How Did the Left Lose the Internet？ The Deck Was Stacked In Their Favor
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Summary
For years, the internet was supposed to be a bastion of progressive ideals. But now, with the rise of right-wingers, the left is losing the battle for the internet. In this episode, Hazel and Simone talk about what happened to the old days of the internet, and why the right is winning.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, Simone! I saw a video recently that I want to play a little clip from that argues that the
00:00:05.620
left, and this is a leftist arguing this, has essentially lost the battle for the internet,
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and the statistics she provides are compelling. So I play the video clip.
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There is no alt-left pipeline, because for the longest time, the internet was the alt-left
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pipeline. Maybe it doesn't feel like it anymore, but for over a decade, it felt like the internet
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belonged to us, the progressives, the feminists, the socialists, the Bernie bros, the techno-revolutionaries,
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the Wikipedia editors, and not just Tumblr, the internet. And then, first slowly by the co-opting
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of beloved online mascots like Pepe and Doge and Joe Rogan, and then, all at once in the last year or
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so, the right took over the internet. In the 2010s, the culture war was ours to lose, and we lost.
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We buffed that man. Having blue hair and an ambiguous sexual orientation, that used to be
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cool. Know them. I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. It'll happen to you.
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Anyway, the left wing of American politics is the Democrats, I'm sorry to tell you. They are pouring
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money into throwing cringe yet lavish coconut-themed parties for online influencers, and plot twist,
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I was one of those influencers. And everybody is rightfully dunking on it online. Meanwhile,
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the Republicans seem to have an unstoppable wave of organic support from basically every
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podcaster who doesn't talk, like, with the NPR voice. Today on our show, we're gonna be discussing
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the ways in which, like that. So I ask, what the happened? Now, you might be saying, Hazel,
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you're catastrophizing, okay? The internet is still very left, or at least a liberal place,
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Look at it! Look at it! I want all of you to look at it!
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Almost all the most popular channels on YouTube, not to mention the, um, the other, all the other
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ones, including Rumble? Should, should I be posting my show on Rumble? Uh, yeah, so they're all right-leaning.
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This Media Matters report shows that nine out of the top ten online shows had right-leaning politics,
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and across the internet, the right-wingers took the lion's share of the views. This is a big deal,
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this has real-world effects, obviously, because now they're calling the 2024 election the podcast
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election, and Trump is also doing this. He specifically thanked podcasters in his inauguration
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Now, you hadn't seen these statistics before. What are your thoughts?
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This is so surprising to me, because as you know, I mostly consume leftist media on YouTube,
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and so my perception is that YouTube is just a socialist, Marxist, super left-leaning echo chamber,
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and that we are among the very few that, that post content that's conservative, aside from like some,
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you know, conservative niches, but the mainstream stuff is super progressive.
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Okay, so what happened was, is she saying this happened after Trump was elected?
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By the way, I was just watching a left-leaning video in which this one financially, she's supposed
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to be financially focused, but she's just incredibly politically polarized, interviewed among other
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people, Princess Weeks, a very progressive YouTuber, and she literally bleeped out President Trump's
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name. Like, it was a bad word. Yes. Yes. Like, this is how, because it's too, maybe because it's
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too triggering. Anyway, like, this is how, how, I'm just so surprised by this, right? Like, in light
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It actually makes sense if you think about, if I think of any YouTuber or online personality
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who rose to fame, let's say from 1990 to 2010, my assumption is going to be that they are left-wing.
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Because you could not have gained all that political, or, oh, sorry, all of that, all
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those followers without being banned if you weren't progressive.
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Well, that's part of it, yes, which is why they, because they had a lot more editorial control
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But they were just all progressive. But what I mean is if you were like a neutral content
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creator, right? Like, if you were MatPat, or you were, you know, shoe on head, or you
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were, you know, you're creating content that is like, maybe sometimes it touches on the
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political, the Green Brothers or something, or you were, you know, the, the show that
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became RealPolitik, what did he do? The, the bald guy who I like, Vsauce, you know, all
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of these individuals, you assumed, even if they don't talk about their politics, are far
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The Green Brothers, the, aka the Vlogbrothers, are super leftists.
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Yeah. Or, oh, who is that lady who did like the song, Do You Want to Date My Avatar?
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Which is actually pretty cool. Anyway, she's far leftist as well and everything. But now,
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Yeah. Now I often take the opposite approach. I, I generally think anybody who's risen to
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fame within the past 10 years, if, if they don't, if they only talk about their politics
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casually or not explicitly, they're typically rightists.
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So they were just closeted rightists when being a rightist would have otherwise gotten
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No. It's a new class of creators. It's, it's new people who were not famous before.
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So they just got famous now? Like, after the second Trump election?
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The people who got famous in the past 10 years, largely speaking, like, Asmogold. Asmogold
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was not famous before 10 years ago. Like, he, he may have had some-
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So you're saying this, this, this rise first started and they were first able to accumulate
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Nuxinor. You know, no, I don't think it was the first Trump election. I, and I'm going
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to argue why I don't think it was the first Trump election actually, because let's talk
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about like what I think caused this, because I've been trying to like actually dig my brain
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on this. And I think part of it is the way that each side relates to positions of power.
