Speaker 1: Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Speaker 1: Show weekdays at two a m. Eastern eleven pm PACIFICO.
Speaker 1: If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
Speaker 1: was enough, I think again. He's the last remnants of
Speaker 1: the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness. He treats
Speaker 1: crackheads in the ghetto Cutter the same as the rich
Speaker 1: pill poppers in the penthouse, the Clearinghouse of hot takes,
Speaker 1: break free or something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben
Speaker 1: Maller starts right now in the air everywhere. We are
Speaker 1: back at it again, another weekend of podcasting. Here. This
Speaker 1: a course, a spin off, as you know by now.
Speaker 1: He spin off of the Overnight show, the Ben Maller
Speaker 1: Show on Fox, and this all over the podcast world
Speaker 1: eight days a week now because four hours are not enough.
Speaker 1: And we welcome in yet again, David Gascon. This is
Speaker 1: an interview podcast. It's an interview podcast. Want me to
Speaker 1: play that? Uh? I was delightful about the guest selection
Speaker 1: that you had for this week. I know this is
Speaker 1: this is Gascon's dream come true. I assume you already
Speaker 1: know now because you downloaded the podcast. Who was on
Speaker 1: the podcast but for a very long amount of time.
Speaker 1: Gascon has been badgering me with the Babylon Be and
Speaker 1: I have come around. I'm a big fan now of
Speaker 1: the Babylon Be. At first, I was like so annoyed
Speaker 1: because you would every day with these Babylon Be stories.
Speaker 1: I'm like, leave me alone, Leave me the f alone.
Speaker 1: But I've come around, and they've blown up here this
Speaker 1: year in this election year. Babylon b which is a
Speaker 1: satire site, and they've been in the news a lot
Speaker 1: because they got shut down this week. It's by Facebook
Speaker 1: because of inciting what was it? Inciting violence on a
Speaker 1: satire site, which is just outstanding. So we have tracked
Speaker 1: down here ask on the man that runs it. The
Speaker 1: CEO of the Babylon Be, Seth Dylan's gonna hang out
Speaker 1: with us here on this podcast, which I'm excited about.
Speaker 1: I was it was a long time coming. I thought
Speaker 1: about the approach since we've had so many radio personalities on,
Speaker 1: and I figured this is a great time to have
Speaker 1: them on, especially because we got the election going on.
Speaker 1: People are voting, and we got obviously the huge day
Speaker 1: on November the three, and we didn't laugh a little bit.
Speaker 1: You you've had a wild week um Dodgers coming back
Speaker 1: last week in the NLCS in the World Series. You've
Speaker 1: got Kyler Murray, you got got Republicans and Democrats. This
Speaker 1: is this is a good week for us, so that
Speaker 1: I thought it was appropriate for you. Yeah, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it's it's great with everything's going on. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll last seth about the the President Trump retweet of
Speaker 1: the Babylon B which got a lot of attention recently
Speaker 1: as well, within the last ten days or so. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that as well. And for those that
Speaker 1: are unfamiliar, I don't know how you would be unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: because we talk about the Babylon B guest gun played
Speaker 1: as a game here every once in a while, B
Speaker 1: or not to be. But it's a satire side obviously.
Speaker 1: It's it's been been doing very well here. And as
Speaker 1: they say, I like the mottel they have on their
Speaker 1: social media. I think it was on Twitter. I read
Speaker 1: this that fake news you can trust, fake news that
Speaker 1: you can trust, and uh, it's it's you know, it
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of the the Phil Hendry
Speaker 1: radio show from back in the day. I remember it
Speaker 1: because like if you listen to the Phil Henry radio Show.
Speaker 1: And you didn't know that it was a joke, you
Speaker 1: would be upset, right, you'd be like angry. But if
Speaker 1: you knew it was a joke, if you figured that out,
Speaker 1: and you'd be like, this is the most amazing this
Speaker 1: like art, like this is art? What this is? And
Speaker 1: so the babila me like the way I consume it now,
Speaker 1: it's so funny when I read these stories and I
Speaker 1: you know, you know, they're satire whatever. And then the
Speaker 1: people that are hard ohs that don't get the joke.
Speaker 1: And that's my favorite part. That's I that's just outstanding.
Speaker 1: And these are people in society that have very important
Speaker 1: positions and politics and news and they don't get the joke.
