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April 15, 2020 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
24:54
How A Digital Detox Can Help You Cope With The Panic | Dave Rubin | DIRECT MESSAGE | Rubin Report
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dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Hey, good morning, everybody.
I got a little raspy there.
I've been doing a lot of talking lately.
Yesterday, I interviewed Senator Marco Rubio, I interviewed Congressman Dan Crenshaw,
and I interviewed Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy.
It was a crazy, crazy day of interviews.
And then in between, I'm also doing a lot of press now for "Don't Burn This Book,"
which doesn't come out till April 28th, but we're stacking interviews
so that a ton of stuff can come out that week.
So I was talking, I mean, non-stop talking from like 8 a.m.
to about 9 p.m.
and then we had a bunch of meetings with our staff and the rest of it and actually the only time that I really didn't talk throughout the day was during the interview with Mike Lindell who this guy, you know the MyPillow guy, and what happened to him a couple weeks ago, what about two weeks ago now, he was at the Rose Garden with Trump and he had converted his MyPillow studios studios, his MyPillow factories to make masks.
They're making about 50,000 masks a day.
And then the media just tried to absolutely attack him.
And it's like these people who do no good for anyone attack this guy.
They were also attacking him because he talked about God and Jesus, oh my, oh no, oh Lord,
while he's doing this great work.
So we had a really fascinating talk, but he's one of these people that he's so energetic.
He's so into what he's doing.
He's so like obviously living the life He's supposed to live but he just talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and I love the interview But I basically just had to sit here and not fall out of my chair Anyway, guys, we are doing the direct messages every Monday and Wednesday 8 45 a.m.
Pacific 11 45 a.m.
Eastern I have not eaten yet.
I just have my coffee here and And quick clerical stuff right up top.
Just a reminder everybody, if you're watching this thing on YouTube, which is the only place it's on, click that little bell so that you might, just might, get subscribed to our videos.
Then you might just actually see them in our feed.
It's still a coin toss with the YouTube gremlins, but give it a shot if you can.
And when I take questions here, which I'll do in a little bit, I'm only taking questions from subscribers at RubinReport.com, so the YouTube chat's not on.
I'm not doing it off Twitter or anywhere else.
And if you join us at RubinReport.com, you get our full videos five days early, so our interview this week with Dana Perino, which is just in clips on YouTube right now and will be full on YouTube on Sunday, is already up at RubinReport.com, and it's ad-free, of course, and we've got ad-free podcasts.
And all that good stuff.
And, of course, you can pre-order Don't Burn this book.
The actual copies have arrived, as many of you have seen.
And I've been signing and personalizing a bunch of copies to some of the people that have influenced me most and whose ideas I try to expand upon and further in this book.
So I'm getting those out soon.
And we're going to be doing a big book signing the day that it comes out and a live stream and all that good stuff.
some interesting little press notes.
Finally, after about literally 20 some odd years of trying, I will be on real time with Bill Maher on May 29th.
So that's exciting.
I don't know that we'll be in studio.
He's doing it from his backyard, but we live in strange times and there's a lot going on.
So what I wanted to talk to you about today though, was something that I sort of,
I would say I pepper through a lot of the things that I do here,
which is about the amount of time that we spend online.
And one of the things we do in the Rubin Report community, we've been doing these Sunday afternoon movies.
So at 1 p.m. Pacific.
Each week, we've been doing a movie.
I didn't do it this past week because I did do a weekend off, which is something that I actually really recommend, although since quarantine and lockdown and everything else has started, it's like our only way of really communicating is being online, so I've been doing it more on the weekends.
But two weeks ago, we watched The Matrix, and we did the Netflix party thing so we could all chat throughout the movie.
It was totally fun, and you know, The Matrix is just a Brilliant, brilliant, classic, you know, it's the Red Pill movie, right?
But underneath the Matrix and the cool effects and everything else, and the fighting and all that stuff, is the basic idea that there's a digital world out there.
