Panic World - Silicon Valley’s midlife crisis (with Taylor Lorenz)

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

From shooting themselves up with boys’ blood to starting their own countries, “techno-optimism” has taken a decidedly dark turn. It turns out Silicon Valley is going through a midlife crisis — and while us peasants might address that with a motorcycle or a long vacation, the dudes in the PayPal Mafia are facing their mortality by inflicting pain on the rest of us. Taylor Lorenz joins the pod to dissect what’s caused so many billionaires to lose their minds, and the implications for humanity. Our guest Taylor Lorenz is a journalist. She hosts the podcast Power User, and writes about tech and online culture for her Substack, User Mag https://www.usermag.co/. You can follow her everywhere else @taylorlorenz. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can you run us through like real quick, like the wackiest tech health startup pitches you've ever heard? So many, Ryan. I mean, they want to create these like nano robots that go into your body and clean up yourselves and your disease. There's a lot of hormonal types of things. Of course, these are the same people that are against trans people taking hormones. But, you know, men taking hormones to optimize their body. There's totally that's fine to make you taller, things like that. There's just a lot based around like youth and vitality, like regeneration, a lot of stuff around

regenerative organs and regenerative, you know, regenerating your hair line, stuff like that. Well, hold on, hold on. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Tell me more about that one because I definitely. I'm going to be controversial for a second. I believe we have some urgent issue that I wish we were dressed obsessively and with ungodly amounts of money. But instead, Silicon Valley has thrown ridiculous amounts of money into other shit.

Mainly just a bunch of chaos that doesn't help anybody. Social media over the last decade hasn't been great. The Metaverse is a thing that billionaires really want to happen, but it's not going to happen. And they also are obsessed with crypto and NFTs and all the other things. We haven't even talked about AI. But these initiatives, they're largely out of touch with most normal people. And I have a theory as to why. And to help me break down this theory this week is our wonderful guest, Taylor Lorenz.

Hi, Taylor. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Are you ready to hear my theory about why Silicon Valley's gone off the rails? Absolutely. About 10 men are having a profound midlife crisis and they're taking it out on the rest of us. That's my theory. What do you think?

100%. A hundred percent agree. Mark Andresen, most notably Peter Thiel. I mean, name a famous Silicon Valley man that's not having a midlife crisis. Well, actually, we're going to name a few today and how they're definitely trying to fight for immortality. But first, let me tee up the show here. Welcome to Panic World. My name is Ryan Broderick.

It's a show about the various witch hunts, moral panics, and viral freakouts that bubble up out of the weirdest, most confusing corners of the internet. And today we're going to be talking about the men who are obsessed with, well, starting their own countries and living forever. the man who have the ear of our next president and possible future dictator, and the men who really want to use that proximity to shape the next government's agenda. Unfortunately, these are the people who, as the onion phrased it, suck it being a person and see a huge potential in AI. This is part one of a series. We'll probably be working on for quite a while.

And we're going to call this first one, tech people are fucking weirdos. Wait, my favorite thing recently, too, was the health, the guy who went viral on Twitter because he wanted to forever change his oral microbiome so that you would never have to get cavities again by sort of training to release ethanol or some sort of alcohol. Like your saliva would become alcohol and you would never get cavities. And many people that know about the dentistry world were like, okay, so that would actually probably give you throat cancer.

So maybe don't do that. There was a guy years ago. Do you remember like the guy on Twitter who like tried to make his stomach into a brewery? Like he tried to like. Yeah. And then he got like he got really sick and he was constantly drunk and he like he had to like go to the hospital I think because he was like ingesting like yeast or something. Yeah. That was back when Twitter was good.

And again, these people will do nothing to mitigate disease. Nothing to mitigate disease on a societal level. Endless weird body hacking things to try to. I think. I think my favorite is truly like I just I think it's like so insane is the men who like break their legs to become taller. Oh, I'm obsessed. I'm on a whole Instagram community of one.

I and they and the thing is Ryan they become like two inches taller like two inches taller like two they go through a year of physical therapy to become two to three inches taller but their arms stay the same length so they just look insane you look their torso stays that they're rest of their body stays the same length. They just have very abnormally long. like femurs or calves or whatever you call those that bone it's very it's painful and it's sad right we should we should accept short men short kings we love you don't do this to yourself yeah being being a short man is very in right now like there's like these men don't need to do this to themselves

but of course it's like these are the same guys you're going to be like I don't like a women have plastic surgery but I'm going to go smash the bones in my leg so I could get slightly taller the jawline implants yes yes those are same energy um um um um So, Taylor, how prevalent would you say the midlife crisis crisis in Silicon Valley is right now, based on your experience talking to some of these people? Very prevalent. Very prevalent. I think they're all struggling. I think they're starting to feel their own mortality. That's why you're seeing all of them getting into longevity shit and, you know, siphying off teenagers' bloods or injecting themselves with HGH. They're, I think, starting to realize that they might not be totally invincible and they're, you know, siphying off teenagers' bloods or injecting themselves with HGH. They're, I think, starting to realize that they might not be totally invincible. And they're, their time might be limited on this earth. And they're just going to inflict pain on the rest of us because of that. Like they're all just completely losing their minds. I think COVID, when the pandemic started, also accelerated a lot of these mental breakdowns. So wait, you're saying it's unreasonable

to take steroids to work at an email job? You think that that's like a crazy thing to do? Just jacking myself up before sitting, you know, on my office on Sand Hill Road. But before we get to sort of like how this midlife crisis is manifesting now, we want to sort of start at the beginning. And so we're going to talk about kind of like how these things are sort of bubbling up starting around 2020. You actually kind of got it right. So in 2020, AI researcher Dr. Timnit Gehbreu was fired from Google after he expressed concerns about ethics inside the company. Do you know about this story? Have you heard this?

Yeah, definitely. I remember this happening. So do you think there are ethical concerns inside of Google? You think that that's probably realistic, right? Yeah. I think there might be some ethical concerns with, you know, one of the biggest multi-billion dollar tech conglomerates entering into AI. There might be some ethical concerns there.

