Grimes Wants to Be Less Famous (and Replaced by AI)

Gideon: I hear you moving in some kind of wide political space. I hear you speaking like someone who belongs to both left and right political groups. You know, you’re obvious — a lot of the people that you hang out with in Silicon Valley or around Elon are libertarians or conservatives, and then there’s a lot of progressives as well, and from the backgrounds that you usually hang out with, me guess. So am I right when I see young people trying to connect different political viewpoints and thinking about how they can be integrated?

grims: Yes. I really think one of our biggest issues right now is polarization. I refuse to be left or right. You know, I’m scared of what we’re doing to young men and the discourse about men right now.

Lauren: Which part scares you?

grims: There are a lot of issues with male toxicity, but like we mean business, like we’re just telling men that they’re nasty about things they can’t — testosterone is like a crazy war drug. For example, why can’t there be a political platform that creates space and space for masculinity – and honors it – in the way that traditional masculinity does, and constructively encourages it to get better, rather than tearing it apart, so to speak? This still affects women’s rights and access to abortion and transgender rights. The question is: Why are these things dichotomous? For example – why are they fighting each other? How-

Lauren: What do you think is an effective way to do this?

grims: I think for me it’s always about the carrot and not the stick. What I’d like to see is some sort of, um, celebration of the good side of manhood. For example, how do you create a discourse that encourages men to strive for themselves and be chivalrous? And how – how do you, uh, romanticize a kind of masculinity that’s really respectful of women and supports discipline, and how, I don’t know, like all the crap that everyone makes fun of, but how –

Gideon: I think I understand what you want to say again. I mean, it feels like you’re just saying that the standard way to criticize toxic masculinity is to try to pick apart masculinity itself. And instead-

grims: I think that, I think that’s, I think that’s what happens with – what happens too often is like when we’re trying to get rid of the things that were so, so destructive, I think we’re tearing apart manhood as a whole .

Lauren: Shall we fire a rapid-fire round?

Gideon: Sure, I’ll start. What keeps you up at night?

grims: We have an education crisis across the board, almost worldwide.

Gideon Mm-hmm.

grims: Almost everything to do with how we raise children.

Gideon: What makes you optimistic?

grims: Young people, children. I see a lot of Gen Z stuff that’s scary, bad, and traumatic, but like every Gen Z person I know personally, I’m just like, ‘Wow, damn it. you are so sick Oh dear God. And so enlightened.” I mean, my children, it’s like realizing that people are born really great. We’re just screwing ourselves up, but like we’ve made a great start. We start out enlightened, and I think that gives me a lot of confidence that the natural state of man is a pretty wonderful state.