Speaker 1: Welcome and appreciate all of you listening to us. I
Speaker 1: am Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses. I believe
Speaker 1: this is number forty five or forty six of these conversations.
Speaker 1: Been having them for a few years off and on
Speaker 1: wanting to get the Clay and Buck show up and running.
Speaker 1: So now that we're officially underway there and feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: I can start some of these long form conversations again.
Speaker 1: And today's guest is Seth Dylan. He is with the
Speaker 1: Babylon b and we're gonna get into that here momentarily.
Speaker 1: Last week we talked with Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard that yet, I think that will
Speaker 1: be an incredibly enjoyable conversation for you guys to check out.
Speaker 1: We bring in Seth now. Seth is in the middle
Speaker 1: of a battle with Twitter, which we are going to
Speaker 1: eventually work our way up to where the Babylon Be
Speaker 1: account has been locked over a refusal to delete a
Speaker 1: to delete a tweet mocking many of the issues that
Speaker 1: we're dealing with on a day to day basis, but
Speaker 1: this one in particular with transgender related issues. We'll get
Speaker 1: to that eventually, but let's start here. First of all,
Speaker 1: thanks for being on seth Secondly, how in the world
Speaker 1: have you found yourself doing what you do now? So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with the most basic question, where did
Speaker 1: you grow up? Would you ever have thought, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: going to end up as a sator is basically on
Speaker 1: the internet. Uh? What's your background? A great question? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, thanks for having me on play. It's
Speaker 1: pleasure to be on the show. Um. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: my background. I grew up is someone appropriately to be
Speaker 1: running a you know, like a Christian conservative satire said?
Speaker 1: I grew up in the church. My dad was a pastor. Um.
Speaker 1: I was born in d C. Of all places, but
Speaker 1: I bounced around all of the place. When people ask
Speaker 1: what my hometown is, I don't even know how to
Speaker 1: answer that because we lived in Maryland and Jersey and
Speaker 1: Texas and South Florida, so I was kind of moving
Speaker 1: around a little bit. I don't really have like a hometown. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, my my background, my early back ground.
Speaker 1: I love to read. Um. My parents taught me how
Speaker 1: to think critically, and they taught me the values as well.
Speaker 1: And I and as I came into like young adulthood,
Speaker 1: young adulthood, I cared very much about, um, you know,
Speaker 1: issues of importance, you know, cultural issues and uh in
Speaker 1: morals and values UH and making sure that you know,
Speaker 1: whatever whatever I was doing in terms of like supporting
Speaker 1: and politics reflected my my values in my worldview. UM.
Speaker 1: And so I had a good, I think good foundation
Speaker 1: under me because of my parents. I'm thankful to them
Speaker 1: for that. But when it comes to like the satire
Speaker 1: and the humor stuff, I mean, I got into a
Speaker 1: little bit of trouble in college writing the satire that
Speaker 1: I sent, I distributed throughout the school. Um, I was
Speaker 1: able to download the whole email list and like the
Speaker 1: blast out an email to the staff and faculty and
Speaker 1: all the students and and it was making fun of
Speaker 1: the school and some professors, and it was it wasn't
Speaker 1: super lighthearted. Some of it was even mean spirited. I
Speaker 1: would say, there was a little bit of an edge
Speaker 1: to it and UH, and it got me in a
Speaker 1: bit of trouble with the with the school's administration, and
Speaker 1: I almost got kicked out of college. So I had
Speaker 1: I had an early start when it came to getting
Speaker 1: in trouble with that higher and humor. UM, But I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't start a career doing that because you know,
Speaker 1: there's not really many ways to make money doing that,
Speaker 1: and there certainly weren't back then for me. So I
Speaker 1: got into the Internet marketing world and learned how to
Speaker 1: do UH, search marketing, SEO, all of that stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: I worked for some agencies doing that. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: about two thousand twelves that I struck out on my
Speaker 1: own as an entrepreneur and uh and the babylon Be
Speaker 1: fell into my lap in eighteen when I was looking
Speaker 1: to kind of diversify into the media space and the
Speaker 1: babble Onbe was taking off like a rocket and UH
Speaker 1: and I wanted to help it grow. Um. But the
Speaker 1: guys who was running at adam Ford he started in
Speaker 1: and he was looking to sell it, so we ended
Speaker 1: up working at a deal. UM. So, long story short,
Speaker 1: that's how I got involved in it. But it was
Speaker 1: just kind of like a dream come true to see
Speaker 1: something like that come across my radar. When I saw
Speaker 1: the babble on B, I thought to myself immediately, Man,
Speaker 1: I wish I had thought of that. I wish I
Speaker 1: was running that side. I wish I was involved in
Speaker 1: it in some way. Um, and I initially looked at
Speaker 1: it as just an investment, like to see if I
Speaker 1: could get involved as an investor, kind of giving us
Speaker 1: things some fuel. And uh, never thought I'd be running it,
Speaker 1: but that's how it worked out, all right. So I
Speaker 1: want to go back. Your dad is a is a preacher.
Speaker 1: What religious faith did you grow up in? What was
Speaker 1: he a minister? What church affiliation? So Protestant Christianity, Evangelical church,
Speaker 1: but not like any particular denominational affiliation, so Bible churches,
Speaker 1: community churches, stuff like that. So I grew up in Nashville,
Speaker 1: as most people who are listening here no, um, and
Speaker 1: I grew up going to Baptist Church as a kid,
Speaker 1: as a lot of people who grow up in the
Speaker 1: South do. Uh. And so I experienced a lot of
Speaker 1: different preachers and a lot of different preachers sons and daughters.
Speaker 1: And it's a cliche that they often have issues. Did
Speaker 1: you feel any particular pressure or any particular or find
Speaker 1: that you had any particular issues as a preacher son?
Speaker 1: Do you have brothers and sisters? Like? What was your
Speaker 1: experience like in that respect, especially since you said you
Speaker 1: grew up in so many different states. That's not uncommon
Speaker 1: for those jobs either, because a preacher might constantly be
Speaker 1: relocating and moving around to find different religious groups to
Speaker 1: be to be preaching too. Yeah. Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I think kind of a common thing that happens
Speaker 1: is you have really conservative households, a lot of really
Speaker 1: strict rules. Um, kids end up, you know, becoming really
Speaker 1: wanting to rebel and break away from all that. I
Speaker 1: I grew up having a tremendous amount of respect for
Speaker 1: my parents, and I was in a very loving home,
Speaker 1: and so I never really felt any um strong inclination
Speaker 1: to like lash out against them or defy them. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I never I never really struggled with that.
Speaker 1: It never really felt like I was jaded because of
Speaker 1: you know, things that the things that I had seen
Speaker 1: behind the scenes in the church, or you know that
Speaker 1: that rocked my faith to its core or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You know, there was obviously a lot of drama that
Speaker 1: goes on in churches, and a lot of political stuff
Speaker 1: that happens behind the scenes, and a lot of fact
Speaker 1: stabbing and and very Unchristian behavior that you end up seeing. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think my my parents really they
Speaker 1: handled it all with a lot of grace and uh
Speaker 1: and they really just loved on people. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: my my dad's job, being a pastor is like a
Speaker 1: seven jobs. So you know, you're you're you're dealing with
Speaker 1: stuff in the church, you're preparing for your sermon, but
Speaker 1: then you're doing hospital visits and and funerals and weddings
Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff, just seven um, serving and
Speaker 1: ministering to other people. So I never had anything but
Speaker 1: tremendous respect for them. Um. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think my faith only grew stronger as a results
Speaker 1: of of my my upbringing in the church. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess I might be one of the exceptions.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no idea what percentage of
Speaker 1: pastor's kids turn out normal versus uh, you know, going
Speaker 1: the other way. So, was there, ever, when you were
Speaker 1: a kid a move where you were just crushed that
Speaker 1: you had to leave a particular community or a particular state.
Speaker 1: Was there a place that you loved as a kid,
Speaker 1: was one of those moves more traumatic or difficult for
Speaker 1: you than others? Um? I do remember I grew up
Speaker 1: in Maryland. I was in Um, we were. We lived
Speaker 1: in Carroll County, Maryland. My dad passed through little church
Speaker 1: called Uniontown Bible Church, and it's a really small town
Speaker 1: and uh, small church and but very close family. The
Speaker 1: church was like family to us and uh and so
Speaker 1: those were like my kindergarten years, first second grade. I
Speaker 1: was a little kid, and I remember when we left there,
Speaker 1: everybody was really sad and devastated that we were leaving.
Speaker 1: And I was sad myself because I felt like we
Speaker 1: were leaving our family. But I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: you know, I hadn't hadn't developed like lifelong relationships with
Speaker 1: anyone yet at that point. But um, that sticks out
Speaker 1: to me most in my memory as being one of
Speaker 1: those times when I was really sad. I guess as
Speaker 1: I got a little older, we moved around, you know,
Speaker 1: four years later, we moved again. Five years later, moved again.
Speaker 1: I kind of, I guess I got a little accustomed
Speaker 1: to it. I think it was harder on my sister.
Speaker 1: You know, she would she had boyfriends, and she was
Speaker 1: a little older than me. You know, she was having
Speaker 1: the breakup with boyfriends we moved. That was devastating for her,
Speaker 1: But um, for me, I kind of got used to it,
Speaker 1: and I found it exciting going to a new place,
Speaker 1: meeting new people. Um, it was just that one initial
Speaker 1: move when I was younger, the first one that I
Speaker 1: remember where I felt like we were, you know, leaving
Speaker 1: our home. Where did you go to college? You mentioned
Speaker 1: that you got in trouble for what you sent out
Speaker 1: to the school listserv. Where did you go to school?
Speaker 1: I went to Palmbich Atlantic University. I was there from
Speaker 1: two thousand and two thousand four. I studied UH. I
Speaker 1: studied business management. While I was there, I minored in
Speaker 1: English and and I recently actually got canceled from speaking there.
