The Path Toward Human Flourishing

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All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now to get your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save This is the Gray Area. I am Seaan Iilling. My guest today is Christine Emba. She's a writer and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Christine writes about sex, dating, loneliness, gender religion, social norms, basically all of the anxieties of modern life or at least most of the moral anxieties of modern life. But really this is a much broader conversation about why Gin Z is retreating from dating and relationships all together and how the internet is supercharging all of those trends Hope you enjoy Christ Ember Welcome to the show. Welcome back, actually. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good see you I want to start this thing where you started your piece on Gen Z which is with this inccredibly weird male subculture of look maxing, a word I still struggle to say Um, First of all, I just have to ask for the sake of anyone in the audience Fortunate enough to know nothing about this world What is looksmaxing? how do you describe it for people who are Bisty not online. Yeah, congratulations to you if you don't know what a look maxer is looks maxing, and I'll try and keep it simple because there's always a lot of online lore and background to these things Looks Maxc is a subculture that emerged from the in cell involuntary celibate subculture U Incels believe that due to misfortunes of life, genetics, whatever, they were doomed to be involuntarily celibate forever. No one found them attractive enough to ever have sex with or be in a romantic relationship with. And they were sad about that. In many cases, that sadness turned into misogyny had went into very dark places. But then there was a subset of in cells who believe that it was their looks holding them back. Um from getting into relationships with the opposite sex. And so they turn to this idea of looks maxing So attempting to maximize their looks, maximize their attractiveness. through really intense and sometimes insane means You mentioned that you have trouble saying with terms. So it actually Of course the term looks maxing comes from another online culture or a subculture generally, like role playing games you know, like Dungeons and Dragons, et cetera. whereere you get a certain number of points and you can assign them to different character traits U The idea of looks maxing is maxing out your appearance as the one thing you optimize for in your quest to become a more successful person So Lsmaxers took it really far Um they come to believe or say that they believe that looks and aesthetics are kind of the only thing that matters in life U and on their own sort of forums and discussion groups They have created hierarchy of looks that's really really detailed down to sort of like what best width of your jaw bone is or like distance between your eyes based on this ideal attractive person. And as you get closer to that attractiveness, you can ascend become a more beautiful person. It's a whole thing. It's Deeply problematic. Yes It's u it is very weird. So you say they go to insane means to max their looks I have read that One of those means is smashing their faces with a hammer in order to improve jaw line. Is that a thing people are actually doing or is that just lore Apparently it is a thing that people are actually doing. So again, because it's like an internet subculture They've come up with their own terminology for kind of everything. So if you're a looks maxer, you can be Soft maxing. which is, you know wearing makeup or going to the gym or sort of normal kind of non permanent ways of making yourself look better. Or you can be a hard maxer, somebody who like gets plastic surgery or engages in Bone smashing, which is the term for what you're talking about. Basically hitting yourself in the face in order to ostensibly create micro fractures in your jaw or bones that then grow back and you have a stronger jaw line or better cheekbones And there is video. people doing this online in particular Cavicular, who I talk about in my piece, who is probably the most famous L maxer at the moment. Yeah. How big are drugs and supplements in this world I assume a pretty big part Again, absolutely. One of the things that made Clavicular famous is that he's a streamer. He live streams talking about how he has looks maxed, the lengths he has gone to and what he wants to do in the future and like gives advice to other guys who want to become more attractive um So he talks about how he got into Looks Maxing at the age of fourteen and how he started taking testosterone supplements at fourteen how at some points he's done crystal meth to like hollow out his cheekbones Um when you talk about people, when you talk about peep tides, which have become a big, you know point in conversation at this moment, weirdly There's much conversation about what peptide stacks you can use to make your hair glossier or like makeake your physique better. So there are lots of pharmaceutical and off label uses that looks Max serves go to. Um There are probably going to be a few more jokes coming from me in this conversation. but This is actually like devastatingly sad and tragic, really. fourourteen year olds taking steroids. Um, It's just deeply sad.. You