Sad Boyz - We Are All The Same Person (w/ Drew Gooden)

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

We're joined by Drew Gooden to discuss exclusively mental health and runescape, the two most important topics of our time. Follow Drew https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSRIY3GLFYIpkR2QwyeklA Watch Us Live (Wednesday/Sunday/Friday) https://twitch.tv/sadboyzpod Follow Us https://instagram.com/sadboyz https://twitter.com/sadboyz Outro music @prod.typhoon & @ysoblank

Thanks everybody for joining. We have some bad news. We were supposed to be joined today by Drew Gooden, but, you know, I haven't heard anything from him. Well, Travis, I don't think that's fair because you did say some things and did some things that I think might have put him in an area that we don't currently have access to.

Are you suggesting that it's my fault that Drew is missing? Not, I don't want to ascribe fault aside from the fact that it is what you did drew is missing not i don't want to describe fault aside from the fact that it is what you did that that put him where he is and at this point i think we all know where he is but i'm afraid to say it i think illegal perjury i know where drew is huh where's drew he's right here whereabouts drew drew can you hear me yes drew what's it like down there hot whoa okay that's a lot more dramatic than I was expecting. I was thinking maybe you were just in like a purgatory type position. It sounds like maybe you've been punished for your deeds. No, I went straight to the bottom. Wow. You were very deep. Yeah. Is

anybody there with you? Any other YouTubers? Pretty much every YouTuber. Yes, they are all here. All good YouTubers go to hell. Yeah, it seems to be the moment you make a YouTube account, this is where you end up. Wow, a lot of people there. You know, that does make sense. Even like a lurker account with no comments or videos? Yeah, no. That seems unfair. They don't even have their human faces.

Their face has been replaced with the default profile picture icon. No, their branding. The worst thing to lose. Yeah, it's really unfortunate. Do you know how you might be able to, like, get out? I don't know. You put me here. Remember?

I think the deeds put you there. Wait, no, wait. He's right. He's right. I did put him here. Look, it's Drew. I fixed it. I'm sorry, everyone.

Oh, my God. You did it. I accidentally put Drew in hell. You took him out with the click of a button. That was easy. Shout out to the easy button yeah it's that simple welcome to sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also.

I'm Jarvis. And I'm Jordan. My hair's getting long enough to the point now where I'm drying it with paper towels. And today we are joined by a very special guest. He's just the guy being dude, the creator of YouTube himself. Oh, also an NBA player. Can't forget that. Drew Gooden, everybody. Congrats. That's right. Yay. Oh, also an NBA player. Can't forget that. Drew Gooden, everybody.

Congrats. That's right. Yay. Oh, thank you. Clapping and excitement. So wonderful to be here, especially considering I was just in hell

about 90 seconds ago. The contrast is probably pretty good. Yeah, I'd be happy to be anywhere right now. If I was in like a hospital, I'd still be happy just because it's not hell.

The second worst place. Yeah, that's the type of emotionally manipulative shit we're up to here on Sad Boys. Sad Boys, it could be worse. It's not literally hell. You're right. It works. So, okay, well. Drew's here today. We're just going to chat, hang out, do our normal thing. But before all of that, Drew, how was your week?

My week? It was pretty good. I made a video. Nice. Waiting for the brand to get back to me. You know how it is. Yeah. You're done with the video and you're all ready to post and then they take either one day or like four days. So yeah, but other than that it's good good week i think that if i don't get a video done in a week it makes me feel bad are you able to like get over that like it's like hey i put in the work

the video didn't happen but you know um well it depends mean, I definitely don't have a schedule to where it's like, if I don't have a video in a week, it's a disappointment or that people are surprised because I'll just, I'll randomly disappear for like a couple of weeks at a time. And then people are always like, where did you go? Or they'll, you know, you'll get, I'll get DMs or like, are you okay? And then I just come back with a video and don't acknowledge how long I was gone. Yeah. Everybody's cool. No, that's good. I think having a schedule is an aspiration that I've not been able to reach to this day. Yeah. Since there's no schedule, is it closer to sort of like a hunger or an addiction where you intuitively feel like it hasn't been, it's been too long?

Yeah. That's actually a good way to put it. You know, I make a video and depending on how much time I spend on it, it's like, all right right i deserve a little bit of a break and then as soon as i get to the point where i feel like okay i'm a piece of shit now the break has gone on too long yeah or i just have an idea i'm really excited about i feel like at this point in my youtube journey the thing i spend the longest doing anymore is trying to figure out what the fuck a video is going to be once i have the idea it's pretty straightforward from there especially once i've recorded too like editing can be tedious but it's like that's the easiest part because it's all done it's just yeah it's just technical

work at this point put it all together yeah so one thing that i would say i'm really impressed by drew is that you make stuff that like you want to make, like there's a lot of low hanging fruit on YouTube where it's like, oh, you did the big thing, do it again, like volume seven, like make that your entire brand. But I've consistently seen like a lot of range from you. And it's clear that you're talking about topics and stuff that are like near and dear. And that's hard to do on the platform. So I think it's like really admirable and really impressive that you're doing that and you're creating like really great work.

Appreciate it. Yeah, no, that's definitely, I think especially this year too, it's that's, I can hit a point where it's like, if I am making videos that I am not super invested in, but I'm making it because I feel like I should make it or because it's a popular thing, on top of all the other emotions I'm feeling,'s just it would be self-destruction so even if

I know like I make a video about like a video game streaming service that I know is not going to get nearly as many views as the rest of my videos but I enjoy making it and it fulfills me in that way it's like that's more important to me at this point than getting like those sweet sweet views I 100% agree with that. And we can talk more about that later. But Jordan, I want to hear how your week has been. Oh, man. Well, as my addiction is not putting out a video.

So I've been running pretty smooth on that one. Yeah. As far as topics that I enjoy, my topics that I enjoy are lethargy and a lack of impact or creative fulfillment. That's sort of what i'm into what a rush i like yeah i'm a masochist in that way uh yeah i'm relatively a little little wacky we talked about it on friday but i was coming off of a slightly wiggly wiggly wild uh hypermanic episode which you know hey that's that's the that's the style with bipolar 2 you know you're

riding the wave yeah sometimes it's bad and sometimes it's not great but that's the that's the style with bipolar 2 you know you're riding the wave yeah sometimes it's bad and sometimes it's not great but that's actually exclusively it but yeah but on the bright side i hate it yeah but on the bright side at least it happens a lot uh yeah it was all right it's it's the spikes are a little bit more intense and long term because of covid but overall i mean sad boys is a joy to do life otherwise is i mean now that this is my full-time thing i'm i'm realizing that i have maybe hobbies and interests outside of my career in the past i feel like you can get lost in the aesthetic of career if that's that's your focus for a certain amount of time for sure i yeah i don't know been no flex but i have been playing a lot of mountain blade one of the worst video games ever made.

What is that? I've never heard of that. Never heard of it. If you've ever thought, wow, what would it be like to play a medieval simulator from a bird's eye view, which isn't fun in any way, but at least you can play it a lot and think that it's a good spend of time and then realize that you're getting absolutely dominated, the game and do worse again are you describing runescape my favorite game to spend my entire life on no it's a version of runescape where you lose a lot of hours and feel unfulfilled if you can imagine that is runescape though yeah i was gonna say yeah what are you talking about runescape is a bit of a skinner box where i i do feel like i'm getting like payouts of of like neurotransmitters like dopamine and stuff for yeah all my things that is the ultimate we're probably going to get into runescape in detail but i've always liked that

runescape is the kind of skinner box that doesn't hide it like runescape is very transparent yeah because there's even that um there's that anti-mmo um not anti-mmo but it's like a this is a very old game that was a commentary on the genre that was called Progress Quest. And it was just a game that you like hit, like start on and then all of your stuff went up over time. And then it would tell you, you like leveled up and it's like, you didn't have to do anything, but you would still like get a little bit of a, oh, hey, look. The rush of cookie clicker. Yeah. It's like cookie clicker with less activity.

Oh, that's the dream. Yeah. They don't really hide it. That the whole point is just like, I want to see the number get higher. And in order to do that, I need to click on the same object 9,000 times. It's true. And it's a game that requires very little attention most of the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most of the time it's like, I'm watching Netflix and clicking on my other monitor. It's in the culture of the game. And it's so interesting to see like how, well, actually let into runescape talk my week was fine everybody um active runescape week i actually haven't played in a few weeks but what i was going to say is like i played i thought i saw you shaking i'm tweaking man i haven't gotten my my xp fix i have another point on runescape too just on that it's just that like on the RuneScape subreddit or whatever, you know, a common term is efficiency scape.

Because the whole point of the game is not to have fun. It's to do things in the most time efficient way as possible. And if you waste time, you're wasting XP. Hashtag no XP waste. No XP waste, man. Yeah. It's stressful that after a while you start to feel like, and it's like, I enjoyed doing this thing for a while. Then you realize, oh, I could have done it in a more efficient way.

Did I really have fun then? I've lost hours that I would have spent doing RuneScape, I would imagine. Yeah, exactly. It's so dumb. Okay, so like quick background on RuneScape. Massively multiplayer online RPG created in the late 90s by brothers Andrew and Paul Gower started as a mud a multi-user dungeon um and then the 90s was an era many many many years before you were born like do I have the wikipedia open I don't know I'm sharing my screen you tell me you're looking down like you have a brochure for yeah I'm looking down into the the annals of my mind but um i would love to get sponsored by runescape uh so runescape launched initially as a java web

browser mmo got a lot of popularity eventually it grew into runescape 2 which is the most popular version of the game also in browser for the majority of its life then around like 2009 or whatever they made a bunch of changes to the game that the community didn't like. And it created a mass exodus from the game. RuneScape went on to become RuneScape 3, this very similar to World of Warcraft type combat style and graphics and mechanics and stuff.