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If I look at the online lefty YouTubers, none of them, and I mean, literally not one that
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is popular that I am aware of is identifies as a Democrat. In fact, they are quite antagonistic
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to the Democrats and see them as not real leftists. You know, like Hassan Piker is never going to
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say I'm a Democrat, you know? No. And I'm, and I mean this, you know, not only will he not
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say he's a Democrat, he let on his show, you know, AOC and Bernie, like two of the most
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leftist Democrats. And he was roasted for it by his fan base. And so part of the question
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is, is the right like that? It used to be, it used to be. And when I think about right
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wing influencers, because for a while we've been trying to like build a coalition of them
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that we can invite to stuff. And it used to be normal when I'd reach out to them and
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I'd be like, look, I'm trying to put like a Republican coalition of influencers. And they'd
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say, well, I'm not, I'm not a Republican. And I'd be like, everything you post is, what are you
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talking about? And I realize that what you used to have was Republicans, and you had this on the
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left as well, is fear a few things. One is, is that there's easy social status to be gained
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in just, you know, shooting down everything, being like, oh, that's not cool. That's not cool.
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Because clearly the implication is, is I am cool. I'm unique. I'm better than this. Yeah. Well,
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because it's, it's very, I mean, any large political party is going to have its faults.
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So it's much easier to be perfect by being like, well, I have nothing to do with them.
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And then you would see post election cycles, the left was like this, right? Like
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they'd say, well, obviously, you know, I might, I might, even if I, I might support the Democratic
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party, obviously I hate Hillary Clinton. Obviously I hate, you know, they'd always say they hate
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whoever was like the de facto leader of the party. And you actually saw this was Republicans during
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Trump's first election cycle to an extent where people would be like, well, I'm a Republican,
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but I'm not like a Trump is Republican. Right? Yeah. That did happen a lot.
00:08:09.940
And that's changed dramatically. Now it's not to say we don't have Republicans who have
00:08:13.660
turned against Trump. You know, you can see our episode. Why did the racists and anti-Semites
00:08:18.920
turn against Trump? You know, Nick Fuentes, leather apron club, David Duke, Richard Spencer,
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all of them very aggressively try to get their followers to not vote for Trump. It's not like
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they were tokenly against Trump. They were aggressively wanting Trump to lose and Kamala
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to win, to basically treat the light a lesson for not caring about their little snowflake
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opinions enough. And they showed a few things, one that we don't need people like them to win
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elections and there is no point in catering to people like them. But then two, which, which I
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thought was very interesting is when they turned against Trump at the same time, many, many more
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mainstream Republicans, even people who may not fit a stereotypical Republican mold became very
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pro-Trump. Like, for example, Asmogold. In his political positions, Asmogold is left of center.
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In everything I've ever seen about him, Asmogold is left of center. And yet he is without hesitation
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and unironically willing to say, I support Trump. You know, creators like Leaflet, who we've had on the
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show. I love her. She is very centrist in her actual opinions, maybe left of center, yet she
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will unapologetically support the Trump administration. You will see individuals like,
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I mean, you just sort of say, you can consider us, right? Like we unapologetically. I, historically,
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if you'd asked me a few cycles ago, I would have said, well, you know, I agree with a lot of the
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things the right does and I, and I vote for them sometimes on the ticket, but I don't, you know,
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agree with Trump. And the question is, is why did that change? Because I think this is a big part
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of why the right's been able to win is that you're able to have fun within rightist circles and like
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unironically support things. And it's not just about shooting down everyone else. But then the
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other thing that I've noticed is we have our episode where we talk about the diversity of thought
00:10:07.640
within each political faction. And you can see there's very little on this graph I'm putting on
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screen here. Very little diversity of thought within modern leftist culture and a very wide
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degree of thought within modern rightist culture, which, which provides a secondary benefit, which
00:10:21.080
means there's a lot to talk about. Um, like why would somebody watch two hours of a right-wing
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podcast? Cause you don't know what's going to be said. Like, I don't even understand when people
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are like, I want a two hour left-wing podcast like Joe Rogan. It's like, but you know, all of their
00:10:36.460
And that's an interesting point. Yeah. But although, I mean, I will, I will argue that
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there's, I don't consume a lot of right-wing content because I do feel like a lot of it's
00:10:49.860
No, I mean, you do get curmudgeon right-wing content. Like recently we've ragged a few times
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on Sargon of Akkad or Carl Benjamin. And I like him as a content creator, but he very much takes
00:10:59.760
like the curmudgeon approach. And, and you know, and that's one of the reasons, like, I don't
00:11:04.500
understand how we have the highest overlap with his channels. Cause while I like his
00:11:08.640
channels, I always know exactly what his opinion is going to be on everything.
00:11:13.460
And I never hear an argument I wouldn't have predicted from him. And so I'm often like,
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why did I just spend an hour watching that? Like that wasn't anything that I didn't expect.
00:11:23.880
I feel the same way when watching Brett Cooper's content.
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I do feel the same way about Brett Cooper's content, which is why I don't understand why she's
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so popular. Um, I honestly say this, I like her like as a person, she seems interesting.
00:11:34.980
But I know exactly the main reason to watch Brett Cooper's content is when she's talking
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about celebrity gossip. Cause she's got great celebrity gossip. Um, but no, she does. And
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you know, she's going to be honest and based about it. Right. But when it's politics stuff,
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So it's almost like choosing the skin through which you want to consume certain contemporary
00:11:57.300
That's a very interesting way to put it. Right. The skin. Yeah. Well, and, but that's what
00:12:03.160
makes the conservatives different from the leftists. Right. If, if you go to conservative
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content creators, yes, you have the, the skin walkers who it's just, am I watching this in
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a Brett Cooper skin or am I watching this in a Sargon of a cod skin? Right. Right. And
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I will note that I actually do not think Brett Cooper, this Pearl clutch is Sargon of a cod.
