If I Speak - 125: Is the era of conspicuous consumption nearly over?

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Have we finally had enough of hyper-consumerism? Moya and Ash confront the political crises that are changing our attitudes to spending, and what that’s got to do with the World Cup and cerulean sweaters. Plus: what to do when you’ve lost all motivation. Read the Vulture article about lifestyle influencers mentioned in the show. Get tickets for Ash at the Southbank Centre on 26 September. Get tickets for Heated: Carnival Afters at Vespers on 30 August. Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

I do like a good pop of gristle though. Like, you know when you stretch just right and you hear it? Unfortunately, it happens to me too much because I'm one of those terrible people who doesn't stretch enough after I exercise. Too impatient. Welcome to If I Gristle. We're not asking you jokes anymore, Ash. You know this. Oh, yeah.

We're banned from jokes. Yeah, we're banned from jokes. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. Look. The thing is, we're not always going to be funny, and that's okay. The funniest moments happen when you don't try. And we're both tryers, and that's why you like this podcast so much,

because we always try to give you the best listen possible. Do you know what I find funny? Is that I think that when someone leaves negative feedback, you take it a little bit seriously and then you give a serious repost where I was just like, oh, this person's trying to make us feel insecure and self-conscious. Oh, no, I actually am not taking it seriously. I was just doing it a bit. I'm in a very good headspace at the moment.

Yeah? Yeah. Nothing. Not many things can touch me right now. The things that would have bothered me previously are not bothering me. I feel the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders because I have taken agency in my own life. And I've taken responsibilities. Sisyphus got a new job.

Yeah. I've taken responsibilities for the decisions I'm making rather than feeling buffeted by the winds of change. Well, may I buffet you with some questions? Yeah, buffet the fuck out of me. Let's have some buffeting. Okay, this is 73 questions. Minus 70. Question the first. What isn't socially acceptable, but should be? Flossing at the table. Because I do it.

Because I do it. Flossing at the table. Or pooing in public. How public are we talking? Not on the street, like in a toilet. in the place where the poo is designed to go, the receptacle for the poo. There is a weird culture of like, I can't believe someone's going to, yeah,

Ash, everything leads back to toilet. It always was toilet. It's never not been toilet. But I think flossing, I don't care about pooing in public, but I feel bad for my sisters in particular who have a hang-up about going into a public toilet and using the public toilet as it is designed.

Why are you holding, yeah, Why are you holding your poo all day? Just poo. You're giving yourself some... I don't know if it's haemorrhoids or what, but you're giving yourself some sort of restrictive condition because you cannot bring yourself to poo in the place where you're meant to poo.

For fear, someone else might go, God, this poo receptacle smells like poo. It's so stupid. We have scant public toilets now and you should enjoy them while you're in them. Second question. What is something which is social, acceptable but shouldn't be.

Oh. Hmm. I mean, this has become essentially socially acceptable in the same way that bike theft has been legalised in London. Like unenforced. Unenforced, which is playing, this is boring, sorry, this is Lib Dem, but playing music out loud, playing videos out loud on your play. I think that is now, unfortunately, socially acceptable, while everyone says it's

socially unacceptable. but until we start getting vigilante groups enforcing this, we will see it continue. Oh, it's so annoying. It's so annoying. I was in the gym yesterday and someone's just like going through reels and I could hear that like Netflix violin meme music again and again. And I was like, shut up.

But do we enforce it? I need to start saying, can have you got headphones? Yeah. Once we were on a train to Manchester, I think it was. And this was in the early days of our relationship. So my boyfriend was eager to impress me. And when I said, oh, that man behind, that boy behind is really annoying and plays music out loud.

So he went to him, mate, because you put your headphones in, and he helped impress me. And the guy goes, the guy was like, he had a scouse accent. How does he scouse, scouse? He's the fuck do you think you are, mate. But did he do it or not? He did do it. He did do it.

But I did worry there was going to be some sort of like incident. That's the thing, is that I think that is a worry. which is like you're doing it, you must know that it's antisocial. Like you must know. And I do think that there is, I don't want to sound like a daily male columnist, but there's an entitlement problem. Yeah, and I think there's an intersection between people who play music and video out loud and people who don't have respect for the social order

and therefore are unpredictable if you confront them about this. And I think that's the reason they're not being confronted. Like, this is true. I don't want to get yelled out of the top deck of the bus. was a, she must have been Jamaican because she was fucking hooting and hollering in patwa. Someone told her to put her headphones in. Oh my God, I could hear what was happening from the bottom of the bus. She went on and on like, who do you think you are coming and talking to me like that? And it's like that simple ask of please put your headphones in. Yeah.

Has now created outright war. Yeah. Oh, people are pricks. Okay. So for what should be socially acceptable but isn't, mine is I think you should be able to go up to any stranger you see and tell them if you think they look like someone. People do that. They just do that when they're in clubs and high. No, but like I'm just saying all this. Like I was on the tube and I saw someone who looked like skinny Dave Batista. And I was like, I should be able to go, you look like Dave Batista if he was skinny.

First of all, I would put that as, if that became socially acceptable, that would be my thing that it should not be socially acceptable. Ash, will you not spare a thought for all of your brethren who have been told just because they are South Asian, they look like Def Patel? Look, I have been confused for FISA Shaheen

many times by some of the country's leading journalists. So it is socially acceptable and we should ban it, you agree. I think that what was funny to me, because they weren't saying you look like this person, right? Which I think would be fine,

because you can dispute. You can dispute. You can go, I don't think that's true. That's fine. It was a confusion for. I didn't think that is Dave Batista. I was like,

that looks like skinny Dave Batista. I was absolutely viewed to this because I used to have a list of random brown women that I'd been compared to who didn't look like me. Just because when people see a brown woman, they reach for the nearest brown woman.

