School of Life: A Deeply Bad Self Help Channel | Big Joel 

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Bruh imagine ordering fish sticks in a date and she immediately assumes youve been traumatized into having bad taste

So sad that every middle-aged christian mom with a "Live, Laugh, Love" vinyl wall decal has experienced extreme aesthetic-based trauma

"We should prepare kids more for how shitty adult life is" What if we tried making adult life less shitty tho? That's something we could fix, as a society.

I think that ordering a glass of plain cranberry juice on a date actually communicates "I have a UTI"

He's kinda got that Victorian-style logic of "Everyone who disagrees with me has a psychological issue that I made up just now."

“Socialism is when cupcakes are boring” sounds like a satire of capitalism

It's so sad that people expect marriage to be shitty and draining constantly. My boyfriend told me when he was a kid, since people were making jokes about how "wife bad" "marriage bad" he had that expectation out of relationships. However, once he finally got into a healthy relationship, his worldview quickly changed and he just realized, "Oh, marriage isn't inherently bad, these people are just in toxic relationships." It seems like a fundamental thing men are taught, "Wife bad and you only need wife for baby."

as a russian, I absolutely died at his explanation of why *the entirety of russia* has shitty fashion, like babe what?

Bruh socialism is when my privately owned cake shop is run poorly.

That the Soviet period in Russia was "Devoid of art" is a statement in contrast with reality. Also this argument acts as if Russian culture started in 1992 or that Arabian culture started with the discovery of oil.

Glad I’m not the only one who thought the whole “Saudi Arabians and Russians have bad taste, and it’s because they’re traumatized” is just a little bit, er...racist.

When people make fun of you for ordering fish sticks and cranberry juice so you have to make a video about how it's actually part of your sophisticated 5D Chess seduction game

Hot take: The School of Life is a documentary about Alain de Botton's slow realization that his depression is rooted in the abusive capitalist and imperialist system he desperately tries to normalize

Its true, my entire family died in a war and now I like Adam Sandler movies

Everyone with bad tastes has suffered trauma? Dang, I can’t believe every Ben Shapiro fan has gone through such horrible trauma.

Here's some free relationship advice; If you see a date as a fight to 'win them over to your side'... don't go on dates, get actual help.

"life under capitalism is miserable and alienating, but at least cupcake have sprinkle" - Alain de Botton, probably

School of Life: "When you see someone with bad taste in art you shouldn't judge them..." me: "Ah, surely he's talking about how there is no objective judgment of quality in art and so 'bad taste in art' can't possibly exist. Maybe School of Life is not such a bad channel after all..." School of Life: "because they obviously have been so traumatized by their life that they only enjoy bad art and we can't blame them for that" me: "alright nvm"

Ah yes, testing a capitalism Vs Socialism model in a capitalist society. Surely an unbiased and equal test. Not to mention they got the basic definition of socialism wrong. It's not prioritising the needs of the worker over the needs of the consumer. It's prioritising the needs of the worker over the needs of the owner (the boss, CEO etc.) One would assume that by prioritising the worker, they are able to create produce that they are proud of, putting more effort in to create the best product they can, so therefore, the cupcake should have chocolate chips *as well as* sprinkles.

you're a maniac for letting that leaf graze your hair for 20 minutes.. respect

“Socialist cupcake” sounds like something Jordan Peterson would call me.

"sprinkles are a bourgeoisie plot" -karl marx

As someone with depression, that video about “how the world really is” really felt like a lot of the downward spiralling thoughts I’ve had. And it’s important to remind people that life isn’t “just like that”. It’s not fundamentally cruel nor fundamentally kind. And good things do exist. I fear for the safety of whoever thinks that’s normal, because it’s not.

Saying that Saudi and Russia have some sort of art deficiency is literally claiming that those countries don't have any artwork or culture of their own.

