My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Biden condemns anti-Jewish violence
Israel & Hamas leadership and peace
MTG Marjorie Taylor Greene said WHAT?
CRT and 1619 Project by Uju Anya
Weird specific traits of narcissist trolls
A life changing reframe for self-esteem
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Hey everybody! Well, you may have noticed my aborted attempt to do a live stream this morning.
I was trying to have a guest, Dr.
Nicole Sapphire. I'm going to try to reschedule her.
I tried to use the HAPS TV app, but it never gave me an option to add a guest.
So... We'll talk to the people who make that app and see if they can tell me how is it that I would find an option to add a guest, which is the entire point of the app.
Imagine having an app whose main point is to add a guest, and nowhere you can find any kind of button that would do that.
So that would be your interface recommendation for the day.
If you make an app that only does one thing, or mainly is for one thing, You should have some kind of a button to do that thing.
But how would you like to enjoy the simultaneous sip?
To its maximum extent, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chelzer's dine, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
What's it called? The simultaneous sip, yeah.
And it happens now.
Go.
So the interview that I'll try to do as soon as I get my technology to work, not today apparently, would be with Dr. Nussbaum.
Nicole Sapphire. You all know her from Fox News.
You've seen her. And her new book is called Panic Attack, Playing Politics with Science and the Fight Against COVID-19.
And it's available tomorrow, meaning you can order it today, but I think tomorrow is the official date, but you can order it today.
And you should. Get yourself a copy.
All right. Let's talk about some other stuff.
You heard the story about the...
Apparently there's some intelligence reporting now.
This says that in November of 2019 there were a few employees of the Wuhan lab...
Who were sickened in a way reminiscent of COVID. And if that's true, then it would suggest that China knew there was a virus getting out a little earlier than they told us.
Now, is it true?
Well, let's look at the source.
The source is an undisclosed foreign intelligence agency.
And let me tell you, if there's one thing you can trust in this world...
It's an undisclosed foreign source.
Uh-huh. Yeah, those undisclosed foreign sources, they're right every time.
For example, there was the Steele dossier.
Foreign source.
Pretty good information, right?
There was the World Health Organization, got a lot of information from China.
I guess that was pretty good, wasn't it?
Yeah, those foreign sources you can really trust.
So what are the odds that this story is true?
I'm going to say low.
I'm going to say low.
Now that doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
It doesn't mean that Maybe there were some infections before we knew about it.
But what are the odds that an undisclosed foreign intelligence agency is telling us something true?
Really? I would just put zero credibility on it.
Now, be careful when you hear me say, Credibility doesn't mean something is true or false.
It's just by its nature and the way the information came to you, this is something you should give serious consideration to.
And I would say, well, you have to pay attention to it.
I mean, it's a big enough story, you can't ignore it.
But the odds of it being true?
I don't know. Coin flip at best, I think.
All right. Apparently, New York City is going to open up all of its schools in the fall.
For in-person, and they're not going to have these Zoom schools anymore in New York City.
Mayor de Blasio says that.
And I think it's notable not only because it's New York City, but de Blasio is kind of a masking lockdown kind of a guy.
So if he's saying schools are open in the fall, I feel like we did it.
We meaning the world.
I think we're on the...
We're getting a handle on this thing.
I think we're going to be on the other side of it pretty soon.
So that's all good news.
President Biden finally issued a strong tweet.
He said the recent attacks on the Jewish community are despicable and they must stop.
I condemn this hateful behavior at home and abroad.
It's up to all of us to give hate.
No safe harbor.
Which I like that last part.
The last part of the sentence where he puts the responsibility on the citizens.
Right where it should be in this case.
So I like that he framed it that way.
But here's the question.
If President Trump had waited this long to condemn violence against Jewish Americans, don't you think, or really Jewish people around the world, don't you think that there would be a gigantic uproar and they would say, it's obvious why you waited so long.
Why did you...
Why did you wait so long?
And here I saw this tweet, and then I looked for the news, where the news would say, Biden waited so long, it's proof he's anti-Semitic.
But I didn't see that story.
So are you telling me that you can't read somebody's mind?
Based on how long it took them to say something that's mundane and ordinary and expected and does nothing whatsoever?
I mean, it doesn't really make the world a better place.
It's better that the president says it than being silent on it.
I mean, it's definitely better than saying nothing.
But it's not going to make a difference, right?
