Life After Sending My 12-Year-Old Son Away To Save His Life From Tech Addiction

Matt (00:00)
So you got catfished by a computer program.

Andi (00:03)
for sure. I showed his profile to a friend of mine. was like, I think I talked to a bot like last week. And she's like, I've talked to him. He's a bot.

Matt (00:15)
I'm Matt Handy and you're listening to My Last Relapse. Andi, how are you?

Andi (00:21)
Great, Matt, how are you?

Matt
I'm good, thank you. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate this. So this is going to be a unique episode in general because most of the time I'm interviewing people that are professionals in the addiction world or people that are in recovery. Just in general, that's how it's gone the evolution of the show is kind of going in different directions right now. And one of the most important perspectives and addiction that gets just kind of left behind most of the time is the family's perspective. And I certify sober coaches and it's a CPFS certification. So there's a family component to what we do as well. And one of the most important things that I always tell them is that like, not only is that perspective constantly left behind, but people that have gone through it from the family's perspective have a unique angle on what's going on with their child, their husband, their wife, whatever. And those people have a story too, right? And so your son is who we're going, it's gonna be the subject matter, but we're really gonna be talking about your perspective, your story, and kind of like your journey going on through that.

Andi (01:43)
Wonderful. Yes, thank you.

Matt (01:45)
Okay, so introduce yourself and then we can start wherever you want.

Andi (01:49)
Sure, I'm Andy and my son is Miles and he is 13 years old. He got his first iPhone when he was seven and everything was great for a while, but it slowly devolved into just a nonstop tech addiction. in May of 2025, which was about seven months ago, he went to therapeutic boarding school. So I told Miles that we were going to do this podcast together. I asked him and he gave me his blessing to come and share his story with you. And off the top of his head, he just started telling me everything I needed to tell you. So out of respect for him and really his journey, I'd like to start with just giving you his words. So I took some notes. He says, this tech addiction is the sneakiest. It's invading in every way. It's at school.

It's social media for females and video games mainly for men who want to shoot an alien in the head. He says it's pretty life ruining and it's a slope you can go down. He quoted C.S. Lewis from Screwtape Letters saying, the fastest road to hell is a slow walk with no milestone that is a little downhill. He said in some situations it's really encouraged to play games, but online gaming has killed tabletop games in person. But he thinks about tabletop games as like to be reborn, one must die first and tabletop games are making a comeback. And you get to have shared snacks and you get to develop house rules and he's still very much into gaming. He's like games with tech addiction. Once you give up, you've lost. That's just a basic fact to him. And you need a situation where you cannot do it. You just got to take it to the curb on trash day.

He says, you'll just be sneaky and you need a blatant hard no. That's impossible to get around. Schools try to push tech and kids find a way around it. It's dumb to have your own laptop that you carry around with you. It's not just giving an alcoholic a drink. It's literally having drinks in the school cafeteria and handing them to you with your burger. He goes on, we need free periods at schools where there are no screens. He says it has a dopamine feedback loop and it's going to keep making you quote happy and happier, but you just feel bad in the end. If you're a parent, don't do these games. Don't use your phone in front of them. Your kids are with them. Don't use social media under any circumstance. You have children there and they want your attention. And if you're a child, spend more time with other people. Family outings, play dates, and really there's just no excuse for being a lousy, lazy parent.

The wife blames the husband. She won't take it away. He remembered in Willy Wonka, they say to take away the TV and install a bookshelf. And the kids whine about it and complain, but after a while, they're forced to read a book. He thinks parents need to look at the school laptop, look at the use. Is the use for schoolwork? You need to click on it. You need to follow every link because the links are deceptive. And don't get angry at the kids. Get angry at the companies.
He used to do dead drops and this was like a spy tactic where he would take his laptop from school Put it in the park on the way home come home and tell me that he Had that's the laptop taken away from him. Then he would leave the house and go back to the laptop He wanted me to know that So your kids are not dumb they're trying to outplay you this is a metagame They don't understand you're trying to save them and they don't have the foresight of the future. But there are no parenting hacks. If you're doing a hack of getting the kids to do something, like do this and then you get the reward, like, you get so many minutes, they'll realize that and they'll hack that. They'll give you old homework. They do everything half. They don't do anything they don't want to do or that you want them to do. And they hope they will put up enough resistance that you just give up.

He recommends you get some nature, even stay at home moms need to get outside and go into nature for it. And kids with gaming are physically weak. They're not strong. It does have a physical effect. Let's say they aren't athletic. That's not an excuse for sitting them in front of a screen. Learn to dance, be less awkward, talk to a girl. You're going to need some experience in this field if you want to keep the generations going. He asks, how many real world skills do you have? How many have you gained in the last three months? You should have a minimum of one per month or per three months. He recommends reading and writing. He's more the reader. I'm the writer in our family. So says influencer should not be a job and your kids should not aspire to it. You are contributing nothing. Cinema is a thing. This is just popularity. YouTube is social media for boys because it shows them how to get rich by being loud on the internet. And he says when you're feeling anxious or just down, you just need to stop and think, take a step back and realize that things really are good.

Matt (07:36)
Okay.

Andi (07:38)
So that's where he sat after seven months of the therapeutic program. that was begun in May, but we cleared the house of tech in December prior. Yet he still had the school Chromebook.

Matt (07:51)
Okay. that he was dead dropping.
That does not sound like a 13 year old.

Andi (08:03)
He has matured tremendously.

Matt (08:05)
Yeah, dude, that's very surprising to hear from a 13 year old. It's one of the things, in 2026, there is no coming of age, definitive moment, ritualistic boy to man type thing anymore. And so at 13, most kids are not down that road at all. Most 18 year olds are not down that road. Right.
It's just like this arbitrary number, you turn 18, you can vote, you can go to war, you know, it's like, and that's the extent of it. Like, that's it. And so, you know, I think that that is a huge deficiency that we have in our society is that there is no turning boys to men anymore. They just kind of evolve into whatever it is. And it's manifesting in 40 year olds living with their parents. Right, still gaming. Absolutely. out of shape, no interactions with females, and we aren't even at the replacement rate for childbirth. We're like way below it. yeah, I personally think that the tech addiction, which is becoming a thing on the therapeutic side, right? There's adult treatment centers, there's youth treatment centers, but I don't think it's taken seriously at all. No. So okay, let's get into it. I do have a question for you. What was the decision that kind of led you to give him a phone at seven?

Andi (09:44)
Happy birthday from my parents. And it was their old phone. You know, it just put in a bag, brought to Chuck E. Cheese. I did not, my decision was accepting it. And I, of course, didn't see this coming at all. I had no idea. I was thrilled that I didn't have to buy one, because they're expensive. So I was like, cool. You know, and now he won't ask me to borrow mine.

Matt (10:15)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (10:18)
So one more entertainment device to occupy them. It started with all of the parental controls and educational games. There was a period where he went a year playing Simply Piano. He learned so much. He ranked in the top 1 % of users of Simply Piano. And it was like that kind of good use. But in, uh-huh, uh-huh. Because in hindsight, EdTech is also problematic.

Matt (10:56)
Yeah, I mean, it's still the same problem. It's like drinking beer versus alcohol, like hard liquor. Okay. Okay, let's go. wherever you want to with it. I'm assuming that we'll just follow your agenda.

Andi (11:15)
Okay, great. So I wanted to tell you about kind of the pinnacle of our active addiction. So we went from, you know, Ed Tech to him wanting to be a YouTuber. So I started a club called the Creators Club. And this was when he was in fifth grade and my little one was in second grade.

Matt (11:29)
Of course.

Andi (11:42)
And on Fridays after school, we would walk from campus to a nearby studio. And I had professional entertainers, like YouTubers, slash performers. I mean, people aren't like professional after school educators in this. But I had this vision that I could get people who really understood the internet and social media to come and make videos with these kids. They were going to be creators. They were going to develop their voice. They were going to do skits. Like, oh, you want to be a YouTuber? OK. I believe in you. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer, and my dad helped me start a band. So just I'm thinking I'm going to make this happen for you. And we had a handful of kids, like eight kids, and they would just want to play the video games together.

No one really wanted to record content. not like the playthroughs that they watched where like the influencers is in the top corner talking through the game. was like that was the idea. But in fact, they didn't want to be seen or heard because they were children. They wanted to be these men. And if they revealed their faces and voices that would not be what they wanted. So instead, they just wanted to train on the games. Like, we have to get really good at the games before we're ready to be an influencer. OK, well, that's a part of it. OK, well, let's practice the games. Let's get good at the games. But where's the videos? And so we made some skit videos. We kept them private. The kids loved it. They just loved getting together and playing these games. And I appreciated that it was social, and it was in person, and it was face to face. They're just all on their devices.

sitting around a small room. it was, you know, it was fun and, but in hindsight, I'm like, can't believe I actually started a, it turned out, we called it the YouTube club because like that's what, it wasn't the creators club. They weren't really being creative. But in their minds, that was like ultimately where they wanted to go.

Matt (13:57)
Yeah. Yeah, they had like a phase clan. You know what phase clan is? Phase clan was like the original YouTube clan that like they played Call of Duty. Yeah. But they're millionaires. I mean, they are some of the biggest crypto influencers now because they won all this money at tournaments and they just started investing in Bitcoin and they, you know, they're huge scandals. I mean, they're massive influencers all based on Call of Duty.

Andi (14:34)
Wow, that's what the kids see on YouTube. That's what the boys see as their role model. These are wealthy, popular people and they aspire to be successful and they just need to get good at these games. That they certainly want to win. know, their motivation is there to grow up and be a man and they're watching these men. They're not watching like, athletes play sports or necessarily musicians playing concerts, like their intake.

Matt (15:13)
Yeah, it's attainable too. You don't have to have athletic prowess, don't have to have musical skill or talent.

Andi (15:21)
to have high processing speed to be that kind of gamer. You have to have a really good narrative ability to do play through games. Yeah. So I would, I'm going to say that they

Matt (15:35)
I mean, yeah, what I'm saying though is that it's like what percentage of the world has become an influencer and what percentage of the world has become a pro NFL player. I'm sure it's a much wider, a much lower barrier to entry to become an influencer. mean, Ava said it to me like already, she was like, you're an influencer and like, no.

Andi (15:45)
I don't know. You know? okay, well, you can have an audience and you can make an influence and you can do good. How do you get to the level where you're making millions? I don't know. don't know. That seems like a smaller group. Yeah. And on the boy side, that's what they're going for. On the girl side, which I don't know much about, but you know, it's only fans. it's like, don't want to work that hard and then, you you I just feel like you can get played by the algorithms too, where you see you have 10,000 views, but there isn't any money coming in the bank. then you see the comments, but they could be bots. they're just getting your engagement and your free content.

Matt (16:51)
So in your opinion, what is the end game for... So for young men or boys that are playing games, theirs would be Fortune and Fame based on whatever games they're playing most of the time, and then for females, it's OnlyFans. It kind of devolves into... But that's it turns into.

Andi (17:07)
Well, that's not their goal. just, you know, influencing on social media can be a thing for sure. You are ultimately pushing products or propaganda. Yeah. But I think in both instances, ⁓ you are going for that audience and you're doing more and more outlandish behavior because that is what's getting The views. boys or girls, you're going to see pushing the envelope, pass social norms. For boys, there's also a lot of prankster videos and just, you know, it's kind of like, remember the show on MTV? Jackass. Yeah, it's like that.

Matt (17:56)
Yeah, that was like the first wave of... So I'm turning 37. So I was a kid watching Jackass. And they were like the first influencers. Right? But it was a whole... MTV just shut down.

Andi (18:10)
Wow. You could go back to the real world, not as influenced for so much. I mean, they had an influence, that landish behavior, where you don't have to be an actor, just do something crazy.

Matt (18:23)
Yeah. then you can go back to America's Funniest Home Videos, too.

Andi (18:27)
Yeah, those people didn't, they just, mean, yeah, you're right. They just submitted videos. Who was that guy? Those were candids, right? Those were from their real life. They weren't like trying. And the real world tried to pass itself off as candid. But we all know that there's retakes and people stirring the pot behind the scenes. And just casting.

Matt (18:48)
and incentivizing, like have you watched the whole like, like Johnny Knoxville stories, Steve-O stories? No. yeah, they all end up like destroying their bodies. Like, and it was always like this, the most extreme thing to the point where Steve-O when he, like at the peak of his addiction and the peak of like his showmanship, like this is a guy that went to Barnum and Bailey's clown school and like was like a performer ended up on Jackass, like dude, knock teeth out. There was a stunt that he was gonna do where he was like jumping across, he was gonna swing on like a tater tot type thing and jump across like a gap in these buildings and land on a pyramid of stacked trash cans. And everyone was like, this guy's gonna fucking kill himself. And they'd like stop him. Cause that was like how extreme it was getting. Yeah. And he writes about it in his book. You know, it was like, And they also told him, like at the same time, like when they stopped that stunt, they're like, you don't, need to go to rehab. Cause he was like doing so much drugs. It was just like this drug fueled what's the most, they were all doing it, right? Bam, Steve-O, at one point Johnny Knoxville, like, but then all of them, like Chris Pontius, all of those dudes, was all a drug filled, what was the most extreme thing. And that was the most popular thing on TV. Yeah. And this is pre-internet.

Andi (20:13)
Wow.

Matt (20:16)
This is pre-internet, iteration of it.

Andi (20:20)
Right. Have you seen In and of Itself? It's an awesome movie and there's a story about the Ruletista and it's this guy who's playing Russian roulette and ends up with a following. It's pretty cool. The whole movie's great.

Matt (20:37)
That sounds pretty awesome, actually. Is he online?

Andi (20:38)
You'd like, I think it's. It's this magician type guy performer, but definitely does magic tricks. And he's on stage in New York City and he did like two or three hundred shows in a row every single night. It's a yeah, it's it's like people came to it. Small audience, maybe one or two hundred people in the audience. And they made this sort of.

Matt (20:54)
This is based on like a real story? I think I-

Andi (21:05)
like documentary, mean, it's the show, but they kind of splice together multiple nights of the showing to like make it make sense because it was running thing. there's six parts to it, Donkey series? No, like a gun. Oh, yeah.

Matt (21:23)
Yeah, chamber and revolver.

Andi (21:26)
Yeah, and he just tells the story and it's inspirational. It's awesome. My kids watched it. It's not like adult in the sense of, mean, the beginning part kind of sounds scary, but actually it really has a lot to do with integrity and who you really are and being who you are.

Matt (21:50)
Okay. So at the peak of whatever was going on, actually let's go to the lead up to it. Seven years old, you give your son a device, right? And it kind of starts off like in a, almost like a non-harmful, very sneaky way, right? But where did it start to devolve into whatever it up being?

Andi (22:17)
Well, back to that C.S. Lewis quote, there's no milestones. additional devices is a big milestone. So then the PC in his room, a Nintendo Switch.

Matt (22:29)
Meaning what?

Mm-hmm.

Andi (22:38)
I mean, he had a Kindle, not to worry about that. So yeah, that's it. mean, it's like, you know, now you're gaming and having YouTube going. sure. Of course. And then ⁓ you're also, you know, the school invasion. I mean, like when he went from elementary school to middle school in sixth grade and was issued his own Chromebook, like I think that, I mean, that was game over yet totally because, but it was already, he already was failing some classes in fifth grade.

Matt (23:15)
Okay. And in elementary school, there was no device component to the schooling.

Andi (23:25)
They had them there and they had EdTech. Not a ton. But no textbooks.

Matt (23:34)
What?

Andi (23:35)
No, there's no textbooks in school. No.

Matt (23:37)
anymore.

Andi (23:41)
I mean, this is just Google's like giving out Chromebooks basically, and then you don't have to buy textbooks anymore. OK, COVID was like the big thing because he was in like first grade and they did get a Chromebook. We had to go pick up a Chromebook.

Matt (23:56)
Yeah, okay, so we're at home.

Andi (23:59)
Yeah. And then like we did the online learning, but like there was so much isolation and kids like could only play with each other and pods and we don't really have a pod. You know, like you're only allowed to like associate with like a small number of people because you're supposed to not. It's like a small family group where you've got maybe two or three families that allow their children to play together. Because other than that, you're supposed to be isolating.

Matt (24:15)
So was this like mandated?

Andi (24:29)
No, it's like a social norm.

Matt (24:31)
Social norm. Okay.

Andi (24:34)
Um, so yeah, I he got sent home from school March 17th, 2020. It was like rodeo season and it was the night I think rodeo was opening and then it was just game over. We went and got the Chromebook, uh, I think this was spring break, um, and then didn't go back to school for six months, um, or nine months. And so then at home, a big, Part of this was my problem where I used all these devices as a babysitter.

Matt (25:10)
Yeah. Yeah. as far at what were the behaviors that you were trying to quiet down that led you to just the babysitter devices.

Andi (25:27)
Well, sibling rivalry was the biggest. So I had a pretty good sense of like, you're bored, know, find something to do, like lots of freedom. But I mean, they would choose a device over anything else. So always. like, I have to take away the device or they won't go play outside.
they won't play with their toys. So the devices are just the number one go-to. So then it all becomes about limiting where you've got the parental controls and then you're setting timers and then they can ask for an extension. So now they're bugging you every 15 minutes unless you give them an hour and whining and it's like, you can put your foot down, that's fine.
it's like recommended, you know, no more than two hours a day or no more than 30 minutes a day during the week and two hours on the weekend. But this just all leads to them getting sucked in. ⁓He might my son described it as like the same thing with the one drink is too much and what? Yeah. Same thing with the minutes. So

Matt (26:37)
Where is he hearing all this? At... at... wherever he's at?

Andi (26:47)
no, I shared that one, at least just that one with him, just from my own experience going to AA. So I've heard a lot of it and I see it through that lens.

Matt (26:59)
Yeah, no, it's very analogous.

Andi (27:04)
Give your kid 30 minutes a day of an addictive activity. They're just going to get more and more upset about it. So then it becomes cat and mouse where they're hiding devices, they're hacking, they're sneaking, they're lying. Absolutely, just, you I lost it. Right, and ⁓ huh, I wonder where it is. Now we're all looking for it, and like, it's under the couch. wait. Yeah, sure. So then we get to the moral failing where not only has he failed classes, but like, we lost his sense of Right and wrong.

Matt (27:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when you think about device addiction from a neurological lens, it the exact same, maybe even on a crazier level because it's constant. When I was using heroin, I would get high once every four hours. When you're using devices, is, I mean, for hours at a time.

Andi (28:14)
yeah. After a couple, let me make a year or two of this. Let's see, so we're talking about a period from seven to 13, know, in the middle of it. So, no, actually this was in fifth grade. Yeah, when he was in fifth grade, I had gone back and forth with the school a lot. He was having behavior problems. what? Not paying attention, not doing his work, because it's a preoccupation, right? So he's thinking about it all day at school, even though he's in class and he doesn't have a device, he's thinking about how to beat the games, what he's gonna play when he gets home, he's talking about it all the time. So he's not there. they're trying to deal with it and they're not saying he has ADHD, but they're like, have you talked to the pediatrician and is he on medication, like hinting, we need some help here. He... Let's see. yeah. Okay, so I had done all the limits and we were doing the cat and mouse thing. And then I read this book called Courage to Be Happy. And it's about the Adlerian philosophy or maybe Adlerian psychology. It's an approach where you let people do what they will and suffer their own failures. they like, free will is the most important thing. You've really got to let people determine their own lives. And I was kind of out of, I felt like I had tried everything else and I tried this and it was probably inappropriate for his age.

Matt (29:51)
Yeah, I was gonna ask like that seems appropriate not for children

Andi (29:57)
Yeah, and not in the throes of addiction, which I didn't see it as yet. So, so we set out to have him make his own life plan and he had limits that he wanted to set for himself, for his screen use, and he had goals that he wanted to do. And, you know, it looked good on paper. He was left to do it. And I all I will do is encourage you and boy, like total failure. So he would, I don't know if he gamed 16 hours, I know he gamed at least 16 hours in a row. I mean, days, he would go like as long as he could a day or two, and then he'd just sleep. And it was like, you he slept through one of his best friend's birthday parties, and like, granted the best friend was just on his own PC playing a game the whole time. So it's like, he didn't miss much. But I mean, he went over there and fell asleep like on the

Matt (30:29)
Yeah.

