DOD20: Kids and Internet Safety

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that wants you to go out and play outside once in a while. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello.

0:00:39 Thomas: We talked about this? That's how every show starts.

0:00:40 Tom: About going outside to play?

0:00:41 Thomas: Have we talking about... Because we bought the house. The reason we moved was for the yard. We had no yard. Zero yard. A great house. Our first house, fantastic house, great location, close to downtown, but not... It was a great location. I loved the house to death. And then a couple of things happened. We had kids. I don't know if you know that, that. We have a couple of kids and also with COVID and me quitting my actual job, we didn't really need to be close to like downtown where the work was. And so that's why we bought the new house was the, is it has a decent size yard. You know, I figured the kids, my vision back in my day, my parents used my mom. You should just tell us just fucking get out of here. Just don't come inside until dinner is what you would tell us. Like you're just not allowed in here, you know and we just you know do whatever play fucking get eaten fall on a barbed wire fence get giant scar I have massive amounts of scars on my body, yeah.

0:01:33 Tom: Yeah, whatever. Go explore an abandoned mine in the back of the yard full of poison snakes?

0:01:38 Thomas: Exactly. Fall fall

0:01:38 Eli: Right where your dad buried his gold that he jumped off the plane with.

0:01:42 Thomas: Down fall down a mine shaft, yeah, see the ghost of the fucking, yeah, whatever. Pirate the

0:01:42 Tom: Makes just all the

0:01:49 Eli: By the way, podcast listener, he still hasn'tt read the diaries. He still hasn' read the fucking... I think about those diaries four times a day.

0:01:50 Thomas: No oh I completely forgot about it I

0:01:57 Eli: Day, four times a fucking day. I'm

0:01:56 Tom: Time all the time, oh,

0:01:57 Thomas: Completely forgotten about It the minute we stopped recording

0:02:00 Eli: Going to fly out to California and I'm gonna read the diaries.

0:02:03 Thomas: You Could you? Probably could.

0:02:04 Tom: What? You know what, for patrons will turn them into an audio book. That's

0:02:04 Thomas: Ah. Yes, definitely, let's sell my trauma, everybody. Oh, so fun. Let's be real, that's what I'm always doing anyway. Yeah.

0:02:13 Eli: Yes.

0:02:16 Tom: What, this whole show is what are you talking about, we're just We're working through some shit, okay.

0:02:16 Eli: Yeah. Podcaster Yeah. And

0:02:16 Thomas: Yeah, that's fine. But we get the yard and I realize I can't, for one, I'm not, as I'm just not as mean as my parents, so I can't do the like, just fucking leave and get out of here, I don't want to see your kind around here, kid, just fucking get out. So they won't go outside, I'll be like, why don't you go play, why don't you go, they'll only go outside if we go outside and so now I've realized

0:02:40 Tom: But isn't it 118 degrees outside every day I

0:02:41 Thomas: Yeah so we don't make them go out when it's, when it, that it is

0:02:44 Eli: On fire

0:02:45 Tom: Mean you, you live in an easy bake oven right now, like I don't blame them at all

0:02:48 Thomas: True no it's way hotter than an easy bake oven, you can actually, you can't actually bake stuff outside, you can't bake stuff in an easy big oven, um, so yeah, for one, a yes, there's like limited tiny amounts of time that we're like, oh my god, it's humans can going to live outside right now. We should go outside. But the other is I just am realizing that you have to be the example for your kids. And I don't want to be that. I got outside so they could go outside, that was why I bought a bit of outside so they could go outside and they're like, but we want to only do that if you go outside and so I have this worthless yard. We don't even fucking use it.

0:02:50 Tom: Yeah yeah see

0:03:20 Eli: Right. But you're modeling a behavior of staying inside them fuck, oh god, to

0:03:27 Thomas: Yep. Yep, you're right. You're right. I am and I'm not mean enough like my parents to just make you do the things I don't WANT TO DO, so

0:03:34 Eli: Banish them

0:03:34 Tom: Donno man, I'm an outside guy, like I try to drag, I'll be like, come on, go for a bike ride with me, and the kids are like, no, what absolutely

0:03:41 Thomas: How do you edit while you're riding the bike, do you get the computer on the handlebars, wow

0:03:44 Tom: They're like, no, absolutely not, they're like, I'm like, come on, let's go out, they're just like, I could be, I, I have to tell my stepson, I'm like, you should open like the drapes around your window so your fucking weird vampire cave occasionally gets some UV rays to scare away the ghouls or whatever that live like, they're just like, they're not just inside kids, they're like weird cave children, I think they're gonna lose their sight, like I match, if they didn't have to go to school I think they would all just become translucent and you'd see their fucking heartbeat and shit beneath their skin And They would lose their Sight and they were just, yeah

0:04:21 Thomas: Boy

0:04:19 Eli: Right you find him hanging from the ceiling, I don't know if that's good, see see

0:04:22 Thomas: Yeah this these might be my kids, holy shit maybe we should switch, hey, Patreon goal actually, we're close, by the way, Patreon goal, a thousand patrons, patreon.com/DearOldDads, we will switch children, and I think, I, I choose Tom's because I'm like this too, you keep her, I'm just, I'll

0:04:26 Tom: Just you'll

0:04:28 Eli: Now, here's yeah

0:04:38 Tom: Love it, my stepdaughter will go outside though, she's she, she'll go outside though for just the most random shit, she'll just be like, I just want to go outside, and be like, okay, what are you gonna do, and she's like, just be outside by yourself, just stand in the yard, just be outside, just, I can't do, I need something to do, like I can't just go being outside now, but I think I did when I was a kid, Thomas, I think like, to your like, it was just like, weren't inside unless you were in trouble and

0:04:57 Thomas: Oh it's the best, are you kidding me, I missed that, that is the bad, is being a kid is a superior form of being, it just is, because you go outside and you've got yourself a stick and there's some bad guys in the form of these fucking, I don't know, a tree branch or something, and you're fighting these bad guys and you got a whole universe in your head of all this like things happening in the surroundings, it's, it's incredible. God, I miss it so much.

0:05:28 Tom: Eli, you weren't allowed to go outside unless your your dad was like,

0:05:29 Thomas: I was going to say, Eli has no idea

0:05:31 Eli: But they begged me, are you kidding, my poor parents, my poor sweet parents, fucking laid a path of skittles out to the front porch in the desperate hope that I would catch a single ray of sun and nothing fucking doing. You know that I never learned to ride a bike. And so I would jog besides my friends.

0:05:31 Thomas: What I'm talking about.

0:05:38 Tom: Wait

0:05:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:05:52 Tom: A minute. Still?

0:05:54 Eli: Yep. Still to this day, I don't know how to ride A bike. Don't know how to write a bike, tried to write A bike once caught my neck on a telephone pole, threw the bike up into the air.

0:05:55 Tom: Wait a minute! You don't know how to write? Eli Bosnick, how

0:06:05 Eli: The bike landed on me and both the tires popped. And I was like, I'm never doing that again. My parents were like, really know what we we do from here? He has no more desire to ride a bike. I put the bike away. And when my friends would come over and it would be like, let's go ride bikes. We're kids in the eighties. I'd be like, I'll just jog. I'll jog beside you guys. Let's go. Oh God. Well, we've made it half a block. I think that's a good adventure for the day.

0:06:04 Thomas: How did you?

0:06:27 Tom: Oh, my God.

0:06:31 Eli: Do you know what I wanted to do as a kid? My favorite adventure as a child. And this, I remember my poor, my dad was so good at hiding it, was so good at hiding it, but every time I would suggest this, he would get just this little bit of sadness on his face. My idea of an outdoor adventure is I would go to our garage, which was next to the house, and I would eat a can of chickpeas and I'd bring a can of chickpeas and a spoon and the can opener and I'd be like, we're camping, and dad would be like, we can go camping, do you want to go camping? And I was like, fuck no, man, open this can up.