mentioned the in cell thing, right? how these are sort of like nexte Jin in sales. who spent years kind of just cooking in Trump era nihilism And broader mananosphere or whatever And then they were also deeply under socialized. during COVID. And I think the under socialization part gets under discussed. I mean, do you think we're even talking about looks maxing right now if we didn't have the lockdowns and all the social isolation, particularly with young people. that went down because of it That's a good question. I think that we might still have looks backack sync. just because subcultures develop and the inell culture was the inell subculture was sort of already present before the lockdowns But I don't think that it would have spread as far as it had. Lookx Maxing really sort of blew up as a subculture, I think During COVID in part because during COVID, like you couldn't go out to meet anyone. so you could just sort of stay on a forum or stay online and kind of marinate in your grievances and trade tips and it felt like you were in community people Um and in a sort of post COVID age and a heavily sort of social mediaized, like atomized moment. You know, we're still not going outside and meeting people in the same way that we did pre COVID, especially Gen Z Um I think Ls maxing remains like a space that feels like community. It's just community that exists. on streams, on YouTubes, on forums. It's not sort of in the real world I mean, one thing that's One thing that I wrote about that seems to differentiate, at least in my mind, sort of the classic incel from the Looksmaxer Is that Inceell seemed they wanted to have relationships, like they were upset that they couldn't hook up with the opposite sex and that was the goal at a certain point um Looks, Maxers. when they talk about, and looks maxing is a mostly male subculture to be clear But like when looksmaxers talk about women, they almost seem to view women having sex and relationships as status markers of how how attractive they are on the Looks max or scale, how much they have ascended, not as actual goods within themselves, like clavicular, know and talking to in New York Times reporter for a profile kind of famously said that He actually sort of prefers the idea of knowing that he could have sex with a woman over actually Doing so becausecause you know, it's kind of a waste of time to have sex, but like knowing that he has that status is what's comforting to him abits That's another like just bizarrely pathological part of this, right? Like I mean, is this just for the most part Again, I'm not doing the gu got to hand it to him. move with the inceells, right? But They did at least care about human contact They wanted to have sex and be with people. they just couldn't and all the resentment came from that Our look snaxers for the most part, just straight up post sexual. Like we've just we just moved on from actually being in contact with other people and now it's just all like, you know Narcissistic posturing and online jockeying and scoring that kind of thing Yeah, I mean, I have been accused of handing it to Incels several times and I honestly, you know, maybe I have because I do think that it's It's very natural to want to be loved to wish that you had relationships with other people if you don't and and they are open about that or were open about that and complained about that. Like, I get it. You're sad. It's okay to be sad. It's not okay to, you know commit mass murder because you're sad. but The instinct is human. and So I think when you ask if Looks maxers are sort of a post sex subculture I think what I sort of wondered about throughout my piece was whether they were symbolic of like a a broader post sex culture which really means a post being in person with other people, culture and I think COVID helped to Push us closer to that, push that forward U for everyone, not just this particularly outstanding group of people To me, this is the thing. that digital tech is doing to us, right? More screen time means more alone time which means less contact with other people, which creates anxiety about contact with other people which I think leads to the impulse to avoid Right, actctual human contact, right? it's justffingle. Doom loop Right? And like that's that's part of the story for me or not part of kind of the story. And this is just like that on steroids. is that your read too? Yeah. no, seem that seems totally right to me. That's kind of my theory too. And I would also add I think there's another factor that plays in, which is optimization culture And you know America has always had this idea of like becoming the better person, like achieving your next thing pulling yourself up by your boots drops, etcetera But also in this particular moment, I think that a lot of people, especially young people feel like the world is extremely precarious in any number of ways. And so you like have to always be becoming your best self or improving yourself, optimizing yourself so that you can win in a hard world. And LooksMaxers specifically, I think, are optimizing themselves for a new landscape in which Dating happens via apps where you lead with appearance. Social media is an image first you know medium, so your face and your body feel like they're always on display. So they're like optimizing themselves for this particular technological culture that also feels