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New Rule: Armed and Lonely | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) – Transcript

In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher addresses America's growing loneliness crisis and its link to mass shootings.

In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher addresses America’s growing loneliness crisis and its link to mass shootings.

Published on Aug 17, 2019

And finally new rule. America must ask itself this question: what do we do about the easy access to firearms by young men who simply feel like shit.

There’s no shortage of reasons offered as to why America has a gun violence problem, but isn’t it a lot of it because America is an every man for himself/the winner takes it all culture that chews up and spits out people who don’t keep up.

You can fly as high as you want here but if you fall by the wayside our response is “sucks to be you loser,” unfollow. Do you want a friend? Get a gun.

42% of the people in America make $15 an hour or less. How much of a life can you really have on that budget? What is an American mass shooter really but a suicide bomber wearing Axe body spray.

The NRA should change its slogan to “guns don’t kill people, seething loners who can’t get laid kill people.”

Yes, we have too many guns. But America has an epidemic of gun violence because it has an epidemic of guys who were picked last in gym…

It’s alright. I do it for them at home…

Forget red flags, just find the guys who cut their own bangs. I know profiling is wrong but if a guy takes his mother to the prom, he goes on the list. Does your fondest sexual memory involve two other people you heard through a wall? You’ve been selected for extra screening. Armed and lonely is not a good combination.

America has a loneliness crisis. 22 percent of Millennials say they don’t have any friends; 25 percent say they don’t even have an acquaintance; 10 percent didn’t know that pizza comes in slices so someone else can have some.

And what is it that has made people so lonely? It’s their stupid phone, which was supposed to connect people but which—studies have found—has made them more lonely. It’s like a vibrator designed by Mike Pence.

The internet is where young white men go from lonely and sad to radicalized and lethal. Because we used to wake up, read the paper, see all the terrible things in the world and say “oh well, at least my life is better than those poor slobs.” But now it’s the opposite. Social media tells you everyone is having more fun, with more toys and more friends than you. They’re always in Saint Kitts having Mai Tais at sunset while you’re in Canoga Park selling your plasma at dusk. Yolo!

Before Instagram, you could be a loser but not feel it because the winners weren’t always in your face. Even the most mundane post of avocado toast in a hipster coffee shop sends the message “I’m having fun and you’re not. Enjoy your cup of noodles fatty.”

This is how the Internet gets you coming and going. Guys watch the haves on Instagram and then go over to sites like 8chan to brood with the have-nots. Being a loser used to just mean that you stayed home on Friday nights to get a head start on your Star Wars fan fiction. You had a hard dick and no social skills but it wasn’t a movement. But now sites like 8chan– 8chan is where three of the mass shooters so far posted their manifestos. It’s where Qanon got started. 8chan is to lonely white man what the Hometown Buffet is to gastric bypass patients: both dangerous and inescapable.

And it’s why people need real friends. Not chatroom friends. Not Facebook friends. Not fellow paranoids feeding each other misinformation on a screen. But real human friends who can look you in the eye and tell you that your theories about the coming race war are horseshit. And to tell you that social media isn’t real. So stop comparing yourself to a fantasy. No one is having that much fun, they’re just distorting reality to big themselves up.

Trust me, anyone out there who’s home tonight feeling left out, discarded and disrespected: if you knew how much everybody else is fakin’ it, you wouldn’t want to join them anyway.

 

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