Hey Upstream listeners, today we're releasing a conversation from Turpentine's show Econ 102, featuring guest Katherine D, also known as Default Friend, Katherine, Noah Smith, and I talk dating in the 21st century, the manosphere, the effects of feminism, and more. Please enjoy.
Hello, good to see you. Nice to meet you, Noah, and nice to see you, Eric.
Hey, yeah, Katherine, thank you for coming on. You don't look at all like my sister in cursing in actuality, only that one photo looks like my sister.
Yeah, that's I'm the queen of misleading Twitter avatars. When that I'm a like 15-year-old Japanese girl.
That's a good one. It's a good trick. Noah, why don't you remind the audience of the conversation that helped inspire Bring It On, Katherine D, or maybe just share what you found captivating about Katherine D's expertise, and then we can get right into it.
Well, okay, so the original conversation was just about like relationships. I guess it all started when Nora Chen and Steph Sher had me on to like a podcast to discuss why women in tech have trouble dating. And my basic thesis was they just work too hard, everyone, we're just, you know, works too much. But then that was my there's probably a lot more to it than that, but I just don't know what it is, and I'm I'm not very qualified to talk about this. But then I I went on some giant rant, Eric, you forced me to go on some giant rant about like love and relationships in one random episode, and I don't know why, but it it turned it was very popular and went viral sort of. Yeah, and and so we're like, well, let's let's get someone who talks about these things professionally to talk about these things. If we're gonna if we're going to switch to like a love and relationships podcast, um, we better get someone better than us.
Amazing, that's a cool topic. Katherine, how would you, for people who are unfamiliar, how would you sort of describe your expertise or interest on the topic?
Um, so I used to have a moderately popular dating advice column in my weird, eclectic body of work. e. Carroll was a big fan of it when it existed, and I I don't know, I I talk to a lot of people, and I think my expertise comes from from that, just exposure.
Yeah, and so maybe maybe let's start at the at the top in terms of like what do you think is missing in the in the discourse when people, you know, Noah brought up a potential theory why people aren't are aren't matching. Like what what do we think people don't appreciate about dating, whether it's, you know, looking at it across generations, you you look at Gen Z a lot, or you what do people not fully appreciate about what what's happening on the dating market?
So there's multiple dating markets, I think, is is a big one. Uh, your experience in New York is not your experience in San Francisco, and then the the big coastal like, you know, like relevant cities, right, the ones that everyone thinks of, really don't reflect the dynamics in the middle of the country or even in smaller cities within the same state. Like dating in Sacramento is probably quite different from dating in San Francisco, and I know that dating in San Jose and Sunnyvale when I when I lived there was different uh than San Francisco dating. So there's all these variations that I think get glossed over. To, you know, to go a step further and focus on the Bay Area, dating within tech is is different than if you're not in tech, and then there's there's gradients within that. Like are you in the startup scene? Are you are you very social? When you say you work in tech, do you you work at, you know, a big company like Apple, right? So there's all these there's all these differences that I think everyone thinks that they're normal as everyone else is normal. Of course, there's like overarching trends, but that I think when we give advice, it should be more tailored to people's more specific environments.
Okay, so that that's that's a good insight. They they're different dating markets. What and people were ask, okay, so what is the difference between sort of San Francisco and New York, or like what are the different kinds of markets, and what are the different factors that that make them different? Is it sort of sex ratio, you know, or or what are what what what makes them different markets? Is it the type of people that are in them, the personality traits?
It's it's everything, right? It's it I think the the big sort of like elephant in the room that I think people know is there but don't really mention, frankly, is class. That's I mean, and not just not just wealth, but also like where are you in the social hierarchy of your scene? Like if you if like some people in San Francisco, their dating market is or their dating pool rather are high earners who are maybe even a little bit famous even within their own sort of world, and that's a very different experience than dating in the middle or working class. So that I so I think that's really the big one, especially with like gender war conversation, dating discourse, capital D, you know, two capital D's, right?
