- You say that you wanna be happy,
you say that you wanna have a great life,
you say that you wanna have a loving family
and a meaningful career,
and the sex life of a second century Roman emperor.
Yet, your actions tell me a different story.
See, words lie, but behaviors always tell the truth.
And right now, your behaviors are telling me
that you kind of wanna be a miserable sack of shit.
So here, let me help you with that.
Here are nine steps that anybody can apply
to become completely and utterly miserable in their life.
And don't worry, you're already doing a couple of them.
Step one, always blame something or someone else
for your problems.
That's right, from now on, anything that goes wrong,
and I mean anything is someone else's problem.
There is nothing you can do, you are the victim.
The world is a cruel and injust place.
Boo fucking hoo.
Now, that's the easy part.
The hard part is figuring out who we're gonna blame.
If you're just getting started with misery,
I recommend looking at other miserable people
and seeing who they blame for their problems.
Popular choices include the government,
society at large, big corporations, your parents,
that group of evil people that you really don't like.
Me? I just blame everything on my dad.
You don't get to tell me what to do.
Step number two, complain constantly.
Now that you've found someone to blame
for all your problems,
you wanna spend as much time
and energy as possible telling other people
that it's their fault, because after all,
what's the point of being miserable
if you can't make everybody else
around you miserable as well?
Complaining is important for a few reasons.
The first of which is that it guarantees that no one fun
or interesting is ever gonna wanna spend time with you,
thus guaranteeing even more misery.
Second, complaining will give you a false sense
of moral superiority over the rest of the world.
It'll make it look like you're doing something,
even though you're not actually doing something.
It'll make you look like you care about the world,
even though we all know you really just care about yourself.
This is important
because if you are going to blame everybody else
for your problems,
you can't ever catch yourself
actually doing something productive.
That would mean you're being accountable.
And see step one, we never wanna be accountable.
Step three, avoid anything even remotely uncomfortable
or challenging.
Everyone knows that growth requires
some amount of discomfort, and if we're growing,
that means things are getting better in some way.
So that means no exercising,
no honest and difficult conversations with our loved ones
or the people that we care about.
It definitely means developing no new skills or hobbies,
and it certainly means never changing your mind
about any of your beliefs whatsoever.
These things are hard,
like who wants to do hard stuff, right?
This step is particularly important
because this sets us up for step four.
Wait for someone else to come fix all your problems.
Let's be honest here.
It's pretty tough to sit around
and complain about all the problems in the world
without actually doing something yourself.
It starts to feel a little bit hopeless after a while.
We're miserable, not hopeless.
Am I right?
Hey, sorry about that.
For our misery to be sustainable long term,
we have to find a way to cultivate a sense of hope,
despite doing absolutely nothing to give ourselves hope.
So what do we do?
Well, we project all of our hopes onto another person.
That's right, we sit around and we wait for a hero.
Now, this could be somebody close to you,
like a family member.
It could be an imaginary girlfriend or boyfriend.
It could be a politician,
although I really don't recommend that,
and I especially don't recommend putting all your hopes
and dreams on some douchey internet personality.
That's definitely not gonna turn out well.
- Here in my garage,
just bought this new Lamborghini here.
But you know what I like a lot more
than materialistic things?
Knowledge.
- Nobody can fix your problems but you.
I mean, even if you find somebody who you can sucker
into trying to fix your life's problems for you,
it's still not gonna work.
Regardless, prepare to be very, very disappointed.
This brings me to the next step.
Get extremely angry
when that person doesn't fix all your life's problems.
That's right, people suck.
Everybody lets you down and you can't trust anybody.
It's only the truly miserable person
who will convince themselves that somebody else
can magically make them stop being miserable
and then become unbelievably angry
when that person fails to do so.
Welcome to the relationship dynamics
of a 14 year old.
But look, remember, it's not your fault.
It's their fault.
How dare are they?
