Why Everyone Is Angry: Rage Bait, Political Violence & the Attention Economy (2025 Year in Review)

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A reflective year-in-review episode from the True Life Podcast, recorded on December 16, 2025. Host George dives into the major events and themes of the year—from the Israel-Gaza conflict and global tensions, rising political violence and assassinations, class warfare, corporate home-buying, H-1B visa debates, to emerging trends in AI, health reform, and the longevity movement. He shares personal thoughts on division vs. unity, radical self-responsibility for health, predictions for 2026 (including a potential health reform wave on college campuses), and why rage bait is dominating attention. Ends with holiday well-wishes and an invitation for listener predictions. Aloha!

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George Monty

My name is George Monty. I am the Owner of TrueLife (Podcast/media/ Channel) I’ve spent the last three in years building from the ground up an independent social media brandy that includes communications, content creation, community engagement, online classes in NLP, Graphic Design, Video Editing, and Content creation. I feel so blessed to have reached the following milestones, over 81K hours of watch time, 5 million views, 8K subscribers, & over 60K downloads on the podcast!

What is TrueLife?

TrueLife is a story-driven documentary podcast that explores the invisible threads connecting us to each other, the world, and the mysteries of life. Every episode uncovers extraordinary journeys, human transformation, and the relationships that shape our stories.

True Life Podcast – Year in Review (December 16, 2025)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. Hope you’re all having a beautiful day. It is December sixteenth, right before the holidays. I thought I’d jump in with a little year-in-review. So much has been happening this year. How are you guys feeling? You ready for the new year? You ready for Christmas? You got your Christmas tree up? You got the lights on? I hope so. You do your shopping yet? I hope so.
Wow, what a year, right? What a year.
You know, the first thing that kind of jumps out at me for this year is the whole Israel-Gaza situation, the brink of World War, war with Iran. Remember that? You guys remember that? It wasn’t that long ago, right?
I remember when I started seeing clips and videos on X, on Instagram, on TikTok, all over the news—like the massacre that was happening in Gaza. You know, it’s not like we hadn’t seen some of these tragedies before, but it was different. It was different.
You know, there were images of like children being shot in the back of the head. There were images of total devastation, you know—and that was on the Gaza side. And I don’t want to leave out the attack that happened on the Israeli side. I don’t know that we ever got clarification on that. A lot of people said that it was allowed to happen. A lot of people said that it was a pre-planned attack that was helped by Iran, some mercenaries, and some Palestinians.
You know, I guess there’s a good quote that says the first casualty of war is the truth, and I think we saw that this year in a way that—man—it really caused a lot of chaos and strife. And especially here in the United States, where we’re already going through so much political turmoil.
The year just started off as a banger, right? To start off with so much chaos, so much loss of life, so much tragedy.
And I don’t know for you, as my dear listeners, what you guys are feeling about it. But to me, man, it was like a giant clusterfuck.
For me as an American, I started thinking, why are we spending so much money? Why are we sending so much money for this? Why are my tax dollars going to kill innocent people in a foreign nation that I don’t even know about?
I remember waking up and taking my daughter to school and just being so thankful that I have people in my life that love me and we’re not subjected to that. But on the other side of it, man, I look down at my daughter and—you know—you see these images on X or Instagram or TikTok of some innocent family, a child just being slaughtered. And I don’t know what goes through your mind, but…
And it’s that kind of pain and suffering that causes generational trauma. It makes me sad. I’m sure it makes you listening to this sad.
And so we go straight from Gaza and Israel to… jumping into Iran. Remember that Iran attacks Israel? They send over all their drones and the Iron Dome is fired up and they’re firing all these missiles. And you got to see a few of these giant Iranian missiles just obliterate towns in Israel.
It’s interesting to see—and I mean that in the most compassionate way—because I don’t think me or you or anybody listening to this really wants there to be destruction over there. And it’s so easy to try and, you know, take the humanity out of it. Like when you watch it on TV, it doesn’t even seem real, you know—especially with all these video games that are out there now where people are just killing each other left and right.
And you know, you see that on a screen and then you’re watching the news and then you see these missiles coming in and people fleeing for their lives and people rioting in the streets. It takes away from the real humanity of it.
And yeah, that was just the beginning of the year, guys. That was just the beginning of the year.
I think that that tension over there at the beginning of the year really began to set precedence for what’s happening in our country in the U.S. over here. You started seeing all these protests over here, and there was protests on the left and protests on the right. You got the whole No Kings protest going on.
