who are absolutely convinced that everything I
post is supposed to be for their inspiration:
I got news for you.
It's not.
I'm down for the people who are down for me.
The rest of the people, I could care less about.
It's a better approach to life.
I tried the one.
You can't love everybody.
You can't help everybody.
Sometimes people go,
"Oh, Tai, I follow you for inspirational posts.
"Why do you post pictures with girls playing basketball?"
I don't know, 'cause it's my social media,
so I post what I was actually doing?
I'm like, yup. I was actually doing that.
I was on a movie set.
And I still post inspirational stuff.
When I feel like it.
And when I don't, I don't post it.
And I wanna say to those people:
What have you ever done for me?
That I owe you something?
Narcissism is rampant in this world, boy.
It's become an infection.
It literally has.
Become an infection, I'll tell you.
To how to know whether you're a narcissist
or whether someone around you is,
cause people say, "Oh, well, Tai, aren't you a narcissist?
"You post on social media all day."
Well, it's more like a business to me,
so I'm probably somewhat narcissistic.
I've done the Dark Triad test.
I've done HEXACO scores.
My narcissism is eh-eh.
It's a little high but not super high.
You know, it's a little above average.
But just so you know, some narcissism,
if you ask a scientist, is associated with creativity.
Generally people who are more creative,
more entrepreneurs tend to be a little higher on narcissism.
But there's some people who just take this too far.
I mean, I go on some people especially, well,
I don't wanna pick out women
because men are just as stupid in my experience, but.
Men and women are stupid in different ways in my experience.
I know it's probably gonna get me in trouble with
somebody who'll get butt hurt about the gender thing,
but there's a difference between men and women.
And I'll tell you how I know.
I'ma write a book one of these days.
It's gonna be something called like,
"The Million Dollar Body."
And it's how I spent, over three or four years,
a million bucks on testing my body.
Different trainers, different stuff.
I'll try anything once.
You know, vegan, I just tried,
if you saw when I was in Europe,
I was doing vegan, I do the DEXA truck,
which is a X-ray truck, comes every month.
I take about 28 vials of blood out of my arm,
every single month.
I've done everything.
I've done a gut test, I've done SpectraCell,
I've done, I know my Immunidex score.
I've done my WellnessFX, Greenfield panels,
I know my tests, my estradiol, my cortisol,
my DHEA, all that stuff.
And I've tested it, some on my friends and family,
that are women, and I've tested men.
Just those people around me, I go,
"Hey, you wanna try a test?"
Men and women are very different.
Man blood is different.
My cousin Maya got her testosterone back.
And her total test was 30 or something like that.
I said, "we gotta send this back to the lab.
"How's your total test,
"this is testosterone by the way,
"how's your total testosterone gonna be 30?
"When mine's 1200?"
(laughs)
I'm like, "Oh my god," that's when I realized,
men and women are not the same.
But, I mean, I guess they could be the same,
if you take a man and pump him full of shots of estrogen.
So maybe the gender is just hormones.
Let's call it that, we won't call it genders.
But I see people.
Some of them women.
I'm not trying to offend anybody.
If you go on a women's Instagram, in every single picture,
is her face, like this.
And it's like a flip book, if you flip faster.
And I got pictures of me on my Instagram,
so I'm not really trying to judge, you know.
I try not to have every picture of my face.
Maybe I'm not that pretty, so I don't want my face.
And I'm not even judging peop- girls who do that.
But it is a classic sign of narcissism.
To be completely, I mean, most girls aren't too bad,
but I've seen, I once counted a girl who had
a hundred pictures of her face in a row.
I'm like, "This society, I'm not perfect,
"but I don't wanna be like that."
And you know, men do it in different ways.
Obviously men usually aren't as obsessed with their face.
We got the wrong kinda, men are more,
my mom always says men always are overly confident.
You go to the pool and there's dudes in Speedos
with a huge gut just walking around,
thinking they're God's gift to women.
That's kinda like the male's version,
you know, men are oblivious.
There ain't no women that're attracted to your big stomach.
You know what I mean?
And so we're, this society's narcissism level,
and I've been talking a lot about this,
because I realize it in myself,
and I wanna get rid of it, to some extent.
On a one to ten, I don't wanna be a one.
That's too little narcissism.
You need some narcissism to generate enough pride
to get out of the bed and go, "I better work hard,
"cause I don't wanna look like an idiot."
I mean, some narcissism is what
evolutionary psychologists call functional.
It means it has an evolutionary adaptive purpose.
It's useful.
But man, sometimes I'm worried about society.
I was dealing with some stuff today,
it's kinda like attachment issues.
Tinder and stuff like this.
I wanna do some psychological experiments.
I wish they had been done more fifty years ago.
Because here's the deal.
If you watch my social media,
you know that I'm around a lot of pretty women.