Is there anybody out in the street who said, oh, wait a minute, I was just going to hit this Jewish person with a brick and But now I see this tweet from President Biden and, well, now I see it's my responsibility not to do that.
It's not going to make any difference, but you still have to do it.
That's how leadership works.
But what took him so long is the question we must ask.
So it turns out that our greatest fears about Biden may be overblown, just as the greatest fears about Trump from the other side We're a little overblown.
And it turns out that the Republicans are probably going to do a pretty good job of blocking the biggest changes.
And apparently even infrastructure isn't really making its way through Congress the way you think it might have, partly because there's a difference in opinion about what qualifies as infrastructure.
For some reason, Republicans are hung up on the definition of the word.
If you want to know what incompetent government looks like, it would be your government arguing over what a word means.
How's that good?
Now, some of the things that I think we're talking about as to whether or not they're part of infrastructure or not, I know stuff like Wi-Fi and things like that, but isn't the real question whether the individual things are worth doing?
The question is not whether it's called infrastructure, is it?
Here's a question that doesn't help anybody.
Which one is labeled infrastructure?
And which one should be called different words?
That means nothing.
Nothing's changed because of the words you put on it.
Either the things in the infrastructure bill are individually worth doing, or they're not worth doing.
Why does it matter if we call them infrastructure?
Now, I'm usually opposed to these big omnibus bills where you throw in all the pork, but I don't think that's what this is.
This seems to be a whole bunch of ideas which, if you looked at them individually, you might say that's a pretty good idea.
That's different from pork.
Pork would be, let's build a bridge where we don't need it.
Pork would be, let's put a military base maybe where we don't need it.
You know, that's pork.
Because it's not really helping everybody.
It's helping one state or even one politician in one state.
But, if you've got a grab bag of different things, you know, Wi-Fi and, I don't know, whatever the other things are in there, I feel as if those are not pork.
Those are just things which people think are good, and we could debate them.
So why not just debate them one by one?
The argument, it's not infrastructure, is just stupid.
That's just stupid.
I mean, I get that it might be a shorthand way of saying these are not justified expenditures, but none of it is, really.
I mean, you don't have to fix the potholes.
You don't have to.
You do have to fix the bridges and make sure they don't fall down.
So it's a whole bunch of things that we should be looking at individually and not arguing about whether they fit the definition of infrastructure.
That's just dumb.
So I guess Republicans are also blocking some minor gun control things.
It looks like they'll probably stop the...
Committee to look into the Capitol protests.
So those are three examples CNN pointed out in which the GOP is actually having more success than you might have imagined in stopping things.
Now, I think it all depends on Joe Manchin being willing to oppose changing the filibuster rule.
So it ends up, you know, the Republicans can filibuster to delay things, but...
You know, as long as they have that, they have a little more power than they should for the number of people they have elected.
All right. Do you remember I was telling you yesterday, and I hadn't heard anybody else say this out loud, which is that Israel has no reason to make peace.
And in fact, the Hamas leadership also has no reason to make peace.
They have lots of reasons to make war, but they don't have any reason to make peace.
Now, the Palestinian people have reason to make peace, definitely.
And there are probably lots of individual citizens in Israel that would like to make some peace.
But it's not good for the country of Israel, because they have all the power, and they can gobble up land and just dominate the region, and They're so superior militarily and economically that they can just kind of do what they want.
And it's hard to criticize another country for pursuing its legal and obviously justifiable self-interest.
Well, self-interest is a little too far.
But pursuing their, let's say, strategic safety is, of course, perfectly acceptable.
Now, Fareed Zakaria, who I've noted I think is one of the more useful and productive voices on CNN, says largely the same thing, not exactly the same thing, but he said that Israel has no practical reason for making deals with the Palestinians economically or defense-wise, because they're just not a risk.
And But also there's sort of no one to negotiate with, right?
Because there's no one who really wants this peace.
Hamas doesn't want it, at least the leadership.
So who are you going to negotiate with?
So there's certainly no point to it.
But I didn't expect to see CNN's, you know, an important voice on CNN, I didn't expect them to say it directly, that Israel has no practical reason for peace.
Now, Fareed does make the ethical and moral argument that there's a moral and ethical reason to make peace in terms of Israel.
But since when do countries care about that?
Never. I can't think of a time...
Can you?
Maybe we can.
Let's think optimistically here.
Can you think of a time that any country acted against its own best interest...
For economics and security, because there was a moral imperative to do it, and it also was a big thing.
