The Troubled Teen Industry: Legal Kidnapping in America
For decades, desperate parents have sent their struggling teens to residential treatment programs that promise to help them overcome everything from behavioral issues to substance abuse. But for many, these programs deliver years of trauma and abuse, rebranded as discipline and growth. This week, we are pulling back the curtain on the billion-dollar Troubled Teen Industry.
What happens when a parent’s last resort becomes a child’s worst nightmare? We explore the slick marketing and manipulative tactics used by these facilities to lure in terrified families, and the shocking reality of what goes on behind closed doors. From isolation and psychological abuse to a system where compliance is mistaken for healing, we uncover the repeatable, cult-like model that defines many of these programs.
We also discuss the tragic case of Taylor Goodridge, a 17-year-old who died at a Utah facility just days after her arrival, and the fight for justice and regulation that continues today, championed by survivors like Paris Hilton. This is a look into an industry that operates in the shadows, and the fight to bring it into the light.
Sources:
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). (2007). Residential Programs: Selected Cases of Death, Abuse, and Deceptive Marketing of Residential Programs for Troubled Youth.
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). (2008). Residential Treatment Programs: Concerns Regarding Abuse and Death in Certain Programs for Troubled Youth.
U.S. Senate Finance Committee. (2024). Warehouses of Neglect: Hidden Hazards of Residential Treatment Facilities for Children.
U.S. Congress. (2024). Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act (SICAA), Public Law 118–194.
Utah State Legislature. (2021). Senate Bill 127: Human Services Program Amendments.
Oregon State Legislature. Senate Bill 749: Educational Consultant Disclosure Requirements.
The New York Times. (2024). Inside the Profit-Driven Business of Behavioral Health.
The New York Times. (2003–2005). Investigative reporting on WWASP-affiliated programs and Casa by the Sea.
The Washington Post. (1991). Reporting on Straight, Inc. regulatory actions and lawsuits.
Los Angeles Times. Investigative reporting on Synanon, Elan School, and behavior-modification programs.
Associated Press. (2023–2024). Coverage of survivor testimony and passage of the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act.
STAT News. Investigations into for-profit behavioral health companies, understaffing, and patient harm.
Netflix. (2023). Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare (history of Steve Cartisano and the Challenger Foundation).
YouTube Originals. (2020). This Is Paris — documentary by Paris Hilton detailing her experiences in the Troubled Teen Industry.
Breaking Code Silence. Survivor testimony, advocacy materials, and public records archive.
Unsilenced. Survivor documentation, program timelines, WWASP archives, and investigative resources.
Robbins, Ira P. (2014). Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transport Industry. Law review article.
Academic research on coercive control, institutional betrayal, and cultic group dynamics.
Historical records and investigative reporting on Synanon and the development of confrontational “therapeutic community” models.
Archival reporting and survivor accounts related to The Seed, Straight, Inc., CEDU, WWASP, and affiliated programs.
Archival journalism and survivor testimony concerning Elan School (1970–2011), including the 1982 death of Phil Williams.
TRANSCRIPT:
troubled teen YOUTUBE AUDIO-1
[00:00:00] So we have a lot to cover in this week's episode. This was a, this is a topic that I only really knew a little bit about because of seeing certain documentaries and things like come across Netflix and stuff. But it's not one that I really did like a deep dive or really got like super invested in until I started looking into it wanting to do an episode.
And there's so much more to what, how the troubled teen industry works than what I really even realized. And some of the stuff that we're gonna share in this episode, I was telling even my kids about and they were just like. What I know, like this is insane. So as a parent, you know there's really a very specific kind of panic that sets in when you feel like you're losing your kid.
And we're not talking about the losing as in like they're growing up and pulling away, but we're talking about the kind of panic where you have a teenager who is maybe spiraling and your house feels like a war zone. The school's calling, maybe [00:01:00] substances are involved. They might be self-harming, maybe even running away.
And as a parent, you're doing the thing that parents do when they're terrified. You start trying to fix it all. You're up reading articles at 2:00 AM you're calling therapists who of course are always booked until the end of time. And you're Googling phrases like, my team won't listen to anything. And is this normal or is this dangerous?
And of course, Googling is always the most dangerous thing to do because every search result will make your stomach drop and make you think like that. This is really, this is beyond your, yeah, this is beyond what you're capable of handling. That moment is really where the troubled teen industry begins.
It starts the moment that a parent becomes desperate enough to believe that extreme measures might truly be the only measures they have left. And the pitch is always really simple and it hits these parents' fear directly on the head. Their teen needs help, and these places are saying they can provide it.
And this isn't a punishment. This isn't like [00:02:00] jail. This is supposed to be about treatment. This is supposed to be a place where there can be structure and accountability and just a safe environment with professionals who know what they're doing. And the idea is that your kid will go here, they can't run away, they can't manipulate or derail the process, and they're gonna be removed from the bad influences and the chaos until they're finally able to get better And.
Just to be clear, we're not shaming parents who made the decision to send their kids to any of these, uh, any of these places, these aren't like cartoon villains that are like, yes, haha, let's send my child to like the worst possible place I can think of. These are parents who are really scared and exhausted and often they feel isolated themselves and they're being targeted by an industry that learned how to speak fluently in fear.
There's a whole ecosystem around the trouble teen industry, and it's all designed to look very legitimate to families who are already in crisis. There's brochures that read [00:03:00] like private school websites, staff titles that sound clinical and success stories that are curated, like testimonials for a luxury spa.
And then of course there's the educational consultants, quote unquote, who seem to show up at the exact moment when parents feel the most overwhelmed and out of options. Absolutely. One thing I would add to this is having a kid that's like this, the desperation I think is even more increased when you have other kids in the home.
Yes. Because you have to take care. Like it can't just be you and them. You have to. There has to be a change. Right. And sometimes those changes are big. So I feel bad for people who have had to make these kind of decisions. Me too. Yeah. It's gotta be one of the hardest things to even consider Absolutely.
As a parent. Mm-hmm. Like you can't even put yourself in those that those shoes unless you've been there. Absolutely. So if you don't know what an educational consultant is, picture a placement expert whose job is to recommend where your troubled teen should go. And so to the parent, this feels like a much needed guide through this terrifying maze, [00:04:00] and they tell the parents that their child needs a higher level of care, or that their problems are really beyond what an outpatient center can handle, then they'll sell 'em on a program that specializes in oppositional behavior.
In many cases, parents will pay thousands of dollars to these consultants who may never even meet their child or observe them in person. These consultants rely heavily on what the parents report and then point them towards programs, which usually are very expensive. Before we start naming specific programs or locations, we really need to explain the structure itself, because this is where people often misunderstand what's actually happening.
The troubled teen industry doesn't operate like a collection of unrelated schools that happen to share just a few bad practices. It really operates more like a template. It's a repeatable model that can be dropped into almost any setting and still function the same way. And that model is built around one [00:05:00] central idea.
That compliance is mistaken for healing. And so in these environments, improvement isn't measured by emotional insight or stability. It's really measured by behavior and obedience. So on the surface, this can look like progress, right? Especially to adults who aren't seeing inside the system. But when you look closer, you start to see how this structure actually works.
