April 16, 2024 • 62 mins
Rachel definitely knows what it's like to read nasty brutal comments on social media.
But, occasional criticism can be valid.
Rachel, along with Dr. Robi-- face the comments (and haters) head on.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Welcome to another episode of
Rachel Goes Rogue. This is your host, Rachel Savannah levis
being in the public eye, especially now with this podcast
and choosing to put myself out there, I am opening
myself up for judgment and comments on social media, and
(00:30):
I think that's just part of being in the public eye. Unfortunately,
it's a trade off, almost like I gave up my
right to privacy in a way, and by choosing to
put myself out there, I have to accept the criticism
that comes my way. But some of these comments are
(00:52):
just They're heartbreaking to read, and it seems like they
are meant to hurt me. I've been staying away from
social media because I would just rather not read that
and consume what other people's perception of me is. Because
I know who I am, I know what's true in
(01:15):
my heart and how much work I've done on myself
to better myself and with my iHeart producers. They have
some questions, and I wanted to read some of these
comments and express the feelings that come up.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So when you read these comments, does it affect your
sense of self?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
It can? It can? If I let it. I think
that the comments are very shaming, and I already feel
shame around my actions and what I did, and I
did mess up. I recognize that. And so when somebody's
bringing that up and bringing that up and pointing that
(01:59):
out and not letting you evolve as a person, it
keeps you in this certain mindset where it's like, oh,
maybe I'm not doing enough, maybe I haven't grown and changed,
like maybe I am bad. You know, all of those
things do creep in if you read enough of these comments,
(02:22):
you start to believe it.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
In one of the comments, someone said her time and
whatever joke of a program she attended was clearly a
waste of time and money. She didn't learn a damn thing.
How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I know that I've learned a lot from my time
in this recovery center. I really dedicated myself to grow
and to look at my patterns and my behaviors. And
I knew I had an issue and I wanted to
get help, and that's why I decided to stay longer
(02:56):
than the forty five days. I also knew that the
environment that I was in was bringing out the worst
in me. So reading something like that, it's a joke
of a program and a waste of time and money. Like,
I know that it was a great investment because relatively,
I'm on the younger side of people figuring out their
(03:19):
life and making big changes. But then I also think
it's like minimizing, it's minimizing my experience.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Somebody wrote, Raquel is the kind of woman that is
loved by men and hated by women. She looks for
validation from men. She's pathetic. How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Well? I can accept the fact that I was seeking
validation in men and that was a huge part of
the problems that I was having. I am choosing to
prioritize healthy female friendship in my life, and it looks
(03:59):
a lot different than the way that I've been acting
before and my priorities before. So I think it's just
unfortunate that people are able to label somebody and judge
somebody for their absolute worst behavior and then be like, Nope,
(04:22):
that's you forever in this box and you're not capable
of change.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Somebody said, this girl is doing herself no favors. Instead
of cleaning up her image, she's coming off as petty
and immature.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
How does that feel?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Okay? Maybe I am petty and immature sometimes when like
I with the whole Kaiti Dana Instagram post. Yeah, that
was petty, but I'm able to acknowledge that, I'm able
to be aware of that, and I'm able to take
(04:57):
accountability and like I'm choosing better for next time.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Okay, this one I think is pretty low. I'm betting
Raquel's adopted family is regretting adopting her right now. They're
probably so embarrassed and humiliated by her actions and stupidity.
They certainly didn't bring this horrid mistake of cells into
the world to create this malstrom on Global TV.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Gosh, this horrid mistake of cells into the world. Jeez,
that is low. Reading comments like this makes me question,
like who this person is and how they think the
dialogue that goes on in their own brain. And I'm
(05:44):
even hesitant to talk about my family because anytime I
bring my family up, people see that as an opportunity to,
I don't know, get creative with these comments and take
some jobs that are so low and unnecessary. I'm very
blessed to have the family that I do with my adoption,
(06:06):
and they are still proud of me, even though I've
made some mistakes. I think they're more concerned for my
safety than anything, and they're very proud of how far
I have come, and they're very happy that I'm not
on the show anymore. So, Yeah, reading something like this
(06:26):
it's very painful.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So some fans have said this, I was writing hard
for you until you decided to sue the person you victimized.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Choosing to take legal action was not something that I
chose lightly. I really had to weigh all of the
pros and cons, and one of the cons was a
public's reaction to it. I saw this coming, and that's
just something that I had to debate and realize that
(07:00):
if I want to seek legal action against Tom, then
I also have to seek legal action against Ariana. Yeah,
what I did was not morally right, but recording and
distributing a video is also not right. So in you know,
(07:20):
there're two separate instances. One is illegal. So that's hard.
It's hard, like, you know, because I do feel guilty. Yeah,
I feel guilty for you know, potentially causing more pain
than I've already caused somebody. But then I also take
(07:41):
a look at like what I've been through, and I've
been through a lot, and I just don't think that
it's right or fair or just. If we're all out
to hold each other accountable, then I guess I'm doing
the same.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Here's another one, Rachel. She's not changed in the slightest.
I thought for your mental health, you were staying away
from VPR. Now her podcast is talking all about people
on VPR FYI. She still sounds like she's crying with
every sentence she speaks.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, unfortunately, this is just my voice and I've had
to accept it. But I would like to stay away
from vander Pump Rules. Unfortunately, this show is still bringing
me up as a topic of discussion and as a
storyline point. So it's only natural for me to want
(08:36):
to not only defend myself, but like share my experience
with this because there's more to the story just than
this black and white. This is a villain, this is
a hero, and that's it. Like, it's a way more
nuanced than that. And I am prior to my mental
(09:00):
health by not being an active participant in the show
any longer. They're bringing me in involuntarily. I have no
choice what they say about me. But with time, I
will be removed from vander Pump Rules, and I honestly
(09:21):
don't feel like I am missing the cast members of
vander Pump Rules. I think I'm sharing things honestly and
being reflective of my relationships that I've had with certain
people from more of a healed place. So my perspective
is a little bit different. Me prioritizing my mental health
(09:44):
may look different than what you would think that it is,
but for me, having my own podcast is part of
what makes me feel so empowered today that I get
to reclaim my narrative. I get to as much as possible.
(10:04):
Take away, you know, vander Pump Rules is power to
create whatever narrative they want about me, which they're doing anyway,
and I'm being honest and truthful and being authentic to
who I really am in choosing to share that with others.
I think it's important to remember that vander Pump Rules
(10:26):
has been part of my life for all of my twenties,
like nearly nine years, that this show has been part
of my human experience, and so by talking about it,
I'm able to process through it. And it is this
developmental process where eventually, yeah, I will be able to
(10:49):
stop talking about vander Pump Rules. But I feel like
it's very unrealistic to expect somebody to completely disconnect and
associate from heart of their life that has been so
integral into their development of who they are today.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Somebody wrote, did she say he didn't have enough integrity
to tell her himself? You gotta be kidding me. Where
was her integrity when she didn't tell her friend she
was smashing her man?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
No, I totally get that comment, And as I was
saying that to Joe that Shorts didn't have enough integrity
to tell her, I was fully aware that I did
not have integrity in that moment to tell Ariana. But
I have more integrity now. I own up to the
fact that I'm not perfect. Yeah, I didn't have integrity
(11:40):
during that time. I was not honest and did not
tell Arianna that this is going on, and that was
a choice that I made and something that I have
to live with. One of the comments says, she has
done zero work on herself and this proves it. She's
(12:01):
still suing Ariana, which is shitty alone. Can we stop
giving this mistress a platform of listen so she can disappear? Gosh,
those comments that are like can you just disappear or
go away. I click on their profile and they're following me.
I'm like, okay, like you don't need to comment on
(12:22):
my stuff, just like unfollow me then if you don't
want to see it. It's so bizarre. But then it's
also like, okay, what does disappear mean? Are you wishing
me not to live anymore on this planet? Because sometimes
my thought process goes there. It's a lot. It is
(12:43):
because you just feel so damaged and unworthy of love
and acceptance, and it, Yeah, it can get to a
dark place very easily if you let it. I feel
like the work that I've done on myself has gotten
me to the place where comments like this affect me
(13:04):
less and like, what a relief. It's bizarre too, because
I feel like there's these people that write stuff like this,
But then there's like people that I will meet in
person that approach me and they say that they listen
to my podcast and love it, and they acknowledge the
work that I've done and they feel like they've learned
(13:27):
something by listening to my podcast. Is so rewarding, Like
those in person comments like that is like what makes
my week, And so I choose to focus on the
in person comments, and I give way less weight to
(13:51):
the comments that people make online. I feel like I
need to write out ten affirmations to counteract all of
those negative, mean comments, because focusing on the negative is
just going to bring in more negativity and I do
not need that in my life. I don't know why
people choose to be so mean in the comments, and
(14:15):
I choose to be kind to myself and not to
speak to myself that way. But I want more clarity
on like why people are so mean in the comment
section and why the cast is so mean to each other.
On this show, I have a therapist joining me today.
Doctor Robbie is a nationally known psychotherapist and award winning reporter.
(14:39):
She has appeared on programs like Nightline, CNN, The View,
and Wendy Williams. So let's get into that. I want
to explore more on why people feel, I don't know,
entitled to say some of the things that they say online.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
It's such a good question, and we're seeing it a
lot now, uh, obviously because of social media and people
can respond in real time, so there isn't that cool
off period, you know, back in the day if you
were really angry about something or if you had an issue,
(15:15):
let's say with a celebrity or TV show, you would
have to take the time to write a letter or
an email and find out where to send it. And
there were a lot of steps involved. And usually in
between having that experience, emotional experience and having to write
something down and send it, you know, the question was
(15:37):
is it really worth it? Is it really worth my time?
But now it's so easy. You don't have to have
that cool off period of time. And there's something about
not being face to face with somebody and being anonymous
that all of your aggression can come out and there's
a decreased level of empathy. When you see somebody live
(16:00):
to phase, they're more human, they're more three dimensional. But
when you're doing it through the screen, it's like anything goes.
