The Matt Walsh Show - INSANE: Prisoners Are Being Granted WHAT Now!? And MORE

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

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this segment on the show anymore. And the reason is that we decided to make some format changes to the show. It was time for a change. So we've, as you probably noticed, we've got more into longer in-depth analysis of a single topic per show, expanded the range of topics that we cover, doing a lot more cultural analysis. Why do we make that change? Well, because honestly, I was talking about this yesterday. It's like everything is getting very boring. And I felt that about the show as well. I was repeating myself way too much. Even worse, repeating other commentators in the space, not on purpose.

But when you talk about politics and news of the day, every day, you end up inevitably hitting the same subjects and you make a lot of the same points as everybody else. It's just the way it works. And this is the whole problem with the whole space right now, to be honest with you. I think conservative commentary in general has gotten incredibly boring. I'm certainly not the only one that feels that way. I think the audience obviously feels that way because it's the same takes. It's the same arguments, the same points, the same squabbles and feuds over and over again.

It never ends. Just the same thing every day. Teadious. It's very tedious. It's redundant. Like, we get it. We get it. And there's just this total lack of creativity among conservative commentators.

Everyone has basically like three opinions, three to five opinions. that they just repeat over and over and over again. Without finding any kind of newer, entertaining way to deliver the opinion, I mean, it's one thing if you have a few basic ideas or opinions, but you find interesting ways to convey them and to sort of package them.

But you don't find that in conservative media very much. It's just, it's the least creative, least imaginative way of just, here's what I think over and over and over and over again. So now, in my own defense, I've always tried to find creative ways to approach these subjects. That's why I've made two movies. I've done two different series, not to mention books, you know, over the last few years. But the show itself had not changed for like five years.

And you got to keep changing. You got to switch things up. If you don't switch things up. If you don't change, then you just, you shrivel up and die. That's the way. At least that's how it feels to me, you know. So we have switched out how we do things, but we'll still do five headlines, you know, probably once a week as a separate thing.

And that's what we're doing now. Okay, so let's start with Chris Rufo over at the City Journal. He's not a part of the boring right-wing punditry problem because he's been doing great journalism for years. And here it is again. Headline is, watching porn on California's death row under Gavin Newsom, state prisoners are turning taxpayer-funded tablets into personal sex machines. Personal sex machines.

Sounds like the name of a rock band. If rock band still existed. Anyway, under Governor Gavin Newsom, California sought to transform its massive prison system into a Nordic-style rehabilitation program. Newsom has placed a moratorium on all executions, transferred, condemned prisoners to facilities across the state, dismantled San Quentin State Prison's death row, and turn the notorious prison into a therapeutic center with art, classrooms, a cafe, and podcast studios.

Oh my God. Because that's what we need. That's definitely what we need. We're so in need of podcast studios that we have to convert prisons into them. Podcasting feels like a prison sometimes. So maybe it's appropriate. I'm joking.

Not really. As part of this transformation, the Newsom administration approved a $189 million contract to provide new digital tablets, generic flat screen devices in a plastic shell to every inmate in the state prison at no cost to offenders. The administration heralded the effort to replace inmates' old tablets, which were piloted in 2018 and given to nearly all prisoners by 2023. And as the story goes on, which you can go to City Journal and read it, and you should, it goes into a detail about how all these different prisoners are, including prisoners on death row,

even though there really is no death row now in California, are using these tablets, which are given to them. and they are looking at porn. They are, in some cases, able to connect with minors, with children, you know, and groom them. Really horrible stuff. Now, Newsom's office has responded to this, and they put out a statement and said, this is flat out false. This MAGA nonprofit provides zero evidence for its outrageous claims.

There are sources, convicted murderers, and a random guy who doesn't even live in California. Fact. Prison tablets do not provide open Internet access. fact, communications are monitored, recorded, searchable, and investigated. Fact, these tablets are used for education, rehabilitation, family communication, and reentry support, proven to reduce crime, conveniently omitted from this propaganda post. Now, first of all, Rufo was taught as a ton of sources for this. Prisoners and prison officials, people on the record and off the record.