Looks great. No one plays it. Yeah, no one plays it. It looks great, presumably. Also microtransactions, like no one's business. Like it's insane. And that was a big thing that like the community hated. But then in 2013, they found a snapshot of the RuneScape server from 2007

and made a poll where they were like, hey, we found this. Would anybody be interested in like an old school version of the game? Because a lot of people were like, bring back, make RuneScape great again. You know, that type of shit. Would you be interested in playing the old school version of the game because a lot of people were like bring back the make runescape great again you know that type of shit yeah and um would you be interested in playing the thing you liked yeah remember when it when you liked it and you didn't hate it could we just go back to the good old days i promise i can change uh take me back take me back users the poll got like 500 000 signatures so they or the petition poll thing anyway it was like people were voting on it and then uh old school runescape was birthed and now fast forward seven years it is more popular than it was in its heyday more popular

than runescape 3 and has a thriving content creator community that i personally i personally love dude like i'm that's what got me back into the game is because i would start watching youtube videos um there's the guy who does the more uh more iron man yeah uh settled it's uh all his videos are such a treat yeah that stuff like that exactly he so i'm glad that you set up earlier that runescape is this game where you just like click things over and over in a lot of in a lot of context because masochism is an interesting word but i would say that like i can't i can't that I can't not use that word to describe someone who has restricted themselves to a specific area of the game where it's very difficult to do everything that you would normally want to do in the game and has relegated themselves

to say, okay, well, I want to train my agility skill. And the only place in Mauritania, this area that I can train it is by going across this bridge that was never meant to be a training like spot. And I get two XP per try. So it's going to take me, I don't know, a thousand hours, you know, to like get the level that I need. And you watch because watching RuneScape content, when it comes to the specifics of like grinding and things like that, especially these restricted accounts, becomes this like treatise on the human condition where you're like watching the like, like, I just watched his most recent video where he's like trying to complete constraints he has to like stay awake for 17 hours at a time or he has to like be online for like 17 hours at a time or something and he's just like going insane slowly and it's just like wow that's what's great about his videos too is because he has this extremely popular series that he could milk but the episodes only come out every couple of weeks

which means it's hundreds of hours in but you know of content that is mind-numbingly dull to do whatever it is he's doing, but to condense it down and tell it in this interesting way. His videos are very well edited. It gives you all the dopamine of following along this journey without having to do the tedium of it. That's what also got me back into the game. So shout out to Settled. He's also like 19 or 20 years old. It's like insane, this's like very very cool guy there's a lot of great content creators uh for runescape there's like a guy who's doing every quest in order of release uh with the restrictions oh yeah time jimmy he's another great content creator there's so much like creativity happening like like runescape like machinima sketches are are like a new popular

like form of a thing and it just makes me so nostalgic and i feel this way with the smash community as well whenever there's a small like relatively small community of people who care a lot and there's not a lot of money in the esport element of it there's not a lot of money in it it's just a labor of love i feel like that's when you get the most like most cool shit smash especially i mean that's more my comfort zone than runescape because there's like there's so much literacy in the smash community because in order to be involved in it and be as excited as your contemporaries you have to just get versed as hell plus there's the doc you know there's like what like the six hour documentary available if you want to catch up on everything up till about 2014 2015 that like that culture is so obsessive while not gatekeepery which is very rare right because they

don't have the uh melee does not have the resources to be gatekeepery it needs allies as much as possible and there's a quiet admiration for the people that really know their shit and the especially when it comes to speed runners or non-traditional players or combo contest players speed runners speed runs are another great example of this smash 64 which is not a game i have ever played or had an interest in there's such a active and tiny combo competition culture at like super smash con where it's like the combo contest where yeah everybody's like contest with like two japanese players who come in and do things you didn't know were physically capable in the realm of men and you just have to like take a it's like a core it's like you're watching this it's like you're watching a

choreography of like a dance or something where everybody's just going yeah oh oh oh and it's like this build and build and then when somebody fails to like do whatever they're trying to do, everybody's like, aww. And then they get it. And then everybody's like- It's more like an improv game though, right? Yeah. Cause everybody's like, you fail.

And they're like, it's okay. You, yay, success, failure and success. And then somebody wins and everybody just like deteriorates in the rush. It's like a dragon. They're streaming and their family comes into the room. And it's like, yeah, it's the- Their father returns. The jury eats in the rush. They're streaming and their family comes into the room. Their father returns.

You finally made me proud enough to come back. I am going to go get cigarettes again, though. He's got a gallon of milk and cigarettes. It's so old. It's so curdled. Incredibly old milk. It's cheese at that point. Eat this cheese with me, boy.

They drink it together and all die and instantly die oh man they went out on a high note though so speed running is another example of this where i just like i feel like it reminds me because you can watch the most popular things all at all times and be like you're feel like you're a part of the zeitgeist or whatever but there's not the same communal element of like something with a smaller like more intimate community yeah and and what kills me is literally this dad coming back moment makes me think of um shout out to summoning salt which is like one of the yeah like he's like an amazing creator that tells the story of a speed running community through the world world record progression of a game and it's like an amazing creator that tells the story of a speed running community through the world record progression of a game.

And it's like, I've never been so, I feel like every video I watch of his is like watching a documentary about the moon landing where it's like humanity got together and they like put all their minds. They put all their minds together and they figured out that there was a way to frame skip through the wall at this point. And then like. Yeah, I love videos like that they show the context of like before this is all that was possible and then someone discovered this and now they're it unlocks all these new possibilities to accomplish the most meaningless goal exactly so many incredible layers like uh wow there's the idea that you could take like 2012 speedrun and then show them a 2016 speedrun it's not just an impressive leap it is like uh horse-drawn carriage versus f1 yeah it's just like inconceivable my asmr these days is watching

because i like don't i can't watch some like corners of youtube when i'm relaxing because it makes me think about work i'm like oh no don't tell me what like jake paul is up to or whatever or even if it's like i'm so inspired by him and his work even if it's like somebody being funny i'm kind of like i truly want nothing more than to listen to there's this guy who does pokemon like pokemon red and blue playthroughs with one pokemon and just describes the process of playing through the game where it's like can you beat pokemon with just an Electabuzz? And I'm like, I don't know. Let's find out. 45 minutes, I'm game. You know what I mean? I'll listen to that like going to bed because it's just like, there's something about the little, the small details and I love trivia and it kind

of hits all the things. But what I was going to say before the shout out to Summoning Salt was that I was watching one of those videos and he's like really building up to this climax of this guy like breaking a years old speed running record and he breaks the record and he's like i did it and then his dad is like hey could you keep it down or whatever he's like alone in his room and it's just like that is that is it like he's freaking out people on the internet on twitch are freaking out people in a small community are like you have moved mountains to get to this point and then his dad is like hey i'm trying to watch the game like could you please like cut it out hey i'm playing melee shut up i'm on netplay i'm trying to wave dash son my sweet boy come back to

me when you can do a clean wave dash oh my gosh speaking of smash i've never um i've never been big into it because i never owned a smash game uh enough to like learn how to play it on me on my own the only time i've ever played smash is with other people who are way better at it than me and i get frustrated and it makes me not want to play it but i have a lot of respect for the competitive community, especially it's like what you were saying, how it's such a niche thing, not like a big profitable thing. It's just they love the GameCube version of Smash.

And so they're going to hold on to that forever. It gets like criticism for just having the gods at the top, which cycle in sometimes. Sometimes there's new players, but historically there's like a dozen. The top four people of these win every tournament and the top dozen are the only people that are ever in the bracket i personally kind of love that i find that like there's it's nice and condensed so i never feel like i need too much work to follow the narrative and it's

like oh hbox won a tournament i haven't even checked on melee news for two months but i understand what that means more or less there's a dude with and i and drew i want you to finish your point too but i was gonna say there's a guy who has a channel with like 5,000 subscribers. And all he does is before a tournament, he goes through all the storylines of like, oh, this tournament is about to happen. And like, we think this person is going to do well. And this person is coming off of a hot win over here. And he's got a history with this guy. He's never beaten this character, blah, blah, blah.

We might be able to see an upset like that type of stuff. Like then I'll watch the tournament i'm so bad at smash but like i will watch the tournament on twitch and i'll just be eating popcorn like watching the storylines like rooting for like oh my god not only did he win but he's like the first person from his country to place outside of this you know like that type it's like sports it's sports exactly what i was gonna say that's why that's something that's always drawn me to sports like when i explain to people who don't like sports why i like sports i explain that it's so much more than just what they're doing that every individual person involved has their own story has their own redemption arc or it's like well this guy played for that team for

a while and now he's going against that team and he wants to beat that team or that coach used to be here like there's all these individual human stories or this guy's daughter has it's going i don't know it's like all these little things and it's all it's very human yeah and it adds to it that's part of why i get involved it's not just like i get that surface level football is very stupid yeah it's just big guys hitting each other give giving themselves brain damage yeah uh and chasing a ball and trying to get it from one end to the other but yeah you know when when you go into these stories and so that's yeah but the thing to your point like it's stupid but like isn't everything when you really like look at it yeah it's like allow us something down into a single sentence and take away the nuance right like yeah exactly there's a bunch of frames

yeah yeah movies movies are these like my like life-changing things for people these like big productions but it's like oh you just looked at a screen for an hour i think that's a comment when people are like oh i don't like anime i'm like but it's like a full like there is that's like saying i don't like movies because like we've got you know decades of of art that's like changed media both in inside of the form and outside of the form so it's like to say that you're just like painting with this broad brush is is reductive and i and unproductive to rhyme to your loss like i yeah i would love for somebody who doesn't like anime to find their few animes because they've just robbed themselves of

a unique experience maybe yeah it's a very cynical viewpoint valo evian says what games have you been playing recently on a more serious note how much of video games helps you with stress and anxiety during quarantine i think that's sort of a hybrid question have you had a particular game that helps you through the stress and is it mountain blade it's not uh no um for me i mean the past few months and we'll probably end up getting more into just our emotions of this quarantine. But for the past few months, I've had a lot of ups and downs. And I think near my lowest point mentally, which I actually feel like I'm in a pretty good place now in the scheme of the past few months, which I feel good about because it got really dark for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when Ghost of Tsushima came out on PS4,

getting, having a game, well, that was fun for me because I hadn't really heard of it before. I had no expectation. I feel like with every game now you get, there's so much buildup and so much excitement. And there was for that game. I just wasn't aware of it.

But Eddie Burback told me like a week before, hey, are you going to play this game? And I was like, I don't even know what that is. And I looked it up. And then I watched like one streamer play it for a little bit the day it came out i was like well i need to play that and i bought it and yeah something it would just had this very pure feeling that i hadn't really gotten from a game since like breath of the wild or even like skyrim where just the discovery of it and just the uh i got so sucked into it feeling yeah and that was really important for me during that couple weeks when i got really into it it has that soft skinner box effect in the vein of far cry 3 and

then every single subsequent ubisoft game yeah right that at least that was the taste i got from it where yeah i'm being sucked into slightly repetitive play but there's never a moment i dislike and it doesn't feel disingenuous in the way that like an assassin's creed game does right that's what i mentioned i think i mentioned that in uh the ps now video i made recently which is like the i was talking about a game and like all of open all of the open world games are repetitive when you want to break it down to it but it's like if you enjoy the thing you're doing over and over again why does it matter if it's repetitive it's like and you're slow it's the progression of it too it's like oh i learned this new move you're still getting stronger and yeah that was really fun and just

the aesthetic of it was really captivating how did you how did you feel about the story i felt completely disengaged until it like got past a portion of exposition i yeah i couldn't even really tell you what the story was because i i it's with a lot of games, I feel like I am trying to pay attention, but I often don't. And the only part of the story I really pay attention to is how it affects the gameplay or whatever. I think that was one where it's like, it didn't really matter what the story was. It's like, okay, I'm a samurai and I get to kill people. It's a good framing device. But have you ever played a game that was more uncle-focused?

There's a lot of uncle- work in that game yeah yeah not but other game developers should take note get more uncles get more uncles yeah there are almost no uncles in runescape i was gonna say related to runescape runescape is a lot of repetitive action over and over but there's a catharsis there that like clearly it's like completing this loop of like, oh, I want to like, I felt addicted to RuneScape, even though like the basis of the game, there is a lot to it. It's hard to talk about the game for its merits because the holistic experience of it has value that's hard to describe. Like when I'm in the game and I'm like, for example, like I kind of burned myself out because I was I was trying to catch up to my good friend, Russell. And he's he's kind of casually played for the past couple of years. So his account's like very far along.

