Comments on: I would just show you my butt, right now.

I would just show you my butt, right now.

lazaruslong — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:44:58 -0800

Ze Frank previously and Rainn Wilson talk about the Teen Brain.

By: JimmyJames

JimmyJames — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:00:55 -0800

That. Was. AWESOME!

By: philip-random

philip-random — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:03:15 -0800

and songs like this

By: glhaynes

glhaynes — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:06:11 -0800

We sure talk down to teens a lot.

By: gerryblog

gerryblog — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:08:46 -0800

I love Ze, but I've found the new version of The Show to be a bit precious for my tastes, most of the time. We need some more Those Brooklyn Stairs! and Fingers in Food as a release valve for the guru/life-coach persona he seems to be favoring. If the Earth Were a Sandwich was a gag, not an actual thing... solamente gags

By: jourman2

jourman2 — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:22:06 -0800

Just watched this. A++. Would watch again.

By: fartknocker

fartknocker — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:31:44 -0800

We are so lucky to have Ze. So many wonderful lessons: how to dance properly... how the teen brain works... the spiral hot-dog...

By: snorkmaiden

snorkmaiden — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:33:28 -0800

I've never seen this man (Ze) before, and I'm having trouble paying attention to him because when he talks, he opens his eyes so wide you can see the whole iris. It's weirdly hypnotic.

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:52:43 -0800

Hypnotic? I found it screamed "Do NOT trust me! I am never sincere!"

By: snorkmaiden

snorkmaiden — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:57:05 -0800

Yeah, that too. I both can't look away from his eyes and don't trust him, at the same time. If I were a teenager, I would feel roundly patronised.

By: stevil

stevil — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:57:16 -0800

Is this what Beakman's World spun off into?

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:05:18 -0800

Now I could--I would--right now I'd just show you my butt right now--I have no cares about that... Priceless.

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:20:17 -0800

The fact that he did not actually show his butt made a mockery of Rainn Wilson's claims. And this is just anecdata, but I have never been more exquisitely aware of the consequences of my actions or more in control of my emotions that when I was a teenager. I may have emotional Benjamin Button disease.

By: Harvey Kilobit

Harvey Kilobit — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:21:22 -0800

I don't buy it. In my (adult) experience, the reason adults are able to make "wise" decisions and do things that prevent problems from happening by "thinking ahead" is that they've already had bad experiences that came from failing to do the right thing. As a result, whenever they are placed in a situation that reminds them of the bad experience they had, it sticks out into consciousness enough to make them ponder how to prevent it happening again. It doesn't have anything to do with teenagers not having "access to the frontal lobe where wisdom is stored." If you ask adults why they are doing something that seems like it involves "thinking ahead," they'll give you a very nice and sensible explanation that makes you think "how logical and smart! of course that seems quite convincing! why didn't I think of that?" but really they're just post-hoc rationalizing a way of thinking which is mostly drawing on learning and experience (both directly or vicariously, e.g. through reading). Rainn Wilson knows now he has the social expertise to handle the social consequences of a butt exhibition, so he doesn't freak out as much as he did as a teenager, when the social consequences were worse and he didn't know what sort of things to say to defuse people's reactions.

By: NoraReed

NoraReed — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:54:38 -0800

I wish this kind of stuff came with a disclaimer that's like, hey, so you're a teenager and people keep telling you that feeling like the world is ending is part of that, but if you literally want to die a lot of the time, that's worse than regular teenagerhood and you probably have depression. Or something. Because I was so constantly told to dismiss my emotions as a part of adolescent madness and I had no perspective AT ALL that the depression thing didn't really click right and I spent probably 6 years of my life with depression looming over me and not really doing anything about it.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:36:58 -0800

I think that's the third time in the past week or two but only the third time in my life that I've seen or heard the term "googly eyes" -- one was in a bondcliff askme and the other was... somewhere I forget at the moment -- but anyway: are "googly eyes" a current consumer fad?

By: pracowity

pracowity — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:27:35 -0800

And come to think of it, Ze keeps giving us those "runaway bride"/"googly" eyes in this video.

By: ReeMonster

ReeMonster — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:31:18 -0800

I wish he'd just shut up. And also, give his upper brow muscles a rest. Douche-tastic.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:50:00 -0800

Adults! Always with those EXPEDIT shelving units.

By: zoo

zoo — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:19:13 -0800

And what do neuroscientists know anyway? I use my brain to tell me how my brain works, and there's no way that could go wrong.