I was driving my kid to school and going to work and seeing all these people on bridges, seeing them on the street corner holding up signs like, “Don’t buy a Tesla. Elon Musk is horrible.” You know, and that drives me kind of crazy, too, to think that it’s one person. That drives me nuts to think that it’s one person.
It’s not Trump. It’s not Biden. It’s not Elon Musk. Like that’s—that’s too easy. It’s too easy. If we could just get rid of this one person, everything would be better. No, no.
You know, as I’m looking back at the year in review, I see the same thing come up. This idea that it’s like one boogeyman. We can get rid of this guy then. Guess what? Everything will be better. No, it won’t. No, it won’t.
Look, it’s been getting worse for a long time. You’re talking about declining living standards over the last thirty years. You’re seeing real inflation at probably twenty percent. And beyond all that, there’s an incredible demographic divide, right? I think there’s something like ten thousand baby boomers retiring every single day and being such a large class of individuals with, you know, holding a large majority of the wealth—of course buying habits are going to change, of course life is going to change.
You know, we’re moving away from a real dynamic community where everybody was in the workforce to a more geriatric community where people are living on fixed incomes. They are settling down. They are looking to put their money in investments to make a small percentage and live on a fixed income forever.
And it’s happened before. We saw it in Rome. We see it in other countries. We really saw it in Japan. They called it the lost decade, where there was an elderly class—and still is—and not enough young people to take care of them.
So, you know, as we’re looking back at this year in review, we can kind of take a look at other parts of the world. And, you know, they say history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. So if we can look at other sort of geographical areas that have the same demographics—and we’ll use Japan for this—you know, it’s plausible that we could have a lost decade.
And if I’m being honest about it, I don’t see housing coming down anytime soon. There’s no way—especially with the addition of large corporations like BlackRock or Vanguard buying up single-family homes, buying up not only single-family homes, but tracts, entire housing tracts.
Imagine this. It’s so fucking crazy. Imagine this. Imagine… a large banking institution going and buying up, you know, seven hundred homes in your community and then renting them back to people.
You know, and as we’re talking about the year in review, I don’t know if you guys remember this. There was the Mangione—remember that kid? That kid went and committed—he murdered one of the health CEOs. But after that assassination, there was another guy, and I forgot this guy’s name. I’ll look it up. I’ll try to put it in the show notes. But he went into New York with a gun, and he went to the thirty-third floor of a big building in New York, and he murdered—a girl that was responsible. I think it was BlackRock. Don’t quote me on that. I think it was BlackRock, though. He murdered the girl that was responsible for creating or spearheading that movement.
Now, it didn’t get put in the news that much, but if you look and you actually look for it, you could probably go and Google “BlackRock or Vanguard woman killed in New York,” and it’ll tell you the story. And a lot of people say that that was a vigilante attack—the same way Mangione attacked the UnitedHealth guy.
And it would be remiss to not put that in the year review. I think we’re going to see—and this doesn’t bring me any joy—but I think you’re going to see more of that coming. I think that when there’s nothing left to lose, people lose it.
And I’m not suggesting any of you guys lose it. I’m trying to sit over here and just give you the bird’s eye view of how I see it and come up with some solutions of how to make it through.
But if I pause right there for that beginning of the review, I’ll go ahead and give some predictions. I think you’re going to see more of that. I think you’re going to see a lot more people that have lost everything and are going to start taking it out on society.
You know, and it’s—I see it everywhere, like in the division. There’s all this division on the news or X or whatever. In fact, I heard recently that rage—the idea of rage bait, the idea of rage videos, of these atrocities, like this fear porn—is actually outpacing the actual porn industry. So we’re shifting as a society from being attracted to certain modalities. And it seems like rage is the number one attention getter out there.
So if we see that as a trend, I mean, I think you can expect more of it.
And if I just stay with this line for a minute—like what else happened this year? Well, what comes to mind recently is how about the Charlie Kirk shooting? Did you guys see that?
Wow. Here’s a guy that is speaking to young people on college campuses. And whether you like him or whether you hate him, the guy was touring a lot of campuses. And he was really getting a message out there.
And I really think that if you want to make change in the world, you got to start with the youth, right? People that are already—I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to use the word successful or maybe people that are already far ahead in their careers—they’re not too focused on creating change, you know—especially if you’re doing all right. You’re like, “Hey, don’t rock the boat, man. We’re doing okay over here. We don’t need all this hope and change,” you know?
