Podcast
The Extreme Crisis of Young Women - Freya India -
Modern Wisdom
- Young Women Are Driving The Political Gender Gap
- Freya India argues the bigger political shift is young women moving sharply left, not young men rushing right.
- She says women now report more pessimism and more negative views of men, yet similar claims got her branded misogynist before the New Statesman echoed them. Transcript: Chris Williamson We often hear about a lost generation of young men, but research shows that young women are more pessimistic across the board. They are less likely to say they feel happy, ambitious, excited, or fulfilled, and are more pessimistic about the prospect of being happy for their life generally. Yes. The fuck’s going on? Freya India So is this the New Statesman piece? Yeah. So there was this huge New Statesman piece, Angry Young Women, which made me an angry young woman. Chris Williamson Why did you get pissy about the New Statesman piece? Freya India Because they reached a lot of conclusions that a lot of conservative women, conservative people have just been saying for a very long time. So as you said, they were saying that young women feel pessimistic, that they have more negative views of men than men have of them. And all we’ve heard about for the last few years is the manosphere and how men are getting radicalized. And ultimately the argument in their piece was that women are getting radicalized by social media and particularly by femosphere influencers. So women warning them off other men. All of the women reading your book. Yeah, basically. Chris Williamson Unhappily. Freya India Yeah. So they came to the same observations as me and a lot of other people. But then after my book tour in the UK, I’ve had to put up with constant accusations of being misogynist, being far-right conservative for saying something is happening to liberal young Women. They’re not happy. Something is happening in their relationships. They feel hopeless about the future. And even in the New Statesman piece, they found that more privileged women felt even more pessimistic. And these are things that I’ve been trying to argue very carefully and I hope with some compassion. But I’ve had to put up with constant smears and backlash. And so it’s just it was very interesting to me that the new statesman can reach the same conclusions. And it’s sort of celebrated and welcomed. Chris Williamson I once spoke to Douglas Murray about this and I said, have you ever used your gay privilege card? And he said, well, are there gay men? Of course. I said, you know what I mean? You know, you’re from a particular protected group. Have you ever been able to cash in your status at some point? And he said, well, the problem is that I’m white and conservative, which makes me essentially an honorary straight guy. White conservative is the straight of the gay community. And you being white, British, and right-leaning means that you’re essentially, your female privilege is totally dismissed. You don’t have it in the same way as the New Statesman writers may do. Freya India So yeah, a lot of the criticism against me is you’re a white, cis, heterosexual woman trying to argue what’s happening to women from that perspective. But then I’m like, if I wrote a piece, a book telling you what black women are feeling, I’d get attacked with that. That would be awful. I don’t know. And so I feel like, how can you not write a book from your own perspective and say, you know, there are, I think there’s young women who feel this way too, because I have all the data. What do you mean? Chris Williamson Like white, cis, heterosexual woman, is that not what most women that you’re speaking to are? Yeah. Freya India Well, my book is for women in the anglosphere who are facing specific problems. So our problems are not stigma around mental health. They’re pathologization and medicalization of all of our negative emotions. Our issues are not too much pressure to settle down. They’re pressure to stay single and self-actualized. So it’s unique issues to the Anglosphere and to sort of women growing up in the liberal world like me. And, but yeah, so the argument is basically the book is just my ranty opinion from my privileged point of view. Chris Williamson That is a thin end of the wedge to funnel people into right and far right conservative beliefs. Yeah, it’s full of dog whistles. Yeah. Freya India Yeah. But then that’s why the new Statesman piece is annoying because it’s like, it’s the exact same conclusions and they’ve gone out and spoken to women and reached the same observations As me. (Time 0:02:01)
- Women Got More Choice But Lost Their Anchors
- Freya India says many privileged women have gained freedom and opportunity while losing the anchors that make life feel stable.
- She points to family breakdown, weak community, less religion, and says social media filled that vacuum with addictive substitutes. Transcript: Chris Williamson Do you think women actually want in 2026? Freya India Well, this is sort of the argument in my book is I think women do have unmet needs. I think the reason that more privileged women were more pessimistic in that piece was that they have everything they want and basically nothing they need. So all of the foundations and anchors that help women and people in general feel stable have basically been eroded. And that’s the argument in my book that we have had our families break down. We don’t know our neighbors. We don’t have communities. We are less religious. We’re less religious than young men even. So we don’t have any of these anchors. And that is why I think when the social media platforms came in, they really destroyed young women because they offered substitutes and simulations of these things that we didn’t have In the first place. Chris Williamson And that’s why you think that women were more susceptible to the impact of social media? Freya India Yeah, in a way. And I think social media plays on girls’ specific personality traits and vices. So it was very addictive. But the reason it’s so bad is because we didn’t have any grounding because if you look at the mental health crisis um women who grew up in conservative and religious households young Girls are doing way better and they seem to have had some sort of protective mechanism from that which is actually why i became interested in it in the first place it’s not that I was conservative Or religious. So part of the argument now is that I’m some sort of fundamentalist Christian who’s pushing this worldview. But I generally, I was looking at the data and thinking there is a pattern here that liberal women who’ve raised in liberal households seem to be rootless. They seem to not have anything to hold on to. And that’s why they are actually more addicted to social media. So liberal teen girls is about 31% say they use it for more than five hours a day. And it’s much higher than other groups. And so there is something specifically going on there with liberal girls and having a liberal upbringing that’s not happening with conservatives. (Time 0:08:30)
- Why Product Thinking Makes Motherhood Look Unappealing
- Freya India says young women increasingly treat themselves like products to optimize rather than people pursuing human experiences.
- She argues this frame makes motherhood look irrational because it is risky, bodily, long-term, and hard to display online. Transcript: Chris Williamson Said they’re getting what they want, but not what they need. Yeah. What is it you think that they think they want and what is it you think they need? Freya India Well, I think, so the argument of the book is that women are becoming something more like products rather than people. And so I think they’re being encouraged to see their lives as the ultimate goal is to optimize yourself for the market. The ultimate goal is not to have a collection of human experiences. And I think this explains a lot of things. So it explains what young women value and what they don’t value. So for example, not having children, more of an aversion to having children someday than young men I think that’s because they think of themselves as a product not as a human and so people Say things like oh that’s the most human experience why would you not want to do that but if your goal is to be a perfect pristine product then why would you take the risk of motherhood when It could destroy your body it’s unpredictable it’s dangerous it’s scary it’s not really something you can display quickly you know it’s like a long-term satisfaction and so i think We often view it from the wrong frame we’re thinking about women previous generations of women but i think this generation of women is very different and their values are very different. And so my argument in the book is that you’re being encouraged to focus on all the wrong wants rather than what you actually need, which I would argue is what all humans need, basic human Connection, dependence on other people. (Time 0:10:48)
- The Pressure Is To Be Perfect Before Love
- Freya India argues liberal young women feel less pressure to settle down than pressure to become perfected, healed, and self-actualized first.
- She says years of posting life for an audience make commitment feel like the end of the identity most rewarded online. Transcript: Freya India You think there’s a pressure for women to settle down and have children um i’ve actually argued that it’s the opposite and in my experience it’s been the opposite which is that so emma Watson was talking about this recently on a podcast and she was saying that it’s a violence and a cruelty against young women this pressure to settle down And then it’s overwhelming And that she feels in such a rush to do it. And I just couldn’t relate to that at all. And I don’t, thinking about the women in my life, I don’t think that is what’s happening. I think for the women I’m talking about, there’s much more pressure to stay single, to stay unattached, to stay available. And I think what Emma is really describing when she talks about the rush and the hurry is she feels pressure to cram in all her self-actualization before she meets someone. So in the podcast, she’s talking about healing herself and fixing her mental health and becoming the best version of herself and becoming whole and healed and enlightened And I think That’s a core message that young women are growing up with, which is that you need to be perfect before you take on a responsibility or commit to someone. And so I don’t think there’s pressure to settle down. I think there’s pressure to be perfect before you meet someone, which often is pressure to stay single. Chris Williamson And that’s because your self-brand, your product online, that needs to be, you basically need to exit the business of your public profile because post-motherhood, you’re not going To be able to go to brunch with the girls or wear cute heels in the same sort of a way and, you know, can be flexing, changing nappies on your timeline. Yeah’s it’s the end of something um it’s the end of the thing that is most valued by other people in the community that you are engaging with most which is the internet yeah and part of the Freya India Reason i wanted to write the book is to give people a sense of young women’s childhood to how long they’ve been marketing themselves as a product and thinking of themselves in this way And I think that’s really hard to just switch and so I talk about girls being on Instagram at 10 or 11 that every experience they have they feel they have to document market perform for Other people everything is done in anticipation of an audience and then you’re asking them to do things that are scary and have a quiet satisfaction and where they would have to give Up some part of themselves and I include myself in this you know I was on Instagram at 11 and for me to get off Instagram and then not have the constant nagging feeling of I need to take a picture I need to document this I need to prove to people that I exist. It was so hard to switch my mindset, even though I wasn’t even that addicted. (Time 0:12:23)
- Childhood Branding Now Starts Before Birth
- Freya India says child content now starts before birth, with parents reserving Instagram usernames and planning online baby narratives.
