The Blindboy Podcast - Coneydwendydwelve

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

I explore existential anxiety through Kony 2012, my first day at school and the book The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prepare to invade Mulhuddard, you quinoa smugglers. Hello, God bless. Welcome to episode 103 of the Blind Boy Podcast. How are you getting on, you gentle Benjamins? Sturdy with you fantastic feedback from last week's podcast there which I fucking loved doing I really loved doing it

if you haven't heard last week's podcast I suggest go back and listen to it it was recorded by a river by Yarty's couch with my new set of microphones. And I listened back to it myself, and it felt kind of relaxing, which is what I was going for. I wanted a chilled out, kind of relaxed nature vibe off it, and that's what we got. nature vibe off it and that's what we got let's get the upcoming live podcasts out of the way to fulfill my contractual obligations this saturday the 28th of september i'm in killarney

the inec all right there's a few tickets left for that last one was great crack i'm looking forward to this i like to get down to old kill I like to get down. To old Killarney. You know. Old wet tarmac Killarney. I associate Killarney with wet tarmac. I don't know why. I'm getting visions of broken glass and wet tarmac. That's.

That's what I associate in my head with Killarney. I don't know why. Something must have happened at some point. But. Yeah. 28th of September. Killarney. I like saying Killarney I don't know why something must have happened at some point but yeah 28th of September Killarney I like saying Killarney

then into October Thursday the 3rd the Pavilion Theatre Dun Laoghaire savage fucking venue had some great podcasts there before lovely sound in there I'll have a cracking guest

then Saturday the 12th of October Kilkenny Langtons in Kilkenny having gig there about a year and a half, looking forward to that then this one's almost sold out

actually there's only very small amounts of tickets left Sunday the 13th of October, the Cork Opera House then, this one's almost sold out actually, there's only very small amounts of tickets left, Sunday the 13th of October, the Cork Opera House, right, that's gonna be great crack, if you're down in Cork, you'll know that my, there's a poster of me on the side of the fucking, on the side of the Opera House, looking into the Lee, which I saw last week, which I am, I was looking into the Lee which I saw last week which I am I'm very happy with that it's just nice

like my dad's from Cork so it's nice having a big poster looking over Cork City if he was alive he'd have very much he'd have gotten a kick out of that

so I enjoyed seeing my poster up there on the side of the Opera House so that's the 13th of October and then Tuesday the 22nd Sligo lads in the Knock Noray Arena

ok I've been talking about this one for a while because it's just there's certain gigs most gigs no hassle then there's certain gigs as soon as you get Midlands and up north

you just kind of have to push them more because people are either slow on the tickets or people prefer to buy them at the door. So, Sligo, lads, if you're interested in coming to my live podcast in Sligo, 22nd of October, please come. Look, put it this way, lads. The promoter tagged a fake Instagram page when they were trying to promote it last week. They were trying to promote the gig and instead of tagging the actual Instagram page, which is Rubber Bandits Official,

they managed to tag a fake blind buy Instagram page that has nothing to do with me. All right? So I really got to push this one. Go buy some tickets. All right, God bless. I was over in London at the weekend doing two live podcasts,

which were fucking great, in the London Irish Centre. The first one interviewed Jarla Regan. That was tremendous crack. Then for the second one, the second gig, which was a Friday night in the London Irish Centre

unlike any live podcast I've ever done it was fucking bizarre it was the maddest live podcast I've ever done it was so like

half the audience loved it the other half of the audience loved it, the other half, other, other half of the audience found it uncomfortable, I, I kind of just went with the flow, I was curious, I liked the energy of it, it was, there was no podcast hug, let's just say that, it was much closer to a two hour long fucking Jeremy Kyle show so when I book live guests for my podcast right the main criteria I have most of the time my guest is someone I really would like to talk to. Someone who I admire or who I follow and I just really like to have a chat. That's most of the time. Other times I'll interview someone

and I haven't a fucking clue who they are. I will interview them because I want to go into the situation clueless and I want to have like an organic chat in the moment and I want it to be driven by my curiosity basically I want to be driven by me being curious and learning from someone and in those situations usually what I do is like my number one thing that I've learned from experience now if I'm doing a live podcast the number one thing that I must have in a guest is that they have some experience with public speaking that's the

most important thing I don't give a fuck how well read the guest is how many books they've published whatever the fuck if if they don't have public speaking experience, I can't do a live podcast with them because you're up on stage and you can have several hundred people there. And stage fright is a really, really common human thing. Being able to speak in front of a group larger than 10 is a bottom line basic that that is a requirement once i see that then i can book someone for a guest there's been many guests i'd love to have had on and they haven't had experience speaking in front of a live audience for that reason i'm just like no i'm not taking that risk. Because stage fright is nuts. Stage fright can...

I mean, stage fright is... It's based on the anxiety response. I mean, I'm guessing at least 70% of ye listening at home now, I'd say even higher, your anxiety would very much be triggered by having to speak

in front of a large group of people. It's incredibly natural some people are born with the ability to naturally be cool speaking in front of a bunch of people other people they have to learn it as a skill or it's just a continual anxiety trigger me bizarrely because here's the queer kind of um anomaly anomaly with my personality so i'm someone like social anxiety is my thing like i have it fully conquered but it still remains in elements of my personality like you'll know from this podcast i used to get severe anxiety to the point of agoraphobia,

where I couldn't be in large crowds. I just couldn't. In supermarkets and whatever, this was very triggering for me, and it would bring on anxiety attacks, and there was a whole load of shit I had to deal with. But yes, I was never,

I never really had that much of a problem with public speaking or performing for some reason, despite the second it stops, I'm deeply uncomfortable. The reason I think why is that when I was really, really, really young in school... Right, one reason I think... I had a bunch of older brothers and sisters right and when you when you have like way older so when that's the situation and you're a baby they tend to pay attention when you're talking so that I think made it okay for

me to speak to large groups of people secondly yeah when i was about four or five i started getting there used to be encyclopedias at home you know those world book encyclopedias and i used to fucking adore them my my obsession with those encyclopedias was so much that i learned to read from reading those encyclopedias I think even before I went into school I'd have sat enough grasp of reading from them. Horsing into these fucking encyclopedias when I was about four years old I used to fucking love them in particular the dinosaur part of the encyclopedias I remember it clearly it was about we still had the book at home and I was drawn all over it

what I used to do was I couldn't get over how large the dinosaurs were so I used to draw a little stick man of what I would look like beside the dinosaurs beside each one

in order for me to contextualise it but I used to fucking devour the 40 or 50 pages in the D encyclopedia book about dinosaurs

to the point that I was a fucking a dinosaur nerd by about 4 years of age so I would have been in what's the first one the first one of junior infants and in school i was really i was a very anxious child like my first day of school was my first day of school was my first ever social anxiety panic attack now that i think it was

deeply traumatic i couldn't fucking handle it, I couldn't handle just suddenly being in this room with all these other kids, I just couldn't handle it, and I puked all over, actually fucking hell, I'm just having a bit I just got so upset and anxious at being in this place and not knowing why I was there, that I cried so much that I puked all over a lad's bag, his name was Raymond, he's a gardener, I vomited all over his fucking bag, such was, I just remember my face being hot and crying so much that my face hurt and then puking all over this lad's bag and then just everyone going quiet and watching and me having to be taken out and people having to clean up my puke and I've just realized and this is fucking bizarre because I've

been through years of psychotherapy but you'll know from me speaking about my social anxiety that I used to suffer one of the huge fears I would have in like uh like when I'm when I was 18 19 if I was in a shopping centre or a pub, one of the things that would bring on a panic attack would be the fear of, what if I puke my ring up? That was a huge fear. What if I puke my ring up and become an object of public disgust? Or what if I do something mad?

