654: Solooooo

Summary

Duncan Trussell Family Hour

Episode: 654: Solooooo
Release Date: December 8, 2024

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Introduction

Duncan Trussell opens the episode with gratitude towards his listeners for appreciating his solo episodes. He reflects on his insecurities about hosting alone but acknowledges that these episodes serve as a platform for him to explore and develop ideas with the help of his audience and tools like ChatGPT. Duncan emphasizes the importance of sharing his "rambling attempts" to uncover truths or recognize flawed ideas, viewing such endeavors not as failures but as contributions to collective understanding.

Notable Quote:

"You're failure is helping all of us succeed by realizing you are. You are totally fucking off." [00:30]

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Alan Lichtman and Political Squabbling

Duncan delves into a heated exchange between Sink C E N K and Alan Lichtman, the creator of the election prediction keys. Lichtman defends his theories against criticism, vehemently denying personal attacks and asserting his credibility. Duncan uses this interaction to highlight the fracturing within political thought leaders, noting that both the left and right have their "priest classes" who often attack themselves rather than engaging constructively with opposing views.

Notable Quote:

"I think Lichtman thought of himself as a sort of untouchable guru of the left." [05:00]

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The Mystery of the Cassette Tapes

Duncan shares an unsettling personal anecdote about receiving a box of mysterious cassette tapes with peculiar stickers. He expresses his wife's frustration over the unsolicited and eerie packages addressed to him. Despite not owning a cassette player, Duncan humorously contemplates the possibility of listening to these tapes live on the podcast, imagining they might contain eclectic mixes or personal recordings.

Notable Quote:

"It's a box of cassette tapes. Like, I'm just grabbing one out, weird stickers on it and shit. It's unnerving." [10:15]

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Memes and Mnemonic Possession

Transitioning to a more analytical segment, Duncan introduces the concept of "mnemonic possession," blending Richard Dawkins' idea of memes as units of cultural information with the notion of possession. He defines memes not just as viral images but as any cultural data with replicative tendencies, such as political slogans or fashion trends. Duncan argues that memes can influence individual identities, behaviors, and societal structures, likening overly politicized individuals to being "possessed" by a set of pervasive ideas.

Notable Quote:

"Memes, they want to propagate, they depend on propagation to exist." [15:31]

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Analyzing Political Egregores and Superorganisms

Expanding on the meme concept, Duncan explores "egregores," which he describes as entities that exist within collective human consciousness, embodying specific ideas or ideologies. He uses examples like Santa Claus to illustrate how egregores manifest in culture. Duncan then parallels political factions to egregores, suggesting that both the left and right function as superorganisms driven by hierarchical structures and pervasive memes. He critiques the uniformity and rigidity within these political memeplexes, pointing out how media figures act as high priests perpetuating specific ideologies.

Notable Quote:

"If you look at the uniformity, the homogeneous nature of this memeplex is insane. It's an organism. It's a superorganism." [64:43]

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The Dance of Political Polarization

Duncan metaphorically describes the interaction between opposing political factions as a ballroom dance where both sides mirror and amplify each other's behaviors and ideologies. He highlights the cyclical nature of political rhetoric, where each side's actions inadvertently fuel the other's agendas, leading to heightened division and conflict. This dance, according to Duncan, perpetuates a state of mnemonic possession where individuals are entrapped by dominant memes, hindering genuine understanding and cooperation.

Notable Quote:

"We're dancing with each other. We're in some ridiculous ballroom dance with each other." [77:53]

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Personal Reflections and Self-Interrogation

Concluding his analysis, Duncan encourages listeners to introspectively evaluate the memes influencing their thoughts and behaviors. He urges individuals to discern between authentic personal beliefs and those instilled by external cultural forces. By doing so, Duncan believes people can achieve greater self-awareness and liberation from the subconscious propagation of potentially harmful memes.

Notable Quote:

"Have the courage to interrogate your own psyche to see what memes are swimming around up there in your brain." [80:02]

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Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Duncan Trussell interweaves personal anecdotes, cultural analysis, and philosophical musings to explore the pervasive influence of memes on individual and collective consciousness. By examining political dynamics, societal behaviors, and personal experiences, he invites listeners to critically assess the underlying forces shaping their realities. The episode serves as a compelling reflection on how cultural data, or memes, drive societal structures and personal identities, urging a conscious effort to distinguish and possibly liberate oneself from imposed ideologies.

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Note: Advertisements and non-content sections from the transcript were omitted to focus solely on the core discussions and insights.

Transcript

[Duncan Trussell]

Greetings to you, my friends. It's me, Duncan. This is the Duncan Trussell Family Hour. Hello. I want to say a big thank you. A lot of you have been sending me really sweet messages telling me you enjoy these solo episodes. And that makes me feel great because I feel a little insecure about doing them. I mean, who the fuck do I think I am? And it occurred to me in the middle of the night when I woke up after a really bad dream that I should maybe. And I know I don't think I should do this for every single one, but maybe point out how a lot of the things I'm talking about on these solo episodes. Episodes are clearly not fully developed ideas, but more of a way that I'm trying to, in my own mind, work out ideas that I have. Because every once in a while, I just get some idea that I want to explore. I've got methods of doing that that are evolving. This is one of them. Also, I like sharing the ideas with you guys because your responses help develop the ideas, point me in new directions. Um, and then I interact with ChatGPT a lot when I come up with an idea. And I'm trying to make them a little bit more organized because I recognize that I inevitably go off on a tangent, and sometimes that tangent never returns to the original idea. So I'm working on that. I don't want to be hyper organized, but also it would be. I think it'd probably feel better if the things were slightly more structured. Bottom line, thank you for being part of my rambling attempt. My stumbling towards some truth or realizing whatever my dumb idea was was actually just a dumb idea and there's nothing there at all. Which to me is a delight that I feel like people have sort of unfortunately failed to recognize. Uh, it's double failure. Failure in trying to, like, propose some new idea or failure in putting your ass on the line, uh, and then turn. It turns out you're wrong. Is not really failure. You're. You're failure is helping all of us succeed by realizing you are. You are totally fucking off. And I think the most classic example of that that I'm seeing right now in the. On the Internet is. And I doubt we could show this because it's definitely like, IP violation, but please check out. There's an incredible clip floating around of that guy Sink. Is that his name from the Young Turks? Sink Unger or something I don't like. And you all probably have heard of Alan Lichtman. Alan Lichtman. If you watch the William Montgomery episode William has already had tension with Lichtman. Alan Lichtman is the originator of the keys that predict the election. And Lichtman was wrong this time. And there's just, you know, as we're watching, the sideshow of politics is probably every single one of you must be to some degree, if you're not, God bless you. Congratulations. But one of the things that is happening is these sort of leftist spokespeople, the priest class of the left. And there's a priest class in the right, too. I'm not trying to be partisan here. They're falling on themselves. They're attacking themselves. And I guess Lichtman thought of himself as a sort of untouchable guru of the left. Like impenetrable. That's not the right word. He's probably penetrable. We all are. Hey, we all are. That's how God made us. But sort of. You weren't supposed to challenge Lichtman because he actually did predict a bunch of elections. I think he predicted that Trump would win. And so not in this one, though, but because of, you know, his predictions were always accurate. Whenever he called it, people freaked out because they're like, oh, for sure they're going to win. And that could theoretically produce a sort of complacency in the. In that. In the party that was predicted to win. And so this is an incredible clip. Maybe we can show. I don't know the rules, man. I got to figure this. I don't care. Let's just. Can you look up Sink C E N K versus Lichtman, Piers Morgan. It's crazy to watch. I think I've seen other podcasts. They'll show a little bit of it and then you could just hear the audio or something.

