 Good day, mate. Forty here. I'm looking at an article in the Washington Post about people turning to content creators for mental health support during the pandemic. So during the pandemic, viewers have turned to content creators for mental health support. And I'll throw down the link for this in the chat. And so we live very much in an era of expertise. So what expertise do content creators have to to provide mental health support? And apparently, you'll never guess, most content creators are not trained mental health professionals. Which is true. Good point, fair enough. But there's no empirical evidence of a strong and definitive nature that mental health professionals are particularly effective at their job. That's what that's what's missing from this Washington Post essay. So here we go. During a live stream hosted by Abdullah Elian, I've never heard of this guy, but he's an official Nintendo brand ambassador with 884,000 subscribers. Wow, someone's binging. Yeah, actually, I'm not I'm not binging on Recala. It's just that my set designer, I spent thousands of dollars on a set designer and he wanted me to to, you know, brighten up this this presentation and he thought a good good packet of Recala would would do the trick. So the caller's there just for the exciting visuals. It's also delicious. Sugar-free lemon Recala. And also occasionally doing a live stream, you get a little tickling your throat, nothing like it like a Recala to ease that out. So anyway, Abdullah Elian, have you ever heard of this guy? He's an official Nintendo brand ambassador. A viewer donated $5, along with an accompanying message. I'm going to take my life now, the viewer wrote. Yeah, I thought thousands of dollars for a good Hollywood set designer. Absolutely worth it. Okay, Recala's consumption truly makes one see a man of the people. So certain things tend to happen as soon as you go online. You tend to become more spontaneous. So you do things more quickly than you would otherwise. You don't tend to think as much about what you're going to do. So you make more impulse purchases online. You tend naturally to become more grandiose, to have a more exaggerated sense of your own importance than in the real world. You tend to become more of a narcissist seeking admiration. And you tend to share things, dark things that you wouldn't normally share in face-to-face interactions. So that's the danger of this online world is that people will say all sorts of horrible dark things that they wouldn't say face-to-face. So here, someone donates a $5 Super Chat with the message, I'm going to take my life now. That's disturbing. But that is the nature of the online world. People are both more spontaneous and they are more morbid. And that's why we've got the perils of the e-personality. So Elian, who makes YouTube videos under the name Abdullah Smash, said he immediately erased the message from the live chat so other viewers wouldn't see it. And on a side monitor, he instructed his team of moderators to check in with the viewer. He kept his stream going. It wasn't his first time handling this kind of situation. So yeah, I didn't know how I'd handle that kind of situation that is disturbing. But in my real life, people with suicidal ideation, I tell them to get help. And then I tell them to stop calling me. When they're calling me, I had one acquaintance who was talking about suicidal ideation. And so I told him, I don't want to hear it. Stop. So Elian trains his moderators to move concerning comments to private chats where they can listen and deliver professional recommendations for therapists or hotlines. That's all great. But I'm all for expertise. I love expertise, but there simply is not empirical evidence that mental health support is particularly effective. All right. You can really, you can only help someone who wants to be helped. And if somebody wants to be helped, then usually they are not so mentally troubled. My directive for moderators is to reach out and see if we can get them to talk on the side. We're not experts. Moderators are not therapists. You have to be able to give resources the viewers need. My team reports back all that stuff. It feels good having that support system. Like this is a this is a live stream. It's not a mental health support system. The support system may be a side benefit of being part of this community. But what we primarily do is discuss political, cultural, religious, and personal issues. But it is, it is a relationship. Like you say things, I react. I say things, you react. I do it for you. You do it for me. We do it for fun. We do it for free. We do it for all the right reasons. With loneliness and anxiety on the rise during the global pandemic, gamers and popular streamers alike rely on comfort content more than ever. This is just a symptom. So to get down to root causes, it's not the pandemic. It's people who feel ill at ease with themselves and with other people that need excessive amounts of comfort. Fans tune in nightly to watch their favorite content creators. It helps them cope with isolation. Problem is that while streamers offer