The Hoely Hour - E178 Alpha Male Camp

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

You read that right, folks. Not only do we hear about Amelia’s first exposure to a penis being a one-balled wonder; we dissect the existence of MDK, a “man camp” that beats the vulnerability out of you. This discussion is more of a tragedy than a comedy, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It feels like a brain-frazzled kind of day for me. I understand that. That's sort of my resting state. Welcome to The Holy Hour, a podcast about sex, relationships, mental health, and everything in between. I'm Amelia Sampson. And I'm Liz Ball. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at The Holy Hour.

I'm on Instagram and TikTok at Amelia Sampson. And I'm on Instagram and TikTok at Liz Ball So Hard. You can also watch us on YouTube or listen ad-free on Patreon at patreon.com slash theholyhour. Check out our merch at theholyhour.com and email us your spicy stories at holyhourpodcast at gmail.com. I woke up today just immediately salty to be awake. You know? Did you have a bad dream? No.

I wanted to stay asleep. I think that's why. Mm-hmm. yeah i slept through the night for the first time in like 20 years last night congratulations thank you so much i woke up at 7 30 because paulie decided it was time she licked she does this thing where she licks directly into my mouth because i sleep with my mouth open oh my god and that's what woke me up this morning what a way to wake up yeah it's the sloppiest alarm clock ever um i had a thought when i was in the bathroom just now i don't think that there is

any better experience than popping an ingrown hair that is a very satisfying experience um I had an experience earlier today where because I have like a mole right here kind of near my lip yeah um and it felt tender ish like it just kind of hurt and I was like I know there's a zit and i just can't see it because it blends in and then i like push around it and it went all over the mirror yeah dude that's the fucking best it wasn't too crazy but the relief yeah oh yeah it's very nice absolutely so i get cysts on my chin and like they'll hang around for like a month before they pop and when they pop you know what there's something just like disgusting and satisfying when you pop a zit that one is causing you pain and two it gets on the mirror yes you're like oh

my god like that one just came out with some attitude ready to go there was gusto in that one oh my god um total diversion but i had this conversation with frank last week and he was like have you talked about this on the podcast and i don't think that i have it's really not that big of a deal but it is it is kind of funny you meant to tell me no it's really nothing but i don't think you know it's i'm really building this up if there's no reason something about you you might this is this is such a nothing burger i can't believe i'm even like doing this exposition but everybody be quiet drum roll drum roll on in your car on your steering wheel this is gonna be the most exciting piece of news you hear all year all year it's April 2024

okay what is it the first guy that I ever gave a blowjob to which also means it's really the first dick that i was like up close and personal with uh-huh only had one ball oh and so i thought they just looked like that and so after i was done giving him said blow job he was like so you're probably wondering and i had no idea what the fuck he was talking about i was just ready to accept the fact that that's just what they looked like you're probably wondering but actually i wasn't wondering anything he i was wondering when this would be over my jaw hurts that's actually exactly what i was wondering no but i was kind of like there was a moment where i was like is that just one ball but i was i was about to live my life just wondering i've never just like investigated

i've never been like what's going on down here with this little purse well i was like this little coin purse i was on my like he was standing and i was on my knees i feel like that would be uncomfortable yeah it sucked but i was like it sucked hey but i was like i don't know i feel uncomfortable for both parties yeah he seemed to like i mean i feel like uh i don't know they're always happy to just be included yeah absolutely yeah us on the other hand not so much um actually i kind of i like giving head but that's that's for another time um but apparently if you if you have balls you might not want to hear this because when i was telling this to frank he was like i don't want to hear that don't tell me that but he was trying

to like jump over a pole and like oh no burst his ball oh my god a real ball buster that i don't even have balls and my my butthole clenched at that uh-huh yeah so he has one one ball i hope he's doing well he also cheated on me so well it's probably because he was insecure about how many balls he had you know i think one is better than like three you know what i mean like if you're gonna have an unusual number of balls that's the that's the best option yeah one or three yeah or none yeah I mean I have none I mean I've never really again I don't really think about balls I that doesn't mean I neglect them okay it's just I've never like there's never been an opportunity where you can just sit there and investigate

yeah just be like no I don't want you to to pay attention or anything I just want I just want some time to myself to observe what's happening down here right right yeah but i mean like with a little science experiment your brain can process things very quickly you know just you just go down there you just kind of take like a mental get like a read get some stats and that was what i experienced down there this is all this is unrelated to what you you just told me um did i share on the podcast about the most like my naked neighbors obviously i know i told the story about the first time you saw them yeah no you haven't you haven't updated anyone okay okay well um i haven't seen them in a while and you know what it's also probably because the trees are blooming

