$10 off tix for my special taping in NYC on Sunday 4/21. Come/tell friends! And I’ll be in NOLA on Friday night doing two shows. Also performing in Belgium and Holland in May. Ticket info for all that here.

Poly people are so exhausting

The media keeps going gaga over poly folks. The latest example: Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule (NY Times). It starts with this sentence:

The word “polycule” is a synthesis of polyamory — engaging in multiple romantic relationships — and molecule.

And this photo:

And it just gets more insufferable from there.

Look, it’s not the sex that’s the problem. I’m fine with consenting adults doing whomever they please. It’s the way these people talk. You’d have to learn an entirely new language just to survive in their group chat.

A few terms they toss around in this piece: heteroflexible, femme-presenting person, metamours, nesting partner, poly-saturation, compersion, transmasc, and relationship anarchist. Because being polyamorous now requires being a polyglot too. (Note: They’re based in Cambridge, Mass…because of course they are.) But what if someone didn’t major in gender-studies theory? Ain’t dumb people allowed to screw around too?

The term “ethical non-monogamy” always seemed a bit suspect. The “ethical” in there reminds me of someone who keeps insisting they’re your friend: If it was true, you probably wouldn’t have to keep telling me.

To be fair, I’m biased about all this since I’ve always had a hard time finding one person who wants to have sex with me, much less dozens. My ongoing reaction to poly folks: “We get it, you’re desirable.”

These horny language/relationship anarchists are slippery too. “I identify anywhere from femme to nonbinary, depending on the day,” says Nico. I like to imagine her checking her calendar each morning. “Taco Tuesday is fun, but it ain’t got nothing on Heteroflexible Friday!”

Then there’s Robert (Ann’s husband) who was bummed when Ann “started seeing this dude who was an absolute stud, having sex with him and having a great-ass time.” But don’t worry. Robert’s cool with it now. He says, “Lots of tears were shed. But medication helped me.”

I must be brainwashed by the patriarchy ‘cuz that scenario sounds an awful lot like this…

Robert: You’re my wife. I’m not cool with you having great sex with this stud.
Ann: Here, take this medication.
[Problem solved!]

Someone please let Robert know the medicine he may actually need is a divorce. Because imagine living with a person who talks like this:

Ann My husband, my nesting partner, is the person I own a home with. I also have life-partnership friends, I call them my wives, who are core members in the polycule. One of their husbands is one of my best friends and occasional sexual partner, and I do have sex with my wives, but we’re not romantically involved. But I love them.

Ugh. Listening to her talk makes me want to vote Republican.

And then there’s the workload involved. So. Many. Rules. I can’t stand group chats (I’m trés Larry David that way) and their’s seems like a true nightmare:

Katie In the polycule, it ranges from people who really don’t have rules to we’re only going to date people together or we’re going to participate in the group only as friendships, or as sensual friendships, or we’re only going to be sexually intimate at gatherings, and outside of that we’re not going to date anyone individually. We keep track in group chats.

Sounds like taking on a second job where your boss is your genitals.

See, I can barely handle a five-person group chat about an upcoming vacation so lord knows I’d be pulling my hair out if I was in some WhatsApp group named “Polycuties” or whatever. (Also: It’d have to be weird/dyed/asymmetrical hair since that seems to be a requirement for the ‘cule too.)

Also, the scheduling seems neverending. All these poly people should teach a productivity course ‘cuz I have no idea where they find the time. I’ve never been horny enough to wanna start a spreadsheet, y’know?

But I shouldn’t criticize them too much. Turns out they’re doing it for the people. Katie says, “I hope this is a social movement.” And Ann goes even further (typical Ann!): “It is very much about social change. It is about making the world a better place.”

Making the world a better place, eh? Where have I heard that kinda talk before? Oh yeah, it was in the BS mission statement of every lame-o tech company a decade ago.

See, the specialty of overeducated elites nowadays is behaving like a narcissist while claiming to be Ghandiesque. They want to act selfishly while being praised for their selflessness.

It reminds me of Sam Bankman-Fried touting the benefits of effective altruism in public while talking in private about how "we woke westerners" play a game where "we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us." He kept telling us he was making all that money so he could give it away and change the world for the better. And we all saw how that turned out.

Poly people should get it on with whomever they want. After all, it’s nice to see someone being the antidote to the sex recession.

But they really gotta try doing it without sounding like a jargon-filled Reddit forum, Facebook’s 2017 mission statement, and/or effective altruists who launder money via wire fraud. Otherwise, the rest of us might wind up thinking they’re actually just a bunch of egotistical horndogs who also get off on wearing the mask of being a “social change agent.” And no one wants to fall in love with that.

Let’s remember there’s another path available for couples who want to sleep around: Pretend you're French, have an affair, and shut the hell up about it.

