HealthyGamerGG - Talking With penguinz0 | Dr. K Interviews

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

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My notebook. Hey. Oh. Good morning, man. Holy shit. Your voice critical. You cut out. What did you say?

I said, holy shit, you're moist critical. Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you know what an autograph? I can, I can like sign your. No, no, no. I didn't realize that was you, dude. Dude, I have actually recently discovered your content. And I think it's awesome.

I appreciate that, man. Thank you. I didn't realize who you were. You're penguins. It's all good, man. Yeah, yes, sir, yep, yep. Yeah, and, you know, I know it's crazy because, like, I swear to God. So just, so you remember we were on that podcast together?

Mm-hmm. And they introduced you as Charlie, right? So I was like, okay, there's a dude here named Charlie. And I was like, damn, that Charlie dude asks, like, really good questions. Oh. And it's like, like, really, like, thoughtful about his questions. I was like, that's a cool guy. And then I didn't realize, like, and I was like, oh, like, it'd be cool if, you know,

we could hang out sometime, talk more because I really wanted, I know you'd ask questions, but there are a lot of people who were asking questions about mental health. And I thought that was like really cool. And then recently I saw a couple of your videos about like Leafy getting banned and then something today about like animal videos on YouTube. And I was like, hey, it's that Charlie guy. And then I saw that your name was penguins. And I was like, oh, okay, so I guess his name is penguins.

And then I shit you not, man. Like, let me show you. Anyway, I want to show you. I was just going to say it. You don't need to prove it. I was taking a dump this morning and I was watching your video about animal videos on YouTube. That's a scary rabbit hole right there. That'll ruin your shitting experience.

And I didn't realize you were known as Moist Critical. So I apologize. I have this terrible habit of just making random fucking names on every platform. It's awful. But it is what it is. Twitch has now asking me to show the dump. Can you prove that? Yeah, did you flesh it?

Yeah, it's too late for that. But it's funny. I actually, we talk a lot about poop in my household. Because in traditional Indian medicine, a good sign of proper digestion and diet is your poop. And so. Yeah, that's how they used to tell whether, you know, whether your bowels are functioning properly and whatnot.

They used to use a long time ago. The Vikings used to use onion soup. And if they could smell it through your wounds, it meant you were going to die because the infection spread or something, right? Fascinating. I didn't know that. But I guess that makes sense.

Interesting. Yeah. In ancient India, speaking of, you know, expratory material, a good way that they would test whether you had diabetes or not is they would have you piss near an ant mound. And if the ants came and actually like drank up the piss, it meant that you had sugar in your urine and that you had diabetes. That's huge.

Yeah, it was really great. But theoretically, people also maybe were just drinking urine, which is possible. But I like the ant test better. Yeah, I think the ant test seems a little more sound. Yeah, involves consuming less urine. So we're big fans of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and what do you want me to call you? Do you like Charlie or? Oh, yeah, yeah. Just Charlie. You don't have to use any like, you know, titles or anything, man, is casual.

And so tell me a little bit. Is there something in particular? I noticed that some, my producers have like put a list of questions, but is there something that you want to talk about today or some way that I can be helpful? I'm game to just talk about whatever. The way your producers talked about it sounded like we just talked about. about what was prevalent what's going on okay kind of you know shoot the shit okay sure sure okay that that sounds great to me so just to clarify sometimes I have personal conversations with people about their life and sometimes I talk with people about stuff do you have a preference of are we shooting the shit about other things or are we talking about you well your chat actually brought up something interesting and we can talk about addiction that's kind of become

pretty prevalent in my community recently because okay I'm sure you would understand. I've been very big into buying Yu-Gi-O boxes and opening them on stream. Okay. Some simpletons would refer to this as a form of gambling. It's because not too different from like EA loot boxes. You're buying a mystery.

I consider it mystery investing in the Yu-Gi-O cards. But there's a lot of people that think that perhaps I have a susceptibility to gambling because of this. What do you think? I think it's simply for the fun of opening some Yu-Gi-o cards, the unexpected thrill when we pull that starlight, that rush of dopamine.

I think all of that sounds like a gambling addiction, but I think what it actually is... I was going to say, a pretty good case for an addiction. The thrill of... It's just fun. Yeah. You know, it's just...

