The Josh Innes Show - Delusional Confidence

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

The University of Missouri conducted a study that discovered "delusional confidence" among young adult.s This is not shocking. I find young people to be annoyingly delusional. I wish I could be like them. It must be nice to have this overinflated sense of worth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. All right, here's a headline for you. Mizzou students research discovers delusional confidence among young adults. Well, I'm glad that we finally have some data. I haven't read the story yet. I like to read these stories with you. So we experience them together. But one, I'm glad there's maybe going to be some data here that actually points to something that I've been saying for a long time, which is these people in this of this generation, the the youth, the young adults that these people have

way too much confidence, but also too much self-importance. Not even self-esteem. Self-esteem is healthy. Confidence is healthy. Those are all things you need to have, right? You need to have some level of arrogance, but you also know how to temper it back, you know? Like, the thing is, like, even when I've been super confident about things a Lot of that's just a facade right? That's kind of a show like on the radio You put up this kind of like super confident front because when you turn a microphone on you gain confidence It's a weird thing man. When you turn on a microphone and you know that it's live and

Boom, let's go something kind of takes over because instinctually, you know you need to do something that people are going to find entertaining. Whether that's just taking what you do and ramping it up 15, 20, 25, 30, 50%, whatever or not, I don't know, that's kind of what I do. Like when I get on the air,

I don't turn on a microphone and just go, watch, I'm gonna fuck shit up today.'t turn on a microphone and just go, watch, I'm gonna fuck shit up today. I turn on a microphone and it truly is like something goes off. Like when Stallone would turn his hat around and over the top, like that's how it feels when I get in front of a live microphone. It's different even for a podcast.

Like as I sit here in my room, there is a net. If I think the podcast sucks, I don't have to post it. If I do a show on this podcast that I go, that might be a little over the top, I don't have to air it or I don't have to post it. When you're on the air, it is you and potentially hundreds of thousands of people and you have to find a way to entertain them. You have to find a way to keep them engaged and for whatever reason when the mic goes on. Now,

you could argue I'm not funny. You could argue that I'm not entertaining. That's fine too. But the second the light goes on, it's just like something clicks and you go from being normal, mild mannered doofus in the office to boom, let's go. Stallone over the top. I tear my hair, I flip this way. Like that's truly what it is like. But then you get me off the air and it's like I have a level of confidence, like I know I'm good at this stuff, I wouldn't have gotten the jobs I've gotten had I not been good at it, but I'm also neurotic and I'm also a head case like everybody is. But what I've

learned is that when I see like, I almost say delusional is the word I'd use. I think the youth of today are not necessarily super confident. They are kind of ill informed as to how the world works and they are delusional. I think delusional is the best word to use to describe the younger generation in this country, which is wild because this is the generation that's grown up with social media and they see the hate and they deal with it yet they are delusional. I work in an industry where the people the young people

particularly are delusional alright but I want to read this study so this is a study from Missouri the University of Missouri. Missouri students research discovers delusional confidence among young adults. Let's break this one down after these words from whoever these words are from. All right, it's the playoffs, basketball playoffs right now and there is no better way to try to make a couple of bucks by putting your knowledge of hoops to the test than using pick six from DraftKings. You can turn that

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terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos. All right, here we go. Missouri, I love the start of this story. These local news channels are the greatest. It just says, this comes to us from Missouri, Missouri. I don't think that's where it's coming from. Maybe Columbia, Missouri. A group of University of Missouri journalism seniors has spent their final semester tackling a big question. What does success look like to young adults today? Their capstone study concluded that adults between the ages of

18 to 24, a group they call Yaya, the youth and young adults, are quote, delusionally confident about achieving their goals. And that's the thing, man, like, and this is why I don't want to be a parent, although maybe I'd be a great parent. Because I think you need to tell your kids that they can accomplish a lot of shit, but not everything is something they can truly accomplish and that's okay, right? It's like if you're 5'4", you're probably not going to play in the NBA.

