The Blindboy Podcast - Ultans Gullet

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

I discuss how a critic reviews food with his face and how Russian politics is shaping western culture, while ultimately talking out of my arse for over 70 minutes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Burn bright, you tungsten Bernadettes and fluorescent Emmets. Unscrew yourself from the ceiling of life and smash into a thousand pieces. What's the crack? How are you getting on? You delicious pricks. It is October 3rd, the year of our lord 2018 and this is podcast number 52 it is not the one year anniversary

that will be in two weeks time I believe but it's the 52nd fucking podcast Christ what did we chat about last week not sure yeah last week was part three of the cognitive psychology podcast which was i don't know it was in a it was to bolster my own kind of mental health resilience for the winter and for yourselves as well. If you wish to participate.

But yeah, I gave you three solid weeks of psychology podcasts. And the feedback for them was very, very strong. You liked it. But there were still a few people. Bit like three weeks of psychology playing by chill out man and that's fair enough that's fair enough because not everybody is introspective not everybody um wants to look inside some people you know for where they're at in their lives at this moment are quite happy

going I'm not ready for that yet I'm gonna continue on externally because it's working for me right now so that's fine so for those people I will discontinue the theme of psychology this week and just do something

interesting some old school shit some hot takes do you know on whatever takes our fancy um i did a bit of a rant about podcasts versus traditional media versus like um television and radio and a few of you were asking me you know i was saying i much prefer like vloggers to whatever's on television and people were asking me what vloggers do i enjoy and if i could mention them i don't actually like loads of them um the one vlogger that i would look at the most, it's a fella on YouTube, and his name is Mark Wiens, W-I-E-N-S,

and, it's, you might hate it, you know, I just happen to like it, he's just this fella, and he travels all around the world, with his wife and his child. And all he does is he goes looking for nice food. That's it.

His subscribers, like he'll say, right, I'm off to Portugal next week. His subscribers will give him a list of restaurants to visit. He'll go to the restaurants with his camera. And will just find nice food and eat it. And I watch him for hours i don't know why um again it is the passion this guy mark weans when he is talking about food you can tell there is nothing more in the entire world that this man loves than finding nice food and that is incredibly infectious and one thing that's incredible about mark weans and you'll either hate him or love him for this when he eats a piece of food he has this fucking ridiculous expression on his face which is halfway between it's halfway between

the moment of climax while masturbating and seeing a giant lollipop it's the only way I can describe it he has this look of pleasure and ecstasy do you know what I mean like looking up at a cloud

and seeing God's shin or something but like yeah he just has this crazy fucking contorted ecstatic view look on his face

when he eats into a piece of food and you'll either hate it or love it but my theory is that when he does this face after eating food to the camera for me i end up with this feeling of empathy and i get hooked on it and that's what has me coming back and when he when you when you watch his vlogs and you get to know him

like he he could be in singapore eating eating a burger and he doesn't rate the food he doesn't say like this burger was a nine out of ten or a seven out of ten you have to empathically use your ability as a human being to judge by how his lip curls or how his eye contorts or the noise that he makes. To judge whether it was a 9 out of 10. Or a 10 out of 10. Or a 2 out of 10. And I just find that highly entertaining.

And I'll watch that for hours. As opposed to. Something that had a team of 10 writers. And a budget of 2 million. So there you go. That's my recommendation for a vlogger. You can't. So what have go. That's my recommendation for a vlogger. You can't. So what have I been up to?

Well. If you listen to this podcast. You know that my. My day to day. Kind of existence. Is taken up with writing. I'm writing my second book. Of short stories.

And I'm also. second book of short stories and I'm also writing a television series so like that's my day to day and I love it I absolutely fucking adore it there's nothing more than I want to do than sit down and write and you'll also know that my goal

when I sit down to you know engage in in the creative act of writing I'm looking to achieve the state known as creative flow which is the intense state of of like waking like being in a waking dream where ideas just flow through me and come out onto the paper and then I go wow that's a great idea I don't know don't know where that came from so that's that's my day today but like I don't do that all day I might do it for maybe two or three hours in the morning and then maybe go back to it in the evening you have to compartmentalise it

so for leisure what I've been doing aside from going to the gym or going for the odd jog for leisure I've been treating myself by playing video games and I don't know I have a queer old

relationship with video games I've spoken before about addiction and substances. Not necessarily, not addiction, but more abuse. Abuse of any substance or activity, right, which is external to yourself. which is external to yourself which you engage in but you're doing it to soothe an internal issue so in my situation i'm using video games as a kind of a reward system and to alleviate boredom but i have to say like just using my self-awareness around video games. Like, I don't know, I don't think video games are too healthy for me. Like, that's the thing with a substance or activity.

Always try and look at, like, what is my relationship with this thing? So, we'll say, alcohol. is my relationship with this thing so we'll say alcohol I can have a feed of cans at the weekend and get shit-faced and have a very enjoyable time and that's it I have my cans and then the next day little bit of a hangover but I get on with my life it doesn't I don't feel guilt over it I don't feel shame it doesn't when I have drink on me it doesn't. I don't feel guilt over it. I don't feel shame. It doesn't. When I have drink on me. It doesn't cause me to do anything.

Where the next day I'm like. Have the fear over it. So my relationship with alcohol. Is actually quite healthy. But. I'm not sure of my relationship with video games. Is that healthy. Because.

I don't know. It causes. Video games cause me quite a bit of stress and upset, and I think, I've said it before, I believe, but I think what it is, is whatever endorphins in my brain get released when I sit down and write okay we said the dragon that i chase when i sit down to write the motivation the chemical reward that my brain gives me when i have an idea that i'm happy with video games does that for me so i i have this new game called city skylines it's a bit like um sim city i don't know if you played that years ago but

it's just a video game where you design a city and it's brilliant it's fantastic I fucking love it but I'll sit down at it without even being aware of it

like three hours would have passed and I'm just completely and utterly absorbed in the zone of this video game, and yeah, it's enjoyable, but it's a very detached enjoyment.

