Seth Dillon
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Summary
When was the last time you thought to yourself, "This can't be real, this has to be a parody"? It's reached the level where it's almost impossible to tell the difference between what's reported as fact by the news media and what someone with a dark sense of humor has made up. Well, we thought this was exactly the moment to speak to the man who makes up more news than anyone in America, Seth Dillon, who runs Babylon Bee, and he joins us now to talk to us about what it's like being a prophet, as our own Isaiah. Because it turns out, and we went through quite a few examples, that the Babylon Bee's parody stories have come true in dozens, scores, nearly 100 cases. I'm going to put three of them on the screen and get your reaction to them to set the stage to announce Seth as America's most accurate prophet. Seth Dillon is the founder of America's premier humor site, Babylon Bee. He's a writer, podcaster, and podcaster. He also happens to be the creator of The Daily Show and The New York Times, and is one of the funniest people in the entire world. He's also the author of several books, including "The Devil Next Door" and "The Dark Side Of" which you should read if you haven't already. And he's a very good friend of mine, so I'm sure you'll agree that he's worth checking out. If you're looking for a good time, then you'll enjoy this one out. And if you're not, then this one's for sure will be worth a listen. Enjoy! Thank you, Seth. - -Isaac "Isaac" Dillon ( ) and ( ( . ( ). ( <3) ( ) ( . . . ( ) ( ), . ) ( )( ) ( ). ( ) Thank you so much for coming on the pod, and I hope you enjoy this episode, and don't forget to leave us a review of the show, and tweet us what you think of it if you liked it! and your thoughts on the podcast in the comments section or if you think it's a good one! ) and , and if you have any other good ones we'd like us to send us a shoutout! , &
Transcript
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When was the last time you're reading the news in this country and thought to yourself,
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this can't be real, this has to be a parody? It's been more than three days, you haven't
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been reading the news. It's reached the level where it's almost impossible to tell the difference
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between what's reported as fact by the news media and what someone with a dark sense of humor has
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made up. Well, we thought this was exactly the moment to speak to the man who makes up
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more news than anyone in America, Seth Dillon, who runs Babylon Bee, and he joins us now.
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Seth, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.
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So we're really talking to you today, not as the proprietor of America's premier humor site,
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but as a prophet, as our own Isaiah. Because it turns out, and we went through quite a few
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examples, that the Babylon Bee's parody stories have come true in dozens, scores, nearly 100 cases.
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I'm going to put three on the screen and get your reaction to them to kind of set the stage
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to announce you as America's most accurate prophet. So let's go in order here. This is from January
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2023. Here's the headline. Experts say they don't know what thing is causing everyone to suddenly
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collapse, but it's definitely not that one thing. Let's go to the news story. Something has been
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killing American young people in sharply rising numbers, but it's not vaccines.
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They don't know what it is, but they know it's not vaccines.
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Exactly. So when you see the news story that confirms what you thought was a pretty out there
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joke, what's your reaction? I mean, we're getting accustomed to it at this point, but I think it's
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probably the most common misconception people have is that when the world goes really wild and insane
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and there's crazy stuff happening, that it's easy to satirize that. It's easy to make fun of it. And
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it's actually the opposite. We find that it's... The way that I put it is, imagine if your job is to
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write jokes that are funnier than what Democrats are doing in real life.
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Imagine if your job is to write jokes that are funnier than a Kamala Harris speech.
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I mean, it's challenging. It's actually very challenging.
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So you really want to live in like Amish country where everything is like orderly and neat and
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sensible. That's something fun to pivot against.
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Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. We see this stuff happen where I'm used by it on the one hand,
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and on the other hand, we're like, this is... It's crazy that satire can't stay satire for more
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What the shelf life of your pieces is here. Let's throw up another one. This is from September 2020.
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State with no electricity orders everyone to drive cars that run on electricity. And there
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you have Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of what state?
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California is told not to charge electric cars days after gas car sales ban.
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It's comical. I mean, well, in some sense, we're just reporting the news when we're doing this
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stuff. You know, like, you see it happening. You see the madness happening all around you.
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You call it out, and next thing you know, it's actually in the headlines.
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But you... I guess the joke is you see the implications of the news?
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Yeah. The joke is that you see what's... You can kind of see around the corner. And I think
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it's easy to... You can kind of guess at what people are going to go to next. What's the next
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logical step here, given where we've... What is Kamala Harris's line about how... Where we've
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been and where we're going or something? The line she keeps repeating all the time.
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And wherever you are, you are. And wherever you are, you are. I don't know. I mean, it's...
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You can kind of see around the corner with this, especially when you're trying to think to
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yourself, well, you know, what's the... What is the next insane thing that they could...
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That they could come up with that they haven't already come up with? You just throw that out
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there and see what sticks. I mean, eventually, it's going to come true.
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Well, it's a constant meeting. It's an ongoing meeting. It's just, you know, pitching ideas
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all day long. So we just pitch them back and forth. Based off that, we read the headlines.
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We read the real headlines. And then we exaggerate them a little bit. You know, we do this little
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caricature of the headlines. And then that's when they come true.
