The Blindboy Podcast - I dont even know what this episode is about, but I enjoyed making it and I invite you to trust my process

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

30 years of the internet, Irish rebel songs, gangsta rap  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Present yourself to the hell-bent dentist, you henpecked Kennets. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If you're a brand new listener, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. If you're a regular listener, a droopy owner or a fearless searsha, you know the crack. This is the first episode of 2026, a very futuristic sounding year. if you're an elder millennial like me it's the type of year

you would have dreamed about as a child and imagined what am I going to be doing in 2026 what's life going to be like in 2026? I first used the internet in

1996 20 years ago and in those days I can't oh fuck it I don't I'm just an old man. There's no way.

I just have to lean into it. Actually, I'm such an old man. I just called 1996 20 years ago. When it's not, it's 30 fucking years ago. 1996 was 30 years ago, lads. Like, put it this way. If something is 20 years old, that's considered vintage. If it's beyond 20 years old, that's called antique.

Okay, so I'm speaking about something. I'm going to need to explore some antiquary. themes from my childhood here. So in those days in 1996 when I first used the internet, to use the internet, it wasn't a thing in your home. You didn't have it in your

house. Well no, some people did if they were a rich kid or if their dad worked with computers, then these people had the internet in their house. I actually remember probably 1995. The summer of 1995

I was carrying a A revolve... I used to put her a... Like a cap gun. I was carrying a revolver and I used to put it down the front of my pants because I was listening to a lot of iced tea and had seen the film Boys in the Hood,

which I adored. But the summer of 1995 I remember first hearing about the internet from my friend Lee, not his real name, who had a computer in his house because his da fixed computers. I remember standing outside his house with a gun down my pants

and him telling me we have this thing called the internet and I said, what's that? And he said, you can look at photographs of people having sex with sheep. I was a child that took me back a bit. I didn't interrogate it further. Things didn't work out too well for Lee.

He... God, I met him in Australia. He got addicted to the crystal meth in Australia. He told me that about the internet in 1995. and kind of walked away going, well, why the fuck would I want to go on the internet? And I didn't think about it again until a year later, in 1996.

Because in 1996, to use the internet, you had to go to a place where the internet was. In Limerick, it was a comic book shop called Forbidden Planet. Fucking incredible place. If you shot me into the head and I went to heaven. I'd want... I've got the giggles this week. if you shot me into the fucking head

and I went to heaven why do I have to have such a violent death why can't they just die by natural causes and actually yeah if I was going to get a violent death I might as well get a good one I'd be blood-eagled should know what a blood-eagling is it's an old Viking method of execution

I don't know if you want to hear about a blood eagle do you I have to tell you now okay content warning for about the next 30 seconds I'm going to describe what a blood eagle is. This is a profoundly violent method of execution. You may not be interested or want to hear this. So fast forward by about 30 seconds.

So the Vikings, they had a ritualistic form of killing. This method of execution. I think it was only reserved for like royal people. Like if you took over a kingdom or a royal clan. So what they'd do is they'd get like a hatchet. and they'd hack someone down their spine, then ripped their spine apart,

pull their lungs out so it looked like a set of wings, and then the person would be kind of crucified, and this was a blood eagle. The silhouette of the person dying looked like an eagle because their lungs were used as wings. So if you fast forwarded there, I'm not speaking about blood eagling anymore. So if I was to die by blood eagling and went to heaven, I don't believe in heaven either.

I'm just trying to talk about a comic book shop in Limerick in 1996. There was a comic book shop in Limerick in 1996 called The Forbidden Planet, and I used to go there as a child, and some of my happiest fucking memories are going to this place as a child. And to return to that place, at that age, with that sense of wonder, is a vision of heaven for me, Because it's where I would, I could read comic books, I could see Japanese manga, they'd be playing Akira. I could go there and Akira or Ghost in the Shell would be playing in the corner on a TV screen and I'd just stand there looking at it.

And I was a child and the people working in the shop, I'd be there for hours like, I would be there for hours looking through comic books or staring at whatever manga or anime was playing on the television. people working in the shop. I know they'd be like, should be ask him to leave because that cartoon that's playing is actually 18s. There's violence and sex in it. And sometimes the girls working there in particular, they were so lovely. They would fast forward certain bits, especially bits with sex, but they were so, they were just like this kid is here all the time and he clearly loves all this stuff, just leave him be. We can tell how happy this makes him, but there was still a little duty of care. It was very compassionate and they were probably in their early 20s or late teens. They would have been the cool kids I suppose. Because in those days, in those days, if someone

was cool, there was no social media. You couldn't perform a personality online. You couldn't go onto Instagram and curate an entire personality for yourself. I mean, that's what coolness is now you can share your taste, your interests, how you look, your fashion, where you go and you curate this personality and present it as a digital avatar. In those days,

a huge signifier of coolness was where you worked. If you got a job in Forbidden Planet, like the comic book shop, or you got a job in the music shop, that was a difficult job to get. You had to be a cool person. You had to have

passion and knowledge about the things that are being sold in the shop, but when customers walked in, they had to get a feeling of, oh, this is kind of intimidating. Everyone who works here is way cooler than me. See, I was a literal child in that shop, so those rules of coolness didn't apply to me. No one in their 20s is going to be competing with a child for coolness or trying to intimidate a child. So I got quite a lot of generosity, although I do remember one day, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. I went into the comic book shop. I probably fancied the girls as best as you can fancy

a woman in her 20s when you're a child. I felt cool that I was allowed in there and I liked that they knew me and that they were nice to me and I would have looked up to him. I had a prodigy t-shirt, right? But they didn't make prodigy t-shirts for children.

They only made adult prodigy t-shirts. So I was wearing an adult prodigy t-shirt, which probably went down to just above my knees. But my shorts, my shorts were shorter than where my t-shirt ended. And one of the girls in Forbidden Planet, thought that I wasn't wearing any underpants. She thought it'd come in with just a t-shirt and my balls out. And she asked me, and I was mortified. Because I suppose in hindsight it's like there's a child in here

and there's adult cartoons playing that's bad enough but we can't have a nude child we can't have a nude child because you just, fair enough on reflection afterwards it's like it does actually look like I have no trousers on whatsoever it looks like just t-shirt and legs and then balls underneath

no pubes So in those days, cool people, the cool people, you were cool if you had a cool job in a cool shop. And this was gate kept by a really, really, really cool manager. And if you were really, really, really cool, you got the fuck out of limerick and you had to go to a place in the world where cool things were happening. You had to go to New York or you had to go to London. You had to physically visit a place where a scene was happening and then absorb the music that you heard, the fashion. and you had to bring it home to your hometown. Like, even before my time,

a level of cultural scarcity that I don't even understand. I used to have a theatre producer. In the early 2010s, man by the name of David Johnson, I've mentioned it before. He sadly passed. Not the same theatre producer who I mentioned last week who got a rash on his back from letting a fox sleep on his couch.