[Josh]

Is this it?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, this is crazy to watch. And this is a from Fox News. They've broken it down. Let's just watch the clip and I don't know, we'll figure out what happens if I get in trouble. Jeez, you have to watch the commercial, too, like on the Fox. You can't skip. You're going to watch this new series. It's an all new epic series coming out. The Saints. Martin Scorsese. What the. Fox Nation.

[Josh]

There you go.

[Alan Lichtman]

I debated Professor Lickman before. I told him his theories about the keys were absurd. I was right, he was wrong. I said he'd lose his keys wrong. And that's a cheap shot and I won't stand for it. Well, who won, brother? Should not be cheap shots at me who live in a total World of denial. I read your own followers. You don't know who attacked me personally. So deluded. I've only been a professional. I've never been able to finish. How many books have you published? Been an. No, because you're personally attacking nerd fight. Say whatever you want, but I'm not. Brother, you got it wrong. You were preposterously and stupidly wrong. So I will not sit here and stand for personal attacks for blasphemy against me.

[Duncan Trussell]

Blasphemy?

[Alan Lichtman]

You don't. Blasphemy against you? Who the hell are you? Are you Jesus Christ?

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, you could stop it. That is incredible. Now, there is a. My. Like, there in psychology, there's something called leaking, and it's really interesting. And all of us do it. It's where you accidentally reveal the thing that you think about yourself that you never wanted anyone to know. And that's a case of leaking. Lichtman leaked that in the term blasphemy that he considers himself to be. You know, when I think of blasphemy, most people in general, like, imagine divinity, sainthood, a kind of mystical position, a shamanic sort of political position. And when Lichtman says blasphemy, that means he thinks of himself as something that could be blasphemed against. And also he's sort of articulating a general sort of political idea, which is that you, by uttering the wrong thing, you are blaspheming. It's not just your. It's an ad hominem attack. This is fucking like spitting on a cross. And in this case, Lichtman, I guess, was the crucifix that the left crucified themselves on. And. And. But also I do want to say, like, and this is me just being a complete naive dumb shit, but I. As fun as it is to watch, like a nerd squabble, I mean, I think if you wanted to break it down, that's what you're looking at there. It's the squabbling of nerds. And there's nerds on the right. Any political pundit is a nerd. And I don't mean nerd in a bad way. I mean, like, if you're, you know, I'm into Hearthstone, I love it. I'm a nerd. That's a nerd thing. And if I got into a Hearthstone argument, that would be a nerd argument. And so what you're seeing there is like, essentially nerds squabbling. Or another way to put it would be like, it's no different than like people who are into baseball squabbling over some idea of who is going to win the World Series. It's just a squabble of nerds. And that's a cool name for it. I don't know what a group of nerds is called, but I think we should start calling it a squabble. And so, and you know, there's something like weirdly sweet in Lickman. You know what I mean? There's something pathetically sweet or something. I mean, he's been destroyed, defeated, absolutely. Now his keys, people question the keys. That was never before. He lost a lot of power and, but also what you're seeing there is, you know, the, the losing political side falling on itself because they, they, the attacking the other side has become a secondary consideration. Now they're attacking each other, blaming each other. It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault. You thought this, I thought that I was right. You're wrong. And so it's just wild to watch. And it's really up because like, my God, they've got really sharp fangs like, and swords. And they've been sharpening their swords. I, no one would want to be on the receiving end of that blade. And now to watch them like essentially turn the blade on themselves, do this kind of like self mutilation is just cra. Crazy to watch and still sad. They're still missing the point. Like it's, that's the strangest thing of all is it's like, dude, don't turn the blade on yourselves. The very same blade you turned on the right that caused you to lose the election. All of your power. The blade is the problem. Friends. Stop. Put it in the fucking sheath. Be civil with each other. You know, it's funny though. I mean, I'm glad that happened. It's hilarious. Oh yeah. Before I get into what I want to talk about today, I want to show you something. Josh, this is fucking weird. So, you know, obviously parent kids, I, I, I don't want anything mailed to my house that isn't from like Amazon or something. I ordered and I got something really unnerving sent to my house. I want to show you.

[Josh]

It's from a fan.

[Duncan Trussell]

Don't know. No idea. No idea. And the, and I'll show you why I have no idea. So a box of cassette tapes. Like, I'm just grabbing one out, weird stickers on it and shit. It says shake it up and it's got numbers on the back. It's unnerving. It's like, it's definitely like, not. Has not made my wife happy.

[Josh]

Have you listened to any of them?

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't have a cassette player.

[Josh]

Oh.

[Duncan Trussell]

So I fucking can't. But I'm gonna get one eventually. It's. The holidays are coming up, so I'll have to wait. But. Yeah. Box of fucking weird cassette tapes. And the whole box is cassette tape. Yes. Fill and all. All of them with weird fucking, like, stickers.

[Josh]

Oh, Jesus.

[William Montgomery]

Is that. Jesus.

[Duncan Trussell]

I hope so. But regardless, there's, like, fucking a lot of weird shit in there. I mean, I like. Yeah. So the reason I. If. I mean, I wanted to show them on the Soul episode, but the reason I brought them here is also because my wife's like, give them the fuck out of the house.

[Josh]

So you brought them here. I appreciate it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Sorry, but I didn't want to throw them away. Yeah, she wants me to throw.

[Josh]

I'm going to find a tape here. I'm going to listen to some.

[Duncan Trussell]

Would you please? Yeah, that would be awesome. I. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it definitely is. Like, you know, like, these things pop up on Reddit. Someone's in their house, they find a. Like a safe, and, you know, they want to open the fucking safe. And then the thread never pops up again. You're just left with this feeling of, like, what's in the fucking safe? And that is kind of how I feel right now, but because we're all about to go out of town and I'm trying to get a bunch of podcasts done, and I've been on the road, I just don't have time to, like, go and find a fucking cassette player.

[Josh]

Yeah. How long you had them for?

[Duncan Trussell]

I don't know. They came, see, just went to Chicago. Like, right before I went to Chicago, they showed up, you know, been sitting in my car.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And they. Now they're here with you.

[Josh]

They. They must have spent a pretty penny to send them because that's a big box.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's a big fucking. That's. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of, like. I certainly understand why Aaron doesn't want them at the house and why she's upset about it, because it's like, it's truly the last thing that you would want. And also it is addressed to me. Yeah.

[Josh]

How do they know your address?