Unfortunately, Geproo did not sort of stick to like the things you probably should care about ethically when it comes to companies like Google and has since kind of created a banner term for this. very like sci-fi movement like very popular in Silicon Valley. Do you know about the acronym Tescreal? Have you heard of this? No, actually. No. Okay.

So it stands for transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and long-termism. Okay. I'm familiar with all of those genres, but did not realize there's an acronym to speak to this. So many easily pronounceable isms in that acronym. And for listeners who don't know those words, congrats, you are more mentally healthy than Taylor and I.

And we're going to get to what they mean in just a minute. But Taylor, do you sort of subscribe to the same idea that like these guys, like that's sort of the banner that these guys are obsessed with, right? Undeniable. Yeah. I mean, they've, and yeah. Silicon Valley's always had weird tendencies. I mean, I went to like the transhumanism festival in Silicon Valley back in like 2013.

Oh, good Lord. We're putting microchips in their hands to open their garage doors. But it's gotten, I mean, it's gotten out of control. And especially, I think, tied to the rise of crypto and some of these other technologies. It really kicked off in 2020. The Washington Spectator in May 23 wrote a little bit about this. And they summed up this way, which was transhumanism proposes that humans should augment themselves by combining biological and synthetic technologies

as a way of evolving our species. Extropianism, which is one that I did not know the word for, is the idea of expanding the human lifespan, perhaps infinitely. Singularitarianism suggests that technology will advance to a point where it begins to design itself, thus accelerating exponentially and leading to the singularity or the irreversible explosion of intelligence and technological advancement. And these guys, like, they think that's, like,

all real and possible and like going to happen, right? Yeah. No, it's so funny because they think it's going to happen in our lifetimes when we can't even get ad tech to work correctly. It's, it's out there. I mean, I think you have to be a bit of an idealist to work in Silicon Valley and to have these big ideas. I'm not against a lot of these big ideas generally. They could be used for good. But the way that these terrible tech people are pursuing them is not, it's not going to manifest in any sort of utopia. Yeah. So, so I don't know like who from this world you've, you've met IRL, but like,

could you sort of talk about what their, their vibes are like in person? Their vibes are terrifying. I've been around some of the VCs and, um, and people, and Peter Thiel in person. Um, it's funny because it was before I became sort of like a villain to them. So I doubt that they remember me. but yeah, you cannot criticize them at all or their investments or their investments. I think when I besmirched Clubhouse by saying like, hey, you guys could use a few more user safety features. They started setting up these rooms, which Mark Andreessen was a member of multiple rooms where they were talking about killing me, hanging me.

It was Taylor Lorenz and other journalists that need to be hung. Normal. Their children. I mean, Elon banned me for reporting critically on him, exposing his lies. Like they are the most thin-skinned weirdos. Mark Andreessen went on this newsletter with this far-right weirdo where they were debating my orgasms. Like they're just,

they're total fucking creeps. They're total fucking creeps. And it's hilarious that I live, you know, so rent-free in their heads. But I think I think that they just have palaces in their heads that are just filled with like sort of grievances against people. I think that's right. I think that they believe that they are heroes. that are ushering in this new future.

And if you point out that like their shit is dumb and they suck, like they get really mad. Or if you just ask them a question about it. Or that you just ask them basic details. Yeah. Basic details. Yeah. I mean, as the Washington Spectator in this piece points out, there is an authoritarian bent to all of this. Like it does.

And eugenics. Totally. Totally. It's very fully eugenics. Like, let's be real. It's about like culling the weak and the species and building like a super race of humans. Yeah, based on like the lamest men in the world. The New Republic kind of connected these dots too in a piece from this year where they wrote, California fever is what they called it,

alliance suspiciously with a cultish dystopian movement to build so-called network states, private zones where tech zillionaires can abandon democratic society to live under the rule of their own private microgovernments, which is a very interesting sort of like projection, I think, of like their own insecurities about their whole. horrible bodies. Like, that's sort of my theory. It's like they can't, they can't control their bodies, so they want to control, like, everything. Yeah. Ultimate male eating disorder mentality. Yes, exactly. Wait, you're not waking up at five in the morning to just, like, eat ground beef and bananas. Yeah. It's interesting that you sort of mentioned, like, the basis of this in tech utopianism or, like, techno-optimism. A historian who's been studying this name Quinn Slavodian wrote that despite Silicon Valley's talk of techno-optimism and abundance, many tech plutocrats are

plagued by a creeping sense of paranoia about the future. Fearing the possibility of civilizational collapse or driven by greed, megalomania, and the desire to have a zero percent tax rate, some tech elites seek a retreat into bespoke fortress societies. This was something that I heard a ton about when I went to Bitcoin Miami right after the pandemic, like lockdown lifted. And then, they were obsessed with building like completely self-sufficient like suburban fiefdoms powered by Bitcoin. Like that was like their big pitch and they were going to like take these to sub-Saharan Africa and like create like a nation state there. And do you ever watch the documentary. Sorry to interrupt an arcococo.

No, I've never heard of this. Oh, you have to watch it. This documentary is amazing because it documents how these bitcoinsers basically all move to Acapulco and try to create Acapulco into this like Bitcoin state multiple there's there's multiple John Galt's there's a Juan Galt there's a Juanita Galt they've all named themselves after iron rand characters multiple people end up dead it's it's just it's just a perfect sort of like unintentional comedy almost of of how these sort of network states end up playing out yeah and it's like it's very fascinating that they're talked about almost in the same breath as biohacking and transhumanism because like I think it's the same impulse right