especially harsh at this moment. The optimization thing, I mean The language of this world is so cold and weirdly Economic, you know I mean,'s like it's all about value, ranking, body count status leverage, I mean, it sounds like people talking about commodities on CNBC. Yeah. It's very abolutely strange and it's like its just to me, it's very anti human. gets to, you know, and which Maybe it's a dramatic term, but that's how it scans for me, right? Like it's just It just feels removed from like the flesh and blood world of people and has become something abstract in I think it's sort of representative in an extreme way of a larger phenomenon in American culture and especially the culture of, you know, younger millennials and Gen Z who were locked down during COVID you couldn't really you, experiment with just talking to other people or building relationships in a normal way, you ended up kind of being funneled Um, towards this Consumerist image forward isolated culture and didn't really get practice doing other things, and that is affecting the dating outcomes and like relationship formation outcomes of these generations, I think in a big way. Let's stick with dating for a second because Um I kind of just gave you my theory of the case as to why people are avoiding people But you've done some reporting and you've talked to Gen Z, men and women What are the things you hear most from them about why they don't want to date anymore. I hear a couple of things. firstirst, I think, is a general sense of anxiety around interacting with other people So one of the things that I cited in my New York Times piece was this major survey that came out. It was done by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute at BYU And they did a nationally representative study of Americans ages twenty two to thirty five. and then they narrowed that down to people who explicitly said that they were interested in relationships or getting married one day and who were cururrently not married and they asked about dating. Um And The first line of the report is So dark to me U The like top line conclusion is that we are in a depressed dating economy. whichich like makes me depressed just to say, frankly. Yeah. And then the reasons that people cited for not dating U were s reallyally just like anxiety based First there was the idea of like money, which speaks to the precariousness. like dating is expensive. I'm not sure if I have enough money, etcetera takeake people out on dates. But then also like fifty percent of people talked about having issues with what the survey described as dating efficacy which really, when they broke it down meant that they think that they knew how to or were confident enough to approach someone of the opposite sex. U they weren't confident that they could like read social cues. they weren't confident that they could accept rejection and like bounce back if you know, they dated someone and it didn't work out So because of their anxiety, it's exactly the cycle that that you stated. They were just like opting out of doing it And I hear a lot of this anxiety when I've gone to college campuses and talked to young people myself too. There's just this worry about getting it wrong. You mentioned the dating apps, I mean, you would think on the surface that should make dating easier Um But Again, it's that easiness, right? It's the frictionlessness of the whole thing, which wipes away the courtship process where you actually You have to encounter the other and learn about the other and allow them to learn about you, which is bumpy and yes, has a lot of friction But that's life in the world with other people. And again as that becomes more intolerable The idea of doing that becomes scarier for understandable reasons. I have a lot of sympath people who have grown up young people in this environment. I mean, it just feels really stacked against social flourishing and emotional wellbeing, for lack of a better word. Like many of the technological developments over the past ten to fifteen years. I think that dating apps were something we were all very excited about. when they first happen, like, yeah, this should make things easier. and then they've kind of turned out to be a social cancer. Um, You know, one thing that I alsoso hear from younger people about dating absent, I mean, also from older people, honestly is that first, especially Men seem to feel like they experience just so much rejection on dating apps because, you know, You're swiping through people like a deck of cards, you see that there are so many people out there And then you try and match with them and they don't match with you. or you start a conversation it doesn't go anywhere or they unmatch. And it's like a volume of rejection that is kind of abnormal for a human person to experience And I think that kind of sours people on the use of the apps and sometimes on the opposite sex U women experience this rejection too, but also experience a lot of Harassment. Um and sometimes like really scary things on the apps and the way that people approach them and talk to them Um And so I think that can same their view of Do it sex Um, And then there is also just like the way that the apps are set up, right? I mean, like you really are swiping through Hundreds of people, like you don't know what they're looking for. They don't know who you are. It's very easy to treat people