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Are you getting to the point where no idea is too outlandish for a joke?
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Well, I mean, I guess part of the problem is some of these ideas are too outlandish for
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a joke, but they do actually happen in real life. So people don't realize they're a joke.
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You know? So you have these things. We'll publish a joke that's clearly a satirical
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joke, but everybody thinks it's true. And they share it as if it's true because they're
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so used to seeing almost satirical headlines in the real news.
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So reality is at fault for that. It's not that, you know, our jokes are too believable.
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It's that reality is too close to satire. Oh, we get fact-checked all the time. We've
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been fact-checked dozens of times. Snopes has fact-checked us at least 20 times, 20 plus
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Right. They do. They, when they, they used to attribute, uh, nefarious motives to us. They
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used to say that we were like misleading people on purpose with these jokes because they were
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believable and people were sharing them as if they were true. Again, not our fault. I think
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that's the fault of reality being too close to satire.
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Yes. Um, but they would fact-check them regular, ridiculous jokes. Like, you know,
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AOC goes on the price is right, guesses everything is free or, um, or, you know,
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Ninth Circuit court overturns death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You know, these, these are,
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they're, they're, they're silly jokes. They're funny jokes, but sometimes people believe that
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it's true because you could actually see somebody doing this.
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Uh, I don't know. I don't, we don't, we don't actually put the name of the author on the article.
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So I'd have to go back and look and say, yeah, yeah. We have a, we have a, we have a very,
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very sharp writing team. They're very good at this. Super good at this. I think one of my,
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honestly, one of my favorites that got fact-checked was our joke about Trump saying that he had done
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more for Christianity than Jesus himself. And that was, uh, that was your headline.
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That was the headline. Trump, I have done more for Christianity than Jesus.
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But he kind of said that at some point, didn't he?
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He did. Well, yeah. So we, we made that joke in 2019. It got fact-checked shortly thereafter
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because it went crazy viral. And then in 2021, I think it was 2021 or 2022, he said he'd done more
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for Christianity and religion in general than any other person in the history. So I, it's hard to
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tell sometimes, are people reading our website and getting ideas for what to say and what to do?
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I don't know. But that, that one was kind of fun.
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So how do you respond when someone fact-checks a joke, AOC on Price is Right, Trump's better
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for Christianity than Jesus. How do you respond to that? Uh, well, when they fact-check it, I think
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it's hysterical when they fact-check it. What I don't like, what I don't like is when the fact-check
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says they've managed to pull off this ruse before they're tricking people. Um, you know, the reason
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your grandma shared that joke on Facebook is because the Babylon Bee tricked her into believing it was
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true. You know, it's, that kind of stuff is ridiculous. We actually threatened to sue Snopes
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because they were, they were literally maligning us and suggesting that we were
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misinforming people on purpose. And then Facebook was saying that they were going to demonetize and
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deplatform us because we were being fact-checked by Snopes. So they're saying you can't spread fake
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news on our platform. I'm like, it's satire. So what, I assume Snopes is run by the CIA or,
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I mean, I don't have evidence of that, but I like Wikipedia. I, it seems obvious, but what do you
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know about Snopes? Uh, there was a couple that started it and they were running it for a long
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time. I think the guy's name, I might mess it up. It was David Mickelson or something like that,
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or Michelson. Um, I may be getting that wrong, but anyway, I, it changed hands recently. Somebody
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else took it over. Oh, someone else. They actually reached out to us and said, I know we've had a,
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you know, we've had a rough past, but we want to put that behind us and move forward. And
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I mean, in, in your experience to the, the fact checkers, which are, I mean, again, clearly at the very
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least influenced by the Intel agencies. Yeah. Do they play any constructive role in our public
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conversation? No, no. I mean, well, first of all, they're spending their time fact-checking satire.
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This, the, the joke about Ruth Bader Ginsburg that, or her death being overturned by the Ninth
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Circuit Court. Can you overturn someone's death, by the way? Uh, it happened, it happened once.
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It happened once. I don't think it happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but USA Today fact-checked that
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one. And they cited 15 sources in their fact-check. Like they were taking it so seriously. They
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checked the Ninth Circuit Court website. They placed phone calls. It's like, just look at the website
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that published it. It's the Babylon Bee. It's insane. Right? Yeah.
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So I always think that behind every ludicrous event like that is a person who spent his day
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doing that thing. So imagine if he went home at night and your wife says, you know, like,
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what, Seth, what'd you do today? Yeah. What'd you accomplish today?
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And you're like, well, I fact-checked a joke with 15 sources. Like the respect level from your wife
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has to plummet, right? The, the, the fact that it got fact-checked is funnier than the joke itself.
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Yes. Like the one, so, um, I, I had spoken with you about this one before. CNN purchasing an
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industrial-sized washing machine to spin the news in before publishing it. That's a ridiculous joke.
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It's silly. It's a CNN bias joke. And that got fact-checked and rated false. So they're spending
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their time on stories that aren't even- Wait, so CNN didn't actually purchase an industrial-sized washing machine?
