You’ve Been Lied To About Masculinity – Scott Galloway @ TRIGGERnometry (Transcript)

And you’ve spoken about this and you’ve written a book, and you’ve been very eloquent and very nuanced and very thoughtful about this, and you’ve spoken about why you’re worried about this generation of young men in particular. Why is that?

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, Francis, the data is pretty stark and clear. If you go into a morgue and there’s five people who’ve died by suicide, four are men. More women own homes, single women own homes in the US than men. And by the way, we should do nothing to get them in the way of that.

If you, 1 in 3 men are in a relationship under the age of 30, 2 in 3 women under the age of 30 are in a relationship, and you think, well, that’s mathematically impossible. Well, it’s not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men.

There are now one in seven men in the United States are considered NEETs. They’re neither in education, employment, employed, or in training. So you have there was just this crazy stat, a couple crazy stats I’ve seen in the last week. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 are spending less time outside than prison inmates. And 45% of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person.

So you were essentially producing, I would argue, or evolving a species of asocial, asexual males. And the gag reflex, which is understandable, is like, well, they should just get their act together. And women have had these problems for thousands of years. Why is your hair on fire now?

And the knock on effects are pretty severe for society because if we’re going to have an ominous conversation around mating, I do believe, look, I believe GDP, AI, podcasts, it’s all a means. The ends is, I think for most people, secure and loving households. I think that is where we find the most purpose, the most reward, the most happiness, is building a life with someone.

And when men aren’t economically viable, men made socioeconomically horizontally and up, excuse me, horizontally and down. Women horizontally and up. And when the pool of horizontal and up keeps shrinking, there’s just less household formation.

So 60% of people age 30, 40 years ago had a child in the house, not 27%. And the question is, are young people not deciding to have kids because they don’t want them? I don’t think that’s true at all. I think it’s one, because they don’t have the money.

A series of economic policies in the US have transferred money from people their age to people my age. People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. People my age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago.

And also the number of people, the number of viable mates, or what women would perceive as mates, is shrinking. So quite frankly, there’s just less mating, less connection among men and women.

And you’re finding, I think this mating crisis, a lack of economic opportunity, lack of skills being developed by young men. And then finally, I think probably the biggest menace, I mean, it’s a multidimensional problem, but 40% of our market cap in the SNC is represented by 10 companies. And those companies represent 20% of global market value. These are the most valuable companies in history.

The Role of Technology and Social Media

And unbeknownst and unwittingly and incrementally, what the algorithms that drive the profitability of these companies have figured out is that the way to keep people engaged on the phone is through enragement and polarization. And young men with much less mature prefrontal cortices are much more prone to go down these kind of dopa inspired facsimiles of life online.

Why have friends? Or why go through the pecking order of friends when you have Reddit and discord? Why put on a tie and try and get a job when you can make money trading crypto or stocks on Robinhood or Coinbase? Why would you go through the humiliation, the effort, the expense of trying to find a romantic partner when you have literally lifelike synthetic porn 24 by 7?

So unfortunately, we have the most valuable companies in the world with godlike technology, have connected the sequestration and polarization of young men from society. And what we have, I think is a series of a cohort of the most dangerous person throughout history. And that is a young, broke, lonely man. And we’re producing too many of them.

So, and then finally I just relate to them. When I was a younger man, I was unremarkable. I didn’t have a lot of romantic or economic opportunities. So I just feel like, I quote unquote, I see them.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s, what you’ve done very beautifully is broken down, particularly from an economic perspective, which I don’t think people focus enough on, of the plight of young men. And we’re going to get into all of that throughout the conversation. But you also grew up a single parent in a single parent household, which was more unusual when you were growing up. But now unfortunately it’s becoming more and more common and that is a very real issue for young men.

The Impact of Single Parent Households

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, you’re zooming on the key issue. So people look at me and they hear my talk and they assume that I went to like Exeter and was playing squash growing up. I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary, actually immigrated from the UK. I got assisted lunch, I got Pell grants, which are basically government programs to help lift up people from low income households.

And if you reverse engineer the single point of failure, if you were to try and predict this boy is going to struggle, the fulcrum of that or the point of failure is when he loses a male role model through death, divorce or abandonment.

What’s interesting is that we have the second most single parent homes in the world, just behind Sweden. And when we say single parent homes, we really mean women. It’s somewhere between 82 and 80, 80% of women had single parent households.

What’s interesting is that girls in single parent households have similar outcomes to girls in dual income households. Dual parent households, they might be more promiscuous because they’re looking for male attention in the wrong areas because of an absence of male attention. But they have the same rates of college attendance, same rates of self harm, same rates income. They’re actually fine.

A boy, the moment he loses a male role model, at that moment he becomes more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college. What it ends up is that, and all the research points this way is that while boys are physically stronger, they’re emotionally, neurologically and mentally much weaker than girls. And we don’t acknowledge that.

And in addition, if you think of the primary lubricant for upward mobility in the West, I think most people would point to unfortunately now it’s the wealthier parents. But before that it was college attendance. College attendance was the greatest, the greatest accelerant of income mobility. It was 40/60 male to female, female to male, 40 years ago. Now it’s 60/40 female to male.

And it’s, that’s not even really indicative of the reality because the reason you go to college is to get certified to get a degree. And because men drop out at a greater rate, we may have two women for every one male that graduates from college in the next 10 years.

So you have essentially young men are coming off the tracks and absence of male role models. And the reason we haven’t weighed in with programs, if any group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group, people would say there’s a problem here, we need to weigh in with economic and social programs.

But there isn’t a rush to help because there’s a lack of empathy because of my generation recognizing such a disproportionate amount of prosperity that we’re holding a 19 year old accountable. I call it the Red army effect. And that is, I know you’re from Russia. Hitler brutalized the Russian people. So when they came into Berlin, mildly speaking, they were pissed off.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You can say that again.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: And there was horror on both sides.

FRANCIS FOSTER: That’s right.

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

And it’s probably the wrong analogy, but when people look at me, they say, okay, Scott. And this is true. From 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the economic growth of the entire world with 5% of the population, so loosely speaking, six times the prosperity of the rest of the world. And then we took all of that prosperity and we mostly crammed it into the pockets of people born white, heterosexual males.

I hit the lottery being born, you know, being born Caucasian with outdoor plumbing and as a heterosexual, I just hit the lottery. I think I got a disproportionate unfair amount of advantage when I was, I made my money in the 90s raising money in venture capital. I couldn’t name now a non white, a gay man or a woman who was raising money in the 90s. And I never stopped to think, well, why aren’t non whites, why aren’t women raising capital? And I didn’t even recognize kind of the advantage I have.

When you’re the recipient of unfair advantage, you just think it’s your character and your grit. At least I wasn’t self aware enough. But now a young man does not have that advantage. I would argue he has disadvantage K through 12. Highly biased against boys. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior adjusted basis. Same behavior. A black boy five times as likely.