0:06:57 Tom: What is that? What is...

0:07:07 Eli: What the fuck are we doing, it's chickpea time

0:07:07 Tom: I just waited the girl that's the weirdest fucking thing I can't imagine being your neighbor. You look like, oh, is that fucking Eli kid just eating a can of chickpeas again

0:07:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:10 Eli: Yeah just eating a can of chickpeas in his quiet dark garage while his dad wonders what possible combination of genetics created this thing no they hope I don't know, it was eating chickpeas

0:07:22 Thomas: What in the hell? I don't even know what that's supposed to be.

0:07:28 Tom: Were you like playing hobo or something, what was that

0:07:35 Eli: No I

0:07:37 Thomas: Eli was like, they're not going to let me go live in the oven, so I guess I'll be out here with my chickpea.

0:07:37 Eli: Was playing I was plain I guess I'm just gonna eat it, can't, no, they tried, so, oh my goodness, every camp, every activity, every, oh, they tried so hard to get me outside, so hard, and they just desperately failed. Now here's the interesting thing, Max is an adventure baby, he will go and do anything, he is, he prepared for it, he's ready to do it. But I'm an inside golem flesh creature, but I am a self-aware one. So here's the compromise that Max and I have come up with, we run around and have adventures in indoor air conditioned areas like the mall or Target. I kid you not, when I it is my turn to watch Max, one of our favorite things to do together is I drive us 10 minutes down the road to Target, and we just, he runs, I walk around Target for an hour and a half, and he just touches things and we practice words together. He loves it.

0:08:39 Thomas: Oh, my God. Did see? I think I posted a picture. When I took the kids to the hardware store the other week and they had the hardware, so they have these like fucking, you know, the kid carts. That's like it was like a truck or something, a giant truck where they both could sit and steal. Oh, my God. I could have done that all day. It was so fun. Feel They like they're driving. And then they, you Know, Phoebe, as always, would direct Arlo how to do everything. She's just like constantly controlling his every move. It's fine. Whatever.

0:08:39 Tom: Oh yeah yeah

0:09:05 Thomas: I actually

0:09:05 Eli: So we live, I am ten minutes from the American Dream Mall, which is now the largest mall in the United States. It has a Ferris wheel, a ski slope, a full aquarium

0:09:15 Thomas: Holy shit. A ski slope, how how holy crap, can we go to your house

0:09:17 Eli: Uh an indoor water park, yeah yeah

0:09:17 Tom: What the fuck are you talking about it has it has skiing I've

0:09:25 Thomas: Hmm

0:09:26 Eli: It's the, yeah it's this American Dream Mall, it's these giant malls, the largest mall in America right now, a lot of it is still closed because they've been setting it up for the last however many years, but it is 10 minutes from my house, and me and my son go there, all that, there's like gardens and activities and concerts and a huge food, he loves it

0:09:35 Thomas: Okay now this is great because this was the kind of thing that as a kid I got to do once every five years, and I, like, if it was like, I'll tell you, this is gonna be so sad, the things I got to do one time in my childhood, maybe two, and then for the rest of my life was like, I want to do this all the time and never got to, as a kid, was bowling as a kid.

0:09:46 Eli: Yeah so

0:10:07 Thomas: I got to go bowling once. And I was like, this is the best thing ever. I want to do this. Never went again. Uh, skating got to do that once. Never got, never got again.

0:10:07 Eli: Dark so dark

0:10:15 Tom: Never been ice Skating. I've never tried that I

0:10:15 Eli: There's a nice skating rink there

0:10:17 Thomas: And there's a couple other laser tag got to be that one time. I was, like, well, this is an impossible amount of fun that cannot exist on the planet. And then never got to do it again. So when I drive by, we have one of those, uh, I don't know if it would, this This is a regional thing. I think it's called like Scandia or something. But those those things that are like the water slides, the mini golf, the arcade, you know, like those those of.

0:10:39 Thomas: Yeah, we drive by those things. And I am realizing I was like, I will live at this fucking place with my kid if he wants to. Like either of them, if they want to go to this thing, this thing that would have been like the worst thing my parents ever did. They would have like, oh, OK, I guess we can just murder to get them to do anything. I will leave there if they wants to and it would be so fucking fun. I can't wait to do this.

0:10:37 Eli: Sure skate estate yeah it's I will tell you, I have an absolute, like, I know a lot of parents who would be like, following around your toddler in Target for an hour and a half is a punishment, management, I adore it he just runs from aisle to aisle and points the shit and says what it is and you know we'll work on like colors or letters or whatever the fuck it is he wants to talk about at the time. It's like there are very rarely times in my life where I'm not completely addicted to my phone, but Target trips with Max, man, I do not I don't need a podcast, I don't need shit, I'm just walking around being like, yep, blue, blue, it's also, and maybe this is just him, and maybe just because, because I'm his dad, I'm the only one who thinks he's cute, he tags all the posters, right? He runs up, puts both hands on the posters. And I can tell he's getting too tired and we need to get home because he starts to tag stuff too hard. He'll

0:11:10 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, that's great.

0:11:27 Thomas: That's awesome.

0:11:47 Tom: I

0:11:47 Eli: Like run over and slap his hands on. Okay, we're getting a little sleepy, let's, let's head on out, buddy. And you know, this, this is a kid who like has a few snacks that he likes. So we grab a croissant. We grab a fresh croissant at Target. And he just like occasionally turns back to me for another bite of croissant, this kid is set, we could spend all day there birthday

0:12:09 Thomas: Oh it's the best. It's the best time.

0:12:09 Tom: I feel so back now, I feel, Thomas, I feel like your parents at these things, like I like, I'll go, I'll bring my kids to these things occasionally like

0:12:15 Thomas: Yeah. That already better than my parents. They just wouldn't go or take me.

0:12:19 Tom: I but and I used

0:12:20 Thomas: So, Tom, I will not have you besmirch yourself to say you're like my parents, my parents just would not do it.

0:12:20 Tom: To take when Finn was little but I

0:12:27 Thomas: Occasionally, you know how I got to go, someone else's parents, yeah and took me, yeah well

0:12:25 Eli: Parties yeah he

0:12:30 Tom: Parties with someone else yeah yeah I don't, I don't like this stuff, I'm not gonna lie, like I get so bored, I

0:12:38 Thomas: I don't blame you because you don't like video games and you apparently you're not coordinated, so there's a lot of those games, like the throwing, the shooting, the basketball, the throwing, whatever, yeah no that's too bad oh, I fucking love it what about mini golf you could mini golf that's fun

0:12:46 Tom: All the worst, it's all torture I'm just I'm I'm only there because the kids are there uh a mini golf is okay yeah, I yeah I'll go mini golfing once, just just

0:12:54 Eli: Hits too hard, he can't do it every shot goes sailing

0:12:53 Thomas: Right yeah yeah it's a driver just kills a kid, yeah, the clown's

0:12:57 Eli: Off the course, yeah

0:13:00 Tom: I'm not, that's a lot, that's a lot, mini golf's a lot of, it's, it, I feel like that stuff is like, I'm there just

0:13:06 Thomas: Looking at me funny, just punches it

0:13:07 Eli: He's trying to throw the golf course away when he's done, no, Tom, you leave it for, I'm done with this one though, I golfed it, he's paving the course, Tom, stop, stop paving the course yeah he's tiling it, yeah, as he goes, no, see the see

0:13:25 Thomas: Tiling it he's tiling the court, yeah, yeah

0:13:15 Tom: Okay I'm I'm done, I'm, how do you, how do you crinkle it up and throw it away now, I don't smash the wood, mill there was instructions on how to do it, dad left a note, it's fine

0:13:31 Thomas: Same

0:13:32 Eli: The great thing for me though is like, what I have learned is that like, yeah, because I would get bored at that stuff too, except I just literally don't do anything, I just sit perfectly still and watch my child like a dead body, because I'm in perfect, watching my son makes me super happy, right I I don't get bored. I don t need anything in that moment. I don't know what I'm going to do. Look, there is a countdown timer, and it's a little hard to talk about it.

