a conversation, you know, you and I here, you and I here, but not here to talk about my face. I mean, my face is just my face. We're here to here to exchange ideas and to have a conversation. But I won't post, I won't post self is yeah I I actually I remember the point where I realized that you I shouldn't I didn't want to post cl fies was was just after I I ran over the finish line of a marathon a couple years ago and I trained for IT, train for IT and I train for IT.

I'd worked so hard at IT and at that point I think I had maybe ten thousand followers on twitter, and and I took a photo of myself having cross the finish line, looking like how completely exhausted and high as a kite on and orphans, and I nearly I nearly press and and then I was like, well, don't do that. Do not do that and and I deleted IT and I did I did not post the self feet of myself having just crossed the finish line, because I realized if I did, like probably seventy five percent of the people who follow me would say, great, well down, congratulations. And I get lots of love.

The other twenty five percent will be the people who hate full because they exist. Once you get past a certain point, you get, you have hatred on the internet because, like, people can find, people can hate anything. You know, that's just the law of the internet.

People find something incident to hate, even if it's just people doing like middle doing maths. And then and have been one mean comment which would have just crushed me and that would have ruined my diet. I thought, what's the easiest way of not experiencing that one? Me in comment is just not just to post the picture, but it's more than that.

It's also that IT IT exposes something intimate and personal which I realized was just not something which was IT wasn't for everybody else IT was my that that moment was for me and IT was for my, for my family and for the people who supported me. IT wasn't for and and for the people who who supported me to fundraising wasn't for general consumption. And and I realized that that actually there is a boundary. And I i've spent more time online. I i've appeared in public war since then and the more the more I do IT, the more I i've come to think that actually we need, the more exposed you are potentially online, the more the more intentionally you have to be about thinking, inking.

thinking clearly on way you raw the line.

Well, I wouldn't that be problematic way of putting IT in public, because I think they are borrowing from other people, from a faith which I don't personally a spouse, as as a metaphor .

model OK no sell is so, no cell, no pictures of my home.

no pictures of my child, no pictures of my husband. No discussing my husband, my child or my home, except in the most general terms and and really, no, no discussing into mate matters from my social life and my my family life and my home life, unless it's in the most general terms or with the consent of anybody else involved. Ultimately, these are these by virtue of being relationships, the things which don't just belong to me. And because IT doesn't just belong to me, I can't mind. I have no right .

to mind that for content, justify for the non content creator people, why a degree of digital modesty is also a good idea OK. So the more I thought .

about digital modesty, the more I realized that what we're actually talking about is dress is setting boundaries on the culture of transparency.

And this is really something which I think we've inherited from the one hundred and sixty and the sort of happy europeanism and this idea that, you know, if we will let IT all hang out, if we just open about everything, if we will just share, and where we're onest and we're authentic, then somehow everything is gonna be Better. And that might have been true. Maybe that was true to an extent before the internet, because there was a limit on what you could say.

But now we have the internet, we could theoretically ally be documenting literally every moment of our lives. And on those are, are those people who tried documenting literally every aspect of their lives online, generally ended up in some pretty horrible places. I can't remember the name of the guy, but there was also a famous, there was a famous subculture. There was some guy online who who documented literally every every aspect of his life and he ended up getting rolled and he basically went some very dark places and ended up ah yeah in in in in profound kind of yeah so I really sense the kinds of audience capture that wasn't nicaro .

other cargo was IT he he's a more recent case in point.

You know, people who end up so are you crying and breaking up with with and getting back together again with his boyfriend while eating and in almost plates of food? Basically for internet class, there's a sort of race to the bottom aspect that but but but more generally, even for people who are not uh, professional internet uh, presents have us the culture the culture of transparency and a lot of tyranny. Transparency has negative effects.

Like I was thinking about this like in the context of dating, I mean, you know periodically you see these tiktok which which Young men or women put out with them I oh you know I I just point of view, you're on a date and they are literally filming the date while they're on the date and then they're criticizing the the counterpart on the date while they're actually doing IT or they are gone to the loose to make a tiktok about how the date is going wrong while they're actually having the day. And i'm thinking, well, you if you never draw line and so if if you if you arrive in a sort of potentially intimidating ation, you always got that imagined audience in your head, which is potentially everybody on the internet, how are you ever supposed to create a shared into mercy with anybody? And I think so is like transparency is not just the enemy of desire. Transparency is the enemy of intimacy, is the enemy of relationships. And if if does nothing, if there's no gap at all between what you'd say on main and what you'd say in private, that this intimate is just meaningless is not a thing.

One of my friends who I came up doing club a with, he was in southampton, and I was a new council running the same event college, which was an event where you bought A T shirt as your ticket, and you do was tasks on the back, like polder pig got off with three random swatch shoes with somebody at sea sea right very sort of mid naught Larry british shrinkin culture stuff um and I was asking him where he thought that the Larry culture, which although maybe not exactly like emotionally healthy, is a kind of a liberated licentiousness which kind of speaks of a degree of transparency and honesty and truth, like i'm just going to do what I want, right? I'm not going to perform and whether I had done well like the Larry like you know paul randoms in a club type thing because that's not what happens we see does any no. And he said it's because of this in the audience stari surveilLance state run by gallois al volunteers, which is everybody with the .

phone in the park yet yes, exactly that you know does no, no, you can't do prints. You can't. You can't have A A crazy night at with your friends. And I we throw some completely focus parties.

When I was, when I was late teens, early twenties, I body the absence and laughing gas party, which I can only remember kind of in bus, and that that there was a magical evening which I have unforgetable and also unremembering but there's absolutely no way that could have happened any of IT. Um if if if camo phones have been a thing at the time and i'm thinking, you know there are there are huge mbr of benefits that come there. There are new kinds of communication, the new forms of relationship. I mean, you and I wouldn't be sitting here talking to one another if IT wasn't for this phenomenal technology that we have that brings people together in some ways. But if we if we're not able and willing to set on what we will not want to share, then IT IT IT will eventually scoop out everything that's inside us and leave us no scope for intimacy or interpersonal connection at all.

Ultimately, everything becomes performed. everything. And my friend early on, and we were saying I had an aversion to taking photos for a while, because given my love island aluminous status, I had seen a lot of people who did photos.

And I associated every time you take a photo of your self for what you're doing or ever, that is, you shilling yourself a content on the internet. But that's not true. People took photos way longer before social media existed.

So I had associated, the only reason for taking photo is supposed to online. Therefore, I won take a photo because I don't want to be one of those one key of olin people, the postal of their life online. But that caused me to not post my life online, which I wasn't going to do anyway, but also not taking any photos of the fund stuff that I was doing.

I ve got these huge debts of of my life where I don't have photos of me and my friend's doing stuff on a lunch to go see the the day I wanted to like, I was like, I wanna remember this I wanted remember the pink shirt that he was wearing in the fact I had cross on and like, you know, stuff oh, my, okay, let's take a photo. But i'd have to get over my own fear that i'm doing IT for content even though I know i'm gonna post IT. No, it's like I like, like for projecting myself into the future that i'm not a part of.

but is the stuff that you would just categorical of a photograph?

No, no, I would. I would. I would be like times with friends if I go on a hike with some friends or whatever, but i'm in nature and I feel like i'm supposed to be like a primitive man here. And I shouldn't have my phone out because IT feels gosh, somehow to do IT or whatever. You know. I mean, like here I am at the top of the t but it's not it's here I am with my friend i've just taken a hike with and I really want to remember this oh, maybe i'll frame IT and put in on my wall at some point at something like that. Seems like all of that such a good idea that a good use of technology up until the point of which you everything becomes an only fans for yourself.

