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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the

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Speaker 1: very worst people in all of history. And we have

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Speaker 1: a very special episode for you this week. I've been

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Speaker 1: burning the midnight oil because we have as a guest

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Speaker 1: this week, my old boss and current New York Times

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Speaker 1: bestselling author, several times over, Jason Pargin. Jason, welcome back

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Speaker 1: to the show. Thank you.

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Speaker 2: I get so nervous doing this show because of the

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Speaker 2: subject matter. It seems like it's so easy to fall

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Speaker 2: into saying something that can be taken out of context. Like, well,

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Speaker 2: now that is one thing I admit I do like

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Speaker 2: about Bill Cosby. And then one of my enemies is

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Speaker 2: going to pull that out. And then I'm sitting here

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Speaker 2: trying to launch a book and they're going to put

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Speaker 2: that all over TikTok and Reels because it's out of context.

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Speaker 2: Like in this episode, if I say the phrase... I'm

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Speaker 2: not saying I'm going to say it, but if I

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Speaker 2: say the phrase, I'm kind of glad that guy got shot,

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Speaker 2: don't pull that. It's illegal for you to pull that

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Speaker 2: out without including the context. I will take you to court.

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Speaker 1: There is one guy who you'll be glad gets shot

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Speaker 1: in this episode. Or at least I'm glad. Look, I'm

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Speaker 1: willing to admit it. He shot himself.

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Speaker 3: Jason, do you want to give us a plug for

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Speaker 3: your latest book that's coming out up top?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's plug your book.

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Speaker 2: Sure. It is book five in the John Dies at

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Speaker 2: the End series that some of you will be familiar with.

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Speaker 2: And the title is, There Are No Giant Crabs in

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Speaker 2: This Novel, A Novel of Giant Crabs. And it should

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Speaker 2: be available probably when you listen to this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, at least in ebook form.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. We're hoping. If you're not familiar in the book industry,

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Speaker 2: there's issues with paper shortages. I guess there's some disruptions

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Speaker 2: to things in the world, to supplies of all things

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Speaker 2: from all countries.

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Speaker 1: I've heard about that.

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Speaker 2: And I don't want to act like I'm the worst

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Speaker 2: victim because I think part of it has to do

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Speaker 2: with fuel prices and diesel prices, which I think is

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Speaker 2: due to wars that have killed many, many people. Don't

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Speaker 2: want to act like... Don't take this out of context

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Speaker 2: that I think I am the greatest victim of the

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Speaker 2: wars happening all over the world. I realize I am

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Speaker 2: one small part of all of this. But anyways, in theory,

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Speaker 2: the book should be available by the time you listen

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Speaker 2: to this in probably almost any format. And if you

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Speaker 2: listen to this many years from now, may not be

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Speaker 2: available again. Who can say?

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Speaker 1: We can say we're all potentially making lost media every

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Speaker 1: time we create anything. Well, yeah, you said that.

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Speaker 2: I was your old boss at crack. There's no evidence

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Speaker 2: of that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, not anymore.

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Speaker 2: All that stuff has been deleted from the site. There's

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Speaker 2: no evidence either of us ever worked there.

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Speaker 1: Years of work just gone.

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Speaker 2: Which is crazy because I successfully predicted every single thing

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Speaker 2: that has happened since then. And now there's no way

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Speaker 2: to prove it.

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Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. Like right down to a couple

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Speaker 1: of weeks ago when the Brewers won that latest game.

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Speaker 1: You know, you got it all.

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Speaker 2: Did a whole column about that.

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Speaker 1: People thought it was weird. You were writing a lot

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Speaker 1: of articles about Milwaukee sports, but.

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Speaker 2: Now who's the fool?

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Speaker 1: Now who's the fool?

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Speaker 2: Still me.

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Speaker 1: There is evidence.

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Speaker 3: It's just, you know, protected by HIPAA because it's in

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Speaker 3: your therapist's log.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Jason, you came to me with the kind of pitch

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Speaker 1: you wanted to hear about this week, right? You wanted

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Speaker 1: to hear specifically about like some of these guys, they

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Speaker 1: generally get called nuisance streamers, right? Or rage baiters.

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Speaker 2: Well, I heard about it on the news because it

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Speaker 2: happened here where I live. Yes. In the great state

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Speaker 2: of Tennessee. And they were talking like I should know

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Speaker 2: what this is because they're like, well, you know, this

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Speaker 2: guy did his thing where he streamed himself going into

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Speaker 2: a restaurant and then shouting racial slurs at the staff

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Speaker 2: and then shot himself.

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: You're going to get into the story probably. And then

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Speaker 2: they're like, well, you know, he's a nuisance streamer. I

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Speaker 2: was like, he's a.

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Speaker 1: A what?

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Speaker 2: Is this another cyberpunk thing that has come true? Is

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Speaker 2: that what's happened?

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Speaker 1: That's actually where my script starts, Jason, because in 1992,

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Speaker 1: Neil Stevenson published the novel Snow Crash, which in the

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Speaker 1: years since has been credited with inventing or at least

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Speaker 1: predicting MMORPGs, social media, cryptocurrency, almost every mainstay of our

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Speaker 1: modern digital life, right? It really is a pretty remarkable book.

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Speaker 1: It's impossible to overemphasize how influential Snow Crash was, in

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Speaker 1: part because most, if not all, of the people who

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Speaker 1: coded or otherwise created all those things did so in

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Speaker 1: part because they read Snow Crash's kids, right? So there's

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Speaker 1: a lot in that book that might stick with the reader.

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Speaker 1: But the main thing that stuck in my mind after

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Speaker 1: reading it was the concept of a gargoyle. These were

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Speaker 1: side characters Stevenson included to illustrate the dangers of digital addiction. Quote,

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Speaker 1: instead of using laptops, they were computers on their bodies

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Speaker 1: broken up into separate modules that hang at the waist

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Speaker 1: on the back on the headset. They serve as human

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Speaker 1: surveillance devices recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider.

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Speaker 1: These get ups are the modern day equivalent of the

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Speaker 1: slide rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt.

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Speaker 1: marking the user as belonging to a class that is

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Speaker 1: at once above and far below human society. And we're

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Speaker 1: talking about those guys today.

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Speaker 2: But see this right away. This is fascinating to me

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Speaker 2: because you have one of the subjects, I know we

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Speaker 2: covered it back at Crack, not to keep mentioning Crack,

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Speaker 2: which again has none of our work still on it,

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Speaker 2: but the concept of technology making a new kind of

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Speaker 2: crime possible. Yeah. Because you think about like when the

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Speaker 2: telephone was invented and then five minutes later, The prank

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Speaker 2: caller pervert is like, wait a second, I can use

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Speaker 2: this to call women.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I can make people uncomfortable.

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Speaker 2: And then pleasure myself over the phone. I've been waiting

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Speaker 2: my whole life for this. Finally, they invented the thing

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Speaker 2: that's going to let me exercise my specific. And like here,

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Speaker 2: the ability to stream from the street to where walking

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Speaker 2: down the street, you can get upload speeds that can

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Speaker 2: keep you live streaming while you're doing God knows what.

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Speaker 2: That's brand new. Yeah. And it's like there's a type

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Speaker 2: of person who had been waiting their whole life Like,

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Speaker 2: here's a new kind of mischief I can do that technology, thank.

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Speaker 1: God, has enabled me to do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, this is what I like about AI,

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Speaker 2: because there's actually no way that can be misused.

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Speaker 1: No, no. Thankfully, we finally invented a technology that has

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Speaker 1: no downsides. But yeah, it is interesting. I remember when

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Speaker 1: I first went to my first CES around 2010 or 11,

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Speaker 1: which is the big consumer electronics show in LA every year.

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Speaker 1: They had people who were streaming live video from the show,

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Speaker 1: but it was a whole backpack. Their rigs were like

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Speaker 1: 30 or 40 pounds. This is just in 2010 or something, right?

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Speaker 1: It's not all that long ago. And yeah, now you

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Speaker 1: can do it on your phone and it's led to

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different kinds of content. There are just

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Speaker 1: a lot of people who just live stream their lives

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Speaker 1: and aren't trying to like fuck with other people. But

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Speaker 1: there's also an increasingly popular kind of content for live

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Speaker 1: streamers that just focuses around pissing people off, right? Like

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Speaker 1: what you're doing is going out in public to make

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Speaker 1: people react angrily to what you're doing or to make

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Speaker 1: them look like fools or to make them scared or uncomfortable, right?

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Speaker 2: Well, here's where I think it's really important to clarify,

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Speaker 2: because a lot of them call themselves prank streamers, where

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Speaker 2: they talk like they're doing what they do on Jackass,

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Speaker 2: or what Tom Green did. But it's like, okay, it's

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Speaker 2: not a prank to just run up to somebody and

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Speaker 2: start screaming racial slurs in their face. You've got to

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Speaker 2: have some element of a setup that would be fun

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Speaker 2: for somebody.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's... That's actually what's most upsetting to me,

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Speaker 1: because I think we'll get into this. This is fun

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Speaker 1: for people, but not in a way that I think

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Speaker 1: is a positive development for society. The fact that people

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Speaker 1: are having fun with what these folks are doing is

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Speaker 1: a pretty dark turn for the old human race, although

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Speaker 1: not an unprecedented one, as we'll discuss. But this kind

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Speaker 1: of content, these guys, as we've said, they go by

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Speaker 1: nuisance streamers, some people call them. And the type of

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Speaker 1: content they're doing, it also tends to be called rage baiting, right?

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Speaker 1: And rage baiting isn't just, you know, people streaming. It's

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Speaker 1: a thing, as we'll talk about, people have done online forever.

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Speaker 1: But probably the most relevant example of the nuisance streamer

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Speaker 1: archetype in the United States right now is Dalton Levi Etherly.

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Speaker 1: This is the guy you asked me about at the

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Speaker 1: start of the episode. He's better known as Chud the Builder.

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Speaker 1: And Etherly's origin story is unfortunately about what you'd expect.

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Speaker 1: He was in a car accident around 2024 or 2025,

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Speaker 1: like late 2024, early 2025. And the other car was

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Speaker 1: driven by a black woman. I think she had her

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Speaker 1: family with her. And they wound up like having an

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Speaker 1: altercation afterwards. And she takes a picture of him during

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Speaker 1: it where he's holding his cross out the window. And

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Speaker 1: she says that, like, he's shouting racial slurs at my family, right?

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Speaker 1: He's shouting the N-word at them over and over again.

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Speaker 1: Chud would later claim that he hit them with a

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Speaker 1: blessing because they were throwing drinks at his car. I

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Speaker 1: don't think there's any real evidence of– I mean, there's not–

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Speaker 1: this wasn't, like, fully documented. He's not streaming, so it's a–

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Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what happened. But the interaction, the

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Speaker 1: picture of him went somewhat viral because Etherly was very

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Speaker 1: obviously being an asshole in this situation. And he was

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Speaker 1: fired from his contracting job. So he gets in this

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Speaker 1: public altercation with a black person. He starts shouting racial

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Speaker 1: slurs and he loses his job. And within a few

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Speaker 1: months of this, he decides to adopt the name Chud

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Speaker 1: the Builder online and start live streaming, right? And the

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Speaker 1: specific thing he's doing per one arrest affidavit was filmed content,

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Speaker 1: including racially charged content on social media with the expressed

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Speaker 1: goal of provoking rage. He would do things like accost

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Speaker 1: strangers by walking up to them and like saying relevant

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Speaker 1: racial slurs on camera. And his goal was to provoke

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Speaker 1: reactions primarily from black people, which he branded chimp outs.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: That's like the the. thing that his content was usually

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Speaker 1: like filed under in social media. It's what his fans

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Speaker 1: came to expect. And he did a lot of other

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Speaker 1: infuriating stuff. On May 11th, 2026, Chud dined at a

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Speaker 1: restaurant in the Nashville area. He racked up an almost

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Speaker 1: $ 400 bill. He loudly and disruptively live-streamed at his table

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Speaker 1: until staff told him to stop. And at this point, he,

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Speaker 1: per an affidavit, grew disruptive and started making racial statements,

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Speaker 1: yelling and screaming. He began to insist he would not

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Speaker 1: pay if you are kicking me out, and then he

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Speaker 1: left the restaurant. Because that's like a $ 400 theft, the

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Speaker 1: restaurant called the police, and the police find Chud on

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Speaker 1: the street and arrest him. Days before this happened, he

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Speaker 1: had posted a video of himself macing a black man

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Speaker 1: and screaming the N-word at him in response to that

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Speaker 1: guy knocking a hat off his head, which I think

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Speaker 1: was in response to Chud saying racial slurs in public

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Speaker 1: in order to make money, right? Charming fella, right? This

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Speaker 1: is an interesting career pivot for a former contractor, but

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Speaker 1: he makes pretty good money doing it. Chet is mostly

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Speaker 1: streaming on Kik, which is a website we'll discuss in

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Speaker 1: more detail later, but in short, it exists because Twitch,

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Speaker 1: which is like the first of these live streaming services,

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Speaker 1: started kicking streamers off their service when they did stuff

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Speaker 1: like this, right? And so kick is the free speech alternative, right?

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Speaker 1: Like this happens with other social media stuff. It's like

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Speaker 1: Gab or something like that, you know? Since his streams

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Speaker 1: were long and largely boring, he monetized them primarily through

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Speaker 1: a complex content ecosystem that Will Sommer kind of describes

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Speaker 1: this very well in an article for The Bulwark. He

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Speaker 1: films these long videos and his fans, I think maybe

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Speaker 1: people he pays, clip out like the most offensive segments

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Speaker 1: and put them up on short videos with like his

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Speaker 1: cash app or his Venmo or whatever in there so

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Speaker 1: people can send him money because he made someone uncomfortable

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Speaker 1: by shouting racial slurs in public. That's his business, right?

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Speaker 1: That's how Chud makes his money.

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Speaker 2: Okay. I have eight or 9,000 questions about this.

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Speaker 1: Sure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, We don't know how much money he makes

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Speaker 2: off this, right? We don't know how big his audience is.

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Speaker 1: We have some evidence. He raised $ 65, 000 before the event

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Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, the shooting. He raised like

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Speaker 1: $ 65, 000 in a crowdfunding campaign. And he also launched a

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Speaker 1: meme coin, dollar sign Chud, which I imagine made him

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Speaker 1: some amount of money. I don't know how to tell there,

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Speaker 1: but he was raising a good amount of money.

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Speaker 3: I hate every word you just said.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not great. But he's making not insignificant money.

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Speaker 2: I'm trying not to make your episode sad. I know

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Speaker 2: people don't, they're not tuning into podcasts because they want

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Speaker 2: to be sad for the rest of the day. Sure.