0:13:52 Thomas: Oh it's the best me watching your son

0:14:04 Eli: There's a countdown time to the day that my son realizes that I'm a fat piece of shit and wants me to do anything, and then this beautiful stained glass mirror of our lives will fall terribly, right? Because at some point, my son's going to be like, Daddy, you threw the ball, and be like, oh, I'm sorry, son, daddy doesn't throw balls or worse, I'm gonna die throwing a ball to prove to my son, here's the thing, my heart, right, my heart is like the marathon runner at Cleities, right, just like I've got 26 seconds left to go, so I, if I stand up too quickly, my body goes like, okay, you get six more of those, man, six more

0:14:02 Thomas: Yeah yeah yep yep, cats

0:14:22 Tom: Yeah yeah

0:14:24 Thomas: In the cradle and a sin

0:14:45 Eli: Just so you know, oh

0:14:48 Thomas: I thought you were going to say, I, it is really sad to me, the timer on when the kids are just not interesting in that way, you know, like, it really is, it's so fun when they have this curiosity, this, all the stuff they're doing, and then someday, they're just going to want to sit in front of a YouTube Nazi all day, just, they'll just, shut up, dad, I want the fucking tablet, it. I don't want to do it. You know, that's going to be sad.

0:15:06 Eli: Andrew Clay is talking, dad, let him infinite, which is an excellent transition into our subject for today. So, um, as you may remember, we did a little Patron AMA back in June. We got so many incredible questions that are going to end up being episodes all unto themselves. Uh, and I thought we would tackle this one today from General Contact Unit Problem Child, who asks, "What would you do if you felt any of your sons were falling into the alt -right? And I'm going to make a bold claim here. Gonna say that while while the show is precedented on "we don't know what the fuck we're talking about," I would argue that this is one of the very, very few topics we could actually be useful on. Because not falling into the alt-right and engaging with the alt-right is something that at least a couple of us have dedicated way too much of our lives to.

0:15:39 Thomas: Ooh.

0:16:02 Thomas: Yeah. Well, and, and I grew up conservative. So like, I know the draw of a lot of these arguments, you know,

0:16:08 Tom: I So funny because, because, like, would I do?" I think I would immediately, if they're, like, really engaging with the alt -right, like, if they are really, like, watching that YouTube shit and reading that fucking 4chan garbage and just they are in that, I wold, as long as they were young enough that I had control of it, I would disconnect them from the internet.

0:16:27 Thomas: Murder them. Oh yeah. So that's what I was going to say too. Yeah, yeah. Disconnect from the internet.

0:16:31 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I will completely disconnect them from the Internet. They would lose the ability to even engage that, that until, I, we got to fucking deprogram them, and however long that takes, like they would have no access at all. It's like they wouldn't have the wi-fi password, I'd take their phone, that's it. Like you don't, you shit is so dangerous, it'd be like, it'd be like saying, like, hey, how much heroin would you keep in the house if you fucking kids started doing heroin?

0:16:32 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Well, yeah yeah.

0:16:53 Eli: Right.

0:16:53 Tom: Well, no heroin, we would immediately get rid of all of my heroin, right?

0:16:57 Thomas: Fortunately you don't have to do that now because they're not addicted to it, so you can still keep a smattering of heroin around

0:17:01 Tom: So I'd have, have mine that's the thing, I could have mine because I'm not a, yeah, right I know how to use it like a grown-up, you know, the

0:17:02 Eli: Right. Right

0:17:01 Thomas: Yeah emergency heroin yeah well want to ask you guys this, how much do you think it is getting caught in the YouTube whatever rabbit trail thingy, uh, how much do you think it is just preparing your kids the best you can to not be the kinds of people, especially with, with sons, the kinds of dudes that this shit would appeal to, you know, like how much do you think it's those things.

0:17:21 Tom: Second one is more important yeah

0:17:27 Eli: Yeah, I, so we need to lay out sort of the issue for those who aren't aware, um, and like I'm gonna sound like a crazy person for a second if you're not aware of this already existing, um, but it's, it is true, I have receipts, and this is something we've talked about extensively, which is that almost all forms of children's online entertainment has an element, be it audience or creator, that is meant to drive your child to the far right, right? Not extensive.

It's not always purposeful, but if you look at the like PewDiePie or, you know, these online creators who mostly just play video games and make silly noises at said video games, there is a significant portion of their audience, and often their content, that are dedicated to taking your child and moving them to the right politically, right, further and further to the right, or using them as a tool of the alt-right so they can harass people or dox people or do that kind of stuff.

So the first thing that needs to sort of be acknowledged in this conversation is that that's real and that's happening, that that's not, Eli's not a crazy person, that that is real. And the, the reason that it's real is because, um, what needs to be understood is that the far right, one, use the internet significantly more than you, the person listening to this podcast, do, right, amount of time that you spend on the internet. The people who consider themselves like core members of the alt-right, they are on the Internet something in the range of like five to ten times the

0:19:03 Eli: Amount that you are

0:19:03 Thomas: Well, and they have to be because when you have an extreme extremist type view, you go outside and talk to a person and be like, hey, you know how like women are such and such like everybody, you're not like, you you know, if anyone's ever raped, they're asking for just all this bullshit. Well, maybe you could in the South, I don't know, in Republican territory, but like extreme these views in order to find people who share them, you have to go to the thing that has all the people on it from anywhere, you it's 1%, if it's 0.1% of people who have these extreme, extreme views, they have to do that because probability wise, they're not going to be able to find another other person near them who has these thoughts. So they have to use the internet in that way to find each other and to radicalize more people.

0:19:04 Eli: Right exactly yeah right

0:19:05 Tom: What yeah right

0:19:49 Eli: And that they can't do this with in-person events, right? If you go to your local knitting club and you're like, so, white power, am I right? Someone will be like, hey man, get the fuck out of here. But if you have 25 fake accounts, right, you invade a knitting forum, you can scare a lot of people off that forum and drive people who want to stay on that forum towards your side of political beliefs. At the very least, you can divide that space, right? And there's a million very innocent spaces that people like wouldn't assume would be susceptible to this kind of thing, like ponies, right?

0:19:53 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:54 Tom: Yeah

0:20:00 Thomas: Hopefully.

0:20:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:31 Eli: Like we did a whole episode of our sister show, um, Citation Needed, about this, about how, like, the, the My Little Pony space was divided by white supremacy because white supremacists thought it was funny to pretend to like My Little Pony and to try to drive people towards their beliefs. And basically what they did is they took, because, because this is very important as a part of this conversation, your kid is not going to fall for, hey man, how about them, them Jews starting all the wars, right?

0:21:01 Eli: That's not what it means when your son falls into the alt -right. What it means when your son falls into the alt-right is it means that your son is a part of a culture where racist, sexist jokes, jokes that are hostile, conversations that are hostile to people of color or women or trans people or any other kind of persecuted minority, they're told that those are okay, that those Are part of culture. And when someone who's part of those oppressed groups comes into that space and says, Hey, this joke or this way of talking hurts me. All they need your kid to do is be quiet or be annoyed by the person raising the commotion.

0:21:00 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

0:21:41 Eli: That's how you turn spaces, all right. Right. And we talk about this as, again, everyone who listens, most of the people who listen to this, listen to this podcast because of our atheism content, right, have spent years and years and years in the atheist space preventing our communities from falling into those spaces, and it requires a zero tolerance policy towards those kind of behaviors.