companionship and entertainment, they aren't trained therapists. Why is that a problem? It's like saying the problem with national football league players is that they're not trained physicists. So a lot of people get comfort from watching their favorite sports teams and sporting heroes compete. Now who would expect their favorite sportsmen to be mental health experts and even mental health experts? There's not much empirical evidence that they consistently provide help. Will you ever do a gaming stream? I don't think so. I haven't yet. It's not that I look down my nose at it. I've got such a busy life reading books and reading essays about books and the other things that I like to do, it just seems like adding a vice to my life to add gaming. Gamers and streamers help viewers maintain a sense of normalcy at an uncertain time. Maybe this is just like one type of community so we can discuss heretical ideas in this conversation that you often can't talk about in real life. But stream chats and discord servers can take a dark turn when viewers share their intimate mental health struggles. Well, all sorts of things can take a dark turn. If you can have human interactions, any human interaction online or offline, they can take dark turns and people might start opening up about mental health struggles. Responding during these sensitive times is a big responsibility. Is it really? Like if you're a gamer, why would anyone expect you to have expertise about mental health? I mean it's not really your responsibility as a live streamer to provide mental health care for troubled viewers. Not necessarily have any expertise. And not necessarily that there are any people out there who are particularly skilled and helpful. Mental health experts say professional and medical intervention is often necessary. Well, there aren't any empirical blood tests or radiographic tests for mental illness. It's a highly subjective arena. And the evidence is simply not there for either therapy or medication as being robustly effective. So whether it's exercise or therapy or medication, it all has a result that's just a little better than the placebo level result. So that's what this article lacks is this sense of proportion that we don't have empirical evidence for mental health care being consistently particularly effective above a placebo level. I wish that wasn't true, but that's the reality. So this article just seems so one sided. Responding during these sensitive moments is a big responsibility. It's cool that Luke has got a contract promoting Recala and Yasso Ice Cream 40 has become an influencer. Yeah. While growing their audiences, every content creator's dream that growth can make it a more difficult task to handle or even notice individual cries for help. Well, would you say the same about an actress or a model or an author or a politician or a sporting hero? Okay, they develop a growing audience. Is it really their responsibility to handle and notice individual cries for help? I mean, if you can do it, that's a beautiful thing. It's not your responsibility as a live streamer. Like help where you can help, but in areas of mental health, it's very tricky. So you might help one person and then you might get deluged by other people and maybe way beyond your own abilities. So Al Jahn says it's not uncommon to have messages about suicidal ideation in his live chat. So if I encounter that in my live chat, I'm just going to ban people. I don't want that. He often sees teenagers opening up about personal problems in his channels, private discord server. Yeah, that's a tricky thing. And Al Jahn sees messages about family troubles and abusive situations as moderators step in. This keeps the chat a fun place to hang out while his team gets support and resources to those who need it privately. Okay, support is something you should look for on your deathbed. Otherwise, if you're still breathing and kicking and living, you shouldn't be looking for support. Okay, support is for dying people. And Al Jahn is prioritizing his own mental health. This language, it's not that we have that much definitive information about what creates mental health so that we can then prioritize it. He includes workouts and eating healthy. It enables him to deliver what his audience needs at such a critical time. It's such a pretentious article. My entire life is about making everyone else happy. That's the facade you have to put on. Oh, poor boy. At the same time, you have to take care of yourself. Waking up, working out, physical health will absolutely turn into mental health. They're connected. Oh, great. Thank you for that, Al Jahn. I would never have known that. Mental health experts. Don't you love mental health experts? I mean, how do we know that they are experts? They've got degrees. They've passed accreditation, but do we know if they even make much of a difference with people? But while gaming and live streams offer comfort, it's only the first step in getting real support if people are really struggling. Apparently a large portion of the gaming community relies on streamers for support, but they need