Ep. 534: "Shibboleth Drops"
John: Let's see here.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: You still have the blue man as your picture.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Let's do a real start.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, wait.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Is that the real start?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: This is the start.
Merlin: Is this the real start?
Merlin: How's the start?
Merlin: Berlin man.
Merlin: Roderick's on the line.
John: Here we are.
John: You still have the blue man as your avatar.
John: I do.
Merlin: I figured you like it.
John: I'm starting to feel like you're just doing it.
Merlin: But by doing nothing, I'm doing something?
Merlin: Yeah, it's exactly right.
Merlin: Of all the people that I use this application to communicate with, I chose this, whatever it was, two, three years ago.
Merlin: Kept it there.
Merlin: It's what they call a long con.
Merlin: Guten Abend for a line.
John: Guten Abend.
John: The little ones are called a bamf.
John: You've kept it there.
John: This has been your Zoom thing.
John: We've never used Zoom until very recently.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And I've expressed that he's scary.
Merlin: We should talk about this.
Merlin: We have other things to talk about, probably.
Merlin: But, you know, I guess I'm guessing you weren't a big – have not at any point in your life been much of a comic book reader.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, not true.
Merlin: Wait, okay, so, sorry, you're not like an adult baby comic reader, but you read, you like Harvey comics, is that right, when you were a kid?
John: I did like Harvey comics.
Merlin: And just for our younger listeners, which is everyone, that's, you got Richie Rich, you got Casper the Friendly Ghost, Nancy,
John: Not Nancy.
Merlin: No, come on.
Merlin: Scrooge McDuck has a Disney comic.
Merlin: What the hell are you talking about?
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Well, I had those.
Merlin: It was done by his brother, Harvey Disney.
Merlin: Roy ran the parks and Harvey ran the ghosts.
John: Ran the ghosts.
John: I also read Sergeant Rock and what was the ghost soldier?
John: The guy with the skull head?
John: well no oh you like you're talking about like like military comics yeah like war comics yeah yeah and i read mad magazine of course religiously which i don't know why they call that a comic or not i thought of it as one but i didn't read superhero comics yeah i didn't understand them first of all and in the 70s you didn't understand them you didn't understand the appeal
John: Well, and also I just didn't understand the world building.
John: Like I couldn't, I couldn't quite get into, I didn't like muscle men and I didn't like space, uh, creatures and I liked Spider-Man cause he was.
John: He was a jokester.
John: Yeah, he was funny.
John: He was relatable.
John: He was a funny teen.
John: He was relatable.
John: Yeah.
John: But everybody else.
John: Funny teen.
Merlin: That's a good way to put it.
Merlin: He's a funny teen.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: That's a big part of his appeal.
John: Yes, and it was to me.
John: In the 70s, I think he was especially funny.
John: But I went to a birthday party at a young age where every kid got a comic book as a party favor.
Yeah.
John: and my comic book was the silver surfer and it was a episode of the silver surfer where he was surfing through outer space yeah and there were many many very long thought balloons where he was kind of ruminating philosophically on uh yes being a silver surfer in space
Merlin: He had a lot of peace to make over the years with his role.
Merlin: Because he had a role that probably was not clear, even with those very long... What are we talking about here?
Merlin: Are we talking about early 80s?
Right.
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: This would have been 75.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: And at the time, I was already reading Mad Magazine, although I didn't understand it.
John: But, you know, I was reading like Mad Magazine parodies of the French Connection.
John: Jaws.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I remember Pappy Boyle's hat.
Merlin: I remember the way it was drawn.
Merlin: I still remember that.
John: Yes.
John: And Jaws and all those things.
John: Movies I wasn't allowed to see, but I was reading parodies of them.
John: That sounds like an entire college experience.
John: I know, right?
John: I don't read Shakespeare, but I've read people who write about Shakespeare.
John: It made us into who we are.
John: Like, oh, I guess Kramer vs. Kramer's really sad or something?
John: Not like I'm ever going to see it.
John: But then, so I took the Silver Surfer home and I really studied it and I couldn't make any sense of it.
John: Yeah.
John: And couldn't understand why any kid would read it.
John: And I think from then on, anytime I saw someone in a tight costume who was doing super things,
John: I was like, that stuff's too heady.
John: It's over my head.
John: I can't figure it out.
John: It's not for you.
John: Yeah.
John: So even now, you know, Hodgman many, many times would buy me these omnibus collections of...
John: 700 comics and you know ken jennings has a whole wall of his office devoted to a collections of every comic back to before pogo you know does he have a certain kind of comics ken does he have a certain comic that he likes everything he likes every comic book ever made and i think can quote from them all he probably calls it sequential art
John: Well, and he's, you know, the library that he has of just comic books, I just think it's ridiculous.
John: Because it's, you know, it's $200,000 worth of leather bound comic books.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it wouldn't be that much better than somebody saving the Sunday funnies for 60 years.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Remember that time Beatle Bailey had to deal with Sergeant Snorkel and it was really awkward?
John: Remember that?
John: But that's the other thing.
John: I read the daily newspaper comics.
John: Sure.
John: Like my life depended on it.
John: Every morning.
John: So I feel like a comic book, I feel like a person very much...
John: raised by comic art but never uh marvel or dc shall shall pass the threshold of yeah yeah and then you know what oh when i was in college people were like you have got to read uh x-men
John: And X-Men were really blowing up at the time.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And I read X-Men.
Merlin: It was in 1991 and it just rebooted.
Merlin: I think it might still be Uncanny X-Men number one, that reboot of it.
Merlin: I think it might still be the – it's one of the biggest selling single issues of a comic cover.
Merlin: It's like Magneto's back, baby.
Merlin: I feel like it was even earlier than that.
Merlin: Would I have been introduced to X-Men in 86?
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, X-Men were pretty popular in the 80s, and they had a lot of characters that appealed to young people.
Merlin: They'd added people like Jubilee, who likes malls.
Merlin: And, of course, you had Kitty Pryde, one of my favorites, who goes through stuff.
John: I liked her when she was a rapper, too.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Hmm.
John: Kitty Pryde.
John: Hmm.
John: Kitty Pryde was a rapper until they made her stop calling herself Kitty Pryde.
John: Oh, because of the name similarity.
John: Yeah.
John: I can see how that would be confusing.
John: She was just Kitty, but she had a couple of jams.
John: Yeah.
John: But then The Dark Knight.
John: And when The Dark Knight arrived... 86, yeah.
John: Oh, maybe it was The Dark Knight that I saw in 86.
Merlin: Watchmen and Frank Miller's Dark Knight, I think, came out within the same year of each other around 86, I think.
John: And then I understood...
John: the appeal of that because i was i was able to i mean i was 18 i could understand it but also like whoa batman he's dark it's not like he's not like it's this isn't a comic book man this is some dark shit this is serious business but i still wouldn't have crossed the street to pick one up off of the ground i just you know yeah read them when somebody was like making me read them
John: And this may embarrass you.
