[@ChrisWillx] The Extreme Crisis of Young Women - Freya India

April 27, 2026 · 119 min read

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Duration: 115 min

Short Summary

Freya India is a young author and Substack blogger who spent five to six years writing a controversial book examining young women's struggles in the Anglosphere, drawing parallels to a New Statesman "Angry Young Women" piece that reached similar conclusions yet was celebrated while she faced accusations of being far-right and misogynist. The episode explores how social media, the mental health industry, and progressive culture have contributed to young women's unprecedented pessimism, risk aversion, and political radicalization, while traditional foundations like family and community have eroded. It also debates controversial topics including Hungary's family tax incentives, the impact of divorce on women and children, and whether young women are being sold therapy to address problems created by systemic issues.

Key Quotes

"one of the worst feelings in life is being right but early" (00:00:11)
"women are becoming something more like products rather than people" (00:00:11)
"they have everything they want and basically nothing they need" (00:00:08)
"you have industries encouraging them and telling them the problem is you" (00:00:45)

Detailed Summary

Book Background and Polarized Reception

Freya India is a young author and Substack blogger who began publishing in Quillette at sixth form college and spent five to six years completing her debut book examining young women's struggles in the Anglosphere. The book has garnered significant controversy, with the Guardian calling it a "grift" and Goodreads reviewers comparing her to "Serena Joy of the Handmaid's Tale."

Liberal women on Goodreads gave the book one-star reviews, complaining it did not match its appearance as a standard anti-capitalist Marxist text.
A New Statesman piece titled "Angry Young Women" reached the same conclusions as Freya's book—young women feel pessimistic and have negative views of men—yet was "celebrated and welcomed" while she faced accusations of being far-right and misogynist.
The host's mother described the book as "loving toward girls" and expressed pride after reading it, highlighting the polarized reception.
Critics come up with various angles of criticism rather than admitting Freya reaches conservative conclusions about women's issues.
Freya does not maintain Instagram or TikTok accounts, with her Substack available at freyindia.co.uk.

Research on Young Women's Pessimism

Research presented shows young women are more pessimistic across the board: less likely to feel happy, ambitious, excited, or fulfilled, and more pessimistic about prospects for happiness in life generally. The New Statesman article found that more privileged women felt even more pessimistic, aligning with the book's argument that privileged women "have everything they want and basically nothing they need."

Young women cited in New Statesman interviews said motherhood requires "getting rid of our career" and they fear losing their identity.
Nearly 30% of teenage American girls aged 14-18 seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021.
Mental health problems are both underdiagnosed in those who need treatment and overdiagnosed in those who don't have issues but are convinced by the internet they do.
Young women who grew up in conservative and religious households show better mental health outcomes, suggesting a protective mechanism from social media's negative effects.

Mental Health Industry Critique

A central argument is that young women are being sold therapy and mental health services to address feelings created by systemic issues, particularly the rise of divorced parents. The mental health industry encourages young women to ruminate, go inwards, focus on their distress, and self-diagnose, fueling a cycle of distress rather than addressing root causes.

Better Help runs advertisements showing young women with unhelpful fathers or friends, positioning their services as superior alternatives to real relationships.
The speaker characterizes this as telling users to be less attached to people who love them and more anxiously attached to experts, which she describes as a "Marxist-style analysis of commodity exploitation."
DSM diagnoses were voted by "rich white men in the pharmaceutical industry" rather than emerging organically, according to the speaker.
Opening up about personal trauma became incentivized; a whole industry formed around vulnerability content because it increases clicks and revenue.
The speaker notes that mental health industry critics face accusations of being anti-science or trying to take away women's resources.

Young girls begin documenting every experience for an audience on Instagram from age 10 or 11, with approximately 25% of five to seven year olds in the UK already having a smartphone and 38% on social media despite Instagram's minimum age requirement of 13. The platform's verification relies solely on entering a birthday rather than identity verification.

Facetune allows users to edit their appearance by slimming jaw, enlarging eyes, changing waist, tanning skin, and whitening teeth.
Teenage girls used Facetune during their most formative years, then developed body dysmorphia and aversion to having their picture taken naturally.
Self-love campaigns were a marketing strategy to sell editing apps like Facetune, not genuine wellness messaging.
In 2020, morality became measurable and instantly judged by Instagram profiles; Cara Delevingne coined "silence is consent" during Black Lives Matter protests.
Not posting a black square during protests became a form of reputation destruction, particularly damaging for teenage girls whose lives are constant reputation management.
Young women pressured each other to post support for causes, and those who didn't were attacked.

Political Radicalization and Cultural Division

The New Statesman reported that young women, not young men, lurched dramatically to the left in the 2010s, and young women moving to the radical left is widening the political gender gap among under-30s. Young women are dragged by social media algorithms into rabbit holes similar to how young men are radicalized by the manosphere.

Progressive politics plays into women's characteristics including compassion, empathy, indirect aggression, cancel culture, risk aversion, and safety-seeking.
The speaker argues women rarely encounter conservative-leaning views by accident because liberal assumptions dominate culture and media.
Even being slightly conservative on one topic while holding progressive views on everything else immediately codes a person as rightwing, leaving "barely any room to be moderately conservative or curious about conservative approaches."
There are parallels between extreme manosphere content and Call Her Daddy: same language, same thumbnails and titles, with messaging like "we don't need men" mirroring how the manosphere speaks about women.
The speaker believes they receive more targeted hate than a "right-wing political influencer" would because operating in the middle is "almost more threatening."

Hookup Culture and Dating Advice

The book covers 2010 to present, documenting how hookup culture was pushed through media like Teen Vogue and the Call Her Daddy podcast. Teen Vogue published articles teaching teenagers anal sex and hookup tips, while Call Her Daddy featured guests who gave advice that women are "just a hole" and should "learn to cook" to compensate.

Despite hypersexualized cultural messaging, actual statistics show people are not having more sex—a paradox between messaging and outcomes.
A study of 15 years of Reddit relationship advice with 1,166,592 comments found that "End relationship or cut contact" recommendations increased from 30% to 50%.
"Communicate" recommendations dropped by 25% and "Compromise" dropped by about half over the same period.
The most egregious relationship stories go viral online because they are extreme, creating a biased training dataset where the least representative stories get the most attention.
Online advice communities create bidirectional incentive systems where extreme stories generate clicks while normal resolutions generate neither.
ChatGPT's training data contains a substantial proportion from Reddit, potentially encoding these biases.

Girl Boss Feminism and Risk Aversion

Girl boss feminism is argued to be animated deep down by risk aversion and fear, functioning as a form of control and security against relationship uncertainty. A "ratchet effect" makes it hard to relinquish career-earned independence when attempting relationships, marriage, or starting a family.

Young women are described as a risk-averse generation with unprecedented access to information about physical risks and complications of parenthood.
Childbirth carries a huge physical and emotional asymmetry where women pay a much higher price than men.
As women achieve greater socioeconomic success, they increasingly adopt more independent, assertive, and disagreeable traits described as "masculinized."
Personality traits praised in public careers "you pay for in private" when it comes to intimate relationships.
The book has faced contradictory criticisms both for being anti-capitalist and for questioning girl boss feminism.

Divorce's Impact on Women and Children

The author traces the evolution of divorce from normalization to glamorization to a means of self-fulfillment and self-expression, arguing this transition has hurt women and children. Guest Erica Commisar argued custody arrangements should not be 50/50 because "babies need mom more in early years and dad more in later life."

Couples often break up between 6 months and 3 years of a child's life because added stress exposes cracks that were already in the relationship.
Single mothers face what the speaker describes as a "quadruple burden" rather than a "double shift" when without a dual income household, especially with young children.
The rise of divorced parents has contributed significantly to attachment disorders and mental health struggles in young women.

Hungary's Family Policy Debate

Hungary's tax policy for mothers offers concrete financial incentives: 25% off income tax for the first child, 50% for the second, and 100% for life if they have three or more children. A New Statesman piece framed potential UK tax benefits for mothers as "an inverse tax penalty on women who want to be child-free" that would "force them to have babies."

The speaker argues this framing "just extrapolates one story onto everything," referencing the Handmaid's Tale.
The episode features heated debate over whether financial incentives constitute coercion or legitimate family support.

Cultural Paradoxes

The book identifies several cultural paradoxes: a hypersexualized society having less sex, people being more connected yet more isolated, the conflict between independence and maternity leave, hating billionaires while finding meaning in corporate work, and valuing freedom while accepting surveillance.

The speaker notes young women care intensely about the Middle East but show "zero empathy when talking about their own boyfriends."
Obscene amounts of empathy, when turned up to maximum, becomes a different type of judgmental tribalism where caring for one group means you become the oppressor if you're not part of it.
When progressives demonize traditional authority structures (religion, parents, moral codes), the market and influencers fill that vacuum to determine what people value.

Gaming Statistics and Gender Differences

Gaming statistics show 90-99% of teenage boys play video games with 39% describing themselves as daily gamers, while 22% of teenage girls are daily gamers playing 0.5-1.5 hours per day on average versus boys' 1.5-2.5 hours. Teenage boys primarily play first-person shooters, sports games, action combat games, and competitive multiplayer games.

Teenage girls play social sandbox games (Roblox, Minecraft), simulation games (Sims, Animal Crossing), puzzle games (Candy Crush), and cozy games with short sessions and low commitment.
The male sedation hypothesis posits porn, screens, and video games explain why high rates of sexlessness among young men have not produced expected uprisings.

Framework for Evaluating Content Creators

A four-part theory is proposed for identifying if content creators have your best interests at heart: whether they bond over in-group love or out-group hatred, when they last admitted being wrong, when they last surprised you with a take, and when they brought on someone they disagree with.

The speaker recommends evaluating a "criticism creation balance sheet," with an ideal ratio of 10 to 1—creating ten pieces of content for every criticism.
The episode discusses Scott Galloway's "Unsubscribe" and "resist" movements encouraging people to delete social media accounts from companies deemed politically problematic.
Blue Sky is described as "as socialist of a capitalist company as you're going to get," but criticism of tech companies is deemed hypocritical when popular platforms are given a pass.