So I'm not a Puritan about this, okay?
I'm not trying to say, you know me,
if you watch my social media.
So listen to very carefully.
I'm not trying to judge.
But I also know, when I was 20 years old,
I fell in love with this one girl,
named Alexandra Pettier, this French girl that I met,
I was, I've done, I never graduated college
or even did one year,
but I did a little school at NC State in Raleigh,
like one quarter or something.
And I met her there, and my friend Zolin from Sweden
introduced her, and she's this girl from Paris.
And I was head over heels in love with her.
And I remember looking back and being, like,
"Did I ever think of talking to other girls or cheating?"
And when you're young, you're supposed
to be more romantic and attached, you know?
It's like first love, puppy love.
I didn't even know you could talk to other girls.
(laughs)
Like, maybe I was just an idiot.
But maybe I wasn't, maybe I was just romantic.
And you see people now.
Like I said, I don't know as much about guys per se,
'cause I don't date guys.
I date women.
But you see some girls, it's like, under 25,
and they never had a boyfriend,
or they're like, "I've never been in love,"
and I'm going, is this society now generating
a ton of people who have literal, the word attachment,
is a scientific word, there's a good book by these
two famous scientists, Heller and Levine called, "Attached."
You can read about it.
And they're not the ones who invented attachment theory,
is very old, psychologists have noticed it.
They studied little babies.
There's people who have attachment issues.
It's kinda like when a mother gives birth to a child, okay?
It's not healthy.
If the baby's not attached and won't nurse from the mother.
There's a oxytocin bonding process, there's psychological
issues that will haunt that child forever.
And I saw this on a farm!
When a baby lamb was born to a sheep,
we had sheep and goats and cats,
if the mother doesn't bond with the baby,
that baby gets all messed up and needs that attachment.
So I'm not sure.
Like I said, I'm not a professional psychologist.
Some of my mentors are the top psychologists in the world,
so I listen to them,
and I kinda pick up little things here,
and I read a lot of books and textbooks and talk to,
and go to conferences and stuff, so.
This is my amateur opinion, but
there's something going on with attachment issues.
Now when someone's been married and divorced three times,
sometimes people are 35 years old and they're like,
"Man, I'm just gonna go out and get."
My friend was married and then he got divorced,
and he was like, "Hoo! I ain't never doing that again.
"Been there, done that."
But you know what, he married his high school sweetheart.
So when he was young, he was attached to one person.
Then he got older, and him and his wife had a little
rough times, they got divorced.
They have a kid, he's like,
"Boo! Now I'm just gonna kinda play the field and date."
And he went on Tinder and Match.com,
and I understood it because he was older,
and he was kinda jaded, right?
So you don't, I'm a little older, I get a little jaded.
It makes sense.
But I'm talking about people
who're supposed to have puppy love.
You're 18, 19, 20, and they're just
dating 30 people at a time.
I don't know if it's good or bad.
I'm not trying to judge.
I'm literally venting my thoughts,
and maybe you can leave me a comment with some
scientific studies you've read on it.
Some article you've read. I'm willing to learn.
I just, I have a gut feeling that something has changed.
Joel Satin, my first mentor,
he met his high school sweetheart, 18, 19,
they got married, they've been living somewhat
happily ever after, I mean.
I'm sure if I asked him, they've had their ups and downs,
but they've been married and they're in their 60's.
And so, like I said, I'm unmarried, so I'm not,
I've never been married, so I'm not judging people,
I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
I'm just wondering.
Is there truth to this general observation
that it seems that technology is making people
better off in some ways,
and a hell of a lot worse in other ways.
So the question is, sometimes like Mark Zuckerberg
and these guys are like, you know,
"We're helping the world and benefiting the world."
And Google, guys are like, "Do no evil," and all this,
and I'm like, hah, it's easy to say,
but is there proof that we're really
more connected because of Facebook?
And Instagram, and YouTube.
And you know I love social media,
but I'm still honest about it.
So I like it, but it doesn't mean I'm gonna
over-amplify its benefits.
So are we really better off?
Did Mr. Zuckerberg, because I lived
with Amish for two years when I was in my early 20's.
And they were pretty connected.
And they didn't never heard of Facebook,
TV, electricity, or YouTube.
They send each other letters
and they live near each other,
and they help each other out as families,
and they go to, kids go to school together,
and they have kind of a cool life, so.
I dunno, Mr. Zuckerberg.
I'm not sure you're right.
Maybe you are.
I would love to see the science and go, "Is this true?
"Is our generation becoming more narcissistic,
"more detached, more unable to have healthy relationships
"with fellow human beings?"
Unhealthy obsession with how we look in the mirror.
You know some people say,
"Well, it's the Kardashians' fault."
Well, I dunno if that's true.
Some people say, "Oh, it's Donald Trump's fault."
I dunno if that's true.