0:22:04 Thomas: I was going to add on to that. Think pretty similar to what you just said. A lot of it I think it starts as humor. It starts as quote-unquote satire. And I think a lot of the, another reason it overlaps with online stuff with the, you know, the gaming stuff is because these, like a arms race of being more and more extreme and being more, you know? And being more off color to like create the You know, if you're in this space where it's this arms race to like the shock value, like the shock value of the worst thing, the worst things is rewarded. The most shocking things is rewarded in these spaces often. And you can always pretend it's a joke. And I bet for a lot of people it is, but that's the danger of it is you don't know the people there. There's a reason why people with extremist views do that. It's because they can always have that plausible deniability or maybe you both mean it, you know, like maybe you don'T, maybe you mean, Oh, I don't mean it.

0:22:12 Eli: Sure. Right.

0:22:30 Tom: Yeah, mm. -hmm. Yeah.

0:22:57 Thomas: Oh, it's, and you never know. And to me being an ironic Nazi is as bad as being a Nazi. That's called being a Nazi to me, but like to, yeah, to a lot of people, it's not, they, they, they might genuinely have convinced themselves it's humor. Our could be in that thing of convincing themselves. Oh, no, it's just really edgy, funny, whatever stuff. And that's I do think that is where it starts.

0:23:03 Tom: There's No difference. Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:04 Eli: There's No. Yeah.

0:23:16 Eli: And You know who really really doesn't care whether or not you're ironically a Nazi or a Nazi Nazi-ing, they're just excited. You're There, they're just like, yeah man, jokes aplenty, right? And the thing that is crazy about this, and, when you know, this is one of those things where, like, I don't know about you guys, but you have a conversation that when normal people try to have it with you, you see their eyes go a little wide and you're like, oh, sorry, nope, I'm taking it back, I'm scaling it back.

This is the conversation that I get crazy about, because all of these things, all of these tactics, they're all public, right? They're all on public websites that everyone can read right now. They plan these things, right? Like the My Little Pony thing, which again, I'll use as an example, was just planned on 4chan, right, for word, moment for moment. 4chan just was on a different forum that you could just click a button to go read their plan.

They were like, hey, this is what we're going to do to the My Little Pony space. And then it worked, because the, the good people on the My Little Pony space could not be bothered to go check out that other website and realize, hey, look, the Nazis are planning to attack us, or, hey, this thing they're saying, it's a copy and paste from another

0:23:24 Tom: Right, so

0:23:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:30 Eli: Thing, you know. I, you know, not to get into the whole, because is its own thing that I should break down, but something that's really important to keep in mind about GamerGate is the lie that began GamerGate, the person who did it, right, ran it past 4chan and 8chan, and I don't mean that in the sense of, like, oh, you know, I'm starting this lie here, I mean, he said, hey, I'm thinking about telling this crazy lie, do any of you have any notes on my crazy lie that I'm going to spread to the world, and they workshopped it right there are threads, there are archived threads, that you, a podcast listener, can read right now, where Nazis, white supremacists and trolls were like, hey, change this sentence, tweak the grammar here, and then that is the statement that that person later released that started GamerGate, what I would argue the primary harassment campaign of the internet. Yeah.

0:24:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:27 Tom: I, I keep thinking about, is, you know, I know I said, like, what would you do if your kids were into this, and I would just, and I would, but, like, how do you prevent them, and just keep thinking about that, and I keep thinking, like, gotta make this shit unappealing. And I think that a huge amount out of the appeal of the alt -right shit, and we're talking about this specifically for our boys, right, and I think, because there is a loneliness problem among men and boys that is part of, and I know we talked about toxic masculinity, I don't think you can pull these things apart, I think that boys, and and men, as they grow and they mature and they enter into puberty, the loneliness problem is a huge fucking problem for boys, and the internet solves it in exactly the wrong way.

0:26:11 Thomas: Yeah. The toxic masculine part is the entitlement part, because by itself, a lonely person, just, just by itself, one, that factor alone shouldn't really, that's bad, but they shouldn't be hurting anyone. Like, if you're just lonely, you're just lonely. The part that I think is a killer, and why I think toxic masculinity is is really at the root of so many of our problems as a society, is the entitlement that girls should be paying attention to you, regardless of how shitty you are to them, or if you haven't done any work to try to be, like, an interesting or actual nice person or whatever. I've been wanting for so long, by the way, to do an episode on quote-unquote nice guys.

0:26:49 Eli: Yes.

0:26:49 Thomas: We'll pin in that for later. Because that's where I think it really creates the toxic brew, is loneliness plus entitlement, because then you're angry. Then you're mad at the world for not giving you the thing you think you deserve.

0:26:50 Eli: Yes. Yeah.

0:26:51 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:02 Tom: Would ad to that, or maybe separate that or buttress that with, I'm talking about loneliness, not just with girls, but loneliness, like, boys in general don't know how to deal with their loneliness, they, we, don't, boys do a worse job of establishing, in general, of establishing deep, meaningful social connections with their peers. I, what, think we're seeing now is a coalescence of two factors, social factors, that are creating this especially toxic moment, and I think that, um, years and years, we've not taught boys how to connect meaningfully and deeply with other boys, and as we, like, embrace and continue to embrace the sort of stoicism of manhood that kids are sort of still indoctrinated into as as a sort of masculine virtue, it makes it more difficult for them to emotionally open up to one another, not just to girls, but to one another, and so they have a limited number of deep, meaningful social connections, and I think that's connecting to this moment of the internet, where predatory fucking grown -ups um, alt -right groups, recognize that this is ripe for the picking young minds.

0:27:10 Eli: Yes.

0:28:18 Eli: And

0:28:18 Tom: And they intentionally create language, look at, like, Jordan Peterson and his fucking self-help book stuff, it's stuff on its surface, the self-help stuff is reasonably helpful, but it's just a gateway into all the other awful shit that fucker has to say and all the other awful people that fucker's connected to, so it's the fact that these kids feel like they need the help, they feel like they need to connect, and they don't know how to meaningfully interact with other people, and the pandemic has made that a hundred times worse, it's like adding fire to fire.

0:28:54 Eli: Yes, the internet has egalitarianized all the answers, right, that young people are looking for, right? We're young, especially when we were young, preteens, teens, which is the sort of dangerous, we're desperately seeking answers to life's big questions, but the internet makes it impossible to tell who has good information and who has bad information, right, and how to find good information on the internet is really fucking hard, because so-called impartial sources actually do a really terrible job of telling you what's true, right, because Wikipedia very rarely goes, and by the, the way, some people think this, some people think this, but those people are fucking wrong.

0:29:00 Tom: Yeah. Yes. This.

0:29:35 Thomas: God,

0:29:35 Eli: Right, those people have fucking asked, you can find the argument to support what it is you have to say, you, wherever you are in the internet, and so, like, I want to talk at the end of this episode about, like, real and actual things you can implement, one of them being teaching your kids lateral research, right, is really hard, and most adults don't know how to do it, right?

0:29:56 Thomas: It is so disappointing to find out how many adults can't do this basic thing. It's incredible.

0:30:01 Eli: Right. And how, like, and look, I, no one is more guilty of it than me, right? I am a professional skeptic, at least by some considerations. And I would say two or three times a year, I see something I agree with on Twitter and I'm just like, I agree, retweet and spread this information. And, I don't know what you're talking about, Tom, if you could use something relevant that our audience would understand. That's crazy. I don't really.

0:30:17 Tom: Yik yak article is right.

0:30:26 Eli: No, but like, exactly. Like, like, I'm as prone to that as anybody, and it's so much harder when you're a kid. The other thing I want to talk about is, like, kids are desperately looking for a reason about why they feel bad. And look, the truth-tellers, the honest people, they don't have a great, comfortable answer for you, right? The answer about why you feel bad is complex and has to do with you as an individual. Individual trans people are invading your locker room is a lot easier to sell, right?

0:30:57 Tom: Yeah.

0:30:57 Eli: Black people are just too uppity these days is a lot easier to sell, and it's especially easy to sell to a white young person of privilege right.

