Episode 180： Most Hated Man In Hollywood
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.62073
Summary
Perez Hilton is one of the most hated men in Hollywood, and not just for the reasons only internal Hollywood knows about. He s a celebrity host on the Chippendales stage in Las Vegas, where he talks about how he went from building a website that got 8.8 million hits in a single day on his website to becoming one of Hollywood s most hated people.
Transcript
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You know, there's a lot of people in Hollywood who are hated.
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Some of them for reasons that we know about, like fans know about, but some of them for
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The person I'm sitting down with today, he calls himself the most hated man in Hollywood.
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And outside of that, Mila Kunis once said he's the one that started trolling.
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He's the original troller before any of these people today that learned how to troll.
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He was the first one, and that's none other than Perez Hilton.
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He breaks down how he went from building a regular website that all of a sudden got 8.8
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Perez Hilton, thank you for making the time to spend some time with us here today.
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I've been here in Vegas for over three weeks now.
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The special celebrity host here at Chippendales, and I've been having the best time.
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I've been doing a lot of acting, and we're just performing lately, which is kind of going
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I went to college, and I studied acting, and then I got sidetracked with my little hobby
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that turned into a full-fledged career that allowed me to support not just myself, but
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And recently, I've been on TV shows, auditioning, and I got this great opportunity to come out
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to Vegas, which I love, and my mom loves, and my kids have been enjoying, and it's been
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You've had a lot of great stories that come out, and there's been a lot of controversy.
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I mean, you got the bad, you got the whole thing going on, right?
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Which is what kind of needs to be when somebody really gets good at what they do.
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If I went to high school with you, and we're in 10th grade together, we're in math, we're
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I graduated top 10 in my class in high school, and I went to NYU on a full scholarship.
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So, were you always curious in other people's stories, even when you were in high school?
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I attribute most of my success to my upbringing, in that I grew up in a Latino household where
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In fact, chismear, the chisme, it was a good thing.
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And my mom was the biggest chismosa in the neighborhood.
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She knew everything about everybody, about the neighbor down the street, about my family,
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You know, she would get her Spanish-language celebrity weekly magazines.
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You know, both of my parents fled a communist regime, oppression, and came to this country
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with nothing, and had to build something out of that.
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And they instilled in me just the importance of not just even working hard, but working
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So that if I don't even achieve it, it's still higher than most.
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Like, you knew this is what space you're going to be in.
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And I also knew I was different from everybody else.
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Miami in the 90s was very different than it is now.
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I would say back then it wasn't very accepting or tolerant of different people.
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Like, if you were growing up in Miami in the 90s, and you told your parents,
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I want to be a sculptor, they'd be like, oh, you're not going to be a sculptor.
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You need to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer.
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Which is what everybody who went to my all-boy Jesuit school did.
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You were a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer.
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And you said, I'm hoping my sons are straight and not gay because it's an easier life.
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Just the same way I hope that my daughters aren't fat.
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Even after I grew up, all my 20s, like, yo-yoing and having constant issues with my body and my weight.
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Clearly, I will love and accept my children no matter.
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There's one thing my kids could do that I would not love and support.
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They could do anything else and I would love and support them, dot, dot, dot, so long as they're not lazy.
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You don't have to be an all-A student, but I have to know that you're putting in the effort.
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So if you're getting C's but working your butt off, okay, you worked really hard and that's what you could do.
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But I'm not going to sit back and be like, oh, it's okay, you don't have to try.
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By the way, that's a very interesting dynamic when you say that.
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That's the biggest lesson I've learned in life.
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In this day and age, you might luck your way into success.
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There are a lot of instances because of social media of these personalities who do nothing and then overnight they have 2 million followers on Instagram.
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However, you don't even need talent, but you will not sustain success if you're lazy.
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So would you say you are a 100% capitalist when it comes down to the economy?
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Because I know your family left Cuba and communism.
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So you would say you 100% believe in capitalism?
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I mean, but I also personally give back and I don't even like to put labels on myself.
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Like I am an open-minded person and very liberal, but in many ways I'm also very conservative.
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But I also do believe in giving back, you know, like let's tax alcohol, let's tax cigarettes, let's tax gaming, the lotto, let's find creative ways.