better access to mental health care services. We tend to have much empirical evidence that mental health care services make a robust difference in individuals' lives. So have you heard about rise above the disorder? That's rad. It's an international mental health platform that provides free support to those who need it, connects people who can pay to therapists. Yeah, look, please display your frame credentials behind you. So I think the only credential I have is that I graduated from Alexander Technique teacher training after three years. So I did like three years of Alexander Technique teacher training, and I graduated. So I think that's about the only credential I have. When I look at a person reaching out to a content creator, I don't see them doing something wrong so much as doing the only thing they can do or turning to the only person they can go to. The unfortunate reality is that this person is most likely ill-equipped to be there the way viewers need them to be there. Well, who is equipped? It's such a subjective area. That context is what's missing. So some people are going to improve by going outside and getting exercise. Other people are going to improve by going to church. Other people will improve by taking medication, and other people will improve by going to a 12-step program. But we don't have robust indicators of which types of mental health consistently work. So this content creator notices one fan who is posting consistently troubling messages and reached out directly encouraging them to seek therapy. So yeah, I've had people on this channel consistently post troubling messages, and when they do, I block them. And if they reach out to me directly, yeah, I tell them to get therapy or see a psychiatrist. I have a general sense of worry for viewers' well-being, and whether my advice is truly beneficial. Well, I don't know if I worry. I talk about what works for me and what I've read, and then let it go. I'll try to urge them to see a professional. Well, this is what's missing. The empirical evidence, you know, professional health care. There's no robust evidence that professional health care is better than unprofessional health care. So it talks about a smaller stream with only 9,500 subscribers. He finds it easy to respond to every message. We're not here to provide mental health support or any type of support. If they don't have a place to go, is that going to make their day worse? I always try to trade carefully. I never want anyone to think I'm trained to help anyone else. I'm not licensed. Well, it's not like licensing and training is empirically, obviously, robustly going to make you better at providing mental health support. Michelle Ruth, a licensed counselor in London, says she understands why a viewer might feel they have something in common with a creator they love. Instead of creators trying to act to stand in therapists, she says streamers should continue to send viewers to professional resources. In other words, come put money in my pocket and in the pocket of my peers. You know, we're professionals. While some commenters might be joking or looking for attention, it's not a moderator's job to tease that out. It's only their job to provide links to therapists or hotline numbers. The treat everyone as if they're being serious. It's a huge pressure for creators, but the consequences if they get it wrong are massive. Well, it's not on creators to take care of their audience's mental health needs or other needs. So if you break a leg and you come in here and say, oh, 40, I broke my leg. What should I do? I mean, you're an idiot coming in here looking, looking for help. So I'm not sure the consequences if they get it wrong, a massive, it's not their duty. Oh, Rune says, but Mr. Ford is an amazing mentor. He's very inspirational for some of his viewers. Thank you, Rune. I just I try to do the best I can, but try to have an understanding that there's a limited number of things that I can control, which are basically just my reactions to life. And then I can share with you my own experiences, my own readings, but I can't control or direct your life. It's up to you to do the things that you need to do. It can be expensive or difficult to get professional mental health. 40, my posture is a bit out of work. Okay, bro. Yeah, we got an essay. I've got an exercise for you. This, this exercise I found is the easiest way to get back in whack. And that is to expand your field of awareness. So right now, I'm seeing both sides of the room simultaneously, as well as everything in front of me. So when you expand your field of awareness so that you're seeing both sides of the room, what happens? That is, I started going up. So without that exercise, I'd be like this. But now, as I see both sides of the room simultaneously, as I'm increasing my field of awareness, I'm going up. So my back is lengthening. Now my, my back is widening. All right. In other words, I'm letting go of needless compression and weird contortion patterns. So expanding the field of awareness, I find is, is the most helpful tool to improve your posture, improve your use of