And I think our society is crumbling because of.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
That emotional That's so true. Yeah, I remove myself because
I'm seeing things through like a reality TV lens, And
I think the way that the show edits people, it
dehumanizes them. So it allows for people to feel more
entitled to say whatever they're thinking because they don't have
(16:38):
maybe they don't have like that same level of empathy
as you would in person, but then also removing myself
and just thinking about, you know, this next generation that
was brought up on social media and the pressures of
appearing a certain way, and it's you only really see
(17:00):
the highlights of somebody's life on Instagram or TikTok or
Facebook even It's just interesting to think because my generation,
i mean, Instagram came out like my last year of
high school. So it's a weird transitional period. So I
(17:21):
just think that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
So let me pick up Rachel with what you said,
because you talked about two different scenarios that are both
very real and slightly different. So with reality TV, what
we see is more of a judgment TV. Right. It's
set up like a novella, and there's the good person,
there's the bad person. We tend to see things in
(17:45):
terms of good and bad. We like that it's not
complicated and so people are edited to look a certain way.
It doesn't tell the whole story. It's not supposed to, right.
It's like a live soap. And with reality TV, the
audience that's watching becomes very judgmental, and that's part of
(18:07):
the fun of it for them. They get to feel
morally superior. They get to feel superior and therefore feel entitled,
either because they feel they know you or your story
or the people in the reality TV story. They're invested
in the story and would comment. And it's easier to
(18:29):
be mean in some cases than it is to be nice,
and in some cases that's very cathartic because if we're
being really mean and devaluing to somebody else, somebody we
don't know, or somebody we feel like we know even
though we don't, then it allows us to be kinder
to ourselves. And it really helps a person felt. Yes,
(18:52):
it helps them to feel better about themselves because it's
helping them to not attack themselves. If I'm attacking somebody
on the screen, if I'm attacking another person, then I'm
not attacking myself because usually people have relationships with others
that are parallel to the relationships they have with themselves.
(19:14):
So you can think of it as like a kind
of a therapeutic intervention that reality TV does. It allows
people to feel morally superior, and they may feel envious
because this other person is famous or has money or
has it easier, or whatever the case may be, and
(19:34):
a way to equalize that divide is by attacking is,
by devaluing is by feeling, you know, morally superior to
these people that they are judging. And that is part
of the appeal of reality TV. You get to sit
and feel that you're better than these other people. And
(19:55):
the problem is is that, first of all, reality TV
is filled with people who kind of in a way
didn't understand or sign up for celebrity culture in terms
of acting. So maybe an actor or a singer might expect, okay,
there's some negative reviews that come with the art that
(20:16):
I put out there, or even newscasters or big podcasters,
they might say, you know what, I understand, like people
are going to like me and people are not going
to like me. But with reality TV, it's kind of
like newbies that are finding their way along the way
and you're real people, and words do hurt and they
(20:39):
can be damaging, and I think that there is that disconnect.
But in terms of social media, let's say for the
average person, I was just talking with my sister and
she was like, you know, my daughter, my niece looked
beautiful for her prom I mean, perfection. There was no
reason not to put up many photos. But she was
(21:01):
concerned about the likes about the commons, and it's a
lot to deal with, especially when you're young and growing
and your self esteem is very vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think you brought up a good point
with the envy peace because I was kind of researching
the concept of Shortenfreud the Germans saying we're basically people
(21:39):
derive joy out of seeing other people's harm or misfortune, yeah,
failures or failures. Yeah. And uh, I think maybe, like
this is my running theory because as I'm getting healthier
and removing myself from the toxicity that is vander pump Roules,
I now see it so much differently, Like I see
(22:05):
it as the toxic dysfunctional group. And not only is
the group dysfunctional, but like then you're put on a
platform for everybody to comment and make judgments on your life.
So I'm trying to understand, like how somebody enjoys watching it,
because I don't necessarily enjoy watching it, you know too much.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Well, there's two things that go on. One this is
sad but true. But when we see a lot of chaos,
it's more interested. Right in the news, we say, if
it leads, it leads, So people on the show are
encouraged to create drama, to be me to be divisive.
There's an upside to it because they get more play
(22:53):
or people will be more interested in that. And so
the show is designed people on it please and they
know what the deal is. If they're part of the
drama in the mix, they're going to lead, they're going
to be interesting, and if they don't, they're considered boring
and not useful. So people within the environment are trying
(23:15):
to kind of figure out how to be relevant, and
when being relevant is being mean, well, then you just
kind of let out your primary impulses. There's no editing.
And what we know is if we don't edit what
we say, we will have no friendships because we have
a lot of noise in our head and we shouldn't
(23:36):
be saying all the noise that goes on in our head.
In reality TV, it's the opposite. Say all the noise
in your head and let's see what happens, and it'll
think for a more interesting show. So there's that piece.
And I also think that in some ways it's a displacement, right.
We can't talk about our friends that way and still
(23:59):
be considered a good friend, you know, we're not going
to have relationships in our own personal life if we're
saying the most vicious things, we know how that roles.
But if we say really bad things about the people
on reality shows or whatever it is, I mean, we
can even see it play out in the royal family.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
We don't have any relationship to them, but everybody feels
like they know the royal family and can comment. It's
safe in many ways, there's no consequences. What's going to happen.
Free speech. You can say whatever you want, and you know,
for right now, there's an appeal to that, and it
serves a function for the audience. I could be mean,
(24:42):
I could say mean things and it's not going to
hurt me in my real life. Is that true? Not necessarily.
We really do better when we can rise above and
be classy and see things for what they are. But
there is a safety net in critiquing you know, socialites,
(25:04):
royalty reality figures and actors, or just anyone who has
a high profile.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, definitely. I feel like, as you explain it, it
almost sounds like an excuse for how mean the people
can be on this show, especially the girls. And I
understand to a certain degree, yes, we're all making a
reality TV show for entertainment, but then there seems to
(25:33):
be a line that's crossed with complete disregard to how
their actions are affecting other people in the group. I'll
just give an example. We see, you know, Joe being
iced out by the group and being laughed at and
talked about, and it's because she doesn't quite fit in
(25:54):
like the other girls too, Like she's not as willing
to like show off her hair and she'd rather wear
baseball cap at the end of the day. And you know,
she feels awkward in this group where she knows she's
not necessarily welcome. And Katie put out a tweet saying
Joe is spooky. I mean, none of us could stand
(26:17):
to be around her. Her energy is on par with
a crackhead. She has a psycho and I will also
light her on fire with Rachel and I feel like
the problem here is a calling somebody a crackhead when
they don't do drugs, like Joe has ADHD and you
know she's more high energy, but that doesn't mean that
(26:39):
she's a crackhead. And yeah, people are very quick to
judge when they don't know you and just know the
information that is being put out there, So I feel
like that's super damaging and then also saying I will
light her on fire with Rachel. I think it's dangerous
because it's almost endorsing that behavior or.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
What is made. Okay, you know, there are different rules
in different environments. So you bring up a great point.
You know, what is the rule within the vander Pump environment.
The rule is be as cruel as you want to be.
That's the rule. And the more clever you are at it,
the more talked about you'll be. And the more you know,
(27:25):
it's kind of like trking journalism, more it'll get noticed.
I think there's that. But you bring up a really
good point in terms of mental illness, mental well being,
and diagnosis. So there are certain people who have a
diagnosis which will allow them to be more cruel. And
(27:46):
sometimes it's a mood disorder that's unrecognized where they're just
more irritable and nasty. Sometimes it's a character pathology. We
hear a lot about narcissism, but borderline personality or people
who have sociopathic tendency may get high off well. In
the borderline. They see people in terms of all good
(28:07):
or all bad. There's no gray and that's not true,
but that's how they experience people, and they can't regulate
their own emotions, so they discharge all of that rage
because they can't metabolize it themselves the way let's say
a person who is more well could So there's the borderline.
(28:27):
There's the narcissistic kind of sociopathic tendencies where they really
don't have empathy towards another person and so they don't
consider their feelings. The other person doesn't really matter. The
only person that matters is themselves. And then there's the
point about sadism in general. You know, the act of
being mean or intentionally cruel, it helps a person to
(28:51):
in the moment feel powerful. Kind of this idea of
either you're the bully or you're the bullied, and people
take too well, I'm not going to be the bullied,
so I'd better be the bully. And it's kind of
this mindset of kind of again either or thinking. But
when you're in a mean space, you feel momentarily powerful
(29:15):
and you're not feeling vulnerable, And you know, who wants
to feel vulnerable? Who wants to cry on the show,
who wants to feel you know, like a victim who
wants to show that they're weak, because the more weak
a person is, the more likely these personalities will go
after you.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I've experienced it, yeah, I mean perceived weakness because I'm
just more of a kind, forgiving person. Yeah, and that's
seen as weakness to some of them because I'm not
like as you're not aggressive, you're as I'm not aggressive.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, and we're not perfect people and not only that. Okay,
so let's talk about like in your situation, you know
you were then you know, the friend that went with
the friend's boyfriends. So there are a lot of people watching,
and men somehow get off a little easier than women.
(30:13):
Women are just way easier to demonize because we expect
so much from women that whenever they're not perfect, they
get critiqued and smashed. Right, So we know that to
be true culturally, But the other pieces, you know, it
reminds somebody of their own situation. Oh, that person in
(30:34):
the show is just like my friend mary Anne, who
did that? You know? And they start to personalize the
situation and it's almost like they're experiencing it themselves. I
was cheated on or somebody cheated on my boyfriend, and
they may even see certain personality traits in the other
person that they have in themselves that they don't like.