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Do we really need to spend, thankfully that was canceled, like $20 million on a military parade.
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Let's be smart with how we are spending our money.
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So do you actually follow politics as well or no?
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I've always been, you know, interested and discussing what's happening in our country.
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I don't call my website an entertainment news site.
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And to me, politics, social issues, silly cat videos, all of that falls under the umbrella of pop culture.
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So what do you think about the current president that we have?
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Any other president, a Karen McDougal story or a Stormy Daniels story would be done.
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But it doesn't seem like it does anything with this, with Donald Trump.
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So what is so different about him that makes him an anomaly?
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I have come through the storm, because you mentioned Stormy Daniels, and I actually am inspired by what has happened in this country,
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in that I've never experienced a president like him before.
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People older than me lived through Richard Nixon, and maybe he was somewhat comparable.
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We could have the most ill-equipped person in the White House, and the world is not going to stop spinning.
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The country hasn't exploded or imploded yet, thankfully.
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Clearly, I'm not happy with everything, but now there's less than two years left.
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So you don't think he's getting re-elected at all?
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I don't think he will get re-elected, just because I know there were so many Republicans who voted for him just because they hated Hillary Clinton that much.
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But they had convinced themselves that she was worse for some reason.
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So who do you think is coming up that's not going to be worse?
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I mean, there's actually a lot of viable options.
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To me, you know, I would love Elizabeth Warren, a Cory Booker, not a Bernie Sanders.
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So what do you think about the Democratic Party right now, the challenge you're going through, where they feel like they're being pulled to the left?
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So if Mike Bloomberg runs for president in 2020, which he could have run this last cycle, but he didn't want to hurt Hillary Clinton's chances of winning, he ended up speaking at the DNC, the Democratic National Convention, I would seriously consider voting for Mike Bloomberg.
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I acknowledge that there are some amazing Republicans out there.
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One of my favorite politicians, a real sensible, smart person, Ileana Ross-Laytonen.
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It also helps when people have those in their families that aren't the same as them.
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So if you're a Republican in Congress, but your son or daughter is a Democrat, or your son or daughter is gay, or your son or daughter married a Muslim person, then if you're that Republican, that opens your mind.
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People like Meghan McCain, even John McCain, people like Anna Navarro.
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Like, the people that will support him no matter what, that troubles me.
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Well, I have a problem with anybody that's no matter what any candidate.
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Like, if somebody wants to go as a centrist, independent candidate, you know, some people might think, oh, the Republican Party's gone to Trump, and the Democratic Party's gone to Socialists.
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So I'm going to go with this guy who's speaking to me.
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When you typically go too far left, and then you go too far right, then you're typically going to want somebody in the middle.
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That'd be very interesting if somebody in the middle makes a run at you.
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Looking for a president with no experience needed.
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I mean, I honestly think almost, I won't say anybody, but like 99 out of 100 people could do a better job than Donald Trump.
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When you were coming up, and I know obviously right now a lot of people look at you, oh, boy, it's either TMZ or it's you, and the stories are coming out.
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And people said, wow, where is this coming from?
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Back in 2004, when I started, it was the wild, wild west of the Internet.
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I started off blogging as a hobby, not thinking anybody was reading my site, like, oh, nobody's reading this.
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I was doing things then that I don't do now because I know better not to do them now.
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So the first thing that really got everybody's attention was, well, first of all, I nicknamed Brad Angelina Brangelina.
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And then I posted the first photos of them together as a couple.
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And how I got those photos was I posted them illegally.
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And now the photo agencies don't even operate this way anymore.
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The photo agency sent the photos to all of the celebrity magazines in the UK and the US and asking for the highest bidder in each territory.
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And I was friendly with an editor at one of the UK magazines whose magazine got outbid so they were not going to run the photos.
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And because print wasn't coming out for a few more days, I posted them before they went to print.
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And I posted the first photos of Brad, print, and Angelina Jolie anywhere.
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And there was so much traffic to my website that it crashed.
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People were so interested in, like, oh, my God, it's true?
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So you said you got a contact from UK, but you're here.
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So how did you become so good at your sources being willing to share, like, what is in return?
