Dating & Relationships Deep Dive w/ Noah Smith and Katherine Dee (Default Friend)

Hey, Upstream listeners. Today, we're releasing a conversation from Turpentine's show Econ 102, featuring guest Catherine Dee, also known as Default Friend. Catherine, Noah Smith and I talk dating in the 21st century, the manosphere, the effects of feminism, and more. Please enjoy.

Hello. Good to see you.

Hey, nice, nice to meet you, Noah. And nice to see you, Erik.

Hey. Yeah. Katherine, thank you for coming on Econ 102.

You don't look at all like my sister in person. In actuality, only that one photo looks like my sister.

Yeah, that's, I'm the queen of misleading Twitter avatars.

When I'm a, like, 15-year-old Japanese girl.

That's a good one. It's a good trick.

Noah, why don't you remind the audience of the conversation that helped inspire bringing on Katherine Dee, or maybe just share what you found captivating about Katherine Dee's expertise, and then we can get right into it.

Well, okay. So the original conversation was just about like relationships, I guess. It all started when Noor Siddiqui and Steph Sher had me onto like a podcast to discuss why women in tech have trouble dating. And my basic thesis was they just work too hard. Everyone just, you know, works too much, but then that was my There's probably a lot more to it than that, but I just don't know what it is. And I'm, I'm not very qualified to talk about this, but then I, I went on some giant rant. Erik, you forced me to go on some giant rant about like love and relationships in one random episode. And I don't know why, but it turned, it was very popular and went viral sort of.

Yeah.

And, and so we're like, well, let's, let's get someone who talks about these things professionally to talk about these things. If we're going to, if we're going to switch to like a love and relationships podcast. Um, we better get someone better than us.

Amazing.

That's a cool topic.

Katherine, how would you, for people who are unfamiliar, how would you sort of describe your, uh, expertise or interest on the, on the topic?

Um, so I used to have a moderately popular dating advice column in my weird eclectic body of work. E. Jean Carroll was a big fan of it when it existed. And I, I don't know. I talk to a lot of people and I think my expertise comes from, from that just exposure.

Yeah. And so maybe, maybe let's start at the, at the top in terms of like, what do you think is missing in the, in the discourse when people, you know, Noah brought up a potential theory why people aren't, aren't matching. Like, what do we think people don't appreciate about dating, whether it's, you know, looking at it you know, across generations, you look at Gen Z a lot, or, you know, what do people not fully appreciate about what's happening on the dating market?

So there's multiple dating markets, I think is a big one. Uh, your experience in New York is not your experience in San Francisco. And then the big coastal, like, you know, like relevant cities, right? The ones that everyone thinks of really don't reflect the dynamics in the middle of the country or even in smaller cities within the same state. Like, Dating in Sacramento is probably quite different from dating in San Francisco. And I know that dating in San Jose and Sunnyvale when I, when I lived there was different than San Francisco dating. So there's all these variations that I think get glossed over. If you know, to go a step further and focus on the Bay Area, dating within tech is, is different than if you're not in tech. And then there's, there's gradients within that. Like, are you in the startup scene? Are you, are you very social? When you say you work in tech, do you, do you work at, you know, a big company like Apple? Right. So there's all these, there's all these differences that I think everyone thinks that their normal is everyone else's normal. But of course there's like overarching trends, but the, I think when we give advice, it should be more tailored to people's more specific environments.

Okay. So that, that's, that's a good insight there. There are different dating markets. What, and if people were to ask, okay, so what is the difference between sort of San Francisco and New York, or like, what are the different kinds of markets and what are the different factors that make them different? Is it sort of sex ratio, you know, or what are the, what makes them different markets? Is it the type of people that are in them, the personality traits, the—

It's everything, right? It's, it, I think the big sort of like elephant in the room that I think people know is there, but don't really mention frankly is class. That's, I mean, not just wealth, but also like, where are you in the social hierarchy of your scene? Like if you, if like some people in San Francisco, their dating market is, or their dating pool rather, are high earners who are maybe even a little bit famous, even within their own sort of world. And that's a very different experience than dating in the middle or working class. So that, so I think that's really the big one, especially with like Gender work conversation, dating discourse, capital D, you know, 2 capital Ds, right?

How about San Francisco versus New York specifically, would you say?

So I think it depends on, on where you, where you lie in that, that landscape. People in San Francisco, I think, I mean, are not— so if we're looking at sort of people with these like more prestigious jobs, I would say like it's slightly easier as a woman in San Francisco. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I think that even though maybe the men are more awkward or something, like it's much easier to find someone who is stable across like multiple axes in the Bay Area than New York where people are like more in creative careers and there's a little bit more precarity. I also think the expectations of people's appearances are different from city to city. This is something that is sort of whispered about, but not really explicitly said, you know, like who's considered hot in Miami and again, San Francisco and New York. And then even just throwing in a wildcard there, like San Jose, those are all very different things. And you can get away with one kind of look in one place and not the other. And I think that also applies. applies to men. Like, what are the expectations for men and women in these particular cities?

So you're saying there could be an arbitrage opportunity?

Yeah, of course. Right. And this is something that people were joking about when there was like the migration to Miami, right? Like the women there are so beautiful, but it, you know, it depends on your taste.