And it's very fascinating that they're talked about in almost the same breath as biohacking and transhumanism. And I think it's the same impulse, right? And today, I mainly wanted to focus on three guys who I believe are fending off their midlife crisis in similarly toxic ways. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Brian Johnson. So let's start with everyone's favorite middle-aged teenager and sentient jar of mayonnaise with abs, Brian Johnson. Are you familiar with Brian Johnson? Very familiar, of course, yes. In last year in a Time magazine piece written by Charlotte Alter, they wrote, Brian Johnson, 46, is a centi millionaire, which does not mean millionaire with a hundred hands, a tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the last three years in pursuit of a singular goal, don't die. He's spent more than $4 million developing a life extension system called Blueprint in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors. That system includes, oh my God, downing 111 pills a day,

just like me in college, wearing a baseball cap that shoots a red light into his scalp, collecting his own stool samples, sleeping with a tiny jetpack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections. And Johnson thinks any act that accelerates aging like eating a cookie or getting less than eight hours of sleep is an act of violence. Except not really because he doesn't take any steps to mitigate disease in the slightest and has embraced full antival. or mentality of getting infection is good. This is a man that got COVID lost 40% of his lung capacity and has taken absolutely zero steps to prevent himself from getting COVID or any other disease over and over again. It is so, it's just so perfect because it's just like these men could take pretty basic

steps to mitigate pretty major diseases. Like they have the level of privilege where like they really don't have to get sick that often and like they could live along in healthy life. but instead they are repeatedly exposing themselves to path and chance taking no precautions and then trying to like biohack their way out of it it's like dude just open a window and get some fresh air like come on you know Taylor you don't have to mask if you're wearing a tiny jetpack on your penis measuring your directions you're totally fine um a little background on johnson uh for our listeners who might not be familiar with him he's from Utah he's an ex-mormon and uh he got there's always a

Mormon root. Always, always a Mormon root. He founded a payment processing company called BrainTree in 2007, which was, uh, uh, which that company acquired Venmo and then that was all sold to PayPal. And PayPal is going to be a big character in our episode today because the PayPal mafia is essentially the guys we're talking about. Like all of these like, like we don't like banks. We want to make our own bank that's also a country guys. Like that's, that's what this is. Um, Johnson, uh, received $300 million when it was all sold to PayPal. And it was overwhelming, apparently, to be that rich. He says he gained 50 pounds.

It became depressed. And then he divorced his wife who had cancer and decided that he was going to live forever. Not her, but he's going to fix it for himself, which I just think is the most telling detail here. I like literally, this is like a chat GPT could write this profile of this man. And also just it's I think he's like has a weird relationship with his son too, right? Like his son's like the blood giver. He doesn't he take his own blood or something. Well, I know that they take a lot of shirtless photos together.

Okay. Which like that's cool. Like I wish me and my dad like just. No hate to the son by the way. I cannot imagine like no hate. But I feel like I read at some point. Maybe I'm confusing him with Peter Thiel. There's definitely teenage blood, you know, being exchanged in some sort of Silicon Valley

circles. We're going to get to Peter. teal and the boy blood thing in just a little bit. So Johnson, this is from the Time article again, his goal was to make his 46-year-old organs look and act like 18-year-old organs. And Johnson says the data compiled by his doctors suggests that blueprint, which is like the name for this project, has so far given him the bones of a 30-year-old and the heart of a 37-year-old.

What? Also, his measurements, as many have pointed out, are based on, like, nonsense. Like there's no like one true way to like measure your biological age in any sort of reliable way. I mean, you can sort of measure certain metrics that are associated with aging. But his whole thing of like, I have 30 year old bones and 35 year old heart or whatever. It's like it's just it's all very dubious. I'm also getting an update from our producer grant that, uh, yeah, you are correct. Brian Johnson was getting blood from his son to make him younger.

But apparently he stopped doing it because he didn't see any. Impact. Knew it. So I guess his son's blood just wasn't good enough. Hey, it happens. Fathers and sons have a complicated relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

Very cool. According to this timepiece, Johnson's house was described as an Apple store in the jungle. And the journalist was given a special chocolate that she said tasted like a foot and a drink that tasted like sandy Gatorade. What is the point of living when you're living like this? I don't understand. Yeah, that's the thing that I really can't wrap my head around is like, why would you want to live forever if your life is this horrible? What's the point?

Here, I want to play a little game with you with our audience to, can you do your best to describe the before and after photos of Brian Johnson and I just put in the chat for you? Take a look at these. Yes. Okay, this looks like. one of those, this looks like one of those, um, like Twitter threads of like, what, what do they say, like what estrogen did for me or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he, he, he, he looks, he, he, he just, I don't

want to call it a glow up, but he, like, he looked totally normal before. His before picture is completely normal. He just looks like a normal guy. Yeah. His after picture, like, his skin, it, he's dressed in kind of weird clothing. But I don't even think he looks younger. Like, he looks, I don't know. He's very strange. He looks like honestly like a character, like an extra on the Matrix. Yes, that's what I was saying.

He looks like he just jacked out of the Matrix. And now you're like, you're seeing the real him. And he's like wearing like, you know, like future fetish gear kind of stuff. Like that's what it looks like. I got one more photo of him for you for you to describe for the audience here. One funny thing is like, I don't even know if he's into the like natural fibers thing, but like there's this whole like health movement around like natural fibers and like, you know, the plastic in your clothes is killing you and stuff. Oh my God. But these like futuristic health freaks are all like in the most like synthetic getups ever.

Like it's just it's so funny like where their different lines are drawn. Okay. Sorry, you said there was one more. Yeah, right beneath it. So yeah, just sort of like describe like the general color of this man's skin. Oh, God. It's blue. Yeah.

It's blue. He's, I mean, he looks like he's actually been drained of blood and he's sort of holding the blood vial that has been like removed from him. He looks very pale. I feel like he has some sort of wasting disease, like a Victorian child, you know. Like I want his lead levels tested. He looks like a waxed down. of himself.

Yes. That's melted, kind of. Like, he looks melted. Mm-hmm. Time comes for us all. And whatever this man is doing is extending his life in potentially such marginal ways, you know. And every time also you, every time like these like Centarian people are interviewed, you know, they're always like, I eat a chocolate bar a day and take a glass of whiskey.