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Speaker 2: I kind of thought this is a quirky, kind of

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Speaker 2: a weird subject. It's not like people are dying here.

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Speaker 2: But so far, this is the saddest thing I've ever

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Speaker 2: heard in my entire life.

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Speaker 1: It's really depressing. Yeah, it's super depressing.

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Speaker 2: So much of this could only, like, I assume he

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Speaker 2: had an NFT at some point, probably. Maybe he didn't

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Speaker 2: get it.

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Speaker 1: I think he may have been a little late for that, honestly, but.

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Speaker 2: There's like this vein in the economy that you can

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Speaker 2: worm yourself into, but only if you've done something extremely terrible.

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Speaker 2: And it's like this rebound effect of, because I don't know,

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Speaker 2: like if he was on the show, in fact, let's

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Speaker 2: bring him on now.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get Chet in from the waiting room.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. But if he was on the show, would he

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Speaker 2: describe this as like, well, it's a free speech thing. Yes.

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Speaker 2: I want to prove that speech is... Because I feel

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Speaker 2: like there's no place or time where saying certain things

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Speaker 2: in somebody's face would not get you struck by that person.

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Speaker 2: I'm not saying I approve of that. I don't get

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Speaker 2: into many fistfights in my life, but it is a

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Speaker 2: very normal part of human interaction. Somebody's out and about

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Speaker 2: and you start screaming slurs or whatever, that at some

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Speaker 2: point they're going to shove you or hit you or

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Speaker 2: do something. And if you call the police, they often

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Speaker 2: will not sympathize with you for instigating that. Like they recognize, no, that's,

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry, like that's an expected outcome of what occurred

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Speaker 2: here today.

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Speaker 1: Clearly being a giant asshole.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. This is not a free speech issue. This is

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Speaker 2: like living among other human beings. And he knows this.

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Speaker 2: Like him getting hit, that's the goal of the stream, right?

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes.

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Speaker 2: That's where he wants this to go.

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Speaker 1: It's unfortunately even darker than that, right? Because he does.

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Speaker 1: You were right. Like when he showed up on InfoWars

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Speaker 1: and he showed up on like Gavin McGinnis, the Proud

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Speaker 1: Boys founder's podcast or show or whatever. And he said

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Speaker 1: like it's a free speech. I'm trying to reclaim the

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Speaker 1: N-word for white people, which like– Reclaim? You know why

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Speaker 1: it was developed originally, right? Like he does, I'm sure.

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Speaker 1: But the fact that there's violence and the fact that

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Speaker 1: he might provoke violence by doing this is part of

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Speaker 1: the point. Will Sommer in his article describes it as

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Speaker 1: like a boomerang effect. Etherly will say deliberately and do

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Speaker 1: deliberately infuriating things to provoke a response, ideally from famous

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Speaker 1: people online, which then draws more people to his content

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Speaker 1: and more attention to his work. And attention is money.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It's just money.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: And he's been making pretty good money. And he's made

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Speaker 1: it very clear for at least several months prior to

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Speaker 1: what happens that his ultimate goal was to shoot and

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Speaker 1: kill someone over this. In December of 2025, he posted

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Speaker 1: to Twitter, series finale is dead chimp on the pavement

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Speaker 1: and you monkeys rioting when I walk free. So that's

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Speaker 1: not coded, really.

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Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. I know that somebody– I know there's places

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Speaker 2: online where people discuss these episodes. Somebody's going to say

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Speaker 2: that we're part of the problem because we are now

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Speaker 2: giving this guy publicity by talking about him. But this

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Speaker 2: is the paradox that people like him exploit because you

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Speaker 2: have a choice of either not talking about it and

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Speaker 2: then it just stands on its own or talking about it.

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Speaker 2: It's like, well, some– there's at least one chud in

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Speaker 2: the audience who's going to say like, oh, I actually

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Speaker 2: think that sounds hilarious. I'm going to go listen to it.

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Speaker 2: But in theory, this thing in society where you kind

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Speaker 2: of have to acknowledge and denounce bad behavior, but also

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Speaker 2: you're shining a light on it, and then the way

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Speaker 2: the attention economy works, you're also letting them profit from it.

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Speaker 2: In theory, somebody could ride that All the way to

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Speaker 2: the White House. Yeah. Just saying a series of outrageous

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Speaker 2: things every single day and then just dominating news coverage

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Speaker 2: and then until suddenly you're president. And that's my cyberpunk hypothetical.

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Speaker 2: God knows it.

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Speaker 1: It would never happen, obviously, in the real world.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, that's the whole point, is he knows that

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Speaker 2: there's no good way to– oppose this because if you

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Speaker 2: want to say like well just don't feed the trolls

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Speaker 2: it's like well that he's fine with that too because

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Speaker 2: he's eventually going to find somebody.

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Speaker 1: Yeah there's a world full of people and you're running

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Speaker 1: around shouting in their faces someone's going to react right

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who make livings in some

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Speaker 1: version of this we've had we have some streamers in

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Speaker 1: Portland who will show up in protest and just have

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Speaker 1: like literally put their cameras on people's bodies like to

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Speaker 1: provoke somebody to hit them so that they can then

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Speaker 1: crowdfund that like I got attacked you know for like

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Speaker 1: well You were like, it's not that good that you

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Speaker 1: got attacked, but you were trying to get attacked, right?

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Speaker 1: Like that was the purpose of you being here.

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Speaker 2: And I've heard of something called First Amendment auditors.

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Speaker 1: Auditors, yeah.

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Speaker 2: It's like packs of, is that those people or are

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Speaker 2: you talking about different people?

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Speaker 1: I would say First Amendment auditors, there's a spectrum because

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Speaker 1: some of them are doing stuff like showing up and

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Speaker 1: protesting in places that you're supposed to be allowed to

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Speaker 1: like have a sign or something. And if they get arrested,

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Speaker 1: they're suing the police department. There are some people where

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Speaker 1: I think there is more of a justification.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: But this is I mean, Chud is well past that line.

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Speaker 1: He is talking specifically like my goal is to provoke

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Speaker 1: someone to attack me because I always have a gun

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Speaker 1: on me and I will shoot them.

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Speaker 2: Right. Right.

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Speaker 1: Like that is a real the fact that he's stated

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Speaker 1: that outright is a very different, I think, wrinkle on

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Speaker 1: this and that there's money and being that kind of

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Speaker 1: guy now is a really different like that is new.

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Speaker 1: That that was not the case. Even a couple of

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Speaker 1: years ago, I wouldn't have imagined that working as a

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Speaker 1: business like. usually you would have had to hide a

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Speaker 1: little bit what you were doing, but Chud's very open

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Speaker 1: about it. And on the afternoon of May 13th, 2026,

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Speaker 1: two days after he was arrested in Nashville for ditching

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Speaker 1: out on that bill, Etherly was in Montgomery County Court

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Speaker 1: over a failure to pay $ 3, 000 owed to a credit

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Speaker 1: card company. Outside of the courthouse, he started streaming and

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Speaker 1: doing his usual thing, saying racial slurs and stuff, at

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Speaker 1: which point a man named Joshua Fox confronted him, and

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Speaker 1: Chud alleges this happened. He said, you start saying all

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Speaker 1: that chimp out shit to me and I'm gonna hit you.

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Speaker 1: And he hit me. He started wailing on me. And

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Speaker 1: even after I had to defend myself by shooting him.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So that's what happens. He's the Fox is a black man.

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Speaker 2: He's like.

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Speaker 1: Yelling racial slurs. Fox walks up to him and strikes him.

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Speaker 1: And he pulls his gun and starts blasting. He shoots Fox,

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Speaker 1: a disabled veteran and father of three, three times. Thankfully,

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Speaker 1: Fox survives. Several of his shots miss and ricochet off walls.

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Speaker 1: This is a crowded area. He could have hit numerous bystanders.

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Speaker 1: And he also shoots himself due to the fact that

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Speaker 1: he's just generally not super competent with a gun. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that is the one shooting I don't feel bad

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Speaker 1: about here. He's currently being charged with a bunch of crimes,

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Speaker 1: including attempted murder. And we'll talk a little bit more

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Speaker 1: about him in part two. But I want to, because,

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Speaker 1: you know, as you said, I don't want to focus

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Speaker 1: on this specific Chud for this episode. He's not worth

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Speaker 1: that much attention. What's much more worth discussing is how

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Speaker 1: did we get to the point Where this guy decided

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Speaker 1: confronting random black people with racial slurs and waiting for

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Speaker 1: an excuse to murder them on video was a good

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Speaker 1: career move. And how did we get to the point

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Speaker 1: where he has, as a spoiler, raised hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of dollars as a result of this?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 1: Because that's where we are right now. And that's what

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Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of unravel. One term you'll hear

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Speaker 1: used repeatedly in conjunction with Chud and the other nuisance

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Speaker 1: streamers we'll talk about this week is rage bait. Rage

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Speaker 1: baiting content is one of the pillars of modern social

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Speaker 1: media because all algorithmic social media prioritizes making you angry

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Speaker 1: in order to keep you engaged, right? It is a

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Speaker 1: part of the business model. Anger is a thing that

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Speaker 1: keeps you on the site, right? Like the more you engage,

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Speaker 1: the more people, the more they can put content that

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Speaker 1: pisses you off that you want to argue with, the

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Speaker 1: longer you stay on the site. Like it's everyone's business

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Speaker 1: model one way or the other. Some sites like Elon

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Speaker 1: Musk's X reward people with direct cash payments if they

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Speaker 1: generate rage effectively enough. The phrase rage bait, which the

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Speaker 1: Oxford University Press voted its word of the year in 2025,

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Speaker 1: actually has its origins on the pre-social Internet. New York

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Speaker 1: Times journalist Jennifer Schuessler traced it back to 2002, quote,

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Speaker 1: in a post on a Usenet discussion group to describe

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Speaker 1: a particular kind of driver reaction to being flashed by

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Speaker 1: another driver seeking to pass.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: It's it's when someone tries to pass you and like

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Speaker 1: the driver gets pissed off and tries to block them

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Speaker 1: for some completely illogical reason.

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Speaker 2: Right.

436
00:21:35,990 --> 00:21:38,650
Speaker 1: Like you're just trying to piss off the other driver, basically.

437
00:21:39,340 --> 00:21:42,020
Speaker 1: I doubt that's relevant to the terms modern popularity. This

438
00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:44,159
Speaker 1: strikes me as the kind of word that was reinvented

439
00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:47,699
Speaker 1: from first principles to describe modern online behavior. But the

440
00:21:47,740 --> 00:21:50,109
Speaker 1: fact that it came into existence decades earlier to describe

441
00:21:50,140 --> 00:21:52,990
Speaker 1: an offline behavior is relevant. It is important we acknowledge

442
00:21:53,030 --> 00:21:56,469
Speaker 1: that the impulses which make rage baiting content popular and

443
00:21:56,490 --> 00:21:59,210
Speaker 1: make guys like Chud able to make a shitload of

444
00:21:59,250 --> 00:22:02,990
Speaker 1: money don't originate online. They've always been with us, right?

445
00:22:03,030 --> 00:22:06,129
Speaker 1: This has always been a piece of the human experience.

446
00:22:07,180 --> 00:22:11,320
Speaker 2: Also, you want to hear a really weird theory? So

447
00:22:11,380 --> 00:22:13,780
Speaker 2: you can take two people walking down the sidewalk side

448
00:22:13,820 --> 00:22:16,320
Speaker 2: by side, and they are very friendly with each other.

449
00:22:16,340 --> 00:22:18,359
Speaker 2: If one bumps into the other, it's like, oh, excuse me.

450
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:20,600
Speaker 2: You take those two people and put them into two

451
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:24,869
Speaker 2: separate cars in traffic, and now they will casually try

452
00:22:24,940 --> 00:22:28,230
Speaker 2: to murder each other because there is something about being

453
00:22:28,310 --> 00:22:32,130
Speaker 2: in a car behind a windshield that just That other

454
00:22:32,210 --> 00:22:35,090
Speaker 2: person is not a human being. They are an obstacle.

455
00:22:35,130 --> 00:22:38,090
Speaker 2: They are your enemy. You have no charity toward them.

456
00:22:38,170 --> 00:22:44,110
Speaker 2: You have no grace. There's something weird about a windshield

457
00:22:44,790 --> 00:22:48,350
Speaker 2: and a screen on your phone and how you view

458
00:22:48,430 --> 00:22:50,649
Speaker 2: other human beings that is different than if you were

459
00:22:50,710 --> 00:22:53,609
Speaker 2: encountering them face-to-face standing in line at the grocery store.

460
00:22:53,630 --> 00:22:56,070
Speaker 2: You would be much more forgiving, but the moment you

461
00:22:56,130 --> 00:22:57,390
Speaker 2: have that gap.

462
00:22:57,690 --> 00:22:58,889
Speaker 1: Between you– You just want to kill them.

463
00:22:58,910 --> 00:23:01,580
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the fact that the idea of rage baiting

464
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:05,800
Speaker 2: comes from road rage, not that different of a phenomenon.

465
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:10,939
Speaker 1: No, it makes complete sense. The most logical thing around

466
00:23:10,980 --> 00:23:13,679
Speaker 1: the presidency is that we do not allow presidents to drive.

467
00:23:13,820 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 1: Because if any president had the chance to get behind

468
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,510
Speaker 1: the wheel, the nukes would already have been fired, right?

469
00:23:18,670 --> 00:23:19,290
Speaker 2: I would shoot.

470
00:23:19,590 --> 00:23:22,570
Speaker 1: Every time I've been in traffic, I would drop a nuke, right? Like,

471
00:23:23,109 --> 00:23:24,530
Speaker 1: on me, you know?

472
00:23:24,950 --> 00:23:27,230
Speaker 2: I literally didn't know that presidents were not allowed to drive,

473
00:23:27,250 --> 00:23:28,230
Speaker 2: but yeah, it makes perfect sense.

474
00:23:28,250 --> 00:23:29,030
Speaker 1: No, they are not.

475
00:23:29,810 --> 00:23:30,530
Speaker 2: Yeah.

476
00:23:30,810 --> 00:23:33,330
Speaker 1: So it's also equally worth acknowledging, in addition to the

477
00:23:33,369 --> 00:23:36,510
Speaker 1: fact that these impulses go back further than social media,

478
00:23:36,850 --> 00:23:40,690
Speaker 1: that making a nuisance by pissing people off has a

479
00:23:40,730 --> 00:23:43,679
Speaker 1: long and storied history online well before the dominance of

480
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:46,140
Speaker 1: social media. Jason, you and I both came up writing

481
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: for the internet. And from my earliest days, I remember

482
00:23:48,740 --> 00:23:52,080
Speaker 1: comment sections being hives of scum and villainy. Back at Cracked,

483
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 1: one of the first and most futile pieces of advice

484
00:23:54,260 --> 00:23:56,640
Speaker 1: we would give new writers is like, don't necessarily read

485
00:23:56,680 --> 00:23:57,220
Speaker 1: the comments.