- She cites UK figures that nearly a quarter of five to seven-year-olds have smartphones and 38% are already on social media. Transcript: Chris Williamson Parents are registering their kids’ handles on Instagram before they’re born. Freya India Yes. That’s become part of child content. So you’ll plan your baby shower, you’ll plan, pack your hospital bag on YouTube, you’ll do everything and then you’ll select your child’s username. Do you know nearly a quarter of five to seven-year in the UK have a smartphone? Chris Williamson A quarter of five to seven-year in the UK have got a smartphone? Yeah. So they can see the internet? Yeah. Freya India And I think it’s 38% are already on social media. Chris Williamson How old do you have to be to register for Instagram? Freya India I think 13, but I don’t think there’s any proper, you just put a birthday in. Chris Williamson It’s not like Pornhub where you do some sort of verification. Freya India No, you just put a birthday in. Chris Williamson I was with Tony Abbott in Australia. And I didn’t know much about Tony Abbott before we sat down. Interesting guy. We were with the person who had spearheaded that under 16 social media band yeah in australia they were at the table too this big big dinner thing and uh i wonder whether that’s going to Get rolled out i get the sense that the uk is going to feel way too much pressure it’s so tight-knit yeah i think it’s going to really struggle the brits just don’t like dealing with displeasure In that way they don’t like we’re a complaining country right i’m aware that americans are very litigious if you trip over on a curb someone’s getting sued yeah but uh the uk have the equivalent Skill but at complaining and i think that that is a weapon of mass destruction that stops progress from happening sometimes i also think we are more of a surveillance state, as in there’s Freya India So much messaging scaring the life out of young people for what they post and what they do online. And I think that that will end up being its own harm in the UK because we already have the online safety bill where it’s age verification. So all adults have to upload ID to view. Half of it is illegal content, so fraud or child abuse. But then another part of it is platforms would have to protect users from bullying or hatred against people, which is my sub-stack. But yeah, it will be, I think the methods we’re going to use in the UK will cause their own problems because Kirstama is already saying he wants to double down on age verification. (Time 0:15:22)
- Young Women Now Fear Family More Than Men Do
- Freya India says young women now express less desire for marriage and children than young men, which she sees as culturally unusual.
- She links it to fear, unstable family models, online gender wars, and porn shaping scary templates for relationships. Transcript: Chris Williamson What’s happening with young girls’ desire for children? Freya India I think that it’s very interesting to me when I did the book that young men seem to be more seem to desire having children someday more than young women so there was a pew survey recently Which showed that 12th grade girls were less likely to say they wanted to get married someday even than young men um and there were so many statistics about not just children, but being Open to dating and having a relationship that men seemed much more open to dating. Single young women were actually more likely to say that they felt that marriage was outdated and old fashioned than men. What interests me is why young women see more of us than young men now I would think it would be the opposite and I think part of that is my argument that women are becoming something more Like products I also think as well it’s general risk aversion and fear and I trace some of that back to you know having your own family down. I don’t think young women have had good models of stable relationships that make them feel safe and that they could invest in someone enough to have children. Chris Williamson So you’re saying the psychological impact of being in a home that’s either unstable or maybe broken causes an imprinting for what you think relationships should be like when you get Older. Freya India And having children is terrifying. So it’s so vulnerable for a woman. And so I think that fear is a huge part of it. And if you think of it, it’s not just maybe you grew up in an unstable household, but you might have also grown up online so you don’t see a happy relationship between your parents and then You learn about relationships from the internet so you learn from the sort of deranged gender discourse online so you’re hearing wounded adults talk about men and women and generalize And stereotype off the back of their own hurt and heartbreak but you’ve got young people reading that before they’ve had an experience of a relationship so you have that and then you Also have online porn will be teaching you about relationships and teaching girls that men are sort of brutal and insatiable and predatory and so and I think this is happening for young Men as well I just haven’t researched it much, but it seems to me that all of young women’s templates will be very scary and make that commitment even scarier. (Time 0:17:56)
- Child Free Culture Often Masks Fear Not Freedom
- Freya India says the child-free trend is driven less by glamour than by intense risk aversion around pregnancy, dependence, and losing control.
- Chris Williamson adds women fear becoming just a mother, while Freya frames careerism as emotional insurance against relational vulnerability. Transcript: Chris Williamson What about some of the trends around living a child-free life? What are some of the ones that you’ve been most worried about or that you’ve seen online? Freya India I think the risk aversion. So people often talk about the child-free sort of glamorizing their lives. So they’ll be like in the Maldives and they’ll be able to, you know, they have double income so they can buy all of this meaningless stuff. But that doesn’t worry me as much as the general fear. So I’m going to get you into trouble again, but the girl with the list, she lists out all of the terrifying things. I’m going to need one. I can say it because I’m a woman. All of the terrifying things that can happen in childhood. And that to me is way more dangerous for young women now. It’s not that I think they’re looking at child-free lives and thinking it’s really glamorous. I think they’re just really scared. We’re already a risk-averse generation. And then you think of previous generations they were not able to read through all of the physical risks and analysis and neuroticism about having children that we are and so i think that Really affects anxious young women where they think why would I do this? Chris Williamson To steel man that side, I think childbirth is so physically and emotionally taxing for women in a way that it just isn’t for men. There is a huge asymmetry in terms of what women pay in order to go through childbirth and what men pay in order to go through childbirth. And I think what that leaves is a sense that any man or person, but specifically a man who doesn’t fully recognize how big of a risk and sacrifice that is for a woman, if they appear to be Flippant or not understanding or not compassionate about it, which can be overly sensitive, but still, it appears as a man being callous. And I understand if this is the scariest, biggest thing that you’re going to do in your entire female adult life, and some guy comes along and seems to be dismissive of why this is something Big and scary. Yeah, fuck you, dude. Like, no, you should recognize why this is something that’s big and scary to me. But there was a line in the New Statesman when the lady was interviewing a group of girls. They said, it’s a much bigger deal for us to become mothers. We have to get rid of our career. I’m not fully against kids. I just really don’t want to lose the other things and become just a mother. I still want to be me and I will probably lose that. That’s not the same thing that I’m talking about. I just really don’t want to lose the other things and become just a mother. I still want to be me and I will probably lose that. Freya India Yeah, I think it’s a fear of vulnerability. Chris Williamson Dependence. Freya India Yeah, I think this gets missed sometimes with the discussions on girlboss feminism and all young women just want to be a girlboss and for sort of selfish reasons. I think a lot of it deep down is animated by this risk aversion and fear and it’s a way of having control. So you have a career and you have all of these other things that make up you so that if something happens to your relationship, you have something. And there’s some truth to that. But I think that’s happening among young women and young men, a fear of vulnerability and chasing things that make people miserable because they’re trying to avoid having to depend On someone and take that leap of faith with someone. So you see it with productivity stuff online for men, which is that put everything into your career because a woman will just hurt you. I think it’s a similar thing with young women. But yeah, I do think it can get caricatured sometimes. But deep down, it’s fear, most of all. (Time 0:21:45)
- What Gets Rewarded At Work Can Hurt Love
- Chris Williamson argues traits rewarded at work like dominance and relentless independence can undermine intimacy, compromise, and family life.
- Freya India says this generation must relearn risk and dependence because career-first conditioning makes it hard to lean back out. Transcript: Chris Williamson Think that needs compassion. But there’s definitely a challenge that women have. And I think this is going to happen more and more as women are socioeconomically more successful. As you’ve got more women getting careers and entering the workforce, they’re going to behave rightly or wrongly, whether they need to or they don’t, in a more independent, masculinized Way. They’re going to be more assertive. They’re going to be more dominant. They’re going to be more disagreeable. And that very well may be the thing that they need in order to get them through their career and to ascend the rungs of the ladder. I think that this creates a weird sort of ratchet effect where it’s hard to ever go back from this level of independence and assertiveness. And unfortunately, when you want to start a family, when you want to get into a relationship, there’s a degree of relinquishing that you have to have. When you want to move in together, the same thing happens. You need to compromise more. You need to show up for this person because they need you in a way that isn’t just what do you want right now. Freedom, freedom, freedom. And then maybe you get married and you financially you’re tied. And increasingly, women are going to be the ones that if they don’t get a prenup, they’re going to be more liable if they’re out earning their partner. And then you have kids and the same thing happens times a thousand, that you need to be able to relinquish control. You need to be able to be looked after. You need to have needs and make them known. And it’s a strange sort of duality that nobody wants to strip female independence because how many marriages stayed together because women were basically financial prisoners. And at the same time, if you can’t let go of your independence, it’s going to be really, really difficult for you to have a successful relationship and start a family because you’re not Supposed to be a solopreneur inside of your relationship. You’re supposed to be a partner and then a mother and then a member of the unit, the house unit that gives and takes and doesn’t keep score. Freya India Yeah. I think you’ve spoken about this before, that the personality traits that work for your career will not work in your relationship. Chris Williamson What you’re praised for in public, you pay for in private. Freya India Yes. And I actually don’t have a problem with women working, obviously. But I do think my issue with stuff like lean in feminism and lean into your career fully is, as you say, it’s then very difficult to lean back out when you need to. And I think for this generation, the biggest thing we need to learn to do is lean into risk and vulnerability. (Time 0:25:50)
- When Traditional Authority Fades The Market Takes Over
- Freya India argues that when progressives weaken religion, parents, and other authorities, the market becomes the remaining moral authority.
- She says influencers and industries then decide what women value while critics still describe themselves as anti-capitalist. Transcript: Chris Williamson Young liberal women hate capitalism or love the idea of an independent career? I know. Because I can’t work out which one it is. Freya India Yeah, that is very confusing to me because my book is criticized for, they think it’s an anti-capitalist book, but I don’t call out capitalism because I believe in free markets. And so I’m criticized for not, um, you know, having an anti-capitalist argument, but then I’m also criticized for, you know, questioning the motives of girlboss feminism and being Uh putting everything into your career and so i don’t understand how the two are compatible at all and my argument in the book is actually if you progressive sort of demonize all these Other forms of authority so um religion you don’t want to be told what to do by religion you don’t want to be told what to do by your parents. You don’t want right and wrong from basically anyone. And my argument in the book is if you undermine all of these forms of authority, the authority will be the market. The market will influence right and wrong. It will be influencers who tell you what right and wrong is. It will be influencers who come in and determine what you value rather than relying on all of these other things. So I often think that progressives sort of want to take down all of these other forms of belonging and meaning, and then all that’s left is companies and industries, but then they’re Anti-capitalist. Chris Williamson It’s a difficult circle to square. (Time 0:28:30)
- Hypersexual Culture Can Make Sex Feel More Scary
- Freya India says Gen Z received hypersexual messaging without becoming more sexually active, suggesting the messaging itself made sex feel threatening.