That fun with the chat, you know, you get to shoot the shit in the chat, make some jokes, get very disappointed when we don't pull a starlight. We get to feel the hot. and lows. And so maybe, you know, maybe I do have a gambling addiction. What do you think? I wouldn't know. I mean, so far I know, all I know is that you're a guy who opens Yu-Gi-O cards. That's right. So let me ask you, do you, so by understanding is that Yu-Gi-O is

a card game, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you play the game? No, I just collect the cards. Okay. Right. So, so that's like a, let's let's, let's think about a spectrum of addiction. So you've just shifted towards addiction, right? If you don't, if you, but at the same time, I mean, people collect all kinds of stuff. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you're addicted. Like, people collect stamps, right? So that's useless. And are Uvio cards useful if you don't play a game with them?

It's the implication I could battle if I needed to. I could make some monster decks. And I think that's what makes me scary to the community. That you could unleash your. monster deck of you go-yo cards on some unsuspecting noob if you if the if it if reason arose yeah you can't do that with stamps like what are you going to do with stamps just throw them at someone that's worthless you're gonna send mail with them oh who cares right yeah like a ballot or something like that a bill a letter you know

okay so I mean so are you serious that your your community kind of jokes about maybe you having like an addiction to yeah so i don't know if it's i know at least a couple people earnestly think i have an addiction i i i don't but maybe like they grew up in a household they're an environment where they were around people that maybe had like a real gambling addiction you know maybe went to the casino more times than they should stuff like that and i i don't see the same qualities here because i make it pretty clear that it's just for like the stream content and the fun than highlight the videos for YouTube because I think a lot of the fun comes from just like the unexpected polls and like the you know the jokes you can make when a bad card comes up just

I think it's more about the journey instead of the destination I don't really think it's more like I'm there to make money or I'm going to be really fucking disappointed if I don't get this one thing and I don't think a lot of people can recognize the difference between just that kind of stuff for some content versus a real, you know, gambling problem or a real addictive personality disorder. Okay. So is it okay if we talk about that for a second? So maybe what we can do, Charlie, and I'm thrilled that we're having this conversation because I would love to have this conversation with you. It's like we can talk about what addiction is, right? So what do you think makes an addiction? How do we know whether someone is addicted to something? Like, do I love, do I just enjoy gambling or

am I addicted? What do you think? So I guess in my voice crack, in my perspective, I think it becomes an addiction when it becomes like the forefront of your mind where you're thinking like I've made this amount of money which means I have

this amount of gambling money to set aside or you know it becomes something that you're constantly thinking about as a means of making money or as a way of staying happy. Like I have to gamble and this will make me happy but if I don't get this I'm going to be real sad. So I think it just more becomes to me an addiction when it's something you're constantly

harping on, something that's always on your, like on your mind. You know what I mean? Sure. So there's a certain constancy of mind. I want to tunnel down into actually, I think a couple of words, which I, you didn't seem to emphasize, but I think are really important. You use the word have to, right? So you said, I have to make me happy to make money, whatever. So I think that there's a certain compulsion, which I think is actually really important. It's not so much about what's on what's after the have to or what's before the have to it's the phrase have to there's a certain amount of constancy in your mind so like let's say that and and so I'm just trying to think about situations where let's say I have to go to work and I'm

constantly thinking about work let's say I'm an investment banker so this is common right so they spend a lot of time going to work. They feel like they have to. It occupies their mind. They get to sleep for like four hours a night. Do we call that an addiction? Yeah, right? I wouldn't call that an addiction.

That would be more of a profession. That is actually what they do for a living. It is an entire career built around it. I think, I guess maybe for me, the distinction would be, if it's not a career, just this hobby that has become this absolute focal point of your life where it's taking over other parts of it. Okay, taking over other parts. I think that's really important too. So we're getting to a really sort of classical medical definition of addiction step by step, taking over other parts of your life. So let's think about something

else. So let's say that I play League of Legends for 12 or 12 hours a day. I am failing out of college. I'm Masters League or Masters level or whatever and I want to go pro. What do we call that? Is that a career or an addiction? What do you think? That's tough. To me, that would be a passion, but I think it would be a little misplaced. There has to be a balance. I think obsession in any of its forms such as that like being obsessed with this drive to make it to the next level in league, I don't think anything positive ever comes from that. So for me, I'd call that another unhealthy addiction to a certain degree. But for that person, I guess maybe passion would be more the right term for them,

because they're clearly very into the game. They clearly see a career and a future in it, but they're letting other parts of their lives slip and fall down the shitter for it. Which is what most progamer do, right? Before they make it pro, they tend to make these sacrifices. And they devote themselves fully to an ideal. So I'm hearing you kind of say you'd put that ultimately in the passion bucket. Yeah, more so than like, yeah, I'd definitely say passion.

