The Blindboy Podcast - Hostile Architecture in Neoliberal society

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Hostile Architecture in Neoliberal society  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rub your tongue along the judge's bunion, you wonderful Ultans. Welcome to the Blindby podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, a 10-foot deckling, a steaming quiva, you know the crack.

I'd like to thank you all for your patience last week. After my computer fucking broke, I managed to get it fixed, which was not a complicated process well I managed to make it fucking complicated because I brought the computer to a fella to fix it and when I

first off I arrived with the computer in a prem because I'd no other way to bring it so I brought in it in a child's pram and then when I got to the place to repair the fucking computer your man who was fixing it he looked he was the fucking image

of the football player Paul Gaskine. Now I mean, do you know when you see someone who looks like someone and it's not like, oh, that person looks like Paul Gaskine? It's like, fuck, is that, is that Paul Gaskine? Is that actual Paul Gaskine working in a tiny computer shop in Limerick? Is that what's happening here? And then he started talking and he was from DRADA. And DRADA.

The DRADA accent, it's a bit like Newcastle accent of Ireland, because Paul Gascoigne has a new castle accent. So the Drahada accent is as ridiculous as the Newcastle accent. No disrespect to anyone from Drahada or Newcastle, but you know the crack. You've got silly accents. Anyway, I got so distracted by this cunt looking like fucking Paul Gascoigne that I handed him the computer and forgot to tell him what was wrong with it. So then I had to go back and tell him what was wrong with the computer. He shouldn't have taken off me. But anyway, it was grand. one of the fans had gone in the computer and the fan needed replace a tiny fucking job

what pissed me off was that it was a Windows update a fucking a Windows update that I didn't ask for managed to blow the fan on my computer which is unacceptable activity because we don't we don't really own our electronics anymore we think we own them but we're effectively renting them like if you've got an iPhone and it's a couple of years old or a Mac laptop and it's a couple years old. You know that the next update could be the thing that makes your device unusable and you can't not update because your apps won't work. So once you're in that situation, you don't really own your fucking phone anymore. Even though you bought it and you think you own it, you don't. You're renting it. Apple owns it. And now PCs are going that way too. And I can hear

people screaming through the podcast. Switch over to Linux. Switch over to Linux. I'm heavily reliant on on too much software that I have to use it on either Mac or fucking PC for my job but anyway my computer's fixed and I didn't lose any data

so I'm very happy with that I want to update you on the milk situation in my office I'm currently losing the milk battle I won't say I've lost the milk war but I'm losing the milk battle so as I mentioned two podcasts ago I rent an office

a communal office from a gigantic multinational office renting corporation with an annual turnover of $4.5 billion. Part of the agreement when I rent this office is you know, not only do I have a space to work 24-7 but basic amenities like a canteen, a fridge and tea and coffee facilities are provided. They're not free. I rent them.

It's part of the fucking service I pay for. And fresh milk is provided. by the office for everybody to enjoy. Everybody who wants to have tea or coffee in my office, the milk is free. It's there in the fridge, fucking free, regular dairy milk. But the corporation has decided, in order for them to save money, they're switching from fresh milk to U.H.T. milk, ultra-high-temperature milk.

Which, if you enjoy tea and coffee, you know that that's not an option. It's disgusting. It doesn't taste like milk. It makes your tea taste like emulsion paint, so no one will actually drink it. No one's going to drink the UHT milk. I successfully fought this two years ago. Now they're bringing it back and I'm trying to fight it at the moment. By emailing the CEO, the CEO of all of Ireland, regularly,

they're probably just going to cancel my contract. But I'm going to continue because of the idiocy of it and the injustice of it. Now if you're listening, you might be thinking, Why do I give a fuck about the milk situation in your office, Blindby? Why is that important to me? It's not that important to you. To be honest, it's not really that important to me. It's a minor annoyance, a minor inconvenience.

But what irritates me about the transition from fresh milk to UHT is that it's like a little tiny case study. that represents much wider problems in society. So this tiny little inconvenient issue, it's holding a mirror up to what's wrong with society at large. And that's the thing that's pissing me off. So I get into my office Monday morning. Open up the fridge in the canteen. And there it is, U.H. tea milk.

Nobody using it. It's just there in the door of the fridge. No one's drinking from it. No one wants it. But it's there. and I look around the fridge more. Small little pints of milk. The fresh milk

that people have gone and purchased themselves privately. Not my milk. So, okay, now I gotta buy my own fresh milk. Who gives a fuck? Not a problem. And one liter. One liter of milk will do me for the week. Off to the shop to purchase one liter of milk.

It only costs a euro and 20. Not expensive. Minor inconvenience. I'm going to the shop anyway. It's just one extra thing that I have to do that I didn't have to do last week but I'll deal with it. A liter of milk a week who gives a fuck?

