Speaker 1: Welcome too. It could happen here a podcast about things
Speaker 1: falling apart and sometimes putting things back together. And you know,
Speaker 1: today we're doing an episode that's kind of more on
Speaker 1: the intellectual and emotional end of a very specific set
Speaker 1: of things falling apart, And rather than clumsily try to
Speaker 1: introduce it myself, I'm going to bring on the person
Speaker 1: who who I think the thoughts that have kind of
Speaker 1: been going through my head. I know they've been going
Speaker 1: through the heads of a lot of the folks that
Speaker 1: we have here at cool Zone for quite some time now. Thoughtslime.
Speaker 1: You are a YouTuber and a good YouTuber who does
Speaker 1: a number of videos. Some of your recent ones are
Speaker 1: thoughts on ai Art, a timeline of Elon's Twitter mistakes.
Speaker 1: She did a really fun video on the QAnon Queen
Speaker 1: of Canada, who is a pretty problematic character. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks for having me, Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Do you want to just kind of start by reading
Speaker 1: us that thread? Because you posted this on Twitter the
Speaker 1: other day and I started chatting with it, and then
Speaker 1: we moved over to DMS and decided we should kind
Speaker 1: of do a little more formal thing. Yeah, so basically
Speaker 1: I said that I'm constantly considering making a Why I
Speaker 1: Left the Left video about how my views have not
Speaker 1: changed one iota, but I've become completely disillusioned about my
Speaker 1: role in communicating them. Part of the reason I shifted
Speaker 1: my focus to trying to be just entertaining is because
Speaker 1: deep down I don't really see a lot of value
Speaker 1: in getting people on my side anymore. I don't think
Speaker 1: it does anything or means anything. But the best I
Speaker 1: can do is give you information and hopefully a laugh.
Speaker 1: I used to feel like I was participating in something
Speaker 1: bigger than I think A lot. Then I think I
Speaker 1: really am that I was helping in some small, in
Speaker 1: some small way towards a sort of shift towards a
Speaker 1: more revolutionary mass consciousness. I think that was a bit
Speaker 1: of a childish fantasy. In retrospect, sometimes people will say
Speaker 1: you made me an anarchist, and like, Buddy, I don't
Speaker 1: even think it matters that I myself am an anarchist,
Speaker 1: and I regret that that sort of we're fighting the
Speaker 1: good fight mentality has allowed some of the worst grifters
Speaker 1: on the platform to flourish by manipulating people's passions for
Speaker 1: their own weird petty reasons. I think what I do
Speaker 1: has a lot of value, But I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: I think I perceive that value to be is a
Speaker 1: lot different than what I thought it was a few
Speaker 1: years ago. Is basically what I had to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I think does such a good job of nailing
Speaker 1: the problem that I've been kind of dealing with emotionally
Speaker 1: as well, which is it's it's not It'd be easy
Speaker 1: to sum it up as like I no longer believe in,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to transmit you know, leftist ideas or
Speaker 1: political analysis, or that I don't believe in the value
Speaker 1: of like trying to inform people about the world, because
Speaker 1: that's not how I feel. But there is there has
Speaker 1: been this shift, and I think probably the high point
Speaker 1: for the version of me that was optimistic about the
Speaker 1: ability to use mass media to build power and the
Speaker 1: ability to take effective action on the left. I think
Speaker 1: that kind of crescendoed I'm gonna I'm gonna say June
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty um, and it had a pretty sharp
Speaker 1: drop after that point. And I both think it's it's
Speaker 1: valuable to still acknowledge kind of how remarkable what happened
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty was, for all of its flaws and
Speaker 1: all of the really messy fallout from it, we saw
Speaker 1: an ups an uprising of unprecedented scale, and part of
Speaker 1: why the crackdown in response has been so narly is
Speaker 1: that it scared the hell out of a lot of
Speaker 1: really unpleasant people. Um and the media had a significant
Speaker 1: role to play in that, both in the fact that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who were who were
Speaker 1: kind of already organizing and radicalized when the shit started
Speaker 1: to hit the fan, and that as things happened, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the what was happening in the streets, what
Speaker 1: the police were doing, the different kind of marches and
Speaker 1: and different campaigns that were being started, got spread to people.
