Why the World Needs More Purple

In this episode of the GaryVee Audio Experience, I sit down with Mark Manson - author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and co-writer of Will Smith's memoir - for a long-overdue conversation. I talk about why the second you're living for outside affirmation, it's game over, and why values are the sorting mechanism that keeps you from drowning in noise. I share my simple framework for handling judgment: do the people who know me best like me? Mark and I get into why parenting builds the value system and why the answer to a red-and-blue world is purple. I also discuss becoming Walt Disney instead of Mickey Mouse.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Vayner Nation, what is good? We are back on the podcast 2022. I'm really not planning on doing too many interviews or episodes. I'm kind of, I'm focused on Be Friends and VaynerX. I think the speaking, the books, even the content, I'm down to the lowest levels this week in seven or eight years. But when I get an opportunity to do a show where I think all of you who are listening are going to really enjoy the combo or have wanted to see the combo, I've definitely heard through

• 0:39Speaker 00

  my navigating of the world that people wanted Mark and I to interact or how would we jam? And I'm really excited that he's on the show. So I'm going to let him introduce himself and how he likes to speak about himself. I'm curious myself. And then we'll get into a little bit of like book life because he's a beast and then maybe just shoot the shit on a bunch of different stuff. So, Mark, how are you?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  I'm great, man. It's great to be here. I can't believe we've actually never talked before.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  The amount of, you know, there's people like you and there's probably 15 other people over the last decade that, you know how like it's almost like a neighbor you have, you've never talked, but you head nod, you know? Like, I've always felt that I had these kind of like people that ran in similar circles, shared friends.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  And it was just sheer serendipity that we weren't at the same conference, at the same event, that, you know, that if we met seven years ago at a South by Southwest, we would talk 13 times a year versus not once for seven, you know, like it's one of those kind of things.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  It's actually, when Kobe Bryant passed, I actually promised myself to slightly do a better, I've done a little bit of a better job with it, but I'm such a mad scientist in my lab, my family, which is my real life, and then professionally, my laboratory and my crew around my laboratory cheer and cheer and root for everybody on the outside, but spend so little time on it. So I find myself in these predicaments where, but, but I want to be a little more thoughtful because I definitely feel like I've always loved the way people talked about you and that know you, that know me. So I'm happy you were here.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too, man.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Thanks.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  So, quick, quick intro. I'm actually from the blogging world. I started blogging in 07, actually discovered you back in like 09, 2010. Basically blew my career up going viral on Facebook and Twitter back in the day, back when you kind of could go viral on Facebook, Twitter. Grew a massive audience, millions of readers each month, parlayed that into a publishing deal. Books did super well, have sold about 15 million books.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Crazy numbers. How many have you written?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Four. One self-published and then three conventionally published.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  The last one was I did, I co-wrote Will Smith's memoir with him. It came out a couple of months ago.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  What was the experience, what was the experience in co-writing?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  You know, I, with him, it was great. I don't really aspire to be a memoirist or a ghostwriter or anything like that. It's just-

• 4:01Speaker 00

  He was just, he was cool enough and it was, the whole thing was cool enough to do?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  He, yeah, he and I really hit it off and I think he-

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Did you, did you come across Brad Haugen in his world? I know he's on the productions, did that name, I think he works on some of the content side, good friend of mine. Anyway, keep going.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  But yeah, I mean, he and I, like, he was in the right spot in his career to do the book, what I would call correctly, you know, which is like actually open up and actually get into kind of the ugly parts of his life. And then I think he and I just like on a personal level, our skills and personalities complemented each other really well. So that ended up, and I mean, I'm a 90s kid, so.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  It's the fucking-