In small ways, yes.
Certainly in lots of small ways, Israel does moral and ethical things, such as warning people before they blow up a building.
So in small ways, yes.
Plenty of moral and ethical behavior, and some is not.
But... Can you think of an example where a country...
Somebody says the Marshall Plan.
Now, I would say the Marshall Plan was self-interest.
USA during World War I, be more specific.
Panama. I'd need specifics on that.
We got into Vietnam, and then we got out for moral reasons?
I don't think so. I don't think we got out for moral reasons.
I think we got out because we didn't have any benefit to be there.
And on top of that, there were moral reasons.
Civil War, somebody says.
The Civil War. No.
Paris Accords? I guess this one's kind of a head-scratcher, right?
I'd love to see an opinion from some historians whether any country has done something that was in a big way, and it's the big way that matters.
In small ways, of course, we make moral decisions.
But in big ways?
I don't know that we do, or anybody does.
All right, well, we'll wait for some real historians to tell us about that.
So here's more on using the rules against them.
So I've told you a number of times that if there's some kind of standard or rule that the Democrats want to impose on society, that the best way to make it go away, if you don't like it, is to fully embrace it.
Don't try to argue against it, because that just hardens people asking for it.
But instead, just do what they do.
Just fully embrace it and watch it fall apart.
And in an accidental way, that's what Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did.
Now, I haven't talked much about Marjorie Taylor Greene because I'm less interested in individual personalities and their little dramas than I am about the bigger picture stuff.
So talking about people isn't so interesting to me.
But she did something that got a little attention.
So here's the story.
So she's quoted as saying, Marjorie Taylor Greene is, that we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany.
Then she added, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.
Now, I think the context is masks and maybe, I don't know, vaccine passports or something.
But here, Marjorie Taylor Greene is likening our pandemic response to Nazi Germany.
Now, if a Democrat had said something like this, that something Republicans are doing is just like Nazi Germany...
What would be your impression?
Well, your impression would be, no it's not.
Do you know what compares well with the Holocaust?
Almost nothing, right?
Almost nothing. So anytime anybody makes any kind of comparison to the Holocaust, It's going to be dumb 99.9% of the time.
I mean, maybe if you're talking about Pol Pot, maybe if you're talking about, you know, Chinese Holocaust, etc., maybe you're in the right ballpark.
The Uyghurs? The Uyghurs, if you're talking about that as a Holocaust, they're not quite executing them en masse.
But it's certainly a genocide of some kind.
So, do I care that Marjorie Taylor Greene used a Holocaust comparison to wearing masks during a pandemic?
And the answer is, it's so ridiculous that I think it's wonderful.
It's so ridiculous.
Because using the democratic theory that you can just compare everything to the Holocaust, no matter how trivial, I've been mocking it for years.
But when I see a Republican do it exactly the way it's been done to Republicans for years, it's just funny.
And If there's a way to make this whole everything is Nazi, everything is Hitler, everything is the Holocaust, if there's a way to make it go away, it would be for Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene to use it all the time.
Just use it on every speech.
Well, I think this infrastructure bill is clearly like the Holocaust because it'll make our debt go up.
Or how about if we don't open school in the fall, it's going to be the Holocaust for children.
Just make everything the Holocaust.
Let's just do it.
No, that's a bad idea.
We've got to keep the Holocaust in its own little category.
Let's not make it trivial.
Alright, here's a question which, ironically, I was thinking about the question just when it got answered, which I love.
And I was thinking, there's a lot of talk about critical race theory.
There's a lot of talk about the 1619 Project.
And I note that just about every conservative is opposed to both of those things.
Fair statement so far?
Would everybody agree with those statements?
The Republicans and conservatives are pretty much universally opposed to critical race theory being taught in schools and the 1619 Project being taught in schools.
Wouldn't you say? Yeah. In the comments, people are agreeing.
But then I ask myself, what are those things?
What is critical race theory?
You kind of know in general, right?
Like you've got a general sense of it, what it's about.
But do you know the details?
I don't. So I went looking for them this morning.
I thought to myself, well, somebody's going to have a little bullet point summary.
I just want to get the high level, get the general idea.
Couldn't find it. Couldn't find it.
One of the biggest topics in the world, and I'm Googling away, and you have to sort through all the garbage returns.
Maybe it's there. You know, somewhere down in the searches.
I don't know. But I couldn't find just a good summary of what critical race theory says, you know, this point, this point, this point, so I could just have an opinion on it.
