Kyle Creek - On Depression, Social Media, And Entering Into Fatherhood

Foreign.

Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I have a special guest here today that a few of you, one person in specific, had actually recommended. And when I started going down this guy's work and thoughts and the way he looked at the world, I was like, well, I got to have this individual on the show. So let me tell you first and foremost a little bit about my guest today because he's, he's done some incredible work. So Joining me is Mr. Kyle Creek, who is also known as the Captain. He is a writer and social media personality. He's got a very sort of sarcastic, straightforward, straight shooting Persona and way of being that shines through his work and the hard hitting quotes that he posts generally on social media has grown him in popularity over the years. He describes himself as a writer, a creator and an instigator. He's New York native, started his career in copywriting, focusing on commercials and working for advertising agencies. And he has spoken at events all over the world. He's published five books and he won the 2016 AAF People's Choice Award for his role in a charity auction. One of them was very popular, came out in 2020 called fucking history 111 lessons you should have learned in school. He also wrote a book called Speech Therapy and another book called feel free to quote me again. So those are just a few of his books. So Kyle and I go deep into some of his core philosophies on life and meaning and what he thinks is sort of happening with, within our culture and our world from a social perspective, from what's happening with social media, what's happening with men, the transition into fatherhood that his life has recently taken him in and how that impacted him. And he talks very, very openly on this show about his battle with depression, anxiety and even suicidal ideation. So this is a really powerful conversation and in many, many ways I hope that you enjoy it and as always, man it forward, share this podcast and this conversation with somebody that you know will enjoy it and have a little bit of a discussion or, or maybe we'll just get a kick or a laugh out of this dialogue. So thank you so much for tuning in as always. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review. Please, please, please. Takes 30 seconds, goes a tremendously long way. And just so you guys know, I said this on a recent show, but I've been celebrating this with my team and with my friends and the Mantalk show is in the top 1% of podcasts, which is absolutely mind boggling to me. I think we might actually be getting close to the top.05% of podcasts in the world in terms of listenership and downloads. And so that, for me, has been phenomenal. And it's just a testament to each and every single one of you because we never spent a dollar on marketing our audience. You, our fan base, you, our. Our ability to attract new and cool and exciting guests that have very interesting perspectives is all a result of you. So thank you so much for tuning in consistently, for sharing the show consistently and without any further delay. With that gratitude hopefully received, please welcome Mr. Kyle Creek. All right, Kyle, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How you doing?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, man, it's good to. Good to have you here. You came highly recommended. And then I started digging into your work and I was like, oh, this is going to be fun. This is going to be a fun conversation. So with that said, I'd like to kick us off with the question, which is, tell us. Tell the audience a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

There's two that come to my head immediately, and probably the one that I think made the biggest impact was finding out that I was going to become a father. My son's about a year and a half now, and I had dealt with some mental health struggles. I've been in and out of bouts of depression for the past couple years of my life particularly. And I found out I was going to become a father. And I was not in a good mental headspace when I first, you know, heard that news. And so it initially spiraled me deeper and it filled me with probably more fear than any other situation in my life. I was scared. I was scared of how it was going to change my life. I was scared of how I would be as a father. And honestly, I had a lot of selfish fears as well. You know, how is this going to affect my career? How's this going to affect the way I'm seeing? Is this going to affect my writing? Am I going to lose my creativity? Because I'll be too busy being a dad? And I've held it pretty close. I didn't talk to a lot of people about it because I felt a lot of shame about the fear of being a father. And I felt like it's something I should have been excited about. And when other people around me started hearing that I was going to be a dad, most of the responses, particularly from men that I heard were along the lines of, oh, I'm Sorry. Oh, your life's over. Oh, what are you going to do now? I didn't get a lot of positive feedback, and it made me realize I had a, you know, a real kind of immature circle of men around me, and I wasn't surrounding myself with the right kind of people. And it wasn't until I had a conversation with an old friend of mine. We ran to each other in Vegas, and he has five kids. And we were talking about it, and he told me, you know, Kyle, being a dad made me more successful. Being a dad made me work harder, made me see the world differently. And some like, it was almost like a light bulb just went off in my head, as cliche as it sounds. And I've always considered myself, you know, an intellectual. I'm someone who's a deep thinker. I write a lot about things, and I just, for some reason, couldn't grasp a hold of what he. What that was until he said that to me in the moment. Then it all kind of clicked and changed, and I embraced it. And being a dad is, honestly, it's exactly what he said. It's made my life easier in a lot of ways. I care about a lot less superficial, dumb. That was distracting from my work. And I think I'm doing some of the best writing I've ever done. Definitely feel like I have much more purpose to my work. I'm more careful with what I put out there in the sense that I try to really write with a date, meaning, and an intention to actually, you know, help others, as opposed to just making people laugh all the time, which was where I was kind of at prior to becoming a father.

I love that. I love that. I feel like. When was your son born? Do you mind sharing that?

July 3, 2021.

Yeah, mine was March 13, 2021. So I was just a little ahead of you on. On the birth game there, but I hear you, man. I think, like, becoming a dad, I was so terrified of losing my freedom. Like, really, like, this deep, deep fear of. Because, I mean, before I could go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted with whoever, whenever, you know, if I wanted to just pick up and travel back home or see my family or go hang out with friends somewhere, that was all possible. And so I had this sort of really. Yeah, I was really afraid that I was going to lose my. My sense of freedom and autonomy as a man, which I have really valued. But then becoming a father, it's like, oh, no, all those things are still possible. Like, when I was writing my book, I went away for a few days and locked myself in a cabin for like, you know, six days and just, and just wrote and my wife fell down the fort and. Yeah, so I, I love what you're saying. I wanted to, I want to revisit this, but I want to come back to this notion of depression because I think that that's something that a lot of men deal with, sort of like a silent epidemic that we don't necessarily talk about. And I, I would love for you to maybe talk a little bit about what that experience was like, what did depression feel like and how did you know that you were depressed or like, when did you sort of clue into that, if you're open to that?

