If you needed further proof about how meaningless the terms “woke” and “cancel culture” have become, look no further than Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers doubling down on how he’s been “immunized.” It mighta been the weakest defense I’ve seen from a football player – and I’m a Jets fan so that’s saying something.

Rodgers:

I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now, so before the final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I’d like to set the record straight on some of the blatant lies that are out there about me now.

Then, he went on to most definitely not set the record straight in a way that made me crave a filmed sitdown between Rodgers, Kyrie, and an actual medical professional; I trust Rodgers’ opinion on vaccines as much as I trust Fauci’s strategy for attacking a Cover Two defense.

These jocks spin words in a way that’s barely sensical. I wonder if some doofus out there is gonna use this excuse to explain why he doesn’t want to wear a condom:

I believe strongly in bodily autonomy and the ability to make choices for your body, not to have to acquiesce to some woke culture or crazed group of individuals who say you have to do something. Health is not a one-size-fits-all for everybody.

The only way this could get dumber is if Weird Al recorded a song parody to “In Your Eyes” with the chorus changed to “Immunize.”

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

Aaron Rodgers/"In Your Eyes" but it's "Immunize" 🎶 Immunize I'm in my cleats Immunize Throw's incomplete Immunize Avoid the hallway to a thousand nurses Immunize The woke mob & their fruitless curses Immunize I see Joe Rogan & his elk meat Immunize I want to be that complete 🎶

November 8th 2021

You know America is in a sunken place when Howard Stern (!) is the closest thing we’ve got to a levelheaded voice of reason.

Rodgers also revealed he received COVID-19 advice from podcast host Joe Rogan, a fact Stern mocked.

"You've got doctors who study in medical school," Stern said. "I don't know what has happened to this country."

Stern also suggested that the "next time this f--- head gets injured on the field, they should bring in Joe Rogan to fix the bones."

“It was the wokes”

The new playbook for any rich/powerful/famous person held accountable for their actions is to pull out some combo of “woke,” “cancel culture,” and “witch hunt” and let their stans applaud while they refuse to take questions. It’s a bummer since there are plenty of valid reasons to attack wokeness/cancelitis. Batya Ungar-Sargon did a good job outlining some of them on CNN:

Brian Stelter @brianstelter

Short clips of my interview with @bungarsargon have been making the Twitter rounds. So here's the entire segment. She began by saying "it's very brave to have me on," so I asked why...

November 8th 2021

68 Retweets369 Likes

And a few months back, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explained, in an elegant takedown, how she found the “hypocritical, self-regarding, compassion-free behavior” behavior of young wokes obscene.

In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.

I find it obscene.

It’s gorgeous writing (read the whole piece for more) and I nodded my head while reading.

Yet something still feels tiresome about the anti-wokes and their rote complaining about, well, other people complaining. (Yes, I’m complaining about people complaining about other people complaining. Hakuna matata!) Even the most articulate of them – Dave Chappelle, Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss, John McWhorter, etc. – sound like they’re singing some variation of “get off my lawn.” (Related: Want to go to college but definitely don't wanna get laid? Then consider the University of Austin!) It’s basically a cottage industry nowadays: Attack the wokes 👉 Turn on paid subscriptions at Substack 👉 Monetize! Even though I frequently agree with their arguments (McWhorter is especially sharp), I find it dull, whiny, and one-notey.

Who do you love?

Years ago, comedian Patton Oswalt gave an interview where he preached the value of focusing on things you love instead of hate when performing standup comedy.

As you get older, I don’t think anger and comedy mesh at all. I remember Chris Rock telling me, ‘Don’t get mad, get funnier.’ Getting mad doesn’t help you as a comedian. Anger eventually cancels out comedy. I think what you have to do is find the things that delight you, and if you really push the things that delight you, then the things or people that piss you off, it just makes them angry. If people you don’t like or people that you disagree with, if they see you on stage pissed off and angry, that’s actually kind of reassuring. Because they’re like, ‘I’m getting to that guy.’ But if you’re on stage, and instead of cursing what you hate, you’re celebrating the alternative and making that seem better, that’s what drives your enemies bugfuck. That’s what just drives them into the red.”

Author James Clear argues for a similar approach in Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds.

Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy. As one Twitter employee wrote, “Every time you retweet or quote tweet someone you’re angry with, it helps them. It disseminates their BS. Hell for the ideas you deplore is silence. Have the discipline to give it to them.”

Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Don't waste time explaining why bad ideas are bad. You are simply fanning the flame of ignorance and stupidity.

So what would it look like to take this approach re: cancel culture? Is there a way to discuss young wokes that offers aspiration instead of condemnation?

To that end, I decided to invert Adichie’s rant and wrote a version that, instead of bitching about how the kids have lost their way, models idealized behavior. (Full credit to Adichie for her framing which I totally ripped off):

It would encourage me to see more of this in young people today: A hunger to give and give and give; a lack of entitlement; an ability to show gratitude; an avoidance of pretension and selfishness; an obsession with truth that is revealed in direct language; an expectation to only be helped or rewarded when it is deserved, language that is mundane but possesses great emotional intelligence; a lack of self-absorption; a realistic expectation of wrongdoing from others; an accurate sense of one’s own talent (or lack thereof); an ability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; virtue executed in friendship and not performed on social media. I’d find that nourishing. 

I’d like to see people who rarely use social media who are overflowing with compassion, who can actually show kindness without pontificating about it on Twitter. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, matter most. People who love messy stories about humanity and ignore the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who support their friends even if it means they’re ostracized from the purity class. People who never ask you to ‘educate’ yourself and instead focus on their own learning, reading books so they can intelligently defend their ideological positions. People who do not want you to parrot what they say and who seek nuance because they understand life is complex.  People who avoid a simplistic mix of abstraction and orthodoxy – who want to show how their views are distinct from the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. 

People who accurately assess threats without inflating them. People who speak clearly, who have compassion for anyone genuinely curious or confused. Ask them a question and you will get a thoughtful response devoid of groupthink. Ask again and they will appreciate your desire to fully understand their opinion. 

With that, we could have a generation of young people willing to give wrong opinions, thus affording them the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow. They will be unafraid to say what they think. They will assume good faith. They will know that what matters is goodness, not the appearance of goodness. They will be human beings, not angels. It will be truly decent.

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Quickies

🌀 When people have multiple podcasts i say they're polypodorous.

🌀 Using social media now feels like an internet version of The Warriors. You’ve gotta navigate The Crypto Furies, The Q Mafia, and the Goop Goonies just to get back "home" to photos of your family.

🌀 It's weird how young people use the term CATCHING FEELINGS, like feelings are a virus to be avoided. "Ugh, actual human connection? GROSS." It's a generation that wants to get vaccinated against emotions.

🌀 Land acknowledgements should keep updating over time. Eventually, I want the Varvatos store on Bowery to open up every day acknowledging it used to be CBGB.

🌀 The different types of diabetes provide clarity. I wish there was also type 1 and type 2 for these words: sober (are you a lifelong square or did you hit rock bottom?) and mushrooms (the pizza kind or the lose your mind kind?).

🌀 There's a new NHL team called the Seattle Kraken. First time I saw it on the scrolling ticker, I thought it said the Seattle KAREN. And honestly, a team of Karens sounds way more vicious than any sea creature. I can see the logo now: a white woman from the Pacific Northwest holding a cellphone in a threatening manner. No team would want to faceoff against them, especially the Nashville Predators.

🌀 “Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
-Albert Einstein

🌀 My friend Gary is an abstract painter who is constantly revising his work. I once asked him how he knows when a piece of art is done. He said, "When someone buys it." I always liked that.

🌀 "My post-election analysis: The right answer is to do more of what I want. I was right all along! Anyone who feels differently is dumb."
-Everyone on every side somehow

🌀 Nope, Cincinnati is spelled wrong. Don't care what you say. It just is.

🌀 Amazon gonna start making electric cars simply because Bezos won’t wanna buy delivery trucks from Musk.

🌀 Remembering DVD director commentaries. So illuminating, like going to (free) film school. It's sad we’ve lost 'em as our media bandwidth has “improved.”

🌀 It’s not the people, it’s the business model.

🌀 If you perform your relationship online, I need the same amount of information when you break up. ✊⚡️

That clip from my album/special “Feels Like Matt Ruby.”