John: No, not at all.
John: Associated with me.
John: What?
John: But I never read Watchmen.
John: I never saw it.
John: I never even was exposed to it.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Well, I mean, with all of this stuff, it's, I don't know.
Merlin: It's so difficult to take something where, like, you certainly had things in your life where you imprinted on something at a certain age.
Merlin: The timing was right.
Merlin: Not comics, necessarily.
John: A giant eagle.
John: A giant eagle I imprinted on.
Merlin: You imprinted on a giant eagle?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I lived in her desk for two and a half years.
Merlin: It carries you there, drops you off, second breakfast, that kind of eagle?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I never read any of those.
Merlin: Bowls?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's weird, though.
Merlin: It's like you make such an emotional connection with these things.
Merlin: I realize this sounds like a not very apt comparison, but I think it took me a while to realize that I know that I'm not as into sports as other people, and I'm definitely not as into sports culture as other people.
Merlin: But I realized that for a lot of people, you know, something like, look at my wife's family and the Red Sox.
Merlin: where, like, they have quite a history with that.
Merlin: And they're, for that matter, I guess the Patriots, whatever.
Merlin: But, like, that goes back a long way, where, you know, in my case, I can still name a lot of the starting lineup of the Reds from 1975 and 6, because I paid a lot of attention to that.
Merlin: Pete Rose.
Merlin: You got Pete Rose, you got Dave Concepcion, Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo.
Merlin: You got all the biggies.
Merlin: I'm forgetting others.
Merlin: Joe Morgan.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: Anyway, I think part of this is an internet problem, to state the obvious.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's funny.
Merlin: This is apropos of two different things from my day so far.
Merlin: One is listening to a podcast I like a lot where they just started doing a series on a short-lived Japanese director who did anime movies that are really, really good.
Merlin: It's like, are there... Anime and manga, two things, where, like, you're kind of not allowed to get into it because you never do it right, according to everybody.
Merlin: You're watching the dubbed instead of the subbed.
Merlin: No, you should have started here with that.
Merlin: Before you even begin that manga, you've got to read this manga.
Merlin: And, you know, there's just all that stuff where everybody... To use a phrase that... I don't know if it's fallen out of favor, except insofar as it really works, gatekeeping.
Merlin: People who are like, you're not allowed to be into this.
Merlin: You haven't satisfied my...
Merlin: But you have not satisfied my criteria for you being allowed to be into this or say you're into this.
Merlin: Like if I went out today and bought a T-shirt that was related to Fallout, which is, you know, a video game and a TV show, like I bet a lot of people would be like, well, what fall did you play first?
Merlin: And like, you can't just be into a thing because like, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You've got to like, you've got to show your bona fides.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: I think gatekeeping is kind of not a terrible word for that a lot of the time.
Merlin: And that's why it does make me so grateful to people like me.
Merlin: out there doing the work to say, like, hey, if you're potentially interested in this kind of thing, like, here's a good place to start.
Merlin: Like, here's a terrible place to start.
Merlin: And, like, everybody's going to tell you to do this.
Merlin: That's fine.
Merlin: But, like, if you really, like, if you want to get into Nightcrawler, you should start.
Merlin: I could tell you, like, if you want to go all the way back, it's really beneficial to start with this comic from 1975.
Merlin: But I can also give you inroads.
Merlin: Nightcrawler.
Merlin: Sleep in the day.
Merlin: Wait, wait.
Merlin: Is that Judas Priest?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Nightcrawler.
Merlin: Who is it?
Merlin: No, don't tell me.
Merlin: It's better.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You haven't gatekept correctly.
Merlin: You shouldn't even tell me it's music.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, except that the baseball part of it or the sports part of it, I think, becomes important, though, because, like, you know...
Merlin: There's this phrase that I've used, and I think I'm not the first person to use this.
Merlin: You know, there's that phrase you'd hear for years, you're doing it wrong.
Merlin: My slight twist on that is, you know, hey, you're enjoying this wrong.
Merlin: Or even better, you're not enjoying this wrong.
Merlin: Or you're not enjoying it right.
Merlin: I get in conversations with another podcast co-host of mine where I feel like a lot of the times it does come down to either I don't enjoy something right or...
Merlin: I'm not enjoying it right, and I'm also not not enjoying it right.
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Because, like, if I really understood, which I can't.
John: You would not not enjoy it a certain way.
Merlin: But the problem is the goal of that kind of thing.
Merlin: And you've probably seen this in your encounters with people in the military.
Merlin: I bet you've seen this in law.
Merlin: I was doing a deep dive on, as I was falling asleep last night, and I should tell you my two other things.
Merlin: Boy, this is all relevant to this episode.
Merlin: I was thinking a lot last night about jargon, and especially that thing that happens in jargon where something starts as a verb, and then what starts as a noun becomes a verb, and then becomes a different, like...
Merlin: Yeah, you're super riz right now.
Merlin: You're risen.
Merlin: Yeah, that one goes right past me.
Merlin: But like, you used to say, if you wanted to invite someone to something, the transitive verb invite, you would send them an invitation.
Merlin: And then, you know, through software stuff, like, then that kind of became invite.
Merlin: Where you'd say, like, I didn't get an invite for that.
Merlin: I don't hate that one.
Merlin: I think it's weird that it was in Shogun.
Merlin: I don't think they would have said invite in 1600.
Merlin: There's a point where Yabashiga or whatever says he's going to give you an invite to his demo.
Merlin: And I was like...
Merlin: I didn't catch it.
John: It went right past me.
John: Usually that stuff clangs.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: And meanwhile, I'm out here crowing to everybody who will listen about how great the, and actually it is, the process of how that was translated and subtitled is amazing.
John: I really want to hear somebody say like, hey, I invitationed you.
John: But, you know, like you didn't respond.
John: You didn't respond to my – I mean, yeah, use it as invitation, but then somehow have a different form.
Merlin: Well, it's – and the reason I was – and actually, I was on ChatGPT and having a conversation about this, and I was – it wasn't – With ChatGPT?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I ask it things like this.
Merlin: Sometimes it's become like a Google for me in some ways as a starting off point.
John: But you would describe that as a – I was having a conversation.
Merlin: on chat gp but that you mean you were just just me just me and and the chat in the most basic mode i see and and i was i think what i asked was and um is okay talk about this is this boring hey hey chat gp how's it going how's it going how am i doing
Merlin: I don't have an opinion about that.
Merlin: No, you know, I get frustrated.
Merlin: I get frustrated about words sometimes because I don't mean to.
Merlin: I don't think of myself as like exactly a grammarian.
Merlin: Do words matter?
Merlin: Well, I think they do.
Merlin: And I think sometimes...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't need to go on about it.
Merlin: But I get frustrated with stuff like the thing that as I was falling asleep last night and thinking about this, I was trying to think about words.
Merlin: And this is even covered in an version of this that's covered even in Strunk and White updated editions is like the way that hyphens work.
Merlin: where things will start out as two words because they're two words of two different things.
