Name: The Lake of Narcissus | Ep. 118
Uploaded: 2025-05-05T11:01:29.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Lake of Narcissus | Ep. 118' from Joy Tactics on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Lake of Narcissus | Ep. 118' from Joy Tactics on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-05. Transcript available.

The Lake of Narcissus | Ep. 118

Well, I've been researching this topic for over most of my life with the people
that I know, frankly.
And in the industry that we're all in, we are encountering this type of mental
disorder more than you could imagine.
And that is the disorder of narcissism, which is one of the last things, which
none of us, by the way, none of us have.
Yeah, ego and narcissism.
None of us used to have those diseases, but I took the correct supplements.
Right, the knowledgeable supplements, the knowledgeable supplements, the
paragraph vitamins that have deleted that virus from your brain.
Welcome to Joy Tactics, the podcast dedicated to all things joyful, joyous and
meeting as many celebrities as humanly possible.
Hosted by Eric Rahill, Nate Veroni and Jack Bensinger.
Enjoy.
Should we be slating at the beginning of every episode?
Jack Bensinger, New York, six, uh, non-threatening six-five.
Like the, the clapper?
Oh, no, I mean, well.
Eric Rahill, 425-205.
Oh!
Nate Brown.
Eric, you almost just said half of your phone number.
I know, bro.
That's what's hilarious, but then I stopped myself.
I'm not willing to shave.
Do not, I'm not fucking shaving.
I, I, I frankly would say that in auditions now.
I've, and I, I've, I, I am not willing to shave.
Unless it's a part of a lifetime.
And I'm not willing to shave.
Otherwise, otherwise, much like Narcissus, I will be staring at my own
reflection.
But, different than him, I will be wanting to break the mirror in half and burn
it.
Because I cannot stand my reflection when it's all shaved up.
So, what is this?
Boiled up.
So, the, the narcissism has its roots in the, if you go into the semantics and,
and etymology
of narcissism, this, this goes back to what a lot of things do, which is Greek
mythology
and, once again, uh, stories, okay?
Which is how we communicated back then was through storytelling.
And how we still communicate.
And there's a power, huh?
Go ahead.
All right.
Go ahead.
So, this, this has its roots in a quite lost, I would say, story called The Pond
of Narcissus.
And, Eric, you've been studying this for years, right?
Yes, thank you.
So, I was, you're welcome.
Well, basically, this is a scene, this is a scene in book three of Ovid's
Morphoses.
I know.
Yeah.
Okay.
I know.
Yeah.
You know that, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course.
I didn't know that.
Quick breakdown.
Narcissus is the son of the river god, Cephasis.
And the nymph.
And by the way, what's that?
Syphilis?
Nymph, he says.
Nymph, Cephasis.
Cephasis.
Succades.
Ah, the son of Lickades and Succades.
His mom is the nymph, Leary Ope.
She's a fucking nymph, by the way.
She's a milp.
The original milp.
She's the original mania.
Dude, if I was about to, let me get back in a high school classroom right now,
I would
be beyond a class clown.
I would be a fucking class headlining insane blessing.
And the teacher would be laughing, cracking up at my shit so much that she
wouldn't even
care.
Or he.
I would be staying under the radar.
Because if they've, I think truly if someone found a five-year-old or six-year-old
as smart
as us, we would be executed by the current regime.
Well, that's why they held us back.
They did hold us all back.
Because they saw in the laboratories where we were born how dangerous we would
be.
So they put me in special ed.
They got Eric addicted to theater classes.
And they got Nate addicted to pornography in Halo.
And now all three of us are just kind of, it's almost like, what's going to
happen first?
Are we going to realize how smart we are?
Or is AI going to, you know, it's kind of the race to the good versus evil.
Right, right, right.
So to continue this, he's the son of the river god, Cephasis, and the nymph, Learyope.
And he was renowned, Narcissus was renowned for his extraordinary beauty.
Okay.
And what has happened here is he was cursed by Nemesis, the goddess of retribution,
who
I believe was fine as hell.
And cursed him to fall in love with his own reflection in a clear pool.
And unable to tear himself away from the image, he eventually wasted away and
died.
And in his place, a flower bloomed, the Narcissus flower.
Okay.
Wow.
So only in death can you truly be viewed and discovered through the act of
death.
So what exactly happened?
That's what I took from that.
Narcissus was acting up.
He was a beautiful guy.
And he was cursed by the goddess of retribution to stare at himself forever
because he was so
in love with his own image.
And he got so thirsty that he just fucking died.
No, he didn't take a sip.
Oh, yeah.
He did get thirsty.
I guess he would have gotten thirsty.
I would imagine that that's the first thing that would have killed him.
If he was stuck looking at his, if he couldn't move.
Right.
Well, you have to keep in mind he is the son of a god and a nymph.
And so maybe thirst wouldn't factor into his death.
Well, right.
And once again, I'm being too literal.
So let me just say, right, I get the message.
So right away when I'm reading this tale, immediately, I don't think of mirrors.
And I don't think of ponds.
I think of something called basically social media.
Wait, watch this.
What was it?
Redes Sociales.
That's not it.
But it would have been close.
What are you trying to say?
I'm trying to say social media in Spanish from when I took my Spanish immersion
three years
ago on Zoom.
Good job.
Trying to keep up.
Well, you should be saying social media in Greek.
Ancient Greek.
I don't think they had that.
Not that we know of.
Does ancient Greek English?
Or was it its own thing?
I'm pretty sure that ancient Greek was not English.
I think I can confirm that.
Yeah, that wasn't around for a minute.
But I'm not certain.
But yeah.
So, A, what do you guys think of narcissists?
B, how is our society currently rewarding narcissists?
And C, I don't know.
What you doing tonight?
What's up?