And it's meant as a compliment. I totally get that, which is why you can't be. be rude when someone comes up and says things like, I've said this loads, but Beyonce from the eyebrows up, that's just forehead. That's just forehead. And my forehead does not look like Beyonce's. So there were so many random people on that list. And it was just because people were trying to pay a compliment. I do understand that. But it was very like, who is the first brownish woman I can think of? And I will compare thee to not a summer's day, but Rihanna for some

reason. Shall I compare thee to a random light-e? Literally. And some of them weren't even lighties. It's just brown. So I would veto this because I think it would lead to a lot more annoying, misguidedly nice. You look like XYZ and you don't. You can have one pass if they actually look like them. If they actually like speedy-age to stuff. I think I'm really good at it. I think I'm really good at it. I'm sorry, like, because I'm not just doing random shit. Like, you know, there was This guy who used to come to the pub where I used to work all the time, and I was like, evil Eric Lamella. Hmm.

Did you see Dave Patista pop up in The Odyssey? I'm pretty sure he was there. I didn't think he was in it, but who was he? I swear he was the blind seer, Turassiz. Teresius. I was trying to work out who Teresius was. I don't think that was Dave Batista. Who was it?

Because it was someone I recognized, I couldn't remember. I tired of the blind, throbbing between two lives. Who was it? Okay, I just need to find out. Ask me my next question while I'm finding this out. Okay, all right. Final question. I want to go on a lovely little date night this weekend. Where should I go? What do you want from the date night? Food, cocktail. I would say, what kind of cocktail?

I mean, when you say what kind, I like the classics. I would say, the thing is, I don't want to send you to Dolster, but I would send you to Carricio's canteena. because they have creatures downstairs which is the best cocktails ever and is really like dimly lit very sultry and then the upstairs

is really lovely food but it depends so much you want to spend there's so many restaurants in London where would you go for a day it really it really depends it depends if you want to go fancy

and feel like you're somewhere do you know what there's a bar in Kings Cross called I can't know what it's called it's like the station or like 1821 that I'm dying to go to just because it looks so fucking fancy I wouldn't even care if the cocktails were mid. I just, I think the decal matters more.

I want to go. I would say, I would, you've asked the wrong person. I don't really do date nights in London anymore. Like, I don't, I haven't, I haven't been to food date nights. We do food somewhere and then we'll go somewhere else. So I would say, for a sexy drink, crichios though. That's a really good cocktail. You know what, that's good enough for me.

Questions over. Buffeting done. Buffeting done. I feel not as, I don't feel like I'm on the winds have changed. I feel nicely rooted. Which is good because our next topic is, is it big? It's more of a way to talk about like some... To do a recent retrospective on mad shit that happen in culture.

I think this is a big theory. Yeah, maybe. I thought about this. I was like, is it a big theory or is it interesting thought? I think it is a big theory. It's a big thought. It's a big thought. What was the new segment you invented advice, disaster class?

Disaster class. I still think it should be called Great Leap Forward, but I'm not naming anything after Mao. What a terrible rule. I'm not doing that, especially not about something that led to the cultural revolution. Absolutely not, Ash, that's vetoed. She won communism or now? No, I'm actually fine. I'm actually fine. I've never once identified as a communist, so you've asked the wrong person there.

I'm soft. I'm softer than you. Right. All right. Big theory. I think hyper-consumerism has had its day for now. I think that hyper-consumerism is on its way out and I think it's passe. That doesn't mean consumption and consumerism is over. I just think the trend of conspicuous hyper-consumption is no longer hot. I think it is now not, okay? I've been reading the tea leaves, which are mostly in New York Magazine.

articles. And what the leaves are telling me is, well, personal experience is telling that the cost of living is biting, right? I think that post-pandemic, there was a big boost in spending. First of all, people had some spending from the pandemic. They saved up, but there was also people who were like, fuck it, let's ball after they got out. Credit cards, you know, taking out loans. And I think that money is now running out and the debts are catching up. That is from reading a couple of finance articles and also from talking to people. A finance article I don't want to boast ash

but sometimes I read some finance article Every time Every time I read the FT I want to take a fake phone call And be like not now darling The Tokyo markets have just opened It's literally like get the cigar out And get me one of those giant phones

They had in the 80s I would like some stock Anyway So I'm seeing You know the pandemic spending Is winding down post-pundemic spending. And you'll see, you do see this in actual retail market. So retail spending is down in the UK. I think June was its biggest slide. July was a little better, but June was

its biggest slide. Luxury retail has collapsed. The bottom, the arse has fallen out of luxury retail. And of course the elites by luxury retail, but really luxury retail is also held up by us, Joe Public, who are over-leveraging ourselves to buy things, right? So there's dwindling sales as well for all but the biggest of music events. You know, we call it blue dot fever. But as someone who also puts on events and talks to people within the industry, it's like the big club events survive,

the massive ones like Fabric, who can afford to take hits, who can get the biggest lineups, the smaller ones are fucking dying on their asses. You've got reports by banks from banks like Barclays, being like retail spending is down, mama. So I think the Roaring 20s are over, darlings. I think as history predicts, the roaring 20s are done.

