The Blindboy Podcast - Elf on the Shelf is a tool of surveillance capitalism

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

A reading of Elf on the Shelf as a tool of surveillance capitalism via Benthams Panopticon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Slide down the banister, you melting endas. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I'd like to begin this week's podcast with a short piece of prose that was submitted by Ronan Keating, who used to be in Bison. And then he stopped being in Bison and he just became Ronan Keating. This poem is called A Letter to My TD. What if I climbed inside that dog? In the front of him.

Through his mouth. Then I controlled the dog from the inside. Would they still treat me like Ron and Katie? Or would they treat me like the dog? Why are dogs only allowed to do the things that dogs do? Maybe I like getting rubs. Maybe I like chasing tennis balls. Maybe I'd like to be fully naked and scream at a postman.

Look at him with his wet nose and his piebald Jack Russell coat thinking he's better than me. Maybe I'd like to lick my own rectum in front of a fireplace. Why would this only be okay if I climbed inside that dog? Why can't I do these things? Me, Ronan Keating. No bullshit, it's fucking 2022, come on. That was a short piece of prose called A Letter to My TD by Ronan Keating. Thank you very much, Ronan.

Ronan sent that poem to me subliminally through messages that were directed to me alone in last week's Late Late Tie show, which I had to decipher. So thanks for... No. No, he sent it in the post but that that poem reminds me of when I was a child when I was a teenager

we used to have this dog called Cheesy his full name was Liam Cheese. And he was a great dog. He was a little weird terrier cross. He was like a Jack Russell crossed with a cairn terrier. So he was a little wiry terrier

the colour of cheese. And when I'd be like 12 or 13 and I was misbehaving and being a little shit my ma used to like shame me by saying why can't you be more well behaved, why can't you be like cheesy, look how well behaved

cheesy is, why can't you be more like him and I used to always point out to her the failure of the logic of her statement because what would I be doing? I don't know, I'd be playing fucking music too loud or something. And she'd say to me, be more like the dog, he's more well behaved than you are.

And I'd say to her like, he's bollocks naked and if the postman comes near the door he rips up envelopes directly out of the postman's hand what if I was bollocks naked attacking the postman or I used to jump on my dad's balls

my dad be watching TV and cheesy jump up and land on his testicles and I'd say to my ma is that what you want you want me to be fully nude jumping on my da's balls? Is that an ideal son is it?

One time he was asleep on my ma's lap and he snapped at her because he got woken up by one of his own farts. The dog, not my da. Outrageous behaviour and what was I doing?

Fucking failing my junior cert. So what? It's coming up to Christmas now. And I have to say Limerick City is looking beautiful. Especially in the evening times. We've got all our little restaurants. We've got our outdoor dining areas. That are covered.

That have lights and heaters and people are making use of the city and it's gorgeous and we have a little Christmas market that makes the streets smell like caramelised hot nuts I was visiting some of these stalls these Christmas stalls just having a look, seeing what the crack was

so there was one stall that's selling these hot caramelized nuts which I refused to buy because they smell so nice. They smell so amazing and they fill the air with such wonder and promise that I guarantee you the taste of them isn't as nice and I don't want to find out. I don't want to ruin those Christmas caramelised nuts for myself. I want to leave them as the possibility of wonder that floats in the ether. And I'm able to do that because I'm an adult. I've been around long enough.

I quite enjoy sitting with the frustration. Being able to tolerate the frustration of not tasting those nuts. Then there was another stall. And it's just selling sweets. It's just selling loads of different really cheap sweets. And I think you buy them by the bag full. But they're being sold out of this little shed. This little makeshift shop.

And all the sweets are there in the front and you can see them all. Again it looks magnificent. I don't want to buy them again I only want one or two I don't want a full bag of sweets but as I was standing at this this sweet counter this temporary makeshift Christmas market sweet counter I couldn't help but notice that like it'd be very easy to steal the sweets if I wanted to they're right there there's no security cameras, if the person working there just turned their back

it'd be very easy for anybody to steal those sweets, now I'm an adult again, I'm not going to be robbing sweets I'm also a public figure, I don't think I need that in the newspapers. I don't like the idea of stealing sweets. This is someone's business. So I'm not thinking of stealing the sweets. But I was thinking about the clientele and I'd be thinking back if I was a

child. Now if I was nine or ten, I'd probably chance stealing a sweet. I'd probably chance stealing a little sweet from that Christmas stall. If the man's back was turned. But then I looked up. And I'm going what type of security have they got here? If I was a child and I wanted to steal sweets. What security have they got? They didn't have any.