• 4:44Speaker 00

  I get, I get, I get suckered into things all the time.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. But honestly, I mean, it was such a great experience, but it's funny because I mean, now, now that that book is done so well, you know, I've talked to my agent, she's like, you know, other celebrities are going to want to do stuff and, well, and people are going to reach out. I'm like, you know, I don't, I don't know actually, like, I don't know if that's something I really want to focus on, so.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  It sounds horrible.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  I, if, I think if you don't have the right person or if there's not a good chemistry, I think it would be horrible.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's kind of like the way I think about VaynerMedia, like clients, like it actually is hard. When I talk about eating shit, I don't think people really understand, like, like having, when you're creative, having somebody, two cooks in the kitchen is incredibly challenging.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  It's not that it's horrible. I use that as a slang term for, man, that you want to say serendipitous and the person wants to say, you know, by chance, like, you know, I, I love my art of being a content producer and being a businessman and have absolutely with my father, my brother, you know, especially when it's family like that, had challenges when, you know, I knew what I wanted to do was right, but I wanted to be empathetic or have compromising capabilities or, you know?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  So, anyway.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And it's, and it's, there are obviously, there were moments where it's like there were certain things that I felt should be in the book or certain directions I thought certain chapters should go. And it's, at the end of the day, it's his book.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  His book, yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Good for you to have like some, because some people, some people with no leverage and juice aren't great at having that humility. You came in with some real front-facing consumer leverage. You're, you know, obviously the reason so many people have brought you up to me is because I say the word fuck so much and you, like, obviously, you know.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Such a dumb, dumb reason for people to associate us, but.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  It's incredibly fair. Actually, I've had more than a couple of people ask me through the years, probably five, which is a lot if you think about it. Hey, are you pissed he wrote that book? Like, I'm like, no, I'm pumped he wrote that book. I was like, I'm like, you know, not from like that, more like they just really think there was a lot of crossover of beliefs and then obviously the word fuck, I think. Actually, just to go right into it, because there's so many marketing, branding, content people, you have two books with that in it. Sorry, I have a cough, everybody. Sorry if this hurts the podcast a little bit. Do you think, like, the brilliance of what Tim Ferriss did? I met Tim around that time as well. We were all kind of running around in those, you know?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  And he ran Google AdWords to figure out which title would work.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  You know, obviously, you know, Ryan Holiday and others. I, I watch how people navigate. Do you think that in the title had real impact, no impact, some impact on the success?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Real impact, for sure. I mean, so that book, you know, you mentioned the Tim Ferriss thing running AdWords to figure out Four Hour Work Week. A lot of subtle art was very much market-tested through blogs. So there are a lot-

• 7:59Speaker 00

  You knew what was working.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that, that, that title, so I originally started writing that book with a different title and then I wrote an article called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and it went fucking bananas. And I was like, oh shit, okay, maybe this should be the book, right? So there, there are a lot of sections in that book that grew out of viral blog posts. You know, it's like, I know this works. I know this like gets people. Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Let me ask you a question.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  One, the, for the people listening, what is the one, two, three sentence recap of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, the 2016 book that went bananas?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Uh, basically, it's, I always joke that, that it's a book about values, but it, you know, if I, if I told people it was a book about values, nobody would read it. So you gotta put fuck in the title and kind of trick people into it, but it-

• 8:56Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I mean, you just, you, you do realize you just completely in two sentences recapped my entire career. I would argue that in two seconds-

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, Gary-

• 9:08Speaker 00

  The amount of shit I eat.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Here, here's the thing, man, and, and, and I, and I think you, you and I landed in this spot for the same reason, because you, you and I live and breathe and eat and sleep the, the online social media world. And what you quickly discover when you're in that world is that there's an infinite amount of stuff out there. And so if you don't figure out that, like, if you don't discover values to sort that stuff, if you don't figure out like principles of like, this is what matters to me, this is what's important to me, and this is just crap that I'm gonna ignore, you're gonna drown. And I, I quickly just, you know, coming from a self-help angle, um, I quickly discovered that a lot of my generation's problems, a lot of the anxiety

• 9:55Speaker 01

  and depression and stress that my generation goes through, it comes from just not figuring out what those values are. What are, what are those sorting mechanisms in your life?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  And then when you don't have your own, you're grabbing on to people's-

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Grabbing to others, you're completely succumbing to, um, outside affirmation. And the second you are living for outside affirmation, it's game over.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny, I remember seeing the book in the, in the airports, because I'm always in the airports, right?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  And it, and it grabbed me too, like every other human. And I, I remember feeling a hu- you know, I, I do, to my community famously talk about how little I read, but I remember feeling an incredible kinship just on title. I also believe so much of the world's problems is headline reading and making assumptions. So, like, I selfishly asked you that question right now for my own self, but I really do believe that getting into a comfort zone of understanding the following, do the people that know me the best like me?