And then, same with the 1619 Project.
I was trying to think, okay, but what are the specific complaints?
I did get one.
There was one specific complaint about the 1619 Project, Which I guess there's a claim there that part of the justification for the Civil War was to maintain slavery.
Which you don't have to be a historian to know that's not true.
Because there were a whole lot of people fighting the war that had nothing to do with slavery.
You know, there were just people in the South.
Only some of them had slaves.
And yeah, maybe that meant something to them.
But it wasn't the reason for the...
For the revolution.
So there are factual differences between what historians say is true and what the 1619 Project said.
But I'm not sure that's the big deal.
You know, people get stuff wrong.
I don't know if that's what's the big deal.
So let me tell you my take on this.
I was looking at a tweet from...
I have no idea how to pronounce his name.
U-J-U. I'm going to say...
I don't mean to make fun of the name, because I think it's respectful to pronounce people's names correctly, but I have no idea how to pronounce this.
I'm going to say Yuju Anya, and I hope I got that close.
Did a tweet thread, and part of that tweet thread said, now you're thinking people want to ban somebody's type of legal analysis.
Now that's what He's talking about critical race theory.
Well, yes.
But they don't even know what critical race theory is.
So, now this is characterizing the people who are against critical race theory, mostly Republicans, conservatives.
And this tweet says, they're racists and white supremacists who don't want public discussion and legal consideration of systemic racism and white people's unfair advantages.
Well, I talk to a lot of Republicans, and I talk to a lot of conservatives, and I've never gotten the feeling that there was somebody who didn't want to discuss systemic racism and white people's unfair advantages.
Let me tell you what I think Republicans and conservatives believe.
And in the comments... Do me a fact check.
I would say the majority of you watching are probably on the right side of the political aisle.
So I'm going to characterize you now.
So when other people characterize you, it's always a problem, right?
But let me characterize you.
I believe that you, my audience, would say the following.
And then you can tell me how close I am.
I think you would say that you would like to see black Americans thrive...
Not just do okay, but thrive for the obvious reason that it's good for everybody, right?
If everybody has a job, everybody's doing well, crime goes down, you're not paying as much for social services, economy goes up, look at the comments.
You know, I don't know how many left-leading people are on this live stream, but check your view of the world.
Look at the comments. It's just thoroughly yes.
It's just yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Every single person here, literally every one.
It's hard to come up with something that people would agree on completely, but every person in the comments, just hundreds of them going by right now, they're all saying yes.
Every one of them want black Americans to not just do okay, but to thrive.
It's pure self-interest.
Even if you think people are just bastards, maybe that's not too far off.
We human beings have some rough edges.
But even if we're all bastards, It's better for me if black people thrive, like personally.
It's like I've been living in a better world.
Less complaints, less racism, less everything.
It's all good. So why is it that this presumably left-leaning person, Yuzu, or I hope I'm somewhere in the neighborhood of the right name here, why is it That he or she, I don't even know if it's he or she, why is it that they believe that there's all these white supremacists who just don't want anything to get better?
That is a viewpoint of exactly nobody.
Like, I don't think anybody in the world...
I think if you even went into the center of a Ku Klux Klan rally...
Like, literally. If you could find one.
I don't even know where they are.
But if you could find one and attend a meeting and then ask this question.
Hey, hey guys, everybody.
I know you're all a bunch of white supremacists and I know you're racist, but I just have this point of clarification.
If it didn't cost you any money and it didn't hurt you in any way, Would you be okay if black Americans thrived, got good jobs, had good lives, good educations?
Would you be okay with that?
I'm not positive, but I think the Klan would say yes.
Am I wrong about that?
I think they would say yes.
Wouldn't they? Now, I'm not supporting the Klan, obviously.
You know, they have lots to explain.
But I don't think there's anybody who doesn't want black Americans to thrive.
And I'm using the word thrive because I'm not talking about equity.
I'm not talking about, oh, let's all be equal.
I'm saying thrive.
Do great. Exceed.
How many white Americans, even white supremacists, how many of them are bitching about Asian Americans doing especially well?
I've never heard it. I've never heard one person bitch about it.
Do you know why? Because Asian Americans are working hard, following the rules, doing the strategy that everybody knows works.
Stay in school, stay out of jail, don't do drugs.
Guess what? It works.
Is there some Klan rally right now?
Oh, we have to stop the Asian Americans from thriving?
No! No.