Different person. But he used to tell me about the emergence of the, new romantic movement in London in the late 70s and early 80s. So I'm talking, by George, dead or alive. That early 80s, very flamboyant androgynous lots of makeup. That was the new romantic movement. It was a style of dress and music, half based on 70s Bowie. But anyway, that just started on one street. And my old pal David Johnson, who was around then in the 80s, he'd have been in his 20s, he used to tell me, in this one street, I think it was in Covent Garden in London. People just started dressing like this. The cool kids just started wearing makeup and dressing this

way and hanging around a corner. And then if you were a teenager too and you fancied yourself as fuck it, I want to be one of them. You had to just show up on Saturday with makeup on and you might be allowed hang out or you'd be rejected. And he was one of the ones who he was allowed to be there. He, full makeup and mad, ridiculous clothes and he was in that new romantic scene. And then other people would show up and go, what the fuck is this? Why is, why is there 20 people on this one corner dressed this certain way? And then the media would show up with cameras, taking photographs of these young people wearing makeup. And then tourists would show up and take photographs with the new romantics. And then they'd all start listening to the same tunes. And then they'd open

a nightclub or have a night where they listen to these tunes and they go to this nightclub. The nightclub was called the Blitz. They became known as Blitz Kids. And then music managers show up and talent managers show up and go, can any of you sing? And then people get signed to labels. There was a job. The job was called A&R. And A&R people used to work for music labels and their job was to go to the cool cities around the world and see who were the cool kids? What are they all doing? can you go in there and find the next

massive act? And that's what used to happen. And that was a scene and you had to be there and then that scene would go mainstream and I suppose the moment that went mainstream is David Bowie's video 1984, Ashes to Ashes Bowie by 1984 had

stopped being cool and he was older, he'd have been party so he wasn't cool anymore so he went down to all the new romantics and said, come into my video come into my music video for Ashes to Ashes and make me cool again. And the reason I can make that assumption is

Bowie himself kind of gives that anxiety away on a song on the same album. Actually, 1980, not 84. On the album, Scary Monsters, one of the greatest albums of all time. Bowie has a song called Teenage Wildlife and one of the lyrics is, A broken-nosed mogul are you,

one of the new wave boys. Same old thing in brand new drag comes sweeping into view. And that lyric there, that's Bowie, worrying about getting older, worrying about not being cool anymore, not being relevant, being a little bit passive aggressive, going, oh, these are the cool kids now? This is what's cool? Doing shit that I was doing 10 years ago? Okay, well if you can't beat him, join him, bring him on board and get some of that coolness. And Bowie did that his whole

career. He was amazing at that. And Madonna, Madonna was great for that. And just as an aside, what I mentioned there about, you know, the early 80s, where, A scene emerges in a place with people and you have to physically show up. The last vestiges of this that you'll see. And I don't even know is it still there because the last time I saw this was maybe 10 years ago. Camden. Got to Camden in London, which used to be cool and isn't cool anymore. Go to Camden in London.

And you will see elderly punks. Punks in their 60s. And with all due respect, to me they appear. appeared to be people in active addiction, alcoholics. And they're sitting down on the side of the road, dressed as punks in their 60s, all the hair, the jackets, everything. And they're holding up signs. And the signs say, take a photograph with a punk and give me money for beer. And those old punks are harking back to a time in the 70s and the 80s when tourists would go to Camden and get a photograph with a punk. get a photograph with some lad because his hair is mad.

Now you can go on to Google images and learn how to dress like a punk and get all the punk clothes sent to your house. Probably comes from China. The authenticity is gone, the cultural scarcity has gone. But to be cool in the 90s, you had to leave where you lived, go to the place where the cool people were, and then return home with trinkets of coolness

in the way that you talk, the way that you dress the music that you listen to. You had cultural capital that you could hoard. And these were the people who got jobs. in record shops or comic book shops and look at a film like High Fidelity from 1997 I think it is that's a film about exactly what I'm speaking about

it's about a bunch of hipsters in a record shop gatekeeping music and deciding who's cool enough and who's not cool enough and choosing not to share certain records with certain people because they don't think they're cool enough to understand this music And that film is a satire, but that's how things were. So the cool people, they worked in nightclubs, they had proximity to music,

they worked in music shops, the comic book shop. And then the beautiful people, like the people who would now be an Instagram influencer, what were they doing in 1996? They worked in clothes shops. Physically attractive people worked in River Island or in Brown Thomas. and it was an unwritten rule but it was clearly a fucking rule because you walk into the Brown Thomas

and it's like why is everyone here a ride? But I used to, I was going to Forbidden Planet I'd say from 1994 to 1996 every Saturday for hours as a little child just being there and feeling spiritually nourished not feeling like a freak

not feeling left out discovering art and ideas and different cultures. But 1996 was the year when in Forbidden Planet in Limerick they got a computer in there. One computer over in the corner with a chair and for one pound,

for one Irish pound, you could use the internet for one hour. And in those days, you went on websites. And websites were things people told you about in real life. and the people who were going on the internet in 1996 in Limerick they were cool kids in their early 20s who'd just come back from America

and they were emailing their friends back in America and that's what the internet was it was a thing you paid for in a shop for one hour or a half an hour and it was a very safe space and it was enjoyable and it's where I first saw I didn't want to see photographs of people having sex with sheep I wanted to see what the Prodigy looked like.

Photographs of the Prodigy. My favourite band were The Prodigy. And I'd been listening to The Prodigy, wearing big baggy T-shirts that made me look like my dick was hanging out. For about three years, I had their music on tape, obsessed with the Prodigy, and I didn't know what they looked like. This would have been pre-fire starter, so before that the Prodigy were relative, not underground, but you wouldn't be seen their videos.

on TV. Put it this way, my neighbours, their grandkids lived in New York and used to come to Limerick for the summertime. I've spoken about this before. These were the kids who showed me teenage mutant ninja turtles before it was in Ireland.

And they got a little bit older. One of the kids, Brian, again, who sadly passed, one of my best friends, he's not with me anymore. He gave me Wutang Clan on tape and I'd never heard of Wutang Clan in Ireland. impossible. Why would you? And I gave him the prodigy on tape

because he'd never heard of the prodigy in America. So the first thing I ever looked up on the internet was photographs of the prodigy. And it felt a bit shit because I'd elevated the prodigy to the level of gods and now I'm just looking at photographs of a fella called Liam, Liam Howlett,

who sounds like he could have grown up around the corner from me. And just as an aside, because there's a million people listening to this podcast, now. If anybody knows Liam Howlett, like, I have a lot of listeners in Essex. If anyone from Essex is personal friends with Liam Howlett, give him a shout, please and tell him I'd love to have him on this podcast. He's a dream guest. My two dream guests for this podcast. Liam Howlett from The Prodigy, an iced tea. I've a lot of listeners over in Los Angeles. If anyone knows ice tea. Tell him that he's a god to me and I'd love to chat to him. Ice tea radicalised me.

I used to listen to ice tea. I'd say it was five or six years of age. I shouldn't have been listening to ice tea when I was five or six. My older brother was a huge fan of Bob Dylan and he read an article that said ice tea is the Bob Dylan of today so my brother bought an ice tea tape, didn't like it and just gave it to me because I was listening to the And it was the first ever rap album that I heard. It was Home Invasion, which was fucking political gangster rap. And I used to have it blaring in my front room. Motherfucking this and motherfucking that.

And my dad came in and heard all the motherfuckins. And was a bit concerned because of all the motherfuckings in the songs. But my dad sat down listening to it with me and listened to the lyrics. And the lyrics were about I'm a black man in America and the police are oppressive and the police murder black people and there's a system here called racism

and you have to fight against it and my dad listened to that and said I don't give a fuck about the motherfuckins this is good stuff for him to be listening to and that's when my dad first started explaining to me about my granddad in the IRA and he'd say he did tell me about the black and tans

and he'd go But that's, that, those police there, they sound like what the black and tans were doing. Because the black and tans, they were a police force by the British. But they'd shoot you. They weren't actual police. They were there to kill people. Because my dad used to be listening to the wolf tones. He'd be listening to rebel songs.

And then he, my dad would say to me, oh, this iced tea stuff, this, this sounds the same as the wolf tones. It's the same stuff, isn't it? There's no Carson and the wolf tones, but it's the same message. So I was allowed listen to ice tea when I was tiny. And then he'd get his tape and he'd play. Come out your black and tans, come out and fight me like a man. And that song, that song is pure gangster rap, political gangster rap. And it's, it tells the, it's so fucking Irish.