How about San Francisco versus New York specifically? Would you say?
So I think it it depends on on where where you lie in that that landscape. People in San Francisco, I think, I mean, are not so if we're looking at sort of people with these like more prestigious jobs, I would say like it's slightly easier as a woman in San Francisco. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I I think that even though maybe you the men are more awkward or or something, like it's much easier to find someone who is stable across like multiple axes in the Bay Area than New York, where people are like more in creative careers and there's a little bit more precarity. I also think the expectations of people's appearances are different from city to city. This is something that is sort of whispered about but not really explicitly said, you know, like who's considered hot in Miami and again San Francisco and New York, and then even just throwing in a wild card there like San Jose, those are all very different things, and you can get away with one kind of look in one place and and not the other. And I think that also applies applies to men, like what are the expectations for for men and women in these particular cities.
So you're saying there could be an arbitrage opportunity?
Yeah, of course, right? And this was something that people were joking about when there was like the migration to Miami, right? Like they're so beautiful, but you know, it it depends on your taste, and they may have a different value set or just that.
And so is it true that like 30% of men, you know, under 30 aren't having sex or whatever? Like what do we make of the the the not having sex thing?
What exactly is is happening there? I think a lot of people are sort of antisocial. They aren't really they going out as much. You know, there's a lot of arguments over like, you know, to what extent did Me Too impact this? And I'm sure I'm sure it did create, I don't want to say a culture of fear because I don't I don't want to like invalidate anyone's, but I think that a culture of caution and perhaps overcorrection is, you know, one of the downstream effects of of of Me Too. So there's that, but there's also like COVID lockdowns. I think, you know, charitably people got used to just doing nothing, right? Just lying down, communicating over text message. And it's said socializing was a muscle, right? If you're not regularly social socializing, it's it's uncomfortable when you get back into it. And I think here's another difference between even Chicago where I am and San Francisco. You when I lived in the Bay Area, I was always going out all the time. There was always a party. There's always something happening. People are a little bit more reserved in Chicago. Not that there aren't people who are, you know, going out all the time, but my particular social circles aren't. Right. So there's there's a question of like what is the the cultural scene like in in your immediate environment that I think also plays a pretty big role.
Do you think that there will be some sort of great reset and just sort of pendulum swing, you know, the sort of like post-Me Too, post-COVID, you know, slutification, you know, sort of Trump in office, you know, now it's I'm I'm teasing, but I or do you think that this is just, you know, like a durable trend?
I mean, it depends on. I think for some people, yes, there is also like a backlash to being to online. I've noticed people are moving into the offline world, into physical reality, and every sort of current thing I think is just another chip like being online. Like I think each each event that happens just pushes people away from the internet, and what that might do is for certain populations, they they may start socializing more, and people may be may start having more sex. But I also think a lot of people are we're just kind of broken by lockdown and and maybe don't have the opportunity to socialize if they would like to. I mean, you know, lockdown didn't only impact us psychologically, but like, you know, for example, in in a lot of cities, a lot of bars closed, or it created a weird dynamic where like the rents changed, and so there's like bars constantly cycling out, not just bars, but also bookstores, more like subcultural hangout spots, more in general third third places. So some people are left in kind of this, you know, they have to make their own table, they have to make their own social scene, and I don't know how many people would be willing to to do that.
Yeah, Noah, can you imagine going to college during the COVID era?