[Duncan Trussell]

That's the problem. That's what you don't like. I mean, it's creepy. It's creepy when you get, like, nice things to your address from people that you didn't know had your address. But it's obviously Even more creepy when you get a fucking box of weird cassette tapes with weird stickers, writing, and art on them. If I was single, it would be the coolest fucking thing ever.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

When you have kids, it's like a whole different ball of wax.

[Josh]

So you open it up, it has fentanyl or something.

[Duncan Trussell]

I didn't even think of that.

[Josh]

I'm gonna wear gloves when I open it.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's a good and bad thing again. It's like. Yeah. Like it. Yeah. I don't know, man. It's. It's a true curiosity. But, yeah, if you have access to a cassette player, I imagine they're not that hard to find. I just.

[Josh]

Now you get on Amazon, you think then, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, we should, like, play some next solo episode or something.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

See what's on there. You know what? Don't listen.

[Josh]

Just.

[Duncan Trussell]

We'll do it. We'll do it live.

[Josh]

All right?

[Duncan Trussell]

We'll do it live. And it's probably just. My guess would be it's just like, music and. Or something.

[Josh]

So it's this guy's mixtape. His whole freaking whole collection of all the songs he's ever made.

[Duncan Trussell]

Dude, that would be the funniest of all time. But I don't know. We'll find out. Okay, here is what I want to talk about today. This is something that has been going through my head for a while now. It actually connects to the lichtmanship. Sadly, it is. Does have a political component to it, but not a partisan component to it. Just an analysis. And I've been thinking about it a lot, so I even made a title card. Today's topic, mnemonic possession. And that Kilroy was here. I put her. I forgot to put the yan. But basically that. That's a meme that was showing up in restrooms for a long time. And so. All right, you can take that shit down. Whatever the. So this is something that has really caught my attention lately. And before I show it to you, somehow, if you're not familiar with the origination of meme, the term meme, do you know anything about where that term came from?

[Josh]

No.

[Duncan Trussell]

So that came from Richard Dawkins, and he's the one who coined the term. Meme basically is a kind of unit of cultural data. And so a meme is not just like an image. A meme can be anything. It's a. It's a. It's a symbol set, and it's viral in nature. Right? So a meme has a viral quality, and in its viral quality, there's a Lot of aspects to it that like, almost seem like it's alive. So like memes, they want to propagate, they depend on propagation to exist. If, like people stop sending the meme around, the meme dies. There is no more meme political ideas, you could actually call them memes or turns of phrases that show up in politics would be considered a meme. So when you start hearing people vocalizing sentences that are political in nature and are identical across whoever's saying it, for example, crisis at the border. This is a meme crisis at the. I'm not talking about whether it's true or not true. I'm saying the term itself is a meme. People on the left will say it, people on the right will say it, but it's an echoing kind of thing that propagates from person to person and it lives in human minds. So a meme will nest in your brain and it seeks to replicate. It is also subject to natural selection. So memes evolve. Memes adapt, adjust to the environment. And all of the adaptation and the adjustment is survival based. It has to adapt in ways that make sure that it keeps going. And so Pepe, oh yeah, Pepe is a classic example. There's lots of memes that are going strong. Socrates, Plato, like these things from a long time ago. You could argue Christianity from this perspective. Any world religion is a meme that has a mechanism of propagation that usually is a story built into it, at least when it comes to religion. Right. I mean, if you look at Christianity as a meme, which I'm sure I didn't read the selfish gene, which is where the term meme came from. I'm sure Dawkins would say Christianity is an incredible meme in the sense that its mechanism of propagation is the story. The story invites a kind of missionary. You must spread the word of God. And also built into the meme is it's scary if you don't accept Jesus, hell awaits. Meaning it's fangs. That meme has fangs. And so that meme is like, it's rolling. I mean, I'm looking at it purely from like a Dawkins atheist perspective, which don't want to reduce it to that because I don't necessarily believe that, but just from that perspective, Christianity meme.

[Josh]

And they're becoming cryptos. Like Pepe is a cryptocurrency worth a billion now. It's crazy.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go. Like in memes. That's, that's an interesting point. Because memes, they. The mechanism of propagation of the memes is Increasing in the sense that, you know, if you. The Kilroy was here, the dude peering over. The mechanism of propagation was bathroom walls, right? That was pretty much it. It's a limited mechanism of propagation. I guess you could draw it on a wall anywhere. Draw it on your paper, whatever. Another meme which is really interesting is that weird diamond shape kids would draw in their notebooks. You know, I'm talking about. That was a meme. There's certain things kids draw that show up over and over. Micro memes happen in, like, you know, elementary schools. Kids will. A contagion of some certain meme will show up where kids are, like, saying the same thing. Minions speak. Yeah, you know, kids talking like the Minions Baby Day. That's a meme. They get spread through children. Thank God adults aren't doing that. But it's a meme. It's the most annoying thing when you're.

[Josh]

My kids or calling me. They're like, dad, you're acting Sus. And I was like, don't say that.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go.

[Josh]

You cannot say that. It means suspicious. I was like, not in my generation. It means something different. Don't ever call your dad Sus.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. Or bro. Like, there was a parent telling me their kids started calling her bro, which is really funny. But. So that's what a meme is, right? And so now I wonder if you could pull up symptoms of demonic possession. Because today I want to talk about mimonic possession, which is pretty much the same thing. So let's pull up. What are the signs from Quora?

[William Montgomery]

This episode of the DTFH has been.

[Duncan Trussell]

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[William Montgomery]

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[Duncan Trussell]

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[William Montgomery]

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[Duncan Trussell]

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[William Montgomery]

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[Duncan Trussell]

Which is why it is the favorite.

[William Montgomery]

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[Duncan Trussell]

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[William Montgomery]

Great Christmas gift for the parents.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay, this is funny. I think we'll have to go somewhere else, but I just want to read this because it looks cool. I was the victim of witchcraft. It felt like an ailment, like an illness I was having. I couldn't get up from bed. I was always sleeping. Seemed like I had depression. The person who did witchcraft on me was a man from my community college studies.

[William Montgomery]

I'm gonna get you.

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm gonna put a spell on you. The person who did witchcraft, I remembered he attacked my mind. He got into my mind. I started hearing voices. I had headaches and vomited a lot. Nobody believes in witchcraft. I do. Seems people are skeptical about the devil. Everyone seemed to abandon me due to what I was having. I found a girlfriend online and her prayers helped me regain strength and faith in God. I went to see a priest. They didn't believe I was bewitched. So I went to see a psychiatrist due to voices and they diagnosed me with schizophrenia. I was taking medication for schizophrenia, but the symptoms didn't go away. I was dealing with suicidal thoughts. One time I was watching a YouTube video about schizophrenia and I saw a comment. The guy said God removed his schizophrenia. Anyway, okay, that was just interesting. That is, by the way, a certified nurse assistant. So I hope you don't end up with her in your room. Yeah, let's look up on what Reddit. Christianity. And it really connects with Lichtman. Yeah, right there. Let's pull that up. In the sense that Ligman said, blaspheme. Let that baby load up.

[Josh]

I don't know why Reddit's going so slow.