Well, absolutely. So it came in a time in my life when I left my career. I had spent over a decade working in advertising. I'd been a copywriter for advertising companies for over a decade. And on the side I had this kind of captain Persona where I was writing books, I was self publishing, I was tweeting, I was making a lot of social commentary. And it wasn't really something that was a financial, you know, game for me. A lot of it I was just doing for the pure enjoyment of being able to write without client feedback, which is what much my professional career was. And over time, this captain, you know, Persona, like I said, became, you know, a beast. It became something that I felt a lot of responsibility for, but also became something that I falsely fed because I needed.

I hate using this word, but I needed content. I don't like to refer to what I do as content. I really like to refer to what I do as work because I do put a lot of effort into it. But when I was this captain character, I kind of just separated myself farther and farther away from who Kyle Creek was. And then I ended up leaving my advertising career. My girlfriend and I had been doing a long distance relationship between New York and la, and I moved to LA to be closer to her and work on that relationship. And all of my income dried up, all my opportunity dried up and I was left with just myself. I was no longer busy traveling for client meetings all the time. And when I was left to just myself, I'd forgotten who I was. And it took probably about six months in LA till I sunk to my lowest point. And that's when I was just kind of questioning what everything was. And the big difference, I think, between sadness and depression is, you know, sadness comes and goes. It's fleeting, it's emotional, we all have it. I mean, it's totally Normal to feel it. You're going to be sad for a couple days. You know, something doesn't go your way, you might be sad about it. Depression is looming and it's very long lasting. And it affected every area of my life. It affected my writing, it affected my relationship. My girlfriend eventually actually ended up leaving me because I was so depressed. She just couldn't be around it anymore. And I don't blame her. I had been pushing her away. I've been trying to defend her from myself for a long time. I was telling her to leave me. I told her I didn't see myself getting better and she had to kind of get away before it got worse. And it was one night when I started writing letters to my nephews, basically telling them, you know, not to be like me. And I, I treated that at the time like a writing project, but really what I was doing is I. I realized I was writing a suicide note to them. I didn't have a son, I didn't have anyone to kind of leave some wisdom behind to. So I kind of wanted to do it with them. And that's when I realized how dark I'd gotten once I got past the ideation part of suicide and actually started really planning how, when, where and why kind of thing. And I just had a night where I completely broke down. My girlfriend had left me, I was alone in la. I went and got myself a hotel room. Just kind of needed a change of scenery. And I realized part of my problem was trying to be this character online as opposed to myself. So I wrote a message to a lot of my followers. At the time, I think I had about 400,000 followers. I wrote a message to everyone telling me, hey, listen, I know you guys have been following me. You've been taking a lot of you know what I say to heart. And I just got to be honest. I've been struggling, I've been having a hard time and I need to take some time away. And I deleted all the social media from my phone. I moved back home to Utah and I did the exact opposite of everything I've been doing up to that point. I stayed off of social media. I read books that I had been previously opposed to, books that I considered too spiritual or books that I considered kind of woo woo. And I started seeing a therapist for the first time. I tell a lot of people I gave my therapist more money in 2019 than anyone else. In that year. I went to a lot of therapy to try and unwind who I'd become and try and get back in touch with who Kyle Creek was. And I finally came back to social media a couple months later, and it was the first time I'd ever used my real name online. I had been offering under this moniker for a long time to intentionally kind of separate myself. I came back and I changed my. My name to Kyle Creek. And I admitted that I had been dealing with thoughts of suicide, and I felt like I was coming out of it. And the amount of support I got from men and also women writing me and saying, yeah, I idolized you. I thought you had the life that I wanted to live. And to hear you talk about it leads me to believe that I can also work on it or I can talk about it. I had women write me who told me, I wish my husband had read this two weeks ago, he just killed himself. I wish my son had read this a month ago. He also killed himself. I hear thousands of messages from people where I realized my vulnerability was more powerful than anything I've written up to that point. And it was a turning point in my career is when I decided to kind of change the way I. I wrote. And that's when I decided to talk about more vulnerable topics with. With my audience. And I often tell people, once you've admitted to a half a million people you want to kill yourself, there's kind of nothing that can hurt you. So it was like, once that embarrassment and shame was removed from the whole idea, it made writing a lot easier for me, and it made my life a lot easier because I was no longer trying to be this character, and I was no longer trying to feed this. This Persona. And I felt really good for about a year like that. And then Covid kind of just spiraled me back into. Into a depression, because a lot of healing is. It's very cyclical. It's not linear. You go in and out of it. And, you know, when I. When I went back into it in 2020 is also when I found out I was going to become a dad. So then I kind of had to do the work all over again. In addition to accepting this new role as a father.

I appreciate you sharing your story and the impact of that. And I. I agree. I do think that vulnerability and the transparency is what allows other people to. It's like an opening, you know, it's like opening a door for the people to admit what they've been going through or hiding behind the scenes. And I think that. That it can be incredibly powerful. I'm curious, and I've heard a couple people like I think Jim Carrey says, you know, depression is your body's way of saying fuck you. And you know, I've heard this notion of, like, depression is, is something that is unresolved in the past. You know, anxiety is about the future and depression is about the past. And I'm curious about, you know, in your journey and all the work that you did, how did you begin to sort of define what was causing the depression within your life? Not that we necessarily, like, need to look at causality, but I think for some people to have context or to contextualize some of the things that can lead to depression, I think that's pretty important. So I'd love to hear your sort of take on that.