School of Life: “Life in a capital centric society obsessed with productivity and monetary gain is unnecessarily stressful and damaging to the majority of workers” Also School of Life: “Communism is when building ugly 🤬 and cupcake yucky 🤢🤮”

Capitalism in a nutshell: "You can do anything! You can be anything if you work hard enough! Nothing is stopping you under capitalism!" *5 sec. later* "You're depressed? Well.. did you ever consider maybe your expectations are too high? You've got to be realistic after all. I don't think you were believing in yourself hard enough."

15:23 WHY TF DOES ONE OF THE BOOKS HAVE TIDDIES I’M SCREAMING

You, an avid consumer of school of life: - I'll have the fish sticks from the children's menu and a cranberry juice. Your date, also an avid consumer of the school of life: - I sholdn't judge his bad taste, it's probably due to some sort of trauma..

They speak with this undeserved authority as "educational" because the narrator has a British accent and can afford to animate it like an educational video. They may as well be PragerU.

If you don't like Big Joel, it's because you are traumatized as a child.

when i was a child my mother once told me i could only have one scoop of ice cream rather than two. this event traumatized me and that is why i like kitschy earrings and j-fashion

Those capitalist cupcakes look like they have 75% fondant and 25% bread, I feel like when I bite them I would get dizzy

"We shouldn't judge people, morally or otherwise, for having bad taste." hell yeah! "Because the only reason they HAVE bad taste to begin with is that they have been harmed in some way." what

The racism of the “aesthetic trauma” claim ohhhhhmygoshhhhhhh

As someone who has suffered from severe bouts of depression numerous times in their life, the whole Bunny video was literally how I felt in my last major depressive episode. Literally. Nothing was worth it, everything was hopeless... I truly don't think that's a rather normal approach to life and certainly, we would all be jumping off bridges en masse if it were true. My last bout of depression lasted about three years and was so dire I was basically a shell of my former self, with my entire identity stripped. Life isn't that way, at all-and it shouldn't ever have to be. That nihilism isn't so lovely to spread around- we all deserve to find some fulfillment and happiness- and we all can. With some good coping mechanisms (therapy) and the ability to connect with others.

The only thing i know about alain de botton is that in my c2 cambridge english test i had to translate a review of one of his books and it was absolutely tearing it to SHREDS

-Middle eastern architecture: One of the most beautiful in the world that two of them are actually part of the seven world wonders -Russian literature: Dozens of writers that brought such profound literature that it's taught and read to this day, in every school in the world -School of Life: Lolz git gud at art

School of Life diagnoses PTSD: Post-Traumatic Style Disorder

That bad tastes one literally sounds like a parody of snobbery, the sort of thing the snooty character from a British sitcom would say 😂

Me: “Prepare for an elegant dinner, my date.” Also me: “I’d like to order a kids pizza with a chocolate milk.”

I’m cracking up. Imagine if under PTSD in the DSM they listed “bad taste” somewhere between the hyper-vigilance and night terrors. I have PTSD so I’m just picturing the doctor that diagnosed me telling me I have “bad taste” 😂

His comment about Russia and Saudi Arabia is just basically him trying to justify his racism through bad logic

All valid points. Having watched many "School of Life" videos, two things stick out to me: 1. They seem to be pointed at people who are insecure and possibly broken inside. Besides describing normal thoughts and worries, they are sometimes shown magnified into horrendous proportions and then the video focusses on how bad that can be for some people. They seem to operate on the premise that everyone needs therapy, whether they know it or not. That seems a bit self-serving. 2. The only great redeeming quality I have found is the tone of how people should deal with others. Always, ALWAYS, there is a great emphasis on coming from a position of kindness and love when dealing with anyone in any situation. I cannot find fault with that, no matter how condescending the video may seem.

The cupcake video made me convinced that this whole channel is a satirical joke in one fell swoop.