I don't know, impossibly slightly more radical than that in the sense that well, I may I mean.

I think .

about when I run a lot. So I run red flag, you left. I run is just know so, so I run a lot. One of the reasons I run is because I can't do that in west simultaneously. Scrolling like left actually .

can do in between sets.

The reason, the reason I obsess about all of this stuff is because I like I am so so that hard word to to the the the rage machine, like i'm so plugged into the internet is which is why I I find myself kind of restless with the other limits of IT at all. And one of the reasons I run, and one of the reasons I I treat that is absolutely sacris sant space in my life, is because it's physically impossible to do that while simulators ously throwing.

And I have an absolutely castle, rolf for myself. IT doesn't matter how beautiful the scene, doesn't matter how gorgeous the sunrise. When I gone for like a two hour dawn run the mod of nowhere, I will not stop in photography. I will not, I will not stop and record that, because I don't want to allow space for that imaginary audience.

See that again. There's no reason I understand why you do that. I think that's a noble like set of rules to set to yourself. The reason that, that has happened is because of the social media side, not because of the photo side. Let's say that you had a beautiful photo album of all of the beautiful sunsets that you'd ever seen. IT is a gainst sort of crossing over of the barrier of, not just this is for me, but that there is something in built into technology that kind of like, in fact, and gets into me.

And if I opened my phone, oh my god, what if I see a fucking notification from twitter and i'm sucked in the score hole in my entire run is is ruined and stuff like that, I said, it's a shame that something which can be, you know, my videographers got this like, real, special sort of pointing click camera that is very low fraction. And he bought IT specifically, even though he had all of the kid in the world, but he bought this very specific camera, which is just pointing shoot. And all IT does is that, and he bought that to remove the friction and remove the performative nature of this.

So I just think it's it's an interesting blends. But we you were talking before about how um people who put a lot of themselves online, they can have unforeseen repercussions. I guess if a lot of people are clustering together over their political opinions, and if you even synonymously post hot for political opinions on the internet, eventually the person that you're potentially looking to date is is resume.

We're gone to get exposed whatever is that you do online. And if you are a hard core, if you're fucking bronze age pervert or something, it's I oh right like and now I have this entire other side of you that needs to be folded into our dating pool. I learned from scot galloway in one thousand hundred and sixty one in twenty five, parents had concerns about their child marrying someone from the opposite political party.

By twenty eighteen, almost half of democrat parents and the third of republic ican parents had such concerns. And a third of each party sees the other party is an enemy. So given this sort of clustering around political opinions more than many other things, and a lot of people doing the synonymous anonymous shit posting online thing, you are potentially creating a future in which your entire mating pool has been restricted by opinions that you had six months ago. And you've got a choice between neither lying to somebody about your ship, posting online thing, or trying to somehow fold that into a conversation .

that they can be accepting up. I'm not even sure how you how you resolve that. I mean, I am fortunate. I'm immensely blessed in my husband I met some time ago, and this was just just never really been before before even .

an option before I was a professional .

opinion have a long time before I was a professional opinion haver um and really long before political polarization was anywhere near its current level of completely budget crazy. So I mean, that was a completely academic and and the honestly, honestly cristy the advice I give to anybody, anybody whose single and extremely online is date, somebody who's just not very online.

You know, you can only have one very online person in a relationship, you know, except in the most unusual circumstances, because and dota from Younger friends I know who are also opinion, have as whether an anonymous ly or uh or or on the under their own faces and exactly is a real problem because, well, I mean, quote one one, one writing and on who I chat to periodically who should remain nameless told me that I mean i'm i'm paraphrase a little bit but essentially um he has he has a real problem because if he like he says if you your choices your choices between an eagle uh arriving eagle and that generally unlike a little if they can be on the unstable side or somebody who doesn't know anything about your opinions, in which case how on earth you're going to explain what you do, what you spend all day doing online and furthermore, what what's gna happen when he finds out about your opinions on the internet? It's not going to be great and it's a real problem. So like how how you supposed to form any kind of any any kind of of a genuine mutually satisfying relationship under those circumstances?

I don't know the answer. I mean, I suppose I come back again to to digital modesty and the idea that we have to reserve some some space for intimacy, which is protected from from the imaginary audience that we have on the internet. And actually, I think in some ways, what the analyst is is wise in that sense because by virtue of being a known theyve already drawn a very clear boundary.

You know, they said there, but you know, if you want to stay, if you're unknown, you want to stay and on there's a whole sway. The stuff that you just can't share, you can't really post anything about where you are, what you do for a living or or anything is too close to what what your data day activity is. And and so that that creates just by it's a very, a very blanket way of setting some boundaries ies on what you're win to share. But for the rest of us, uh, it's it's a real chAllenge knowing knowing where to raw those lines and where and where to protect your, where to protect what's just yours and what belongs to you and the .

people you love you. Douglas told me a couple of years ago, uh keep your private life privates um I think you know, one of the things that people can see is that relationships and makeup, PS and break ups and the visitor des of your personal life can be a very effective wedge to begin levering a to be able to create an audience, right? It's the same as, it's the same as every person who decides to call out some other internet commentator and have an argument with them.

That's a very effective way to gara a attention. And I bees, but at what cost? What does that say about you? What sorts of conversations does IT something?

Always s more doit. Doesn't matter what, how much you fear.

If you think that having a relationship is hard, try having a relationship at a couple of million people who were also invested in the outcomes .

of your relationship. You every soft I see, I see a nms with a bit of a platform report that somehow IT somehow comes out, the two, two people who have a bit of platform of having a relationship with one another, and all of a sudden everybody cares. And everybody, unlike what am I even invested in this.

I have no idea who these people are, but I don't know. Maybe it's just a by product of being otherwise relatively atomised and fear like that. This is a basic human need. Sort of feel like you have a void.

a community. I wonder if a little bit of IT is kind of like um who wins in a fight between bat and and superman .

like who gets in a relationship .

like you got two people, both of whom you know individually and they are now in a relationship together and you go, oh what happens if these two world collide are something you know, my coop er got engaged the other day and he announced on the internet that he was like the back of her philaner y's head, maybe the side of his ARM in a shoe or something.

And it's like this the first last time that the intents going to see a part of like my husband's body. He's fiances body. He's not interested in being famous and I really like him for that and that's what you've got that like a one sided internet relationship. Uh and he did a little bit of time talking about IT and now is going to move on. But yeah, you got to be careful on again to kind of seeing the song for the people who don't have A A following or a desire to monetized or any of you of the things.

IT is a gene that does not go back in the box, two places, not go back in the tube, because once of the photos of things that you have on the internet, the place that you live, the kids that you have, like a little stuff, like if you take a photo of your kid in the school uniform on the first day of school, guess what, that school uniform identifies which fucking school they go to. So yeah, very, very interesting talking about this. I've found a study that I think this is kind of associated.

A survey was sent out breaking down whether participants of different political ideologies would refuse to date to current only funds worker and an only fans subscriber percentage of participants who would not date occurrent only fans worker, left leaning forty. Moderate sixty three, lightening eighty four percentage of women who would not date a current only fun subscriber. Left leaning seventy, moderate seventy eight, right, eighty forth or right is eighty four th of both.

But there are way more left leaning people who would date and only funds worker than would date and only funds subscriber. And I think that that says kind of quite a lot about some of the signaling that people on the left are looking to do at the moment that like sex work is real work. And you can like monitise yourself as you wish, but there is still an inherent ache from women to the men who are a part of that ecosystem.

