Based Camp - Far More Famous Influencers Are Fake Than You Realize

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm very excited to be talking with you today because I kind of feel like I need

00:00:05.420 to completely reevaluate the way that I browse the internet and that everything's a lie. And

00:00:08.960 that internet theory doesn't even begin to really describe what's going on. And I need help. I need

00:00:14.440 help. You're going to help me. So according to some analysts, for the first time in over a decade

00:00:20.180 now, bots generate the majority of internet activity, like 51% to 53%. This is according

00:00:26.560 to multiple reports and sources. I have in the show notes on Patreon and Substack, all the sources

00:00:31.960 I can link to them. Breakdowns sometimes separate the good bots, like search engine crawlers and SEO

00:00:37.120 from the bad. And the bad ones still control up to like 40% of internet traffic. Cloudflare's data

00:00:43.080 has it a little bit lower, like 31 to 32%, but that's insane. Anyway, there are literal view

00:00:49.380 farms of just like walls of phones of just people generating fake traffic very sophisticated fake

00:00:57.880 traffic a literal view form oh no i have seen this yeah no but it's it's worse than this

00:01:10.900 so yeah there was this brazilian one that was raided two months ago and and police go in and

00:01:16.420 it's just like these walls of just phones wired up it just looks like something fake like if i

00:01:22.020 saw it in an anime i'd be like yeah no like no one actually no no we just we're just gonna like

00:01:25.880 put grids of phones on a giant wall and like control them and for any platform you can imagine

00:01:31.020 you can buy view bots with varying degrees of sophistication this includes a few bots that have

00:01:37.160 widely varied ip addresses that have detailed histories that leave comments that mute and

00:01:42.380 unmute while watching streams like the extent to which it's hard to actually track whether or not

00:01:47.960 this is real too because i came into this being like oh yeah i've heard view botting is a problem

00:01:51.780 i guess i should just look at like engagement on a thing and then if there's a lot of you know

00:01:55.580 like what seems to be real human behavior it's gotta be real no no this is so what i want to

00:02:02.180 use this conversation to talk about like the meta of this conversation for me yes is how much of

00:02:07.560 what we perceive to be popular on the internet is a lie no this is so true of the left and the right

00:02:16.360 and this has been really evident in a lot of things like recent games that are still trying

00:02:23.920 to appeal to a woke audience and we haven't gotten as much a chance to go over these as i would like

00:02:29.200 we may do a whole episode on them if people really want to yeah one of the comments crashed out

00:02:33.800 recently after like every main person it's made by larry ellison's daughter in the industry talking

00:02:39.040 about how good it was it got like all perfect reviews like 10 10s um and it was called mixtape

00:02:43.760 and it had a high a player streaming high of 2000 um another one that came out recently called

00:02:52.300 euphoria right to to give you an idea of like how bad these things do so it had a developer team

00:03:00.460 of it looks like around 60 people um and it was in development for i think four years okay oh my

00:03:09.420 lord okay this game came out a month ago and if you look at the the peak player count on it okay

00:03:19.100 it had a peak player count this was 15 days ago so it only recently came out okay okay of 219 people

00:03:27.500 if you look at its current player count 21 people that's about a right now

00:03:36.660 that's about a third the people who are currently playing our fab ai that's like people riding a

00:03:42.760 bus it's bad this is really bad days ago from a team of 60 people who made it right it's just

00:03:51.140 like one public school classroom of children yeah for a year again all these people likely

00:03:57.520 had salaries of like 60 70 000 or something like that you know you're probably more than i think

00:04:02.780 yeah like okay say they paid them cheaply like 20 000 the game is estimated to have made i think

00:04:09.900 around 40 000 in total or like 45 000 in total like astonishingly low amounts of money how is

00:04:17.880 it's happening this is made by a major studio by the way right but it's not just it's not just game

00:04:22.300 studios either like fame in general is manufactured like major music labels and artists are are using

00:04:30.260 botting to look bigger than they are so even when you're like oh well of course like Beyonce is

00:04:34.460 famous like no there was this big in back in 2012 there was this really big basically like

00:04:40.200 view bot erasing and figures like Beyonce lost like billions of views just like oh by the way

00:04:45.920 those were fake like that even these these huge people their hugeness is to an extent it's and

00:04:52.620 it's impossible to say how much because so much of this is both very hard to measure and kept very

00:04:58.200 under wraps manufactured another example drake accused his own label of conspiring with third

00:05:04.520 parties including spotify to bot streams for kendrick lamar's not like us to harm him and

00:05:10.720 And while Yonji called it untrue and illogical, they dismissed defamation claims and the broader

00:05:16.380 case is still ongoing. And Drake has also faced separate accusations of using his stake partnership

00:05:21.640 to fund botting for his own catalog. Like it's just so pervasive that like everyone understands

00:05:26.180 it's happening, but most of it's just gone underground. And also it's the extent, and this

00:05:31.520 is another really good way of understanding how true this is. When major companies don't use

00:05:37.480 viewbotting you see extremely embarrassing situations like the pilot episode of star trek

00:05:42.760 starfleet academy yeah which oops someone forgot to pay the viewbotting company it came out at

00:05:48.600 lower than our episode count for that week and yeah they got 16 000 views in the first 11 hours

00:05:56.140 after release on youtube and a separate report also said the live premiere peaked at roughly

00:06:01.020 1 300 concurrent viewers now leaflet on one of her streams at like two in the morning we'll have

00:06:06.880 like a low of 1 000 viewers right yeah so i i do streaming it was leaflet on now every other friday

00:06:13.160 so we'll be doing it this friday early early in the morning so like 3 a.m on a sun what is saturday

00:06:18.420 saturday's what after friday saturday yeah saturday 3 a.m generally we're at around like a

00:06:23.140 thousand five hundred that's where we typically are so we will the stream tonight will start at

00:06:28.160 8 p.m est um and something i got wrong here is the thousand five hundred is just her concurrent

00:06:33.820 views on twitch i forgot that they're probably about equal or larger on kick so she's typically

00:06:39.100 doing about twice or i guess we are doing about twice as well welcome to starfleet academy

00:06:44.380 territory heavily marketed etc are beating starfleet academy which had hundreds of millions

00:06:52.140 of dollars go to it our episode that came out the day it came out and keep in mind we do episodes

00:06:58.620 every day okay and they had one premiere had well it checks out i've i've i've watched i've

00:07:07.300 watched so many hours i mean like days worth of leaflet and i love star trek i've not watched

00:07:12.840 admit it i've not even watched the preview of starfleet academy i don't i don't like

00:07:16.680 it's but anyway so that's just again to be clear it may you you can't obviously know how much

00:07:24.080 these like big media companies and and famous celebrities are investing in viewbotting and

00:07:29.280 fluffing up their own subscribers and views and engagements and likes and shares and comments

00:07:33.420 but you can see what happens in the absence of it and it's not just like professional like

00:07:39.440 mainstream media figures viral figures like caleb hammer and clavicular are manufactured to a great

00:07:46.180 extent and we're going to get into that too it's insane oh hold on i want to get into asthma gold's

00:07:50.180 take on this before we go any further so okay i thought it was very interesting so yeah he was

00:07:54.180 going over viewbotting on twitch and he's like almost every large player on twitch is viewbotting