And I was trying to I was trying to catch up. And then I started doing all this in-game content and I started like befriending RuneScape streamers. And it was like I had a call with one and he was like helping me through like the in-game raids. I don't know how familiar you are, Drew, with like Chambers of Zerik or whatever. Well, I like watching other people do that, but I've never gotten, it takes, well, that's the thing.

There's so much with RuneScape, so much content with RuneScape that is literally behind a wall of thousands of hours. You can't skip to that. You have to grind forever. And my original RuneScape account got moved over to RuneScape 3. That one is super high level, but it's like, so I tried getting into RuneScape 3 like a couple of years ago.

Couldn't. So I had to make a new one. And by the time I got anywhere close, I'd sort of burnt myself out. But continue what you're saying, sorry. No, no, no, no. But that's like, that was my experience too. Like, I think there's this, people have said like, you never quit RuneScape. And I think that that's like a thing where it's like, you play it for these like bouts

and you're really into it. And then you like burn out and then you come back. But, and then you're like, oh, I have all these nice stats. Who did this? Who was the time traveler? Who like went ahead and leveled me up? Like the game has a lot of depth,

but like you said, Drew, it's behind a lot of walls of grinds. And the nice thing about my job now is I do sit in front of a computer a lot. So if I'm editing a video and I have like RuneLight, the RuneScape client, having a thing where it like wakes me up when the game is like idle, then I can just like do the AFK thing in RuneScape, go back to doing whatever I was doing.

Then the game is like, hey, you need to pay attention to me. And I'm like, okay, well, let me click on the tree or whatever. And like, let me go back to what I was doing. Yeah, exactly. Let me click on the different fishing spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This one moved god damn it um and then starting over from scratch was the reason that i didn't start old school initially but then same and then i started i made a pure account because back in the day so uh i think both of us have this in common that in 2006 we posted runescape videos on youtube yeah and so like my my runescape channel today is actually my runescape channel my YouTube channel today is, I was just talking to-

Which is a conduit to one day being a YouTube channel. So I was talking to- Real, real channel. I was talking to Sabrina, friend of the show, Abelina Sabrina about this, where she's doing a thing talking to people about their, where their YouTube usernames and handles come from. And my, my old YouTube user, like you can get to my account, like youtube.com slash Jarvis now, but you can also get to my account by youtube.com slash user slash vsympathyv. And vsympathyv is my pure PKing account because I used to post PK videos. I initially like made a pure in old

school and I was like, oh, this is fun. But then I started to feel restricted in the content that I could do because when you have an account that's restricted and I was like oh I actually want to play the full content and then doing the early game to mid game grind was so fulfilling to me and I was just like I've played I've played all these quests before I've like done all this stuff but like there's something about it that just feels good and then it makes sense why there are some content creators who are constantly making new accounts and doing the same actions over and over but it's but it's still fulfilling and then on top of that there's leagues and we will stop the runescape talk but i have to mention that uh dead man mode and leagues are super fucking cool and yeah it's really cool the way they've yeah kept incentivizing like really high knowledge players to come back and have new

challenges or whatever because now they have like little seasonals where it's like oh you've got to start an account from scratch, but like XP is 10 X and like you have infinite run energy and whatever. So it's like all of the grind is mitigated and then you can just play an interesting version of the game. So that'll probably be when I pick back up. Cause there's a new league starting and the last dead man mode, a shout out to tears.

You the YouTube channel, the only real YouTube channel. He messaged me. It was like, dude, you should play channel he messaged me it was like uh dude you should play dead man mode and i was like i'll see about that and then i played it for like 10 minutes and then i was literally at the end of dead man mode i was uh rank like 100 uh in in all of all of rivers because i was playing it so fucking much oh my god uh he would log in he stopped playing and then he would log in he'd be like what you're still playing this and i'm like yeah man yeah well to your point about the

game having like you thinking like oh i already did all this i don't want to do it again but the the most satisfying part of the game is that early to mid leveling because you can do things so fast especially if you know the best way to do it yeah where after a while it's just like i said go from one level it's going to take me four days so like in six hours and it's not fun anymore but it's also taking you to the point where you're the most addicted to that particular loop and the the dopamine release of hearing the audio i mean i'm playing more from it's been linked in so played runescape but i'm recently i mean you're never not an addict you're a sober addict so i'm i'm getting over my addiction to destiny which will never fully be gone but it's destiny became an actively antagonistic experience i genuinely did not like playing it because as far as efficiency

goes it has these caps on how efficient you can be and that just makes me very angry that's telling you that that's the game but then handicapping your ability to do it was just very frustrating but there is now i think i was able to quit because it plateaued into a place where there's no traditional leveling in this modern version of of destiny so instead it's getting new loot and using that loot all loot technically just has a non-specified amount of defense boost to different stats it's just a visual bar that you kind of have to intuit the numbers for but the number associated with it is just a power level so if you have three year old piece of loot with an old power level and then you level it up to the power level it's just as good as anything else the age doesn't really affect it

so a lot of people just keep leveling up the things that they have and i plateaued at a point where i was never being able to level up any further and at that point i was like well if you're gonna make the process a bit obtuse and kind of exhausting, give me that rush. Give me the consistent 0.5 higher number over and over again, because I'll stay, baby. I'm not going, I love you despite your faults. But then it started cheating on me pretty consistently. Yeah. The worst part about RuneScape is that the levels scale exponentially. So the skills are 1 to 99. So if you're level 92 at a skill, that's halfway to 99, which is, that should give you a sense of what, in terms of experience, which is like,

should give you an idea. And then experience caps out usually before that point. So you're essentially doing the same thing for the entire time leading up to that point. You can only have the option of doing like a repetitive thing. Yeah. So I found the most fun part of making my new account when I switched to old school was just getting all of my stats up to a certain level, like base 40 or base 50 or whatever. It's like – because you spend this time doing whatever, but then to get something from 1 to 40 seems like a lot, but you can do it in a few hours if you do it right. And just that constant like the little fireworks over and over again. Oh, my God. It's so fucking expensive. constant like the little fireworks over and over again oh my god okay and the last thing i will say is that yeah i got into efficiency scape a little bit but not efficiency scape in terms of maximum efficiency but like what works for me scape like yeah yeah exactly like i got my magic and uh range

to 99 very quickly because there's a very expensive way to do it and and so i like did that but yeah and then also i watched a seven seven hour video one day like while i was like kind of depressed like on the couch watched a seven hour video of someone maxing an account it was like a 7 000 hour journey and it was voiced over and i watching that i was like okay now i kind of want to seeing this for whatever reason made me want to play like a main and like actually like go after that stuff okay uh end of we keep saying it's for real last thing we're gonna say about runescape i think it's like i'm already thinking there's gonna be a youtube highlight of this that's jarvis and drew talk about runescape for 30 minutes but

i wanted to go back to sports because you you had mentioned it but i wanted to ask what like sports you're into like is it just football or and and like, what are your teams? So I've been a Miami Dolphins fan my whole life. I've always been into football pretty much since I was like five or six. And then as I got older, then I would watch every game and I would pay attention and I would pay attention in the off season. I would follow all the transactions and everything. So I've always been a diehard Dolphins fan and they have rewarded me by doing nothing. Yeah. Ever, never winning anything and just being terrible in perpetuity. Yeah. And then in the past few years, I've gotten really into basketball.

Well, I've always been into basketball, but I would really just watch like the playoffs and the finals. And then, then I started watching more of the season. And then I was like, and then once the Orlando Magic started being a competent team because they were terrible for a very long time. Right. Then I got really into it. I started going to the games because it's like with so many games in a season they're pretty cheap to go to I even in January before everything went to

shit I was like me and Amanda went and we paid too much not too much money but like we paid for the the court side seats because I've always wanted to do that yeah so we just found like the cheapest game out of all of them. Cause it depends, it depends on who the away team is. It was a wizard. So they're not a huge, not a huge market team.

It was maybe less, it was like five or 600 bucks for both of us to go and sit courtside and have this amazing experience, which now looking back, I didn't even know what was happening in the future. So it's like, I treasure that experience even more. That was well worth $500.

And so you get the seats and and you get to sit we sat right behind the away team literally that the seat in front of us was the other players and coaches um but then you also just get free drinks and free food and so that was cool but yeah i got really into the magic uh recently and they just got eliminated from the playoffs yesterday so thank you for bringing that up sorry for your your loss. It was time to invest. Did you grow up in Orlando? Like, have you been there for most of your life? Yeah. Yeah. I was born in North Carolina, but we moved here when I was like two. So I lived in the same house for about 22 years. Super, super cool. The reason I ask is because growing up in Gainesville, Florida,

I didn't have any pro teams that I would pay attention to because I lived in Gator land. Because like the Florida Gators were amazing at every sport, baseball, basketball, football. When I was in high school, they were national champions in basketball and football simultaneously. And it was just like- Was that the Tim Tebow years? That was the Tim Tebow years. Or it was like the overlap of like Joe Kim Noah, like on the basketball team, the Billy Donovan years with like the Urban Meyer years of the Gators.

And that was just like, the entire town is like super oriented around the University of Florida. Every small business is like Gatorland Toyota or like Gators Dockside, Gator. It's Gators Dockside. It's the Gator Burger place. It's the Gator Chicken place. You know what I mean? And that was the culture that I was really steeped in. And I never kind of got a pro. I never became a fan of a pro team. And when I went to college, Georgia Tech also had D1 basketball and football. So I would follow

that and I would go to all the games. I would go to every football game. And so I loved basketball and football, but now I'm in the space where I don't have any association really to, or I don't have any incentive to follow the college sports as much anymore because I'm not in the thick of it. And then I don't have a pro team. So then I moved to San Francisco after college college and the golden state i got to watch the golden state warriors be the best team in basketball for the five years that i was there and then i bounced to la and so now i'm watching the lakers like me like oh my god i know wow

you've had the opposite uh fandom experience i know i have never gotten to watch a successful team and you've watched the most successful teams at every level geographically yeah i just kept i don't know like my life just led me in in that it gave me a very unrealistic expectation of how most things will go in life to be honest yeah i yeah i wanted this to be good and it was cool i guess that's how everything will be from now yeah there will be no i will face no resistance um no need to make sure that that happens with agency and even like even like well i was just going to say that like cam newton was briefly at the university of florida and he stole a laptop and got kicked out and then he went to like junior

college and destroyed all of everyone because he was cam newton and then he you know went on to like what was it i can't remember auburn yeah and then he won a championship yeah sports are fun i it's all like storylines and in in the human the human element of it and uh i think that there's really good docs and stuff like all the 30 for 30 i love sports documentaries yeah then obviously the last dance is like amazing um i feel like even if you're not into sports you can watch a doc a sport a good well-made sports documentary and get invested even if you're not into sports you can watch a good well made sports documentary and get invested even if you don't give a shit because that's what

they frame all the best points the storylines that's why the last dance was so interesting too because it's these things we didn't know that we thought we knew from the people who were there it's just like the idea of the speedrun videos I was just going to say yeah

