Gen Z's Obsession with Loserdom

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Hey Goof, what's [music] up? Cool binder.

[00:00:01]>> Hey Goop, want to come over to my house today?

[00:00:03]>> They all hated me.

[00:00:05]>> The Gen Z stare. We shouldn't have to greet people. You don't owe anyone anything. Lowmaintenance friendship, situationships, jealousy, and performative activism. Gen Z is deathly afraid of growth, vulnerability, sincerity, and connection. And it's normalized loser behavior. We shouldn't avoid or invalidate our feelings, but normalization in our generation feels a lot more like enabling these days.

[00:00:27]Oversharing on the internet is not vulnerability. Discomfort is part of the process. Effort is not labor. And feeling away is okay. I promise I'm not here to simply [ __ ] on Gen Z. I am Gen Z. And I also think that the behavior that I will be analyzing today is not at all unique to our generation, but it is worth examining through that lens.

[00:00:45]Nonetheless, all I ask is that you try to take what I say today into consideration. That's all I ask. I haven't been nervous to post a video since my pop feminism video, but there's always a small voice in the back of my head that's like, "Well, this the one they let you get this far, Lonnie. Pack it up." And it's back louder than ever right now. It's definitely not healthy.

[00:01:01]And I'm working on it, but I just I just wanted to share that. I love this comment I got the other day that was like, "It's literally Lonie's lens." And even I was like, "Wait, it is Lonie's lens." So, remember that when you start telling me what I should or shouldn't say and how to say it in the comments.

[00:01:14]The block party always needs more people. So, this is your one and only reminder to keep it cute.

[00:01:19][music] Welcome or welcome back to Lonie's Lens.

[00:01:25]My name is Ka Lani. If you love thoughtful deep dives, camp, and a bit of whimsy, you're in the right place. My last video on this channel was Everyone is Hot. But no one is attractive anymore, which did crazy well. I was not expecting that. And then on my second channel, I did a review of the second half of The Pit season 2. If any of that interests you, everything will be linked in the description below along with my socials. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe, especially if you've been here before. And with that, let's get back into today's video. But first, a word from the sponsor of today's video, Grow Therapy. I'm very excited to talk to you all about Growther Therapy because I myself have been using the platform for 2 years now. Growther Therapy is a mental health platform that connects patients with over 19,000 licensed in-person and virtual therapists and medication management providers. They work with over a 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Costs will depend on your insurance plan, but sessions average about $21 with some clients paying as little as $0 depending on their plan.

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[00:02:52][laughter] Loser.

[00:02:55]By definition, a loser is someone who is consistently defeated, who chronically underperforms, or who struggles socially. So, I don't think it's crazy to associate Gen Z and a lot of our behaviors with loserdom. I don't think it's crazy to say that. But relax, it's not a fixed state or a moral failing, and it's not something that's unique to us, but it is affecting us severely, and there are patterns I've noticed that are worth examining. I want to be clear upfront about what this video is and what it isn't. It isn't a takedown. It isn't me standing outside of my generation pointing fingers. I'm in this, too. Some of this is literally about me. A lot of this is about things I've had to actively unlearn and still am unlearning. There's going to be a lot of disclaimers in this video, which I hate, but I think it is necessary for this one. I just hate when people are like, "Oh, what? You think you're better than me?" And it's like a little bit.

[00:03:35]Yeah. I think I think my dedication to doing better and trying better and not just excusing and normalizing my behavior makes me a little bit better than those of you who don't. Why should I be scared to say that? Yeah, not inherently. It's my attitude and my approach to life. One of the most useful things I've learned this past year came from my therapist, who I actually met through Grow Therapy. I started sessions late last year for what I thought was seasonal depression and overactive anxiety, which it was in part, but it was also my mind and body giving me information about my current circumstances, and my approach to life.

[00:04:03]My therapist taught me that framing my experiences, my days, my emotions, my responses to the world as good or bad or a problem to solve was actually a distortion and a bid for control. It was a way of labeling something and closing the book on it before I'd actually read it. And I think that's what we do as a generation constantly. We label, we diagnose, we normalize, and then we stop right there as if naming the thing is the same as understanding it. As if the label is the destination rather than the beginning of a much more interesting and necessary conversation. So that's what this video is, not a diagnosis of losser or a fixed verdict, but an attempt to read the information and ask what all of this behavior, the cynicism, the withdrawal, the performative gestures, the fear of genuine effort and connection is actually telling us about what we've lived through as a generation and what we're so afraid of. because I think we're just afraid and I think that fear is making us losers and I know we can do better. So, how did we get here in the first place? Our exhaustion is real and the disillusionment makes sense. Our generation inherited a set of circumstances that would make anyone want to call it quits or maybe I'm sorry, check out. Maybe I shouldn't say call it quits. Sorry, I can say that.

[00:05:07]That's not crazy. We came of age online, which sounds like an advantage, and in many ways it is, but the platforms we grew up on were never designed for our well-being. They were designed for our attention. And the algorithms are built to overwhelm, provoke, and keep us scrolling. We have more access to information, each other, and the world than any generation before us. And somehow that access has made us feel more powerless, not less. Then there was the pandemic. A lot of us spent formative years isolated, watching the world fall apart through a screen, deprived of the exact kind of human connection that sustains people. And isolation was framed correctly at the time as survival. Staying away from people kept you safe. Wearing a literal mask was normal. But I think we learned something from that period of time that didn't leave when quarantine ended. We learned that withdrawal is self-preservation and that lesson calcified into something that now governs how a lot of us move through the world when there's no virus, no emergency, and no reason to stay inside.

[00:05:58]And then there's the economic reality.