Okay. So then let me just kind of highlight a couple of thoughts. One is you mentioned have to. So I think compulsion is a part of addiction, right? Sort of a sense of a lack of control over your absence. The second thing is a certain constancy in your mind, which you sort of alluded to, that it's at the forefront of your mind is what you said. you're kind of thinking about it all the time. I think that's also a feature of addiction, so a preoccupation with the thing. So if you think about, if you talk with alcoholics,

like a lot of them will be thinking about, okay, like if they're going on vacation in their mind, their mind will be sort of figuring out, okay, when can I drink, how can I drink, when am I going to get my next drink? And then I think a big part, and this is ultimately what sort of determines addiction for me. I think it's really important is when you talk about taking over other parts of your life. So I would call that like sort of the medical term is impairment of function. So if it interferes with your personal, professional, academic life or your physical or mental health, it's more likely to be an addiction. That sounds about right to me. So I know we don't diagnose or treat things on stream.

You're aware of that, right? So but now let's just think about Yu-Gi-Oh, sort of as an academic example. Would you say you hit those bullets? So do you feel like some degree of compulsion to buy Ugiot cards? That, I will absolutely concede on that. It was like even just four nights or two nights ago, whenever I opened the last fucking 34 boxes of Verizon, the Duelist, that night I was like, I need to get more.

I need to find this card, which doesn't help my case. Like, I realize that makes me look like an addict. But in my defense, like, I've got to find that fucking card. You know what I mean? the stream's not complete without finding it. Okay. So what I'm hearing is that you do sort of have a sense of compulsion, but it also sounds like in your sense, you're sort of making a,

it sounds to me like it's almost like a career kind of thing for you, where you've decided that the stream is about finding the card. Well, yeah, not the whole stream. I'm not like a Yu-Gi-O streamer these days or anything. It's just a fun little side quest we've been going on here. I guess more so it's a compulsion with a goal. It's like really aggressively chasing a goal, which is finding, you know, that white whale, that starlight rare we've been looking for. You know what I mean?

Okay. Okay. So there's a particular goal. Do you find that you're thinking about it relatively constantly? No, no, no, no. The only time I really think about it is when the boxes come at the door and I'm like, shit, this is the one. And then when it's not, I'm like, shit, I'm thinking about it again. Wait, so I'm confused.

So you're thinking about it when the box arrives at the door and then when, when you open the boxes and you're done, then you're thinking about it again. Yeah. Those are really like the only two times. I'm ever really thinking about getting more cards or thinking about cards in general, really. How many hours a day would you say you spend thinking about you, you know? Oh man, it makes me sound like a child. Not much. I'd say it's a the only times I'm thinking about it, like I said, is when I actually have the boxes and I'm excited to open them on stream and when we just finished doing it and we didn't and we didn't And we didn't get what we were going for.

I'm sorry. Sorry for making it sound like you were a child. Do you feel like a child? You know what? A little bit. Yeah. You know, when I'm opening you,

you know, it makes me feel like a little boy again. You know, that's, that's a feeling you can't emulate these days. It's one of those things. You crack open that nice pack. You get that nice,

beautiful aroma of some fresh cards. You know, back like on Christmas Day, 2006. It's lovely. It's a blast of nostalgia. So, yeah, it makes me feel like a kid a little bit. Is that a bad thing?

Not at all. Okay. So it sounds like you don't think about it constantly. No. And would you say that it impairs your function or takes over other parts of your life? No, I definitely wouldn't say so. I don't think I'm losing my life to Yu-Gi-O or anything. I haven't been like neglecting my dogs or anything for Yu-Gi-O card.

Yeah. I mean, so I think that's a pretty good, like, you know, I, I mean, I've never heard of a Yu-Gi-O addiction before. But I think if you're, you know, people are watching and kind of thinking a little bit about is this an addiction? I think those are the important questions to ask. Yeah, exactly. And if the answer to all three of those or, you know, even two out of three is yes, like you may want to consider like getting that checked out or getting evaluated or, and I think really impairment to function is the most important one. So if it's interfering with other parts of your life, then, I mean, it sounds to me like you're really interested in Yu-Gio.