Merlin: So if you wanted to say, for example, how did you receive that message?
Merlin: Well, I received it via electronic mail.
Merlin: Well, that's already, that's very clever, right?
Merlin: Because that's an idea of saying, you know, mail, like that you get at your house.
Merlin: Imagine there was mail, but it was electronic.
Merlin: And you go, oh, that's cool.
Merlin: Electronic mail.
Merlin: And then eventually, you know, that might become electronic dash mail.
Merlin: At a certain point, it became E dash mail.
Merlin: And then, but there's a pattern to those things.
Merlin: And then eventually it becomes email, like no dash.
Merlin: And I was just thinking about what it is that frustrates me about those, again, to use that word, kind of boulderized usages.
Merlin: So, like, there's one that drives me crazy.
Merlin: I do not like it when people say ask as a noun.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, that's my ask?
Merlin: It's usually often styled as that's a big ask.
John: Oh, uh-huh.
Merlin: And, like, I think that's ignorant.
Merlin: I think that's a dumb thing to say, right?
Merlin: Like, you already have other – and, of course, I've written about this.
Merlin: It's online.
Merlin: You can – there's no way to link from this show.
Merlin: But, like, I've got – I've got Merlin Mann's work.
Merlin: I've got a thing on GitHub that's called Usage I Dislike.
Merlin: And it includes things like this.
Merlin: Because, like, I think –
Merlin: Ask becomes jargon in the most cynical way, because unless I'm really super missing something, we already have good words for that.
Merlin: One might be request.
Merlin: Or, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, I'm not going to go into it like super deep here, but let me just give you an example from a couple months or so ago that really nails this jelly to the tree for me.
Merlin: My lady friend, who's in a lot, a lot, a lot of meetings with a lot, a lot of people all the time, a meeting being led by a person, and according to Madeline, this very intelligent, like, person who's leading a team said both – let me get this right –
Merlin: They used solve as a noun and solution as a verb.
John: Show me that.
John: How does solve work as a noun and how does solution work as a verb?
John: Right.
John: I'm going to solution that?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, it's going to be a tough solve.
Oh, wow.
Merlin: And that one really, for me, and I don't know if the listener is understanding what that means or why that bothers me, but let's not make the person sound sillier than they are.
Merlin: You could say something like, you know, we're very, I'm already slipping into the patois, but like, we're very resource constrained this quarter.
Merlin: So staying committed to this project, we need a way to figure out what to do with that.
Merlin: That's going to be a tough solve.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And in order to do that, we should really solution some ideas for how we do that solve.
Merlin: And that one is so beautiful to me in the most twisted way because, you know, to quote John Siracusa, so close.
John: Like, all you had to do was use – They're using the – switch the word.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In that case, all you had to do was use the word that makes sense.
Merlin: Or you could say what you really mean.
Merlin: It's just that part of jargon.
Merlin: And so this is why I said the chat GPT last night as I'm falling asleep and thinking about this stuff.
Merlin: And there's even more.
Merlin: This is all relevant, John.
John: Did you have to wake up chat GPT or was chat GPT doing something else and ready to talk?
Merlin: It's hard to know.
Merlin: Like, it's sort of like, you know, when you're on a phone tree, like, is it really a tree?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You got a tree this solve.
John: Okay.
All right.
Merlin: No, but I'd said, what are some characteristics of jargon?
Merlin: Like, start off just very general.
Merlin: And just kind of drill down, you know, past, there's the in-group stuff, right?
Merlin: And this is all, in some ways, like, the ones that I'm making fun of here or that I'm frustrated about are a kind of business speak.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, there's business speak, there's the kind of, you know, jargon that comes out of finance, right?
Merlin: You know, or, like, think about how many people... What about your communities?
John: Are there jargons that come out of your communities that maybe you're not aware of at first and then you realize?
Merlin: Yeah, no, I think that's entirely possible.
Merlin: I always feel like I'm a stranger in almost every culture.
Merlin: So, like, stuff clangs a little bit for me.
Merlin: But, you know, let's just, you know, you say stuff like that because it's an in-group thing.
Merlin: And, you know, like, when I first got a job working with programmers...
Merlin: And they would use the word functionality.
Merlin: That really drove me crazy.
Merlin: Because I was like, well, can't you just say function?
Merlin: No, it's a functionality.
Merlin: And I mean, there is a difference in that path.
Merlin: I don't hate that one.
Merlin: I think, again, though, if you can find a clearer way to say that in a way that will be sensible to other people.
Merlin: So the theme of all of this that seems incredibly unrelated right now is that there is something to be said for...
Merlin: not something to be said, there's a real thing out there, which is we speak in a way that shows our, there's that, oh God, another wonderful word, a shibboleth.
Merlin: These kinds of things where you're like, I can talk about this thing and you're going to instantly know that I'm on the inside.
Merlin: Like, what was I watching?
Merlin: Oh, I was watching, oh, I think I was watching The Beekeeper with Jason Statham.
Merlin: And the way that he is talking is throwing a shape to these cops.
Merlin: And the cop's like, you police?
Merlin: And he's like, I'm not police now, you know, but like he's the way that he's saying things like describing things are the way that cops talk to each other.
Merlin: And even though I saw what I didn't say was they had just arrested him.
Merlin: And the way that he acted and spoke led them to understand that this guy was probably a cop.
Merlin: Well, like, that's really different from somebody who bought a hat that says FBI on Redbubble, walking around, you know, talking about profiling or whatever.
Merlin: It's you, there's an authenticity to be able to go going straight into the
Merlin: And again, one of the upsides of jargon is there is a specificity to it sometimes.
Merlin: It's just that, as George Orwell talked about over 70 years ago, jargon also has a way of distancing us from what's actually happening.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's just, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I was thinking about it last night and I was thinking about like, what are examples of this that don't bug me or that do bug me?
Merlin: And I was thinking about an example that came, you know, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, you've seen the film, right?
Merlin: There's the wonderful scene that was added really just for Alec Baldwin to perform.
Merlin: And he does that rant with the steak knives and everything.
Merlin: And he says something, I think to Ed Harris about, you know, you think this is, you think this is abuse.
Merlin: This is nothing compared to what you get when you go out on a sit.
Merlin: I got from context clues what that is, right?
Merlin: A sit is when you've arranged to go meet with your mark and try to sell them some real estate, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And that one doesn't drive me crazy so much.
Merlin: It's the ones where it's like, I think what bugs me ultimately is that people stop noticing how much they're doing like in-group speak.
Merlin: Just doing kind of like potentially future dumb guy stuff of just talking in this in that sort of patois And I don't know the stuff like that ever bug you and you ever think about you know, you've been calling this stuff out since we I I was not I was not hip to
John: business speak you're the first person that ever open the kimono type stuff right yeah open the kimono let's drill down on that yeah you all you said all those things to me at the end of the day yeah the first time i ever heard those things and you were already saying them sarcastically to me yeah and when you and i would go out on the town in san francisco back in ye olden times 1880s 1890s yeah yeah one of your ways of like uh
Merlin: trolling dumbasses in bars who would be like, and you would say people in San Francisco, especially at that time really wanted to have a conversation with you, but it was really just the thinnest premise for them to show you how successful they were.