• 11:00Speaker 00

  And do the people that know me the least have a chance of liking me or not liking me? Is a very simple framework that can help. I mean, I, every day, I get accused of things that are not true, get negativity thrown at me, and I'm pretty positive communicating, like, I'm trying to, you know, but I have a style that I think rubs people, the conviction and the confidence and the, you know, the competitiveness, like, I get it. I understand why it lands like that. I also think, like, alpha male energy timing is a little awkward, and I'm empathetic to that. Those are macro trends. But everything that makes it palpable, that not giving a fuck, of course, I care, but it's, it's having a structure of understanding,

• 11:43Speaker 00

  no, no, but, but do the people that know me like me? And then as you get further away, does it still stay as good? Like, strangers thinking that I'm a charlatan makes sense. Thirteen second clip on a video, you know, da, da, da, you know? But my mom thinking that, that's devastating. And I think there's a lot to that that I think a lot about.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Well, it, it's, it's also just the world that we live in now, right? Like, it's, we're exposed to so many other people all the time, and so many other people are exposed to us that it's, it's unreasonable to think that everybody who comes across you is gonna like you.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  But I think, but I think there's a bigger thing, I love your thought on this. I, I think we're also in the explosion of popular culture judgment and, and pushing away as fast as we can, any level of accountability. So judging is on fire, and accountability, everyone's running away from. Pointing fingers, super fun, popularized, point, grabbing thumbs, devastating, nobody wants to do it. Thoughts?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I, one, one thing I wrote about when the pandemic started was like, I feel like people have this addiction to like moral righteousness. Like, it's, it's actually becoming a problem. Like, I think we should become, not less moral, but like more amoral, like, like withhold judgment on like what is actually good and evil, because it-

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Because you're the ju-, when you're the judge and the jury, it's a game of opinions outside of the things that most common sense, nice, human beings can agree on. I don't think anybody's on the side of murder.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, but it's, I, I think, you know, it's so easy to pass judgment, like moral judgment on people or groups of people today, and there's so little repercussions. And I think that that is, like, we, we've just kind of, we've got this, like, crack addiction to moral righteousness as a culture.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Well, it makes you feel better when you-

• 13:45Speaker 01

  It feels meaningful. It feels meaningful, but there's new consequences.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think to your point, like, man, we're gonna really nerd out on this. I, I think it, it's an indicator of more collective unhappiness, because I think we're in a bigger game of outside validation.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Because when you're unhappy, the trigger of tearing somebody else's building down is an endorphin, and, um, maybe not a dor-, maybe I'm using, is a hit emotionally for you that helps you prop up in the short term.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  And so, you know, it speaks to, you know, it's funny, people will blame technology, social media, things of that nature, but I think it really starts, to your point, back to what you did in 16, it starts on values. Like, if parents raise their children in, and I'm a capitalist and I'm an entrepreneur, but, but I love the game. I'm not in it for the Lambo or the watch. And if you're teaching your kids that, like, it's all about those things, like, we're gonna aspire to get a Mercedes Benz, or, you know, you don't, you gotta lose 15 pounds because you don't look good, or like all these different things, everything you're doing to reinforce that the outside world's judgment matters, I'm, I'm the greatest

• 15:00Speaker 00

  beneficiary of a mother who built me the reverse.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Nothing else mattered. But what happened to our four walls? And are we nice to people and to each other? And call it a day?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure, man. Unlike the traditional social media and blogging and everything, everything just feels like, I don't wanna say dead, but like saturated, right? Like, it's, the ROI is so-

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Brother, it's, it's, it's the tale as long as time. The reason you and I in 07, and you did blogging, the reason you found me in 09, was, I would say the most frustrated I was in my career, in my entire career, was 2005 to 2009, because I couldn't write, I still can't, I can't write for a lick.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  And I saw blogging coming, and I'm like, and you know, and I'd won on kind of e-commerce and search, and I'm, and email for sure.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  And I was like, this is gonna be huge. And I knew that I was like on the sidelines with like my helmet in my hand. And, and literally the second, you know, the second, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm, I got my timer wrong, 03 to 06, 04 to 06, because the second YouTube came, I was on it so blistering fast. That's why my wine thing worked so well, because I was like, okay, I can use the new thing. And then obviously social, the new thing, and then every app on social. But you're right, like, it's gonna take the next TikTok to do anything in Web 2. But even that is gonna be a slight alteration of what we've seen

• 16:39Speaker 00

  since 05. Web 3 is like crazy new world, which is what we were learning about the internet back in the day.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, Web 2, it just feels like you're taking the same playbook and applying it to new platforms.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Over, over and over. And it, and after like-