Regarding people writing self-help books not being qualified to write them: I work as a ghostwriter, and we get dozens of orders for self-help books every month. These books rarely come with super detailed outlines, and the people publishing these books don't have any real qualifications; half the time they are published under a made-up name anyway. For the most part, we are expected to fill them in ourselves and do our own research, usually just by looking for relevant articles online. I've written at least 10 self-help books in my time at my company, and I can guarantee you I wasn't qualified to write ANY of them in the way you'd expect someone to be. I don't have a psychology or sociology degree or anything. Hell, I don't even have my life together. Half the time I was writing advice like "go to bed early and get enough rest to increase your productivity" while staying up until 5 am to finish an order I'd procrastinated for two weeks. In short, yeah, I definitely believe that many people shy away from self-help books because of the abundance of underqualified writers spitting out the same 10 common sense tips you can find in any other book and muddying the market, and probably not because of... emotional education being viewed as undignified, or whatever School of Life was trying to claim there.

imagine saying to your friend something like "I dunno, I thought James Cameron's Avatar was ok, I sort of enjoyed it," and then your friend tries to tell you that you're a victim of trauma.

something this video has done for me, is that whenever I have a very irrational intrusive thought I pretend like it was a thought from the guy who runs school of life. and then it's way easier for me to be like "what?? That doesn't make any sense. I don't even understand how you got there." And like, sometimes I just stop worrying about it. Nice.

The end is just him justifying ordering chicken tendies on a first date. Honestly, ordering chicken tenders on a first date is one Hell of a power move.

Actually what he typifies as gaudy Middle Eastern style is really fascinating. In Islam copying things found in the world through art is considered idolatry. So instead of painting scenes of nature or portraits of people there's this incredible explosion of geometric designs and patterns. Add to this exquisite tile work and ones gets the beautiful feature walls or ceilings in many famous mosques and elsewhere. It's not the same as European sensibilities but it's is gorgeous and creative in it's own right.

-Decent working conditions OR -Sprinkles on cupcakes Hmm...

I swear people will think anything said in an English accent is smart

The most frustrating thing about School of Life’s videos is that in most of them, there is some small or tiny idea that I can agree with. However it’s suffocated by so much warped and bizarre reasoning or explanation that it transforms the whole point into utter nonsense.

It's so strange seeing how this guy actually seems to think that his personal perception of reality _is_ reality. The high production value, namely the script, voice acting, and animation, all lend non-existent credibility to his videos, reminiscent of a TedED video or something similar. The problem is that once you look past all the fancy words... nothing is there. The bigger problem is that he doesn't even realize it.

i think the most frustrating thing about school of life is the high production value. the animation is very high quality, but it’s been wasted on the bullshit this guy spews. it’s just a shame.

I like to imagine that at some point in the past, Alain went on a date and ordered the kids Fishsticks, a glass of Cranberry Juice and the most elegent dessert available, and he is now desperetly trying to justify his choice

Here is my School of Life video: "Why working at night is better" Thesis: Working during the day is bad because it reminds you of bad times you had during your childhood of being awake at night while you associate night with good times because you rested as a kid so your brain is more active at night. People force you to work during the day because they are sheep. Women prefer men who work during the night because it's sexier and less conventional. Also arabs with ugly art probably work during the day or something.

Imagine calling Russia, the country that's created some of the most brilliant artists and writers, a country of bad taste

I’m so traumatized.... my taste is just... so bad ... now....

Watching this with auto generated captions is fantastic. Elan de baton Elon de baton Alon de baton Alondo Baton Alanda Baton A London Baton One of those is right, right?

As someone with depression who recently started therapy that bunny video reminds me of how I thought before I started antidepressants and is a very unhealthy way of thinking

Honestly, the “socialist” grocery store in my town (it’s really a co-op where the employees own the store) is much nicer than any stop and shop or Whole Foods nearby. The employees are locals, they know what the locals want, they know the farmers, and they know when/where they can get deals. A lot of the food is at least as cheap as the national chains and the staff is friendlier because they love their jobs. So, idk dude, socialism seems pretty awesome.

I'm sorry, an 'ETERNITY OF EKING OUT A LIVING, in the BARREN DESERTS of Saudi Arabia'!? lol maybe he should read up on the history of the Arabian peninsula

The message of school of life is : Be a good productive citizen..Don't stand out to much and don't try to better in the world.