But what they did have. They had four of those little fucking. Elf on the shelves. You know those cunts. They had four fucking elf on the shelves. You know those cunts? They had four little elves on the shelves. And then I realised, that's the security. That's the security, that's the purpose of those elves on the shelves. Now up until this point,

I've only started to know this elf on the shelf maybe the past seven years. It's quite a new phenomenon I didn't know much about it all I know is that it's this little figurine of an elf a red elf and parents buy them in the weeks coming up to Christmas and I think they place the elf

in various places around the house in a new place each night so that the kid thinks that the elf is moving around the house grand, harmless, none of my business nothing to do with me but I never liked the elf on the shelf as soon as I first saw an elf on the shelf I never liked them because they look sneaky

they always look like they're hiding a boner if you look at an elf on the shelf, the figurine, they always have their hands covering their crotch for some reason, like they're hiding an erection. And the worst thing about an elf on the shelf, they don't make eye contact. They're always looking off to the left. So they look sneaky. I don't like them. Elf in the Shelf. What vibes does Elf in the Shelf give me? They're like one of those lads that are really, really, really nice to women in the hope that the woman will then have sex with them. That's the vibe that I get off Elf in the Shelf. And then this week I started looking into what the fucking Elf in the Shelf is for,

what the purpose of it is. Because after I saw him at this sweet shop, I just, I couldn't stop thinking about the elf on the shelf and I needed to find out. And it turns out that the whole point of elf on the shelf is you buy this little elf, strategically place it around your children up high on a shelf, and then the elf watches him 24 7 the elf is fucking sneaky he is a sneaky prick the elf watches the child's behavior and then the child doesn't misbehave because if the child misbehaves it won't because the elf is always watching and you don't know where the elf is going to be he's up there, but where is he going to be tomorrow? He moves all around the house and he's always watching. And if you do anything wrong, he's telling Santy.

And he's telling Santy that you've been a little shit and you're not getting presents. And there's a reason too that the elf looks sneaky. It's a psychological projection. If the child is thinking, maybe if I do it over here where the elf can't see me, it's not going to work because his eyes are always looking to one side. It's not a fixed gaze. It suggests movement. And to a child, you'd be thinking, well, maybe when my back is turned,

his eyes look the other direction. He doesn't look straight ahead. His eyes are darting everywhere. He can see everything. And he's hiding his privates and he's crossing his legs his body language is sneaky this person isn't honest if i even think about being sneaky forget about it because this cunt is 10 times sneakier than me i'm not dealing with an authority figure here i'm dealing with someone who's dishonest but what the child is really doing is that they're projecting their own feelings of trying to be crafty and trying to outsmart the elf they're projecting their own sensation of sneakiness onto the elf which is then reflected back at them by how sneaky the elf is there's a manipulation going on and that's when i realized this fucking christ Christmas market sweet shop was using Elf on the Shelf for security.

So I rock up as an adult man thinking to myself, there's all the sweets right in front of me. I could just rob them. I could just rob these sweets. There's no cameras. I could just rob the sweets. I'm not going to do it. I'm a grown adult. I'm not doing it. I'll buy the sweets. I've laid out the reasons why I'm not going to steal the sweets. It's not happening. I'm not doing it I'll buy the sweets I've laid out the reasons why I'm not going to steal the sweets it's not happening I'm not going to do it I don't need to know whether I'm going to get caught or not

I'm not stealing the sweets because I'll feel bad afterwards I'd feel like a shithead so it's not happening I'm able to regulate myself but if I was 10 I'd probably rob a little sweetie if I didn't think I was going to get caught

unless there's four elves on the shelves If I was 10, I'd probably rob a little sweetie if I didn't think I was going to get caught. Unless there's four Elfs on the Shelves placed strategically around the sweet shop where security cameras should be. The Elf on the Shelf is being used in this sweet shop or this sweet shack as a type of deep psychological surveillance for children who have been psychologically conditioned to believe that the elf can rat them out to Santa Claus. And the elf in the shelf is actually rooted in philosophical theories that underline modern neoliberal capitalism, specifically the theories of a fellow called Jeremy Bentham. He was an 18th century philosopher, social reformer, and the modern prison industrial complex kind of starts with Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham invented a type of prison known as a panopticon, a type of socially constructed omniscience. So the panopticon a type of socially constructed omniscience so the panopticon

it was a concept for a prison and a lot of modern prisons are built this way where prisoners are in cells in in this circular building in cells and in the center is a tower where the guard is now the thing is a bit like a two-way mirror the prisoners don't know if the guard is. Now the thing is, a bit like a two-way mirror, the prisoners don't know if the guard is watching them or not. So it was a way to condition behaviour. A prisoner will not behave out of line because psychologically, as far as he's concerned, he's being watched at all times. And that's the panopticon. Elf on the Shelf is a panopticon. Elf on the shelf is a panopticon. Elf on the shelf conditions children for the surveillance state. A child who has an elf on the shelf in the house they're not thinking about the ethics or consequences behind behaving badly. They're

not thinking about if I misbehave, this misbehaviour might hurt another person or might cause another person to be upset. No, they're just thinking I'm not going to misbehave because the elf, whatever I do, it doesn't matter, the elf is going to see it and if he sees it, I get less goods and services. Surveillance capitalism.

