The Blindboy Podcast - Barbie and Mattel as Millennial Pavlovian Conditioning

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

How the deregulation of children's advertising in the 1980s conditioned millennials to have a positive emotional response to Mattel toys which temporarily soothes the anxiety of not feeling like a real adult. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Escape the hedgehog's headlock, you dreadlocked costigans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. It is August, and we've just had the wettest July on record. This July has had 215% more rain than any previous July. The vengeful personality of Irish weather is growing in intensity. June was very hot and very dry and then it rained passionately for all of July. We've been very sad in Ireland this week because unfortunately Sinead O'Connor died. There's been an outpouring of grief and also a huge amount of anger and anger as hypocrisy, especially towards the media.

Sinead O'Connor, when she was alive, was absolutely vilified by the media. She was very outspoken. She was very passionate about justice and compassion towards other people. She would use her platform to express this compassion. Sometimes, especially the past 10 years, she would go through periods of mental health crisis and would sometimes post her way through it on social media.

And a lot of people vilified her for this. They'd call her an attention seeker. They'd call her mad. They would shame her. They would laugh at her. And it was egged on by the media. And they would use this to then completely discredit her when she would speak in a compassionate way about social justice or tried to help other people and the media decided to define Sinead O'Connor as an unstable

person who isn't worthy of being listened to and whenever she would try to release a piece of work or do a gig the media would instead change focus away from her achievements and towards her behavior during times of mental health crisis in this really sneering shitty fucking way that had nothing to do with human compassion or decency. And if you've ever been through a mental health crisis, or you've been around somebody who has been through a mental health crisis, it's not pretty, it's not fun, it's not crack, it's frightening, and it's stressful. And if we're to be a society that's compassionate,

we have to actively express compassion when someone is going through a mental health crisis that's just what we have to do it's the decent human thing to do and fuck all these platitudes about be kind or just talk to someone don't take the piss out of people who are going through a mental health crisis just don't do it

don't take the piss out of them don't frame headlines in a way that sensationalises them don't define that person by that behaviour don't place clicks and engagement over their wellbeing and that's what a lot of the media did to Sinead O'Connor

when she was alive and not just the media, people people on social media did it too because I remember it, I remember seeing it and it broke my fucking heart so there's a lot of pain and anger in Ireland this week after the incredibly unfortunate death of Sinead O'Connor people are not just grieving for Sinead O'Connor

they're grieving for how she was treated repeatedly and consistently as a pattern and people are angry that the same journalists and tabloids had forgotten this and were expressing their grief during the week. And the feeling I had throughout this week is that I read so many fucking wonderful tributes and words about Sinead O'Connor. So much love and respect, especially from the hip hop community as hip hop celebrates its 50th birthday, I think this month. But I'm talking about people like Ice-T, Chuck D from Public

Enemy, people who invented hip hop, outpouring their grief and respect for Sinead O'Connor, because it's hard to imagine this now, and this was before my fucking time, but Sinead O'Connor because it's hard to imagine this now and this was before my fucking time but Sinead O'Connor in the 80s was massive she was one of the biggest pop stars in the world and she was white and she was being primed by record companies

to become the next gigantic thing to be listened to in suburban America to be turned into a product a commercial product and Sinead never wanted that because she was a punk in her own words she was a punk she used her platform in the late 80s to draw attention to hip-hop artists to draw attention to African American artists in America because hip-hop artists, to draw attention to African-American artists in America, because hip-hop in the late 80s was not seen as music. It was not music,

and what was considered music was being gate-kept by mostly white men, and hip-hop was considered to be noise shouting over stolen music by people who don't have talent. And there was racism behind it. And black musicians weren't getting played on MTV. And hip-hop wasn't getting played on MTV unless it was framed as novelty. And Sinead O'Connor would have seen the injustice and the idiocy of that and she used her massive platform on all these giant US TV shows and MTV she would use her platform to speak about Public Enemy or to speak about Ice-T she she fucking shaved the Public Enemy logo into the side of her head and performed on television. She collaborated with MC Light

in I think it was 1986. MC Light again an amazing pioneer of hip-hop music and herself and Sinead collaborated on a track called I Want Your Hands On Me and the two of them appeared on the front cover of the single. MC Light was there on the front cover of the single. MC Lyte was there on the front cover of the single. But this is the bit that sounds nuts. It doesn't seem strange at all today for a white female musician to have a rapper on their fucking, on their track. I mean, the biggest track at the moment is

from the soundtrack of the Barbie film, which is the massive, highest grossing fucking film of the summer. And the lead track off that is a remix of Barbie Girl by I Spice and Nicki Minaj, two African-American female rappers. So now it's not only normal, it's standard. But in the fucking 80s,

Sinead O'Connor, to do this, it would have hurt her commercial career to do this she really had to stick her neck out to support rap artists and she fucking did it and she wasn't being performative there was no cool points for doing this back then

it would have made her uncool because rap music just was not being taken seriously as an art form Sinead wasn't being performative in doing this she did it because it was the right thing to do because rap music just was not being taken seriously as an art form. Sinead wasn't being performative in doing this. She did it because it was the right thing to do. And as an artist, she had her ear to the ground and she understood as an artist, the most important music that's happening right now is called hip hop.

