TRIGGERnometry - Bridget Phetasy - The Fightback Against Wokeness Has Started

Episode Date: December 20, 2020

Bridget Phetasy is an American writer, comedian and broadcaster. Check out her show Dumpster Fire with Bridget Phetasy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FfQPIBn8lU&feature=youtu.be Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. And a brilliant guest we have for you today. She's a comedian and writer Bridget Fettocy. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. I feel like Brilliant is overselling me a little bit though. So thank you. Yeah. And the way you said excited was very emotionless as well. You were like very excited. Because I was still stumbling around. in my head. I'm like, brilliant. I feel like everybody's going to really be disappointed. It's the instant insecurity. Well, let's make sure that happens, shall we, Bridget. But listen,

you are fascinating. And, you know, we've obviously, we know we have a lot of mutual friends. We've seen some of the interviews you've done in the past. And I get the sense and correct me, if I'm wrong, that you're sort of a little bit like us and that you're stuck between two sides. You're not quite entirely sure where you are. Both sides occasionally go off the deep end. and then when you criticize the side that has gone off the deep end, all the people who thought you were on their side have a go at you. Like what's 2020 been like for you with being in that position? It's been that way for the past four years.

And 2020 was heightened, although in many ways it was easier because I had this four years to really get comfortable in that position. And at first I wasn't at all. And I don't know exactly what your experience has been, but you, if you come from the left, you kind of swing out. And then suddenly you're talking to all these people on the right wing. And now you're branded as just another reactionary liberal who got red-pilled. And then you're doing the circuit on the right. And they're like, yay, you know, one of us, one of us. And you're realizing that you're not exactly one of, one of, one of, of that tribe either. And I think just finding my own voice and way into asking myself the questions of what are my values, there are certain things that I share that I thought were perhaps more liberal values. And I think they certainly are. But they might not be shared by my peers or by the far left anymore in the way that they were when I was growing up.

And they, whether I consider myself still a member or liberal, they're not considering me that. If they were dividing up teams, I wouldn't be on their team anymore. So no matter what. Yeah, I'd be in the gulag. That's fine with all my friends. But listen, before Francis jumps in, I realized that we got straight into the politics side of it. But actually, there'll be a lot of UK people who watch our show who may not be familiar with your backstory. So maybe tell everybody a little bit of your journey through life

and how you happen to be where you are now. Yeah. So I always wanted to be a writer, but I moved out to L.A., and I feel like this is similar to a lot of your guests, probably. I came out here to be in entertainment. I was, I started doing comedy, stand-up comedy in 2010. I was writing, always hoping to write shows, science fiction comedies. I have a million scripts sitting around. I was doing all the things, you know, the things you do, waiting tables, teaching yoga, like cliche, Los Angeles chick and her 20s. And I continued on that path for a while. I did some traveling around the world when I took a kind of break from L.A. and came back. I got sober in 2013. I only mentioned that because it was, it is just a big turning point, I think, in my, in my life in general.

And in 2015, I got on Twitter in 2013. So I completely replaced my alcoholism with Twitter. So you relapse, basically. I started mainlining the bird. And I definitely recognized that it was an addiction. But as far as harm reduction goes, I think it was okay. from just a just a perspective of I had been in L.A. at this point since 2007 this time. I was out here when I was very young in my late teens, early 20s, right after rehab. And I didn't stay sober in that time. But this time that I came back at 27, I was doing the thing for years. So by the time I got sober in 20, 13, I'd been hustling for a while and trying to make things happen. And I went on Twitter and I kind of

realized that I could just build an audience and that that would be at least there was something that I could do when I was feeling very powerless, still running around asking gatekeepers permission to perform. And that was one of the things I loved about standout comedy. Nobody could really take the mic away from you. You could get up there and say essentially whatever you want. and you just had to wait around and wait for your turn. But essentially it was very free. And I saw Twitter as that same kind of medium where I could just make jokes and say whatever and try and find people who resonated with me and keep building an audience.

And I decided to just focus on that while I was waiting tables and still trying to sell scripts, etc. I got a job at Playboy. I sold my first freelance piece to Playboy in April of 2015. That was all through Twitter. I always say every every I should have named my podcast, which is called Watkins Welcome. I should have named it. All of my friends are from Twitter because all of my friends are from Twitter now all over the world. And I, I ended up getting connected to an editor of Playboy. They connected me to the culture editor. I wrote a piece. It did pretty, well. And then I wrote another piece. I did a couple of freelance ones. I kept begging them for a column. Then they approached me in January with the brilliant idea of writing a column for them weekly. And so in 2016, I started writing a column weekly for a Playboy. And that was amazing. And anyone who's ever done a weekly column knows it's a crazy grind and I loved it. And that was right around the time that like Trump descended the staircase and or his escalator and everything went crazy in the culture. And I kind of stumbled into a culture war that I was already befuddled by.

I had never heard of toxic masculinity. I had never heard of the patriarchy. I mean, I'd heard of it. But I didn't go to, I didn't go to like college. I didn't learn any of this stuff. And so I was learning. quickly being online with Playboy and then I started noticing

that I was not, I was censoring some of the things that I wanted to say self-censoring and getting kind of censored by editors at Playboy and then I started paying more attention to politics and 2016 forced everybody to

in America in particular and probably every I mean you guys were on the heels of Brexit I was in London and Ireland actually right on the heels of Brexit. And everybody was asking me if I thought Trump would win. And I really saw Brexit as kind of the canary in the coal mine for America. And I was like, yeah, I totally think he's going to win.