Andi (30:56)
kids bed while the kids playing a game in the middle of the day. And he fell asleep like at family events. We went to like our family's vacation home and had friends over and he's asleep. Because he's like gaming all night, know? Just random, no schedule. It doesn't matter if it's night or day outside because he's in a trance.

Matt (31:18)
Yeah, is he doing that thing where like they are planning meetups virtually and then like going into game?

Andi (31:25)
That was a big hard no for me and he never got around that. To my knowledge and he's been very forthcoming. So no discord. No, I was just like you're not like talking to anybody that you don't know. My younger son, which we can talk about a little bit, it's very less dramatic. He played Fortnite and he had some online friends and I would listen to him and

Matt (31:36)
No plan activity.

Andi (31:54)
They sure were kids. I mean, I don't think voice alteration stuff could have, the way they talked, they were like little kids. Yeah, Yeah, it was, I I just, I don't know, I felt like he was pretty safe ⁓ to the extent of not being preyed upon by an adult.

Matt (32:03)
Which, what is the other game? It's Fortnite and...

Andi (32:22)
Minecraft is big. so they that's how they started. They loved Minecraft and it was like so cheap compared to buying the Legos. I was telling all his friends, parents like this is awesome. You have to get this game. It's like $30 and it's endless Legos and we would play together. We'd get in the same realm all three of us. I don't like gaming at all, but I would spend time with them and garden so my like one of them would be an architect, one of them would be more of like a rancher and I would like be the gardener and we'd just hang out. What? It was fun. Yeah. It was harmless. Like it was good, like family free fun.

Matt (33:00)
Yeah, so there have been more instances of child predation on Minecraft than any other game ever. and it's like, you know, it's, especially nowadays, it's becoming like a predator hunting is like a thing, right? There's like entire millionaires made off of this stuff now. And it's like they are meeting child predators on children's games. and these predators will approach them, groom them online, have them meet up in real life, and it's adults. But how many times does this happen? And that's always the big, how many times have you done this before? And it's devolved into this. Originally, it was Chris Hansen, where he was doing the Dateline and whatever to catch a predator. And then there was like, maybe 10 or 15 people that did the exact same thing and now they're just beating up predators and getting millions of views. Yeah. So it even still, even with something that on its face seems positive, still always, around the internet, devolves into degeneracy. It doesn't matter. It's like, plus internet equal degeneracy. It's crazy.

Andi (34:21)
Yeah.

Matt (34:24)
Wow. Yeah, it's like no avoiding it. You cannot add the internet to something and expect it to stay like altruistic or It doesn't matter what it is. So you're on Minecraft and are you enjoying it?

Andi (34:41)
Mmm, you know, a little bit. Yeah. It can be kind of cute and fun. I'm enjoying that they're getting along and they're not like, I mean, they're boys. And so they're not yelling and wrestling. I mean, I don't mind a little wrestling, but like in the backyard, you know, so they're not tearing up the house. So I like that.

Matt (35:02)
Yeah, so I'm the oldest of 10. Yes. like, dude, we were all best friends. Uh-huh. But, I don't know how, I guess I know how my mom did it, you know, this is the 90s, in like early 2000s, so like, discipline was defined differently. Uh-huh. And, like, lines got really blurred around, like, like today she would have been in jail, right? But back then it was like, dude, spank your
F'ing kid, you know, I was like, but sibling rivalry, I think contributed to like a lot of who I became. You know, it was like, if I didn't have those interactions with my brothers, would I have been comfortable enough to go be the person that I needed to be in prison? I don't know. Like if I wasn't comfortable with confrontation, if I wasn't comfortable with

Andi (35:55)
What do you mean? How so-

Matt (36:01)
just interacting with other men or like people my age, you know, like, don't know if would I have been the person in the corner, like in the cell block, you know, like, I don't know. Right. And so like, I know that I didn't go down a traditional path, like to becoming a man. But I feel like at least I had like a definitive moment where I was 18 going to prison and I came back at 21 like a man, you know, and like most people don't have experiences like that.But my whole point is like my interactions with my siblings contributed to the way that I ended up maturing. so, but yeah, I imagine.

Andi (36:41)
So yeah, the difference is going to be that there is not so much physical contact when you're playing with your sibling through the game. And it's also confined to the game's rules. So you're not having to make up your own rules and negotiate.

Matt (36:52)
Dude, I remember that. How many siblings do have? Okay, we would make shit up. yeah. Yeah, our favorite thing was like we had this little hill in our backyard and we would like make tracks in the dirt and roll rocks down them. Awesome. But yeah, gaming was a thing back then, right? We had PS1.

Andi (36:55)
I'm an older brother. Right. He would, I'd have to, I was the younger. You know.
Yeah. So we did, we did two, we had Nintendo. You play, you take turns, you get bored, you go outside. They're not that addictive. They got good. Nintendo's so good. We went to the movies over Christmas and there was an ad for the new Switch. And it was literally like a kid, I think it was in Central Park, a gigantic city park, laying on his tummy with his Switch.

Matt (37:23)
Nintendo and Sega

Andi (37:47)
And the three of us just burst out laughing because we're like so over it. I can't believe this. Like they're advertising like you could go to the park and play with your switch.

Matt (37:56)
Yeah, well imagine how like how deceptive things like Pokemon go is like as you're out in the world Mm-hmm, right and but you're incentivizing like going into like random places people have gotten killed for trespassing on people's property Wow, yeah, and so there's that aspect of it, but it's like, okay, you know, you're out in nature You're literally out in nature trying to find Virtual Pokemon that really aren't there Geocaching and geocaching was cool though back in the day. Do you remember that? Okay.

Andi (38:28)
I never really did it. Why was it cool? there was something there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is cool.

Matt (38:32)
You would there was a Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a website. You would go and get coordinates, like actual locational coordinates, like on a map. Cool. You would plug in coordinates, however, or you would actually get a map, find the longitude and latitude, and you would find like they had clues that whatever were ambiguous most of the time. And you had to like figure out a puzzle once you got there. And then if you figure it out, you could leave like a memento. Cool. Yeah, but.

Andi (39:03)
Scavenger hunt. Yeah

Matt (39:05)
So this is like the hijacking plus internet equals Pokemon Go.

Andi (39:10)
Yeah. Crazy. All right. I wouldn't be surprised if geocaching turned into some nefarious. Get somebody to show up at this spot.

Matt (39:18)
There is a website there was like a game going on called like aeronaut or something Necronaut anyway, it was like this thing where you would pay a hundred bucks Something and they would give you like a location and you would go there and you'd like watch people get killed No, it's like this rip. It was really it was crazy and people would like film it and It turned to this snowballed into this whole thing where people were like, and people were like, how do they know that this car accident was gonna happen? You would show up and a car accident would happen. Or you would show up and some, would find, people were finding dead bodies. Right? And so, plus internet equals crazy.

Andi (40:06)
Okay, you're convincing me. Not that I needed convincing, but here we go. Yeah, there's like, I hope there's a bottom to it. Out of it.

Matt (40:12)
Yeah. Well, okay, you want to talk about like the conspiracy side of the internet like who built it Who built the internet? What was the internet originally used for it was for internal internal communication for the military Right. That's how the internet started was instant internal communication and then they released the World Wide Web which was the What we see like when you type in to any browser, but this is all like The surface of the internet there's a whole Everybody knows about the dark web right, but what do they know about it? It's like oh, that's where you buy drugs or it's where you buy like people or guns or whatever But there's crazy shit going on online on the dark web on the real world to you like in the in the clear net, too But yeah plus internet equals crazy shit Yeah Okay, let's keep going

Andi (41:07)
Right.Okay, cool. Yeah, we were talking about bots like in your comments and I feel like and I was telling you how the kids didn't want to be seen on screen and like on the other side of that screen is like they're either playing with bots or they're playing with like people who think they're playing with adults but like you're actually playing with a kid who like should be doing his homework and his chores and they're not they're trying to disguise their age you know to
Like that's their game is like, I'm going to literally be a man. Like I'm going to practice being a man. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't, you don't know. So you may be thinking that, you know, you're having fun or you're training them or you're helping them, you know, in like CoLab games, like collaborative games where you're on a quest together and like they're on your team.

Matt (42:12)
What is that?like old, like Final Fantasy.

Andi (42:19)
Call of Duty would be one of them or whatever. There's lots of games, but you're on a team with a bunch of random people. what I'm saying is you think you're on this team, you're getting this social feedback, but what if the team is just bots and little children?

Matt (42:33)
Does that actually like, like there's other.

Andi (42:36)
It does. Well, Facebook has like said that they're using bots now and I don't know if it's just I mean, you know, maybe it's just a little like an AI thing to search for something that you're looking for like marketplace. I don't know. Maybe it's like a utility more more so. But I don't know why they wouldn't use it for engagement to make you think you have friends so they can show you ads like why wouldn't they? And then, yeah, I feel like comments are
Like I think they're bots. Something about Twitter and exposing people's, what do you call it? Their location, their VPN or whatever. Maybe it's not a VPN. Your IP address and how these people that were all about like MAGA, I think, were actually
And they were kind of saying Nazi-ish stuff on Twitter. They were actually from Pakistan.

Matt (43:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're talking about the farms, the bot farms? Farms? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ukrainian bot farms.

Andi (43:43)
Yeah, they're pop-Right, so mean, imagine you're arguing with these people.

Matt (43:49)
Dude, you know what they found out about that? Know what? They would target churches, like in the South. And there would be like, they would start a whole controversy about this church. And what they ended up finding out was all of the real people that interacted with it downstream, they were interacting with armies of bots on each side that just arbitrarily and completely made up this whole thing.

And then people are showing up and protesting and doing crazy shit, all based on a Psy-Op. 100 % made up. There was no real event to start that domino effect. wow. Yeah.

Andi (44:34)
It's like a false flag or whatever they feel, right?

Matt (44:38)
Yeah, yeah Yeah, I don't know. These are full blown. So this was like a big thing around 2016 was where like people started to kind of understand that like a lot of the shit is fake. Right. Right. And a lot of it had to do with like Trump getting elected and like, well, I found, I was down some crazy rabbit holes around that time, I'll tell you what, but like the spear of destiny and like just crazy shit was going

Andi (45:06)
Okay.

Matt (45:08)
Do you know what the spear of destiny is? The spear that pierced Jesus' side. So they claimed that this kid found it. So Hitler was on this world domination tour to find relics. There was this belief system that if you had all of these relics, you could take over the world. So he was going into Jerusalem and going into Egypt, going into all these crazy places and trying to find relics.

Andi (45:09)
No, tell me.

Matt (45:38)
and one of the ones that he needed was like the spirit destiny. And there was like biblical prophecies around like the seven trumpets and like people were like saying the Trump is the trumpet, like all this stuff. And then this kid found the spirit destiny at the same, and he disappeared, right? Like completely disappeared off the internet after he like, like all of me included found like saw watched him go on this journey to find this thing and he found it and disappeared. And then you find out years later it's like all this shit was just to stir people up. I was invested. I don't know.

Andi (46:17)
So there's like dimension A, dimension B, like that's our news right now. And yet the truth is probably somewhere in the middle or just in it's just right here. Like it's just, got to show up for it. It's not, it's not there.

Matt (46:32)
I don't know. The reality that we find ourselves in today is so convoluted. And I have a four-year-old, right? So you're talking about like screen time. Like she had, there is a no device policy.

Andi (46:46)
Great. Family movie night. Like stick with that. That's a good thing.

Matt (46:50)
So there's like, we're showing her all the movies from our childhood. You know, all the classic Disney movies, the golden movies. We showed her Matilda two nights ago. She loved it.

Andi (47:00)
It's so fun. I love Danny DeVito in that.

Matt (47:06)
Dude, it's such a good movie. I was like watching it all. I know every word. My wife's like, shut up. You know, but I haven't seen it in 20 years and I know every word still. It's like, is and she's sitting there like just mesmerized by this movie, right? It's like, OK. And the leading up to this conversation, I'm watching her look at this movie and I'm like, how different is that than?
So how different is that than YouTube?

Andi (47:37)
They have nothing to do with each other.

Matt (47:39)
Really? Like how is it different? Like effectively and like in practice, why is it okay for me to let her watch these movies and not okay for me to let her...

Andi (47:47)
I see. Well, I mean, first of all, family movie nights, like two hours on a Friday night with the family. OK, so there's like, but let's say that it could be bad to write like TV's bad. And like before TV, people were like, she always has her nose in a book like, OK, so, you know, are you going to ever see fiction? Are you going to ever, you know, relax like up to you if you think that there's something wrong with that? Yeah. So on this on that scale. Family movie night has a narrative. It has a story. It has a message. You've screened it and you've decided that it was good You can talk about it together. You can make sure she understood the message and What did it really mean to you? What it means your wife? What does it mean for your family? You can you know It's a it can be enriching and You refer back to these movies we watched A River Runs Through It over Christmas. then two weeks later, my son actually went on a trek to go fly fishing just like randomly. And it was like, what? That's so crazy. We just watched it. And he was like, yeah, it is amazing. And in that movie, we really explored the brother relationship and the little sibling who was out of control. And he suffered a horrible fate from it. But his family still loved him to the end. So you get these moral lessons and I think they're great, really. It's up to you. If you think you can deliver that punch by just telling a story, go for it, and you should. If you can just sit down and tell your daughter stories from your life, just keep telling her stories, great. But then something about a movie that's just, it's a shared.

Matt (49:38)
experience.

Andi (49:39)
shared experience and it's like even like everyone's seen it you know like the classics yeah like kind of just a part of the culture yeah

Matt (49:47)
When you talk about the great directors, they consider themselves storytellers. Absolutely. Scorsese, think, was talking about, it was, yeah, about what he's actually doing is just trying to tell a story. Yeah. Right? It's like, yeah, okay. And that's what they used to do. Pre any of this, was like they would sit around and tell stories. yeah, I probably should start doing that. I've got some crazy stories. You do, yeah. My wife was like, dude, you can't tell her that story. I'm like, all right.

Andi (50:27)
You know, think kind of going at what age they're at is helpful. you know, what are the stories from when you were their age or like a couple years older? Like, I feel like that's appropriate.

Matt (50:37)
I was like molested as a kid so it starts like crazy. Yeah, no, it's okay But yeah shit got crazy really fast when I was a kid. So mm-hmm Yeah, because I was like what story can I tell her she was like, I don't know But just don't tell her any of yours like okay makes sense

Andi (50:56)
You know, talking about relatives is great too, because like they have their life story. great, like those are great, what are they warning? Like don't be like this guy who ended up this way. It's, I think it can be helpful. tell, tell, like because those are real people. You know their real story. You know the impact it had on your family and you know how people view them.

Matt (51:02)
My relatives are fucking crazy too.

Andi (51:25)
and how it turned out for them. And those are like wisdom.

Matt (51:28)
Yeah.yeah, so one of my relatives was the first person to be executed in this country. Wow. They got off the boat, they hung him for starting an insurrection on the boat on the way over. Wild. First person ever executed here was my ancestor.

Andi (51:48)
Wow. Crazy. Come a long way.

Matt (51:51)
Yeah, well, I haven't, but some of my family has. Yeah. Yeah.

Andi (51:55)
For sure they have. You're doing great things. All of you. So, okay, let's compare that to YouTube. Down to you're by yourself, no one's seeing what you're seeing, nobody wants to watch what you're seeing, no one wants you to turn their phone to them and be like, check out this video, you know? That's worst. That is weird. So, you're by yourself, you're completely isolated and you may be following suggested things most likely, especially if you're a kid, you're just following suggested things. So your parents are not picking them out for you and monitoring and supervising and screening. And then they may be 15 second shorts. Kids will just watch shorts. I mean, it's the attention. So.

Matt (52:43)
You know?

Andi (52:47)
That's a problem. have no, I mean, they just have no moral benefit. It's like, so then you've got to look at the opportunity cost. You're like wasting your time.

Matt (52:56)
Yeah. Yeah, I saw this thing that, I don't know how accurate this is, but there was like a study that was done that said that since the introduction of TikTok, the average attention span has dropped by like seven minutes.

Andi (53:10)
I believe it. So then if you compare it to movies, it's like you're getting nothing out of it. It's sucking your time and it's making you spend more and more of your time. Like it's sucking you in.

Matt (53:24)
By using smaller amounts of time, it's creating this.

Andi (53:29)
Yeah, think part of, yeah, I don't know if it matters how long the video is, but like I am, yeah, it is kind of confounding why people get drawn to shorter and shorter videos. think it's just dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. So there's rabbit holes, especially with kids that are so weird because the content is endless.

Matt (53:55)
Have you seen those creators that are like Mickey Mouse-esque type videos, but it's like always ends up where like things are getting chopped up and like spanked? Have you seen that whole genre? There was creators, creators understood that like the target audience for the most engagement is kids. And in order to be on YouTube kids, you have to like meet a certain threshold of like, cleanliness. Yeah. And so they would like disguise the first like, however long of it. And then at the end of it, it's just like all of the characters like chopping each other up. And they got billions of views. I mean, billions of views and they were just racking up money. Yeah. Yeah.

Andi (54:41)
When my kids were little, would watch these things where you open up new toys, unboxings. Yeah, it was really big. yeah, it's like porn for kids, like unboxing toys and taking out the toys. And you get to look at all the little parts of the toys and what they do. And it's just so weird.

Matt (54:47)
What? That's like the pre-genitor of ASMR. ASMR is like those videos where people like, so the ones that I end up watching is like people taking apart guns. yeah. And then putting them back together. no talking, it's just the sounds. Yeah. And I guess like people, a big one now is like women using their fingernails to like do this on stuff. And like the different sounds.

Andi (55:05)
What is ASMR?
huh.You care?

Matt (55:28)
Yeah, it's weird. is the downstream effect of everybody having autism.

Andi (55:34)
Yeah, we can talk about that. So I mean, who knows where it's coming from, but why are there so many? Why is the race going up so much? I mean, I know there's a lot out there. Can we talk about tech?

Matt (55:49)
I think it's a...

Andi (55:51)
like de-socializing, stunting socialization combined with broadening the definition.

Matt (56:00)
That, yeah, when the spectrum grew and absorbed like so many DSM-5, like DSM-4 diagnoses, it became this everybody fits on the spectrum, even if they don't have it. You can find a characteristic of anybody to fit them on that spectrum. And now it's like, you hear like the 35-year-old, it's crazy. I had autism this whole time. It's like, uh-huh.

Andi (56:28)
There's a great gal who has a show called Psycho Babble. She's on YouTube. She breaks it down.

Matt (56:43)
A huge agenda around that is the normalization of the de-socializing of young men so that they can lower the population.

Andi (56:53)
Yeah, OK. The men are doing their own social movements online. You've got MGTOW, you've got incels. They label themselves, and they gather together and claim to be this thing. ⁓ So again, they're kind of socializing around it and using the internet to get their social fix, which is pretty weird. When you look at why, I I understand the depopulation, like evil threat.
And I don't deny it or I'm not going to argue against it. I just feel like the main thing is the company's wanting your attention to just sell you ads and more stuff. I agree. So like that's a that's a financial motivation. That's not necessarily depopulation. They I just feel like they kind of couldn't care less if.

Matt (57:45)
Yeah, I think there's a hierarchy in and I think the the actual epicenter of all of that right which is you have to monetarily incentivize evil in order for people to propagate it. and so in order to do that they have like monetized people suffering but ultimately when you come back to it it's like we want a smaller controllable population and so this satisfies like a ton of those things.
Like we can easily control them if we control actually their attention. We can easily control the population if they're no longer having sex. Like there's all of these downstream things that all go back to like there is this, you know, I graduated from a conspiracy theorist to a conspiracy enthusiast and so this is all just my past life. But yeah, it all comes back to like there is a power structure.that whether we can recognize it or not, most people can't, but some people it's very obvious that it's like, there are people that have nefarious, very ultimate, like world domination goals. This is gonna get me fucking canceled. And ⁓ these are all like different avenues that they're using to accomplish this very specific thing. And so like, but yeah.you have to monetize evil in order to have people propagate it.

Andi (59:12)
I am a huge dance enthusiast. It's my passion. love it. I am crazy about it. know how people will be like, rock climbing. And then they kind of tell you every facet of it. And it's the ultimate thing in the world. But I think that about dance. It's good for mind, body, and soul. It brings us together. I love everything about it. And I see this is just an opposite to it. You don't even show up. you don't touch, you don't interact, you don't see, you don't feel. You know, it's just, it's, and you don't procreate, you know, you don't go, you just don't go anywhere. whereas dance is like this, you know, loving communal.

