After The Fracture： Only One Show Remains
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about how the media industry is dying, why Marco Rubio is not a viable presidential candidate, why the Democratic Party is floundering, and why there's only one shared discourse we have left.
Transcript
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Hello, Malcolm. I'm very excited to be with you today because we are going to talk about
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the last show left. We're going to talk about why Marco Rubio is not a viable presidential
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candidate as a Republican, despite his alleged merit. We're going to talk about why the Democratic
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Party is floundering. We're going to talk about why TV culture is dying and why really there's
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only one shared discourse we have left. So I will summarize the point because Simone's going
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off on tangents here. Essentially what we're going to be talking about is how, as the media
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industry died out and as the idea of cultural touchstone shows died out, you know, like your
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Game of Thrones or your like these just, we do not see these anymore. There isn't an equivalent running
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right now that everyone is broadly aware of, except for maybe South Park, right? But even the fact that
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South Park is one of these shows or the last one left sort of reinforces this point, which is what
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has come as sort of the pan-cultural zeitgeist to replace all of that. And that is the drama around
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U.S. politics and the presidential administration. Well, and world events, tech, health, it's basically
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that. It's world news, which includes and is very heavy on U.S. politics because that affects the world,
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plus health and tech. So basically anything that profoundly affects everyone, that's all that's left.
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South Park is arguably only showing up and making headlines because its episodes are 100% on that.
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It's on how AI is affecting us. It's on shifts in health like COVID and it's on U.S. politics and
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world politics in general. But we've really entered this age of cultural balkanization. There's only a few
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common topics left like those that we can talk about. And I really want to also dive deeper into just
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how profound this balkanization is because I think it's one of those boiling frog metaphor situations
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where people don't realize just how in a bubble they are already in. Like they assume that most people
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kind of do the same things that they do and live a life kind of similar to theirs and are more relatable
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because they don't really leave that bubble. And so the impact there is that they also don't realize
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that if they want to be broadly relatable, they're going to need to stick to a specific narrative.
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But there's another big factor here, which is worth talking about, is as the last show on earth,
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like as the Trump administration became sort of the last show on earth, we have also seen the global eye
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in the same way that historically, you know, in a lot of places you were on earth,
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you would have a show that was popular in America, but it was also popular in all the other countries,
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and it would be a cross-cultural touchpoint. You see a lot of people interested in American
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politics that were not before as sort of a show, right? You basically, you have around, like,
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consider our audience, like 50% is non-U.S. living.
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Well, and actually, so there's a great, like, this is just randomly in one of Asmund Gold's
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episode where he talks about why he covers news events, because he's been doing a lot of stuff
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on, like, you know, like what on earth is going on in Russia? What's going on in Spain? What's
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going on in Indonesia? And he pulled up, I just shared you a clip of this, in one of his episodes,
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he's like, look, like, here are my stats. More than half of his viewers are from outside the U.S.
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And research does highlight that large-scale international engagement with U.S. political
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content has increased, particularly around, like, the major social media platforms like X and on
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Instagram and Facebook, because you can't really talk about anything else. Like, there's nothing
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else that you can get a platform around. What's really interesting about this is sort of our role
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in this, because one of the things that I always comment on is it is so weird for people who don't
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know, we're often seen as, like, the leaders of the United States' pronatalist movement, and at least
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the figureheads that the media always talks to. And so, you know, I'm really talking with reporters,
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talking with Politico yesterday, right? You know, and we've got Telemundo coming over soon. We've got a
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French station for a 30-minute episode. We've got a German team for, like, a 25-minute piece. We've
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got a, you know, we've had major pieces in Japan. HBO's here next week. Oh, HBO's here next week.
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Yeah. So we do the rounds in terms of international media. And many people ask, like, why isn't there a
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pronatalist movement in one of the countries that needed it more than the United States, right? Like,
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the United States is arguably one of the most resistant countries to fertility collapse
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when its wealth is taken into account. And so, you know, why didn't the pronatalist movement start
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in Japan? Why didn't it start in Korea? Why didn't it start in Italy? Why didn't it start in Germany,
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right? And why didn't it start in China, right? Like, all the other countries are freaking out
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about this. Like, why is grassroots pronatalism a uniquely American thing? Why is it when Germany
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or Italy, where their fertility numbers are much worse than ours, when they are covering falling
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fertility rates, they come and talk to me? Why is it Telemundo is talking to us and not a Latin
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American pronatalist organization? When, you know, Mexico fell below the United States TFR last year,
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or, and, and, you know, now it might be all of Latin America might be collectively below the U.S.'s
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Well, we get this with, like, it's not just in Latin America. There was recently a German journalist who
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reached out to us and was like, I want to cover demographic collapse in Germany. Can you introduce
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me to the German pronatalist leaders? We're like, there aren't any that we know of. And,
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and then he's like, well, okay, just any, any pronatalist in Germany. And we're like, well,
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we know of one, but she's leaving the country and she's, she's an expat anyway. She's not German.