That is the most important music. It's more important than Bob Dylan. It's more important than the Rolling Stones. There's a new art form that's coming from the African-American community and it's so novel and new that ye can't even hear it as music, you silly bastards.

She used her position to help a lot of careers for no reason other than a love of art and doing what's right. And it was lovely to see people like Ice-T and Chuck D remembering that that's just one example fucking every famous person everyone important in the world this week expressed their grief and respect for Sinead O'Connor and what broke my heart was I wish she could have been alive to see how much people loved and respected her and to see how important she was

how much esteem she was held in and it's so infuriating and frustrating that so much time and space was given to fucking vilifying her when she was alive for fucking what

the crime of the crime of having a public mental health crisis, the crime of asking for help in a way that was appropriate to her at that moment, something I'm also realising this week with all the tributes that are pouring out for Sinead O'Connor

she represented a very specific type of Irishness. An Irishness that I'm very proud of. And it's something we're losing. It's an Irishness that's rooted in a solidarity with people who are undergoing systematic oppression. An Irishness where, historically, where people with white skin we were colonized we were colonized

for 800 years so there is an Irishness whereby under the system of racism we benefit from having white skin we also have an understanding a historical understanding of being colonized being oppressed, having our culture taken away from us, our language taken away from us, and to mobilise that history into compassion and solidarity with people who are being oppressed now. And Sinead really fucking represented that. And it's the type of Irishness, it's Daniel O'Connell in the 1840s bringing Frederick Douglass over to Ireland on a speaking tour

to speak to the Irish people who were just about to emigrate to America and to say to him, you're under the boot of oppression here but when you go to America, things might be different and there's going to be people there, like Frederick Douglass here. And they have a system over there called slavery. And when you get to America, you must oppose this. And show solidarity to the people who look like Frederick Douglass. Or it's Bernadette Devlin McCadiskey.

Going over to New York and being given the freedom, the key of New York City. And handing it to the Black Panthers up in Harlem. Or it's our historical solidarity with the people of Palestine. Or it's the women who worked in Dunn stores from 1984 to 1987, ordinary workers of Ireland, part of a trade union who refused to handle products that were made in South Africa, who showed solidarity with people who were facing the unbelievably brutal system of apartheid and it became international news. It led to the Irish government banning the importation of South African goods while the system of

apartheid was in place. Our historical solidarity with the people of Cuba. Sinead O'Connor represented that Irishness. The Irishness of coming to terms with and working through the historical trauma of systemic oppression through acts of solidarity and compassion with people who are going through something similar and I'm not trying to gloss over the conduct of the Irish diaspora. The history of Irish America is a history of racism. Like when those Irish people in the 1840s who were impoverished and completely oppressed here in Ireland, when they went to New York, they didn't find solidarity with African-American people

or enslaved people who were freed. They found their whiteness within a system of racism by committing acts of brutality against African American people. They became the fucking American police for fucks sake. You've similar stories in Australia with Irish people and violence towards indigenous people in Australia and the Irish Catholic Church who were involved in some real nasty oppression to indigenous people in Australia. But Sinead very much represented that Irishness of solidarity that's rooted in an understanding of our history and it's an Irishness that I'm proud of and it's an Irishness that I now see as something belonging to a

previous generation. It's an Irishness that my father had and something he tried to instill in me. I remember being, I was probably four or five years of age and it was around the time that Rodney King was in the news. Rodney King was a man, an African-American man in Los Angeles who was beaten severely by police in the early 90s and what made it unique is people had home video cameras so Rodney King being beaten by the Los Angeles police was filmed and leaked to the news media and it was being played on loop non-stop on Sky News and I only remember it as a memory because I was very young I was a child I only remember it

because of what my dad said to me. So the news were playing this footage of this African-American man being beaten by police. And I'm assuming the newscasters were saying something racist. Or they were taking the side of the police or they were blaming Rodney King for being beaten. Whatever it was, I was staring at this as a kid. And my dad came to me and he said, Do you see that man on the television there being beaten. Whatever it was I was staring at this as a kid and my dad came to me and he said do you see that man on the television there being beaten? That's your grandfather and he made a point of saying it to me and that's why I remember it and I hadn't a fucking clue because I'm a child

I didn't know what was going on. I was at an age where I was only figuring out oh my skin is white and there's other people whose skin isn't white. And for some reason, this matters a lot in society. And also in Ireland in the early 90s, I don't think I'd ever seen, I don't think I'd seen a black person or any person of colour in real life only on the television. I remember thinking how strange it was. How is that man on the TV my grandfather? What does that mean?

