Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 823: The Anti-Social Century

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/

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Ontario. This episode of cognitive dissonance is brought to you by our patrons you fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is the Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way, we bring critical thinking, skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat.

Today is still Thursday the 13th that you're listening to this on Thursday, probably the 20th of seven days. Yeah. Still works. And we are still recording because we record two at once. So I'm still recording from home.

Yeah. And I think it's really funny that today we're gonna talk about isolation. Isolation in your home. On a recording that we are far away from. Yeah, yeah, we read an article and Tom read it for patrons It's the antisocial century by the by and it's in the Atlantic. It's by Derek Thompson So I want to I want to get this out of the way first. I don't fucking Derek Thompson is I hope it's not some fucking

Hated right wing. This has happened to us before It's like something this is a good article with some interesting points and people will be like, that person is the worst. And you're just like, well, I didn't know that. And also I still think the article is worth contending with. I will say he might be, he might certainly have some ties to the intellectual dark web because he does mention Jonathan Haidt in this article. He does. So he might have some ties to the intellectual dark web. I'm not a hundred percent sold on this article, but I think there is some interesting points that we need to talk about as we work our way through it to see, because I think that some of the stuff he brings up

is certainly relevant and not like, you know, it's not written in a way that makes me think. Like there's a couple places where he's clearly getting an idea from Jonathan Haidt and I'm like, I don't know that I believe that, but there's like a couple of other places where I'm like, oh, that seems like there's there's a study for that. And it seems like they did a good job of researching certain parts of this. So we're

going to work our way through it and talk about his main point, which is that our existence now is now a lot more electronic than it used to be. And as we do this, it's not that it's not, it's not that we're experiencing more loneliness because we are distant from each other and sometimes in virtual spaces or communicating in different ways than humans had communicated for many, for the entire existence of humanity.

It's not that we're more lonely in those spaces, it's that sometimes there's a sector of society that is being neglected, a sector of our social life is being more neglected now than it ever has been. We still have close friendships with people, but those friendships are not group friendships as often as they used to be. And there's sort of this middle ground of people that are not strangers,

where you would just go to a bar or something and see strangers. We are still interacting with strangers on occasion, and we're still interacting with the close people. It's the people that were sort of in your orbit before, that are maybe your neighbors or the people you work with more or things like that, that we're not interacting with as much. And those are people that can also sort of shape our hard edges and make us more social in ways that allow us to understand and empathize with other people. Does that make sense?

Is that sort of like the thrust of the article? Yeah, yeah, I think it is. I think that there's a, you know, I think what he does throughout the article is he sort of like traces kind of a history of socializing in America, you know? And like, you know, there was a time in America where, you know, people were just social differently. And the difference primarily was that we were social in groups and we were social in person.

And I was thinking about this in advance of our conversation. And like, you know, I don't want to universalize my experiences entirely, but I'm happy to talk about my experiences personally, because I think maybe it adds color. I feel like as I've gotten older and as like I work from home and as like kind of the world has shifted to these different ways of communicating, I feel like I no longer have a social circle. What I have is a discrete number of friends. So like you are a very close friend. I have other close friends, but rarely do we engage

with one another collectively as a social circle, the way that we engaged in those ways when we were younger and when the world was like a little less dispersed. And that might be a function of time. It might be a function of age. It might be a function of all of those things together. I think it probably is the latter, right?

I think it's probably the latter. I think it's a function of all those things together. One of the things that he brings up too that resonated with me a little bit because I'm seeing this because I'm looking for it. So I will admit that, but I'm seeing, cause I'm looking for it is in preparation for some dad's show content, but is, is the rise of male improvement videos and male improvement influencers as inherently isolationist in nature, the sort of the view of the, you know,

rise and grind kind of guy. This article shows like, yeah, that's a guy who like wakes up and he, you know, eats his fucking breakfast and he works out and he gets in his cold plunge and, you know, and never do they show any him interacting with anybody. The whole idea of self-improvement, I think for a lot of men as it's being sold to us through influencers, a lot of the idea of self-improvement is rooted in personal isolation. And that's something that I think is both true and distressing because we know

from like research that like the biggest predictor for happiness isn't money and it isn't, it's, it's having people bonded to you that you love. That's the biggest predictor for happiness is like, do I have people in my life that love me and that I love in return? Do I have rich, robust social connections? So I think there's a real tension there that is really worth thinking about that. Like we should be nervous about the rise of influencers and specifically male culture influencers, because that's a really fraught space right now for young people that isolates them more and more.