- She cites Call Her Daddy and magazine content that framed sex with ratings, tactics, and male cruelty rather than trust or intimacy. Transcript: Chris Williamson Happening with sex? Freya India Well, so that was interesting in the book because I had so much research about how hookup culture was pushed on my generation. So the book goes from 2010 to now and everything that’s changed sort of culturally and technologically. I had all of these examples like teen vogue teaching teenagers how to have anal sex giving them tips on hookup culture some crazy stuff and then i had i had to sit and listen to these call Her daddy episodes to get transcripts of what they were talking about and this was sort of in the late 2010s and it’s all about sleeping around and hookup culture and why it’s good and Empowering and healthy for young girls. So I had all of this evidence that there was so much influence that that was normalized. Chris Williamson Alex Cooper now happily engaged. Freya India Yeah. So I had that. But then you look at the statistics and we’re not actually having more sex. And so I was thinking that’s all going to lead to this huge explosion in hookup culture and it really hasn’t. And so there’s a paradox there. There’s so many paradoxes in the book between the messaging we were given and what actually happened to the outcome. And that’s just one of them. Yeah. Chris Williamson It seems strange that Gen Z’s hyper-sexualized and having less sex at the same time. Yes. Freya India But maybe they’re linked, which is that when I was sat listening to the Call Her Daddy episodes and reading these articles, sex sounded horrifying and scary. Did it? Is it not advertising sex i think that’s what we think it’s doing but i mean on call her daddy they’re saying you know if you’re a five or four out of 10 then you really need to like learn these Sex tips in order to make up for it you’re just a hole. No, but just genuinely, so it’s like the sort of stereotypically worst masculine banter coming out of women. Like basically they had this guest on. Chris Williamson It sounds like something that Louis Theroux would have seen in the Manosphere doc. Freya India Exactly. Chris Williamson Like if you’re butters, you’d better learn to cook. Freya India Exactly. So they had this guest on called Milf Hunter. Brilliant. Chris Williamson Hang on. Milf Hunter for women? Freya India This is a guy. Right. Who had slept with a load of older women and was giving them advice, basically. Okay. And the advice is just horrifying. But then at the end, he shouts out, women don’t care about you sorry men don’t care about you and then alex cooper and the other host are like i hope you girls are listening and even if you’re Married you’re not safe he still wants to cheat on you this is terrifying messaging around sex and i think that is i mean it’s the most listened to podcasts by women and so I really think That would have played a part in why we’re now seeing a sex recession is that you had it on both sides you had this awful messaging from the feminist influences the femosphere that the New statesmen now are finally talking about but then you also have it from the manos for influencers everybody basically saying that investing in the opposite sex or being vulnerable At all is going to get you hurt and you have to put on this defense mechanism bravado and it’s the exact same messaging what (Time 0:30:04)
- Porn Taught Girls About Sex Before Relationships Did
- Freya India says porn also reshaped girls’ expectations because many encountered it before dating, often by accidental exposure on mainstream platforms.
- She argues some women became porn-brained, speaking about themselves as objects in language that sounds pulled from porn sites. Transcript: Freya India Do you think pawns done to expectations around sex and power i think porn is another thing that terrified young women from my generation because they would have been exposed to it before, Likely before they’ve had a relationship. And so you have, I had to go on this forum in the book of Gen Z adults talking about when they first were exposed to porn. And some of them are like eight, six, and they’re talking about accidentally seeing it on these platforms and way before they’ve even attempted dating anyone or can put that in context. So I think we talk a lot about the impact of porn on young men, but not so much on young women. Even if they’re not watching it, I think there’s constant sort of exposure to it on social media. So a lot of the statistics in the book were accidental exposure. So it’s not young people going on to Pornhub. It’s very often on Twitter or Instagram and it’s accidentally come up and it started an addiction. And so I think that plays into the same thing. It creates a fear around sex and it creates crazy expectations. I think there’s porn-brained women sometimes where the way they speak about women, about themselves is so heartbreaking. Even listening to Call Her Daddy and some of the guests on there, the way they talk about themselves, it sounds like it’s straight out of a porn site. And they’re viewing themselves as nothing but an object, a product. Chris Williamson There’s another weird paradox going on here, which is porn is both something totally meaningless, transactional, that you can do freely with whoever you want, whenever you want. And also the root of potentially the most traumatic thing in your life if it’s done incorrectly. Freya India No, I don’t understand the consistent defense of porn from progressives. So this is part of the controversial part of my book is that I don’t caveat. I don’t give any disclaimers with that because I was so tired of reading books that constantly caveat. Chris Williamson And so with things like porn- The throat clearing land acknowledgement. Yeah. Well, we must remember that porn can, it does empower women to be able to, if they’re a disadvantage, they’ve got an iPhone and a dildo and they can make the money that they would have. Freya India And I do that throughout the book. So another controversial part of the book is to talk about the mental health industry. And I don’t do the constant, you know, some medication really helps people and it saves their lives and therapies, of course, life-saving for some people. I do a brief acknowledgement of that at the beginning. And then I go into what I think are the real dangers, because I think we’ve heard that other side of the story. There are so many books telling you the benefits of mental health awareness and opening up and taking medication. And the point of the book is it’s the things that we didn’t grow up hearing. And so I give the skeptical side of it. And I think that is very alarming to a lot of progressives. (Time 0:33:37)
- Online Vulnerability Became A Monetized Performance
- Freya India says vulnerability online shifted from rare honesty into a monetized performance that sells intimacy to algorithms.
- She traces it from Zoella revealing anxiety to creators now live-streaming panic attacks and showcasing messy depression for clicks. Transcript: Chris Williamson That’s L-I slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout how do girls think about their emotional lives and struggles well in the book i actually talk about it starts with this sort Freya India Of cliche of posting your perfect life online. So highlight reel of everything you’re doing. And then I trace the start of influencers being vulnerable online. So I put it, I begin with Zoella, who was huge in the UK, you know, the beauty influencer. Chris Williamson No, should I? You don’t know her? Sorry, the beauty influencer Zoella. Yeah i should be familiar with her okay maybe men and women do have different lives different echo chambers here you know what i mean yeah does she lift no ah if she lifts then if she starts Freya India Lifting if she does a vlog with chris bumstead i’ll watch that okay okay but she basically she was huge for young british women okay british and yeah and she was sort of perfect looking And really sort of inspirational if you were 13 and she was in her 20s and she was one of the first beauty influencers and she did this video where it was so dramatic she was like i’m gonna Reveal a really dark side to myself you guys might not think about me the same and but i’ve just got to say it and it was literally just she has anxiety but at the time it was so it felt so personal And private that she was revealing this and so she spoke about having panic attacks and it got millions of views because 13 year olds like me at the time were like gosh there’s this perfect Woman admitting to having a struggle so that to me seems a healthy thing and then i talk about how that basically became incentivized a whole industry got built around that and other Influencers began to see that opening up would be beneficial in terms of clicks and money. How’s it beneficial? Because it’s releasing sort of a private secret. So it’s very clickable. So if you say, I have to tell you how damaged I am about my personal trauma, it’s like gossip. And so those videos do really well because they’re intimate and vulnerable. And basically, was the start of girls like me seeing influences offer up their deepest feelings to the market to algorithms and i think some of it was directly copying influences so We’re so sick and tired of the filtered perfect lives that we’re all going to start showing the vulnerable side of ourselves. But it’s still a kind of performance. And yeah, and so my argument in the book is it became its own performance just as damaging as seeing the perfect lives. Now you scroll through people live streaming their panic attacks, showing their messy depression. Chris Williamson At least the perfect lives are aspirational. Freya India Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Chris Williamson And it’s, it’s objectively, even if they’re untrue, objectively, if we’re able to truthfully get there, that seems like not a bad life to have aspired to. Freya India It’s harmful to scroll through. (Time 0:38:06)
- Real Distress Gets Repackaged As Personal Disorder
- Freya India says young women’s distress is real, but industries increasingly recast human reactions as disorders and identities.