And the first step, like it is with everything negative, including cults, is really isolation, physical isolation, often in remote areas from cities and support networks, but more importantly, psychological isolation. Teens are cut off from private communication. Phone calls are monitored, letters are read visits, if they happen at all, are controlled and supervised.
And so even when the parents are present though, the teen knows they're really not allowed to speak freely. You're not gonna have a parent there. And that the kids say this laundry list of things that have happened because they, I feel like the [00:06:00] parent thinks, uh, you're trying to get out of here for sure.
And they're also terrified as we get into it that somebody's listening and it's going to, you know, they're gonna be punished further. Then comes total control of the environment. Every hour is scheduled, every movement is observed. There are rules for how to sit, how to speak, where to look, when to stand, when to remain silent, and those rules are often applied inconsistently, which isn't a flaw in the system.
It's really a feature. Unpredictability keeps people anxious and anxious. People are easier to control. Hierarchy is introduced almost immediately. There's different levels and phases and ranks, and new arrivals, of course, start at the bottom, and they're completely stripped of status and autonomy. And advancement isn't about better understanding your behavior or processing trauma.
It's really about proving that you are compliant and that you've accepted the program's authority over your identity. And one of the most damaging [00:07:00] elements of this is peer enforcement. Kids are being pressured to monitor each other, to report on each other, to correct each other. Not because they want to, but because their own standing in the program depends on it.
I know in my house, if my kids want to correct the other one, I'm like, absolutely not. You're not the parent. If you want to bring something to me, you can, but I'm not gonna have That just seems dangerous. Just in your own house. Like you, the way emotions will rise and everything in, in a situation like that is just wild to me.
So knowing that these programs do that, I, I actually could not believe that. Yeah. Well, and then there's also, I mean, you obviously, you don't wanna compare human beings to like actual animals, but I mean, even at home, like in your house, there has to be like a pecking order. Yeah. You know, a pack order, because that's just how things are gonna function the best.
You certainly don't wanna have a, you're not bringing up a child that thinks they have equal authority as you. Oh heck no. So you can't have that. And so you can kind of see in this situation where it's like you have kids policing kids and like, but at the same time [00:08:00] there's also a group of adults policing all these kids.
So it's kind of like, where does. The authority, like even begin or end, right? It's kind of, it's very confusing. Absolutely. And in these situations, trust becomes dangerous, comforting, someone can be reframed as manipulation and staying quiet can be seen as withholding. Everything really becomes evidence of something else.
And over time, the teen learns something very specific. The safest version of yourself is the quiet one who doesn't react. So to understand how the troubled teen industry came to operate the way that it does, you really have to go back to a place that on the surface didn't even have anything to do with teenagers at all.
Synanon was founded in 1958 in Santa Monica, California by a man named Charles or Chuck Diedrich. At the time, the United States had very few effective treatments for drug addiction, and Synanon positioned itself as a radical alternative. It [00:09:00] wasn't a hospital, it wasn't traditional therapy, it was a community.
Synanon described itself as a therapeutic community, and members would live together, work together, and they were expected to hold each other accountable. So this sounds like, honestly, not the worst idea. It sounded very progressive, even revolutionary. I feel like in these situations, it's like, it sounds great if everything works perfectly, and everyone kind of does exactly what they're supposed to do, and nobody tries to exert themselves as being higher than anyone else, right?
But that's obviously not how humans behave whenever you actually put them in a group together. But the idea was that addicts could help other addicts through honesty and peer confrontation, rather than through doctors and medication. Inside that community, something else was taking shape. One of Synanon central practices was something called the game.
And officially this was described as a form of group therapy, but in reality it was [00:10:00] a highly structured exercise in humiliation, dominance, and psychological breakdown. During the game, participants would sit in a circle for hours at a time while other members verbally attacked them. We're not talking about constructive feedback, we're talking about aggressive confrontation.
There's screaming, there's insults, there's wild accusations being thrown around. Every insecurity, every failure and every personal flaw was dragged out into the open and used against people as a weapon. So there's real quick, a documentary called The Synonym Fix. Did the Cure become a cult? It came out 2024.
It was on max. I watched it. When you're talking about this the game thing, it is people in other people's faces. And by the way, you're both here for the same reasons. Screaming at each other, telling them they're trash, they're no good, they're no this, they're no that. I mean, I, I would, I, I get anxiety thinking about somebody being in my face like that.
No way. It, it was just unreal. Like how, how that ended [00:11:00] up being a thing that people were like, no, this is good. Keep screaming. Yeah, this is gonna help them. It, it's. I don't get it. No, I haven't seen that one. I definitely, uh, you should. It's really good. Wanted to watch that one. Mm-hmm. There was another documentary that we'll discuss towards the end of the episode that I did watch, but um, I did not watch this one, so I'll have to go back and watch that.
That sounds terrifying. Intense. Yeah. And also fascinating. Yeah. But the alleged goal of all of this was to strip away ego, denial and resistance. What it actually did was something a lot more dangerous. It trained people to accept abuse as truth and submission as growth in Synanon. Any objection to the game was treated as proof that you needed it even more, which is, it's kind of going back to NX VM call, right?
Like it's very much giving, like everything is proof that you need us. You know, that proves it that much more. So the idea that discomfort equals progress and pushback is proof of your own shortcomings is what really became the cornerstone of countless programs that followed over [00:12:00] time. Synanon grew more and more extreme.
Chuck Diedrich consolidated power and the community became increasingly authoritarian. Members were encouraged to cut off contact with outsiders, including their own family. Children born into the group were raised inside of it, and critics were labeled enemies. Violence was justified as a form of discipline.
By the 1970s, Synanon was no longer just a rehab program. It was now widely recognized as a cult appropriately, and its unraveling included criminal activity, intimidation of critics, and even attempted murder. Eventually, Synanon was forced to disband, but the ideology did not disappear with it. By the time Synanon collapsed, its methods had already escaped into the wider world.
The idea that people could be fixed through confrontation had taken hold, as did the belief that breaking someone down was a necessary step towards rebuilding them. Those ideas were really [00:13:00] absorbed, repackaged, and sanitized, and the language softened attack therapy really became accountability, which I think is the number one word used in cults.
Public humiliation became group processing and coercion became structure. And most importantly, these methods began to be used on children and teenagers. This is a population with even less power and fewer rights, and almost no ability to leave. So when we talk about the program, the thing that shows up again and again in these troubled teen facilities, we're not talking about something that evolved naturally from best practices and mental health.
We're talking about an ideology that was born in a cult, refined through control and exported to environments where resistance could be punished and silence could be enforced. And once those ideas entered youth programs, they found an audience that was uniquely vulnerable. By the late sixties and early 1970s, the United [00:14:00] States was soaked in fear about youth behavior.
Drug use amongst teenagers was being framed as a national emergency. Media coverage painted a picture of a generation slipping out of control, and parents were warned that experimentation wasn't normal, and defiance wasn't just a phase, it's really the beginning of their child's ruin. At the same time, psychology and behavioral science were becoming more visible in public life, but often in really oversimplified, in poorly regulated ways.