486
00:23:57,770 --> 00:23:57,970
Speaker 3: Right.

487
00:23:58,030 --> 00:23:59,949
Speaker 1: There's going to be there's going to be fans in there,

488
00:23:59,970 --> 00:24:01,990
Speaker 1: but there's going to be people who are there trying

489
00:24:02,030 --> 00:24:02,930
Speaker 1: to troll you, too.

490
00:24:03,090 --> 00:24:03,250
Speaker 2: Right.

491
00:24:03,290 --> 00:24:06,690
Speaker 1: Like that's just the thing that happens with the comment section. And,

492
00:24:07,210 --> 00:24:09,730
Speaker 1: you know, I we didn't know it at the time,

493
00:24:09,770 --> 00:24:12,530
Speaker 1: but I think our struggle with and about commenters and

494
00:24:12,650 --> 00:24:14,729
Speaker 1: this is a bigger thing than, you know, the old

495
00:24:14,780 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 1: place we work. This is just like people know this

496
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:19,580
Speaker 1: about Internet comments. There's always people who are there just

497
00:24:19,619 --> 00:24:22,670
Speaker 1: to try to piss other people off. And I think

498
00:24:22,710 --> 00:24:25,570
Speaker 1: that that's kind of a prelude to this cottage industry, right?

499
00:24:25,590 --> 00:24:27,470
Speaker 1: You can see some of the impulses that wound up

500
00:24:27,530 --> 00:24:30,790
Speaker 1: feeding into this there as well. Nuisance streamers and other

501
00:24:30,850 --> 00:24:34,209
Speaker 1: rage baiters are part of the influencer industrial complex. And

502
00:24:34,330 --> 00:24:36,909
Speaker 1: it's hard to get accurate estimates of the size of

503
00:24:36,930 --> 00:24:40,070
Speaker 1: the influencer economy, as it's often called. But in October

504
00:24:40,090 --> 00:24:42,330
Speaker 1: of 2024, Goldman Sachs estimated it as a $ 250 billion

505
00:24:42,350 --> 00:24:49,100
Speaker 1: a year industry. Now, that Because sometimes you hear that

506
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:51,340
Speaker 1: and you think like, oh, so that's all like people

507
00:24:51,380 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: trying to sell stuff on TikTok. It's not quite that.

508
00:24:54,940 --> 00:24:57,179
Speaker 1: I think that this is also referred to as the

509
00:24:57,240 --> 00:24:59,659
Speaker 1: creator economy. So a lot of people get lumped in

510
00:24:59,880 --> 00:25:02,030
Speaker 1: as influencers who are in an earlier age would say, well,

511
00:25:02,050 --> 00:25:05,430
Speaker 1: that's a musician, right? That's a writer. Because to some extent,

512
00:25:05,510 --> 00:25:09,030
Speaker 1: anyone who wants to be a creative person has to

513
00:25:09,350 --> 00:25:12,810
Speaker 1: have that degree of like social media, like you have

514
00:25:12,850 --> 00:25:14,609
Speaker 1: to engage with people, right? You have to be able

515
00:25:14,630 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 1: to build a fan base. it's kind of necessary. But

516
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 1: a big chunk of that is people who are making

517
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:24,850
Speaker 1: their money with their primary marketable asset not being a

518
00:25:24,940 --> 00:25:27,629
Speaker 1: thing that they do, but being just their relationship with

519
00:25:27,650 --> 00:25:30,690
Speaker 1: their fan base, right? That's kind of the purest example

520
00:25:30,710 --> 00:25:33,870
Speaker 1: of the influencer economy, someone who is famous because they're

521
00:25:33,910 --> 00:25:35,750
Speaker 1: an influencer as opposed to, well, this is a musician

522
00:25:35,790 --> 00:25:37,210
Speaker 1: who I want to listen to, or this is a

523
00:25:37,250 --> 00:25:39,170
Speaker 1: writer that I want to listen to or an actor, right?

524
00:25:39,390 --> 00:25:41,950
Speaker 1: Like this person is just an influencer, you know? I

525
00:25:41,970 --> 00:25:44,930
Speaker 1: don't really know what chunk of that $ 250 billion a

526
00:25:45,050 --> 00:25:47,310
Speaker 1: year are people like that, but it certainly seems to

527
00:25:47,350 --> 00:25:48,370
Speaker 1: be growing, right?

528
00:25:49,230 --> 00:25:51,129
Speaker 2: And so many of them just came from the world of,

529
00:25:51,250 --> 00:25:54,950
Speaker 2: in terms of influencers, of just like reacting to video

530
00:25:54,970 --> 00:25:58,050
Speaker 2: games or reacting to, because people will ask, well, what

531
00:25:58,070 --> 00:26:01,350
Speaker 2: does Asmongold do? And it's like, well, he was a

532
00:26:01,450 --> 00:26:05,230
Speaker 2: World of Warcraft streamer and then pivoted to just watching

533
00:26:05,300 --> 00:26:07,460
Speaker 2: videos and reacting to them. But when you go on

534
00:26:07,500 --> 00:26:11,940
Speaker 2: these streams, these Twitch streams or wherever, it's people just

535
00:26:11,980 --> 00:26:15,160
Speaker 2: sending them money. Yeah, yeah. And then to have their

536
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:17,460
Speaker 2: name read on the streams, like, oh, whoever sent me $ 150,

537
00:26:17,380 --> 00:26:21,179
Speaker 2: thanks for the donation. And they're sending money to millionaires.

538
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:23,950
Speaker 2: And it's people sending a significant chunk of their meager

539
00:26:23,990 --> 00:26:27,229
Speaker 2: paycheck from Chipotle to a guy worth $ 100 million today.

540
00:26:28,410 --> 00:26:32,540
Speaker 1: And that's how it works because- That's baffling to me, yeah.

541
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 2: I know that part of it is I'm too old

542
00:26:35,100 --> 00:26:39,500
Speaker 2: to understand this because it's kind of new. But when

543
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 2: I was a kid, you bought an album from a

544
00:26:41,380 --> 00:26:43,280
Speaker 2: rock star, you got an album. The idea of just

545
00:26:43,460 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 2: mailing an envelope full of money to Nirvana and saying, hey,

546
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:51,200
Speaker 2: split this up among the band would have been crazy

547
00:26:51,260 --> 00:26:51,459
Speaker 2: to me.

548
00:26:52,090 --> 00:26:56,230
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really strange, but it is like this is

549
00:26:56,790 --> 00:27:00,179
Speaker 1: the dominant form of like influential media, certainly for the

550
00:27:00,220 --> 00:27:03,060
Speaker 1: very young, right? There's a reason this particular kind of

551
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:06,860
Speaker 1: relationship is so valuable. From 2019 to 2023, the number

552
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:09,820
Speaker 1: of Gen Z and millennial respondents to a morning consult

553
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:13,650
Speaker 1: poll who described themselves as trusting social media influencers grew

554
00:27:13,690 --> 00:27:15,409
Speaker 1: from 51 to 61%. 57% of young people listed their

555
00:27:15,450 --> 00:27:21,550
Speaker 1: dream career as influencer. And lest I be seen as

556
00:27:21,590 --> 00:27:25,169
Speaker 1: talking shit on the youngs, 41% of a morning consult

557
00:27:25,190 --> 00:27:30,470
Speaker 1: survey of 2,204 adults listed influencer as a dream career, right?

558
00:27:30,810 --> 00:27:36,050
Speaker 1: This is pretty much the most commonly desired life path

559
00:27:36,210 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: for people right now. The data is pretty consistent.

560
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 2: Okay, but here's the thing. I, in my current life

561
00:27:44,340 --> 00:27:47,220
Speaker 2: right now, sometimes struggle to explain to people what I

562
00:27:47,260 --> 00:27:50,400
Speaker 2: do for a living. And in fact, sometimes I lie.

563
00:27:52,510 --> 00:27:54,510
Speaker 2: But at least in my case, if they Googled me,

564
00:27:54,530 --> 00:27:57,150
Speaker 2: it would come up like, well, he's an author. He

565
00:27:57,190 --> 00:28:00,700
Speaker 2: writes books, yeah. He went on social media as part

566
00:28:00,740 --> 00:28:03,419
Speaker 2: of his being an author. And then hopefully they would

567
00:28:03,460 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 2: not notice that actually the entire audience is now TikTok

568
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 2: and Reels and hardly any of those people read my books, whatever.

569
00:28:11,340 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 2: But at least it's legible what I'm doing. If you're

570
00:28:13,540 --> 00:28:16,210
Speaker 2: somebody like Chud the Builder and people ask what you

571
00:28:16,250 --> 00:28:17,669
Speaker 2: do for a living, what does.

572
00:28:17,550 --> 00:28:22,770
Speaker 1: He tell people? Professional racist. I think influencer, there's not

573
00:28:22,810 --> 00:28:25,570
Speaker 1: a lot of, you know, we need to go to ads,

574
00:28:25,630 --> 00:28:27,250
Speaker 1: but I think kind of to put a bow on that,

575
00:28:27,750 --> 00:28:31,369
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a stigmatized profession, really. Like certain,

576
00:28:31,430 --> 00:28:33,830
Speaker 1: I think what Chud's doing is, but I don't think

577
00:28:33,890 --> 00:28:39,310
Speaker 1: influencing is anymore, right? Like it's deeply desired. And we'll

578
00:28:39,330 --> 00:28:41,370
Speaker 1: all sit with that while we listen to some ads,

579
00:28:41,530 --> 00:28:43,810
Speaker 1: because this is totally different from the thing that we're

580
00:28:43,850 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: talking about. And we're back. So I was talking about

581
00:28:54,670 --> 00:28:59,570
Speaker 1: how influencer is pretty much the most desired career among

582
00:28:59,590 --> 00:29:02,810
Speaker 1: young people. It is worth noting that basically everyone who

583
00:29:02,890 --> 00:29:06,830
Speaker 1: tries will fail miserably at that ambition, right? Roughly half

584
00:29:06,870 --> 00:29:09,290
Speaker 1: of the people who actually make money as an influencer

585
00:29:09,330 --> 00:29:12,260
Speaker 1: make less than 10 grand a year. Um, but these

586
00:29:12,300 --> 00:29:15,060
Speaker 1: episodes aren't about that separate, but related issue. We might

587
00:29:15,100 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: find this like, and I do want to note, cause

588
00:29:17,420 --> 00:29:19,700
Speaker 1: I also think sometimes it gets written as like, oh,

589
00:29:19,740 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 1: all the kids want to do is like sit on

590
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:25,020
Speaker 1: a live stream and have people send them money. When

591
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I think a similar number of

592
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:29,270
Speaker 1: people would have given their chief ambition as becoming some

593
00:29:29,330 --> 00:29:32,470
Speaker 1: form of celebrity and music or musician or actor or whatever.

594
00:29:32,490 --> 00:29:35,030
Speaker 1: So I think when we talk about like how everyone

595
00:29:35,070 --> 00:29:36,930
Speaker 1: wants to be an influencer, it's not so much that

596
00:29:36,970 --> 00:29:39,790
Speaker 1: like they were, they find that kind of thing possible.

597
00:29:40,210 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 1: intellectually appealing. It's that like, it's really hard out there

598
00:29:43,940 --> 00:29:46,540
Speaker 1: right now. College degrees don't get you what they used

599
00:29:46,580 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: to get you. And influencers make a shitload of money

600
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: and don't have to do much work. That's the, that's

601
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:53,060
Speaker 1: at least what people think, right? I think that's why

602
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 1: it's a desirable career is it's like, well, this is

603
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: a way better life than I'm going to get doing

604
00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:58,180
Speaker 1: any kind of straight job.

605
00:29:59,050 --> 00:30:01,270
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just a very human thing. You grow

606
00:30:01,330 --> 00:30:03,070
Speaker 2: up as a kid and you see what the adults

607
00:30:03,170 --> 00:30:06,170
Speaker 2: around you are doing and you determine, oh, that looks

608
00:30:06,250 --> 00:30:09,410
Speaker 2: cool or that looks lame. Or your dad is a plumber.

609
00:30:09,430 --> 00:30:12,420
Speaker 2: It's like, well, that job sucks. He seems to hate it.

610
00:30:13,110 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 2: So if you grow up and the people you interact

611
00:30:17,150 --> 00:30:20,780
Speaker 2: with are on a screen and there are other influencers, yeah,

612
00:30:21,060 --> 00:30:24,380
Speaker 2: it looks like... Something you could do, where if I

613
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:27,459
Speaker 2: was a kid, I would see a rock band and think, oh,

614
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 2: that would be cool to do that. But the first

615
00:30:29,010 --> 00:30:31,610
Speaker 2: time I tried to play an instrument, realized, oh, no,

616
00:30:31,690 --> 00:30:34,970
Speaker 2: I cannot, in fact, do that. Yeah. But that's why

617
00:30:35,010 --> 00:30:39,170
Speaker 2: it's so unhealthy, too, because especially, to make it clear,

618
00:30:39,310 --> 00:30:43,070
Speaker 2: anything I talk about, it's worse for young girls and women. Yeah.

619
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,820
Speaker 2: Because for them, when they're looking at an influencer on Instagram,

620
00:30:48,180 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily personality. It is looking a certain way,

621
00:30:52,220 --> 00:30:55,830
Speaker 2: being a certain weight, living a certain lifestyle. And it's like, well,

622
00:30:56,530 --> 00:31:00,210
Speaker 2: can you achieve that? Can you achieve that level of,

623
00:31:00,930 --> 00:31:03,010
Speaker 2: can you have her skin? Can you have her hair?

624
00:31:03,070 --> 00:31:07,080
Speaker 2: Can you be that level of being thin where they

625
00:31:07,140 --> 00:31:10,100
Speaker 2: already were thin and now they're taking Ozempic? Yeah. All

626
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 2: of the body image stuff where the thing that they're

627
00:31:13,100 --> 00:31:16,500
Speaker 2: doing is just being themselves. So if I can't do that,

628
00:31:16,540 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 2: then it's not because my guitar playing was bad. It's

629
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 2: because I am not good enough. Yeah. Because an influencer

630
00:31:23,900 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 2: is just putting their own being and their own personality

631
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 2: and their own lifestyle out there. So it's like, well,

632
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 2: if I'm not successful doing that, that's a condemnation of

633
00:31:34,740 --> 00:31:36,760
Speaker 2: my whole deal. Where if people don't buy my book,

634
00:31:36,820 --> 00:31:38,900
Speaker 2: it's like, well, who cares? That's just a thing I wrote.

