Leaflit： Streaming, Controversies, and Creating a TTRPG
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Summary
Leif from Leafletandasari joins us to talk about how she got her start in the gaming world, her love of nerd culture, and how she started her career as a streamer on twitch.tv. We also talk about the history of Leaflet and Asari, her inspirations, and the future of the company.
Transcript
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hello this is malcolm and simone and i have a guest here today who is one of the channels that
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i actually watch the most outside of our own which is leaflet from leaflet and asari and if
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you haven't seen her channel she does well i'd say like right leaning by today's standards takes
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maybe not by old standard takes on a lot of topics but she has a lot of experience in i guess i'd
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call it nerd culture early in her career she worked at companies like riot games and blizzard
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i know you designed lux lux is one of the ones that i that's probably the that's probably the
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most people know about yeah looks yeah and then the spartan looking one yeah pantheon before the
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rework yeah and i really like you and one as an example of and i wanted to talk with you as well
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as through your evolving fan base as somebody i think you started in streaming right like like
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like streaming video games and stuff yeah mostly video games i started actually i think
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2011 2012 holy moly yeah there is a site called own 3d back then that it was like before there
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wasn't twitch twitch became twitch is justin but their competitor was own 3d and then they folded
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and then i i messaged justin i was like hey can i get like partner because partner on own they're
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like nah and i'm like damn it so then i kind of just stopped streaming for a bit and then yeah it
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ended up coming back later so you built your audience on streaming and now you've i don't know
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is youtube like your main goal right now or do you mostly stream and youtube's like a secondary
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thing for you the funny thing is is they're they're they're kind of separate because i do the live
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streams but i actually don't manage too much on youtube i don't really have time for it because
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i'm as you know i'm working on like the other the game projects and we'll also have like novels
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coming out and stuff so we're working on all i'm working on that stuff because i'm like the lore
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person for the company so i'm working on that you're doing like a game we had archon recently who's
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also doing a game we're doing a game i like this i like this new thing i'm like you know after that
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everyone was like all the all the like based influencers need to be making games because this is
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where we're going to get like interesting ideas what is actually before we go further i want you to
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talk a bit about this game because i'm just interested in like sure it's a it's basically
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i i play a lot of like tabletop a lot of dungeons and dragons pathfinder and some other japanese games
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and i want we wanted to make like our dream game so our idea was to make that game but like free to
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play and uh constant updates because like one problem that like like dungeons and dragons has for
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instance is everyone has to get the book so sometimes you have people that don't have the book
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and then updates like say there's like a really broken mechanic in the game they can't really
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update it you have to update it in like a magazine right and then now nobody has the same rules because
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not everybody saw the magazine so the idea that behind our games everything's online and we patch
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every like two to three weeks so there's like new classes new items new races being added all the time
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that's fun okay wait so what what what's the theming of the universe actually everything is linked
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so the stream like like me and like my mom and the novels they're all linked in the same universe
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well okay i don't know the novel so tell me about is this a fantasy universe is this a generic fantasy
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what's the twist on the generic what's the it's kind of like like uh it's fantasy but has like high
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power and like high high magic sort of people that like things like anime would like it yeah yeah
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okay i i think i know what you mean when you say high power do you mean sort of like high elf culture i.e.
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like high culture high power fantasy like there's a lot of like magic and like like some abilities
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are super ridiculous like there's a chronomancer class in our game and they can just stop time
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and like they can they can just completely stop like a non so that we have a differentiation between
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like heroic units which are like the like player characters and then the non one's called grunts and
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almost all the enemies are grunts except for like bosses and grunts are basically susceptible to like
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these big like magic like insta kills and like time freezes and stuff like that so like the dnd world
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before the i forget that event i don't actually the truth is i don't know much about the dnd lore
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itself because i've always homebrewed i've always been like that person to homebrew everything so like
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hold on you you at least played through that recent dnd game i did i did i played that one yeah
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boulder's gate okay so so it was implied in boulder's gate sorry i just i'm so i am a nerd
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for lore i love deep lore stuff me too i love it okay okay so dnd actually the lore is not that good
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there's some like really good lore if you're like into lore i can be like oh you got to go into this