Now this movie is from, I think, about 20 years ago already.
But the idea is that there's this digital world out there.
And we, the organic things that we are as humans, that the more we sort of give over to that world,
the more time we spend in that world, that ultimately we just become batteries
for that digital world.
So if you haven't seen the movie, you gotta see it.
And I'm not really blowing anything here, but you can all sort of picture,
for those of you that have seen it, if you haven't seen it, it's not really much of a spoiler
'cause the movie's been out for 20 years.
I think I get a 20 year window on a spoiler thing.
But that, you know, there's that scene where you see the humans,
just they're basically the batteries that keep the digital electronic world alive.
And, you know, we're in a really weird spot right now because for the last 20 years,
we've all been spending more and more time online.
More and more social networks have come and gone.
And, you know, we've handed over more information to them, and we watch more video online, and now, because of the way we are with social distancing and being in lockdown, it's like all of our communication right now is this, right?
Like, this is you, you're probably sitting at a laptop, possibly in bed, maybe you haven't even got up yet, or you're watching on, you know, Apple TV, or at your computer, or whatever it is, but all of our communication, the way we're now talking to our friends and family, I mean, think about it, for the last month, if you've talked Basically to anyone in your family, unless they live in your house, you know, we're doing it through Zoom and we're doing it through FaceTime and you know, we're tweeting all the time and Facebook and all that stuff.
And see, this is one of the interesting things.
It's like, I don't want to be one of those people that just look at it like, Oh, this is some evil thing.
I mean, it's, it's incredible actually the way it's, it's connected us and it's freed us in many ways.
And so many new voices are out there.
And so many of the things that I care about.
Calling out mainstream media lies all of that stuff. It's like it's because of this and also look at my life
I mean I'm in the garage of my house and we've got a studio and we've
got a control room and a green room and people often Before this thing would come here and chat and we get this
out on those pipes So I love all of this stuff, but you know, it's sort of like fire, right?
Like it's a technology, it's a tool, and fire is really great, right?
You can cook food on it and it can warm you in the winter and a whole bunch of other stuff, but it can also burn you and it can burn your house down and a whole bunch of other things.
So I just think right now we have to figure out ways to kind of balance maybe a little bit better.
'Cause I sense this with everybody's kind of like, you know, the temperament of average people right now
that are just spending more time online and suddenly you're seeing all the fights
and the wars and the partisan stuff.
So my guys gave me some interesting numbers here that I thought you guys would find sort of enlightening.
So in North America, people right now spend an average of 2.4 hours per day on social media.
I mean, that's actually 10% of your day that you're spending online.
Now, if you're also sleeping for let's say eight hours a day
that is a huge chunk of our waking hours that we're spending staring at these things.
And actually when I saw that number, it actually seemed kind of low to me, especially right now.
I mean, really think about it.
How much time you're spending just sitting online, looking at things, watching things, consuming things,
talking to people and the rest of it.
Now I get it because of this unique time.
It's like, how many things can you do in your house?
Like we started a puzzle.
We have this giant Yoda Lego thing that we've been meaning to get to.
We take a lot of walks with the dog.
We're cooking a ton.
But I get, like, the whole thing has sort of pushed us and funneled us into this.
And it's not just specifically online, but the amount of time we're watching television.
We started The Sopranos again, which David had never seen.
And I had missed the first two seasons.
We're in the middle of season three right now.
And it's true.
It's true art.
Like, it's truly cool.
So again, I'm not saying that watching all these things is bad and binge watching and all that,
but it's a lot of us just sort of passively doing things.
Related to the television, by the way, during quarantine, overall TV viewership
has risen by over 17%, which is a tremendous amount.
39% for children two to 11, and 46% for kids 12 to 17.
and 46% for kids 12 to 17.
I mean, that seems dangerous.
I mean, that seems dangerous.
Now, I'm not a parent yet, so I don't wanna pass judgment on anyone
Now, I'm not a parent yet, so I don't wanna pass judgment on anyone
that is now locked in their house with their young kids.
that is now locked in their house with their young kids.
