Video summary
The podcast explores a disturbing shift in how young women perceive their appearance, describing it as an escalating arms race driven by social media competition for clicks and money. Influencers like Zoella have evolved from posting simple makeup tutorials to showcasing extreme procedures such as Brazilian butt lifts within casual vlogs, normalizing invasive interventions as part of standard beauty routines. This trend extends beyond physical alterations into mental health and politics, where platforms drag issues toward their extremes; consequently, the distorted reality presented on Instagram and TikTok becomes the new baseline for information rather than an outlier. The result is a pervasive terror of aging among young women, evidenced by twelve-year-olds obsessively calculating sun exposure to prevent wrinkles before puberty even begins, effectively forcing them into active anti-aging routines at increasingly younger ages. This digital environment fosters intense rumination and one-upmanship regarding personal struggles, creating an arms race where individuals compete over the severity of their diagnoses or problems. Influencers who brand themselves around mental health conditions like ADHD or autism create bad incentives that encourage users to outdo each other in displaying neuroticism. Furthermore, the constant presence of front-facing cameras contributes to body dysmorphia and a psychological cost for growing up with 24/7 self-scrutiny. The discussion highlights how platforms amplify these issues by encouraging co-rumination on forums like Reddit, where users collectively deepen their anxieties in a race to see who can go deepest down the iceberg of personal trauma or insecurity. A significant paradox exists between "self-love" messaging and record levels of body dissatisfaction, which the speakers identify as largely driven by marketing strategies rather than genuine empowerment. Apps like Facetune are marketed as tools for confidence while simultaneously teaching users how to reshape their jaws, enlarge eyes, and alter skin tone; however, this creates a disconnect where young women feel embarrassed about their natural appearance after using these editing apps. The experience is likened to the pickup artist movement, where men learned they had to contort themselves superficially to succeed, leaving them feeling even more inadequate when not deploying those tactics. For users of beauty filters, the dopamine hit from likes creates a dependency that leads to an aversion to being photographed naturally, as seen in friendship groups fighting over whose phone allows for post-editing control. The transcript also touches on specific behavioral trends and visual cues resulting from this digital conditioning, such as teenagers covering their faces with hands during candid photoshoots or using filters like the "dog ear" mask that subtly beautified users while they grew up hating unedited images of themselves. The speakers recall early Snapchat filters involving bees in face masks that smoothed skin and enlarged eyes for thirteen-year-olds, leading to a sudden hatred of their natural features once they realized how distorted reality looked without them. Ultimately, the conversation concludes that social media has stunted real-life interactions by making individuals feel out of control when they cannot edit their appearance or rehearse conversations, leaving many young women unable to reconcile who they are with the filtered avatars they have been conditioned to prefer.
Read the full video transcript
What's happening with how girls see
their appearance? How's that changed
over time?
Yeah, I mean that's another crazy arms
race. I mean I talk about
again with beauty influence influencers
like Zoella that I grew up with.
She would just do like a back to school
makeup tutorial and it would be very
simple
and basic and not
nothing really harmful about teenage
girls watching that.
But again, the competition, the amount
of influencers over the years that that
now have to compete for clicks and money
mean that each beauty influencer also
has to up their game and say something
slightly more extreme or
show something more extreme. So for
example, you go from normal beauty
tutorials to
casual vlogs where you just show you
getting a Brazilian butt lift in the
middle of the vlog and that becomes part
of a standard beauty routine. And you
see it with stuff like anti-aging where
it's just
a simple anti-aging routine and then
becomes like a 50-step anti-aging
routine and you need to do it younger
and younger
because the thumbnail that says, you
know, you need Botox at 17 does way
better because people click it and want
to know more about it.
And so it's in all aspects of life for
young women. It's
the mental health trends, it's the
political trends, it's the beauty
trends. Basically social media will drag
everything to its inevitable extreme.
And then if you're spending most of your
waking hours on social media
then that is no longer the extreme. That
is where you're getting your
information, it's where you're learning
about beauty and relationships and
politics.
Has Instagram and TikTok changed what we
find attractive?