I don't think there's a chance. He's going to lose. And then that happened. And overnight, this person who became, what was fascinating to me as a comedian was watching this person who all of the comedians, all of the late night, everybody made millions of dollars and millions of jokes at his expense while he was running. And I kept saying on Twitter, I was like, you guys are making, this is a joke now, but he's going to win and it's not going to be so funny to you anymore.

And overnight, when he did win, it went from this kind of buffoon to, you know, literally Hitler. And that was the first time I ever experienced what I didn't even know at the time, but what I've come to start calling is like narrative whippen. where the mainstream culture just shifted the narrative so quickly on a dime. And I was like, wait, you guys were making fun of this guy like he was no big deal. So he's either a clown or he's like a dictator. He can't, how do you just overnight go from one to the other? But you know, you can't really say that in Los Angeles, if you're trying to be a writer and get into

writers rooms. And then I noticed that you couldn't say, you know, why can't I say these things? and work in Hollywood, that seems ridiculous. And that was when the journey kind of really began. And I think recently I'd carry on. And she was saying, I would rather just speak truthfully than work in entertainment. And I definitely had to come to that very conscious choice because I did recognize that I knew the minute I kind of started just pushing back. I risked not being able to work in the mainstream. But on the other hand, I think we live in an amazing time for creatives where you can build

your own thing. And there weren't really any gatekeepers, although now with big tech and their stuff, they're suddenly acting like the producers and agents and all the people who run entertainment. So it's, it's terrifying. Yeah, I mean, it is terrifying. I mean, we've all got our own stories to tell. But let's just go back towards when you were saying that if you said that you supported Trump or that you didn't disagree with some of his policies, you wouldn't get accepted into writers' rooms.

Can you explain to people who don't know the Los Angeles Circuit what that means and what that looks like? So you're not going to, you'll never know. that's the hard thing about the industry that we're in. You will never be fired because of your beliefs. You will just not be asked back. Or they will find another creative reason for letting you go. Or you suddenly won't hear from your managers anymore the way that you used to hear from them. And it could just be that you're not a big enough fish or it could be that, you know,

I see what everybody in the writer. rooms and on these shows is tweeting. This is the thing about Twitter is you see what people are saying. And I know this in this idea that the thing that I loathe is the I don't feel safe using this as kind of a cudgel to silence people. And I know that it would only take one person saying, I don't feel safe. She talks to Ben Shapiro on Twitter for me to perhaps not get a job if I was being considered. I obviously don't have any proof or evidence of this other than the fact that I don't have jobs in writers' rooms, but I don't think you're even really, it's so challenging, too, because Hollywood will go where the money goes. And I do already see the shift. I already see people

who have been pushing back in the middle, you know, starting to gain more mainstream traction. Andrew Schultz is a great example. He has a four. part Netflix series, he, they will go, capitalism always wins, as I always joke. So I'm hope, and now that you don't have to constantly kind of justify like the, the but Trump people who say anything to you pushing back against anything wild and crazy on the left, perhaps there will be more room for people to take aim at some of this more insidious and insane stuff that's coming out of the left. But yeah, I think. that it wasn't even what was interesting was I wasn't even taking aim at necessarily saying at the

time saying Trump I support Trump I don't know I didn't know anything about his policies he was so new I didn't even know he he didn't strike me as someone who had an ideology I still feel that way about him he seems very much just like grabbing whatever he can while he can and and he and he and he but I did notice, you know, one of the things that was really obvious to me right away, particularly being a playboy and hearing all about this kind of toxic masculinity and feminism and etc. I called it high heel hypocrisy was this, the way they would attack Ivanka and Melania after all of this defense of Hillary. Oh, we're always making fun of women for what they're wearing, for what they're talking, for the way they're hair looks, et cetera. And the minute these two

got any kind of power were running seriously for office. Suddenly they were attacked with all of the same stuff that these women had been saying for years is not an acceptable form of you know, making fun of a woman or judging a woman. And apparently it is acceptable if that woman isn't on your team. And I just think if you have principles, you have to apply them, even in people that don't agree with you or you disagree with or they're garbage. But that's like apparently not the way politics works. Well, no, it doesn't. As we all know, Ivanka and all that group are white supremacists.

They're Jewish white supremacists, but nevertheless, white supremacists. But one thing I wanted to ask, Bridget, was, so we've got this, we see this now with you can't say certain things, but aren't comedians meant to be the counterculture? Aren't we meant to be the people pointing out the flaws? laughing at the things you couldn't laugh at? What went wrong? I just think it's fear, honestly. And it's, and it's fear, it's wanting to fit in. And it is being part of an in-group. It's easy to be, it's easy to tweet the right thing and be, and signal that you're part of that group. And it's interesting because I really, I am all for progress. You know,