But here's the thing. If I come back from that shop with a one liter carton of milk and place it in that fridge see other people in the office are going to use my milk and that one liter is gone by the end of the day

because other people have used it. Now why are other people going to use that milk? Because the fresh milk it was once a public service. We all paid our little milk tax and we all got free milk for everybody and we never had to worry about it, never-ending milk that everyone paid for.

But the office, the big corporation, in order to save money, have replaced that public service from fresh milk to UHT. So what they've done is they've taken a public service and then reduce the quality of it to the point that people are forced to. to go private. And the people who use my milk, you know, they see that carton of milk.

Are they being selfish or are they being mean when they use that carton of milk? No, because psychologically, that carton of milk still feels like a public service. It looks the same as the milk that was free last week. Also, if you get caught, if I was to walk into the canteen when someone's using my milk and I go, hey, that's my milk, they go, oh sorry man, It's just a carton of milk. I thought it was everybody's, and that's a plausible excuse. Now I know this from the last time it happened two years ago. So what did I do?

I had to think about it and go, Right, okay. I now have to purchase my own fresh milk. How do I do it in such a way that nobody else uses it? Now, I'm not going to write any aggressive labels on the milk. I'm not going to get a permanent marker and write on the milk. And say, my milk, leave it alone. not your milk

because that's antisocial, that's overtly aggressive that creates conflict that's bad manners in a shared office environment makes you look like a lunatic that creates fights

so I'm not going to do that so what I did instead was and this is the bit that pisses me off a part just a one-liter water drinking bottle a reusable water drinking bottle in the most unmilky colour possible

in a colour which is as far I'm not going to, just in case there's one person listening to this podcast who's in my office. I can't... I bought a fucking water flask. A reusable water bottle. That's the opposite of milk, not black, just a color that's not milk. An unmilky colour. And then I poured my milk into that.

And that works. Because psychologically, the person in the office now who wants milk for their tea and coffee opens up the fridge, they are not going to touch someone's water bottle, even if they know there's milk in there. And they want to chance it. If they want a chance stealing my milk, they are not going to steal it from a fucking reusable water bottle because it's very clearly private property. And it doesn't feel hygienic. It's like what if that person is drinking from their own private water bottle? I'm not using that. Now if you get good. cat. Now you look like a cunt. Now you look like you're stealing milk, you see. So no one's

going to touch it. They're going to go and get their own milk. So this solution has worked. I've got a water bottle in a loud color. My milk is fresh. It's untouched. I have a new fresh milk supply. It's private. I'm paying for it myself. Why is this information pertinent enough? that I can spend 10 minutes talking about it to a million people on a podcast because I've just engaged in hostile architecture and that impacts all of us. The private milk situation is a, it's a perfect model

for very bad things that are happening all around us in society that we don't see. And one of these things is called hostile architecture. So let's just take an example of what used to be a public service that was paid for by people's taxes. Housing. Health care. Mental health care.

Since the 1980s, housing has become financialised. Council houses are not being built anymore. The financialisation of the housing market means that houses are about the accumulation of wealth. Our healthcare system. In Ireland, our healthcare system hasn't become fully privatised. But I'd argue that it's in what's called. the managed decline. Same with the NHS over in England, Scotland and Wales. Where a health system becomes gradually underfunded until you get longer and longer waiting lists,

the public system appears to be broken and then what that does is it forces people to, if they can afford it, towards the private system. Same thing happens with housing when they're just not building council housing anymore. They're just not doing. doing it and then the people who need council housing are instead and this is in UK and Ireland and I think America too where these people are given allowances or credits that instead of acquiring a council house they perpetually rent from the private market and this is subsidised by the government which means there isn't a solution or people aren't provided with homes but instead homelessness is becomes a source of profit for

the private market. And that's fully where we are in Ireland today. The homelessness crisis is managed as a for-profit industry. Private landlords profit from it. Huge hotel chains profit from it. Taxes are not being spent and providing people who need homes with homes. Taxes are being given to hotels to provide what's called emergency accommodation, but it's being done in perpetuity for profit. The hotel rooms are being rented out at market rate. The money comes from the government through taxes and most of that money is absorbed by the hotel chains as profit. This also has the impact of creating scarcity. So the amount of hotel rooms that are available to the public to purchase are less and less. So now the price of hotel rooms goes up. Same thing happening

with giant investment funds. Buy up entire house. housing estates, this reduces the amount of properties that are available to rent, which pushes rent up. And then these investment funds rent the houses to the government at market rate. This is presented to us all as a solution to the crisis of homelessness. It's not. People's misery has been turned into a for-profit industry. The homeless crisis is managed for profit rather than actually solved. But public wealth, taxes just get siphoned off into private pockets.