I mean, he covers every base possible when it comes to sources. And it's funny that Newsom says, oh, well, his source. are convicted murderers. Yeah, because they're the ones who have the tablets. And so Rufo spoke to them. In that case, it makes sense to talk to them. But it's funny coming from Newsom, because what he's saying is that, well, they're convicted murderers.

We shouldn't trust them. Well, okay. But if we shouldn't trust convicted murderers, which we shouldn't, then why are you trusting them with a tablet? If convicted murders are so untrustworthy that you cannot believe. what they say about their own tablet usage, then does it not stand to reason that they are not trustworthy enough to have the tablets to use in the first place?

Also, if a prisoner was going to lie about this, wouldn't they lie and say they aren't using the tablets for porn? Why would they lie and say something that is going to result in them getting their tablet taken away? Like, why would a prisoner who is very fastidious and is making sure to not look at any inappropriate content with his tablet and is only using it for education, right? He's learning about American history.

He's watching Prager You videos. Why would a prisoner who's only watching Prager You videos, if you asked him what he's doing with it, why would he say, on the record, with his name attached to it, oh, I'm looking at porn if he's not? So the Nile makes no sense. And it's not even really a denial because the main point is that Newsom is taking millions of dollars from taxpayers to give to tablets to every inmate in California. He doesn't deny that part. That's happening. He just says that the usage is monitored, which even if it is, which it clearly is not, not well enough anyway.

But regardless, it's totally outrageous to give tablets to prisoners anyway, right? To spend taxpayer money, tens of millions of dollars to give tablets to prisoners. I don't care if they're, I don't care what they're, I don't care if they're doing nothing. nothing but playing subway surfer on it or something. I don't care if all they're doing is going to Instagram to find fun new recipes that they can try out in their prison sales, it would still be an outrage that they have tablets. Because here's the thing. Prison is not supposed to be fun. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Prison is supposed to be a painful experience.

The pain is the point. It is the point. If we got to a point where prison is not painful, then it's pointless. It basically doesn't exist. You might as well not have it. And nobody wants to say this for some reason, but pain is the point of a punishment. Of any punishment. I mean, it's the same thing when you punish your children.

Now, hopefully you're not inflicting sadistic pain on your kids because you take pleasure in causing them pain. If you do that, then you're abusive and you should go to prison. where, by the way, you should not have a tablet. And I don't even mean physical pain. I mean even something like you put your two-year-old in timeout for five minutes. Okay? When you put your two-year-old in time-out, that causes him some measure of discomfort. Now, it's not very much.

He'll be fine. It's a very low-stakes situation. But for him as a two-year-old, being in timeout is really horrible. That's why it's a punishment. It causes him a certain small amount of discomfort. And that's the point, right? If it didn't, if it didn't cause him any discomfort at all, then it wouldn't be a punishment. If you're punishing your, and a lot of parents make this mistake, by the way,

punish their kids in a way where their kids go, oh, okay, sure. Like you send them to their room where they have like a TV and a tablet and video games. That's enough out of you, mister. Go hang out in your room and play video games for an hour. and your kid says, oh yeah, sure, great. Oh, awesome. There's no pain there. There's no discomfort. And so, therefore, it's not a punishment.

So that's the whole point. Now, take that logic and apply it to convicted murderers. And, you know, in this case, now their misbehavior is astronomically worse than what your two-year-old would do. And so the discomfort, the pain that they should feel should also be astronomically worse. otherwise it's not a punishment. And not punishing murderers means we don't have justice, which means we don't have a civilization,

which means we should be making prison more painful, not less. We should be coming up with ways to make the whole experience even less comfortable than it already is. That's what we should be doing. And giving them tablets,

I mean, I can certainly see why, even if you gave prisoners tablets and you did lock it down so that they could never access any inappropriate images at all, which again is not what they're actually doing, but even if you could, still, like, having a tablet in prison would, yeah, I mean, that would make the experience so much easier. Now, you still wouldn't want to be there, but being able to get a tablet, that, being able to have a tablet, especially like a tablet, like a tablet full time, whenever you just have it in your prison cell, that's got to improve the prison experience exponentially.