But to the youth, they see it completely different. You know, if you’re a young man or a young woman right now, it looks pretty bleak. Like, how are you going to afford a house? How are you going to afford a family? You know, how are you going to have any sort of social mobility when you come out of college and you owe a hundred grand or fifty grand and, you know, your degree is being taken by AI? And we’ll get into that. We’ll get into that.
But, you know, so Charlie Kirk’s out there. He’s going to all these different campuses. He’s getting his message out about, you know, living a more wholesome life. I think part of his talking points at TP—uh, Turning Point—were about Christianity and religion and doing the right thing.
And, you know, I—I gotta be honest. I didn’t listen to a whole lot of his speeches or whatever, but I—I thought I understood the crux of what he was saying in that he wanted a better life for the youth, at least in his view. That’s what it seemed like. He’s a family guy. He’s out there, you know—and I think he toured like hundreds of different campuses. So that’s really how you get a message out there.
But a lot of people didn’t like his message, did they? A lot of people didn’t like what he was saying. Maybe it was construed as racism. Maybe it was construed as hate speech, you know—and he had a lot of provocative takes.
But what does it say in a society when someone goes out and starts talking and they get murdered—especially in public, especially at a college campus?
I’m old enough to—to remember—coming up on fifty—so I wasn’t there for the—for the MLK or the, um, you know, some of these other political assassinations or the JFK or the RFK. But I’ll tell you what—this kind of looks a lot like it, right?
If we take out the judgment of it, we take out the why it happened, and we just see it as an event that happened—it’s pretty horrendous.
What does that make you think of in society right now? What does it mean when a society is willing to commit murder on people going out and using their freedom of speech?
Well, I think it makes people pretty nervous to go out there and start talking. I think it makes people pretty nervous to go out there and say what’s on their mind.
So I guess, you know, there’s—there’s been a wave of those, right? If we take the Mangione, we take the girl from BlackRock, and we take Charlie Kirk out there—there’s been a wave of, uh, assassinations happening. Pretty interesting to see in the United States. And, um, kind of sad, in my opinion.
I think that we need people out there speaking their mind in a way that is not divisive, but brings people together. I think so much of the division we see out there isn’t really between races or classes—it’s okay—it’s not between—it’s made out to be between men and women, gay and straight, or black versus white or Indian versus Asian, whatever these—these sort of divisions are.
I think they mask a bigger division, and that division is class warfare.
There’s more billionaires and trillionaires than there ever has been right now. There’s a great book by Thomas Piketty called Capital. And in that book, Thomas Piketty goes back and he talks about capital, the ability to have resources. And he talks about the nature of capital.
And in that book, he describes that the middle class is something that is pretty rare. In fact, it’s a blip. When you look at the history of mankind, the middle class is like a tiny little blip. And that capital is something that coagulates at the top and leaves the bottom.
So when you look at other societies—like take India for example—there’s really, really wealthy people and there’s really, really poor people. And that is—according to Thomas Piketty—that’s the norm for society. That’s the norm for capital.
And you can go back to like kings and queens—and you know, if you look back at a time when there was a lot of royalty—like that is how it was. There was really wealthy people that owned all the land. And then there was really poor people that worked on the land. And they gave their proceeds and the money to the lords and the barons and all that kind of good stuff.
And I think you can make an argument that that’s sort of coming back. According to Thomas Piketty, you’re going to see a resurgence of that. And I would argue that we’re kind of seeing it now.
Some of these… Let’s take Sam Altman, for example. Here’s a guy that… has created ChatGPT, which probably all of us use, and it’s made him incredibly wealthy, right?
In fact, when you read some of Sam Altman’s writings or you listen to some of his interviews, it seems to me—and this is just my opinion—he’s more concerned with being the guy that gave birth to AI than he is about creating something beautiful for everybody.
And maybe that’s part of it. Maybe you don’t get to be at his level without that sort of giant ego of like, “I am going to change the world.” You know, we saw it with Steve Jobs or you could argue you see it with Elon or Sam Altman or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg.
But regardless of what you think, it seems to me that these are the new kings and queens of the world right now. You see some of their boats, man. They look like aircraft carriers. Imagine being a guy and owning an aircraft carrier, and you just sail that thing around.
These guys are all building underground bunkers, and man, what a different dimension to live in, right?
But when I think about that, it’s like, okay. Is it possible—and I’m just going to throw this out here—is it possible that the more wealth that someone has, the less wealth someone else has to have? Does that make sense?
For every person that makes a dollar that doesn’t deserve it, that means somebody has to work for a dollar and not get it. I don’t know if that’s a hundred percent true, but I kind of lean towards that sometimes.