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It's not like you're a billionaire and you're CNN.
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But it helped that I was living in Los Angeles.
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And back then, I was a lot more liberal with what I would post, too.
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I operated differently than I do now when I was a kid.
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You and Lady Gaga had a good relationship together.
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A friendship that was a little bit of falling out.
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Now I don't even try to have celebrity friends.
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I was really good friends with Katy Perry when she was nobody.
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By 2007, you know, I had been on a ton of TV shows.
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And then I was a big champion supporter of hers.
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She almost became too big of a star to be my friend, if that made sense.
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Like, just realizing that I don't want to have celebrity friends.
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But then I just grew up and I realized underneath it all, it's an unequal relationship.
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In the case of somebody like Lady Gaga, it may have started off them using me.
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And then it might have turned into me using them.
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But there was always and will always be some element of using each other, which I don't
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Have you been following the whole Alex Jones controversy?
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You think it's right that these guys got together and they did what they did?
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Alex Jones is this ultra right wing, what some argue is a dangerous person, conspiracy theorist.
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He's been banned from a lot of private companies, so privately owned organizations saying he
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What I would have done is make his material not come up in searches.
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If he's on YouTube, for example, and he's talking about Donald Trump, if I search Donald
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Trump on YouTube, I don't want to see anything from Alex Jones show up on a search.
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The only way that people should be able to see them if they're subscribed to him.
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So he should still be able to reach his subscribers, but not show up in search, I think.
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I don't agree with what he's saying, but I will defend his right to say it, even on
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You know, the government can't prosecute him for saying stupid, wrong things.
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They say that they have the right to ban him because it's a private enterprise.
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I have the right to ban any customer that I want.
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They clearly have their terms of service and they could point, say, oh, he violated this,
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You've been able to take your blog from what it was to now.
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What kept you going that got you to where you're at today?
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Whatever interests me, whatever I think will be fun, whatever I think people want to see
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or hear, whatever I observe is working for other people or in other ways.
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You know, I'm just so proud that everything went off without a hitch today with Perez Hilton
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I should have done a major redesign and a revamp a long time ago, but I want to do this.
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Like my old website had not been updated in forever.
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It's never too late to try something new, to try something different.
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You know, I look at somebody like a Joan Rivers as an ultimate inspiration for me because
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she suffered a lot of setbacks, had an incredible career, was working literally until the week
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And, you know, I've been around long enough to have made a bunch of mistakes.
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And for a while there, I was going through the no phase, which is a strategy that a lot
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And not only yes, my thing is not just to say yes to a lot, but to say yes and.
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How can I turn this one opportunity into an even bigger opportunity?
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How can I do that and have it not disrupt my life?
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Like really being smart about the yeses and turning yes into more yes.
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What excites me is just continuing to have a long career and continuing to show people
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I don't see the provoking is going to go away anytime soon.
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But you can do that in a way that's not mean or cruel.
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Would you say initially when you came out, you were trolling a lot more?
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But you can, and you can troll in a non-mean way.
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There's tons of ways you can troll without being a nasty, mean troll.
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Although Mila Kunis recently said in an interview that I invented trolling.
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I keep, I keep waiting for somebody to add that to my Wikipedia and nobody has.
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You know, we, obviously we, our audience, they're entrepreneurs, they're business people.
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They're trying to go out there and do something big for themselves.
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One of my favorite things to tell young people when I go speak at colleges or high schools,
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a lot of business people and entrepreneurs are hung up on the idea.
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Everybody thinks they have the most brilliant, genius idea.
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And then I tell young people and you, no, ideas are not special.
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And then they roll their eyes and they're like, oh, no, that's BS.
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Because I could come up with something that nobody's ever thought of before.
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Remember, you are living in Las Vegas and somebody in Australia randomly may have come
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up with the exact same brilliant, never before done idea.
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So whenever you can find what is inside of you that's different and special and fine tune
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it and share it with the world, success will come a lot quicker.
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And that becomes a great idea because you are a great idea.
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Again, anything you took away from this, comment below.
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If you have any thoughts you want to share with him, you can tweet.
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The Perez Hilton is for me personally and then Perez Hilton is for the website.
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And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
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And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
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And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.