It tells the history of British colonialism. It's intersectional. What I love about come out your black and tans, the song. And this is why my dad used to contrast it to iced tea. It's a song about the Irish struggle, but it doesn't, it's not just about the Irish struggle. struggle, it's about systems of oppression all over the world. I was born in a Dublin street where the royal drums do beat and the loving English feet they walked all over us.

And every single night when my dad would come home tight, he'd invite the neighbours out with this chorus. Come out, ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man, show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders. Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away from the green and lovely lanes of Kilichandra. That song was written by Dominic Behan, Brendan Behan's brother. And just that opening verse, the storytelling that's going on.

When people sing that song, come out your blackened hands, come out and fight me like a man. You think that it's addressed at the British. It's not. I was born on the Dublin Street where the loyal drums do beat. Loyal. And every single night when my dad would come home tight, tight is drunk. He'd invite the neighbours out with this cupboard. course. Who the protagonist is addressing come out your black and tans to. It's not to the

tans. It's to the working class community. It's to his neighbours who went and joined the British army. To the Irish people who were loyal, to the Irish people whose minds were colonised by a foreign power. The actual, the, the, the mirror analogue in rap music is, it's actually a song called Black Cop by KRS One, which is, it's a song about a policeman who's black who brutalizes his own community, in a type of self-loathing, a way to gain approval within the system of whiteness that works against him. It's a tenement street in Dublin, and it's like, ye took the queen's shilling, you're Irish people, and you went and fought for the fucking British, and they walked all over ye. So who he's enticing there are other Irish men.

neighbors, the song is said, I think, probably the 1930s post-war of independence. And the worst thing that you can call an Irish man back then is a black and tan, because he's going, he went and fought from, look what they did, look what they did here. I'm not letting you forget that, but it's also trauma, because the protagonist, you can tell he was in the rap. He fought against the British in the War of Independence, and now he's coming home drunk every night. He's traumatised from all that. And he's got this bitterness. Come out your black in tans and come and fight me like a man. Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders.

That's World War I, because this happened in a lot of working class Irish communities. The system was against Irish Catholics. This happened in Limerick too. One of the only good jobs you could get was to become cannon fodder for the fucking British army and an Irish person joined the British Army and they sent them off to the front lines and the Irish were hoodwinked. Around the time of the First World War there was a politician called

Redmond and Redmond was like do you know what if loads of Irish people go and fight for the British in World War I they might just give us our country back which would never have happened but that was answering Redmond's call that was the excuse that a lot of

Irish men gave when they came home they just said I was answering Redmond's call, I thought if I went to World War I, that it would get his independence. And then their wives were accused of taking the queen's shilling. Again, another thing, even when I went off, if I work with BBC, someone would go on the internet and go, you're taking the queen's shilling, which is to take English money to be a traitor. And then the third verse is, come tell us how you slew them all Arabs two by two. That's referring to the Ottoman Empire. That's the roots of fucking Palestine right there. And then it's like the Zulus, they had spears and bows and arrows. How bravely you faced one with your 16-pounder gun

and you frightened them damn natives to their marrow. So now it's gone from Palestine, right down to Africa, where the British were colonising and committing mass murder, where the Zulus are trying to fight back. But they don't have guns, they've got spears and bows and arrows, and the British are just killing them by the hundreds with maximum machine guns. Now that bit there is based on a popular myth, but it's a myth that the Maxim machine gun was the first ever machine gun. It was a British invention. And in the late 1800s, the British would only use machine guns on non-white people. Now I don't think that's 100% historically accurate. But the lyrics use it to illustrate the point of racism and colonialism and that song.

You hear it being shouted in pubs when people are drunk. But it's like iced tea, you think you're just hearing the motherfuckings, but when you go underneath the surface, it's storytelling and it's a deep interrogation of systems of power. And it's in that Irish storytelling tradition of hold the fucking British accountable hold all of British colonial history in a song in something that you can keep in your mouth you don't write it down you keep this in your mouth and no one can take it away

and my dad used to he would contrast and compare that music with what iced tea was saying with greater complexity as I got older and I'm so glad he didn't take my iced tea tape away just because it had curses in it and it was the greatest decision my dad ever made Jesus Christ, I'd have been robbed of so much

if he'd have just heard all those motherfuckins and decided to take the tape away. That changed my life. That defined who I am as a person. I still listen to that. I still listen to Home Invasion every fucking week. I can't play songs in this podcast, unfortunately, because it'll get taken down.

But there's one song I used to listen to. It's called The House. It's actually on a different iced tea album. I think maybe the tape that my brother had was a taped tape with more than one iced tea album on it because I had no cover art. I'd no cover art. I'd just had this tape.

I didn't know what iced tea looked like. I worshipped him. But he has this song, The House. And this song itself is less than a minute long. But I'll read out the lyrics fee. And I won't read this out as a rap. I'll read it as Irish prose. You know that house down the street?

where the kids are. And every day they seem to have a new scar. There's something strange is going on and everybody knows. The door's always shut and the window's always closed. The little girl. She had a barn.

The boy was black and blue. They said it came from play but you know that's not true. The boy's arms broke. The girl is scared to speak. And their parents drink all day a couple of dead beats. Some days they go to school and other days they might

because it's hard to stay awake after you cry all night. You see them every day with the tear tracks on their cheeks but they'll never tell it goes on weeks and weeks. But what can they do? They're only children, man.

You're not a fucking kid. Act like you give a damn. Won't somebody save these kids do something? Call a cop? the other night I heard gunshots. I think that was the song that made my dad go, no, this is good stuff.

Like, just that is a short story. It's about a house where kids are undergoing physical abuse from parents that are suffering addiction and severe domestic violence. And then by the end of it, it's like, call the police, call the police, something must be done.

and the police show up and they don't help anyone. They shoot the parents in front of the kids because in America, under the system of racism, if someone is black and they're poor, the system doesn't work for them. The police are at danger. Now, post-George Floyd, we all saw this.

We see this with social media. The world is aware of this systemic injustice that happens in American society now. But before social media, or the internet, you had to hear about it from Ice-T or Ice Cube. And Ice-T had a song called Cop Killer. It's a song about killing cops, and the US government tried to arrest him for treason.

Actually, I'll play you a clip rather than me explain it. I'll play ye Ice-T in 1991 on an Australian TV show explaining what the song Cop Killer is about. Savage, hateful message, isn't it? It's now not relating just to the cop. He's family as well. Yes, it's saying that I know your family's grieving, but what about the families of the youth that have been killed out there?

This record is so far-fetched from Australia or New Zealand. It's like, you guys are very fortunate. You don't undergo the police brutality the same way we do in America. But where American people are really up in arms about this song, which doesn't kill, it's just a song. But the cops are in America actually kill kids, and the parents cry and scream and these cops don't go to jail

they're just laid off you know there's no cops on death row and this particular character and this song has said hey I know your family's grieving but so what you know this is a point where I determine it's time to get even

and he doesn't say he wants to get up he just says he wants to get even this is a very angry song song about rage okay but I understand that you said this in one of your US interviews I've got no trouble with kill

Killing brutal cops? True? They have no trouble with killing what they consider brutal kids. See, my attitude is that just by, because you have a badge, doesn't give you the right to murder me. Once a cop pulls me out of the car and handles me under the law, that's cool. But once he starts beating on me and taking advantage of me, no longer is he in the lines of law. He is now becoming some inhuman person, and he's determined, now it's just two men out in. the street and one of us got to die and it's not going to be me you know it's either you or me that's what the record says it's better you than me if it was me down there and i was rodney king

i would have tried to kill those police because they were trying to kill that man okay you presented as a black view and yet for instance the new black chief of the la police asked for this song to be banned what does that tell you he's not black he's just uh he might have black skin but he's not at the bottom of the system. When I say black and white, it has nothing to do with skin color. It has to do whether the system works for you or the system works against you. I don't have any love for that particular police chief. He's what we consider in America, Tom.