I would be curious to hear like what these what the methodology was and whether there was any effort to control for preference falsification. Well, I mean, when you think about when you think about what orthodoxy is on the left, but IT went around, you know sex work is work and the the other other um I be willing to bet that there would be a subset of people who asked, you know, would you be willing to dated on friends, worker, lie, even if they weren't actually, even if actually honestly, if you ask them in the pub privately, off the record, be like you that gives me that if you ask them in that sort of a context, they would they would give them morally approved answer for full their political tribe which is, oh yeah, that's fine. Sex work as well, I don't know, may be some of them genuinely don't care, but I am willing to bet that it's a higher proportion actually of of of men on on both sides of the politic spectrum. Does he find that appealing?

What do you learn about the world in the current only find subscribe .

er thing okay so so the difference between well and like a guy was addicted to porn is basis fundamentally low low status? You know and I think it's it's it's moral. It's considered morally acceptable across the entire political spectrum to dunk on to dunk on lonely like mater baty hang dung. That's like nobody nobody cares about them. You know that in sales are those status .

simps the perverts .

and the porn sic like losers like nobody cares about them, everyone is happy to to dunk on them. So there's less, less of a pressure to preference falsification, where as well as women, women in the sex industry have a much, much hefty of architectural moral lecturing around them, at least on the left. So so that would be that would be my read on what's going on there. Yeah, a preference for fiction.

What did you learn after the release of the Barbie movie? Did you reflect on sort of what that did culturally? Did you do .

anything culturally? I think that .

there was an ough lot of conversations around what true feminist power, feminine power, means, and whether or not there is still this sort of rampant patriarchy that is kind of keeping women down and so on and so forth. And then there was the right wing reaction and was the left hring left wing reread tion to the right wing reaction in all the rest of IT. So I thought he was interesting, you know, if anything, that ensure peer needs to do a forty five minute video about, like after he was watched stress, as can I thought, was an interesting um yeah that is an interesting opportunity.

My favorite read on the Barbie movie was was that I was a straighforward reactionary text that IT was and that IT was IT was arguing fundamentally against tremendous and arguing fundamentally for women as for the and body differences between men and women. And that was, there was nothing, there was nothing progressive feminist about to the all.

how? So how? What would you say to the people who are like? How could you say this? There is IT was obviously was pushing back against men. And men were on the receiving end of all of the, and they laughed them in all the rest of things.

But they, but pregnant boby, was expelled from the Bobby verse. I mean, there's no dark a commentary on the on on the boundaries of liberal feminism. I mean, this is, this is what I spent my entire professional career harping on. The black is the fact that liberal feminism has another shape blind spot and is right there in the film.

It's it's so, I mean, even if IT was meant as a liberal feminist text is a liberal feminist text that's telling on itself in a sort of compulsive verbal area by and and this is the this is the reactionary read of of the Bobby movie, I mean, you know but from I suppose you could say that it's in the night like a good piece of art is never, is never a straightfor poly piece of political propaganda. You know, IT doesn't work like good stories and never a never straight forward moral lectures. A good stories always, always contain the, the, the other perspective. And good stories are always just more complicated than that. But I mean, even if even if IT was intended as a piece of a feminist propaganda IT told on itself in some powerful ways, i'm including by in the detail of expelling pregnant boby from the barbi vers.

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Plus there is a no B S, no questions ask ref n policy, so I can buy one hundred cent risk free that drink. L M N T dot com slash modern wisdom. I was talking to the ise about the unobvious ways in which our culture is anti family.

I didn't get round to actually finding out. I just helped on myself. What would you say some of the ways that people might not realize that culture could be anti family?

Well, I can give you a very straightforward anette. So I don't live in london. I live, I live out in the bones. Uh, I have i've traveled into london with a toddle in a pushchair um and you know occasionally somebody will help you up and down the steps on the tube but you push sometimes people do, times people don't um but like nobody will really give you the time if nobody looks at your kid can't really I not sure that I could explain why i've also traveled in to london with a dog. Everybody wants to talk to your dog, right?

I mean, is IT not just that dogs are Better than than humans across the board? Your do is beautiful and very lovely, but it's impossible to be Better than a dog. I think that so IT works.

You you only say that cause .

you don't have kids true of look, he's the thing that I i've also realized dog walked past you, your everybody a dog is kind of like it's the world's pet. It's not your pet because you are allowed to go over and tap IT on the head and what's your name? And ba, if someone presumably IT might be nicer. If more people acknowledge daughter, you walk by. But if they started ed coming over and patting her on the head and feeding.

I mean, you maybe not the feeding treats, but in other countries, like people respond to to a random child completely differently. You get warm looks. He get interactions from strangers. It's only in britain. And the people like I must start look at your and I don't I don't know that I am I don't fully understand the psychology behind not looking at somebody else is child and not wanting to even acknowledged that there's a little person and that there's something very .

distinctive about IT. It's like the non radar thing that people are so concerned of being seen as like some latent sexual predator there is for men.

That's definitely a factor. And I I know that because i've i've spoken about IT with with male friends and peers who who confirmed to me that they they they'll be very cautious about interacting with with mothers and children in in, in public setting because they're terrified of being labelled in that way. And I think that something really toxic about that.

and something i've found, I think i've told you this, that over the last few years, my Peterson al instinct to started to kick in, and children have gone from being super annoying and lame to like, kind of cute. So but I see a child now, like, let's says, like some little girls being walk on by her mother or father or whatever, in the policy where I live, I am like, I would like a Green IT whoever the over .

the top go over the top three and yeah well enough water .

you high highly .

performance athlete .

I don't like have a Green at the child is the walk past I don't think of fucking her like i'm a strange, like the third easy year old man the pocket flow weather original precisely?

No, it's really dark. It's really dark. It's really dark. And and I want that me either. The the total number of none things today is no, no, no higher actually than IT was fifty, twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, if anything. So but the the level of panic is so much greater.

right? So the anti child accepting and pleasure culture isn't helping to reduce the Nancy rate. It's just making life. It's just making life alone. Mother and kids like kind of lame.

I mean, it's very it's difficult time. I don't know that I would be I be cautious about drawing clear calls or lines between those things and and whether whether the stranger day, all of that panic is is a cause or an effect, be hesitant to speculate without IT more data, but not none of IT none of IT helps you to feel any more part of a community when you're existing in public with a child that learn lot children.

yeah. Does he feel alienating a little bit?

Well, I mean, it's it's it's particularly powerful when you've got very strong children because I mean, when before before once your kind is in school, you're sort of in in your kind of part of an ecosystem at that point. You know your part of of the schoolmaster's whats up group and your part of you part of a community, and you know the events you go to and you see the same kids around the Brown is or whatever.

And if so, so after you, you sort of start to fit in with with fabric of other people. And you do realize that actually some I mean, if you live in a small town, as I do, at least you know if you're fortunate enough to live somewhere like that, then that something of that fabric is still there, even if you do have to go looking for IT bit. Um but when you when you are very new mum, particularly when it's your first or were in my case my only um is IT feels like you you just fAllen off the edge of the world into somewhere completely different and old old women will smile at you on the street. But pretty much, pretty much nobody is very hard to establish where you fit at all.

There's a lot you know go make a kind， I guess bobbies cultural commentary. There's a lot of talk about the crisis of masculinity at the moment。 If I was to make a prediction for the next sort of five to ten years, I think that I would project out that there will be a big crisis of femininity coming down the pike at least a little bit.

I I think that IT IT can't be the case. The women continue to grow up because there is a death of good male role models, but the female role models are no Better. The only differences that they're allowed to be on T, V, more, that they get more rare time, and that when women have problems, there is a little bit more mainstream sympathy.

I think that's probably true. I mean, I suppose I would frame IT very slightly differently. Um like the problem as I see IT isn't it's not it's not necessarily just a crisis of mind ny or a crisis of femininity. It's a total crisis of embodied humans which hits the sexes differently and which is downstream of having developed a culture in which almost nothing about our physical bodies makes very much difference at all.