Cause we've not seen good things coming from isolated young men. Like isolated young men. You're not wrong. There's not been a lot of like positive news coming from that space. Yeah, that's an interesting point, Tom. And I think when you think about that, there is that sort of rugged individualism mindset

that really does appeal, I think, to young men in many ways. That sort of, I'm an individual. I'm able to, you know, build myself, create myself, improve myself. And that's something that we sell to young men. Like that's the thing that we sell to them to try to get them to be more desirable. That's a thing that we'll say, and we'll say, you know, like you wanna be desirable,

you've gotta build yourself up. You've gotta make yourself into something that's worth selling to other people. So you've gotta get rid of some of these bad habits. So these influencers, they're doing all these things, right? Get up in the morning, meditate, have your, you know, your oats for breakfast, workout, and then cold plunge and do these discipline things to make yourself,

to mold, to sculpt yourself into something different. And then go out into the world. And like you say, they're not interacting with anybody. They're not being, and there's also like a lot of solitude stuff online. If you look, you know, there's a whole genre. I watch them sometimes cause they're very calming. There's a whole genre of sort of this ASMR camping videos

where people will just go out and just be by themselves in a place and then they will film themselves in like camping in a car for the night. And then they make their food and they, like it's the sounds of them making them food. It's the sounds of them sort of making a fire outside before they retire. It's the sounds of, and so like they're doing these things in a solitude sort of way.

So that's like, you know, it's not this male influence there, but it still is selling you something. It's still selling that solitude, that peacefulness that comes with that solitude. And it's not selling the, you know, the possible loneliness that comes with that solitude. Yeah, man. And like, I think too, like associated to that, like there's a, like, it's a problem when we attribute all of our success or all of our failures to only ourselves and only our actions. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And like a lot of ideas, part of the difficulty is that we have to contend with the fact that some of it is right and some of it is wrong and all of it is complicated.

Because to your previous point, I do think that there is generally good advice to be had in the idea that in order to be attractive to other people, you have to do the work of making yourself attractive. You have to be somebody that is a good value proposition for somebody else so that people say, hey, Tom's a good guy. Tom will be, Tom is, Tom is a, is a person of good character. He has worked on himself. He is not some accidental version of himself constantly apologizing for who he is.

You know, like there is something to be said for self-improvement that I do believe in. Sure, yeah. You know, and I think that is though, at odds with the idea that is being sold specifically, I think to young men, but I think to everybody, that like our successes are ours alone, that we silo those away from the influences of other people. Because when I think about the things that make me who I am and have

influenced me the most and have probably made me the better version of myself than I ever would have been, it's friendships like the one I have with you. It's the hundreds of hours of conversation that I've had with you, challenging my ideas, challenging my beliefs, laughing together, sharing and communing together in ways that like, that's a thousand times better than a million cold plunges, man. Like all the cold plunges in the world will never challenge my ideas as a man or check my ideas and my morals or say like, hey, this is something I should think more about. I've had all of those experiences from talking to you.

I can never have those experiences in my gym in the basement or in my sauna or my cold plunge. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I can't challenge myself in that way. There's also this sense like to the ASMR video, I was thinking about this while you were, while you were mentioning that I thought, yeah, like something else I see that's associated

with this article is like, there's a rise in the number of people that identify as introverts. So many people now identify as introverts, but like the introvert, extrovert idea is a false binary. It's not, it was, it's, that's not a, like that, those ideas were not intended to be ideas that were descriptors that were like hard lines around who you are.

We're all introverts and extroverts. We're all both of them. Like it exists on a continuum that moves through the day through our needs. Like there are times when we're under greater stress where we might be more in need of certain kinds of interactions than other, or we might retreat into less interaction rather than more, or we might retreat into, you know, less interaction

rather than more, or seek more interaction rather than less. That idea though, that we are introverted, or we are extroverted, that false binary that describes who we are fundamentally as people, I think that's being sold to us as part of that rugged individualism. And I think it's being sold to us because it's good for capitalism, because it's good for the economy, because it's good if I say, Hey, if, if, if, if you believe in this myth of yourself as a siloed person on a hill that exists outside of the purview and the influences and the needs and responses of other people,

then like, yeah, man, you're your fucking job. That's what you are. You are a consumer. You are a producer. That's what the grind wants you to really be. They don't really give a shit if you cold plunge, right? They don't really give a, that's all shit you buy. That's all shit you buy.

