The Auron MacIntyre Show - When the Bread and Circuses Turn Gay ｜ 1⧸12⧸26

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:36.260 The Roman Empire was famous for running on breads and circuses.

00:00:42.460 The bread and the circus were critical to distracting the population from what was going on.

00:00:48.260 When the population was able to be governed as a republic, it was full of virtuous people.

00:00:53.520 People who were expected to provide for their own meals and cultivate virtue through different aspects of literature and song and all these other arts, all these other pursuits, intellectual, climbing the ladder politically, besting others in warfare or training yourself to become a peak physical specimen.

00:01:15.580 These are the ways that you were expected to pass your time.

00:01:18.440 Now, of course, no one is perfect.

00:01:20.160 Even in the Roman Republic, there were plenty of people who were ultimately lazy or didn't get the job done.

00:01:25.840 But there was a critical mass of virtuous people who made the society work.

00:01:30.420 But as the rulers became more despotic and as the quality of the people just went ahead and evolved over time, it was clear that emperors needed to supplement what used to be the critical aspects of society, making sure that people were fed and people were entertained.

00:01:49.480 So they didn't look around them and say, hey, what happened to that republic, by the way, and why aren't things running as well?

00:01:55.940 You had to distract them and you had to keep them fed.

00:01:58.920 This is a classic example of how a society deteriorates.

00:02:03.300 And this is why the fall of Rome is one of the most famous references everyone makes when they look at historical cycles or the way that different civilizations live and then go on to die.

00:02:14.200 Well, I won't be the first one to do this, not exactly a revelation here, but we're going through our own bread and circuses situation.

00:02:23.800 We have a large amount of people who no longer know how to really manage their own lives.

00:02:29.480 They don't know how to provide for themselves.

00:02:31.540 They certainly don't have the self-discipline to pursue virtuous activities in any of their leisure time.

00:02:37.280 And so really what our society ends up doing is packing a lot of our free moments with these circuses.

00:02:46.140 I'm not going to talk so much about the bread today, though that's absolutely a huge aspect.

00:02:50.920 It's probably worth its own episode or a few about the way that the food we eat or the welfare programs that often provided

00:02:59.000 or the supplementary nature of these different corporate relationships with the government and how they work together

00:03:08.900 to make sure to kind of produce the lowest quality common denominator slop when it comes to food.

00:03:14.900 But that's going to be someone else's discussion or a discussion for another day.

00:03:18.600 Today, I want to focus on the entertainment aspect, the circuses.

00:03:22.360 What has happened to our entertainment?

00:03:24.260 Why is it getting so bad?

00:03:25.680 Everyone's noticed that the circuses just aren't as good as they used to be.

00:03:30.240 And I don't think it's just nostalgia.

00:03:32.620 It's very clear that the quality of what's being produced is an issue.

00:03:37.060 Now, overall, you might think, well, this is a bad thing.

00:03:39.760 All the stuff I love, all the TV shows, the movies, the comic books, the video games, all those things have become terrible.

00:03:47.120 They've become woke.

00:03:48.100 They've been destroyed.

00:03:49.500 And that's true.

00:03:50.680 But simultaneously, maybe there's an upside.

00:03:52.900 Maybe there's a positive side to the fact that ultimately, these things that were distracting us from real life,

00:04:00.320 keeping us from pouring ourselves and committing ourselves entirely to productive activities,

00:04:06.140 virtuous activities, the cultivation of virtue, making an impact on the world around us.

00:04:11.000 Maybe ultimately, a loss of that stuff is a positive thing.

00:04:14.500 We're going to dive into that thought today.

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00:05:43.080 All right, so the thing that kind of inspired this is the sad image you see on screen.

00:05:51.680 It's the new Star Trek series that's coming out.

00:05:55.380 It's Star Trek Academy, I believe, and the idea, as you can probably tell from the way this is shot,

00:06:02.080 is basically turn Star Trek into a teen drama, right?

00:06:05.800 This looks like one of those CW series from the early 2000s with the diverse cast.

00:06:13.640 I'm sure several of them will be gay or have trans or probably both somehow or all at once. 0.52

00:06:21.880 There'll be just insufferable amounts of preaching about the different aspects of their social relationships

00:06:30.460 and will have very little to do with what classic Star Trek was.

00:06:35.640 And a lot of people look at this stuff and they say,

00:06:38.180 all right, fine, I'm finally done.

00:06:40.660 I'm not dealing with this anymore.

00:06:42.720 Maybe I've stuck through with this property for a long time, the ups and downs.

00:06:47.280 I was a true fan, but ultimately this has become too much.

00:06:51.960 Now, if you paid any attention to Star Trek, this has been going on for a long time.

00:06:56.100 We've had basically everything in the modern era, really, of Star Trek has been an absolute disaster.

00:07:03.600 I think the last Star Trek series I really watched with any regularity was Star Trek Voyager.

00:07:09.960 And I loved those as a kid.

00:07:12.140 I remember very distinctly the only sci-fi show I think my mom ever watched was Star Trek The Next Generation.

00:07:20.140 And I was absolutely captivated.

00:07:22.260 I don't know why she picked that one and she never watched another one again, but she did watch that one religiously.

00:07:28.380 And so I saw it all the time growing up and I really enjoyed it.

00:07:32.080 It was something that I thought was incredibly compelling.

00:07:34.680 Now, Star Trek has always been a series that was a little more, I guess you could say, cerebral.

00:07:40.660 Now, I want to make it clear.

00:07:41.900 It's not like Star Trek is for geniuses or anything.

00:07:44.860 You're not some highly intelligent person for having watched Star Trek. 1.00

00:07:49.000 Many, many idiots over the years have. 0.99

00:07:50.800 But I will say that, like, out of the regular sci-fi shows that showed up on TV or in pop culture, it was more intelligent than perhaps some of your space dramas, that kind of thing. 0.99

00:08:04.800 That doesn't make it superior in every aspect.

00:08:07.000 There's plenty of ways in which a more, you know, swashbuckling style of sci-fi, I think, is engaging.

00:08:15.140 However, Star Trek built this reputation for, you know, at least trying to get some of the hard science right, trying to tackle complex issues.

00:08:24.300 You know, the stuff that sci-fi is often famous for when it's not in full-blown fantasy Star Wars mode.

00:08:31.020 And so this is something that I thought was very interesting when I was young.

00:08:34.540 Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, and you'll be exactly right to point this out, but, Oren, Star Trek was always, like, commie nonsense.

00:08:43.340 It was always this humanist propaganda.

00:08:46.700 The Starfleet is just the UN in space.

00:08:49.500 And, you know, we get rid of scarcity.

00:08:52.760 And all of a sudden, you know, everyone becomes somehow elevated.

00:08:55.960 We no longer have conflict because, you know, the replicator makes all the stuff, and we've seized the means of production, and we don't have to worry about material scarcity anymore so we can have this sci-fi communist utopia.

00:09:08.460 Again, you're right about that, of course.

00:09:10.700 And a lot of the Star Trek episodes and the social issues they addressed were all incredibly progressive messaging. 0.97

00:09:18.820 It was a lot of, you know, racism is bad, and war is bad, and religion is for the ignorant, and all the dumb Reddit stuff you expect from a lot of sci-fi.

00:09:30.160 So even though this might have been a slightly more complex show in some ways, again, it's just pushing a really cringy message. 0.93

00:09:37.940 So in some ways, not a lot has changed, but in other ways, everything has changed.

00:09:42.840 Because as subversive as those messages were, a young me didn't pick up on them because the quality of the writing and the quality of the storytelling was compelling, right?

00:09:54.420 Like, yeah, the messages were bad, but at least the people crafting them had some level of competence.