It's not a present moment, here and now type of enjoyment. It's like artificial flow. It's the only way I can describe it. When I write and i achieve flow it's an intense depersonalization where like when you're daydreaming not aware of time you're not aware of space you're just in your head figuring out ideas and it's a very present pure thing video games do a similar thing to me but afterwards i'm left with this sense of shame this sense of i don't know it's it's like

spending three hours in another person's imagination and coming out of it with nothing to show for it so i end up then with this weird kind of hum of guilt around and and i know you're saying yeah you shouldn't you shouldn't be guilty about relaxing or having something as a reward but like again it's about assessing my relationship with it if instead of playing video games for an hour i i don't know go for a walk for an hour or something that'd be much better but it's just something i notice um i think i do think now they are actually at the dsm which is the diagnostics and statistics manual which is it's a manual that psychologists and psychiatrists use to assess

different mental illnesses I believe for the first time video game addiction is in the DSM I think last year they added it and I'm not saying I'm addicted to video games because

like I say it's only like an hour or two a day but it's not about like take it back to something like alcohol if you only drink cans once a week but however that once a week results in

cans causing you to feel depressed or results in you know alcohol causing you to do things that you regret shit like that then you might not be addicted to drink but you have a an unhelpful relationship with it. Same with smoking fucking hash. Some people smoke hash and it causes intense paranoia and unpleasant experiences. You might just do it once a week, but if that's your experience with it,

then you have to assess your relationship with that external stimulus that is being used to soothe an internal disquiet, and for video games, that's it for me, so it's a tough one, I'm just, it's something I'm really fucking battling with, because I also don't want to not play video games,

because I love them, I fucking love them, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming out at the end of october and red dead redemption is one of my favorite games of all time it's fucking beautiful so what i did though with city skyline i got the cd and i put it up on a very high press to keep it out of sight i think that particular game i need to stay the fuck away from any video game I find I had another one before called Tropico 5 where

you're basically the dictator of a banana republic any game where it's sandbox planning and building which is in a sense kind of creative that for me is a bad drug um something like grand theft auto online i can dip in out of that do it for an hour get the

fuck away from it but do you know what it is i think i've just figured it out now. Video games that require the creative part of my brain. If I'm playing a game where it's just shooting people, there's very little creativity involved in that. That's kind of a mental gymnastics. It's the mental equivalent of doing physical activity. But if I'm playing a video game that is requiring of me to use my artistic skills or my creative skills then I think that's toxic for me I think it I get guilt I get a strong feeling of guilt if I sit down and write for two hours and come out with something at the end of it I get the complete opposite feeling yes I've left my body for a while yes I'm completely absorbed

but I come out of it with a deep sense of personal meaning and I spoke in previous podcasts I was referencing the psychologist Viktor Frankl about the importance of finding personal meaning that the key to trying to have a happy life is can you find your own personal meaning now i'm very lucky because i know that acts of true creativity writing creating music that gives me deep personal meaning so if i do two hours of writing and i come out with something good even if I don't the act of engaging in that for two hours I get this very intense emotional sustenance for the rest of the day so I'm incredibly happy for the rest of the day and I feel a great sense of purpose and a great sense of achievement and that translates then into a general hum of

everything's okay you know i don't get stressed i don't get tired i don't get irritable but two hours of a fucking video game and i just don't feel good for the rest of the day it's that simple i feel drained i could go out and do a 10k run. It doesn't fix the feeling. I'd be getting anxious pangs for it. And yeah I just asked myself. I said if this was fucking cans. I'd be looking for an AA meeting. You know.

So what is this week's podcast about? It's not about that. That was my. Pre hot take rant. Which is something I've started doing recently isn't it. Like the format of the podcast kind of changes a little. Now I do a little. Like a 16 20 minute rant.

At the start. And then I get on to the hot topic. So let's get on to the hot topic. I'm actually now kind of pissed off that I mentioned the video game thing because I know now anytime I mention a video game on Twitter ye cunts are going to be going you sure you need to be doing that blind boy

you sure you don't need to step away from the Xbox do you know what we'll fucking do because I haven't done it in a while haven't done it in a while haven't done it in about 15 weeks I'd say I'll read out some of Donald Trump's tweets

as your drunk limerick aunt now if you're new to the podcast first thing I'd suggest is go back to the fucking start you absolute bastard go back to the very start and listen from the start but there's

yeah a tradition on the podcast whereby you know we're currently living in the trump era and we don't know don't know what the fuck that is it's an it's just this new thing it's this new thing where the most most powerful man in the world is incredibly irrational and I read out his tweets as a drunk limerick aunt and because it just feels right

just feels right, if you have a limerick aunt and she gets mildly drunk you'll know what I'm talking about you know the vibe so your aunt your aunt is wearing her pyjamas and she's just she's had a Netflix binge

and because it's cold outside the first bite of frost in the air and that smell of that smell of turf that you get from chimneys is catching in the fog and creeping in an unclosed window

and this coldness and the Netflix binge causes your aunt to decide that she must open her bottle of Madeira Sherry. Which she got for herself as a present when she was in Santa Panza two years ago. But she's going to open up the full bottle of Madeira Sherry. Which is a very sweet dessert wine. And I suppose it's like a Spanish Buckfast, you know.