And they may have a different value set or sort of just that And so is it true that like 30% of men, you know, are under 30, aren't having sex or whatever? Like, what do we make of the, the, the not having sex thing? What exactly is, is happening there?

I think a lot of people are sort of antisocial. They aren't really, they're going out as much. You know, there's a lot of arguments over like, you know, to what extent did MeToo impact this? And I'm sure, I'm sure it did create I don't want to say a culture of fear because I don't want to invalidate anyone's, but I think that a culture of caution and perhaps overcorrection is one of the downstream effects of MeToo. So there's that, but there's also COVID lockdowns, I think, make, charitably, people got used to just doing nothing, right? Just lying down, communicating over text message. And it's that socializing is a muscle, right? If you're not regularly socializing, it's uncomfortable when you get back into it. And I think here's another difference between even Chicago where I am and San Francisco. When I lived in the Bay Area, I was always going out all the time. There was always a party, there's always something happening. People are a little bit more reserved in Chicago. Not that there aren't people who are going out all the time, but— my particular social circles aren't, right? So there's, there's a question of like, what is the cultural scene like in, in your immediate environment that I think also plays a pretty big role.

Do you think that there will be some sort of great reset and just sort of pendulum swing, you know, the sort of like post-MeToo, post-COVID, you know, slottification, you know, sort of Trump's in office, you know, now it's, I'm just teasing, but I, Or do you think that this is just, you know, like a durable trend?

I mean, it depends on, I think for some people, yes, there is also like a backlash to being too online. I've noticed people are moving into the offline world, into physical reality. And every sort of current thing I think is just another chip, like being online, right? I think each, each event that happens just pushes people away from the internet. And what that might do is for certain populations, they, they may start socializing more and people maybe may start having more sex. But I also think a lot of people are— we're just kind of broken by lockdown and, and maybe don't have the opportunities to socialize that they would like to. I mean, you know, lockdown didn't only impact us psychologically, but like, you know, for example, in, in a lot of cities, a lot of bars closed. Or it created a weird dynamic where like the rents changed. And so there's like bars constantly cycling out, not just bars, but also bookstores, more like subcultural hangout spots, more general third places. So some people are left in kind of this, you know, they have to make their own table. They have to make their own social scene. And I don't know how many people would be willing to do that.

Yeah. Noah, can you imagine going to college, during the COVID era.

I'm glad I didn't have to do that.

Insane time.

Yeah, no, that's, that'd be, that'd be very disheartening.

I don't know.

I also feel that when I went to college, there was more of a cult of college because we didn't really have social media yet. There was this idea that that's when you're going to meet all the people who are in your class and who, you know, you're going to fall in love. You're going to meet your best friends. You're going to have all the, you know, new experiences, blah, blah, blah. And I think that social media has sort of Disintermediated a lot of that stuff so that you can do that stuff without college more easily. I mean, you could back in the day too, but, but I think that college was special institutionally because, you know, it collated, it was, you know, it was university. It brought all these people together, you know, that in a way nothing else did. And now social media does that. And so I think that it hasn't completely disintermediated it, but people really thought, you know, I need to have the best 4 years of my life in college. And a lot of people were like, you know, actively sad and depressed that they, if they didn't, if those years didn't go perfectly. And, and so, well, I mean, for, for me, I was depressed because my mom randomly died right when I was starting college, but that was different anyway. But yeah, so, so I think that, that, that was a big deal. Now it's becoming less important. I don't know. I feel like I meet, you know, when I meet young people, like, do you know, do you know Anson Yu? Sort of famous kid.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anson, you know, yeah, she's like, she goes to Waterloo with a lot of the other Waterloo kids. And actually a lot of the Waterloo kids that I talked to, They, you know, they like their college, they like the people they meet at college, but they don't feel that that's like the main thing. They think the main thing of their youth is like going to a city and meeting people, you know, in real life, using the internet as a tool to find people in real life, but then coming together in real life. So those are the, those are pretty much the only like Zoomers I know. I mean, how about you, Erik? What do you think?

I mean, I know Zoomers and I sort of hear similar things to what I'm hearing from Catherine D, which is It was a pretty demoralizing time and you never get that time back. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that has some sort of durable effects on people's willingness to be social or sort of put themselves out there or sort of have developed, you know, that sort of set of resilience, social resilience that college can teach and just be way more online.

Something that Noah reminded me of is it used to be that social media was a supplement to your college experience. Like you would be in a Facebook group with your graduating class or something like that. And now it feels like you use social media to meet a subculture or a particular network of people that you want to be involved with. And that is a big difference. When I first started using social media, it was really to meet people In my immediate environment. And then I think the time I used it most intensely outside of, you know, now, right, was like Facebook groups when I was getting ready to go to college. And I remember like joining like graduating class of like the 3 different schools I thought I was gonna go to. And then, you know, I would leave and, you know, stay in the, the one of the school that I, I, I did end up going to. And then we, I, you know, there was like a secrets page, right? Where people would post like things they overheard or, secrets and confessions if people went to the school. And something that's interesting is right when Facebook was starting up, a lot of schools had similar sites that were just for the school, right? It was social media, which made it different from other internet-assisted platforms that had existed decades prior. But Columbia had a sort of Facebook clone. I think NYU had something similar, and all of these were just designed to help connect people who may not have otherwise met because they weren't in the same class or something.

