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Episode 17 - The State of America & Post-Pandemic Awkwardness
30 Plays6 months ago
Continuing this week with our fresh pod structure, we have two interesting new topics for you! We hope you enjoy listening to two amateurs attempt to have an intelligible conversation about the future of our country and the effect a modern plague can have on our socializing. Put your arm floaties on and dive into the shallow end with us, won't you?
Articles:
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/money/a44090/america-equal-opportunity-stuck/
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2024/04/13/awkward-social-interactions/
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Shallow End'
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, Rebecca. Oh, hey, Dad. And hello, shallow friends. Welcome to this episode of The Shallow End. Welcome back. This is our our second effort at our new and improved format where we're really trying to jump into the theme of the show, right? Like shallow, shallow sort of. Dips, little dips.
00:00:44
Speaker
Dips, we're just gonna doggy paddle around certain issues for a little bit. I'll only doggy paddle. So we both have an article for this week and boy are they doozies.
Preparing for the Podcast
00:01:01
Speaker
Okay, I will say.
00:01:04
Speaker
they're looking back on it after reading so so this week we both read both articles ahead of time yes we're actually prepared this way so I know what what yours is and you know what mine is but after reading both of them I like looking back on the one that I chose for last week I was like okay that was kind of a doozy like that was some
00:01:26
Speaker
There's more science than I was intending it to be, I think. I don't know. I thought I still thought it was it. I enjoyed it. Oh, it was interesting. to Yeah, it wasn't. But yeah, i I want to start with a big old big old apology to all our shallow friends, but particularly to you, Rebecca. Yeah, because last week um we recorded an hour. Roughly an hour.
Tech Skills and Generational Gaps
00:01:57
Speaker
And it's the end ah at the end, I sent you my audio file and you popped it up and you were like, oh, dad, you idiot. You didn't say that. You're very kind. What you actually said, you didn't do it right, but I can make this work. And um so thank you for making it work.
00:02:25
Speaker
Here's the problem, okay? People think I'm a techie and I'm not a techie. It's because of what you do. But it's, so in 1999, I understood a little bit of technology. Yeah. It's 2024. I did not in the tech, like there are people that I work with that are very good with the technology, but they're also 20 years younger than me.
00:02:55
Speaker
So I screwed up last week and made it way harder than it should have been for Rebecca. And also, I mean, a child gets behind the wheel of a car. And you don't blame the child, you blame the parent. So it is also on me a little bit for not saying, dad, do you have your buds in?
Podcast Format and Article Introduction
00:03:16
Speaker
But in this case, I'm the child and you're the parent. I'm the parent. No, don't like that. But also, it's really not your fault. It's my fault.
00:03:26
Speaker
but I did say let's let's go slower today and make sure we're doing this right we did a test but so we actually tested today we sure hope everything is can you imagine if we have this entire conversation and at the end you send me your audio file and it's the same thing and so we have to publish this episode talking all of this smack but it's shitty audio still I'd, I'd kind of enjoy that. That'd be funny. I know certain people. has I know certain people who would really enjoy that.
00:04:02
Speaker
All right. So, so our new, our new model is we each bring an article.
American Culture and Social Mobility
00:04:08
Speaker
Um, I feel like we should do like rock, paper, scissors, or one round of Oh hell or something to like figure out who has to go first. I went first last week.
00:04:20
Speaker
Oh, shit. Okay, so that means you should go first again, right? Yeah, we're gonna start a pattern. So this is me flipping pages. Don't do that, you're making your mic weird. I know, that was the whole point. I was flipping pages.
00:04:45
Speaker
So my article, are we ready to just dive in? Let's just dive in, I had it pulled up, I had my notes, which I took. My article is actually eight years old. Okay, I wrote that down. I wrote here, published in 2016, because I got halfway through, and then I thought, I wonder when this was published? And I scrolled back up and saw 2016, and I was surprised, because it was scary accurate. Yeah, I mean, it's still relevant for sure, right? Right now, yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker
And so I'm going to like set it up a little bit. The reason I found this article is because mom and I listened to a podcast on the way back from the cottage this weekend. And this is the guy that was the guest on the podcast. And he had some really interesting things to say.
00:05:36
Speaker
about a topic completely unrelated to this essay. But I just looked him up and found an essay that I but i thought it was interesting. This was published in, what was it, Esquire magazine, I think? Yeah, Esquire. He's like a think tank guy. He's British born. The topic of the- He is British born. Yeah, scorn yeah. The topic of the- I wrote that down too. Yeah, well, yeah. It's interesting.
00:06:01
Speaker
but title yeah the The title is In Defense of Immigrants. Here's why America needs them now more than ever. And we're not really going to get political about this. We're really not.