to go back to a dorky element that i can at least relate to where i watch those and i'm totally enthralled because it's a shortcut to literacy that i don't have i don't i never grew up with the vocabulary of that i'm sure some people are like what but what about cricket no none i grew up in a sportless house and amongst a sportless community i just couldn't despite the fact that I really wanted to, especially when I was in LA, like the nuances to it are fascinating. And that's often the sell for professional wrestling as well, independent of quote, realism. It's the, it's theater, right? And the idea that you would build out a super comprehensive law and background and history that only the most dedicated people would know. And then they get the payoff from that like comics. That's great. And that's fascinating. And watching a sports documentary gives you even just like a,

just like a little bit of just a flavor of it. They're all so good. And it like, I feel like if you're not a fan of sports or if you're one of those, like a sport ball, I don't know nothing about that. Like people, then you watch a sports documentary and you realize like,

we are all the same. We are just telling the human story of trial and tribulation and that's possible shit infuriates me as somebody that is not actively and i won't even say interested actively involved in the fandom of any sport right now it's just it's gatekeeping based on the vocal minority like oh all the jocks that i used to be really into sports it's like yeah but they're like maybe two percent yeah of the entire sport watching audience and you just happen to like you could very reasonably say that the gaming demographic are all terrible people because the majority of the vocal ones are terrible people right but i'm more committed to the gaming community than anything else in my life what all is also great about sports is it like you said

theater it's the live theater aspect of it where you don't know what's going to happen. There's so much stake in it or whatever. I don't know. That's what it's like. So you think sports are stupid, but you like movies, right? Or one thing that kind of bridged the gap between me and my wife Amanda is she really likes the show Big Brother. We watched that together. It's a reality show of people living in

a house and they you know they get power one week and vote someone off and all that and big brother they're like not allowed to like it's like very much like uh it's completely contained completely contained yeah yeah but what's fun about you can see every single room yeah and what's fun about big brother compared to like survivor which i used to watch but have not really gotten into um is survivors all like pre-recorded and then edited and then they do the live finale but Big Brother is going on as it's happening so every Wednesday there's the live eviction

show and you get to see these live reactions and she gets really into those and it's like okay I think I see why you like sports now it's like you get excited. Does the US version have the actual ongoing live stream like the UK version does? Yes. You can straight up consume every single minute of it if you'd like to uk version does yeah yes you could straight up consume every single minute of it if you pretty much yeah they only cut away during like the competitions

because they don't want to spoil it for the show but pretty much you can watch whenever um and we have done that before and i don't want to talk about it but yeah but that was sort of the bridge it's like so yeah you understand why why people would like sports if because you get there's a you have a player in the house that you like the most. You're invested. You want to see them win. You don't want to see them go home. And that emotion of it, being emotionally invested in something you can control over

is something we've talked a lot about lately. It's heartbreaking, but so rewarding when things go well. And so much of, I mean, all of our lives, especially you two, so much of your time is spent curating something that's very, very consciously made. Like here is something that from front to back I was creatively intellectually responsible for. I just raised this video baby and here I'm now sending it off to school. Whereas this is, I mean, not unlike, to be honest, Sad Boys is like a nice reprieve from the other stuff we work on because it's done instantly it's like i used to do improv uh in san francisco and that was like a big outlet for me because it was like you do it you do it and then it's done and it existed and it was interesting

for the audience that was there but if you look at a videotape of it don't do that it's it's pretty strange you know what i mean like it's like you're describing a dream to someone true you dabbled in improv yeah that was that i was gonna say that was both the thing that drew me to improv for several years, but also what I think ultimately makes people frustrated who do improv for a long time is the lack of permanence, where it's like we had this amazing show, this big

shared experience, the audience was into it, we all had this great show, and then it's just gone forever. I mean, you can record it, but it's not going to have the same, you know, impact if someone watches it later on. But also the having the creative um outlet that you don't have to prepare a lot for you just go and you create these things in the moment it's so fulfilling to yeah like the highs i got from improv were were better than you know some of the other highs i've gotten in my life creatively just that coming up with the perfect line on the spot or creating this

moment and living in the scene when we like when you there's that like you know you start a scene you don't really know what's going to happen but you just sort of have that mental connection where you realize what the joke of the scene is yeah and then you see someone come in because they know exactly what the next step would be and it's like it's it's a one of the most beautiful forms of art it's like kinetic it's like it's like uh shout out to the movie don't think twice uh because i think it's got a really great depiction of improv like this dance like it's like shot all the improv scenes are like shot like a dance from where you're within it and it gives it this life that like typically like if you had a still shot of improv it just

doesn't give it the dynamism that like really exists in the moment. And also shout out to Middle Dish and Schwartz because first of all, they're incredible. I've seen them live a couple of times and their Netflix show is fantastic. Like their Netflix, like I have never seen improv captured on like real improv captured on film as well as it is for that show. Yeah. I was really like, I love those guys to death and I was still worried going into like, oh, it's going to be weird, but it's like, I don't know if it was the way they filmed it or I guess it's just cause it's, I don't know. It also came out at a good time where it was at the beginning of the pandemic and we were dying for that human connection, that shared human experience that you get in a live show. It just, it felt like you were there. There's a very healthy amount of kayfabe, you know that term?

In the wrestling community, kayfabe is the persona that you maintain independent of the actual stream, the streamed show. You maintain, Hulk Hogan goes out and about and when he goes to the mall and somebody's like do you want fries with that he goes yeah brother you know like that's that's maintaining kayfabe and i think the healthy distance they have in the scene which is something that like um like lauren hates right on snl where you ever break or show a part of yourself that's independent from the from the show i think middle ditch and swartz because they know each other so well and the show is so small scale are able to dabble ever so lightly in the isn't this silly that we're doing this oh man it's the fucking best yeah yeah you're in it without killing the scene like they do like i've seen thomas rendaldich and ben schwartz do this like middle ditch uh one of my favorite shows that he does is improvised shakespeare like in chicago it's like improvised

shakespeare company it's like one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Everything is in rhymed couplets and Shakespearean dialogue. And they improvise an entire three-act Shakespearean play. It's awesome. Yeah, that shit's insane. But I've seen it in that and I've seen it in Middle Edition Shorts where they have this power to comment on the thing as it's happening without losing the thread of what's happening in the moment, which is very difficult to do because. And it's something you're told by an improv teacher, not to do. You're told to commit a thousand percent every time. And if you're doing it wrong,

it comes off as hammy or self-destructive. Like you're shitting on what's happening. And then you're, but, but if you do it well, like they do then. Yeah. You feel like you're brought into the fun with them. Cause it's like, wait, am I, wait, who was I? But I thought I'm over here. And then you see like them building the stage picture because they're playing like several characters at once. And it's like, oh yeah, you know, it is a lot that you have to keep in mind. They're teaching, they're showing you a little bit of peek behind the scenes of like, you know, where we last left our heroes. Like I was standing over here, there's a guy who's dead on the floor right here. And like, they have some sort of relationship and I'm starting to lose it. And then we together come up with like the resolution to that because everyone wants to see them land the plane, you know? And so it, there's like a group catharsis element to it. I don't know. It's just such a thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think dabbles in the same aesthetic to a degree, not just quite literally in that it's a somewhat similar sense of humor but his shows have become so metatextual at this point where the joke is can't are you just as shocked that this is working out as i am

let's all indulge in how strange that is while also not compromising on how funny the actual scripted jokes are right in the same vein as vein as Lonely Island. Like those are, I think we always talk about both of them on Lonely Island because they're so influential on, I would assume, all three of us. Is that accurate, Drew? Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Whereas those shows never compromise the actual, or rather those tracks never compromise the actual quality of the tracks. You could listen to them independently. They're always actually funny. They're always well produced. But also you could very easily indulge in the comedy

of wow they put this much work into a dumb pop song about uh having an orgasm in a grocery store like that's like it's kind of wacky why i don't understand like it's like this line between committing and not committing because going back to the thing we were saying about improv the reason that improv teachers tell you not to break or or anything like that is because you aren't committing to the moment. You're not being in the moment. You're thinking. You're not supposed to write in improv. You're not supposed to be writing in your head. Yeah. It's like you're all inflating this balloon together and you just come in and pop it. And it's like, okay, you destroyed the whole thing to make one bad joke or whatever. Exactly. But somehow I think that like Bo toes that line of like,

I, his songs feel earnest and like, but he's also got the wink and a nod to every, like everything that he's doing. And it allows him flexibility with the types of topics that he covers or the jokes that he makes that would not be afforded to, you know, a less self-aware comedian,

I guess, or someone who takes themselves too seriously like i think that there's like this great like like line with bow i do wonder if like we were saying where improv just so rarely translates to a recorded format if their tongue and cheekness throughout it that's sort of like winking to the audience helped bring viewers in if they were too committed like maybe it would have been like as an audience watching from home it's like i'd actually this is weird but for them to sort of be like yeah this is silly right because it is it's so i agree what they're trying to do yeah so

to acknowledge that is is is common ground between you and the audience and they do it in a funny way without shitting on it you know what's happened is it what's the name of bench watchers like short form project where he was doing it's said as a morning talk show with him and a couple of other performers that's like a funnier die thing yeah it's a funny production from like three years ago and the whole conceit is that they have each episode is based on a stage of grief because he gets his him and his wife break up and then it's just a series of painful steps right afterwards. And the genius of it is that the breaking is so rare.

It's a little like the Californian sketch to a degree where the break is so real and so transparent. Like they start using real names for five seconds after it happens and they hard cut back to the scene. The push back and forth contrast is always like a horror movie like you're hitting that like oh my god wow they really just broke that scene so aggressively but not for too long and not so sincerely like okay well now i'm now we're just watching a bad play so drew i think you make a really good point i'm thinking about what you just said about the like the wink and

the nod or like the acknowledgement of the audience makes it so that it does work. I think that there's something that's very similar to how YouTube is, right? It's like the parasocial relationship. If you go to improv, they're talking to the audience. They're like, hey, what's up? We're Middle Ditch and Schwartz. We're going to do some live improvised comedy. It's never happened before.

Someone's going to give us a word. That links the audience to the us a word that like links the audience to the stage a little bit and links makes the audience feel like a part of the show and i think that the way that like they are connecting to the audience the viewers at home is very similar to like a youtuber connecting to viewers at home by like looking into the camera and speaking to someone so it's like i feel like they, they're managing to do both. And I think that both does that does that as well. It's also sort of that, uh, that self awareness or, or self, uh, what's it called when you like make a self deprecating, that's what it is.

That's it. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's similar in that way, which is a big thing on YouTube where it's like, I think people tend to gravitate towards YouTubers a lot of the time. It's because they seem like very real people and it's good to put yourself down at times instead of, especially with with what we do where we're talking about other people in a negative way if we're just like all cocky about it it's like well okay this guy's kind of putting me off but sort of making jokes about yourself to break you know connects you

in that way yeah you too especially i think um and you know fuck danny fuck cody they're all trash but you too i've been holding that in for a long time finally get through the whole tour we found the title of the episode oh yeah by the way we came we came to the tour date in la and that's right it was amazing yeah so just wanted to shout out to we are two different people tour in the case of you two and the rest of the goats of course uh i think there's a very delicate line to lead between again maintaining that that kayfabe in the scene of this is well structured pseudo-scripted where it needs to be i don't want to lose a narrative i have a statement to say and information to convey and set up for these jokes but then not hi i'm like a fully insincere character

and i'm just here for the memes and who could say i don't know what to what degree an individual video not just from from you guys but anybody sharing the same kind of space, it would be impossible for me to say what was scripted, what was semi-scripted and then what was complete improv because it doesn't really matter because at no point are you claiming that, Hey, this is a fake version of myself with an entirely different name. And if I ever break that illusion, I failed in that way, or this is all improv right off the top. And then I failed in that way. It's just, hi, I'm Drew.