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Never happened. They never, they never did. They never slapped their logo on a washing machine and
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spun the news in it before it never happened. It was a joke. Um, but the joke is that they fact-check
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it. They took it seriously, but no fact-checking. So the way that I look at it is, you know,
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fact-checking is a, um, it's an arm. It's one of the methods that's employed by the lovers of
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censorship to guard the narrative, not the truth. Yes. And so what they're doing with fact-checking is
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they're, they're, they're very selective. First of all, they're super selective about what they fact-check
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and then the fact-checks themselves often get the facts wrong on purpose. And so they're not
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guarding the truth and saying, okay, there's this problem of misinformation and we're going to prevent
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it spread. And we're going to do that by having objective people look at what the facts are.
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It's all narrative driven. It's all about protecting the popular narrative.
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The lie. Yeah. Whatever the popular lie is that they want you to believe. Yes. That, that, that,
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the, the claims around that, you have the press secretary for the current administration saying
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that, uh, Biden has done more to secure the border than any other person. That's a straight-faced
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claim from the press secretary. Fact-checkers haven't touched it. It has not been rated false.
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Now, uh, governor Abbott in Texas, governor Abbott in Texas, um, had, was talking about how this
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administration currently has basically an open border policy and that got fact-checked and rated false.
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So, you know, the, the challenges to the narrative are fact-checked and rated false. The narrative
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itself, which isn't true, is allowed to go unchecked. So normally we wouldn't care what
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the fact-checkers say because they're obviously discredited. I mean, they're disgusting by their
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nature, but we have to care because they are the triggers that set into motion the censorship
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apparatus at the social media companies, correct? Well, they rely on the, so they use the, the fact-checkers
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are the way of them, uh, getting out of the way and saying, well, we're not the ones
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determining. We're not the arbiters of truth. Facebook could go, could punt to Snopes or whoever
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else, USA Today, whoever's doing the fact-checking and say, we're not censoring you. We're not removing
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your content based on, you know, arbitrary rules. We have third-party fact-checkers that are objective
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and they're the ones deciding what's true and what's false and what can stay and what goes.
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So they just, they fit in as a piece that allows them to basically have like plausible
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deniability that they're involved in censorship. But the USA Today fact-check on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's
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death, that was funded by grants from Facebook. So Facebook paid USA Today to write that.
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Well, didn't Facebook steal the last election too? They put almost half a billion dollars,
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Mark Zuckerberg, into changing the way we vote. So I don't know. Are they going to fact-check
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that? Does that actually happen? Okay. Let me get to the third example of the Babylon Bee's prophetic
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accuracy. And I don't actually know how else you describe this. This is from April of 2022.
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Government disinformation board determines all criticism of government disinformation board to
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be disinformation. It is a self-licking ice cream cone. Okay. So that was your headline.
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Here's the fact. Mayorkas cites misinformation about Homeland Security's disinformation board.
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It's, you know, the world is too absurd to be satirized.
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So when you see that, I mean, do you feel vindicated?
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It means we're onto something. What it means is that there was, okay, so this is another criticism
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of the Babylon Bee. We're narrative driven. We're propagandists. We're trying to push our own
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viewpoint that has no basis. Is that what the propagandists say about you?
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Yeah. Like Slate, all these people, Rolling Stone. When they write, when they write, they do. Yeah.
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And when they write pieces about us, they talk about how we're trying, or the reason our jokes
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aren't funny is because they're not writing on the back of the truth. They're not carrying a message
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of truth. They're pushing a narrative. They're based on a narrative. So, so the joke isn't funny
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But, but I think the fact that we get fact checked so much and these jokes are coming true
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vindicates that there is truth to them, obviously. They're rooted in the truth because
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they're coming true. You have to fact check them and rate them false.
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So, I wonder if we take this seriously enough. I mean, if someone is trying to stop you from
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talking, that person doesn't consider you human, of course, because you can't, if you consider
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someone human, that person has every bit the right to speak that you do. If you consider the
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person subhuman, a slave, then you can make them shut up. So it's the way they see you is not how
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you see them at all. You see them as human beings, correct? The censors, the fact checkers,
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Slate. You don't want to shut them up or put them in prison, do you?
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No, no. And I, this is, I actually like the way that Twitter now acts as handling
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false claims or, or misleading claims because what they're doing is instead of trying to shut
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anybody up, you know, the community notes thing where they tag a note on it, but it's the best
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feature of the platform, by the way. It's so entertaining when people get noted and it's, you know,
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they make a ridiculous claim. Biden's been noted a bunch of times. Even Elon's been noted a couple
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of times. So you share something that's either from a, you know, a dubious source or you make a
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claim that's, you know, obviously false and a community note gets attached to it that offers
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context, readers added context, right? That's at least more speech in the answer to speech that's
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disliked. It's, it's, it's a rebuttal that's, that's prominently set up next to whatever the claim
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was. I like that a lot more than, okay, Snopes rated you false. Therefore we're taking your page
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down. You can't talk anymore. Um, you know, the answer, the answer to speech that you don't like
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should be more speech, right? A refutation or an argument, not removal of your voice.
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Well, of course not. So, but your voice was removed from Twitter back when it was Twitter.