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And he's like, oh, I'll talk to her. Like, no, there's just, yeah, it's really interesting.
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No, no, but the point being is we sort of joined as members of the last show on earth,
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right? Like we are, we are side characters, we are background characters, but we're, we're there.
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We're playing into the, the, the narrative of that large sprawling cannon that is forming.
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It's fascinating because it is a complete transition of what it means to be a movie star
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in this generation and what it means to be a politician.
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Well, yeah. And that's the thing is because this has replaced TV and movie, movies and sports and
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games as the one thing, the one discourse we can all share. It has also sort of gone the way of
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professional wrestling where now these used to be so like politics, health, and technology. Okay.
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These used to be very wonky, nerdy topics, you know, newspapers and outlets and, and, and commentators
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and armchair commentators as well, who covered them were very nuanced. We're very nerdy. We're very
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niche. They, they did not have a lot of charisma or personality. There wasn't a lot of show to it.
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Right. But now that it is the source of main entertainment and public discourse, you cannot
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really make it in this space without being an over the top outlandish character. And that's why I
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mentioned Marco Rubio and you point to him as an example is that he's one of those original, like
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meritocratic, like traditional politicians who there's more nuance there. He's trying,
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like, he's playing the game, like politicians used to play the game where, but now the game is
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the way Trump plays the game. It's, it's, it's WWE Trump, not political wonky Marco Rubio.
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I actually argue, and we see this not just on our side, but look at like all of the like tweeting
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and trolling that they're doing, like Gavin Newsom is trying to do, which everybody about the American
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psycho politician figured out trolling where we go over what happened there. But I, I think that you,
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you might be sort of picturing it wrong. We've actually had a flip. So if you go back to the
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old days, let's say like the 1950s. Okay. Everything was sort of centralized. So everybody tried to be
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respectable. You know, your, your politicians tried to be like broadly inoffensive and respectable
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and your media broadcasters tried to be broadly inoffensive and respectable. And then you move into
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the, the era of the nineties and early two thousands, right? This is your, you know, Clinton and
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Obama Bush era. Right. So in this area, politicians stayed broadly respectable, right? Like boring and
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not really the main show. Right. But the media had transitioned. You look at the, the shows and the
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pundits that people were watching most and especially the younger people, because you know, you're going
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through a transition and many of them were comedians. Many of them tried to, you know, spice things up.
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Many of them tried to be, be sort of like out there. Right. And, and, and capture public attention.
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And you saw this with a lot of celebrities, like doing stunts to capture public attention and stuff
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like that. Right. Today that is flipped again, where the, the, the politicians have to take on
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the WWE style of what the media used to be doing. Right. The media that people are watching, ironically,
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in terms of like information media, like where people get their news, I would say is ironically more
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nuanced and more sort of level-headed and intellectual than media was in the eighties and
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nineties. Yeah. Actually, what's really interesting is at least in the United States, media was sort of
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always known to be polarized. Like if you were a Republican, you would tune into Fox news. If you
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were a Democrat, you would tune into, I don't know, like ABC or CNN or whatever. Right. And you would,
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you would sort of know and play your party. I was just looking at some, some Pew research on
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the, the way that people are consuming news media now. And 37% of people under 35, I think a smaller
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proportion, but quite big of the rest of Americans get most of their news from influencers. Now, most
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news influencers on social media, primarily on X, Facebook and Instagram are, well, it's almost like
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half and half. It's like 45% have no political affiliation at all. Of those that do have political
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affiliation, it leans slightly to the right. So there are more, when they do express their affiliation,
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they're more likely to express a conservative affiliation than a liberal affiliation. I can send
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the graphs to you after this. What I want to know is who, what media influencer that's a big name
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doesn't have a political team. I think that Asmogold is probably seen as one of those. It
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doesn't have. Okay. Well then it's inaccurate. Asmogold is obviously on the right. Right. Yes. I,
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I hear you, but I mean, that's, I don't think that's how Pew's doing it. They didn't name names
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from what I skimmed. They just did it wrong. Almost everyone who is in this space is, is partisan.
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And, but I don't hear they're nuanced partisan if they do well. What? Asmogold loves Bernie Sanders,
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doesn't he? He did ages ago. Like, but I'm just saying like, he's nuanced. He's not like,
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not at all, Simone. Most, but freaking most of the white house main staffers now liked Bernie Sanders
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back when Asmogold did. That's true. Like, I don't know what you're like. Okay. So if, if, if you look
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okay at our show, right, like fairly nuanced intellectual coverage with a stated partisan bias, but you can
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look at the, the big figures like Asmogold or something like that, right? Like he is spicy,
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but he is going deep and intellectual. Kersha, the, the, the canceled Foxy girl, right? Like
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clearly intellectual in the way that she covers things. You can look at Sargon of Akkad, like
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clearly intellectual in the way he covers, covers things. Carl, Carl Benjamin. You can look at
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on the, on the left, right? Destiny. Destiny might be a partisan, but he is way more in-depth and
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intellectual than any of the mainstream hosts that were on television.