When your heroes and fantasies fail you to this extent,
it's just more of an opportunity to blame others,
shirk responsibility, complain incessantly,
and basically run scorched earth
across all of your intimate relationships.
See, this stuff, it works in kind of like a shit circle.
The more miserable you get,
the more you look for others to validate you and save you,
the more they disappoint you,
the more you complain and alienate people,
and the worse it gets.
Now, come with me as we ride further down the shit spiral,
because now we're to step six,
become absolutely obsessed
with what other people think about you.
Now, this is where things get fun,
and by fun, I mean like the seventh ring of hell.
Because you are constantly blaming others,
complaining to others, and irrationally expecting others
to come fix your life for you,
it is only logical that you will become absolutely obsessed
with what everybody else thinks about you.
An old friend that you haven't heard from
in years suddenly sends you a happy birthday text.
What do they want?
What do they really want?
Oh, look, somebody landed in your DMs on Instagram.
Does that mean they like you?
Should you be funny?
Should you be interested?
Should you be aloof?
Whether you prefer mild anxiety
or complete and utter social dysfunction, just remember,
no matter what people say or do, it's always about you.
Step number seven, validate all of your horrible thoughts
and ideas on social media.
By this point, you are probably a deeply miserable fuck.
People are probably sick of your shit
and they're telling you to your face.
What is a person to do?
That's right, get on Twitter.
See, the beauty of the algorithms
is that whatever you spew out into the world,
it's just gonna find a way to reflect it back to you.
So if you're just feeling an intense anger
or general malaise towards humanity,
the algorithm will find the appropriately despicable humans
to show to you.
If you have crazy ideas
of political revolution
or that the government should just start sending you
a bunch of money,
we'll find some idiot pundits to justify those beliefs.
If you feel like all women are absolutely disgusting humans
and you're gonna stay single forever, don't worry,
social media's got your back.
You're not the problem, they're the problem.
Step number eight, numb yourself.
Look, man, you're doing great here.
I'm really happy for you, and by doing great,
I mean you're doing horrible, and by happy for you,
I mean I fucking hate you and I never want to see you again.
Hopefully by now your life is in a complete tailspin
and none of it is your fault,
and nobody wants to hear you bitch about it.
(screaming and gasping)
That means we are officially approaching max misery.
At this point,
all of the pain and despair gets pretty overwhelming.
So we're gonna want to introduce a regular regiment
of numbing and distraction
to keep yourself somewhat functional.
Obviously, things like video games, porn, TikTok, I mean,
they're a nice starting point,
but that's kind of the bare minimum.
But if you're ready to get serious about numbing yourself
to the outside world,
may I recommend a mild case of alcoholism,
a gambling addiction,
or maybe spending all your life savings on cheap hookers.
Ideally, we want to find a form of numbing
that makes your life even more of a mess,
because eventually we will reach misery's final form,
and that is step number nine,
believe that change is impossible.
Wow, look at us.
We made it. We're here.
I would say I'm proud of you,
but then that would force me to consider the feelings
and wellbeing of another human,
and I'm just not willing
to take on that kind of accountability.
But still, we've come a long way.
Can you remember back when we were hopeful
and took action to solve our problems,
were accountable for those actions?
Feels like forever,
but now that we've baked the whole miserable cake,
it's time to put the icing on top.
And that is a belief in the impossibility of change,
because what is more miserable
than the belief that misery itself will never end?
Hell, it's not even icing,
it's more like encasing the whole cake in like carbonite,
you know, like they did with Han Solo?
The point is, we did it.
We made it. We made it to permanent misery.
I'm gonna say, I take no responsibility for this.
This is not my fault.
Fact, it's your fault.
You're the one clicking on this and watching to the end.
Like, maybe if you didn't want to be such
a miserable piece of shit,
I would be free to pursue my own interests.
Shame on you for watching this.
I need to post this video, get it edited,
and then complain about the algorithm.
So, fuck you very much. I'm out.
(gentle music)