00:10:00.660 They knew what they were doing.

00:10:02.140 They knew how to tell a story.

00:10:03.480 They knew how to write dialogue.

00:10:05.060 They knew how to build tension.

00:10:06.700 They knew how to weave plot lines together.

00:10:08.720 These things were compelling at some level, even if ultimately that was kind of a problem, because it was allowing me and many, many other people to fall for and kind of unwittingly imbibe this indoctrination of a worldview that was antithetical to my own.

00:10:29.360 And my mom, who is a lovely person, an amazing Christian, would probably have never let me listen to those messages in any other format, right?

00:10:38.720 But because it was shrouded in the layers of the science fiction, I watched a lot more of this humanist propaganda than I probably would have in any other scenario.

00:10:49.260 And this is kind of what I'm actually getting at, right?

00:10:51.740 Because there are entire massive channels, way more successful than this one.

00:10:56.740 And all they do is talk about the collapse of entertainment from video games to music to movies to television.

00:11:05.400 Everything is woke. 0.99

00:11:07.300 Everything is crap. 0.99

00:11:08.660 It's all falling apart, right? 0.99

00:11:10.420 These are massively successful channels.

00:11:12.580 Many of them are very funny.

00:11:14.280 I'm not trying to denigrate them at all.

00:11:15.740 Many of them are very talented.

00:11:17.240 But it is kind of a content mill, right?

00:11:18.860 They spend all day talking about how every one of these things has broken down.

00:11:23.200 We get long, complicated video essays about how Call of Duty has fallen, or we're never going to get another Bioshock, or why is it that movies keep doing this over again?

00:11:35.400 Why is the Star Wars franchise coming apart?

00:11:37.840 How has feminism worked its way into all these things? 1.00

00:11:41.500 Why has metal become so formulaic, and why is it this music of rebellion now preaching social messages?

00:11:48.700 And again, I'm not trying to decry the value of that content.

00:11:53.500 I've watched before.

00:11:54.680 I find many of these things to be thoughtful and often compelling.

00:11:58.660 But they are kind of stuck in a particular rut because the thing that you feel over and over again is people are just demanding better propaganda, right?

00:12:08.500 I think of something like the NFL or other sports leagues.

00:12:12.800 A lot of people, of course, spend their entire weekend on the couch watching sports, and they felt okay doing that because in general it was pro-American, and you stood up, you sang the national anthem, you honored the veterans.

00:12:29.040 There was a certain amount of kind of just wholesomeness that felt like even though this probably shouldn't be spending this much time on watching this dumb game, you know, and again, there's nothing wrong with watching some sports.

00:12:40.960 I'm not the anti-sportsball guy. 0.53

00:12:42.520 I watch sports.

00:12:43.600 I enjoy watching sports to some degree, though it's harder and harder to do that. 0.99

00:12:47.300 I really don't spend very much time on it at all anymore, but it's one of those things where there is this reflex of like, ah, the sports ball idiots. 0.98

00:12:55.460 I think that's poorly done. 0.97

00:12:58.120 Watching sports has always been some aspect of society's.

00:13:01.980 However, the fact that it has just been, you know, injected with this incredible wokeness, and now it's every player talking about BLM and how they support, you know, the struggle against ice or whatever.

00:13:14.740 However, it's just insufferable, and it's harder and harder for people to watch, and when people complain, hey, why is my video game bad?

00:13:24.400 Why is my sports league bad?

00:13:26.440 Why is the writing in my television show bad?

00:13:29.980 In one sense, they do have a real point.

00:13:33.160 Like, the cultural output we have matters.

00:13:35.920 The messages being pushed through the zeitgeist matter.

00:13:38.680 I'm one of the first people who will tell you that it matters quite a bit what the elites are trying to manipulate people into believing.

00:13:46.000 So it's obviously bad when people are trying to use television or movies to brainwash kids into becoming trans.

00:13:52.460 It's bad when, you know, they're pushing sports betting or these other things that are deleterious to society. 0.90

00:13:59.520 Like, so I'm not saying don't pay attention to the messages here or that all of this stuff going to crap is, you know, just an unalloyed good.

00:14:08.380 It's certainly not.

00:14:09.560 In fact, much is very bad.

00:14:11.140 We can look at the entertainment produced and see those cultural markers and recognize that ultimately there is something negative going on.

00:14:20.680 However, when we demand a return to what we think of as higher quality entertainment, you know, where are those great movies?

00:14:28.520 Where are those great TV shows?

00:14:31.260 Why don't I just have a good old football league on my television on Sunday?

00:14:35.620 When we're asking for that, in a way, what we're asking is for better propaganda.

00:14:40.800 Why aren't my circuses better?

00:14:42.240 Why aren't the things that the regime is using to distract me from being a productive citizen?

00:14:49.420 Why isn't that being remedied, right?

00:14:51.960 Like, why can't I get a higher quality that I deserve a better version of the slop is really what they're saying.

00:14:58.400 Now, I do think there's a line here.

00:15:00.700 There are legitimate cultural outputs.

00:15:03.280 And of the ones we've been talking about, movies, video games, sports leagues, all these things, I think the movie is probably the truest artistic form available out of all these things.

00:15:14.260 Though not every movie is artistic and there can be artistic movies and video games and television shows and all these things.

00:15:21.660 But I do think that if we're going to talk about one cultural form that, you know, along with a novel probably should reflect the complexity of your society and display some deeper level of artistic ability, the movie would be the one.

00:15:37.920 However, ultimately, it's still just asking, I think, on many levels for a better version of the slop, especially when we're talking about Marvel movies and all that.

00:15:48.140 Why can't we just go back to the good Marvel movies?

00:15:50.460 Why can't we just go back to, you know, the good Star Trek or whatever, right?

00:15:54.300 And the issue is all these channels, all these thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of hours of pop culture analysis, they're all really just demanding a return to better circuses.

00:16:08.680 I want to go back to when the circuses weren't gay, right? 1.00

00:16:13.000 And this is important because, you know, I've talked about the nature of Gamergate before.

00:16:19.540 If you're not familiar with the Gamergate phenomenon, you can watch my videos that go into further detail on this.

00:16:27.140 But the relevant part of this is that a big part of Gamergate was people recognizing that there was too much of wokeness, of social justice, of the leftist agenda being injected into video games.

00:16:41.160 Video games were never neutral.

00:16:42.540 They were often telling a story, and that story had values, and they tended to be more progressive than not.

00:16:49.880 But just the blunt instrument, the relentless stream of just ham-fisted forcing of trans characters and gay storylines and quibbling about social justice issues, the treatment of women, and why don't we have all this stuff constantly injected into the video game. 0.96

00:17:08.300 That made a lot of people who were deeply stuck in, I think, the cycle of pop culture consumption stop and think, right?

00:17:19.500 And I know it did for me.

00:17:20.620 Look, I was born, arguably, into one of the most compelling ages and addictive ages for pop culture slop.

00:17:29.060 Like, I was born into the age where World of Warcraft became a phenomenon, right?

00:17:34.460 I think I was in high school when it first really launched, and then I was in college when it really was hitting its stride.

00:17:43.160 And I saw so many of my friends just have their entire life consumed by World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs.

00:17:52.320 The shift to the games as a service model has gotten tired now.

00:17:56.340 People are complaining about it now, but at that time, it was considered a revolutionary.

00:18:01.100 You could truly just devote your entire life, more or less, to pouring yourself into this imaginary realm.

00:18:10.520 And a lot of people did that.

00:18:12.320 I was never as bad as a lot of my peers when it came to MMOs, but card games, I was obsessed with strategic board games and card games.