poorly or casually or waste people's time U And so're shopping feel like a slog. Yeah, you're shopping for commodities, which is not how you want to be related to as a human person and also kind of crowds out other, I think, more healthy options for dating that we used to have in the past. You know, like if you go to a bar Th days you realize it People aren't sort of mixing up and you know, talking to each other, buying people drinks There's almost a stated assumption in many public places that like Okay, we know that the apps are where romance happens. So I'm not going to bother anyone in real life. I'll just wait to see if they're on the app Um, But then if you're not matching with people, like you don't get that practice, there's not that human interaction. And so yeah, things begin to feel very cold Ppport for the Greay arerea comes from Hyns It can be uncomfortable to talk about, but ED is more common than many people realize. And in a lot of cases, it may be easier to address than you'd expect. With HIM, you can connect online with the licensed provider to explore treatment options that fit your needs all from the privacy and convenience of home. 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Support for this show comes from Shopify. Whenever you're taking on something new, it's easy to focus on what could go wrong. That's especially true when you're starting a business where so much feels uncertain But there's another possibility worth considering. What if it works? What if your idea really connects with people and grows into something real Shopif I can help you take that chance They're the commerce platform powering millions of businesses worldwide and nearly ten percent of all e commerce in the US from established brands like All Birds and Converse to entrepreneurs just getting started Their design tools make it easy to build the exact online presence you're imagining with hundreds of ready to use templates to choose from built in marketing features, you can create full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks. 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Taskers have assembled over three point four million pieces of furniture, completed seven hundred thousand home repairs, and handled one point five million moves and counting So our laundry room was a complete objective disaster and we had to get a couple of giant cabinets and what can I say? yourour boy just did not want to break out the toolbox and spend an entire afternoon putting all that stuff together. so we had a handyman come and do it and it was fantastic. When life happens, your to do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get fifteen dollars off your first task at taskrabbit d. com or on the Task rabbit app using prromo code Greay Area. Taskers book up fast, especially for same day tasks, so book trusted Home Help today That's fifteen dollars off your first task using promo code Gay Area with TaskRabbit app or taskraabbit. com I've heard you say that men and women seem to be withdrawing in different ways, certainly on their surface, right? Like men more into grievance and the self optimization we've been talking about women in a lot of cases seem to be just decentering men all together. Do you see those as parallel responses to the same world or is there something importantly different about the way GinC men and women are adapting or reacting to the conditions. I think And this is not totally separate from dating, but also a larger sort of question and phenomenon in and of itself We're seeing a real gender divergence in younger generations. And this became really notable during the twenty twenty four elections, right? where young men tended to remain in the center or move in a slightly more conservative direction. and young women voted far to the left and And that seems kind of representative of how Uh The sexes are separating in real life too and when I talked about sort of dating apps and other situations sort turning men and women off of each other A I think younger women especially are more primed to think that Men are sort of dangerous, ahead gross to conservative, kind of a risk And men R Again, I guess I'm going to like hashtag not all men, hashtag not all women tend to see women as like not liking them, man bashing. And also like kind of users and untrustworthy themselves. And I would say that a lot of this is fueled by social media too And again, the amount of time that people spend on social media in this moment. Like if If you're on YouTube and you're watching sort of I don't know, what might be considered male centered videos, right? Like you're watching sports clips or whatever It doesn't take you very long for the algorithms to suddenly take you to like Andrew Tate or some like dating advice guru Wh tells you that? you know, like, Women only want one thing or women only want men who are six six six, and also all women are constantly sleeping around and are untrustworthy And you know, you can call women Foids and whatever, all of this stuff U wait what is six six six? I'm sorry can' I know I can't pass My brain is roted from researching this. You know, this idea that women only date men who are six feet tall or over make six figures and have a six pack or something else and But like all those stereotypes about women that are false, first of all make them seem like the enemy who you're sort