so can't see into their window as easily nature yeah boo sunshine in seattle finally um the sun is is uh just glistening through the window right now by the way um thank god it was it was kind of yucky earlier like during the day it was like overcast and blith uh-huh and then the sun came out and it improved my mood i love that but anyways naked neighbors so the other the other month i think it was sometime last month um the naked neighbors one of them the girl was like whipping she she was like in her bra and underwear and there were people on the couch like maybe three people so it's like her her boyfriend and then a potential second couple and she has a microphone and she's in her bra and underwear and then she takes her bra off and she's like

swinging it around and we're like oh what is going on she's doing a show like what is this and then the guy gets they all clap and then the guy gets up and then he's like clicking on something on the tv and we're like are they watching tv like what is going on here and then um he has a microphone and he starts singing we're like oh they're doing karaoke strip karaoke yeah so then he starts taking off his clothes and then you know towards the end he pulls his underwear off and then he's just like singing and then mr liz was like we have dick ladies and gentlemen dick has landed his beepus was out i was waiting for him to helicopter it and then we're like oh my god okay so they're doing strip karaoke i wonder what at what point

they decide to take off an article of clothing you know how there's like a rule with a poker i'm very curious yeah maybe it's like when you hit the bridge what the agreement what the arrangement was yeah and then um when it came time for the guests turn presumably they closed the curtains and I was like god damn it I wanted to see what was going on they're not exhibitionists like your naked neighbors and that's fair I just am curious and obviously the naked neighbors want people to see them doing stuff in front of the window oh yeah and Mr. Liz and I we we think that they're probably annoying we think in real life they're annoying I mean I think you have to have a certain kind of personality to be so consistent about making sure your neighbors see you naked

you know what i mean like yeah it gets to a point where it's like i wonder if you're forcing your kink on other people neighbors are out or the neighbors are sitting in front of their window let's be naked yeah i mean like how these buildings are set up like there's no question that people are seeing oh we can see directly yeah into their home carry nakey no i was like i wonder can they see in here they must be able to you must be able to nakeyoke is for sure what they call it yeah at first it was carry nakey don't like it i don't like that either i feel like a carry naked karaoke frank would be here and say not everything needs to be one word sometimes i'll do this just like in our kitchen sometimes things can be one word and they should

be thank you why say more words strip aroki strip aroki something like that well so if you guys need something to do this weekend you can do strip karaoke instead of the masked singer it's the naked singer oh yeah what if they were masked but uh from the neck down fully nude oh my god guess that cock i would win i would get so competitive i can see a cock from a mile away anyway you have sex news i have one one sex one talking tit just like that guy's ball before art yes yeah one bouncing ball one bouncing ball one supple ball oh my god i hate the word supple so much i wish i could unhear that okay here's the headline um older americans now have twice as many stis as a decade ago

huh isn't that interesting isn't that interesting like i hope they're okay i'm laughing but it's kind of a funny image because i know like twice as many stis people are like breaking backs in nursing homes people are fucking like crazy in nursing homes yeah because i was thinking people are having less sex so this is what it says yeah rising divorce rates foregoing condoms as there's no risk of pregnancy the availability of drugs for sexual dysfunction the large number of adults living together in retirement communities and the increased use of dating apps are likely to contribute to the growing incidence of stis in the over 50s wow isn't that interesting oh in the over 50s yeah wow yeah interesting fucking janice and bill are

clapping cheeks oh hell yeah well throw it back somewhat related um well throw it back to him so i continue um somewhat related so i was reading i already have the book um why does you do that and I was reading parts of it um just because I was curious and you know it is it's sexual assault awareness month by the way oh yeah um wow I can't believe it's already April I know uh so I was reading parts of like why does he do that because I someone else referenced it and I was like oh yeah I do have that book and one thing it mentioned is that like refusing to use a condom or or like just like you have to consent I don't know I don't know how to explain this like if you were having sex with someone and you were like I only want to have sex with you if

it's with a condom and then without asking they have sex with you with no condom on yeah like that's assault yeah first of all but then also just generally refusing to take any accountability for um pregnancy prevention to be like well i don't want to wear a condom so i'm not going to that's a form of abuse to i mean that makes so much sense well because you're also just kind of like literally using this person i actually i took screenshots of it because i was like oh my gosh my ex did this to me um yeah so many guys that i've had sex with that shit to me it's it's fucked up yeah it's super what the hell is wrong with you it doesn't feel as good it feels fine you know it doesn't feel good as pushing a whole human use your hand then yeah so this is really interesting