635
00:31:39,550 --> 00:31:42,710
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, the corollary to that too, Jason,

636
00:31:42,730 --> 00:31:45,410
Speaker 1: is if you succeed at this, I think one of

637
00:31:45,490 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: the thoughts it sort of reinforces in your head is like, well,

638
00:31:48,220 --> 00:31:51,020
Speaker 1: if I'm making money at this, then I'm like, I'm

639
00:31:51,340 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: a good person. Like I'm doing good as a person, right?

640
00:31:53,500 --> 00:31:55,540
Speaker 1: Whatever I'm doing is the right thing if it's working.

641
00:31:55,580 --> 00:31:58,980
Speaker 1: You know, all that matters is the attention. So whatever

642
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,270
Speaker 1: is getting me attention and money is like ethical, right?

643
00:32:02,310 --> 00:32:05,010
Speaker 1: Like that is kind of the corollary to that, unfortunately.

644
00:32:05,030 --> 00:32:06,630
Speaker 1: And that is sort of what leads us to the

645
00:32:06,710 --> 00:32:12,010
Speaker 1: logic of nuisance streaming. Um, so I, I still have

646
00:32:12,090 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: some more, uh, groundwork to lay, right? Because just, just

647
00:32:15,660 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: talking about like rage baiting as a form of content

648
00:32:17,900 --> 00:32:20,500
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily lead us to chud the builder walking around

649
00:32:20,540 --> 00:32:23,469
Speaker 1: with a concealed gun, screaming racial slurs, right? You can

650
00:32:23,510 --> 00:32:25,870
Speaker 1: say like Ben Shapiro in the daily wire with their

651
00:32:25,930 --> 00:32:28,550
Speaker 1: liberal tears mugs, that's rage baiting, right? But it's a

652
00:32:28,550 --> 00:32:31,620
Speaker 1: very different kind of rage baiting, right? And I'd be

653
00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:34,690
Speaker 1: lying if I said 0% of this show's success came

654
00:32:34,730 --> 00:32:37,350
Speaker 1: from telling stories that piss people off, right? That's part

655
00:32:37,470 --> 00:32:39,430
Speaker 1: of what people come here for, is they know they're

656
00:32:39,470 --> 00:32:42,980
Speaker 1: going to hear something horrible that makes them angry and frustrated,

657
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: but hopefully informs them about the world more too, right?

658
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:48,380
Speaker 1: I don't think it's, again, not the same thing. But

659
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:54,090
Speaker 1: you can see there's some deeply buried things that people

660
00:32:54,190 --> 00:32:57,530
Speaker 1: respond to. Fear and anger are two of the big ones.

661
00:32:57,610 --> 00:33:01,750
Speaker 1: That's why social media profits from making you angry and afraid, right?

662
00:33:01,890 --> 00:33:06,270
Speaker 1: Is that it's, we're hardwired to care about stuff that

663
00:33:06,310 --> 00:33:08,070
Speaker 1: makes us feel that way. It's the same reason that

664
00:33:08,110 --> 00:33:10,830
Speaker 1: like people are hardwired to be interested in stories about

665
00:33:10,890 --> 00:33:13,969
Speaker 1: serial killers and shit, right? Is it feels relevant to

666
00:33:14,030 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: us if it scares us.

667
00:33:15,810 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 2: Okay, but also there's a mechanism here where by far

668
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 2: the best promotion for one of these streamers, the best

669
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,580
Speaker 2: way to break free of the platform into the mainstream

670
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:29,540
Speaker 2: is with some kind of scandal. Do you want to

671
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 2: guess the first time I ever heard of Logan Paul?

672
00:33:31,740 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be talking about that.

673
00:33:33,820 --> 00:33:35,260
Speaker 2: The thing in Japan, okay.

674
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 1: The thing in Japan, yeah.

675
00:33:37,100 --> 00:33:40,220
Speaker 2: But that's the first time I heard of the streamer Dr.

676
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,820
Speaker 2: Disrespect was because he had been banned from Twitch for

677
00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:43,700
Speaker 2: some sort.

678
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,090
Speaker 1: Of, Yeah, that's what gets you attention.

679
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:08,420
Speaker 2: It always helps them.

680
00:34:08,739 --> 00:34:09,839
Speaker 1: It always helps them.

681
00:34:09,900 --> 00:34:12,460
Speaker 2: Even if they get banned for a while, because it's

682
00:34:12,620 --> 00:34:14,569
Speaker 2: on the front page of the New York Times. So

683
00:34:14,620 --> 00:34:17,189
Speaker 2: many people, it was the first time. So it only

684
00:34:17,250 --> 00:34:19,210
Speaker 2: makes sense that eventually somebody is going to come to

685
00:34:19,250 --> 00:34:23,509
Speaker 2: the conclusion, well, let's just make that happen. Yeah, yeah.

686
00:34:23,670 --> 00:34:25,770
Speaker 1: And that, I mean, that is where we're, you know,

687
00:34:25,830 --> 00:34:28,930
Speaker 1: heading to, right? And I think an important piece of

688
00:34:28,969 --> 00:34:31,049
Speaker 1: connecting tissue in terms of like how we get from

689
00:34:31,150 --> 00:34:34,580
Speaker 1: rage baiting, you know, comment sections on the internet and,

690
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:36,919
Speaker 1: you know, the daily wire to The stuff like Chud

691
00:34:36,940 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: the Builder starts with a woman named Jennifer Ringley. And

692
00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:42,839
Speaker 1: Jennifer is not a bad person, right? Not in any way, shape,

693
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 1: or form. But she is one of the most influential

694
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 1: people in the history of the internet that you've probably

695
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:50,359
Speaker 1: never heard of. Because when Jennifer was 19 in 1996

696
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:53,219
Speaker 1: and a college student, she became the first live streamer.

697
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,009
Speaker 1: She invented live streaming effectively, right?

698
00:34:56,110 --> 00:34:56,790
Speaker 2: Jenny Cam.

699
00:34:57,430 --> 00:35:00,049
Speaker 1: Jenny Cam, yeah. Okay, so you caught this back at

700
00:35:00,110 --> 00:35:00,850
Speaker 1: the time.

701
00:35:00,890 --> 00:35:03,190
Speaker 2: When it was happening live. I was there when she

702
00:35:03,210 --> 00:35:05,060
Speaker 2: would go live, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

703
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: And this was like a major moment. She had a

704
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:11,700
Speaker 1: webcam in her dingy dorm room and started broadcasting her

705
00:35:11,739 --> 00:35:13,570
Speaker 1: life all day, every day. You'll see if you're on

706
00:35:13,590 --> 00:35:16,129
Speaker 1: the Netflix, we've got a couple of clips from the show.

707
00:35:16,170 --> 00:35:19,190
Speaker 1: But it looks a lot like modern life, other than

708
00:35:19,390 --> 00:35:21,870
Speaker 1: the resolutions worse. It looks a lot like modern live

709
00:35:21,890 --> 00:35:25,189
Speaker 1: stream content, right? She's like doing her makeup. She's doing

710
00:35:25,210 --> 00:35:27,890
Speaker 1: her homework. She's got the camera on her while she's sleeping.

711
00:35:28,790 --> 00:35:31,160
Speaker 1: As Jason noted, she called what she was doing Jenny Cam,

712
00:35:31,180 --> 00:35:34,100
Speaker 1: and it was very successful. Even by modern terms, she

713
00:35:34,140 --> 00:35:38,399
Speaker 1: was pulling incredible numbers. Per that BBC article, websites took

714
00:35:38,460 --> 00:35:41,509
Speaker 1: whole minutes to upload. And yet, although Jennifer's stream of

715
00:35:41,550 --> 00:35:43,310
Speaker 1: pics were usually of an empty room, she was at

716
00:35:43,350 --> 00:35:45,509
Speaker 1: class or in the loo, or of Jennifer looking at

717
00:35:45,530 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 1: the computer, or sitting on the bed studying, or in

718
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:49,899
Speaker 1: a fit of action doing her laundry or brushing her teeth,

719
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,780
Speaker 1: this slideshow of the mundane was utterly compelling. Four million people,

720
00:35:53,900 --> 00:35:56,360
Speaker 1: then a far greater proportion of internet users than it

721
00:35:56,420 --> 00:35:59,439
Speaker 1: is today, would watch her quarter-minute updates of quotidian life.

722
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:04,540
Speaker 1: And mostly it was pretty positive. She got an interview

723
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: with David Letterman. She got New York Times coverage. There

724
00:36:07,060 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 1: was a turn when she had what that article describes

725
00:36:10,540 --> 00:36:13,510
Speaker 1: as an intimate night with her boyfriend that was streamed. Um,

726
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,660
Speaker 1: Kratosky describes this as turning her fan reactions, quote, from

727
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,940
Speaker 1: curiosity to condemnation, which I do think is worth keeping

728
00:36:20,020 --> 00:36:22,339
Speaker 1: in mind in terms of the things that will piss

729
00:36:22,420 --> 00:36:24,090
Speaker 1: off your audience. This is going to be a through

730
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:26,950
Speaker 1: line with some of these streamers. Your fans don't necessarily

731
00:36:26,989 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: want to see you have a happy relationship. Um, She

732
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:35,450
Speaker 1: shuts the experiment down in 2003, and despite her wild success,

733
00:36:35,570 --> 00:36:38,190
Speaker 1: I don't think she got rich. I don't know how much.

734
00:36:38,450 --> 00:36:41,350
Speaker 1: She would today. If today you were capable of drawing

735
00:36:41,350 --> 00:36:44,129
Speaker 1: 4 million live viewers a day, you would be worth

736
00:36:44,190 --> 00:36:47,460
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars, right? Those are massive numbers today.

737
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:49,739
Speaker 2: Let's put it this way. One of the ways that

738
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 2: she got paid is the fans would mail her cash

739
00:36:52,420 --> 00:36:52,980
Speaker 2: in envelopes.

740
00:36:53,460 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 1: Good Lord.

741
00:36:54,260 --> 00:36:56,700
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was really, really— You understand that the systems,

742
00:36:56,930 --> 00:37:00,390
Speaker 2: the infrastructure now to send tips, none of that existed.

743
00:37:00,450 --> 00:37:03,710
Speaker 2: She was running this off of a server in her apartment. Yeah.

744
00:37:03,750 --> 00:37:06,250
Speaker 2: Because it would crash if she changed clothes in front

745
00:37:06,270 --> 00:37:08,359
Speaker 2: of the camera. It would freeze up and die because

746
00:37:08,380 --> 00:37:11,060
Speaker 2: too many people would jump on because there were people

747
00:37:11,100 --> 00:37:15,219
Speaker 2: waiting for that to happen. Yeah. Yeah, and then I'm

748
00:37:15,700 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 2: sure you're going to get to, she is not on

749
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:20,910
Speaker 2: anywhere on the internet at all. No, no.

750
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:25,170
Speaker 1: No, she kind of proves the concept, improves the hunger

751
00:37:25,230 --> 00:37:28,420
Speaker 1: for this kind of content. But obviously, 96 to 2003,

752
00:37:28,410 --> 00:37:31,350
Speaker 1: the technology is nowhere near where it would need to

753
00:37:31,390 --> 00:37:33,069
Speaker 1: be to make this an industry. As you say, there's

754
00:37:33,110 --> 00:37:37,009
Speaker 1: not any kind of like infrastructure around like making this monetized.

755
00:37:37,489 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: So a lot of things about technology, we're going to

756
00:37:39,739 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: need to change for live streaming to become a dominant

757
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 1: kind of content and aspects of our culture needed to

758
00:37:44,540 --> 00:37:47,060
Speaker 1: change too. I'm going to call my shot now and

759
00:37:47,100 --> 00:37:50,490
Speaker 1: argue pretty directly. I don't think nuisance streaming at least

760
00:37:51,010 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 1: is something that would have existed before the rise of

761
00:37:53,540 --> 00:37:56,219
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, just as I don't think the Trump presidency

762
00:37:56,260 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 1: would have existed without social media, right? That's a big

763
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 1: part of why he got elected. And as I'll talk about,

764
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: I think there's a degree to which seeing the president

765
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,580
Speaker 1: succeed doing the things that he does provided permission for

766
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:12,799
Speaker 1: other people to behave in a certain way, right? Because

767
00:38:12,820 --> 00:38:16,109
Speaker 1: he is the president, you know? We'll talk a little

768
00:38:16,150 --> 00:38:19,890
Speaker 1: bit more about that. That's me kind of going out

769
00:38:19,950 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 1: on a limb a little bit. It's certainly unprovable, but

770
00:38:22,620 --> 00:38:25,299
Speaker 1: I do feel pretty strongly about that.

771
00:38:26,460 --> 00:38:29,900
Speaker 2: I mean, very quickly, I will say that when we

772
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 2: were at Cracked, the first sign of that movement before

773
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 2: Trump came along was around the time of Gamergate, and

774
00:38:36,700 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 2: that was being driven by 4chan. And 4chan is entirely

775
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:43,239
Speaker 2: a rage bait. Yes. Space where people would post, you know,

776
00:38:43,260 --> 00:38:45,440
Speaker 2: Hitler did nothing wrong memes. And it was a mix

777
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:47,940
Speaker 2: of people who actually believe that and people who were

778
00:38:47,980 --> 00:38:51,660
Speaker 2: literally 12. Yeah. Like it was literal children sometimes posting

779
00:38:51,739 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 2: and they would have the racist, the Jewish caricature. That's

780
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:56,459
Speaker 2: the first time I ever saw that was on 4chan.

781
00:38:57,020 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 2: So when Trump first came along, he was like the

782
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 2: 4chan meme candidate to me. Like I thought, oh, it's like, okay,

783
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 2: this is like, let's wait for the real Trump. primaries

784
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 2: to start because right now the four channers are boosting

785
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:13,100
Speaker 2: this Trump thing because they think it's funny that he's

786
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:16,910
Speaker 2: the troll candidate. So it very much, at least early on,

787
00:39:17,010 --> 00:39:21,390
Speaker 2: registered as he's the troll meme candidate and nothing else.

788
00:39:21,469 --> 00:39:23,130
Speaker 2: And then suddenly he's president.

789
00:39:23,190 --> 00:39:24,870
Speaker 1: Suddenly he's the president twice.

790
00:39:25,330 --> 00:39:25,529
Speaker 2: Yeah.