What are the behaviors we teach in school? Sit still, be organized, be a pleaser, raise your hand. You just described a girl. And 70 to 80% of people in our K through 12 infrastructure are women. And who are women? Like anyone, naturally more likely to champion girls. So you have, I think, a set of wins in the face now versus in the backs of young males. And the problem is people look at me and say, all right boss, you got a 3,000 year head start. So the question is, should we hold a 19 year old male accountable for my unearned privilege?

KONSTANTIN KISIN:

And that is I think what we have been doing and I think culturally it really came out, I think over the last ten years in particular. And what if it was? If we were behaving like this as a society towards any other group, we’d be disgusted. You know, “all men are trash,” “the future’s female,” all of this stuff. And you go that like whatever the arguments may be about the way that women and minorities have been disadvantaged 30, 40 years ago, a 15 year old Zuma boy neither benefited from that nor created that situation. And yet for a lot of them, it feels like they’ve been bearing the brunt of that attempt to amend history.

The Double Standard in Modern Dating

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

Yeah, there really is a double standard. So you watch like Mad Men of these programs. The guy who’s aggressive romantically slash sexually, who makes an effort to approach strange women. That used to be an admirable quality. Now it’s pathologized and demonized.

So this is anecdotal evidence. I don’t have data around this, but when I go out to quote, unquote, social atmospheres or bars, women, and I’m not exaggerating here, dozens of times have said something along the lines of, I’m out, I’m single, I’m ready to mingle, I look amazing. No men ever approach me. No men ever approach me.

And the question is, well, okay, why would they? Say you’re in New York and you’re a dude and you’re at the bar and you see someone, a group of girls you want to speak to, a group of women, you approach them, you say something indelegant or you’re not very good at it, or it’s inartful or it’s the wrong time, and you all work together at JPMorgan. It ends up being one of the 300,000 people that work at JPMorgan. You’re now that guy. Does a young man really want to?

And this is one of the things I talk about, the legs of stool, masculinity. I think one of them is procreation. What it ends up is the guys who are abusing their power. It was a small, very small number of men who were doing it a lot. And the vast majority of men know the difference between expressing interest and harassing someone, know that they shouldn’t abuse their power.

But interest in romance, interested in sex, has been pathologized amongst young men. And I would argue that we need to embrace and even celebrate it. Because the way I describe romantic or sexual interest among a young man is it’s like fire. It can be very harmful. If you start watching a lot of porn and you start thinking of women as objects and it creates unrealistic expectations around a relationship. And quite frankly, the algorithms start figuring out how to keep you online with more and more extreme porn, which borders on misogyny or is misogynistic and borders on violence. That’s fire that can be destructive.

But I think the vast majority of interest of a young man wanting to get out there. When I met my wife, I didn’t look at her and think, I’d like lower life insurance rates in 20 years. Quite frankly, I saw her and to be blunt, thought I would really like to have sex with her. And because I wanted to have a lot of sex as a young man or at least have the opportunities, I dressed better, I worked out, I tried to have a plan, demonstrate kindness, demonstrate excellence.

But when a man is, unless he looks like Brad Pitt, told he risks being a creep or that guy if he makes unwelcome advances, we’re discouraging from making the approach. And regardless of what the Atlantic or the New York Times will tell you, 80% of women still say they want the man to initiate romantic interest. They want the man to make the approach.

So I think that fire, that desire, when it’s channeled in the right ways, is a wonderful thing, a kindness, practice having your s* together. You know, I was smoking too much pot in my 20s and my girlfriend said unless you stop smoking pot, I’m no longer going to be your girlfriend. I think young men need the guardrails of a relationship and convincing them that the most wonderful thing in life is to create a loving, secure household and build it with a partner can be a same sex partner.

Some people decide not to have kids, but 95% of us are wired to have a binary relationship and would like to have kids. I’m not saying you can’t be happy without kids, but that desire, that fire is a feature, not a bug. And we’ve demonized it and pathologized it amongst young men. I joke, but I’m sort of serious that my advice to young people is to go out, drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.

KONSTANTIN KISIN:

Well, it’s interesting you mentioned that because everything you’re saying makes perfect sense. I completely agree with it. And it’s predicated on recognizing something that I do feel as a society we’ve kind of covered up for a while, which is men and women are very different.

Acknowledging Gender Differences

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

Yeah, and even saying that triggers some people because implicit in that statement from people on the far left is that means you’re discriminating against the 5% who are non binary. Not at all. The non binary community deserves absolutely as much respect and opportunity and grace as the binary community in my view.

In addition, some women masculinity and femininity. We’ve been celebrating femininity. It’s been overdue. It’s a wonderful thing. But we demonize masculinity. There’s no such thing as toxic masculinity. There’s cruelty. There’s criminality, there’s abuse of power. But true masculinity are wonderful things. Protect, provide, procreate.

And we’ve decided that even acknowledging that certain people born as females and certain people born as males or the vast majority of them will have an easier time learning into certain characteristics and attributes. And that’s okay. I think we need to come out of the closet and say women have an easier time leaning into nurturing, having better EQ, being, you know, quite frankly, more engaged and more thoughtful.

And if I were to say women, because of their EQ and their maternal instincts, make better managers. And I believe that people nod and clap. Women make better doctors. There’s more women going to medical school, there’s a lot of rote memorization. Their brains are more wired for that executive function. They are better bedside manner. Not all women. That doesn’t mean men shouldn’t have opportunities to be nurses and surgeons. But women will likely over time be recognized as having the attributes to make better doctors. I say those things, people nod.

But if I say men make better combat soldiers and on a risk adjusted basis in general, men oftentimes make better entrepreneurs because they’re more risk aggressive. Which is again isn’t to say women shouldn’t have the same opportunities. It’s I don’t feel safe around you.

So it’s okay to acknowledge we have differences. And by the way, women have sometimes masculine and femininity aren’t sequestered to people born as males or females. The majority of my friends are actually my male friends are quite feminine. I’m drawn to men who quite frankly are more nurturing and kind of take care of me. And I think a lot of men bring wonderful feminine characteristics.

My pivot co host is one of my masculine role models and it’s Kara Swisher. She brings a lot of strength and protection, kind of. I think she brings wonderful masculine attributes. But I don’t think there’s. What I’m trying to communicate is young men need a code.

The Need for a Code

Every young person needs a code to make decisions. You’re going to be thrown hundreds of decisions every day. It’s difficult to make them in the apps. It’s hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. So the question is, where do you get that code? You can get it from religion, you can get it from your country. I think you can get it from the military.

My first code was from work. I worked at Morgan Stanley and they had a very strict approach and set of principles around the way you approach work and other people. And that served as a good code for me. I still have some of that resident in me. But I think in a world where there’s an absence of a code for young men who are searching, the masculinity, if framed in an aspirational way, can be a great code.

And also, most young men have an easier time leaning into masculine attributes, just as most young women will have an easier time leaning into wonderful feminine attributes.

So what I’m trying to get across with this book is one, let’s acknowledge that young men are struggling and it’s not their fault. You want to be pissed off at me? I was just walking by about four or five years ago in the same week I was asked to go on the board of Tiffany and Tapestry, which is a company owned coach and a bunch of other retailers. And literally on the dot the same day, two weeks later, it was the Me Too movement. They called me and said, we apologize, we just had a meeting. We’re going to withdraw the invitation for you to join our board because we need to put a woman on the board.