It's Bentham's panopticon. And if you think I'm reading into this too much, if you look at what surveillance capitalism does, and you look at, we'll say, Jeremy Bentham's initial idea of the panopticon, ultimately it comes down to saving money, spending less resources on servicing a community. You see in Bentham's Panopticon prison you don't have lots of prison employees attending to the needs of prisoners. You have a central tower you just need one guard because no one knows whether they're being watched or not and if you look at how security cameras are used in modern society today. Instead of funding being placed into a community to address the reasons, the poverty, the trauma that criminal behaviour results from,

instead of funding these areas, which is quite expensive, you save money and you go, no, just put cameras fucking everywhere. Put cameras everywhere and you might get the desired outcome of reducing crime without having to invest in any services that help the community. And then you look at the time and place and the environment where Elf on the Shelf starts emerging in culture.

Elf on the Shelf starts to happen... It started in 2005 but it became became popular around the recession parents who might be working two jobs who are absolutely shattered who are stressed who because of their economic circumstances because of society don't have the energy and time to address their children's needs or mightn't have the time and effort to listen to their kids they come home at 7 in the evening after a shitty commute

the kids come out of daycare it's 8 o'clock in the evening and they go there you go there's a little shit of an elf up there on the wall and he's watching you behave yourself because I really really need to go to bed I have

a three-hour commute at six in the morning and I'm not critiquing parents there I'm compassionately drawing attention to the reality that neoliberal capitalism has made it so that parents don't get to spend as much time with their children as they would like. Elf in the Shelf operates within those parameters. And that's why there's four Elfs in the Shelf in this sweet shack at the Limerick City Christmas Market. The person running the shop

it's obviously a tradition amongst all of these sweet shops in Christmas markets around the world the people running the shops know security cameras. I don't need security cameras. sweet shops in Christmas markets around the world. The people running the shops know security cameras. I don't need security cameras. All these children think that these elves are watching them. It's perfect. See when I was growing up we didn't have elves in the shells. We had something similar. What we had was the robin redbreast. We were told, coming up to Christmas, if a Robin Redbreast sees you misbehaving,

he'll get very upset. And the Robin Redbreast is Santi's favourite bird. And if the Robin Redbreast gets upset, Santi will see his tears, and you mightn't get the presents you want. You might get a bag of coal instead. Now that didn't work on me. I kind of wanted the bag of coal. I liked

staring at the fire. I didn't give a shit about ties. I just wanted to stare into the fireplace until I started seeing shapes. So a bag of coal seemed like an alright present for me. But the Robin Redbreast thing. I really didn't want to disappoint the Robin Redbreast. And the Robin

Redbreast, he wasn't just some sneaky cunt in a pyjamas hiding his boner. I did, like, I cared about the Robin Redbreast. I'd go to my ma, I'd be four or five, and I'd say to my ma, look, why is the Robin Redbreast so special? Like, why? If I am misbehaving, and the Robin Redbreast sees me and he gets upset at my behaviour, why does this matter? Why does Santa Claus love the Robin Redbreast so much? And my ma would say to me, well apparently when they were crucifying Christ and Christ was up on the cross and he was bleeding. And the Roman soldiers were mocking him, so they made him a crown made out of thorns to mock him,

and they put the thorns on his head, and then the thorns stuck into Christ's head, and all the blood was dripping down his face, right? Well, apparently, the robin was this lovely little bird with a white chest, but the robin felt bad for Jesus. So he flew up onto Jesus' shoulder and started picking the thorns out of his head. But as he was doing this, the faint mixture of Jesus' blood and tears stained his chest. And that's why he looks like that and it's why all robin redbreasts have a red breast.

It's still a very fucked up thing. It's still a little fucked up story but it's a beautiful story and what it did what it did for me was if I felt the robin redbreast was watching me I didn't misbehave because I was scared of not getting presents

I didn't misbehave because I was experiencing compassion for this beautiful little bird with her bloody chest. See, I started to have respect and admiration for the robin. You have to realise this was being a child in Ireland in the early 90s, you know. I was being indoctrinated in school with stories of Jesus Christ. At about the age of four, I felt really big shame and guilt because of what was done to Jesus Christ. I'd be three, four years of age and outside my classroom was this huge crucifix statue of Christ.

And every day the nuns would say to us, look what they did to him. Look at the torture and brutality they did to that poor man. He loves you. And you know why they did it? Because of your sins. The sins that you were born with as a human being, the sinfulness that we have. He died for that. And he's up there in agony and pain because of what you were born with. And I was far too young to question this. So I did take it on board as a burden and a guilt. And because I was so small and so young. I'd have had the feeling of what can I do? I'm just a tiny little child.

