Welcome to the 2025 Grievance Games™—where outrage is strategy, victimhood is currency, and gold medals are earned by crying the loudest.
In this satirical episode of Stay in the Gray, Ryan Lafield kicks off the Grievance Games with commentary on identity politics, digital delusion, and the new Olympic sport of taking offense. From TikTok trauma to DEI theatrics, this is your front-row seat to the culture war’s participation trophy parade.
🎙 Topics:
– How performative victimhood became a skillset
– Cultural gatekeeping and micro-status battles
– Why satire is now considered violence (by the internet)
Trigger warning: Common sense ahead.
🎯 Hit Follow for more sharp takes that hurt all the right feelings.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction to the Grievance Games
00:58 - Welcome to Stay in the Gray Podcast
01:36 - Cinco de Mayo and Victimhood
02:11 - The First Annual Grievance Games
03:34 - Opening Ceremony and Competitions
07:30 - Race, Reality, and Rewards of Victimhood
08:45 - Middle Class Struggles and Accountability
13:45 - Closing Thoughts and Future Plans
00:00:00
The stakes are imaginary, and currency is not medals, it's
00:00:05
victim points. Forget strength.
00:00:07
Forget grit. The real gold medal goes to
00:00:10
whoever can cry the loudest while holding their iPhone 15
00:00:13
Pro. I see tenured professors who
00:00:15
think free speech equals violence.
00:00:17
And look Meghan Markle clutching her royal trauma in a front row
00:00:22
section reserved exclusively for people offended that my podcast
00:00:25
even exists. And I could say such things.
00:00:28
Michelle Obama says she's never felt safe in America.
00:00:31
So sad while she rides around in motorcades with a Netflix deal
00:00:35
and Secret Service in tow. The mental gymnastics there.
00:00:39
Let's not forget the Celebrity DEI relay race sponsored by Ben
00:00:43
and Jerry's Amazon and every company trying to sell Rebellion
00:00:47
with a barcode. Welcome to Stay in the Grave
00:01:00
podcast. I'm your host, Ryan, and I'm
00:01:02
here to bring you raw conversations about life and
00:01:05
those undeniable human truths. We dive into the chaos one issue
00:01:10
at a time, blending comedy, controversy, and the
00:01:14
unexplainable. Get ready for transparent ideas
00:01:21
straight from the Gray areas where most answers are hiding.
00:01:26
So stay curious, stay inquisitive, please stay
00:01:30
laughing, stay in the Gray. Come check it out.
00:01:33
We'll see you there. Hey guys, good to be back.
00:01:40
It is Cinco de Mayo, May the 5th.
00:01:44
I was told I'm not allowed to celebrate Cinco de Mayo from
00:01:48
some of the liberals who claim that if you're supporting
00:01:54
illegal criminals being deported then we shouldn't be able to
00:01:57
celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I was unaware that that was a
00:02:00
holiday that supported illegal immigration.
00:02:04
Correct me if I'm wrong, but everybody be safe, have fun
00:02:08
drinks and margaritas and let's get it rolling.
00:02:12
It just fit to say that because I'm going to talk more about
00:02:16
this idea of victimhood, this idea of this just daily
00:02:19
oppression that people claim that they have in this country,
00:02:24
and it's kind of beyond me. I'm kind of just baffled by the
00:02:27
whole thing. So the best way to deliver is
00:02:29
this to you, I thought would be to have some fun.
00:02:32
And I've invited you all to the Grievance Games.
00:02:38
It's the first annual edition, and I'll probably do it more
00:02:42
than once a year. But welcome and let's talk.
00:02:46
Who's more oppressed today? This is the Grievance Games,
00:02:50
where unwarranted outrage is the sport and everyone's a
00:02:55
contender. So here we go, ladies and
00:02:59
gentlemen, I'm sorry. I'm so excited.
00:03:03
This is the most anticipated competition of the modern world,
00:03:06
the 2025 Grievance Games. So here we go.
00:03:09
It's where nobody lifts a finger, but everyone lifts
00:03:11
emotional baggage. Where the competition is fierce,
00:03:15
the stakes are imaginary, and currency is not medals, it's
00:03:20
victim points. Forget strength, forget grit.