0:31:04 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:31:05 Tom: When I think you've got it, you've got to take the emotional temperature of your kids in a way that like is ongoing and that you trust is true. I don't know about you guys, but I like, I sometimes have reflected that I am incredibly glad for about a thousand reasons, but I am incredibly glad that I did not grow up now. I would hate to have been me now because I was an incredibly lonely teenager. I was an intensely, deeply lonely teenager. I did not have strong social connections. I didn't, I was a very isolated and lonely and I felt, I felt constantly out of place.

I mean, I had all those like feelings that would have driven me into that zone where people are saying, Hey, here's some other people that feel that way. And here are some reasons why you might be feeling that way, I think I might have, during a brief window of my life, I might've found some of those conversations personally compelling. And that is, that's because nobody was ever like, thoughtfully checking in and saying, how are you doing for real? And demanding a real answer and making sure that you look for signs of isolation and loneliness and, you and depression. Because I think for, you Know, a lot of the research says, you Now, one of the manifestations of depression for many people, and particularly boys, is anger. And so,

0:32:19 Eli: We

0:32:38 Tom: But We don't Way we see it as problematic or troublesome behavioral difficulty and so

0:32:38 Thomas: That's Interesting Oh

0:32:44 Eli: Often Respond to that in exactly the opposite of what those kids Need, right

0:32:44 Tom: Yes We Aren't we, aren't loving, we aren't, we aren't saying, hey, you know, Tom is angry all the time and maybe he's depressed, instead it's like, Tom is hungry all the time, the fuck you angry about, cut Your shit out, you know, and It's this Yeah Combative kind of acceleration space, so I think that one of the ways, and Eli, I very much want to hear about the practical stuff, but I do think like one of the sort of wishy-washy but honest things you have to constantly do, and I've got teenagers, teenage boys, I think about this, is you've got to know their emotional headspace.

0:33:01 Eli: You're A bad Kid Right

0:33:25 Tom: You've got to check in. You're going to have to know what their values are. If you start to see shifts in their values that move them away from the like the empathy-based values that you've probably raised your kids with, and you start to see them becoming, you know, callous, when they start laughing at like the misfortune of others in a way that suggests that they're on those 4chan-esque spaces That's

0:33:24 Eli: Right

0:33:48 Thomas: That Would not fly for two seconds in in my household Of All time

0:33:50 Tom: What I'm you You Know what I mean but You've got to keep an eye On that shit, you got to check in and you got to do it in a loving and non-combative way because I I think back, again, I'm, and I'm not trying to like universalize my anecdotal experience, but I do, I do feel like maybe some of those ideas would have appealed to a young, dumb, alienated me. Because I was young. I was dumb. I was very alienated. And I was extremely angry. And I think that makes you impressionable because the last thing you want to feel is angry for no reason. So you search for the reason to match your anger. And I think that that's a, a reality about growing up as a teenage boy in a world that sometimes doesn't teach you good lessons about how to deal with your emotions.

0:33:51 Thomas: Yeah Yeah

0:33:52 Eli: Yeah Yeah Top of that, right, know exactly, with that check-in, you also need to do check-ins on ideas, right? Do you feel about the things that are happening in the news, right? Lot of parents are like, I don't want to talk about the news with my kids, you know, the world is so bad, or this thing is so mad, you know, know, I just want to leave it alone. I want to let my kids be kids. Problem is, other people are sending your kids messages, right?

0:34:59 Eli: If You're not, someone else is getting in there. And if you're not willing to have those conversations, I will say, cause Tom, I think that your experience is not universal. I think your experience is a very universal, right. I was a kid who grew up in upstate New York where problematic ideas were flying left and right. Right. And except, except for the fact that I was Jewish, right, was brought into all of those bad ideas, brought into all of those bad ideas. And it was exactly because of the luck of having the dad that I did, who constantly wanted to talk about what ideas I was having, and wanted to help me understand his way of seeing things. And more importantly, wanted to understand my way of seeing things, you know, talk to me like my ideas were worthy, my ideas where a value, even when, when they weren't, even right? When I had just like completely crazy ideas, there was always this willingness to have a conversation. And one of the things that the alt-right and the right wing in general is counting on is you being unwilling to have the conversation,

0:34:58 Thomas: Yeah Well

0:34:59 Tom: Yep. Yes. Yep.

0:36:01 Eli: Right. That's why they're constantly saying, you know, the left won't talk about this, or they won't mention this. And you also have to deal with hard questions, right, trick questions or questions that you don't necessarily know how to answer right now. Right. You have to be willing to say, I don't know. Can we talk about that later? That's the thing that, again, is very uncomfortable, especially if your kid is saying something problematic. You know, one of the things that I noted down when were going to do this episode that I wanted to talk about is like, if you look up black on black violence, right, you will find in the Google result are right-wing arguments for Why gun violence doesn't matter because we're not addressing black on black violence, basically what they have done, the right has taken this particular phrase, right, they have skewed the Google results to the best of their ability, now it's gotten better since then because

0:36:54 Thomas: I This is through through serious inquiries only, I've noted this is true of every single issue, like Literally every issue, I've, I've never had the time, but I've been trying, and I've been in the back of my head developing an idea of like some way to combat this, because for any given bullshit issue, they have, whether it's as you say, black on black crime, or it'll be like a given uh viral moment or something where it's like you Know, oh, the kid that was the one at the march with the stupid fucking kid with his fucking face or whatever, whatever that, the whatever the thing Will be, you'll know, the whatever the thing'll be, the one with the The Native American guy, and Then the, yeah Coming Like Uh, like that or something as an example, if there's an issue like that, an event like that, I, every time I research it, every Time I want to look into something that's like, or maybe it's like slightly not mainstream, but it's something that the entire right wing somehow unites around and starts developing This mythology around.

You Google it, every fucking result, every new, and even if you click on the news tab, every news result is New York Post or, you know, fucking, uh, wire.com. You know, they're all flooded the the zone, they have every

0:36:58 Eli: Mm -Hmm

0:37:24 Tom: Rittenhouse. Oh, I know. Yeah. OK.

0:37:28 Eli: Covington Catholic Yeah mm -Hmm Yes

0:38:02 Tom: Yeah,

0:38:02 Thomas: Single Yeah Yep That, yep, and They all get In line and and reinforce it like

0:38:02 Tom: Right.

0:38:02 Eli: Because Publish First and They publish free, right Right Doesn't matter if they're right or wrong, right. The reason why you're not seeing a New York Times article first about the Covington Catholic thing in In those reporters' defense is because those reporters are doing actual Reporting Which Takes time, and Breitbart can just be like, Native American attacks child with drum Child Terrified for his life, right, and all contrary is a good feeling, right, knowing something that the rest of the world doesn't know is a gut feeling, believe me, I know, there's a reason why I'm a magician, right, it's like, that's the appeal of magic, when you're a little kid, it's like, oh, I know where the the hole in the boxes and other people don't know, like, it is the same, it is that magic trick

0:38:15 Thomas: Have To report Yeah Yeah Yeah Right

0:38:47 Tom: Mm

0:38:47 Eli: Of like, no no, no, you know, the secret, here we are, and once that reporting finally gets done on the Washington Post or on the New York Times, you know where it is, it's trapped Behind a fucking paywall, right

0:38:47 Tom: Hmm.

0:38:57 Thomas: No Or No one Care, they've moved on

0:38:58 Tom: Yep, yeah.

0:39:00 Eli: And They've Moved on

0:39:00 Thomas: Yeah Yeah

0:39:01 Tom: Yeah. Well, that that's exactly it. I, know, I also think, you what do you think about kids? Like they're not, I mean, for the most part, most of the indoctrination that they receive is, is not by Googling news sources and reading bad articles.