For me, I believe much of my depression was caused by self suppression. And that is denying who I really was or what I really wanted in life. And that came from trying to continue on with this captain character. Denied what Kyle Creek was. I denied the fact that I wanted a relationship. I mean, you talk about your freedom. I didn't have a serious relationship. I was 33. I very much lived this single male lifestyle and I was living in New York City as a high ranking creative director. And I made a lot of money and I traveled and I partied and I did everything that a single guy or you're told a man should do. And I did it probably better than anyone. I often tell people I had Tuesday nights that were better than anyone's New Year's Eve celebration. And that was just very common. It was the lifestyle created for myself. But deep down I wanted connection. Deep down I wanted a relationship. I wanted to, I wanted to be a father. And at one point I remember thinking like, I really wanted a family. But as I went through my twenties and my career progressed, I told myself, oh, I can't have a career in family. I can't have this, I can't have that. And I just continued to suppress myself. And I think that's why we saw a lot of depression come to life the past couple years is the self suppression of people being forced to not vocalize their opinion, not to express, you know, questions they were having because they were being so publicly shamed for it. And so self suppression to me is probably the ultimate recipe for depression. And I learned in therapy, but more so I learned the past year and a half with, you know, my girlfriend kind of really prompted me to look more into childhood trauma. Tell me, you need to get back into your past farther than your, your thinking. And she, you know, really kept telling me, you need to, you know, you need to talk to your inner child kind of stuff. And I read a couple of books about it. And in doing that, I realized I grew up Mormon. I grew up lds. I grew up in a religion that was fairly conservative. I grew up fairly suppressed. I didn't talk about my emotions as a teenager, because when I talked with my parents about them, the answer is usually you need to read a scripture, you need to pray about it. You need to go talk to your bishop about it. And that's not what I needed. What I needed was someone to talk to me as a human. I needed my parents to relate to me as parents. And I'm not knocking them any way. I have a fantastic relationship with them today. But at the time, I didn't need to hear the scripture bullshit. And so what it did is it caused me to stop talking about it, and I suppressed everything. I didn't never told my parents about anything that was going on in my life. In high school, my friends. If I had a crush on someone, if I was feeling awkward, I didn't talk to anyone about it. And I became a very hardened, rebellious individual. I didn't want anything to do with religion. I distanced myself from every form of organized religion by my late teens, and I didn't talk to anyone. And that continued well through my 20s. And I started in my writing to express this kind of desire. But at the same time, I had this veil of the captain. And so if something was a little too vulnerable, I could always be like, oh, that. That was. That wasn't me. It was the captain. So it was kind of like a safety net for me to expose some of my emotions to a wide crowd, but just not in the way that I needed to. And it wasn't until I had this, you know, first serious relationship with my girlfriend, who's now the mother of my son, that I realized how much I had actually learned to not talk about things.

And why the captain? Like, where did that moniker and that Persona come from? I'm sure you get asked that all the time.

I do, actually. It came from a time in my 20s when I was partying very hard, and my friends said going out with me was like getting on a boat and waiting for it to sink. They say when you go with Kyle, you're basically along for the ride. At some point, he's gonna crash into an iceberg and the night's gonna go haywire. And that's really what I pr myself on doing at that time, you know, 21, 22, 23, I was trying to get kicked out of bars. I was trying to get in trouble. I was trying to cause mischief, and I was trying to do all sorts of just ridiculous, ludicrous things to distract from my own pain of not feeling seen. You know, you figure if you get attention that way, it kind of helps you deal with the fact that you're struggling with anything internal. And that's where the nickname came from. So when I first started. When I first started making money as a writer was in advertising, it was the first time I was able to collect a real paycheck. I had an apartment, I bought myself a truck. And I was very grateful that I was be able to get paid to write, and I didn't want to lose it. And so when I started tweeting and started being active on social media, I was really paranoid of my clients or my boss at the time seeing something I wrote. And, you know, this is when Cancel culture was starting to kind of come about. So I didn't want to use my real name online. I didn't want them to be able to find me. So I used this captain character. And that's really what it stemmed from, was just kind of to protect Kyle Creek. And it happened in a multitude of ways as it went on and it grew.

It's interesting, man. I mean, it's interesting to see how that part of your, like, personality came into being. And then I would imagine over time, you've had to reconcile with that part, you know, integrate it, reshape it, allow the more authentic version of who you are to sort of permeate into that captain character.

Oh, absolutely. I. I go back and read some of my older work, and I cringe.

Same. Same here, buddy.

That's the. That's the beauty of having written so many books, is I can kind of see my growth. And I was asked this recently at a book signing. You know, is there anything you want to go back and change or anything you want to go back and rewrite? And I don't, because I like looking back on it at the time. It's how I felt at the time. It's how I saw the world. And I don't regret it. I meant it, and I've learned from it. And there's a lot of stuff I look back on and I'm. I cringe, but in, like, a good way. I'm, like, glad. I don't think that way anymore. I look back and go, damn. Like, I'm so glad I'm not that person anymore. But the captain was Always me. And I always tell people this, like, there was very much a Persona to it, but it was always me. I always tried to write authentically, and I've always been a big proponent of not. I even told people this in my advertising team when I was overseeing people. Don't lie in your copy. Don't lie in what you write. Don't make extreme, absurd opinions that aren't truthful, like, be truthful about what you say and write in your copy. And I did that with everything I wrote online, granted. I just did them with a veil of, you know, a hardened emotion or, you know, some kind of very obvious boundary line there sometimes.

So when, you know, your. Your career shifted quite a bit and, you know, obviously you're an author, you talk about certain subjects in such a. An interesting way. I was curious, like, when. When people ask you what you do, how do you describe that? Like, what's your. What's your response to people? When you get the. The question at parties and everybody, like, what do you do, man? Like, what do you do? How do you describe that?