That idea of American exceptionalism and the idea of the rugged individual is rooted in capitalism and it promotes capitalism. So I really do think that like all of those forces, while none of them are explicitly untrue, they're all so complicated. And I think that they're leading us too far into the one direction.

And this article kind of proposes the same thing and I'm sympathetic to that. Yeah, I agree that we can sort of vacillate and be in different places on our introverted and extroverted thing, but I think more often than not, I am more introverted than extroverted. I think more often than not, I'm on that end of the spectrum.

I can be at times very extroverted, but I think, like, there are... Most of the time, I would prefer to be alone or prefer to be with very small groups of people. I think that's something that is just like a preference of mine. And so, like, sometimes when they're talking, and very specifically in this article, when he's saying, you know, there wasn't a TV in people's rooms until this time.

Most people went to the movie theater to see stuff. And you know, like, it's like, I fucking hate going to the movie theater. I fucking hate it. I hate going to see a movie somewhere. Like I would much prefer to sit, even if I'm missing all of the extra booms and bigger screen and all that, I'd much prefer to sit and watch it at home in my own comfort of my own house, where I can cough and not feel weird and then have to whisper to my wife.

I could just stop it and be like, do you see that guy's eyes? What is happening with that? I want that. Like I want that kind of thing. So I get, and I understand when they're talking about certain things in here, I'm like, yeah, but I kind of like that.

Like I kind of like the way that feels. I don't, I don't feel like, I also don't feel like I'm social at all when I go to a movie theater. Like, I understand the concept that he's trying to reach, which is this is your community. And in your community, you learn manners, you learn these things, you learn how to interact and bump up against other human beings. So you get a chance to sort of be in that space and that will help you sort of be more well adjusted. So I do understand it. It's just not appealing to me.

I'm just like, it doesn't appeal to me at all. So like there is some stuff that I agree with, but then I'm also recognizing like he's not talking to me so I can, it's okay if I'm outside of it to be like, yeah, but I'm not into that. Like I'm not cool with that. And there's another part too that he talks about social media we'll get into later that I don't also identify with too. You know, one of the things he says I thought was really interesting that's kind of related to that is they, they did some study or whatever where, you know, they said, hey, what would you prefer on a train? What would be your preferred train ride?

And most people said, oh, my preferred train ride would be to get on the train and just sit quietly and be on the train. That's what everybody thinks that they want. That's what everybody experiences wanting. Yeah. And then when they, then they, then they, so they put a bunch of people on a train,

they said, all right, you guys shut the fuck up and be on a train ride. They took a bunch of other people, put them on a train, said, all right, now you gotta sit and have a conversation for half an hour or whatever with the stranger next to you. Which most people were like, oh my God, I'd rather kill myself on TV than have to do that, right?

And like, look, here's the thing. I think of myself in a more extroverted way than you think of yourself, I think, right? But I recognize that like, I don't think anybody, introvert or extrovert, likes to be in a big crowd of people they don't know for very long. Like, that's not like, I like to be surrounded by people I know very well. Like, I want to be around people, but I only want to be around people I know really well. Like, but I still think of myself in a more extroverted

rather than introverted way. When they put these people on this train and say you gotta have a conversation with these strangers, everybody's like, that sounds horrible. They put them on the train, they have a conversation, when they pull them at the end, the people were happier when they got off the train and had that forced conversation. And I do think there's something to that.

I wouldn't have been one of those people. Everybody says though, like that's the thing. But I've been on a million trains. And whenever we talk to them, I go fuck yourself. I don't want to talk to you. I've been in a million, I've also been in a million of these icebreaker conversations that they make you have. Dude, this is very similar to what they did, right? They did this thing where they're like, have an icebreaker conversation.

Fuck your icebreaker conversation in the eye. I fucking hate every one of them. Like I hate it. Like it's the worst part of me. I hate it so much. So like, this is another part of the article. I'm like, yeah, maybe most people would be, but I do not identify with that group at all.

Who was like, that would be better. I would fucking get, I fucking bet a stack of money that I would be with the people that would say, eat shit, I didn't have a fun time. Dude, I 100% believe you. I just think that the part of that that's interesting is that there's a difference between what we think we need socially.