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She, she doesn't do that. No, she's not. No, no. She comes across. Well, she, she doesn't come
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across as curmudgeonly and her default isn't to just poo poo something. She will stand up for things
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or express support for things. Even if she doesn't have a universal feeling of safety that they're
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going to turn out perfectly. Yeah. But, but there's, there's that style of content creator
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and the left has a lot of those, but then on the right, you know, you've got your like
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Curtis Yarvin or people like us or, you know, content creators that you can go to and you're
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like, okay, what is actually their take going to be on this? Like I, I know if I read a Curtis
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Yarvin piece or a Munchess mole bug is what he's often called. I'm going to have, I'm going
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to come across at least some ideas I have never personally thought before. And that's going
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to be stimulating for me. I don't really have any leftists like that. Even when leftists
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break the mold and people can be like, well, Scott Alexander is a leftist. And it's like,
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and this, this actually, I think shows, shows the problem, right? The very fact that the New
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York times tried to do a hit piece on Scott Alexander and many mainstream people on the
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left right now consider Scott Alexander, a rightist shows why the right has grown so much.
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Scott Alexander is not a rightist in literally any belief that I'm aware of other than that.
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Well, you know, we should challenge the system at times and, and think outside of cultural
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I got really mad at the New York times piece that like put him in the same category as like
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Richard Hanania. And it was like, look at all these rightists who have turned on Trump.
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You have like Richard Hanania. And then what's her faith? The one in who we've had on the show
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How can I blink on her name? But yeah, she's so cool.
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Anyway, she's fine. I don't, I don't care about her betrayal of Trump. She's not an American.
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Alex Kishuda feels very strategic, but, but, but Scott Alexander was never pro Trump.
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Not even a little from anything I've ever seen. He wrote like multiple, you should vote for
00:14:32.480
And yet he's considered a Republican by like the online newosphere. And I think that this shows
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why a lot of people who are like him may eventually just be like, why am I even trying to like side
00:14:45.500
with you guys? Right. Like, why am I even trying to make you guys happy? If you didn't grow up in
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the previous generation and have this older interpretation of the right, you just be like,
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why am I fighting this when these guys are nice to me and accept me and you guys treat me terribly?
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Which again, I mentioned this story before, but it's one that I think is always worth retelling
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because I think it's very important to the right. And I think it shows that the rightists
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who go to events and rag on like gay people at an event or something like that, or attempt to
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make people feel uncomfortable for having, you know, different beliefs in them instead of just
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having honest debates. These individuals are not friends to the movement and they hurt us in the
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long run. The famous case here being one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse or the fifth,
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the Muslim lady, whatever her name is. Omar. Omar. Yeah. So she, she goes to a psychologist and
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she's depressed. And the psychologist is like, well, I know this isn't your brand, but have you ever
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thought about praying? And so she tried and she has become a Christian. And a lot of people are like,
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but why didn't you become a Muslim? Right? Like you used to be a Muslim. Right. And she goes, well,
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you know, of all the years where I was attacking people of faith and, and many people on the left
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do feel this way of all the years I was attacking the right, they kept coming at me with love and
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kindness. They kept coming at me with, I'm praying for you. I want, I hope you get better. Like, I hope
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you, you know, can see the light and it was people on my own side, whether it was Muslims or, or other
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atheists who would send me all the death threats and say, you know, I hope you die or I hope you
00:16:19.420
Well, that's interesting that Muslims are doing that. Well, of course Muslims do that to apostates,
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right? But, or people they would see as apostates, but it shows that this matters in terms of the
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final breakthrough with an individual. You want someone to come join your side. You don't treat them like
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a jerk. Okay. Even if they are currently not within your team, I feel like leaving the door
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open and engaging in honest debate is how we bring them over. But yeah, well, that's, that is what
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cultural sovereignty is about. It's also, it's not about being opposed to outside ideas. It's about
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having a lot of different ideas and having debates and exchange between the two of them and learning
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from each other and also switching when you find a better ideology. Yeah. I think another thing,
00:17:06.500
and I wasn't sure if I was going to do a whole episode on this is, and I've really been confused
00:17:11.920
about this is why doesn't the left stigmatize in other, the communists and the Marxists within their
00:17:20.060
movement? Well, why, how could you, when those ideologies feed into the logical conclusion of a
00:17:26.440
culture that is built on victimhood? They are the victimhood political alignment.