At least if you if you live in, if if you do a knowledge based, if if your occupation is in the world of information, I mean if I mean you are all work or obviously like your physical body matters a lot, you know, to an if you do something physical, but those those that that as a proportion of the economy has been drinking and drinking and shaking with with industry first, first with the the the the the rural depopulation as agricultural industrialized, and then with the industrial, with with the industry. The industrializing is the second tear of that know the number of people who do manual work has been drinking with every generation and and the number of people who do, who who work in the world of information has been growing. And I mean, if you work in the world of information.

IT doesn't matter. Watch your body.

And exactly that. There are all gender neutral occupation ents in syrian of us could be driving a spread sheet.

Doesn't matter drive and arguably I mean .

the same the same goes arguably to a great extent for for the being a professional opinion have IT doesn't matter what sex you the .

keyboard wheelers can be .

the same thing IT doesn't matter. There's a real there's a concrete question which faces confronts all of us in that context, which is to what extent does do our bodies even matter? And I think really this is what the gender ideologues are pushing up from the opposite direction.

You they're making a very strong statement. What shape my body doesn't matter so much. So in fact, that i'm entitled to remodel line as I see fit and making building a whole political platform on the basis of that premise and else.

But but everybody is confronted with the same, but even people who are not signed up to the holes of meat, lego world view, everyone's confronted with the same question, if, if i'm driving a spread sheet or being a professional opinion, have a like, what? What difference is that even matter? You know, who cares? Who cares? What shape my body is is is masculinity of, yeah what does that mean to be a man or to be a woman when we're all just disable the heads on the internet? I don't know the answer to that.

but I grapple with that every day. But it's definitely something, I think, that people grap away ultimately. You know, given that work is maybe one of the most important things that you do that might contribute, but there will be times where your biology and your previous position smash up against your nature and the experiences that you have in life.

I completely agree, and I think this is what we what IT would benefit all of us to to be more to be talking more about and to be leaning more into. And I mean, sometimes that I see people making early attempts at that are trying to trying to find ways into that you get these sort of ridiculous kind of trade subcultures, for example, who are trying to find ways to be men and women in a sort of post human age, which is really kind of what we're talking about here yeah and and that kind of doesn't work and it's kind of clinton and often.

I mean an example.

Well, I mean, okay, so backing up a bit so was a real like among the alright in particular. This is something which I ve been reading into a bit recently among the alright, you know, in between sort of two thousand and sixteen and maybe two thousand and twenty, there was a real, there was a real boom in influences of both sexes. But actually quite a lot of a Young women and who were who were calling for, you know, pushing back against the kind of modern generation y and saying, we should all, we should all, we embrace traditional gender roles, and we should have more resort traditional set up relationships, and that we could fight back against the collapse of everything in that way. As IT turns out, a lot of those, a lot of the women who actually tried doing that um just absolutely hated IT they though the relationships were really mess up and IT don't you know a lot of the relationships were abusive and there are women who are coming out of that now having survived and an all right attempt to a trade relationship who had just massively beau p and traumatized by the experience and who are now they sort of unhinging ed kind of subset of like post all right .

radical feminists, what was their experience of the .

relationship? Well, I mean, if you if if you want an example of somebody who went, who went away through one one vary into this, you should look at law in southern story.

No, I mean, without wanting to make any comment on her opinions or her political trajectory, but I mean, SHE SHE went through something along these lines and ended up living in a trail park with with a um you know having having married somebody who was possibly a fed and was I was all all here right I mean IT IT was a great absolute te crazy arc and you know having having leaned all the way into being a kind of all right anti feminist influencing he yes he ended up as a single mother living in the trail park and is now I don't know what she's doing now but yet I mean, there are a great many people who did who sincerely tried to kind of recent something like the old, the old wave of men and women interacting. And I found that I just just blew up underneath them, and I didn't all I know there were their relationships he formed, which is still flourishing. But there are there a lot of other things went extremely long.

What is going?

I don't know. I I honestly, I think like trying to trying to reverse engineer a set of a set of a sex differences without the material underpinnings which created those six, those different sex social norms is just is a beautiful .

errent honest what like can you get specific like .

vee specific I have to come up this from the other direction. Um so so one of the scenes, one of the things in i've writing about in feminism against progress is those ways in which, like many women have both always worked, at least stop until the beginning of the industrial remen of women always worked, but both success did and they did so complementary.

I've an alert beautifully about this in gender, which I strongly recommend as a book if you're interested in in the the the deep history of of the relations between the sexes. And he writes, he writes about how in premodern, modern, agrarian, largely agrarian life, you know, men's work and women's work were always, always different. And and what constitutes men's work or women's work will vary depending on the context.

But they're always different, and they are always defined in relation to one another, and they're always ambiguously complimentary. He describes as like the relationship between your right hand, your left time, they know where they are in relation to one another. They're not the same. They are one another, and they together, and and that the nature of men's work and women's work into.

like harvesting and processing exactly.

exactly and there, even down to the language use, down to the kind of the social spaces is occupied, even even down to the kinds of tools which are considered acceptable for one sex to use rather than the other. And the know, he describes villages where IT would be considered deeply humiliating for a man to touch the tools that would be Normally used by a .

woman that was just a roling in exactly.

you know, IT would be utterly.

utterly unthinkable off for one .

sex to touch the tools which are reserved for the other. And this, so this is that that emerges out of a material context in which everybody needs to work in order of a survival to in, in order for the life to happen.

And and what happened, you know, as as we as the world is industrialized, and we vented, I know what what he, what he calls the transition from fanatic agenda, which is the ambiguously mentally world of men's work and women's work into the world, the world of economic sex, which is which he describes, he describes as more sexist than than the world of vacuum. Enda, because although, although life is less gender, in practice, by pretending that everything is unisex, you end up with women being structurally disadventure. Ge, because basically the default becomes the masculine one.

And this is the world. This is what paradine kao paris talks about when SHE great, another great book, invisible women, where he writes about how. Have so much of the built environment and the physical environment and tools and a norms and dealt medical defaults and you know crash test domes and can't surgical instruments and so on, are all are all constructed for a male default and and the women's distinct physiology, and which is subtend different, and in some biomedical context extremely different, is is just quietly render invisible. And and this is, this is really what religion is talking about when he talks about the the, the more sexist nature of economic sex, because by by refusing, by by pretending that men and women are interchangeable IT rent IT effectively as when you .

got a ale default you was interestingly, I guess when you move across into ut the world of mental health, you're looking at a female default you know um I think that's .

very too very interventions .

just bringing .

this back to the question of why why trying to reverse engineer ambiguous, complimentary in the in the world of economic sex. Just not know that we've got those no, we've got that vocabulary in place. I I can maybe explain what I mean and I said it's bit of a full servant because I mean because in a sense, you know, you can't like you can't put the tooth post back in the tube.

You can't we can't go back to to the world, to the world before modernity. We stop with that. Now we're stuck with this world in which everybody's pretending that men, women are interchange, able to a significant extent in the world of bits and bites.

We kind of our and under those circumstances, to say where we're just gonna degree that we're going to have a pre modern division of sex labor within our private home. Um I mean, it's a IT can work like for some for some people that kind of does, but I think you just need to be a little bit less doctor about IT. And anybody who sets out to be rigidly ideological about IT is setting themselves up for a toxic dynamic and potentially domestic abuse.