What can I do? I'm powerless. I can't take him down off the cross. I don't know what I did to cause this but I identified with the little robin. This tiny little ball, this creature who was small like me made me feel a little sense of power and hope that this tiny little bird could go to Jesus's shoulder and pull out the thorns. I related to that robin. It gave me something to aspire to. I felt like even though I'm tiny and small, maybe I can alleviate someone's pain. Maybe I can make the world better.

I want to be tiny and powerful like that robin redbreast. I was thinking, what a lovely little bird. Wasn't that so nice of that little bird to take the thorns out of christ's head isn't that a lovely thing to do i quite i respect this bird i care about this little bird i don't want this bird to be disappointed in me i want to be that bird he's helping people so the palette of emotions that i felt the complexity of that story imagery, really asked me to philosophically reflect on my behaviour and how it impacted on those around me, which was quite a healthy, that's quite a healthy way to be thinking about ethics as a child.

Now, am I being pro-fucking Catholicism here? I am in my hope. I should have been learning about emotional literacy emotional intelligence understanding the pain or frustration that might drive me to misbehave what are my needs and how am I acting out in order to have these needs met I certainly didn't need the the visual pornography of a 2,000 year old carpenter that was nailed to a wooden beam. But it was better than the sterile surveillance capitalism of Elf on the fucking Shelf with the big incel head in him.

And I have to reiterate, if this sounds like I'm looking into this thing too much, this is ridiculous. This sounds like a conspiracy. Like it's not a conspiracy. It was good marketing and luck. Elf on the Shelf was released as a book in 2005-2006. It was branded as Elf on the Shelf A Christmas Tradition, which it wasn't, but a very, very clever tagline. And it was just a book about Santa Claus's little elves who rat on children who are being naughty. And then the book came with the little elf and this was really popular. But I reckon it became popular because of the recession. It became popular because it suited the needs of parents

who simply had less time to be at home with their kids. So because of those social conditions, it flourished within that. Maybe if it came out in the 1970s or the 1980s, it wouldn't have worked. It would have just have been a book that didn't sell. Like for instance in the 1950s in America two things became really really popular. Ant farms and sea monkeys. Now an ant farm was a small little box with a colony of ants that you keep in your bedroom. Same with sea monkeys. Sea monkeys were like a tiny little aquarium about the size of a book with these tiny little shrimp that you could hatch from eggs and they called them sea monkeys. Ironically with sea monkeys as an aside the person who invented sea monkeys was a German Jewish man who escaped

Germany during World War II but then when he went to America he was a big mad white supremacist and he used a lot of money that he earned from sea monkeys to buy arms and guns for the Ku Klux Klan but my point is sea monkeys and ant farms became popular in America in the 1950s because kids were living in apartments

in industrialised cities and they didn't have the space for pets so they could have pets with these little ant farms and sea monkeys. I believe Elf on the Shelf became popular around the recession because it was a really simple way to keep your kids in line around Christmas time

when you don't have a lot of time. But the wider implications around Elf on the Shelf is... I'm going to have people listening to this podcast now you might be 18 19 20 which means you grew up with elf on the shelf being a part of your childhood elf on the shelf means something to you but now look at the society you live in look at how your data is commodified by apps. Data is effectively your privacy. Your private behavior on your phone, what you type, what you search,

where you walk around, your location on Google Maps, every single aspect of your private behavior is recorded by your phone and sold to advertisers as data your phone is now your elf on the shelf now we as a society we need to be a lot more protective around our data and our privacy we need to be able to say i know i'm doing nothing wrong i've nothing to hide but even still still, I still want my privacy. I still don't want to sell all of my behaviour to fucking corporations. I'm not okay with this. That becomes difficult when, from the earliest ages, you've been conditioned to believe that it's okay

to have an omniscient elf monitoring all your behavior in a panopticon. The elf on the shelf conditioned a generation to believe that it's okay for someone to be looking at me all the time. I don't mind that. I don't know anything different. Like we know that our phones listen to us. We know that certain apps on our phones use key logging, which means that everything we type into this app is logged as data.

We give away our privacy all the time. We're going to start seeing security cameras that have facial recognition, security cameras that will recognize and remember your face. You can already do it right now privately. I mean, you can buy like a Google Nest camera, put it on your hall door, and you can buy like a Google Nest camera. Put it on your hall door. And you can type in the names of all of your neighbours. And every time one of your neighbours walks past your hall door.

You'll get a notification with their name. Because you've told the camera that's who that person is. You can do that right now. You don't even need credit cards anymore. If you've got an iPhone right now. You can buy something in a shop by clicking your iPhone on the card reader and your phone uses your face to unlock the payment. And all of those interactions are data, data that is harvested. And currently it's just used to advertise to us.