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I guess, but I mean, the right has done a very good job of keeping what I call like our,
00:17:37.500
our trans extremists out of the movement, right? Like these are the, the racists and the anti-Semites
00:17:42.900
and stuff like that. Yeah. But the racists and the anti-Semites are more often than not associated
00:17:46.840
with the Nazi party, which was extremely socialist and progressive. I mean, like from the perspective,
00:17:52.700
right. It was like, well, we're victims and we are going to, you know, provide, you know,
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social services and social support. I mean, okay. The, yeah, they did demonize this, you know,
00:18:01.000
like certain, like a, well, a lot of different groups, but they still, in the end, that was still
00:18:05.720
a very, by our modern standards, progressive leaning culture victimhood and of let's have the
00:18:12.340
government pay for everything. Who do not realize that the Nazis was a progressive party and was a
00:18:17.640
socialist party because people often be like, oh, they're not actually, they were actually
00:18:21.080
national socialists. No, but, but people are like, oh, but the name doesn't necessarily mean
00:18:26.420
that. So let's review their actual policies. Okay. Because their policies were more socialist
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than Bernie Sanders or AOC. Hello. Yes. I'm just going to point this out. They were, they were
00:18:36.700
the perfect picture of socialism. The Nazis famously reduced unemployment through state-driven
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infrastructure projects, very famous to U.S. socialists. Like who was the one during wartime
00:18:47.440
that did the new deal? The, the, the, yeah, the big new deal or the, it was like the new deal plus
00:18:52.860
is what the Nazis implemented. They, they built the Audubon highway construction, public building
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works, stadiums, monuments, et cetera. There's so many Nazi monuments and buildings you can see
00:19:01.140
and a re-rememberment and military expansion. By 1936, unemployment dropped from 6 million to under
00:19:07.280
1 million. So that's huge. State subsidized leisure. They organized state vacations, cruises,
00:19:14.040
opera visits, and cheap cars. The precursor to the Volkswagen Beetle. Wow. And this was called
00:19:20.600
Strength Through Joy or Kraft de Freud. They had welfare and family support. They had generous
00:19:26.160
maternity benefits and child allowances and marriage loans. Fenestrate Simone for suggesting
00:19:31.560
a medal of motherhood, which France did first before Germany ever did. But, oh, ask for unlimited
00:19:36.960
maternal leave and, and, and ask for a support. But what's really funny is, is you ask an AI this and
00:19:42.460
it'll be like, oh, but these policies were partially racially restricted. And I was like,
00:19:46.500
they are with modern socialists as well. Yeah. If you look at the way welfare is handed out,
00:19:51.540
is handled out on racial lines. If you look at the way- Even COVID vaccines were often prioritized.
00:19:55.960
COVID vaccines were handed out partially along racial lines. If you look at the, no, you just see
00:20:00.980
this over and over and over again. And there was like a UBI project in San Francisco, only given to
00:20:05.800
black people. Well, that was supposed to be reparations, but I mean, I guess kind of like the Nazis
00:20:10.160
were like, well, reparations for the people who- No, hold on. It's very important to note,
00:20:14.300
the Nazis believed that they were a discriminated group. Yeah. Again, it was victimhood culture.
00:20:20.920
It's, it's an inherently progressive associated thing. So I don't, I think it's not, there hasn't
00:20:27.060
been any effort on behalf of conservatives to fight Nazism because it's not a conservative thing.
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It's fundamentally what progressivism is. And I agree with that.
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It's epitomized by an internal locus of control, by we don't believe in victimhood. We believe in
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what we have control over. And we believe in granting ourselves the rights to pick ourselves
00:20:47.020
up by our bootstraps. Just give us the freedom to try to do that. Give us the chance. The American
00:20:52.980
dream, the true American dream is having a shot at it. And then this, it's been perverted by progressives
00:21:00.360
to mean like, oh, the American dream is I should be given this all by default, which was never the
00:21:06.240
American dream. That was never what brought immigrants over. Immigrants came over for a
00:21:09.900
shot at these things, not from some socialist promise to be given these things.
00:21:15.460
I agree. And you see the hatred of this from their hatred of Starship Troopers. We always point out,
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they hate the idea of a system where you have to earn it to have political power. You need to make a
00:21:27.380
sacrifice, which is all you need to do. You don't need to join the military. You just need to make some
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sort of a sacrifice in terms of spending two years or a few years working for the government.
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So this is, this is their core fear is having to make a sacrifice. They want to control other people.
00:21:42.400
But why are these people allowed? Because if you look at somebody like Destiny, I love one of my
00:21:46.720
favorite things to do is watch progressives, try to explain why progressives can't win elections
00:21:51.740
anymore. And Destiny is, you know, he's not a communist, right? Like he, he understands these
00:21:59.640
more extremist positions aren't going to win. And that these individuals who hold these positions
00:22:03.760
often protest progressives instead of Republicans that they often hate on. They're not actually trying
00:22:09.860
to win elections was his point in this video he did on this. And I'm like, yeah, I agree with you.
00:22:14.380
And so my question to you is why, why do you keep these people within your, your community?
00:22:19.000
Right. You know, why don't you make your community hostile to these people? And I think the part,
00:22:25.060
part of the problem for the progressives is, is that the young excited people are all part of
00:22:30.480
these fringe movements. Whereas within conservative communities, it is the opposite. It's often, I mean,
00:22:37.020
most, you know, when I look at like the actual, I'm not talking about like the genetics people or
00:22:42.240
something. I'm talking about like the actual racist, racist, you know what I mean? Like a lot of these
00:22:46.340
people are like older and out of touch. They're, they're all the race supremacists. Yeah. Because
00:22:51.380
the human biodiversity people, I don't know, like more often than not, like their, their wives are
00:22:58.040
different. Yeah. Oh, every, every human biodiversity person I know is in an interracial relationship.