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lore like this lore is great dnd top tier lore is either going to be vampire the masquerade
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absolutely top tier lore or who else has top tier lore warhammer 40k has top tier lore
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not warhammer fantasy and but anyway so indeed they mentioned it a few times in this is that the
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world used to have like tons of magic and then the god of magic i think her name was mithra she's
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the one that wess's face like had a crush on or something anyway like the world somebody cast like
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a two high level spell and it ended up breaking oh yes to try to like take her power or something
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and it ended up removing her for a split second but then that ended up like causing all the cities
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to crash because they were all floating and then she made it so no one could use top tier magic anymore
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anyway people will probably draw that comparison to your world it's it's it's possible i mean like
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the whole world actually came about from dnd games so we played dnd for like years like this this
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campaign i think i have i have some ridiculous amount of hours in like world 20 but i dm'd multiple
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campaigns in this world and then that world became the foundation for like the streams and then the
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novels and then the and then we're like let's just make a ttrpg of it so we have like all of it is
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like kind of the same interconnected world yeah what i really find interesting about what you're
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doing here or what we're doing or what arc's doing at the moment is at this really interesting part in
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terms of gaming media history where there's this huge market opportunity because you look at what
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you're doing right and like for example dnd pathfinder stuff like that should own this market but dnd has
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like you know made orcs like orcs were racist so we're gonna have them be like normal the the
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pathfinder guy said that he learned that like jd vance is like apparently like a super nerd and
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like into magic the gathering and the guy who created pathfinder or something thought that he
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might play his game so he was like well this isn't a game for him or people like him um and i'm like if
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you're just like killing like like the huge part of the nerd audience then they've created this huge
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opportunity and i look at video games in this there was this article in wired this last year 2024 the year
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that killed gaming and then i like go and look at the charts and i was like did people spend less
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in gaming in 2024 no it went up in fact they spent double what they spent 10 years ago so how did
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it kill gaming oh you just mean that all of the big players got wiped off the table in one year
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like could there be a better year to go into things yeah it's it's it's crazy because i remember when we
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were developing the game we were like did the dungeons and dragons just blow themselves up like in
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the middle of what yeah just like all all the stuff like they've been doing and like there was
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like that like wheelchair accessible dungeons it just allows for that kind of takes you out of the
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fantasy and tries to like inject like like some real like people play games like dungeons and
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dragons because you want to experience like you know something else right yeah because sometimes life
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sucks you want to get away from it right and it's like they're trying to like re-inject like the same
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things and and i think a lot of it is at least in in my observation it seems like there's a certain
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subset of people that have to play literally themselves in like games and it's it's so weird to me i just
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because because their life is a power fantasy um when you can force no i mean i think that there's a
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class of people that has learned certain hacks i mean what do we all want in life but validation
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and there's a certain like like for other people to see us the way we see ourselves there's a certain
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class that has learned social hacks for forcing validation but once you have fallen into a category
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where you can force other people to validate you in the real world like it's very hard i think to break
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this way of seeing yourself within a game setting because there's no point for a power fantasy or
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anything like that are you guys familiar with like tumblr tumblr yes i used to i used to i've tumblr
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in action i was obsessed with but i was also like into tumblr like unironically as well because i love
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like nerdy subcultures like we've done some recent videos on stuff like the omega verse and stuff like
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that's how much i'm into like that's a hilarious one okay i didn't see that video you guys made
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i want to hear more about tumblr continue so like it's kind of funny because i wasn't
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personally like into tumblr other than just like kind of joking around but my brother was so i got
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to see like kind of all of this stuff kind of forming and like bubbling up to the top
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right you know what i mean you saw like all the all that stuff happening and you're like
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yeah it's just crazy people on tumblr it's like there's no way and then all of a sudden started
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to become like more and more mainstream like wait a minute what's going on here it was like one of
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those like pools that you hear about in like those those stories about early life where it's like
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bubbling and like you hear about all the organic compounds and everything and now it's like
