The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #936 - Colin Moriarty

00:00:01.000 Boom! 0.99

00:00:01.000 And we're live. 0.99

00:00:02.000 How are you, Colin?

00:00:03.000 I'm alright.

00:00:03.000 How are you?

00:00:04.000 What's going on?

00:00:05.000 A lot.

00:00:06.000 You've got a lot of stuff happening, man.

00:00:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:00:08.000 First of all, thank you so much.

00:00:09.000 My pleasure.

00:00:10.000 This is amazing.

00:00:11.000 Well, Dave Rubin recommends you.

00:00:12.000 And I listen to Dave Rubin's...

00:00:14.000 I don't listen to a whole lot of people's recommendations, but Dave Rubin's one of them.

00:00:16.000 He's been an amazing figure in my life just in the last less than even a month.

00:00:21.000 He kind of was like my savior when everyone was, you know...

00:00:25.000 Kicking me while I was down, he was the one that kind of reached a handout, and so I owe him a great deal.

00:00:28.000 Well, we should kind of explain what kicking you while you're down means, because it's more silly to me than anything, because it doesn't really make sense.

00:00:36.000 But you tweeted a joke.

00:00:37.000 And it's a real simple joke.

00:00:40.000 Jamie, see if you can pull up the joke.

00:00:42.000 This is what happened.

00:00:43.000 Colin tweeted a joke about a day without a woman.

00:00:47.000 And everybody knows that a day without a woman was like that day without a Mexican thing, where you're supposed to like, well, imagine if there were no women. 0.89

00:00:56.000 Well... 1.00

00:00:57.000 If there were no women, first of all, there'd be no fucking people. 1.00

00:00:59.000 So yeah. 1.00

00:01:00.000 Yes.

00:01:01.000 Women are super important. 1.00

00:01:02.000 Of course.

00:01:02.000 So you just write this tweet joke, ah, peace and quiet, hashtag a day without a woman.

00:01:08.000 I would laugh.

00:01:09.000 I would think it was funny, and I would move on, and that's it.

00:01:13.000 So then, hold on a second, put that, look, go above that, go above that, above it.

00:01:20.000 Look at that.

00:01:21.000 Sent this tweet which was roundly condemned as sexist.

00:01:26.000 Yeah, not really true if you leave the gaming industry, but, uh, roudly condemned in the gaming industry for sure.

00:01:33.000 Outside of that, people, I think normal everyday people that don't have an axe to grind about literally everything, found it, you know, read it, maybe groaned or maybe laughed and then kept going about their day like a normal person.

00:01:43.000 You're not allowed to have any personality anymore.

00:01:45.000 No. 0.99

00:01:45.000 If you work for any kind of a company that is in any way public where you can be targeted, where they can say, oh, that's the fucking guy. 0.99

00:01:54.000 Go get him! 0.99

00:01:55.000 Like anything that's remotely controversial.

00:01:57.000 I mean, that is really remotely controversial.

00:02:00.000 It's just Al Bundy.

00:02:01.000 Yeah, I mean, it's not even a good joke.

00:02:03.000 And, you know, I heard you and Jim Norton talking about it.

00:02:06.000 By the way, that video, someone clipped that out and put it up on some YouTube channel.

00:02:12.000 That video is going to be a relic in my family forever.

00:02:14.000 Everyone was like, I can't believe this.

00:02:15.000 What is going on?

00:02:16.000 This is so great.

00:02:16.000 So I really do appreciate you stepping up.

00:02:19.000 But when I got your DM, by the way, on Twitter, I was like, what an amazing turn of events this has been for me.

00:02:24.000 So I really am appreciative of you again.

00:02:26.000 I just want you to know that.

00:02:27.000 Oh, well, thank you.

00:02:27.000 Thank you.

00:02:28.000 Stop saying that you're making me uncomfortable.

00:02:29.000 Oh, sorry.

00:02:31.000 But at the same time, you know, I was in bed with my girlfriend actually when I wrote it and I showed it to her and I was like, it's kind of funny, right? 0.99

00:02:38.000 It's kind of stupid. 0.99

00:02:39.000 And she left. 1.00

00:02:40.000 She's an ER nurse and she works the overnight shift. 0.63

00:02:42.000 So she was just getting into bed as I was getting up. 0.64

00:02:45.000 And she's like, yeah, it's funny.

00:02:46.000 Then we didn't really think twice about it.

00:02:47.000 I sent it.

00:02:48.000 I got in the shower.

00:02:49.000 I went about my day.

00:02:50.000 And then when I got to work, I realized that it was a much bigger deal than I had thought.

00:02:55.000 And then everything fell apart and then was rebuilt very quickly.

00:02:59.000 So...

00:02:59.000 Well, you resigned from the company that you worked for.

00:03:02.000 Yeah, I founded it.

00:03:03.000 I co-founded the company.

00:03:04.000 I owned a piece of it.

00:03:04.000 And you resigned because of that.

00:03:06.000 Yeah, other reasons too, but that was definitely the straw that broke the camel's back for me. 1.00

00:03:10.000 What in the fuck, man? 0.99

00:03:12.000 Yeah, I felt like... 1.00

00:03:14.000 How is it possible that in this day and age that simple tweet...

00:03:19.000 By the way, if you reverse the sexes in that tweet, there's not a single man that would complain.

00:03:24.000 And if he did, he's not a man.

00:03:26.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:03:27.000 And I say also that if a person that wasn't a self-described moderate conservative or libertarian sent that joke, it also wouldn't have gotten the firestorm.

00:03:35.000 That's the thing, Joe. 0.99

00:03:36.000 You don't think a liberal man wouldn't have gotten a rash of shit and been sort of... 1.00

00:03:42.000 Kicked out of the community? 1.00

00:03:43.000 Maybe in a different place, but not in the gaming industry, which is almost completely hyper-liberal.

00:03:49.000 So, I've had a target on my back for years, and that's, I think, kind of the point that's lost on some people, is that this was just an opportunity.

00:03:56.000 No one was offended by this joke.

00:03:57.000 No one was aghast.

00:03:59.000 Like I said on Ruben, the second time I was on there, I said, like, no one was crying in their shower, losing sleep, tossing and turning over this joke.

00:04:05.000 Maybe Ruben was.

00:04:06.000 Well, I hope so, because we should find that person.

00:04:08.000 Find that person and study them in a lab.

00:04:11.000 But to me, I was like, no, this is...

00:04:12.000 I mean, it was clear a few hours later when I finally realized what was happening.

00:04:15.000 I'm like, this is...

00:04:16.000 They're in for the kill now.

00:04:17.000 This is...

00:04:17.000 They found their way to get me.

00:04:19.000 So why do you think they wanted to, quote-unquote, get you?

00:04:23.000 Because, you know, I live in San Francisco.

00:04:25.000 I've lived there for 10 years.

00:04:26.000 I was born and raised on Long Island.

00:04:27.000 But I went to college in Boston, and then I moved to San Francisco.

00:04:30.000 And it is as cartoonishly liberal as everyone thinks it is.

00:04:34.000 So it's...

00:04:35.000 The gaming industry is there.

00:04:37.000 The gaming media, the people that write about games and cover them and do all that kind of stuff, they're largely there.

00:04:42.000 It's a huge echo chamber.

00:04:43.000 They don't like when people penetrate the echo chamber.

00:04:46.000 I made a name for myself in the industry over years.

00:04:48.000 I was the senior editor of the biggest gaming website in the world for years.

00:04:52.000 What website was that?

00:04:53.000 IGN.com.

00:04:54.000 I was the senior editor there.

00:04:57.000 I made a name for myself, not only with criticism and with long-form pieces, but basically, I was writing pieces about political correctness in 2011. In 2012, people going after game developers, people going after all these things, and me kind of standing up and saying, this isn't okay, this character assassination.

00:05:11.000 A good example for everyone out there that doesn't know games, there's this game called Borderlands 2. One of the developers was giving an interview about it.

00:05:21.000 And this was back in, I think, 2011. He said something to the nature of, this particular mode in the game is accessible for everyone.

00:05:27.000 It's like a girlfriend mode if you want your girlfriend to come play. 0.99

00:05:31.000 He insinuated that women can't play games and don't know how to play games by using the term girlfriend mode.

00:05:36.000 And people went after this guy and tried to get him.

00:05:38.000 You know, and I wrote this piece saying like, what the hell is everyone doing?

00:05:41.000 This guy just is trying to explain something.

00:05:43.000 He's not a sexist.

00:05:44.000 Why do you make these assumptions based on this one thing about him?

00:05:46.000 And why do you want to ruin someone?

00:05:47.000 And that's the whole thing.

00:05:48.000 They want to ruin people.

00:05:49.000 So I was outspoken about this and I was outspoken for my support of Mitt Romney and I was outspoken about my support for Gary Johnson and my outspoken.

00:05:56.000 So they don't like that.

00:05:58.000 They don't like that stuff.

00:05:59.000 And I think that's pretty clear now.

00:06:02.000 So you feel like there's a sort of a reinforced type of thinking, like a very liberal, reinforced type of thinking that you must subscribe to if you want to be a part of this.

00:06:12.000 Yes, it's an orthodoxy.

00:06:13.000 It's a complete and utter orthodoxy.

00:06:15.000 And what's so kind of nice about this, like the unintended consequence that I think is the silver lining of the dark cloud is...

00:06:22.000 People from the outside now saw firsthand what I had been saying for a long time, which was I was kind of on the fringe.

00:06:28.000 I was kind of being pushed out. 0.97

00:06:30.000 And I got literally thousands of people tweeting at me and Facebook messaging me and doing everything, being like, wow, this is fucking crazy. 0.78

00:06:35.000 These people really are out to get you based on that. 0.78

00:06:38.000 You know, you would think I said some horrible, just offensive, just truly awful thing.

00:06:44.000 Do you think they're really out to get you?

00:06:45.000 Or do you think they're capitalizing on a moment where they feel like you have a target on you?

00:06:49.000 And they're like, kick him.

00:06:50.000 He's down.

00:06:51.000 We got him.

00:06:53.000 But this reaction culture that we have, like this overreaction culture that we find ourselves in today, It really does seem to foster that kind of behavior.

00:07:03.000 People really like it when someone gets caught doing something or when someone says something inappropriate, when you can just point the finger and then everybody can pile on.

00:07:12.000 Yeah, I think...

00:07:13.000 Well, let me put it a different way, because I think you're probably right in the sense that...

00:07:17.000 I never gained the benefit of the doubt with this group.

00:07:19.000 Let's put it that way, right?

00:07:20.000 So it was one thing.

00:07:22.000 It was just one thing.

00:07:22.000 The domino was tipped and they were down.

00:07:25.000 That's why I brought up the example before of if one of the people that they actually liked within that insular industry said the same thing.

00:07:31.000 They might have been aghast, but they might have reached a handout or given that person a second chance.

00:07:35.000 So I think that that all plays into the...

00:07:37.000 I have the Gadsden flag as my Twitter icon.

00:07:39.000 I've had that since 2009. I've not been shy of...

00:07:43.000 The Gadsden flag being, don't tread on me, the snake...

00:07:45.000 Right, exactly.

00:07:47.000 So there are just certain things that made me very different than other people in the industry, and I definitely think that that plays a huge role.

00:07:54.000 Well, your Twitter name is No Taxation.

00:07:56.000 Yeah, which is a reference to the American Revolution, which I know you know.

00:07:59.000 A lot of people think, well, no taxes?

00:08:00.000 I'm like, that's not what it means.

00:08:01.000 I can't fit No Taxation without representation on Twitter.

00:08:04.000 That's why it doesn't say that. 0.98

00:08:05.000 Yeah, that would be a long ass. 0.98

00:08:06.000 Yeah, and unnecessarily long. 0.94

00:08:07.000 You'd have no room for tweets, but it would make you very economical with your words.

00:08:11.000 Yes.

00:08:12.000 That's what I love about Twitter.

00:08:13.000 You probably feel the same way.

00:08:14.000 I write something really long, sometimes, and then I have to parse it and figure out how to make it fit.

00:08:18.000 And it feels so good.

00:08:18.000 It's very good for joke writing.

00:08:19.000 Like, for the skill of joke writing, to make things more concise.

00:08:23.000 Like, I always tell people that I think the greatest joke writer, or the greatest comedian, is Joey Diaz.

00:08:28.000 Because he says, he gives you the most amount of visuals and impact with the least amount of words.

00:08:33.000 It's just bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop.

00:08:34.000 He knows how to, like, sink it in really quickly.

00:08:37.000 And Twitter's, like, a good tool for that. 0.95

00:08:40.000 That's a little ridiculous.

00:08:43.000 I don't know if that's the case how it is now. 0.77

00:08:45.000 Well, actually, it definitely is, right?

00:08:47.000 Like, if I write to you, if I reply to you, your name takes up a big chunk of what I tweet to you.

00:08:56.000 But what you tweet doesn't take up.

00:08:58.000 So it's like the 140 characters would be limiting people that respond to you rather than you tweeting.

00:09:05.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:09:06.000 And the beauty is, too, as you've probably noticed, is that I think in the last year or whatever, images used to take up characters, too, and videos and links.

00:09:13.000 I think the links are the only thing left that takes up the extra characters in addition to the name.

00:09:16.000 But it keeps everyone curt.

00:09:17.000 But that doesn't stop people from tweeting 7,000 times in a row.

00:09:20.000 Oh, and putting numbers on them.

00:09:21.000 I've done it, too.

00:09:22.000 Yeah, no, I did it just yesterday when I ran into some woman in San Francisco that I was walking my dog.

00:09:26.000 I have a Boston Terrier.

00:09:27.000 She was, like, a little sick.

00:09:29.000 Her poop was a little wet, so I went and picked it up, and I left, like, some, you know, just, like, smear.

00:09:33.000 You'd have to use your fingernails to get off the ground.

00:09:35.000 Some woman came out of her apartment and started scolding me. 1.00

00:09:38.000 Like, she was waiting by the window to scold me for this, and I, like, what the hell is going on?

00:09:43.000 So I had to tweet out a few tweets about that just for posterity. 0.99

00:09:47.000 Yeah, the Twitter thing is very weird, but here's something that I really don't like, and I'm glad I don't see much of it anymore, is that twit longer shit. 0.97

00:09:55.000 Hey, that's a loophole. 0.99

00:09:59.000 Don't do that.

00:10:00.000 Don't do that. 1.00

00:10:01.000 Ralphie Mae used to do that shit all the time. 1.00

00:10:03.000 He used to read his tweets. 1.00

00:10:04.000 I'm like, what the fuck, Ralphie? 0.99

00:10:05.000 Why are you writing paragraphs here? 1.00

00:10:07.000 You know what's going on.

00:10:08.000 Yeah, some people, you know, I've done it too, will go in and Photoshop and make a paragraph of a text and then make that the image.

00:10:15.000 People do that on Instagram too.

00:10:16.000 Yeah, I've done that before.

00:10:18.000 I've drawn, written things down and then taken a photo.

00:10:20.000 I said I was going to do that for a while.

00:10:21.000 That I think that Twitter is just too impersonal.

00:10:23.000 I'm going to write all my stuff out and then take a picture of it. 0.97

00:10:26.000 But I was just fucking around. 0.88

00:10:27.000 I think if that's the exception, I think it's totally fine. 0.97

00:10:30.000 I don't want people ruining Twitter.

00:10:31.000 I like the curtness.

00:10:33.000 Yeah, it's good.

00:10:34.000 It's a good format, but it also makes it extremely easy for people to do what happened to you.

00:10:38.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:10:39.000 Because nuance is lost, right?

00:10:41.000 Yeah, nuance is lost.

00:10:42.000 Well, it's always lost in text.

00:10:44.000 I mean, in writing, it's very difficult.

00:10:47.000 I mean, even if you're reading a book sometimes, you have to go over the previous paragraphs to figure out exactly how this guy was setting this up.

00:10:54.000 But I think what's happening, what you're saying, See, there's two parts.

00:11:00.000 One, the example that you gave before about the guy saying that it's like girlfriend mode.

00:11:05.000 If he just said, it's like, say if your girlfriend doesn't play video games and she wants a really easily accessible, you could do it that way.

00:11:12.000 But people probably would attack him even for that.

00:11:14.000 They would say, what are you implying that girls don't play video games? 1.00

00:11:18.000 Well, it's always the implication, right?

00:11:20.000 Everyone's always out to assume the absolute worst.

00:11:23.000 And that's what I was trying to write about.

00:11:24.000 I'm like, this guy is just...

00:11:26.000 Trying to make an example, he's probably given 15 PR interviews today.

00:11:29.000 He's probably exhausted.

00:11:30.000 He's also a developer, so he doesn't have much PR training.

00:11:32.000 He's trying to just get the point across.

00:11:34.000 Why do you have to assume the man is a sexist and a misogynist because of this one thing?

00:11:39.000 I'm willing to die on that hill because I feel like people deserve the benefit of the doubt.

00:11:42.000 People deserve to make a mistake or get a joke wrong or...

00:11:45.000 You know, all those kinds of things.

00:11:46.000 And I feel like, yes, people are allowed to exercise their free speech on the other end and be like, I don't like that joke, or I don't like this, or I don't like that.

00:11:52.000 But it doesn't stop there.

00:11:54.000 With what's going on with Dave Chappelle this week, I thought it was really actually interesting with his two specials on Netflix.

00:12:00.000 People are freaking out about, you know, his jokes about gay people or transgender people or whatever. 0.96

00:12:05.000 Well, he's comparing transgender people to black people and, you know, and saying that it's a ridiculous comparison. 0.99

00:12:10.000 Right. 0.79

00:12:11.000 Like, I actually, after I saw all the stuff, I went and watched the first one and then I watched half of the second one and I was falling asleep, so I didn't want to watch it anymore.

00:12:18.000 But I was like, this is funny.

00:12:22.000 And... 0.70

00:12:24.000 Anthony Jeselnik or Daniel Tosh would make these people shit their pants compared to what's going on with this kind of stuff.

00:12:29.000 And it's always this drama that seeks to kind of...

00:12:33.000 It doesn't stop at saying, like, I don't like it.

00:12:34.000 It's often insinuated or outright spoken that they want to censor it or change it.

00:12:38.000 That's like where I... Because I was reading a piece specifically about Chappelle where they're like, this calls up questions as to how far should comedy go?

00:12:46.000 And I'm like, no, that doesn't call...

00:12:48.000 And that's when the free speech argument ends for me.

00:12:51.000 That's when I'm like, you're actually now talking about changing it.

00:12:53.000 Well, it doesn't work.

00:12:55.000 It doesn't work with us.

00:12:56.000 With comics, it just doesn't work.

00:12:58.000 We're not going to do it.

00:12:59.000 Too many people like it.

00:13:01.000 I understand what they're trying to do because when they live in that world of cubicles and human resources and very restricted patterns of behavior that you have to follow...

00:13:11.000 If you live in an office environment and work in an office environment or other, there's a lot of people out there that are boxed into these terrible situations where you have to pretend to be this thing that you're not.

00:13:20.000 And again, you don't have any personality. 0.93

00:13:23.000 You're not allowed to say anything ridiculous or silly. 0.88

00:13:26.000 And when you have that kind of environment and you see someone who's free, like Dave Chappelle, You want to stop it. 0.94

00:13:33.000 And if you can, if you can point something out that can...

00:13:36.000 Oh, look, he's saying something that's inappropriate.

00:13:38.000 He's saying something I don't agree with.

00:13:39.000 He's saying something.

00:13:40.000 Let's get him.

00:13:41.000 Let's go get him.

00:13:42.000 And then also, in defense of the writers...

00:13:46.000 They're writing these articles. 0.94

00:13:47.000 Look, they're in a bizarre environment where they have to fucking constantly defend their position. 0.95

00:13:55.000 They have to constantly get clicks. 0.97

00:13:57.000 They have to constantly get hits.

00:13:59.000 They can't just put an article out and nobody reads it.

00:14:02.000 They'll lose their job.

00:14:02.000 So they have to write about something that's inflammatory, write about something that's salacious, something that's going to get people excited.

00:14:09.000 I mean, that guy that wrote that thing about you for the International Business Times, I looked into that International Business Times, and one of the things about it is that there was a, I think it was a Mother Jones article about that website, where they were told that the people who write articles were given some ridiculous task,

00:14:26.000 like they have to get 10,000 hits per article they write.

00:14:29.000 So that might have, for people who don't know, there was a guy who wrote an article about Colin where it said, Kinda Funny's Colin Moriarty resigns after writing a racist joke that targeted women.

00:14:43.000 It wasn't racist even remotely in the slightest. 0.97

00:14:47.000 But when you take into account the environment that these people are forced to work in, and you say, well, this guy literally is forced to write something that's more fucked up than it really is.

00:14:56.000 So you have to get people excited about this in a way that's going to get them to click on it and hopefully get him to his 10,000 hit quota.

00:15:03.000 If that is true...

00:15:05.000 I feel for him in a way. 0.80

00:15:07.000 I mean, I think he's working for a shitty business, you know? 0.94

00:15:10.000 Right. 0.94

00:15:10.000 But it's the same way I feel. 0.94

00:15:12.000 I mean, I actually, you know, I came from the editorial world where you have to get clear.

00:15:15.000 I mean, our expectations were way higher.

00:15:19.000 Did you have those kind of requirements?

00:15:21.000 No, not literally.

00:15:21.000 I know some sites do, but...

00:15:23.000 Some sites have like a quota?

00:15:24.000 Yeah, like a quota or like you get bonuses if you get, you know, a certain amount of hits or whatever.

00:15:27.000 We didn't have that.

00:15:28.000 We were salaried or whatever.

00:15:29.000 But you would be fired, ultimately, if you weren't writing things that people were reading.

00:15:34.000 Right.

00:15:34.000 But I tried to stay out of my way for, you know, writing inflammatory things.

00:15:37.000 Actually, there are a couple of examples where I wouldn't write a story because I felt like it wasn't pertinent to any information and it was specifically to assassinate someone's character.

00:15:47.000 Alright, well we found a problem here. 0.99

00:15:48.000 You have fucking morals, dude. 1.00

00:15:50.000 There's the door. 1.00

00:15:52.000 No room in this business.

00:15:54.000 I had a high-profile woman in the gaming industry tell me in an interview that was unrelated to what I was actually interviewing her that she never was once the victim of sexism in the industry, ever.

00:16:06.000 And I was like, I could write this, but this isn't why I was there.

00:16:10.000 I wasn't interviewing her about this.

00:16:11.000 And this is going to cause her problems.

00:16:13.000 And that's not who I am.

00:16:14.000 Why would that cause her problems?

00:16:15.000 Because then people are going to jump on and be like, well, I experienced this, and I experienced this, and you're diminishing.

00:16:20.000 And it would just cause her drama.

00:16:21.000 I'm like, why would I do that to her?

00:16:22.000 Right, but it's not...

00:16:23.000 See, this is where it drives me crazy.

00:16:25.000 That's a beautiful example of people being cool.

00:16:27.000 If she can say, hey, I've never experienced any sexism in this business, you'd be like, wow, the gaming industry must be really cool. 0.88

00:16:35.000 And this woman has managed to get through the maze with a bunch of high fives and people appreciating her work. 1.00

00:16:40.000 Wouldn't that be celebrated?

00:16:43.000 Not in the gaming industry.

00:16:44.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

00:16:45.000 Like, why does that have to be, in some ways, a target?

00:16:49.000 Like, why is that story a target?

00:16:51.000 Like, wouldn't you assume that if there is a person who can reach a high level of prominence in this very complicated business, right?

00:16:59.000 I mean, the gaming industry is incredibly complicated, especially how weighted everything is when it comes to male versus female stuff. 0.56

00:17:06.000 That whole Gamergate shit exposed so So much of that, which was really confusing to people on the outside, especially people like me who don't play games. 0.99

00:17:13.000 I was like, what in the fuck is going on with these gamer people? 0.99

00:17:16.000 It's confusing to me, too. 0.97

00:17:18.000 The second story I think was more pertinent, though, which was this guy worked at a big publisher, and he was laid off, and he had this huge meltdown on social media.

00:17:30.000 And people were writing about it.

00:17:31.000 And I was like, I knew him personally, and I wasn't really friendly with him at the time.

00:17:36.000 But I knew him personally, and everyone was like, we should write about this.

00:17:39.000 And I'm like, what is this serving?

00:17:42.000 What was the meltdown?

00:17:43.000 He was just going off about how...

00:17:45.000 He was just angry and sad.

00:17:46.000 He's a young kid that finally got in, and then he lost his grip on the job and was laid off, whatever.

00:17:52.000 And he's fine now.

00:17:52.000 He's back in the industry.

00:17:53.000 But...

00:17:54.000 I think I wasn't cut out to be this hardcore, like, go-get-em journalism at any cost, because I was like, this is going to ruin this.

00:18:02.000 Why would I want to contribute to this?

00:18:04.000 I didn't get into this industry to pile on people, to ruin their lives.

00:18:08.000 I got into this industry to celebrate video games, to tell interesting stories about games, to challenge people's minds.

00:18:14.000 And I always tried to take that with me where I was like, I'm not going to write anything for the clicks.

00:18:18.000 I could write these, like you said, salacious headlines.

00:18:22.000 I can write this dirt or this stuff I heard, whatever.

00:18:25.000 But that's not who I am.

00:18:26.000 That's not who I want to be.

00:18:27.000 And I'd rather contribute more positively to the ecosystem than be like, well, I'll just get clicks for this today.

00:18:33.000 And this guy's got to read the story.

00:18:34.000 And it's going to be in Google and LexisNexis forever.

00:18:37.000 And it's going to, for what?

00:18:38.000 So I can get 50,000 clicks one day and then just move on?

00:18:41.000 He's not going to be able to move on.

00:18:42.000 He didn't even do anything that is worthy of me writing about this.

00:18:46.000 Why are we always after people?

00:18:47.000 Well, your mindset is noble.

00:18:49.000 I mean, it is a great way to look at things.

00:18:52.000 It's weird that it's so unusual, you know, and that most people would be more self-serving and would choose the path that's going to get them the most clicks and, hey, if I got to fucking crack a few eggs to make an omelet, that's how it goes.