00:07:58.520 and so he was saying you know you've got these people where they realistically have like a

00:08:04.060 thousand people watching and i'm just like dude should we just like get into viewbotting and then

00:08:07.320 start a twitch right and he's like but twitch doesn't want to shut it down because it makes

00:08:11.020 their numbers look higher he's like they say yeah they're very disincentivized from and there there

00:08:16.640 are twitch streamers who have been like publicly been like oh yeah if you bought like they're

00:08:20.780 probably like three people watching this right now but it looks like there are a thousand people

00:08:24.140 like so transparent and they're friends with twitch's like ceo like it is very what was more

00:08:30.860 interesting about asthma gold's take on this is somebody was like well these people who buy ads

00:08:34.680 on them right and they think that they're getting like thousands and thousands of views but it's

00:08:39.460 like less than a thousand concurrent viewers and asthma gold was like well actually they're not

00:08:44.900 really getting screwed and the guy was like but what do you mean by this and he's like well consider

00:08:49.660 who actually signed the contract to buy the ads it's not somebody with equity in the company

00:08:54.420 it's not the company's ceo it's the head of marketing or whatever right and he just needs

00:08:59.080 to show the next guy above him how many people watched it for x amount of money they don't know

00:09:03.780 but those who are savvy enough to be able to somewhat sophisticatedly track if they're getting

00:09:09.660 a bump to a product like um and they're not seeing it like there people are starting to realize that

00:09:14.960 and and people like devon nash who i'm going to reference multiple times because he's actually

00:09:18.580 really good at parsing out what's going on here being somewhat of an industry insider more than

00:09:23.240 someone some advertisers are discovering this and they're super not cool with it so there is a

00:09:28.880 tension there actually hold on this explains something i didn't fully understand um but our

00:09:35.000 discord is hugely bigger than other equivalently sized influencers and i've been very surprised by

00:09:43.480 this and now i'm realizing oh were we supposed to be viewbotting no like it's really good that we

00:09:51.920 weren't i'm really glad that we're not but i mean now i i get also maybe why a lot of people are

00:09:56.200 like why is your channel a lot bigger because i think they're used to seeing yeah they're used

00:10:00.600 content creators who are viewbotted and so like when you see that someone doesn't have like oh

00:10:05.220 where's your like you know hundreds of thousands of well you're seeing mostly people who are

00:10:10.100 paying for that because it's also incredibly affordable and i'll get into that too

00:10:14.000 but yeah to go over twitch around and we're talking just normal creators like small creators

00:10:20.060 around 10 of twitch streamers with at least 50 average viewers show clear persistent signs of

00:10:26.020 viewbotting according to the most comprehensive independent analysis and i again this is all

00:10:30.180 linked in the show notes. It's worse though, as you pointed out, as Asmongold says, for big

00:10:34.860 creators. So Devin Nash, again, he really knows what he's talking about. They analyzed the top

00:10:39.940 500 Twitch streamers and estimated that 400 to 430, that is roughly 80% of them show signs of

00:10:47.780 view botting or being bought it. Now keep in mind, many streamers do not know they're being

00:10:52.620 bought it. And I'll get into this. Okay. So 30 to 40% of viewers are blatant bots. And then another

00:10:58.900 5% to 15% via embeds. And this is based on chat activity, monitoring, user list sampling,

00:11:06.820 logged in and out ratios, and then known botnet cross-referencing. Creators argue that Twitch is

00:11:12.260 a platform where viewbotting is necessary for survival. Basically, if you're not doing it,

00:11:16.760 you're not competitive. And this is because unlike on YouTube and many, like probably most

00:11:21.500 other platforms, discoverability is basically just impossible on Twitch. The way they've designed it,

00:11:26.500 you will not, you will not be discovered on Twitch period. And that's why I feel like breaking into

00:11:31.000 it is really hard now, especially if you're not like already super famous. And basically I think

00:11:36.320 the way people get big on Twitch is they have huge audiences elsewhere to start now. And then

00:11:41.220 those audiences come over to Twitch. I don't even know how much viewbotting would really help to

00:11:45.720 jumpstart it, but Devin Nash went into the unit economics of this in a really fascinating way

00:11:51.800 and showed how basically it's a no-brainer smart decision for a streamer's agency to viewbot them

00:12:00.520 because they will put in like $1 and then get $1.50 back. Like it pays back. It would be stupid

00:12:09.660 to not do it. And he understands this because he's a professional on the brand marketing side 0.99

00:12:13.720 of the equation. I think he just left it, but he was at least former chief marketing officer at

00:12:17.720 Novo, which is an agency. And again, he represents not the streamer side, but the brand side. So

00:12:22.340 he's also keen on delivering actual results to brands so that they can trust him and keep working

00:12:26.740 with him. So he pointed out that viewbots cost approximately one to two cents per viewer hour,

00:12:33.400 and that translates to about 135 to 185 per week to add 500 to 750 viewers to a stream.

00:12:41.020 And then the weekly cost includes features like chatting and custom chat messages to make the

00:12:46.760 viewers appear authentic. And so for a full month of viewbotting, agencies spend less than $800 to

00:12:52.860 artificially inflate viewer counts. That's pretty reasonable. Now, Twitch sponsorship rates, and

00:12:57.840 again, he knows this, he's worked in the industry, they range from $1 to $3 per concurrent viewer,

00:13:04.080 with $150 to $2 being the standard rate for two-hour gaming sponsorship. So for a streamer with

00:13:10.980 a thousand viewers at a $2 per CCV, a single two-hour sponsorship generates $4,000 in total

00:13:17.680 revenue. The agency typically takes a 20% commission. So they earn 800 per deal while

00:13:23.500 the streamer gets 3,200. So Nash demonstrates how agencies can receive basically massive returns

00:13:31.560 by combining few botting with multiple sponsorship deals. So starting with a 300 viewer stream and

00:13:37.700 then adding 700 botted viewers creates an apparent 1000 viewer stream for approximately 150 to 180

00:13:45.060 per week and if the agency secures just two hour sponsorships for that inflated audience they earn

00:13:50.420 1600 in commission while spending less than 400 on view bots and so it's it's he calls it a money

00:13:58.460 printing machine it is i just i can't believe it and i think that this is an easy way to tell who's

00:14:04.960 viewbotting and who's not viewbotting is who's doing sponsorships people who aren't doing

00:14:09.320 sponsorships there's virtually no reason for them to viewbot and this is why i think when you're

00:14:14.200 looking at our communities you see individuals who are big enough easily to do lots of sponsorships

00:14:21.140 like say an asthma gold but you almost never get them or a leaflet and you almost never get them

00:14:25.620 and it's being right wing in the way that we're right wing like if you're right wing and like

00:14:30.100 the way ben shapiro it's your episode on him where i point out heavy evidence that his audience could

00:14:35.260 be as much as 90 percent botted there's a huge reason to view bot and the financial backing to

00:14:41.280 do it and no when people are like wait so his entire organization is just fraudulent and i'm

00:14:46.460 like i don't really think that's it i think what's going on with him is that the daily wire should be

00:14:53.080 thought of more the way we think of an organization like the heritage foundation where it's people

00:14:57.760 giving it money to influence politics

00:14:59.840 and not really something

00:15:01.980 with a large, organic audience.