00:06:19
Speaker
Because it's easy to do that. And he doesn't really. He doesn't either. He doesn't really either. No. Yeah. But um I thought it was interesting that about 80% of this essay is not really related to the topic at hand. No. He just sets a bunch of precedents up and then and then kind of puts the hammer down about his overall thesis. Yeah, he does.
00:06:46
Speaker
um
00:06:48
Speaker
So I mean, and and we're going to these are things where we should probably like when you publish, put the links to the to the articles. Right. Yes. Yeah. I think that this is an example of this episode is going to be an example where we I think it would be really good for people if you're going to listen to these episodes of the shallow end. Please click the links and read. Read them. Read them. They're quick. They're they're not. Well, yeah. I'm not asking you to read it. It's maximum.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah. And then listen, because we don't want to just recite the article, right? Yeah. We're going to talk about the article. All right. So this is a man who's got, he's a British man who has a unique perspective on the American experience. He does, as an outsider. Right. But also an insider. Yeah, because he lives in the US now.
00:07:45
Speaker
um
00:07:48
Speaker
Give me, or I can start with the first thing that struck me. like what What do you think the first thing that struck you in in the way that he was, what he was trying to say? like Well, but honestly, the first thing that struck me was I wrote down, okay, so this is what I wrote down. Sometimes as Americans, we do forget that the culture of confidence that we live in is not one most countries have.
00:08:15
Speaker
Like everybody you meet is just so sure that they're the best thing on the planet. and a Like seriously though. Like we we have this like ego as Americans. For better or worse. Because it's kind of, for better or worse, because it's built into like the roots of the country that
00:08:40
Speaker
Some people said, I bet we can do this, and then did. She just did, because they nobody told them they couldn't. Nobody said no. um So when he's talking about like like this attitude that Americans have, where it's like, yeah, I'm just going to do it. I can do that, I bet. That he talks he talks about in in Britain, it's a lot, like depending on where you are in the I don't know, caste system. I don't want to use such dramatic words. But you know what I mean.
00:09:16
Speaker
um
00:09:19
Speaker
People like, quote unquote, know their place right in a way that Americans don't. Yeah. But like until somebody outside of us points it out, I don't really notice it because
American Ego and Social Class
00:09:30
Speaker
I am just so in it. Yeah, you're embedded in it. I think this is, and it's in the one of the first paragraphs, what we're talking about here is he says, the most important American manufactured products are Americans themselves.
00:09:44
Speaker
Because of that like and and the thing that that made me think of is that idea that we just assume we can We can just make stuff happen That the story that popped into my brain was this recent The yacht that sank in the Mediterranean know Okay, was a big yacht like a big like it's a billionaire yacht off the coast of Italy and apparently some kind of like microburst hit it or you know a mini tornado or something. And the whole like the thing went haywire at like 5.30 in the morning and topsy-turvy down to the bottom of the ocean. And one of the guys that died that was hosting everybody on this yacht was the UK's first tech billionaire.
00:10:45
Speaker
And it made me first. yeah Yeah. And this guy is like, I don't know, maybe he was 60. So it made me think like, Oh, the UK has, they produced a tech billionaire, like a few years ago.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah. And Silicon Valley is just cranking them out like on a weekly basis. Yeah. There's a tech billionaire in every corner. Right. like So there is something fundamentally different. That's that that captures that idea that Americans just assume they can make something happen. Like we assume that we have social mobility. Yeah.
00:11:28
Speaker
But the rest, a lot of the rest of what is going on in this article is kind of like, okay, well. It's saying, well, now check. Yeah, pump the brakes. So, yeah. Okay, can I can i tell you my second name? Yeah, please. Like, take away. It's like, okay, like three paragraphs in, he has this one liner that he,
00:11:56
Speaker
separates by a paragraph break that i wrote down because i thought it was like he writes america is stuck and i wrote it down initially when i first read it but then throughout the rest of the article he keeps repeating it yeah like america is stuck and it's stuck in this part of your society and it's stuck in this part and it's stuck in this part and here are the reasons why like i
00:12:24
Speaker
It's just like a very simple sentence that I think is summing up all of the frustration that a lot of people have had. Right. And he brings he he brings some really strong numbers to it. He takes points. Yes.
00:12:39
Speaker
I mean, the idea of social mobility is supposedly embedded in our identity as Americans. And yet he he's basically saying that worked for a long time. And now we're stuck. Like people are not moving from class to class. It's almost like he's saying we are looking more like some of these embedded social constructs of Europe and stuff like that.
00:13:05
Speaker
yeah
00:13:07
Speaker
This is this is the the thing that really made me, when he starts into, how stuck are we?
00:13:19
Speaker
I wrote in the and in my note, it said, the American dream is failing, because he says, Americans born at the bottom of the ladder, socioeconomic ladder, are in fact now less likely to rise to the top than those situated similarly in most other nations.