yourself, to get some length back into your spine to let go of interfering tension and compression patterns. So another thing you can do is listen for every sound around. So if you're listening, as though your life depended upon it, you wouldn't be listening like this. If you're listening as though your life depended upon it, you'd go up as you expand and broaden, widen and deepen your, your awareness. You naturally will start going up and your spine will naturally start lengthening. This is, this is what life looks like when you're, when you have an expanded field of awareness, as opposed to when I'm just getting sucked into my, my phone. Another thing I find helpful is learn to turn, rotate your head from here. I'm going to look at the ceiling from here and look down at the floor from here. So as opposed to, see, then I lose my neck. See how I'm losing my neck? My neck is compressing. I'm just doing this normally. But if I choose to hinge from up here, I'm not losing length in my neck, not losing length in my spine. So I'm maintaining expanded field of awareness. And then another trick I love to do is to let go of everything I think I know. So just now I just let go of everything I think I know, and you might have seen my face soften. So when I let go of everything I think I know, I let go of any unnecessary tension and compression around my eyes, my forehead, my lips in my neck and back. My, my breathing becomes easier. My back unlocks, lengthens and widens. Now you have to keep coming back to it because you immediately start reverting to everything that you think you know. But if you deliberately take a time out and just go into a state of letting go of everything that you think you know, you will move out of all your, you know, dogmatically held assumptions. And that, that you should immediately feel your breath freeing up and your back unlocking and just letting go of unnecessary tension and compression in your face and your neck and your shoulders. Because all beliefs are just unnecessary muscular tension. So when you let go of all your beliefs, not only let go of all your political and religious and social and cultural beliefs, you also let go of all your fears and all your resentments. So you're moving into a state of awareness rather than judgment. Now you don't want to be in a state of no judgment all the time. Obviously we all have to make constant judgments, but unless you need to make a judgment, you're much better off being in a state of awareness rather than a state of judgment. So it's easier to just move into a state of awareness rather than judgment by deciding, I'm going to let go of everything that I think I know. So that way I'm no longer defended against you. I don't have all these barriers of my strongly held beliefs. And it's not interfering with my breath or with tension in my neck or face or shoulders. It improves my breathing, my voice quality, everything goes better. And you're simply in a state of awareness. Look at that wonderful bird flying by and a little bit of breeze through the palm trees. I love being in a state of awareness rather than a state of judgment. Okay, in the news, massive jury watch. So when do you think we're going to find out about the Derek Chauvin jury? Right? I mean, didn't the OJ Simpson jury come back in about two hours? So I want to be in a state of awareness for when the writing starts up here in Los Angeles. The world's most famous atheist has been canceled by the American Humanist Association for his lack of true faith in the holiest of humans, transgenders and blacks. So the American Humanist Association is withdrawing an honor from Richard Dawkins. Regrettably, Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups and approach antithetical to humanist values. His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking black identity. So Richard Dawkins had his 1996 humanist, meaning atheist of the year award canceled for his shocking lack of true faith in intersectional verities. So Dawkins recently tweeted in 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of the NAACP was vilified for identifying as black. Some men choose to identify as women and some women choose to identify as men. You'll be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Yes, the words of the prophets are written on the billboard walls. Trans people are sacred. And Steve Saylor notes, prosecution demands jury convict Derek Chauvin of first degree grinchism. So in the closing argument, a prosecutor said, while some believe George Floyd died from an enlarged heart, he actually died because his heart was too small. No, because ex-officer Derek Chauvin's heart was too small. Mr. Floyd died because his heart was too big. Mr. Chauvin's heart was too small. So if the heart doesn't fit, you must acquit. Now, isn't this interesting? Officer Brian Sicknick, Capitol Police officer who engaged with the rioters. Coroner announces he died of natural causes. So isn't this two and a half months after January 6th insurrection? And he had all these big names saying that he died because he was, you know, bashed that essentially