00:18:22.780 And I'm someone who always had a mind that needed to be working on things.

00:18:27.980 I need to be figuring out systems and breaking systems and excelling at going through and understanding them, things that I think are actually quite useful today.

00:18:36.940 And while I'm glad to some extent I honed those abilities, the original application of those abilities was very poor.

00:18:43.360 Don't get me wrong.

00:18:44.080 We've always used things like games to train people to do real-world tasks, right?

00:18:49.540 Like most of the original Olympic sports, archery and throwing the shot put and races and wrestling and these kind of things, they were all based in combative sports.

00:19:02.220 They were all very practical instantiations of what you should be doing as someone training to be a useful member of society.

00:19:10.360 They were emulating things we wanted people to understand.

00:19:14.080 Chess, obviously, a famous way to train people to think strategically, right?

00:19:18.580 So there's nothing wrong with mimicking and training for these useful skills through game.

00:19:25.540 That's something people just do.

00:19:27.440 It's been through throughout history.

00:19:29.540 Sports are as old as organized societies.

00:19:33.100 The same is true with some level of tactical game.

00:19:36.120 You know, there's, of course, the expression of deep thought through art in these things.

00:19:40.760 All of this has value.

00:19:42.500 So it's not me just saying, well, everything needs to be practical and you can never have fun and you can never create things.

00:19:48.740 That's not what I'm saying at all.

00:19:50.580 However, there is a big difference between learning to play chess and enjoying chess, playing a couple games of chess, maybe even in a day,

00:19:58.880 and spending 8 to 12 hours on a video game, which is what a lot of people did with things like MMOs.

00:20:05.780 They devoted large amounts of their life to it.

00:20:08.420 And again, I'm someone who certainly poured a large amount of my need to understand systems and exercise strategy and my mind through what are mostly useless pursuits.

00:20:22.920 Like, it's really cool that I'm very good, I guess, at Magic the Gathering, but it doesn't have a lot of practical application day to day.

00:20:31.400 It's not a threat to the regime in any real sense.

00:20:34.560 And that's why, in many ways, these things became popular, right?

00:20:38.440 Because who are the biggest threat to any given tyrannical regime?

00:20:43.180 Well, it's young men with a lot of free time, right?

00:20:46.820 Like, that's the most dangerous thing to any order is a bunch of men who don't feel like they're useful and they don't fit in and they have a lot of time and they're not finding a way to utilize their skills and kind of actualize their potential, you know, assert their will and the power process.

00:21:06.440 Like, these are all critical aspects of being a human being, but especially being a man.

00:21:12.240 And these are all the things that the society fears once it becomes decadent and corrupt, right?

00:21:17.360 Like, if you are tyrannical or despotic or just a degenerate leader, you don't want men of quality.

00:21:24.820 You don't want people who are becoming virtuous, who are exercising, who are learning things, who are building these skills.

00:21:32.640 You don't want people who are fit.

00:21:34.160 You don't want people who are skilled in combat.

00:21:36.720 You don't want people who are tactically sound.

00:21:39.260 You don't want people who are ambitious and politically or rhetorically skilled.

00:21:43.500 You don't want that stuff showing up on a regular basis.

00:21:46.760 It's really going to mess with your ability to control society because when your society becomes decadent, when you're the kind of ruler who rules over a decadent society, you're really banking your systems of control on the fact that the people won't do this stuff, that they aren't capable of building these skills.

00:22:03.540 And you work to make sure that they don't.

00:22:05.900 And we see this echoed in many different works.

00:22:09.040 We could think about C.S. Lewis and Men Without Chess ripping out the organ and demanding the function.

00:22:14.560 Or we could think about R.R. Reno's book, Return of the Strong Gods, talking about how we had a global order that wanted to avoid the rise of Hitler or any other strong man after World War II.

00:22:26.520 And so we needed to strip out nationalism and patriotism and religion and masculine vigor because these are the things that threatened to create, well, great men.

00:22:36.020 And great men can do great things and they can also do terrible things.

00:22:40.380 So better to just get rid of the ability to have great men and just let everything be managed by systems.

00:22:46.000 But for that, we need weak, subdued people, just like Rome did. 0.92

00:22:50.660 And so you need to give them the bread and the circuses.

00:22:53.800 You need to get out there and have effective pathways to capture that ambition, especially that male ambition.

00:23:00.660 Make sure that they don't have that hunger, don't have that fire.

00:23:04.080 Are you sure you have to go out and prove yourself in battle?

00:23:07.100 There's Call of Duty right there.

00:23:08.680 I mean, you can practice, you know, going through the process of progression, building up skills, conquering and dominating other guys, working together with men in a shared task, but without actually having to, you know, build any of the real life skills.

00:23:23.360 In fact, ensuring that you don't build those real life skills because you're pouring all of your time into the video game.

00:23:30.460 You know, you don't have to worry about the guy who's sitting on the couch, obsessed with football, working on his sports betting, figuring out his fantasy football league.

00:23:38.360 That guy's probably not going to, you know, lead his church.

00:23:42.160 He's probably not going to go out there and organize people in his community.

00:23:45.720 He's not going to be politically active.

00:23:47.560 He's not going to be aware.

00:23:49.140 If, you know, he might be distracted.

00:23:51.120 He might see something on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and then, you know, base his opinion off that.

00:23:56.420 And that's kind of what you're looking for.

00:23:57.660 You don't want the guy who's getting involved in his community who's making a difference.

00:24:01.360 Every one of these surrogate activities is there to pull away your ability to have any real confidence, any real virtue, any real ability to become a threat to the regime, to the wider order as it is.

00:24:17.200 And so in this way, competent pop culture is a problem because it's good at what it does.

00:24:25.400 It holds our attention.

00:24:27.260 It keeps us locked into those loops.

00:24:29.640 Again, I've enjoyed peak pop culture.

00:24:33.920 You'll see me make references to it.

00:24:35.500 I'm still a creature of modernity like everybody else.

00:24:38.680 I might recognize these issues, but it doesn't mean I'm somehow entirely immune to them.

00:24:44.280 However, the thing that happened to me and that happened to lots of people, especially, again, young men, was kind of the Gamergate phenomenon. 0.70

00:24:52.980 Because all of a sudden we look down on it and realize, wait, my bread and circuses are all gay. 0.99

00:24:59.620 It's all full of trans, you know, propaganda, homosexual messaging, feminism, anti-capitalism, you know, anti-Western. 1.00

00:25:10.060 It's all complaining about racism and this stuff. 0.97

00:25:12.600 And it's just a slog.

00:25:14.540 All of a sudden, the video game, even if the mechanics are good, they become less and less compelling.

00:25:20.620 The storylines don't make sense.

00:25:22.400 The writing doesn't make sense.

00:25:24.380 The movies, the television, I don't even want to turn on a modern television show.

00:25:29.280 I even go back now.

00:25:30.400 It's so bad that now I go back and I watch television shows that I thought were better and I recognize how deeply subversive they were, how deep the messaging goes.

00:25:40.760 And that while that was more carefully hidden, the fact that this new blunt instrument has been introduced in more modern times through the whole social justice woke thing means that retroactively, I can look back and see how just completely subversive the propaganda was even early on.

00:25:58.920 And so, like many, I looked at this Gamergate phenomenon and look, not all aspects of it were positive.

00:26:06.180 Some people had some bad behavior on the Gamergate side as well, but it really was a large awakening of people.

00:26:13.980 Now, you wouldn't think that this would become political, right?

00:26:16.620 I've made this joke a lot that Gamergate was the origin of the Trump movement.

00:26:20.600 But in many ways, it's not a joke because it was the first time in a long time that suddenly a group of people who were kind of the natural leadership of America, the people who should be moving into the next generation.