Speaker 1: It's it's really pretty funny. It's kind of piggybacking off
Speaker 1: of Sports Talk with Barry right because he would go
Speaker 1: Twitter change his name multiple times and people would just
Speaker 1: crush him or they would retweet him like he was
Speaker 1: breaking news. And that's the ya capain with the Beat
Speaker 1: because they have a good attention to detail with titles
Speaker 1: and pictures and then articles and then bang, could you
Speaker 1: imagine could you imagine if sports talk very joined forces
Speaker 1: with the Babylon be. Oh my god, you it would
Speaker 1: be like all the superheroes teaming up in satire. It
Speaker 1: would be amazing. Uh man, all right, well let's get
Speaker 1: to it though, guess because we don't want to waste
Speaker 1: any time here. The man is standing by virtually, of course,
Speaker 1: we welcome in the CEO of the Babylon Being the man,
Speaker 1: one of the big shots that runs this thing. Seth
Speaker 1: Dylan is his name, and Seth, why don't we start
Speaker 1: with the reason we're having you on here? The Babylon Be.
Speaker 1: You guys ran a story, a political story, and got
Speaker 1: shut down by Facebook. Kind of walk me through how
Speaker 1: this all happened, please, Yeah. I mean basically, Facebook has
Speaker 1: these community standards, and they have a complicated algorithm based
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence system that looks at various posts on their
Speaker 1: platform and links that are um posted on their platform
Speaker 1: to determine if they are hateful or inciting violence or
Speaker 1: threatening in some way, and so they're signals that they're
Speaker 1: looking for that will tell them, um, if the content
Speaker 1: is posted violate their standards in some way. So, um fine.
Speaker 1: You know, to have systems in place like that, it's
Speaker 1: more efficient than having people looking at everything. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think they have so much content on their system.
Speaker 1: It makes sense that they do that, but in this case, yeah,
Speaker 1: we posted it absolutely ridiculous article. It was basically a
Speaker 1: re hashing of an old Monty Python scene. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we we we took the scene from where they were
Speaker 1: in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they were
Speaker 1: trying to condemn this woman as a witch and they
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out if she was a witch
Speaker 1: or not, and they decided to weigh her against the
Speaker 1: duck to see if she weighed as much as a duck.
Speaker 1: And it's just the most absurd scene ever, and they
Speaker 1: determined that she is in fact a witch and she
Speaker 1: needs to be burned at the stink right. Well, we
Speaker 1: translated that scene into the confirmation hearing where Amy Coney
Speaker 1: Barrett was being grilled by these senators, um, and you
Speaker 1: know they're disparaging her and trying to make her look
Speaker 1: silly and whatever. So we took this duck scene from
Speaker 1: Monty Python and we made it. We made a spoof
Speaker 1: on it and and had the senators you know, suggesting
Speaker 1: that if she weighs more than a duck, and then
Speaker 1: you know she's a then she must be a witch
Speaker 1: and we must have burned her. Well that language like
Speaker 1: we must have burned her? Was it triggered something? And
Speaker 1: fag Facebook flagged it as being, you know, an incitement
Speaker 1: to violence, and obviously it's not. But the incredible thing
Speaker 1: where it went where things went sideways a little bit,
Speaker 1: was when um, we appealed that that ruling and a
Speaker 1: person looked at it and then it reached out to
Speaker 1: us and said it is an incitement of violence. We
Speaker 1: stand by this. Uh, you need to make changes to
Speaker 1: the article. And we just couldn't believe that that's insane.
Speaker 1: So like, you know, how's it where they assume the
Speaker 1: email you or you just go to your Facebook the
Speaker 1: babblelon bi Facebook page and you're like, you're done, that's it,
Speaker 1: It's over. Are you? Like? How how does the chain
Speaker 1: go where you find out you've been taken down, your
Speaker 1: your your financial opportunity demonetized? How did that work? Yes,
Speaker 1: they send you a notification tour account. They have like
Speaker 1: a page quality section where you can analyze your page
Speaker 1: and see if you're compliant with their policies and and
Speaker 1: they give us a notification saying that one of our
Speaker 1: popes had been deleted because of violated community standards, and
Speaker 1: as a result of that, we were demonetized. So basically
Speaker 1: what that means is we can't make use of any
Speaker 1: of Facebook's monetization tools. We can't use their instant articles platform,
Speaker 1: which allows you to display articles within Facebook and have
Speaker 1: Facebook ads on them for ad revenue. Um, you can't
Speaker 1: use their subscription platform to collect subscription revenue. Brand collaborations
Speaker 1: are no longer permitted. So they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: monetization tools that they restrict and turn off if you're
Speaker 1: violating the community standards. So they let us know that
Speaker 1: those tools were no longer accessible to us. We would
Speaker 1: no longer be able to monetize our Facebook page until
Speaker 1: we fix this issue. And when we appealed and they
Speaker 1: denied the appeal, we had no choice. But they go
Speaker 1: to the media and try to make us think about
Speaker 1: this because it's just absolutely ridiculous, Like in what universe
Speaker 1: is that article and actual incitement to violence. They say
Speaker 1: in their community standards that they take context into account
Speaker 1: when they review these things, Well clearly they didn't in
Speaker 1: this case. Yeah, so how does that you know? You
Speaker 1: you're an Internet guy? Obviously run the Babylon be You've
Speaker 1: been in the game for a long time, Like, how
Speaker 1: does that happen with the algorithm? Like, is it you know,
Speaker 1: somebody programming it obviously, or how does it end up
Speaker 1: in that situation? And I saw your you posted on
Speaker 1: Twitter about this, and I saw a bunch of people
Speaker 1: underneath you said, yeah, I had something happened, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd said so and so, and I got in trouble
Speaker 1: with that. So like, how do you think this happened?