I'm glad I enough to do that in the same time. Yeah, I know that's that'd be that'd be very disheartening. I don't know. I also feel that when I went to college, there was more of a cult of college because we didn't really have social media yet. There was this idea that that's when you're going to meet all the people who are in your class and who, you know, you're going to fall in love, you're going to meet your best friends, you're going to have all the, you know, new experiences, blah blah blah. And I think that social media has sort of disintermediated a lot of that stuff so that you can do that stuff without college uh more easily. I mean, you you could back in the day too, but but I think that college was special institutionally because, you know, it it it collated, it was it, you know, it was university, it brought all these people together, you know, that that in in a way nothing else did. Now social media does that, and so I think that it hasn't completely disintermediated it, but people really thought, you know, I need to have the best four years of my life in college, and and a lot of people were like, you know, actively sad and depressed that they if if they didn't if if those years didn't go perfectly. And and so well, I mean, for for me, I was depressed because my mom died right when I was starting college, but that was different anyway. But yeah, so so I think that that that was a big deal. Now it's becoming less important. I don't know. I feel like I meet up, you know, when I meet young people, like do you know do you know Anon Yu, sort of a famous kid?
Yeah, yeah, Anson, you know, yeah, she's like she goes to Waterloo with a lot of these other Waterloo kids, and actually a lot of the Waterloo kids that I talk to, they, you know, they like their college, they like the people they meet at college, but they don't feel that that's like the main thing. They think the main thing of their youth is like going to a city and meeting people, you know, in real life, using the internet as a tool to find people in real life, but then coming together in real life. So those are the those are pretty much the only like Zoomers I know. I mean, how about you, Eric? What do you think?
I mean, I I I know Zoomers, and I sort of hear similar things to what I'm hear from Kath D, which is it was a pretty demoralizing time, and you never get that time back. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that has some sort of durable effects on people's willingness to be social or sort of put themselves out there or sort of have developed a, you know, that that sort of set of resilience, social resilience that college can can can teach, and and just be way more online. Something, you know, that Noah reminded me of is it used to be that social media was a supplement to your college experience, like you would be in a Facebook group with your graduating class or something like that, and now it feels like you use social media to meet a subculture or a particular network of people that you want to be involved with, and that is a big difference. When I when I when I first started using social media, it was really to meet people in my immediate environment, and then I think the time I used it most intensely outside of, you know, now, right, was like Facebook groups when I was getting ready to go to college. And I remember like joining like graduating class like the three different schools I thought I was going to go to, and then, you know, I would leave and, you know, stay in the the one of the school that I I I did end up going to. And then we I, you know, there was like a secrets page, right, where people would post like things they overheard or, you know, secrets and confessions if people went to the school. And something that's interesting is, you know, right when Facebook was starting up, a lot of schools had similar sites that were just they were just for the school, right? It was it was pure and it was social media, which made it different from other, you know, internet-assisted platforms that had existed decades prior. But like Colgate had a or Facebook clone, I think NYU had something similar, and all these were just designed to help connect people who may not have otherwise met because they weren't in the same class or something.
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What about sort of talk a little bit about sort of the culture of Trad? Speaking of social media, is this kind of just an elite kind of defection? Is this a moment in time, or, you know, was this just an aesthetic thing that people actually weren't living out? Or is there something, is this just the beginning of something, maybe a sort of reaction or backlash against a certain sex positivity reality or something? What do you think about this?
I think the Trad, the Trad movement is like a lot of wishful thinking. I think it does exist in shades, and it's definitely, you know, it definitely was like an aesthetic movement or or online subculture. I think it's since subsided, but the the backlash we see is more gender war, right? It's radfems, maybe that use that word is being a little bit too liberally, or, you know, self-identified man-haters. And for for men, you know, people have talked about this ad nauseam, right? They're not, you know, they they don't like the way women live. I think again, like the most charitable interpretation is there's men who are, I don't want to use the word disgusted, but I guess the word is disgusted. They're disgusted by, um, what they perceive as contemporary femininity. Um, and sometimes it's as extreme as like straightforward sexism and misogyny. Um, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's just like I don't want to disrespect myself by giving my time or my money or my virginity to a woman who doesn't see me as a person. And that's, you know, that's maybe not necessarily what's actually happening, but it's what they what they perceive as as a situation. And I think there there's shades, it's it's a continuum on on both sides, right? There's women who straightforwardly hate men, um, and there, you know, are men who straightforwardly hate women, but not everyone is that extreme. There's there's more moderate people, but, you know, wherever you lie on that spectrum, there is a sense of of separateness.