- She argues girls with less real-world social practice get told the problem is internal, then ruminate harder through diagnosis and self-labeling. Transcript: Freya India And I think it’s actually harmful for the young girls themselves to, to tell the internet, everything they’re feeling and reveal their deepest emotions. And i actually say in the book that companies were explicitly encouraging that all through my childhood so instagram facebook snapchat they’re all telling you open up share your story We want you to tell tell people how you’re feeling um and i think it was more about sharing your data with companies than actually opening up if you think about the progress for, let’s Chris Williamson Use Instagram, you go from just being able to post images to being able to post images and videos, to being able to post images, videos, and then stories. And the reason for the story, I remember at the time, the guy that was running Instagram, he said, sometimes I do something or take something that I don’t think is good enough for my feed, But I do want to share it. So that can go on my story. And then you have close friends. So there’s even a, you know, members only. And there’s a literal members only. It’s like an OnlyFans section of Instagram for people who want to have paid for GateWald members content on there too. But yeah, the only, the close, Instagram stories thing can be exactly where you would put this sort of stuff. And then, you know, I’ve refined my having a breakdown content, maybe it’s fit for public consumption now. Freya India And I think you have. One thing I always argue is, you don’t know who you’re going to be at 20 or 30. And you have young girls sharing really vulnerable parts of themselves and sort of then categorizing themselves as that thing so if you’re really struggling with social anxiety disorder At 13 you might not be struggling with it at 20 but you’re giving the internet everything about that struggle and so another part of this is is the social media platforms and how permanent They are, but then it’s the mental health industry that you will get categorized, sold to, and then be encouraged to diagnose yourself with a disorder and take it more seriously, whereas You might grow out of it. Chris Williamson And if you have to do a U-turn on that in future, there is this cemented, fossilized record of where you were previously. Hey, hey, hey, you used to believe this thing. Yeah. And now you are saying this thing. Why? Freya India So often in the book, I’ll talk about influences and sort of how they’ve had, they’ve been called out for something or they’ve had a breakdown or something has backfired. And it’s so interesting that young girls were basically mimicking on a smaller scale, everything that they were doing and so for example I talk about 2020 and all of the influencers Getting cancelled for not posting the right black square and getting called out and the same thing is playing out among ordinary girls turning on each other for not posting the right Thing and it’s it’s a similar theme throughout the book whatever’s happening to influencers on a big ordinary girls are mimicking. Because they also have an audience. It might not be a huge audience that influencers have, but they are performing for their followers and their subscribers. And the argument is that our role models were influencers more than anything else. Chris Williamson So normal feelings are being reframed as disorders now? Yes. Freya India And so that’s a big controversial part of the book. Chris Williamson Nearly 30% of teenage American girls aged 14 to 18 seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021. 30% of teenage American girls 18 to 14 seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021. Freya India See, I think there’s two things going on, which is that there is genuine distress. And so I’m not someone who argues that young women are just diagnosing themselves, but they feel fine. I don’t actually think they feel fine. I think they feel intense psychological distress for all sorts of reasons. But then part of that distress is a mental health industry that is encouraging them to ruminate to go more inwards to focus on it to diagnose themselves and so it’s a part of it um but i think Yeah if young girls say they have an anxiety disorder they have social anxiety i think what they’re really feeling is actual distress from the world that they’re growing up in. And so they have had less practice. They have had less face-to interaction. And so they do have this outsized reaction to socializing, but it’s not a disorder. And so the problem is you have a lot of young women who typically by their nature will go inwards when they feel distressed, but you have industries encouraging them and telling them The problem is you. Chris Williamson Yeah. They’re not making it up, but they are being manipulated. Freya India Yeah. Yeah. And the point of the book is basically there’s nothing wrong with you. Your reactions are human reactions to the world and to a world that’s trying to turn you into a product, the fact that you feel unhappy. Chris Williamson What’s the product bit? Freya India Well, I think that all of these things in some way are linked to girls viewing themselves as some kind of object or trying to be perfect. So trying to look perfect, feel perfect, labeling themselves if they feel anything human or any sort of distress or human reaction to something, they will need to package it up and understand It. (Time 0:41:15)
- Algorithms Pull Young Women Left Through Female Coded Incentives
- Freya India says social media radicalizes young women by pulling normal liberal sympathies toward more extreme social justice positions.
- She argues these movements reward female-coded traits and vices like empathy, safetyism, indirect aggression, and cancel culture. Transcript: Chris Williamson What’s happening politically? Freya India To young women. Well, so this is the interesting thing in that New Statesman piece, is they actually admitted that it’s young women who have been radicalized. So from the 2010s, it was young women who lurched dramatically to the left. It wasn’t that young men lurched to the right. Young men pretty much stayed where they were. It was women. Chris Williamson Yeah, the New Statesman said, the prevailing narrative is that young men under the influence of the Manosphere and Andrew Tate are being politically radicalized faster and in greater Numbers than young women. The result is a gulf in political sensibility between British women and men who are now dramatically inclined to the populist right compared with other parts of the population. It’s a compelling story, but it isn’t completely accurate. Instead, it is young women moving to the radical left that is widening the political gender gap among the under 30s. Yeah. Freya India And I would put that down to social media because obviously there’s all different spheres of content on social media and every trend, basically, you can get dragged toward the most Deranged and extreme end point of that trend. And so I’ve been trying to argue for ages that young women are going down their own rabbit holes, whether it’s mental health trends. They hover over some content and then end up diagnosing themselves and it becomes their full identity because they’re dragged constantly toward more content. And it’s the same with progressive politics. You start at a pretty normal place where maybe previous generations of women were, but then you get moved by the algorithm constantly, further and further to the left. Chris Williamson Why to the left and not to the right? Freya India I think because progressive politics naturally plays into women’s characteristics, especially new sort of social justice culture of politics because it’s very much about compassion Empathy also plays into our vices so indirect aggression cancel culture risk aversion safetyism a lot of the vices of young women are sort of indulged by the new social justice movement So i think that’s happening but then also you combine that with social media platforms and young women are just sucked into it in a way that young men aren’t there was a segment in that Chris Williamson New statesman article i asked if the women would consider dating a man with different politics they all immediately said no i don’t think i’d even be friends with one, said one girl. They don’t see you as human. Only one woman, Evelyn, admitted to having male friends, though she was worried this made her a pick-me trying too hard for male attention. Evelyn was concerned about the men that she knew were watching online. The stuff that’s being said about women is crazy. They’re getting all of these reels talking about bad stuff about women, and I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men. I try to think not all men are like this, but it’s interesting that men get reels talking bad stuff about women. And she knows that she gets reels of women talking bad stuff about men, but that the women talking bad stuff about men is warning her about what the men are watching. And that’s true, but that the reels that are telling the men the bad stuff about women, that’s actually where the danger is. Yeah. Freya India And I think that’s where what the new statesman would draw from all this is that women have negative views of men because men are bad rather than why do they have negative views of men? What rabbit holes are they going down? When it’s young men, it’s always a rabbit hole that they’ve gone down. But young women are reacting to a real issue. Whereas I’ve seen so many parallels between the sort of extreme manosphere guys and Call Her Daddy. It’s the same language. It’s the same like thumbnails and titles. So it would be like, we don’t need men and we don’t need women exactly the same and the way again they speak about women is identical. (Time 0:46:40)
- 2020 Turned Instagram Into A Public Morality Scoreboard
- Freya India says 2020 was when morality became publicly measurable through Instagram posting and silence started looking incriminating.
- She recalls teenage girls calling each other out for not posting Black Lives Matter content because everything else in life was already performatively shared. Transcript: Chris Williamson 2020 a turning point for girls online? Freya India I think it was the first time that I remember being called out for not posting something And so something really changed in terms of you have to join in the pressure and the fear of your Reputation being smeared, especially if you were a teenage girl at the time. So I remember being, I think I was 19, when Black Lives Matter protests were happening. The sort of again you had celebrities and influencers being called out but then you had ordinary girls coming after each other for not posting stuff and I give the context in the book That we were basically posting everything online by that point so every relationship memory holiday was updated and you know compulsively shared with people and so if you’re doing That and then you don’t post a black square it looks really suspect because everything else is shared and so i think what changed in 2020 is morality became measurable and instantly Judged by your instagram profile um and i think when a teenage girl, your life is basically just constant reputation management. And so that really hit young girls, this idea that you’re not a good person if you’re not joining in and you’re not displaying where you stand on things. Chris Williamson What was that silence is consent tagline? Freya India That was cara de la vene so she had a instagram story saying silence is consent which is the worst it’s not great it’s not great to tell women is it yeah yeah but yeah all so it was young women Pressuring each other and then going after each other for not doing it because it became another form of reputation destruction that you have inoffensive and outdated views and so I think it was even separate from what was happening politically it just became another form of competition a (Time 0:50:30)
- Beauty Content Turns Girlhood Into An Escalating Arms Race
- Freya India says beauty culture on social media escalates like an arms race, normalizing procedures and anti-aging anxiety earlier and earlier.