Matt (59:59)
Did you watch the Cynthia episode? She is a... She does...

Andi (1:00:02)
No.

Cool, I'll check it out.

Matt (1:00:10)
One of them. She does like a Latin dance. Yeah. But I...

Andi (1:00:14)
Wait,I did listen to her. I remember. Yeah. I alluded to it a little bit. Yeah.

Matt (1:00:19)
Yeah, yeah. And I sucked at school because there was no girls in the books. Right? So I was like, why am going to think fuck this? But one of the only classes I got an A in college in was advanced ballroom.

Andi (1:00:36)
Awesome. It is easy to get A's in dance in college. I did that myself. Yeah. Yeah. Did my dance professor let us pick our own grades? What? Whatever you think. Just tell me.

Matt (1:00:49)
Dude, that's amazing. That is crazy.

Andi (1:00:50)
Yeah, she was awesome.For sure. with, like I see it in my, I teach and I see it in... Dance? Yes, I see it in my adult clients. Like they just have gotten slouchier. I've been teaching since 1996. And like you see this, they call it tech neck. You know, your head is heavy. It will weigh you down. It will pull you down. We have a mind-body connection. Like you don't want to be pulled down emotionally. you're better off psychologically if you have your chin up, if you're balanced. You it's less stress. And there just is a feedback loop to like your body's position and your body language and how it affects your mind. And I'm just seeing people like hunching over. It's like the opposite of the evolution chart of a man standing up like we are going down. So I work with a lot of them on posture. Almost every client or every other client. like needs to stand up against the wall with your back against the wall, make sure the outsides of your shoulders are touching the wall and the back of your head is touching the wall. they, mean, it's like crazy to. Yeah, I mean, they're like, they think it's outrageous and it's not. It's, that's how you're, that's how you're balanced. Now you can step off the wall and really balance your head. Like you can kind of circle it around.

Matt (1:02:06)
The lights come on.Yeah.

Andi (1:02:21)
Clockwise or counterclockwise from looking down on it and you can see like where exactly you should balance your head So for you, maybe maybe it is a tiny tilt Forwards, I'm not saying you have to have like your nose in the up at the air looking down on people But when I get someone who's really hunched over to stand like that They are like they think I'm acting I'm asking them to like cock of the walk like really, you know, and it's like nope This is totally normal and I've even had a client say I just I just don't think I can do that at work. It's like I would just look like I was full of myself. And it's like, no, you're good. But it's just because so many people are hunched over that you don't want to be the one that stands tall.

Matt (1:03:07)
Have you noticed this, like, for old people?

Andi (1:03:12)
More, way more so. That's a little bit more common.

Matt (1:03:16)
Yeah, but I mean, like, I look at like, when you look at pictures of people in the 20s, like in the 20s, right? Which was a very short 100 years ago, right? That was like really not, that was two people ago. Not even, that was like a person and a half ago, right? Just how much healthier they look, how much happier they look, and they all seem like straighter. Yeah. You know, and it's like, but not just straighter, they Like when you actually like read about people or like, anyway, where I'm going with this is all of the leaders of the world have been fucking old. Like they're old men and none of them are like bent over at the waist. And now you like see it all over the place where like old people are literally hunched over.

Andi (1:04:05)
Yeah. You got to watch out for your head. It's just, it's very heavy. It's, you know, bowling ball. And so you, so you need to raise your screens.

Matt (1:04:11)
Yeah. just stop with the screen.

Andi (1:04:17)
Well, I I get it. You're an adult. You have a job. So you need to lower your chair and raise your screen. That's just like an ergonomic solution. That's going to help a lot. I mean, if you're looking down at your phone, I mean, you're fucked. Nothing you can do about that. Yeah. But when you're doing computer work, that's a good solution. At home, if you have a computer station, just get that screen up to where you're looking up at it. And that'll help. It'll help just counteract that physical problem.of tech use.

Matt (1:04:49)
Yeah. Do you remember when like ergonomics became like a big thing for people with carpal tunnel? Yeah. You know, and then they came out with those. Yeah, yeah. the fold in, it's folded in half and you type like this. Have you seen those ones? It's so weird. Yeah. Cause they've like, yeah, they folded it in half. Cause this, this does not hurt you like at all, but you can't see it. So you're like.

Andi (1:05:05)
Yeah. So I teach couples how to dance and yeah, I ask, I ask everybody how'd you meet? You know, it's fun. In 2003, four, five, one, one of the couples said they met on match and that. Yeah. And like,

Matt (1:05:21)
Makes sense. 2005

Andi (1:05:39)
I want to say 10 or 15 years went by and like one other couple said they met on eHarmony. We're talking about five, six, 700 couples. And then past two or three years, I'm going to say since COVID, but like there wasn't, no one got, no one was like doing anything during COVID. So I didn't see anybody. But then, yeah, after that, it's like every one in three couples. Hinge, Bumble, Tinder. Yeah. So yeah. that people like also, they do, yeah, they do meet. I've been, I was on Bumble like a year and a half ago and I connected with someone and it's worked out. I'd love to tell you about him. But I also connected with a bot, not for long, but like I've spent time talking to somebody and it was like.

Matt (1:06:11)
Connected I'll define out of the box.

Andi (1:06:30)
I started asking about God. I said, you know, do you believe in God? And he said yes. And then I said, how did you meet Jesus? And like, no, couldn't answer. It's wild. And then I'm like, I kind of did other things where I'm like, I'm going to dig in other areas of his life to see if he has an emotional resonance. And he was like avoiding stuff.

Matt (1:06:44)
What? Okay, so you got catfished by a computer program.

Andi (1:07:01)
For sure. showed his profile to a friend of mine. was like, I think I talked to a bot like last week and she's like, I've talked to him. He's a bot. I mean, all I have is her confirmation. She's, you know, doesn't work for the company or whatever. But I'm like, that's so crazy. And then I heard about Ashley Madison. Like they were, they were bots. The girls were bots. Like a ton of them. yeah, I think they got sued. I mean, it was like a huge

Matt (1:07:19)
Yats. What? Actually, Madison was like the celebrity thing. Like high-end clientele.

Andi (1:07:29)
No, was, No, was that you cheat.

Matt (1:07:34)
Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was for married dudes. That's amazing.

Andi (1:07:41)
Well, yeah, but there weren't married women just paying tons of money to talk to bots. What? Yeah.

Matt (1:07:50)
What a great business model. Yeah. got it, they got sued for this.

Andi (1:07:56)
Yeah, there was a, I know the big scandal was elite. And then I think there was, yeah, I think it was revealed they were bots too. I mean, yeah.

Matt (1:07:58)
Yeah, I know that they leak out.Right? you imagine that like sitting back? Like these are, these are like our super villains today. Like I'm going to trick all of these men into thinking that they're talking to real women. Meanwhile, there's real women out there. Yeah.

Andi (1:08:22)
Right. Right. Yeah. And like then you've got these, you know, it's like incels or whatever you want to call them saying like, you know, the women only want like, yeah, it's like six pack and six figures. whatever. So and they're not even talking to real women. Are they? Are they just talking to these people online?

Matt (1:08:33)
They've got these, do you know what Whatever, the Whatever podcast is? Okay, so there are, so within the Red Pill movement, which you know what that is, right? The Red Pill, so.

Andi (1:08:57)
Yeah. Well, you could divide it for me. mean, I'm not like a...

Matt (1:09:01)
So there's like the normal definition of what the red pill is, which I don't really even know. I don't even know like how to do that. But what I call it is like a data pack. Like it's a prescriptive data pack for what a man that prescribes to it should in practice be, right? Because there is like, it's hard to like hammer down somebody who is a red pill person. Because when you try to say, Andrew Tate is a red pill guy, it's like, no, he's actually a black pill guy because he's got, like, this other crazy shit going on. But anyway, so there's within the red pill sphere, they've started like all these dating podcasts, right? And it's like two guys with like very conflicting worldviews from the girls that come on, they will sit there and debate like worldview. and they will talk about the dating landscape and the dating market. this is one of the most famous ones, right? It's called the Whatever Podcast. there's like, Brian Atlas is the host, and then now his very normal co-host is Andrew Wilson. And he's a political commentator, Orthodox Christian. Brian Atlas was an atheist who's converting into orthodoxy actively right now, and they bring OnlyFans girls on.

And they ask them, what are your, because this is the pinnacle of what girls are aspiring to be now. It's successful top one percenters of OnlyFans, right? And they bring these girls on, and they're asking them, what are the bare minimums that you want from a man? What are this? And they're talking about, I want $500,000 at a minimum. They've got to be over six feet tall. And so it's like, but. All of these incels and all of these other men are watching very specific, very pointed content towards like, they are modeling, because they don't interact with real women. They are modeling all of their belief systems on this very specific archetype of a woman. And that is really what they're saying is that like, they gotta be six feet, they gotta be a millionaire, they gotta be 23, they gotta be this, they gotta be that, they gotta have a... And it's like, you're talking about like the 0.001 % of males in the world.

And then, you know, there's like all these dating statistics and studies that come out and it's like 80 % of women seek 20 % of men. Yeah. So that means that 80 % of men are going to look for 20 % of women, right? So they're all fighting over, you know, in their like, to use that language is like they're fighting over scraps because these are the girls that these guys don't want. And these are the guys that we are not. So it's like this whole Hodgepodge of just mess. The dating landscape has become a fucking mess. Right? And I've got a friend right now. He's 54. He just married a 27 year old. And the majority of the world, based on arbitrary right and wrong definitions, would say that that's gross. Right? But when you really look at it, he, as a single male, with a successful business, and mature, good looking, in shape, he has all of the dating collateral for the males. And so who's he gonna match with? A 45 year old single woman with kids or a 27 year old woman who's good looking, who whatever. They are matched on the dating scales. But the rest of the world would be like, that's gross. It's like, dude, don't listen to them. Dude, you're happy, whatever. Who cares what they think?

All of these voices are so loud. Like this is who we're, these are, this is who's influencing people is like people that will tell you that that is wrong and gross, but can't actually tell you why from their own worldview, why it's wrong. They just know that it's gross because that's what it is. And so it's like, and then you've got kids that are aspiring to do that. Like they are trying to be the new talking head. Yeah. We've taken over, the mainstream media with small content creators. And so now they are the people who dictate what's right and wrong instead of conglomerates or whatever. But it's just as dangerous. Because we're talking about uneducated, unexperienced, really shut-ins that are trying to dictate what is right and wrong to the rest of us. And we're listening.

Andi (1:13:43)
I'd say go out dancing, you know me. And in the 20s, that's what they were doing. And they were healthy and happy. yeah, go swing dance, go do whatever. Country and Western's really popular right now, especially around here. The dance halls are packed. You can find out a lot about a person. You can get to know them. You can see if they smoke or drink in real life. You can see if they are coordinated. You can see if they're intelligent. You can see if they're a ton of fun. You do, yeah. You can smell them.

Matt (1:13:55)
Really?break touch barriers. Which is massive.

Andi (1:14:13)
Yeah, see, she should get to know people, you know, and it's a great way to find, to just size people up. And I think, you know, we're looking for our soulmates. We're not looking for all of these checkboxes.

Matt (1:14:29)
Well that's a whole other thing, right?

Andi (1:14:31)
You can go to the app and you can check all the boxes and I did that and I met someone and he's a great dancer and you know, that's Yeah, I mean it can happen. I'm not saying I don't ever I met him on Bumble. Okay. Mm-hmm and I did that because all my clients were meeting on Hinge and bumble and tinder and I'm like, I mean there was one tender. Okay, maybe two so I'm not saying that that's it. Yeah, not as big as the other two

Matt (1:14:39)
What?

Andi (1:14:59)
But yeah, I was seeing people having success, which I had never seen before. And I don't know if they were just too secretive about it because maybe before COVID, like it was more, we're going to make up a story about how we met because it's embarrassing. So I'm not sure. But that's, I trust them. They don't know me. They'll just tell me what's going on. Yeah, I think so.

Matt (1:15:12)
That makes sense. Yeah, hookup culture is a whole other thing. You add male plus female plus internet equals degeneracy.

Andi (1:15:26)
I don't even want to know anything about it.

Matt (1:15:28)
Hookup culture is destroying the dating landscape.

Andi (1:15:31)
Yeah. So, yeah, we were like talking about who are these people and if we're talking about all these fake people, it's like the emperor has no clothes, you know? Like, what if we look around and we're like, wait, none of these, none of this is really going on. Like this is all made up. Like it's somehow this very tailored, you know, entertainment, but it's really just entertainment for you. Like you're thinking it's real.

Matt (1:16:00)
Yeah.

Andi (1:16:02)
Like not even like these people you're talking about that are like debating and like who who knows who they are. Yeah, random people.

Matt (1:16:10)
Yeah, yeah. So like Andrew Wilson, he is not an apologetic because in order to do like orthodoxy apologetics, you have to like have the church's blessing. Okay. Like in order to speak for the church, you have to like go through this whole process, right? And so he says that he's a social commentator and political satirist, but he does thousands of like, I've watched probably hundreds of hours of his content and He's like one of the few people that I trust as far as like this guy's worldview is public, right? And he's, you know, like it isn't just like his wife also wrote a book called like Occult Feminism. It's just the history of feminism. Like the actual not tailored for like third wave feminism, but like this is how we ended up here.

Andi (1:17:02)
Yeah, I'd love to read that.

Matt
Dude, it's a crazy book. Cool. Yeah, it's a crazy book because it talks about how men propagated feminism and for specific reasons like we doubled the workforce and now we have a huge tax base and like ⁓ We take women out of the whole again We take women out of the home and now their children will be raised by other people and they will have less kids Right and all goes back to like let's make people have less kids Yeah, so like it's like okay how

Andi (1:17:32)
Wow.

Matt (1:17:36)
Really, when you think about it, it's like women's suffrage, okay, like they should have the right to vote. But how did that start when for thousands of years, it's just not the way that it was? Who started this thought process? And it's like, a bunch of rich men gotten, you know, was like F16, I think was the group, right? And it was, they got into like the ear of these women that were like, yeah, you know what, fuck this, why are we home? You know, and then it like became this wave of just voices and it was like, okay, you can vote, whatever, you know, but then it turned into what it is today where it's like, after this like post sexual revolution, now we're in a situation where ⁓ only fans, right? And all of this is, when you follow it all back to it, it's like the epicenter of it is stop the population growth. Again, crazy. And this could just be like Me being a conspiracy enthusiast.

Andi (1:18:40)
I mean, it's a big deal. It's the first commandment in the Bible is be fruitful and multiply. Like, this is what we are here to do. Yeah. And there will be forces against it. Yeah. It's like, there's always been, you know, good and evil. So it's just adding the internet.

Matt (1:18:50)
Dude, add the internet, it explodes the evil. Yeah. Yeah.

Andi (1:19:04)
But that suffrage thing that happened a long time ago, you know.

Matt (1:19:07)
Yeah, well, yeah, but not OnlyFans. Yeah. And so like you add that last piece into it, it's like, okay, maybe I shouldn't say this, but there's like a, I read this thing on like the de-evolution of societies and cultures historically, right? And like the high watermark of the deterioration of any society.

Andi (1:19:11)
No, here we are.

Matt (1:19:33)
is sexual degeneracy and the normalization of the trans movement. It's like Rome, the Byzantines, all this stuff. It's like right before they fell, this is what was going on and we're right here. It's like, shit. We're teetering on what is America gonna be in 10 years? Do we even know? We don't know. I don't know.

Andi (1:19:59)
So have you heard about frog boiling with the kids shows? Yeah, it's definitely happening. Wild stuff. can't take your eyes off of it. You can't trust it. Netflix was supposed to be just like, you know, blockbuster in the mail. Like we bought into it. We've lifted it up.

Matt (1:20:02)
Well, it's like Amazon. You remember what Amazon started as? A bookstore? A bookstore, online. Now it's like, don't leave my, I do this too. I don't leave my, I don't even shop at the grocery store anymore.

Andi (1:20:28)
Yeah, well, that's okay.

Matt (1:20:30)
Is it? I don't know. Think about like the micro interactions that you have with people at the grocery store. I'm no longer doing that.

Andi (1:20:37)
It's lovely. You can do other things, I understand. Yeah. I mean, you don't have to, you know, talk about the cantaloupes. Like, you can go to the park and you can go to a concert and like you can be, you know, it's.

Matt (1:20:40)
Yeah. How long before that stops? Like think about the virtual.

Andi (1:20:53)
I'm surprised any of its comebacks since COVID. think a lot of stuff did, you know, it's still suffering. I mean, a lot of that hasn't really regained. But then there are some things that had a resurgence. I feel like the social dancing has. I mean, I've seen it. I'm very into it. So it's more popular now than it was. I think it hasn't been this popular since 1998 with the swing dance revival. I do. ⁓ And then it went to Latin dance, like Ricky Martin. You know, like that was pretty big. That was pretty big. was a thing. then after that, guess what happened to dance?

Matt (1:21:33)
XStreetBoys

Andi (1:21:35)
True. Where did it go? Dance went on your phone. It went to Instagram. It went to making dance reels. TikTok, COVID nurse dancing. it's a... Yeah.

Matt (1:21:50)
Nurse dancing I fell down that rabbit hole no I watched attractive nurses dance on

Andi (1:21:55)
You danced online? Gotcha, gotcha. So yeah, well, I mean, that's a huge thing that girls are doing. And so instead of, you know, being in a group or going to the school dance, like they are making videos and just posting them and like TikTok dances. Like that's that is our that has been our dance culture for 10 years.

Matt (1:22:21)
Yeah. 15 years. The dance, like even so I wasn't like, I wasn't like a dance. I wasn't like you, right? But I did dance and I started with tap and then went into swing and then jazz and and then like I ended up in advanced ballroom at 18. Cool. Right. so I danced and I understood dance and the differences and like step and rhythm and like all that. Right. But there was still like one driver behind it was like I got to dance with girls. Yeah. Right. But that dance is so different than TikTok. What do they call it? Trends. Right. Right. When I look at that, it's like not dance. You're just... Because a lot of it's from the waist up anyway.

Andi (1:23:08)
So many of the benefits of dance ⁓aren't happening.

Matt (1:23:13)
Right, oxytocin exchange.

Andi (1:23:15)
Yeah, I mean, you're getting some physical benefit and you're getting attention. So you're getting exercise, you're getting attention. You're potentially cognitive, you if you're learning choreography all the time, that actually is great for cognition. Maybe not creativity if you're just copying other people's trends. But if you're coming up with trends, great, you've got that creativity element. So I mean, there's some benefits for the person, but like compared to dancing with other people.in the room or in their arms, same room, same arm, whatever, it's lacking a lot. And then just the isolation of it's really bizarre to me. It's fine, it's just like very, I think of it as kind of narcissistic, like in the narcissist looking at him's reflection in the pool, you're like spending a lot of time making videos of yourself, reviewing them, filters, edits, cuts, this is very much about you and your image. Then you're like, what do you think of it? You know, and it's like, okay, well, who cares what other people think?

Matt (1:24:19)
Even worse is you're posting it and basing the value of it on the views. Absolutely. Okay, let's go back to your.

Andi (1:24:23)
Great girls are doing this.
We're dealing with an industry.

Matt (1:24:30)
Which that word, industry.

Andi (1:24:31)
Yeah, who are these people? They're making games, they're selling them, they're making bank and just leaving a trail of broken lives and broken families and broken hearts and lonely people.

Matt (1:24:42)
Yeah, and the R &D really speaks to their mission. Yeah, right? Because it isn't, okay, how are we going to get people to interact with other people? It's how are we going to rob them of all their, literally, this is like internal messaging is how are going to rob them of all their time? How are we going to monetize their attention?

Andi (1:24:46)
Totally. Right. Yeah. you're making them work for you. You're using psychological tethering. It's like a type of slavery. Yeah. There have been many types. There's been chattel slavery. In the Bible, there's like people who devote themselves to a life of slavery because they need to survive, right? And then, you know,

Matt (1:25:14)
Yeah, I was about to say that. Yeah, to survive.

Andi (1:25:28)
This is something that's new, and it seems voluntary, but it is not. They're getting you to work for them for free. All they need is you to just sit there and stare at the screen and click the buttons.