of alwaysways fighting with and have to control demeaning Um And then women on the other side are often getting a lot of advice about or A lot of conversation, we could say, Um about how bad the patriarchy is and how, you know, unsafe relationships can be and how many, you know narcissists there are out there. And so they're like, I don't want to deal with that either. So both of the sexes are sort of in opposition to each other and end up becausecause they're not spending time in person you know taking in these stereotypes and avoiding each other even further It's not just that they're not spending time together in the real world, it seems the problem is also that online They're just shadowbxing with caricatures of the other sex, right? It's mostly men talking to other men in their online corner and women talking to other women in their corner and they're both sort of grappling with like cartoon versions in a lot of cases of each other, which againgain feeds into the the cycle of distrust and anxiety. I mean, I just again, I guess this is a recurring theme. Lots of doom loops here. Lots of loops. This is another one, I think. Yeah, no, I think shadowbxing is like the exact correct term actually. L men are arguing with other men about women who they are not in contact with Women are talking about men who they're not in contact with And the you know, the way that you would correct this, right is by spepending time with an actual woman if you're a man and being like, oh Is this correct or incorrect? Like this real woman in the world could tell me something about how women are. But if you're spending all of your time online and also if you know, algorithmically, you're pushed into the specific like male content or female content funnel you're You're not really doing any of that And like I've It's funny I've had this experience and I see this online not infrequently where You know some guy posts something about how All women want is X, Y and Z And a bunch of women are like posting under his ex thread like no, actually As a woman, I can tell you that's not true. And he's like, I don't believe you. Women lie. We know this. And it's like The women are here, but you'd rather listen to like Fresh and fit tell you about women or something? like some podcast Do you think most GZ People actually still deep down want intimacy Oh just. feel like they lack or actually lack the social skills or the emotional resilience, which you only get by going out into the world and kind of falling down and learning from it But do you think that deep down most the overwhelmingly like overwhelmingly most People even at that age still want intimacy. they just don't know how to get it Yeah. I mean, I think I think this goes back to my sort of sympathy for the instceel, right? Like people I do believe that most people, all people really to be loved, you know, they want to be seen It is nice to be known by someone else and you know, have intimate relationships. Like in the dating survey that I cited Um majority of the people you know, who were spoken to said that they wanted to be in relationships, you know, they wanted to be with somebody. It was more that they didn't know how to get there. They didn't feel confident almost in their skills and understanding. Um to make it happen for themselves I how long have you been really reporting on this thinking about this. I mean, I Do you feel like things are getting worse, increasingly quicker. Or is it just sort of kind of holding steady, right? I mean, does it feel like like things are really deteriorating pretty quickly and just sort of And again, a kind of self fulfilling dynamic driven by all these Yeah, I mean, as you can as you can probably tell, I've maybe been reporting on this too long. Um, But I think I started writing sort of on gender and relationship and . Topics accidentally, I was at the Washington Post. I was an opinion columnist U And there was that Elliot Rogers sort of in cell shooting spree and I wrote a piece about like the in cell phenomenon and kind of felt inklings of like, oh, there's something Weird going on here? Just to jump in real quick, was this a guy at UC Santa Barbara? Yes, the guy at UC Santa Barbara who was upset that like cheerleaders and sorority girls wouldn't date him and so when driving around shooting at them then You know Me too happened and I was writing about that. and I ended up writing my first book Rhinking Sex provocation. about how women especially felt like they were experiencing a dating scene that felt bad to them. Dating apps were sort of confusing Um weren't leading to the relationships that they wanted, even though again, we had at first hailed dating apps as wonderful. that there were like all these expectations around sex that were influenced by social media by Corn Um and You know, I went on from that to write about masculinity and how that seemed increasingly influenced by sort of both a lack of real world experience and kind of mentors and the online world And I think one thing that I've noticed is like I keep reporting on this is that substitutions keep popping up and increasingly, I think worrisome ways And I think that that may make the cycle worse. What do you mean by that sububstitutions So So when I say substitutions, I guess I mean substitution effects are something that I worry about more than I used to in the past. I think that people