Digital Social Hour - Hidden Cameras & Mushrooms with Diplo I Scumbag Dad DSH #407

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Scumbag Dad comes to the show to talk about hidden cameras and mushrooms with Diplo APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey Billy, why don't we tell them what we're about, man? So we're here to welcome you to the Madhouse Chronicles. It's a talk show with myself, Billy Morrison. And me, Ozzy Osbourne. This man, Prince of Darkness, and we watch and react to the maddest internet clips. What do we discuss, Ozzy? Drugs, rock and roll, aliens, all that kind of shit. Drugs, rock and roll, aliens, and all that kind of shit.

Come and join Ozzy and myself. Visit osbournemedHouse.com to get special access to... Come on! What do you say? Do you think it's the wildest show on the internet? Oh, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I think one of their cardinal sins is that they

pretend like it's random. A guy did a video where he approached a disabled kid and his dad. You know, I don't have a dollar. Do you have any money for me? The kid just happens to be a fan of Travis Barker. But that was a super well-planned thing. Like, the guy had contacted the family months ago.

The dad had already agreed to be part of this play. But in fact, this was like a well-planned and articulated advertisement. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode. Welcome back to the show, guys. I'm your host as always, Sean Kelly. We're here on the Digital Soul Shower. We're here with Scumbag Dad.

And I got to say, you don't seem like a scumbag. Yeah, the name is sort of evolved when it first started. When it first started, I used the name Scumbag Dad to sort of make fun of a bunch of like nice guy dads on TikTok. You know, I saw them, you know, people like Korean Dad and Proud Dad, they're treating the camera like a kid they're like oh hey let's go get grapes or something and i was like well wouldn't it be funny if they were negligent or alcoholic or you know they were actually criminals and so as time went on i i wanted the the name to be sort of subversive i wanted it to be like okay you're getting information from a guy called your scumbag dad

like is that really trustworthy and so i've sort of built it on from there no i'm actually i think i'm a pretty good dad i've got a kid nice and i hang out with him all the time and i i think i'm giving him a pretty good childhood okay so you put these nice guys out of business and then you became a nice yeah yeah pretty much so yeah once i had a kid uh it's not so much that the the goal was ever to put them out of business but i wanted to like highlight that it's sort of more funny if the story is is more silly right you know like like it's very easy to go to the camera and be like hey let's go get grapes but for us to like take the kid or take the camera on a drug deal or something like that i thought was like inherently funnier yeah because i wanted to do action movies you know at the end of the day like when i started

to do tiktok i wanted to do like high octane like action shorts right but tiktok kept banning me over and over again why uh because there was too much like violence and implied drug use you know what i mean because because the the guidelines were very strict you know what i mean they would say um i would get a video taken down because of a drug reference and so now i'd need to change the language yeah so it's not you know it's now it's special sugar now i have to say it's special sugar instead of like a different type of thing and tiktok would ban a video if now if someone throws a punch that's okay but if someone throws a punch that is that connects on camera they're taking the video down and i got banned i got post banned so many times about two years ago i was like i have to kill the

series i had like a huge vision for the series and even though it's what like blew me up on tiktok i don't really think that's what i'm known for anymore now i'm known for like making weird satire and like deconstructive comedy on like bigger creators and trends right so yeah i think i think um i keep the name i keep the name your scumbag dad because i want it to be one of those sort of off-putting things. Like you don't expect this like wild guy with a mullet called your scumbag dad to be speaking facts. Yeah. And I like coming at comedy and I like coming at critique from that angle. Did you have that name before you had a kid?