in a typical abusive inversion my clients often attempt to convince me that they are the sexual victims in their relationship as one man said my partner uses sex to control me that's how women jerk men around women are the ones that really have the power over men because they know what they know they have what we want most and they have the power to shut us out my wife wants me to be her little puppy dog begging and drooling and wagging my tail that's the only way i'll get sex the underlying attitude comes bursting out of his words he believes his wife is keeping something of his away from him when she doesn't want intimate contact he sees sexual rights to a woman as akin to mineral rights to land and he owns them so i think that is like that's the

mindset that i do think that a lot of men have like especially like kind of like incels yes the mindset that they have is that women are keeping something that they have the right to from them i mean that's such an archaic view that's the whole thing with like how marriage like began the concept of marriage began was it's it's always been an ownership thing abusive men who have these kinds of attitudes of sexual ownership sometimes refuse to use birth control or to practice safe sex. I'll read the whole thing. Dehumanization can be a sickening horrible experience for the person at whom it is directed. If you are involved with a sexually exploitative partner, you may find that sex is sometimes or perhaps always a nightmare. Exploitative, rough, coercive, uncaring sex is

similar to physical violence in its effects, and it can be worse in many ways. And part of why it feels so degrading is that a woman can sense the fact that in her partner's mind, she has ceased to exist as a human being. Abusive men who have these kinds of attitudes of sexual ownership sometimes refuse to use birth control or practice safe sex. I've had numerous clients, for example, who have conceived children through sexual assaults on their partners. The implications of these kinds of sexual abuse for a woman and for her children are very serious anyways keep that in mind um well because i remember after my ex and i broke up he like apologized wow for that because i think he talked to a therapist that's very big they're like yeah what the fuck is wrong

with you yeah and yeah i just wow i mean that's very big of him too when i think about it it makes me so fucking pissed though yeah well we shouldn't have had to wait until he we broke up for him to be like no um yeah it was wrong and cruel for me to do that it shouldn't have have taken like a third party if that is what happened it should have taken a third party but like unfortunately like um yeah it was completely unfair yeah for me to make it 100 your responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancy yeah the first time that i had sex with the poet remember the poet he came in me without asking what the fuck yeah and then one of my guy friends I told him about it and he was like yeah he was like that's assault Amelia and the fact that like one of my male

friends said that I was like what like I'm so glad that there are men in my life that are like identifying that these things are assault assault and like they're aware of it a straight man too um but also like looking back on it like that is so fucked and i did call him out in the moment i was just like oh you like came to me without asking that's interesting he was like oh i just figured because that's just what i've always done like in the past and i was like i'm not what i'm not other women that you've had you know what i mean but because when i think about it too i'm like no it's always been a conversation right i mean historically it's been a conversation for me yeah yeah like no not cute not not cute we can jump into our main topic yeah i had mentioned it

last week um man camps the idea of a man camp is it's i mean it's another grifter thing yeah essentially um you'll see these like alpha bros assigned chat at birth um you'll see these guys like pushing this like three day camp it costs ten thousand to eighteen thousand dollars are you serious this three-day camp that a bunch of men go to and they essentially just like abuse you like you're in the military to like break you um for the first couple of days to prove like to prove that you are worthy and manly enough to connect with other men so it's this very well and then they also sell you the idea that they're going to help you fix all your problems you're going to become an alpha male you're going to you're going to practice stoicism you're going

to blah blah blah like all of this other shit it's that is so there's no way that these dudes that are these grifters aren't laughing at these guys for paying ten thousand dollars much do they how much do they believe they don't they don't it's a grift they don't they actually don't it's like liver king he doesn't act he was he's been taking steroids oh yeah yeah these people are they lie for profit ten thousand dollars yeah for three days eighteen eighteen thousand dollars that's so i i can't remember where i first heard about this like man camp thing um it might have been on reddit but uh there were a couple of other reddit searches or internet searches and one of um it's on the r sad cringe subreddit no this weird three-day program ran by a bunch of alpha

males that turn you into an alpha male as well for the low cost of eighteen thousand dollars the program is called the mdk project so the more i looked into this because i was like huh um the modern day night project is a 75 hour personal growth experience for men who want to live a life with fulfillment purpose financial freedom and have a deep loving relationship with their family but it's more than just a 75 hour crucible because when you graduate from the 75 hour experience you become a member of the brotherhood mastermind a 12 month long coaching and mentorship mastermind focused on developing the man the meaning and the money even more um that's so scary dude so vice has this very interesting article breaking down the whole thing