00:03:26
The real gold medal goes to whoever can cry the loudest
00:03:29
while holding their iPhone 15 Pro.
00:03:31
So let's get right to it. Here's our opening ceremony.
00:03:34
Let's get things started with the lighting of the woke torch
00:03:37
fueled by moral outrage and soy lattes in the crowd tonight.
00:03:42
Wow. I see influencers with self
00:03:43
diagnosed anxiety from TikTok. I see tenured professors who
00:03:47
think free speech equals violence.
00:03:50
And look, Meghan Markle clutching her royal trauma in a
00:03:55
front row section reserved exclusively for people offended
00:03:58
that my podcast even exists and that I could say such things.
00:04:04
By the way, there are no US flags allowed at these games
00:04:07
unless it's no national flags. Even unless it's Ukraine,
00:04:12
Palestine, rainbow flags, triangle flags, or a
00:04:15
postmodernist remix of both. Let the games begin.
00:04:21
All right, so here's this year's schedule.
00:04:23
We've got the 100m Microaggression dash.
00:04:27
Contestants race to spot, label and tweet out microaggression.
00:04:32
I'm familiar with that event. UC Smollett gets an honorary
00:04:36
ribbon for sprinting backward into his own hate crime hoax.
00:04:43
We have the emotional support animal javelin throw.
00:04:46
Competitors claim PTSD because someone wore a Pocahontas
00:04:50
costume in 2014. That's a no no, then.
00:04:55
Speaking of the cultural appropriation vault, watch the
00:04:58
outraged soar when a white girl wears braids.
00:05:02
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift got black for cornrows even though
00:05:06
she's donated to every woke charity possible.
00:05:10
No one, no one is exempt. Goodness, we have the cancel
00:05:18
culture high jump. See who can leap to the most
00:05:21
extreme conclusion about 12 year old Facebook posts and someone
00:05:25
get someone fired faster then you can say context.
00:05:31
The privileged triathlon, white guilt, swimming, male shame,
00:05:35
cycling and cisgender apologizing hurdles.
00:05:40
Michelle Obama says she's never felt safe in America.
00:05:43
It's so sad while she rides around in motorcades with a
00:05:48
Netflix deal and Secret Service in tow.
00:05:51
The mental gymnastics there. Gold medal level for Michelle
00:05:56
Obama. How's your podcast doing?
00:06:02
Don't compare to my numbers. I'm not known.
00:06:04
I'm not worth $80 million. Let's talk about the updated
00:06:09
medal count now that you're all wondering in gold, I'll say in
00:06:14
in the lead. We've got systemic oppression
00:06:17
screaming. How about Patrice Cullers, Co
00:06:21
founder of Black Lives Matter, now the proud owner of multiple
00:06:25
homes. She says capitalism is slavery
00:06:30
right before cashing her 6 digit check from Nike.
00:06:36
In 2nd place we have cultural victimhood Endurance, the gender
00:06:42
studies major who's oppressed because someone disagreed with
00:06:45
their pronouns in a women's restroom.
00:06:49
Coming up in 3rd Bronze, we've got historic suffering
00:06:53
continuation, the 4th Degeneration, Ivy Leaguer who
00:06:57
identifies as historically marginalized because her great
00:07:02
great grandmother was looked at funny on a trolley in 1911.
00:07:06
Let's not forget the Celebrity DEI relay race sponsored by Ben
00:07:11
and Jerry's Amazon and every company trying to sell Rebellion
00:07:14
with a barcode. And of course, we cannot forget
00:07:19
Lady Gaga thanking her trauma while standing on stage in a
00:07:24
$100 dress next to Tony Bennett.
00:07:27
Life is hard. Let's talk quickly about race,
00:07:33
reality, and the rewards of victimhood.
00:07:37
Look, history sucks. Slavery sucks.
00:07:41
Slavery was real. Jim Crow was real.
00:07:46
But here's the thing. It's 2025.
00:07:50
People don't like when I say that, but it's true.
00:07:53
You need to think about it. We've had a black president.