And I suppose it's like a Spanish buckfast, you know, when she drinks this. It not only causes a condition of inebriation, but also results in, you know, the sugar causing a sense of hyperness. So here is your drunk aunt reading Donald Trump's tweets. The only reason to vote for a Democrat is if you're tired of winning. Congratulations to Mexico and Canada. Hello for them. It'll never be enough. Stay tuned and watch. Like many, I don't watch Saturday Night Live. Just don't watch it, even though I past hosted it. It's no longer funny. There's no

talent or charm. It's just a political ad for the Dems. Word is that Kanye West, who put on a mega hat after the show, despite being told no, was great. He's leading the church. So, if African American unemployment is now the last number in history, median income the highest, and then you add all of the other things I have done how do democrats who have done nothing for African Americans but talk win the black

vote and it'll only get better so that was that was actual tweets actual words from the leader of the free world and

yeah that sounds like my aunt and a load of Madeira wine at two in the fucking morning do you know what we'll do the ocarina pause now because I want to go on a big long uninterrupted rant so the

ocarina pause is occasionally there are digital adverts inserted into this podcast so that they don't surprise you or shock you what I do is I play a Spanish clay whistle if you're lucky you will just hear the clay whistle if you are unfortunate

you will be advertised some bullshit that you don't need recent adverts have included you will be advertised some bullshit that you don't need. Recent adverts have included Airbnb during a podcast about homelessness selling you the new fucking Audi. Like, who the fuck wants that? People don't buy new cars these days. And then the good old British Army.

So let's see what show the pricks advertise this week. Here's the ocarina. I'll do it with a bit of distance actually. On April 5th you must be very careful Margaret. It's a girl.

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Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

Who said that? The first Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to that was the ocarina pause um this podcast is also it's it's supported by you the listener via a patreon page if you enjoy this podcast and you listen to it every week and you're like oh fuck it i wouldn't if i met blind by in a pub i'd buy him a pint or i'd buy him a cup of coffee if you are so inclined there is a way to do that you can give me the equivalent of a cup of coffee or a pint once a month on the patreon page which is patreon.com forward slash theblindbuypodcast.

If you can, please do. That's why I release this every single week. That fucking, that's my upkeep. That's what, it's what keeps me going, pays my fucking bills. I'm very grateful for it. But if you don't have the money, or if you simply don't want to you want to listen for free you can do that too that's fine

alright God bless you pricks right so what am I going to talk about this week in the podcast well I'm working towards a kind of a hot take on something I saw on social media last week so there was this

video right that went it went fairly fucking viral on mainly on twitter and i saw video was is it was set on a subway in russia or a fucking underground train or whatever you call it and what the headline was is that a russian activist punishes men for manspreading on a train and what the video was is it was all these lads on a train first of all man spreading you know what man spreading is man spreading is it's when it's it's when lads are on public transport and they spread their legs unnecessarily far now that's a thing all right sometimes people overreact to it sometimes they don't like the fact of the matter is all right if you have a set of tackle crossing your legs one over the other is is incredibly uncomfortable putting your legs very close together is uncomfortable so if you're in

possession of a set of tackle you need to keep your legs somewhat apart in order for comfort to exist right that's a thing however being on public transport as a lad and completely spreading your legs to the point that it encroaches upon the space of a passenger beside you that's not on and most lads do it not, not for comfort, but as a masculine way to posture, it's kind of like an insecure body language way to communicate to someone, it's like going, oh man, fuck, I better spread my legs really far, because I've got a cock the size of an antelope, fuck I better spread my legs really far because I've got a cock the size of an antelope do you know what I mean so manspreading is a thing and it's not great it's it's a it's a city road way to use public space um but anyway some uh some some people see it as a very

aggressive uh intimidating male form of posturing which, which in a way sometimes it can be. So this woman in Russia, who was an activist, made a viral video where she had a bottle of bleach. And she made a point in the video of saying that it was highly concentrated bleach. and she made a point in the video of saying that it was highly concentrated bleach, and as an act of protest, what this woman in the video was doing was going to men that are manspreading on public transport, and then pouring bleach on their crotches, in the hope that the bleach will stay in their jeans and act as this mark of shame. Now I saw it, and...

Now I mainly saw it because first of all all the western clickbait sites were sharing the fuck out of it it was brilliant content for them

here's the thing with clickbait and themes of social justice most media sites are not the friend of social justice most media sites are not

the friend of social justice causes Buzzfeed, Huffington Post what they're looking for is engagement so when Buzzfeed shares something a headline about a social justice topic they're not doing

it from the perspective of being a helpful ally what they want is to piss people off they want to they want to share uh something to portray we'll say quote unquote an sjw doing something and what they want from that are arguments polarized aggressive arguments in the comments from people on the left and people on the right because this continual fighting, basically it pushes BuzzFeed's articles up in the feed or huffing the post or whoever.

So clickbait is not the friend of social justice. No matter how much social justice topics it shares, online journalism they really just want discord and emotional responses to push up fucking to push up their content in the feed so naturally they went apeshit for this

video so they share it Russian fucking activists pouring bleach on man spreaders crotches and how i saw it was you know some people retweeted it as in fair play this is brilliant a minority but mostly the engagement that this video was getting was from very angry aggressive detractors for instance when i saw it on facebook i looked at the comments and most of the comments were feminism has gone too far uh the left are violent here is the proof um if she did that to me i'd kick her fucking head in and then someone

would say that and then you'd have a million people underneath that comment going are you advocating violence towards women? And all this video did is that it caused this giant fight. Now, I didn't like the video because, like, okay, let's just say as an act of artistic protest, if manspreading was an issue, maybe pouring paint on someone's balls i can get behind that that's um it's risky for a woman to do i don't think a woman would actually do that because it presents a genuine risk of violence towards her but there's no real victim in pouring paint on someone's crotch it's just it means you have to go home and wash your jeans but pouring bleach on someone's crotch like i don't know if you've ever gotten bleach on your fucking skin i have even the smallest amount

if you leave it there for fucking 10 minutes you've got to burn so and testicular um what's the word the general climate of the testicles is quite sensitive so if someone goes pouring a bottle of bleach on my dick I'm gonna know about it for a fucking for weeks it's an act of assault it's a chemical attack do not get bleach on your balls or dick

please and anyone who does it to somebody else that's assault so this video was advocating for pouring bleach on people's crotches and all it was doing was causing people to fight and fight and fight and the more i looked at the video i kind of realized something's not right here it's filmed too perfectly you know it doesn't look like a genuine video of someone pouring bleach on actual unassuming men's crotches on public transport

this looks staged and then lo and behold did a bit of googling did a bit of research yes it was staged it was a staged video made in Russia where they actually interviewed one of the fucking actors for this girl's YouTube channel or whatever it was a staged video made in russia where they actually interviewed one of the fucking actors for this girl's uh youtube channel or whatever it was it was like it was a prank and it wasn't bleach it was water and western media clickbait media ate it up they didn't care they're like

brilliant this now will get the left and the right fighting with each other. And we'll have loads of views. Because we don't care how we get our views as long as we get them. So they all shared it. And it just caused a very aggressive fight. And then I looked into it fucking more. And it turns out the girl who made the video. She's not a feminist activist.