John: yeah right and like and see if they could a status thing yeah yeah and you would hit them with this machine gun gibberish of just like uh hip terms business terms that that strung together meant nothing but it was so convincing you did that thing you know you're talking into your shoe but you did that thing where you're just like hey man i am completely talking to you in your own you know your
Merlin: own dialect you can let your guard down you're you're in a safe space you're with you're with another a fellow bro yeah but but and it was hilarious and you know i'm pretty good at keeping a straight face oh you are oh you're you're very i was about to say wingman i hate that word you you're actually you're very good at things like this and i think in ways that nobody except a single person could have experience of a lot of times you and i were a pretty funny team yeah it was like that
Merlin: Honestly, we had a good time because, you know, I'd be like, so when you can pick up on that, like, again, from context school is like, oh, this guy.
Merlin: Now you can tell he's kind of into it.
Merlin: He might be kind of a douchebag.
John: Yeah.
John: No, you'd wind him up.
John: You'd wind those guys up and they would just be like trying to, you know, they were like, yeah, I'm in.
John: Oh, my God.
John: That was the first time I heard you describe yourself as a ceramicist.
John: I'm a ceramicist.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure where I was going with that.
John: But no, but I was never part of that culture, right?
John: And you were getting a lot of that stuff because you were in the day also transacting with those people.
John: Yes.
John: And so you were cluing me into a thing that now I see because my daughter's mother slash partner was on Zoom calls eight hours a day.
Merlin: Is it weird, though, when you first hear somebody you know well lapse into that patois and it doesn't sound uncomfortable to them at all?
John: Yeah, it's just like, oh, my God, is your head like this all the time?
John: You've been in a room with some weirdos, like, snap out of it.
John: And, uh...
John: Because as you're saying, I think one of the things you probably hate about it is that it's not descriptive of things.
John: It's not helpful.
John: The change in the language gets, it's more obfuscating than it is clarifying.
John: There are already words you could be using to clarify your point, but you're actually trying to mystify what you're saying because there isn't really anything there.
John: There's no center.
Merlin: And so you're just filling the space with words.
Merlin: Honestly, and I'm trying to not be cynical.
Merlin: I'm trying to grow.
Merlin: But honestly, there are times where there are conversations where you're like, this is all rapping and no presence.
Merlin: Like, why don't you just say the thing that you want to say?
Merlin: And it's like, well, maybe they are saying the thing that they want to say.
Merlin: Maybe I'm so far outside of it, in the same way that if I was at some kind of, I don't know, one of those Middle Ages Christian conventions, the Deid of Worms or whatever, if I was at one of those things, they probably had their own jargon that seemed pretty nonsensical that they took very seriously.
Merlin: And that was all about the man in the sky and who his kid was.
John: Well, yeah, they might burn you at the stake if you didn't understand, if you didn't get the inside shibboleths.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Yeah, right, right.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I, I, yeah, I feel more and more, I don't know, like are to the degree that society is splintering.
John: I think there are a lot of people that want society to come back together, but they're not sure how to do it because they don't want to abandon society.
John: all the stuff that they've gathered on their path.
John: They don't realize when they diverge.
Merlin: It's almost like starting a new D&D campaign with a new character.
Merlin: You want to keep all your stuff in your bag of holding and your Vorpal Blade and all that stuff.
Merlin: If you had to set aside even half of the stuff that's your in-group culture, you might not have the same status.
John: Yeah, right.
John: That's exactly right.
John: I mean, you see it as social media has splintered, and there are all these people who had 100,000 followers, and now they have 1,500 followers, and they just migrate back to Twitter, not because it's good, they hate it there, but because they have...
John: They have status there.
John: They have the numbers.
John: And I think what because there's a lot of conversations now happening where people are saying, how do we how do we return to a common culture?
John: How do we stop being so negative online?
John: You know, what is the language we can use?
John: But nobody's conscious of their own group.
John: Or if they are conscious of it, they're like, I would prefer to keep this, and also I think this is best.
John: And that's precisely the part of the division.
Merlin: It's like an Alex de Tocqueville thing, right?
Merlin: Where you kind of need somebody from outside of your group for you to be aware of the extent to which your language and culture is bound up in this in-group stuff, right?
Merlin: Is that part of what you're saying?
Merlin: Part of that cognitive bias is I probably won't or can't know the things that are...
Merlin: My shibboleth drops.
John: It's what we originally said.
John: Remember when the internet was still a dream?
John: I do.
John: And we all said, wait a minute, if the news is targeted at us, we're going to get inside of a bubble.
John: And you could see that in 1997.
John: Like, wait, this idea of, of catering of, you know, of crafting the news and crafting the culture so that it met with your desires.
John: We can see that that was a goal even in the early days.
John: And I think a lot of thoughtful people said, Oh, is that good?
John: Like, what if you just get cranky news or what if you just get news about cats?
John: Like, is that good?
John: Yeah.
John: and that's exactly what happened and it's exactly not good in in the ways that we could that we could foresee 25 years ago all the architects of that let's change the news depending on who's watching it based on what we see they want to see that's a terrible way to to to design a society
John: And it was evident on the front page of what the internet was potentially going to be.
John: And now we're so deep in it that it's just like, well, I've been watching the news that's tailored to me, increasingly tailored at me.
John: For so long that I forgot that other people actually use that word to mean the opposite of what I'm using it to mean.
John: So now I can't even use words talking to other people because I don't know if the word means the same thing to them.
John: If it ever did.
John: Using it wrong is a shibboleth.
John: Like we're using that word incorrectly and that's how you know that you're one of us.
John: Yeah.
John: How are you going to expect somebody that's still using the word correctly to even be able to, I don't know, be in the room?
Merlin: I mean, it's not like all, I mean, I use jargon.
Merlin: I use all kinds of crazy words.
Merlin: I mean, to me, having access to that whole palette is really valuable.
Merlin: We say schmageggly all the time.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But like, you know, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I talk about this stuff so much.
Merlin: I shouldn't be a pill about it.
Merlin: You shouldn't pollute this space with it.
Merlin: I mean, one way to just put it is that I think there's some funny turns out stuff going on with this.
Merlin: One of those turns out things is, oh, yeah, you're just trying to use a word that's fancier.
Merlin: It's like, well, I would disagree.
Merlin: I don't think I'm trying to use a word that's fancier.
Merlin: I think I'm trying to use a word that is more.
Merlin: And then here's an array you can pick that's more precise, more unambiguous.
Merlin: more emotionally evocative, right?
Merlin: There's all kinds of reasons that we choose the words that we do, and that's nominally what makes somebody, at least the passable writer, is knowing les mots just.
Merlin: Like, what is the one that goes here?