Speaker 1: That's another story, but um, I guess that's going on
Speaker 1: two years now. I was supposed to go speak at
Speaker 1: the chapel, and the Twitter mob formed to assemble to
Speaker 1: to to UH to say that to the administration that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have someone like me on their campus. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm full of full of hatred and all this stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know I ended up I ended up getting
Speaker 1: denied from speaking in the chapel because that's a sacred place.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that I actually attended that school. I've
Speaker 1: never even I've never even heard of the school Palm
Speaker 1: Beach Atlantic. You said, what is Palm Beach Atlantic known for? Uh,
Speaker 1: beautiful women the beach. I don't know, I mean, is
Speaker 1: it a big school like I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: sports context, so I can't even like how many people
Speaker 1: would go there. Roughly a few thousands. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not they're not They're not on the map when it
Speaker 1: comes to like, uh sports, UM, so you know they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not a highly competitive athletic department. UM. But there
Speaker 1: are there are a Christian school. It's a private Christian university, UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, you have a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: big draw to come down to Florida be be neither
Speaker 1: near the beach, and so you know, as an alternative
Speaker 1: as some of the other Christian universities that are not
Speaker 1: in awesome locations. I think Palm each Atlantic has a
Speaker 1: has a great draw for that. They do have some
Speaker 1: good programs there though, and and UH I recently just
Speaker 1: I actually invested in and and made it a large,
Speaker 1: large UH donation to their new Philosophy of Religion UM
Speaker 1: program that they launched a master's and Philosophy Religion. I
Speaker 1: have a strong interest in like apologetics and philosophy and
Speaker 1: and arguing for the faith using reason. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: that they're they're launching a program with someone I really respect,
Speaker 1: Paul Cope, is running that program and uh, and I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be very fruitful training up a younger
Speaker 1: generation of of Christians who can actually defend intellectually their beliefs. So, um,
Speaker 1: that's really cool that they're getting into that. So that
Speaker 1: you made a large donation to the school and they
Speaker 1: still canceled your speech, yeah the next year. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean it seems to me that the Religious School
Speaker 1: would not necessarily be offended by you, particularly because you're
Speaker 1: an alarm Were you surprised that they they decided to
Speaker 1: try to cancel your speech? Yes, and no. I mean
Speaker 1: you don't really see much backbone and institutions these days.
Speaker 1: The the squeaky wheel gets the grease, you get these
Speaker 1: Twitter mobs that form, and they're the really loud, really obnoxious,
Speaker 1: really angry people that everybody wants to appease. And I
Speaker 1: think the administration found themselves in a position where, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to have a they didn't want to
Speaker 1: have an event on their campus that was attracting any
Speaker 1: media attention with protests or anything like that. So they
Speaker 1: just wanted to appease the mob and do what the
Speaker 1: mob wanted and say, Okay, we're not going to have
Speaker 1: him in the chapel if you guys don't think that's appropriate. Um,
Speaker 1: instead of coming and standing by me and saying, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with this guy. He attended this school, his
Speaker 1: he he doesn't have, um, you know, terrible values. He
Speaker 1: doesn't hate people. We stand by him. We want him
Speaker 1: to speak here. No one. They didn't have my back
Speaker 1: like that or stand up these kids. And the thing
Speaker 1: that to me it was it's crazy. It's like, is
Speaker 1: the administration running the school or are these angry students
Speaker 1: running the schools? The same thing with Disney? Is the
Speaker 1: CEO really in charge? And it doesn't really seem that way.
Speaker 1: It seems like the tail is wagging the dog. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt we're talking to Seth Dylan. He is the
Speaker 1: he runs the Babylon b I'll ask him an official title. Uh,
Speaker 1: since two thousand and eighteen, I believe uh, And I
Speaker 1: am Clay Travis. This is wins and losses, all right?
Speaker 1: So you go to college. I'm actually curious about this.
Speaker 1: You said you were there two thousand to two thousand four.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the first time you ever got on
Speaker 1: the internet. You're around my age, so you probably do.
Speaker 1: Do you remember like the first time you got on
Speaker 1: the internet and what you did when you got on there?
Speaker 1: Was it with a O L? Like those discs? What
Speaker 1: what do you remember about the Internet as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up? Man, it wasn't it the rich kid that
Speaker 1: had a O L. I don't even know if I
Speaker 1: had a well, I think we had like like net
Speaker 1: zero or something like that. I didn't have. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to answer your question, by the way, I
Speaker 1: didn't even have the Internet at my house. So when
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit older than you, I'm nineties seven
Speaker 1: to two thousand one was the time I was at
Speaker 1: George Washington, But when I went away to college. The
Speaker 1: first time I ever got an email address was when
Speaker 1: I got to college, and we didn't have, to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: the internet at our house. Now, when I came back
Speaker 1: home in the summers, by that point, we had the internet,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have the internet at home. My my
Speaker 1: uncle next door had Prodigy dial up internet, but I
Speaker 1: never had the Internet at my house. So so you
Speaker 1: do you remember the first time. I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I got on. I was with my friend Greg Schamberg,
Speaker 1: who I don't even know where Greg lives now, but um,
Speaker 1: he had a O L those free discs that they
Speaker 1: sent out. Remember, like you used to get so many
Speaker 1: hours to get on for the Internet. It was dial up,
Speaker 1: And I remember he and I got on. That was
Speaker 1: the very first I was at his house. I was
Speaker 1: probably you know, ninth or tenth grade. That was the
Speaker 1: very first time I ever got on the Internet. You
Speaker 1: had to get like a CD ROM add on for
Speaker 1: your computers. Yeah, that's right, disc and if you didn't,
Speaker 1: if you didn't already have one, yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: remember my my granddad on my mom's side was really
Speaker 1: into like playing bridge and stuff on the Internet and
Speaker 1: so and that was like a big thing early on.
Speaker 1: And and he was really excited about being able to
Speaker 1: set us set us up on the internet so that
Speaker 1: he could chat with us remotely. He lived in Virginia
Speaker 1: and uh, and so he helped us get on the internet.
Speaker 1: We got like I c Q and a O L
Speaker 1: A Messenger and started chatting with friends. I think I
Speaker 1: was probably fourteen or fifteen around that. Time when we
Speaker 1: first did you recognize hey, yeah, but did you reckon
Speaker 1: by the time you get to college two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: did you recognize even as a young kid, oh, this
Speaker 1: internet thing is going to be big? Or like I
Speaker 1: remember getting my email address at GW freshman year, and
Speaker 1: I remember the guy saying, Hey, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: one of your favorite things that you ever have in
Speaker 1: the internet, you know, in college, it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: big deal. And I remember kind of rolling my eyes
Speaker 1: like yeah, whatever, and then almost immediately being like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of amazing to be able to email
Speaker 1: with everybody and to be able to have an email address. Again,
Speaker 1: I was eighteen before I had an email address. Did
Speaker 1: you think back then, oh, this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: big deal in some ways? I mean we had, uh,
Speaker 1: we had all kinds of ideas. Um, you know, my
Speaker 1: brother and I we we secured PlayStation two dot com
Speaker 1: before PlayStation have been announced and uh, and so we
Speaker 1: were playing around doing stuff like that, like buying domains
Speaker 1: and stuff. So what happened with PlayStation two dot com?
Speaker 1: Did you end up selling it or did they like
Speaker 1: that was called back in the day, right, like you
Speaker 1: would just try to think about the web addresses. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's started be coming. That was before it was even
Speaker 1: like a super popular thing. I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one had thought of that one yet.
Speaker 1: And UH and Sony sent us a letter demanding that
Speaker 1: we released it to them, and my parents freaked out
Speaker 1: and made us do it, and so we didn't even
Speaker 1: get any money for it. You would have been how
Speaker 1: old when you had PlayStation two dot com? I don't
Speaker 1: even remember a teenager somewhere. I don't know, four teams,
Speaker 1: fifteen six. I'm not sure. This letter just arrives at
Speaker 1: your house. Your parents opened it up and they're like,
Speaker 1: I can imagine being a parent and being like pretty
Speaker 1: upset about Yeah, yeah, it's an official it's official letter
Speaker 1: ahead from from Sony and UH, and they're sending us
Speaker 1: as a demand letter. Basically was a demand letter saying
Speaker 1: that they had the rights to that domain. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it was very aggressive in its language, and so they
Speaker 1: were they didn't have any money for like a legal
Speaker 1: battle or anything, and they thought we were going to
Speaker 1: get in trouble for for squatting on it. So they
Speaker 1: didn't understand that, you know, he bought it it was ours.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they they they they were pretty pretty serious
Speaker 1: about making sure that we did whatever we could get
Speaker 1: Sony Offera backs there. So when you're at college in
Speaker 1: two thousand to two thousand four, obviously you're in a
Speaker 1: religious school. Did you think to yourself, Hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to have some sort of life. I'm gonna you mentioned
Speaker 1: you got into s c e e O. How did that happen?
Speaker 1: So you graduate in two thousand four from Palm Beach
Speaker 1: Atlantic and you go and take one job. Um, my
Speaker 1: first job, well, actually my first job before I before
Speaker 1: I got into like the internet marketing stuff directly with
Speaker 1: like agencies, was an enterprise Rennetal and I just didn't
Speaker 1: even know where I was going to work and they
Speaker 1: were hiring. So you were two and you work at enterprise.
Speaker 1: What where was the enterprise location in Palm Beach West,
Speaker 1: Palm Beach West, Palm Beach, Florida. Was it a good
Speaker 1: location for enterprise or was it like a because you know,
Speaker 1: there's big differences between where you could be located better
Speaker 1: than me. No, not a great neighborhood. It was in
Speaker 1: a trailer. It wasn't even a structure like an actual building.
Speaker 1: It was it was a trailer on stilts and tiny
Speaker 1: little trailer, uh dingy little office, flickering lights, dirty carpet,
Speaker 1: and you know you're out there washing cars wearing a
Speaker 1: shirt and tie and slacks in the Florida heat. It's
Speaker 1: just it was. It was pretty rough. But I met
Speaker 1: my wife there. My wife got in a car accident,
Speaker 1: needed a rental, comes into the office. I rent her car.
Speaker 1: Later on that evening, she calls the office and asked
Speaker 1: me out to dinner. So, I mean, how old? Wait,
Speaker 1: so how old was your wife when she came in?
Speaker 1: How old? How old you were? Twenty two? She was?