Full Transcript

Show transcript

Why has your book got one star on Goodreads? >> Because I'm being attacked um by normally liberal women, I think. Um so we sent out some galleys, some free copies to just avid Goodreads readers and women who are not in our sort of sphere thinking about things that we are. And I think also because the book looks like an anti- capitalist Marxist book, there's no indication that I would sort of be skeptical of the mental health industry or um talk about cultural trends like family breakdown. And so a lot of the reviews are women warning each other that this is not what you expect and you might be hit with a viewpoint you disagree with. Um, and so it's a lot of girls who've got through the first chapter and then I've said something like about trans and they've just given up and warned each other not to carry on. >> You're horrendous. >> Yeah, basically. >> When did you start writing about women and girls? >> I started um 2021. So, it's been a long time. Um, and it was mostly because I felt anxious and I wanted to figure out what was going on. And so I was trying to map it all out and it's taken me sort of five six years to finally finish the book. So it's it's not only research that I've done but it's basically years of my life. I've carried it through different phases and seasons of my life and this is where I've ended up. >> I was talking to William Costello. You and him wrote uh an article together in Qulette and I think you were in still you were still in sixth form college. >> It was so long ago. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I've been writing for a really long time, but part of the criticism against me is that I just picked a topic and I'm using it to sort of funnel in my right-wing agenda. >> So, it will be Freya just noticed that the mental health crisis was happening and she's using that to spread her sort of fascist >> Okay. ideas. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're in good company here cuz I'm a fascist as well, apparently. >> Oh, nice. Uh we often hear about a lost generation of young men, but research shows that young women are more pessimistic across the board. They are less likely to say they feel happy, ambitious, excited, or fulfilled and are more pessimistic about the prospect of being happy for their life generally. >> Yes. >> The going on? >> So, is this the New Statesman piece? Yeah. So there was this huge new statement piece, angry young women, which made me an angry young woman when I >> Why did you get pissy about the new statement piece? >> Because they reached a lot of conclusions that a lot of conservative women, conservative people have just been saying for a very long time. So as you said, they were saying that young women feel pessimistic, that they have more negative views that of men than men have of them. And all we've heard about for the last few years is the manosphere and how men are getting radicalized. And ultimately the the argument in their piece was that women are getting radicalized by social media and particularly by femosphere influencers. So women warning them off other men and >> women reading your book. >> Yeah. Basically. And um >> unhappily. >> Yeah. So they they came to the same observations as me and a lot of other people. But then after my book tour in the UK, I've had to put up with constant accusations of being misogynist, being far-right conservative for saying something is happening to liberal young women. They're not happy. Something is happening in their relationships. Um they don't they feel hopeless about the future. And even in the New Statesman piece, they found that more privileged women felt even more pessimistic. And these are things that I've been trying to argue very carefully and I hope with some compassion, but I've had to put up with constant smears and backlash. And so it's just it was very interesting to me that the new statesmen can reach the same conclusions >> and it's sort of celebrated and welcomed. >> I once spoke to Douglas Murray about this and I said, um, have you ever used your gay privilege card? And he said, well, on other gay men, of course. I said, well, you know what I mean. you know, you you're from a particular protected group. Have you ever been able to cash in your status at some point? And he said, "Well, the problem is that I'm white and conservative, which makes me essentially an honorary straight guy." >> Like he white conservative is the straight of the gay community. >> Yeah. >> And you being white, British >> Yes. >> and right-leaning. >> Mhm. means that you're essentially your female privilege is totally dismissed. You don't have it in the same way as the New Statesman writers may do. >> So yeah, a lot of the criticism against me is you're a white cis heterosexual woman trying trying to argue what's happening to women from that perspective. But then I'm like, if I wrote a piece, a book telling you what like black women are feeling, I'd get attacked with that. That would be awful. I don't know. And so I feel like how can you not write a book from your own perspective and say, you know, there are I think there's young women who feel this way too because I have all the data. >> What do you mean like white cis heterosexual women? Is that not what most women that you're speaking to are? >> Yeah. Well, my book is for women in the Anglosphere who are have facing specific problems. So our problems are not um stigma around mental health. They're pathization and medicalization of all of our negative emotions. Our issues are not too much pressure to settle down. They're pressure to stay single and self-actualized. So, it's unique issues to the Anglosphere and two sort of women growing up in the liberal world like me. And but yeah, so the argument is basically the book is just my ranty opinion from my privileged point of view. >> That is a thin end of the wedge to funnel people into right and farright >> conservatives. Full of dog whistles. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> but then that's why the new states piece is annoying because it's like it's the exact same conclusions and they've gone out and spoken to women and reached the same observations as me. >> It's the indignation I think that sucks. Um, you know, I wrote this piece ages ago as the one of the worst feelings in life is being right but early. >> Yeah. >> Uh or being right but the wrong class to talk about it in whatever way it is. Because you see, hang on, you want to scream it from the rooftops. The problem with this is as you're having these conversations, >> you see this a a good way to talk about this would be the um climate people, the environmentalists, >> they believe that this is the most important crisis facing humanity at the moment. >> And then they don't think that people are listening enough >> and then they see the impact of these things happening. They see ice sheets melting, water levels rising, forest fires, etc. And they go, they feel emboldened because they go, "Hang on a second. I've been warning you about this and no one's listening. >> Yeah. >> And what happens is at that moment you probably should do a sort of soft but soft reminder. Hey guys, this is really important. But what they do is think no one was listening. That means I must shout louder. And they shout louder and shout louder. And this is where people that have been campaigning for one issue for a long time feel like they haven't been listened to become you see them and they seem so deranged. >> Yeah. >> Because saying I'm deranged. >> Yes, that's the that's the main takeaway. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Mhm. >> They seem deranged because the incentive has been I said this, no one listened. I'm going to say it louder. I'm going to shout more. I'm going to make my throw soup on a painting, glue myself to the M25. I'm going to do all of these things so that people will finally listen because I feel vindicated. You see that there's a problem. I can see that there's a problem. Everyone has admitted that there's a problem. >> Yeah. >> I'm just going to shout louder until they listen. This is sort of uh you know pick your pill from me. It's which way do you want to go because is you have the option here to just start ranting and raving about it. >> It's true. I think >> yeah it's the it was actually the reaction to the piece. I actually think the piece was really good. It's the reaction where people were saying this is so unexplored. is unrecognized and you know but or well someone said oh they've got they're the first with the balls to say it or someone >> tens of thousands of Substack subscribers >> and someone needs to someone said someone needs to think about women's unet unmet needs and how they got here which is >> someone should write a book on it. >> Yeah they should. They really should. >> What do you think women actually want in 2026? >> Well this is sort of the argument in my book is I think women do have unmet needs. I think the reason that more privileged women were more pessimistic in that piece was that they have everything they want and basically nothing they need. So all of the foundations and anchors that help women and people in general feel stable have basically been eroded. And that's the argument in my book that we have had our families break down. We've we don't know our neighbors. We don't have communities. We are less religious. were less religious than young men even. So we don't have any of these anchors. And that is why I think when the social media platforms came in, they really destroyed young women because they offered substitutes and simulations of these things that we didn't have in the first place. >> And that's why you think that women were more susceptible to the impact of social media. >> Yeah, in a way. And I think social media plays on girls specific personality traits and vices. >> Um so it was very addictive. But the reason it's so bad is because we didn't have any grounding. Because if you look at the mental health crisis, um women who grew up in conservative and religious households, young girls are doing way better and they seem to have had sort some sort of protective mechanism from that, which is actually why I became interested in it in the first place. It's not that I was conservative or religious. So part of the argument now is that I'm some sort of fundamentalist Christian who's pushing this worldview. But it's I generally I was looking at the data and thinking there is a pattern here that liberal women who've raised in liberal households seem to be ruthless. They seem to not have anything to hold on to. And that's why >> they are actually more addicted to social media. So, liberal teen girls, it's about 31% say they use it for more than 5 hours a day. And it's much higher than other groups. And so, there is something specifically going on there with liberal girls and and having a liberal upbringing that's not happening with conservatives. >> You said they're getting what they want, but not what they need. >> Yeah. >> What is it you think that they think they want, and what is it you think they need? >> Well, I think so. The argument of the book is that women are becoming something more like products rather than people. And so I think they're being encouraged to see their lives as the ultimate goal is to optimize yourself for the market. The ultimate goal is not to have a collection of human experiences. And I think this explains a lot of things. So it explains what young women value and what they don't value. So, for example, not having children, h having more of an aversion to having children someday than young men. I think that's because they think of themselves as a product, not as a human. And so, people say things like, "Oh, that's the most human experience. Why would you not want to do that?" But if your goal is to be a perfect pristine product, then why would you take the risk of motherhood when it could destroy your body? It's unpredictable. It's dangerous. It's scary. It's not really something you can display quickly. You know, it's like a long-term satisfaction. And so, I think we often view it from the wrong frame. We're thinking about women, previous generations of women. But I think this generation of women is very different and their values are very different. And so, my argument in the book is that you're being encouraged to focus on all the wrong wants rather than what you actually need, >> which I would argue is what all humans need. basic human connection, dependence on other people. >> Do you think there's a pressure for women to settle down and have children? >> Um, I've actually argued that it's the opposite. And in my experience, it's been the opposite, which is that so Emma Watson was talking about this recently on a podcast and she was saying that it's a violence and a cruelty against young women, this pressure to settle down and then it's overwhelming and that she feels in such a rush to do it. And I just couldn't relate to that at all. And I don't thinking about the women in my life, I don't think that is what's happening. I think for the women I'm talking about, there's much more pressure to stay single, to stay unattached, to stay available. And I think what Emma is really describing when she talks about the rush and the hurry is she feels pressure to cram in all her self-actualization before she meets someone. So, in the podcast, she's talking about healing herself and fixing her mental health and becoming the best version of herself and becoming whole and healed and enlightened. And I think that's a core message that young women are growing up with, which is that you need to be perfect before you take on a responsibility or commit to someone. And so I don't think there's pressure to settle down. I think there's pressure to be perfect before you meet someone, which often is pressure to stay single. And that's because your self-brand your product online that needs to be you basically need to exit the business of your public profile because postmotherhood you're not going to be able to go to brunch with the girls or wear cute heels in the same sort of a way and you know can be flexing changing nappies on your timeline. >> Yeah. It's it's the end of something. Um, >> it's the end of the thing that is most valued by other people in the community that you are engaging with most, which is the internet. >> Yeah. And part of the reason I wanted to write the book is to give people a sense of young women's childhood. So, how long they've been marketing themselves as a product and thinking of themselves in this way. And I think that's really hard to just switch. And so I talk about girls being on Instagram at 10 or 11 that every experience they have they feel they have to document, market, perform for other people. >> Everything is done in anticipation of an audience. And then you're asking them to do things that are scary and have a quiet satisfaction and where they would have to give up some part of themselves. And I include myself in this. You know, I was on Instagram at 11. And for me to get off Instagram and then not have the constant nagging feeling of I need to take a picture, I need to document this. I need to prove to people that I exist, >> it was so hard to switch my mindset, even though I wasn't even that addicted. And so, I think people really underestimate what these platforms are doing to not just how young women see themselves, but how they treat other people and what they actually value in their