She is a pro-Putin kind of propagandist. She's pro-Vladimir Putin, and she's done videos like this before, and is most likely probably paid or implied by the Russian state to do these videos. And you're kind of going what's the point what why would the russian state want a video of a girl pouring bleach on you know lads crotches if they're man spreading and the key is is that like you like the way it was presented it was presented as kind of feminism win. Do you know what I mean? It was like a win for women's rights.

Man spreaders get bleach poured on their crotches. And what the intention was, it was to portray the left or to portray in particular feminists as violent, irrational lunatics. It was very snaky propaganda. Or to portray in particular feminists as violent, irrational lunatics. It was very snaky propaganda. Russia very recently brought in a law that essentially makes domestic violence legal. And Russian feminists have been rightfully protesting as best they can in Russia about this law. It's endangering the lives of women. So this video was put out through some snaky channels as a way to make the average Russian person think,

we must not listen to these feminists. They're aggressive, angry, bitter lunatics who pour bleach on people's crotches this these are not reliable people to get behind they're irrational and it worked the exact same with western media because the responses i saw underneath were from people who already have the belief that the left or feminism or liberalism is irrational and hysterical and this fed into their belief and confirmed it and made it actually a hell of a lot worse because now they they were like brilliant here's the fucking evidence not only are these feminists lunatic lunatics and hysterical people they're violent they must be stopped they must be stopped and that was the purpose of it it was propaganda and this is kind of this is kind of like part of the bigger chess game that russia are playing on not only their own population

but also on like the West you know Russia played a big part in the spread of fake news for Brexit Russia played a big part in the spread of

fake news and propaganda for Trump you know, straight up lies, Hillary Clinton has AIDS, Hillary Clinton is a paedophile, shit like that, and doing it through these fake websites, and it was done, it was a bad year for satire, I'll put it that way, a lot of complete absurd lies were put out on websites, but if you read the disclaimer on the website, it would say that this is a satire news source. And it really...

The meaning of the word satire was distorted heavily with Brexit, trump and fake news like satire for me is it can be parody but it's parody whereby usually the comedy is punching up it's deconstructing power of some description or its intent and context is quite clear that it's satire. Like, I don't know, one of the greatest, I won't say the greatest, but a classic example of satire would be a modest proposal by Jonathan Swift from the 1700s where Swift wrote a pamphlet that proposed that a solution for the Irish famine were for the rich people to start eating the children of the poor and this

was horrendous and it shocked everybody but that's beautiful satire because what it does is you know the rich person would read it going this is horrible this is disgusting how could you possibly suggest that we would eat a child be so barbaric to eat a child this is inhumane but the inhumanity and deliberate disgustingness and deliberate shockiness of swift's work what it's actually doing is it's it's reflecting an inhumanity that already exists just in an in a format that's considered acceptable by which i mean the laissez-faire economic policies of the British. There's a famine going on in Ireland. Let's not intervene whatsoever.

Let's allow them to die because it's God's will and export their food. Now, that was, to the Brits, considered hugely acceptable under their ideology of liberal economics so what swift basically said is well what you're doing lads is so mean you might as well be boiling children and eating them because it's the same result on the ground that's good satire um saying that hillary clinton has aids or saying that uh barack obama is a secret Muslim, like there's no punching up there, that's just simply calling, that's lies and then using the excuse of satire as a disclaimer. But ultimately, yeah, Russia are playing a very, very clever game at the

moment, incredibly clever. The way that they they are using could you call it soft power they're not Russia basically since the fucking fall of the Soviet Union have a very tight leash okay they're surrounded by NATO countries they're surrounded by these

tight unions of western countries that will not let Russia expand in any way whatsoever and Putin and the Russians like are a very proud people they want

essentially to have the old Soviet Empire back but they can't do it with the way nato are kind of and the eu are at their doorstep so what putin wants is he knows he hasn't a hope like here's the thing with russia too like first off russia is very frightening right purely because there was once a time during the cold war when russia was a superpower and you know us here we come from a culture of 50 years of russia being this terrifying awful nation with nuclear bombs that want to eradicate everyone like that is no longer a fact and we're unsure even how much of a fact it was back then as well because a lot

of their stats about how much nuclear weapons and stuff they had were kind of made up but russia's massive on the map but it can its economy is is pretty much about the size of italy it's not really that powerful putin isn't isn't that powerful as a country so militarily russia can do fuck all but what they do want to do is to destabilize the west massively politically and it's working they want to break apart the european union they want to break apart nato and they're having a good whack at it and we're kind of doing it to ourselves Brexit do you know like the scary thing about Brexit

is not necessarily the Brits leaving but it's like if the Brits leave and they get a very good deal then the fear is the domino effect and then what happens is if if europe europe falls apart and then you have all these nation states that's not safe we know from world

war ii that that isn't safe like the whole point of the eu is when you have european fucking countries that are nation states with ancient rivalries then you have Europe at war. That can't exist in a post-World War II climate because of nuclear weapons. So things like the United Nations, NATO, the EU, these are necessary defence mechanisms that stop the most powerful nuclear-armed countries in the world going to war. And Russia wants this dissolved. it's in Russia's benefit so they're doing it through fake news or like

doing it through you know promoting things like Brexit spreading fake news that will target the vulnerable people who will vote for Brexit. With Trump what they want and it's working. Like Britain and Europe are huge allies of the US. Trump isn't too interested in that.