and the title of the vice article is guys are paying ten thousand dollars to become real men at warrior warrior camps macho programs promise self-fulfillment through a hardcore military style training but are they just a fix for an epidemic of male loneliness so this article is i thought it was very interesting i didn't get through the whole thing i was i skimmed it because it is a bit long um but the the author um brendan burris um the author talks to people who went to it so um they essentially just like take these depressed ass men who think that this is gonna to solve all their problems and they make them do endure a lot of physical hardship and then the thing about that I don't understand and I think also proves how fragile masculinity is

is you have to men make other men prove their masculinity to each other yeah like and I know I've said this before but like women don't make other women prove their femininity to each other like i'm not friends based on how they perform their gender expectations yeah you know yeah but men do like men hold women to that standard of like a certain level of femininity not not all men but like you know it's kind of the same thing they're the only ones really thinking super hard about gender roles well and i think that part of this um just like like feeling like men feeling lost is because they haven't had the same historical experience of exploring and challenging your gender identity the way that women have because women have a history of like having to

fight for their rights and pushing back on these gendered expectations of like caring for a whole household and not having a job and not having rights to a bank account or to vote things like that so they have all of this time in history to challenge those things whereas like modern men don't have that track record of history of challenging their gender role expectations do you know what i mean yeah like there's all and it's it's just this constant back and forth i think between men who are like i don't want to feel this way or behave this way and i don't identify as someone who is like some macho man I don't want to be out of touch with my emotions I don't want to be emotionally unavailable to my partner or my kids and then you have this very

large subset of men who are afraid of that so then they lean even more into this like idea of masculinity which just reinforces emotional unavailability which also reinforces like the male loneliness epidemic. So you have the same men who are crying and screaming and pouting about the male loneliness epidemic, but they're also the ones holding each other to these expectations and standards that only hurt them. Yeah. I mean, it feels like an Occam's razor in their mind that it's like, if I'm so lonely, then I need to be the manliest version of myself to like stop being lonely but it's like this advice is coming from men that very clearly are also pretty lonely like and they're selling it as like I used to be like you but like underneath it all

they're still exactly like them they just like have bigger muscles you know like it doesn't there's no proof in the pudding here and that's scary that they can sell these programs as hard as they do well and they're selling yeah I mean they're selling these programs to people who have like PTSD whether it's from like being in the military or from having like abusive parents and just generally being failed by patriarchy but not being able to identify it as that so it's appealing to those that group of men who are like I've never felt like accepted as a man um because i'm not masculine enough um and people who just like men who are just suffering internally because they don't know how to explore themselves because they've never been

given the space to safely do that so this article explores just kind of like this scam yeah this they explore it as both from the perspective of like a scam and a grift and the perspective of like male loneliness because um they have to prove their masculinity to each other but once they do then they spend this time together with their peers who are part of this camp like like opening up to each other it's like they have to prove this manliness to be worthy of having close relationships this is just like that that whole thing though is exactly how incels operate though with like their little message boards and their little discord channels is like you know looking around and being like wow i'm not the only one in this struggle that's

the exact same thing continue the study of male psychology as something unique is surprisingly new in 2018 the american psychological association released its first guidelines for conducting psychological practice with men and boys on the whole the apa operated from the perspective that traditional masculinity which the organized defined as traits like stoicism competitiveness dominance and aggression was psychologically harmful and generally unattainable for men though men benefit from patriarchy they are also imping impinged upon it by patriarchy one of the project's head instructors steve ecker a marine veteran with bushy eyebrows and a bald head as shiny as a cue ball has a different perspective men are either on one end of the

spectrum the two extremes either they think they have to be rah rah rah kill fuck pillage or or since they think that's so horrible they're soft and weak and not speaking up passive aggressive afraid to show who they really are like that again just kind of emphasizes the ideology that like an incel essentially has is like okay if you're not this violent hyper masculine man then you're just like soft and weak yeah and it's like why are those why are those the only two options and what's bad about being soft yeah what's bad about being emotionally available yeah it's it just it must run so so deep for each individual person to feel that way it doesn't feel like like a one person experience feels like it's like deeply

like rooted in who they are and they in this camp they kind of have this idea that you have to like basically if you're experiencing depression because there's i don't even know where to begin with the layered like you're experiencing depression because there is no place that has existed for men specifically to challenge traditional masculinity and like make a new identity and space for themselves yeah so then there's this idea like oh you gotta like emotionally and physically beat the shit out of a guy in his depression to get him to wake up yep yeah the project which it's called the project like proper noun um which costs twelve thousand dollars excluding flights and hotels for men