[00:06:00]Latestage capitalism is exhausting in a way that I don't think previous generations fully reckoned with. You can do everything right and still not be able to afford to live. I did air quotes because there's no wrong choice you could make that would justify not having food, shelter, and water. But, you know, I guess that's just me. That's just Lonnie's lens. That's just Lonnie's lens, I guess. You know, [laughter] I also want to acknowledge my own privilege here. I genuinely love what I do, and my work feels like a labor of love most of the time. And I know that's not the reality for most people because they're working to survive. But here's what I find fascinating and very troubling. We are the most vocally and explicitly anti- capitalist generation there has ever been. And yet we have internalized capitalist logic more deeply than any generation before us.

[00:06:39]Every interaction is a transaction.

[00:06:41]Every relationship is an investment with expected returns. Every effort is labor to be compensated for. The language of the marketplace has colonized the parts of life that used to exist completely outside of it. Like friendship, community, care, showing up for people and being present. And we need to wake it up because when we frame engagement with other people as labor, we're not resisting the capitalist system. We're extending it to the last places it hadn't reached yet. And I would also argue that a lot of y'all don't actually have a problem with capitalism. You're just mad that you're not the one benefiting from it. We got to wake it up. But that's that's not today. Not today. Cynicism feels radical. Opting out feels principled, but it's actually requires nothing of you. The truly radical act, and I mean this is genuine investment, showing up and staying open.

[00:07:22]So, I say all this to say I get it. All of these circumstances are real, and I understand why we're exhausted and honestly grieving at this point. A lot of people are protecting themselves using coping mechanisms that made sense at some point. But there's a difference between circumstances and response. And somewhere along the way, our responses started to turn into our identity.

[00:07:38]Explanations became excuses and normalization became enabling. But I genuinely think we can do better because if not, we're [ __ ] Sorry. But I genuinely believe we can do better because we deserve to do better. And if not, where does that leave us? Writer Ocean Vong said something in an interview once that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Speaking on young people and sincerity, he said the following. They perform cynicism because cynicism can be misread as it often is as intelligence. You know, you are disaffected. You are too cool. You've seen it all. And so they pull back. But in fact, they are deeply hungry for sincere, earnest effort. They often do it privately. They don't want to admit to each other that they're actually trying really hard to do what they want to do, but amongst their peers. I think sincerity is something we deeply hunger for, particularly young people, but we are embarrassed when sincerity is in the room.

[00:08:36]>> I think that's one of the most precise descriptions of this generation I've ever heard. And I think jealousy is where that tension lives most visibly.

[00:08:42]Recently, a Tik Tok went viral of a girl talking about her friendship with someone more successful and fulfilled than her, a lawyer who was happy, thriving, and seemingly at peace with her life. And this creator couldn't be around her anymore. Not because her friend was cruel or mean, just because she was doing well. I'll let her tell it.

[00:08:58]>> I had a friend that I used to be friends with. We're not friends anymore. And you know what? For good reason. Because genuinely, I don't think I could continue being their friend because of the fact that I honestly was just jealous of them. I luckily did not treat this person like trash. I know that typically when you are jealous of somebody, jealousy is just like so it just takes so much energy out of you.

[00:09:20]It's so hateful. And I know that a lot of the times when people are jealous of other people, they treat them horribly.

[00:09:26]they're just very rude to them. I knew that being jealous of this person was a waste of my energy and I hated feeling that way and it was something that I really really struggled with. And mind you, this person did not have to do anything to gain this lifestyle. They just kind of had this life handed to them. Hence why I was just very jealous of them cuz it's not like they had to work towards it or anything. Like that's just their life. That's just what they had. And it really really sucked. Just imagine being friends with somebody like that when you are just like so unhappy with your life and they're just walking around every day with the life that you wish that you had. It almost just feels like it's a slap in the face, but like it's not because that's just their life.

[00:10:11]Your life is so casual to you and it's just something that like I just can't have. And I really am not kidding to you when I tell you like this person like had what I wanted for my life. like that badly. Like 2, like literally every single thing down. They just had I wanted to be them so bad. And I knew that I couldn't. And they just What struck me about this video wasn't the jealousy itself. Jealousy, as the entire comment section keeps repeating, is normal. It's human, for sure. It's on the emotion wheel. I felt it. You felt it. We've all felt it. That's not analysis. A bunch of jealous [ __ ] looking at each other talking about Exactly. Acknowledging the fact that jealousy is a human emotion is so often where the conversation ends, but there's so much more to discuss. Identifying and labeling our emotions is not the end point. Think of it like a road map. It's the first stop, but it sure as [ __ ] ain't the destination. Jealousy typically points you towards something you want, something you value, something that matters to you. And that's actually useful information if you're willing to follow it somewhere. But she didn't follow it anywhere. And most of us don't. Instead, there was this telling distortion throughout the video that her friend just had everything she wanted.

[00:11:20]She didn't have to work for it at all. A lawyer didn't work for it. I do want to acknowledge that I saw her follow-up video where she clarified that her friend wasn't actually a lawyer. Then she doubled down on her perception of her friend not working hard at all and having class privilege. She really wanted us to understand that her friend didn't work hard at all and was just rich. However, all of these extra details are still irrelevant. Most people who watched the original Tik Tok agreed when they thought the friend was a lawyer. But regardless, the hyperfocus on her friend's circumstances as an excuse to avoid looking at the particulars of her life was and continues to be the actual problem, not her friend's actual job description or class. I shared the video with my mom, and my mom thought it was kind of laughable that this girl wants us to believe that her jealousy and resentment that is oozing out of her as she speaks in these two videos, even the follow-up video, really wants us to understand that her friend did not work hard and is like pretty much implying that her friend is lazy and didn't earn anything.