You know, like so much of longevity is like, I think just like not being stressed. And this seems like a very stressful lifestyle. There is a woman in southern Italy alive right now who will live twice as long as this guy. And she will do it by drinking red wine every day and like smoking a pack of cigarettes. And just like having a great time with her with like in the palazzo. They'll be asked like, how did you live so long? And she'll be like, well, my husband died. So I'm a lot less stressed than I used to be.

So now I'm a hundred and ten years old. I do want to be clear because he's gone on the record saying this several times that he does not color his hair, but he has a gray hair reversal concoction. That's the quote that he uses. He uses some kind of concoction that isn't hair dye. It's the concoction hair dye. You know? The concoction has a series of dyes in it. So obviously we both think that this man looks like he's been dead for several years and washed ashore of some kind, you know, on a beach somewhere. But I did want to bring in a professional voice here. So, uh, Dr. Near Barziol. The director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City said he looked sick

He was pale. I don't know what he did with his face Dr. Barr's the ally adding that he was alarmed by Johnson's lack of fat which plays an important role in the body and The doctor said all these MDs we all kind of agreed that he didn't look so great He doesn't. You know, but you know, you can't come, you can't deny the results, which is that Johnson says that he gets the erections, the erection rate of an 18 year old when he sleeps, which is how he's been measuring his health. Did you know about this? So like male.

I mean, it's just like, it's such a like male ego way to measure your health and vitality. Because not even about like, oh, I'm getting another correction from our producer Grant that just this year, just this year, Brian Johnson posted on Twitter that his nighttime erections are now better than an 18 year old. That's great, man. That's, congrats on the gooning. Is his sperm aging in reverse too? Like, who cares if you're getting hard if you're shooting, you know, six-year-old sperm? Like, it's just these people, I don't know. It's good luck to him.

it's it's not just about boners it's about ideology um and sort of like making them all fit together and obviously like the whole deal with him is is is an obsession with immortality and that bleeds over to like his beliefs about technology too you know he believes that artificial intelligence is quote the most significant event in this part of the galaxy well fucking god in this part of the galaxy okay so annoying sure um sure uh and he really does does believe that the entire world will be optimized by algorithms and he wants an algorithm for his body. And it's once again this idea of like, I'm going to police my own body and then I'm going to police the rest of the planet in the same way. It is an authoritarian idea.

I really think so. Yeah. It's about control and optimization and maximizing, you know, every inch of your body and like every morsel of food you eat. And it just sounds, yeah. He, this is one last piece from the Times piece, which is very good. So it reads, whether we're talking about falling in love or having sex or going to the baseball game, you're talking about biochemical states in the body. And he says, uh, we should be willing to divorce ourselves from all human custom, everything, all philosophy, all ethics, all morals, all happiness, which is what cult leaders say,

I think right before, like they forced you to commit mass suicide. Quite literally. This is so authoritarian and dark. and crazy. And none of these things, it's so interesting how these men just view themselves through the lens of individualism. And like, it's like nowhere is he talking about the potential for humanity and, you know, protecting people that are vulnerable or disabled or sick or whatever. You know, it's like, yeah, it's just all about him. You and I have talked about this before, sort of the idea of like, like the very sexist idea of writing off like when women are

influencers and you know it's like totally regarded as frivolous but these guys are doing the exact same thing for instance uh brian johnson uh was using all of this to sell olive oil you could buy a 75 dollar bottle of olive oil and it of course sold out because he's literally just a wellness grifter like that's the whole thing that is what this is and if a woman was doing this by the way they would institutionalize her like women are like they would bring back the lobotomy they'd be like Absolutely not. And they would be like she's obsessed with age and her youth and she's so desperate to preserve her youth.

And meanwhile, yeah, these men are just trying to like, you know, age rank their liver state or whatever. Johnson is not alone in this sort of idea of like an obsession with the body, an obsession with creating your own nation state and a just a true love of grifting. And we're going to be talking about. talking in just a second about possibly the biggest one of these guys, the most important one of these guys. His name is Peter Thiel. He's a Gawker killer. He's JD Vance's puppet master. He loves building countries on oil rigs in the middle of the ocean. He's possibly literally a vampire.

And we're going to be very careful about what we say about him because Teal is very litigious. So we're just going to stick to the facts. And we're going to do all of that when we come back from the break. Taylor, question for you. When did Peter Thiel, like, appear on your radar? When did you sort of, like, when was, like, the first time you remember encountering him? I met him at the press club in Washington, D.C., when I was covering some talk that he was giving. And I think, I can't remember if it was before or after the election. It was either 2016 or 2017.

And I kind of knew who he was at that point because he had played a bigger and bigger role in politics. I mean, I would say he came into. to my world more in like the early 20, early to mid-20tenths. Obviously his spat with Gawker and then sort of his political activities just put him on my radar. So for our listeners who are not familiar with this guy, here's the Spark Notes. He graduated from Stanford, even though he spends like all of his adult life complaining about higher education. He co-authored a book called the diversity myth. Have you ever seen this book or anything about it? I've seen it and certainly not read No, no. It's exactly what you think it is. He uses part of the book to defend the use of homophobic slurs. He is an outgay man, but that hasn't stopped him from being an absolutely massive reactionary. And his main focus is not really a cultural crusade at the beginning of his career. It's finance. So he starts working at PayPal in the late 90s with a programmer named Max Levchen. And the two, he starts working at PayPal in the late 90s with a programmer named Max Levchen. And the two,

sound pretty cool to hang out with. Here's a quote for my 2011 New Yorker feature. I'm addicted to hanging out with smart people, Leibchin said, and I found myself craving more time with Peter. While developing the first prototype for PayPal, Levchen and Thiel tried to stump each other with increasingly difficult math puzzles. How many digits does the number 120,100 have?