Matt (1:25:46)
The most valuable commodity on the market today. You know what it is? What? Information. Mm-hmm. Right? And we are, they are harvesting every bit of information around us.

Andi (1:25:56)
So creepy, so creepy that they do that. You know, mean, imagine like kind of, yeah, you don't want to look at it or think about it, but like the monitoring on children too, because they're innocent and they're naive and like they don't know that like everything that they typed is going back to them. I don't know if NSA keeps this stuff.

Matt (1:26:14)
I mean, we know they do now.

Andi (1:26:15)
Right? Yeah. do. They don't just have to get your phone.

Matt (1:26:18)
Have you seen the banks that they're building? No. The hard drive banks, like the storage facilities? They're cities, the whole city where the hard drive

Andi (1:26:25)
I heard about him. That's what I mean. also, so you're in, you know, the more time you spend online, the more of your entire life is going to be in that bank. The less time you spend, the more privacy you have. Yeah. And this idea that, I don't do anything wrong. I don't need privacy. It's like,

Matt (1:26:47)
Do you what a kosher phone is? No. So, Hasidic Jews, like in Jerusalem, they have kosher phones, where there's like no GPS, no camera, no internet access. It's like a phone.

Andi (1:27:03)
Yeah, we do that. My son has a makes sense. No, Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool. So let's see. You're talking about Red Pill, like the Matrix, Yeah, of course. It's the first Red Pill I ever saw. And it's like this enslavement of the people, like the lore in the movie is that there was a war. Yeah. And that the...

Matt (1:27:17)
I was gonna say

Andi (1:27:29)
humans like tried to blow up the sky and then they got imprisoned and they got made into batteries. We're just crawling in on our own.

Matt (1:27:35)
No, yeah, and this brings up like the simulation theory, right? It's like, what are we actually doing? Like how are we intentionally going towards this world where we are, you know, it's the transhumanist movement of, again, it's like the reduction of the population and the infusion, like the fusion of humans and machines. And we're like, what's Neuralink? That's like right around the corner. You know what that is, right? Yes.I mean, they're doing working wonders for Like blind people can now see, deaf people can now hear, like people with spinal injuries can walk and like...

Andi (1:28:19)
Perfect. Yeah, awesome.

Matt (1:28:20)
But then what about that guy that gets it implanted so that he can think faster than everybody else? Then everybody will have to do that to catch up. Right? And then slowly, a normal human will be subpar. Right?

Andi (1:28:28)
No, spiritually. No, no, no. is a temple. Okay.

Matt (1:28:40)
In performance, in performance on the market, in the job space, the dating market, in the sports world.

Andi (1:28:48)
That's not necessarily the most, those are all just like entertainment.

Matt (1:28:53)
For sure, for sure. But how many people want to unplug? Or even using terminology?

Andi (1:28:59)
one right here. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But not entirely. So I do like to use my phone as a tool. And my computer. ⁓ So let's see. yeah. I want to talk about Neuralink AI. You know, it's like the new thing and I've had some interaction with it. Recently, I was talking to my co-parent about some issues with our son and your son, my younger son. Yeah. And he, he nHe made up a song on a song app and like sent it to me and the chorus said, you got to give the devil its due like near the end or something. And I'm like, I disapprove of this song. Like I didn't say anything about the devil. You know, this, this is not okay with me. And he's like, it's just AI. And I'm like, no, it's subversive. It's wrong. That message is wrong. You can take a contrarian point of view, but we're not.

Matt (1:29:53)
Well, it's interesting because the bot wouldn't talk about Jesus, but he will definitely talk about the devil.

Andi (1:29:58)
Correct. a couple, can I share a couple more examples? like, I wrote a book and I sadly used AI like against all judgment. I was like, I just need a title for it just so I can like kind of continue to work on it. I was like halfway through and she's about to...

Matt (1:30:16)
Not sure how did Ava help you. She came up with this, we came up with this together.

Andi (1:30:21)
I love this title. It's so cool. So anyway, I just used it as a placeholder. Like was just there, you know, just to kind of like get me to stop obsessing about it. And, but I hate AI. I already did. And I was like, I have to change the title. I have to come up with something new and I never could. And I just, you kind of got through the editor and it got through like the guy who was writing the blurb. And I'm like, you know what? I'm to, I'm publishing this thing because like, you know, you just got to it out. It was called Steps to Forever. And it was about dance. Okay, so when I published it and it got up on Amazon, if you typed in that title, the very next thing underneath it was like an album cover with like a noose in it. And it was like, you know, as if it was like Steps to Suicide, right? Like how to commit suicide or something. It's like Steps to Forever. And I'm like, no, so I've changed the title. But.

Matt (1:30:56)
Steps to what?

Andi (1:31:19)
I don't want to say, I'm still working on it. But ⁓I think I got something that I got from a friend. This is the way we should do things, from a good natured, good spirited, well minded, person to person. Yes. So I just could not believe that happened. and then I told you about the bot on the dating app. So this just AI thing is so creepy.

Matt (1:31:43)
So I talk to my AI all the time. But the reason why is because when I talk to five different people, I'll get five different answers about any given subject. it's like the information is boiled down to the most pointed and relevant information. so it is trained, but especially for me, right? Because I'm trying to sift through

Andi (1:31:55)
Yes. Right. It's trained though.

Matt (1:32:17)
a lot of convolution around this industry. And so I'll have these conversations and I'll talk to people and I'll hear things and then I'll read books and see stuff and it's like, based on all the available information, give me the most accurate answer. And it'll like break it down on like, it'll give me the answer and then break it down why. And it's like, this was used and it's like, okay. So as a tool, but then like in college, There are entire classes that if you get caught using AI you will fail immediately. Mm-hmm. Right? And it's like this is... Who was it? I was talking to like a professor or somebody that was like talking about like how does this make sense that you're going to fail people for using a tool that's available in a world where that is going to become the authority on everything. It's like, yeah, we're in a conundrum here.

Andi (1:33:11)
I would resist that authority. just think it's not weighted correctly.

Matt (1:33:16)
Well, this is where we go to President AI.

Andi (1:33:18)
Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So I checked that out. It's like the Joe Rogan concept. Yeah. I think it's a terrible idea. It's just that he doesn't know like what to prioritize. Like there's somebody behind. Yeah. But there's also this, the fact that it's trained and it's programmed. So there are in fact people behind AI. And I think part of the trick that the tech industry is trying to pull on us is convincing us that the machines are not sentient. But the machines are, not by virtue of their own spiritual awakening, but by virtue of the fact that they are man-made constructions.

Matt (1:34:11)
Okay, by sentient, what do you mean? Self-awareness.

Andi (1:34:14)
They have, no, they have the mind of the people who programmed them. Someone in there, and it could be a collection of people, but if you elect President AI, you're actually electing those people. And just because it operates on its own accord according to their instructions doesn't mean that they're not in charge of it. And so like, I wouldn't elect Sam Altman as president or his team.

Matt (1:34:18)
Okay, so there's

Andi (1:34:41)
And that's who you'd be actually electing. It's the Wizard of Oz. You have to pull the veil. And then even I heard Sam Altman talking on conversations with Tyler, and he was talking about the insurance behind AI, like if they were to get sued for whatever they're doing to kids or whatever. he said, he related it to the banking.

Matt (1:35:08)
too big to fail time.

Andi (1:35:09)
And he has that in mind, it came out of his mouth. He's like, I mean, I don't want it to be like that.

Matt (1:35:14)
But it is. Yeah. It's crazy. I don't know. How about this whole uploading conscience?

Andi (1:35:25)
Like what Michael Jackson tried to do? no, he tried to preserve his body. Yeah, I've heard about it. You'd like go to the cloud.

Matt (1:35:31)
Yeah. What do think about that?

Andi (1:35:34)
I'm, it's kind of sacrilegious to me, like to think like of heaven. like I'm going to put my conscience, my spirit into like a cloud. Like I'd rather just go to heaven.

Matt (1:35:39)
Like almost her right I mean, do you think it's possible?

Andi (1:35:49)
I know where I'm going. don't need to preload it into a computer.

Matt (1:35:57)
I think people don't really understand how big of a deal this actually is. Like that we're literally kind of fighting for humanity's future. Sounds so crazy to say that, huh? The future of humanity is contingent on shit like this. Are we going to end up a battery? It's a crazy... Okay, so technology, just definitionally, technology, right? Eyes are a technology. Like when you really think about like, right, the human machine is a technology in and of itself.

Andi (1:36:33)
I don't know. Interesting. Yeah.

Matt (1:36:37)
It was God created, right? But it's still a technology, but so is language.

Andi (1:36:41)
What's the definition of technology?

Matt (1:36:44)
So it depends on where you live. Technology. Technology is like, well, let's look it up.

Andi (1:36:47)
was man-made. Yeah.

Matt (1:36:55)
But recovery is a technology, right? Language is a technology. These are also technology, but so are knives.

Andi (1:37:09)
Yeah, I just feel like there's a will to some things that are not technological because there's not a determinism to it. Like you could be influenced by physical properties in your brain, but ultimately like you do have a free will and that makes it not strictly technological.

Matt (1:37:32)
Okay, so it's the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. A branch of knowledge dealing with engineering and applied sciences. But when you take it back to Greek, it's art and craft.

Andi (1:37:48)
Okay, cool. Got it.

Matt (1:37:50)
Right? Yeah. And so it a lot dances a technology like a lot of things that we interact with on a daily basis that we take for granted. Earrings are technology. What was the use? was like attraction status. A lot of.

Andi (1:38:05)
You also use the little pokey ends to like split open a piece of plastic that won't open. I feel like they were a tool that women would store in their ears for like little tasks.

Matt (1:38:10)
I mean, yeah. So when you really talk about jewelry, historically where that started was with males, and it was for social status. OK. Yeah, so like Egyptians, right? was like the males predominantly wore makeup and jewelry. say that. Yeah, that's where like we, like for the most part, decorative jewelry, that's where it got its beginning was with males. High heels, males. Yeah, I mean, it's like, ⁓ so now when you talk about like feminine traits, masculine traits, now we're talking about like, what does it actually mean? I mean, it's generational, it's cultural. then those things are also technologies, right? But what I'm getting at is that like, when you talk about technology,

And when you talk about applied technology, I say this all the time. You can build a house with a hammer. You can beat somebody's head in with it. It is up to the person who is manipulating the technology to dictate the outcome, whether it's

Andi (1:39:29)
What about the user?

Matt (1:39:30)
It's the user that dictates the outcome. Okay, gotcha. So you can abuse. Well, and then when it comes down, where I've gotten to with this is, can I really abuse a hammer? And I applied to drug addiction. It's like, can I really abuse heroin? Or am I really just abusing myself? Right? Is where I have gotten to. So it's like, is drug addiction the abuse of, like, when you really look at it, it's...

Andi (1:39:49)
Mmm. Right. That's awesome.

Matt (1:39:59)
substance abuse. No, it's not. Right. Right. And then it like all tracks back to the industry and like, see, so it's like the way that we use words really, really dictates the way that we interact with our reality. And then when you think about what words are, they are technology. Right. And that's me. That's like how I deal with my reality.

Andi (1:40:15)
Awesome. Cool. There's this new, so The Anxious Generation was like the best book and we can get into that one. There's a new one that's a kids version, a graphic novel, mainly for like adolescents, preteens. Okay. It's called The Amazing Generation and ⁓ it's so cool and it just says use the phone as a tool. that's, you know, it's a phone. Maybe you do email messages, calculator, weather, time. when you start driving GPS, like there's a use for the phone. But you really have to use it as a.

Matt (1:41:01)
Yeah, again, it's up to the user or the human that is manipulating the tool to dictate the outcome.

Andi (1:41:08)
So this book is awesome, you know, just to have around to give to kids, to leave a line around. Generation, because it trains them. Like my younger son has read it twice already. He loves it.

Matt (1:41:14)
What is it called? The Amazing Generator. And how old is your youngest now? Ten. Okay.

Andi (1:41:26)
So let's see, just like more on the problem with the industry. Imagine a foreigner coming to your door with a video camera wanting to hang out with your child alone and you need to put your credit card on file with him.

Matt (1:41:43)
Wow.

Andi (1:41:47)
When I use the phone as a babysitter, right, it's like hooking up your child to a machine and just tethering them there in solitary confinement.

Matt (1:41:55)
Yeah, the visual of the foreigner was...

Andi (1:41:58)
Oh, you like that one? Yeah. Because these things are from, you don't know where they're from.

Matt (1:42:05)
Yeah, well, and even if like the even if the the software was created fucking wherever it could be created in the United States Who is actually the people that are finding out ways to manipulate it? It isn't us it isn't people in the United States, right? It's these Ukrainian bot farms and like these people all over India that are like Doing crazy shit, you know, it's like they're still not us You know, like we are literally welcoming the rest of everybody else in while we're actively trying to like America is more divided and more like blocked off and like than ever. in a time where we're actively trying to shut out our neighbor, we're actually welcoming Ian.

Andi (1:42:48)
Exactly. Yeah. Crazy. With self-facing camera and, you know, it's a lot. That's cool. Yeah.

Matt (1:42:53)
Yeah, my wife tapes all of her camera. I laugh at her every time because it's like, you're not doing, the only thing you're doing is blocking the camera. You're not doing anything else. You're not opting out of any of the services. You're not doing any of that. So they might not see you on that camera, but you're not like taping the back ones. You're only taping the front one.
They can hear you, they know where you're at.

Andi (1:43:19)
Right. It's crazy. Yeah. So you mentioned that the kids were the main target, you know, because they've got all the their whole future ahead of them.

Matt (1:43:31)
Yeah, it isn't just the hook'em when they're young, they're also oblivious. Right. So they are obliviously tight and they are like the squirrel see shiny shit and goes after it. Like when they see balloon or, you know, they're...

Andi (1:43:47)
gemstones on their screen. Yeah.

Matt (1:43:48)
They just tap on shit. Whereas like the adult will be like, yeah, not interesting or whatever. So they are the most vulnerable, most easily manipulated demographic of our population. So people figured this out and engineered shit for them to be able to, but then also they're feeding like nefarious shit into it.

Andi (1:44:11)
And I just want to look out for our seniors too, because they're in their retirement. So although their window of opportunity may only be 20, 30 years, they have endless free time.

Matt (1:44:23)
They're also being robbed blind, right? Like I was in the house when somebody hijacked my grandpa's computer and I could hear him in the other room like, okay, I'll get all this. His hard drive has like sensitive material on it because there's a lot of client information on there. And so he was like paying them thousands, like getting ready to like pay this person thousands of dollars to release his computer back to him. It was like, dude, crazy. this was in like, this was recent, you know, it's like the shit is still going on. Right. And they are targeting, you know, it isn't, you know, the average 35 year old doesn't have a life savings, right? Who has life savings is like retired old people.

Andi (1:45:10)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's like, you know, we know we're in trouble. We're all on this plane and like, we got to figure out a way to land it.

Matt (1:45:21)
no, we all know. Yeah, even people who will vehemently fight against the truths that you're talking about, they inherently know, like, we're kind of fucked. Like, there is no escaping this. On an individual level, maybe, but systemically at this point, no way.

Andi (1:45:35)
There is. I'm sure there is. It has to be a mass. mean, you don't need it. That's okay. Because you can save yourself. You don't have to go down with a ship.

Matt (1:45:50)
Yeah, you have to save yourself before you can save anybody else anyway.

Andi (1:45:53)
And then you can save your spouse and your children and your parents and tell a friend, and that's enough. That's OK. So you and I are seeing this marriage of tech and depopulation. And I know you see depopulation in other genres, too. I think tech may be the problem.

Matt (1:46:16)
It became, the internet was introduced to the public at large in 96. Okay, so this has been going on for generations before that, plus internet equals, yeah.

Andi (1:46:32)
Voila. Cool. So like there's the technology behind it and there's this science of the dopamine, right? So oxytocin has a half-life of 16 to 18 hours and dopamine has a half-life of five to 10 minutes. So Anna Lemke has some good research on this and it's, if you do get the oxytocin from socializing, from touching, it's going to last.

Matt (1:46:41)
R &D around all this. Have you listened to this show? Yeah. Yes. Have you listened to our lives?

Andi (1:47:08)
wait, maybe I heard about that. I think I heard about that oxytocin thing on your show. was Dr. Shaw. Forgive me. I'm like really wanting to like give everyone their credit. I didn't write down his name. Forgive me. So it was him. And I was like, wow, that's the tech addiction right there that you need to hit all the time. Yeah, he was amazing.

Matt (1:47:29)
And when you really talk about the evolution, we would get bored of Nintendo. Right? Totally. You fast forward 20 years and the research and development has really spot, pointedly, like, how are we going to hijack people's attention? You know, and then it's like this hypersexualization of a lot of stuff. violence too. I think that there's a..there is a huge value between the effect of like fake violence and fake sex. Because even if it's fake violence, I mean, even if it's fake sex, it's still sexually arousing. Whereas like people can watch violent movies and video games all day and not go kill people.

Andi (1:48:15)
True. Yeah. Still desensitizing. It's kind of creepy.

Matt (1:48:19)
It is desensitizing, but also I think this is was a major contributor to the situation that we ended up with as far as like mainstream, mainstream attraction to OnlyFans and that type of thing, where it's like 20 years ago, if OnlyFans was a thing, it would have been demonized. I think even 10 years ago, like pre-COVID even, if OnlyFans hit, actually do know what OnlyFans originally started as? It was for chefs and dance instructors and like...

Andi (1:48:53)
It started in my mind. Like, you know, during COVID, was like, I mean, I could teach online and like, would even like, I social dance. like, I mean, if someone like wants to dance with me, mean, like that, I don't know what we would do, but like, we could see. Well, that's how it started. It was right at that time too.

Matt (1:49:13)
Yeah, so I learned about OnlyFans in 2012. I had a chef that would do personal, like, would do cooking lessons online. And that's how it started. So, but obviously, like, with the situation we're in today, it's like, of course that was going to end up being where it ended up. Right.

Andi (1:49:17)
Oh, oh I didn't know it was that long. Yeah. Cool. The formula continues. Yeah, I remember Anna Lemke, she talked about the trance. That's what that was a reference. That's how I had her name in my mind. She also talks about info addicts. So like that's a whole nother addiction that like my kids don't do, but information addicts. And my son devolved in, I mean, he also went into Googling. Like once the Chromebook, I got YouTube taken off his Chromebook individually at school. Can you believe they have YouTube on their Chromebooks at school?
Like, I would look at his screen history and he would be watching YouTube shorts for hours. know, like that can't, that's the worst. That rapid. So horrible. So.

Matt (1:50:16)
Then it was 2016. That's when the fans started. Cool. But there was. Well, that's when that's when like the average girl like started to get on there because camming was a thing. Do you remember? Yeah. So camming was digital pimping. Gotcha. Right. Where like a guy would find a harem of girls and he would like.

Andi (1:50:21)
They got popular during COVID, am I right?

Matt (1:50:45)
Control them on these like this was Andrew Tate. Yeah, and this was how Andrew Tate made his millions was cam was from cam websites Yes Yeah, his whole mastermind said like all of his online stuff was teaching men how to run cam sites right and so pre Only fans and fans lean this type of stuff. It was cam girls And then when girls kind of got hip to like I could keep all of my own money they started getting on those types of sites, like OnlyFans and Fansly and whatever the other one is. Yeah, so it was like an evolution of another sexual freedom, which all, you can stem it all back to the sexual revolution and then go back to second wave feminism and then first wave feminism and then bam, you're right back to the transhumanist deep population movement. You just, plus internet equals destruction.

Andi (1:51:45)
Okay. So same with the information addiction. When you just want podcasts and YouTube videos and Google searches for AI results of things you're curious about, now you're going all the way back to original sin and wanting to know everything. Yeah. You want God-like knowledge. You know, you might not know it, but you can find it. You can find out. You can just keep pouring in there. And so there is a information addiction happening to adults.

Matt (1:52:18)
Yeah, which is when you bring up information addiction, now you add in confirmation bias, right? Because you can engineer a question to get a specific answer. You're not actually addicted to the information. You're addicted to the confirmation bias. I want to be right.

Andi (1:52:33)
for sure. Yep. Yeah. I just need some sources. Or I just need perplexity to tell me I'm right. Yeah. That'll do it. It knows everything. It has.

