s2 ep1 Relationships / Friendships

The hosts of a podcast discuss the decline in relationships and friendships. They attribute this decline to the advancements in technology, particularly social media, which they believe has led to selfishness and laziness. They argue that social media allows people to portray a fake lifestyle, leading to jealousy and negative emotions. They also mention the negative impact of cyberbullying and the increase in teen suicide rates. They highlight the lack of meaningful connections in society, with many people having only one close friend or no confidants at all. Overall, they believe that social media has played a significant role in the decline of relationships and friendships. Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, oh yeah man how you doing, I know you like that. Welcome back indeed my dear friend Leo, it's been a while. Everybody out there, welcome back to another episode of Saving Our Society with your hosts Jim and Leo. We kind of took, what would you say, a little hiatus, finished up the summer, very busy, a lot of weddings, family visiting from out of the country, out of state, everything so you know we're going to hit this hard and we're going to come back, we'll call this season two so this will be the premiere of season two and Leo, as I hand it over to you like I usually do, we're going to be talking about relationships and friendships, pretty much what we feel the decline is but give everyone a little update, how you been, what's the good word and welcome back. Well unlike the majority of the issues surrounding us in the country, I'm doing quite well, end of summer, back in full swing with work and coaching so hit the ground running about a month ago and haven't looked back since so yeah, summer's gone, let's go, season two, here we go. It's like this bittersweet feeling because as we get close to the end of summer, I know me for one, I've just had enough and I really do enjoy the fall so it's nice to be here, nice to start this new season and I want to lead with why I think this is a good topic now more than ever. So I was talking to a couple of co-workers about this and I just see the decline overall with relationships whether intimate, platonic and friendships, for lack of a better term, we're just going to call them all relationships and now that the economy, everything is getting worse, real estate market, economy, the state of affairs so I wanted to know like why now more than ever have we seen such a large decline in the quality of friendships, relationships? What I mean by that is even going back 20, 30 years and I know you guys are probably thinking what the obvious answer is and I'll mention that in a moment but 20, 30 years ago, try to go out of your way to call somebody, to stop in to see what they're doing, now I think a lot more people have gotten lazy and selfish so we'll get in to that momentarily but without spoiling what I'm thinking about, what I think the big elephant in the room is, what can you or what do you think is the main attribution to the decline in relationships overall Leo? I think just the overall, just crazy sudden advancements we've had in technology, social media being a big part of that. Bingo, I was going to say that leading into everything but that's the elephant in the room right? We can at least admit that? Well I mean I'm thinking about, I get nostalgic but I'm thinking about when I wanted to see my friends or hang out with my friends, I didn't FaceTime with them. If I wanted to play video games with them, I had to go to their house and play video games with them. If I wanted to have conversations or play a game, sports, whatever it was, I had to go and meet up with them so different world today. Right and you hit the nail right on the head with the social media and it infuriates me and I know it's almost like a necessary evil because I think there's a lot more, once again we've mentioned this numerous times on the show here. It's a necessary evil, however I think a lot more people use it in a negative light than a positive light. Like the amount of information you can ascertain, the amount of people that you can meet for networking and potential future jobs or just relationships, ironically enough as we're talking about them. But I think it lends itself to selfishness and people being lazy. So let me address the selfishness aspect. Social media allows people to portray a fake lifestyle and I know we have mutual friends, a couple of them might pop to your head, but people might be taking pictures out on a boat and they might be renting that boat, it might be a family member's boat but they'll post, oh I'm on the boat, I'm on the lake, I'm in the ocean, whatever it is and you know that's a crock of shit, it's not their boat, it's a family member's boat, it's a rental. But yet other people are on there so now here's the selfish thing. People are going to say, I'm not going to like that because they're jealous, they don't know, they might feel like they're not doing as well in life so they're not going to give credit where credit is due. I think a lot of negative emotions get opened up when you start seeing certain things but also that's paramount to the individual, like what the wavelength they're on, how enlightened they are because if you're a genuine friend you're going to want to see people do genuine good. Obviously you're going to call out the bullshit and say, listen you don't own a jet ski, you don't own that condo down the shore in Florida or wherever, you don't own that RV that you're going through Yosemite National Park with, but people will post and flex on the internet to create this life. So I mean that can also open up a whole other array of questions, open up Pandora's box with what are they lacking, are they lacking additional relationships in their life that they've got to fake it so people like them or perceive to like them. But before I get too much on a tangent and break it down, I do agree, social media is indeed the culprit here because the 20, 30 years ago that you speak of does seem only like a couple of years ago where you would call somebody or you would stop in. It reminds me of the stand up we're just showing, I was just showing you this actually, the Sebastian Maniscalco just knocking on the, hey I'm in the neighborhood, what's going on, how are you doing, how are the kids, all those days long gone. It also has, you know, not only have we taken a direction where you have the world at your fingertips, you also have despair, anger, anxiety, fear brought to you immediately. I'm looking at Psychology Today online, psychologytoday.com and in one of their studies that they did, a renowned NYU psychologist had said that in one of the studies they did on teen suicide apparently between 2011 and 2018, rates of cyber bullying among teens increased everywhere, everywhere, markedly nearly every nation across the globe. So this is not a nationwide issue but an international issue. Kids being online, young people being online, which are the people that use this technology because my grandparents don't use this technology. My parents in their 60s, they can barely use this technology at our fingertips and look at the harm it's done in society. We have kids that are committing suicide based on the things that you're mentioning with the facades that people are building either being unhappy with their life from seeing someone else posting something. That's an excellent point you bring up and it's sad because even when we were younger and social media, internet was just breaking through, MSN, Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, MySpace even. Back in the day, you couldn't turn that off. You went to school, you turned it off, you couldn't bring your computer with you to school. Now these kids have a whole profile. Now keep in mind, AOL Instant Messenger was text messaging before text messaging was a thing. So when you left your house, you left up your message, you went and did your thing, you came back, maybe you had messages, maybe you didn't. Who knows? Who cares? But it was kind of like that dopamine hit, you wanted to come back and that somebody cared for you, somebody left a message. So where am I going with this? The point is that as we've gotten attached to these devices, there is no separation. That person that you're putting on social media, everyone is believing that they are that person now. That facade, that character that you're building, through your insecurities, through trying to make people jealous, maybe trying to create somebody that you're afraid of because all the other depression, anxiety, everything else you get, you're trying to create this character online. There's no off switch. People have become addicted, people never turn it off. You turn on, you get messages in your inbox and like you've mentioned, it's like, oh, I'm addicted to this, I'm addicted to this. You turn on, you get messages in your inbox and like you've mentioned, these young kids are killing themselves, getting very depressed. But as you bring up that article, I'm going to bring up another article from NBC News. This is back in 2019. And I chose this because before the pandemic, because a lot of the research that went into this show, everything was very pandemic centric where they wanted to use that as a crutch rather, why people's relationships are falling apart. So the title, Lonely? You're not alone. America's young people are suffering from a lack of a meaningful connection. I'll read the first paragraph or so just to give you guys an idea in context. The word loner generally conjures up images of a social pariah, a person who voluntarily removes themselves from a community and lacks the skills or desire to connect with anyone. Yet in reality, deep feelings of loneliness are not reserved for outcasts. The holidays in particular can be a painful time for a lot of people, especially those who feel disconnected from family. In fact, research suggests most people in America crave more meaningful social interactions. Ironically enough, what we're talking about. Let's look at the numbers here. The average person in the U.S. only has one close friend, according to the study published in the American Sociological Review. One in four people have no confidants at all. Zero. In other words, to make things worse, 75% of people corresponding to this survey say that they are unsatisfied with the friendships they do have. That goes back to a 2013 study that they cited. So what this is telling me, in so many words, is that people realize that they don't have these social