00:15:04.720 By the way, if you're wondering

00:15:06.160 why I am so certain

00:15:08.880 that his channel is heavily botted,

00:15:11.640 if we are to believe his channel, really,

00:15:14.200 he does a daily hour,

00:15:17.100 hour and a half hour episode, okay?

00:15:21.120 About two-thirds of the views

00:15:23.020 for his daily episodes

00:15:24.400 are arriving the day after they're released and then after that they get virtually no views

00:15:31.640 that makes no sense i could see almost like in our videos the majority of the views happening on

00:15:39.200 the day they're released for a daily episode but who's reliably watching daily episodes always

00:15:47.400 the day after they're released instead of the day that they're released and i'm not saying that it's

00:15:53.480 impossible that anyone would have this behavior i suspect you know maybe one tenth of our audience

00:15:59.160 would have a behavior like this if we're talking like on the larger side but two-thirds of your

00:16:05.120 audience or more than two-thirds it seems like often um or i could be like well maybe he's got

00:16:11.080 a really long tail and so that way you would see views trickling in for a long time after the video

00:16:15.860 which we also don't see views basically stop the moment a video hits around half a million views

00:16:23.260 which almost always happens on day two or day three but this indicates basically they're paying

00:16:29.860 someone to promote it in a linear fashion that doesn't make sense for daily episodes especially

00:16:36.200 if they're daily episodes that have a fanatical long-term following which is what we have to

00:16:41.220 assume because the longer form episodes are doing so much better than the shorter form episodes

00:16:46.240 which typically doesn't make sense in the youtube algorithm unless it's like a dedicated following

00:16:50.800 waiting for them oh side note here some people were looking up youtube statistics and they

00:16:55.000 thought that simone got the 85 decline in ben shapiro's numbers wrong even if you don't include

00:17:00.160 view botting and there was some debate about it on the discord and at first i thought that they

00:17:04.900 were right and that she had got it wrong and then she pointed out malcolm i upload all my notes to

00:17:08.660 the show notes go to it and so then they went to it and then they kept arguing for a while

00:17:12.140 and then they came to an understanding that simone wasn't wrong but it had to do with the

00:17:17.440 way that she worded it i don't get it exactly the point being is that if you think on a surface

00:17:21.760 level we've gotten something wrong especially if it's simone because she's the more diligent

00:17:25.780 researcher out of the two of us do check her show notes so another online conservative voice i had

00:17:32.120 heard was fake when i was doing research on the ben shapiro one where it seems pretty clear that

00:17:36.200 ben shapiro has a smaller real audience than we have was louder with crowder and i used to like

00:17:42.200 Crowder a lot. I watched the show regularly and then it just got boring. So I was like, okay,

00:17:47.540 that seems believable. Let's look into this. So here I pull up an episode. So this episode's from

00:17:54.680 10 days ago. I wanted to get one that looked like fairly representative for the channel.

00:17:59.300 It's got 104,000 views and it's got 529 comments. Okay. Let's look at one of our videos to get an

00:18:07.180 idea if that makes sense. All right. So we'll just go through one. So there's a video that

00:18:11.320 came out yesterday this one had 12 000 views it's already at 553 comments so more than a video with

00:18:21.000 over a hundred thousand views of his that came out 10 days ago okay maybe that's an anomaly let's go

00:18:26.940 before that the one from the day before that 16 000 views over a thousand comments 1077 okay the

00:18:33.700 day before that 16 000 views 443 comments like it's no it's not plausible it's not plausible

00:18:41.860 that he's 10x larger than we are and has less interaction than we have it shouldn't even be

00:18:48.660 close if it was three times our interaction i'd still find that suspicious and i think your

00:18:54.080 perception and my perception of who's big in certain culture war spaces is heavily warped

00:19:02.200 and heavily manipulated and often very not true and i think a lot of the sort of moldier more

00:19:09.280 boring more pearl clutchy conservative figures who previously i thought were like a giant political

00:19:15.700 battle that we're fighting against are not real their their base is not real their this ideology

00:19:24.040 is entirely astroturfed not that it didn't have support at one point i'm just talking about within

00:19:31.060 the current online environment and i was thinking about this recently in the context of because i

00:19:36.280 was talking with slay flit about this and like oh you know should we be worried when you know x y

00:19:42.540 and z people are mad at us for our views or whatever and i've just gotten to the point of

00:19:47.580 it's like it doesn't matter it doesn't matter i don't need to care about them they're not going

00:19:51.840 to have a place in space if their views lead them to disengage with technology or not actually find

00:19:57.440 partners and have kids it's not a political battle worth fighting because they're just

00:20:02.700 not long-term relevant i need to focus on groups that are thriving and do have a possibility of

00:20:10.560 building those spaceships with my descendants this is why when we look at like our cultural

00:20:16.460 movement right like this techie right-leaning cultural movement the impact it seems to have

00:20:24.120 was in online culture is so much bigger than you would expect from the right yes yes yes it's been

00:20:31.140 yeah i've been like wait why are like why have we been referenced here and there when like our

00:20:34.720 views are so low and yeah yeah and what i'm realizing is our culture like for example you

00:20:41.640 look at leaflet streams or something like that leaflet doesn't really do sponsorships and because

00:20:47.020 she doesn't do sponsorships she doesn't have a reason to view bot in the way that other people

00:20:51.520 yeah there isn't that same incentive although and we're going to get into it it is not always

00:20:57.500 even if you don't have an agency and even if you don't have sponsorships you might still be

00:21:02.880 viewvotted without your consent and go over it come on let's go yeah but first i want to talk

00:21:08.020 about so i just i also want to be clear that this is i think a lot of people that the discourse is

00:21:11.980 oh twitch viewbotting twitch viewbotting whereas i just want to reiterate and this is even older

00:21:17.260 discourse that Facebook full of viewbotting and also even more so Spotify and like just streaming

00:21:23.000 music viewbotting so huge but here's the one place where I was like oh well here's a place

00:21:28.120 where Substack couldn't you know like where viewbotting isn't a thing Substack I'm like well

00:21:32.140 Substack is too new and the way it works like with email platform delivery and all these other forms

00:21:36.860 of engagement like Substack has got to not have viewbotting but no it totally does so there are

00:21:43.000 websites that sell Substack subscribers for as low as two cents each. And sometimes they claim

00:21:48.640 that they use real people that they add in manually rather than pure bots. Whether they're

00:21:53.320 organic or farmed, it's still artificial information. And I found one, just like one

00:22:00.800 website where you and I just now, if we want to, can go to en.mrpopular.net to buy. But you can

00:22:08.220 choose low quality medium quality or high quality subscribers they don't really i haven't poked

00:22:14.040 around their site a lot but i told you like when we had a family member who all of a sudden had

00:22:18.480 like 80 000 followers on on subpack and i was like this is fake he had four articles and like

00:22:23.180 three comments on each i know i i didn't want to believe it and now i'm like oh my god because but

00:22:28.660 it's and it's not yeah it's not just subscribers you can buy comments you can buy likes views

00:22:35.140 shares, plays, restacks, searches, comment likes, comment restacks, comment shares.