for men to unfuck themselves to do that men must do hard shit so they can level up in what um this guy someone that they're citing what he calls the five f-bombs faith family fitness finance which provides a life of fulfillment oh my god um it is designed to wrap the pill up with cheese he tells me the pill representing men's mental development and building emotional bonds the cheese representing jujitsu and tactical gun training as well as experiencing military style heroism without the dangers of war like we just need to give these guys some guns and teach them jujitsu for them to get in touch with their emotions the main photo on their front video this dude is shooting a gun do you see that i mean they're trying to appeal to a specific type

of man their next class is in october and it's over halfway full how much is it and how many people do they accept they accept 37 and there's only 15 spots left this is what the project is all about it is confronting men with the crossroads the path to staying a bitch and the path to becoming a beast oh my god and like everybody has that uh voice in their head that is mean to them you know what I mean like it's it's not exclusive to to men you know yeah it's it's your ego yeah it's literally your ego it's just so sad that there aren't avenues that they've had up till this point to help them make sense and fix what they are seeing as that like what they're experiencing in that voice like that that's a sad reality the thing that I think is

interesting is through all of this you know the physical torture essentially and making men feel like they have to earn the right to express themselves without sacrificing their masculine identity or their identity as a man to be worthy of expressing themselves emotionally so there's just i think it's just really interesting the idea of like you have to prove yourself before you get the right to express yourself yeah and i'm eventually they get to the same conclusion of like allowing yourself to feel your feelings allowing yourself to connect with other men without you know no homo you know without feeling like it's impeding on your masculinity or your identity as a man I it's just so bizarre to me to feel like you have to punish yourself to be

allowed to express yourself yeah and so the article also really explores the idea of like yes this is kind of this awful thing to to um essentially like physically punish men to make them feel like they're masculine yeah and then allowing them this space to connect with each other so they do get to a point of like confronting like their inner demons of self-doubt and depression and anxiety and the things that make them feel that way and they are creating this safe space and community with each other and it you know therapy would obviously be significantly more effective but like it's kind of like the same yeah it's a community and this is this is how they have to go about proving to themselves that they deserve a community and you can kind

of see the same thing happening in fraternities with hazing and they're like well this happened i you have to go through it because i had to go through it it's it's it's really interesting i just like if you want community and you want to like purge yourself of this reality so that you can open up like go do ayahuasca you know just just just so much psychedelics the yellow banner at the top of the MDK project says, attention, the Modern Day Knight project is only for entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders. And then when you go down to the bottom, it says it again. It says that first part and then it says, who are ready for a serious breakthrough, all caps. This exclusive experience isn't for anyone who's just starting their self-development journey.

This is in-depth experience. This in-depth experience is for men who are seriously ready and tired of making excuses so i feel like that's kind of they wrote that in like a way to like absolve themselves of responsibility of like they're just being like a bunch of lost men it's like no you have to be like an established like sure of who you are guy before you apply to this program it's like nobody that is kind of related to something that's in this article if society were a bell curve baumeister writes women would command the middle with men at the extremes It is true men still disproportionately dominate the top of American society. More than 90% of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies, 86% of the 400 richest Americans,

73% of the seats in Congress, and 100% of past presidents. The opposite is also true. Men disproportionately dominate the bottom of society, making up more than 93% of the prison population and about 70% of homeless populations. Wow. according to the u.s department of labor statistics 92 of americans who die in the line of work are men of the first 3 000 american soldiers killed in the iraq war 2 938 of them were men like i think i thought that was like one of the most interesting statistics

that i read while reading this article is just that there is kind of this bell curve of like dominating the top and the bottom of society yeah and it kind of relates back to like why is this the only two ideas of who you can be yeah why isn't there anything in the middle of the spell curve for men yeah it's sad baumeister believes there is a simple anthropological reason for all of this men are more expendable than women the fewer women available to reproduce the greater the risk of a particular tribe dying out in the long run therefore cultures exploit men to assume the most dangerous tasks with the most possible risks like hunting animals or fighting wars and should those men succeed they reap whatever rewards come as a result in this way men are in

constant competition with each other to either succeed spectacularly or fail miserably on social media the the project instructors shame dropouts telling followers to not be a bell ringer you have to ring a bell three times if you want to quit and deny them access to their brotherhood so that's really interesting it's like okay if you don't endure this physical abuse essentially yeah then you don't get you don't get to connect with other people you don't deserve it that's so it's so sad whereas like that's so sad it's like okay you have to do all of this to be allowed to be vulnerable whereas like vulnerability is like i don't understand the the idea of vulnerability is that it makes you weak when really it doesn't vulnerability empowers you right but it just