00:23:03.400
Like the idea that this is a racialist supremacist movement is effing ridiculous. Now we are not human
00:23:10.740
biodiversity people ourselves. I'm just pointing out that movement does actually have a lot of like
00:23:13.860
young engaged people within it, but I don't really consider it to be a particularly racist
00:23:18.540
movement. When I look at the actions of the people who are within it, which are pretty much all in
00:23:23.060
interracial relationships and have interracial kids, which to me does not signal a belief that
00:23:27.800
their race is superior to other races. It's that they're asking questions and you can watch our
00:23:33.540
videos on like, are certain races smarter than other races? They basically are like, I can understand
00:23:37.720
how you could come to this idea, but you're probably wrong in ways that matter. But like,
00:23:43.140
not to go into that now, the point I'm making is that on the right, those sorts of individuals,
00:23:47.700
like the HPD bros, they generally hate the racist races. Like they're not like friends with like
00:23:54.860
your, your, your Richard Switzer or, you know, your, your, those sorts of individuals. Right.
00:24:00.820
And, and they are the first to yell them out of the room. You know, the, the, the, the young
00:24:06.580
MAGA writers are the first to yell these people out of the room, not yell them out of the room,
00:24:10.400
but, and that was the thing also about like the way that this works. If you go to like our conference
00:24:14.560
at the first peronialist conference, like Richard Switzer came, right. He, he felt uncomfortable and
00:24:18.720
he didn't come to the second one. Right. Like that's not like we were mean to him or anything,
00:24:22.560
but it was clear that his sorts of ideas are not normal within this community. It wasn't like,
00:24:29.200
there's no place for them. He, he didn't have a place for them because it's not,
00:24:33.040
they don't have merit. Yeah. And, and, and keep in mind, this is not me saying there's,
00:24:39.800
there's a big difference between like somebody who's like, oh, well is, isn't, you know, Kevin
00:24:44.840
Dolan a racist. Cause he's like a desert nationalist. Right. And I'm like, that's just
00:24:49.200
like the Mormon version of being like a Zionist. Right. Like if you just want some Mormon state
00:24:53.160
and, and I'm not gonna, you know, hate on somebody for preferencing people of their own
00:24:57.720
cultural group, right? Like, and sometimes cultural groups have ethnic overlaps, but
00:25:02.540
pretty rarely within the United States, for example, it's usually going to be like Mormons
00:25:07.120
or Catholics or, you know, weird tech bros like us. And am I going to disproportionately,
00:25:11.980
for example, hire a weird tech bro over a, a, you know, like a devout Mormon? Like I like Mormons,
00:25:17.600
but yeah, unless it's for a sales position, in which case I'd probably hire a Mormon always.
00:25:22.260
But you know, it, it, it, it makes sense to preference people who are culturally similar to you.
00:25:27.720
And so it's important to differentiate like hateful racism and being like, Oh, I, I culturally
00:25:33.820
preference people who are similar to me, but the right has done that. And the left hasn't had these
00:25:38.500
nuanced conversations. Right. It hasn't been like, Oh, you're like an actual racial supremacist.
00:25:44.500
Like when you go out there and you say something like white people can't be racist, you should
00:25:47.580
immediately, anyone in the movement should just be like, what, what are you doing? Like, we need to
00:25:51.580
have a conversation about you saying that, because that's a racist thing to say. That's like saying
00:25:55.640
you can't be racist against Jews. Like, which is basically what the Nazis did, right? Like it's a
00:26:01.900
huge problem when you can create a subjective judgment around which groups can be discriminated
00:26:06.300
against and which groups can't, but you do this. Right. So that's a big problem.
00:26:13.440
A little bit. And I think that you're right. I think that part of the problem is, is that
00:26:17.500
because they define the right as Nazis, they can't see where it's woven into their own culture
00:26:23.880
because they have this incredible amount of cultural control and an incredibly narrow degree
00:26:28.900
of thought, as we see in this, you know, chart of, of, of ideas on the left and the right,
00:26:32.940
you don't get a lot of interesting conversation happening. So there's not as much reason to watch
00:26:36.120
it because, you know, it's so easy to commit thought crimes. You know, if I even was a pure
00:26:42.260
leftist and I tried to talk for two hours every day or an hour, every day, like our podcast,
00:26:45.980
we'd be defenestrated by now. You know, we'd be just said that we're, we're, you know,
00:26:50.000
because we would have made mistakes. You, that's why they keep their media short,
00:26:55.380
tight and incredibly editorially controlled. That's why leftism worked in the age of the
00:27:00.520
newspaper and it doesn't work in the age of the podcast. Yeah. But I'd love to hear your thoughts
00:27:07.480
on the, specifically the concept of the rightists being willing to support the Republicans and the
00:27:13.980
leftists not being willing to support the Democrats. What do you think it's, it's that
00:27:17.000
phenomenon? Cause that's not one that we've never really gotten deep on. Yeah. I don't know. I
00:27:23.060
mean, we, we definitely saw that earlier. I think a lot of this has to do with just the very, very
00:27:27.760
blatant betrayal that Democrats felt with the 2024 election and just being openly lied to
00:27:34.600
multiple times. I mean, one, the very undemocratic selection of Kamala Harris for the presidential
00:27:40.380
candidate after Biden was found. Validating every single claim that DI is just racism.