It sounds like you have a nostalgic connection to it. It sounds like it makes you feel like a kid, which is kind of fun and alluring in a world where, you know, everything is going to shit. Yeah. And it's also like something that you're doing with your audience, which sounds kind of like fun and engaging. Sort of like a bit of career, a bit of nostalgia, and at the end of the day, it's not causing you to neglect your dogs. That's right. I'm not hearing that you go 14 hours a day without eating or drinking or using the bathroom because you're opening Uguio cards. Not yet, but maybe I just have.

haven't got enough boxes, who knows? Yeah, I guess one other thing to just think a little bit about is whether from a financial perspective you can afford to purchase and open all the Yu-Gi-O packs that you're buying. And so that's one. Yeah. Make careful. Make sure to be very careful with that kind of stuff. I very rarely spend money.

So when I do, I feel like real guilty. So I make sure to look over it very thoroughly. Why do you feel guilty when you spend money? It's just how I grew up. I never really purchased. anything. I just kind of always saved and hoarded money and either gave it away or, you know, occasionally spent it on something every now and then. So with Yu-Gio, it's been very different because the only thing I would ever buy is movie tickets and food. And then I bought those Yu-Giob boxes

for stream once. And I was like, damn, this was fun in the chat really enjoyed it. So then I spent more money on it and like, damn, I'm kind of feeling a little slimy about this. Okay. I don't know. Just something a, you know, just something a little different. Charlie, I noticed that you crossed your arms. Are you feeling comfortable talking about this stuff? Yeah, I just don't know what to do with my hands because typically I have them on the keyboard here. So I'm facing the camera. I don't know what to do with them. No problem. I just, do you mind if I ask a little bit about you kind of feeling guilty about spending money growing up and boarding chains?

Yeah, I'm an open book. Help me understand, you know, a little bit about how you grew up and how you viewed spending money. But so yeah, my parents were, they made sure to instill in me the value of a dollar, right? If I was begging for something at Toys R Us, I wouldn't get it. My dad and mom would be like, nope, you can't have that. You know, that's that's that. We'll give you this toy, but you can't have two toys, that kind of thing. So it was the idea of not being spoiled, and I just kind of made me feel as I grew up and started having more money, just more frugal with it.

I didn't want to just buy all of these materialistic things because I just didn't. didn't need them you know what i mean it was just one of those things where i don't need it i'll save this money use it for something better as opposed to something you know just for me so the way i view money is like making fun content out of it spending money for content is always when i'm happiest when it comes to money as opposed to buying something like a ugeo box that i open in private while i'm scratching it my neck having an episode or something you know what i mean okay what do you by having an episode. Is that a joke? Oh, yeah, no, I'm just kidding. I haven't happened. Okay, hold on a second. I thought it was joke. I was like, I was like, I was envisioning like an

episode of like Yu-Gi-o withdrawal where you're like, Farrell in the closet, like, opening up packs and kind of scratching yourself sort of thing. Okay. I thought that was funny. I was just kidding. Yeah, so that's kind of interesting. And do you have a sense of why your parents felt it was so important to instill in you the value of a dollar? Yeah, I grew up in an area that had a lot of spoiled kids, like a lot of real assholes, you know, parents that would just ignore them and give their kids whatever they want. It's not too different from parents these days to just give their kids an iPad and tell them to go do whatever. So my parents didn't like that and they wanted to make sure I didn't turn out to be one of those spoiled kids that just had everything handed to them and just,

you know, live life with this silver spoon where everything they wanted they got, you know what I mean and I think that was just a really valuable lesson because I've I've definitely I feel like it's a lot better to spend my money on things that other people can enjoy like you know fun content or stuff like that or giving it to people that could use it more use it for something in their life you know what I mean sure so so just for me versus something better yeah and do you remember how you felt as a kid when your parents you know sort of said like hey I mean what was it like to grow up surrounded by kids who got two toys instead of one and you only getting one toy. It never really bothered me. I never really had too much of a problem with it.

From a young age, I was like, you know what, that's totally fine. I can understand why my parents are wanting me to learn this. My parents, I think, have been just incredible role models. It always treated everyone with so much respect and did everything they could for everyone around them. And I always recognize that as a really good thing. So the fact that they were telling me, look, it's better if you just learn that you can't always have everything you want at a young age, you'll benefit from it. So it never really bothered me that, you know, my friends would have all this crazy shit. It wasn't really a big deal to me. Okay. Because I realized I didn't need it. You know what I mean? Okay. That's really impressive, man. So it sounds like not only did they sort of

teach you the value of a dollar, but I'm also hearing that they spent the time and energy to try to explain to you what they were doing and why they were doing it. Oh, they would explain everything to me, man. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a NASCAR racer called Dale Earnhardt. Yeah. And my parents loved NASCAR. One of their biggest weaknesses, I don't know why they like NASCAR, but they loved it. And I was watching NASCAR and that accident happened where he crashed into the wall and died.