No, no. Well, I mean, I'm sorry. Yes, I actually had the name scumbag dad before I had a kid because my entire goal was to, uh, sort of make fun of like nice guy dads, like the scumbag dad project started very simply, but then I wanted to use it to actually make fun of parasocial relationships. Right. Uh, I had a storyline that I wanted to progress that ended up getting nerfed by Tik TOK. Um, but I wanted to show people that just because someone loves you and just because somebody's fun doesn't mean they have your best interest in mind and and you could become like a

worse person by choosing them over you like a lot of the comments and scumbag dad videos were like still better dad than mine even though like the dad character literally took them on like a a drug deal or like a trap like like a like made the kid an accessory to a crime people are like well he's fun and he's funny and that is what i wanted to deconstruct like long term i wanted the story to evolve such that the main character uh becomes horrible and and and you want to i wanted people to leave the series knowing like it would have been better just not to ever trust the dad character but uh life happened you you know, times changed. And now I'm just a regular dad who makes like crazy skits online that make fun of other

creators. Nice. Yeah. You built a huge following, three mil on YouTube, six mil TikTok. What were those first few viral videos about? Well, when I first started, I only had a couple of viral videos. I started my first viral video ever was actually a watch video. Not this watch, but a different one. It was a clock two and i had hardly hardly 2 000 followers i was just sort of

using tiktok as a way to um like promote music that i was posting to youtube and stuff and i viewed it as very subsidiary once i posted that watch video and i got two million views i was like oh it's possible to grow here in a way that I can't on YouTube. So I started to expand. I started to make skits. So watch videos with a start. And then I made a really dumb song about putting an egg on my wife's head. And it was real. I made the song because I knew I had eggs in the fridge and I had a friend over. And I'm like, let's do a dumb song that's part prank, part weird musical. And so I literally cooked cooked an egg i put it on my wife's head while she was asleep and that song like went super nuclear so that was like the first sort of big hit um and then i started to get a little weirder with the skits until the scumbag dad project was

like the main thing for a little more than a year and a half and then as i started to get banned more i started to do more um more satire i would pick like larger creators or things that were trending and i would you know find meat to pick at them right and then i would find a funny way like or an absurdist way to make fun of that yeah i've seen you go out some big creators i saw you go after people that use hidden camera print for their pranks right yeah i think hidden cameras are like a real pox on society and i think that a lot of people aren't really educated enough to understand that. If you film in public,

any creator knows if you've got a cell phone out or camera out in public, you know 99% of people walking by, they're going to say, as long as I'm not in the shot, I don't care if you're filming, whatever. As long as you're not in the shot, as long as you're not in my way, they don't care.

But a lot of folks who don't create, they don't see that. They don't see how upset someone can get when they even think they're in your video. And so creators who are fairly selfish, they understand they can get around that by just using the hidden camera. So, okay, if you aren't very creative, say you're not very creative and you want to succeed on social media. Well, if you can't sing, dance, act, edit, whatever, what are you really going to do?

Well, it's really easy to strap on a hidden camera and turn other people into your actors whether they know it or not and then what the way things have evolved like it's basically a prank and as times times evolved people have started to view pranksters as like cringy and horrible right but now they've taken that ethos and they ameliorate it with a money giveaway they put on the hidden camera they film them they screw with them it's basically a prank but oh that i'm going to give them a thousand dollars at the end so now it's okay and that's where we start to get into like weird concepts of ethics right is that what i think a lot of the audience a lot of the short form audience doesn't understand the definition of work.

Work is not just swinging a hammer and hitting a nail. Work is giving your image and your voice and presentation to someone. When someone doesn't know they're on camera and they essentially behave normally in front of an influencer, they have become an actor in a play that they never agreed to. Right. And part of the reason that that influencer chose that person is probably because of their look you know a lot of the kindness videos tend to involve folks but they tend to involve minorities people disabled people people who

when you initially see them on camera there's there's somewhat of an interest there somewhat of an interest because a lot of us don't get close to homeless folks a lot of us don't get that close to people who aren't doing well but immediately when they're on camera in that first second there's immediate interest by the audience and even though that homeless guy is getting a thousand dollars at the end of that video the comments the comment sections aren't understanding that that was a hire that was a hire by by any other name and there's a lot of sort of ethical ways to worm around that but at the end of the day you just hired that guy yeah didn't actually give him charity if i give you if you need ten

dollars from me you're like oh man i need ten dollars to afford this thing i really need i just don't have it and i give it to you with no expectation of paying back i have now done it a charity and i forget about it we never bring bring it up again. I have done you a kindness because I gained nothing but the feeling of the kindness. But if I give you that $10 and I ask you to do a dance for a video, I've just done, I've done a higher, even if it's a thousand dollars, even if it's a million dollars, and even if the dance took you 10 seconds, it's still a higher at the end of the day and i think that that is probably the toughest mental bridge for the audience to understand you know what i mean so that's kind of like