But what if, what if that data becomes available to a government and then that government starts to use our data to monitor our behaviour and to reward us for good behaviour and punish us for bad behaviour? We've already seen this in China with the social credit system. The elf on the shelf conditions kids from childhood, conditions an entire generation, to have a panopticon-type surveillance be part of their earliest childhood memories. And not only to be part of their earliest childhood memories, but to associate it with quite happy memories of Christmas and the reward of presents. Like, I grew up with Tamagotchis. I grew up with

this little weird tiny little video game that looked like an egg that you could keep on a key ring and in this egg you had this little digital creature and you had to feed it and you had to play with it and that was your little Tamagotchi and if you didn't look after it it died and it was a lot of fun but now everybody who had a Tamagotchi. And if you didn't look after it, it died. And it was a lot of fun. But now everybody who had a Tamagotchi when they were a kid has a Fitbit as an adult. I've got a Fitbit and I've got a thing called a Hope. I've two of them. And now I'm the Tamagotchi.

I have this software that monitors every single aspect of my activity and my health, my heartbeat, how much sleep I I get what food I eat and now I'm my own Tamagotchi and I check in with my Fitbit app or my Wope app and I look at how I'm doing and it's beneficial I like having this data about my health it's beneficial but sometimes I ask myself, do I like what it's doing to my brain? Like sometimes I'll go for a run. I'll go for a fucking lovely big 10 kilometer run. And if I forget to bring my fitness monitor when I get home from that run, I feel disappointed. Because it didn't log it. I know I ran 10 kilometers.

I know I burnt a load of calories. I know my heartbeat was really fast but when I don't see that reflected back at me in my app as data I don't register it as a feeling of accomplishment and happiness because my endorphin kick is more associated with seeing the data than the lived experience of going for the run and I don't really like that I don't want to be a Tamagotchi I think people will say who are younger millennials so like between 28 and 33 this generation grew up with pokemon either pokemon cards or playing pokemon on handheld nintendo devices but this is also the generation that's latched onto twitter so successfully and twitter in its heyday is effectively pokemon it's a role-playing game you invent an avatar of yourself a performance of your personality, and you do battle with other people and their performance of their personalities via turn-based, points-based

combat. That's what Twitter is. Nobody behaves the way they do on Twitter in real life. Nobody conducts themselves that way. No one's that combative. No one's opinions are that extreme. This is why Twitter is mad there's plenty of lunatics on twitter who conduct themselves in a much more thoughtful way over on instagram in fact the average tweet that does really well on twitter if you were to take that same tweet and put it into your instagram stories and for your friends in real life to see this tweet in your Instagram stories, people would probably ring you up and go, are you doing okay? Because you sound mad there on your Instagram stories. Whereas on Twitter, you're getting 500 tweets for the same shit.

But if you grew up playing Pokemon, you're probably really good at Twitter. These are just hot takes, lads. They're the fun part of academia. They're the thesis proposals that get shot down by a supervisor in the first meeting. Okay let's have a little ocarina pause. I don't have, I'm in my office, I'm in my office so I don't have the ocarina. I should have an ocarina in this office. I had my Puerto Rican guero for ages and then I lost the bit that you rub off it. So what I have is my vape. So I'm going to vape as the pause here

and when I vape you're going to hear an algorithmically generated advert. You might hear an advert that is inserted into this podcast based on the data that your phone collected for you. Not everybody gets the same advert. I have a little limiter on the mic so it tends... You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway,

the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit TSO.ca 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. It makes the sound of the vape dip in and out a bit. It makes the sound of the vape dip in and out a bit.

What a limiter does is it cuts out the real quiet noise in the background. Because I'm in my office, you see, the fan on my computer is quite loud. I don't need you hearing that. And also, in this corridor in my office, sometimes people walk past and they roar and shout the barefoot accountant isn't an issue anymore he stays in his office we're all good we chat now we chat now he listens to the podcast everything's cool so the barefoot accountant

doesn't howl and roar in the corridors anymore but the odd time someone goes past, so I place a limiter on this mic to cut out background noise. So you mightn't hear the vape as perfectly as you should. Right, that was, I don't know what type of fucking pause that was. No, what that was, wasn't just a vape pause. It was vaping and me explaining the concept of limiters to ye pause. the concept of limiters to e-pause. 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, emotional sustenance, whatever this podcast does for you, please consider paying me for the work that I do in making the podcast this podcast is my full-time

job this is how I earn a living it's how I rent out this office that I make the podcast in it's how I pay my bills I wouldn't be able to make this podcast if it wasn't my full-time job so please consider supporting that if you can all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you met me in real life, would you be like, fuck it, I'd buy him a coffee. I'd buy him a pint. Well, you can via the Patreon page. But if you can't afford that, if you don't have the money right now, don't worry about it because you can listen to this podcast for free. Everybody can get this podcast for free no problem because the people who can't afford to be patrons are paying for you to listen for free

so if you can't afford it you're not only paying for yourself you're paying for the person who can't everybody gets a podcast i get to earn a living it's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast also keeps this it keeps it independent advertisers can't tell me what to talk about i don't have to adjust my content to be clickbaity i don't have to talk about shit just because i think it'll be popular i make what i want to make each week depending on whether I'm passionate about it or not and if I do that you get the best result. When it comes to funding any type of creativity you want to fund people so they have space to fail rather than funding people to succeed because when you fund failure you give the creative person the time and capacity to be curious to be curious and to