I want more people to be, I want everybody to have the same access, obviously, to everything that everyone has access to. It just seems like a very simple idea. But I don't necessarily think that pushing other people down is the right necessarily, necessarily the way to go about that. It just seems like a dangerous and also kind of hypocritical stand to take. And I don't know what happened in comedy. It got, it just got, it's like it got taken over by the, the alt scene or something. Like, I'm not exactly sure when, when it shifted to, to that kind of idea of claptor, as it's been called, where you're trying to get approval instead of trying to point out, And again, I actually see, I'm beginning to see a shift. I'm seeing people pushing back. I think the more comedians that speak out and are just like, F this, I'm saying what I want, the better it is for everybody. The more conversations we've been having like this, the more that people, they're going to have to make fun of somebody. And you can make fun of the right wing all you want. But there's a big void that's going to be left when a lot of these people can't make fun of their favorite, you know, sin-eat.

or the orange man bad or whatever who kind of took up all this space. So I already see some of the more mainstream comedians shifting in that way and they'll ride in the wake of all the people who are kind of fearlessly calling this stuff out from for the past four years. But that's not entirely a bad thing if it means that we can bring back comedy. Because we live in dark times. Dark times produce dark comedy. Dark comedy is hilarious. It's my favorite kind of comedy. This should be,

we should be allowed to say whatever right now because everything is so crazy. If you can't say the most crazy things and call this stuff out and make fun of it, it gives it too much credence and it becomes this religion. And that's the other thing that I think kind of happened with comedy is

that what I saw happen and the loss of credibility with comedians, with media people, with the journalists is that everyone became an activist, everyone, overnight. Not everyone. Some of us remained idiots. But I'm happy to be an idiot. I don't need to be an activist. I can still push for change. And I also think it is my job as a comedian to like call out these kind of deeply held I always say I'm going to make burgers out of your sacred cows anything that's sacred to anyone

I think it's kind of hilarious and particularly being able to make fun of ourselves and there's this whole kind of warped every the level of sensitivity that the culture has does not seem healthy

for anyone. It seems like it's causing a lot more mental illness taking themselves so seriously and everything, looking for an offense everywhere you go and problematizing everything and walking out. I mean, we are creating a world of eggshells that everyone's walking on. Now, I grew up in a dysfunctional household. That crap is bad for you. Like, it's like growing up with, you know, an alcoholic father or something. Like the whole culture is like that now. The whole culture is an alcoholic dad. You're like, oh, crap, is he going to

come home and be funny or is he going to come home and beat the crap out of me because I said the wrong thing? I don't know. That's how... You just described Twitter very, very well, haven't you, Bridget? That's just how it feels, though. I hate that. I hate feeling like I'm being emotionally manipulated. I hate feeling like you are responsible. When I was in rehab at 19 years old, I remember the women who were helping me out said something to me when I said, oh, they're all pushing my buttons. And the women who are running the place, the halfway house I was in there, like, yeah, and they're your buttons. And you need to take responsibility for them and look at where they were installed and why you have them and why you're getting so, you know, why you're so easily upset by these things.

Or maybe it's true. They're saying something that's not nice, but still, I should be able to, you know, is the beginning of learning how to emotionally have some kind of emotional so sobriety and take care of myself. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase.

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you've been through a situation where you had to admit, as we were talking before we started, a lack of control over certain things in life. You had to focus on dealing with what you could affect. You had to go through difficulty. You had to accept personal responsibility. and these things kind of inoculate you against being hypersensitive, against making everyone else responsible for your well-being.

Do you think that's a part of where your journey sort of came to this point? I do, although I think it started even earlier being from a huge Irish Catholic family where I always joke that my upbringing was a roast battle. So I think I come from a family where it's like, oh, you're going to cry about a bridge? you know, that, like my uncle would say that, not like another cousin, an adult would mock you for crying as a child. And that was the upbringing. It was a very punchy, Irish Catholic. Everybody's taken hits at everybody else. It was very hard to be a sensitive empath in our family. I saw a lot of my cousins kind of struggle when the ones who were just more quiet and wanted to read and felt things more. deeply. You kind of either, you either jumped in and learned how to take it or you, you didn't. And you didn't generally fare well. So there was that early upbringing. And I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful that I had parents who were like, life isn't fair. I'm grateful that I came from a

family that deeply respected the ability to be able to laugh at yourself. And that was a primary value that we were instilled with growing up and being able to be self-deprecating and laugh in the face of tragedy. That was another thing that my family and my grandparents were just, you know, they went through so much my grandparents on my dad's side in particular. They were in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. My grandfather was in the South Pacific for the entirety of the war and was blown off warships and saw kind of horrific things was in Japan when they were getting all the prisoners of war. I've been reading all of his letters and their depression kids and they had such a great attitude about life. And they saw some of the worst that humanity has to offer. And still,

we're grateful, we're grounded in faith, we're grounded in the kind of principles of family first. You don't, you don't have fallings out with your family about money. You don't have fallings out with your blood about politics, you just don't. It's like where I'm so grateful that I had that backbone kind of instilled. And then, yes, going through a lot of self-inflicted wounds, many of which I, you know, many choices I made on my own and really having to take responsibility. I got sober this time at 35. So the first time I was in rehab, have was when I was 19. And then it was a long journey between 20 and 35 when I ended up getting sober, sober from everything. And I really, when I first got sober, I really had to look at

the ways in which I was entitled, the ways in which I felt like a victim and was always looking to, because this kind of stuff really is the foundation of upholding that sense of, you know, pour me, pour me, pour me another drink. So all of these kinds of feelings are just not good if you want to stay sober because essentially they're going to lead you to being in self-pity constantly, which is a horrible place. There's so much self-pity. The culture is just so self-pitying.