210. It was a bit like a weird courting process. nerds trying to repress each other. Leibchin said, that sounds great. I would like to be... How would get kicked out of that friend group so fast? I think that would be a good thing. Here is how David Sacks, another PayPal guy,

and a guy who was most recently embarrassed at the RNC, described Peter Thiel when he was younger. He would demolish your arguments in five minutes, Sack said. It was like playing chess. He was a libertarian, but he would ask questions like, should there even be a market for nuclear weapons? He would drill down and find the weakness

in your argument. He does like to win. Wow. An argumentative libertarian? I've never heard of such a man. Yeah. It's he sounds insufferable by being honest. Yes, he does. And when he was at PayPal, he met a couple other important people in our story today, Elon Musk being one of them. They create the payment program. They sell it to eBay for $1.5 billion. Peter Thiel walks away with 55. million and in 2004 he invests in Facebook in 2012 when Facebook goes public he makes a shitload of money by 2016 he's estimated to be worth three billion dollars and he's basically spent most of that money investing in like global extremism yeah which brings and like sort of trying to undermine global democracy which brings us to c-steading so you

already mentioned this before sort of walk us through like the basics of like the c-steading movement. Yeah, sea-steading is essentially this movement of a lot of crypto-libertarian-type people that want to go off and create these essentially little nation states on the sea. Like, I think they envision them as these like platforms, like almost up in the middle of areas where there's currently no boundaries. Like I think the laws are different at sea. So you're not maybe bound by things like U.S. government forcing you to pay taxes.

And so, you know, they've sort of endeavored to, yeah, to sort of colonize the sea. Yes. They want to go to international waters where there are no laws technically and they can do whatever they want. In 2008, Peter Thiel gave half a million dollars to the Seasteading Institute with the hopes of using these platforms in the ocean to just like not pay taxes. It kind of didn't go anywhere. In 2009, though, he penned an essay saying, I no longer believe that economic freedom

democracy are compatible, which is, I think, a real tell about what this is. Yeah. Yeah. Have you heard of the terms like dark enlightenment or like neo-reactionism? Yes. Yeah. Just in the context of these people and their sort of ideologies. Yeah.

It's very similar to like stuff that Steve Bannon has talked about, this idea of like, if you can use technology to smash the federal government and replace it with like your own setup, you can like live like a king. That's sort of the idea. So some more here. from Peter Thiel's letter, which is since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women to constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians have rendered the notion of a capitalist democracy into an oxymoron.

So yeah, he's literally just saying like, because of women, like we can't, we can't have a democracy. He's saying the quiet part out loud. Yeah. He doesn't want women to vote. Can you, you sort of touched on it. And I want to circle back to sort of like Peter Thiel's invisible hand over social. Silicon Valley over the last 15 years. Like, how would you say he's kind of shaped the progress of that whole culture?

I think Peter Thiel has really ideologically led the way in sort of like radicalizing his colleagues in Silicon Valley. I think he was sort of, I mean, he was one of the original, he was sort of one of the original like Silicon Valley extremists. And then he ended up kind of building this universe around himself. Obviously, you mentioned like the PayPal stuff. There's the PayPal Mafia. Obviously, Ian Musk was also part of that group.

But it's really just this group of really rich men that got rich back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and have become increasingly politically extreme on the right. But they're more extreme than conservative. Like it's a very self-interested ideology. Like if the conservative movement was enacted completely, but it didn't benefit them directly enough, they would abandon it. Like they're, yes. Politics are solely based around sort of their own personal net gain. Yeah, it's literally just like we don't want to pay taxes and we don't want to like have to deal with anyone's laws. And we don't want any criticism.

Let's not forget that too. Yeah. And I want to be clear like this podcast, we're not criticizing you, Peter, if you're listening. I love you. This is fan behavior. Please do not sue me. And in the effort to be fair to Peter Thiel. We did some research.

He did not receive boy blood. That was a miscellaneous report. In fact, he's got on the record with the New York Times saying, I want to publicly tell you that I'm not a vampire. On the record, I am not a vampire. Always great when you got to say that. Yes. You know you're in a really good spot ideologically

when you have to repeatedly tell the New York Times that you're not drinking people's blood. He is, I think mainly best thought of is sort of like the mysterious benefactor of like lots of stuff but he's also tied into the same kind of transhumanism and weird health stuff as brian johnson right like he's obsessed with resurrecting the woolly mammoth um and he spent seven million dollars on like herpes vaccine experiments um yeah he i mean how would you sort of how would you sort of connect this idea of like like ideological selfishness with like a distrust of medicine or like a desire to overhaul all this

stuff like how does that sort of connect for you they don't really believe in modern medicine they think that they can optimize themselves out of cancer like they this goes back to I'm surprised to hear that he even invested in vaccines only because this crowd has gotten super anti-vaks really in the past couple years if you listen to their podcast like the all in podcast the David Sacks stuff like they've really moved pretty strong far to the right on that stuff. But it's this idea of like health as a commodity and they think that they can sort of like purchase or invest their way into good health. And it's a very, it's a very broken view of health too because it's about consumption. It's about like eating the right things or

doing the right like, yeah, red light treatment or whatever. It's, it's individualism. It's not about like recognizing that public health is important. Our society is interconnected. Disease mitigation from a public health perspective is important. Like, they think they can sort of like opt out of all of that because they're rich. And to some extent they can, but not completely because they still have to live in society and the world. And they can't just be completely isolated. Do you think that ties into like this desire for like health?

I mean, I think health startup culture is largely based on like the lack of like good health insurance in America. But I, but do you think it's also tied to this idea of. like someone's going to make the startup that helps Peter Thiel like fully remove himself from the global biome, you know? Yeah. There's just such an ideal of like health supremacy and this idea that they are like the master race, right?