This reminds me of like people who have like, uh, therapy speak, where you're like, okay, but you're not using those words, right? Like you, you're using it for your benefit, but not really in the way that it's meant to be, you know, processed. You see that a lot on the internet in 2020. Oh my gosh. Don't get me started.
Hopefully not in 2026. Let's leave that behind. Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody's a narcissist. Everybody is gaslighting. There's those words where I'm like, okay, but also terms like behavior modification and conditioning we're entering the [00:15:00] mainstream without the ethical guardrails that we have today. So when programs began claiming that they could reprogram behavior or that they could interrupt these bad patterns and replace 'em with obedience and accountability, it really didn't sound extreme.
It sounded actually pretty modern at the time. And this was also the era of the war on drugs where fear wasn't just cultural, it was political. I'm also thinking back to like satanic panic. There was a lot of stuff going on at this time. All that at the same time. Yeah. Yes. They were really scared back then.
Very scared. I'm actually just scared reading this. Me too. I always think it would be, it would've been great, like if I was born in that I was born in the wrong era of novel love and peace. Right. It seems like they had a lot of fear and anxiety at that time constantly. In 1970, a program called The Seed opened in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and it would go on to become one of the earliest and most influential examples of what later evolved into the troubled teen industry.
The seed marketed itself as a drug rehabilitation program for adolescents. Parents were told their children needed to be removed from their current [00:16:00] environment and placed into a highly structured system that would help interrupt destructive behavior patterns and replace them with accountability, discipline, and of course, sobriety.
Inside the program, former participants described an atmosphere of constant pressure and surveillance. New arrivals were immediately placed under the watch of peers who had already been in the program longer, and these peers were expected to monitor behavior, confront, rule breaking, and report, anything that suggested resistance.
Silence was even suspicious. Emotional reactions were scrutinized and confessions were encouraged and often expected. See, this reminds me a little of ology. I don't wanna say the whole word. Uh, yes. But it sounds a lot like that. Yes. So group therapy sessions played a central role. Teens were expected to publicly admit wrongdoing and accept criticism from their peers while demonstrating submission to the program's authority.
Any discomfort was framed as part of the healing process. And if a participant pushed [00:17:00] back, it was treated as denial. What made the seed especially important wasn't just what happened inside its walls, though it was how the program was perceived from the outside. It attracted a lot of public and political attention during a period when, as we were just saying earlier, drug use among young people was being framed as a national emergency.
So the seed became part of broader conversations about prevention and rehabilitation. And even when concerns were raised about coercion and psychological harm, the program still remained influential because it did appear to produce results. As we were saying before, kids did stop using drugs, they followed the rules and it looked like they were being compliant.
And in this era, that is prioritizing outward behavior over your internal wellbeing, that appearance of success. Really carried enormous weight and is what really what allowed this program to continue going on. In 1976, another program emerged that would help solidify this model and push it into the [00:18:00] national spotlight, and this program was called Straight Ink.
Straight presented itself as a more organized, more professional evolution of earlier programs like the Seed. It focused heavily on adolescent drug use and framed its approach as a necessary response to a growing cultural and political crisis. The structure inside Strait mirrored many of those same core elements that had already been proven effective at enforcing compliance.
There were rigid hierarchies. The new arrivals, again, were placed at the bottom and required to earn. Basic privileges over time. And of course, peer enforcement was central to their daily life. But what truly set straight apart was the legitimacy through association. So during the height of the war on drugs, straight benefited from high profile political attention that helped frame it as a trusted partner in a national effort.
Public visits and endorsements from influential figures created the impression that this wasn't some fringe operation, but [00:19:00] it was a responsible and endorsed solution to a serious problem. That perception, of course, deeply matters to parents. So when a program appears aligned with government messaging and respected authority, families really stopped questioning whether its methods are appropriate.
They assume that they must be, and that legitimacy served as a very powerful shield. Despite mounting lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny, and survivor accounts across multiple states, the core model remained intact. Facilities opened and closed. Names changed. Location shifted, but the system survived. What Strait demonstrated to the industry was a critical lesson.
Controversy doesn't destroy the model. It teaches the model how to adapt. And we have so much more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. Before the break, we talked about how desperation and fear opening the door for the troubled teen industry. From educational consultants to isolation, [00:20:00] compliance-based systems and peer enforcement.
We also trace the roots of these practices back to Synanon, a 1950s cult whose confrontational tactics were later repackaged as treatment. And now we're getting into how these ideas exploded in the 1970s and became normalized through programs like the Seed and Straight Incorporated. So one of the primary reasons programs like the Seed and Strait were able to expand and persist is because there was never a unified system overseeing them.
Youth residential programs didn't fall neatly unto one regulated category. Some were treated as educational institutions, others as healthcare facilities. Some were connected to juvenile justice systems, and others existed in legal gray areas where oversight depended entirely on state interpretation.
And in many cases, the oversight, if there even was any, was very minimal. Licensing standards varied widely from state to state, and enforcement depended heavily on complaints being filed and [00:21:00] then investigated and sustained. And those complaints often were coming from minors whose credibility had already been undermined by the very programs that they were trying to report.
Parents were frequently warned in advance that their children might lie, they might exaggerate and they might attempt to manipulate them. So when these teens did express the fear, the distress or the anger, those reactions were often just kind of brushed off. And they said they were symptoms of the problem rather than red flags.
But what emerged was a perfect storm. It was a fear-driven parenting culture and programs framed as treatment instead of punishment. And by the time serious questions were raised, these programs were already deeply embedded. They have these referral pipelines, legal teams, and they have decades of practice where they're essentially framing themselves as as being helpful instead of harmful.
And those circumstances didn't just allow individual programs to survive. [00:22:00] It really allowed this entire industry to take foot. So one of the biggest pioneers, which is one thing to call it, and this troubled teen industry, was this man named Robert Litchfield. He was a Utah businessman who became one of the most influential figures in the expansion of behavior modification program for teens.
He's closely associated with the Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs in Schools, or W-W-A-S-P, which is an umbrella organization that connected dozens of youth programs operating under different names in different locations across the United States and internationally. W-W-A-S-P wasn't a single school, it was a network.
Lichfield functioned as a central architect of this network, and under this, the programs marketed themselves as therapeutic boarding schools or specialty schools for troubled teens. And on paper. They appeared independent. In practice, though, survivors and investigators have described a striking level of [00:23:00] uniformity across these facilities.
The same rules, the same punishments, the same level systems, the same group confrontations, and the same language used to describe compliance as progress, and this, of course, was not accidental. What W-W-A-S-P effectively created was a franchise model for behavior modification. Facilities could open under new names and new jurisdictions while relying on this already established playbook.
Parents weren't really buying into one school, they were buying into the program even if they didn't really realize it yet. Lich Field's role was not as a hands-on therapist or educator. He was a business operator. His influence was in the infrastructure connecting schools to referral pipelines, standardizing methods, and expanding into locations where oversight was weaker or easier to avoid.
Over time, these W-W-A-S-P affiliated programs began operating not just across multiple US states, but internationally, [00:24:00] countries like Mexico, Jamaica, and Samoa became part of this network, allowing American teams to be sent thousands of miles away from home, far outside the reach of us. Child welfare regulations, that's another thing they did in Synanon.
