Why Young Men Are Falling for Fake Masculinity | Aaron Prager

Society did chastise men across the board and told them that you're toxic because of your masculinity. Aaron Prager. I wonder whether today some young men feel this anger and resentment. They feel like the deck is stacked against them. In some arenas it might be. We want to eventually find a wife and build a family unit and have a good career. There is a new group of men, specifically ones that go on the internet, claim that they have masculinity. Also appear to be incredibly angry, conspiratorial, and not exactly responsible for their own Andrew Tate is the head of the Manosphere, a perfect example of somebody who wraps personal responsibility around an iron hot core of you're a victim. So they already have negative energy inside of them. And now they see somebody who is reaping all of these rewards. I think that is one of the most nefarious and destructive forces. Every young man and growing man needs to continuously have ambition, to have drive, and to not shirk responsibility and blame other people for their problems. How do we talk to that 20 year old who is spending time on the internet and doesn't want to hear about any sort of morality and goodness? I'm really glad you're here, Aaron. Thanks for having me. When I say you're here, you're here physically right now at PragerU, but you're here with us at PragerU. You have your own show, American Recovery, and it is a unique show. It's something that I'm not sure if, if we didn't have you and you didn't go through your own journey, I'm not sure that we'd be able to create such an important show. Yeah, no, I, I'm very blessed. I, I, I give all credit to, to God first and foremost, and I don't think it's appropriate to start an interview when I do them ever without giving acknowledgement there first. Um, my, my story in and of itself, it's, it's not an easy one. Some people look at my circumstances and say it's not, uh, worse than others, not better than others. But I just take my story for what it is and it's just one that, you know, now I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic and addict and, um, it's, it's important that people know that about me right off the bat. So tell us a little bit about this journey, this background, uh, that you have and why you felt that speaking to the public about your journey and producing a show that talks about recovery was so important, probably not just for Americans, probably these are people around the world that relate and resonate with your story, but why does this matter? Why is it so important to you? Well, to be honest, Marissa, it's not something I ever thought that I would do, you know, given the fact that I was adopted at birth by Dennis Prager, he's my father, um, you know, he'll be the first person to say that blood doesn't matter. It's values. It's who raised you. And, uh, for a long time I rebelled against those values. I, I, I rebelled against authority. I rebelled against, um, the, the phrase I love to say is living life on life's terms. I did not want to deal with, with the way the world was really set out to be. I thought the world for so long should conform to my desires rather than me conform to baseline society. And, uh, that led me to being a lot of pain, you know, mostly self-induced, but nonetheless, and I would medicate from a very early age, about 12 years old is when I found the first time I had liquor, you know, in my body and I felt the effects of it. I thought to myself, wow, like I want to feel like this every day of my life. And I chased that, uh, up to other substances. And I finally landed on one of my, you know, my secondary love, as I like to say, a crystal meth and shot crystal meth and, you know, went down, went down this whole rabbit hole of, you know, lack of a better word, degeneracy and spiritual bankruptness. Um, but thank God I was able to, you know, finally hit what a lot of people would refer to as a rock bottom and come out the other side. And, um, rock bottom is, it's a tough place, but it's simultaneously the best and worst place to be in. When it comes to hosting a show, I mean, uh, once I got sober, I really felt that it was not just something I could do, but I was morally responsible for doing and obligated to do, to try to carry a message to anybody who was struggling, whether in my shoes with a similar issue or other issues that can hold them down and really hold them back, not just from a happy, joyous and free life, but a relationship with God too. Do you think that you had something in your DNA or in your background that made you more prone to addiction? Is that what people have? If their parents were addicts, then they're likely going to be addicts too. Well, I mean, there's, there's multiple schools of thought on that. Is there a DNA gene? I mean, we do know scientifically that some people are more predisposed to alcoholism than, than other people and substance use disorder as it's classified in the DSM-5 now. Um, I don't personally, when I look back at my own story, get too caught up in that. I kind of look at the, look at everything as I would not be sitting in this chair today if I hadn't gone through everything. And that's a blessing. You know, it was a very tough journey, but it is a blessing. I think when people get too caught up in thinking, oh, I'm predisposed to this or there's this gene for this, I was destined for this, they tend, it's a very slippery slope into shirking all responsibility. Yeah. It's a, it's so interesting that you bring that up because that is oftentimes what people want to do when things really are tough. You just want to say, well, God gave me a broken body and therefore it's not I who is responsible for my destiny, but I am just set up for failure. Yeah, the thing is personal responsibility for me. What it truly means is there's a difference between responsibility and accountability. If I'm drinking and I'm under the influence, am I responsible for the things that are happening that I, that I engage in the answer? Probably not, but I'm a, but I have to be accountable for the actions that I take. I drive a car and I'm under the influence. You know, if I have a DSM five classified disease of alcoholism or substance use disorder, then one school of thought can be, I'm not responsible. But if I kill somebody in a drunk driving accident, I have to be accountable for that action. So it's, it's an interesting distinction that a lot of people don't know. And they just think a lot of times that, oh, if somebody is using the disease. Uh, argument or saying like, oh, I have a disease. I'm an alcoholic or I'm an addict or whatever, that they're trying to shirk everything. But it's actually the exact opposite of that. Somebody living in true recovery owns every decision that they have made. They don't run away from it. If I'm to run away from my decisions, I can never go through a true process of recovery. How can I make amends to somebody that I've harmed if I don't take responsibility for the things that I've done? How can I take an inventory of myself if I'm not willing to take an honest examination