00:13:38
Speaker
and only half as likely as Canadians.
00:13:45
Speaker
and Guys. And come on. Embarrassing. Come on. I can't blame Canada anymore? Now I have to blame us? Damn. That's tough. Come on. Guys, we're lower than the UK.
00:13:59
Speaker
I know that's rough. That's rough. They don't even have good teeth. That's a blow. That's a blow. OK, but in this same section, he uses this term. He says a glass floor, which I really love. I highlighted that, too. Yeah.
00:14:19
Speaker
A glass floor prevents even the least talented offspring of the affluent from falling. I love that. Yeah, and he's saying basically despite the fact that there's not socioeconomic, it's actually that there's no socioeconomic rise, but there's also no socioeconomic falling necessarily. Once you get to the top, you're protected.
00:14:39
Speaker
And I highlighted that same sentence and I wrote in the side, boring because why? Because the idea that people can't fall out of a higher socioeconomic class, it just generates a bunch of boring people. Yeah, it's not fun. If there's no risk, right? Like, what's the point? Right. And if yeah, there's no there's no risk, there's no downside or they they could take a bunch of risks.
00:15:09
Speaker
And it doesn't ever impact their lifestyle. Yeah. It's like everybody should watch Succession. It's a great show. Hey, they're not sponsoring us. Stop it. They're not. God, could you imagine? But that's like a perfect example of it. One day, dad. Yeah. One day. Keep working on articles like these and we're going to rise to the top of the podcast pyramid.
00:15:40
Speaker
We're going to have a glass floor of hot hosting. Yeah, that'll keep us from falling into the deep end. Oh, actually, I think that's the best we'll do this entire episode. We should end it here. No, stop it. There's a lot more good stuff here. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. There's a lot more. Oh, OK.
00:16:04
Speaker
That's all I have to say about the glass floor. I had a question for you. Yes, please. Because he kind of moves on from there to blame a lot of it on the American tax system. I knew you were going to come up with this. This is really going to be fun because I want to set the let's make sure everybody understands who's writing this. This guy is a conservative.
00:16:32
Speaker
think tank guy. He's not a socialist. He's not doing like when he's saying these things. But he has experience in politics. Yes, he was. What was it like? Well, yeah he was something about in Britain, in Britain, he was like, yeah, but not anymore. So so it was interesting to see, like,
00:17:04
Speaker
I feel like if an American author wrote this, they would be either more hesitant or less hesitant in a dramatic way. Yeah, depending on their position, or the side of the aisle. or And it would immediately be not just politicized, but I don't know, partisanized? Yeah, right. That's not a word. Well, it would just be minimized. Arguments would be minimized. Minimized, yeah.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, <unk> like people would attack him for just being a commie. Yeah. But my question for you that is because I.
00:17:47
Speaker
I think I said this last week or previously on the podcast, I think I said this, but I politically and to an extent kind of a bury my head in the sand and try to ignore it because it pisses me off and scares me so much. So I don't really know.
00:18:04
Speaker
I wouldn't call myself knowledgeable about the American tax system. So my question for you is, how much do you agree with him? Or how much do you disagree with him? Or how much do you, not necessarily agree or disagree, how much do you think his argument is valid?
00:18:20
Speaker
Well, let's let's before I answer that, let's let's let's get a little more specific about what he's what he's positing because and um ah we don't have to get into the specifics.
Inequality and Policy Choices
00:18:31
Speaker
like I don't want this to turn into a tax code podcast either, but.
00:18:35
Speaker
I highlighted one line that I think is, it kind of summarizes at least the first chunk of what he's saying about the tax code. And it is that America is unequal because American policy moves less money from the rich to the poor.
00:18:54
Speaker
And inequality is not fate or an act of nature. Inequality is a choice. And so I wrote that down too. Yeah. And so fundamentally, I believe that I think that is true.
00:19:12
Speaker
I think that the the tax system and the system of incentives in our overall federal form of taxation absolutely is a choice to keep inequality happening. And I think it's couched in false promises of opportunity.
00:19:41
Speaker
But our programs of trying to help people who are at the lower rungs are totally ineffective and there is no appetite to look at it and say, let's engage with communities to figure out what they actually need. There's just yeah like capture of those communities because it's politically expedient.
00:20:07
Speaker
and
00:20:09
Speaker
that So for all the talk about how our country is founded on social mobility and opportunity and everything, and it's part of our DNA, we've always kind of kept like certain people back under the thumb yeah because that's helpful too.
00:20:30
Speaker
I mean, Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal. It's right there. I mean, to it would it would be all people are created equal if we were writing it today. But but yeah, no, I mean, I think it's it's it's an interesting, we're still stuck in some of those systems.