life. Parents are registering their kids' handles on Instagram before they're born. >> Yes. That's become part of like child content. So you'll plan your baby shower, you'll plan pack your hospital bag on YouTube, you'll do everything, and then you'll select your child's username. >> Do you know nearly a quarter of five to seveny olds in the UK have a smartphone? Quarter of five to seven year olds in the UK have got a smartphone. >> Yeah. >> So they can see the internet. >> Yeah. And I think it's 38% are already on social media. >> How old do you have to be to register for Instagram? >> Um I think 13, but I don't think there's any proper You just put a birthday in. >> It's not like Pornhub where you do some sort of verification. >> No, you just put a birthday in. I was with Tony Abbott in uh Australia and uh I I didn't know much about Tony Abbott before we sat down. >> Interesting guy. >> We were with the person who had uh spearheaded that under 16 social media ban. >> Yeah. >> In Australia. They were at the table too. It was this big big dinner thing. And uh I wonder whether that's going to get rolled out. I get the sense that the UK is going to feel way too much pressure. It's so tightknit. >> Yeah. that I think it's going to really struggle. The Brits just don't like dealing with displeasure in that way. They don't like we're a complaining country. I'm aware that Americans are very ligious. >> If you trip over on a curb, someone's getting sued. >> Yeah. >> But uh the UK have the equivalent skill but at complaining and I think that that is a weapon of mass destruction that stops progress from happening sometimes. I also think we are more of a surveillance state as in um there's so much messaging scaring the life out of young people for what they post and what they do online >> and I think that that will end up being its own harm in the UK because we already have the online safety bill where >> um it's age verification so all adults have to upload ID to view half of it is illegal content So fraud or child abuse. But then another part of it is platforms would have to protect users from bullying or hatred against people which is my substack. So they won't be >> Yeah, it is. >> But yeah, it's it will be I think the methods we're going to use in the UK will cause their own problems because Karma is already saying he wants to double down on age verification. >> So what's happening with young girls desire for children? Um, I think that it's very interesting to me when I did the book that young men seem to be more seem to desire having children someday more than young women. So, there was a Pew survey recently which showed that 12th grade girls were less likely to say they wanted to get married someday even than young men. Um, and there were so many statistics about not just children, but being open to dating and having a relationship that men seemed much more open to dating. Single young women were actually more likely to say that they felt that marriage was outdated and old-fashioned than men. >> And so, what interests me is why young women seem more of us than young men. Now, I would think it would be the opposite. And I think part of that is my argument that women are becoming something more like products. I also think as well it's general risk aversion and fear. >> And I trace some of that back to, you know, having your own family break down. I don't think young women have had good models of stable relationships that make them feel safe and that they could invest in someone enough to have children. So, you're saying the psychological impact of being in a home that's either unstable or maybe broken causes uh an imprinting for what you think relationships should be like when you get older. >> And having a children is terrifying. So, it's so vulnerable for a a woman. And so, I think that fear is a huge part of it. And if you think of it's not just maybe you grew up in an unstable household, but you might have also grown up online. So you don't see a happy relationship between your parents. And then you learn about relationships from the internet. So you learn from the sort of deranged gender discourse online. So you're hearing wounded adults talk about men and women and generalize and stereotype off the back of their own hurt and heartbreak. But you've got young people reading that before they've had an experience of a relationship. So you have that and then you also have online porn will be teaching you about relationships and teaching girls that men are sort of brutal and insatiable and predatory. And so and I think this is happening for young men as well. I just haven't researched it as much. But it seems to me that all of young women's templates will be very scary and make that commitment even scarier. >> A quick aside, look, you know, sleep matters, but let's be real, most nights you're probably not getting the sort of sleep that's actually restorative. Eight pod 5 fixes that. It's a smart cover that you throw over the top of your mattress that actively cools or heats each side of the bed up to 20°. They've even added a temperature regulating duvet and pillowcase so you and your partner can sleep at your preferred temperatures covered head to toe like some temperature controlled mummy. 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What are some of the ones that you've been most worried about or that you've seen online? >> I think the risk aversion. So, people often talk about the child-free sort of glamorizing their lives. So, they'll be like in the Maldes and they'll be able to, you know, they have double income so they can buy all of this uh meaningless stuff. But that doesn't worry me as much as the general fear. So, I'm going to get you into trouble again. But the girl with the list, she lists out all of the terrifying things. I'm going to need one. >> Yeah, >> I can say it cuz I'm a woman. >> It's okay. Go ahead. >> All of the terrifying things that can happen in childhood. >> Mhm. >> And that to me is way more dangerous for young women now. It's not that I think they're looking at child-free lives and thinking it's really glamorous. I think they're just really scared. we know we're already a risk averse generation and then you know you think of previous generations they were not able to read through all of the physical risks and analysis and neuroticism about having children that we are and so I think that really affects anxious young women where they think why would I do this >> to steel man that side I think child birth is so physically and emotionally taxing >> for women in a way that it just isn't for men. >> Yeah. >> There is a huge asymmetry in terms of what women pay in order to go through child birth and what men pay in order to go through child birth. And I think what that leaves is a sense that any man or person, but specifically a man who doesn't fully recognize how big of a risk and sacrifice that is for a woman. >> Mhm. >> If they appear to be flippant or not understanding or not compassionate about it, which can be overly sensitive, but still it appears as a man being callous. >> Yeah. And I understand if if this is the scariest, biggest thing that you're going to do in your entire female adult life >> and some guy comes along and seems to be dismissive. >> Yeah. >> of why this is something big and scary. Yeah. you, dude. Like, no, you you should recognize you should recognize why this is something that's big and scary to me. But there was a a line in the New Statesman >> um when the lady was interviewing a group of girls, they said, "It's a much bigger deal for us to become mothers. We have to get rid of our career." I'm not fully against kids. I just really don't want to lose the other things and become just a mother. I still want to be me and I will probably lose that. >> That's not the same thing that I'm talking about. >> Yeah. >> I just really don't want to lose the other things and become just a mother. I still want to be me and I will probably lose that. >> Yeah. I think it's a fear of vulnerability and >> dependence. >> Yeah. I think this gets missed sometimes with the discussions on girl boss feminism and all young women just want to be a girl boss and for sort of selfish reasons. I think a lot of it deep down is animated by this risk aversion and fear and it's it's a way of having control. So you have a career and you have all of these other things that make up you so that if something happens to your relationship, you have something and there's some truth to that. Yeah. But I think that's happening among young women and young men. A fear of vulnerability and chasing things that make people miserable because they're trying to avoid having to depend on someone and take that leap of faith with someone. >> Um, and so you see it with, you know, productivity stuff online for men, which is that put everything into your career because a woman will just hurt you. And I think it's a similar thing with young women, but I yeah, I do think it can get caricatured sometimes and but deep down it's it's fear most of all. >> I think that needs compassion. But there's definitely a challenge that women have and I think this is going to happen more and more as women are socioeconomically more successful. As you've got more women getting careers and entering the workforce, they're going to behave rightly or wrongly, whether they need to or they don't, in a more independent, masculineized way. Yeah. They're going to be more assertive. They're going to be more dominant. They're going to be more disagreeable. And that very well may be the thing that they need in order to get them through their career and to ascend the rungs of the ladder. >> Yeah. I think that this creates a weird sort of ratchet effect where it's hard to ever go back from this level of independence and assertiveness. And unfortunately, >> when you want to start a family, when you want to get into a relationship, there's a degree of relinquishing that you have to have. When you want to move in together, the same thing happens. You need to compromise more. You need to show up for this person cuz they need you in a way that isn't just what do you want right now? Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Mhm. >> And then maybe you get married and you financially you're tied and increasingly women are going to be the ones that if they don't get a prenup, they're going to be more liable if they're out earning their partner and then you have kids. And the same thing happens times a thousand. That you need to be able to relinquish control. You need to be able to be looked after. You need to have needs and make them known. And it's it's a strange sort of duality that nobody wants to strip female independence because how many marriages stayed together because women were basically financial prisoners. And at the same time, >> if you can't let go of your independence, it's going to be really really difficult for you to have a successful relationship and start a family because you're not supposed to be a soloreneur inside of your relationship. You're supposed to be a partner and then a mother and then a member of the unit, the house unit that gives and takes and doesn't keep score. >> Yeah. That I think you've spoken about this before that the personality traits that work for your career will not work in your relationship. >> You get praised for in public, you pay for in private. >> Yes. Um and and I actually don't have a problem with women working obviously. But I do think my issue with stuff like lean in feminism and you know lean into your career fully is as you say it's then very difficult to lean back out when you need to. And I think for this generation the biggest thing they need we need to learn to do is lean into risk and vulnerability. And I think putting that all into work very often comes at the expense of something which is that you can't depend on someone or or compromise or sacrifice. >> Do young liberal women hate capitalism or love the idea of an independent career >> because I can't work out which one it is. Yeah, that is very confusing to me because my book is criticized for um they they think it's an anti- capitalist book, but I don't call out capitalism because I believe in free markets. And so I'm criticized for not um you know having an anti- capitalist argument. But then I'm also criticized for you know questioning the motives of girl boss feminism and being uh putting everything into your career. And so I don't understand how the two are compatible at all. And my argument in the book is actually if you progressive sort of demonize all these other forms of authority. So um religion, you don't want to be told what to do by religion. You don't want to be told what to do by your parents. You don't want right and wrong from basically anyone. And my argument in the book is if you uh undermine all of these for forms of authority, the authority will be the market. The market will influence right and wrong. It will be influencers who tell you what right and wrong is. It will be influencers who come in and determine what you value rather than relying on all of these other things. >> So I often think that progressives sort of want to take down all of these other forms of belonging and meaning and then all that's left is companies and industries. Mhm. >> But then they're anti- capitalist. >> It's a difficult circle to square. >> Yeah. >> What's happening with sex? >> Well, so that was interesting in the book because I had so much research about how hookup culture was pushed on my generation. So the book goes from 2010 to now and everything that's changed sort of culturally and technologically. And I had all of these examples like Teen Vogue teaching teenagers how to have anal sex, giving them tips on hookup culture, some crazy stuff. And then I had I had to sit and listen to these Call her Her Daddy episodes to get transcripts of what they were talking about. And this was sort of in the late 2010s. and it's all about sleeping around and hookup culture and why it's good and empowering and um healthy for young girls. And so I had all of this evidence that there was so much influence that that was normalized and >> Alex Cooper now happily engaged. >> Yeah. So I had that but then you look at the statistics and we're not actually having more sex. And so I was thinking that's all going to lead to this huge explosion in hookup culture and it really hasn't. Um and so there's a paradox there. There's so many paradoxes in the book between the messaging we were given and what actually happened the outcome. And that's just one of them. >> Yeah. It seems strange that Jenz's hypersexualized and having less sex at the same time. >> Yes. But maybe they're linked, which is that the when I was sat listening to the call her daddy episodes and reading these articles, sex sounded horrifying and scary. And >> did it in is it not advertising sex? I think that's what we think it's doing, but I mean on call her daddy they're saying, you know, if you're a five or four out of 10, then you really need to like learn these sex tips in order to make up for it. You're just a hole. >> No, but just genuinely. So, it's like the sort of stereotypically worst masculine banter >> coming out of women like basically they had this guest on. It sounds like something that Louis Thuru would have seen in the manosphere >> dock. >> Exactly. >> Like if you're if if you're Butters, you'd better learn to cook. >> Exactly. They had this guest on called Mil Hunter. >> Brilliant. >> Hang