philosophically that's where i'm at and that's why i go after the hidden camera guys a lot because unless you're a content creator you don't understand just how few people want to be in your video yeah you know what i mean yeah for, for sure. That makes sense. And it seems like a lot of those skits or pranks seem fake. A lot of them are. A lot of them are very well planned. A lot of the big guys, I mean, they've got big sponsors. And if you know anything about sponsors, you know that sponsors don't play games with their money.

When you pitch a sponsorship, that goes through nine layers of people. And they don't want you to pick someone random. They want you to pick the disabled person, or't want you to pick someone random they want you to pick the disabled person or they want you to pick like the most sort of sad character you can find and i think one of the cardinal sins of you know these hidden kindness pranks or kindness content i think one of their you know cardinal sins is that they pretend like it's random they pretend like they just walked up to a guy in the middle of the parking lot and like,

Oh, can you give me a dollar? I can't afford a taxi. That was not a random person. That person was either a plant or someone they spent a while waiting for. They're like, that guy looks, he's got the right look.

We're going to go after him. Right. You know? And, and, and that sort of, uh, did I answer the question or did I go on a rant?

I forgot the question. Honestly. Oh, okay. Oh wait, pranks were fake. But, but yeah,

but, but, but, but, but I mean, a great example is a guy did a video where, um, he approached,

he approached a disabled kid and his dad and he said, Hey, uh, you know, I don't have a dollar. Do you have any money for me? And the dad has a hundred dollar bills in his wallet. And,

uh, basically, but the other way, the dad has a hundred dollar bills in his wallet. And, uh, basically the dad has a hundred dollar bills in his wallet. And you know, the, the kid just happens to be a fan of Travis Barker. You know what I mean? It seems like a very candid, beautiful moment. Like a disabled kid is, is gets to meet his hero, but that was a super well-planned thing. Like the had contacted the family months ago the dad had already agreed to be part of this play you know what i mean so no matter like the story behind that is inherently deceptive to the audience because they think you just found some random kid and gave him this amazing day but in fact this was like a well-planned and articulated advertisement whether whether it's an advertisement for a product or not as irrelevant because it wasn't presented in like, it wasn't presented to the audience, honestly. Yeah. And what these guys do is they hide behind the money giveaway. They hide behind,

they're able to hide behind these certain ethical defenses. They're like, well, how many people did you help today? And I'm like, my entire point is don't post people that you're helping because you're hiring them. Why would I have posted any of this? It's a very like disingenuous sort of form of defense. And that's kind of like, you know, I'm definitely losing this fight because, because at the end of the day, people's little, you know, due to the nature of algorithmic content, people's feelsies are like upped by these. They get a little serotonin dose because they think someone's being helped. But at the end of the day day it's just a staged scene right whether it's actors you know at the end of the day the debate's not about whether or not the bad outweighs the good the

debate is whether or not their intentions were ever good pablo escobar is a murderer you know he was a violent man but he built schools he helped people he he built a zoo like there are some people who'd be like he was a nice guy but that doesn't distract the fact that he was objectively responsible for violence i'm not saying the kindness guys are responsible for violence but just because you do good in certain search situations just because you do good in certain situations does not make you a good person right and um it's just tough to articulate that now how do you feel about the way mr beast does it because he gets some hate but i think he's a little more well i'll tell you my philosophy of mr beast is a

lot more neutral because mr beast videos are more about the ostentatiousness of the of the video right there they he doesn't focus on only poor disabled people with sad music who are crying he's like hey whoever takes their hand off the car last gets the car right the the focus the narrative focus isn't on surprising somebody or turning them into like a and i've got cancer sob story he's he's like i don't agree with the criticism mr beast because it's about the narrative focus yeah and i think his is more based on like how much silly crap can i do with the criticism of Mr. Beast because it's about the narrative focus. And I think his is more based on like, how much silly crap can I do with a lot of money rather than how can I turn strangers or,

he doesn't focus on turning strangers into actors and he doesn't focus on staging scenes because he doesn't need to. Whereas these other guys, these sort of wannabe Mr. Beast, they know that if they just walk around Walmart with a camera, they'll eventually find somebody who doesn't see the camera and plays ball.