And I feel ironically bad for people who live in that kind of constant state because it's not, that's what I don't understand about this current, like, psychology or wave that's going through the culture of victimhood. You know, there's this idea of like playing the tape forward. And I just don't understand where this, where does this get you? Feeling like you're perpetually offended, feeling like you're a victim, feeling like the world owes you something, not waking up and asking, how can I be of service to the world, what can I bring to the world, waking up and saying, how have I been like effed over and who owes me and how am I, how do I get mine is not healthy. You know, ultimately it just seems like it's, it will, it only leads to more of that.

Where's the end of that? But don't you think part of the problem is, Bridget, is that if you look at a lot of these kids who are saying, you know, oh, I've been screwed over or this or that, or I'm offended. And you compare it to your grandparents' generation, you know, who went through the Depression, who went through the Second World War. They've had it so easy. Yeah, no, it's too much. I mean, I've said this.

I've said, I think America is like a trust fund baby. It's behaving like a third generation child who came from wealth. And it's, I'm really thinking a lot about this and I want to write about. I've been trying to work out my thoughts because I think everybody deserves a hero's journey. And it's the stories we love the most. It's the story that's been told a million times through all of history. It's pretty much the backbone of any great story. And in the absence of true struggle, do you self-destruct and create your own?

And that's what so much of this stuff seems so, it's so like every time I see something trending on Twitter, which is a perfect example of this kind of trust fund baby worry or self-destruction. It is. It's like a trust-fund baby that gets addicted to drugs so that it can have something to like overcome in life. And I see these things trending. A great example recently was an op-ed that somebody wrote for the Wall Street Journal about any said, it was all about the use of Dr. Jill Biden using doctor. And then there was a whole 24 to 48 hour news cycle around this.

And the pundits and talking back and forth. And I'm meanwhile, very fascinated with the cause of the famine in Yemen because it's so bad. There are so many children starving. An entire generation is starving. And you would think with all of our outrage that we could direct it somewhere like that. Like that to me is the stuff that keeps me up at night and talk about feeling powerless.

I don't even know where to begin. Like all I can do is donate to an organization and hope that it doesn't go to some criminal who's taking money and abusing a 501c3 and that it's actually going to help someone who needs the money. That's really all I can do from here and maybe draw attention to it. And then I see that.

this news cycle and I'm like, guys, like, what a waste of energy? There's so, you care about people suffering, but there, you say, and I think that drives a lot of my own frustration and feeling like so much of the outrage is disingenuous because if you really are, you're outraged about this and like children are starving still in front of our eyes and you have a big platform and why are you using it? Why don't you take that outrage about Dr. Jill Biden. Someone got paid to write that column, first of all,

in the first place, which is bananas to me. Probably why it got written, to be fair. And then there was another one in the New York Times. Yeah, because it's all, you know,

no one's clicking on like the starving kids. Right. Which is, it starts with us. You know, it's our priorities and our principles. And it is,

I get it. It's fun to engage in that kind of, like, stupid cultural, basically is like, you did a dumb thing and now I'm going to say a dumb thing and you did a dumb thing and now I'm going to say a dumb thing. And then I see it too with like feminism, you know, in the Western world, it's like ladies, we have a lot. We are probably the most privileged women in the history of women on earth throughout all of time. But there are still plenty of women.

I've been to many of these countries where they don't have that. And maybe we should try and help them out or fight for them or at least support the women in those countries who are fighting for their freedoms that we take for granted. So I do, to answer your question the long way, again, I think we take an enormous amount for granted. And even these freedoms that were like free speech, we just take that for granted in the United States because it's the water we swim in. And it's easy to let go of something like that if you don't understand that people died for it. If you don't understand what it's like to live in a country that doesn't have that and suffers consequences when they say things that aren't correct or allowed or I don't know. I'm, I try very hard to be optimistic and there's and stay focused on the positive.

but I see like a chilling slide into, I'm just amazed at how easily people are like, tra-la-la, here we go, authoritarian, take over. You know, like skipping in, I'm like, frog in the boiling water is an understatement of the year. Bridget, I'm a pessimist, so I've got to say 2020 has been great for me. Every one of my shitty little predictions has come true, and I have never been more smug.

I'm absolutely thrilled. Do you know what he calls himself, Bridget? You know what? His surname is Foster. He calls himself Foster Damas now. That's how ridiculous it's got. Unbelievable. Yeah.

I was having dinner with my girlfriend last night, and I referred to myself as that. And I saw a little light, a little light in her eyes slowly die. Happiest I've ever been. Everyone else's misery makes them happy. But Bridget, let me ask you this, because it's something I've been thinking about a lot.

It seems to me like, as entertainment has become politics, politics has become entertainment. Oh, yeah. That's maybe where the sort of Dr. Jill Biden, you know, trees are racist, all of this shit sort of comes from because everyone needs that entertainment. We look to and look at the politicians that we elect. I mean, Biden isn't the most entertaining, but certainly here in the UK. We are consistently electing people now because they look at using on camera.

Right. They're young, they're funny, they're this, they're that. We're not actually electing men and women of substance, of principle, of, of moral integrity, of these sort of old school values that we used to think about. You know, look, I'm in my late 30s. I personally think, until you're about 50, you shouldn't be anywhere near politics, because you probably don't know what the fuck you're doing, right? Right.