791
00:39:25,570 --> 00:39:28,029
Speaker 1: And it's weird to me because as a kid, I

792
00:39:28,050 --> 00:39:31,489
Speaker 1: was a class clown. I got in trouble for saying

793
00:39:31,550 --> 00:39:34,259
Speaker 1: things in school that were deliberately meant to provoke a

794
00:39:34,300 --> 00:39:37,339
Speaker 1: reaction sometimes. I was that kind of kid, right? And

795
00:39:37,380 --> 00:39:40,530
Speaker 1: my mom... Really did not encourage that sort of behavior.

796
00:39:40,710 --> 00:39:42,310
Speaker 1: And one of the things she would say to me

797
00:39:42,350 --> 00:39:43,629
Speaker 1: when I would get in a pocket is like, hey,

798
00:39:44,090 --> 00:39:46,530
Speaker 1: if you keep doing that when you get older, someone

799
00:39:46,550 --> 00:39:48,739
Speaker 1: will like beat the shit out of you or shoot you, right?

800
00:39:48,820 --> 00:39:51,500
Speaker 1: Like you can't say certain things to people out in

801
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:54,990
Speaker 1: the world or they'll fuck you up, right? And I...

802
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: I've come to believe actually that that's a good thing,

803
00:39:57,980 --> 00:40:01,230
Speaker 1: like that people should feel that way. Not that you

804
00:40:01,250 --> 00:40:02,989
Speaker 1: should go out in fear of your fellow man, but

805
00:40:03,010 --> 00:40:04,509
Speaker 1: you should know that like, well, if I just walk

806
00:40:04,550 --> 00:40:06,230
Speaker 1: up to someone and say a racial slur, there's a

807
00:40:06,290 --> 00:40:08,129
Speaker 1: good chance I'm going to get the shit kicked out

808
00:40:08,190 --> 00:40:12,230
Speaker 1: of me, right? Like, I think that fear is positive

809
00:40:12,469 --> 00:40:14,989
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And one of the things

810
00:40:15,030 --> 00:40:17,759
Speaker 1: that's broken down in the last quarter century is today,

811
00:40:17,860 --> 00:40:20,180
Speaker 1: if you're a huge asshole in public, you might get

812
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: fucked up, but you might get really rich.

813
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:23,279
Speaker 2: Too, right?

814
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:25,380
Speaker 1: And a great example of this and something that I

815
00:40:25,500 --> 00:40:28,580
Speaker 1: think probably inspired Chud the Builder is back in August

816
00:40:28,620 --> 00:40:32,060
Speaker 1: of 2025, a white lady from Minnesota was captured on

817
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:35,500
Speaker 1: film calling an eight-year-old boy with autism the N-word repeatedly.

818
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: She was charged with three counts of disorderly conduct. She

819
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,279
Speaker 1: took to a crowdfunding site and billing herself as the

820
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:44,839
Speaker 1: victim of silly misinformation raised more than $ 800, 000 in a

821
00:40:45,060 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 1: matter of days. A fundraiser for the family of the

822
00:40:47,620 --> 00:40:49,060
Speaker 1: child raised $ 340, 000 in the same time frame.

823
00:40:51,890 --> 00:40:59,529
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm sorry. Who was sending the money? Was she

824
00:40:59,570 --> 00:41:02,060
Speaker 2: saying she needed to raise it for her legal bills?

825
00:41:02,100 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 2: Because it was like a disorderly conduct charge. There's not

826
00:41:05,340 --> 00:41:05,730
Speaker 2: going to be a.

827
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: I think the attitude was the wokes are coming for me.

828
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,089
Speaker 1: They've destroyed my ability to make a living.

829
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:12,710
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

830
00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:16,980
Speaker 1: It's what you brought up earlier, Jason. As soon as

831
00:41:17,020 --> 00:41:20,089
Speaker 1: like a scandal goes viral, it's the best advertising you

832
00:41:20,130 --> 00:41:23,390
Speaker 1: can get. She becomes instantly famous. And I think she

833
00:41:23,430 --> 00:41:24,550
Speaker 1: just had the sense to be like, well, if I

834
00:41:24,590 --> 00:41:27,170
Speaker 1: throw up a fundraiser right now, I will draw in

835
00:41:27,210 --> 00:41:29,170
Speaker 1: all of the people who think it's fine to behave

836
00:41:29,230 --> 00:41:31,720
Speaker 1: this way. And apparently there's a lot of those, right?

837
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:33,700
Speaker 1: Or at least there's people with a lot of money

838
00:41:33,739 --> 00:41:37,300
Speaker 1: who feel that way. I don't know how many individual donations.

839
00:41:36,860 --> 00:41:37,620
Speaker 2: She got, but.

840
00:41:39,150 --> 00:41:42,210
Speaker 1: I suspect this really had an influence on Chud. I

841
00:41:42,250 --> 00:41:44,490
Speaker 1: don't know, he hasn't spoken about it, but the timing

842
00:41:44,530 --> 00:41:46,770
Speaker 1: of this and the timing of when he started doing

843
00:41:46,850 --> 00:41:49,910
Speaker 1: his content makes me think this is one thing that

844
00:41:49,950 --> 00:41:53,029
Speaker 1: made him recognize there's money in doing this sort of shit.

845
00:41:53,989 --> 00:41:58,270
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because it's not a hypothetical. She demonstrated that,

846
00:41:58,469 --> 00:42:00,969
Speaker 2: because it's so weird, because sometimes in this economy, it

847
00:42:00,989 --> 00:42:03,370
Speaker 2: seems like nobody has money, but other times it's like,

848
00:42:03,860 --> 00:42:06,060
Speaker 2: I think some of you have too much money.

849
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:07,960
Speaker 1: Certainly some people have too much money.

850
00:42:07,980 --> 00:42:12,070
Speaker 2: Because I'm seeing what you're spending it on. Yeah. That

851
00:42:12,130 --> 00:42:14,810
Speaker 2: money would have been better off going anywhere. I would

852
00:42:14,830 --> 00:42:17,410
Speaker 2: rather you gamble with that money. Because at least you

853
00:42:17,430 --> 00:42:18,390
Speaker 2: could have maybe won.

854
00:42:18,410 --> 00:42:23,590
Speaker 1: Yeah, that money would be better spent on literally anything.

855
00:42:23,770 --> 00:42:27,660
Speaker 1: Like lead-based gasoline. I'd rather have it go to.

856
00:42:28,100 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 2: Drugs.

857
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:30,260
Speaker 1: Drugs, of course.

858
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 2: At least crack will get you high. Yeah. Yeah.

859
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:34,490
Speaker 1: At least crack has value.

860
00:42:34,590 --> 00:42:38,430
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, there's an example of something you could pull

861
00:42:38,510 --> 00:42:40,750
Speaker 2: out of context and make the book look bad or

862
00:42:40,790 --> 00:42:41,930
Speaker 2: make the publisher look bad.

863
00:42:42,370 --> 00:42:44,810
Speaker 1: Now, Jason, I've always been pro-crack. I'm anti-cocaine. You would be.

864
00:42:44,730 --> 00:42:48,049
Speaker 2: Better off buying crack because it's great. Don't pull that

865
00:42:48,190 --> 00:42:51,270
Speaker 2: out of context. That's against the law. I will take

866
00:42:51,290 --> 00:42:52,549
Speaker 2: you to court. Yeah.

867
00:42:53,190 --> 00:42:53,469
Speaker 3: I won't.

868
00:42:53,790 --> 00:42:57,049
Speaker 1: I meant what I said. So professional live streaming didn't

869
00:42:57,090 --> 00:43:00,730
Speaker 1: come into existence until 2011 when Twitch was launched as

870
00:43:00,770 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: a video streaming platform. This proved to be a wise

871
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 1: business move as millions of young adolescents had been raised

872
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:08,620
Speaker 1: on a mix of video games and YouTube content based

873
00:43:08,660 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: around playing those video games. Twitch provided a much more

874
00:43:11,700 --> 00:43:14,589
Speaker 1: direct variant of this experience and the young people ate

875
00:43:14,610 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: it up. per an article in The New Yorker by

876
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:19,420
Speaker 1: Adrian Chin. Twitch offered a number of ways to monetize

877
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,299
Speaker 1: a livestream and attracted a huge audience of young gamers who,

878
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:24,879
Speaker 1: to their parents' confusion, wanted not only to watch people

879
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,020
Speaker 1: play video games for hours, but also wanted to give

880
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:29,489
Speaker 1: money to their favorite streamers in the form of subscriptions

881
00:43:29,530 --> 00:43:31,690
Speaker 1: and tips. This is what you're talking about, right? It's

882
00:43:31,750 --> 00:43:34,610
Speaker 1: very baffling to the olds because, like, this isn't how

883
00:43:34,690 --> 00:43:37,790
Speaker 1: media ever worked for us, right? You, like, you pay

884
00:43:37,830 --> 00:43:40,109
Speaker 1: for a product or your attention and, like, the ad

885
00:43:40,190 --> 00:43:42,100
Speaker 1: revenue they get from it is the product. This is

886
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 1: a real, like, sea change. That 2018 article by Chin

887
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 1: was a profile of a guy who was probably the

888
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,060
Speaker 1: first or at least the first successful in-person live streamer

889
00:43:52,500 --> 00:43:54,890
Speaker 1: and one of the first nuisance streamers. And he goes

890
00:43:54,930 --> 00:43:57,890
Speaker 1: by the name Ice Poseidon. This is the guy who

891
00:43:57,910 --> 00:44:00,469
Speaker 1: took Twitch from being a place where people streamed themselves

892
00:44:00,550 --> 00:44:03,589
Speaker 1: gaming to a place where people just streamed themselves out

893
00:44:03,650 --> 00:44:08,430
Speaker 1: in the world being, right? His real name is Paul DeNino.

894
00:44:08,690 --> 00:44:11,770
Speaker 1: He was 23 in 2018, and in that interview with Chin,

895
00:44:11,810 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 1: he described his childhood as a never-ending struggle against authority.

896
00:44:16,010 --> 00:44:19,569
Speaker 1: He grew up in a wealthy, gated community in Martin County, Florida. Today,

897
00:44:19,610 --> 00:44:21,890
Speaker 1: it's the seventh richest county in Florida with an average

898
00:44:21,910 --> 00:44:25,549
Speaker 1: income of $ 123, 000 a year. His mother was a mental

899
00:44:25,570 --> 00:44:28,210
Speaker 1: health administrator at a clinical facility, and his father was

900
00:44:28,250 --> 00:44:32,210
Speaker 1: a plasma technician. His mother told Chin that Danino was

901
00:44:32,290 --> 00:44:35,310
Speaker 1: shy as a child, and to gain attention, he acted out.

902
00:44:35,570 --> 00:44:37,489
Speaker 1: At one point, he asked the teacher in class if

903
00:44:37,530 --> 00:44:40,270
Speaker 1: she was good at giving blowjobs, and obviously, he got

904
00:44:40,290 --> 00:44:42,230
Speaker 1: in trouble for this kind of thing, right?

905
00:44:42,969 --> 00:44:43,049
Speaker 2: Um.

906
00:44:43,580 --> 00:44:45,540
Speaker 1: So we see again, he's like, you've got a class

907
00:44:45,580 --> 00:44:49,190
Speaker 1: clown kid here who's bad at boundaries and knowing what's appropriate.

908
00:44:49,730 --> 00:44:52,230
Speaker 1: And it makes him isolated and drives him to the

909
00:44:52,270 --> 00:44:54,670
Speaker 1: internet more because he doesn't feel like anyone gets him

910
00:44:55,090 --> 00:44:58,460
Speaker 1: in the world, right? Because he's being punished for his behavior.

911
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: As a result of how he acted, he was kicked

912
00:45:01,620 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 1: out of or had to leave school several times. At

913
00:45:03,880 --> 00:45:06,260
Speaker 1: one point, his parents sent him to what the article

914
00:45:06,300 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 1: described as a forestry camp for troubled boys. I don't

915
00:45:09,500 --> 00:45:11,299
Speaker 1: know where this was. I'm guessing it's one of those

916
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,270
Speaker 1: troubled teen facilities I've covered on this show. We covered

917
00:45:14,330 --> 00:45:17,110
Speaker 1: it on Cracked a number of times. If so, he

918
00:45:17,150 --> 00:45:19,990
Speaker 1: was abused as a kid, right? These are profoundly abusive places.

919
00:45:20,230 --> 00:45:22,230
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what facility. It may have been

920
00:45:22,250 --> 00:45:24,469
Speaker 1: a different kind of thing, though. The description in the

921
00:45:24,510 --> 00:45:25,299
Speaker 1: article is a little vague.

922
00:45:25,739 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 2: Oh, so you're saying it didn't cure him of his

923
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 2: maladaptive behaviors? No. No.

924
00:45:32,340 --> 00:45:35,700
Speaker 1: He says he was prescribed Zoloft and ADHD meds and

925
00:45:35,739 --> 00:45:37,620
Speaker 1: then sleeping pills to deal with the side effects and

926
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 1: that he quit all of these drugs when he turned 16.

927
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: Although he always brings this up online as a way

928
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:45,620
Speaker 1: to urge his followers not to take their psychiatric medications.

929
00:45:45,780 --> 00:45:48,390
Speaker 1: So I don't maybe take that with a grain of salt.

930
00:45:50,310 --> 00:45:54,770
Speaker 1: Please take your psych meds, folks. Anyway, while he was

931
00:45:54,810 --> 00:45:57,129
Speaker 1: struggling to find his place as an adolescent, Danino got

932
00:45:57,190 --> 00:46:00,420
Speaker 1: into RuneScape, an MMORPG that's kind of, you know, I

933
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: think it predated WoW, if I'm remembering properly. It's one

934
00:46:03,300 --> 00:46:04,660
Speaker 1: of the older ones, but it's one of the ones

935
00:46:04,700 --> 00:46:08,020
Speaker 1: that's had a really long, like, lifespan. And he soon

936
00:46:08,060 --> 00:46:12,129
Speaker 1: got super addictive, right? Chin's article claims that he played

937
00:46:12,150 --> 00:46:14,290
Speaker 1: it all hours, waking up at 5 a.m. to play

938
00:46:14,310 --> 00:46:16,830
Speaker 1: before school and gaming late into the night. He started

939
00:46:16,870 --> 00:46:20,170
Speaker 1: avoiding going outside at all, and he started making friends online.