00:19:05.000 I never wanted the canon to be turned on me, even though it was eventually.

00:19:08.000 You know what I mean?

00:19:09.000 The canon of hate.

00:19:10.000 Try to put out that energy that you want that's positive, or at least constructive.

00:19:15.000 If someone murders someone in the gaming industry, yes, that's noteworthy.

00:19:18.000 We should probably write about that.

00:19:20.000 It depends on who they murdered, right?

00:19:22.000 Well, what do you mean?

00:19:23.000 Well, if someone's a terrible person, they murdered them, like Punisher-style.

00:19:26.000 Well, that's different, I guess.

00:19:28.000 We can have that conversation, I guess.

00:19:30.000 Yeah, no, I know what you're saying, man.

00:19:31.000 I agree with you.

00:19:33.000 Again, it's noble.

00:19:35.000 Your mindset, your philosophy is very noble.

00:19:37.000 And I wish more people shared it.

00:19:38.000 And I think that when there's all these people scrambling around, like we're seeing now, you know, trying to find their niche and trying to get attention, you find more of that kind of predatory behavior.

00:19:51.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:19:53.000 And well, that brings me back, Joe, to what we were saying specifically about, well, you feel bad for these writers at these sites.

00:19:58.000 And to me, like the analogy I draw is like, I hate the TSA, right?

00:20:01.000 There's normal people that work for the TSA that are just trying to do their thing.

00:20:04.000 But that doesn't mean I don't hate the system that they work under and think the system should change.

00:20:09.000 And it's the same thing here.

00:20:10.000 It's like, yeah, these guys are victimized by the set of circumstances under which they have to write.

00:20:14.000 But that doesn't mean that the system should remain the same because they need to write those stories.

00:20:17.000 Let's talk about the TSA. Okay.

00:20:19.000 Because I know more about that than I know about business.

00:20:21.000 Sure.

00:20:21.000 About your business, rather.

00:20:22.000 Sure.

00:20:23.000 What do you hate about the TSA? They're infringing on your Fourth Amendment rights.

00:20:26.000 They're warrantless searches.

00:20:28.000 They illegally seize things.

00:20:30.000 I mean, this is written very clearly in the Bill of Rights.

00:20:31.000 So...

00:20:32.000 And I hate the whole argument of like, well, you don't have, you know, or you kind of pass by your rights or give them up when you're in the airport.

00:20:39.000 And I'm like, no, they're inalienable, actually.

00:20:42.000 So I just have a huge problem.

00:20:43.000 I don't have a problem going through a metal detector or something reasonable, a reasonable search.

00:20:47.000 Yeah.

00:20:48.000 Well, it's kind of reasonable because there are carbon fiber blades and all these different plastic blades that they can make now that you could really fuck somebody up.

00:20:58.000 That are not going to show up in a metal detector.

00:21:01.000 Sure.

00:21:02.000 But it goes back to the...

00:21:04.000 First of all, you know, I don't think that we're going to have many problems on airplanes anymore.

00:21:08.000 I think that they're moving on to something else.

00:21:10.000 And no plane is going to get hijacked anymore now that everyone knows what's going to happen.

00:21:14.000 But dude, as soon as you think like that, that's when something happens.

00:21:17.000 That's, that could be, that could be an argument.

00:21:20.000 I also want to give a shout out that serious things happen.

00:21:21.000 My dad's a New York, a retired New York City firefighter.

00:21:23.000 So it's, it's, that hit very close.

00:21:26.000 I knew people that died that day.

00:21:28.000 But it's still, you know, and my dad could have died that day, depending on the circumstances.

00:21:32.000 Thank God he didn't.

00:21:34.000 But to me, it's like the old Benjamin Franklin thing.

00:21:37.000 It's balancing your liberty and your freedom with security.

00:21:41.000 And I think that we've given them so much power with the Patriot Act, with the TSA, with all these things where I'm like, this is a bad road to go down, and they're just going to take more and more.

00:21:49.000 Yeah, what is the Benjamin Franklin quote?

00:21:51.000 He who values safety over...

00:21:53.000 Yeah, over liberty deserves neither safety nor liberty.

00:21:56.000 Yeah.

00:21:57.000 I think the TSA has a ridiculously hard job. 0.98

00:22:00.000 And I think the requirements that people have, what people request of them to make sure that they are safe, and then you give them $10 an hour, whatever the fuck they make. 0.97

00:22:11.000 They don't make much, you know. 0.97

00:22:13.000 No, of course.

00:22:13.000 And what you get is...

00:22:15.000 bunch of underqualified people who are tired and they're tired of working like that the constant flow if you watch how I like to study people at the airport because I feel like it's one of the rare times where you could just stare at people while they're doing their job and no one gets weird with you because everybody's staring at that guy or that girl that's taking your license and scanning your ticket and all that jazz I just stare at him and I watch How they interact with all these people. 0.98

00:22:41.000 And people are fucking tired. 0.97

00:22:43.000 That's what I see. 0.99

00:22:43.000 I see frustration. 0.99

00:22:45.000 I see so many people in these lines.

00:22:47.000 And I see people just being exhausted.

00:22:50.000 And then the people that have to deal with the people that don't take their shoes off.

00:22:52.000 Sir, you have to take your shoes off.

00:22:53.000 Why do I have to take my shoes off? 1.00

00:22:54.000 Take your fucking shoes off, man! 1.00

00:22:56.000 You see that kind of thinking. 1.00

00:22:57.000 Right, right.

00:22:58.000 They're on the edge all the time.

00:23:00.000 So you're not dealing with them.

00:23:01.000 Well, sir, you have to take your shoes off because it's going through this thing.

00:23:03.000 It's not like he has one guy he's dealing with in the whole day.

00:23:06.000 He's dealing with this constant river of human beings that are coming through, and some of them have water bottles, and you've got to make sure those dangerous water bottles don't get on the plane. 0.99

00:23:14.000 There's a lot of stupid shit that goes with the TSA, but... 1.00

00:23:17.000 How the fuck else are you going to keep people from bringing shoe bombs or knives on planes? 1.00

00:23:22.000 And it's really hard to do. 0.98

00:23:24.000 No, it is.

00:23:24.000 I mean, I don't think that the counterpoint would be to just get rid of it, to just walk into a terminal and be able to get on an airplane.

00:23:32.000 But I remember, you know, and you remember too, and a lot of people do, We had a security apparatus before 9-11.

00:23:37.000 These guys outsmarted the security apparatus by doing very specific things, including, like, knowing how to fly planes and doing all the things that you can't possibly check for.

00:23:46.000 And also, people get guns and knives and weapons intentionally through the TSA all the time.

00:23:50.000 I think, wasn't it something like over 90% of, like, agents that were trying to get things through the TSA succeeded?

00:23:55.000 So, these are the people standing in between us and ISIS, you know?

00:23:59.000 People do it accidentally all the time. 0.99

00:24:01.000 They have stuff in their bag and it gets through and then they go, what the fuck? 0.99

00:24:04.000 It happens all the time. 0.99

00:24:06.000 Yeah, I knew a guy that brought a ton of weed overseas on accident.

00:24:11.000 That's terrifying.

00:24:12.000 That scares the shit out of me.

00:24:14.000 Me too. 0.95

00:24:14.000 I go through my bed just for anything you might leave in there. 0.95

00:24:16.000 I always comb through just to make sure you never know what's going to happen.

00:24:20.000 But to the point, he didn't mean to do that.

00:24:22.000 But there it was.

00:24:24.000 Yeah.

00:24:25.000 Yeah.

00:24:26.000 Yeah, it's not a perfect system, and it's not going to be, and that's just the way it is.

00:24:31.000 It would be nice if it was more efficient.

00:24:32.000 It would be nice if people got paid better.

00:24:34.000 It'd be nice if it was easier and quicker.

00:24:36.000 There'd be a lot of, it would be nice.

00:24:38.000 But I don't know of anybody that's come up with a better system for scanning people and making sure that they don't bring guns or bombs or whatever the fuck it is on an airplane. 0.98

00:24:46.000 It's just bizarre that airplanes are the one place where we have so much fucking security. 0.97

00:24:50.000 Where malls, which are filled with way more people than your average plane... 0.99

00:24:54.000 There's something about terror and flying, where it's already terrifying, like, yeah, you think you're scared now, bitch? 1.00

00:25:00.000 What if it blows up in the fucking sky? 1.00

00:25:02.000 A dude pulls a fucking turban out of his bag and wraps it around his head and starts lighting his underwear on fire. 1.00

00:25:07.000 You know, that's what we're scared of. 0.99

00:25:09.000 We're scared of someone taking it to the next level, because people are already tensed, because you're in a metal tube hurling through the sky at 500 miles an hour.

00:25:16.000 If it blows up while you're doing that, it's even more freaky.

00:25:19.000 Oh my god, it's horrifying.

00:25:20.000 But isn't that weird?

00:25:21.000 It's terrifying.

00:25:22.000 But it's kind of strange.

00:25:24.000 Whereas like...

00:25:26.000 That seems to be the preferred method of terror that we're really worried about, which is why the TSA exists in the first place.

00:25:33.000 Because the volume of humans that go through a lot of places is probably commensurate with the volume of humans that go through the airport.

00:25:40.000 Oh, sure.

00:25:41.000 But you don't have a single place that you could mention that's as strict with what you carry around as the airport. 0.99

00:25:48.000 You could walk into the fucking mall with a loaded gun any day of the week. 0.99

00:25:52.000 Any day of the week. 1.00

00:25:53.000 Every single time I walk on the mall, I am just never checked.

00:25:58.000 Nobody frisks me.

00:25:59.000 I don't go through any metal detectors. 1.00

00:26:01.000 You could walk in armed to the fucking teeth. 1.00

00:26:04.000 And who's going to stop you? 1.00

00:26:05.000 The mall security guard? 0.99

00:26:06.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00

00:26:07.000 In his little SUV? Yeah, like during Christmas time, there are thousands of people at the mall. 0.99

00:26:12.000 Thousands.

00:26:13.000 Thousands and thousands.

00:26:14.000 Yeah, I agree. 0.99

00:26:15.000 I mean, it's more like the Israeli experience where this kind of shit can happen at any time, anywhere. 0.98

00:26:19.000 They're very vigilant about that. 0.98

00:26:20.000 I've often wondered that as well.

00:26:21.000 Like, why doesn't, even at a security checkpoint in an airport, why not just do it there?

00:26:26.000 Yes.

00:26:27.000 And I really think it's that they, you know...

00:26:29.000 To your point with the mall and all these kinds of things and these public places, I think it just speaks to the fact that most people, vast majority of people, are just good, decent people that want to go about their lives.

00:26:38.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:26:38.000 And that these terrorists could target all these different places.

00:26:40.000 I don't think they do maybe because they can't, but probably more because they don't want to give themselves away for something that might be seen as minor.

00:26:47.000 Like 9-11 was a spectacle.

00:26:49.000 It wasn't only that 3,000-some-odd people died.

00:26:51.000 It was that it was the spectacle of killing those people in that way.

00:26:54.000 And so I think that there's something about that as well, which is why I'm more scared about, like, A dirty bomb or something like that today than I am of anyone taking an airplane over.

00:27:02.000 Because everyone knows what happened in 2001, so now if someone pulls out a knife on an airplane, someone's just going to tackle that guy and probably kill him.

00:27:09.000 Oh yeah, for sure. 0.99

00:27:10.000 I know the guy tried to blow his shoe up or something like that on the plane, that's why we have to take our fucking shoes off now. 0.98

00:27:16.000 But to me, I'm like... 0.98

00:27:18.000 The threat has changed.

00:27:20.000 The threat is evolving.

00:27:21.000 And we can be vigilant in all these ways, but then I wonder, it goes back to, like, NSA and all these things, like, how much are we going to give the government and how much are we going to give up in order for safety?

00:27:28.000 I'd rather live in a more dangerous world, personally, and know that no one's reading my text messages or no one's throwing out my hand lotion, you know, or harassing.

00:27:37.000 I saw these two women, Australian women, in the airport at SFO when I came down to LA last week, They were in wheelchairs. 0.98

00:27:44.000 They were going through all of their stuff and I'm like, what the fuck are you doing to these people? 0.98

00:27:49.000 Just leave them alone. 0.95

00:27:50.000 And I actually went up to them afterwards and I'm like, I'm sorry, we hate these people too, just so you know.

00:27:54.000 So this is not okay with any of us.

00:27:56.000 They were there for like a half an hour.

00:27:58.000 They had these frowns on their faces.

00:27:59.000 They looked dejected.

00:28:00.000 This might be their first time in the States for all I know.

00:28:02.000 Good, keep them out.

00:28:03.000 Yeah.

00:28:04.000 This is what happens when you come over here. 1.00

00:28:05.000 We'll check your shit. 1.00

00:28:06.000 Take your pants off. 1.00

00:28:07.000 What do you got in there?

00:28:08.000 What are you packing?

00:28:09.000 They're harassing old women, they're harassing, you know, harassing... 1.00

00:28:11.000 I think I saw in JFK once, like, going through, like, a nun's bag or something.

00:28:15.000 I'm like, what?

00:28:16.000 This is madness to me.

00:28:17.000 I'm like, this is not...

00:28:18.000 Everyone's turning on each other.

00:28:20.000 But it's not, because if it wasn't...

00:28:21.000 If they didn't go through everyone thoroughly, and they go, oh, we're gonna let nuns go through? 0.98

00:28:25.000 And then what happens?

00:28:26.000 Someone goes into us as a nun, and they act as a terrorist. 1.00

00:28:29.000 Or they are a terrorist.

00:28:31.000 I don't know much about it, you probably know more about it than I do, but someone was telling me a little bit about the way the Israelis do airport security, specifically, that it's all about, they're not profiling even based on race or anything, they're profiling based on your behavior. 0.86

00:28:44.000 And it goes to your point, these are well-paid, professional people that know what the fuck they're doing, know what they're looking for, and they're in the airport and they see someone just acting a little weird. 0.98

00:28:53.000 Well, they also do some crazy shit. 0.99

00:28:55.000 Like I had a friend who went there and she took photos of some anti-Semitic pictures, some like Nazi swastikas on something. 0.99

00:29:04.000 So you know what the Israeli guys did at the airport?

00:29:06.000 They shot her computer and they gave it back to her. 0.70

00:29:09.000 Really?

00:29:09.000 Yes.

00:29:09.000 Jesus Christ.

00:29:11.000 Yeah.

00:29:11.000 So there's that.

00:29:12.000 That's a little over the top.

00:29:13.000 Yeah.

00:29:14.000 That's a little over the top.

00:29:14.000 So there's that.

00:29:15.000 A little more balanced than that I would like to bring.

00:29:17.000 They said, can we see your computer?

00:29:18.000 And they opened up her computer.

00:29:20.000 Terrible Israeli accent. 1.00

00:29:21.000 I didn't even know where to go with it there. 1.00

00:29:23.000 They just put a fucking hole. 1.00

00:29:24.000 She heard, dunk, dunk. 1.00

00:29:25.000 And they gave her back her fucking computer. 1.00

00:29:27.000 Half hour later. 1.00

00:29:28.000 That's a little too strong-armed for me.

00:29:32.000 To the point, I don't know what this is.

00:29:34.000 I just don't like the security theater aspect of it.

00:29:35.000 We all know what's going on.

00:29:37.000 Everyone's being inconvenienced. 0.99

00:29:38.000 These people are miserable. 0.97

00:29:39.000 We're miserable. 0.98

00:29:40.000 It goes back down to no one wants to make hard decisions or even do really hard work.

00:29:43.000 What works?

00:29:44.000 What doesn't?

00:29:44.000 Let's do studies.

00:29:45.000 Let's figure out what we're doing.

00:29:47.000 Instead of looking at people naked in machines.

00:29:49.000 Well, you don't really see anyone naked in machines anymore.

00:29:52.000 That's not real.

00:29:53.000 I know, but back in the day.

00:29:54.000 But even back in the day, it was just like, come on, man.

00:29:56.000 What are you worried about? 1.00

00:29:59.000 People are so silly. 1.00

00:30:00.000 Are you worried about people seeing you naked? 0.99

00:30:02.000 But the thing that gets to me, though, is like, how can you make it safer?

00:30:07.000 No one has offered up any sort of alternative to the TSA that makes any sense to me.

00:30:12.000 I mean, I've heard people say the TSA is incompetent. 1.00

00:30:14.000 I fucking hate them. 0.99

00:30:15.000 You know, violation of the Fourth Amendment. 1.00

00:30:17.000 But there's no alternatives that I've seen that are even remotely responsible.

00:30:22.000 No, I mean, I think it goes back to me of like, I can't speak necessarily to the level of incompetence because I'm not in security.

00:30:28.000 I don't know like what they're specifically doing.

00:30:30.000 I don't know what their level of training is.

00:30:31.000 It just goes back to the constitutionality of it.

00:30:33.000 Like if we if we and it brings up those tough questions, it's the same way I feel about about the Second Amendment.

00:30:38.000 If we start seeding what this means in certain situations and before you know it, they'll just continue to erode it away.

00:30:44.000 Like and so what I'm like this is a warrantless search This is by definition a warrantless search if you went and got John Jay and James Madison and all these guys and asked them and Somehow told them what the fuck was going on and then said like what is does this look like this?

00:30:58.000 But you would have to go and get them and then go okay This is Isis and this is the internet and then this is Twitter and this is this is how they send information through pictures with metadata You know it's encoded in the picture and you have to break it down.

00:31:12.000 That's where the message is like They'd be like, oh yeah, search everybody.

00:31:16.000 Oh my god, you live in a terrible place.

00:31:18.000 They'd be like, I gotta go to bed and really process this.

00:31:20.000 Yeah, like, back in the day when we only had muskets, it was so awesome.

00:31:23.000 I don't know if my argument makes sense to you, but to me, I just feel like these are certain sacred rights that need to be protected in any way they can.

00:31:29.000 And if we want to have a conversation about why we should cede this right in a specific way, then you have to do it a little more clearly.

00:31:34.000 And to me, I just, I think people take some of these things for granted that, you know, what's stopping them from, you know, if these rights continue to erode, then what stops them from busting into your house at some point and be like, well...

00:31:45.000 Well, they can do that, and there are some search and seizure methods that they're really being criticized for, lately in particular, for drug offenses, where they don't even knock.

00:31:56.000 They just break open people's doors and wind up shooting their dogs all the time, shoot people all the time.

00:32:02.000 I mean, there was an article written recently about the amount of people that are wounded in unnecessary How do they describe that kind of altercation between the cops?

00:32:14.000 No knock, searchless warrants, or what is it?

00:32:18.000 I think they just call it no knock.

00:32:21.000 Break-ins or something like that.

00:32:22.000 I don't know how they describe it, but if you've seen the way the DEA treats any sort of a situation, even when they just have marijuana, they'll kick down the door.

00:32:31.000 If they see a dog, they shoot it, and then they make people huddle up in the corner after they just murdered your family pet, and oftentimes they find like a pipe.

00:32:40.000 You know, I mean, there's many people that have been called on, like someone has turned them in or someone has said something about them that turned out to not be true.

00:32:48.000 Like, hey, these people have a grow up in their business or in their house, rather.

00:32:51.000 And one of them was a former FBI, a couple that both worked in the FBI. They kicked in their fucking door, held them at gunpoint. 0.99

00:33:00.000 The whole deal went to the basement. 1.00

00:33:01.000 They were growing tomatoes. 1.00

00:33:03.000 And they were like, what in the fuck? 0.99

00:33:04.000 These are retired FBI officers and the DEA broke down their door and pointed a loaded gun in their face and then found plants. 1.00

00:33:13.000 Yeah.

00:33:14.000 That you can eat.

00:33:15.000 You can eat weed too.

00:33:16.000 Yeah, you can.

00:33:17.000 It's actually not bad for you.

00:33:19.000 So these things are happening.

00:33:21.000 Actually, that one thing sounds familiar with the family pet being killed.

00:33:23.000 I think I saw a video on that on YouTube.

00:33:24.000 There's a lot of it.

00:33:24.000 It's not just one thing, man.

00:33:26.000 One of them was a mayor.

00:33:27.000 And, goddammit, was it Washington?

00:33:31.000 Where was it? 0.91

00:33:31.000 There was a mayor who, it turned out that the post office, someone in the post office was running a scam. 0.91

00:33:39.000 And what they were doing was they were having weed sent to other people's addresses.

00:33:44.000 And they were sending it through the post office.

00:33:48.000 Would intercept the package because he was the guy who delivered that address.

00:33:52.000 Oh, okay.

00:33:52.000 So he would get that package and somehow or another it got intercepted before it got to the postman and then they had a dummy postman come and bring it and then do the whole break down the door, shoot the dog thing.

00:34:04.000 They chased the dog, a golden lab, chased him out in the yard.

00:34:07.000 The dog ran and was running and hiding and they shot him in front of everybody.

00:34:11.000 And it turned out that the guy who was the victim of this and his family who were held at gunpoint and zip tied It was a mayor. 0.99

00:34:19.000 And so, you know, he was like, what in the fuck are you people doing? 0.98

00:34:22.000 Like, what is this? 1.00

00:34:23.000 You just killed my dog in front of my kids.

00:34:25.000 You traumatized my family. 0.62

00:34:27.000 Yeah, it's awful.

00:34:27.000 But you're making the argument in my opinion of why we have to take a stand.

00:34:30.000 You know, like, why we have to say, like, this is it.

00:34:33.000 In that situation, yes.

00:34:34.000 But that's not TSA, though.

00:34:36.000 No, but it is a Fourth Amendment issue that are allowed to be eroding.

00:34:39.000 No one should be allowed to go into anyone's home without a warrant, no matter what.

00:34:42.000 But don't you think that you sort of imply at least a certain amount of consent when you get in that line and give them your bag and say, here, search this.

00:34:50.000 Like, no one's telling you that you have to do that.

00:34:52.000 Sure.

00:34:53.000 Like, you could choose to fly with no baggage at all.

00:34:56.000 You could choose, if you wanted to, to send your stuff through the mail, and it would probably cost the same amount as it would to pay that 50 bucks or whatever it is with Southwest.

00:35:04.000 If you wanted to send your package through the mail, you could do it that way and just walk through with nothing on you.

00:35:10.000 Sure, you could do that, yeah.

00:35:11.000 And you would still have to go through the machines and all that.

00:35:12.000 I don't dispute that, because I agree with you.

00:35:14.000 In the pre-9-11 world, going through the metal detector, having your bags, looking at it through the machine, I think that that's all reasonable. 0.97

00:35:20.000 I just don't like the people being pulled aside, pulled into rooms, people just kind of very disrespectfully going through shit. 0.97

00:35:26.000 I don't know. 0.97

00:35:27.000 To me, I just...

00:35:29.000 Is that a hill worth dying on?

00:35:31.000 In a way, it is, because I feel like it could just...

00:35:32.000 As you made the point, it's already...

00:35:34.000 That mentality now seeps into lots of different places.

00:35:37.000 And I just don't want to see the end result of that.

00:35:40.000 Well, that mentality is also the justification for the NSA, being able to look at your text messages or being able to look at your emails.

00:35:45.000 And that's the big thing that was exposed by Edward Snowden that really pissed me off that so many people were so flippant about.

00:35:51.000 They were like, hey, if you're not doing anything wrong, don't worry about it.

00:35:54.000 Like, that is wrong.

00:35:55.000 You can't say that because you can't look at everyone.

00:35:59.000 You can't just randomly look at everyone and look at their private information.

00:36:03.000 You just can't do that because the people that are looking at that are just people.

00:36:07.000 And that's the problem with the TSA. It's not even necessarily the issue being that you get to search people's stuff to make sure there's no terrorists and no people bringing weapons on planes.

00:36:17.000 It's who gets to do that?

00:36:18.000 Who are these people?

00:36:20.000 Are these people experts?

00:36:22.000 Are these people security experts?

00:36:24.000 Do they work for the Musan?

00:36:25.000 Are they CIA agents?

00:36:28.000 Are they FBI? Who's looking?

00:36:30.000 Who are these people?

00:36:31.000 Are they competent?

00:36:32.000 Why are they doing...

00:36:33.000 You go to the airport, man, what you see is a bunch of people, and I used to do a joke about this, that I think that How do I phrase this to make it sound less insulting than it used to be?

00:36:45.000 That's an old joke.

00:36:46.000 But the idea was that I think that the people who work at Burger King at the airport and the TSA, they're the same people, and they just reach into a hat.

00:36:53.000 Today I got fries. 0.99

00:36:54.000 Oh shit, I'm on bomb duty. 0.99

00:36:56.000 It's literally almost like that. 1.00

00:36:58.000 It's like you see people that are just taking...

00:37:01.000 Whatever job they can get a hold of.

00:37:02.000 You know, I feel for them.

00:37:03.000 I mean, if someone comes along and you don't have a job and they say, hey, the TSA's hiring, 15 bucks an hour.

00:37:08.000 Okay, cool.

00:37:08.000 What do I got to do?

00:37:09.000 You got to stand here and make sure that people don't bring water bottles on a plane.

00:37:12.000 All right.

00:37:13.000 And then after, like, you know, the 50th day of people bringing water... 1.00

00:37:16.000 Take your fucking water bottle out of the bag. 0.99

00:37:18.000 You know what you're doing. 1.00

00:37:19.000 Yeah.

00:37:19.000 Yeah, my frustration grows in that way, which is people that in 2017 seem to have some...

00:37:24.000 Because you and I, I'm sure you do too, I fly all the time, right?

00:37:26.000 So you see all types, right?

00:37:28.000 And it's like, you always encounter the guys, like, have you not flown in the last 15 years ever to know that people trying to walk through the machines with their shoes on, their belt, it's like, what is...

00:37:36.000 All the time.

00:37:36.000 And then their inconvenience camera.

00:37:37.000 People that don't push their bins through the, you know, down to the thing and just leave it there for someone else to push through.

00:37:42.000 I'm like, what is... 0.99

00:37:42.000 Some people are just cunts. 0.99

00:37:43.000 There was this one guy who was really kind of funny. 0.99

00:37:46.000 He was going through the metal detector thing, and he had a bottle of water in his bag.

