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Jan. 17, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:19

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #830

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
	I'm joined by Josh and Harry.
	Hello!
	And today we're going to be talking about the average university IQ is going down.
	I think I know where that's going.
	Actually, no, I think about it, but yeah, we'll find out.
	Don't spoil it.
	All right.
	They don't know why they failed and also don't ask questions.
	Just consume the product.
	Consume.
	Those are quite esoteric.
	I mean, that is the joke.
	It's a meme.
	It's been a meme for years.
	Yeah, I was just trying to say something funny, but I ain't got nothing.
	I do have an announcement to make, though, which is we'll be doing Lads Hour, which will be pretty funny, which is tomorrow at 3 p.m.
	UK time.
	So adjust your foreign clocks.
	Anyway, we're talking about how, if you were given 200 billion dollars, what would you do with it?
	So, I feel like this is going to be like the one where we thought about what dictator we would- well, what famous person- Well, you all chose Hitler, right?
	No, it was just Karl.
	What was the famous line from that?
	Let's stop lying, guys, you'd all choose Hitler.
	Get it on a shirt, while stocks last.
	On the merch store, by the way.
	We're still working on it.
	But anyway, yeah, tomorrow.
	So if you're a premium member, or wannabe, or enjoy Ladder, do come join.
	We'll be chatting shit.
	Alright, let's get into the news.
	So, this might not necessarily be a surprise to many of you, but the average university IQ of the students is going down.
	And, spoiler alert, I used to be a student, and... It was as soon as you left.
	The IQ plummeted, obviously.
	This is the nicest thing you've ever said to me.
	You feeling alright, Harry?
	I've been feeling a bit peaky this morning.
	I thought so, but I wanted to talk about this because there's been a large meta-analysis and there's been lots of hubbub about it because of course the state of universities more generally has been a hot topic particularly with the stuff going on in Harvard and the likes and as well as us talking about universities being pretty much a breeding ground for leftism at this point and it's kind of a beating a dead horse to talk about it but I think this is quite interesting.
	So Here is the study itself.
	It is titled Meta-Analysis.
	On average, undergraduate students' intelligence is merely average, which is quite the condemnation because of course many people going to university think that it somehow makes them smart.
	And one of the things that I kind of realized at university is that Not everyone there is even close to being smart.
	And actually, if you want to do well at university, just work hard.
	You don't need to be smart.
	You don't need to be intelligent.
	Any old idiot can go to university these days.
	As long as you actually do your work and do it well, you'll be fine.
	Is that not a bit of a condemnation, though?
	Yes, it is.
	I always thought the whole point of schooling was to determine, you know, who's going to make it.
	Who's smart and who is not.
	Yeah.
	It's now become who can jump through the most hoops willingly.
	It's almost become like, you know, people train their dogs to do things.
	It's like a lesson in discipline from who owns you, which is the state, of course.
	Great.
	Very cynical view, but there is obviously value in education.
	I don't want to demean that.
	And I'll talk about that side of things more as we go on, because I got a lot of value out of my education.
	So I'm not going to be too dismissive, but I'm going to read some of the key points.
	So it says, the background, according to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points.
	And that is substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population.
	Of course, the average is 100, at least in Britain, which the average is set by.
	So, you know... I know how people make fun of us for like, oh, where's the dateline for the whole world?
	It's like, right through London.
	Well, I don't think it's formally what London is.
	IQ right in whatever British people think.
	Well, if the line for average IQ is now being set by London, if that's what 100 is, then I've just gone up three standard deviations.
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't think it's formally what London is.
	I think it's just that it so happens that Britain is just average, which it hurts me to say.
	It was perfectly average.
	A perfectly average empire.
	It does also say that data was from the 40s and 50s.
	Yeah, you've just stolen my next point, but thank you.
	You're helping me out, that's fine.
	So it carries on to say, today graduating from university is actually more common than completing even high school in the 40s.
	So in the 40s there were More likely to drop out of high school than to drop out of university today, which is kind of mind-blowing.
	I think that must be in the States.
	I think this particularly focuses on the States.
	And they said they conducted a meta-analysis of the mean IQ scores of college and university student samples using the Welschler Adult Intelligence Scale between 1939 and 2022.
	And they basically tried to measure the trend between the two.
	And that test is just one of the variants of IQ tests I've done.
	Fair amount of work looking at these.
	And they say the results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and has declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year.
	So 0.2 since 1939, one would presume.
	So that's quite the condemnation of university students because it's just average now.
	Which isn't great.
	You know, all these people who think, we know best, we're going to go on to manage things, we're the civil servants, we're working for the government, we're the bureaucrats, the councillors, all of those.
	They just have a mere average intelligence.
	And why is it that nothing really works anymore?
	Hmm.
	Realistically speaking, the world that has been set up by managerial bureaucracy, the amount of complexity within everyday life means that you do probably need at least a 110 IQ to be able to manage anything of it due to the sheer complexity of the world that we live in right now.
	If you're in a developed, industrialized, or service-based economy in the West, if you're going to be doing anything important, I want you to be at least above average intelligence?
	Well, things are, certainly in some industries, so complicated that they can't really be managed by one person.
	As we're getting increasingly sophisticated with our technology and things like that, we're developing advanced systems in which lots and lots of people are involved.
	A lot of people just simply can't comprehend the complexity of it.
	And I think you have to be very gifted to be able to understand the nature of complexity in the world today.
	But I wanted to talk through some of the implications of this finding, because the ones proposed in the study I actually thought were quite interesting.
	So they said, universities and professors need to realize that students are no longer extraordinary, but merely average and have to adjust curricular and academic standards.
	Which, you know, aren't exactly high to begin with.
	Is it going to dance around affirmative action?
	Is that what this paper is going to do?
	Yes.
	Yes, okay.
	I will be getting onto that specifically, but feel free.
	Let's just get it straight out there.
	This is because of affirmative action.
	For decades now, universities and other places of education and business have been lowering the standard of criteria to be able to get into them for particular ethnic minority groups.
	And, big surprise, When you're looking to increase the amount of students in the university that arbitrarily are under one ethnic category, and to get that many people in, you need to lower the standards.
	All of a sudden, the standard of the student you're going to have in those universities will automatically be lowered.
	As a logical chain of events, you don't even need to bring it into the real world to understand that that's obviously what is going to happen.
	And people act surprised.
	They've stopped hiring based on merit, haven't they?
	That's what's going on here.
	They're getting people in who otherwise, if they were judged purely based on the quality of their work, wouldn't be able to get into certain institutions.
	And because they have this view of equity, that you need everyone to be In sort of groups which reflect society.
	We need standardised outcomes.
	Yes, very strange.
	Which is just going to result in a race to the bottom, lowest common denominator.
	And what this means is that all of those talented individuals who couldn't get into the universities because they were exceptional but needed to be pushed to the side to allow for an ethnic minority to come in, they're still out there, they're still really intelligent, they're just probably optimising hearts of iron strats on Twitch right now.
	Anyway, it also carries on to say, employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees.
	That is scathing.
	Students need to realize that acceptance into university is no longer an invitation to join an elite group.
	And the myth of brilliant undergraduate students in scientific and popular literature needs to be dispelled.
	So those are quite strong statements.
	Really, you know, it does skirt over some stuff.
	And it is worth mentioning as well, I have my questions about the validity of IQ as a measure of intelligence.
	And IQ has been proven to be measuring something, some aspect of mental ability.
	But to call it intelligence, necessarily, because there are lots of things that IQ simply doesn't measure.
	Like it doesn't measure your creativity, or lots of things that actually will come into play in the modern workplace that are quite important.
	And so to say it's a measure of intelligence, when really it's sort of a mathematical ability, maybe analytical abilities in some cases, it's quite specific in what it measures.
	But what it does measure, it measures well, I think is the best thing you can say about it.
	So it's a sort of benchmark, but it shouldn't be seen as the be-all and end-all.
	That being said, I did write an article once where I looked at the country with the lowest average IQ, which is Equatorial Guinea on the west coast of Africa, which had an IQ of 59, which if you know the 70 benchmark is very low.
	And it actually took me to probably one of the most deprived countries in Africa.
	And so there must be something to it.
	It made me realize that these people who are living on the equivalent of two dollars a day, if I remember.
	I wrote this all the way back in 2021, so I can't remember the specifics, but yes, it has its utility.
	Just to make it clear, 70 is the benchmark for what a medical doctor would classify as mental retardation?
	Yes.
	So, according to this IQ test which we apply for that area, that country is probably made up of quite a few people who are mentally retarded?
	Yes, by definition.
	Although it doesn't sound very nice, does it?
	It doesn't sound very nice, but it is accurate to point out.
	So, Matt Goodwin pointed out something interesting.
	I'm not going to go through his sub-stack.
	If you want to read it, go ahead.
	But what I wanted to look at here was this graph and student visas, particularly.
	So if you look at since 2020, pretty much, what is that?
	India, Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of South Asia have skyrocketed, but particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and India, which I find interesting.
	So that suggests that perhaps there is a sudden influx that may be altering recent results in recent years, and the makeup of students hasn't always been the same.
	Is this the United States or the United Kingdom?
	I think this is the UK.
	Because that study was looking at the United States.
	The Home Office, yes.
	But the trends in university students, I've looked at other research as well, and it's true both in the UK and the United States.
	So we can kind of see it as a general trend in many Western countries.
	I think it's a good point to qualify because The expansion of education to lots of other people, I think, has altered the kind of student that comes out, I suppose is fair to say.
	There's also that aspect on the affirmative action end, which is not only are you introducing a wide audience of people who wouldn't have made it otherwise, you're also excluding people on the ethnic basis.
	Yes.