I think is the sex recession real or is that hype?
I I think that's real. There's been a lot of a lot of surveys on it, but, you know, I will tell you, I will tell you that a few months ago I went to a wedding with a bunch of Gen X guys who are like, you know, they're all like five years older than me. I'm I'm an older millennial, but but five years older than me is is Gen X. And and then those guys were so horny. I couldn't believe how horny those guys, you know, those guys are like in their in their mid-40s, and they're like they are insanely horny, much hornier than any young people that I meet. Okay, not any, most, but then it's just it's like night and day. They're just thinking and talking about sex constantly. And then I sort of remember this is the way people were when like I was a, you know, a teenager listening to people in like their 20s talk about life. Like this is how they talked, and this is what I thought people were like, and then it sort of went away, and I didn't notice it until now. There's been a generational shift, and I think the Boomers were insanely horny too, like and just sort of took it for granted that this is how human beings are. And like something happened somewhere in the middle of the millennial generation, or maybe maybe even starting with my like mini generation, something happened. And and, you know, obviously RFK people are going to be like it was the seed oil or some [__], but like it was the internet, wasn't it?
I mean, I think that's that's part of it, right? Because there's all sorts of theories that are floated that I think have various levels of truth, right? Like more people are on SSRIs and other types of of psychiatric medications, and and that impacts. But also people are sedentary. They're they're much more sedentary, and obviously lockdowns only, uh, amplified this. And if you don't if you're not moving your body, you become out of touch with your body. So I don't know if we can say it's, you know, it's the internet purely, like we're all being mentally hijacked. I think there's all these other little things that are just seems so obvious that we take that we take for granted. It just like here's here's another one, like Uber Eats, right? Like even for myself, like I, you know, would walk half a mile or whatever to to go to a a cafe and pick up a coffee in the morning. That would be like my fun little routine and treat. And that's it's like if it's too cold or something, it's like oh I could just get it delivered, and it's it's 12 bucks, and it's like why not, you know, who gives a [__], right? Like that's that's nothing. And so I and but that's that still walk, I don't know, but that's like, you know, that's maybe that's like a that's a mile missing from like the amount that I'm that I'm moving around each day. And for some for other people, it's probably like much more extreme, right? There's just like no movement.
I'm going back to the radfem stuff for a second. So on on in the feminism sort of discourse, is it fair to say that reactionary feminism is also sort of wishful thinking and sort of losing out, you know, significantly to sex-positive feminism or or even career-based? Or like what's the latest in feminism? What's winning? What's going to win?
I think people are are are very skeptical of liberal feminism. So that, you know, to this is a little bit reductive, but just like an easy shorthand, like the girl boss sort of stuff, you know, consent-based, sex-positive things like this, they're much more skeptical about that. I think I don't know if that's if that's true, but just from from my own experience, reactionary feminism I think does appeal to some people, but I I don't think it's as popular as something that it's not quite radical feminism, but it looks more like radical feminism. I wouldn't underestimate how skeptical of anything even with a patina of conservatism young, you know, young people are. I think they're with men it's a little bit different, but I think a lot of women they don't want to be associated with the right, and they also don't feel like the right represents their interests, even if there are like feminist or or or woman, you know, centric elements to it, right? Like abortion is a big issue. Reactionary feminism doesn't really have room for abortion, neither does Catholic feminism, you know, should go without saying, it's basically in the name. And it's they they might be more willing to make concessions with liberal feminism, even if they're also skeptical of the sex industry. So that's like another another big fault line. I think there's many different shades. I would say millennials are probably more likely to be sex-positive, pro-sex work. Zoomers probably are are more conservative compared to millennials, but not as not necessarily as far as someone like Louise Perry or Mary Harrington, but I could be wrong. This is just sort of what I what I see.