00:37:51.000 And because he had a bottle of water in his bag, they had to check his bag.

00:37:54.000 And so when he goes through, they set your bag aside.

00:37:58.000 You know your thing goes through the line.

00:37:59.000 It hits the scanner, and they pull it.

00:38:01.000 Bag check.

00:38:02.000 So this guy was like checking his phone and looking at the bag.

00:38:05.000 I mean like 30 seconds had gone by.

00:38:06.000 And he goes, I have a flight to catch.

00:38:09.000 Excuse me.

00:38:10.000 I have a flight to catch.

00:38:11.000 And the woman who grabbed his bag said, what are the odds?

00:38:15.000 You're at an airport and you got a flight to catch?

00:38:17.000 How crazy. 0.99

00:38:18.000 And she goes, hey, you got a water bottle in your bag, dummy. 0.99

00:38:21.000 And everybody was laughing. 1.00

00:38:22.000 It was funny because the guy was being a cunt. 1.00

00:38:24.000 And the girl just kind of called him out on it. 0.99

00:38:26.000 And the way she did it was very humorous.

00:38:28.000 I got a good chuckle out of it.

00:38:29.000 Yeah, you see, I always try to show, to your point, about showing some respect to the TSA agents.

00:38:34.000 I have my confrontations with them somewhat.

00:38:37.000 Do you?

00:38:37.000 What kind of confrontations have you had?

00:38:39.000 Well, just in the sense, like, just a couple of weeks ago, I guess it was, when I came down to see Dave, I was with my girlfriend, and they were going through...

00:38:48.000 They were going through a bag.

00:38:49.000 They held my girlfriend's bag, but they were just holding it to a point for minutes.

00:38:52.000 We were in a rush, but I'm like, the guy wasn't even acknowledging that, like, hey, dude, our stuff's here.

00:38:57.000 We're kind of just standing here waiting.

00:38:59.000 And I said to him, are you enjoying your little bit of power right now?

00:39:03.000 I don't understand why you're doing this to us.

00:39:05.000 We said please and thank you.

00:39:07.000 We're doing our stuff.

00:39:08.000 So just these little confrontations.

00:39:09.000 I had a massive, when I was still in high school, because 9-11 happened when I was in 12th grade, and I flew down to...

00:39:16.000 In 2002, early 2002, I flew down to Virginia to see my sister who was teaching down there.

00:39:20.000 And they were going through my bags and stuff like that, and I had a confrontation with the TSA where one of them was like, son, do you know what happened or whatever?

00:39:29.000 And I'm like, yeah, I know what happened.

00:39:30.000 I'm from New York.

00:39:30.000 I live in New York.

00:39:31.000 Have you heard of 9-11, son?

00:39:32.000 And my dad's a New York City firefighter.

00:39:34.000 Yeah, I understand what happened.

00:39:35.000 You know, and, like, to the point where, like, where they called over, like, I was a 17-year-old kid, and to the point where they called over, like, some cops, and then they were just, they, like, just let me go, whatever, but I was like, at that point, it was so, so to me, where I'm like, why are you being so, why are you disrespecting me?

00:39:49.000 Like, you're going through my stuff if I'm a little upset about that, or I have something to say about that, like, I understand you have to probably deal with this all day, but don't, don't, Because I'm a young kid, I don't know what happened because I'm a young man.

00:39:58.000 You had no idea what my experience was.

00:40:00.000 Were you at the funeral for a firefighter that you knew that died?

00:40:02.000 You know, I was.

00:40:03.000 So like, you know, it's that kind of stuff always, I think it's so deceit in me very early with them where I'm like, eh.

00:40:09.000 So I acknowledge that part of it too, you know, where it's like there is a little bit of a chip on my shoulder with them.

00:40:13.000 I'm sure there is.

00:40:14.000 I never have a confrontation with them.

00:40:16.000 I'm always super friendly.

00:40:17.000 I go through, say hi to people.

00:40:19.000 I just treat it as, like, just this is what I'm doing now.

00:40:22.000 I don't say this is a big inconvenience.

00:40:24.000 I just say this is what you have to do.

00:40:26.000 This is what I'm doing now.

00:40:27.000 I do respect this idea that the Fourth Amendment is being violated, but I do not see a better alternative.

00:40:34.000 If I did, I would think that, well, we should definitely follow that protocol, whatever the better alternative is.

00:40:39.000 I just think...

00:40:40.000 Whenever you have non-skilled labor in those sort of situations, like the guy working the fries at Burger King or the guy who's, you know, doing that thing at the TSA, you're going to get a wide variety of people that need a job, and some of them are just going to suck at protocol.

00:40:55.000 They're going to suck at being polite.

00:40:57.000 They're going to suck at recognizing that this old... 1.00

00:41:00.000 And I don't think they have any leeway either. 0.70

00:41:02.000 If some old lady comes through in a wheelchair, I'm pretty sure you have to check her, just like you check everybody else. 1.00

00:41:06.000 And if you don't, you probably get fired.

00:41:07.000 They have cameras watching them everywhere.

00:41:09.000 So it's not their fault.

00:41:10.000 The organization itself, the TSA, I mean there's a diffusion of responsibility when you're one of the people that's responsible.

00:41:17.000 You're at the top and you make these laws and you pass them down to the people that are supposed to enforce all these regulations that you've written down.

00:41:27.000 There's almost like There's a diffusion of responsibility from the people that have created those laws.

00:41:31.000 They don't have to enforce them.

00:41:32.000 They're not out there doing it.

00:41:33.000 So someone else, it's someone else's job, the $10 an hour guy, it's his job to go out there and do all this stuff.

00:41:39.000 And so it's real easy for someone at the top who's not experiencing the interaction, the day-to-day interaction with these human beings to be callous about it or to make hard, fast rules like, hey, if someone comes through in a wheelchair, there's no leeway.

00:41:51.000 Let them go.

00:41:52.000 But then again, You have to think about it in their point of view.

00:41:55.000 Like, if someone was a terrorist and they did decide, well, here's what we do.

00:41:58.000 I mean, it's been proven for a fact that they've used children as suicide bombers.

00:42:03.000 So why wouldn't you use an old lady? 1.00

00:42:05.000 You know, why wouldn't you use an old man? 1.00

00:42:07.000 Why wouldn't you use someone in a wheelchair? 1.00

00:42:08.000 You certainly could.

00:42:09.000 So you have to follow the same protocol with everybody.

00:42:12.000 Everybody that goes through has to be scanned.

00:42:13.000 You can't let somebody not be scanned just because they're old.

00:42:17.000 Like, you've reached a certain amount of years on this planet. 0.95

00:42:20.000 You wouldn't do anything fucking crazy, would you, Bob? 0.96

00:42:22.000 No, not me! 0.99

00:42:23.000 You can't think like that, because if you do think like that, that will be your vulnerability.

00:42:29.000 That will be the path in that someone who's looking to do something horrible will take.

00:42:33.000 I think the solution, Joe, to bridge the gap in the way we feel about this and come to some sort of consensus, what might be And this conflicts a little bit with my small government kind of mentality, but it's just to say, to ask the kind of fundamental question, why are these people being paid $10 or $15 an hour?

00:42:47.000 Back to the Israeli experience of these guys that are professionals.

00:42:50.000 They take a lot of pride in their work.

00:42:51.000 They make maybe $80,000 or $100,000 a year.

00:42:54.000 Not that they necessarily need to make that much money, but people that are professionals, should we invest more money in making this smarter?

00:42:59.000 Well, it would be a substantial increase in our airline fees and much other things, I'm sure.

00:43:04.000 Maybe it wouldn't.

00:43:06.000 Well, we already pay a little bit of that with tickets, but I think Homeland Security might be able to...

00:43:11.000 Maybe we stop dropping bombs on a bunch of countries and take some of that money and put it on into that...

00:43:16.000 How dare you! 0.99

00:43:17.000 What else do you suggest?

00:43:18.000 No more drones? 1.00

00:43:19.000 Fucking communists? 1.00

00:43:21.000 Who is this guy? 1.00

00:43:22.000 Yeah, I mean, the Israeli thing is interesting because Israel has a mandatory military service requirement that I am not in favor of, but I am. 0.96

00:43:35.000 I feel the benefit of it.

00:43:39.000 It's very rare to meet people that are more patriotic than Israelis.

00:43:43.000 People that are more committed to their country.

00:43:48.000 They feel very marginalized, very Targeted and rightly so and so because of that like people that I've met that work for the Israeli army or that have been Soldiers over there. 1.00

00:44:02.000 They have this very intense sort of view of altercation and of the world and when you're forced to do two years military service mandatory like they are you also have You're invested in this whole project of Israel.

00:44:16.000 I mean, there's not there's no veterans and then civilians, right?

00:44:20.000 Everyone's a fucking veteran And, you know, when you deal with a country where literally everyone does some military service, there's more chips in the game, you know? 0.95

00:44:29.000 People are all in. 0.99

00:44:30.000 It's a different scenario.

00:44:31.000 Yeah, I think, you know, I went to school with this girl that was Israeli when I was at Northeastern in Boston, and I remember very clearly she had this, very unassuming, you would never know, but she had this picture of her with an assault rifle shooting at a range, and I'm like, this is so interesting.

00:44:45.000 It conflicts, because I agree with you.

00:44:46.000 It's like one of those things where I'm like, I can see both sides of this, where...

00:45:02.000 I agree with you Or do something that is for the society and really have some investment and some skin in the game in society.

00:45:11.000 I think that that's a nice idea, but I think that the way I feel about the state's exertion of power over the individual kind of overrides that.

00:45:18.000 But I like the idea in principle, like the idea of saying like, hey, and it's also easy for me as a 32-year-old that would be long, you know, to be like, ah, you guys do it.

00:45:26.000 So at the same time, I understand that argument as well.

00:45:28.000 No, I think I'm completely in agreement with you.

00:45:30.000 I love the idea that they're all in, but I don't want anybody enforcing that on me.

00:45:35.000 And I want a kid, if a kid grows up in America and then decides, hey man, I'm going to backpack across the country.

00:45:41.000 No, you can't. 1.00

00:45:42.000 You got to join the army, you fuck. 1.00

00:45:43.000 I don't want that. 1.00

00:45:43.000 You know, I want people to do whatever the fuck they want. 1.00

00:45:46.000 Hey, I want to be a fly fishing guide in Colorado. 0.99

00:45:49.000 No, you can't.

00:45:50.000 You have to clean machine guns.

00:45:51.000 Right, right. 1.00

00:45:52.000 No, fuck that. 1.00

00:45:52.000 Yeah, it's... 1.00

00:45:53.000 I love the fact that America has so much ultimate freedom for what you choose to do and not to do.

00:45:59.000 Look, we live in this sort of experiment in self-government, and you can not participate if you want to.

00:46:07.000 I like that.

00:46:07.000 I like that you don't have to vote.

00:46:09.000 I mean, I'm not saying that everybody should fuck off and not vote, but I am saying that I like that it's your option. 0.99

00:46:16.000 Me too. 0.99

00:46:16.000 I think they have compulsory voting in Australia? 0.99

00:46:19.000 What do you want to say?

00:46:19.000 And look how that works out.

00:46:20.000 Fucking kangaroos are everywhere, dude. 1.00

00:46:22.000 Crocodiles. 1.00

00:46:23.000 And spiders. 1.00

00:46:23.000 Poisonous bugs and shit. 1.00

00:46:25.000 God, that place looks horrifying. 1.00

00:46:26.000 It's great.

00:46:26.000 It's awesome.

00:46:27.000 Have you ever been?

00:46:27.000 No, I've never been.

00:46:28.000 It's the best.

00:46:28.000 I've never been.

00:46:29.000 I live there.

00:46:30.000 That's number three on my list.

00:46:32.000 Number one, America.

00:46:33.000 Number two, Canada.

00:46:34.000 Number three, Australia.

00:46:35.000 That seems like a pretty reasonable list.

00:46:37.000 Very good list.

00:46:38.000 Just being in the gaming industry, I know a lot of people, some people I really love that came from Australia, really friendly people. 1.00

00:46:43.000 But the interior of that country sounds like just an absolute fucking shit show. 0.99

00:46:48.000 It's crazy, but it's also really gorgeous. 1.00

00:46:51.000 It's wild.

00:46:52.000 I have a good buddy who lives over there who goes into the interior all the time.

00:46:56.000 He's the one who sent me a video of a brown snake getting killed by some evil spider.

00:47:01.000 The brown snake kills you, like, instantly.

00:47:04.000 And there's some evil spider that was killing the brown snake. 1.00

00:47:07.000 I'm like, what the fuck kind of a shithole do you live in, Adam? 1.00

00:47:11.000 He's a madman. 1.00

00:47:12.000 He's out there living in that shit. 1.00

00:47:13.000 A man like me would not be able to survive there. 1.00

00:47:15.000 This dude camps out there.

00:47:16.000 He goes out into the bush and shoots buffaloes with a bow and arrow. 0.99

00:47:19.000 He's a maniac. 0.88

00:47:20.000 But the area of Australia is the size of the continental United States. 0.71

00:47:26.000 But there's as many people as, less than the amount of people that live in the greater Los Angeles area. 0.98

00:47:31.000 Live in the entire, this whole fucking continent of Australia. 0.99

00:47:37.000 It's nuts. 0.99

00:47:37.000 It's incredible, yeah. 0.99

00:47:38.000 It's like Perth on the West Coast and then it's just Sydney and Melbourne right on the East Coast and that's basically it.

00:47:43.000 Well, it's Queensland.

00:47:44.000 There's a few other places, but the bottom line is there's a giant percentage of that place where you don't want to get caught dead.

00:47:51.000 No, I wouldn't...

00:47:52.000 I'm the kind of guy where I see a spider and I have to argue with my girlfriend who's going to kill it.

00:47:56.000 So I don't want to...

00:47:58.000 Do you really?

00:47:58.000 You argue?

00:48:00.000 Step up, bro.

00:48:01.000 Get those man points.

00:48:02.000 It always ends up on me, but I hate spiders.

00:48:06.000 Do you get arachnophobia?

00:48:08.000 No, I don't think I have that.

00:48:09.000 If I see one crawling on me, I'm not going to run out the house. 0.97

00:48:12.000 I have to really think about my strategy on how I'm going to kill this thing.

00:48:17.000 It's one of those things where I'm like, eh. 0.52

00:48:19.000 I'm just being honest with you.

00:48:20.000 If I was in Australia, You've got to be super careful in Australia.

00:48:24.000 Oh my god, dude.

00:48:25.000 I see some of these things when people are outside barbecuing, even in like Melbourne or something like that.

00:48:28.000 Yeah.

00:48:28.000 And the camera pans.

00:48:30.000 Oh look, it's a brown snake!

00:48:32.000 And I'm like, holy Jesus God!

00:48:34.000 I wouldn't, I don't know.

00:48:36.000 That's not for me.

00:48:37.000 The waters are filled with sharks.

00:48:38.000 If you get past the sharks, they're filled with jellyfish. 0.98

00:48:41.000 You get to the shore, there's poisonous spiders, you go into the hills, there's poisonous fucking What is it about that part of the world? 0.99

00:48:48.000 It's ruthless. 0.99

00:48:48.000 It's unbelievable. 0.99

00:48:49.000 Yeah, they have Manowar and all that kind of stuff in the water, and the...

00:48:53.000 Fox jellyfish are the scariest.

00:48:55.000 Yeah, these things are crazy. 1.00

00:48:56.000 They just fucking kill you. 1.00

00:48:57.000 They kill you. 1.00

00:48:57.000 If you fall into some sort of a patch, or what do they call them, a school of jellyfish? 1.00

00:49:02.000 If you accidentally stumble upon one, you're a dead person. 1.00

00:49:05.000 You're fucked. 1.00

00:49:06.000 I mean, you're dead instantly. 1.00

00:49:09.000 It's really crazy.

00:49:09.000 And they're little tiny guys, right?

00:49:10.000 And they swarm on you and...

00:49:12.000 Jellyfish are always scary.

00:49:15.000 Because growing up on Long Island, we had obviously harmless jellyfish, but they would wash up on the shore sometimes.

00:49:19.000 And I used to look at them and I was like, these are so strange.

00:49:22.000 What is this, Jamie?

00:49:24.000 It's a spider killing a brown snake.

00:49:26.000 Another one?

00:49:27.000 So spiders just eat brown snakes all the time.

00:49:30.000 Is it caught in its web?

00:49:30.000 That's pretty cool.

00:49:31.000 That's horrifying.

00:49:32.000 Webs are awesome.

00:49:33.000 It's horrifying.

00:49:34.000 Not to me. 1.00

00:49:35.000 Snakes are cunts. 0.99

00:49:36.000 I don't know whose team I'm on. 0.99

00:49:38.000 I think I'm on team snake more than I am on team spider.

00:49:40.000 I think I am too just because they're less scary to me.

00:49:42.000 Plus, well, you can eat spiders.

00:49:44.000 Apparently tarantulas are delicious and they cook them a lot in the Amazon.

00:49:47.000 They have these big spiders that they cook.

00:49:50.000 And they're a lot like crabs.

00:49:52.000 They taste like crabs.

00:49:52.000 And apparently they're really similar in their lineage, their genetic.

00:49:56.000 Interesting.

00:49:57.000 Yeah.

00:49:57.000 I mean, if you put a spider in front of me, I didn't know what it was.

00:50:01.000 Even if I did know what it was, it's not going to kill you when it's dead.

00:50:03.000 Yeah, I'd eat it.

00:50:04.000 Yeah.

00:50:04.000 If it's good, if it's delectable, that's fine.

00:50:06.000 I should say, I've eaten spiders before on Fear Factor.

00:50:10.000 I've eaten a couple spiders.

00:50:11.000 I ate an African cave-dwelling spider.

00:50:14.000 Jamie just freaked out.

00:50:15.000 You must have seen some things on that show, man.

00:50:17.000 Yeah, I'm numb.

00:50:18.000 Pretty numb.

00:50:19.000 Yeah, I guess that explains a lot of your kind of more...

00:50:21.000 You've seen it all. 1.00

00:50:22.000 I'm like an old prostitute. 0.99

00:50:24.000 I've seen too much. 0.99

00:50:27.000 You know, 50-year-old prostitute in Holland. 1.00

00:50:29.000 Like, whatever. 0.99

00:50:30.000 Smoking a cigarette.

00:50:31.000 There's nothing you can show or do to me.

00:50:32.000 Lipstick on my teeth.

00:50:33.000 I'm not even bothering to clean it off.

00:50:36.000 I'm curious about...

00:50:38.000 Because you brought it up before, but what is your stance on Snowden?

00:50:41.000 It seems like you're against the NSA, all that kind of stuff.

00:50:43.000 But what is your stance on him?

00:50:45.000 I'm curious.

00:50:45.000 Do you think he should come back?

00:50:47.000 Do you think that he should...

00:50:48.000 Is he a patriot?

00:50:49.000 I think he's more of a patriot than he is a traitor.

00:50:51.000 I agree.

00:50:52.000 But I think it's a very complex issue when you give away national secrets and you've signed an oath that you're not going to give away national secrets.

00:51:02.000 You sign an oath of secrecy and then you give away national secrets.

00:51:06.000 But, if those national secrets are, in the case of Edward Snowden, they're very detrimental to what we think of as freedom in this country.

00:51:15.000 Like, if you have a bunch of people, like you or me or Jamie or just a normal person, and they work at the NSA, and they can, as he has said, spy on their ex-girlfriends, read their emails, go into anybody's email that you want to and check them out, and then We were also being lied to by the government about the extent of these searches.

00:51:34.000 And he exposed that, that the president was saying it's just metadata.

00:51:36.000 And he was saying, no, it's not just metadata.

00:51:38.000 It's not.

00:51:39.000 It's the actual emails.

00:51:39.000 It's the actual text messages.

00:51:41.000 It's the actual photos that you're sending to each other.

00:51:43.000 They can get those.

00:51:44.000 They have all of those.

00:51:45.000 And that they're storing all this stuff.

00:51:47.000 People were horrified.

00:51:48.000 But this is also something that was exposed.

00:51:50.000 There was an NSA whistleblower from...

00:51:52.000 I want to say 2011, there was a guy who was a, I think he was a coder in the NSA, and he's gone public with this.

00:52:01.000 But he didn't go public with this in the same way, where he dumped a bunch of documents and let people go through them like Edward Snowden did.

00:52:09.000 And he also didn't face the consequences that Edward Snowden did as well.

00:52:15.000 He was criticized and it was debated whether or not him talking about it at all was legal or whether he should be able to, but ultimately he didn't face the same kind of consequences.

00:52:24.000 I mean, Edward Snowden can't live in America anymore.

00:52:26.000 I mean, Chelsea Manning has been exonerated or pardoned.

00:52:31.000 Is that the word?

00:52:32.000 It wasn't a pardon.

00:52:33.000 It was commuted a sentence?

00:52:35.000 Yeah, commuted a sentence, right.

00:52:36.000 So they commuted the sentence, and she's allowed to be free in May, so in a couple months she'll be free.

00:52:41.000 But he's stuck in Russia, and he essentially...

00:52:45.000 The difference being, they said that Chelsea Manning went through the court system, was tried, and then Obama decided that it was a good enough amount of time, and then he was going to commute the sentence.

00:53:00.000 So I kind of see their point there that...

00:53:03.000 Edward Snowden fleed and didn't go through the whole, but why wouldn't he flee? 1.00

00:53:08.000 You're going to lock him in a fucking cage. 0.99

00:53:09.000 Chelsea Manning was locked in a cage 24 hours a day with the lights on with no fucking clothes in solitary confinement for I don't know how long, but it was a long period of time. 1.00

00:53:20.000 I want to say years. 0.97

00:53:22.000 I want to find out how long was Chelsea Manning in solitary confinement for? 1.00

00:53:27.000 Because I know the way they did it.

00:53:28.000 It was cold in there, and they took away all her clothes, or it was his clothes at the time.

00:53:35.000 When do you start saying him or her?

00:53:38.000 What's the deal of that?

00:53:40.000 That's a good point.

00:53:41.000 When you're thinking back on the person before they transitioned.

00:53:43.000 Do you say that Bruce Jenner won the Olympics, or do you say that Caitlyn Jenner won the Olympics?

00:53:47.000 Jesus, I don't know.

00:53:47.000 I'm afraid to say the wrong thing.

00:53:49.000 Okay, the former army analyst with two weeks of solitary confinement in connection with a suicide attempt in July.

00:53:54.000 No, no, no.

00:53:55.000 That's just one.

00:53:57.000 She's declined to discipline them with two weeks.

00:54:00.000 No, but she's been in solitary confinement, not just over the suicide attempt.

00:54:04.000 This is like way late.

00:54:06.000 That's 2016. Go, not the solitary confinement after suicide attempt, but just go to solitary confinement.

00:54:15.000 And don't look at Chelsea.

00:54:16.000 Look at Bradley Manning, solitary confinement.

00:54:19.000 Yeah, it was before he was tried.

00:54:20.000 Yeah, you could say he.

00:54:22.000 Can you say he?

00:54:23.000 Can you get yelled at?

00:54:24.000 I bet you could.

00:54:25.000 I'm sure you will.

00:54:26.000 But I think it's reasonable to say before the transition, when you look back in posterity on a person, maybe it's up to that person.

00:54:32.000 But I would assume that the pronoun would change at that point. 0.99

00:54:36.000 I don't give a fuck. 1.00

00:54:37.000 It's ridiculous. 0.99

00:54:38.000 It's too confusing. 1.00

00:54:38.000 It's so stupid. 1.00

00:54:39.000 There's a case of a transgender fighter who was a man for 30 years, became a woman for two years, and started beating the fuck out of these women. 1.00

00:54:48.000 How is that okay? 0.99

00:54:49.000 And didn't tell them, by the way.

00:54:50.000 Oh, so the organizers or whatever didn't tell?

00:54:52.000 No, he didn't tell.

00:54:53.000 Or she, whatever.

00:54:54.000 Didn't tell.

00:54:55.000 Right.

00:54:57.000 Jesus!

00:54:57.000 But here's the best part about it.

00:54:59.000 I was debating with someone online, and this woman said that she's always been a woman, that this person has always been a woman.

00:55:07.000 And I said, okay, do you realize that this person fathered a child?

00:55:10.000 I said, so even when he was a man having sex with a woman and got her pregnant, He was a woman then, and this woman goes, even then. 0.62

00:55:19.000 I'm like, okay, we're done. 1.00

00:55:20.000 Well, fuck you. 1.00

00:55:20.000 That doesn't make any sense. 1.00

00:55:21.000 It's chaos.

00:55:23.000 Okay, 23 hours a day for over an 11-month period. 1.00

00:55:26.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:55:27.000 And conditions that he also found might have constituted torture. 0.99

00:55:31.000 I was going to say, that sounds torture.

00:55:32.000 Yeah, Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldiers arrest the U.S. military base in May of 2010. He concludes the U.S. military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day for over an 11-month period in conditions that he found.

00:55:51.000 Okay.

00:55:52.000 So yeah, that was what it was.

00:55:53.000 It was almost a year of solitary confinement, and I'm pretty sure that he at the time, she now, was naked.

00:56:02.000 And they took everything away from him.

00:56:04.000 No books, no nothing.

00:56:06.000 Solitary environment.

00:56:06.000 Really?

00:56:06.000 Nothing to read?

00:56:07.000 And cold.

00:56:08.000 They keep it cold.

00:56:09.000 They keep it cold where you're like barely able to tolerate it. 1.00

00:56:12.000 Holy shit, what do you do? 0.99

00:56:13.000 What are the places your mind goes? 1.00

00:56:16.000 I would start doing kung fu.

00:56:17.000 Yeah?

00:56:18.000 Just start working at it.

00:56:21.000 I'd be like Wesley Snipes in that one movie where they kept him locked up.

00:56:25.000 I think stripped naked at night.

00:56:28.000 Yeah.

00:56:30.000 I think that, you know, what they did was what they are allowed to do.

00:56:34.000 You know, you're allowed to do whatever you want to do.

00:56:36.000 When you get someone locked up like that, they don't really have the kind of rights that an average person does.

00:56:41.000 You get locked up for treason.