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I mean, if you look at any mainstream news channel, at least in terms of us outlets, it is,
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there's, there's no nuance. I mean, another really important trend that I think is important to
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highlight here too, is that news used to be a highly local thing. And, and now it is not. You really,
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all you have left, even when it comes to like journalism that is supposed to inform people of local
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events. No, it is all world news. It's not just that like people from Romania are tuning into Asmongold's
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channel and listening to, to our podcast. It is that the number of local journalists in the United
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States has dropped about 75% since 2002. And already then they were like almost none over 3,300 newspapers.
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So more than one third have closed since 2005. So basically more than half of us counties have little
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or no local news coverage. All you have really is like the next door app, which is this sort of
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neighborhood based app where you have to like, you have to upload an electricity bill to prove that
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you're a resident. And then people just kind of use that to chat about local things. But yeah, so
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really again, like even when it comes to the things that journalism still used to do, like they weren't
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known for deep nuanced wonky takes about world news. They were more about like, here's what you need to
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know locally. Here's the stuff happening on the world stage that is relevant to you as a citizen.
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So you can vote responsibly. That was kind of this noble concept of journalism and that all fell
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apart. And now it is WWE journalism and now it's WWE politicians. But would you like to, I found some
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really interesting information on just how balconized culture is now.
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I want to do a fun tangent here. One of the fun things that we learned a while ago, and I should go back
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and see if this is still true. If you're looking on some site of like, Romanian podcast rankings,
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and we were like the seventh highest ranked podcast in Romania.
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Yeah, I think that's changed since, but I was shocked to see.
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Yeah, I'm sure it's changed since then. But I was shocked to see that as well. I was like, what the
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is wrong with you, you Romanian bastards? What are you watching me for?
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Yeah, but again, there's sort of one, if you want to engage in online discourse in a meaningful way,
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and not just be in your very, very tiny bubble. You need to be talking about these things. And we
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talk about, we do touch on the main things, you know, world relevant politics, which often is US
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politics, tech and health, like we talk about all those things a lot. So it makes sense. But to give
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you a picture of, oh, now I'm going to use America as the primary example here, because there's really
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good data there. It has become so fractured over time. So for an example, we used to, like you said,
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at the very beginning of this, watch, at least a lot of us watch the same TV shows. So household
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viewership for TV shows, it peaked in the 1950s, in 60s, with shows like I Love Lucy. Like, I think
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there used to be some stat of like, at any given time in the world, like, you know, I Love Lucy's
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playing on this many TVs. And it was just humbling and terrifying at the same time. Also, though,
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like another top show was called Texaco Star Theater, which I've never heard of before. So
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whatever. But 50 to 60% of American households watch those shows. So you had more than a coins
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flip odds chance of being able to make an inside joke about one of those shows. And the random
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that many people watch the same shows. Yeah. 50%. But it's the same as Trump today. If I make a
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comment about the Trump White House or some 100%, everyone's going to know 50, over 50% of people
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will know. Way more than like, when I was growing up, there was like, I didn't know anything except
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for like, you know, about the Clintons, except for like the scandal, right? Like, I didn't know that
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much about the Bushes. I didn't know, except for like word flubbing and stuff like this. You're
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getting a constant daily, like this is what's happening at the White House right now. Even if
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you don't want to know, you know, and that's the crazy thing. People take pride in not knowing
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because they see it as like such a difficult thing to somehow not know what's going on at the
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White House. It's true. But yeah, it's not just TV, though. It's also books. I mean, as you did a
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whole episode on like, no one reads anymore. But in the early 1980s, blockbuster bestsellers like the
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Bonfire of the Vanities and the Da Vinci Code, they could reach up to 10% or more of US adults,
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which is pretty impressive, given that US adults don't have to read. And it's not like that common
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of a pastime, I guess. So 10% is pretty impressive. Now, today's bestsellers, even the most popular
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fiction, reach just one to 2% of Americans. And fewer Americans are even reading a book. So only 48.5%
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of US adults read any book, any book for pleasure as of 2022. And that's down from 52% in 2017.
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And yet, despite this, right? In like around these days, so like for the past five years or so,
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about 4 million new book titles are published each year. And in 2003, about 300,000 new titles were
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published. So 3,000 new titles to now 4 million. So there's like a billion more books. And like for
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any weird niche thing you're into, you can read your book. And yet, you know, it's very...