Some of their kids were sent internationally. This expansion wasn't, of course framed as regulatory evasion. It's framed as an opportunity. Parents were told that their child needed distance, they needed a clean slate, a complete reset, and what they weren't told was that the distance also made oversight nearly impossible and escape completely unrealistic.
So as scrutiny grew around individual programs, the network structure became a shield. If one school faced complaints, lawsuits, or closure. Others just continued operating. The names would change. Location shifted, but this underlying system remained intact, and that's what made W-W-A-S-P so powerful. It doesn't rely on a single institution's reputation.
It relies on [00:25:00] replication, the same structure and methods, but now available across borders. By the time authorities and journalists began connecting these dots, dozens of programs had already cycled thousands of teenagers through a system that was designed to prioritize control, compliance, and of course profitability, all while presenting itself as therapeutic care.
For many teens, the trauma didn't begin when they arrived at a facility, it actually began in the middle of the night. So there's a largely unregulated industry that exists alongside the troubled teen programs known as youth transport services. And this is actually shocking to even learn about because it's literally so out there.
But this is how it works. So these parents who often are acting on the advice of these educational consultants that we mentioned before, or the programs themselves hire these private transport agents to come take their child to a facility. So the teen is rarely told ahead of time where they're [00:26:00] going or that they're even going anywhere at all.
Instead, they're woken up in the early hours of the morning by complete strangers being in their bedroom. Scary men. Terrify coming to take them away, terrify telling them that they have no choice in the matter. They're told that resistance will make it worse. And sometimes these kids are even restrained with handcuffs or whatever else, and sometimes they're just simply intimidated into complying and they don't need to be, you know, restrained in any way.
But legally, even though this sounds absolutely horrific, someone coming into your bedroom in the middle of the night and just taking you away, um, it sounds like this should not be a legal thing, but it is because the parents have authorized it. Unfortunately, there are psychological consequences to doing things like this.
And it's really in that moment when natine kind of first gets their first taste of like, not only just like what is going on, but it's like you're being betrayed almost by your family. Yeah. In that moment, it's just a very confusing time and it really teaches the teen everything that they need to know about the system that they're [00:27:00] about to enter.
And that is that adults can't be trusted. You don't have any autonomy. Your body's not yours, and any attempt that you make to assert yourself will be punished. So by the time the teen actually arrives to the facility, they're already exhausted, they're terrified, and they're disoriented. So they're perfectly primed for compliance when they get there.
So when you remove a teen from everything familiar, you surround them with authority figures who define their behavior as pathological, and they punish any dissent as proof of illness, you really create this closed system where resistance starts to feel dangerous. And just being submissive to this whole system feels like the way that you have to survive.
So over time, many teens stop trying to express themselves at all, and they really just learn to perform compliance. They learn to say the right things to adopt the program's language, and to even appear grateful for the punishment. And from the outside, it looks like the. Teens are really improving, that they have accepted what's [00:28:00] going on and that they're really making strides.
Parents will have phone calls with their teens and they'll say that they sound calmer. You know, they sound like they're doing better. They get progress reports that have all this therapeutic language in it, and they're told that their child is finally taking responsibility that the program is working.
But what the parents are seeing isn't really healing. It's the result of coercive control. One such place that teens would be whisked off to in the middle of the night was called Aon School in Poland, Maine. It opened in 1970 in the small rural town, far away from any major cities. And like all the other programs, Elon School described itself as a residential program for adolescents struggling with behavioral issues, substance abuse, defiance, school problems, and of course.
Family conflict. This school was founded by Joseph Ricci, and to understand Elon, you have to understand Joseph's role in shaping not just its structure, but also its philosophy and right outta the [00:29:00] gate. It's important to know that Joseph Ricci was not a licensed mental health professional, wasn't a clinician or a psychologist, or a researcher.
He was nobody that was even addressing underlying mental health conditions. In fact, before he got with the school, he was a drug addict with a history of criminal behavior. While Joseph didn't have any real credentials to make him fit for this field, what he did have was a personal experience and of course, exposure to punitive, confrontational recovery models that places like Synanon and other therapeutic communities had used.
Joseph believed in the idea that young people could only change if they were broken down first. This is like real military stuff that we've heard first. Sure. But you're talking about. Children. So to him, things like humiliation and domination, and of course fear were merely just tools necessary for change.
And that belief came from Joseph's lived experience inside harsh recovery environments that framed suffering as proof of progress, and of [00:30:00] course obedience as healing. When Joseph founded Elon School in 1970, he wasn't trying to build a therapeutic environment in the modern sense of the world. He was trying to build a control system, one that really mirrored the coercive models that he believed had worked on him.
And crucially, there was nothing at the time that prevented him from doing so. So Joseph Ricci was able to position himself not as a former addict with no clinical credentials, but as an authority figure, someone who understood their defiance or knew that it worked, and someone who believed that if kids were suffering, it means the process is doing its job.
At the school, Joseph embedded his worldview into policy. Former students have described him as someone who held immense power, both directly and indirectly, even when he wasn't physically present. The rules, punishments and the overall culture reflected his philosophy, and the staff, of course, enforced his vision and older [00:31:00] students replicated it.
Of course, the whole hierarchy that we keep hearing about protected it. And because Joseph framed his approach as accountability and treatment rather than cruelty, the school was able to operate for decades without being dismantled, even as stories of abuse accumulated. Survivors of Aon school consistently described the first days as being deeply disorienting, but not because things were actually chaotic.
It was really the opposite. It was because everything was so controlled. The confusion came from the fact that the rules were really everywhere, but they were rarely explained in a way that made any sense to a terrified teenager who had just been dropped into this brand new world. When new students would arrive, nobody was sitting them down and explaining this whole hierarchy to them.
They were just expected to learn by observation, and that expectation alone really created this powerful psychological effect. It told these teens that if they didn't understand what they were doing wrong, you can't ever feel safe. So daily life was structured [00:32:00] down to the smallest details. Everything from where to sit, where to stand, who to talk to, how to even speak, uh, when you're allowed to move.
Just everything. And what made it worse, according to many accounts, was that the rules were often enforced inconsistently. So the same behavior that. Got you in trouble one day might be ignored the next day. And as we said before, that kind of unpredictability is part of the design, meant to keep the teens anxious rather than able to think critically about whether the system that they're in even makes sense or not.
And so when it came to privacy, as you can imagine, that really was not a thing. The students at the school were constantly monitored and evaluated, and they lived in fear of being labeled defiant based on something as small as maybe even a facial expression or a change in their body language. And the definition of bad behavior at the school was incredibly broad.
It wasn't just things like sneaking food or leaving your seat. You could also get flagged for not participating enthusiastically enough or for making a face, or even [00:33:00] if you just happen to look away at the wrong moment. Survivors describe learning over time to keep their faces completely blank and to show no emotion, have no reaction.
So the students just start to erase themselves. The cruelty of this whole system is that it often creates exactly what it claims to be fixing. The kids that are subject to this become emotionally numb, hypervigilant, and they're terrified of saying the wrong thing, as well as being unable to trust absolutely anyone, which is any parent who would send their kids to these things.