00:27:46.000
But then also the clear gaslighting followed by the whiplash of, oh, actually, yeah, he's not fit
00:27:53.820
to be president. And we systematically covered this up. Yeah. I just think that that's what I see cited
00:28:01.540
the most. And I think beyond that, there's the issue of Bernie Sanders being truly beloved, especially
00:28:09.080
among the online content class. And then being systematically sidelined and not just that, but being,
00:28:15.100
but admitting to being systematically sidelined. Yeah. So between those things, how can they not
00:28:22.460
disassociate from the democratic party? They're extremely mad. And, and, and by the way, I didn't
00:28:29.420
finish all of the socialist thing the Nazis did, by the way, they also did price and rent control.
00:28:33.500
They regulated prices, wages, and rents to prevent inflation. They did strict rationing and consumer
00:28:39.100
repression. They also had universal employment. Everyone was expected to contribute to the
00:28:45.020
people's community. Unemployment became a moral failing, not a structural issue. And those that
00:28:50.240
didn't work were harassed or in prison, very similar to most communist and socialist systems.
00:28:54.380
But broadly speaking, they were socialist by any modern standard and very socialist. They were
00:28:58.960
basically AOC, like Nazis are AOC, the same, same broad political position. And they both hate the Jews.
00:29:05.040
So don't worry. You know, they've, they've converged, but any final thoughts, Simone?
00:29:13.040
we're conservative influencers have more reach online now because democratic influencers
00:29:24.700
can't associate with the democratic party anymore. But that's, that can't be it.
00:29:29.520
I don't think that's part of it, but it's, it's that they are all forced into being so ideologically
00:29:34.840
extreme that they, they, they, because it's all about conformity to this form of extremism,
00:29:42.440
as we see from the chart, that they're not able to create interesting content.
00:29:48.180
Okay. Oh, they got boring. You're, you're basically saying like, because any non, any heterodox
00:29:53.380
idea got kicked out, all that was left was boring conformity, which then-
00:29:57.520
Boring conformity or Hassan Piker. And then when you, sorry, what was the point I was going to
00:30:03.660
On top of that, like another reason why they, they lost.
00:30:07.820
That they, oh yes. Then the ones who were still producing more moderate content were essentially
00:30:15.180
harassed into producing less and less of it and became more and more mentally ill over time.
00:30:20.720
You know, I do actually, you know what, that's a really underrated element of this because many
00:30:24.720
of the progressive YouTubers that I follow who've had five plus year careers on content
00:30:33.700
platforms talk about really basic activities as things that are like difficult for them
00:30:43.160
One is, you know, you have, this was like ContraPoints or Philosophy Tuber, like they
00:30:47.460
basically stopped producing content because they were getting so harassed for trying to take
00:30:52.380
I mean, keep in mind harassment because when I see ContraPoints post and ContraPoints is
00:30:57.880
doing a decent number of like Natalie, when does a decent number of interviews, like I
00:31:01.660
just saw another interview go live ContraPoints or Natalie, when also was recently on a bit
00:31:12.340
What I hear is that basically a lot of references, not to, to videos, not being produced due to,
00:31:17.640
due to controversy, but rather to, it's just a lot of work. I think it's more has to do with
00:31:23.960
mental health affecting the productivity of these people.
00:31:27.720
Well, that's part of it. I mean, like consider like Jenny Nicholson, who we mentioned before,
00:31:30.780
like basically produces nothing anymore. If you look at the nostalgia chick though,
00:31:35.360
this was specifically harassment. Remember she had a point that people didn't like. And so she
00:31:40.300
got harassed and now she basically doesn't produce things anymore. And she was a big progressive
00:31:44.260
voice for a while, which is that a lot of big progressives were essentially harassed out of
00:31:49.660
YouTube by progressives, not conservatives, because there is such an expectation of ideological
00:31:54.720
conformity. Well, a lot of them also went on to platforms like Nebula where they just felt safer.
00:32:04.160
Yeah. Well, and they're, and they're not producing content that people are engaging with as much. And so
00:32:10.520
Yeah. Like I feel like Nebula was kind of an early, I not, and I don't mean this politically,
00:32:15.060
but like an early form of blue sky where they're like, Oh yes, let's go to this new enlightened
00:32:19.080
platform, but then no one's there. So they just are all kind of talking to each other in a very,
00:32:23.880
very small audience instead of the broader, like YouTube is where the video discourse takes place.
00:32:29.360
X is where the, this is what's happening right now. Discourse is taking place. And if you choose to be
00:32:34.820
off those platforms, even if you're going to some enlightened wild garden, you're leaving the
00:32:39.660
discourse. So that makes sense. But no, I think, I think it's underrated because I was telling you
00:32:45.580
offline. Well, we also talked about the, the self isolation of the Democrats, which has lost them
00:32:51.060
a lot of access to platforms. Like blue sky is Democrats being trapped in a crystal by Trump.
00:32:55.480
Exactly. Like, but I was telling you how Abby Cox, who is a YouTuber who I love, who just talks about
00:33:01.260
fashion history. Like it, you know, it shouldn't be political, but I mean, the politics does shine
00:33:05.560
through talked about how exhausting it is just to make like some Etsy listings, which that's a before
00:33:12.760
breakfast activity for you. Yeah. So I think that, that it does come down also to people falling into
00:33:20.100
progressive therapy culture, which breaks them more and more and more like a PC that needs to be
00:33:28.240
defragmented. And they just like, after a certain point, like their Tetris wall is a mess and they
00:33:36.020
can't break through anymore. Like it just, it's gridlock. Yeah, no, I, I totally see that. I love
00:33:41.940
that analogy of the Tetris wall, just filling up over time as more and more progressive ideas and social
00:33:47.480
therapy norms fall into the, as victimhood creeps as the, as the therapy takes over suddenly. Yeah.