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Yeah. It's like video games, right? People must be playing the same video games. And I guess this
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is me like a non-video game person. In the 80s and 90s, the blockbuster video games like Super Mario
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Bros. and Tetris were played by 30% to 50% of all gamers. So it's very similar to like TV shows in
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the 50s and 60s, right? They all had this like shared experience. And you even see this, like
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chiptune, music was inspired by it. We all bond over it as like millennials. Like all these references,
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you know, like flight. Like we know what that means as millennials, at least, right? I think
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even a lot of like younger people know what that means. But today, even the mega bestsellers like
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Minecraft, with which our son is obsessed. Yeah. Or Grand Theft Auto have only reached about 5% to
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10% of all gamers over their lifespans. Wow. At any given moment, the current bestseller only engages
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one to 2% of active gamers, of active gamers, not even like including nobodies like me who have
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never played a game in their life, except from Roller Coaster Tycoon and like Riven, right? So
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that's wild. And so I was like, okay, well then maybe, maybe it's, it's sports, sports. People still
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watch sports, but no, actually. So average regular season NFL viewership is down from its peaks in the
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80s and 2000s. NBA finals in 2005 averaged only 10.2 million viewers. That's down 46% from the 2005
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peak. So that is just like, people aren't watching the same sports anymore. What's actually happening
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though, is while major sports in the USA, like the NFL, NBA, MLB, they're shrinking. Global sports,
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like women's leagues, international sports, international soccer are seeing growth. So people are just going
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into the little niches. And then I think like anecdotally, maybe people can't relate to this
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as much because they're probably only going to parties with people who are like super within
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their bubbles and niches. But you and I, when we host parties, we're bringing together politicians
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and journalists and business leaders and investors and influencers and writers and authors. And I think
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like 20% of the conversations are like either pretending that we understand a reference someone
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is making or asking them to explain a reference. Yes. It's so frustrating. It's just like, oh,
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well, like so-and-so said or this thing. And like, oh, you know, or Elon reference, everybody knows.
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If you make a reference about the weird pronatalist, most people know, like, which is weird,
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right? Like, yeah, it's insane. It's insane. And I just, I still can't get over, like-
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I want to focus on, say what you're going to say and then I'll get to-
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Well, I mean, so that like, even in 1964, 36.3% of Americans watched the TV show Bonanza.
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And then, then in the nineties, when you and I were kids, at least 20% of Americans watched
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Seinfeld, I didn't. But now, do you even know what 2024's top American TV show was?
00:19:49.220
No, no. It was a show called Tracker. 17.4 American, 17.4% of American households watched it.
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It's, it's about a professional reward seeker who finds missing persons for prize money,
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all while struggling with complex issues from his fractured family and past traumas.
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Never heard of it. I've never freaking heard of that.
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But I want to point out here, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, it can't really be
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that bad that nobody has cultural touchstones anymore outside of what's in the public media
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narrative. If you, like us, hadn't even heard of the top show right now, you're sort of proving
00:20:34.200
But I think, you know, another element of this that I think is under discussed, which I'd love
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to hear your thoughts on is, is we're, we're seeing much more of a mixing of social classes
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and cultural groups. So like when you were growing up and we even like your mom harangued
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us about this before she passed about like how we had to raise our kids. She was like,
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you have to go to tennis and you have to go to sailing because you need to have this like
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shared lingo with your social class so that you can fit in. And now there's just so much
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more mixing like immigration since 1965 and changes in laws and social attitudes have
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meant that like social classes and ethnic groups and cultures are now way more mixed.
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So like nearly 39% of Americans married since 2010 are in religiously mixed marriage. So
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that's, that's double the 19% rate before 1960. And in 1980, for example, about 86% of undergraduates
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were white. So like going to university kind of was like a rich white person thing where
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you would all get your like cohesive culture together, but that figure dropped to 40% with
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non-white students making up from 80%. Yeah. So like 86% in 1980. And then in 1960, nearly
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90% of American workers were white. And then by 2019, the share of non-white Latino were both
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workers doubled to about 40%. So like just there used to be like a lot of just cultural isolation
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and like shared understanding of things. And now we're just, we're mixed. And so that's
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one thing. And then of course we've also like church attendance is down, right? I mean, it's
00:22:09.380
dropped from about 50% in the forties to sixties in the USA to 30% today.
00:22:14.100
Well, yeah, you can't reference. I remember growing up, my parents, I was raised in a secular
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family, but I was told I needed to memorize the Bible because they shared cultural touch points
00:22:26.000
When also play tennis and go sailing. And what were the other things you were supposed to do?
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Tennis, sailing, you think golf? No, they said golf is only trashy or autistic kids learn golf. They
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were like only like really nerdy, messed up kids learn golf, even rich kids. They're like, because
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it's not a kid's thing. They're like, you learn that when you're an adult. Don't do that.
00:22:42.880
That's true. Okay. Yeah. Learn it when you're old. Yeah.