And I'm just after fucking realising, and I can't believe I've. Made this connection now. After so much soul searching. But yeah. My first day of school was. Very fucking upsetting and traumatic. And involved me. Crying so much.

And feeling so frightened. And so in danger. Of just not being around. Not being at home. And not being around not being at home and not being around my family see i was never school was was put put on me as a surprise my ma never said to me you're going to school i just remember waking up one morning and being really fucking happy and i remember wearing blue pajamas being so fucking happy now my older brothers they were all in secondary school and shit but I remember being

so fucking happy and sitting down with some type of cereal and Muppet Babies was on TV remember that cartoon Muppet Babies and then all of a sudden this fucking unit my ma comes out with this uniform

with this little tie that had elastic and i'm fucked into school for the first day and i was never told that it was just surprised on me i was never prepared over the summer going like in two months time you're going to school do you know what that means it was i guess my ma probably thought it was best to go fuck it you'll freak him out if you if you tell him about it so just throw him into school so my first day was deeply traumatic I puked all over a fellas bag and then and it was only a half day as well

we were only in from about 9 in the morning until 11 I think because you're essentially a baby and I remember my older brother. Having to come in and collect me at like 11. No earlier. They had to call him in.

Because I puked all over everything. And he came in. At that age I was listening to. A band called T-Rex. Because in my house. There would have been a lot of David Bowie. And T-Rex played. And I was listening to T-Rex. And I remember my older brother. Saying to one of the nuns. Who would have been a lot of David Bowie and T-Rex played. And I was listening to T-Rex.

And I remember my older brother saying to one of the nuns who would have been the teacher. Because the nun was going, what the fuck is wrong with him? Why is he puking everywhere? Why is he the only student who's bawling and crying with anxiety? And I remember my older brother handing her... There was a tape player at the top of the class. And my older brother had a T-Rex tape. That he brought in.

And he said to her. Play him T-Rex. And that'll calm him down. Because I fucking loved the music. Of Mark Boland when I was a baby. And she didn't. She said. Yeah fucking hell it's all coming back now.

What the fuck. She refused to play the T-Rex tape because that was adult music it wasn't it was like fucking children of the revolution and fucking what else right of white swan like there's nothing

at all they're like lullabies they're really fucking catchy but I remember her saying to my brother who Who would have been a teenager. He'd have been 14, 15. Saying no we're not playing that. That's adult music. And she threw on. And then he just said.

Just play music for him. He loves music. If you play music he'll calm down. Because I was in absolute hysterics. Having puked all over this young fella's Raymond's bag. And I'd managed to single myself out in the classroom. As being the young fella who puked all over this young fella's Raymond's bag and I'd managed to single myself out in the classroom as being the young fella puked over everything and being the object of disgust and being stared at and everyone looking going what the fuck is wrong with what's wrong with him who's

he who pukes on things and I remember him so he had this t-rex tape and he's saying to the nun look play a bit of T-Rex and then he'll calm down she says no that's adult music we don't play that so then she plays whatever fucking tape was in the tape cassette it's top of the class

if you're happy you know it clap your hands music for children and I remember her playing that me feeling really let down I felt like I was

they thought I was thick or something I felt stupid I felt stupid I felt like stop patronising me with this yeah I felt patronised stop patronising me with this

if you're happy and you know it clap your hands shit, because I listen to T-Rex. I've been listening to actual music. I remember when she played it, looking up at my older brother, and he kind of rolled his eyes at me, as in,

isn't she silly playing that stupid music for children? And that recognition brought me out of my anxiety. That made me feel okay. I don't know why, anxiety that made me feel okay I don't know why but that made me feel okay so anyway I'd settled into school and after about two months when you start off being the fellow puked on things you're kind of treated as differently even from the teachers as well teachers are kind of every day going, are you okay? Worried that it's going to happen again. And also, every morning, like I eventually, I was gone every single day for about two months.

And it was becoming normal and I was okay with it. I'm like, look, I'm in school now. It's fine. It's not too bad. It's not as scary as I thought it was. Gradual exposure. But I had to walk past this uh giant statue of christ in the corridor each morning and it was just this huge fucking looming massive nude man you know nailed to a fucking cross with blood dripping down his face and dead eyes on him and the nun pointing up at him saying he loves you and i didn't know who the fuck he was

because there was no christ in my house growing up you see i'd really only been exposed to it for the first time when i got into school and it's just this awful terrifying statue of a man being tortured and you're four years of age and and it's like he loves, he died for your sins. Like, who the fuck is he? So, after about two months, one day the teacher pulled out a book and there was a fucking cartoon dinosaur on it. It wasn't even like a proper dinosaur, it was like an anthropomorphic dinosaur. And I said, oh, that's a Brachiosaurus.

And she was like, what? I said, it's a Brachiosaurus, it's a former sauropod. Because I was, after fucking memorising everything about dinosaurs and had been devouring it intently. So then she goes,

what the fuck does he know this for? So there was a teacher upstairs with the, they were in first class. First class now would have been, I'd have been four and junior infants and first class was

people who were like seven years of age, six years of age. And that teacher upstairs was the dinosaur teacher. You learned about dinosaurs in first class. So my teacher brought me upstairs to the older students and kind of whispered into the other teacher's ear and said, look, this little cunt here seems to know his shit with dinosaurs.

I asked him a couple of questions. cunt here seems to know his shit with dinosaurs I asked him a couple of questions and I was kind of intimidated because the students there were like they were seven and six so they that was like adults to me they felt like teenagers and again I was anxious and frightened because I was a kind of an anxious fucking child but anytime any time I found myself around my interests. Anything I was really really passionate about. That got me in my heart. Such as music or dinosaurs. I didn't have anxiety. I felt confident.