00:22:42.240 You can buy messages. You can buy comment replies. You can buy save as image. You can buy a ton of

00:22:47.960 different ways to be like, yeah, look at all these, like, clearly this isn't fake. Who would

00:22:53.540 who would buy save as image? Like that is how sophisticated this is. I'm just really impressed.

00:22:58.840 And there are already high profile examples, recent ones, prominent ones of people totally

00:23:05.040 faking their sub stacks so in april the observer covered how andrew tate's sub stack saw its total

00:23:10.640 follower count drop from 1.1 million to 980 000 after analysis of a sample of 1 000 paying

00:23:17.020 subscribers paying subscribers found that 75 percent had no biography publications or visible

00:23:25.000 activity and half were created in a 16 day window so wait his paying subscribers 75 percent were

00:23:34.200 fake and you know and i believe this when i look at andrew tate's comment being as popular as it

00:23:40.120 doesn't make sense he's not that smart and like interesting it's not even that though it shouldn't

00:23:45.500 also be i mean because his whole thing is sort of like faking things you know pretending to be a

00:23:49.060 a thought and you know using like a girlfriend's images and then like chatting to men on only fans

00:23:56.080 or something you know what i mean like i was just checking out our our sub stack right now

00:24:00.960 um hey first of all do you know how many paid subscribers we have we have a lot and they're

00:24:05.960 cool dude every by the way every time we get a paid subscriber i will and some of them are a

00:24:11.840 little bit more secretive than others i totally stock them i find their instagrams i find they're

00:24:16.280 like you do yeah so we are at now 99 paid subscribers on subject you want to be number 100

00:24:22.420 uh i actually think our patreon is slightly better than subset i don't know like if we

00:24:26.520 i treat them i treat them equally i read every comment i uh i i add each new paid subscriber to

00:24:33.500 our personal like network like you know in our personal crm i email them personally from both

00:24:38.760 of us there's an open line of communication via email and you want to know what our what

00:24:42.360 our yearly income is just from sub stack what i was surprised by this ten thousand seven hundred

00:24:49.200 dollars oh i mean you can't live off of that but that's that's really meaningful guys i appreciate

00:24:57.280 it no like for real the support yeah we like and yeah and and i i these people have histories like

00:25:05.880 i wouldn't be able to stalk them if they weren't real uh so anyway i was just kind of shocked that

00:25:12.260 you could that you could fake sub stack as much as you can and this isn't it's not just entertain

00:25:16.980 where youtube tried to take us off for a bit oh yeah that was so mad at me that i made like an

00:25:24.120 arc about that and i was like no it's so fun come on yeah but we got a lot of subscribers and thank

00:25:29.840 you for everyone who did show support then because we really thought we were done on youtube we were

00:25:33.140 incredibly demoralized but we have one we have one of three strikes i'm just saying it's gone now

00:25:38.560 it's gone did it fall off it did not fall without strikes for long enough that the strike where we

00:25:45.300 said hitler was bad because he was progressive that's gone hold on it must have because i just

00:25:51.560 saw like three days ago it was still there no you're right it's gone oh our record has been

00:25:58.100 cleared okay well i hope that doesn't mean people are not going to consider i mean immediately as

00:26:02.560 soon as it's clear leaflet gets a strike for one of our videos but oh no i feel really bad about

00:26:07.660 she was clear um she oh right she was thank god yeah asthma gold got it cleared for her or

00:26:12.920 something i know but like yeah she had to cash social chips or that i don't i don't know i don't

00:26:17.960 think cash social chips i think a bunch of people on the right created content about it red says

00:26:22.500 desu nuts like everybody was creating content about it it's part of the site hopefully it was

00:26:27.000 good for her yeah yeah as long as it's good for her i never want anything bad to happen to her

00:26:30.860 she's the best okay so also there was this creator called rebecca jones who lost hundreds of

00:26:35.640 thousands of subscribers it when they did a bunch of purges and this was documented on x in 2025

00:26:41.260 like it's it's a thing i just didn't know it was a thing i was i was very surprised but so in terms

00:26:45.940 of view botting on youtube fake views have existed on youtube since around 2009 and they've been

00:26:51.060 getting media attention since 2011 but this major 2012 purge in which youtube removed billions of

00:26:57.480 fraudulent views including over 1 billion from universal music group artists like beyonce like

00:27:03.340 rihanna like justin bieber like nikki minaj it's so crazy to me that like i look at them and i i

00:27:10.080 never had a reason to question i'm like well of course it's like justin bieber people are crazy

00:27:14.280 but who listens to justin bieber anymore i watch justin bieber a and bs i don't watch justin bieber

00:27:20.360 that tickles me yeah anyway uh and then you have like literally these physical view farms that i

00:27:30.000 you i hope you can include the the brazilian recently right everywhere right yeah you know

00:27:36.480 what's interesting is is so i'll be i'll be transparent with people here we tried like a

00:27:42.620 version of boobotting with our books oh totally yeah we we've talked about this before yeah we've

00:27:49.280 never tried it with youtube it's called book laundering like that yeah this is a whole other

00:27:53.800 thing if like if you if like anything all the all the proof that we used to use to think like oh

00:27:58.980 this must be good it's a new york times bestseller it's a whatever bestseller no completely look up

00:28:04.060 the way we taught the wall street journal bestseller list was was this sort of stuff

00:28:08.640 right people are always confused as to why our wall street journal bestseller book is the lowest

00:28:13.760 reviewed of any of our books like clearly the selling of any of our books it's because we had

00:28:18.300 to launch it in a really stupid way like not on amazon because amazon didn't count yeah we had to

00:28:24.380 launch through barnes and noble and then dot dot dot well i think there's like a lot of offering 0.89

00:28:31.860 it for free but then i'm sure they have like a lot of fake purchases in there you know we paid

00:28:37.080 someone to help us with this so we're not but we're not above this i mean we're too lazy to do

00:28:42.660 it with you so people wondering why we don't do it with youtube the reason i also just want to

00:28:47.040 like actually engage with our our community on youtube no but there's like a reason it's really

00:28:52.200 bad for your long-term algo. So there was this one French study in 2024 where they analyzed nearly

00:29:03.640 100,000 YouTube videos from over a thousand French channels over 1.5 years to find fake

00:29:10.440 view removals. So corrections on 90% of channels and about 78.5% of videos. The corrections

00:29:17.340 occurred in daily batches around 5 p.m., and they frequently happened late in a video's life cycle

00:29:23.980 after most of the organic views had accumulated. And it appears that videos corrected later tended

00:29:30.860 to be more popular overall, which suggests that the fake views can temporarily boost

00:29:36.740 algorithmic recommendations and perceive popularity before you get stripped. So no,

00:29:42.840 actually in many cases getting that early social proof that tricks algorithms has been to the

00:29:50.720 benefit of the creators and this was again this was published in 2024 i would like to think that

00:29:55.300 youtube has gotten better at this i don't want to risk it i don't want to put our channel at risk

00:29:58.880 because one of the ways that youtube is fighting this and many other platforms fight this because

00:30:03.660 it is incredibly hard you know the the cat and mouse game has gotten so sophisticated

00:30:08.040 that what many platforms are doing is basically you're guilty until proven innocent

00:30:11.780 And I, I mean, like we're already at risk of being taken down. If something were to go suspiciously