[00:12:11]That didn't affect your friendship at all. Okay. I mean, I I think you y'all could be convinced of anything, so I guess why not just try and say some [ __ ] She's like, "Trust me, my friend didn't work hard at all." And I think that eraser is doing specific psychological work for her. If someone else's success is arbitrary and unearned, then the gap between you and them isn't about effort or choices. It's just luck, which means there's absolutely nothing you could do anyway, so why try? She even said at one point, "I wanted to be her so bad, and I knew I just couldn't." And I sat with that for a minute. She obviously couldn't become her friend and have her exact life. But there were no steps she could take to move closer to what she actually wanted for her life with her circumstances.

[00:12:47]Nothing. That's not an observation about reality. That's a story she was telling herself to keep her exactly where she was. Someone else having an easier path doesn't make your path disappear.

[00:12:56]Someone else's unearned advantage doesn't make your effort pointless. It just means life is unfair, which we already knew. The seething is the real problem. She took valid information.

[00:13:06]Life is unfair. class privilege exists and used it to justify complete inaction and resentment. That's the distortion.

[00:13:12]Because the idea that she would be doing so much better and and thriving if she didn't have this friend as a constant reminder is very convenient. Even if she got exactly what her friend had, she still wouldn't be happy. That's why the job description doesn't matter because it was never really about the friend.

[00:13:26]The friend, like most relationships, are just a mirror of ourselves. and the narrative she built around her friend that success is luck, that trying is pointless, that she already knows how it ends, is a very convenient way to keep sincere effort and possible satisfaction out of reach. It is such a good thing that like we are not as close as we once used to be and just not anymore because I really don't think I could have gotten to a point where I was just fine with them, like not being jealous of them.

[00:13:52]And I feel like the only way that I would just not be jealous of them is if I had a better lifestyle. And I just don't I don't wish the worst for this person. I don't wish anything bad on this person. But I just cannot keep around somebody like that in my life knowing how unhappy I am with my life currently. And like I just don't think I would have ever gotten to a point where I wouldn't be jealous of them to be honest. And then she said she was glad the friendship was over because she couldn't have someone like that in her life. Someone thriving and happy when she couldn't have that life herself. And then she pated herself on the back for never being mean to her friend out of jealousy, which is the bare minimum.

[00:14:32]Actually, she said luckily she didn't treat her friend badly, as if it wasn't up to her to do it. I'm sorry.

[00:14:37]Everything can't be luck. This isn't the luck of the Irish. Like we'll get to it later in the video, but I cannot stand when people act like kindness and basic decency is a perk of their friendship when it should literally be the baseline for how you interact with everyone.

[00:14:49]Well, luckily I wasn't a piece of [ __ ] to my friend. Oh god, the bar is in hell. But according to her, the friendship just dissolved on its own for other reasons. And she retroactively framed it as the right outcome, which means even the resolution isn't something she chose. Nothing in the story was chosen by her. Everything just happened to her. the friend success, the jealousy, the ending of the friendship.

[00:15:07]She moved through all of this without any agency, painting it afterward as though it were wisdom she'd arrived at rather than circumstances she'd passively drifted through and accepted.

[00:15:16]So, I want to pose the question, was that always the only outcome? Or did her mindset and attitude quietly steer her toward it without her ever realizing it?

[00:15:23]And then she posted this narrative to hundreds of thousands of people who told her it was normal, brave, and vulnerable.

[00:15:31][snorts] Don't piss me off. Here's what I've had to come to terms with as a creator myself. Talking to your camera, editing it, curating a story, and sending it out to an audience the algorithm has specifically tailored toward people who will affirm you. That is not vulnerability. It can feel that way, especially if your worst fear is being perceived. But it is so much harder to sit across from someone you actually know and tell them a hard truth. To say, "I've been struggling watching you thrive, and I don't know what to do with that." She never said that to her friend. She never asked her friend how she built her life with curiosity. She just assumed that her friend never did [ __ ] to earn it. She never brought that feeling into the actual relationship where it could have done something. She brought it to the internet where it could only be affirmed by hundreds of thousands of strangers she will never have to see face to face. The question I've started asking myself before I share anything personal is, is this actually helping me process something or is it just a way to get validation from strangers that keeps me stagnant but feeling heard? And my biggest issue with this girl's framing is that everything is so conclusive. She never poses a single question to her audience. It's not. How do I learn from this? How do we learn from this? What do I do with this feeling in my next friendship? How have you learned from this? No, just, hey, this happened. This is normal. This is how I feel. And hundreds of thousands of people agreed. And she's in the exact same defeist place she started, but now she feels heard, I guess. In her follow-up video, she was like, "This is for the people that know this feeling and understand this, and if you don't, then it wasn't for you." Echo chambers are normal, too. Nowhere in that video did she talk about any sincere effort she'd made toward building the life she wanted. not her friend's life or her friend's circumstances, her own.

[00:17:00]Instead, she rehearsed a narrative that resigned her to inaction and the audience rewarded her for it. That's not support, that's enabling, because normal has never been the point. A lot of things are normal. Normal doesn't make something okay, and it doesn't make it where the story has to end. But cynicism gets mistaken for intelligence.

[00:17:16]Resignation gets mistaken for self-awareness. And the algorithms are a few 300,000 people who agree. So, it starts to feel like wisdom. When you've decided that other people's thriving is a threat rather than an invitation, the logical next step is to start building a life that keeps that threat at a safe distance. So, you start to curate your relationships and remove anyone who challenges you, expects growth, or whose happiness makes you uncomfortable. You call it boundaries. You call it protecting your energy. You call it lowmaintenance. I'm going to be paying close attention to language and semantics throughout this video because it matters more than we think. The stories we tell ourselves about our lives shape everything and a lot of us are still stuck on the first draft.