00:56:43.000 And there was a tremendous amount of heat coming towards the U.S. military when that WikiLeaks video, what was it called?

00:56:51.000 What did they call it?

00:56:52.000 Something about collateral murder.

00:56:53.000 I think that was what they called the video.

00:56:55.000 Was it drones?

00:56:56.000 No, it was a helicopter.

00:56:59.000 Oh, okay, I know what you're talking about, yeah. 0.98

00:57:01.000 Helicopters shooting fucking horrific gunfire down on these people that turned out to be reporters. 0.97

00:57:07.000 And then the callous attitude that these soldiers showed in the video. 0.99

00:57:11.000 We could hear them talking about whether or not there were kids in the van.

00:57:14.000 Well, they shouldn't have brought kids. 0.95

00:57:15.000 The whole thing was really dark.

00:57:17.000 And I think in a lot of ways...

00:57:21.000 Exposure to that stuff is good because unchecked behavior is extremely dangerous.

00:57:26.000 That seemed like it was unchecked.

00:57:29.000 And it seemed like unchecked behavior in a time of war is extremely dangerous.

00:57:32.000 And it was pretty obvious that when you looked at what Edward Snowden had revealed, it was pretty obvious that the majority of the American people had a huge problem with it.

00:57:42.000 The majority of the American people, you or I, who are doing nothing wrong.

00:57:45.000 I'm not committing any crimes.

00:57:47.000 I'm certainly not victimizing anybody.

00:57:49.000 Why do they have access to my email?

00:57:51.000 Why?

00:57:52.000 There's no reason?

00:57:53.000 No reason.

00:57:54.000 You just can?

00:57:55.000 Like, that seems insane.

00:57:57.000 And that, to me, is a way clearer violation of the Fourth Amendment than this weird sort of gray area, not necessarily gray if you're looking at it from a constitutional sense, of how They're allowed to check you at the airport.

00:58:10.000 Yeah, no, that's a very valid and solid argument, I think.

00:58:12.000 Because my stance on Manning specifically has softened over time, because I feel like, you know, when he or she...

00:58:21.000 I don't know.

00:58:21.000 Can we call her Z? Z? I'm not trying to be disrespectful.

00:58:25.000 I just don't know what I'm supposed to...

00:58:25.000 You are being disrespectful.

00:58:26.000 I'm sorry. 1.00

00:58:26.000 You fucking son of a bitch. 1.00

00:58:28.000 I'm sorry. 1.00

00:58:28.000 You're racist, too, I heard. 1.00

00:58:29.000 I know, I know. 0.98

00:58:30.000 That LexisNexis will call me a racist for the rest of my life.

00:58:33.000 But, yeah, to me, it was like...

00:58:35.000 I felt like it was very...

00:58:38.000 They didn't take the time to people died because of that stuff like there were people that were put in danger because of the things that they were put out because it wasn't they didn't Carefully comb through it and make sure that he's actually where people died.

00:58:48.000 Yeah Because of the way WikiLeaks released it because I don't think that I don't know if they're gonna point that specific things but the Way things were out like I don't think all the names were blacked out I don't think like operate the operations in process like people were in play and That were being outed in that way.

00:59:04.000 I think the reason I was a little softer on Snowden was because not only was it domestic, primarily, which I think is an important qualifier, but also because I think he went out of his way to not single any individuals out.

00:59:15.000 It was all about the apparatus itself.

00:59:17.000 It wasn't about like saying like general blah blah blah is doing this and general or admiral but it was about like hey this structure exists and it's really as quite nefarious indeed you know and I think that so I was always to me my stance on him is he's a patriot and he should be welcomed home and the fact that he wasn't he can't be I guess part he hasn't been tried or whatever but the fact that I know that some people think that Obama only pardoned Manning because it made him look good with the transgender community and with the LBGTQ community which I think is a little When

00:59:47.000 he's leaving office, though.

00:59:49.000 Well, because it's part of his legacy.

00:59:51.000 It's the same reason why how much Ford was hurt when he pardoned Nixon.

00:59:55.000 That stuck with him forever in a negative way.

00:59:56.000 Well, this is going to stick with Obama, I think, positively in a good way moving forward.

01:00:01.000 But I don't know that I'm quite that callous in thinking that that's the only reason.

01:00:05.000 I think that he probably had time to marinate on it.

01:00:08.000 Clearly, she went through some rigors.

01:00:10.000 Well, also what's important to point out is that Obama's website, the Hope and Change website that he had when he was running for president and when he got into office, the original website had in it these provisions for how he was going to treat whistleblowers.

01:00:25.000 They were going to allow people to release information that showed crimes and they were going to protect them.

01:00:31.000 They were going to protect whistleblowers.

01:00:32.000 It was a very specific statement.

01:00:35.000 It was a very specific approach that they were having while he was running for president about whistleblowers, because he was about exposing these egregious offenses.

01:00:45.000 And once he got into office, one of the things that happened after the Chelsea Manning thing and after the Edward Snowden things, they removed that from the Hope and Change website.

01:00:54.000 They removed that provision about whistleblowers.

01:00:56.000 Interesting.

01:00:57.000 Because obviously he was unable... 0.99

01:00:59.000 He's either a hypocrite or is unable to keep that promise. 0.99

01:01:02.000 Right. 0.99

01:01:02.000 Well, that goes back to the whole thing with Snowden when you were saying, well, you kind of take an oath... 0.99

01:01:06.000 You know to protect these secrets and all that kind of stuff But yeah, I look at it, you know I want people to be flippant with that kind of stuff like you were saying I want people to be flippantly being like well this is I have some sort of personal problem with this But I actually think it takes a level of courage to be like what in the fuck is going on here?

01:01:19.000 Oh for sure and also I believe that before he gave that information to Glenn Greenwald I believe he offered it to a bunch of different mainstream news sources like New York Times Washington Post correct me if I'm wrong Jamie I think that was in the documentary, the...

01:01:33.000 I didn't see it.

01:01:34.000 Oh, it's Citizen Four or something like that?

01:01:36.000 Yeah.

01:01:36.000 I fell asleep.

01:01:37.000 I tried to watch it in a hotel room.

01:01:39.000 What's up, James?

01:01:40.000 I was going to say, which one did you want me to look up?

01:01:41.000 Because I got the...

01:01:42.000 It said no one died as a result.

01:01:44.000 Oh, okay.

01:01:44.000 Well, I'm wrong.

01:01:45.000 Which one?

01:01:46.000 Which one?

01:01:46.000 The one earlier about Manning.

01:01:48.000 Oh, okay.

01:01:49.000 But, Jamie, it doesn't say anything about...

01:01:51.000 I remember that being contentious.

01:01:52.000 The reason that they were upset about it was because they were like, this puts people that are in play in danger now.

01:01:56.000 Well, maybe that.

01:01:57.000 Maybe it puts people in danger.

01:01:58.000 But maybe no one actually died.

01:02:00.000 A writer had a USA Today piece, I think, about it, and she got a lot of heat for even writing that in the first place.

01:02:07.000 That puts people in danger?

01:02:08.000 That people died from the result of his leaks.

01:02:11.000 Okay, so she got a lot of heat because they haven't.

01:02:13.000 Oh, interesting.

01:02:14.000 That's probably what it is.

01:02:15.000 You probably read that.

01:02:16.000 Okay. 0.99

01:02:17.000 Yeah, man, people, again, you're a racist, and people have died. 0.99

01:02:20.000 I mean, Google says it. 0.97

01:02:21.000 But you know what I'm saying?

01:02:22.000 I mean, like, people need clickbait.

01:02:24.000 So with her writing an article saying that a bunch of people died or someone died, It's kind of the same thing.

01:02:30.000 They're trying to make something juicier.

01:02:32.000 Sure, and even with the London terrorist attack...

01:02:35.000 The most recent one?

01:02:36.000 Yeah, the one that just happened, where people, they seem to have identified the person, new sources that you think are reputable say it, and then they have to retract it later.

01:02:45.000 Everyone's very quick to try to pull the gun first and be like, well, we have the story.

01:02:50.000 And then we're all victimized as people that are just...

01:02:53.000 We're not in the trenches, so we need the information.

01:02:55.000 We have to trust these people, and trust is broken, I think, in a little way.

01:02:58.000 Yeah, I certainly think there should be some sort of a national debate on whether or not Edward Snowden is a hero.

01:03:05.000 You know, whether or not Edward Snowden did something that benefited the American people.

01:03:09.000 Because I certainly think the overall reaction, the overall, like if you look at what Edward Snowden did and then you look at what are the consequences of what he did, I think it's good for us.

01:03:20.000 Because we got to see that all these Alex Jones type conspiracies were actually true.

01:03:25.000 When Alex Jones is ranting and raving about the government, looking into your emails.

01:03:28.000 One of the great episodes of this show, by the way.

01:03:30.000 Thank you. 0.95

01:03:30.000 But people were looking into that like, there's no fucking way. 0.95

01:03:33.000 There's no way the government really looks into your email. 0.98

01:03:35.000 There's no way.

01:03:35.000 It doesn't happen.

01:03:36.000 But yes, they do.

01:03:37.000 That was a stunner to me.

01:03:39.000 And for me, it was...

01:03:41.000 I had been telling people that Alex Jones, who's my friend and has been my friend for a long time, I get criticized so much by people for that. 0.99

01:03:49.000 They're like, he's so crazy and he's such a fucking right-wing wacko. 0.99

01:03:52.000 I'm like, Alex Jones is not right-wing. 1.00

01:03:54.000 He's not.

01:03:55.000 He's anti-government. 1.00

01:03:57.000 He's anti-tyranny and he might be crazy as fuck and he probably is. 1.00

01:04:01.000 But he's right about a lot of shit, and that's where it gets really scary. 1.00

01:04:04.000 He was talking about the NSA looking into people's emails and having the ability to... 0.99

01:04:09.000 I found out about that NSA whistleblower, the original one.

01:04:13.000 See if you can find who that guy is.

01:04:14.000 I want to say...

01:04:16.000 Yes, yes.

01:04:17.000 Pull up that article.

01:04:18.000 I found out about that from Alex.

01:04:20.000 He told me about it.

01:04:21.000 I went, what?

01:04:22.000 And then I hear, Bill Binney, the original NSA whistleblower on Snowden, 9-11, and illegal surveillance.

01:04:27.000 Now he was, oh God, I want to say it was before 9-11.

01:04:30.000 Wasn't it before 9-11 that he came out with this?

01:04:33.000 Scroll down.

01:04:34.000 Or was it right after 9-11?

01:04:35.000 He believes that 9-11 was preventable a month after it happened.

01:04:38.000 He resigned to protest from the National Security Agency.

01:04:41.000 Benny was part of an elite NSA team which designed and built an intelligence gathering system to target and collect data on terrorism threats.

01:04:51.000 He belongs to an intimate group of four whistleblowers, each of whom left the NSA after raising concerns about failures in the agency's intelligence gathering capabilities. 0.68

01:05:04.000 Yeah, so he was the first guy that was saying what they're doing is bullshit, and he alleges the NSA buried key intelligence that could have prevented 9-11.

01:05:14.000 He alleges the agency's bulk data collection from internet and telephone communications is unconstitutional and illegal in the U.S. He alleges that the NSA is ineffective at preventing terrorism because analysts are too swamped with information. 0.71

01:05:28.000 Now that makes sense.

01:05:30.000 Under its bulk collection program.

01:05:32.000 That totally makes sense.

01:05:34.000 Yeah, when you have everything, where do you begin?

01:05:36.000 Yeah, I mean, all those things that he said, I mean, there's no way.

01:05:40.000 I mean, that's the thing.

01:05:41.000 A friend of mine was joking around about this, because, man, I'm just not comfortable with the NSA reading my email.

01:05:46.000 I go, of course you're not comfortable.

01:05:47.000 I'm not either.

01:05:48.000 But guess what? 1.00

01:05:50.000 Who's fucking reading your shit, man? 1.00

01:05:51.000 Nobody's reading your shit. 1.00

01:05:52.000 Yeah, that's not even the point, right? 1.00

01:05:55.000 Yeah.

01:05:56.000 Well, it goes back to the point we're making, because with the Patriot Act after 9-11, they made the same argument.

01:06:00.000 Well, if you have nothing to hide.

01:06:01.000 Right, but the problem is, as soon as something comes up, they go, hmm, it's Colin Moriarty. 1.00

01:06:05.000 He's been talking a lot of shit. 0.99

01:06:06.000 Let's find out what he's into. 1.00

01:06:07.000 Oh, look at that. 1.00

01:06:08.000 A bunch of dick pics. 1.00

01:06:09.000 Right, right. 0.99

01:06:09.000 Time to put those online. 0.99

01:06:10.000 Don't tell anyone that. 0.99

01:06:11.000 Hey, bro, nothing wrong with dick pics. 0.99

01:06:13.000 But, yeah, no, I think we're in league with that. 0.98

01:06:17.000 I think Snowden is like a hero.

01:06:19.000 I feel like what he did took a lot of courage, and it blew up his life.

01:06:24.000 I would like to, if I go to Russia, and I might go to Russia for the UFC, I'd like to meet that dude.

01:06:29.000 I'd like to interview him.

01:06:30.000 He probably would talk to you.

01:06:31.000 Jamie, you want to go to Russia?

01:06:35.000 Big pause.

01:06:37.000 My dad went when I was younger, and I was trying to think of, like, how did that go for him?

01:06:43.000 I don't want to put you on the spot.

01:06:44.000 But if it was possible to meet that guy, I would love to meet that guy.

01:06:47.000 I don't know if they just let you meet him, though.

01:06:49.000 I bet it would be, like, really hard.

01:06:50.000 I know John Oliver met him.

01:06:51.000 Shane Smith did, too.

01:06:53.000 Yeah, yeah, that's right.

01:06:54.000 Maybe I could go with Shane.

01:06:56.000 Get Shane to hook it up.

01:06:57.000 He would probably love to talk to you.

01:06:58.000 I mean, he seems like an interesting—he's probably under constant surveillance, you have to assume, but— No, I'm sure. 0.99

01:07:02.000 I would be fucked when I came back. 0.96

01:07:04.000 They'd probably check everything. 1.00

01:07:05.000 Oh my god, yeah.

01:07:06.000 I would like to sit down with that guy for a few hours.

01:07:08.000 Like, do like a six-hour interview with him and just pick him apart and ask, like, what is your life like now, man? 0.98

01:07:14.000 Like, how many Russian chicks you banging? 1.00

01:07:16.000 Are you a hero over here?

01:07:19.000 Do they pay you?

01:07:21.000 How do you eat?

01:07:22.000 What do you do to feed yourself?

01:07:23.000 Like, where's he getting his money?

01:07:24.000 He must get a stipend of some sort, you have to assume, right?

01:07:26.000 I mean, he's a guest of theirs, so you have to assume that he's taken care of in some way.

01:07:31.000 Right, but I mean, he probably has to keep his value high.

01:07:34.000 Like, at a certain point in time, they could say, hey, you're not valuable to us anymore. 1.00

01:07:39.000 Time to live in Guatemala, bitch. 1.00

01:07:41.000 I mean, he's a very smart man, so he must know at the highest level that he's a geopolitical pawn that, like you said, could be played in any way at any point. 0.99

01:07:49.000 If I was him, I would just be listening to Rosetta Stone with Russia all day long. 1.00

01:07:54.000 I'd be like, I need to find out how to speak Russian, and I need to fucking go hide in Siberia or some shit. 0.99

01:08:00.000 I need to grow my beard out. 0.99

01:08:02.000 Yeah, he's an interesting cat.

01:08:04.000 I'm somewhat fascinated by him.

01:08:07.000 I think he'll come back at some point.

01:08:09.000 Neil deGrasse Tyson had a fascinating interview with him on StarTalk Radio.

01:08:13.000 And Neil deGrasse Tyson essentially was saying the same thing, that he thinks he's a patriot.

01:08:17.000 And Neil doesn't really take too many stances that are really political in that regard.

01:08:21.000 But I think as far as data collection, random...

01:08:26.000 Just a blanket data collection of all the people in the United States. 1.00

01:08:29.000 I think it's fucked. 0.97

01:08:31.000 And it's absolutely not what we think of when we think of the freedom that the United States supposedly provides its citizens. 0.99

01:08:39.000 It seems like we're all under suspicion then.

01:08:42.000 We're all being under surveillance. 0.99

01:08:43.000 That's some really creepy Orwell type shit. 0.92

01:08:47.000 You know, that's just, it's not what we want. 0.99

01:08:50.000 It's extremely Orwellian.

01:08:51.000 I feel like with Snowden, sometimes people miss the forest for the trees with it.

01:08:55.000 They're very focused on the man, the act.

01:08:57.000 But they're not focused on...

01:08:58.000 One of the things that I'm really interested in is, what is the level of complicity with the telecoms?

01:09:03.000 What is the complicity with the government forcing these people?

01:09:07.000 And how many thousands of people are in on this?

01:09:09.000 And that's the crazy thing, is that Snowden, who was a contractor, not even really in the inner sanctum of the NSA, knew all of this stuff.

01:09:17.000 There are people running around, thousands of people, just acting like this never happened or wasn't going on.

01:09:21.000 It's not a conspiracy because we know it's true, but it's a pretty big thing where I'm like, focusing on Snowden is missing the entire point.

01:09:30.000 No Sprint or T-Mobile or anyone was like, hey, imagine the kind of coup would have been for one of those companies to be like...

01:09:36.000 We're not doing this.

01:09:37.000 And in fact, we're going to tell everyone.

01:09:39.000 This will make us look amazing from a very shrewd corporate stance.

01:09:44.000 We don't cooperate with it.

01:09:46.000 But let's be honest.

01:09:47.000 That would never happen.

01:09:48.000 And if it did happen, they would come down on that company so hard.

01:09:51.000 There has to be some weird sort of arrangements.

01:09:54.000 These gigantic telecommunication companies like Verizon or something has with the federal government.

01:09:59.000 I mean, it just has to be.

01:10:00.000 I think it's just protecting the bottom.

01:10:02.000 I mean, I'm sure that there's something they can do, but they don't care about anything but money.

01:10:05.000 Well, I have a friend who used to be a big executive at Google, and she described to me some of the conversations that they had when they were dealing with the government and search engines and Right.

01:10:29.000 Right.

01:10:30.000 Right.

01:10:32.000 The searches.

01:10:32.000 They had to censor things.

01:10:34.000 I mean, the government of China does not feel the same way about freedom as the government of the United States.

01:10:39.000 And the government of the United States gets real sketchy with it.

01:10:42.000 As soon as you're doing what Edward Snowden has proven that they're doing, you're getting really sketchy with freedom. 0.99

01:10:47.000 I mean, you can land on the free, home of the brave, except I want to look at your dick pics. 0.99

01:10:52.000 Except, I want to read your emails. 1.00

01:10:53.000 Right.

01:10:53.000 Except, I want to listen to your voicemails.

01:10:55.000 Except, I want to be able to track your calls.

01:10:58.000 Except, I want to be able to know where your phone is at all times.

01:11:01.000 I mean, that metadata from where the location of your phone is, is one of the primary ways they target terrorists.

01:11:09.000 People who are not aware of why so many civilians die in these terrorist attacks.

01:11:15.000 Part of the reason, especially in the early days of drone attacks, When they were trying to target terrorists, rather, was that they would use the metadata.

01:11:25.000 They would find out where the phones are.

01:11:27.000 So if your phone was in this apartment building, they're going to bomb that apartment building.

01:11:31.000 It's like, whoa.

01:11:33.000 Yeah, it's very deep.

01:11:33.000 It's very technical.

01:11:34.000 And I have no problem with them going to a shadow court and getting permission to be like, we're tracking this guy's phone now.

01:11:41.000 We're reading this guy or this organization's emails or people that are kind of within seven degrees of separation or whatever from this person.

01:11:46.000 At least there's some sort of orderly nature to it, right?

01:11:50.000 You don't need to be reading my emails or I'm just getting Uber receipts sent to my email.

01:11:54.000 It's like, why are you even storing all this?

01:11:57.000 What use is it other than obviously they want trends, they want data that they can do big...

01:12:01.000 High up data, you know, eagle eye data and saying like this is the trend and all these kinds of things.

01:12:06.000 But it's all ill begotten because it's like it's not it's not right.

01:12:09.000 And that was the disappointing.

01:12:11.000 And you probably feel the same way, Joe, is like after Snowden and NSA was a big story, but then everyone kind of just like, eh.

01:12:18.000 And everyone kind of forgot.

01:12:19.000 Well, they're still kind of doing a lot of the same kind of thing.

01:12:22.000 We know about it now, but we don't know the level of change that was affected, really.

01:12:27.000 No, we don't.

01:12:28.000 And to me, I feel like this is the thing where you've got to keep the pedal down, and you've got to keep going and be like, this is not okay.

01:12:33.000 This is not right.

01:12:35.000 And it's the same thing with...

01:12:38.000 With the Patriot back in the day where everyone was really upset about that.

01:12:40.000 Well, you have every right to be upset about.

01:12:41.000 That's really egregious stuff.

01:12:42.000 Sure, the NDAA. I mean, the NDAA, what they've essentially done is they've eliminated the right of due process.

01:12:49.000 They can lock you up for as long as they want.

01:12:52.000 They can deny you any sort of legal representation.

01:12:57.000 That's all been taken away from us now.

01:12:59.000 What used to be one of the foundations of being an American, the right to due process, right to have a lawyer, the right to a trial of your own peers, all that stuff is kind of gone now if they just decide that you're a terrorist.

01:13:11.000 And they can decide you're a terrorist if you have weed on you.

01:13:15.000 If you're involved in illegal drugs, you can be, under the Patriot Act, considered a terrorist.

01:13:20.000 It's really kind of crazy.

01:13:21.000 It is, and it's scary in the sense, too, because it goes back to what they were saying, or what this gentleman was saying that we were just talking about, where he was saying, like, they have too much data.

01:13:28.000 They have too much to work with.

01:13:29.000 And at some point, someone has to be like, hey, the guy with an ounce of weed, or the guy, you know, even with four ounces of weed, why are we dumping him in with all the stuff that's just going to muddy the waters more about the real target that we're really going after, which is someone that's actually going to hurt someone, or someone that's actually going to cause a terrorist incident?

01:13:46.000 Right.

01:13:46.000 To me, if I were them, I'd be like, we need less.

01:13:49.000 We need way more targeted data.

01:13:51.000 We need to leave 325 million people alone, probably.

01:13:55.000 At least.

01:13:56.000 And here's another big part of the problem, was that when Obama was instituting these changes, and when the NDAA got passed, and when people were saying, well, hey, we're never going to use it.

01:14:06.000 This is one of the things they said.

01:14:07.000 We're never going to hold people without legal representation indefinitely.

01:14:10.000 We're never going to use the indefinite detainment.

01:14:13.000 Okay, but that's you. 0.98

01:14:14.000 What if a crazy person becomes president? 0.99

01:14:17.000 Cut to President Trump. 0.99

01:14:19.000 Right. 0.99

01:14:19.000 We now have a crazy person. 0.99

01:14:20.000 Yep. 0.99

01:14:21.000 Crazy person is now president, and you're like, well, now what? 0.99

01:14:23.000 Well, what about these fucking crazy laws, Obama, that you passed when you thought that it would be nothing but your standard politicians and hopefully Democrats from now to the end of time? 0.99

01:14:32.000 Guess what? 0.99

01:14:33.000 Now it's not.

01:14:34.000 Now it's a guy who wants to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency.

01:14:37.000 Now it's a guy who wants to drill pipelines through Dakota Access.

01:14:42.000 This is a guy that wants to do a lot of stuff that people find to be troubling.

01:14:46.000 And this guy has the same rights to use the NDAA as you did.

01:14:52.000 And he's the new guy. 0.99

01:14:53.000 And he's kind of crazy. 0.52

01:14:55.000 Yeah, and this is the level of restraint that needs to be shown by someone in that position because... 0.83

01:14:59.000 And he hasn't done anything yet.

01:15:00.000 You can't say he has used it, but he's only been in office a couple of months.

01:15:04.000 Yeah, give him time.

01:15:05.000 But to me, it goes back to the argument of executive orders, it goes back to the argument of all these things where, or the filibuster in the Senate, where what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

01:15:16.000 You can't set up these rules that are just going to backfire on you and then complain about them later.

01:15:20.000 To me, I think it's a huge mistake.

01:15:22.000 That's why I have a lot of respect for presidents—we haven't had one in a long time—that are more restrained.

01:15:26.000 The presidents that defer executive power and actually say, like, maybe the legislature should be dealing with these kinds of things.

01:15:31.000 We need a man like that or a woman like that. 1.00

01:15:33.000 Who's ever done that?

01:15:33.000 Oh, I mean, it's been a long time.

01:15:35.000 The Gilded Age, you have Coolidge and Harding and those guys.

01:15:38.000 But ever since FDR, really, the imperial presidency grew in power and all these kinds of things.

01:15:42.000 And before you knew it, you had a little canaries in the coal mine.

01:15:45.000 I was actually talking to Dave about it last night with Eisenhower with the military-industrial complex and all these kinds of things.

01:15:50.000 That was amazing, wasn't it?

01:15:51.000 Really, I don't think people realize how insane that is.

01:15:54.000 That man said that.

01:15:56.000 Well, explain what he said and when he said it.

01:15:59.000 So Eisenhower was president from 52 to 60. Well, technically 53 to 61. And he was obviously one of the instrumental generals in the Allied assaults on Japan and on Nazi Germany.

01:16:13.000 And he saw the influence of the military growing and that in the Cold War, in the nascent era of the Cold War, that We were making bombs to make bombs, that we were trying to have conflicts, like with Korea, which he did end in the early 50s,

01:16:28.000 and seeing these seeds sown of a perpetual war, a perpetual war that the economy was actually benefiting from.

01:16:36.000 Jamie, pull up that speech, because it's an amazing speech.

01:16:39.000 It would be nice for people to hear it.

01:16:41.000 Because a lot of people are not aware of the tone and the way he said it, and it was when he was leaving office.

01:16:47.000 Sorry if I'm not doing a good job.

01:16:48.000 No, it's okay.