(30:57):
But again, it's easier to critique the other person rather
than to own up and say, you know, I have
those tendencies too, Like, let's be honest, we all have
a tendency to be selfish or impulsive in the moment
and not think about cause and effect. So you know,
that's what you're not seeing people not wanting to own
(31:17):
that piece, and it plays out the way you personally
have experienced and the way you know a lot of
people who are high profile have to experience. It's kind
of part of the job.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, there's a thing called justice based shrodhom Ford, and
it's a feeling that we experience when someone finally gets
what they deserve, and that like satisfaction when a murderer
or a scammer gets rightfully convicted for their wrongdoings, then
we feel that satisfaction. And I think maybe in my
(31:50):
situation with you know, the scaned of all, maybe people
were so quick to dog pile on because it was like,
this is morally wrong, and we feel deceived by this
person because she seems to put up maybe quote unquote
affront that she's a nice, kind person, but in reality
(32:17):
she's been deceitful and has been keeping lies and not
being truthful with her actions.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
And you're absolutely right, there's no interest in the nuance, right, right.
We don't know why this happened. You know, we don't
know the inner dynamics. We don't know what was going
on behind closed doors, you know, between Tom and Arianna,
we don't know. We have no idea, no clue, and
(32:47):
there's no interest in the nuance because that's too complex,
that's too difficult, you know why. I understand that isn't
even the point of reality TV. Right, It's not like
you want, you know, to get your doctoral thesis. You
want to watch it because it's easy to watch. It's
a good person. There's a pretty person, there's a bad person.
There's a rich person, there's an unfit person, there's an
(33:09):
addicted person. You know, they almost become their their labels,
and you know, it's an easy way, as we said
Judgment TV, to feel morally superior. And we do like
to see the bad guy burn, right, We do like
to see you know, karmic justice. The problem is we
don't know the whole story, and we may never know
(33:32):
the whole story.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, and that's like one of the reasons why when
I was weighing out the pros and cons, which I
had a long running list, it was part of the
reason why I chose not to go back, because I
knew that my story wouldn't be represented accurately, because I'm
a much more complex person than just someone who's labeled
(33:53):
as deceitful. And even like the producers would tell me,
we have to keep it very basic, like we have
to keep this like a five year old can watch
this and follow along my exact point.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
It's not a factoral thesis. Let's do a deep dive
and understand everybody's background. I mean, I don't know, maybe
that'll happen for another class, but not the general public.
And that's exactly right. You've been cast, right, You have
been cast for better, for worse, for understanding the whole story.
Probably not a five year old has to understand it.
(34:29):
You know what's five year olds catered to five year
olds Walt Disney, The Princess Prince. And you're smart to
take back the narrative of your own story because if
you go back to that environment which is not mentally healthy.
It would not have been good for you, and you
don't need it anymore. Why do you need to head
(34:50):
back into a scenario that's setting you up emotionally to
have a very difficult time. And the bottom it is,
they're interested in producing a great show. They're interested in
having a successful show. So the mental health and well being,
you know, it's not top riority. It's somewhere there, you
(35:15):
know where the laws matter. And when you step out
of it and say I don't need it anymore. I
got everything I could get out of it. I got
a name, I got exposure. I'm taking it back and
telling people who I am and hopefully they'll see a
different side where the other sides of me. There are
many different sides to a person.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I'm so lucky that I found a good group of
people and creating a new community out here and hot
yoga has been a great way to like find those
like minded people. But I think in general, with the
pandemic and all of the struggles that every single person
had to face, with financial troubles, with being isolated, with
(36:01):
not having you know, family or community, I think maybe
that's the reason why people have short temper or are
more mean or you know, because we see the people
break out in airports or like on a flight and
people are videotaping it. There's all those encounters that we
(36:24):
just see more often. I feel like, do you think
that that's a correlation.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
It's a really interesting question. And certainly the pandemic helped
us to view the world differently. And if somebody is
really isolated and doesn't have a community they can connect to,
it can make them more depressed or angry or anxious
(36:49):
and maybe act out and be more impulsive with their emotions.
There's that We also live in a world where everyone
walks around with a camera or write our video. We
can tape every single thing that happens that did not
happen in the past. So that allows us to see
more tumult around us and videotape it and share it
(37:13):
and observe it and be shocked by it. So there's
more taping going on and sharing and things can go viral,
as we know. But I do think one of the
problems is, and this maybe is social media related and
maybe not only social media related, that the algorithms get
us to connect with people that share our own values viewpoints,
(37:39):
political ideas, and so we're interacting in a bubble that's like,
you're right, you're right. Oh oh, I'm so glad you
brought up that. Boy. Why doesn't everybody know it? But
we're really interacting with like minded people, which is easier
to do. What we don't know how to do so
well is interact with people who have different points of
(38:00):
you and not have it devolved into either a verbal
altercation or a physical altercation. And what we really need
to learn how to do to first of all, be
smarter and just be better developed, is how do you
hold space for somebody who has a very different ideology
(38:21):
or very different ideas than you have, and how do
you have a useful conversation? And I think that's the
next step. That's what we need to learn to do culturally.
Otherwise we're just going to be in little bubbles that
tell us we're right, and that's a really very dangerous
place to live.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, you're so right. It is very dangerous and feel
like a newer thing that we're experiencing because what we're
consuming on our for you pages or just our feed
in general is biased to what we already like and
what we already consume.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
It's a very dangerous place to be. We also have
confirmation bias, where we only see and read things that
confirm our own mindset. And really the goal to be
an intelligent person or a growing person is let me
read something that's not my point of view. And it's
a very hard thing to do. But I think our
(39:18):
culture will be so much stronger if we learn to
have conversations with people who have a different idea about
something and hold that space for healthy doubt where we say, well,
you know what, maybe there's more to just my point
of view. Maybe there's another point of view that would
(39:39):
be just interesting to hear. We don't have to believe
in it, but maybe just hearing it makes us a
better person, a smarter person, a more valuable person in society.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, definitely. What about empathy? What is the disconnect that
people have when they lack empathy?
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Well, there are character pathologies, and that's a problem with
your personality that can interfere with empathy. People who are
narcissists and maybe even have narcissistic features, so they may
not be a full blown narcissist, but they have those features.
They don't empathize with other people. There are certain diagnoses
(40:22):
which make it very hard to empathize with others and
just a self involvement sometimes where we're only looking at
things through how we feel about a certain situation. But
it's it's harder. Gail King will say that it's harder
to hate up glows. You know, when you see a
(40:43):
person face to face, you get more information about that.
It's harder to demonize somebody that you're face to face
with and it makes us step back and think, oh,
they're a person just like me, or maybe we have similarity,
and you know, it's it's harder. But when you don't
(41:03):
have that, it's a flat screen. You're never seeing the
person you could just you know, if you're feeling angry
about your life, you're feeling angry because this person reminds
you of somebody that you dislike. I mean, in some cases,
a lot of the personal judgment is not personal. In fact,
it's kind of never personal. It's always about what another
(41:25):
person raises for you. You know, So if you see
a person and you hate them, you have to ask yourself,
why am I hitting this person? You know, who do
they remind me of? Is it a personality thing? Or
do they have features that I wish I had and
I don't have. It always has to do with the
person who is taking that other person in, and so
(41:48):
it is really helpful to know it's not personal. It's
something is being raised for them that we don't know,
and maybe we're not that interested in knowing, you know,
but it's really useful information to have. So when somebody's
really nasty, it might hurt, but then to say, you know,
it's not personal. And some people can't empathize and don't
(42:10):
want to empathize, but it's a skill being empathetic, and
it's considering another person's position, and it helps us to
have successful relationships to say, oh, you know, maybe my
behavior did impact this other person or wow, I never
considered that this other person might have a totally different
(42:33):
frame of mind. And we are better people and we
are better friends and family members when we can be empathic.
I think that's always the goal, But not everybody is there.
Sometimes people just need to stay in their rage because
if they don't, they may fall apart, or they may
(42:54):
have to feel major depression, or they may have to
kind of feel vulnerable, And not everybody is willing to
look at themselves honestly. In fact, a lot of people
have a lot of personal blind spots, and that's where
therapy can come in. When you look at yourself and
you learn more and it can help you navigate life
(43:15):
and friendships and success.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
That are going back to kind of the beginning of
our conversation. You were saying, the reason why people are
so mean to other people is because then they don't
have to be mean to themselves. And so I think
you know, viewing that meanness from a new lens where
(43:37):
you take it less personally and you actually see it
as like data as of that's how this person thinks.
This is how this person maybe even thinks about themselves.
Because if you're being reminded of yourself in somebody else's
(44:00):
actions or misbehavior, and you deny that and you don't
want to accept that as your own, or you know,
empathize with the many things.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
But basically, if you're an attacker, right, if you're designed
to attack, there are people that engage in self attack
and the only reprieve they have from that self attack.
I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, No one wants me.
I'm too old, i'm too young, I'm too dumb, I'm
too smart, whatever the case may be, and they get
(44:34):
to attack somebody else, which reality TV gives us this
beautiful opportunity to do. Then for a brief moment, they
have the opportunity to shift their focus from being attacking
of themselves to attacking somebody else so they can feel
better in the moment. So it's almost like a public service,
(44:57):
public service announcement.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah, if you can handle it, if you I mean,
And that's the education part, right, because for somebody I
don't know, like me, that like goes onto a public
platform like this, and I'm not an actor. I didn't
do it for you know, acting opportunities or I just
did it as like a self development thing to overcome
(45:23):
my social anxiety and also to develop thicker skin. I
knew it I would develop thicker skin, and thank goodness,
it was a gradual build. Otherwise, you know, if you're
if you're put on a platform like this and you
haven't had that type of experience and you're being bullied
and then you're being bombarded by a bunch of people
(45:46):
online and you don't understand the psychological concept behind rejection,
then it becomes so dangerous, you know, So I it's
very understand I understand what you're saying, but I also
hear it as almost like an excuse.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
It's not an excuse. But the more information we have,
the better we are able to make choices. It doesn't
mean I'm going to be with my statistic friend because
it's better for them to be mean to me than
to themselves. No, I don't want toxic friends. I want
(46:25):
friends that feel good about themselves, are successful, so they
can celebrate more of life with me. And it's not
an excuse, but your instincts were right. I mean, you
allowed yourself to be in an environment where it's almost
like you took a speed class in learning how to
deal with nasty triangulations and you know, being the subject
(46:52):
of a lot of hate. But fortunately for you, you
survived it and learned from it and benefited from it.