He's a protectionist. He's a nationalist protectionist. So that's the kind of non-linear war that Russia want to fight. What else are they doing? Those mad poison attacks in England. The Novichok thing. Do you know what's the point of that? Why would you bother your whole going into another country and poisoning someone?

Because it's audacious. It's an act of propaganda and fear that lets the people of Britain it simultaneously lets British people feel afraid and also embarrasses the government of Britain by showing that

their defences aren't very good that's why we say Russian jets were for about 2 or 3 years before Brexit nearly once a month they were russian jets were making very aggressive moves towards the coast of britain or british waters and then the british raf would have to respond by scrambling jets to stop them it's a way of i don't know it's like fucking tennis balls over someone's wall way of i don't know it's like fucking tennis balls over someone's wall it's provocation it's being as brazen as possible the annexation of crimea you know that's one of the fucking

that again is testing boundaries we haven't seen in in in europe or the fucking west the annexation of an area since world war ii and russia just did it with crimea testing boundaries you know what will you do if we try this shit and no one really did anything um before trump came into power there was a strong narrative in the news coming from both britain and the us about like hillary clinton's whole thing was russian aggression russian aggression what are we going to do with russian aggression so my guess is that if Clinton did actually win the election, right now we would have, I don't know, kind of not a new Cold War, but something not far off it. Russia and the US would most definitely be head-to-head

over Crimea right now if Clinton was in power. Now, whether that's a good or a bad thing, I don't know. Now, it's worth mentioning too. That the. We'll say the revolution in Crimea. Was also western backed. The thing that. Russia responded to.

So I'm not. Like. I'm not a. Russia are a shower of cunts. But. Pretty much every government in the world. Are a shower of cunts. Like the Americans are.

Dirty cunts. The Russians are dirty cunts. The americans are dirty cunts the russians are dirty cunts the brits are dirty cunts that's modern politics but what i want to get at with today's podcast and what i want to speak about is um i suppose that the type of thinking and the style of thinking and purpose behind propaganda and destabilization of reality. That's what we have right now. Like, we no longer have the narrative, the Cold War narrative of two superpowers. Cold War narrative of two superpowers we instead have this complete

like knowledge at the moment as well is completely under fire, do you know what I mean it's hard to trust sources you don't know, even with something scientific you know you pull out the figures for a scientific study and then you scratch beneath the surface and you find out, oh shit, well this study was actually funded by such and such, so therefore these figures that I have before me, they might not even be that reliable because of who funded the figures. Things like that. Putting faith in evidence is not something that it's not very 2018

right also too with the rise of we'll say politics and identity shit's been seriously reappraised a lot of science

or fucking philosophy, psychology lot of science or fucking philosophy psychology was the work of white men and it didn't take into consideration a multicultural perspective like even the cbt podcast that i spoke about spoke about their past three podcasts about cT like I saw a fucking a brilliant paper criticizing CBT in that the whole thing about CBT is that you know it's evidence-based you you treat yourself like a scientist and look at the evidence and look at the reason and look at the logic but that logic and reason has its foundations very much in western ideas going right back to the greeks of rationality and of evidence and these things aren't they're not um

other cultures allow for a bit more nuance so the paper that I read basically was arguing that CBT is only really effective for white western people but if a psychologist if we'll say somebody an African migrant we'll say was to present to the NHS or the HSE

and look for CBT CBT might not be the most effective treatment for them because culturally they don't come from a culture that gets the absolute horn for rationality and evidence. Their cultural outlook on life and themselves and the world can allow for a kind of a nuance in it. You know, religious thinking. How does CBT work for someone who's

religious you know what i mean but knowledge basically in 2018 it's it's not very reliable so we definitely have a climate of absolute uncertainty you know you don't know what's right what's wrong what's up what's down the internet contributes to this as well because of the multiple narratives and conflicting points that you see all the time online and you don't know which one is true so russia and russia in particular but all sorts of propaganda very much exploit this uncertainty. Because from this uncertainty what's very easy to exploit is human emotions. This is why too I think now hot fucking take.

But people are very political and idealistic nowadays. Young people in particular people in their fucking 20s, are political in a way that, their older brothers and sisters, 10 years ago, were fucking not, there's, 20 year olds, and 21 year olds,

identifying now, in Ireland like, as full on, I am a communist, on the other side of the coin, you've got, 20 year olds identifying as, no I'm a fucking Nazi,

but, very polarised, and very strong opinions and what i think that is is it's searching for a definite sense of certainty in a very uncertain climate of ideas because what else are you going to do and I suppose what you'd call it is I don't think we live in the post-modern era anymore we don't live in because irony and context are kind of going out the window too a bit so what some people say we live in is meta-modernism

meta-modernism is where we have the idealism of modernism right modernism, right? Modernism is from the Industrial Revolution right up to the 1950s, where basically science was the thing. You trust science, you trust big ideas, and you put faith in them, and you'll be grand.

Then when that kind of failed with the 1950s, like, how did science fail? All right, architecture is the most obvious reason in the fucking 20s 30s 40s 50s architects decided okay there's a slum problem in most large cities how do we solve it let's build these big giant council estates huge tower blocks and engineer them and the science of sociology and the science of architecture, and this will solve all of the problems of society.

And that didn't work. It didn't happen. Just look at Ballymun in Dublin. It failed to account for the chaos and irrationality of the human condition. So from the failure of, we'll say, big ideas like that post-modernism comes out of that which is kind of an ironic laughter at the failure of modernism but post-modernism i think went out the window as soon as social media became a thing as soon as we stopped living in the authentic world and instead now live through digital avatars of ourself online.