00:20:50
Speaker
and big government perpetuates big government. And those systems are really hard to move. So I do agree with the fundamental premise that there's inequality in the US because we choose and based on our systems and but based on our structure. That doesn't mean there is an opportunity for individuals out there. I just think that things are tilted.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yes, I agree. I think things are tilted. Okay, so interesting could in What you just said you at one point you said there's nobody Looking at this and saying let's do something about it basically like nobody's going into communities and Doing the work so I wrote down This is a quote from it whose job is it to do something about this? Mm-hmm because that's kind of the question that I, I at least, I wouldn't say struggle because again, I kind of intentionally don't think about this a lot. But one thing that comes up a lot when I do think about it is when I get to the point of frustration or fear or sadness, I stop myself and I go, well, what are you, what can, what can you do?
00:22:16
Speaker
Not a lot, right? Not individually, no. Like, not individually. So, I mean, I vote.
Conversations and Societal Change
00:22:26
Speaker
That's kind of as much as I'm able, maybe willing to put effort into. So whose job is it? If like, if I personally am not willing to do that work, why am I putting it on other people? I mean, you want to go super meta here?
00:22:44
Speaker
yeah Whose job was it to overthrow the British?
00:22:51
Speaker
it It was nobody's job until it was everybody's job. You were either on one side or the other. And I think that part of it is like, it's the job of anybody who has an interest in living in a more egalitarian society, a society that is more respectful to all to have these conversations. Like, okay, maybe maybe we can put our pat ourselves in the back, Rebecca, and say, we're we're talking about it. We're gonna put this out into the world. And maybe that's part of whose job is it? Like, it's our job. I guess. I don't i don't know. i I see what you're saying, but I also, personally, when I hear other people say that kind of stuff, I'm always like, okay, like, that's bullshit. Like, that's something you say to yourself to make you feel like you're doing something when you're not. Like, do do you remember?
00:23:42
Speaker
Again, I don't want to get political, but like like Instagram activism, like people- No, I don't remember that. like Never engaged in- Black Lives Matter. Oh my gosh. People thought that like posting Black Lives Matter on their Instagram story was activism. It's like, it's not.
00:24:04
Speaker
Agree, yeah, black lives do matter, but like, what are you doing? Okay. Other than signaling to other people that you believe in. Right. Like that's what I'm saying for us. I understand. And so when I ask, when I say whose job is it, I mean like, it's all of our job, you know, like we share the job. It's like, okay, but who's getting into the weeds and changing something?
00:24:24
Speaker
yeah Well, we have to have a change in politics. We literally have to have a change in politics. Now, here's what's interesting. I mean, not to skip to the end, but the this author has kind of addressed this problem, right? Like what you're saying is our national politics are so dysfunctional that even just talking about it like there's no There's no way to translate these conversations, these really interesting, like there's a bunch of there's a bunch of real numbers in this article that are incontrovertible. You cannot argue against what the reality is. And there are some good ideas for how to address it, but in the end what he says is that we're so dysfunctional as a national political animal,
00:25:19
Speaker
um And I guess we just cut to the chase. He kind of just says the place that we're going to make the most progress is in the cities.
00:25:31
Speaker
where a lot of the issues of inequality are most stark, well that's where there's the the maximum amount of flexibility because you've got a localized kind of area to have an impact. So i that's one of the reasons why I really like this article is because it it kind of like walked through the whole thing and then landed the plane with this is where we start.
00:25:56
Speaker
i Still believe conversations like ours are Important because it's not this is not Instagram activism. This is a real conversation that's And even if only two dozen people listen to it, maybe they have another two dozen conversations and true That helps it helps to strip away some of the stupid politics and and start to look at, hey, we do have a problem. What do you think about ways to solve it? And hopefully people will read this and come away yeah feeling like there is a problem and we should solve it. I do think people should read it. It's very interesting. Again, I didn't agree with everything he said, but yeah a but it he's a good writer. I liked
00:26:45
Speaker
the discussion itself I thought was an interesting one, and I liked a lot of the points he made. Um, I don't know if we already brought this up, but I wrote this one down. He says at some point when he's talking about immigrants, he's talking about how, like,
00:27:02
Speaker
The attitudes of immigrant Americans is more fundamentally Americans than, right ah like the, I don't know, like non-immigrant Americans. He writes, new Americans are true Americans. yeah And I enjoyed that. I love it. He says, he also said immigrants are twice as likely to start new businesses.