Because that was my thing. That was what made my heart flutter as such you know. So she. The first class teacher pulls out this big poster that had loads of images of dinosaurs on it it was like an educational poster of dinosaurs and she gets me to stand at the top of the class like a test in front of all the first class students and she just points at random dinosaurs and asks me to read them asks me to name them and I do there was fucking consignatus fucking allosaurus albertosaurus I remember fucking albertosaurus clearly

because I remember albertosaurus looking like t-rex but he wasn't because he was from Alberta in Canada and was slightly larger and I was able to name it all out and then I got a big round of applause from the teachers and then the class. And at that moment I felt confident and like I was a good boy. It's like I'd received, what's it called? What does Carl Rogers call it conditional positive regard from the adults I think would have

sowed a seed in me that began my confidence to be okay with public speaking because I am, I'm grand with public speaking like that's my fucking job not a bother of me like

literally I don't get anxious I don't know why but put me into a crowded pub and little bit on edge I don't know what the fuck that's about but I think those early childhood memories could have because that's how our personality forms that that's how like i might sound like a mad bastard going back to my first day of school but that's the whole process of psychology and therapy and that's why the cliche exists of people going to therapists and it's like tell me about your childhood that shit matters you know something like cbt that i speak about a lot that's not a what you'd call a psychodynamic therapy it doesn't cbt isn't too concerned with your childhood it's more like what's happening right now but other forms of therapy if you want

to understand the root cause of what's causing discomfort you got to go back into your childhood. To early memories. Of. You know. When did you experience. Shame. Humiliation. When did you feel that someone else was better than you. When. You know.

When do you remember being. You know. Really upset. And to trace these things back. And. Bizarrely for me. Live on the fucking podcast. Yeah. I just had a little epiphany about my first day of school

and potentially that laying a traumatic framework for my adult experiences of agoraphobia how the fuck did I get onto this is the other issue live podcast in London last Saturday it was fucking madness right it was insanity so my criteria for a guest they must have public speaking experience because speaking in front

of an audience is terrifying for a lot of people so i need confirmation to know that somebody has done it there needs to be practical evidence so my guest was basically my agent had been approached would Blind Boy like to interview the UK's biggest biohacker I don't know what a fucking biohacker is but it sounds cool and the person had huge experience

with speaking in front of live audiences doing conferences they were a former um instructor in nlp which is neurolinguistic programming which is like neurolinguistic programming if if someone was if someone was nervous for public speaking and they wanted to become good at public speaking they would northern neurolinguistic programming is one of the things they would train in it's uh kind of the psychology of body language it's that it's it's rooted in psychotherapy but sometimes it's used it's it's one of these things that it has a noble root but it's also

found its way into like the pickup community they'll teach uh nlp to lads who are trying to pick up girls to you know either improve their own body language to make themselves more desirable or to read someone else's body language. But NLP at its root is rooted in psychotherapy. So anyway, I didn't know what a fucking biohacker was. I thought it was going to be some type of transhumanism shoving fucking computer chips into your arm whatever so i was like look the guest has got public speaking experience

it sounds like they're experienced they're very passionate about what they do i'm looking forward to a night of learning about what the fuck this is um and it didn't kind of pan out that way, I don't know why, the guests, so the room basically, right, here's the thing with my live podcast, when I do them abroad, so in, this was in the London Irish Centre, sometimes when I go abroad to do a podcast, you'll have like 70% of the audience are people who actually listen to the podcast but then you'll have 30% who are just Irish people that are there because blind buys there or because of the rubber bandits or because their friends are gone so it wasn't that 100% podcast crowd there was about five percent of the audience were drunk okay put it that way five but i'd say five percent of the audience were drunk and all it takes is five percent of drunk

rowdy people to turn the rest of the audience like five percent were drunk 90 were having a drink that's fine people are having a drink in all my podcasts but there were some drunk loud people at this and my guest who was a very polite kind of middle-class English dude brought him on to talk about biohacking he kind of within the first five minutes he'd made an anti-irish joke right he didn't mean it in a malicious bad way but in in a way that it's like read the room buddy you're in the london irish center and the audience in front of you is 500 irish people there might be 10% Brits so I asked a question

about what is biohacking something about hydration and then he referred to alcohol as Irish hydration that's a grand joke look there's nothing wrong with it it's not particularly offensive it's fine but

in a room full of fucking irish people and you're it didn't go down well we'll say it did not go down well so it created a a loud furore from the audience and at that moment i think a segment of the audience were not on his side on my guest's side then it turns out as well like the whole biohacking side of things it's not computer chips it's like to me it just seems like a type of an alternative medicine with it it's it has a lot of buzzwords we'll say it has an awful lot of buzzwords and if if there's people in the audience

some people were like doctors you know if you're smart I don't want to completely shit on it right it's he said some great things about like the ketogenic diet like the ketogenic diet is something that would have started off

as kind of an alternative approach to diet but now as science progresses you know medicine is truly looking at the ketogenic diet you know for people who have multiple sclerosis things like that he said look biohacking is just health optimization that's all it is for me that sounds like just medicine. He's a health optimisation that uses science. Sounds like medicine to me. Sounds like what a doctor does. So a lot of buzzwords, a lot of alternative ways to say shit. And the audience weren't having it.

And it got increasingly more uncomfortable as the night went down. And we were going two hours into it. As well now, it was a bit unfair. night went down and we were going two hours into it um as well now it was a bit unfair at the interval my guest was approached by someone in the audience and they were pretty rude to him and that shook him as well um so it was a crazy night it was a crazy night i i enjoyed it i liked the chaos of the energy of it i liked the room i really found a good crack a lot of people found a good crack, a lot of people found a good crack as well, other people found it deeply uncomfortable, people who were coming for the

podcast hug, it was a rowdy night, it's not one I'm going to be putting out live for you to listen to, because I know you're probably thinking, put it up, that'll be fucking great, it won't, trust me, some live podcasts are very good if you're in the room but to put them out live to listen to they just don't work and that was one of them do you know what i'm saying so that's what i did at the weekend and a great time in london and i had some very productive meetings as well about future projects um yeah but one one thing as well, yeah, especially for gigs not in Ireland, okay, like my upcoming Australian tour, like, don't get pissed for the live part, if you could avoid it, because when I do a gig abroad for some of the audience

it just turns into this Irish reunion right if that was a gig it'd be fine but if it's a live podcast and you're pissed and other people are pissed then that's no fun for anyone

because even when you don't think you're being loud you're you are being loud so by all means have a drink but don't think you're being loud. You're. You are being loud. So. By all means have a drink. But don't turn up. Rowdy and pissed.

Singing ole ole ole. Cause it's a live podcast. Um. Then what happened after the gig. Yeah. So. I was a little bit. Like I said.