Then I get older. I start listening to the lyrics of people like Ice-T who spoke about police brutality spoke about Rodney King I listened to Public Enemy and years later I understand it what my dad meant was you're two generations removed from that and don't fucking forget it because my grandfather grew up in West Cork when West Cork was controlled by the British and ordinary Irish civilians were being beaten and murdered every single day by British soldiers and for the people of the north of Ireland this is a living memory and what my dad was saying was you can't change history you can't change what happened but don't ever forget it and don't ever side with evil and systemic

oppression is systemic oppression the system either works for you or it works against you and know when to identify that when you see it and don't accept it as being normal especially when you benefit from that system and that is one aspect of Irishness and it's very constructive and it's very compassionate and it's very compassionate. And Sinead O'Connor represented that. And we're losing it. We're fucking losing it. We're becoming a racist country.

We have direct provision in this country, which is explicit systemic racism that's going to have generational impact. The far right are gaining traction. Racism is becoming normal normalized. Racism towards the traveling community has always been normalized. And we've become this dirty little puddle where international corporations just launder billions and billions of money in our country to avoid paying tax. And when Sinead O'Connor went on Saturday Night Live and ripped up that photograph of the Pope,

she was doing the exact same thing that Bernadette Devlin did when she was invited to New York by Irish America and was given the key to New York City and handed it to the Black Panthers up in Harlem. They were both doing the same thing. White America gave them a huge platform to behave themselves and they didn't.

They said, fuck that, I'm Irish. Bernadette used the opportunity to draw attention to African American revolutionaries and the oppression that African American people were experiencing in America. And Sinead used the opportunity to speak up for victims all around the world who were being systematically abused by the Catholic Church for decades before anyone was even talking about it. And Sinead used several moments in her career with this massive platform

to speak out against racism in the music industry and to draw attention to African-American artists who were not being given attention. They dragged cow shit into the carpet of the White House and said, smell that. And Sned continued. She continued this mentality right up until her death. She was always outspoken about direct provision. She always had solidarity with refugees in Ireland.

A year ago, she donated a load of her makeup to the trans community and the media went out of their way to portray her as an unreliable narrator. Her activism and her words were too fucking scary so they said she's too mad to be listened to about anything and now it's too fucking late because she's dead and we're all grieving for that. We're all mourning for that. A missed opportunity. Something I want to clarify there as well. When I was talking about, we'll say Irish solidarity with other communities.

There's another strain of this, which is a bit cringey, which is, sure, how can I be racist? I'm Irish. We were colonised. We didn't colonise anyone. How could we be racist?

Sometimes you hear that and it's absolute bollocks. And the Irish person uses an opportunity for solidarity to speak about how terrible our history was. I'm talking about if you find yourself as an Irish person with a platform, using that platform to speak up for, draw attention to, or give that platform to someone who doesn't have it that's what Sinead O'Connor did I was contacted this week by some of the media to speak about Sinead O'Connor because she'd been a guest on this podcast I didn't take the opportunity because

why would I why the fuck would I do that when I can just talk about it in this podcast what good is five minutes on the radio to talk about that or needing to be concerned with how my words will be twisted and edited for a headline for engagement but on that topic I'm really grateful unbelievably grateful that Sinead O'Connor came on to the podcast a year ago to chat with me what I'm grateful grateful for is podcasting as a medium. When Sinead came on this podcast I was able to use it as an opportunity to speak to her

about art. Here's a fucking, a genius. Here's a legend. Let's speak to this person. Let's have a not even an interview. Let's have a conversation about art and see where it goes and we ended up having a lovely conversation where Sinead had a safe space to just chat and speak about what she

was passionate about and what she cared about and I don't think at any point was she concerned or worried that I was going to start bringing up bullshit so that I could get a sound bite or an attention grabbing headline or place her into a position where she needs to defend herself and that there is the benefit of podcasting as a medium we don't need interviews we don't need sound bites we can have actual fucking conversations but all the time and space in the world for curiosity so I'm heartbroken I'm fucking heartbroken that Sinead O'Connor's gone. She was always unbelievably kind to me, even as far back as the fucking rubber bandits.