00:27:26
Speaker
Um, immigrant children get undergrad degrees, immigrant children show the strongest upward mobility rates. Like they are the epitome of the American, like what, what we believe as our identity is. Yeah. Yeah. So I really enjoyed that. But then also he says, are these,
00:27:54
Speaker
symptoms, symptoms of just an aging society? Like this is a natural progression of a society as it gets older, it starts to settle into these grooves? Or is it a symptom of a disease that we can reverse? Like, are we able to correct our course? Or is this just the natural progression? And I thought that was an interesting question because then I had to think like, oh, well, how has it ended up for other countries in this position. And then I had to think, well, we're still kind of the great experiment. We are. We still are the first of our kind. And so like there isn't an answer. We get to figure it out. We get to figure it out, right. But I do think that when you look at
00:28:48
Speaker
So a lot of it is comparing us to European countries where lower birth rates shrink like a lot like an aging population and a lot of the economy is kept sustained by net immigration, not by live births, right? It's And a lot of Europe is struggling with that. England is struggling with it. Italy is struggling with it. France is struggling with it. Even Germany is struggling with it. That they have a problem because they don't have that ethos of upper upward mobility. That ethos of you can make something happen here. To them, immigrants are just other.
00:29:34
Speaker
and they they And we have this too, by the way. It's not like we're better. like we We have that as well. But the immigrants who come here come here because they want to make something of themselves. And a lot of the immigrants that are showing up in Europe are like, they're refugees. They have literally nothing.
00:29:56
Speaker
And I think a lot of the political debate about immigration in the US in the last eight to ten years has been around the change in immigrant flow being more Europe-like, where it's a lot of very very starkly needy populations who are fleeing political persecution and awful circumstances and politicizing that. Where previous to that it was just economic immigration because we had opportunity and people were coming here to make stuff happen for their families. So anyway, again, we don't want to get too political about it. Oh, that's a really good point though. Yeah. Hmm. Well, I do recommend that people read this because
00:30:46
Speaker
it It's nothing else that will make you think right about maybe some things that you wouldn't normally. Check it out. Nobody's going to probably agree with everything in it, but it's still yeah's still a good read. I agree. We'll link it. We'll link it. Please read it. We'll link it. Read it, please. It's quick, too. All right. Moving on. Can't wait for this one.
00:31:17
Speaker
My article. I really enjoyed this. Did you? OK. This one is even quicker. This one's a a short little thing. ah It's a shorter read, but I'm not sure it's a shorter conversation.
00:31:31
Speaker
Oh, no. I don't think it's a shorter conversation. No. I also, interestingly, I think disagreed with more in this one, the one that I chose than in the one that you chose. Interesting. Well, I highlighted the crap out of this one.
00:31:47
Speaker
Did you? Okay, then I would love to know. I'm like all over the place on this one. You're so studious, Ben. Not really. Then, okay, so then I would love to know in the same way that I gave you my first impressions of yours, what were the first things that stuck in front of you? Well, I want you to introduce it first. Tell us what we're talking about.
COVID Isolation and Social Impacts
00:32:10
Speaker
Okay, sorry. This one is called four years after the pandemic began, are we all just awkward now? So this is a conversation about COVID isolation and its consequences on Earth, social graces as society. Yeah, and I'm all about it. Yeah. um So the first thing that
00:32:37
Speaker
The first thing that jumped out at me, which I'm going to say just to lay it out there and not as a way to minimize any of the rest of the stuff that goes on. But the first thing I want to lay out there is that within the first four paragraphs, I was like, the author of this is so self-involved It's like this article itself is evidence of this sociopathy kind of of of the of the pandemic. like you've you've already You've already proven your premise by writing the article itself.
00:33:24
Speaker
because it's a bunch of personal examples and I'm like okay girl you are really involved in what everyone thinks about you and no one else cares as much as you do they're not thinking about you to that point there's this part she's quoting somebody that she interviewed for this article and it's like so like a psychologist who studies like social interactions and she says this is like Typical of interactions where one person reports it as being an uncomfortable interaction That one person is completely absorbing the awkward energy and one person has no idea what even happened got it that is Hey encapsulates this entire art yes extra in what extra tism points for her
00:34:18
Speaker
great i actually but yeah So starting from the very beginning of this article, she she just calls it out. Her mom is a retired therapist who apparently taught her that most people's biggest problem is other people, which I fundamentally disagree with. If your yeah biggest problem is other people, your real biggest problem is you.
00:34:47
Speaker
If you are constantly thinking about how other people are the problem, it's the old axiom like, if that's true if you're angry at every and denominator if you're angry at everyone in the room, the problem is you. If every room smells like shit, you're shit. You smell like shit. And yeah.
00:35:10
Speaker
And the subset of that is
00:35:15
Speaker
If you can't tell who the idiot in the room is, it's you.
00:35:22
Speaker
So yeah I mean, we got off on ah on ah on a kind of a rough start. But there's good stuff in here. I agree. that's That's the thing. It's like a lot. You kind of have to like sift through.