The I mean .

in practice, if you ask most married hyo sexual married couples um you they will though if if pretty much you any of them will tell you that there are jobs that he does and the job there are jobs that he does because that's just IT falls out and because you both prefer that way. I mean, I I could give .

you like what we're IT not .

for digital modesty. I could give you examples from my own family, but i'm not .

going to it's like the specialization of labor almost right, but domestic specialization labor.

But there I mean, there are instances in my own family where the the division of labor is counter intuitive. If if you were coming out IT from a rid doctoral point of view, IT won't IT wouldn't be there with the way IT is. But but IT IT works that way because .

we both like IT that way. So moving forward, in that case, the we should return to a trade cn history in the future is that that's just A A dead end as far as your concern.

I I think we need to be we just need to be a bit more attentive to where we are. And I think we can we can afford to be a little bit more respectful of the dynamics within individual couples. I mean, it's it's generally like there are patterns which emerge you know in any in any given heroes xul couple you know that's been together long term, they'll be they'll be things which are more typical of the male partner and things which are more typical of the female partner. And I think and that's fine, you know, we shouldn't be trying to fight against those stereotypes if if there what works for people but I but I don't see much point in imposing imposing kind of you should be doing this or you shouldn't be doing that yeah .

because ultimately people.

people but people, people can figure out what works best for them. I mean is one example. So like talking in very general terms. I mean, I ve made the argument. The problem with trade wives as such is that they just not tried enough um in the sense that what they're hacking back to is a sort of middle mid twenty century template which was actually only true for a very small subset of the middle ass and which is distinct in itself, distinctively modern because in in premodern .

times all women worked pretty apart from that the very very Richard.

So so so the question I want to ask is what what does the twenty first century version of the pre modern in productive household look look like the house where the basic economic unit is your household? And so you you've agreed you're all in IT together. You're there for the long term. You know everything that you do, you do for the team. Um and then then it's just a matter of agreeing of of figuring out how how we try to get the best start of everybody. And like I can't i'm not interested in legislating for any given couple what that looks like and in in a modern context whether most of us work in the world, in the world of bits and bites anyway, I don't know I can't I can't I can't make that determination for you um but but you but there will be a way you know when you when you form your household, you you and you make your decision about how you can get the best out of your productive household, they'll ll be they'll be a patent. And I think there's no shame in in accepting that sometimes that can fit into a more traditional mode.

What was that insight that you had about women needing to develop a strategy for not having well.

I guess that's just a variation on talking about productive household. I mean, one again in feminism against progress. The the analogy of given is weaving, which I think is it's a very it's a very powerful illustration of what happened to to women's work at the beginning of the industrial revolution in that for for some little ten, twenty, thirty thousand years prior to the industrial revolution, weaving was always women's work.

And they're very there are solid practical reasons for that. Um you can weaving is something, I mean the a households needs textiles, right? You know you don't have textile factories, somebody needs to make testers and you need them clothes. You need them full sorts of different things.

So so somebody y's got to do the weaving um and somebody y's also got to look after the kids are happily weaving and looking after kids are fairly compatible because you can raise a loom off the floor, you you can put down, you can put down your repetitive. You can do IT whilest keeping an eye, you know, total as all small people running around and it's interrupted and its social. So so it's ideal work to be to be getting on with while you've also got small children under.

And so far for millennia, mEllenda after millennium, a weaving has been women's work. But weaving was also one of the first industries to move out of the home into factories. And that point, that point, IT was very, very much more difficult for IT to continue to be women's work.

Know those those working class women who went to work in the textile mills had reeled dilema on their hands, because, I mean, what do you mean to do with the your breast ford baby? You know, there was was there are hear stories, but you know how how women tried tried their best to cope with that. You know, babies dung with opium, you know left to starve or you know left in the inadequate care of, yeah awful stuff.

And and then there are those women who there are women who who respond by just saying, okay, fine, went, we're not going to make the textiles anymore. So we're just onna focus on on different stuff. But but but the point is that and if you're if IT wave yeah weaving is is a fine example of of the kind of work which which can which which in the in pre modern times took place within a productive household. And and I suppose the question I have is a what kinds of work let's say you want to be a mom, let's say you ve got small children around underfoot. What's the equivalent work that's a bit interrupted, that's a bit social, that's a bit you can pick IT up and put IT down again.

It's not what people think about when they think .

about how IT all though, right? It's have IT all everybody knows that they too like enough feminist prior to me, have have leveled with the world. You know you can't have at all.

You know you can have a lot, and you can you can have a great time doing IT, but you can't have IT all all of the time, all at once. You know, you have to do so. Some things. One, after all.

that Lewis said that SHE SHE worked IT out and he was doing forty hours a week of breast feeding like a full a more than full time job of just that part, just that one vertical underway, the child having process.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's not that's not something you can outsource because it's it's not just food. You know there's there's a half of the foundational .

layers of your child and making a .

fdc aspects of your child's capacity for self regulation and your child's capacity for being being an integrated person, a laid down in those early, early interactions. And it's not something which can be so contracted things to find important.

This was something that mary ever starts said to me. He thinks that motherhood in matic desire, at least in some in some regard that um you know one of her answers to the birthrate decline is that fewer mothers to get fewer mother's.

I think it's something in that yeah yeah. I mean, if you think i'm trying to think how many how many babies did I have a hole before my own? Not very many, to be honest.

If I need is possible. It's possible that the first baby I ever held was my own, or if not, if not, the first should be very, certainly very cool sed to the first. And I was in my life thirties.

You should think this is crazy. You know, there was a not not even not long ago. There was a time you've been you'd have been left holding Younger siblings or um other people's kids or you'd have been around little babies and IT wouldn't been frightening in the same way.

But it's you know the one of the reasons you know midd middle class. All the mothers like me sit and sit there, you with with late stage pregnancies frantically consuming baby books is because we just don't we don't have that. We don't have that practice around us more because famous who got smaller and extended family is who got more scattered and extended family ies who got smaller as well. So so they as as mary so eloquently explains in her, he writes a lot about the the shrinking of the family and the the atomized effect that that had the loss that that imposes on.

Adam lane Smith got this thing about how don't forget that moving out of the house at eighteen is a set up by the mortgage industry to turn one family into two homes. Yeah.

that makes sense. I think you can make the argument argument for the divorce industry. You know there are there are genuinely opinion peace out there from divorce lawyers arguing .

that divorce is good for the G D. P, which is is california famous poster said marriage is nothing sacred is a recent video you put that marriage is nothing sacred. It's just a piece of paper. If the person to go with isn't helping you grow, you need to let them go. Obviously makely for as parag on of successful relationships and I would respectfully .

disagree with the sentiment.

And ah I just thought I had this really, really great owning when I send you the abpi de when IT goes up. This too called madsley and he tracked all of the different western mating ideologies over time and how they were adapted for the particular cultural at time. And he goes through, you know, they would like a gran, the romantic and he calls the one that we're now the confluent era.

Know I am the coinage which I ve used in the, it's not actually my college. I forget the the sociologist you coin IT, but the self expressive marriage, which I think is a very good, really, what with the quote, the quote from california, you just just often is a perfect expression of the the self expressive marriage. This idea that know your your partner is, is a vector for your self actualization.