01:16:48.000 No, no, no.

01:16:49.000 You did great.

01:16:49.000 Great job.

01:16:50.000 Okay, and so he's a man of a military background.

01:16:52.000 Everyone loved Eisenhower.

01:16:54.000 Right.

01:16:54.000 Because of what he did in the war, and he had two-term president.

01:16:57.000 Nixon was his vice president, very popular.

01:16:59.000 But at the end, he was like, you gotta watch what's going on over here.

01:17:03.000 I'm telling you.

01:17:04.000 Yes.

01:17:04.000 You can trust me.

01:17:05.000 I'm from that world, and watch what's happening.

01:17:07.000 It's a great speech.

01:17:08.000 Play it, Jamie.

01:17:09.000 It's a cool speech.

01:17:11.000 Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

01:17:14.000 Good evening, my fellow Americans.

01:17:17.000 We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations.

01:17:30.000 Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.

01:17:38.000 American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.

01:17:46.000 But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.

01:17:51.000 We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

01:17:58.000 Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.

01:18:05.000 Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.

01:18:14.000 The total influence Economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.

01:18:25.000 We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.

01:18:34.000 Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved.

01:18:38.000 So is the very structure of our society.

01:18:42.000 In the councils of government, We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex.

01:18:53.000 The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

01:19:00.000 We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

01:19:06.000 We should take nothing for granted.

01:19:09.000 Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel The proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

01:19:26.000 Jesus.

01:19:27.000 It's an amazing...

01:19:28.000 At the time, that was an amazing speech, and it's just prescient.

01:19:32.000 Yeah.

01:19:32.000 Because people have to understand, and you know, before World War II, we weren't a built-up and militarized society.

01:19:40.000 We would militarize when we needed to, and it was really...

01:19:44.000 Teddy Roosevelt and all those kinds of guys that started getting a little more bullish in that kind of regard with the Spanish-American War and the USS Maine.

01:19:51.000 But the fight over World War I was real.

01:19:54.000 We didn't want to get involved.

01:19:55.000 We got involved very late.

01:19:56.000 And people take for granted now that we have just massive military, we have this massive power.

01:20:01.000 But in the 19th century, not that you can't equate them necessarily to the 21st century, we weren't going around running roughshod over people and doing those kinds of things.

01:20:09.000 We were very isolationist.

01:20:11.000 That was kind of the American tradition.

01:20:13.000 And to hear that come out of Eisenhower's mouth, especially knowing his experiences in the war and his deep knowledge of the military and what was going on in the world, it's one of the great warnings of all time in American history.

01:20:25.000 It really is.

01:20:25.000 And it's very wise on his part because he recognized that there are survival systems.

01:20:29.000 That are a part of any industry, you know?

01:20:33.000 I mean, there's survival mechanisms, and the industry wants to stay alive.

01:20:37.000 If all of a sudden there was peace on Earth, this gigantic industry, this multiple-billion-dollar-a-year industry, I mean, I don't know how much.

01:20:44.000 It's trillions a year, right?

01:20:45.000 What's the military budget per year?

01:20:48.000 It's $600 billion a year.

01:20:49.000 $600 billion of new spending.

01:20:52.000 So you have trillions of dollars worth of equipment.

01:20:54.000 Jesus Christ.

01:20:55.000 So that massive amount of money, there's so many people that are involved in that, and so many jobs that have to be preserved, and so much of the industry relies on keeping conflict Active and I think that's what he was trying to warn us about but it's so interesting about it and it involves citizenry and that people need to be aware of it and to hear that from the president you're never going to hear anything remotely as even close to as candid as that is today.

01:21:22.000 No absolutely not and I think that even hearing that from you know just to reiterate like hearing that from a Barack Obama for instance would be strong right but hearing that from a Ulysses S Grant or a Zachary Taylor or a guy that served right especially at the level he served is like that That meant something to people.

01:21:39.000 And I think that's why that saying never went away, but under our noses it happened.

01:21:44.000 And what he said was going to happen is exactly what happened in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. 0.97

01:21:51.000 He called it from a fucking mile away. 0.96

01:21:53.000 Well, it wasn't even a mile away because he was living there. 0.99

01:21:56.000 I mean, he was in the heat of it.

01:21:57.000 In 1960, when he made that speech, you think about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

01:22:01.000 I mean, that was just a few years later.

01:22:02.000 Just a few years later, they had a false flag that allowed people to get enthusiastic about entering into the Vietnam War.

01:22:09.000 And that's where it all came from.

01:22:10.000 Right.

01:22:11.000 And it's the same, you know, some people say the USS Maine and Spanish-American War in 1898 was another false flag or something that they let happen or something that was blown out of proportion.

01:22:18.000 Pardon the pun, because it was about a ship blowing up.

01:22:21.000 But yeah, it is a provocation that gets everyone involved.

01:22:24.000 And we had this nemesis.

01:22:26.000 It was good versus evil.

01:22:27.000 We were upset.

01:22:27.000 We saw, I think, especially against the Nazis, we saw the stature of the good versus evil argument.

01:22:33.000 And we won with the Allies.

01:22:35.000 So I think we tried to perpetuate that.

01:22:37.000 Immediately, the Soviets became the evil. 0.99

01:22:38.000 And then we created our bombs.

01:22:40.000 And then they created their bombs.

01:22:41.000 And then we just had these proxy wars that we were fighting against the Chinese in Korea and the Soviets in Vietnam, really.

01:22:47.000 All these things that were kind of...

01:22:49.000 You know, everyone knew what was going on, but no one...

01:22:53.000 I'm sorry.

01:22:53.000 Please go.

01:22:54.000 I was just going to say, so I think that when the Soviet... 0.83

01:22:58.000 When everything started to get peaceful, what do they call it?

01:23:00.000 Glasnost?

01:23:01.000 In the Soviet, which is like the idea of a new era, like peace and prosperity with the West or whatever, in the late 70s, early 80s. 0.99

01:23:08.000 I think that the Boeings of the world and the Halliburton's of the world were like, oh shit. 1.00

01:23:14.000 You know, and... 0.98

01:23:16.000 Come 90s, but we immediately found new targets.

01:23:19.000 And we should be wary of why that happened.

01:23:22.000 I'm not saying that we shouldn't necessarily fight.

01:23:23.000 We have to fight sometimes.

01:23:24.000 But to have this industrialized nature of it, to have this need to lurch from one war to the next war to the next war to the next war is not what a thriving republic does.

01:23:34.000 It's what a dying empire does.

01:23:36.000 Well, it's definitely what an empire that's dependent upon the control, or rather an industry, rather, that's dependent upon the control that it has currently maintaining it.

01:23:46.000 You need to maintain that money.

01:23:48.000 You need to maintain the business, the business of making these machines and of having these contracts.

01:23:54.000 I mean, it's a huge industry, and like all of these unlimited growth industries, Every business essentially operates under this paradigm of unlimited growth, or most businesses do, most corporations do, where every year they want to make more money.

01:24:09.000 And if that's applicable to a company that makes tanks, well, every year they want to make more money, they want to make more tanks.

01:24:17.000 We don't need tanks anymore. 1.00

01:24:18.000 Well, oh the fuck, you don't. 1.00

01:24:19.000 You definitely need tanks. 1.00

01:24:20.000 Oh, look what's going on over here in Yemen. 1.00

01:24:21.000 Oh shit, you need some tanks. 0.99

01:24:23.000 Right, exactly. 1.00

01:24:23.000 And that means Team America World Police. 1.00

01:24:26.000 It's really crazy.

01:24:27.000 It's scary, and it's a scary waste of money, too.

01:24:29.000 I don't think that we...

01:24:31.000 I really do feel like we should have the most powerful military in the world.

01:24:34.000 I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.

01:24:35.000 I think you're right.

01:24:36.000 I think a powerful republic can have those kinds of things.

01:24:38.000 But we don't need all these bases that are legacy bases.

01:24:40.000 Why are we still in Japan?

01:24:41.000 Why are we still in... 0.99

01:24:42.000 In case they talk some shit, or Godzilla shows up. 0.99

01:24:45.000 Trump's proposed hike to military spending is bigger than all but two countries' entire budgets. 0.99

01:24:50.000 Well, that's because we're America, and we're better than everybody else. 1.00

01:24:52.000 Get that communist shit off my screen. 1.00

01:24:55.000 I want to say, I mean, this is incredible, Joe. 1.00

01:24:56.000 I want to say, I think this is right, that if you split the military spending of the world in thirds, we are responsible for a third of it.

01:25:05.000 Ten countries are responsible for another third of it.

01:25:07.000 And then everyone else is responsible for another third of it.

01:25:10.000 We have four and a half percent of the world's population.

01:25:13.000 So this is way out of whack with even our needs, like our actual very need to protect ourselves.

01:25:19.000 I think it's just way out of whack.

01:25:20.000 Right, but when you get past those 10 countries, the other third, and then us, that's 11 countries, everybody else is using coconuts and catapults.

01:25:30.000 Essentially, yeah.

01:25:30.000 They're throwing rocks at each other.

01:25:32.000 But there's relative tranquility outside of the Middle East and in Eastern Europe with Ukraine and Russia.

01:25:39.000 There's general...

01:25:57.000 I think it's more of that.

01:26:03.000 GM, Ford, all these guys were making our armaments.

01:26:06.000 You know, Mitsubishi made the Japanese Zeros. 0.67

01:26:09.000 Offshoots of IBM were making friggin' punch card machines for the Nazis.

01:26:12.000 You know, like, people, you know, for better or for worse, ramp up and do what they need to do in times of war to make money.

01:26:18.000 And so we could have a plan in place to say, like, hey, if we need to ramp up, if something bad happens, if we need to go overseas or something, if we have to go engage the Russians because they're rolling into the rest of Ukraine, for instance, we can take care of that without having bases all over the world.

01:26:32.000 Well, the problem with that kind of thinking is, as soon as you say that, then they realize, well, there's a lot of money to be had if that is the case.

01:26:39.000 So, let's make that the case. 0.99

01:26:41.000 And then there's some weird fucking covert sneaky shit going down. 0.99

01:26:45.000 Do you have an earring on both ears or something that's going on here? 0.99

01:26:48.000 Are the headphones irritating you?

01:26:51.000 Oh, no, no.

01:26:51.000 I just like to hear, whenever I do this, no, no.

01:26:54.000 The earrings have been in since I was like...

01:26:55.000 18. I just never took them out.

01:26:57.000 I'm superstitious.

01:26:58.000 You're superstitious?

01:27:00.000 Yeah, so I don't like to, you know, not like overtly superstitious, but I'm afraid to take them out. 0.79

01:27:04.000 I'm afraid to do different things.

01:27:05.000 Do you have a We the People tattoo on your arm?

01:27:07.000 Yeah, We the People, and then I have Franklin's association snake on my arm.

01:27:11.000 So you're like join or die.

01:27:12.000 Wow.

01:27:13.000 So you're like a serious, almost like a fan of politics.

01:27:17.000 Yeah.

01:27:17.000 Is that a way to describe it?

01:27:19.000 Sure.

01:27:20.000 When I went to college, I went to school for American history, and I graduated.

01:27:23.000 And when I got my job offer in the video game industry, I was about to start my graduate degree at Northeastern in American history because I wanted to be a professor at the time.

01:27:30.000 So my real passion was American history and American politics, but I veered off into a different direction.

01:27:36.000 How did that happen?

01:27:37.000 I'm sorry.

01:27:37.000 No, please go.

01:27:38.000 I was going to say, so these are like relics.

01:27:39.000 So I got these when I was like 20. Wow, that's interesting, man.

01:27:43.000 Those are unusual tattoos for a 20-year-old.

01:27:45.000 Yeah, I just, you know, I love...

01:27:48.000 I'm really interested in the founding generation.

01:27:50.000 I'm really interested in their experiences.

01:27:52.000 And the American Revolution, I think, is a fascinating revolution compared to a lot of other revolutions, primarily because it is, I think, an inherently, in some ways, conservative revolution, which is not common.

01:28:01.000 These were incredibly rich people fighting.

01:28:04.000 These weren't, like, poor, destitute people.

01:28:06.000 John Hancock had something like 1 350th of all of the value of the colonies under his name.

01:28:11.000 These people had everything to risk and everything to lose.

01:28:13.000 So it's, like, an interesting...

01:28:15.000 I think very principled revolution that they fought.

01:28:16.000 Although if you read like Howard Zinn or something, they would say that they did it to protect their money.

01:28:20.000 I'm sure they did, but I'm sure they had other motives as well.

01:28:23.000 Of course.

01:28:24.000 And it's sort of an unprecedented thing in human history.

01:28:28.000 I mean, it's a really crazy...

01:28:30.000 Union that we've established over here, and to see all these things that threaten what we find so amazing about it, like the violations of the Fourth Amendment, all the NSA stuff with Edward Snowden, all these different things that we see that are huge problems.

01:28:45.000 What they are is also they're weakening the foundation of these ideas that were so amazing when they were first established in 1776. Yeah, and to me, that's why I think that they're worth protecting.

01:28:57.000 It goes into the, like, is the Constitution living or not?

01:29:00.000 Is it a strict constructionist or a loose constructionist?

01:29:02.000 All those kinds of questions I think are valid.

01:29:04.000 But to me, I'm like, we have this very unique vision into what the founders intended, because they were one of the few, I think, people at that time that were like, we're going to...

01:29:14.000 The Federalist Papers are incredible if you read them.

01:29:16.000 You don't have to wonder what they meant.

01:29:18.000 They literally tell you exactly what they meant.

01:29:21.000 So when you go to Supreme Court cases, I don't know that there are many Supreme Court cases that don't even reference the Federalist Papers because it's like, well, they said this at Article 3, Section 2, but actually in this paper that they wrote anonymously that we know Alexander Hamilton wrote, here's what he said about it.

01:29:34.000 And I think that's interesting stuff.

01:29:36.000 Now, how did this knowledge of politics and how did this fascination that you have with the history of the United States, how did this get you in, you know, quote-unquote, trouble in the video game industry with these people that are predominantly left-wing and predominantly progressive?

01:29:52.000 I say progressive, but progressive is kind of a dirty word now.

01:29:56.000 It is.

01:29:57.000 There's a difference between liberal and progressive.

01:29:58.000 Well, it would be great if everybody was liberal.

01:30:01.000 It would be great if everybody was progressive.

01:30:03.000 It would be great if everybody wanted people to have freedom of choice and freedom to be whoever you want, but that's not really what those things are anymore.

01:30:12.000 Those things are like ideologies.

01:30:14.000 They're these predetermined patterns of behavior that people subscribe to in a very, very rigid way.

01:30:20.000 What did you find was an issue when people found out about your extreme understanding and respect for the history of the United States? 0.97

01:30:32.000 Well, primarily they think it was kind of a joke, not a ha-ha joke, but like you're a clown, kind of. 0.90

01:30:38.000 Why? 0.90

01:30:39.000 Because I believe in a small government, for instance.

01:30:41.000 I believe in low taxation.

01:30:42.000 I believe in the elimination of the income tax and things like this.

01:30:45.000 But I don't actually have...

01:30:46.000 Not all my ideas are radical or even outside of the mainstream.

01:30:49.000 Socially, I'm probably further to the left than many of these people.

01:30:53.000 I think that it goes back to this idea, and this is something Dave Rubin has touched on a lot in his show, which I'm sure you're familiar with, which is this idea that it's really all or nothing.

01:31:01.000 We're good to go.

01:31:26.000 Right.

01:31:34.000 Right.

01:31:45.000 Because you have this one thing that we have a problem with.

01:31:47.000 Okay, but you're not being clear about that.

01:31:50.000 Like, what is the issue when it comes to small government?

01:31:53.000 Like, you wanting small government, what's the opposition to that?

01:31:56.000 What are they saying?

01:31:57.000 Well, they say, like, they make...

01:31:58.000 A lot of it's insinuations, because a lot of it isn't even things that I feel or believe.

01:32:01.000 So an example would be, you know...

01:32:04.000 I see a lot of people say all the time, like, Colin doesn't believe in welfare.

01:32:07.000 Or Colin doesn't believe in social security.

01:32:09.000 And I'm like, I never said that, actually.

01:32:11.000 I just, I believe that these things should be reformed and maybe taken back a step.

01:32:15.000 But they even look at that as a push too far on the system.

01:32:19.000 I guess what I'm trying to say to you, and I'm sorry I'm not being more lucid with you, I'm trying my hardest, is that they, you have to agree with them lockstep. 0.88

01:32:27.000 If they see you in one way that is injurious to their cause or that is conflicting or contrary to what they believe, they do not give a fuck about anything else you believe.

01:32:38.000 And that's the thing that always frustrated me and what so surprised me when people really were running me out on a rail out of the gaming industry with a completely innocuous joke, which I think tells you everything you need to know about the intent, that they don't want allies in different ways, allies in different clothes, allies in different...

01:32:56.000 You know, it's very Orwellian.

01:32:58.000 They just want you to be completely like them, and if you're not like them, they don't want anything to do with you.

01:33:02.000 And it's not even like I was advocating for anything crazy.

01:33:04.000 I don't advocate for anything crazy, I don't think.

01:33:07.000 That doesn't sound crazy at all.

01:33:08.000 But what's interesting is we've kind of turned a corner where, in many ways, the right is more tolerant than the left to variations in their ideology.

01:33:18.000 Whereas the right is much more tolerant to people that support gay marriage.

01:33:22.000 The right is much more tolerant to people that...

01:33:25.000 I mean, you could fill in the blanks.

01:33:27.000 There's a bunch of different rights that the right would sort of accept from someone who also voted Republican.

01:33:34.000 But the left isn't.

01:33:36.000 Like, if you got to the point where, like, I got in a heated argument with someone once about abortion, which I'm pro-choice.

01:33:43.000 But I was saying, well, essentially, it was a criticism of Richard Dawkins' quote, where he's comparing a human embryo to a pig fetus, or a pig embryo. 0.91

01:33:53.000 I forget the terms you used, but I'm like, well, that's ridiculous. 0.56

01:33:56.000 Because one of them is going to become a person if you don't take it out of your body.

01:34:00.000 And that was the idea behind it.

01:34:01.000 Like, you can't use that sort of an analogy because it's not true.

01:34:06.000 I mean, it's just one has the potential for being a person.

01:34:09.000 And I was being accused by this guy of being right-wing because of it.

01:34:12.000 And I was like, well, I'm not right-wing.

01:34:14.000 I'm just talking about the potential for life.

01:34:16.000 Like, a pig embryo is never going to be my neighbor Mike.

01:34:20.000 You know, it's just not.

01:34:21.000 You know what I mean?

01:34:22.000 But that baby, I'm not saying you should be forced to make that baby a person and keep it in your body when it's a few cells and then two weeks old.

01:34:31.000 I'm not saying that you can't choose when to terminate your pregnancy.

01:34:36.000 What I'm saying is you're terminating a pregnancy.

01:34:38.000 We both know what you're doing.

01:34:40.000 I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to do it, but to pretend that it's not messy.

01:34:43.000 And nobody wants it to be messy.

01:34:45.000 Nobody wants it to be a complicated issue.

01:34:46.000 They want it to be cut and dry, if you're on the left in particular.

01:34:49.000 It's pro-choice.

01:34:50.000 A woman's reproductive choice, the freedom of your body to do what you want. 1.00

01:34:55.000 I get all that.

01:34:56.000 I'm 100% with you.

01:34:57.000 But let's not lie about what it is, because as soon as we distort the reality of what the thing is, Then we put up these ideological boundaries and blinders, and we make communication very difficult, and we make these rigid ideologies almost like a religion.

01:35:14.000 They're almost like dogma.

01:35:16.000 That's a great way to put it.

01:35:17.000 I mean, when you do that, you have real problems because people can't communicate.

01:35:21.000 So if someone does bring that up and say, well, you know, what is abortion?

01:35:25.000 And then silence across the dinner table.

01:35:28.000 You hear people dropping their forks and like, what is abortion?

01:35:31.000 What are you doing?

01:35:31.000 At what age is it okay?

01:35:34.000 To have an abortion, what age is it not okay? 0.79

01:35:36.000 Is it okay to abort a baby a day before it's born?

01:35:39.000 No.

01:35:40.000 No, of course not.

01:35:40.000 How about a month before?

01:35:42.000 No?

01:35:42.000 How about two months before?

01:35:43.000 No?

01:35:44.000 How about three?

01:35:44.000 How about four?

01:35:45.000 How about five?

01:35:46.000 How about six?

01:35:46.000 How about seven?

01:35:47.000 Where do we get to the point where it's not a baby?

01:35:51.000 And I think that's a viable conversation.

01:35:54.000 And it's a very uncomfortable discussion.

01:35:57.000 Like me saying it right now, there's people listening to this right now that are in their car.

01:36:01.000 Maybe there's a woman listening to this that's had an abortion. 1.00

01:36:04.000 She's like, I don't want to hear this.

01:36:05.000 And she wants to shut it off.

01:36:06.000 Maybe there's a guy who's trying to pressure his wife or girlfriend into having an abortion, and he doesn't want to hear it.

01:36:12.000 But what is it?

01:36:13.000 What is abortion? 1.00

01:36:14.000 What is it?

01:36:15.000 Right, and this is what I always call, this issue to me particularly, Joe, is a 60-40 issue.

01:36:20.000 What I always say is, like, I am pro-choice, but I respect the pro-life argument, and I don't think you should just have unfettered access to abortions forever.

01:36:27.000 You know, like, yeah, two months?

01:36:30.000 You know, something like that.

01:36:31.000 14 weeks?

01:36:31.000 I don't know.

01:36:32.000 I don't know what the number is.

01:36:33.000 I don't know what the number is.

01:36:33.000 But to me, I'm like, yeah, you make a great point.

01:36:38.000 Because it is this dogmatic sense of saying, like, here's the way it is.

01:36:44.000 That's it.

01:36:44.000 It goes back to, you know, I heard you talking about it.

01:36:46.000 I was so glad to hear you say it.

01:36:47.000 Because it goes back to, like, the war on women.

01:36:51.000 Right?

01:36:51.000 Like, there's just a whole group of people, apparently, in the country.

01:36:54.000 150 million of them that hate women. 1.00

01:36:55.000 That because they're pro-life, for instance, which is a stance I don't share, but I respect.

01:37:01.000 Why does that mean that they hate women? 0.99

01:37:02.000 Why does it mean that like why does it always go from zero to ten you know for like immediately it's like and then and then there's all these lies mixed in like the The the pay gap which is a fucking lie. 0.99

01:37:13.000 It's not just a lie. 0.96

01:37:14.000 It's a lie that's perpetrated by Obama on TV talking about it I mean It's such a confusing lie.

01:37:21.000 It's just bizarre.

01:37:22.000 It is demonstrably false.

01:37:24.000 And it is a lie.

01:37:25.000 So why does everyone want to be so divisive?

01:37:28.000 Why do you want to add more fuel to the fire when you can be like, hey, maybe we have problem X, Y, and Z, but this isn't a problem, actually.

01:37:34.000 I saw it again recently.

01:37:36.000 It was recently in the news, somebody brought it up, and they're unchecked and unchallenged.

01:37:40.000 Just explain to people if they were, because I've done it too many times.

01:37:42.000 Explain to people what the real pay gap is and what the issue is and why it's used incorrectly.

01:37:48.000 So the pay gap claimed by studies, I guess the Department of Labor or something, is 21 cents or something like that.

01:37:53.000 So saying, I think, something like every dollar a woman makes 79 cents. 1.00

01:37:58.000 That's true only if you take every man... 0.98

01:38:01.000 Every woman take all the money they make and divide it by the amount of men and the amount of women. 1.00

01:38:05.000 Doesn't take into account careers.

01:38:07.000 Doesn't take into account personal choices.

01:38:09.000 Women, for instance, leave the workforce to have families. 0.94

01:38:11.000 Sometimes men are gravitating towards engineering or physics or things that pay them a lot of money, while women tend maybe towards psychology or something like that.

01:38:21.000 I think the argument is something like nine out of the ten top grossing career choices are men-dominated.

01:38:26.000 And nine out of the ten lowest money-making career choices are actually dominated by women. 0.99

01:38:30.000 I think the only exception there is clergy, which is dominated by men.

01:38:34.000 But it doesn't adjust for any of these things.

01:38:36.000 So when you actually adjust for choices, when you adjust for careers and longevity and hours and all of these things that are relevant, the pay gap closes to something like less than five cents.

01:38:45.000 And then there's even arguments saying that those could probably be explained away completely as well.

01:38:49.000 I know Christina Summers and some of these people that know way more about this than I do have videos about.

01:38:54.000 If you actually dive in, you probably can get rid of the entire number completely.

01:38:57.000 But it's preposterous to say that the woman makes $0.79 for every dollar. 1.00

01:39:03.000 And it's just repeated ad nauseum.

01:39:04.000 The real issue is it's implying that two people working alongside each other at the Apple store, the man is making $5 an hour, the woman is making $0.79 an hour less.

01:39:17.000 Or 79 cents per dollar less.

01:39:19.000 Right, a significant amount.

01:39:21.000 And I like the argument because it's true, you know, if that was true, why wouldn't a corporation just hire women? 0.98

01:39:27.000 79 cents.

01:39:27.000 I should say it right.

01:39:28.000 79 cents to every dollar the man makes.

01:39:30.000 Right.

01:39:31.000 It's just, yeah, corporations would hire women if they were just as competent and just as skilled. 1.00

01:39:36.000 And it's not that.

01:39:37.000 It's also men are more likely to die on the job.

01:39:40.000 Men are more likely to pick way more dangerous careers like forest fighting, forest firefighting, whether it's coal mining.

01:39:48.000 All those things are dominated by men and a lot of people die on them.

01:39:50.000 Law enforcement, of course.

01:39:52.000 There's a bunch of issues with it.

01:39:54.000 But the problem is it's...

01:39:56.000 Spewed out as an indication that we are an inherently sexist society.

01:40:01.000 And whether or not you can find sexism in our society, I'm sure you can.

01:40:04.000 It absolutely exists, just as racism exists.

01:40:07.000 I don't think it is nearly as much of a problem as they're trying to pin it out to be.