You know, 70% of our customers at Tiffany are women. And we woke up. I get it, I get it now. Maybe that’s not a merit based decision, but I understand, I’ve been on boards. I understand the need to broaden the perspective and have something resembling a board that somewhat looks like your customer base, your employment. I get it.

But should my privilege, again, be the weapon or be a reason to have this lack of empathy for young people? So I’d like to think that one, young men are struggling. We got to acknowledge this. And two, that masculinity can serve as a code.

And my biggest fans are men. Young men come up. High five. Thanks, Professor. My biggest supporters and who have made this dialogue much more productive is simple mothers, of course. And the dialogue goes something like this. I got three kids, two daughters, one son, one daughter in graduate school at Penn, the other’s in PR in Chicago, and my son’s in the basement playing video games and vaping.

The people who are seeing this up close and personal and withdraw the argument from the narrative or ideology of the far right, of the far left are mothers. They’re like, you know, regardless of the orthodoxy or what’s politically correct or incorrect, I see a huge difference between the progress and between the emotional health of my daughters and my sons.

The Gender Gap in Education

FRANCIS FOSTER: And that’s such a profound point because I remember when I was teaching, I saw that pattern being replicated right across schools. It didn’t matter if it was primary or if it was secondary, color, creed in class. A lot of the times, the girls would thrive, the boys would struggle.

And we as a school, and I’m ashamed to say that because I kind of bought into this as well, we were just like, oh, you know, schools are doing better. This is brilliant. You know, this is something to be celebrated. Girls have been subjugated for so long.

But I think what people didn’t realize at the time, and I was guilty of this, is that when you start seeing things as a battle of the sexes and you diminish one sex and you think, oh, this sex is doing really well. This is great. Girls are doing better than boys. This is brilliant. You go, well, actually, girls need boys in just the same way as boys need girls.

And eventually, if you’re diminishing this sex, then what you’re doing is you’re actually harming the long term future of girls. Because eventually she’s going to want a strong man, a man who is masculine, who is a provider, who will take care of her, who is somebody who will support her through life. But if you are diminishing them, then you’re going to damage the girls in the long term as well.

Men Need Relationships More Than Women

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, who wants more economically and emotionally viable men? Women. The only thing where there’s some nuance, or I might provide a little bit of pushback, is that there’s a cartoon of a woman in her thirties who never found romantic love and is sitting listening to a Joan Baez album and a big wool sweater, looking out at a rainy day, just miserable that she hasn’t found a man. That’s a cartoon.

What you find is that men need relationships more than women. Widows are happier after their husband dies, widowers are less happy. Men in relationships live four to seven years longer, women two to four years longer. If a man hasn’t cohabitated with a woman or been married by the time he’s thirty, there’s a one in three chance he’s going to be a substance abuser.

In sum, while women’s loneliness is upsetting, I’m not saying it’s not a problem, but it ends up that men need relationships much more than women.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Except for one thing. Scott, sorry to interrupt, though. I’ll push back on your pushback. I said this, I think, in our conversation with Nick Freitas. We are talking to a lot of women, just privately. No one wants to really say this in public because it’s unpleasant and it’s difficult.

Women do want kids. The relationship side of it is different. And we are now seeing my generation of women coming to the end of the period when that was biologically viable. Some of them suddenly realizing that actually that is something they would have liked to have done and they no longer have that opportunity.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yep.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And so maybe they’re not sitting there upset that they don’t have a man. But I do think a lot of women are starting to get to the point where they regret the things that they used to believe because it’s led them to a place where they don’t have kids.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: I think that being taught just pour all your energy into work and you don’t need a man is not a healthy narrative either. And I do think there’s a lot of regret. I regret not having more kids. My biggest mistake, I wish I’d had a third kid. I wish I had a daughter. Because now that I’m getting older, I recognize it’s daughters that take care of their dads.

FRANCIS FOSTER: That’s unfair. Gay men, there you go.

The Reality of Divorce and Mental Health

SCOTT GALLOWAY: So I don’t want to… I think you’re right. I think there is. But what the conservatives, the conservative movement has said, look, and they pointed out correctly, look, women, this isn’t good for you. I agree. It’s especially bad for men.

And I’ll give you an example I’ve been thinking a lot about. I have two big charities, public schools and then teen suicide prevention. And so I’ve learned a decent amount about suicide or death by suicide. You’re not even supposed to say suicide. You’re supposed to say death by suicide. That’s going to change anything anyway. Oh, I walk by some unhoused outside, that’ll solve the problem.

But the period where a man is most inclined or most prone to self harm and suicidal ideation is the year after he gets divorced. And what it ends up is that divorce is harder usually on men than women. It’s harder on women economically, it’s harder on men emotionally.

And there’s also, I mean, just most of the data shows that without a relationship a woman is sad and regretful, and without a relationship, a man is quite frankly dangerous to himself. Men need… A single man at thirty-five is much more inclined to be a substance abuser, much more inclined to engage in self harm than a woman, a single woman at the age of thirty-five.

So while I absolutely think, yeah, there’s probably a lot of women who wake up and think, I was given this very progressive outline and it hasn’t paid off the way I’d hoped. What we don’t talk enough about is the fact that, quite frankly, a simple fact, and I have research that backs up, men need relationships more than women. I’m not saying women aren’t worse off without a relationship. Men are much worse off without a relationship.

Young men need guardrails. They need it in the form of male mentorship. And they need a relationship is a fantastic guardrail for a man. So we talk a lot about this image of a woman who’s sad. I get it, it’s bad. But it’s worse for men and we don’t talk about it.

Language Learning and Real World Connection

FRANCIS FOSTER: If you learn a language only from a book, you’re going to hit a ceiling. What actually changes everything is hearing how people really speak in real situations. That’s why I genuinely recommend Lingopie. I’m fluent in Spanish and immersion is what got me there, not textbooks.

Lingopie is built around that same idea. You learn by watching real TV shows and movies. And while you’re watching, the subtitles are interactive. You can click any word for an instant translation, save it automatically, and later review it with flashcards, quizzes and pronunciation tools. Lingopie turns passive watching into active learning without making it feel like studying.

And I’ll give you an example of what I’ve been watching. There’s a Venezuelan adaptation of Wuthering Heights on there called Cumbres Borrascosas. So yes, I’m quietly working my way through a Spanish language, Gothic romance. It’s dramatic, intense, very emotional, bit like my love life. And it’s brilliant for picking up the kinds of expressions and turns of phrases you never meet in a textbook. You start noticing how people actually argue, confess things, exaggerate, all in real Spanish at full speed.

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And it’s what you’ve spoken about very eloquently, Scott, and this ties into the conversation is how we just give kids a smartphone at an age when the reality is no one should have access to a smartphone. And then we wonder why we’re seeing these narratives being propagated amongst men. You know, incel culture, it’s not on the right, but incel culture, on one side, on the other side, you see this style of approaching women or seeing women in a certain way, and you go, this comes from spending too much time online and not enough time in the real world.