	Particularly the Chinese, which on IQ tests score on average way higher than pretty much everyone.
	They place a very high cultural emphasis on mathematics and the IQ test is significantly weighted towards mathematical ability in my opinion, depending on which one you're doing.
	So what we're learning is that if you open up lots of routes for people to come to your country, where the countries they're coming from, having an IQ of 90, which is below average for us, but would mean that you're potentially exceptional, multiple standard deviations above the norm over there.
	Equatorial Guinea specifically.
	Yep, yep.
	You're an exceptional person over there, below average over here, they come over here and then we go, ah, we can have everything you want, join our universities.
	Yeah, that's going to reduce standards.
	Yeah, it's funny that.
	So, it is also worth mentioning as well that there have been studies that have found that going into further education... Is that this one?
	I can't remember.
	I need to double check actually.
	What's your IQ?
	Mine's not very good.
	I went to university, so it actually got lower.
	He went in a 145 Chad, came out a 110 midwhip.
	he went in a 145 chad came out a 110 midwhip okay so actually the iq sorry this is a different study um the The IQ is explained 35% by their capacity on school performance, but their country of origin was 45%.
	So actually, country of origin is more important.
	Which I found interesting and was seemingly one of the most important factors.
	But anyway, it's worth mentioning as well that if you know basic maths, if you've got a reasonable IQ, you'll know that the more people that do a thing, the more it deviates to the average.
	That is a law of averages, funnily enough.
	Here is an article from the Guardian.
	In 2017, almost half of all young people in England go on to higher education.
	I imagine that this is a trend mirrored in many of the Western countries, that an increasing number, as a percentage, go to higher education.
	And so it makes sense that the more people that do a thing, the more it's going to go to the average, right?
	But it hasn't reached that yet.
	Here is, what is this?
	Some sort of think tank.
	I prepared this.
	But basically they said we're a long way off.
	It's only about 43% actually.
	It's not quite 50% yet.
	That feels like nitpicking.
	That feels like debunking right there.
	Well actually it's only 43%.
	Well it makes a difference.
	That's 7%.
	It's something.
	It's worth mentioning, very briefly.
	It's actually slightly less than half.
	Okay, yeah.
	And comically enough, apparently puberty blockers have been linked to having lower IQs.
	I can't say much more about that, lest we get in trouble, but yes, there could be a potential explanatory factor in this day and age.
	Also, there's this as well, that universities now are about 60% female in my psychology course, it was 85% at least to undergraduate.
	So you had run of the mill?
	That's one way of looking at it, yes.
	And this is something that's been talked about very frequently, that male intelligence has a wider range.
	So you have more complete morons and more geniuses, and female intelligence tends to spike higher around The sort of average, which is, you know, no apportioning blame or anything like that, or no calling people stupid.
	It's just the way in which human beings seemingly have developed.
	And so I can't really make too many conclusions about it, but with more women, it makes sense that it's more towards the average because that's how the IQs plot on a graph more so.
	So that might be another explanation as well as just more people going and more international students.
	And here is something else as well.
	A lot of the education system now has been catered towards making women achieve and girls and actually boys perform worse all the way from sort of the essential education that they do the mandatory education all the way up until university and so the system seems to be very female oriented in how it's structured and taught there has been for ages now that massive push to get as many girls in stem as possible
	and then you see organizations like what was the one that had the gigantic panel blow out of its um airplane the Oh, Boeing.
	Yeah, Boeing, and then Boeing.
	Was it American Air?
	I can't remember.
	I think it was Boeing.
	Boeing shares a video of the team that's putting those together or designing them or something, and it's just all women.
	They're very proud of that fact.
	Yes.
	You're right there, because that IQ difference isn't...
	IQ isn't everything, of course, but it is obvious that if you want excellence in science, then you have to be exclusive.
	And you have to be exclusive on the basis of finding the best.
	And the best, if we can go back to that chart real quick, because that last line, that dotted line, the male to female ratio, when you get to the geniuses right at the end there, it's really extreme.
	It's about as extreme as people who are really violent.
	Yes.
	If you take the most violent people in society, they're all men.
	If you take the most high IQ people, they're almost all men.
	So if you wanted excellence in science, that's what you'd look for.
	But instead, if you just want a quality of genitals, and then even more female genitals than male genitals for some reason, then you end up setting up the system that you're accurately describing, which is that you make sure that females succeed in the entire system from birth to grave.
	I know that in the UK data, Working class white men are the most underrepresented in higher education, and black women are the most overrepresented in higher education.
	So what does that say?
	That's in the UK.
	This does not surprise me.
	Just for those not watching and instead listening, the ratio, it seems, of genius men to genius women is 9 to 1.
	At the very extreme?
	At the very extreme.
	Those are the sorts of people who will be creating paradigm shifts in whatever field it is that they're working in.
	Are you really?
	Let's be honest.
	No, I'm joking.
	Average three standard deviations right there.
	No, probably not.
	Anyway, where was I?
	So it's also worth mentioning as well that female teachers are more and more common these days and it's been found to be an observable trend that they give boys lower marks for the same work.
	And there's actually this perception from the boys, so the boys understand that women are more likely to discriminate against them and their rights.
	Which is kind of infuriating, really, because I've butted my head against the education system on the way up to where I am today, and I found it incredibly frustrating.
	It felt like everyone was working against me, and I really had to struggle to actually make anything of myself.
	I can also speak to this.
	I've had the same thing, even as early as primary school, which is hilarious.
	Yeah, I know.
	Yeah.
	So we, um, in my primary school, my mom remembers this vividly.
	She tells me, I know it's a laugh we have in our family, which is that the teacher for pink class, which was like year three or something, uh, was a woman.
	And she did parents evening and told my mother that she didn't want to teach boys and hated boys.
	I had a primary school teacher like that as well, yeah.
	I was just like, well, why are you here?
	She was like, well, I couldn't go to an all-girls school, so I'm here.
	And she was just awful to all the male students.
	Could you imagine going into teaching and thinking, I'm so twisted in my own head that I'm only interested in teaching one sex of children?
	But if you're like that, you'd keep it to yourself at least.
	But no, she just says it at her parents' evening.
	And that's primary school, where, you know, education is kind of a joke, right?
	But that went all the way up into university as well, the same trend.
	And the more funny part of that What is the reverse?
	Are male teachers giving women lower grades on purpose?
	I don't think so.
	Not that I can tell.
	No, it doesn't happen.
	Male teachers...
	How blunt can I be?
	If you've got female students, not only is there an institutional bias that you should give them the best marks possible, there's also a sex difference, which is that men don't want to be bad or rude to women.
	There's no reason to just be like, nah, I hate women, yeah!
	This is what many feminists get wrong, is that men are actually nicer to women than they are to other men.
	But those female teachers, I mean the ones I'm speaking of, and that we know of in this study, yeah, they genuinely just hate boys, and it's like, okay, you're horrible to be around.
	Yeah.
	Well, I was mostly taught by men growing up, so I didn't really experience much of that.
	But the few female teachers that I did have, I did notice quite a few of them were much more standoffish and blunt than the men were in a way that felt very forced.
	I didn't feel like they were purposefully being discriminatory to the boys, but maybe that's where I'm from versus where you guys went.
	I've had some rather excellent teachers of both sexes as well, so it's very contingent on the individual.
	Just to clarify, I'm sure everyone's on board with what we're saying anyway.
	But anyway, let's look at this.
	This was the study that I foreshadowed earlier, and apparently going through education can increase your IQ by one to five points apparently so actually maybe measuring it at the end of their education rather than the beginning might actually suggest that it's raising people's IQ but then you know it depends what kind of thing they're studying
	I would imagine this is an average of all students and so it should be probably disproportionately weighted towards subjects where they've got a mathematical basis that complements an IQ test.
	I imagine if you're doing gender studies, there may actually be a decline.
	you Maybe that, or post-colonial studies, there will probably be a decline as well.
	However, I wanted to talk about this, because this is the final thing that I thought was hilarious, and this is a journalist called Anna Stanley.
	She went to a King's College anti-terrorism course, and this is for civil servants.
	Of course, King's College is a London-based university, quite a good one.
	I just want to read a little bit from this, and she says, the course began with the issue of definitions.
	What is terrorism?
	Without anyone providing an opposing standpoint, we were taught the adage, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.
	So it's basically like the left wing of the Labour Party defining what a terrorist is.
	What about baby rapists?
	Are they ever freedom fighters?
	I would say no, controversial.
	Because you're so right, I am so bored of hearing that.
	Where it's like, okay, yes, when we're talking about, like, the Taliban or something, there's an argument made, but a baby rapist organisation, like, no.
	No, no, no, they're terrorists.
	That's not a discussion we're having.
	And it carries on to say, all the civil servant participants were given a topic to research and present.
	One attendee said her brother had been radicalised and fought in Syria for Islamic State.
	Phew, I thought, at least one person here will understand the problem of extremism.
	Her presentation was about the UK's counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent.
	She argued Prevent is inherently racist because it focuses on Islamist extremism.
	Because they're after my brother specifically.
	Yes.
	Islam also not a race, it's a religion, and also targeting Islam when they themselves sometimes describe themselves as terrorists.
	As in, the actual terrorists, right?
	And her own brother is in them.
	I mean, yeah, you're an idiot.
	The mere mention of Islamist extremism makes Muslims feel uncomfortable, she argued.
	Tough.
	The thought of being blown up on the tube makes me uncomfortable.
	I think I win on that one.
	Her brother would have most certainly agreed.
	Later on, we were shown an ISIS propaganda recruitment video filmed in Syria.
	The same attendee's face lit up.
	And then given leaflets.
	And she stood up, hand on heart, during the whole thing.