[Duncan Trussell]

That's weird. Probably the fucking cables that got cut. There we go. Okay, let's scroll down to clear problem. 9,000, 590. He says, as someone who has been demon possessed, I can name some symptoms for you. Hearing voices and having thoughts that blaspheme. Holy things are persons. Sink is clearly possessed. He blasphemed. Lichtman seeing things that others cannot see, usually of an evil nature. Feelings of rage that appear to come out of nowhere, often with the intent of harming oneself or others. Feelings of wanting to commit heinous acts that don't come from the self. Inability to control your thoughts and or actions. Knowing things about the future and others don't or cannot know. Hatred or fear of children and animals. Inability to read the Bible without the mind wandering or feeling hatred. Intense, debilitating fear or hatred when choosing to do good. Excessive narcissism. Now this is pretty much the symptoms of demonic possession in Christianity. Now, not all of those fit in to what many of us have seen happening politically to people, but I think you could argue quite a few of those show up. Let's go back through it again. Specifically, intense, debilitating fear or hate. Wait, go back. Knowing things about the future that others don't or cannot know. Now let's talk about that. And again, this. Let me just say right off, I am not saying that if you have become politicized, you are possessed by a demon. I'm just saying there are characteristics that you are exhibiting that interestingly enough, match the symptoms of demonic possession. And also, I'm not saying that demonic possession is a reality. I'm using this as a structure, a lens to look through, a fun way of looking out at the world. Whether it's true or not, who gives a fuck? And I'm not going to go on a tangent about chaos magic, but that's sort of an implicit thing within it. It's like it doesn't matter yet. Is there a Wolverine in real life? No, I wish there was. But could you theoretically channel the personality spirit of Wolverine? Could you actually, via some bizarre ritual, bring all that aggression, bravery, wildness into your own life? Yes, you could. Therefore, the existence or non existence of an entity is irrelevant to the effect it has in the direct moment to exert your will in the world. Meaning you can actually, you don't just need to summon angels, demons. You could summon Wolverine if you wanted to, as ridiculous as that sounds. So, and the a less woo woo version of that would be pump up music. Like, you know, if you have some music you like to listen to when you're going to the gym or when you're down, or you need some energy, you need to feel better. You could say this is a ritual. You are summoning an energy via like the music and the words and the music. It's a summoning ritual. You are invoking an entity which is the entity of enthusiasm. Ambition, fearlessness. It's the identical thing. Except instead of using music, you would be using symbols. The symbol could be Jesus. The symbol could be Batman. The symbol could be Arnold Schwarzenegger. The symbol could be Gargamel from the Smurfs. So I have no idea what that would do for you ritualistically. The point being, when I'm saying these things, I'm not literally implying or saying hyperdimensional entities have attached themselves to people, though I'm not saying it's not possible. I don't know. And I'm definitely not saying that some, the left or the right, have all been possessed by demons and. But it's fun to use these preexisting frameworks as a lens to look at things, which I think when you're in a swirl of tumult and confusion, that's a good thing, is to find a new way of looking at it, to sort of extricate yourself from the situation and to turn that lens on yourself fearlessly to see where you fit in there. But also hatred and. Or fear of children and animals. Now, I want to point out a fashionable sort of cultural idea that is alive and well in the world right now, which is maybe not necessarily a hatred of children, but certainly a fear of breeding. Like, there is a. You know what I mean, an antinatalist movement. Now, if you go to any of the subreddits that are focusing on those ideas, inevitably you will find, I just fucking hate kids. There is a general sort of like. And I, you know, I. I remember prior to breeding, the sense of just absolute annoyance when a baby would start crying. Oh, my God. Or a baby comes on the plane and you're like, mother that. It's a meat air siren that I'm about to fucking hear for this whole fucking flight. But then you have kids in your immune system for, like, shit like that is so much stronger. So I don't give a fuck. A kid could scream for an entire flight. And it will not impact me the way it used to, other than just, like, feeling for the parents, you know, like, it just sucks for the parents because they feel guilty. But that actually happened on a flight. It was the coolest thing ever. It wasn't cool because my little girl had just decided to wail through the flight and sometimes there's nothing you could do. And we were trying everything, you know, their ears pop. It's just weird. The whole situation is bizarre. Brand new. It's loud. I think maybe they're, like, feeling shit that we've learned to Tune out or something, I don't know. But, like, the plane lands, we feel bad for the people in front of us. We're apologizing. It was the most amazing thing. Everyone was like, it's fine. We're parents. We get it. It was really cool. I totally misjudged people. But definitely. I used to be the dick on the plane, mad at the baby. And so I get it. The point being this sort of, like, feeling of revulsion when it comes to children, having children, breeding, interestingly enough, fits in at least in this person's description of demonic possession. Something we just pulled up, but I've read that in other places, too. Feelings of rage that appear to come out of nowhere. Dude, I guess you could say that, like, the rage coming out of the losing political group right now is not necessarily coming out of nowhere, but it does appear that the people are experiencing bouts of rage here and there that are, like, unbridled and uncontrollable feelings of wanting to commit heinous acts that don't come from the self. Now this again. I've seen, like, lots of shit of, you know, people saying they're gonna start poisoning men and shit, like, kill. Like, excessive narcissism, you know, like, a lot of times when you're seeing the vocalization of, like, horror over what has happened, it feels there's some sense of self involvement in the horror. The camera has been set up for the nervous breakdown. The lighting is right for the nervous breakdown. The setting up the camera to film you telling your child that the bad man won. You know what I mean?

[Josh]

I've seen those.

[Duncan Trussell]

Those are fucked up. Because it's like, you know, if you're. If your family is aligned in some political way and you have included your poor fucking child in American politics, which. Jesus Christ, why would you do that to the poor kid? It's like when I was a kid. Jesus, I'm so glad my parents didn't do that to me, you know? And if they did, I don't remember it. But the point is, like, the kids have enough to worry about. They're learning how to walk, talk that Alphabet and shit. They don't need to, like, be suddenly, like, confronted with the idea that the Antichrist has risen to power. They certainly aren't going to have any impact on whatever happens because of that. So I feel bad for those kids. But, you know, who the fuck am I to say, like, I hate parenting, like, advice and shit. It's like, do your thing. You're a parent. The part where it gets Narcissistic is when you set the fucking camera up for the talk. That should be personal, not necessarily. You're filming your child's dismay. It's fucked up. It's narcissistic, if you ask me. There's narcissism there. You're not doing it. The agenda there is not necessarily based on, like, breaking the news to your kid, but also showing everyone that you're breaking the news to your kid. It's narcissism. Right.

[Josh]

So it's the social credit. It's not about being right, it's about the appearance of looking right.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's transactional.

[Josh]

Yep.

[Duncan Trussell]

You are getting. Yeah, you're getting likes, views, you're getting this. You know, there's a quantification of the event. The agenda is to quantify the event online. Really fucking weird. Really narcissistic. By the way, don't forget to like and subscribe.

[Josh]

And here's a word from our sponsors.