of myself? And these are, these are, these are principles that I feel are lost nowadays in modern society, where people just want to take the easier, softer path a lot of the time. And that's part of what American recovery, the show is about as well. Not just the show, but what I try to exude and put forward to people is a message of hope, but you have to take action. It's so interesting to hear your perspective. There's a brilliant statement in a place where a penitent stands, a complete righteous person cannot stand. And essentially means you have to go through real hardship to really, truly understand how to come out of real hardship. There's a perspective that you have that somebody who hasn't gone through the failure, somebody who hasn't gone through the rock bottom, that person would never have the perspective that you have. But what's very interesting is I've known Dennis Prager for over 16 years now. So I've known you since you were young and you were going through the process of getting into recovery. For as long as I've known Dennis, he would talk about how we are all responsible for our own lives. We are the ones who can be blamed for our destiny, no matter how hard the circumstances are. And I'm sure you grew up hearing your father, Dennis Prager, constantly saying it is you, you, you, who is responsible for you, right? If the moment you start making excuses and blaming other people is going to be the moment that you will absolutely fail and you're not going to be able to lift yourself up or something like that, right? So what was it like for you in your twenties to hear Dennis Prager talk about this personal responsibility and, you know, hit rock bottom at the same time? So, uh, the first, the number one word that comes to mind is resentful. I was resentful of my father for preaching this message of, you know, not quite pick yourself up by your bootstraps, but it was similar, kind of rhymed with it, personal responsibility. You're the person who is the master of your own destiny. A lot of these different philosophies. I was very resentful at him because I didn't number one want to, but I'd understand that I was very much in the mindset of wanting to be taken care of. I want the, I went to Bernie Sanders rallies in 2015, you know, like that was me and it was just because it was the person promising to give me free things. And I'm like, sweet. I don't have to do anything. I can be a lifelong bum. It's fantastic. You know? Um, and my father was teaching me the opposite of that. So it's, and it's very painful to hear that a lot of people nowadays will be told, Hey, you can change your environment based on your actions. You can change the circumstances of your life based on your actions and your decisions. And I'll tell you this right now. I am met with the most vitriol online. When I will post content talking about personal responsibility, it triggers people more than anything, because you do not want to be told that you were doing something incorrect or that you are responsible, the human inclination. Our baseline is to is self-preservation. And it's very painful when you're confronted with, Hey, you made this decision, therefore your life is this way. And people will make excuses every day. They will blame the government. They will blame the weather. They will blame the food. They'll blame political parties. Doesn't matter what it is, but blame everything. Um, so when my father, when I'm confronted with this as a young person, I'm like, can you just speak frankly? I'm like, can you just shut up? Like you shut up. He asked me how my day is. Yeah. But anybody who knows my father is more like, you know, he, he's going to try to teach me to be a good person. He doesn't view, uh, being a friend as, as something, which I don't do that with my kid, I'm not trying to be her friend. I'm trying to be her parent. I need to, and a lot of times that might come across as cold, but it is necessary. I wanted to sit with you today. Not because I want to dissect your past. I want to honestly sit with you because I want to understand how to do better. I also have kids. I have three kids. I have a growing boy and I am seeing how hard it is to communicate with our children. Right. I don't want to be preachy. Um, and so, I mean, I've known you and I've loved you forever throughout your entire experience. And I have seen you hit rock bottom. And I see you now as a father, as a husband taking responsibility. It is a miracle is a miracle to watch you, Aaron, really. And I think that there are many parents out there who are praying and trying to understand how do we communicate with our kids, because we don't want to shut them out. We know that we're not supposed to be their friend, but we also know that if we preach at them, they may not listen and we will lose them entirely. And this compiled experience with human nature of, of an adolescent or a 20 year old needing to push parents out of their lives in order to basically build their own lives is a natural biological thing. What is not natural and biological is the added component of the culture that is coming from the internet and social media. Right? So you have all these people who are trying to influence our children out there. And parents like me are looking at young men like you, and we are asking, how do we talk to that 20 year old Aaron Prager, who is spending time on the internet and doesn't want to hear from their old parents about any sort of morality and goodness and preachy stuff and personal responsibility stuff. If you could go back and speak to you in your twenties, is there a way to not preach, but actually teach? I think it's first important to say that if you don't raise your kids, someone else or something else will either somebody with nefarious intentions or ulterior motives than what your values are as a parent or social media will take its place as well. And we see all the different bad avenues that that's taken us these days. Would anything have changed my mind? I don't think there would be, I think there is an element that parents do need to understand as well, that number one, not everything is going to land with your child, not everything will, but that's not to say you should stop doing it. There is a time and place for preaching. A lot of the things that my father told me, lo and behold, you know, I got sober at 23, I'm 33 now when I'm 25, two years into recovery at like, it just like pops in my head and I'm like, oh wow, where did that come from? So it's about planting seeds with your children. And if your child decides to go like I did along a certain pathway, you can put all the safeguards you want in place. They're going to blow through that because that's part of like what kids do to some degree. The question is, is what kind of environment has been fostered on the back end to try to provide an environment where there's open communication for one, that's number one question. I get Marissa when, when I do speeches or when I talk to people right afterwards, the first hand goes up and I go, well, what happens if your child is like you? And I go, you know, the best thing