Speaker 1: And I do think that you know, folks, you know
Speaker 1: like you and me, were a part of that. Although
Speaker 1: it never is far from my mind that the most
Speaker 1: influential piece of media that was that was recorded and
Speaker 1: disseminated during twenty twenty was the video of George Floyd
Speaker 1: being murdered, which was filmed by you know, someone who
Speaker 1: just happened to be nearby and had the courage to
Speaker 1: film it, not a professional journalist, not a not an influencer,
Speaker 1: not a not somebody who was a professional political thinker
Speaker 1: and everything else combined didn't have the influence of that video. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that that kind of gets to the heart
Speaker 1: of it, right, is that like we express support for ideas,
Speaker 1: and thus people tend to treat us as though we
Speaker 1: are the progenitors of those ideas, or the guardians of
Speaker 1: those ideas, or the leaders of a kind of decentralized
Speaker 1: proxy party of some kind. Yeah, it's it's it's both,
Speaker 1: because I think thankfully there's that. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: always going to be every everyone who makes popular media
Speaker 1: gets forms a little cult, and so there's always going
Speaker 1: to be a number of people who, you know, take
Speaker 1: any given person in the media more seriously than they deserve.
Speaker 1: And that that includes the both of us. And that's
Speaker 1: that's not attempting to be that's not attempting to be
Speaker 1: like humble or anything. That is simply a fact of
Speaker 1: how mass media works. Um. I do think we've seen
Speaker 1: I think there's been a mix of a healthy pushback
Speaker 1: against looking at people who are doing creating popular media
Speaker 1: as more than what they are and more than what
Speaker 1: that media is capable of being. I think there has
Speaker 1: been a pushback against that in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: It's been healthy, and I think there's been a pushback
Speaker 1: that's been unhealthy. Um, I think people have forgotten some
Speaker 1: of the lessons of like one. I think a good
Speaker 1: example would be there was a very justified backlash against
Speaker 1: and when I say streamers here, I'm referring to people
Speaker 1: who are actually in the streets streaming during riots and
Speaker 1: protests and whatnot, right and that, And the justified part
Speaker 1: of that backlash was due to the fact that past
Speaker 1: a certain point, particularly those video those streams were primarily
Speaker 1: being used by law enforcement, both to get charges on
Speaker 1: people and to just to know where folks were as
Speaker 1: an intelligence gathering method. And I think that the backlash,
Speaker 1: which was understandable, and there was a lot of ugly behavior,
Speaker 1: including people who kind of got in after the early
Speaker 1: portions of that, in order to make shitloads of money
Speaker 1: by you know, streaming people getting the shit beat out
Speaker 1: of them by the cops, and that was I think
Speaker 1: very justified, a pretty aggressive social response to that, but
Speaker 1: I think it's also caused a lot of people to
Speaker 1: forget that. A huge part of why things kicked off
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty and why so many people got involved
Speaker 1: was Nico from Uniform Corn riot on the ground every
Speaker 1: night in Minneapolis, doing one of the most impressive pieces
Speaker 1: of citizen journalism that I think we've seen in this country.
Speaker 1: And so I do think that some of what's frustrating
Speaker 1: here is that it's difficult for people. It's difficult for
Speaker 1: us as a community to take some of the proper
Speaker 1: lessons from these these things that are happening from the
Speaker 1: push and pull of the conflict that we all find
Speaker 1: ourselves in, in part because the nature of the way
Speaker 1: people express their understanding of these lessons via social media
Speaker 1: is very geared towards flattening them and making it a
Speaker 1: very simple matter of this is bad or this is
Speaker 1: good and not well in this period of time, this
Speaker 1: worked and then it didn't. You know, there's no real
Speaker 1: sense of proportionality in these discussions. It isn't just a
Speaker 1: matter of like, hey, you fucked up. You should probably
Speaker 1: take this down, or this could be dangerous if you
Speaker 1: leave this up, or if you continue to do this.
Speaker 1: It's more so like what are you a cop? What
Speaker 1: are you some kind of cop doing this? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: let's spread that rumor and it. I mean, yeah, the
Speaker 1: cop jacketing thing is is kind of one part of
Speaker 1: the problem. But I want to focus a little bit
Speaker 1: on what you were talking about in terms of what
Speaker 1: do you think as you're kind of looking at you know,
Speaker 1: and we're all kind of staring twenty twenty four as
Speaker 1: it approaches, what do you think is useful from media
Speaker 1: that that attempts to analyze and share perspectives that are
Speaker 1: that are left wing, that are anarchists inclined. What do
Speaker 1: you think is actually the value that can be added
Speaker 1: to attempts to achieve greater justice in our society. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the answer is twofold. I think firstly, anything
Speaker 1: that drives people to like real life organizing and taking
Speaker 1: action outside of online spaces is obviously useful. Beyond that, though, like,
Speaker 1: I think there is some value to just exposing people
Speaker 1: to ideas that they might not have found otherwise. But
Speaker 1: I think that, um, that a lot of that has
Speaker 1: been accomplished now. I feel like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are more familiar with with kind of the leftist the
Speaker 1: leftist idehology one on one type of content that people
Speaker 1: might expect in that way, So yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: those are the two value propositions. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: think a lot about because one thing that concerns me obviously, UM.