They've evolved past us. They don't have to deal with these silly little diseases. And this ultimately, it's so funny because it shows their fallacy. Like when these people, like these people are going to get the flu or COVID or whatever or HIV or anything. Like they can get any sort of disease that any. anybody else can get they're not subject to you know to the same level of risk as all of us but you can't biohack your way out of certain diseases like cancer in

some ways right like there's only a certain amount of treatments but they but they believe that the money will absolve them that they will that they will get treatment that they won't have to die and they cannot accept that they have to they have to believe that enough money and investment can't that they can opt out of that and they can't that's the irony and it's hilarious but they're gonna I also think there's like a fear of irrelevance with them where like because they do want to be removed, but they obviously want to like control how we live. Yes. Yes. And so like with with Peter Thiel, it's really interesting where like, you know, he's investing in Facebook and he's got this huge sort of imprint on, you know, we can talk about how bad Facebook is all day, but it changed the entire world. Like it changed everything. But now I sort of look at these guys like Teal and I think like, oh, you reinvented the world once. You no longer understand it and it really freaks you out. And so you're spending all of your time trying to change it again.

Yes. That's why they're so obsessed with like online culture. And I think why they've gotten really online the past couple years. Like I think that they are starting to feel their irrelevance. And that's why you have Elon tweeting memes that are the worst things you've ever seen. Because it's like it's that desperate attempt at cultural relevance of the type of cultural relevance that frankly only young people have, you know, like people that you can't have that when you're a billionaire.

I'm so glad you brought up Elon Musk because right after the break, that's who we're going to be talking about next. Obviously, there's a lot to choose from, but what would you say it was the most epic Elon Musk moment for you? What's one that you just come back to? Let's see. I mean, when he wiped $20 billion off Twitter's balance sheet, the valuation and all the banks are fucked now because of it.

So many great. Yeah. so many great moments but yeah i like when he wore the cowboy hat backwards at the border like he went down yes yeah and it's like clearly no one told him that it's backwards i really enjoyed that one um let's i you know we all kind of have a decent idea of like what elons been up to over the last 15 20 years but let's do a quick little timeline huh so um his first big splash was PayPal by all accounts he wasn't much of an ideologue he just was like a rich south african guy He donated $2,000 to both Bush and Kerry in 2004.

He donated to Hillary and Obama in 2008. In 2015, he said that Trump would be embarrassing if he was nominated, and he kind of didn't do much for 2016. In 2017 is when he starts courting Republicans, but he's still outspoken about climate change. In 2016, though, also, I think there's like a very important moment for Elon Musk. Do you remember the Elon Musk hot tub simulation quote at the Recode conference? No. So a reporter in the crowd asks Elon Musk about like simulation theory. And he talks about like how him and his brother would like sit in a hot tub.

Oh yeah. And like debate if we live in a simulation. Yes. I do actually remember that. I forgot about that. And it goes like mega vile. Yeah. And like my dad was sending me like videos about it.

And I think like I think that's the moment. where Elon must realize, like, it was powerful to be viral. Like, I don't think he totally clocked it. Because, like, before that, he's, like, in Iron Man. He's, like, a traditional celebrity. And then after 2016, he's like, I'm the meme man. I think, but I, yeah, right. I also think the cave, remember when he wanted to rescue the children from the cave and kind

of ended up interfering and destroying it? Like, I also think that was a radicalization moment because he got so kind of angry that people could know more about things than him or that like and he was being sort of dismissed and mocked and demeaned and I don't know these people's egos are so fragile I can't remember what year that was yeah yeah don't worry because we've got it so in okay 2018 he meets and starts dating grimes this is also when he goes on the jo rogan podcast this is the era I think where everything starts to click in and we start to see the creation of the current elamust that we all know and love. This is when he smokes weed on the podcast and everyone's like, oh my God, that's so epic.

This is where he starts being a lot more vocal about politics. This also seems to be around the time. He starts to radicalize around trans issues because of his daughter coming out as trans. And by 2020, he's tweeting about taking the red pill and saying that pronouns suck because he doesn't know what those are. And this is also where Grimes is publicly complaining that he's sending her like far right shit and saying this is where she tweets like is this from fortune or something you're actually starting to sound like someone from the far right and i think that this also kind of lines up with him having a midlife crisis to be very honest 100% he's like dating he's got like an elf wife and he's like going on like edgy podcast and he's like sending people like racist memes i don't

know no one has been more desperate for relevance than Elon Musk like no one has like craving validation he wants to be seen as cool. Yes. Like it's not enough to be the richest and most powerful person. Like he wants this like cool like hip like I'm with it factor that he'll never have because he's a billionaire and he's a fascist. Yes. He's also similarly to Teal and Johnson in a way, both obsessed with transhumanism and creating his own nation state. Except he's not wanting to build it in the ocean.

He wants to go to Mars. But it's the exact same impulse, I think. He said that by 2024, SpaceX would be landing on Mars, which was then moved to 2026, and now he's saying we'll have a colony there by 2050. I think we'll get it. I think we'll do it. I think we'll do it. This is a quote from him that I find very inspiring. Terraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our lifetime.

However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime. There being Mars. At least a future space-faring civilization, discovering our ruins will be. be impressed humans got that far. Okay. No, they won't. Everyone's going to die of climate change and forget that.

Like, I don't see this happening in our lifetimes, unfortunately. Well, that is a fantastic point because, like, he is clearly, like, he understands that climate change is real. Like, deep in his heart, he knows that that's real. He's now, like, pretending he doesn't care because, like, it's not politically useful for him. But instead of, like, working on that,

he wants to become a multi-planetary society as he keep saying because like for him once again it's not about like helping the rest of us it's totally selfishness a hundred percent because it's all motivated by selfishness it's all like well us superior people will run off to mars and you pores can you know rot here on earth no we can accrue a ton of debt getting to mars then work as slaves that's that seems to be one of his plans true dream did you ever like fall did was there a moment where you like you've regarded il l musk as like at least like a smart guy like did you did that work on you Yeah, well, I just sort of regarded him as, I think I was like pretty neutral on him.

But I remember when he offered to help the people in the caves. This was 2018 when a Thai youth soccer team were trapped in caves for over two weeks. And it was so quickly became clear that he is an egomaniac that had no idea what he's talking about that I was like, oh, this man is an idiot. Yeah, the caves thing for me was also like, what it? Like, because up until that point, I just sort of knew him as like kind of like the same as like, what is that guy's name? Richard Branson. Neil de Grastheson, too, though.