That's neoliberalism. A big and annoying and confusing word. But what it means, hand public services to the private market so that a private, for-profit company can place a tall booth between your taxes and a public service. And then you look around you and go, why is everything shit? That's why. But what you get from years of managed decline of public housing, public health care and public mental health care, you then get left with a crisis of homelessness

and a crisis of addiction. You see people sleeping rough or people in active addiction who should be accessing public mental health services, self-medicating and then destitution, suffering, pain, homelessness becomes very visible in our cities. And that's where we are now, in most neoliberal economies after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And then you see the rise of what is called hostile architecture. Hostile architecture is something that is all around us, but if you're not the target of it, you don't notice. I'll give you an example of hostile architecture.

Any new benches gone up in your city? Benches for sitting on. Notice there's no such thing as long benches anymore. I remember when benches used to be longed benches. be long. Public benches aren't long anymore. They have dividers in between them now. Now if you're someone who goes into your city to purchase goods and you want to sit down on the bench, you might be thinking, grand, a bit of privacy somewhere to rest my arms. But that's not what those dividers are about. They're to stop. Homeless people sleeping on them. Spikes on the ground in doorways.

You're not going to notice them because you have no business hanging around fucking doorways. But if If you're a homeless person and you need somewhere to sleep that night, then you fucking notice it. Then you notice the spikes on the ground that you can't sleep on. That is called hostile architecture. Me pouring my fresh milk into a reusable water flask is hostile architecture. If you open the fridge you just see a water flask. If you're looking for milk, then you go, that fucking cunts after hiding his milk in that fucking

flask. And now if I go near it, I look like a robber. Bullocks. I really need milk for my tea. Fuck. I'm gonna have to buy my own now. My covert milk hiding device is anti-homeless spikes. Why? Because what was previously a public service, fresh milk.

In order to save money was put into managed decline. See, technically they're not breaking contract. Like, I'm paying for tea and coffee facilities. I'm paying for milk. They're doing it. They're just giving us milk that's so shit. It's unusable, but they're still abiding by the contract. So the fresh milk situation has been put in managed decline.

I'm then forced to the private market. And now to protect my assets, my week-long milk fucking supply, I have to engage in hostile architecture to exclude other people. Now if anyone came and asked me, can I have some of your milk? A fucking course you can. But I just, I can't go putting the bottle of fresh milk in the fucking fridge because it'll be gone in two hours. It's happened before.

So I have to become Mr. Private, Mr. Covert, Private, Hostile Homeless Spike Milk. It's a minor inconvenience, but it bothers me because it holds a mirror up to much more serious things that are happening around us in society. My milk scenario,

this is exactly what neoliberalism does to society. Hostile architecture. Not hostile infrastructure. It's the covert way that an ultra-capitalist neoliberal society controls people's behavior and it's always done covertly to maintain the facade

of the freedom of capitalism to maintain the facade of democracy and abundance. You see they can't just say there's loads of homeless people so no homeless people on benches. Homeless people on benches is illegal and you're going to get arrested

because that doesn't look like capitalism that doesn't look like freedom, that looks authoritarian. So the bench is given dividers. It's a way of designing a public space that deters the presence of certain people. And these certain people tend to be the ones at the bottom of the system,

the ones most impacted by neoliberal policies. The targeting homeless people is the most obvious one. And it's done in very, very sneaky ways. It's greenwashed. In 2018, in Seattle, Seattle, which would be seen as a very liberal American city, a very open American city. There's a bridge there called the Young Street Bridge. Underneath this bridge, homeless people would sleep there. There was a large homeless community underneath this bridge.

You'll know it directly from the Nirvana lyric, from the Nirvana song Something in the Way. The opening lyric is, underneath the bridge, tarp has sprung a leak. That's Kirk Cabain, who was a heroin addict. Kirk Cabin, when he ran away from home when he was a teenager, he went as a homeless person and lived underneath this fucking bridge in Seattle. And the tarp is the, his tent has sprung a leak. So underneath this bridge, which was providing shelter and home for homeless people to give them some relief from their misery.

You got to remember what people in homelessness, sometimes sleeping rough is safer than sleeping in shelters. So in 2018, Seattle, Liberal City, a city who could not be seen to remove homeless people or not allow homeless people to sleep under this bridge. What did they do? They filled it full of bike racks. They green washed it. We are providing amenities.

Don't drive to work, cycle to work, get out on your bike. Save the planet, save the environment. We've provided all of these wonderful bike racks underneath the bridge. If you're in employment, if you work in the city, this to you seems like a good thing, brilliant bike racks underneath the bridge. If you are at the bottom of the system, if you're homeless, now you don't have a place to sleep anymore. So those bikes are actually hostile, the bike racks are hostile architecture.