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yeah walking around like eating people it's like i didn't think that would turn into dinosaurs
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i remember distinctly like the time like the i know the exact moment i was like i was like
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oh what the hell is this and it was when my brother got into an argument with someone and
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he comes out of it and he's like how can they argue with me i'm you know i'm gay and i'm a person
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of color so how can they even how can they argue with me and i remember thinking like what does that
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mean like what do you mean they can't argue with you that doesn't make any sense right like like
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that doesn't make your argument like automatically correct or automatically wrong you know it and it was
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so weird seeing like that kind of intersectionality just kind of like sneak its way into like you know
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but i i agree but i think it's so natural to human thinking you know i think good games can really help
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you understand different time periods and i'm playing through a game again right now expeditions
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rome which i played before when it takes place in in rome and there's all this stuff around like the
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words you use for people or talking to people of different classes and and it just sounds like so much
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oh you know i'm of the praetorian class how dare he question anything i say like and i think that
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people in human history always did this and if anything the equality that we enjoyed growing up
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was a historic anathema and i think that if if anything like society might be benefiting because
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the class that chose to assort their authority other others truths to be like inefficient and witless
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and is quickly being deposed uh one of the people said to me and i just can't believe that we're
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living and it's so true that the if you think about it like yes we live through like as we call the
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urban monocultures control of our society for you know the past i'd say like six seven years maybe
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maybe a little bit longer but in terms of like a cultural force dominating the largest empire in the
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world at the time it's the shortest any has ever held power by like the most astronomical margin ever
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it's it can't the problem is it can't hold up all all it needs is a little bit of light once you
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actually see it and you understand what they're talking about of course it it doesn't hold up to
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anything so yeah well but we need to worry about this as well and it's one thing i always point about
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like people don't like all this complaint about woke right stuff but i think people need to call it out
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like these people on the right who are like now we've won now we need to like matt walsh recently
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he did a thing saying that like guys who are into video games are like gay and then he said yeah or
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like effeminate and he was like and the guys not that there's anything wrong as being gay he meant
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that to mean like effeminate and less than masculine and then there's there's the other one that was like
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last year he did one on like how guys who are into anime are all like pathetic and yeah i remember that
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i remember that one then he people like yeah just need to be expelled like we need to you know push
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back or we're going to end up exactly where they were this is i actually wanted to make a video on
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this for the longest time about how one of my biggest worries coming out of this is just like
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the pendulum swinging way too hard the other side yeah the other way because again like i'm you know
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i'm not i'm not like even though people might say i am i'm i don't really consider myself to be that
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far right so it's like i i don't want to see the the pendulum come back and swing and hurt a bunch
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of people that had nothing to do with any of this you know absolutely yeah but i would say that you're
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actually like watching your content you're you're pretty centrist right these days yes yeah i wouldn't
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even say that you're like you're to the left of the right you're pretty much like jd vance oh yeah
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it's like it's like the meme with elon musk it's like it's it's like you're you're kind of there in
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the center and then things pull so far to the left that now you find yourself more on that side right
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yeah but i think we're in a good place because i don't remember when the left was gaining power
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like anybody saying like hey are we going too far with this whereas i hear this sort of across the
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board and sort of my influencer friends now and i've seen very little willingness to budge
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actually sorry zero willingness to budge on stuff like the new rights position on things like gay rights
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like absolutely nothing like the old right they're like okay and now you're going to change your
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position on gay rights fuck no i'm not changing my position on gay rights like what what are you
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smoking so hopefully we can maintain the position but we'll see so hold on i want i want to do what
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i originally wanted to do which was like do a study of your career and sort of what it felt like
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starting as a streamer because you didn't start with political intentions at all yes and how you
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moved the various controversies how they moved you etc okay uh so so the thing is a lot one sentiment
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that i i've heard is like oh like you know now that trump won she's like this but the thing is i've
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always talked about these things it's usually during like a late night session where i'm playing a