I tell people I'm retired. That's always my first answer, because then they don't. They don't really have much more questions after that. I've been doing that for years. I just tell people I'm retired, but it usually will eventually evolve to where I tell them I'm a writer. And I don't refer to myself as an author. If I do, it's usually like an accident. I believe writers write about the state of the world, and I believe authors create worlds. I save authors for fiction writers, and I think it's much harder to create an entire world from scratch. And so kind of my way of paying a nod to the fiction writers that are good out there. And hopefully it's something that I'll branch into that novel aspect at some point. But I. I describe myself as a writer, and then I usually. I don't like talking about it much. Like, if people kind of ask, I say, yeah, I've written a couple books and you can follow me on social media. And usually by then they can kind of tell them not really. Not really feeling the conversation, because, like you said, it's hard to explain. It can go a lot of different ways. It used to be, you know, when I was still in advertising, I would tell people the creative director, because that was my official title, and that was kind of easy. But, yeah, writer or retired usually suffices pretty well.

I love that. When my wife and I went to this wedding, one of her friends was getting married, and it was a pretty bougie wedding. It was, like, the most expensive wedding that I've ever been to in my life. And we were at the, like, sort of, like, opening party. And, like, you know, I run a men's mental health organization, so when people ask me what I do, I always sort of have fun with it in the beginning. And we're sitting at this table, and it's. It's probably like, all hedge fund owners and, you know, guys that work at banks and CFOs and shit like that. And the one guy's like, oh, what do you do? And I was like, I'm a trust fund baby. And just. And just like, floated out there. And my wife just looks over at me like, what the hell are you doing? So I relate to the. I'm retired. I've liked sort of messing with people.

I was gonna say, you should have told those bankers, you help men recover from that job.

Right?

Yeah. It's like when you have your moment when you finally realize this job isn't for you and you're not really contributing to the world, you're gonna come to a guy like me?

Yeah. You're gonna come see me? Yeah. I'm gonna help you out of the malaise and the confusion. One of the things I was really excited to talk about with you is twofold. One is culture, and the other one is social media, because I noticed that you've had a good amount to talk about. And I think over the last couple years, culture within our country has just been a nightmare. It's just been kind of like the Civil War that's been going on. And so I wanted to just get your sense of what the hell do you think is happening within the culture of the west, within the culture of North America right now, and where do you think that individuals or groups within this culture are going astray, are struggling? You know, how do we bridge some of the divide that's happening? I just kind of wanted to open the question up, and then maybe we can drill down on some of these pieces and see where social media fits in on that.

I think we are seeing self suppression at a massive level. I think we are seeing the elimination of individuality, and we are seeing a real push towards conformity. And there's a lot of ways you can take that. And whether you want to get real deep in the hole of, you know, quote unquote conspiracies or not, it's evident in everything that's happening. And from our art to our Buildings, the style. You know, we no longer create apartment structures that are beautiful, we create human storage. You look at every new building going up in Manhattan and they're fucking hideous. It's just like, how can we stack people on top of each other? And then you go somewhere like Europe with some time honored history, you can see a lamp post with more detail and more ornate architecture than a billion dollar skyscraper here in America. And I think it's happening all over the world. I think part of what the issue is, and I'm glad you brought up social media, is the algorithms. I think algorithms have taken a lot of the enjoyment and spontaneity and creativity out of social media. I mean, back in the day, I used to love Instagram, like 2013, 14, 15. I thought Instagram was really fun. I thought you could go, you could go on there and see a lot of different ideas and meet a lot of weird people. And now it seems like you go on there and everything's the fucking same. Everyone's using the same filter, everyone has the same opinion, they have the same outrage. My girlfriend the other day was showing me pictures of her friends and she was saying, they all look the same, they all have the same filler, they all have the same eyelashes. And whether it's celebrity influence or whether it's filters over time, you know, fucking with the way we perceive ourselves, individuality is, is disappearing. And that's why I also think there's been a real sharp rise in mental health and depression the past couple years. Like I said earlier, it's that suppression. A lot of people were told they had to suppress their beliefs the past couple years because they'd either be deplatformed, they'd be painted to be a bigot, or they'd be seen as everyone's afraid to be mislabeled. That's another thing that's causing suppression is this label trying to box you in every time. And I've had a lot of people over the years when I've made political commentary, they'll say to me, why aren't you picking a side? Are you right? Are you left? I can't tell. I can't tell where you are. And I tell them, I have chosen a side. I've chosen the side of the people. I'm on your side, I'm on my side, I'm on his side and her side. I'm on the side that respects being different, unique, and having, you know, arguments and still being friends afterward. And that's what is killing culture. Our inability to be Unique. And I think the, you know, the real problem is you have a lot of people that are thinking they're unique or claiming they're unique, but they're just jumping on whatever the trend is that supposedly is painted as unique that month. I've never had a TikTok. I think TikTok's probably one of the biggest purveyors of this bullshit. Everyone tells me, oh, yeah, TikTok has the best algorithm, though. That just scares me away from it. And that's kind of the reason why I stepped back from social media myself. I don't use it as much because I just think it's boring. It's just so boring. It's all the same.

Yeah, I don't have TikTok either.

And.

And it's interesting because the more that I've talked to people about social media and, you know, where it fits in within the business, so many people have been like, well, you should be on TikTok. Like, you'd blow up and your content will blow up. And I'm like, well, but do I give a shit about that? Like, do I care about that? Because when I go on, when I've seen TikTok and I've never downloaded the app, you know, I see all the. The videos, whether it's on YouTube or share it on Instagram and whatnot, it does all look the same. It looks like there's this sort of like conformity that's very pervasive, you know, where everything looks, everything looks the same. Like the videos, all the mental health videos pointing at. It's like the five things need to do to help your anxiety and people just pointing at words on the screen. It's like, is that helping anybody? You know, maybe it's supporting some people and getting some basic information, but is that genuinely long term creating any viable change or support? And I really struggle to believe that it is, you know.