But we've gone the other way now. If you're in your 50s, it's probably way too late. You've been and gone. We need to get rid of you. Let's get someone that looks good on camera in. you know what I mean? Interesting. I mean, I think in America, like, the olds are just still clinging to the to the, to the keys of the car and refuse to let go.

Like, they're still like, no, I'm not giving this up. I'm not sure. Yeah, we have like Feinstein, Feinstein, whatever name is. I never know how to pronounce it. I always feel like I get it confused. she's 87 you know and Biden is old so I feel like we have a lot of but then we have like the AOCs and the squad coming in and they seem very young like I was an idiot at that I'm still an idiot I think probably this sweet spot for politics is like 40 to 60 and 40 being young not that you can't get into it

but it's just I really, and I feel like the more I learn, the, I just don't feel like I know anything. That's really what the last four years has taught me is I know nothing. Like I go, I'm like, oh, famine in Yemen. And I'm like, that's outrageous. What's causing it? And then it's like, geez, I don't know. It's like interfactions and I would have to study, you know, now I know why people are like, Dr. Jill Biden, because you have to study.

What do you like the history of a country in order to understand what is happening right now? I take your point about the old still holding on. So, you know, Trump, Biden, Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, whatever, in America. But look at who the sort of promising candidates are. On the left, it's people like AOC and the squad, et cetera. And equally on the right, it's people like Dan Crenshaw. Within the Democratic Party, people are talking about people like Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gubbard. But these people are also at Pete Buttigieg.

All of these people are very young. And equally, I think the right is going to produce its own people. You know, Nikki Haley, Tang Crencher, who I mentioned, people like that. But anyway, look, maybe we'll just come back to the entertainment and politics sort of trading places now. Yeah. Which I think is a really interesting point. I don't know how you feel about that. I'm not surprised.

I mean, this has been kind of predicted. Did you guys ever read the book amusing ourselves to death? It came out in the 80s, and he basically said with the dawn of television and this visual medium and everything being entertainment and that this would happen, that everything, everything would become entertainment. And it would be bad for all of our institutions. And so, and then there was another great book mediated that came out in 2006 that I refer to in pretty much every podcast I'm on because it was he was looking at kind of philosophically how all of this mediation is changing our brains and us. And with the dawn of technology, and this was pre-social media

that his book really came out and looking at how everything's personalized. Everything is the iPhone. And it's all about us. And you can personalize your music and personalize your settings in your car and the temperature in your house and how when the world is flattering you constantly, you become entitled and you become kind of, you expect everyone to adjust to you and the world to adjust to you. It's not an unreasonable expectation given the way that our technology has trained us to essentially behave. So I'm not surprised that it's become entertainment. It's, I think anyone who had any kind of foresight, idiocry, is a great example of Mike Judge just seeing the writing on the wall

of everybody ending up in this Costco reality with a reality show president. And the question, Foster Damas is, what is the, what does this look like? What is this, what are your predictions for 20? and beyond in the next four years say. I think we are more and more going to elect people not on what they say, not on what they do, but on their race, gender, etc. And it's going to become more and more of a valid statement to say,

you know, as a brown woman of color, I believe this. And everybody goes, okay, all certain segments go, let's, yeah, that's great. We'll listen to what you say. I think the message and the message and the content. of what you're saying is going to become ever more irrelevant. Irrelevant? Yeah. And that we're just going to be disappeared and memory hold?

I just think it's going to be ever more about box ticking. I just think that it's going to be about categories more and more and more. And then you're going to go, oh, so this person believes, or this person is like this, therefore I will tick that box. So for instance, I'll give you an example. Our current Chancellor of Exchequer is an Asian guy called Rishi Sunak. Right. I've had people say, oh, isn't it brilliant for diversity,

the fact that we have an Asian Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite the fact that the guy is literally married to a family of billionaires. Right. By that ain't diversity. Do you know what I mean? Well, I mean, this is the joke I was making the other day. I was talking to a friend who's in this industry. And I'm like, let's just make some cool shit together.

And she was like, I'm like, representation matters. And by that I mean ideological representation. You know, it's not just like the immutable characteristics. That's what they might as well be saying. Immutable characteristics matter. Because that's really what they're saying. It's not representation. You don't give a crap about representing people who don't think like you.

you care about representing certain, like you said, you know, checking certain boxes. And if that is what you believe it comes to, I mean, that's chilling because there seem to be boxes that you check that are right. And if you don't fall into a box or if you're not checking those boxes or if you're pushing back against the idea of everything being about checking boxes, you get memory hold. Right. And you made the point earlier as well, Bridget, essentially sort of translating what I heard out of what you're saying. Essentially, we've got to a point where these claims of sexism,

like you were talking about different ways that conservative women are treated versus liberal or whatever left wing. And all these allegations now of sexism or discrimination, they're actually weapons. They're not really genuine claims about what happened. there's simply a way of achieving your outcome that people have now worked out is very powerful. Yeah. It's a very powerful thing to say that someone is racist or that someone is sexist.

And it's difficult to defend. It's difficult to deny. It's difficult to argue against. And I think that's one of the reasons I've been so worried about it because you're sort of making it okay now for people to go, you know what? I am racist. You want to call me racist a hundred times? I am racist.