And as you know, everyone's been discussing for the last decade, everyone's in an echo chamber, and, you know, things are curated by algorithms and what have you, right? One of my thesis about culture, and I, you know, I was saying this in reference, I know you had a debate with David Marx, who we're also gonna have on the podcast at some point, who's an old friend of mine, and I you guys were debating whether or not culture like like how creative or novel culture is. And I was saying I actually think it's not possible to know anymore because in, you know, the 80s or 90s or whatever, you could just look at popular music and film and TV, and you could look at these like these things, you could, you know, this this mass stuff that everybody watched and listened to and consumed, or famous artists who, you know, displayed at the top galleries. You could say what you could have a general idea whether culture was getting stale. Now everything is hived off in a subculture. It's it's very compartmentalized, and I think that it's impossible it's impossible to get a map of the landscape. So there can be incredible creativity in one pocket, incredible stagnation in another pocket, and it just it depends on your vantage point. It depends on which pockets you happen to be interacting with because there's no, you know, maybe AI will get good enough where it can survey all the pockets and sort of give us a good answer to this soon. But actually we should just ask Claude about or GPT about this: is culture getting stale? I mean, it'll just yeah. So so I thought that that was that was an interesting debate because I think that it it is impossible for me to know which one of you guys are right because I can name you pockets, I can name you parts of the culture where Dave is absolutely right that culture has stagnated, and I can, you know, I don't know, like a lot of, you know, music. I would say music in general is pretty stagnant, but but especially like rap music has stagnated in LA, you know, in the last few years, and then and then, you know, rock music has stagnated for longer than that, and and electronica has stagnated really badly. But then like but then then other places you see that are like, you know, short video is just so much more wildly creative than it was before. You know, people made short videos when I was a kid, but then, you know, just the the expansion. And I have this this thesis that it's it's mostly technology-driven. Now we have TikTok, but we all, you know, music is stagnant specifically because when we exhausted the possibility of synthesizers and amplifiers, you when when when we did all the and mixers, you know, when we did all the things we could do with those fundamental technologies, then then music stagnated a little because we didn't keep inventing new technologies to make music. But then we invented new technologies to make short video like TikTok, and then and and so there was an efflorescence there. So I think a lot of it's technology-driven, but then it's just impossible for me to say whether this, you know, constitutes an overall cultural stagnation or not because everything is in its bubble.
That's a good point. I mean, I think when people talk about whether, uh, culture is stale, a focus on, um, you know, what's left of the monoculture, what's gatekept. I think that there is a thirst for gatekept media, gatekept music, you know, gatekept everything, right? Because we like we need some standard bear, and it just doesn't it still exists, but it's it's it's not as respected as it once was, and it maybe not as, you know, beloved as it once was. To to your point about technology, I also think people don't learn their crafts, so they can't innovate because they don't understand the traditions that they're working in. You know, like there there's like this axiom that like, you know, all the best directors know everything there is about film, right? It doesn't mean that every copy is a great filmmaker, but, you know, all great all great, uh, filmmakers are copies. And if you if you're just working, you know, with a surface-level knowledge of of music or or whatever, you're not going to be you're not going to have enough knowledge to remix the past, right? There's that that Gerard essay that says like all innovation is just like, you know, remixing, uh, what came before you. And then to, you know, to your point about technology, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Like there are so many things we we could do with music that we don't, or that very few people are doing because we don't know enough about it again to like push the envelope technologically. Like I like I always wondered why like soundscapes or sound baths didn't take off because there's a lot you can you can do there, right? I I went to a sound bath like eight years ago now where this musician replicated the feeling of being in a blizzard with sound, right? And he came pretty close, and that's like that's pretty amazing, you know. But who's to say like the next, you know, like all right, we've moved beyond albums as like a storytelling, uh, method. Maybe the next thing is like some sort of like immersive sound experience, and it doesn't have to be that. It's just like one example of like something that feels like it hasn't really been, you know, explored. There's there's all sorts of things that we could be doing, and we aren't probably because people don't even know it's an option.