Well, the answer to that is no. The reason people are all making the same video is again, they're trying to feed these algorithms. One person that has shown that this worked for them, maybe they had a video that went viral doing that. So everyone copies it. And I wrote about this actually in 2020. I said, you know, we're expecting too much of people. We're, you know, having this critical thinking is expecting too much of people. Because a lot of people haven't made a personal decision since 2007, you know, since Facebook came about. And I made it in kind of a jokey manner, but I meant it in a way that you See a lot of people online, they'll post a photo and say, should I cut my hair? Should I shave my beard? Should I wear this outfit or that outfit? And I usually respond, you're a fucking adult. Make a decision. A lot of people over time, these small decisions that you think aren't a big deal. If you've been doing that year after year after year, posting, you put a poll on your Instagram, should I move here, should I move there? You are detaching from your own intuition. You are detaching from your individuality. And now the major decisions or the small decisions you're making for the masses. And then you, over time, you don't realize the neuroplasticity of your brain. It's changing. The way you think about things is changing. And so when you're faced with a big decision, when you're faced with something, you know, as significant as, you know, what we've dealt with the past couple of years, you're not in a place to critically think. And you're very quick to jump on the bandwagon because you don't have trust in yourself. And that is what's happening. And that's why, as someone who's benefited greatly from social media, my career would not be what it was about. Social media. I love it, and I still like that I can connect with people on it. Life was better before social media. I think it was more enjoyable. I think people were happier. And I think there was a hell of a lot more individuality and creativity. And this is why I constantly tell creators, do not refer to your, your work as content. Content in and by definition is something that's meant to be an advertising or a marketing or an algorithm specific, you know, medium. You do not make content. You create works of art, you write songs, you paint paintings. You don't paint content for the day. And really, I just want to encourage creators to take back that control and realize that what you're doing is significant and beautiful and you don't have to post every day. You don't have to feed this bullshit.

Yeah, I love that.

I love that.

Cause I think I was listening to a conversation with, I can't remember how to say his last name, but his first name is Chamath. He's a Canadian billionaire and investor young guy. And he was talking about how, just to condense it down, essentially that, like, the next wave, the next huge industry will be quote, unquote, content creators. And what he meant by that is people like myself that are creating podcasts or like yourself, that that's an author that has a, a kind of like forward facing brand. But I do think that so many people, it's almost like this commodification of ideas or ideology.

Right.

And I, I think that a lot of people are getting lost because they'll go online, they'll see somebody doing something and then they'll just try and replicate that and copy it.

So.

Oh man, there's so many questions out of this that I want to talk about. We're going to keep digging into this one. One of the things that I was curious about is what do you believe outside of the algorithm? What do you believe is causing some of this crushing of the individual individuality and the individual voice and the self suppression that's happening through online? Like what about us as human beings has this kind of proclivity towards conformity?

It's our deep need for connection. Studies have shown for a long time the most beneficial thing humans can have as a community. We want to be a part of things as much as we want to believe we were a lone wolf. I mean, I have solitude tattooed across my knuckles, for God's sakes. I mean, at one point in my life I was all about like, oh, I'm a lone wolf. This is what I am. We need to be accepted. We need people around us. And social media has provided a way to, for us to have that acceptance at a massive level. And that is what the cause of all of it is. Rather than connecting with our friends or our neighbor or, you know, meeting someone organically at the store, we're seeking it online. And I like that you brought the word commodity because we have largely become commodities. You look at dating apps, dating apps have made everybody a commodity. And I think those have contributed to depression. You have a friend on there who perhaps is more attractive than you and they're talking about all these dates they get on Tinder, all these dates they get on Bubble and you get on there yourself and you're not getting any matches and the matches you do get, they quickly unmatch from you because it was a mistake and you just start feeling like shittier about yourself. It's that deep need for connection and community. We need that. We want to be accepted, we want to be seen. We're not meant to be lonely soldiers. That's not how life is. And unfortunately, I think a lot of current I'll use the word life coach because I like to use that in an insulting way at times.

I think a lot of current life coaches preach this idea of, you know, man, you're supposed to be strong and, you know, get used to being alone. And, you know, if you can't be with yourself, you can't be in a relationship, all that kind of stuff. And I get it, there's. There's valid points to that. But people take that to the extreme to mean, hey, I'm just not meant to settle down. I'm not meant to have a family. I'm not meant to be in a relationship. Like, the best thing I can do as a man is be single and, you know, be like Andrew Tate, I think that's his name, and just live this fucking ridiculous lifestyle that doesn't get you anywhere and you don't deeply connect with anyone, and everything you do is just to get attention.

Yeah, I agree. And it's interesting when you're talking about it, initially, Andrew Tate is the person that came into my mind that sort of embodies that.

That.

That Persona of being the lone wolf. And I do think that there is this deep intrinsic need within us to belong, you know, and I think that social media has. It seems as though it's made it much easier to belong through conformity, through agreement. And there seems to be this big push that if you don't agree, then. If you don't agree with me, then that's grounds for me to unperson you from my life to de. Platform you, to cancel you from my life at the drop of a hat. And I don't think that we've ever necessarily experienced that. I mean, that's. It's like the closest thing that I can get to it is like, reading about the witch hunts, you know, of the old days of, like, sort of seeking out people that were in this position of being like the villains, you know, or having something wrong with them or. The Crusades, I think, was another time. It seems like we're going through, like, a technological crusade in some way. I'm curious. You. You made this post the other day that I. That this was a while back, and I wonder how much this plays into it. But I'm just going to read the caption because I loved it. You said, I truly believe most people have no idea who they are, where they stand, or what to do with their lives, because the mob mentality of social media has made people so afraid of being labeled as something they're not that they don't even attempt to be who they are. And so I would love for you to just dig into that a little bit more and talk about the fear that most people have around being Labeled as something that they're not.

