Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Ever, notice how you hate
Speaker 1: everyone who disagrees with you. If you said yes, then
Speaker 1: you're not alone. And if you said no, then you
Speaker 1: But you're not the only one who feels this way.
Speaker 1: After two hundred and forty four years together as a nation,
Speaker 1: we seem to be growing apart. Americans are fiercely split,
Speaker 1: not only about policy but on the basic decency of
Speaker 1: the other side. Growing shares in each party now describe
Speaker 1: those in the other party as more closed minded, dishonest, immoral,
Speaker 1: and unintelligent. According to an NBC poll, sixty of college
Speaker 1: Democrats say they would not dorm with a Republican. Of
Speaker 1: Americans now have few or no friends across the aisle.
Speaker 1: In a poll before the last election, percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: and twenty percent of Democrats agreed that the country would
Speaker 1: be better off if large numbers of the opposing party
Speaker 1: US died. We'd be better off off the other side
Speaker 1: just died. What that's crazy? Please think about it. The
Speaker 1: entire country would be haunted by the ghosts of your enemies.
Speaker 1: Enemies who, by the way, cannon will watch you master
Speaker 1: be And why can't you share a dorm room with
Speaker 1: someone you disagree with politically, it's it's a difference of opinion,
Speaker 1: not airborne chlamydia. Also, it would be great to dorm
Speaker 1: with a Republican. Do you know how fun it would
Speaker 1: be to sexile someone who doesn't even believe in pre
Speaker 1: marital sex. Sorry, don't come in, we're drying our wet
Speaker 1: spot with your all Lives Matter shirt. Sure. So the
Speaker 1: question is how did we as a country become this divided?
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it in our latest installment of Long
Speaker 1: Story Short m H. Outrage in America isn't new. It's
Speaker 1: one of our oldest pastimes, right behind baseball and racism.
Speaker 1: But what is new is just how much money entire
Speaker 1: industries are making off our outrage, Starting with social media.
Speaker 1: Their entire business model depends on keeping your eyeballs on
Speaker 1: the screen until your tokes gets numb on the toilet seed,
Speaker 1: and nothing does that better than anger. I've actually been
Speaker 1: on the toilet with my phone so long that I
Speaker 1: p again in and internal Facebook report showed that their
Speaker 1: algorithm purposely feeds users divisive content and ordered it increased
Speaker 1: time on their platform. We've all ex vurience this, I
Speaker 1: mean personally, I am way more likely to click on
Speaker 1: some dudes transphobic ramps than another picture of my cousins twins.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't get me wrong, both those kids are
Speaker 1: up in their own truly fascinating way, but they're not
Speaker 1: keeping me strolling till two am. And once the algorithm
Speaker 1: figures out what pisces you off, it runs with it
Speaker 1: right off a cliff. In the summer of two thousand
Speaker 1: and nineteen, Facebook run an experiment. It created a fake
Speaker 1: account for a forty one year old mom living in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. They called her Carol Smith. Carol started off
Speaker 1: by liking a few popular conservative Facebook pages like Fox News,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and Melania Trump, but quickly Facebook began dragging
Speaker 1: her down a rabbit hole of misinformation after only two days.
Speaker 1: Two days, Facebook recommended Carol follow a q and on page,
Speaker 1: and a few days later it suggested she follow another.
Speaker 1: By week three of the experiment, Carol's feed had become
Speaker 1: quote a constant flow of misleading and polarizing content, and
Speaker 1: so Facebook began sending push notifications. One notification was actually
Speaker 1: to a Facebook post claiming Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Wow.
Speaker 1: Facebook radicalized the person in just three weeks even Isis
Speaker 1: was like, why can't we get numbers like that? And
Speaker 1: that's just one example. Everything on the internet is so sweaty.