People are just happy that we have more technologists, more lawyers, more doctors, more scientists.
I've never heard anybody complain about it.
So here's what I would suggest.
That when you're talking about critical race theory and the 1619 Project, here's what I think the proponents want.
You see how dangerous this is?
Because when I say, here's what I think they want, am I going to be any more accurate than Uju Anya is in imagining what white people want?
Because Uju is completely wrong.
Like, complete wrong planet.
Not even any people think this, much less most of them.
But do we make the same mistake?
We being, let's say, do white people...
Make exactly the same mistake in a different way, which is imagining what the other people are thinking, but we're imagining it wrong.
Here's what I think.
I think that if you're black and you're in favor of, or it doesn't matter if you're black, but if you're in favor of critical race theory in 1619, here's what I think you want.
That the truth is clarified.
That the truth of the founding of the country is clarified and focused on and that nobody who is a victim is ignored and that the legacy of slavery and all the way through systemic racism are fully known to everybody involved as a key foundational part of who we are and why things are the way they are.
Would that be fair? That the proponents of these things just want us to really understand it.
I feel like that.
Like they just want the truth.
You know, let's just be honest about what happened.
Now, do you have any problem with the truth?
In the comments, tell me how many of you have any objection...
To better understanding of what the actual situation was historically in America.
Is there anybody who objects to better knowledge?
Now, it's a separate question about whether some of the facts are right.
You have to deal with that separately.
Yeah, no objection, right?
But I do.
I've got an objection. Not to be accurate, but that's all good.
But focus.
Here's where everything went off the rails.
Here's the important point.
Critical race theory and 1619 are like your asshole friend.
Do you have a friend who's an asshole?
What does your asshole friend always say to you when they say something really cruel to you?
And they insult you.
What do they say to you? They always say the same thing, right?
Just being honest.
Just being honest. So, is it good to have a friend who's just being honest?
It's good to have a friend like that, right?
Don't you want your friend to be honest?
You don't want a friend who's lying to you, do you?
Yeah, you do. Because the alternative is an asshole.
You do want to be lied to.
You do want your friend not to tell you your haircut looks like shit.
You do want that.
You do want him to ignore something that's not going to help you.
You do want your friend not to tell you it looks like you gained weight.
You probably knew it, right?
So, the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, as the analogy isn't perfect, right?
So don't get hung up on the analogy.
I believe that they are well-intentioned.
And they come from a place that we would all agree on, which is that better information is just better.
But here's the problem.
Focus and framing.
The way you operate in life and the decisions you make don't have to do just with what you know.
It has to do with how you interpret it and how you frame it.
And if you frame things wrong, you will be strategically disadvantaged.
If you frame things correctly, you will be advantaged and have a strategic path that's really superior.
Now, what happens if you're trying to balance these two things?
On one hand, you want the truth, as clear as it could be.
On the other hand, you want to win.
You want to thrive.
You're going to have to find a balance.
And here's the balance I would suggest.
Certainly we want as much stark truth and honesty about slavery and all that has become of it.
Yes, we want that.
But if you frame history that way, you're telling people that victimhood is their primary frame.
If you take victimhood as your primary view of life, you will not do well.
But if you take strategy as your preferred frame, you will almost always do well unless you have terrible luck.
Here's what strategy would look like.
Okay, kids, boys and girls, some of you are white, some of you are black.
Tell me what strategies you would use, and they might be different.
To succeed. White kid says, well, I'll go work for my dad.
And if that doesn't work out, I'll go work for my uncle.
And if that doesn't work out, I'll go work for my mom's brother.
And if that doesn't work out, I'll go work for my mom's cousin.
Because they all have companies.
And they all hire people.
Then you say to the black kid, alright, what's your strategy?
And the black kid says, well, I don't have any family members who could hire me.
So I need a different strategy.
Here's what it is. I'm going to get a good education, stay out of jail, don't do drugs, and when I go to a Fortune 500 company with my college degree, which I will get financial aid because of my economic situation, and I'm going to take my college degree into a Fortune 500 company and I'm going to get any job I want because they're dying for diversity.
The big companies have to do it.
There's a lot of eyeballs on them.
They have to diversify.
They have to promote black and brown and women and LGBTQ. They have to.
They don't have a choice. So if you're black, it's just a free ride in a corporate world.
And not only will you not be underpaid compared to white people, you'll do better in the corporate world.
Now, I'm sorry.
You are still a shill and a half.