Yeah, I mean, it's something I touched on earlier. And the problem with fear in any aspect of your life is you make the wrong decisions almost every time. If you let fear guide you, you make inauthentic. You make decisions that are safe, and you make decisions that you ultimately hope are going to alleviate that fear. And we've seen so many powerful people or so many people that we've respected get deplatformed over the past couple years for expressing themselves. Or perhaps we have a friend who, you know, posted something controversial and you watch the mob attack them. And when you're not sure of who you are, you doubt your ability to survive something like that. If you're not very confident and you see this happen to someone else, you think, holy shit, if that happened to me, it would be the worst thing. I couldn't deal with it. I couldn't handle it. And luckily for me, when I first started using social media, I largely started because I wanted to ruffle feathers. I used to tell my friends, if I don't lose a hundred followers, it's not a good post. So I got pretty used to upsetting people. It was something I was comfortable with. And I would not have the following I have today if it wasn't something I'd gotten comfortable with. And it was easy for me to do. Like I said, because I had this Persona of the captain, I kind of use it as a way to protect myself so I could make these harsher statements. But the point I'm getting at is when the time came in 2020 and 2021, and I saw the division that was happening and I wanted to post stuff that would encourage people to question, encourage people to come together, I was comfortable getting fired upon. It's the same thing I talked about earlier. When you don't make decisions for yourself over time, you lack that ability. But on the flip side of that, because I'd done so much of it over time, getting people upset, I was ready to be fired on. And I had had my first major book deal was set to Release August of 2020, and this was the first time I hadn't self published. This was the first time I had a real publisher behind me. And it's the largest publisher in North America. And I was paranoid they were going to take that book deal from me when I decided I was going to speak out. But I told my girlfriend, I said, listen, my entire career has been predicated on me speaking my mind. If I don't speak my mind now I'm a fucking hypocrite. Everything I've done doesn't matter if I don't say it now. And so I came to terms with the fact that I might lose that contract and lose that book deal. And once I accepted that, I was like, no holds barred. I was like, all right, I'm ready to go. I've made peace that already. And fortunately, that I never heard anything from them. They never wrote me, they never asked me to not say anything because largely they took me on as a writer because of, you know, what I did online, too. That. Because of that voice. And so it worked out well. I gotta be myself and I gotta keep my book deal. But I had to make peace of that fear before I could truly just open up. And that's what a lot of people need to do, too. And what. What people don't realize. And I wrote about this in my book, speech therapy. Being canceled or having people call to cancel you is not the worst thing in the world. If you're anyone with any kind of a creative brain, it actually will help you. You know, they say that thing, all attention's good attention kind of thing, unless it's something really awful. You did, like, if someone tries to cancel you and it becomes a big deal and say the news is covering it and you're a creator of any kind, that's actually going to help you. I'm not saying go out there and try and get yourself canceled, but realize that the blowback is almost always met on the other side with just as much support. That idea and that acceptance and realizing that is going to help you be yourself more. Just know that when you speak out, even, you know, I'm not saying you have to be someone who makes their. Their living off of social media or writing books. If you speak out on Instagram or you say something that's very vulnerable on your Facebook page, there's a lot of friends and a lot of people that needed to hear that. And they might not tell you, but secretly they're sitting back and they might not even like your post, but they're sitting back and they're thinking, damn, I wish I had the balls, or I wish I had the guts to say that too. And I just felt like my voice was needed the past couple years. And I just wish more people could understand that, you know, an angry mob online is not the end of the world.

Yeah, it almost seems like the threat of being canceled is diminishing. You know, this. This notion that, like, oh, if you say the wrong thing or if you go against the herd that you know they're gonna. The mob's gonna come for you and you get canceled. It almost seems like that mentality is starting to diminish, I think as people are starting to. Yeah, hopefully are starting to speak out more and risk it. And it's certainly a fine line to walk. One of the other things that I found interesting, I listened to an interview that you did, and you talked about this notion that a lot of your writing is meant to help people put their own power back in their hands, to put power back within the individual's hands. And you were talking about how sort of surprising it is often about how much blowback you get from that. And I was wondering if you can speak to why it is that we or what you think it is that we as human beings are afraid to claim that sense of power while we buck against sovereignty and individuality. And there's sort of this hate on for that. I would just love for you to unpack that a little bit.

I know the conversation you're talking about. The majority of my work is meant to be empowering. Large majority of it. And like you said, I get a lot of pushback on empowering messages. And the reason I believe that is, is because people don't want to accept the fact that they're capable of changing their life. Because once you accept the fact that you're capable of changing it, you have to also accept the fact that you're the cause of it. And it's painful to realize that for the first time. If you've spent the past couple years victimizing yourself and blaming external influences for where you are, and it's easier to stay in that muck of victimhood than it is to shed that skin and realize, holy shit, it's gonna be hard, but I have the power to change this. And that's why I think empowering messages are met with a lot of resistance online. People just, they're fighting the inner resistance in themselves. And anything worth having or anything that involves real growth is not fun. It's hard. Whether it's in business or your relationship or some creative endeavor, there's always that fight in you that you have to have, and people just aren't ready to have that. The past couple years, I think. I think it was in the same interview I talked about this. The problem is social media has largely become a means of who can out victim each other. Because you see such a response come to these kind of posts and a lot of friends will, you know, post and they'll they'll agree with your woe is me mentality, or you'll share a story and they'll be like, oh, I'm sorry that happened to you. And you get a lot of feedback from it. And you interpret that feedback as validation that you're feeling is correct. And the problem with that is it continues to perpetuate that mindset to where you seek ways to be the victim. You seek ways to have this woe is me mentality because the masses agree with you. And I told people this one time too. You have to understand, people support bad behavior online because it helps them feel less shitty about their own bad behavior. If you see a friend who's also making the same mistakes as you, you suddenly don't feel alone in your mistakes. And you both could be doing something that's completely counterproductive, but because you're doing it together, you feel better about it. And a lot of social media lives on that kind of interaction. People are going to like your dumb behavior because it's a confirmation of their own.