Yeah, that's true. And I don't disagree. I don't disagree, yeah. So like, I totally believe you, dude. But like, that to me is the most interesting part because we think we need all these And we think we need it because that's what we've built, right? We have built a society that is more and more isolated and we think that that we're building the things that we want But if you test it out and say what makes people happier? How do we make people feel more fulfilled?

It isn't the thing that we're building. The thing that we're building, I think, feels comfortable. And I think there's a big difference between being comfortable and being happy and being comfortable and being fulfilled. Yeah. And I think it's real important to know that difference, you know? And I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to pretend I know what to do with it. I don, I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to pretend I know what to do with it.

I don't think the author knows what to do with it either. I live in a home that I've made that's very comfortable. I fucking work from home. Like I don't see anyone but my family. I mean, I see you on Thursdays and then I probably won't see anybody else for months. Except for like the store or something, but yeah. Yeah, right.

Yeah, like I'll go to the store, but like, like at this point, I don't have any other social interactions that are regular. Like I might have two or three a year. So like I'm very isolated. And I think about that and I'm like, yeah, I don't feel sad about that. Like I've grown accustomed to it.

It feels comfortable to me at this point after four, four and a half years of this. Now this feels, this feels like a retreat into a comfort, but I am not also challenged by anyone. Get ready for a Las Vegas style action at bet MGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like blackjack baccarat and roulette with our ever-growing library of digital slot

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I do only the things that I wanna do when I wanna do them for the most part. That's a great point. That's a great point. And I don't think that's good for my growth. I don't think that's making me a better version of me. I think it's making me a fucking weird hermit. Yeah. And I don't know that that's better.

That's a good point. And I think too, like, you know, there are people who are forced, you know, I think about the people who are, you know, that are retired, that are starved for contact. You'll see people that are older often are very starved for this sort of contact, that are retired, that are starved for contact. You'll see people that are older often are very starved for this sort of contact, that sort of conversation, that contact. And like that can't be good to be in that situation, but in many ways you're treating yourself in many ways

like a retiree. You're by yourself all the time. You know, and that, and I think maybe they recognize, you know, they would like to have that sort of human contact as well. I put myself, so I have a, one thing that struck me from the article, and this is from the Jonathan Haidt portion,

that does strike me as something that I see as an outsider without actually having any children, right? So I don't, I don't have any kids. I don't know what, you know, if it's, if it's, if this is true or not. And I have talked to you before and you have said that it is something that your kids do. When I was a kid, I had a friend group. And that friend group, I used to get picked up in the morning by this kid who lived down the street. I wasn't very close with him, but he used to pick me up because I was friends with his friend. And so he used to pick me up and go to school and we would pick up another guy on the way to school. So four of us would

drive in his car and I didn't live that far from school, but I would go to school, to the place with them. And this was a friend group, a group of people that were all, you know, we went every day to school and he gave me a ride home every day unless I walked. I got out early two days a week. So I would sometimes walk by myself, but other days he would give me a ride home afterwards. I knew this guy, I'm friends with him on Facebook, but like I never hung out with him individually. He and I never once hung out. Like, Hey, let me, hey, Bob,

do you want to go out? Like I never hung out with him as a person, just me and him, but we were friends, right? And then there was like a group of people that I hung out with at school where I might never hang out with them individually, but I would hang out with them at this group. And whenever we went to a party, they would be there. When I like, there was a buddy of mine named Jeff. I still thought of him as my buddy. Whenever I saw him places, we would talk, we were friendly and we were in the same friend group, but like I never, Jeff and I never drove anywhere together by ourselves.

So like, but I had this large friend group and that continued in college. I had that in college. I had that all the way until I, like I got married and I started a job. Then I didn't have it really anymore. Then I had the people that all I had that all the way until I got married and I started a job. Then I didn't have it really anymore. Then I had the people that all those people that I was, you know, quote unquote friends, but they fell away.

And then I was now had tight friends that I was like, these are people who I just hang out with individually or as a group, it didn't matter, but like that was my friend group after that. And they're saying that that doesn't happen anymore. That that sort of thing isn't something that's happening as often. Like there won't be a pile of kids

that get in a car and drive to the mall and meet with another group of kids there and then go walk them all and then go hang out and try to talk to girls and whatever they do. Go play games and go to this food court and whatever. They're saying that that's not happening as often. That could be something that's making our friend group more selective earlier in our life than it needs to be. Because I think I grew a lot being involved

in multiple friend groups for many, many years. Yeah, and I think my kids at least are anecdotal evidence of that as a truth. Like they all, my kids at least are anecdotal evidence of that as a truth. Like they all, my kids have friend groups, but their friend groups are smaller than I remember. And they don't do the thing you're describing, which is the sort of like, like passing in and out between groups where like, oh, it's these six people. But then when I'm over here, these other people kind of swarm in and then I'm kind of part of this other group, you know, when I'm when these guys connect, it's much more, again, like I don't know of a better word. It's much more siloed. It's much more like the walls are there are more clearly delineated now.