doesn't make any sense and it's like you're weak if you're vulnerable but then you have to be you have to go through all of this abuse so that you're able to be vulnerable with these men but doesn't that just cancel out the work that you did if you're using that kind of like binary but like to understand vulnerability that doesn't make any sense to me it's it's sickening how obvious of a grift this is it's scary they're exploiting like underdiagnosed depression in males what you amelia just had a very shocked face so i'm scrolling down on this front page and there's a whole section now here's how you can get your wife on board oh because there is going to be a woman who in their life who's like why are you spending all of this money to basically go to

like a fraternity boot camp yeah and i mean there's all these videos of like case studies of women that like i see more belief in himself an incredibly life-changing event it's given way too much for our family it's also taken away your children's college fund yeah so your your husband can go away for 75 hours to get the shit kicked out of him yeah cry after doing an ice bath so he can feel like it's okay for him to express his feelings that's just wild to me i can't believe this exists to better detect depression among individuals adhering to masculine identities psychologists have developed alternative methods like the gotland male depression scale these new models prioritize externalized symptoms over internalized ones such as explosive anger at

minor annoyances numbing their pain through substance abuse workaholism and womanizing self-destructive and power-seeking behaviors impoverished friendships and in general i can do it myself syndrome so i think it's really interesting that like you have to kind of make a new a special scale of depression for men so they don't feel emasculated but i also think it is very helpful to have these like external indicators that you are experiencing depression because it's like well i'm not depressed i'm like i'm doing all these things but it's like okay someone who's explosively angry at something minor that is a sign of depression depression that's a symptom of depression right when including these alternative scales alongside traditional ones for

depression men and women meet met criteria for depression in about equal proportions a 2013 psychiatry study found it is curious however that these symptoms of male depression are sometimes the same behaviors we associate with manning up damn man up yeah be violent be angry be sad be be sad but don't show anybody yeah anybody you're saying that's this is feels ridiculous to bring up gotland male depression scale it is have you ever watched wife swap uh i've seen like a couple of scenes but i've never like uh watched a whole episode it's absurd like it's it's ridiculous yeah but like it is an interesting kind of study of um like manliness because they always have the families that are swapping have like one dad who's like very militant and very like manly and

then one dad that's like very like oh i just kind of sit at home all day and play video games and how they like take pieces of what they've learned from the other family to just like be the better version of themselves and it's like that's that's what exists it's wife swap so it feels i'm like trying not to laugh while i'm explaining this but it's a good example of like it doesn't need to be one or the other yeah people are always better when they're taking on different aspects of like this quote-unquote binary that they have in their minds like it's it's a balance it's just kind of this like self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness and depression it's like you're creating the circumstances that are making you lonely

and depressed but it's also reinforced by everybody around you yeah it's really sad it is like when i was reading this whole thing it just made me really sad that there's just kind of like you have to endure hardship and abuse to be able to have good friends good friends who will listen to you there's probably so many instances of people leaving this camp and being like i feel exactly the same yeah i'm sure and they realize they got scammed and fucked over you know they still might have this like kind of like emotional high from it initially and then it tapers off yeah and i mean that's also how like a cult works um this so this quote from the article says through man camps men are sold individual glory and delivered a brotherhood into which they belong

is that all any of them really wanted because um i read a statistic that uh men most men have six close friends which is half the amount that men used to have wow um and just kind of like the idea of like you know the male loneliness epidemic um in the united states many men have become disconnected from the societal institutions that have anchored dads to each other and our community uh historically men have made long-term bonds through religious institutions and friendships at work our sense of worth derived from what we could provide our families so not being able to not having a community is harmful to any person yeah we're social creatures yeah it doesn't matter how you identify if you don't have a community and you

don't have someone that you feel like you can safely turn to and rely on yeah you're gonna be fucking depressed yeah i mean that's it really does they they feed andrew tate's the same way they feed off of these people that just want somewhere to belong and that's sad like i could shit on these dudes all day but like underneath it all it's actually it's very very sad that this type of thing has spawned from people just feeling so lonely and like they don't belong somewhere so they spend their hard-earned cash to go to this experience that like there are just so many other better options but like the propaganda that exists on this website is it's intense and and it makes sense why people fall for it today a 2019 you gov poll found almost one in five uk men

say they have no one they consider a close friend and according to a 2006 analysis published in the american sociological review white heterosexual men have the fewest friends in america one explanation comes from university of maryland professor and relationship expert jeffrey grief oh what a name men tend to develop shoulder-to-shoulder friendships doing stuff together while women have face-to-face friendships sharing emotions and experiences he writes in buddy system understanding male friendships evolutionary psychologist robin dunbar also notes that men deeply bond during periods of intense and scheduled engagement like school sports and military service but fail to maintain those relationships as distance and time apart