Misguided Meditation with Matt Ruby

In NYC on Thursday (11/11)? Come check out my show:

Misguided Meditation is a comedy show about the mindfulness journey – including meditation, therapy, and psychedelics – of comedian Matt Ruby. Along the way, Matt offers some hard-earned wisdom, discusses zen concepts, and cracks jokes about his own failures/successes on the path to wellness. Musical accompaniment from Steve Pestana. Tickets/info here. Use code “breathe” for $5 off.

5-spotted

1) The Tim Ferriss Show with Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant. A good overview on Web3, NFTs, and other stuff I barely understand but people tell me will be important. Here’s Naval on why he never charges for content:

The greatest artists are going to have the greatest distribution. It’s why not to pick on our friend, but one reason why I think like Joe Rogan and others make mistakes by going to Spotify is that the power of a meme, the power of an idea, is determined by how many computers it’s running on. The power of program is how much computation power it has beyond it. The power of an idea is how many brains is it running in? So if you have good ideas, you want to spread them as far and wide as possible.

That’s why I’ll never charge for a piece of content, and no one in their right mind who has good ideas should. You don’t want to restrict the avenues. You want people to recompose your ideas…

If you want your content to get as much out there as possible, don’t hold anything back. If you have good ideas, you want to spread them as widely as possible, and you wish — you should be so lucky — that other people come and compose them with their own content and create new memes and new ideas.

Related: Alexis Gay performs “when you definitely understand NFTs.”

Alexis Gay @yayalexisgay

when you definitely understand NFTs

November 2nd 2021

4,108 Retweets22,942 Likes

2) The NY Times featured this story: BIPOC or POC? Equity or Equality? The Debate Over Language on the Left. The comments were rather fierce. Here’s an example:

I’m a super liberal, never-have-never-will vote for a Republican queer woman. Nothing quite prepared me for being told implicitly, by my straight, white, cisgender male professor, that queer people are defined by their oppression, are constantly oppressed, easily offended and traumatized, and see their queerness as the most important thing about them. In my experience, none of this is true, but there is that constant babying around us. The result is that my classmates are terrified to bring up issues with their students and see identities first instead of people. When I raised the issue of, “We’re using language to fix problems instead of solutions; let’s talk about economics and strategic racism, too,” I was told to get with the program or I wouldn’t be recommended for licensure. Yes, really. It was a horrible, sickening feeling to realize the Right was correct to an extent about the hard left. Yes, they have gone mad, and have an authoritarian streak, too. I’m terrified for our democracy.

Related: How therapy-speak turned victimhood into currency

3) Philosophy is like athletics – theory must be put into practice.

Epictetus implores us to look to athletes. When we do not act upon what we think is right, we are acting like an athlete who trains but never competes. What is the point? This moment that makes us uncomfortable, this action we think we should take, this is our Olympic Games, this is our chance to compete. We need to act. We need to perform. And even if we fail or make mistakes, at least we tried, and now have feedback about where we can improve further. At least we have put our skin in the game…

And what advantage does a wrestler gain from his training partner? The greatest. And that man, too, who insults me becomes my training partner; he trains me in patience, in abstaining from anger, in remaining gentle … And yet you say that if someone trains me in abstaining from anger, he brings me no benefit? It is simply that you don’t know how to draw advantage from other people.

Related: Why are tech elites embracing a philosophy meant for slaves?

4) Allegations of racism and misogyny within the Phoenix Suns: Inside Robert Sarver's 17-year tenure as owner. Guess what? The mission statement for the Suns is complete BS. I’m shocked!

GO TO THE Phoenix Suns' official career opportunities page and you'll see it: what the team calls its mission for prospective employees.

It reads: Our mission is to "Provide the Finest in Sports, Entertainment and Community Leadership," and our goals are to "Win Championships and Create Sustained Success." By uniting around the following ...

On the right side of the page, alongside a big, purple box, the team lists its values: Forward Thinking. Accountable. Mutual Respect. Integrity. Leadership. You Have Passion For Our Purpose.

The first letter of each bullet point spells out an acrostic: "FAMILY."

"That's our motto, right? That's what they shove down our throats," said one longtime staffer who recently left the team.

"If it involves revenue, OK, we're 'family values,'" said a current Suns executive. "But let me tell you, that is the biggest piece of s--- document they've got in that place."

5) “Navy launches ship named for gay rights leader Harvey Milk.” Saw this posted in response. Well played.

Thanks for reading.

-Matt