Speaker 1: Any community develops a language that is to some extent
Speaker 1: its own UM, and that's that's a that's part of politics,
Speaker 1: you know, political analysis, if you're looking at things with
Speaker 1: a Marxist analysis, or if you're analyzing things, you know,
Speaker 1: based on your understanding of generations of anarchist political philosophy.
Speaker 1: There's terms that you're going to use that that other
Speaker 1: thinkers have created, that are the terms that people use
Speaker 1: to discuss those ideas UM. But it is sometimes kind
Speaker 1: of a thin line between that and the thing that
Speaker 1: colts do where they come up with a bunch of
Speaker 1: specific terms that no one else uses in order to
Speaker 1: separate a community from the rest from everyone else. And
Speaker 1: obviously I don't think there's any intentionality there. I don't
Speaker 1: think people who are talking about you know, the dialectic
Speaker 1: or whatever are attempting to separate their listeners from the
Speaker 1: mass of humanity. But I do think that happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: And when I listen sometimes to conversations on the left
Speaker 1: about justice, in particular about social justice, I wonder, like, well,
Speaker 1: how is somebody who isn't like reading all this shit
Speaker 1: going to interpret this? Is it just going to sound
Speaker 1: like nonsense to them? And I think maybe like part
Speaker 1: of the purpose, the positive purpose of mass media that
Speaker 1: looks at things from the left is trying to communicate
Speaker 1: with folks who are not going to sit down or
Speaker 1: at least who have not yet sat down and done
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of reading on the history and the politics,
Speaker 1: but whose hearts are in the right place and who
Speaker 1: I would like to be to engage in conversations with
Speaker 1: folks who maybe kind of get their heads a little
Speaker 1: bit too full of specific terminology. Sometimes I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a specific balancing act because on the other hand,
Speaker 1: like you also have to give your audience a little
Speaker 1: credit that they're absolutely but I think that like you
Speaker 1: have to be able to meet people where they're at.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, like if someone has expressed
Speaker 1: this idea in a way that's already sufficient, like it's it's, uh,
Speaker 1: why do the work of like trying to re explain that,
Speaker 1: you know. But that being said, I think there is
Speaker 1: a tendency to just assume people already are on our
Speaker 1: side or understand ideas to the level of complexity that
Speaker 1: we might like and that people are on board with,
Speaker 1: like what even something as simple as what capitalism means.
Speaker 1: You know, all the time you see people online who
Speaker 1: will say that, Like a musician will post their band
Speaker 1: Campaige and people will be like, oh, I thought you
Speaker 1: were anti capitalist. You know. Yeah, it's it's like you know,
Speaker 1: but like you also can't get caught up in the
Speaker 1: kind of um weaponized ignorance that the people you know
Speaker 1: like you. You can't make someone understand something if they
Speaker 1: have a particular reason not to want to. So I
Speaker 1: absolutely agree that, like there's the danger of that that
Speaker 1: group in speak, uh, but it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: difficult problem to solve. I think the kind of approach
Speaker 1: I take to it most of the time is that
Speaker 1: I tend to write my scripts as the as though
Speaker 1: I am uh just the like like a child. Like
Speaker 1: I I try to write as though I'm speaking to
Speaker 1: a five year old, you know, Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: I think. I also I think a lot about and
Speaker 1: this is something you know here at cool Zone, I've
Speaker 1: brought we brought on a couple of years ago. People
Speaker 1: who you know are now making podcasts for the team
Speaker 1: who when we brought them on, had a lot less
Speaker 1: experience writing scripts and making media for mass consumption. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I found it was kind
Speaker 1: of like my job to do repeatedly was to point out, like, Okay, stop, go,
Speaker 1: actually go back to that term, because you you just
Speaker 1: you know, said a term that I think means a
Speaker 1: specific or you just referenced a thing from history that
Speaker 1: I think that people are interested in and should know about.