I’m not against people going out there and hustling and making your dream come true. I’m one of them and I want my dreams to come true and I’m willing to work hard and sacrifice, do all the things I need to do in order to make that dream come true.
So it’s not so much a hate on wealthy people, but I do think that what we’re seeing right now is a—not so much between men and women, white and black, races—but it’s a clear socioeconomic divide. It’s class warfare.
And we see it with—uh—here’s what else happened this year too. I know there was a big—a big uh—sort of a hubbub about H-1B visas and immigration, right? That was big this year.
You guys remember those fights? If you tune in and you watch some of these young guns coming up, that was some of their talking points was like, “Hey, man, why are we importing all these H-1B visas when we have kids graduating right here from the United States that have that same degree?”
And when you start digging into it, you realize that if someone has an H-1B visa, then their ability to stay in the United States is contingent on them working for this company. It’s almost like an indentured servant.
And think about it. If you are someone that has freedom and you can go anywhere, you are probably not going to work as hard as someone whose dependency to stay here is based on their performance at work.
And I don’t know if that’s a good policy, man. I don’t know if we want to be indentured servants. I don’t think that helps anybody’s kids come through. So something to think about.
So that’s the first part and some predictions on the beginning of the year.
Let’s see what we got else coming up. What else happened this year, guys? Politics. Man, we talked a little bit about politics earlier. Um, Charlie Kirk, the culture wars.
How about this one? How about like the great psychological shift? I’ve been noticing this one too. I talked to a lot of people in the wellness industry and the health industry, and it seems that we are moving towards—and this could be a good one guys. I think that everybody could get behind this—the idea of health reform.
Now if you’re like me, you’ve had people in your family die from an overdose. You’ve had people in your family get cancer. You’ve had people in your family worry about going to the hospital because they can’t afford it.
And I think that that is something that people are fed up about. And I think it’s something that everybody could get behind—is this idea of health reform.
And here’s some of the people I’ve been talking to. I’ve noticed this sort of Ariadne thread that runs through all of the wellness industry. And I like it. I like it a lot. I hope you do too.
It’s this idea of radical self-responsibility. Right. You and you alone are responsible for your health.
Now, I’m not saying you might not get in an accident or you may have some internal injury—like those are things that might be beyond your control. And I am grateful that we have doctors and nurses and wellness practitioners that can help us get through those difficult times. My heart goes out to all of them. There’s some amazing people out there—some surgeons, everybody trying to make everyone healthy.
But what I’m talking about is preventive care. Like you as an individual—what if you really took your health very seriously? What if you monitored what you ate every day? What if the first thing you did every morning was get up and do some pushups or go for a run or sit and meditate for a little bit?
And if you could string all of those things together, know what would your health look like? I bet you’d have to go to the doctor less. I bet you’d have less anxiety. I bet you’d have less depression.
You know—and I guess what dovetails with that—like if you can string together that aspect of radical responsibility—you know let’s factor in screen time too, right?
How many of us—you know this year with this new AI models coming out, all these ChatGPTs and these Groks and these incredible resources, these incredible tools that allow you to talk to what seems like the smartest person in the world. And they have some pretty good advice, right?
You can ask them about a business plan. You can ask them about writing a paper. You could ask them about some family problems or even get some pretty good counseling from some of these LLMs.
I think that that is the next aspect. As far as predictions for health reform, I really think that this is something we can all galvanize behind.
I’ve talked to quite a few people. In fact, you know what? It might be worthwhile to… And I’ll even throw this out as a prediction. I think we’re going to see—instead of the Charlie Kirks going out there and talking to college campuses—I think it would be better to see like a health reform because that’s something everybody can get behind. That’s more uniting than dividing.
And that’s my prediction for 2026—is that on college campuses, we’re going to begin seeing the—hopefully—the idea of uniting language instead of dividing language.
Because if we continue to divide ourselves this way—and trust me, there’s tons of people out there that are preaching the lessons of division—but I think everybody’s getting tired of it. I think everyone’s getting sick of it.
And I think you’re going to see a wave of sort of creative rebellion. You know, not so much against each other, as it is against the ruling class. Back to that idea of class warfare.
And I think it’s gonna start on college campuses. And I think that health reform would be a great way to start that. Because all of us care about our parents. All of us care about our aging elders out there.
And instead of being upset with them for some mistakes that they’ve made or being upset that they hold all the wealth—they’re going to need the younger generation to take care of them.
And so I hope so. My prediction for health reform 2026 is that we’re going to start seeing people come together over this issue. I don’t know if it’ll fully come to fruition in 2026, but I think we’re going to start seeing it out there.