Another example of neoliberal hostile architecture is, you can find it in Limerick City, Henry Street Dunn stores just there off the Bardshit district. If you want to go up the stairs to get to the multi-storey car park, you walk into the fucking staircase which is dark and you're suddenly overcome with this a strange feeling like the air has changed. It's hard to see the light has changed. The lights are a weird type of blue. I as someone who wants to walk up the stairs just notice it as something strange, something different, but those blue lights, it's so that, it's so people who are injecting Heroin can't see their veins. That's hostile architecture.

For me it's a mild inconvenience or something strange or different. For someone who's inactive addiction, it is get the fuck out you can't inject here. That person doesn't have access to a safe injection centre and any facilities with clean needles. Instead, the addiction is criminalised and managed. This year my city introduced... So guards on the beat, police on the beat,

Public service. Something that you'd expect. Of course there should be guards on the, isn't that their fucking job? If you're in a city, aren't there supposed to be police walking around? It's public service. They brought the police on the beat, walking all the city blocks, specifically to deter what they called aggressive begging. And that's another form of hostile architecture. Because aggressive begging is a code word. What it really means is people who are begging for money for crack or heroin. That's what it means. I'm in the city every single day. I've never experienced, I've never been intimidated or aggressively, had anyone aggressively

begged me for money when they need this for their addiction. But that type of begging, the begging from a person who's strung out, who's physically ill, that's more visible. That's the wrong type of begging. So they brought the police in to combat this aggressive begging. But really what it means, if the police are there, the people in addiction, are not going to beg because they either want to buy drugs or they have drugs on them and that's hostile infrastructure there and it's neoliberal because it's when

public space itself becomes privatized if your benches are there for you because you have a job and you're in here buying goods and services but these benches are not for you you who doesn't have a home who needs this bench to rest to sleep, it's not for you, it's for you there who's here to buy goods and services. That's the privatisation of a public space. The privatise infrastructure of neoliberalism, it pushes everything down onto the individual. It very cleverly makes structural issues feel like individual problems. If you walk around a city and now there's police on the beat because they need to stop

aggressive begging, i.e. people who are addicted to drugs. Or if the bench that you sit on is a little bit more annoying because it has been adapted to prevent a homeless person sleeping on it. Or you can't go for a piss because there's no public toilets. They remove the public toilets because they say that's where people use drugs. So now if you want to use a toilet, you have to go to a coffee shop. But the coffee shop, you go to a fucking Starbucks. You can't use the jacks in a. Starbucks because you have to purchase something to get the code for the toilet and the receipt. That's not fair. I'm sorry we got to keep out the homeless people. Then you finally find a public toilet but it's difficult to use because they have those weird blue lights so that people can't find their veins. Are you going to try and rent out a hotel room and you're pissed off because your hotel room is so expensive but the

reason your hotel room is so expensive is because there's huge scarcity that's caused by all of the homeless people that are being given emergency accommodation in hotels. Or you're lucky enough to save up and afford a mortgage and you actually get a mortgage but you go to buy a house, but then the house is bought already, but that's going to be used for people on housing assistance payment. That creates a general hum. A general hum where the structural problem is completely blurred and each time it's because of that group of individuals. Hostile architecture, hostile infrastructure, which is a tenet of neoliberalism, will have you pointing fingers at the people at the bottom of the system rather than the complete stripping

of the public services that created that system that put those people at the bottom. Another facet of this hostile, fucking neoliberal infrastructure is like the Manosphere is one example. Andrew Tait, men who promote a version of masculinity which is just about anger. and aggression and very little else and dominance and bullying. Now patriarchy, misogyny, that's always been a problem. I grew up with a narrative of patriarchy and a narrative of male worth. Society sold me an idea that to have worth as a man means owning a house, having a full-time career and being the sole breadwinner to provide for a woman. So that's the

narrative of male worth, patriarchal male worth under capitalism. Neoliberalism made all of that impossible, but the expectation didn't shift. The rules stayed the same, the social expectation stayed the same, so you're effectively destined for worthlessness. My dad and his generation. First off, my dad got a job in Aer Lingus, which was a state-owned company. Full-time contract, guaranteed pension for life. That means after he's retired. Very difficult to get fired because there was a union, a union that protected your rights as a worker,

guaranteed stable, predictable income. Getting a house, first off, houses were not expensive. How did he get a house? There was a thing called the Small Dwellings Act. The government, and this wasn't just Ireland, this would have been in Britain too, the government believed that as a public good, it was a good idea if people had houses. This was a good thing. You have a healthy society with a social net if people can get houses and this is not a difficult thing to do.