It's. The gig went bad. when my guest made, when he referred to alcohol as Irish hydration, which is a bad move. But also it's like, I understand it's a bit of crack and whatever and there's no malice, but at the same time you're aware that it comes from a position of privilege. malice but at the same time you're aware that it comes from a position of privilege that's a serious position of privilege to uh to say that in front of a room full of Irish people and to think that it's grand that means that the person genuinely doesn't uh think that we find it offensive it's only offensive because a British a British person says it to be honest because we take the piss out of our own drink culture but you just don't want a British person saying it in particular an English person that's that's not how it works so then in

typical yeah the most paddy thing then happened to me after the gig so I kind of I was keeping it easy on the cans during the gig I had Bud Bud Light on my rider, so it's very difficult to get Mouldie off Bud Light, you know, it's very diluted, so when the gig was over, it was pitch dark outside, now the London Irish Centre is in this weird place, it's in like a, it's up in Camden, in where houses are, it's not like near pubs or anything it's where a lot of houses are so I come out the venue the streets are quiet it's like 12 I went onto my phone to order a taxi on an app a black cab so the black cab turns up but I'm outside the London Irish Centre and I have with me my bag which is full of cans cans, so I'm drinking my can, and then I look across the

road, right, and outside one of the houses is all these black, black bags of rubbish, and I notice that, oh fuck, one of them's on fire, so whatever happened across the road, someone, I don't know, on the way back from the pub some fucking lunatic decides I'm going to set fire to this bin outside someone's house so I'm now watching across and it's like oh fuck

those bins are on fire they're slowly do you know the flames are slowly rising but it's three or four black bags of rubbish so that goes up quickly but it's three or four black bags of rubbish so that goes up quickly and it's against the door of someone's house so it's that weird moment where it was the bystander effect where i'm just there in the dark and you're looking at this bin on fire and the part my i was fairly tipsy now at this stage i've had several bud lights

and i'm there staring at the flames of the bin. And for about 30 seconds, my brain was literally like, Ah, the bin's on fire. Is that what they're doing in London now with this? Do you know what I mean? I didn't see it as a bin on fire. I saw it as like, I don't know, someone flamboyantly preparing pancakes. It was like, I didn't look at it as as a an emergency it was like ah this must be the new cool london thing they're doing a bins on fire

hmm staring at it then my brain kicks in and i go no a fucking bins on fire that's someone's house shit shit so as this is happening fucking taxi driver arrives he's pure east end cockney lad he was sound now and he just arrives in and i'm screaming the bin's on fire the bin's on fire he looks out the window he sees it he sees me at this point he clicks that i'm fucking irish and i then in an act of utter paddywhackery reach into my fucking rucksack pull out two tins of beer open them and i run across the road and now i'm kicking the fucking fire bins and trying to pour cans of beer on it it slightly stops it but by which time now the flames are gotten fucking huge and i'm going fuck i can't go near this now i'm after offloading two cans of bun light bud light on this bin fire and it's it's only stifled it but it's ready for

more then luckily out the side of the london iris center all the security guards that have been working there all night who were closing up they come out the side door and there's now like six lads and they're going oh fuck a fire so all the bouncers run over and we just start kicking the shit out of the fire. Literally. Like eight or nine men. Me and all the bouncers. Like kicking the head off a fucking bin fire on the ground that I'd just thrown beer on.

So we managed to successfully kick the fire around the road so that it's away from the door. And now there's just this flaming rubbish all around the road but it's still kind of getting bigger and when the lads comes out then with a a mayonnaise bucket full of water and flakes it all over um so i get into the fucking cab and he was grand he was sound the taxi driver but he just could not get over for the entire journey how funny it was that he was collecting an Irish lad who then was putting a fire out with some beer. And I was then reflecting on, see, it's hard to get offended.

That's the problem, like, when English people are taking the piss out of the Irish cliche of, I was drunk. But then it's like, the person who made the joke earlier on the night is like, the podcast was essentially derailed because of a lot of drink. And then I finished the night by getting drunk and pouring drink all over the fire you're like living up to this stereotype I think the problem is it's like the English people are always fucking pissed as well I don't think the Irish drink any more than the fucking English and as my ma used to say about fucking my ma used to say the difference

between a Protestant and a Catholic is that the Protestants used to keep their fucking drink in private. Do you know? I think that's it. It's like Irish people are like yeah, we like drinking. It's part of it's an element of our culture. It's the same with a lot of British people. Maybe the posh ones

are a little bit more secretive about it. Secretly drinking brandy in cupboards or whatever they do. That was a bit of a ramble. we'll go for the ocarina pause what type of ocarina oh we've got this deep deep ocarina I'm not mad about him here's the ocarina pause lads

oh yes fuck actually yeah I can tie this one in with my Patreon so here's the thing that live podcast at the weekend, that happened to be the night that, like, a load of fucking TV people showed up, like a bunch of people from fucking BBC

or people who were interested in touring my gigs, like all the London hotshot bigwigs who'd been listening to Blind Boys podcast and deciding, oh, we'll go and see it now. We'll go and see what this guy's about and make our decisions. So they turned up to a two-hour-long episode of Jeremy Kyle where it was just chaos.

So I doubt I'll be getting any phone calls from the TV people or the live touring people as a result of that live podcast. So, Ocarina Paws. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. I'm not a devil. Evil thinks of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first O-Men. I believe the 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 O-Men. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. 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 um yeah support the fucking patreon lads this podcast is uh funded by you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast okay that's how you can support this podcast um it gives me a regular income you know the crack it pays my way it allows me the freedom to do a gig in london for it to be absolutely mad for it to be attended by a bunch of TV execs and for me to kind of go fuck it if they came to that

and they weren't feeding it and it doesn't turn into something fuck it there'll be another podcast because I have my Patreon and I know where my money's coming from and I know what I have at the end of the month. And it allows me to be a bit more relaxed.

Like that. If I didn't have my Patreon. I would be crying and weeping and worrying. And sending anxious emails. Going I'm so sorry. That the podcast was. A loud shambles. Where not much was discussed.

But I guess we don't have to do that now um what else before i get into the topic of this week's podcast yeah i last week i was plugging i read a short story last week for my brand new book boulevard rain so just a reminder that that's in shops on nove 1st. And to pre-order the book from easons.com. Pre-order the book and if you're lucky, if you're one of the first, I don't know what the number is, but if you're one of the first pre-orders, you will get a signed print with your book a drawing that i've done that's as a high quality print and it's signed and there's only a limited amount amount of them that won't be reprinted so if you pre-order the book from easens.com you will get one of those if you're lucky and as well just if you're planning on buying the book anyway uh pre-order it helps me out because if the shops get a lot of pre-orders

it means they're more likely to push it when it does go on sale and that's handy enough for me and I'm very happy with the book I'm fucking thrilled with it of course I prefer the second book because it's more mature

I've spent more time on it I really like it, I've found my voice more in my opinion, but, mainly just look, if, if I wasn't me, would I want to read the book?

Yes I would, so that's all I, that's all I need, that's all I need, I'm happy with it, that's all I need, and I look forward to sharing it with you, I can't fucking wait till November 1st.

For you to go reading it. Can't fucking wait. God bless. So what I wanted to talk about this week is. A kind of a hot take. Kind of. I don't know. I don't know.

Is it a hot. Yeah. I suppose a hot take. Flew into my head during the week. In that. I don't know. It just arrived. out of nowhere as i won't say a fully formed idea but a good hot take for me is

getting two kind of unrelated things things that seem seemingly unrelated but finding the interconnections between the two um so the interconnection between these two things i want to discuss is existential anxiety i suppose if you could call it that i mean the the anxiety around i'm not fully sure but what i want to speak about the first thing i want to speak about is a a book that i read when i was 18 19 and it is it popped into my head last week and i'd forgotten about it it's a fucking fantastic book i'm gonna spoil it for you all right i am gonna spoil it for you but to be honest the book is so good it doesn't matter if to spoil it for you. Alright, I am going to spoil it for you. But to be honest, the book is so good, it doesn't matter if I spoil it. You know what I mean?