on. Mil Hunter for women. >> This is a guy, >> right, >> who had slept with a load of older women and was giving them advice basically. >> Okay. >> And the advice is just horrifying. But then at the end he he shouts out, "Women don't care about you." Oh, sorry. Men don't care about you. And then Alex Cooper and the other host are like, "I hope you girls are listening." And even if you're married, you're not safe, he still wants to cheat on you. This is terrifying messaging around sex. And I think that is I mean it's the most listened to podcasts by women. And so I really think that would have played a part in why um we're now seeing a sex recession is that you had it on both sides. You had this awful messaging from the feminist influences, the femosphere that the new statesmen now are finally talking about. But then you also have it from the manosphere influencers. Everybody basically saying that investing in the opposite sex or being vulnerable at all is going to get you hurt and you have to put on this defense mechanism. bravado. Um, and it's the exact same messaging. >> What do you think porn's done to expectations around sex and power? >> I think porn is another thing that terrified young women um, from my generation because they would have been exposed to it before, likely before they've had a relationship. And so you have I had to go on this forum in the book of Gen Z adults talking about when they first were exposed to porn >> and some of them are like eight six and they're talking about accidentally seeing it on these platforms and way before they've even attempted dating anyone or or can put that in context. Um, so I think we we talk a lot about the impact of porn on young men, but not so much on young women, even if they're not watching it. I think there's constant sort of exposure to it on social media. So, a lot of the statistics in the book were accidental exposure. So, it's not young people going onto Pornhub. It's very often on Twitter or Instagram and it's accidentally come up and it started an addiction. Um, and so I think that plays into the same thing. It creates a fear around sex and it creates crazy expectations. I think there's pornrained women sometimes where the way they speak about women, about themselves is so heartbreaking. Even listening to Caller Daddy and some of the guests on there, the way they talk about themselves, it sounds like it's straight out of a porn site. And that's they're viewing themselves as nothing but an object, a product. There's another weird paradox going on here, which is porn is both something totally meaningless, transactional that you can do freely with whoever you want, whenever you want. >> Yeah. >> And also the root of potentially the most traumatic thing in your life if it's done incorrectly. >> Mhm. that I I I I don't >> no I don't understand the consistent defense of porn um from progressives. So this is part of the controversial part of my book is that I don't caveat. I don't give any disclaimers with that because I was so tired of reading books that constantly caveat. And so with things like >> the throw clearing land acknowledgement before well we must remember that porn can it does empower women to be able to if they're disadvantaged they've got an iPhone in a dildo and they can make the money that they >> and I do that throughout the book. So another controversial part of the book is I talk about the mental health industry and I don't do the constant you know some medication really helps people and it saves their lives and therapies of course life-saving for some people. I do a brief acknowledgement of that at the beginning and then I go into what I think are the real dangers because I think we've heard that other side of the story. There are so many books telling you the benefits of mental health awareness and opening up and taking medication and the point of the book is it's the things that we didn't grow up hearing and so I give uh the skeptical side of it and I think that is very alarming to a lot of progressives. They want the constant disclaimers because they think it's dangerous to not have them. A quick aside, there is a stat that genuinely surprised me when I first heard it. 95% of people don't get enough fiber. 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Does she lift? >> No. >> Uh, if she lifts, then if she starts lifting, if she does a vlog with Chris Bunstead, I'll watch that. >> Okay. Okay. But she basically she was huge for young British women. >> Okay. British. >> And yeah, and she was sort of perfectlooking and really sort of inspirational if you were 13. and she was in her 20ies and she was one of the first beauty influencers and she did this video where it was so dramatic. She was like, "I'm going to reveal a really dark side to myself. You guys might not think about me the same and but I've just got to say it." And it was literally just she has anxiety. But at the time it was so it felt so personal and private that she was revealing this. And so she she spoke about having panic attacks and it got millions of views because >> 13-year-olds like me at the time were like, "Gosh, there's this perfect woman admitting to having a struggle." And so that to me seems a healthy thing. And then I talk about how that basically became incentivized. A whole industry got built around that. And other influencers began to see that opening up would be beneficial in terms of clicks and money. because it's it's releasing sort of a private secret. So, it's very clickable. So, if you say, "I have to tell you how damaged I am about my personal trauma," it's like gossip. And so, those videos do really well because they're intimate and vulnerable. And and basically, that was the start of girls like me seeing influencers offer up their deepest feelings to the market, to algorithms. And I think some of it was directly copying influences. So we're so sick and tired of the filtered perfect lives that we're all going to start showing >> the vulnerable side of ourselves. >> It's still a kind of performance. >> Yeah. And so my argument in the book is it's became it became its own performance just as damaging as seeing the perfect lives. Now you scroll through people live streaming their panic attacks showing their messy depression lives. >> At least the at least the perfect lives are aspirational. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's >> objectively, even if they're untrue, objectively, if we're able to truthfully get there, that seems like not a bad life to have aspired to, >> it's harmful to scroll through. And I think it's actually harmful for the young girls themselves to to tell the internet everything they're feeling and reveal their deepest emotions. And I actually say in the book that companies were explicitly encouraging that all through my childhood. So Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, they're all telling you, open up, share your story. We want you to tell tell people how you're feeling. Um, and I think it was more about sharing your data with companies than actually opening up. >> Think about the progress for let's use Instagram. You go from just being able to post images to being able to post images and videos to being able to post images, videos, and then stories. And the reason for the story, I remember at the time the guy that was running Instagram, he said, "Sometimes I do something or take something that I don't think is good enough for my feed, >> but I do want to share it." So that can go on my story. And then you have close friends. >> Yeah. >> So there's even a, you know, members only and there's a literal members only. There's like an only fans section of Instagram for people who want to have paid for gatewalled members content on there too. But yeah, the only the close friends Instagram stories thing can be exactly where you would put this sort of stuff. And then yeah, you know, I've refined my having a breakdown content. Maybe it's fit for public consumption now. >> Mhm. And I think you have one thing I always argue is you don't know who you're going to be at 20 or at 30 and you have young girls sharing really vulnerable parts of themselves and sort of then categorizing themselves as that thing. So if you're really struggling with social anxiety disorder at 13, you might not be struggling with it at 20, but you're giving the internet everything about that struggle. And so another part of this is is the social media platforms and how permanent they are. But then it's the mental health industry that will you will get categorized, sold to and then be encouraged to diagnose yourself with a disorder and take it more seriously whereas you might grow out of it. >> And if you have to do a U-turn on that in future, there is this cemented fossilized record of where you were previously. Hey, hey, hey, you used to believe this thing. >> Yeah. >> And now you were saying this thing. Why? So often in the book I'll talk about influences and sort of how they've had they've been called out for something or they've had a breakdown or something has backfired. And it's so interesting that young girls were basically mimicking on a smaller scale everything that they were doing. And so for example, I talk about 2020 and all of the influencers getting cancelled for not posting the right black square and getting called out and the same thing is playing out among ordinary girls turning on each other for not posting the right thing. And it's it's a similar theme throughout the book is whatever's happening to influencers on a big scale. Ordinary girls are mimicking because they also have an audience. It might not be a huge audience that influencers have, but they are performing for their followers and their subscribers. And the argument is that our role models were influencers more than anything else. >> So normal feelings are being reframed as disorders now. >> Yes. And so that's a big controversial part of the book. Nearly 30% of teenage American girls aged 18 to 14 to 18 seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021. 30% of teenage American girls 18 to 14 seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021. >> See, I think there's two things going on which is that there is genuine distress. And so I'm not someone who argues that um young women are just diagnosing themselves but they feel fine. I don't actually think they feel fine. I think they feel intense psychological distress for all sorts of reasons, but then part of that distress is a mental health industry that is encouraging them to ruminate, to go more inwards, to focus on it, to diagnose themselves, and so it's a part of it. Um, but I think yeah, if young girls say they have an anxiety disorder, they have social anxiety, I think what they're really feeling is actual distress from the world that they're growing up in. And so they have had less practice. They have had less face to face interaction. And so they do have this outsiz reaction to socializing, but it's not a disorder. And so the problem is you have a lot of young women who typically by their nature will go inwards when they feel distressed, but you have industries encouraging them and telling them the problem is you. >> Yeah. They're not making it up, but they are being manipulated. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and and the the point of the book is basically there's nothing wrong with you. Your reactions are human reactions to the world and and to a world that's trying to turn you into a product. The fact that you feel unhappy. >> What's the product bit? Well, I think that all of these things in some way are linked to girls viewing themselves as some kind of object or trying to be perfect. So, trying to look perfect, feel perfect, labeling themselves, if they feel anything human or any sort of distress or human reaction to something, they will need to package it up and understand it. I think so much of girls lives about again presenting things to the market and understanding labeling and displaying themselves for other people. >> What's happening politically >> to young women? Well, so this is the interesting thing in that New Statesman piece is they actually admitted that it's young women who have been radicalized. So from the 2010s, it was young women who lurched dramatically to the left. It wasn't that young men lurched to the right. Young men pretty much stayed where they were. It was women. >> Yeah. The New Statesman said, "The prevailing narrative is that young men under the influence of the manosphere and Andrew Tate are being politically radicalized faster and in greater numbers than young women. The result is a gulf in political sensibility between British women and men who are now dramatically inclined to the populist right compared with other parts of the population. It's a compelling story, but it isn't completely accurate. Instead, it is young women moving to the radical left that is widening the political gender gap among the under30s. >> Yeah. And I would put that down to social media because um obviously there's all different spheres of content on social media and every trend basically you can get dragged toward the most deranged and extreme end point of that trend. And so I've been trying to argue for ages that young women are going down their own rabbit holes, whether it's mental health trends, they hover over some content and then end up diagnosing themselves and it becomes their full identity because they're dragged constantly toward more content. And it's the same with progressive politics. You start at a pretty normal place where maybe previous generations of women were, but then you get moved by the algorithm constantly further and further to the left. Um, >> why to the left and not to the right? >> I think because progressive politics naturally plays into women's characteristics, especially the new sort of social justice culture of politics because it's very much about compassion, empathy also plays into our vices. So indirect aggression, cancel culture, risk aversion, safety. a lot of the vices of young women are sort of indulged by the new social justice movement. So, I think that's happening, but then also you combine that with social media platforms and young women are just sucked into it in a way that young men aren't. >> There was a a segment in that New Statesman article. I asked if the women would consider dating a man with different politics. They all immediately said no. I don't think I'd even be friends with one, said one girl. They don't see you as human. Only one woman, Evelyn, admitted to having male friends, though she was worried this made her a pickme, trying too hard for male attention. Evelyn was concerned about what she the men that she knew were watching online. The stuff that's being said about women is crazy. They're getting all of these reels talking about like bad stuff about women, and I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men. I tried to think not all men are like this, but it's interesting that men get reals talking bad stuff about women. >> Yeah. And she knows that she gets reels of women talking bad stuff about men. Yeah. >> But that the women talking bad stuff about men is warning her about what the men are watching. And that's true. But that the reals that are telling the men the bad stuff about women, that's actually where the danger is. >> Yeah. And I think that's where what the New Statesmen would draw from all this is that women are have negative views of men because men are bad rather than why do