You're familiar maybe with me and my bad content. I'm here to produce something in the exact way that I do. And you engage with it in whatever way you like. I don't want to prescribe how funny it is to you for the reasons that I'm doing it. My humor happens to include self-deprecation. It's not there as like a PR tact move.

Yeah. I kind of want to talk broadly about quarantine. So what if we gave a rating of quarantine as how it's been for our mental health? Drew, what do you think of quarantine? Cool. 10 out of 10. I love it.

A plus. Yeah. It's the fucking best. Can I give it a raise? Oh yeah. Of course. So out of 10, say that again. Oh, I. Can I give it a raise? Of course. So out of 10, so again, all of you guys go first. Jordan, what would you give all of quarantine as a 0 to 100 score?

The quality of quarantine or my experience of quarantine? The effectiveness of quarantine. Oh, I would have a big 150%. It's crushing it right now. Strength to strength. I feel very contained. I'm so quarantined. The subtext here is, how's everybody coping? How is everybody doing? Right, yeah.

Like I kind of mentioned earlier, I think like a lot of people, there's been ups and downs throughout quarantine. There's times where you sort of just accept what's happening or you just have a good day and it feels like, okay, I can do this. And then you just sort of break down in the middle of that day or another, you know, and then there's the ups and downs. Yeah, definitely been better recently. But that is after pretty much all of July was like, I had more panic attacks in July than I think I had in my entire life combined up until that point. It was really bad. I went to the ER two separate times because i thought i was dying and you'd think after the first time i wouldn't have to go again but it

was a different kind of panic attack that i'd never experienced before the second time where i thought i had a stroke oh my god it was terrifying i thought i sort of i don't even know how to describe it and what scared me about it too is it came on so suddenly whereas generally with panic attacks it's sort of a slow buildup of anxiety and it brims over. Whereas that I felt pretty good all day. And then it just sort of hit me really fast. And I was like, the only logical conclusion here is that something like I broke a blood vessel in my brain or something. Right.

And I was shaking and it was. Are there historically triggers? Because that sounds like a cumulative effect, right? Like, God, this month has been so overall stressful that now I just snapped. Or is it typically tied to like, holy shit, what a terrible phone call. It's, yeah, it's, well, I don't know.

It's my, I can't even relate the anxiety I've been having this year to the anxiety I've had in the past because it's so specific to what's happening. And a lot of mine has stemmed from anxiety about my health, where I went the past six or seven years, never going to the doctor, never thinking anything would be wrong with me because I'm a healthy young person. And then all of a sudden this year, it's like,

I'm constantly paying attention to my body in ways I've never had before. I'm like, is my heart beating too fast? Is my heart beating irregularly? I was convinced myself I had congestive heart failure. I don't know how I read something on the internet and that's what triggered my first really bad panic attack. But I've gotten better because then I was like, well, I need to go to the doctor and get tests done. Everything's fine, thankfully.

But once I found out, it's like, okay, there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing going inside of me. Several hundred dollars later, of course. Then it's like, okay, now I nothing wrong with me. There's nothing going inside of me. Several hundred dollars later, of course. Then it's like, okay, now I can just address my anxiety as what it is, as being psychological and not, because it was hard before to talk myself out of something if I couldn't fully believe that it wasn't real. Once I convinced myself something was going on, it's like, well, I can calm myself down

mentally, but if my heart is failing, then I need to, that's not going to stop happening if I feel better or whatever. The thing about, yeah, with anxiety too, like if you can't anchor yourself in what's true or like a fact that you know about, like if you have a doctor that says we ran the test and everything's fine, then you can grab onto that like sort of safety handle whenever you're like, is everything going wrong? It's like, no, things did not change on the drop of a dime. The last time I felt like this, I went through this experience. I can like use that. It's such a cycle too, where as soon as you start to have anxiety, you,

if I'm looking for symptoms of a serious problem, all of them are also symptoms of anxiety. So your heart beating really fast or sweating or feeling dizzy, even all these things, it's all like a panic attack. A really bad panic attack is very similar to a heart attack attack and that's why people go to the hospital when they're having a really bad panic attack for sure feels like something physically is happening and it is not even internally i mean as people i think we're all fairly self-aware about our mental health and that it's just as valid a concern as anything else but that propaganda that it isn't is in there deep it's hard to it gets tricky to shift that i would guess in all of our cases you sometimes want to temper it with oh it's just my brain exactly and then then i go to the er and it's like you there's these doctors who are probably

dealing with way more shit than i'm dealing with they're in the middle of a health crisis and i'm like i'm scared i feel like an idiot when i'm done it's like like, it felt so real to me, but then now I feel like I'm wasting your time. And so then there's sort of that guilt of it too, on top of it. But good on you for like going to the ER and like trusting that, because I think it's very easy to hold that in for exactly the same reasons that you gave, which is like, I mean, you know, maybe my problems aren't worth it. Like I would rather you, you know you take that leap and find out nothing is wrong. Yeah, I'm glad I did. Yeah. And the guilt is like a separate, I guess, a separate issue, but it's something that can be

worked on independently because I'm proud of you for going and getting checked out. Thanks. I've ignored a lot of panic attacks in the past and they've always, things get better, obviously. But I'm glad I went because it was very much, it was such a specific type of anxiety where I was like, if I don't get validation or confirmation from the doctor that nothing's wrong with me, then I will continue to have this. And it's not as simple as just like, well, I should just get prescribed anxiety medicine because even if that happened, I would still believe that there was something going on

with me. So I had to like go get a CT scan, which is ultimately what I did. And that was really weird. But it's like a very, like a trapping feeling, right? Like it's like the only way to escape this is with some sort of objective truth about like what i'm obsessing about or what like sort of i can't what is intrusively unavoidable in my brain yeah you're also the worst the worst resource for support in that place that is like uh trying to teach yourself to do physio while all of your limbs are broken it's just like yeah sure i can see the rationale behind the fact that i'm being irrational yeah

maybe i should consult my brain to see what my brain thinks brain oh you're panicking okay yeah you're not you're not helping here in that case i mean it's my brain why would i be wrong i'm inside me i i have like a like a low hum of anxiety. It's a lot of like catastrophizing or worrying about the worst case scenario for things. But I think more for me, it's like I have like depressive mood fluctuations. Could be related to my ADHD or something. I just recently started taking like an SSRI, like Zoloft or whatever. And that's been really helpful for like stabilizing stabilizing my mood but the narrative in my head during whenever i'm having

these like negative cycles of thought is we've described it in the past like it's propaganda it's like your brain is like going like oh my god you're bad have you seen this poster of uh of you doing a bad thing and it's like but no i i think i'm good though and it's like i don't know about that i think you might be bad and you're dying it's prejudice box news just did a report on you yeah exactly and it's like and they're pretty reputable and i'm like are they and it's like i don't know i'm your brain and it's like they are they certainly are today oh god have you ever like done therapy or anything like that like for developing like coping mechanisms for dealing with like panic attacks and stuff no i just i've had done therapy it's more just like general i guess they haven't been very helpful if they're not helping in a way

but it's just more sort of like talking through shit but uh yeah yeah i'm also lucky that i have uh a wife and and someone to live with because I know for people living alone, I can't imagine living, if I lived by myself and couldn't, we couldn't vent to each other, I would be fucking miserable. I would have been, I don't know. But in a lot of ways, my wife and I are each other's therapists, which is- Yeah, yeah. Having someone who can validate your experience and that you can vent to, and yeah, that's so, so important. And if you don't have that for anybody listening, don't be afraid to seek help or reach out to friends because it's very easy to think like, oh, I don't

want to put upon someone else. But like more like 99.9% of the time, if you reach out to someone for, for help, they are going to try to help you. And they're going to rather you have reached out than you have just like kept this to yourself and like self-destructed, you know? thing with that too is like it almost doesn't even matter what they say or who you're saying it to what's important is to vocalize it and to hear it yourself because sometimes that's enough to be like okay maybe that is not that is kind of ridiculous or not that it not to down like in my case it was like i needed to say like i'm dying i feel like

i'm dying well i'm not dying like i don't i don't have some urgent medical was like i needed to say like i'm dying i feel like i'm dying well i'm not dying like i don't i don't have some urgent medical thing where i need to you know it's so to being able to talk to a lot of it it's as simple as just hearing it sometimes and yeah it's so real like community is so important and you know we do get a lot of people saying like they don't have like friends that they feel like they can easily access so we do have a discord and it's like exclamation point discord in the chat. If you just want to find some like minded people just like have a group of people who it's like, okay, we have something in common. And they're not going to dismiss your problems if you've got them, you know, because we don't always

have the answers. But at the very least, like your friends won't have the answers either. But you can get like, yeah, just that validation. It's like, goes a long way. Yeah. Sometimes even just hearing that other people go through the same thing is all you need to be like, oh, okay. If a lot of people are going through this, then I can, it validates it. Exactly. Like one of the biggest things for me, like I remember, like I was going through, I've told the story on the show a number of times, but probably in 2017, I went through this big breakup and I was so affected by it. This is like, I don't know, maybe five years ago. I was like, why am I so affected by this? It feels dumb that I am, but I'm of the two minds where it's like, I hate that I'm affected by this, but I am,

and I don't know how to move past it. And I somehow, some way, I learned about cognitive behavioral therapy and started reading this book called Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy by David Burns, MD. It's this like Stanford psychology professor dude. And he was kind of one of the first people to popularize cognitive behavioral therapy, the basis of which is like thoughts influence your mood. And so you can have like negative thought patterns that like lead you to like having a negative mood. And if you can identify those thought patterns, then you can kind of stop those spirals like before they get too deep. In the book, it kind of outlines all these lies that we tell ourselves or this like propaganda or whatever, like the kept catastrophizing being a big one. And the fact that previous to reading this, I felt so alone in my pain where I was like, this is so unique to me. I'm the one who's like

this. And this is the narrative through line that's playing through my brain. And no one can convince me otherwise. Reading a book from the 80s where like an old white dude is like, have you ever felt like this? Turns out everyone has. And I'm like, what? It's you you're actually a member of a club that is most people you know like that almost instantaneously less alien to like this this experience and like oh other people go through this i'm not weird i'm far more normal than i am not normal you know all these like kind of lies that i tell myself were sort of balanced with this very like all this science and in evidence to the contrary true did you ever because it seems like you're very comfortable acknowledging that it is a panic attack and it's

not just some sort of ambiguous uh you know sometimes things happen to me and i've got drug and disease did you have a catalyst moment for being able to use that verbiage or when did nouns come into it when did you get comfortable with that awareness yeah i mean i would say that the ones i've had this year are so clearly panic attacks because of how physical they feel. Whereas any sort of overwhelming anxiety feelings I've gotten in the past have not necessarily felt that way. I've had a different type of anxiety experiences in the past, and I don't even know what the name for it would be. I think it's dissociating. I don't know where before the panic attacks is what I would call them but I