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different game and then we'll be talking about this stuff so i've always kind of talked about this
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stuff and always kind of held the same beliefs it's it really is kind of just coincidence because
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what happened was again like i said because i'm working on the game and i'm working on the novels i didn't
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have time for youtube so two of my my mods one of one of which is my producer approached me and they
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said hey i want to learn how to edit videos so like can i can i run the channel because you're not using
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the channel that much and i said okay sure i you know fine so they basically take whatever i i put
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up and then they take it they edit it they they throw it up they do all the thumbnails for me
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and then we split it that's hold on pause on this before you go further because earlier you're like
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i don't pay much attention to youtube and i was like you do daily fully edited videos
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throw this i don't pay much attention now i'm learning it's one of your digits okay that makes
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sense i i do i do some like sometimes i'll do an edit on the video but it's mostly like it's mostly
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you know my my editor now who's originally just one of one of my mods from twitch and and one of my
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producers that are kind of working on it and they're they're they're helping me out with it
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because i just i just because i'm i'm taking care of so many other projects and and also like we have
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like a company like like our company like angel sword studios is like we actually like we actually
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manage like another talent as well and we're getting a new one like like soon yeah like like
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yeah thank you but it's it's again it's like so much stuff that is really kind of a godsend that
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they were like you know you're not really using the youtube channel and like you know you could
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probably expand on that just talking about what you like talking about anyway and plus i mean my my
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my editors are are you know they're kind of more politically aligned with me so they're like oh we
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want to see more of that stuff so then they wanted to help create it and that explains so much that also
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explains how you don't see yourself because so i know you from youtube only and in youtube you are
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like 100 percent of political commentators um the way that they've chosen to pull your clips
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it's 100 percent political commentary i mean we were doing that before too right we were we were
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already kind of making that kind of content before the before the election and then the election hit
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and then it was like there was just so much news right like there's news every every hour and i'm
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sure you guys know about it like as content creators in the same space there's just like rapid fire news
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over and over and over again so there's always something to talk about so if you are not a
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youtube commentator you will not understand the struggle of this simone and i really want to
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maintain a channel oh by the way if you're wondering why she's not talking much in this
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video it's because the kid's crying really loudly she'll mention that at the end of the video and
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you'll be like oh that's why she hasn't been talking but simone and i really want our channel
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to engage with philosophy engage with religion engage with science engage with demographic trends
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and engage with politics and yet so much is happening so quickly it feels like we can only
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afford to engage in politics right now it's like okay so for example yesterday we did a video on the
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usa controversy that's huge right like that definitely needed a video but today what i'm skipping doing a
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video on shutting down the u.s department of education and the u.s department of consumer protection
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like that just doesn't even deserve an episode because just so much is happening so quick we
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literally might just end up not doing an episode on that which is wild okay so i want to keep going
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you doing it with your mom because we plan on doing this with our kids as they get older can you talk
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about how you got pulled into that oh yeah sure so me and my mom have always played games together
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like mmos and like we've always watched anime together and as you guys know doing cognitive
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creation it's like such a busy job like you barely have time to do anything so it got to a point where
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i wasn't able to i wasn't able to spend as much time with my mom as i wanted to like again we used
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to play games together all the time and it just became like oh i can't because i have to work at
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the stream i have to you know edit videos or or whatnot and then one day i had a suggestion i was
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like what if you just stream with me and so she was like you know i'll give it a try so we got her a
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little picture and she put it up there and she actually enjoyed it so after that i was like okay
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we'll just get you like you know your own your own setup for it and then like we can stream together
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we'll do a thing on sunday and so that's why we play every sunday together and sometimes she
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streams on her own now because she actually likes it herself now so yeah that's awesome okay okay and
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then talk about the early controversies that begin moving you potentially more politically sure so
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probably the biggest one was the discord one which i i did a video on that one yeah i did a video on
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that recently on the monkey one yeah it's funny too because when i released that video a bunch of