940
00:46:20,210 --> 00:46:22,890
Speaker 1: He met his first roommate on Skype. and developed a

941
00:46:22,950 --> 00:46:26,469
Speaker 1: following of other players who enjoyed his online antics. Chin

942
00:46:26,510 --> 00:46:29,569
Speaker 1: writes how Danino found that in the game, he could

943
00:46:29,610 --> 00:46:34,650
Speaker 1: do things for attention without real-life consequences. Quote, In 2013,

944
00:46:34,650 --> 00:46:37,190
Speaker 1: Danino came up with a prank called Closing Doors, in

945
00:46:37,230 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: which he would repeatedly click on a door so it

946
00:46:39,219 --> 00:46:42,580
Speaker 1: couldn't be opened, trapping another player in the room. Danino

947
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:44,759
Speaker 1: uploaded videos of the prank to YouTube, and they racked

948
00:46:44,820 --> 00:46:47,660
Speaker 1: up views. He decided to start broadcasting live on Twitch.

949
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:51,060
Speaker 1: The first night, 10 people watched him. The next, 20.

950
00:46:51,060 --> 00:46:54,120
Speaker 1: Soon he was making $ 700 a month in viewer donations.

951
00:46:54,420 --> 00:46:55,839
Speaker 1: At the end of the summer, he was laid off

952
00:46:55,860 --> 00:46:57,819
Speaker 1: from the restaurant where he worked and decided to make

953
00:46:57,860 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 1: live streaming a career. So again, you see a similarity

954
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 1: between this kid's trajectory and Chud's where they're not fitting

955
00:47:07,980 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 1: in in regular society, work doesn't work out for them,

956
00:47:10,700 --> 00:47:14,620
Speaker 1: and they realize they start getting rewarded for their behavior

957
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,190
Speaker 1: online and decide to turn that into an income stream.

958
00:47:17,590 --> 00:47:20,969
Speaker 1: Now what What Ice Poseidon is doing is much less objectionable.

959
00:47:21,010 --> 00:47:23,830
Speaker 1: He's not going in and like making himself a racial

960
00:47:24,190 --> 00:47:26,790
Speaker 1: slurking or whatever. He's doing like pranks in a video

961
00:47:26,830 --> 00:47:31,060
Speaker 1: game and stuff, right? At first, he was just another

962
00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:33,580
Speaker 1: Twitch streamer and he gained a loyal following of fans.

963
00:47:33,620 --> 00:47:37,460
Speaker 1: He nicknamed the Purple Army because RuneScape was Danino's social life.

964
00:47:37,500 --> 00:47:40,060
Speaker 1: He started monetizing his time gaming and he did not

965
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:43,460
Speaker 1: even consider separating his real and personal life from his performances.

966
00:47:43,860 --> 00:47:45,670
Speaker 1: He would talk to his biggest fans on the phone

967
00:47:45,710 --> 00:47:48,030
Speaker 1: and even game with them in real time. His fan

968
00:47:48,070 --> 00:47:51,270
Speaker 1: base grew madly loyal and Chin claims it became known

969
00:47:51,350 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 1: for harassing other streamers and was described by other players

970
00:47:54,380 --> 00:47:57,460
Speaker 1: as a toxic hive, right? So this fan base he develops,

971
00:47:57,600 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 1: maybe in part because he's doing some kind of aggressive pranks,

972
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 1: becomes themselves. Like they get really into like brigading people,

973
00:48:06,410 --> 00:48:08,810
Speaker 1: I think is the old term we would use for it, right?

974
00:48:09,750 --> 00:48:12,610
Speaker 1: We're all familiar with fan bases like this, right? Who

975
00:48:13,510 --> 00:48:15,270
Speaker 1: can respond kind of aggressively, right?

976
00:48:16,370 --> 00:48:18,650
Speaker 2: But also, if you go into the world of streaming,

977
00:48:18,750 --> 00:48:22,460
Speaker 2: it feels like 90% of their content is streamers just

978
00:48:23,660 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 2: having beef with other streamers. It's like Destiny reacts to Asmongold,

979
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:33,590
Speaker 2: reacts to Hasan, reacts– I'm just naming streamers now– reacts

980
00:48:33,650 --> 00:48:37,810
Speaker 2: to iShowSpeed, who is reacting to– that's all the ones

981
00:48:37,870 --> 00:48:41,029
Speaker 2: I know. But it's only– it's like that's the whole thing.

982
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:43,660
Speaker 2: It's a form of cross-promotion and some of it is

983
00:48:43,700 --> 00:48:48,580
Speaker 2: very clearly like world– like wrestling style beef. Yeah.

984
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:49,820
Speaker 1: Kayfabe basically.

985
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:53,090
Speaker 2: Like the first time you've heard of this other streamer

986
00:48:53,130 --> 00:48:55,620
Speaker 2: is when I yelled at him and so now– Like,

987
00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 2: it's true that you're all now in each other's chat

988
00:48:58,219 --> 00:49:00,240
Speaker 2: screaming slurs at each other or whatever.

989
00:49:00,300 --> 00:49:04,299
Speaker 3: And that's the perfect reference, Jason, because now we're seeing

990
00:49:04,380 --> 00:49:06,500
Speaker 3: so many of those guys go into that world where

991
00:49:06,540 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 3: they're doing YouTuber boxing.

992
00:49:08,450 --> 00:49:09,750
Speaker 1: Wrestling and boxing.

993
00:49:09,770 --> 00:49:12,890
Speaker 3: Wrestling and boxing. And, you know, we're going to get

994
00:49:12,910 --> 00:49:17,360
Speaker 3: to the Paul brothers as well using Logan Paul was

995
00:49:17,420 --> 00:49:22,490
Speaker 3: a WWE superstar today. And it's like but they're using

996
00:49:22,550 --> 00:49:26,580
Speaker 3: the same exact skills they learned from this. there.

997
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: It's also, it's interesting. All I know about Asmongold is

998
00:49:30,780 --> 00:49:34,980
Speaker 1: that he's like a filthy goblin whose room is always disgusting, right?

999
00:49:35,180 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 1: Because I just see shit like that clipped all over

1000
00:49:37,540 --> 00:49:42,989
Speaker 1: social media. I was watching a movie just literally last

1001
00:49:43,070 --> 00:49:46,230
Speaker 1: night called They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which is from

1002
00:49:46,310 --> 00:49:49,110
Speaker 1: the 60s. It stars Jane Fonda. And it's kind of

1003
00:49:49,190 --> 00:49:52,390
Speaker 1: about It's weirdly enough, it predicted a lot of like

1004
00:49:52,450 --> 00:49:55,310
Speaker 1: the way social media works. But it's about this like

1005
00:49:55,450 --> 00:49:58,410
Speaker 1: dancing contest that is incredibly abusive. It goes on for

1006
00:49:58,450 --> 00:50:01,009
Speaker 1: like a thousand hours and it's destroying the bodies of

1007
00:50:01,030 --> 00:50:04,420
Speaker 1: the contestants. And at one point, the emcee explains like

1008
00:50:04,460 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: the appeal is like, no, no, they're not rooting for you.

1009
00:50:07,290 --> 00:50:10,430
Speaker 1: they like seeing you be like fucked up and miserable

1010
00:50:10,670 --> 00:50:14,180
Speaker 1: and like engage in like dealing with like horrible, stressful problems.

1011
00:50:14,260 --> 00:50:15,419
Speaker 1: Cause it's funny to them.

1012
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 2: Right.

1013
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:18,580
Speaker 1: And it distracts them from their own lives. And this

1014
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,180
Speaker 1: movie from the sixties really gets today better than almost

1015
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:22,419
Speaker 1: any other media I've seen.

1016
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:27,060
Speaker 2: I am not going to take this off on a

1017
00:50:27,140 --> 00:50:31,569
Speaker 2: tangent here, but some of us, when we talked about

1018
00:50:31,630 --> 00:50:37,629
Speaker 2: like canceled culture, We were not saying, actually, I think

1019
00:50:37,730 --> 00:50:40,070
Speaker 2: Bill Cosby should have been allowed to still have a

1020
00:50:40,110 --> 00:50:42,009
Speaker 2: show after the things he did. It wasn't that. It's

1021
00:50:42,030 --> 00:50:44,890
Speaker 2: that when you have somebody who rightfully did something bad,

1022
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 2: you got people criticizing, calling her out correctly. But then

1023
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 2: you have this other circle of people who clearly don't care. Yeah.

1024
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:58,460
Speaker 2: But they are the sadists who see an opportunity because

1025
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:02,660
Speaker 2: they want this person to commit suicide on camera or whatever.

1026
00:51:03,100 --> 00:51:05,290
Speaker 2: And they will just go at them and just start

1027
00:51:05,330 --> 00:51:07,390
Speaker 2: calling their house or whatever. It's like, whoa, you don't

1028
00:51:07,430 --> 00:51:10,700
Speaker 2: care about justice. You're a freak who has found an

1029
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:15,399
Speaker 2: opportunity because for you, that would be entertainment. The downfall of.

1030
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,069
Speaker 1: And you can tell very well the difference between when

1031
00:51:18,090 --> 00:51:20,910
Speaker 1: you have someone like, you know, who's very powerful in

1032
00:51:20,950 --> 00:51:23,710
Speaker 1: the industry who gets quote unquote canceled, they're gonna be

1033
00:51:23,810 --> 00:51:26,069
Speaker 1: back with a Netflix special in a year or two.

1034
00:51:26,410 --> 00:51:28,830
Speaker 1: The majority of the people who get attacked by mobs

1035
00:51:28,890 --> 00:51:31,210
Speaker 1: like that and actually suffer constant or just like random

1036
00:51:31,250 --> 00:51:33,450
Speaker 1: folks online who like said something maybe that was like

1037
00:51:33,570 --> 00:51:36,110
Speaker 1: kind of shitty once. And then they get this mob

1038
00:51:36,150 --> 00:51:39,790
Speaker 1: that harasses them, sometimes for years. Like, people endure years

1039
00:51:39,870 --> 00:51:42,469
Speaker 1: of online harassment because of shit like this. And it

1040
00:51:42,540 --> 00:51:45,680
Speaker 1: is part of the same, like, content cycle, I think. Like,

1041
00:51:45,719 --> 00:51:48,960
Speaker 1: it is part of the same, this broader media blob

1042
00:51:49,620 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: of people desperately needing more conflict in their lives. And

1043
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:54,910
Speaker 1: I do think that's a part of, like, what this

1044
00:51:55,390 --> 00:51:57,810
Speaker 1: nuisance streamer complex is feeding, right?

1045
00:51:57,890 --> 00:51:58,410
Speaker 2: I mean.

1046
00:51:58,650 --> 00:52:00,350
Speaker 1: This desire for conflict.

1047
00:52:00,370 --> 00:52:00,589
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1048
00:52:00,890 --> 00:52:03,770
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I just got a news alert that,

1049
00:52:04,130 --> 00:52:07,629
Speaker 3: you know, directly relates to it that's from MS Now.

1050
00:52:07,670 --> 00:52:10,469
Speaker 3: It says the FBI plans to offer the UFC an

1051
00:52:10,550 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 3: exclusive one-year contract to train its special agents in hand-to-hand combat.

1052
00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 2: Great.

1053
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:17,820
Speaker 3: Great.

1054
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:19,660
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1055
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:22,939
Speaker 3: Everything is interconnected in the most horrifying way.

1056
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:26,540
Speaker 2: Well, no, but like the director of FBI, Kash Patel,

1057
00:52:26,580 --> 00:52:30,560
Speaker 2: has said, like streamer merch. He has like custom Nikes

1058
00:52:30,660 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 2: and like he has a logo.

1059
00:52:32,660 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 3: He, in a way, is a nuisance streamer in my opinion.

1060
00:52:37,140 --> 00:52:39,649
Speaker 1: That's, I mean, that's a lot of what like Pete

1061
00:52:39,670 --> 00:52:42,870
Speaker 1: Hegseth is doing too, right? Like the deliberate use of

1062
00:52:42,910 --> 00:52:46,689
Speaker 1: slurs in order to provoke content condemning it, which then like,

1063
00:52:47,030 --> 00:52:50,060
Speaker 1: you know, it's, it's, It's all part of the same blob.

1064
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:52,860
Speaker 2: Execution he wants to live stream that just came up

1065
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:57,569
Speaker 2: earlier today. That's not something that he thinks is good strategy.

1066
00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:00,750
Speaker 2: It's something that he thinks will make people get angry

1067
00:53:01,050 --> 00:53:04,009
Speaker 2: and that it will be good because we owned the

1068
00:53:04,070 --> 00:53:06,830
Speaker 2: libs by shooting this guy in a wheelchair because he's

1069
00:53:06,850 --> 00:53:10,230
Speaker 2: a paraplegic, I think, live on a stream and think

1070
00:53:10,290 --> 00:53:13,670
Speaker 2: it's going to make the liberals scream. It's like, yeah,

1071
00:53:13,690 --> 00:53:16,690
Speaker 2: but is that? Is that the guiding principle of your

1072
00:53:16,710 --> 00:53:19,630
Speaker 2: whole philosophy? Because that doesn't prove that you're right. No.

1073
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 2: You can do a lot of things to make people mad.

1074
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:25,739
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean you're correct. Yeah. Anyway.

1075
00:53:25,780 --> 00:53:29,540
Speaker 1: You know who is correct, Jason, about everything? It's our sponsors.

1076
00:53:29,860 --> 00:53:39,970
Speaker 1: They're always right. Listen to them, won't you? And we're back.

1077
00:53:40,010 --> 00:53:40,110
Speaker 2: So.

1078
00:53:40,730 --> 00:53:42,690
Speaker 1: That was a tangent. We've been going on a couple

1079
00:53:42,730 --> 00:53:45,670
Speaker 1: of them. But let's get back to the story of

1080
00:53:45,850 --> 00:53:50,430
Speaker 1: Ice Poseidon, Paul Danino. Things change for him. He's streaming.

1081
00:53:50,469 --> 00:53:53,330
Speaker 1: He's building a following. He's doing weird little in-game pranks.

1082
00:53:53,390 --> 00:53:56,830
Speaker 1: And shit changes in the summer of 2016 when Pokemon

1083
00:53:56,890 --> 00:54:01,780
Speaker 1: Go is released. Danino starts strapping a webcam onto himself

1084
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:05,900
Speaker 1: and walking around and live streaming from the world as

1085
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,779
Speaker 1: he's playing this game. And per Chin's article, This was

1086
00:54:09,820 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: when he pioneered one of his viewers' favorite forms of content,

1087
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:15,319
Speaker 1: ineptly hitting on women on the street. The streams were

1088
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,640
Speaker 1: a sensation. He said that he regularly pulled in 20,000 viewers.