Speaker 1: You know the algorithm? Well, I mean they code there out,
Speaker 1: they code their system to look for specific keys, phrases
Speaker 1: and words, and so a sentence like we must burn her,
Speaker 1: you know, burn her is clearly a reference to, you know,
Speaker 1: lighting someone on fire, and their systems aren't smart enough
Speaker 1: to look at the broader context and see that we
Speaker 1: weren't actually suggesting that Amy Coney Barrett be lit on
Speaker 1: fire by anyone. You know, the system is not smart
Speaker 1: enough to detect satire. And then when they came out
Speaker 1: in their public statement, they didn't make a statement to
Speaker 1: Fox News when Fox inquired about this, and they said,
Speaker 1: you know, our systems have a hard time detecting satire.
Speaker 1: So we're sorry for this mistake. But but our response
Speaker 1: to that is, well, okay, your system failed, but then
Speaker 1: a person looked at and the person also failed, So
Speaker 1: you know, why did that happen? There's no explanation for that.
Speaker 1: And to your point, yes, there are lots of people
Speaker 1: commenting underneath his posts talking about how they've been flagged
Speaker 1: and they've been disabled, they've been suspended, but they don't
Speaker 1: have the platform that we have. They can't get online
Speaker 1: and get the media involved and and push back on Facebook.
Speaker 1: They don't have the ability to do that. We're in
Speaker 1: a position where we can do that, fortunately, but not
Speaker 1: everybody can. So for those people, when this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff happens, they're just done. They're dead in the water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this has a happy ending, right, Santh. I mean
Speaker 1: you you updated the story, right, So because of interviews
Speaker 1: you've done like this and other obviously big platforms, they've
Speaker 1: changed their stances that correct. Yeah, I mean, well, once
Speaker 1: we brought media attention to it, all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they're issuing apologies and saying they reinstated our account. And
Speaker 1: this happens over and over and over again. You know,
Speaker 1: Twitter hasnt spended us before Facebook has threatened us with
Speaker 1: the platform and demonitization before. And the only time we
Speaker 1: get a positive outcome is when we go to the media,
Speaker 1: we explain what's happening, and you know, news reports start
Speaker 1: coming out about it, about how Facebook is trying to
Speaker 1: censor us, and then and only then they changed their
Speaker 1: tune and try to fix it. Said are you surprised,
Speaker 1: like has this happened to you? Or have you had
Speaker 1: a hint of something like this happening to you in
Speaker 1: the past, or is this the first time you've been
Speaker 1: hit with a hammer like that? Uh, well, it did
Speaker 1: happen one time in the past with Facebook specifically where um,
Speaker 1: when they first started implementing fact checking, they started working
Speaker 1: with third party fact checkers, and the fact checkers snokes
Speaker 1: in particular, was rating our articles full. And it's just
Speaker 1: the most absurd thing in the world. It's like, a
Speaker 1: joke isn't true or false. It's a joke, right, it's
Speaker 1: in its own category. Um, you don't when when Jerry
Speaker 1: Seinfeld is up on stage tracking jokes in a nightclub,
Speaker 1: you don't stand up and yell that's not true. Whenever
Speaker 1: he tells a story that's that's fictional because it's a joke, right, so, um,
Speaker 1: it's just it's silly. But Facebook was was wodenly interpreting
Speaker 1: these fact checks to mean that we were putting out
Speaker 1: fake news, and they had strict policies against faith news,
Speaker 1: and so they would they reached out to us and
Speaker 1: threatened us. This was a few years ago, well, two
Speaker 1: thousand eight teens. They threatened up to with the monetization
Speaker 1: and uh in suspension of our page for for for
Speaker 1: pushing fake news. And again we made we got a
Speaker 1: lot of media attention there. Eventually they apologized and said
Speaker 1: we realized it's a satire now and we need that
Speaker 1: we need a better way of handling this stuff so
Speaker 1: that we're not threatening satire companies, you know. But there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of effort on the left to in
Speaker 1: to insinuate, imply, um that we are not in fact
Speaker 1: a satire site, but we are actually a purposefully misleading
Speaker 1: disinformation campaign that pretends to be a satire site to
Speaker 1: certain invent Facebook rules. And I'm not as a kidding
Speaker 1: like that sounds crazy, But there's a recent article in
Speaker 1: um in in New York Times published like five days
Speaker 1: ago that says that we capitalize on Fusion Um in
Speaker 1: questions whether or not we're doing this on purpose. Well, set,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to bring that up because because Ben and
Speaker 1: I like Ben, Ben Monday through Friday is typically compelled
Speaker 1: to hit all that is sports talk radio. It's great.