It's not one of those fucking, is Bruce Willis a ghost at the end? Or was it a tiger in the boat all along type of shit? It's not plot twisty. It's literature-like, so it's about the process. So it won't ruin it. But, so, as i mentioned earlier in the podcast and as i when i do speak about mental health for the point of relatability i speak about the difficulty i had in my late teens and early 20s in particular with anxiety and depression um anxiety was the real issue but when you have anxiety for

a while it will result in depression because when you let anxiety rule your life consistently to the point that you're not meeting your needs and you're not living your life in a way that's conducive with how your peers are living it so for my situation it's you know not living your life in a way that's conducive with how your peers are living it so for my situation it's you know not leaving my house being agoraphobic not being able to go to pubs do that for a long enough time and it will result in uh often a sense of shame over yourself a sense of feeling less than a sense of feeling not the same as everyone else, that shame will lead to depression. So I had a crack at that.

But there was a book I read at the time, and I won't say the book helped me. It didn't help me. It didn't necessarily traumatise me either, didn't necessarily traumatize me either but it was like reading this book was like something I couldn't I couldn't look away from like like a morbid like when you're curious on the fucking internet, you know, and you just want to see someone, you want to see dead bodies or something, or you want to see what a fucking,

like I don't do it anymore, but like when I was younger, do you know what I mean, when you had the internet, there was sites, there was gore sites they were called, and you could see dead bodies, or you could see someone who'd been in a car accident, you know, that type of way, where it's like you don't know why you want to see it but then you see it and you're just like i feel bad that type of thing so it was a book i i read it by accident because the author is called patrick suskind now it's worth noting too. That looking back. This book was a huge influence on my writing I think.

And the themes of it. Were. It's something I returned to a lot in my writing. But Patrick Suskind. The reason I knew who Patrick Suskind was. He had written a book called Perfume. The story of a murderer. Fucking incredible book.

The film about it is also. Pretty fucking good, very true to the book. And I knew about it because I was big into my nirvana as a teenager and there's a song on the album in utero called Scentless Apprentice and the opening lyrics, and the opening lyrics like most babies smell like butter his smell smelled like no other is I believe a quote from the Patrick Suskin novel Perfume which is a novel set in the 14th century about someone who has an extraordinary sense of smell and it is

highly recommend the book so after I read that because I'd heard it in a Nirvana lyric and I don't know popped open a magazine and realized oh scentless apprentices about this book i better read it fucking loved perfume read it so i said right i gotta figure out what else this fucker patrick suskin has done so i came across this book inside in a shop in town called the pigeon very small book about 120 pages I cracked it open and it was a very dangerous read because it played its themes were things that I was really struggling with at that time

things that I was really struggling with at that time. And when anxiety is your thing, you know, the fears of... You can have this intense fear of going mad, basically, when you don't fully understand it. You know, either... My fears were, like I said, vomiting in vomiting in public right puking in public and becoming a spectacle or and this is quite a common one doing something mad doing something crazy being in tesco and jumping into the carrots or ripping my top off and screaming the fear it's kind of like you know when you look over a cliff

and you're confront the french have a word for it i don't know what it is but you know when you look over a cliff and you're suddenly confronted with the reality of choice you're looking over a cliff or over the top of a building and you look over and you look down into the traffic and it's universal your brain goes wow i could make a choice right now to jump jump off this building and land in that traffic and end my life and create a spectacle i could make that choice that's something that all humans have when they look over the building when you suffer from anxiety that can plague you quite a bit not necessarily jumping off a building but for me it was what if i do something mad what if while queuing in this shop i start screaming and everyone looks at me what if I don't have control over that these were the thoughts that were bothering me each day and keeping me from leaving my house

so I started reading The Pigeon and the central theme of it I think it's kind of that it doesn't really address it but it addresses think it's kind of that it doesn't really address it but it addresses very 20th century modernist themes that you'd find in the work of Franz Kafka or Beckett reflecting on the absurdity of simply being alive and meaning and existence. And. In a nutshell. What the book is about. It's about this fella called. Jonathan Knoll.

And it's set in Paris I believe. Yeah it's Paris. And Jonathan Knoll is. A middle aged man. And. He has an unhappy childhood. When he's a child, he returns home from school one day and his parents, he's Jewish. His parents had been taken away by the Nazis. When the Nazis went into France, his parents had been taken away.

And he never sees them again when he's a kid the deep trauma of just boom like that gone parents done gone never to be seen of again there's that and then he has quite an unhappy man his wife one day as well when he gets older then he gets married and one day his wife just leaves him for no reason i won't say for what no reason doesn't go into that but simply his wife leaves him for another man suddenly so the uncertainties i mean i suppose it's the theme of it's it's something if you hear me speak about mental health you'll know i talk about one of the conditions of being alive is you have to accept that pain is an inevitable part of being a human being. Pain, rejection, loss, surprise, disaster.

These things are part of being alive and we can't turn away from them. We must embrace them. And that's something that I would have used. them and that's something that i would have used that's a philosophy and a theory which you take from buddhism and existential psychology that allowed me to overcome my anxiety but the character in the book the pigeon jonathan noel he doesn't do that the great pain of losing his mother and his father to the nazis and his wife running off with another man that the suddenness and sharpness and the you know the hammer into the head that is those situations for him instead of him embracing the chaotic uncertainty and inevitability of pain that

comes as part of the tapestry of human existence. Instead of that, he becomes someone who's incredibly rigid in how he lives his life. So the character in The Pigeon, literally, he rents a tiny little Parisian apartment. He has a job in a bank. And every single day, he has the exact same routine. He goes to the bank does his job he returns home with bread meat and fruit and he doesn't deviate from it and he lives this very rigid simple boring life where there's no surprises at all um i have a theory that the Radiohead song No Alarms and No Surprises may be based on this book, The Pigeon, knowing that Tom York probably knows that Kurt Cobain based the song on Scentless Apprentice,

and maybe Tom York said, well, I'll base a song on the work of Patrick Suskin too, because the song No Alarms and No Surprises is similar enough to the theme of The Pigeon. But anyway, I digress. similar enough to the theme of the pigeon but anyway i digress so jonathan noel in the pigeon starts to live this like really simple rigid fucking life work apartment fruit bread meat no surprises all perfection on sundays all he does is stay at home, cleans his room and change the sheets. And he becomes very well behaved, takes pride in his job. He essentially becomes a very, a robot. A robot who doesn't have many connections with people.