1089
00:54:19,020 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 1: His fame began to bleed into the real world. And

1090
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 1: so he starts making serious money. By the time in

1091
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:27,379
Speaker 1: 2018 Chin's talking to him, he's making like 60 grand

1092
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:30,339
Speaker 1: a month doing this sort of stuff. And this is

1093
00:54:30,380 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 1: how he transitions. He still does some like sit down

1094
00:54:33,260 --> 00:54:35,899
Speaker 1: in his house streams, but he starts exclusively pretty much

1095
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:38,520
Speaker 1: going out into the world and interacting with people, right?

1096
00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:42,980
Speaker 1: And Danino's leap into fame hinged entirely on taking that

1097
00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:45,620
Speaker 1: step from out from behind the keyboard into the real

1098
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: world where he could provoke real people in various ways.

1099
00:54:49,260 --> 00:54:49,360
Speaker 2: Right.

1100
00:54:49,380 --> 00:54:51,910
Speaker 1: And he wasn't just he's not purely doing nuisance streaming.

1101
00:54:51,950 --> 00:54:55,270
Speaker 1: Sometimes he's having pleasant interactions with people. But again, the

1102
00:54:55,290 --> 00:54:57,430
Speaker 1: thing that makes him first go viral for this is

1103
00:54:57,489 --> 00:55:00,110
Speaker 1: like badly hitting on women in public in a way

1104
00:55:00,150 --> 00:55:02,810
Speaker 1: that's probably embarrassing and awkward, I would imagine.

1105
00:55:03,090 --> 00:55:06,009
Speaker 2: Right. And also they didn't they didn't agree to be

1106
00:55:06,070 --> 00:55:09,340
Speaker 2: part of your show. No. That's the thing. Because occasionally

1107
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:11,400
Speaker 2: you'll see somebody post something like that, and the comments

1108
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:14,030
Speaker 2: will be like, oh, this is fake. She's in on it.

1109
00:55:14,060 --> 00:55:15,930
Speaker 2: It's like, no, I want her to be in on it.

1110
00:55:16,360 --> 00:55:17,819
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would prefer that.

1111
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 2: Yes, I want that to be a plant. I don't

1112
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:22,719
Speaker 2: want to think that you interrupted somebody going about their

1113
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:25,469
Speaker 2: day just so you could get donations from a bunch

1114
00:55:25,489 --> 00:55:26,930
Speaker 2: of creeps. Anyway.

1115
00:55:27,590 --> 00:55:30,270
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Paul's success came in spite of the fact

1116
00:55:30,310 --> 00:55:33,330
Speaker 1: that his content caused problems both for Twitch and for him.

1117
00:55:33,980 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: In December of 2016, he was banned for 45 days

1118
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:38,860
Speaker 1: from Twitch after he gave out a girl's phone number

1119
00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:42,009
Speaker 1: on stream, and his followers started calling and harassing her.

1120
00:55:42,570 --> 00:55:45,069
Speaker 1: During his interview with Chin, Danino talked about this and

1121
00:55:45,090 --> 00:55:47,549
Speaker 1: said that he felt bad about having done that, but

1122
00:55:47,570 --> 00:55:50,510
Speaker 1: because their interview occurred while Danino was streaming, his viewers

1123
00:55:50,530 --> 00:55:52,410
Speaker 1: were able to comment too, and one of them just said,

1124
00:55:52,730 --> 00:55:54,510
Speaker 1: I remember how he didn't give a fuck about leaking

1125
00:55:54,550 --> 00:55:56,690
Speaker 1: the girl's number. Ha ha ha, Ice is such a

1126
00:55:56,750 --> 00:55:57,569
Speaker 1: good fucking liar.

1127
00:55:59,880 --> 00:56:02,040
Speaker 2: Also, pretty sure that's the first time I ever heard

1128
00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:04,500
Speaker 2: of Ice Poseidon was when that incident, because again, that

1129
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:08,029
Speaker 2: band is trended on Twitter and everywhere else. Yep.

1130
00:56:08,210 --> 00:56:09,069
Speaker 1: And then you hear the name.

1131
00:56:09,170 --> 00:56:09,350
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1132
00:56:10,020 --> 00:56:12,980
Speaker 1: However he felt, De Niro moved to Los Angeles after this,

1133
00:56:13,060 --> 00:56:15,509
Speaker 1: into an apartment complex that had already become famous as

1134
00:56:15,550 --> 00:56:17,730
Speaker 1: a streamer living space. I think one of the Pauls

1135
00:56:17,770 --> 00:56:21,270
Speaker 1: had lived there previously. He had to leave after six

1136
00:56:21,330 --> 00:56:24,770
Speaker 1: months because his fans kept calling the apartment office asking

1137
00:56:24,950 --> 00:56:27,240
Speaker 1: if he was there and then calling in bomb threats.

1138
00:56:27,620 --> 00:56:30,839
Speaker 1: He started to get swatted with incredible regularity, and this

1139
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:34,259
Speaker 1: continued for several years. Chin writes, there was a time

1140
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:36,509
Speaker 1: when he was swatted every day for a month. Things

1141
00:56:36,570 --> 00:56:38,680
Speaker 1: reached a crisis point when someone called in a bomb

1142
00:56:38,700 --> 00:56:40,920
Speaker 1: threat on a plane he had just boarded in Phoenix

1143
00:56:41,219 --> 00:56:43,240
Speaker 1: on his way to a video game convention, and several

1144
00:56:43,260 --> 00:56:46,279
Speaker 1: of the airport's runways had to be closed. And again,

1145
00:56:46,300 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: that's why I said when I'm like, part of the

1146
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:50,700
Speaker 1: appeal is just like watching other people deal with fucked

1147
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:53,250
Speaker 1: up shit that makes them unhappy, right? Like that is

1148
00:56:53,310 --> 00:56:54,549
Speaker 1: part of the content here.

1149
00:56:54,570 --> 00:56:59,009
Speaker 2: Okay, but I'm going to say, even at a very

1150
00:56:59,110 --> 00:57:01,549
Speaker 2: low level of fame, you're going to have a certain

1151
00:57:01,570 --> 00:57:03,930
Speaker 2: percentage of people who very quickly get bored of the

1152
00:57:03,950 --> 00:57:06,759
Speaker 2: thing you do. And they think, well, you know what

1153
00:57:06,780 --> 00:57:09,259
Speaker 2: would be fun? To see this person get shot by

1154
00:57:09,300 --> 00:57:12,800
Speaker 2: the police or something. To see this person have a breakdown.

1155
00:57:12,840 --> 00:57:15,360
Speaker 2: To see their life ruined. Because I've gotten tired of

1156
00:57:15,469 --> 00:57:17,510
Speaker 2: the act, so I want to see what they're like

1157
00:57:17,750 --> 00:57:19,510
Speaker 2: in distress. I want to see what they're like when

1158
00:57:19,530 --> 00:57:22,570
Speaker 2: they think their life is in danger. And again, these

1159
00:57:22,630 --> 00:57:26,640
Speaker 2: are People who are extremely unwell in many cases. Oh, yeah.

1160
00:57:26,700 --> 00:57:28,980
Speaker 2: But if you've got a large enough audience and those

1161
00:57:29,020 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 2: people feel like they have access to your personal life

1162
00:57:32,450 --> 00:57:34,370
Speaker 2: because you've been broadcasting your life.

1163
00:57:34,390 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: Every minute of it.

1164
00:57:35,590 --> 00:57:38,330
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not saying he deserved it. I'm just saying

1165
00:57:38,350 --> 00:57:42,210
Speaker 2: that I'm telling you firsthand. And again, if you're a woman,

1166
00:57:42,370 --> 00:57:44,670
Speaker 2: it's so much worse. The creeps you get, the DMs

1167
00:57:44,690 --> 00:57:47,310
Speaker 2: you get, you don't have to be very famous at

1168
00:57:47,410 --> 00:57:49,550
Speaker 2: all to have the weirdo who tries to get the

1169
00:57:49,590 --> 00:57:52,240
Speaker 2: cops to show up at your house or whatever. Yeah.

1170
00:57:52,520 --> 00:57:55,590
Speaker 1: And, you know, this is he's not just again, he's

1171
00:57:55,620 --> 00:57:57,650
Speaker 1: not a nuisance streamer at this point, although part of

1172
00:57:57,690 --> 00:58:00,370
Speaker 1: the appeal is other people causing nuisances for him. So

1173
00:58:01,110 --> 00:58:03,090
Speaker 1: this is, you know, we can see how this behavior

1174
00:58:03,130 --> 00:58:05,530
Speaker 1: maybe eventually leads to Chud the Builder, but it's still

1175
00:58:05,570 --> 00:58:07,930
Speaker 1: a pretty far cry from what Chud is doing. But

1176
00:58:07,970 --> 00:58:09,810
Speaker 1: you can see the seeds of the industry to come

1177
00:58:09,890 --> 00:58:13,050
Speaker 1: in ISIS successes and failures. The drama of watching him

1178
00:58:13,070 --> 00:58:15,430
Speaker 1: deal with SWAT attempts and other provocations was part of

1179
00:58:15,470 --> 00:58:17,860
Speaker 1: the appeal. And as you probably noticed, a number of

1180
00:58:17,900 --> 00:58:20,780
Speaker 1: his most famous moments came from his interactions with women,

1181
00:58:20,860 --> 00:58:24,740
Speaker 1: specifically negative interactions with women. Hitting on a lady without

1182
00:58:24,780 --> 00:58:28,280
Speaker 1: success or giving out another woman's phone number online. In time,

1183
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:30,310
Speaker 1: he seems to have fallen in actual love or at

1184
00:58:30,330 --> 00:58:33,190
Speaker 1: least like with a woman named Caroline and they started dating.

1185
00:58:33,650 --> 00:58:36,470
Speaker 1: His fans decided she was a gold digger. They nicknamed

1186
00:58:36,510 --> 00:58:39,540
Speaker 1: her the leech per the New Yorker. Viewers thought that

1187
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:41,460
Speaker 1: she was taking him away from the stream and using

1188
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:44,280
Speaker 1: him to boost her own career. They bombarded the subreddit

1189
00:58:44,300 --> 00:58:47,060
Speaker 1: with hateful posts about Carolyn and Danino, approached the couple

1190
00:58:47,100 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 1: in real life to harass them, and staged a boycott

1191
00:58:49,420 --> 00:58:52,390
Speaker 1: that cut Danino's viewership and revenue by a third, demanding

1192
00:58:52,430 --> 00:58:54,930
Speaker 1: that he break up with her. Danino resisted for months.

1193
00:58:55,250 --> 00:58:58,110
Speaker 1: Carolyn made him happy, but eventually he relented. It just

1194
00:58:58,130 --> 00:59:00,150
Speaker 1: got too much, dude, he told me. It was just

1195
00:59:00,230 --> 00:59:01,980
Speaker 1: easier to break up with her than to deal with it.

1196
00:59:02,290 --> 00:59:03,970
Speaker 1: He showed me a chart of his earnings, which had

1197
00:59:04,030 --> 00:59:07,400
Speaker 1: doubled the week after he and Carolyn broke up. We'll

1198
00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:10,300
Speaker 1: talk more about Danino, Ice Poseidon in part two. two,

1199
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:11,820
Speaker 1: but I want to break down what we're seeing at

1200
00:59:11,860 --> 00:59:15,380
Speaker 1: this stage. Ice's fans had trained him to respond to

1201
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:18,210
Speaker 1: their demands about his personal life and shown him that

1202
00:59:18,250 --> 00:59:21,870
Speaker 1: by doing so he made money, potentially life-changing money. We're

1203
00:59:21,890 --> 00:59:25,290
Speaker 1: talking tens of thousands of dollars a month. Think about

1204
00:59:25,330 --> 00:59:27,610
Speaker 1: what you do for that kind of money. And think

1205
00:59:27,670 --> 00:59:30,390
Speaker 1: about what other people have done for a lot less, right?

1206
00:59:31,270 --> 00:59:33,550
Speaker 1: And you'll start to understand how we get to chud

1207
00:59:33,590 --> 00:59:36,250
Speaker 1: the builder. And I think that's where I want to

1208
00:59:36,330 --> 00:59:39,990
Speaker 1: end us for today, Jason. How are you feeling?

1209
00:59:41,290 --> 00:59:43,370
Speaker 2: I think that there's people who would say that all

1210
00:59:43,390 --> 00:59:45,650
Speaker 2: of the bank story and the stuff from their youth

1211
00:59:45,730 --> 00:59:49,260
Speaker 2: about being the class clown, maybe coming from a broken home,

1212
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 2: the thing you see over and over in these stories,

1213
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:54,520
Speaker 2: that maybe some mental health issues, early medication. I think

1214
00:59:54,540 --> 00:59:57,860
Speaker 2: a lot of people say, well, every entertainer Every stand-up

1215
00:59:57,920 --> 01:00:02,480
Speaker 2: comic has that. But the difference is, a stand-up comic

1216
01:00:02,520 --> 01:00:04,900
Speaker 2: at some point had to go out to a club

1217
01:00:05,640 --> 01:00:08,500
Speaker 2: and interact with other comics and interact with the people

1218
01:00:08,620 --> 01:00:10,930
Speaker 2: on the club. They had to learn to be a

1219
01:00:10,990 --> 01:00:16,970
Speaker 2: person and to be a professional. It's different versus where

1220
01:00:17,010 --> 01:00:19,770
Speaker 2: you get to forever stay behind a keyboard and stay

1221
01:00:19,810 --> 01:00:23,430
Speaker 2: behind a monitor and a web camera. It's in terms

1222
01:00:23,470 --> 01:00:26,180
Speaker 2: of your development as a human being and trying to

1223
01:00:26,220 --> 01:00:28,700
Speaker 2: develop some sort of a, it is very different to

1224
01:00:28,720 --> 01:00:31,440
Speaker 2: where you've developed an act. You go out on stage,

1225
01:00:31,500 --> 01:00:32,780
Speaker 2: then we step off the stage.

1226
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:33,300
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1227
01:00:33,420 --> 01:00:35,540
Speaker 2: Act is over and you're back to your own real life.

1228
01:00:35,880 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 2: It is in terms of if you were trying to

1229
01:00:38,120 --> 01:00:41,680
Speaker 2: build a machine that ruins a human brain and a

1230
01:00:41,760 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 2: human development, I can't think of a better one than

1231
01:00:45,580 --> 01:00:49,360
Speaker 2: this method of you're 19 years old. You suddenly are

1232
01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:53,530
Speaker 2: making millions of dollars a year. You're not seeing your

1233
01:00:53,570 --> 01:00:59,890
Speaker 2: fans face to face. It's all anonymous. And your money,

1234
01:01:00,050 --> 01:01:02,230
Speaker 2: you don't have like a job where you have a salary.