I mean, that is, that is, just being able to distract yourself in that way is that's got to make it so much better. For sure. That's exactly why you shouldn't do it. I mean, you could give them a recliner in their prison cell with like, you know, get them an expensive massage recliner chair in their prison. That'll make the experience so much better. Again, that's why you shouldn't do it because then it's not a punishment. And if you really want to rehabilitate these people, then they need to actually be punished and suffer for what they did. Or there can be no rehabilitation. Also, by the way, if they're on death row and Newsom says, well, we've got to give them the, you know, this helps so that to reduce crime rates so that they can reenter society.

They're on death row. They're never reentering society, I would hope. So that doesn't work either. Okay. Well, I also have to talk about this. I feel almost a moral obligation, which is the UFO files. Time reports, quote, on May 8th, President Donald Trump ordered the release of more than 170 files on a Department of War website. Some dating back to the 1940s, the accounts are made available just as they were originally reported with neither clarification nor explanation by the government.

Some of them are from farmers and other lay folk. Some are from commercial pilots. Some are from Navy pilots who have captured videos. The release is an effort to make good enough promise the president made on April 17, 2026, that those eyewitness accounts would be released soon. A number of UAP accounts had been already widely reported and were even subjects of congressional hearings in 2022 and 23. But the ones just spilled by the Department of War were previously unknown, many going back generations. On August 9th, 1952, for example, on a teletype labeled urgent expressed to then FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, two employees of the DuPont Chemical Plan at Savannah River, South Carolina, reported seeing a blue light with an orange fringe shaped like a saucer. Other incidents were a bit more intimate on September 27, 1952, officers. with the Philadelphia Police Department patrolling in their squad car when they saw an object descending

toward the ground to first appear to be a parachute, but according to the officer's account, decidedly wasn't, measuring about six feet in diameter, it landed in a nearby field. The officers, upon examining it, noted that it gave off a purple glow. The officer summoned to other officers. After looking at the object for some time, the attention to pick it up, the object broke, leaving a slight odorless residue over a period of about 25 minutes, which the officers spent watching the object. It completely disintegrated.

And then there's a whole bunch of other I mean it's a lot of files So you maybe you've seen some of the stuff already But and there were some videos and pictures as well But they're mostly just lights and blurry spots in the sky Basically what you've seen before And that's the thing These UFO files so far from what I've seen

Are mostly stuff you've seen or heard before In some cases they're the exact same I think UFO reports you've heard about But in other cases, it's reports you haven't heard, but they're very similar to ones you have. So it's the same kind of thing. And anyone who was hoping for video, you know, of actual aliens, like anyone who was hoping for a video of an actual alien climbing out of a spaceship and then, I don't know, Will Smith punching them and saying, welcome to Earth. If you were hoping for that, you were disappointed. And I was hoping for that.

I got to be honest. I mean, I didn't think we'd get it. I had no confidence that that would happen, but I hope for it. I wish. I wished we would get something like that, and we didn't. So the whole thing has been a total letdown. And I say that as someone who wants to believe, you know that about me, I want to believe that these UFO sightings are real. I cannot wrap my head around the people who say that they don't care at all about this, even if they are aliens. I mean, it's one thing to say that, you know, you don't buy any of the UFO sightings or you think the files are, you know, dumb or whatever. so you're doubting the legitimacy of it. But that's one thing. Okay, fine. But the people who take the position, a lot of people do, that, like, even if this is real, I still don't care.

Someone said that to me the other day. They said, well, you know, why does it matter if there are aliens? Who cares? Well, who cares? I mean, what? Like, you don't have to believe that aliens have visited Earth, but you're brain dead. If you can't at least admit that it would be incredible and endlessly fascinating if they did. advanced beings a whole new species from another planet

and another solar system from a civilization we don't know about an entire history that we've never heard about if that were to come in contact with us that wouldn't interest you? You would find that boring? Well, then you're just empty inside. I mean, what do you find interesting? Right?

What does excite you? The next Avengers movie? Is that what gets you all jazzed up? the next Avengers movie, if there was a choice between going to watch the next Avengers movie in theaters or going to the site of where it actual UFO just landed and aliens are going to get out of the

spaceship, like, which one would you choose? And here's the thing, I think a lot of people would choose the Avengers movie. They would rather see, I mean, really, they would rather go to a movie and see aliens in a spaceship and like Iron Man fighting them or something than see actual aliens. They're more interested in the Hollywood slop than the reality, which I find, I just can't understand.