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You were in Twitter prison. I can't remember why were you there? Prison changes. Like how was your
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time in Twitter prison? Uh, um, we were in Twitter jail, uh, as you could put it for eight months.
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We were there with a few other interesting people, Jordan Peterson, Captain Cripton.
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You know, a lot of, a lot of interesting people in Twitter jail.
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I can't even imagine. I can just picture you smoking your home rolled cigarettes, playing
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pinochle, cooking pasta. So we had, uh, we had made a joke. So, so there was a real headline.
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Um, USA Today names Rachel Levine, uh, woman of the year. So Rachel Levine is the transgender
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health admiral in the Biden administration. Oh, the dude in the, with the medals.
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Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, woman of the year. So that headline itself, I think is comical. It's
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funny. It's, it's, it seems like a parody, but it's not, it's real. So we were thinking to
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ourselves, what, what do we do? Very bold and beautiful woman. I don't know what you're
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talking about. Sorry. Brave, stunning. So we were, we were trying to, we were looking
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at this headline and thinking to ourselves, what do we do with this? Like, what is the
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angle here to make a joke out of what's already a joke? This is already a joke and women should
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be offended. Everybody should be offended that this, that, that a male person is winning
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this woman of the year. But, um, the only thing that we could think of to say was, okay,
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well, how about in defense of women insanity, we just simply say the Babylon bees pick for
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man of the year is Rachel Levine. So that was the headline that we put out there. Babylon
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bee names Rachel Levine man of the year. So, you know, Twitter didn't like that. It's
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misgendering. It's, that's so hateful. Yeah, exactly. So, um, misgendering falls under the
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hateful conduct. You're calling him a man. You're referring to a male person as a man. Yeah.
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That's hate. And that's, it's hate, hateful conduct. It's, it's misgendering by their
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policy. It's not, you know, it's not acceptable. So, um, what the, basically what they, what
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they said was this, you can have your account back. If you delete the tweet with that joke
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attached to it, you have, but you have to delete it. They're, they didn't take it down. They
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wanted us to delete it and check this box that said by deleting, you know, when you delete
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this tweet, you acknowledge that you violated the rules, including the rules against hateful
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conduct. So sign a confession, sign a confession, bend the knee, you know, censor yourself, delete
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your own joke. Like we were, I was basically telling Twitter, I'm like, you guys delete,
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if you don't like it, you take it down. Why make me take it down and admit that I did something
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wrong? Well, that's the whole point. It's not censorship, it's subjugation, right?
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Yeah, exactly. So, uh, we said no. So we're like, no, we're not going to delete it. And we
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got into this standoff with Twitter. Can I ask you just a question? So, um, which is a little
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bit off topic, but maybe central, central. You are a Christian, son of a, of a pastor.
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Yeah. When, when you're told by the authorities, not simply that you're being punished, but that
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you have to agree that your punishment is just. Right. Is, is there like a theological component
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for you when you say no? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's standing on, it's, it's standing on the
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principle that not only do we think that this, first of all, it's a joke. Right. Second of all,
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it's true. This is a male person referring to them as a man, a man means an adult human male.
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So there's truth to it as well. Um, so the, the idea that we're not allowed to speak the
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truth, uh, but, and that we have to censor ourselves and admit that we engage not just
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in a falsehood, but something that was hateful. Yeah. I think, I think that there's, there's
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a moral objection to, to playing any part in that. Um, so, uh, yeah, so that, that was really
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the ground that we were standing on. It wasn't just like, oh, let's, you know, let's get some
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publicity by refusing to do it. This was a costly decision, by the way, we had, there
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was nobody in the world at that time knew that Elon was positioning himself to take over
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Twitter. So, and we didn't know that if he did, that he would end up restoring us. So
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it wasn't like we had any kind of fallback for that. It was just, our Twitter audience
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was going to be inaccessible to us if we didn't delete the joke. And we deliberated about it
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for like five minutes and we're like, no, we're not doing it. So we sat in Twitter jail
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until, uh, Elon took the reins and was like, bring back the Babylon Bee.
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So how did that play out? I, and by the way, this is, you're one of the main owners
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of the business. Your whole business is getting your content in front of viewers, selling ads
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against it. I mean, this is like a, as you said, a very costly.
00:19:04.660
It was a very stupid business decision. It was, I think it was a morally right decision,
00:19:10.300
but you know, the right thing and the easy thing are rarely ever the same. It was a costly
00:19:13.300
decision because that's where we generate a lot of our traffic is through Twitter.
00:19:16.640
And that's where, so when, when people say, well, how costly was it to be off of Twitter?
00:19:20.480
Well, I mean, we weren't, we weren't getting engagement from people like Trump or yourself
00:19:25.320
or Rogan or, or, or Musk on Facebook or Instagram. It was happening on Twitter. That's where we
00:19:31.040
got engagement from people with big followings. That's where they, that's how they knew about
00:19:35.020
the bee and that's how they engaged with the bee. So once we were sidelined from Twitter,
00:19:38.120
we were basically out of the conversation. That's where the conversation was happening.