Merlin: And so I'm looking here, like, for example, the word experience, which we all use now.
Merlin: Using experience as a verb is, there's a reason we all do it.
Merlin: Partly it's because everybody else does it.
Merlin: It's one thing to say, this is like nothing I've experienced before.
Merlin: That to me is like a fairly passable one.
Merlin: But we're not really that far away, again, to go back to Orwell.
Merlin: At that point, we're not really that far away from we are experiencing technical problems.
Merlin: You're like, no, you broke the internet is what you did.
Merlin: You're not experiencing technical problems.
Merlin: You broke the internet, but you don't want to say you broke the internet.
Merlin: So, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Because experience is that kind of passive voice thing.
Merlin: But it causes other parts of speech to then do extra amounts, unnecessary extra amounts of work.
Merlin: If you could take a step and a half back and say, well, what is it I'm really trying to say here?
Merlin: What is it I'm really trying to get across to somebody?
Merlin: And that's where you could spend another 30 seconds and think about, well, is there...
Merlin: Another way to phrase this, rather than just changing words, right?
Merlin: But is there another way that I could phrase this that would communicate better than just falling, sliding back into this kind of, you know, language evolves, blah, blah.
Merlin: I just – and I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to be a pill about this.
Merlin: People should do what they want.
Merlin: But, like, it's –
Merlin: It's just weird.
Merlin: It's just weird how it gets passed around.
Merlin: Then something suddenly becomes in vogue in every news report, every headline.
Merlin: Right now, the verb that I despise is oust.
Merlin: And if you talk about Mike Johnson, who's the current Speaker of the House...
Merlin: Like when people talk about, yeah, yeah, there's lots of ousting.
Merlin: What does it mean to oust?
Merlin: What the fuck does oust mean?
Merlin: Well, no, you know, oust, like they were forced out.
Merlin: Okay, why didn't you say they were forced out?
Merlin: Were they forced out?
Merlin: Were they fired?
Merlin: Were they removed?
Merlin: Were they recalled?
Merlin: Were they impeached?
Merlin: Were they pressured to quit?
Yeah.
Merlin: What does oust mean?
Merlin: And that's okay if one person did that, but a lot of people do it, and that means a lot more people can do it.
John: Ousting means grabbing someone by both the shirt collar and the underwear band and swinging them back and then defenestrating them.
John: The bum's rush, you call it.
John: That's ousting.
John: And the bum's rush.
John: It's the bum's rush, that's right.
John: I experienced the bum's rush.
John: What you're describing, and I think you see this everywhere, is...
John: that when you try to level society, which we've been doing for the last at least 30 years, probably, oh, I mean, there's always been an element in culture that wants to level society, bring the top down, bring the bottom up.
John: But what you end up with, particularly now, is that what that means is you have to find the level of dumbness that feels fair, right?
John: And so what that means is that the, as dumbness becomes the dominant form, anything you use that's above what is the level of dumbness seems unfair.
John: Like you're saying, what are you, some Mr. Big Fancy?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Somebody might very well say, and honestly, somebody might say, well, why can't you just speak plainly here?
Merlin: Like somebody might say, like if I say, well, you know, I feel like with the way that you're, well, I don't know if I'd use the word dumb, although I would, but like really it's very unsubtle.
Merlin: The way people talk about certain kinds of things can be very, I think, dumb, but a nicer way to put it or a way that still has a lot of usefulness is to say it's not very subtle, it's not very nuanced, it lacks context.
Merlin: People say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but is it a yes or a no?
Merlin: Like, are you for America or not?
Merlin: And you're like, that question does not make a lot of sense and you're changing the subject.
John: Well, because in this leveling, and you saw this on Twitter, there's also an emotional baseline where if people are, you know, what you basically do is have to cater your content, have to cater the things you say to accommodate people that don't understand.
John: your subtlety don't understand the nuance don't understand that you can say something and then also it's opposite and mean both things you can you can have multiple ideas and in one package and increasingly you have to target what you're saying and doing to a level of emotional dumbness including not being able to use the word dumbness even as a joke or as a
John: As a way of saying like, ha, ha, ha, or not ha, ha, ha, but like, this is real, but also I recognize that it is.
John: It's come up with a better term for dumb, maybe leveraged insophistication.
Ha!
John: and that so so we're seeing that across the board in our culture yeah in order to level it in order to make it fair we're increasingly taking all the good stuff and squashing it down so that no buddy who has you know has never read a book is ever going to be confused or alienated or upset
Merlin: And that word choice becomes important because it has that same valence that you get used to or that same emotional heat in some cases.
Merlin: And like that person, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, as they say.
Merlin: Throw them under the bus, Merlin.
John: There's buses all over.
Merlin: There's people all over.
Merlin: I think this does go for everybody.
Merlin: One problem is if you're using social media to communicate with people, you really do have to simplify your message.
Merlin: And you know what I mean?
John: Which is the opposite of what we did at first.
John: At first on social media.
John: Well, yeah, we complicated our messages.
John: Those were all inside jokes.
John: And, you know, that was what was so startling to us.
John: And still so startling.
John: That at first it felt like such a place that you could finally express yourself.
John: And then gradually it became a place where you were really not allowed to express yourself, except in terms that were unambiguous.
Merlin: Well, you couldn't count on people having the context...
John: for like why you would say that at that particular time and yeah there's just all kinds of ways where like i had never watched all in the family well and heard super chunk that's a very you know that's a very that's in my demo that's very watched all in the family didn't see kramer and kramer but got all the references super chunk yeah
John: third Kramer I wrote this I was on I was on threads which I kind of I don't know I don't want to be on there but Instagram that seems the closest thing to like I don't I haven't been on it but my wife is and I know other people are it's the closest to like like Twitter right
John: Yeah, they're pushing me over there all the time.
John: But it was one of those weak moments.
John: I hardly ever post there.
John: But I was sitting in bed and I was thinking about something.
John: And I was like, this is something I would have tweeted at one point somewhere down the line.
John: I don't know.
John: Maybe I'll put it on threads.
John: And I went on there and I said, you know, being excluded really is a terrible feeling.
John: And we've done a lot of work.
John: to make it so that people aren't excluded.
John: But the thing about being excluded is your reaction to being excluded, whether you change what you're doing to fit in, whether you embrace being excluded, whether you comply, whether you resist this, these decisions, when you're being excluded early on in life are, they determine your course.
Merlin: It certainly becomes something like, I feel like, this is really, really silly, but it's almost like you've established a level or established a baseline for like, even, I don't know if you say, is this normal, is it abnormal, whatever.
Merlin: But you establish this idea of maybe like, if you like, what's your comfort zone and what's not your comfort zone.
Merlin: And like you tend to want to defend that area to you want to stay part of the in-group, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And like stuff from the outside that kind of doesn't fit the vernacular, doesn't fit the culture.
Merlin: Like now you've got to like circle the wagons in some ways.