00:30:18.580 viral, even naturally, just because platforms are trying so hard to fight against this. But yeah,

00:30:26.180 I mean, I'm just trying to say there is some, there's some, there are many instances. I mean,

00:30:30.840 look on Twitch and that with this example on YouTube where people are being rewarded for

00:30:35.560 doing this, this bad behavior. But now I want to get into a different version of manufactured

00:30:41.260 i was highly suspicious i was just because we were doing a video on ben shapiro recently and

00:30:45.060 so i was looking at his views i suspect he's heavily view butted because the pattern in his

00:30:49.840 videos didn't make any sense most of his videos were at around the view count of our videos

00:30:54.140 and then he would do these like and when they're him when his name is on them they're good a lot

00:31:00.160 they're good when they had his name they were like an hour long and it was like the podcast

00:31:03.660 he was like half a million views i was like this doesn't make any sense why are your videos that

00:31:08.780 should be doing better in the algorithm yeah the short form algo friendly videos i think that he's

00:31:14.400 entirely astroturfed if i'm gonna be honest at this point i mean who's still watching when have

00:31:19.480 you heard a human being say i am i i continually watch ben shapiro even today yeah like look at

00:31:30.400 our content i'd like i a lot of people we go to like a conservative convention or something like

00:31:35.680 that and a lot of like the staffers will run up to us and be like oh my god we love you guys

00:31:39.480 even though daily wire is trying to freeze us out of all of them see our video on that

00:31:43.620 uh but like like clearly people watch her and i can see why you would watch our stuff

00:31:48.740 like this is the thing with the people who i watch who don't appear to be viewed about it

00:31:53.360 you know like leaflet or asmigold or something or next to nowhere i can understand why people

00:31:57.100 watch their content right yes totally i just don't get it who's watching yeah i can't bring

00:32:03.800 myself to watch it i'll watch brett cooper not infrequently but no for example who's still

00:32:10.320 watching steven crowder no me and i used to like his stuff like tim pool i used to like his stuff

00:32:17.620 i cannot imagine who's still watching their stuff it's so formulaic now

00:32:21.500 yeah because like when i click on something i'm like i either want to have my views informed in

00:32:29.820 an interesting way which is like nox or asmogold right yeah or i want to learn something new which

00:32:36.360 i think is what we try to do as people like we try to have and people will like challenge us

00:32:40.580 they'll be like your new idea per minute in this video was low but i was like you

00:32:46.860 yeah i know i know we're trying guys like well then let me introduce this to you because this

00:32:52.400 is so interesting to me and i mentioned this to you one morning earlier but i didn't really get

00:32:55.860 into it is i'm calling it clip spamming it this isn't it's not like a term but again devon nash

00:33:02.700 and i gotta start watching more of his videos because i just as i was doing this research i

00:33:06.060 realized like all the best sources were coming from him and i'd seen like two of his videos

00:33:10.480 already he he totally changed the way like a week ago in how i view youtube discovery in in his

00:33:17.800 breakdown of how people including clivicular and caleb hammer are manufacturing virality by

00:33:22.300 spamming clips of their work on platforms like youtube and well not not exactly them i should say

00:33:27.860 you can see the video again i linked to it in the show notes it's called exposing the new

00:33:32.400 manufactured viral content industry the video explains how basically a paid clipping economy

00:33:38.340 is artificially hijacking short-form algorithms on youtube and tiktok and instagram and x to

00:33:43.300 manufacture viral influencers and promote the streaming platform kick rather than just like

00:33:48.640 surface it's a great platform i know well but and this is and and just you know like uh spoiler

00:33:54.800 alert kick is just doing this this is how kick is growing they're not necessarily asking caleb

00:34:00.940 hammer like hey dude are you cool with this they're just they're just taking these these

00:34:06.440 clips and like caleb hammer is benefiting but i think they sort of spot like who is the potential

00:34:10.960 and they use those as almost like non-consensual endorsers of kick that drive people to the

00:34:17.980 platform so here's how it works on kick i guess but you how it works is why do you watch caleb

00:34:24.700 hammer simone because you watched him before he became political fun yeah i you you build a

00:34:31.260 parasocial relationship with him you feel better about your own life and your own mistakes when

00:34:36.800 you see just how he makes me feel terrible about the u.s economy i'm like jesus yes i don't want

00:34:41.380 to pay yes but it after watching our finances and like i stress out about like oh have we saved

00:34:46.880 enough? Am I budgeting well? And then I see how these other people spend their money and I feel

00:34:50.600 a lot better about it. And I think a lot of people watch for that. You know, it's just like, well,

00:34:54.360 you know, inflation's bad, prices are going up, but like, at least I'm not this idiot who bought 0.99

00:34:59.740 like a car with a terrible loan, you know, that kind of thing. So, but here's how the clipping 0.97

00:35:04.680 system works. There are these campaigns that are run inside large discord servers. We're talking

00:35:10.220 20 to 30 000 people or invite only groups where each campaign corresponds with one streamer or

00:35:17.420 podcaster or brand and then the clippers who are in in like the people in these discord servers

00:35:23.820 they will pull what 30 to 120 second segments from the long form streams because you know like

00:35:29.420 a caleb hammer financial audit is like uh an hour plus and their streams are even longer

00:35:35.420 and then they'll upload them as shorts to tiktok and instagram reels and youtube shorts and

00:35:39.820 sometimes x under their own accounts so these are like widely dispersed accounts not affiliated with

00:35:45.740 anyone else just like some random person in pakistan and then they in turn through this

00:35:53.500 discord server community are paid on a flat cpm basis around 10 to 40 cents i think per per thousand

00:36:01.900 views but around two to three dollars or specific bounties like three thousand dollars per million

00:36:07.820 views for particular clips and then payment happens in the usdt and there's often like a

00:36:13.220 minimum they have to reach in terms of views before they reach that threshold like maybe they have to

00:36:17.300 have 100 000 total views across all clippers uploads and then that incentivizes people to

00:36:22.480 just spam like 50 to 100 views across or sorry 50 to 100 clips across multiple accounts and keep in

00:36:29.220 mind he he's hanging out in the discord servers to try to figure this out like he spent like two

00:36:34.320 plus weeks just watching what was happening here super fascinating and then so become the cpm

00:36:41.640 is on top of the platform's own ad revenue this can be really decent money for clippers in very

00:36:48.540 low-income countries which as we want to cover this not aldous huxley sent us this graph of like

00:36:54.140 the the internet users of today and like so much of the people are just huge chunk we need to go

00:37:01.180 brazil has like half the internet users of the u.s yeah and we just don't realize you know we

00:37:06.500 think you just think like oh like it's mostly like u.s and europeans or whatever because like

00:37:10.840 what we see is english but no there's like it's just like people in brazil and pakistan too and

00:37:14.940 like hi guys too i mean like a lot of the people watching base camp are in brazil and we love you

00:37:19.160 guys but like we just didn't realize how many of you were there and so but anyway like if you're in

00:37:23.580 a third world country where wages are really low not necessarily brazil but like pakistan or

00:37:27.680 something, you can make a decent income from uploading these clips and making them, especially

00:37:32.720 if you're leveraging AI and being smart about it. And so this is run in a professional, non-scammy

00:37:38.980 way. There are visible campaign caps. They're like, okay, well, this is a $20,000 budget campaign.