0:39:01 Eli: Yeah

0:39:13 Thomas: This Is kind of broadening it it out a little Bit, yeah, yeah

0:39:15 Tom: Right. But But I want to come back and say, you Know, cause one of the notes I have here is that, you know, when I look at the, uh, Jordan Peterson's and, you you know, the, the other sort of manosphere folks, there is a heavy handed paternalistic aspect to the way that they speak and the advice that they give and the, you know affectations that they put on. And all of that, I think is specifically designed. And I, and I use that word intentionally. I think it is designed to allow them to step into a paternal realistic role to fill a role.

0:39:16 Eli: Yes Yeah

0:39:49 Tom: Well, part of the reason we wanted to start this show is there's so many bad, had, unavailable, shitty dads, there are so many dads that just don't do the work, and so I remember, and again I'm not trying to over universalize, but I remember having grown up without a mom, and one of the things that you just naturally do, I think, is you go look for mother figures to act in that role in your life, because it feels weird not to have it, and I think that the internet is offering, and and specifically, the right wing internet is offering these personalities up in these really aggressively designed and paternalistic ways to fill that role for kids and young people who never had that role filled properly before.

0:40:34 Thomas: And they do that little impression of a harsh truth, they rely on these dad tropes of like Well, they say that, uh, wage should be 20, but here's the harsh truth, you know, they phrase it as all like, yeah, here's the counterintuitive I know

0:40:49 Eli: Here's the real deal here's the straight shoot

0:40:42 Tom: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah, fine. And you as a kid, finally, someone's leveling with me.

0:40:56 Thomas: Know, the people who touchy-feely think, you know, people should be paid a living wage because they're fucking touchy, or, what, here's the real dad, you know, about how the world is not fair and why actually I'm funded by the Koch brothers and I should still make all the money is actually what's happening, but they frame it in a way of, like, here's the harsh truth that you can't deal with. I, I've been meaning to bring this up to you guys for a while, and apologies, I can't stop coming back to the toxic masculinity problem with it, because I think I'm going to make a controversial statement that might get me in trouble, I don't know.

I think that dads are, well, it's not controversial to say that we have a problem in our society, that dads are just shitty oftentimes, right? Like it just there, we have a dad problem in our society. And genuinely, dads are not as good at loving their kids. And I think it's because, in my opinion, society teaches men, white men mainly, that they're the main characters and that they are the focus. And I think that really loving someone, especially kids, requires a selflessness that

0:41:06 Tom: Yep. Yeah? No,

0:41:35 Eli: Yeah absolutely

0:41:59 Thomas: Our society doesn't teach to men. Our society teaches that men get to do the heroic, oh, it's the prince and the knight that does the da da da, and the woman in the story classically is the one that does nothing, like, just waits around and is like exists for the male character. And I truly think that message gets reinforced everywhere in stories, and in all these things in our society. And I think, to really be a good parent, to really love someone, I think there's selflessness there. It to be about the person, the object of your love more.

You can't love someone if you narcissistically think you are the main character and they should be paying attention to everything you do and care about everything you doing. And I think the key problem is that so men still retain that message of they're the main characters, and anything society is doing to try to change, to say, hey, actually these people over here have gotten a raw deal, like people have been discriminated against, or these people haven't been, you haven't be considering their needs and feelings as much as you should, there is just such a natural, uh, and ingrained backlash that humans have, specifically, you know, men have, that like, I, I shouldn't have to fucking change my behavior, like I should be paid attention to, I should still have the standing in society that I had in the 50s or whatever as a white man, and any attempt to change that is an attack on their identity, and it starts, it starts really young, and I think that's the key thing I think to push back on, is teaching empathy and trying teaching to model real equality in that way, and not model the idea that you, the man, is the the adventurer that does the stuff and the woman is the one who waits by and does nothing.

0:42:21 Eli: Yeah

0:42:31 Tom: Absolutely. Absolutely.

0:42:44 Eli: And again, just think about what a huge cause, god, there's so much right about what you just said, like I hate to be a podcast where we just agree with each other, but fuck yes, like, about how hard it is to wrap your head around, you have been part of something bad that you, right, have contributed to it, you've been a part of it, the history, because the hero's journey does not include stealing the sword from the lady in the lake, right, she fucking gives it to you, right?

So it's really hard to wrap your head around, like, yeah man, you are walking on the shoulders of oppressed people and and your journey should be about raising them up, it should not be about achieving your dreams, Arthur, or conquering, or, you know, all this shit that society has built on. You, and I also just think that this has occurred to me while you were talking, is like all the things that society does to separate fathers from their families, right, the increasing time of the work day, the that men are expected to be gone 10, 12 hours a day, how many families we destroy and break up with our crazy drug laws and the prison system, and how, how we've destroyed the notion of fatherhood in so many communities, right?

So many parts of culture now have turned fatherhood into like a weaponized part of community, and how the alt-right uses that, right, uses the fact that, like, these drug laws have separated especially poor people from their families, and so they then turn to those people and say, look, they're poor, they can't even keep their families together, without acknowledging that that's been part, part of like a personal systematic attempt to destroy the very structure that these societies are built on, and

0:43:50 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah, mm-

0:44:42 Tom: Yep.

0:45:23 Tom: Yeah. And I think, I Thomas you're, exactly right. And I think the corollary to that that's problematic is that by and large, many of the social structures that we live and work within don't just demand, but they reward exactly that behavior for men. And It's it very difficult to swim upstream against a series of social incentives like That is, that I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, you should do it, but I will say it takes a, it takes the specific and conscious actor to do that, because the it is still the case that many of the social incentives reward exactly those kinds of behaviors. And we know that they do because those are the stories we tell about the heroes that still are our Heroes rose, yep.

0:45:39 Thomas: -hmm yeah yeah I Was just gonna bring that up, the story, one, one thing that really occurred to me, it always bothered me but I didn't have the language for it, like, why I never watched it, like fucking House, I never watched that fucking show, there is no female equivalent of that character, maybe there is by now, now, I don't know if somebody's tried it, but the classic character, and as a little boy, as a little boy who wanted to be like smart, like I always, my only goal, I don't know why, but it was always I had to be smart, like I had to be, you know, I had to be the genius in the class that I, that was the pressure that I felt as it, for some reason, that I was always that need to be the smart kid in every class, every room.

And so that kind of shit, that character that we do where the person who has all the answers that we all need, need to pay attention to and that we're all dependent on, is a fucking asshole, dude, and his behavior is just his behavior, and he gets to do it for some reason, and we all need him, and we can't, oh, you know he's an asshole, but we gotta, we're so dependent on him, and he's so great, that character is everywhere, and it teaches such a bad message. Imagine for one second the female equivalent of that character, you'd be like, well, fuck that, you know, be weird

0:46:51 Tom: Yeah

0:47:11 Thomas: Like that's what society would do, you know, right

0:47:11 Tom: It Doesn't Work Right It socially doesn't work

0:47:14 Eli: And emotional is always to that character, right? House, Sherlock Holmes, right, there is always an emotional foil who is worthy of scorn and derision, right, Sherlock has Watson, and Watson's like, I don't know, Sherlock, perhaps we shouldn't be mean to these people, and he's like, I'm too smart to be nice, and we're supposed to be like, he's too smart to be nice, right, and the same with house and whatever, cancer doctor, right, Cows would just walk around, a cancer doctor would be like, hey man, don't like just shout in people's faces, and he'd be like, I have to shout in people's faces, that's the only way to get the truth, right?

0:47:25 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah so

0:47:26 Tom: Yep

0:47:49 Eli: And but, like, again, these structures are part of it, I do want to get to answers because we're getting towards the end of our time, right

0:47:48 Thomas: Dumb god yeah now let's just highlight a ton of problems and then hang up

0:47:57 Eli: I do want to get two answers, uh, so the first, and again, I think Tom absolutely hit it on the fucking head, which is you gotta check in emotionally with where your kids, you got to be willing to accept uncomfortable answers about your kid being sad, about your kid needing mental health support, about you kid needing perhaps mental health care, right, the first thing. The other thing is you need to be wiling to have different conversations, right.