00:19:41.420
Right. So it was, it was a big cost to us, not just monetarily, but just being relevant.
00:19:45.580
We weren't relevant anymore. So, um, I mean, the way, the way it went down was really crazy
00:19:51.920
because you had, you know, obviously Elon was wanting to make a move to buy Twitter. You know,
00:19:57.240
when he, when he first found out that we were, we were suspended, he reached out to us and he's
00:20:00.260
like, is this true? Are you guys really suspended? That's what I'm hearing. At first he actually
00:20:03.980
reached out to our Babylon B account and we couldn't respond to him because we were locked out of it.
00:20:07.260
So we're like, we can receive the message, but we can't reply to it. So we're like,
00:20:11.200
Elon Musk is trying to message us and we can't get back to him. Yeah. So we couldn't even respond.
00:20:15.500
So eventually he, you know, he found our editor in chief's account and was able to message him
00:20:19.200
and get in touch with him. So we're like, yeah, we got, we got to find you guys. Oh yeah. He was,
00:20:23.620
yeah. He was trying to get in touch with us to figure out what was going on. Cause at the time,
00:20:26.600
unknown to us and anybody else, he was already buying Twitter stock and he was kind of positioning
00:20:30.840
himself, looking at Twitter as like a potential acquisition. So, um, and he wanted, and the reason
00:20:37.500
he wanted to do that is because he was concerned that there was a lot of censorship and people
00:20:41.380
weren't allowed to speak freely on the platform anymore. And that's something needed to be done
00:20:45.020
about that. So then he finds out that the B is suspended and he's like, are you serious? This is
00:20:48.640
ridiculous. You should be able to tell jokes. So yeah. So we had a conversation with him about,
00:20:54.120
you know, how insane it was that, that we were kicked off and we're like, and he's like,
00:20:58.000
why don't you just delete the tweet to get back on? And we're like, I don't think we should,
00:21:01.660
I don't think we should have to. And he's like, well, no, I don't, I don't think you should have
00:21:04.500
to either. So fast forward a little bit. I mean, we were on a roller coaster there for a while
00:21:09.120
because he was, you know, he made an offer and then he tried to get out. He tried to back out and
00:21:13.900
say, Oh, you know, you guys misrepresented your numbers. There's all these bots. I don't want to
00:21:17.280
buy bots. I want to buy real users. And so he was trying to get out of the deal. Maybe he bit off more
00:21:21.660
than he could chew and was like having, having cold feet about it. It was quite a mouthful. Yeah. Yeah. And then Twitter
00:21:26.540
sues him to try to keep him in the deal. And so we had no idea if anything was going to happen or if
00:21:31.160
he was actually going to take over, if this was just a big publicity play or whatever.
00:21:35.140
So I woke up to a message one morning, it was October, November last year. I don't know exactly
00:21:40.380
when it was that he took over, but he finally closed the deal. And yeah, it was in October.
00:21:46.280
He finally closes the deal. And I wake up at like, I don't know, eight or nine in the morning. I'm
00:21:51.900
sleeping in that day. It was a weekend. I think it was. And I had a message from Elon
00:21:55.720
that he sent overnight. He said, would you like me to restore the B's account? There
00:21:59.740
will be no censorship of humor. So he took over and was immediately wanting to rectify
00:22:04.460
the problem. And how long after he took over was that?
00:22:10.340
So one of his first texts was to you saying, you're restored.
00:22:13.720
Yeah. Well, would you like me to restore your account? There will be no censorship of humor.
00:22:17.280
Come to find out, we actually didn't get restored for another month because he started, you know,
00:22:21.620
he went into the meetings with the trust and safety team and they're like, you can't just restore people.
00:22:25.720
You can't just break the rules. There's rules. We enforce the rules. If you break the rules for
00:22:29.860
one person, you have to break them for everybody. If you insult someone in power, we censor you.
00:22:33.780
Yeah. Yeah. So they were like, dude, you can't just restore the Babylon Bee. And he's like,
00:22:37.460
well, why not? Why can't, isn't it like a presidential pardon? Why can't I pardon somebody,
00:22:40.960
you know, and set them free? And they're like, this isn't, that's not how this works. I mean,
00:22:44.880
I guess you can, if you want to. So they actually argued with him a lot back and forth.
00:22:47.960
Can I ask you just another sideline question? But like, you can't insult Richard Levine,
00:22:55.300
product of private school, doctor, guy posing as an admiral or whatever. He's in power. He works
00:23:01.560
for the current administration. But if you were to find like some 45 year old white guy drywall
00:23:08.160
hanger in Iowa, is there anything that you would not be allowed to say about him?