Speaker 1: How old? I was twenty one? I graduated a year early,
Speaker 1: so I was twenty one. She was nineteen. All right,
Speaker 1: So what percentage of people that came into your enterprise
Speaker 1: office were datable? Like like one in one in fifty,
Speaker 1: Like it's gonna be a pretty low percentage, I would think,
Speaker 1: especially again, because you're not at the good enterprise. I
Speaker 1: always say, like, when I wrote my first book, I
Speaker 1: got sent to a bunch of not even the good
Speaker 1: Walmarts to do book signings. And by the way, Walmart
Speaker 1: not an ideal place to do a book signing, but
Speaker 1: when you're not even at the good walmart in a town,
Speaker 1: it's a much better it's a much worse dynamic. Trust me,
Speaker 1: I would say a very small percentage, more like one
Speaker 1: in a hundred. I don't know. It was not It
Speaker 1: was not a frequent thing. So when she when she
Speaker 1: came in, it was like she grabbed everybody's attention. You know,
Speaker 1: this other young guy that I was working with was
Speaker 1: hitting on her. He tried to get her number because
Speaker 1: he was going out with some friends later and he
Speaker 1: wanted to see if she and her friends wanted to
Speaker 1: join him, and she blew him off and took off,
Speaker 1: And then when she called back and asked for me,
Speaker 1: he was like, he was so upset. It was pretty
Speaker 1: It was pretty hysterical. So what did you do on
Speaker 1: the first date after you met at the car rental place? Um,
Speaker 1: we went out to We went out to dinner that night.
Speaker 1: We actually went out that night. She asked me out
Speaker 1: that night. I said yes, So we went to dinner
Speaker 1: that the first day that we met. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it was this restaurant called Bruisy. Bruisy's not even open anymore.
Speaker 1: It was in Uh, it was in a city place
Speaker 1: in West Palm, which it's not even called city place anymore.
Speaker 1: This is you know, this is how old we are.
Speaker 1: The places that we used to go and hang out
Speaker 1: are all clothes and renamed now. So um yeah, those
Speaker 1: those things don't even exist anymore. But but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that was my that was my first job, though
Speaker 1: my first job, like out of school. I was twenty one. Um,
Speaker 1: I ended up getting into, uh, I end up getting
Speaker 1: into like that internet marketing team because while I was
Speaker 1: in college, I had a business online actually started. You know,
Speaker 1: the internet always interested me, It always interested me, so
Speaker 1: I knew there were ways to make money online selling
Speaker 1: stuff on eBay or Craigslist or or you know, just
Speaker 1: creating a website and finding some kind of product or
Speaker 1: service that you can offer. And and while I was
Speaker 1: in school, I was doing this thing where I had
Speaker 1: all these like English as a second language students that
Speaker 1: were struggling to to write properly in English. I was
Speaker 1: doing editing work for them on the side and helping
Speaker 1: them with their grammar everything. I wasn't writing their papers
Speaker 1: for them, but I was helping edit their papers and
Speaker 1: like fixed up their English. So feared completely towards the
Speaker 1: self students, and I started a whole business doing that.
Speaker 1: And so I was connecting editors, like English English speaking
Speaker 1: and writing editors with English's second language students to help
Speaker 1: them with their English and help them get better grades.
Speaker 1: And so I had a website that I was marketing
Speaker 1: for that when I was in school. And then that's
Speaker 1: kind of how I learned the ind and outs of
Speaker 1: like paid search marketing on Google and Yahoo, um, and
Speaker 1: you know, so I had experience with that before there
Speaker 1: were even degrees for that that you could that you
Speaker 1: could get from the university. And so when I when
Speaker 1: I started applying for jobs doing that at these agencies
Speaker 1: that do that do search marketing, they once they knew
Speaker 1: that I had some experience, They're like, oh wait, you've
Speaker 1: already done this on your own. You're hired. So it
Speaker 1: was very easy to get a job. So you basically
Speaker 1: taught yourself internet marketing based on having a business like that.
Speaker 1: What kind of dollar for dollar return did you get
Speaker 1: back in those days with Google search results? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I mean clicks were pretty cheap early on. You know,
Speaker 1: I was able to I was the middleman, right, So
Speaker 1: I was linking editors together with like students basically, and
Speaker 1: so I would take like a percentage and pay the editors,
Speaker 1: you know, I pay the editors, and I would take
Speaker 1: some off the top. And so I was in the
Speaker 1: middle of that, I was. I made like I made
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty tho dollars the first year I
Speaker 1: was doing that, I was still a college student. I
Speaker 1: was vacationing to the Bahamas, going to like Paradise Island
Speaker 1: and stuff, you know, like I was living it up.
Speaker 1: I thought I was rich. I mean, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money for a college kid, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you were making thirty or uh, and how many hours
Speaker 1: were you having to work to do that? I was.
Speaker 1: I was working quite a bit because, you know, just
Speaker 1: facilitating the whole thing. I didn't have any programmers, like
Speaker 1: to automate anything. It was all manual communication between people
Speaker 1: and sending invoices and all this stuff. So it was
Speaker 1: it was time consuming. I was working almost, you know,
Speaker 1: like almost at a full time clip, even as I
Speaker 1: was finishing school. And then when I got out of school,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to go get a real job
Speaker 1: and get some real world experience. But I had in
Speaker 1: my back pocket that I knew how to do the
Speaker 1: internet marketing stuff. So that's what kind of kicked me
Speaker 1: off on that path. I started working for like in
Speaker 1: search marketing agencies, one of them in Boca called more
Speaker 1: Visibility UM, another one called Beyond Our ali uh, and started,
Speaker 1: you know, doing that whole thing and learning the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of that. And that's fascinating because you end
Speaker 1: up people with clients who are running businesses in a
Speaker 1: in a bunch of different industries. Like you could be
Speaker 1: running campaigns for people who are selling Vegas show tickets
Speaker 1: or steel toe shoes, or a law firm that's looking
Speaker 1: for leads, or some company that organizes garages, you know,
Speaker 1: And so you learn, like you learn how to run campaigns,
Speaker 1: you learn the ins and out to how much the
Speaker 1: clicks cost and what kind of return on investment you
Speaker 1: can get in a wide variety of industries. And with
Speaker 1: that knowledge, it sets you up to be able to
Speaker 1: go out there and start your own business. You know
Speaker 1: where the opportunities are. No, that's fascinating. Was there, by
Speaker 1: the way, a straw that broke the camel's back moment
Speaker 1: as it pertained to working in the car rent holes?
Speaker 1: Was there like a I'm done with this forever moment
Speaker 1: for you. I don't remember if there was one specific moment.
Speaker 1: I will tell you though, that it is pretty like
Speaker 1: soul crushing to be outside in nine degree heat, like
Speaker 1: washing a car while wearing a suit. I mean, you're like,
Speaker 1: and then you and then you run inside the office
Speaker 1: a little trailer and there's a line of people. They're
Speaker 1: all mad because there's no cars available. You know how
Speaker 1: Enterprise is, right, they they did a sign Feld episode
Speaker 1: about this whole thing. But you know, you have a
Speaker 1: reservation and then you show up and there's no car,
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, what's the point of the reservation.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to hold a car. Well, the Enterprise model
Speaker 1: was to stay rented completely out the whole time. You
Speaker 1: wanted no cars on your lot. But then people would
Speaker 1: walk in needing a car or having reserved car, and
Speaker 1: you don't have any for them. So then you're scrambling
Speaker 1: kind of barter with another agency to try to get
Speaker 1: a car from them to bring to your people. Had
Speaker 1: It's very stressful. The phone's ringing the whole time, and
Speaker 1: you gotta run outside and wash another car in the heat.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I did that for six months.
Speaker 1: I was like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta be
Speaker 1: done with this. I also would imagine I I worked
Speaker 1: in tail for a while, and um and so forward facing.
Speaker 1: A lot of people probably listening to us worked in
Speaker 1: restaurants or whatever else. But I would imagine probably the
Speaker 1: anger level of car rental is one of the highest
Speaker 1: of all professions forward facing, right, because nobody's ever in
Speaker 1: that good of a mood. It doesn't ever feel like
Speaker 1: you get the car that you're expecting to get. The
Speaker 1: line always takes longer than you anticipate, there's some issue
Speaker 1: with the car. When you get in, you always gotta
Speaker 1: worry about refueling it. Like I find the whole car
Speaker 1: rental process to be frankly pretty awful. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: then as a as a guy that's renting you the car,
Speaker 1: like there's pressure on you to try to sell the damage,
Speaker 1: waiver the personal injury. Of course, that's a great point.
Speaker 1: All these upsells. You know, you want to sell them
Speaker 1: the prepaid gas, you want to sell them the coverage.
Speaker 1: And if you don't hit certain sales metrics, you know
Speaker 1: you you you you don't, you don't excel, you don't
Speaker 1: get you don't rank up. You don't get to be
Speaker 1: an assistant branch manager and then a branch manager and
Speaker 1: then an area manager. So in order to work your
Speaker 1: way up, you've got to be an outstand salesperson. So
Speaker 1: you're on top of people being miserable for all those
Speaker 1: reasons you just mentioned, you're also trying to sell them stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I also mentioned that you have
Speaker 1: kids now, right, you have too boys, two boys ye
Speaker 1: eight and six. Yeah. So the only it's bad enough
Speaker 1: when you're single and you're trying to get a rental
Speaker 1: car or you're married and it's just you and your wife.
Speaker 1: But getting a car seat, first of all, to have
Speaker 1: the car seat be there, secondly getting it installed in
Speaker 1: a rental car, all of this is just a miserable process, right,
Speaker 1: Like it gets worse when you have to have the
Speaker 1: rental car for the kids and you try and reserve
Speaker 1: the car seat and then it's not there, and then
Speaker 1: your wife blames you for that, and then I just
Speaker 1: I think it's becoming quite clear that I hate the
Speaker 1: rental car process. Basically I would rather uber everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And adding to that is usually like you're getting a
Speaker 1: rental car for your family when you're on a trip somewhere,
Speaker 1: maybe you're somewhere cold and it's snowing, and you're standing
Speaker 1: outside preasing waiting for them to get that. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: to add all that, that's exactly right. All right, So
Speaker 1: you have this knowledge with s e O, how long
Speaker 1: do you work in sort of the S e O
Speaker 1: field for? For several years? I mean for probably like
Speaker 1: six seven years something like that. So I ended up
Speaker 1: branching out to do that on my own too, And
Speaker 1: I had a bunch of clients, and I was I
Speaker 1: was doing pretty well with that. But you know, when
Speaker 1: you have when you have a bunch of client accounts
Speaker 1: that you're managing your it's like having a bunch of bosses.