01:40:12.000 And I think there's a lot of other factors involved in why men make more money, and one of them may be the demand for a higher salary when they're being hired, better skills at negotiation, or more confidence in those sort of confrontations with employers.

01:40:27.000 I mean, there's a lot of factors, but it doesn't do anybody any good to repeat a false statistic when it's provably false, and then when people find out that it's false, then they lose confidence in the information they're being given.

01:40:40.000 I think that's one half of it.

01:40:41.000 The other half of it is, what does it say about a person that just continues to say it anyway?

01:40:45.000 At some point, truth doesn't matter anymore.

01:40:47.000 I want to have factual debates.

01:40:51.000 I want to have, this is the starting point.

01:40:53.000 These are objective truths, and then let's debate about those things.

01:40:56.000 But if that's your starting point, if that's a third of the entire reason why you're angry and in the streets in Washington, D.C., well, then I don't even know what you're angry about anymore, to be honest.

01:41:04.000 It goes back to Occupy Wall Street or all these things where I'm like, I don't know exactly what you're angry about.

01:41:09.000 And this is why this protest isn't working and isn't resonating with people.

01:41:12.000 I saw people in the March for Women, the Women's March thing, with signs talking about the gender pay gap.

01:41:19.000 And so they had the time to make a sign.

01:41:22.000 They had the time to take that sign and nail it to some boards and carry it around.

01:41:28.000 But they didn't have time to Google whether or not that was true.

01:41:32.000 Exactly.

01:41:33.000 That's fascinating.

01:41:33.000 It's also, and I feel like some of them have to know, right?

01:41:37.000 Some of them have to know.

01:41:37.000 They don't want to know, man.

01:41:39.000 It's like, I've read this thing once that said that sperm cures depression in women, and I didn't even look any further.

01:41:47.000 I'm like, I got all the information I need out of this.

01:41:49.000 I don't want it just debunked.

01:41:52.000 I want to be rock solid in my approach.

01:41:55.000 Shut the laptop and walked out of the room.

01:41:57.000 I mean, that's really what's going on.

01:41:58.000 It's like, that sounds great.

01:41:59.000 If women make 79 cents to every dollar a man makes, it sounds awesome. 1.00

01:42:02.000 This is a bullshit society. 1.00

01:42:04.000 This is the patriarchy. 1.00

01:42:06.000 The patriarchy.

01:42:07.000 The patriarchy. 0.98

01:42:07.000 The evil patriarchy. 0.98

01:42:08.000 Meanwhile, you ask them, you know, you ask one of these feminists, there's no reason with feminism if the goal is for total equality, but we all know that that's not really what feminism means today, that, you know, if you sit there and be like, can you name just one thing that I can do that you can't?

01:42:23.000 Just one.

01:42:24.000 And I'm not saying, like, you give birth, I can't, or something biological.

01:42:27.000 I'm saying, like, what can't you do?

01:42:29.000 Like, if you really wanted to.

01:42:31.000 I'm not saying that, you know...

01:42:33.000 I know, for instance, that, you know, the examples that people give, and I haven't seen the statistics, but I've heard it circulated, that even that, you know, companies are so desperate now to hire women because of this situation, this optical situation that they're in, where it seems like women are being pushed down,

01:42:50.000 that women in their 20s and 30s are actually making more now.

01:42:52.000 You know, and certainly they're more likely to get a higher education, certainly they're more likely to even graduate high school.

01:42:59.000 So there are actually systemic benefits to being a woman, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that either.

01:43:03.000 But I just feel like it goes back to that thing of, like, why are we fighting?

01:43:07.000 Like, what is the divisive nature?

01:43:08.000 Can't we...

01:43:09.000 And this goes back to your question about the video game industry.

01:43:10.000 I'm like, hey, instead of yelling at me about this, we won't agree about these situations over here, but can't we advocate for these together?

01:43:17.000 Or do you not want my advocacy for gay marriage because...

01:43:22.000 I believe in small government.

01:43:23.000 You don't want my advocacy for, you know, transgender rights because I'm for low taxes. 1.00

01:43:29.000 I'm like, okay, that's weird because we can totally be friends here.

01:43:31.000 With the Women's March, I know that there were problems with pro-life organizations getting involved at a sponsorship level even.

01:43:37.000 Oh, wow.

01:43:38.000 That's interesting.

01:43:38.000 And it's like, they're not women.

01:43:42.000 Right. 0.96

01:43:43.000 They're lesser than you.

01:43:44.000 Because there's a debate about that one issue.

01:43:46.000 Yeah.

01:43:46.000 It's strange.

01:43:47.000 You said something that I want to go back to.

01:43:49.000 Sure.

01:43:49.000 What do you think feminism is about?

01:43:52.000 Well, it's this argument about equality.

01:43:53.000 I mean, to me, feminism was about equality. 1.00

01:43:57.000 And I think that this, you know, I'm reading more about it and learning more about it, so I'm still very ignorant about it, but this more third wave, what they call third wave feminism, which I'm sure is a term you've heard, that seems to be more about a combative nature to actually... 0.95

01:44:11.000 Instead of saying men and women are equal, men and women should deserve the same rights and the same treatment and all those kinds of things, it actually seems to be very anti-man in a way.

01:44:19.000 It seems to be almost like the tables have turned.

01:44:22.000 And I'm like, but why are you turning the tables?

01:44:23.000 Didn't you achieve what you wanted in the first place, which was just that we were going to be here together at the nexus of everything as two genders?

01:44:33.000 Part of the problem is that reinforcing that fake statistic The gender pay gap, that so many people have heard that.

01:44:41.000 Sarah Silverman was just talking about it recently, and some big thing that she did.

01:44:45.000 I'm like, that's not true, but yet people just say it.

01:44:48.000 And no one stops them from saying it.

01:44:49.000 A friend of mine that was a very educated guy said it.

01:44:51.000 We were having a debate about divorce, and he brought it up.

01:44:56.000 And I was like, that's not even true.

01:44:58.000 And unfortunately, we're in a place with no cell phone reception, so I had to wait until we got back to send it to him.

01:45:03.000 Like, this is not true.

01:45:04.000 Like, what you're saying is not true.

01:45:05.000 Like, you're repeating it as if you know, but meanwhile, you've done zero research on it.

01:45:09.000 It's a talking point that just gets reiterated over and over again without any research.

01:45:13.000 And it's convenient.

01:45:14.000 It's convenient to reinforce your argument.

01:45:16.000 It's a number.

01:45:17.000 It's a number that deals with a very complex and nuanced debate.

01:45:22.000 And I think that the idea of feminism Is, to me, in a lot of ways, very similar to the idea of the men's rights movement.

01:45:30.000 I'm not opposed to rights for anybody.

01:45:32.000 I'm not opposed to anyone. 0.90

01:45:33.000 I'm very egalitarian in my ideas about the world, but I am opposed to anybody that likes one gender over the other, because I think that's foolish. 1.00

01:45:43.000 Just like I'm opposed to people that only like white people. 0.95

01:45:45.000 I'm opposed to people that only like black people.

01:45:47.000 I'm opposed to people that generalize based on an enormous mass of human beings. 1.00

01:45:53.000 Like, men are shit, women rule. 1.00

01:45:56.000 Girls rule, boys drool. 1.00

01:45:57.000 You know, I don't like it the other way either.

01:46:00.000 I don't like the He-Man Women Haters Club. 0.98

01:46:02.000 I don't like any ideologies that lump people into these huge groups, because I think it's moron think. 1.00

01:46:08.000 I think it's this stupid way of looking at the world. 1.00

01:46:11.000 Yeah, I agree. 1.00

01:46:11.000 And I'm the same way. 1.00

01:46:12.000 The egalitarian nature is the best.

01:46:14.000 The live and let live nature to judge people based on their character and the quality of their intelligence or whatever it is you're looking for in them shouldn't be categorized in these specific ways by sex or gender, by race or religion, by any of those kinds of things.

01:46:28.000 I'm totally with you there.

01:46:29.000 I think we both agree that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, right? 1.00

01:46:31.000 Yeah.

01:46:32.000 Women have suffered long enough. 1.00

01:46:34.000 Enough already, girls. 1.00

01:46:35.000 I used to think that joke was so funny.

01:46:37.000 I mean, you get murdered for that joke today, but suffragettes, women have suffraged long enough instead of suffering or whatever. 1.00

01:46:43.000 I was like, it's a funny joke.

01:46:45.000 That would have ruined my career, too, on Twitter.

01:46:47.000 It didn't ruin your career.

01:46:49.000 It gave you a platform, honestly.

01:46:52.000 It all balances out.

01:46:53.000 As long as you're being attacked for something that's not valid, it all balances out.

01:46:57.000 You take a little heat, and then you realize, okay, I'm through that.

01:47:01.000 Yeah, it was scary for a little while.

01:47:02.000 Was it scary?

01:47:03.000 I don't know if scary is the right word.

01:47:05.000 It was uncomfortable and unsettling, and you really saw where everyone stood.

01:47:09.000 So one of the things I was talking with people about was how sad it was for me that very few people that I knew came to my defense.

01:47:17.000 And I wasn't saying they had to come to my defense and be like, Colin, that joke was fine.

01:47:22.000 If you didn't like the joke, I don't care.

01:47:24.000 It's fine.

01:47:25.000 It's a joke.

01:47:25.000 Jokes fall flat all the time.

01:47:26.000 You know that.

01:47:26.000 You're a comedian.

01:47:27.000 It's hard.

01:47:27.000 I don't do it professionally.

01:47:29.000 It's impossibly hard to get on a stage and do that kind of stuff.

01:47:31.000 But to me, I was like, hey, is anyone going to say that I'm not a sexist?

01:47:35.000 Is anyone going to stand up that's known me for 10 years and say, hey, we don't agree with the joke, but the way you're categorizing this guy, who I know, is not accurate.

01:47:44.000 And I heard that there were some fights behind the scenes with people, and I got a lot of DMs and messages, but very little in terms of public support.

01:47:50.000 That really hurt me.

01:47:51.000 That really, really hurt me and wounded me in a deep way and ruined friendships that I had for years.

01:47:58.000 Well, they're probably fake friendships, man.

01:47:59.000 And people probably felt the need to toe the line, toe this, I don't want to say party line, but the ideological line.

01:48:08.000 I mean, the dogmatic line.

01:48:11.000 If you run into someone who Is in any way involved in any sort of a dispute that makes that person appear to be a sexist.

01:48:20.000 You're supposed to pile on.

01:48:21.000 Yeah, and that's exactly what they did.

01:48:24.000 And the thing that hurt me the most is that I'm not close with a lot of these people, but people that know me, there are people in this industry that are writing, that were piling on me, or remaining silent, that got freelance work because of me, that maybe even got hired because I was on a hiring committee, that pushed for them.

01:48:40.000 All these kinds of things.

01:48:41.000 And people I used to take out to lunch when I was senior editor to see how they were doing, if there was anything I could do for them, stuff like that.

01:48:46.000 And everyone's just like...

01:48:47.000 No, I'm not going to come back and help him out now.

01:48:50.000 And I try to put that good energy out there.

01:48:52.000 I'm not always full of good energy.

01:48:53.000 Sometimes I say negative things or bad things.

01:48:54.000 Sometimes I make mistakes.

01:48:55.000 But when a person comes after your character, and you damn well know that there are a bunch of people around you that know who you are, whether or not they agree with what you said or agree with what you do, but they know who you are, and they know the severity of what people are saying, and they don't say anything... 0.66

01:49:10.000 That really wounds a person and that really fucking hurt.

01:49:14.000 Do you think that what's going on in a lot of ways when people did not come to your defense is that what you're doing in many ways is making a very complicated and nuanced perspective from a person in your in your stance you're kind of You're taking this path outside of the ideology. 0.76

01:49:40.000 And by doing so, you sort of challenge a lot of the ways these people have been behaving for a long time.

01:49:46.000 And as soon as you do that, they have to kind of reconsider these ideological boundaries they've set up in their own behavior and thinking and communication.

01:49:54.000 And they don't want to do that.

01:49:56.000 They don't want to do that.

01:49:57.000 They like to keep things rigid and simple.

01:49:58.000 And they also want to continue to progress in their career.

01:50:02.000 And in order to do that, you have to kind of have this predetermined pattern that you follow.

01:50:08.000 I think simple is the key word that you used.

01:50:11.000 Because, yes, there are people out there that cannot comprehend how a person who believes in small government, for instance, will use the same argument that says, the government can't touch my guns.

01:50:22.000 That's consistent with saying the government can't tell a woman what to do with her body. 1.00

01:50:26.000 That's consistent with the principle that says a government shouldn't even be involved in telling you who you can marry, and a man should be able to marry a man, and a woman should be able to marry a woman.

01:50:32.000 And I would go as far as to say that even a polygamist totally on the up-and-up, everyone's in on a relationship should not be the government's problem. 0.83

01:50:40.000 They cannot acknowledge that it's the lack of governmental power that gives you that right in my perspective.

01:50:46.000 When they feel like it's the wielding of government power that ensures those rights.

01:50:50.000 That's not congruent with them.

01:50:51.000 They don't understand how we came to the same exact conclusion by going just totally two different directions.

01:50:57.000 And that challenges them, and they don't have the philosophical bounding to figure out how that might be.

01:51:03.000 Well, that's the argument that the philosophy has to be bound in writing.

01:51:06.000 It has to be bound in some sort of a doctrine.

01:51:09.000 It has to be written down on paper and established and enforced by a government.

01:51:13.000 That's like a big daddy thing.

01:51:16.000 Instead of saying, give the power to the people, let people do whatever they would like to do as long as they're not infringing upon the rights of others, and let's have less and less people dictating what people get to do.

01:51:27.000 Right, and that to me is liberty, right?

01:51:29.000 And they look at it, I don't want to say they, but a lot of people, a lot of progressives or regressives, depending on you want to look at them, will look at it and be like, well, the government has to insure these things because these are not natural.

01:51:38.000 These are not natural rights or these are not things that can be insured.

01:51:40.000 And I'm like, but In the natural society, in the natural sense, we have to have consistent rights.

01:51:46.000 I can't in good faith say, like, I have the right to wield a gun because the government can't tell me that, even though it's enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but then say, like, oh, the government can get involved in your bedroom, though.

01:51:55.000 Oh, the government can tap your phones.

01:51:57.000 Oh, the government...

01:51:58.000 I'm like, no, it's either all or nothing.

01:51:59.000 And if that's a philosophy that's too hard for people to wrap their minds around, then...

01:52:04.000 I don't know what to say about that, but to me, it's pretty clear and pretty lucid, the way I feel my principles are rooted in that philosophy.

01:52:10.000 Also, I think when people, they're seeking this sort of comfort level in life and in their positions, and I don't necessarily think people understand that as soon as you allow the government too much power, you will never get that back.

01:52:26.000 As soon as they have power, as soon as they can take away some of your liberties, those will never get returned.

01:52:32.000 One of the rare ones is marijuana.

01:52:35.000 I was trying to explain to someone the other day about this.

01:52:37.000 It's incredibly rare that something becomes legal that was illegal as long as marijuana.

01:52:43.000 It's very rare.

01:52:44.000 Something has to be just completely undeniably good.

01:52:48.000 For it to have gone through all the propaganda, all the bullshit, all the lies, all the governmental regulations, all the people being locked up in jail for life for, and then still come out on the other side on 2017 and be legal in a bunch of states, recreationally,

01:53:04.000 not even just medically. 0.83

01:53:05.000 It's great to see.

01:53:06.000 But it's fascinating, because it's one of the rare instances where liberty lost is regained, and most of the time it's not.

01:53:13.000 It's just not.

01:53:14.000 It's an aberration.

01:53:15.000 And that's what people have to be really scared of.

01:53:16.000 And that goes to the point, it's like, I don't want to give anything an inch because I am afraid of the consequences of giving anyone an inch.

01:53:22.000 That's why I wouldn't apologize for the joke.

01:53:24.000 That's why I resigned from my company instead of apologizing for the joke.

01:53:27.000 How could you apologize for that?

01:53:28.000 That's so crazy. 1.00

01:53:29.000 Because it's so stupid. 1.00

01:53:29.000 First of all, it's a honeymooners, married with children, all in the family level joke. 1.00

01:53:33.000 Something you'd see on the floor of a CBS writer's room.

01:53:36.000 Yeah.

01:53:37.000 But the point is that I could have probably apologized and groveled, but I'm like, no, because A, I'm not sorry, so that would be a huge lie.

01:53:45.000 B, I have to now really recalibrate the way I go about my business with my partners and with the audience, because...

01:53:52.000 You know, I didn't have the protections that I thought I would have when the mistake was made.

01:53:57.000 You know what I mean?

01:53:57.000 And that was what hurt me.

01:53:59.000 So I tried to do what I thought was the most principled and character-driven choice, which is be like, this is best for my partners, who don't agree with me.

01:54:06.000 This is best for the audience, who might not agree with me.

01:54:08.000 It seems like a lot of them do.

01:54:09.000 And this is the best for just everyone moving forward.

01:54:12.000 I'll have other opportunities and other things that I can do.

01:54:14.000 Has there been any blowback targeted towards the people that were upset at you?

01:54:19.000 Yes.

01:54:21.000 And the thing that, you know, it's sad to see because it's not my, I feel like I'm a pretty good natured person and I don't like seeing the rubber band effect going on where people now are suffering because they stood up and stood out or whatever.

01:54:32.000 It's just that, and I don't care about the people that were out to character assassinate me.

01:54:35.000 I'm talking about like, you know, my ex business partners and stuff.

01:54:37.000 It's just that, like, no matter what I say, it'll be twisted.

01:54:40.000 I tried to be very magnanimous and, like, very kind about it when I was on Reuben the second time, and people twisted everything to just be a problem anyway.

01:54:47.000 So I'm like, I'll just remain silent because I'd rather them misconstrue the silence than misconstrue the words, you know?

01:54:52.000 Isn't that a problem, though?

01:54:54.000 If you're not communicating freely because you're worried about the repercussions?

01:54:58.000 I'm not worried about the repercussions for me.

01:55:00.000 I'm worried about foisting repercussions on other people that have no control over what I'm saying anyway.

01:55:03.000 Yeah, but even that, it's not your responsibility as long as you're communicating in an honest way.

01:55:10.000 Sure.

01:55:10.000 I mean, you're thinking that's sort of the same reason why people didn't come to your support in the first place.

01:55:16.000 Because they were worried that if they spoke their mind, they would be targeted.

01:55:19.000 If they said, hey, I know that this is going on.

01:55:22.000 I think Colin's a great guy.

01:55:23.000 I don't think he's sexist.

01:55:25.000 And my feeling on him is that it was just a joke.

01:55:27.000 And then they could get targeted, and they chose not to.

01:55:30.000 They chose not to step up.

01:55:31.000 In a lot of ways, you not speaking your mind in a clear way sort of sets that same sort of tone.

01:55:37.000 I think you should be able to speak freely.

01:55:39.000 And I think you should be held responsible for when you say something and it's irresponsible.

01:55:44.000 Sure.

01:55:44.000 Or it's wrong, or it's hurtful in some ways.

01:55:46.000 And people make mistakes like that all the time.

01:55:48.000 And there's also, we have to take into account that a lot of times people don't realize the consequences of their words, or they say things in a flippant manner, or they're tired, or they're stressed, or things come out that they don't necessarily believe in that way, but especially when it comes to something like Twitter or some short form,

01:56:04.000 short paragraph sort of a thing.

01:56:05.000 I think it's really important that we be given the opportunity to express ourselves fully and then The disagreements with that be categorized in an honest way. 0.71

01:56:16.000 And what I had the most problem with was not just someone calling you racist, but that everyone was making it out to be this horrible The sexist evil thing when it's clearly something said in jest and as soon as you can and that's my wheelhouse as soon as you start taking humor and something that people say that's absolutely Meant to be just funny and make it as like oh this guy just signed an affidavit that women should shut the fuck up because it's better I mean that's really the the

01:56:46.000 worst case scenario interpretation of what you said yeah, and and yeah, I think that That was the disappointing part of it was, again, it goes back to this point of like, it ignored everything, like my body of work.

01:56:58.000 I actually stood up very loudly for political and social causes many times.

01:57:02.000 There are huge videos I have of my feelings on the Confederate flag or like how I feel like- What do you think about the Confederate flag?

01:57:09.000 I think that you have the right to fly, I just think it's in terrible taste, and I understand why people are upset about it, and I don't think the flag of a traitorous country should be instituted in state flags in the United States.

01:57:20.000 That, I think, is absolutely valid.

01:57:22.000 Do you think that it's legal?

01:57:23.000 Is it legal to have a Nazi flag?

01:57:25.000 Is it legal to have a swastika?

01:57:27.000 Yeah, I wouldn't see why it wouldn't be.

01:57:29.000 I mean, it's legal to have the Confederate flag, but you just can't have it on the Dukes of Hazzard.

01:57:34.000 Well, to me, I'm not talking about the legality of it, because if you want to fly a swastika out at your house, I think you should probably be allowed to do that. 1.00

01:57:40.000 I don't think you're an absolute idiot for doing that, but that's your right to be an idiot. 1.00

01:57:44.000 The Confederate flag thing was just a sign for me because it was this juxtaposition of saying, well... 1.00

01:57:51.000 We're talking about the legal rights, but actually I'm talking about the taste.

01:57:54.000 People don't remember what the CSA was.

01:57:57.000 I don't think a lot of people that even fly that flag know what the hell they're flying.

01:58:00.000 This country seceded from the United States. 0.97

01:58:03.000 They were traitors.

01:58:06.000 Or they're Leonard Skinner fans.

01:58:08.000 Or they're huge Leonard Skinner fans.

01:58:09.000 They're big in Mississippi.

01:58:11.000 But to me, I'm like, let's put this in historicity.

01:58:14.000 Let's think about what we're doing here.

01:58:16.000 This country left.

01:58:18.000 To protect its slaves, its right to own slaves.

01:58:21.000 Any other interpretation of it is wrong based on what was going on in the 1850s and leading up to 1860. These states' rights advocates and all that.

01:58:28.000 That's not what it was about.

01:58:29.000 It's about economics.

01:58:30.000 Yeah, it's not what it was about.

01:58:31.000 It wasn't about states' rights.

01:58:32.000 It wasn't about any of those things.

01:58:33.000 It was about your economy would have fallen apart without free labor.

01:58:36.000 And these people left.

01:58:38.000 They caused a gratuitously bloody war.

01:58:41.000 And then they were let, you know, both Abraham Lincoln and then Andrew Johnson just let them back in.

01:58:46.000 You know, Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the Confederacy, wasn't murdered.

01:58:52.000 He wasn't executed.

01:58:53.000 You know, like, they were all let back in.

01:58:57.000 For some reason, because Reconstruction went the way it did, into the Ulysses S. Grant kind of era of presidency, people look at it and be like, well, things kind of ended good, and they're kind of like brothers again.

01:59:07.000 And I'm like, that's not really the way it was when Jim Crow came up and stuff like that. 0.99

01:59:09.000 This fucking flag means something nefarious. 0.99

01:59:12.000 And you can't... 1.00

01:59:13.000 So it's your right to fly it, and if you feel like that's a Southern pride thing, more power to you.

01:59:17.000 I love the South.

01:59:17.000 I think the South's awesome.

01:59:18.000 I think the South needs another flag.

01:59:20.000 But yeah, you need to know what this flag means to people.

01:59:23.000 You guys left.

01:59:25.000 You guys killed hundreds of thousands of people doing it, and you just fly this flag as like the South will rise again.

01:59:33.000 No, it won't.

01:59:34.000 Don't you think that's a bad expression?

01:59:36.000 The South will rise again is a terrible expression.

01:59:38.000 But I think that a lot of people look at that flag and it represents what we're calling Southern Pride.

01:59:44.000 Which is nothing wrong. 0.99

01:59:45.000 Nothing wrong with being proud of being from Georgia or wherever the fuck you're from. 0.99

01:59:48.000 Of course. 0.99

01:59:48.000 Great states down there. 0.99

01:59:49.000 Yeah, but I think the issue is what it means to other people, you know, and whether or not that's valid.

01:59:55.000 I mean, you're not talking about, like, touchy-feely, like, people being oversensitive.

01:59:58.000 No, you're talking about a horrible war about slavery.

02:00:02.000 It's, like, probably one of the worst kinds of wars.

02:00:05.000 Like, a war, because we would like to keep people imprisoned and working for free, so we're willing to kill other people over it to fight for that right.

02:00:12.000 This is essentially what it was.

02:00:13.000 Right.

02:00:14.000 To the people of today, it doesn't seem like that because they're not living in 1850. They're not in the days when, you know, they would have these massive, like, Gettysburg.

02:00:26.000 They'd have these massive areas where people would be slaughtered.

02:00:29.000 I mean, there's people to this day that still find, like, Civil War shit where they have these massive battles and they can dig through the ground with metal detectors and they find... 0.97

02:00:38.000 Bullets and guns and badges. 0.96

02:00:40.000 It's awesome.

02:00:41.000 It's crazy.

02:00:41.000 It's great.

02:00:42.000 I mean, I took the idea from Saving Private Ryan, the guy that would take dirt from all the battlefields that they'd go to and put it in jars.

02:00:49.000 They only showed it once in the movie, but I used to go to all these battlefields when I was a kid because I was fascinated by it.

02:00:53.000 My parents would bring me, and I would go buy baby food and dump them out and then go to all the battlefields and put dirt in each of them and put them on.

02:01:00.000 Dude, that's heavy.

02:01:02.000 You did this when you were a kid?

02:01:04.000 Yeah, in my teens and early 20s, yeah.

02:01:05.000 So you've always been into this?

02:01:07.000 Yeah, since I was, you know, my earliest memory is of being into politics and history was the Gulf War, which was, you know, in the lead up to it with Kuwait and stuff in 1991. So I was like six or seven.

02:01:17.000 I remember, you know, Newsday is Long Island's newspaper.

02:01:19.000 I remember just seeing images and kind of maps.

02:01:23.000 And I didn't really understand what was going on.

02:01:25.000 I couldn't even read most of the words.

02:01:26.000 I mean, it's complicated geopolitical stuff they're talking about.