Speaker 1: So some of the stuff that he does on his show,
Speaker 1: or some of the stuff he wants to do on
Speaker 1: the show, just can't because obviously that kind of a spectrum,
Speaker 1: it doesn't cater to it. But on the podcast, which
Speaker 1: we obviously invited you on, we do things a little
Speaker 1: bit different. And so, like I said the email, when
Speaker 1: I introduced myself to you, I was kind of like
Speaker 1: one of the original fans of the Babylon b and
Speaker 1: to kind of pull the curtain back, I would send
Speaker 1: articles to Ben. I text him like in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night when his show is going on, and
Speaker 1: his eyes would just roll because like, what the funk
Speaker 1: is this right? And then before you know what, some
Speaker 1: of those other friends that are at sports that the
Speaker 1: media started retweeting you guys on the regular, and then
Speaker 1: Ben's followers and listeners to a show started retwitting stuff
Speaker 1: and then tagging the minutes. So so yeah, and it
Speaker 1: blew up. It I mean, I know you guys have
Speaker 1: done great, and this is like, uh, let me ask
Speaker 1: you this a little said I. I I. When you told
Speaker 1: the story about you know, the New York Times and
Speaker 1: and their your their article like it, it it reminds me.
Speaker 1: I used to have a Boston radio that didn't get
Speaker 1: like I I don't you know, I do a sports
Speaker 1: show obviously, but you know, occase, let's throw some satire in.
Speaker 1: And I had a boss that did not get had
Speaker 1: no sense of humor. What is it like? It feels
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of people, said, that have no
Speaker 1: sense of humor. What is it like to do a
Speaker 1: satire site in when no one has a funny bone anymore?
Speaker 1: It seems well, okay, so there's a couple of things
Speaker 1: that play there, and there is there is um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hesitation to do comedy and for
Speaker 1: certain audiences because of the PC culture, right. I mentioned
Speaker 1: Jerry since all a minute ago, you know, years back,
Speaker 1: he announced that he would no longer do shows for
Speaker 1: college students on college campuses. And the reason is because
Speaker 1: they're so politically correct, you know, anything he says, they're
Speaker 1: gonna think he's racist or sexist or something thing, you know,
Speaker 1: or homophobic. So um, they they they're just ready to
Speaker 1: be offended by anything. And that kind of culture does
Speaker 1: make comedy a little difficult. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: not having a sense of humor, Look, people on the
Speaker 1: left love to laugh as long as it's the right
Speaker 1: targets that are being hit. You know, these late night
Speaker 1: comedy shows. I just saw something the other day. It
Speaker 1: was something like their jokes when they're making political jokes
Speaker 1: are about Trump, um, and only like three percent of
Speaker 1: them or something, or about Biden. Well, you know, they
Speaker 1: like to laugh at certain people, they like to laugh
Speaker 1: at certain ideas. They're they're very they're very willing to
Speaker 1: laugh as long as it's it's not it's not pointed
Speaker 1: at them, right, So, um, it's a very selected thing.
Speaker 1: It's a double standard. A lot of these media companies
Speaker 1: that that are very hard on us and and have
Speaker 1: this uncharitable assumption that we have some kind of ill
Speaker 1: motives where we're trying to mislead people on purpose. They
Speaker 1: never think that about the Onion, for example, the most
Speaker 1: popular web you know, satire site of the last twenty years. Um,
Speaker 1: they never assigned ill motives the Onion. They think the
Speaker 1: onion is funny and that they're doing genuine satire. And
Speaker 1: the only reason that they question our motives is because
Speaker 1: they disagree with us politically. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: they see that or not, but it's definitely disingenuous and
Speaker 1: it's double standards. Said, let me what percentage of people
Speaker 1: I remember I read a study years ago, I said
Speaker 1: of Americans will believe anything like what percentage of people
Speaker 1: read your stuff online? And they're like, they don't get
Speaker 1: the joke, they don't understand the sets. How do you
Speaker 1: have any idea just a ballpark figure on how many
Speaker 1: people you think just don't get it? Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I wouldn't say that's probably as high ascent.