I've able to been able to come to is that there needs to be open communication fostered from day one. When my child is barely able to even understand, I'm telling her my whole story. I'm going to tell her exactly what, what it's like, because if she's out there and she's in high school and she's encountering things, whether it's, you know, eating disorders, substance use or whatever, she sees a kid OD at a party or whatever. She might not know how to process that. In fact, she probably won't, but if that sits there and it doesn't, she doesn't talk about it and get out there, she might be in college later and then she has a bad feeling and that comes up or whatever. She sees it again, God forbid, how's she going to cope with that? Probably not in a good way because she's never talked about it. And when we don't know things, just like I didn't know when I was younger, my father trying to tell me, walk me through things. If we don't, when we don't know things, it's, it's very tough to try to crack through that hard facade that a lot of kids do. Young men specifically, because there are a lot of added pressures, whether self-imposed, which a lot of the time is the case, um, or by somebody else. There's something so raw and real about the fact that Dennis Prager, our intellectual hero, this incredibly articulate man struggled to articulate to his own son, those values. Yet you say that everything he said was somewhere in your mind and came back to you as a gift later on. I think it is absolutely profound because sometimes, I know the kids sometimes feel like they're not heard, but parents sometimes think that they're not being listened to. And, and the mind of a child is like a little sponge. Those little whispers that we say to them when they're little remain these whispers with them through throughout their lives. And it's like, it just came back to you. It's such a profound thought. When you talk about recovery, do you ever, do you feel like you recovered or are you always in recovery? Do you still use these tools and do you still have those same temptations? I'm recovered from a hopeless state of body and mind. I will always be recovering from the disease of alcoholism and addiction. That's never going to change. And to some degree, I don't want that to change because everybody goes through things in life. Everybody goes through stresses. Everybody goes through character defects, flaring up, shortcomings manifesting in strange ways, needing to take a look inside, relying on God. All these things, people need to, you know, these things happen in life. I just happen to be, you know, I've gone through a program that illustrates to me pretty easily that if I practice the best of my ability on a daily basis, I'm offered a better day than, than the day before, you know, God willing. So into that, that, you know, whenever I introduce myself, I say I'm a grateful recovering alcoholic, you know, because it's true. Recovered from a hopeless state of body and mind though, is something very different. There there are three, three, or there are two threes that I always look at recovered from a hopeless state of body and mind and happy, joyous, and free. I want to get to a place of happy, joyous, and free, not just stop the behavior or substance that I'm in taking into my life. Now this can be used for anxiety. This can be used for toxic relationships. This can be used for debt, you know, in today's world for anything. I look for a pathway to happy, joyous, and free. A lot of the avenues that are being offered to people now, happy, joyous, and free are shortcuts. There are shortcuts in and of themselves. I mean, I'm a gym guy, right? Good analogy. I want to gain more mass. I want to be more lean. I want to do all these different things. So have I, you know, when the guy in the, in the, in the locker room asked me, Hey, Aaron, I got this thing in the bag, you know, 20 bucks, you know, it's, you know, it'll help you gain all these things you want. I have to say no to that, even though it's not going to change, you know, you know, get me high or whatever. Um, it's a shortcut and I reject the shortcut model now. That's the thing that I think a lot of young men struggle with is rejecting the shortcut. So for you, the process of constantly resisting, uh, and remaining recovered. Is to focus on the hard journey as what to relish in the work that has to be done rather than get to the results. Results come as long as I continue to keep working at it. So I don't view any, it's an, it's important for people to hear this. Cause I feel in today's society, we quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, run, run, run, run, run. And everybody's looking to get to the finish line. You have to enjoy the journey. You have to enjoy the process by which you are self-improving. I enjoy the process of doing work on myself. When I pray to God and I say, Hey, I need strength in a situation. I'm not just given strength. I'm usually put into a situation that requires me to exhibit strength. Same thing with patients. That's why I never pray for patients because you believe me, I'll be in this situation where I need to be patient the next day. Um, but yes, I do relish the journey. I, I, I, I don't shy, shy away from struggle anymore. Struggle is something that builds men into something greater than they are. Great example of this rabbi, Abraham Torski. He was a, he was an Orthodox rabbi. He was also in the substance abuse world. He told a story called the lobster story. And the lobster story is, um, how does a lobster, it's a crustacean, but when it's born, it's, you know, it's little and it grows into a shell, but it has to, to get bigger, crack through that shell. So it's in pain. What does the lobster do? It goes underneath a rock and it goes through even more pain to, you know, rub against it, to get rid of the shell so that it can grow into a bigger lobster, which the moral of the story is that pain and uncomfortability are actually a catalyst for growth. In fact, probably the best one. Hmm. It's so interesting because so many of us want to shelter our loved ones, especially our children from pain. Uh, but I guess there is no life really, truly without some suffering and pain. So you might as well be prepared for it. Yeah. Well, you, I mean, you don't, you don't want to like, you know, just throw your kid to the wolves, obviously, or throw your loved one to the wolves. But I mean, a healthy dose of, of, of strife and struggle. I mean, that's what makes people who they are. It's what actually helps define characteristics, your personality. Like when, when my child, you know, a guest on American recovery, you know, he gave the example of his son or his stepson, I believe, who, when they leave the house, he's learning to tie his shoes and then rather than just tying the kid's shoes every time, which would be faster, he lets the kids struggle with tying his shoes because he needs to grow and he needs to understand how to do these things. Now, if you just extrapolate that example out, the different aspects, dealing with anxiety, finding healthy coping, healthy coping