they have negative views of men? What what rabbit holes are they going down? When it's young men, it's always a rabbit hole that they've gone down. But young women are reacting to a real issue. >> Whereas I I've seen so many parallels between the sort of extreme manosphere guys and call her daddy. It's the same language. It's the same like thumbnails and titles. So it would be like we don't need men and we don't need women. Exactly the same. And the way again they speak about women is identical. Was 2020 a turning point for girls online? >> I think it was the first time that I remember being called out for not posting something and so something really changed in terms of you have to join in the pressure and the fear of your reputation being smeared especially if you were a teenage girl at the time. Um, so I remember being I think I was 19 when black black lives matter protests were happening and the sort of again you had celebrities and influencers being called out but then you had ordinary girls coming after each other for not posting stuff >> and I give the context in the book that we were basically posting everything online by that point. So every relationship, memory, holiday was updated and, you know, compulsively shared with people. And so if you're doing that and then you don't post a black square, it looks really suspect because everything else is shared. And so I think what changed in 2020 is morality became measurable and instantly judged by your Instagram profile. Um, and I think when you're a teenage girl, your life is basically just constant reputation management. And so that really hit young girls. This idea that you're not a good person if you're not joining in and you're not displaying um where you stand on things. >> What was that silence is consent tagline. >> Yeah, that was Cara Deavine. So she had a Instagram story saying silence is consent which is the worst >> worst line. >> It's not great to tell women is it? >> Yeah. Yeah. But yeah all so it was young women pressuring each other and then going after each other for not doing it because it became another form of reputation destruction that you have inoffensive and outdated views. And so I think it was even separate from what was happening politically. It just became another form of competition. A quick aside, most people think that they're dehydrated because they don't drink enough water. Turns out water alone isn't just the problem. It's also what's missing from it. Which is why for the last 5 years I've started every single morning with a cold glass of Element in water. 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Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. The the female intros competition thing is so fascinating to me because it's so hidden. >> It's so done behind the scenes. It's not out front. I guess >> what's happening with how girls see their appearance? How's that changed over time? Yeah, I mean that's another crazy arms race. I mean I talk about um again with beauty influence influencers like Zoella that I grew up with. She would just do like a back to school makeup tutorial and it would be very simple and basic and not uh there's nothing really harmful about teenage girls watching that. But again, the competition, the amount of influencers over the years that that now have to compete for clicks and money mean that each beauty influencer also has to up their game and say something slightly more extreme or show something more extreme. So, for example, you go from normal beauty tutorials to casual vlogs where you just show you getting a Brazilian buttlft in the middle of the vlog and that becomes part of a standard beauty routine. And you see it with stuff like anti-aging where it's just a simple anti-aging routine and then becomes like a 50step anti-aging routine and you need to do it younger and younger because the thumbnail that says, you know, you need Botox at 17 does way better because people click it and want to know more about it. And so it's in all aspects of life for young women. It's the mental health trends, it's the political trends, it's the beauty trends. Basically, social media will drag everything to its inevitable extreme. >> And then if you're spending most of your waking hours on social media, then that is no longer the extreme. That is where you're getting your information. It's where you're learning about beauty and relationships and politics. >> Has Instagram and Tik Tok changed what we find attractive? >> Yeah, I think so. I think it's more of a sort of avatar now where you there's a terror of aging among young women. And so I wrote a piece ages ago about 12year-olds worrying about wrinkles on Reddit forums and obsessively ruminating over pictures whether they whe they have aged. um writing out all of the sun exposure they've had and checking, you know, is this something that could make me look worse in the future. >> Comparing all of their anti-aging routines and their children. >> Um >> you need an aging routine. You need you need to actively be aging at that point. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is sometimes it's girls worrying about wrinkles before they've got through puberty >> because they've grown up with watching influencers who are worrying about that and who are having to sort of exaggerate their neuroticism and up their neuroticism to get clicks. >> But then you have young girls that's the first they encounter, first sort of young women role models they encounter who are warning them about this. Um, and I think social media in general just makes you ruminate. And so girls already ruminate more than boys, but then they're on all these platforms like Reddit where you all co- ruminate together. The point is >> you talk about your problems >> and there's an escalation on there as well. There's always a sense of oneupmanship. I always see this with my friends that are uh conspiracyminded and in a room there's always a it's kind of like an arms race to see who can go deepest down the iceberg. Oh, you think that Epstein was just a guy that had an eye? Oh, you think he was just Mad? Oh, you think he was just a reptile person? Dude, let me tell you the Oh, that's cute. Let me tell you the real thing. And it's this Yeah. weird race to the bottom of the of the iceberg. And it's kind of the same here that there is this um ratcheting up in intensity of this stuff. >> You see that most with the mental health stuff where it will be, oh, you think you it's bad. You've got ADHD. Well, I've got autism and ADHD and I've >> and I've got I've got a gluten intolerance and I've got a club foot and my dad walked out. >> Yeah. Exactly. And I think the platforms again they encourage that because you have all influencers are competing for attention but then you have influencers whose whole brand now is their mental health diagnosis and they are the ADHD influencer. And I think that creates some very bad incentives because then you you you basically compete over your diagnosis. >> There has to be a psychological cost of growing up with a front-facing camera 24/7 as well. >> Yes. >> Right. What was that? There was a is it the zoom face that people had during lockown >> Snapchat dysmorphia as well >> where people want to get surgery and to look >> like their filter. >> They don't like seeing themselves without their filter. >> Yeah. So you have girls who are using Did Did you know about Facetune? >> Cuz I swear no young men even know what it is. >> You don't know? >> Lots of Face Tune. >> See that's great. So, Facetune is like one of the most popular apps where girls would edit themselves to then post on Instagram >> like filters. >> No, going in and editing each part of your face. So, you can slim your jaw, you can enlarge your eyes, you can change your waist, you can tan your skin, you can whiten your teeth, it's everything. But that is what girls were using as teenagers all throughout their all throughout growing up. and then they've reached their 20ies and people say, "Why are they unhappy with the way they look? Why do they have body dysmorphia?" And they're using this app where you you change yourself and then there's like an undo button which if you click it, you look horrifying because then it reverts back to how you actually look. But you had girls doing that during the most formative years of their life >> and then trying to adjust to how they actually look. How does the self-love messaging coexist with record levels of body dissatisfaction? >> Yeah, that's another paradox. Um, I think because it's a marketing strategy. It's much like mental health awareness. A lot of that was a marketing strategy. The self-love campaign was basically ways to sell things like editing apps. So, Facetune was marketed as something that can help you feel confident and empowered. And I talk about these influencers in the book who are literally they're literally talking about how they don't have any insecurities anymore and they've overcome it and they finally reached a stage of self- loveve while they're literally reshaping their jaw on Facetune teaching girls how to do it. And none of the comments are calling that out or thinking it's hypocritical. >> Why? because I think it's been drilled into us that these things are self- loveve. And so a lot of the time in the book I talk about recognizing what are you actually being sold versus what you're being told because you're constantly being told you feel this way >> and that this app or technology or trend will make you feel this way even though it's not. So I don't know any young woman that would facetune herself and feel good >> feel good doing it rather than feel embarrassed and a bit ashamed and feel worse about themselves after. >> You know I think the same thing happened with the pickup artist movement. So what guys that did it learned was just how much they had to contort themselves in order to get laid with a woman. And even if it was effective, what they felt was the delta between who they were normally and who they were when they deployed the game by Neil Strauss. >> Yes. >> And that gap made them, the normal version of them feel even more disgusting and even more unwanted. Look at how much I've got to disguise and pervert myself in an attempt to try. Did you see the fight outside? Let's go to three other bars so that I can neural linguistically program hack the back of your brain into coming to bed with me tonight. you go, I have to jump through all of these hoops. And this is where so for the guys that it was successful for, if you don't do too much self-investigation, hooray, you did a thing. >> Yeah. >> But if you do a bit more self investigation, it's pretty it can be pretty dark. And for the guys that did it and it didn't work, >> even with the best tactics in the world, I still can't make myself into someone that a woman wants. >> Yes. >> Neither of those are good outcomes. >> Yeah. It's the same that's so similar to the beauty stuff for women, which is that it can maybe get you what you want superficially. So, you facetune yourself and you get 200 likes on your Instagram post, but it then it's a momentary bit of dopamine, but then after that, you're now hooked on the app. You need to keep using it. You need the constant >> Yeah. And and then you develop, which is what happened to me and a lot of girls I know, which was then having an aversion to having your picture taken naturally >> because you're so used to controlling it. So girls in my friendship group would fight over whose phone the picture would be taken on >> so that they could go in and face >> the control. >> Wow. >> And so then >> Wow, that is insane. >> Yeah. Because it feels so out of control. And then also that explains a lot of I think social anxiety because being in the real world is out of control. You can't control your appearance. You can't edit what you're saying or rehearse it. And so I think a lot of these apps actually then stunted us in real life because it feels so >> You know what was interesting? I was at I was on Long Island uh August of last year. Good weather, sunset, and there was a group of young teenage girls that were taking photos. And I noticed that if it was really perfectly put, I mean, they must have taken, I'm not kidding, it must have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos. I get it. You want a nice new profile picture, whatever. Like, is it a bit silly? Yeah, but whatever. It's fine. >> The other thing that was interesting was if they were snapping as they walked because it they stayed in the same area that was going to have the best sunset, which is where everybody was eating ice cream or whatever. And um if someone was sort of snapping away more naturally, more candidly, immediately all of their hands went up to their face. Have you seen this trend where girls sort of do this? So they'll do they'll pose with their body, but cover their face with their hand. >> And I was like I again like I'm trying to get it. I'm trying to not chromogenally point a finger at someone that's 20 years younger than me and go these kids these as I'm okay. So what is it that they're feeling? Why are they doing this thing? What's the best interpretation of this? Like it's a cutesy little you but it wasn't a Marilyn Monroe shocked open mouth sort of face. It was I just need to do this. It was like the scene out of Four Lions where he's trying to stop the CCTV from watching it. >> It's another paradox where we're vain and insecure at the same time. But there there's context to it because you know I grew up with the dog ear filter on Snapchat. Please tell me you know what that >> I've seen that one. And I remember the um Do you remember the face mask that was bees? >> No. >> So you know like the face mask that you used to have in CO >> Yeah. >> that very quickly became like a object of oppression or something that didn't work or whatever. Yeah. >> Um I swear there was one people going to tell me in the comments whether or not I'm hallucinating this. I swear that there was one that was yellow and had bees. Jared Google. Was there a Snapchat filter of a face mask with bees? I sw not hallucin but I remember the dog one and then if you opened your mouth it did a licking thing, right? >> Yes. But the dog one uh >> made people want to be dogs. >> No, but it beautified you as well. So it would like um enlarge your eyes and smooth your skin. And so you had 13year-olds using it cuz it was cute but then suddenly hating the normal pictures of themselves and not knowing why. And it's cuz it was subtly changing your face. >> Why do you think social media's feminized us all? >> Oh, because I think that it has so because girls use social media more than boys and they say that they find it harder to give up. And as I said before, it sort of these platforms tap into our vulnerabilities and our vices. But then lately, I've realized that I think it does that for everyone. So I used to think that social media is particularly bad for girls because it makes you feel insecure. It makes you ruminate and it encourages this indirect aggression. So reputation destruction and going after people online. But now I see grown men online acting like teenage girls. And I think it's because the platform itself encourages these behavior that teenage girls already typically do. And so you see people online of all genders, of all different sides of the political spectrum, all different types of content thinking like teenage girls. So becoming more ruminative, >> spending hours and hours on platforms where