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people were saying like oh that was me that was me i was the person that like that they were getting
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mad at and then you you stepped in and he was like that was crazy and it's it's so wild because
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i didn't it's crazy how much impact one person can have like one person that just has bad intentions
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yeah okay so i'll tell you so i'll do a quick summary of this and then i'll tell you a quick
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story so the event she's talking about was essentially somebody this is during the blm riots
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that was like they're acting like monkey like literally meaning not like like the black people
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or anything but just like the rioters you know chimping out right like what what does that word
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mean right and you know people attack the person you defended them i think courageously i don't know
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if i would have taken that risk and then you never you never walked back from that position
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and then like a crazy person decided to try to ruin your life and like got your discord taken
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down but like we have a lot of do you know razib khan by the way he's a famous geneticist anyway he
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used to work for the new york times and now he does like a genetics blogs yeah he talks about well
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the types of things you're not supposed to talk about in genetics he's been on our show before
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he's done like he mostly talks about differences in ethnicities but like down to like really granular
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levels like different casts in in in india and stuff like that anyway so he he has this
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one crazy person where whenever he gets a new investor or whenever he's working at a new
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company they will call the company so he always warns someone when they hire him they go you're
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gonna get a call from rebecca here's a script of most of what she's gonna say and this is just
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something he has to live with his entire life yeah it's it's such a pain like having to having to
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deal with that like yeah oh what's worse is for some of my friends so there's this thing called the
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rationality wiki i don't know if you've heard of it they figured out how to do like really well
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in like seo results and so for a long time a lot of my friends because they would always come up first
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in search results even though it's just won by like one crazy former neo-nazi actual former neo-nazi
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by the way who's now like the same but like woke and so he just attacks all of these people and he
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gets it to come up very first like all of the sins they've ever committed oh my god that would just
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like destroy your career like i'm so like lucky i got a wikipedia article before that happened to me
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because now i can never be trapped but just like wow man that's scary anyway uh continue continue
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so this happens to you how do you like internally in terms of your like ideology respond to this event
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it's kind of rough because i'm not gonna lie if i'm i would be lying if i said that i it didn't affect
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me of course like you know you work so hard on on your content and building up your community and
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you know seeing it kind of all just evaporate because of one person is kind of it was it was
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distressing but at the same time it's like i'm not gonna let someone say that i'm not gonna i'm not
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gonna admit to something that i didn't do right and they were trying to they were trying to get me
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to say like oh yeah i yeah i'm sorry for being racist i'm like i'm not racist though so i'm like
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but it's so weird just like how how it went and like you know they they they basically told me
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oh you should go look into some you know kkk and nazi sites to find out like what what racist
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terms are like what are you talking about it's like how do you know like like what you can or
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can't say when the context doesn't matter right it is it is so interesting to me and there's there's
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a few examples of this that like are very very confusing to me so here's one example and who
00:22:47.420
knows if i get tarred and feathered for this but it's the term tar baby so people will say that tar
00:22:53.940
baby is a racist term for black people and i'm like yes it is a racist it was for a brief period in
00:23:03.060
like like an american history of racism for black people but it hasn't been for a long time but the
00:23:07.620
reason why i hold so much hatred to the people who want to remove the term from the lexicon
00:23:12.220
is the term tar baby comes from the stories of briar rabbit which was a black traditional african
00:23:20.040
children's story that we captured in the american lexicon and is a truly african contribution
00:23:28.740
to the the sort of american history whenever somebody talks about being thrown in the briar
00:23:34.600
patch or whenever somebody talks about a tar baby they are referencing uh traditional african uh songs
00:23:42.420
and and and and and myths that people fought so hard to bring over on the slave ships that people
00:23:48.660
fought so hard to give to their kids and give to their kids um in the most brutal of conditions
00:23:54.980
and after all that that that can just be erased by like a woke person is to me really really hurtful
00:24:01.680
because somebody at one point decided to use that as a racist hurt i mean it's it's kind of funny
00:24:07.860
because you saw the same thing with a lot of branding right like you've got the the chiefs for instance
00:24:12.720
aunt jemima uncle ben all of these things that were being kind of erased from and you know not even
00:24:18.180
you know with the case of was it the redskins they even they even wanted that right the the local
00:24:24.600
tribe did want that yeah yeah so it's it's kind of funny how it's it's sort of just like a
00:24:30.780
a crusade that's not even for them one of the yeah no one of the craziest examples of this is when
00:24:38.220
the blm movement was like we need to protect black culture and as such we need to like de
00:24:43.500
de-normalize the nuclear family like de-normalize the idea of a husband and wife raising kids together
00:24:49.380