02:01:28.000 But ever since that point, I was very politically focused.

02:01:31.000 And my dad is a staunch, like Rockefeller Republican, like a paleocon, like a moderate Republican. 0.72

02:01:37.000 In the old north, you know people out there might know but like Republicans are pretty disparate group like Republicans in New England or Republicans in New York are very different than Republicans in Texas, but they're both Republicans and my dad grew up just in You know giving me things to read and feeding that fire and buy me maps and buy me books and we would listen to talk radio and we would Debate things and we would kind of come to these conclusions of different things and we disagree about a lot of things still to this day,

02:02:03.000 but he's a great man and Ever since then, I was really, really interested.

02:02:07.000 And I knew when I was fourth or fifth grade that I would study history.

02:02:09.000 And I remember in New York, we have this thing called the Regents in high school, which are like these tests, these state-run tests that you have to pass to graduate.

02:02:16.000 So, like, you take your class, but then you have to take your final, but then you have to take a Regents exam, which is the state-run thing.

02:02:21.000 Say, like, you know math, you know whatever.

02:02:23.000 And I remember when I was in sixth grade, my sister, Allie, who's six years older than me, was taking the U.S. history Regents, like, the next, or a few days from then.

02:02:31.000 And I helped her study.

02:02:33.000 I remember she didn't know anything she needed to know.

02:02:36.000 I taught her what she needed to know just for this very rudimentary test.

02:02:41.000 That stuck in my mind because I have a real passion for this.

02:02:44.000 I really like it.

02:02:44.000 I enjoy it.

02:02:45.000 I don't know everything.

02:02:45.000 I make mistakes sometimes and I change the way I feel sometimes.

02:02:49.000 It's always been a real fascinating part.

02:02:51.000 So now that you've left your company, which was...

02:02:54.000 What was it called?

02:02:57.000 Kinda Funny?

02:02:57.000 Kinda Funny, yeah.

02:02:58.000 And what was Kinda Funny?

02:02:59.000 Kinda Funny was the four of us that founded the company were all at IGN in different respects.

02:03:04.000 And we spun off to just start our own YouTube channel about games and nerd culture and stuff like that.

02:03:08.000 Do podcasts.

02:03:09.000 And we found some good success.

02:03:11.000 Most of it crowdfunded on Patreon.

02:03:13.000 And it was a lot of fun.

02:03:14.000 And I enjoyed it.

02:03:15.000 But I felt like I needed to leave because I felt like that was the best for everybody.

02:03:18.000 Well, once that... 1.00

02:03:20.000 I mean, how could you not if they turned on you over that stupid fucking joke? 1.00

02:03:24.000 Yeah, I mean, it's like... 1.00

02:03:25.000 Not that it's a stupid joke. 1.00

02:03:25.000 It's funny. 1.00

02:03:26.000 It's a bad joke.

02:03:27.000 It's not even that bad.

02:03:28.000 Well, I appreciate that.

02:03:29.000 That means a lot coming from you. 0.99

02:03:30.000 I just thought it's stupid, the reaction to it. 1.00

02:03:32.000 It was so fucking stupid. 1.00

02:03:33.000 It was stupid, and I felt like, you know, I wish that things went differently. 1.00

02:03:36.000 I wish that, you know, we had a lot of fights behind the scenes. 1.00

02:03:39.000 I won't get into all of that.

02:03:40.000 Honestly, I think it's good.

02:03:41.000 I think it's good, too.

02:03:42.000 I felt like I did what was right for them, and I felt like we would have just come to this impasse again.

02:03:48.000 So I was like, let's just pull the bandaid off and get this over with.

02:03:51.000 Are you going to do something that involves politics now?

02:03:54.000 Because clearly you have a deep passion for this.

02:03:56.000 Yeah, I started a new YouTube channel.

02:03:58.000 The first video will go out April 3rd.

02:04:00.000 It's called Colin's Last Stand.

02:04:02.000 Sounds crazy.

02:04:03.000 It's already funded on Patreon.

02:04:05.000 Is this another hill worth dying for?

02:04:08.000 You love that expression.

02:04:10.000 I do, yeah.

02:04:11.000 Because I think it's powerful.

02:04:12.000 There are things worth dying for.

02:04:13.000 There are things worth risking.

02:04:14.000 There it is.

02:04:15.000 So I reach $39,000 a month now. 0.99

02:04:18.000 Damn, son. 0.99

02:04:18.000 And it's going to fall. 0.99

02:04:19.000 $39,000 a month?

02:04:21.000 I'm sure it's going to fall. 0.99

02:04:23.000 Holy shit, dude. 0.99

02:04:24.000 People are talking. 0.99

02:04:26.000 People are responding.

02:04:27.000 Don't try to minimize this. 1.00

02:04:28.000 Holy shit, that's a lot of fucking money. 1.00

02:04:30.000 39 grand a month? 1.00

02:04:31.000 Yeah.

02:04:31.000 You're going to get 39,000 a month and you haven't even started it yet?

02:04:35.000 Yeah, technically.

02:04:36.000 But this is...

02:04:38.000 It's going to fall back down to the teens probably.

02:04:39.000 Relax.

02:04:40.000 Relax with your humility.

02:04:41.000 Take it down.

02:04:42.000 Well, if you scroll here, you'll see on the left side underneath the number, my only stretch goal was to reach $10,000.

02:04:47.000 So my expectations were blown out of the water.

02:04:50.000 And I really...

02:04:51.000 What I read into this show is... 1.00

02:04:54.000 People are just sick of this bullshit. 0.99

02:04:57.000 This is them speaking and being like, we need a conduit that's going to get into the history and get into the philosophy and the politics, but also that will stand up and say, I'm not sorry for a joke. 0.99

02:05:07.000 People have the right to make mistakes.

02:05:08.000 People have the right to express themselves.

02:05:09.000 It goes back to the Confederate flag thing.

02:05:11.000 I might disagree with a person that flies that flag, but I'm not going to go rap-bap-bap on their door and pull it off and call them a racist.

02:05:17.000 I'm just going to shake my head and walk.

02:05:19.000 Because there are other things to worry about.

02:05:21.000 So it's people that want...

02:05:23.000 More liberty-focused, individual-focused kind of things.

02:05:25.000 And that's just people speaking to me.

02:05:29.000 So the number will fall back down after the month, I'm sure, and that's fine.

02:05:32.000 Stop saying that.

02:05:33.000 You're driving me crazy with this fake humility.

02:05:35.000 It's not fake humility.

02:05:37.000 Actually, I remember...

02:05:38.000 But the number's going to fall.

02:05:39.000 People are going to like me less.

02:05:42.000 But my whole thing, it's really not fake humility.

02:05:44.000 It's me saying, like, I hear you, and I'll do my very best to do this.

02:05:47.000 Or the numbers keep going up.

02:05:49.000 The problem is everybody's going to know what the numbers are.

02:05:50.000 And they're going to go, I don't need to give them any money.

02:05:52.000 He's making $39,000 a month.

02:05:54.000 That's fine.

02:05:54.000 That's not fine.

02:05:55.000 You should hide that number.

02:05:56.000 Can you hide it?

02:05:56.000 You can, but I feel like I want to be honest with people.

02:05:59.000 Fuck. 1.00

02:06:00.000 Oh my god, if you were on Patreon, you'd freaking kill. 1.00

02:06:01.000 Gotta get that cash, son. 0.73

02:06:03.000 But yeah, you can hide it, but I want it to be totally transparent.

02:06:05.000 What I keep telling people is as long as we keep a level, a sustainable level of money, which is way less than what I have now, there'll be no baked in ads, no product placements, none of that.

02:06:12.000 And I want people to know.

02:06:13.000 I want people to be involved in it from its...

02:06:16.000 So Colin's last stand is about politics.

02:06:19.000 It's going to be, yeah, so I want to do two videos a week, between 10 and 15 minutes long each that are scripted and written.

02:06:25.000 And I know how to edit, and so I'm not very good at it.

02:06:27.000 The quality of the videos, from an optical perspective, you'll find better quality.

02:06:32.000 But I want the content to be really good.

02:06:34.000 And so I want to just do two videos a week.

02:06:35.000 One probably focused on history, and one probably focused on politics.

02:06:38.000 So one that's more rooted in philosophy that I'll go research and write.

02:06:41.000 I'm already researching and writing the first one.

02:06:42.000 I don't want to ruin it for anyone yet, but...

02:06:44.000 I think it's going to be really fun.

02:06:45.000 And then maybe the second video every week will be something about what's happening in the world.

02:06:49.000 And I'll talk to a camera and just be like, this is the way I feel about this.

02:06:51.000 This is maybe why I feel this way.

02:06:53.000 And just some stuff out there.

02:06:56.000 I want to treat people's time with care.

02:06:57.000 I don't have the brand you have.

02:06:59.000 I don't have people that are religious about listening to everything I do.

02:07:02.000 So I want people to look forward to saying, oh, twice a week, Colin might put up a 10-minute video that I can just, when I'm making dinner, just listen to it in the background and then go about my day and maybe learn something or maybe feel a certain way or maybe I disagree.

02:07:12.000 And then move on and just be a part of people's lives in that way.

02:07:16.000 So clearly you put a lot of thought into this and you've thought this through.

02:07:19.000 This is obviously something you're really planning out well.

02:07:22.000 Yeah, I'm trying.

02:07:24.000 Actually, when the number kept rising, I was horrified at first.

02:07:27.000 What?

02:07:28.000 Because I was like...

02:07:30.000 I hate money.

02:07:30.000 Is that what you were like?

02:07:31.000 I hate money.

02:07:32.000 Of course I love money.

02:07:35.000 It's like the imposter syndrome where you never really know that you're earning it or whatever.

02:07:38.000 And I'm like, I don't want to let anyone down.

02:07:41.000 I only have right now the intro video, which is just me talking to the camera kind of with what my plan is.

02:07:44.000 I'm trying to really keep people engaged and putting update videos on and letting them know where everything is.

02:07:49.000 But yeah, I was horrified because I'm like, you know, I only have the bandwidth to do two videos a week, whether I'm making $15,000 a month or $40,000 a month.

02:07:57.000 And so I put out a video to everyone being like, if this level is sustained or even a level that's in the 20s or 30s, whatever it is, I have to recalibrate what I'm thinking.

02:08:06.000 Maybe I do hire someone to help me shoot.

02:08:08.000 Maybe I do hire a genie.

02:08:09.000 When you say the bandwidth, what do you mean by the bandwidth?

02:08:11.000 Because I don't want it.

02:08:12.000 People are like, oh, can we get a podcast?

02:08:13.000 Can we do more videos a week and stuff?

02:08:15.000 And I'm like, that's not the vision for the product.

02:08:16.000 I only have enough bandwidth in my mind to write.

02:08:19.000 And it doesn't create time and space, right?

02:08:21.000 Okay.

02:08:22.000 The money gives me means in the future to maybe make the product more dynamic or interesting or hire people and do more.

02:08:28.000 But right now, I just want to spend a few months to be like, this is what I'm planning.

02:08:31.000 I want to write these things.

02:08:32.000 I want to put care into them.

02:08:33.000 I want to give you citations.

02:08:35.000 I want to give you further things to read and all those kinds of things.

02:08:38.000 And that takes time.

02:08:39.000 Are you always like this, really hyped up and energetic?

02:08:42.000 Do you always have this much energy?

02:08:44.000 You always talk this fast?

02:08:45.000 I'm a fast talker.

02:08:46.000 That's a New York thing.

02:08:47.000 I used to live in New York.

02:08:49.000 You didn't know a lot of people that talked very fast? 0.99

02:08:51.000 They do, but you're like fucking ramped up. 0.97

02:08:53.000 It's because it's something I'm passionate about. 0.98

02:08:55.000 I don't mean to come off as annoying or anything.

02:08:58.000 No, no, no, you're not annoying at all.

02:09:00.000 It's impressive.

02:09:01.000 Thank you.

02:09:01.000 I just try to...

02:09:03.000 These are the things that I forgot for so long, in a way, because I was writing about games, which I love.

02:09:08.000 I love games.

02:09:09.000 I think they're important.

02:09:09.000 They're an important piece of escape.

02:09:10.000 They're an important piece of art.

02:09:11.000 I think that's all great.

02:09:13.000 But being able to engage with someone like yourself with someone like Dave Rubin or someone like a Steven Crowder or whoever it might be I was on Glenn Beck's radio show last week.

02:09:22.000 It brings out an energy in me.

02:09:24.000 Did he wear a bow tie?

02:09:26.000 Did he wear a bow tie?

02:09:27.000 I don't know.

02:09:28.000 I was on the phone so I have no idea.

02:09:29.000 He could have been naked for all I know. 0.92

02:09:32.000 It brings out an energy in me where I'm like, I can finally engage with people that know what the fuck they're talking about in this particular realm, which I think is so exciting and so interesting. 0.98

02:09:41.000 We debated.

02:09:42.000 We don't agree on everything.

02:09:43.000 I think that's awesome.

02:09:44.000 So that's really cool that you found a very big positive out of this.

02:09:49.000 Now you can express yourself more honestly, and you can gravitate towards your real interests.

02:09:55.000 And that's what I'm trying to do.

02:09:57.000 I'm trying to use this as an opportunity for myself and trying to use it as an opportunity to just carve out a little slice of the internet, however big or small it might be, where we can affect some positive change and ideas and learning and free expression and free thought.

02:10:11.000 And making mistakes and disagreeing and all that.

02:10:13.000 I think that's all great.

02:10:14.000 I want to use this as an example.

02:10:16.000 I want to get away from the orthodoxy of the gaming industry.

02:10:18.000 It's stifling and it's strangling.

02:10:20.000 Why do you think, let's go back to that, because why do you think it is like that?

02:10:23.000 Why is the gaming industry so hardcore, ideologically left-wing, progressive, like no variations, no room for debate?

02:10:32.000 Why is that?

02:10:33.000 Well, I think it's portrayed, it's like all of it's funneled through a media that is hyper-liberal, right?

02:10:38.000 So it's similar in a way to what's going on with the media in news and politics.

02:10:44.000 These, you know, underneath the surface of the gaming industry, there are plenty of conservatives and libertarians.

02:10:50.000 Do they hide?

02:10:51.000 Yeah, they do.

02:10:52.000 A lot of them.

02:10:53.000 I'm sorry.

02:10:54.000 I'm sorry.

02:10:54.000 Go ahead.

02:10:55.000 I was going to say, a lot of them talk to me.

02:10:56.000 I mean, I know people that are like heads of studios that feel the way I do.

02:10:59.000 I know people that are in the trenches at QA and doing very menial things at gaming studios that feel the way I do and everything in between.

02:11:04.000 I remember a GDC game developer conference in San Francisco, which happens every spring.

02:11:10.000 Six or seven years ago a guy pulled me aside.

02:11:12.000 This is the first time it ever happened to me and this is when I was kind of starting to make a name for myself And he pulled me aside and he's like hey man I work at X Y& Z and I'm it works on a big game and he's like keep doing what you're doing There are a lot of people out there that agree with what you're saying But there's there they they don't dare speak out because they'll get lambasted in some way look what happened to me over something so innocuous and Well,

02:11:33.000 obviously you were saying that there's some pushback about your ideas before this.

02:11:39.000 Yes.

02:11:39.000 What did you experience?

02:11:40.000 Well, so every time I would write a politically driven op-ed, for instance, when I was at IGN, I was senior editor, but I kind of had like editor-at-large qualities, meaning for people that don't know, editor-at-large basically...

02:11:52.000 In a way, do whatever they want.

02:11:54.000 Like, they'll find something to write about.

02:11:55.000 I used to go away for days at a time and do research things and then write these big 50,000 word articles.

02:12:00.000 50,000 words?

02:12:01.000 Yeah, the history of Naughty Dog.

02:12:02.000 Who's got that kind of time, dude?

02:12:03.000 Well, I did.

02:12:04.000 I carved it out.

02:12:05.000 But what about people reading it?

02:12:06.000 Who's got that kind of time?

02:12:07.000 It was in five parts.

02:12:08.000 Oh, okay.

02:12:08.000 The history of Naughty Dog was like my opus.

02:12:10.000 Naughty Dog's this very huge, actually in Santa Monica, very huge game developer, very talented game developer.

02:12:15.000 I went and talked to 19 people, got about a bunch of primary sources and And all these things and wrote this piece that I really cared about.

02:12:22.000 But when I would write things like the political correctness piece about...

02:12:25.000 Let me give you an example.

02:12:28.000 There's a game that was cancelled maybe five years ago or so.

02:12:31.000 It was pretty late in development.

02:12:32.000 So it's weird to cancel a game when they've already spent a bunch of money on it.

02:12:36.000 It was called Six Days in Fallujah.

02:12:38.000 And it was a game about, it was a third-person shooter, I think, about the experience of Fallujah in Iraq.

02:12:44.000 Terrible conflict that happened there.

02:12:47.000 And people, even on the right, were getting upset about it, being like, it's too soon, this is still ongoing, how can you do...

02:12:55.000 And I wrote a piece being like, what are you all saying?

02:12:58.000 This is awesome.

02:12:59.000 This is so great that someone wants to tell a story like this and do something like this.

02:13:04.000 And you just get it from all sides.

02:13:05.000 People will be like, you know, it's not sensitive.

02:13:09.000 It's all these kinds of things.

02:13:10.000 And then the girlfriend mode thing I wrote about where people were like, oh, you're a sexist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

02:13:14.000 And I'm like, I'm actually just protecting the sanctity of a man who might have made a mistake.

02:13:18.000 That's it.

02:13:18.000 You know, instead of destroying him.

02:13:21.000 It goes back to this whole thing of like the...

02:13:24.000 I'm sorry the girlfriend mode the Borderlands story I told you where the guy and they get they were all going after him and going after his job and all these things and I wrote a piece being like hey Yeah, like if this is a farce guys like right he made a mistake Maybe and I don't know that he should it was a soft target and they just went after it exactly and It reminds so you've experienced blowback yeah every time from that yeah every time what was the blowback from that from you defending this guy saying well He just really fucked up the way he described things, 0.67

02:13:52.000 but he was it was innocent in that regard Well, you lose, like, social cachet when every time something like this would happen, right?

02:13:57.000 So that's why I say, like, this was the moment, the joke was the moment that they were looking to pounce, really.

02:14:02.000 And I'm not saying that they were calculating everyone's waiting, but they saw an opportunity and they took it.

02:14:06.000 Because over time, you lose respect over people because your political stances, completely reasonable political stances, I think.

02:14:14.000 Where they remember that you said this and you said this and you said this and you said this.

02:14:17.000 So this wasn't like really...

02:14:18.000 You weren't really having debates with people where you were disagreeing with them.

02:14:21.000 It was simply a matter of reaction to some of the things that you had written where they were trying to box you into some sort of a conservative group.

02:14:27.000 Right.

02:14:27.000 And they would call me an alt...

02:14:28.000 You know, now it's like, I'm a Nazi.

02:14:29.000 I'm alt-right.

02:14:30.000 I'm all these things.

02:14:31.000 I'm like, I don't think I have one alt-right thing.

02:14:34.000 I don't even really know what the alt-right means.

02:14:36.000 What is alt-right?

02:14:38.000 To me, it seems like the far fringes, like the Richard Spencers of the world, the neo-Nazis, and the white supremacists, and the actual nationalists, you know?

02:14:46.000 Well, as soon as you write alt on something, I feel like it's a message board thing.

02:14:49.000 Like alt-right, it's a Reddit thing.

02:14:52.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:14:54.000 So alt-right, alternative right, like what is it?

02:14:57.000 I mean, I don't know the- So maybe you're it.

02:14:59.000 I hope not.

02:15:01.000 Based on their characterization of it.

02:15:05.000 I'm sorry, go ahead.

02:15:07.000 How would they define you as being alt-right?

02:15:09.000 What would they say that you have alt-right characteristics?

02:15:12.000 You can see these message boards, for instance.

02:15:15.000 A lot of people were very supportive on Reddit and all these kind of places that are a little more known for free thought, but there's this one video game message board in particular that is just insane.

02:15:24.000 And there was a 125 page or so thread about me.

02:15:28.000 20 posts, or I think it might even be 50 posts a page.

02:15:31.000 And I was reading it.

02:15:32.000 And it hurt some of it.

02:15:34.000 Because people are like, first of all, people are telling me I said things I never said.

02:15:37.000 Like what?

02:15:38.000 People are like, Collins, you know, his name is no taxation.

02:15:41.000 He doesn't even believe that taxes should exist.

02:15:43.000 I often talk about how I really like Ayn Rand and I really like Atlas Shrugged.

02:15:46.000 But I don't consider myself an objectivist.

02:15:47.000 I don't believe that selfishness is necessarily a virtue.

02:15:50.000 I just think she's interesting, and I think some of her ideas are interesting.

02:15:52.000 You know, God forbid I exist somewhere in the gray area.

02:15:55.000 Right.

02:15:55.000 But they're like, Colin's an objectivist, and he's selfish, and blah, blah, blah.

02:15:59.000 Colin's a Nazi, and he's a racist. 0.99

02:16:02.000 I think the term a lot of them used was soft racist or soft bigot. 1.00

02:16:05.000 Soft racist?

02:16:06.000 Being like that, he doesn't intentionally or actually overtly say anything, but supports causes that are racist or sexy.

02:16:12.000 These are the kind of character assassinations that were going on.

02:16:14.000 Basically, people with...

02:16:16.000 On bulletin boards with yarn and maps.

02:16:21.000 That's how I picture them, trying to make continuous connections.

02:16:24.000 And it's like, these things aren't even things I feel and things that I said or being taken out of context.

02:16:30.000 I often use the...

02:16:33.000 In video games, one of the big things is like, you know, there's a need for diverse casts, diverse protagonists and stuff like that.

02:16:38.000 And I often use the case that I used to use the saying, I don't believe in diversity for diversity's sake.

02:16:43.000 I believe that an artist should tell his story.

02:16:45.000 So if an artist, a writer of a game wants to have an all white cast and that's what he thinks serves his story, I don't think that makes him a racist.

02:16:51.000 If he wants to have an all-Asian cast, I don't think that makes him a racist either.

02:16:55.000 I think that's what he wants to do.

02:16:57.000 And people took that out of context and were calling me a racist and a bigot and all these kinds of things.

02:17:00.000 And it's hurtful because there's no one there.

02:17:02.000 No one's defending me.

02:17:03.000 And I can't defend myself because I'll just make it worse.

02:17:07.000 So it was kind of like this hapless kind of situation that I found myself in.

02:17:10.000 And I tried to make the best of it.

02:17:11.000 I had a debate once about that with a friend who was an Asian actor and he was talking about the lack of roles for Asians in Hollywood and what a massive issue is and you know that he wanted to raise awareness of it I was like man, but this we're talking about a creative venture you're talking about somebody writing a story like I think the the correct way to go about it is to try to figure out how to get your own project through or someone else who feels very strongly about this trying to get their own project through but The right way is not for someone to have to compromise their creative vision

02:17:42.000 in order to encompass the full spectrum of races in whatever story they're writing.

02:17:47.000 Like, a creative story, like, if you want to write a story about a small town in Maine like Stephen King has done so often, you shouldn't have to have 10% Asians in that story. 0.96

02:17:55.000 I mean, that's not...

02:17:57.000 What creativity is about.

02:17:59.000 There are places and people that you're going to run into all black folks, or you're going to run into all Norwegian people.

02:18:08.000 Those stories are just as valid as a story that's fully diverse.

02:18:12.000 I don't think that that necessarily makes anything better.

02:18:15.000 And I also think that when you're talking about that, you're sort of talking about it like there should be a quota, you know, and like Hollywood should recognize the need for these people to be in films and movies.

02:18:29.000 And it's just, you're making this politically correct sort of...

02:18:35.000 You're passing these judgments on this thing that is all about imagination.

02:18:41.000 I mean, Hollywood essentially, when you're making a television show or you're making a movie, it's really about an imagination.

02:18:47.000 It's about imagination and vision and having that vision being entertaining for people.

02:18:52.000 And if you only want to write about the people that you were in college with, that you shared a dorm room with, you should be allowed to.

02:19:01.000 And if there's a disproportionate amount of people that are doing that, that happen to be white males, you know, we should probably try to figure out why.

02:19:09.000 But the idea that you have to force people to hire Asian folks or black folks or women or whatever, that seems so crazy to me.

02:19:16.000 Yes, serve the story, right?

02:19:18.000 And to give you a little glimpse, to give you some context with what might be going on in gaming, there was this very popular game series called The Witcher, which is made by a Polish developer called CD Projekt.

02:19:28.000 They're in Warsaw.

02:19:29.000 And it's based on the fusion of, like, Polish kind of identity with this famous book series that's based on, like, kind of Polish lore, you know, like kind of the Lord of the Rings, but in Eastern Europe.

02:19:41.000 And One guy, this cartoon character that works at this website called Polygon, in his review was talking about how there was no diversity.

02:19:52.000 And everyone's like, Dude, it's Poland, and it's based on Poland of yore. 0.97

02:19:59.000 And it's about dragons, and goblins, and there's some white guys. 0.94

02:20:03.000 And this is what you're upset about?

02:20:06.000 And there's another guy, I think he's Slovakian, somewhere in Eastern Europe, making a game called Kingdom Come Deliverance.

02:20:13.000 And it's supposed to be a very realistic look at something like the 14th or 15th century in that area.

02:20:18.000 And again, they're complaining there's no diversity.

02:20:21.000 There's no diversity. 0.71

02:20:22.000 And he's like, there was no black people in this area in 1500. I'm trying to make a game that's true to the era.

02:20:29.000 That doesn't make him a racist. 1.00

02:20:32.000 And this is just the kind of bullshit. 1.00

02:20:35.000 But you see this in movies. 1.00

02:20:36.000 You see this in TV shows.

02:20:37.000 It's not exclusive to gaming, but it's what I've had to deal with for a long time, and I'm just sick of it.

02:20:41.000 What's the root of it, though?

02:20:42.000 What's causing it?

02:20:43.000 Why do people feel like they have to put a black person in a game about Poland in the 1500s or whatever it was?

02:20:52.000 Thankfully, the people that make the games don't care.