Speaker 1: You work for each of your clients. And um, and
Speaker 1: I was, for whatever reason the way that I was wired,
Speaker 1: I was I never really wanted to be working for
Speaker 1: somebody else. I wanted to be doing things on my
Speaker 1: own terms, working for myself. And so even though it
Speaker 1: was my own business, having clients, felt like I was
Speaker 1: working for somebody else all the time. Um, I always
Speaker 1: had to do what they wanted me to do, and
Speaker 1: they were always waiting on me for something, and and
Speaker 1: uh and I wanted to do things more on my term,
Speaker 1: and so I was always looking for an out from there.
Speaker 1: So at some point I decided, you know, I'd rather
Speaker 1: just strike out on my own entirely and run my
Speaker 1: own businesses that aren't client based businesses. You know, um
Speaker 1: things that I can I can automate and offer services online,
Speaker 1: uh and not have to deal with clients. And and
Speaker 1: I knew how to do that, just because I don't
Speaker 1: have to spent so many years in the internet marketing world.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, eventually I struck out to do that.
Speaker 1: My brother and I teamed up. He's my brother was
Speaker 1: an engineer, aeronautical engineer, but had a knack for like
Speaker 1: computer programming and web development stuff. And so I told him, look,
Speaker 1: I've got some ideas. If you can build some things,
Speaker 1: I can market them and we'll see if they do well,
Speaker 1: and if they do, we quit our jobs and we'll
Speaker 1: do this whole time. He said sure, and uh, the
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, we were out on our own
Speaker 1: all right. So were you active on social media? You
Speaker 1: said you first noticed I think the Babylon be online yourself,
Speaker 1: and we're interested in it as a business opportunity. Were
Speaker 1: you active in any other media based entities. Prior to
Speaker 1: noticing the Babylon b No, I had never And this
Speaker 1: is the thing, this is why when I was interested
Speaker 1: in investing in the B I really just wanted to
Speaker 1: invest in it. I did not want to buy it
Speaker 1: because they didn't know the first thing about running a
Speaker 1: meet a site. Like I knew how to like sell products,
Speaker 1: generate leads, turned clicks into cash, you know, like I
Speaker 1: knew how to I knew how to monetize websites, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to monetize like a media site.
Speaker 1: That's just like where you're not selling a product, you're
Speaker 1: just publishing articles. I didn't know the first thing about
Speaker 1: running a media site. So um, I was really just
Speaker 1: interested in investing in it and letting the guy who
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing run it and produce the content
Speaker 1: and manage all of that. Um. But he was more
Speaker 1: interested in selling it. In fact, he was talking to
Speaker 1: the Daily Wire at the time back in and they
Speaker 1: had worked out a deal and they were about to
Speaker 1: sign on the dotted line, and then Daily Wire backed out.
Speaker 1: Facebook had changed their algorithm and around that time, and
Speaker 1: they got kind of cold feet about whether or not.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be, you know, running another property that
Speaker 1: was really almost entirely dependent on Facebook for traffic and everything.
Speaker 1: So when they backed out, Adam called me back and said, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're still interested, I don't I don't want an investor.
Speaker 1: I want to sell it. So if you want to
Speaker 1: have a serious talk about buying it, you know, fly
Speaker 1: to Michigan and let's meet and let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: So so that's when I flew up there to meet him. So,
Speaker 1: so you buy the company in two tho. Um, how
Speaker 1: what was the size of the company. How nervous were
Speaker 1: you to be buying it? Walked me through the decision
Speaker 1: by which you come to purchase the company and enter
Speaker 1: the media business. Well, it wasn't it wasn't super expensive,
Speaker 1: It wasn't millions of dollars. So I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: I was taking a huge financial risk. Um, but I was.
Speaker 1: I was a little nervous about taking on a property
Speaker 1: that I didn't know how to manage. It was going
Speaker 1: to be a learning curve and I had a very
Speaker 1: full plate doing. You know, we're running a bunch of
Speaker 1: several other online businesses and so um. You know this
Speaker 1: idea that I would be taking on something that it
Speaker 1: was foreign to me. Was a little bit nerve wracking. Um.
Speaker 1: But the upside, the exciting part about it was it
Speaker 1: was fun. It was satire. It was what I was
Speaker 1: doing when I was in college and getting in trouble.
Speaker 1: I saw the opportunity to have all kinds of fun
Speaker 1: and getting all kinds of new trouble. And he was
Speaker 1: worried about this whole fight with censorship and Facebook kicking
Speaker 1: him off for for misinformation or whatever. They were starting
Speaker 1: to fact check around that time, and I welcomed that fight.
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to be on the suntlines
Speaker 1: of that fight. That that sounds like fun. Let him
Speaker 1: try to check me off, you know, Let's let's take
Speaker 1: him to court. Let's fight that battle. Let's fight for
Speaker 1: free speech. So I thought, as this really exciting thing,
Speaker 1: and he was like, I want to pull the ripcord
Speaker 1: and get out. So um, and ended up working out.
Speaker 1: We when we sat down and talked, you know, we
Speaker 1: really liked each other. We got along really well, um,
Speaker 1: and it sounded like I could really bring something to it.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, I was excited about the opportunity
Speaker 1: to get involved with something that would be like really fun,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than just a business where you're selling
Speaker 1: Like I mean, we were selling all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: we're selling like insulated water bottles and slutting sunglasses and
Speaker 1: and iPhone bumpers and stuff like that. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: like exciting to me. It wasn't fun. I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like it was impactful and meaningful. But the bee had
Speaker 1: something special to be had. It was speaking truth. The
Speaker 1: culture was dealing with the preservation of freedom and the
Speaker 1: restoration of sanity, and in all of that through humor.
Speaker 1: And that was just right at my alley. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to that in a second. What was
Speaker 1: the craziest thing you sold that you couldn't believe there
Speaker 1: was as much demand for it? Like, in other words,
Speaker 1: if you had to go back and only sell one product,
Speaker 1: what would it be and or what surprised you the
Speaker 1: most that people were willing to buy? Uh? You know, honestly,
Speaker 1: probably probably floated Like I don't know, maybe it's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not that weird of a product in your mind,
Speaker 1: but I had no idea all the demand that there
Speaker 1: was for floating sunglasses. Did you know that was even
Speaker 1: a thing. I didn't even sunglasses were a thing. This
Speaker 1: is like, so if they fall off your face, they
Speaker 1: don't sink. Yeah, they thought. Yeah. I always thought if
Speaker 1: you lose your sunglasses and the water you lost them,
Speaker 1: they're gone. They think for the bottom. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize there was even the things such as floating sunglasses.
Speaker 1: But I actually am now thinking I didn't know they existed,
Speaker 1: But now I'm like, you know what, floating sunglasses does
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense. So you guys would sell
Speaker 1: tons of floating sunglasses. Yeah, we had a business called
Speaker 1: waves Gear and uh and yeah, we would sell microfiber
Speaker 1: towels and water bottles, all kind of like beach stuff
Speaker 1: and uh and floating sunglasses was the top seller. Um,
Speaker 1: it was was. It was big on Amazon. Um. We
Speaker 1: ended up transitioning away from that and and uh and
Speaker 1: and moving on to other things. But for quite some
Speaker 1: time before there was a lot more competition. Um, that's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty profitable business. Um. How did you, by the way,
Speaker 1: get your stuff shipped? So the reason why I'm asking is,
Speaker 1: we obviously have sold a lot of out kick gear
Speaker 1: over the years, and I before I started selling gear,
Speaker 1: I had no idea how complicated shipping was, how expensive
Speaker 1: it was, how often things got lost, how often things
Speaker 1: went awry. People think, oh, I'm just gonna sell something
Speaker 1: on the internet, and they don't really work through all
Speaker 1: of the complexities associated with it. Uh, that is pretty overwhelming, right,
Speaker 1: So you have to learn. I mean, like you're making
Speaker 1: it sound fairly simple, right, but there's actually a lot
Speaker 1: of complexities involved in selling product on the internet. It
Speaker 1: depends on how much margin you want, how much work
Speaker 1: you want to put it. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: opportunities to do, like drop shipping stuff, you can print
Speaker 1: on demand stuff. Now there's there's companies that have made
Speaker 1: it so easy to just like put your design on
Speaker 1: a T shirt and they print it for you on
Speaker 1: demand and ship it all. And you have to charge
Speaker 1: quite a bit for it because it costs so much
Speaker 1: to have them do all that for you. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you're able to pass some
Speaker 1: of that costs onto the consumer, you can still make
Speaker 1: a little bit of a margin on it and you
Speaker 1: don't have to handle any of that stuff, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um. But we had a warehouse, I mean
Speaker 1: we ran the operation out of Actually I partnered with
Speaker 1: a guy out Utah that had a warehouse, uh and
Speaker 1: and and did some distribution and fulfillment stuff. And so
Speaker 1: we worked together on on that whole process and he
Speaker 1: and he managed that whole thing. So we would we
Speaker 1: would bring in the shipments and and palates and stock
Speaker 1: and store them in the warehouse and he would handle
Speaker 1: all the fulfillment and and ship everything out. And so
Speaker 1: we had a system. We had a system. But but
Speaker 1: for for the B right now, we do a lot
Speaker 1: of prinn demand stuff. Um. We take advantage of a
Speaker 1: lot of that. But we are we are transitioning now
Speaker 1: that we're doing bigger volume. We're growing. There's a lot
Speaker 1: more volume. We can make a lot more money if
Speaker 1: we actually handle a lot of the fulfillment stuff ourselves.
Speaker 1: Um or you know, at least not do it print
Speaker 1: on demand, but by it in bulk at lower rage.