	But apparently that same attendees face lit up, laughing and pointing at the jihadi in the video.
	He used to go to my school, I know him, she exclaimed.
	Mouth agape, I looked around the room for responses to yet another disclosure involving personal links to ISIS terrorists.
	I appear to be the only one to find this extraordinary.
	You are a normal person, Anna, but apparently these people are not.
	Well, yes, of course.
	This sort of thing, although they're not, you know, formally students, they're civil servants, which almost makes it worse.
	But it's a university course, right?
	And it's more or less the inverse of what should be taught.
	And this has happened in a lot of educational settings where Normally it would be set up, you know, a counter-terrorism course would probably be set up to counter-terrorism.
	I don't know about you, but that would be my understanding.
	And it seems like it's just a place where people who are sympathetic to terrorists have gone.
	And the same thing goes for things like sociology, where You know, it purports to understand society.
	Actually, it's just a vehicle for ideology.
	A lot of it, anyway.
	Not all of it.
	I've covered some sociology and, you know, particularly the stuff pre-World War II can be quite interesting because it's not politically biased.
	I think around that time it became a vehicle for politics.
	But it's got to the point where even Forbes is saying that universities need to rebrand themselves because it's not going well.
	What are the suggestions in here?
	I didn't go for it because I imagine they're pretty entry level because it's Forbes and they're boring.
	I've got an idea because there's been recent discourse that I've seen on the idea of what are systems for and people putting forward the idea that the purpose of a system is what it does.
	You can say that oh we intend to do this but what it actually does is what the purpose of it is.
	So perhaps leftist retard factories I don't know, maybe some ISA sponsorships on the side?
	Maybe some ways to raise money?
	I mean, what do universities do?
	They're supposed to give you an education and teach you how to think, but what they actually produce is leftist retards.
	Yeah, we should probably avoid university indoctrination and politics.
	I think if a topic isn't explicitly political, there shouldn't be politics in it.
	And that if you're paying to get an education and paying a lot of money, you know, I paid some of mine out of my own pocket.
	You want a quality education.
	You don't want to hear some professor's narcissistic views on, you know, Donald Trump or what have you.
	It is not relevant.
	It is a waste of time.
	But people still listen to them because they're an authority.
	And I was doing a media degree and I still got that.
	I know.
	Yes.
	But my point in bringing this up is that It's very interesting to me that there's been a push on the left to send as many people to university as possible, and it turns out that it's not really having particularly desirous effects for wider society.
	In fact, I think many people would benefit from doing a trade and learning in their spare time rather than paying an institution, which they get a piece of paper at the end.
	It can offer a valuable education, and I got a good one.
	At the same time, you don't need universities now more than ever.
	Good points.
	I don't know what to say.
	Genuinely, I am so sick of the state of universities.
	I know.
	Part of me wants to go the full American route and just be like, entirely self-funded, but they seem even more extreme than the West.
	I know, it's weird isn't it, that in America there's a lot more free market as far as university funding goes, and even then they're the most extreme.
	Alright, well, let's talk about something Different.
	Which is the fact that a lot of people don't know that they've failed.
	These specific people being those who are arguing for mass immigration.
	Now, I don't know about you boys, but I've definitely seen a conversation shift in the last few months.
	Specifically around mass immigration.
	And it's not just us, of course.
	The Canadians have been going through the same thing, and then the shift in the conversation there has happened.
	The United States with the illegal immigration on the southern border.
	I mean, massively, the Anglosphere has now got the mass of the population all in agreement that this is terrible.
	It's not even just the Anglosphere anymore.
	Have you seen some of the opinion polling and things on the continent of Europe?
	Loads of continental countries are pushing very hard.
	I mean, just look at how they're voting.
	Yeah.
	It's just I have a strong bias for the Anglosphere because, you know... We're English, yeah.
	So there we are.
	But the argument that I want to go through today is the one of ancient times in a land before In a land before.
	After the something happened.
	I don't know why you're sounding like a pirate.
	Once upon a time, there was a man and he argued that more immigrants equals more money and Medicare.
	No.
	And the argument that the economy needs lots of immigrants because literally it doesn't exist without them, even though it already exists.
	Otherwise, why would they be coming?
	Never made any sense on any front.
	And it's always been kind of a comical thing, and it's reared its head again because of our good friend James O'Brien, who has decided to turn up and have an argument with someone on his talk show.
	And he's arguing that infinity migrants in the UK is the reason that we're all so rich in the UK.
	I mean, my pockets are sagging with all of the pennies that I fit in them.
	I don't know about you guys.
	Seems like he is as well.
	He's around your foot.
	Why is he always hunched over?
	Yeah, but I mean, it is stupid at this point.
	I mean, the UK is still poorer than it was in 2007.
	We've not recovered.
	And it shows.
	I mean, not only comparing, obviously, to the rest of the Anglosphere, the Canadians and the Americans, the Australians and New Zealanders, I think are all doing better than us.
	Yep.
	But the world has changed as well.
	I mean, a friend of mine was talking about his company and they were debating to go pro-Israel or pro-Muslim in the recent debate, right?
	And he's a very business-minded chap, so he was thinking, hmm, you know, Jewish money, there's quite a lot of that.
	And then he realized, hang on a minute, the Muslims have all that oil.
	And the world has changed.
	They're no longer poor.
	They're unbelievably rich.
	So they had an omen and an hour and eventually came down on one side.
	What company is that?
	Are they selling weapons?
	Why do you need a position on the Israel-Palestine conflict at all?
	I'm not going to tell you, but my point being that, of course, the world has changed.
	Quite a lot of countries that were once poor are now very rich or very middling or very similar to the UK at this point.
	And the UK in the Anglosphere is a joke.
	And we are the ones who have gone through infinity migrants from, well, the third world, if possible, in a recent time.
	So it's just mad.
	But here's the debate and I'll just play it and we'll enjoy the conversation I suppose.
	I suspect that you want less immigration and a stronger economy.
	I think less immigration would be a good idea because I think principally immigration displaces The lower levels of English people pushes them on to welfare and that is not good for the social contract.
	Okay.
	What if you can't have a stronger economy without high immigration?
	What do you do then?
	Above my pay grade squad.
	Well it's not, is it?
	Because it's the basis of your voting intention.
	So you're drawn to one of these weird new parties that begins with R, are you Bill?
	Only with reluctance.
	R is for reluctance.
	But the relationship between economic growth, if you have fewer people earning, is an impossible relationship.
	No it doesn't.
	That's a silly figure of speech Bill.
	It depends how the cake is sliced.
	You're literally the poster boy for the kind of think tanks I'm talking about.
	because they're the ones who are going to be enriched by it.
	I mean, why can't they go for it? - Bill, you're the thing, you're literally the poster boy for the kind of think tanks I'm talking about.
	You believe in the impossible. - You keep telling me what I'm saying.
	I just keep reminding you what you said when you rang in.
	You want a stronger economy and lower immigration.
	That's literally your reason for ringing in.
	You said the two things they failed on, didn't you, were the economy and immigration.
	You're going to vote for one of these weird new parties beginning with R that you think is further to the right than the Tories, or at least more likely to deliver lower immigration and a stronger economy.
	I'm not so sure about the stronger economy, but... Hey, who cares anyway, as long as we can bring immigration down, eh?
	Well, there you are.
	Yes.
	I don't care if it makes me poorer.
	Did you vote for Brexit, Bill?
	Well, again, this is the point.
	It's a question, Bill, not a point.
	Did you?
	Of course I did, because I don't mind about being poorer.
	As long as there's fewer foreigners around.
	Yes.
	Am I right?
	Good Lord.
	Quite nostalgic for the days when people like that rang in on a rather more regular basis.
	But to be fair to Bill, I suppose you can see why they don't.
	I want a stronger economy.
	What did you vote for in 2016?
	A weaker economy.
	Stop putting words in my mouth, mate.
	Have the floor.
	Say what you want.
	I mean, I hate this man so much.
	It's bad.
	I'm gonna be honest.
	I feel a bit bad for him here because as a propagandist, he's clearly failing.
	As a mouthpiece for the regime, all of that fire, that twatty fire that he used to have when he was doing things like interviewing Nigel Farage, has completely gone.
	So ineffective.
	The soul from this man's eyes, not that he had one to begin with, but whatever facsimile of a soul was displayed through his eyes is completely gone because he's been making these same arguments for who knows how long now.
	He's been doing the same song and dance for years and years.
	And are you going to tell me that he doesn't notice?
	that the entire country's gone to pot.
	He's repeating the lines, but with no conviction, because he doesn't believe them.
	Because even Aaron Bastani, as we saw last week, can walk around any town centre in this country and go, hold up, there's a bit more...
	Motor seaters are right.
	It's a bit more barren than it used to be.
	So if you're telling me that on his way to his morning pret, James O'Brien isn't noticing there's a few more empty shops than there used to be...
	So, with mass migration being what it's been, if we're supposed to get X amount richer per immigrant come in, and we've had record migration... Where's all the money?
	Yeah, where is that record money that we should all be making?
	To be fair, you can't see the destruction to the average British town in London, really.
	And it's one of the places that doesn't have loads of boarded up shops everywhere in a similar way to most towns across Britain.
	Disconnect.
	Yeah.
	He does very much remind me of neocons back in the day, just endlessly trying to defend the invasion of Iraq.
	And that's what we're going to go to in a minute.
	But, um, obviously that point real quick, but it's so slippery that you see so common is like you voted for Brexit.
	So why do you think the, the country's poorer now?
	As if the assumption is that because Brexit was voted for and then passed through, there's been lower immigration.
	No.
	It's gone up.
	Everyone's well aware.
	It's the highest it has ever been.