interactions. People, 75%, acknowledge that, but yet nothing's changing. That was 2019, and the stats for now are getting worse. How do you rectify something like that when everybody seems to be on the same page and everybody agrees, not just us? We're not just pulling this and being, I wish I could say we're that original. But I think it's getting very pervasive now that most friendships, people can water down to acquaintanceships, if that's a word. And most people don't give the time of day, and I think that's because Yeah, we also have a different idea of what relationships or friends are nowadays. Remember that. We've had an episode where we had a woman on the episode that has about 7,000 boyfriends, who many of them do believe. She says that they have relationships. Yeah, you're right. You have kids online. But are they delusional? Is this a real thing? Can we really justify that? Are these people just delusional? For me, it's sad. It's sad, and to me, I'll be honest, I wouldn't want to have to go through high school nowadays. I wouldn't want to go through that experience. No, I would not. And I feel sorry for the kids going through it, the young crowd, the single crowd, slightly younger than me, because I don't know how they do it nowadays. With the way social media is, with the way relationships can go, with the way meetups are, you have all these relationship apps that people just burn through, and it's not, again, I don't want to speak down of it or of them. Well, we're not. We're just bringing light to it. You have to call it for what it is. You've got to call a spade a spade. Like I said, I wouldn't want to be in their position nowadays. Well, it's funny you say you don't want to be in their position, because I'm going to go on to cite exactly what that position is from the same article. The next series of sentences states that the level of disconnections is dangerous to our health. Loneliness has been alleged to have the same impact on our life expectancy, get this, Leo, as smoking 15 cigarettes a day with a risk factor that rivals excessive drinking and obesity, or obesity, sorry. In addition to lack of social contact, it can hasten cognitive decline, increase Alzheimer's, heart disease, depression, and suicide. This leads to a huge rack up of medical bills, and AARP recently reported that isolation among older adults accounts for $6.7 billion. So going back to growing up now or, you know, how you would be able to interact or live now, of all age groups, Gen Z, anyone ranging from the age of 18 to 22 in particular, seems to be most impacted. According to a recent study conducted by Cigna, which is a leading health insurance company, Gen Z is significantly more likely than any other age group to say that they experience feelings that are associated with loneliness. 68% say that they feel like nobody knows them well, and Cigna gave Gen Z a loneliness score of 48.3 out of 80. This is in contrast to the so-called greatest generation, people over 72, which has the lowest loneliness score of 38.6. Millennials, a generation including anyone born between 81 and 1996, comes in around the middle of 45.3. So you can see as technology inclines, because they said baby boomers are even less than that. So as you can see, as a rise of social media increased, you can see that meaningful, impactful, whatever type of relationship you want to call them, they have decreased over the years. And make what you want of it, I think a lot of it has to do with making impactful decisions and making thoughtful decisions. Going back to the clip we referenced earlier with Sebastian Maniscalco. If somebody rang your door 20, 30 years ago, you're excited. Who is it? Who could it be? Who would be visiting us? You know, I even mentioned to my wife, kidding around, like this is something exciting. Even as a kid, you knew the chances for you were slim. But the fact that your parents had visitors, like as a kid, you're like, this is great, we have company, they came to see us, who cares this much about us to come see, yada, yada, yada, you break out the good dessert or put the coffee on, whatever you do. Now somebody rings the doorbell, you're furious, dogs are barking, who is it? It's usually somebody selling you something, nothing. So once again, I point the finger at social media, but is this letting everybody off the hook easy? Because like I said, we're exchanging phone calls with text messages, you know, maybe compliments with likes or just comments on a photo. Instead of saying something to somebody's face, hey, you look nice tonight, nice suit, I like your hair, you're waiting for them to post it and then you say something. So is that your justification to say, oh no, we have a good friendship, you know, we talk on social media, I don't really think so. I don't think that's really meaningful to be honest. Well, I'm going to speak from the perspective of an educator. The last 10 years of my life that I've dedicated to teaching, if there's one thing I constantly notice and talk about with other teachers is the very little, I don't know, the very little ability that kids have nowadays and have had for a while now to be able to socialize. No one knows how to have proper eye contact. No one knows how to shake a hand, say hello, have a conversation. And these are things that in our society we have pushed away from. So again, and it's not out of respect, it's just I think these things, losing these things has brought us in this direction as well. People can't have a conversation without it being, I don't know, online, people can't have a conversation, let's say, about something like politics. But why is this? Is this because you get, like, we're going to sit here and we're going to do what this is saying, argue that social media is the blame for all this? Like is it the fact that social media has commandeered our attention in terms of entertainment, in terms of what we think news and knowledge is, in terms of what we classify as relationships and friendships? Has everything been hijacked to the point where we are, we lost touch with who we are as humans, like the actual social creatures that we are? Has everything been hijacked, in your opinion? I think so. And I see it when we have adults that in order to keep their kids entertained for five minutes when they go out or they go over a friend's house or someone's over, we'll say, okay, just grab the iPad or do this and that. You know what I mean? And it's a common practice, but it's something that, okay, so how the hell did they do it 50 years ago? Right. You've got to ask yourself, because I mean, I've done it myself with my nephews, they come over sometimes, before I ring their neck, and their eyes pop out of their head. I'd rather give them something to entertain themselves for a couple of minutes. And then I'm thinking to myself, am I doing them a disservice? I see the hunch in the neck. We are. I see the way their eyes get glazed over the iPad. But what do you do? I mean, listen, I think not having parents that are willing to beat the crap out of you is negative. And I'm not saying I was abused as a kid, but we got disciplined when it came to it. You're going to sit still and you're going to be quiet. And if you're talked to, make sure you look in their eyes and you respond. And it's not the fact that it was just like parents were parents back then. Now I think everyone is just selfish. You want to do what's easier? I'm not saying I'm above this. I mean, there's times I throw my daughter in the iPad. It's just... That's what I'm saying. I think we've gotten to a point where that ability to have that tool has just become so easy. I think, and I'm going to quote a couple studies here off of this next article I brought off from American Survey Center. I feel like everyone is worried about getting judged for the wrong reasons. So instead of yelling at your kid, smack them on the ass, discipline them. Oh, we can't do that. Just give them the iPad, just do whatever. And we are doing a great disservice. So this article from June 8th, 2021, and I really don't like the twist, like the COVID-19 pandemic twist on here, but pretty much it reiterates a little bit of the same facts The previous article saying that Americans report having fewer close friendships than they ever did and talking to their friends less often and relying less on their friends for personal support. So the article says COVID-19 pandemic is the most obvious culprit, which I say bullshit. I think we made a good case for social media and we're going to keep going in on social media. With that in mind, it says a couple things here. First, Americans are marrying later than ever and are more geographically likely to be mobile than in the past. I agree. Two trends that are strongly associated with increasing rates of self-reported social isolation and feelings of loneliness. Second, American parents are spending twice as much time with their children, ironically, we just mentioned that bad, compared to the previous generations, crowding out other types of relationships, including friendships. I want to come back to that. Finally, Americans are working longer hours and traveling more for work, which may come at a cost of maintaining and developing friendships. In fact, perhaps reflecting a central place in the hierarchy of American social life, Americans are now more likely to make friends at work than any other way, including at school, neighborhood, place of worship, or even through existing friends, which I think, and I wanted to talk about this with my personal experience at work, but how ironic. The thing that we're crowding the children more, where, listen, I get it, and Jordan Peterson had said this, where in the years past, parents were usefully negligent with their children, because they had them younger, and when you have your kids in your mid-twenties, you can't go out, you said, who cares, I'm drinking, I want to watch this movie, to two-year-old or three-year-old would be fine, and they fall down, hit their head, cut their cheek, cut their arm, whatever. Now, we're having them later on in life, and now we're more attentive, because we have that knowledge, we have that extra wisdom, that extra decade of life experience, and now we're saying, get off the couch, don't jump on the bed, don't poke the dog in the eyes, don't, all these things that, in the previous generation, you poke the dog in the eyes, if you get bit, oh well. You know what I mean? If you want to go jump on the bed and you go flying off and hit your head on the back of the headboard, oh well, that's what you