So lots of houses are being built. Supply is high, so prices are low. And my dad just got a loan from the council. It wasn't a mortgage. a fucking loan from the council. Fuck all interest. Like with a mortgage, I think for the first 15 or 20 years, you're not even paying the mortgage, you're just paying the interest, the profit that the bank makes before you even begin paying off the loan. Getting a house holding down a job, providing for a family, became the social conditions of a man's fucking worth, which is bollocks,

bullshit, but those that was the socially agreed upon conditions of a man's worth, then that's all stripped away. Unions got replaced with HR. Full-time contracts got taken away. The state-owned companies got privatised. So you get a generation of young men growing up, whose bullshit idea of worth, self-esteem, external worth, is stripped away by structural issues, but it's experienced.

as deep personal failure and the hostile infrastructure that steps in into that space is these alpha male influencers, trade unions, full-time contracts, affordable housing these things get replaced with, self-improvement courses, dating strategies, lux maxing and the hostile individualistic identification of proxy. target who have caused all this. So when homelessness becomes visible in a city, and the city is then designed to target the homeless people through benches, ballards, taking away public toilets,

and then your environment tells you, what's them? They're causing it. They're the problem. Look at them, they're criminalised. When housing becomes unattainable and job security becomes unattainable, and the social construct of patriarchy attack is male worth these things. Well then it's the feminists' fault, isn't it? Can't afford a house?

Well, fucking... I'm involuntarily celibate. What do you mean? I mean... I can't have sex because women only want a man that has a house and I can't get a house so I have no worth, so I'm involuntarily celibate, so I fucking hate them. They're doing this to me with their high standards. And the Manosphere Influencer backs that up and says, yeah, that's correct, that's how it is. And it avoids the...

the evidence-based structural critique, housing's been financialised, the fucking prices are after outpacing wages and the actual price of a house from your parents' generation. It's multiple, multiple times what it was then, so it's unrealistic because of structural fucking issues that were planned to benefit the wealthy. Feminism destroyed men. Women don't want children anymore because of feminism. depressed. That's because feminism has society only caring about women. The neoliberalism creates the structural insecurity and in that space, a private, commodified space opens up for

Manisfair influencers to step in and reframes it as the fault of feminism or actual structural issues become interpersonal grievances, finding a group to point that whether it's feminist immigrants and then on top of it all, the places where most of this discourse is occurring. It's not real life spaces, it's online spaces that are controlled and owned by billionaires who decide what the algorithm shows you, who are clearly overwhelmingly pushing these narratives and these particular influencers, Manosphere influencers. And also find me the Manusphere influencer who doesn't also. Also, Call everyone a communist.

The man is for your influencer who doesn't. Every, if they're not complaining about feminists or immigrants, they're complaining about socialism. I mean, what socialism really? Well, I think taxes should be used to fund public services. I don't think public services should be private. Everyone should have access to healthcare because humans are humans and humans get sick. Everyone should have access to housing. Workers should have unions.

unions, they should be able to organize to collectively bargain. A workers right to health care, security to be able to live, that's more important than a company's profits. I don't think billionaires should pay less than one percent tax. Just today I saw a headline in Bloomberg where the world's largest hedge fund have figured out a way for the wealthiest 1% in the world to pay zero taxes. So what's a socialist? Someone who believes a society works best when everybody has universal access to healthcare, housing, education and social security. That's it. Find me the Manosphere influencer who espouses that or who doesn't take that word socialist and completely vilify it. It's all the blame game, point in figures so that you never,

question the structures that led to this. And if you want to hear the truth out of any of these particular influencers, something that's started to emerge. In the past four or five years, in the real post-truth era, and Israel does this too, they accuse other people of what they themselves are doing. So if you take someone like Andrew Tate, him and his brother right now, are they're fighting they're in the US

they were in Romania and somehow got safe passage to the US via the Trump administration but right now they're in the US they're on extradition charges they're wanted in the UK on

rape sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material so that's what you're dealing with as influencers I'd wager strongly that the tates are compromised individuals, which means I would guess that because they're in the US,

they're being politically protected, they're now working on behalf of an intelligence organization of some description for propaganda purposes, because they're compromised, politically compromised individuals. So their messaging would align with what intelligence organizations would want them to say And just this week Andrew Tate was being interviewed and someone said to him, why are you being prosecuted? He implied that he's

the deep state are trying to take him down. That like the CIA are trying to take him down. And I'm paraphrasing now because I can't find the fucking interview. I can't find the clip. They said, why would the CIA want to take you down? And Tate said, along the lines of the CIA's main concern

is to prevent a revolution. So he's trying to say there that he is the cause of the revolution because the things that he says are so truthful that they will cause a revolution and the CIA need to shut him down. But he's so politically compromised, he's been protected in America.