- She describes children on Reddit obsessing over wrinkles, sun exposure, Botox, and routines before they have even finished puberty. Transcript: Chris Williamson The female intrasexual competition thing is so fascinating to me because it’s so hidden. It’s so done behind the scenes. It’s not out front. I guess what’s happening with how girls see their appearance? How’s that changed over time? Freya India Yeah. I mean, that’s another crazy arms race. I mean, I talk about, again, with beauty influencers influencers like zoella that i grew up with she would just do like a back to school makeup tutorial and it would be very simple and Basic and not uh there’s nothing really harmful about teenage girls watching that but again the competition the amount of influencers over the years that that now have to compete for Clicks and money mean that each beauty influencer also has to up their game and say something slightly more extreme or show something more extreme. So for example, you go from normal beauty tutorials to casual vlogs where you just show you getting a Brazilian butt lift in the middle of the vlog. And that becomes part of a standard beauty routine and you see it with stuff like anti-aging where it’s just a simple anti-aging routine and then becomes like a 50-step anti-aging routine And you need to do it younger and younger because the thumbnail that says you know you need Botox at 17 does way better because people click it and want to know more about it. And so it’s in all aspects of life for young women. It’s the mental health trends, it’s the political trends, it’s the beauty trends. Basically, social media will drag everything to its inevitable extreme. And then if you’re spending most of your waking hours on social media, then that is no longer the extreme. That is where you’re getting your information. It’s where you’re learning about beauty and relationships and politics. Chris Williamson Has Instagram and TikTok changed what we find attractive? Freya India Yeah, I think so. More of a sort of avatar now where you there’s a terror of aging among young women and so I wrote a piece ages ago about 12 year olds worrying about wrinkles on Reddit forums and obsessively Ruminating over pictures whether they were they aged writing out all of the sun exposure they’ve had and checking, you know, is this something that could make me look worse in the future? Comparing all of their anti-aging routines and their children. Chris Williamson You need an aging routine. You need to actively be aging at that point. Freya India Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is- Get more sun. Sometimes it’s girls worrying about wrinkles before they’ve got through puberty because they’ve grown up with watching influencers who are worrying about that and who are having To sort of exaggerate their neuroticism, up their neuroticism to get clicks. But then you have young girls, that’s the first they encounter, first sort of young women role models they encounter who are warning them about this. And I think social media in general just makes you ruminate. And so girls already ruminate more than boys. But then they’re on all these platforms like Reddit where you all co-ruminate together. The point is you talk about your problems. Chris Williamson And there’s an escalation on there as well. Yeah. There’s always a sense of one-upmanship i always see this with my friends that are conspiracy minded and in a room there’s always a it’s kind of like an arms race to see who can go deepest Down the iceberg yeah oh you think that epstein was just a guy that had an island oh you think he was just massad oh you think he was just a reptile person dude Dude, let me tell you. Oh, that’s cute. Let me tell you the real thing. And it’s this, yeah, weird race to the bottom of the iceberg. And it’s kind of the same here, that there is this ratcheting up in intensity of this stuff. Freya India You see that most with the mental health stuff where it will be, oh, you think it’s bad, you’ve got ADHD. Well, I’ve got autism and ADHD. Chris Williamson And I’ve got a gluten intolerance and I’ve got a club foot and my dad walked out. Yeah, exactly. Freya India And I think the platforms, again, they encourage that because you have all influencers are competing for attention, but then you have influencers whose whole brand now is their mental Health diagnosis. They are the ADHD influencer. And I think that creates some very bad incentives because then you basically compete over your diagnosis. (Time 0:53:43)
- Facetune Taught Girls To Distrust Their Real Face
- Freya India says apps like Facetune trained girls to manually redesign their faces, then hate the unedited version.
- She recalls friends fighting over whose phone took the photo so each girl could retouch herself before anyone saw it. Transcript: Chris Williamson There has to be a psychological cost of growing up with a front-facing camera 24-7 as well. Freya India Yes. Chris Williamson Right. What was that? There was a Zoom face that people had during lockdown? Snapchat dysmorphia as well where people want to get surgery and to look like their filter they don’t like seeing themselves without their filter yeah so you have girls who are using Freya India Did you know about facetune because i swear no young men even know what it is. You don’t know it. Chris Williamson Lots of Facetune. Freya India See, that’s great. So Facetune is one of the most popular apps where girls would edit themselves to then post on Instagram. Like filters? No, going in and editing each part of your face. So you can slim your jaw, you can enlarge your eyes, you can change your waist, you can tan your skin, you can whiten your teeth, it’s everything. That is what girls were using as teenagers all throughout their all throughout growing up and then they’ve reached their 20s and people say why are they unhappy with the way they look Why do they have body dysmorphia and they’re using this app where you you change yourself and then there’s like an undo button which if you click it you look horrifying because then it Reverts back to how you actually look but you had girls doing that during the most formative years of their life and then trying to adjust to how they actually look how does the self-love Chris Williamson Messaging coexist with record levels of body dissatisfaction yeah that’s another paradox. Freya India I think because it’s a marketing strategy. It’s much like mental health awareness. A lot of that was a marketing strategy. The self-love campaign was basically ways to sell things like editing apps. So Facetune was marketed as something that can help you feel confident and empowered. And I talk about these influencers in the book who are literally, they’re literally talking about how they don’t have any insecurities anymore, and they’ve overcome it, and they finally Reached a stage of self-love while they’re literally reshaping their jaw on facetune teaching girls how to do it and none of the comments are calling that out or thinking it’s hypocritical Why because i think it’s been drilled into us that these things are self-love and so a lot of the time in the book i talk about recognizing what are you actually being sold versus what you’re Being told because you’re constantly being told you feel this way and that this app or technology or trend will make you feel this way even though it’s not. So I don’t know any young woman that would face-tune herself and feel good doing it rather than feel embarrassed and a bit ashamed and feel worse about themselves after. Chris Williamson You know, I think the same thing happened with the pickup artist movement. So what guys that did it learned was just how much they had to contort themselves in order to get laid with a woman. And even if it was effective, what they felt was the delta between who they were normally and who they were when they deployed the game by Neil Strauss. Freya India Yes. Chris Williamson And that gap made the normal version of them feel even more disgusting, even more unwanted. Look at how much I’ve got to disguise and pervert myself in an attempt to try. Did you see the midget fight outside? Let’s go to three other bars so that I can neurolinguistically program, hack the back of brain into coming to bed with me tonight you go i have to jump through all of these hoops and this Is where so for the guys that it was successful for if you don’t do too much self-investigation hooray you did a thing yeah but if you do a bit more self-investigation it’s pretty it can Be pretty dark and for the guys that did it and it didn’t work even with the best tactics in the world i still can’t make myself into someone that a woman wants yes neither of those are good Freya India Outcomes yeah it’s the same that’s so similar to the beauty stuff for women which is that it can maybe get you what you want superficially so you facetune yourself and you get 200 likes On your instagram post but it then it’s a momentary bit of dopamine but then after that you’re now hooked on the app you need to keep using it you need the constant yeah and then you develop Which is what happened to me and a lot of girls i know which was then having an aversion to having your picture taken naturally because you’re so used to controlling it. So girls in my friendship group would fight over whose phone the picture would be taken on. So that they could go in and face-train themselves. They’ve got the control. Wow. And so then- Wow, that is fucking insane. Yeah, because it feels so out of control. And then also that explains a lot of, I think, social anxiety because being in the real world is out of control. You can’t control your appearance. You can’t edit what you’re saying or rehearse it. And so I think a lot of these apps actually then stunted us in real life because it feels so… (Time 0:58:16)
- Social Media Rewards The Worst Traits Of Teenage Girls
- Freya India says social media has feminized everyone by rewarding rumination, insecurity, and reputation warfare over physical confrontation.
- Chris Williamson says even masculine online spaces now resemble high school cattiness, with adult men acting like mean teenage girls. Transcript: Chris Williamson Know what was interesting? I was on Long Island, August of last year, good weather, sunset, and there was a group of young teenage girls that were taking photos. And I noticed that if it was really perfectly put together, I mean, they must have taken, I’m not kidding, it must have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos. I get it. You want a nice new profile picture, whatever. Like, is it a bit silly? Yeah, but whatever, it’s fine. The other thing that was interesting was if they were snapping as they walked, because they’d stayed in the same area that was going to have the best sunset, which is where everybody Was eating ice cream or whatever. And if someone was sort of snapping away more naturally, more candidly, immediately all of their hands went up to their face. Have you seen this trend? Where girls sort of do this? So they’ll pose with their body, but cover their face with their hand. And again, I’m trying to get it. I’m trying to not curmudgeonly point a finger at someone that’s 20 years younger than me and go, these kids, I’m like, okay, so what is it that they’re feeling? Why are they doing this thing? What’s the best interpretation of this? It’s a cutesy little you but it wasn’t a marilyn monroe shocked open mouth sort of face it was i just need to do this it was like the scene out of four lions where he’s trying to stop the fucking Freya India Cctv from watching it it’s another paradox where we’re vain and insecure at the same time but there’s context to it because you know i grew up with the dog ear filter on snapchat please Chris Williamson Tell me you know what that i’ve seen that one and i remember the um do you remember the face mask that was bees no so you know like the face mask that you used to have in covid yeah that very Quickly became like an object of oppression or something that didn’t work or whatever yeah um i swear was one, and people can tell me in the comments whether or not I’m fucking hallucinating This. I swear that there was one that was yellow and had bees. Jared, Google, was there a Snapchat filter of a face mask with bees? I swear, fucking not hallucinating. But I remember the dog one. And then if you opened your mouth, it did a licking thing, right? Freya India Yes. But the dog one… Chris Williamson Make people want to be dogs. Freya India No, but it beautified you as well. So it would enlarge your eyes and smooth your skin. And so you had 13-year using it because it was cute, but then suddenly hating the normal pictures of themselves and not knowing why. And it’s because it was subtly changing your face. Chris Williamson Why do you think social media has feminized us all? Freya India Oh because I think that it has so because girls use social media more than boys and they say that they find it harder to give up and as I said before it sort of these platforms tap into our Vulnerabilities and our vices but then lately I’ve realized that I think it does that for everyone so I used to think that social media is particularly bad for girls because it makes You feel insecure it makes you ruminate and it encourages this indirect aggression, so reputation destruction and going after people online. But now I see grown men online acting like teenage girls. And I think it’s because the platform itself encourages these behavior that teenage girls already typically do. And so you see people online of all genders, of all different sides of the political spectrum all different types of content thinking like teenage girls so becoming more ruminative Spending hours and hours on platforms where they have to share how they feel how their day is their opinion encouraged to sort of catastrophize and ruminate over that then you have men And all different types of people becoming more insecure so looking at themselves through a front facing camera which is bad for girls but even worse i think for boys it’s just very unnatural To sort of forensically analyze and inspect your face and so you have looks maxing and guys getting really um obsessed with how they come across and how they appear and also thinking They have to be this perfect product and then you also have guys using sort of the typical aggressive tactics of teenage girls online and so louise perry and mary harrington have spoken About this that the internet forecloses physical aggression. You can’t punch someone on Twitter. And so you have to do things like spread rumors. Reputation damage. Yeah, gossip. And yeah, just destroy their reputation through posting like an unflattering picture of them. Chris Williamson There’s a lot of catty behavior for men on the internet. You know, I go on X and I just see, because I only log on maybe once every other day. Yeah. So I see it, you know, when you go to a nightclub and strobe lights flash and you don’t see someone move, you see them at frames. They’re here, then they’re here, then they’re here. It’s kind of like that. So I log on and see this breakdown between two people. And then a couple of days later where that war has sort of evolved into. And it is so, especially for the most masculine, academic-y, intellectually, everybody has regressed to the mean of high school dinner table. Freya India It’s interesting because ideologically men and women might be further apart but i think behaviorally that is one place that we’re converging is that we’re all regressing back to being Teenage girls and i i’ve also argued that it’s not that it’s the thing about being a teenage girl is it’s miserable like a lot of women would say they do not want to go back to being 13. It’s one of the worst stages of life for a lot of women. And so not only are we acting more catty online, but I think it’s bad for our mental health because it traps you in this sort of particularly destructive developmental time. (Time 1:03:18)
- Influencers Sell Simulated Friendship To Lonely Girls
- Freya India says influencers increasingly sell themselves as synthetic friends, not just advertisers, which blunts the loneliness that pushes real connection.