00:33:55.080
Anyway, I love talking with you for dinner tonight. Please reheat those chowm bao patties.
00:34:00.940
And what I love, what I'd love to try tonight is maybe, could you like toast some bread with butter
00:34:08.960
for like a bun? Because we've got white bread, right? I think we also have hot dog buns. Would
00:34:13.600
you like a hot dog bun instead? White bread will taste better. Just white bread, just like buttered,
00:34:19.300
toasted white bread. Yeah. And then cut up some onions and give me some salad with it.
00:34:23.980
Okay. And I'll just put it in little, like, I'll make little sliders out of it.
00:34:27.720
Okay. How many slices of toasted buttered white bread?
00:34:32.680
Two. Okay. I mean, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to eat a ton. Don't serve me more
00:34:38.940
than four at a time. Okay. So four patties, two slices of white bread, salad, cucumber, yes or no?
00:34:45.940
Yeah. Cucumber. Cucumber, salad. And with the cucumber, you can make it either way this time,
00:34:52.160
whatever's easier for you. Okay. And I'm not making more of that sugar dressing, therefore,
00:34:57.240
because I don't need the sugar dressing for this. Yeah. You're having it with buttered toast.
00:35:01.200
And then maybe I can make flaky butter biscuits or something like that tomorrow,
00:35:04.820
which would be more. I just figured this would be like a fun, different way to eat it. Well,
00:35:08.260
and the kids are really into sandwiches right now. So I can, you know, it's useful. Everyone wins by
00:35:13.400
this. So thanks. Thank you. I love you so much. Thank you for being my mated person, as they say
00:35:23.920
in the romantic book that we learn. Bonded for life. Oh no. Oh, it doesn't even make sense. Why
00:35:30.660
would I like a woman for life if I'm not like super naturally attracted to her?
00:35:34.640
Well, no, that's the, you know, you don't have to feel personally responsible for it because it
00:35:39.000
was fake. It was forced on me by God, clearly. So it's not your fault. Yeah. For everyone who
00:35:47.240
criticizes you for, you know, clearly she's out of her league. Yeah. She bonded to her. Don't you
00:35:54.020
know? I think it's a romantic. He didn't have a choice. Yeah. I love you. I love you too.
00:35:58.600
You're perfect. And you are my, my bonded. You hit record. Okay.
00:36:03.720
Mm-hmm. So how's it going? You learn anything new today?
00:36:11.080
The, the, the reader suggested YouTube video of a Marxist analysis of what was that book
00:36:19.420
called? Morningstar Milking Farm. Okay. Tell me, tell the audience about this because I can't
00:36:25.440
believe you went through this analysis. Well, I'm glad, I'm honestly glad a listener suggested
00:36:29.980
because it's hilarious. And in the context of the episode that we ran on romanticy, there
00:36:35.820
is this extremely smutty romanticy novel called Morningstar Milking Farm about a corporate facility
00:36:43.320
where women bring minotaurs to ejaculation to create basically a Viagra pill for a pharmaceutical
00:36:50.260
company. Cause they just, it's a, it's the minotaur semen extract that produces the desired effect.
00:36:57.460
Wait, is this, is this written for women? It appears. Cause it is a romance novel written
00:37:02.620
for women. And this one YouTube creator went to just do a satire of it, like read it and
00:37:11.880
then roast it online. And then she reads it and she's like, actually, this is a Marxist critique
00:37:17.080
of late stage capitalism. And she goes on this long rant about how like the facility represents
00:37:26.120
late stage capitalism. And this two-faced like, you know, front room is all cutesy farm decorations.
00:37:32.120
And then you go back and it's all sterile hallways and how, you know, over-educated women, uh, can't
00:37:38.880
find a job and end up having to sell their manual labor to produce, you know, products in the name
00:37:45.100
of vanity. And, uh, it is, I highly recommend it. Just search Morning Star Milking Farm, Marxist
00:37:56.340
late stage capitalism on YouTube, and you'll find it. And that was, it was very, it was very
00:38:04.900
enlightening. Enlightening, enlightening, Simone. It was great. I, I don't think I could read that
00:38:11.600
book. So I'm glad that I just read her, her Marxist critique of it.
00:38:16.440
Well, I, I got obsessed with a series that I read the entire thing, by the way.
00:38:22.560
Oh, yes. Yes. So I was, when I was doing that episode, because we had talked about like Omega
00:38:28.840
verse in it and I was like, okay, I, I should like Google around, like I'm doing, I'm like,
00:38:35.260
okay, I'll Google around. Are there any Omega verse stories that a guy wouldn't hate?
00:38:38.960
Oh, for men, Omega verse, but for men. Okay. I was like, okay, I'm looking for girl,
00:38:43.540
girl stuff. Cause I don't want, I don't want any guy in, in my romantic fantasies. I do not want a
00:38:48.220
guy. Because they're not going to be. And that's why actually keep in mind that if you just, for
00:38:52.480
example, Google image search, image search, the term Omega verse, you're getting all boy,
00:38:56.960
boy, boy covers that are. Yeah. So like a lot of women also prefer erotic material that don't
00:39:02.620
have any women in it. Oh yeah. Why do you want to, I mean, I'm not into men, right? Like,
00:39:06.720
so why do I want to see him? But so I found one Omega heroine wants her alpha villainous.