And not even like give a show. I mean, James Lindsay talked about us when we're not. had him on. Everybody has a sort of fuck it point. And once you accuse somebody of something enough, they just go, you know what, fuck it. I am that. And they actually start to be that, you know? That's the kind of danger. I remember, I went through this when I was in high school because I moved so much. And everyone called me a slut when I moved. I'd never even had sex with a guy. It was just a way women weaponized. It was a way of bullying a woman when you were a new girl in a new school. And I got to the point where I was like, all right, I'll show you slut. And then I just

started being a slut. I mean, I don't know if that was necessarily the progression, but there is that. That's one of the things that I've had to, and this is on us. I don't put that on the people who are bullying me. I think that this is where the idea of being a reactionary is true to a certain extent and dangerous because I've definitely had to check myself in this process of being kind of rejected from the mainstream, the left, whatever, my peers. And it would be very easy for me to be like, F all you guys. And out of those feelings of rejection, rejection is a very powerful, motivating force. And so the work I've had to do the last four years around a lot of just being just on the personal level, not even on the political scheme, just looking at,

is this something I should naturally be reacting to? If I am reacting to it, let's get very clear about why I'm reacting to it. What am I reacting to? Like in many instances, I found that I'll be called a reactionary for reacting to what I see as compelled speech. And so if I can articulate that, that helps me with. And then sometimes it's like, oh, no, I'm just reacting because I'm feeling it's that knee-jerk like, oh, if you're going to call me racist enough, then I'll show you racist that idea. And that idea is dangerous, you know, that we have to guard ourselves again. that because you can see how it can they did I remember reading some study and I don't remember

where it was or who it was and I need to get much better about these things but it was all about how if people are generally put in you know boxed into a corner they're they're going to become um they're obviously going to react and I've been saying for like four years the whole um is it good that we're having white people focus on their whiteness. Like, this seems like a, like, I feel like we've been doing a lot right in that we haven't had them focusing on this. And is it great?

I mean, Ryan Long did such a great job of pointing that out with the woke versus racist. Because it just seems like a dangerous, I'm like, do you really want white men to be defensive about being white? like that seems like a marble that might not roll in the direction you wanted to roll into. And it's terrifying. Because that is, it is reactionary. You know,

you don't, we have to take responsibility for our own reactions. Obviously, I'm not, I'm not giving anyone who's racist a pass. But I do think that there is a dangerous cultural trend of focusing on race that will see, that seems to be agitating things. when I felt like actually we were making tons of progress in race relations,

even just from a statistical, just completely objective look at it. And do you think that Trump is somewhat to blame for this? Because in 2016, it accentuated the culture war? Or do you think it was already bubbling before he came to power? Yeah, I've thought a lot about this because I wasn't paying attention during the Obama years. but it seems like I was really unaware until one of the things that I really had to do during the Trump years, and it was very hard to discern because the media did not cover Obama the way they covered Trump. And so I had to really turn to people who were essentially never Trumpers or principal conservatives who had been in this space for a long time.

And I would say, is this something that Obama did that they're covering as if it's something new? or is this something that is dangerous and unprecedented that is new that Trump is doing? And constantly having to evaluate every single story that came out about Trump through that lens was a lot of work. But it taught me a lot about what went on during the Obama administration and how much Obama actually did play into identity politics and really start that ball kind of rolling. I mean, I think the Tea Party sprung up under him. You know, it was, so this process, I think, was already happening.

I see Trump is just a symptom of a lot of that process that was already happening. And people feeling like they weren't being heard. You know, the most fascinating people to me in all of this time are the people who voted from Obama to Trump and then Biden, you know, Or the people who are just like, yeah, burn it all down or Bernie Broats who voted for Trump, there's, I feel like there's just a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of reaction in our culture in general. Everyone seems like they're kind of reactive to everything. Well, let's talk about the future a little bit and how things will go, particularly trying to channel your optimism that, I've got him to put up with being pessimistic all the time.

So let's get some positives if we can. Let's start with Joe Biden first. I mean, we're recording this in sort of mid-December. Look, we're not in America, but as far as we can tell, Biden has been elected. Is that fair to say? I believe the Electoral College certified it this week. So, yes, he's been elected. And Mitch McConnell congratulated him, and I see a lot of amazing thing.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think that that is, it's safe to say. say that that is the reality. Yeah, and my question was going to be, I know people have some disagreements about it and don't want to get into that part of it at all. But let's operate on the assumption that Biden has been elected a lot of people, I think, now accept that. Do you think that will reverse the trend? Do you think that will make things better? Okay, there we go. Excellent. I'm so happy. Thank you, Bridget. No, I don't think. So I'm worried. twofold now because you have this enormous grievance with millions of people who feel

the election was stolen. And a kind of figurehead for that. And so you have that, which I think will get progressively agitated. You're seeing big tech censor more and more. and try and slap their warning labels on everything and not allowing people to really make up their own minds and deciding that they need to be the... Essentially, Big Tech has become the nanny state, and that's terrifying. I think you'll see more of that because as this grievance, you know, becomes more agitated, I think we saw it recently even with YouTube where they were saying anything that, any election stuff that disagreed with the idea that Biden won, it would, it would, it would. would be, you know, memory hold or taken down or whatever. And that only fuels the idea that

something sketchy is going on. If you're, you're disappearing all this stuff or you're, you're shadow banning it or you're making, demonetizing it, all the different ways you can de-platform. So that will probably get worse. And then in the absence of Trump and all of Trump's supporters, I worry that the pitchforked mobs of the left will take their aim at people like us. You know, people who maybe weren't necessarily all the way over on the right, but didn't tow the line with the left. And I actually worry that there will be that they won't have as many things to do and people to go for and that they're still going to need those clicks and to make that money. And so where does that energy go?