and i was like did you know that in the 1970s black people had uh one half the rate of unmarriage
00:24:56.720
as white people in terms of kids the kids born out of wedlock were at one half the rate of white
00:25:01.080
couples that this current idea that it's like somehow black culture to be unmarried is just a
00:25:05.740
completely modern phenomenon and completely downstream of wokeism and it's it's messed up
00:25:10.280
that now they're trying to like cauterize this change anyway and i mean i mean the the fact of the
00:25:17.560
matter is like if you distill it down it it's a disservice to all of those communities like it
00:25:24.360
it doesn't do anyone anyone better to kind of promote like you know that kind of that kind of
00:25:29.940
behavior because it it's it's not good for people like financially spiritually emotionally like it just
00:25:36.700
it dehumanizes like everyone involved yeah well okay so here's one that i haven't heard that much
00:25:42.920
about and i am actually very interested about is your hogwarts controversy okay because it sounds
00:25:47.540
like you you personally at least haven't really crossed the like trans skepticism rubicon yet
00:25:52.280
and so you that that that puts you in a position where i had assumed that most of your audience
00:25:58.440
wouldn't be particularly surprised given the stuff that i hear you say you would watch something like
00:26:05.200
a hogwarts or say like i'm not gonna boycott this but apparently a significant portion of your
00:26:09.920
audience was surprised by this or at least a sliver enough to cause a a hubbub was that what caused it
00:26:15.880
or was it like the beast tuber community that caused it or like how did this get started and why was it
00:26:20.700
seen as weird so like the the there's in the vtuber community and just like kind of online on like the
00:26:28.520
loud vocal minority of like gaming there's a lot of people that you know they they they have
00:26:34.580
they have interests in their narrative not being tampered with at all and you know they they kind
00:26:42.640
of spread the whole jk rowling is is evil and she sell these bad things and i think it's
00:26:48.100
sorry i'm trying to formulate like how to say it but it's difficult you're entering a verbal trap
00:26:55.020
right now yeah yeah i have i have laid out from the floor it's the depth for me leaflet it's like
00:27:01.820
it's and the thing is i i really the funny thing is is like i have friends who are trans and like i
00:27:09.780
have nothing against against that i i draw i draw a very strict line of like when it comes to to
00:27:15.640
children because you know there's i mean there's there's that's a whole different thing right
00:27:19.880
but just in terms of of hogwarts i think it's just the the vocal people like who just don't
00:27:26.440
like jk rowling they just went out of their way to like attack anyone that was that was into it and
00:27:31.940
there were particularly a lot of those types of individuals in the vtubing community because the
00:27:38.060
vtubing community is like kind of honestly it's like kind of like a big hug box so like super positive
00:27:43.400
vibes all the time and stuff you know so it's like anyway people people i think they got
00:27:49.860
surprised because i didn't talk about this stuff as openly before around that time when hogwarts
00:27:55.360
came out i i have a manager and he's like maybe don't talk about this stuff it's like i really
00:28:00.060
want to talk about maybe don't talk about that stuff and it's kind of like that but so i would
00:28:04.120
talk about it like late at night or like like late at night i'd be doing like late night gaming i
00:28:08.540
played this bounty hunting game and then i'll talk about it then like different topics along those lines
00:28:14.060
but yeah you know one thing you mentioned there that i i often feel so we've had hope not hate
00:28:20.320
which is this uk thing they did this like undercover reporter like in our organization for like a year
00:28:24.720
plus year plus trying to find us saying anything racist or bad or anything like that couldn't find
00:28:29.320
anything which i'm really thankful for but like you know we've been numerous guardian hit pieces on us
00:28:34.740
everything so the news is always trying to get us and the funniest thing is is that's like if you just
00:28:39.180
sat down and listened to our actual content beginning to end even just like three episodes
00:28:44.560
you would find so much more worse stuff than you've been able to find and all of your like
00:28:50.040
dredging expeditions um and it's like the best place to hide something is like deep in a stream
00:28:57.840
yeah like late late at night like uh eight hours in 12 hours in
00:29:03.720
yeah i gotta be honest i think this no but then somebody's gonna cap you one time you know
00:29:10.440
oh who is that person who i i felt kind of bad at because they were a streamer okay so it was a twitch
00:29:15.100
streamer who worked for sweet baby inc and it was a woman or something do you remember when this
00:29:19.600
happened and her stream got capped was it she had like like 15 followers or something and so she
00:29:25.360
thought like nobody would possibly be capping her oh i know what you're talking about it was a vtuber right
00:29:31.060
yeah it was a vtuber yeah i i remember what you're talking about they said a bunch of stuff
00:29:35.840
and then like people found it of course because people were trying to dig up stuff on
00:29:39.340
on sweet baby inc yeah yeah damn well now i wonder was like ai what are they gonna find me saying i mean
00:29:46.520
i i my positions just get more extreme as i go on so i don't i don't think i'm like you i think that
00:29:53.180
like i've been maybe moving more and you've been have you have you feel like you've been pretty
00:29:56.840
politically stable or do you feel like you've been sort of i mean i i again like i used to be
00:30:02.480
kind of more libertarian and i think as as i've gotten older i've kind of found that the social
00:30:09.940
fabric matters a lot more than i used to think so i do i do see a little chipping a little bit like
00:30:18.260
over just from the ridiculousness like i don't want to deal with it you know it's annoying it's it's
00:30:24.240
annoying it's just like people screaming at you all the time and like who wants to deal with that
00:30:27.780
right yeah no it's funny i'd actually say like i used to be libertarian but like i'm not as
00:30:32.500
libertarian anymore because you got people like jd vance and i'm like yeah whatever whatever he does
00:30:36.220
is probably okay yeah i don't know simone you gotta talk more bargained at all you've been
00:30:42.360
completely quiet why don't you talk about countryside stuff with her countryside stuff yeah you're moving
00:30:47.140
to the suburbs because you didn't want to move i had to force you 30 minutes straight and she just
00:30:51.280
stopped so your time is actually great but yeah so have you moved to the countryside what what yeah
00:30:55.260
like i mean yeah i actually moved from california to yeah it's funny when i first when i first moved
00:31:02.780
i first moved to texas and my neighbors are like so where where are you guys from california and they
00:31:10.060
said y'all keep texas texas okay i was like don't worry i don't like any of this that's why i left
00:31:16.280
that is so good but fyi by the way simone grew up in san francisco oh really first moved to dallas
00:31:23.660
before moving out here yeah when i told everyone that i was going i was in the san francisco bay
00:31:28.780
area and they freaked out when they realized i was moving especially to dallas they're like at least
00:31:34.220
you can move to austin like they sort of thought austin was like well at least they're liberal there
00:31:38.900
and they were just terrified like as if i you know was tell her your gun story and by the way wipe
00:31:44.220