• 16:53Speaker 00

  It's a real art, like, knowing how to capture the art of TikTok versus Instagram is a real art. But to your point, you're still making a short form piece of content in video form.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And, and it's after 12 years or whatever, like, it, you know, it kinda, you, you, you kinda just keep getting the same thing over and over. Whereas like Web 3, it just feels like we're in like 3D chess.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  No, it's like Finding America.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  You know, like, like you thought it was just Europe, and like, wait a minute, no, it's really like that. It's our version of that. Final thoughts? Give me, you know, I don't, I, I feel like we may have to do this again, because I, I wanna extract, what are some hot takes from a social commentator? What are you seeing out there? What should people think about? What is a good, what, what are some good takeaways?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Hey, gang, hey, gang, keep, keep an eye on this. Whether it's literal, like OTT shows, or like pop culture, or common emotional themes you're seeing and just like takes.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I feel like, I feel like there's, there's kind of like a great moderation coming like, I feel like a lot of what felt so unstable with social media and just the news media in general throughout the 2010s, I feel like it was a lack of education on the users end of like, people don't understand how social media feeds affect their, their moods, their information consumption, the way they think, the beliefs that they adopt. And I think the, the general public's knowledge of how these things work is catching up to like where you and I were five, 10 years ago. And I think as that happens, we're already seeing

• 18:31Speaker 01

  it now. People are just learning better, learning to, to, to turn off all the noise and bullshit. They're learning to back off, not hit the reply button so fast.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  And I, I, I see a kind of a new boom of like independent voices happening right now. I'm like so bearish on traditional East Coast media right now. It's crazy.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Like what, what does that mean?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Like New York Times, Washington.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shit like that. It's just, I, I just think there, it's just a sinking ship.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think all traditional media needs a different model.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  They do, they do.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  It's not even about for everybody listening. It's not a left or right thing. It's funny. When you said a great moderation, I've been using a purple heart. I've been falling in love with the color purple. I've been, I've been spending so much time in this. Too bad my favorite color is green, but I'm going to figure this out. I am completely convinced that what's about to happen is purple. I'm, you and I, we need to really actually become friends. We're clearly very similar in a lot of ways. I'm sure very different than others and those are the fun parts, but the world is so red and blue.

• 19:47Speaker 02

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• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  And the answer is purple. And it's, and some people, and, and sometimes it's dark purple, sometimes it's very light purple, but like, it's so clear that we will die. And this is not even like from politics, like, you know, like socialism or storming the capital. It just becomes societal. It becomes like operational. It becomes your day-to-day life.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  It's, it's everything. It's not, I mean, it's most visible in politics, right? But like,

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Correct. But it's everywhere.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  It's everywhere. Like I, I'm, I'm a big gamer. I see in the gaming community. It's like the loudest, most insane 2% of gamers are the ones that you hear about all the time, you know? It's like, it's like the fucking crazy sports people are the ones you hear all the time, you know? And it's,

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Well, it's, it's our own fault for loving rubbernecking.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and it's, I feel, I hope slash feel that people are, they're smartening up to this. And I think this is why you're seeing like Substack take off. You're seeing like, uh, you know, you, there was a chart recently of like Joe Rogan's numbers compared to all like the, um, what do you call it? Cable news shows or whatever. And it's like, you know, his audience is as big as like the five biggest cable news shows combined, you know? And it's like,

• 21:25Speaker 00

  I mean, people are 700,000 years old that watch cable news. Like, we have to understand that. By the way, I, I think ageism is a problem. I'm not shitting on 50, 60, 70, 80, 90. I'm almost 50. Fuck, you know, you're old. I'm, I'm shitting on the concept that the world's evolving, that I have unlimited friends who are 71 years old, who know what Stubstack is and like read like all sorts of different things and are just like, and I have very interesting friends who are willing to watch both Fox and CNN and this and that. And it's not even about like the politics anymore. It's just the formats.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  So, so here's a thought for you. I'll, I'll leave you with this thought. You know, when I was a kid, I used to make fun of my parents. Cause like we'd get like a VCR and my parents didn't know how to program the VCR. And like my brother and I would figure it out, right? And we would like make fun of my, my parents like, oh, I'm so bad with technology. It was like a funny thing in the nineties to be an older person who was bad with technology. I think now it's potentially like a social problem.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Well, and, and also I think we, we judge them so negatively. We'll talk, brother. Congrats on all your success. We will cross paths again. Thanks for being on the show.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. Great talking.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and uh, thanks for being part of the

• 22:40Speaker 03

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• 22:55Speaker 00

  Journey. See you later.