That's the opposite of what you're hoping right, is going to happen to your child at Elon. Punishment wasn't just about correction. It's really about spectacle, which again reminds me a lot of Synanon survivors are consistently describing punishments that were being designed not only to hurt the person being punished, but also to send a message to everyone watching.
No privacy, there's no visibility. This is how it's all constructed, and one of the most disturbing aspects of the [00:34:00] system was how punishment could be turned into a performance so students could be singled out in front of peers and subjected to hours long verbal attacks, ridicule and forced confessions.
These aren't just outbursts. They're structured events often, sometimes they're even announced in advance, where this entire group understands that someone is about to be worked, and the punishments were often wildly disproportionate to the alleged offense. A student could be punished for eye contact that was interpreted as being challenging, or for a tone that sounded sarcastic, my kids would be screwed even for failing to show enough enthusiasm.
There's really no standard. The standard shifts constantly, which means the safest option was not to exist too loudly at all. Some punishments involved forced humiliation, and survivors have described being made to wear signs, sit in degrading positions, or stand apart from others in ways that meant to mark them as targets.
Not to parent shame, but the thing, one of the [00:35:00] things I hate the most on the internet is seeing a parent whose kid has done something and make them wear a sign around their neck that's like, I did this. Like, I get what the, the, what you're trying to do. But I, I, I disagree wholeheartedly. Me too. Others describe being screamed at for hours while required to remain standing or seated in painful positions, and they can't even move as their bodies are aching, and I'm sure their brains are aching at this point.
But beyond these public punishments, the school relied heavily on extreme deprivation as a control tactic. One punishment, which they called the shotgun, which by the way, none of these people have an ounce of creativity in their bones. It's like, no, the program, the shotgun, nothing is good. During this, the students were forced to sit motionless for enormous stretches of time, as just one example of a broader menu of punishments designed to exhaust.
Disorient and demoralized survivors have also described being denied basic comforts for extended periods, things most people don't even [00:36:00] think of as a privilege, like talking or reading, writing, making eye contact, and sometimes even sleeping normally. In some cases, students were required to remain awake late into the night during confrontations or forced activities.
Then expected to function normally the next day. Manti, we both have teenagers and if there's one thing kids like to do at this age is sleep. Sleep in, yes. I can't imagine functioning after like these little amounts of sleep and that being something that's like praised that they're doing like this is so important.
Food could also become part of the punishment structure. Your meals could be restricted, delayed, or maybe even conditional. This isn't Donna's part of a plan, it's just use as leverage. And there are also accounts of forced physical exertion being used as discipline. This is exertion that's meant to break someone down.
It's this physical exhaustion layered on top of the emotional stress and it makes resistance really feel impossible. [00:37:00] You're gonna go along with anything someone says. And then of course the psychological punishment that's really harder to describe, but often is really more damaging. Students never know when a punishment's coming or how long it would last or what would make it stop.
This unpredictability is this classic fear conditioning tactic, so when consequences feel random, people stop trying to understand the rules and just start trying to avoid attention entirely Over time. Students of course, learn to suppress reactions. They flatten their emotions and anticipate what authority wants to hear and give it back verbatim.
Not because they believe it, not because they've learned anything, but because belief is safer than punishment. And we still have more to get into after one last break to hear word from this week's sponsors. So before the break, we were talking about how weak oversight really allowed the trouble teen industry to grow into this coordinated system.
We explained how figures like Robert Lichfield and the W-W-A-S-P network turned behavior modification into a franchise [00:38:00] model, and how Aons School became one of the most extreme examples of this system in action. And now we're getting into what happened when this kind of control went too far. So in 1982, the worst possible thing that could happen at Alan School actually happened when a 15-year-old boy who was enrolled there died during a punishment.
Phil Williams was not a hardened criminal. He was a teenager who was placed in a program that claimed to help kids like him. At Aon, one of the disciplinary practices involved boxing matches. These weren't supervised athletic competitions with rules and safety measures in place. This was literally coercive fights that are meant as a punishment where students are forced to fight each other, or sometimes the adult staff members, my gosh, how people thought this was okay, is unreal.
If you're ordered to go into the ring, though, the goal is not to win. It's to be hit until resistance disappeared. So Phil was forced to participate in one of these boxing [00:39:00] matches as punishment. During the match, he was repeatedly struck in the head. At some point he collapsed and it was learned that he suffered a brain aneurysm.
He died as a direct result of being beaten in a program that was supposed to be therapeutic. And yet Elon School did not shut down. Phil's death did bring scrutiny and investigations, but there were no criminal convictions and no effort to dismantle the school's operation. The system just absorbed a child's death and really moved on like nothing happened.
And the reason nothing happened again was because there was no federal agency overseeing youth residential programs. Jurisdiction in this is murky and accountability depends on local agencies and the way these incidents are categorized. But the biggest issue with these practices that led to Phil's death were that they weren't being framed as abuse, but as discipline.
So the program's actions were really given the benefit of the doubt, and they were able to [00:40:00] manage the narrative carefully and downplay the seriousness of the entire thing. Students of course, were not encouraged to talk openly about Phil's death and any questions, distress or emotional reaction would of course be called disruption.
And parents weren't being told the truth about what happened to Phil either. The version of events they were given was filter through the same lens that was used for everything else. Parents have been warned that their child might lie or exaggerate things when faced with accountability. So of course, they believe even if their child is coming to them and telling them this terrible thing that happened, they really shouldn't take it seriously.
And to us, it feels incomprehensible that this school continued to operating after a child died in such a horrific manner. But there were layers upon layers of manipulation and control behind it. While the industry was hardening its methods for these indoor facilities like Aon School, a similar movement was taking shape in the American West.
This was wilderness therapy, [00:41:00] and this is really the one I feel like was there. I think there was a documentary that had, um, one of these wilderness places. Yes. Featured, I can't remember the name of it. I wish that I could, but that was really the first time that I had like kind of an introduction into like the troubled teen industry and, and seeing like this, like these wilderness programs where it's supposed to be like a.
Is it Hell camp? It's on Netflix. One, one. That was the most recent one. Yes. It might be that one. That sounds familiar. Um, but yeah, just absolutely terrifying. And whenever I, I didn't watch that whole thing, but I remember watching a little bit of it and being like, wow, this is actually crazy. But this wilderness therapy is pitch as a return to nature and just a way to get your child out of their toxic environment away from these modern influences and get them out into a survival situation where they have to live like a primitive human.
But reality is that it was often a very brutal test of endurance for these kids. One of the industries most infamous pioneers was Steve [00:42:00] Carno. He's an Air Force veteran who founded the Challenger Foundation in 1988, and he took the same tough love approach of Synanon and moved it into the Utah desert.
Teens were forced to hike hundreds of miles in 90 degree heat with minimum water and carrying heavy packs. The industry's first major wake up call came in 1990 when 16-year-old Kristen Chase collapsed and died of heat stroke three days into a challenger hike. Three days. They're doing this for three days.
That is unreal. For days, it's absolutely wild. So Steve Carno was charged with negligent homicide and child abuse. Although he was eventually acquitted, the pattern didn't stop. He simply moved operations to places like Samoa and the US Virgin Islands. Over the next three decades, at least 30 more teens would die in wilderness programs.