We'll be talking about you later.
I've got a segment about you.
Narcissist trolls.
So, I think you could fix the CRT thing and the 1619 by not going into their frame.
If you fall into the question of is it accurate or not accurate, you have fallen into their frame.
Don't do that. That's the wrong argument.
That makes you think past the sale.
The sale is whether this should be taught and focused on and part of the main frame of history.
If you're arguing about the details being accurate or inaccurate, you've accepted the frame.
Don't do that. You should say, instead of this, which will make you fail, how about we teach you strategy, which guarantees success?
There's no contest.
One is smart, one is dumb.
1619 and critical race theory, I believe, are well-intentioned, and I love accurate information, and I think students should have it.
But if you make it your major frame, the way of viewing things, you've lost your strategic advantage, and then you've moved backwards.
So as someone who wants black Americans to thrive, thrive, not get equity, not be equal, thrive.
Just everybody does as good as they can possibly do.
That's what I want. And I hate that they're being held back by this framing of how to look at history.
That's my opinion. Did you know...
I didn't know this until today. Interesting factoid.
Matthew Sheffield tweeted this.
I think there was a Bloomberg article.
That if you actually looked at all the different kinds of taxes between California and Texas...
That Texas has higher taxes on the middle class.
If you include all the different types of taxes, the middle class is actually burdened in Texas.
But the rich get absolutely creamed in California.
But the rich actually do well tax-wise in Texas.
Now, I didn't look at the details, but I'm just guessing because I have enough experience with this question.
Then I'm guessing that rich people don't spend a big percentage of their income for sales tax, maybe not as big a percentage of their income for property tax or whatever the other taxes are, so that Texas ends up being a good place for rich Californians to move to.
When I read this, I said to myself, You know, maybe it's not just if I move to Texas.
Maybe I have to.
I mean, the difference is pretty stark.
Alright. Let's talk about narcissist trolls.
Just an update. If you were to find a narcissist individual, they would have often a set of traits which are very predictable and common.
And it goes way beyond, oh, I think I'm great.
That's what you think of narcissists.
But beyond telling you that they're great, narcissists have these weird, very specific behaviors which you can predict.
And if you see them from trolls, It will help you to know that you're not dealing with a normal person.
You're dealing with somebody who's very unique and very damaged, literally a narcissist.
And here are the ways which you can tell that your troll is a narcissist versus just somebody who disagrees with you.
There are plenty of people disagreeing with you on Twitter and social media, But they're not all being narcissists and trolls, right?
Some people are just respectfully disagreeing, some of them just giving you different information.
But here are the tells for a narcissist.
Number one, they attack the messenger or the way something was said.
So you'll see me get these kind of comments, and you'll even see the narcissist pop up in the comments.
They're the ones who say something like this.
Well, you can't believe anything Adam said.
And no details.
We don't even know what the topic is.
It's just attacking the messenger.
So that's standard narcissist behavior.
There's also what I call the over-laugh at nothing specific.
Usually with lots of emojis.
Like, ha ha ha ha.
Adam says, ha ha ha ha.
Can you believe, ha ha ha ha, that he would talk?
Ha ha ha ha. Then there's not even a point.
That's a narcissist. Because a narcissist just wants to put you down and show that they're, like, superior.
So that's classic narcissist behavior, the over-laugh.
The other narcissist behavior, and this is...
I'm not making this up.
This is going to look...
This is going to look as if I made these things up.
I swear to God, I didn't make any of this up.
These are specific behaviors that are so predictably common...
To one type of person?
That you can just laugh at it and walk away.
It's like watching a show. And here's another one that you won't believe is common until you start watching for it.
Which is, the narcissist will bring up something that the messenger did years ago.
How often have you seen that happen to me?
I'll say something like, I don't know, something about COVID. And somebody will say, well...
I don't know if we can listen to you, because what about that thing you said ten years ago?
What? That has nothing to do with what I said today.
Why would you even bring that up?
Yes, I said something wrong, or didn't, ten years ago.
But it's not relevant.
I mean, only in the most indirect way.
So, that's a narcissist approach.
A narcissist will bring up what you did years ago, Consistently.
And other people just don't do that.
Other people will just talk about the thing you're talking about.
Because if you can't argue about the thing you're talking about, and you have to bring up some unrelated thing from ten years ago, you don't really have an argument.
Michael says, I don't have any asshole friends, but my friends do.
Well, that was worth five dollars.