And have separated our personalities. From ourself. So. We live now in meta modernism. Which is. The. The irony of post modernism. And the idealism of modernism.

Exists side by side. in this continual fluxus. That's what's going on. And fake news and propaganda exploits this. And that's the crack that's what Russia tested out on their own population for the past 20 years, we'll say, since Putin has been in power. And it's what's happening now with Brexit and Trump and I want to look a little bit I'm going to move on to other stuff afterwards but I want to look a little bit at you know where does this come from where in Russia is this coming from and I'm going to borrow from Adam Curtis who's a journalist who makes fucking fantastic films

I suggest looking at anything Adam Curtis has ever made but one of Putin's top advisors is a fellow by the name of Vladimir Surkov and he kind of he pulls I won't say he pulls Putin's strings but he is the person Putin goes to for PR and propaganda and

stuff like this and this is who has been doing it for putin for the past 20 years and this video which i saw of the girl pouring the girl the girl in russia pouring bleach and on man spreaders crotches. Is pure Vladimir Surkov. It is. If it wasn't. Conceived by him personally. It's from his playbook. And this is the type of thing.

That Surkov has been doing. Through the Kremlin in Russia. For years. Like some of the examples would be. Surkov would have the Kremlin sponsor and train far right groups but then at the same time train left groups

and they would kind of fight it out together and you're going what's the point of funding two ideologically opposed groups like what what's that about or the kremlin would actually fund and support parties that oppose vladimir putin you know and what what makes this advisor sarkov so interesting is that his background is from the world of art and theatre

modern art specifically so he appears to be like taking like ideas from the world of avant-garde art and applying these theatrical themes to politics and that's what he's done since 2000 and even madder than that then he released a book where he just it was like an autobiography of

himself under a different name but he basically told everyone what he was doing and the end result of this is to create a state of absolute sheer confusion where you don't know whether up is down or down is up and it ends with a population that are so uncertain and so continually distracted and fighting about small things that the actual wheel of power keeps turning unfazed because everyone is on the ground like it'd be like trying to give a speech and then throwing a lot of euros on the ground as you're doing it no one will be listening to you everyone be on the ground fighting for euros you know that's kind of what what sarkov has done to russian politics and he's been accused of it being like of creating for putin what what is known as the world's first first post-modern dictatorship by which i mean a standard dictatorship as we know it is very blatant.

Like Kim Jong-un, that's modernist dictatorship. He is in power, he is in power by force, he has a cult of personality and it is very, very obvious. he's been in power since 1999 i believe in i suppose a democracy where people have freedom to vote and he's not a dictator he's the world leaders have to take him seriously as a democratically elected either you know when he was prime minister and when he was president and then prime minister and then president again and then extending the period of what a presidency should be and you've had one man in power for 20 fucking years effectively running a dictatorship but it not being a dictatorship because it's called a democracy what that is is it's the fundamental shaking up of what we understand to be normal fundamental shaking up of what we understand to be normal and this is absolutely being now exported into the west either through russia or through the west simply viewing and looking at

russia and seeing well that fucking works um trump is the finest example like i always feared that steve bannon and thank fuck he's gone because when trump got into power i always thought steve bannon was going to be trump's vladimir sarkov the incredibly intelligent person with an ideology the one thing about trump that is not a good thing but a less frightening thing is that the man truly is a fucking impulsive idiot and with an ego he doesn't appear to have a strong political ideology set of beliefs

Steve Bannon did he was frightening but he's gone and I thought he was going to be Trump's Sarkov but if we stop looking at Trump as this lunatic clown and see what he's actually doing, it echoes what Russian politics was like for the past 20 years in that, like, I don't even up the news app because you don't really see news anymore. How much of the headlines since Trump has been in power have not been about actual shit that's happening, but rather intense debates over something that was said, over words or inappropriate actions.

And what it's doing is that it's taking Trump is basically we have this you know as a civilization, as a society have this idea in our heads that a politician has to be a certain way and Trump turns that on its head every time and we're left with this utter fucking confusion

to the point that. I don't open my news app anymore. I don't open my news because. It's such a confusing. Cluster fuck. And everyone's fighting. That I don't know what's happening. And it's the same with Brexit.

You've got. Boris fucking Johnson. Who's. Another clown. Theresa May, who seems completely incapable, and then she's in league with the fucking DUP, Christian fundamentalist lunatics, who think that the art is 6,000 years old and hate gays. It's a circus, it's a pantomime. And we don't have figures of real leadership anymore.

But this again, this is the question it's like is it true chaos or has the russian playbook of this meta-modern political theater merely been is that now culture like kan Kanye West. You know, this style of political theatre, I see it in Kanye West's recent behaviour. Now, I don't know, is Kanye West... Like, some days I go, right, Kanye is someone with bipolar disorder, and right now we are seeing someone with bipolar, and they're expressing a manic episode. someone with bipolar and they're expressing a manic episode but then other times i see kanye on his bullshit and it's too well thought out and i wonder is he being influenced by the trump era by the putin era to like no no one no one has an opinion on kanye west anymore like he did a was it a press conference he He was on Saturday Night Live wearing a Make America Great Again hat and a Colin Kaepernick t-shirt. That style of thinking

is meta-modern political theory. That's, that's fucking Vladimir Surkov and Putin sponsoring both right-wing groups and left-wing groups that's what kenya was doing right there two vastly opposing ideas and the only response that we have is to argue about the hat and the jumper and what do they mean or to simply give up as vice who i'm not a huge fan of Vice Media, but their website, Noisy, when Kanye came out with this batshit, irrational set of behaviours that we've been seeing recently, like telling everyone an album is going to come out

and then the album doesn't come out, this madness, which we're also seeing with Putin, we're also seeing with Trump, when Kanye did it, Vice came out with an article that says, we reviewed all of Kanye's albums using only autocorrect text on the iPhone, which I thought was a beautiful response. It was basically, Kanye has gone so irrational that we can't respond with any degree of critique or rationality so we must allow the autocorrect artificial intelligence of an iphone to review his albums which i thought was a

brilliant appropriate response to it but that is our response now when you just don't know what's happening in the world and everyone is clinging to. Some type of hard line. Ideologically. Ideological belief. For a feeling of safety. I think. You know. Even though it's motivated by.