[00:17:53]Before we get into this section, I want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with being a victim. When something or someone harms you, you should be able to complain, riot, and scream from the rooftops about it. I know I do, and I hate how the word victim has been turned into a pjorative. However, there is a difference between being a victim and acknowledging that reality and adopting victimhood as a fixed identity that becomes your entire story. At the root of everything I've been describing, the cynicism, the resignation, there is a fear of genuine investment, being disappointed, and being seen trying and failing. And the permanent victim mindset is the most sophisticated defense mechanism against that fear that I've ever encountered. I say it like it's the final boss. [laughter] You see, it's tricky because it doesn't just protect you from the risk of trying. It makes not trying feel like the only rational response to reality. Let's break down the logic. If the system is rigged, effort is pointless. If success is arbitrary, ambition is naive. If other people thriving is luck and not labor, then the gap between where you are and where you want to be isn't something you can close. And once you've built that narrative, once it feels true and not just convenient, you've relinquished all of your agency. Things happen to you. And there's genuinely nothing left to do except feel the feelings and find people who understand.

[00:18:59]And we are very good at finding those people now because of the internet. But I want to stay with that Tik Tok for one more minute because there's something in it I haven't addressed yet that I think is the most revealing part of the whole video. I say that like they don't realize how lucky they are to have their life. But I honestly do think one of the reasons why I was so jealous of them is because of the fact they actually did kind of acknowledge that they lived a decently nice life. And the fact that they were grateful for their life and they were happy with their life made me all the more jealous cuz it's like, okay, well, you're so happy and grateful for your life. Like, of course you are.

[00:19:33]Like, of course you are. Obviously, like we should want people to be grateful and thankful for like really good lives, but I don't know. Like I just it really just like added to the jealousy cuz I know that if I was living that lifestyle, if I had that kind of life, I would also be very very grateful and h and happy. And I think because of the fact that they were so happy with it and they were comfortable with their life and happy with it, it just I guess like the happier they were with their life, the more bitter it made me. She listed her friend's gratitude as one of the worst parts of the situation. And that was experienced as an affront. Not her friend being cruel or condescending and rubbing in all of her success. No, just her friend being genuinely thankful for her own life. And she took that personally. Someone else's contentment became evidence of her own failure. Her friend, who was just living her life, probably valuing their friendship, had no idea she'd been cast as the villain of someone else's story. She was just happy, and that was enough to make her a threat. And that's the victim mindset at its most insidious. It's not just self-defeating. It's profoundly selfish.

[00:20:34]It takes the people closest to you and repurposes them as characters in your own narrative. It treats a friend not as a full human being with her own interior life and struggles, but as a mirror that keeps reflecting back your own inadequacy. And I would bet that her friend actually valued her and didn't look down at her at all. But when you're so deep in this mindset, it doesn't matter what people actually think or feel or intend. Everything just gets filtered through the same lens. Every effort someone makes to improve their life feels like an accusation. Every expression of gratitude feels like a slight. But the thing that feels like the threat is actually the cure. This is not self-help rhetoric. It's literally just true. Being kind to other people makes you feel better. Genuine connection between human beings is what sustains us. So having someone in your life who is growing and thriving and happy and grateful is not a reminder of your own inadequacy. It's an invitation, but it's up to you to accept it. But when the narrative of predestined misery has turned into your identity, anyone around you who shows you a different path feels like a threat to your stagnation because they are. their existence quietly asks, "What's your excuse?" And if you don't have a good answer, it's much easier to hyperfocus on what they have, ruminate in resentment, and remove them from your life than to sit with that simple question. Which is exactly what she did.

[00:21:42]And she thought it was normal and valid enough to come online and share. And she was welcomed with open arms.

[00:21:48]Normalization has just become enabling.

[00:21:50]It was supposed to help destigmatize and create space for honesty without shame.

[00:21:53]But somewhere along the line, normalization quietly became permission.

[00:21:56]We got so good as a generation at naming the feeling, validating it, finding community around it that we forgot to ask what the feeling was actually trying to tell us in the first place and then what we're going to do about it.

[00:22:07]Instead, what you're left with is a carefully constructed life where no one challenges you, no one asks anything of you, and no one's thriving makes you uncomfortable. But from my lens, it's just the fear winning quietly.

[00:22:18]A lot of us in this generation struggle with anxiety to the point where it's paralyzing us in fear. So, we're basically walking around every day hoping we have no human interaction.

[00:22:27]That's not normal and that's not realistic. Like, it's people in my comments right now talking about some, "Well, what if I don't want to interact with humans?" My [ __ ] you're a human.

[00:22:35]What are we talking about? I want to introduce two terms that I think are useful. The first is pro-social behavior. The small ordinary acts of connection and kindness that holds community together. simple greetings, check-ins, follow-up questions, showing up, being present, and second, antisocial behavior, which isn't just rudess or hostility or something people put on t-shirts. It's the withdrawal from any of these small social acts.

[00:22:58]It's opting out of the ordinary maintenance of human connection. I think we've normalized antisocial behavior so much that we've stopped recognizing it as such. We've given it better branding and PR. or we call it protecting our energy, setting boundaries, being lowmaintenance, and those things can be necessary in the right context. But I think we need to be honest about how often these terms are used to justify a consistent pattern of not showing up for the people around us. When I thought of this video idea, I remembered reading this Substack essay from Tell the Bees about the mainstreaming of lizardom that focused on the normalization of isolation and abstaining from hobbies and creation. They also touched on the loss of adequate social etiquette writing. There is this issue of individualistic culture and declining social etiquette. Post about people stating, "I hate my co-workers and I hate small talk and I refuse to engage in any conversation outside my job."

[00:23:46]Routinely going viral and I think that's a failure of etiquette. Sorry. And parenthesis allowing people to state these opinions without shame, but it does feel like a larger societal failing that the activity people crave the most is scrolling on their phones watching other people live their lives. Exactly.