[Duncan Trussell]

So it gets really interesting when you start thinking about people who have become politicized as being possessed by memes. It's mnemonic possession. Are they possessed by an entity? No. Are they possessed by a set of ideas that they have begun to conflate with their own identity? Absolutely. Now I think it's good to sort of point out, well, what ideas? Like, what is an original idea? And I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if you're. When you're taught any language based within that language is its own meme set, its own sort of idea of how reality works. There's words in German that aren't in English. There's words in Spanish that aren't in German. And those words point to a kind of human experience that minus the word, it's not like schadenfreude being the classic one joy at another, sorrow. Right. There really isn't a word like that in English. But the moment the word comes into being, you can sort of categorize or quantify an aspect of being human. It gives you a way of understanding a feeling that maybe you are just putting into the category of, you know, anger, or it becomes like a more specific shade of anger. So anyway, the point is, when you start thinking about. And again, not just in the politics, like if you. Fashion. We have fashion trends, all of a sudden people have started. Tight pants are out, loose pants are in, hairstyles are out, hairstyles are in. This is a meme that is adopted en masse and produces a fashion trend. And it's a big business Supposedly, like people from the big fashion houses, like, go out and try to look at what is coming. They try to predict what's coming. And sometimes they try to move the needle forward a little bit too, to, you know, add their own take on things. There's a collaborative sort of thing happening there. So when you start thinking about politicized people as having inside of them a bundle of ideas that have the intent of propagating, it's like how they say a virus isn't even alive. Is a meme alive? It wants to reproduce. It depends on the human biome to exist within. But is it actually a living thing? Probably no more than, like, it's not like when you get a cold. It's not like. It's not like the cold virus is like, I'm going to fuck this motherfucker up. Just running a code. Basically, it's just a loop that's gotten into your. It's hijacked your DNA exploited. Your DNA is living inside of you and wants to propagate every time you sneeze. So it really gets weird when you start looking at it from this perspective, because this is where I would say you get into. You move from meme to egregore. Now, an egregore is, I like, for the case of what I'm trying to ramble about here. An egregore is like something that only exists within the minds of people, but has a real personality. And the classic example being like, Santa Claus, right? Like Santa Claus right now exists in the psyche of countless children and for kids who are watching also in the North Pole, but where he's busily making toys. But the egregore is this projection that you don't necessarily see in reality, but you do see symbols of the egregore. You see drawings of Bigfoot, of the gray alien. So it's an egregore. It's a kind of entity. And so if you start looking at the political egregores, then it gets really interesting when you can identify not just a behavior set like what the egregore would be. And honestly, we have an egregore for Santa Claus. We don't really have an egregore for the left or the right, but you could take the way people on the left dress and the things they say and the way they behave and the way people on the right dress and the things they say and the way they behave. And from that extract an actual entity, a being, a creature that has a predictable set of behaviors and not Just that, a predictable look. Could you pull up what I call the Mad Al Memeplex?

[William Montgomery]

This episode of the DTFH is brought.

[Duncan Trussell]

To you by Better Help.

[William Montgomery]

The holidays are here, and for a lot of us that means feeling like a bug smashed upon the materialist, corporatist, consumerist windshield of modern day life. What is this festival of horror disguising itself as something spiritual? Why am I here?

[Duncan Trussell]

What are these commercials?

[William Montgomery]

What am I becoming? You need something in the midst of all that madness to find some comfort. Maybe a hot cup of chocolate or a soft blanket to wrap around your trembling body. Anything to assuage the existential shudders of pure horror as you sit on that fragile eggshell perched above the vortex of unexplored emotions and thoughts that swirl below, constantly threatening to suck you and your hot cocoa and that blanket down into a dark, dark depression. This is why therapy is great. You really need to crack through the eggshell, have the courage to go into the darkness and confront the very thing that is making your holidays feel like you're in some kind of dark, existential one man show My friends, I speak from experience.

[Duncan Trussell]

The holidays used to be hell for me. Hell. Horrible.

[William Montgomery]

Those were the drinking days.

[Duncan Trussell]

Those were the days where you just.

[William Montgomery]

Hole up and wait for it to end. You become the much maligned Grinch, which is a representation, as far as I.

[Duncan Trussell]

Was concerned back then of someone who.

[William Montgomery]

Hadn'T been indoctrinated into the system. Man. Well, as it turns out, it was actually completely unresolved issues from my childhood that I didn't want to deal with. And therapy helped so much. Listen, there's no shame in getting an ally to go into the dark cave. Or the growling thing you can't remember keeps growling at you in the middle of the night. Do I love Christmas music now? No, not necessarily. But I can look at a Christmas tree without wanting to down a bottle of vodka and that's pretty great. I enjoy Christmas now. And I know that sounds absolutely insane. And I'm not telling you if you go to therapy, you're going to enjoy Christmas.

[Duncan Trussell]

I mean, let's face it, it is.

[William Montgomery]

A garish annoyance that seems to be thrust upon us by strangers, but at.

[Duncan Trussell]

Least you don't have to go through.

[William Montgomery]

Your holidays with that dark sense that.

[Duncan Trussell]

You'Re about to be pulled out by.

[William Montgomery]

Some emotional undertow into an ocean of pure depression. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a Brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You could switch therapists any time for no additional charge. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.comduncan today to get 10% off your first month. That's Better Help.hp.comduncan thank you. Better help.

[Duncan Trussell]

Ho ho, ho. You know, this is really fascinating to me in the sense that what we're seeing here is like not just like, you know, a similarity in glasses. It's the glasses, though, somehow are like a dog whistle. Like the glasses. Like, look at the similarity in glasses. Isn't that fucking weird? Am I just seeing that? Doesn't that seem like the same. Like, it's essentially the same kind of glasses. It's like this, you know, I don't know what the name of that glasses style is, but it shows up across the board. And then it's the pink hair, the blue hair, the purple hair, you know, it's the dyed hair. And weirdly, it's almost like facial structure. That's where it gets fucking weird to me is like. And I don't know if I'm just seeing it or not, but like, dude, you know what I. You know what it's like? You know that thing where they say, like, you start looking like your dog?

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

And you're like, how is that true? How could that be? Am I looking like my dog? Is my dog looking like me? Another way to put it is where, like, attention goes, energy flows. Like if you become so consumed by any given meme plex, the sum total of all memes in any category, is it possible it actually changes facial structure?

[Josh]

Yes, because of the way it's a lot of. And they push their chin back and of shock and so it free just the way happy people. You can tell they're happy because they have these smile lines and they're.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, dude. Because. Okay. Whoa. That's so weird because it's going to create not just a way you dress, but an actual way of expressing yourself facially. A breathing pattern. It would shape facial structure.

[Josh]

Mouth breathers, dude. I can always tell when an old lady's mean because she has these frown lines right here. So even when she's not frowning, she still has them.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow.