- Chris Williamson compares this to male sedation through porn and games, while female pathways simulate belonging, advice, and companionship. Transcript: Chris Williamson Do you see influencers as just salespeople pretending to be friends then? Yeah. Freya India So that’s a big part of all kinds of influencers. So beauty influences, mental health influences, is that they present themselves as a friend. And I think this happened quite naturally at first. So the original influences were just… Chris Williamson Hi girls, here we are today. Freya India But now it’s a tactic. Now they know that they have to appeal to young girls and make them feel like a friend and so i talk about these tactics in the book where they will literally say something like that their Youtube title will be let’s get ready like we’re on facetime and they’ll do their makeup and talk to you like you’re on a facetime call and literally simulate friendship with girls and I think that is a huge issue because it it stops girls from getting lonely enough to actually go out and make friends and do something about it because they can simulate all of these things Chris Williamson That’s so good you’ve heard my male sedation hypothesis thing right maybe which one uh young male syndrome throughout history when there’s a lot of sexless young men they tend to cause Uprisings and push over granny and set shit on fire yeah we’ve got the highest race of sexlessness among young men that we’ve ever had why is there not the concordant antisocial behavior Yeah it’s my belief that it’s porn screens and video games yeah porn giving a titrated dose of sexual satisfaction screens distracting and video games giving a simulacrum of goal-seeking. So they’re being sedated, male sedation hypothesis, they’re being sedated. That’s why a study done by William is where are all of the incel killings at? Why are there not more? There should be if you were to run it by the numbers. That’s not a fucking request to the DJ, but where are they? And what’s interesting about this is what are some of the young female pathways? What are the nutrients that they want? For guys, it might be progress, mastery, a sense of teamwork as they move toward a goal. For girls, belonging, advice, emotional understanding. And it’s interesting. I’m going to guess, Jared, can you chat GPT what the teenage gender split is for playing video games? Because I’m going to guess that it’s way more on the male side. But if you were to look at Day in the Life vlogs, I bet that the split- Get ready with me. Who the fuck, get ready with me. It’d take three seconds. It would be called put your pants on with me and it would literally be a 15 second video for a guy. Oh, wow. 99% of boys play video games, 94%. Freya India What other games are? Chris Williamson Among teens, 39% of boys describe themselves as daily gamers, 22% of girls do. Just search, do you know what the relative amounts, like a daily play time is? Because it’s got to be more. There’s no way. Yeah. 93% of teenage girls playing video games? Freya India Yeah, but is it like Sims in Animal Crossing? Yeah, maybe. Chris Williamson I guess so. This is where the gender difference becomes more. 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day on average girls half an hour to one and a half hours so boys are one and a half to two times as much first person shooters sports games action combat games strategy And other competitive multiplayer games for boys social sandbox games roblox minecraft simulation sims animal crossing you nailed it candy crush subway surface puzzle game short Sessions low commitment cozy games stardew yeah cozy games um yeah i saw this quote the other day i’d be interested to know what you think about it the average woman’s misandry comes From online radicalization not experience. (Time 1:10:33)
- The Internet Turns Bad Dates Into Theories About Men
- Freya India says some women’s mistrust of men comes from real bad experiences that online spaces then universalize into claims about all men.
- She also says therapy language can make women doubt valid discomfort, overanalyze, and stay in bad relationships under the banner of being secure. Transcript: Chris Williamson What do you think about that? Freya India I think they may have bad experiences. So when I was writing the book, a lot of the complaints from young women were things like situationships where there’s no clear commitment. And so I do think there are less incentives for men to formalize a relationship. Chris Williamson And also girls have to be super cool with that. Yes. Because sex is supposed to be no strings attached. You should have sex like your brother and work like your father. It’s super chill. Yeah. Freya India So a lot of the forums are full of women asking each other whether something’s okay like he i’m not actually his girlfriend yet he is dating someone but we are exclusive you know it’s like It gets really muddled and asking each other that is this normal should i put up a fucking christopher nolan movie plot yeah yeah yeah and so i think there will be cases where young women Are coming across more men who do act like that, depending on the type of young women and who she’s going for. But a lot of the time, I do think that online radicalization is at least stopping them from treating those as specific examples. So they then generalize to all men. So I think they might’ve had a bad experience, but then they go online and people say, this is all men, this is happening to me, this is happening everywhere. And I think similar with women. So sometimes, um, I read comments that will say things like, know, like one in two girls are OnlyFans stars, or they’re all promiscuous. And that’s just not true. That’s just generalized from the internet. And so I think it happens to both sexes, which we’re just, again, encouraged to catastrophize and generalize online. Chris Williamson Well, the most egregious stories are the ones that go viral. So you end up, I call this a recursive red pill learning, which is the most ridiculous stories that you can find on the internet. This guy leaves the house for two hours, but he lost his job the day before and he comes back and his wife’s in bed with the milkman and the milkman’s dog. And then she leaves him and he’s broke and he gets addicted to fentanyl And whether that’s true or not, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. That is the story because it’s so extreme. Yes. That’s the one that gets pushed online the most, which means the most people see it, which means the most people learn from it. And that then just feeds this cycle of if you were a training data set for Chachapi Tea, you would be being trained by exposure because you don’t see everything because you’re not omnipotent. You would be trained on the most extreme stories. So you have the least representative stories because they’re the ones that get the most attention online. This guy and his wife had a minor argument and after a couple of hours, they came together and had a cup of tea and everything was okay. Like that is hopefully what most people should be experiencing. Freya India Yeah. Chris Williamson But that’s not going to generate any clicks online, which means that you’re less likely to see it, which means also people are less likely to post it. So it’s this bi-directional, tri-directional incentive system. Freya India Well, if you look at Reddit in particular, you’ve seen that study about, you know, the advice is break up. Chris Williamson Can you Google Reddit relationship advice graph? Yeah. Freya India It’ll come up. I think compromise is the least popular response. That’s gone down. Yeah. Chris Williamson Was it like just talk it out? Got a therapy ticked up a little bit. Yeah. But it’s, you should just break up. Yeah. And the interesting thing is ChatGPT, I think some huge proportion of its training data is on Reddit. Yeah, yeah. So that being said, I haven’t heard many people say, I haven’t heard many people say that ChatGPT has told them to break up. True. Here it is. So 15 years of relationship advice on Reddit, 1,166 comments. End relationship or cut contact has gone from 30% to 50%. Communicate has dropped by a quarter. Give space and time has dropped by even more. Seek therapy and counseling ticked up a little bit. What’s that yellow one set and respect boundaries so kind of the I guess weaponizing of therapy language a little bit there and then compromise also dropped by probably half yeah I was Freya India Gonna say because some of the examples in the book I take from reddit where actually, I wonder what that advice is for. I’d love to see a breakdown because sometimes it’s a young woman presenting a completely valid opinion about her relationship. So she’s saying, I feel, let’s say her partner’s addicted to porn. And there was one example in the book where her partner had said to her that he was addicted to porn and he watches girls that look like her to try and reassure her. So don’t worry. Chris Williamson It’s all right, darling. I only go for blondes. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s basically me watching you. Freya India Well, I think he was saying even worse that like I watch people with average bodies like yours. Like I also watch normal women but anyway she wrote this like heartbreaking uh post on reddit to say how do I deal with this and she kept saying in it constantly like I know that I need to Get over this but you know it’s upsetting me I can’t stop crying about it I can’t have a conversation with him literally every single comment was you are the problem I think you have an Anxiety disorder I think you have an attachment issue because this is completely normal. And so I think there’s sort of two things going on. I do think there’s also, when there’s legitimate problems, the sort of inward spiral of Reddit can make you overthink it and go too far inwards. Chris Williamson I keep seeing this everywhere. And this is another example of it, that for instance, mental health problems are both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. So there is a bucket of people who have serious mental health issues that aren’t seeking medical attention or advice or treatment for it. And then there’s a huge number of people who don’t have mental health problems, but have convinced themselves or been convinced by the internet or gaslit themselves into believing That they do. So they’re both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. It’s like relationship advice is both too fragile and too forgiving at the same time. It’s too accusatory and too blameless. Freya India Well, as you’ve said before, the people who don’t need that advice will take it. Hyper responders. Yeah. And so you have, if you’re a girl that’s self-critical and likely to go inward and someone tells you you are the problem, you’re going to take that seriously. Chris Williamson And you’ll also gravitate toward a community of people who believe that too. Yeah. So you will echo chamber that. (Time 1:14:23)
- Performative Empathy Online Can Bypass Real People
- Freya India questions whether online displays of empathy are genuine when they coexist with coldness toward partners and people nearby.