And the moment they stop delivering on that front, you can kick into the curb. No, there's no there's no sense of mutual solidarity. There's no sense of being in IT for the long haul. There's no commitment to anything which is bigger than yourself necessarily expect as IT, except in this very transactional sense of IT delivering goods for you. And and the the moment that starts to that, that starts to fault or you go through a rough patch for any reason you're wholly entitle to serve the contract and go look for IT somewhere else is incredibly consumers paradise. But I would I I argue that the the issue with that is that we don't live in the age of we no longer live in the age of economic abundance, which which other pendant gave rise to that marriage ideology is just t cept for the wealthy st. Who are just rich enough to survive divorce and to have their children come out, you only mildly fucked up rather than deeply um you know for everybody else who's further down the food chain, you know voice divorce in single parent who D S an absolute catastrophe for a great many of the women who go through IT because there is almost the women who end up with with with care of the children and I mean the and the feminization of poverty quote on quote is .

directly down stream of the breakdown of our families yeah I mean he comes back to IT again the luxury beliefs idea Robert this morning yes um and ah I just bears repeating again the best thing that i've learned from you and you taught me before you even out the rules that are made by the upper classes are luxury beliefs that don't impact them. They impact the poorest st women and the poorest families and the poorest children. So IT is one straight line from shively is good and you should hold the door open for women that you don't know as you go in out the hotel right down to you shouldn't be your wife like IT is a single strain, very slippery, slow, that gets slippery.

the closed get to the bottom. And what manifest lda door open at the top of the food chain as much, if you're lucky, as a woman, manifest at the bottom of the food chain as intervening when you see a woman being assaulted on on the two platform and and the more the more you attacked the holding the door open, the the less likely you are as as a sole traveler in late night, you with no who can't afford to get a taxi to have somebody come to your aid if you find yourself being attacked on a two platform alone .

yeah what I think again, obviously you ve got to deny of sex differences. Well.

why does the man need to step in as though as though the upper strength in the fisc weight in the height and all of those things had had all suddenly been magically flattened by the fact that we're talking to each .

other on computer screens. And I was talking to this about this yesterday, that gentlemen who's currently about to be on trial in new york for choking a guy out. That was.

I think, a drag though he's going to be acquitted, but that was an insane trial. That was an insane effort to to lunch somebody who was obviously doing doing a public service.

Think about how many people now in the while, this case is still an open loop. And maybe even after if he gets a quite .

a ary effect for any man attempted to intervene .

in a public situation like that is, yeah, yeah, I don't want to be, I don't want to be me tude. Or the next joy floyd case or any of that stuff exactly .

above disaster.

yet scary. What's your thoughts on the surrogacy industry?

I think you should be banned. All that band, yes, across the board. I don't think argus, he should be a thing.

Why little.

but little babies need their mothers, and and mothers are not. No, no one. A woman is not a factory, you know, gestation is not a process of manufacturing to the to produce a product which can then be handed over willingly arly to to another, another carer.

PregNancy doesn't just create a baby. Pregnant y creates a mother IT pregny y rewards your brain IT IT transforms you through a series of, you know, you get a little hormone bays for nine months over the, over the course of that, your body changes, your breast change, everything about your change. And you completely reorient you towards .

ready to receive.

ready to, ready to receive baby and to prioritize the care of baby. So in in your this is, this is not just true across the human species, is true across countless animal species. Your prime for attachment and your prime for attend attachment to your child.

Of course, this is not to say that. This is not to say that adoptive parents don't do a brilliant job, and there are countless adoptive parents who wonderful jobs and and do and care for care, wonderful ly for their adoptive children. However, everybody, everybody accepts that a motherless child is in a is off to a week to start then then a child born into a loving home with with their mother and father.

And there's a reason for that. And it's because the the actor that the that basic biological level of attachment and attachment that's prime through the process of pregNancy is is essential from birth onwards to to laying the absolute foundations of IT means to be an integrated person. And to say, I think it's just profoundness morally wrong to say we should, we should create a hand new life with the with the express intention of severing that bond at birth. Because somebody, just for the sake of adult desires, I think that's profoundly inverting the duty of care that we owe a dependent infants, know we should be prioritizing. Then it's not.

as did you see the episode did with doctor animation about life of dad and about how, yes, this other senate is so good so he looked at the role of father's kind of throughout all of the child of bringing to they leave the home and talked about how I think that one of her pregnancies was uh particularly difficult and um then SHE and the child had been taken away after the birth which was successful and he was OK and the dad was just left and that no one even came up to him and he just thought that like mom could be ad a child could be dead no one ever spoke him about IT you know, all of the pretrial classes, I don't know what they called, all of them are focused on mum, mum, the one that's gonna birth to her body that goes through the stress attache, a attatched.

But he said, fathers can deal with a like post child's depression. What's IT called post possible? Thank you. Post point of depression, dad can get that.

Um does this really, really common up issue that fathers encounter, which I saw first hand and then he talks about in the book, which is that a wife is pregnant? Future dad to be knows that wife is pregnant six, seven, eight, nine months deep. Dad doesn't feel like he cares about child that doesn't have any change in Peter nal instinct that doesn't have .

any develops after birth. For that IT develops, feel guilt and shame.

yes. And I was SAT in this. Remember where I SAT in Austin with this room? Like hundred million, a hundred million, a billionaire, lionel, millionaire, millionaire.

The big hit is all the way around this room. And IT was one of these, you know, guys. Anyone's got anything that, you know, they want to a bit of advice on.

We've got a room with people that are pretty capable in here. And you can say what you want this do. Do I like eight months pregnant? Don't think I love the kid.

What do I do and do that across? Was that give IT six months after the birth, everything will change, but that fear and the guilt in the shame. And can I tell my partner, does this mean I don't love my partner? Does this mean i'm going to be a terrible father?

You know, all of these things, like at that one insight from that episode, I ve never had so many tags and me from guys in a really long time. So I thought, I thought I was broken and I thought I was defective. Or I am going through this right now. My wife is x months pregnant or the child is three months old. I like, I just feel nothing for this kid and .

and IT just takes longer for me. Okay, so are bringing them back to surrogacy. So now imagine that, uh, instead of being the dad who takes who takes that long to develop the bond with the child, now it's both parents because neither parent has been through the biological priming process of Regina cy, now now imagine let's I can't prove that this is going to do, this is going to impact on the on the life of a newborn baby.

But I would bet you any money that I will. And I think it's just profoundly the role to take that immediate, immediate love of of of motherhood away from, to intentionally deprive a child of fat in the name of out of desire to think that was profound. Ally, more only wrong. And we shouldn't allowing .

IT I think I saw a video I told about a video of one of the cardanus ans.

One of the cardsharps was very open about this and SHE SHE SHE procured a child by sargasso and yeah that it's human traffic, Chris.

Your training just using genetics?

Yes, is human trafic using sometimes you're on genetics so you see you kill a baby of gracy and was very open about the fact he really struggled to bunk with with the baby. And I thinking, you know, so so okay, like we we can all emphasize with you maybe, but like we can we just think about what the baby is going through here? This is a new born baby who needs to be surrounded by love and to and responded to with care and, you know, nurse, whenever in, had picked up and held whenever he or SHE needs IT and and and both parents are struggling to bond and both parents are feeling nothing, and both .

parents picked up in to the nani el continue to.

yeah no, I just inside reading that wet for the baby who was still not being centered in the story and even as carditis was talking about how he was, how about her emotional journey? Even then the child was not being incentives in the story. I just think it's profound profile upside down. We are a duty of care to to the the most dependent of all, the most runner of all, which is our babies. And every time we prioritize our own desires over those of our babies, we're fAiling in that duty of care.

What you mean by matt walsh on, tell me about matt walsh. M.

this is my, I mean, I don't, I don't Normally, I don't Normally pick name fights with with people. I, when I talk about matt roaches. And this is a frustration I have sometimes with the, with certain elements on the on, on the right. And this antifeminist right, if you like you know this really comes down to be where where my arguments come from which is about the material conditions and feminism emerging out of the the technological transformations first of the industrial era and later of the cyborg era um and my my argument that really we have to we have to look at where we are in terms of the material and the technological conditions which are producing.