Speaker 1: All right. So I don't remember when I first became
Speaker 1: aware of the Babylon B. I'm obviously hyper online. That's
Speaker 1: what I have to do. I was running out kicks,
Speaker 1: so I understand the media space, developing audience, all of
Speaker 1: those different things. What surprised you the most about running
Speaker 1: a media business that you didn't anticipate before you did,
Speaker 1: And when did you start to feel Maybe the answer
Speaker 1: is you still don't, but when did you start to feel? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable. I kind of understand the business aspects associated
Speaker 1: with running a site like the Babylon b Well. I
Speaker 1: mean when I first took it over, you you asked
Speaker 1: some questions earlier that didn't even answer. Uh, I guess
Speaker 1: I got distractive with other things, but like how big
Speaker 1: is the opera? How big was the operation? Who was involved?
Speaker 1: I mean when I when I took it over, this
Speaker 1: was it. This was a one and a half man show.
Speaker 1: I mean it was Adam and in a one part
Speaker 1: time writer. That's it. It was two guys and uh
Speaker 1: and the part time guy was submitting some ideas and
Speaker 1: Adam was running the site. And they had some Google
Speaker 1: ads on their that was. That was all they did
Speaker 1: for monetization, UM and some some T shirt sales through
Speaker 1: t spring that they were doing here and there, But
Speaker 1: it wasn't really generating a lot of revenue. Um. There
Speaker 1: wasn't really a model in place for that. So all
Speaker 1: of it was a learning curve for me. I had
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, how do we how do
Speaker 1: we maximize our RPM, our revenue per thousand impressions, and
Speaker 1: actually turn us into a business, and then you know,
Speaker 1: obviously hiring talent, trying to find writers and all of that.
Speaker 1: So we did. We went through a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: we figured out, we we launched the store, so now
Speaker 1: we have merchandise, We started publishing books, we launched a
Speaker 1: subscription platform. All of this Clay was geared towards making
Speaker 1: sure we had diversification of revenue sources in the event
Speaker 1: that we got the platforms. We were working on the
Speaker 1: whole potential d platforming problem right from the beginning, because
Speaker 1: we knew that we had all our eggs and Facebook's
Speaker 1: basket to drive traffic, and all our eggs and Google's
Speaker 1: basket to generate revenue. Either one of them shut us
Speaker 1: off at any time and we have to close our doors,
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do. So we wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that we had multiple traffic sources and multiple streams
Speaker 1: of revenue coming in just to diversify and keep the
Speaker 1: business on its feet in the event of those d
Speaker 1: platforming events. So um, that was that was what I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out from the beginning, and all
Speaker 1: of it was you know, kind of a learning curve
Speaker 1: since I've never never run a media set before. But um,
Speaker 1: we've got we've got our feet under this now, I think.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, the Twitter thing that just happened
Speaker 1: is a big deal, but it's not going to sink
Speaker 1: us because of all that effort we put in diverse fight. Okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I noticed, and I
Speaker 1: testified under oath about this, so this is no great surprise,
Speaker 1: was Facebook could throw off tremendous amounts of traffic. Social
Speaker 1: media could in general, but if you did something to
Speaker 1: upset the gatekeepers, almost immediately, they could flip a switch
Speaker 1: and your traffic would disappear. I imagine that didn't happen
Speaker 1: very often to you in the selling the floating sunglasses business.
Speaker 1: It was pretty pretty hard. I would imagine. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: wrong to super offend the floating sun girl. I although
Speaker 1: I guess Amazon could change their dynamics in terms of
Speaker 1: costs and things like that. When was the first time
Speaker 1: you realize the power of the big tech platforms in
Speaker 1: terms of their ability to allow you to have traffic
Speaker 1: or disallow you to have traffic? Um, probably the first
Speaker 1: time was when we had you know, like even before
Speaker 1: all of the media site stuff, like, you know, have
Speaker 1: just having issues where you know, Google would suspend your
Speaker 1: ads for policy violation and you've got to try to
Speaker 1: figure out why and try to appeal and get back on,
Speaker 1: and you would just all of a sudden your traffic
Speaker 1: would dry up. Well, well you're in the middle of
Speaker 1: dealing with that, and you realize it's like you're completely
Speaker 1: at Google's mercy. You cannot drive traffic. You know the
Speaker 1: way Google, Google changed everything when it came to advertising.
Speaker 1: You know, it used to be that you know, there
Speaker 1: was this big concern where you know, Walmart or Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble would come into a town and all the
Speaker 1: small businesses would suffer because you have these big you know,
Speaker 1: these big brick and mortars that offered so many products,
Speaker 1: they dominated, and no one could could generate any business
Speaker 1: anymore in that area. Well, the Internet, to some extent,
Speaker 1: put you know, fix that problem, or at least address
Speaker 1: part of that problem by making it possible to have
Speaker 1: small businesses put your ads right next to the big companies,
Speaker 1: the big brands, and be competitive with them. You know,
Speaker 1: like we ran like in the self help legal filing space,
Speaker 1: we ran ads right next to legal zoom, and people
Speaker 1: clicked on our ads just as much as they clicked
Speaker 1: on legal zooms ads. And so you can put your
Speaker 1: ads right there next to them. But then, but then
Speaker 1: that can all just go away if if Google decides
Speaker 1: that one of your ads violates the policy, you know,
Speaker 1: they can suspend your account and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're dead in the water and you can't generate
Speaker 1: any traffic anymore. And that can't happen with a brick
Speaker 1: and mortar. Your your store is still there. You know,
Speaker 1: no one's shutting your store down, So you know that
Speaker 1: was dealing with issues like that make it feel all
Speaker 1: very uncertain and and always like you know, you need
Speaker 1: to have you need to have multiple things going at
Speaker 1: all times, because if any one thing topples, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't you want to you don't want to be
Speaker 1: in a situation where all your eggs in one basket. Um.
Speaker 1: So I learned very early on that the importance of
Speaker 1: making sure that you know you've got you've got multiple
Speaker 1: things going on so that you're not you're not you're
Speaker 1: not in such a precarious position. I think what was
Speaker 1: the yeah with the with the B. You know, it's
Speaker 1: when we first started getting back checked and we first
Speaker 1: started getting threatened with demonetization and uh in our platform
Speaker 1: being removed, like basically saying, look, we will we will
Speaker 1: demonetize or de platform you if we feel it's necessary
Speaker 1: if you continue to share fake news. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: those kinds of threats coming from the social media, there's
Speaker 1: no alternative for site like ours to get traffics on,
Speaker 1: especially at that time when they hadn't even created a
Speaker 1: lot of these like uh you know, third tier kind
Speaker 1: of social networks. So one of the challenges that you
Speaker 1: have and you've dealt with. And I'm curious how this
Speaker 1: is played out. And we're talking with Seth Dylan, he
Speaker 1: is the owner of the Babylon B. We are talking
Speaker 1: on wins and losses I of course, and Clay Travis,
Speaker 1: you're a satirical site and you are constantly poking fun
Speaker 1: at a variety of different issues. Yet many people don't
Speaker 1: seem to understand the concept of you being a satirical site.
Speaker 1: And I know this is by the way, not just
Speaker 1: unique to you. The Onion back in the day used
Speaker 1: to often be considered a serious news site as well.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in the stories that they were sharing. How often
Speaker 1: are you getting caught up in those kind of disputes
Speaker 1: And do you think people use it as an excuse
Speaker 1: because of your bent, Like there's this idea that Republicans
Speaker 1: can't be funny, that a conservative site could not be funny,
Speaker 1: and you guys fly in the face of that and
Speaker 1: are pretty consistently hysterical at ridiculing many of the issues
Speaker 1: that are out there. Well, it's funny, I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: I don't think much of it is honest. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it is disingtenuous. It's an effort to
Speaker 1: silence and suppress us by pretending that we're something that
Speaker 1: they know that we're not. You know, like when when
Speaker 1: The New York Times calls us a far right misinformation
Speaker 1: site that traffics and misinformation under the guise of satire,
Speaker 1: and those are exact words when they do that. They
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. You know, they are in fact
Speaker 1: using misinformation to smear us as being a source of it.
Speaker 1: And it's very deliberate. It's it's conniving, it's it's wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not they're not laboring under they're not
Speaker 1: they're not confused about who we are and what we do.
Speaker 1: You know, it's obvious that we're actually a satirical publication.
Speaker 1: They just they just don't like the fact that we're effective,
Speaker 1: and so they find these ways, these creative ways to
Speaker 1: come after you, and so they pretend to be really
Speaker 1: bothered by it. Oh, your jokes are too believable. Too
Speaker 1: many people think that your satire is true. You must
Speaker 1: have some ill motives. You must be trying to uh
Speaker 1: confuse people and spread disinformation, you know, um, and it's
Speaker 1: it's just absurd. I mean when you think, when you
Speaker 1: really think about it's like satire needs to have an
Speaker 1: element of truth to it in order for the joke
Speaker 1: to land, in order for the joke to make sense,
Speaker 1: the point that you're making. All that satire does is
Speaker 1: exaggerate the truth to make its points. And so if
Speaker 1: you're not if you're not closely writing on the back
Speaker 1: of the truth, your jokes aren't gonna land. And this
Speaker 1: idea of this expectation that our jokes should be so
Speaker 1: divorced from reality that no one could possibly believe they
Speaker 1: were true, is to say that we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing something other than satire altogether, you know, like We're
Speaker 1: supposed to just be making absurd, silly statements that that
Speaker 1: that are just dumb and have no point. Um, And
Speaker 1: that's just not how satire works, and they know that,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's one of the arguments that they
Speaker 1: used to try to shut us down, along with you know,
Speaker 1: the hate speech, to punching down and all of that nonsense.
Speaker 1: So you got your account locked recently on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to that in a moment. The first
Speaker 1: thing I want to say is, so you took over
Speaker 1: in Obviously election was massive for you guys. When was
Speaker 1: the first time that you felt, hey, we're having a
Speaker 1: significant influence at least in the online discourse and we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of fans out there. Was there a
Speaker 1: moment in time or some body that responded and you thought, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: we're really having an impact. Do you recall having a
Speaker 1: moment like that, Uh, when we started to get a
Speaker 1: lot of media attention. Um, I think that was one thing,
Speaker 1: you know, that was one of the unexpected things that
Speaker 1: I never really thought I would be doing, is like
Speaker 1: going on uh, you know, Shannon Bream and Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: and whatever and talking about about being fact checked and
Speaker 1: being labeled hate speech and all these things. You know.