Now, that said, I have to admit that it pains me to say it. It grieves me. I must say with a heavy heart that I am, a heartbroken, really, that I am increasingly persuaded that perhaps, perhaps aliens have never actually been to Earth. I still believe they exist for sure. Absolutely, I believe that. But have they been here? I'm, my faith is wavering in that, in that, in that, you know, I've never seen any evidence that's really all that compelling. And I'm, and I'm not even objective.

Like, I'm saying, I'm saying this is someone who's not objective. Anytime someone has what they claim is proof of aliens visiting Earth, I look at that wanting to believe it, totally biased in your favor. When you come to me with a video of a UFO, I am completely biased in your favor. I want to believe. I am not an objective observer at all. And yet, even I, I look at it and I go, okay, I mean, this again, like, come on, can you get, it's always just, it's always just, it's always just, every video. It's like a light, it's a blur, it's some weird blur and a sky, and it's moving all around. And they're always just like whipping up and back and forth, up and down, all around and disappearing. And sure, that defies the known technical abilities of earthly aircraft.

I get that. But also, why would an alien even be doing that? You know, it kind of cuts both ways because when you look at these videos and they say, oh, well, you see this object. It's like, you can never really, I don't, I'm sure if I see an object. I see a, I guess, I mean, I see a light. I don't know. Like, maybe it's a physical object.

It's hard to tell. but I see some, you know, there's, there's, I see movement. I certainly see that. Okay. And then they go, well, this is, no earthly craft can move this way. So it must be somewhat a space alien from another solar system. But why would they be doing that? Why would they, what are they drunk?

Are these like alien teenagers doing the equivalent of donuts in the parking lot? Are we a giant parking lot? Is that how the rest of the galaxy sees us? Is that all we are is basically an empty parking lot? That alien teenagers, they just come here to kind of mess around and then they leave and their alien parents get mad at them. Their alien parents call them and say, where are you? It's 11 o'clock at night.

Your curfew is 10. And they make up some excuse. And then the alien parent is like, you're on earth again, aren't you? Mr. come back here this instant. you have five seconds to get back here, 10 trillion miles. Is that what this is? I don't know, because it doesn't make any sense to me. Why would they travel 90 trillion miles just to do some wheelies in the sky and then turn around and go home?

What are they doing? They're not observing anything. They're like doing this and up and down. What is the point of that? The other problem is that there are so many of these strange sightings. I actually think the volume works against the alien theory because look at it this way. You take one of these videos of reports. some strange object twirling around in the sky, behaving in ways that seem to defy our technological

ability, okay, well, if there is an earthly explanation for any one of those, then there's an earthly explanation for all of them, right? Like, if there's an earthbound reason why you might see strange objects whipping around in the sky, then that reason or something like it probably applies to all, or at least the vast majority of those objects. And I would think that there probably is an earthly explanation because if there isn't, if there's no way to explain it but aliens, then that would mean what, that we've actually been visited by aliens like hundreds of times in the last 60 years alone. Aliens are coming here all the time. I guess that's what it, you know, at first you would see an alien sighting or you'd see a video every once in a while.

And then when this really caught on, now you're just seeing them 10 of them a day. And then they put out these files and it's like there's thousands. So what are we supposed to believe that aliens are just, I mean, Earth is a tourist destination for aliens? And if that were true, then we should have a lot more evidence. I mean, if they're coming here that often, if they're here all the time, then shouldn't we at this point have seen some better, shouldn't there be a better picture by now, something, anything? I mean, if Earth, is like the, I don't know, the Cancun of the universe, sort of a tourist destination with a couple of nice spots, but the rest of it is pretty shit. It's like you go, you know, you go to Cancun.

It's like, here's the little strip of land where you can hang out, but don't go anywhere. You don't want to be anywhere else. Just there. That's it. And then leave. And is that what it is with Earth? They just come here on a sightseeing thing and then they leave immediately because they don't want to hang around. I get it. I mean, I would understand that. I'd feel that way too. So I don't know. I'm forced to concede finally that aliens probably haven't been to Earth. Though again, I still believe they exist.

