A (17:53)
I think it's really important. I mean you're talking a little bit about role models and references. And so first off, one myth I think we need to dispel is that success equals exploitation. There's a very unhealthy zeitgeist, especially from the far left, that anyone who's very successful is exploiting others. And I think we need to puncture that narrative and say you should strive to be successful and success might mean certain things for other people. I didn't grow up with money, so for me success for most of my life was trying to get economic security. I was anxiety plagued, my mom and I, economic anxiety. And it was like a ghost following us around telling us we weren't worthy. So my role models were always people who'd figured out economic success and people have to pick their own role models. I always thought masculinity was getting back in someone's face who wasn't Give me the respect I thought I deserved. I was that asshole that when someone cut me off in traffic, felt like I needed to speed up and cut them off. That if the Delta ticket counter representative wasn't kind to me or was busy, I would get back in their face. It's like, well, do you realize I'm a 1k member? And then, you know, a decent reference point is just men you admire and they're everywhere that perhaps don't can take blows. They realize someone might be having a bad day. But you said something that inspired a thought in that what I just outlined is pretty meta, you know, kind of themes that sometimes aren't that actionable. So I just want to bring it down one level. As we were talking about off mic, I try and mentor two or three young men at any given time. And these are young men that quite frankly need mentoring. They're struggling. Most of them might be still living at home. You know, they're not. These aren't people who went to Brown and are working at Goldman Sachs. And, and so some, just some more tactical things that I think serve as a reference point for how you succeed or how you make progress. The first thing I do, the first hack is I say unlock your phone and I'm going to look at it and there's a little bit of nervousness. So what I do to loosen them up or lubricate it as I say, okay, let me tell you two things. First is I gamble. I don't gamble on FanDuel. I gamble with options. I know it's stupid. I know I'm going to lose money over the long term. I'm a smart guy. I love markets. But that dopa hit I get is too seductive. So I sell calls and puts. I consume porn. That's sort of not. That's not a. That's an embarrassing thing to say at 61. But yeah, I still consume porn, but I tell them that and it lubricates or it makes them more comfortable. I open their phone. Everyone has an advantage. Most young men who are not excelling, if you will, by traditional Western capitalist standards, their advantage is capital, specifically their human capital. They have time. And within about five to seven minutes, I can find eight hours of time from TikTok, from X, from porn, from gambling sites, from YouTube. I'm like, we're going to find eight hours. You tell me we're going to reduce this eight hours and next week I'm going to check and we're going to reallocate that capital into three things. The first is we're going to get really fucking strong. I just think the best antidepressant is moving weights, building some bulk or running far. I've jokingly said every man under the age of 30 should aspire to be able to walk into any room and know if shit got real, they could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. There's different forms of fitness. You can be fast, you can be flexible, you can be strong. But there's no excuse. The male form is blessed with, you know, more bone density, double twitch muscle, all the things you talk about, this incredible substance that pours over called testosterone. You're going to look back when you're my age and think, why wasn't I just fast, sleek, a monster, just strong. So we're going to work out at least three times a week. The second thing is we got to make some money. And I want you to make money outside of your house. You know, I don't care if you're a Lyft driver. Task Rabbiter Panera's hiring people at 18 bucks an hour and only one out of ten that accept a job actually show up the first day. So if you really make the effort, you can make decent money. And the great thing about getting a taste for the flesh of money is you start learning how to make more money. If you want to make a lot of money, unless you're smart enough to be born to rich parents, start off by making a little bit of money and you'll start to figure out capitalism, right? And the final thing is at least three times a month we're going to put ourselves in a group sitting where we are trying to achieve something great in the agency of others. A non profit, a church group, a sports league, a riding club. And then the second phase of that is we're going to do something what I call as the approach. Hey man, do you want to go watch the jets game? Right? An expression of friendship. And then if you're really comfortable, an expression of romantic interest while making them feel safe. Would you like to grab a coffee sometime? And this is the goal. The goal is no, because you're going to get nos. And then I'm going to call you after you've made the approach. You're going to text me. I did an approach. Did you get a no? Yeah, I got a no. That's exactly the point. That's the goal. Because everyone you admire, everyone you think has killed it. The only thing I can guarantee you is there were a shit ton of no's in getting to one of the top 10 podcasts in the world. Getting to a person as a partner who's higher character and hotter than you, getting to make more money than you would have ever guessed that person would have made. The only thing that got them there was the willingness and the endurance to. To anticipate. No. And unfortunately, Big Tech is setting up an algorithm that convinces you that a frictionless life is a good life and that you never need to endure. No. And what you end up with is a lack of skills to persevere, to realize you're okay. And that's what I ask the kids the next day. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm bummed out. But you're okay. If a man under the age of 30 works out three times a week, works 30 hours a week outside of the house, and is volunteering, that immediately puts him in the top 8% of all young men. And I apologize for the word salad here, but something I hate is the incel movement. Involuntarily celibate, right? Throughout history, 99% of men have been involuntarily celibate for most of their lives. There's few things young men would rather be doing than having sex. Only 40% of men have reproduced throughout history, 80% of women. So no man has a birthright to reproduce. In the west, it's actually now 75%. So young men have more agency than they ever have. Now, if you do those things right, just those three things, work outside of the house, work out, have a kindness, practice, volunteer in the service of others, you're immediately going to put yourself in the top decile of young men. And if you're in the top decile of young men, I can guarantee you over time, you will become voluntarily ins celibate, which is awesome because you'll establish a relationship. And young men under the age of 30, a lot of the research shows, benefit more from a relationship than women. Yet only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship, whereas two in three women are in a relationship. And you think, well, Scott, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women are dating older, because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. So I'll circle back to the more tactical recommendations. Get fit, start making some money, have a plan, and start doing things in the agency of others. I think the ultimate hack for depression, or if you're feeling bad about yourself, is to start helping others and to always keep in mind, and this is the hard part, that the antichrist of your progress as a young man the devil, the fucking enemy. The villain here, the Bond villain with trillions of dollars is Big Tech. They are trying to figure out with AI a million times a second how to convince you to spend one more second a day on your phone sequestered from your relationships because they're a shareholder value. 40% of the S&P is 10 companies whose sole mission is to monetize your time. And unfortunately they're not bad people. But what they're doing has resulted in, in a small group, a cohort of men. It's not small. Millions of men who are evolving into a new species of asocial, asexual males who wake up at the age of 30 thinking they've had a frictionless life living at home, obese, anxious and depressed, having never developed the skills that they need to do well professionally, personally. So Big Tech is not your friend. If you do not figure out how to modulate big tech products, whether it's Instagram or YouTube, you are falling into a trap of eventually being sequestered and not developing the skills to establish the most important thing in life. And that is relationships.