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What about sort of, talk a little bit about sort of the culture of trad, speaking of social media. Is this kind of just an elite kind of defection? Is this a moment in time? Or, you know, was this just an aesthetic thing that people actually weren't living out? Or is there something, is this just the beginning of something, maybe a sort of reaction or backlash against a certain sex positivity virility or something that they're seeing? How would you, what do you think about this?

I think the trad, the trad movement is like a lot of wishful thinking. I think it does exist in shades and it's definitely, you know, it definitely was like an aesthetic movement or, or online subculture. I think it's since faded, but there, the backlash we see is more gender worry, right? It's radfems, maybe that use, that word is being used a little bit too liberally, or, you know, self-identified misandrists and, you For men, you know, people have talked about this ad nauseam, right? They're not, you know, they don't like the way women live. I think, again, like, the most charitable interpretation is there's men who are— I don't want to use the word disgusted, but I guess the word is disgusted. They're disgusted by what they perceive as contemporary femininity. And sometimes it's as extreme as, like, straightforward. Sexism and misogyny. Um, and sometimes it isn't, sometimes it's just like, I don't wanna disrespect myself by giving my time or my money or my virginity to a woman who doesn't see me as a person. And that's, you know, that's maybe not necessarily what's actually happening, but it's what they, what they perceive as, um, as a situation. And I think there's, there's shade. It's a, it's a continuum on, on both sides, right? There's the straightforwardly hate men. Um, and there, you know, are men who straightforwardly hate women, but not everyone is that extreme. There's, there's more moderate people, but, you know, wherever you lie on that spectrum, there is a sense of separateness, I think.

Is the sex recession real or is that hype?

I think that's real. There's been a lot of, a lot of surveys on it, but yeah.

I will tell you, I will tell you that a few months ago I went to a wedding with a bunch of Gen X guys who are like, you know, they're, they're all like 5 years older than me. In, I'm an older millennial, but, but 5 years older than me is Gen X. And, and then those guys were so horny. I couldn't believe how horny those guys, you know, those guys are like in their, in their mid-forties and they're like, they are insanely horny, much hornier than any young people that I meet. Okay. Not any, most. But then it's just, it's like night and day. They're just thinking and talking about sex constantly. And then I sort of remember this is the way people were.

Yeah.

When like I was a, you know, a teenager listening to people in like their 20s talk about life, like this is how they talked and this is what I thought people were like. And then it sort of went away and I didn't notice it until now. There's been a generational shift. And I think the boomers were insanely horny too, like, and just sort of took it for granted that this is how human beings are. And like something happened somewhere in the middle of the millennial generation, or maybe, maybe even starting with my like mini generation. Something happened. And, you know, obviously RFK people are going to be like, it was the seed oil or some shit, but like, it was the internet, wasn't it?

I mean, I think that's, that's a part of it, right? Because there's all sorts of theories that are floated that I think have various levels of truth, right? Like, where more people are on SSRIs and other types of psychiatric medications, and that impacts. But also people are sedentary. They're much more sedentary. And obviously lockdowns only amplified this. And if you're not moving your body, you become out of touch with your body. So I don't know if we can say it's the internet purely, like we're all being mentally hijacked. I think there's all these other little things that just seem so obvious that we take for granted. Here's another one, like Uber Eats, right? Even for myself, walk half a mile or whatever to, to go to a, a cafe and pick up a coffee in the morning. That would be like my fun little routine and treat. And now it's like, if it's too cold or something, it's like, oh, I can just get it delivered and it's, it's $12. And it's like, why not? You know, who, who gives a fuck, right? Like, that's, that's nothing. And so I, and, but that's, that's— Still walk. I don't know. But that's like, you know, that's maybe, that's like a, That's a mile missing from like the amount that I'm, that I'm moving around each day. And for some, for other people, it's probably like much more extreme, right? There's just like no movement.

I'm going back to the RadFem stuff for a second. So on, on, in the feminism sort of discourse, is it fair to say that reactionary feminism is also a sort of wishful thinking and sort of losing out, you know, significantly to sex-positive feminism or even career-based or like What's the latest in feminism? What's winning?

What's going to win?

I think people are, are, are very skeptical of liberal feminism so that, you know, to, this is a little bit reductive, but just like an easy shorthand, like the girl boss sort of stuff, you know, consent-based, sex-positive things like this. They're much more skeptical of that. I think, I don't know if that's, if that's true, but just from, from my own experience, reactionary feminism, I think does appeal to some people. But I, I don't think it's as popular as something that it's not quite radical feminism, but it looks more like radical feminism. I wouldn't underestimate how skeptical of anything, even with a patina of conservatism, young, you know, young people are. I think they're— with men, it's a little bit different, but I think a lot of women, they don't want to be associated with the right. And they also don't feel like the right represents their interests, even if There are like feminist or, or, or woman, you know, centric elements to it, right? Like abortion is a big issue. Reactionary feminism doesn't really have room for abortion. Neither does Catholic feminism. It, you know, it should go without saying, it's basically in the name. And it's, they, so they might be more willing to make concessions with liberal feminism, even if they're also skeptical of the sex industry. So that's like another, another big fault line.