Speaker 1: There's absolutely people who don't get it. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons for that, right, there's um satire is successful.
Speaker 1: The jokes are funny when they're when they're closer to
Speaker 1: the truth rather than further away from it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's they depend on having a proximity to the truth.
Speaker 1: If it's too detached from reality, it's not funny. So
Speaker 1: that you know that saying there's a grain of truth
Speaker 1: in every joke is it's popular saying for a reason,
Speaker 1: there's truths to the things that we're joking about, and
Speaker 1: that's why people believe them so readily. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: the world has gotten much crazier. People have much more
Speaker 1: extreme views. They're saying much more extreme things. There's really wild,
Speaker 1: crazy things happening today that would have never been normal
Speaker 1: or acceptable years ago. UM. And so in that environment,
Speaker 1: when when when you're trying to exaggerate the truth a
Speaker 1: little bit, which is what satire does, Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: to stay one step ahead of it. So almost everything
Speaker 1: is believable today. I mean, and from my experience what
Speaker 1: I see in the headlines, I see headlines every day.
Speaker 1: I'm shaking my head in disbelief. I'm like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe that really happened. I can't believe they really said that.
Speaker 1: I can't believe they really did that. In that kind
Speaker 1: of environment, UM, it's hard to write stories that people
Speaker 1: aren't going to believe. So it's reality's fault, Honestly, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not that our satire is too close to reality,
Speaker 1: which is what we're accused of. It's that reality is
Speaker 1: too close to satire. That's the problem. And on that note,
Speaker 1: is that what inspired you to create Not the Bee?
Speaker 1: Because you guys have had some articles on the babel
Speaker 1: on Bee that you know they've turned from satire to truth.
Speaker 1: So is that look you to create Not the Bee?
Speaker 1: We call them, we call them fulfilled prophecies. But yes,
Speaker 1: we have in some cases, mere hours after we published
Speaker 1: a story, whatever we were joking about actually happened. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's a perfect example of how reality is, Like
Speaker 1: it's hard to stay one step ahead of things when
Speaker 1: they're this crazy. But yeah, that's the that's the inspiration
Speaker 1: for Not to Be. It's that there's there's enough crazy
Speaker 1: stuff happening, these wild headlines, they seem like they should
Speaker 1: be satire but somehow aren't. Um. Not to Be is
Speaker 1: really targeting those stories and in isolating the stories and
Speaker 1: amplifying them. So um, it's just really there's so much
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit today out there and what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world. We thought that there was a great
Speaker 1: opportunity to do kind of a spinoff of the Bee
Speaker 1: where it's just this absurd like should be satire but
Speaker 1: somehow isn't. And you guys do things on a national level,
Speaker 1: But is there a particular state that you target the most.
Speaker 1: I know, you guys hit California pretty hard, But is
Speaker 1: it in California or New York or Florida and Texas,
Speaker 1: anything that you like in particular, you mean in terms
Speaker 1: of hit pretty hard. Like we make fun of them
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, we will pick on people, uh,
Speaker 1: anybody that where you feel like basically, you know, satire
Speaker 1: what we try to do with his ridicule, bad ideas. Um,
Speaker 1: that's one of the that's one of the main purposes
Speaker 1: of satires to criticize you know, bad thinking, bad ideology, hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: double standards. So when we see like governors uh you
Speaker 1: know with really heavy handed, um kind of authoritarian rule
Speaker 1: in their states, you know, and they're doing crazy ridiculous
Speaker 1: things or contradictory things, we make fun of that. And
Speaker 1: and you've got a lot of stuff. You've got a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on right now in California. They're
Speaker 1: in the headlines all the time, like they don't have
Speaker 1: enough they don't have enough electricity of power their state,
Speaker 1: for example. So you know, we we condom for those
Speaker 1: kinds of things. Um. So yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: the ones that are in the headlines, the most are
Speaker 1: the ones that are gonna get picked on the most.