Here's another thing that narcissists trolls do.
They will misinterpret what you said no matter how many times you clarify it.
Have you seen that?
Have you seen somebody will say, for example, I'll say, the sky is blue.
And the critic will come in and say, you keep saying the sky is red.
And I'll say, oh no, I'm sorry, you must be mistaken.
I've consistently said the sky is blue.
I'm saying it again. The sky is blue.
Only blue. Never said anything else.
Blue, blue, blue.
And the narcissist troll will say, I don't think so.
No, I don't think so.
I think you're saying the sky is red.
And it's something that only the narcissists do.
They won't take yes for an answer.
Okay, you believe the sky is blue.
I believe the sky is blue.
Can we agree?
Can we just agree?
And the narcissist won't.
The narcissist will say, you're not saying the sky is blue.
No, you're not.
And you're an idiot, because you're not.
No, please let me agree with you.
I'm agreeing as hard as I can.
I can't agree harder.
I'm trying. I'm trying!
Only the narcissist will not let you agree with them.
The other thing they'll do is, and this is freaky, if you haven't seen it, it's freaky, they will misremember what they said five minutes ago.
So they will deny what they just said, Even if it's written right there, like in the last tweet or post, they'll act like it didn't just happen.
And you'll say to yourself, they know they just said this, right?
Are they just lying?
And here's the weird part.
They're not lying.
That's the freaky part.
They're not lying.
They actually have a legitimate rewrite of memory that happens in real time.
That's a real thing. And it's consistent.
It's instant. And you can observe it.
And you can even trigger it.
Like, if you know you're talking to a narcissist, you can actually just trigger a loss of memory within the last five minutes.
You can make them say they did not say what they just said.
And you can do it over and over again.
And if you think that the person is lying to you, which I always used to believe, You'll be so mad and confused.
What you have to understand is they don't know what's happening to them.
They don't know they're narcissists.
They don't know they're lying, because they're not.
They're just misremembering.
And they're completely oblivious to any of it.
They're just acting like they think they need to act.
All right, here's another one. And then ultimately, if you were, let's say it's an online argument, and you just crush your opponent...
You show some data that's unambiguous.
You've just won the argument.
You have just crushed your troll.
What happens next?
You know what happens next.
They tell you that the argument was over something different.
How many times have you seen it?
Again, you'll say, sky is blue, after they've argued that you've really said it was red.
And finally, if you can nail them down to, yes, it was only about the sky, and the sky was blue, they'll say, we were talking about humidity.
And you'll say, what is happening?
That wasn't even in the conversation.
And they will go to their grave saying, no, no, you're moving the goalposts.
You're doing it again.
You're... You're changing the subject.
I always said it was about humidity, and it wasn't.
It wasn't. So when you see those things, don't defend yourself.
So the effect of that is gaslighting, one of the definitions of gaslighting, but not the common one.
The common one is that you're intentionally trying to make somebody think they're crazy.
The more modern use is just that people do think they're crazy, not that you're trying to make them that way.
How do you deal with it?
The way you deal with it is knowing what you're dealing with.
Let me say this.
If a robot came up to you and insulted you, what would you say?
A robot. Let's say...
Someday, not too long from now, there's a robot that can talk to people.
And the robot walks up to you and says something that's offensive to you.
Do you get angry?
Probably not. Because you're like, well, it's just a robot.
It's just programming, right?
When you see a narcissist troll or in person, just think of them as robots.
If they had the option of not doing this, maybe they would.
But the specificity of how they act, the going down what you could call the narcissist well, once you prove them wrong, there's a very predictable path they take into some kind of illusion.
And once you realize it's just programmed and they can't help it, and they can never help it, and it can never change, It just is amusing.
And then you just move on with your life.
On Locals, a little bit later today, I'm going to do a special micro-lesson on how to make friends.
It turns out that's a big problem.
How many of you have problems making friends?
Or maybe lately, because of the pandemic.
Any of you have problems making friends?
I would love to see in your comments.
Yep, yep, yep.
People are saying yes. Somebody says no.
Good extrovert there.
Never. Nope.
Nope. Yes. Nope.
Yeah, I think it's maybe 50% of people or something like that.
Yeah.
So you'll get a lesson on that, how to make friends.
I'll tell you some specific things to do that are not creepy and they're easy and anybody can do them.
I've got a reframe for you that is going to change some of your lives.
Like actually, literally, within the next five minutes, at least one person, and maybe more, And this is a brain hack.