they have to share how they feel, how their day is, their opinion, encouraged to sort of catastrophize and ruminate over that. Then you have men and all different types of people becoming more insecure. So looking at themselves through a front-facing camera, which is bad for girls, but even worse, I think for boys, it's just very unnatural to sort of forensically analyze and inspect your face. >> And so you have looks maxing and guys getting really um obsessed with how they come across and how they appear >> and also thinking they have to be this perfect product. And then you also have guys using sort of the typical aggressive tactics of teenage girls online. And so Louise Perry and Mary Harrington have spoken about this that the internet forecloses physical aggression. You can't punch someone on Twitter. >> And so you have to do things like spread damage. >> Yeah. gossip >> and um yeah, just just destroy their reputation through posting like an unflattering picture of them >> or for >> there's a lot of catty behavior for men on the internet. You know, I go and >> X and I just see >> because I only log on maybe once every other day. >> Yeah. >> So, I see it, you know, when you go to a nightclub and strobe lights flash and you don't see someone move, you see them at frames. They're here, then they're here, then they're here. It's kind of like that. So I'll log on and see this breakdown between two people and then a couple of days later where that war has sort of evolved into and it's it is so especially for the most >> masculine academicy intellectually everybody has regressed to the mean of high school dinner table. But it's interesting because ideologically men and women might be further apart, but I think behaviorally that is one place that we're converging is that we're all regressing back to being teenage girls. And I I also argued that it's not that >> it's the thing about being a teenage girl is it's miserable. Like a a lot of women would say they do not want to go back to being 13. It's it's one of the worst >> stages of life for for a lot of women. And so, not only are we acting more catty online, but I think it's bad for our mental health because it traps you in this sort of particularly destructive developmental time. >> In other news, I've been in the gym for nearly two decades now. And it wasn't until the past few years that I had the best training run of my entire life. And a huge part of that was the RP Strength app. Actual scientists built this thing around one obsession, having a sciencebacked path to maximizing muscle gain. 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And get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom a checkout. That's rpstrength.com/modernwisdom at modernwisdom a checkout. Do you see influencers as just salespeople pretending to be friends then? >> Yeah. So that's that's a big part of all kinds of influencers. So beauty influencers, mental health influencers, is that they present themselves as a friend. And I think this happened quite naturally at first. So the original influencers were just >> hi girls, here we are today, >> but now it's a tactic. Now they know that they have to appeal to young girls and make them feel like a friend. And so I talk about these tactics in the book where they will literally say something like that their YouTube title will be let's get ready like we're on FaceTime and they'll do their makeup and talk to you like you're on a FaceTime call and literally simulate friendship with girls. >> Wow. And I think that is a huge issue because it it stops girls from getting lonely enough to actually go out and make friends and do something about it because they can simulate all of these things online. >> So good. You've heard my male sedation hypothesis thing, right? >> Maybe. Which one? >> Uh young male syndrome. Throughout history, when there's a lot of sexless young men, they tend to cause uprisings and push over granny and set on fire. We've got the highest rates of sexlessness among young men that we've ever had. >> Why is there not the concordant antisocial behavior? And it's my belief that it's porn, screens, and video games. Porn giving a titrated dose of sexual satisfaction, screens distracting, and video games giving a similacum of goal seeking. Yeah. >> So, they're being sed male sedation hypothesis. They're being sedate. That's why like a a study done by William is where are all of the incel killings at? Like why are there not more? There should be if you were to run it by the numbers. That's not a request to the DJ. But where are they? And what's interesting about this is >> what are some of the young female pathways? What are the nutrients that they want? For guys, it might be progress, mastery, a sense of um teamwork as they move toward a goal. >> Yeah. uh for girls uh belonging advice uh emotional understanding and it's interesting I'm going to guess Jerry can you chat GPT uh what the teenage gender split is for playing video games uh because I'm going to guess that it's way more >> on the male side but if you were to look at day in the life vlogs I bet that I who the get ready with me it take 3 seconds you know it's like it's be called Put Your Pants On With Me and it would literally be a 15-second video for a guy. >> Uh, >> oh wow. 90 99% of boys play video games. 94% >> What are the games >> among teens? 39% of boys describe themselves as daily gamers. 22% of girls do. Just search um do you know what the relative amounts like a daily play time is? Cuz it's got to be more. There's no way. 93% of teenage girls playing video games. >> Yeah, but is it like Sims in Animal Crossing? >> Yeah, maybe. I guess so. This is where the gender difference becomes more. Boys, 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day on average. Girls half an hour to one and a half hours. So, boys are one and a half to two times as much. First person shooters, sports games, action combat games, strategy, and other competitive multiplayer games for boys. Social sandbox games, Roblox, Minecraft, >> simulation, Sims, Animal Crossing, you nailed it. Candy Crush, Subway Surface, puzzle games, short sessions, low commitment, >> cozy games, >> stargy. Yeah, cozy games. Um, >> yeah, >> I saw this quote the other day. I'd be interested to know what you think about it. The average woman's misandry comes from online radicalization, not experience. What do you think about that? >> Um, I think they may have bad experiences. So when I was writing the book, a lot of the complaints from young women were things like situationships where there's no clear commitment. And so I do think there are less incentives for men to um formalize a relationship. >> But also girls have to be super cool with that. >> Yes. >> Because sex is supposed to be no strings attached. You should have sex like your brother and work like your father. It's super chill. >> Yeah. So, a lot of the forums are full of women asking each other whether something's okay. Like, he I'm not actually his girlfriend yet. He is dating someone, but we are exclusive. You know, it's like it gets really muddled and asking each other like, "Is this normal? Should I put a Christopher Nolan movie plot?" >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I think there will be cases where young women are coming across more men who do act like that. M >> um depending on the type of young women and who she's going for, but a lot of the time I do think the online radicalization is at least stopping them from treating those as specific examples. So they then generalize to all men. >> Mhm. >> So I think they might have had a bad experience but then they go online and people say this is all men, this is happening to me, this is happening everywhere. >> And I think similar with women. So sometimes um I read comments that will say things like you know like one in two girls are only fans stars or they're all promiscuous and that's just not true. That's that's just generalized from the internet. And so I think it happens to both sexes which we're just again encouraged to catastrophize and generalize online. >> Well the most egregious stories are the ones that go viral. >> Yeah. >> Right. So you end up I call this uh recursive red pill learning which is the most ridiculous stories that you can find on the internet. This guy leaves the house for 2 hours but he lost his job the day before and he comes back and his wife's in bed with the milkman and the milkman's dog and then she leaves him and he he's broke and he gets addicted to fentinol and d and whether that's true or not maybe it is maybe it isn't that is the story because it's so extreme. Yes, >> that's the one that gets pushed online the most, which means the most people see it, which means the most people learn from it. >> And that then just feeds this cycle of if you were a a training data set, >> Mhm. >> for ChachiBT. >> Yeah. >> You would be being trained by exposure because you don't see everything because you're not omnipotent. You would be trained on the most extreme stories. So, you have the least representative stories because they're the ones that get the most attention online. this guy and his wife had a minor argument and after a couple of hours they came together and had a cup of tea and everything was okay. >> Yeah. >> Like that is hopefully what most people should be experiencing. >> Yeah. >> But that's not going to generate any clicks online which means that you're less likely to see it which means also people are less likely to post it. So it's this birectional trial incentive system. >> Well if you look at Reddit in particular you've seen that study about you know the advice Can you uh can you Google um Reddit relationship advice graph? It will come up. >> And I think compromise is the least popular >> that's gone down. Yeah. Was it like just talk it out? Go to therapy >> ticked up a little bit. Yeah. >> But it's you should just break up. >> Yeah. >> And the interesting thing is Chachi BT I think some huge proportion of its training data >> is on Reddit. >> Is on Reddit. Yeah. So that being said, I haven't heard many people say I haven't heard many people say that chat GPT has told them to break up. >> True. >> Uh here it is. So 15 years of relationship advice on Reddit, 1,166,592 comments. End relationship or cut contact has gone from 30% to 50%. >> Mhm. Communicate has dropped by like a quarter. Give space and time has dropped by even more. Uh, seek therapy and counseling ticked up a little bit. What's that yellow one? Set and respect boundaries. So, kind of the I guess weaponizing of therapy language a little bit there. And then compromise also dropped by probably half. Yeah, I was going to say because some of the examples in the book I take from Reddit forums where actually I I wonder what that advice is for. I'd love to see a breakdown because sometimes it's a young woman presenting a completely valid opinion about her relationship. So, she's saying I feel let's say her partner's addicted to porn. And there there was one example in the book where the her partner had said to her um that he was addicted to porn and he watches girls that look like her to try and reassure her. >> So don't worry. >> But she >> It's all right, darling. I only go for blondes. It's fine. It's fine. It's basically me watching you. >> But I think he was saying even worse that like I watch people with average bodies like yours. Like I also watch normal women. But anyway, she wrote this like heartbreaking uh post on Reddit to say, "How do I deal with this?" And she kept saying in it constantly like, "I know that I need to get over this, but you know, it's upsetting me. I can't stop crying about it. I can't have a conversation with him." Literally, every single comment was, "You are the problem. I think you have an anxiety disorder. I think you have an attachment issue because this is completely normal." And so, I think there's sort of two things going on. I do think there's also when there's legitimate problems the sort of inward spiral of Reddit can can make you overthink it and go too far inwards. >> I I I keep seeing this everywhere and this is another example of it that for instance mental health problems are both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. So there is a bucket of people who have serious mental health issues >> Yeah. >> that aren't seeking medical attention or advice or treatment for it. Mhm. >> And then there's a huge number of people who don't have mental health problems, but have convinced themselves or been convinced by the internet or gas lit themselves into believing that they do. >> So they're both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. It's like relationship advice is both too fragile and too forgiving at the same time. It's too accusatory and uh uh too blameless. >> Well, as you've said before, the people who don't need that advice will take it. >> Hyperresponders. >> Yeah. And so you have if you're a girl that's self-critical and likely to go inward and someone tells you you are the problem, you're going to take that seriously. >> Yeah. And you'll also gravitate toward a community of people who believe that too. >> Yeah. >> So you will echo chamber that. I mean this is the >> It's great. I I I think that guys who take responsibility and girls that take responsibility, dudes that like, you know, lock in and get done, great. There is a limit. >> Yeah. >> Right. You you are not supposed to grit your teeth through your intimate relationship. >> Yes. >> You're not supposed to subdue your needs or push simply because that's what's been successful elsewhere in your life. Like your relationship is a place that you're supposed to feel safe and regulated, not another challenge for you to go to war inside of. >> But I actually think sometimes the therapy language in relationships can obscure the real problem. And so if you're constantly encouraged to communicate and talk it through and see their point of view and understand their boundaries and it's their personal taste and preference, >> you have a generation who is so articulate in therapy speak, but then >> find it very hard to see what is the actual problem and react to the actual problem. There's a great Alanderbot on video where he says that after a while, you need to realize that the late night journaling sessions and the couple's counseling and the 4-hour phone calls are just an indication that this isn't working. >> Yeah. >> That the fact that we now have the tools to be able to do rupture and repair and and and to work out our attachment styles and learn our love languages >> Mhm. doesn't mean that there isn't a limit to incompatibility. >> Well, this is what I've spoken about about girls thinking they're anxiously attached when they're just with a really bad partner. And again, doing that thing where they feel like they can't ever be jealous or insecure. And so instead, they think that being securely attached is never being insecure or unhappy or reacting to things. And I think a lot of that is because they're reading relationship advice on Tik Tok which has no context and basically is dramatic and extreme as possible and tells them that they have a problem. >> Megan Cooper, a British traumainformed holistic therapist, has a podcast called Higher Love in which she discusses violence against women, hyper masculinity, and the ecosystem of manufactured male victimhood. On Instagram, Cooper posted about conflicts in Iran, Palestine, Beirut, and Sudan. I don't know about you, but