00:23:13.260
No, nothing. Nothing. Yeah. No. So this is, let's kill him and everyone like him. Right,
00:23:17.260
right, right. No. So this is such an important point you're bringing up the idea, this concept
00:23:20.740
of who you can and can't make fun of. So Richard Levine, Rachel Levine, whatever you want to call
00:23:26.940
him, man of the year, uh, high ranking white male government official. Yeah. High ranking white
00:23:33.080
male government official. And this is a person that you can't joke about because they're
00:23:35.800
marginalized and oppressed supposedly. I do words even have meaning. What does the word
00:23:40.320
marginalized mean? Dylan Mulvaney. Is Dylan Mulvaney on the red carpet at these events
00:23:44.380
and, and sponsored by every major, uh, you know, brand marginalized and oppressed? What
00:23:49.960
does that word even mean to be marginalized? Right? So we're looking at this and we're like,
00:23:54.280
so wait a minute, they're telling us they have a rule. Facebook now has a rule. The other platforms
00:23:58.900
are adopting this rule and they're trying to make comedians live by the rule. You're not allowed
00:24:03.980
to punch down. That's what they say. You can't punch down and punching down.
00:24:07.500
Dylan Mulvaney towers above the rest of us in his power, right? Right. Right. But the rule
00:24:13.380
against punching down. Who has more power when you were Dylan Mulvaney? Uh, I can't get anybody
00:24:18.160
censored for making fun of me. So, uh, I think, I think if you have the will and the power to,
00:24:22.340
to, to silence people who so much as make a joke at your expense, then you have more power
00:24:26.400
than anybody. You're punching up. Exactly. Ibram X. Kendi has way more power than anyone in the
00:24:31.220
county I live in. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So this idea, the punching down, like the number
00:24:35.260
one rule of comedy should be funny. It's to be funny, right? When a, when a, when a humorist
00:24:39.100
or satirist, a comedian is sitting down to write a joke, they should be thinking to themselves,
00:24:43.160
is this joke funny? Not, am I, am I going to be making fun of someone who supposedly has
00:24:49.720
less power and privilege than me, but can actually get me punished if, if they're offended by my
00:24:53.720
joke? Right. Um, and it's such a, but I think it's a matter of reclaiming the language. Like
00:24:58.980
Dylan Mulvaney, Rachel Levine. I mean, these are our rulers actually. Right. Yeah. They're,
00:25:07.680
they're the most powerful and privileged people in our culture and you're not allowed to joke
00:25:12.240
about them. So, and that's, and that's how Michelle Obama is. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this
00:25:16.480
is a, everybody understands this too. This is a, it's a well-known saying that, you know,
00:25:19.840
you can tell who you're, you can tell who rules over you by who you're not allowed to criticize
00:25:23.220
or who you're allowed to joke about. And that's exactly the situation. I don't think you're
00:25:25.580
even allowed to say that though. Are you probably not? I don't think you are. Yeah. Yeah. That's
00:25:30.160
hate speech right there. Yeah. But we're not, but we're not, we're not punching down. We're not
00:25:35.520
punching down. I think we're punching back, but this is the thing that this is the, so, so comedy
00:25:39.400
when they, when they make this rule, you know, well, there's, there's a number of elements to this
00:25:44.180
too. Imagine thinking to yourself when you're making a joke too, like, you know what? I shouldn't
00:25:47.940
joke about those people. They're beneath me. Imagine if that's the mentality that you're in,
00:25:52.220
right? Like that's a condescending mentality. Well, any man who's ever lived in
00:25:55.520
a dorm knows that mocking somebody is a sign of fraternal friendship. That's your peer.
00:26:01.960
Right. I had a friend whose birthday was this morning. I mean, I sent him a whole barrage
00:26:06.340
of insulting jokes about his age and his sexual potency. And that's the first thing I do when
00:26:11.640
one of my closest friends gets older. You know what I mean? The way of treating each
00:26:14.260
other equally is joking about each other indiscriminately. So yeah, I think, I think
00:26:17.980
comedians who, and this is, this is why so much of comedy is not funny today. It's, it's my chief
00:26:22.920
criticism of like late night comedy, which I find unwatchable. I think it's totally
00:26:26.480
unwatchable. But also contemptible. I mean, they're collaborators.
00:26:28.560
They are, they are, um, they're just like the fact checkers, they're guardians of the narrative.
00:26:35.780
How can Jimmy Kimmel live with him? Like Jimmy Kimmel is a talented guy and I don't, I don't
00:26:40.220
think he's like an evil person or something, but he's made this deal where he just serves
00:26:45.060
power and attacks anybody who challenges power. Like how can, honestly, how can he look in
00:26:51.300
the mirror and say, I'm doing something honorable? Like how could he live with himself? How could
00:26:54.960
his wife sleep with him? Well, it'd be, it'd be one thing. It'd be one thing if, if his job wasn't
00:27:02.740
to be a comedian and to do that, but his job is to be a comedian. He's supposed to be funny
00:27:06.900
and comedians are supposed to hold people in positions of power.
00:27:10.160
But he's a pure suck up to the people in charge.
00:27:15.000
And it's like the self-hatred he must feel because he wasn't always, that's my point.
00:27:20.320
I mean, Colbert has always been a hard partisan, talented guy, but obviously a part, you know,
00:27:25.220
not, he's not a comedian, but Kimmel was a comedian. Like how does he, I don't understand.
00:27:32.760
He might, he might buy into the narrative to the extent that he thinks it's morally wrong
00:27:42.540
But it's not just that. He's like pouring hot oil on the peasants from the parapet.