And I get it, my brother and sister have young kids and it's tough, right?
And I get it, my brother and sister have young kids, and it's tough, right?
Like now you've got, you have to work, both my brother and sister work
and their spouses have full-time jobs, right?
And now suddenly you've got the kids in the house all day long.
And sometimes it's easier to just hand them an iPad or turn on the TV or whatever it is.
I'm not talking about my siblings specifically, like I get it, but these numbers,
like this will just sort of addict a future generation, a young generation more and more.
39% up, two to 11 and 46, 12 to 17.
And by the way, when I said that 2.4 hours on social media that we're spending right now,
that's an hour increase since the start of quarantine, which again, that seems kind of low to me.
I suspect we're all spending a lot more time.
I'd love to hear your feedback on this and how you guys are managing it.
Some of the little tips and tricks that I offer at the end of Don't Burn This Book, which you can get at www.dontburnthisbook.com, in Chapter 10 I sort of lay out what I think are some of the ideas that I think can make us a little more functional, a little more whole, a little more A little more happy through the madness.
And obviously I wrote this before quarantine, but a lot of what I talk about is how to do a little bit of a digital detox.
So most of you know, I do for the last three years, I've done it and I'll do it again this year.
I've done August off the grid, no phone, no TV, no news, no nothing.
And it gets increasingly difficult because stuff is everywhere.
One of the beauties that I have is because now people know me, They keep me honest.
So like, I'd be at the supermarket in the middle of August, and I'm like, I got my backwards hat on and a tank top and shorts, and I'm like disconnected beyond belief.
And someone will come up to me and be like, Hey, Dave, you're really offline.
Come on, man.
Let me, let me see.
Let me see your pockets.
You know, seeing if I have a phone in there and I'd literally have to like empty my pocket and be like, no phone, no phone.
The only thing that I did sort of stay connected through was the GPS in my car.
I have a terrible sense of direction.
And I felt that that was pretty much okay.
Also, I don't know how to even disable the freaking screen in front of you.
But there are a few little tips and tricks that I offer here that I guess I could tease out for you guys right now.
I think one of the things, and I'm pretty good at, we don't always do it but we've become pretty good at it, is don't bring your phone into your bedroom.
Especially right now where your office now suddenly may be your bedroom.
Your office may be your kitchen.
We don't have functional hours anymore.
I think one of the things that will be lost in all this, there's some good stuff about the way we're all figuring out how to work right now.
The fact that many, many people are not commuting as long.
I live here in LA, which has the most bananas traffic in the world.
Maybe not the world, but we're pretty high up there.
And before I had the home studio, pretty much anywhere you go in LA, especially if it's rush hour, You're tacking on an hour each way, like, even if you're trying to get literally three miles.
I live pretty close to the highway here, and sometimes the mile to get to the exit is, it could take 45 minutes.
I mean, I'm actually not making that up.
It's truly ridiculous.
So it's kind of cool right now that, you know, a lot of you guys now, you don't have to do the commute, you don't have to sit in the car, you don't have to get on the train, all of that stuff.
I mention in the book, I think I said this in one of the live streams the other day, that my dad who just retired at 71 years old, he worked, we
grew up in Long Island, he worked in New York City his whole life, so he worked over 40 years,
almost 90% of that at one company actually, and he would take about a 50 to an hour minute, a 50 to, 50
minute to an hour train ride every day on the Long Island Railroad to get to Penn Station to then
take a walk to the office and blah blah.
He did that over 40 years.
That's basically two hours a day, 40 years.
That was over two hours of his life.
Now my dad's pretty highly functional so he would read a lot and do things, do work and all that kind of stuff or sometimes I suppose just nap.
But the idea that we're able to rethink our lives right now except Now you've got that extra time you've got other people in the house and that we sort of never we don't have normal hours so in a normal workday if you work in a normal office you know the sort of average office maybe you work from say 9 to 6 something like that yet your lunch break and whatever else.