I don't even know if that's technically what it is although I guess it's up to me to decide what my experience is it's actually up to me Drew but in the past I think what would happen is sort of like I would start to and it's I don't even know how to describe it where I would be doing something and I would start to feel like I would start thinking about like dreams I've had recently and they start to feel more like memories then they are dreams and reality starts to feel more like a dream and it's like I'm I and I feel like I'm zooming out of my body and it's very scary and I It'll last like 30 minutes or whatever where I start to and I have like no memory during that time. It's very weird I don't even know what that is

I tried googling keywords from what I just described yeah and there's a million different answers because everybody has their own experiences yeah but in the past that's what I would just call a panic attack if I was having one even though that's not your straightforward panic attack which right for me recently it resembled more of like a heart attack or just sort of this I'm shaking I can't stop shaking it just feels like this physical yeah well you mentioned that it doesn't necessarily have that explicit term but there's so much i don't know internalized oppression around am i allowed to identify as the thing that i think would help me as an identity actually has anybody ever played depression quest it's a zoe quinn game from like i don't know a half dozen years ago it sounds awful i mean i'm on one right now

that's actually all of the quest in roots game dragon slayer 2 yeah it's this amazing game by zoe quinn who amongst other things was one of the key targets of gamergate at a certain period of time and which is the thing that we're all pro. We're pro gamer games. Obviously, yeah. We're certainly not man-children that have been able to develop past it because we're adults. And even at the time, we thought it was fucking deplorable.

Grow the hell up. Joker's a bad movie. It was a game that is just an incredibly simple kind of mud style text adventure with the occasional image or FMV. And it's maybe an hour long at most. And it's just, the more it goes along, the more it starts to simplify and almost in a good way, trivialize traits of depression, take away that sort of,

I tried talking about this on my stream the other day, and I can't find the words for it without seeming too like aggressive or contentious. But like, lately, I've been trying to say more instead of like, look, you're validated by your own experiences. And you know, everybody feels bad. And like, sometimes when you you aren't successful in your career or you aren't successful socially and you need that external validation you know you just got to get off your own back and lately i've been trying to re-articulate it as like fucking get over yourself man like yeah it's not stop indulging it's like kind of cathartic to indulge oh my god it's my favorite thing i'm such a workaholic like i'm

such a workaholic and i i'm so depressed when i'm like not able to engage with all the things i want to all the time and i'm there's a lot of romanticism around i don't know not having a special term and having a uniqueness or some nuance that other people don't have and that sensation of like playing depression quest i just i burst out crying i played it in like my second year of college where depression was becoming a real thing that was when i think supposedly bipolar to manifest the most now you were you were a fan of depression before it was cool is that correct i was huge for it um oh oh you like depression name three terrible days monday tuesday and wednesday happy days yeah genuinely encourage people whether they're like listening or in the chat or in the

discord or whatever like please please please if you have the tiniest tiniest inkling that you might be dabbling in stuff like this i guarantee you there's a blanket term for you and i'm not saying that's necessarily always good to trivialize the nuanced thing that you're experiencing. But don't burden yourself with, well, I've got a problem so unique and specific that there's not even really... I don't have the right to call myself depressed because I don't have the certificate from sad school. Looking for permission to almost like seek help, right? Like it's like no one's going to say, no one's going to put the label on this. I may not be graced with the privilege of having someone else put a label on this thing and i'm only hurting myself by not seeking help you

know what i mean like or trying to hold it into that make it that um the unique element of it i was just gonna say sorry the reason that i started talking though i did start to lose my thread there um thanks adhd i uh was reading like hannah Hannah Hart's book randomly. I don't even know where I got it. I think Mayuko lent it to me. In it, she was talking about getting diagnosed with ADHD at 25 and her experience with it. And that was the first time that I had heard someone walk through that process in detail. And I felt like that gave me permission to seek treatment myself or seek even an evaluation because all it was was just like, hey, maybe my entire life has been this way. And perhaps there's a name for this. because people see themselves in me sometimes when I'll talk about it, or I can find resources that help me and share and further illuminate parts of my own life experience that I didn't understand.

Like there's this thing called, there's a thing that some people with ADHD have called rejection sensitive dysphoria. And it's a feeling of intense rejection. Some people feel physical pain from being rejected. And a rejection can come in so many different... All your brain needs to do is feel like it's a rejection. So the example I've given before is that one time I was telling Jordan how much caffeine was in black tea and green tea. And he was like, oh, I don't really care. And that was enough of a rejection. I just like make the most trivial example ever for me, my brain to just like shut down

and go like fight or flight. Oh no, is my, does my friend hate me? Is this like, you know, none of it makes any sense, but it feels so real. And it's so like instantaneous. And I had had that experience my entire life. I used to like, when I felt like I was being laughed at or not included in a group in high school, I would always just like quiet down. I would shut off. I wouldn't talk to anyone else.

I would sit in a corner and like mope to myself because it was like that indulgence that you were talking about, Jordan. And then like this year, my psychiatrist was like, hey, I'm going to send you this white paper. And I just want you to read it and see what you think. And it was a description of RSD and about what this guy has seen in his patients over 15 years or whatever. And I was like, this is my entire life, bro. This is every way that I've interpreted almost all these different interactions. It was like someone had wrote it about me specifically. That's how like on the money it was. And that was a crazy experience.

And it was so empowering because now I had a name for it. And also now I had a path to treatment or a path to address it or to talk about it in therapy or to start figuring out whether or not things are just my personality or something that's like atypically like neural atypical about my brain you know so claiming the thing can at the very least get you on the path to finding better coping mechanisms or dealing with that thing better so drew do you do you have any terms that you do or don't engage with or that you think you may hold some claim to but like aren't comfortable using a la depression it sounds like anxiety is like a very comfortable thing for you to address yeah i mean definitely depression anxiety it's interesting how

much those things have shifted for me this year in particular where before i was always like sometimes depressed and my depression was always for me personally uh i would never speak blanketly about anything because i've never had certain experiences but for me personally my depression was almost always self-induced where it's sort of the cycle i end up in where i'm like i'm not feeling very creative or whatever so then i don't do the thing i should be doing and then i'm upset because i didn't do the thing i should have done and then now i'm depressed because of that jarvis you've talked about that before that sort of self-destructive that's been me my whole life and now that of course we pick the perfect job where we have no boss and we have to be our own fucking boss. And it's great most of the time, but then sometimes it's like, you piece of shit,

do the thing you're supposed to do. Yeah. Why can't you executive function right now, bro? Yeah. Just go to work and work eight hours. That's what you do. Sometimes you're a terrible boss. Oh yeah. My boss sucks. Yeah. I'm a terrible boss and a terrible employee. I used to be such a good employee when I worked for someone else and they would just tell me what to do and I would do it. I hated it, but I was really good at it. I always worked very hard. And then now sometimes I forget how to do that. Big relate.

I guess my point was like in the past, my depression has always been very much like it's kind of my own fault when things go wrong. And the best way for me to deal with that is just be better. Not indulge in my depression because sometimes you'd be like, oh, you suck. i don't i don't even deserve to be happy and that's that's part of depression yeah um that indulgence like the journal yeah where it's just like keeps feeding itself but yeah and then you don't yeah and then it's that cycle so getting out of that but then this year it's been more like what is will things ever be normal again all of these things that are out of my control so it's a different it's a different experience. And it does feel like more of a dark cloud. And I don't even remember what your question was. But this is just keep talking. Just keep going. Yeah, I guess it doesn't

even really matter. And then my anxiety in the past, as of all two were, and I still have, I assume I still have social anxiety. I haven't been able to test that lately uh but it's always been very social for me where i think like uh i'm excited to do that thing this weekend and then the day it comes i don't want to do it all day and i have to go to a go do a thing and people are going to be there it sounds awful then i go and i do it i feel good having done it whereas now it's more it's been more of like what if i die what if i have this thing wrong with me? What if someone I know dies? What if it's these things are out of my control for me to get putting it back in In my control is the thing where it's like, okay if I'm anxious about this thing

I need to figure out if I if I have a reason to be anxious about it Like I said, I don't want to just go get anxiety medicine If the thing I'm anxious about actually exists because then what the fuck is medicine gonna do? It's gonna dull dull dull the pain, but I'm still, or not whatever, but I still haven't addressed the thing. How have you guys been with stimulants? I know you mentioned you do take Zoloft. I've never taken antidepressants or anything like that. When my anxiety started to get bad this year, I started cutting out other things. Like I, I was never a big drinker before, but I just have completely stopped drinking at all. I stopped drinking caffeine for a while,

which is insane because I would say coffee is such a big part of my life. I would not go a day without having coffee. I would go, I would get a venti cold brew from Starbucks, which is this gallon of, and Starbucks coffee is a whole different level of caffeine. So I went from doing that to like sort of cold turkey quitting. And I stopped for a while and I did feel better. And then it got to a point recently where

I felt like my anxiety was back under control and then I missed caffeine. So I started drinking caffeine again. And now I feel like I have a good balance again. I figured out the right amount of caffeine where it's like, I still like it. I still like doing it. I love coffee. I like the taste of coffee and I want this to be part of my life. And I feel like even though I was, maybe I was more leveled out before I kind of missed the highs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really relate to that. And like stimulants for me, like I had, you know, undiagnosed ADHD for all of my life, but like found all these ways to all these coping mechanisms to deal with the symptoms.

And so it's like, I would never do my homework or it was always hard for me to get me to do my homework. So I'd put myself in situations where I was doing homework in groups or I was whatever, you know, like I knew that I would never be able to study for like interviews for my old job, like working in tech and stuff. And they have these like this ridiculous interview process. So I like became a teaching assistant for the class where that material is taught. So I constantly had to like have it fresh, you know? So it's like, I had all these coping mechanisms, but then a big part of it was coffee. And I never understood why coffee made me feel so clear. And it turns out that it behaves very similarly to, I take Vyvanse now for my ADHD.