There are people who are don't have that ego strength,
don't have the community, and they start thinking this is
always going to be for me. The moment feels like
(47:13):
it's never ending, and they can't tolerate the idea of
other people thinking they're bad and horrible, and in some
cases it contributes to self harm. And so I think
we need to be really careful, and I know social
media is a little bit of the wild West, and
I think we need to edit in a way that
(47:37):
we reduce harming people or putting people at emotional risk.
We see suicide is up for younger kids. We see
depression and anxiety as up. This is all a contributing factor.
We are allowing people into our lives that we may
not allow into our homes, and that's really something to
(47:59):
think about. If you wouldn't allow them into your home,
you have to find a way to not allow them
into your head. And I think that there's a responsibility
of these companies to monitor and edit out what's not
okay to put up on screen. There are certain things
that are crossing the line, and I think we need
(48:20):
to have the laws catch up to technology and eliminate
that from happening and putting people in harm's way.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
So, okay, this might be a controversial question. Do you
think that social media should eliminate the comment section?
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Oh well no, but I think it should be edited,
you know, and a person can eliminate it for themselves
and put no comments.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Certainly a person can do that, and if they need
to do that I highly recommend they do it if
they need to do it for their psyche. I think
it's nice to hear other people's comments. And social media,
just like anything else, can be really good or really bad.
But it might be if you're going through kind of
a storm, maybe you don't allow the messages and let
(49:20):
the storm blow over because you don't need or you
not just you Rachel, but you the general public. You know,
maybe it's you know, do you really need to hear
everything somebody has a thought about I don't think so.
It's not necessary and these things do stick in our psyche.
And I do think the laws should come in. Is
(49:41):
comments not okay? Or they edit it, you know, they
look at these comments before they can be posted. I
hope that we're moving in that direction.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, it's still very tricky because I've been dealing with that.
And thank goodness that Instagram has the in words feature
where you can eliminate certain words or ban certain words
on your comment section, so that when somebody types that word,
it won't allow that person to comment. It will just
(50:14):
say like this user doesn't allow comments of this kind. Yeah,
and then they would have to edit it, and people,
you know, I still get negative comments. It's not like
I've eliminated all the negative comments. People find creative ways
to say.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
It just means that you're relevant, right, You're part of
their conversation. You are in their psyche for whatever reason,
because people don't talk about people that no one knows,
that nobody cares about.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Right.
Speaker 4 (50:42):
But what I will say is that you can use
all of this information maybe to be part of the solution.
You know that somebody who's experienced it, somebody who's been
targeted or been victimized by cancel culture, even you know,
it's like it is tough, and it's a unique experience,
(51:04):
and when you come out the other side and it's
not about you personally and anymore, then maybe we can
make some political changes because it's a problem and it
shouldn't be allowed. I mean some negativity. Okay, we can't
be loved by everybody, but there's a line that's being
cross that shouldn't be cross. And I think people who
have experienced it need to be part of that change
(51:26):
of changing the laws, changing what's allowed so that we
can protect future generations.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
Mm hmm, yeah, definitely. Can you define the mob mentality
because I know it dates back to like way back
when when I don't know, someone who did something morally
wrong would be like up on you know, they would
bring them up on a stage and like you team
or not.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
Somebody who was au threatic about who was defined it
as witches, right. I think that they were women. I
don't know what they were doing, but they weren't witches, right. Well,
the mom mentality is kind of like group thing. So
somebody within that group would never think of maybe hitting
a person multiple times, but if they're in a group,
(52:13):
there becomes kind of like a group psychology where certain
behaviors are made okay that are not okay, and people
start to think less individually and it's more of like
a group think mentality, and so their individual ability to
know right and wrong as they might as an individual
(52:34):
when they are part of a group. There's something about
being part of a community, being part of something bigger
than yourself that can get certain people to suspend certain morality,
certain social codes right and wrong, because there's something about
the numbers that get people to feel I'm part of
something bigger than myself. It feels right, it feels good,
(53:00):
spend good judgment, yeah, or it could work the other
way too. I mean, you can have a mob that
stands for something great, but when we hear mob mentality,
we don't tend to think of, oh, these are morally
great people. You know. It's usually an aggressive act where
people give themselves permission to behave in really cruel and
(53:21):
horrific and horror fying ways.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
How do you deal with bullying in real life or online?
Would it be like a different approach for each of
those circumstances.
Speaker 4 (53:33):
Well, I mean, as you said, I mean they're online
tools where just don't have any comments, don't have any life,
eliminate it totally. I was talking to my daughter who's
twenty one, so she's obviously a different generation than me,
and she eliminated TikTok. She's like, it was taking a
lot of hours of my time. It wasn't doing anything
healthy for me, you know, the algorithms were sucking me in.
(53:57):
My sister did it as well. You know yourself and
be proactive about choosing mental well being for yourself in
whatever form that takes. So I highly recommend that you know,
you can't always depend on others to take care of you.
Sometimes you need to figure out what you need to
do for yourself and your own mental health and just
(54:19):
do it. When I think about bullying and bullying in
schools and how physically aggressive it can get, it's absolutely horrifying.
And I say that there first of all, should be
a zero tolerance for bullying. I think that there should
be more education about emotional regulation and what our emotions
(54:40):
mean to us and how we should handle them, and
our tendency to want to pick on people who are
weaker because it feels good without really having the empathy,
teaching empathy of how will your behavior impact somebody else,
and that bullying really is a community issue. I think
it extends beyond the school system and is a community
(55:02):
issue where there needs to be a community at large
that also gets involved and says it's not.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
Okay, but it's okay for reality TV, well, I think.
Speaker 4 (55:13):
The assumption is that people are signing up for it, right,
you sign up for it, you get fame, you get money,
you get perched, you get this, you know all that's
are on And again that's the ending, Right, why are
you getting these things? And I'm not or I would
like to get these things too, but I'm not. So
(55:34):
there's that, And yeah, I think that there needs to
be some awareness.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Yeah, I just think you know, it's so normalized on
a TV screen.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Yeah, it's normalized. It's considered okay, and it probably shouldn't.
But a lot of things are considered okay that aren't okay.
You know, in reality TV is just a piece of it.
And you know, maybe as we evolve, you know, but
people always love to have an enemy, right, Yeah, when
(56:08):
you have a common enemy, then you have a group
of supporters.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
Let's talk about that for a second. Yeah, because Brene
Brown says common enemy intimacy is like a false sense
of intimacy where you are bonding with somebody else over
having a common enemy. Can you speak more about that?
Speaker 4 (56:30):
Sure? I mean, and not only that, it's probably just
a form of of Well. I love how Brene Brown
puts it. It's like a false intimacy. But some people
are not capable of intimacy, and that's the only kind
of intimacy they can have. Let's have a common enemy
(56:51):
and then we'll form a group together and it feels
good in the moment. And again, we are aggressive people.
I mean when you look at you know, our primitive
impulses and fantasies, you know, Freud said, crazy men, you know,
(57:11):
murderous men. Crazy men act on normal people's fantasies. And
it's this idea of we are animals. We have aggressive tendencies. Right,
that's why laws are in place thou shall not kill
because sometimes people want to, but it doesn't mean you
can act on it. But I think in reality TV,
when we have a common enemy, and it happens in
(57:33):
geopolitics as well, then it is okay to join forces
and say, you know, let's put all of our anger
and hate in this direction so we can form an alliance.
So it is strategic, it is done. But in terms
of intimacy, sometimes it's the only kind of intimacy people
can have. Yeah, they can't do anything else.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
Interesting, Yeah, I don't know why. Like Lord of the
Flies popped in my mind, one of those classic books
that you read in high school.
Speaker 4 (58:08):
What do you think is for you?
Speaker 1 (58:11):
I think, just uh, just the chaos, like the utter,
you know, no government, no rules, regulations, And I think
there is something like with the id and the ego
and the super ego, some sort of symbolism with that,
and it.
Speaker 4 (58:29):
Is that it's like that primary process before we're socialized, right,
and it's like all of these impulses and if we
act on all of these impulses, every single one of
us would be in friends, Okay, every single one of us.
And there's only so much freedom people can handle.
Speaker 1 (58:48):
You know.
Speaker 4 (58:49):
Sometimes people can't handle freedom and they act in really
extreme ways. And that's why kind of having you know,
a democratic government and laws in place helps people to
organize their impulses and thoughts so that they can behave appropriately.
(59:10):
But yes, I think Lord of the Flies is a
great analysis of what happens when there's lawlessness. Well, there's
chaos because there are going to be people who are
out of control and that's a pretty dangerous place to be,
either physically or mentally.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, and I feel like vander pump Rules is very
Lord of the Flies. And it's almost like the morality
is pick and choose, Like some actions have consequences that
are like extreme or fireable offenses, and others are brushed
(59:49):
under the rug or even celebrated, and so it's very
it's a very muddled, confusing place to.
Speaker 4 (59:57):
Be and they probably the world change a little bit
because it's also based on that interesting concept of money,
you know, what's getting more views what's getting more to works,
who's the most interesting person, what's getting the most talked about,
And then the morality and the rules change because everybody
(01:00:18):
wants to feel relevant, and so it's really throwing people
into the mix who have a lot of self interest,
and that will shift and change given the rules. And
the ultimate goal is to have a successful show. So
if that means throwing a balloon in someone's face, then
they'll throw a balloon in someone's face because the rules
(01:00:40):
are different. That makes you successful. And we respond to
our environment, we really do, and our environment can manipulate
how we experience ourselves and how we treat others.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Well, I feel like we covered so much and.
Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
So much it's like a faster class.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
It's yeah, it is a little master class. Oh my gosh, Well,
thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Oh so you're a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
I feel like that conversation was so beneficial because when
we look at reality TV and we see the way
that people are interacting with each other and how it's normalized,
we have to remember that that doesn't make it acceptable
to treat other people that way in real life. And also,
(01:01:30):
they are real people behind the screen. They are human
beings that deserve respect. We all have the choice to
be kind, so I encourage you guys to just take
a beat before commenting on social media because your words
do matter. Thank you so much for listening to Rachel
(01:01:57):
goesgrog Follow us on Instagram and TikTok for exclusive video
content at Rachel Goosrogue Podcast
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Welcome to another episode of
Rachel Goes Rogue. This is your host, Rachel Savannah levis
being in the public eye, especially now with this podcast
and choosing to put myself out there, I am opening
myself up for judgment and comments on social media, and
(00:30):
I think that's just part of being in the public eye. Unfortunately,
it's a trade off, almost like I gave up my
right to privacy in a way, and by choosing to
put myself out there, I have to accept the criticism
that comes my way. But some of these comments are
(00:52):
just They're heartbreaking to read, and it seems like they
are meant to hurt me. I've been staying away from
social media because I would just rather not read that
and consume what other people's perception of me is. Because
I know who I am, I know what's true in
(01:15):
my heart and how much work I've done on myself
to better myself and with my iHeart producers. They have
some questions, and I wanted to read some of these
comments and express the feelings that come up.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So when you read these comments, does it affect your
sense of self?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
It can? It can? If I let it. I think
that the comments are very shaming, and I already feel
shame around my actions and what I did, and I
did mess up. I recognize that. And so when somebody's
bringing that up and bringing that up and pointing that
(01:59):
out and not letting you evolve as a person, it
keeps you in this certain mindset where it's like, oh,
maybe I'm not doing enough, maybe I haven't grown and changed,
like maybe I am bad. You know, all of those
things do creep in if you read enough of these comments,
(02:22):
you start to believe it.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
In one of the comments, someone said her time and
whatever joke of a program she attended was clearly a
waste of time and money. She didn't learn a damn thing.
How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I know that I've learned a lot from my time
in this recovery center. I really dedicated myself to grow
and to look at my patterns and my behaviors. And
I knew I had an issue and I wanted to
get help, and that's why I decided to stay longer
(02:56):
than the forty five days. I also knew that the
environment that I was in was bringing out the worst
in me. So reading something like that, it's a joke
of a program and a waste of time and money. Like,
I know that it was a great investment because relatively,
I'm on the younger side of people figuring out their
(03:19):
life and making big changes. But then I also think
it's like minimizing, it's minimizing my experience.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Somebody wrote, Raquel is the kind of woman that is
loved by men and hated by women. She looks for
validation from men. She's pathetic. How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Well? I can accept the fact that I was seeking
validation in men and that was a huge part of
the problems that I was having. I am choosing to
prioritize healthy female friendship in my life, and it looks
(03:59):
a lot different than the way that I've been acting
before and my priorities before. So I think it's just
unfortunate that people are able to label somebody and judge
somebody for their absolute worst behavior and then be like, Nope,
(04:22):
that's you forever in this box and you're not capable
of change.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Somebody said, this girl is doing herself no favors. Instead
of cleaning up her image, she's coming off as petty
and immature.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
How does that feel?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Okay? Maybe I am petty and immature sometimes when like
I with the whole Kaiti Dana Instagram post. Yeah, that
was petty, but I'm able to acknowledge that, I'm able
to be aware of that, and I'm able to take
(04:57):
accountability and like I'm choosing better for next time.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Okay, this one I think is pretty low. I'm betting
Raquel's adopted family is regretting adopting her right now. They're
probably so embarrassed and humiliated by her actions and stupidity.
They certainly didn't bring this horrid mistake of cells into
the world to create this malstrom on Global TV.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Gosh, this horrid mistake of cells into the world. Jeez,
that is low. Reading comments like this makes me question,
like who this person is and how they think the
dialogue that goes on in their own brain. And I'm
(05:44):
even hesitant to talk about my family because anytime I
bring my family up, people see that as an opportunity to,
I don't know, get creative with these comments and take
some jobs that are so low and unnecessary. I'm very
blessed to have the family that I do with my adoption,
(06:06):
and they are still proud of me, even though I've
made some mistakes. I think they're more concerned for my
safety than anything, and they're very proud of how far
I have come, and they're very happy that I'm not
on the show anymore. So, Yeah, reading something like this
(06:26):
it's very painful.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So some fans have said this, I was writing hard
for you until you decided to sue the person you victimized.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Choosing to take legal action was not something that I
chose lightly. I really had to weigh all of the
pros and cons, and one of the cons was a
public's reaction to it. I saw this coming, and that's
just something that I had to debate and realize that
(07:00):
if I want to seek legal action against Tom, then
I also have to seek legal action against Ariana. Yeah,
what I did was not morally right, but recording and
distributing a video is also not right. So in you know,
(07:20):
there're two separate instances. One is illegal. So that's hard.
It's hard, like, you know, because I do feel guilty. Yeah,
I feel guilty for you know, potentially causing more pain
than I've already caused somebody. But then I also take
(07:41):
a look at like what I've been through, and I've
been through a lot, and I just don't think that
it's right or fair or just. If we're all out
to hold each other accountable, then I guess I'm doing
the same.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Here's another one, Rachel. She's not changed in the slightest.
I thought for your mental health, you were staying away
from VPR. Now her podcast is talking all about people
on VPR FYI. She still sounds like she's crying with
every sentence she speaks.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, unfortunately, this is just my voice and I've had
to accept it. But I would like to stay away
from vander Pump Rules. Unfortunately, this show is still bringing
me up as a topic of discussion and as a
storyline point. So it's only natural for me to want
(08:36):
to not only defend myself, but like share my experience
with this because there's more to the story just than
this black and white. This is a villain, this is
a hero, and that's it. Like, it's a way more
nuanced than that. And I am prior to my mental
(09:00):
health by not being an active participant in the show
any longer. They're bringing me in involuntarily. I have no
choice what they say about me. But with time, I
will be removed from vander Pump Rules, and I honestly
(09:21):
don't feel like I am missing the cast members of
vander Pump Rules. I think I'm sharing things honestly and
being reflective of my relationships that I've had with certain
people from more of a healed place. So my perspective
is a little bit different. Me prioritizing my mental health
(09:44):
may look different than what you would think that it is,
but for me, having my own podcast is part of
what makes me feel so empowered today that I get
to reclaim my narrative. I get to as much as possible.
(10:04):
Take away, you know, vander Pump Rules is power to
create whatever narrative they want about me, which they're doing anyway,
and I'm being honest and truthful and being authentic to
who I really am in choosing to share that with others.
I think it's important to remember that vander Pump Rules
(10:26):
has been part of my life for all of my twenties,
like nearly nine years, that this show has been part
of my human experience, and so by talking about it,
I'm able to process through it. And it is this
developmental process where eventually, yeah, I will be able to
(10:49):
stop talking about vander Pump Rules. But I feel like
it's very unrealistic to expect somebody to completely disconnect and
associate from heart of their life that has been so
integral into their development of who they are today.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Somebody wrote, did she say he didn't have enough integrity
to tell her himself? You gotta be kidding me. Where
was her integrity when she didn't tell her friend she
was smashing her man?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
No, I totally get that comment, And as I was
saying that to Joe that Shorts didn't have enough integrity
to tell her, I was fully aware that I did
not have integrity in that moment to tell Ariana. But
I have more integrity now. I own up to the
fact that I'm not perfect. Yeah, I didn't have integrity
(11:40):
during that time. I was not honest and did not
tell Arianna that this is going on, and that was
a choice that I made and something that I have
to live with. One of the comments says, she has
done zero work on herself and this proves it. She's
(12:01):
still suing Ariana, which is shitty alone. Can we stop
giving this mistress a platform of listen so she can disappear? Gosh,
those comments that are like can you just disappear or
go away. I click on their profile and they're following me.
I'm like, okay, like you don't need to comment on
(12:22):
my stuff, just like unfollow me then if you don't
want to see it. It's so bizarre. But then it's
also like, okay, what does disappear mean? Are you wishing
me not to live anymore on this planet? Because sometimes
my thought process goes there. It's a lot. It is
(12:43):
because you just feel so damaged and unworthy of love
and acceptance, and it, Yeah, it can get to a
dark place very easily if you let it. I feel
like the work that I've done on myself has gotten
me to the place where comments like this affect me
(13:04):
less and like, what a relief. It's bizarre too, because
I feel like there's these people that write stuff like this,
But then there's like people that I will meet in
person that approach me and they say that they listen
to my podcast and love it, and they acknowledge the
work that I've done and they feel like they've learned
(13:27):
something by listening to my podcast. Is so rewarding, Like
those in person comments like that is like what makes
my week, And so I choose to focus on the
in person comments, and I give way less weight to
(13:51):
the comments that people make online. I feel like I
need to write out ten affirmations to counteract all of
those negative, mean comments, because focusing on the negative is
just going to bring in more negativity and I do
not need that in my life. I don't know why
people choose to be so mean in the comments, and
(14:15):
I choose to be kind to myself and not to
speak to myself that way. But I want more clarity
on like why people are so mean in the comment
section and why the cast is so mean to each other.
On this show, I have a therapist joining me today.
Doctor Robbie is a nationally known psychotherapist and award winning reporter.
(14:39):
She has appeared on programs like Nightline, CNN, The View,
and Wendy Williams. So let's get into that. I want
to explore more on why people feel, I don't know,
entitled to say some of the things that they say online.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
It's such a good question, and we're seeing it a
lot now, uh, obviously because of social media and people
can respond in real time, so there isn't that cool
off period, you know, back in the day if you
were really angry about something or if you had an issue,
(15:15):
let's say with a celebrity or TV show, you would
have to take the time to write a letter or
an email and find out where to send it. And
there were a lot of steps involved. And usually in
between having that experience, emotional experience and having to write
something down and send it, you know, the question was
(15:37):
is it really worth it? Is it really worth my time?
But now it's so easy. You don't have to have
that cool off period of time. And there's something about
not being face to face with somebody and being anonymous
that all of your aggression can come out and there's
a decreased level of empathy. When you see somebody live
(16:00):
to phase, they're more human, they're more three dimensional. But
when you're doing it through the screen, it's like anything goes.