Your detractors would say that the music is second-rate stuff that wouldn't rate a mention if it didn't have these references to violence. What do you say to them? My detractors couldn't make a record that would sell 10 records. That's like me saying that Rembrandt would have never sold a painting if he didn't paint nudes. You know, that's ridiculous. So that was Ice-T explaining his song on Australian TV in 1991. And one thing I noticed from that interview,

he wrongly assumes that police brutality is not a thing in Australia. And my listeners, especially my Aboriginal listeners in Australia, would know this is not the case. There's a huge issue in Australia with, Aboriginal people dying in custody, and this has been gone on for years. But I reckon someone pointed that out to him because in his 1993 album, he does address Aboriginal Australians in a song called Race War. I've meandered heavily from the initial point that I was trying to make at the start of this podcast.

2006, it represents 30 years of me using the internet. In 1996, I probably would have thought to myself. of, wow, wonder what it's going to be like in 2026. I imagine robots and flying cars and all that type of futuristic crack. But what I didn't imagine, and which didn't seem possible, is that this internet thing that I was using there in Forbidden Planet, that it would become this huge source of pain, that 30 years in the future, we'd be imprisoned by this thing, that it would be, impact our mental health that we'd have exported our identities and sense of self and self-esteem to a digital online avatar. I think we'll take a little ocarina pause. I don't have an ocarina. What I'm going to do is I'm going to hit my coffee cup with a vape. I'm not back on

the vapes. I just have one in my possession. So I'm going to hit a coffee cup with a vape. You're going to hear some fucking adverts, all right? Oh, very monastic. Quite like that. No complaints about that. Actually my pacing there wasn't that monastic that was more of calling a cat for its dinner. calling a cat for its dinner. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener,

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okay so let's keep it going if you're interested in doing that Patreon.com forward slash the blindby podcast and if you're a new patron don't sign up on the iPhone app because Apple take 30% they're greedy

do it on a browser or the browser on your phone right let's let's plug some contractually obligated gig plugging I'm going to start with my UK tour so this UK tour England's gotten in Wales right

it's it's not until next October which is nearly a fucking year away, loads of ye bought tickets as Christmas presents, all right? So this UK tour, even though it's ages away, is very quickly selling out. Thank you so much for the Queen's shilling. Some of these dates, they're more than 90% sold out, all right? So if you want to come to my live podcast in England, Scotland and Wales in October 2026, get your tickets now because they're selling out really quickly and I won't be able to add extra dates because just the type of venues

that I'm booking, they're big venues. So when you book a big venue, you have to give it like minimum eight or nine months in advance because these places are booked up. So I won't be able to add any second shows if any of these sell out and they look like they're going to sell out pretty quickly. So starting on the 18th of October, 26, Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guilford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead and Nottingham. Gilford there is flying out the door. I did not know I had so many listeners in Guildford. Thank you very much because I was unsure where Guildford was. but if you want those tickets Fane.com. UK forward slash

the Blind Boy Podcast Irish gigs starting in January, the 23rd of January. I'm in Waterford on the 23rd January. That's nearly sold out. Nais, Kildare on the 31st, up at the spirit of Kildare Festival. There's actually, that's a small enough gig.

So, yeah, there's only a few tickets left for that. February, Vicker Street, on the, is that the fourth? Vickert, very nearly sold out. You're talking 20 tickets left for that. Belfast on the 12th of February. Galway on the 15th. Killarney, the Ineck on the 28th of February.

Then in March, what have I? The third, is that, no, the 14th of March, I'm in Carlo. Oh, there's only about five tickets left for that. Cork Podcast Festival, March 26. I don't have updated sales for that gig I've only got ticket sales from like November so I don't know what the crack

is with Cork but Cork office sells out and then Castle Blaney there in April and Limerick in April on the what is that the 9th

come to Limerick that one is selling quick because people when I do a gig in Limerick people tend to travel and make a little trip of it You'll get those tickets and links on the blindbuy podcast.e, assuming my website is working. Right back to the podcast, which I think, I think this is about me using the internet for 30 years and just imagining in 1996 what the world would be like 30 years from, what the world would be like right now. The early internet that I experienced, it wasn't really anything.

knew. It was the information super highway, as they called it. You were surfing the web. It was just, it was books on a screen. It was access to loads and loads of information. It was the reduction of scarcity. It was safe. It was a single player game. It was somewhere you could retreat. And when eventually we started to get the internet in our fucking house, on the computer in your house. It wasn't that different to opening a book. It was a new way of opening a book. It was somewhere you went to escape to find out very specific information.

The only time I experienced something like radically new was social media, the emergence of social media. My first experience of social media would have been Bebo. Before social media, you were truly anonymous. anonymous. You were nothing. You didn't have an identity to defend. When social media came about, now you had a situation where you could feel threatened. Like Bebo was one of the first social media platforms and there you are with a community of people you know in real life with actual photographs of yourself up. And there was top friends.

And people would get anxiety over, am I not in that person's top ten friends? And you're being ranked. And you're going, oh, I thought I was closer to that person, but I guess not. I'm not in their top ten friends. And your Bebo page had views on it. So if you had a lot of page views,

well, that was a numerical representation of how popular you were, how people in your peer group viewed you. So if you had loads of page views, you're a liked person, you're popular. But if you had no page views, it meant you were unpopular. You weren't cool. You didn't have worth. Now, I first joined Bebo 20 years ago. In 2006, 20 years ago.

I was very young. I was trying to make it as a comedian. I was doing prank phone calls and uploading them on Bebo. And you have to realize in 2006 the idea of the internet is a place to have a career this didn't exist this did not exist no one had done it

no one had done it yet what we knew was here's this new thing called social media it's like a year or too old you can put your content there for free people can listen to it for free but there's no way to earn money in any way and it wasn't

taken seriously but still if you were doing anything creative, you could show people and people could respond. And it was the first time that I started to notice, all this internet thing here. I have an emotional response to this machine. My identity, my sense of worth, feels somehow tied to this new social media thing. Sometimes it feels great, but then other times it feels terrible, it feels awful. 2006 is when I first started to read about psychology, the psychology of Carl Rogers.

In particular, Rogers' idea of the real self and the ideal self. You have your real self, it's the person who you actually are, your feelings, your needs, your lived experience. Your real self is the person who experiences joy. My real self when I was a kid was being inside and forbidden planet. enjoying art my real self could exist on the early internet where it's

just an autistic kid in the world's biggest fucking encyclopedia but then this new thing called social media comes around and all of a sudden you're comparing yourself

to other people ranking yourself with other people am I popular enough do people like other people more than they like me and that there is Rogers' ideal self

it's the person who you would think you should be continually trying to find happiness in the approval of other people and that is not if you do that you'll find misery shame and a consistent fear anxiety and a consistent feeling of not being enough because self-esteem has to come from within it can't come from without and as I was using Bebo in 2006 I started to notice what's this feeling this feeling of comparing myself continually to all these other people