And I'm just thinking of like, you know, I think of like my dad when I was growing up and like my dad was born in 1947 I was born in 78. So I'm talking about like the mid to late 80s early 90s And like my dad is not the world's most social guy, right? Like not by a fucking long shot But then I think like well But he was much more social on a regular basis than I am now Because he went to a church and then he was part of the trustees of the church. So he did trustee stuff and then he was part of a racquetball club.

So we did racquetball stuff. Like he actually, now that I think about it, actually had a lot of moments of socialization. This sort of like casual socialization where the people that he would run up against, I think very importantly, were not people he selected. All the people that we run up against now outside of our workplaces are people we selected for the most part because we build these lives where we just, we select only these people and that's the only people we run into. we select only these people and that's the only people we run into. And I think that that contributes in large part to the polarizing effect and the, and the, this sort of like echo chamber effect of our own thoughts and values.

Because we're very rarely going to the fucking Rotary Club, right? Like, or going to the VFW hall. Sure. Or going to the, and I know these are like old fucking things, but like, I'm just making the point. Like we're not doing those same kinds of things. So we're not running into people that we didn't select for already. Everybody I meet in a social space now are people I've selected for. So am I likely to get along with them? Of course! That's why I selected for them.

So how can they challenge me? And so what's the likelihood that that's just going to sharpen my views rather than broaden my views. And I do think that that's an important thing and not a good thing that's happening right now. It feels, it feels kind of urgent actually, as I think about this to find ways to be involved with people I didn't pick. Groups of people that I didn't choose from, you know?

Like, because I wonder, am I wrong about things? And no one's gonna tell me, because everyone in my life are people that are wrong about the same things. That's why I picked them. And the worst part about being wrong about things or having a different opinion with somebody and it's a social media interaction Is that that the chance of that being way more vitriolic and a lot less? understanding is

If you have it online, right? You'll have somebody who just screams at you that you're wrong instead of helping you understand if you are wrong There is there's just this automatic, I'm gonna fight you as much as possible. You know, how could you not know this? How could you not know how to act in this situation? How could you have this opinion? How could you be the person you are?

I can't believe you're the person you are. And that's the kind of interactions we have. I mean, and maybe other people in social media don't have that. Maybe people who don't have a podcast don't have that. But I experience that all the time. I get messages from people who don't want to help me become a better person.

What they want is they want to shame me. They want to yell at me and they want to shame me. And I don't know if that's ubiquitous across social media. It certainly is if you have a podcast. I'll tell you that right now. It certainly is. And that's not unique to this podcast alone. That's any kind of time that I've, and since I am somebody who does podcasts, I also get that online from other places too. If they see me, they send those types of things to me, even if it's just's just me right even if it's just my personal instant Instagram or whatever I will still get messages like that too that are more hostile and less

Understanding than I would ever get any other way So but I can't tell you if that's a function of one or the other I'm sure the listeners could be able to tell me Whether or not that's a function of just being online or if it's a function of who I am and who I put myself out in the world as. But I don't get a lot of people who are going to talk to me in a way that I think, you have to talk to someone when you get a chance to see them and get a chance to see them react to how you're talking to them and make your words not as sharp as they can be online and make them less sharp than they could be even in a text.

And I think like all those things are real when you get a chance to see someone and talk to somebody. I think those are important places. And I think too, I just wanted to mention one of the things that I hear from atheists all the time is that this, we just don't have a church. We just don't have a place to meet. We just don't have a place to meet. We just don't have a place to talk and congregate

and be somebody who might all sort of not believe in God, but might not all believe in the same things outside of that and have that sort of social interaction like you suggest with people that, you know, you're not self-selecting for. Yeah, I'll tell you, man, it's not just you because like I am much less online publicly than you are, right? So I don't have anyone on my social medias that,

my rule is if we've not shared a meal together, you're not my social media friend. So I don't have any people connections in that way. But what I have done recently is I've joined some really enormous groups online, which I'd never done before. As part of like some content farming, I was gonna do for the dad show.