Absolutely. Of that, I am confident. I don't know if they've been here. And now, with my luck, we're going to get a full-on alien video like tomorrow. Now that I've said this, now, now, 24 hours later, we're going to get a, now a UFO is going to land on my yard tomorrow because now I've said this. And can I just say, if that were to happen, I still get to say I told you so. So I'm kind of retreating a little bit, but I still think, I think I get time served on this

because I've been a UFO believer for so long that if it does end up being real, that I still, I think I still get credit for that. Can we disagree on that? So if we do get evidence tomorrow or next week or even next month, I am going to come on here and say, I told you so. And I think you all should be cool about it. And what you shouldn't do is say, well, actually, you should. said on May 14th at this timestamp that you don't believe it anymore. Like, don't do that.

Just be cool about it. Just be cool. Let me have my moment. Okay. I've, you know, I'm, whatever. I'm playing both sides of the fence now on this thing. That's, I guess that's what it's going to be. So just, you know, anyway, supposedly there are more files coming out. I've heard that the really crazy stuff is still coming. That's what they're saying on social media. That's probably not true. never true, actually. Here's a general rule of thumb that I think holds true in like 100% of cases. I think at 100% of cases it holds true that if somebody is releasing something, some kind of information, whether it's a government entity or a journalist or an influence or whoever, the craziest stuff is never coming later. They say that it is. It never is.

It never, ever is. Whatever they drop initially is the best they got. That's as good as it's to get is whatever they first tell you about. And then they'll always try to string you along and say, oh, the real, hang on, hang on, the real stuff is coming. Oh, if you think this is crazy, it gets so much crazier. That's never true. Because if it does get crazier, why would you not have just told it? Like, if you have video of an actual alien, you know, greeting the Pope or something, you probably would lead with that. You wouldn't put out a week's worth of blurry stuff in sky and then say, oh, hey, by the way, we actually also have this. And a corollary to that, by the way, is that any time the release of files or a story or news of any kind is hyped up

ahead of time, anytime, anytime, anytime you hear ahead of time about some big news, some big thing that's dropping, whether it's from the government or a journalist or an influencer or on Twitter or anyone else, anytime they hype it up ahead of time, it's going to be a letdown. Always, always, every time. Because if you have an actual bombshell, you would just put it out.

If you have a bombshell, you would just drop it. You don't need a marketing campaign. You don't need a release strategy like you're a movie studio. If you have the thing, if you have a bombshell, if you have something huge, you would just release it. And then we would all see it and we would go, wow, that's huge. You don't need to hype it up. And, you know, I said at the beginning how conservative media in general is getting so boring and repetitive.

And this is part of it. You've got these people. I mean, it's like the slop posters on X and everywhere, YouTube that are breaking news. This, oh, this is the biggest thing. Oh, you're never going to believe. This is the biggest. This changes everything. And it's always just, yeah, I've already heard that.

It's just stuff. he has people that post breaking news They've never broke any news You understand that so many people And they make a lot of money now That post breaking news But have never actually broke any news They've posted a thousand times

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. All right. Finally, headline here, probably the most important, hacky sack mounts a comeback with Gen Z. A couple weeks ago, a gaggle of freshmen at McCallum High School in Austin, Texas.

This is from Seattle Times, pulled out a pouch the size of a Clementine and began battling it back and forth between their feet. Took a minute for me to realize, wait, this is a hacky sack. Said Sandra Primo, 56, a teacher at McCallum. Haven't seen one of those in a while. Young customers that played against sports in Concord, California have been clearing the shelves of suede paneled sandmasters and multicolored Buda bags for at least a month, said Billy Ball, 46. a sales associate. He works at at Play at

Against Sports. His name is Billy Ball. Really? I mean, you couldn't ask for a better name. You couldn't ask

for a better name. I guess if your name is Billy Ball, you have to work at Played in Sports. Or be like a little league coach or something.

You got to be in sports in some capacity with a name like that. Anyway. So Hackusack's making a comeback. That's the story. I don't think I need to read it. And I think it's

Great. You know, I was never much of a hacky sacker myself, but it's good to see it make a comeback. And I got kind of annoyed when I was first reading this article because it was a bunch of Gen Xers who were reminiscing. A bunch of Gen Xers were saying, oh, man, I haven't seen those in a while. Hackey sack was not a Gen X thing. It was a millennial thing. And I get really tired of Gen X constantly trying to attach themselves like barnacles to our stuff. I get tired of these Gen Xers with their inferiority complex, which is well deserved because they are inferior. I mean, their generation is in terms of like the culture. They just attach themselves to our. They're just, you know, Gen Xers are mad because the 90s belong to millennials because it was our coming of age decade.