Speaker 1: But you do have to like go in and explain
Speaker 1: it and walk people through it. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: part of That's really one of the challenges I find,
Speaker 1: particularly with Behind the Bastards, right where we're talking sometimes
Speaker 1: about these complicated social movements and moments in history, and
Speaker 1: it's this kind of tub of war between you want
Speaker 1: to respect the intelligence of the audience and you want
Speaker 1: to give them enough to hail that they have contexts
Speaker 1: and that can maybe understand multiple sides of it, but
Speaker 1: also you can't get bogged down in every detail, otherwise
Speaker 1: you're never going to finish the damn thing. And we
Speaker 1: can't all be Dan Carlin making ten hour long podcasts. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I do like there's a degree to which I'm quite
Speaker 1: jealous of his work, the way he set up his workload.
Speaker 1: But I would just never be able to think of
Speaker 1: that many boxing analogies. Yeah, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: very much about boxing. I would probably just like throw
Speaker 1: in a whole lot of balls mahoney analogy, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of for me, it would be a lot of
Speaker 1: super punch out references. Like hell, yes, stan Lee would
Speaker 1: always say to comic book writers that every comic is
Speaker 1: somebody's first comic, and so you kind of have to
Speaker 1: consider that, like every piece of messaging you do might
Speaker 1: this might be like the first time someone is stepping
Speaker 1: out of a completely different ideological bubble than you might expect,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it kind of has the messaging
Speaker 1: kind of has to stand on its own. But I
Speaker 1: think that's also like a unique problem to mass media
Speaker 1: because it also means that in a sense, it's much
Speaker 1: harder to like build on previous work. It's harder to
Speaker 1: like go from your one on one content and then
Speaker 1: get to the more advanced subjects, because someone could just
Speaker 1: start at the more advanced part and get lost. I
Speaker 1: think that's a really apt way of describing what I
Speaker 1: also find as one of the central problems because a
Speaker 1: ton of the episodes of Bastards, especially the stuff when
Speaker 1: we focus on fascists, builds on itself. Right, you, your
Speaker 1: understanding of fascism in Romania will be influenced and is
Speaker 1: to some degree. You don't really you can't understand fascism
Speaker 1: in Romania without understanding fascism and ymar fascism in Italy,
Speaker 1: fascism in the United States during the same period, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. And so my hope is that the people
Speaker 1: who catch all of the episodes are building a really
Speaker 1: complex and durable understanding of the problem through it. But
Speaker 1: it's also the struggle of like, well, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are just going to be like, oh shit, I
Speaker 1: know Hitler, but I maybe I'm not interested in hearing
Speaker 1: about Romania, you know, and I'm not going to click
Speaker 1: on those episodes. And there's nothing against people like when
Speaker 1: I listen to podcasts, I find myself doing the same
Speaker 1: thing where it's like, there's a million episodes of this show,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to listen. I don't I don't have
Speaker 1: the time to listen to all of them. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that touches on another problem, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: the subjects that people like us tend to cover are
Speaker 1: biased towards what we think people will find interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and beyond that, like what we ourselves find
Speaker 1: interesting to research, Yeah, and what in what you can
Speaker 1: And this is a thing that I try to point
Speaker 1: out on my subreddit sometimes when people are like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe you haven't done this guy or that guy,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, that doing that research is going
Speaker 1: to fuck me up, and like, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do it yet. I'm gonna do this thing that's funny.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read about the liver King this week. I
Speaker 1: need I need a break. So the liver King is
Speaker 1: who we're talking about. Yeah, everybody needs a liver king
Speaker 1: in their life at some point. Yeah. It's like I
Speaker 1: read the Turner Diaries for one video. Yeah, And I've
Speaker 1: been constant people who have been constantly like, oh, you
Speaker 1: should read Camp of the Saints, you should read Siege.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to.
Speaker 1: First of all, I don't even know if I want
Speaker 1: those things on my hard drive. Yeah. Yeah, Camp of
Speaker 1: the Saints is a little easier, but yeah, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: one of those a year and no more. That's like
Speaker 1: the most I would recommend from like a mental health standpoint.
Speaker 1: It's also like you don't need to read the full
Speaker 1: text of all of those I mean, that's part of
Speaker 1: the thing is that like you can get a lot
Speaker 1: by checking in some exerpts and reading scholarly papers analyzing
Speaker 1: this stuff, and there there always will be that um
Speaker 1: and I think to a significant standpoint, like it's more
Speaker 1: important to understand, you know, And this isn't true for everybody,
Speaker 1: because there's some people who you know, are scholars of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and you do need to to to do
Speaker 1: the deep reading. But if you want to understand the
Speaker 1: degree to which Siege and the Turner Diers diaries influence
Speaker 1: the mass shootings that we see in the United States
Speaker 1: state that are carried out by the far right, you
Speaker 1: don't need to read those books to do that, right,
Speaker 1: There's plenty of really good scholarly analysis, and that's part
Speaker 1: of what you and I try to do for people.