There are exceptions, but you're probably not going to play in the NBA if you are 5' but you're probably not going to play in the NBA if you are five foot four. So maybe adjust your dreams. Like it is okay to tell young people to have big goals and have lofty expectations, but once you're kind of in your mid teens, you kind of get an idea of what somebody is or isn't. Like if you're eight years old and you want to tell your kid that, hey, you want to dream big and play a major league baseball, that's cool. There's no sense on shitting on kids at an early age, right? Like you want to dream big and play Major League Baseball? That's cool. There's no sense on shitting on kids at an early age, right? Like you want to

try to keep them grounded in some level of reality, right? But you don't want to like completely destroy them either. You want them to be little. You want them to be kids. I think nowadays what we're doing is we're really taking away the opportunity for kids to be kids because they're all over the fucking internet. They're all like forced to watch their parents be fucking lunatics about politics. You got some parents that are like, hey, my kid can be a boy, my kid can be a girl, it doesn't fucking matter. Like just let your

kids be kids, keep them out of the politics shit, keep them off the internet as long as you possibly fucking can, let them watch Bluey. I would tell you to let them watch, you know, Sesame Street, but Trump's about to take that shit away from you so can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? No because it's been bombed like that neighborhood in Philadelphia back in the 80s like Trump's like throwing a fucking bomb on Sesame Street so don't watch Sesame Street and in fairness Sesame Street is boring as shit anyway so let's not waste our time watching that go watch some fucking He-Man or some shit and then and enjoy being a child eat some shitty food when you're a kid

It's okay when your kid goes to fucking Chick-fil-A Don't make them get the fucking milk and the apples at the Chick-fil-A Let them have some goddamn french fries and some nuggets and a good fucking soda pop Just don't let them do too much of it, you know, let kids be kids But anyway, that is a different discussion for a different day kids be kids. But anyway, that is a different discussion for a different day. This is about the delusional confidence that comes from people of the, as this Missouri study is calling them, the yayas, the youth and young adults. So they are delusionally

confident about achieving their goals. Let's see what that means. We continue. Five on your side spoke with a few of the team members. Haley Gabauer, the 21-year-old media planner, Abigail Kleptos, Klepotokasas, I think she's Greek, Katsopoulos, Jesse Katsopoulos, the 22-year-old account manager, and Cynthia Martinez Serna, the 22-year-old quantitative strategist. Together, they have spent months defining success through the lens of their generation. The team based their study on

the foundation that success is an internal feeling that people have. They then conducted a survey and separated the results into three categories, financial success, career success, and personal success. We asked, what are the following factors that are the most important to your success, and those were the three that came up really high. All of them came out really high actually, but those were the ones that we wanted to focus on. We had other research to also back it up and give it a full scope. Their findings were based on 800 survey responses and 20 interviews

of focus groups. A central conclusion, ya-yas tend to believe in achieving success overnight, a timeline that's wildly different from the decades-long journey previous generations experienced. That makes sense. People want it now, but we're in a want-it-now generation, right? Like we've talked about that on the podcast a lot. Like, you know, you have access to everything now. There's no excuse for you to be stupid because you can open up your phone and find every piece of data,

every piece of information you could possibly ever want. That like everything you want something, you want food, you get it right now. You call Grubhub, you call Postmates, whatever, right? Do you need something from Amazon? It call Grubhub, you call Postmates, whatever, right? Do you need a, you need something from Amazon? It'll be here by the afternoon. I think that's kind of how the world works now. People want things and they want them fast and then they see other people getting them fast because they can see it all over the internet and they think they're failing if they're

not. The climb is part of the fun kids, not to go too deep on it, but like I give my left nut and I granted this is easy to say as you sit here in your underwear doing a podcast when you're 38 years old soon to be 39 years old, but I was thinking about this today. I don't know why. Oh, I was walking down the street and I saw a sign in the neighborhood that says congratulations to Brooke Kirkwood High School class of 2025 and I go, holy shit I graduated 20 years ago from high school, 20 years ago and 18 year old me in high

school who was you know doing some you know some radio shit you know my dad was in it and I was doing some hockey play by playing some baseball play by play but everything was out in front of me and I know it's easy to say now but the climb and getting these jobs is the fun. I honestly think that's why I run myself out of jobs because I enjoy coming back. I don't know if other people have that and I think I get that from my dad and I'll explain. So my dad loves to build shit and then never use it and I almost think he likes to lose shit just so he can get it back. An example. So we had our house in in Port Allen, Louisiana when I was a kid. We lived in two

different houses when I was growing up over there. One was this kind of like already built house that we had moved into when I first moved across the river because I lived like about a year with my dad in East Baton Rouge Parish which is Baton Rouge. You cross the bridge West Baton Rouge Parish that's like that would be like Port Allen and Brutely right. I went to Brutely High School but I lived in Port Allen that's where my address was. So we are we're in this house nice little house it's fine. About a year or two later, dad builds a giant house on the corner in this brand new subdivision that is right around the corner, like a block over.