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No, but it's true though. Like all the kids I know who play golf as like young people
00:22:49.480
are like real squares, like, you know, in a, you know, in a way that, that see our pod person
00:22:55.960
episode in that, in that sort of a way, but gosh, I actually just thinking about me being like a
00:23:00.580
sailing and tennis kid, varsity tennis, by the way. And yeah, you were actually good at it. I just
00:23:05.340
learned that last week that blew my mind. You were like, wait, you were good. I didn't like it,
00:23:10.300
but I was good at it. I love in the discord. Uh, somebody was saying at one point that Malcolm
00:23:15.300
has this identity crisis where he keeps trying to pretend to be other things like Americana or
00:23:21.520
redneck or something like that. When in actuality, he's just like the most English nobility, uh,
00:23:29.320
like Edwardian Victorian period person they've ever seen in terms of values. And I can sort of see it
00:23:35.580
like that. I'm intellectually that English anthropologists, um, uh, Victorian, like, like
00:23:44.620
whatever you call it, like genteel scientists trying desperately to fit in with the natives
00:23:49.240
and pretend that he is something other than what he is. But anyway, the point being is I agree with
00:23:56.220
you. I think we are seeing a degradation of classes with sort of new network classes emerging.
00:24:01.680
Class separation. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing either. I mean, like social media has
00:24:06.300
leveled the playing field to a great extent. But I disagree with part of your thesis here. Okay.
00:24:11.180
I think what we're seeing is a new sort of class system emerged. It's much more of a network state.
00:24:17.480
Technofedalism. No, 100%. Technofedalism. Like if you look at our class, our community is
00:24:22.240
the rationalist slash effective altruist community. Even if we're in the right wing faction of it,
00:24:28.140
like we would have many of the same cultural touchstones as anyone else in that community.
00:24:33.540
They're watching. So we can make those. Yeah. We can talk about Rocco's Basilisk. We can talk
00:24:37.320
about all these things. We know Rocco, by the way, the guy who created it. We could have him on the
00:24:42.800
show sometime, I guess. He has some really fun, because he's come up with so many things aside
00:24:48.120
from the Basilisk. Yeah. Like, well, his talk on Hereticon was about building communities in like
00:24:53.700
icebergs or something, right? That was really interesting. You thought you could build cities,
00:24:56.840
floating cities out of icebergs would be cheaper than making it on a ship. Yeah. You didn't even make
00:25:01.260
the iceberg. Like you didn't even have to, yeah, it was super cool. Yeah. Yeah. That was the cheapest
00:25:06.640
way to get a big floating mass on the ocean. And the mass checks out. It's cool. I like it. But
00:25:11.900
anyway, anyway, so we're talking about Rocco. Oh yes. But you know, you have this shared cultural
00:25:18.860
idea. And there's many other shared communities out there where they sort of all, like we're also
00:25:25.400
adjacent to like the manosphere community. Like I know anything that's going on in the manosphere
00:25:29.680
community, largely anything they would know. Yeah. We can make a lot of references to them. Yeah.
00:25:33.780
Like the based gaming community we're adjacent to. But there's other communities out there that like,
00:25:38.740
if you're talking about like the progressive gamer community, like that's a whole other thing that
00:25:43.100
like doesn't include. Oh, can I give you a picture of this? Because I just think this is so fun.
00:25:46.940
Okay, sure. Let's do some niche literacy tests on you. No, no, no. Before we do niche literacy tests,
00:25:53.480
I wanted to go into another point, which I think is really important, is what you need to win
00:25:59.640
within this existing ecosystem is very different than what you needed before. And this is what we
00:26:04.480
sort of started with, but I want to highlight it. Yes. I was talking with a reporter at Politico
00:26:08.980
about the various potential candidates for president in the next cycle. You know, if it wasn't going to
00:26:14.800
be JD Vance, you know, who are the real contenders on the right? And she suggested RFK. And I was like,
00:26:19.500
RFK is an awesome candidate. Yeah. I loved his hilarious bear story. If you really guys,
00:26:25.820
if you haven't seen the story, he saw a roadkill bear and decided he was going to eat it, which first
00:26:31.120
of all, I'm like, you just know you have to watch the recording of him. It's yeah, just watch it puts
00:26:36.460
it in a bike lane in New York. And and the news started covering it saying that somebody had crashed
00:26:41.400
into a bear and hilarious. Anyway, I love it. I was like, what a base guy. And he's clearly not afraid to
00:26:47.780
challenge the system. And like, I don't think he's right about everything. I think he might his
00:26:51.700
skepticism might be a little too tuned up. But I think that he is willing to challenge things that
00:26:56.740
a lot of people haven't been willing to challenge for a long time. And that makes me like him as a
00:27:01.020
person. He's got the he's got the charisma for television, right? JD Vance definitely does.
00:27:06.500
You know, he's got that great origin story. He's willing to, you know, go to Europe and then meet
00:27:11.140
with the AFD, you know, like the band of political party instead of the mainstream party, then give
00:27:15.540
some big speech about how they're all a bunch of fascists and we shouldn't even be allies with
00:27:19.460
Europe anymore. And everybody like, you know, it's like he's doing something fun, you know,
00:27:23.540
and then you get there like who else? I think Joe Rogan would be a great presidential candidate.
00:27:27.480
Yeah, but get to your point, right? So obviously characters are viable.