deserve. Now, in our generation, it's not like that. I want to bring up the whole work thing. I've said this, part of the reason I wanted to bring this topic up is because I was speaking with a guy at work. I've tried to get him on a couple of times, but I haven't gotten him on at one point. I haven't called him. Why not? He lives right down the road. We can knock on his door. The fact that people spend so much time at work, and I'm not saying you've got to be best friends with people at work, I'm not saying you've got to move in next door or this, but it's becoming increasingly clear that we spend more time at work, and we're spending more time at work with our colleagues than sometimes our own family. The fact that some of these people don't share the same sentiments, and I was talking to my co-worker. We do, ironically. That's why we're talking about it. Hey, you want to go get a cup of coffee after work? You want to come by? I could throw some steaks on the grill. We could have a drink, whatever. Some people, yes. Some people, no. I don't got time. So what do you mean you don't got time? What are you doing? You're spending so much time at work. It's just like, you know, you'll talk my ear off or we can bullshit at work. As soon as work's over, I can fall off the face of the earth and I won't hear from other people. I'm sure you have it at your job, too, where it's just like, I'm not asking us to have this beautiful platonic relationship where we just, every Friday we've got to do something together, this or that, but once in a blue, hey, you want to come by, grab a drink, we'll do this, we'll do that. So many people say no. Do you see that where you work, too? Do you see that happening a lot where people are just so disconnected in a selfish manner that they're almost like a succubus. They'll take as much energy from you during the day and then they placate you and it's almost like they extract all your resources during the day. Okay, and then once that bell rings, once that punch clock hits 3.30, whatever time you work until, they don't want anything to do with you. I don't know. I guess it depends on what kind of job you have, where you work, what you do, and what kind of co-workers you have. Myself, in education, I've found that the staff usually does try to do things to socialize every once in a while because if you have a happy staff, you have a together staff, you're going to have happy kids going to school there. Personally, at my place, I'm very blessed that I have a great principal. He's a great leader and he does encourage things like that, believe it or not. He'll encourage once a month, let's all go out for a happy hour to de-stress, talk. He celebrates the people that he works with. You're talking about co-workers, Jim. I'm thinking to myself people I've met along the lines of life, just friends of mine that I've known for years that at one point I get to thinking, why the hell am I even still friends with this person? They make no attempt to hang out. It's only me reaching out. There's certain life occurrences that I invite them over and you don't get the same response. I'm like, okay, so what the hell is the point? Exactly. It's funny you mention that. We'll come back to the co-workers. I think it's a very telling issue with friends in general. How do I say this? I'm going to try to phrase this very delicately. I want to be very explicit in what I'm saying here. Screw it. Just say it. I do believe people come and go into your life for certain reasons at certain times. I'm not saying you have to be friends with them forever. I'm not saying it's going to last. I'm not saying it's going to be beneficial. I'm just hoping that you can learn something out of them. My best friend through elementary school, as soon as we went to middle school, it was over. We're still friends, but we just went separate ways. It was different. Then my best friend from middle school through high school, that was great. Then we went our separate ways. Listen, we work in the same company now. Once in a while, life happens. We're a lot older now. We were inseparable growing up. In this one, I'm talking about being on different wavelengths. This is why friendships, I don't want to ever close the door on a friendship. I don't think anybody should. I might not be able to be your friend now. Maybe in 10 years, we're going to be friends again. What I mean by that is people come and go on different wavelengths, different times of their life. We've been friends now almost 20 years. When we were both single and young, our hobbies were working out, going to the club, picking up girls, and sports. If my wife is listening, I don't know who he's talking about. He's talking about someone else. Yeah, not interested in girls, guys, sorry. One of us gets a girlfriend. The other one still stays single. Now, what are you going to do? You're going to third-wheel it. You're going to try to find some random person to bring along. You know what I'm saying? That doesn't mean the friendship is over, and it doesn't mean that it can't still be a friendship. What I'm saying is maybe in a couple years, you come full circle. I don't want to ever close the door on a friendship. I might not be able to be your friend now. Maybe in 10 years, we're going to be friends again. Some people get it, and some people don't. Some people only want to live in a certain world with certain possibilities and capabilities. What makes our friendship very unique is that regardless of what wavelength or where we were in our lives, everything was reciprocated with the amount of effort being put in and the amount of effort being put out, the amount of respect being put in, and the amount of respect being put out. I know we can sit here and name names over the course of our years because we ran in the same circle where that was not the case. Not only was that not the case, but it was always all or nothing, where it was just like, if you don't come to my thing, I'm not going to your thing. If you can't make this, I'm not. It was very rude and pompous at times. That's when you start, as you get older, to realize you have to eliminate certain people. I know I've mentioned this before, but Alex Ramosi's wife, Layla, would say that sometimes you've got to level up your friends and prune your circle because so many people have said this. I think Alex has said this. I think Jordan Peterson has said this. You are the sum of your five friends, the five closest people you hang out with. I think there's something to be said about cutting nonsense out, but at the same time, where do you point the finger? Do you point the finger at the person that cuts out the other four bozos who's not leveling up and not wanting to do anything with their lives? Or do you point your finger at yourself and say, I'm the selfish one. I'm the one who cut off these four friends. We could still be friends, but could we really? I don't know. That's a tough point. That's why I'm saying like co-workers now. You spend so much time with co-workers that you develop friendships. A lot of the guys that I work with, when they retire, they've done 30, 35 years in the company. That's a lot of time to be at work with somebody. The overtime, the holidays, the for-sale. I have this conversation regularly. With you, I've had it in the past. I have it with another buddy of mine from Spain. I think you're going in the right direction by saying you should never cut off a friend. The thing is that you also have to think, how is maintaining this friendship and this relationship affecting you or making you feel? Is what you should be asking yourself. If you're feeling to yourself, and this is my opinion, if you're feeling to yourself, hey, this person's not pulling the same way I am in this friendship. Why the fuck wouldn't they invite me to this? When they're one of the first ones I think about that, and I've known this person 20 plus years, then that right there should be an example of you saying, okay, you know what? Maybe you know. We should know our boundaries and we know where they're at and where I'm going in life. Because you mentioned what we were back in the day when we were right out of high school and into college. Right now, I lead a very different life. I have a good friend who I've known for the past 30 years. We were inseparable for 20 plus years. He still lives the same lifestyle that he lived 20 years ago. When he's visited lately, I can't hang out with him. I've told him straight up, listen, I can't hang out with you because I can't do the things you're doing. Right. I don't think you have the mental capacity to want to do that either. I'm happily married, and I'm also physically unable to party the way you still do. I said, I'm not knocking you. Don't get me wrong. I think it's great you're still doing this. I'm happy for you that you're happy. You look great. You look great. You look young still, but I can't. Some people can't understand that. I think it's those type of people that can't understand that because I don't think it's both ways. See, that's what I'm saying. That's the worst part about it. I still feel bad. Right. You know what I mean? I feel that. I don't know if it's anxiety or what it is, but I know, hey, when they're back to visit here in Jersey, why the fuck doesn't he reach out? This kid spent the majority of his high school and college years at my house. Why doesn't he reach out to hang out? It is anxiety because it makes you uneasy. It makes you question who you are. And as I elaborate on that, what I'm getting at is that you know in your head subconsciously you're going back, right? And you're saying, I know how close we are. I know we're not that close now. The way I feel about this individual is the same. How can I mend this gap or close this gap to make it the way it was? The answer is it's never going to happen. It's not going to happen. And because of nostalgia, because of the memories, because of the sentimental events and everything that took place, you still do your best. And the anxiety within you is because you are the good person that you are and your moral compass is telling you to still be that guy you were 20 years ago, even though you know you can't do it and it's not fair to the person you're with now. Not only that, I'll even take it a step further. Maybe I'm speaking on my behalf. I can speak out of turn. You can correct me. I don't believe that you'd want to do that anyway because I know I just got done hosting a family member from Italy who's 8 years younger than I, single and all that. I didn't want to do half the things that I did