00:37:45.600 People are making careers out of this. And then Nash uses a case of a clavicular clip to show

00:37:52.960 the scale. In one recent month, Clivicular allegedly generated 2.2 billion views from about

00:38:00.680 69,000 clips posted across platforms with 1,600 plus paid clippers involved. And averaged out,

00:38:08.860 each clip might get around 31,700 views, but the real point is this volume. You've got tens of

00:38:15.100 thousands of separate uploads all about the same person in 30 days. What is that going to tell an

00:38:20.540 algorithm, right? Like the, the point is that algorithms are sort of the way he, he described

00:38:25.800 it in his video was like, you know, how's an algorithm going to know? Like if you're designing

00:38:29.760 an algorithm, like, well, if there's some earthquake or like a volcano explodes, like

00:38:33.820 how, how am I going to make sure my algorithm picks that up? Well, if suddenly a bunch of

00:38:38.280 separate people all at once start talking about like a volcano, I should probably like promote

00:38:45.420 that thing you know surface that content more yeah and so that's what they're gaming with these

00:38:50.720 really simple on the surface of it clip campaigns is they're tricking the algorithms into thinking

00:38:58.040 oh my god this clavicular guy like he must be the most relevant thing in the world

00:39:03.160 so just this sheer volume tricks the recommendation system and then algorithms that treat topics

00:39:10.140 with tons of uploads and engagement is globally relevant

00:39:13.140 are just, it's just so fascinating.

00:39:17.820 So in terms of who's funding it,

00:39:19.860 it's just Kik, it's not the streamers.

00:39:22.900 A Kik-based streamer will openly state

00:39:26.140 that they receive over six figures a month

00:39:27.960 of clipping budget.

00:39:28.620 And then Kik pays high bounties,

00:39:30.580 like 20 to $30 CPMs on some clips.

00:39:33.040 And then internal clipping,

00:39:34.240 sorry, internal Kik clipping program materials

00:39:36.540 from invite-only servers.

00:39:38.020 some of which I don't know. Is this what you're saying? Yeah, I guess if you're going to start

00:39:42.100 streaming, stream on kick, they can require clippers to use a precise kick logo overlay

00:39:46.940 and then incorrect placement can get the clip rejected and unpaid, which ensures that the brand

00:39:53.540 of kick is visible on every short. So if you see a short and you see a kick logo on it, you know,

00:40:01.060 you're being subject to this new tactic and kick strategy, which is derived from its association

00:40:06.840 with Stake, which is a crypto gambling platform, is to pay to flood short form platforms with

00:40:14.560 Kick-branded clips. And then they grow selected streamers to funnel some fraction of the billions

00:40:21.000 of impressions back to Kick. And Nash, who is also, you know, at least my like go-to now expert

00:40:27.800 on like Twitch botting, he contrasts this with Twitch's older model of paying select streamers

00:40:33.460 big contracts and expecting them to bring their own audience with now this, I think, much more

00:40:38.560 smart and sufficient method. Yeah. Where Cake is just spending its marketing budget directly on

00:40:43.240 mass short-form distribution. And then streamers just benefit as a side effect, but streamers are

00:40:48.380 clearly benefiting. So what's happening though, is that algorithms that heavily weight volume and

00:40:54.300 multi-channel chatter are just completely getting one-shotted by the tactic. And so you've got this

00:40:59.940 sometimes even like really mediocre or unlikable personalities are suddenly dominating feeds and

00:41:06.160 getting all this paid volume while more interesting creators just aren't getting discovered and then

00:41:14.080 you get basically this this random weird like fake viral stuff like what i i find like some of

00:41:23.180 the talk about clivic earlers be interesting but then when i go and i watch his actual content i'm

00:41:26.960 like it's so boring like i find there's no charisma nothing's happening this is really

00:41:32.140 boring now caleb hammer is different i think he's actually fun he's he's good at like actually

00:41:37.100 trying to deliver whereas i think fundamentally clavicular is an introvert autist who's discovered

00:41:44.360 his special interest and kind of just wants to be left alone but it you know understands that

00:41:48.700 he's getting a lot of money and reinforcement and attention and is feeding into it like while he can

00:41:52.400 but i just want to be clear like this is not this is not some concerted thing like this isn't just

00:41:58.980 a story of like oh like all the celebrities you thought were real were manufactured i mean we all

00:42:04.660 kind of knew that like the kardashians manufactured themselves and like all the music labels are

00:42:08.640 they're faking it but i didn't know how bad it was but that's still a thing but then it's also

00:42:12.760 not like oh well all twitch streamers are just faking it by viewbotting because no often it's

00:42:17.100 their agencies without even telling them just trying to get more of their cut and then the

00:42:21.320 the streamers don't even know it and asthma gold has talked about this like it's not necessarily

00:42:25.400 and even sometimes it's fans who are like a big stand of some creator even if they're really small

00:42:30.820 and they're like well i want to make them look bigger so then they're going off and they're

00:42:33.560 buying bots so like people are so this isn't even content creators so sometimes it's the agency

00:42:39.180 sometimes it's fans sometimes it's a music label sometimes you're a fan of us how risky it is to

00:42:44.100 buy a show don't don't yeah don't don't bought us but sometimes it's a platform sometimes it's

00:42:50.580 like kick doing it right i'm up to running a bot experiment on kick or rumble or something but not

00:42:56.340 here not not here yeah don't no please don't yeah no no again we weren't above it for book laundering

00:43:03.180 but and again books right so just but but what i thought i was going to come away with this like

00:43:08.620 my moral of the story was like well if you see you know a youtube video that has a lot of views

00:43:13.560 and you're trying to decide whether or not it's worth watching like actually look at the comments

00:43:17.060 but that doesn't even work so i don't know like because i i do i i fall for it i will look when

00:43:24.400 i'm like go through my youtube feed and my recommended stuff like i will look at how many

00:43:28.960 views something has and if it has a lot of views i'm going to be more likely to choose it and

00:43:33.060 now i'm i know i can't do that and i don't know like what what would what do you do in light of

00:43:39.320 this information to try to to not be subject to that level of manipulation and to not get

00:43:45.140 caught in in the debtor than i knew internet what do i do well i think watch content that's

00:43:54.000 actually entertaining sure this is the no no no this matters more than you think right like

00:44:00.620 yeah i think discount content that when you go to it and you're like i've heard x person is really

00:44:07.560 big and they have a reputation for being really big and then i go to their channel and i'm just

00:44:12.600 like not this is kind of boring who's watching this yeah so basically even if people are talking

00:44:20.340 about i don't want to cast shade even if people say they're watching it like that doesn't you

00:44:24.820 have yeah use your own judgment so an example of this right okay i don't want to cast shade

00:44:29.560 because like smuggle on it is like on team or whatever do you see that smuggle on it and the

00:44:34.760 latest you know smuggle on it the vtuber right the fox girl conservative vtuber so the latest

00:44:40.780 what was it shoo on head stream yeah about commenting on hassan crashing out yeah it was

00:44:46.520 fun to see them together yeah but like i go i well i like her politics and everything and

00:44:53.180 some of her stuff the reality is she's just not that entertaining right and if i contrast her

00:44:59.240 views was how entertaining she is i'm like oh this is a little sus and i think that i need to