And my parents immediately, like, without missing a beat, it's like they had fucking scripted his death. They're like, Charlie, this is death. And you need to understand what? this means. Like I was always beginning lessons and I think that that really just kind of helped me understand things at a younger age as opposed to like, you know, having to learn it the harder way or, you know, later on. What's the harder way? Yeah. As far as death, I don't know. But as for not getting everything you want, you know, realizing that you can't always have everything. You know what I think is the harder way.

by yourself. Because what I'm really hearing from you is that, you know, what you learned a lot of things not alone. Like you had parents who took the time to really try to explain to you things, help you understand things. It's interesting. I think it makes a lot of sense because you seem to me to be like, I mentioned you at the beginning when I was fanboying a little bit,

that, you know, I think you ask really good questions and you're an insightful dude. And it's kind of interesting to see that from a young, young age, your parents taught you how to think or encouraged you to think or find reasons or try to understand things. Yeah, I appreciate that, man. Yeah, I really can't thank my parents enough for the upbringing. I think a lot of the reason that I am the way I am today is because of everything they taught me.

Sure. I really appreciate that. If you're in the chat, mom and dad, keep up the great work. Love you. So, Charlie, if I can just kind of point something out to you, that's a little bit of. that I think is a little bit strange. So I think, you know, you kind of say, I don't need it, which sort of makes sense. But that seems to me like a little bit different or maybe related to feeling guilty when you do indulge. What do you think about that? Yeah, I guess that might be a little

part of it. Because at the end of the day, I don't need Uguio cards, right? Like my stream's not going to, you know, go to the shitter if I'm not opening Ugiot cards, like some kind of crazy feral animal. It's not something I need. And when I buy it, it does make me feel a little guilty, because, again, it is big purchases, right? Like, 34 boxes of Yu-Gi-O cards. That was like $1,700. Like, that's not like a small purchase. It's something I feel guilty about spending that much on something like that, which is, again, just this thing just for some fun on the stream. And I think the fact, yeah, I just think the fact that I don't need it and, you know, it just makes me feel a little slimy.

Yeah, so oddly enough, I think the fact that you do it for stream is what makes it okay for you. So I think stream is a good reason that protects you from the guilt because you strike me as someone who wouldn't buy 34 boxes of Yu-Gi-o cards unless you had a quote-unquote good reason. Right. And I think now I'm going to say something a little bit provocative, okay? So I think the interesting thing that I'm hearing from you is a good reason is anything except for yourself. That's fair. I mean, that's probably fair. Yeah. What do you think about that? I think there's a lot of truth to it. The more I think about it, the more I realize I don't buy anything really for myself.

All my purchases are either food for me and my girlfriend or movie tickets for me and my girlfriend. I guess like the last thing I bought simply for me to enjoy was a dance dance revolution machine. And now that I'm talking about this out loud, it seems like everything I buy is something that a nine-year-old would think is cool. But yeah, I don't really buy a whole lot solely for me to enjoy. But that's because I like to share everything with everybody. Like if I have something, I put it on stream or I make a YouTube video out of it. Yeah. So once again, everything that you have is for other people.

Yeah, I guess so. Right? Yeah. And not to be a little bit further provocative, but like let's just think, it's just, I'm thinking about some of my supervisors who would just really love. to make some kind of bizarre conclusion like you know it sounds like your parents taught you about very mature things at a very young age that you weren't able to indulge in getting two toys and sort of live life freely and openly which is why as

an adult you're chasing the feelings of a child that's what I'm not chasing any children don't you put those words feelings feelings right so so you kind of keep commenting that it makes me sound like I'm a kid and so So some of my like analytic supervisors would be like, oh, he is trying to rediscover his childhood in adulthood because he was robbed of it because his parents taught him about death at a young age instead of letting him indulge and be a child. Can you believe that? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What do you think about that?

I definitely wouldn't agree with that. I don't think I'm trying to chase the feeling of anything I missed as a kid. I feel like I had a great childhood. Yeah. And it's not like I was, you know, in the streets selling lemonade, you know, it's a war-torn. area for money so I could buy something for myself. Like my parents obviously got me things, but it was this idea of there's no need to have everything you always want at every given moment.