Brain Development and Maturity

SCOTT GALLOWAY: So this is a multidimensional issue. At the most basic level, men have immature prefrontal cortex. Our executive function part of our brain doesn’t catch up to a woman’s until the age of twenty-five. Two seniors in high school applying to college. Effectively, the girl who is a senior is competing against a tenth grade girl when he’s competing against another eighteen year old boy. They are just more mature, right? They have a better sense of, oh, I should stop playing video games and study now. They’re just, their brains are literally more mature. And you have kids? Do you have kids?

FRANCIS FOSTER: No, but I taught for twelve years, so I know a bit about kids.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: So it is so striking. And Constantine, well, you can both comment on this. I’m not exaggerating, but when my son has a party and he’s fifteen, the boys are nice, but they can’t make eye contact. They’re a little bit dopey. They’re fine. They’re boys. There are some girls at the age of fifteen who could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

The Impact of Big Tech on Young Men

SCOTT GALLOWAY: I feel like with a right pantsuit, they could be in Parliament. I mean, they’re so incredibly mature, even physically. Hello, Mr. Galloway. What a lovely home you have. I mean, what is the effect of the non dom on you? I mean, these kids are like. And then the boys were. I don’t know. And it’s not universal, but there’s definitely a demarcation.

Now, to your point about online. America right now is a giant bet on AI. All of our GDP growth, all of our stock market growth has been fueled by 10 companies. 77% of the earnings growth, 77% of that 16% of the increase in S and P has been the earnings growth of 10 companies. And those companies do a lot of things, but two of the core central things they do is try and play on flaws in our instincts, our insecurities, our desire to make a quick buck, our desire to have more mating opportunities and have a reasonable facsimile of that through porn, we get angry and anxious.

So where I’m going to figure out your political leanings, take you further and further that way, and then show you stuff that enrages you such you start hating the other side when you used to not really, you know, used to disagree with them but not hate them. I can’t remember. There’s an absence. There’s another reason young women are going more progressive, men are going slightly more conservative, but it’s yet another reason they’re not mating. Because women aren’t interested, get turned off by men who are conservative.

Can you remember the political leanings of anyone you dated? When we were dating, we didn’t talk about this. We didn’t care. It just wasn’t. It’s like yet another reason that people aren’t hooking up. So what you have is the most godlike technology, the most deepest resource companies in the world, trying to figure out any way to keep you on your phone. And what’s worse than keeping you on your phone? It’s keeping you away from your friends, it’s keeping you away from your wife, it’s keeping you away from your kids.

So we’re mammals and it’s pretty straightforward. The less time we spend with others, the worse our life is. Put an orca in a tank alone and see what happens, right? The worst thing you can do to a human is put them in solitary confinement, leave your dog alone without another dog or another human and sees what happens.

Big Tech’s Role in Social Isolation

So what Big Tech is doing really, really well, which is tearing at the fabric of society, is preying on young people, girls and boys. But unfortunately, boys are more prone to this because they have this dopa addiction at an earlier age. It’s trying to convince them, why figure out the pecking order of friends when you have Reddit and Discord? Why? You know, you don’t need to go to work, you don’t need to take risks in real life. Real life relationships are hard.

I’m going to make an assertion here. The best thing in your life is the best thing in your like, and that is relationships. And the one thing that was common across all those relationships was that they were really hard. It is hard to establish the pecking order and friends and not be jealous and call a dude and say, hey, do you want to go watch the football game and have a beer? It is really hard to navigate all the bullshit in a corporation and have bosses that are not as smart as you and get memos from corporate on things that make no goddamn sense. And occasionally going to work when you have nothing to do just for face time.

So I know, let’s trade stocks and let’s buy crypto. And it’s also trying to tell you you don’t need to go through the humiliation of a romantic or a sexual relationship. And this is the thing. All those things are goddamn hard. And that’s what real victory is. It is really hard to find someone to be married to for 23 years and have kids. That is really hard. And the reward is immense. That’s where I find most men get the greatest level of purpose.

So what we’re saying to young men is, no, no, no, no, ignore that stuff. Ignore friends, ignore work, ignore mating. You can have a reasonable, frictionless version of that online. And then you wake up at 30. And I believe a lot of these men are obese, anxious, have no skills when it comes to work or friendship or romantic relationships, and they’re exceptionally depressed. And they never get a chance to recognize real victory, what it means.

The Rewards of Real Relationships

It has been so hard raising kids. I mean, it’s been every day. I’m like, am I any good at this? I can’t tell you what assholes my boys can be. I mean, they are terrorists, constantly assessing the household for vulnerabilities to strike when we’re at our weakest. I feel so. There’s been moments where I felt so much shame and insecurity because I felt like I wasn’t making enough money and couldn’t support my kids at the level I wanted to. And it just made me. It just destroyed me. It’s been so hard.

And the only moments I ever feel like I have meaning and purpose on this world and I can leave and feel like I checked something resembling a box is when I have those moments with my son and I get the chance to raise them with someone I love. And I worry that there’s a ton of young men who are never, ever going to experience that because Big Tech has attached 40% of the S and P to market value by sequestering us from the rest of our relationships.

So I’m not saying they’re innately evil people, but unfortunately, these algorithms and these companies have figured out there is money in sequestering people from the relationships and getting them really angry at everybody else. Blaming immigrants for their economic problems, blaming women for the romantic problems, blaming the other side for everything that’s wrong. So unfortunately, these companies are the wedge, are the cudgel between people and especially young men and relationships and what I would call a healthy, rewarding life.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I think one of the greatest tricks social media companies ever played was the idea that this app that you were going to go on was about connection. It was going to help you to connect with other people. That’s what Facebook inevitably was. Connect with your friends all around the world. It’s one of the greatest lies we’ve ever been sold.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, is it though? I mean, look, I don’t know about you, I would say the way I have come to you, social media. Now, look, I have a pretty big following, so it’s perhaps a different story, but it’s a way for me to connect with people that then we speak to and become friends with. Right. So, and also I just think as well, it’s important that we, we also in this conversation talk about solutions because the world is the way the world is.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yep.

Personal Responsibility and Parenting

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And our great grandparents and great grandfathers face some way bigger problems. Then you’ve got this phone with porn on it like that. That’s relatively minor to. The Germans are invading. Right. So I guess what I would say is, I think partly it’s about, actually, I would argue a failure of parenting as well. Because, and look, you know, it’s hard to, it’s easy to say. Parents should have known better. Like my wife, for example, is a complete screen Nazi. My 3 year old has never seen a screen.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: The only thing he does with a phone is he brings it to us and we go, thank you, and put it in our pocket. That’s it. Right. Like, we all have to begin to realize this is the world we live in. We live in a world of screens. We live in a world of social media. And we are all going to have to do something about this that allows us to live better lives. And, you know, I think it’s important perhaps for you to talk to us about what is the man code? How do you be a man? How do you have a good life as a man? How do you confront the fact that every human being ultimately faces a choice. You either go with comfort and become a loser, or you learn to accept discomfort and you win.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: So just to acknowledge your point, if we had a red button that you could push and Big Tech would disappear, I wouldn’t push it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: I would argue that Big Tech is a net good.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

The Net Good of Technology

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Creates tremendous economic value. I found you on social media. People come up to me on the street. They could not be. Do you find this online? I find people so angry and vile and aggressive in real life. I can’t get over how lovely people are right. I can go anywhere in the world and 99% of the people who approach me, even if they say I disagree with your views on Israel or whatever, they want to have a thoughtful conversation or they come up and they say something really nice that makes me feel better about my day.