00:26:36.120 They should be taking over positions of political power, positions of cultural authority, family leaders, church leaders, leaders of corporations and organizations, people who were going to be leading political movements.

00:26:49.200 All of a sudden, those people who had had all of that energy sucked up into the slop, into the propaganda, into the circuses.

00:26:57.940 They looked around and said, my circuses are terrible and I don't want to do this anymore.

00:27:03.560 Now, there's stages of denial, right?

00:27:05.540 Again, this is why there are these massive YouTube channels that continue to make a lot of money and get a lot of views by critiquing culture.

00:27:15.520 But I think over time, even those have petered out, like even the constant complaint cycle on woke culture is starting to peter out.

00:27:24.980 Like, I think it's becoming clear, unfortunately, to many people that we're just not getting the good video games back.

00:27:31.680 We're not getting the good movies back.

00:27:32.920 We're not getting the good television shows back.

00:27:34.960 We can talk about, you know, go woke, go broke, but that just doesn't happen.

00:27:40.160 These people continue to make money or even when they don't, they don't care.

00:27:43.240 Think about how many garbage movies Disney has made in the last few years, chock full of highly offensive social justice messaging that keep flopping at the box office and they keep making them. 0.94

00:27:55.940 They just don't care. 0.98

00:27:56.940 It doesn't matter.

00:27:57.800 The ideology is what matters.

00:27:59.700 Don't get me wrong.

00:28:00.560 They don't want to lose money forever.

00:28:02.320 Probably make some, you know, attempt to dial it back.

00:28:05.140 But even look at the people who said, oh, we're dialing woke back.

00:28:08.260 And then you just see the next movie come out and you're like, well, what do you mean?

00:28:12.080 It doesn't seem like you dialed it back at all.

00:28:14.700 Oh, there's only four trans characters instead of five in this one.

00:28:18.640 My video game is, you know, only 70% an anti-capitalist screed.

00:28:24.260 The new Star Trek is only got, you know, three lesbian characters as prominent figures in it. 1.00

00:28:31.460 Okay.

00:28:32.140 I guess we've put the woke away.

00:28:34.140 The truth is that the, you know, the creatives don't want to do that.

00:28:37.820 The people who have been put in charge of our cultural development, they still hold

00:28:42.380 all these opinions and they have more sway than the executives at this point who are

00:28:47.840 themselves, maybe not true believers, but still pretty in culture when it comes to this

00:28:53.220 like left-wing woke nonsense.

00:28:55.180 And so that stuff doesn't mean to be, doesn't seem to be going away.

00:28:59.260 And at the same time, you know, more and more people are just saying, all right, well,

00:29:03.560 fine, like if the NFL is not going to tone this down, I'm just going to stop watching. 0.98

00:29:08.120 If the movies are going to keep being crap, I'm just not going to go anymore. 0.80

00:29:12.360 And, you know, to some extent, part of this is also the need to make this stuff for everybody. 0.97

00:29:16.860 You'll see this over and over again.

00:29:18.480 You know, something like Warhammer 40K, which might be the most right-wing coded intellectual

00:29:24.460 property in the world.

00:29:26.320 Obviously, you know, just kind of fascism works in space.

00:29:31.360 And the whole thing about that is like, it's so immune to wokeness, but the people who rent

00:29:38.480 it are desperately trying to inject it.

00:29:40.480 Like, even though it's constitutionally as right-wing as you can possibly get, these people

00:29:44.460 are just doing everything they can to try to rip the lore apart and eject it.

00:29:48.480 And the reason they keep saying they're doing that is because, well, it's for everybody.

00:29:52.340 Warhammer 40K is for everybody or Dungeons and Dragons.

00:29:54.860 Suddenly, you've got, you know, wheelchair-bound, pansexual, trans-feminists in the middle of 1.00

00:30:02.500 your D&D game.

00:30:04.740 Like, you literally have to, like, help a guy down the stairs because he's got a wheelchair

00:30:09.140 in your Dungeons and Dragons game.

00:30:11.740 Why?

00:30:11.960 Well, because Dungeons and Dragons is for everyone.

00:30:14.420 Or these movies become international.

00:30:16.100 These video games become international.

00:30:17.960 They need to appeal not just to American audiences, but they need to appeal to, you know, all these

00:30:23.140 emerging audiences and China and everything.

00:30:26.400 And that lack of particularity does something to the game.

00:30:29.900 You know, games, films, they rely on a shared cultural template.

00:30:35.440 You need to have this, you know, just substrate layer of shared understanding from which the

00:30:42.680 culture and the creativity can arise.

00:30:44.780 When you try to make a movie or a video game or a television show for everyone, you effectively

00:30:50.340 make it for no one.

00:30:51.480 It loses that, you know, cultural root that really makes it what it is.

00:30:55.960 It can't speak a shared language.

00:30:58.280 And in that way, it can't convey a complex truth.

00:31:01.900 It has to be grounded in a culture for it to really achieve any kind of artistic significance.

00:31:07.320 And so the more and more we try to turn these art forms into stuff that just goes everywhere

00:31:13.440 and is for everyone, the more and more it becomes clear that you can't maintain any kind

00:31:18.260 of serious message, any kind of real interesting artistic development.

00:31:23.320 And fewer and fewer people want to be involved.

00:31:26.060 This also has something to do with the constant need to, you know, get too greedy with the different

00:31:32.680 aspects of the entertainment.

00:31:33.760 Well, now I need every movie to have 19 sequels and we need to stretch every storyline as far

00:31:39.560 as possible.

00:31:40.260 And we have to make sure that you see the movie and then you read the book and then you buy

00:31:44.920 the comic book and then you watch the television show on three different streaming services.

00:31:49.720 You don't want to miss one of the secrets in the Star Wars thing, right?

00:31:52.420 You want to know what the character in Star Trek was referencing, right?

00:31:55.280 You don't want to be the guy who doesn't know what happens when Tony Stark is winking what

00:31:59.520 he's referencing in the next Marvel movie, do you?

00:32:01.560 And so you just have this perpetual thing, you know, video games, it's all service online.

00:32:07.440 Everything's online all the time.

00:32:09.360 And so the storylines start to fall apart.

00:32:11.320 The mechanics of the games start to fall apart.

00:32:13.620 The narratives of the movies fall apart because everything is stretched so thin.

00:32:17.840 And this like just constant destruction of the quality of entertainment seems bad.

00:32:23.720 And in a way it is bad.

00:32:24.740 I'm not saying this is just, again, just a complete good thing.

00:32:27.660 But it does create an interesting result because as the circuses get worse, the only thing

00:32:35.700 that they really can't pollute, the only thing they really can't destroy are the things that

00:32:41.740 are kind of transcendent, the things that are truly good in and of themselves, the things

00:32:47.060 that actually build virtue, right?

00:32:49.700 Like your social justice can infect a video game, but can it infect my reading of Aristotle?

00:32:56.700 Your social justice can destroy, you know, the, the, the experience of watching an NFL game,

00:33:02.780 but can it really get rid of the satisfaction of going to the gym and feeling yourself becoming

00:33:08.860 healthier and stronger?

00:33:09.940 However, yeah, I mean, wokeness can destroy your ability to enjoy a call of duty, but can 1.00

00:33:17.380 it keep you from going to the range with friends and gaining mastery over a weapon and training

00:33:23.600 together and building that skill that is as applicable in real life as it could really,

00:33:29.120 you know, in anything could be something that could actually defend your life or the life

00:33:32.140 of others that compels you to become a more competent male to fill your role?