Yeah, of course. It was definitely just a balancing act of making sure I wasn't spoiled, but also making sure that I wasn't, you know, going hungry and not having things to have fun with. Yeah. I mean, because like you said, you know, just to be clear, we're not talking about zero toys versus two toys. We're talking about one toy. So you go to Toys R Us and you get one.

toy, you know? And so sort of makes sense. At the same time, I am a little bit, you know, I do wonder a little bit, Charlie, about sort of putting yourself last or not being able to put yourself first and how you feel about that. I never really look at it that way because in general, I'm at my happiest when I'm making like cool content or I'm making bigger projects, like the music video I did early this year, that was like the biggest undertaking I've done. It was a year-long project, a full animation, and it was expensive, but I liked doing it because I like putting that kind of stuff out there. And I would say, like, that's for me as well as for sharing it with other people. I would say making something like that was putting myself first,

but it's also something that I got to share with everybody, which is what I really enjoy. Yeah. So I really don't view it as like me putting myself last where, you know, I'm, you know, not spending anything on myself, making sure that I'm taken care of or anything like that. It's just more so I enjoy doing things that I can share with everybody else. What do you enjoy about that? All right. I was wondering what that was. My doorbell doesn't work.

So it just says install cover. There's someone at the door. What was the question? Sorry. I was just, I forgot. Yeah, I forgot. Give me a second. All right, no worries.

Oh yeah. What do you enjoy about sharing things with other people? I don't know. It's just always been a really fulfilling thing. I've just always enjoyed making things for the fun of making them and then putting them out there for the world to enjoy or shit on. Really, you don't have to love everything I do. I don't expect everyone to love everything I do. I don't do it for that kind of reason.

It's just I have a lot of fun doing it. And since I had fun, hopefully other people have fun watching it or interacting with it in some way. And I just really enjoy that, just being able to help entertain somebody maybe. What is that feeling when you keep on using the word enjoy? What do you feel when someone, when you share something with someone and they're able to appreciate it? Jubilation. I'll use a hard word there. I'd say like, I really feel great when someone's like, look, Charlie, that video was really fucking cool.

SkyNet, I'd never even thought about robots being powered by semen. That was wild. That makes me feel like really good. Oh, yeah, the music video is about robots powered by semen. You'd have to read the mic. Yeah, like it's a lot. S-E-A-M-E-N or S-E-A-N? Oh, yeah, I'm talking about the mail seed baby.

I'll break down the storyline as a little lore recap. In Skynut, it's basically Terminator if the machines were powered by Nut as opposed to technology, electricity. Yeah, it's deep. There's a lot of moving parts to that. I don't even want to get into it. The fan series of wild. A Skynut is something that you made, or is it something? Okay.

Yeah, so I have a band with a buddy mine named Troy, and we made this song that's all about that, and then we hired an animation studio to animate all of it. And that was by far the biggest project I've done, and putting that out there and seeing people really enjoy it or, you know, really relate to it in some strange way. It's just really cool. It just made me feel very happy. Charlie, it sounds like the world is lucky to have you. That was sweet. Thanks, man. I'm what do you right?

You're just being sweet, man. I don't know. It was just very nice. I wasn't trying to be nice. Can I explain myself a little bit? I'm curious how it sounded how you felt when I said that. All right, sure, man. Well, let me just because like, look, so you're like one of these content creators, right? And it sounds like I imagine you make a fair amount of money.

And it sounds like what you really try to do is you strike like, a really good balance of being sort of authentic and not catering to the masses or giving them the kind of content that they want but really that your goal is to do something that you find like interesting and fulfilling and i think you use a really interesting word which is subtle and has a lot of connotation which is share so you share something without expectation right you give it to people and you say hey i hope you enjoy this i enjoyed it you don't say i need you to enjoy it which is what happens with a lot of content creators you know, I want you to enjoy it.

How can I make something so that you enjoy it the most? That's not what I'm hearing from you. What I'm hearing is that, you know, you have some resources and you invest those resources to a certain degree in personal satisfaction, but also that like you really try to align personal satisfaction with things that other people can make the world a slightly brighter place or make someone stay better. Man, that was, yeah, but I think you. hit the nail on the head, man. I really appreciate that. It means a lot to even, like,

hear someone explain it that way, because that's definitely how I feel. Like, I don't make these things trying to cater to some kind of, you know, popular take or popular opinion. Like, you know, no one's talking about nut powered machines, you know. It's just, I enjoyed it. I like putting it out there. And it always means a lot when people like it. And if they don't, that's fine, too. Like, maybe they could make fun of it and they can have fun that way, really. It's just, you know, just the cycle of how I like to create things and just the way I kind of live my life thinking of well here's something I could do that maybe other people would enjoy it yeah and so what was it like to hear me say that ah man it felt like five different angels all tickling my nutsack