So I joined some of these big like, am I the asshole type, you know, these huge groups with tens of thousands of people. And like I had to leave man, because like the way people talk to each other in those groups is just awful. It's just awful. It's, and like one thing that occurs to me

that you can't do when we're talking like this, like when we're talking like this, I can talk for a couple of minutes, but I don't get to like fucking sound off in complete silence, right? When we're interacting right now, I'm looking at your face. I'm reading your body language.

Yeah. Like there's a lot of communication that's happening right now. That isn't just our words. When we're online, it's like, I get as much time as I want to sit here and just type out my fucking response and your side of the equation is fucking silent. It's not the same. It's just not, it's less, it's less humanizing. And I think as a result, it's more polarizing and we're not understanding each other.

So we are more connected, but we're not connected to like, like this humanity level, this connection level, this empathy level that we would be if we were in person and like, if we know that an enormous amount of the communication that people have is through body language and is through nonverbal stuff, it strikes me as odd to say for anyone to contend that like, even though most communication percentage wise is nonverbal, that it can be replaced with text.

Yeah. Cause it just can't. And like, you and I were talking before the show. How nice, like you and I have had a couple of instances where we've had to record a part for extended periods of time. The first was the pandemic, and that was a real long time. And then the second was when we had some health struggles here at my house. And I don't know, like I know, I actually do know, like, when I've gone back and like,

we've like reconnected after weeks of not, or months sometimes of not seeing each other, it fucking feels great. Sure. It feels great. It feels great. We're still doing the same show. We're still talking, but there's something different. There is something different about like walking into the same room that you're in and just seeing you and sharing that space. And I do think that that's worth considering. So I just want to share a story. Years ago, we were on, we were, you know,

our show was new and someone had left a blog post comment because we used to post to a blog. When we used to post our show, we used to go to a WordPress blog and there would be a... Oh yeah. For each one. And people would leave comments and there'd be comments under each show. God, I forgot about that.

And we got a ton of comments, you know, from people who were, you know, rude and shitty and mean. And there was one guy who very specifically left a really rude and shitty comment. And early on in my days, I would go and fight those people. I'd be like, why would you say that? Like that's mean and shitty. And I remember somebody being like really rude

and really shitty to us and like mean and just mean for the sake of mean, right? Online, just mean for the sake of mean. We traveled to Skepticon and we were at Skepticon walking around and I look and I see this thing. I'm wearing a cog dish shirt and I see this thing, I'm wearing a COG dish shirt and I see this person who's standing in front of some organization. And I walk up and I'm like, oh, hey, what's up?

And he's like, hey, he's like, you listen to that show? And I was like, I am that show. And he's like, oh, I left you a comment a while back. I was like, what's your name? And he told me his name and I remembered it. And I was like, oh, you're that guy. And we had the nicest conversation. We had a, we had a conversation the whole time.

He was, he was kind of stuttering and like apologizing the whole time. Cause he was just like, he knew he was an asshole online. He knew he was mean online, but in person, when I'm standing right in front of him, he was a totally different person, a hundred percent different at the end of the conversation, he's like, you know what, we're doing this big thing. Would you want to come? And I was like, you know what, I don't think so. I don't know that this is repaired.

I was like, but thank you, you know? So the thing is, is that there is a difference. There is something there, like you suggest. You're not looking at somebody. You're not able to read the body language of that person. You're not able to do any of that stuff. And I do recognize that that's different. So I, but I also, I recognize too,

probably how old we sound when we have this conversation. Yeah. But you know, we do, and like I have, I have like, I've got four kids from 11 to 18. And what I find interesting is as my kids are getting older, something that I thought would be what's happening is like that my 18 year olds are finding a fresh appreciation and need and desire to form the same kinds of social connections in person that we were describing. They were less, they were more comfortable

in that online space as more of their life. Now I don't know if this is universal. I don't want to pretend it is. Yeah, just with your kids. So I'm specifically not universalizing. Just say it's your kids. Yeah. But I'm watching them age into a time

where they need the physicality of those connections. And I do feel intuitively that like, yeah, like there's something there that they need, like as they're trying to find romantic partners, as they're trying to like deepen their real friendships and like discover those real like deep, like potentially lifelong friendships, they're, they're moving out of that online space and they're getting together more often in person. And I do think too, that like, it's really important that we have ways for people to do that and encourage places and opportunities for that to occur, not just for young people, but for everybody.