00:07:56
We have black billionaires, CEOs, justices and moguls
00:08:01
building empires and still. But what do we hear?
00:08:06
America was built on our backs. Cool, now you're building
00:08:11
generational wealth on America's dime.
00:08:15
There are scholarships, hiring quotas, DEI roles, some of which
00:08:20
flat out exclude white or male applicants.
00:08:24
Heaven forbid we point that out, we become racist.
00:08:30
Meanwhile, Colin Kaepernick is still cashing out an oppression.
00:08:34
Excuse me? He's cashing in on oppression
00:08:36
while starring in a Netflix documentary about himself and
00:08:41
regular folks. They're just paying the bills.
00:08:45
Meanwhile, in the real world, while this circus plays out on
00:08:49
Twitter, Bob from Nebraska is working three jobs just to stay
00:08:54
broke. He doesn't have a safe space.
00:08:57
He's not crying. He's got an old four with one
00:09:00
working door and a fridge full of processed baloney.
00:09:04
No victim grant, no rural white men in economic despair
00:09:09
scholarship crying about his lived experience.
00:09:14
He's not in the Grievance Games, he's in The Hunger Games.
00:09:19
But nobody's watching. So for the closing ceremony
00:09:22
today, let's salute this year's Grievance Games champions the
00:09:27
gold goes to, such as social justice influencer crying on
00:09:31
Instagram from their luxury suite in Bali.
00:09:34
I'm going to give silver to the professor demanding reparations
00:09:39
before heading out on a $30 lecture tour.
00:09:42
Bronze, let's go to the ginger. Excuse me, the gender non binary
00:09:47
activists protesting fascism with signs made from Amazon
00:09:51
Prime boxes and Chai lattes in hand.
00:09:55
Take your medals, cry into your oat milk and shove them up your
00:10:00
ass. And remember, in the grievance
00:10:03
games, it's not about overcoming adversity now, it's about
00:10:06
monetizing it. That's the games.
00:10:09
That was it. You needed to hear it delivered
00:10:12
in a way that perhaps sounded so silly and so outlandish that
00:10:19
perhaps you'll go, hey, it was true.
00:10:23
Ryan's not just spouting off some silly one liners.
00:10:27
These things actually apply. I'm getting so tired of hearing
00:10:32
how everybody's a victim and how it's everybody else's fault.
00:10:37
Meanwhile, the middle class goes to work, comes home, pays their
00:10:41
taxes, sends their kids their kids to school, and they're
00:10:46
basically funding the country and they're funding all of these
00:10:49
people to to whine and cry this GoFundMe nonsense that we have
00:10:55
now. The Carmelo Anthony case, which
00:10:58
I've talked a lot about in conversations at nauseam on
00:11:02
social media, the fact that a killer could raise this much
00:11:05
money on these social on these platforms where people donate is
00:11:12
insane. It's beyond me.
00:11:14
There's another case just the other day where a woman yelled
00:11:19
at a 5 year old black boy in the park because he was in her bag
00:11:26
looking or just just going through a bag and she ran up and
00:11:30
I believe she was yelling racial slurs at him and saying he was
00:11:35
acting like a certain culture because he was rifling through
00:11:40
her bag. Well it turns out this boy has,
00:11:43
I believe he's autistic. Forgive me if it's something
00:11:47
else, but there's something, there's an issue with this this
00:11:49
young boy to where he would do that without thinking it was any
00:11:53
big deal. And even if he he wasn't, he's 5
00:11:56
and it's just kind of a whoa. But this woman has, I think
00:12:02
she's almost earned $800 on a GoFundMe type page because now
00:12:08
her life's being threatened by, by people and she's having to,
00:12:12
everyone has to relocate now when they, when they get into
00:12:16
the spotlight and it's this poor me, poor me, poor me.
00:12:21
And nobody's stepping up and taking responsibility for their
00:12:24
actions. There's no accountability, No.
00:12:27
Am I comparing yelling at a kid verbally to stabbing somebody
00:12:33
and killing them? No, you can't.
00:12:38
And that, that that would be the case if, if this, this woman was
00:12:41
black and, and Carmelo was white, it'd be the exact same
00:12:44
situation. Don't tell me otherwise.