And I think our society is crumbling because of.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
That emotional That's so true. Yeah, I remove myself because
I'm seeing things through like a reality TV lens, And
I think the way that the show edits people, it
dehumanizes them. So it allows for people to feel more
entitled to say whatever they're thinking because they don't have
(16:38):
maybe they don't have like that same level of empathy
as you would in person, but then also removing myself
and just thinking about, you know, this next generation that
was brought up on social media and the pressures of
appearing a certain way, and it's you only really see
(17:00):
the highlights of somebody's life on Instagram or TikTok or
Facebook even It's just interesting to think because my generation,
i mean, Instagram came out like my last year of
high school. So it's a weird transitional period. So I
(17:21):
just think that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
So let me pick up Rachel with what you said,
because you talked about two different scenarios that are both
very real and slightly different. So with reality TV, what
we see is more of a judgment TV. Right. It's
set up like a novella, and there's the good person,
there's the bad person. We tend to see things in
(17:45):
terms of good and bad. We like that it's not
complicated and so people are edited to look a certain way.
It doesn't tell the whole story. It's not supposed to, right.
It's like a live soap. And with reality TV, the
audience that's watching becomes very judgmental, and that's part of
(18:07):
the fun of it for them. They get to feel
morally superior. They get to feel superior and therefore feel entitled,
either because they feel they know you or your story
or the people in the reality TV story. They're invested
in the story and would comment. And it's easier to
(18:29):
be mean in some cases than it is to be nice,
and in some cases that's very cathartic because if we're
being really mean and devaluing to somebody else, somebody we
don't know, or somebody we feel like we know even
though we don't, then it allows us to be kinder
to ourselves. And it really helps a person felt. Yes,
(18:52):
it helps them to feel better about themselves because it's
helping them to not attack themselves. If I'm attacking somebody
on the screen, if I'm attacking another person, then I'm
not attacking myself because usually people have relationships with others
that are parallel to the relationships they have with themselves.
(19:14):
So you can think of it as like a kind
of a therapeutic intervention that reality TV does. It allows
people to feel morally superior, and they may feel envious
because this other person is famous or has money or
has it easier, or whatever the case may be, and
(19:34):
a way to equalize that divide is by attacking is,
by devaluing is by feeling, you know, morally superior to
these people that they are judging. And that is part
of the appeal of reality TV. You get to sit
and feel that you're better than these other people. And
(19:55):
the problem is is that, first of all, reality TV
is filled with people who kind of in a way
didn't understand or sign up for celebrity culture in terms
of acting. So maybe an actor or a singer might expect, okay,
there's some negative reviews that come with the art that
(20:16):
I put out there, or even newscasters or big podcasters,
they might say, you know what, I understand, like people
are going to like me and people are not going
to like me. But with reality TV, it's kind of
like newbies that are finding their way along the way
and you're real people, and words do hurt and they
(20:39):
can be damaging, and I think that there is that disconnect.
But in terms of social media, let's say for the
average person, I was just talking with my sister and
she was like, you know, my daughter, my niece looked
beautiful for her prom I mean, perfection. There was no
reason not to put up many photos. But she was
(21:01):
concerned about the likes about the commons, and it's a
lot to deal with, especially when you're young and growing
and your self esteem is very vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think you brought up a good point
with the envy peace because I was kind of researching
the concept of Shortenfreud the Germans saying we're basically people
(21:39):
derive joy out of seeing other people's harm or misfortune, yeah,
failures or failures. Yeah. And uh, I think maybe, like
this is my running theory because as I'm getting healthier
and removing myself from the toxicity that is vander pump Roules,
I now see it so much differently, Like I see
(22:05):
it as the toxic dysfunctional group. And not only is
the group dysfunctional, but like then you're put on a
platform for everybody to comment and make judgments on your life.
So I'm trying to understand, like how somebody enjoys watching it,
because I don't necessarily enjoy watching it, you know too much.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Well, there's two things that go on. One this is
sad but true. But when we see a lot of chaos,
it's more interested. Right in the news, we say, if
it leads, it leads, So people on the show are
encouraged to create drama, to be me to be divisive.
There's an upside to it because they get more play
(22:53):
or people will be more interested in that. And so
the show is designed people on it please and they
know what the deal is. If they're part of the
drama in the mix, they're going to lead, they're going
to be interesting, and if they don't, they're considered boring
and not useful. So people within the environment are trying
(23:15):
to kind of figure out how to be relevant, and
when being relevant is being mean, well, then you just
kind of let out your primary impulses. There's no editing.
And what we know is if we don't edit what
we say, we will have no friendships because we have
a lot of noise in our head and we shouldn't
(23:36):
be saying all the noise that goes on in our head.
In reality TV, it's the opposite. Say all the noise
in your head and let's see what happens, and it'll
think for a more interesting show. So there's that piece.
And I also think that in some ways it's a displacement, right.
We can't talk about our friends that way and still
(23:59):
be considered a good friend, you know, we're not going
to have relationships in our own personal life if we're
saying the most vicious things, we know how that roles.
But if we say really bad things about the people
on reality shows or whatever it is, I mean, we
can even see it play out in the royal family.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
We don't have any relationship to them, but everybody feels
like they know the royal family and can comment. It's
safe in many ways, there's no consequences. What's going to happen.
Free speech. You can say whatever you want, and you know,
for right now, there's an appeal to that, and it
serves a function for the audience. I could be mean,
(24:42):
I could say mean things and it's not going to
hurt me in my real life. Is that true? Not necessarily.
We really do better when we can rise above and
be classy and see things for what they are. But
there is a safety net in critiquing you know, socialites,
(25:04):
royalty reality figures and actors, or just anyone who has
a high profile.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, definitely. I feel like, as you explain it, it
almost sounds like an excuse for how mean the people
can be on this show, especially the girls. And I
understand to a certain degree, yes, we're all making a
reality TV show for entertainment, but then there seems to
(25:33):
be a line that's crossed with complete disregard to how
their actions are affecting other people in the group. I'll
just give an example. We see, you know, Joe being
iced out by the group and being laughed at and
talked about, and it's because she doesn't quite fit in
(25:54):
like the other girls too, Like she's not as willing
to like show off her hair and she'd rather wear
baseball cap at the end of the day. And you know,
she feels awkward in this group where she knows she's
not necessarily welcome. And Katie put out a tweet saying
Joe is spooky. I mean, none of us could stand
(26:17):
to be around her. Her energy is on par with
a crackhead. She has a psycho and I will also
light her on fire with Rachel and I feel like
the problem here is a calling somebody a crackhead when
they don't do drugs, like Joe has ADHD and you
know she's more high energy, but that doesn't mean that
(26:39):
she's a crackhead. And yeah, people are very quick to
judge when they don't know you and just know the
information that is being put out there, So I feel
like that's super damaging and then also saying I will
light her on fire with Rachel. I think it's dangerous
because it's almost endorsing that behavior or.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
What is made. Okay, you know, there are different rules
in different environments. So you bring up a great point.
You know, what is the rule within the vander Pump environment.
The rule is be as cruel as you want to be.
That's the rule. And the more clever you are at it,
the more talked about you'll be. And the more you know,
(27:25):
it's kind of like trking journalism, more it'll get noticed.
I think there's that. But you bring up a really
good point in terms of mental illness, mental well being,
and diagnosis. So there are certain people who have a
diagnosis which will allow them to be more cruel. And
(27:46):
sometimes it's a mood disorder that's unrecognized where they're just
more irritable and nasty. Sometimes it's a character pathology. We
hear a lot about narcissism, but borderline personality or people
who have sociopathic tendency may get high off well. In
the borderline. They see people in terms of all good
(28:07):
or all bad. There's no gray and that's not true,
but that's how they experience people, and they can't regulate
their own emotions, so they discharge all of that rage
because they can't metabolize it themselves the way let's say
a person who is more well could So there's the borderline.
(28:27):
There's the narcissistic kind of sociopathic tendencies where they really
don't have empathy towards another person and so they don't
consider their feelings. The other person doesn't really matter. The
only person that matters is themselves. And then there's the
point about sadism in general. You know, the act of
being mean or intentionally cruel, it helps a person to
(28:51):
in the moment feel powerful. Kind of this idea of
either you're the bully or you're the bullied, and people
take too well, I'm not going to be the bullied,
so I'd better be the bully. And it's kind of
this mindset of kind of again either or thinking. But
when you're in a mean space, you feel momentarily powerful
(29:15):
and you're not feeling vulnerable, And you know, who wants
to feel vulnerable? Who wants to cry on the show,
who wants to feel you know, like a victim who
wants to show that they're weak, because the more weak
a person is, the more likely these personalities will go
after you.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I've experienced it, yeah, I mean perceived weakness because I'm
just more of a kind, forgiving person. Yeah, and that's
seen as weakness to some of them because I'm not
like as you're not aggressive, you're as I'm not aggressive.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, and we're not perfect people and not only that. Okay,
so let's talk about like in your situation, you know
you were then you know, the friend that went with
the friend's boyfriends. So there are a lot of people watching,
and men somehow get off a little easier than women.
(30:13):
Women are just way easier to demonize because we expect
so much from women that whenever they're not perfect, they
get critiqued and smashed. Right, So we know that to
be true culturally, But the other pieces, you know, it
reminds somebody of their own situation. Oh, that person in
(30:34):
the show is just like my friend mary Anne, who
did that? You know? And they start to personalize the
situation and it's almost like they're experiencing it themselves. I
was cheated on or somebody cheated on my boyfriend, and
they may even see certain personality traits in the other
person that they have in themselves that they don't like.
(30:57):
But again, it's easier to critique the other person rather
than to own up and say, you know, I have
those tendencies too, Like, let's be honest, we all have
a tendency to be selfish or impulsive in the moment
and not think about cause and effect. So you know,
that's what you're not seeing people not wanting to own
(31:17):
that piece, and it plays out the way you personally
have experienced and the way you know a lot of
people who are high profile have to experience. It's kind
of part of the job.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, there's a thing called justice based shrodhom Ford, and
it's a feeling that we experience when someone finally gets
what they deserve, and that like satisfaction when a murderer
or a scammer gets rightfully convicted for their wrongdoings, then
we feel that satisfaction. And I think maybe in my
(31:50):
situation with you know, the scaned of all, maybe people
were so quick to dog pile on because it was like,
this is morally wrong, and we feel deceived by this
person because she seems to put up maybe quote unquote
affront that she's a nice, kind person, but in reality
(32:17):
she's been deceitful and has been keeping lies and not
being truthful with her actions.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
And you're absolutely right, there's no interest in the nuance, right, right.