John: but people like me who realized you have a wagon i'm excluded and so i'm just gonna venture off into the forest as part of my reaction to realizing i'm never gonna be i'm never gonna cut it with the people who you know the with the boys that have mustaches in seventh grade and the girls that like them like i'm never gonna cut it with all patches on jean jackets that kind of group
John: and so you know and what i didn't say what i didn't say was
John: we have put so much effort and i think a lot of us it's because those exclusion moments hurt us and we forget the other side of it which is that they made us it's the same as me trying to understand my adhd and going from thinking about it in terms of all the things that caused me to miss out on all the all the business decisions i failed at all the ways that at times you didn't realize it was a superpower because it's all you knew
John: Exactly.
John: And learning to understand it is like, whoa, ADHD totally put me where I am.
John: And without it, my life is incomprehensible.
John: So why would I choose to just see it as a failure or a fault?
John: It's also true about being excluded.
John: Like, yeah, you can feel that pain the rest of your life and you can, and you can do everything you can to keep your kid or all kids from ever being excluded again.
John: But you're not seeing that being excluded is what turned you into whoever you are.
John: and to deprive people of exclusion and that's a weird thing to say because we only use the word inclusion but to deprive people of the experience of being excluded and then fighting for who they are somehow in that is a thing we it's just one of these things that we don't we don't think about it because we don't think about being excluded as a
John: as like a foundational, like soul-changing event.
Merlin: And also like what we do to sometimes, not always, but sometimes what we do to increase inclusion and to theoretically minimize exclusion is sometimes extremely unrealistic.
Merlin: And I'm thinking now about this video, this...
Merlin: Who was it?
Merlin: Maggie Mae Fish did a really good video about vaping ads and how anti-vaping ads are so desperately uncool.
Merlin: It really seems like it's to encourage you to vape.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: That's not as far from the first time that something like that has happened.
Merlin: But there are times where you've had to wonder in the past, like, gosh, did those settlements in the 80s and 90s lead to like deliberately making commercials that made kids who don't smoke look like dorks?
Merlin: There can be inclusion and exclusion because we're talking about different kinds of inclusion and exclusion.
Merlin: There's a big one.
Merlin: There's an elephant in the room that's difficult to get around.
Merlin: Things like America's fraught history with race and class and the class of race.
Merlin: But you also could be honestly talking about becoming a different kind of nerd.
Merlin: I think about when I started at New College and all through high school, I thought I was the smartest person in the world.
Merlin: And I thought I was the weirdest person in the world, which sounds like I'm trying to puff myself up.
Merlin: Well, that was just to like make it through the day.
Merlin: I felt very out of whatever was happening.
Merlin: I did not feel part of much in high school.
Merlin: And the way that came out, because I had the, you know, I didn't have anybody to, as you said, on the first day we met, you said, Merlin, there's nothing wrong with you that couldn't be solved by one good ass kicking.
Merlin: And I do think about that a lot.
Merlin: But then I arrived at New College and I felt like the dumbest person that had ever been in the city of Sarasota.
Merlin: And I felt like the least weird or put differently, the least interesting person.
Merlin: Everything I had, David Sedaris has talked about this.
Merlin: Lots of people talked about this.
Merlin: Like your first day in art school, you discover there's like 40 other people that are you except better and from New York.
Merlin: And it's like, I'm from Central Florida.
Merlin: And like listening to The Cure is not actually that much of an act of cultural defiance.
Merlin: So, like, you know, there's all kinds of inclusion and exclusion.
Merlin: At the end of the day, I'm a white guy, which helps with a lot of things.
Merlin: But I do take your meaning, even in the nerd area, where you would be like, well, it's like my friends who went to law school before they realized they didn't like lawyers.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And that caused them, that forced, that became a crucible, I feel like, for them having to figure out what a different application of that would be.
Merlin: But it's hard to talk about because it can be pretty awful.
Merlin: But it also just the fear of loss.
Merlin: which humans are so, especially Americans, are so subject to.
Merlin: Like, fear of loss over so many other things.
Merlin: Like, the way, I said circle your wagons earlier, but just the way that you, like, if you, like, go to the mattresses to, like, defend this certain kind of thing.
Merlin: And I'm not going to make it silly by saying that could be a Korean pop band or whatever.
Merlin: It could be fucking anything.
Merlin: It's certainly happening in politics, but that's too much to get into.
Merlin: But it's just, it's difficult...
Merlin: To you can't give somebody when you want a recipe for green bean casserole, you just want to know how many cans of green beans, green beans, how much turkey onion, how much you don't want to read the whole story.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I know that's a controversial thing, but I think it applies here because I think I'm here to make a treat from my childhood.
Merlin: The person who's writing that says, oh, I heard that if I put in a lot of anecdotes and make the post longer, it's more likely to do well in Google search.
John: Well, and they also are like my anecdote from my childhood.
Merlin: Yes, it's very on brand.
Merlin: It's got to be part of your like your brand as like whatever your name is like country mama or whatever.
John: But I think I think that a lot of us want to think and want to live in a world where every kid that's in theater in high school is there because of their affinity.
John: And everybody joins theater because it's what they want.
John: And it's their beautiful course, right?
Merlin: Could it also be there because, like, this person plays tuba because they're good at tuba more than anything else.
Merlin: This person acts in dramas because they're better at doing dramas than other kinds.
Merlin: But something where you find a fit, right?
Merlin: Like, you find your place.
Merlin: Well, I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but that's that's what's presented is like, hey, you better go to woodshop because you're the kind of kid that would really do great in woodshop.
John: There's that.
John: But, you know, like I remember an article or an interview with Charlize Theron where she said.
John: I had the worst time in high school.
John: Everybody hated me.
John: I was an ugly duckling.
John: I hated everything about it.
John: And I ended up in theater because it was the only place I could go.
John: I ended up acting because I had no friends.
John: I had no social life.
John: I was so awkward.
John: And I was basically forced into theater because it was the only place I could be.
John: And that's the opposite of let's make the world so that everybody can do whatever they want.
John: It's awfully close to seating somebody at the frat mixer over by Mohammed.
John: Right, exactly.
John: Like, here you go.
John: You belong over here.
John: You belong at the bottom of the barrel with these other weirdos.
John: You belong with the losers, right.
John: And the idea in my own life, like if I had at the age of seven been able to pick...
John: everything and be included everywhere i would be a fireman now or a lawyer and at and somewhere along the line between fireman and lawyer both of those ambitions got i didn't choose a better path those both got shut down for me close i was closed off
Merlin: Can I ask why you say that?
Merlin: What made you think that that was not doable?
Merlin: Just your grades weren't there, that kind of thing?
John: Yeah, I mean, I was told if you're going to be a success in life, it goes like this.
John: And at each juncture, I was not a success.
Merlin: Were you getting that more from your parents or the school or where was that?
John: The whole world.
John: No one ever wants in my life, and I don't know if this happened to you, but no one ever suggested, hey, you know what?
John: Go out in the world, you'll be fine.