Are these these chAllenges that we now face? And sometimes if I find find myself frustrated with those elements on the right who seem to think that everything about modern life can stay the same, except what women do, and then everything will be fine. Give me example.

So so for example, you know, let me let me think example. That everything of everything that's wrong in the dating culture will be wrong if if that would be fixed, if we would just stop being hse to take. I mean, that's a very crude example, but it's a sentiment that I hear, you know women just need to stop being holes in everything.

We fine and i'm like, well, okay, but you know you does that mean you're gonna stop shagging around? Does that mean you're gonna stop having contracted ted sex with with random women? Does that mean you're going to stop watching porn?

Does that mean I mean, so many, I mean, so somebody yet, so so, so many of these quote on, quote, trade men have semi public porn habits, completely discriminate about liking like you sort of, he thought, accounts on instagram, simultaneously invading against against trade women. You know, displaying more than a few square inches of skin on the internet and i'm thinking, you you look at yourselves for a minute and I mean, we going to have chastity. Can we have fucking custody across the board? You are all for more chastity, but let's all, let's all be in in the party, please. You know, if and if IT really is just about everything staying the same except what women do, then and yeah, i've took to me that is the right wing equivalent of thun sucking is to fAiling to look at any of those deeper structural drivers of some of the difficulties that we face and just just retreating back into oh, it's it's just the fault of those nasty women and sometimes, sometimes IT is the fault of those nasty women.

But not always and it's never just us yeah that's interesting to think about that. You got some rule of thumb how every political movement when IT becomes mainstream is reduced to its most idiot possible, idiotic possible version.

Yes, the most embassy c possible version of the well is guaranteed to be the one that goes.

What just do the patience ly resistance means, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The mall. The more reductive something becomes, the more.

yeah, the more reductive becomes. I again, I A conversation for two hours today about means no in the number of times we quoted, mean first, explain later. Like the stickiness, arms race of a lot of this stuff causes people to be able to get structural ideas across with good branding and good advertising in good marketing. And I think that are definitely a lot of the stuff that is coming out with regards to meeting and dating advice is a lot of the time that it's things that on the surface sounds you trigger all manner of different biases, whether be a your sort of tribalism against the other party, the other sex um whether it's the path of least resistances they are looking for. Like there's a whole host of different reasons why people end up a rising IT arriving at the particular conclusions that they do.

But the more IT gets boiled down to a set of just doctrinal talking points, the more useless IT becomes. I me I don't really want to get into insel disco because it's not it's actually not a terrain a massively familiar with. But every often I hear these talking points which had touted out pretty much kind of without without any context or without any sense of qualification like the one about, you know, eight, ten, twenty percent of .

the men and getting eight .

percent of the .

women said.

I get people shot IT out as just gospel truth. And I look around and all like, you know, women, women won't date somebody who's lesson six feet tall. I'm like, hello, do you have eyes you ever got outside? You know, if I this .

is the terminally online issue, right? And again, both of us are and this isn't me la basting the people that determined online. It's me saying that if you are kind of, yeah but the way that the snipers tries to adjust, okay, the wind is blowing fifty north, east, west, okay, so I adjust how I perceive what the target is like if you spend this much time online.

So Lewis, as this theory about yourself, right, that'll give you, which is that you've got a barbell strategy, which is like extremism online and extremism touching grass and like never the twin you'll make, the grey area is where you go to die right at the dark playground where you kind of like, I think husband calls a good screen, bad screen. It's I have spent enough time on bad screen today, which is work in details, so I get some good screen time tonight, which is watching netflix. I would, but ultimately are still within the components of the game.

And I, you know said, this is ten, the times the most degrees. Gist stories online are the ones that gone to the most attention and people who don't ever spend any time not being online use those as an indication of what the real world is like. But they forget that those stories are selected for precisely because they're insane.

Yeah, yeah, man, leave the house, comes back and the wife slept, the postmen and the postman's dog, and now is left to die and a bridge with a diabetic foot glooming tolerance or something like that, that stories insane. Which is why I gone some of opinion and so much attention. And you don't know if it's true. And even if IT is true, it's probably not representative.

He's a case a fine example of that from actually not the dating discourse. But just just to illustrate the point, yeah, there was a video that did the answer the other day. Somebody compiled some zoom ors wearing ridiculous clothes and made little video compilation of zoom as wearing upsurge outfits and put IT out on the internet.

You know, the zoos are bond redemption will sub some caption like that. You probably saw the video that like, and they looks stupid. So I mean, i'm not stupid when I was nineteen and as well, I were ridiculous class, and I was, I looked at this and I thought, and later I watched this video.

And then later that day, I dreve, I drove through. Cambridge's is extremely full of Young people. I get really very, very zoom dense environment. Cambridge, because I I had had to go there, something or other, and I was, I was looking, looking along the strait, so thinking, this is this twenty something, know, early twenty eight, eighteen year old and ninety year old, twenty year old, well, after one after another, walks past me wearing just Normal clothes. I was like, thank you you you're not set to really be on redemption.

You're just wearing yeah .

the catch is exactly where's the cat is in the absurd kind of non binary get up and still .

and the eighty in inch .

platforms and whatever hell else was in this stupid video ah and I think no no literally somebody he's just gone and compiled the most extreme and agreeable stupid, stupid clothing that's seventeen year odds are wearing. And and you've tried to generalize that to everybody and that's that's just what the internet does as you say. But when you apply that to the relationship discourse, then you end up in a situation where people, especially people who are not making much of an effort, for whatever reason, to reality justice against what's actually happening out there, you know, really struggling and finding themselves. You resort circling the drain a bit with in terms of their assumptions and expectations.

One of my friends referred to IT as shadow boxing and imaginary hedge on fucking beautiful. Yes, right. That you have this thing that doesn't exist that you're somehow compensating for and interacting with despite the fact gain IT isn't there and IT exists like in this inevitable place that everyone kind of perceives and no one ever sees, except for in this sort of virtual world, which then impact the way that you show up and then you get, you know, culture and counter culture occurs to, okay, well, fucked IT like i'm gonna become a ferial whatever, because i've seen IT on the internet and I know that IT pissed is off the right way.

Or i'm gonna become a gun toting maga republican because I know that I pissed off, you know, all the way. don't. So yes.

I give thanks every day for the fact that I have to share at the same time every afternoon on the to for the school run. Pick up you.

why? I mean.

if it's it's not physically touching grass, but IT IT does IT does .

that socially touching grass?

I I spend I spend all day like, you know blue th into the right machine and then I go to pick up my daughter from school and I like, yes, actually do that. That is real. And twitter is twitter actually is real life, but it's also not real life. And it's it's important to remind for the ways in which is not true.

I think there should be for every one hour that you spend on the internet, you should have to spend sixty seconds in the George at as the clothing department like just to be like, is the fucking Normal people again.

you say that I was really interested you to notice in science breeze, as in George, as in max, and spends the maxi long sleave maxi dresses have been all arrange for some time now o and I mean, I I don't know what, I don't know if I I don't .

know this is the thing.

but i've i've been noticing i'm thinking we're gonna a is this just a sign of economic downturn? Um is is just that. But because this this is well document to the hemlines go up when the as the economy grows and is IT just the fact?

Is that just the fact that the women that women are sensing sensing the the coming economic crisis? I don't know? Or or is IT? Or is that the sexual country revolution? Or is that not is IT actually .

just I don't certainly know .

that I really noticed the trend.

Self objectification from women is correlated with wealth and inequality in the local ecology. So that's an interesting one. Women seem to self objectify, sexually objectify themselves. So IT was kind of Blake study on the posting of sexy southeast and her justification for IT in terms of the mechanism was that IT shows women not only how high they could climb, but how far they could fall with a partner.