Through his lies, he's telling the truth. The truth is, yes, they are trying to stop a fucking revolution. But the revolution they're trying to stop is the one that would turn against neoliberalism, the one that would turn against the billionaires. And that's why the US are trying to put people who speak, in an anti-capitalist way to label these people as terrorists now. And just around social media there.

One example, one clear example of neoliberal hostile architecture that doesn't really exist anymore, but it did exist around the 2000s before the Great Recession and if you were alive then you'll remember it in the news. So gangs of teenagers used to be a thing. When I was a teenager, there was fuck all to do but go outside. And you'd roam around in massive groups and meet up with other massive groups. And I remember times from my childhood, 12, 13, 14, and a Saturday night. Gatherings of up to maybe 200, 250 teenagers in a fucking park.

And this became a moral panic in Ireland and hugely in Britain. 2004-2005 huddies were all over the news because it was just the fashion at the time if you were a teenager you wore a fucking hoodie but this was then freaking out adults assuming that every teenager

who had a hoodie was out for trouble but you see under the neoliberalism of the 80s youth clubs started to get defunded or removed completely fucking community centres started to disappear things that were running at a

community level went away. So by the 90s and the early 2000s, you had a lot of teenagers but fuck all to do other than hang around on corners. I used to be one of those teenagers. Just hang around corners and spit in a circle, that was it. And then by about the year 2000, hostile architecture that targeted teenagers started to be introduced in public spaces. They were known as mosquitoes and you'd find them. We used to come across them outside petrol stations, outside shops, outside private businesses. There were devices that emitted a very high-pitched noise that could only be heard by someone under the age of 25.

You can still buy them today like the mosquito, they have a website to sell them. And the opening fucking text on the website is fed up with teens lightering outside your home or business. Are homeless encampments and rough sleepers invading your local area? Have you been the target of vandalism? Look no further. than the mosquito anti-lightering alarm.

I remember hearing it. I remember it. It would actually make you fuck off from outside a shop. I can try and play the mosquito now, online. Can I hear it? Can I fuck? Because A, I'm too old, and B, I'm riddled with tinnitus,

so I live with the mosquito 24-7. There's no way it's worse than my tinnitus. But that there is an example. You know, why are their kids all over the place in the early 2000s? Because austerity measures took the funding away from community centres, youth clubs, all of these spaces, and then kids had nothing to do but hang around. But then the private market enters with a hostile device to target the ears of fucking children, which creates the exact type of distraction where it's like, no, this isn't structural issues,

this has nothing to do with youth clubs or tatcher or any shit like that, nothing to do with that. It's them, it's those fucking teenagers. They're so bad that we had to put this thing outside our shop. I know this all started because of a fucking milk bottle, but it's the same shit. Austerity measures towards the milk have put me in a position where I'm engaging in hostile architecture. Why don't you see gangs of teenagers?

You don't see it anymore. I can't remember the last time I saw a fucking gang of teenagers. And if I do see a collection of teenagers, they're on their way to school, but you don't see them hanging around anymore. Well, number one, birth rates have declined that there's less teenagers. And what do you expect? With expensive housing, no full-time contracts, even people who are fully employed, it's like,

well, is that with a multinational corporation who might disappear from the country tomorrow at the click of a finger to save money? So you don't actually have security. Those conditions over 20 years, 30 years, a lot of people just didn't have kids. kids and then 2012 smartphones social media socialising itself became privatised and commoditised. People could now perform their identities online through avatars from 2012 onwards in their fucking smartphones so kids just didn't need to go out and meet as much anymore and all of that interaction. Like if you hang around on a street corner and you're spitting on the ground,

you're not earning anyone money when you do that. Ironically, the only person who might earn a bit of money is when you do go into that local shop, the local shop that didn't want you hanging around outside. Out of that gang of teenagers, someone went in and bought sweets. But once that physical interaction disappeared and kids instead stayed at home and met up online, Every bit of that meetup was commodified and earned money for Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, whoever the fuck. And then when it comes to young adults, 20s, I watched the nightclubs disappear. Like I was there. I first started gigging properly.

2009, 2010. There was too many nightclubs in Ireland anyway because of the Celtic Tiger. They all started to close down. And I used to gig those nightclubs from about 2019. 2013 and each year the nightclub would fill up later and later and later until about 2013 what was left of the nightclubs the only people that were showing up were showing up at about half 11 12 already drunk from the house party and then only showing up to the nightclub not buying drink paying admission and only showing up at 12 just to meet the opposite sex that's why they were

coming in there at 12, circa 2013, just to meet the opposite sex. And then as soon as dating moved online, 2015, 2016 with the emergence of Tinder, then people stopped fucking meeting in real life for dating. What's the point of the fucking... Like, if the nightclub is no longer even a space you can go to because you're drinking at a house party, then now no one's going to the nightclub to dance. Because that used to be the mating ritual.

now it's all being done on Tinder. So that became privatised. And I watched that. And now, in 2026, there's a dating app called, I think it's Hinge is the one. And Hinge, they're trying to move their dating app model towards AI. I think it's Hinge. I could be wrong.