Matt (1:52:38)
And you can find me You know what I just did? I was like, wait, is that when I heard about OnlyFans? And I asked AI.

Andi (1:52:51)
Sure, it's okay. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, totally. do. mean, we all, you know, it's, it's just, it's it doesn't matter. But that's the, that's just the science, I feel like behind what's going on with the, what you, what you're brought to light to me was that dopamine and that

Matt (1:53:11)
Yeah, oxytocin for staph.

Andi (1:53:12)
Even with information, it's just like, dang, okay, now I see myself.

Matt (1:53:18)
Yeah.

Andi (1:53:19)
So let's get back to my son. I read The Anxious Generation. It came out in 2024. Jonathan Haidt. I first heard him on some podcasts. He was on Huberman. And I really thought at the time I was doing well and like I'd like hacked parenting. Then I read this book and was like, oh, it's kind of a problem. And then I started doing this, you know,

Matt (1:53:28)
wrote it.

Andi (1:53:49)
cat and mouse with my son and then the limits and then after he rejected the limits the Adlerian free-for-all and then he failed but he was gonna learn from that failure and then like summer came and I met my fiance and he was just a lifesaver. He came in and he just took a look around my family and was like the boys aren't doing well.

Matt (1:54:16)
Yeah, which this isn't a criticism to single mothers, but there is an equilibrium in a nuclear family that especially for single women raising boys, they are maladapted to the world. It just is a fact. The government keeps statistical data and studies at a rate that nobody else can catch up to, right? And so they keep all the outcome studies, they keep all that stuff. And I read a statistic based on a study that said that, well, there was like multiple things. One of the things that was just so crazy was that a child raised in an abusive household where one or both parents are abusing them will have better outcomes than being raised in a single parent household. Whether that's male or female, it doesn't matter. And so like even if you add in the stimulus of abuse, they still have better outcomes than having a single parent And so yeah, and I mean it's hard for women to raise men actually, I don't think it's And like I said, this isn't ⁓ like a critique of single motherhood, it's a critique of the lack of fatherhood Right. It's the men and this is hookup culture is men do not want to take responsibility for their actions which

Andi (1:55:23)
I agree. Yeah.

Matt (1:55:42)
Strap up, do whatever you gotta do, but when you bring a child into this world, that is your responsibility. It isn't your responsibility to pay the child support, it's your responsibility to, and whether you're a part of that child's life or not, it is your fault. I have two daughters, and I'm thoroughly convinced that it falls squarely on the shoulders of fathers to raise well-adapted women. It isn't the mother's relationship, it's, the reason why I think this is because I've known

Maybe not hundreds of prostitutes and strippers, but a lot. And every single one of them pointed to their father. Whether it was the abuse of relationship, the lack of the father, whatever. It was never, I hated my mom. It was always, hated my dad. Yeah, and so it's like, it's our responsibility. Typically, it isn't, you know, there's like the whole court system too that's geared towards awarding motherhood, whether that's whatever, right? It's like the paternal side of the court case almost always loses. It's like a 99 % failure rate on that side. But it's still our responsibility. Whether somebody tries to take it from us or not, it's still our responsibility.

Andi (1:56:58)
Yeah. So he came into my life and wanted to help me and my boys. he had a, I had an idea of philosophy that you don't want rules. Like you need values. And he, he said, you need to really think about what characters, like what character traits you want your sons to have. And ⁓ so I thought about it and I, and I thought, okay, the big word is

Matt (1:57:11)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (1:57:28)
Respectful.

Matt (1:57:29)
Okay.

Andi (1:57:31)
That was what we lacked. The subsets are going to be, there's going to be, be respectful is like the word and then it's going to be honest, kind and responsible. Those are the components of being respectful. So you're honest, the truth, you're kind and you're responsible because like you're not being respectful if you're not taking care of yourself, taking care of your responsibilities. You're not being respectful if you're being rude. you're not being respectful if you're lying to me. So like, be respectful. So that was just enough that they got it. We lectured, we set it up, and we started funneling everything through those principles.

Matt (1:58:16)
Okay. Was this pre-treatment? Yes. Okay.

Andi (1:58:22)
for about almost a year. so, you know, don't, it happened, I don't know, in the fall before treatment. And by, the changes happened so rapidly once that was in place and so much was revealed. So my older son just like couldn't get with the program, just like couldn't do it, you know, just. And then I really saw the moral failing, not just that before it was my fault that he snuck by me. It was my fault that I forgot to set the parental control for the new time frame. It was all my fault. Because my sweet boy couldn't do anything wrong. And he was powerless against this technology. Like it was my fault. So it's like, OK.

Matt (1:59:08)
Of course.

Andi (1:59:18)
Now I could see that the things that he was doing was not just breaking my rule. It was like, I'm letting him have this moral failing. I can't let him. This is not good for him. Not because it's an extra hour screen time or he stayed up all night or he's late for school or he slept during class. It's like, this is his spirit. This is his character. This is who he is. This is how he feels about himself. This is his future, like, soul on the line.

Matt (1:59:52)
Yeah, so what effect did it have on you around these realizations?

Andi (1:59:59)
It just lit a fire. It just focused me. laser focused. then I'm doing a lot more research. I read The Tech Trap by Deborah Berry. She's from Houston. Her daughter had issues with online predators. And the woman described the whole story of her daughter being sent to therapeutic boarding school. First, she went to wilderness. for three months. And then she went to therapeutic boarding school. And so I'm already, it's in my mind that like there's an escape route that is going to help him. Like if I can't solve this problem, that's where I did skip. So I know that that's my last resort. Anything I do between now and then is like, want to keep him home. This is my honor and privilege and duty.

Matt (2:00:39)
You skipped well wilderness, right?

Andi (2:00:56)
I confronted him with self-awareness, like, you need to be honest with yourself. So that respectful part with the honesty, honest with yourself. And you're not. You have an internet addiction, a tech addiction, I don't know what you call it, video game addiction. You you have this problem. And so I got a checklist from a website. It was like PubMed or something, NIH.
And it was about 10, 12 things. And I printed it out, and I sat down with these signs with him. And we'd go through the signs one by one. I can share them with you if you'd Yeah. Yes? OK. So use longer than intended. Preoccupation. Withdraw signs and symptoms. Tolerance.
unsuccessful attempts to stop or reduce internet use?

Matt (2:01:55)
Let's go back one. Tolerance. It's like a building of tolerance as in needing more and getting less out of.

Andi (2:02:04)
Yes, and multiple devices. Yeah, needing more. More time, more devices. Craving. Loss of interest in other hobbies or activities. Excessive use despite problems. Use of the internet to escape or relieve a negative mood. And finally, lying about use. So as we go through these,
He struggled to be honest with himself, but we checked off each one. And by the time we got to the end, he said, no, I don't lie about my use. And I said, come on, you do. When was the last time you lied? And he was like, yesterday. And like, he really meant it. Like in his mind, he was sitting there with me having a conversation. Like he was stone cold sober. You know, he was done.

Like I'm not using now, so like I'm fine. Like it's not a problem, because I'm here. Like he couldn't see past yesterday, you know? That like this is happening all day, every day, all the time to you. I feel like as much as I kick myself for the Adlerian approach, at least he could see, like at least we got to failure. Is this from your podcast? Like make sure, no, no, it's from,
It's from like Gamer Anon. There's one of these groups. Make sure that it gets enough of whatever there

Matt (2:03:35)
no, trust me, that is us too. Okay. Yeah, I think that systematically people have been robbed of the full benefit of their suffering. And it's because of codependency and enablement, right? Where like the parent, the loved one, the friend, almost always in that order. Whether if it's a child is the parent, if it's a spouse it's a loved one, and if it's not within those familial ties, it's the friends. will justify people's use and step in on their consequences. And what you're ultimately doing is making yourself feel better. And what you're doing is robbing that person of those experiences because they talk about the demoralization and how important that is. How do you have that? And men, maybe this is true for women too, but men respond, and Dr. hates it when I say this, but men respond really well to guilt and shame.

And if you rob them of the opportunity to be guilty, they will never learn from whatever it was that they did wrong. And if you always step in on their consequences, then you have negatively reinforced a negative behavior.

Andi (2:04:46)
I mean, he saw the light for this checklist. It's called, by the way, like problematic internet use.

Matt (2:04:57)
That's the clinical term.

Andi (2:04:59)
Yeah, or Internet Gaming Disorder. Those are the two terms from NIH.

Matt (2:05:02)
gaming is and then it's gamers anonymous

Andi (2:05:06)
Yeah. It's the support group, right? Yeah, there's anonymous, there's the anon group, the friends and family group.

Matt (2:05:17)
there's a... Yes. wow.

Andi (2:05:18)
Yeah, that's where I got that from. Cheryl Wolf is a therapist who runs it.

Matt (2:05:23)
Okay, so a family support group for Gamers Anonymous is... what is it called?

Andi (2:05:28)
It's like gamer, a non game gamer, a NAR because game is gambling. But Gammon on is gambling. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. We got lot going on. So, yeah, she's Cheryl's cracked me up. She's like, no. don't know. Deborah Barry, the author of tech trap. Yeah. Cheryl's described like what they what we do online is like digging her way to China. You know, just going, going, going.

Matt (2:05:30)
Game Anon.from here?

Andi (2:05:57)
She's awesome. Helped me a lot. So anyway, after we had this big conversation, my son was like totally freaking out about the fact that we were going to pack up the house of all technical devices. wow. And it was over.

Matt (2:06:16)
What did that look like? What did the meltdown look like?

Andi (2:06:20)
He said to me, if you think it's so bad for me, why do you let me use it at all?
Okay. And I said, it's over. I'm not going to. You're right. You're absolutely right.

Matt (2:06:35)
I'm so sorry.

Andi (2:06:37)
so sorry. We're done. So it's your little brother. So it all went away. it was December 20th. So was right before Christmas. had a holiday. He was home. And we started to learn how to
He had a really hard time with it. You know, there was a lot of sibling rivalry that was like unresolved and like, you know, plus the cravings and the withdrawals and you know, there's just so, there's just so much like just chaos. And I'm sitting there going, we're going to be respectful, honest, kind, responsible. You know what I'm just trying to like get this to happen. Yeah. And he goes back to school and he gets his Chromebook and then I'm advocating. So like kind of Yeah. So kind of don't waste your time, but like.

Matt (2:07:16)
Yeah. This is where dead dropping starts.

Andi (2:07:33)
I was the school counselor, the school principal, the assistant principal, every single one of his teachers, the district level tech department, the curriculum department. It's a hot potato.

Matt (2:07:46)
Yeah, because they're going, well, you got to talk to them.

Andi (2:07:48)
Yes. So curriculum's like, we don't do tech. And I'm like, you're all tech. All my son does is play on his computer. So that is, in fact, his curriculum. And then the assistant principal says, well, we expect them to be responsible for their own computer use. And I'm like, what's the curriculum to develop digital citizenship, digital responsibility? He hasn't learned that yet. No one has taught him how to do that. And then the teachers have ways they can shut it down. But they've got a lot of kids and a lot going on, and he's hiding under his desk, and it's really weird, and you need to get him checked out. So I'm kind of threatening, I'm going to refuse computer for my son. And the teacher's like, no, no, no, no, no. And it's like, OK.

Matt (2:08:42)
Wait, why are they saying no? Because it makes their job-

Andi (2:08:44)
Now they're going to have to give him paperwork and like all the other kids like they figured this they Everyone did their curriculum during the Covid year when they were like in their jammies and then they just are hosting, you know, so they don't have to go to the teacher They don't go there. I mean, they're just in there. So, I mean god bless them This it's it's district-wide. It's statewide and it's google that's giving everyone chromebooks like subsidized

Matt (2:09:10)
Ava texted me and said that Apple and Amazon have made massive backroom deals with school districts. Right? I don't know where she's got this from, but I believe her.

Andi (2:09:22)
There's a lot of iPads in schools too. We had Chromebooks, but iPads are more popular in private schools from what I've seen. Of course. Yeah. So the tech department ⁓ was able to remove YouTube from his Chromebook. And at the end of the school year, the district removed YouTube from all Chromebooks, thankfully. So I feel like I did my part. I don't know. I could get back in there. But whatever. I've got to move on.As much as I want to advocate and I and I like want to tell you what I feel like you need to know for your own children Yeah, it's like

Matt (2:09:57)
Which I want and I'm not Who knows who else is gonna hear this? Yeah, you know like there are parents out there dealing with Whether it's the same level worse or less Everybody's gonna have to deal with this

Andi (2:10:14)
I hope so. You can bury your head in the sand of social media yourself or whatever you're into. So yes, it takes everybody, like teamwork, because without each other, we also don't have much to live for. you have to have, everybody has to do it. It's a collective action problem, as Jonathan Haidt says. So ⁓you also need to be in a group of like-minded parents. That's what my brother gave me that advice.made me, it was right after we took away all the devices. He was like, you need to find a community of like-minded parents. So I started looking for private schools in addition to dealing with the Chromebook. Yeah, we applied to a tech-free Catholic school and didn't get in and got waylisted. And then we applied to another Orthodox Christian tech-free school. And by the time

Matt (2:10:55)
find them.

Andi (2:11:11)
But he did his visit and we were waiting to hear back. he was gone. He didn't make it.

Matt (2:11:18)
Isn't that interesting that they are religious organizations? Isn't it? Yeah.

Andi (2:11:23)
textbooks and the book. he made decisions that were the slow march to therapeutic boarding school. so like, initially, it was like you are not spending the summer at home gaming. This is you did that last summer. I let you do it. You when I asked you what's your plan for going back to school and you said, No, get over it. And you didn't, so we're just not gonna do that again, but we tried it. So see how the failure, like letting him fail and letting him write his own life plan and making him look at it be honest with himself and be like, I did fail that. Okay, actually, I don't wanna live like this. Like I do want to succeed, but then he's going to school and like he just can't handle it. And it's not, so anyways, it's like we came up with you're gonna go to outward bound two weeks hiking mountains in Colorado, you're going to go to the boys camp at the Catholic school, you're going to go to a Catholic leadership camp, you're going to work. He has a pressure washing business and it's just kind of like we got these, which he started during when I took the stuff away from home. He's like, I'm going to make money. Great dude. So he had these summer plans that were all tech free and he was looking forward to summer.

And then he made decisions. So whether it was the, you know, kind of running away-ish where he would like leave, you know? Now I know what he was doing.

Matt (2:12:55)
Yeah. And he was how old at this time?

Andi (2:12:58)
12. Or he was, that would be like an infraction. And then there was like locking himself in the bathroom. Locking himself in, he did lock himself in the bedroom, but I took the door handle off. Of course. Yeah. And then he's in the bathroom and it's like, what are you gonna do? So there was a couple of things where it's like, now you're not going, to your amazing summer vacation that I've planned and paid deposits or paid in full for, you are now going to Wilderness. It's a three month program. This is what it's like. And he's like, I don't want to go. don't want to go. I don't want to But then there was another fraction, a final one, where he knew that if he did something again, it was going to be a behavioral choice. where he chose to go to the next place. And I showed him therapeutic boarding schools and he liked this one. It showed a lot of outdoor adventure. He loves to hike. So he was like, I want to go. I want to go. And I'm like, well, you're going to go if you do this thing again. And the thing he did the last time was like lock himself in the bathroom with a book. He didn't do that. Yeah. So that was like not that bad. And I'm like, I really think he's kind of crying for help. I really, I'm okay with this. Like I need to do this.

Matt (2:14:21)
Thanks.

Andi (2:14:23)
And on my end, I knew that the wilderness program was not going to be long enough for him. I knew three months wasn't enough. So like, why extend this whole ordeal by three months when he's going to go to therapeutic boarding school?

Matt (2:14:39)
Yeah, because it would also have been three months then a relapse and then back. ⁓

Andi (2:14:43)
He would have gone straight. But like, it's the difference between 15 and 18 months without him or 12 to 15 months without him. And it's an expense for wilderness. It's like twice the price per month, three times the price per month. Then there are people at boarding school. Yeah, it's a lot of money. It's more individual therapy. It's a lot more.

Matt (2:15:00)
That doesn't even make sense Okay, I have friends that have gone to wilderness therapy, multiple friends. All of my friends that did it loved it to the point where when it was time to go home they didn't want to. Aww. But there was no therapy.

Andi (2:15:19)
Awesome.there it's on these. are whatever. They're 1300 bucks a day.

Matt (2:15:28)
Day yeah, wait wait do they do like the kidnap them in the middle of the night? Okay

Andi (2:15:32)
And if you need it.Yeah, that's called transport service. Yeah.

Matt (2:15:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all my friends got kidnapped.

Andi (2:15:41)
My mind was happy to go. He made his decision. He was looking forward to it. He was excited. He packed. It was like, we're not even finishing sixth grade. We're leaving two weeks early. What are you going to do? Play on your Chromebook? What do you want to do? You want to go? I mean, I'm not actually giving him the choice, but I'm like, you're not going to go watch two weeks of YouTube shorts. We're going. You know, get in the car. Yeah. So and he's he's one of the only guys there that chose to go. And he's very proud of that.

Matt (2:16:10)
But yeah, I imagine so.

Andi (2:16:12)
Mm-hmm. It's pretty cool. So I'd love to tell you about the program and the therapeutic treatment. Okay, I'll give you the rundown. So the things that they provide, 24-7 supervision. Of course. Coping skills, interrupting, intercepting, like stopping and pausing. Mm-hmm.

Matt (2:16:17)
I've had a bunch of questions. And they're using those terms? But what about the interrupt and intercept?

Andi (2:16:35)
Coping skills. I wrote intercept. think it's intercept, but I want to say it's an error. I must've gotten that from you because I think he calls it interrupt. Okay. And you called it intercept. So I was taking

Matt (2:16:41)
Did you get that from us too? We were deciding whether it would be inter... So, because there's normalized terms for this stuff even in this industry, but it's intervene. Right? Intervene when you look at like the word, you are still stopping something. Right? And so anyway, it ended up being interrupt where you're actually like, you're interrupting a process instead of intervening on a consequence.

Andi (2:17:17)
Okay, cool. More on that, there's a book, I think it's Whole Brain Child, but it talks about pause and stop. They use interrupt, but they also use this third person kind of perspective where you should just try to look at yourself from the outside a little bit. And I like that idea of intervene, because it's kind of like the you and the you. Let the you intervene in this situation.

Matt (2:17:18)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Language is so important when you are talking about helping somebody heal. Right? There is... You can use ambiguous terms, and if you don't put enough thought into it, like intervene... What is the actual difference between interrupt, intervene, and intercept? Like, probably not that big of a difference, definitionally, but in practice, it can make the world a difference in whether or not... Because what are you actually doing? Right.

Andi (2:18:13)
Cool. Exercise is required. He's currently required to do 15,000 steps a day measured by his Fitbit. They make it fun. He's like working his way toward Mordor. That's so funny. long trek. So very much like quieting the amygdala. At home, we used to listen to No Agenda. That's our favorite. We just laugh at the news, laugh our heads off. at, so we don't take that all that seriously, you know, at school, they don't get news. They watch like a little bit of CNN and discuss it in social studies class. And I'm always like, what were the commercials? And he's like, they don't let us they don't play us the commercials. And I'm like, well, then you don't know who's funding it. So you don't see the potential bias, you know? Yeah, he knows somebody behind it. But I'm like, you guys should really watch the commercials. Anyway, so

Matt (2:18:59)
you know, they're all the same.

Andi (2:19:12)
They do, so I am seeing this physical change through that mind body with the exercise.

Matt (2:19:18)
Do they use, do they talk about the quieting of the amygdala?

I mean, it's effectively the same thing, especially when you add the physical component to the recovery. Yeah.

Andi (2:19:31)
And that's a no agenda phrase too. Amygdala shrinkage. Yeah, they talk about it all the time. Cause the news will get you all fired up and freaked out.

Matt (2:19:35)
Really? Yeah, it's also like a hardening and a scarring of the actual organ. Yeah, and so like the hyperactivity that is caused in the like when you come when you start the escalation and end up in the elevated state, it is an actual signal interruption by the scarring that causes like a misfiring, right? Where it's like instead of a linear path for the signals to go, it has to work itself through this scarring. That's like the hardening of the material and it shoots it off in different directions. And then it stimulates a part of the brain that wasn't supposed to and it starts this whole.