Speaker 1: The media attention was one thing where it was clear
Speaker 1: that that people were paying attention to us and what
Speaker 1: was happening to us and how we were being characterized
Speaker 1: or mischaracterized. Um. But then there was also this stuff
Speaker 1: like uh, congressmen and women, the President of the United
Speaker 1: States retweeting our stuff, engaging with it, you know, from
Speaker 1: Ted Cruise to Donald Trump or whoever it is, Elon
Speaker 1: musk um with with people with massive audiences, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sharing our stuff. It was clear that we were starting
Speaker 1: to kind of break out beyond where we were. Where
Speaker 1: we started out as this kind of like niche Christian
Speaker 1: community site that was reaching you know, doing a lot
Speaker 1: of like church humor and jokes about worship pastor skinny
Speaker 1: jeans and stuff like that. Um. Going beyond that's actually
Speaker 1: reaching a broader community and the culture at large and
Speaker 1: being engaged in this much broader discussion. UM. I think
Speaker 1: I think some of those things were kind of obviously
Speaker 1: the telling factors that we were And I'm obviously you know,
Speaker 1: our our traffic was exploding and our audience was growing
Speaker 1: really quickly too, So it was bearing out in the
Speaker 1: metrics as well. What what's the best month you've ever
Speaker 1: had in the history of the Babylon b uh. Honestly, well,
Speaker 1: which tend which metric you look at? If you want
Speaker 1: to go strictly on revenue, March of March two because
Speaker 1: of the Twitter attention and banning or locking of your account,
Speaker 1: I probably should say that also then drove a lot
Speaker 1: of people probably to want to spend money with you, right,
Speaker 1: so they come on, they sign up or your platform
Speaker 1: because they want to support what you're doing and basically
Speaker 1: stick up a middle finger or thumb in the eye.
Speaker 1: However you want to convey that towards the big tech
Speaker 1: companies for what they're doing to you, right, Yes, we
Speaker 1: get we get a lot of support, and we ask
Speaker 1: for it. You know, it's a situation where it's a
Speaker 1: very it's a very real threat to the business these
Speaker 1: these big tech companies and uh and there you know
Speaker 1: their heavy handed censorship um and their uneven enforcement of
Speaker 1: their of their policies and there and their biased policies
Speaker 1: themselves that have their own ideology baked into it that
Speaker 1: you have to agree with their ideology in order to
Speaker 1: even be compliant with their policies. Um, you know, that's
Speaker 1: that that puts us in a position where when when
Speaker 1: something like this happens, you know, we have to appeal
Speaker 1: to our audience and say, hey, look we need your support. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we know we will have these spikes and growth, punctuated
Speaker 1: spikes and growth that that go along with some of
Speaker 1: these attacks on on the site. And it's a very
Speaker 1: fortunate thing that we get that we get a response.
Speaker 1: You know, we have an audience that really loves us,
Speaker 1: that really values the content that we're putting out there.
Speaker 1: They don't want to see us go away because Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter decide that we're too dangerous, were too hateful
Speaker 1: for you to see our content. Um. So we're really
Speaker 1: thankful to our audience. Our readers are subscribers or listeners
Speaker 1: who who have propped us up and have decided that
Speaker 1: they're going to come alongside us and make sure that
Speaker 1: we stick around no matter who tries to show us up.
Speaker 1: What's the most successful headline that you guys have ever had,
Speaker 1: do you know? Uh, most successful in terms of shares.
Speaker 1: There's a couple that come to mind. There's one about
Speaker 1: how motorcyclist identifies as a bicyclist instead of world record. Um.
Speaker 1: That one did like probably like six or seven million
Speaker 1: shares something like that. Um. There's been a few that
Speaker 1: just attracted a ton of media attention, like some silly ones,
Speaker 1: like it's not the best headline ever, but we did
Speaker 1: we were we were a joke about how had purchased
Speaker 1: an industrial sized washing machine to spin the news and
Speaker 1: before publishing it, and it's just a silly a joke.
Speaker 1: It's like ridiculous, it's not believable or anything. But it
Speaker 1: got fact checked and reading false by snops and so
Speaker 1: we end u getting all this media attention because because
Speaker 1: we're like fighting for our lives to stay on Facebook
Speaker 1: because snokes is reading our jokes fault. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's it depends on how you how you want to
Speaker 1: try to judge it in terms of like how monumental
Speaker 1: was it in our history? You know, there's a few
Speaker 1: that really stand out that weren't necessarily our funniest for
Speaker 1: most shared headlines. So okay, let's go into what happens
Speaker 1: with Twitter had you had the Babylon be account locked
Speaker 1: before what we're what's your deal? And by the way,
Speaker 1: people may be listening to this months from now, years
Speaker 1: from now, even we're talking in early April of two.
Speaker 1: Right now, the Babylon b account is locked because you
Speaker 1: won't take down a tweet, which I'll get to in
Speaker 1: a sect. But had your account been locked before this occurred?
Speaker 1: There was one time when our account got suspended, like
Speaker 1: entirely suspended. What was that suspended for? Well, a mistake,
Speaker 1: of course, right, It's always a mistake. Um. We were suspended,
Speaker 1: um and and we asked Twitter why um and because
Speaker 1: we didn't even get an answer. Just one day we
Speaker 1: woke up and the account was suspended um and their explanation.
Speaker 1: They actually did apologize and reinstate the account a couple
Speaker 1: of days later, after we got a ton of media
Speaker 1: attention going out there talking about how Twitter had just
Speaker 1: suspended us for no apparent reason. Um and it was
Speaker 1: like it was a mistake. They said there was some
Speaker 1: spam crackdown that they were doing, and our account got
Speaker 1: flagged as being like a bot or something like that
Speaker 1: and was taken down by in error. So but that
Speaker 1: was the only time that we ever really got fully suspended,
Speaker 1: and they apologized that it was an error and we
Speaker 1: got back on. But they only did that after we
Speaker 1: made a ton of noise in the media and we're
Speaker 1: going all over talking on on news shows and whoever
Speaker 1: would have us to talk about how Twitter had just
Speaker 1: suspended us out of nowhere and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they're sorry and they made a mistake and now out
Speaker 1: of your account right now, What has what occurred? What
Speaker 1: has happened, and what is the future as you know
Speaker 1: it right now likely to look like for people who
Speaker 1: don't know, the bablon b account was suspended and or
Speaker 1: locked however you want to classify it for tweeting out one.
Speaker 1: So there was a there was an article published in
Speaker 1: USA Today naming Rachel Levine a transgender Health Department official, UM,
Speaker 1: naming Rachel Levine one of their Women of the Year.
Speaker 1: They had nominated several women for Women of the Year,
Speaker 1: and Rachel Levine was named as one of them. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, we we did a parody version of
Speaker 1: that where we named Rachel Levine as the babble on b.
Speaker 1: The babble Wobe picked Rachel Levin as our pick for
Speaker 1: Man of the Year. So it was us like pushing
Speaker 1: back on this idea that Rachel Levine is really a
Speaker 1: woman and that runs a foul of Twitter tapeful conduct
Speaker 1: policy because it involves miss gendering, according to them. Now,
Speaker 1: we disagree that it involves miss gendering. I think it's
Speaker 1: mis gendering. You call Rachel Lavine a woman. Um, but
Speaker 1: they think it's mis gendering the other way. And so
Speaker 1: they have this policy, this hateful conduct policy that has
Speaker 1: their their progressive gender ideology baked into it. Uh, And
Speaker 1: they want us to delete the tweet and affirm that
Speaker 1: we did violate this policy and and that we did
Speaker 1: engage in hateful conduct and in lessen. Until we do that,
Speaker 1: we can't unlock the account. And to me, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, if you don't want this content on
Speaker 1: your platform, you can take it down. If you want
Speaker 1: to delete it, delete our tweet for us. You have
Speaker 1: that power, you have that right. Um, take it down
Speaker 1: and tell us that you think we engage in hateful conduct,
Speaker 1: but don't make us delete it and admit that we
Speaker 1: engage in hateful conduct when we don't think that we did.
Speaker 1: So there it's basically they're pretty in a situation where
Speaker 1: they want us to bend the knee, kiss the ring, whatever,
Speaker 1: and we're like, no, we're not we're not doing that.
Speaker 1: We disagree that this is hateful conduct in the first place.
Speaker 1: You know, we disagree with the ideology that you've baked
Speaker 1: into your terms of service. So you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of these situations where we're just at this stalemate. So
Speaker 1: how does this resolve itself? Then? Yeah, you're at you're
Speaker 1: at a Yeah, that's exactly right, You're at a standoff.
Speaker 1: So how does this resolve itself? In your opinion? And
Speaker 1: does Elon Musk having bought nine two of Twitter, does
Speaker 1: that have any impact in the way that they adjust
Speaker 1: their editorial standards? Like, what do you anticipate might happen
Speaker 1: right now going forward? I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting that there might be a possible solution to
Speaker 1: this that involves someone like Elon Musk getting involved. You know, Initially,
Speaker 1: my whole thinking was one day, Uh, Congress is going
Speaker 1: to have to deal with this problem. The courts are
Speaker 1: going to have to do with this problem. There's been
Speaker 1: so much talk about Section to thirty and the rights
Speaker 1: that these companies have versus the rights of the people
Speaker 1: to speak and and and be heard, And where do
Speaker 1: you where do you draw these lines and how do
Speaker 1: we work all this out. Well, something's got to be
Speaker 1: done here, because, as musknoted himself on Twitter before this
Speaker 1: was all announced, he was saying, you know, Twitter is
Speaker 1: like the de facto town square at this point. This
Speaker 1: is where the vast majority of public discourse happens. It's
Speaker 1: the vast majority of discourse between citizens, but also between
Speaker 1: government officials and private citizens. And so you know, when
Speaker 1: you have platforms like that cracking down hard on certain
Speaker 1: views and certain people and allowing all kinds of other
Speaker 1: misinformation and hate speech to be you know, proliferate and
Speaker 1: be pervasive on the platform that is that they approve of,
Speaker 1: you end up with a really unbalanced, uh situation. That's
Speaker 1: not good for discourse, and it's not good for democracy,
Speaker 1: it's not good for society. Must cares about that very deeply.