Half the time I didn't know was it horror or a fake account, but she'd always just for the sake of it go, I like what you're doing, it's weird, it's strange, keep it up. She always had her ear to the ground, and she always had time for people who were doing things that interested her. If you would like to listen to that episode it's called Sinead O'Connor. I do have a little hot take this week. I'm gonna do it after the ocarina pause. I'm gonna have a little ocarina pause now. I don't have a book to recommend to you this week but I do have I've got

my old trusty Puerto Rican guiro. So I'm going to play this Puerto Rican guiro and you're going to hear an advert for something. On April 5th, you must be very careful Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil.

It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey!

Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health,

to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. The Old Trusty Puerto Rican Guero.

This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. If this podcast brings you joy, solace, entertainment, distraction, then please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast because it's my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I pay the rent for this office where I record the podcast. It's how I have the time and space that's necessary to deliver this podcast each week and to have time for failure. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast, I get to earn a living.

It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Also, it means I'm not beholden to advertisers. Advertising is what destroys television and radio. Advertising is what destroys podcasts. If there's any advertising on this podcast, it's done completely on my terms. I'll never be beholden to an advertiser. No advertiser can tell me what content to create or ask me to hit a certain amount of listens so that they can get more advertising revenue. That model is how you end up with sensationalism. So support whatever

independent podcaster you enjoy, whatever independent podcast you're listening to, support them in whatever way you can. Like the podcast, give it a share, tell a friend about it. Over the pandemic, big corporate podcasts tried to take over and I think they lost. A lot of shit was created that saturated the market. And I think the podcast bubble has burst. Companies aren't signing giant podcasts anymore. Offering huge amounts of money for celebrity podcasts. That's not happening anymore post pandemic.

Which is a good thing. So they're disappearing. And who's surviving are your independent podcasters who are making shit that they're very passionate about because of direct funding so gigs I'm going to do this real quickly

the 26th of August this month I'm down in Cork I cannot wait to go back to Cork it's part of the Cork Podcast Festival I'm in the Cork Opera House on the 26th of August. Come along to that. Check out the Park Podcast Festival.

Actually, that sounds like a nice culinary. That sounds like a nice culinary festival. The Pork Codcast Festival. What do you do with that? We eat pork, and then we cast our nets and catch cods. It's the Pork and Cod Festival. It's the C and cod festival it's the cork podcast festival on the 28th i'm in vicar street 28th of august i'm in vicar street tasty little monday

night gig gonna have a cracker of a guest come along to that only a few tickets left then i'm in birmingham at the mosley folk festival Festival which is on Friday the 1st of September looking forward to that Monaghan I'm at the Patrick Kavanagh weekend I'm interviewing a very good guest at that one that is a Saturday the 30th of September November there's gonna be a UK tour probably gonna announce that this week so keep an eye on my Instagram, Blind By Boat Club. Is that the name? Is that my name on Instagram? Yeah, Blind By Boat Club. Belfast, I'm in the waterfront on the 18th

of October. And then the 19th of October, Vicar Street, I'm back in Dublin for my book launch. My fucking book Topography of Hibernica, which I've been writing that I cannot wait to show you. I'm really proud of this book. I don't know how the reviewers are going to take it. Fuck them. I love the work. I'm

really proud of it. I can stand over it. I'd read that if I wasn't me. You can pre-order that as well actually. My new collection of short stories Topographia Hibernica. So what I'd like to talk about this week is it's a recurring theme on this podcast, because it's something that really fascinates me, and I don't see enough critique and analysis being done on it. I want to speak about the millennial condition. I'm a millennial. Millennials are. Right now, if you're between the age of 27 and 42, you're a millennial. If you were born between 1981 and 1996, you're considered a millennial. If you're between 27 and 41, you're a fucking adult.

You're an adult. There's no debate over that. You're 100% a fully grown adult. But we're not referred to as adults. And we're not treated as adults culturally. And the media still likes to refer to millennials as young people. Even though most of us are now middle-aged. If you're over 35, you're middle-aged. It's not nice to hear. It's unbelievably tempting. Like when I open up a newspaper and they're calling me a young person,

Like when I open up a newspaper and they're calling me a young person. That's very tantalising. I'd love that. But I refuse. I'm not taking it. I won't take that delusion. I'm a middle aged man. I'm a middle aged man.

I've about nine grey pubes. I've pains in my knees and my shoulders as a given. That's just how it is now. I'm tremendously interested in porridge. A group of teenagers saw me coming back from the shop holding an Old El Paso Fajita kit underneath my arm. And they gave me a

nickname. They called me Old El Paso. That's how you know you're a middle-aged man when the teenagers are giving you a nickname. So if you're a millennial, you're an adult. You're a fucking adult. If you're an older millennial, between the ages of 35 and 41, then you're in quite a unique position. You're old enough to really remember what things were like before the internet.