Hey, Bridget, don't worry. Council culture is a myth. It doesn't exist. We're going to be fine. Only people who never say the wrong thing get to say that. I always laugh when people say that. I'm like, yeah, it's always the in-group saying that. The people who are saying that are always on the in-group.

I'm like, oh, yeah, you, you will. wouldn't know what this is actually like because you've never been on the wrong side of a mob of people who is trying to come for your job, your family's jobs, and your future children's college educations. You know, it's insanity. Yeah. Yeah, they're the ones who always say, yeah, yeah, yeah, why don't you just say the right things and everything will be fine? My, yeah, just say what we want and you'll be fine. What's the problem? What's the problem?

What is it? But look, Bridget, I'm trying to get us to the positive point. I'm trying to get us to the positive point. You talked about the pushback in comedy, right? Do you see that? Because, you know, we talk a lot about how politics is downstream of culture, the culture shapes everything else. And comedy is often the canary and the coal mine for processes that then go on to happen.

do you think the fact that we're starting to see that and by the way it will be very funny to see all the comedians who've been woke for the last five years suddenly become really, really edgy. Yeah. But do you think that happening will start to take us to a say in a place?

Great. Thank you very much. I'm trying to be hopeful because I do see, I do, I think as long as we're allowed to speak, yes, but a lot of it rests on. how much they're going to try and crack down on anybody who's pushing back against the ideology of wokeism. You know, I think the stuff you see around trans activism is like bananas insane. And for instance, with the Elliott Page stuff recently, this is somebody who got famous as, you know, identifying as a woman with a female name.

And if you misidentified her two seconds later, most people don't know what dead naming is. If you drove around America and said, do you know what dead naming is? I would say probably one out of 25 people might actually know what that even means. And people were calling them bigots for, you know, dead naming somebody that they knew is famous.

Two minutes later to give people some time. You know, that's what is, that's what's, um, concerning to me is the lack of time people, everybody assumes the worst. Oh, you called her Ellen, him, Ellen, and therefore you're dead naming this person who two minutes ago you knew is Ellen. It's like, can you have some compassion and maybe give people a chance to try and get their minds around something that's pretty new? And I don't know, that's what's kind of chilling to me is that you'll see something like that. and then it's like someone will get banned from Twitter.

You know? That's like because they, I don't know, not maliciously, accidentally made a mistake. And this is where I feel like I see a lot of the energy going. So I'm optimistic that as long as comedians are allowed to speak and to make jokes that I think people are like, have had it, but there's so much fear in the culture. People are terrified. I was on, have you been on Clubhouse? Have you guys heard Clubhouse? No. What's Clubhouse? It's a new app, social media, but it's all audio. And you can enter these rooms or be invited as like a speaker. And then you can also just observe. And I was like, wow, come for the group therapy and stay for

the struggle session because I went into a room. And it was essentially a woman. And it was essentially a woman got kicked out because she maybe she just floated the idea that hate speech, um, isn't violence. And they booted her out of the room and then they let her come back in to rethink what she had said and to apologize essentially. And listening to the people try and pick their words. I mean, it was, because you see this on Twitter and you're like, oh, this can't really be real. Like, these are all parodies. But then I went. went into this room and you're hearing the voices and the conversations and just the level of fear and the you could basically tell where on the kind of intersectional pyramid somebody was by how freely they spoke

and how carefully they chose their words was how far down on the power dynamic they were essentially like everybody who was white was choosing. every single word walking on those eggshells waiting to step on that landmine at any given moment. And I was like, wow, this is, this is not good. If this goes mainstream, we are in trouble. That kind of fear of saying the wrong thing. And in many ways, it is going mainstream. We're seeing it. You're seeing it in corporations. You're seeing it. I mean, I hear this all the from people in my email where people write about being politically homeless or self-censoring. And that is a dangerous trend. And I'm not sure. I feel like the only way out of it is to just keep

speaking. People like us to just keep, like I said, I'm like, there are hills I will die on. And I'm going to keep saying those things until you ban me because I have to until, until I don't, it's like not being able to say, for instance, men and women are, biologically different, I'm going to die on that hill. Like, okay. That's, we, I have to, there are just certain things that you, you're not going to like gaslight me into compelled speech essentially. And, and that might cost me a platform eventually. But I'm doing things to kind of sure. I see, this is where I see the free markets kind of working. You know, like Dave Rubin's thing, locals is great because I know I'm at least going to get a phone call and I can upload my videos

directly there and it operates a lot like Twitter and I have a lot of freedom to say whatever and we have an amazing group of all free thinkers so but then I see stuff happening like with you know MasterCard and Visa and you see the financial systems getting involved in what people can and can't say and ban kicking people up Patreon and and forcing you know like companies to behave certain ways. And I'm like, eh, we might,

but then there's Bitcoin. So it's all, it's all, we live in these crazy times, guys. I'm, happy new year. Happy New Year.