for the past few months, my bones have achd, she wrote in March. The viscerality of the feminine wound is an interesting injection of sort of female coded language into global >> wars and conflict that I don't I'm not I don't I don't fully see the link there. >> No, I don't understand that. The only thing I can think is that it becomes again another form of signaling you are a good person. >> Look at how much I care. >> Yeah. And these would be the same women who've again grown up with believing that what counts as being a good person is what they post. Um, and >> but also empathy, you know, to steelman that this person is, if that's the truth, this person really cares about what's going on in the Middle East and is genuinely pain by it. And that that's a kind of investment that's really impressive. >> Yeah. I don't I don't know whether I like one of the concerns is that the incentives align on social media for empathy in particular. A very sort of public a very obvious kind of look at how much I care. This is my these are my tears for the people of the Sudan. These are this is my concern. I went, but I that's a kind of it can be uh deranging >> and it can actually stop you from doing something that could help or focusing on something that you can have an impact on. It's interesting to me that um in the New Statesman article, >> October 7th was a huge turning point for lots of these women. >> Yeah. >> But not the 77 bombing. >> Yeah. >> But not issues that are much closer to home. not the grooming gangs crisis that we've got which is directly affecting women. Like the concern here, the viscerality of the feminine wound. >> I'm going to guess when we're talking about the Middle East, most of the casualties are probably going to be men because they're the >> people that are military uh actors on both sides. Same thing goes for the Ukraine. The same thing goes for Gaza. >> Like, yes, women and children are not enemy combatants or combatants at all. That's a huge tragedy. But like it it's more men that die in war. >> Yeah. >> And the viscerality of the feminine wounds seems like a kind of weird injection of gender into something that's just a tragedy. Yes. >> And the same thing around October 7th. Like >> there are much closer to home issues that could trigger that but for some reason haven't and didn't. And I wonder whether it's maybe because the grooming gangs in the UK is right coded. >> Yeah. It's too polit it's not politically correct. But also, it's interesting in that New Statesman piece. Did you read what that young woman spoke? What she said about her boyfriend being a Labrador? >> Yeah. He's a Labrador. He's never endured any discomfort in his life. Uh, it's hard for someone who's never faced adversity and has been privately educated to understand this. Dot dot dot. I actually think I'm the adversity in his life. >> So, where's the empathy for people directly in front of you? That that is what concerns me. That's why I am suspicious of >> being in a relationship with you. >> Yeah. Suspicious of being suspicious of it being actual empathy because it doesn't seem to translate to even more closer to home than the grooming gangs and the 77 bombings. Your actual >> family or partner. >> What's been the response to this by the press? >> Um to the New Statesman piece. >> No, to yours. >> Oh, >> to your book. Well, dangerous I think is one of the one of the sort of key themes has been that actually I think more from the press it's been that it's not genuine empathy ironically. So that >> should have talked about the Sudan. >> Yeah. Um so the Guardian said it was like a bit of a grift to talk about what's happening to girls. Um, the New Statesman said, you know, I can't possibly save anyone because their argument was because I'm selling the book and so because I talk about consumerism, I can't actually sell the book. I just need to write it and just leave it on the floor. >> And so, >> it's interesting for someone who's got a publication that's behind a pay wall. >> Yeah, we have to sell. Who isn't who is has so much integrity that they didn't even sell their anti- capitalist book? >> They just gave it to people. Like, you know, I just don't think that's an argument. But >> yeah, it's also not an anti- capitalist book. >> Yeah. But I think what's happening is there's been all kinds of criticism from all different directions and some of them cancel each other out. And so I think the real thing is that I'm just not the politically correct person to say it. And I don't have all the disclaimers. I don't talk about political issues in the Middle East. I don't talk about the patriarchy. I talk about what I genuinely think affected me and is affecting young women that I know. And so I think they come up with all other angles of criticism rather than saying it's because she reaches conservative conclusions. >> I don't understand why this isn't seen as progressive. Like surely saying that these tech companies are abusing and commodifying children for profit. >> Yeah. >> Should be the thing that's being called out and pushed back against. >> No. Because they think that we live in a patriarchy and the problem is men. And I'm sort of deflecting it onto social media platforms also that social media platforms are where girls can learn about feminist ideas and express themselves and you know th those are good for women >> but they also hate billionaires. >> Yeah. Well that's the that's an irony with all of these industries. I mean a lot of these young women define their lives by DSM diagnosis that were basically voted by rich white men. No, the actual pharmaceutical labels, >> right? >> So, all of these industries have the influence of rich white men that they hate. >> But because I draw different conclusions from them, and because I have the cultural stuff in there about divorce and porn, all of these sort of conservative coded concerns, >> and then the whole book has to be dangerous. Um, and so a lot of it, yeah, is is young women warning each other. How is being anti- divorce conservative or how is being pro- divorce progressive? >> Because it divorce is now how women selfactualize. And so um I talk in the book actually about going from the normalization of divorce to the glamorization of divorce and then divorce being a means to self fulfillment and self-exression. People have divorce parties. >> Yeah. And basically I think that women interpret that as me saying women should stay with the absolute worst husbands at all costs. But really I think that the normalization and glamorization of divorce hurts women as well hurts wives and it hurts children. Um, >> well, we're already hearing a lot, although it seems to be not fully backed up by the data about the double shift, women coming home from work and then having to clean up around the house. When you add in other types of, especially emotional labor and emotional containment that men do, uh, the numbers start to fall away. >> Yeah. >> But if you're worried about the double shift, imagine the double shift, but without the helper, because that's what it is. Especially if it's young kids. >> Yeah. If it's young kids, they Erica Commasar was >> amazing. That was a great episode. >> Thank you. Her saying custody shouldn't be 50/50 at all because baby doesn't need dad as much as it needs mom. Maybe it needs dad more in later life, but people seem to break up >> between the ages of like 6 months and 3 years because it's really hard and the cracks that were in the relationship before have been really exposed by this additional level of stress. If you break up during that time, you you are going to be as a mom, you're going to be the one that's going to bear more of this burden and you don't have a dual income household anymore. So, it's like quadruple burden. >> Yeah. >> I I I don't know. it it this this sort of theme the trend that we've I'm kind of fascinated by and it's good to see us kicking all of the tripwires of are the sort of paradoxes of these hypersexualized but also having less sex. Yeah, >> sex is something which is really sacred but also something that if it's done incorrectly can be incredibly traumatic traumatic to you. >> Uh uh the world is more connected than ever before and yet people feel more isolated. Yeah. Uh we have independence is what you should strive for in your career as your highest calling and also maternity leave needs to be increased. Uh billionaires are bad but working for a company can be where you find your greatest meaning in life. Like >> uh freedom is really important but also it's just it's a really interesting >> when you see these >> paradoxes and a kind of like like cultural hypocrisy in a way. It's usually a suggestion that it's not fully thought out because it shouldn't be smoother than that. It should be more easy to deconstruct logically. >> Yeah. >> You know, you've got a number, you do the division of this and the numbers 45 characters. There's a ton of decimal points after you try to sort out what this equation means. >> Yeah. I think the way I view it is I think some again it's it's overthinking a natural instinct a lot of the time. Like if you think about divorce, a child's parents splitting apart and not living in the same household with the child, >> that's going to harm the child. I don't really need data sets and research for that to seem true. That feels true. And you see it playing out with people who've had divorced parents where they carry that into relationships. And that's what's interesting is progressives love attachment theory and they love talking about abandonment issues, but they never talk about what's causing those abandonment issues. >> It's only ever looking backward, never looking forward. >> Yeah. So if you say all of these young women feel abandoned because they were more likely to have divorced parents, that's not politically correct. But you can talk about all of these young women need to be in therapy and they need to be healing their inner child and they need to be giving money to these industries because they feel a certain way. Like we should be figuring out why they feel a certain way, why they're so dependent on the mental health industry. >> They're prepared to kind of under the bus the previous generation and say, "Well, you know, our parents didn't have the therapeutic tools. >> Yeah. >> They didn't understand attachment theory. They weren't able to hold me when I needed it. >> They weren't able to look." And all of these things are true. And I agree. And I think that a lot of an attachment informed child rearing strategy would make kids' lives and then the adults lives better. >> Yeah. >> But saying they weren't able to hold me as a kid, which is why I need to go to therapy now. But also, if me and my partner break up, that's something to be celebrated that >> how little do you think you're going to be able to hold your kid if it's at your father's your ex-husband's house? But they think that I think they think the reason they have an attachment disorder is that they are disordered. They have an illness. It seems to stop at the label which is that I have a problem. Whereas what I've tried to do is give some of the context to that because some of the context of that has ended up conservative coded. >> That's when it becomes an issue. >> I still can't understand, you know, there's this uh there's a bunch of different movements at the moment. unsubscribe, resist and unsubscribe. Scott Galloway's thing. Have you seen that? I I think maybe Netflix is on there. There's a bunch of companies that are on there. >> Um >> I don't know whether there's any social media platforms that are on there. But if you want to look at who are the companies making the most money that have the most influence, politically powerful, >> every left-leaning Gen Z girl should be deleting their Instagram account. >> Mhm. >> They should be deleting their Instagram account. They should be deleting Tik Tok because of the abuses to workers in China. >> Yeah. >> And they shouldn't ever be using that. Also shouldn't be on X because Elon Musk's got loads of money and they don't like his politics and how he influenced the American election. I mean, I don't know who owns Blue Sky. Maybe maybe that is as a company is run. That's like as socialist of a capitalist company as you're going to get. But it that's where it seems self- serving or at least it feels a little bit hypocritical where you say, "Well, >> if you're going to kick up a stink about these companies, but give a pass to the one that you think is cool and that you want to gain status on because everybody else holds it in high esteem." That suggests to me that you're not talking about this in order to move the conversation forward. You're doing it because you want clout, which is why you're not prepared to neuter yourself on the platform where you want the clout to be. >> Yes. I I I genuinely get confused by some of the criticism because it's it does seem to me so progressive to be skeptical at least of these companies and to figure out the need. It's sort of a Marxist idea. What what is the need that we have that is then being exploited and sold back to us? So something like Better Help. Why do so many young people think they need to be in therapy, young women especially, >> and why are these companies, these online therapy companies marketing themselves in a certain way? So for example, the therapy companies have now shifted to filling the role of almost parents where they'll say M >> you know if you need to talk about dating or how you feel or your crush or exams you can come to us >> just a friend >> just renting a friend or a parent. >> Yeah. And a lot of it is like guidance that your parent would give you growing up. >> You know what this is like? Have you seen those uh stories of people that pay for cuddlers? >> Yeah, it is like that. >> It's the emotional social emotional equivalent of paying someone to come around and hug you >> because you don't have anyone to do it. Yeah, they have. So, Better Help specifically have these adverts where they have um they'll have like a young woman and her dad >> and the dad will say something like you should just go for a walk in the sun or something and it will just come up that's unhelpful and then the Better Help >> code and it does it with friends as well. It's replacing >> Look, I'll I'll advocate for a walk in the sun all day long. There's I'm not saying that going for a walk in the sun is going to cure all of your problems. >> No. But there are very few problems that a walk in the sun won't make better. >> Yeah. But but it's just I'm so suspicious of a company telling you to be less attached to the people that love you and more >> attached to them >> like anxiously attached to experts. >> It is I don't know. I mean it is very deranging. I do feel a little bit sometimes like am I am I losing my mind a bit when I when I go on the internet and especially if you're in the middle of a eye of a storm you are now I was a couple of months ago >> you're like >> am I the you remember that scene in um Mitchell and web where they're dressed as Nazis are we the baddies like >> am I the maybe I am I might I actually might be because everybody Everybody else on the internet seems to have consensus. >> Yes. >> About this thing actually being right. And I'm really trying to work it out and I just can't get there. So maybe I'm just maybe I am a bad person. I just can't understand I can't understand how saying the sentence just a mother >> Mhm. >> is raising up