Yeah, there's a T shirt right? There's a, there's like a T shirt right there. Based on that quote, you could sell I don't like your dump.

Yeah, you could sell it on the Jersey shore and one of those little print to order T shirt shop.

Right, right. Or like a little coffee mug. Like, people are going to love your dumb behavior because it confirms the great.

Example of this is drinking. If you go out with your friends and you're the one that's not as drunk as everyone else, suddenly everyone else starts to feel shame and guilt for being super drunk. And I use this, that analogy often. And also with drug use. I mean, at one time in my life, I was using a lot of cocaine. I used to do a lot of drugs in my 20s. And if I had a friend that wasn't using it, I did everything I could to try and convince them to do it with me. And then on the flip side, if there was a night where I was trying not to, they would do everything they could to try and get me to do it. Because that way you can bond over your mutual behavior.

Yeah. I mean, it's so true. And I think just to go back to that notion of victimhood, I've been like, working on this sort of theory that there's a part of us as human beings that has an urge to try and restructure things around victimhood because there's an immense amount of power that can come by playing the role of the victim. Even if you aren't actually the victim or being victimized. And so I think there's a hierarchy within the quote, unquote, power structure of victimhood. And you see this a lot in intimate relationships.

Right.

It's one of the things that is the biggest challenge in a lot of relationships that have gone sideways. Like my wife is a marriage and family therapist. And a lot of the times in an intimate relationship where the relationship's gone sideways, it's because people are competing to try and out victim the other person unconsciously. Right. People are in this sort of like locking horns of who has it worse in the relationship, you know, or whose life is going worse or who has it harder, you know, or how unfair things are for them. And that becomes the mode of operation that that relationship is then built off of. And in our culture, there seems to be this kind of push to restructure the. Whatever we want to call that the power structure or the way that we operate as a society around victimhood. I don't know if you agree with that or what your take is on it, but I'm curious.

I agree with you, absolutely. And if I need to go shut up my cat, let me go chase him off, you can hear them on the other line. Didn't even notice, oh, he's in the hallway going berserk. The reason why, in my opinion, is because it's easy. We have become such a culture of convenience. Whether it's the way we order food or how we date, or everything's gotta be easier. Easier, easier to the point that we just. We repel against anything hard. And it's a lot easier to play the victim than it is to empower yourself to make the change. And so I think people do. Without even realizing what they're feeding into. Yeah. I don't think people realize they have lost the ability to do hard things because it's just become such a way of life to make everything comfortable and convenient. If you look at any infomercial in the 90s, the ones that always sold the most were what makes your life more convenient? Or what makes your life more comfortable? That's the shit people buy. Everybody wants that. And it's just such a hyper way of life now. And, you know, I was. I was talking to someone about this the other day too. Even to the fact that we don't even make decisions for ourselves anymore. I mean, you get on Spotify and you don't know what to listen to, so you look at a playlist that's already been chosen for you you don't know what to watch on Netflix. You look at suggestions that have already been made for you. You don't know what you want to look at online, so you look at the algorithm that's already fed stuff they think you'll like. We don't make decisions for ourselves. We don't take enough control. And so it's just that constant search for what's the next easiest way to do this that's fueling everything, I believe.

Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because that notion does seem to be permeating a lot of different aspects of our society. I mean, even if you look at the therapeutic industry and this and sort of like quote unquote, self help and personal development, I see a lot of people hawking change and healing in this sort of comfortable way. Like it, you know, it'll be quick and it'll be easy. And you just, here are the five steps, you know, and buzzfeed it. It's like, no, man like that. That shit's hard. You know, grieving is terribly challenging sometimes and can last for a long time. And that's not an easy thing to, to undertake. It's not a comfortable thing. And nor should it be, you know, that there's, there's value in discomfort. I think that's part of what I'm hearing you say, if I'm not mistaken, that there's value in discomfort.

That's where you learn. Everything you learn that's worth a damn in life is going to come from a struggle or something you had to work for. And what you just said is why I, I use the term life coach in a derogatory fashion. I think anyone with more than 10,000 followers has been told by one of their friends, oh, you should be a life coach, and they see it as a money grab and they start thinking, oh, all I got to do is create these videos of me pointing to five different things that'll change your life. And now I'm a life coach. I can charge people $5,000 a month for my expert opinion. I don't even know where I was going with that. But when you started, as soon as you said that, I just, it clicked. It's like, that's why I dislike life coaches. It's the fact that they tried to make everything so easy. And it's no longer like the deep six month work or the 12 month work that it requires all the time to have that real change in your life. Yeah. And it's all the same stuff. They're all parent Parodying the same thing. It's all take a cold shower, make your bed in the morning. And it's just that same stuff that.

Everyone'S, well, hey now, cold showers, come on now.

Listen, I'm not knocking easy there. I take, listen, I take cold showers myself. But it's the fact that everyone is still just parodying the same thing. No one's coming at it with any real knowledge of how to work through grief or how to work the trauma or how to rewire aspects of your brain. There are a few that are, there are some that are doing really good job. But the vast majority of life coaches are going to give you the exact same info that you could find by googling Life Coach on YouTube. You'd probably find a thousand videos that have the exact same opening or how.

To, how to deal with depression or how to deal with anxiety. You can just Google that and get very similar results. I mean, it's, it's interesting. Like, I, I just interviewed Dr. Nicole Laera, who's the holistic psychologist. I think you're familiar with her work.

I just read her book how to do the Work. I finished it probably less than 24 hours ago, honestly.

Oh, cool.

Cool.