Of the examples that I gave earlier is like black on black violence and how that's a right wing canard, right, your kid comes to talk to you about these issues, right, and and they have right wing canards loaded in the back pocket, you need to be willing to do the research and demystify those myths for them, right? You need to able to say like, hey, yeah, no, I have read that too. Let me explain to you how that's a bad framing of the argument, right?

And then break that down for them. And you could do that for a variety of social justice. Right. There's a, there's a million right wing trick questions, if you will, or trick topic bring ups that it's pretty important that you get conversant in. But more important than than that, and this is really what I wanted to hit home, because this is what's been studied and proven time and time again, is that empathy and personal interaction is everything, everything, and

0:49:17 Eli: I'm gonna, I'm going to say something that is very, that was very uncomfortable for me, that I, I actually learned, this is going to sound so silly, but like I learned this in a university training for one of my trainings, is, um, Robin and DiAngelo came in and spoke to one of the universities that I teach for and she got up in front and said to me, and there's a great video online that you, you can look up, but she said, um, society teaches you that that you can spend your entire life, never sharing a meal with a person of color, never having a friend who is a person who's not, having one black friend, and that you have missed nothing, right?

You can be a doctor, that can be a teacher, that can be white person with an all white cast in your life, and that you have lost and missed out on absolutely nothing.

And I will be a little bit vulnerable here, because I was an adult with an audience, and when I heard that, I got super defensive, I got my cognitive dissonance, if you'll forgive the pun, uh, my cognitive dissidence kicked right the fuck in, and I got real huffy in my seat in the back of the room, and I was like, what am I supposed to do, just make black friends for the sake of making black friends, like this lady's calling me a racist because I don't know, and I like recognize that in myself, at least because I'm wrong so often I've at least gotten good at recognizing that.

But the truth of the matter is that if you're not exposing your kid, right, different kinds of people, they're not going to be able to relate to those people, right? Because more than anything, more than arguments, more than logic, more than education, more than money, more than time, the thing that changes people's mind is empathy.

And seen it in our own community, right, I've had people who I did, and God, Thomas, you know this too, we've had people who we've done hundreds of email and Twitter conversations with, right, and we've made no progress, and they listen to one of Cali Writes' podcasts, right, then all of a sudden an issue that I could not get through clicks for them because they have that emotional, emotional, empathetic connection to the issue. Right.

And so one of the really tough ones, and again, like, will say, I personally had a tough time hearing this, one of the tough ones is to check in with yourself and say, have I invited different people, oppressed people into my life? Or do I have all white, straight, you hat friends and family? Um, what lessons am I denying my children with that of

0:49:16 Tom: Yep

0:49:29 Thomas: It's hard, though, because we're set up to fail because society is more segregated now than in the times of segregation,, like we're geographically sorted so that it is very difficult for a lot of America to even be in the presence of diverse groups of people as you're talking about.

0:51:59 Eli: Course

0:52:00 Tom: Yeah it's real tough in the Midwest, no

0:52:00 Eli: It's

0:52:02 Thomas: Yeah. So I guess I would say that I think, you shouldn't look at that as an attack on them, that it's their fault for not doing this. But it is something that you have the responsibility to to try to change if you can. And if not, something where you just don't have diverse friends, it is also a weird, awkward overreaction to be like, I gotta go find a black guy. Just like to be, like, you know, like that doesn't make any sense. That's even like, that's weird and racist too as a white person to be Like, I need to go like just force a black person to be my friend. That's weird. But like at the very least being open and looking for to be something to change if the opportunity comes up.

0:52:24 Eli: Right and just checking in with yourself and saying like because

0:52:40 Thomas: Yeah. Well, and I was going to say media wise, as you said, too, like making sure that and that's something that's easier than ever, that your child is able to consume diverse media. And it's not all just isn't it crazy how recently all of TV was just like white? Like it's Not even that long ago. Yeah. Every single person was white.

0:52:52 Tom: Yeah

0:52:58 Eli: Friends fucking friends Friends. I grew up on friends. There's one fucking black person in friends. That's so fucking crazy.

0:53:10 Tom: Well it's New York, New York's not diverse at all like

0:53:10 Eli: Right. Exactly. That famously white city of New York or just like and you look at, like, again, talking from my own place of vulnerability, like I think that's a, that cognitive distance is a real issue. You, not to get too, like, topical, but like fucking people freaking out about Ariel the mermaid being black, like it's so

0:53:13 Tom: Right I

0:53:16 Thomas: Yeah that real, though, because I'm to the point now where I don't know that any of this is real I only ever see stuff that can't be fucking real, but maybe, it's as you said, it's the one guy with the 20 accounts or something just doing all that shit good

0:53:32 Tom: I can't tell either what

0:53:34 Eli: Here's the thing yeah well that that's a big part of it, right, is that you have to understand that it is, uh, that's huge thing also to understand, which is that the anonymous internet isn't real, and you need to reinforce that for your children all the time, right?

0:53:53 Tom: To add a piece of advice to along with your advice, and that is to the point of being demanding that your kids, especially as they get older, that they have more and more real-life, one -on -one, physical interactions with people, and that's how they spend most of their time. You need to, like, keep them, you know, I know, but it can be done. Spend most of their time. But these ideas, these bad ideas, they fucking wither and die in the sun. They don't work when they're disconnected from the online world. They don't they they They don't. They can't fucking breathe in the real world. They don't have enough. They don't have the air out here. They need the fucking rotten soil of the fucking online world in order for them to grow. So the more time that you can encourage your kids to spend with their best friend with their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, let's physically being present in the world, that is every hour they do that is an hour they're not spending ensconced in these fucking horrible ideas or in horrible idea adjacent spaces.

0:53:56 Eli: Yeah yeah mm

0:54:13 Thomas: Luck with that yeah my part of, in terms of adding to the solutions part, um, was going to hit on on the empathy part, because I find, I, the biggest divider there between people who are susceptible to this, or people who get into this, and mainly, mainly men, obviously, mainly boys, is that lack of empathy, is that ability.

I am honestly fucking still shocked, um, can't remember if I mentioned on this show to you guys, but I play Rocket League, like that's a game that I play a lot, it's like, like soccer with cars basically, it's really fun, and I can't go a single day session of playing Rocket League without somebody's username being a racist slur, without somebody team name being racist, I reported every time, it does nothing, I reported, there's a report button, or without the chat turning racist or turning homophobic, and as much as we think, and mainly Eli, when we've had this conversation, thinks we're in some brave new world of like the gender is gone and all this stuff, you spend one minute in a video game, this is, there's nothing adult about this video game, I'm not playing some adult video, I'm playing cars

0:55:43 Tom: Jesus Christ right

0:56:09 Thomas: Hit a ball, there's nothing my child could play this well, kind of, I mean, yeah, it's like it's just any age basically, it's one of those kind of games, and and look, a lot of serious adults play this game.

0:56:09 Eli: Yeah you're playing a game aimed at children, yeah okay a lot of real

0:56:23 Thomas: Okay, hey, there's a major there's a major. There's a there's a league. You a there is a championship that where millions of dollars are won by people by adults. Look me in the eyes, Eli adults who are good at this game.

0:56:23 Eli: Grown -ups playing Rocket League, Splatoon is a high competition my adults, adults who fuck with balls full full raw dog raw dog no condoms

0:56:38 Thomas: Okay, who have had sex with a woman. Okay. But you go you cannot go one play session without seeing that and it's it's so sad to me. It is so sad because the the empathy is the key, the ability. I want my kids. And I really think you just have to model it. You can't just say stuff. You have to Model it. And you have to spend a lot of time. You have to put in the time of all kinds of interactions throughout your life, their little lives of saying, well, wait a minute.