00:45:07.940 be more open to in my head calling out when i'm like who is watching this like what's the

00:45:16.980 entertainment value of this for people like at the very least was nick fuentes i'm like i get

00:45:22.860 the entertainment value and it does seem that he's heavily bought it but especially because 0.84

00:45:27.780 he's like cruel to his fans like live in the dream three daughters of what you're the gayest 0.99

00:45:34.000 guy ever you're gayer than gay guys that's crazy but i understand that like there's the thing 0.98

00:45:41.280 where there's like the hasan fans who are like women who like men demeaning them and there's 0.97

00:45:46.220 the nick pointes fans who are guys who like to be demeaned by people they look up to i don't

00:45:52.400 it's like not my thing speaking of smogalana the vtuber like the automated vtuber rig creation

00:45:59.620 system that you're creating for reality fabricator rfab.ai you should try it out malcolm's building

00:46:04.420 really cool stuff it should be working by the time so it's partially working right now right now it

00:46:10.320 will work for generating the vtube rig generating all the components here the v2 rib exporting it

00:46:16.260 in a file format that you can export to a v2 rigging platform but you're going to have to

00:46:21.420 manage the deformations yourself or i'm trying to automate that step right now but uh yeah i mean

00:46:27.820 you can get the basics with what we have right now well i wanted to ask because like when when 0.98

00:46:32.740 smuggalana on that collab tried to bow she just like just her just her her titties bounced is

00:46:41.400 are you eventually going to set up a rig that can do like full body tracking yeah i'll do titty 0.89

00:46:46.440 bouncing i just don't have it no not titty bouncing i just mean like she wanted i will have 0.95

00:46:51.460 you have ever well obviously you don't even understand my titties will be bouncing out of 0.95

00:46:58.460 control with this rig i hope the most luscious the titty simulations you've ever seen no look 0.98

00:47:06.060 they should never be luscious that makes them sound like they're hairy you want luscious you 0.98

00:47:11.560 hear hairy yeah you want buoyant titties well not buoyant buoyant i now think of like a woman 0.98

00:47:17.740 swimming and her titties are like bobbed up in front of her well they do there's this scene in 0.98

00:47:24.000 the original austin powers movie where there's like a woman in a hot tub and i like her titties 0.55

00:47:28.920 do seem to float in this like one scene and i just something like that's that scene sits with

00:47:34.080 me it was like do breasts float they have a lot of fat tissue in them so they probably do so they

00:47:39.400 would float yeah especially if you have like a jacuzzi bubbles but like i just remember being

00:47:43.040 like, huh. Your breasts aren't big enough to have experience. They really are. My poor, 1.00

00:47:49.140 my poor English muffins. I would be honest, I would find that disgusting. Like there are guys

00:47:53.920 who are confused by this. For me, like the big, I find it so gross, so disgusting. Well, it's for

00:48:01.360 someone and I hope that you build into that. But what my, my larger question is clearly with

00:48:06.520 feed trooper rigs titty bouncing is not something that hasn't been solved it exists however she 0.98

00:48:13.660 clearly wanted to do a full body gesture and was prevented from doing that will you make it possible 0.51

00:48:19.340 to like bow and dance eventually no that will take too much time never mind girl can dream

00:48:25.200 you've got to keep in mind what i would have to rig i mean i will eventually do this but right now

00:48:30.860 i'm just focused on the basics okay what we will have by the time this video goes to life is if you

00:48:36.020 handle the rigging yourself the image output is all going to be fine now what i'm working on now

00:48:43.420 is getting the auto rigging set up as well nice and just for context god yeah because no some of

00:48:52.600 our vtubers are people who use animated anime avatars of themselves or animated characters

00:48:58.980 one is like an orange i think like the biggest twitch streamer right it's just an orange potato

00:49:03.240 a potato a potato yeah angry orange was like an early youtube thing which is not popular anymore

00:49:09.080 oh you're right no okay fine he's he what he's a thing he's not but anyway where you use an

00:49:14.280 animated thing you you and like basically there's software that tracks your face and then uses that

00:49:20.220 to like puppet the the illustrated puppet and so typically what people do will have done up to this

00:49:26.300 point is you have to commission an artist to make every small part the eyes the nose the ears the

00:49:30.580 different variations. And then you upload it to the software. And then the software is what you

00:49:35.340 use to record your videos and streams and interviews, et cetera. What Malcolm is doing

00:49:39.400 with Reality Fabricator is making it possible to submit a prompt to AI to create your own

00:49:46.060 character, which you can then upload to that software and animate in all of your videos and

00:49:50.180 interviews and streams without having to commission art from someone. And even if you have an existing

00:49:55.340 vtuber setup you can use ai to generate outfits or accessories that you may not have had

00:50:00.980 to save you time to to speed up turnaround and it's really cool like hearing him go through

00:50:05.840 the creative process has been humbling and impressive bruno's working on this too it's

00:50:11.580 really cool stuff yeah let's see i didn't take down the site because i was doing an update right

00:50:15.100 now yeah it's working great okay anyway that's cool stuff but okay yeah i agree with you and

00:50:22.700 you know what i think that like younger people and younger generations are already really hip

00:50:27.680 to this something i've noticed with our six-year-old son octavian is so like we were we were trying to

00:50:35.220 find videos on youtube explaining the the the feather dongle on quail's heads that little

00:50:42.620 it's actually six feathers at least on the california quail but what's going on over here

00:50:46.920 you know and so we're trying to figure out like why those feathers are there there's not really

00:50:50.760 good explanation but we found all these videos about quails and a bunch of them were ai slop

00:50:54.660 and i thought well maybe kids wouldn't really know when a video is ai like generated like it's

00:51:01.100 obviously like a thing but not bad quality like they honestly weren't terrible they gave the

00:51:05.960 information they were better than many human created videos but it was still ai slop

00:51:09.240 and octavian 100 with that 100 accuracy was like oh this was made by ai and yeah this is why it's

00:51:18.880 Good to engage them with AI at a young age.

00:51:21.320 Actually, yes.

00:51:22.580 And because he talks with AI all the time.

00:51:25.000 Yesterday, he was just talking with Chat2PT all night.

00:51:27.500 It was really funny.

00:51:28.680 Chat2PT is so sycophantic though. 0.99

00:51:30.660 So yeah, anyway, I do think that younger generations

00:51:33.980 are going to become much more sophisticated about this.