We don't know why this happened. You know, we don't
know the inner dynamics. We don't know what was going
on behind closed doors, you know, between Tom and Arianna,
we don't know. We have no idea, no clue, and
(32:47):
there's no interest in the nuance because that's too complex,
that's too difficult, you know why. I understand that isn't
even the point of reality TV. Right, It's not like
you want, you know, to get your doctoral thesis. You
want to watch it because it's easy to watch. It's
a good person. There's a pretty person, there's a bad person.
There's a rich person, there's an unfit person, there's an
(33:09):
addicted person. You know, they almost become their their labels,
and you know, it's an easy way, as we said
Judgment TV, to feel morally superior. And we do like
to see the bad guy burn, right, We do like
to see you know, karmic justice. The problem is we
don't know the whole story, and we may never know
(33:32):
the whole story.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, and that's like one of the reasons why when
I was weighing out the pros and cons, which I
had a long running list, it was part of the
reason why I chose not to go back, because I
knew that my story wouldn't be represented accurately, because I'm
a much more complex person than just someone who's labeled
(33:53):
as deceitful. And even like the producers would tell me,
we have to keep it very basic, like we have
to keep this like a five year old can watch
this and follow along my exact point.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
It's not a factoral thesis. Let's do a deep dive
and understand everybody's background. I mean, I don't know, maybe
that'll happen for another class, but not the general public.
And that's exactly right. You've been cast, right, You have
been cast for better, for worse, for understanding the whole story.
Probably not a five year old has to understand it.
(34:29):
You know what's five year olds catered to five year
olds Walt Disney, The Princess Prince. And you're smart to
take back the narrative of your own story because if
you go back to that environment which is not mentally healthy.
It would not have been good for you, and you
don't need it anymore. Why do you need to head
(34:50):
back into a scenario that's setting you up emotionally to
have a very difficult time. And the bottom it is,
they're interested in producing a great show. They're interested in
having a successful show. So the mental health and well being,
you know, it's not top riority. It's somewhere there, you
(35:15):
know where the laws matter. And when you step out
of it and say I don't need it anymore. I
got everything I could get out of it. I got
a name, I got exposure. I'm taking it back and
telling people who I am and hopefully they'll see a
different side where the other sides of me. There are
many different sides to a person.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I'm so lucky that I found a good group of
people and creating a new community out here and hot
yoga has been a great way to like find those
like minded people. But I think in general, with the
pandemic and all of the struggles that every single person
had to face, with financial troubles, with being isolated, with
(36:01):
not having you know, family or community, I think maybe
that's the reason why people have short temper or are
more mean or you know, because we see the people
break out in airports or like on a flight and
people are videotaping it. There's all those encounters that we
(36:24):
just see more often. I feel like, do you think
that that's a correlation.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
It's a really interesting question. And certainly the pandemic helped
us to view the world differently. And if somebody is
really isolated and doesn't have a community they can connect to,
it can make them more depressed or angry or anxious
(36:49):
and maybe act out and be more impulsive with their emotions.
There's that We also live in a world where everyone
walks around with a camera or write our video. We
can tape every single thing that happens that did not
happen in the past. So that allows us to see
more tumult around us and videotape it and share it
(37:13):
and observe it and be shocked by it. So there's
more taping going on and sharing and things can go viral,
as we know. But I do think one of the
problems is, and this maybe is social media related and
maybe not only social media related, that the algorithms get
us to connect with people that share our own values viewpoints,
(37:39):
political ideas, and so we're interacting in a bubble that's like,
you're right, you're right. Oh oh, I'm so glad you
brought up that. Boy. Why doesn't everybody know it? But
we're really interacting with like minded people, which is easier
to do. What we don't know how to do so
well is interact with people who have different points of
(38:00):
you and not have it devolved into either a verbal
altercation or a physical altercation. And what we really need
to learn how to do to first of all, be
smarter and just be better developed, is how do you
hold space for somebody who has a very different ideology
(38:21):
or very different ideas than you have, and how do
you have a useful conversation? And I think that's the
next step. That's what we need to learn to do culturally.
Otherwise we're just going to be in little bubbles that
tell us we're right, and that's a really very dangerous
place to live.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, you're so right. It is very dangerous and feel
like a newer thing that we're experiencing because what we're
consuming on our for you pages or just our feed
in general is biased to what we already like and
what we already consume.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
It's a very dangerous place to be. We also have
confirmation bias, where we only see and read things that
confirm our own mindset. And really the goal to be
an intelligent person or a growing person is let me
read something that's not my point of view. And it's
a very hard thing to do. But I think our
(39:18):
culture will be so much stronger if we learn to
have conversations with people who have a different idea about
something and hold that space for healthy doubt where we say, well,
you know what, maybe there's more to just my point
of view. Maybe there's another point of view that would
(39:39):
be just interesting to hear. We don't have to believe
in it, but maybe just hearing it makes us a
better person, a smarter person, a more valuable person in society.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeah, definitely. What about empathy? What is the disconnect that
people have when they lack empathy?
Speaker 4 (39:57):
Well, there are character pathologies, and that's a problem with
your personality that can interfere with empathy. People who are
narcissists and maybe even have narcissistic features, so they may
not be a full blown narcissist, but they have those features.
They don't empathize with other people. There are certain diagnoses
(40:22):
which make it very hard to empathize with others and
just a self involvement sometimes where we're only looking at
things through how we feel about a certain situation. But
it's it's harder. Gail King will say that it's harder
to hate up glows. You know, when you see a
(40:43):
person face to face, you get more information about that.
It's harder to demonize somebody that you're face to face
with and it makes us step back and think, oh,
they're a person just like me, or maybe we have similarity,
and you know, it's it's harder. But when you don't
(41:03):
have that, it's a flat screen. You're never seeing the
person you could just you know, if you're feeling angry
about your life, you're feeling angry because this person reminds
you of somebody that you dislike. I mean, in some cases,
a lot of the personal judgment is not personal. In fact,
it's kind of never personal. It's always about what another
(41:25):
person raises for you. You know, So if you see
a person and you hate them, you have to ask yourself,
why am I hitting this person? You know, who do
they remind me of? Is it a personality thing? Or
do they have features that I wish I had and
I don't have. It always has to do with the
person who is taking that other person in, and so
(41:48):
it is really helpful to know it's not personal. It's
something is being raised for them that we don't know,
and maybe we're not that interested in knowing, you know,
but it's really useful information to have. So when somebody's
really nasty, it might hurt, but then to say, you know,
it's not personal. And some people can't empathize and don't
(42:10):
want to empathize, but it's a skill being empathetic, and
it's considering another person's position, and it helps us to
have successful relationships to say, oh, you know, maybe my
behavior did impact this other person or wow, I never
considered that this other person might have a totally different
(42:33):
frame of mind. And we are better people and we
are better friends and family members when we can be empathic.
I think that's always the goal, But not everybody is there.
Sometimes people just need to stay in their rage because
if they don't, they may fall apart, or they may
(42:54):
have to feel major depression, or they may have to
kind of feel vulnerable, And not everybody is willing to
look at themselves honestly. In fact, a lot of people
have a lot of personal blind spots, and that's where
therapy can come in. When you look at yourself and
you learn more and it can help you navigate life
(43:15):
and friendships and success.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
That are going back to kind of the beginning of
our conversation. You were saying, the reason why people are
so mean to other people is because then they don't
have to be mean to themselves. And so I think
you know, viewing that meanness from a new lens where
(43:37):
you take it less personally and you actually see it
as like data as of that's how this person thinks.
This is how this person maybe even thinks about themselves.
Because if you're being reminded of yourself in somebody else's
(44:00):
actions or misbehavior, and you deny that and you don't
want to accept that as your own, or you know,
empathize with the many things.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
But basically, if you're an attacker, right, if you're designed
to attack, there are people that engage in self attack
and the only reprieve they have from that self attack.
I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, No one wants me.
I'm too old, i'm too young, I'm too dumb, I'm
too smart, whatever the case may be, and they get
(44:34):
to attack somebody else, which reality TV gives us this
beautiful opportunity to do. Then for a brief moment, they
have the opportunity to shift their focus from being attacking
of themselves to attacking somebody else so they can feel
better in the moment. So it's almost like a public service,
(44:57):
public service announcement.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah, if you can handle it, if you I mean,
And that's the education part, right, because for somebody I
don't know, like me, that like goes onto a public
platform like this, and I'm not an actor. I didn't
do it for you know, acting opportunities or I just
did it as like a self development thing to overcome
(45:23):
my social anxiety and also to develop thicker skin. I
knew it I would develop thicker skin, and thank goodness,
it was a gradual build. Otherwise, you know, if you're
if you're put on a platform like this and you
haven't had that type of experience and you're being bullied
and then you're being bombarded by a bunch of people
(45:46):
online and you don't understand the psychological concept behind rejection,
then it becomes so dangerous, you know, So I it's
very understand I understand what you're saying, but I also
hear it as almost like an excuse.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
It's not an excuse. But the more information we have,
the better we are able to make choices. It doesn't
mean I'm going to be with my statistic friend because
it's better for them to be mean to me than
to themselves. No, I don't want toxic friends. I want
(46:25):
friends that feel good about themselves, are successful, so they
can celebrate more of life with me. And it's not
an excuse, but your instincts were right. I mean, you
allowed yourself to be in an environment where it's almost
like you took a speed class in learning how to
deal with nasty triangulations and you know, being the subject
(46:52):
of a lot of hate. But fortunately for you, you
survived it and learned from it and benefited from it.