I’ve made a lot of money using social media. I FaceTime my sons every night and it makes me feel more connected to them. These are. I would not press the button. The problem with saying they’re a net good is the word net. And what I mean is we can have nuance.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: So I think fossil fuels are a net good for the world. Greatest arbitrage in history is fossil fuels. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have emissions standards. Now we can have an argument around what those standards should be, but we’re just not going to let you know. It’s probably important that we have rules that says, Ford, you can’t pour mercury into the river. And if you don’t have laws, they need to pour mercury into the river. Otherwise General Motors and Chrysler will and have a cost advantage.

Pesticides are a net good, but we still have an FDA that’s a Food and Drug Administration here for you foreigners saying, okay, by the way, one of the first things I noticed about London is that food rots. And I think it’s because we have higher standards.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, we do.

Proposed Solutions for Social Media Regulation

SCOTT GALLOWAY: And then all of a sudden it freaks me out now that I can buy something and put it in my refrigerator and seven weeks later it’s still edible here in the U.S. I’m like, okay, maybe that’s not a good thing anyways. So for example, let’s move to some solutions. I don’t think anyone under the age of 16 should be on social media. I don’t think any synthetic relationship should be allowed for anyone under the age of 18. I don’t think we should have phones in schools.

I think we should remove Section 230 protection for algorithmically elevated content. Right. Such that if you are in fact putting out content that leads to greater self harm and you’re elevating that content. I don’t believe in censorship. I don’t think if someone wants to say MRNA vaccines alter your DNA, I think they should be able to say it. The problem is when the algorithms go, oh, this is pissing off people and they’re commenting and every comment is another Nissan ad, which is more shareholder value. So let’s take this incendiary and sometimes more novel content and let’s elevate it artificially.

My view is if you elevate content artificially, algorithmically, you’ve now decided you’re a media company. And I don’t see why these quote unquote, nascent platforms, which is what they were called in the 1997 legislation, should not be subject to the same liability you’re subject to. If you started saying that this member of Parliament is a Nazi and he’s a physical threat to our safety and you published his address and someone showed up and committed violence against that person, this podcast would be in a world of hurt. But if you say it online, if you say it on a platform, an online platform, they are not subject to the same standards as the rest of media.

So there are, in my opinion, common sense solutions. But the incumbents want to weaponize what I’d call the illusion of complexity. All these problems are unsolvable. Right. We couldn’t. We would go out of business. If you removed 230. Well, if you removed it for algorithmically elevated content, you wouldn’t go out of business. And the most. When. When the January 6th riots happen, you know what happened? Oh, let me go back. News Corps gets fined $750 billion. $750 million by saying that the voting in the US were weaponized by the Venezuelan government. Not true.

FRANCIS FOSTER: I’m Venezuelan. We can’t even. We can’t even run a country, let alone weaponize an election.

Media Accountability and Legal Precedents

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, it wasn’t true. And they knew it wasn’t true. But they put talking points in front of their hosts and said, promote this theory because we think it’ll inflame and engage our audience.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Wait, hold on. Do you have any evidence for that claim, Scott, that they did it for that reason?

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, a judge and a jury of their peers found that to be the case and awarded Smartmatic $750 million.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: They. So I didn’t follow as closely as you are. I’m not disputing what you’re saying. I’m just asking. So in that case, when they promoted this theory, was it established that they did so to get attention? It wasn’t to influence the result of the election, for example. It was specifically to get attention.

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

The legal ruling falls under defamation and slander, and that is they knew they were saying something that wasn’t true, and that that thing that wasn’t true ended up having economic harm on Smartmatic. And so Smartmatic said, you knew this wasn’t true, and also you knew it would hurt me economically. So there are laws against that.

So if you say something, if you start spreading rumors that I’m a pedophile and all of a sudden my speaking engagements go down and there’s no evidence of that, you are liable for defamation and can and have to economically compensate me.

KONSTANTIN KISIN:

I get that part. What I’m asking with specific, the specific thing I’m trying to tease out is I got the impression, correct me if I’m wrong, that you’re saying this was done to get clicks effectively. Right? Well, I’m wondering, do you know that? Because my instinct would be it might be to influence the outcome of who ends up president. That might.

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

Oh, that’s interesting.

KONSTANTIN KISIN:

Do you see what I’m saying?

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Social Media Companies and Accountability

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

I see what you’re saying. So I would argue that everything these for profit media companies do at the end of the day is to cater to their audience such that they’re more glued to the show, such that they make more money. It’s a reasonable you could say that maybe they knew that was going to so I guess it’s feasible that it was more important to them to get Trump elected then keep their audience engaged and sell more opioid induced constipation medication in between commercial breaks.

But basically the court said, you guys actually they found emails that said, you know this was bull, but you said it anyways. And this private company experienced huge economic harm. The reason I bring this up is they got fined $750 million. That’s real money. What happened on Fox was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud. What happened on Meta with those rumors? But because Meta is, quote unquote, a new nascent platform, they’re totally exonerated. They get a halt pass.

The reason I bring this up is that I think those companies should be subject to the same responsibilities as a traditional media company. And I think the argument around free speech, around how far you can go, is a really worthwhile argument. In my view, generally speaking is anybody should be able to say pretty much anything about pretty much anybody. But if I know I’m saying something, if I’m spreading lies about you and I continue to do it and it has real economic harm on you in the US you’re subject to defamation and slander.

My point is these companies, which are the most valuable companies in the world, are playing by get to play by a different standard and that there are common sense solutions. We shouldn’t have phone ins in schools. I don’t think there’s any. I think we need to start age gating doing a better job of age gating pornography for kids under the age of 18.

They claim there’s no they claim they are worried about the privacy concerns of young people. They can tell when I’m at a Beyonce concert and serve me an ad for the Uber to get home and the Beyonce album and tickets to new concert. But it would be impossible for them to figure out the age of these kids or they’re worried about their privacy. No one under the we age gate alcohol, the military, motorcycles, pornography. Why on earth wouldn’t we age gate these things online?

And there’s a real problem, in my opinion, a fissure in our society. And that is we won’t let our kids go to school alone, but we’ll let them go online with strangers and see this kind of content. We overprotect them offline and we under protect them online. I think there’s just a series of common sense solutions that won’t solve the problem, but would go a long way to addressing it while recognizing we don’t want to put these companies out of business. They’re not terrible people.