Because everything's more expensive, constant fretting about asset prices. You're hearing all this about house prices are collapsing, except they're not collapsing fast enough to make them affordable. They're just going down a bit so people selling their homes can't sell them. And also, like, asset prices and house prices aren't exactly the same thing. So asset prices can keep going up, but house prices go down. Exactly. And the war on around has further inflated the cost of everything, including energy.

know, things, and even if you are not yet totally feeling that pinch, the entire, I guess, miasmy you're surrounded by is telling you that things feel tight and they're going to get tight. I think there was a really interesting, um, who was it said? It might be Barclays as well, but the Guardian was reporting about how credit card spending has gone down as people prepare for bad times. So it's the idea of preparation too. Now, if you're super rich, this is actually not really affecting you. They're continuing to spend, spend, spend. But, I remember, I've written another interesting piece, a finance piece, in an outlet that was talking about how this actually makes the existing leisure activities or things that, you know, and other things on the consumer market more expensive because as the rest of us stopped spending, they jack up the prices so just the super wealthy can, you know, make up the difference essentially. Something I've also noticed in events.

Something I've also noticed in events. If you don't think that everyone's going to buy the cheaper tickets, you just sell less of the more expensive ones to make up the difference. And where you will see this change in consumer culture most sharply is in the people who sell to us, aka the influencers. Influencers. This is where you will see what is going on in consumer culture because they are essentially, if you ever seen that film, Meet the Joneses with Demi Moore? No.

Very underrated. It was ahead of its time satire about this family who's essentially a team of influencer marketers. It was before even, it's like 2010, and they're sent to a neighbourhood to sell products to the neighbourhood. They're implanted marketers. And it's all about how their lives just are horrible, basically. But these people are seen as our peer-to-peer sellers, even though they're just like in-house marketers. They're the people who sell us stuff on our feeds, you know. And Vulture recently did a great feature, which we will link in the description.

Thank you, producer Chow, which interviewed former lifestyle influences. who've had to pivot, that's the word they use, into making different types of content because the glossy lifestyle content that they previously were selling, or the, you know, I've bought 20,000 Stanley Cups on Timu video, watch me open my hall, is no longer keeping engagement. So there was a quote from this which said, you can't just be showing Macha Pilates Allo. And if you understand all of those words,

you, my friend, need to go for TikTok. but instead of making lifestyle content, they're now making rage bait content because that gets engagement and that holds people's views and then for advertisers will invest in them because they're managing to be engaging. There was one influencer within this story who says that

she's doing an ad for luxury brand. She'll post a brand being like, I can't believe how much this dress cost on her story. Rather than in the past when you just post a picture of yourself twirling around in the dress, right? And they also said in this article another quote, you can't just be pretty and share pretty clothes. People want educational content.

And we have seen a massive switch to like, I think it's in the article they call it like a intelligence slop, which is, you know, I've used some of my feeds where you have a font in the middle, you're doing slides, I've seen this with lots of people who call themselves writers on Instagram where it's just like the 10 things I would never do as a writer, how I sold my book, like all this stuff and it's just, you know, it's selling yourself an intelligi-stir kind of vibe. what people are basically turning to is old-fashioned blogging and narrative. Always wins.

Anyway, today I want to do a post-mortem, even if premature, on this era of hyperconsumption as entertainment and ask, what next? What next? So I guess my first question I want to bring to the table is Ash, do you even agree with my theory? Do you think the trend

of hyperconsumption is over? See, when I first read the script, I was like, I'm not sure if I agree, but I found you very persuasive. So I would say I am leaning more towards agreement than I am leaning towards disagreement. And I think looking at it as the sort of cultural bit being downstream from these massive financial and geopolitical headwinds, I'm like, this, this. has the ring of truth to it. It does feel like we're still in this period of waiting for the other shoe to drop. So when it comes to the war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, I mean, now that, you say low-level conflict, it feels fairly high level when it's, you know, a regional power like Iran and the world's biggest superpower in the United States, you know, shipping traffic

has just ground to a halt again. And what that means, in terms of fertilizer, what that means in terms of oil and natural gas is obviously massive. Now, I wonder if it's the case that lower-income countries, countries which relied more heavily on Iran for oil and natural gas, are more exposed. So, like, early on in the crisis, you saw fuel queues in Southeast Asia in a way that you didn't see here, because that's where they're getting it from, it might be the case that the West's decreased reliance on those sources of energy. It means that the bubble hasn't popped just yet. But people can feel it coming, right?

People can feel it coming. And it makes sense to me that that even unconsciously is integrated into your spending behavior in ways that you're not fully aware of. Because you're starting to think, it's my job as secure as it once was. You know, will the business that employs me do as well? Will my customer base still exist in the same way in six months' time, et cetera, et cetera? And that's before you even think about climate change and this really uncanny period of time that we're in right now where we haven't had rain for months.

And I really enjoy a London summer, right? I love like the endless hot days. I love the beer garden. and I love a Kampari Spritz. But when you're walking around a park and you're like, all this grass is dead. All this grass is just dead. And I've got a friend who is getting his pilot's license

and he showed me a picture from over the Kent countryside. And he was just like, it's just a patchwork of yellow and brown. I think, again, even if you try not to think about it or you're not thinking about it at a conscious level, there's something going on there. there's something going on there for all of us. I think we have this understanding that this isn't right, that particularly in the UK,

we're feeling just through body temperature, we're not built for this. And of course, there are economic effects down the line. So it does just feel that we're in this weirdly suspended space of inevitable disaster. It's a question of when and not if. and that's going to be reflected in the culture somehow. I also think that there is,

so there is a relationship between influencers who are sort of the distillation of marketing and this sort of economic context. But I do also think there is something else going on as well as that, which is to do with people are sick of influencers. are just sick to the hind teeth of influencers. I actually think if someone said my job is to be an influencer, I don't like this about myself.