- Chris Williamson notes some women frame distant wars as feminine wounds while showing little empathy for men directly in front of them. Transcript: Chris Williamson Megan Cooper, a British trauma-informed holistic therapist, has a podcast called Higher Love in which she discusses violence against women, hyper-masculinity, and the ecosystem Of manufactured male victimhood. On Instagram, Cooper posted about conflicts in Iran, Palestine, Beirut, and Sudan. I don’t know about you, but for the past few months, my bones have ached, she wrote in March. The viscerality of the feminine wound. There’s an interesting injection of sort of female coded language into global wars and conflicts that I don’t fully see the link there. Freya India No, I don’t understand that. The only thing I can think is that it becomes, again, another form of signaling you are a good person. Chris Williamson Look at how much I care. Freya India Yeah, and these would be the same women who’ve, again, grown up with believing that what counts as being a good person is what they post um and also empathy you know to steelman that this Chris Williamson Person is if that’s the truth this person really cares about what’s going on in the middle east and is genuinely pained by it and that that’s a kind of investment that’s really impressive Yeah i don’t i don’t know whether like one of the concerns is that the incentives align on social media for empathy in particular a very sort of public a very obvious kind of look at how Much i care this is my these are my tears for the people of the Sudan. This is my concern. But it can be deranging and it can actually stop you from doing something that could help or focusing on something that you can have an impact on. It’s interesting to me that in the New Statesman article, October 7th was a huge turning point for lots of these women. But not the 7-7 bombing, but not issues that are much closer to home, not the grooming gangs crisis that we’ve got, which is directly affecting women. The concern here, the viscerality of the feminine wound i’m gonna guess when we’re talking about the middle east most of the casualties are probably going to be men because they’re The people that are military uh actors on both sides same thing goes for the ukraine the same thing goes for gaza like yes women and children are not enemy combatants or combatants at All that’s a huge fucking tragedy. But like, it’s more men that die in war. Yeah. And the viscerality of the feminine wound seems like a kind of weird injection of gender into something that’s just a tragedy. Yeah. And the same thing around October 7th. Like, there are much closer to home issues that could trigger that, but for some reason haven’t and didn’t. And I wonder whether it’s maybe because the grooming gangs in the UK is right coded. Freya India Yeah, it’s not politically correct. But also, it’s interesting, in that New Statesman piece, did you read what that young woman spoke, what she said about her boyfriend being a Labrador? Chris Williamson Yeah, he’s a fucking Labrador. He’s never endured any discomfort in his life. It’s hard for someone who’s never faced adversity and has been privately educated to understand this, dot, dot, dot. I actually think I’m the adversity in his life. Freya India So where’s the empathy for people directly in front of you? That is what concerns me. That’s why I’m suspicious of it being in a relationship with you. Yeah, suspicious of it being actual empathy, because it doesn’t seem to translate to even more closer to home than the grooming gangs and the 7-7 bombing. It’s your actual family or partner. (Time 1:23:27)
- Certain Conclusions Become Forbidden Without The Right Politics
- Freya India says critics treat her concern for girls as a right-wing grift because she reaches conservative-coded conclusions without ritual disclaimers.
- She argues skepticism toward social media, divorce, porn, and mental-health industries should sound progressive, but the framing makes it unsayable. Transcript: Chris Williamson What’s been the response to this by the press? Freya India To the New Statesman, please. Chris Williamson No, to yours. Oh. To your book. Freya India Well, dangerous, I think, is one of the sort of key themes has been that, actually, I think more from the press, it’s been that it’s not genuine empathy, ironically. So that- Should have talked about the Sudan. Chris Williamson Yeah. Freya India So the guardian said it was like a bit of a grift to talk about what’s happening to girls um the new statesman said you know i can’t possibly save anyone because their argument was because I’m selling the book and so because i talk about consumerism i can’t actually sell the book i just need to write it and just leave it on the floor. Chris Williamson And so- It’s interesting for someone who’s got a publication that’s behind a paywall. Freya India Yeah, well, you have to sell. Who has so much integrity that they didn’t even sell their anti-capitalist book? They just gave it to people. I just don’t think that’s an argument. Chris Williamson It’s also not an anti-capitalist book. Freya India Yeah. But I think what’s happening is there’s been all kinds of criticism from all different directions and some of them cancel each other out. And so I think the real thing is that I’m just not the politically correct person to say it. And I don’t have all the disclaimers. I don’t talk about political issues in the Middle East. I don’t talk about the patriarchy. I talk about what I genuinely think affected me and is affecting young women that I know. And so I think they come up with all other angles of criticism rather than saying it’s because she reaches conservative conclusions. Chris Williamson I don’t understand why this isn’t seen as progressive. Like surely saying that these tech companies are abusing and commodifying children for profit should be the thing that’s being called out and pushed back against. Freya India No, because they think that we live in a patriarchy and the problem is men and I’m sort of deflecting it on to social media platforms. Also that social media platforms are where girls can learn about feminist ideas and express themselves. And those are good for women. Chris Williamson But they also hate billionaires. Freya India Yeah. Well, that’s an irony with all of these industries. I mean, a lot of these young women define their lives by DSM diagnosis that were basically voted by rich white men. No, the actual pharmaceutical labels. So all of these industries have the influence of rich white men that they hate. But because I draw different conclusions from them and because I have the cultural stuff in there about divorce and porn, all of these sort of conservative coded concerns. (Time 1:27:17)
- Attachment Talk Often Ignores What Breaks Attachment
- Freya India argues divorce moved from normalized to glamorized, especially as a route to self-fulfillment, while its costs to women and children get minimized.
- She says progressives embrace attachment language but avoid discussing how divorce itself can help create abandonment wounds. Transcript: Chris Williamson Is being anti-divorce conservative? Or how is being pro-divorce progressive? Freya India Because divorce is now how women self-actualize. And so I talk in the book actually about going from the normalization of divorce to the glamorization of divorce and then divorce being a means to self-fulfillment and self-expression. Chris Williamson People have divorce parties. Freya India Yeah. And basically, I think that women interpret that as me saying women should stay with the absolute worst husbands at all costs. But really, I think that the normalization and glamorization of divorce hurts women as well, hurts wives, and it hurts children. Chris Williamson Well, we’re already hearing a lot, although it seems to be not fully backed up by the data about the double shift, women coming home from work and then having to clean up around the house. When you add in other types of especially emotional labor and emotional containment that men do uh the numbers start to fall away yeah but if you’re worried about the double shift imagine The fucking double shift but without the helper because that’s what it is especially if it’s young kids yeah if it’s young kids they erica commissar was she’s amazing that was a great Episode thank you her saying custody shouldn’t be 50 50 at all because baby doesn’t need dad as much as it needs mom. Maybe it needs dad more in later life, but people seem to break up between the ages of like six months and three years because it’s really hard. And the cracks that were in the relationship before have been really exposed by this additional level of stress. If you break up during that time, you are going to be, as a mom, you’re going to be the one that’s going to bear more of this burden. And you don’t have a dual income household anymore. So it’s like quadruple burden. I don’t know. This sort of theme, the trend that I’m kind of fascinated by, and it’s good to see us kicking all of the tripwise of the sort of paradoxes of these hyper sexualized but also having less Sex yeah sex is something which is really sacred but also something that if it’s done incorrectly can be incredibly traumatic traumatic to you uh uh the world is more connected than Ever before and yet people feel more isolated We have independence is what you should strive for, and your career is your highest calling, and also maternity leave needs to be increased. Billionaires are bad, but working for a company can be where you find your greatest meaning in life. Freedom is really important, but also it’s just, it’s a really interesting, when you see these paradoxes and a kind of like cultural hypocrisy in a way, it’s usually a suggestion that It’s not fully thought out because it should be smoother than that. It should be more easy to deconstruct logically. Yeah. You know, you’ve got a number, you do the division of this and the number’s 45 characters. There’s a ton of decimal points after you try to sort out what this equation means. Yeah. Freya India I think the way I view it is I think some, again, it’s overthinking a natural instinct a lot of the time. Like if you think about divorce, a child’s parents splitting apart and not living in the same household with the child, that’s going to harm the child. I don’t really need data sets and research for that to seem true. That feels true. And you see it playing out with people who’ve had divorced parents where they carry that into relationships. And that’s what’s interesting is progressives love attachment theory and they love talking about abandonment issues, but they never talk about what’s causing those abandonment Issues. Chris Williamson It’s only ever looking backward, never looking forward. Freya India Yeah. So if you say all of these young women feel abandoned because they were more likely to have divorced parents, that’s not politically correct. But you can talk about all of these young women need to be in therapy and they need to be healing their inner child and they need to be giving money to these industries because they feel A certain way. (Time 1:30:16)
- Therapy Companies Are Replacing Family Guidance
- Freya India says therapy brands increasingly position themselves as replacements for parents, friends, and ordinary guidance.