00:27:46.600
Like he's hurting anyone who challenges the king.
00:27:52.220
The, the comedians should be poking holes in the popular narrative, not propping it up.
00:27:58.060
Like no amount of money is worth what he's doing, in my opinion.
00:28:01.900
Okay. So speaking of handmaidens to power who want to kill you and anyone else who speaks
00:28:07.500
the truth. So you get back on Twitter and this deeply upsets a figure called Brandy Zedrozny,
00:28:14.240
assuming I'm pronouncing its name correctly. And I'm also not guessing gender on this one.
00:28:19.560
But I will say, as you watch this clip, this is Brandy Zedrozny complaining about you speaking
00:28:24.100
out loud. Keep in mind, it's not just about Brandy Zedrozny, whatever that is. This is
00:28:29.380
the person who runs our society. This person and people like it are actually in charge.
00:28:34.860
And I just can't wait till the rule ends because there's never been a worse ruling class
00:28:40.620
Who did he bring back yesterday? He brought back Jordan Peterson, the Babylon Bee and Kathy
00:28:44.780
Griffin. So the Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson, they were taken off the platform. They were
00:28:50.380
suspended for misgendering trans people. So apparently that policy against hate speech and
00:28:57.880
harassment of trans people, that's done with. That's important. This comes at a time when
00:29:02.700
trans people are being harassed and violence is aimed at them at sort of unseen levels before.
00:29:08.200
So this, this sort of matters. Everything about that, the sort of the, obviously the low IQ,
00:29:16.920
the up talk on there at the end of every sentence, the ersatz glasses, the completely theatrical fake
00:29:23.200
glasses, the made up stats, the fake concern for some group that she knows nothing about at all.
00:29:32.260
And then under all of it, the desire to press harder with her boot against the neck of ordinary people
00:29:40.760
and to shut them up on behalf of her bosses, the people who run the world. Like every, that's just,
00:29:47.040
that's the perfect, I hope that someone puts that in a time capsule for when the revolution finally ends
00:29:51.280
and like we're rid of people like that. They ran the world. How do we let them?
00:29:55.540
I know it's insane, but it's, you know, it's, it's, it's how they control speech and thought. It's how
00:30:01.780
it's, if you, if your worldview is incoherent and impossible to defend rationally, then you have
00:30:08.900
to insulate it from criticism. And what's the most effective kind of criticism there is? I think it's
00:30:12.260
mockery, which exposes foolishness for what it is. So it, it makes perfect sense to me. I honestly,
00:30:18.280
I was, I was mistaken about this. It's, it's something I admit I was wrong about is when early on,
00:30:22.660
when we first started getting fact-checked and we first started having these issues with censorship
00:30:25.880
with the Babylon Bee, it was my belief that humor, uh, these were humorless scolds who just didn't
00:30:34.200
think our jokes were funny and they thought they were offensive and they were being hypersensitive
00:30:38.480
and that's, it's not, that's not the case. No, it's not. You're going through the stages of
00:30:43.400
realization. The stages of realization. I eventually learned and came to realize that it's not humor.
00:30:49.380
Humor is a vehicle for truth delivery. They don't like the fact that the narrative is being
00:30:54.200
challenged in a way that's effective. And so they have to shut you up. And so that's what it's about.
00:30:59.640
It has nothing to do with them being, and it has nothing to do with being offended. This whole
00:31:04.100
thing, you know, the, the, the hypersensitive, the people getting up in, in comedians faces or
00:31:08.560
charging their state, the stage to slap them in the face when they make a joke they don't like
00:31:12.140
the, um, you know, don't bring your speaker to our campus because we need a safe space here and this
00:31:17.080
will offend people. The, it, they're not, it's all fake outrage because they've learned that fake
00:31:23.160
outrage can be used as a tool to bludgeon you into silence and submission.
00:31:27.940
But that's, that's exactly right. If they would censor you, they would kill you. Period. Because
00:31:32.460
you don't censor a peer, another citizen, another human being. You censor your slaves. You censor
00:31:38.160
someone you consider less than human. So if censorship doesn't work, they'd indict you. If that doesn't
00:31:42.660
work, they would kill you. I mean, that's just, it's a very obvious continuum. But I'd also say,
00:31:46.600
and I want to ask you this, as the target of people like Brandy Zedrosny, wouldn't you rather
00:31:51.820
be the target of an explicitly fascist regime where it was aggressive rather than passive aggressive,
00:31:57.360
where some guy in a funny mustache got up and said, you're going to jail instead of having someone
00:32:02.000
in fake complex glasses telling you you're endangering trans people. I mean, there is a kind
00:32:07.000
of, the passive aggression is very hard to take. I'd rather neither of them, but well, I don't know.
00:32:11.200
If I have to take my pick, I'll take Twitter jail over real jail any day. But
00:32:14.100
Well, like, that's where that's going. You don't censor people if you consider them human. Period.
00:32:18.800
Yeah. No, they're both bad. They're both bad. They're just two sides of the same coin.
00:32:24.020
How long do you think your moment of freedom will last?