00:51:37.320 And not only will they know when something is AI sloth

00:51:40.300 and do they already,

00:51:41.580 but I think they're going to know like,

00:51:43.300 okay, this was served to me algorithmically,

00:51:45.180 but it's fake because it's it's not hitting and hopefully over time yeah things that don't hit

00:51:53.260 are fake yeah yeah like if you're not feeling it and but this is important because i think

00:51:58.920 what's happening with a lot of people is they're like well and because i do this all the time like

00:52:04.940 it's not hitting with me but i guess it's still true or the zeitgeist or important because it

00:52:12.560 has so many views or because it keeps getting served to me. Like it just keeps showing up in

00:52:17.680 my algo when I scroll. And one, this is just another argument, another point in favor of not

00:52:23.320 scroll-based content. Like if you are consuming content based on a feed, stop. You should be

00:52:29.680 searching proactively for stuff that you like and then leaning into channels and creators that

00:52:34.580 clearly do their homework and are good and real and trying. And by real, I don't mean doesn't use

00:52:41.420 ai whatever but like just per your judgment but yeah i don't know anyway it's it's there's going

00:52:48.980 to be a lot of great job by the way researching today's interview episode like i didn't know any

00:52:53.680 of this this is fantastic it changed my view on a lot of things i don't have been thinking about

00:52:56.820 it for a long time and that's what i come to conversation for oh and you know what i need

00:53:02.860 normally a you thing but i wanted you to work on the vtuber rigs i need a a shorter sword

00:53:09.020 that i can flail around on stream better oh because this is too large for your yeah so i

00:53:15.020 need something i can really hit our kids with if you know what i mean well what if you like 0.98

00:53:19.060 you need you need a butterfly knife and you need to look oh god you're gonna you're gonna 0.98

00:53:23.060 watch all my fingers like by the end of the stream i got no fingers left 0.97

00:53:28.620 this is your face is all bloody yeah that's how it's gonna go and then of course toasty's gonna

00:53:33.760 great ai thing to have in the background of a guy like playing with a knife and like as this room

00:53:39.060 goes on fingers start missing this is the face gets increasingly cut yeah honestly though i feel

00:53:45.100 like a lot of streamers are just watch a clavicular stream right at the end he's hospitalized

00:53:49.020 and yeah he's he's just his face is descending because he you know gets all cut up but it's

00:53:54.840 god it's just so strange all this is just so strange we're being manipulated and puppeted

00:54:00.740 but there is no they there is no man you know like illuminati doing this it is all these unique

00:54:08.380 systems that are just performing in a line with incentives i just realized my classmates who i

00:54:13.620 thought had like immediately started bigger sub stacks and like youtube channels than us

00:54:17.080 were they botting because i've watched some of their stuff and i'm like it's not very good

00:54:22.180 no call it no call it i know like one it may not hit with us but no per the the internet

00:54:33.840 revelation that we had thanks to not aldous huxley we know that the internet is to a great

00:54:41.720 extent less educated third worlders not to like okay no not to be mean for that but i'm talking 0.89

00:54:48.280 about my other classmates who are not they're all right who are trying to sell highbrow yeah 0.58

00:54:52.500 colin colin caters to the everyman the not even developed country everyman just the everyman

00:54:58.800 yeah and he's great and we love and he's very smart and he's amazing he's great but yeah the

00:55:03.500 ones who are like i'm selling highbrow content i'm selling interviews with founders i got mock

00:55:09.440 cuban on my stream it's like who fucking cares what cuban thinks in 2026 man grow up 0.82

00:55:15.100 um i bet it's all bought in now that i think about it i hadn't thought about it because i 0.94

00:55:20.860 hadn't when i saw my family member bought so callously i was like you don't think anybody

00:55:26.420 i don't know because they they were also successful in generating viral content in the past

00:55:33.020 like actually well i don't know let's see because it was 2009 when when you first saw

00:55:39.120 viewbotting on youtube i'm gonna have to look at the timelines i i don't know some stuff is

00:55:45.480 really viral some stuff is not i don't i don't i don't i'm just having such a crisis of but anyway

00:55:51.700 this episode is definitely dedicated to devon nash who's just i i have a lot of viewing to do

00:55:57.060 because he's done a lot of like per his unique position as someone making money in this ecosystem

00:56:04.180 and understanding like the the unit like as asmund gold understands it's happening

00:56:09.520 but he has no interest personally in like understanding the unit economics going into

00:56:14.580 discord servers like watching watching people work like that's that's a deep level i just

00:56:20.720 want to explore this more but i yeah i'm just i i'm never going to look at the internet the same

00:56:24.360 way again because i thought dead internet theory was mostly about content and now i realize it is

00:56:32.960 it is literally it is engagement it is restacks it is image downloads like

00:56:39.520 it's crazy uh but i love you very much i love you too you are an absolute princess and i uh i guess

00:56:49.140 i'll go down and talk with steven minka right after this yeah and work out work out some dinner

00:56:54.400 plans and i will try to wrangle the younglings maybe shovel some of the sand out of our house 1.00

00:57:01.080 that's the new thing are you going to kill even the younglings simone going after the video is 0.85

00:57:06.260 like her lightsaber like in that scene with anakin the younglings they have crossed every straw 0.53

00:57:13.760 oh they they crossed every straw yes they did they did they crossed this i'm not good with

00:57:21.840 the brain thing this is like one of my failure zones scenarios i mean i don't know if i'm gonna

00:57:28.700 to be able to get because texas look he's like totally crushed out on my oh you can't even move

00:57:33.880 of course i can't i'm immobilized based on his he's just all i can't i can't there this is red

00:57:41.400 yeah i love you too early tonight you should try to go about early tonight god i want to i've had

00:57:47.500 one long pounding headache all all day bye bye give us money for her headache subscribe to patreon

00:57:57.100 or subscribe to take away my headache but actually like our subscribers are awesome thank you so much

00:58:03.060 for those of you who do yeah i know for the ones who are subscribed like that's really cool like

00:58:06.640 it makes it feel like you know when people don't like us on youtube or whatever it's like well you

00:58:10.600 know at least some people like us i'm like we get so much of our episode content from them and

00:58:17.320 they're smart and like so we just farm you for everything content money we're the worst our few

00:58:23.560 our future children spouse it like yeah it's bad anyway bye bye for the leaflet stream me too

00:58:32.860 two days two days have you have you watched any of my long streams with her i've only seen clips

00:58:38.540 no i because i have my my view my view list is so freaking long you don't have time for 10 hour

00:58:45.960 crash out streams they make me want to do twitch streaming if i'm gonna be honest yeah i've learned

00:58:53.540 i'm really good at it like i'm gonna be i've like watched other church streamers

00:58:58.580 i'm astonishingly good at it well guess what you're gonna you're gonna discover quickly

00:59:02.900 why maybe you're not gonna want to do that but we'll go into it so i guess i might as well just

00:59:06.820 start oh it's all fake oh okay so you've got a store that you made here with like little huts

00:59:13.860 behind it? Okay.

00:59:14.940 This, this is the, this, that, that is the person box line, and that is the person by

00:59:21.300 place, too. And that, that is the, that is the, that is the place where you can get furniture,

00:59:28.720 and you see the carpet, that is the carpet place. And you see the fridge, that is where

00:59:33.480 all of the food's on, and you see all of the fridge, that is the toy aisle.

00:59:38.240 Oh, that's the toy aisle?

00:59:39.720 And right there, it's the hair salon.

00:59:42.620 Oh, that's the hair salon right there?

00:59:44.140 And this is my AI buying place right there.

00:59:48.300 Oh, this is where you get AI?

00:59:51.020 Yeah, to buy.

00:59:52.300 And what would you do as the AI that you bought?

00:59:55.020 Oh, I'm going to make it help me do something to buy.

01:00:00.300 Wait, so what is over here, Octavian?

01:00:03.380 Oh, that is another home.

01:00:07.200 That's something you made in this store.

01:00:09.420 Okay, so I'm going to...

Based Camp - May 15, 2026

Far More Famous Influencers Are Fake Than You Realize

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