It was called Brittany Estates is what it was called. Big fucking house, man. And like a mansion, it's a one story house. It's not like it was, you know, huge. He ended up building an extra room onto it at one point. It was a cool place, big house. It's not like it was a fucking mansion, right? But it was a nice house. I gotta see what the square footage was, but it wasn't a mansion.

So his goal was to put a pool and a deck and have all this awesome shit. So over the course of however much time it took, dad and all these people went out and they built this fucking brand new deck. A big awesome deck in the backyard so fucking cool swimming pool all this shit it was this oasis there was a hot tub there was a swimming pool there was a deck outside it was it like I'd give my left nut to have that set up right now as an adult as a kid you don't truly appreciate a good deck as an adult you're like fuck man I'd love to have nice deck. I would love to just be able to go outside and just have a couple of smokers out there, have a built-in fucking

grill, like a built-in cooking area and just go, you know? But dad had that when I was a kid. I didn't really think much of it. We swam a lot, but you know, whatever. So he eventually added a pool in there. He eventually had the deck and it was all great. Never once have I seen my dad in the pool and never once did I really see him on the deck. He built shit and then never used it and then eventually when he got divorced they moved out of that house and he just went to another house a couple of blocks over to live for a while and I think he enjoys that in a weird way. Like I think he likes going well this house now needs a deck so let me build a deck. So he built a brand new deck on the back of that house that he had.

This new house. Didn't put a pool in but he put a deck in. And it's just fascinating because I think that's what he enjoys. I think he enjoys the build and then the maintaining part of it. He's kind of like, whatever, didn't even like to use it. And maybe that's where I get that from. Now he has another house in Prairieville, Louisiana where he lives now. It's got a nice outdoor patio. It's got a built-in fucking grill for the outside into the, like a, you know, like an outdoor kitchen. It's got a nice little swimming pool. Never once, and my dad's lived there for a decade. I've never once seen my dad in the pool and I've never once seen him use the grill. His wife will use the grill, he won't. It just fascinates me, right? Like my dad loves to build shit, loves to put it together

and then just doesn't maintain well and that's kind of how I am in life. Like I get a job and then all of a sudden I'm like, hey I kind of want to try something new and just build it up again. I'm a great climber. I'm not a great stayer. And that's something I need to work on as a human. Anyway, none of that really matters. What matters in all of this, I think people like the youth are like that. Like they see the people online, they want instant success. But the climb is part of the excitement, right? Like that Miley Cyrus song, the climb, I can almost see it, that dream I'm dreaming. Like this is a weird example, but it's like the concept of like, I like, if I'm going to do something on like Madden, I want to start with the worst team and build it. Or back when I used to play NCAA, I wanted to start with, you know, Troy and see if I can eventually get a job at Florida, right? These people just want the job in Florida. The climb is so fun and if I could go back to it and do all of that shit again, I would do it in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat,

I would go out there having to drive the radio station Hummer to high school football games or calling a high school football game on a Friday night or like, holy shit, I just got offered a job in fucking Houston. Or like, I wish I could experience all those things again because I'm jaded now but back then it was so cool and I like I want the climb because you want to have the story the story is in the climb and a lot of these people don't really get that. The word delusional has a rather negative connotation for older generations and we totally understand that for our life stages and Let's see and we totally understand that for our life stages and the survey respondents and the

Qualitative it's not offensive the word delulu is like very common and social me. I can't read this story anymore These people are hard to read but the point being in all of this is they are. I work in radio. You wanna know who the delusional people are? These young people that don't realize that you're not really a big celebrity if you're on the radio. Like you are if you're Bobby Bones,

but you're not really if you're like the local person on the radio, like cool, it's neat to say you're on the radio. It used to kind of get you laid, not me, but it used to kind of get you laid, it me, but it used to kind of get you laid, it gets you into concerts. Like being on the radio is a cool thing, but it's not this huge deal. These people that are in radio in this era are truly delusional people because they think they're more important than they are. Maybe I'm the unique case here, but I know I'm not that important. In