Just a robot loner. By himself. With everything in complete and utter control. And that was tough for me to read at the time because that's what I was doing I was living in my bedroom and because my bedroom couldn't hurt me I couldn't get an anxiety attack

I was getting anxiety attacks in my bedroom but not as much as I would have gotten I felt if I had gone to the fucking supermarket we'll say so I I had my, my books were essential, I had my music, and I had my, to be able to make music and to paint, I had my little things in my room, basically, my sheltered cocoon of utter control as I refuse to acknowledge the inevitable chaos uncertainty and pain of human existence that cannot be avoided and you can't turn your back from it and if you try to control your life in such a way that you stop the inevitability of pain and suffering and disappointment it's not a pleasant

route to go down it will end badly so jonathan noel continues on with this way of living right and he's doing it for like a decade and the only kind of real change in his life is the little apartment that he's renting, he agrees with his landlady that he'll eventually buy it, so I think he's saving up to buy the apartment, and that gives him a sense of hope, because he's like, the one uncertainty I had in my life is I rent this apartment, but now I'm going to buy it, and it'll be mine,

and it'll never be taken away, and every day all I will have is work, my bread, my cheese, my meat, my apartment, and cleaning it on Sundays, and nothing's ever going to change. And then one day, he comes home from work, and he notices right outside his door, so it's like a little Parisian corridor, you know, like a small little apartment, and right outside the door of his hallway, there's a small little parisian corridor you know like a small little apartment and right outside the door of his hallway there's a small little window across the way and he notices that a pigeon

has created a little nest just there inside inside the building there's a pigeon outside his door creating a little nest and this rattles him deeply he the pigeon kind of becomes this real symbol of chaotic disgust he really begins to despise it it's like I have this perfect controlled life and here's this animal cooing and preening and shitting and nesting outside my door, do you know? I have a little excerpt of it here, when he sees the pigeon, he runs into his apartment and he says to himself, of it here when when when he sees the pigeon he runs into his apartment and he says to himself you will die jonathan you'll die if not right away then soon and your whole life has been a lie you've made a mess of it because it's been upended by a pigeon you must kill it but you can't kill it you can't kill a fly or wait a fly yes a fly you can manage or a mosquito or a little bug but never something warm-blooded some warm-blooded creature

like a pigeon that weighs a pound you'd gun down a human being first bang bang that's fast just makes a little hole quarter of an inch thick that's clean and it's permissible in self-defense it's permissible article one in the regulations for armed security personnel it's required in fact not a soul blames you if you shoot down a person just the opposite but a pigeon how do you shoot down a pigeon it flutters around a pigeon does so that you can easily miss it's a gross misdemeanor to shoot down a pigeon it's forbidden that leads to confiscation of your service weapon to loss of your job you end up in prison if you shoot a pigeon now you can't kill it

but you can't live you can't live with it either never no human being can go on living in the same house with a pigeon a pigeon is the epitome of chaos and anarchy so he ends up really derailing and unable to maintain his rigid life now because of this fucking pigeon and really what the pigeon is it's it's the chaos and anarchy you can't live with this pigeon it's chaos and anarchy he says because life is chaos and anarchy you can't live with this pigeon it's chaos and anarchy he says

because life is chaos and anarchy life is chaos and anarchy any one of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow and there's no control over it life is guaranteed suffering, there will be guaranteed pain and suffering in being

alive, this is a given of human existence, there's also going to be Life is guaranteed suffering. There will be guaranteed pain and suffering in being alive. This is a given of human existence. There's also going to be a lot of pleasure and a lot of happiness. But there'll be sadness and tears as well and surprises and shocks. But this Jonathan Cunt has decided to try, was so hurt by loss and surprise loss that he's tried to live his life in a rigid fashion but now this pigeon is fucking it all up and the pigeon never interacts with him the pigeon's just doing his pigeon thing just nesting just cooing and nesting and shitting but it begins to strip away at his everyday life and his sanity so the end of the book it kind of focuses

on on one day and it's the day he finds the pigeon so he runs into his room and he's just like i can't i can't fucking live here i can't do this routine and have this thing if this pigeon is outside the door. So he gathers, like, all the things that matter to him, all his valuables and his essentials, and he puts them into one suitcase. And he then, like, he leaves the room, right? And when he's outside, he's like, all right i need to get the fuck away from this pigeon so now he's outside his gaff with his suitcase and he's thinking around his head going you know i've been saving up now to buy this apartment but i can't live in the apartment if the fucking pigeon is outside the apartment and he's really anxious and anxiously totting up

the amount of money that he has figuring you know how long can i stay in a hotel if i if i live on fuck all how can i stay in a hotel just anything to get me away from this pigeon how long is the pigeon going to live how long do pigeons live can i live in a hotel for as long as this pigeon lives until it dies but what if it has children and there's more pigeons and it's this really anxious continual flutter of fear about this pigeon and he's now out in the road with his suitcase and all his belongings inside it he goes to a local park to chill out and sit down on his bench that he always sits on whenever he does visit the park and uh a tramp comes up i say tramp now they call it clochard which is a french word for a tramp but a tramp comes up and he's seen the tramp like loads as part of his daily routine he's

familiar with this is the tramp that's in the park but because of the incident with the pigeon earlier and it derailing his routine he now starts to look at the tramp with this kind of furious envy he becomes jealous of he's like obviously angry with himself at not even been able to live in his own apartment because there's a pigeon there and now he's jealous of this tramp who he views as having this utter complete freedom no job, no house, no nothing just wandering around the park picking up fag butts

and he becomes very angry and jealous of that tramp then he bends over and like he's this is Jonathan Noel now, bends over and rips, the arse of his pants or something, so he goes to his hotel anyway, and he basically decides,

the tram thing too, that's pure Beckett, that is very very Beckett, if you think of a play like, Waiting for Godot, like, very much the, that one thing with existentialism, it confronts our, the choice that we have to be free,

that to be truly free is a choice that we have, and to be alive is to, whether you master that choice or not, and it's a big theme in Waiting for Godot, where, which is essentially about about it's a very existential play and it's two kind of tramps deciding whether one of them is going to kill themselves or not so I think Suskind in this book is deliberately nodding towards Beckett it's Becketian, can we say that

can we be a cunt it's very Becketian I don't think anyone says that, what do they say Beckettian, I don't think anyone says that. What did I say? Beckettian? I don't know. So anyway, Jonathan Noel, you know, having been envious of the tramp in the park, he goes to his hotel and decides he's going to kill himself, right?

Now, the choice to commit suicide or not is, and I say commits, that's a word I don't normally use. The proper term to use is to died by suicide but in the literary modernist kind of existential vein suicide and commit suicide is is used often in the discourse all right so that's why I'm using that word so he makes his choice to try and do that right but he doesn't then he has a flashback of the tramp from earlier

and he remembers seeing that same tramp one day putting his pants down and taking a shit in a public park and not caring who's looking and then Jonathan becomes obsessed with what if he does that

and kind of like the chaos of the pigeon in his building having broken down his reality to such a point that what if he ends up in a fucking park with his pants around his ankles shitting what separates him and his job

in the bank and his routine from that so the whole book it's it's about that it's about i mean i'd nearly call it post-modern existentialism because the themes in it are pure kafka and beckett shit that had been done 40 50 years previously but it's kind of a new twist on it and the book came out in 1985 I think which would have been the era of late post-modernism so it would have been a pastiche we'll say

of shit that had already happened in modernism but something happened five or six years ago that very much reminded me massively of the plot of The Pigeon. Someone living this rigid life which they believe to be good and then by the end of it, faced with, holy fuck, what if I do something crazy? Except this person does do something crazy. Do you remember Coney 2012?