Yeah.

I think there's many different shades. I would say millennials are probably more likely to be sex positive, pro-sex work. Zoomers probably are, are more conservative compared to millennials, but not as, not necessarily as far as someone like Louise Perry or Mary Harrington. But I could be wrong. This is just sort of what I, what I see. And as you know, everyone's been discussing for the last decade, everyone's in an echo chamber and, you know, things are curated by algorithms and what have you. Right.

One of my theses about culture, and I, you know, I was saying this in reference, I know you had a debate with David Marks, who we're also going to have on the podcast at some point, who's an old friend of mine. And I, you guys were debating whether or not culture, like, like how creative and novel culture is. And I was saying, I actually think it's not possible to know anymore because in, you know, the '80s and '90s or whatever, you could just look at popular music and film and TV. And you could look at these, like, these things, you could, you know, this, this mass stuff that everybody watched and listened to and consumed, or famous artists who, you know, displayed at the top galleries. You could say what you could have a general idea of whether culture was getting stale. Now everything is hived off in subcultures. It's, it's very compartmentalized. And I think that it's impossible. It's impossible to get a map of the landscape. So there can be incredible creativity in one pocket and incredible stagnation in another pocket. And it just, it depends on your vantage point. It depends on which pockets you happen to be interacting with because there's no, You know, maybe AI will get good enough where it can survey all the pockets and sort of give us a good answer to this soon. But actually we should just ask Claude about our GPT about this. Is culture getting stale? I mean, it'll just, yeah. So, so I thought that that was, that was an interesting debate because I think that it is impossible for me to know which one of you guys are right because I can name you pockets. I can name you parts of the culture where Dave is absolutely right that culture has stagnated. And I can, you know, I don't know. Like a lot of, you know, music, I would say music in general is pretty stagnant, but, but especially like rap music has stagnated in the last, you know, in the last few years. And then, and then, you know, rock music has stagnated for longer than that. And, and electronic has stagnated really badly, but then like, but then, then other places you see that are like, you know, short video is just so much more wildly creative than it was before. You know, people made short videos when I was a kid. But then, you know, just the expansion. And I have this thesis that it's mostly technology driven. Now we have TikTok, but we all, you know, music is stagnant specifically because when we exhausted the possibility of synthesizers and amplifiers, when we did all the, and mixers, you know, when we did all the things we could do with those fundamental technologies, then music stagnated a little because we didn't keep inventing new technologies. to make music, but then we invented new technologies to make short video like TikTok. And then, and, and, and so there was an efflorescence there. And so I think a lot of it's technology driven, but then it's just impossible for me to say whether this, you know, constitutes an overall cultural stagnation or not, because everything is in its bubble now.

That's a good point. I mean, I think when people talk about whether culture is stuck, they focus on, um, you know, what's left of the monoculture, what's gatekept. I think that there is a thirst for gatekept media, gatekept music, you know, gatekept everything, right? Because we, like, we need some standard bearer and it just doesn't— it still exists, but it's, it's, it's not as respected as it once was. And it may be not as, you know, beloved as it once was. To your point about technology, I also think people don't learn their crafts, so they can't innovate because they don't understand the traditions that they're working in. You know, like, there's like this axiom that like, you know, all the best directors know everything there is about film, right? That doesn't mean that every cinephile is a great filmmaker, but, you know, all great filmmakers are cinephiles. And if you're just working, you know, with a surface-level knowledge of music or whatever, you're not going to have enough knowledge to remix the past, right? There's that Girard essay that says all innovation is just remixing what came before you. And then to your point about technology, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. There are so many things we could do with music that we don't or that very few people are doing because we don't know enough about it, again, to push the envelope technologically. I always wondered why soundscapes or sound baths didn't take off? Because there's a lot you can do there, right? I went to a sound bath like 8 years ago now where this musician replicated the feeling of being in a blizzard with sound, right? And he came pretty close. And that's pretty amazing. Who's to say the next— all right, we've moved beyond albums. As like a storytelling method. Maybe the next thing is like some sort of like immersive sound experience. And it doesn't have to be that. It's just like one example of like something that feels like it hasn't really been, you know, explored. There's all sorts of things that we could be doing and we aren't, and probably because people don't even know it's an option.

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We talked a bit about feminism. I want to ask you a bit about the manosphere. I haven't checked in on what's happening in a, in a quite a while. Have— has the manosphere gotten bigger? Has it gotten more vulgar? What is sort of the trend line on sort of, sort of the male side of the, the gender war in terms of how they communicate to other men, but also in terms of how they sort of, you know, interact with women?

I mean, I, I think for it with, with both sides of the divide, there's a lot of lowest common denominator content. It's so easy to create content. Internet's much bigger. So all these subcultures are very bloated. The same is true of the manosphere. It, it's just like more, like a really big part of it is more people are trying to get attention. And, you know, we all know rage bait does very well. So they up, up the stakes. And everyone's, you know, finding any possible angle to You know, like galaxy brain their way into women oppress men or, or whatever thing. It's, it's really sad, I think, because if you, if you listen to early men's rights activists, like even early pickup artists, you know, I'd say like up until like the early '90s. So like, this is a time span from right after the sexual revolution to like 1993 or something. They sounded very reasonable and very helpful. Like I, I saw a debate with, I think it was like Herb Goldberg, who was an early men's rights activist, and maybe like Susan Faludi, who wrote Backlash, which is, you know, a famous book about how whenever feminism has any wins, there's a backlash, right? And it was just like they both were so like, they both had respect for their own arguments and respect for each other. And they seemed to like, they want to, they seem to be truth-seeking in a way that everyone's an entertainer now. And that's just not happening. Everyone wants to get people upset. And hooked and, you know, paying for their course or their supplement or whatever.