Speaker 1: We're really piggybacking on whatever is in the news. And
Speaker 1: and Sepia, the October sixte President Trump retweet is that
Speaker 1: the Mona Lisa for the bab al embie. Oh man.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of debate about that that. Actually,
Speaker 1: we don't normally get media attention outside of like conservative media,
Speaker 1: you know, like we get Fox News pays a lot
Speaker 1: of attention to us, a lot of the a lot
Speaker 1: of the players on the right like the Daily Wire
Speaker 1: and the Federalists and the Blaze. You know, they pay
Speaker 1: attention to us, But we don't get a lot of
Speaker 1: immediate media attention on the other side, like with Slate
Speaker 1: and Box and CNN or any of those places. But
Speaker 1: but when Trump tweets our stuff, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they pay attention, and they they look at that as
Speaker 1: just a prime opportunity to make fun of him as
Speaker 1: being an idiot. But um, we actually know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we know people in his administration, um, and we have
Speaker 1: it from we have close contacts of his who have
Speaker 1: a short up that he knows what the babylombie is.
Speaker 1: He thinks it's funny. Um, he reads it all the time,
Speaker 1: and so we believe that he knows that it's satire,
Speaker 1: but um, it is it is. It's possible he's just
Speaker 1: trolling people on the left and and uh and sharing
Speaker 1: satire just to see a kind of reaction he can
Speaker 1: get from them. I would not put that past him
Speaker 1: at all. Seth, who's the biggest celebrity or or I
Speaker 1: guess personality that you guys have fishhooked? Is it like
Speaker 1: Alissa Milano or who? Is it? Very good question. If
Speaker 1: Trump was confused by that headline and thought it was real,
Speaker 1: then it's Trump for um. But I don't think that
Speaker 1: he was. I'm not sure. I'd have to go back
Speaker 1: and look. I do know. We recently did a piece
Speaker 1: on after Ruth Vader Ginsberg passed. UM. We photoshopped Lebron
Speaker 1: James wearing like a lace a white lace collar around
Speaker 1: his black shirt, honoring Ruth Vader Ginsberg, so it looks
Speaker 1: like he was dressed like her. And UM, people on
Speaker 1: the left we're sharing that like crazy. So there were
Speaker 1: like New York Times reporters who are sharing it talking
Speaker 1: about how beautiful it was, now meaningful it was that
Speaker 1: the NBA was honoring Ruth Bader Ginenberg in that way. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, depending on what we do, we
Speaker 1: get a lot, a lot, a lot of attention um
Speaker 1: from people. You know, they love to say that we're
Speaker 1: we're fooling our own audience with this stuff, but they
Speaker 1: get fooled by it all the time. And specific names
Speaker 1: of like celebrities are escaping me. I'm not sure. But
Speaker 1: there was another one too, we did about how Trump
Speaker 1: said that he's done more for Christianity than Jesus himself.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're just playing on Trump's ego there.
Speaker 1: He's constantly you know, talking about how great he is
Speaker 1: and how and how he's done, you know, better than
Speaker 1: anybody in history at whatever he's doing in that moment um.
Speaker 1: And but you know, the the left believe that that
Speaker 1: was true, that he really said that, and that one
Speaker 1: was shared very wide, and I know there were a
Speaker 1: lot of celebrities who are who are condemning him for that,
Speaker 1: you know, being so arrogant to say he's done more
Speaker 1: for Christianity than Jesus. So I'd have to go back
Speaker 1: and try to pick out name because they're escaping me
Speaker 1: at the moment. But there's been some big ones. I
Speaker 1: sins for sports guys. Well, I'll ask you this one.
Speaker 1: Is there a favorite sports story that you've done, because
Speaker 1: Ben's hit it up with Colin Kaepernick obviously over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: ones that I noticed the most was when he got
Speaker 1: put into Madden and then you guys published an article
Speaker 1: it says Madden introduces throw a Malotov feature. I think,
Speaker 1: for us, the perfect intersection, you know, because we have
Speaker 1: a very we have like a large conservative Christian audience.
Speaker 1: So whenever we do it Tim Tebow joke, it's like
Speaker 1: the perfect nextus of things because we're roping in the
Speaker 1: sports on the one side, but also like the Christian
Speaker 1: fake stuff on the other side. So one of them,
Speaker 1: uh it was. I wrote the headline for this one.
Speaker 1: It was Tim Tebow suspended for using performance enhancing Bible verses,
Speaker 1: and it got shared like a million times. It went
Speaker 1: like crazy viral. So I think whenever I think, whenever
Speaker 1: we do a Temtebo article, it goes crazy viral because
Speaker 1: it's that kind of perfect, you know, combination of the
Speaker 1: Christian stuff and the and the culture and sports stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in general, steth. How how do the sports
Speaker 1: stories do? I mean, you guys obviously deal with politics mostly,
Speaker 1: but like, how do the how do the sports stories
Speaker 1: do in comparison? They do really really well. Um, we
Speaker 1: just don't do that many of them. We need to
Speaker 1: do more of them. Part of the problem is we
Speaker 1: have our writers are more like it's funny, you know,
Speaker 1: our writers are are like a mixture of things, are
Speaker 1: like computer programmers or or they have a creative like
Speaker 1: art background and and and so they like they like
Speaker 1: board games and video games and stuff like that much
Speaker 1: more than they like sports and not sports guys, Right,
Speaker 1: So we need more people on our staff who get
Speaker 1: sports and want to write about sports. Like the founder
Speaker 1: of the b is actually really into sports. He loved
Speaker 1: like he loves like m m a, he loves baseball.