But I stand by what I’ve said. I think Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have done more harm to young people while making more money than any two people in history. And I find it just so insane that we had Sheryl Sandberg running around the world with a book talking about the important conversation of gender balance in the workplace as she invented and drove a business model that resulted in an 80% increase in self cutting among teen girls. And I just find the two totally incompatible.

So these companies, these companies should thrive. We want them to, we want our horses to run. But with some significant but reasonable changes, we can solve a lot of these problems. And again, they weaponize the illusion of complexity. Oh, these problems are too difficult. This is, you know, there’s always been problems with media and you know, well, Elvis was a threat to the parents then. Kids weren’t cutting themselves after watching Elvis Presley. Right?

They weren’t going down rabbit holes and convincing themselves that there was a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza place. They weren’t picking up their father’s assault rifle because dad was loose because old people were listening to Lawrence Welk and they saw those people as their enemy. This is a different level of harm. And I do think there’s just common sense practical solutions that these companies get in the way of.

The Influence of Big Tech Lobbying

They overrun government with massive amounts of money. There’s more full time lobbyists living in D.C. who work for Amazon than there are sitting U.S. senators. And the only way you get elected in the U.S. 98% of the winners are the ones who raise the most money and who has a lot of money to write. So when these issues come up on the House floor, it’s Republicans and Democrats that get in the way. And they start asking questions like, I’m worried about this. Let’s talk about it more. Let’s have another hearing and nothing ever happens.

I also believe, I apologize for the word salad here, that these are the greatest espionage and national security vehicles ever invented. And I think what happens, and I don’t have evidence of this, I think what happens is Mark Zuckerberg goes into a confidential security briefing and says, do you want to keep killing terrorists? I mean, what could be a better way to kill terrorists than to figure out where their sons and daughters are on Instagram and GPS, locate them, and figure out their relationships when they’re gathering?

These are the most of the CIA, the GRU, the CCP, couldn’t have dreamt in their wildest dreams an espionage tool, a security tool like social media. And I don’t have evidence of this, but if I were Mark Zuckerberg and focused on shareholder value, I would say, do you want me to continue to work with your security apparatus to continue kill bad guys, then back the f* off? I think that conversation is happening over and over in D.C. and as a result, our young people pay the price.

Advice for Young Men Today

KONSTANTIN KISIN:

Well, that I think in terms of the structural changes and the structural situation is a really great analysis. And you make some really, really important points. And I know you and I probably disagree about Elon. He’s someone I really respect, and I am surprised that he hasn’t done some of the things that he said he would do to mitigate some of these issues that you’re bringing up after he took over Twitter. I wish he had done. Because you talked about freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. You talked about prioritizing content from verified users, and none of that’s happened. And I imagine it’s partly because of the incentive structure that punishes that sort of more responsible behavior.

But let’s come back to my point, which is what? Ultimately, in addition to all of this stuff, every human being is going to have to deal with the world as it is. And if you’re a young man today, you have not been dealt a great hand. You’ve also not been dealt the worst hand in history, 100%. So how do you be a young man today? What is the man code? What are the lessons? What is it that your father wasn’t around to tell you? What is it that makes you someone who can deal with the world as it is today and thrive?

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

Thanks, that’s a generous question. So what I’ve tried to do is distill a basic version of masculinity down to some aspirational things. And I think of it as three legs of the stool.

The Provider

The first is to be a provider, and that upsets some people. I think every young man should assume at some point he’s going to need to take economic responsibility for his household. And by the way, sometimes that means getting out of the way and being more supportive of your partner, who might be better at that whole money thing.

But I think a pretty decent place to start as a man is that we live in a capitalist society and the way the world is, is I will be disproportionately evaluated by other people and my self esteem will disproportionately be driven by my economic viability. And that you need to get certified, you need to show discipline, you need to work hard, you need to have the rational thinking to spend less than you make, such you can start saving some money.

But the reality is 75% of women say economic viability is important in a mate. It’s only 25% of men, right? Beyonce could work at McDonald’s and marry Jay Z. The opposite is not true. You will be disproportionately evaluated based on your economic viability. Figure out how to make money.

Now, I have been probably addicted to it and people have pointed out online that I see everything through the lens of money. I grew up without money, so it’s always been important to me, probably too important. But I stand by the fact that as a man, if you are not economically viable, your self esteem, your place in society, in a capitalist society, your ability to find a mate is going to be severely diminished.

So we want to get a T in. The best way to start making, to make a lot of money is start making a little bit of money. I coach a lot of young men. I’m like, if you have a smartphone, you can make money. Tomorrow we’re going to start. I don’t care if you need to be a Lyft driver, Uber driver, TaskRabbiter, going to Panera Bread, where they’re desperate for people and they start them at 18 bucks an hour.

But once you start making a little bit of money, you’re going to realize how wonderful it is. You’re going to start figuring out the marketplace. But you need to get out and make money. You need to be a provider. First leg of the stool.

The Protector

The whole point of, in my opinion, getting some economic security and economic prosperity is such that you can move to the second thing, and that is being a protector. The jobs I think we view as being most masculine, cop, firemen, military. At the end of the day, they all do one thing they protect.

And again, this is a personal anecdote, but I think it’s true. I think the most rewarding thing in life is to feel like you are doing a key role as a protector. My moments of peace come when my kids are asleep, safe and warm, with a lot of opportunities, more opportunities than I had. My partner feels noticed and safe. And I feel like I can finally go on offense in my life and start protecting my community, my country, and start doing, you know, planting the trees, the shade of which I’ll never sit under. I think that protection part is hugely important.

And you were talking about Elon. I think Elon demonstrates unbelievable attributes of masculinity in some areas and a total deficiency in others. I think making taking enormous risks and having vision and working his ass off such that he can land a rocket on metal scissors and create hundreds of billions in value. Right on, brother. Right on. He inspired the EV race. You got to give him credit. Like, if we get to Mars, we’re going to get there years or decades sooner because of Elon Musk.

There couldn’t be anything more masculine. I mean, this risk aggressive craziness, right, that men. And again, this will upset some people, that men are more prone to taking crazy risks. Right? A man is more likely to rush into a burning house. There’s something called the Carnegie Award that literally awards people who put their own personal safety at risk to try and save someone else’s from harm who they don’t know. It’s literally the running into a burning building thing. Every year they give out about 80 awards and every year about 75 of them go to men.

So while we like to frame young men as reckless, there’s also valor in that, right? There’s also. And the fact that men are risk aggressive and do stupid things, occasionally they start really crazy stupid companies that end up being crazy genius. Elon represents that exponentially. So props.

The issue I would have as Musk as a role model for young men is he seems to have skipped the protection part. And that is when you’re being sued concurrently by two women for sole custody of your child because you’ve never seen that child. I don’t think there’s anything more anti masculine. I think when you’re the wealthiest man in the world cutting aid to HIV positive mothers, in my opinion, that’s a reputation extinction event. I just don’t. I think he’s missed the protection part.