Speaker 1: And what what other you know, folks who are creating
Speaker 1: this kind of media other journalists do for folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will I would say that I strongly balk at
Speaker 1: the I don't consider myself a journalist. Um, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I don't consider that's something people talk about as well.
Speaker 1: On the subreddit, I get a lot of like comments
Speaker 1: on people appreciating the journalism in the series, and we
Speaker 1: do in some of our shows, like you know we
Speaker 1: did we went to the Border, mean mar last year.
Speaker 1: Garrison just got back from Cop City. But like Bastards,
Speaker 1: isn't journalism, you know, sometimes it's like celebrating journalism, but
Speaker 1: it's it's it's entertainment that I hope has like an
Speaker 1: educational quality to it. Yeah, it's I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: say this to belittle myself. I just don't see that
Speaker 1: as as the function of my job. I think, like
Speaker 1: like I have, I have in the in the course
Speaker 1: of my work, occasionally done journalism by accidents. I did
Speaker 1: a long interview where I had like about the chaz
Speaker 1: and and kind of the misconceptions that people had, and
Speaker 1: I had some you know, talks with people within and
Speaker 1: like that is technically, on its face a piece of journalism. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely, it's not what I consider my uh
Speaker 1: strength or role to be well, and I honestly this
Speaker 1: goes back to what we were talking about with the
Speaker 1: young woman who filmed the video of of George Floyd. Um,
Speaker 1: journalism is a profession, but it's also just like a
Speaker 1: set of tools, and you know sometimes you will use
Speaker 1: those tools in order to do other things. You know
Speaker 1: that that's that's certainly true. I'm curious you and I.
Speaker 1: You and I both kind of uh like make our
Speaker 1: our our work work uh differently. UM, mine's ad supported obviously,
Speaker 1: so my conversation with fans, you know, outside of like
Speaker 1: when I'm doing a live show is primarily through we
Speaker 1: have a subreddit and we have Twitter, um, and that's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some difficulty there. For one thing, like
Speaker 1: every single guest we have, there are people who will
Speaker 1: be like, this is the best guests you've ever had,
Speaker 1: and this person is the worst guest you've ever had,
Speaker 1: And there's absolutely no way to make decisions based on that, right,
Speaker 1: It's just a much Um. You you've got a different relationship,
Speaker 1: or at least a different method of I think communicating.
Speaker 1: I imagine it's different, um because because your your Patreon supported.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in, how have, if at all, have you
Speaker 1: seen kind of the conversations about what people want from you?
Speaker 1: And you know the way in which you've been talking
Speaker 1: with your fans. Have you seen that change since twenty twenty. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the major ways is since I've
Speaker 1: kind of taken a step back from this explicitly political content,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of people have kind of encouraged me
Speaker 1: to go more in that direction, and I have seen
Speaker 1: like a big drop in my support as a result.
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's a tricky balance to strike again.
Speaker 1: Many of these things are like such a balancing act
Speaker 1: because I always am careful to remind people that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can support me on Patreon if you like what
Speaker 1: I'm doing and want there to be more of it,
Speaker 1: but please don't operate under the assumption that doing so
Speaker 1: is activism or contr utes to activism, because it is not.
Speaker 1: You are not like making the revolution more than exactly
Speaker 1: you know, you are getting a little drawing that I'm
Speaker 1: going to put at the end of my video, like
Speaker 1: that's that's the value proposition here. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: that you know, it's it's a I don't The reason
Speaker 1: I don't accept ad ad reads on Thoughtslime I do
Speaker 1: on scaredy Cats is because I don't want the perception
Speaker 1: that my views are going to be limited or held
Speaker 1: back by, you know, the desire to seek out advertisers,
Speaker 1: which whether or not I would have the the integrity
Speaker 1: to withstand like it, it would create the illusion. But
Speaker 1: that creates the problem of, well, now I kind of
Speaker 1: have to do what I think that my audience will want,
Speaker 1: and that's its own kettle of fish. Like am I
Speaker 1: am I pushing people to donate more than than they
Speaker 1: might be comfortable with, and so that's you know, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't really know like the the ethics of it,
Speaker 1: to be perfectly frank, there have been times when people
Speaker 1: have made big donations and I've had to message them
Speaker 1: and say like, hey, I think you should you should
Speaker 1: probably take this money back. You probably weren't thinking straight
Speaker 1: when you sent me this money. I think you should
Speaker 1: probably have it back. Yeah. That's such an interesting thing
Speaker 1: for me because it also you know, I've I've thought
Speaker 1: about that myself quite a lot. You know. I had
Speaker 1: a decision to make when we first started doing these
Speaker 1: shows about how it was going to be done, and
Speaker 1: I took the ad supported corporate route, and I've been
Speaker 1: very happy with that so far. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that's let us do. There's certainly downsides to it, um,
Speaker 1: you know, including occasionally advertising for the Washington State Highway Patrol. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, it's one of those things. I
Speaker 1: made a comment, and this is part one of the
Speaker 1: one of the frustrating things about making media for a
Speaker 1: large audience is there's always going to be people who
Speaker 1: will like read into what you've said something you never meant.