But young enough to have grown up with the internet being a huge part of your life. If you're a younger millennial, between 27 and 35, then you grew up, the internet was always there, but you had the trauma of the recession when you were very young. You might have been 10 or 11 years of age, and your parents suddenly lost their jobs, or you had to move out of the house you were born in because they couldn't keep up mortgage payments, or you had to move out of the house you were born in because they

couldn't keep up mortgage payments. Or you had to move to Australia. Younger millennials grew up with the certainty that you may not own a house, you may not be able to have children, you may not be able to have a career. Whereas older millennials, we had the rug pulled from underneath us. millennials we had the rug pulled from underneath us. We were promised a lot. We were told with absolute certainty from our parents, from the schools, by watching society around us. We were told all you gotta do is go to college and you'll be a homeowner by the time you're 25. to college and you'll be a homeowner by the time you're 25. Older millennials were raised with this idea that society, the conditions of society just get better and better and better because the generation before us, it had just gotten better. We saw the Celtic tiger when we were teenagers and we really believed, fuck it, it's going to be great for us. We're all going to have

careers, kids, houses, whatever the fuck we want. It's going to be amazing. And then we get to about 20 or 21. Boom. Recession happens. When I was in my mid-twenties in Ireland, I had just watched the Celtic Tiger. And suddenly, giant shopping centres turned into building sites that never got built. 300,000 people a year my age in Ireland left the country.

Older millennials remember what it's like to see a packed nightclub, multiple packed nightclubs on a Tuesday night anywhere in Ireland. Younger millennials hit adulthood at the height of the recession and ye had ye'd house parties ye just drank cans at house parties and then there was only

one shit nightclub left and ye went there at half eleven. But now we're all 100% definitely fucking adults and the media and politicians

and culture just doesn't know how to place us they don't know what to call us or where to put us and it's not just in Ireland this is the world over and we had a generation above us that we could look at and say that's how an adult is supposed to be that's what an adult who has their shit together looks like when I was 16 I saw 26 year olds with houses that they owned. 26 year olds who had houses that they owned and careers, not just jobs, careers and kids. But millennials are in a state of, I call it perpetual kittenhood. And I say this because all kittens meow. and I say this because all kittens meow whether that's a wild kitten or a domesticated kitten

all kittens meow so that their mother can hear them it's necessary to their survival but when a wild kitten becomes an adult cat they kind of stop meowing meowing no longer serves a purpose they focus instead on quietness and stealth. To survive. To hunt.

Unless they're domesticated. Domesticated adult cats will meow. Domesticated adult cats hold on to this vocalisation from kittenhood because their human keeps them in a perpetual state of kittenhood. But with millennials, economic circumstances, politics and culture keep us in a perpetual state of kittenhood. But instead of meowing, we engage in nostalgia. The media doesn't know what to do with us.

Politicians don't know what to do with us. This is why they call 40-year-olds young people. They start calling us middle-aged and they have to start admitting to some serious systemic problems. The modern work environment, especially in tech and large multinational corporations, the modern work environment has become effectively a daycare centre for adults. The HR department has replaced unions. A union places real power in the hands of employees. Adult power, autonomy, the capacity to demand what you need via collective bargaining and downing tools if you don't get what you need. That's been slowly replaced by the HR department.

That's been slowly replaced by the HR department. HR departments tend to solve issues on an individual basis, internally, very much for the benefit of the company rather than all of the employees. Instead of a solid full-time contract, a pension or a union, you get a fridge that has beers in it, breakfast and dinner provided, a ping-pong table, bean and dinner provided, a ping pong table,

bean bags you can sit on whenever you want, you can work from home if you like, and you don't have to work in a cubicle, your desk can be wherever you like it. The modern work environment has created the ideal bedroom that you would have liked when you were a teenager. The HR department has become your parent. The idea of having a union and downing tools and demanding things

feels rude, it feels mean, because your employer is being so lovely and nice to you. Instead of being an autonomous adult worker with rights, who is valuable, who generates income for the company that you work for, you're a child with incredibly kind and loving parents who give you food and a ping pong table and a roof over your head and you can be let go at any time because all of these things have been exchanged for rights, for workers rights and then culture keeps millennials in this

consistent state of childhood through nostalgia and what I want to speak about is the Barbie movie and not just Barbie but Mattel the company that makes Barbie in general now I haven't seen the Barbie movie I do want to see it because the reviews are very good but what I'm fascinated by is who is this for