00:33:37.760 Yes, of course, wokeness can enter the church and we have a serious problem with wokeness in 1.00

00:33:44.740 religion, but there's still transcendent truth that comes through.

00:33:50.180 Christ is King and his message transcends whatever attempts are there to corrupt it.

00:33:56.940 And so if you are regularly involving yourselves in true religious practice, hopefully Christian 0.99

00:34:02.840 practice, then can it really be ultimately subverted by woke messaging?

00:34:08.660 These things are eternal and these things are powerful and these things are what build society.

00:34:14.040 They're what make men virtuous.

00:34:15.660 They're what create families.

00:34:17.160 They're what push back against tyranny.

00:34:19.620 They're what make you demand more from your leaders and move them out of the way if they

00:34:25.140 don't deliver it.

00:34:26.600 And you can't hide behind the slop anymore. 0.95

00:34:29.840 You can't just go back to watching Netflix.

00:34:32.400 You can't just go back to playing the video game because it's so bad.

00:34:37.000 It's not going to distract you anymore when the stuff was addictive.

00:34:40.700 Look, man, I played a lot of Fallout New Vegas in my day.

00:34:44.700 I could avoid a lot of emotional pain, a lot of.

00:34:48.660 A lack of feeling of accomplishment by playing Fallout New Vegas.

00:34:55.820 I still love the game, but like I do understand that the fact that it was so compelling meant

00:35:00.960 that I didn't have to go back to doing the important things.

00:35:03.760 I didn't have to notice the problems with the real world.

00:35:05.900 Because there's always the chance that I could go back and enjoy that entertainment.

00:35:11.960 And it was so engaging and so important that I didn't care about maybe the things that were

00:35:18.000 really important, the things in my life that I should have been focusing on.

00:35:21.600 And I think many of us have felt that experience.

00:35:24.760 But when the quality of the circuses collapses, when it's all gay and it's all trans and it's 1.00

00:35:30.460 all feminist and it's all woke and it's all anti-racist, who wants to spend all of their 1.00

00:35:35.820 free time in that world?

00:35:37.200 Who comes home from a hard work of day and is like, you know what I need? 0.88

00:35:40.540 Three more hours of being lectured about how evil I am as a white man.

00:35:44.560 You know what I really need after being denigrated by the HR lady? 0.98

00:35:50.080 I need to come back and have a Star Trek character tell me that women are the future 1.00

00:35:54.700 and that I'm a failure for having testicles. 0.99

00:35:58.120 Like, I think these are things that are just no longer satisfying to people. 0.99

00:36:02.300 They're no longer engaging.

00:36:03.840 They're no longer distracting.

00:36:05.580 Now, don't get me wrong.

00:36:06.640 The masses, there's always going to be a large percentage of people that are going to

00:36:11.440 involve themselves in that.

00:36:12.860 NFL is still going to make money.

00:36:14.060 Video games are still going to make money.

00:36:16.160 Movies, you know, they're having trouble, but, you know, there's still going to be some

00:36:19.320 kind of visual entertainment that people consume to distract them.

00:36:23.480 However, what we really care about is how many possible elites are being siphoned away.

00:36:29.820 How many possible community leaders?

00:36:32.960 How many leaders of your city, your town, your church?

00:36:36.360 How many guys who could have made it into your state Senate?

00:36:39.420 Who could have been a business owner?

00:36:41.200 Who could have been in college, could have become an academic, could have been a political

00:36:45.960 leader?

00:36:46.280 How many of those guys are no longer being siphoned away by that addictive and very compulsive

00:36:52.720 entertainment?

00:36:54.060 That's the real question. 0.93

00:36:55.180 And I think this is the ultimate value of watching the circuses become gay. 1.00

00:37:01.340 Because while, again, at some point it is, you know, it can be demoralizing to watch someone

00:37:06.700 take things that you loved as a child or as a teenager and make them terrible.

00:37:13.020 Well, I don't think that's good in a very direct sense.

00:37:16.000 I think that the overall phenomenon of having less compelling entertainment, less addictive

00:37:21.620 entertainment allows people who otherwise would have been sucked in to return to a place

00:37:27.480 where they are bettering themselves, where they are feeling like, OK, maybe if this was

00:37:34.680 a better video game, I would have spent my three hours after work on that.

00:37:38.360 Or maybe if this was a better TV show, I would have spent four hours binge watching it. 0.93

00:37:43.700 Or maybe if I wasn't being told every 10 minutes that America is terrible and, you know, white 0.98

00:37:49.540 people are the devil on my NFL game, maybe I would have spent the whole weekend watching 0.99

00:37:54.120 football.

00:37:55.080 But I just can't do it anymore.

00:37:56.680 I can't I can't put myself in front of that stuff anymore.

00:37:59.800 And when that becomes the case, it opens up an entire world because now you got to do what

00:38:05.040 everyone used to do, which is go out.

00:38:08.120 Right.

00:38:08.840 I mean, again, this is not a revolution.

00:38:10.740 I'm not breaking any news to you here.

00:38:13.220 But large amounts of a society have fallen apart because we're amusing ourselves to death

00:38:17.580 as the book has a famous title.

00:38:20.720 You know, people have fewer babies for a lot of reasons.

00:38:23.820 But one of the reasons people have fewer babies is they can stare at their screen more.

00:38:28.120 You know, there's a joke that whenever the power goes out, you get a baby boom. 0.99

00:38:31.580 But it's also true because it turns out that when people don't have the ability to placate

00:38:37.220 themselves by watching a bunch of television, they go out and start talking to each other. 0.62

00:38:43.200 They spend time having sex.

00:38:46.160 You know, it's just when you don't have that distraction, you don't have other compelling

00:38:50.800 things to do.

00:38:52.000 You actually remember, oh, yeah, this is actually pretty good.

00:38:55.960 This is actually worth my time.

00:38:57.360 I mean, I might even make the investment to regularly make sure that I have access to

00:39:01.740 this, like finding a woman, dating her, getting married.

00:39:06.300 And that leads naturally to having children.

00:39:08.640 And all of a sudden, like these things that turn you into a competent adult, a contributing

00:39:14.120 adult, they get reintroduced back into the natural life cycle.

00:39:18.500 All of a sudden, going to the gym seems like a better use of my time than sitting in front

00:39:23.640 of my computer.

00:39:24.300 All of a sudden, it makes a lot more sense to try to involve myself in my community,

00:39:30.940 get out and meet people, go to church.

00:39:33.980 Because what am I going to do?

00:39:35.860 Sit home and watch, you know, a bunch of trans characters lecture me about how I'm not 1.00

00:39:40.360 sufficiently a queer ally?

00:39:42.780 Who wants to do that? 0.99

00:39:44.840 And so all of a sudden, human interaction becomes more interesting.

00:39:49.020 The ability to actualize yourself, to take some kind of control over the environment around

00:39:55.340 you becomes far more compelling.

00:39:57.260 There's no, you know, there's no supplement for the power process.

00:40:02.500 There's no other way to get this dopamine.

00:40:04.380 There's no artificial supplement for that drive that you feel as a man to control space and

00:40:10.880 master something.

00:40:12.300 And so maybe instead of mastering speedruns for your video game or by becoming the most

00:40:18.540 knowledgeable guy when it comes to Star Trek movies, you become the guy who knows a lot

00:40:23.220 more about philosophy or politics.

00:40:25.460 Maybe you become the guy who explains them to people and helps them try to understand what's

00:40:30.920 going on in the world.

00:40:32.480 These are positive changes and they only really happen.

00:40:35.580 They only get spurred on when we can no longer bury ourselves deeply in the slop.

00:40:39.600 And so I understand that, you know, when we watch these beloved properties in our childhood

00:40:47.800 and meant so much to us, when we watch them get corrupted, it hurts.