I would look at them with a bit of contempt. And it's not that I think that they're stupid, it's not that I think that they're not smart, is that I just think that it is so socially useless and that it is built on both vanity and insecurity, right, which are both bad things. You know, I sort of think that you should, I'm not should. I know that I feel about influencers the way that I would also feel about sales reps for

Purdue Farmer, who were marketing OxyConin. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's how I feel about it. And I think there is an obvious way. in which that influencer culture has not just rotted our brains and rotted our attention spans and had us locked into a series of values which are just so obviously not good for us. But I think you also then couple it with an increased societal awareness about the effects of digital immersion, about that being bad at society-wide level, both in terms of loneliness,

mental health, but coupled that with an Zempic era. And so that life of like Machia Pilates aloe, the unspoken bit is plus disordered eating, right? You know, plus anorexia,

which has become hypervisible again. Is that again, we know that that's bad for us. So I think that there's something of a backlash to that. So I think it's a sort of cultural process which is kind of a bit separate from the economics of it, which is then also,

downstream of and caused by the economics of it. So that's me saying, yes, I think I agree with you in a really long-winded way. I won the Battle of the Linnit Trousers. I was reading this and I was like, oh God, this is Liddin Trousers 2.0. Yes. We met again. We met again. And this time I won.

No. It was like one of the, you know, Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson. and fights, you know. We both take one. We both take one. The rubber match will be coming up. We don't know what it would be about. I, what you just said made me write a lot of stuff down because I also want to talk in a

minute about something you're going to fucking love, which is football. Ha, we, we, we, we, we. But first, I want to say, I've been thinking a bit more when you were talking about, you know, this idea of social use. And I don't think this applies to everyone. but I will be using broad generalizations because this is a podcast. I co-host and I can. Okay.

And I'm allowed. And I'm allowed. It's legal. So I do think the pandemic has played a massive role in this. I think that in the pandemic, we're only just starting to grapple with the psychological impact of what that did to us. And how many people during the pandemic, we wanted to go brains off, right? Polyamory is a cry for help. Yeah.

And we know it as post-pansomers. pandemic. I think there was a, I think there was a brains off. And then it was immediately followed by Gaza, which I think has had a huge rupturing effect on, I was talking to Sean about this yesterday, and she was just sort of outlining. Actually, I will credit her with the sort of interesting discussion, has had a huge rupturing effect on even the lingering subconscious trust people had in the idea of international order and international institutions coming to save us, right? and there is, the way she put it is, you either have to face up to the truth of it

or you bury your head deeper. And I think there was a bearing of the head deeper and I think, you know, I think Gaza is in a lot of ways fading from the front lines of attention, but I don't, which is very sad, you see all the time, but I think people have changed,

I think people have internalized a thing that something has to change and no one is coming to say, And I think there is an appetite for social use that you are seeing. I'm not saying it's channeled in the right way yet. Yeah. But I think that's why people are telling you to I want educational content on TikTok. They're still trying to tinker with the sort of medium that is part of the problem.

But it's like I want educational content. I want content that's, you know, about geopolitics. I want to be engaging in something that makes me feel like there is purpose and change. I think you see this everywhere from the optimism that's, greeted Andy Burnham. He hasn't really had to do anything apart from saying like things aren't going to be a shit maybe. And I was like, fuck yes.

Let's get. I feel there's energy. There's an energy that has come with this man's ascension to the premiership that has a little bit to do with him, but has more to do with the appetite. I think people have for any sort of hope or idea that there is a purpose out there greater than just sort of sitting at home and waiting for everything to decline and fall. I think that post-pondemic, there was very... Which was absolutely star-marism in a nutshell.

Yeah. I see that as one of the best distillations of star marism that I've heard, which is like sit at home, wait for everything to collect. Yes, exactly, exactly. And I think people are going like, this limbo is something I actually cannot stand and I cannot wait for someone else to break it. I am seeing on, just in my local area, people my age are starting to make mutual age groups again. They're starting to make like organizing groups.

I am seeing activity. I obviously have a job that takes me all over the country. I am seeing activity, both from places like combined authorities in terms of like, fuck it, we've got to just get on and do something. They cite Manchester a lot, but there is an energy there. And also people on the ground who are like, if we keep saying things like this, our city is shit and it always will be shit, it will be shit. We have to try.

And again, I don't mean that the energy is always getting channeled into something that is actually of social use. But I think you can see the downstream of that in people's consumptive habits when it comes to content and influences, like who are they actually engaging with now and who do they, who does it make them feel better to engage with? Is what I'm basically saying?

So I think that this comes to, like, you know, why is it I loathe influences? And I do, and I think that there are things to do with it which aren't good. I do think that there's some internalized misogyny in there. You know, I don't like seeing women um, basically in some way,

advocate that the highest calling for a woman is to be pretty and buy things, right? I think that's a shit message to put out there in the world. And I get it, you've got to earn a living, but you could have, like literally anything else would have been more socially useful than what you do. But there is another part, which is the purposelessness of it. Now, it can obviously, it gets dressed up in various ways. It can be dressed up as sort of self-care, dressed up as wellness. but it is both individualistic in the sense that it's about you, it's about individuals, but it's also saying that the highest good is in the curation of your image. And I don't think that anyone, anyone, even if you've drunk the Kool-Aid and you're in deep,

actually thinks that that's the same as a life's purpose. And so I guess I'm maybe like a tiny bit less plugged into the optimism side of it or sort of like the optimism and activity side. And I was thinking a little bit more about the way in which having, you know, there is a through the looking glass mirror image of how people relate to Gaza. And I'm not saying that these are moral equivalents at all. But in terms of that feeling of like this is happening all the time and what, you know, why can't you see? Is that for the right, that thing is small boats and sex crimes.