You know, there’s too much anxiety, too much depression—and I think it probably get a little worse before it gets better. But I think you’re going to start seeing the older communities realize they need the youth and some of the youth realizing that, you know, they’re going to miss their parents. They’re going to miss their grandparents.
And so that’s my predictions for the 2026 over there.
I mentioned a little bit about AI. Let me talk a little bit more about AI tech and the consensus reality, you know.
So we all know that AI didn’t arrive this year, but it’s been something that we’ve all been toying with for the last year, and it’s really hit home.
We saw some people use AI, and some of the stories in AI this year were people using it as like a—I don’t know—like a counselor or a therapist. And there were a few stories of people that talked about AI and some people actually committed suicide because of what AI told them. And those were really big. And they’re sad and they’re wrong. And the AI company should be held responsible for that aspect of it.
However, however—how many people did AI help?
You know, it’s interesting that we say, “Hey, look, these five people committed suicide because of AI.” But how many people didn’t commit suicide because of AI? How many people used AI to get themselves out of a funk? How many people use ChatGPT or Grok to solve an actual relationship problem that they couldn’t afford to go to a therapist and talk about?
I think that that’s a pretty interesting question too, because if we do use AI as a tool and we realize it’s not conscious, but it is providing us with different avenues of thinking, of different avenues of understanding a situation that is imperceptible to us—then I think we can see it as a net positive. It is a net positive.
There definitely should be some more rules around it. Maybe there should be some narrow AI. Are you guys familiar with this term narrow AI?
So narrow AI is AI that only knows or has walls around it. A narrow AI could teach you how to be a truck driver. A narrow AI could teach you how to be an English teacher. But it would only be trained on information in those fields. Instead of knowing everything, it would be a narrow AI.
So instead of a giant wide beam—think of like a small focus laser beam.
So my predictions for AI in the future are going to be more narrow AI, targeted towards different demographics, targeted towards different age groups, targeted towards different sort of professions. And I think that’ll get us away from some of the consequences that people might be using it.
Um, here’s another one that I—that I got into this year. It’s the whole anti-aging longevity crowd.
Guys, man, I had some podcasts this year where I was talking to people—you know, I don’t know if you guys follow this whole living forever thing—but there was this cat named Bryan Johnson and, uh, he’s like a billionaire—billionaire tech bro billionaire—and he uh he’s got this whole thing called the Blueprint where he wants to live forever, you know.
And to me that’s a sign of collapse guys—like that is a sign of just the fountain of youth magic beans—like you’re not gonna live forever man.
And to see all these billionaires like Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson and the leader of the X Prize—they’re just pumping all this money into living forever. And to me, it just sounds like a giant fire hose of bullshit.
Like who believed—if you believe you’re going to live forever, man, I’m a little jealous that you would be that naive, but, uh…
Yeah, so I got into it with a few people. I had on Aubrey de Grey. Aubrey de Grey—he’s a science—he’s an incredible guy from Oxford who’s been doing research on anti-aging and longevity.
And I thought we were going to go head to head, but I asked him straight up like, “Hey, what is your take on this living forever crowd?” Because I personally, ladies and gentlemen, I am for everyone living well longer. I want our aging elders to have a better life later in their life. I want to have a better life as I grow older. I want to try to steer away from cognitive decline. And I hope nobody has to go through that as a family member or that aspect of it.
So I’m for living well longer. However, I draw the line at living forever.
So I asked him that question. And it was pretty beautiful because he’s like, “No, no—you’re not going to live forever. That’s a bunch of bullshit. That is just sensational journalism.”
And so we went on to have a really cool conversation about some of the new technology about living forever and what it’s like to maybe some of these new novel peptides coming out or whatever. He’s doing some pretty interesting experiments with mice and telomeres and all these sort of anti-aging technologies that are on the surface—but they are not to live forever. They are to make the last years of your life live better.
But my predictions for longevity, ladies and gentlemen, is that you’re going to see lots and lots more of this live forever crowd that are telling you you can live forever if you just buy their subscription model. And I think it feeds into that whole class warfare that I was talking about earlier.
So those are the few things I got. I’m going to do a few more sections on this as we come to the end of the year. But I’m just trying to recap the… the year in review, give a few predictions out there.
Christmas time is coming up. New Year’s is coming up. So super grateful for everybody hanging out with me all year.
This is the True Life Podcast. Uh, thanks for hanging out with me, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you have a beautiful day.
Think about the year in review and let me know what some of your predictions are. I would love to read them on the air. I would love to hear what you guys are thinking.