02:20:54.000 They're like, we're going to make our game.

02:20:56.000 The people that are complaining about it, they're virtue signaling, which is not even a term I even knew what it meant until a few weeks ago.

02:21:02.000 I heard people throw that term around.

02:21:05.000 I didn't quite know what it meant.

02:21:06.000 I looked into it.

02:21:07.000 You know what it is.

02:21:09.000 It's the idea that these virtuous people, it's the same people that attack me for the joke.

02:21:12.000 I have to be virtuous and show that I am against sexism, so I have to attack the man.

02:21:17.000 I have to do all these kinds of things in this need. 0.92

02:21:20.000 But what they're saying when they're saying we have to have black people in this game in Eastern Europe in the 1500s, what they're really saying is you're a racist. 0.89

02:21:32.000 Yeah. 0.93

02:21:32.000 That's the subtext. 0.93

02:21:33.000 And it goes back to this character assassination and this need to destroy.

02:21:37.000 I often use the example of...

02:21:38.000 Do you remember when Gawker wrote about Conde Nast's CFO and outed him?

02:21:43.000 No, I don't know what that story is.

02:21:45.000 What's that story about?

02:21:46.000 So, on Gawker, this guy...

02:21:49.000 Wrote this story about the CFO of Condé Nast.

02:21:53.000 What is that?

02:21:54.000 Condé Nast is like this big conglomerate that owns a bunch of smaller businesses.

02:21:59.000 They're a pretty big company.

02:22:00.000 I don't know.

02:22:00.000 I think they might even be in publishing and stuff like that.

02:22:02.000 Okay.

02:22:03.000 And so they wrote this story, and the entire crux of the story, this guy that no one...

02:22:09.000 This guy, I think, is brother or brother-in-law with Timothy Geithner.

02:22:13.000 So that's his claim to fame, I guess.

02:22:15.000 But he's just a private citizen that works as a CFO of this big corporation.

02:22:18.000 Okay. 0.89

02:22:19.000 They write this piece that outs him as a gay man, that he's having or trying to have an affair behind his wife's back with this guy.

02:22:27.000 All of this stuff just...

02:22:29.000 And I'm like, I read this piece and I'm like, what is the purpose of this?

02:22:33.000 Why?

02:22:34.000 And I'm sure, Jamie, if you want to, you can probably find it.

02:22:36.000 Why did they?

02:22:37.000 Why did they write it?

02:22:40.000 Clicks?

02:22:41.000 You know, and it actually blew up in their faces. 0.90

02:22:42.000 People were fucking furious about this because this wasn't... 0.81

02:22:45.000 Yeah, so there's the thing. 0.97

02:22:49.000 It's like, they just out this guy for no reason.

02:22:52.000 Destroyed his life.

02:22:54.000 Gawker on Thursday evening helped a disgruntled sex worker extort the chief financial officer at Conde Nast and brother of former Treasury Secretary Kim Geithner.

02:23:04.000 Is that how you say his name?

02:23:05.000 Tim Geithner, yep.

02:23:06.000 Jetsoning any semblance of journalistic integrity and likely ruining a man's life in the process.

02:23:12.000 I'm telling you, you can go jump down the rabbit hole at this.

02:23:14.000 Read about this guy.

02:23:15.000 This is such an example of outrage, of not even outrage culture, of just character assassination for the sake of...

02:23:20.000 Now I kind of remember this.

02:23:21.000 Now I'm kind of remembering this story.

02:23:22.000 It's almost, it's unfortunate. 0.99

02:23:23.000 There's so many fucking crazy stories. 0.99

02:23:25.000 So, yeah, it says, he is married and has three children, allegedly arranged a night with a male escort on a recent trip to Chicago. 0.99

02:23:32.000 When the escort found out who the CFO was, he asked for help with an ongoing housing dispute.

02:23:37.000 In other words, trying to kick it to the government because of his connection with Geithner.

02:23:40.000 The CFO allegedly got spooked and canceled their meeting, though he paid in full for whatever rendezvous they were going to have.

02:23:45.000 In retaliation, the escort went to Gawker, which published the story despite knowing that doing so would play into the extortion attempt.

02:23:51.000 The site also published screenshots of the pair's alleged text message exchange, including several photos.

02:23:55.000 They shook this guy down and ruined him.

02:23:58.000 Just ruined him.

02:24:00.000 He's going to have problems with his wife, probably get divorced.

02:24:02.000 Now his kids are going to be in limbo.

02:24:03.000 He's going to lose his job and he's got to follow him around forever?

02:24:06.000 Why?

02:24:07.000 Why?

02:24:07.000 Right.

02:24:08.000 Because he tried to, you know, it's not our business if he's cheating on his wife, and it's not our business if he's gay, and it's not our business if he's trying to be with a male escort. 0.86

02:24:15.000 They just saw a clickbait.

02:24:16.000 Yep.

02:24:16.000 And this is what it's all about.

02:24:18.000 I would even go further with Gawker, which obviously ended up taking him down, with Hulk Hogan.

02:24:23.000 It's like, why?

02:24:24.000 Because he's a famous person, his sex tape, which is going to ruin his friendship, ruin his marriage, ruin all these connections.

02:24:29.000 What kind of pleasure do you get out of that?

02:24:31.000 That goes back to the point I was making about how I wouldn't write stories about a couple people back in the day, because I didn't want to ruin them.

02:24:38.000 That's not what I'm out to do.

02:24:39.000 And I feel like...

02:24:40.000 So it all plays into the same culture, the same culture of character assassination, neopuritanism, witch hunting, enjoying the fall of random people.

02:24:49.000 There's a responsibility that comes with this that there's almost like a power that has not been earned.

02:24:55.000 The power of whether it's social media or whether it's ability to write blogs about someone like that or whether it's ability to just to make tweets and just attack someone.

02:25:07.000 This ability is really very, very new. 0.99

02:25:10.000 And the ability to mass publish, like to make a tweet about a guy like you, just decide Colin Moriarty is a piece of shit, I can't believe that joke, fucking sexist, and then boom, put that out there, and then it gets retweeted over and over again. 0.99

02:25:24.000 That people don't necessarily understand the repercussions of these actions. 0.99

02:25:29.000 That this is like, there's an amount of power that they really haven't earned.

02:25:33.000 There's an amount of power and influence that you have.

02:25:38.000 Your ability to express yourself today, that's a really new thing.

02:25:42.000 I look at it a little differently in the sense that, because I think you're right, I think you're on to something there, but I think it's also the mob mentality that exposes the fact that Say I was ruined forever, right?

02:25:53.000 And they won, whatever that means.

02:25:55.000 And then people go like, hey, you just ruined that guy.

02:25:57.000 Why did you do that?

02:25:58.000 And they can be like, oh, he did it.

02:26:00.000 Oh, he did it.

02:26:01.000 In other words, no one's responsible for it.

02:26:03.000 And when you're in this mob, it's old-fashioned witch hunting.

02:26:08.000 And it's done for strangely puritanical reasons.

02:26:11.000 Yeah.

02:26:11.000 Do you think that there's also an inclination to do it because you're worried that it's gonna happen to you and you want to attack first?

02:26:17.000 Like this is almost a thing where the people want to take the vision off of themselves, or they want to take the scrutiny off of themselves.

02:26:26.000 And when you point it at someone else enough and you keep pointing it at other people, I mean eventually people kind of get it after a while. 0.99

02:26:34.000 It's that little expression that if you want to look at, like, with girls, it was always like the girls who would talk shit about other girls being sluts were always the biggest sluts, right? 0.99

02:26:44.000 You know? 0.99

02:26:44.000 I mean, there's this weird thing about people where if you're going after folks in a lot of those sort of situations, what you're trying to do is take some of the eyes off of you. 0.99

02:26:56.000 I think that's probably a huge element of it.

02:26:58.000 I find it strange because I went about my business in a different way for the same reason, if that makes any sense.

02:27:04.000 You're making the argument, which I think is true, that it's like, don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

02:27:09.000 There's all this stuff over there.

02:27:10.000 And my whole thing was like, I don't want to I don't want to be involved in this at all.

02:27:14.000 I get that.

02:27:14.000 And I believe you, that you don't want to be involved in that.

02:27:16.000 And I think that's very virtuous.

02:27:18.000 I think it's very nice that you think the way you do.

02:27:20.000 I think it's important.

02:27:22.000 And I think it's important that you have this ability to express yourself and let people know that that is a good way to look at the least amount of conflict that you can go through life with, the better you're going to be off.

02:27:31.000 As long as it's unnecessary conflict, you know?

02:27:35.000 And I think in this situation, this is clearly unnecessary conflict.

02:27:39.000 Yeah, and that's the whole...

02:27:41.000 And it causes this rigorous kind of atmosphere where...

02:27:44.000 We can see it in politics, too, where...

02:27:48.000 Everyone's mad about everything.

02:27:49.000 Like, Donald Trump reads, everyone's mad.

02:27:51.000 Donald Trump reads today.

02:27:52.000 The picture that's going around on CNN where it's like, it was literally like, is Donald Trump afraid of stairs?

02:27:57.000 Was like the Chiron, the lower third. 1.00

02:27:59.000 And it's like...

02:28:00.000 Stairs?

02:28:01.000 He prefers elevators.

02:28:03.000 Yeah, he prefers gilded elevators.

02:28:05.000 They're serious?

02:28:06.000 Is this a real question?

02:28:07.000 Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that's going on.

02:28:09.000 Is it S-T-A-I-R or S-T-A-R-E? Oh, no, stairs like you walk up and down, yeah.

02:28:13.000 Okay.

02:28:15.000 Because it could be like the evil eye.

02:28:18.000 But to me, I'm like, you know, and that's why it goes back, you know, the fact is, and I think this is an important component to maybe making you understand what happened a little bit better, because you're not in that ecosystem, but I think you can relate because you're seeing it happen elsewhere, is that the gaming media is dying.

02:28:33.000 And they're dying because no one really trusts or cares, trusts them or cares what they have to say anymore.

02:28:39.000 People, 10 year olds and 15 year olds today are not growing up being like, I wonder what Polygon has to say about the newest game.

02:28:44.000 They go to YouTube and find a guy there that they trust and believe, which is why the only people unanimously pretty much that came out in my defense were YouTubers.

02:28:52.000 Because they know that they're the next rung of this evolution of the way we absorb and communicate and absorb information and have news.

02:29:00.000 Meanwhile, these people, to your point, are writing clickbait, trying to stay relevant, but no one really cares what they're saying anyway.

02:29:04.000 So they're in their death throes.

02:29:06.000 This is a way for them to take shots at multiple people at the same time.

02:29:09.000 This is what they did to PewDiePie.

02:29:10.000 This is what they did to other people.

02:29:11.000 The PewDiePie one was really egregious.

02:29:13.000 It was egregious, but again...

02:29:16.000 A lot of that stuff was taken out of context.

02:29:18.000 Yes.

02:29:19.000 No, I don't mean PewDiePie was egregious.

02:29:21.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

02:29:21.000 I mean the attacks on him were.

02:29:22.000 Oh, yeah, it was terrible.

02:29:23.000 What Wall Street Journal did to him, this is just a sign of the times.

02:29:26.000 These are people fighting, and I really feel this way, and you might disagree, but I feel like a lot of it is these people are fighting for their lives.

02:29:32.000 If I were a person that was writing about- Hold on.

02:29:34.000 The journalist.

02:29:35.000 The journalist, yeah.

02:29:36.000 Like, if I were...

02:29:37.000 I'm sorry to interrupt you.

02:29:38.000 If I had written in the video game industry for 10 years, right?

02:29:43.000 I wrote in the gaming industry for 14 years.

02:29:45.000 But if I was a 10-year industry veteran, and I had fewer than 10,000 Twitter followers, and I'm writing for a site no one reads, and I'm trying my hardest to stay relevant and to do my thing, I'd be pretty mad, too, if I saw a guy that turns on his camera and speaks whatever he wants and gets the amount of views in 30 minutes that I'll get the entire year.

02:30:04.000 Why would you be mad?

02:30:05.000 It has nothing to do with you.

02:30:06.000 It does.

02:30:07.000 It has a lot to do with you because there's only so much time and space for these people to absorb things.

02:30:10.000 That's famine mentality.

02:30:12.000 They'd rather go to YouTube.

02:30:13.000 There's 350 million people in this country alone, and there's many, many more people all over the world.

02:30:17.000 The idea that anybody's views is somehow or another taking away from your views is just straight famine mentality.

02:30:24.000 There's plenty of eyes to go around, and you're showing it right now with your new project.

02:30:28.000 Sure, but I'm just like... 0.99

02:30:30.000 But I'm just saying, their thought process sucks.

02:30:33.000 Yeah, and ostensibly, it's actually adding to their destruction, because people are looking at this, like the media, for instance, in the political landscape is dying anyway. 0.98

02:30:42.000 The decline is happening.

02:30:43.000 Wall Street Journal put up a piece not too long ago saying that per capita, viewership on television is actually starting to be outpaced by YouTube.

02:30:50.000 So that's over now, right?

02:30:52.000 And that's not on video online or video on demand.

02:30:54.000 That's just YouTube.

02:30:56.000 And so people are looking at the situation and actually precipitating it happening quicker.

02:31:01.000 Because in order to stay relevant, they lie.

02:31:03.000 Or they write hit pieces.

02:31:04.000 I think we should talk about what happened with PewDiePie. 0.98

02:31:06.000 Because most people are like, who the fuck is PewDiePie and what happened? 0.98

02:31:09.000 Sure. 0.98

02:31:10.000 Do you want me to explain it?

02:31:11.000 Yeah, please.

02:31:11.000 Go ahead.

02:31:12.000 So PewDiePie is the biggest YouTuber in the world.

02:31:15.000 He has 55 million subscribers.

02:31:17.000 And he's a millionaire.

02:31:20.000 Just to be clear, I don't really know him very well.

02:31:22.000 I think I've had one or two communiques with him at some point, but I don't know him, so I don't really have a horse in the race.

02:31:27.000 He lives in Europe.

02:31:28.000 He lives in England.

02:31:29.000 I think he's Swedish or something of that nature, but he lives in England.

02:31:33.000 And he has a massive YouTube following.

02:31:35.000 I mean, every video he does will have 10, 12, 15 million views.

02:31:38.000 And you know you're on YouTube, I'm on YouTube in a much lesser sense.

02:31:41.000 That's a lot of views.

02:31:43.000 And he pushed the boundaries in some ways, in some tasteless ways.

02:31:48.000 As this is right.

02:31:49.000 And the thing that really caught on was that he was using this service called Fiverr, which is this kind of TaskRabbit kind of thing where it's like you can pay people to do whatever you want.

02:32:01.000 And he paid...

02:32:02.000 Some of the things he did were otherwise, but he paid these guys in some country to hold up these... 0.63

02:32:07.000 Like, death to all Jews signs or something like that as part of a joke.

02:32:12.000 And, you know, and that's something I think is somewhat tasteless. 0.99

02:32:15.000 But he's trying to make a point.

02:32:16.000 Whatever point he was trying to make, he was trying to make a point.

02:32:17.000 It was lost on a lot of people.

02:32:19.000 And this combined with some other imagery he had been using, some, like, kind of fascist or Nazi imagery and some other things that have been going on over the months.

02:32:25.000 I'm sorry.

02:32:25.000 Did you want to...

02:32:27.000 Oh, I thought you were about to say something.

02:32:27.000 I'm sorry.

02:32:28.000 And so eventually the Wall Street Journal caught wind of this.

02:32:32.000 Wall Street Journal obviously have a prolific right of center but still pretty moderate newspaper and basically went after him and basically tried to destroy him and took a lot of things out of context and forced Disney...

02:32:45.000 Disney owns a studio that...

02:32:47.000 Funds him and all these kinds of things and caused a lot of personal and economic destruction for this man.

02:32:51.000 It seems like they intentionally took things out of context, too, and they distorted the actual intent of what he was trying to do, especially with telling people to not be Nazis.

02:32:59.000 He was, like, mocking people that were being Nazis, and they used that to say, this guy is pretending to be a Nazi.

02:33:05.000 Right.

02:33:05.000 It was a completely dishonest hit piece in the same vein as the Condé Nast hit piece.

02:33:10.000 It's the same vein as the Hulk Hogan hit.

02:33:13.000 It's these people, you know, the term punching up.

02:33:16.000 They want to punch up and they think they're punching up.

02:33:17.000 Wall Street Journal's punching up now on YouTubers.

02:33:19.000 But really caused a lot of- That's hilarious.

02:33:21.000 Punching up on a YouTuber.

02:33:24.000 Isn't that hilarious?

02:33:25.000 This guy's a YouTuber.

02:33:26.000 He's a guy by himself.

02:33:28.000 You're punching up to attack him because he's the king, because he's the media elite.

02:33:32.000 I mean, that's the media elite.

02:33:33.000 I mean, it's like an independent reporter attacking the ABC News or something like that.

02:33:37.000 Exactly.

02:33:38.000 And to me, it showed a lot of cowardice.

02:33:41.000 It showed a lot of half-cocked thinking on the Wall Street Journal's part to think that this wasn't going to blow back on them.

02:33:47.000 And it showed a level, and I hate using this word because I don't think innately it's necessarily a bad thing because I think it drives you forward, but there's a level of jealousy at play with a lot of these kinds of things that are happening.

02:33:56.000 So that's what you were thinking about before when you were saying that someone who's struggling to get 10,000 views in any story they write is going to look at a guy like this that can do one video where he talks about farts and he makes...

02:34:07.000 You know, his 7 million views or something like that.

02:34:10.000 Yeah, and he makes 15 million a year or whatever.

02:34:11.000 They're mad at him.

02:34:11.000 Yeah, and they're mad and they don't understand it.

02:34:13.000 And I get that.

02:34:14.000 You know, I look at some people that are famous or some people that are, you know, have a platform and I'm like, I don't get this, but I'm not going to like sit here and like rain on their parade.

02:34:21.000 That's their right.

02:34:22.000 They have an audience.

02:34:22.000 That's totally fine.

02:34:24.000 Maybe look at yourself and why you don't have an audience.

02:34:26.000 Maybe look at yourself and realize that if you've been doing this for so long and you're so proud of that, why isn't anyone listening to you?

02:34:31.000 Could it be you?

02:34:33.000 You know, instead of looking around for people to assassinate, which is what's basically happening here, I find it so distasteful, I find it so destructive, we're at the precipice of a very dangerous time because the trust in institutions, no matter where you are now,

02:34:48.000 is just lost.

02:34:49.000 And a lot of it has to do, and that's what I was saying, with media precipitating the fall by not telling the truth, by not doing the right thing.

02:34:59.000 I think the media in terms of politics, for instance, is really rebounding from the fact that they thought Clinton was going to win, so they thought they can get away with saying and doing anything for that means to an end.

02:35:08.000 The Donna Brazile thing, for instance, where she was feeding questions to the Clinton campaign, is so incredible.

02:35:16.000 It shows such a level of bias and systemic inherent bias.

02:35:20.000 They thought they were going to get away with all of it.

02:35:21.000 Now no one trusts anyone.

02:35:22.000 So when I see all this stuff, I don't know what's going on with Russia and Trump. 0.99

02:35:24.000 For all I know, he could be a fucking Manchurian candidate. 0.99

02:35:27.000 But I don't believe a word they say. 0.99

02:35:30.000 When I read this about Paul Manafort, about Flynn, about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm like, I don't know. 0.99

02:35:35.000 You lied about all this other shit. 0.98

02:35:35.000 I have no idea what you're talking about. 0.98

02:35:37.000 I have to really do my own research.

02:35:38.000 I don't even know who to trust anymore.

02:35:39.000 They did that to themselves, and they precipitated their own downfall.

02:35:43.000 More and more people are going on YouTube to listen to people like you, to listen to people even like Alex Jones, to listen to Dave Rubin, to listen to- Giant problem.

02:35:51.000 It is a problem because you need...

02:35:52.000 Especially if you're listening to me.

02:35:53.000 Well, it's a problem because you need people in the trenches that you trust.

02:35:55.000 You need someone in the press room at the White House.

02:35:57.000 You need someone in the AP that is on the wire, that is telling you the truth.

02:36:01.000 But when you can't even trust them anymore, that's a big problem.

02:36:04.000 And that's when people go seek out alternative sources of news and information and entertainment.

02:36:09.000 And that's what's happening, and that's why they're dying.

02:36:10.000 Yeah, well, in many ways, sure, that big corporate model is ensuring their own demise. 0.96

02:36:16.000 Absolutely.

02:36:16.000 And it's the race for clicks.

02:36:19.000 It's the race for money.

02:36:19.000 It's the race for prominence.

02:36:21.000 It's the race for relevance.

02:36:22.000 And not honesty.

02:36:24.000 And not transparency.

02:36:25.000 And not a real objective sense of what the truth is and what the actual facts of a story are.

02:36:31.000 That's where journalism is a different thing now because it's now an entertainment show.

02:36:36.000 It's an entertainment show that also has the news in it.

02:36:39.000 But that's why the women are so hot. 1.00

02:36:41.000 That's why the women on Fox News are wearing these tiny little dresses and they have beautiful legs and heels on and they're talking about important issues. 1.00

02:36:49.000 But they're giving you a little bit of eye candy while they're doing it.

02:36:52.000 It's so transparent too when I see that kind of stuff.

02:36:53.000 I'm like, that was a very attractive woman.

02:36:55.000 I'm sure she knows what she's talking about.

02:36:56.000 But I know why she sits at the end of the table. 0.60

02:36:58.000 I like when they're aggressive, too.

02:37:00.000 Like Megyn Kelly, she's attractive and she's aggressive. 1.00

02:37:03.000 Yeah, she's smart.

02:37:03.000 That's what makes her sexy.

02:37:04.000 Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

02:37:06.000 But, you know, yeah, so we're in this weird space.

02:37:10.000 You know it.

02:37:11.000 We're in this just very bizarre space.

02:37:13.000 Do you feel like this is like almost an adolescent period in human communication, that we're going through this weird growth period where we have this incredible access to information and the ability to spread it like we have now with...

02:37:24.000 With social media and with YouTube and all these different things where anybody can kind of hop in and all of a sudden get a platform like this PewDiePie guy.

02:37:31.000 PewDiePie wasn't a star.

02:37:34.000 He wasn't a politician.

02:37:35.000 He wasn't an actor before this.

02:37:36.000 He was just a guy.

02:37:37.000 Yep.

02:37:37.000 And he connected with people and carved out this path for himself and pretty much anybody can kind of do that now.

02:37:43.000 I mean, it's not easy.

02:37:45.000 If it was easy, everyone would do it, but it is not insurmountable.

02:37:49.000 I wonder what the next stage is in terms of the ability to share information, if it's going to change past where it's at now and get to some new level.

02:37:58.000 Yeah, I think you're right in the sense that the internet specifically had taken off so quickly.

02:38:03.000 The World Wide Web is only 24 years old.

02:38:05.000 The internet's way older.

02:38:06.000 But the way we communicate with each other now is so different than even Usenet in the 80s or We

02:38:36.000 need a media that we can trust.

02:38:38.000 But I don't think we need the media as it is right now either, because the media we have right now is bloated, dishonest, partisan politically and motivated, all these things that don't really serve a purpose to educating and informing someone.

02:38:50.000 The days of Cronkite are gone.

02:38:52.000 Well, doesn't that sort of set the stage for someone to come in and offer a viable alternative?

02:38:56.000 I hope so.

02:38:57.000 There you are, Colin Moriarty!

02:38:59.000 Yeah, that's the idea.

02:39:00.000 Just in my own way.

02:39:01.000 I don't have these delusions of grandeur that I'm gonna make millions of dollars and have this huge reach.

02:39:06.000 Dude, you're already at $39,000 a month. 0.99

02:39:09.000 You better cut the shit with this humility stuff. 0.99

02:39:11.000 I know what you're doing. 1.00

02:39:12.000 I know what you're doing, you fuck. 1.00

02:39:14.000 Stop. 1.00

02:39:15.000 I'm just trying to say that I didn't have...

02:39:17.000 I left my...

02:39:17.000 I was making good money.

02:39:19.000 Kind of funny.

02:39:20.000 I walked away expecting that I was going to take a pay cut to do what I really wanted to do and try to do the right thing.

02:39:26.000 And it's great that people are responding the way they do.

02:39:28.000 I hope they continue to respond this way because it will allow us to do more of it.

02:39:31.000 My advice to you, stop being concerned with that and just do the best stuff.

02:39:34.000 Stop being concerned with being humble about all this.

02:39:36.000 It's definitely going to drop.

02:39:38.000 I'm not going to be famous.

02:39:40.000 I'm not going to be...

02:39:40.000 Forget about all that nonsense.

02:39:42.000 It's all like you've shackled yourself.

02:39:45.000 Just plow forward, young man.

02:39:48.000 I appreciate it.

02:39:48.000 Plow forward with intent.

02:39:49.000 You've got some good content, man.

02:39:51.000 You're a smart dude.

02:39:51.000 I appreciate you.

02:39:51.000 Thank you very much.

02:39:52.000 I appreciate it so much.

02:39:53.000 My pleasure, man.

02:39:54.000 And thanks for coming on here, man.

02:39:55.000 It was a good time.

02:39:56.000 I really enjoyed it.

02:39:56.000 We'll do it some more.

02:39:57.000 Thank you.

02:39:57.000 I really appreciate you, Joe.

02:39:58.000 And when you do have a thing and it does go live in April, I'd be happy to help you promote it and happy to have you back on again.

02:40:04.000 And it was really awesome.

02:40:05.000 Really enjoyed this.

02:40:06.000 Thank you so much.

02:40:06.000 I appreciate you.

02:40:07.000 Colin Moriarty, ladies and gentlemen.

02:40:08.000 We'll be back in a little while with my friend Justin Wren.

02:40:11.000 See you soon.

02:40:12.000 Bye.

02:40:14.000 That was great, dude.

02:40:15.000 Cool, thank you.

02:40:16.000 That was a lot of fun.

02:40:17.000 How long did we go?

02:40:18.000 Awesome.

02:40:18.000 Almost three hours.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 24, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #936 - Colin Moriarty

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Summary

Transcript