But there's one of the big dating apps. And they're going to use your data to create an AI version of you. That AI version of you. that AI version is going to go out into the app, go on dates with other AI versions of other people. And then these virtual AI dates are going to happen with your avatars. And then they'll come back with the results of compatibility based on how your AI versions went on dates with each other.

And if that happens, and two humans meet each other, because their AI avatars went out and dated each other. And then two humans meet in real life. and have sex with each other and have a child, that means that we become domestic animals of artificial intelligence. That means the AI has domesticated us because it's breeding us. I'm putting all this shit into the emails that I'm sending about the milk.

I can't tell if this week's podcast is making sense or if it's utterly mad. Before I do the Ocarina pause, like even this podcast in a way it's not hostile architecture but it exists there's certainly it's a product of neoliberalism and what I mean by that is

I'm a huge fan of public service broadcasting radio television forms of entertainment that are publicly funded and that are not necessarily run for profit pure public service broadcasting and I suppose the hey day of it would have been

mid-80s 70s maybe the 60s although we don't have a lot of it left because they used to not record things but creative platforms that are funded to create for the sake of creating it doesn't matter if the thing that's being made

is wildly popular or if no one watches it because the public service model is about funding a space for playfulness and creativity to happen. Like I'm working with the Abbey Theatre right now, as you know. Rehearsals have begun today where the Abbey are adapting my short stories through the director Dan Colley, who's fucking brilliant, adapting my short stories into a play.

The Abbey Theatre publicly funded. It's the National Theatre of Ireland. At no point in the creation of this play is, Anybody talking about advertisers or even bums on seats. I mean if a lot of people show up that's brilliant, isn't that great? But really it's, we're publicly funded, this is the National Theatre. We like what you do. Here is some time and space to explore and create something.

That's how public funding of the art should work. Simple as that. As opposed to most of this funding comes from a bunch of brands. We definitely need to make them money because they've invested. Therefore, you don't really have any creative freedom, you have a bit, but this work is definitely going to need bums on seats. And the best way to do that is to be topical or appeal to the lowest common denominator or be controversial for the sake of it, or have some people in the play who might not be the right actors for the play, but we're putting them there because they already have a profile and that'll bring people in. When you create art that way, as I've said before, you get consistent mediocrity.

When you fund art in a way that here's a space for playfulness and failure, when you do that, you get occasional brilliance. The Abbey Theatre, it's one of the last places where that environment exists, so it's great crack working with them. Our national broadcaster, RTE, it would have worked like that at one point, maybe the 70s and 80s, but it's not really operating that way anymore, even though it does receive public funding. advertisers and a for-profit model means that a genuine space for playfulness is really difficult to have. This podcast, like Jesus Christ, if RT give me a radio show, I wouldn't be able to take it, and they wouldn't offer it to me in the first place, because I wouldn't be able to do the type of shit that I do on this podcast. But instead, so this podcast, it's a, it's a neoliberal form of fucking public service broadcasting. Like, if you put a gun to my head and said, who's my hero of spoken word, you know, it'd be Joe Frank.

Joe Frank was an American, an American broadcaster who used to make very experimental radio shows that were, blurred the line between radio show and fiction. He made art through broadcast audio. He was hugely influenced by Samuel Beckett. And Joe Frank, huge influence on me when I started. to create this podcast 10 years ago. He was PBS in America, which was a listener-funded model,

where he had the freedom to do whatever the fuck he wanted. And that's what I'm trying to do here, in a neoliberal way, because it is privatized. So if you enjoy this podcast, if you like listening to it, if it brings you Marth, Merriment, Distraction, Entertainment, please consider funding the podcast directly via the Patreon page, patreon.com, forward slash,

the Blind Buy podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint when you can do it digitally? And that allows me to do this as my full-time job

to have the time and space each week to show up. Not to try and succeed, but to use this as a playground of curiosity and following my gut and not thinking about whether this is going to be

popular or not popular. Start thinking that way that's when you get your dog shit. And even though this is funded through Patreon, it is a private, it's a private neoliberal model of funding. I don't get-keep the result. The podcast is free to listen to by everybody. Whether you pay or not, that's the important thing for me. Everybody gets to listen to this podcast because some people can't afford to pay. But if you can't afford to pay, you're paying for the person who can't afford to pay. And if you can't afford to pay, someone else is paying for you to listen. Everyone gets the exact same podcast whether you pay or not. I get to earn a living. And I'm trying my best to operate in the public service broadcast model when the state public broadcasts