Andi (2:20:19)
Amazing. Yeah, when you're like not doing the right thing, like there is, the technology is there, right? Like we were created that way, like it's not working.

Matt (2:20:29)
Yeah, and so I've always applied the word technology to the amygdala. Cool. That it was an actual technology. Right, and so this is where like the whole, like God created this technology. Yeah.

Andi (2:20:41)
So they deal with the underlying issues. This is what really drew me to this school because I saw like,⁓ it's not a tech addiction. Like there's something beneath this, like you said, the trauma. they do that through group therapy, individual therapy, family therapy with me and other family members.

Matt (2:21:02)
is the family therapy mandatory.

Andi (2:21:05)
Ja, Rene. No question I would show up. I can't imagine a family that wouldn't. are, yeah, okay.

Matt (2:21:15)
Yeah. So with an addiction, especially towards the downstream effects of it, I imagine so with tech as well, is that people, family, end up loving one of two ways, with their time or their money. And if they are still loving with their money, they haven't been robbed yet. And if they are only loving with their time, it's because they have guilt or shame.

there's a difference between, there's a different quality of supports. There's spiritual support, mental support, monetary support, the negative supports, like the enabling and all that stuff. And with an addiction, you will see it so often where people just don't show up for family programming. And it's not mandatory, because there is no medical billing code for family therapy.

Andi (2:22:16)
Right. There are family seminars where you go in person and those are optional for sure. Not everybody goes, but like a lot. I mean, it seems like almost everybody's here. I'm sure. Really. It's like a weekend where you do things together with the child, but like mainly it's more like the family's getting experts. There's equine therapy.

Matt (2:22:41)
Okay. he participate in that? Yes. So what's his experience been?

Andi (2:22:48)
It's so awesome. He completely resisted it, totally thought it was lame, not interested. When... Do you know... Yeah, I heard. I heard your show with him. So cool. So this one, it has stages, six stages of like learning to put the bridle on and learning just to kind of pet and just kind of stand there. And then like get it to walk and then get it to play. And then it goes until you're trotting on it. So like there's a lot of stages. And when he got there, first three months, he was resisting and the horses were just hanging with him. He wasn't doing anything. And he would show me like, oh, this what we have to do, kind of. And I'm like, well, you want to ride horses. Like last summer, we rode horses and you for the second time and you ask the guy, can we take off? And the guy's like laughing at you like, no, this is your second time on a horse. You're like nowhere near trotting or running on a horse. Like it takes so much time to get good at it. And my son's like, man, really wanted to, like, I didn't want to do this again. I didn't want to just like across the same mountain, right? Because I already did it. So I'm like, this is your big opportunity. You have all this time, like you should write it. And he's like,

Okay, so we go back in the tent and talk to the lady who owns the place and he asks her, I trot on it? You know, like now. And she said, no, I don't let you work the horse before you have a relationship with it. That's not fair. Yeah. And that's not right. And that was totally what he was doing in life. And it was like his light bulbs and my light bulbs were like, my gosh, we were just talking about this in family therapy. Like you not. investing in the relationship, in any relationship, you just wanting your thrills. yeah, this equine therapy is a little bit of a different approach. It's just like the traumatic, like hanging with the horse and having emotional resonance, but I'm sure that's going on too. Great to know.

Matt (2:25:02)
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it is. It's unavoidable for the horse. So there has to be some type of exchange.

Andi (2:25:10)
Yeah. Cool. a couple of weeks ago after Thanksgiving, I mean, every time I see him, he's doing so much better. Even the first time when he was crying and resisting and I hate all the supervision, like he was still doing better. And then it just keeps getting better. like around Thanksgiving, he was like playing with the horse, walking it, you know, and then at Christmas he told me,

Matt (2:25:25)
Yeah.

Andi (2:25:39)
He made a friend, he's got one that he really likes. He's gonna ride it. They're doing everything together. It's like tank, like he just needed tank.

Matt (2:25:47)
You're talking about him doing better. Are you asking questions with the therapist and who do you interact with there?

Andi (2:25:58)
The behavioral therapist and the therapist.

Matt (2:26:01)
Okay, do they attribute his doing better with the detox? Like, that, was that terminology used at all?

Andi (2:26:09)
I use it. There's detox, there's nature. There's a lot of nature therapy. in the woods. they do.
work, which is like a four-step program, each quarter has a main topic of character development. Underneath those that have social skills, they're different from the coping skills. Coping skills are like how they're dealing with problems, but social skills are like what they need just to function and thrive. And the behavioral counselors assign social skills new every quarter. It's supposed to be every quarter. could take longer if you don't pass all your social skills or you don't do all of the work. There's a lot of assignments and the behavioral counselor will do check-offs. So his first set of social skills, he couldn't get with it. Total failure, right? Just rebelling, resisting. And they took it down to checking him off on an hourly basis.
I can't really speak to the other boys, like, I think so. They have it.

Matt (2:27:34)
Sounds like it because once that becomes a viable option it sounds like that. It makes sense that they all end up at the same level of dysfunction.

Andi (2:27:44)
And they have the system totally down. Like we're not the first family. They're not figuring this out. They've been doing it 20 years, think, a thousand kids. the checklist is like, so he would start getting a check for an hour and then a couple hours. And then I went all afternoon and I made it through a whole day. I strung a couple days together. It's two weeks since my last infraction, you know? And then now he's just...

Matt (2:28:12)
Stay.

Andi (2:28:12)
He's got two mentees, he's giving campus tours. He's just doing great, so proud of himself. long? Seven months. Total seven months. Yeah, it was May. ⁓ And it's January now, so maybe we're coming up on eight. Maybe it's eight. Anyways, the individual therapy, I don't know what happens, I'm not there. I get check-ins, I get told like...

Matt (2:28:15)
Wow. How long has he been there? It's like responding or not type thing.

Andi (2:28:42)
Yeah, yeah, how he's doing and I get recommendations for how I can help with structure at home. I have a lot to do to get ready for his reintroduction to our family. Because I don't have an hourly checklist. Like I'm not paying attention to him 24-7. I have to actually sleep and take a break and you know, be a bunch of... So it takes a lot of supervision to give him this feedback that he needs and he has... Thanks for your Christmas, he said You know, I resisted the supervision so much, but that's exactly what I needed.

Matt (2:29:18)
Yeah, the family part about this. With an addiction is that first of all, there's no medical building code for family therapy. Most places, in my opinion, like they would never say this, but the less family come, the easier it is on them that weekend. And I doubt they would ever admit that or say it. And I'm sure like the person that's guiding those family groups really want people there, but they're not making money on it. It costs them money.

Right? But it's impossible to send a healing person into a sick situation and expect that healing person to not get sick again. It just doesn't make logical sense. And then in practice, never works. There is never healing by osmosis. It never works the other way around. People only get sick for whatever, probably because of the law of entropy, right? Like just how it has to go.

Andi (2:30:18)
Right. Right. So I have to set up a lot of structure for him and he wants it. He's eager for this. He's like, this is what I like. I want to go to a structured school. He's open to anyway, going to boarding school again. But let me tell you more about the program. So there's an unofficial play therapy going on. You know, little kids do play therapy. This is great because they're all available. None of them are. going to play video games. They're all just hanging out and it's, they have board games and they have basketball and like tetherball, like they just hang in. So he gets tons of free time with boys his age. That's crazy. Why can't we do that? I can't send him out the front door and expect that to happen because nobody's out there. Yeah. So that he, that's the main reason he wanted to go. The treks and the hikes and the kayaking stuff looked really cool to him, but it was, it was the idea that they had D &D and Magic the Gathering and the kids played it like they play there and When we went tech-free before he left we started instead of the YouTube Club We started a board game night at our house and he had friends over and they loved it So he's he's like I want to do that, you know there. Mm-hmm Let's see The kids are also one of the Concepts in their path work is like show up and be present, right? So like that's one of the things where all the kids are encouraged to show up and be present. They're not let to go off and be isolated. Like they're coached and helped and supported and being social with each other, supporting each other. So when they get the infractions, they do get like time and space. And my son just says, I needed all that time. I needed all of it. I had just had to think. It's like, do have to think about your life, you know? glued in, tuned in, 24-7, except when you're sleeping. You don't have a moment to think about it.

Matt (2:32:20)
Is that crazy? Like how right on Timothy Leary was all those years ago? It was a tune in or drop out tune it, whatever it was, the LSD thing. Really? Yeah. I'll tell you what it was. It was like tune out of like all of the BS and like drop out of society and like, but it was basically like disconnect from the machine. Right? Yeah.

Andi (2:32:26)
Day. What does mean?

Matt (2:32:50)
And it was all around the LSD movement.

Andi (2:32:54)
It's like, okay, in a good way.

Matt (2:32:57)
Yeah. Well, I mean, not according to the government. Timothy Leary was the tune in, turn on and drop out. Okay. Yeah. And it was just the disconnect from it. This was like the Vietnam War and like free love, all that stuff that he was saying. Like we are headed in a fucked up direction and do these things and like go into nature. Right. You know, like.

Andi (2:33:23)
Walden Thoreau too. He came up with the term brain rot. So they have a digital citizenship program for the last like three months of the stay. So kids can come anytime and go anytime. When they're nearing the end, they get one device of their choice and they learn to use it. And I'm not a huge fan of this and I've talked to my son about it. His choice is an MP3 player to listen to music and I'm fine with it. He is a musician and he's great. like what I think it's a smart choice for him. And finally, they do graduation ceremonies so that they do get prepared to leave and there's a honorable closure. They get to talk about their life, their experience, you know, and everyone gathers and they go.

Matt (2:34:04)
If the grid shut down today, music would be lost forever. Like, to a lot of people.

Andi (2:34:30)
Interesting, my son got his music taken away from him with more infractions at home. he was like, I can't believe you would take away music. And said, there's one way you'll always have music. Yeah, he's like, my voice? Yes. So I can't take that away from you. You're just whining. You know songs?

Matt (2:34:53)
Yeah. I've got this whole theory about the music industry. Okay, so look at mainstream music today and who's making it, right? It's no longer the artist, right? They're a recording artist. They actually have no talent. They don't need it, right? They just need a backstory. They need to sell this person's backstory. then engineers create it, right? And they changed, like they went from different...

Andi (2:35:02)
Tell me.

Matt (2:35:26)
harmonies even right and different like Like even when you listen to the frequencies of the sounds they are different and when you look at like the frequencies that they are engineering music out of today it points like some really crazy shit right, but You know 20 years ago. It was bands talent practice for sure all this stuff and so today Again, it is these engineers that are going to these liberal schools that are getting ingrained and indoctrinated into all of this crazy shit that is creating music, that's pointing people towards drugs, sex, all that violence, gang banging. Like that's what's on the mainstream right now. Sagging their pants, beating people up, like woman to woman to woman. this is, and it's all engineered, right? There is no talent involved. in music anymore. It's all engineered. Wow. Yeah. And I think it's all being done. You can point it all back to the same shit.

Andi (2:36:30)
Right, I can see that.

Matt (2:36:33)
And so it's like, I'm a metal guy. And so I have friends that are in big world touring bands still. And I got kicked out at 16 and I went and lived at a music studio. so I got to watch. If I wasn't at a practice, I was at a show every day of the week for months and forever. For my 16 to 18. That's just all I did. But I see it now where it's like music has fundamentally changed.
Yeah. And people today are more invested and being influenced by music more than ever. And it's all nefarious. no. I mean, right. Am I wrong? I don't think so.

Andi (2:37:17)
It's more nefarious than ever.

Matt (2:37:19)
It's more nefarious than ever. And when you look at what people are basing their image off of, it is based on the person that they listen to the most.

Andi (2:37:28)
Hmm, wow. I can see that. I'm ready for the ska revival. Fourth wave ska.

Matt (2:37:37)
Dude I have a friend I have a friend he's in a ska band and it's called Bill Scosby

Andi (2:37:39)
Live music. huh. You got it. Okay, I'll take a look. Bill Scott. Have him come to Houston.
Cool. I just want to say, you know, he personally does not do medication. OK. That's a thing that he's proud of. Yeah. He likes that he's kind of facing this without. And I see, like, any possible diagnosis that he could have had just disappearing.

Matt (2:38:19)
Yeah. Have you heard us talk about medication?

Andi (2:38:23)
No, I don't think so.

Matt
Okay. So everybody that quits drugs or alcohol is going to have depression and anxiety. And they should. And what do we immediately do? Is diagnose them with depression and anxiety and put them on medications. Why are we diagnosing people who should be... There is no...
Underlying diagnosis they should be depressed and anxious. Yeah, they're coming off of drugs. Yeah, they have wreckage that they have to fucking deal with Why are we putting them on medication? Mm-hmm, right and dr. Shaw's like Nope ain't doing it Wow, right and so it's like Obviously like there are again handcuffs that the industry puts on us where it's like in order to justify treatment. You've got a Prescript because I said we ended up a bridge between the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry Right? And so, you know, there are handcuffs that we have. In order to legally proceed, there needs to be like medical intervention. But again, that word medical intervention, like you are now stepping into consequences. But medications specifically around depression and anxiety were engineered to do something very specific for a specific amount of time. And you see everybody end up on them for life.
Right? And it's like now, not only if you don't have clinical anxiety or depression, it will give you anxiety or depression. And now you are treating something that was caused by the medication with the medication. It's crazy. so then now when you rewind the tape to like childhood medication, childhood medication, this is new. But so are all these diagnoses.
So, the diagnosis and the medication predate the technology.

Andi (2:40:24)

Okay. Yeah, kind of when we were kids.

Matt (2:40:26)
Yeah, yeah, right. So they started the Ritalin and all this stuff and as that became more Prolific so did the diagnosis. I see right right. So what came first the chicken or the egg are they actually? mental Diagnoses are these just bad kids that you're putting on medication because you don't want to deal with them

Andi (2:40:47)
Right. Did you see the South Park thing about how people handled ADHD back in

Matt (2:40:56)
Yeah. Dude, so, and then you look at like, how did we end up in this situation? It's like, it's because disciplining your kids became illegal.

Andi (2:40:59)
Yeah. It's not illegal. In Texas, it's not. You can't hit them, but you can use corporal discipline.

Matt (2:41:12)
Well Okay, yeah, I was hit as a kid and that shit worked, right? And it was a Machiavellian type thing where it was like, you rolling out of love or fear type thing, right? But the reality is most people equate discipline to spanking, right? And so if they don't spank their kid, they don't discipline their kid, right? And it's like, but that also is We are all maladjusted. We are also fucked up. We are not our grandparents' generation. My generation is also a result of the deterioration of the nuclear family. This is where it started, was during my generation. And so of course my generation can't discipline their kids. Our parents couldn't discipline us. And then it devolved.

Andi (2:42:11)
It kind of said yours did? are you just saying-

Matt (2:42:13)
No, mine did. Okay, but mine were abnormal time even you got you know, like it was already It was already abnormal and in California illegal to spank your kids

Andi (2:42:17)
Mine too, okay. Okay, in Texas it's not. And I sat down with my younger son and reviewed the Bible verse with him.

Matt (2:42:33)
I'm really glad to know that it's not illegal to spank

Andi (2:42:36)
Good tip. You can look it up. And Spare the Rod, Hate the Child is biblical. And there's like Bible plans about responsible, righteous discipline. And it is our duty. it's, you know, so much of what the Bible tells us to do seems onerous until you realize it's like for your own good and then your best interest. And you do get to choose if you do it or not. He didn't make us to not have a choice. So you can do it. Another note is that you can leave your children unsupervised. It's up to you to determine how capable they are. So you cannot neglect past the point of their capability. So they're going to have to be a certain age and a certain level of intelligence and responsibility. You are responsible for them.

Andi (2:43:34)
But you can leave them alone at home and you can kick them out of the house and you can make them go play in the backyard. So there's things where they can't stay home alone so long, like you haven't fed them. They can be lonely and scared and bored.

Matt (2:43:54)
Yeah, in a day and age where it's my generation, right? The millennials, not only are we raising children, which is scary, but we're also about to take control of the country, right? Which is even scarier. But in a day and age where you see it on the news all the time, where it's like the OnlyFans mom left the kid in the cradle for three days. Dude, it's crazy. We're like, it's because it's my generation that has no clue what the fuck they're doing. What? just making these crazy decisions. There was that one guy in San Diego that left his, he left thousands of dollars for his nine and seven year old daughter, daughters, left them in there for months and would order them, ⁓order them Grubhub every day. And the Grubhub delivery guy, was like the same person every day, called and was like, there's something, I've been all summer long and the guy's like on vacation.

Andi (2:44:55)
Wow. That's why.

Matt (2:44:59)
And so like you give these people these freedoms, of course they're going to take advantage of it, right? And rules are only made when a situation comes up that calls for rules, right? Like there were no rules at one point in time. And then somebody broke a law, did something and we created a law. so eventually, and laws never get looser. They only get tighter. Right? And so we're in a situation today where it's like, well, we still have these little freedoms for how long?
Right, how long? Especially because we don't even own our kids.

Andi (2:45:33)
So then going back to that psychological tethering and like you are confining your children by use of a device because like you wouldn't have left them alone for three months if you didn't know that you could trust the device to keep them there. So there's that babysitter component going on too where it's like it's fine, they have their phones.

Matt (2:45:46)
Have you seen the digital babysitting?

Andi (2:45:56)
No.

Matt (2:45:57)
There are people that like set up cameras all over their house and then they pay somebody to sit on the and just watch.

Andi (2:46:03)
No way. Okay. Okay. feel like some of that goes on with the 24-7 supervision at the Therapeutic Boarding School because... Right. Okay.

Matt (2:46:12)
These are parents that want to go to Florida for the weekend. I see. And they're paying, who knows?

Andi (2:46:21)
Kids. Like shouldn't Not having a kegger in the house while we're gone? kids.

Matt (2:46:23)
Kids. Little kids. Okay. Yeah. No, no, no, not like not like you're making a bad decision It's more like you have no clue what a bad decision is. Kids do yeah, and they're just monitoring them from their computer. Mm-hmm, you know crazy The person calls

Andi (2:46:35)
What happens if there's an emergency? And then they fly back from Florida real fast? neighbor or something?

Matt (2:46:48)
I guess. mean, I don't think it...Well, I mean, I guess there's probably legal loopholes that said, there was somebody watching him. Yeah.

Andi (2:46:56)
Yeah. wow. Crazy. So I want to tell you a little bit. Do you have any questions about the boarding school?

Matt (2:47:05)
It would derail, like not that I don't derail everything anyway, but yeah, I mean, it's so, even though it's so similar, the baseline problem is very similar to addiction. The solution is massively different because they understand the length of exposure component dictates the outcome, ⁓ which is so important and we don't care anymore in my industry. Yeah, it's just everything that they are doing right, it's like what we are doing wrong.

Andi (2:47:49)
They are so loving. I'll tell you, like, they just pour in to me and to him.

Matt (2:47:55)
which is amazing. they, like that is amazing. Cause we just don't do it.

Andi (2:48:03)
The very beginning, ⁓they said, you know, you're a single mother and there are scholarships available. And they helped me. And they told me like, I had to put up my own level of support. My father's helping me. And then I'm contributing and like, so we're all doing this.
But they said, you just need to pay for the first 13 months. And then if we need him for longer, we'll take care of the rest. And you could expect it to be 15 months. So it's like, if they don't heal him, they'll take care of him.

Matt (2:48:40)
Really? Dude. That is amazing.is, because from my paradigm, we over promise and under deliver. And there are ripples of conversations going on right now about value-based care. Do know what that is? No. Where it's like a doctor that performs a surgery, if the surgery goes wrong, they don't get paid. Yeah. the diagnosis doesn't come out whatever they predicted, then they don't get paid. Well, they're talking about it in the treatment industry too, where they're like, if somebody goes to treatment and they don't get better, you don't get paid. And everybody's like, fuck, no, no, why? Why, right? And so now the conversation is turning towards, if they go to treatment and they don't get better, the next one's on you then.

Right? And so now it's like, okay, well, let's just get them better on the first one. Well, then why were you arguing? You know, it's like, so, and then this all comes back to intention is like, are we intentionally setting people up for failure? You know, and it's like, they would never do, they would never offer that. They would never say, if they don't get better, we'll take care of it. Ever. Ever. It's insane to me. Yeah.

Andi (2:49:55)
It's beautiful thing.