You know, it's the decade you count came of age, and that's kind of your decade. And Jet Excer came of age in the 80s with, like, crack and AIDS and Boy George. That's what the 80s are known for. Is AIDS and crack and boy George. That's like those are the main things from the 80s. And they're so embarrassed that they try to glom on to millennial stuff. That's why whenever we're talking about the 90s, you know, a bunch of millennials are together talking about the 90s. because what else are we going to talk about?

A Gen Xer will show up and go, oh yeah, I remember Nickelodeon. It's like, okay. Oh, cool. Anyway. Oh, cool. Oh, you do? Yeah.

Anyway, Gramps. Now, all that to say, I think it's generally cool when 90s stuff makes a resurgence like this. And in the 90s, we had a ton of random little trinkets and toys and things. We had hacky sacks. We had the little finger skateboard things.

We had tomagotchis and we had Gack, which was basically like a ball of mucus that sounded like farts. Smelled like a two, actually. And it was a thing, you know, and they had commercials for it. Back of the 90s they had commercial. They sold a ball of mucus and there were like tons of commercials. They were making so much money on the GAC. And I don't know, you were a kid. You saw a commercial for GAC and you just said, what do you do with Gat and nothing?

You don't do anything with it. You just have it. You just have it. And then you lose it under the couch. And then three and a half months later, your mom pulls it out from under the catch. It's covered in like cat hair. You know, and then she throws it away. And then you ask her to buy you some new Gack.

And she says, no, I'm not going to buy it anymore because you lose it under the couch every time. That's the experience we all had. Anyway, Gack, you know, yo-yo's. You bring a yo-yo to school. I'm not saying we invented yo-yo's, but it was a thing in the 90s. It was a big thing for a while where we had yo-yos who brought him to school. You carry around in your pocket, your yo-yo, you always made sure you had it on you. You go up to a group of people in the hallway at school and you'd say, hey, I can walk the dog, watch this.

And they would say, oh, you're a dork, leave us alone. It was awesome, you know. But here's the issue, though. The resurgence of the 90s, 90s trends, 90s toys, 90s fashion, and there's a lot of that happening now. And all of that is kind of cool if you were a 90s kid and now you're old as hell like me. So you see that and there's part of you that feels nostalgic for it. And so it's kind of cool. But it's also a sign of something deeply wrong.

You know, the kids today have to go back and resurrect trends and fashions and toys from the 90s because they don't have any of their own. Like that's the problem. Every decade in modern American history can be identified and defined. you know, in certain ways by its own style, its own fads, its own trends, its own approach to music and film and fashion, its own aesthetic, right? And it's so, it's very vivid, it's very clear. And it's so vivid that if I were to say to you, oh, I'm throwing a 90s party, which I would never do, not exactly the guy that throws themed parties. But if I were, if I were to throw a 90s party or a 70s party, you know, and I said, hey, come over, you would know exactly what to wear.

You would know exactly what kind of music is going to be played. You would know what kind of food will be served. You would just, you know how it's going to be decorated. You know what the vibe is going to be. You know what kind of party favors I might be handing out, right? If I'm going all the way. If it's an 80s party, I'd be handing out like crack rocks and that sort of thing. But that seems to have stopped around 2010, almost exactly.

The 2010s don't really have their own unique feel, even in retrospect. The 2020s certainly don't. We're more than halfway through the decade. What are the movies? What are the movies? What's the music? What's the style, the trends that this decade will be remembered for? Or the previous decade.

If I were to throw a 2010s party, if I said I'm throwing a big party, it's themed, it's a throwback, it's a 2010s party. Make sure you're dressed up like you're from the 2010s, right, to get ready to listen to some 2010s music. What are you supposed to wear to that party? Maybe skinny jeans you would know, but that's like what else? What kind of music are we going to play? What's the vibe? For you to walk into a room and it's all 2010s, what's the 2010s vibe? We all know exactly what the 80s vibe is, what the 90s vibe is.

