"Is that your absolute free decision though, or are you just saying that because of societal expectations?"
"Oh it's authentic. Also I've authentically called the cops just fyi."

Despite popular imagination, people like Sartre never really talk about "the meaning of life". In fact he only mentions it once as far as I can tell, where "meaning" is used as "interpretation", making the point that we interpret our own lives in the same way we interpret novels - after the fact. So if we die halfway through a project, our interpretation might be totally different, so we shouldn't really be too worried about it, in a sense. What matters is our freedom and the decisions we actually make.
Oh and also he was a huge pervert.

John Brown was a deep Christian too, so I don't know maybe there is something to it after all.

Simone Weil was an early 20th century philosopher, and communist. She dedicated most of her early life to politics doing things like building unions and even working in factories to understand the plight of the common worker, for the goal of communism. At this point she was a dedicated pacifist, having witnessed the horror of World War I. However, around the outbreak of World War II she converted to Catholicism, and far from curbing her political aims, she abandoned pacifism and picked up a gun to try to shoot Fascists in Spain, and later trying anything to help the war effort. I went on Rev Left Radio a while ago to talk about her full biography.

The problem with believing society always progresses is that you must also believe that reason always wins the power struggle against stupidity, which I don't know...I'm just not too sure about these days.

The reason the English don't like spicy food is because they never evolved to be fully human.

Nietzsche said “to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”, essentially believing that humans do not even wish to avoid suffering, but only find meaning in the suffering they endure. What's interesting about this, in the context of spicy peppers, is that humans actually enjoy eating them. Peppers evolved specifically to avoid being eaten by mammals, by activating our nerves with something called “capsaicin” that makes us literally feel like we are burning. Birds don’t respond the same way, so all the seeds get eaten by birds, which is better for the plant since birds fly farther away, and don’t chew the seeds.
As a result, all mammals (aside from the treeshrew, which seems to evolved an immunity) do not eat spicy peppers. All mammals, of course, except humans. Humans have a higher thought capacity that allows us to understand that we aren’t really burning, and there is no real danger. What’s interesting though is that this doesn’t just result in us bearing the suffering to reap the reward of the pepper’s nourishment. Humans actually enjoy the burn. In fact, in a strange twist of fate, the only animal on earth to enjoy peppers also made peppers one of the most successful plants on earth, because we also happened to be the only animal that cultivates plants on purpose. Chili peppers spread across the globe, and in fact were specially bred to be more spicy and burn us more. Humans seem to enjoy the very sensation of suffering.
Of course, everyone still seems to have a “limit” to how much spice they enjoy. Once you go past it, the physical reality of the pepper sensation overpowers the strange enjoyment we get from pretending our mouth is on fire, and it returns to the animal state of mere suffering. There is, however, an exception even to this. The premise of the YouTube show “Hot Ones” is of course based on this principle: it is actually pretty funny to subject ourselves to extreme pain on purpose. Ever since they bred spicy peppers that are too hot for anyone to reasonably enjoy, dudes have been daring each other to eat them for a laugh. So while humans have transcended the animal state, which responds to mere stimulus to make decisions (mouth hot! don’t eat!), and converted the pain to pleasure with knowledge, we can further transcend even our humanity and convert the higher level of suffering to pleasure, through will power.
This is why Conan O’Brian is the true existential hero of the show. Not only did Conan enjoy his suffering, because it was funnier the more he suffered, but his pleasure was directly tied to the suffering. He would have, in fact, been quite disappointed if he had not suffered, having been robbed of the goal of his directed will. He wished to suffer for glory, and to creatively construct a great episode and lasting memory for the show. This is Nietzsche’s rebuke of utilitarianism – mankind should seek to transcend lower goals of mere pleasure and pain so that they can instead create great art from their force of will. This is why we can say, I think quite confidently, that Conan O’Brian has at last achieved Nietzsche’s ultimate goal of transcending his humanity and becoming an Ubermensch.

Am a cynical? Yeah maybe, the YouTube algorithm has been recommending me a log of myopic videos lately.

If you love stinging and irony enough, it all adds up. Plus it's a pretty funny way to die, so you've got that going for you.