Speaker 1: I love that he cares about that deeply. You know,
Speaker 1: he really does want to preserve freedom and make sure
Speaker 1: that that Twitter remains a free platform for pre expression, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, they have a ringing tribute to in
Speaker 1: their terms of service. Their mission statement is that they're
Speaker 1: all about free expression and representing a diverse range of
Speaker 1: perspectives on their platform. Um, but you know, what they
Speaker 1: give with one hand, they take away with the other
Speaker 1: by having these policies that that have their ideology backed
Speaker 1: into it, and you have to conform with it or
Speaker 1: else you can't be on a platform. So I always
Speaker 1: expected that there would hopefully one day be some solution
Speaker 1: that either comes from the courts or from Congress to
Speaker 1: deal with this problem, or maybe even like at at
Speaker 1: the state level, some of these laws at the state
Speaker 1: level of being passed to prevent these companies from engaging
Speaker 1: in viewpoint discrimination. You know, maybe maybe the answer is
Speaker 1: we make uh we we amend the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: to say that political belief is a protected class and
Speaker 1: you can't discriminate on that basis, you know, because you
Speaker 1: can't discriminate based on race or gender or religion or whatever.
Speaker 1: Why not make political belief one of those things that's protected.
Speaker 1: Or maybe we just make it unlawful for these companies
Speaker 1: because they're so large. You know, if you have more
Speaker 1: than fifty million daily active users, you can't engage in
Speaker 1: viewpoint discrimination. You know. Maybe those are the answers. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but must keep getting involved. Is very interesting
Speaker 1: because his commitment is to free speech, and he seems
Speaker 1: to be wanting to get influential by getting on the board.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what will actually resulting down the road,
Speaker 1: or whether or not he'll be able to exert any
Speaker 1: influence over them. I know that they're going to be
Speaker 1: very resistant internally at that company. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: see it already. You've seen some of the reactions to
Speaker 1: his appointments to board. So I'm really fascinated. This is,
Speaker 1: you know, me putting on my lawyer hat and analyzing this.
Speaker 1: Have you thought about filing a lawsuit? One question? And
Speaker 1: second part of that question, you can clearly show damages
Speaker 1: because I know based on the the impact that that
Speaker 1: has had on out Kicks business. When suddenly you weren't
Speaker 1: able to share headlines and articles from the Babylon B,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that your website traffic goes down, which creates
Speaker 1: a substantial impact on your overall revenue. Now you mentioned
Speaker 1: people can respond to that by going to Babylon B
Speaker 1: and spending money that they might not have spent otherwise
Speaker 1: to support your fight. But over time, the impact of Twitter,
Speaker 1: I imagine on your traffic was substantial. Have you thought
Speaker 1: about a loss too, And what kind of damages from
Speaker 1: a traffic perspective which leads to dollars are you seeing
Speaker 1: in your business. I'd take it beyond traffic too. I
Speaker 1: mean when you talk about the damage of being removed
Speaker 1: from from public discourse, I mean just being sidelined from
Speaker 1: the conversation if you want, if you want your brand
Speaker 1: to be relevant, if you you know, like when we're
Speaker 1: out there, we're talking about you must you know, Elon
Speaker 1: must interacts with our content on a regular basis. There's
Speaker 1: lots of people with very large following to interact with
Speaker 1: our content, who shared, who talked about it. If we're
Speaker 1: sidelined and remove from that conversation, we become less and
Speaker 1: less relevant every day. Um, you almost become forgotten when
Speaker 1: you're not out there where the conversation is happening. So
Speaker 1: there's there's a cost that's not even like monetary that
Speaker 1: you can't quantify. It's very difficult to quantify um. But
Speaker 1: then yes, again, the traffic that you lose um over
Speaker 1: the course of time, all the media attention and and
Speaker 1: the people signing up and subscribing and getting really fired up.
Speaker 1: That last for a matter of days, and then it
Speaker 1: subsides and it goes away and life goes back to normal.
Speaker 1: People get mad about other things and get worked up
Speaker 1: about other things and stop thinking about you, and the
Speaker 1: traffic is still gone. The problem still remains. You're still
Speaker 1: off the platform. And so long term, you're right, it does.
Speaker 1: It does have an effect in terms of like an
Speaker 1: actual lawsuit, like what you would sue them for. That's
Speaker 1: very difficult. You know. There have been suits that there
Speaker 1: have been challenges that have been brought that try to
Speaker 1: argue that you know, these companies, uh, you know are
Speaker 1: for example, um, the modern public square, um, and that
Speaker 1: you have a right to be there whatever, and some
Speaker 1: of these illegal efforts that people have launched against them
Speaker 1: have failed spectacularly in the courts. UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's been some a lot of commentary on that. Justice
Speaker 1: Thomas on the Supreme Court weighed in recently UM to
Speaker 1: talk about how, UM, the section to thirty immunity that
Speaker 1: these companies have been have been given by the lower
Speaker 1: courts where they it's been interpreted so extravagantly to basically
Speaker 1: they can moderate however they want to, and whether the
Speaker 1: tension was really for them to be able to do that, Um,
Speaker 1: is in question, and maybe there is an answer to
Speaker 1: that by applying like common terrier doctrine. You know, where
Speaker 1: they're based. These companies, these they're trying to have their
Speaker 1: taking eat it too, These these big tech companies, they
Speaker 1: want to be they want to be able to um
Speaker 1: uh basically have complete immunity for what's on their platform
Speaker 1: by saying, we're just a conduit. We're just a conduit.
Speaker 1: We're not responsible for whatever said here. But then when
Speaker 1: there's a message that they don't like, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't want to be the speaker of that message.
Speaker 1: We want to we don't want your we don't want
Speaker 1: that to be our voice. Well, it's not your voice.
Speaker 1: You're just a conduit. It's not your speech. Are you
Speaker 1: the speaker or aren't you the speaker? You know, if
Speaker 1: you treat them like common terriers and apply that kind
Speaker 1: of regulatory uh, you know, restrictions on them that common
Speaker 1: carriers have, there's there's precedent for that happening without it
Speaker 1: being a First Amendment issue, where these companies don't have
Speaker 1: speech rights anymore. You know, they can still say whatever
Speaker 1: they want, there's just limits on how much they can
Speaker 1: restrict other people's right to say what they want because
Speaker 1: they're just conduits for other people's information and speech. So
Speaker 1: there's an interesting conversation to be had there. I think
Speaker 1: that before we could actually bring an action, the law
Speaker 1: would need to be changed to be more favorable to us,
Speaker 1: or you know, the courts are gonna have to weigh
Speaker 1: in on us and say, up to this point, it's
Speaker 1: been they've gotten it wrong, it's been interpreted incorrectly. Seth,
Speaker 1: what do you wish The last couple of questions for
Speaker 1: you here, what do you wish you had known about
Speaker 1: the media business that you know now that you didn't
Speaker 1: know when you started? Because this is wins and losses.
Speaker 1: We talk with a large audience out there about the
Speaker 1: wins and losses of everyday life. It can be in sports,
Speaker 1: it can be in politics, it can be in business.
Speaker 1: What do you wish you had known that you didn't
Speaker 1: know about the media business? What do you wish you
Speaker 1: maybe had changed? As everybody who runs a business learns
Speaker 1: and makes mistakes along the way, what would you say
Speaker 1: to people out there listening in that respect? Such a
Speaker 1: good question. Um, I haven't had time to give that
Speaker 1: a lot of thought, but I mean, just off the
Speaker 1: top of my head. Uh, you know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: going into all this, And maybe it's just the type
Speaker 1: of site that we're running, you know, like on the
Speaker 1: one hand, it's like we're making jokes, we're trying to
Speaker 1: make people laugh, you know, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: we're also trying to make them think. And I think
Speaker 1: it's I didn't know how rewarding it would be to
Speaker 1: be out there with a voice in the in the
Speaker 1: in the public, in the conversation, where you know, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with really important issues and there's really bad ideas
Speaker 1: out there and in some cases, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the when you have somebody that's when you have people
Speaker 1: who have abandoned reason altogether and they're irrational on purpose,
Speaker 1: Arguing with them is not very effective because you're using
Speaker 1: reason and they've abandoned reason. So the best thing that
Speaker 1: you can do is to mock and ridicule them, and
Speaker 1: that's what the Babylon b does. And I had I
Speaker 1: had no idea how rewarding, how mission based, it would
Speaker 1: be to go beyond just simply running a media company
Speaker 1: that's focused on like making money, to being running a
Speaker 1: median media company that's speaking truth to culture, ridiculing bad ideas,
Speaker 1: which I think is a moral good um, and and
Speaker 1: trying to preserve freedom and restore sanity in an age
Speaker 1: where both are under assault every day and like crazy
Speaker 1: ridiculou with ways and so just being on the front
Speaker 1: lines of that battle and fighting back against the censorship
Speaker 1: and the effort to you know, shove ideology and downward
Speaker 1: throats that that that we don't want um, and the
Speaker 1: effort to silence and suppress our voices. Being involved in
Speaker 1: that is extremely rewarding, far beyond you know, whatever whatever
Speaker 1: financial reward there is. And running a popular media company
Speaker 1: that's you know, it's got a lot of eyeballs and
Speaker 1: was generating a lot of traffic UM. So I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I didn't know what I was getting into
Speaker 1: with that. But with that also comes the weight of
Speaker 1: a lot of responsibility. You know, everything you say is scrutinized,
Speaker 1: everything you do is scrutinized. Um. But you know, we're
Speaker 1: very fortunate to have a ton of support, a lot
Speaker 1: of people in our corner, and I think we're fighting
Speaker 1: a fight that's worth fighting. So it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: just be about the business. For me, what I learned
Speaker 1: is it's this goes way beyond business. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things here that are really of value
Speaker 1: and that are rewarding and being involved. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: in these discussions, the right is used to being attacked
Speaker 1: and ridiculed and the left is not. That makes that
Speaker 1: a very fertile area to be able to puncture that
Speaker 1: that that sort of illusion. And what I have found
Speaker 1: is disagreement doesn't really bother people on the far left wing.