00:27:30.620
Right. But I'm showing you what is viable. What isn't viable is Rubio. She's like, what about
00:27:34.860
Rubio? And I'm like, Rubio would make a great democratic politician because they haven't figured
00:27:38.460
out how to be interesting yet. No, he wouldn't because yeah, what they need is interesting politicians.
00:27:43.280
This is why Gavin Newsom, if he just leans into his villain era, he's good. He's golden.
00:27:48.760
There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me,
00:27:56.600
only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand
00:28:03.700
and feel flesh gripping yours. And maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable.
00:28:12.760
AOC, she's, she's, she's close. She's adjacent. You know, she's, she's characterable, right?
00:28:20.720
You know, it just like, you need strong characters.
00:28:27.180
Well, I was watching a really interesting take recently when they were talking about,
00:28:31.280
the Democrats recently hit their highest level of unfavorability, I think, like almost ever,
00:28:36.420
at least in a very long time. And the party is just sort of unwilling to see how bad they are.
00:28:42.440
And a lot of people think, oh, this means we need to go extreme or we need to go moderate.
00:28:47.080
And what the guy was pointing out is, is actually their unfavorability numbers now are about what
00:28:50.900
the Republicans were when Trump came into power in the first place. But dibs have gone through this
00:28:55.300
before. And he was talking about when Clinton came into power, the, the, you know, Bill Clinton,
00:29:00.040
and he pointed out that when you have these changes in who's running and who's winning,
00:29:05.460
it is because the new person doesn't come out there and just take a more moderate or more extreme
00:29:11.880
position. Typically what they do is, and Bill Clinton did this and Trump did this, is they'll
00:29:17.900
take a number of positions that are more extreme and they'll take a number of positions that are
00:29:22.660
moderate or literally on the opposite side. So you'll look at somebody like Trump and Trump comes out
00:29:28.300
there and, you know, everyone back then on the right was like, well, we can't be as far on
00:29:32.300
immigration as we have been historically. Trump goes way to the right of them on immigration and
00:29:36.640
then goes way to the left of them on gay rights and then goes way to the left of them on social
00:29:42.160
security and, and Medicaid. And then, you know, goes, takes this new sort of nationalist rightist
00:29:48.040
stance. It's not like a war hawk rightist stance. And Bill Clinton was doing the same thing when he
00:29:51.660
came into power, right? Like he was, he was way to the right or even right leaning on a lot of issues
00:29:56.160
and then way to the left on other issues. And freaked out Dems. Dems were terrified by Clinton
00:30:01.100
in the early days. And then the party sort of re coalesced around him as is happening with Trump
00:30:05.440
right now, but they need somebody who's going to come out there and do those things while having
00:30:09.400
a personality, which is why Fetterman would be so strong for it. If the democratic machine wouldn't
00:30:14.600
do everything in their power to prevent him from coming in. Um, okay. You can run.
00:30:18.700
Yeah. So I really, yeah. Just so for, for like literacy, cause I think people again,
00:30:22.080
don't realize how in a bubble they are. Like people get the impression on X that like everyone
00:30:27.160
is talking about the stuff we're talking about on X yet only one in five Americans approximately
00:30:32.280
are active on the platform. And then depending on your algorithm, you're in some little bubble
00:30:37.220
there anyway. And like elsewhere on social media, there are people who think that like people such
00:30:43.520
as Becca Bloom are household names. Do you know who Becca Bloom is? Never heard of Becca. Of course you
00:30:47.960
don't. And that's the thing is like, they don't realize this. And also beyond that as
00:30:52.940
of 2025. So as of this year, 73% of Americans don't use social media at all. So they're just
00:30:57.860
all about their local communities or their family. And that's why you, you, you, you have
00:31:02.200
to understand this, but I can show like top, top accounts on Patreon as an example of just
00:31:07.640
all these communities that like, these are people who are paying on a monthly basis to get
00:31:13.300
access to a community. It's really important to them. And you've probably never heard of it.
00:31:16.720
Like random things you don't expect to find on Patreon that are really doing well, software
00:31:20.760
and software mods, horse training, van life inspiration, and also sailing inspiration for
00:31:26.720
whatever reason. Like of the top 50 Patreon creators, there's number two, Peter Boies, who
00:31:33.920
tell me, tell me if this, you understand what this is saying. Okay. This is, this is what
00:31:39.620
it is about says. I tried to bring a lifelike look to Assetto Corsa AC. Ilja Jusper have
00:31:48.960
brought us many tools to mod AC. With his custom shaders patch, CSP, many features are added to
00:31:54.620
AC. One of CSP's modules called Weather FX made new graphics possible. With Sol, I created
00:32:00.520
a highly customized weather system for Assetto Corsa. The next step of my weather and graphics
00:32:04.900
system called Pure. It addresses many problems of Sol and brings new solutions. So what do
00:32:09.880
you think that is? It's, wait, a weather, it's either weather for video game mods. Is
00:32:16.140
that what it is? Is it weather for video game mods?