try things out and if you do that you end up with something that's authentic but if you fund for success which is the advertising model and by success I mean return on investment or having to meet quotas in listenership once you fund way, you don't have space to fail. You don't have space to be curious. You have to just go, what's the fucking lowest common denominator? What will definitely get a certain amount of listens? And in my experience of working in TV and radio

for fucking years, that's what has those models bollocked. That's why there's so much shit and podcasts are going that way. So if you listen to any independent podcaster that you enjoy, try and support them directly, either financially or by sharing the podcast,

following it, subscribing to it, telling a friend about it. All that stuff helps. I'm taking a break from twitch until the new year because i'm too busy i'm just too busy to be doing twitch on thursday nights and also i kind of i'd like a break from it my twitch streams are very very intense i i make up songs and mix songs on the spot to a video game and it's really really intense it's very enjoyable but

it's intense so I'd kind of like a break from that for a bit and hopefully when I come back I'll change things around a bit I don't have any gigs left this year but I do have some gigs in 2023 and I'm gonna let you know about them now because Christmas is coming up and you might want to get someone a little ticket for a gig for Christmas. So here are my 2023 gigs. I'm in the Cork Opera House on the 15th of February. I'm in Killarney in the Einach on the 3rd of February. I just announced a gig in Belfast today. A big gig in Belfast in the waterfront

on the 4th of March those tickets just went out today my gig in Draheda in the TLT Theatre I moved that to the 4th of April I'm going to be in Canada in April but those tickets aren't on sale yet so that's it what I'd like to chat about for

the second half of the podcast and it's a theme I've been doing the last three weeks because as you know I've returned to psychotherapy and last week I spoke about the the huge benefits that I've already started to see by returning to one-to-one therapy one thing I want to flag is I've only done like three sessions but the rewards from those three sessions have been huge. Now the reason for that is I've done the fucking work already. I did the work more than a decade ago.

I did intensive therapy in my early 20s and I learned tools and ways of understanding myself and language to understand my internal world. I did all that work a long time ago and that'll never leave me but by returning to therapy now I'm returning to those tools very very quickly. I don't want to misrepresent therapy and give the impression that I've had a huge transformative experience only after a couple of sessions.

No. It's, for me, it's like this. I'm also learning how to drive again. More than 10 years ago, I used to drive a car. I used to drive a car back when they had the old L plates. I drove a car for three years and then I stopped because I couldn't afford a car. And then recently I got back driving. Now, what was that like?

The first one or two sessions were difficult and then it all came back to me. And now I can drive again. It just all came back. The muscle memory came back and now I can drive again it just all came back the muscle memory came back and now I can drive very very quickly in like three attempts that's how it is for me in psychotherapy two or three sessions speaking to a person getting to a point of emotional regulation having a sense of clarity and now all of a sudden tools that I learned years ago about managing my internality they're now coming back to me I also want to flag too I'm returning to therapy and I'm doing it

privately because I'm paying for it I'm paying for each session out of my own pocket I didn't have a waiting list not everybody has that opportunity and access in this fucking country and that's why i'm continually committed whenever i speak about mental health i'm committed to systemic change we need a country whereby people who require mental health services can fucking access them regardless of their budget and we shouldn't settle for anything less and this is why I'm always cautious of saying things to people like just open up just talk to somebody just talk you need to talk with a professional saying just talk to somebody like if someone is in the throes of a mental health issue and they're living with anxiety or living with depression opening up to a

friend can be momentarily beneficial because you're saying this shit out loud but your friend or your family member isn't a fucking therapist and if someone is to open up and just talk to a friend that's step one but step two needs to be immediate access to a professional where they can where you can actually talk to a professional be cautious of people who speak that narrative it's quite an individualistic narrative we need systemic change we need affordable access to therapy and a reduction of waiting lists and if there's influencers out there or sports people or whatever and they're using their platform to speak about their mental health issues brilliant absolutely fantastic if you are speaking about your anxiety or depression and you're doing this as a way to destigmatize it to your audience brilliant but please if you do that

also understand that you need to be fighting for systemic change for mental health services and access because if everybody is talking about just open up just talk to people everybody gets anxiety everybody gets depression these things are true but if that's the only narrative then it pushes responsibility back on the individual to sort their own shit out. And that facilitates the power structure that doesn't want to fund adequate mental health services, which is what I mentioned earlier, neoliberal capitalism. Push everything onto the private individual. Push everything to the private market. Deregulate. Defund. The forces of capitalism will magically fix it all. A fantastic study came out last year by Julia C. Becker and you can look it up on Google and the

name of the study is Neoliberalism can reduce well-being by promoting a sense of social disconnection, competition and loneliness. It was published in the British Journal of Social Psychology and it does what it says on the tin. It's an academic study that shows through evidence that our current economic system is not working for people's levels of well-being and happiness. The system that is defunding publicly available mental health services is the same system that's causing an increase in anxiety and depression. What i want to speak about is what going from poor mental health to returning to good mental health looks like as lived experience because that's what i'm going through right now what do i want from therapy emotional regulation it's as simple as that. It's what I said to my therapist on the first fucking session. I want emotional regulation.