It’s you and me versus the algorithm, baby. Subscribe and we can win…

Quickies

🎯 People say all you really need is the respect of your peers and I'm here to tell you that's worth less than you think.

🎯 I would definitely be the kind of woman who does her makeup on the train.

🎯 Houston is interesting...somehow it's a place where p0rn and weed are illegal yet everyone carries a gun and is on coc@ine. Go figure.

🎯 Religion is the opiate of the masses and, after looking around, I've come to the conclusion it must be some goooooood sh*t.

🎯 Re: OJ…

🎯 Scientific studies are for suckers. I trust my eyes and whatever men with muscles say on podcasts.

🎯 MAGA people keep talking about how much they're getting left behind yet somehow keep ponying up rivers of cash to Trump's campaign and out here buying Truth Social stock, bibles, etc. Weird. People who are truly suffering don't usually have this much disposable income.

🎯 Remember how much we all made fun of bloggers? I feel like we should take that back now that we've seen the alternative.

🎯 "I went to an Ivy League school" = Penn or Cornell, every time. Harvard and Yale peeps just gonna come right out and tell ya (usually within the first 30 seconds).

🎯 Should we separate the A.I. from the artist?

🎯 Amazing how dating apps elevate “bad at texting” to “someone I would never consider dating.” As if clever texting is some huge predictor of compatibility as opposed to just a weird parlor trick version of personality. Many of the most interesting people I know suck at texting because it’s really just a text-based video game and wise people know video games are merely a time suck.

🎯 A reason comedy crowdwork clips are so popular is genuine human interaction is increasingly rare: "Look at these strangers talking to each other. What's THAT like?"

🎯 I feel like we’re not giving Howard Stern enough credit for what the whole world is now doing on podcasts. The guy somehow rules a medium he doesn’t even participate in…King of All Media fo’ real.

🎯 Life hack: Make sure you ignore this quote…

“A life that is worth living has no shortcuts.”
-Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Comedy

🃏 See my tour dates.

🃏 More jokes, info, and clips of my standup via my social media: Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and YouTube.

🃏 My other newsletter is Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian. It’s all about the craft of standup.

🃏 Listen to my podcast: Kind of a Lot with Matt Ruby.

5-spotted

Everyone’s a sellout now. “So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?”

Even when you land the record deal or have a few hit songs, you’re still stuck on the treadmill of constant self-promotion. “Next thing you know, it’s been three years and you’ve spent almost no time on your art,” he tells me. “You’re getting worse at it, but you’re becoming a great marketer for a product which is less and less good.”

David Byrne on LA:

When the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards.

Neil Strauss’ 10 Simple Steps To The Perfect Interview.

Whenever possible, don’t start the interview right away. Talk or spend a little time with the subject so they can get comfortable with you. Even if you’re just silently observing them do something else, that’s fine. Think of the subject like a cat: If you approach a cat too quickly, it will run away; let the cat get comfortable with your presence, and it will approach you. (Bonus tip: For celebrities, a common rookie mistake is to ignore the handlers and entourage as soon as the celebrity gets close. Don’t do that: Treat everyone with the same level of focus, interest, and engagement.)

Derek Thompson: ”The diabolical opposite of a religious ritual: the smartphone.”

As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in his new book, The Anxious Generation, to stare into a piece of glass in our hands is to be removed from our bodies, to float placelessly in a content cosmos, to skim our attention from one piece of ephemera to the next. The internet is timeless in the best and worst of ways—an everything store with no opening or closing times. “In the virtual world, there is no daily, weekly, or annual calendar that structures when people can and cannot do things,” Haidt writes. In other words, digital life is disembodied, asynchronous, shallow, and solitary.

Religious rituals are the opposite in almost every respect. They put us in our body, Haidt writes, many of them requiring “some kind of movement that marks the activity as devotional.” Christians kneel, Muslims prostrate, and Jews daven. Religious ritual also fixes us in time, forcing us to set aside an hour or day for prayer, reflection, or separation from daily habit. (It’s no surprise that people describe a scheduled break from their digital devices as a “Sabbath.”) Finally, religious ritual often requires that we make contact with the sacred in the presence of other people, whether in a church, mosque, synagogue, or over a dinner-table prayer. In other words, the religious ritual is typically embodied, synchronous, deep, and collective.

Carolyn Hax: Parents must accept that kids can’t learn to handle pain without feeling pain.

They need to get frustrated, lonely, rejected, talked about, betrayed, misunderstood. They need an unfair grade, some misplaced blame, a few dashed hopes and some incredible disappearing homework, especially if they spent hours on it. They need to get cut from the team (and hear their parents not blame the coach).

They need this because every life has some element of frustration, loneliness, rejection, mistreatment, misunderstanding, raw deals, disappointment, disaster and dream-crushing. And after that comes Tuesday.

Thanks for reading. Please share with a friend or sign up for the paid plan or kiss someone you dig for me.

-Matt