00:35:39
Speaker
the self-absorption to find the little glimmers of gold in there. Because the reason I picked this one was because despite... I don't even know what I'm saying. The cringiness? Despite the... Yeah, it's pretty cringy. It's very millennial. I thought the topic was an interesting one. I thought the conversation itself... I thought it was interesting to bring up.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah, like how does social how does social distancing and the COVID pandemic affect society over a longer term? Because it's only been, I mean, generously, if I'm going to be generous, it's only been four years. Right. But like, anyway, so we don't really know what the effects are yet. We're only just now starting to maybe see some of the longer term, like,
00:36:38
Speaker
society-wide effect for sure on the way we interact and I think it's interesting to like keep our eyes open to try to like pick them out when we start to see them you know yeah well I think that she's not trying to give us like any kind of like a research-based experience of this she's kind of just reflecting and that's okay like I'm i'm good with that I agree with you like the overall impact. we're just i mean we're We're still dealing with economic impacts from the way that COVID went down. We're still dealing with societal. and
00:37:16
Speaker
Imagine you barely escaped high school people who went through high school during that time. like What are the long-term impacts on socialization around that when the last two years of your life?
00:37:34
Speaker
a child being born in 2020, being four years old now, but like their beginning years where they're supposed to be talked at all the time by a bunch of different people. It's just their parents. Yeah. So toos super isolated. Yeah. Like, or, or imagine a kid that was five in 2020 is almost 10 now and missed important formative years of socialization with peers that they just didn't. Some of them are a lot more like five than they are like 10, right? Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:38:18
Speaker
So I thought I'm going to call this out. There was this line that just made me just back to the cringe thing. Because again, all those things are very valid as as areas of research I think that we'll learn a lot more about in the next 10 years. But this is really a very personal
00:38:41
Speaker
essay around her and she's I mean she's evaluating these experiences as well but and this goes back to like the tism point thing I highlighted this line okay I wanted so badly to be part of the world again. But it seemed that every time I opened my mouth, my foot wound up in it. Life had become an inescapable episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm and I was Larry David.
00:39:16
Speaker
Like, girlfriend, maybe you're just a narcissist. Like, it's not about you. Like, this idea that, oh my gosh, the world is just like, I'm the star and now I'm the comic foil. It's it's so extremely narcissistic. And it's like,
00:39:38
Speaker
sometimes it seems like, ridiculous to say that the people who hate themselves the most are the most narcissistic. But it's like, all you're doing, all the time, is thinking about you. Right. Nobody else is thinking about you that much. Thank God. I promise.
00:40:03
Speaker
ah Yeah. but Okay, so so I'd love to talk about the main event that this article is really centered around. The social experience? you like The interaction? The social faux pas she claims was the worst thing that ever happened. what she She's at a restaurant and her waiter She basically tells her waiter that he looks like a celebrity and he doesn't respond the way that she wanted him to and so she freaks out about it and is like, oh he hates me.
00:40:42
Speaker
um Now he's going to go tell everybody else that works at this restaurant about me and what I just said to him and how much he hates me. And I'm never going to be able to go back there because everybody in the restaurant, everybody that works there is going to hate me. By the way, spoiler alert, he does tell everyone in the restaurant. It does become a thing, but they don't hate her. He does tell them in like fun way, like, listen to what this customer told me. And then like, she has a nice moment with another employee about it later on. Because it wasn't the biggest deal in the history of all deals. It's not that deep. I promise. So one line she writes, which I think she should have asked herself before she even wrote the article.
00:41:33
Speaker
Will we be awkward forever, or are we simply shaking off the cobwebs? Keep shaking, girlfriend. Keep shaking. Keep shaking. Yeah, you still got some some spiders in there, honey. Yeah. But what what I found interesting was that she,
00:41:54
Speaker
the event that was so shaking to her was, if we boil it down to its essence, just her, trying to connect with another human that she doesn't really know, and feeling like the other person rejected that connection. So, I mean, not to come up with my own thesis for this article, but I'm going to, and it is this.
Human Connection and Loneliness Post-COVID
00:42:24
Speaker
We are not, oh, she also tries to argue in this article that like people are, people after the pandemic just, don't want as much social interaction. yeah Like they've become okay with having only two or three friends and like being online instead of in the public. A lot of people realize that maybe they didn't like socializing as much as they thought they had. Huh. I'm like, I, I don't know if that's true. I don't either. I don't, I don't think that's true. I think that just the opportunities to socialize were taken away.
00:43:02
Speaker
And I think that now coming out of the pandemic, we're just trying, we're desperately looking for those connections again, just in maybe some clumsy ways. But the desire for connection between each other, it's like, I would say like the most the key but thing that makes us humans is that we're a group. yeah we we We're community. right we We desire connection. We lean on each other. I will say this. i think that and I don't think there's enough attention paid in this and this piece to it. I think that back to the idea of we don't know the consequences of you know forced isolation for a period of time on developing people and younger people.