[00:24:00]We are normalizing antisocial behavior and championing losserdom. No etiquette, no consideration, no kindness, no curiosity, no conversations. I believe this is why situationships, lowmaintenance friendships, and general antisocial behavior is so common now or normalized. I've heard the sentiment recently from multiple directions in real life and online. And it goes something like this. I may not reply to your texts or check in regularly or ask about your life, but you know I'll be there for you when it actually counts.

[00:24:28]If you've heard that, you're entitled to compensation. Who is buying that [ __ ] I'll break it down because sometimes enough people saying some stupid [ __ ] makes it seem like it makes sense when it really doesn't. Just because you normalize antisocial behavior with a new label doesn't make it okay.

[00:24:40]Lowmaintenance friendships just feels like a way to be a bad friend with a new name. People want to do the bare minimum while still maintaining the access, title, and illusion of connection without any of the consequences or accountability. First, it's betting on the fact that nothing serious will ever happen. that the when it counts moment will be rare enough that you can coast on the idea of showing up without ever actually having to do it. Second, it completely misunderstands what friendship is. Friendship is not just being an emergency contact. It's the accumulation of small ordinary pro-social moments, the replied texts, the remembered detail, the unprompted check-in, the question that shows you were actually listening the last time you talked to them. That's what builds the kind of trust and intimacy that means something when something actually does go wrong. I feel like Elmo having to explain what friendship is. Are we serious?

[00:25:25]>> He's my new best friend, Rocco. But Zoe, it's a rock.

[00:25:30]>> Yeah. So So it's a rock.

[00:25:32]>> Yeah. And he's going to play with us today.

[00:25:37]>> Why would you want somebody to believe that you will only be there for them when something goes wrong? That's so weird. Oh my gosh. And the thing is, I would show up for a stranger in a genuine emergency. Most people would.

[00:25:47]That's basic human decency. So, when you tell people that your friendship is defined by being willing to do what any decent person would do for someone they've never met, you're just revealing how little your friendship means in day-to-day practice. That should sound bad in theory, too. Like, there's this growing sentiment that kindness and energy are scarce resources, that you have a finite reserve, and you have to protect it, ration it, and deploy it strategically so you don't run out. And I understand where that comes from.

[00:26:12]People are exhausted, and the demands of modern life are real. But I think this framing is both factually incorrect and genuinely harmful. It's all just a way to promote antisocial behavior. What the y'all doing? Y'all rationing around here?

[00:26:23]>> Come on, man. Hook me up.

[00:26:27]What the [ __ ] y'all doing? Y'all rationing around here? Come on. Hook me up. Two little [ __ ] string beans.

[00:26:31]Give me the goddamn string beans. I want some [ __ ] devil eggs. I like fruit.

[00:26:36]Don't you like fruit? I like fruit.

[00:26:39]>> Kindness is not a finite resource. It doesn't deplete the way money does. In fact, it tends to do the exact opposite.

[00:26:45]The more you extend it in small, ordinary moments, the more naturally and abundantly it'll flow from you. The person who greets their neighbor, replies to the text, asks the follow-up question, that person isn't running on empty. They're building connections by being pro-social. They're in the habit of connection, and that habit sustains them as much as it sustains the people around them. Hoarding kindness doesn't preserve it. It just lessens its presence in the world. There was a debate online not long ago where service workers were arguing that they didn't owe customers basic greetings because they were tired and overstimulated and people might not greet them back. I have empathy for people in exhausting service jobs. That labor is real and it's undervalued and I could not do it. But I don't think completely shutting off any potential interaction is the solution either. Even a brief moment of genuine warmth between two people at a drive-thru window for 30 seconds is not nothing. I love when I go through the drive-thru and I get the really chipper person who's like really happy to be there and takes pride in their work and tells me about the like whatever thing is on the receipt. I love that [ __ ] Now, do I ever actually fill out the survey? No. But I can admit that that's me blocking my blessing. So, that's on me. That's on me. We've somehow convinced ourselves that small interactions are inconsequential. We think that brief exchanges with strangers are beneath us or cost too much. Small talk is superficial and therefore worthless. But those small interactions are the connective tissue of community. That's how trust gets built between people who don't know each other yet. And when we opt out of them entirely, we may save ourselves some energy, but we also make the world a little colder each time and then wonder why everything feels so isolating.

[00:28:12]Now, it is the part that might get me in trouble, but this connects directly to our modern understanding of activism as a generation. A creator I respect made an observation recently that made so many things click for me.

[00:28:22]>> Palestinians, for a lot of people, that was the group to advocate for cuz you can't see them. They're not next to me.

[00:28:29]they're away from me. I don't really give a [ __ ] about what y'all advocate for. Especially when you don't advocate for the marginalized communities around you. When you don't give a [ __ ] about black Americans as an American. When you don't give a [ __ ] about the unhoused population in America. When you don't give a [ __ ] about the people being swept off the streets.

[00:28:51]>> I've been trying to find a way to articulate this and she did it so perfectly. You expect people to believe that you care deeply about people abroad in Palestine and Sudan when you don't engage with unhoused people in your own city when you don't show up for black Americans and actually weaponize the plight of people abroad against them.

[00:29:05]Y'all are so full of [ __ ] I'm sorry. I would take that a step further. You can't reply to your friend's texts. You can't greet a customer. You can't make eye contact with your neighbor and wave, but you expect us to believe that you would do anything for people abroad beyond reposting an infographic. It's very convenient cuz I just hate the idea that if only this that I would do something. You ain't doing [ __ ] You ain't doing a show beyond posting that infographic. Like, let's be so serious.

