In this monologue from The Scary Guy Podcast, the speaker argues that children are born with an innate capacity for love and an unburdened desire to play, but society—through family, schools, media, and social platforms—systematically teaches them to hate and to limit their aspirations. He connects this theme to his own song "Haunted," which portrays life as a series of unwanted games and imposed dreams about wealth, status, and material possessions. The speaker critiques the conventional music‑industry definition of "making it"—signing a record deal, winning Grammys or Oscars—and instead frames true success as the love and support of fans, which he sees as the real reward. Throughout, he emphasizes that love is the natural state of humanity, and that the learned hatred and pursuit of external validation are cultural constructs that can be unlearned.
Chapters
If you, if you look at yourself as a child, you have to be taught to hate, right? Somebody has to teach you that. So when you, when you're growing up, as you look at these little children, they, they're born and they just see another little child. They don't care their skin color, they don't care anything about their, their, their, their, uh, beliefs in the world because they don't really have much belief besides, I just want to play. That's right. I just want to go play. So these children, they run and they don't care about nothing. Let's just play. Hey, let's dig in the dirt. Let's throw dirt at each other. Let's do whatever we're going to do, right? Then as they grow up, social media and media and movies and TV and their parents and their family and their friends and their schools, and it just keeps growing and growing. They teach them to hate. They say you're supposed to hate this, and then they start— then they go further and they say you're also supposed to Uh, not— don't reach for the stars, don't do this. We're all taught this, this way. That's what my song Haunted is about. It says, we've been haunted, we've been haunted by life we never wanted, playing games we were never meant to win. They told us what to dream for. They tell us, hey, you're supposed to want this big house, you're supposed to be separate, you're supposed to be middle class, you're supposed to be poor, you're supposed to be rich. You're supposed to want this big car. And I— that's how you— that's how you get success. There's people, my own fans, they say, when— man, I can't believe— even to this day they say, I can't believe you haven't made it yet, quote, made it. And they say, when are you gonna— when is somebody gonna pick you up and you're gonna make it? I can't believe that you haven't. And I go, I'm still hoping that someday I will, you know, because they don't understand They've been trained to think making it is, is a signing a record deal, right? Somebody signing you to a record deal, and then you come in and, and they get to change your morals and change the way you look and change everything about you. And that's how you make it, because you receive awards from them, not because the reward is the fans, but because you— that's what's weird about fans is sometimes they go, I— they want you to make it. They're, they're rooting for you. And the way— but their idea of making it is to see you get a Grammy or to see you get an Oscar, when my idea of making it is them. They're my reward. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, like, that's, that's what I try to tell them. Anyway, my whole point is that— because I could talk forever— but my whole point about the thing about love— we got you on a podcast then, really, isn't it? Right. You know, because of my podcast that, uh, I could talk. I could really, uh, overtake a thing. So keep me reined in. But the whole thing about love and hate is that we are trained to, to hate. We just were born to love. We are born into sin, but we're born to just love and love and love, and then we're taught to hate each other.