the Barbie movie is not for kids. It is not, even though it's PG, the target audience of the Barbie movie is not children. It's adults who remember being children and having a Barbie. The Barbie movie is directed at Millennials. It's directed to people over the age of 25 and the Barbie movie is quite unique and it's working. So traditionally pop culture, pop culture has tended to be advertised at the ages 16 to 30. Pop music, fashion, things that are fun and frivolous and playful like the barbie movie these things tend to be advertised and directed at an audience of 16 to 30 and that's always how it's been because traditionally by the age of 30 people had their shit together quote unquote so pop culture

was advertised to people from 16 to 30 and then from 30 onwards the advertising became boring shit, functional shit, the trappings of traditional adulthood, cars, watches, DIY, lawnmowers, jewellery, barbecues, bedding, curtains, electric showers. Like I saw an advert on TikTok there recently. It was an Irish advert. It was a house alarm company and the advert said we are looking to speak to homeowners

between the ages of 25 and 35. There were hundreds of comments and every single comment was are you fucking serious? Who between the ages of 25 and 35 owns a house or is interested in a house alarm? And it was a small Irish company. They weren't being clever

to get engagement. They'd literally gotten it wrong. They thought that people between the ages of 25 and 35 owned houses. Domestic products, boring adult shit is now being advertised to people in their 50s. Barbie is the first time that I've seen

pop culture really aggressively advertise specifically to people over the age of 25 and mostly in their 30s, millennials. And I'm not wrong here because I went researching and looked it up. So the company that owns Barbie is Mattel huge fucking toy company and the thing is with toys like Toys R Us remember Toys R Us, they went bankrupt in Ireland we've got Smith's Toy Store, they're closing down

everywhere toys are no longer big business they still exist but toys aren't that important there's not money being made in toys for children anymore. So Mattel, who were a gigantic toy company

in 2018 went oh fuck. The young kids aren't buying toys anymore because they have iPads. What are we going to do? We can't just go out of business. What are we going to do? We're Mattel. We're a giant toy company. In 2018 Mattel had lost 300 million dollars and they got a new CEO and the new CEO of Mattel said right change of plan. Toys are fucked. We're going to move into

intellectual property. We're going to become an IP company. What does that mean? Mattel are now going to start making movies out of every single toy they ever made. It's in the works, it's happening. Barbie was only the start. There's going to be a Barney the Dinosaur movie directed at people in their 30s. There's going to be a He-Man Masters of the Universe movie that's going to be huge. There's going to be a Polly Pocket movie. There's going to be a Hot Wheels movie. Mattel plan on getting every toy they ever made using nostalgia and making movies that are directed at people in their 30s who remember playing with these things when they were children and that's Mattel's plan and Barbie was

the first example of it. And Barbie fucking worked. And this isn't a conspiracy theory. It's just how things are panning out. Because of economics. Because of culture. Because of where millennials are at. Because millennials are trapped in perpetual kittenhood. You see, ultimately, what does it mean?

What does it mean to be 35? And to know that there's a Barbie movie and it's directed at you? What's the feeling? The feeling is, it's not over yet. I'm still young. See, millennials have been raised on advertising. We grew up, we've been tit-fed on advertising. We've been targeted and directed since we've been babies. Polly Pocket, He-Man, Barbie, Hot Wheels these things have been directed at us since we were kids and it made us feel important

it made us feel like somebody the television is talking to us and there's toys being made just for us and when you take that same Barbie and that same He-Man and you direct it at a 35 year old, the covert message, the feeling is, I'm still young, I still have a hope, I still have a chance. If I'm being advertised to, then I'm still worthy. We don't have adverts that pat us on the head and tell us what good adults we're being.

No one's trying to sell a house alarm to a 30 year old because they know that the 30 year old is renting. They're selling the house alarm to the 50 year old landlord. So we don't get adverts to tell us that we're adults. We get adverts to tell us that we're still kids and not to give up yet. But how does all this start? How do you get to the world that millennials live in today? Where no one's in a union. No one has a full-time contract in their job. Even if you do have a full-time contract, there's no sense of security because the job could literally leave in the morning for a different country. No one's job has a pension.

Not many people own a house. Rent is unbelievably high. You pay taxes, but the richest corporations in the world don't pay any taxes. And the vast majority of the world's wealth is concentrated in 1% of people, in the global north, in 1% of people. How does that happen? In short, Ronald Reagan. It's a real simplistic answer, but Ronald Reagan is why that happened. That's why we're here. Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was President of America throughout a lot of the 1980s.