For their Substack or their podcast.

Sure. Guilty, you know, guilty as charged myself.

Erik, we need, we need, we need, you know, more sponsors for this podcast. We have to be more controversial. Let's say controversial things.

Yeah, exactly. Well, is there a trend, sort of a trend line or a sort of through line between sort of the pickup artist community and MeToo where the pickup artist community You know, taught nerds how to sort of hit on women and, you know, it maybe taught them this idea that they could attract beautiful women because they saw some nerds do it. And maybe there's like, maybe women don't want to be hit on by nerds. And so there's sort of a, or is that too cute? Or there's really no—

Where there is a through line is incels and pickup artists. The original incel communities were direct reactions to pickup artistry. I think MeToo It's, there's too much going on there. Pickup artistry is just too obscure really to have inspired that. MeToo, I think, was a confluence of different movements and trends. And, you know, we had sort of raunch culture in the early 2000s. There was the discourse around campus rape and the media response to all of these things. I mean, there's just too, it's, it was too big and the landscape it was emerging from was too complicated to say that pickup artistry had much to do with it. Yeah, maybe insofar as like we had this sort of sideshow, like over-the-top sexist kind of thing, right? Though these, these guys would get, you know, trotted out on Maury and Dr. Phil, right? But they, I mean, who took, who took that seriously really?

Right. Is, is MeToo kind of like the feminism end of history or something like that? Just kind of won out and there's, you know, not likely to be sort of, you know, great repudiation of, of, of, of MeToo, or how do you sort of Think about sort of, you know, sex norms, you know, a few years from now, do you expect the pendulum to swing back or unclear?

I don't know. I mean, it depends. Like if we stay online and stay sort of antisocial, it's, you know, it just depends on where the broader culture goes. I don't think it is, you know, feminist end of history necessarily though.

Is it likely that whatever AILA represents, the sort of glorification of sex work, sort of like rational polyamory, you know, specifically on the sort of Sex positivity side. Do you think that peaked a few years ago?

Oh yeah. I mean, but she's not even very well liked by those people because she's a little bit too, too out there. She's too, she's too, too libertarian. She asks too many questions. She's, she's very, she's like one of the only like true originals that I could think of. Cause she, she's her own box in a way that not many people are.

True original right here.

Okay. Exactly.

No, I, so, so here's another, another topic that I've been thinking about. Avoidant avoidance, avoidant behavior, avoidant attachment. I, I've noticed a distinct trend among the young people that I see toward what I consider to be avoidant behavior. So like I said, the Gen X people, you know, they just, they were just impulsive people who like had trouble controlling their impulses, maybe because of lead poisoning or maybe just, you know, I don't know why. But they were, but they were very like horny and often violent, aggressive. And, you know, would say intemperate things and just make bad decisions in life sometimes. And so controlling themselves was a big problem for these people. But then when I look at young people, I see a completely different set of problems. I see them, they're not having like just a whole bunch of hookups with a bunch of random people. I mean, a few people are doing that, but like, it's not as common. Instead, what I see are people having these situationships, which are relationships where you're sleeping with someone occasionally. Not, you know, 5 times a week, whatever, but you're sleeping with them, you know, once every couple of weeks or once a, you know, I don't know what. And like, but then they, and they, they just have this, this person, they're like, oh yeah, we're in a situationship. And they never really think seriously about whether they want to, you know, have some sort of emotional commitment. And that's, that's their romantic life. And it, it seems casual because they, they're like, oh, we're just keeping it casual. It's not real. We're not defining a thing, blah, blah. But it's not, it's not the same thing Gen X people did when they said we're keeping it casual. When Gen X people say we're keeping it casual, they just meant we're having a lot of sex, but we just, you know, don't feel emotionally attached to each other. But then these people, like, it's almost like, it's like a relationship that failed to ignite. It's like a relationship that sort of putters along and kind of, and kind of doesn't quite reach critical mass. And it's like, you know, Jupiter failed to be a star because it wasn't big enough. It's sort of like that. It's, you know, that's what I see. And I also see. At the same time, a lot of people talking about, you know, sort of using therapy speak as an excuse to say, ditch all your friends, ditch all the people in your life, cut off contact with everybody. Like, that's a common thing that you see people rant about on Twitter or other platforms. You see people say, you know, just ditch them, avoid toxic people, cut them all out of your life. And then, and that's an avoidant behavior as well. That's, that's avoidant attachment style. And so I'm wondering, are we seeing a mass epidemic of avoidant attachment style among the youth? Or is this the availability heuristic? Am I just happening to see different people or is it overhyped or am I misidentifying it? You know, what do you think about this?