Some died from dehydration, others from hypothermia, and one a 14-year-old named Aaron Bacon. He [00:43:00] died from a treatable infection that the staff dismissed as faking it until it was too late to do anything. By the early two thousands, the cult leader era of the industry began to transition into something even harder to hold accountable, and that was the corporate era.
Many of these schools and programs were brought up by massive private equity firms. Companies like Acadia Healthcare and Universal Health Services, which are traded on the stock market, began to acquire facilities across the country. So this shifted the motive from rehabilitation to now we're trying to maximize occupancy in these facilities.
In a private equity model, the goal is often really just to cut costs and increase profit margins before selling the company again in four to seven years and. Obviously when you're talking about like treatment, mental health treatment for teenagers, this is not the model that you wanna be following. No.
So this leads to a really dangerous cycle. They cut staff wages, they hire unlicensed mentors instead of licensed therapists, and they [00:44:00] really ignore all facility maintenance investigations by the New York Times and the US Senate Finance Committee have found that these corporate owned facilities often use physical and chemical restraints or sedation, uh, at much higher rates to manage a staff that is undertrained and overworked.
When these companies are sued for abuse, they often just pay the settlement and then rebrand the facility with a new name and keep the doors wide open. Elon School finally closed in 2011. It closed quietly without a formal admission of wrongdoing, but of course, the troubled teen industry did not close with it.
Today, youth residential programs still exist across the United States and internationally. Some operate under new branding, and some emphasize this wilderness therapy and others call themselves therapeutic boarding schools or residential treatment centers. And while awareness of course, has increased, the core structural problem remains, there's no single federal agency that oversees all these youth residential [00:45:00] programs.
Honestly, it's so shocking to me that there is no federal agency, it seems like they like to oversee everything. How has there not been? They love an agency, right? Like how has there not been an agency established for this? Just for money. You think they do it? Yeah, exactly. And of course, religious and boarding school exemptions still exist, and children in these programs still have limited power to report abuse or remove themselves from harmful environments.
What has changed though is visibility survivors have now found each other. The internet as terrible as it can be, has allowed people to compare notes in ways that weren't possible in the seventies, eighties, or nineties. Patterns that once looked isolated are now very unmistakable. When a teenager sent to Elon in the 1970s had aged out and left, they simply just went home and tried to rebuild their life.
If someone was sent in the eighties or nineties, they entered the same system, but the people who had already been through it were really scattered around the country, living [00:46:00] different lives at different stages of readiness to even talk about what happened. So even though there were warning signs, they really didn't converge.
There's no central database, no social media, no survivor forms, and there's no easy way to search lawsuits, complaints, or firsthand accounts. So I can imagine that feels very lonely to know you've gone through this. Maybe your parents don't believe you, other adults don't believe you, and you're completely alone in what's happened to you.
And if you're a parent in 1995, you couldn't just pull up a thread of hundreds of former students describing the same punishments at the same school. There's no Yelp reviews, and if you're a teenager inside one of these programs, you were repeatedly told the same thing. No one will believe you. You're exaggerating.
You're manipulative. And of course, this is all your fault. So the spotlight really started to shine on the troubled teen industry in 2020 when our beloved Paris Hilton publicly spoke about her experience in the troubled teen industry, including her time at Provo Canyon School in [00:47:00] Utah. So I think most of our listeners probably know who Paris Hilton is, but if not, she's a media personality, a businesswoman and a pop culture figure who became famous in the early two thousands.
Um, she's someone who's often been reduced really just to a character, just a socialite, a reality TV star, if you will. Melissa, I know that you are very familiar with our beloved Paris, Paris, her aunt, her mom. I know 'em all. Yes. But long before that public image existed, Paris Hilton was just a teenager who was sent into the same troubled teen industry that we've been talking about this entire episode.
So it's important to note that Paris did come from an extremely wealthy and connected family. She's the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton who founded Hilton Hotels. So she's someone who grew up with privilege and access to things that most of us can only dream of, but none of that protected her from this evil industry.
In the late 1990s, Paris was placed in multiple residential youth programs, including Provo Canyon School in Utah. It was a facility that was a [00:48:00] lot like Aon School marketed itself as a last resort solution for parents who were scared and out of options and what happened to her. There followed a pattern that will sound painfully familiar by now.
Paris has described being forcibly transported in the middle of the night by strangers hired to take her to the facility. She's described extreme isolation being cut off from her family being placed in solitary confinement, being physically restrained and being medicated against her will. She's talked about being punished for speaking up, punished for showing emotion, and punished for resisting, and for years.
This part of her life was not a part of her public story. In 2020, she released a documentary about her experience. And for the first time, the troubled teen industry actually started being scrutinized a lot more heavily thanks to Paris's celebrity status and her ability to reach a large audience. That documentary is called, this is Paris, and you can find it on YouTube for free.
I actually did sit and watch [00:49:00] it right after I finished working on this episode. I wanted to go and look that up because I love Paris Hilton and I had no clue that she had even gone through this or had any connection to anything like this. And of course I was like dying to figure out like how and why and everything.
The documentary is really, really good. Did you see that one? I have. And then today I actually saw a clip of it, 'cause I haven't seen it in a long time. With her sitting down with her sister, Nikki and her mom Kathy, and Kathy just. I still think does not get it. She does not realize, doesn't she realize how it was so traumatizing for adults to take her in the middle of the night?
She was like calling her an alien to her face, like saying, you're so weird and that's why we had to do this. And you're like, oh, I see. You can see her shut down right in the documentary. And you're like, oh, it's, it's really sad. I know, and I of course, um, like a lot of people, like they knew Paris Hilton from The Simple Life TV show.
Yes. The reality show where she literally just played like a dumb character, like the, the quote unquote dumb blonde character mm-hmm. Was basically what she played, you know? And in this documentary she talks a lot about how, like, that that was never really [00:50:00] her. That's not her. And honestly, I came away liking Paris Hilton a lot after I watched this documentary.
And just really my heart going out to her and feeling less bad for her. You know, I feel like, um, she's somebody who people always think about being born with a silver spoon in their mouth and has never struggled through anything. But then when you really find out like what Paris Hilton has been through, you're like, wow, actually it's kind of messed up.
Oh yeah. Terribly messed up. I mean, she was still born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but she had parents that still did this to her. Obviously they think they're doing the right thing as we know, but hearing it, watching her mom just not connect with what happened to her just blew my mind where I was just like, whoa, you still don't get it?
Like, yeah, it's unreal. But for decades, the troubled teen industry survived because its victims were looked as troubled kids that society was more than happy to ignore. But since Paris's documentary was released, we've seen more legislative movement than in the previous 40 years combined in 2021. Paris testified before the Utah State Senate leading to the unanimous passage of SB 1 [00:51:00] 27.
For the first time, Utah, who's known as the capital of this industry, mandated that facilities report every single time they use a restraint on a child and banned certain types of chemical sedation. Thank you. Yes. Um, and just recently a major federal milestone was reached with the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, or S-I-C-A-A.