And I think that there is something about, you know, we've talked so often about Gaza being the first live streamed genocide. And I do think that there is something both in terms of the fact it is a genocide, but also how it is we know about. it, which is this unfiltered, very, very raw, very first person through our phones, in our homes. It's not being contextualised or, you know, sort of moderated by like a broadcast journalist because also part of the story is the breakdown of trust or the further breakdown of trust in traditional forms of journalism is that there is a parallel and I know this because I've seen it

with people who are like this where the same way for me and many of my friends and many of my family members as well every new massacre they are aware of and they are struck to the core by the parallel to that is that every new story of a set

crime by an asylum seeker plays the same thing. And so I think that it's both the sort of like immersion, again, the sort of digital immersion of it, but also this gives you a sense of mission, right? And I think that sometimes that, you know, the bad thing about it is that that sense of mission can be very like disembedded. And it can turn you into someone

where it's like, all I can do is think about this and all I can do is talk about this, but what you do with that is unclear. But obviously some people have channeled that into like useful political activity from my perspective, right, being on the left and being someone who's pro-Palestine. But also for the right, they're going, okay, well, we're trying to create new flashpoints. We're trying to create new flashpoints, you know, around, you know, the asylum hotels, though that's been going on for a couple of years, but also like the flags and stuff like that.

we're trying to give people something to do and create a flashpoint between two different sets of values. So I'm not always optimistic about it because I think that those breakdowns of trust can go any which way. There's no guarantee that it will go in the direction of what I think is based on truth and a sense of fairness and justice. But I do think that purposelessness and the purposelessness of that hyperconsumption

which you talked about, the pointlessness of it is sort of on its way out. People want a sense of purpose again. I literally wrote down, I think people are longing for purpose. So you've articulated that so, well, people are longing for fucking purpose. And I think they're longing for a bit of morality. I think there is a longing for a moral core. And that is where I'm going to bring in Gianni Infantino. Who...

Today... I feel purposeful. Today I feel purposeful. Today I feel like I'm going to sell football to the Kushners. So the reason I bring this man in is because even though I don't think he is hyperconsumption, I think he is the perfect embodiment of rapacious capitalism. I read this on Twitter. I can't remember who said it is that someone said,

SEP Blatter loved money, but at least he also. loved football. That is a great encapsulation. So I'm going to just explain who Gianni Infantino is because I worry if you explain to Ash, you're going to get in the weeds because you're even deeper in than me. Gianni Infantino is the head of FIFA.

He replaced a corrupt FIFA. Would you say chair? Allegedly corrupt. Allegedly corrupt. And he is, he promised to end corruption. But what he did is he went from brown envelopes to deals to off the World Cup.

So he made the most recent World Cup. It was in America. He's very good friends with Donald Trump. He gave Donald Trump a made-up prize called the FIFA World Peace Prize or some shit after Donald Trump was unable to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And he sort of behaved like,

as if he is an authoritarian leader of a country except the country is FIFA. And he said when he got elected, I'm going to make everyone in FIFA really rich, all the member country. is we're going to make so much fucking money from this. This is my pledge to you. And to do that, he's already, you know, made the World Cup this huge spectacle where the ad breaks, hydration breaks, are sold off to companies, you know, there's more investment than ever, but it's even

close to private equity. Anyway, Martin Ziegler, journalist at the Times, came out with a story last week where it said that Gianni Infantino had a secret plan to turn part of the World Cup into a company that people could buy shares of, aka private equity, could buy shares in the World Cup. And one of the lead alleged business people who was going to buy shares was Josh Kushner, who happens to be the brother of Jared Kusher, who was Donald Trump's son-in-law.

So it was all very, oh no, and then all hellbrookluse and something crazy happened, which was Ash, Sep Blatter, the man, the myth. came out and absolutely condemned Janney and Fentino. UEFA broke with FIFA over this issue. I said they no longer have confidence in Gianni and Fentino, the English Football Association,

and the Welsh Football Association also have said they don't have confidence in Gianni and Fentino. And I think that if you want parallels to this, in terms of recent history, you have to think about the outcry of the Super League. So the Super League was an attempt to have what I sort of think of as like the WWEification, right? The sort of WrestleManiaification of international club football by saying, well, these clubs, you're always going to see play each other.

And it was embarrassing because Spurs was also involved. And I was like, we've got no business playing Barcelona, however many times a year you want us to play Barcelona, right? We've got no business with that. And the reason why people hated it is that obviously, obviously the story of football since the 1980s is one of huge money and corruption. And you can go back and if you think about FIFA presidents, you've really got to go back to have a Lange who kicks off this process. And then in 2015 you've got the massive FIFA corruption scandal,

which people might remember, where it's literally just bribery, like straight up bribery. And there was convictions of, you know, some head honchos in FIFA, but they never got the big guy. They never got Sepplatter. And so in many ways, Janie Infantino is a continuation of that. But this is what I mean by Sepplatter love money, but he also loved football. The thing that Janie Infantino has pioneered is a sort of corruption of the game itself. So one of the reasons why people hated the Super League,

was that it took certain teams out of the pyramid of competition. And that's the thing which, you know, it's not a left-wing thing, it's not a right-wing thing, it's not a what should the ownership structure of clubs be. It's not, you know, does corporate sponsorship have a place in football? It's none of that. It's literally, well, all of us love the dream at like an FAA Cup level of Marine or Tranmere Rovers taking on the big clubs. we love to see underdog teams like Cape Verde in this World Cup, you know, take the fight to Spain in the way that they do. We love to see Leicester become top of the Premier League in 2016 because you've done this on sort of sheer talent and gamesmanship and willpower.