I'm wondering if I'm popular enough and putting work up and getting all these positive comments from strangers and feeling empty and then one negative comment completely fucking destroying me and this machine this internet it now, it's a source of pain. It's something I have to avoid. And I remember when Bebo first came about, there was no smartphones. Smartphones didn't exist, so you had to still sit down at your

computer, turn it on and check your Bebo page. If someone left a comment on your page, if someone liked your fucking photograph, I can't remember how it worked. But if someone interacted with you and Bebo, it took a good five minutes to open up your fucking account and check. And if you did check, if you were online, beside your photograph, it said that you were online. And back in those days, there was a sense of shame about being online too much. So you had to open it up, check, get the fuck out. Because if you were online all the time, it meant you had no life. And the reason it meant you had no life was, if you're online all the time, it means you're in your room all the time and you're not out in the real world socialising. Because

anyone who's online, they have to be sitting at their computer. So if you were added too much, it was weird and it was a source of shame. So you'd to open it up, check, get the fuck out. And that's how Bebo worked. Because we didn't have smartphones. So if you were online all the time, you were an addict. You had no social life. You were seen as a weirdo, a loser. And you know what people used to joke about in 2006? And I'm serious. People used to say, fucking hell, Bebo's good crack, but Christ, imagine it was on our phones. Imagine that on your phone you could check your Bebo account, wouldn't that be utter and absolute hell? That was the joke we used to, that was an unthinkable reality. We used to, the idea that you have social media in your

pocket at all times and you consistently can check in what comments you're getting other people's photos. That was an unthinkable hell. technology to make it happen didn't exist yet. And I used to think about all this critically. And I used to contrast it with Carr Rogers' theory of the real and ideal self. Because social media was like a year fucking old. So anyway, I had a lot of followers on the prank phone call page. About 8,000, which in 2006, 8,000 followers, it'd be like half a million now.

your ma wasn't on social media in 2006 social media was a small cohort of young people it hadn't gone mainstream it started social media went mainstream 2008 2009 with facebook that's when your ma started to go on facebook and everyone had social media before that it was new it was niche we didn't know the rules we didn't know what it was we didn't know what to call it what to feel about it it wasn't spoken about our treated about as anything real or serious. It was like a toy. It was seen as a video game. So I had this page with 8,000 followers and one day I decided to post a blog where I basically spoke about Rogers' theory of the real and ideal self and I said the fact that Bebo has page views and everyone's page and that you can rank, that that human beings can rank themselves against other human beings and see a figure. that denotes their popularity. I said, this is going to have massive mental health impacts

and it will eventually lead to suicide. And when I posted that, 8,000 people saw it, which was massive in 2006 and my Bebo page got deleted. And my life was over. The little career that I thought I'd built for myself with the prank phone calls, that was gone. And I was in bits. And I actually managed to dig up a radio interview.

that I did 20 years ago about my Bebo page getting deleted because it was one of the biggest bebo pages in Ireland in 2006 and there was a DJ down in Cork by the name of Casey who was a buddy of mine still and he used to play rubber bandits prank phone calls on his radio station

he was the first person ever to give me any type of established media presence so when my Bebo page got deleted I had to go to KC and say I need to start a new one and I don't know what to do can you put me on the radio

so I found my this is my first ever I think proper radio interview where it's me it's me complaining about my Bebo page getting deleted in 2006 this is so old that I wasn't even called

Blind Boy I was going by the name of Liam Flag who was a character that I used to do in prank phone calls. Liam Flagg. Ironically, I think Liam Flagg was me knowing that I was autistic when I was like 19. It was me as a kid

playing the character of a man in his 30s who was basically autistic. I think it was my unconscious mind knowing what I was going to turn into. But anyway, I'd like to play this interview from 2006 of me. me on the radio, talking to the DJ Casey about my Bibo getting deleted. And also, what strikes me with this is, I don't know when to be serious and when to be in character.

I don't know what the rules are. On their Bibo page, Lean Flag from the Bandits on the line. Hello, sir. How's it going there, Casey? How are you? I'm very good myself now, but I'm a bit, I'm shook with the incident with the Bibo page now. Let's just tell people, if you had how many fans, you had how many, how many groupies on your Bibo page? With about

just over 8,000 And the page was about 7 months old With over 8,000 Signs on the page And about 100,000 views Now, this would make it The most popular

Un signed act Fan site on Bebo Worldwide. It's correct. Not bad for a couple of messages In Merrick, isn't it? Well, yes, I suppose But the success

of it perpetuated itself, you see, the emphasis on the fact that it was unadvertised, you know? Yeah. But unfortunately, the page itself was actually deleted very, very quickly and abruptly.

And the reason for this is because I had written in my blog about the horrors of profile views. Okay. Now, I'm sure many people who use Bebo are aware that when you go onto anyone's page, it shows how many views are on that page. And it's a bit of an ego massager. If you're up on 50, 60, 70,000 hits, I mean, it's, you know, it looks good for you as a person. Very much so. And as a result of this, it's Tommy Bebo.

into a popularity contest, which is all well and good for the people that have maybe 10,000 kits, but for the people that do not have as many profile views, then it has a very bad effect on their self-esteem.

Now, I stated this in my blog, or my blog, I'm very sorry, in B-BOR. And it was deleted rather abruptly and rather unfairly, I believe. Does that mean, Liam, that they were monitoring your B-BBO page? Well, yes, they were actually,

they were monitoring it, but considering it was the more, the most, you see, the thing is, because I had so many fans, the 8,000 fans, as soon as I wrote anything in my blog, 8,000 people then got what was in that blog, you see. So, after I wrote that in the blog, I created a separate page, which was an online petition to remove profile views from Bebo, because it was having such a negative effect on people's self-esteem. That page was deleted, and the rubber bandage page was deleted as a result, because what I was saying was dangerous to Bebo.

they know this and that's why they deleted you well it's all I can assume there was no other conduct that would have been considered against the rules it just it disappeared completely when I emailed Bebo about it and explained my situation that we had so many page views and whatever

they just simply said to me that they refused to discuss why the page was deleted and it cannot be brought back and to be honest the way I feel at the moment it's as if fascism has gotten democracy pregnant it's left me with the child and it's suckling on my breast

and there's no milk there. Right. That's how I feel at the moment. That's some analogy there, Lou. It's a fantastic analogy. Since your letter of complaints into the powers of Bibo, where are they based?

It's an American. They have offices in California and England, I believe. But it was the Californian office I was in contact with. This thing is huge. I mean, every kid and young adult between the ages, anyone between the ages of 13 and 35 is on Bibo.

They're not just honest. out. They're on it three or four times a day. Do you think it's become a dangerous addiction, Liam? Very much so. And this can be evidenced by the fact, and profile views are a part of the addiction, because it can be evidenced by the fact that you have people on it, who

especially young teenage girls, who take photos of themselves in maybe their underwear or something, and they'll use this as a means of getting more profile views. So, if you look at what addiction is considered, because they are doing something that they would otherwise

consider appropriate but no longer consider inappropriate because they want to get these views. They are therefore addicted and it is dangerous because their value and self-esteem is derived from how many profile views they have, which is absurd. But isn't it essential for Bebo as well, Liam, to have that profile view thing because that means that there's people probably like myself with huge egos who go on there for 10 hours a day and just click profile view, refresh, refresh, refresh, because I'm only at 12 at the moment and I need to start getting that back up. And I'm sure your self-esteem is affected.

Of course it is. I wouldn't like to feel your pillow. I'd say your pillow is very wet and salt. It is. I spend a lot of time crying in the shower. It's terrible. In the shower, well, it's good because the salt will wipe off. Because an unfortunate thing that can happen with tears is that if you're crying in a hot room,

the salt will actually solidify on your face. The tear will evaporate. You're left with salty tracks on your face. It's kind of going on like that. You look like a panda or something, you know? Rex the mascara as well. Scara and salts. They're not designed. They're not compatible.