mechanisms, not running to some online community that tells you, oh, blame this group or that group, finding a substance or going to the bar or, or, or going on Tinder or something like that, engaging in a quick fix, a shortcut, like I was talking about before. Where do you go in your mind when you feel this instinct of fear, conspiracy, despair, disappointment? I have to imagine that after going through recovery, you have a place in your mind that sets you straight. Interesting. Well, fear, fear is a big one. Fear is usually fear is the center for all other emotions, negative emotions. I should say, usually if I'm, if I'm angry at something, it's because it's tapping into my fear center on something. If I'm angry at my job, if I'm angry at my wife, if I'm angry at something, it's usually because they have said something or done something that activates my fear center. And my biggest fear center is a sense of inadequacy. And I have no problem sharing that being raised in my household. I think people could probably understand that that's like something I've struggled with a lot. Um, but I don't let it define me anymore. That's the difference. When I feel fearful about something I know, because some of this does come just with time of separating yourself from the substance behavior or activity that you're trying to recover from, um, is knowing that you don't have to anymore, which is very, it's just something that's very hard to do at the beginning because you, it, your mode of operation is to, I feel negative, go drink. I feel negative, go to Tinder. I feel negative, go to the bar, something like that. Um, whereas now I'm like, well, I have data points that I can point to 10 years into the process to be like, oh, I went through this horrible event. I'm able to still not, you know, relapse as you, as people would say. Um, but is there a specific place I go to? I have a heavy emphasis in my relationship with God. I mean, the, the, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, for instance, there's 12 steps in that program, that specific program. Only one of those steps has the word alcohol in it. The rest of them is in reference to God. Most of the majority of them, he was like six or seven of them that have reference to God with the ultimate promise in step 12, having had a spiritual awakening. And I think that's what I know. At least I was trying to get to, and that's what a lot of people try to get to is having a spiritual awakening. And when I say spiritual, all I really mean is just not being concerned with the material in life, focus on something greater than yourself and trying to build a So that when, so that when, you know, proverbial, you know, ish does hit the fan, um, you don't have to run back to that. So holding, holding higher power, God, whatever you want to call it, I call him God, um, at the forefront of my mind and trying to envelop all different aspects of my life is that shield when all else fails is the shield for me. God speaks to you, I guess, internally and reminds you that you have nothing to prove and nothing to hide so that you don't have that fear. I know I have, I have nothing to prove. I have things to prove only to myself. That's had health. And that's also a healthy thing. I need to prove things to myself. Every young man and growing man needs to continuously have ambition to have, to have drive and to not shirk responsibility and blame other people for their problems, which if I didn't mention before, that was my rock bottom. When I suddenly realized that I had no one left to blame for my problems, but me. It was the moment that my life entirely changed. I became willing, which is a big part of this, the willingness to people say they're willing, it's different action, different when you actually put into action, became willing to take suggestions that ultimately then benefited my life. God speaks to me a lot of the time through other people, you know, the difference between prayer and meditation is, you know, prayer is speaking. Meditation is listening for anybody who's listening to this, who struggles with those things, keep it simple, stupid. Prayer is talking, meditation is listening. And I would argue that meditation is more important than the prayer component to it because you can talk and talk and talk, but then isn't the onus on you to see where God's going to respond in your life? Are you going to hear a voice in your head or is it going to come most likely in the form of somebody who probably of the unlikeliest places says something that directly answers your question? For as long as I've known you, I've wondered what is it like being a white male having gone through the education system because I'm a teacher and I've always been incredibly concerned about how white boys have been treated in schools. If you look at what happened during the BLM years where boys were told that they're the last to speak or the last to audition for a school play because they have to pay for the sins of their forefathers, the requirement that you sit still and boy, did you not like to sit still, right? Dennis Prager has spoken about it for years and I've watched it as well. And I've always wondered what is it like to go through the school system as a young man and I wonder whether today some young men, conservative young men feel this anger and resentment because if they were not preached at home, they were preached at school that they're too masculine and not enough. Yeah, no, I think you touched on something extremely important. I mean, granted, I went to school right before, I mean, I think I graduated in 2010, maybe 11. So it was a few years before things really got strange. But when I was in school, I think I went to five different high schools or some crazy number. I lost track of it, you know, because to your point, I couldn't sit still. First off, at the top of the order, I should say, I don't think young boys should be in school. I don't think they should be. If I have a son, God willing, I have a daughter, but if I have a son, God willing, we probably won't put him in formal education to begin with. I mean, obviously, in the early years, kids are not designed to sit at a table. And I'm sure, you know, this is an educator. It's very it's it's it's it's not natural for a child to sit at a table for what, nine, eight, nine hours a day with one recess or something like that, especially at an early age. And young men, we have that drive. We have that, you know, that especially, you know, we have aggression that there's positive aggression, there's negative aggression. So it's a matter of figuring out how to control that aggression. But what society did, especially after 2020 in the summer of love, was it chastised men across the board and told them that no matter what you do, you're wrong. You sit down, you shut up. You're the last person to speak. You toxic. You're toxic because of your masculinity, things that they cannot change. Masculinity, you cannot change necessarily. There's different levels of it. And of course, they're going to interpret that is one of two ways. One, I'm extremely angry now. I'm going to