because it's the anxiety of being put in a position I don't want to be put in. It's exhausting. It is exhausting. It's exhausting. I can't drink the way they used to drink. So now I get anxious about am I going to get sick if I drink too much? Am I going to be making a fool of myself? Am I going to be throwing up? Am I going to be a problem? Am I going to be ruining his night looking at my watch the moment I get there? Right, exactly. All these things, and it's not done from a place of maliciousness, but it is done out of consciousness of what you'd expect them to do for you, but at the same time you're at two different pages in the chapter, two different chapters in the book. And this is why we have to have a follow-up episode, in my opinion, Jim, on this subject because we should get the female perspective on this because what we go through is completely different than what girls go through when it comes to relationships. Well, before we keep pontificating and everything like that, I totally agree. I wanted to get a spin. I think it's safe to say that next week we'll have our girl, our bad bitch Nicole Forever back on the show. She reached out. She wants to do another one, and I have an interesting topic for next week, so I think she might be able to be on here, a little spoiler, a little teaser. But this female perspective is totally different because they're all over the place, a lot more emotion and everything like that. And before I switched up the article, they were even hit harder during the pandemic because I think they rely on more of, how do I say, the female mind, the female opinion to encourage their decisions or behaviors. We're men. We've been very close for a long time now. I can reach out to you and just consult with one person and say, where's my moral compass? Am I on the right page? And you can say yes, you can say no, and then I can adjust based on that because I know where your moral compass lies. So I can just ask one opinion, and that can set me straight or it can just reaffirm what I already know. So walking it back, as I told you before, I didn't like the fact that a lot of these articles used the COVID-19 as a crutch. This article is all the way back from 2008. Believe it or not, the topic, the header, the headline, the article, why is friendship on the decline? So it says pretty much friendship is not yet an endangered species, but studies in the U.S. and France have both found that people are spending less time with friends, neighbors, and relatives. We haven't talked about neighbors yet, but that's interesting. The amount of hours worked has increased, so it has something to do with the pattern. Researchers seem to say there's also priorities, and most people in the U.S., a job isn't a job. A job isn't a job. It's much more, and it's part of their identity. So I tend to agree, and before social media got too crazy, this article even says that the short of casualness in friendships degrades social ties in what you might be able to have in the past, like we mentioned earlier, where now you can just, instead of somebody having a bad day, hey, how's your day going? Instead of calling them and making a conversation out of it, instead of saying, hey, let's go to the coffee shop or let's go to the bar and grab a drink, you shoot a text, and you can text five people from your couch as you engage or watch your Netflix show or whatever you do and say, I'm being a good friend, but I don't really know. So it's funny that they had this article in, and they have said the data they've gotten from 1996 to 1998 said memberships in social groups have remained slightly stable. There is a decline in visiting friends, neighbors, and relatives. And the decline, they said, was not simply due to friends switching and to email communication and socializing at work, but the true decline was reported that under the last 20 years, visiting and the popular press and other things, so they're alluding to what social media has become, has detracted people from having true relationships. So once again, we keep going back where you have to make an effort, a true effort and spend genuine time, go out of your way, like is a text message really going out of your way? Are you really making an effort with the text? You can write a text message as you're taking a shit in the bathroom. Is that really taking an effort? You're just trying to kill two birds with one stone. But even still, I'd appreciate a text message. I'm not saying it's not appreciated because you're still thinking about it. Right, right, right. Agreed. I can see that point. Because even a message can go a long way, in my opinion. Right, but to piggyback and to draw parallels with where we're at with society, is that more selfish behavior? Is that because of social media? Is that just the world we live in? Should we just expect friendships to change like everything else, like sports changed because people want to gamble? Our relationships have changed because people are online. Dressing, I'm not going to say that's a teaser, but maybe it is. Dressing and appearance has changed. We used to take pride in that. People are just going out in whatever clothes they want to the store and running errands. Should we just accept these, I hate to say this, but this degrade, this decay in society because that's what it is? Is it selfish because we don't take the pride and respect that we used to have? What are we saying here? I want to know, what would you say is it more? Is it laziness? Is it lack of self-respect? Is it ignorance? What can we point the finger at? I know it's social media, right, so we've identified that. But we don't have to use social media. So is it just following the crowd? Is it conforming? What do you think? I don't know. I think it's a combination of social media, like I said before, and technology, just advancing technology. I'll never forget. I was in a class in high school. Year was 2001, senior year, and this kid, I always say his first name. His name was Jed. He shows up to class, and he's got this little device in his hand, and he's looking at something on it. And I see that there's words on it. And I go, what the hell is that? Oh, it's a pager, two-way pager. A Motorola two-way pager. And that was like the start of text messaging, if I'm not mistaken. And then they implemented it with the cell phones, being able to do it along the cell phones. But the pager, I mean, you still had to make a phone call. Someone could send a bullshit message, but you had to make a phone call. No, no, no. The Motorola two-way pager was something you can send out a text message through. You're thinking of a beeper. You're thinking of a beeper that you could receive. Yeah, yeah, pager, beeper, we're not saying the same thing? No, no, this was the initial device that you could receive text messages on and send it to someone else. And I remember seeing it and going, so wait, who do you send that message to? Oh, the other person that has this. I said, so you know someone else who has this? You're the first person I ever met that has this. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I'll never forget that moment because I said to myself, this is going to change everything. If I could be sending messages out, and sure enough, it did. But it's technology, it's social media. I mean, I know you're saying you don't want to blame COVID, but eventually I think down the line we are going to have to. I think that's the future reason because if you think about it, the amount of kids that were destroyed socially because of COVID, the measures they took with masks, with the homeschooling and whatnot. I'm thinking down the road it's going to be a major factor in our inability to be able to interact normally with other people. I agree. I mean, that's a good point. I didn't even think of it that way. I thought you were just going to steamroll me here. Oh, no. Just like COVID, these are shown. Even so many people that have returned back to school, you're talking about teachers, educators, you're talking about kids, parents, that'll all say these kids aren't the same. No. These kids, they're not the same. No, they're not. And you're comparing them to kids that they had five years ago, and they're like, these kids are so far behind being able to keep up with just the normal things of society when it comes to interaction. Yeah. You know? No, yeah. I mean, that's a very valid point. I thought you were just going to lump it in there and say, yeah, COVID. No. Because people stayed away from each other. COVID's the future. Yeah, with the masks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think we even know yet. We have no idea. Yeah, we don't even know yet the scale of things. Because here's the thing. We have, right, so let's even use that age group that we mentioned earlier, 18 to 22. How long would you say the effects of COVID had lasted? Because it started in 2022. I mean, sorry, it started in 2020. Or 2023. So that's four years. Do you think all those age groups, do you think it's extended from, like, 22-year-olds down to infants? Because I know it definitely did affect infants and little kids being exposed to doing stuff, but you're talking about maybe 20 years of problems, socialization issues. And as much as I just want to point to social media, as much as I want to point to laziness and selfishness and the decline of, I don't want to say humanism because it's like a cop-out. Things that make us human, like compassion, care, social cues, and then social settings, like, all these are being stripped away. And so many people have, dare I say, fell victim to the bigger agenda here. And a lot of people, I don't know the number off the top of my head. I'm not going to bother researching. Most people don't even talk to their neighbors or even know who their neighbors are. Luckily, I'm not in that category. All my neighbors are actually pretty good. Minus one that I don't care for, but I'll just leave it at that. I don't wish any well. Well, I'm not going to say I hate the guy. He's just there. Everyone else is awesome from every type of background you can imagine. But I will tell you, and this is ironic, and I had a blowout with a neighbor over something very stupid, and this is the point. Two years ago, we were building a fire pit at the house, me and my father-in-law. I was going to get the white creche stone that I had delivered. I saw this car pull up, pick up a... The town, they put the American flags on the grassy part. I don't know the name. Between the sidewalk and the street, so I don't own that, because there's the 10-foot