	Brexit's not the only factor in the economy as well.
	They talk about it like it's the only thing that ever happens to you.
	I'm sure you're about to show GDP per capita, but that's not... Oh, did you know?
	Oh my goodness.
	But here's just to make the point, we're still poorer than we were in 2007 in terms of GDP per capita here.
	You can just see that it's never recovered, it's just hopped up and down.
	Does this even take inflation into account or is this just raw numbers?
	I assume this takes inflation into account, I believe so, from World Bank.
	Because if it is just raw numbers then that's even worse, wouldn't it be?
	Yeah, but it's just mad to be like, you know, record immigration, therefore economy good.
	It's like, no, no, it doesn't work.
	Everyone lives here.
	I mean, people were confused, obviously, in their responses.
	So this is a graph of GDP growth versus net migration.
	And as you can see, the golden age here, low immigration.
	There's a golden age here.
	There's a slight uptick, but nothing mad.
	And then, well, there's one here that happens to coincide with the insanity.
	And then we continued the insanity.
	And for some reason, we fell through a cliff.
	That is almost like an inverse trend, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	So it's just mad.
	I mean, a lot of people would just strap angry.
	Well, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
	Let's be fair.
	Let's be fair.
	Go back, go back.
	So you see that point in a 2000, what's that?
	2007 to 2009 is when the drop really starts to be noticeable.
	And then 2000, yeah, 2000 financial crisis.
	Yeah.
	2008 to 2009.
	is when the drop really starts to be noticeable.
	And then 2000...
	Yeah, 2000...
	Financial crisis.
	Yeah, 2008 to 2009.
	That was obviously Brexit.
	What happened was in 2008, people voted Brexit.
	Proto-Brexit.
	And immediately became twice as poor as they used to.
	That's the only explanation.
	You are so right that the endless focus on Brexit is like the last, I think Helen Dale said this, it's like the last Japanese soldier in 1955 still thinking the war's going on, on some island in the middle of nowhere.
	So shut up, man.
	Who are the only people who talk about Brexit anymore?
	It's James O'Brien and Femi.
	Yeah.
	They're the only people.
	A lot of people are angry.
	They're just like, well, where's all the economic growth from the foreigners then?
	Come on.
	You Mr. Toad-looking motherfucker.
	You know, sympathise.
	And then there's people talking about, you know...
	What do these people actually do all day?
	They think the economy's getting up because GDP go up, because infinity Africans and shitbox Newbelts are being built.
	It's like, no, that's... I didn't need this mental image of Mr. O'Brien.
	Yeah, but I mean, both of those pills you're taking, I mean, it's just lower quality of life is the net result there.
	But then people started posting stuff like this, which is, we're objectively poorer with more foreigners around.
	So yeah, I'd rather be poorer with zero foreigners.
	Because that's really the option.
	Would you rather be poor and have no homeland?
	Or poor and have a homeland.
	Also, what's the logic here that England was never rich?
	England was never a world leader in economic forces before we had infinity Africans and infinity migrants coming into the country.
	Here's a novel idea.
	How about if foreigners stopped coming into the country would actually gain money because they're not actually net contributors to the UK economy.
	That's a... Depending on the group.
	Yes, of course.
	But I mean, this is all just an economic argument.
	Of course, this doesn't matter that much.
	There are far more important things, such as not being ethnically displaced and ending your 2,000 year reign over an island.
	I mean, that's sort of kind of more important.
	Quality of life, that's more important.
	I mean, there's various things.
	But if you just want to talk pure economics, I mean, this graph is hilarious.
	It shows here earnings since the year 2000.
	Earnings are up 112% since the year 2000.
	House prices are up 240%.
	Now the inflation rate during that time period is 124.9%.
	So you are poorer on average than you were in the year 2000.
	So that immediately destroys the earnings increase.
	Yeah, that's actually negative.
	The house prices, yeah, in real terms, they have gone up.
	What possibly could be the thing driving the house prices?
	Well, it's not because we're not trying to build enough, it's because of the demand.
	There's huge demand, not enough supply.
	Prices go up.
	Who'd have thought that the market operates on supply and demand?
	This new revelation, my goodness.
	I do feel like a child doing these segments sometimes and saying that, but then you look at people in London and you're like, you are so disconnected.
	You don't seem to know, but there we are, or at least these people in particular.
	But, I mean, just to that point you were mentioning about types of immigrant, here's obviously people who know about immigration.
	Denmark, yep.
	This is the Danish study in which they found that Danish people are net contributors to the state.
	Western European immigrants, they're a net contributor.
	And then you have the group there, other non-Western immigrants.
	They contribute some but are a net drain.
	And then you have the Middle Eastern immigrants who are just a drain.
	I assume other non-Western immigrants will be what, East Asians maybe?
	Yeah, so there's a payoff period here.
	But only when they're a particular age.
	It also encompasses such a wide range there, of course, of ethnic groups.
	So these lines represent over a lifetime, right?
	Yes, from the year you are born to the age of 90.
	So at no point do Middle East or North African, Pakistan or Turkey, at no point in Denmark do they ever become net contributors?
	Correct.
	On average?
	Yep.
	So that's the truth.
	So there we are.
	And weirdly, as I mentioned, this reminded me, him sitting there, because everyone knows this at this point, the shift has happened in Canada, it's happened in America, it's happened in the UK, Denmark, Germany, etc.
	I think everyone's pretty much getting up to speed on this.
	We're no longer having to take baby steps constantly.
	Instead it is, no, we know that infinity Africans doesn't equal infinity money.
	Otherwise Zimbabwe would be to the moon.
	Are we hoping that they're continent?
	Are we hoping that they're just, like, smuggling diamonds with them?
	Yeah.
	And then we can, when they're coming through customs, we can just gang... get them for the diamonds, maybe?
	Everyone knows Africa is synonymous with riches and wealth.
	So, that particular argument you see from James O'Brien, I mean, it really does remind me of this.
	So this is the image from the invasion of Iraq, with George Bush with his thumbs up going, mission accomplished in 2003.
	Someone needs to photoshop this.
	James O'Brien's face and rows and rows of Turkish barbers.
	Because the thing is, this is how I perceive this argument being made in the early 90s, is that people, I presume, actually took this argument seriously.
	It is comical on the face of it, but after the 20-odd years of what we've gone through, I mean, it is just nuts.
	I don't want to compare it to the Iraq War because, I mean, I think there's a weird similarity I'm going to force through.
	So, of course, I mean, the Iraq War starts out with the invasion.
	30,000 Iraqis die in exchange.
	172 Anglos die.
	Sad day for the Anglos.
	And then, of course, there's the insurgency period, 2003 to 2006.
	I was like, okay, maybe that whole Iraqi freedom thing was not a great idea.
	Maybe they don't want democracy.
	Maybe this is not going well.
	Well, you know, we'll just fight for a few years.
	It'll be cool.
	There's another 90,000 people dead.
	And then it followed with the civil war, immediately, for two years, in Iraq.
	Which, another tens of thousands of people dead.
	This is between, well, proto-ISIS, the Mardis, and then, well, us, really.
	Propping up the Iraqi government.
	Which, um, yeah.
	What happened after the civil war?
	We had the second insurgency.
	2011 to 2013.
	They're like Marvel films, aren't they?
	They're coming out every year.
	Yeah, that's another 10,000 dead.
	And then immediately after the Iraqi insurgency ends in this period, well it didn't really end, it escalated into the second war in Iraq, alright, against ISIS.
	Which, um... Hey, the death count on this one is really large.
	Oh, really?
	ISIS killed a lot of people, is that what you're telling me?
	No, we killed a lot of ISIS.
	Oh, okay.
	We did a very good job, I'll be honest.
	It's kind of, uh, very based.
	So, strength 100,000, 200,000, 129,000 ISIS members killed.
	Bloody hell.
	So, there we are.
	But, I mean, let's be fair though, guys.
	It was all worth it because now we have peace in the Middle East.
	Well, I'm just keeping it to Iraq.
	So the ISIS war encompassed, of course, a lot of genocide and a lot of extra people dying.
	So 220,000 Iraqis dead.
	220,000 Iraqis dead.
	59 Anglos.
	That's a hell of a AD ratio.
	We weren't doing all the fighting, but the strength of the American military is comical.
	Let's be fair.
	It does need to be nerfed for there to ever be a fair fight, and it's not going to be.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	Don't insurgents ever learn.
	You say that, Callum, but how does an American military force engage against a few Sandy boys coming from the mountains in 2022 or 2021, whatever it was?
	The big dichotomy between the juggernaut meme machine that is the US military and then the US political leadership, which is just awful.
	They can't do anything.
	I mean, they genuinely turned up to Afghanistan and were just like, oh yeah, we'll make them liberals.
	It's just like, what?
	But anyway, getting back to Iraq, okay, so even from the invasion right up to 2017, just constant warfare.
	I mean, the last thing we're just looking at here is the ISIS war, which is, in terms of modern warfare, a very large death count.
	I mean, not small.
	You don't get these kinds of deaths usually.
	And then, of course, immediately after and to the present day, we still have an insurgency in Iraq.
	It didn't end.
	It's still going on.
	So, yeah.
	Mission accomplished, boys.
	I mean, you can still look if you go on LiveMap and just check out the situation in Iraq still, and there's like a province up here that ISIS still control somehow.
	I mean, there's still crap going down because of all the Yemen stuff, the Palestine things.
	There's a bunch of Iranian-backed military groups who are now threatening to blow up all the Western military bases and overthrow the government again.
	So, Yeah, that 2003 invasion was not exactly mission accomplished.
	We still haven't accomplished anything.
	That mission is still a joke.
	Now watch this drag.