You walk into a room and if it's that vibe, you immediately get it right away. 70s, 60s, you immediately know. 50s, 40s even. You immediately know. But what's the vibe of the 2010s or the 2020s? I'm throwing a 2020. 10 years now, I'm throwing a 2020s party. What are you going to wear to that?

A COVID mask? I mean, what is the defining thing of this decade? It kind of feels like we fell into some kind of cultural black hole about 15 years ago. And, you know, I was talking about this on X today. There's people that were trying to argue the opposite. And somebody was saying, oh, no, the 2010s. Oh, the 2020s, it's defined by, you know, female pop artists. This is exactly what I mean.

I mean, female pop artists, we've had female pop artists for decades, and the female pop artists of 30 years ago were far more iconic, ubiquitous, distinct, than the ones today. Like the female pop artists of 30 years ago or 40 years ago, they take Madonna, or go to the late 90s, Britney Spears or something, right? But they were, like, even if you didn't like the music, you knew who those people were and you knew at least some of their songs. Maybe not by heart, but like you knew, you can probably name a couple of songs at least.

Even if you didn't want to. It's just they were, they dominated the culture that way. They were a part of the shared culture. But these days, who is that? Like, I don't even, Sabrina Carpenter.

Like, I know her name. I wouldn't, I couldn't tell you one song of hers. I couldn't tell you one. And I know you would say, well, it's because you're old. But yeah, if you were 40 in 1998, you and someone asked you to name like a Madonna song,

you'd be able to do it. Even though you're old and you don't listen to that music, you'd be able to name a song or two because it's part of the culture. It defines the culture. And my point is that that doesn't exist anymore. And we've talked about this a lot about the death of the monoculture,

the advent of the kind of fractured atomized culture, which is a non-culture, is an anti-culture. And I've pointed at 2007 as the peak of the monoculture, and it's death happening right around that time thanks to the advent of the iPhone. And I think that's kind of true, but I've been thinking about it more.

I think it could be a little bit more specific. And I think, and I have to consider this a little bit more. But I think everyone comes up with their diagnosis, what is it that killed the culture? Why do we live now in this sort of non-culture? And a lot of people point to political things. They say, oh, the wokeness or things like mass migration. Certainly, those all play a part, for sure, no question about it.

But I think there's something that happened in 2009. There's a reason why the 2000s, the early 2000s, the aughts, feel like the last decade in some ways. That's what we're kind of experiencing now, because decades don't really exist anymore. decades are kind of I mean they're a human construction anyway really and there's just how we sort of organize time in our minds and and it's just it doesn't exist I mean they exist on the calendar but it doesn't really exist as distinct eras anymore they're just kind of like they just bleed into one another and it doesn't mean anything and I think there's a reason why that stopped right at 2010 about because in 2009 you had something distinct happened it was the advent basically of the

You know, algorithms prior to 2009 were working behind the scenes with social media since the beginning. The social media existed pretty much all throughout the early 2000s. But, you know, then iPhones came along in 2007. You could bring social media with you everywhere you went with a smartphone. But it was really until 2009. 2009, your feed, Facebook was the first to do this, where your Facebook feed, but by far the dominant social media platform at the time, became now personalized and algorithm driven.

And before that, on social media, whether you're on Facebook or going back to MySpace days, right, your social media feed was just a chronological list of people, of your friends, most of whom you know personally, or people you've chosen to follow. It's just a chronological list of everything they, saying. And if that's all it is, then it just, it, you know, really becomes a way for culture to spread and for people interact with each other. But in 2009, it's switched to, it's driven by

the algorithm. It doesn't really matter what your friends and people you know are posting. It doesn't really matter. The chronology doesn't matter. The algorithm is going to decide, based on what it perceives your interest to be and your personal preferences, it's going to decide what you have access to and what you see. And pretty soon after that, you know, Twitter followed suit and Instagram and all the social media companies and now everything is controlled by the algorithm. And I think that if I were to point to one thing, it would be that. And we now have a culture defined entirely by algorithms. That's, that is the issue, really, more than anything else. I mean, there's a lot of other factors that play into it. But I really do think if I had to

point to one thing, it's probably that. But that's maybe a topic that deserves a deeper dive. And maybe we'll do that soon. I don't really know how to end this now because it's not really a show. So see you later.