But now it sort of never ends.
So those of us that are in the digital space more, in the digital world more, my guys that work for me, it's like we all have crazy, crazy hours.
Like we're texting each other at nine o'clock and I try to be very respectful of everybody and I really try not to have my guys working on the weekends.
And I'm also a firm believer in, and I say this to them all the time, it's like as long as you do your work, I don't care when you do it.
You know what I mean?
You want to be up at 3 a.m.
sending a gajillion emails, like, as long as I didn't miss anything during the day because of that, we're good.
So I think that we're going to really be rethinking how we work, where we work, when we work.
And it's really, really cool.
But I am, I still, beneath all that, this idea that we are now so dependent.
We went from being super dependent on big tech, right?
Super dependent that YouTube is giving us the videos we want, which we know.
I mean, guys, I don't have to tell you at this point.
It's like, we have, I don't know, 1.3 million subscribers on this channel, which they hid the subscriber numbers basically now.
It used to be something you could be proud of.
It's sort of irrelevant to me at this point.
But like, we know that when I do a live stream, if that gets out to 2% of you, like, that's a lot.
You know what I mean?
Like, we just know.
And by the way, I'm not even calling that a conspiracy with YouTube.
Just whatever is going on with the algorithm, with all of these things, we have become so dependent in the way we can get information and then communicate with each other.
You guys know this, the Twitter terms of service now has shadow banning in there telling us we can de-boost, we can hide certain people and amplify other people.
They're putting it in the terms of service.
So it's like we went from, you know, the old days of 2019 to knowing that big tech had this huge amount of power over us.
And all the things that Facebook's doing with your feed and your data and all that stuff.
They have this huge amount of power and then now we've just decided we're all going into that world even more.
And I just think we have to be wise about what we're doing there.
That's one of the reasons, by the way, that I created Locals.com and what we've built with Rubin Report and Bridget Phetasy is now on there and Michael Malice is now on there and Zuby's now on there.
And Andy Ngo is on there, and Yaron Brook is on there, and we're about to add a couple other people, some really big names soon.
It's not a giant platform.
It's just allowing these individual people to own their communities, own their data, and you can communicate directly with the people you like with no big tech nonsense.
That's why we did that.
And as I mentioned to you guys a couple weeks ago, we did all of our fundraising in the midst of Corona, like as all hell was breaking loose, like two days before, just as they were talking about lockdowns.
I was in San Francisco and San Francisco is sort of the hub of like paranoia and weirdness and whatever.
And we're in there like trying to get out because I didn't want to be trapped in freaking San Francisco during the lockdown.
But we were able to fundraise quite well.
We're adding live chat, by the way, which we should have in the app, I think, by next week.
We're beta testing it right now.
We have some live stream video coming and all sorts of stuff.
And there's no bots and trolls because it's a gated community.
So anyway, so I'm super curious, generally, how you guys are behaving with social media specifically.
Like, it's not just the stuff that you're watching maybe, or you watch a lot of YouTube videos.
Although you can get trapped in that hole too, right?
Like every now and again, I'll just Google like, you know, Star Wars fan fiction
unidentified
thing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And like, before I know it, it's like two hours later and I've watched like 30 horrible things.
And there's one good one, but you just keep clicking and clicking and clicking.
Not to mention someone will send me a TikTok video every now and again.
And I'm not even, I think maybe I have a TikTok account, but I'm not using it.
And it's like, when you start on one TikTok thing, man, next thing you know, it's three years later.
You know, it's like, I brushed my teeth.
All right, guys, I wanna get to a couple of your questions because you gave me many of them.
Bye.
Here you go.
Stacey says, have you watched Hoaxed?
So I haven't seen Hoaxed yet.
That's Mike Cernovich's documentary about media manipulation, which I, from what I understand, is doing incredibly well online right now.
I think, unless I did something else with him years ago, right when My career was sort of taking off.