back the town owns. They pull it up off, I'll just use for the sake of a better term, my property, and they drive away. I watch my house they go to. I walk all the way up there. It's like maybe half a block away, 10 houses away. I know who the guy was, and it's his wife and his son, so I didn't want to really get into it. I said, I just saw you take it off my property. Oh, I'm sorry. It is sad. I don't know. I said, you're my neighbor. I said, I have a doorbell camera. I have a camera. I saw you do what you did. I said, we're neighbors. We're supposed to ask each other for sugar or help each other out. I said, you're taking off my property. He said, if you wanted that bad, I said, you could have... I said these words. I said, you could have stole it from anyone else in the neighborhood, but you chose to steal it from your neighbor a couple doors down. I don't even think it was 10 doors down. She might be like five doors. Then her husband came out, and I explained the situation. He said, oh, you got the flag back. He said, it's not about the flag. It's about the principle. He said, if you wanted it that bad, you could have knocked on my door and asked. I would have gave it to you, no problem. Where did you get those? I really like them. I'll take a couple here. Here's the thing. The town puts them out. They're free. Every year, the town puts them out on hundreds of houses. Makes it even worse. Right. That's what I'm saying. You have the audacity and broad daylight to have your son, who couldn't be older than 10, 12 years old, jump out of the car, and you told him to do this, to take the flag off the house because you don't have any. You can get them at the dollar store. This is the problem in society now, where it's just like, I'll just ask. I don't care. I really don't care. I have the flags on my property every year. I don't care. I've got four more, five more in the store. I don't care. The fact that you had taken them and you had your son do it and drove a couple doors up like I'm some dummy who doesn't know what's going on in my own neighborhood, that's what bothers me. And that's why these types of relationships, how can you have relationships with people who do that? This is where we're at. That's the problem. Nowadays in society, we don't have any common courtesy. We've lost a lot of that. A lot of people thinking what someone else might find to be hurtful, offensive, or inappropriate, people don't do that. It's all about me, me, me, what's hurtful to me, what's offensive to me. And back to what I mentioned before, we have a lot of screwed up kids that went during either middle school or high school or college, moving on to the next phase of their life after COVID. And with this whole social media issue, we have a lot of screwed up adults coming up. I want to get your take on something, Jim. I was thinking about this. We have a hard enough time as it is making relationships with people in real life, and people really struggle with it, right? What do you think about this whole idea of Facebook creating this, I think it's called Facebook Meta, where they are going to try to do some type of symbiote between man and machine. They connect you directly to, I don't know if it's a device or something, you're literally living things through your brain that you want to create. Do you want my mainstream reaction and opinion, or do you want my conspiratorial? I think both is appropriate today. So, I'll start with the mainstream. I think certain aspects, like I said, it's up to the individual. Because you have to be aware, you have to be in lane, you have to be intelligent, you have to be in the know to utilize these for your benefit. Everything here with technology is a net neutral. Now, you can say, Jim, that's wrong. You know, these things are listening to us. They're giving off radiation. They're doing it. Yes, I agree. There's ways to mitigate that. I understand. However, growing up in the mid to, yeah, I could say the mid-90s. No, maybe even earlier. How fast did it go from Walkman to CD player to MP3 player to now you just have a phone? Does anyone have MP3 players? What's an MP3 player? CD player? Maybe somebody has an old one in their house hooked up to an entertainment system. I don't know. How fast did it go from a horrible phone that you have to literally physically lift the external antenna up to get better reception and it was 2G analog phone calls to 3G to 4G to 5G phones that you could talk to on each other? How fast did it go from TVs and then you have to get like an illegal box if your parents knew somebody and they'll put all the pay-per-view channels and the movie channels to now... Scrambler. Right. You can stream everything on anything on your phone. Your phone is a calculator. Your phone's a computer. Your phone is a fax machine. Your phone is everything, right? So I think it could be very good if you want to use it to be good because it's neutral because you could also use it to be bad. So here's the conspiratorial. It's all about control. They want to control your thoughts. They want to control your tongue. They want to control your finances. This is evil at the end of the day. Jim, what are you talking about? You just said this is good. Yeah, but here's the problem. Majority of people are ignorant. They're willingly ignorant. We've mentioned this numerous times on this channel. They're willingly ignorant where they're so preoccupied with other things. Leo, humor me here. Humor me here. What do people say when you bring this up to them? Bring what up to them? The meta thing? Any of this stuff. Any of these, hey, the government's doing this. The government's doing that. The government's doing this. The government's doing that. They laugh about it. What's their go-to sentence? Humor me. If not, I'll fill it in and you'll say, of course. Oh, you're being crazy. You're thinking too much about it. My favorite response is, well, why would the government do that? Yeah. Why would they do that? I've given up on those people, Jim. I'll be honest. Friends, family, I've given up on them. Why would the government? That's the point I'm making. As soon as you start making that response, I just turn around and go, okay, that's it. Thank you. I'm done with this conversation. But that's the point I'm making. How many more people do you know say shit like that than say, that even question it and say, oh, I didn't even think about that. Where'd you get your information? Most people just say, oh, why would they do that? Bury their face back in their phone watching this. Only fans this. Instagram that. Facebook this. That's what they all want to know. Wait until they're hooked up to Meta and they don't have to interact at all with any other person because they can dream up their world. They can be the biggest, fattest, unhealthiest slob. In their mind, they're hanging out with a supermodel. Right. So, going back to the PED episode, and this is what Andrew Huberman said, and I did more research on it. I think we said it. Do you think it's by design that they have told us that the drugs that happen to be downers are safe and they're pushing that, like weed? Oh, mushrooms, psychedelics, you could do this. People are microdosing with this stuff. They want you to DASA. Right. Bingo. Because now we learned with nicotine, it's a nootropic. It does have some therapeutic enhancers to it in terms of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and stuff like that. But we also know that it works with your choline receptors and it's a donor, so it helps you have high-end focus, alert. Why do you think they give the GIs all cigarettes? I mean, we haven't had a war in a long time, but I think there's going to be a hot war pretty soon. The Germans were giving their soldiers meth, right? Why do you think, you know, when we were working out back in the day in the early 2000s, all the, not to go off on a tangent on PDs, but all those pro-hormones, all those, ephedra, how popular was ephedra? Stacker 2, stacker 2. It was all over the TV. Everybody knew stacker 2. Nobody even questioned if you were taking stacker 2. Rit fuel, all this stuff. And then they realized, okay, listen, of course there's implications. People are going to get abused and get sick and die and whatever. But people do those cigarettes for the dawn of time now. People have been doing that with heroin for a long time. The crack epidemic in the 80s, they did nothing about it in the inner cities. Now they're doing it with the heroin. Why aren't they doing anything about this if they're going to do a war on drugs? Because these are the drugs they want. We're killing ourselves. They are depopulating us. They are controlling us. They are being addicted. Cigarettes, yeah, addicting, but guess what? Cigarettes increase your metabolism. They increase your alertness. They decrease your appetite so you don't have to worry about food. All these other drugs, weed, mushrooms, all this stuff, guess what? They're going to make you eat. Guess what was happening in the last year? And I know one of the early podcasts we did was the explosions and then the train wrecks and the East Palestine. Guess what? That's all farmland. Guess who's buying up all the farmland? Bill Gates in China. Guess who's making fake meat and all this stuff? Bill Gates. You don't think, I'm not advocating for smoking, but you don't think, hey, nicotine or FEDRA or something, an appetite suppressant wouldn't be a good idea when they're forcing fake food on us that has known carcinogens and poisons in it. So in the social media world, that is what MED is going to be. It's going to be control. It's going to be addicting. It's going to be habit forming. And it's going to make you docile. That's going to be your happy place. Instead of saying I need to go out back for a smoke, I'm going to go back out and have a drink. I just need some virtual reality. I need to go and make good relationships and friendships and talk to people instead of that. How about this? Maybe we should copyright this. We might make money off it. I'm going to go home and meditate. Then they hijack what real meditation is. If you get involved with this and I don't mean it like the Hindu way and everything and anti-God and all that. But the chakras, like all the stuff they keep doing is keeping you in your lowest chakra, your lowest energy field. I won't get too much on tangents, but that's what I think is going to happen. They want to decrease your trustworthiness in other humans. They want to decrease your ability to realize that we all have God's DNA in it. We're all part of God. We all have the