00:40:52.360 That's reasonable.

00:40:53.360 I'm not telling anyone not to feel that way.

00:40:55.500 I'm just saying that maybe rather than making the 14-hour video essay about why we need a,

00:41:03.280 you know, higher quality Disneyland experience or that kind of thing, maybe the better use of

00:41:09.400 our time is to invest ourselves in the things that are going to matter, the transcendent things,

00:41:15.200 the things that build society, the things that make us a threat to the regime.

00:41:19.060 Get fit, get confident, learn how to use a firearm, learn about, learn about philosophy,

00:41:26.020 learn about business, learn how to make money, learn about organizing a community, learn how

00:41:30.440 to lead.

00:41:31.340 What does it mean to run an organization?

00:41:34.120 One of the things I noticed is that a lot of people will get very down on the early steps

00:41:38.760 of this.

00:41:39.580 They'll say, oh, you know, you're trying to organize people in real life.

00:41:43.260 You're probably some kind of fed.

00:41:44.720 You're trying to get us all arrested.

00:41:46.540 Oh, you're trying to go to church. 1.00

00:41:48.420 What are you, a hypocrite? 1.00

00:41:49.460 You didn't believe that stuff before. 1.00

00:41:52.200 You're just going to meet a girl or something.

00:41:54.440 Oh, why are you going out to try to date women? 0.99

00:41:56.400 Don't you know that they're all corrupt? 1.00

00:41:58.240 Don't you know that they're all terrible? 0.97

00:42:00.920 And look, we all know there are problems with modern feminism and dating. 1.00

00:42:03.980 But while some of this stuff might be valid, ultimately, these are all just attempts to

00:42:09.700 wreck someone.

00:42:10.320 Just the same as walking up to a fat guy and saying, what are you doing in the gym? 0.86

00:42:13.800 You'll never lose weight. 0.57

00:42:15.440 Look at you.

00:42:16.200 You're 300 pounds. 1.00

00:42:17.240 You're disgusting. 1.00

00:42:18.200 You can barely lift a weight. 1.00

00:42:19.500 You can barely walk on the treadmill.

00:42:21.120 Why even bother?

00:42:22.200 It's the same thing, man.

00:42:23.940 Because guess what?

00:42:24.760 The only way you build competence is by trying stuff out, by going through the motions.

00:42:32.500 And you're going to fail.

00:42:33.580 You're going to fail at asking out the girl.

00:42:35.620 You're not going to be sufficiently dedicated to your religious practice.

00:42:39.160 You're going to lose some money trying to build a business.

00:42:42.020 You might even mess up the first time you try to organize a community event.

00:42:46.200 But guess what?

00:42:47.660 No one else is doing it.

00:42:48.960 So if you get out there and you build the reps, you learn how to get it done from failure,

00:42:54.840 eventually you're the guy who succeeds.

00:42:56.980 Trust me.

00:42:57.800 I'm more involved in community organizations and talking to people who do this stuff and

00:43:02.180 myself being plugged in than I've ever been in my life.

00:43:05.240 And the one thing everybody needs is more people, more competent people.

00:43:10.820 There's just no one doing the work.

00:43:13.160 Go to these old organizations in your town, the historical societies, the Rotary Club.

00:43:18.960 Go to these places.

00:43:20.820 They're filled with old people who are desperately trying to find someone young to take over for 1.00

00:43:24.940 them.

00:43:25.580 Be that person.

00:43:27.460 Build that skill.

00:43:29.300 Learn how to publicly speak.

00:43:31.260 Learn how to lead.

00:43:32.400 Learn how to put together an event, even if it seems small.

00:43:35.460 Oh, it's a dinner with 50 people listening to one speaker.

00:43:40.300 All I did was rent out a space and order a caterer and set up a microphone.

00:43:47.740 Great, man.

00:43:48.320 You're already ahead of the game.

00:43:49.720 You're already doing better than the vast majority of people.

00:43:52.040 You've already built a skill that most people don't have.

00:43:54.720 Now do it again and do it bigger and keep on doing it.

00:43:58.820 That stuff may seem small, but trust me, that's really what they're counting on.

00:44:04.860 The regime is counting on the idea that you never build that skill set.

00:44:09.900 You never build those muscles because guess what?

00:44:12.300 What you also build while you're doing that?

00:44:14.560 Virtue.

00:44:15.840 Self-discipline.

00:44:18.580 Control of your impulses.

00:44:20.980 The ordering of your emotions and thoughts.

00:44:23.380 You learn how to interact with other people.

00:44:25.700 Become compelling.

00:44:27.160 You build a Rolodex of people who trust you and you trust.

00:44:30.300 If something hits the fan, if there's a disaster, you know who to call.

00:44:35.340 And that's something most people in the United States just don't have anymore.

00:44:38.720 So I guess to wrap this up, guys, I know it's really frustrating to watch these cultural icons come apart and to go through this humiliation ritual.

00:44:50.660 But as frustrating as it might be to watch your favorite property, your favorite game, your favorite show, your favorite series, to watch that stuff come apart, your favorite sports league.

00:45:00.900 Now you have what it takes.

00:45:04.840 Now you have the thing that's going to spur you to go do the real thing.

00:45:09.700 It's not enough to watch woke football anymore.

00:45:12.000 I want to go out and play real sports.

00:45:14.560 It's not enough to go out and play Call of Duty.

00:45:16.640 I want to become competent with a real firearm.

00:45:19.200 It's not enough to, you know, play some life sim game or something.

00:45:23.740 I want to go out and build a real family.

00:45:26.720 These are things that are critical.

00:45:28.560 They're going to make you better.

00:45:29.700 And if the degradation of entertainment spurs you to do better things, well, then you know what?

00:45:35.400 At the end of the day, that was probably good.

00:45:38.180 All right, guys, we have a lot of questions over here from the people real quick.

00:45:42.480 So I'll start going through theirs.

00:45:46.400 Jacob says, don't make Oren deploy the Justinian solution to the sports consumer question.

00:45:52.060 Yes, the greens and the blues.

00:45:53.860 We all have to worry about the hippodrome.

00:45:56.000 But seriously, well, well, yeah, sometimes you might have to force that.

00:46:00.220 Rulers might have to force that if they want to return people to virtue.

00:46:04.480 Hopefully, you know, we're doing that through, like I said, just the degradation of the entertainment itself.

00:46:10.360 Cherry Coke Nixon says, woke is back.

00:46:12.120 It was not defeated by one election or podcast.

00:46:14.200 Bros mocking it. 1.00

00:46:14.960 Still in pop culture will return to corporations next time dims take power.

00:46:20.260 Absolutely correct.

00:46:21.480 This is exactly what I've been saying for a long time.

00:46:23.760 People who are selling the death of woke were really kind of buying, you know, they're high on their own supply.

00:46:30.440 And now it's all coming back.

00:46:32.300 Right.

00:46:32.540 Like now we're getting all the narratives back.

00:46:34.460 It's still in the television shows.

00:46:36.280 It's still in the movies.

00:46:37.840 It's going to go back in your corporate boardrooms as soon as the leaders don't feel like they have the Trump administration breathing down their neck.

00:46:45.160 If serious changes aren't made like this stuff is going to return.

00:46:49.600 And so that said, hopefully the impact of that is to drive people to more productive pursuits.

00:46:59.300 Weirdy Curb says propaganda is only bad when it's pushing wickedness.

00:47:02.920 I think the outcry is more for a demand of decency and entertainment than chimping for circuses. 0.93

00:47:08.380 Yeah, that's fair.

00:47:09.140 Like, like, again, entertainment that portrays the good life that gives you something to aspire to.

00:47:16.660 That's positive right now.

00:47:18.000 I would like to call something like the Odyssey or the Iliad, you know, entertainment.

00:47:25.720 I think that's selling it short.

00:47:27.740 It's literature that literally defined the archetypes of heroic nature for many critical civilizations.

00:47:35.220 But ultimately, the fact that that is what people filled their time with produced more virtue because it was, I guess, propaganda in a sense.

00:47:43.460 But propaganda that elevated heroism and sacrifice and, you know, critical things, bravery.

00:47:50.520 And so, yes, I agree that ultimately we're always going to have entertainment and we want that entertainment to be wholesome and to encourage good behavior.

00:47:58.300 I'm just saying there is a there is a point at which the propaganda is good at what it's doing and very dangerous because it's so good people don't notice.

00:48:08.740 So when it's wicked propaganda and it's competent with wicked propaganda, that's in many ways the worst moment.

00:48:15.620 And it's what a lot of people are craving.

00:48:17.380 They just want to go back to the competent wicked propaganda.

00:48:21.020 They're not looking to go read the Iliad.

00:48:26.080 Bram Zwingle says, all I wanted to to all I wanted was to hang out and play video games with my friends.

00:48:31.960 But now I'm a decade into a culture war.

00:48:34.120 Yeah.

00:48:34.420 I mean, it's a famous phrase.

00:48:35.780 All I wanted to do is play video games, man.

00:48:38.180 And here we are.

00:48:39.020 And that's why I said I think Gamergate did wake up a large amount of people, guys who otherwise would have been completely disconnected, would have been completely checked out.

00:48:46.920 But they just couldn't stop themselves.

00:48:49.400 The woke guys didn't understand the function of their propaganda.

00:48:52.880 They thought that the whole that they just had this lock on the zeitgeist forever.

00:48:57.000 And so they could do whatever they want with it.

00:48:58.860 They didn't recognize.

00:48:59.640 They remember because they didn't build the system in the first place.

00:49:02.640 But the actual reason they're doing what they're doing was to keep people satiated, to keep them from going out there and doing important things.

00:49:09.040 And so now you have the situation where guys who just wanted to go home, just want to play video games.

00:49:13.940 Just give me a little bit of that Soma, a little bit of that drug to calm me down and make me go out the next day.

00:49:20.980 Everybody lost that.

00:49:22.360 And now they have to think about, OK, I guess I have to care about politics.

00:49:26.120 I guess I have to care about the community.

00:49:28.160 I guess I have to care about the world around me, because if I don't, these people are not going to leave me alone.

00:49:32.800 And as we know, the side that wants to win always beat the side that wants to be left alone.

00:49:39.320 Sherry Coat Nixon says, anti-ice stuff is woke by its very foundation.

00:49:43.500 Yes, that is, of course, entirely true.

00:49:46.200 Weir E. Curb again says, I guess my point is there's going to be propaganda, good or bad.

00:49:50.100 More people are demanding good propaganda and entertainment, which I think is positive.

00:49:53.860 Yeah, like I said, you know, man, I really I understand what you're saying, but I think that asking for better versions of stuff that was already entirely corrupted is a problem.

00:50:04.000 I think you're right that there ultimately there are going to be movies.

00:50:06.500 Right. And we do want those movies to ask things of us, to elevate the human spirit, to inspire people.

00:50:13.220 So those things are good.

00:50:14.620 But just when we look at the slop, right, where is my better Marvel movie?

00:50:18.120 Why is it my call of duty better?

00:50:19.800 Right. Those things, those things are the problem.

00:50:22.720 Latrita Bidet, IRS enforcer, says, how about a crowdfunded AI hardware device that intercepts the HDMI stream and de-woke-ifies your Netflix in real time?

00:50:36.800 Call it the discriminator.

00:50:38.740 That's very funny.

00:50:39.820 So if you're not in obsessive evangelical Christian communities, you might not know this.

00:50:45.580 But there used to be an entire service.

00:50:51.100 And of course, you know, you watch movies on TV and they edit stuff out.

00:50:54.520 Right. So you watch Die Hard on there and you're like, oh, they're saying some things that I don't think were actually in the original movie.

00:51:00.000 They've changed language.

00:51:01.000 They've pulled out some scenes, that kind of thing.

00:51:02.940 So we're all familiar with the idea of editing movies.

00:51:05.380 But there used to be this entire service where parents would send videotapes in of like movies that are popular in the zeitgeist, Disney movies or, you know, popular action movies, that kind of thing.

00:51:18.160 And the Christian service would edit things out that they didn't like.

00:51:22.560 So they'd edit out stuff that was, you know, referencing homosexuality or was too sexual or violent or whatever.

00:51:29.120 And then they would send the tape back.

00:51:31.460 So there are kids out there in these communities who have watched these movies over and over and over again and didn't know they contained like absolutely degenerate stuff or devastating stuff or sexual stuff.

00:51:45.140 Like they've never seen the real movie.

00:51:47.200 And then they see it in real life and they're like, what's going on?

00:51:50.140 Right. And so that would be the same thing.

00:51:51.960 Right. Except it would just go directly.

00:51:53.280 You don't have to mail the videotape in instead of, you know, getting rid of all the stuff that might offend, I guess, Christian sensibilities.

00:52:00.060 It would offend non-woke sensibilities.

00:52:02.700 But I do think that's a hilarious idea.

00:52:06.200 Cooper Weirdo says, not sure how much this fits in with the topic, but could you bring someone to talk on about the Avatar movie?

00:52:12.760 They're so irrelevant yet also succeed.

00:52:16.060 You know, man, the only problem with that is I don't know anything about them.

00:52:19.540 I mean, I remember the first Avatar movie coming out and I watched it because it was, you know, this amazing 3D experience.

00:52:26.280 And truly, it was a technological innovation at the time.

00:52:29.600 3D movies, they kept trying to make them happen in Hollywood and they always sucked.

00:52:33.060 And then Avatar came out.

00:52:35.160 And even after Avatar, all the other 3D movies were awful.

00:52:37.820 But Avatar and only Avatar was very good.

00:52:41.240 And so I will say in that way, it was very impressive.

00:52:44.500 And you understand why a lot of people want to see it.

00:52:46.400 So I think the first one just made a lot of money because it's just visually stunning and changed filmmaking in a certain way.

00:52:53.580 But that said, like, it's just Pocahontas.

00:52:56.740 It's just Fern Gully.

00:52:58.300 It's just Dances with Wolves.

00:53:00.140 It's White Guy Goes Native and fights his own people because they're evil. 0.95

00:53:03.980 Like, and the, you know, blessed tribal people are the real heroes.

00:53:09.040 It's that tired thing over and over again.

00:53:11.360 And so I just never saw anything else.

00:53:13.780 I don't even know how many there are.

00:53:15.200 I know a new one came out.

00:53:16.500 Is that the second one?

00:53:17.300 The third one?

00:53:17.820 I really have no idea.

00:53:19.820 So I hear what you're saying in a way that could be interesting.

00:53:22.940 But then I'd have to watch it.

00:53:24.680 Do you really want to do that to me, Creeper Weirdo? 1.00

00:53:29.040 Come on.

00:53:29.920 Don't you care about me?

00:53:30.940 You really want me to have to do that?

00:53:32.520 But anyway, I appreciate the suggestion.

00:53:36.160 Sean Weiland says, subcultures only thrive if they remain underground.

00:53:40.040 Yes, this is also true.

00:53:41.520 As somebody who's a part of several subcultures, one of the main problems is their expansion

00:53:45.520 of audience, again, to be for everyone.

00:53:47.560 The minute that they try to appeal to everyone, they fall apart.

00:53:51.400 If you're familiar with Magic the Gathering, that's happening right now.

00:53:54.440 They've got this new Universes Beyond thing where they bring in, like, Spider-Man and Doctor

00:53:58.660 Who and Avatar and all this other stuff.

00:54:02.180 And it's just awful.

00:54:04.080 Like, it's just awful.

00:54:06.060 There's just nothing left of the original game.

00:54:08.660 It's all going to just be, hey, I remember that property.

00:54:11.140 Hey, I've read that comic book.

00:54:12.520 Hey, I saw that television show.

00:54:14.200 And it's just going to destroy the whole thing.

00:54:15.580 And you know what?

00:54:16.620 It's probably better because at least I won't waste any more time with it, right?

00:54:19.440 So ultimately, again, I'm going to take my own advice there, right?

00:54:22.760 Sad to see it, but probably best at the end of the day.

00:54:24.740 Cherry Coke Nixon says, mid-1990s Law & Order already had woke messaging with evil prep school

00:54:32.420 frat boys, bad right-wing groups, et cetera.

00:54:34.920 Post-2010, DEI writers even worse.

00:54:37.500 Yeah, it's amazing how bad crime dramas are.

00:54:39.840 And you're exactly right.

00:54:40.720 It's so funny that, like, the vast majority of criminals in Law & Order are, like, well-to-do

00:54:45.380 white guys with white-collar jobs who just, like, I don't know, beat the maid for no reason

00:54:50.160 or something, like, it is very funny that that is now, like, the standard that we get

00:54:54.580 from a lot of the stuff.

00:54:56.380 And it even was back then.

00:54:57.960 So, yeah, it's only getting more insufferable.

00:54:59.820 But you're right that this has just been going on for a very long time.

00:55:04.200 Florida Henry says, it freed me.

00:55:05.800 No TV in years.

00:55:06.760 NFL protesting the flag was the last straw.

00:55:09.560 Yeah, that did a lot to me, too.

00:55:10.720 I went back to NFL last year because I was like, ah, I do like watching football.

00:55:15.780 And then just, you know, a few of those messages came through.

00:55:19.140 And I was like, nope, nope, now I remember.

00:55:21.000 That's why I don't watch this anymore.

00:55:22.840 And I've just fallen back off again.

00:55:24.940 So, overall, though, I will say if Creed does play a Super Bowl, that will, I will show up

00:55:31.300 for that and only that.

00:55:33.820 Joe McDermott says, I've been off sports ball slop for a long time, but admittedly have been

00:55:37.940 too lazy to organize alternatives.

00:55:39.880 And that's the key, right?

00:55:41.260 There do need to be alternatives.

00:55:42.800 And that's what you should be doing with that time.

00:55:44.600 If you find yourself no longer able to consume that stuff, do better things.

00:55:49.140 Now, maybe it won't be going out and organizing.

00:55:51.400 Maybe you don't have time for some of those social things.

00:55:53.520 But at least spend the time working out, reading, understanding concepts, maybe improving

00:55:59.160 a house or a car.

00:56:01.400 Just do physical things.

00:56:03.240 Do things in the real world.

00:56:04.880 Learn to repair a car.

00:56:06.300 Something practical with that time.

00:56:09.000 Don't just let it go nowhere, right?

00:56:10.660 Because it will be filled with something else.

00:56:12.540 You're not just going to sit around the house.

00:56:14.940 If you're sitting around the house, you're going to watch a movie or play a video game or do

00:56:18.420 something.

00:56:19.320 So, you know, fill that time with something constructive.

00:56:24.000 Chud Vane says, they never should have touched our video games.

00:56:27.580 So true, comrade.

00:56:28.740 So true.

00:56:31.160 Sherry Coke Nixon says, one battle after another woke Magnus Opus is an award catnip, but box

00:56:36.820 office poison.

00:56:37.640 Good sign or just about a good sign or just about movie theater irrelevance.

00:56:42.460 Yeah, I've heard about this movie.

00:56:44.360 I've heard it's an absolute disaster and just nothing but a weak Antifa or a woke Antifa

00:56:50.480 fever dream.

00:56:51.720 I don't know.

00:56:52.580 I haven't I haven't watched it.

00:56:54.260 I don't know anything about it.

00:56:55.780 But obviously, you know, the director is very I think it's the same guy who made like there

00:56:59.680 will be blood and a good movie.

00:57:01.560 So I understand why a lot of people would want to see it.

00:57:04.080 But from what I've heard, it is an absolute disaster.

00:57:06.620 It is a joke.

00:57:07.340 Uh, again, McDermott says, uh, by the way, did the Oscars or Golden Glows happen recently?

00:57:12.540 I think I saw some of that nonsense in my periphery, but I averted my eyes.

00:57:16.760 Honestly, I have no.

00:57:18.200 Oh, wait.

00:57:18.600 I so actually I do know this.

00:57:20.380 Funny enough, I, I, I haven't seen one of those in a long time, but I did see a commercial

00:57:25.580 or something.

00:57:26.300 And the, the only thing from the commercial was the host making a joke about how relevant

00:57:32.300 the award ceremony was.

00:57:34.000 And I think once the only thing you can do with your award ceremony is talk about how

00:57:39.580 irrelevant it is and how disconnected all the people in the industry are and how awful

00:57:43.820 the movies are, it's officially dead.

00:57:45.880 Right.

00:57:46.040 Cause that's actually like the same thing that they do with Christianity.

00:57:48.980 It's that level of deconstruction.

00:57:50.740 So it's actually just the, you know, the, the pop culture deconstruction eating its own

00:57:54.840 tail because now it can't like deconstruct Christianity anymore.

00:57:58.480 The church anymore.

00:57:59.220 It's done all of that.

00:58:00.020 It's, it's out of juice.

00:58:01.080 So now all it can deconstruct is its own irrelevant institution, which is an interesting thing

00:58:05.800 to occur.

00:58:07.500 Uh, John, uh, Hoyle says a new trend.

00:58:11.180 A friend was banned from Facebook for using offensive language to meta AI.

00:58:15.380 There's no privacy with AI.

00:58:16.680 Apparently keep an eye on this.

00:58:18.120 Yeah.

00:58:18.600 I mean, Facebook's been banning stuff for a long time, right?

00:58:21.260 Like they're nefarious for, uh, or notorious for being nefarious.

00:58:24.840 For taking out all of this speech.

00:58:27.340 Uh, so I hear you, but I don't know if this is really a new trend.

00:58:30.560 It sounds like maybe just AI helping with an old trend.

00:58:34.040 Now, you know, they can censor more because AI can look at more posts.

00:58:37.940 I mean, YouTube already does this, right?

00:58:40.020 That's one of the reasons you have to be so careful on YouTube is because AI is the only

00:58:44.500 way they can possibly moderate their content.

00:58:46.540 There's so many videos going up all the time.

00:58:48.780 There's just no way that they can have real people watch everything.

00:58:52.140 And so AIs will trigger on basically anything they think could possibly be offensive.

00:58:56.740 And then you have to go back and get it reviewed manually and all this stuff.

00:59:00.560 So I think this is technology that's just going to continue to be deployed on social media.

00:59:03.820 I understand your concern, but I don't know if there's a quick fix on the horizon or that

00:59:07.500 anything about that is particularly new.

00:59:09.720 All right, guys, going to go ahead and wrap this up.

00:59:14.240 I want to thank everybody for watching.

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00:59:41.040 Thank you, everybody, for watching.

00:59:42.360 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 12, 2026

When the Bread and Circuses Turn Gay ｜ 1⧸12⧸26

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