00:12:48
But just the idea that everybody's like poor me and
00:12:53
they're to blame, they're to blame, they're to blame.
00:12:55
And it's just, it's, it's, it's ridiculous.
00:12:58
And so I've started the grievance Games and I'm looking
00:13:02
to build on that idea. If anybody has an ideas for some
00:13:07
of the events or some of the awards, I would love to have a
00:13:14
bunch of gold medals to hand out at the Grievance Games.
00:13:18
So help me with that. I'm going to push this idea
00:13:21
because I think it's, it's, it's healthy to, to laugh about
00:13:25
things. That's what I've always tried to
00:13:27
do. And I'm going to keep doing it
00:13:28
now. I'm going to keep delivering the
00:13:30
grievance games to you and, and hopefully it catches on.
00:13:32
Hopefully people enjoy it. So that today was the 1st
00:13:35
edition. So give me a break.
00:13:38
If if there was some stuttering or you didn't quite, you weren't
00:13:41
feeling it, give it another opportunity because I really
00:13:43
think this is going to catch on. So in the meantime, this is a
00:13:47
short episode today. I hope everybody is doing well.
00:13:51
And but like I said, it's important to laugh.
00:13:53
It's important to talk about these things in a way where
00:13:56
everybody can kind of get on the same page.
00:13:58
And I think that there are a lot of things that are happening
00:14:01
right now that are just unbelievable when it comes to
00:14:08
the things that are being said and the the, the way people are
00:14:12
reacting. The DEI conversations.
00:14:16
The biggest one right now are Americans who are actually
00:14:24
protesting and freaking out because illegal immigrants,
00:14:30
especially the ones who have committed further crimes, most
00:14:34
of them violent, are being shown the door and deported.
00:14:41
A lot of these people who are upset about this, they're not
00:14:45
upset about this, they just don't like Donald Trump are
00:14:48
saying due process. Well, if they're found, if it's
00:14:52
a fact that they're here illegally, there's no due
00:14:56
process. They're here illegally.
00:14:57
It's not like you need a trial to say that they're out.
00:15:01
This is not the the defense of these people is is beyond me.
00:15:07
And it's just another example of the wrong person being the
00:15:12
victim. So in a sense, you could put
00:15:15
these people who are being deported in one of these events.
00:15:19
You could even put the people who are crying for them in one
00:15:23
of these events. Probably the, the, the biggest
00:15:27
criers are these politicians who are actually going down to El
00:15:31
Salvador, I believe, and shaking the hands of these guys and
00:15:34
apologizing. We're sorry that we kicked your
00:15:38
ass out of our country. It, it's just, it's disgusting
00:15:46
to see where allegiance lies in our own country.
00:15:51
And so to connect humor and sarcasm to these problems is
00:15:57
something I'm going to try and do because nothing else seems to
00:16:01
work. Everybody gets so fired up and,
00:16:05
and, and before they really listen and before they
00:16:07
understand and before they say, OK, I, I see Ryan's point.
00:16:11
Let's just yell at him instead. That's more fun.
00:16:14
And it doesn't do anything. It just riles everybody up and,
00:16:18
and nobody talks. So let's try and have some fun
00:16:22
with it. And if you have something to
00:16:23
add, then please do. I'm getting lots of comments and
00:16:26
I'm really, I appreciate everyone of you that's
00:16:29
commenting on social media. Keep doing it.
00:16:32
Like and subscribe it. Pass the word along.
00:16:34
I know that there's a lot of frustration about this issue
00:16:37
from people who are like minded to me, so pass it along.
00:16:41
Somebody brings up this topic, say hey, I got the show for you
00:16:45
and pretty soon hopefully you'll have some Grievance Games
00:16:49
merchandise available because I think this thing can catch on
00:16:54
and I think everybody is. I think a lot of people are
00:16:56
feeling the way I am. And so we need to to latch onto
00:16:59
something and unite when it comes to this.
00:17:02
So thanks for tuning in until the next Grievance Games.
00:17:07
I congratulations to all of our champions and I'll see you guys
00:17:12
next time. Love you.