energy, the ability to formulate social, meaningful social relationships with each other. We're meant to help each other, not divide and conquer and kill. Not to bully. Not to put each other down. We're here to assist and help each other. That's the reason why I brought it up to you and I asked you that question. I think that that's one of the topics that hasn't been spoken about much. It was mentioned a couple weeks ago here and there by some of the guys I listen to. I thought to myself, this is freaking weird. If people hop on this and people actually join, and if it blows up the way Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook have already been, we're screwed as a society. Because you're going to have so many people from society not even being part of society. They're going to be involved in this other realm. You know why? Okay, you know the term water cooler talk? Obviously you've heard of that. It's like at work, instead of talking about, and maybe I'm a nerd or totally off base with this because I can't with guys. And this is going back to the NPC episode, right? I'm not talking from a place of hierarchy or I'm holier or smarter than now. I'm definitely not. I'm just a regular guy that anyone else can do what I do. The fact that people openly have conversations about just like TV shows, and that's all they want to talk about. And then if you bring something else up, if you want to talk about men, are they going to look at you and say, what are you talking about? I never heard that word. But then if you want to talk about what outfit so-and-so wore on whatever show's popular, they're going to say, oh, can you put, look at, okay, perfect example. I don't know if you watched. Did you watch Thursday night, the football game? I was just thinking when you were saying that, I stopped having cable, I don't know, maybe seven years ago, eight years ago, and I've never looked back. Thursday night football. Yeah, I know, but I still. Do you have any idea what happened on Thursday night or what's been going on? No clue. Because there's a conspiracy about this. What's that, Taylor Swift? There you go. Let's just head out for tonight because I don't think that's good. That's brilliant. So many people are obsessed about Taylor Swift. This might be the biggest hot take. I don't give a flying shit about her or any of her music. I don't give a fuck. I don't care. If you ask me who the guy is that she's dating, I have no idea. I don't know the name. Travis Kelsey. There you go. Pfizer boy that Aaron Rodgers called him. Yes. You should watch the conspiracy about this. I'm not even going to answer this conspiracy, but this is what I'm saying. People going bananas over a celebrity. This is idolatry. What are we doing worshipping these false idols? Buying jerseys. Buying tickets to the games because they're going to be there. Going to these concerts. Even Andrew Tate has said this. You go look at these idiots. I've been to concerts before. I enjoy the music and certain artists. Don't get me wrong. Like I said, I'm not holier than thou. But these people who go apeshit, jumping up and down, throwing their fists in the air. These people are on stage looking down at you. You're worshipping them. They're above you. They have all this occult symbolism, all this stuff. People will talk about Taylor Swift. If you want to talk about, I don't know, hollow earth, flat earth, the moon landings, what latest book you just read. Maybe doing some type of community service. They're going to say, what are you talking about? They're going to look at you like you've got ten heads. Yeah. And this is what I'm saying. This is what's lacking. And leading into one of the last articles we're going to cite because we can just keep going on them. From Psych Central is the importance of connection. It's going back. What I just mentioned, neighbors relying and everything on each other. Through the years, we've thrived as a species connecting with others. Whether we're hunting for meat, gathering berries, or traveling in stagecoaches, Oregon Trail, how do you think Manifest Destiny would conquer the United States? We did it together in social groups. But with the rise of digital interactions, we've also seen the increase of loneliness. Isn't that odd? We have more connections to more people, more than ever, and people are more lonely. We no longer meet for drinks after work or gather with our friends for the game or movie nights. Meetings and social gatherings are not done virtually. I think you mentioned this off air before we got on with FaceTime and all this other bullshit people do. Go to meeting, all this stuff. We celebrate the events in our lives with a heart emoji or thumbs up. I fucking said that from Jump where people were less like, instead of you're at a wedding or event or at the dinner with somebody, instead of somebody saying, hey, nice shoes, or forget what comes after nice shoes, but hey, I like your tie. I like your suit. I like your dress. Nice haircut. Where did you go? They won't say a word to you because they don't want to give you any street cred. They don't want to give you any props. They don't want to give you any accolades. If you post it the next day, thumbs up, heart emoji, maybe a comment. Why can't we just be decent to each other anymore? That's one of my biggest contentions here. This, again, cites the pandemic saying three in five Americans reported being lonely after the pandemic. Well, that was before the pandemic. Sorry. And then after the pandemic, the number increased. So they say it's a lack of social interaction, support from peers, and poor mental health. What are we doing here then? Once again, another episode. Everybody's on the same page. It seems that way. But people refuse to stop doing it. It's just like this addiction that people have. I've only been doing the social media thing for, like, when did we start? March. Seven months now. I'm getting exhausted at some of the shit that I say. I really am. The stuff that certain people put out, myself included. And then I see some girl shaking her ass, 100,000, 1 million likes, 1 million views. I'm saying, what? That's your entertainment? That's what you thought was valuable today? So much so that you give a thumbs up or a heart emoji or a sweat emoji or an eggplant emoji or try to slide into the DMs, like, you thought you shot your shot. Like, I don't know. It's sad. It's sad. And the loneliness is going to continue until somebody breaks the cycle. You know, like I, for example, with me personally, a lot of my first cousins have moved across the country. My second cousin is still here. Social media helped me connect with all of them. And I don't mean just the social media, like the Instagram stuff, but, like, with having the text message and everything, easy way to communicate with everybody at one time, getting together. But how many people would, don't do that, connect with distant family, reach out, do anything? It's ironic. Real quick, at work, a lot of the guys, the contractors, like, you're always in your truck. What are you doing? You're lazy. You're this. I said, excuse me. I get my work done and I go in the truck. I said, I'm brushing up and I'm trying to be fluent in Italian. I've learned Italian many, many, many times over the years. I can't tell you how many years I studied it. I forgot more than I've ever learned. Trying to make it a habit of being fluent and knowing it. Simultaneously, I'm working on getting my Italian citizenship. Because the geopolitical stuff here, there's a lot of advantageous reasons. I've had meetings with lawyers over there. I've done so much. I'm reading books. I'm listening to stuff on audio tape. And these guys are busting their ass hard working. I get it. You got to work hard. But there's more than life than just digging a hole, putting a pipe together, putting a I understand all that, but that's small-minded thinking. So many people are just interested in going to the social media, not formulating any real meaningful relationships, and ridiculing people that they don't understand. If you took the time not to understand what I'm doing or why I'm doing and having a real conversation instead of just judging based on what you see, maybe the outcome would be a little bit different. But I feel like a lot of people fall victim to that. And that's what we set the stage for this conversation earlier, when I mentioned that people flexing on Instagram or Facebook or whatever, saying they have this or they're doing that, when some people might know that's a far cry from reality for that person. That's a lie. Yeah. I'm not sure if you want to touch up on any other subjects or any other direction in this subject in particular. But I think something we really need to start thinking about is how we can change this in our society. What can we do to fix this, right? So I was thinking to myself, a couple of things we can try. And you can chime in whenever you're ready, because I've got a couple of things I'm going to mention. Go for it. I want you to lay it on the table for me. Yeah. I think that what we can do as individuals, and you can start, anyone listening can start, is to do what the phrase treating your family like friends and treating your friends like family, to do that more regularly. And you can start at home. Even if it's a family member or family members that you don't get along with so regularly or you see every once in a while. Do the right thing. People will take notice. And eventually they'll start doing the same thing. And you really have to start thinking to yourself, who's important in your life and who you really want to improve your relationship with or build on that relationship. During the show tonight, I had a phone call from my grandfather that Jim noticed on my phone. And it's something that I've done because I have a relationship with my grandfather who's 93 that I don't have with anybody else in my family. We call each other almost every other night. Oh, how are you? How's it going? How was your day? Good? Good. A, he's a big part of my life. And I think that someone like him, who's such a social butterfly and just an overall good person and happy person is someone that I want to constantly be in touch with and be like. So I like to be in touch with him. But other than that, your kids, if you have kids, if you have nephews, interact with them. Conversations, regular daily conversations, really meaningful conversations and entertaining ones where you're asking them about their day. Your friends, when you get a chance. And even if, I know you might not agree, but even