[00:29:27]Obviously, I'm not saying caring about global issues isn't real or valid. It is. I do. But there is a version of political engagement that functions exactly like the I'll be there when it counts friendship. It's an empty promise. It's the performance of care that never gets tested in the ordinary, inconvenient work of actually showing up for people. You can post the infographic because it's visible and it doesn't cost you anything and it makes you feel like you've done something. But the actual work, attention, engagement, and consistent presence, that requires the same investment that lowmaintenance friendships and situationships explicitly try to avoid. The BLM movement and the pandemic normalized a kind of activism that could be performed from your phone in your bedroom. And a lot of that was necessary, but the habit stuck. And now political engagement for a lot of people means the periodic burst of online visibility followed by a return to complete disengagement. It's episodic, purely aesthetic, and rarely goes anywhere meaningful. Performative activism and lowmaintenance relationships both let you claim the identity of a good person, a conscious citizen, someone who cares without any of the investment or effort that those identities require. They're both ways of hoarding your energy while still feeling good about yourself. And they're both the result of the same fear. That genuine investment will cost too much and demand too much from you. But people abroad don't need your infographic. Your friend doesn't need your hypothetical emergency availability. They need your presence, your attention, your small, ordinary, consistent showing up. That's the pro-social behavior that actually builds anything meaningful. But we've normalized talking and posting ourselves out of it.

[00:30:56]>> Hey, shout out mental illness.

[00:30:59]Shout out mental illness. I want to be really careful with this section of the video, not because I'm afraid of the conversation, but because it's the one where nuance matters most and where the enabling language is at its most sophisticated. So, let me be crystal clear about what I'm not saying before I say what I am. I really hate doing disclaimers, but you've got to. You have to. I go to therapy. It has genuinely changed my life, and I recommend it to anyone who has access to it. I am not villainizing medication. I have been medicated. there is absolutely a place for it and I am completely aware that accessible and affordable mental health resources are hard to come by and that's a serious problem that deserves its own conversation. What I am questioning is something more specific. The normalization of the idea that if you just had access to the right treatment, the right therapist, the right medication, everything else would fall right into place. That the missing piece is the diagnosis and the prescription and the work ends there. It doesn't. A therapist and medication will undeniably help and I think everybody should have access to them. They can be genuinely transformative, but they are not magic.

[00:31:58]And I say all of this from experience. I started going to therapy again late last year because I thought I had seasonal depression. I also got labs done hoping that I just had a vitamin D deficiency so I could chug some vitamins for a month and be back to normal. Thankfully, that wasn't the case and I had to confront a harder reality and I'm better for it. My body wasn't telling me I needed pills and vitamins. It was asking for real substantive changes. My mental health practice right now involves therapy, meditation, journaling, exercise, eating well, drinking water, going outside, and being intentional about how I spend my time and attention.

[00:32:30]It's not a flex. It's how I keep my sanity. But all of these things work together. Therapy alone wasn't the cure all, even though I have a really great therapist. These changes required sustained discomfort and consistent effort and the willingness to sit with myself without immediately reaching for something to make the feeling stop. And as I've established throughout this video, that is exactly what we've been talking ourselves out of as a generation. I was watching a vlog the other day and I found her response to this question very revealing and troubling. She was asked what coping mechanisms she tried before going on medication and she said the following. I will not be saying who the creator is obviously and I really do enjoy their content. I just think this is a great learning moment. That's why I'm bringing it up. I think a lot of people think that I tried other ways to manage it besides medication when I did not. I went straight on medication because in my mind, if there's a tool that can help me right now, let's do that right now.

[00:33:17]I'd rather start with medication and wean off of it and figure out ways to make it work while on it. I'm a very I want to see results right now kind of person. I'd rather fix the issue up front and then get the tools later. So, I did not have other ways that I tried to manage it before taking medication.

[00:33:30]And I want to be fair because on the surface this sounds reasonable and even pragmatic. I understand the impulse completely. I even wanted to do that last year. When you're suffering, you want it to stop. That's normal and human. but fix the issue up front and then get the tools later is actually the inverse of how this works. The medication is supposed to create enough stability that the deeper work becomes possible, not replace that work entirely. The tools shouldn't be the reward you get after feeling better.

[00:33:53]They're how you get there in the first place and how you stay there. And the part that never enters her plan at all is the most important part.

[00:34:00]Understanding what the suffering was responding to, what her life and habits and patterns were communicating, what it was trying to tell her, much like what the girl's jealousy was trying to tell her. But I feel like we're just slowly eroding curiosity and just feeling like we always have to have this answer and we have to understand and fix. As somebody who also has that mindset, I think that is a really dangerous thing that we kind of have to move away from as a people, as a generation. And I think inherently treating mental illness as something that's a bad problem that needs to be solved is the opposite of destigmatization that everybody wants to champion. But sometimes it feels like I'm the only person who thinks that. I don't know. I used to have a friend who explained away a consistent pattern of poor behavior toward me and other people by pointing to the lack of her access to treatment. And I have genuine empathy for that. But I also had to be honest with myself at a certain point. Having access to therapy and medication wouldn't automatically have made her a better friend, even though she framed it that way. It wouldn't have made her more considerate or more present or more willing to show up. Those things require a kind of internal reckoning that no prescription can do for you. And normalizing the idea that they can lets people avoid reckoning with that fact indefinitely while feeling like they have a completely legitimate excuse. I might just let that rock. So often mental health is used to explain the ways we fall short. The unturned text, the inconsiderate behavior, the withdrawal. I don't want to dismiss how debilitating mental illness can actually be. But I've noticed some things that just feels like we're further stigmatizing mental illness in ways that I don't appreciate. I've also noticed that nobody ever uses their mental health to explain the good things they do. It's never my anxiety makes me check in too much or my depression makes me overly empathetic. It's almost always deployed as an explanation for absence, withdrawal, and not showing up. And when it functions that way consistently, it stops being an explanation and starts being a shield that I personally think leads to more stigmatization. There's a monologue from one of my favorite films, Call Me By Your Name, where I's father tells him to embrace his feelings despite how painful they can be. And I've always thought it was so beautiful, and I'm happy I can find a way to insert it here. How you live your life is your business. Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once.