Speaker 1: I made a comment once about like, you know, because
Speaker 1: we get people asking why don't you do a Patreon
Speaker 1: or whatever, why do you do it this way? And
Speaker 1: I just made a comment like expressing what you had
Speaker 1: just expressed, like, well, you know, I feel weird sometimes
Speaker 1: asking for money. And if I can just like get
Speaker 1: money from a big company and you know, hire my
Speaker 1: friends and do my work, I feel okay doing that.
Speaker 1: It's how most of my career has worked. So that's
Speaker 1: what I'm most comfortable doing. And yes, there were people
Speaker 1: who took from that, like, well, Robert doesn't think it's
Speaker 1: ethical to have a Patreon. It's like half of my
Speaker 1: friends make their living son Patreon. I do not have
Speaker 1: an ethical problem with supporting yourself that way. I will
Speaker 1: say that. When I heard you mentioned that in an episode,
Speaker 1: and it did send a chill down my spine briefly. No.
Speaker 1: I mean I think like Cody Johnston, who I've worked
Speaker 1: with for what fifteen years now, has a massive Patreon.
Speaker 1: Tom and Dave Boyd lived with some of my best friends.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, Like it's it's I think it's perfectly
Speaker 1: it's it's certainly no less ethical, and you can make
Speaker 1: a case people do that it's more ethical than being
Speaker 1: ad supported. It's just like, I mean, some of it
Speaker 1: just comes down to like what kind of stuff are
Speaker 1: you making and what kind of like a person are you,
Speaker 1: and what's going to work best with you as like
Speaker 1: a creative method in a way of interacting with fans,
Speaker 1: and they have downsides and they have positives. You know.
Speaker 1: It's also like a matter of of what you're able
Speaker 1: to do to certain extents because like I don't know
Speaker 1: how to get advertisers. Yeah, any advertisers that I've ever
Speaker 1: gotten on my my horror channel have just reached out
Speaker 1: to me, and like, I don't know if I'm getting
Speaker 1: as much money out of them as they should be.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I just I just kind of
Speaker 1: wing it, you know, Like if you have that background
Speaker 1: in radio or broadcasting or what have you like it,
Speaker 1: can you know that it's it's a much more viable
Speaker 1: option for some people than it is for others. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of why it works for me
Speaker 1: the way that it does is because I've had a
Speaker 1: fifteen year career and not in broadcast, but you know,
Speaker 1: in comedy writing and whatnot. And so I mean that's
Speaker 1: how I got the I got my podcast hosted on
Speaker 1: my heart in the first place, and that's like a thing.
Speaker 1: And this is actually one of the things that concerns
Speaker 1: me most about the ship that's happening with AI right now,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's this, Uh, the folks that kind
Speaker 1: of I came into making media for all of us
Speaker 1: started as fairly a political comedy. I think that's Cody
Speaker 1: Johnston right some more news. Coody was making videos about
Speaker 1: like chat roulette and penises when we when we all
Speaker 1: started working together, very funny videos, but like we were
Speaker 1: making silly things, um, and everyone has kind of moved
Speaker 1: into making like, you know, pretty pretty serious fact based media. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, Cody does a very popular, very political kind
Speaker 1: of current events show, and we were able to get
Speaker 1: good at making the kind of media that we made,
Speaker 1: and build the connections that we built, and build the
Speaker 1: audiences that we built because we had years of time
Speaker 1: where you could make a decent living writing stuff for
Speaker 1: the Internet. And I see the kind of shit that
Speaker 1: I'm afraid AI is going to do to these jobs
Speaker 1: where people would get their start as writers and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Maybe it wasn't the best, you know, it's not that
Speaker 1: you're not doing the best writing you're ever going to
Speaker 1: do the jobs that get replaced by AI, but it's
Speaker 1: a foot in the door, and I keep feeling I
Speaker 1: feel like I keep seeing the room for people to
Speaker 1: put their foot in the door get smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: every year, and that's that worries me a lot. I
Speaker 1: definitely know what you mean. I also feel that like
Speaker 1: there's a fear among some people that, like, you get
Speaker 1: crowded out of these spaces the more people there are
Speaker 1: doing this sort of thing, and I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like that's not the case. I like the AI stuff,
Speaker 1: I definitely share your concerns, but yeah, the the institutional
Speaker 1: barriers and people's way, like I think that, like to
Speaker 1: be frank, like, I started doing this on a shitty
Speaker 1: too hundred dollar computer and a completely legal video editing software.