lash out and use that aggression negatively. Or I'm going to repress it. And what do we know about repression? When you repress something, it will lash out one way or another. And instead of it being in a healthy manner, it will come out sideways. So I'm not surprised you see the the the rise of a lot of these groups or figureheads who are so utterly focused on catering to men's worst instincts. I think that conservatives have been paying a lot of attention to what has been happening to young men on the left. Many men suddenly identifying as women or identifying as part of the LGBTQ plus victim bingo, oppression Olympics, whatever you want to call it, men becoming more effeminate, thinking that if they repress their masculinity, they'll be more accepted by society. We've seen that on the left. You alluded to a reaction that you could see on the alt-right or on the right or just in the culture in general, where there is a new group of men, specifically ones that go on the internet to find another affinity group to belong to. And that is one where it is almost the other extreme of it, where it's men who claim that they have responsibility, claim that they have masculinity, claim that they have sovereignty and authority over their own lives, but eventually appear to be also incredibly angry and incredibly conspiratorial and not exactly responsible for their own destiny. This is much of the cohort of, of young men, your age and, and, and younger. Yeah. I mean, like I talked about before, I mean, personal responsibility is key. If your main focus in life is to be self-serving, you are going to take shortcuts and through those shortcuts, you're going to end up being attracted to certain figureheads who you feel are preaching the correct things, but they're masked. What I mean by this is a lot of the time, there are people, figureheads who are on the internet, predominantly right-wing coded figureheads who will say, you are the master of your destiny and they'll give a policy prescription for it, but they do not address the resentments. And if I'm looking for a happy, joyous and free life, that is oxymoronic to resentments, I cannot be happy and be filled with resentments. Resentments, by the way, as a popular, you know, program also says, and it's like drinking poisons, hoping somebody else dies, it's going to eat you up from the inside. Um, so I have a, I have a tremendous, um, issue with telling people who are trying to, who have at least that self-identified, they need to make a change in their lives. They're struggling. They're like, Hey, listen, I've, I've made this point where I feel like something is against me. I want to try to figure out a way to overcome it, but then you're selling them more victimhood. You're selling them more problem. That's wrong. What do you think about Andrew and Tristan Tate? Uh, well, yeah, I mean, Andrew Tate is the, I guess you could say the head of the manosphere is it's now the self-help pick yourself up by your bootstraps, but like I was saying, he's a, he's a perfect example of somebody who wraps personal responsibility around a, just a, uh, an iron hot core of, of you're a victim. That's what he preaches to, to, to people. How so how does Tate cause Andrew Tate speaks about personal responsibility and he speaks about, you know, go to the gym and work out and be the master of your own destiny, which I'd imagine for many young men, it's incredibly encouraging to hear that kind of narrative out there. Yeah. We want to be going in a direction, uh, and be ambitious and be the person who is attractive to women and to eventually find a wife and build a family unit and have a good career and have a good physique. Like we want all those things like granted met his messaging at face value isn't exactly terrible when it pertains to like, you're the master of destiny, go to the gym, take care of yourself, you know, work hard, have ambition, get a good job, do all these things. There's a whole other like misogynistic side to that though. Um, which I can get to in a second, but the personal responsibility that the Tate brothers preach is side by side with what they call the matrix. And the matrix is this construct that they themselves are the gatekeepers to, by the way, they're the ones who coined the term, the matrix. So the matrix was obviously from the movie, the matrix and being red pilled, you know, you take the red pill, you actually wake up to what's really going on as opposed to going, just living in this alternate simulation, whatever. Um, but the Tate brothers matrix. Yes. That's something they made up. As Andrew Tate describes the matrix. It is this construct of anything and everyone who is, who is working against young men. Somebody you can blame. Exactly. So, like I said, it is personal responsibility on the outside, collective grievance and victimhood on the inside. So it's still blame the man and not personal responsibility. It's blame everybody else. It is men do what you can. You get fit, have a good job, attract women, do all these things for $50 a month, you know, get in here, get into my course. I'll teach you how to do all these things. And if for some reason, anything is in your way, it's because of the matrix. It's this outside group. It's feminism. It's it's the government. It's the cabal. It's the Jews. Like it's, it's all these different things that he says are working against you. But if you give them the money, you can actually get out. And that's what makes it so attractive is because, uh, you know, $50 to some people sounds like a lot, but to a lot of people who are really like beaten down and told you suck, you're a man. You can't do anything. You're the problem. Toxic masculinity, seven ways from Saturday. And they're told this over and over again, $50 is like nothing. They're like begging him to take the money, take the money. Please help me learn to be a top G alpha male. Well, what, how are they taking the money? So they have this university, the hustle university. I think they changed it to what the real life or something like that. Real world, real world, real world university. So you pay into the system and they teach you personal responsibility and how to be successful. And if you don't come out successful, it means the matrix came after you. Yeah, basically. That's the short version of it. If you were 20 years old again, and you went back to Aaron Prager in his twenties, would you sign up for something like that? I mean, I can't relate to it at all. So I want to understand why are so many young people relating to Andrew Tate? If it's so obvious to the rest of us that they don't actually own these cars and they're not actually that wealthy. And they're even saying now that they're, that they don't own those cars. So why are young men so attracted to the Tate brothers aside from the masculinity narrative, which I mean, Jordan Peterson also talked about masculinity, but a very different type of masculinity, it seems like the Tate brothers masculinity is also laced with a lot of anti-women behavior, right? Do you think the Tate brothers, Andrew Tate would be as famous and as popular as he