[Josh]

Or she lost a lot of weight. One of the two.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wow. So. So that. That's where it gets really interesting. And I'm so. I did this last minute. I was trying to put together the meme plex for the. Right. But it's certainly out there. I'm afraid that I might actually somewhat fit into that. And that is not because I'm necessarily aligning with one or the other, but just because, like, I got the beard and the shaved head.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So, dude, I got like. I just didn't have time to put it together. But I did start and because I think that's another important thing. This is not an energy cannon being fired at one side. This is a more distinct look. I think you could argue and it's easier to find, but I would be happy for someone to put together the memeplex. There's many of them for the right, many different ones for the left too. But I think it's really important to turn this on yourself. That's my point is like, if you have become consumed with politics to the point where you're changing the way you dress to identify with the team that you're on, your hairstyle, your glasses, style, and the way you're expressing yourself, I think it's a good thing to know that, just to look into that and ask yourself how much of these thoughts, ideas, ways of expressing myself are legitimately me, and how much of them did I invite into my psyche and they began to propagate within my own mind and tricked me into thinking this is me. And that works for any mean, plex, right, left, Christian, Buddhist, whatever the it is. It's a, I think, a really worthwhile thing to interrogate oneself, to try to get a sense of how much of the way you're behaving is an original behavior, or even it doesn't have to be original, but is rooted in your past, your direct experiences with reality, and how much of the way you're behaving is related to being impregnated with memes via mainstream media, TikTok, Instagram, whatever. It's a good thing to know, like, if I, you know, I out here in Texas, dude, God help you if you have a puddle in your yard, because that puddle is going to fill with mosquito larvae and you're going to have mosquitoes all over your yard. So you have to be hyper aware of, like, places where mosquitoes spawn. Garbage cans. Jesus Christ. That was one of my. A wonderful dad moment is when one of our garbage cans filled with maggots and I got to show my boys just a fucking mass of wriggling maggots. Their minds were blown. It's disgusting. But, you know, the human mind is a fertile breeding ground for memes. And knowing that, you want to make sure that the memes you're inviting in to your mind are something you want breeding in Your psyche. You don't want memes in there that are going to fuck you up. And the other thing to think about when it comes to asking yourself if you have mnemonic possession, I think there's some things that we could. You could sort of like look at. When it comes to mnemonic possession, do you notice that you are isolating yourself from groups of people that challenge your ideas? For example, like, do you notice that you are hostile towards people who challenge your ideas? Do you have because of a set of ideas in your head? I'm saying a set of ideas in your head, not your direct encounter with reality. A of ideas in your head, a general sense of despair. Is your internal universe matching your external universe? Do you have a sense of an imminent apocalypse? A feeling that the world is about to end? Do you have a feeling that you are being controlled by external evil forces? A kind of paranoid sense that things out there are potentially going to like, limit your freedom or fuck you up? I'm saying it hasn't happened yet, but you have a feeling it's coming. I'm not saying it might not come either. Just the general sort of. If you were a meteorologist for your psyche, what are we looking at there? Do we have storms and what are those storms related to? Where are they brewing from? And if you really look into this, you'll probably realize they're not coming for direct encounters with reality itself, but they're coming from whatever content you've been focusing on the most. Like, for example, I'll tell you what, I've got the memes running around my head right now as I was thinking about this imminent World War three. That's one running rampant in my brain right now. It's a politicized one too. It's not just like there's always some general sense World War 3 could kick off, but because of some of the media that I've consumed, I've got a sort of paranoid conspiracy sense that the author. I'm sorry if you haven't heard this yet, Happy Thanksgiving. By the way, the reason that Biden authorized Ukraine to use American long range missiles was because of a sense that when Trump comes into power that war will end. And so the only choice to finish the project was to attempt to get Russia to use nuclear weapons to justify NATO boots on the ground to finish the job before Trump gets into office. Is that true or not? I don't know, but I definitely didn't come to that conclusion on my own. That came from going online and watching YouTube videos and stuff.

[Josh]

Did you see the Russian state TV, what they were saying about what European countries they would bomb if they keep doing it?

[Duncan Trussell]

Sure. I mean, this is. And again, this is an ongoing thing. I've seen, you know, by now all of us have seen Russian state TV talking about nuking this place or that place.

[Josh]

I don't even know if they're translating it right, but I'm assuming they are.

[Duncan Trussell]

They are. I mean, that's. It's no different than, like, you know, what. What war hawks here, you know, in words, shaking the nuclear saber at this person or that, you know? So my point being, I. I hope that I'm not trying. I'm. I'm trying. I hope. I don't. You don't think. I think I don't have my own memeplex inside of me? Because, you know, I also, I will. I will run through. I happily run through the foulest of digital swamps and drink from the foulest of digital waters and no doubt have parasitic memes existing within me. But for the sake of what I'm rambling about here, the point is, like, I think one meme probably existing in a lot of us is a general, like, sense of, like, fuck, man. Why the. There's. There could really be. I mean, this is trending on Twitter all the time. There could be World War three. Like, hopefully not. Probably not. But the point is, because of my consumption of media, I am now living in a reality tunnel that has built inside of it some possibility of nuclear holocaust in an imminent kind of way that has been politicized by things that I look at. So this is a meme, and I have many others living inside of me. I've got Ram Dass memes, I've got Terrence McKenna memes. I've got all kinds of memes wrapped up inside of me. I got God of War memes. I got. So I am a hive of memes, as you probably are. And it's good just to kind of take a look in there and see if I were a sorcerer and if I could summon entities that existed within my energy field, what entities would I want hanging out in there and looking at your own sort of meme set and your own personal memeplex. I mean, there's the gut biome. We need it. You need, like, to take probiotics. Your shits will get infinitely better. You'll feel better, your mood will change. And there's actually, you could take probiotics to, like, to change the gut biome feel better. So if you start looking at the Psychic biome. In the same way you look at your gut biome, start thinking about, okay, what the fuck's in there? They say that if you eat a bunch of sugar, you crave more sugar. Because your gut biome wants sugar. It actually sends somehow sends signals to your brain making you crave sugar. So that's one way you can kind of figure out what's going on in there is like, what are you wanting? What are you paying attention to? What are you fixating on or obsessing over? And then that will basically tell you what memens you've possessed with. And so dude, this to me, I think it's a wonderful thing to really think about and also to not get fucking butt hurt. Because you begin to realize that you have been non consensually impregnated with this. With a meme plex that is now making you feel embarrassed or humiliated. And that thing I showed you in the beginning with Lichtman and sink that to me, I think that's where he fucked up. That was so funny. Is that people like Lichtman who have been sucked into a memeplex, who are possessed with memens, they need the ability to unzip the meme suit and like, you know, they need the ability to like, not to be shamed or humiliated because they like took on a set of fucking stupid memes, which we all have. You know what I'm talking about? Like, this is the problem. I feel like if you like, this is where it gets really funny. Especially in left versus right here. You have some set of behaviors on the right. Let's talk about the right. Conservativism, deregulation, small government, family values. Focus on the family, Focus on breeding.

[Josh]

Fuck the environment.

[William Montgomery]

Yeah, right.

[Duncan Trussell]

Well, yeah, fuck, you know. Fuck yeah. You know what? No. Drill, baby, drill. That's a meme. Drill baby, drill is a meme. And energy independence meme. Anti globalism meme. Like anytime you hear yourself voicing any of these things, you are articulating a meme. You're propagating a meme. Not to say it's wrong or right. It's a meme. What else do we have on the right?