Yeah, I think so. I think it's more of
a sort of avatar now where you
there's a terror of aging among young
women and so
I wrote a piece ages ago about
12-year-olds worrying about wrinkles on
Reddit forums and obsessively ruminating
over pictures whether they they whether
they aged
writing out all of the sun exposure
they've had and checking, you know, is
this something that could make me look
worse in the future comparing all of
their anti-aging routines and their
children.
Um
You need an aging routine?
You need you need to actively be aging
at that point.
>> Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is
>> Get more sun. Sometimes it's girls
worrying about wrinkles before they've
gone through puberty
because they've grown up with watching
influencers who are worrying about that
and who are having to sort of
exaggerate their neuroticism, up their
neuroticism to get clicks.
But then you have young girls, that's
the first they encounter
first sort of young women role models
they encounter who are warning them
about this.
Um and I think social media in general
just makes you ruminate. And so girls
already ruminate more than boys. But
then they're on all these platforms like
Reddit where you all co-ruminate
together. The point is
you talk about your problems.
>> an escalation on there as well. There's
always a sense of one-upmanship. I
always see this with my friends that are
conspiracy-minded
and in a room
there's always a l it's kind of like an
arms race to see who can go deepest down
the iceberg. They're oh, you think that
Epstein was just a guy that had oh, you
think he was just my side? Oh, you think
he was just a reptile person? Dude, let
me tell you there oh, that's cute. Let
me tell you the real thing. And it's
this yeah, weird race to the bottom of
the iceberg and it's kind of the same
here that there is this
ratcheting up in intensity of this
stuff.
>> see that most with the mental health
stuff where it will be
oh, you think you it's bad you've got
ADHD? Well, I've got autism and ADHD.
>> [laughter]
>> And I've got I've got a gluten
intolerance and I've got a clubfoot and
my dad walked out. Yeah, exactly. And I
think the platforms
again, they encourage that because you
have
all influencers are competing for
attention.
But then you have influencers whose
whole brand now is their mental health
diagnosis. They are the ADHD influencer.
And I think that creates some very bad
incentives because then you you you
basically compete over your diagnosis.
There has to be a psychological cost of
growing up with a front-facing camera
24/7 as well.
>> Yes. Right. What what is that there was
a zoom face? That people had during
lockdown.
>> dysmorphia as well. What people want to
get surgery and to look Yeah.
>> like their filter.
They don't like seeing themselves
without their filter.
Yeah, so you have girls who are using
Did you know about Facetune?
Cuz I swear no young men even know what
it is.
You don't know? What's Facetune? See,
that's great. So Facetune is like one of
the most popular apps where
girls would edit themselves to then post
on Instagram. Like filters?
No, going in and editing each part of
your face. So you can slim your jaw, you
can enlarge your eyes, you can change
your waist, you can tan your skin, you
can whiten your teeth. It's everything.
But that is what girls were using
as teenagers all throughout
their all throughout growing up.
And then they've reached their 20s and
people say, "Oh, why are they unhappy
with the way they look? Why do they have
body dysmorphia?" And they're using this
app where you you change yourself and
then you there's like an undo button
which if you click it, you look
horrifying because then it reverts To
who you really are. But you had girls
doing that during the most formative
years of their life and then trying to
adjust to how they actually look. How
does the self-love messaging coexist
with record levels of body
dissatisfaction? Yeah, that's another
paradox.
Um
I think because it's a marketing
strategy. It's much like
mental health awareness.
A lot of that was a marketing strategy.
The self-love campaign was basically
ways to sell things like editing apps.
So Facetune
was marketed as something that can help
you feel confident and empowered and
I talk about these influencers in the
book who are literally they're literally
talking about how they don't have any
insecurities anymore and they've
overcome it and they finally reached a
stage of self-love while they're
literally reshaping their jaw on
Facetune teaching girls how to do it.
And none of the comments are calling
that out or thinking it's hypocritical.
Why?
Because I think it's been drilled into
us that
these things are self-love. And so a lot
of the time in the book I talk about
recognizing what are you actually being
sold versus what you're being told
because you're constantly being told you
feel this way
and that this app or technology or trend
will make you feel this way even though
it's not. So I don't know any young
woman that would Facetune herself and
feel good.