There are people who are don't have that ego strength,
don't have the community, and they start thinking this is
always going to be for me. The moment feels like
(47:13):
it's never ending, and they can't tolerate the idea of
other people thinking they're bad and horrible, and in some
cases it contributes to self harm. And so I think
we need to be really careful, and I know social
media is a little bit of the wild West, and
I think we need to edit in a way that
(47:37):
we reduce harming people or putting people at emotional risk.
We see suicide is up for younger kids. We see
depression and anxiety as up. This is all a contributing factor.
We are allowing people into our lives that we may
not allow into our homes, and that's really something to
(47:59):
think about. If you wouldn't allow them into your home,
you have to find a way to not allow them
into your head. And I think that there's a responsibility
of these companies to monitor and edit out what's not
okay to put up on screen. There are certain things
that are crossing the line, and I think we need
(48:20):
to have the laws catch up to technology and eliminate
that from happening and putting people in harm's way.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
So, okay, this might be a controversial question. Do you
think that social media should eliminate the comment section?
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Oh well no, but I think it should be edited,
you know, and a person can eliminate it for themselves
and put no comments.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Certainly a person can do that, and if they need
to do that I highly recommend they do it if
they need to do it for their psyche. I think
it's nice to hear other people's comments. And social media,
just like anything else, can be really good or really bad.
But it might be if you're going through kind of
a storm, maybe you don't allow the messages and let
(49:20):
the storm blow over because you don't need or you
not just you Rachel, but you the general public. You know,
maybe it's you know, do you really need to hear
everything somebody has a thought about I don't think so.
It's not necessary and these things do stick in our psyche.
And I do think the laws should come in. Is
(49:41):
comments not okay? Or they edit it, you know, they
look at these comments before they can be posted. I
hope that we're moving in that direction.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, it's still very tricky because I've been dealing with that.
And thank goodness that Instagram has the in words feature
where you can eliminate certain words or ban certain words
on your comment section, so that when somebody types that word,
it won't allow that person to comment. It will just
(50:14):
say like this user doesn't allow comments of this kind. Yeah,
and then they would have to edit it, and people,
you know, I still get negative comments. It's not like
I've eliminated all the negative comments. People find creative ways
to say.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
It just means that you're relevant, right, You're part of
their conversation. You are in their psyche for whatever reason,
because people don't talk about people that no one knows,
that nobody cares about.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Right.
Speaker 4 (50:42):
But what I will say is that you can use
all of this information maybe to be part of the solution.
You know that somebody who's experienced it, somebody who's been
targeted or been victimized by cancel culture, even you know,
it's like it is tough, and it's a unique experience,
(51:04):
and when you come out the other side and it's
not about you personally and anymore, then maybe we can
make some political changes because it's a problem and it
shouldn't be allowed. I mean some negativity. Okay, we can't
be loved by everybody, but there's a line that's being
cross that shouldn't be cross. And I think people who
have experienced it need to be part of that change
(51:26):
of changing the laws, changing what's allowed so that we
can protect future generations.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
Mm hmm, yeah, definitely. Can you define the mob mentality
because I know it dates back to like way back
when when I don't know, someone who did something morally
wrong would be like up on you know, they would
bring them up on a stage and like you team
or not.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
Somebody who was au threatic about who was defined it
as witches, right. I think that they were women. I
don't know what they were doing, but they weren't witches, right. Well,
the mom mentality is kind of like group thing. So
somebody within that group would never think of maybe hitting
a person multiple times, but if they're in a group,
(52:13):
there becomes kind of like a group psychology where certain
behaviors are made okay that are not okay, and people
start to think less individually and it's more of like
a group think mentality, and so their individual ability to
know right and wrong as they might as an individual
(52:34):
when they are part of a group. There's something about
being part of a community, being part of something bigger
than yourself that can get certain people to suspend certain morality,
certain social codes right and wrong, because there's something about
the numbers that get people to feel I'm part of
something bigger than myself. It feels right, it feels good,
(53:00):
spend good judgment, yeah, or it could work the other
way too. I mean, you can have a mob that
stands for something great, but when we hear mob mentality,
we don't tend to think of, oh, these are morally
great people. You know. It's usually an aggressive act where
people give themselves permission to behave in really cruel and
(53:21):
horrific and horror fying ways.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
How do you deal with bullying in real life or online?
Would it be like a different approach for each of
those circumstances.
Speaker 4 (53:33):
Well, I mean, as you said, I mean they're online
tools where just don't have any comments, don't have any life,
eliminate it totally. I was talking to my daughter who's
twenty one, so she's obviously a different generation than me,
and she eliminated TikTok. She's like, it was taking a
lot of hours of my time. It wasn't doing anything
healthy for me, you know, the algorithms were sucking me in.
(53:57):
My sister did it as well. You know yourself and
be proactive about choosing mental well being for yourself in
whatever form that takes. So I highly recommend that you know,
you can't always depend on others to take care of you.
Sometimes you need to figure out what you need to
do for yourself and your own mental health and just
(54:19):
do it. When I think about bullying and bullying in
schools and how physically aggressive it can get, it's absolutely horrifying.
And I say that there first of all, should be
a zero tolerance for bullying. I think that there should
be more education about emotional regulation and what our emotions
(54:40):
mean to us and how we should handle them, and
our tendency to want to pick on people who are
weaker because it feels good without really having the empathy,
teaching empathy of how will your behavior impact somebody else,
and that bullying really is a community issue. I think
it extends beyond the school system and is a community
(55:02):
issue where there needs to be a community at large
that also gets involved and says it's not.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
Okay, but it's okay for reality TV, well, I think.
Speaker 4 (55:13):
The assumption is that people are signing up for it, right,
you sign up for it, you get fame, you get money,
you get perched, you get this, you know all that's
are on And again that's the ending, Right, why are
you getting these things? And I'm not or I would
like to get these things too, but I'm not. So
(55:34):
there's that, And yeah, I think that there needs to
be some awareness.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Yeah, I just think you know, it's so normalized on
a TV screen.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Yeah, it's normalized. It's considered okay, and it probably shouldn't.
But a lot of things are considered okay that aren't okay.
You know, in reality TV is just a piece of it.
And you know, maybe as we evolve, you know, but
people always love to have an enemy, right, Yeah, when
(56:08):
you have a common enemy, then you have a group
of supporters.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
Let's talk about that for a second. Yeah, because Brene
Brown says common enemy intimacy is like a false sense
of intimacy where you are bonding with somebody else over
having a common enemy. Can you speak more about that?
Speaker 4 (56:30):
Sure? I mean, and not only that, it's probably just
a form of of Well. I love how Brene Brown
puts it. It's like a false intimacy. But some people
are not capable of intimacy, and that's the only kind
of intimacy they can have. Let's have a common enemy
(56:51):
and then we'll form a group together and it feels
good in the moment. And again, we are aggressive people.
I mean when you look at you know, our primitive
impulses and fantasies, you know, Freud said, crazy men, you know,
(57:11):
murderous men. Crazy men act on normal people's fantasies. And
it's this idea of we are animals. We have aggressive tendencies. Right,
that's why laws are in place thou shall not kill
because sometimes people want to, but it doesn't mean you
can act on it. But I think in reality TV,
when we have a common enemy, and it happens in
(57:33):
geopolitics as well, then it is okay to join forces
and say, you know, let's put all of our anger
and hate in this direction so we can form an alliance.
So it is strategic, it is done. But in terms
of intimacy, sometimes it's the only kind of intimacy people
can have. Yeah, they can't do anything else.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
Interesting, Yeah, I don't know why. Like Lord of the
Flies popped in my mind, one of those classic books
that you read in high school.
Speaker 4 (58:08):
What do you think is for you?
Speaker 1 (58:11):
I think, just uh, just the chaos, like the utter,
you know, no government, no rules, regulations, And I think
there is something like with the id and the ego
and the super ego, some sort of symbolism with that,
and it.
Speaker 4 (58:29):
Is that it's like that primary process before we're socialized, right,
and it's like all of these impulses and if we
act on all of these impulses, every single one of
us would be in friends, Okay, every single one of us.
And there's only so much freedom people can handle.
Speaker 1 (58:48):
You know.
Speaker 4 (58:49):
Sometimes people can't handle freedom and they act in really
extreme ways. And that's why kind of having you know,
a democratic government and laws in place helps people to
organize their impulses and thoughts so that they can behave appropriately.
(59:10):
But yes, I think Lord of the Flies is a
great analysis of what happens when there's lawlessness. Well, there's
chaos because there are going to be people who are
out of control and that's a pretty dangerous place to be,
either physically or mentally.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, and I feel like vander pump Rules is very
Lord of the Flies. And it's almost like the morality
is pick and choose, Like some actions have consequences that
are like extreme or fireable offenses, and others are brushed
(59:49):
under the rug or even celebrated, and so it's very
it's a very muddled, confusing place to.
Speaker 4 (59:57):
Be and they probably the world change a little bit
because it's also based on that interesting concept of money,
you know, what's getting more views what's getting more to works,
who's the most interesting person, what's getting the most talked about,
And then the morality and the rules change because everybody
(01:00:18):
wants to feel relevant, and so it's really throwing people
into the mix who have a lot of self interest,
and that will shift and change given the rules. And
the ultimate goal is to have a successful show. So
if that means throwing a balloon in someone's face, then
they'll throw a balloon in someone's face because the rules
(01:00:40):
are different. That makes you successful. And we respond to
our environment, we really do, and our environment can manipulate
how we experience ourselves and how we treat others.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
Well, I feel like we covered so much and.
Speaker 4 (01:00:56):
So much it's like a faster class.
Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
It's yeah, it is a little master class. Oh my gosh, Well,
thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Oh so you're a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
I feel like that conversation was so beneficial because when
we look at reality TV and we see the way
that people are interacting with each other and how it's normalized,
we have to remember that that doesn't make it acceptable
to treat other people that way in real life. And also,
(01:01:30):
they are real people behind the screen. They are human
beings that deserve respect. We all have the choice to
be kind, so I encourage you guys to just take
a beat before commenting on social media because your words
do matter. Thank you so much for listening to Rachel
(01:01:57):
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