fact, I'll tell you so often that I'm not important that I'll probably cost myself jobs doing it. But like these people think they're super important and think they're fucking changing the world and they all like when some big political things happening they all want to go on their little top 40 pop show and say something with a message and their bosses are like shut the fuck up and play Sabrina Carpenter. No one gives a fuck about you or your stupid political messages. But that's how these people are. They're super delusional. I saw some, there's some guy, a radio dude, not even a big time radio dude. And I and Jilly showed me that he posted a graphic on his Instagram to let everyone know that he and his wife are getting divorced and they really want some privacy

during this time. Of course, they posted about it on social media to get all the clicks, but we're going through a divorce right now. I'm like, dude, you're a local fucking disc jockey. No one gives a fuck if you're getting divorced, but these people are delusional. And like, so when I read that headline and it says people of this era are more delusional when it comes to their confidence, absolutely they are. And there was a time that I was, let me tell you the dumbest thing I've ever said and thought. I was a freshman in high school and we were at basketball practice and coach has everybody in the room, the JV, seniors, whatever, everybody, the varsity.

Sitting in this room and coach passes out a sheet of paper and it's got some questions like what's your name whatever and what are your goals for this season now realistic me now could tell you like what my goals are like if i got that job at 97.5 and somebody was like what is your realistic goal like delusional guy would go well we gotta be number one well realistic guy would say they have an 18 you guys have a three let's try to get to a 7 share here and then we'll go from there. But 14, 15 year old Josh sitting in this room, mind you, it's like 500, 8 foot tall black dudes. Me and a couple of my white buddies. I'm this kind of, at the time, really skinny because I lost a bunch of weight because I choked on a piece of steak and didn't eat for a couple months.

Great diet plan, better than Manjaro. I look like Karen Carpenter, but it worked out for a while. But anyway, we're in there. And like it almost instantly you got to practice and realize I have no fucking chance to be good at this. But I had played at the Knights of Columbus and the Knights of Columbus League where me and my buddy played. And we both average like 18 points a game played in the Knights of Columbus and it's like, yeah, it's a bunch of dipshit. So that's like we had a little skill. The rest of these people had no skill. Like it was such a janky thing that our basketball coach wouldn't let his son play in the

Knights of Columbus because he was that much better than everyone. He thought it'd make his game worse. Anywho. So I grabbed this piece of paper. I'm like, I'm gonna average a double double 10 points, 12 rebounds, you know hits or whatever and like I wish I still had that somewhere because you're like Jesus Christ You fucking putt you don't know what you don't know and that's something that Barry Warner used to tell me all the time You don't know what you don't know and I wish I would have listened to some of that a little bit more like I've had A nice run and I've done cool shit and my life has been pretty cool. I've made a lot of money, I've lost a lot of money.

Like I've done some cool shit. But when there's someone offering you advice that's been there, done that, listen to it a little bit more. And it's hard when you're in it, man. It's hard when you've convinced yourself that this is a bad situation or that's a better situation. It's tough, but that kind of goes to being delusional

and being overly confident. I just think these people have an overinflated sense of self-worth and I think the internet has given them that because you say like what you had for breakfast and you get 10 likes and you're like people care what I have to say. Back in the day you really had to make someone like write you a letter to really know that people thought what you were doing really mattered. Now you can get instant gratification and you feel like you're much bigger and badder than you actually are. It would actually help people to be humbled a little bit. Like I've been humbled in my life, you know, like I like I think people like I read comments sometimes and I'll see like someone will post about hey, why not Josh Ennis in Philadelphia? Oh, that arrogant son of a bitch.

I'm actually like the least arrogant guy ever. But when I'm backed up against a wall, like my arrogance will come out like it's a weird phenomenon. Like I don't sit around every day saying I'm badass, but then I'll hear some shitty disc jockey on the radio. Like I'll listen to KC 95 and they've hired this guy who's an okay disc jockey to do my job, but he barely even talks, and the traffic guy talks more than this guy. And I'm like, why the fuck did you hire this

guy? You had me, I'm a fucking stud. Like it's only when it's me versus someone else will I allow my arrogance to be like, see? Most of the time I just think I'm a putz. But if I start hearing people, I'm like, I should be doing this because I could do this fucking job better than they are. That's when the juice comes out. But these kids in this era, they're just all super confident and all super delusional and it's actually annoying. Like you want them to be humbled, like you need to fail, but then they fail and somehow like they don't view it as a failure. It's such a weird phenomenon. Anyway, more to come.