Hatred. Or it's motivated by a desire for social justice. This. Very definite trend. That we're seeing. Of. Alt-right Nazis. hardcore libertarians, people describing themselves as communists. This wasn't here 10 years ago. That was the minority. Now it's mainstream.

It is people going, at least communism has a fucking rule book. Because I don't know what's happening right now, I don't know what this is, so maybe that's a boiling hot take, I don't know, this is a ranty one isn't it, but that's what you get now after three weeks of psychology, what I want to look at too just briefly some other examples of kind of batshit propaganda like the woman in the bleach but because it like

Putin didn't fucking invent that Vladimir Surkov didn't invent that Brits used to do it in 1972 the British MI5 up in Northern Ireland at 72, no it wasn't 72

it might have been it was a particularly violent year anyway in the Troubles and what MI5 started to do because the Exorcist had been hold on I better check my actual fucking year on this i'll check the year yeah 1972 to 1974 very violent years in northern ireland

um what you had in the culture in 72 was it was a team in the media of satanic panic, which was a global theme of the fear of satanic sacrifices, satanic rituals, brought about by themes in media, like, what did you have around then? Fucking Black Sabbath. You had Black Sabbath coming out in 1970 with their first album, which would have been a huge hit with young people, and Black Sabbath used to explore kind

of satanic themes in their music, and this obviously was eaten up by young people who wanted to scare their parents, you had The Exorcist, you had all this stuff, and a fear of satanism, and a fear of young people turning to satanic ritual was a thing so mi5 via the british army what they started doing in belfast whenever there was like a shooting or a bombing or republican activity mi5 would go in and they would plant upside down crucifixes and they would plant black candles and pentagrams and satanic things in these areas and then the locals would find it

would start freaking out and what the purpose of it was is that like MI5 they would do it as well with loyalists the Brits were very fearful of the sectarian religious element to the Northern Ireland troubles when the issue is political

they felt that it was more controllable because with politics you have clear aims and shit like that but when religion was there They felt that it was more controllable. Because with politics you have. Clear aims and shit like that. But when religion was there. And when you're taking sectarianism. And the fact that Catholics were oppressed. And all of this shit.

With a religious people. They were hoping that. The priests would think. That the rab were engaging in satanism. And that what this would do is it would cause confusion and dissent within Republican community or even within the Loyalist community and it would cause the average

it's a way basically to stop your Ma or your Da supporting the Ra it was a way to divide the community. That the rational church going decent people. Could not possibly get behind or vindicate. These paramilitaries that were committing these shootings and shit like that.

And then fucking having pentagrams and burning black candles. So that's what the bricks brits did a deliberate uh counterintelligence plot to get the people of northern ireland fearful of the rad doing satanic rituals which you gotta hand it to him pretty clever shit far more sinister uh than that though is the the military reaction force which were a kind of mi5 uh the brainchild of mi5 but there were british soldiers in plain clothes that were given a license to kill and british soldiers did drive-by shootings on unarmed innocent civilians in catholic areas of northern ireland so that the ra would think that it was loyalists and the british army sanctioned by the state murdered innocent people deliberately to spark a sectarian feud that would take the ira's attention away from um the fucking the british army that's why there is no moral high ground in fucking

in the north whatsoever if anyone pulls that shit the british army are murdering uh scumbags who have nothing to fucking they have nothing to fall back on when it comes to that particular activity there but what the military action force also did is they ran a laundry service. And they ended up getting caught, but they had this successful fucking laundry service where everyone just thought it was, oh, fuck it, cheap laundry. What they were doing is they were going into nationalist areas and they were, people would give their sheets and their jeans and their fucking t-shirts to be washed. And of course the Brits, clandestinely, in their secret laundry vans,

were testing all the clothes for Semtex or dynamite or whatever. Kind of clever, but murdering scumbags. This podcast is so fucking rambly this week. And directionless. That. I think I'm going to call it. I'll even call it a silly name. But.

Yeah. What are you going to do? You know that's the thing about this podcast. I just gave you a load of opinion there you know. I'm not a fucking journalist I'm nothing you know if you want to talk metamodernism why are you

coming to a fella with a plastic bag in his head to find some facts you know that's the other thing our politicians are clowns and then the people who are supposed to be clowns have to take on the role of fucking rationality and you're seeing that as well the world over

I heard the phrase post comedy used recently and I don't know how I feel about it it was used to refer to there's a Netflix special called Nanette which is fantastic I enjoyed it but however it felt

it looked like stand up comedy but it felt more like a Ted Talk a Ted Talk I said that like a fucking grandmother Ted Talk Ted Talk a Ted Talk fucking grandmother TED talk TED talk a TED talk it's not a bit like

your grandmother would say fucking turkey meat instead of turkey meat or green day instead of green day it's a pure Irish grandmother thing

but anyway yeah Nanette felt more like a TED talk than comedy. And I'm not saying that to detract from it. Hannah Gadsby delivered a fucking, you know, it was well thought out, well structured, but it was something new. It wasn't specifically, I don't think she wanted anyone rolling around the floor laughing it was much more about

it was like the shit that leads to jokes but not doing the jokes it was like the thinking behind it Nanette is more like it's a hijacking it's almost that Putin-esque kind of thing the podcast

was speaking about whereby it's it's almost that putinesque kind of thing the podcast was was speaking about whereby it's like okay here we are uh we're in a stand-up club stand-up lighting this looks like a stand-up comedian but instead of doing a stand-up i've got you here for an hour i have you the audience's attention and we're going to use this space for you to try and experience what life is like for me. Because I've had different experiences than you've had. This is about empathy. It's not really about rolling around the floor laughing. That's what I got from Nanette.