I even did an experiment where I strapped a hidden camera to myself. And I started to do these and people looked at me. They hated it. One woman caught me. She's like, what's that? And I did this experiment just to see what would happen for my own purposes.

I felt horrible because i knew i was like i only have a dollar but i know i'm lying to them right and i know i'm filming someone who never agreed to be a film right and one woman she said oh what are you doing she saw the camera in my collar and i'm like oh i'm actually doing a youtube video um if i give you five hundred dollars would you agree to be in it like and she'm like, oh, I'm actually doing a YouTube video. If I give you $500, would you agree to be in it? And she's like, don't film. And I go, but look, it's like a kindness thing. Like you give me the donut, I'll give you $500. She's like, she didn't want to hear it

because I'm a stranger to her. It's a weird agenda. And I think if you try this stuff in real life, it doesn't work. And that's really my big problem is my problem isn't that people are being helped. It's that I feel like being genuine is important. And when you present a lie to the audience,

you are sort of giving them a false worldview. Anyways, that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, Mr. Beast is fine. Yeah, when he got hate for curing blind people and deaf people, I was really confused. No, I never got into that conversation. I'm specifically going for hidden camera people and deaf people, I was really confused. No, I never got into that conversation. I'm specifically going for like hidden camera people and like stage,

like I'm super against filming strangers, super against it. There was a Melbourne woman, I always mispronounce that, but there was a woman who received flowers from an influencer. He pretended to tie a shoe or whatever, gave her flowers and she looked around, right?

And they played sad music and she spoke out against him. She's like, you filmed me without my consent. You're jerk this was patronizing you dehumanized me and the audience was mad at her like her feelings didn't make any difference to them they're like screw you you got flowers why don't you be appreciative he was trying to be nice to you like like she's the person there and that's what that's where the new sort of media is making it so that a person's feelings and a person's self-worth are only important insofar as they appear on the video yeah if you're entertaining to me that's all i care about you for but if you hated that video

i'm going to react defensively and say oh well you should be happy to be in that video he gave you flowers he gave you a thousand dollars you, nobody wants to look at like the dark elements of this because it, nobody wants to look at the dark elements of this because it contradicts. Are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below and here's the episode guys. The nice feelings they have when they see these types of videos. Yeah, that makes sense. How long have you had the mullet for? Oh man, the mullet, I started to grow when the Scumbag

Dad series started. Yeah. So once I started to do Scumbag Dad, like I grew the mustache first, right? Cause I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to look like a weird guy. That's impressive to even just get the stache. Oh, thank you. you thank you so like one of my buddies he's like brad you'd look great with a mustache i'm like i'll try it and i'm very short hair and then the first scumbag video video i'm sorry the first scumbag data video blew up and i was like oh this is fun i can make myself look like a like a crazier guy if i keep growing the hair so at this point i'm like i'm gonna start having long hair for as long as this like tiktok thing is doing well and if i ever cut it it means that i've either super succeeded and i don't even need to deal with this anymore or i failed and like it's okay like i still have a

great job and i'm happy with my life like i could go back i could go back to my sort of like daily life as an orthodontist in iowa and not really be sad about it because it's a good life yeah you know what I mean? But yeah, if I cut my hair, it means that something big has happened. It's like a girl when they break up with someone. Kind of, yes. It means I'm entering a new relationship or my old one fell apart. But yeah, the mullet I think has helped a lot with sort of recognizability.

People see me in public all the time and they recognize me from the mullet. Yeah. It's a good branding. The loud way I dress. You're the first person I met from Iowa. What's it like over there? It's quiet. It's quiet. It's good. That's what I thought.

Yeah. Property values are cheap. I live in an amazing house like out there. Oh, you're still there? Well, no, I mean, we, we, I'm going to, I'm going to be renting it out to a friend. Like we just started to make the transition to California. But like we live in a house that a member of Slipknot used to own. Wow.