if it's a text message, Hey, how you been? Just checking in. Wanted to make sure everything's okay. Good. Let me know when we can chat. We'll catch up for a couple minutes. People at work, okay? People at work. You mentioned people at work. I would definitely, definitely recommend, and if it's something that I've ever learned from my father, is to make sure you thank those that have made a difference in your life, either at work or have gone out of their way to help you out with something when it came to work or a job you got. A lot to unpack there. I was going to stop you a couple of times, but you were making good points, so I'm going to roll. Before I give my opinion on what you said, do you think it's safe to say a lot of people nowadays, I don't have the word naive, but take for granted the ability to communicate, was that a fair statement to make? I would say so. I thought you would, and I think that also leads into another thing, because you were mentioning your grandfather, so that made me think of my grandfather. All of my grandfathers are long past. So, I shouldn't say both, but all of them, but the two that I know. My grandfather, that passed in 2017. And this is a shame, and this is why I want to make a point. I wanted to make sure I address this, because your grandfather is still alive at 93. I got into hunting 8 years ago when I was 30. All my family, both my mother's and father's side hunted. Grandfather hunted, since he's passed I have a lot of his stuff. Don't wait to make relationships with these people, because you take it for granted that they're going to be there. By the time I started hunting, getting involved, enjoying it, sharing stories, talking to my grandfather, he was passed away. He died. Same thing with my one uncle. I get old enough, start busting chops, talking shit, having a good time, let's have some whiskey, let's have a drink. Hey, what do you want for Christmas year? I buy him a bottle of whatever. I think it was Johnny Walker, the green, because I couldn't afford the blue, so I would try to get at least the green. Random surgery, voluntary surgery. He was in a recovery room, cardiac arrest, dead. You take for granted that these people are going to be there, that you're going to be able to just, I'll text them tomorrow, call tomorrow. Yeah, I hate to text, but it is better than nothing. Unfortunately, I think it's safe to say that texting has been, I think, graciously accepted in society now with open arms. I don't think it's rude as it used to be. I think to give a phone call is much more meaningful, but I think it's acceptable. Don't wait to make that phone call, that text message, to kick back up that relationship if you're like, oh man, I haven't talked to so-and-so in so long or whatever. Do it. Even if the other person wants nothing to do with you, you can rest your head, you can rest your hat rather, and you say, I tried, I did it. And that's kind of what made me reach out to a lot of my other cousins and everything that we haven't seen in a long time because you know when I started seeing them? At everyone's funeral. Family members started dying, started passing away. And now these cousins I haven't seen in 15, 20 years, they're all grown up. I was the oldest cousin. When I was 15. So now when I was 30, they're 15. So you start seeing this and you say, I know nothing about them. I haven't seen them. I haven't talked to them. I haven't done nothing. Don't wait to make those relationships. You never know that the day it is that you hold the door open, you have a random conversation with the cashier, somebody making your coffee, the barista, your own family member, they can be having the shittiest day or they can feel real miserable. They can be on the verge of suicide, whatever it is. Form these meaningful relationships with people because you won't know until years down the road. It's just like kids, right? You have no idea how these kids are going to turn out. It's an investment. You're pouring your heart and soul into raising kids. You're trying to do your best. Give them all the resources. Teach them. Punish them when need be. Show them the world. Give them a good vacation. Everything. You won't know if that pays off until at least they're 20 years old. Maybe 25, 30. You don't know. But that doesn't mean you don't try. That is a very good point that you made. I wanted to touch on that. I know there's a lot more that you said, but I think the one thing that I took away and resonated with me is don't wait to make friendships. Don't wait to restart a friendship. Reach out. Right. Or whatever it is. Something as simple. I know we just talked about relationships in terms of platonic and friendships, but even relationships if you want to be intimate in a relationship. If you're interested in somebody and you shared a moment, you had a good time in this, and you're like, I don't know if I should talk to him or this or that. Don't wait. Life is way too short because no one is guaranteed or promised tomorrow, as they said. You're going to fight. You're going to fight with close friends. You're going to have falling outs. You're going to have disagreements. You're going to fight with your spouse, but that doesn't mean it's the end all be all because if you agreed all the time, what kind of world we're living in? You're going to have disagreements. You're going to have miscommunications. It's about, I posted this on the one post that we had on there. Instead of looking, this is perfect. I could claim this. I don't think I've ever seen this before. Instead of people looking for a way out, look for a way forward. Instead of saying, I had an argument with my girlfriend. I'm going to dump her. I had an argument with my best friend. I don't need to talk to him anymore. Look for a way forward. Like, hey, did I say something that bothered you or did I come off too strong or was there a miscommunication here? And to what Leo was saying before, make sure just to give people the credit, the common courtesy. Hey, thanks for bringing this. You didn't have to. Thanks for mentioning that. I appreciate you doing this. Something like that because people notice these things. They want to be appreciated. People, you know, we're social beings and it's often overlooked with grown men, but even sometimes it's just like, hey, that was nice. That was thoughtful. You didn't have to do that. Something simple because these nuances are what the meaning to life is and these help the foundation of friendships, relationships, whatever they may be because people tell us a lot about your character and, I mean, for this, I think that's safe to say I think that would be a good turnaround point for a lot of people. Stop taking things personally. Give credit where credit is due and most importantly, what we mentioned the whole time, I think we end almost every show with something similar, but do one to others. You know what I mean? Lead by example. If someone's going to be a shithead to you, don't go around and be a shithead to somebody who has a shithead back. You know, almost turn the other cheek to a degree and don't let that person, that individual, that circumstance, that event change who you are. Just stay true to yourself and I think this is a great way for us to actually tackle this problem, you know? People can talk things out. People can turn around and start, rebuild, or help the relationship and, you know, something I thought about while you were just speaking, Jim, is when you make the attempt to rebuild that relationship, if it's not taken the right way or the way you wanted it to be taken, you also can't hold it against that person. You can also, you know, you can also part ways but at least you'll have that peace of mind that, hey, you tried and you expressed yourself and you said what you wanted to say and what has been bothering you because, again, as I mentioned before, maybe it bothers you but it doesn't bother them. Right, right. And that's why you got to communicate and express that because you can't let a miscommunication go by and the two things that I have helped make my, like helped guide my moral compass, number one, I'm a baseball guy. So everything is three strikes. I'll invite you to hang out three times or invite you to do something or whatever it is. I'm not going to beg for your companionship or your fight for your time but I'll invite you, as I said, three times because, like, listen, I get it. Everyone's busy. I got this going on. I can't do this. I'll do this and do that and then after the three times, I've made the attempt. I'm not going to hold it against you. I'm not being spiteful but now the ball is in your court. If you want to do something, you make the attempt. So that's one thing that I have. Three strikes and you're out. Who doesn't know that since they were a kid? Right. So that's what I'm saying. It's just like I put myself out there three times. I'm not going to keep embarrassing myself because if you generally don't want to hang out or talk or whatever the situation is, that's fine. I'm not going to hold it against you but just know that there's not going to be a fourth time. If you choose to approach me on the fourth time, then I'll take you up on it. We'll play it by ear. I might be busy that time. It's important to point out that we as humans are social animals and there's a big reason why our current issues with communication and social interactions are heavily impacted by the way people are emotionally responding or the suicide rates that we have right now. People want to be social. People want to be in social circles. The issue is we've lost our way. How? So this is how I think we've lost our way and this is going to be the second thing that I've learned I think has been very helpful. I think a lot of people should adapt. If you're able to, at times it could be seen as confrontational and kind of intense. That's maybe how I come off to a lot of people but I'm a firm believer of speaking your mind, saying your piece and moving on. If you did something I might not like or approve of, I'll say, hey Leo XYZ and be done. You're doing this. Hey, I wouldn't do it that way. I would do it this way. If you continue to do it your way, I'll support you but just so you know, I told you I don't agree with that. Do you know what I mean? Hold on. Before you continue, I've tried this with my wife and it's almost never worked. I speak my mind and then it's not done for the next month and a half because it keeps being brought up. That's a different situation. Yeah, yeah. Two completely different animals. I will always speak my mind. That