This one's passed with bipartisan support and finally establishes these federal oversight and data collections to track abuse across state lines. It's, of course, a huge win, but survivors like Paris and the founders of breaking code silence warned that the fight just isn't over. As long as the profit motive remains, the industry will keep looking for loopholes.
Sadly, the story of the troubled teen industry isn't over, but this is where we're going to be done with it for today. And man, I, I will say I knew some of this stuff just because it's, I watched the Synanon [00:52:00] documentary, I've seen the Paris Hilton thing. I read a lot of that stuff, but I had no idea really how they all kind of worked like each other, how they were so much manipulation.
That's system. Yeah, man. This was. This is, I don't know, it just makes me, it's tough. It's a tough topic. Yeah. Because it is, it comes from a place of desperation. That's what we were talking about. It is such a desperate feeling and you're protecting your family and you think you're protecting your kid and all this stuff.
Everything is being done for the right reasons, but unfortunately this system takes advantage of that. Yeah. It's very, very sad and definitely something that I'll be, I'll be wanting to follow, you know, and see how hopefully we can get some legislation that really like locks things down to make it where this is not possible like that, this type of thing cannot happen anymore.
Totally. Okay. Melissa, since it is the very first. Everything. It is January 1st. It is the yay, first of the new year. We're all excited. Let's turn the page and move on to last thing before we go today. So since we are moving into a new year, we thought it would be fun [00:53:00] to talk about just some like silly things, kind of like our predictions for the new year, um, or opinions which, you know, we don't really share too frequently.
Um, and there won't be any s as we basically just said, a lot won't be anything about opinions Yeah. Going on here. But yeah, I thought we would just talk about maybe some things that we, that we think, or that we foresee going into. 2026. Okay. Like for example, Melissa, what do you think is a headline that we're all gonna be sick of by March?
I say this with Glove Anne's light because I like this person, but I predict there's going to be a countdown for Taylor Swift wedding. And while I'm in favor of it and I think she should be happy, I already have Tavis fatigue by hearing things like, oh, she went out with Selena today. I bet she asked her to be her bridesmaid or whatever.
It's like, who won't be invited? Like I'm already done. I was very excited for them and I still am happy for them, but like, I don't need every detail. This is, I'm tired, I'm tired. Yeah. [00:54:00] Yeah. I feel like I get really sick of celebrity news a lot quicker than some people do. Yeah. You know, the other day I saw, or yeah, last night actually I was, um, scrolling Instagram and I saw like TMZ posted some whole like, but it was like they were like throwing a party about it, about Beyonce being declared a billionaire.
Did you see that? That is the most billionaire thing I've ever heard of. Oh my gosh. To grow. Gosh, gosh. They're basically like, oh, I forget who they said to Cliff Forbes. I don't know. Someone tried that. Oh, probably I saw some stuff on that fiance, Beyonce. It's a billionaire. But even just seeing that like come across my screen, like it made me literally.
Angry. Like I was like, yeah, I don't know. I've never really been one to be like, I don't know, I'm not like hateful about people who have achieved wealth or anything like that. Sure. But like, something about unrelatable celebrity news hitting my newsfeed, like, woo-hoo. Let's all have a, let's all jump up and down.
Because Beyonce is a billionaire. Like, meanwhile, I can't go to the grocery store for four things without spending a hundred dollars. Yeah. So I'm like, y like yay, I guess. Um, so yeah, for me, any headline about rich [00:55:00] people and their money is gonna be on my nerves. All of 2026. I, I would agree with you. I like that one.
Yeah. Okay. Mandy, what is a technology that will become normalized in 2026, do you think? Whether we like it or not? So I think the obvious answer is anything in the AI field. Sure. For sure. It is rapidly expanding. We're starting to see it all over the place now. I think we're gonna start seeing it applied more and more, even in more ways than we can even imagine right now.
Like, there's gonna be things I feel like even this year that are come, gonna come up and we're gonna be like. I didn't see that coming. Like how I'm surprised that they like figured that one out. Um, but I think we're gonna see a lot of crazy more crazy stuff. Like, I feel like we're really close to like voice cloning becoming a thing and becoming a problem for like, yeah, that's gonna be a thing coming.
Not for us. I think we're not doing that, so don't worry about it. Yeah. We're not, not not, um, with our permission anyway. Not for our paycheck. Uh, yeah. Um, but I think also. Facial recognition is gonna become a thing. Mm-hmm. More. [00:56:00] See, you're scaring me like everywhere. Like I know, I know. I think there's gonna be all kinds of crazy stuff.
It's gonna be a lot of AI driven things because I feel like a lot of technology is going to pop off now that AI is in the picture. So I feel like there's things that have been on the verge of happening for a while that are actually gonna be able. Like to become a reality. Okay. I hate that. Me too. Um, I'm gonna do my, mine is also ai, but ready for how dumb I am.
I said AI at fast food restaurants. When I go to like Wendy's, I need a minute to be able to say like, um, I would like a, in like, have a human, you know, conversation there and him and haw and not feel stressed out about this robot. That's like quickly writing everything down. I say, especially when I do so poor, even talking to a person, right?
And then they bring a person on, it's probably the cook, and they have to come and make me do the whole thing again. I just wanna drive off in my robot car, which I don't have, but like, I just wanna drive off the road. Quite honestly. I can't take it. [00:57:00] And then I'm like, I now I don't feel shamed about eating a burger, but I feel shamed about not being able to use this stupid AI thing.
So that's one. Um, I like mine better than yours. 'cause yours is still scaring me. I know. Well, I think, did I tell you about my last experience flying, um, with Alaska Airlines and like, they have very fancy stuff now at their, um, their baggage whenever you go drop off your bag. So I feel like a lot of the airlines now have like some form of like doit yourself tag and bag system, right.
Where you can go and print out your own tag and then you go, but you still have to wait to take it up. I like that. Mm-hmm. And somebody will come and, and take it and they usually will put it on the scale and weigh it and then they'll, A person will tell you, okay, you're good. They'll take your bag and you go.
And when I went and flew with Alaska Airlines, I. Felt like an 85-year-old woman because I walked up to where you would normally go to the ticket counter to go deal with all of that. And to my surprise, the entire thing is now automated. So there is not, there is one person manning, like eight or 10 [00:58:00] machines and you have to walk up to the machine, you put your own ID on the scanner, and then you put your bag on another.
Thing that's got sensors all around it and it weighs the bag for you and it reads the tag, like there's a scan. I don't know. It's crazy. And you do nothing, like all you do is put the bag on it. You put your ID in, it weighs it, it will tell you if you're good to go or not. Well, of course, for some reason I was not good to go and I had to wait for like, they're like, oh, wait for assistance.
I literally, there was no one around. I don't know. Did they call somebody from the back of the airport to come out? Oh, Alaska. Like, I don't even, I know, like I didn't even get it. But the whole thing was automated to the point that like, you did not need a person there. Like, unless you have a problem, then you need a person.
Always, always need a person from the problem. And there's always a problem. Let's be real. Yeah. Um, but yeah, stuff like that does. Freak me out. I know it's meant to like make everything more seamless and streamline and smooth, but I don't know. I'm glad I'm not any older than I am when all this is happening because I know we really are the best [00:59:00] position 'cause like we've been able to adapt for the most part.