I was thinking about that today. Like there is this really like, it's almost like smarmy or something. Like, I don't know, there's something like really annoying about it. Just like this inability to have difficult conversations. And so just sort of like lying low, right? Like if you're not even, if you're not outright ghosting someone, just sort of like waiting for like The conflict you made up in your head to blow over, you know? And I think this is a very millennial thing too. I think this started with, with, I think we're all roughly in the same age cohort. It started with us. We were the first generation and I don't know what causes it. It's like this fear, like there's this mass fear of like getting yelled at, even if you're not going to get yelled at. Like I'm, I'm going through it like right now. Like I have a friend who's just like not responding to my texts and there's this like awkward energy. And I know she's like in a moment of retreat and I'm like, did we, like, did we have an argument that didn't register as an argument to me? I mean, you just see it with people all the time, right? And I like, I can't, I can't explain it. Like some people have offered, maybe we get too many notifications and it's like response to overstimulus. Some people say like, oh, you know, if you were sent to daycare, this is yours. It's like there's, I don't know what it is, but it's very annoying. Right. And I, I don't. I, I think you're right that to point out that it's present in the, in, in dating, but it's present everywhere.

Do we have a low T crisis or epidemic, or what's the right way of thinking about sort of testosterone and its sort of the state of it and its impact?

I mean, it's, it seems like all the science says, says we, we do. And then, you know, also sperm count is another thing to be concerned about. I would, I would be thrilled for someone to say that this is fake, or that I would even be thrilled to find out that it's just like we're sedentary and obese and it's like a fixable problem, right? Like, you know, Ozempic fixes this.

I love it. Right.

Like I would, you know, I would love to hear that. Yeah.

You alluded to it earlier in terms of like people not wanting to be conservative. You know, Balaji likes to say that Democrats and Republicans are almost like Sunnis and Shiites now. They don't like date. They don't sort of intersect.

Biology is hilarious. We need more biology on this podcast.

Very colorful. Are you, are you seeing this sort of great sort of, you know, sort of isolation or fragmentation in terms of people not wanting to date across political party?

I, I think that one's not as bad as people say. I think people are, they, on surveys, it might reflect, you know, one way, but first of all, I don't think people are dating much at all, right? As we've discussed. But for the people who are dating, I think they're more willing to make concessions, even if they might not necessarily admit it. And I think there's, there's mixed politics relationships all over the place.

Yeah, it is interesting. There's this white kid at University of Chicago who's very like Daniel Schmidt, I think his name is very sort of like publicly aggressive about sort of, you know, like race-related topics and he likes to post sort of images of his dating life to show, hey, see, I can be racist and people can like me. But there seems to be this broader, like, what started as a joke is like white boy summer, like identification of white identity that's like not exactly white nationalist, but not exactly not, and seems like playful. But, and maybe just the fact that you can even say that among, in certain places just means there's been some shift. But my guess is it's largely a fringe and never really gonna escape beyond a A phrase, but Katherine, did you see any of that or do you make any sense of this?

That people are softly white nationalist?

Yes.

On, on social media, sure. But I, I actually think in reality, people are, are, are much less extreme on these topics than, you know, being on the internet all day might suggest. Like, I, I think even people who are posting like pretty out there, like memes or whatever, or, you know, are saying all manner of racial slurs on, on, on Discord or They, they probably wouldn't repeat those things in the physical world, not only because it's frowned upon, but because like they don't feel comfortable and these maybe don't reflect all of their beliefs. But whether or not people can talk about being like a white boy, I think that never went away. You see it on the left, you know, a very popular like genre of tweet back when they were called tweets was like, you know, playfully making, and not in the sort of like self-deprecating way that was a hallmark of wokeness. But like, you know, playfully making fun of the fact you're, you're a white boy or engaging with it, if not making fun of it. So it, you know, I think that's sort of always been there and it's always been okay and socially sanctioned.

Do you think that the sort of the stuff on the manosphere and the stuff in the feminism scene are getting more extreme that make the most extreme versions of today, whether it's Andrew Tate or I don't even know who on the feminism side, kind of look tame a few years from now? Is there just this broader, you're sort of durable, sort of, you know, expanding the spectrum of what's, of what's allowed to say? Or like, and then do these poles seem to be just getting further and further apart due to sort of the internet? What will AI do for, you know, AI boyfriends, AI girlfriends?

It's, I mean, it's, it seems, it seems like this because this is what generates engagement. I think like we'll reach a breaking point where it's just too much. Or at least I hope people are like, you know, decide that it's just untenable. But, you know, I also say this, like, I can speak for millennials and I, you know, I have observations about Zoomers, but I don't know what Gen Alpha is going to be like. And Gen Alpha, I mean, they're teenagers now and they, I mean, yeah, I'm, I'm interested to see how that, that plays out.

They don't know what they're going to be like either.

That's, that's true. And there's some, their, their, their internet culture is, is, is very extreme. And, you know, they, they're like, there's some weird stuff going on.

Where are they?

TikTok? TikTok. They're, they're all over. They're, they're all over the place. I'd say Discord, Roblox. It's another place.

Roblox.

Yeah. They, I mean, they're, they're, they're all, they're all over the place. I will say something that, you know, poses a problem for anyone who wants to observe these behaviors. I mean, it is behind walls, right? It is. A lot of things do take place in group chats and Discord servers and areas that aren't as easily surveyable as Twitter. I love it.