service model doesn't really exist anymore. Not in that completely free way. This model does protect the podcast from the whims of advertisers. Advertisers come here by my roles. They have no input, no sway, no influence. They can never pressure me to make content that takes boxes or does well in the algorithm or platforms people that I'm not interested in platforming. So patrion.com forward slash the blind by podcast. Let's do the, I have a creaky chair this week. I need to, I need to tighten a few fucking screws. Let's do the Okkina pause. You'll hear some advert for bullshit here now watch. Too high, that is a dog disturbing pitch or some teenagers possibly. Again, sounds like a dying kestrel. All right, gigs. I mentioned on last week's podcast there was going to be a

gig in Garnish Island on the 6th of September that sold out in 10 minutes. So thank you to everybody for coming along to that. That's going to be great fun. I didn't gig altogether. now this weekend I chose instead to spend time with family. I do not regret that one fucking bit. And I have a wonderful warm, fuzzy feeling of meaning because I made that choice. Right, Scotland, England and Wales tour this August. Kicking it off in Brighton at the Brighton Dome on the 18th of October. Then over to Wales at the new theatre, Cardiff, on the 20th of October. making our way to Coventry there

the Warwick Arts Centre on the 21st Bristol Beacon Hall on the 22nd of October Guildford G-Live London sold out Barbican Glasgow as good as sold out Gateshead

come along to Gateshead on the 29th of October and then I've got Halloween off in Gateshead keep thinking about what the fuck I'm going to do in Halloween in Gateshead some Anglo-Saxon shit I've never spent a Halloween night outside of Ireland

so I'm looking forward to seeing what the crack is in Gateshead on Halloween night What I would like to do on Gateshead and Halloween night is So Ridley Scott who directed Blade Runner is from that area and the opening scene of Blade Runner set in 2019, the past

is the city of Los Angeles with these big big towering chimneys full of fire. And apparently Ridley Scott, when he was a kid, used to go over this huge bridge in Gateshead. And there were oil refineries or steelworks or something underneath the bridge that would shoot fire into the air. And he saw this as a school kid walking home on this bridge at night time,

and that inspired the opening sequence of Blade Runner. So I'd like to try and see that on Halloween night in Gates' head. But because of Maggie fucking that, all of that industry is gone so apparently there's nothing there anymore and you can't see what inspired blade runner so thanks for that maggie the last gigs in Nottingham on the first of November and then fucking actually I nearly got my fucking head kicked in I have a gig in Sligo which I haven't been promoting on this podcast even though in fairness most of the tickets are gone already and I didn't even fucking advertise the fucking thing but I actually have a gig in Sligo in the Hawkswell Theatre in What is that the 19th November? Which

It's nearly half sold So if you're around Sligo in the 19th November Come along to the Hawkswell Theatre And recommend a guest to me Sligo is steeped in fucking history Megalytic tombs and Cairns Surely there's interesting people up around Sligo I could speak to about that

I need those dates there as well In England, Scotland and Wales Recommend some guests for me Then off to Australia in April 27 which this tour is it's nearly fucking sold out this tour let's see what's gone so Auckland in New Zealand

is the first gig tickets left for that I'm in the town hall in Auckland then Melbourne Pallet Theatre that one's going quick down to the last 200 on that one Brisbane sold out completely

Pardth you're down to 30 tickets in Pardth I mean thank you so much to Olli fucking hell lads this gig is nearly a year away and it's almost sold out so thank you so much for this tour um so part yeah you're down to the last 30 tickets and sydney opera house yeah you're down to the end at sydney opera house so that's nearly the we're down to the last tickets at sydney opera house which is on the 22nd of april 2027 all right this week's podcast was a a fucking phone call podcast not a pure phone call podcast I got some research in to get my facts and data correct. But the computer instant from last week did fuck me up. So I did lose last week's. I didn't lose any other data.

I kept all my other podcasts think, fuck. Last week's podcast that I recorded, I did lose it because the computer crashed mid-recording. I hadn't been saving or auto-saving, so I learned a lesson there. So I lost last week's podcast, and I put out the live one a week early. I spent all of this long weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I spent all of it with my family. I wasn't researching, doing any work prepping this week's podcast because it was supposed to be a live podcast this week. So that's why this week's podcast was a bit of a phone call. But I'm going to be up tomorrow morning, researching and writing next week's podcast.

In the meantime, Rob a Dog, Wink at a Swan, Genia Flect to a Warm. Dog bless. Thank you.