Bebo's font. Leim, the funny thing about this is, after your letter of complaint now, since yesterday, they've made profile views optional. So what they deleted you for, they've now changed. This is correct. Because of the online petition, it only survived for about a day or two before it was deleted, but it was massively popular, and it was very clear from looking at it, that a lot of people on Bebo were very annoyed with what profile views has turned Bebo into,

which is a profile views have made Bebo quite annoying because a Bebo is a fine service that's there to help people communicate for free and I applaud it for that but unfortunately what it's turned into is a popularity contest where people are more concerned with advertising their own page and it's very, very annoying

most people see this and Bebo has now listened but at the expense of me because I now have a new Bebo page that I have to rebuild that. So I only found that recently I think that might be my first ever radio interview. That's 2006. And I didn't know.

I was doing prank phone calls. That was all comedy characters. And I didn't know how do I balance sincerity. You know, speaking about something that's actually very fucking important to me. And then balance that with humour. Coupled with the... I'm not even blind by yet. Liam Flagg.

Didn't even have a name. And Liam Flagg was very serious. Liam would talk like this. I used to do prank phone calls for What used to do with Liam Flag? I used to ring up bin companies arguing for the rights of dogs Well I just, I noticed that

Wheely bins became a thing around 2005 and I just noticed that stray dogs were starving, stray dogs couldn't eat out of bins anymore because now there was these new fucking wheelie bins This was about 2005 and I used to get worried about starving dogs so he's to ring up the bin companies

and record it and say this is Liam Flagg and I'm very serious about this and I think that the bin company should pay for dogs to have special metal mouth mechanisms attached to their mouths so that they can have steel jaws

that it bite into the side of wheelie bins so that they can access the nutritious rubbish inside so that's the shit I was doing in 2006 but also I'm personally I'm personally responsible that was my party piece I'm personally responsible for

for profile views getting removed from Bebo. That's a fact, and there's your proof there. And something as well I want to raise just listening back. Now, this is 20 years ago, I'm a fucking young fella there. But I did make the point. When I was making the case for what social media addiction was, the example I gave was I was seeing teenage girls

post and photographs of themselves in their bras just to get more likes. And that's, that's a bit misogynistic. That's a bit body shamy. If I had a time machine to go back in time and speak to me 20 years ago, I'd say to myself, that's not a very good example there. That sounds to me like some type of sexual morality. If women want to show their bodies online, that's absolutely none of my fucking business. And I have no say in that whatsoever.

So if I had a time machine, I would say that to me 20 years ago. I think I was trying to make a point about a body image, social comparison. But what I would have said If I had a time machine See here Anytime I start thinking of this If I had a time machine And went back to me in 2006

And go Here it's me 20 years in the future I've got some things to say to you About that radio interview tomorrow I'd just have a panic attack I'd be like Who the fuck are you

I'm you from the future What So I hate using that That analogy Yeah I'd be terrified I'd be terrified And then I'd try and fuck myself Or

Or at least say, What does your dick look like? Are your pubs gone grey? And then future me. Yeah, I'd probably try and freak out younger me. I'd just have to show younger me an iPhone And then I'd just get a heart attack. Or I'd probably, I'd dress up in tin file.

Me now, I'd cover myself in tin file And go back 20 years And go, it's me from the future, this is how we dress. But no, seriously, what I would say, I'd just say, make the argument about something you can relate to and shut the fuck up about women wearing bikinis, what the fuck do you know about that? Keep it about your own experience, is a little cunt. But I think body image and vanity was where I was gearing towards. I was nervous as well. That's the other thing. I'm fucking nervous. It's my first ever give a fuck about radio interviews now. But I was nervous back then because vanity was. heavily shamed. In 2006, selfies didn't exist. Selfies did not exist. People, when people uploaded photographs of themselves to Bebo, you couldn't upload a good photograph of yourself. You had to upload like six shit photos that your friends took. If somebody in 2006 got a camera, took a photograph of themselves in a mirror and posted that to Bebo, that was seen as like,

mentally ill. And I say mirror there because that's what you had to do. There was no front facing cameras. This did not exist. You had to take a photograph of yourself in your fucking bathroom mirror. That's what people had to do. Most people didn't have digital cameras. They were uploading scans. They were getting photographs. Physical photos developed in the fucking chemist and scanning them into Bebo. Sometimes with that sticker on them that the chemist used to put in it saying, this is blurry. This is blurry. You need. to use your camera properly. In 2006, taking a photograph of yourself and putting it on the internet, like narcissistic, that's where culture was. Look at, look at people being, look at people

on camcorders before social media. If you find old footage of people from the early 2000s or the 90s, people did not want to be on camera. If someone shoved a camera in your face, you shoved your hand up to the lens. People didn't want to hear their own voices, they didn't want to look at themselves. A completely different culture. Like occasionally now in TikTok, like 20 year olds will get their hands on a camera from like 2004 and they'll shoot fake 2004 footage and they're basically faking. Oh, this is all footage of me and my friends in 2004. And it's the camera from 2004 and it's really convincing and they put effort into dressing like it's 2004. I can tell you in two seconds if it's fake by how comfortable people are with the lens. Real footage from 2004? Nobody wants to be

on camera. Everyone is a little bit strange, a little bit weird, and when the camera has pointed at them, they don't know what to say. And what you started to see in 2007 was the emergence of duckface. Duckface was where vanity started to become normalized on social media, okay, because people's self-esteem became associated with their online avatar. So people wanted to start looking hot on social media, but you couldn't look like you wanted to look hot. So people would pull duck face. People would perform a silly face that accentuated their cheekbones

where they're looking hot, but it's all a bit of a joke. And even the word vain, vanity, this isn't used anymore. Oh, that person's always posting photographs of themselves online. Like this is, this does. not exist. Now that's probably a good thing because it's one less thing to be shamed about, but it is completely and utterly social. It's not only socially acceptable. It is expected to post photographs of yourself, looking nice, in nice locations, wearing your best clothes, bragging about your life. This is socially acceptable, normalized behavior. There's a job now called

influencer. In 2006 that person was called a lunatic. I'm, I'm, these are not my opinions. What I'm trying to do is, is, I'm speaking about zeitgeists. I'm trying to capture the cultural feeling of 2006 and contrast it with now and it's really difficult to do. I was there at the call face of it. I, I'm the man who got profile views deleted from people. All of this was highly stigmatized in 2006 because we did not know what the rules were. You're vain, you're bragging, you're showing off. That's gone. And another part of that interview, KC. says,

Bebo is huge. People are checking their profiles three, four times a day. How many times do, how many times do you check your Instagram? A day? 60, 70, over 100? What about every single moment throughout your day where you have to experience? the inconvenience of boredom or nothingness or even an uncomfortable emotion, straight on check those likes.

That's normal. That's where we are. Is that a good thing just because it's completely normal? Selfies only became a thing with the Kardashians. No, it was Paris Hilton. I think Paris Hilton was the one, circa 2007, 2008, who normalized making it okay to take a photograph of yourself and post that online. and for this to be socially acceptable behaviour.

The Overton window has shifted here. If you showed someone in 2006 TikTok where people are filming themselves, just regular, normal people are vlogging their everyday life. If you showed that to someone in 2006, they'd die of shock. And the reason I wanted to play that clip there, it's now, like, widely accepted, widely accepted that social media has not been a good thing for people's mental health.