way for two reasons. That person knows how I feel. There's no guessing because that's a lot of the problem. Number two, that way there's never, you should have told me, I wish I would have told you, if I only knew sooner. It eliminates all that. Hey, we're good. Perfect. It's something so stupid. Hey, I want to go here for dinner. I don't really like there. All right, but I really want to go here. I haven't been there in a while. Okay? I said my peace of mind. If you don't care that enough to say, okay, he doesn't really like going out to dinner there. Let's go somewhere else. Then I said my peace of mind. I'm not going to hold it against you. Don't hold it against me. I told you how I felt. If you still chose to do it, then I'm going to say, okay, either he really, he doesn't give a shit about what I think about this place or what's on the menu or whatever it is or I'm going to say to myself, he really wants to go there. I'm going to suck it up for him or I'm going to go there. So I think, and we mentioned this before, and I'm going to allude and I'm just going to fall back to one of my favorite quotes that Matt Graham has said is that we value politeness over honesty. So the friend who tells you that uncomfortable truth, he's not the asshole. Hey, Leo, I wouldn't wear that hat with those shoes. It kind of is embarrassing. Now you might say, this fucking guy, what does he know about anything? Thirty seconds, digest it and say, you know what, I kind of thought that, but I'm glad he said it to me. I can say, hey, yeah, that dunce cap with the little spinner on top, that's sweet. Let's go out to the bar and get a drink. And now the whole time, you're thinking, oh, this is cool. Yeah, nobody wearing a menacing hat and this and that and then everybody's fucking laughing and I'm the friend who says, oh, don't worry about that. But the politeness has got to stop. I'm not saying you don't have to be polite, but where it's more important to be polite than honest is the problem. And I think we can start there. Oh, absolutely. And that's for another conversation as well. But I think that's going to help reel everything back with relationships, to form real relationships that you can trust somebody. Right? If you invite me over to dinner and you cook something and it's an abomination. Right? Let's just say you left it in the oven too long, you got preoccupied and something burned. Hey, how's it taste? Listen, we both know that the blackened lasagna is burnt to a crisp. It's not going to taste good, but you did a good job. It's good. Well, we have to have an episode on political correctness and how that's brought us back. Political politeness. Yes. It's the same thing. It's wordsmithing. We could definitely have a whole episode on that and examples of how it's ruined our conversations. And our relationship. Right. So, before we get into that and we'll save it for another topic, I just think it's very important to be honest and there's a way to be respectful. It doesn't mean you're doing maliciously, but, you know, even my wife sometimes, I get tied up. I'm working around the house. I'm helping her with the kids. I'm doing this and that. I'll run into the store and she's like, you're going to wear that? Who cares? I was working in the garage. I was unclogging the drain. I don't have time to care. We'll at least do this, change your shirt. There's a stain or this that I didn't notice. Okay. I'll fight her. I'll be a little, what are you talking about? Who cares? Why are you bothering me? But they're right. You know what I mean? You take that 30 seconds. You take that deep breath and you say, okay, yes. They know you're just being stubborn and fighting just because you didn't want to be inconvenienced. So, I think that's very important that we go ahead and just start there. You know, it doesn't really take much. And as long as the people know that you're coming from a place, a good place, wholeheartedness, I don't think that there's much to argue about in that aspect. So, what I'm getting at is I think two takeaways. If people want to start utilizing this immediately, I think maybe adopting almost like a three strike and you're out protocol, like set boundaries for yourself so you don't overextend. You don't look desperate and you have boundaries. I'll ask this person three times, do you want to go for coffee? Do you want to go for drinks? Do you want to swing by? After that, leave it up to them. You've tried. You've put yourself out there. You've put that energy out there. And you've tried. And then on top of it, be honest. That's all. Be that honest asshole for 30 seconds because that person will value your honesty and your friendship a lot more because they know they will tell you the truth. Not only that, you're going to sleep much better at night. 100%. It's a golden rule. Do unto others. You'll sleep much better at night. Really value yourself enough to say, okay, I'm going to be honest with my situation. I'm going to speak the way I feel. Say the things I think. And if it's not worth it, then move on. They're not the only people you'll know or bump into in this lifetime. Right? So that's another thing you have to keep in mind. It's a big part of maintaining sanity in my opinion because sometimes you do have to cut people out. As much as it's great to catch up and build relationships with people that maybe you've fallen off from, you can also cut them off. And you're not cutting them off because you hate this person or you want to do this mean act to them, but it's just better sanity for you. So, I think we did a good job here tonight. I think we didn't leave much to be imagined. I think a lot of people grasp everything. I wanted to do a little bit of something different before we head out here. So I'll let you, if there's anything else you want to add or say or anything. But there's a video. We're not even going to respond on the way out before we hit the exit, the outro. I want to play it. I just want to leave it open-ended for everybody because I want it to sink in what we just talked about with social media, people's perception of themselves and everything like this. The only teaser I'll give is that it's not entirely an attack on women. But unfortunately, I think social media preys on women. So, this is geared towards this. You guys can check it out. It's on the Instagram page. But before we head out and do that, anything else you want to recap on and say before we get out of here about relationships and friendships? Yeah, obviously, every individual is different and their situations are different. But if I can leave tonight's episode with any type of advice or something I would encourage people to do is to have conversations, talk, definitely catch up with those, as I mentioned, friends and family, co-workers that have been important people in life. There's a reason why social events are much more uplifting and doing things outside with others, families, and friends have a better impact on your life, your soul, than meeting up with someone online or maintaining a relationship through text. To capitalize on that, I want to touch back on the fact that if there's been a friendship and that chapter's closed and you want to reopen it, a relationship, whatever you want to call it, sometimes you've got to be that person. I know Leo said sometimes you're tired of the one reaching out, but sometimes those are the friendships that just happen to be that way. You might be in two different chapters, someone's got a family, they're caring for their elderly parents, they're in and out of the hospital, they're working to make ends meet, not that they don't have time, but they don't have time. So it doesn't mean they're not thinking about you, but sometimes by the time they get around to it and say, I got a half hour before I go to bed, it's 10, 10.30, 11 o'clock at night, you're going to text somebody at the end of the day when that person is probably sleeping and how's that person going to feel. Maybe they don't care what time they get texted, but they're like, oh, now you're going to text me at 11 o'clock at night, I'm going to bed. So sometimes, listen, I might just take that little bit of nudge, but one preface to this video, the way this is going to make girls seem, it does the opposite effect for the guys. So I'll just say, inflation for girls and it deflates for men. So I'll just say, inflation for girls and it deflates for men. So I'll just say, inflation for girls and it deflates for guys. So, anything else? We'll head out of here. I think we got Nicole coming up for next week, hopefully. I'll tease that on Instagram next week, but besides that, I mean, thank you guys for tuning in. Welcome to season two. You know where to find us, Saving Our Society on Instagram. Saving Our Society, take the G off for Twitter, whatever the hell it's called now, X. Anything else, Leo? Yeah, if there's any topics you think we should discuss or lay into, please feel free to share. I mean, if there's one thing we enjoy is interaction with our followers and what they're thinking. Yeah, we like the social implications. Maybe we'll get back and forth a little bit. Maybe we'll agree, maybe disagree, but please, send us everything. Once again, thank you guys. Thanks for those who send the messages that I already talk to on a daily basis, the people who interact, the stories, the interviews, the interviews, the interviews, the people who interact, the stories, the voting, all that stuff. That's great. Let's leave you with this. We'll head out and we'll catch you next week. All right. Take care, everyone. Thank you very much. If you had to pick one thing that corrupted females and made them delusional, in general, not all of course, but if you had to pick one, what would you say it would be? Can you give us a little bit of context on that? Filters in what way? Okay, so when, we could say it's social media, but when filters came around, girls started to view themselves through that lens. A little bit higher, yeah. Exactly, so we think, because we view ourselves that way, that other people should as well and it just, it leads into like a... That's a very interesting, I never thought about that, but that's a very interesting point. So you're saying it's an illusion. So you're saying it's not even the social media, it's the pictures that are posted on social media through the lens of apps that allow women to increase their beauty significantly. Exactly. And they see themselves as that individual in that picture getting 100,000 likes. Exactly. Not the girl Exactly, yeah. Exactly. Okay. Good point right there.