Emotional regulation is the genuine capacity for me to be calm. That's all it is. For me to exist presently, in the present moment, with a sense of calmness. So when I experience the inevitable stress of existing, I can respond to my environment with a thoughtful sense of criticality.

This week's podcast is an example of that. I visited a Christmas market and because I was feeling calm, I was experiencing the Christmas market in the present moment and because I was calm I'm not worrying about

things that happened in the past, I'm not worrying about things that might happen in the future I'm physically at a Christmas fucking market and I'm looking around and nothing is intimidating me nothing is frightening me I'm simply at the Christmas market enjoying the smells of the caramel nuts looking at the beautiful lights and visiting the sweet shop and having the sense of playful curiosity

where I can look at the sweets, think about them and notice the elf on the shelf and think about that and then walk away from it still thinking about that and then my creativity kicks in and I've just had a meaningful experience that results in me writing a little story that I can tell you. That's how I want to live my life. I don't want anything more than that. Once I can do that, I'm happy. Other things I've noticed this week. If I get emails for me to do little jobs, the boring shit, doing Zoom meetings, applying for projects that may or may not happen. When these emails come in, I don't experience them as frightening. I don't immediately focus on what can go wrong.

I sit with the frustration and I get it done. Simple as that, I get it fucking done. And then my jobs are done, I'm not stressed, and the rest of my day, I feel calm. And I've been doing that all week. If I get really stressed when it comes to doing this podcast, it can take three times as long as it needs to take and I can end up recording this thing at like fucking six or seven in the morning because that's how long it took me

to do it. I got into my office at nine o'clock this morning. It's 11pm now. I'm nearly finished. It's a long day but I'm gonna go home to bed at a normal time and be awake tomorrow if i'm really really stressed sometimes it could take me 18 or 19 hours to record this podcast that's not happening now and i'll tell you another one of the shittiest things about having about being stressed or having poor mental health is self-sabotaging behaviours. Viewing the world, viewing everything as a threat and something to be afraid of. And then when opportunities present themselves, I don't take them because I'm too stressed.

Like here's an example. Now this is also stress and then a little bit of autism as well. About a month ago I was offered a fairly big award, a literary award. Now I've spoken about awards before. I don't particularly, I don't like putting weight on awards but that's that's not what this is if someone offers me an award it's only courtesy to accept it so this award came in and I turned it down I turned this award down because it would have meant traveling to Dublin to collect it my mental health was so shitty that when I when something good happened like someone giving me a fucking award for work that I've done in the past, the idea and thought of how do I get up to Dublin?

How many people are going to be there? How do I do this? How do I do that? That was so overwhelming and frightening to me that I turned down a fucking award. Now, that's also very autistic behavior but if I don't have access to my tools, my mental health tools and emotional regulation I'm led by that behavior. I become reactive. So I turned down a fucking literary award because I was overwhelmed by the idea of traveling to Dublin and I know that sounds nuts

but it is fucking nuts. When I'm not emotionally regulated I'm nuts. And I know that sounds nuts. But it is fucking nuts. When I'm not emotionally regulated, I'm nuts. I do things that are mad. That's mad. So I've since, since then, I've gotten back to him and said, look, I apologise about that. Of course I'd love to take the fucking award.

So hopefully that's still going ahead. But that there is self-sabotaging behaviour. When I view everything as a threat and view only what could possibly go wrong I don't take opportunities and then opportunities pass by and the negative thoughts that I have internally you're a failure you're useless you don't deserve awards you're pathetic anything you achieved in the past is an accident and you're going to get found out that becomes my narrative and then I end up manipulating my environment

to confirm that negativity and I end up turning down fucking awards because I can't travel to Dublin when I'm emotionally regulated when I'm calm and something presents itself to me an opportunity what do I say to myself?

What's the worst that can happen? You'll fail. So what? Who gives a fuck? You failed before. What's failure anyway? Take the opportunity. Do it.

Even if you fail, it'll be a learning experience. And then when you start behaving like that, what happens? Success. This is one of the core things around. You see a lot of people talking about manifesting and manifesting to me is harsh shit there's people who talk about manifesting you know ask the universe and the universe will reward you as if it's this supernatural shit it's not it's simply not if you're not emotionally regulated you view the world as a frightening place and you view opportunities not as what can go right but what can go wrong.