[Josh]

What were all the things that made you come up with your own meme about blowing up the pyramids with Diet Coke and Mentos?

[Duncan Trussell]

I'm glad you asked me about that. Well, and it kind of gets into what we're talking about here. The pyramids are a fucking meme. It's a concretized meme. And this is where it gets weird. So you look at like the general aesthetic of the right, you look at the aesthetic of the left and you see the way that the meme goes from idea to physical form, dress, hair, whatever it is that someone is like the mold that someone's body is fitting into. But it doesn't stop there. That's where it gets fucking weird. The collaborative efforts of people within any given memeplex extantiate themselves into time space in three dimensional forms. Art, architecture, movies, video games. It doesn't stop with the way you dress. It actually wants to build itself into time. It wants to create statues to itself. It wants to create posters, paintings, symbol sets that are non mind dependent other than they have to be observed to come into existence. But they live in 3D space. I mean, brutalist architecture. Pull up Mussolini's God. The Parliament building. Mussolini's parliament building. Look at this. Brutalist architecture.

[William Montgomery]

This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by AG1. Listen, as a parent, I feel embarrassed to say this out loud, and I'm probably putting myself in a little bit of danger, but that's superstition, actually. But I gotta tell you, when you have kids, plagues run through your family. You're essentially just a medieval village surrounded by filthy barbarians who from time to time catapult to an infected dog into your well. Kids come home from school, they've picked up some kind of rare disease from some other filthy kid who picked it up from another filthy kid. And you watch the disease run through your house, jump from person to person, inevitably taking down your wife. And then you know, I'm next. But sometimes you're not. And that's when you get a feeling that you can't really announce to your family, which is like, wow, you guys are weak.

[Duncan Trussell]

Look at me, a God of health.

[William Montgomery]

That couldn't take me down. And I attribute some of that, if not all of it, to AG1. AG1 is how you keep on top of your vitamin routine without having to go through a bunch of bottles of vitamins, looking at the ones that are expired, figuring out which one to take, dealing with the inevitable vitamin puke that comes because you forgot to eat or didn't have time to eat, but you wanted to take your vitamins. AG1 figured it all out. Just take that sweet green blessed powder and you pour it in some ice cold water. That's what I do. Nothing fancy, just some cold water in my AG1 and slurp, slurp, slurp. I'm on my way to secretly and silently judging My family's immune system. And that feels good. Listen, take your wins where you can find them with AG1. Also, if you're traveling, they have awesome travel packs. You don't have to cart around some. Some big thing.

[Duncan Trussell]

You just throw a bunch of travel.

[William Montgomery]

Packs in your suitcase and you are guaranteed to get the vitamins you need during the holidays.

[Duncan Trussell]

Also, if you are a parent out.

[William Montgomery]

There, not trying to be exclusionary to those who have yet to become parents or don't want to be, but if you are a parent, you know what it's like going through the airport with your kids. You're not eating. You think you're going to eat. When are you going to stop and get food? There's no time. There's no time. You're essentially escorting inmates from Arkham Asylum onto a plane. There's no way that you're going to stop anywhere to eat. It's all about the kids. And by the time you get to wherever you're going, you're tired, you're exhausted because you didn't get the vitamins you needed. Can change all of that. With AG1, just dump some of that powder into a water bottle and slurp back that green elixir of. It's AG1. So this new year, try AG1 for yourself. It's the perfect time to start a new healthy habit. And that's why I've been partnering with AG1 for so long. And AG1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of D3K2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out drinkag1.com Duncan to get this offer. That's drinkag1.com Duncan to start your new year on a healthier note. Healthier than the other members of your family. Thank you, AG1.

[Duncan Trussell]

So here we see the sort of architecture of fascism, which is a meme.

[Josh]

Boom.

[Duncan Trussell]

Whoa. Yeah, dude.

[Josh]

Is that from Obey? Is that where they got it from?

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, I guess so. Check that shit out. That is when a meme grows into time space. You've got the form of the meme Mussolini's face. You've got the brutalist architecture. You've got the grim look at. Like you talk about a meme that made someone look scary. There you go. Is that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Exactly. So there you go. Or pull up like. I don't know, pull up like Hitler rally or Nazi architecture. Pull up Nazi architecture. You know, just pull up I wish I could think of, like a good, like. Oh, there you go. Look at that. That weird. Whatever the fuck that is. The swastika. Yeah, look at that pillar with a swastika on it, right? So the thing that was in the minds of the Nazis begins to grow into time, space in the form of this insane architecture, fashion, right? And so that's how it starts growing into actual physical structures. And within the physical structures, the meme proper propagates via meetings, legislation. So the physical structures. So it goes from being the mind as the breeding ground of the meme to the physical structure, becomes a place where people within the memeplex can collaborate to propagate the meme further into the world, because the meme wants to propagate and survive. And so this is where it gets really fucking weird. An idea goes viral. The idea, first, it lives in the mind. It then starts showing up in the form of phrases, linguistic patterns, fashion and behavior sets. Then inevitably, legislation, then the legislation, it guards the meme so that now the chances of the meme going away, now it becomes illegal to say certain things. And that's where censorship pops in. So now, which is why, you know, within, if you're looking for fascism, the first thing you should look for is censorship, because you have to censor antithetical memes to ensure the propagation of the meme. This is the emperor wears no clothes. That little fuck, you know, like, you needed people to be like, yeah, he's. No one should say that the guy has no fucking clothes on. Or like, I don't know, pull up like, oh, my God, it's the best thing ever. I'm trying to think of who it is. Applause at Nazi rally. You ever seen this before where people are afraid to stop clapping?

[Josh]

I've seen it at North Korea.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, maybe it's North Korea. And people will like, yeah, the. It was North Korea because it was North Korea Plaza.

[Josh]