is if he wasn't so nasty to women? No, you, you, I, for, for the brand to succeed, especially in attracting young men, because the first brand, the first brand of what came out was, uh, he tried to launch a thing called Cobra or I forget the exact name of it, but Cobra. And it was targeted at about twenties and thirties men. But the problem with that is that when you're at that age, you've been more developed prefrontal cortex. You're more scrutinizing. You're reading the refund policy. You're looking at all these things. Um, but he quickly realized that he was going to fail at that. So take that and apply it to younger men. Take it to take that same model. Of course, pay here. I'll help you improve your life. But here, it's an interesting thing too, is the inherent problem with a self help course is that you're the problem. That the villain in that is you pick yourself up by your bootstraps, make yourself better because you're not doing well, that's very hard to sell to somebody in their twenties. And what Andrew Tate did with Husserl's university is he said, the villain is everybody else who is holding you down and young men, like we spoke about with the education system, with dating culture are flocking to this because there are real issues. Uh, when it comes to male, female right now in 2026, there, there are real problems that young men feel like, you know, they, they can't get a leg up. They can't get a good woman, you know, people who let's say young, uh, or like, I just want to find it like somebody like settled down with, but you know, Tinder, everybody's just on Tinder right now and there's the height settings now, you know, for guys, there's all these different settings, you know, uh, that, that you can try to, that are giving people the illusion that you can just control every little aspect of this. And the reality is you just can't. And for young men, the allure of the Tate brothers course is that they actually get community at the end of the, at the, at the end of the rainbow, they get a community of guys who eventually, I mean, I don't know how many, how many people have actually succeeded to become what they call top G or whatever, and become multimillionaires with the girls on the arms and all these things. I don't know how many have actually got it. I would assume not many. Um, but then again, it's the journey, it's, it's the, it's, and it's really, truly, it's set up like a cult a little bit. How so? So with cults, like you tell people, you give them a promise, you give them something to go to, you bring them in, you say, Hey, listen, I, I've identified this problem with you. Please come over here. We're going to hold you up and we're going to hold you in similar to what the church does, right? The downside to it is that if you leave, if you leave, well, now you're part of the problem. Then you join the matrix, join the matrix. They may, you're just, you're going to go, but you're, you're willfully going back to the herd. So in a way it's this, and the immersive, the power of this cannot be underestimated right now because young men at outsize rates feel tremendous sense of hopelessness. They have no purpose, um, job markets, economics, all these different factors are, are, are, are to some degree actually against them. Um, where my problem tends to really come in is the Tate brothers and, and, and people like that who are trying to sell this product to young men. That no matter what happens, you can like, you cannot get better. I think that is one of the most nefarious and destructive forces. And it's not actually helping. They claim to be helping young men and helping the culture by actually helping men become this, this, this version of themselves. But in reality, you are chaining a, a lead ball to them for the rest of their lives. I would not have gotten sober. I would not have changed my life if I was still willing to blame other people for my problems. They are, there is no way to, if you're going to blame the matrix or these unknown forces or the Jews or this cabal or the elites or whatever, if it's. Then you're never going to actually fully get the benefits of a, of an advanced life of a fulfilled life, happy, joyous, and free, probably the most shocking thing that I will ever say is that it appears as if Andrew Tate becomes more popular despite the way he treats women. So you have everything that comes out in all the allegations that come out in Romania about whether it's sex trafficking, digital sex trafficking, harassment of women, possibly even rape, alleged rape, you have additional allegations against Andrew Tate in the UK, then there are allegations in Los Angeles against him. The allegations against rape or treatment of women seem to just make him more popular. Well, the Tates have denied the allegations against them and for followers of them, this is just confirmation that the matrix is out to get them because years and years ago, Andrew Tate said, first they silence you, then they will, then they, then they come for you. And in 2022 is really when Andrew Tate rose to prominence because Andrew Tate in 2022, um, that is around the time where he got banned on meta platforms, uh, TikTok and all this simultaneously. Now one can make the case that the timing was very conspicuous. They were very close together, but I could also make the case that, uh, companies do a cost benefit analysis real quick and risk to see if a, we should, we don't want to be the last people hosting this guy on our platform. You know what I mean? But when he got banned, it was, see, that was one of his prophecies that came true was they silenced him. Right. So now that he's being arrested, this is just the second half. See, they silenced me for not doing anything. Now they're arresting me for not doing anything. So his followers it's, it's, it's publicity that you cannot buy. Nine figure advertisement agencies and marketing agencies could not compete with this. Allegations against him that have to do with mistreatment of women actually help Andrew Tate and his brand. I don't know if it happened or didn't happen. I don't have beliefs. I'll wait for the justice system to make a decision. What is shocking to me is the additional allegations against them simply make him more popular. That's that's he, or the thing with Andrew Tate is he, he learned this from a very early age. He learned this from a very early age when he was in his kickboxing career, for instance, his kickboxing career. Um, he realized that at that low level that he was at, you needed to be a villain in order to make any sort of money because you either had to be really, really good to get people in the seats because that's what promoters want, or you needed to be a villain. And he played the villain card very, very well. Uh, and he does it to this day and he's exceptional at it. Credit to him. He knows very well, he's a master marketer. How does this villain image help drawing young men? Because the villain in and of itself is something that young men, like, like you had mentioned before, had have been told sit down, shut up. Your opinion doesn't matter. So they already have