All over the news the past two months, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, they conducted internal studies about the mental health of people using Facebook and Instagram, and the findings internally were so detrimental that they cut the study short. They found hard evidence that people who quit Facebook, reported lower depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison. Right? They found this and then they cut the study short. And government bodies are asking for transparency around this because they're going,

hold on a second. Is this cigarettes all over again? Is this like when they told us the cigarettes weren't bad for our health and the corporations hid all that evidence? Because it would appear here that social media is actually a public danger. I've no idea what this week's podcast is about. I think it's about it's 2026 and I'm trying to reflect

on 30 years of the fucking internet because on 1996 I went on to the internet for the first time and when I would imagine the future in 30 years I there's no part of me no part of me would have thought this internet thing is going to cause me

misery this internet thing is going to cause all of us some very difficult emotions what I intend ended this podcast to be about was. So I go on mindful walks. A huge portion of my life at the moment is escaping

my fucking phone, okay? It's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this podcast remaining as an audio podcast because a lot of podcasts now are pivoting towards video. No. Stick me in your fucking ears and go for a walk because the thing is the podcast hug

that I've been speaking about for eight years if you're listening to my podcast or any other podcast that you're listening to you're getting a break from your screen you can go for a walk and listen to it

you're not going to be checking TikTok in the middle of a podcast a podcast is one of those things you listen to it and that's that one thing that you do and the unique feeling

of invigorate invigoration and relaxation that you can get from listening to a podcast. I reckon a huge part of that is because you've just gotten a break. You've gotten a break from the horrors of your phone. I now have to go on reality walks. I'll pick an hour in my day where I just walk. And all I deal with is the physical environment that I'm existing in. I ground myself in my feet, in my breath, in my smells, and my senses, in what I see.

The only thing I'll allow myself is a podcast, if that's what I feel like, a podcast or an audiobook, bit of music. But I need to get the fuck away from that screen. Social media is my job. As you can tell from that, like, I'm an OG to use that, the iced tea terminology, I'm an original gangster. I've been there from the fucking start the very, very start I would imagine I'm in a very small

it's a small circle of people who started off on social media in Bebo and who are still doing it and I'm still doing it I'm very fortunate to still be working professionally I started off before fucking Bebo

I started off on GeoCities but let's not even talk about that but I've seen it all and I can't escape it and if this was not my job if I didn't have to have an Instagram or a TikTok or a fucking Twitter or X as part of my job I simply would not have them

I'm too old I don't give a fuck anymore but I have to have these things because it's my job and it hasn't been great for the old mental health because I said it before when I decided to go back to therapy about four years ago. I've been called a prick

by strangers. Every day of my life for I'd say the past 25 years just by simply existing on the internet. I mean this is part of the game.

If you create content and put it online strangers are going to be really mean to you. As a given, as a guarantee there's no way to avoid it. No way to avoid it. And at this stage, I don't really take it on board. But I did have to go to a therapist at one point and say to him,

actually, I've got a job and I've been harassed by strangers online every day of my life there for about 20 years. And that's just my life. And death threats and all of these horrible, cruel things that just are a given, an absolute given if you post content on the internet. A given, there's no avoiding it. So 30 years ago, thinking about the future, 30 years into the future, to think this internet business is going to consume you so much that you're going to have to go on daily

walks where you just experience reality and nothing else because the virtual world has consumed you to the point where I truly, you struggle to understand what, what is the real you and what is the online you? Because I feel like a big giant part of my brain has grown that contains an online avatar of myself. And same with ye. You know, if you've got social media, which you probably do, there's Facebook you, you don't use that much. That's a curated version of yourself, a performance of yourself, where you perform that version for maybe your ma and your aunts and uncles who are still on Facebook. And then there's Instagram You,

which is the version of yourself that you perform for friends and a couple of strangers. But then there's your private stories, Instagram, who that's a performance of yourself that is closer to the real you, but you perform that for close friends. Then, if you're a lunatic, you're on Twitter still, and I don't know what the fuck that performance is.

and then there's if you have a TikTok account that's the strangest one because who the fuck is that for that's not for your friends so if you're posting on TikTok that's I hope a stranger sees this

and approves of me and then there's the really strange one the LinkedIn now I don't have a LinkedIn but if a lot of ye listening to this I've got a LinkedIn so who's your LinkedIn persona

because apparently that's the most performative of all that's the most absurd and fake performance and avatar that we have online is the LinkedIn on fucking dating apps your Tinder or your hinge or your grinder now who the fuck is that person and how much how much of your actual sense of self and self-esteem is invested in that performance the Tinder performance or if like me you're you're a professional are you on only fans do you do

online sex work who is that person do people pay you money and you perform a fantasy for them and can you separate that person from who you really are and see we don't have words for all of this shit even there like I'm consciously using the word performance there because that's not everyday parlance you're just going to go onto your Instagram

you're not going to go oh just going to go on to Instagram there and do I'm going to play that character I have a I have a character that's highly curated for Instagram and I perform this for my friends, for their performances that are also on Instagram. We don't use this language and it might be helpful to use this language

because when you can say it to yourself, when I use social media and all these different platforms, actually I'm an actor and I haven't formally figured out the rules. It's something I kind of feel. But when you use a lot, any of these, you're acting, you have a little character that you've written for yourself.

You haven't said in your mind that this is what you're fucking doing, but that's what you are doing. It might be helpful to start thinking about it that way. Your Facebook character, your Instagram character, and you're just an actor performing all these roles. And possibly that is the healthy way to process all this shit. And of course you're impacted by it, otherwise you wouldn't be posting. If it feels good to get a like, then this is impacting our sense of identity worth and self-esteem. If you've ever posted a selfie

and you're not happy with how many likes it got, so you deleted the selfie, then you took a little hit. You took a hit to the identity there and that impacted your fucking mental health. So we all need to have our little, our mindfulness walks now to get away from the screen.

I wanted to speak about a specific walk I did in this podcast but now I'm 70 minutes in and I can't. I can do it another day. I've spoken about 1996, 2006.

What about 2016? 2016 is an important year. We tend to think of 2016 as the year when everything went to shit. It's kind of accepted that

as soon as 2016 happened, things went a bit mental. Now I proposed a theory years ago I'm not saying that this is serious this is a bizarre hot take that I just put out there for entertainment I suggested that when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider

in 2014 it actually did rip a big hole in reality and since 2016 we've been living that reality a lot of people say as soon as David Bowie died everything fell to shit 2016 was Brexit 2016 was Trump

there has been the sense that since 2016 like what a fucking horrible decade we've had if you go back to 2016 it's just been crisis after crisis after the Parma crisis they call it fucking COVID no one's talking about COVID that was rotten

so 2016 was an important year and it is I think we can all agree that since 2016 it has felt pretty shit all the time. Now, there has been lots of bad news, but looking back 10 years, what's my assessment of 2016? I think what happened was algorithmic.

I think in 2016, everybody had a smartphone. Like, one of my core memories of 2016 was, so when Brexit happened, that was shit. Brexit was fucking shit, right? I'm not even in Britain, but Brexit was shit for everybody. It just was depressing. It was just, are you serious?