really do desire love and companionship and like to be in community with other people, to be with someone else But Doing that is kind of hard especially if you didn't necessarily learn the skills or have spent a lot of your time isolated U you know, like going out Putting on the right clothes, like figuring out how to talk to girls, say. is kind of a slog and you might get rejected a bunch of times and it feels bad U But in the past you kind of had to do it if you like wanted to have or like experience some kind of sexual relief You know, for men I think especially, first you could kind of not do it and find a bunch of guys to whine about your problems within a forum and give you like an excuse not to do it because like women won't want you anyway, etcetera, et ccer Or you could just sort of watch porn, which is like not as good as being in a relationship, but you know for the moment maybe suffices It's frictionless. It's Easier than doing the real thing U, you know, dating gaps have made sort of the asking someone out on a date feel frictionless and can feel like kind of a substitute like, well, you know, I tried dating, but I didn't match with anyone. so I guess I'll give up now. like I'm not going to pursue this further. I'm worried now about sort of AI and how that's going to play into it in the future as people you know, enter into sort of emotional entanglements with these chat bots who will'll never, you know tell them that they're wrong. you don't really have to practice relationship skills because like these the bs affirm you and agree with you. L you don't learn how to how to argue how to have friction. And then women, I think I'm very interested in the ryise of romantasy. what is really kind of like written softcore as a way to sort of engage romantically without putting yourself out there or this idealization of a sort of like soft detached life or bedrootting or whatever you know, self optimization and wellness as almost in lieu of forcing yourself out there and the discomfort of other people Spport for the Greay area comes from Hyms. You may not realize it that ED is more common than most people think and often more manageable than expected. With HM, you can connect online with a licensed provider to explore treatment options tailored to you all in a way that's private and on your schedule. HIM says they can offer personalized prescription treatment options for ED if prescribed. and if a prescription is right for you, they offer a range of choices. fromr customized treatments to trust to generics that can cost up to ninety five percent less rand name alternes With HIMS, expert care comes directly to you with fully online access to treatments tailored to your goals. HIM says they put your health and goals first with real medical providers making sure you get what you need to get results. To get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss, and more, you can visit HIMNS dot com slash gray area That's HIs dot com slash gray area for your free online visit. HIS d. com slash gray area. Prescription required, C website for details and important safety information. Solenail is the generic version of Viagara. Viaga is a registered trademark of Vatrice. spepecialty LLC. HMS is not affiliated with or endorsed by Vatrus Support for this show comes from Shopify Whenever you're taking on something new, it's easy to focus on what could go wrong. That's especially true when you're starting a business where so much feels uncertain But there's another possibility worth considering. What if it works? What if your idea really connects with people and grows into something real Shopif I can help you take that chance They're the commerce platform powering millions of businesses worldwide and nearly ten percent of all e commerce in the US from established brands like All Birds and Converse to entrepreneurs just getting started Their design tools make it easy to build the exact online presence you're imagining with hundreds of ready to use templates to choose from built in marketing features, you can create full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks. So you can reach your customers wherever they are It's time to turn those what if into with Shopify today You can sign up for your one dollar per month trial period at shhopify. com slash box. You can go to shhopify dot com slash boox. That's shopify dot com slash boox We all do it You have a night for yourself but don't like the sound of the silence, so you turn on the TV just for the ambiance This's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone And other insurers well, they may make you feel alone But when you switch to GaIico, you've got clas reps available around the clock So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help And let's turn on the washing machine, just for good measure. Isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support. It feels good to Gaiko I do thank Christine If You asked the aliens on whose supercomputer I presume are current simulation is fning If you ask them to build a social environment most likely to destroy the conditions of human connection, I feel like this is the program they would write Now that I've just said those words out loud, do you think I sound hysterical? I do not think that you sound hysterical. In fact, I agree with you. And I have felt incorct the aliens or they. Okay, the aliens