What Alain is talking about is an old, outmoded idea in the art world. Tony Bennett (the academic, not the singer) talks about it a lot in his books (I knew my Masters in Museum Studies would come in handy!!!). A random thing was happening in the late 18th century in Europe. Rich people were gathering their enormous collections and curiosities, throwing them all together and putting them in large, cathedral-like buildings. The modern public museum was born. Public being the operative word. It was a radical idea that these objects should be put on display for everyone. It wasn’t an accident either. As these institutions were being erected, Europe was leaving the late industrial revolution. Mechanization was happening and fewer people were needed in mines and factories. Suddenly you have a whole lot of unemployed people. I have an idea, a bunch of rich people said. Let’s educate them into the upper classes. So, poor people were allowed into these new institutions to look at rich people stuff. The idea was looking at beautiful stuff would actually make you a more advanced person. What Alain seems to be missing is that this is studied in sociology because it is a BAD thing. We study it so that we don’t do it.

I love that one leaf is caressig your gorgeous locks, you steamy alewife.

Ok but the socialist cupcakes look really good. Sprinkles are overkill. Does that mean I have traumatically bad taste?

Cranberry juice is famously something you drink when you've got a UTI, I'm not sure that's the message you wanna send on a first date

This also hits close to home for me, because I have a somewhat childish taste, so for a lot of people I must be mentally unstable or immature (or not a fully developed adult??) :/ ... I just like plushies, pastel and glitter, pls leave me alone :'(

We had to read Alain De Botton's book at college and he was so insufferable I couldn't do it. The idea of trauma causing someone to like art/fashion that's different to you is so arrogant it's funny

_“I diagnose you with Traumatic Past”_

His videos really remind me of when I was a teenager in the early 2000s going onto a bunch of Atheism forums where everyone took turns fighting tooth and nail to defend whatever Shower Thought they had about the world that day. The smug tone, the complete lack of any kind of evidence or even clear signs of critical thinking, the framing of this stuff would have really spoken to me when I was 17 and depressed and I am sure would have really impressed all my friends at lunch time at school when I incompetently paraphrased it [and they weren't listening anyway].

Ah yes “School of life” or as I like to call it “School of pathologizing everything”

I'm weird. I'm a weirdo. Have you ever seen me without this stupid cranberry juice? That's weird.

Omg Russia has always traditionally had a very intricate and theatrical aesthetic style, it didn't start after the Soviet era, that's the most small-minded view of the country possible.

Me: "I'd like the fish sticks, please." My date: "What are you, a gay fish?"

that bunny video gets under my skin because it basically argues we should be content, know our place as a burdened cog in capitalism. it's exactly what the ruling class wants: for us to accept this shitty society, that improvements are futile and that wanting better things will just cause you pain. what we should do is forget the possibility of better things so we don't know how bad we really have it. never attempt change. just be obedient workers

The racist undertones in that first video were pretty exquisite, I may just order some fish sticks to compliment it.

"I like minions unironically" "who hurt you?'

I went through a pretty shit two years of depression and insomnia a while back, made worse by the fact I had no clue what was going on and made really scary conclusions based on the way I was. I watched hours of The School of Life on the really bad days, and nights when I'd hallucinate (mostly disturbing things, fighting off men in cloaks and trying to talk down women taking their lives in the corner of the room, to name a couple of the worst). Back then, Alain's soft but assertive assurance in every video that "the world is a terrible place, and everyone is traumatised and scared, but thats just fine" was exactly what I needed to hear, and made the way I saw everything around me easier to accept. Now I'm out of the black hole, I don't give too much of a fuck about the videos- but they cater to a very specific world view which is traumatised, scared, and in need of comfort and clarity. The School of Life is a bad self-help channel for people who don't need help, essentially. Its also a disgustingly liberal and outdated philosophy tank intent on upholding classical ideology and the culture of the privately educated european class, but that's another point.