You know what i mean at one less than a quarter of the price of this of a similar house in la oh yeah and like everything's super cool um you know i could i could be just retired there but my wife and i we want to move to california we want to give our son like sort of a leg up in case he wants to go into the arts professions and we have just like sort of a better network of other like actors and creatives here like i've got a band here i've got like a lot more creative resources but iowa i was quiet like there's some really quite good restaurants in the des moines area yeah um but it is it is more difficult for me to find collaborators in like the art field for sure like i've got a group but it took me a long time to sort of like suss out friends and like people

flake and then they don't want to do it anymore but like i finally have a decent core group there but it took me forever to find those people that's how i felt in jersey oh yeah i mean at the end of the day west coast is sort of like where a lot of people go to you know pursue more creative professions broadcasting for instance and like in my case doing comedy absolutely um so in terms of social media platforms which ones are your favorite which ones pay out the most? I'm hearing good things about Snapchat right now. Well, Snapchat's a huge pot shop for me. I get paid from Snapchat once in a blue moon

because some of my videos do not go viral. I'm very consistent on YouTube. YouTube and TikTok, with the new creator fund, they pay pretty decently well. So I focus more of my efforts on you know gearing for those two platforms uh snapchat snapchat's a uh snapchat's a gamble i still repost all of them whenever i make a video it goes up to instagram snapchat you know facebook uh and tiktok yeah and i threw the money i get from all those plus a couple of pretty regular sponsorships,

I'm able to eke out a pretty decent living just doing this. But if I ever fail, it's okay because I'm not really leaving my office. I've got this great job and I have the luxury of knowing that I can sort of be an a**hole to the system because if this all goes to a**hole, I still have a valuable profession that I can support of be an a**hole to the system because if this all goes to a**hole, I still have a valuable profession

that I can support my family with. What are you learning about the brand deal side? A lot of creators struggle getting brand deals. Well, brand deals for me have been a bit of an uphill battle because of the genre that I'm in. I know several people who are in very easily definable genres and they get brand deals pretty easily. If you're a food person, if every post you do is food,

it's fairly simple for you to have your agent plug you to a restaurant company or a hotel. If you're a fitness guy, it's fairly easy to get a supplement to sponsor you. But what am I? It's very difficult. Who am I? My agent talks to me about this sometimes,

and he's like, yeah, well, it's just sort of a little tough because you know even the name scumbag dad immediately like family-friendly companies are going to be like yeah yeah and so so now i have to sort of resort to you know getting like alcohol sponsorships which is great like i like to party and i like you know i got money too yeah they got money like i have no problem with that but it does you know because of the genre i'm in it does limit it. Like I have no problem with that, but it does, you know, because of the genre I'm in, it does limit it me a bit. That makes sense.

So it is a bit of an uphill battle, but some of the relationships I've built up have been very, very good. That's cool. Did you go on America's Got Talent? I did. I was on America's Got Talent ages ago and it was part of a villain origin story.

Me and my best friend were writing pirate raps. So about Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew, we were the number one pirate rap group in the world and we were we were making like at the time bear in mind like the numbers don't sound impressive but at the time we were selling thousands of cds out of my out of my house like i would walk to the post office and just be like ah we got a ton of these and you know we got like a viral video on youtube that had like 200 000 hits nice but that was very serious like very serious number back then and so that launched like a five album you know career of this like parody rap yeah and and what it was it's just one of those jokes that like high school kids make

like haha you know wouldn't it be funny if like pirates were rapping instead and we and we did it and we were we were invited onto america's it and we were invited on to America's Got Talent. We were invited on, I think, to be kicked off because we were just a bunch of jerks. But it still set me off on a path. Because at the time I was in school, yeah, I made art and I made comedy, but I had no intention of making it my career.