	Yeah, and this is how I see the argument about immigration, where it's just like, man, one day, one day, it'll start paying dividends.
	One day, sacks of gold will turn up on the migrant dinghies.
	It's like, there'll be no people, there'll be no women and children, it'll just be unmanned dinghies with gold on them.
	The current discourse is that we're paying them the danegeld, aren't we?
	We're paying the Vikings, the people coming over in the boats and pillaging our economy, money to go away.
	It's not mission accomplished.
	And then they don't go away.
	It's never going to be mission accomplished.
	I mean, Iraq probably will never be mission accomplished at this point and will end up like Afghanistan or just becoming some kind of weird outpost the Americans have to spend loads of money on stabilizing every year, which...
	I mean, that's why we ended up leaving a lot of the Empire.
	It just wasn't worth having.
	But, anyway.
	There's that.
	I'll bring it back to the immigration for a minute here, because, of course, it's easier, instead of accepting that mission not accomplished, to just believe lies, just endless lies, and the Canadians are finding this out in real time, because they've undergone an unbelievable level of mass immigration very, very recently.
	A lot of it from India.
	An unbelievable amount of immigration from India, frankly.
	I mean, India's just got an infinite supply of people to send wherever.
	And as you can see, they're kind of shitting themselves because they used to be quite similar in terms of standard of living to the Americans.
	And you know, we're always going to be poorer than the Americans are the global hegemon.
	But since the COVID lockdowns and then the mass immigration, the forecasts here are not good.
	That's a big dip.
	It turns out having huge demand for housing, which pushes up rents and house prices so much that no one can then save money to start businesses, really damages the economy.
	And then also all of the other problems, which we could sit and talk about for five hours and Probably have collectively done about 200 hours worth of video on.
	So there's that.
	And the response from the leadership in Canada.
	So this is the Canadian finance minister.
	She was asked this question, which is maybe infinity immigrants doesn't make Canada richer.
	And she responded by saying, quote, Canada is the most welcoming country for new Canadians.
	The magic soil, they step onto that magic soil, immediately they become Canadian.
	Ancestry?
	Who cares about that?
	I thought Lichtenstein was the most welcoming to new Canadians.
	What a weird sentence.
	Yeah, that's just pure programming.
	But then she ends off that sentence, after saying that, with saying that the fact that Canada is the most welcoming for new Canadians is the source of its economic strength.
	I mean, we're not dealing with adults.
	We're not dealing with arguments.
	We're just dealing with mission accomplished.
	Trust me, bro.
	It's mad at this point.
	So she gives us a solution to the crisis, which is she wants to build more homes and also increase the level of immigration.
	Again, supply and demand.
	This isn't very difficult stuff.
	It really is just people shouting at you, mission accomplished at this point.
	To any political leader who might be watching this, even if you do want infinity immigration, consider it takes a lot longer to build a house than it does for an immigrant to cross your border.
	Turns out buying plane tickets is quite fast.
	But anyway, Um, we are still stuck with this for the time being.
	We're missing out.
	We're missing out the Turkish barbers, but I'm happy with this.
	Didn't think of it, but Thomas did a wonderful job of editing this together, which is, um, yeah, mission accomplished.
	Infinity Africans equals infinity money.
	And it's, we all have to sit here looking at this and feeling like this guy is serious.
	And it's just, it's so over like that, that paradigm is so over and I'm glad at least that's dead.
	Let's move on.
	On the subject of incredibly poor propaganda, I am going to preface this.
	It's your segment, Matt, is it?
	No, I am going to preface this and say I was expecting Connor to be on this podcast with me, and so this segment is somewhat tailored for a nerd conversation between myself and Connor.
	I'm sorry, I've taken his place.
	My nerd credentials aren't as strong as Connor's are they?
	It is what it is, and this is going to encompass some stuff that I'm sure you both will be able to discuss with me.
	So let's see how we go, eh chaps?
	Because Connor has directly messaged me right now saying, I am sorry, and you will be.
	That's not good enough, Connor.
	You're not allowed to be unwell.
	You will be, Connor.
	No, get well soon.
	Yes, get well soon.
	So, propaganda is becoming more and more obvious.
	The quality of propaganda which has been pumped out by the regime over the past ten or so years is probably one of the reasons that you're watching us right now.
	If you came over on the initial wave of Hold Up, everything I used to love is now terrible.
	You're probably watching us, and you've probably gone a lot further than just going, like, why are my comics, why are my movies, why are my games worse than they used to be?
	But it is important to still highlight that, yeah, they really do suck, but one of the things that we're starting to pass into is a new paradigm where not only are they terrible at propagandizing us, they're accidentally sending the entirely opposite message.
	From what they should be.
	I think a good example of this kind of counter-reading of recent films.
	Are you alright there, Josh?
	My microphone's broken.
	It's in the stand.
	So now I've just got to hunch down like this.
	Just lower your chair.
	Annoy John.
	Alright.
	Sorry, John.
	That's what I'm about to do.
	Bye bye, Josh.
	Yeah, it turns out you can actually interpret things.
	If you have a functioning mind of your own, you're allowed to make your own interpretations of films and other kinds of media.
	And on the subject of James O'Brien being very tired and doing a really poor job at gatekeeping other people's opinions, the left has become very poor and very tired at gatekeeping other people's opinions now, because they just know it's bollocks.
	They just know it's both.
	Barbie comes out, was supposed to be this big, progressive feminist film.
	Right wingers all of a sudden turn around and say, OMG, Ken is literally me.
	And have quite a well-developed reading of the film.
	Not naming any names, Connor.
	Yeah, not naming any names.
	Hey, that's not even Connor's video.
	This is Carl's video.
	Oh, yeah, of course.
	But, I mean, Barbie came out and everybody... And Carl.
	All people had to use was what was in the film to be able to turn it into a right-wing anti-feminist masterpiece, according to Carl and Connor.
	I've still not watched it because I'm not going to watch the Barbie film.
	I am in the same boat here.
	Yeah.
	I can't look myself in the mirror and call myself a man and say I... My testosterone levels are far too high.
	I'm too busy lifting weights, that's what's going on.
	Unironically, yes.
	But you can do this with other things, and speaking of low testosterone, Connor did force me to play Life is Strange.
	Poor Connor, we're being mean to him and he's not very well.
	That's because he's not here right now, he can't do anything.
	He's watching though!
	And he made me play this game, Life is Strange, which is commonly understood as the Tumblerina game.
	But there is a reading that you can take of it, which is the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be.
	And even going back to the 90s, you have these films like we covered, called the classic Fight Club, which was supposed to be... I don't even know what it was supposed to be, if not the reading that we other people took from it.
	It was meant to be a satire of masculinity, wasn't it?
	Yeah, but the obvious reading that you can take from it really is the one that Josh and I took, which is that it's actually quite sympathetic towards masculine disenfranchisement within modern society, especially that hyper-consumerist society that people were living in in the late 90s.
	People like, um, on the most recent Lads Hour, Conor was complaining that, oh, he's complaining about the fact that he's got all of these material goods, I wish I was in that boat.
	And that's, you know, that's a disconnect that we have from the film right now.
	But for the time, it was very clear to a lot of people that just buying a load of shit and filling up your apartment with it without any meaningful relationships is not a way to be happy in your life.
	I mean, funnily enough, yeah, people who have lots of money, like celebrities, everyone knows they're all happy, right?
	Yeah, they're not record levels of mental illness within and around Hollywood and other liberals who are just mindless consumers.
	But once again, people take these readings from it and then the artists who did them, like David Fincher is a director I really respect and I think he's done numerous fantastic films.
	Absolutely.
	The most recent film, I've not seen his most recent film, I don't know if it's out yet, but when he was doing Mindhunter for Netflix.
	Oh yeah, I've seen that.
	That's a really good television program.
	But they hate that people resonate with this in the way that they don't want them to, which is interesting because there was this interview where David Fincher said, Oh, I'm not responsible for Fight Club being a hit with incels in the far right.
	I don't know how to help people who idolize Tyler Durden, where he said that, you know, he was saying, Oh, I'm not responsible for how people interpret things.
	Language evolves and symbols evolve.
	But what's happened there is it might not have been the reading that you wanted, but what you have produced, the art that you have created.
	Has resonated with people, is connected with people, which is the whole purpose of art in the first place.
	And he turns around and says, because they're the wrong people, and because they got the wrong message, because it resonated with them in the wrong way, these people are incels, these people are far-right maniacs, how dare you sympathize with Tyler Durden?
	He says, it's impossible for me to imagine that people don't understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence.
	People who can't understand that I don't know how to respond that I don't know how to help them and I'm not going to say that Tyler Durden is, should be somebody that you look up to as an entirely positive role model.
	But even within the film, as we covered, the narrator, when Tyler Durden's talking to him, he points out that I'm everything that you're not, that you want to be.
	I'm strong, confident, assertive, successful for women.
	I'm literally selling the fat of rich people back to them as soap.
	So I'm, you know, thumbing my eye in the system and the people keeping you down.
	Why wouldn't that connect with people?
	Well, a lot of those sort of principles, virtues, behaviors appeal to masculinity, don't they?
	And of course, masculinity is not particularly popular.
	And although I don't agree with the sentiment of the film, either in our interpretation or the one in which the mainstream media asserts, you know, you can have nice things and just not be really materialistic.
	You know, you get the best of both worlds.
	There is a balance, as there is in many aspects of life.
	I think the unifying factor between a lot of these is that these filmmakers will present the audience with a nihilistic world in which nobody cares about anything, and that everybody is miserable, nobody has ideals or values, and then they will present a character who has values, who has ideals, who stands for something, but then paint him in red and go, he's the bad guy.