1235
01:01:02,330 --> 01:01:04,790
Speaker 2: You're making money hour by hour, day by day. And

1236
01:01:04,830 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 2: you can watch the line go up. When I did this,

1237
01:01:07,910 --> 01:01:10,840
Speaker 2: the line went up. And the feedback loop of how

1238
01:01:10,960 --> 01:01:15,020
Speaker 2: quickly you get captured by that audience, where everything about

1239
01:01:15,060 --> 01:01:16,840
Speaker 2: how you dress, how you act, how you talk is

1240
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:19,300
Speaker 2: going to get dictated by watching what makes that line

1241
01:01:19,340 --> 01:01:22,620
Speaker 2: go up. It is an engine of madness.

1242
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:27,740
Speaker 1: Yeah. I shudder to think about what my life would

1243
01:01:27,760 --> 01:01:31,620
Speaker 1: have been like if I had been born 10 years later, right?

1244
01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:35,110
Speaker 1: Because just based on the fact that I've succeeded at this,

1245
01:01:35,270 --> 01:01:38,970
Speaker 1: I probably would have tried to get involved in some

1246
01:01:39,130 --> 01:01:41,490
Speaker 1: similar chunk of the creator economy, because there wouldn't have

1247
01:01:41,510 --> 01:01:45,350
Speaker 1: been websites to write for, right? That doesn't exist anymore

1248
01:01:45,390 --> 01:01:46,910
Speaker 1: in the way that it did when I was coming

1249
01:01:46,970 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 1: up as a baby writer. And you're right. I I

1250
01:01:49,920 --> 01:01:52,260
Speaker 1: can't even imagine how different, not just like my writing

1251
01:01:52,340 --> 01:01:54,000
Speaker 1: would be, but I would be as a person if

1252
01:01:54,060 --> 01:01:57,060
Speaker 1: I hadn't spent 20 years working with a bunch of

1253
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: other people and having my work shaped by them and

1254
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:02,760
Speaker 1: my personality shaped by them and my interactions with them,

1255
01:02:03,300 --> 01:02:06,710
Speaker 1: as opposed to the body of my work being a

1256
01:02:06,770 --> 01:02:10,170
Speaker 1: pure representation of my id and how I respond to

1257
01:02:10,230 --> 01:02:10,930
Speaker 1: piles of money.

1258
01:02:11,970 --> 01:02:14,990
Speaker 2: And you had editors, you had professionals working with it,

1259
01:02:15,010 --> 01:02:17,150
Speaker 2: you had people you had to go through. And again,

1260
01:02:17,190 --> 01:02:19,850
Speaker 2: we like to talk about gatekeepers, things like that. But

1261
01:02:19,890 --> 01:02:22,010
Speaker 2: in this case, especially if you're a young person, it's

1262
01:02:22,050 --> 01:02:25,880
Speaker 2: your first work. Those people are so important to your life,

1263
01:02:25,940 --> 01:02:28,620
Speaker 2: where if you just had direct access to an audience

1264
01:02:28,760 --> 01:02:34,940
Speaker 2: as a teenager, I don't... Because, I mean, I was...

1265
01:02:36,090 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 2: I was out of college before I got my first

1266
01:02:38,460 --> 01:02:42,040
Speaker 2: internet connection. My first blog was after I had a

1267
01:02:42,060 --> 01:02:45,140
Speaker 2: college degree. That's how old I am. Do people realize

1268
01:02:45,160 --> 01:02:46,060
Speaker 2: that's how old I am?

1269
01:02:46,180 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 1: I was reading that blog when I was 12, Jason.

1270
01:02:49,240 --> 01:02:52,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so now you've got somebody like me who

1271
01:02:52,780 --> 01:02:57,600
Speaker 2: I joined TikTok four years ago. It was August 2022

1272
01:02:57,600 --> 01:03:00,700
Speaker 2: because my book sales were going down. It's like, oh,

1273
01:03:00,740 --> 01:03:03,630
Speaker 2: I'm getting old and my audience is all dying off

1274
01:03:03,670 --> 01:03:05,900
Speaker 2: of old age. So I'm going to go on TikTok

1275
01:03:05,920 --> 01:03:07,760
Speaker 2: to try to connect with the youth because I've heard

1276
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:10,480
Speaker 2: there's people that review books on there. And if you're

1277
01:03:10,600 --> 01:03:12,800
Speaker 2: on there, then I was like, well, I can tell

1278
01:03:12,840 --> 01:03:14,860
Speaker 2: these people, hey, I got a new book out. You've

1279
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 2: probably seen me. Now you've seen my face because, hey,

1280
01:03:17,900 --> 01:03:20,780
Speaker 2: I wrote anonymously the first 10 years of my career.

1281
01:03:20,860 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 2: I didn't want people to know my name, what I

1282
01:03:22,980 --> 01:03:26,720
Speaker 2: looked like, where I lived, anything. So now fast forward

1283
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:32,690
Speaker 2: four years, I'm coming up on 3 million followers across TikTok, Reels, Instagram, YouTube.

1284
01:03:33,550 --> 01:03:35,470
Speaker 2: And I get messages every day saying, well, how do

1285
01:03:35,490 --> 01:03:37,130
Speaker 2: you do it? How do you become an influencer? How

1286
01:03:37,150 --> 01:03:40,130
Speaker 2: do you become a TikTok influencer? It's like, no, you

1287
01:03:40,170 --> 01:03:42,330
Speaker 2: tell me how I cannot have to do this.

1288
01:03:42,970 --> 01:03:44,170
Speaker 1: Please tell me how to stop.

1289
01:03:44,210 --> 01:03:46,650
Speaker 2: Because I grew up wanting to be Stephen King. I

1290
01:03:46,650 --> 01:03:50,030
Speaker 2: didn't grow up wanting to be, you know, pick your

1291
01:03:50,070 --> 01:03:52,950
Speaker 2: TikTok influencer. It's sad that I can't name one, even

1292
01:03:52,970 --> 01:03:56,030
Speaker 2: though because I do this for a living. Yeah. You understand? Like,

1293
01:03:56,140 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 2: I didn't aspire to that because it didn't exist. And

1294
01:03:58,620 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 2: so now I'm an elderly man on this platform of children,

1295
01:04:01,580 --> 01:04:04,820
Speaker 2: and I have children asking, well, how do I do that?

1296
01:04:04,840 --> 01:04:08,000
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know. I've been on the internet

1297
01:04:08,100 --> 01:04:12,930
Speaker 2: every single day since 1996, and this is all I know.

1298
01:04:13,090 --> 01:04:15,350
Speaker 2: And I went on here to try to get people

1299
01:04:15,370 --> 01:04:18,610
Speaker 2: to buy my books, and now they only watch the videos.

1300
01:04:18,670 --> 01:04:20,810
Speaker 2: Now I get recognized every time I leave the house,

1301
01:04:21,250 --> 01:04:23,970
Speaker 2: and none of them have read my books yet. They

1302
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 2: all love the videos. If I tell them that, now,

1303
01:04:26,540 --> 01:04:28,980
Speaker 2: were you around in the crack days? In the what?

1304
01:04:29,820 --> 01:04:31,300
Speaker 1: Yeah, the what magazine?

1305
01:04:31,340 --> 01:04:33,440
Speaker 2: You're not on here at all. Did you just lie?

1306
01:04:33,460 --> 01:04:36,030
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? There's no evidence of that.

1307
01:04:37,270 --> 01:04:40,790
Speaker 2: So anyway, I find myself trying to talk to these

1308
01:04:40,850 --> 01:04:43,810
Speaker 2: young people who are trying to ask me, well, yeah,

1309
01:04:43,850 --> 01:04:45,610
Speaker 2: this is my job. I want to be an influencer

1310
01:04:45,650 --> 01:04:49,910
Speaker 2: like you. It's like, no, you don't. I'm an elderly man.

1311
01:04:49,990 --> 01:04:52,740
Speaker 2: I've lived my life. I'm adjusted enough to know that

1312
01:04:53,240 --> 01:04:55,760
Speaker 2: these comments, that when people say the things they're saying,

1313
01:04:55,780 --> 01:04:58,080
Speaker 2: that that's just the way they interact with content sometimes.

1314
01:04:58,120 --> 01:04:59,860
Speaker 2: They don't even mean it a lot of times. It's

1315
01:04:59,900 --> 01:05:03,900
Speaker 2: like they said that thoughtlessly, but I had decades to

1316
01:05:03,940 --> 01:05:07,340
Speaker 2: adjust to that. Sure. I can't imagine if I was

1317
01:05:07,340 --> 01:05:09,320
Speaker 2: 16 getting the comments I get now, it would have been,

1318
01:05:09,340 --> 01:05:11,330
Speaker 2: it would have fried my brain.

1319
01:05:11,350 --> 01:05:14,940
Speaker 3: I mean, it's very similar to like, like, say, like

1320
01:05:14,980 --> 01:05:17,660
Speaker 3: a Justin Bieber getting famous at such an early age,

1321
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:22,370
Speaker 3: that changes a person. But it's like, at least his thing,

1322
01:05:22,450 --> 01:05:24,770
Speaker 3: it's like he got famous because he has a very

1323
01:05:24,890 --> 01:05:29,950
Speaker 3: good singing voice. And an influencer, it's very different. It's

1324
01:05:29,990 --> 01:05:30,750
Speaker 3: very different.

1325
01:05:31,510 --> 01:05:35,770
Speaker 1: People saying you're good at this actual like long recognized

1326
01:05:35,810 --> 01:05:39,270
Speaker 1: and valued talent as opposed to like, you made me

1327
01:05:39,330 --> 01:05:42,530
Speaker 1: laugh because you made someone unhappy in the real world

1328
01:05:42,630 --> 01:05:44,320
Speaker 1: by like saying something to them.

1329
01:05:45,360 --> 01:05:48,360
Speaker 2: Or I just admire the way you dress. I admire

1330
01:05:48,380 --> 01:05:50,320
Speaker 2: the way you live your life. It's like, well, but

1331
01:05:50,400 --> 01:05:54,440
Speaker 2: that's nuts because Justin Bieber worked very hard to learn

1332
01:05:54,500 --> 01:05:56,920
Speaker 2: how to sing and dance and do all that stuff.

1333
01:05:56,960 --> 01:05:58,880
Speaker 2: But that was an act. When he walked away from

1334
01:05:58,900 --> 01:06:02,070
Speaker 2: the stage, it was over. The idea of just What

1335
01:06:02,110 --> 01:06:04,270
Speaker 2: you have for breakfast is part of the show.

1336
01:06:04,930 --> 01:06:05,670
Speaker 1: And forever.

1337
01:06:06,210 --> 01:06:06,590
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1338
01:06:07,490 --> 01:06:10,250
Speaker 1: It seems like hell, honestly. I don't understand how the

1339
01:06:10,270 --> 01:06:14,650
Speaker 1: streamers do it, right? That's probably enough for this episode.

1340
01:06:15,570 --> 01:06:18,690
Speaker 1: Check out Jason's books, all of Jason's books. The John

1341
01:06:18,710 --> 01:06:21,530
Speaker 1: Dyes at the End series is great. And Jason, you've

1342
01:06:21,570 --> 01:06:23,010
Speaker 1: got a more direct plug, I'm sure, at the end

1343
01:06:23,030 --> 01:06:23,270
Speaker 1: of this.

1344
01:06:24,170 --> 01:06:26,290
Speaker 2: Yeah, the new one, book five in that series is

1345
01:06:26,750 --> 01:06:29,840
Speaker 2: There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel, A Novel

1346
01:06:29,930 --> 01:06:33,140
Speaker 2: of Giant Crabs. These books are like detective novels in

1347
01:06:33,160 --> 01:06:35,140
Speaker 2: that you can read, you can grab any random one.

1348
01:06:35,260 --> 01:06:37,920
Speaker 2: Each book is its own complete case or whatever. So

1349
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:40,240
Speaker 2: if you find one at a garage sale or at

1350
01:06:40,260 --> 01:06:44,000
Speaker 2: the library, if they've only got book three, it's fine.

1351
01:06:44,600 --> 01:06:45,960
Speaker 2: It's not like Game of Thrones.

1352
01:06:46,480 --> 01:06:47,459
Speaker 1: Jason knows what he's doing.

1353
01:06:48,180 --> 01:06:49,740
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can just grab one.

1354
01:06:50,090 --> 01:06:52,950
Speaker 1: It's fine. One of my favorite and longest, I've been

1355
01:06:52,990 --> 01:06:55,490
Speaker 1: reading John Dice at the End stuff since you started,

1356
01:06:55,550 --> 01:06:57,410
Speaker 1: since it was like a serial that you would put

1357
01:06:57,450 --> 01:06:58,770
Speaker 1: out a story every Halloween. Yeah.

1358
01:06:59,740 --> 01:07:03,410
Speaker 2: It was backrooms before backrooms. It was a piece of

1359
01:07:03,490 --> 01:07:06,330
Speaker 2: internet lore. It was a viral blog post that got

1360
01:07:06,350 --> 01:07:08,830
Speaker 2: passed around in the late 90s and early 2000s and

1361
01:07:08,890 --> 01:07:12,680
Speaker 2: then became a film. That's the first thing that made

1362
01:07:12,720 --> 01:07:16,620
Speaker 2: me the level of fame that I have. It was that.

1363
01:07:17,200 --> 01:07:20,140
Speaker 2: And back then, when a piece of text that was

1364
01:07:20,140 --> 01:07:25,919
Speaker 2: 150,000 words long could go viral, like lots of people

1365
01:07:25,980 --> 01:07:28,230
Speaker 2: reading it, they would just read it all day. Yeah.

1366
01:07:29,280 --> 01:07:36,800
Speaker 1: Wild i'm so old yeah rip reading well read jason's

1367
01:07:36,840 --> 01:07:40,260
Speaker 1: books and uh yeah come back in part two and

1368
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:42,540
Speaker 1: we will uh we will continue with our story about

1369
01:07:42,580 --> 01:07:46,890
Speaker 1: how we got from you know paul danino to chud

1370
01:07:46,910 --> 01:07:49,510
Speaker 1: the builder walking around with a handgun uh that that

1371
01:07:49,610 --> 01:07:50,910
Speaker 1: that and more in part two.

1372
01:07:54,260 --> 01:07:56,760
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

1373
01:07:56,980 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 3: For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

1374
01:08:01,090 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 3: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1375
01:08:03,910 --> 01:08:07,390
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of

1376
01:08:07,430 --> 01:08:10,169
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every

1377
01:08:10,250 --> 01:08:12,890
Speaker 3: Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you

1378
01:08:12,910 --> 01:08:16,370
Speaker 3: don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog,

1379
01:08:16,450 --> 01:08:20,330
Speaker 3: continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at

1380
01:08:20,390 --> 01:08:25,070
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.