Yeah, we were, we were having this conversation and my wife and I have had this conversation about how there is this sort of over commodification of healing, you know, and I think it speaks to what you're talking about, which is that there are, there are a lot of people that are in pain mentally and emotionally. You know, there's a lot of people that are hurting in our culture. And I think what's wonderful about what you're talking about is that you're sort of purporting this notion that comfort is maybe not the path out of that suffering, you know, that maybe things have to get a little bit more uncomfortable first before they're going to get better. So I, you know, I want to be mindful of your time in our conversation today, and I wanted to come back to this conversation that we started this podcast with, which is about becoming a father. You know, one of the things that I've grappled with in having my son and I'm is just this notion of like, what I want to teach him and how do I safeguard him from the just the fucking like insanity of the world sometimes and social media and technology and online opinions and all that kind of nonsense that's out there that can really erode one's sense of self and individuality. And I was curious about how you think about that do you look forward into the future and wonder how you're going to support your son, what you're going to teach him? Like, what are some of the valuable lessons that you want to try and instill into him? And how do you want to operate as a father in his life? Like, what are some of the important tenets that you think a young man will need in today's society?

I absolutely have the same fears that you have when you talk about that. And it's largely why I read Nicole's book. Also, my girlfriend's been pushing me to read it for quite some time. And what kind of, you know, kept me from reading it was the fact that I saw her as a social media personality. And I just thought, oh, this is just another one of those social media personalities that's just gonna put out a book at the money grab. And so I. I was opposed to it for a long time, but I read it, and it was a lot of. A lot of very valuable insight when it came to my own childhood, particularly with, you know, my religious upbringing. And I'm not as concerned with protecting him from the world as I am with protecting him from myself. And what I mean by that is I don't want him to inherit the traits that I dislike or the traits that I know have made my life more difficult. And that's largely what started me down the road the past year and a half of trying to unwire what caused me to be who I am. A lot of it very beneficial, but a lot of it has made my life harder than it needed to be. And one of the primary things that I would like my son to know is that it's okay to not be okay. And I know that's a cliche and it's said quite often online, but I always felt that I had to portray to my family that I was fine. Particularly, I wanted to prove to them that I was good without religion in my life. Like, I don't need your religion. Look how happy I am. And so it caused me to not talk about a lot of things that were bothering me. And if my son grows up knowing that he can talk to me about anything and everything at any moment, that means more to me than anything else. Whether he tries to follow in my footsteps or let you know, whether he picks up all these other things, that's great. Obviously, every father likes that. But my primary thing is him just knowing he can come to me and that dad is either gonna help him fix it or he's going to help him work through it. And if I am in my 60s and he's in his late 30s or 40s, and he comes to me with a problem, that would be. I would love that. I would love to know. Even at that point in his life, he still sees his dad as someone he can rely on. And so everything I'm trying to do with raising my son is hinged around that. Just him knowing that there's always an open door on my life. And so one of the things I've been very cognizant of recently is when I'm in a bad mood or when I'm dealing with something frustrating, I realize he picks up on it now. I mean, it was the other day I was. I was very frustrated, and I was verbalizing something. I was using my hands a lot. And he started doing the exact same behavior back to me, and I was like, holy shit. Like, he is too young to be doing this. And that was kind of another kick in the ass to be like, listen, you need to handle stress better. That's probably my biggest issue in life, is how I handle stress. I've gotten much better at it, but that's been the cause of a lot of things for me. So I'm just really trying to do the work myself so I can set the right example for him to know that, you know, it's okay to be disliked, it's okay to be yourself, it's okay to have different opinions. I mean, you're going to have a lot of hurt and pain in your life, and that's part of it. I'm not trying to protect him from pain. I'm trying to ensure that he knows there's always a way through it. I love that. I love that.

I appreciate you sharing, appreciate your honesty, and really appreciate the work that you're doing for the folks that are out there and, you know, maybe got curious about your. Your work, your creativity, your art. Where would they start? Because you've. You've written quite a few books, and if somebody wanted to go buy their first book and learn about the stuff that you put out in the world, where would you suggest that they start? Which one?

Speech Therapy is the book I think I feel the most proud of. And when I wrote that book, I wrote it last fall. I actually wrote it with the intention of if my son were coming to me with this problem. So basically how the book is structured is I took, like, 52 situations that are going to happen to all of us in life, whether you lose a job, you get broken up with, or even the little dumb shit like you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or you're sick and you're not feeling well, all that kind of stuff that can mentally derail you and something that can happen in a moment can end up ruining your whole week or a month or years of your life. If my son came to me with any one of those problems, what is the conversation I would have with him in that moment? And that's why I call it speech therapy. Because they're meant to be conversational short speeches that kind of help pick you up and redirect your focus during that time. That book I'm most proud of because honestly, if I had had that book in my late teens, early 20s, I would have got a lot of benefit out of it. The book that I'm most known for is Fucking History, which is a take on learning from the past. But I've done it in kind of a humorous fashion where the way you can get through heartbreak is by learning how this queen got through heartbreak and she happened to burn down her ex's kingdom and take it back and behead everyone in his noble family. Like really kind of crazy, twisted takes on history is what that book is. I would start speech therapy for sure, though, then history, and then I have a series of quote books. They're all available on Amazon and people can find me on social media pretty easily if you search Kyle Creek. Awesome.

Awesome, man. Well, when we jump off, I'm going to grab your address and send you a T shirt that says, don't worry, I'm a life coach. I hope to God you can wear that to. You can wear that to parties, you know, and just mess with people.

It'll. It'll become a gardening shirt very quickly. Quickly.

That's awesome. Well, listen, Kyle, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. For everyone that is out there listening, man, it forward if you enjoyed this conversation, if you know somebody that would benefit from it, that would, you know, enjoy it, would get some critical thinking out of it, then definitely forward it to them. Don't forget to like and subscribe to. Leave a review of the show and we'll have all the links in the show notes for you to go check out Kyle's work. So definitely do that. Go and buy one of the books because he's a great, great, great writer. And until next week, this is Connor Beadon.

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