like it was just soothing like you just made me feel so at ease and like fulfilled it was wonderful Okay. Do you feel, I mean, hey, I don't know what else to put this, but is that an unusual feeling, angels tickling your nutsack? Well, it doesn't happen as often as I'd like, you know what I mean? But it's just a nice feeling. I don't know, man. I've always watched it. Like, I watch your show, obviously. And I always appreciate what you're able to do for the community around here, not just

the people you bring on stream, but also the chat as well. I think you do a lot of good work, even making people in the chat feel like they're learning something about themselves and feeling good about themselves. So, I mean, I'll make a bold claim here. I think you're tickling a lot of nutsacks and making people feel a lot better. Yeah. that's that's generally speaking what my FBI file is filled with yeah they they call me aka nut sack to clerk oh I believe it man you're notorious out here

yeah so Charlie I think you know I wasn't trying to tickle the nut sack but I think you genuinely offered you know something that I heard which is that I think you do kind of go not out of your way really. I think that's actually what's pretty cool about it. You don't go out of your way to make people feel better. What I really hear you doing is offering the most authentic parts of yourself with the hope that other people can benefit from them. And there's just something really like pure about that. And I just wanted to acknowledge it because I think it's cool, man. Well, thank you, man. I'm glad you think it's cool. It really does hear a lot to me. And yeah, so I do, I do think there's something here, Charlie, which I think

not necessarily that we need to explore further, but sometimes when people, you said something like, you know, you do it, you do some things just for yourself as opposed to like having a better reason to do them. And, and I, I know we, I sort of mentioned that you kind of put other people ahead of yourself, which I think is a really noble and awesome thing. I think it's part of what results in what we just talked about, right? That you really do authentically try to create things kind of for yourself, but then do your best to try to share them with other people. I do wonder a little bit about, can I just think for a second

and try to figure out how to say this? By all means, man. So sometimes people are taught that other people are more important than they are. And there's a very subtle. So if you put someone ahead of yourself, there can be a couple of reasons for that. One is that you just value other people, right? So like the person besides you can have a lot of value. The other reason that you can put people ahead of yourself is that you can value yourself very low.

Does that make sense? It's kind of like a comparison. Now, I'm totally. I'm not saying that you value yourself. lowly, but I can envision a world in which a kid is surrounded by a bunch of rich kids. And I'm not saying this is you, by the way. I'm just sort of sketching this out. Okay. And it's you're, you have to tell me whether this fits or doesn't fit or whether you want to explore it further or not. I'm envisioning if you take a hundred kids that are surrounded by a hundred kids

with lots of toys and they're the one that doesn't get as many toys, that out of those hundred kids, some of them will think or feel like they are worth less than their peers. Does that make sense? Yeah, I could definitely envision that too. But for me personally, I don't think it goes like that deep. When it comes to putting other people ahead of myself, I wouldn't say I value those other people more than I value myself. I'd still say at the end of the day, I care more about myself than somebody that I have

never met before and what's going on there. I just really like to be able to maybe produce something for the. that they can enjoy as well. It's not because I'm thinking like, you know what, they deserve something here and I don't deserve any of this. I don't think I've ever really felt that way. As far as like, you know, that kind of feeling, maybe in high school I felt like really low on myself and maybe put others far higher than me. But sure. I've grown a lot since then in high school. I mean, that's just rough for everyone. You know, I'd like fucking pimply face. I took acutane twice. I was beating my dick every night. It was miserable, right? Like it's a high school experience.

but since then I don't think I've ever really had like this really low self-image or self-worth or anything like that where everyone around me is more important and I'm trash. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not getting that sense from you. I'm getting a sense that you're confident you recognize your own worth. And at the same time, you sort of acknowledge in a simple sort of like human way that other people are super important too. And that the really cool thing is that it seems like you can hit both of those, you know, birds with one stone in terms of, of you can do something for yourself and do something for other people.

And that the two aren't actually like, one doesn't have to come at the cost of the other. That's what I think is actually really cool about a lot of what you spend your time on. Is that sure you can enjoy opening Ugiot cards, but your stream enjoys it too, right? And it's fun for all of you guys together. There's some real enablers in there that I'll tell you what. They'll tell me I don't have enough UGO cards and I feel like I have to fucking prove them wrong. I'm going to flip my death over and just ordered 34 more. How many packs are in a box?