And I've tried Adderall and whatever. The craziest thing to me, first of all, from a neurological standpoint, a lot of these ADHD medicine stimulants do the same thing, but they have different side effects in people that no one really understands. So you end up having to shop around. I took Adderall and I couldn't poop. And that was the thing. I couldn't poop. And then I also was so sensitive to caffeine that I drink a sip of a... There's two big popular root beer brands. There's like Mark's and then like mug or whatever. And one of them is caffeinated and one of them isn't. I was avoiding caffeine when I was taking Adderall because it was, it sort of amped me up to the point where I felt like I was in the movie crank and like my heart was going to like beat out of my chest. And I

took a sip of fucking whatever the caffeinated root beer was at an airport. And it was the worst experience of my life. So I was like, okay, no, no, for me. And also like before going into the medication side, I was like, okay, I know what my baseline is. I've gotten this far in life. I've all my coping mechanisms are cool. This is like, I'm going to see if medication is a, if it helps or hurts, like I'm always open to like, okay. Like my eyes get tired sometimes when I stare at screens all day, let me put on glasses and see if that like makes my life a little bit simpler. That's how I think about it. And I have like a relatively small doses of Vyvanse. I take it every day. I drink one coffee in the morning shortly after my medicine. I feel that a really high peak, what used to happen before I was taking Zoloft is unrelated to the caffeine, I would have this big, big mood

crash where like in the middle of the day, I was suddenly like lethargically couldn't do anything about anything and had to like work up the energy to like go back into the world. And all that energy was like building myself back up and I don't feel those crashes anymore. So now I feel like I have a peak and then I level out the rest of the day unless, you know, something I get like really good news or something. And it like improves my mood through that. Like I feel like my ADHD medication is maybe a 10 to 15% improvement on my clarity. It's just enough that it's like worth continuing, but it's not life changing in any way. Like none of the side effects are like, and for the Zoloft as well. And I don't want to become dependent on anything.

Not that there's anything bad about that, but I do like feeling in control. So I feel like I'm in a place right now where I've got like what I need from the medication to be at peace. And I'm not seeking like sort of new solutions to my problems right now. Jordan, how about you? I have a PhD in this shit at this point. I am 100% medically dependent on my medication and I will never not be. And I fully intend to remain that way. I spent most of my life playing on expert mode. I feel like,

like, which is very frustrating because now you were Goku and a weighted gi. You just like took off your clothes. It's like, Oh, it was 30 pounds. Yeah. The weighted gi is the same color as my skin.

And so when I found it and took it, I was like, Oh, this is what I look like and how I operate. No, I weirdly, I don't want to talk about severity much on the show show because I sort of feel like it's it's people could misinterpret it as like a oh so you're more of an authority on this because of your severity

it's like no it's all just the same shit with different milligrams like whatever the I have incredibly severe ADHD and I did my whole life and wasn't diagnosed until about two years ago and the I'm a different human being just real real quick, due in part to like, you had told me that when I was going through my experience with like getting diagnosed and we were talking about it on the show, like back in 2017 or whatever, that was what kind of got you to look into it for yourself. Is that? Yeah. You were definitely the trigger for that. Not to give myself credit. It was more about like the show. You know what? Pat me on the back right now. But more just like it's i think it's

so important to be able to have these conversations because like there are so many people who from hearing our stories will go well you know it can't hurt to take an evaluation or talk yeah that's exactly right you know what i mean i mean the thing that you you gave me was more of a it was more than anything a framework for finding out like you can in the abstract you can say oh well i got diagnosed with this thing and then you're like at like you did you just go to a medical school and asked like what was what did you literally do and you had more specific recommendations or also you're not weak by for doing it that was another thing that was big for me it's like no one who has braces anyone goes like you're weak for getting braces you you're

using like a or you're weak for getting glasses it's like no like we've normalized these things it's time to normalize any like you said this to me on a previous episode jordan it's like all the medication is doing is making sure that like the chemicals floating around in your brain are like the same ones that everyone else has you know you just need to take it right yeah that you intended chemicals yeah if you're breaking at any higher or lower that's wrong like yeah yeah like uh nobody wants to be overstimulated by stimulants. You literally want it to... Coffee is obviously, that's like the most common in to realizing that maybe you do have a, not so much a restriction on the chemicals flowing through you,

but like a misapplication of them. Because there was a period of time where I would just go to Phil's literally every single day. I would not go into the office and I wouldn't tell anybody I wasn't going to the office because I just couldn't introduce that into my mindset. I would go to Phil's, i would sit there for 11 hours and i would do an obscene amount of work with a medically dubious amount of caffeine and the reason that that would happen i had no idea but all i could diagnose is that i wasn't able to change just kept happening and this was the only way to stay sustainable and i always had this you were like i can't be productive in the office like Like this is my like happy place. Cause I've been to the Phil spot.

And I don't have the resources to find out why. Like there's no, we don't have time. It's like, it'd be like trying to quit like heroin during the zombie apocalypse. It's like, I just, I just can't like, I get it. But like right now the risk is too big. And the, right now I take a, I'm on Adderall. Funnily enough, when I did Vyvanse,

I had the same experience you did with Adderall in reverse. That's how buck wild this shit is. It's like, you'll be the judge. Try my drugs three. It's because we have the two opposing halves of the locket. Yes, that's right. Half a pill in each. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I took that for, I don't even want to call it attentiveness, literally just chemical flow. And then the more I was doing it, even though I felt like a real human being for the first time ever and i i colors were all vivid and i could truly experience life then uh my volatility increased and that was the point where after i moved to la i saw a psychiatrist psychiatrist and they were like bro it's bipolar that's what's happening like there's nothing there's nothing mysterious or intricate about this it's just a very simple you're on a slightly indelicate rhythm by design.

And if you start taking a stimulant or drink a lot of coffee or whatever else, you're the scale of the sine wave is just gonna go bigger and you're gonna peak and value a lot faster and a lot more intensely. And now I don't know, I feel very stable. It's something I'm still a tad self-conscious about because I feel like I spent half my life talking about it.

Cause it is such a, it's almost like being devoutly religious. be like what are you doing this weekend you're like well well i'm going to church that's because you went through your whole life uh without this thing that now is making your life more livable and it's like i you want to shout it off it's literally the gossip yeah the good news yeah you want to shout it because it's like oh this changed my life this opened my eyes. This opened my eyes. Not unlike my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, no relation. It's just a different dude named Jesus.

Yeah, great bloke. He lives in the Cotswolds in the UK with you. Drew, are you tempted to explore that angle a little more? Religion? No, I know you've been on Reddit like me. It's not for you. Are you more tempted to explore medication in some um i have been especially recently um i did i think there's been a little bit of a stubbornness to it my whole life and a fear of it too i've always had a fear of medications

in general because of the side effects and how much they vary from person to person like you guys are saying how how random and sometimes severe they can be. I've seen in my own life, people who have gone down a slippery slope where they started with one thing and then, okay, cool. Now my, you know, now this is all, but I can't sleep anymore. So now I need to take something to help me sleep. And then, you know, that, that's how the pattern evolves. So I've always been like kind of taken pride in like, but it's not so much, it's not really pride. Does that make it sound good? It's more of a stubbornness to be like no i'm going to go through life without stimulants and trying to do what was in my control recently caffeine was a big one for me i think there more people should be aware of how much caffeine they're putting in their body and understand that that's even though it's like

oh i can't start my day without coffee it's like well that's kind of a problem right yeah i can't go i can't live my life until my uh my stimulant goes it's like and you and it's not like dosed in any uh careful way it's like coffee can be as much as like you have one cup or you have three cups or you have a cup at 5 p.m to get through the day and you can't sleep and it's like i've always for a long time i was having trouble sleeping and it's like and once i stopped drinking caffeine i i would i didn't lay awake at night. It's like, Oh, yeah, the thing I do in the morning affects the thing I do at night. Yeah, I would have thought but yeah, for me, I definitely have thought about it feel like I'm in a good place now. But I know that I'm always one one bad situation away from just biting the bullet and getting into it. And maybe that'll be the

thing where it's like, Oh, I should have done this years ago. Sure. But like, you know, we're all on our own, you know, timelines because I have no regrets about my, in fact, like I'm very grateful for my experience thus far because I'm very similar to you, Drew, where I was like, I've gotten pretty far without any, you know, medication. Yeah. But then I'm like sort of getting to the point where I'm like kind of a little bit of a self-improvement kind of person where I'm like, okay, I figured out this problem. What's the next problem?

And then I reached a wall where I was like, oh, I just can't focus. And it feels really bad when I can't focus. So like how am I going to- And I'm losing hours to this. Like I'm just not as tall as Kevin Bonner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I'm losing. The agreement that I had with myself in going the medication route because

it's only been a couple years ago I was like hey at any point you can nope out of this and you're fine stimulants in particular are non-addictive so it's not like I'm going to like need to keep chasing this or whatever and I can see if it works for me if it works for me cool if it doesn't I was doing fine before I you know can continue along the path that I was doing, but I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't living life on hard mode, you know, like, is there something that I could be doing that's easier? Let's see. Okay. Well, you know, we, we tried, we gave it our all. There's always another option to try. And then there's no shame and there's no shame. Yeah. How are you guys with, do you guys smoke weed at all?

With ADHD, it's like weird. Cause I like, I do a little bit, but it's, my experience is strange. And also I want to quickly say about caffeine and coffee. It's just, it is a drug caffeine. And it's funny how normalized it is because if you replaced it with a similarly strong stimulant, it would seem insane how we talk about it. Yeah, if coffee came out of a syringe, we would be like, hold on. But it might as well with the way it affects...

Or the narrative, the fact that we can replace it with whiskey. Then all of a sudden the narrative is completely different. Hang on. What we assign to it as a society is like more negative versus like more accepted. And even encouraged. Or encouraged, yeah. And like, I was just going to say that like coffee has had hundreds of years of being normalized in this way. You know, like during the like Renaissance and shit, they were like, have you heard of this shit?

Like it's insane. We're all writing basically the tea lobby of like the 1400s or whatever. They were like, oh no, coffee is going to get in like the way of our tea business. Let's get the Pope to like say no to coffee because all these people are like meeting up in their little shops and they're drinking their little coffee stimulants and they're writing poetry and shit we it can't like no no no no and then the original working out of films like i heard this on a podcast the npr podcast uh about history the name is escaping me right now but the pope tried the cop tried coffee and he was like oh this is pretty good actually and then like you And then it was okay.

And that sort of system of normalization isn't the same for a lot of these other things that would otherwise be on the same playing field as caffeine. One interesting thing is that Tylenol is very strong and very dangerous, like acetaminophen. And if Tylenol was introduced today, it would not be available as readily as it is. And it would be something that you need to get behind the counter but because we kind of have this like because we have like a culture around it and it's grandfathered in to being like on the shelves then like so so it goes that's interesting i hadn't thought about uh that being introduced yeah anytime there's something new it's like yeah yeah yeah hold on i don't know yeah yeah i mean it was literally the impact versus what was possible before. It was the pill from Limitless.

It was truly like, you know that thing that everybody experiences and basically is the routine of humans, like the way that they live? No need. Just put these little blockers in your brain that stop the chemical and makes you feel sleepy. I guess kind of for free, you just boil it for a while. I mean, Elon Musk is putting chips in our brain now. So that's the next big move. Thank you, Tech Daddy.

Can't wait. Pretty excited. Will it have Bluetooth? All the people that asked for this, I guess. I did ask about weed and I forgot. Oh, yeah. The only reason I brought that up was because that is another thing that I cut out where I was, I've never been one to smoke regularly. It certainly doesn't make me productive. So I've done it.