your teeth they're covered in makeup very nerdy i like it but okay so anyways the gun story is so
00:31:51.300
she moves to texas and her friends from san francisco are like you are going to be shot
00:31:55.900
simone you cannot move there she goes you know they're like shooting people in the they've got
00:32:00.180
guns everywhere simone had to like explain it was not like a public shooting range and they they did
00:32:05.240
not believe her they were terrified for her life you know i i had a i have a similar story to that
00:32:11.780
you want to hear it oh yeah go go go so like man it's kind of a sad story but my my grandpa used to
00:32:18.620
be super conservative super conservative and then what happened was as he as he grew older he ended up
00:32:23.700
being in the care of like more liberal family members and they cut him off of like fox they only
00:32:31.100
forced him to watch cnn and it was like like he would tell me like i just want to watch my fox leaflet i
00:32:38.440
just want to watch fox they won't let me and so like it was kind of like that it was kind of weird
00:32:43.100
it's really sad and then i remember just they just slowly like they would they would tell him like
00:32:48.540
like like like for instance he was going to vote for trump in 20 2016 he's going to vote for trump
00:32:53.480
and they basically told him like if you vote for trump we're gonna lose our job and all of our money
00:32:59.680
and all of our livelihood and so like he got guilted into voting for hillary and he told me like
00:33:05.920
this is like a big regret like i regret it i didn't want to vote for her but like i did
00:33:10.460
and so this kept going it kept going on and on and the last conversation i had with him before he passed
00:33:18.840
was he he goes he goes leaflet do you still carry a gun and i was like yeah i carry a gun all the time
00:33:26.860
and he's like stop carrying a gun because when the police find out you're asian they will shoot you
00:33:34.320
and i was like who told you that what's going on it was so it was the last conversation i ever had
00:33:39.860
with my grandpa that's so sad right yeah weird that that does make me very angry at i don't want to
00:33:47.200
say like your family members but like the wider but i i also oh by the way just just for audience
00:33:51.760
who like doesn't know it's it's for safety because of like the weirdos on vtubers and stuff like that
00:33:56.640
and like you you you even like stream with a gun from what i remember oh yeah i've got i've got ones
00:34:01.940
i i just like guns i have a lot of them but i always carry a gun for protection that is awesome
00:34:06.920
what made you decide to move like awake i mean because most people get so used to california
00:34:12.900
like the idea of leaving seems incomprehensible yeah obviously a lot of other things changed
00:34:17.900
either politically but like why did you decide to take the leap so it was it was really hard because
00:34:23.260
california has a lot of nice things you know a lot of bad things but there's also a lot of
00:34:28.060
family there but what happened was after covid happened and gavin newsom he he did a lot of
00:34:37.740
things like a lot of things where he had rules for other people but not for himself and he just
00:34:44.340
general like the general way that he handled covid and so what happened was he got recalled and like
00:34:51.600
larry elder went up against him and me and my mom were like oh finally like finally like finally
00:34:57.480
someone's gonna kick this guy out because he sucks right and they voted to keep him in and my mom
00:35:03.640
like she said leaflet this place is cooked like we're we need to get out of here this is this is so bad
00:35:12.520
like if if he can if he can win after everything that happened he can never lose so so we're like okay
00:35:20.060
and then so you know immediately literally the next month we started looking for houses we're just
00:35:25.460
like we're just out of here if it makes you feel any better about him one thing i'm really excited
00:35:29.380
about for this next election cycle because you know everyone thought that he was going to be like
00:35:32.400
the guy to be the next presidential candidate i hadn't i hadn't put this together yet you know he
00:35:36.960
had the olympic games happening in la right before that yeah like okay fucking half the city is burned
00:35:42.260
down trump's not going to contribute any federal dollars to this this olympic cycle the olympics has become
00:35:47.940
more and more corrupt every year like this is going to be the disaster of disastrous olympics
00:35:53.420
yes it will be entertaining i am i am here for it i've got my binoculars i want to see the
00:36:01.180
content goldmine and it's going to have a big trans controversy right in the middle of it because
00:36:07.780
trump has recently announced that he plans to deny visas to the olympic athletes that are going by a
00:36:14.820
different gender and of course gavin newsom's gonna put his his d on the table on the other
00:36:20.820
side of this issue and it is going to be a hilarious fight yeah absolutely yeah um where do you think the
00:36:30.520
future of america is like where do you see your friends and colleagues and other contacts building
00:36:38.760
their lives if not because it used to just be that like all cool people would typically gravitate to
00:36:45.920
like la san francisco new york maybe boston are you seeing a shift in that among people that you hang
00:36:53.420
out with and talk with a lot is it more dispersed now yeah well the problem is is a lot of these big
00:36:59.660
cities are just not affordable yeah it's it's it's impossible and and i keep telling a lot of people
00:37:05.740
that live in these big cities it's like you're not really out of the tutorial of life until you own
00:37:12.200
property because that's how they keep that's how like as long as you're paying rent you're literally
00:37:17.800
just losing money every month and it's just not affordable to actually like own a place in california
00:37:24.980
it's a million dollars it's not even the right career path anymore so if you're in like the
00:37:28.660
entertainment space for example i think we especially saw it after this election cycle
00:37:32.540
is like i used to want to be like a newscaster right like on tv eventually or something and now
00:37:37.760
it's like why would i want to be that like they get like lower ratings than like we did a thing
00:37:43.220
recently and like we were worth i i think like during the election cycle in terms of view time
00:37:47.920
each of us or our podcast alone so so together 14 new york times full-time stafford like nobody watches
00:37:55.460
like like the mainstream news anymore and and because of that like if you're on this pathway
00:38:01.500
to become like a an influencer or like a thought leader and one of the things i've realized by talking
00:38:06.640
to you is there's like these bubbles of thought leaders like you're in the bubble of thought leaders
00:38:11.820
that previously would have been actresses i think or voice actresses no i mean like you're an
00:38:17.580
entertainer entertainer right like and like we're in the space that like and you end up knowing everyone
00:38:23.080
in that space really quickly like and like with us like we know like i think it's so weird that like
00:38:27.320
we're like friends with people like curtis yarvin and stuff like that and i'm like like weird but
00:38:30.600
like we're in the intellectual intellectuals yeah space and the question is is you know can can you
00:38:35.520
we continue to build from here i don't know it's difficult like i know some friends in the space who
00:38:39.780
have built like really sustainable incomes but outside of this i think the real way to do this
00:38:46.160
is to build sort of i guess i'd call it like purage networks and then release products that people
00:38:52.320
was in our industry want whether it's games like the stuff that because one of the things i was