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Hey everyone, Eric here.
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We talked a bit about feminism. I want to ask you a bit about the manosphere. I haven't checked in on what's happening in a in a qu quite a while. Has the manosphere gotten bigger? Has it gotten more vulgar? What is sort of the trend line on sort of sort of the male side of the the gender war, both in terms of how they communicate to other men, but also in terms of how they sort of, you know, interact with women?
I mean, I I think for with with both sides of the divide, there's a lot of lowest common denominator content. It's so easy to create content. Internet's much bigger, so all these subcultures are very bloated. The same is true of the manosphere. It it's just like more like a really big part of it is more people are trying to get attention, and you know, we all know rage bait does very well, so they up up the stakes, and everyone's you know finding any possible angle to you know like Galaxy Brain their way into women oppressed men or or whatever thing. It's it's really sad, I think, because if you if you listen to early men's rights activists, like even early pickup artists, you know, I'd say like up until like the early 90s, so like this is a time span from right after the sexual revolution to like 1993 or something, they sounded very reasonable and very helpful. Like I I saw um a debate with I think it was like Herb Goldberg, who was an early men's rights activist, and maybe like Susan Kudi, who wrote Backlash, which is you know a famous book about how whenever feminism history me wins, there's a backlash, right? And it was just like they both were so like both have respect for their own arguments and respects respect for each other, and they seemed to like they want to they seem to be truth seeking in a way that everyone's an entertainer now, and that's just not not happening. Everyone wants to get people upset and hooked and you know paying for their course or their supplement or whatever their substack for their podcast. Sure, you know, guiltiest charge myself, Eric. We need we need we need you know more sponsors for this podcast. We have to be more controversial. Let's say controversial things. Hey, yeah, exactly.
Well, is there a trend sort of a a trend line or a sort of through line between sort of the pickup artist community and Me Too, where the pickup artist community, you know, taught nerds how that to sort of hit on women, and you know, it maybe taught them this idea that they could attract beautiful women because they saw some some nerds do it, and maybe there's like maybe women don't want to be hit on by nerds, and so there's sort of a or is that too cute?
Or there's really no where there is a through line is in incels and pickup artists. The original incel communities were direct reactions to pickup artistry. I think Me Too, it's there's too much going on there. The pickup artistry is just too obscure really to have inspired that. Me Too, I think, was a confluence of different movements and trends, and you know, we had sort of runch culture in the early 2000s. There was the discourse around campus rape and the the media response to all of these things. I mean, there's just to it's it was too big, and the the landscape it was emerging from was too complicated to say that pickup artistry had much to do with it. Yeah, maybe in so far as like we had this sort of sideshow like over-the-top sexist kind of thing, right? That these these guys would get you know trotted out on Maury and Dr. Phil, right? But they I mean who took who took that seriously really, right?
Is is Me Too kind of like the feminism end of history or something like that? Just kind of won out, and there's you know not likely to be sort of you know great repudiation of of of Me Too, or how do you sort of think about sort of you know sex norms, you know, a few years from now? Do you expect a pendulum swing back?
Or unclear. I don't know. I mean, it it depends. Like if we stay online and stay sort of antisocial, it you know it it just depends on where where the broader culture goes. I don't think it is, you know, feminist end of history necessarily, though.
Is it likely that whatever Aya represents, the sort of glorification of of sex work, sort of like rational polyamory, you specifically on the sort of sex positivity side, do you think that peaked a few years ago?
Oh yeah, I mean, but she's not even very well liked by those people because she's a little bit too too out there. She's too she's too too libertarian. She has too many questions. She's she's very she's like one of the only like true originals I could think of because she she's her own box in a way that not many people are.
True original, right here. Okay.