00:43:54
Speaker
i think that yeah We've we created an environment based on the pandemic that sent a bunch of people primarily into screens, primarily into virtual worlds. And that's part of the reason why people are isolating socially, even to this day. But they're not like certain subsets of of society are just like primarily living online.
00:44:26
Speaker
And I do think that that is a already a very, very bad outcome. We've taught people that that their entire existence can be virtual. And it's failing to feed a very fundamental part of their person, that that desire for connection, like you said. So again, she doesn't really talk about that so much.
00:44:56
Speaker
but She mentions it, but she doesn't really dive in. Yeah, I think that's interesting. Because during the pandemic, that was the way that we connected with each other mainly. Like like the online, okay. Like the TikTok community during 2020 and 2021 was like peak. Blew up, yeah. at like It blew up because everybody was like, well, this is the only way I see other people, basically. like This is the only way I talk to people. So this society and community that was previously offline just kind of moved online, but a lot of people haven't been able to transition back from that. Right. And there's a lot of dysfunction in the way that yeah the online communities
00:45:49
Speaker
capture attention and that you know, it's kind of gotten to the point where you just you're you're kind of pulling pulled into addiction and not into connection Yeah, wo that's that's a problem Okay,
00:46:08
Speaker
but okay so she she talks about ah Briefly she talks briefly about how loneliness it's like a
00:46:21
Speaker
like a studied damaging thing. I don't even know how to say it. Like loneliness affects people to such a degree that it like affects every part of their life.
00:46:40
Speaker
And she kind of credits that as being the reason that people are like socially retarded. right in the in In the literal way, not the word and the literal word not the terrible way. Not an awful way. I mean i don't mean, yeah. no i So i thought that i I thought that was both,
00:47:07
Speaker
half an interesting point, but also the point I thought was used in a way that I didn't really agree with. yeah Like, like, yeah, I agree that loneliness is a extremely damaging state to be in constantly. And it can like, yeah, it makes sense that it would affect the way that you interact with yourself, other people, your community at large. That all makes sense. But I don't think that you can use that as a reason.
00:47:37
Speaker
to say, oh, everybody's just awkward because our social grace is degraded during lockdown. It's like most people, too, is a year. like I feel like we got to pick an argument here, too. Pick an argument. Did our social um capacity degrade? Because there's a part of it that she's like, yeah, we we're all just trying to learn how to get along with each other again. And then there's another element. it's like um were fundamentally lonely and this is weird like sometimes she's tapping into like pseudoscientific stuff where she's like oh I talked to this person who does studies on this and they say the lonely brain and I'm like define the lonely brain what is the lonely brain how lonely how do you define that
00:48:30
Speaker
what it like in in And could we more accurately describe the lonely brain as clinical depression? Like, why are we coming up with a new term? real So I was like, when she got there, I was like, eh, lonely brains respond to each other in certain ways. Like, no, depressed people don't want to talk to people. I get it.
00:48:58
Speaker
So i got that it got a little off the off the track for me. when I feel like it was an attempt to bring science into an element of what she's trying to convey. And it it really fell flat for me. it Honestly, what it felt like was the parts where she quotes outside sources felt like she wrote the article and then her editor said,
00:49:24
Speaker
gotta Let's drop some stuff in there. You can't just be all like, come on. And so she like Googled some stuff. And I was like, that's good. The editor was like, by the way, you're too much right now. This is is like super cringe.
00:49:42
Speaker
you're being a lot um yeah that's what it came off as because it was like just every now and then she'd be like also some of science i guess i think she just copy pasted this from her bumble profile by the way that's what i guess she's raking in the matches just raking them in
00:50:02
Speaker
I don't want to brag on this poor audience. I know, we're being so mean. We're really being mean. It's actually a really good thought-provoking essay. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. It's not as bad as we're making out. I'm sorry. No, it's not. I'm sorry. We're just being shitheads. What is her name? I'm sorry, Shanice Ajiwa. I think I'm sorry. I'm slaughtering your last name, too. Ajiwe. Ajiwe. I bet it's way. You're probably right.
00:50:31
Speaker
she's i mean this yeah She's from Philadelphia, so she probably has a very different experience of the world than us than we do, so send that as well. Yeah.
00:50:44
Speaker
But okay, so then I had a ah question to take from this article and ask you, do you feel like following lockdown when we emerged back into the bright light of society?
00:50:59
Speaker
Did you feel like out of step or awkward at first or do you still feel that way or did you never experience that? No, I felt actually the opposite as my sort of like halfway, like as a recovering introvert. Um, I felt mostly
00:51:24
Speaker
okay socially during COVID.
00:51:31
Speaker
You know, we curated a small group of people that we were still being social with, including having the family really close, which was helpful. But coming out of COVID, I think the thing I learned was, who cares if you feel awkward? Be social. Put yourself out there because it's worth it.