00:39:12.440
And I read the entire, how many chapters was this? 141 chapters, basically three books in,
00:39:20.000
in the past few days. Cause I enjoyed it so much. It's just cutesy basically.
00:39:24.940
How does it compare to love advice from the great Duke of hell? Because I just died for that.
00:39:29.440
I considered it about the same, but was a different vibe. How does it compare to the
00:39:34.940
lesbian BDSM? What were, what were those books called? I liked it more than Sunstone.
00:39:39.640
Sunstone. Okay. So better than Sunstone equal to love advice from the great Duke of hell.
00:39:45.260
Yeah, but different. This is okay. So this was about maximizing when we talk about a story
00:39:50.880
I meant to masturbate a specific emotional subset. Okay.
00:39:53.960
Sweetness and people being really dedicated to each other as partners.
00:39:57.000
That's what the Sunstone series is about. No, no, it is too tangential. The, the plot is not as
00:40:04.880
interesting. So if you look at this story versus Sunstone, which is another good story that I'd
00:40:09.360
recommend, but it's about BDSM if you're interested in that culture. I didn't like a lot of it is like,
00:40:14.680
oh, I, I did all this stuff to like prep for sex. I did all this stuff to prep for whatever
00:40:18.980
and, and to prep to make my partner. This is like, I helped them with a test. I helped them get into
00:40:24.600
medical school. It's just straight to the act of love of service of help.
00:40:29.280
Right. And, and I should note, if you're getting into this and you expect something not safe for
00:40:32.900
work, it even censors kissing. And that is the most not safe for work thing. I wonder if there's,
00:40:38.880
so they must be catering to the laws of some country that don't, that doesn't permit showing
00:40:43.900
lesbians kissing, which I'm thinking might be Russia because the Duma last year or no, previously
00:40:49.680
they had, they only added to this legislation had had passed legislation. I think that, that
00:40:54.160
prevented any promotion in the media of gay or lesbian lifestyles. So I bet this is to enable
00:41:02.240
distribution in Russia, but I don't know of Chinese regulation against gay or lesbian media. Whereas
00:41:08.020
in Russia, I know that that is not permitted. Interesting. So, so as a guy, I'm forced to watch
00:41:14.640
men in, in my erotic material, I'm forced to read books with men and I don't, I don't want to do that.
00:41:19.240
But no, it's, it's a, you, you might like it, Simone, if you like, like stories that are like
00:41:25.200
the, it uses the Omegaverse trope just to make it so that there is no question. Like it basically,
00:41:33.140
it makes their relationship not gay because in an Omegaverse world, you have women with women and
00:41:39.760
they can have kids. And you have men with men, men get pregnant in the Omegaverse all the time.
00:41:43.980
Yeah. So basically it removes all of the problems with them being lesbians, but in terms of like
00:41:49.920
the story. Oh, because they can, one can get the other pregnant without there being.
00:41:53.880
Yes. And it creates with like scenting and marking and stuff like that, uh, replacements for modern
00:42:02.020
concepts, like giving someone a ring or something like that, which may have lost some of its power or
00:42:07.120
like, Oh, well, we don't actually want to do like a real sex scene. So we'll just have her sniff the
00:42:12.080
girl or something. Right. Like, okay. I'm like, okay, whatever. Like, I actually appreciate that
00:42:16.860
more because I didn't want a sex scene. I just wanted them to be happy with each other. Right.
00:42:21.720
Which is, it's very interesting to see how it's done in practice. Cause I had never actually read an
00:42:28.720
So, so now I am the worst that I actually found one that I thought was pretty decent.
00:42:40.920
What she means is that Matt got mad at her for giving, giving up that she actually reads all these
00:42:48.760
And you said, I only do it to go to sleep. And I'm like, you're on book number three of the series,
00:42:53.980
It takes me at least 30 minutes to fall asleep and a book can help. At the end of that period,
00:43:01.340
I'm more likely to fall asleep. I have to get through novel material every night. So even a 20
00:43:07.780
hour book isn't going to last me a lot of time. It's like saying like, oh, how dare you refill your
00:43:14.900
prescription of Ambien? Yeah. Because your prescription is filled with, with porn, Simone.
00:43:23.980
You're such a model full of porn. And you're the old man. He's like, I need this for my heart.
00:43:28.640
Okay. All the readers say I'm busted, but whatever. If I'm, you are so busted, Simone.
00:43:36.300
The problem is I'm still reading All Systems Red by Martha Wells and loving it. The problem is
00:43:41.260
I'm not going to sleep. I'm not falling asleep. It has to be poorly written smart.
00:43:45.740
You've got to get back to your, your werewolf billionaire story, Simone. That's what's truly
00:43:51.320
going to put you to sleep. All right. All right. I'll get started here.
00:43:58.940
Let me get my weight right here and I get milk in my mouth.
00:44:05.520
Um, I'm going to get away from the cold milk and extra trail where I'll get away and medicine too.
00:44:23.800
Okay. You've got Mr. Bear here to cuddle with you?
00:44:27.660
Okay, buddy. So we'll give you milk and medicine. Do you want some mac and cheese?
00:44:36.220
Okay. So you just want milk and medicine. Is that right?
00:44:40.040
Okay, buddy. Is there anything else we can get for you?
00:44:49.860
All right, buddy. I'm going to get that for you, okay?
00:44:57.660
Or do you want cold milk because you're too hot?