Does that ring a bell? Coney 2012. Right? Well, it's something that's just been forgotten about. I don't hear people talk about it anymore. Coney 2012. It was... I think it's one of the most important moments

of the 2010s right because it was the first time like if you ever wonder like where does this woke culture come from where does

like online activism come from like now it's always been present it's always been there but it's now very mainstream like clicktivism or clout rage no clicktivism being online activism for clicks or clout rage is being outraged or offended at something. Not necessarily because. The person believes it.

But because it's a good way to get likes and retweets. There's a reward system for it. But social justice. You know. Online social justice. Has been. A defining element of popular culture. For most of the 2010s. And it just kind of came out of nowhere and anyone who's old enough to remember using the internet in the 2000s this wasn't there like

there was no social justice on myspace or bibo or early facebook you would have had the odd person who's attempting online activism in online spaces and it existed but it wasn't a mainstream conversation at all and i think the defining moment was coney 2012 so coney 2012 was this very sharp slickly produced uh video that appeared in 2012 okay and it was an activism video and it had like everything we now know as as like the common infrastructure of how things play out on social media started with the first instance of it for me was corny 2012 so this video comes out and it was released on youtube and it was by an activist organization called invisible children

and it was a half hour long documentary and it basically there's a guy in uganda called joseph corny who is like a war criminal really fucking nasty guy war criminal uh kind of grooming child soldiers mass murderer nasty character and this organization decided you know have you ever heard of Joseph Kony no you haven't well let me tell you about him he's a evil mass murdering uh person who's on the loose so the goal of it was in 2012 let's make joseph coney the most famous man in the world and then bring him to justice and it was this really fucking inspirational effective video that when you saw it it was like a light switch would flick on in your head that

made you realize wow the internet and social media can truly be used as a tool for good this can be used to change the world it was like that it was like the whole infrastructure of twitter and facebook was like fuck if I share this video we can take down a warlord and it was really inspirational and then they deliberately targeted celebrities people like Rihanna shared it I think Beyonce might have too so now you had celebrities for the first time ever like instead like I mean rihanna's twitter and and like it would have been just here's my new song do you know like public figures in in 2009 2010 they didn't really go on to social media for a big rant that was kind of it wasn't a thing yet you would have had a few but it wasn't widespread

you wouldn't have had them expressing political opinions they were entertainers but with coney 2012 and retweets it's like i see it as the start as i see it as the first um inclinations of of 2010 social justice online culture widespread i see coney 2012 is the start right so what happens is it's a huge success at the beginning everyone in the fucking world if you're on the internet in 2012 is talking about coney 2012 and everyone's like we're gonna do it we're gonna get him we're gonna bring joseph coney to justice so the initial response was really positive I think fucking Michelle Obama got behind it everyone was tweeting hashtag Kony 2012 stop Kony whatever and you had this real feeling of hope and change and waiting to see what had happened and

UNICEF got involved the world was talking about it so the guy who so Coney 2012 was started by an organisation called Invisible Children which were like a well meaning charitable organisation I think with Christian values whose intention was to end the use of child soldiers in parts of Africa pretty noble kind of

you know a thing you want to get behind to be honest em and the guy in the corny 2012 video who made it who was I think a founder of Invisible Children was Jason Russell and he's in the video narrating it comes across as a really friendly incredibly enthusiastic yank do you know that that type of white american enthusiasm that they have that incredible friendliness that's the vibe so initially corny 2012 is doing fantastic everyone on the internet is talking about it i remember at the time just feeling this is something new I haven't seen this before

I haven't seen one thing go this viral this big and it being about changing the world okay I definitely remember it as this being wide scale wow we can use the internet to change something big

such as taking down a war criminal and Jason Russell anyway who is a Christian right he's you know he started off as a Christian youth theatre comes across as a kind of a very polite well-raised middle-class white american enthusiastic person who's a devout christian and follows christianity and you know probably tries to live their life each day as a christian trying to do good i mean he's part of an organization that's trying to end child soldiers in Africa. So on the outside, that appears to be someone who's evangelically following the book and how Christians should behave.

And I like it when Christians are doing shit like that, you know, instead of judging people that they're out there actually trying to improve the world. So he starts kind of very much obsessing now about Coney 2012 and especially the online comments. But also what happens is, and this is the first time, 2012 is also the very beginnings of clickbait. beginnings of clickbait okay clickbait didn't get fully into the swing of things until about 2013 2014 but 2012 is definitely the beginning now by clickbait i mean content you know moving away from journalism moving away from journalism and reporting and it becoming about online content which means

very quick rapid continual output of articles to like it would have been the start of buzzfeed continually putting out articles that are on hot topics and and and the goal is for us to click on them, by appealing to our emotions, extreme emotions, fear, rage, jealousy, things like that, so you begin to see the cycle, and it's a familiar cycle now, with anything on social media, like Corny 2012,

it took place over maybe two or three weeks, to hold the battle, which now it'd be a day, you know, the way shit progresses now, like you look at the fucking news now, like currently right now, this very moment, Boris Johnson is, after lying to the Queen,

and Parliament has said that he's acted unlawfully, and could actually be, he won't, but like technically Boris Johnson could be hung for treason, technically, but he won't but like technically boris johnson could be hung for treason technically but he won't because guess what an eu law stops uh england and their archaic high treason law he's not like but i'm just this is the world we're living in boris johnson right now prime minister of england is technically after doing something treasonous, and the President of the United States, Trump, is, there's going to be an impeachment inquiry, because he withheld military aid to Ukraine,

so that they would investigate, or they'd give out secrets on Joe Biden's son. So, in a nutshell, this is how nuts the news is right now, just today. Fucking Boris Johnson, treason, and Prime Prime Minister or President of the United States impeachment. And we're not even batting an eyelid really. In 1990 or 1996, if that was the fucking news, like TV channels would turn off.

It would be insane. But this is just a regular news day. The way that the internet moves so quickly now. This is just a regular news day. And it'll be something different tomorrow. You know. How this shit happens I don't know. I want to do a separate podcast on this alone.

But it's the sign of our times. But Coney 2012 kind of started that. So. What happens is. Jason Russell is now following the Coney 2012 thing. It looks like a success. It's looking like it's clear cut. It's here we are. We've made this really inspirational online video. Everyone's sharing it.

Rihanna, Michelle Obama. Nothing's bad is going on. We want to bring a war criminal to justice. Because for some reason he's not. We want to stop the use of child soldiers. All incredibly really noble things. And I'm sure Jason Russell from his point of view as a devout Christian. Is going I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.