I was going to dental school. But that, getting kicked off, seeing the inside of the reality show scene it made me be like oh all this is fake all this is a little like like just the fact that we were shooed in we didn't have to wait in any lines they invited us like that alone sort of started to deconstruct the barrier because because they weave this tail and and sometimes when you weave a tail it's okay and it's honest and sometimes when you weave a tail it's less than that yeah but but america's got talent in these shows they weave a tail like oh they didn't know they'd get on tv they waited in line for hours to show their talent judges

when in fact like eight out of ten of those acts are are just sort of like they get somebody gets an email and they're like could you come on and then for the line like they show all the acts like standing in line pensive they just bring us out of the studio put us in line to like run the camera up in front they're like okay come back and that's it and so that was sort of the first big disillusionment i started to have like yeah we all know it's staged to a certain extent but to be part of it to be in it is like a totally new, you know, system of experience. Right. And then like, as time went on,

I started to learn about like, uh, what is it? Joey salads is like another big, you know, item I bring up because he was one of the first social experiments I heard that was completely debunked. And what the guy did is he brought a car covered in Trump stickers to like a

predominantly black neighborhood. And then he's like, here's an experiment to see what's going to happen to this car and and a bunch of people destroy the car and and the video did very well and then somebody posted on twitter like oh this is joey salads like and we see all the attackers of the car behind the camera and it was what's so crazy is that like the call out and like the information that it was faked didn't get nearly the reach of the initial video and like to me that shows an absolute monster of a person to sort of paint a group of people in a in a in a negative light for views and pretend it was real yeah like because that's that's the reason why it went viral the reason why people saw that and the reason why people

passed it to their friends is like i can't believe this happened to a trump car they just destroyed a car and that's one of the seminal examples i bring up when it comes to this debate about social experiments is that that if your heart is in the place where you're willing to lie to your audience for views and profit you are a bad person whether whether even even if're, even if you play sad music and it's about giving to a homeless guy, you've still taken a step in, you know, very serious dishonesty. You're willing to lie to millions of people and, and they're too, they never had anybody to explain to them why this is bad because it takes a couple levels of understanding. It takes a couple levels of philosophical comprehension and social media comprehension. if you're not well versed in this stuff if you've never tried to

make content it's very difficult for me to explain just how awkward it is to film a stranger or how awkward it is to ask a stranger to help and they tell you to off because most of them do i was filming at the mall recently and um there was a guy who wasn't even in our shop not even close but i was like pointing at a table i was like you sit here and then this guy was like don't film me and i was like no no sir we're not actually not filming he's like i don't care what you do but i better not be in the shot he went out of his way to tell us not to film him a lot of people have that attitude for sure and and when you market something as a social experiment when you say the word experiment

you are telling the audience i don't know what's going to happen. And if that is a lie, you have now done a skit. You have now done a skit. And people with limited creativity or limited ability, they can just have their friends pretend to do something real and label it a social experiment and get a viral video. And they can churn them out so much faster than anybody doing an actual social experiment or prank. I mean, let's call them what they are. They are pranks. But they are reframed as social experiments so that they can sort of get that initial hit of engagement.

Because if I tell you, if I run up to you and I, you know, sorry, let me reset. So some of these folks, they look at the social experiments, the staged videos, and they say, this is no different than a movie. This is no different than any piece of fiction. Why are you so mad? But if I ran up to you and I said, oh man, I just saw this video. A guy got shot.

And you'd be like, oh my God, a guy got shot in the video? I'm like, yeah, let me send you the link. And I send you the link to Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis. You're going to look at me like I'm a jerk. You're like, yeah, it's a movie. It is different when you present a work of art as a fictional piece you are being honest with the audience nobody thought titanic was a documentary you know what i mean nobody is assuming that like

that really happened because it's been presented in a certain way but because there's so little control over social media it's very easy for bad actors to pretend something's real when it's not. And that's sort of the midst of what I'm doing now is trying to sort of, through satire, show that, but through these podcast clips, just talk about it plainly. Yeah, it's good to get it out there.