00:32:19.680
So Assetto Corsa is a highly acclaimed racing simulation video game. I thought it was some
00:32:24.280
kind of like weather prediction system. I was like, oh.
00:32:26.460
Yeah, I thought weather prediction at first, but then you asked me. So I was like, okay, it's
00:32:30.720
Yes. Do you want to guess how much he makes per month on Patreon?
00:32:39.240
That's the second highest earner on Patreon is $55,000?
00:32:41.880
Yep, that's right. Uh-huh. That's right. Uh-huh. Yep. Mm-hmm. So just $55,000 a month.
00:32:47.380
I know. Well, the True Anon podcast, which is at number eight, makes $174,000 a month because
00:32:52.800
I don't know they charge more. There are several D&D creators. So D&D is alive and well.
00:32:56.860
Yeah. There's 38 is Turbo Driver, which just creates mods for The Sims 4 and has nearly 18,000
00:33:03.260
paid subscribers. There's number 41, Fornax, who creates Pixel Drain, which is some kind of
00:33:09.900
file sharing software. And he makes $58,960 a month. These are people, again, like people are
00:33:17.460
building their lives around this. They're paying monthly subscriptions that are non-trivial in cost
00:33:21.440
to these people for the software mods and to access the community. This is just the crazy thing.
00:33:25.940
And also, I don't think people realize we now have, you know, it used to be that like
00:33:29.080
throughout London, in a London neighborhood, you'd walk a couple blocks and you'd hear a
00:33:33.300
new accent. Like the idea of being hackneyed meant that you were born within earshot of a
00:33:38.580
specific church bell and you would have your, they had their own accent. Like it was a thing.
00:33:42.940
Now there are major social media accents. There's the female influencer accent. It's also called
00:33:47.420
TikTok voice or influencer accent. There's a male gamer accent. There's trad wife accent.
00:33:52.940
There's male news commentator or podcaster accent. And there's Gen Z non-binary, like
00:33:58.440
androgynous accent. That's what you've heard. The accent that always gets me is the EA community
00:34:03.020
accent, which is like our wider, like EA rational accent. Yes. And the thing that defines it,
00:34:08.940
because you see this when everything starts talking, it blinds me. Like when I hear it,
00:34:14.060
because I find it so annoying, which is they couch everything they're saying. They are like,
00:34:20.440
so afraid to make a claim where they'll say something like, like I feel, or like, I feel
00:34:26.800
like X or like, you know, this has been observed or whatever. Right. You know, like they don't,
00:34:33.200
they don't. Well, it's more word choice. It's, it's more their, their like diction and syntax and like
00:34:38.680
lilt and accent, but it is totally a distinct thing. Yeah. You can listen to someone and know,
00:34:44.940
depending on how informed you are, what community they're a part of like, oh, she's trying to be
00:34:48.880
TikTok influencer. Oh, he's a gamer. Like, oh no, he's more of a news guy. Come on. People gotta tell
00:34:55.280
us what, what, yeah. I don't know what we sound like. What do we sound like people also slang? I'm
00:34:59.860
going to test your slang and listeners follow along with the crew. Okay. Do you know what a light
00:35:07.140
stick is and how it's used? I stick, I assume a light stick is used for like filming like selfies
00:35:16.360
or something. No, you loser. It's a part of the K-pop community. It is a fan light that is unique
00:35:22.060
to each group. So you can buy your light stick for like your chosen K-pop group that has like
00:35:26.400
their logo and colors or whatever you wave it at concerts. I've seen this on my shows. I'm in
00:35:31.660
Japanese shows, but you don't know the word. So, okay. Try this one. Do you know what it means
00:35:37.020
to be tatty blasted? Tatty blasted? You took some good words here. What does it mean to
00:35:46.240
It means that you are covered in tattoos because there is a very thriving and very vibrant tattoo
00:35:51.720
community. Speaking of the K-pop communities, I got an anecdote about that. So when I was
00:35:56.540
getting my Stanford MBA, the guy who was running Netflix at the time came over and gave a speech.
00:36:01.740
And one of the things he mentioned in his speech was like his secretary or something
00:36:05.740
was like, I don't understand why you don't buy more like K-dramas because they're all of the
00:36:12.920
first page results on Netflix. And he goes, that's just your account because you watch them all the
00:36:19.020
time. That's really funny. But this shows how you can forget and be like, oh, I see this stuff all
00:36:25.140
the time. That's why I want, like, I just want to like hammer this home that like, these are very,
00:36:29.740
very large communities that I'm talking about here. Like K-pop, the K-pop world is huge. And we also
00:36:34.620
need to watch K-pop demon hunters. And it is, we, we, we, we like don't realize, but like as big as
00:36:41.460
those worlds are, and as much as you can live your entire life within them, you need to understand that
00:36:46.480
if you want mainstream influence and, and relatability, you cannot use that lingo.