[00:35:56]And before you know it, your heart is worn out. And as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there's sorrow and pain. Don't kill it. And with it, all the joy you felt.

[00:36:07]We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new.

[00:36:21]But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything.

[00:36:28]What a waste.

[00:36:30]Have I spoken out of turn?

[00:36:32]>> I said this at the beginning of the video, but the most valuable thing therapy taught me is that my emotions are information. Not problems to solve, but information about my life, my circumstances, and my choices. And sitting with that information, following it back to its source, understanding what it's asking of me. That is the work. the uncomfortable ongoing never finished work and there is no quick solution for it because it was never a problem to be solved in the first place.

[00:36:55]It was my mind and my body telling me what I need. And further when medication and therapy feel too costly or too distant or too slow, we reach for something else. Something faster, cheaper, and always available. Something that promises the same relief, the numbing of the uncomfortable feeling, the escape from the information the body is trying to deliver to you without any of the work. And we've built our entire lives around it. Any guesses? People get so scared to say this for some reason, but I'm just going to say it. It's those damn phones. It's them damn phones. The internet has so much value. I literally found the majority of the research for this video online. The conversations that shaped my thinking happened online.

[00:37:31]You're watching this because of the internet. But there's a big difference between using a tool and being consumed by it. I had to reckon with my own relationship to my phone seriously last year. I'm a creator and social media is my job technically. And for a long time, I used that as a complete justification for the amount of time I spent on my phone. But at some point, I had to be honest with myself. The job requires some of it, not all of it. All the parts that were just scrolling, consuming, and numbing, that was not the job. For context, my screen time has averaged around 3 hours a day since 2022. One of those hours is typically a FaceTime call with my mom, though. The average screen time in the US is 5 hours, and for Gen Z, it's 6. I kind of hyped it up like my screen time was like 12 hours a day.

[00:38:10]It's never been. I've been really deliberate about it, but I still think 3 hours is too much if I'm being completely honest with you. So, I tried to push myself further and use my phone less. And guess what happened? Literally nothing bad. My work didn't suffer and my ability to stay connected with others didn't suffer either. It actually got better, a lot better. My mental state improved. The content I did consume landed differently and stayed with me for longer. And my depth of engagement changed when I stopped diluting it constantly. Scrolling over stimulates and numbs you at the same time, keeping you just engaged enough that you don't have to sit with yourself and just passive enough that nothing is really being processed. It serves you an endless feed of other people performing vulnerability, rehearsing their grievances, and people confirming that the world is exactly as bleak as you suspect it. And the algorithm is really good at finding the hundreds of thousands of people who agree with whatever you already believe and placing them in front of you until the belief feels like consensus reality. These platforms profit from your numbness, your outrage, and your compulsive return. And we've internalized the logic of those platforms so completely that we now experience genuine stillness and boredom as problems to be solved rather than states to experience. Because here's the kicker. Boredom normal. It really is so funny to me that like everybody's like, "Jalousy is normal.

[00:39:19]Jealousy is normal. I should be able to sit and ruminate in my jealousy for months to years on end, but god forbid a [ __ ] is bored. God forbid a [ __ ] is bored for 5 minutes. Even though boredom is normal, I bet you going to grab that phone and try to eliminate the boredom.

[00:39:31]But when it's jealousy, it's like it's just people just find the ways to just do like the worst possible things for themselves. And it's really interesting to see their justifications and just how inconsistent it is cuz it's so ridiculous. A lot of us reach for our phones not because there's something we actually need from them, but because the absence of stimulation has become intolerable. And in that intolerance, we are constantly running away from the very information our minds and bodies are trying to tell us very graciously.

[00:39:55]They be trying and we be like, "Pipe down, bitch." like we [laughter] be like pipe down like it's like they trying to help us out and we're like nah. My mutual test Bloxom made a video called no amount of scrolling is going to tell you who you are. I watched it months ago when she posted it and I still think about it in the title regularly because I think that's exactly what scrolling is for us. It's an outsourced algorithmically curated search for an identity and a sense of self that can only actually be found by sitting with yourself in the discomfort and the quiet. Our phones promise that and deliver the exact opposite every single time. Tess made another video called Overconumption of Media. I know she's great. Where she argued that we've replaced genuinely interacting with media with simply consuming it and the sheer volume of what we consume devalues its impact because we never let it linger. We've replaced engagement for consumption and lost our critical thinking and our capacity for meaning along the way. I felt this in my own life. Now that I make YouTube videos as my job, I watch a lot less of them.

[00:40:50]Partially because I have my own voice now and I don't need to vicariously inhabit someone else's. But the videos I do choose to watch sit with me differently. They sit with me for much longer and more meaningfully because I let them. I do these digital diaries on my Instagram monthly, not as content, but as a record of things that actually moved me from books, films, conversations, ideas, because giving these things the space to mean something to me, returning to them, sitting with them for long enough to understand why they resonated with me, that's where the real thinking happens. It's the reason I can reference Viol Davis and Audrey Lord months after reading their books. I'm not rereading the books and finding it.

[00:41:24]A lot of the things that they they talked about just stick out because they resonate with me. It's also why I'm really good at my job. I was also good at this before I did that, but it's only gotten better the more I've been intentional about it. You know, I didn't have this mindset when I was watching, you know, Call Me By Your Name for the first time. But that quote was just so beautiful. It stuck with me. Tell the bees on Substack put it perfectly when writing about the early internet. The fanfiction forums, live journal communities, the Tumblr pages full of people making things alone in their bedroom. They acknowledged that these people were creating and then they made a distinction that I think is one of the most clarifying things I've read on this subject. The people screaming from their rooftops about how they don't go anywhere and don't have any friends aren't the same people writing 70,000 words of Harry and Draco smut. I'm sorry. I know my people and this feels different. It feels more sinister.