What about from this person's perspective? You know, Wait a minute, for what? About... Okay, you're playing an online game. That's all anonymous. And you're saying like, "Oh, N-word, F-word," you know, as in not fuck, like the F word, I actually care about, um, and that in the chat, what if there's a gay person that you're playing with, it's anonymous, you don't know, what what would that feel like to you, or a black person or whatever the slur is that they're fucking using all the time, what wouldthat feel like to you to just be that person in that group

0:56:44 Eli: Yeah right French

0:57:18 Tom: Right

0:57:36 Thomas: And in that game and have that be a cruel punchline of a joke, like it's, it's sad. It is really truly sad that in 2022 that's still Feel just how it is.

0:57:36 Tom: No

0:57:48 Eli: This brings me really perfectly into my next solution, and this is really hard for a lot of parents. You got to participate in the internet your kids are participating in hey

0:57:56 Thomas: This is directed at Tom. I was going to say, Tom, it's time for an intervention for Tom.

0:57:59 Tom: I just no no oh

0:57:59 Eli: Yeah if your kid watches a teenager play video games, you got it. And I don't, all the time, not all the time because you got a watch the suicide rate about parents with skyrocket, but you got gotta engage with that content a little bit. Gotta, you gotta be there. You got to watch the person play Roblox. You've got to ask questions. You ought to be interested because I will tell you the truth playing video game, right? My father's rule. And I've talked about this, I think on our show before, my father's role was nothing. You can do whatever you want on the internet, but nothing you do can ever be anonymous. Right. And

0:58:05 Tom: Oh god what are you gonna say right now oh my god no I'm

0:58:37 Eli: That's Because he knew the minute I I could hide, I was already an asshole, and he knew the minute I could hide, I was going to turn into 10 times the asshole that I was. The truth of the matter is that your kid, if your kid's playing Rocket League in front of you, right, if you're sitting in the room reading a book while the kid's paying Rocket Leave on chat, probably not going to call anyone a slur in front of you.

The time that they're going to call someone a slurs when they're alone in their room and they're trying to be edgy for their friends, right? And the you're going going to hear PewDiePie or whoever slipping some racism or some bullshit into your kid's brain way before your kid is, right?

You know, when I talk to people about pewdie pie they're like, "The bro fist guy," and I'm like, "Watch a stream," and they watch a steam for, like, I would say, I've never had anyone make it more than five or ten minutes before they go, "Kids watch this?" And I go, "Yeah, a lot lot of kids watch this because there is almost always some racism, some sexism, and implied bias right there's almost always something there that, you if you were in that room watching and learning, would turn to your kid and go, why would he say that? What

0:58:38 Thomas: That's interesting.

0:59:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:46 Eli: Does that mean, right? Look, the truth of the matter is by the time your kid has gotten into these things, it's going to be much, much harder for you to engage with that content, right? By the time they've bought into Jordan Peterson, it's gonna be a lot harder for you to talk to somebody about their content and their history.

1:00:05 Thomas: Sorry, Tom. Do you want me to explain how the internet works to Tom? Okay. You plug in.

1:00:08 Tom: Not I

1:00:08 Eli: Tom, you're watching some Roblox Let's Plays, damn it. You're watching it. That's your, look, Thomas needs to get the diaries and you need to watch Finn's Let'sPlays.

1:00:09 Tom: Don't god damn I

1:00:12 Thomas: Hey, what does that have to do with anything? Anything, this is

1:00:21 Tom: I feel, I like, you're right, but I can't tell you how little the thing is. Like, I also feel like I, I know both of my teenage sons really really well and I feel like, and maybe this is too, maybe this is hopelessly naive, but like I know how they talk to each other, I know how they talked to their friends, I feel, I really do. And I know that they're not like, hear them talk badly about content creators that push shitty messages. Like my kids will talk to themselves and talk amongst themselves about, like, content creators that they canceled themselves in, in their lives, because they've pushed problematic messages and so I feel comfortable, maybe I shouldn't feel too comfortable but

1:01:08 Eli: Hmm.

1:01:13 Thomas: You justifying not having to watch stream video games isn't it

1:01:15 Eli: He's into whatever Tom has to say. I know my son would never, I won't watch any Roblox.

1:01:16 Tom: I don't fuck

1:01:18 Thomas: Yeah or or he's already a Nazi and I can't do anything about it, I can do, it's already over, I can did oh

1:01:22 Tom: You just, oh god I don't want to do that so hard, no

1:01:31 Eli: Makes you feel any better, Tom, if I told, I'm sure I've told this story of the time my dad tried to watch me play video games. I was playing, so my dad hated video games, he played NBA Jam,

1:01:38 Thomas: Yeah NBA

1:01:37 Tom: Oh god that sounds horrible did he stay awake, I've never stayed awake during it, oh

1:01:43 Thomas: Jam, all that fucking game ruled Oh, my god. That was the best

1:01:45 Tom: Shit

1:01:45 Eli: He loved NBA Jam he beat the shit out of me at NBA Jam. Once I moved past NBA Jam, he was like

1:01:47 Thomas: Um

1:01:47 Tom: It's fucking sports video games oh my

1:01:51 Eli: Yeah

1:01:52 Thomas: Even Eli liked it though, right? I mean, because it's just a good game, you don't have to be into sport, yeah from downtown

1:01:52 Tom: God

1:01:55 Eli: Also everyone had magic powers so it was pretty guy anyways NBA jam, but he tried to watch me play Final Fantasy 10. He was like, I want you play a lot of this game, I want to sit down and watch you. So he sits there and he's watching me play and he just so bored, he's like, what's that? And I'm doing the classic preteen teen thing, I'm like, oh I can't explain it, dad. He's a, doctor, a piece of shit, it's a health potion. But he's not saying it, he's not saying you. I'm a doctor at BC. She's like, oh explain that to me. He's trying to participate in this thing. I get up, I go to the bathroom, and when I come back, he's standing there, he's like two inches from the screen and he's waving his hand in front of it. He's like moving to the left and moving to the right. And for those of you who don't know, Final Fantasy 10 was a turn based RPG which

1:02:00 Thomas: Oh that's That's awesome.

1:02:40 Thomas: Hmm.

1:02:40 Eli: Means I choose, you know, fireball, and then the computer chooses something, and then it's my turn, but there's no real time. It's not like Mario where you're gonna jump on the Goomba's his head, right? You do a thing and then it just waits for you, right? So when I went to the bathroom, my dad had never heard of this before, so he, he turns to me and he's like, how did it know you were gone? Because as far as my dad was, he was watching a video game like Mario and all the Goombas fucking pulled out cigarettes and we're like, he's taking a shit give it a second

1:03:07 Thomas: We'll wait. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll be here. That's okay. We'll know. It's a buddy. Stop.

1:03:12 Eli: Fine, you let us know when

1:03:14 Thomas: Hey,

1:03:14 Eli: You're back, so he thought it was like

1:03:14 Tom: We're taking a 15 that's

1:03:15 Eli: Yeah

1:03:15 Thomas: That plant that shoots fireballs out of the pipe. Can you stop for a second?

1:03:18 Eli: He thought he was, was motion controlled or something he had no fucking idea and I was like, his term is like, why would you play a game that's like a board game and I was like, yeah, kind of, yeah, but right, gentlemen, before we go, important question. Why do French ghost costumes smell so bad? Because they're covered in sheet.

1:03:20 Thomas: Oh, that's awesome! That is the best.

1:03:21 Tom: Terrific oh my God, I'm glad you told told that one though, I want, that was, that worked, they're covered in shit, fucking

1:03:51 Thomas: You Tom would have just read it straight. Like I don't get it. Cause they're covered in shit. Why are they covered? I don'T understand. Why do they cover in shit? Do they, do they shit a lot? Is that the joke?

1:03:56 Eli: Yeah

1:03:57 Tom: Like the French

1:04:06 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.