And so to extract teams from that felt like an offence to football itself. And I think that it was such a moment of overreach. You know, the clubs involved had to back down. UEFA had to back down. And it sort of showed that like you can't fuck with the game too much. Like you really can't do it. And so I sort of wonder if this attempt to sell off the World Cup, had it been done before the Super League,

maybe it would have gone through but because the Super League almost showed how much was at stake people were just like and so I think it's this thing of like it's gonna sound really basic but meaning where do you locate meaning

and these acts of hyperconsumption they're both purposeless right you know what is the purpose of having you know, these huge like sheen halls or Stanley cups or all these plastics to put in your fridge to organise your fridge. You're still going to see your raspberries go furry because you didn't fucking eat them. Doesn't make a difference. Yeah. Doesn't make a difference. But there is also

the lack of meaning. Like where do you derive meaning from your life? And so what was interesting about one of the articles that you sent to me, which was about the way in which the, the asses fallen out of the luxury goods market. But there are certain designers who've managed to buck the trend whose names I cannot remember. Phoebe Filo. Yeah. She's won.

Then there's the guy at Versace. Yeah. The guy at Versace. And the third one. Matthew Blazy. For Chanel. Chanel, the Chanel person who's really done a lot with Chanel. Made it House of Sunny, some would say.

Well, and so it was sort of like, you know, the meaning that's like imbued into the clothes. I'm not, I don't give a shit about this stuff and I'm not saying that in a like cerulean but I just, even if, oh, great reference. But it's sort of, I actually thought that Miranda Priestley's argumentation was very weak.

She goes, oh, I think this, you think this doesn't have anything to do with you, which is bullshit. She just sort of talked about like the chain of trickle down of trends. She didn't say why it has any meaning in itself, but anyway, like I don't, I find it very difficult. I can appreciate art and craftsmanship,

but I just don't think that the clothes you wear have any meaning. But what's interesting about these three designers and this is the argument with the piece that you shared is that all of them have imbued a sense of what is the good? Like what should you be pursuing and how and where do you locate meaning? And everyone else, where it's like, well, there is no meaning. It's just looking good, has seen a customer base ever way.

So I think in some ways it's an evolution of consumerism. And it's how does consumerism and how does marketing evolve in a time of tightened purse strings? What it is that the buying of the good represents has to change. And so we're in an age where there has to be at least an illusion of that meaning. Otherwise, why would you do it? And now, because I think that perfectly wraps up the psychological aspect. The last bit of my question before we move on to dilemmas is, what next? I don't know.

You tell me. I think there will be, and I think, and this might sound mental, and it could be, I think there's going to be a renewed focus on intellectualism. I think the era of anti-intellectionism is coming to an end. I think there's going to be a horrible melding of the capital and the intellectual as not just an aesthetic like dark academia.

I do think we might see an increase in philanthropy again to sort of, you know... Go back to a previous episode. Yeah, not just social causes, but causes that provide meaning. to people's lives, I think that is going to be a renewed focus on sort of education and what is a good life.

I think there's going to be a lot of stressing about what a good life is. Whereas I think the last decade, maybe even 20 years has been all about you can buy things and that is good. And it was the obviously extension of like neoliberalism, but I think it really was the ultimate peak. And I think now there's going to be a sort of post-war, what do you call it?

catches on your arms, shabby professorship vibe as people search again for, I think there's going to be a stripping back. I think there's going to be a big focus on getting rid of. That's my take. That's just what I'm feeling.

I think that's really interesting. I mean, I'm also interested in how social media flattensing. So it's like a facsimile of the thing rather than the thing. So literacy for a post-literate era. Yeah. Which you're seeing now.

If you go on, so my feed has adapted, the moment I said I was writing a book on Instagram, then it adapted. And now I'm being given, like, book influences are the new dominant as well in the publishing industry. And AI books keep getting sold at a stupid lick and having to be removed. But eventually they're going to slip through and the public are going to love AI books. I found with writing, people love writing that doesn't make them feel stupid. So very basic writing a lot of the time because it doesn't, they don't want to be challenged, but they do want to feel like they've learned or done something.

So very, very basic writing. I think a literary challenged, the premium stuff will be the stuff that really makes you think and makes you grow. But for the sort of like mass populace, we're going to see big, poppy sort of books that aren't very smart, but people pretend they are. That's what I think.

Madeline Miller, the... Yeah, Circe. We're going to... That's already sort of like happening as well. But I think it will be really interesting to see how that, also how influences move to selling their brains. And, you know, the selling will be of here's, it would be much more like the things that would exist,

like masterclasses and here's how I became a published author. Here's how I became a published geologist or whatever the fuck it is. I think that kind of stuff is really going to ramp up because I think people are going to want skills again. if you're working in things like woodwork, etc. Start promoting it now. I think people want to be able to do things themselves

and feel like that's a purpose, but you're going to be able to sell that because there's a complete sort of loss of trust in the ability to teach oneself. I see so many people who are like, I wouldn't be a journalist. And then they've been maybe working journalists for 10 years because the journalism industry is collapsing,

they can't get jobs. They're like, well, I guess I'll just go do a master's in journalism. As if you don't know all that stuff already. So we're going to see a lot more. I think the, the crooked teaching other people industry things they already know, it's going to explode a bit more. Just my fake.