	And be shocked when people see this pointless, meaningless, nihilistic world and go, no, I kind of like the guy who actually believes in something.
	Well, yeah, funnily enough, someone who has a solution to problems is seen more favorably than the problems themselves.
	I mean, who'd have thought?
	Yeah, I mean, even at the end of the film, whatever you think of the ending, whether you think it makes sense that blowing up a single building is going to destroy the banking system, it seems to be clear that by the end of the film, the narrator, at the very least, has gone on a character arc and has in some way been improved, at least in the way that he sees his own life, through Tyler Durden's influence.
	Have you watched Fight Club, Calum?
	Nah.
	You should, it's actually a very good film.
	I really want to, I just never go out.
	Yeah, um, and this brings me to something that happened over the past few days, which is the most controversial Twitter post of all time.
	Oh my goodness.
	Which was Literature Devil.
	S.A.
	Rivera said, if you don't understand why Watchmen's Rorschach is beloved and the actual true hero of Watchmen, then you've missed the point of heroes.
	Now, this is where, you know, Connor was supposed to be sat where you are.
	I have seen the film and I know who Rorschach is.
	And I also sit next to Connor in the office and so I overhear his comic book sort of ways.
	So I've kind of developed an understanding by proxy.
	There you go.
	So you've watched the Watchmen film.
	Did you notice anything about Rorschach that differentiated him from the rest of the characters in the film?
	He's based.
	Yes.
	Unironically, yeah, he believes in something.
	Most of the Watchmen story, as Alan Moore wrote it, is heroes, retired heroes who don't believe in anything anymore, suffering their interpersonal issues, complaining about things.
	One of them, Nite Owl, one of his main subplots is literally that he's got ED.
	And he feels really bad about himself because he can't get it up, whereas Rorschach is a bit psychopathic.
	Yes, he is a smelly homeless weirdo, but he also goes around trying to solve murders, stand up for the friends that he's lost along the way, and at one point, very prominently in the story, murders a pedophile who got away with it.
	Um, so, Alan Moore writes this character and then is shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, when the only character who believes in anything or cares about anything or really does anything positive for the world is the one that people, like, attach themselves to and resonates with people.
	You mean to say that people like other people who do things positive in the world?
	My goodness, this is... And I want to preface this as well by saying that this is not a unique take.
	Most people who watch Watchmen come out of the other end saying that, while I don't agree with everything to do with the character, that Rorschach was the hero of the story, so to speak.
	As much as you can be a hero in a nihilistic world like the one that Alan Moore painted.
	But then, for some reason, this rather innocuous normie take post, not to take anything away from literature devil, became A hot button topic.
	And you had loads of leftists coming out of the woodwork with, I'm going to be fair, really poor propaganda to throw back at him.
	And that propaganda, I include Alan Moore's words himself, the man who wrote this character.
	People kept showing this particular quote to him and one or two others.
	So let's read this.
	I wanted to make Rorschachers like this is what Batman would be in the real world.
	I mean, Batman's supposed to be rich, so you kind of got it wrong straight away there.
	Rich homeless man.
	Yeah, rich billionaire hobo.
	He's got all the sandwich crusts.
	But I have forgotten that actually, to a lot of comic fans, smelling, not having a girlfriend, these are actually kind of heroic.
	Now, he does slightly win me back over with that sentence.
	It's a bit rich coming from him.
	I've seen how he looks.
	Yeah, if anybody, just look up Alan Moore and what he looks like, and if you want to see a man whose smell emanates from still images... Yeah, you need to... John, get up a picture of Alan Moore, so get the one of him wearing the Hammer and Sickle t-shirt for me, please, because that's...
	Alan Moore, yeah yeah here we go.
	He looks like Rasputin if Rasputin didn't shave.
	Yeah.
	Does this image have an odor?
	I say yes.
	It smells like stale sweat, yeah.
	Yeah, I think that Alan Moore, if he's going to say that... Oh, there it is!
	Yeah, there's the picture.
	Hammer and sickle.
	If Alan Moore is going to complain that some people smell, he's glasshouses.
	That's all I'll say.
	But going back, I'll read the rest of this.
	So he says, so Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen.
	Once again, someone horrified that a piece of art they created connected and resonated with people.
	So horrible if it's the wrong people and the wrong message.
	I made him to be a bad example.
	But I have people come up to me in the street and saying, I am Rorschach.
	That is my story.
	And I'd be thinking, yeah, great.
	Could you just keep away from me?
	Never come anywhere near me again as long as I live.
	And that was the one that supposedly absolutely destroys Literature Devil's take on this.
	Despite the fact that he wrote it and he may have intended one thing.
	But it is in fact possible to intend one thing and to accidentally write a completely different story.
	Or a story that you can interpret different ways.
	For instance, Alan Moore may not have noticed but he did title the character Rorschach So it's something that you look at and is very subjective in your interpretation.
	Yes, but Alan Moore thinks that you're wrong to have your own interpretation of the character of Rorschach.
	And this isn't the first time he's said this.
	He's constantly, ever since the comics came out, been complaining that people have been taking The wrong message from Rorschach.
	We had some black guy who I'm familiar with post, oh the amount of chuds that find Rorschach admirable is sad, but not surprising.
	The creation of Rorschach, and this is another Alan Moore quote, A mass vigilante who's one of the Watchmen's main characters.
	I was thinking, well, everybody will understand that this is satirical.
	I'm making this guy a mumbling psychopath who clearly smells, who lives on cold baked beans, who has no friends because of his abhorrent personality.
	I didn't realize that so many people in the audience would find such a figure admirable.
	I was told, this was probably five or ten years ago, that apparently Watchmen has quite a following amongst the right wing in America.
	In fact, do you know the far right website Stormfront?
	And then the quote cuts off and I don't know what it goes on to say there.
	But, do you know what happened, Alan?
	Is that, like with all of these other stories, you wrote a horrible, nihilistic, and meaningless world, where everything is awful and everyone is terrible, and nobody believes in a damn thing, and then you included a character in it who believes in something, and says, I'm going to stick to my beliefs and to my convictions, and then you get surprised when he's the one that people latch onto.
	Yeah, well, if your convictions lead you to being homeless living off of baked beans with no friends, and you still stick by them and act on them, then there's something admirable in that, even if they are misguided.
	Yeah, and the whole point of Watchmen when it came out was this was around the 1980s when comics were going dark.
	They'd already been dark and told dark and adult stories, but this was when creators like Alan Moore were self-consciously going out of their way to tell gritty adult stories.
	And the whole point of Watchmen, the groundbreaking point was, did you know that the real world is depressing and gritty?
	Did you know that having ideals and superheroes that have ideals which are aspirational is actually really stupid and that you should be meaningless and nihilistic?
	That's the point because I'm a communist, don't you know?
	Behind every sort of nihilist or pessimist is a disappointed optimist.
	I can't remember who said it but I think it's true.
	I mean, it's no surprise that a communist would be like that in that case.
	But once again, like, that's your message.
	That's your groundbreaking, deconstructive narrative that you're presenting to people.
	And again, he's surprised that people latched onto the one ray of meaning.
	The one speck of meaning that he included in that whole story.
	And Alan Moore is, let's be honest, a weird crazy man who believes that adults loving superhero movies is infantile, and we all know soy jacks, we all know real life soy jacks, so I agree with that part if you become obsessed with it.
	Yeah, me too.
	But also can be a precursor to fascism.
	This is, Alan Moore is like a fascism hiding under your bedsheets kind of Bolshevik type.
	Where if you believe in anything, if you have ideals, you're probably a fascist.
	Because having ideals means that you structure your life around beliefs.
	Having beliefs that you structure your life around means that you put those beliefs above other things.
	That means hierarchy, because you're structuring things in a ranked order.
	Hierarchy equals fascism.
	But I've got very strong beliefs, but my strong beliefs just so happen to be that the government shouldn't do a lot of things.
	Does that make me a fascist now?
	Yes.
	To Alan Moore, because... Oh dear.
	Well, you've got to remember that to Alan Moore, and there is some historical precedent that you can cite to say that this is, from their perspective, they consider it to be accurate.
	Anything that is anti-communist is automatically fascist.
	That's some very juvenile thinking, isn't it?
	Yes, yes it is.
	But the quote is, I said around about 2011, I thought that it had a serious and worrying implications for the future of millions if millions of adults were queuing up to see Batman movies.
	And this was around when Christopher Nolan's Batman films were coming out.
	I quite enjoyed those.
	I tend not to be a massive superhero film fan.
	And those can be enjoyed by people whose wives don't have boyfriends.
	So they're actually decent films.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	And he said, because of that kind of infantilization, the urge towards simpler times, simpler realities, that can often be a precursor to fascism.
	So literally any belief that things can be better in the real world or that people can do good in the world is a precursor to fascism.
	According to this... It sounds like Alan Moore is actually quite a big fan of the F word there.
	Also, do you believe that your average Marvel soy boy, is he going to be the boots on the ground, like, bread and butter constituency for your fascist party?
	Oh no, here comes the Funko Pop division.
	I'm quaking in my boots.
	And people, once again, all of this, even though this all just feels so tired at this point, because it's a really poor job to try and gatekeep people's obviously legitimate interpretations of a piece of art by just pointing at the author who is obviously an insane commie weirdo who smells himself, who can't literally can't write a single comic book without including rape in the story.
	At any point, one of his comics, I believe, is called Neonomicon, and I've heard some people say that it has rape in every single issue for some reason.
	Because it's just on his mind, apparently.
	It's just a pivotal plot device.
	Like, I'm not going to be squeamish and say you can't have rape in your story at all.
	I mean, I'm a big Berserk fan.
	But Alan Moore can't go a single issue without doing that.