If those are the thoughts that drive me, I will manipulate my environment to confirm those negative feelings about myself in a horrible self-fulfilling prophecy. If instead I calmly embrace opportunity, have a healthy attitude towards failure, don't have failure as this thing that defines my worth as a human being, understand that no aspect of my behavior defines my value as a human being, therefore whether I fail or succeed in whatever the fuck I do, it doesn't change who I am as a human being or my worth. When I think of things that way, then successes just fly at me. Simple as that. That's how I've always done it. And the failures, there's no such thing as failure.

I can say that after all these fucking years. There's no such thing as failure. It doesn't exist. Because shit that I've technically failed miserably in in the past the very fact that I participated means that all those failures were just learning experiences that turned into successes down the line so there's no such thing as failure on a long enough time scale the only thing that is an actual failure is doing nothing because I was scared to

try. So I'm really glad I went back to those people who offered the award and said, yeah, I'll take that award. Thank you so much. I'm very grateful for that. Because if I let that one fucking slide, I'd feel really bad about that down the line. That's the shit that would negatively impact my self-esteem. Here's another example, a lived example of what increased emotional regulation has given me over the past week. I was in the gym and I was doing seated rows. So you sit down and you row.

It's a back exercise. So I was doing these rows and there was this lad beside me and he just taps me on the shoulder and he says to me I don't mean to be rude right but I'm watching you doing those rows and you're you're doing it wrong and you're going to give yourself an injury would you mind if I showed you how to do it properly and I said fuck yeah thanks a million I'd love to I didn't know I was doing it wrong at all thank you so much so he hopped to. I didn't know I was doing it wrong at all. Thank you so much.

So he hopped into the machine, showed me what I was doing wrong. And then I was like, oh fuck, I have been doing it wrong. And the way that he showed me was much better. I felt it on my back where it should be. And that was a wonderful interaction. Two things about that.

I had a choice how I reacted to that situation based on the level of emotional regulation that I was at. If I was feeling really stressed, first and foremost, I don't think that fellow would have tapped me on the shoulder to help me. Because I'd have looked like an angry, stressed person. And the signals that I would have been giving out of my body language would have been, stay the fuck away. So your man there would have went, he's doing that wrong. He looks like an angry cunt though, so I'm going to say nothing. Secondly, if I wasn't emotionally regulated and I was angry or stressed, and he did stop me to tell me, I might have gotten pissed off.

Instead of taking ownership of the fact that I'm actually doing this exercise wrong, I would have interpreted his intervention as criticism. I'd have felt hurt. I'd have been embarrassed. And then I would have reacted. And I'd have said, fuck off and mind your own business. Worry about your own exercises.

But I didn't because I was calm and I was happy and I was really grateful that a nice man just wanted to help me for the sake of it and that improved my day that improved my day because I had a meaningful connection with a stranger and then the best thing of all of returning to decent emotional regulation is I've been meditating every day. Now I've always been meditating, but while I was meditating and my mental health wasn't great, I wasn't able to achieve the wonderful, blissful calmness

that you're searching for when you meditate. And now I'm able to get back there again. When I meditate now, and it's just a very simple 15 minutes body meditation real simple stuff when I do that now I can get right back to that really healing almost narcotic inner stillness where the healing of meditation comes from and overall I'm able to use my tools and it's no different to getting back into a car if you get back into a car or you get back up onto a bicycle after having spent ages not cycling those first few sessions you have this anxiety

whereby you're unsure of what you're doing. You don't know whether you can remember how to drive a car. You don't know whether you can remember how to cycle. But then it just happens. It all comes back. So that's where I'm at right now. I'm about 50% on the mend. I'm not waking up every morning with a jump scare.

I'm not checking social media as much because when my mental health is shit I check social media too much. Because when my mental health is shit. I check social media too much. Searching for those little dopamine hits. And searching for pain. I'm not doing that anymore. I post and I get the fuck out. And I do things that are enjoyable. Like reading and focusing on things I'm genuinely interested in.

Curious in and passionate about. Spending time in the places on the internet that don't hurt me that bring me joy so why did i do that for the second half of the podcast because because loads of you have been asking and i just want to thank all of you as well especially on instagram for just being really fucking supportive and sound to me and sending me little messages of support and also for letting me know too that effectively the last three or four podcasts i've been using i've been using as a personal journal to speak about my process but to hear that you're listening to my process but then so many of, are relating that to your own experiences,

and it's helping some of ye, achieve a kind of intrapersonal clarity in yourselves, which is fucking fantastic to hear. Alright, that's all I have time for this week. I'm assuming I'm going to have a hot take next week. I might go back to that fucking sweet shop, and talk to your man about the elves and the shelves and see if it is actually a deliberate thing.

Go fuck yourselves. Tickle a cat's belly. Move a snail from the eyeline of a crow. Fillet a swan's neck. you're invited to an immersive listening party led by rishi kesh her way the visionary behind the groundbreaking song exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Jimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder.

April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. you