The Procreator

And the final third leg of the stool, which triggers more people is procreation. We talked about this earlier. Embrace your horniness, put on a cool coat. Approach a woman. Get used to know what I do with young men is I go through a series of exercises. I’m like, you got to be strong. Go to the gym, work. If you’re under the age of 30, you have this dense bone structure and double twitch muscle and this amazing substance called testosterone. You want to be strong, you’re going to feel better about yourself or fast, you want to run, do yoga, you’re going to be healthier, you’re going to be less depressed, more attractive to potential mates.

The reason why women are interested in guys in shape is not because they have big muscles, because it reflects they have discipline and they can show up. The attributes of being in shape are what’s attractive to women.

Two, we’re going to start making some money and then three, we’re going to put ourselves in the company of strangers outside of the home. And then once we’re there for two or three weeks, I task them a series of exercises. I want you to go up to someone and express platonic interest. Hey, man, do you want to watch the Arsenal game this weekend? Right. That’s a little bit lower risk.

And at some point I say, you need to go ask a woman who you might be interested in or a guy for coffee, right? Hey, what are you doing? What’s going on? Not on the first one. Just establish dialogue. Establish dialogue. And then the next time you say what you’ve mentioned having a coffee and this is what’s going to happen, most of them are going to say no.

Embracing Rejection

And I’m like, that’s the victory. Because the only thing any wonderful thing is in my life has in common was it was preceded by a ton of no’s. I applied to nine graduate schools. I got off the waiting list on one. I applied to 27 jobs. I got an interview with one and got hired because the guy who ran the division rode crew as I did. I didn’t even really get the job. I got it through, I don’t know, unfair advantage.

I can’t tell you how much rejection I have endured from women. But the reason I get, the reason I make more money than your average bear, the reason why I have more friends, I think, than a lot of dudes. The reason why I get to hang out with someone who’s much higher character and much hotter than me. I’ve never been afraid of no. Never been afraid of no.

So I’m trying to get young men to get to know and unfortunately they have these synthetic relationships that never say no to them so they can’t endure or reject no. 45% of men 18 to 22 have never asked a woman out in person. Think of that. Almost half of young men have never mustered the courage or felt the fire because maybe they thought it’d be easier to go home and just watch porn. To actually approach a strange woman and ask her out in person. To me, that’s a disaster.

Because some of those skills, figuring out a rap, figuring out humor, figuring out how to demonstrate kindness, are the skills you need across different dimensions in your life. Those skills are going to serve you well in all aspects of your life. And those men are not learning those skills.

So my code is provider, protector and procreator. And I think all three of those things can serve as guideposts for what a man wants to accomplish and how he helps make decisions and shape his behavior, if you will.

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FRANCIS FOSTER:

I always say, Scott, and look, I’m on board of everything you say. I think it’s really powerful and really important for young men. I always say to people, like when they go, oh, you know you built this. You know you helped to build trigonometry, and you know you’ve done all right. Francis, what’s the one advice that you would give?

I always say courage is a muscle. The more you exercise courage, the easier it becomes. The more. If you see a cute girl, the more you approach a cute girl, the less intimidating it will become. The more you’re able to deal with rejection.

Because you know what’s worse than not approaching? It’s two hours later when you look back, you go, I should have done that. I should have done that because that could have been the one. That could have been the start of something incredibly beautiful. And it could have been the start of a relationship, a marriage, you know, building a life together.

And you know what, if it goes really disastrously wrong in a few hours, it’s going to make the start of a really funny story that you’re going to tell your mates and you’re going to be like, you’ll never guess, man, I saw this girl, I thought she was great. I walked up to her and she was just. And she was just horrible to me. And you’ve got a great story. So whatever way you do it, in the end it’s going to be win, win.

SCOTT GALLOWAY:

Yeah, look, when you approach someone and they don’t return or reciprocate your interest, guess what? You’re both going to be fine. And not like that. And she, quite frankly, has no license to be upset or critical of you. Okay?

And what you find now is more and more women are saying, I would actually like more men to approach me. And if you don’t know the difference between expressing interest while making someone feel safe and harassing them, you got much bigger problems. Right?

And it’s fine to approach a woman in an environment and just, hey, where are you from? She’s going to figure out that you’re just not really interested in geography. And also, most really attractive people, or most people in general, especially women, they figure out a way to softly deflect you. And you have a responsibility to listen to those soft deflections and say, nice to meet you, and leave.

I think every dad, every mentor has a role to play. And that is how do you teach your sons to express romantic interest while making the other person feel safe?

KONSTANTIN KISIN:

And how do you do that, Scott?

The Power of Rejection and Moving Forward

SCOTT GALLOWAY: I think it’s just a series of basics. Follow up text. Hey, I saw where I was telling my son this. He likes this girl and she was going to be in the same place as usual. He’s going to freak out if he sees us. I’m like, just text her and say, hey, do you want to join us in the family at this? Just a couple soft opens. Where are you from? How did you guys end up here tonight? Right? Eye contact. Try and be nice, try and be friendly. And if you’re not getting. I think, yeah.

And a lot of times people aren’t interested. To your point, the secret to my success is rejection. I ran for 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade presidents three times. I lost all three times. And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president, where I went out to wait for it, lose.

But my superpower. I’ve started nine businesses. I think I’m kind of three, two and four. Most of my businesses have failed. But the ability to mourn and move on is everything, right? Okay. I was always able to raise more money. I was always able to get up.

What’s interesting is I have a lot of friends. Not a lot of friends, but some friends. And they’ve known nothing but success and then they hit a bump and they get paralyzed. Their fund doesn’t go well, or they’re not able to raise money, or they have a business that fails or they have a divorce and they’re just paralyzed for three or five years.

So your ability to mourn and move on is kind of everything. And if you aren’t getting a ton of. I would argue the only thing successful people have in common is it’s just a disproportionate number of no’s because they’re always trying to punch above their weight class.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: You want to score above your weight class economically and romantically, get out a big spoon and get ready to eat. I mean, I can’t imagine when you started Trigonometry how many guests said no or how many advertisers said no.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, this is what I was going to say, man, because it’s such an interesting point because if people want to look at the guests that we’ve had on, for every single guest that you thought, oh, wow, the guys have got X, Y, Z, whoever that person has probably said no four or five times. Four or five times. And they didn’t. And the reason is just like a hot girl. They didn’t necessarily say no because there was nothing there. It’s like they’ve got a life, they’re busy, maybe they’ve got a boyfriend. Right.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: And other stuff.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: There’s other reasons. And the trick is that you gradually learn is not to internalize enough 100%. You just got to not internalize it.

It’s Not Always About You

SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s such an important thing because we have a tendency, we’re such narcissistic creatures. When we go up to someone and express friendship and they’re not nice to us, or we sometimes express interest in raising money or something and they say no or they don’t return your interest, we immediately think it’s all about us. My company sucks or I’m not good looking or they’re an ahole.

As far as you know, they’re like, they just found out their dad has Alzheimer’s. You just don’t know what’s going on in their life or they’re going through a breakup themselves, or they just had their heart broken, or this partner at a VC fund, his kid has just been diagnosed with ADHD, or he’s just recognized, he’s just had a conversation where his current portfolio sucks so he can’t make any more investments.