Yes, like those types of people were like, oh, they're science. They know about rockets. Yeah, he's like a science man on the internet. A science man. And then you realize he knows nothing about science, by the way. Right. Or engineering.

Nothing. And this sort of selfish impulse to take us to space instead of fixing the planet we live on now, you know, dovetails quite nicely with his other weird obsession, which is breeding women that work for him. So can you sort of describe like the pattern of behavior that it seems to be happening with Elon Musk and his various female employees over the last decade? He wants to reproduce. He said that women in his companies that are seeking sperm for IVF, he will be, he will father their children so that they can have, you know, biologically superior children.

And obviously he has many, many kids. He has spoken constantly about the need for people. have lots of kids. And he has definitely some sort of weird breeding fetish shit, which is linked to his ego, undeniably. I mean, wouldn't you want Elon Musk's superior genetics in your family tree, a man who looks like he's made of mayonnaise, just like an absolute ubermensch? With zero social skills. Yes.

And it also ties into like some race theory stuff that he's become a little more vocal about over the years. In 2024, this year. earlier this year he tweeted the problem with great replacement theory is that it fails to address the foundational issue of low birth rates. Record low birth rates are leading to

population collapse in Europe and even faster population collapse in most of Asia. Immigration is low in Asia so there is no replacement going on. The countries are simply shrinking away. If this doesn't turn around, then any countries on earth with low birth rates will become empty of people and fall

into ruin like the remains we see of many long dead civilizations. it is obvious though that he's talking about like white people birth rates yes yes yes yes because he doesn't speak this way about the global south or africa or india or anything like it's it's an obsession with yeah just reproducing i mean just it's white supremacy through and through also he doesn't want to do anything to make women's lives easier so that they can give birth right like he's not interested in advocating for paid maternity leave, right? He doesn't even give these benefits to some of his own workers.

So he doesn't actually care about bringing children into the world and fostering healthy children's lives. It's just it's it's authoritarianism. Right. And the switch, but like we can argue all day if you really like felt this way 10 years ago and he was hiding it or not. But like the switch has been pretty drastic from like this, this two, this two, this 2018 year that we're kind of time stamping this on. So I want to show you two old Elon Musk tweets that

are very interesting. And I want you to read them for the audience here. So I just sent you one in the chat. Okay. This is this is from June 2018 from Mr. Musk. Oh, wow. I can't believe he posted this. So back in 2018, he posts, don't buy our car if that's a problem. People should be free to live their lives where their heart takes them rainbow emoji. So he's basically saying like, if you're homophobic, don't buy a Tesla. Yeah, now it's like buy a cyber truck and you can run over trans people with it. Yes. Here's another tweet from Mr. Musk in 2018. This is from the same month, actually.

Oh, wow. So he's quote tweeting a Tesla tweet that says, very proud to have scored 100 out of 100 for the fourth year in a row in LGBTQ equality. Thanks to everyone at Tesla for making LGBTQ inclusion an important part of our culture. It's just so crazy to think about because by 2020, 21, he is tweeting things like trace root woke mind virus. And like, it is a fascinating. I think your theory at the top of the episode that this is tied to COVID is absolutely crucial.

Like, it's something that like, I don't think it's talked about enough that these guys were just alone with themselves for a year and like went insane. Also, the state, let's not forget, Elon fought viciously to keep his factories open to strike the fact that people were dying of COVID. in 2020. He, this is like when they, all these people were like, what do you mean? I have to close down my production and potentially lose a couple dollars because we're in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. Like this was such a like a front to him. I think that it and so many of these other businesses too, like they were so angry that they

couldn't basically again that they had to deal with something that was affecting everyone in the world because in their mind they should be excluded from things like this like global pandemics or disease and death. Exactly. And I think they spent too much time online. This is also when Clubhouse was peaking. Let's not forget Elon was very active on their. They all were.

They were all like glued to that app. And I think like it did become like this echo chamber. And when we talk about like the malaise that we all kind of feel about like the internet now, I do think a large chunk of the blame goes to these guys for just like not letting like they want to stay in control. But they have no idea what any real person wants or cares about it anymore. So we just like we just cycle through these like hype. boom and bust things that don't go anywhere. Yeah.

Well, we're just, they also just try to like manufacture their own thing. It's like they can't control the internet. So, well, what if crypto's the new internet and we can control that? What if NFTs are the new internet and we can control that? What if, you know, AI is the future and good because that's very convenient because we actually own AI and we can control that. You know, it's like it's this desperation for control.

That's exactly it. We are battling against their desperation and it's pathetic and it can definitely make the world suck even more. And to understand exactly how badly it can suck if they really pull off what they want to pull off, we need to talk about the patient zero weird guy, the guy who is the most vocal about making the world a worse place. Do you know anything about Curtis Yarvin? Of course. So can you give our audience a little primer on Curtis Jarvin? Yeah.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong. I think he started as a blogger, a writer, basically. He's sort of like academia adjacent. Like, people think of him as like this smart to sort of acknowledge man. And he's a white supremacist, bigot, fascist, basically. But he's informed a lot of thinking around these Silicon Valley men. Like, they read his stuff. They follow his teachings.

You know, they really look to him to kind of shape their ideology. And it's interesting. I think Peter Thiel has sort of taken Yarvan and mainstreamed his beliefs in a way that Yarvin couldn't have on his own. Yeah, I think the main, the main sort of tenant what Yarvin was blogging about under the name Manacious moldbug was his mold bug or something. Yeah. Was a return to monarchy.

Like he really believed that you could create monarchic systems using technology. And so like even like let's say, you know, we don't know if Elon Musk was reading his stuff. but he fits into the blueprint that he'd created. A hundred percent. He's read some of that shit. A hundred percent. I'm just saying this podcast is not big enough to have a legal team yet. So we have to say what we do and what we do not know.