There's, there needs to be more opportunities for people like you and I to butt up against people that we didn't select that maybe disagree with us about some things, but that we can still recognize our good people, right? That like maybe we did, maybe we disagree about three things, we, the other eight over here, we don't, we share values. You know, one of my favorite things to do every two weeks, I go get a haircut at the same barber shop. And I go and I've developed a friendship with my barber who probably would disagree on all kinds of stuff.

But I like have grown over the last five years to really trust who he is as a person. Like I think I could call that guy in an emergency to come help me. I think he cares about me. Like it's that could call that guy in an emergency to come help me. I think he cares about me. Like it's that level of like, hey, I'm a good dude. I think he and I disagree about a lot of probably important stuff, you know?

But I still share a space with him that's grown to become important to me, you know? And it's something that I look forward to. So like, you know, I am sympathetic to a lot of the views in this article that like reducing our lives more and more to spaces that don't have the physical. They just, they feel inherently like less and more dangerous to me, not just less. I don't want to even say that they feel more dangerous to me. They feel polarizing and sharpening and isolating.

And I worry about like the effects specifically on young men that these things have because like young men are at a point of violent personal crisis right now, and I think like that's got to get addressed or like a lot of people are going to pay severe prices for that. Yeah. You know, that worries me. So I like, there's parts of this that like, maybe I'm just like really emotionally sympathetic to.

I know I was excited to do this article for that reason. I think there's a really interesting part of this article that I don't identify with, but might recognize. And there's a part of this article where they say that, uh, we don't feel lonely in the sense that like, you know, we're always connected. So like we're constantly connected in more ways now than we ever were before.

But the negative effects that they suggest are that because we're so connected, what used to happen is, is Tom would come over, we'd hang out, and then we would have time apart to recharge. There's kind of a recharge, a recharge point needs to happen. In this article, they suggest sort of this recharge point needs to happen when you're

around other people. And because we're more connected than we ever have been before, that recharge part might not be happening because we're constantly searching social media, we're constantly paying attention to other people, we're constantly in contact with other people. And this is where I don't identify with the article, but recognize. I don't do that because I don't feel like I need to respond to things or interact with things.

When I'm away from other people, I do feel away from them and don't feel like I'm constantly contacted with other people. If you send me a text, Tom, I might not even respond to it. Right. It may be that you send me something and I never react at all to it. Right. Then you come over and I say, oh, that was a cool article you sent.

Right. Yeah. It'll be like, it's just like a thing. It's like I got a letter from you, like an old timey letter. And I'm like, oh. This is true. Thank you, sir, for timey letter. And I'm like, oh. This is true. Thank you, sir, for your letter this week. I really enjoyed it.

Audience, this is absolutely true facts. Yeah. Like, I fucking, 30 years we've been friends and I'll send him something and like, sometimes I'll like start a conversation and I'll just. I don't respond. Just kind of drift away a little bit. At all, like I might not respond at all.

At all, yeah, which is hilarious. Because then that Thursday, like we'll talk about it. It's not like you didn't care. You did care. I cared about it. You did care. But there is a genuine separation from other people that I keep when I'm not around them.

So I do my own sort of alone hygiene so that I don't get involved in that. I recognize I might be a unicorn in this space. But dude, that's so good. That's so good. But I don't feel like I owe you a response. I don't feel like if someone texts me, I owe them a response. Or at least I don't owe them a response right now.

And if it's somebody like my brother, I will probably respond relatively quickly, but I don't speak to my brother as often as I speak to other people in my life. Right. So if it's somebody who's not around me very often, I will feel the need to respond to them. But if it's somebody who's around me,

I can unplug from those people really well, and I try to. I try not to be accessible at all hours of the night, accessible to have a conversation at any moment of the day. I leave my phone away from me often for a reason. I don't have my phone next to me all the time for a reason. It's sometimes on the kitchen counter downstairs or it's on my desk and I don't carry it around with me

if I often, because I just, what I don't wanna do is have like be forced to have a conversation or to be involved in that all the time. And then Facebook itself is starting to wear itself out on me. I'm not trying to, I don't react or talk to people anymore on Facebook as often and I rarely post. So it's one of those things that I'm not doing as much.