The internet needs to be fragmented. Community moderation and the possibility of exit were the only thing that— things that kept the internet sane. And that, that one brief shining moment where everyone was just on Facebook and Twitter all the time in the mid-2010s. sucked and led to a lot of bad things, I think.

Yeah. I think the internet should be more difficult to use and that would fix a lot of our problems.

Let's just put up some barriers. What would be, what would be, what would make it more difficult to use?

Like even simple things, like it's more, it's harder to sign up for stuff. Like I don't like the idea of like age gating, but I think if you added like 2 more signup pages to Twitter, like just, that would just start cutting people off. Right. Like in a weird way, like I hate, I always hate when people like reply to my stuff with Urbit solves this, but it's just like, like too confusing and like a little bit too slow to be worth it to anyone except people who really want to be there.

I'll never forget the Noah quote, which is like, when you made it easy to give everyone a voice, don't be surprised if a lot of people say fuck you.

That's what most people want to say. They just want to say fuck you to someone. I mean, like, do you remember when you were a kid and you drove in the car with your parents and then someone would like, you know, Go when it wasn't their turn at the stop sign or cut someone off on the freeway or whatever, and the the parents would just like yell like fucking asshole or like you know fucking Republican or whatever whatever they would say. That's that's what my parents said, but I imagine some people's parents probably said racial slurs. But my parents would just say fucking Republican. But then but then we took that and we turned that into mass culture. Like now people say that in public. They're just like they're blowing off steam. They're annoyed at something. They're just like doing drive by. drive-by aggression. And then we turn that into our mass culture. And that was a mistake. That was not good.

Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. And I also think we took communities that were interesting and maybe not healthy, but they worked in their own weird way when they were very small and blew them up. And now, I mean, the other, there are certain things that should stay subterranean for the sake, you know, for the sake of people who are curious and for the sake of people who belong in those communities. Like the example that gets given all the time is the kink community. And maybe it's not so bad to have a barrier to entry to get into that kind of stuff instead of just like free-for-all. And you know, you type something into, I guess, now ChatGPT and call it a day.

Right.

What about the trans topic? Are we peak the trans topic, both in terms of sort of the pro and concerns about it? Or do you think that will continue To be a sort of social media engagement bait machine.

I think it's become easier to talk about in in some ways and in some places, not everywhere. As the the Jesse Single Blue Sky drama illustrates, that to me was very scary. The way he was treated on on Blue Sky because I feel like even if you you have some kind of problem with his work, I mean just like the death. I mean it's like crazy, like immediately being you know I lost friends over.

I've talked to Jesse Single once and it was. him to say some nasty shit to me.

Oh, really?

Yeah, that's the only interaction I ever had with him. I'm like, I'm staying away from that guy because he's mean. But, but I've lost friends over Jesse Singal because Jesse Singal is on Substack. And in the— in 2021, there were like a bunch of people got— like a bunch of lefties got, including some of my friends, got really mad at Substack. They were like, this place is anti-trans, it's an anti-trans company. But look, they're, they're platforming and paying this guy who's anti-trans. Of course they weren't platforming and paying him. They were actually taking money away from him. But that's if you don't understand the economics. Substack would give you an advance on future revenues, right? Like Matt Yglesias lost about a million dollars or somewhere around a million dollars from taking that deal. Like it was one of the worst financial deals of Matt Yglesias's life, which he didn't know that his blog would be so popular, right? It's basically, they sell a form of insurance by giving you an advance on your future payments. That's basically what's going on. Anyway, I guess the point is that they got so mad at me for, and then I defended Substack and the economics of it. I was like, look, they're not actually paying people. They're just selling them incredibly overpriced insurance with this advance kind of thing that they're doing. And you know, whatever. And then they got so mad at me that they never talked to me again.

Wow.

Yeah. I've lost, I mean, I've always been sort of politically illegible to people, but I went on Blocked and Reported, which is Jesse Singal's podcast, and I mean, I got booted from, from group chats and Discord servers. I lost longtime internet friends, but also friends in person. I mean, people were like furious. I'm still on all sorts of like weird, you know, fuck this fascist TERF, you know, lists on, you know, all sorts of social media sites because of this. And it's like, I mean, if that's the line, I don't know what to, like, if anytime, like, I'm aligned to, I just know the person needs to just like go to prison. Like, it's just so crazy.

Yeah.

Like, well, you know, I'm, I'm sorry. My, my 500-word blog posts about otherkins are, you know, too crazy for you. You know what I mean? Like, it's just crazy behavior. It's crazy. It's a crazy amount of policing.

Yeah. I'm, my political position on Jesse Singal is that I want a world where I don't have to take a position on Jesse Singal.

I think that's, I think it's a good one. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, it shouldn't be, he shouldn't. inflame people this much. It's such an overreaction and it's so scary.

Yeah, maybe if he's anti-trans, you know, like I know anti-trans people. Wes Yang is anti-trans. And, and you know what? I don't have to like structure my social media habits and my, what platform I use and like how I live my life around those people. Like, I don't want to do it. I don't have to do it. And, you know, if you think that like this is a war for the future of You know, like, this is a civil rights movement for a vulnerable population. If you don't support it, you're like the people who just, you know, equivocated on civil rights in the '50s and der to ber to ber. Like, okay, fine. Okay, whatever. Like, think that.