Matt (2:50:16)
Yeah, it's a really cool thing. Trust me, that's not normal in a therapeutic setting.

Andi (2:50:23)
When we got into the underlying issues with family therapy. Okay, cool. Anything in particular?

Matt (2:50:26)
So that's what I wanted to talk about. Yeah. What was what ultimately did they come up with an underlying issue?

Andi (2:50:35)
It's like there was abandonment. He never knew his biological father. I divorced him. I left him when I was pregnant.

Matt (2:50:38)
Okay. With your oldest? Yes.

Andi (2:50:51)
So we got divorced like after he was born, but we were already separated. And then ⁓ I remarried, had another child and we divorced. So then he's dealing with divorce. That was his dad. You know, not I mean, we knew technically he was a stepdad, but like nobody wanted to call him that.

Matt (2:51:18)
I mean, I have a stepdad that was my dad. Yeah. And it is my dad. Yeah.

Andi (2:51:23)
There you go. So, yeah, I he kind of wasn't... had a boyfriend who played video games who got him more into gaming and betrayed him in a game. there was weird stuff that happened with that friend. And that wasn't helpful. Not helpful? No. And then with my fiance, he comes in and lays down the law.

Matt (2:51:44)
Yeah, sounds awful.

Andi (2:51:52)
And it's like, how many guys are going to come and try to mess around with me? know, he's just kind of over it. mom, you can just stop trying. And so there was just, there was like mom issues and like dad issues. know, he was angry at me. He's getting over it, but he struggles. There's tons of jealousy for his little brother that he denied, denied, denied, but he's starting to realize. And the cool thing is, like, they come home for family visits and, we give feedback. So first, I visit him. Then I bring his brother. Then we go on an outing. Then he comes home for a short visit. Then he comes home for a longer visit. And, like, we're reporting back. Like, he's still struggling. I understand he's doing great at school. He's, missed her school. But at home, he's still doing horrible things to his little brother that are not acceptable. Like, he can't live here.

He can't do this. I can't let it happen. For his own dignity and morality and for his brother's well-being, this is not going to work. now he's really confronting the jealousy that he has for his little brother, who has a real dad, biological dad. And so that's the main issue. ⁓ And there's such a rift because just family stuff, the dad's remarried and has two babies and they're twins and there's a lot going on. So many people and who has time for my son. You know, that's hard. So they work, they just work so intimately with him on these things and like they wanted to bring my co-parent, his former stepdad into the family therapy. And I'm, I, Because he wanted to talk to him. And I'm like, this isn't going anywhere. Like, don't need... We just cut this off. This is not good for him. And the therapist is like, if we don't deal with this now, he's going to have to deal with this when he's 18. I'd rather deal with all of these problems, all these issues that you have with their relationship, with what's happened now. under my care while he's here, while we're all here to support him, then let him try to sort this out on his own. And I'm like, are you trying to tell me you care about my son and how he's going to turn out in the long run? As a man and as an adult, and you care about really helping him. It's just amazing. You're going the extra mile. You don't have to bring this guy in. You don't have to step another session. You don't have to read
finagle the schedule. You have to listen to all this stuff, you know, but you know he needs it.

Matt (2:54:50)
Yeah. Yeah, I imagine that. Yeah. I, by no, in no way at all, do I mean to like downplay anything that they're doing. But I imagine that there's like emotional investment. And they, these sound like the type of people, you know, there's like that coach in high school that would like talk to kids. And then like, you find out that like they went to like somebody's wedding like 10 years later or whatever. Because there was like emotional buy-in. It sounds like those type of things.
Right? Then it's like 15 years later, they'll still call this counselor and be like, hey, whatever, you know?

Andi (2:55:33)
Yeah, when I was visiting one time there was a kid that was coming back to campus just to hang out and say hi to everybody. And that's going on too.

Matt (2:55:40)
Generation Alpha. Yeah. Right. That's your kids.

Andi (2:55:44)
Yeah, I think one of them is one and one of them is the other technically. So is Alpha the newest?

Matt (2:55:49)
Yeah. Alpha is the, I think it's 13 to 2.

Andi (2:55:55)
okay, then they both are.

Matt (2:55:57)
Okay, so there are a genera- I talk about this generation all the time, because they are, as young as they are, so massively informed around addiction and sexual promiscuity. Where they are making commitments to celibacy and sobriety in these young ages.

Andi (2:56:17)
Yeah, I heard you talk about that. I don't know. They haven't started hormonal development yet, so I don't really know if...

Matt (2:56:24)
But it's the influence. Right? They're seeing this shit. And they're seeing my generation. They're going... First of all, the disconnect between what's going... Like, the parental... Just turmoil that the average kid is seeing nowadays. So there's that. There's the dating mess, which is hookup culture, which is like pointing all these kids in this like, yeah, we don't want to do any of this. And then the addiction stuff, like...I don't actually know where they are getting this information from, but I know that the only factor that wasn't there for me was this. Right? And so it has to be the exposure to the information that they are all participating in. And then it has to be that like they are living with the consequences of other people's decisions. And so now there's this generation of people that are being brought up. They're kids literal children, not even teenagers, that are making these decisions publicly and it's like, dude, it cannot be because of our great example. It to be because of our terrible example. So true.

Andi (2:57:35)
Wow. Well, godspeed.

Matt (2:57:39)
Yeah, and it's appropriate that they're Generation Alpha. Yeah. And it's like, okay, good job.

Andi (2:57:44)
Yeah, reset. We're in the middle, you know, we're responsible for them and for our parents. It's a lot We can see this, you know, like you've talked about how fast you think things are going and moving But like being born into this speed, I think would just be so chaotic But I mean I could see it also being like, okay, I'm gonna have to ground myself because this is not literate.

Matt (2:58:03)
Yeah. Well, and that's another thing. They have the language to say that. When I was that young, I didn't know what the fuck grounding was, but they do, right? They understand what mental illness is. They understand what depression and trauma, like they know this stuff.

Matt (2:58:26)
And so there is like these dark sides to this, but also because we're failing at our job, they are picking stuff up in other ways. Have you seen Idiocracy? Of course. Okay, that's where we're heading. Like... Crocs. Yeah, Crocs. And then it was Terry Crews was the president. Like, dude, that's where we're heading. 100%. With my generation at the helm, that's where we're going to end up.

Andi (2:58:40)
Yeah. yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. gonna it's good I think we're gonna get good I think we're about to figure

Matt (2:58:58)
I think so too. I think there's like a critical mass coming. There will be like a directional change whether it's good or bad. don't know But something has to change

Andi (2:59:09)
I think so. I wanted to tell you about the way people respond. so I mean, of course, there's the response to me sending my son away. Yeah, and then there's the tech free, you know, like, that I'm doing that because I wanted to share with people. I want their support for like when they play together, you know, I have to tell them like my sons aren't allowed to play video games. And they are supposed to self-impose

Matt (2:59:17)
This is probably interesting.

Andi (2:59:39)
self-report and self-enforce this, you know? So it's just kind of a matter of like, he can come over, but no games. And it's been fine, but I guess just kind of colloquially, like socially, people are just like, ha ha, yeah, I can't ever put my phone down. Or like, yeah, I know, I try, but I just, I'm on social media all the time. You know, and it's kind of like, there's this excuse of like, but I use it, I can't get off of it.And it slips out. You know, it's just kind of like...

Matt (3:00:12)
Yeah, it's the knee-jerk response to justify their own inadequacies.

Andi (3:00:16)
It's just they can't they can't control themselves. So how how can they control the kids? They can't it's not an excuse. It's like alarming You know, this is you need to like seriously think if you're too weak to do it like They can't handle it at all .

Matt
I got out of prison at 21. Uh-huh. I go out, I go to prison, I had a LG chocolate. It was like a... It was a... It wasn't a smartphone. And then I get out of prison, everybody had smartphones. Whoa. Everybody. And I remember for months, mean months, I would go out into the world and I would feel, I would tell myself, remember this feeling, because you're going to forget it, but something changed.

Andi (3:00:50)
Shawshank Redemption moment.

Matt (3:01:03)
And I would tell myself that constantly, like something changed. I don't know what it is, and I don't know if I'll remember this, but just remember having this feeling. And now when I look back on it, it's like, I think that's what it was. was like everybody got on smartphones and it fundamentally changed the way that people interacted with each other immediately. Immediately. And I just came out of a very close proximity, everybody's face to face, like looking each other in the eye situation to. I can literally take stuff out of people's pockets and they would never know.

Andi (3:01:37)
It was such a social status symbol.

Matt (3:01:41)
Oh yeah, the new iPhone? Yeah. Totally. Oh, you still have a Samsung? Oh, you fucking peasant.

Andi (3:01:48)
I know, totally crazy. I think that there's a lot of liability here. I would love to sue the tech companies. How? I know. It's like, they should be held liable. They had malicious intent. Not all of them, but there's enough memos floating around where it's like, no, you actually tried to do this. You're like employed psychologists and like you did this and went after children.

Matt (3:02:13)
You dump billions into R &D to purposefully steal people's attention. And then, not just steal it, monetize it.

Andi (3:02:22)
So there is a, I'm not a lawyer, but there's these ULAs where you're signing away all your rights. I don't think they apply to criminal intent and gross negligence. Nothing applies there, right? So there could also, I don't know what the case is. I can theorize.

Matt (3:02:40)
Yea There would have to be a chain of events that happen in order for this to have ground. And it would have to be something along the lines of catastrophic outcomes combined with whistleblowers, with evidence, combined with a big enough movement of a class action lawsuit to have this take root.

Andi (3:03:09)
I know it could be class action, it's just like, it's, you know what? It's just my son and it's been very expensive. And, you know, no, but I'm just saying like, you know, like I can, I don't, right. I know.

Matt (3:03:18)
No, it's not just your son, it's a whole s-

Andi (3:03:27)
It could be a huge thing, but it gets so big that you don't want to touch it. And it's like, well, that's the problem. Because there's no liability here when they're causing a reparable enormous harm.

Matt (3:03:38)
So the problem with this is humans did not evolve to have something like this hit them this fast. We evolved even socially so slow, right? We ended up in like a monarch, like the monarch societies evolved into like free societies evolved into this like over thousands of years. And then call it 2009, smartphones like hit the market. 2006 was like the iPhone, right? But 2009 became like everyone had it. That happened like that. And we were not ready for what hit us. There was no safety nets. There was no preparation. There was no nothing. And you can see the evolution of what happened with the R &D too. Because it wasn't meant to be this at first. This is what it evolved into.

Andi (3:04:32)
Absolutely. And then with EdTech, it's like it's supposed to be this big benefit, but even they are talking and I mean, I heard from a friend, he does gambling now development, online gambling websites. He's a programmer. And he told me that he's been pursued by EdTech. Like they want bells and whistles and ching ching ching and prizes and they want that. They want the kids to. get addicted to EdTech, which like you'd think, well, that's good. It's good for their education. But like, how's he going to read a 300 page novel? But at the beginning, I told you he quoted me C.S. Lewis. Which is great. I'm like, how did he go from that to quoting me one of my favorite authors? Amazing.

Matt (3:05:20)
Yeah, in a short amount of time. So kids respond really well to therapies.

Andi (3:05:25)
Yeah, we think that there's neuroplasticity going on that will hurt them into this addiction or help them out of the addiction. And so it's like a very good malleable time to intervene. And of course, in Gamer Anon, I am talking to women with adult children. And it's like pretty difficult because you can't kidnap and then send them to treatment anymore. And you may be not be able to kick them out of your house because the tenant's right. like you may have to move. Like it's a problem. it goes slower at 25 does not mean it stops. Even in like Alzheimer's patients, like they're able to find some neuroplasticity in seniors. You can do brain training. Brain HQ is recommended for memory. It's also recommended for children with ADHD. Like Brain HQ is this program. It's not EdTech. I mean, it is online, but like there are no reward systems. There's not like a wizard trail that you're going down or any narrative. It's just memory training, which kind of. creeps me out with the neurolink similarity there. So, you know, brain training, take it for what it is. But when you're older and you're losing your mind, you're trying to stave off, you know, generation. so we know that there's still some plasticity there throughout life and dance contributes to the cognition, even in seniors, because of the neuroplasticity.

Matt (3:06:45)
Recovery in general wouldn't be possible without neuroplastic.

Andi (3:06:49)
Okay, cool. So my point is like adults need to be careful too. Like we are not immune to having a major tech problem in our lives. Our brains are still adapting to this technology. So what we are seeing in the children like could be coming for us. And then what? Like is there anyone left? This sky is falling.

Matt (3:07:13)
Just plug yourself in now and we can all just.

Andi (3:07:15)
Right. Take the lady in the red dress.

Matt
I know. Fuck. Right.

Andi
Yeah, so my recommendations are no screens in elementary school. None. Family movie night. Don't even hand them the phone in the car. Like, not in the grocery store line, like not in the waiting room.

Matt (3:07:31)
Period. because it is ultimately just the starting point.

Andi (3:07:45)
Yes, yes, they will want more. There's no, mean, it might have maybe people say like, yours have a particular problem with it. And I'm like, maybe, I don't know. I've kind of see it everywhere I go.

Matt (3:08:00)
talked about this since the beginning of the podcast. Yeah, the meme. And at first it was like one of those things that just kind of ominously floated around the internet. Because I've been a conspiracy theorist for a long time and you've seen these. I've seen them forever. But it was the picture of kids in 1995 at a playground playing and then pictures of kids at whatever year I was in on the playground and they're all just looking at a phone.

Andi (3:08:17)
that Switch commercial too. Yeah.

Matt (3:08:28)
And then, that too, right? It's like, no, this is, it's crazy. We all accepted it.

Andi (3:08:37)
It was like, oh, it's Brave New World. It is in a book. It's Aldous Huxley. it's like a substance they take. It's like they willingly do it. They willingly.

Matt (3:08:48)
Yeah, yeah, Want it. I'm thinking of Soylent Green.

Andi (3:08:51)
I know, was two for a second. It's like that. I can't remember the name.

Matt (3:08:56)
wonder how many people know what I'm talking about. How many people are going to listen to this and know what Soylent Green is?

Andi (3:09:01)
Yeah, I heard about it on Doegenda. John C. DeVore. I did. I rented it from the library. I had to go to find it. Yeah, it was on DVD. I was like, okay, awesome.

Matt (3:09:05)
You've never seen the movie? My grandpa showed me that movie like when I was a kid. Cool. Yeah.

Andi (3:09:17)
Yay, yeah, that's awesome. So flip phone in middle school. Yeah. No internet. Just a flip phone so they can call you. OK.

Matt (3:09:26)
All right, lot of, do remember that, I had you watch on Blacklist? Yeah. I mean, a lot of parents are doing that though, right? Where they're like, I need to track, I need to know where my kid's at.

Andi (3:09:32)
Black Mirror. No, don't. Okay, there's also this like Live 360. mean, I understand if they're older, but not really. The Live 360 has a commercial and it's about like all the different ways your kids can die. It's insane. Scaring the bejesus.

Matt (3:09:43)
Life 360. my gosh. Out of people. You're fear-pornin' the shit out of people into buying their stuff.

Andi (3:10:01)
The world has never been safer. This is what anxious generation talks about. The world's never been safer. It is out there. But we are misguided. We're trying to protect our children from the real world, but we need to protect them from the online world, from the predators, from the addiction, from the inappropriate role models. That's what we need to protect them from. And all you have to do is shut it all off. But instead we think, well, I'm I'm not going to send them outside because there's cars and there's kidnappers. But it's like, what are the odds really? Now, if they're on their phone outside, maybe they're going to get hit by a car. But if they're just interacting in the real world, you know those odds are actually pretty low. And they've never been lower. But the odds of something happen online, I think are almost 100%.

So maybe you might have some special problem, I think the brain damage is pretty much guaranteed. So you're going to maybe get hit by a car or definitely get brain damage.

Matt (3:11:07)
Yeah, and exposure to inappropriate material for boys is damaging beyond repair. Like the exposure to pornographic material for young boys is detrimental.

Andi (3:11:22)
It's really child sexual abuse. yeah. You can't like make a child watch that. So you can't let a child watch it.

Matt (3:11:31)
Yeah, yeah, they shouldn't, yeah, if they can't consent, then they shouldn't accidentally be able to get, have sexual experiences, right? But with the internet, it's like, they will accidentally, I just watched this thing, it was like a short of a six year old that his dad caught him, yeah, caught him searching for something and he was like, what did you search?

Andi (3:11:35)
You're good,

Matt (3:11:59)
And he was like, oh, whatever. But it ended up being like a six year old typing in and searching like girl shaking boobies. And he was like, why did you do that? He was like, I just love them. And they laughed. Right. And it was like, oh, this is really funny. But it's like, oh, that kid's heading down a slippery slope because that on the wrong search engine will get you some crazy shit.

Andi (3:12:23)
Right, you can't let them do this. You think, I'll put up all the parameters and I'll hack it, I'll set it up. It's like, you're going to become this prison guard and you cannot, you don't have the time, you don't have the attention, something will happen, you'll take your eye off of it. And it's wild, but you have to protect them, I think.

Matt (3:12:46)
Yeah, I think the only effective way of protecting them from this thing is to not let them participate in it. Like, you would never let your 15-year-old daughter date a 40-year-old. So why are you letting them participate in this? It's like, we got sideswiped.

Andi (3:13:02)
Totally anxious generation is all about teen girls and depression and anxiety. That's like that's their problem. So mine have different problems But you want to so that so they recommend no social media before I think it's high school Yeah, that's the recommendation. I disagree wholeheartedly

Matt (3:13:21)
Really? Just at all?

Andi (3:13:23)
We already know. And they're like, well, it's going to be hard. We're trying to make a soft sell. And I'm like, you can't sugarcoat this stuff anymore. I get it. You're trying to make some things kind of plausible, passable. But it's like, you need to call it.

Matt (3:13:39)
Rip the bandaid off, tell them the truth. am, you my wife's like, we're not doing that, but I want to send my girls up to like, I already looked at it, it's this boarding school up in the mountains of like the UK somewhere. All girls school, no boys and just keeping them there until the 30s.

Andi (3:13:58)
See if it's tech free.

Matt (3:14:00)
I'm just worried about the boys at this point.

Andi (3:14:02)
They're online. It still needs to be tech-free. Because boarding schools, I've visited them, not just this one. I visited multiple ones.

Matt (3:14:07)
Yeah. this one's like hundreds and hundreds of miles away from civilizations. Can they just be nuns? Can we just settle with that, you know?

Andi (3:14:18)
It doesn't matter if they're on their phones. My son said, Mom, I'm not Rapunzel. Yeah. And I'm like, you get back up on that tower.

Matt (3:14:27)
I would convert just for them to be nuns. I would be okay with that.

Andi (3:14:32)
You know, if they're adults, which I wouldn't hope, I guess it's 18, I'm hoping they're never going to do this BS. I got off of social media in 2020. I watched like the social network, Social Dilemma, the movie, and it just started kind of eating at me. And I was like, once COVID happened and I felt like, well, this is my only way to socialize. like, I'm not going to do this. Just burn out. not, I didn't feel like I was crazy about it, but I was like, this is lame. So that.

If you let them, you can't let them use social media on your watch. You know, it's not good for them. And just because all their friends have it doesn't mean it's good for them. Or what are we going to do? Let them do drinking and drugging because all their friends are doing it? Like we know it's not good for you. We just, we've discovered that recently. So now it's just a matter of us putting our foot down, being parents, you know, being protective, not overprotective, just protecting them. And if we don't, if we are permissive, they'll come to later think,

They knew. I mean, we know when they found out, you know, and they let me do it anyways. That's not loving. You know, we have to have boundaries. That's our job. And the boundary shouldn't be, can't go outside the front door. The boundary should be, you're not going to get on social media. You're not going to have an account. You're not going to use, but okay, so you need a group of like-minded parents because it was just with each other's devices. So that is a problem. Like there can't be any devices floating around. Difficult, right? that that's contraband kind of territory. Yeah, which is why boarding school can be helpful or you can send her without a phone, but it doesn't matter. So I think they should get their first smartphone with GPS when they're driving if they don't want to learn how to use a map. It makes sense. There's traffic. There's reports. It seems helpful to have GPS when you're 16. So you have a flip phone until you're driving.

Matt (3:16:03)
Yeah, paraphernalia.