grows wow is it all bad if they leave feeling like they have a bond with other people no and that's not even the concern the concern is that they leave and they don't feel that bond because it's like imagine the fallout of spending all that money going through all of that and then not feeling different at all like and i know that that's the risk of anything you could pay all this money to do something and it might disappoint you in the end but when you go in so desperate like i'm going to coachella in two weeks i spent a lot of money on it say i don't have a good time like i won't feel let down because it's just like oh i didn't have a good time if i was throwing that money into a i am at like my absolute lowest and like i need to do something about it and then

i was let down it would be devastating it would i would feel worse than i did before going to the experience because now i'm out eighteen thousand dollars it's so much money it's so much fucking money like i i don't even know how some of these guys afford to do that and perhaps they can't So the author says, suddenly, I understood what Keith Schmidt and all the other project graduates kept telling me about brotherhood. True masculinity is showing love, showing compassion, showing all these things that are traditionally not spoken of as masculinity, Schmidt told me. And I think that scares some people.

So someone who attended this had that revelation. Yeah. And I like, why do you need to dress it up in something? else and i mean it is exactly like what they were saying it's like wrapping the pill in cheese yeah that's so sad i know but you know if it gets them there then it gets them there i guess and and maybe this is where it needs to start maybe but it's like there's but you don't need to uh exploit depressed men that's for it to happen it's so fucking sad it's this this is just a such a sad thing i really want to like have a man on to talk to about like a man specifically that

buys into this kind of thing and not in a way that's like like bringing them on to like have like a fresh and fit like takedown but like bringing them on just to like i just want to pick their brain i just want to know i just want to understand because it's not even like a at first when you started talking about this i was like this is the most this is the dumbest thing i've ever fucking heard oh yeah that was my that was my when i saw like first saw it i was like are you fucking kidding me yeah an alpha male camp and it's like now i'm like oh it makes sense and it's so fucking sad it's so sad so as i was reading it i think that was also kind of the goal that the author had with the storytelling is to rope you in to be like just shocked at how

egregious and stupid the idea is of an alpha male camp and then it kind of like deconstructs it of like men are fucking lonely yeah and this is the experience that they have while participating in this overpriced camp so it's just like it's like anything in life like you're gonna feel conflicted there's nuance and layers to it like if these men feel like that was a worthy investment for them and it changes their life then that's great but you also shouldn't have to spend ten thousand to eighteen thousand dollars to have friends to have friends you can share your feelings with it's just wild that it's like this male loneliness epidemic is such is a result of like how society has viewed manliness for so long and so they're trying to fix the problem with hyper like more

societal manliness yeah when it's like you don't you can't fix a problem by putting more problem onto it you know it's like and it's also really interesting for us to be talking about this when frank is nothing like that yeah and mr liz is nothing like that either mr liz has like lifelong friends that he talks to literally every single day same with frank and it's like i was thinking that when you were when you were talking about like men being so lonely and like Frank is one of the most like in touch with his emotions man men I've ever met and he's able to have those friendships so it's like and that's the same thing with my dad my dad is so in touch with his emotions he's so he doesn't buy into the whole idea of of like manliness you know and has so

many meaningful connections with people so that's what I mean it's like to then throw these people into a place where it's just like manliness in a vacuum when that's been the issue the whole time has been trying to be like as manly and macho as possible like the math isn't mathing I also think something that's super annoying is like when we have conversations like this just kind of observing and discussing um the idea of masculinity and the things that harm men they're like if we were to share the clips of this like or this clip on tiktok there would 100 be men in the comments who would be like well you're not a man so you don't understand yeah and it's like i don't need to be a man to understand that you don't have a space that you deserve to have yeah like absolutely

and to observe it is not to say i like know how to fix it no it's a very human experience yeah and i like i think everyone has felt lonely at least once like lonely or left out and that's a bad feeling and i can't imagine living my life feeling that way yeah um on threads this is so stupid on threads someone like posted it was fucked up they were like and this is why i don't care about the male suicide rate or something like that have you ever seen it like a repost like that yeah they'll be quoting something shitty that a man said um and then a guy like had like replied or re-shared that and he he his take was um just that like toxic masculinity hurts men essentially and the comments under that were just like from other men being

like i hope she sees this oh my god and just calling it performative and white knighting and i know we've talked about that before and it's just like what why and i replied to a guy and i was like your mindset is the thing that contributes to the male suicide rate yeah and then um he essentially proved my point in this conversation he was like yeah i'm depressed and whatever and i was like i know i'm not going to change your mind because i'm just someone on the internet but like how how can you reply to this guy and say like he's performative white knighting and also admit to me that you are depressed and lonely yeah right like he's on your side yeah this guy I was like this guy is literally like trying to have a conversation with other men about