Yeah, it was the last person to stop clap, or the first person to stop clapping. They didn't want to be the first person.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go. This is insane. Look at this shit. If this is it, look at that again, all, you know, the same kind of. Look at the uniformity, the homogeneous nature of this memeplex is insane. It's an organism. It's a superorganism. Isn't that wild? And so this is the other thing that you start seeing is this homogenous quality to the superorganism within any given set. People start looking the same, dressing the same, talking the same. It's replicating Itself in such an intense way that when you see all of them together, it's looking at a superorganism. And it's a superorganism that is a. Has a pyramid structure. It's inevitably a top down hierarchical structure where at the top is the leader, Kim Jong Un, Trump, Harris Maddow. Right. Like, you know, you get the big versions and then you get the mini versions, but inevitably it's a pyramid. At the top of the fucking pyramid is whoever is the high priest of the mean dissemination. So in the media, this is the pundit. The pundit is a high priest. The pundit does a ritual of meme propagation, which is the opening monologue. The opening monologue, inevitably is a way to propagate the meme. So for Maddow it would be liberalism, for Hannity it would be conservatism. And then what you end up seeing, which is where it gets really cool, is a similarity in ritual. If you look at, if you put Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow side by side, you will see completely different takes on the same data set, but an identical way of conducting the ritual. And the way of conducting the ritual is to kind of. You start off, sometimes you start off a little slow. You humanize yourself. Maybe you talk to the host before you. You have a couple of giggles and laughs and then you present to the world what they're supposed to be afraid of that night. What's going down? Dude, this is fucking bad. Bad. Like tonight, this one's real bad and you need to be aware of it. This is mixed in with the personality of the host, but the structure is the same. I present you with a problem for tonight. You blame the problem on the opposite political party. It's because the fucking idiot left Biden got us in a world of hurt. Or it's like, already Trump is starting to fuck shit up. Are you ready? It's always the same. And it's like, whoa, you really need to pay attention to this. We'll be right back. So you know what I mean? Right? Good place for a commercial right there. Anyway, the point is, when you start recognizing the metastructure within the high priests, the rituals of the media, of the Meme Lords is identical. Then you run into the greatest realization. I think when it comes to the analysis of mnemonic possession, it's the same fucking demon. It's the same thing. It's two tentacles of the identical entity. And it's like a kid playing with GI Joes, making them fight. But it's the same Fucking thing. Structurally, it's the same fucking thing. The way it shows up is completely different in style stylistically, but structurally, it's identical. And it's all connected to the same thing and it feeds on itself. That's where it gets really cool. So the left presents some hyper leftist woke idea. The right, so horrified by the idea, pushes back and in the pushback mirrors the idea in the opposite right. You look in the mirror, you see the opposite of you. When you're looking in the mirror, you're not seeing you as you are, you're seeing the polar opposite. So when these fucking meme complexes fight, they're just looking at each other in the mirror and they're helping each other adapt, evolve, get better. Meaning they're the same thing. So if you are against some political class, paradoxically, you are responsible for a lot of that shit. And anything, any reaction that you're causing, because one thing pushes, the other thing pushes, and that pushes back and that pushes back. And it's that dance. It's a dance. It's a terrible, stupid, embarrassing, horrible, potentially apocalyptic dance, but nonetheless a fucking dance. You think you're separate from the left. You're out there like, they're those motherfuckers what happened? The liberal mind virus. Guess what? You're dancing with him. Cheek to cheek via the obsession. Same on the left, you're looking at the right. These fucking neo Nazi fascist fucks, do they know what they've done via your attention? On them, you're giving the meme the nutrients it needs to live. And that's a really cool moment when you realize, holy fuck, we're dancing with each other. We're in some ridiculous ballroom dance with each other. And it's so cool when you realize that which, and I think it's to be the beginning of realizing your particular meme set can lead to true liberation. That's the next step, and forgiveness. These embarrassing motherfuckers. On whatever side, it's like, dude, it's a dance. It's the Macarena. We're all doing this embarrassing Macarena. And it kind of sucks because we're dancing to the fucking Macarena. I hate that shit. One of my kids, that's all they want to listen to. The Maca fucking Reina, the dance one. That's all they want to listen to, Macarena. It's like, I don't want to dance to the Macarena. But in this case, it's even worse than the fucking Macarena at a wedding, my friends, because the DJs. It's fucking DJ Sean Hannity, DJ Rachel Maddow, DJ Rupert Murdoch, DJ. Who's another one? Claude Schwab or whatever the fuck that guy's name is? You really want that to be your dj? You really want the person spinning the cultural fucking record to be any of those people telling you what you should be afraid of? Telling you how to dance? Fuck that. That is embarrassing. And I think at some point, if you realize you're at a planetary rave, it's okay to like, get a new dj. They've done it. These motherfuckers have been spinning the same goddamn record for like ever. It's a record of doom, division, judgment, hate, fear, consumerism, dehumanization, othering. I'm sick of it. It's way I would rather dance the fucking Macarena for the rest of my life. That's all we have to like realize. This is like a summer camp dance. I used to take my kids when I worked at a summer camp. There was these dances that were so funny. Watching a bunch of kids try to do popular dances. It's hilarious. It's cute. Some of them are better, some of them are worse. Some of them take pride in their ability dance. Some of them are ashamed. No different. We're looking at the same situation. Except in this case, the dances can actually lead to global fucking conflagrations. But once you realize, don't be embarrassed. I don't care what side politically you're on. I really don't. I enjoy it when people have differing political opinions than me. Don't you? Isn't that fun? My favorite conversations that I have privately are with my most nihilistic atheist friends, because I am not. And I love talking to them. I love it when they pop my balloons, when they defeat me in some kind of semantic judo.

[Josh]

But that's not the norm, though. The norm is you hang out with friends who are the same class as you, went to the same schools, you all dressed the same type of thing. That's what majority of people are doing.

[Duncan Trussell]

Exactly.

[William Montgomery]

It's the worst.

[Duncan Trussell]

You're missing out, man. Everyone, this whole thing. And this is another meme they saying. The people on the left are saying, don't go to Thanksgiving with your family. I don't think that's true, but it was certainly being pumped out there by one of the meme priests.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Duncan Trussell]

Like, dude, how fun is it even if you don't shit disturb to sit and listen to antithetical political opinions being like, vocalized from your hammered relatives? You really gonna miss out on that? It's the best. I love it. I mean, maybe I'm just a creep, but I love sitting in a cafe drawing on my iPad, listening when conversations get political. I love it. It's so fun to hear the different POVs and especially to hear that meme echoes when you realize the people talking don't realize it, but they're saying the exact same things you heard in a conversation two days before from completely different people. They don't even know they're an echo. They're a. And I don't mean just like it's the same topics, I mean same phrases. Whoa.

[Josh]

All their shenanigans, they're saying shenanigans.

[Duncan Trussell]

You know, it's so cool. So yeah, that is my rant for the day. I say have the courage to interrogate your own psyche to see what memes are swimming around up there in your brain and ask yourself, do you really? Is it doing any good for you in a real sense? Have you become dreary? Are you dreary right now? That's okay, don't be embarrassed. You should be dreary if you let some fucking like horrific satanic DJ get a song stuck in your head because you decided to listen to it and didn't realize it was made to get stuck in your head. Not because it's true necessarily, but because it serves billionaires you'll never meet, corporate interests you'll never know about. Ask yourself like, am I dreary? Are you going out there in the world with the existentialist grin, the wild smile Camus talked about. You're walking to the gallows with a grin. You have defeated the executioner. Yeah, they're hanging you, but you're smiling. They lose the crucifixion of Christ. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Whoa. I wouldn't want to see that if I just crucified some hippie. I want him screaming and yelling at me, confirming that he's a monster. The last thing I want is for him to forgive me and look at me lovingly. That's gonna fuck me up. I'm getting on benzos after that. Mainly, though, I don't even know if we're gonna have Thanksgiving. We could be in irradiated wasteland. We could all be fucking Thanksgiving turkeys. Radioactive Thanksgiving turkeys. But do you want your last few days wandering around this sweet, beautiful, green planet before shit glows to be miserable, sad, dreary, because you've been possessed by corpo memes designed to sell fucking wipes? That's the other irony, when you realize the whole thing is just to fucking sell Lifelock. The whole thing is just. You know what I mean? All right, we're going to cut to commercial. We'll be right back.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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