Andi (3:16:29)
If you choose not to drive because you're home playing video

Matt (3:16:32)
Use GPS at 16.

Andi (3:16:34)
Me neither,

Matt (3:16:36)
I even have to use a map, I just knew the streets.

Andi (3:16:38)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if you get a job, I don't know if you're driving around or if you're going, yes, I see what you mean. Yeah. You're right. When you're little, you don't. So yeah, you may not even need it. So if you don't need GPS, you don't even need to get a smartphone with GPS. Yeah. I mean, you can also like maybe get the navigator on the car or something, you know, some way where they don't get, can't hack the phone because they have, I mean, they get through everything. Like they become hackers. They can, they know your, they know how to get around. Yeah. All of these tech companies. drilling at it all day at school and telling everybody how to do it. So you really, like, if you can limit just the technology, you're in better shape.

Matt (3:17:19)
Yeah, I have a community of family that, you know, I think my parents' 34th grandchild was born this year.

Andi (3:17:29)
Well, y'all are helping out with the population.

Matt (3:17:31)
Well, they're Mormon. Okay. You know, so it's almost like a necessity. Cool. But, you know, I did my part. I had two kids. So I actually had three. But so my replacement rate, I've satisfied that. you know, it's like across the board, it's like our little kids are not and they're all their cousins are growing up with each other. They're all best friends. They spend all their time together. They go to school together. You know, it's like so, yeah, no devices. is happening right there. Although I think I'm pretty sure I have like a niece, she's like 15 that has a phone, I think. This could end up being like ⁓ bigger than substance abuse problems. I think it is. Everybody's doing it.

Andi (3:18:09)
Yeah. Everybody's doing it. Why is everybody doing it?

Matt (3:18:23)
Because it's so easy.

Andi (3:18:26)
You've got to be honest with yourself and look at your own screen time and look at the apps you're using. Do you do that? You look at your own screen time?

Matt (3:18:34)
No, because I know I probably spend more than what I think, almost all of what I'm doing is uploading clips from...

Andi (3:18:45)
Well, you can see what website and app activity you do. So you can just look at it and see if you're satisfied with it. Like I spend most of my time messaging and on email and I'm like, looks good. know, and like I'll look at, yeah, Spotify is a big one for me to listen to music. know I'm, yeah. So it helps.

Matt (3:19:06)
I know I'm on YouTube because I have podcasts going like

Andi (3:19:09)
You know what you're watching. Are you watching shorts or are you watching something?

Matt (3:19:12)
I watch long-form content, mostly debates-based stuff around religion. Cool.

Andi (3:19:20)
You just have to watch out for that info dopamine hit that is like.

Matt (3:19:24)
Where, what is it called? Focus time, right? Screen time. Okay.

Andi (3:19:27)
Screen time, yeah. And I think a lot of parents are scared to look at their kids screen time. You know, if you see 21 hours a day, like how would it make you feel? 16 hours a day. And you're thinking, it's four. Well, you don't know what they're doing all night when you're asleep. You could let them have their phones in their bedrooms. Do you take them away every night? I have a friend who has a daughter who's like in high school and it takes her like so long to do her homework and it's like four hours a night. She has to have her phone and her computer. It just takes her forever, but she has to have her computer. I'm like, she's just chatting with her friends. That's why it's taking so long. Yeah. It's crazy. Oh. So she's using the chat. They're just hanging out. She's not doing her homework. She's just telling you that she's doing what she's supposed to be doing. It looks like homework. Yeah. But it's a lie. So make her do her homework at the kitchen table where you can see it. She's going to end up getting it done in like
probably two hours, if not half an hour. And then she can call a friend or go over to a friend's house or whatever. She can hang out with her friends. She'll have free time. She can develop a hobby. Another thing you can do is have a study buddy or a study group. So if your girls are studying online, just have them come over, make snacks. If they're at the kitchen table, you can hear them. They're held accountable. They're supervised. When they're always online, secret texting, group chats, they end up doing weird stuff. You know, their photos get out there, they bully each other. It's just like, it's a lot.

Matt (3:21:00)
And that's the other thing, like bullying, like online bullying, it ends up being like an actual bad thing. But when I was a kid, we would bully each other to each other's faces. And it was like, it was a good thing. Like we needed to do that to each other. First of all, for like shaming each other out of dumb shit. But like we also like knew who each other were and we would like test our friends around us and like. Yeah. Now insert internet. Right.

Andi (3:21:31)
Yeah, it's horrible. It's just like you should die dude. It's yourself It's horrible and then the kids end up mimicking it right because it's out there. Mm-hmm. It's like I don't remember anybody saying that when I was in high school

Matt (3:21:44)
Dude, and the adults are the worst. dude, the adults are so bad about shit. I get the weirdest comments. I get the weirdest comments. So I had a pastor, and this dude has like, his whole face is tattooed. This dude's like stabbed himself, been shot, broke his own nose three times. Like, he was fucked up. And then now he's like on the complete other side, owns a church, like...

Andi (3:21:53)
Like what?

Matt (3:22:12)
owns a church that makes no money, basically. He's really in it to just help people. And he was talking about a story, something that led him into changing his life. And everybody always see, it's always the same post, and it's almost always the same comment, but everybody always talks about, they'll post something like, talking about how fucked up you are is not a flex. It's like, dude, what about the other 30 seconds? You hyper fixate on the dumbest shit. You know, it's like, you guys are not only taking something out of context, you're also picking and choosing what you're gonna criticize based on what?

Andi (3:22:55)
I think it's a bot. That sounds like a bot. Yeah, there's this outrageous, almost offensive, rude. It's like people, I don't really know anybody like that.

Matt (3:22:58)
I hope so. No, but that's the problem is you add anonymity to the person's

Andi (3:23:17)
Okay, but when I have anonymity, I'm not going out there like being a jerk.

Matt (3:23:22)
Yeah, you seem like a really nice person though. Thank you. I think the average incel who are the people that will be doing this they are Like let's talk let's think about the term incel like involuntary celibate Right, that's what that's what incel means

Andi (3:23:37)
No, you have to take responsibility for yourself. That's ridiculous. But okay. I knew that, but I forgot it. No, you're not involuntary. Right.

Matt (3:23:42)
That's what incel means. Yeah, involuntary celibate. But that's what it means. That's what it shortened from is involuntary celibate. That person is also 40 years old living in his mom's basement with a bowl of four different bags of chips in it.

Andi (3:24:04)
OK, bear with me. OK, let's say it starts with the AI programmers. It goes through all of the tech industry. let's just say programmers in general. So we start with internet programmers. And then you go through the apps and the Google and the social media and everything. And then it gets through the in-cell. And then it gets to you. It's just one iteration away from actually being the bot. So even if it's going through the in-cell. the bot. Yeah, it's just like this weird thing. And it's coming at you from, you know, just devices. I don't know. I just it's like, who cares? If they don't have the if they can't come and talk to you, you know.

Matt (3:24:37)
It is so good. Have we ever seen pictures of a bot farm? You've never seen a picture.

Andi (3:24:50)
No. Yes, no, I'd love to. Okay, please. That's so funny. But yeah, boys, they know they need responsibility. And these grown men that don't have any responsibilities ⁓ really need to work on themselves.

Matt (3:25:09)
This is what they look like.

Andi (3:25:12)
wow. Weird.

Matt (3:25:15)
These are all, shoot, These are all the, these are hundreds of cell phones that are taken apart and the motherboard is placed into these. That is a farm. Check it out, this is one station at the farm. The farm is actually hundreds of these stations. This is how people buy views. They will employ this person to have it's one command and all of these phones now go view this one thing. Yeah, this is a bot farm. Crazy.

Andi (3:25:57)
Yeah, I don't think you can trust the algorithms either or the view counts. I've had weird things happen with my businesses. John C. Dvorak from No Agenda talks about his Twitter account's been capped at 100,000 people forever. How does it not go up or down? And I have weird stuff where I don't believe it. It's not really based. It's just, it's like, guys. It's not based on quality.

Matt (3:26:21)
No, the things that are rewarded. Ava and I talk about this all the time. The things that are actually getting hits, we're like, what? Why did that one? No information, no quality of anything, it's something that I literally pulled out and it's like a 12 second clip, gets like 20,000 views. And it's not just 20,000 views over a lifetime, it's 20,000 views in an hour.

Andi (3:26:44)
Yeah. Yeah, well then why does it stop? That doesn't make any sense to either. That's what I mean. Like this doesn't make any sense. Crazy. Because if it's, did it, was it a test? And it showed it to 20,000 people and then it stopped? No, mean from the algorithm. Like what, what, why did it come and go?

Matt (3:27:03)
It was over the holidays. I've asked, I've asked, like how does the algorithm decide? And so it's based on responsiveness of the engagement. And so if it slows down, it will slow down its exposure.

Andi (3:27:19)
So if, yeah, that's the problem. If you're not obnoxious enough or outrageous, you need to be really outrageous so people are like, look at this.

Matt (3:27:28)
Yeah, the amount of people that are consuming my type of content, first of all, the demographic of people, who are we talking about? It's people in recovery, addiction professionals, possibly people in active addiction, right? And they're just, I think when you talk about like the overall percentage of people in the United States, it's a very small percentage of people. And so there's like organic growth that we're watching like day by day. It's like, I got four new followers, 10 new followers today or whatever. But then I've done experiments around like, okay, I'm just going to put like this clip, this AI clip of what it was, was a coyote chasing a roadrunner. And it got like a half a million views. From the same channel. Yeah. From all that, right? It's like, but this was for some reason pushed so hard.30,000 likes.

Andi (3:28:28)
so much. mean, people watched it till the end or something.

Matt (3:28:32)
Oh, it wasn't just watching it till the end. were sharing. It was like hundreds of thousands of shares, hundreds of thousands of views, 30,000 plus interactions.

Andi (3:28:41)
See, this is what I don't trust. What if they just did that to you so that you will just keep producing free content for them? Well, it's like, because the slot machines work like this. It's like, sometimes you win, sometimes you don't win. And like,

Matt (3:28:50)
Yeah, not doing it. You base your interaction on the win.

Andi (3:29:01)
Yes, and it's addictive when it is unpredictable. It's not addictive if you always get the reward. That's such a good point. So as a content creator, they are potentially addicting us. Why wouldn't they? They've done it in every other way humanly possible. So they want free content or free attention. In both cases, like we have voluntarily given our work for free. We have been psychologically tethered and enslaved by this addiction, like wanting the followers and wanting these like, so they gave you like a huge search. It's like, good job. But or it's random, can be random because the more random, the more addictive the slot machine is, right? So they make it like the perfect amount of big, big jackpot. Nothing. Yeah. They have control. Good point.

Matt (3:29:50)
And they're the house.

Andi (3:29:54)
So I think of sharing my work as a portfolio, but I don't do it much. What are you getting out of it personally?

Matt (3:30:08)
Like around this?

Andi (3:30:09)
of, yeah, the conversations.

Matt (3:30:11)
Getting exactly what I knew I would get out of it, which is a lot of pushback and not a lot of attaboy, right? Because I'm talking about shit that people don't want talked about.

Andi (3:30:24)
Wait, you're talking about comments or you're talking about this conversation?

Matt (3:30:27)
I know. I thought you were asking about the channel.

Andi (3:30:31)
What are you getting out personally of the conversations?

Matt (3:30:34)
the conversations?

Andi (3:30:36)
For you. Yeah. Not like, I get to share, like I get I'm getting something.

Matt (3:30:41)
Yeah, and so this is the part of my life today that is like the most rewarding around like these conversations, right? I get to talk to a bunch of people that I would have never talked to. I also get to like, a lot of people have exposure problems, right? Like Dr. Shah is amazing at what he does. Yeah. But if you asked him to monetize what he does, he couldn't do it. Okay. Okay, so.
Dr. Shah has an exposure problem, right? And this was one of the first conversations that we had was like, don't, he was like, I don't know how to make this bigger. I was like, I got you. Cool. Right? And so the exposure for Dr. Shah, cause there's a model behind what we're doing. Like, I don't know how much of what you, what we've talked about online, you've listened to, but we are proposing that addiction, have you, there's a book called addiction as an attachment disorder.

But he's got a theory and we have a model that says that there's a component to chronic relapse that is gone completely unaddressed and it is the neurological component. Nobody's talked about this because Dr. Shah is the only neurologist that is also an addiction medicine specialist in the field.

Andi (3:32:01)
Amazing. That makes me think of the wearables because like when you, that Black Mirror episode, Archangel, like she had a wearable that detected stress and I watched it right after I listened to your interview and I was like now that would be a good use of a device. I wouldn't necessarily want it implanted, but maybe. But you know, if I knew my child was in physical life-threatening stress, it might be good to know.

Matt (3:32:29)
So there's a component to what we are looking for. And you would think that there's like a physiological reaction, whether it's elevated heart rate or whatever stress response is to this escalation. What we found out and what Dr. Shah has discovered is that, yes, there is a physiological manifestation to the escalation, but it's that you walk faster. And so because you're in this escalation, yeah.

Andi (3:32:57)
Fascinating. My son used to pace.

Matt (3:33:00)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (3:33:01)
Fascinating. And you know, his advice is to remember he to realize that things really are good. It's like, just calm down.

Matt (3:33:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. when you're in that risk-taking mode, you're driving faster. You're walking faster.

Andi (3:33:18)
Well, so with the mind-body connection, there's a physiological feedback loop potentially, at least with if you slow down your walk, are you going to be better?

Matt (3:33:27)
If you slow down the walk, that means that there's intentionality around it, which means that if you rewind it back, you're aware. So this isn't a control or a moral problem. It's an education and awareness problem.

Andi (3:33:42)
Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned there needed to be a collaboration of social norms. What was that about? Calibration. Yeah.

Matt (3:33:51)
Yeah, so it's the social calibration of the moral compass for somebody who is already skewed is massively important. Right? And so for me, I've done things. I can do things that I'm willing to do things that most of the world would never consider. I know I can do them because I've done them. I'm willing to do things because I've done them. And when things like when push comes to shove, like if my daughter is ever Every father would like to think that they would slay their child's dragon, right? And it's like, no, when it really comes to it, you're let the courts deal with it, you're gonna whatever, right? I know that I'm capable of it and I'm willing to do it. And so without other men telling me like your thought process is fucked up, I will continue to think that I'm like justified, right? And so I found my tribe of people very similar in experience and outcomes where it's like, You know, they fucked up their life and they made it better. ⁓ Whatever, right? The baseline of addiction is all the same. You grew up, you got involved in whatever, you fucked your life up, you quit doing that and your life got better. That's everybody's baseline story is the same. And so my moral compass, since I know it's just by default skewed, I have to have it socially calibrated. Yeah.

Andi (3:35:13)
Yeah. How would you relate that concept to tech addiction and how most people are already addicted? how can you find a social group that can be like, what are you doing on your phone? Why are you staring at your phone for two hours? I don't know what, but there's something, how would you see it?

Matt (3:35:37)
You know what? Adult sports. Yeah. When I was growing up, I watched my dad go play basketball like two or three times a week. Uh-huh. And now you don't see adults doing that shit. Paintball, like that was a massive thing when I was growing up. was like adults did it and we wanted to do it too. Uh-huh. And now I just don't really see like adult sports happening anymore. Unless it's like professional level sports. Uh-huh. I think that if adults got involved in physical activity in a meaningful way again, competitive way again, that it would kind of alleviate a lot of the social norm of the doom scroll. Because now you talk about it too. Men respond really well to social shame. Right? Where it's like, I spent six hours on, they're like, what? Dude, what are you doing? And we can shame each other out of negative behavior really quickly.

Andi (3:36:30)
Wow, so doom scrolling is one way. Yeah. It just seems so like taboo almost. No, no, no. Like, well, you use it too. You use your phone all the time too. You know everybody does. It's like there's nothing wrong with it or something. And I don't know.

Matt (3:36:41)
The Doom Scroll? No, we got sideswiped with something that became socially not just normal, but acceptable and necessary. That is contributing, it's a huge contributing factor to how fast our society is deteriorating. It was already deteriorating. Ad internet, dude, escalated it and accelerated it so fast.

Andi (3:37:16)
Yeah. Wow, there's like this scene in the graphic novel. I mean, yeah, the amazing generation. There's this scene where like there's a kid learning to skateboard. I mean, skateboarding was huge when were a kid, know, and adults did it, you know, and they were like super tough and good. So anyways, this kid's skateboarding and another kid is like just looking at skateboard videos. So this kid's really struggling on the rack or whatever he's on. wheel. Thank you. And then the other kids like, Hey, like, look at this. And like, this kid's like doing, you know, pipes or whatever. And so it's like, kind of like, I found something better than what you're doing. You know, but the kid just kept at it, right. And I don't want to spoil the book, it's a kid's book. It's a happy ending. So, you know, I think when we watch, yeah, when you're watching too much, like,

Matt (3:38:04)
Yeah, that's what I

Andi (3:38:13)
You're kind of living vicariously. And it's a little depressing to see, like, it's all, they're all so much better than you, like, why go play? And it's like, why not play?

Matt (3:38:15)
Yeah, it's. heard somebody in one of those debate shows talk about the voyeuristic generation, that we are living through the most voyeuristic time that humans have ever seen. And people are living vicariously through other people's lives.

Andi (3:38:28)
Yes. Right, and that is like the moral harm. the recalibration has to be about our connection and love and caring of one another.

Matt (3:38:46)
Yeah. Addicts are geared specifically for this type of awareness. Most of the world lives in the solution and they will avoid the problem at all cost. But we are coming from the problem towards the solution. And so the way that we see things is different. Right. And we are also able to, willing to and capable of doing things that the rest of them won't do. And so in order for us to say sober, which I'm sure you know, that like we live on a different, we just live in a different way. And it isn't logical. There's nothing logical about addiction and there's hardly anything logical about recovery. And I know this because people will say like, why do you do that? And people will be like, I don't know, but it works. Right? And so it's like, people can't linearly find recovery. Like you have to go through this. journey of discovery and healing and like there's divergence in everybody's healing process. And then ultimately it's like, I guess really when you boil it down to it, there's like only really one way to continue it after the work is done. It's to help other people. Yeah. But I don't know. It's just, are geared for a type of introspection that's not normal and communication that also isn't normal anymore. And then also connection that isn't normal anymore.

Andi (3:40:13)
Right. in that sense, you could help with this tech recovery because you have the perspective, you can bring the tools, and you can dare to have the conversations. And the benefit, we don't know yet, but what we're paying now is the opportunity cost of whatever our flourishing would be, but for the fact that we're doom scrolling and not playing sports and not just, you can pursue anything in your free time.

Matt (3:40:42)
Yeah, how many people have been robbed of their creative experience because of their doom scroll addiction?

Andi (3:40:49)
Absolutely. I can't imagine. Almost everyone. Yeah. And it's one thing to take away free time from an adult. you know, our lives are kind of a grind. Their whole childhood. Yeah. Do they? I mean, that's a lot. I don't want to be too exaggerating there, but, you know, if you let them, they'll spend their whole childhood on it. They'll just go to school and go online. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (3:41:07)
It's crazy. Well...

Andi (3:41:21)
Save the children.

Matt (3:41:22)
Save the, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's our responsibility.

Andi (3:41:27)
Yeah, and you can see it now and you'll see it more and more. You'll see, you know, all the heads down. You already saw it when you got out of prison.

Matt (3:41:35)
I think everybody sees it. They purposefully ignore it.

Andi (3:41:39)
Well, it's easy to ignore when you get back on it and look at your phone. It is the trance. It is the distraction. It is the escape. I pray the best for you and your family and your girls. I need all those. you a little bit. Yeah. And I love the work that you do and appreciate the impact you're making.

Matt (3:41:51)
Yeah, thank you. I this helps. Well, thank you. definitely appreciate your time and thank you for coming on. Thanks for listening to My Last Relapse. I'm Matt Handy, the founder of Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, Houston, Texas, where our mission is to provide compassionate, evidence-based care for anyone facing addiction, mental health challenges, and co-occurring disorders. Find out more at HarmonyGroveBH.com. Follow and subscribe to My Last Relapse on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you like to stream podcasts. Got a question for us? Leave a message or voicemail at mylastrelapse.com. If you're feeling overwhelmed or struggling, you don't have to face it alone. Reaching out for support is a sign of strength, and help is always available. If you or anyone you know needs help, give us a call 24 hours a day at 888-691-8295.