Speaker 1: Ridicule uh, and satire and humor really genuinely bother them
Speaker 1: in a way that disagreement does not. Uh why do
Speaker 1: you think? And and I'm I'm just curious big picture
Speaker 1: for you. You're around the same age as me. We
Speaker 1: grew up when David Letterman or Jay Leno or whoever,
Speaker 1: Conan O'Brien, they tended to take even handed shots. Whether
Speaker 1: it was Bill Clinton got made fun of like crazy, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, he obviously get left a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of material out there, but so did George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: And it felt fairly even handed. And now, basically in
Speaker 1: the wake of the Cold Air report becoming a default
Speaker 1: you know, uh, news news show that now is in
Speaker 1: humor and then you've got Saturday Night Live, they started
Speaker 1: to all pull their punches on the left wing, and
Speaker 1: certainly I think it had started to happen before Trump,
Speaker 1: but Trump put it on steroids. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that is? And and how much opening do they leave
Speaker 1: for you? Because there's almost nobody else out there throwing
Speaker 1: these kind of humor and satire punches. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of desire on the right, um, amongst conservatives
Speaker 1: oftentimes very very often times in like the Christian community
Speaker 1: that I've been a part of in my early life.
Speaker 1: In adult life, you know this this desire to be
Speaker 1: at peace and to plain ice and try to get
Speaker 1: alone and you know, reach across the aisle and find
Speaker 1: common ground and all of these things. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of desire to do that. Um, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of desire to avoid um the can pentiousness of of
Speaker 1: being really confrontational are engaging in those fights. And I
Speaker 1: think that you know, it's it's tricky too when you
Speaker 1: when you start talking about ridicule and mockery, those things
Speaker 1: sound very negative, They sound like like personal attacks, right,
Speaker 1: And what I think that the beatas very effectively and
Speaker 1: what I when I when I summarize our our mission
Speaker 1: statement if we have one. We don't technically have one.
Speaker 1: But when I summarize, what we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: we're trying to we're trying to make people laugh but
Speaker 1: also think. But in that process, we're trying to ridicule
Speaker 1: bad ideas. You know, ridicule bad ideas, And that's it's
Speaker 1: the ideas themselves that are the target's, the ideas that
Speaker 1: are harmful as, the ideas that you need to mock
Speaker 1: and tear down and make fun of before young people
Speaker 1: start to think they're good ideas and grow up thinking
Speaker 1: they're great ideas and put them into policy and into practice,
Speaker 1: and in society as a whole suffers for it. And
Speaker 1: so I think there's a there's a moral necessity to
Speaker 1: ridiculing and mocking um bad ideas. And and if you know,
Speaker 1: if people can understand that that it's actually a good thing,
Speaker 1: then maybe they'd be more emboldened to do it without
Speaker 1: feeling bad about it, like they're doing something wrong. You're
Speaker 1: not doing anything wrong by ridiculing and mocking bad ideas.
Speaker 1: You're helping people, um, and you're standing up for the
Speaker 1: truth UM, And you're cutting through all the noise and
Speaker 1: pushing back on the insanity. But like I said, that's
Speaker 1: one of the only ways you can even deal with
Speaker 1: insanity when people have abandoned rationality. It's not like you
Speaker 1: can just have a conversation with them and reason with
Speaker 1: them because they've abandoned reason. So ridiculing mockery are really
Speaker 1: your only choice, and they're the most effective in that
Speaker 1: in that context. So um, I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that there's a lot of fertile ground. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of opportunity for people to come in and make
Speaker 1: the jokes that you're not supposed to make and do
Speaker 1: these kinds of things, because look, the left has given
Speaker 1: this up. They were so good at comedy and they
Speaker 1: were so good at ridicule. Right now, comedians are being
Speaker 1: so careful. The comedians on the left. You watch these
Speaker 1: late night shows, they're going for applause, not amusements. They
Speaker 1: want the crowd to affirm them and clap for them
Speaker 1: rather than laugh. Like they're not even really concerned with
Speaker 1: hitting laughs. They're just preaching and in the in the
Speaker 1: choir is applauding them. And it's crazy to see that
Speaker 1: happening because comedians satirist humorous. Our job is the poke
Speaker 1: holes in the popular narrative, not promoted, not push it
Speaker 1: on everyone. And when comedians have started to go this
Speaker 1: direction of trying to promote it so that you know,
Speaker 1: they're getting virtue points, whether up there preaching instead of
Speaker 1: actually doing comedy and making people laugh. You know, comedy
Speaker 1: by its nature's offensive. It's not a safe space being
Speaker 1: at a comedy show. You're gonna get made fun of.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be things that are uncomfortable and they make
Speaker 1: you squirm, and that's good. It's confronting us with uncomfortable truths,
Speaker 1: and that's how you grow, That's how you become more resilient.
Speaker 1: And so I think that anybody who goes in there
Speaker 1: and who's willing to make the jokes that you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to make anymore and push back on that stuff,
Speaker 1: they're going to try to silence them. But look what
Speaker 1: happened with Dave Chappelle, Look what's happening with Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: These guys aren't losing. You know, we're not losing right now.
Speaker 1: I think all of us are winning. The effort to
Speaker 1: silence us is only amplifying our voices. Last question for you,
Speaker 1: have there been comedians who are known are thought to
Speaker 1: be a left wing that have interacted with the Babylon
Speaker 1: b have come along and said, you know what, you
Speaker 1: guys are pretty funny that have surprised you. It kind
Speaker 1: of builds out of what you were just saying. Comedy
Speaker 1: that is designed to uh, to uplift people in positions
Speaker 1: of power is propaganda. It's not actually comedy. Um, have
Speaker 1: you seen and received positive feedback from people that might
Speaker 1: have been perceived to be of a different political bent,
Speaker 1: just because the great thing about comedy is it should
Speaker 1: work no matter what your political beliefs are. If you
Speaker 1: have to sit around and think, hey, is this funny
Speaker 1: for a women's studies professor at Amherst, Well, that's not
Speaker 1: exactly the you know, the the faculty lounge there. That's
Speaker 1: the exact absence of comedy. Comedy is reacting immediately and
Speaker 1: instantaneously smiling before you have time to think about the underlying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, root causes of the humor itself. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's a good point. And I kind of reject this
Speaker 1: idea that there's like there's we should think in terms
Speaker 1: of like right wing comedians and left wing comedians if
Speaker 1: you're a right wing if you're a strictly right wing comedian,
Speaker 1: is like pushing a narrative yourself. You know that, then
Speaker 1: you're you're not doing it right either. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that there should be you know you, you should be
Speaker 1: joking about whatever deserves the mockery, joking about whatever deserves
Speaker 1: to be joked about, and that then that involves examining
Speaker 1: your own side, your own motives and inclinations, your own practices,
Speaker 1: your own hypocrisy. We try to do that ourselves quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Um. But in terms of like somebody from
Speaker 1: the left like coming alongside us and saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate I can't think of a single example
Speaker 1: of that happening, Like somebody like who comes who had
Speaker 1: just has a totally different world view than us. There
Speaker 1: may be a couple, but nothing that really jumps to
Speaker 1: mind I can think of, Like some comedians like Bill Maher,
Speaker 1: for example, who I disagree with on many, many, many things,
Speaker 1: but who thinks who thinks cancel culture is a problematic.
Speaker 1: He thinks the woke stuff has gone crazy and over
Speaker 1: the top and is saying, um, he thinks that speech
Speaker 1: suppression is bad and that you shouldn't be trying to
Speaker 1: silence people who disagree with you. Um, you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's more of like an old school liberal that way,
Speaker 1: and has very has been very vocal about those things.
Speaker 1: And I respect that that even though I disagree with
Speaker 1: him on a lot of things, he's he gets that
Speaker 1: and and understands that. You know, comedy is about, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes making making you a little bit uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: making you squirm a little bit. It's not just about
Speaker 1: you know, reaffirming you and and not stepping on anybody's toes. Um,
Speaker 1: and anybody who does should be silence outstanding stuff. He
Speaker 1: is Seth Dylan with the Babylon Be. Encourage you to
Speaker 1: follow Seth online while you still can. Hopefully the Babylon
Speaker 1: Be will be back on Twitter in the meantime. UH
Speaker 1: and people can obviously go to your website and see
Speaker 1: all the content that you guys are putting up on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis. I know you've been crazy busy.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the time. What else do you want people
Speaker 1: to know that I didn't give you an opportunity to
Speaker 1: tell them to close out here? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean when people people ask for how they can support us,
Speaker 1: and I tell them there's a couple of ways, And
Speaker 1: the first one is not like by setting us money.
Speaker 1: The first one is the a bold defender of the truth.
Speaker 1: When when, when Twitter, when Facebook, when YouTube, when, whoever
Speaker 1: it is tries to get you to say that two
Speaker 1: and two make five, tell them, no, two and two
Speaker 1: make four. And I'm not budging on that. Insist on
Speaker 1: recognizing reality for what it is. Speak the truth boldly,
Speaker 1: even it means, even if it means you pay a
Speaker 1: penalty for it. You know, like I've said before, like
Speaker 1: from the stage at these events, I'm talking about this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm like, before this ever happened, by the way, before
Speaker 1: we ever got banned on Twitter. I'm like, the greatest
Speaker 1: achievement on Twitter is not going viral or getting verified,
Speaker 1: it's getting banned for saying something true. You know, paying
Speaker 1: paying a price for the truth is an achievement. There
Speaker 1: are people who have been willing to write down their
Speaker 1: lives for for freedom and for the truth, and we're
Speaker 1: not willing to give up our Twitter accounts. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big deal with's at stake right now,
Speaker 1: and so the best way to support us is for
Speaker 1: us to rally together. We should all be telling the
Speaker 1: truth boldly and not backing down on that, and eventually
Speaker 1: things will swing back in our direction. They're going to
Speaker 1: have to make changes. They can't ban millions of us,
Speaker 1: tens of millions of us, or they will ban themselves
Speaker 1: into a relevance to make them do that. But beyond that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go to our website subscribe. That helps too, he set Dylan.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. This has been Wins and Losses. Subscribed
Speaker 1: to this as well forty five long form interviews. I
Speaker 1: think you will love them. If this is your first
Speaker 1: thanks for checking them out. Go check out more in
Speaker 1: the past, and we'll be back sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: This has been Wins and Losses.