Exactly. No, I so so here's another another topic that I've been thinking about: avoidant avoidance, avoidant behavior, avoidant attachment. I I've noticed a distinct trend among the young people that I see toward what I consider to be avoidant behavior. So like I said, the Gen X people, you know, they just they were just impulsive people who like had trouble controlling their impulses, maybe because of lead poisoning or maybe just you know I don't know why, but they were but they were very like horny and often violent, aggressive, and you know would say intemperate things and just make bad decisions in life sometimes. And so controlling themselves was a big problem for these people. But then when I look at young people, I see a completely different set of problems. I see them they're not having like just a whole bunch of hookups with a bunch of random people. I mean, a few people are doing that, but like it's not as common. Instead, what I see are people having these situationships, which are relationships where you're sleeping with someone occasionally, not you know five times a week whatever, but you're sleeping with them you know once every couple of weeks or once a you know I don't know what. And like but then they and they they just have this this person they're like oh yeah we're in a situationship and they never really think seriously about whether they want to you know have some sort of emotional commitment and that's that's their romantic life and it it seems casual because they they're like oh we're just keeping it casual it's not really we're not defining a thing blah blah blah but it's not it's not the same thing Gen X people did when they said we're keeping it casual. When Gen X people say we're keeping it casual, they just meant we're having a lot of sex but we just you know don't feel emotionally attached to each other. But then these people like it's almost like it's like a relationship that failed to ignite. It's like a relationship that sort of putters along and kind of and kind of doesn't quite reach critical mass. And it's like you know Jupiter failed to be a star because it wasn't big enough. It's sort of like that. It's you know that's what I see. And and I also see at the same time a lot of people talking about you know sort of using therapy speak as an excuse to say ditch all your friends, ditch all the people in your life, cut off contact with everybody. Like that's a common thing you see people rant about on on Twitter or other platforms. You see people say you know just ditch them, avoid toxic people, cut them all out of your life. And then and that's an avoidant behavior as well. That's that's avoidant attachment style. And so I'm wondering, are we seeing a mass epidemic of avoidant attachment style among the youth, or is this the availability heuristic? Am I just happening to see different people, or is it overhyped, or am I misidentifying it? You know what what do what do you think about this?
I I was thinking about that today. Like there is this really like it's almost like smarmy or something. Like I don't know, there's something like really annoying about it. Just like this inability to have difficult conversations, and so just sort of like like lying low, right? Like if you're not even if you're not outright ghosting someone, just sort of like waiting for like the conflict you made up in your head to blow over, you know. And I think this is a very iial thing too. I think it started with with I think we're all roughly in the same age cohort. It started with us. We were the first generation, and I don't know what causes it. It's like this fear, like there's this mass fear of like getting yelled at, even if you're not going to get yelled at. Like I'm I'm going through like right now. Like I have a friend who's just like not responding to my texts, and there's this like awkward energy, and I know she's like in a moment of retreat, and I'm like did we like do we have an argument that didn't register as an argument to me? I you just see it with people all the time, right? And I like I I can't explain it. Like some people have offered maybe we get too many notifications, and it's like response to overstimulation. Some people say like oh you know if you were sent to daycare, this is your it's like there's I don't know what it is, but it's very annoying, right? And I I don't I I think you're right that to point out that it's present in the in in dating, but it's present everywhere.
Do we have a low T crisis or epidemic, or what's the right way of thinking about sort of testosterone and its sort of the state of it and its impact?
I mean, it see it seems like all the science says says we we do, and you know also sperm count is another thing to be concerned about. I would I would be thrilled for someone to say that this is fake, or that I would even be thrilled to find out that it's just like we're sedentary and obese, and it's like a fixable problem, right? Like you know, Ozempic fixes this. I love it, right? Like I I would you know I would love to hear that.
Yeah. You alluded to it earlier in terms of like people not wanting to be conservative. You know, Bologe likes to say that Democrats and Republicans are almost like Sunnis and Shiites now. They don't like date. They don't sort of intersect.
U Bologe is hilarious. We need more Bologe on the pod. Very colorful.
Are you are you seeing this sort of great sort of you know sort of isolation or fragmentation in terms of people not wanting to date across political party?