He did interview me for a documentary, and I think it was Hoax.
So maybe I'm in Hoax.
I'm not even sure, but I haven't seen it yet, but I would be interested in seeing it.
Of all superheroes, Marvel or DC, who would you say is your favorite, either from the movies or the comics themselves?
This is from Devin.
You know, I think my all-time favorite, so I was a big comic book kid in a bigger way than I am now.
You know, the movies have all become sort of stiff, and I've said this a couple times, but at the end of Endgame, it just felt to me like that was the ultimate orgy of all of those movies.
And when I left, even though I really liked it, and I actually liked it even more the second time I saw it on a plane, it seems to me that we desperately need new stories and new characters and like a new creative ethos to like talk about
our present now.
It doesn't mean those things all have to go away, but we really need to reinvent them.
Like it just felt like enough. They've just given us absolutely everything.
But as a kid growing up with comic books, and I have a whole bunch, maybe I'll take some pictures
of what we've got in the green room over there. I've got some great comic books. I grew up reading
Spider-Man and Batman and GI Joe and Transformers and X-Men and a bunch of other stuff. I never
really liked Superman. Actually, he was just too perfect.
It was like the kryptonite thing. It was like, this is boring, which by the way, is why I think the
movies generally are not good. It's like the guy can't be hurt by anything, but this one thing. So
yeah, at some point in the movie, they're going to get the one thing and then he's going to
be okay. And yada, yada.
Spider-Man, though, is my favorite.
Not necessarily the Spider-Man now, although I do think that kid is good.
It's like a little too cutesy for me, but when I was reading comic books, I was in the Spider-Man, like, in the 200s phase.
I don't know what Spider-Man's on right now.
I'd love to know.
But the Amazing Spider-Man comic book.
And there was an incredible run, so when I was probably like...
Maybe 13, 13 to 15, something like that, was the years that Spider-Man was in, like, the 290s into the 340s.
And it was this guy, Todd McFarlane, who was an absolutely incredible artist.
And I have, like, most of them, a couple of them up there.
Spider-Man 300.
He was just an incredible artist.
And then they had some great writing at the time.
And Spider-Man felt a little more mature.
I don't think back then I really thought of him as, like, a high school kid, where it's very much based in, like, the high schoolness of it now.
But there was always, like, a humor to him.
He was, like, a real person, too.
You know, where, you know, Bruce Wayne, let's say, is, like, a little stiffer and he's a rich guy.
Where Spider-Man, he grew up in Queens.
Like, I was born in Brooklyn.
Like, there's something about the Spider-Man lore and the artwork and all that good stuff.
Tommy says, what kind of coffee are you drinking these days?
So, you know, as lockdown went, let me get a sip, We're running to the supermarkets like everybody else.
And I was like, if there's one thing I cannot run out of, if all hell breaks loose, if there's one thing that I need during this to be functional in any way, it's coffee.
So I've got like 10 bags of beans in there and I just kind of grabbed a whole bunch of different stuff.
One of the ones that I generally like is I like Pete's coffee.
I get the beans, I grind them myself, the major Dickinson blend.
I find it's kind of dark.
I like a darker coffee.
I put the tiniest bit of, right now I'm doing like an oat creamer in there.
I think it's a hazelnut oat creamer.
I put like the tiny drop of that in there.
But I also have some bulletproof coffee and then some, just some random brands.
I think I've got just like a Whole Foods tin.
But I do like grinding the beans.
Like there's something about that process and then doing it in the French press, letting it sit there for a little bit.
Check an email or two, get Clyde out to pee, and then start the day.
But I am a big coffee guy for sure.
Torrid Lover says, does Clyde get table scraps?
What kind of dog food do you feed him, dry or wet or both?
Love the pupper.
so far, so we've had him for a little over a month right now,
which really was like the best thing we could have done during lockdown.
And when I posted pictures of him and talked about adopting him and everything,
so many of you guys have talked about adopting dogs and you're fostering dogs.