- She cites BetterHelp ads where a father’s advice gets labeled unhelpful, then the company offers paid emotional support instead. Transcript: Chris Williamson The mental health industry. They’re prepared to kind of under the bus the previous generation and say, well, you know, our parents didn’t have the therapeutic tools. They didn’t understand attachment theory. They weren’t able to hold me when I needed it. They weren’t able to look at, and all of these things are true. And I agree. And I think that a lot of an attachment-informed child-rearing strategy would make kids’ lives and then the adults’ lives better. But saying they weren’t able to hold me as a kid which is why I need to go to therapy now but also if me and my partner break up that’s something to be celebrated how little do you think you’re Freya India Going to be able to hold your kid if it’s at your father’s your ex-husband’s house but they think that I think they think the reason they have an attachment disorder is that they are disordered They have an illness it seems to stop at the label which is that i have a problem whereas what i’ve tried to do is give some of the context of that because some of the context of that has ended Chris Williamson Up conservative coded that’s when it becomes an issue i still can’t understand you know there’s this uh there’s a bunch of different movements at the moment unsubscribe resistant Unsubscribe scott galloway’s thing oh yeah i think maybe netflix is on there there’s a bunch of companies that are on there um i don’t know whether there’s any social media platforms That are on there but if you want to look at who are the companies making the most money that have the most influence politically powerful, every left-leaning Gen Z goal should be deleting Their Instagram account. They should be deleting their Instagram account. They should be deleting TikTok because of the abuses to workers in China. And they shouldn’t ever be using that. Also, you shouldn’t be on X because Elon Musk’s got loads of money and they don’t like his politics and how he influenced the american election i mean i don’t know who fucking owns blue Sky maybe maybe that is as a company is run that’s like as socialist of a capitalist company as you’re gonna get but it that’s where it seems self-serving or at least it feels a little bit Hypocritical where you say, well, if you’re going to kick up a stink about these companies, but give a pass to the one that you think is cool and that you want to gain status on because everybody Else holds it in high esteem, that suggests to me that you’re not talking about this in order to move the conversation forward. You’re doing it because you want clout, which is why you’re not prepared to neuter yourself on the platform where you want the clout to be. Yes. Freya India I genuinely get confused by some of the criticism because it does seem to me so progressive to be skeptical, at least, of these companies and to figure out the need. Sort of a marxist idea what what is the need that we have that is then being exploited and sold back to us so something like better help why do so many young people think they need to be in Therapy young women especially and why are these companies these online therapy companies marketing themselves in a certain way so for example the therapy companies have now shifted To filling the role of almost parents where they’ll say you know if you need to talk about dating or how you feel your crush or exams you can come to us just a fucking friend yeah it’s just Renting a friend or a parent yeah and a lot of it is like guidance that your parent would give you growing up this is like have you seen those uh stories of people that pay for cuddlers yeah Chris Williamson It is like that it’s the emotional social emotional equivalent of paying someone to come around and hug you well they you don’t have anyone to do it yeah they have so BetterHelp specifically Freya India Have these adverts where they have like a young woman and her dad and the dad will say something like, you should just go for a walk in the sun or something. And it will just come up, that’s unhelpful. And then the BetterHelp code. And it does it with friends as well. It’s replacing friends and family. Chris Williamson Look, I’ll fucking advocate for a walk in the sun all day long. I’m not saying that going for a walk in the sun is going to cure all of your problems. No. But there are very few problems that a walk in the sun won’t make better. Freya India Yeah, but it’s just, I’m so suspicious of a company telling you to be less attached to the people that love you and more attached to them like anxiously attached to experts it (Time 1:34:36)
- Use These Signals To Judge Online Thinkers
- Judge creators by whether they unite people around love of an in-group or hatred of an out-group.
- Chris Williamson also says to watch for surprise, admissions of error, and serious engagement with disagreement rather than mockery. Transcript: Chris Williamson Rhetoric i mean look you’re in incredibly good company here um but it is it is strange and that’s not to say that we’re right about everything you’re right about everything that i am. But I have this theory around how you can tell if a content creator has your best interests at heart. And it’s whether or not the group that they belong to and say that you belong to too are bound together over the mutual love of an in-group or the mutual hatred of an out-group. Yes. That is one of the earliest warning signs. Another one is when was the last time they admitted that they were wrong? Another one is when was the last time that they surprised you with one of their takes? Or when did they bring somebody on that they disagree with, not to mock them, but to genuinely try and learn from them? (Time 1:42:33)
- Pronatal Policies Get Reframed As Oppression
- Freya India says many progressives read any pronatalist policy or boundary-setting as a slippery slope toward fascism or The Handmaid’s Tale.
- Chris Williamson uses tax breaks for mothers as the example, arguing critics reframe incentives as persecution of child-free women. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s the people that are furthest away from doing something that are the ones that criticize the most i mean one other thing that we haven’t talked about that i thought was fucking insane Was the reframing of the potential to give mothers in the uk a tax benefit in the same way that mums in hungary got it yeah as an inverse tax penalty on women who want to be child free. Freya India Well, that New Statesman piece said there was a young woman worried about reform forcing them to have babies. And that’s how they framed it. They think reform will force them to have children. And that’s why I laughed at The Handmaid’s Tale, because it’s like they have one story that they just extrapolate onto everything. Chris Williamson Well, it’s the same with history, right? Because nobody knows any history except for a tiny bit of Nazi Germany. Freya India Yeah. Chris Williamson Everybody just defaults to Nazi and Hitler. Yeah. It’s the only piece of history that they know. In the same way as it’s the only piece of literature that can be used for this. It’s handmade to tell. It’s like, well, if you offer, what is it? 25% off your income tax for the first kid, 50% for the second one, and 100% for the rest of your life, if you have three or more, I think that’s what it is in her group, something like that. How can you say that that’s penalizing women who don’t have kids? Like it’s just adding to the system. Now, you can say with anchoring bias, no one should ever pay any tax. That’s fine. But if you’re saying we need to give more money, a lot of the reasons, the justifications that are given for why women aren’t having more kids is because of economic conditions. It’s cost of living crisis. It’s a fear of being abandoned by their partner, divorced, and then they’re not going to be able to afford to keep themselves and the kids alive, et cetera. You’re okay. Well, let’s incentivize that. You go, well, you’re persecuting women that don’t have kids. The women that don’t have kids are being disadvantaged. You go, no, that’s not the case. That’s where everybody is right now. So we want more money for mothers okay well hang on that’s excluding women that aren’t mothers you go okay so do you just want money yes but for women you go yeah i fucking dude what you can’t Freya India Exclude so one of the side effects of everybody only knowing nazi germany that one period of history and then applying it is that anything remotely exclusionary or suggesting closing Things down rather than opening up endlessly becomes suspicious and so any turn back from an overcorrection becomes slippery slope to fascism. (Time 1:45:59)
- Technology Sells Simulations Of Women’s Real Needs
- Freya India thinks women’s underlying preferences have not changed, but digital life now offers fake substitutes for belonging, guidance, and intimacy.
- She says many girls still want family, empathy, and connection, yet get YouTube, influencers, and politics as simulations of those needs. Transcript: Chris Williamson Remember when those mixtapes used to come out, the Marshall Mathers EP, the Real Slim Shady and stuff, and it would have that explicit warning at the bottom of the black and white thing. You basically need that, but you’re like the cigarettes of blogging. You need to come with a health warning on it. Do you think that women’s preferences have fundamentally changed or is it just the environment that they’re in? Freya India I think they’re the same, but as I said before, they’re sort of being funneled toward a fake simulation of the thing. And so… Chris Williamson It’s kind of a big Ponzi scheme. Yeah. Freya India It’s like, even as we were talking about with empathy, I feel like a lot of, you know, sometimes conservatives will say young women are radically left-wing because they’re evil and They want to tear down western civilization i think a lot of the time it is well-intentioned as in they want to look compassionate they want to look good in front of their friends but it’s Being funneled in a weird direction so it’s strange that you have all of these young women in Britain caring so much about the Middle East and then talking about their boyfriend with Zero empathy at all. And I think it’s similar with things that are happening online where, again, you have a need for belonging, but you’re getting it through YouTube. That’s where your family and friends are being simulated somewhat. You have a need to get advice from your parents and you’re getting it from a better help influencer and so i think a lot of the challenges my generation has are not necessarily new but we Have way more simulations than previous generations did how do we know when left’s gone too far? When they rate my book one star. Chris Williamson Ah, there it is. There it is. Freya India I think when it… Chris Williamson You know what I mean? Because this is an old Peterson thing, that it’s obvious when the right goes too far. Freya India Yeah. Chris Williamson But we don’t have the same sort of rules. The entire New Statesman article is saying the skew of women to the left the radical left yeah is more aggressive and is i have to assume is they think is too far even as something that is Left of center yeah you go okay well how do we know because how does it show up it’s like just obscene amounts of empathy that if you turn empathy up to 11 just becomes a different type of Judgmental tribalism yeah i don’t think care for groups has to be constrained to one group, and then it means that you’re not that group, so you’re the oppressor, not the oppressor. Yes. Freya India I don’t actually think it can go too far. Because I think about being, sometimes people will say oh she’s she’s had success because she’s pandering to the right wingers but you can even if you’re slightly conservative on one Topic and all of your other opinions were very progressive you’re immediately coded as right wing so there’s barely any room to um even be moderately conservative or even just curious About the conservative approach so a lot of my interviews have been guilt by association it’s just people that i speak to and who will listen to me then you get coded as too far too right Wing so there’s barely any room on the right but i think there’s so much room on the left. (Time 1:50:54)
- Where to Find Freya India’s Writing
- Freya India directs listeners to her Substack at freyaindia.co for her writing and updates.
- She notes she is not on Instagram or TikTok, implying her primary online presence is independent longform.
- Chris responds playfully, anticipating more controversy from her future work.
- This exchange serves as the episode signpost for following her work after the conversation. Transcript: Freya India Yeah so just my sub stack freyaindia.co um I’m not on Instagram or TikTok I’m excited to see what you do to get in trouble next thank you You too. Chris Williamson All right. Bye, everyone. Dude, awesome. Amazing. Freya India So good. Thank you. Chris Williamson When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the Most dense and interesting. But there wasn’t a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I’ve ever found. And you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren’t going to completely kill your (Time 1:54:55)