The one that stands out to me was that, I forget his name, but he claimed to be able to talk to ghosts. And then as soon as a celebrity would die, I think Malcolm Miller just overdosed and then he made a whole YouTube video talking to him. And that to me was so extreme. It's sort of a sign of the times

that people want to believe in something so much that they're willing to watch a guy pretend to talk to ghosts because they're just so disillusioned. And it's tough to fight that. It is. And it turns out it was all BS and he had like hundreds of videos like that

whenever a celebrity died. Oh, of course it's BS. Lying to the audience is a tried and true business model. Is it true you saw Diplo on Mushrooms? Yeah, yeah. That story is 100% um i uh whenever i come down to vegas you know obviously my friends and i we get like really really really rowdy um i usually organize trips and uh that was fun uh that was fun time my friend she's like we can get us backstage to diplo and i i thought that was great i love i love free stuff yeah i will always go to something cool if I'm invited.

And so my friend Melissa Ong, she's an influencer, and she got invited. And I thought that was pretty cool. So the answer is yes. So how much did you eat? Oh, I'll talk about that some other time. I'll talk about that some other time. Sounds like a full trip.

No, it was a good day. Yeah. I haven't done a full trip since college. Yeah, well, maybe you and I should chat. Yeah, maybe. yeah i haven't done a full trip since college yeah well maybe you and i should chat yeah maybe um and lastly i want to wrap up with master chef yeah because i'm a huge fan of food how did you even get on that show so i used to do a lot of rap songs about like philadelphia food back when i lived there and like i was just sort of this like corny corny kid and right after america's

got talent i wanted to sort of reprove myself you know what i mean and so i cooked a dish called don don noodles that was you know i thought i was pretty good at it i love don don oh then you know what's up yeah so i i made that dish a ton of times and i was pretty good at it so i auditioned with it but because i was like also going in as like a comedian orthodontist they gave they, they like fast tracked me like again, more reality. Yeah. So they fast tracked me.

So I was like assured to go to Burbank to like go to like the next round of auditions. Um, but when I was there, you know, I, I totally boned my interview. They,

they asked me if I was willing to quit my job to be a chef. And I said, no. And then like, bear in mind when, once I knew I was going to Burbank, I called an every chef friend i knew i was like train me train me help me become a better chef and to this day i still like you

know i still think i'm a pretty good chef so i've learned those lessons but i was honest with them when they asked me how long i've been cooking for i said july which was true at the time i i hadn't been cooking seriously like until i was trained and you know they how am i supposed to compete with like tragic characters like my life was pretty good i had nothing they're like so are you trying to prove anything i'm like not really yeah no i just really i just really want to be on master chef they're like are you willing to um quit your job to be a chef no and you know it just didn't uh i wasn't really like a sympathetic character i was just a guy who cooked pretty good who made doofy wraps, who secretly wanted revenge on America's Got Talent.

And then they booted me like that season, Top 100 did not cook for these celebrity chefs. They booted 70 of us. And it was a good learning experience. Again, seeing more of the background of these things has sort of led to the evolution of who I am as a person. And yeah, I mean, I'm glad I didn't go very far because had I gone far, like they would have changed my contract to be like, sort of like semi working for them. And I never would have wanted to leave my actual profession to be a chef.

I just wanted to goof around. You know what I mean? I'm not going to, I'm not going to quit orthodontics. The thing that I spent years and years and years to do to, uh, to, to become a chef. Like, I think that's insulting to all the work i put into it and it's not to say like being a chef's a bad profession it's awesome it's just like i i made my choice and i wasn't gonna lie to america and say like oh yeah i'm not gonna be a doctor anymore i'm gonna be a chef and that's probably where i boned it i should have been like i hate teeth teeth annoy me i want to be a chef now and then you had no villain arc no i had no villain arc there but but i guess now i do i love it well scum died that scum oh it's like a tongue twister

right sure is scumbag dad it's been a pleasure anything you want to close off with uh no just um yeah follow me on the socials uh scumbag dad if i'll look at that camera so i've got a band called the bad circus we're doing a bunch of work so we'll be putting out songs soon and uh just follow me as TheScumbagDad on TikTok and ScumbagDad on YouTube and follow my wife, who is MeowYoFace on Instagram. She designs some really incredible stuff.

We have some really cool stuff coming. I don't want to spoil it too hard, but I have a product coming that her and I designed together that's currently a manufacturer. I'm immensely proud of it. So if you follow, you will probably be the first

to buy this piece of fashion wear that I'm super excited to show you. Can't wait to see it. Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for watching, guys. Peace.