John: You're a good kid.
John: You're smart.
John: You're not cutting it in the straight world.
John: But you know what?
John: It's a big world, and San Francisco's there, and LA is there.
Merlin: But that gets presented to you as this one-two punch of, hey, you know how you suck at everything and nobody wants you to be here?
Merlin: Stick with it.
Merlin: We're like, oh, wait, so what?
Merlin: What am I supposed to do?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You know, all that stuff you're just useless at.
Merlin: You better keep doing it and you're bad at it, but keep doing it because that's your only hope.
John: And it boils down to.
John: Just keep saying that.
John: If you don't get into a good college, then you will never be middle class.
John: And if you're not middle class, your only option is to be is to fall out the bottom of the world.
John: and to be a manual laborer or whatever.
John: I mean, they didn't even specify.
John: It was just like, there's one path.
Merlin: No, no, no, because the point was not to, I mean, forgive my getting my dander up about this, but this is actually just talked about this pretty recently on a different show.
Merlin: It's like, it's not, they're not doing that to help you.
Merlin: That is in no way, like they think.
Merlin: Although they think they were.
Merlin: Well, I think they think it sounds like it.
Merlin: Just like the way the parents talk to their kids sounds like it's helping.
Merlin: But like, you're like, wait, wait, so what's my action item here?
Merlin: And you're like, actually, your action item is live up to your potential.
John: And you're like, get better.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Like, but, but also remember, it's already too late.
Merlin: You've already lost your, you've lost your window for being very good at something.
Merlin: And now just try to make yourself something more than like a burden on the state.
John: Well, and I saw the result of my, of my life reflected in other people's eyes because I stayed close with a couple of my teachers and some of my high school friends.
John: And so I lived to be able to walk my high school English teacher who became the principal of the school.
John: I was able to walk him through a club and
John: when he was in his seventies and had come to Seattle to, and, and had intentionally met me for dinner.
John: And then I said, why don't you come over to the show box?
John: There's a show and I'm going to do a thing.
John: And I went through the club with him.
John: And, and this, this was at a time when everybody in Seattle was like, Hey man.
John: And you know, beautiful people hanging on me.
John: And then I'm up on the stage, like, Hey everybody.
John: And everybody's like, hi John.
Yeah.
John: And had this experience of like, hey, high school English teacher who both had my back and also never told me that the world was big and that I would be a success.
John: High school English teacher.
Merlin: But it's kind of like when Vito brings his family back to Corleone.
Merlin: And it's like, hey, it's a stupid kid that can't talk and he's really dumb.
Merlin: And now he's done really well and he's selling olive oil.
Merlin: Hey, look at you.
Merlin: You were supposed to be a piece of shit.
Merlin: How did that happen?
John: Grab him by the cheek.
John: And then I walked him back to my hotel and he was, you know, he was boggled.
John: And he just said, I just never could have foreseen that by your method of like...
John: basically fighting everybody, but with a big shit-eating grin on your face, that somehow you would be here in a place that, how does this even exist?
John: And by that point, I was 20 years sober.
Merlin: But he got to see people, and this is your telling of the story, but it seems reasonable, but that person got to see you
Merlin: Who that person knew as kind of the same person, but different person.
Merlin: But, like, think about all those little things that were blown right past.
Merlin: That person saw people – this sounds so corny, but there were people who were happy to see you that night.
Merlin: There were people who, in the way that they behaved, seemed to like and respect what you did.
Merlin: And, you know, you don't have to be –
Merlin: an anthropologist with extensive knowledge of the tribe to be able to walk in and go, oh, this person's got some wuffy here.
Merlin: Like, this person is respected and liked and whatever.
Merlin: Or, like, not despised.
Merlin: If you walk into a bar, a club, and people want to talk to you, that's a pretty good sign that, like, you are on the plus side
Merlin: Of that.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: But like, that must be so weird for that teacher to come in and go like in a good way.
Merlin: But like, man, it's neat to see you even whether that's theater or whether that's Dungeons and Dragons, whether that's the comic store, whatever it is.
Merlin: But there's somebody where you're like, oh, you found a little bit of a place here.
Merlin: And I never would have guessed that knowing what we knew in the 1980s.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I didn't get into any kind of good school in order to become a professional person.
John: I did not become a teacher or a professor or lawyer or doctor or a businessman.
John: And in fact, when I landed in Seattle and started playing rock, I was completely rejected by the rock establishment.
John: Nobody in that world liked me.
John: And then you then you leaned into that.
John: And leaned into it.
John: The Bunn family players are a reaction in some ways.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: Oh, you think that's weird?
John: You think that's weird?
John: My band's called the Bunn family players.
John: And our songs each have three time signature changes.
John: So try dancing to that, fuckface.
John: But somehow, you know, by the time I was in my 30s, it all kind of coalesced.
John: And that was not a thing even I could have seen.
John: When I think about the decisions I made at age 28, a lot of them were based on...
Merlin: Because you're still responding to shit people said to you when you were eight.
Merlin: You don't slough off.
Merlin: God, this is obviously a huge thing for me.
Merlin: I am obviously going through something with this.
Merlin: Whether it's a little bit of trauma, it's a little bit of a lot of things.
Merlin: But one of those things is, holy shit, you guys, like you gave me all of this massive amount of cultural data.
Merlin: All these data that I'm meant to put in the right order, never do anything.
Merlin: But somehow I missed the message.
Merlin: You got your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, usually women, your family, who are like, you're a very special little guy and you're going to do great.
Merlin: You'll be handsome one day.
Merlin: Someday you'll be handsome.
Merlin: You'll look like less of a scowl.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: One day your looks will be appreciated.
Merlin: You know, one day you're going to find somebody who thinks that's normal.
Yeah.
John: But, but you know, like one of the effects when I was 29, my girlfriend was 24 and she loved music, but she would say things to me like, why do you, why, why are you trying to get shows?
John: Like, why do you need to be on stage to get other people's approval?
John: Like, why are you trying to get your name in the newspaper?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Why aren't you satisfied?
Merlin: That's such an interesting question, though, real quick, though.
Merlin: It's such an interesting question because, like, I'm sure you could answer that, but it's also a little bit, like, you knock you off guard a little bit, like, oh, well, like, I need to, like, talk about this on a different level than I'm used to talking about this, right?
John: Well, and I didn't at the time.
John: What she was saying is, why don't you, why aren't I sufficient for you?
John: Oh, really?
John: Okay.
John: Why is your ambition not to just have a little house with me with window boxes full of flowers where I adopt three-legged dogs and you work a respectable kind of job that's humble.
John: We can't name them all, Trey.
John: And that we...
John: And that we love each other.
John: Why is that not enough for you?
John: Why do you have to go out and try and be somebody like that's so shallow was her point.
John: And at the time I had no confidence that I ever would be somebody.
Merlin: Yeah, and wasn't some part of your response like, what?
Merlin: Like, are you kidding me?
Merlin: This is such a small pond.