Having gone through depression (and still not being completely out of it), a slickly produced video confirming everything my depressed brain was telling me about life is a really disturbing thing. At best it's gross and irresponsible to tell someone at their lowest ebb that every bad thing they're feeling is both normal and right. But the swivel-eyed cynic in me sees something worse: a means of nurturing depression and isolation so that the audience will be more susceptible to radicalisation. Sounds wacky, but it's pretty much how radicalisation goes - you find someone isolated and confused and depressed, and you make sure you're the only person in their life telling them that they're smart and sane and capable of happiness, and that coincidentally, while you're here and feeling great because of me, maybe you'd like to try fundamentalist alt-right politics? I'd assume that, if you watch enough School of Life videos, you'll probably start getting recommended stuff that's a bit... ickier, like PragerU, and the transition would be pretty seamless. I doubt this is the intention of School of Life, but I wish I could doubt it more.

"Saudi Arabian decor is gaudy and tasteless because their society has lived in scarcity for so long, so they feel they have to compensate for their lack of wealth in the past." *Shows interior of Trump tower penthouse*

The "bad taste" we associate to Russia and Saudi Arabia comes from the fact that both countries have an extremely small elites of rich oligarchs ruling the country and so engage in extremely ostentatious consumption to assert their status

11:20 This is why I used to really like School of Life, and believed what they said - I was very deeply depressed, and their miserable childhood-trauma worldview made sense to my equally miserable traumatized self. I'm still pretty depressed (abuse takes a while to recover from, and being disabled doesn't help), but on going through university all the way up to grad school, I've learnt the importance of looking for sources behind any claims I hear - School of Life never cited its sources, so I actively chose to ignore it because I couldn't be sure it was true. Now, as I hear Joel talk about it, I realize it was lying to me. There are people who aren't secretly always sad on the inside... who find fulfilling relationships. and are, ON AVERAGE, happy. I feel called out, disillusioned and comforted - but also, I am deeply grateful to my professors for teaching me to look for legitimate sources.

"a book nobody should read their children" sounds like the exact opposite to the book "Hogfather". I'm gonna stick with Terry Pratchett, thank you very much

“Russia has gaudy art because of a reaction to the years of communism” *stares in the entire concept of the Faberge egg*

Do you like cupcakes with sprinkles or were you traumatized as a child?

“A classic really weird thing to do” I applaud your wizardry with words

No no they're right, socialism is not only when the gov. does stuff but also when cupcakes are plain looking

If someone ordered children's fish fingers and cranberry juice, I'd peg them right at the table.

My issue with self help books is like. Often they individualise societal problems and put responsibility on the workers rather than on a society that needs to be better

yeah that bunny one was legit depression like that is legit how I felt like when I was depressed and it made me feel pretty shitty and now that I'm on medication and less depressed I can see that life is a lot less shitty than they made it out to be and I actually like life and think that it will be better than just settling and dying

"To drink, I'd like a cranberry juice. That's right, I have a urinary tract infection."

What a sad, sad man. For someone who claims that people disagree with him because they’re projecting their bad experiences, Alain de Botton sure projects a LOT.

That statement about Saudi Arabia is pretty racist and historically ignorant.

The cupcake segment is like if a socialist made a parody video of what they thought right wing people think socialism is

Just want to make a small comment on that bunny video Telling people (especially young people, or people who struggle with depression or suicidal thoughts) that life sucks and it never gets better, is really unhelpful and soul-crushing for them to hear. Just because you've had an awful life doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. It also disregards that there are good moments as well. That it's not just all bad. The good is worth it. Sure, you can tell kids there is bad as well, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't tell them about all the good as well. Hope isn't a bad thing.

When I meet someone who doesn't like Self Help books, at first I scorn them, because they are philistines with objectively bad taste. But then I remember that they are traumatized, and I recommend them my new book "Trauma, and How to Self-Help Your Way Through It", which is on sale this weekend at various online retailers.

My new favorite version of “socialism is when no iPhone” is “socialism is when boring cupcake”. Why does school of life seem like the neoliberal version of a Jordan Peterson?

I remember watching school of life one time and the gist of the video was that the saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is just an excuse bad architects use to justify making bad designs