So it's just, I'm just sort of phasing it out of my life as much as I can. And I think like, even in those spaces, I don't feel like that. But I recognize that other people might, and that also makes me think of how I might want to connect with them. You know, it's interesting because like,

I hadn't really, and I read this article twice, but I hadn't really thought of or put the piece together. Like what they're describing, I think, is that like, because we're always low key connected, we're always a little socially burnt out. Yeah, like we're always at this like gentle fucking hum all the time of these sort of like low quality, high volume connections to other people, you know, for the most part.

Sure. And we don't get, we don't get what he's describing is these opportunities to recharge. Like as long as I am always tethered to something or even tethered to the idea that somebody might reach out to me at any moment, like I'm never really fully present and recharging. So I totally understand this feeling of like, God, you know, I don't want to fucking go out with other people. I'm already, I'm so burnt out. I'm socially burnt out.

Even though I haven't gone out in a month or a week or five days or whatever your timeline is, because like you were socially burnt out from like carrying around this fucking social tether of low quality, high volume interactions. That's a great point. I fucking feel that for, for me, like personally, like because of my job, I'm tethered to my phone. I can never put, I know I've gotten into this terrible habit, but like, it's not, it's, it's my job.

Like while we were talking, I literally have a text message right now from work that as soon as we're done recording, I have to attend to and it's 10, oh, it's 10 10 at night. So like I carry my phone with me. Like if, if I'm just like, see, so I'm such a fucking crazy person. I wake up and like I can be mostly asleep. I'll grab my phone and walk to the bathroom with it. It's not even conscious because I've been carrying it

around with me now for, since a Blackberry, you know? Since I've had a Blackberry. Yeah, you've had to do that for a long time, yeah. Yeah, I've had to do it for so long. Yeah. So like, and I feel an intense anxiety around my phone Like not having my foot having my phone just in another room is not an option. I Wonder what other people?

Who have sort of left some of these social networks, especially these really highly active ones like Facebook and Twitter and things I wonder what they feel about that idea. I wonder what they feel about how connected and how recharged they get when they hang out with people. I think text messaging still is involved in that. So it would have to be that they also probably feel very similar to me about how they text. But I think like, I wonder too, cause Facebook can be a drain.

It can drain, it can absolutely, like you suggest, be a low key constantly following of all these people and you never feel like you're actually apart from them. So yeah, that's interesting. It's a really interesting concept that I hadn't considered before this article. Recognize that other people probably have to deal with that. Definitely after reading this, my thoughts were, I'm gonna do my best. Like, I haven't done it in a while because of the pandemic and all that stuff. I sort of let my fencing go. And it makes me realize, like, that was a group of people that I was around a lot that I had probably some... Not like super, because they're mostly liberal, right?

So it's not like they're like, you know, I'm not fencing with a Nazi or whatever. But like, most of the people have a very similar idea to me, but they also don't in some ways too. Like certain things are different. And there's also a wide range of people. There's a lot, there's a ton of trans people that play this game. So I get a chance to interact with more trans people than I would in my normal life.

And I get a chance to work with and be around LGBT groups that are not, that I'm not, I don't have any real close personal friends that are gay, but in the SCA I have, I know tons of people that are gay or bi, and they also have different ideas about relationships and different ideas.

They have different ideas than me in a lot of ways. And so it's good for me to be around those people. So this article to me says, I should go be more social with that group because I think that group does help me be a better person because I have to interact with a group of people that I just don't interact with on a normal basis. And I have to be... It makes me a different person. And I think it's a good thing.

Thanks for joining us. I don't know that we covered all of this article, but it's a really interesting article. We will link it in the show notes. If you, if you're a patron, Tom read it to you. And I think it's a really interesting thing. So you get a chance. Take a look at this.

All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We'll be back on Monday, the brand new show, but we're going to leave you like you always do with the skeptics creed Credulity is not a virtue It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno Babylon bullshit couched in Scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized Stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info

Docutainment Leo Pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage Death in Towers tarot cards psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues temples dragons giant worms Atlantis dolphins truth truthers, birthers, witches, wizards. These rodents have fought their little hearts out tonight, but it looks like the swirls are gonna come up a couple of- Nuts. Short of a bushel.

Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. at patreon.com forward slash DissonancePod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Preds, all under the handle at DissonancePod. This show is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. Hi, I'm Chris Gethered and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone.

I tweet out a phone number, thousands of people try to call, I talk to one of them, they stay anonymous, I can't hang up, that's all the rules. I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones, I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison, I've talked to people who survived mass shootings. Crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh. Somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends.

I never know what's gonna happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today, Beautiful Anonymous.