I'll just take it.
Oh, tonight?
Chilling, not much.
Are we going to go in order?
My fault.
I think that narcissists are, I'm going to go ahead and defend the narcissist.
Okay.
And maybe play a little bit of devil's advocate.
Because I know people, probably the moral choice here is to say narcissism is
bad.
It's not good.
It's hellish to be around these people.
They cause so much harm.
But I think that narcissism is probably a, here I go talking about DNA again.
Interesting.
It's a, it's a, it's something in our evolution that happened.
Because I think we need variety, okay, in the species to pull it forward.
You know what I'm saying?
Or to, to push it forward.
Sorry.
And I think narcissism is one of those DNA notches.
And I think we need narcissists.
A couple of them, not a lot.
And I think they're necessary for the advancement, whether it be good or bad,
of the evolution of the human race.
Interesting.
Okay, Jack, what do you think about narcissists?
I think Nate's one for sure.
Right.
I know.
Clearly off the bat, I'm thinking, why does he care so much about them?
Maybe he is one of himself.
Yeah, why do you bring this up?
Why do you bring this all up?
Because he wants to hear about himself talk again.
Right.
What I'd say is this, you know, I might have to side with Nate a little bit and
kind of say, what's this big conspiracy?
It seems, because when I look around, I don't see a crisis of ego.
I see a crisis of self-doubt, self-hatred, and self-hatred.
You're saying there's not enough of that.
There's not enough ego.
Now, and it reminds me of all these shit, because you remember how I'm always
talking about Sia?
All these songs that go like this.
The song's about, I don't want to sing it because I don't want to defame myself,
if that's the right word.
But the song about not needing any money.
I don't need no money.
Cheap thrills, that's what it's called.
Yeah.
It's all these pop songs, these multi-millionaire, media conglomerate, global
capital-driven pop songs that are about not needing money, that are built on
the backs of exploitation, money, and horrible capitalist idealities.
Now, what you're telling me is that, you see the hypocrisy there, and I'm
almost thinking, are we being told, you don't need money, all you need is
friendship and family, and we don't need ego.
All you need is to be Buddhist and Zen, and happiness comes from the internal
shit.
Meanwhile, we got Krusty the fucking, what's his name?
Mr. Krabs out here collecting all the dough, and Jeff Bezos enjoying the...
And just to clear this up, Mr. Krabs owns the Krusty Krab.
That's his business.
Yeah, that's a co-op, too.
Are there more Krusty Krabs in the...
Like, does he franchise it out?
I think there's episodes where they tried to franchise, but I'm not sure how
that panned out, because honestly, I dipped out after about season 14.
So I'm not sure what they're up to.
Yeah, just hire Plankton and say, like, open another one on the east side.
Chumbucket, good luck.
He has no taste.
He's a fucking villain.
He's the size of a flea.
He's actually a sea flea, I think.
Or no, he's Plankton.
He is Plankton, yeah.
Right, that's his name.
Remember when they went to the ghetto one episode?
Oh, you mean the Twisted Twilight Zone ghetto?
What?
Called Rock Bottom?
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember that.
And those fish are not normal.
They made them fucking sound like they're shitting their pants between every
word.
Yep.
Remember?
Mm-hmm.
Different style of speaking.
It's a funny way to...
Nobody's really skewered poverty like that.
Bro.
Beautiful way.
Do you think Squidward's a narcissist?
I think he has too much self-doubt to be a narcissist and self-hatred.
No, no.
Squidward ain't, no.
Of course not.
Mr. Krabs really might be the narcissist.
Oh, who's a narcissist within the Spongebob archetypes?
Squidward.
Of course it's Squidward.
No, bro, because he...
Time and time again, his problems always reveal themselves to be a dislike of
his own self.
Why does he play clarinet?
Why does he read books?
It's to prove to everyone else that he's...
He's just insecure.
Mm-hmm.
He's insecure, bro.
That's exactly what narcissism is, is externalized insecurity because you don't
have the confidence
from within, so you're seeking the external constantly.
Those are the most insecure people about us.
You can't just hand them a packet, yo.
But what about those, the mermen, the old folks home people?
I think they are the narcissist because they're going out, they're delusional,
and they think
that they can still fight crime at that age.
Delulu.
So I think they might be.
And they're also the only, I think, in the whole universe, they're the only
people that
were involved in the...
Was it a TV show they were a part of in the show, or were they actual
superheroes?
Oh, that's a good question.
Do you think they were hooking up with the hot fish chicks?
Well, they were fish themselves.
Oh, no.
You're saying mermaids.
No, they're men.
Oh, hell yeah.
They were little ass, tiny ass men.
They're men, bro.
Of course they were.
That's what confuses me.
I know, that's what confuses me.
They were hooking up with Sandy's fucking mom in the, in the, in that.
Oh shit, her mom came to visit Bikini Bottom for real?
What?
The squirrel?
The squirrel's mom?
Many holes we're finding in the plot of friends, Bob.
Many holes.
Okay, listen to this quote from Narcissus.
Okay, this is what Narcissus says.
He says, I am he.
I have felt it.
I know now the image is only of me.
This is him realizing that he's been staring at himself.
I burn with love for myself.
I both kindle the flames and suffer them.
This is the cost of narcissism, bro.
Because you're falling in love with yourself.
You're putting everything only into yourself.
There's no one there to return it, bro.
There's no one there to return, return what you're investing.
Are you not returning it to yourself though?
You can't.
We're incapable.
It's not, I don't, um, I'm finding this to be a dangerous tight roadblock
between self-love
and self-ego.
Well, that's a great point.
What's your, what's, what's Oprah's, uh, new chick's name?
I don't know what you're talking about.
Mel, Mel Robbins.
She, she's against shame.
Seven.
Wha