Yeah.

Katherine, one of your most popular posts of all time on your blog, and this is also a plug of your great blog, is a master list of dating advice.

Oh yeah.

But it's a, um, it's locked. So, so readers can't see it, but so in order to, uh, or readers who haven't paid for it can't see it. So in order to entice people to, uh, to, to subscribe, but also, you know, as we're talking about relationships, can you share a couple of, of nuggets from that article that you're perhaps most, you know, think are most non-obvious or interesting to, and should be known among the broader public? Yeah.

I wonder, I, I wonder which ones were, were, there's some like that I always recommend, but let's, let's see. Let's see what I, what I put there when I, when I wrote it. I also, it auto-paywalled. So ordinarily it should be.

Oh, okay.

Let's see. Oh, well, here's a good one. Convoluted dating advice for men or women is always a grift. Don't let your romantic life become a product. So that was be direct, not desperate. He doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. He wants to have sex and you're too available. You know, it's, it's, it's a lot. It's like a list of how many did I, did I put there? Of like 71 points of common, just common sense things that people like rarely talk about. Because I think people, especially then, it was a little bit more popular then to just like come up with like the craziest, like, you know, if, if he texts, if there's this amount of time between texts and like, you know, uses a period, it means this. And it's, I just, I, I think. Even though there's 71 points there, it's dating is much simpler than the dating industry would want you to believe.

Yeah, I, that's really, I didn't read that post, but, but that's, I agree completely. Like also this eternal question of like, what do women want? And, and the less often asked, but still irritating, what do men want? Like a large variety of different things. When you start to get to know people really well and find out what they actually want, it's like. It's insanely different. There's such a huge spread, both in terms of what people find attractive and how people like to have relationships, what they want their relationships to be like, and all kinds of things. There's so much individual difference, and we downplay these. It's like, what do women want is something I only could have thought before I knew women. You know, once you, once you actually like, you know, have a few female friends, you're like, wait a second.

Okay.

Like people are incredibly different. And I'm, and of course men are the same. That, that's the other thing. Like what, what men find attractive is, is just varies incredibly from man to man. And men won't necessarily admit that. And women won't necessarily realize it.

And like, and that, that's where the, the, you know, point about the different dating markets comes into play because what's attractive to, you know, A certain kind of guy in San Francisco won't be the same as what's attractive to, you know, some random guy in Houston, Texas.

My instinct that the trends that people complain about as it relates to dating apps, which is this idea of there's a lot of women chasing a few men, and then, you know, there's more women going to college than men, so there's not enough sort of eligible men, and that, you know, men and women are becoming more independent thanks to You know, social media, OnlyFans, AI boyfriends, girlfriends in the future, sex robots. It seems like these trends will only continue and it will just be harder and harder or, you know, less pressures pushing men and women together. Are you guys similarly, you know, soft blackpilled on the topic, or are you encouraged that there will be a sort of a pendulum shift or a change in norms or behaviors or products that will Sort of, you know, increase the marriage rate or, or dating rate even, or long-term relationship rate.

I'm maybe blackpilled on it. Like, I have a, like, I have a young son and I think all the time, like, what is, what is it going to be like when he's of dating age? It kind of freaks me out. Uh, scares the shit out of me, actually. I like, I just, I don't know. Who knows? I just, I think the only thing, um, people can really do is like build their, you know, build communities and try to surround themselves with people who share their values. And hopefully that helps the dating situation.

I don't know.

It seems pretty bleak for a lot of folks.

Yeah. With a couple minutes remaining, is there anything— are you happy to wrap here? But is there anything we didn't yet get to that you think is important to leave our listeners with?

No, I don't, I don't think so. I think we, I think if I started listing off things, it would, it would extend the time too much.

Yeah. Well, one thing I'll briefly say is you, you were early to sort of Tumblr as a sort of cultural and political influence. What's the, what's the Tumblr influence, especially on the left? You know, people have been saying, you know, we need a left Joe Rogan or whatever, like any left sort of online culture. What's, what's the version of that today? Or what could you see that being?

Well, I think we, we're, we're, we just saw that, that Twitter was very important. And I mean, that's been true for a long time, but it continues to be very important. I'll say, I'll say the trick for this is wherever it used to be, wherever journalists were or wherever journalists were paying attention to was, was important. Now it seems like whoever has like the largest following, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a difficult sort of metrics. It's not just journalists. Really, you have to find where the cultural gatekeepers are, who they are, and where they hang out. During a period of time that was Twitter, during a period of time that was Tumblr. Now it's like not clear, like who has the most powerful voice and where are they? We might be entering a digital dark age.

Yeah. Anarchy.

Digital anarchy.

Substack, maybe? I think Substack actually stands the best chance of any place of being the successor of like, you know, Important discourse.

Yeah, it's a good place to to wrap. Catherine, thank you so much for coming on the on the podcast. The the excellent blog is is default dot blog. You should follow Catherine at default underscore friend. Catherine, thanks so much for joining Noah and I.

Yeah, thanks for thanks for having me.

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