00:38:57.380
thinking about like my game releases i'm like how am i going to get this game in front of people
00:39:00.680
everything like that i'm like oh all i need to do is piss off the games media then reach out to my
00:39:05.120
friends like i've been on side scrollers a bunch you know i have contacts with like no grums like i can
00:39:09.700
get them to cover this stuff and i'm sure you're the same way right like yeah and i'm like oh shit like
00:39:13.520
that's everything you need to do to like get in front of an audience these days now i just need to make a good
00:39:17.700
product it's it's crazy just how things have shifted so hard like before only certain certain
00:39:23.560
people certain like larger companies had like the keys to all of the you know all of the kingdoms and
00:39:29.260
like now it's kind of being more distributed amongst like you know individuals which is which is great
00:39:34.660
yeah but also the weirdly like isolated social circles has also been really weird i don't know if
00:39:40.800
you've bumped into this where like you see somebody who produces content that in some way is similar to
00:39:45.020
you but they're like a social circle that like you have never engaged with well it's kind of that's
00:39:52.360
a tough one for me because i'm pretty anti-social so i don't really i'm notoriously bad at like
00:39:58.640
collabing and kind of trying to reach out to people to like kind of like do things together i'm just bad
00:40:05.780
at it because i'm i'm kind of i just i'm sort of person that kind of just likes to be alone and play
00:40:11.460
games so it's like i i nervous around people very easily i'm the same way i'm the same way you know
00:40:17.080
i mean one of the things that we actually constantly talk about on our channel is trying to normalize
00:40:22.200
like we sort of talked about like extreme levels of introversion in our society we've almost treated
00:40:27.660
as like it's a condition or something to overcome and the only reason that like i'm good at socializing
00:40:32.980
because i treat it like a job like i would never i look i live on a farm with my wife and we leave
00:40:38.040
like almost never and most of my friendships are parasocial like i'm like i have a lot of friends
00:40:44.060
no it's actually a really interesting thing and i don't know if this has happened to you or like i
00:40:47.060
have a lot of friends where like i talk to them once every three months or so but like they watch my
00:40:51.980
content and i watch their content and so i'm like that's all i need perfect world so it's like you're
00:40:56.080
kind of like interacting with with people but kind of at your own pace right yeah it's way more
00:41:02.800
efficient everyone gets a ton more done people are spending less time and money and yet they still
00:41:08.500
have deep relationships and they they often know each other like what we're seeing more and more
00:41:14.600
whether or not someone has a following is that there's a lot of parasocial stuff going on and
00:41:19.500
often like while they're cleaning or working or other stuff so it's not this isn't time that's
00:41:24.120
competing with like their few time like hours off of work for example and then occasionally they'll
00:41:30.740
like go to a conference or a retreat or travel to a city and meet up with these people in person
00:41:36.700
so that they still get that in-person contact but you get most of the benefits of friendship this is
00:41:44.940
not a replacement for what community used to be where like you just lived and depended on people
00:41:50.480
really closely but in terms of like loose friend networks i think this is a way more efficient way to do
00:41:56.460
it and it's great final question then for her yeah so i want to focus on the question of because i
00:42:02.560
actually don't know this you're the only streamer like i know like all the other people we know are
00:42:07.460
like youtubers or sub stackers or stuff like that like what is the streaming audience like when
00:42:12.280
contrasted with the youtube audience in terms of how you're producing content it's it's it's a little
00:42:16.540
bit so the i think that the difference is it's more there's a lot more interaction right people
00:42:24.300
people come to streams i i think this is really what it is there's a lot of people come to streams
00:42:30.180
like spend time with someone like feel like you're hanging out with people because it's because it's
00:42:36.180
live right and like people will comment and then you'll respond in real time so it's like it's kind of
00:42:41.160
like you're hanging out in the same room with with people and and even like when you know you hear
00:42:46.800
this a lot like oh wow you're just watching someone play games it's it's it's more like you're playing
00:42:53.980
games with your friends that's kind of like the the the kind of feeling behind it it's like you know
00:43:00.140
you're you're you're chilling on the couch and you're playing you know sonic the hedgehog and your
00:43:04.580
friends are watching you play it's kind of like that that vibe to it so when you're putting something
00:43:09.300
together how do you i don't know how to put it but like perfectly masturbate this desire or
00:43:14.760
right like what are you thinking when you're doing that well for me it's more like i just
00:43:21.200
i try to pick games that people like and then i try to just respond to them when they when people talk
00:43:27.920
like you you have to always one eye on your chat so it's like it's like sometimes it's it's that i was
00:43:34.160
like talking about this like when i'm streaming i actually suck more at games because i'm i'm
00:43:38.580
constantly distracted like trying to like look for a conversation hook to like talk about right
00:43:44.460
so like if somebody says something it's like oh that's something i can talk about and then like you
00:43:47.840
clip into that and then you can have a conversation with everyone in chat no i actually i find this
00:43:54.160
really interesting because i think our audience as well will not know anyone like you like you
00:43:59.240
represent a side of i think this cultural shift that is aligned with a lot of our experiences
00:44:08.100
but completely out of anything that they have done like i would doubt very many of our fans like
00:44:13.940
they might like your youtube channel but i doubt you're gonna get any like twitch subscribers from
00:44:17.860
this you know they're no they're mostly like i like i know our fans like they mostly are like
00:44:22.000
mckinsey types so they're like venture capitalists or they like work at mckinsey or they're like a
00:44:25.920
different crowd it's like it's like a different different it's streaming is is it's a different
00:44:31.100
audience than than youtube videos and the thing is it's like i consume both right like i'll sometimes i'm
00:44:36.220
actually to tell you the truth i i actually don't watch that many streams i watch mostly youtube i'm
00:44:41.840
mostly like a youtube person but but yeah i mean i get it it's a completely different audience
00:44:49.000
yeah oh okay awesome i love it it was great talking to you and i'm gonna stop recording you
00:44:55.140
all right and oh wait no what am i saying okay what's the name of the game that people need to go to
00:45:01.560
what's yeah game is angels sword rpg elyrian chronicles is the name of it and you can find
00:45:07.800
that at rpg.angelssword like angels but like possessive angelssword.com and it's free to play
00:45:15.460
anyone can play it and updates every two to three weeks wait how do you monetize this patreon
00:45:20.140
oh okay lovely what a great way to monetize like a dnd type thing yeah it's like people can support if
00:45:27.320
they want i mean i mean you know it's just it's just books like people don't always have the money to
00:45:31.600
to buy the books so it's kind of like we want everyone to be able to play so that's what we