Can I just have a minute to talk about Madeline Miller? If you want to talk Odyssey, we can talk Odyssey as well. So, fucking Slop, right? Song of Achilles is Yowie Slop and Circe is self-insert fan fiction. And I've read both and I really tried to give her like a fair, crack at the whip but the song of Achilles is

offensively bad because in order to sort of of you know center the love story of Patriclis and Achilles what she does is she makes Brousaeus who of course is Achilles is Warpriced who is then taken by Agamemnon

and that's where Achilles gets in the big song she sort of like makes her their hag do you know what I mean it's like you know here are these two very pretty gay boys doing gay boy things and then like you know here's their hag And I was just like, the, the, um, sanitization of, of rape and the centrality of rape to, um, the, the functioning of, of the Greek camp is just nowhere. So you could be like, imagine if two really pretty boys, kith. Um, so offensive. And, Searcy, I was like, well, I didn't like song with Achilles. Let me give this a go. I gave it a go. And I was like, this is just, you know, here's this age.

goddess whose entire inner monologue is teenage girl oh no people tell me I'm not as pretty as them but then other people tell me I'm really pretty

and wow and I was just like she's obviously you know read the telegony she obviously read the Odyssey she obviously read the Iliad but lady you didn't understand

none of it I didn't I didn't bother with Searcy because I opened it and thought it was not to my taste. I read, I think, a song of Achilles, but didn't really stick with me. Pat Barker, if you want a good retelling. If you actually want the best one, Percy Jackson. The most entertaining one still to this day for me was Percy Jackson because it understood the gods as like through the American lens.

And if you're going to do it, fucking go all in on that. But if you want the actual, like, good writing, Pat Barker's the one for you. I agree. Let's move on to I'm in Big Trouble, which is our dilemma segment. If you are in big trouble, go to if I speak at navaromedia.com. That's if I speak at navaramedia.com. Shall I read this one out or you? I don't really mind. You should read it, I think.

Okay, just to show that I can. Yeah, come on. Do your sats. Do people still do those? I don't know. Children do you still do sats. They scrap the year eight ones. I don't know if they scrap the year eight ones. I don't know if they scrap the. This is showing our age, guys.

It's showing that we don't have kids as well as show. Dear Moyer and Ash, I'm a day one special one and your advice is often very thoughtful, insightful and no nonsense, so I thought I'd have a crack at sending in a dilemma. It's been difficult to pin down, but I'm hoping if it goes on the podcast, it'll also be relevant for others out there experiencing the same kind of feelings. Basically, I've lost all zeal, motivation, ambition, drive,

call it what you will, in life. Mostly in my career, but also to some extent in other areas, for example, social life. I've become unmotivated and passive and I hate it. For context, I'm in my mid-30s and have been working in the not-for-profit sector and in green politics combined for roughly a decade now, in policy roles broadly around social and environmental justice. All throughout my teens, I had so much curiosity about the world all around me and a strong sense of, well, injustice, but probably should say justice.

I always believed myself to be a cog that just needed to find its little niche to make the world a better place. But if I'm being honest, I also had ambitions to become something and achieve some sort of significance. So while some of my drive came from my values and beliefs, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a bit of ego mixed in. Anyway, I always knew where I was going, what I wanted to do next, and I've always been driven in the work I do. equally in my personal slash social life I was super outgoing full of energy and had a kind of lust for life nowadays I work in a job that conceptually aligns with what I believe in I'm studying a masters in a related field which is something I've wanted to do for several years and I have a wonderful partner in a good set of friends my life isn't boring and nor is my work the problem is despite having

all these things I feel as though something in me some kind of zeal has drained away and I desperately want it back I can't bring myself to look for a new job or introduce new things into my busy life because I just don't have the energy or the desire to. I feel I've lost myself somewhere and I don't know what to do next and what I want from life. I've been grappling with this feeling for a few years and I cannot get my head around it. Is this just what gang holder is? Is that all there is? Am I a complete phony? And what I thought was my values driving me was actually my ego. Do I need to quit my job and do something completely different for a while? Should I shake things up in some other way?

How do I bring back a sense of purpose, value and drive? Thanks for all you do, gals. Do you want to go first? No. All right. Fine. I want to listen to you. Okay.

Your dilemma really spoke to me special, which is why I'm nervous about answering it because I don't want to project too much. Then again, what is advice, if not complete over-projection and over-reach? My therapist said something to me the other day. because she does that a lot she does to be she do be talking to me she do be talking um

I was saying I was talking about my club nights and I was talking about my life in London and I was saying oh I'm so tired I used to really feed off these things but I just don't have any energy I'm tired all the time

that she looks at the end of the session we talked about other stuff she goes you're not tired you just don't want the same things anymore and that's okay I don't know if this is true for you special one because I think what is missing here at the moment is the ability to start digging into the issue

maybe you're scared of what you'll find when you dig in you have sent a letter so that suggests you want to interrogate it a bit but the you were you know 10 or so years ago how long have you been doing this now mid-thirties you've been working for a decade 10 years ago

do you think that is the same you Do you think that you has to be you forever? Because I don't. I think we change and I think we need new things in our lives and new options. And the first thing I would say is open yourself up to the idea that you don't have to know what comes next, but maybe the next is not going to look exactly like it does now. And I would go from there because I think a lot of people are scared to make changes in their life because they think, well, that's it forever.