But before he was President of America, he was a Hollywood actor. You know right now, there's the SAG-AFTRA strikes. The Screen Actors Guild of America. And the writers, they're striking. They're all on strike. SAG is a union. It's the Screen Actors Guild. They're on strike. We are not working until our demands are met. That's collective bargaining. When was the last time the Screen Actors Guild and the writers went on a massive strike like this? A huge strike. 1960. Who was the president of the Screen Actors Guild? Who was the president of the

union? Ronald Reagan. And while Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild, he gave a waiver to his own production company, meaning that even though there was a strike, his production company could make TV. So he was a fucking scab. So when Reagan eventually became president of America in the 80s, he fucking hated unions. This man who had been the head of a union himself hated unions. Reagan introduced what would be called Reaganomics, okay, which you could loosely refer to it as neoliberalism. Reaganomics was his particular approach to the US economy. Margaret Thatcher did very similar stuff in the UK and it reverberated all around the world as neoliberalism. And what this meant was,

Reagan placed the rights of corporations and businesses above the rights of workers. Reagan's belief and ideology was business and corporations should be as free as possible. They shouldn't have to pay tax, there should be no regulation that prevents them from doing as much business as they like in whatever way they choose and if you allow a corporation to be completely free and to make as much money as possible, then this will trickle down and create jobs for the middle classes

and the working classes and it'll eventually work out. That's not what happened. Unions were destroyed. Workers' rights were destroyed. Corporations' taxes were reduced. Laws that kept businesses and corporations in check were done away with that's deregulation reagan loved deregulation wealth started to be extracted

from people and you ended up with the rise of the one percent most wealth being concentrated in one percent of corporations and very wealthy billionaires. Like if you ever wonder, Jesus, I can't believe these corporations that make billions and billions and billions don't pay any tax. They come to Dublin and they don't pay any tax. Well, they end up paying less than 1% tax. But if you feel, Jesus, that should be illegal illegal why isn't that illegal when Reagan started all of that so what you end up with is giant corporations having all the power unions disappearing

giant vulture funds and investment funds buying up all the property this overall environment where the richest entities in the world are kind of allowed to do whatever the fuck they want and we're left with this feeling of powerlessness going how do you stop them where are the rules what are the politicians doing it's all been slowly sewn up since the 1980s for the rights of corporations to be more important than the rights of people and the rights of

workers now that's a massive oversimplization of 30 years of economic history. They're massive. I'm not an economist and that's just the gist of it. And it means too that when you have wealth concentrated in 1%, recessions are just a mild inconvenience for them. They're just a slight slowdown. But who gets hurt during recessions are the vast majority of people. And then the 1% of wealth gets to buy everything for cheap during a recession, like property,

and then their wealth increases when the economy picks up again. So it's all sewn up. But I've spoken about this in a podcast before. Reagan is also the reason that He-Man exists. Reagan is the reason that Barbie is as big as she is, like specifically and literally. Reagan is the reason that we as millennials have an emotional, nostalgic attachment to advertising. Reagan is the reason that when a Barbie movie comes out and it's directed at 35-year-olds,

we experience a feeling of reassurance and safety, which is mad fucked up. You see, millennials are the first generation who have been advertised directly to since we were toddlers. It used to be illegal to advertise to children. That was seen as, like in the 70s and 60s, that was seen as a harmful thing to do.

Children were seen as too young, not having the capacity to think critically, not having any agency, not having any money. It was illegal, wrong, harmful and bad and manipulative and coercive and dangerous to advertise to children. In America this was overseen by the Federal Trade Commission but in 1980 when Ronald Reagan became President of America one of the first things he did was appoint his own people to the Federal Trade Commission. Now I mentioned what Reagan used to love to do was to deregulate business. Business should not

have any laws or rules that prevent business from doing fucking business. So Reagan deregulated advertising. Even though for years, the psychologists, child psychologists, everyone was saying, you mustn't advertise to children, this is harmful. Reagan said, that sounds anti-business. The rights of a toy company

to advertise to children on television are more important than the well-being of children. So Mattel were a huge toy company. Now they'd been selling Barbie for fucking years. But Mattel were a huge toy company. Now they'd been selling Barbie for fucking years but Mattel are a toy company. They sell toys but they'd never been allowed to use television to directly advertise to kids until 1980 and Mattel pioneered what was called a PLC, a program length commercial. In the fully deregulated environment, in the year when the first millennials were born, Mattel were like, there's no fucking rules, we can do what we want,

let's go for it. Fuck adverts, we're going to invent toys just to create cartoons for those toys. And those cartoons aren't really really cartoons they're advertisements to sell toys you get he-man and the masters of the universe that cartoon that wasn't a cartoon it was an advertisement barbie got her own cartoon it wasn't a cartoon it was an advertisement then all the toy companies get involved you've got hasbro who were the main competitor gi joe care bears transform Little Pony, all of these things were invented as fucking giant long advertisements for kids because Reagan said fuck kids mental health we're gonna advertise to him and the advertising of these cartoons wasn't

necessarily harmless either. They pushed to millennials some pretty strong ideologies. I'm aware that the current Barbie movie that's out now does a lot to try and in a meta way address how harmful Barbie was to young girls but Barbie pushed. Fucking unrealistic body image and I looked at a big reel there of 1980s Barbie commercials and from what I can see it really presented to young girls the only possibility that you have is domesticity that's what I saw who's going to get you that dream house and then for the boys what was pushed was a very aggressive a a Cold War, militaristic, good versus evil, frontierist American dream ideology.