	He also wrote a comic called Lost Girls, which his wife illustrated, which was about underaged fairy tale characters, like Alice from Alice in Wonderland and a few others, getting together and having sexual experiments with one another.
	What can I say about this that isn't libelous?
	Probably best not to.
	Nothing that nobody else hasn't already suggested.
	Let's just say that.
	So loads of people are screeching saying, no, you're not allowed to like Rorschach by pointing to the opinions of this man.
	Sorry, it's not going to work.
	It turns out, in fact, you can have any sort of right wing interpretation of any piece of art and you don't have to listen to the author and it's completely free.
	You don't have to pay anyone to do it.
	You can post it on Twitter and get millions of views doing so!
	I have 20 interpretations of Aardhome.
	They're totally free!
	Exactly!
	And people like RazörFist.
	RazörFist came out and did a good point, which was the reason that Rorschach was a good character is because he wasn't actually Alan Moore's character in the first place.
	He based him off of Mr. A, who was written by Steve Ditko, who was one, the artist who was the original illustrator of Spider-Man, and two, an objectivist.
	And whether you have issues with objectivism as a philosophy or not, it's a philosophy that believes there is such a thing as good and evil.
	And he was supposed to be a satirical take on this character.
	Some also say that he was based on The Question, which was a Charlton character, and Watchmen was broadly based on these Charlton characters that DC had just got the rights to.
	But, according to Razorfist, it's Mr. A. Either way, Steve Ditko was involved in both of them.
	They were both characters with a definitive sense of what is right and wrong in the world.
	And he was supposed to be trying to parody that, but accidentally, because he was the only character who did say there was such a thing as right and wrong, people liked him.
	Alan Moore, most affected.
	I would much rather, um, agree with an objectivist than a communist.
	That's for sure.
	Even though, you know, I've got my gripes with Ayn Rand.
	Yeah, and in summation, there was this amazing post, and I'll just read through this because it sums up the whole thing, because this is Alan Moore's perspective made flesh.
	Once upon a time, there was a stupid, stinky guy named Truth Exists Man who thought he was a hero, but Truth Exists Man was actually a psycho and never got a girlfriend.
	Then situational ethics man killed a million people by dropping a plastic alien on New York because he was smart and understand it needed to be done to stop an atomic war.
	But StinkyTruthExistsMan actually thought that killing millions of innocent people was bad, according to his stinky belief that you should not kill a million innocent people.
	My god, what a radical.
	Fortunately, super smart nihilism man killed truth exists man so the day was saved.
	And if you think truth exists man is a hero you are dumb and stinky and not sophisticated enough to interpret my story.
	That's Alan Moore's view.
	That's the view of people like some black guy and all the other people who are inundating Literature Devil with their stupid Uh, single quotes from Alan Moore, who is not a man that you should trust for good storytelling or good interpretations of reality, because let's be perfectly honest, he is an insane communist who accidentally wrote a few good stories in the 1980s and has done nothing but write rape fantasies ever since then.
	So yeah, do ask questions, don't just consume product, use your own mind to come up with your own interpretations of things, and you don't have to care about anything that these people believe or say, even if they are the person who wrote what you're consuming.
	Let's go to the video comments.
	The man on the street interviews always frustrates me.
	I am I am not a sports fan.
	I rarely watch any sporting event.
	I don't know the players.
	I don't know all the rules.
	If I were to become extremely passionate and driven and emotionally incontinent over a football game where I couldn't figure out who was at bat, people would think I was being ridiculous.
	Why is this not the same in politics?
	People have a free license in politics to be unreasonable, I think, and actually I find it very frustrating because as soon as someone gets really angry, unless they've actually articulated their opinion well beforehand, I just presume that they're so clouded with emotion they can't think reasonably.
	I don't think it actually sells your case at all.
	I think actually staying calm and collected makes you a more legitimate source of information and a more legitimate perspective.
	And it's a shame because I think people are just looking for an outlet to be nasty to each other in a very fundamental sense.
	What do you reckon Callum?
	There's something I like about the countries I've been to where there is no democracy.
	Crop that.
	That's the most base thing you've ever said.
	Because that problem you're thinking about, where you run into someone who knows nothing about the subject, but is just screeching random crap at you, doesn't happen.
	Because everyone knows full well that even if they have opinions, they're worthless, they don't even try.
	So you just never have to run into it, which I quite like.
	I find the worst thing about democracy is that those people, as well as feeling the need to let everybody know their opinions, their vote counts just as much.
	Yeah, that's not even true because it depends on what the boundaries are, how many people are in the boundaries, the vote margin from the last election.
	But still, do carry on.
	It's a tangible thing.
	There was a guy I saw in a video, he moved to Russia.
	And people were like, oh my god, even after the war you're still living here?
	What's going on?
	And he's like, well, you know, I got a Russian wife, I live in the bloody middle of nowhere, so none of that's affecting me.
	And then he went on to talk about the differences that he really liked living there than living back home.
	And one of the big ones for him is that he couldn't stand, especially in 2020, that everyone had to have an opinion on BLM, everyone had to have an opinion on masks and COVID, everything else.
	I think it's particularly worse for Americans because it does seem to be the case.
	Because they take their democracy more seriously.
	They think that you have to be clued up about stuff in a similar way maybe to the Australians.
	I don't know.
	I think in America their localised system often actually has much more tangible effects for their local communities than ours does over here as well.
	That's the reason?
	But I'm not saying that there aren't benefits and negatives to either of those, there obviously is, but there is a very big difference, and that guy noticed it, which is that he didn't have to have an opinion on shit.
	I think it's perfectly okay to say, I don't know much about this, I don't really have that much of a strong opinion, and carry on with a conversation from there.
	But that's the problem, maybe that used to be the case, but now people start getting angry and upset with you.
	But not caring?
	It's a bad trait to have.
	Well, if someone doesn't care, it's not like they want to not care.
	Generally speaking, in a world where meaning is a limited resource, people want to care more about things in their life than not.
	I mean, you guys must have seen this, because I think our position in general is very much the same as the average English person on Israel-Palestine, which is...
	I just don't want to pay for it.
	Yeah, I do run into people who are just like, oh, why didn't you take this side of that?
	I hate this.
	I hate that part of our culture.
	What happens in the desert should stay in the desert.
	Yeah, it works for Vegas, which is in a desert.
	There you go, see?
	Yeah, we're on to something.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Cool guitarist, by the way.
	If you wanted to make a really good memorial statue to advance our dialectic, you should create a Victims of Abortion Memorial that depicts the Holocaust against unborn children and the thoughtless murder that we've had of children who don't have a chance to live.
	The memorial would consist of children's faces printed in relief, faces of different races and people, these little faces that could never be, and the plinth would be an empty incubator table or an empty crib or something like that.
	And the optics of defacing such a memorial would be so bad that I think a lot of people would become, well, pro-life.
	That's a very good argument, yeah.
	That's an interesting idea.
	The idea of that plinth though does really depress me.
	I think if you really wanted to be as sort of emotionally impacting as possible, it could just be like a first birthday cake with empty chairs around it.
	That would just be harrowing.
	How many empty chairs are you going to have to build though?
	Well it's just like a dinner table.
	I thought we were going to have a chair for every baby that's been aborted since like 1940.
	Oh Jesus Christ!
	That's going to be the size of a state.
	America's going to change its industry to manufacturing nothing but chairs.
	Isn't there a ridiculous statistic like more black babies have been aborted in America?
	In the state of New York than have been born, yeah.
	How many slaves, brother?
	Four million, I think?
	How many abortions in the South?
	Well, I think it's something like 600,000, maybe more than that.
	That's a year, isn't it?
	So we're probably looking at more abortions than slaves.
	By a significant margin.
	Yeah.
	Because of course, you know, all the time it's been going on.
	Anyway, that's where my mind went.
	Let's go to the next one.
	A couple additional names for your statue list.
	Friar Gregor Mendel, the priest Rogiro Bosovic, Friar Francis Bacon, and Father Gregor LeMantre.
	These four men basically gave us genetics, atomic theory, the scientific method, and the Big Bang Theory.
	Oh nice.
	I'm going to get one of Oppenheuer just being like, no.
	No, this statue thing I think is a great idea and maybe my dream will come true in the next 20 years.
	I'll start building statues.
	I'm still gutted that they took Charles Darwin off of the £10 note.
	Yeah, that does piss me off.
	I really hated that bloody conversation as well.
	I've got to have a woman on it!
	The Queen was on it and she's still on it as well.
	Yeah.
	Jane Austen.
	Jane Austen, a person who discovered a natural phenomenon.
	Basically aristocratic gossip versus a naturalist scientist.
	But the debate was between Jane Austen and Churchill as well.
	It wasn't even Charles Darwood because we're going to change both.
	I was just like, really?
	But also, I'm not the biggest fan of Churchill, really.
	Does he have to, you know... Is he more important than Jane Austen, though, in British history?
	Well, I think there are other choices.
	I'm just saying, if you had to read more, Churchill or Austen.
	Ah, you got me there.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Listener, Churchill.
	Does Waterstones have a copy of every Churchill book?
	Or every Austen novel?
	If we were properly based and we had to have a woman, Boudicca, you know, driving out the Romans.
	Yeah.
	That would be based.
	Is it Boudicca or Boudicca?
	Or is there just nobody?
	Boudicca is sort of the anglicised version, I think.
	Okay.
	But it's a bit more old-timey than Boudicca, I think.
	It doesn't really matter.
	We don't actually know how it was pronounced, I don't think.
	Weedy, weedy, weechy.
	Oh yeah, that's how I came, I saw, I conquered.
	That's how Caesar talks.
	have these.
	That's how Caesar talks.
	Let's go to the written comments.