I cannot prove that Ilam Musk has been reading Yardvin. I assume so too. But he fits into the pattern of just like, I am a wealthy man. What if we smash democracy, replace it with tech we own, and then I can control my severe eating disorder and make it everybody else's problem. That seems to be really. We're kings. We're kings of their food. You know, like all of these work tech, these workers and poor people, they are our serfs. We are the kings. We will rule the world. We will control everything.

We will amass endless power and wealth and influence and fuck democracy. It was exactly the stuff that I was hearing at Bitcoin Miami, which was like, you could become the king of your like, like Arizona suburb. You could like, you could replace money with Bitcoin and you and all the public services could run on the blockchain. and you could own them all, and then people would work for you, and you could pay them in your own currency. Like, this was like outlying to people in the audience is like a good idea. And I just remember thinking, like, what the fuck are you talking about? It's insane. It's also just like inherently, like these visions for the future are built on subjugating other people.

There's no equality. There's no, like this could lift us all up. It's like, no, this could lift us up so that we can oppress other people. Yes. Like you said, so like we can like rule our little suburb or whatever. we can amass power and wealth at the expense of others. And it's based on like a really existential panic, I think, about like their own mortality, their own relevance.

Like it is classic, I need to buy a boat because I'm 50 years old shit. But like instead it's like I'm going to smash the government and replace it with like my AI chatbot. Truly. All of these men would be happier if they got a lakehouse and went out on a boat and through their phones in the water. Honestly, just shut the fuck up. like but but they're not and it they're not and and I think also just the more they march towards death

the more that they can't you know they're they're going to I think they're going to lose their minds even more because they have to grapple with that like I mean it's just it's an inevitability and I think these tech men I'm even going back to Steve jobs right like they think that they can opt out of death true and they can't I have never been wealthy so I can't say what that would do to me psychologically but I have to assume that if I made like 50 billion dollars or whatever I would just chill like I think I would just I would probably undeniably you couldn't catch me on the internet for any no way no that's the internet's a PVP zone for people who don't make enough money like that's like I would just be hanging I'd be chilling and I would probably die from some sort of like elaborate like concoction of drugs and food and alcohol and just like I'd just like I'd just like I'd just be hanging I'd Go nuts. I'd be a good time pleasure man. That's what I would be if I had too much money. Hell yeah. I would not be trying to become an 18 year old boy. That is a crazy thing to do, in my opinion. Yeah, it's deranged. But it's it's because they're very fragile. I mean,

you don't get to be a billionaire without some screws loose. Like you have to be an ego maniac. You have to be fragile in a way. And I don't want to not all billionaires. I'm sure there's some ones that aren't completely radicalized in the same way, of course, as these men are. But I think the way that these men came up in tech and sort of the backlash that they've experienced, just they're down the radicalization path, the way that so many people with honestly less money have gone down before. And yeah, I wish they would log off. But it's the ego.

It's the egomani. It's the egotism. And racism. Yeah, it's all of them. It's all tied up. And eugenics. And eugenics. It's all tied.

Obviously, these guys are goofballs. But they are very powerful and they're very influential. And I don't know, from where you're sitting, like, what have they actually done to the world? Like, how different are things now because of these guys? Significantly different. I think things, I mean, our entire political system has been reoriented in large part due to their influence. The way that they've influenced policies, norms in the tech world, mainstreamed, really regressive belief systems. these people are having a very measurable, very detrimental impact on our world.

They're doing a lot of harm. I mean, so much of the anti-LGBQ hate, the misogynistic hate campaigns, like the anti-DGII movement, like it has been pushed by these figures. So they have an enormous amount of power and influence. I do. I think that's right. And I think that like even the prolonged use of their kind of like in shitted platforms is like making the world more reactionary, more conservative, less.

pleasant and the internet kind of less fun. 100% agree. Here's a simple question for you. Assuming we survive the next four years, how do we stop this from happening again? What lessons should we learn from turning these guys into Lex Luthor? Well, first of all, we need to stop the founder worship. This is like something I believe so strongly in and I wrote about in my book. But like the reason these men have the power and influence that we do is because they were put

on pedestals by the media and by the public. And we don't scrutinize these men enough. And even with the tech lash and everything of really since 2016 of people being, maybe technology is not all good, you know, like we still focus on these great men. You know, the story of Tesla or Twitter is told through the lens of Elon Musk, right? And not the workers, not the people that have been fucked over, not the exploited, you know, temps and users, right? we tell these stories through, through this, these big men.

And I think that that's really, really, really harmful and corrosive. I think that entire genre of tech journalism needs to go, basically, because they bully these men more. We have to bully them. Bullying works. And you know it works, because look at how angry Elon gets when someone makes fun of him. I think that's a great note to end on. Bullying works. And for our own sanity, maybe as our only defense during this next regime,

we need to make fun of them all the time, you know? And like let them know that while they may want to control the world, the rest of us will die enjoying pizza and hang out with their friends and being loved by those around us and not arguing about the free market or solving Sudoku's to buy heroin or whatever. Yes. Taylor, thank you for coming on the show. If people want to follow you, where can they do that?

What's the best place to go? Please subscribe to my substack publication called UserMag where I write about a lot of this stuff. It's usermag.co. And I'm also on YouTube and you can listen to my podcast Power User on all platforms. Oh, you got a dot co URL? That's sick. Yeah.

Oh, really? I wanted the dot com, but it was going to be $900 and I wanted to spend $12. I couldn't get GarbageJay.com because it's owned by a waste removal app. What do you have? I have garbageday. Email. Oh, that's funny. That's good.

I should have done that. So people don't forget that it's an email. Well, thank you very much. much you're coming on. This is fantastic. And I look forward to bumping into you at the boy blood bank next time I go in for a transfusion. I'll see you in there. Panic World is a garbage day production. It's written and produced by Grant Irving, hosted by myself with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumis. A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rajesk, our lovely video editor. And if you'd like to sponsor an episode,

you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude. productions slash ads. We have a Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com slash panic world. And I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder. Log off and touch grass while you still can.