And then I have to go do this thing forever. and that's not true. You can come back and do the same things you were doing. You can take breaks, but you have to just look at your life and go, okay, this thing that I used to love makes me exhausted. It makes me tired. It makes me not even want to look at other things.

It might be your job. It might be your city. It might be a combination of things. But you have to really sit down and go, if I had all these things removed, what would I do right now? And that might be, I'd be in a little cottage just thinking about my life. Book a week off, go to a little cottage, think about your life. You sometimes need space away from the immediate thing.

And it's not a process that happens overnight. Like sometimes, yeah, people get the fan of clap and they're like, overnight, I know exactly what I'm going to change and exactly what I'm going to do. For me, it was not that. It has taken me, I would say four years to cut to a place where I'm like, okay, I feel confident in the decision I'm making about how I'm changing my life. It might change further again. I'm currently moving, which is fine.

I'm moving back to somewhere I've already been to. First time it didn't work out. I've been trying to move away from London for, I would say four years. I've been moaning about this city for at least four years, maybe longer even. Oh, I'm going to go here, I'm going to go there, I'm going to go there. I've tried it.

I didn't work out. I fled back to London. I'm trying it again. That is a change that I'm making, and it's taking me a while to make it. But I think I've done a lot of therapy in talking about it, I feel pretty confident. I've in that time also changed my idea of what I might do with my career.

I've let myself have options. You know, I'm still very much in journalism right now, but I've let myself think, one day maybe I won't be. And is that so scary? It was at first. It's not when you warm up to it. You have to really give yourself time, even if that's, you know, taking breaks from this thing,

going somewhere else, sitting and thinking, not distracting yourself with, like, phones, social media, etc. you have to give yourself time to sit with yourself and really consider like why am I tired, talk it out with people as well. Where is it coming from? Because there's points in my, in my last few years where I've got really tired at my job, really tired, but I just can't seem to actually leave. And that tells me, I don't want to leave. I just want to change my relationship with work. I want to change my relationship with work and how I relate to work. Because I've known when I've wanted to leave jobs, I've just left. It's different with this.

one. It's like, I don't actually want to leave this. I get a lot of satisfaction from it. I just need to change my relation to it. So it's not the only thing in my life. I want to start hobbies. It took me a long time to realize I need hobbies. I need other things going on. The main point I'm making is there is no one size fits all, but you have to give yourself some time to even start looking at the question and then you have to accept you don't have to make any changes overnight. And that would be far less scary than going, I have to uproot my life and I have to know what I want to do right now, no, you probably want something a little bit different, but at the moment you don't have a diagnosis for where that difference is even going to come in. So that's where you've got to

start. I found it really interesting, special one, that when you're talking about an overall loss of enthusiasm for life, you know, including your social life, that you just drill down into job straight away. And I do think that this is, I'm not going to say it's a generational thing. But it's definitely a distinct trend and thread that I've noticed, particularly within my own social milieu, is that there is a kind of person who defines themselves and their values and their orientation towards life by their politics. And then they go, well, I'm a really political person,

and this is really important to me, so that has to be reflected in the job that I do. And the thing is, is that those things aren't, inevitable. They don't necessarily have to follow on from each other in that way. And obviously I'm a very political person. But I think if you ask me, what are your values or what were you like growing up, even though politics was a really big part of it in terms of time, it would actually be quite a small part of it in terms of how I understand myself. And of course, my job is hugely important to me. and it has an outsized impact in terms of being publicly accessible and visible.

But again, if you ask me the question about meaning and purpose, I would talk about my job a bit. I would also talk about politics a bit. I would also say, you know, I'm a lover girl. I feel like I was put on this earth to love really well. And that's really important to me. Like, that's so, so important to me. that's what I wake up thinking about, right? I think about the relationships in my life.

So I do think that there's something here possibly about overdetermining from certain assumptions that purpose and meanings to be found in politics and politics is best expressed through the job that you have because I think that can lead to a bit of a narrowing. in terms of how you're thinking about life and what it is that you might want and what it is that perhaps needs to change.

I agree with Moyer in terms of the task in front of you is to think about what it is you really want but I would think about that in the broadest possible terms. So don't drill down into am I in the right job or am I in the right job

for the right reasons. Really have a thing about outside of politics, who am I? Who am I? And I think it's really legitimate to say, I don't know, but that's the saying that maybe you should do a bit more finding out. And it's really exciting. It's so exciting when you catch the thread and you go,

there's other me's out there and I actually can go and follow them. 100%. We don't notice when our priorities. change and we change. It feels incremental and it will hit you all at once. Just like the climate change in the south of Britain. Turn on. Maybe maybe what you want is, I'm not, I'm not saying do this, but like maybe actually what you want is something to nurture. Like maybe there is a need, which is really different from what is my impact on the world, what is my status within the movement. And it's a need that because I think you've, you've drilled in really hard,

to thinking about work, but maybe it's a need to nurture something. Or maybe you're tired as fuck and you're fed up of doing things and feeling like everyone wants something for me, even though that's a situation you've created yourself where you have to save the world. And maybe, maybe Atlas,

you need to take the world off your shoulders. It actually was the sky to be really specific. You need to take the sky off your shoulder, Atlas. Got a little tattoo with you. Get off the cross. Some of us could use the word. No, especially when I really feel what you're feeling. And I'll tell you now, when you're out the other side, oh, it's so good.

So exciting. Life is great. Life is good. That note. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye.