The Culture War - Tim Pool - Political Groups PAY For FAKE Influencers, The Internet IS DEAD

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00:00:56.700 This is something you've probably already noticed.

00:01:00.180 You've seen the same video over and over and over again produced by a ton of different people.

00:01:06.180 Now, I've called this out.

00:01:07.720 There's a couple different phenomena happening.

00:01:10.720 One is that people are AI generating influencer videos from like man on the street stuff.

00:01:15.940 So they get millions of views.

00:01:17.200 The other is that people will make a single video like I'm making right here,

00:01:22.540 but then run it through an AI replacement system and turn it into 700 different people.

00:01:29.080 I'm telling you straight up, they will record themselves saying something like,

00:01:33.520 I'm a big fan of fried chicken.

00:01:37.440 And I am, by the way, nothing but chicken wings.

00:01:39.620 I just love it.

00:01:41.140 They'll take that one clip, load it into an AI,

00:01:44.040 and then one by one, they can put in a photo of a different person

00:01:47.200 and render that same video, that same audio with a totally different person.

00:01:52.540 And you'll end up with thousands of videos from various paid creators that are fake paid or, well, fake or paid.

00:02:02.380 We'll just put it like that.

00:02:03.640 And so what do you see?

00:02:04.900 For some reason, tons of people online just happen to feel one way about a particular political issue.

00:02:11.580 In my opinion, this should be absolutely illegal.

00:02:14.720 What we see here, an army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political content.

00:02:20.940 This should be illegal. If you are paid to produce political content, if you are taking

00:02:28.280 money from lobbying groups, if you are on the payroll of a lobbying group, if you are getting

00:02:33.760 paid in any way by a foreign government, you should have to disclose this or a lobbying group

00:02:41.000 on behalf of a foreign government. It should be illegal. Now, to be fair, we can have varying

00:02:46.800 degrees of these things like civil penalties up to criminal penalties. But let's jump into this

00:02:52.280 story because it is mind blowing. An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political

00:02:57.400 content. Our world is being shaped by fake opinions. And what's scary is, how do we know

00:03:04.520 these are real opinions of humans? A lot of people are making videos. They make videos where they say,

00:03:10.760 do you want to make millions of dollars on YouTube like me? And actually don't. They fake it. These

00:03:15.340 people make videos where they're like, this month I made $40,000 on YouTube. And it's not real.

00:03:20.280 But they believe it's real. I say, here's what you do. And they tell you to make videos like this.

00:03:24.620 What if somebody goes on insert AI and says, tell me what kind of video to make

00:03:32.060 so I can make money on YouTube? And it tells them to make a certain political content.

00:03:37.760 And now people are producing videos for the AI.

00:03:43.980 Whether an AI is conscious or otherwise, it is directing the content being produced.

00:03:48.740 And our political opinions are now being recycled by a machine back into that machine.

00:03:54.060 This is getting crazy, my friends.

00:03:56.660 Well, let's jump in the news.

00:03:57.700 Before we do, for those of us that aren't paid influencers, you got to buy our coffee at casprew.com.

00:04:04.140 We got a bunch of great ground coffee and flavored blends.

00:04:08.140 Everyone's favorite, of course, is Appalachian Nights, our best seller.

00:04:12.100 And, of course, Ian's Graphene Dream.

00:04:13.840 Check it out.

00:04:14.180 We got cake cups.

00:04:15.120 We got bottled water.

00:04:16.300 We got all the good stuff.

00:04:17.360 And you need coffee.

00:04:18.720 See, I don't get paid to say these things.

00:04:22.260 I have to make money from them somehow.

00:04:24.480 This is the reality of being a personality on a show.

00:04:28.200 Sponsorships pay the bills.

00:04:29.700 So we launched Casper.com because, well, for one, everyone does coffee.

00:04:33.580 It's really easy to do, but I'm a coffee guy.

00:04:36.120 My family went to coffee shop when I was younger.

00:04:37.760 And so I said, OK, if we don't have an advertiser to buy a slot, we'll run our own product.

00:04:44.880 When you guys buy coffee, join us at TimCast.com.

00:04:49.160 Leave a super thanks, which is like a thing now, or super chats, or even just the programmatic ads on this video.

00:04:55.080 That's how we make money.

00:04:56.780 No one comes to me and says, I want you to support this ideological cause for money.

00:05:03.120 Well, to be fair, they do.

00:05:04.240 And I say, no way.

00:05:05.880 So I'd much rather say, guys, if you like coffee, we sell coffee.

00:05:10.860 If I do this video and I sell enough coffee, I make a living.

00:05:14.560 It really is that simple.

00:05:16.260 Sometimes we have vitamins or whatever.

00:05:17.940 But these people, these videos that you are seeing, this massive collage of all identical,

00:05:25.800 identical talking points up to $30 per post.

00:05:30.600 This is how things are getting absolutely crazy.

00:05:33.500 You know what I wonder?

00:05:34.200 can I like just can I do this can I pay people hey you know 20 bucks to just make a video being

00:05:42.040 like dude I love Tim Pool so could you imagine if you go on Instagram and there's just like

00:05:46.820 tens of thousands of videos of people just being like I just love Tim Pool's content it's the best

00:05:52.040 content ever and then they don't put paid partnership in it if if I were to and this is

00:05:58.280 in all seriousness. If I were to pay someone to say good things about me and my business

00:06:04.160 without disclosing it, that's a crime. But if it's a political issue, they get away with it.

00:06:10.440 Okay, then we'll turn support of me into a political issue or something.

00:06:14.900 Think about this. What if someone's running for office? They raise a bunch of money,

00:06:19.720 so they hire a bunch of regular people to all spam blast out videos about how they're the best

00:06:24.560 politician. Check this out. An army of paid creators is carpeting the web with political

00:06:30.380 content. Unlike celebrity influencers with large followings, these creators produce a blizzard of

00:06:35.860 videos for a fraction of the cost of traditional online campaigns and in the process, shift public

00:06:42.080 conversations. Oh, we have audio? Wait, is there actually audio? There's no audio on this.

00:06:49.160 Why does it say there's audio on this? It's fake. It was fake the whole time.

00:06:54.140 Judging from his TikTok feed, Drew was struggling to get by as a young man living near Dallas.

00:06:58.660 Grocery bills were skyrocketing, he said, and he was looking for thrift stores to keep costs down.

00:07:02.840 In reality, according to his LinkedIn profile, he's a man from Utah named Alex Forrester, not Drew,

00:07:07.540 who said he was now in Florida. All of it was paid for, he said, which was later deleted.

00:07:12.660 I don't even live in Texas. Wow. Mr. Forrester, who did not respond to a request for comment.

00:07:17.540 Yeah, because maybe it's a crime was more is one of more than 100 content creators identified by

00:07:22.840 the New York Times, who in recent months have been paid as much as $30 per post by a progressive

00:07:29.840 group to create videos about affordability for social media. Texas is way cheaper than California.

00:07:37.640 Look at this. That's the quote. And he's like, LA rent $2,742, Dallas $1,588. But then he points

00:07:45.500 minimum wage in L.A. is $18.42, $7.25 in Texas, so that you're working way less. That means you

00:07:51.560 have to work 47% more to afford rent in Texas. This is progressive propaganda to trick people

00:07:58.860 into moving or staying in California for $30. In June, he posted a confessional. Can you play?

00:08:08.540 can we do we have the audio account uh drew yaps all of it was paid for so it was user generated

00:08:17.000 content uh it was through this app which they basically paid me retainer and then any view

00:08:23.280 bonuses to make tiktoks slash instagram reels about whatever content they wanted me to do so

00:08:30.680 they were paying me to post uh very left-leaning stuff about how texas was super expensive and how

00:08:38.420 it has been hard for me living in texas i don't even fucking live in texas i'm from utah i'm in 0.98

00:08:43.500 florida right now uh and they kicked me off the campaign like absolute assholes so yeah 0.94

00:08:49.540 i figured yo this is crazy similar campaigns this year have paid ordinary people to promote 0.94

00:08:56.580 a republican candidate for la mayor to oppose a regulatory bill pushed by the crypto industry

00:09:01.680 earlier this month an unidentified non-profit group offered up to 1500 for videos on tiktok

00:09:06.660 youtube and instagram and support mail voting mail voting working correctly you know i wonder

00:09:13.040 what the rules are on advertising this way you know what we do there's uh something called

00:09:18.340 clipping it's really big you've probably heard of it you basically outsource promotion of your

00:09:22.540 show to various accounts hoping to hit the algorithm what we do is uh we we do like 80

00:09:27.640 of our own posting but then we we tell the networks like y'all y'all are free to clip

00:09:32.220 from the show because that was always the case. And then when they do, we use that for analytics,

00:09:38.280 basically. So people will then go through the show and clip a bunch of different pieces from

00:09:42.380 it in various ways, making like thousands of different segments. And then we can see which

00:09:46.560 ones do the best. And then we just we just repost them. It's it's pretty crazy what social media is

00:09:52.520 becoming. That being said, our show is literally just raw off the cuff opinion. I don't think we

00:09:57.020 can survive. I got to be completely honest, guys. So I made this post earlier where I said,

00:10:03.400 OpenAI, I tweeted him, I said, you need to make like a verified account because I try to make

00:10:08.900 thumbnails all the time with my mug in it because I'm me. And it's like, we can't use that because

00:10:14.320 it infringes on Tim Pool's copyright. And I'm like, I am Tim Pool. And it's like, yeah, sorry,

00:10:19.360 I don't know that. And I'm like, dude, I pay for this service. I run a business. I want you to

00:10:24.920 make a thumbnail with my picture in it. And it tells me no, because I'm famous. That's stupid.

00:10:31.240 So it works half the time when it doesn't, I have to like, I have to do weird tricks where I'm like 0.99

00:10:36.980 at the very bottom, right? Satire. And then just cut it off. And it's like, it'll let me use a

00:10:40.760 third party image. If you put satire on it, just absolutely insane. But a bunch of people were

00:10:46.140 like, stop using AI and hire a person to do it. Can I just, I just explained this to you guys.

00:10:52.180 it's it's it's done it is it is done okay i've been trying to talk about this for so long

00:10:58.680 about how ai has taken everything over it's 200 a month for pro gpt that gives me nearly

00:11:07.840 unlimited image generation and when i say unlimited it's because we cannot generate

00:11:13.380 enough images to actually reach our usage allotment so for 200 bucks a month i can get

00:11:21.360 the work of 15 graphic designers. So let me tell you how it works. So we have and have had various

00:11:30.380 individuals who work on graphic design for a variety of reasons. And we'd say like, hey,

00:11:34.520 we need a graphic that looks like this. It might take a few hours to a few days, depending on the

00:11:38.840 scope of the project. I'm working on a video game right now, which many of you may know about.

00:11:43.220 It's nearly done. It's pretty amazing. And the background, it's a dungeon crawler roguelike game.

00:11:50.540 The dungeon art per floors was rendered in 30 seconds.

00:11:54.440 Guys, I'm talking 20 levels.

00:11:57.700 I'll give you a bit of the background on how my code works.

00:12:00.160 We have a procedural dungeon generator that uses seeds, so every time you play, it's different.

00:12:05.060 The first floor has, I think, six rooms.

00:12:08.360 Six rooms that are connected by tunnels.

00:12:10.920 And that's how the dungeon generator works.

00:12:14.320 Each room is a specific room like the chapel or, you know, the the guards room or the watchtower.

00:12:22.740 The art for those rooms is, you know, windows with trees.

00:12:27.520 And then we have some windows with thunderstorms.

00:12:30.880 That is the background of each.

00:12:32.740 So we had to make the generator, make the individual.

00:12:36.220 So then what happens is the next zone you go to, it's an increase of 10 percent.

00:12:40.020 So the tiles for each zone increases, compounding by 10 percent.

00:12:44.320 So there's 20 floors.

00:12:46.220 Once you get to the bottom floor, it's substantially bigger than the first floor.

00:12:49.520 That's how we scale it, which means we had to create rooms and art for the tunnels, for

00:12:53.480 the background, everything.

00:12:55.560 Now, if I went to a human being and said, I need art for this game, they'd have to individually

00:13:01.160 draw.

00:13:01.760 This could take months, and it was done in 30 seconds for zero.

00:13:06.720 Just part of our natural allotment.

00:13:09.200 I started Ornod in 2013, and we make bike apparel.

00:13:12.880 The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical people.

00:13:20.880 We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily.

00:13:26.180 If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle.

00:13:31.520 It's the thing that you do the thing on.

00:13:33.740 We run the business on Shopify.

00:13:35.340 Start your free trial on Shopify.com.

00:13:37.620 The cost of producing this AI insanity is so dirt cheap

00:13:43.080 that you don't even need to pay these people 30 bucks anymore.

00:13:48.200 The only reason they do is they're decentralizing the account creation process.

00:13:52.520 But if they really wanted to, you can get a handful of guys in India who will do it for you.

00:13:57.920 Welcome, my friends, to the dead Internet theory. 1.00

00:14:01.020 This is a chow burst and had this video I saw earlier. 0.99

00:14:03.520 I'm going to play it for you so you can get an idea of what is going on now 0.89

00:14:06.780 with the political manipulation. It's as simple as that. This street interview has over a million

00:14:16.860 views on Facebook. It might not seem that weird. At first, it's a British woman at an anti-immigration

00:14:23.140 protest somewhere in the UK. Here's the weird part. Cut their benefits. The system is completely

00:14:32.880 broken. We need proper reform of the whole broken system. It's as simple as that. It's as simple as

00:14:38.880 that. Maybe you could already tell, but all of these videos are AI-generated. What's gone viral

00:14:43.680 isn't just the videos themselves, but also the prompt used to make them. It's part of a genre

00:14:48.960 dominating Facebook in the United Kingdom. AI-generated content designed to fuel anger

00:14:54.320 online, particularly with anti-Muslim or anti-immigration messages. It's videos like these.

00:15:00.480 Why are migrants put first? 0.95

00:15:03.100 But also images like these and news updates like these. 1.00

00:15:10.060 Maybe that's not too surprising.

00:15:11.960 These are hot-button topics.

00:15:14.120 Here's where it gets weirder, and you might already suspect what I'm about to show you.

00:15:19.060 These accounts are hiding a secret.

00:15:21.240 Many of them claim to be from the United Kingdom, but if you go to their page, click on their

00:15:26.080 name and click page transparency, you can see that they aren't Sri Lanka. Instead, they're

00:15:34.120 actually based in places like Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. And here's where

00:15:40.160 it gets even weirder. If we simply cut their benefits, they'll choose to leave on their own.

00:15:46.100 These foreign-run Facebook slop accounts are also targeting Australia and the United States

00:15:51.640 with almost the same exact content. 0.90

00:15:54.640 Cut their benefits and they will deport themselves.

00:15:58.220 I wanted to understand the ecosystem that's motivating people in these countries

00:16:02.240 to specifically post this type of content about these places.

00:16:06.560 It's a semi-dystopian system on mine. 0.88

00:16:09.220 News feeds are full of nightmarish slob. 0.92

00:16:12.340 There's no sense of the real impact on people.

00:16:14.260 I've spent the last few weeks deep in this strange corner of the internet,

00:16:18.000 trying to understand why a certain kind of content meant for people in one part of the world

00:16:23.700 has become an obsession for people in another part of it and the answer i found

00:16:28.400 was much stranger than i thought

00:16:30.460 so i think this is just a trailer for uh his longer form longer form video but uh really

00:16:39.840 really great editing really great production and i hope you're real chow berson or is your name

00:16:45.340 Chau Burson. I don't know, but it's the Bureau. The Bureau investigates that that was great so

00:16:51.160 far. My friends, welcome to the dead Internet theory. This is the reality of what is going on

00:16:57.200 right now. The videos you're watching, the people you think you know and trust are not real. Not

00:17:02.900 everybody. A lot of it still is real, but this is where we are going. I made a mistake and I will

00:17:07.700 admit this every step of the way. The last time I was on Joe Rogan's show, it's years ago. He

00:17:11.740 asked me what I thought about AI video and audio and stuff. And I said, I don't think it's that

00:17:16.120 big a deal because we already have Photoshop and video editing. It's just we don't see these kinds

00:17:22.180 of hoaxes. I mean, sometimes, but like we usually suss through them. I made a mistake. What I failed

00:17:27.960 to take into account was the ubiquity and the ease of access for everybody, which means you are going

00:17:34.020 to get a rapid decentralization in the ability to do it. The reason why it wasn't that big a deal

00:17:40.080 when we had photoshop was because you could photoshop stuff but very few people were proficient

00:17:45.960 in photoshop enough to do it now that literally anyone can click a button and for less than a

00:17:52.240 dollar they can transform themselves into whatever they want to be to sound like whoever they want

00:18:01.280 to sound like to convince every single one of you to watch these videos they will do it so whether

00:18:08.480 they're a beanie-clad wearing podcaster or they're some dude in India, people are going to fall for 0.83

00:18:15.560 it. And they're going to get followers. And it's going to be worse than just transforming

00:18:20.160 themselves because we are rapidly approaching ASI, artificial superintelligence. I already believe

00:18:27.640 we're at artificial general intelligence. And what does that mean? The general idea,

00:18:33.140 the general AGI idea

00:18:34.980 when AI is as good as the average person

00:18:38.700 at every job

00:18:39.680 so you can argue that

00:18:41.880 we're not at artificial general intelligence yet

00:18:44.400 because AI can't do every job

00:18:45.940 but I'm going to go ahead and tell you

00:18:47.080 with the latest models that have been released

00:18:48.680 by OpenAI and Claude

00:18:50.160 Fable as well as the new GrokBot

00:18:52.760 which does a fantastic job

00:18:54.600 rivaling in my opinion Fable

00:18:56.180 Astra is still the best

00:18:57.860 no beef Elon

00:18:59.080 but you got some ways to go with Grok

00:19:01.660 and I'm really hoping you can pick it up and beat these guys.

00:19:05.140 But for the time being, I'm going to tell it like it is.

00:19:08.000 Astra can do any white collar job and then some.

00:19:11.120 It can do better creative works than any graphic artist team.

00:19:14.720 It works 24-7 with zero days off, zero breaks, doesn't need to sleep.

00:19:20.900 So we can tell it.

00:19:21.960 I literally, guys, I told for my video game, I told Astra,

00:19:26.240 render, and you don't got to use Astra for this.

00:19:27.880 You could use the cheap models too.

00:19:29.080 You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.

00:19:57.380 Actually, I think I did use,

00:19:58.800 I used a mix of Astra and Soul.

00:20:00.620 I said, render 1,000 images of trading cards.

00:20:05.320 So in my video game is a tabletop game as well.

00:20:08.400 The way the dungeon crawler works

00:20:09.560 is that you find cards

00:20:10.660 and the cards allow you to,

00:20:12.660 they're basically like scrolls

00:20:14.260 that you cast spells and stuff

00:20:15.260 while you're in the dungeon.

00:20:16.240 But the cards also have a tabletop version

00:20:19.620 that is functionally similar,

00:20:21.500 almost identical,

00:20:22.200 but one's real time, one's tabletop.

00:20:24.300 And I said,

00:20:25.380 we're going to design a tabletop game

00:20:26.500 to coincide with this game

00:20:27.680 that you can use the cards in the dungeon.

00:20:29.340 Generate me 500 cards and the art, go.

00:20:32.620 And then I went to sleep.

00:20:33.560 And when I woke up, it was done.

00:20:35.880 Humans can't compete with this.

00:20:38.120 This is artificial general intelligence.

00:20:40.200 It can do our accounting and candle the books.

00:20:41.860 And don't get me wrong, it can make mistakes.

00:20:44.180 So you got to watch out for those.

00:20:45.860 But you know what people are doing?

00:20:47.320 They're using programs that will bring three different,

00:20:50.140 they'll bring Grok, Claude, and OpenAI agents

00:20:52.320 into the same feed.

00:20:53.440 So they're cross-checking each other's work,

00:20:55.440 dramatically minimizing mistakes. And guess what? Humans make mistakes too.

00:21:00.660 The dead internet theory, for those that don't know, back in around 2016, it is believed that

00:21:05.580 fake accounts began to outnumber real people. I'm from the internet. I grew up online. My family

00:21:12.680 had CompuServe in 1989 on DOS, not even DOS shell, for those that know what this is. DOS.

00:21:19.860 Okay. So the DOS operating system, most of you know, it's basically just as like C colon

00:21:23.540 backslash, and then there's like a, that's it, a cursor. And you've got to type things in to

00:21:28.540 execute games. I've typed like dir slash w slash o slash p or something to sort through the directory

00:21:34.860 and then do like, you know, cd backslash, you get the point. cd dot dot, man, we remember all that

00:21:40.120 DOS stuff, right? Well, then we got DOS shell, which is an upgrade. It was a simple graphical

00:21:45.100 interface that actually just showed you the lists in real time and a colored bar would move up and

00:21:51.240 down and you could just press enter to select. It was amazing. We got Windows, the internet evolved

00:21:56.480 and I was on CompuServe on Windows as well as AOL. In fact, briefly had web TV for some reason.

00:22:03.420 You guys remember web TV? Yeah, that was weird, but you know, we had it. And at the time,

00:22:10.120 everybody online was for the most part who they said they were because very few people were online.

00:22:14.680 As time went on, more and more people started using the internet, which created opportunities

00:22:19.000 and economics, meaning companies were starting to form. We got the dot dot com boom and bust.

00:22:25.180 Websites were making real money. And then people realized, let's fake it. Reddit notoriously has

00:22:32.700 been accused. And I think this is part of their official story, but I could be wrong. In the early

00:22:36.060 days of Reddit, in order to convince people to use the platform, Alexis Ohanian and I think Steve

00:22:42.340 Hupp, I think those are their names. Alexis for sure. But Steve, I don't know. I actually know

00:22:46.120 oh, Alex is a nice guy. I haven't talked to him in a long time, but not we're good friends or

00:22:49.420 anything. But apparently they would create fake accounts and just pretend to have conversations.

00:22:54.780 So it looked like the website actually had real user interaction. So you thought you were talking

00:23:01.140 to a guy from Nebraska, but in fact, you were talking to the CEO on 50 different accounts.

00:23:06.120 He was just tricking you. As the story goes, I don't want to speak out of turn because maybe

00:23:10.340 that's not completely correct, but a lot of other platforms have done this. The strategy 10 years

00:23:16.100 ago, because I actually have been in meetings where we discussed this, where I explained like,

00:23:20.580 well, here's how they're doing it. You create a social media app. You run ads targeting high

00:23:25.900 school kids. You tell them, sign up for the cool new app. When one kid signs up, you give him a

00:23:32.540 bunch of fake followers. Why? 16-year-old kid shows up in high school strutting his stuff,

00:23:38.540 starts bragging about how he's got 23,000 followers on Florbo, Florbo.app or whatever.

00:23:46.700 The other kids are like, you have 23,000 followers.

00:23:49.740 Like, what is that app?

00:23:50.540 And I was like, you know, it's like, it's a really cool app where you sing songs.

00:23:53.680 You know what I mean?

00:23:54.140 Like me, like, you know, I'm pretty popular.

00:23:57.300 The kids don't know the followers are fake.

00:23:59.680 All they know is they don't have followers and he does.

00:24:03.480 I was at VidCon 10 years ago and there were a bunch of little kids standing in front of

00:24:07.860 VidCon and I heard one kid go, you have 83 followers?

00:24:11.480 How?

00:24:12.740 And I'm sitting there giggling being like, this is so weird.

00:24:16.100 I mean, at the time I had, I think in like I had hundreds of thousands, I got millions now across

00:24:21.380 the board, but back then is, you know, hundreds of thousands. I didn't think that way, but they did.

00:24:25.760 So when this one kid has all these followers and they're fake and the comments are fake,

00:24:29.480 he doesn't know, but the other kids are jealous. So they all start signing up. He says, you should

00:24:33.540 sign up, man, because I'm, I'm blown up on this platform. So everybody starts signing up. You

00:24:37.780 give them all fake followers and then they start using your platform instead of everybody else's.

00:24:43.300 That's how you build a social media network.

00:24:45.500 And that's the dead internet.

00:24:46.820 And it started happening en masse in 2016.

00:24:50.920 We started seeing people realize you can control public opinion on platforms like Reddit with

00:24:54.760 fake accounts, with fake people.

00:24:57.300 And thus, my friends, here we are.

00:25:00.880 The internet is not real, as I've just proven to you in many different ways.

00:25:07.280 So what do we do?

00:25:08.900 How do we sort through this, man?

00:25:10.460 You know, I don't know. But I wonder if one of the reasons we're seeing a decline in podcast traffic and numbers. Oh, man, I had a bunch of meetings in L.A. Let me just tell you, the big networks are sweating bullets on this stuff. They're worried. I think it's just not real anymore. And it used to be an escape. But the Internet became central to reality.

00:25:34.900 And so regular people are like, man, I'd go online to escape reality.

00:25:38.380 Now online is reality.

00:25:39.960 We want to escape from it.

00:25:41.480 I think that makes a lot of sense.

00:25:43.060 Now that it's largely fake, too, people are just saying the value proposition isn't there

00:25:47.840 for me anymore.

00:25:49.200 So I have to wonder.

00:25:51.380 Don't trust everything you see online, my friends.

00:25:53.520 Smash the like button.

00:25:54.600 Share the show.

00:25:55.400 Thank you all so much for watching.

00:25:56.880 Appreciate everybody who came up and said what up while we were in L.A.

00:25:59.160 We got more coming up for you throughout the day, and we'll see you all in the next segment.

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The Culture War - Tim Pool - September 24, 2026

Political Groups PAY For FAKE Influencers, The Internet IS DEAD

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