And as somebody who's profoundly pessimistic and negative, thank you for that answer, Bridget, and for confirming my worldview. You know what? Our audience always complained that he looks incredibly tense,

uncomfortable and unfriendly. Look at his happy little face right now. He's so happy. Look at him. Look at him. He's delighted. Absolutely delighted. I still think that, I mean. I can't get over it. It's the face of genuine happiness. Look at him.

Everything's fucked and I'm looking for me struggling to find the silver lining and all this. And I do see it. Look, I see it. Andrew Schultz was like a silver lining. His Netflix special. That's a silver lining. Tim Dillon, silver lining. The guy is doing great. He's crushing it. Joe Rogan is on Spotify. That is as mainstream as it gets. He has held the center for many of us. I am optimistic that the people will, you know, that this, this trend continues.

You guys are killing it, doing amazing, you know. Why are you afraid? Because we just had a video with a million views taken down by YouTube because it doesn't comply with WHO regulations. But you're right. Look at his happy little face. No, but you're right. You're right. I think you and I certainly in agreement on one thing,

which is as long as big tech censorship doesn't get a lot worse, which it probably will. But if it doesn't, everything will be great. I do genuinely believe that. Welcome to this episode of Triggerometry. We're fucked. That will be the title. Bridget Fethecy, we are fun.

Bridget, look, it's been a lot of fun chatting, actually. I'm really pleased we got you on the show. Thank you for having me. No, it's been great. It's been fantastic. We'd love to have you back at some point. But for now, our last question, which we always ask all our guests, is what is the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be as a society?

Oh, gosh, there's so many things. I'm worried about the state of mental health, really. And I know we're talking about it, but I don't know that we're doing a great job of addressing the problems. And I think there's a lot of lip service paid to mental health, but it doesn't seem like people are doing any better in that department. In fact, it seems like things are getting a lot worse. So there's a big disconnect for all the talk where we have about like mental health awareness day.

And it's like, is mental health awareness day just like, hey, I'm crazy? You know, because in some respects, it's become like a cool thing to be. I went down this crazy rabbit hole of young adults switching from one personality to another. And these videos had millions of views. I've never had a video. You switched personality in the course of this interview. You wait from a miserable fuck. How happy you are now?

Unbelievable. This is what I'm going to do, Bridget. I now know how to cheer him up. I'm just going to tell him everything will be really, really bad, and everybody's going to suffer. And he will be so happy. But don't, do you think that things are going, okay, my one, can I ask you guys a question?

Sure. Have you heard of Agenda 2030? No, but I'm sure I'm going to love it. People keep talking about it in the chat, but there's a lot of stuff going on, isn't there? No, I know. It's just funny because we went down on dumpster fire, my YouTube show. We went down somebody, one of my roommate is like, she kind of brings up the wing of the conspiracy. She's the voice of all the conspiracy theories of the internet.

She loves them and goes down all these rabbit holes. And it's just a, you know, every day it's like when Alex Jones becomes more and more correct you know and when every day

when you're like she'll send an article and she'll be like agenda 2030 is this some great reset do you guys do you guys feel look I'll tell you what Bridget

I do not I purposely ignore conspiracy theories now in 2020 because I know if I delve into them I'm going to fucking believe them at this point. You know, so I'm just staying well away from that shit because I don't want to have to find myself with a tinfall hack

going about how Bill Gates wants to inject everyone with poison. I know. Like Bill Gates has become a villain. And I know there are people in your comments who are going to be like, actually, he is. There are. So let's wrap this up. I don't want them back.

But I think you're right talking about mental health. Because for all, as you say, for all the lip service, give it. Actually, you lock people in their homes for six months. You give them nothing but social media. And $1,200 in the United States. And then you tell them the world is ending and, you know, Orange Man Bad is killing everyone. Yeah, you're going to have some problems of mental health. It's like a virtual, it's like the, it's like a psychological hunger games. You're not actually like fighting out there for anything against people. You're just locked up and it's like, whose brain isn't going to break.

Bridget, it's been fantastic chatting with you. Before we let you go, tell everybody where they can find your brilliant stuff. You put out a lot of stuff. Obviously, your Twitter and dumpster fire and everything else that you do. So you can find me on Twitter at Bridget Fetacey. You can find me on Instagram and all the things as well under that name, but I live pretty much on Twitter. And fetacy.com is my community where.

we have a great thing going. We do workouts. We really focus a lot on what we can control and mental health and taking care of ourselves and diet and supporting each other. And you can also find me on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel, Fetacee, and I have a show, Dumpster Fire, which makes fun of all the things. And then I have a podcast, Walkins Welcome, which you guys should definitely come visit me on where we talk about grit and resilience and I hear people's stories and we just, it's a little more, more nuanced and less of like dumpster fires very much my Twitter kind of in real life. And yeah. Oh, and I have a column, a monthly column at Spectator magazine. Which is always extremely good and very, very funny. And we'd obviously be very happy to come on the

podcast. So Bridget, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. I think I fans would have loved this show. So thanks very much and we'll see you very soon. Take care guys. Have a good one and we'll see you at 7 p.m. with a live stream or another brilliant episode. And episodes are always Wednesday and Sunday and live streams always Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. See you soon, guys.