	So real quick, the Shadowband.
	Connor says he is pro-Austin on the £10 note.
	Bad. - That's good.
	The Shadow Band says happy Wednesday and donate to 50 bucks.
	Thank you very much.
	If I'm not mistaken, this dude seems to turn up on every stream and I was just like, yeah, here's my salary.
	I mean, if you've got the disposable income for it and want to send it our way, we're not going to say no.
	I'm not going to stop you.
	So let's go for the average university IQ.
	Oh yes.
	Dirty Belter.
	I nearly got reported.
	That sounds like a great euphemistic name, doesn't it?
	Under Prevent in college for showing Alex Jones memes, it's quite astounding how every institution is set up to enforce mediocrity and vice, i.e.
	be like the teachers.
	Why do we allow people who've never done anything with their life to be teachers?
	Yeah, particularly if you've just been through university after leaving education and you go straight back into education.
	It's not like you've got a wealth of life experience, is it?
	That you're imparting on the children you're teaching.
	I think that part of being an adult authority figure that's teaching children is that you teach them lessons of life so they don't have to make the same mistakes that you did in a way in which they're actually going to listen and not think, screw you, I'm not doing what you say, like I did.
	Ross Diggle says, IQ going down amongst university students, no S when they are letting anybody in now.
	And lo and behold, that actually was it, yes.
	JC, Jesus Christ himself apparently, when I went to university I immediately felt the sense of prestige fade away as I was confronted by the reality of what those institutions really are.
	Daycare centres for adults who have had their childhood extended, full of people who had no idea what they were doing, nor why they were there, and a lack of general intelligence was incredibly apparent.
	Since I was one of the few there for the right reasons, possessing more than a handful of brain cells, I was constantly badgered for basic information about how to complete my assignments.
	I still find it remarkable that for my first year of university, most of the lectures that I attended, I didn't learn a single thing that I hadn't learned through mindlessly browsing the internet when I was working at a call center.
	I remember in my master's course, I actually had to correct one of the lectures I was one of the people that went, um, actually, because it was something that I did in my undergrad that she got wrong.
	And I felt like a right, um, you know, fedora tipper.
	Right, know it all.
	I was, yeah.
	But I thought, well, if this is going to be in an exam, we kind of need the correct information.
	So I kind of swallowed my pride.
	There was a few instances throughout my educational years where teachers would say one thing, whether it was correct or not, and then there was one really egregious time where in secondary school geography, one of the classes that we took, he was talking about why it is that people generally in the lower classes who aren't working class, they're on benefits and such, have more children.
	And one of the reasons that he gave, which could be a plausible reason, he said, was simply because they're not at work.
	They get bored and have more time to procreate, shall we say.
	And I listened.
	I listened.
	And at the time when I was in school, because it was a teacher telling me that, I thought, OK, that sounds fair enough.
	And then later on, when we were doing a test, that came up in one of the questions.
	Why is it the people of the lower classes like procreate more?
	I used that answer, because that was the primary one that he told me, and then he marked it as incorrect.
	He said there are many different factors for that, so that was a piss-take, that was.
	I was laughing at, why did you say, um, they're procreating, shall we say?
	As if it's not the right word!
	Because I was trying to be nice and gentle about it.
	They're fucking raw-talking!
	Bloody hell, Callum.
	Way to bring the tone down there.
	Let's be a little aristocratic about it, or shall we say, procreation.
	Bringing out the best in Harry is what's going on.
	What I'm trying to do, the tone of this podcast has descended recently and I'm trying to lift it out of the hedges.
	I'm quite annoyed by it.
	How dare you mention the penis!
	I didn't even mention that, now you're bringing it up!
	Callum, why are you bringing up penis all of a sudden?
	It's always on his mind.
	It reminds me of that family guy joke where Carter's wife gets with some British guy and he's like, hold on, hold on, I don't have to take him down.
	Penis.
	And then he just falls over.
	What?
	That doesn't work.
	You ever seen that joke?
	I've seen the joke.
	He's some British weirdo who's just like, put it up, safety cuffs.
	And he's just like, cock.
	Oh, right.
	Oh my God.
	Because we, yeah, we don't swear more than Americans in Britain.
	That doesn't happen.
	Anyway, sorry.
	yeah let's move on to your uh comments oh all right then 80 come on you bastard uh lord narevar says the economy will be worse without infinity africans clogging up your town centers and degrading your local culture so be it sounds great It's not really much of an argument, is it?
	You think I give a monkey's whether or not the bankers get their bonuses this year.
	I'm getting rinsed already between tax, cost of living, and net zero levies.
	Don't wanna know it.
	I wouldn't notice a bloody jot whether the line was going up or not.
	Whether I would notice my communities feeling safer and happier, I would.
	So make it so.
	That's a great point.
	Yeah.
	I mean, how much do you give a crap the line goes up?
	Because it's never the line that's average income.
	It's never the line that's GDP per capita.
	It's never house price affordability or something.
	It's just blanket GDP, which normally gets hoovered up to the top companies anyway, and is actually used to our expense.
	Because if, say, all of these large companies have more resources relative to the general population, then their buying power is higher and actually raises the prices of your average person on the street.
	Ewan Baker says, thanks, I'm already suffering with flu, now I have to watch the idiot James O'Brien on top of it.
	Sorry about that.
	Penance.
	Blame him.
	Crimes.
	That illness is because you've been bad.
	That's why.
	God's wrath.
	James O'Brien is the solution.
	It's the gays.
	Don't know if you're gay, but...
	You're like a random word generator today, aren't you?
	You're just babbling.
	What are you going on about?
	No, I miss that era.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	You bring up penis out of nowhere, then you start randomly bringing up the gays.
	What's going on?
	I'm gay.
	Is that what we want to hear?
	I'm glad we got to the bottom of that, but I shouldn't have used that word.
	Well, not quite, yeah.
	Don't get you excited.
	But if you've never seen that, you remember back, probably you guys watched Russell Howard's Good News.
	Yeah, back in the day.
	We were all retarded once upon a time, right?
	And do you remember the Jimmy Savile episode when Savile died and he did a memorial to him?
	What a great guy!
	Aged well!
	But he did this one segment once on, there was some flooding in the West Country as usual, and one of the local town councillors was just like, it's the gays!
	Oh yeah, I remember that.
	I'm annoyed that we don't get that these days.
	Yeah, because they said it was God punishing us because of gay marriage, wasn't it?
	It was around 2011.
	I want that back.
	That's all I'm saying, you know?
	All I'm saying is there is a correlation.
	There's no such thing as climate change, it's just God's wrath.
	That's it.
	You've seen that meme, haven't you, where it's like, oh, what conservative say will happen if we legalize gay marriage?
	A plague will come.
	World War III will happen.
	It's like, hmm.
	Hmm.
	Aged quite well.
	Anyway, start trying to turn your kids gay.
	Furious Dan says mass immigration is much like communism with human capital, reducing economics to one metric and demanding it all be equal everywhere.
	Yeah.
	However, I destroy all of your towns.
	Now what, huh?
	Fascist.
	Let's go to the, uh... I'm glad to have you on the podcast.
	Yeah, alright.
	Why was he wearing a hammer and sickle shirt?
	Was he actually a communist?
	Because he's a communist.
	Okay.
	Literally, he's a communist.
	Quite a lot of those dark and gritty comic book writers from the 1980s were communists, or have become.
	One, Grant Morrison, he's now a they-them, which is quite unfortunate because he actually did write some good stories back in the day.
	But anyway, so we got a message directly from Connor regarding this, saying, I vote we call this version of Death of the Author the Ken Effect.
	I want a better title.
	I want a better title, but I can't think of one right now, and it is... It is, like, timely, right?
	So... When wokeness is so hyper-real, art with woke intentions accidentally depicts its villains as sensible reformers.
	People without ideological brain rot can see the motivations of characters like Ken as sympathetic, so it becomes the runaway interpretation against the desires of the creators.
	Red Skull.
	pre-peak woke art by Life is Strange, the natural progression of story vindicates the characters initially depicted as right-wing bigots like suspicious stepfather David in Life is Strange or Rorschach in Watchmen.
	See also Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.
	Red Skull.
	To put that in English for our viewers, they could have said this tomorrow or something.
	To put this into English for our viewers, the people writing this are mentally ill, deranged freaks who don't know what right and wrong is, so inevitably end up writing the bad guys as the good guys and vice versa.
	So, there you go.
	Sophie says, Oh, shut up more.
	Sometimes I just want to sit down with a movie that is fun and have an old school feel good battle between good and evil.
	That's because you're fascist, Sophie.
	We knew this.
	I knew it.
	Thank you for finally letting us know.
	Perhaps I actually... The number of simps increased.
	OMG!
	Perhaps I actually enjoyed the simplicity of the Marvel movies and couldn't go home and just smile a little and then not think more about it.
	That was back then though, it's not been like that for a while.
	But yeah, there's a place for popcorn flicks too.
	Absolutely.
	Spring Valley Itland, at a local cafe, they've plastered the toilet walls with old newspapers from the 60s and 70s.
	I love looking at the old commercials, one of them just stating Further margarine is best.
	That's all.
	Nothing else.
	Just the simple, our product is best.
	And I love it.
	A simpler time.
	No randomized controlled trials or blind tests or managerial expert class.
	That does sound really nice to go back to actually.
	Imagine getting margarine rather than actual butter.
	Ugh.
	JJHW, none of you seem to understand.
	I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me.
	Quote from Rorschach.
	And that's another thing, Alan, if you didn't want to make him the most likable hero of the bunch, don't give him all the best lines.
	Don't give him all the badass lines, because that's a badass line.
	On that note, it's time to end the show, so if you want to see more, you know what to do.

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