male depression and underdiagnosed depression and men dude this like hyper masculinity is it's a cult it's like you don't think exactly like me you're fucking wrong with so many things like and everything that we've talked about in this episode so far and just the idea like when are we going to learn collectively that like nothing binary is not helpful no binary is harmful yeah like you're here uh miserable and depressed and you're still you're still going to defend this but I guess as with anything psychological people are more likely to choose the thing that is familiar to them than do something new even if that thing new is going to guarantee that they are happier so you know someone like someone's staying at an abusive job because they know how

it works yeah versus being like okay well I I'm too afraid to go to this new job where I don't know anybody and I'd have to relearn everything damn yeah but I would be significantly happier yeah and I mean it's like familiar discomfort is better than unfamiliar discomfort yeah and that's just how people work yeah that's how humans work and that's the whole thing with like people being like well you're a man you don't understand it's like but this is a human experience that we're talking about like it's just it just doesn't need to be the way that it is it's just I think just like the history of how these spaces have been created is the crux it's it's it's the downfall yeah of specifically men but everybody yeah but that was the thing that i wanted to discuss i

wish i had been a little more organized with it um but because i want your editing to be easier oh an easier experience thank you but i just i highly recommend that vice article i think it is so interesting and um there is no conclusion in this episode no it's just kind of more of a discussion of like a discussion and an observation of um the the extreme binary that men experience specifically straight men we would love to hear from y'all too i know we always say this but email us your thoughts on this holy hour podcast at gmail.com i know i said in the beginning but yeah you might have sped through it yeah um i i don't know i just like having discussions and like hearing other people's points of view on these things yeah right so yeah when you read about

it is sad cringe it really is sad cringe that it's it's the perfect example of sad cringe but then i am just hopeful that the men that experience this and view it as a positive experience that like solidified um a community for them like i hope that it continues to create like a positive long-term effect for them but yeah yeah i mean i mean real masculinity is being able to like identify and express your feelings appropriately those are the manliest men i know yeah well and i don't know even like even like the best guy that you know still has a hard time yeah expressing and communicating and identifying their feelings who doesn't it's true honestly oh i mean i like never was taught that so yeah i mean i've been in therapy for like 15 years sometimes but mr lizard

and i talked about this somewhat recently anytime he like comes to me about something that i've done that like bothered him or upset him or whatever I don't respond because I need to like reflect on it yeah because like my immediate feeling is that it hurts my feelings and I'm upset because I feel like I've done something bad yeah you know yeah and that's just kind of like something that I had have I will probably always be working on the rest of my life yeah is like not punishing myself for like making a mistake like a genuine mistake of like i didn't know this was something that hurt your feelings or i didn't know this was something that bothers you yeah and he was like he was like did you do did you hear me and i'm like yeah i just need some time to like reflect

on it you're just because i don't know what to say yeah it's like i don't know what to say and like my entire life up until the last few years has been to be like reactive and angry anytime someone's like hey you hurt my feelings i'd be like well fuck you you deserve to have your feelings hurt yeah essentially more or less um and maybe like try and turn the tables and point the finger back at them right you know yeah we're all all of us are living our lives continuing on our lives undoing the things that we've been taught and i think my bottom line in this whole episode is 75 hours is not going to fix a lifetime of shit it just isn't it just is not i will go out on a limb and say that is an 100 fact 100 of the time it might make you feel

a little bit better yeah but you're not undoing anything maybe there just aren't enough places for men to create communities yeah and then the ones that do have a community like through online means is like through incel forums where they also are hyper focused on women you should just be thinking about what you enjoy doing like yeah focus on like exploring yourself and your hobbies and think about you you know yeah go do ayahuasca in south america sometimes that is the answer go find a shaman throw up in the woods this has been good yeah it was a fun discussion it yeah it was something it was a fun discussion it was just a little sad you know what i mean yeah it's just the reality of this is pretty sad but it's an important discussion it's sad and important

we're not the holy hour anymore we're sad and important we're sad and important and so are you yeah maybe well i hope you're not i hope you're not sad but you are important you're important to us you're all important everyone's important and that's the point of inside out or no inside out um no soul that's the point of soul everyone's important your purpose is to be i just got the chills thinking about that movie i love that movie so much oh i was bawling my eyes out that movie fucked me up all right let's wrap it up okay because my parking is up Should we just sing? Yeah, we should.

Do you want to start? We love you, our children. Wow. We love them all at the same time. Wow, we look coordinated. All right, bye. Thank you.