You did this because of racism? Brexit was also a wake-up call to all of us. No one thought Brexit was going to happen. I did not think Brexit was going to happen. And then we saw, oh, the algorithm was very heavily manipulated by these Cambridge Analytica fuckers. 2016 was when you started to see serious radicalisation online your aunts, your uncles

before 2016 conspiracy theories used to be fun 2016 was also the first time it's the first time I remember waking up in the morning the first thing that I do is check my iPhone and then getting that horrible feeling and the horrible feeling was David Cameron's resigning because

Britain just left the EU. Oh my God, this is awful. And that was the first time that happened. I think back to 2015, 2014, I used to have a pile of books beside my bed. Like a big, I remember it because I used to trip over them. I'd have so many physical books beside my bed that I'd trip over them. And that means I wasn't looking at my phone in bed. Whatever was going on, I still had an iPhone. But it just wasn't interesting enough. Or the screen. wasn't big enough. I wasn't looking at my iPhone in bed in 2014. It was boring enough for me to go. Let's put that down and read some actual books here. Now I have to place my phone on the other side of the room because if I stare into that blue screen, I'm not fucking sleeping and if it's TikTok in

particular, forget about it, no sleep. So I have to put my phone on the other side of the room. That started in 2016. Feeds changed. 2016 is when we started to Social media used to be a thing that was on my laptop. I used to use Twitter on my laptop. In 2016, Twitter started moving on to my phone. 2016 was the year of the Doom Scroll, the infinite fucking scroll, where you're just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling

through miserable content, hoping for that one thing that you like. Early to mid-2010 social media was kind of dumb. The algorithm wasn't learning, you know, what you like, and feeding you things not just what you like but the algorithm

started to feed you things that made you feel something these high arousal emotions a high arousal emotion in social media speak is anything that makes you perform an action and that action is either writing a comment liking or resharing

that kicked in hardcore in 2016 corporate media now the media that would like CNN, Sky News whatever the fuck you have news is now being reported to survive in the algorithm rather than to inform us

about what's going on. So since 2016, so the social media algorithms that they prioritize engagement, so there's your high arousal emotions, anger, fear and outrage. That means that there's a bias in the algorithm towards negative, threatening content,

which feeds into our negativity bias because that spreads more. In 2026, we'll say for the past two years, you're not seeing actual, friends in your algorithm anymore. On Instagram on TikTok, you're not seeing

human beings that you connect with in real life. You're getting a continual feed of strangers. And that feels uncertain and strange and you can't ground yourself in at least going, oh, there's my buddy, I know them. All of our algorithms now are tailored to us

individually so you get a feedback loop. So you get this strange loop of things that are directed at you and you alone. And then Evidence-based, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2017, so this is for the 2017 algorithm. Heavy exposure to algorithmically created news feeds is associated with a higher level of anxiety, stress and rumination. COVID fucked all this up. We spent two years, doom scrolling, the doom scroll.

For two fucking years, we used to try and check what the figures were to see how many people died. How many people died today Of a disease I can't leave my house I can't leave my house Because there's a fucking disease out there So I just got to check the numbers Of how many people died So I can look at that number

And figure out when I'd be allowed to leave my house again A lot of us never left that I did not leave that I'm still on fucking high alert I'm still Scanning for threat All the time With little T trauma

from the pandemic. So all the research is shown that since 2016 the social media algorithms that we're swimming in, right? They systematically amplified, emotionally charged, threatening information. And that then interacts with our own negativity bias. And it simply makes the world feel more dangerous than it is. I'm not trying to downplay any bad things

that are actually occurring in the world today. there's a number of bad things occurring in the world today but there's always been a lot of bad things occurring in the world 15 years ago it wasn't shoved in your face on a screen you were able to you could res... You're entitled to have fucking space to exist

if you have the privilege of being safe and most of us right now I'm just going to speak for myself I have the privilege of being safe okay I live in Ireland and as of today I have the privilege of actually being safe

and the pain and misery that I experience in my day and I do experience pain and misery the pain and misery that I experience is because I'm worrying about I did an unnecessary whistle there on the about apologies for that I'm worrying about

there's another one. Most of the pain in my life is completely avoidable. Suffering suffering is part of being alive, but the suffering that I experience is because I'm worrying about

things that might happen or things that have happened in the past. I spend a lot of time ruminating on worst case scenarios catastrophizing making mountains out of mall hills and when I find myself in a loop of these thoughts I experience them as if they're real

and this causes me great pain and that pain is completely avoidable because I'm currently safe I know that my social media algorithm doesn't help any of this fucking shit so I have to go on little walks to get away from it and I could not have predicted that 30

fucking years ago when I sat down with no underpants on in that internet cafe in limerick when I was a child. I did have underpants on. All right, that's all I have time for this week. A lot of people asking me to speak about Venezuela and Trump. And I may do that. I'll see how things develop and whether it's worth a hot take. Because you can't fucking predict anything. You can't predict anything with the Trump administration. You just can't. And I know that thing with the algorithm. Here's, this is proof of that,

well, it's not really a theory or a thesis I gave there because all that stuff about the algorithm is, it's evidence-based, but something that is huge news today, massive news, can be forgotten tomorrow and something

equally as mental is being fed to us. So it's very possible that by next week, Like, the US violated fucking international law. Now, the US going into Central and South America and toppling governments and military coups, they've been doing that for a long time,

but they used to do it covertly. Now they've done it overtly, and it's the framing of it is what's new. It's Trump going, yeah, we did that and we did it for oil. And then the world and the media and Western. governments are going, you're supposed to lie. You're supposed to lie or you're supposed to get the CIA to do it and you're supposed to lie and then we look the other way. That's how this always

worked. You're not supposed to say it. You're not supposed to say we control Venezuela. We violated a sovereign country. We kidnapped the president. You're not supposed to say that bit because we don't know what the rules are for that. Well, we do know what the rules are. It's called international law and we're supposed to stop you. So can you go back to doing it like secretly and covertly again because we don't know what to do? So that's where we are right now. America has done this in Nicaragua. They've done it in Honduras. They've done it in Chile. Like this isn't new. The framing of it is what's new. They've just, they've done it overtly this time, not covertly. And then the international order is going, we don't. We don't.

don't know what to do now because we're looking at the rule book here and the rulebook says we have to stop you and we were really hoping that if you were going to violate international law that you'd have done it covertly and lied but you seem to be admitting it this time and we don't know what to do i've done tons of podcasts on american imperialism so i have a million hot takes about this specific issue i just want to see how it develops because it mightn't be news in two days The President of Argentina has got eight cloned dogs. The President of Argentina had one dog who he loved. So he cloned eight of them.

And now he has eight dogs that are actually the exact same dog because they're clones and he takes economic advice from two of them. This is the world that we live in. So I can't say to you, I know what next week's podcast is going to be about. Or I can't say this thing that's in the... news today. I'm going to do a podcast on that next week. So in the meantime, wink at a wasp. There's a seal. There's a seal up by Yarty's couch. A fucking seal. I saw him and people sent me photographs of him. So currently, the salmon, the salmon are coming in from the Atlantic

and going upriver on the Shannon. And sometimes what happens is that seals will follow the salmon. from the fucking Atlantic and they'll follow the salmon up river. So there's seals now. So I'm going to go down and look for that seal and I'll wink at that seal and wave at that seal and listen to the song Kiss from a Rose by Seal. Incredible fucking song.

There's a wonderful theory about the song Kiss from a Rose by Seal. So in the 1980s and again this would tie into the fucking podcast about South America. but in the 1980s the crack epidemic happened in America and crack cocaine was everywhere and in American petrol stations

usually in poorer neighbourhoods in neighbourhoods that were impacted by the crack epidemic they used to sell really shitty tiny plastic roses like tiny the size of a pencil and they'd sell them inside a glass pipe for 10 cents and these were known as love rose

roses. But really, they weren't selling a rose. There were crack pipes. So people, a bit like, in Limerick, there's a chocolate bar that's very cheap, called an animal bar. And it's only 10 or 15p. You don't seem as much anymore. But heroin addicts buy these chocolate bars because they get the tin foil that's in them, because it's cheap. So America had that in the 80s, with these petrol station, gas station, shitty plastic roses inside tiny glass tubes and people who were addicted to crack would buy these roses to smoke the crack out of the glass pipe

and there's a theory that SEAL's song, Kiss from a Rose, is actually about the hit of a crack pipe and those roses. So wink at a wasp, wave at a seal, genuflect to a... There's not a lot of water. life out at the moment. We're at that time of year, you know.

Jen, you flick to a swan. Dog bless. 1. The Oh! Oh. Oh. Oh.

And... Oh. Oh. You know? Thank you. Thank you.