Well, I did do it regularly, but I do it at night when I'm just like, you know, chilling, playing video games, whatever. I would do it almost every night. Just take a couple hits of my vape. And with that, there's always, I always have the potential to, uh-oh, I'm anxious, but I always am able to. A lot of times with weed, it would help me sort of face whatever I was anxious about. And then I would think about it and I would just accept whatever it is. And then I would feel better. But it was sort of a painful

experience at first. And that's a lot of what people describe with like psychedelics. Sometimes you're just in denial about something and having to like force it with eyes wide open and or face it with eyes wide open. That's like, oh, I can accept this and I can. But yeah, that's how weed was for me for a while. And I would do it a lot. And then it's just hit that, that started to trigger my anxiety even worse. So that's something I haven't done that in several months, but that's been kind of a big part of my life for the past few years, at least for relaxing. But big same in that same period

where I was just going to Phil's exclusively. And it actually triggered off if I had a pretty bad drinking problem for most of 2017. And then was then in 2018 diagnosed with, hey, this is like a thing actually that people do when you have this condition and it's not being medicated and then as soon as i got medication i was like this is not that interesting to me anymore like i drink and i feel you know maybe a little tipsy a little bit fun but it's not giving me like a huge fucking

rush of all the surplus chemicals i didn't have access to and then yeah i smoked weed pretty much every night for about 18 months and And I had fun 15 times. Like most of the time it was exclusively, I want to get to sleep. And it makes, no, I'll take that back. It made practicing wave dashes amazing. I would have a lot of fun watching combo contests. I'm so much better at video games when I'm high. But it's next level shit.

That's when I would play Netplay on Melee and do do okay what's really interesting is that like i've talked about i have like a very non-addictive personality when it comes to substances so far in my life like fingers crossed where like like alcohol or weed it's like it's out of sight out of mind i like don't crave it i forget that it's there if uh it's not in front of me and and so weed wasn't ever a thing that like was a practice of mine but socially i would like engage because it's like whatever uh but i never that's the worst place to do it yeah i never understood why that became a social thing for people it's like because in in high school i would you know that's when i first started doing it it's like yeah yeah you just do i've never experienced it like i'm already awkward as fuck i'm 15 and now i have this thing and it's

like but then i would do it at home and i can just i don't have to worry about how i'm sitting or what what my heart is doing whatever all these things that don't fucking matter i can just live with with whatever and i can focus on what i'm doing and think differently about it yeah anxiety is it has a huge relationship with that because anxiety often goes hand in hand with explicitly with social anxiety. And the idea of, again, handicapping yourself with something that's already challenging is like social suicide. Why would I do that? Yeah, I'm much more of a social drinker because I need like a look for social interactions.

A little bit of lowered inhibitions make me like I have so much more fun because I'm not overthinking about the social interaction. I was thinking about that recently in college when I was the most critical of myself I've ever been and could not get out of my head for the life of me. I remember like I would always get so hard on myself. I would like I'd wake up in the morning and I would feel like, am I funny today or am I not? And most of the time I felt like I wasn't and it was a self-defeating practice of like, and I would just, I'm putting myself down before I even put myself out there. Every time I think of a joke to say, I think about it in my head before I say it

and you lose that. So I was just more awkward than anything. And then we would drink and I would, I remember being really, making people laugh a lot when I was drunk. And I was, because it's like, I was capable of doing it but i would i was in my my own way oh 100 yeah so that being and that's something i don't really drink much anymore um but it's definitely a social thing it is nice to have the one beer yeah i think pete holmes always talks about the one and a half beers

is the perfect amount and any more than that is like but that one and a half man it feels great yeah pd and a half is what keeps you crispy crispy definitely out of sight out of mind if i don't have beer in my fridge i'm not like i gotta go get it but if i have it i'm gonna drink it so yeah no same i have a couple p home stories one when i moved to my neighborhood in la uh i went to brunch with anastasia uh our friend and who works with me on like assistant stuff because i need someone to hang out with me while i write because otherwise i won't do my work um but like we went to lunch and Pete Holmes was like the first person to walk in and I was like, welcome to the neighborhood. I've probably told this story before, but I went to a Pete Holmes show in college, like at the Atlanta Improv in like 2012

or something, 2011. And I was with my friend Jasmine and Pete was doing crowd work and he pointed at me and Jasmine and he was like, are you two dating? And we were like, no. And then he pointed at another couple that was in the front row and he was like, are you two dating? And they were like, yes. And he looked at the guy and he was like, what's your name? And the guy was like, Jarvis. And I said, what? And he looked back at me and he was like, your name is also Jarvis? And I go, yeah. And he's like, you guys have to hug now. So he like, I like hugged this other Jarvis at a Pete Holmes show. And it was like you guys have to hug now. So he like I like hugged this other Jarvis at a feed home show And it was like the weirdest experience ever shout out to Pete Holmes Keep it crispy. It's so telling how

Stressful the previous year has been because when you said that you made physical contact when it yeah you mm-hmm how far away At least six feet away. You were using your wings That's irresponsible Pete the last thing i wanted to say about weed and anxiety is that a very new experience for me with weed is that i have this problem right now and it's the dumbest shit in the world that i hate it's the it's like the weirdest anxiety that i have in my life and it's that when i'm home alone, I want to like watch a TV show. And for some reason, I can't always like get myself to engage my attention in the show or the movie. Like I have anxiety about not being able to be elsewhere. My attention always wants to be like split in so many different ways.

And the thought of focusing on a singular thing like gives me anxiety to the point where I like go on Netflix and I'm like nah nah I can't watch any of this I can watch maybe a documentary because it's informational and I can like be on my phone or something during but whenever I want to watch something narrative where I need to be paying attention I for some reason can't get over it never have this problem when I'm watching something with another person I love going to movie theaters because it like forces my attention and then I can yeah you're in the movie movie place. You're here to do this thing. There's no reason to have a distraction. And I can watch- You'll be shamed if you look at your phone.

Exactly. Yeah. And I can watch YouTube videos because there's something about the parasocial element of it where it feels like I'm not losing that attention thing. But recently I was high and felt the anxiety of wanting to watch something, but then I was able to push through it.

And I was like, this is interesting. Like, cause you were to your point about the, like, just being able to focus or just being able to get over that like little hump that, that was interesting. And I was like, maybe this is something to keep in mind for the future. Yeah. I, cause when I'm high, I can put almost anything on Netflix and, and find a reason to enjoy it. But oftentimes when I'm not, I think

a lot of this is just the way technology is now or whatever, where it's like, maybe I have ADHD. I don't know. But I feel like I do need to be doing a lot of things at one time where it's like, if I'm playing a video game, I should also be listening to a podcast because it's the perfect time to be doing that. And if there's a loading screen, I got to look at my phone. Otherwise, I also got to click the fishing spot in RuneS yeah exactly yeah it's his multitasking obsession yeah it's so much more filling to be focused on the one thing than oh yeah split your attention between a few but i would i would throw out that like all three of us spend a lot of our time working on things where you can only focus on it like the the design of what it is especially say you're editing

yeah or like sound design music anything like that it is to the detriment of what you're making to have something else happening at the same time especially with dialogue yeah whereas if you're able to shift your focus in your free time into okay i don't have my ears free because my ears are going to be thinking about the like music that i need to make or like sound design that i haven't done yet i don't want to have my eyes free because i'll just be looking around and undistracted by the world yeah i really don't want to have like if i watch something and i'm not eating or drinking something i gotta be eating something otherwise it's a waste of time every available sense makes me more miserable yeah i want if the room doesn't smell optimal if the my hands aren't playing a game or fidget cube or whatever, if my eyes aren't watching something in a decent aspect ratio, I just start losing my mind because it's a place for the anxiety to get in.

It's almost like Helms Deep, building up as many walls as possible. That's why coffee shops were so nice. I've never been so productive as when I'm in a coffee shop and all my senses are being consumed consumed by the sound of like noise or in like lecture when I, I've done so much great work ignoring a professor lecturing about a topic like in college, like, like for some reason there's something about like everyone's sitting here doing this thing. I have perfect focus on whatever the fuck I'm doing on my computer. Yeah. Like I so relate to, I need to be doing something else. Like part of the reason, like the boring parts of editing, the parts that are straightforward, like there are creative parts and that's fun for me, but the boring parts are like,

I wish I could listen to music while I was doing this, you know, like more when I first started. Sometimes I will. Yeah. Sometimes when it's like, oh, I'm just going to be putting text on for a while. I've already listened to this part of the video. I don't need to hear it. I'll put music on.

Yeah. Things that you can get into a flow state with are things that like work with my brain, like where I can like lose track of time. When I was first learning to edit and everything was new, there were a lot of creative problems that fully engaged my brain. And now there are a lot of elements to it.

They're like, well, I know how to solve this problem. And there's going to be no interesting pieces for the next like three hours of cutting dialogue for this. So I don't want to do it anymore because it's like not fun, you know, like, or it's hard for me to get myself to do it. Yeah. Well, I also find though that sometimes

the most tedious parts of editing are my favorite just because if it's a time period during which I felt pretty unproductive, it's good to just do something mindless that is objectively productive. I'm putting, I don't have to think about what I'm saying in the video or I don't have to think about what I'm saying in the video or I don't have to write.

Writing can be a quick process or it can take forever. Sometimes I'll spend a week writing a seven page script. But editing is just like, my mind is just focused on this. And during July, anytime I was having like my really bad anxiety periods, I realized once I finally had editing to do,

I felt, I didn't think about any problem that I was focusing on while editing that I was focusing on before. And I realized, oh, maybe it's not an issue if it doesn't happen unless I'm thinking about it. Like if I'm able to just completely put my brain into something somewhat mindless, then yeah, so that helped me.

That definitely helped. Yeah, no, that's actually, I think that's a really good idea. Like I felt that weird, like nothingness feeling or of like boredom. Yeah, I should really just like edit or do the most mindless thing. That's a really good idea. Like I felt that weird, like nothingness feeling or of like boredom. Yeah. I should really just like edit or do the most mindless thing. That's a great idea.

I always get really excited if there's like a graphic asset to make or something. That is an opportunity where I can definitely listen to music. I'll definitely be encountering a problem I need to Google and think about. And I'll almost certainly have an end product that I've at least somewhat satisfied with. I've got to do the thumbnail for,

for the Danny episode. And I'm looking forward to it because I'm like, can listen to a podcast i can just like you know what i mean like that'll be that'll be fun sadie's like in the background just like are we doing dinner or what's up yeah and i'm just like sorry babe i am i'm relaxing right now it's like you are now listening to npr and i'm like yeah fuck yeah ira so that about wraps it up for today i'm really excited about the conversation that we have we got into some really deep stuff can't wait to hear what everyone else thinks but we wanted to say thank you to drew for joining us thank you drew thanks for having me we end every episode of sad boys with a particular phrase now the phrase is uh we love you and we're

sorry so jordan and i will perfectly in sync as if rehearsed say we love you and then you'll say and we're sorry and that'll be the end of the that'll be the end of the show. Okay not the end of the episode it will be the end of the show. The end of the episode but then not the end of the stream. And we're sorry or was I too early on that? No you did it actually that was it. No it's actually perfect. Jordan one two three we love you and that's the end of the show because Drew already said it. Boom. Gucci girl. Gucci girl.

How you doing? How you moving, girl? Moving, girl. How you doing? Looking at future, girl. Future, girl. Yeah, we on now. Take my money.

Go away. All you want is. Go to rich for me.