[00:42:07]Posting fanfiction online is a bid for community. Scrolling on your phone is not. Consumption is passive. It asks nothing of you and gives you the illusion of engagement without any of the actual cost or reward. Creation is the opposite because it requires you to have a perspective. Make something and put it into the world and be accountable to it. We have more access to information, to ideas, to each other, to the world than any generation in history. And we use a significant portion of that access to confirm what we already believe, avoid what makes us uncomfortable, and numb ourselves to the information our own lives are trying to give us. We are literally robbing ourselves of the chance to get to know ourselves. So, the solution is probably not to get rid of the internet, but maybe try using it to make something rather than just absorb everything. I don't think it's crazy to say that. I don't think it's crazy to say that. I was at the airport a few months ago and I sat down next to a family with two young kids, maybe between 8 and 10, and I noticed that they were both reading books and annotating them. I was shocked and I assumed that maybe they just didn't have phones yet. But about 30 minutes later, they took their phones out, looked at them for a second, and put them away and went back to their books. They had phones, but they were choosing to read. And then I looked at their father. He was reading, too.

[00:43:15]Witnessing this unicorn of a family made me reach into my bag and take out my own book that I hadn't really planned to read. I just saw them reading and it felt like an invitation. That was in December, and I went on to read for 89 days in a row after that. That moment has stayed with me because it was so simple and so easy to miss. This man didn't give a lecture or speech to anyone about screen time. He just lived in a way that modeled something worth emulating, and it rippled outward without him even knowing. And I think that's the resolution here. Can you imagine if I was like a Tik Tok comment section? I was like to the family. I was like, "You guys think you're better than me. You guys think you're morally superior because you're reading. It's normal to be on my phone." No, I just was like, "Oh, that's good. You're trying to do better. Let me do better."

[00:43:52]That's I think that's the reaction that we should be normalizing. Not It's normal. I'm not expecting a sweeping overhaul or a complete rejection of everything we've built our lives around.

[00:44:02]More so just the quiet, consistent, unremarkable choice to show up and be present and genuinely in the room with the people in the life in front of you.

[00:44:09]and to trust that that matters even when you can't see the effects. I've been thinking a lot about what it actually means to be brave right now. A lot of our generation and a lot of people have decided that cynicism is brave. That having seen through the illusions and refusing to hope and protecting yourself from any disappointment is some kind of hard one wisdom. But cynicism is actually one of the most comfortable places you can live. It requires nothing of you. It's never wrong because it never commits to anything. You can never lose because you never try. and it will keep you perfectly miserably safe for the rest of your life if you let it.

[00:44:39]Ocean Vong said that young people perform cynicism because it can be misread as intelligence, but underneath it they are deeply hungry for sincerity.

[00:44:45]They just don't want to admit it to each other. And I believe that because I see it and I feel it in myself sometimes.

[00:44:50]The embarrassment of earnestness, the vulnerability of actually caring about something in a world full of people performing indifference and nonchalants.

[00:44:58]Sincerity is the radical act right now.

[00:45:00]actually trying, caring, and showing up for the people in your life in the small, ordinary, unglamorous ways that don't make good content and don't get hundreds of thousands of likes. That is the bravest thing you can do. There's a film I love called Amaly where Amal's neighbor has an illness that makes his bones so brittle that he has to line his entire home with padding and cannot leave his apartment. When he sees Amaly choosing to give into her fears and shrink her life, he tells her, Fore.

[00:45:51]You can take life's knocks. That's not to say the knocks won't come, because they will. But you are more resilient than you've convinced yourself you are.

[00:45:57]The story you keep telling yourself that you're too fragile and hopeless, that any investment is too costly and dangerous is intentional. Because the moment you stop believing that story, it has nothing left to offer you. Anais Nin wrote that life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. And I think that's exactly what we're watching happen. A generation choosing understandably to let life shrink to keep it safe and undemanding. And then we wonder why it feels so small. I don't have a 10-step plan or a morning routine or a list of things to do instead of doom scrolling. But I had the airport, the father reading quietly while the world moved around him, the kids choosing their books, the small, replicable, completely ordinary act of being someone worth emulating. So be curious, stay open, follow your feelings somewhere instead of labeling it normal and moving on. Reply to that text message, talk to strangers, ask follow-up questions, sit with your discomfort long enough to hear what it's trying to tell you. Let other people's thriving inspire you instead of threaten you. Create something. invest in a person, an idea, a community without knowing exactly what you're going to get back. Not because it will always work out. Not because you won't feel hurt, disappointed, or let down. You will, but that's not a reason not to try.

[00:47:02]Remember, our hearts and our bodies are only given to us once. Don't waste them feeling nothing. Have I spoken too much?

[00:47:09]All righty, that is going to do it for today's video. If I seem exhausted, it's cuz I am. That was probably my longest filming in a long time, but I think it was worth it. I really enjoyed. Weirdly, I really enjoyed making this video. I thought it was very complex when a lot of areas, but I do care about our generation. I do care about people my age. I care about people in general. And this helped me reflect on some things and think some things through. But all that to say, if you enjoy this video, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. What is your experience with this generation with people our age? What do you think the solution is?

[00:47:39]What do you think are some things that we could, you know, start to value and normalize that aren't just maladaptive antisocial behavior? because I've talked to my friends about this, talked to my parents about it, but I'm open to hearing what everybody else has to say.

[00:47:50]So, I'm excited to read your comments.

[00:47:52]But that's going to do it for today's video. If you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe. And thank you as always to my lovely patrons. I will see you guys in the next one. Goodbye.