the rioters were responsible for his death. Now, on the one hand, the autopsy finds no evidence that he died because of an allergic reaction to chemical irritants. Now, the conspiracy theory is all these chemical irritants are really quite dangerous, but they don't want people to know that. So they're trying to cover that up. But anyway, he suffered two strokes at the base of the brainstem caused by a clot in an artery. And you still trust the New York Times? Come on, Rustin, how many times have we been through with this? If the New York Times, okay, let's do this. Let's just do this once and for all. Let's just go to the sports section of the New York Times. And let's go to a story here. Okay, so the New York Times says that the Mets split a double header, I think April 17. So when I read in the New York Times that the Mets split a double header on April 17, do I trust that that is accurate? Yes, I trust that that is accurate. So if Rustin tells me there's life on another planet, do I trust Rustin on that? No, if Rustin were to tell me there's life on Mars, I would not trust Rustin on that. But if Rustin was to tell me something about an area where he has expertise, I would trust him. So when the New York Times reports the stock market results or the sports results, I trust that those are accurate. You know what I mean? I know the bias of the New York Times. I have a pretty good idea of your bias. And I think I have a moderate idea of my bias. Everybody is biased. The New York Times is biased. Steve Saylor is biased. Fordy is biased. Rustin is biased. Yeah, there's a lot of good information in the New York Times. It's a left-wing publication. I expect it's going to come with a left-wing perspective. And I expect that I'm going to be able to pick that up and deconstruct it and take what I see as valuable. What is a better New Source than the New York Times? It's not like we live in a world where we have choices of perfection and I'm settling for the imperfect New York Times. No, we live in a world of imperfection. Every New Source is imperfect, inadequate, and biased. Everyone. So what is a better source of news than the New York Times? Twitter. Steve Saylor's blog. And I love and admire Steve Saylor, but we live in a world of imperfection. So where do we go? I read the mainstream media and I read the dissident media. And when they have different perspectives on the same topic, I like to read both perspectives. Sometimes I side with the dissident media. Sometimes I side with the conventional media. Tell me a better New Source than the New York Times. I'm waiting. I mean, is Russia today a better New Source? Is the Gladstone Observer in Australia a better New Source? I don't know. The Times of London, the Wall Street Journal, American Renaissance, 4chan poll. I don't know a better New Source than the New York Times. There may be one, and I look forward to checking it out. And I know the New York Times got a left-wing agenda, and so it's easy for me to go through it. You treated the assertion that the rioters killed that cop with a fire extinguisher's gospel three months ago. I did. I don't remember doing that. So I thought that what the rioters did was stupid. I don't think it was an insurrection. I think that's a gross overstatement. I thought it was a riot. But it was a relatively benign riot. It was nothing as dangerous as what Antifa and Black Lives Matter routinely do. There wasn't nearly as much property damage and damage to people. So we had a police officer shot Ashley Babbitt. We had other people die of natural causes of medical emergencies. Yeah, the Shitter Diatribe was not about, oh, you guys murdered Brian Sickneck. The Shitter Diatribe was you don't go and defecate on places where you are not allowed. You don't get to just pour into Capitol Hill. You don't get to pour into my home. You don't get to pour into Rustin's home and defecate all over it. So I don't celebrate people behaving in a criminal fashion. I don't celebrate people behaving destructively. I don't celebrate people breaking windows, destroying property that does not belong to them. So whether it's Antifa, Black Lives Matter, or the January 6th insurrectionists, I don't support people who go shit all over other people's property. I think I'm fairly consistent on that. I hate criminal behavior. I hate rioting. I hate wanton destruction. And I hate creating an unnecessarily tense atmosphere where people make hair-triggered decisions that then result in some people dying. So I think that what happened on January 6th was a disaster for the Trump crowd, for the right wing. And I think that what Black Lives Matter and Antifa have been doing have been a disaster for the United States of America as well. I don't like criminal behavior. I don't like criminal rioting, whether it's done by the right or the left. And I don't like inaccurate reporting. So we had all sorts of pictures of shit or you must acquit. Okay, so shitting doesn't have to be literal. They were busting down windows and they created a mess and they did not belong there. What they did was illegal and it created a