00:36:53.760
You cannot use that accent. You have to play into the one, the last show left, but I, I have a couple
00:37:01.400
more words for you and then we're going to stop, but do you know what it means to be mogged by someone?
00:37:10.200
No, I don't know mogging. You could, I feel like I know these words. I'm not hip. I'm not with it.
00:37:14.340
Because I thought you knew all about your subculture. This is from the looks maxing
00:37:18.980
subculture to be, to be mogged is to be outclassed in looks. So if someone is much better looking,
00:37:25.540
they mog others. Like you might be height mogged or you might face mog someone. So that, that is a
00:37:38.520
No, I'm looking up pictures of people who mogged people.
00:37:46.140
Well, yeah, the looks maxing, the looks maxing look is a very specific aesthetic that isn't
00:37:51.240
necessarily like everyone's universal standard of beauty, but like anyway, an HFHOA is a homeowners
00:37:57.780
association that is homestead friendly because there's a big homesteading community. You know,
00:38:04.940
they're all about their gardening and their chickens and their, their farm animals and not
00:38:09.720
all homeowners associations are super cool with that.
00:38:11.720
Oh my God. Do you remember, I thought that was so funny. The HBO like documentarian who
00:38:22.380
Are they loaded? Yeah, no, she was genuinely like, she thought she was going to come here
00:38:26.160
and die. Who knows? She might still, we make no promises.
00:38:31.080
Yeah. Anyway, do you know what pan porn is or what it means to de-stash?
00:38:35.660
No, I don't know either of these. To de-stash is to declutter or get rid of the makeup you
00:38:42.060
don't use. And pan porn is, is when you hit the pan, like you've used all of the eyeshadow
00:38:46.460
or like blush or foundation, powder foundation. And what about slack packing?
00:38:50.660
Why would I know those? When would that ever happen to me?
00:38:53.340
You wouldn't know that, but what about slack packing? Or do you know what a Nero is?
00:39:02.120
It's, it's part of the backpacking community. Also huge and thriving. Hiking a trail section
00:39:06.540
without carrying a full backpack or because someone else like shuttles your gear. Like
00:39:11.120
you have someone delivered to the camp ahead of, and a Nero is a nearly zero mile day. So
00:39:15.980
you're just going a few miles before you stop. Okay. Finally, finally though, maybe you'll
00:39:19.960
get this one. I think maybe you'll get this one. What community has murder hobos?
00:39:36.960
Okay. I can tell you what this one means. Cause I do know the Dungeons and Dragons community.
00:39:41.460
It is when a group of players acts like murder hobos, they just, now that they can do whatever
00:39:46.940
they want, they just go out and murder everyone they see. And they'd be called murder hobos for
00:39:53.060
God bless. All right. Well, I got to go get the kids for ABA therapy for Taurus
00:39:58.160
Den as we attempt to get him to eat food, which he refuses to do. But yeah, the takeaway,
00:40:03.820
there is one, there is one show left. And if you don't opt into it, you will not have widespread
00:40:08.680
influence. You need to understand that you live in a bubble more so than ever before that we do
00:40:13.400
not have a shared community or discourse because everything's mixed together, which ironically means
00:40:17.720
everything's balkanized and not unified anymore. And I think that's really interesting.
00:40:32.780
You're a murder hobo. I murder hobo every AI simulation. I love murder hoboing.
00:40:37.020
Everyone's like, I find I get too attached to my AI friends. And I'm like, but I murder all my AI
00:40:44.340
friends. Why do you do that? And it's like, well, I can't murder my real friends. Right?
00:40:49.480
So no, no, too messy, too messy. Although someone pointed out in the comments the other day that
00:40:55.860
like, there are these swamps in Florida that you just like, I guess, like throw bodies into them and
00:41:02.740
Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's some great places in Florida for doing that.
00:41:05.380
We're not in Florida. So people give us, we're in Pennsylvania. All right. Relevant advice.
00:41:13.020
No, just tragic boating accident. Always tragic boating accident. Come on, guys.
00:41:18.780
Tragic boating accident. Got drunk. Ooh, we were all having too much fun.
00:41:22.820
Fell overboard. Tragic boating accident. All right. I love you.
00:41:26.120
Are we going to switch sides because you're going to leave this one?
00:41:33.120
The world order has to remain intact. Don't do that. That would be terrible.
00:41:50.300
Okay, Torsten, do you understand why we're not going to a toy store, right?
00:41:54.380
Well, because you haven't been a very good boy. You hid your pairs.
00:42:00.820
Titan? Titan, I'm thinking we're going to have to throw Torsten into the lava. Should we do that?
00:42:19.200
And you want to have, you like Tex, you want Tex to come back healthy?
00:42:23.020
I don't get the charm ragged thing. I don't get the, like, thing that has the, like, rug and the tiny cars.
00:42:34.020
Can you, like, car lug thing and the tiny cars? Please.