I doubt it's one person's problem.
I don't think that that's true.
I don't know the Kardashians.
Khloé Kardashian reposted one of my tweets,
my videos the other day, so.
That was cool.
But I don't know the Kardashians, so I have no idea.
I've found that I have to meet people in person.
So even though I read in the paper that
Donald Trump is this, or, I've met Hillary Clinton,
I interviewed her a little bit.
I posted it a long time ago on my Instagram.
Talked on books and stuff.
Bill Clinton, I have.
You know, so I don't know 'em well.
And that's why I said, this is something that I wish
scientists would be studying now.
They study so many things we don't need.
What about some scientist studying this for school?
Teaching people.
High school, college, how to read people,
how to understand narcissism.
How to understand how technology warps,
or maybe improves the brain.
There's a great book called, "The Shallows",
which talks from a scientist's standpoint
of what possibly is happening with the Internet.
He found that it's shortening our attention span,
things like this.
So I think that generally what happens,
my answer to the Mark Zuckerberg question, Instagram,
is we're not getting better or worse,
we're getting different.
And it's probably two steps forward and two steps backwards.
Facebook probably, now I keep in touch with my
high school friends, superficially.
So I guess that's better.
Worse off, because I can talk to them on Facebook,
sometimes you won't actually meet 'em.
'Cause you're like, oh, you have a fake connection to them.
That's why I said, there's two sides to this equation.
It's very complicated.
I would love, this is an area that, man, one of my dreams,
I want to start a company that's a research lab.
I got my buddy, German, Dr. Fresco,
he's a Ph.D in neuroscience, I said,
"Let's study all the stuff that's actually important."
There's so many practical things
that scientists could be studying that they're not.
And some of, obviously I'm not knocking all scientists,
some scientists are studying great things, but.
This is the stuff I gotta know!
What's too much narcissism?
How do you read it in a person?
How do you fix it in yourself?
Should I limit the amount of social media I do?
Should I only take x, like I stopped taking
as many pictures of myself and now I'm posting
pictures on my Instagram of other people, even.
I'm not even in the pictures, 'cause I'm like,
I read about that, and I'm like, "Damn!"
I don't wanna be that person that you go to my Instagram,
lemme look at my Instagram right now,
let's see how it looks.
All right, what do we have?
Here's my pictures, we have one picture,
I'm the main one, that one I'm not, that one I'm not,
that one is 50/50, that one is me,
that one is not me at all.
So you know, my ratio, there's a funny video.
I'm about 40% me.
Maybe 50%. So I'm trying to keep that within reason.
You can't have 100%.
No one wants to see 100% anybody's face.
I don't care if you're Channing Tatum or Harry Styles,
or something, or a Victoria's Secret model.
And like I said, I'm not trying to tell people what to do,
I'm just trying to say,
this is what people have found will bring you the good life.
You know, I'm all about the good life.
Health, wealth, love, happiness.
Sometimes people think I'm all about money,
but nah, you're not, you don't follow me if you think that.
Sure, I post pictures with cars.
Partly just 'cause I got a lot of car lovers that follow me.
And I like cars.
And I consider cars one of the most useful inventions
humans ever came up with.
And hopefully they'll get better electricity,
I mean, they'll get better energy usage,
you've got Tesla and all this.
I think they're healthy tools.
I think cars have made the world a better place overall.
Even though there's car accidents and stuff like that.
One of the things I learned with the Amish,
you have to question technology and its effect upon us.
One thing that the Amish say that is very powerful is,
"Just because it's new doesn't mean you have to use it."
New isn't always better.
Think about friends.
Some of new friends you meet are the worst people.
It's those old friends you've known from childhood.
They're better, it's like family.
You know, Fast and Furious.
Family first, why?
'Cause you've known family for a while.
Sometimes old is better than new.
But sometimes new is better.
That's why I think what we have to do,
we have to become more curious people.
This video is me being curious and asking your opinion.
Lots of stuff I have little hypothesis.
Some of what I just said is probably completely wrong,
but some of it's right.
And over time, as you test your ideas,
and you test your theses, and you test your hypothesis.
Next thing you know, you start stumbling
and bumbling upon answers.
Or you start getting smart enough to know
where to find the answers from other people.
And that's the place I'm at now.
And you know, you're watching me, and I'm like,
is technology helping you,
or has it helped you one step forward,
but it's hurt you two steps back?
I wanna hear about it.
Leave a review, leave your answer, leave a comment.
I think it's important.
I love social media.
Entrepreneur Magazine named me, whatever,
the 2017 best social media influencer, business influencer,
some crap like that, but, like I said,
don't know if that's true,
but I am interested in the subject, so.
I'd love your opinion.
I need more insight.
When I gotta go to smart people,
sometimes I go to my own followers.
The good ones.
Not the narcissists.
(laughs)