00:51:54
Speaker
Yes. yeah And most people that's what most people don't care nearly as much as you do about how awkward you are. Yes. that's That's what I took from it too. I left lockdown with this just like, I don't give a fuck attitude. Where it was like i'm just gonna like, I realized that I am fine with just my family actually.
00:52:19
Speaker
Turns out, I'll be good. So we proved it. We did. We did the experiment. And it proved our hypothesis. I have nothing to fear. And so then the fear of like, oh, nobody's going to like me and I'm going to be alone forever, was like, well, you'll always have your family. And even if, by some chance, everybody you talk to hates you, you'll probably be fine anyway.
00:52:47
Speaker
so Whatever. And I started going into social interactions just thinking, I love myself. I think I'm interesting and fun. And if I behave that way, it might allow other people to also be interesting and fun and like step over the fear of being the first person to be a little weird. Yeah. Like if you're the first person in a group to say something a little strange, breaks the ice. yeah The tension breaks immediately. yeah no i think So that's kind of what I do now and it works.
00:53:26
Speaker
I have a question for you about this whole experience reading this article. experience did you Did you have the sense that it was written primarily like or kind of almost intentionally as if from the standpoint of awkward introvert?
00:53:48
Speaker
Ooh. Yes. It felt like the character in the rom-com the main character before the hot guy takes her glasses off? Yeah, right. So you know so so here's the hot guy taking the glasses off in the like second to last paragraph, right? Yeah. On Halloween weekend last year, I suggested to my friends that we take a break from clubbing and bar crawling to go speed to go speed dating.
00:54:24
Speaker
this is but's so quirky and different This is a person who is an extrovert all along and just had to deal with the fact that sometimes the world doesn't want to talk to them.
00:54:42
Speaker
and She actually, to to your point, she quotes one of her sources earlier on. This is a quote that she has in the article where the the person she's quoting is like, as an extrovert, I try to watch my energy when I enter a room. I know I can be a lie. It's like, shut the fuck up. No one cares. That quote was annoying.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yeah, so so after she like you know she sets the premise of, oh, this poor recovered introvert who is now not going clubbing and instead going speed dating my for Halloween, she dresses up because she assumes that the speed dating event is all a Halloween theme. It's Halloween. And she's the only one in costume.
00:55:32
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that's such a quirky, silly a little experience. And she's so proud of herself that she just stayed and hung out. Good for her. You don't deserve celebration for staying and hanging out. You got exactly what you wanted. You were the center of attention for two hours. Yes. And her costume was ah was a cowboy hat and a clown nose.
00:56:01
Speaker
It's not like she was in Frankenstein makeup. So courageous. I bet she looked cute. I bet she looked cute. So courageous. She just won. So courageous. Why are we hating on this girl so much? I know. That turns really negative. It's still definitely worth a read because it's not so much a scientific uh look at it but it's more of a personal experience like look and i think that the more we do that and and uh reflect the the more we can understand people but yeah we we were a little too harsh there sorry maybe a little well okay interestingly i was thinking about this the article that you chose was written in 2016 but read like it was written in 2024
00:56:51
Speaker
And the article I chose was written in 2024 and read like it was written in 2016.
Comparing Article Tones
00:56:56
Speaker
Like the quirky millennial, like, oh, I'm not like other girls. I'm different. I am an introvert. And and I go and read a book at a bar sometimes. Trust me, I'll tell you all about it. I'll write a whole article all about me, but I just don't like talking about myself. Fuck off. That is weird.
00:57:20
Speaker
Um, yeah. Yeah. Well. Wow. Dad, we did it. We did it. That was fun, by the way. I liked both of those. That was fun. I think that structure and it's almost an hour. That's like a tight. Right. I thought we could have. Nicely done. I thought we were going to do an hour on each article because there's definitely plenty there, but.
00:57:47
Speaker
People don't want to listen to two hour long podcasts. No. I mean, unless you're Joe Rogan. Or me. hey I listen to two hour long podcasts, but most people don't. I think an hour of us talking is plenty. Yeah. It's enough for me. Right guys? This is where you say, no, we love it. Keep talking. Yeah.
00:58:13
Speaker
That was good. I think we brought the heat today. It was fun. Good job. Dad, we cooked. We cooked. We cooked. Let me cook. Microwave on. Sorry. Microwave? Sorry. I'm old. That's that's the quality of content you're getting from us over here at the Shallowland. Microwave dinner. We certainly, yeah. And you're welcome. We certainly didn't dive too deep on any of those topics, did we? We cooked. We served. Now it's time to head out. All right. The content diner at the Shallowland. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week for more of our greasy slop.
00:59:04
Speaker
Bye, everyone. Sorry. All right, bye!