Speaker 1: I bought one credenza from West selman Sen and ever
Speaker 1: since then they've been emailing me like five times a day,
Speaker 1: and by the fifth one they're so desperate. They're like,
Speaker 1: if you check out our new throw pillows, we'll suck
Speaker 1: your But as bad as the Internet is, studies show
Speaker 1: that it's nothing compared to how cable news increases polarization,
Speaker 1: because at least on the Internet, different viewpoints sneak their
Speaker 1: way into your feeds. But nobody on Earth is lipping
Speaker 1: back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News except for
Speaker 1: me because I like to break out of my bubble
Speaker 1: and watch the reverse mortgage commercials from both sides. Now,
Speaker 1: all the major cable news networks rile you up, but
Speaker 1: no one is better at it than Fox News. They've
Speaker 1: become the top cable news network by making their viewers livid,
Speaker 1: and they're not subtle about it either. This story will
Speaker 1: have you fired up this morning, U s soldiers now
Speaker 1: learning about the dangers of white privilege. We have a
Speaker 1: story that will make your blood boil infamous social justice
Speaker 1: warrior calling Kaepernick is now the brand new face of
Speaker 1: a Nike ad campaign. If you just paid your taxes,
Speaker 1: this next story will piss you off. This is going
Speaker 1: to enrage you. You're going to be outraged when we
Speaker 1: tell you what happened. Prepared to be outraged, Get ready
Speaker 1: to be angry. The story is gonna make you sick.
Speaker 1: This story will make you want to throw your newspaper,
Speaker 1: make your bo boiled. This next news story is going
Speaker 1: to make you so mad you'll want to punch yourself
Speaker 1: in the butthole. You'll be so mad you'll puke on
Speaker 1: your nana. You'll be so outraged by this next story
Speaker 1: you'll rip out all your pubes in one poll. So
Speaker 1: thank you Cable News. Now at the top of the
Speaker 1: anger food chain are the politicians who benefit the most
Speaker 1: from our outrage. Because politicians know that rage equals donations.
Speaker 1: That's why they're constantly pushing stupid culture war issues on us,
Speaker 1: whether they're real or completely made up. This morning, a
Speaker 1: new warning about the dangers of misinformation spreading online and
Speaker 1: making its way into political races, and this latest claim
Speaker 1: that some school districts are providing cat litter boxes for
Speaker 1: students who identify as cats. The first sign of the
Speaker 1: rumor in the US appears to have been at this
Speaker 1: Michigan school board meeting last December, where it was discussed
Speaker 1: by a parent without cruely, just then shared on Facebook
Speaker 1: by a chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party referring to furies.
Speaker 1: The false story sneaking its way across the country and
Speaker 1: now into Republican stump speeches. Have you heard about the
Speaker 1: litter boxes stuff? If we don't push back on a cat,
Speaker 1: they put tales on and they demand that they have
Speaker 1: a litter box in the school, not because there's actual
Speaker 1: cats in the room, but because there's kids going around
Speaker 1: licking themselves as though they're cats. We've literally got kids
Speaker 1: who think they're cats and dogs using litter boxes in classrooms. No,
Speaker 1: you don't, You literally don't. Kids are not trying to
Speaker 1: ship in litter boxes in the school or at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, most kids won't ship in toilets in school,
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Other kids won't know that you
Speaker 1: ship and that's a secret. This is how I know
Speaker 1: it's a lie because they don't have one example of
Speaker 1: it happening, not one, but that didn't stop them from
Speaker 1: spreading it because it benefits them. So long story short,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering why you're so angry all the time,
Speaker 1: it's not a coincidence. The system is designed to provoke you.
Speaker 1: And politicians like this system because they profit from it,
Speaker 1: they survive from it. They can say anything as long
Speaker 1: as it's what their audience wants to believe. That's why
Speaker 1: when there was a bill that would have required fundraising
Speaker 1: emails to be fact checked, Marjorie Taylor Green blocked it.
Speaker 1: Now that was a lie I just made up. But
Speaker 1: you are like, get up? Didn't? They're so ready to
Speaker 1: donate to my campaign. And once you notice how much
Speaker 1: this system profits of your anger, it's not surprising that
Speaker 1: people would like the other side to just die. It's
Speaker 1: not surprising that people are afraid to dorm with the
Speaker 1: monsters who believe different lies than us. It's not even
Speaker 1: surprising when a mob of people believing they are righteous
Speaker 1: storm the capital, an event where ironically, a bunch of
Speaker 1: furries used Nancy Pelosi's office as a little boy. Explore
Speaker 1: more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching
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Speaker 1: and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus. This has
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