Speaker 1: You know, he's reallyly into sports. Um. But but we
Speaker 1: need more people on our writing staff. Writing day today,
Speaker 1: we can tap into these things because like whenever, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever there's something going on, like we we make we
Speaker 1: like to make fun of soccer and how Americans you know,
Speaker 1: aren't aren't We make fun of Americans for not being
Speaker 1: super interested in soccer and and uh and and feeling
Speaker 1: like it's boring or whatever. And so when we when
Speaker 1: we've got like sports shut down from from COVID, we
Speaker 1: ran one on how American sports fans we even watched
Speaker 1: soccer at this point. You know, well it gets shared
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of times. So well and Seth, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, and you know, being in the sports
Speaker 1: radio game for a long time, and it has never
Speaker 1: been more tribalistic in sports. I the the the Arizona
Speaker 1: Cardinals quarterback the other day completed two passes the rest
Speaker 1: of the game. He was terrible. He completely like, you know,
Speaker 1: nine pass in the game, and I ripped him for
Speaker 1: having you know, I didn't think he played well. And
Speaker 1: the Arizona newspaper wrote a story ripping me for ripping him.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean so that is a gold mine
Speaker 1: for you guys. I know you mentioned you've done well
Speaker 1: with the sports, but a lot of sports fans these
Speaker 1: days cannot take any criticism of the hometown team and
Speaker 1: they just go nuts like you're not allowed to rip us.
Speaker 1: It's it's crazy, it's you know that that stakes to
Speaker 1: kind of a broader thing goes beyond sports. People are
Speaker 1: just not willing to hear disagreement anymore. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's that's it's manifesting itself in the
Speaker 1: sports world. I get to be bleeding into the sports world.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of like a general principle, now, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally it's it's totally true that you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: criticize us. How there you I don't want to hear.
Speaker 1: It's like put their their ear muffs on. They don't
Speaker 1: wanna hear anything other than they want to be fed,
Speaker 1: study diet of what they believe in. It's crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: I do want to do you guys. You know, um,
Speaker 1: I definitely want to do more sports stuff. That's for sure.
Speaker 1: It does really well for us, and we got to
Speaker 1: tap into that more. All right. So are you are
Speaker 1: we the first sports personalities that you've done an interview with?
Speaker 1: I know that you did some stuff you mentioned on
Speaker 1: on a couple of news sites, but are we the
Speaker 1: first on the sports side? Yeah? I think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: even though we've had some kind of viral sports stories,
Speaker 1: we've never really had any sports reporters or media sites
Speaker 1: reach out to us for any kind of like comment
Speaker 1: on it or UM, you know, and no, I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever have. You'll never forget your first and seth,
Speaker 1: do not ever cheat on us. I got a question.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. You don't have to say, I know it's here.
Speaker 1: You know Intel how you how you make the make
Speaker 1: the hot dogs? But like, like, how does this work?
Speaker 1: You have an editorial board that says, hey, look at
Speaker 1: you know so and so when you're when you're coming
Speaker 1: up with stories each day, we kind of talk us
Speaker 1: through how this works here when you come up with
Speaker 1: the stories and with your writing staff. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: have a team of writers, UM and contributors, and we
Speaker 1: communicated a number of different ways. We have a Facebook
Speaker 1: group that's kind of a broader, larger group has some
Speaker 1: people that are not on our staff but are very
Speaker 1: creative that we've invited into that group to kind of
Speaker 1: pitch ideas to us. UM, and then we have kind
Speaker 1: of our internal flack channels where we're talking on flack
Speaker 1: and pitching ideas back and forth. We're in a bunch
Speaker 1: of different locations, so we're not all in the same room.