Feel good doing it rather than feel
embarrassed and a bit ashamed and feel
worse about themselves after. You know,
I think the same thing happened with the
pickup artist movement. So what guys
that did it learned was just how much
they had to contort themselves in order
to get laid with a woman. And even if it
was effective what they felt was the
delta between who they were normally and
who they were when they deployed the
game by Neil Strauss. Yes.
>> And that gap made them the normal
version of them feel even more
disgusting, even more unwanted. Look at
how much I've got to disguise and
pervert myself in an attempt to try Did
you see the [ __ ] fight outside? Let's
go to three other bars so that I can
neurolinguistically program hack the
back of your brain into coming to bed
with me tonight. You go
I have to jump through all of these
hoops and this is what So for the guys
that it was successful for. I mean
if you don't do too much
self-investigation, hooray, you did it
thing. Yeah. But if you do a bit more
self-investigation, it's pretty
it can be pretty dark. And for the guys
that did it and it didn't work
>> Mhm. even with the best tactics in the
world, I still can't make myself into
someone that woman wants. Yes.
Neither of those are good outcomes.
Yeah, it's the same that's so similar to
the beauty stuff for women which is that
it can maybe get you what you want
superficially. So you Facetune yourself
and you get 200 likes on your Instagram
post, but it then
it's a momentary bit of dopamine. But
then after that you're now
hooked on the app. You need to keep
using it. You need the constant Yeah,
and and then you develop which is what
happened to me and a lot of girls I know
which was then
having an aversion to having your
picture taken naturally because you're
so used to controlling it. So girls in
my friendship group would fight over
whose phone the picture would be taken
on. So that they could go in and
Facetune themselves. Wow. And so then
>> Wow, that is [ __ ] insane.
Yeah, because it feels so out of
control. And then also that explains a
lot of I think social anxiety because
being in the real world is out of
control. You can't control your
appearance, you can't edit what you're
saying or rehearse it. And so I think a
lot of these apps actually then stunted
us in real life because it feels so You
know what was interesting? I was at
I was on Long Island
uh
August of last year. Good weather,
sunset and there was a group of young
teenage girls that were taking photos.
And I noticed that if it was really
perfectly put together I mean, they must
have taken I'm not kidding, it must have
been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of photos. I get it. You want a nice new
profile picture, whatever. Like is it a
bit silly? Yeah, but whatever, it's
fine. Yeah. The other thing that was
interesting was if they were snapping as
they walked because if they stayed in
the same area that was going to have the
best sunset, which is where everybody
was eating ice cream or whatever. And um
if someone was sort of snapping away
more naturally, more candidly,
immediately all of their hands went up
to their face. Have you seen this trend?
Where girls sort of do this? So they'll
do they'll pose with their body but
cover their face with their hand.
And as I I again like I'm trying to get
it. I'm trying to not curmudgeonly point
a finger at someone that's 20 years
younger than me Yeah.
>> and go I I
these kids these I'm like okay, so what
is it that they're feeling? Why are they
doing this thing? Good. What's the best
interpretation of this? Like it's a
cutsey little you but it wasn't a
Marilyn Monroe shocked open mouth sort
of
>> Yeah.
>> face. It was I just need to do this. It
was like the scene out of Four Lions
where he's trying to stop the [ __ ]
CCTV from watching him. It's another
paradox where we're vain and insecure at
the same time. But there there's context
to it because
you know, I grew up with the dog ear
filter please tell me you know what that
is. I've seen that one. And I remember
the
um
Do you remember the face mask that was
bees?
No. So you know, like the face mask that
you used to have in COVID
>> Yeah. that
very quickly became like a
object of oppression or something that
didn't work or whatever. Yeah. Um I
swear there was one and people are going
to tell me in the comments whether or
not I'm [ __ ] hallucinating this. I
swear that there was one that was yellow
and it had bees. Jared
Google was there a Snapchat filter
of a face mask with bees?
I swear I'm [ __ ] not hallucinating
but I remember the dog one. And then if
you opened your mouth it did a licking
thing, right? Yes.
But the dog one
uh
Made people want to be dogs. No, but it
beautified you as well. So it would like
um enlarge your eyes and smooth your
skin. And so you had 13-year-olds using
it cuz it was cute. But then suddenly
hating the normal pictures of themselves
and not knowing why. And it's cuz it was
subtly changing your face.
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