women. >> Yes. >> That that just a mother thing. It's like I don't think that working for a company that doesn't care about you and would replace you in a heartbeat if you got hit by a bus is your highest calling. I don't think that independent women are the only ones that are useful and that mothers are >> been conned by the patriarchy into becoming domestic prostitutes. >> Yeah. >> I don't think that any woman that supports men is being a pickme. I also don't think that any man that decides to go after his career as being a tyrant or that any man that talks about his emotions is a useless soy boy. >> How dare you? >> I know. I know. I know. I know. >> No, it's true. I I It's really deranging. I My mom read the book recently and she called me and she was she said, you know, I'm so proud of you and she said it's it was so loving toward girls >> and and then I'm looking online and it's like this is a hateful book. You know, she's a misogynist. She hates women. One of the reviews the title was Freya India would prefer a world without women's rights. >> Can we look at Can you just Google Freya India girls good reads please Jared? I want to I want to do I want to do some highlights of uh of our favorite ones. Um it it is really deranging and I think it's important it's important for you to have people in your life that you can message the you know I've got my group chat. Yep, there it is. Um, >> 3.2 >> 3.16 97. Here we go. Let's go down. >> Let's go in one of the some of the one stars. Handmaid's Tail. >> Beautiful. What starts off as disappointing through its lack of nuance and depth make contradictory points and statistics that feel cherrypicked in order to back up points the author is desperately trying to make. Quickly descends into conservative pearl clutching before ultimately concluding as a manifesto for girls getting back to family values and baby making that could be written by Serena Joy of the Handmmaid herself. The premise of this book is interesting and important. the reason I picked it up in the first place. Yet somehow it manages to miss the mark entirely. Side note, I have never read the term age-old so many times in my life. Does no one edit it? >> Oh, that's painful. >> Uh, cannot recommend. Absolutely not nuance in any way. I so bad I won't. Oh, this person >> click the rant. There we go. >> Oh, it's a blog post. >> Without social media, trans rights or women's rights or therapy? >> Freyer India would prefer life without social media or trans rights or women's rights or therapy. >> Yeah. Wow. I'm glad that it's got no comments. >> Yeah, >> it's hard growing up. I I Yeah, >> transphobia and turf >> rhetoric. >> Turf rhetoric. I mean, look, you're in incredibly good company here. Um, but it is it is strange. And that's not to say that we're right about everything, that you're right about everything that I am. >> But I have this I have this theory around how you can tell if a content creator has your best interests at heart. >> And it's whether or not the group that they belong to and say that you belong to too are bound together over the mutual love of an in-roup. >> Yes. >> Or the mutual hatred of an out group. >> Yes. >> That is one of the earliest warning signs. Another one is when was the last time they admitted that they were wrong. >> Yeah. >> Another one is when was the last time that they surprised you >> with one of their takes or when did they bring somebody on that they disagree with? >> Yeah. >> Not to mock them but to genuinely try and learn from them. So that's four. Someone once asked me how what do I do to my content diet? And obviously I do this horrendously and I follow loads of people that I shouldn't do and it >> wrecks my nervous system but >> that like when was the last time that you were surprised by this person's take if they're just a cookie cutter you know one of their perspectives and from it you can accurately predict everything else. >> Yeah, >> they're obviously not a serious thinker. I also think with my book in particular because I don't know how to phrase it but because I have some unpredictable takes as well. So for example it's mostly about commodification of women which conservatives don't often talk about. I think that >> I get more hate as a result of that. If I >> seen as an unreliable ally as opposed to an outright conservative. >> Yeah. If I was just a right-wing political influencer I don't think I would get this amount of >> bingo >> targeted hate. It's because I sort of operate in the middle and I am genuinely figuring things out and so I think that becomes almost more threatening. But I'm fine. I don't mind people criticizing the book. But there's a sort of tone of criticism that is I am evil like >> snarky, dismissive, judgmental. >> Yeah. And also, you know, I read loads of books I disagree with. I read loads of books with liberal assumptions that are sort of weaved into the book. Every book I read about social media is pretty much like that, but I never feel the urge to go on a 2,000word rant destroying someone else's book. I just put that energy into my own. >> I think you could kind of see it as a uh criticism creation balance sheet. >> And if you're criticizing more than you're creating, you're sort of withdrawing from the system more than you're adding. And that's probably I mean even if you get close it should be 10 to one right of I some people are critics right whatever um but for the most part you should be contributing way more than you are you know what's a great way to do this go on somebody's Twitter >> and look at how much is original content and how much are quote tweets >> yes >> if it's tons of quote tweets and presuming that it's not just this is awesome and I really like this which no one is doing >> go you're extracting from the system >> more than you're adding to it >> it's always people who have never written a book that say this is so badly researched, this is so lazy, this is this way, this is this way. >> Um, and I' I've noticed when it's Yeah. when it's really visceral criticism of the book, they tend to have a profile which is criticism of everyone else's attempt to do anything. >> The loudest shouts come from the cheapest seats with that. It's the people that are furthest away from doing something that are the ones that criticize the most. I mean, one other thing that we haven't talked about that I thought was insane was the reframing of the potential to give mothers in the UK a tax benefit in the same way that moms in Hungary got it. >> Yeah. >> As an inverse tax penalty >> on ch women who want to be child-free. Well, that new statesman piece said uh there was a young woman worried about reform forcing them to have babies and that's how they framed it. >> So they think reform will force them to have children and that's why I laughed at the Handmaid's Tale because it's like they have one story that they just extrapolate onto everything. >> Well, it's the same with history, right? Because nobody knows any history except for a tiny bit of Nazi Germany. Yeah, >> everybody just defaults to Nazi and Hitler. >> It's the only piece of history that they know in the same way as it's the only piece of literature that can be used for this handmmaid tale. So, well, >> if you offer what is it 25% off your income tax for the first kid, 50% for the second one, and 100% for the rest of your life if you have three or more. I think that's what it is in Hungary. Something like that. How can you say that that's penalizing women who don't have kids? Like it's just adding to the system. Now, you could say with anchoring bias, no one should ever pay any tax. That's fine. But if you're saying we need to give more money, a lot of the the reasons justifications that are given for why women aren't having more kids is because of economic conditions. It's cost of living crisis. It's a fear of being uh abandoned by their partner, >> divorced, and then they're not going to be able to afford to keep themselves and the kids alive. etc. You go, "Okay, well, let's incentivize that." You go, "Well, you're persecuting women that don't have kids." >> Yeah. >> The women that don't have kids are being disadvantaged. You go, "No, that's not the case. That's where everybody is right now." >> And it's like, "We want more money for mothers." And you go, "Okay, well, hang on. That's excluding women that aren't mothers." You go, "Okay, so do you just want money?" Yes, but for women. You go, >> "Yeah, >> I Dude, what? You can't exclude. So one of the side effects of everybody only knowing Nazi Germany that one period of history and then applying it is that anything remotely exclusionary or suggesting closing things down rather than opening up endlessly becomes suspicious. >> And so any turn back from an overcorrection becomes a slippery slope to fascism. So you could have a perfectly reasonable tax suggestion, >> but because it starts it starts toward encouraging women to have children, they just envision it careering off into >> Yeah, that's interesting. I suppose that >> you let's say that I'm going to give you something that you really want, >> but it's going to come packaged in a way that you might not be too keen on. You want you want this new toy, but it's going to be in a box that you don't like. >> Yeah. >> Let's say >> there is a a costbenefit analysis that you're doing here. How much of the thing that I want do I get versus how much of the thing that I don't want sort of comes along for the ride. Let's assume that you've interpreted it correctly and not incorrectly. >> This is kind of the same across the board with well >> capitalism bad. >> Mhm. But social media companies, I quite like those because that's the thing that I'm allowed to get my clout through. So the packaging for this thing is sufficiently okay that I don't really mind what it's sneaking in underneath the >> Yeah. Yeah. I think as well with a lot of the criticism toward my book and just in general with conservatives who talk about these things is that a lot of these women will not have come across a conservativeleaning view ever by accident. So I'm constantly coming across liberal assumptions on things because it is the culture. It's the media and books. You most of them are leaning that way if they're talking about something broad like social media. >> But I don't think there are many books where the person writing it is just leaning toward being more conservative. And so a lot of the time they say there's no warning on the book. >> Oh, you've jump scared them with your conservative. >> There's no disclaimer. And they say that they've said that about my Substack for years, which is that I have like a >> it's like a girly magazine aesthetic, the title. And that is me tricking them because >> honeyed them into reading conservative propaganda. >> Yeah. So I need a big disclaimer saying warning. >> You remember when uh those mixtapz used to come out, the Marshall Matters EP, The Real Slim Shady and stuff, and it would have that explicit warning. Yeah. At the bottom, the black and white thing. You basically need that. But you're you're like the cigarettes of of blogging. >> Yeah. >> You need to come with a health warning on it. Uh >> do you think that women's preferences have fundamentally changed or is it just the environment that they're in? >> Uh I think they're the same, but as I said before, they're sort of being funneled toward a fake simulation of the thing. >> And so >> it's kind of a big Ponzi scheme. >> Yeah. It's like even as we were talking about with empathy, I feel like a lot of, you know, some sometimes conservatives will say young women are radically leftwing because they're evil and they want to tear down Western civilization. I think a lot of the time it is well-intentioned, as in they want to look compassionate. They want to look good in front of their friends, but it's being funneled in a weird direction. And so it's strange that you have all of these young women in Britain caring so much about the Middle East and then talking about their boyfriend with zero empathy >> at all. >> Mhm. >> And I think it's similar with things that are happening online where again you have a need for belonging but you're getting it through YouTube. That's where your family and friends are being simulated somewhat. you have a need to get advice from your parents and you're getting it from a better help influencer. And so I think a lot of the challenges my generation has are not necessarily new, but we have way more simulations than previous generations did. >> How do we know when the left's gone too far? >> When they rate my book one star. >> Ah, there it is. There it is. Um I think when it >> you know what I mean cuz this is an old Peterson thing that it's obvious when the right goes too far. >> Yeah. >> But we don't have the same sort of rules. The the entire New Statesman article >> is saying the skew of women to the left. The radical left >> is more aggressive and is I have to assume is they think is too far even as something that is left of center. >> Yeah. >> You go okay well how do we know? Because how does it show up? It's like just obscene amounts of empathy that if you turn empathy up to 11 just becomes a different type of judgmental tribalism. >> Yeah. I don't >> because care for groups has to be constrained to one group and then it means that you're not that group. So you're the oppressor, not the oppressed. >> Yes. I don't actually think it can go too far. Um because I think about being you know some sometimes people will say oh she's she's had success because she's pandering to the right-wingers >> but you can even if you're slightly conservative on one topic and all of your other opinions were very progressive you're immediately coded as rightwing. So there's barely any room to um even be moderately conservative or even just curious about the conservative approach. So a lot of my interviews have been guilt by association. It's just people that I speak to and who will listen to me. >> Then you get coded as too far, too rightwing. So there's barely any room on the right. But I think there's so much room on the left. Um, you can say you're a communist and and write a book about caring for girls and and no one will, you know, scrutinize your motives, but if you write a book about caring for girls and a few of your opinions happen to be conservative, then there's no way that you have genuine care for them. You have to just be a political operator. >> Screw you, Fyer India. That's what I say. Screw you, Freyer India. Uh, you're great. >> I think you're so fantastic. Book's brilliant, blog's brilliant. Where should people go to check out everything you're doing? >> Yeah, so just my substack freyindia.co.uk. Um, I'm not on Instagram or Tik Tok. >> I'm excited to see what you do to get in trouble next. >> Thank you. You, too. >> All right. Bye, everyone, >> dude. Awesome. >> Amazing. >> So good. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode. Another one that I know you love. It's just here.

Short Summary​

Key Quotes​

Detailed Summary​

Book Background and Polarized Reception​

Research on Young Women's Pessimism​

Mental Health Industry Critique​

Social Media's Impact on Girls​

Political Radicalization and Cultural Division​

Hookup Culture and Dating Advice​

Girl Boss Feminism and Risk Aversion​

Divorce's Impact on Women and Children​

Hungary's Family Policy Debate​

Cultural Paradoxes​

Gaming Statistics and Gender Differences​

Framework for Evaluating Content Creators​

Full Transcript​