And when you see those two things side by side, it's run away from a life you don't want and run to water life that you do um and that causes just something comes online and it's like I will handle myself a husbands like activate breasts and uh you do that through the sort of self is the youtube and IT was some insane volume like millions posts that they looked at to find these correlations on the internet. And yeah that that wealth in equi definitely don't disagree that you especially female behavior, but also a male behavior too, can be impacted by local ecology, especially wealth inequality GDP. I mean, we saw even no one never really spoke about this.

I was not waiting for a study to come out, and someone may still do IT. I thought that casual sex was going to drop after covet due to pathogen fear from women, right? women. I've got much, uh, lower threshold for disgust sensitivity, quite rightly, because the more a at risk of. Bearing some sort of burden. Uh and given that we had just talk of disease and and infection and virus and sun and self for a very long time, I thought that we were going to find a big after effect of that. I just turns out to all of the than three years odds now six year olds, I can't read and have absolutely zero social skills about a masco of the face for the last three years.

Well speaking, is the mother of the seven year old. That's actually not that. That's not the case among my daughter's cohort. You'll you've tony, they seem actually .

to the reading age of the reading levels for sure across the um if you look at some of the studies that have been done, don't but particularly .

IT seems what is death? What is absolutely clear is there a stark economic divide, the, the, the, the further down the food chain you are economically to, the hit your children know for for understandable reasons, or whether or not whether it's because you had limited social capital to, or were struggling or in a chaotic family or or simply had to had to work irrespective of locked down there your kids at home and there's just nobody to watch them for a thousand and one different reasons um it's been absolutely disastrous for for for poor children to to a degree which I think is unforgivable .

and shouldn't be forgiven. What are you most obsessed by as subcultures go? Or what are you going to be focused on over the next couple of months? Is there anything that that .

particularly caught your eyes? What i'm reviewing, i'm reviewing leftist, sociological, academic text to the home, which is kind of awful. It's called the women of far right and i'm very interested in IT as a text written by written by the left, about the right.

But i'm also interested in the the, the documents. It's sort of it's a kind of progressive sociological study of some all right female lovers from the late, from the late from sort of two thousand sixteen, two thousand and nineteen and including law in southern. It's kind of badly written and it's kind of it's kind of dated, but it's also it's also interesting as as a phenomenon. So i'm but but but really this is just a crumble.

So one of the things i'm interested in and thinking about really sort of grappling with is the ambuLance and position of women within the larger conservative or writing the dissidents movement because IT is ambivalent because there are there are great money, right right manner that who really are violently mission ism, you know, who genuinely just think women are not people um and yet um there are a great many women out there who look at who look at the sort of the emerging kind of doctor orthodoxy y of the kind of of the mad left, if you you know what I mean by the mad and who just say this is not for me and so there's a great many women who are kind of between those two polls and who are genuinely quite politically homeless. And it's it's something I think about a lot. You know, I don't really have any firm conclusions or stronger reflections on that except to say this is a real this is a real phenomenon, I don't know and it's like, I don't know.

I mean, they sort of fits into a larger kind of reflection, I suppose, on on digital cultures and where we are in the discourse, because IT feels as though a great many of the trends which should have erupted in the sold two thousand and fifteen and two thousand and sixteen, you know, with kind of know the trump eden and and the arrest of IT have around their course. Now, you know, a lot of a lot of those sort of quote on, quote, dissident subcultures have now pretty much percuss ted into the mainstream. You there's a whole new set of talking heads who are now pretty much, I mean, even bronze edge power has been ducked and is is now on his food, dear.

which is you like.

where do we go from here? Because at all that seems like all all that's left in the subculture is just as increasingly on hinge disco about dating and I just I mean, i'm forty four and i'd ve been married for ten years, so like i've got nothing to add to that. So like, I mean, maybe I should just hang up my boots and going to something else so I mean, Bakery .

ery yeah I don't know. I think one of the reasons why everyone is always so interested in talking about the dating world is that IT permits everybody to have an opinion, both those who participate in, those who do not.

Like, if you don't know how fucking the nfl league goes, like what if you got to tell me about how travis cali like changes, like Q B game or something like that? IT doesn't matter what is for dating people do people do have an idea of that. And and because I remember when I was working in night life, one of my jobs was to do I okay, a copywriting.

So I would write to copy for a lot of the social media post. My business partner would do a lot more of the accounts and kind of back office stuff. No one went up to him, looked over his shoulder and gave him shit about the way that is spread.

Ets looked, but everyone has a social media account, so everyone is a cking expert. So everybody had made, I ouldn't post IT at that time, not the hashtag that eye have used. I thought I would definitely think that you couldn't done IT this well like like if you're going to scrutiny me, it's scrutinised the fucking yeah exactly and it's just IT never happened.

And I think that you know, there's a few things that people all it's why diet is such A A breeding ground for people to ask you something got to eat, right? Everybody has an idea about how, and it's death denialism as well. Like, no, i'm going to live longer than you. My veganism gna beat your kind of horizon. And ultimately, just fucking in comes down to people wanting to be able to expose their opinions while as being insulated from the impact .

of one of the missing read we can put on. That might be the if if we're all still still fixed, ted, on the relations between men and women. I think that's a testament of sorts to the fact that the the warm relationships is not going to is never going to try. And completely, you know, men and women do still want to be together.

continue.

even if even if that kind of mudd stings horribly the moment. Now, at least on the internet, I and and the, again, you know, twitter is not real life, even though that kind of is real life. And I just have to trust that somewhere.

somewhere out of this .

mess up discourse, women forming nice relationships, just don't go anywhere near a twitter. You know what? I just have to assume that that's all a one .

of the most like sanity reinforcing periods of my year is when I go home for Christmas and my mom, dad house and the the graph allow comes on, right? And I watched the graphical and I think who's this made for? This is made for families that SAT together around the fire, whether you be shopping at way rose or shopping at little like that's what it's built for. And IT works. I don't across the board.

Great story. No, pretty my heart.

I think graphs is a solid story. Or you know, like the boy, the mother fox and the horse, right like just stuff like that and IT always makes me maybe it's just because Christmas, a kind of wistful winslow time of year, makes everyone happy. But um that always that's like my media equivalent of touching grass. I think that's one of the most grass like a watching experiences.

So what is this built to agenda, right? It's like this very calming, very what's that one with the drag? What's that one with the dragon? So yes, thank you all rims um which must be a nightmare to script but um yeah all of those things and i'm like I thirty five year old child, las man watches children's TV that this is another warning that this is smiling at toddles on a walk isn't IT um but yeah I happily watch that and IT gives me that the stuff that my post content clarity of that is like like everything is a but everything all right.

I think I think I I honestly do think we're going to be alright. No, I since we believe that IT doesn't matter how hard we try and demolish our nature, IT will always find a way back. I I genuinely believe that even if even if has Louis sometimes worries, you know, our culture is so structurally anti noti st that we're just going to end up self selecting against ourselves to the point we just render ourselves extinct. Yeah but but that he doesn't follow from that that all humans are going to go extent IT will just be the ones .

sound yeah and so so some .

human somewhere will survive and they'll be the ones you've figured out how to unplug from the skinner machine and go back to having kids. And but but we we like one way or another, like that subset of the culture which survives will be the one that figures out how to how to get past this kind of missed up point that we're in. But but some part of IT will survive. You know, I think we're going to be right.

That's the White pill that I wants to finish on. Mary harrington, ladies and gentle man, why should people go? They want to keep up to date with all the things that you're doing and what can expect a you over the next few?

I regularly unhurt. My my sub stack is reactionary feminist. You can find me on twitter at moving circles.

how? yeah. Thank you, mary.