Speaker 1: But I love video editing software. I found it in
Speaker 1: a dumpster and I used that, so, you know, and
Speaker 1: then like through that, I was able to like be
Speaker 1: able to afford a fancy camera and some lights and
Speaker 1: you know, but like I didn't know what I was doing,
Speaker 1: like it was all self taught. And I think there
Speaker 1: has to be that kind of diy attitude, yeah, for people.
Speaker 1: And it is something I try to encourage in people,
Speaker 1: is that like, just just do it like I did it,
Speaker 1: You can do it. Yeah, you know. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great point, because I am coming at this from
Speaker 1: the the old man dumerist perspective of somebody who like
Speaker 1: the world has changed from the way it was when
Speaker 1: I'm young, when I was young, and people don't get
Speaker 1: their careers started that way anymore. And your point is
Speaker 1: very valid that while changes in the industry have closed
Speaker 1: specific doors, they've also created some um and I think
Speaker 1: probably in the long run, it is better for people
Speaker 1: to get their foot in the door doing what you
Speaker 1: did than rewriting a bunch of press releases about tech
Speaker 1: gadgets for a shady website that takes advantage of the
Speaker 1: Google algorithm, which has always started my career. I think
Speaker 1: that's actually a really valid I don't think, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that's a It depends on
Speaker 1: your end goal too, right, But I think like the
Speaker 1: thing that becomes incumbent on people like me is to
Speaker 1: like help people, you know, Like I've experienced a certain
Speaker 1: amount of success and so, and I attribute that largely
Speaker 1: to the fact that, like when I was just starting out,
Speaker 1: like I had no idea how to make people see
Speaker 1: my ship. I'd like, I did not know what I
Speaker 1: was doing. Yeah, and a bigger creator just reached out
Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, can I share your video? I
Speaker 1: think it's really good and it kind of snowballed from there.
Speaker 1: So my philosophy has always been, like you take these
Speaker 1: uh you know, you you make space for to lift
Speaker 1: people up with you and do so. It's not an
Speaker 1: entirely selfless gesture either, because in doing so, if if
Speaker 1: there's an extremely talented person who succeeds partially because you
Speaker 1: help them, now you have a connection to an extremely
Speaker 1: talented person, you know, yeah, like that's that's a sense of,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, mutual aid in a
Speaker 1: very yeah, loose sense. I suppose that reminds me of
Speaker 1: something a good friend of mine and a colleague at
Speaker 1: Cracked who now helps run the Small Beans podcast network
Speaker 1: said to me years and years ago when he was
Speaker 1: directing a video, which is, I want to spend the
Speaker 1: rest of my career getting hired and fired by my friends,
Speaker 1: Which is I think a nice way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: And there's a degree to which it's a very old
Speaker 1: Hollywood way of looking at it, but it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: also works very well in this It can work very
Speaker 1: well in this new, this new kind of ecosystem that
Speaker 1: is still being put together. And I do think that
Speaker 1: it's because I see a lot and I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not someone who does a lot of time like I
Speaker 1: like to watch. I watch like the stuff that you
Speaker 1: put together, the stuff h Bomber guy puts together where
Speaker 1: it's actual, like videos on topics and I'm learning something.