massive backlash that makes life more difficult for the rest of us on the right. Now, I do recall someone talking about literal defecation happening on January 6th. I don't have those pictures. I'm primarily talking about the metaphorical messing up property that does not belong to you. I think that's disgusting. And I think it's also disgusting when people say that Officer Brian Sicknick that he was being bashed to death by these protesters. I think there's any evidence of that. Now, what they did seem to be evidence of was that these January 6th rioters were fighting with police and exchanging blows with police. You fight with police, right? You are risking your life because police have guns. I think that was a really stupid idea whether it's Black Lives Matter and Tifa, anyone, right wing protesters, you start punching police. You start putting police on the grave pressure so that they have to make head-triggered decisions on whether or not to draw their weapons and shoot. I don't think I would have been appalled if protesters of either the right or the left trying to invade a government building if police open fire and shoot them all. I'm fine with that. If it's right wing protesters, left wing protesters trying to enter places where they don't belong and the police won't look, we're going to open fire unless you desist. And then the protesters keep coming on, then by all means restore law and order, even if it means if necessary, shooting people who refuse to obey police direction. So one of my favorite things about the Joe Biden era is all the racial healing. So Steve Saylor knows, won't we promise that America would lapse back into a peaceful torpor with boring old Joe Biden in charge? Wait, I noticed no one responded to my repeated question, what's a better news source than the New York Times? No one can give me an answer. There's no other publishing news entity that comes close to providing the depth and the breadth of news that the New York Times does. So why would I abstain from reading the single best source of news? Even if it does come from a left wing perspective. So we've had this outbreak of mass shootings last week or so, Austin, Shreveport, Kenosha, Columbus, Laplace, Louisiana, Detroit. I mean, those are just mass shootings the last 48 hours. So it seems to me I'm not an expert here, but all the denigration of police, incentivizing police to step back from enforcing the law, all the adulation of Black Lives Matter, all the harsh scrutiny delivered to the police has resulted in law enforcement in general backing off in many urban areas. And as a result, bad people are going out and doing a lot of bad things. So normally you would expect violent crime rates to steadily drop because we have improving medical technology and improving law enforcement technology. So the natural trend is for violent crime to drop about 2% a year. But we had an explosion with the arrival of Black Lives Matter in 2014 and another explosion with the summer of George Floyd. And now we're looking at another explosion after the Derek Chauvin trial. Another consequence of police backing off enforcement is that people are driving recklessly. So we had a massive, we had an approximately 20% rise in murders after George Floyd's death in 2020. And we had an approximate 20% rise in traffic fatalities. People are driving much more recklessly because the police are backing off, police are getting a lot of scrutiny and criticism for enforcing the law over what's called minor traffic offenses. So the police are backing off. As a result, a lot of bad people are driving recklessly. You've got a massive increase in traffic fatalities, also pedestrians dying in traffic fatalities, and massive increase in murders, which all logically flow from incentivizing police to step back from enforcing the law. So police no longer so interested in enforcing the law. And as a result, bad guys are out there doing a lot of bad things. And who knows what's coming this week when we get the jury decision with the Derek Chauvin trial. So you don't want to threaten people, you don't want to fight people, you don't want to punch people who have guns, right? And you don't want to put people who have guns in a situation where they feel under great stress and duress, because you are greatly increasing the odds that then people with guns will make bad decisions. So if people with guns make bad decisions, yeah, that's largely on them. But if you have helped to create a situation where they only have a split second to decide whether to draw their weapon and shoot or not, then you have contributed to a disaster. And the January 6th rioters, by putting law enforcement, by putting people with guns under great pressure, they played a role in the shooting of Ashley Babin. And it could have gotten much worse. Because as far as I'm concerned, police officers who are protecting government buildings, and if they tell a crowd to disperse and inform the crowd that they're going to shoot and the crowd keeps pushing, it would not surprise me if law enforcement fights back. Then push people with weapons into a corner.