negative energy inside of them. And now they see somebody who is openly bombastic and engaging in violence and all of this, but he's reaping all of these rewards. How do I go do that? How do I attain that? We'll just pay $50 a month and just, you know, just talk a certain way and clip my content for me. And I'll give you an affiliate link that you could then sign up other people, which is basically a Ponzi scheme. Do you think that now that they're actually claiming that they never owned those cars and they don't have the type of wealth they were playing a role, they were acting in order to create a brand for their, for their business, do you think that that would now turn the young men off when they're watching it saying, well, actually wait a second, this whole thing was a facade and wasn't even real. And they don't actually have all, all of that wealth or again, every time they're, they get caught red handed. It's only good for their brand. I mean, it is, it's an unbelievable branding system. Well, I think all they would have to do is, you know, the ins and outs of the legal case, it could be, they're trying to downplay the fact that they own these things because, you know, for tax reasons or whatever it might be, you don't know the roots going on in their head or what their lawyers are telling them. Bought in. They just want to make sure that their hero is still the hero. And then at the end, then at the end of it, you go out, they, Andrew can make a video and go, see, oh, I got one over on the matrix and the lawyers, they tried to say, all I had to do was claim that I didn't own them or whatever. Like they can make a video like that in two seconds. It's just, I think a lot of people underestimate how. I hesitate to use the word disaffected. I don't think it fully captures what young men are right now. Um, I think a lot of young men are tired. I think a lot of young men are really tired. They feel like the deck, the deck is stacked against them. And, um, in, in some arenas it might be, and that might be true. But once again, the difference between what my branding and someone like a Jordan Peterson's branding and the Tate's is, is that I refuse to let that be a barrier to success. And I think it's more important to tell young men that regardless of whatever's put in front of you, if the universities are co-opted, if the government hates you, if this, if that, if you, if women hate you, if feminism taken over, you can still live a meaningful life, but you never ever will, if you give up or you blame other people for your problems and you sure as hell should not give somebody $50 a month, who's going to tell you to be nasty to women when you're trying to find a good woman. That is, that is, that doesn't make any sense. You know, we talked about the masculinity element and the attack on young men. We talked about to some degree, the feminization of our culture, specifically in schools. There is an affordability issue for young men. We keep telling young men, well, you know, to solve your problems, take on responsibility, get married, start a family. And many young men feel like it's just not affordable. It's very challenging. You saw that burrito, uh, post that went viral. The burrito. Okay. So, you know, many conservatives rightfully so well, well said, well, you don't have to eat out every day. I get it. On the other hand, $20 on a burrito is expensive. It's very expensive. Life is expensive and it's not just the burrito. It's the market. You go to the market, it's expensive. So obviously we're seeing that life is incredibly expensive. You want to get married. I tell a man, go get married, start a family. It is overwhelming. I mean, you're in that situation, right? So how do you address the burrito gate? Okay. My response is going to be very harsh. And my response is very simple is number one. You do not deserve to live. You're not entitled to live a certain lifestyle. If you want to have family that comes at a cost, there's no way around it. It's just the reality. Matt Walsh talked about this. He talked about when he was making 40 grand a year and he was like, well, my wife can work or we can have a kid. And they chose to have the kid. And they lived very, very small because they made, they said, we're going to have priorities, a lot of young men and a lot of people right now, we're actually women too. They want to have their cake and eat it too, but that's not life. You have to make decisions and your life circumstances and your lifestyle are going to be directly correlated to whatever decisions you make, you know, Caleb hammer, financial audit, a very popular YouTube show. He gets vitriol all day on the internet because he simply has the audacity of saying, don't spend more money than you make a novel concept. Right. Um, but people who want to do a lot of these things, I mean, I remember when we were debating having our first child, I did have those fears of like, I don't have enough money, you know? And my wife looked at me and said, well, there are people who are living in the next town who make 30 grand and they have like six kids. And I was like, well, they're on a, they're on benefits. That was my response. And I was like, okay, well benefits are there for a reason. Like if people need them, you work, but you have to, the caveat to that is work to get off the benefits. That's, that's, that's the caveat to it. If you are, I would have no problem. If you're a young man and you're a young couple and you say, Hey, listen, we're getting married. We want to start a family right away. Okay. Go get all the benefits, but work to get off of it and make sure it's not a long-term solution. That's one, that's just a simple one way going about it. And I've thought about for precisely 35 seconds. It is possible there. I mean, people, you look around you, there are people in way worse, and I'm talking to the audience too, when there are people who are out there in way worse situations than you. Way worse situations. How can they have a family? How are they able to do these things? It is possible. Just remember that your, your life is based on your decisions that you make. And if you make a decision, own that decision, don't go blaming somebody if it goes South. If I am on a shoestring budget and I decide to go to Disneyland or get Chipotle DoorDash to me every day for a week as my lunch, I'm not entitled to that. I want it, but I'm not entitled to it. And especially if I'm making 50 grand, you know, a year, you know, depending on where you live and granted, that's another part cities are different. Cities are a whole nother ballgame depending on where you live. Ben Shapiro got really hammered for this one when he said that, Oh, just because you're born in a certain place doesn't mean you're entitled to live in that place. I happen to agree with him. You know, I lived in California, went to Pennsylvania, came back to California. Don't remind me. And it was, it's just like being in Pennsylvania. I had a four bedroom, two bath with a backyard on like a quarter acre. And my mortgage was $1,400 a month. If somebody makes 50 grand, you can afford