John: Well, and the thing is, what I tried to say to her was like, this is what I want.
John: I want to be a voice in the world.
John: I want to have people listen to me.
John: I want to be in the newspaper.
John: Like, I don't understand why you think it's shallow.
John: I mean, I do.
John: It's not very... All the grunge artists at the time were like, we don't even want fame, man.
John: And she...
John: kind of bought that hook, line, and sinker.
John: And I mean, it's very punk rock.
Merlin: As they continue to, in some cases, have a staff of people that did press coverage for them.
John: Yeah, she was like, oh, why don't you like Slater Kinney who doesn't want?
John: And I was like, Slater Kinney spends four hours a day in photo shoots.
John: Have you ever seen them?
John: There's like nine pictures of them in this magazine, and they're wearing all different clothes every time, and it's a great photograph.
John: Do you know how long that takes?
John: That takes a whole day, man.
John: But she and I were constantly in this argument where what I wanted was shallow to be somebody.
Merlin: Did she see it as you want to be apart from everybody else and revered?
John: No, what she thought was correct and true was to be a humble, loving person.
John: You said it really well.
John: Why am I not enough for you?
John: Why is she not enough?
John: And the form that that took was that she was trying to portray my actual ambitions.
John: to me as like a compensating i mean we grew up in an era of pop psychology which i i really wish would come to a close well we definitely came of age i will speak for myself i came of age at a time when the i used to call it the pink section of the bookstore got a lot bigger
Merlin: All that relationship advice, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, all the business books, that was exploding in the mid to late 80s.
John: And our tendency – It was everywhere.
John: Absorbing it.
John: I mean, the number of times I sat in a grade school, junior high, and high school guidance counselor's office while they tried to analyze my behavior.
John: Why are you doing – why do you have a fear of failure?
John: Why do you have a fear of success?
John: Why?
John: What, what happened in your childhood that makes you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And what she was doing was analyzing me and concluding that there was something in me, some missing piece, some, some hurt child that was seeking approval from the world.
John: And that to heal, I needed to find that in myself so I wouldn't need to have my name in the newspaper.
Merlin: You're drinking salt water from her point of view, right?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You're taking this problem and making it worse by a non-solution instead of trying to get at the thing that she would say needs to be there.
Merlin: Your fix, if you like.
John: Yeah, this is DSM-4, right?
John: DSM-3 said that if you're a homosexual, it's because your mom didn't nurse you or something.
John: They eliminated that by DSM-4.
John: But DSM-4 said that it's a pathology to want to, well, to not be content with your own self-righteousness.
John: and your whatever your humble ambitions are now dsm sounds like something from a from a church meeting house in the 1700s also yeah like why can't you just be happy with what god has provided you and what happened was and that's because at the time there was no sign
John: That I would make a living as a musician that I would succeed as a creative person that I would ever have my name in the newspaper.
John: Like there had been no interviews.
John: I had never published anything that I wrote.
John: I had never successfully made a thing.
John: And so as she said those things to me, they mated with the things they told me in school.
John: Like, you're not cutting it.
John: You can't do this.
John: There's no place for you if you don't get on board.
John: I mean all this in the most encouraging way.
John: But, you know, hey, listen, kid.
John: There's hardly a chance that you're going to take all this advice and become an alcoholic.
Yeah.
John: but but it wasn't until five or six years later that i was like wait a minute my name rings out i mean people are buying my album and i am in the newspaper and i don't first of all i don't feel any better so it has not successfully filled whatever hole but also i'm realizing like i didn't have a hole to fill i had things to say and those are the polar opposite
John: Like whatever reason I had things to say, it isn't that I wasn't nurtured.
John: You know, it's not, I don't have things to say because I'm hurt.
John: I have things to say because I'm smart or because I'm here to do that.
John: I was put on this earth not to rescue three-legged dogs named Trey One, Trey Two, and Trey Three.
John: Trey Three.
John: Poor Trey Three.
John: I was put here to say what I had to say.
John: And, you know, and when I had success, no one could have foreseen it.
John: You know, none of the people that went to high school with me, they all, well, whether they foresaw it or not, they all acted astonished that I had not ended up, you know, working at an oil change place.
John: but that somehow all of that fucked up stuff that i did added up to me still be you know like still being the same person and yet there yet there was a place for me in the war yeah uh and and and so much of that was the result uh i mean how could i be me and not have gone through that like what if instead of that
John: I had been, uh, what nurtured by those same people that still didn't understand me, but felt culturally obligated to
John: give me an A, right?
John: Or to, like, tell me that I was good.
Merlin: If you, in a general way, said, I need to now make my entire effort in life to be about undisappointing all the people who are clearly disappointed in me.
Merlin: That's kind of what it comes down to.
Merlin: I mean, seriously, though, right?
Merlin: I mean, there are people who do care about you, and they're like, oh, I would love for you to be a doctor or a lawyer.
Merlin: Well, even when you say that, what you're really saying is, well...
Merlin: Yeah, I'm not really that interested in what in who you are or what you've been or what you're becoming or it's just it's a purely practical thing of like I just I need to be able to brag about you over lunch.
John: Right.
John: Well, and also I need to send you out without feeling guilty about you not having been treated.
John: uh well also like leveled right you got treated the same as everybody and and your special problems got sort of compensated for but i would hit the world at that point
John: And would have had no sense of, you know, I wouldn't have been fighting the world already for eight years.
John: And so I would have hit the world and the world's not interested, you know, the actual world, not interested in what my needs are.
John: But I wouldn't have had all that training to be like, A, adults are untrustworthy, B, they're also mean, and C, they're dumb.
John: So if adults are untrustworthy, mean, and dumb, I feel like that's pretty good training.
Merlin: For a really long time, regardless of how smart and useful the message is, that's where they excelled.
Merlin: That's where the generations above mine excelled, is they could say bullshit, but it was so consistently said and so broadly shared that even the things that weren't bullshit kind of started to feel like bullshit.
Merlin: And if you were able to achieve some kind of escape velocity from the world they've decided you deserve to be in because of your sin or whatever, like, you achieved escape velocity in a way they couldn't have anticipated because they didn't care about what you loved and who you were.
John: And you know what?
John: All my teachers were boomers.
John: and they all had narratives about themselves that they had protested the war that they had you know they had changed everything we got yeah they were exactly yeah and also you know why can't you have a house like me they had overthrown their parents uh greatest generation stodginess and
John: and you know fixated culture and they were the ones that had you know that had blown up they made something out of the new frontier john camelot they did i know it sounds a bit bizarre they got the right direction in the new frontier yes um are you about to quote a donald fagan song
John: But what you're saying here, this is kind of at the heart of my lifelong hatred of the boomers, too.
Merlin: I might send you a bill.
Merlin: I think this is really helping a lot for you.
John: You're learning about the role of Donald Fagan and all of that?
John: Yeah, well, and the thing is, Donald Fagan is one of the boomers you can trust.
John: Yes, there's gas in the car.
John: All right.