But millennials are the first generation to aggressively have advertising targeted to us. And through no fault of our own, because of our young developing minds, when we think of the happiness and safety and freedom of childhood those first wonderful curious years when our brains are growing we can't detach that sense of comfort from being advertised to and this is the hot take I'm getting at. Mattel benefited from Reaganomics. Mattel benefited hugely from the deregulation that Ronald Reagan brought in. And they deliberately targeted young children with program-length commercials to sell us toys. Forty years have passed.

ties. 40 years have passed. Reagan's policies created a domino effect that put millennials in an economic position where we don't have the trappings of adulthood, house, family, secure job, pension, predictable income. So we're in a state of perpetual kittenhood. Now Matt Taylor coming back a second time round, 40 years later. And it's explicit, they've said it since 2018, they're focusing now on IP, intellectual property. They've groomed us. Now I don't want to devalue that word, that's a very important word that's used to people who've been through abuse. But I'm going to use the word with a small g, Reagan allowed Mattel to go against every regulation that the Federal Trade Commission were saying, backed up by psychologists, about why you shouldn't advertise

to children. Mattel conditioned us in quite a manipulative way. They groomed us with a small g to associate the feeling, the childhood feeling of safety, attention and happiness to associate that feeling with being advertised to with toys and now they're back and we're in our 30s and it's working, it is working the covert

message is, the feeling of it is, it doesn't matter that you're 35 if there's a new He-Man movie and it's directed at you, you're worth something. You're still young. It's not over yet. And they don't have to work on it because this is intellectual property. This is why they're investing in this. This is why this is Mattel's plan. A fucking Polly Pocket movie? The fuck you gonna do with that? It doesn't matter. It's about the feeling that Polly Pocket brings up in a 35 gonna do with that? It doesn't matter. It's about the feeling

that Polly Pocket brings up in a 35 year old. Same with Hot Wheels. Barney the purple fucking dinosaur. I don't give a shit about what he's up to now. It's not about that. We were conditioned too young. All we need is his voice, the purpleness of him, the sound of him, the look of him. All we need is his voice, the purpleness of him, the sound of him, the look of him. It's deeply unconscious. Whether you like it or not, it's going to bring back feelings of safety, happiness, curiosity, everything you associate with being a young child. And it's going to fucking work.

And they did it with Barbie. Barbie pink is a colour that they own. It's called hashtag E94196. It's a fucking pink that only Barbie can use. They own it. They used it for the advertising. Why did they own a shade of pink? Because it was hammered into your head when you were three. It brings up a Pavlovian response. Your brain has been conditioned to associate that with childhood fun, warmth, happiness, friends, playing with your barbies, escapism, if your life wasn't too happy. This is what Mattel are doing.

This is their plan. They're not selling ties anymore. They're going into IP. And this wasn't planned out. They just identified. We have conditioned an entire generation through advertising to have a positive emotional response to this advertising when they are re-exposed. Economic circumstances mean that this generation of millennials don't really feel like adults. They're not referred to as adults.

Their self-esteem is low because society promised them something and they haven't reached it we can rekindle these feelings of childhood comfort in them with he-man and fucking hot wheels and barney and barbie is the proof the biggest movie of the year by a landslide and directed at people in their fucking late 20s and 30s so that's my hot take this week i know I've explored those themes before. I explored them before in a podcast called Why I Want to Fuck Captain Planet. I also explored those themes in a podcast that I did about the film Big with Tom Hanks. I believe that film is what created the modern, the modern corporate work environment with beanbags and ping pong tables. It's what normalised it. Big was a satire when it came out. Now it's not a sat tables. It's what normalised it.

Big was a satire when it came out. Now it's not a satire. It was a science fiction prediction of the 2020s. So I'll be back next week. I don't know what with. In the meantime, rub a dog and genuflect to a swan. And hopefully, hopefully the weather won't be too bad in August. Jesus Christ, give us a small bit of sun.

Bit of gentle sun, please. Dog bless. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you. Продолжение следует...