By: quoquo

quoquo — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:23:39 -0800

Nooo! Not brains again, I'm so sick of brains.

By: quoquo

quoquo — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:06:54 -0800

So, they end by saying that (bona fide) adults have privileged access to reality, because they have their emotions under control or because their emotions are toned down or because their emotions have a sort of built in rationality (correct me if this is hyperbole compared to what Ze actually says in the end). But doesn't this boil down to the same thing they suppose in the beginning in order to correct it, i.e. the Aristotelian picture: Teenagers are drunk idiots, incomplete adults, due to their incomplete brains? We are our brains, yes, but that identity only helps us understand ourselves when we look at our brains to a certain extend, because brains are things, but we are people. They do make a good point about the problematic relation between the 1st person vs 3rd person perspective bona fide alienated teenagers have. The 3rd person perspective onto themselves informs them about their stance in relation to their social peers and others in general. Assuming that perspective I look at myself in comparison to others along countless scales, looks, eloquence, number of limbs etc. There is no robust objectivity in that perspective, because it's me who's looking, so certain things I regard about others always have something to do with me too, although I might think that I have a clear picture of the other. If you do not implicitly know about this relativity, your 1st person perspective is bound to be alienated by your 3rd person perspective. The things you deliberately do (1st person) will be authoritatively informed by things you others do, but which you haven't fully understood, because you do not take your own perspective onto those things others to into account. You're trying to be a social robot, following rules, which aren't rules but things people do, people like you.

By: HuronBob

HuronBob — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:42:27 -0800

Come on, folks. This is the internet. These weren't two famed neuroscientists addressing a panel of fellow luminaries regarding the oddities of adolescent thinking! This was two guys with names like Ze and Rainn (that should tell you something right there) whose goal is to, get this, entertain you and somehow make money doing it! I didn't think they were that far off, they were reassuring if nothing more, and they didn't say something like, oh, I don't know, like maybe: "Assuming that perspective I look at myself in comparison to others along countless scales, looks, eloquence, number of limbs etc. There is no robust objectivity in that perspective, because it's me who's looking, so certain things I regard about others always have something to do with me too, although I might think that I have a clear picture of the other. If you do not implicitly know about this relativity, your 1st person perspective is bound to be alienated by your 3rd person perspective. The things you deliberately do (1st person) will be authoritatively informed by things you others do, but which you haven't fully understood, because you do not take your own perspective onto those things others to into account. You're trying to be a social robot, following rules, which aren't rules but things people do, people like you" Because a teen would get, like, halfway through that and say, "hey, Dude, let's go get high" and be outa here.... (don't get me wrong, quoquo, I agree with what you said, it just sort of made me want to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) It was entertaining, with a smidgen of truth stuff. yes, I'm a fan of both Ze and Rainn.

By: pearlybob

pearlybob — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:48:03 -0800

I couldn't watch....dude never takes a breath....it was giving me anxiety....

By: PhoBWanKenobi

PhoBWanKenobi — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 07:15:09 -0800

I love almost everything that Ze Frank's done with the new show. It's like John Green but more . . . earnest?

By: Mrs. Pterodactyl

Mrs. Pterodactyl — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 07:54:40 -0800

if you literally want to die a lot of the time, that's worse than regular teenagerhood and you probably have depression. Yeah, this is an excellent point. I was nineteen before I realized that most people actually DIDN'T feel that way and it wasn't that there was some massive denial-related conspiracy to cover up the fact that we were all suicidal, it was actually normal not to want to kill yourself.

By: echo target

echo target — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:44:24 -0800

I don't buy it either. Adults are constantly doing stupid stupid shit. High school never ended for a lot of people. Dumb teens will egg someone's car because they're bored, dumb adults will order the invasion of Iraq for basically the same reason. Adults do their stupid drama over longer timespans and in lower tones than teens because they don't have the energy for the kind of intensity that teens can produce. The main source of the wisdom of age is having made that particular mistake before. If we're lucky we can learn from someone else's mistake too, but that's less common, either for adults or teenagers.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:34:03 -0800

I couldn't watch....dude never takes a breath....it was giving me anxiety.... It's the Jay Smooth editing style.

By: glhaynes

glhaynes — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:07:44 -0800

"I would just show you my butt right now," says a rich and very famous actor who's used to being on millions of screens every day, marveling at how being exposed is "such a big deal" to these idiot teens.