It's a trick. And I call it reframing.
And the reframing is simply taking something you already know and just reframing it to look at it differently, but you're not adding any new information.
So I won't be telling you anything new.
I'll just tell you how to look at a thing differently.
Some of you completely changed your life.
Here it goes. Do you ever have any problems with your self-esteem and taking criticism in particular?
When people criticize you, how do you feel?
It's pretty bad, isn't it?
It makes you feel like you're just nothing.
It makes your self-esteem in danger.
It makes your blood boil.
It makes you can't sleep.
It's just the worst thing in the world, isn't it?
Because when somebody criticizes you, it's personal.
It's you. Now that's your normal frame, isn't it?
The normal frame is somebody criticizes you personally, you take it personally.
Because how could you not?
Like, what's the alternative?
Taking it personally, right?
Well, I'll give you the alternative.
Won't work for every person every time, but like I said, some of you, your whole life will change in the next minute.
Here's the new frame.
Ask yourself this.
What options did this remove for me?
Instead of, how does that insult make me feel?
What did it do to my self-esteem?
You say to yourself, What options did that remove from my life?
Let me give you an example.
Somebody walks up to me and says, Scott, you're bald and you're short.
Now, the old frame says, oh my God, I feel terrible.
People not only say bad things about me, but I'm short and I'm bald.
That's the way I used to think about it.
Here's the way I think about it now.
What option did that remove from me?
Did it stop me from getting rich?
Nope. Did it stop me from marrying the most beautiful woman in any dimension in our reality?
Nope. Nope.
Did it stop me from playing in the NBA? Well, it turns out my talent is what stopped me from playing in the NBA. My height?
Not so much.
I could be pretty tall and still not make it in the NBA. So, name one thing in my life that's different because of the criticism.
No options have been removed.
Everything is intact.
Right? Now, you say to yourself, how is this going to work?
Just answering that little question, how is that going to work?
Because it's still a personal insult.
How am I going to ignore the personal insult?
This is how reframing works.
Reframing is not about what's true.
It's about what you're focusing on.
What you focus on is your reality.
If you take a frame that says, what options did this change for me?
And the answer is almost always none.
Then you're taking a utility frame on life.
The utility frame says what's useful, what's not useful.
What's useful, what's not useful.
And then you take the utility frame and that part of your brain is not the part that gets embarrassed and shamed and self-esteem.
It's just the utility part of your brain.
Just spend some time on the utility part, right?
There is physically a part of your brain that's working on all the negative thoughts.
You know, the shame and everything else.
Just don't spend time there.
The less time you spend activating that part of your brain, feeling bad, the less you're there, the better, and the more you spend thinking, well, what difference did it make?
Somebody said, I wore a bad shirt today.
I don't like your shirt.
And? Did that make my grades go down?
Is there somebody who won't ask me for a date because I had a pimple on my forehead?
Probably not. Let's say you're in high school.
And the bully says, oh, you got a pimple on your forehead.
Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, the old way is like, oh, no, I'm ugly.
I've got a pimple on my forehead.
The new way is, did the pimple on your forehead lower your grade point average?
No. Did the pimple on your forehead cause somebody who might have liked you otherwise to not ask you on a date?
Nope. Not a single person Ever turned anybody down because of a pimple on the forehead?
It's never happened. Never will, probably.
So, this won't solve every person's problem all the time.
Some of you, your life just changed.
And these little reframes are so powerful that until one of them gets you, And one of them will get you.
They don't all work for everybody, right?
Everybody's got their own little reframe that works for them.
But once a reframe changes your life instantly, you're going to understand how these work.
They are immensely powerful.
Immensely powerful. So that's your question.
Next time you get a criticism from an online troll, here are the two things you say.
Number one, that person, I have empathy for them.
The troll. The critic.
Because they're broken. Whatever it is that makes them need to criticize you so cruelly is a flaw in them, and you should have empathy for them.
You should feel bad that somebody is so broken that the only way they can feel better is through your pain.
The pain they're trying to give you, but you're rejecting.
So that's the first thing you think.
I'm sorry for that person.
They're so broken. Second thing you think is, what option did any of this remove from me?
And the answer is always going to be zero.
And then you move on.
So that is your advice for today.
And we'll try to see if we can get an actual interview with Dr.
Nicole Sapphire about her book, It's called Panic Attack, just coming out tomorrow.
I think it's officially out.
Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19.