Speaker 1: So UM, we basically just look at whatever is going
Speaker 1: on in the news each day and and try to
Speaker 1: think to ourselves, what's a funny take on this, and
Speaker 1: and we throw headline. It's all the joke is in
Speaker 1: the headline. It's always the headline that comes first. So, um,
Speaker 1: it's just headline pitches, one after another. We pitched dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens and dozens of ideas based on whatever is
Speaker 1: going on in the world. UM. So we do that
Speaker 1: day in and day out, and the ones that rise
Speaker 1: to top to get a reaction that you know, our
Speaker 1: editor in chief decides, you know, he wants to run with. Um,
Speaker 1: we pick out of those, out of those pitches. So
Speaker 1: it's really a small percentage. It's probably like, honestly, like
Speaker 1: two percent of the headlines we pitch get published, and
Speaker 1: most of them are just junked. Um. But it's to
Speaker 1: refine the process. You know, we go through iterations of it.
Speaker 1: Someone might pitch something that's not perfect as is, but
Speaker 1: then you know, someone else will do an iteration of
Speaker 1: it that's a little bit better and would you know,
Speaker 1: connect better and better worded. So we play off of
Speaker 1: each other and just work together very collaboratively to come
Speaker 1: up with these ideas. And once we have a really
Speaker 1: good headline, you know, one of our writers can can
Speaker 1: take on the tap you're actually writing out that article
Speaker 1: and populating and getting up on the site. So, um,
Speaker 1: that's what we do every day. It's fun. It's crazy
Speaker 1: that this is our job because we just make up
Speaker 1: funny stories, uh and then photoshop crazy images to go
Speaker 1: along with them. Um. We hitch ourselves sometimes crazy than
Speaker 1: anyone does for a living. But it's a lot of months.
Speaker 1: Wwe holds massive Royal Rumble event on Zoom that was
Speaker 1: pretty solid. Yea. Writers declined to sign Colin Kaepernick. That
Speaker 1: was another good one, that was pretty solid. You guys, Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys continue to shouting. Now, how big is the staff?
Speaker 1: I know you said you have some outside people, then
Speaker 1: some internal people, but how big is the crew? Are
Speaker 1: writing staff? I think we have about a dozen people
Speaker 1: right now writing, and not all of them full time,
Speaker 1: so it's a pretty it's a pretty small crew. Um,
Speaker 1: some several of them all have other jobs and our
Speaker 1: work is like part time contributing writers. And how's the
Speaker 1: the advertising market these days? And we're still in the
Speaker 1: apocalypse right and business is still slow? Are you guys
Speaker 1: being able to still monetize it and make some money
Speaker 1: on this? Because you guys, are can imagine tons of
Speaker 1: traffic these days with all the people freaking out of
Speaker 1: your stories. Yeah, we're doing record traffic numbers. Um. We're
Speaker 1: trending up with that. Um we did. At the start
Speaker 1: of the whole pandemic. If you go back to like
Speaker 1: March April, are advertising took a big hit and and
Speaker 1: our earnings went way down. But they've they've really come
Speaker 1: back quite a bit, pretty close to where we were
Speaker 1: before the pandemic started. So we're really bouncing back on that.
Speaker 1: But we're also trying to monetize in other ways. We
Speaker 1: have a subscription now where people can subscribe either just
Speaker 1: to support us because these big tech issues that we're having,
Speaker 1: or two uh, to gain access to premium content feature
Speaker 1: that isn't otherwise available to everybody. So we try to
Speaker 1: make some we try to throw some value add in
Speaker 1: there so it's worthwhile for people to subscribe. So we
Speaker 1: have a mixture of revenue from like our store where
Speaker 1: we sell stuff and the ads we run aside, and
Speaker 1: the subscriptions where people are paying for access awesome sets.
Speaker 1: So listen, I appreciate you coming on with us. I
Speaker 1: don't They're not gonna take up your entire day here.
Speaker 1: But I was a little skeptical when you when my
Speaker 1: guy David used to send me the Babylon be stuff.
Speaker 1: But I have become a big fan as well. I
Speaker 1: love it and I I feel like we're in on
Speaker 1: the joke because I when I see people who you
Speaker 1: mentioned the lebron story, when I see people who don't
Speaker 1: get it, I just it just makes my day. It
Speaker 1: just I just smile. I have a cheshire cat smile
Speaker 1: from ear to ear when I see It's just it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So thank you for your time. Fun. And you know,
Speaker 1: people people who try to act like it's dangerous that
Speaker 1: people are believing our stories. Come on, it's hard. These
Speaker 1: are jokes, and if people don't get the joke, you know,
Speaker 1: that's on them. But we're not trying to mislead any buddy.
Speaker 1: We're just trying to have fun. We're just trying to think, well,
Speaker 1: what would be a funny take on this and then
Speaker 1: come up with something. So that's all we're trying to do. Awesome,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you said, I appreciate it, all right,
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Speaker 1: Ben Meller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm
Speaker 1: Pacific