And I'm doing it well. Do you get me? But then the clickbait articles come in and the comments come in and they do what's known as a milkshake duck and milkshake duck is a term we use today to refer to something goes viral everyone thinks it's good then it turns out you find out some information that makes them bad then that thing gets cancelled and usually you know the cycle goes now good thing happens then an article comes out to say it's actually bad and then by the end of the week they go actually it's not bad the person who said it's bad is bad and it's actually good again and that's the cycle and that's the clickbait cycle

so with coney 2012 all the articles started coming out questioning where their funding was coming from our articles started coming out saying you know coney 2012 is bad they are misreading the situation in africa coney 2012 is just another example of white savior colonialism. So now you have all these negative takes on something that on the surface appears good. Now whether they were justified or not, I don't know. But it was the birth of the clickbait era. And within clickbait, you can find something problematic in anything really easily. And with a lot of clickbait journalism, that became the focus of a lot of that journalism something is going viral that everyone likes how do we use

post-modern theory essentially to find something problematic in there whether it is or not and it's very easy it is quite easy a lot of the shit i do in this podcast is kind of i search for problematic things it's easy to do so all these problematic things these articles started coming out about coney 2012 and jason russell couldn't fucking handle it and now some of the criticism was legitimate. You know, Invisible Children were working with the Ugandan army. There was a lot of legitimate criticism, but there was also a lot of incredible hot takes that were looking for clicks. But Jason Russell, the creator, the Christian boy, who is...

Now I'm making wide assumptions here now, not really based on evidence, this is an opinion and me reading it, but I, you know, it would appear to me someone who kind of just believed if I just do good, if I'm just a good person and I try and help everybody and I'm good all the time like the Bible says, then what can go wrong? But the chaos of the internet said otherwise the clickbait chaos said otherwise no matter how good you do or no matter how noble you are if it gets really popular someone's gonna fucking have a problem with it on the internet doesn't matter what you're doing someone on the internet has a problem with what you're doing doesn't matter what you're doing someone on the internet has a problem with what you're doing and it's going to say that you are wrong or that

you're the devil or that you're hitler that's that's the internet that's social media in the 2010s as a given it all it depends upon is how popular it gets okay i have yet to see the online opinion that is widely massively shared that does not get ripped apart by someone whether it's legitimate or not or maybe just looking for those clicks because like i said once something's trending you need to have that new take to get those clicks so the best thing to do is go here's why you're wrong what the fuck do you mean i'm wrong click boom uh so jason russell begins to obsess over it then suddenly corny 2012 is deleted it's gone off the internet and you're kind of going what the fuck what's going on and about two weeks later

it like it died down really quickly and like two weeks later then another video goes viral and it's cctv footage outside a cafe in like and it's really sunny and jason russell who was on the video this really conservative lovely nice polite christian man it's him in broad daylight naked in a public space kind of walking back and forth rambling and what appears to be masturbating and masturbating, and, you know, it's very sad, obviously, because, you know, this is mental health, this is a mental health issue, so I'm not making light of it, because the response was, they responded many months later, and just said, look, he had incredibly acute psychosis He had incredibly acute psychosis from the utter stress of this thing going so huge.

And specifically, he made mention of the criticisms and critiques, being unable to handle the criticisms and critiques that were put on it. And I can see why that would lead to that level of stress how the fuck do you and I relate to that that's huge and I have compassion for the man do you know but something about the story of it

on a subtextual level takes me back to the themes of the pigeon it's A subtextual level. Takes me back to the themes of the pigeon. It's. Religion is another way. Especially. Like evangelical. Following religion by the book.

Perfectly. Right. Is another. It's the same thing as the dude in the pigeon with his perfect fucking life and his shelter it's the same as me in my room you know with my books and my music avoiding the anxiety of living the real world religion and following it religiously, even following the good religion, which is I will, everything I do is going to be based upon

being good, being charitable, helping the world. Ultimately, what I'm trying to get at is if you engage in anything, if you define your life by any quest for certainty, okay, that's fucking dodgy. And it would appear to me, and this is a hot take, and I mean this with all respect, from a distance and not knowing the man but from looking at the corny 2012 thing to me it looks like someone who desperately tried to seek certainty in religious doctrine and doing something really noble and good but in a rigid way in a really really rigid these are the rules

and if i follow them everything will be okay and. And if I do this, I don't ever, ever have to recognize or confront or understand that life contains disappointment, suffering, rejection, criticism. And that's why he reminds me, he reminds me of the man in that story, in the pigeon. Even though the pigeon fella, his fear was, what if one day i end up becoming that you know envying the freedom of the tramp and shitting in public losing control that happened to jason russell that's he this christian who was trying to help child soldiers ends up in a public street

in broad daylight, naked, masturbating in front of a CCTV camera public spectacle, needing to go to a mental institution and like I said I don't want to be diagnosing or anything like that from a distance the man himself said a brief acute psychosis brought on by the stress of simply being that famous and all that shit and the criticism.

But I'm trying to look at the deeper structure of... There's no such thing as certainty. There's no such thing as certainty, lads. no such thing as certainty there's no such thing as certainty lads and to strive for it in whatever way

will lead to discomfort we need to learn how to embrace change to understand and recognise that there's only one certainty, death death is the one certainty you and everything you love and everything you know is going to die that's a given that is human

existence all right and to embrace that is it's a good thing I did a podcast on that before about embracing the certainty of death. And the rest is uncertain chaos, right? Here's what you do have control over, and this is fucking really liberating. Here's the real liberation behind it, and this is where CBT comes in. You cannot control what happens to you in life you can't control the chaos of existence you can control how you react to what happens to you that's what you have control over no matter

how chaotic and uncertain life is no matter how much suffering life throws at you no matter how much disappointment and criticism life throws at you, right? These things that are outside of your control, you have full control over how you react to them. And I think when I truly, fully fucking realised that, that's what made me feel empowered. That was the journey for me to get beyond my mental health issues and to to move beyond that ordered extreme anxiety of what if i end up being the naked man masturbating

in front of a cctv camera or ripping my pants around my ankles and shitting in a public park or puking in a fucking tesco do you know what I mean embrace uncertainty embrace change and then you don't kind of obsess over the fear of that choice do you get me right that was a I don't even know what that podcast was about I have a fair idea

I hope you enjoyed me chatting to you for 19 minutes about human existence alright God bless I'll talk to you next week one final thing For 19 minutes. About. Human existence. Alright. God bless. I'll talk to you next week.

One final thing. Did any justice come to Joseph Coney? No it did not. Joseph Coney was never caught. Never brought into justice. He's still. He's still at large. Although.

No longer is very powerful. He doesn't have a huge big army. He's just got a ragtag bunch around him. But no. In terms of. He doesn't have a huge big army. He's just got a ragtag bunch around him. But no, in terms of Coney 2012's goal of bringing Joseph Coney to justice, I'm afraid not. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre 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.