that, you know, but if you, but if you're like, I deserve to have a four bedroom, two bath house on a quarter acre in Los Angeles, it's well, good luck with that, you know? So once again, that's a choice you are deciding to live there. Now, granted, you could have family, you could have all these different things, but it's important that people understand this young people who are looking to advance their lives, that everything is achievable. Nothing is out of reach. You just have to number one, put the work in. But part of that work is realizing that there are easier ways than others to get there. And, uh, I think people are just very quick to jump to resentment and be like, Oh, it's the system's fault that, uh, you know, where it's the college's fault. My degree failed me or whatever it is. Well, and the temptation with pictures on Instagram and on X of wealthy people with incredible homes and incredible travel and incredible Instacart and door dash and cars, I mean, that creates basic envy. Oh, totally. Social media is a cancer. It should be abolished. I, I, I, I can't stand it as somebody on social media. I don't care. Um, I, I, I, social media is, is, is cancerous. It truly is. The, you people underestimate the destructive power of flipping through the doom scroll feature. This feature right here was one of the worst things that it was ever invented. Um, and just seeing pictures time and time again, I'd be like, Oh, that, that girl, I went, I went to high school with her or that guy I went to college. Wow. They're in Bora Bora for the third time this year. How it's like, you don't know that they're probably in massive debt that, or they married wealthy one or the other. Or maybe they're just faking the photo. Exactly. Like it's, it's, it's, people are always reaching for things that are just. I focus on what I can control and what I can control is, do I get up in the job and try not to get fired? Yes. Do I come home and do I try to treat my wife for the best of my ability? Take care of my daughter? Yes. Do I try to make my mortgage payment? Do I try to make my car payment? Do I try to advance? Once again, tying back to ambition for young men, extremely important, young ladies out there, if you find a man, doesn't matter what his income is at the moment, ask if he has ambition because even if he makes half a million dollars at 23 years old, if he's got no ambition, he'll probably backslide later in life. So this is all, this is all like relevant to whether it's the undertake conversation, recovering, it's all the same thing. Um, but the key is to not give up. The key is to try to, uh, uh, to use one of my favorite words. I've learned from you to inculcate to young men that there is hope at the end of the road, that you can live a happy, joyous and free life. And the only thing that's stopping you is if you decide to willfully give up your power, whether it is to yourself or to an online personality or to the matrix. Yes. How has becoming a father changed you? Because I think many young people, especially people your age think that they first need to have wealth and then propose and then have a child, but you proposed, had a child and then took on what I would call a stable job. So, yeah, I mean, I, I had stable employment. I, I did, I did take a huge gamble, uh, right after we got married though, because I worked in the treatment industry for, for, for a handful of years after getting sober. And I thought that was my career path and I absolutely hated it. My wife saw it was just eating away at me. And, um, all the meantime, I had my little side hustles. I was doing content for myself and I had my own show. And, uh, so we got, we bought our house, we got married and, um, we were looking to have a child and I, at this point had quit the job and I was going all in on content and I was, I was stock trading and I was, uh, driving Uber and I was doing a bunch of different things, which in my area paid the bills. Like you can get away, like I said, kind of from the previous conversation, you can get away in life, uh, depend, but I couldn't do that living in Los Angeles, in Pennsylvania, for sure. Would you have taken on all of these jobs if you were not married and had a kid? No, I wouldn't have. And that was the thing is I, I, my father, the best way to explain this is what my, how my father explained this to me, he said, the two things that men especially are never ready for in life is getting married and having kids. And when you, but when you get married and when you have kids, it forces you to either make more money, to, to do more in life, to take more risk, to be more calculated, to, you know, if you're not ambitious to kick it into gear, all of these different things, to do a job, that's not your hobby. Exactly. So, you know, I mean, and I'm not going to lie. I think I'm no problem telling you this, everything I do on a day to day out basis, would I rather be on a beach in Bora Bora? Absolutely. But that's not the reality of that's not the reality of my situation. Now, could that be my situation in a year? Who knows? Probably won't be, but who knows? Try for it. Um, so yeah, change, getting married and having kids changes a lot within somebody, but it also doesn't change, uh, much in the sense that I really, at the end of the day, took one of my, those nuggets that my father, I had told you early on that he had said, and I applied it in my life. And he said here, and he's like, Aaron, I don't care if you're the best burger flipper, I care if you're a good person. Aaron, what's your final piece of advice to people like me who want to raise great kids and want to show up for them in whatever way we can specifically young men. How do you think we should best handle what it is that we are seeing that they're going through? It's a tough one. I don't think there's any one specific answer to this question. I think it's, I think it's a combination of needing to dial back the empathy, actually dial back the empathy from young men, because I think we're now in the, especially in the conservative space, giving too much empathy to men. We need to dial it back. Men thrive when we're faced with adversity, we will become more creative. We will channel that aggression for something positive. We become more, uh, entrepreneurial. We invent new things. We make society better when, when the deck is a little bit stacked against us, what we don't need. And what I think, especially what mothers can offer young men is nurturing the positive aggression side, dialing that up. And it's simultaneously, all parents should be teaching all of their kids not to be a victim that no matter what they are doing, what they're, what they're faced with in life, you can be victimized, but it's your choice. If you are going to make that your dominant personality trait, which sadly we're seeing a lot on the splinter faction, right? Right now, which is not a good sign. Yeah. Raise, raise, raise the bar, not lower it. Yes. All that Aaron, thank you for your honesty. I learned a lot. And as, as many parents out there, we just want to do better. So appreciate it. Thank you for having me.