It’s not about you. Usually the response you get from people, yeah, a lot of it has to do with you, but sometimes most of it has to do with what’s going on with them at that moment. That’s very hard. That’s very hard to learn.

If I could give young men anything, it would be one, an ability to tell stories. That’s the ultimate core competence. All CEOs have the ability to craft a narrative or a story. It’s not learn computer science or Mandarin. Who the f* knows if that’s going to pay any dividends, but it’s storytelling. At the end of the day, you guys are making an exceptional living and so am I storytelling. Right?

But what I would want to give them is risk aggressiveness because you got to get out there and take and get to no’s, right? That’s everything.

The Power of Atheism and Finite Life

And also, and I don’t know if it’s not healthy because they’d all freak out. But the biggest unlock for me has been my atheism. I genuinely believe that I’m going to look into my kid’s eyes someday and know our relationship’s coming to an end. And that finite nature of life or recognition of the finite nature of life.

And also I want to be clear, my views that there was nothing and then the universe exploded are no less crazy than any religious person’s views. So I don’t disparage religion. I actually think we need more religious institutions. And I think young men would benefit from more church or temple or mosque, whatever might be attendance.

But that sense of the finite nature of life has made me so much more courageous and emotive. Right. I now try and stop you. If I see an older couple that look amazing, I stop and say, you look amazing. And it makes them feel good and it makes me feel good. I see young dudes and I compliment them. You know, you’re so handsome, you’re in such great shape.

Whereas 10, 15 years ago I had this f*ed up sense of masculinity where I didn’t feel, I felt self conscious saying nice things to people. But now that I know I’m going to be dead soon, I want to, I want to take the capital I have when I recognize good things and feel good about myself. And feel good about them.

And also when I say something really stupid, I said something. I was in a board call yesterday and I started going on a rant. And about halfway. Do you ever do this? About halfway through the rant I’m like, this is so stupid. What am I saying? This makes no sense. And the rest of the day I’m beating myself up over it.

And then what you realize is the other people on the board call went, oh, that was stupid. And then they started thinking about themselves again a minute later. And I’m sitting there in bed thinking, okay, all of us, all these people, I’m freaked out about their opinion of me. We’re all going to be dead really soon.

So just forgive yourself. You know, take more risks. But also, when you screw up, which you will, based on how many risks you take, forgive yourself. It’s okay. They’re going to be dead, so are you. Enjoy it. Squeeze as much juice out of this lime called life. Cause it’s going to be over fast.

Now, some people get strength and a guidebook from believing there’s an afterlife. And I don’t want to be disparaging of that. Me personally. Atheism and this finite nature of life has been an enormous unlock.

The Top Regrets of the Dying

FRANCIS FOSTER: And, you know, I read this article, it was in the Guardian actually, and it went super viral. And it was written by a palliative care nurse. And she said. And it was called the Top Seven Regrets of the Dying. Number one, I didn’t live a life true to myself.

SCOTT GALLOWAY: My colleague at the business school, Adam Alter, who has an appointment in the psychology department, does a ton of similar work on regrets. And he distilled it down. And it’s been very informative for my life.

Number three, people wish they’d stayed in touch with their friends. Number two, they wish they’d led the life they wanted to lead. Not with their religion or their parents or society. But they wish they’d kind of danced out loud, if you will, or lived out loud.

But the number one regret that he identified amongst these people, when you’re at the end and you know you’re never going to feel sand again or you’re never going to be with your kids again, you get a lot of perspective. The number one thing he noticed, and I think it’s in line with what you’re talking about, was people wish they’d been less hard on themselves. They wish they’d let themselves be happier.

And what I tell people who are on moments of stress is that when you look back on this moment. And I know this. I had a company go chapter 11. That was just devastating for me. I was just like, it almost took me out. I was just like, it just devastated me.

I don’t regret my company going chapter 11. I regret how upset I was because I was able to make money again. I was able to bounce back. And that’s the thing, and that’s what I tell young men is like, or young people are upset. You’re going to regret this, but you’re not going to regret it because it was bad. You’re going to regret how hard you were on yourself. And this shall, this too shall pass.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Before Scott answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our Substack. The link is in the description where you’ll be able to see this.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: How does Scott characterize the loss of the Boy Scouts of America and its impact on boys, particularly boys without strong male role models in their life?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Scott, what advice do you have for people 50 plus years old that are considering starting their own business?

Final Thoughts and Questions

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I’ve heard Scott talk a lot about how young men need to grow a pair and ask a woman out, but I haven’t heard him address the problems of doing so post Me Too, where breathing in the same room as a woman without her consent is enough to get the police called. Brother, it’s been great having you on. I really appreciate the raw authenticity with which we had this conversation, and I think it’s really important and really great. We’re going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a second. Before we do, though, what’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we really should be?

SCOTT GALLOWAY: You asked that at the beginning and I had something and of course it’s, it’s, it’s escaped me well beyond, beyond the struggling young men. My, my, the thing. And I like the boring stuff. America’s become a giant bet on AI and I think that our economy and our global economy has become too concentrated around a small number of companies. And I think that the CCP is going to flood the market with AI models and wreck our economy because our whole economy has become one big bet on AI. That is like the worst answer for what you’re talking about.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t know, man. We’ve just come from San Francisco and I just, I think fundamentally, like in the. It’s a wanky term, but in the elite discourse people are talking about, the ordinary person doesn’t have a clue what’s coming.

And also we had a great conversation with Owen, who Owen McCabe, who runs an AI company. Yeah, we also had some private conversations and let’s just say there’s a range of responsibility levels among the people who are doing this, and there’s a range of awareness of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th order consequence among the people who are doing. Some people are responsible, some people are conscious. There’s also some people who are just going to move fast and break things the way the social media companies did. So there’s a lot to talk about with AI.

The Danger of Synthetic Relationships

SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, the incentives in a capitalist society, your access to health care, opportunities for your kids, access to respect, access to mating opportunities is all based on money. And so I don’t think the CEOs of these companies are the ones that are the culprits. They’re going to make incremental decisions, just as the tobacco guys did, to make more money, even if it creates harm and they know it. The incentives are just too great to ignore the tragedy.

The comments we’re supposed to elect people who understand technology and can regulate it while letting the economy flourish. It’s really, it’s us that’s screwed up and that is we haven’t elected people who understand these technologies. That Washington D.C. right now is a cross between the Golden Girls and the land of the dead. It’s just these people don’t understand technology. Money’s washed over them.

But the idea of synthetic relationships is a better answer. I think. Synthetic relationships are such a danger to our young people. And it’s supposedly one in three people under the age of 18 is in a synthetic relationship. And the problem is you don’t even know what’s going on.

And these people start to tell them how to behave, that they don’t need friendships, that they should stop talking to their mom and dad or not. They don’t tell them to stop talking to their mom and dad, but they stop talking to them. Because this thing, they can ask anything, it’s transparent, it never judges them.

So I think what we’re going to be talking more about, unfortunately, is going to be synthetic relationships. And the discussion is going to be not a good one.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Scott, thanks for coming on. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk, where we ask your questions.

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