I liked it, but I've heard it referred to as post-comedy. Which I hate that term. I haven't got my head around it yet, but it's something which uses the mechanics, the feel, and the look of comedy, but doesn't necessarily set out to deliver on fucking set-up punchline. Do you know what I mean?

Or tagline, punchlineline whatever the fuck it's called it's not there to have you rolling around the floor laughing it's for something different a deeper level of communication like even this podcast

to a sense because of the nature of like on the online economy. Like shit gets consumed very very quickly. Like when. I was releasing music videos as the rubber bandits. Up until about 2014.

If you. Put the work in release the video. Like. Something like dad's Best Friend, that's six months work, all right? That requires writing the song, performing it, mastering it, producing it, raising the funds for the video,

Mr. Chrome doing all the prosthetics, shooting the video, directing it. To do it all yourself, you're talking six months, right? Then you put it out. That went out in 2013 we would have gotten maybe six months of publicity out of that so that six months work is worth it to put out to get six months back in terms of gigs or whatever that's gone now you put six months work into a music video now it goes out on a Monday,

people are talking about it until Wednesday, and by the time Friday comes around, there's an article out about why it's problematic. And then the next Monday comes around and someone says, actually no, it's not problematic, and then no one cares anymore. That's the new cycle of consumption so there's no longer an incentive for artists as such to truly put effort into something, to put long time thought and process into something

so with this podcast I rant for an hour and it goes out every single week and people give a shit about it for three days and that's the way it is but we'll say six years ago and it goes out every single week and people give a shit about it for three days and that's the way it is but

we'll say six years ago the shit that goes into this podcast would have been the jottings in my journal that would eventually turn into well constructed songs or jokes or themes do you know what I mean

and that's kind of lost a bit in today's culture em I suppose I've got my book that I'm going to be able to take time on but I couldn't have that book on it's own em people in the creative industry now

you have to continually have a presence of some description and a good someone who cares about what you're doing will try and make sure that that presence is of a high quality and good standard. That's what I try and do with this podcast. Make sure at least you're enjoying it and I enjoy doing it and it's good quality. But others, it doesn't matter. But others, it doesn't matter. I saw an artist on Instagram and they announced a single release

and the next day they did a selfie and the selfie got nearly three times as many likes as the single release. So it's content has replaced, I won't say quality, but content has replaced art. That's where we're at right now with the consistent consumption of the internet like

look just think of any fucking anyone, any musical artist today who's released a big piece of work an album release we'll take Kenya right now how much of the media discourse.

Is about the actual creative work. And how much is about. Some facet of the person's personality. Or behaviour. Something they said did war. Or some spectacle they were involved in. That's what it's about now. The last time I can remember.

The piece of art. Being the thing that's spoken about most. it's about now the last time i can remember the piece of art being the thing that's spoken about most that's most dissected in discourse this is america by donald glover or childish gambino as he goes by and even that there is an almost a post-music argument to be made about This Is America by Childish Gambino because if you listen to the song, it doesn't really hold up. The song by itself, it doesn't have a recognisable hook as such, you're not going to walk away humming it. The lyrical content is good good but really what it was about was the video the video was amazing incredible engaging but is that kind of nearly post music would this is this is america by donald glover done very well if it was a radio song no we engaged with the spectacle of the beautiful piece of theater that the video was and that's why this

is a long rambling podcast and you're free to disagree with any of the shit i said because i'm just some cunt with a bag in my head and i'm not an authority i'm also i'm not sure what this podcast was about um i think it was a probing into Metamodernism I don't know But I hope you enjoyed it anyway I hope if anything You enjoyed 70 minutes Of The podcast hug

Simply listening to somebody talk And being able to let go Of your own thoughts for a while While somebody else does the talking So if you got that anyway fair play and I'll leave you go there's 70 minutes gone so I don't have time to answer any questions

I'm doing three live gigs this week they're all sold out, thank you very much my two Vicar Streets are sold out and my Belfast Empire is sold out so I'm back in Vicar Street on the 8th and 9th of November they are not sold out and my belfast empire is sold out so i'm back in vicar street on the 8th and 9th of november they are not sold out so please funny thing happened actually so when i'm getting ready

to do these gigs i'm unsure about like it's a live podcast so you want to have the intimacy in the room and vicar street's big that's like 1200 fucking people so you want to still maintain the intimacy of having a conversation with my guest but you want people to enjoy themselves too so i'm guessing it'll be like an hour and a half to two hours and i i want people to be able to have a drink if they can but you don't leave the fucking bar open because then it can fuck up with the conversation and people get distracted. So what I'm going to do in Vicar Street is that the bar will be open at the start,

and then I'll have an interval in the middle where you can go for a pint, but throughout the show there'll be no shuffling and no pints, because I remember I did a gig in Belfast about six months ago, the bar was open, it was chaos. People didn't... A lot of people said that was too fucking noisy. So I'm never doing that again.

But culturally in Ireland, in the gigging scene, we like to have a fucking pint when we go out. That's part of Irish culture. When you go out to a gig, you want to have a few fucking pints. Christy Moore, the brilliant Irish irish singer songwriter famously for years going back years would not allow an open bar at his gigs and it caused now it's getting a bit more normal but when christy was doing it 20 30 years ago people were like fuck this i can't go to the bar during a gig it was nuts so when i asked on twitter should i leave the bar open or closed just to

get feedback from ye who fucking chimes in christy moore christy fucking moore the man who invented the closed bar at an irish gig chimes in so that was my bit of youngie in synchronicity from the day for the day it was a sign from above from the from the collective unconscious of humankind that the bar should remain closed I am talking out of my arse this week lads alright have a good one, have a lovely peaceful week enjoy yourself, look after yourself

rub a dog, rub a cat be compassionate to another person yart person. Ye Art. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.