Whatever helps you justify the world around us.
There is nothing “ugly” about seeing insincere platitudes for what they are.
Ugliness in society is directed entirely at the one-sided war on the underclass and why they are not as successful as those who received different opportunities by design.
The self-help loop is exclusively designed to make money, not improve anyone’s lot.
Much of it explicitly makes a regular consumer worse off spiritually and economically.
I don’t justify
I just say you turn things upside down
I think that their point is that the rich and powerful get to define what is ugly and what is not. Having bad teeth is ugly. Looking down on someone for their wealth is ugly. Employing hundreds of low wage workers is not ugly, and is in fact viewed by most as a mark of success and enviable. Launching tourists into space for no real reason is not ugly. But sleeping on the street is ugly as hell.
I’ll never forget where I was when my dad told me the joke (not realizing it was a joke at first):
Q: how do you make a small fortune?
A: you start with a bigger one. 
Not pissing away an inheritance can be a success in itself. Depends on your definition of success.
Exactly, “have you tried working hard? work harder!” is on the level of “have you tried not being ugly? have your parents buy you a set of veneers!” in banalities.
Ultimately the struggle with many of us comes from wanting strategies to finding and building on internal inspiration and that does not often come from gurus who have through the same successes that give them a position of “authority” been removed from plane of needs us little people exist in and don’t speak as useful in implementation to our mortal struggles.
Day to day I’m so much better off with understanding, caring live humans of a similar “level” of being to bounce my blockers and doubt off than I am with decrees on high.
It’s not exclusive to class differential, but the differential is correlated to the level of unquestioned authority a person is granted in their advice for others.
They are a success, therefore no matter what they say, the words are reflective of a person of success, independent of the material conditions of their success and others, and their ability to express what worked for them beyond “it worked for me”.
They only define, if you follow them
We are not presented with the opportunity to step out of the reality the exceedingly small number of ultra-wealthy individuals create through their use of wealth. Not that Rubin discussed here is a billionaire, but comparatively day to day not engaged with any degree of “journeyman” creative.
Thankfully we are also presented with the opportunity to not take their advice on how to live and strive seriously when dictated to us working class individuals.
No thank you to that! 
Again, if it works for you, great!
Most of us dismissing the usefulness of these podcast guests and bookwriters find it hard to relate to our own struggles and efforts and moving from frustrating aspects “hard work” to smarter use of our time and being able to rely on our own gifts.
I don’t think inequity is good
I don’t think YouTube is good
I do think people are born with benefits in life
I don’t think the world is fair or unfair
I do see some people have more luck than others.
But don’t say the successful person is born lucky. This makes the not-born-beneficial person chanceless
Many things Rick Rubin talks about, they fit for everyone. If you are a busker, if you are a father, if you are a workaholic.
Hé want to share his knowledge (maybe as a narcist, I don’t know and I don’t care). I can use it, or I can decide not to use it.
But it is not about YouTube here, or about a guru. That is not what Rick Rubin makes of it. That’s what others make of it.
Sure, I’d be willing to guess that at least a few of us grew up around narcissistic family systems as well.
Problems with narcissism-
For comparison any authority based on interest in doing sincere good as compared to authority based entirely on established successes is key to why many are wary of the tar pit of self-help that can keep people rooted in self-blame (you just need to work harder, i’m helping!) and from finding their own way that does not match the narrative of how the greats became great and why starving artists die alone, impoverished, and undiscovered.
That is not true at all. Society gives you opportunities based on their perception of you. Rich and powerful people can control media and so can control those perceptions. I can believe myself to be a supermodel but if I don’t look like the ones in the magazines I’m not gonna get a job supermodelling.
Influence the way others perceive you
And don’t consume media
Its not about being super, it is about making the best out of it
I’m sorry but I just don’t have the money to influence very many people’s opinions.
You don’t need money for that
Alright, I want to influence millions of people, how do you do it with no money? Reliably.
Such a great quote. This one resonates with me because I’ve spent $100,000 in the last 4 years for our kid to be in a position to take those shots. He would never have been able to take those shots as a youth hockey player, if not for our resources.
Being a psychologist working in music business (again), I recognize a lot of what Rick Rubin says. Next to this, focus on lifestyle will be the most powerful next step in medicine and psychology. We live in a world that supports unhealthy and la6 lifestyle. Maybe he can be perceived as an annoying ‘guru’, I think what he says makes sense. He is not telling how to be Superman. It is about how to get the best out of yourself.
Don’t want to be rude (I am Dutch)
But if you focus on this, you behave like a victim. I think there are many ways to be free. Freedome is a state
You are a psychologist in the music industry who does not take into account the basic material conditions of existence, neurotypicality and why any of that is correlated to “unhealthy lifestyles”?
We have a fundamental break in lived reality and your driving need here to displace blame for those conditions of existence and any mental states derived from which.
“Lifestyles” being the problem over lifestyles developing around these material conditions, eesh.
I do
But I help individuals
Improving themselves
And who gets to use your services? Who has the resources to access “self improvement”? We all need to eat so I know you aren’t giving your services away. And you aren’t wholly wrong about the victim mindset, always thinking about what you can’t do instead of what you can. But we also need to recognize that there truly are certain things that we cannot do but that rich people can.
I have been trying to start a modular synthesizer company. I have a little money saved up but not a lot. If I asked the CEO of korg for advice on how to build a synthesizer they would tell me to hire engineers, graphic designers, manufacturing technicians, etc. I cannot take that advice, and trying to build a company on that advice would be very foolish. I think that what most people here are saying is not that Rick shouldn’t give advice, just that we should all know that the advice is relevant to a vanishingly small number of people. Now in your field of work that is a slightly less vanishingly small number of people, so I can see how the advice might be relevant.
Me asking the CEO of korg how to make a synth would be about as useful to me as many of the people here asking Rick Rubin advice about making music.