Um, Mandy, do you have a phrase we'll all be annoyed with by the summer? Oh my gosh. Six seven doesn't count 'cause I'm already over it. Yeah, well, six seven is definitely, I'm over that one. No, the one that's getting on my nerves. No. My 16-year-old says all the time is that he's Aura farming. Ew. Have you heard this one?
Aura I have says Ora aura farming. Stop it. I know. Stop it. Yeah. It's all of that. I'm like, I don't really get it. Can I tell you what mine is? Yeah. It's when people say that's T and they use their little fingers to pop them together. I've never seen that. I have a daughter, so that's probably why I haven't never seen that she doesn't do this.
But because I would. Not let her. Um, but it's just like, oh, that's t You'll see like, I saw Alabama Barker doing it. Don't tell me why. I just scrolled somebody's, it wasn't her TikTok, it was somebody making fun of her TikTok, which makes more sense. But yeah, she was like, that's t or t something. I was like, I can't do this little small [01:00:00] finger.
No, I just saw a headline about Alabama Barker saying, my dad did not buy me lingerie for Christmas to my stepmom did. Oh my gosh. I was like, how about nobody? My gosh, you're nobody. How about girl, I remember you being born on tv. Let's stop this. Yeah, well, you know, on. But still though, on the topic of phrases, it's not really a phrase, but, um, I feel like I don't know what anything means anymore, truly.
And I never know if I'm being pranked when I read things, I, I'm definitely getting to that age where I'm like, well, what, is that true? Or is that not true? What does that mean? So, you know how the kid, you know how the youth are also, they say, UNC. Like unc? Yes. Okay. I thought it was short for uncle, right?
Like they're saying like, isn't it Okay. I thought I thought that seem like old uncle. I thought they're saying like, you have the personality of like a weird uncle, right? But then I saw this thing today. This said that like, it was like a, a meme thing, but it was like a, like a screenshot of a girl who was doing a TikTok about it.
But basically it was saying that UNC is actually short for uncool. And I was like, hang on, what does it really mean? I don't understand. Chat. Let [01:01:00] us know in the comments. What does uncle mean? Is it, is it uncle or uncool? I thought it was uncle. I know, actually that makes a lot of sense. It's it does. But then I'm like, how did I not know that?
Like I just feel so incredibly dumb. We're past our prime. I gotta be honest with you. We are. We totally are. Okay. Melissa, here's one for you. We kind of talked, I think, on our little chat episode a little bit about fashion and things and clothing, but what about a fashion trend that you are absolutely not participating in in 2026 or ever?
I will wear ankle socks in my grave. You will not take ankle socks from me. I know. It's a very millennial thing. I don't care. We grow up with puff paint shirts and big hair and giant socks, and my ankles need a freaking break. And so I will die with them on my ankles, on my feet, on my grippers. You can't tell me otherwise.
I bought one pair of socks from Bombas. I love Bombas, and I tried to get like the, whatever their regular size is, crew socks. Yeah. Yeah. And I [01:02:00] wrote them after and I was like, I'm so sorry. Can I return these? I hate these. This is not working for me. And they very kindly sent me the ones I wanted, but I was like, I tried guys.
I will not be doing this. Um, yeah. Mark me out. Unc. I can't do this. Yeah. Um, Mandy, what about you? Uh, so. I can't remember if I've, if I have ranted to you about this or not, but I'm basically not participating in any of the current trends. I can't stand any of 'em. I always am telling my son that I feel like his generation is like the bummiest generation ever hair.
I feel like I can't stand it. Okay. Like, um, I am not a big fan of the ultra super baggy. Everything look beautiful, can't stand clothes that have no shape to them. Um, which is a huge thing right now. And I am also not a big fan of sweatpants everywhere. Now hear me out. 'cause I know a lot of people will be offended because people do love their sweatpants.
I'll fight you. I also love my sweatpants. Okay? I love to dress comfy and I like to be cozy. I like comfortable things. However, I feel like it's gone a little too far when [01:03:00] nowadays. You can't go nowadays. Unc, that's the word you use. Go ahead. You can't really even go out on a regular day. Like, I feel like people actually look at me funny if I go to the grocery store wearing real clothes in the middle of the week.
Yeah. Like, they're like, why aren't you in your sweatpants? Like, why are you, why are you dressed? Mm-hmm. And like that sweat, like, I don't care if you guys wanna wear sweatpants, but I do care if you look at me weird because I'm wearing like a real outfit, like to go out in public. And I feel like people look at you like you're overdressed now if you just have a normal outfit on.
And I don't like that. I don't like feeling out of place for wearing like jeans and like a blouse, like a, instead of wearing sweatpants. Yeah, exactly. You know, and like, and, and of course that sometimes that's more me, right? 'cause you sh most people are like, well, why do you care what other people think about you when you're, you know, wearing?
I feel like it's, nobody wants to be over or underdressed for like Yes. The group that they're in. So like, I don't like feeling overdressed when I see that everyone around me is wearing sweatpants. And I guess that's a me problem. But I would like to ask [01:04:00] that all of you stop wearing sweatpants so that I can feel more comfortable.
Girl, no, I, I talked about this on our bonus episode. I gained a ton of weight this year from not being able to be active with my dumb hip, and I can only fit into sweatpants. So right now I'm wearing sweatpants and hats everywhere because I don't want people to even see me. So then if somebody like you, I get it.
Who's dressed nicely, sees me, I've got my hat on, I'm not making eye contact, I'm not looking at you. I know you were nice. Well then, see, you're not, you're not the one who's upsetting me then, who is doing this? If you're wearing, if you're dressing like me and wearing a hat like me, you don't wanna make eye contact with anyone.
So, I don't know. These are teenagers doing this to admit It's true. It's teenager. It also is true. Yeah. Well, sometimes I will come out, like of my room in the morning, like for after I've gotten ready for the day, and like I will really just be wearing like jeans and sneakers and like, I don't know, like a cute shirt or something.
And. Even my kids will be like, where are you going today? Mm-hmm. Right? And I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. Like, I just got dressed. I mean, yeah, that would be a lot for me. So, um, very happy for you on that, [01:05:00] Mandy. Yeah, so that's, for me, I feel like it's just Gen Z closed. Gen Z clothes are not for me. I'm not, I'm not doing that in 2026.
And I hope that this style changes back too. I don't know. Back to what I feel like they're trying to also bring back Lowrise jeans and stuff. Nope. I don't want those. So, nope, we don't want that. We're not doing that. We are not doing that. Mm-hmm. But yeah, so I am definitely looking forward to 2026. Not looking forward to ai, not looking forward to, oh my gosh.
Stop bringing up the bad stuff, unc. I know, I know. My bad, my bad. All right, I guess we should just get outta here, Melissa. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, everyone. Have a great new year. We also are on YouTube. We've got videos that have been being worked on to be put on there to make it look more cool like the kids would do.
And so if you're not subscribed to that, please do subscribe. It would be really cool and very helpful. Um, and we love you all. We love you all. All right guys, we'll be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. [01:06:00] Bye.