Speaker 1: The stuff that the Dan Olsen puts together. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not so much into And this is not I'm
Speaker 1: not attacking anybody. I'm not like trying to shoot on
Speaker 1: the field. But personally I don't watch like the just
Speaker 1: kind of like stream stuff A lot, and I it
Speaker 1: does seem like there's a lot of conflicts between people
Speaker 1: in that and I'm wondering, you know, my hope is
Speaker 1: that there's more people building connections to create resiliency between
Speaker 1: the people who are are trying to make good shit
Speaker 1: and trying to make stuff that people enjoy, and that
Speaker 1: has an impact on people, and that even changes people
Speaker 1: in positive ways. And it sounds like from what from
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, you know, honestly from what I
Speaker 1: experience too, I do think that's more the case than
Speaker 1: like the drama that that goes viral on Twitter from
Speaker 1: time to time. Yeah, I think, you know, I hope
Speaker 1: so too. I think that that it's it's very easy
Speaker 1: to piss people off and it's much harder to get
Speaker 1: people's attention by being kind. But you know, I like, look,
Speaker 1: you know, how many nice comments do I get in
Speaker 1: a day can't count, But like the one shitty comment
Speaker 1: will always stick out. It's the same way like if
Speaker 1: if I have a thousand pleasant interactions with someone else, uh,
Speaker 1: nobody notices. But if I you know, get into if
Speaker 1: I pick a fight with somebody, you know, it's people
Speaker 1: are going to remember forever. I think that's the thing
Speaker 1: that unsettles me most. And this isn't actually even just
Speaker 1: like this isn't about streaming media or left with media
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is a problem of social media that
Speaker 1: You're right, it's the it's the fights that always get
Speaker 1: most of the attention as opposed to them. I mean,
Speaker 1: not not entirely, because some of like the big moments
Speaker 1: is particularly in recent left wing media things like um,
Speaker 1: you know, people doing these giant streams that raise huge
Speaker 1: amounts of money for a cause. So that that certainly
Speaker 1: is a thing that happens and does get a lot
Speaker 1: of attention when it does happen. But you are fighting
Speaker 1: against and I think we have to be consciously fighting
Speaker 1: against this system that does want to engender conflict. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's also kind of difficult, and I and you know,
Speaker 1: keep in mind this this is perhaps coming from a
Speaker 1: bias perspective when there are individuals and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to name names, who do see that as an easy
Speaker 1: source of generating attentions. It's very easy to the same
Speaker 1: way that like, if I'm going to make a video
Speaker 1: on a subject, I will frame it as like I'm
Speaker 1: disagreeing with Ben Shapiro or I'm disagreeing with Jordan Peterson.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to go look at thought slime. There's
Speaker 1: a big piece of shit because he thought this when
Speaker 1: when actually this is the truth. That's more attention grabbing
Speaker 1: than just, you know, a kind of neutrally positioned argument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a it's a it's a tricky problem. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think one of the ones that I think on
Speaker 1: quite a lot. Well, um, I think that's most of
Speaker 1: what I wanted to talk about today. Did you want
Speaker 1: to like throwing anything else? Or if not, we can
Speaker 1: go to plugs. Yeah, I mean, I'm good. That's pretty
Speaker 1: much it. I will say that one of the things
Speaker 1: that tends to bother me the most is people will
Speaker 1: occasionally say to me that they'll they'll send a message
Speaker 1: thing you seem like a really good person, and I
Speaker 1: will say thank you, But please don't feel that way
Speaker 1: about content creators, because why would I make a work
Speaker 1: that portrayed myself as a bad person? And while I,
Speaker 1: in my mind think I am a good person, I
Speaker 1: think it sets the dangerous precedent that you could allow
Speaker 1: yourself to be emotionally manipulated by someone else who might
Speaker 1: not be well the name of the game. When you
Speaker 1: are creating media, particularly when you're create media that's meant
Speaker 1: to make people feel things. Part of that is manipulation, right.
Speaker 1: Manipulate is not an inherently negative term. You know, Stanley
Speaker 1: Kubrick is trying to manipulate you when he makes a movie.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to persuade you. Yeah, you do it does
Speaker 1: It is incumbent upon the audience for their own protection
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind. And it's incumbent upon ethical
Speaker 1: people who make stuff to not create cults, at least
Speaker 1: not create too many cults. Yeah, as much as you
Speaker 1: can avoid it, for sure. Yeah, all right, you want
Speaker 1: to plug your plugables. Sure. You can find my work
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash thoughtslime or thoughtslime dot com.
Speaker 1: You also find my horror content at YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash Scaredycats TV. Scaredycats was taken. That's me. That's what
Speaker 1: I do. I make videos about fartsand or butts. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. That
Speaker 1: is going to be it for us today. We will
Speaker 1: be back probably tomorrow. It could happen here as a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or
Speaker 1: check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for
Speaker 1: It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot
Speaker 1: com slash sources. Thanks for listening.