00:32:30.140
Well, a lot longer now that Musk is running one of the predominant platforms.
00:32:35.460
If that hadn't happened, I mean, it was just a matter of, like, Facebook throttles us so badly
00:32:42.260
now. We don't get any reach on Facebook. We don't drive any traffic on Facebook. It's not,
00:32:50.340
We've tried. We don't, you can't get straight answers.
00:32:52.800
Do they wear complicated glasses too and up talk?
00:32:55.500
They just give you like really like canned responses or they point you to their policies.
00:33:02.920
Or they have people in place. They'll have some kind of like policy person who's there
00:33:06.200
to mollify you and just hear what you have to say and tell you we're, we're, we're looking
00:33:10.000
into this for you. And then, you know, I'm going to run this up the chain kind of like
00:33:13.220
the people who are there to listen to you, to make it seem like they're actually paying
00:33:16.160
attention, but they don't do anything about it.
00:33:18.380
Honestly, wouldn't you rather, and I'm not being only half facetious, deal with like the
00:33:23.440
North Korean security apparatus where they're like, say that and we'll kill you.
00:33:26.660
It's super straightforward and they're not going to lecture you about trans law.
00:33:33.640
Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, I think I, I'm, I'm hopeful for a couple of reasons.
00:33:37.180
I think, I think Musk really is committed to free speech. I think he means that. I don't
00:33:40.580
think, you know, Twitter was not a money play for him. I don't think that he's, you know.
00:33:44.460
No, it was not a money play for Twitter. Twitter was, is an absolute money pit. And,
00:33:48.960
and he realized very early on it became real. So one of the conversations that they were
00:33:53.200
having internally about whether to restore us was, well, what, what are going to be the
00:33:56.980
advertisers reactions to us putting people back on the platform? And so this, and this
00:34:02.360
is where the censorship gets all the more complicated is the brands themselves don't
00:34:06.860
want that speech. They will with pull, they will pull out their funding. They will pull
00:34:10.940
out their ad buys and cripple Twitter financially if Twitter doesn't do their bidding. And so
00:34:16.860
it's coming from the government. It's coming from the advertisers. It's coming from everywhere.
00:34:20.240
All the positions of power are controlling our speech and saying that we can't joke about
00:34:24.540
these people and things, but we're punching down. Um, so yeah, I mean, he had to, he's,
00:34:30.040
he's, he's walking that tightrope of, I want free speech, but I need revenue in order to keep
00:34:36.020
this business going. So, you know, he was doing this drastic cost cutting measures, you know,
00:34:40.820
all of that stuff. Um, but trying to, I don't know how you actually run a free speech platform
00:34:46.320
and have it be, have it generate enough revenue for you to survive. I don't know how he's going
00:34:52.280
to figure out. Maybe he will, if anyone can do it, Musk can do it. He's, he reuses rockets
00:34:57.040
and lands them on platforms in the middle of the ocean after they've already launched
00:34:59.980
and crazy stuff like that. So I think he can figure this out, but I don't know how he's
00:35:03.520
going to do it. So you expect to be up and available to the public through the election?
00:35:09.060
Yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean, will we, uh, do we have as much reach as we used to have? No,
00:35:16.920
but I mean, we still have, we still have a platform. I don't, I've never been an advocate
00:35:20.940
of let's go create new platforms and do our own thing because then you're just creating
00:35:25.480
a new echo chamber where people who agree with you are on that platform. And, uh, there's
00:35:30.020
not interesting conversations happening there. So I am wanting to stay in the conversation
00:35:35.540
where the conversation actually matters. These prominent platforms where that you could
00:35:39.040
call the public square of the modern age. And I think that we have a hopeful outlook when
00:35:44.240
it comes to legal recourse there too. I mean, you have, you have these laws that were passed
00:35:49.180
at the state level, but in Florida and Texas that make it illegal to, for these platforms
00:35:53.720
to engage in viewpoint discrimination. And the Supreme court is now going to hear these
00:35:58.040
cases because, you know, one of them was rejected by the 11th circuit. One of them was upheld.
00:36:01.560
The Texas one was upheld by the fifth circuit. So, um, the Supreme court is going to make
00:36:07.020
a decision on whether or not these companies can engage in politically motivated viewpoint
00:36:10.480
discrimination. And if they can't, then we're legally allowed to be there.
00:36:14.240
Last question as someone who operates in this world every day, which platform do you think
00:36:20.020
is more censored? The Facebook American owned by Mark Zuckerberg or Tik TOK owned by the Chinese
00:36:28.140
communist government? Uh, I'm not sure that that distinguishable at this point. I mean,
00:36:35.280
what do you think? Uh, that Facebook is not a free speech platform at all. They may give
00:36:40.620
more lip service to free speech. In fact, Twitter did too, back when we were censored that they're
00:36:44.280
a platform for free expression without barriers. Um, they're liars. They're liars. They lie
00:36:49.140
straight to your face and that's fraud. They shouldn't be allowed to do that either.
00:36:51.720
Seth Dillon, thank you for everything you've done. Thank you.
00:36:54.720
Thank you. Congratulations on your prop seat. Thanks.