did sound a little bit crazy. I'm not gonna lie to you there. the social conditions, like I I have become increasingly radicalized notot really just the internet, but actually social media specifically in the interaction styles that it preferences Um And increasingly, like, doesn't even preference, it just forces upon people You know, as far as the internet goes, I don't know that we were ever meant to have this much information at our fingertips or be in contact with this many people Um and then social media and the way that it prioritizes and rifies sort of fear, anger takes you out of the real world, gives you facsimilies of the real world that you can live in U I think it's been bad I think we L think we made some mistakes, some big mistakes Well, I mean, look, I, you know, say humans have never been super great with uncertainty But the internet has just turned ordinary uncertainty into an endless feedback loop of analysis and insecurity., you know, it's like we've all become Soistayski characters or something But all these pathologies we're talking about. I mean do they seem genuinely new to you or maybe just a case of the internet? amplifying oldld anxieties. I think a bit of both is the right way to put it. I mean The problem of humanity, right? Like the problem of being mortal has been sort of Ting trying to be seen and understood by people, trying to find connection and failing feeling alone and trying to make meaning of it, etcetera. like that We have all always felt misunderstood and not like not able to fully understand the world. That's the human condition Um But yeah, I think that The internet and social media and dating apps have supercharge specific aspects of that and made them feel even worse and also given them outsiz prominence in our day to day lives you know, like Again, I think it's the human condition to think about the future and perhaps be a little bit worried about what's coming down the pike That's always the case, right? But Today you have that and then it's like, oh, every second of the day, you're going to get a news alert about how some major crisis is happening in some other country. You can't do anything about it. It might be coming for you. You don't know, but you're just going to know about it you know, or a crisis happening in your country or some bad statistic about how bad dating is Um, and before, like you know, you might have anxiety about the future and all those things might be true But you weren't constantly being bombarded with that fact every second. Well, it makes you feel anxious and impotent at the same time. Kock it where I can't do anything about All of those terrible things And so having it bombard your brain. cannot be good. And again, all these platforms, dating apps or social media What do they all have in common? Well probably several things, but certainly one of them is that they monetize insecurity Basically And that's all that this comes today. If you follow all of these things back to like the source, It's insecurity. Yeah. And to me, thats that's the beginning and the end of the thing. They monetize insecurity and Also they are Volume plays. in different ways And I think that is I'm not sure that the human psyche has caught up to that And so that adds to our anxiety. Like if it's news apps, it's sort of receiving all this information that you don't know how to handle. If it's dating apps, it's seeing like the volume of people who are out there in the world. dating you or who you should be trying to talk to, but you can't U Yeah, I think that's hard for people to handle but we don't really know how to express that maybe Like you said, you sort of made this whole world Youpeat and you think deeply about it, even spiritually, I think aboutout it U Do you still think of yourself as just a journalist or a writer? covering a beet or is this more like a a moral or religious Pjects. And I mean that like in the best, most good faith sense possible I started out as a person as an ideas writer you know, because I just was sort of have a lot of questions about what is going on in the world and what people are talking about and wanted to sort of explain them to myself. and in the process to other people U And I think I started writing about gender Um dating, sex because I had a lot of questions about it personally, like I like was a M Hopefully a young person like out there in the world living in a major urban center, like trying to meet people of the opposite sex and feeling that things were weird in a number of different directions And so I was writing about it. K of I was reporting almost to like understand it myself and then in the process, help other people understand it and one of the most rewarding things about writing some of these pieces is getting feedback in the comments section from letters when I speak in public where people are like, oh I thought I was the only person who felt this way or like I noticed this too, but I didn't know how to explain it or where it was coming from. and Honestly, this beat can be kindind of a bummer these days. as you can probably tell from our prior conversation. In a certain way it does feel Kind of vocational in the sense that like Maybe this is something that I'm supposed to be doing and supposed to be talking about to like help other people make sense of their lives and like help us all try and figure out a way to sort of