And I know many of the shelters right now actually don't need anyone.
Some of them do 'cause they were overflowing at first, but so many people have taken dogs,
which is obviously awesome.
We feed him wellness.
It's a dry wellness food.
It's oatmeal and something.
Oatmeal and chicken, something, something.
It's a purple bag.
And then I do a tiny bit of wet food in there.
He has not had any table scraps so far.
We have done it right.
It's been hard to do, 'cause obviously we're eating home three meals a day,
but he has not even had like the tiniest piece of steak or chicken yet.
He's like half trained.
He's house trained, but you know, he's still, he's one.
He's very jumpy.
He's on us all the time, trying to get on the couch, trying to jump in bed.
So we're working on all that stuff.
And you know, at some point we'll, we break and we'll eat some human food, of course.
And as you guys know, when, when Emma got sick for that last year, we cooked for her for the year.
So I don't love the idea of having to give him dog food all the time, but like right now it's not like we can be, Cooking for the dog.
All right, guys, I'm going to do one more.
They want me to keep these to about 20 minutes.
There's a method behind the madness.
But if you want to communicate with me throughout the day, I do plenty of talking to you guys, responding to questions and thoughts and emails and posting private videos and a whole bunch of other stuff at ReubenReport.com.
And I will add one more question in here.
Let's go political.
We didn't do too much political stuff.
This is Max Justice.
He says, should Trump institute a national voter ID?
I don't have a problem with a national voter ID.
You know, this is one of the weird things.
I talked about this actually yesterday with Dan Crenshaw.
The left is completely against voter IDs, which makes no sense to me.
You need an ID to drive a car.
You need an ID to get on a plane.
You need an ID to buy a beer right now we can have a libertarian debate as to whether any of that's legit but if as a society we're saying there are basic things uh simple things that you need to do to have you know you have to have an id for well then voting absolutely should be one of them the fact that i was able to vote when when this passed for the primaries the democratic primaries that i just walked into a place
Said my name and then they just let me in.
There was no ask.
They didn't ask me for an ID or anything.
That actually seems pretty crazy and I think the reason the left doesn't want it, I mean it's fairly obvious, they want to make sure that people that are not legal citizens of the United States can vote or that people can vote twice or the rest of it.
Now this idea that somehow poor people or a certain race of people can't get IDs is insane.
Everyone has IDs.
There's all these videos out there.
People on the right do these videos all the time where they'll go to poor neighborhoods And they'll just ask people, do you have an ID?
And everyone says yes.
Now, if the idea here is that somebody somehow can't get an ID,
I am all for this would be a good use of federal funds, right?
Let's make sure everyone has an ID so that everyone can vote.
And that would actually make sure there would be less tampering with votes.
This is another thing right now, Ilhan Omar is pushing for mail-in votes.
And it's like, that's just more chances for manipulation.
So, if you're against voter ID, you might be the one that's a little misguided here, and someone that's for it isn't for it because they don't want poor people to vote, or they don't want black people to vote, or some idiotic accusation that we know is the same accusation that's always thrown at everyone that doesn't agree with the progressive groupthink of the day.
Okay, guys.
I have a long day of interviews.
I'm not doing any more interviews today.
I'm doing press for Don't Burn This Book.
So again, it's Don'tBurnThisBook.com.
Join me on RubinReport.com.
We've got an iOS app.
Just search Rubin Report in the Apple Store or in the Google Play Store.
And have a great day, everybody.
Stay sane.
Get out there.
Take a walk every now and again.
Snitch on a neighbor, be a good American, whatever it is, or buy seeds, you know, here in L.A.
One more thing, here in L.A., we can still buy seeds.
In Michigan, they can't buy seeds.
I was at the hardware store yesterday.
I was about to clean them out and just ship them to Michigan, to people in Michigan.
If you're in Michigan and you want seeds, I want to send you seeds.
Send me a message on RubinReport.com.
I will send you seeds.
It's on me.
All right, guys.
Thanks.
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