24 packs in a box. Wow. And why do you order 34 boxes? Why 34? Well, you see, it's simple mathematics. The more boxes, the more chances of pulling that one starlight we've been hunting for. But why not 36 or 40 or 42? Oh, God.

Jesus, you're sounding like my chat. You're going to make me order 100 boxes by the end of this stream. I'm not, that's what the seller had. I just ordered out a full seller. Oh, got it. Okay. Yes. You know, this is going to take a kind of a dark term.

But sometimes when I deal with people who have had a suicide attempt with taking too many pills, they'll say like, I took 27 pills. And then I'll be like, why 27? Like why not 24 or 30? And often the common answer is because that's everything that was in the box. So it sounds like, you know, they were emptying out their supply too, which is a little bit morbid. But I'd like to think that buying out the Yu-Gi-o boxes wouldn't be as hardcore as swallowing a bottle of pills, but maybe I just haven't bought enough boxes yet. If you drown in the U-Gi-Go cards or something.

So Charlie, I do wonder a little bit about, you know, why you feel guilty, right? Where does that- Maybe it's just the wrong word. Maybe it's just the, maybe that, you know, kind of, you know, kind of, you know, a little icky feeling you get sometimes where you did something and it's like well yeah but i could have done this this would have probably been a better use of this time or this resource maybe guilty is just a little too hard of a word for what i feel because it's not like i'm waking up in a cold sweat like charlie you have sinned and now we can't sleep because of it it's just when i make that

decision it's like uh that's you know that's a little that's a little icky right what's icky It's just like that nagging sensation where I'm trying to think of a good way of putting it. Because it's not like terrible. I don't feel absolutely destroyed if I buy Yu-Gi-O boxes. I'm not inconsolable. I'm not in the corner crying about it. It's just like there's other people that want to buy these things and I just bought this entire seller's supply for the sake of opening it on stream. Did I need to buy all of them?

No, probably not. This dream probably would have been just as fun with half of those boxes. Okay. So just a little bit like, you know, didn't need to do that. I went a little hard there and now I feel a little gross for doing that because now maybe somebody that wanted those or maybe someone's parents were going to order from that cellar for their kid or something. Now they can't because well, now the Greece king's sitting on all 34 boxes.

I see. So it sounds like once again in the ickiness, what we're thinking about is in a weird way your mind is kind of thinking about the possibility that through your indulge, you've deprived someone else of an opportunity. Yeah, that's definitely fair, because there's only so many boxes, right? Then I just took a huge chunk of them off the market. So for the fans of the game that actually play the game and keep in mind, I don't actually go out and battle, they can't get those cards now.

Now I have them. And I will not sell them, by the way, you pussies, they're mine. Yeah, so I once again, I'm noticing a slight tension in terms of like the way that your mind measures you again. others, right? That doing something indulgence towards yourself. And I'm not saying it's big or bad or like this is a smoking gun or anything, but I think the interesting thing is as we develop as human beings, the problems with our mind become more and more sudden. They become smaller. And and there's still sort of this tension where if I get something, someone else doesn't. It's a tiny, tiny one, tiny tiny, tiny, tiny, non-n-n-babu one. And, you know, a small one. Nanunanabu means Nanu means small, Babu means baby. And it's something that my kids say from time to time. That's adorable. A tiny, tiny baby.

So my younger kid talks about tiny, tiny baby canora viruses, which is why we can't go to the playground. Oh, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. But, you know, I'd encourage you, Charlie, to just keep track of that and just notice, you know, that in your mind for some reason, when you buy something, your mind has a script that turns on, which starts thinking about how someone else could be deprived by what you've done.

Whereas I doubt, I mean, when you say you bought out a significant share of the supply of Yu-Gi-O boxes, I doubt that. Well, at least on one website, I can tell you, you could probably find like a measurable graph somewhere that shows before I started streaming it and then after for Rise of the Dualist. I think in total we've had like, fucking 60 boxes worth of that that we've opened on stream. I wouldn't be surprised if Konami just stops giving it to vendors and starts sending it right

to me or something. Make more money that way. Do you see what I'm saying, though, about just sort of the automaticity of your thought process in terms of like doing something maybe indulging? Because you're not, you know, that's a sort of a situation where there's one toy, there's two toys, there's no toys. And then you're like going into toys are us. And you have the perception that you're kind of buying out, like,

an entire shelf of something. And then your mind sort of starts thinking about other people because you do seem like you care about other people. And there's just this little script. I'd encourage you to just keep an eye on that. There may be something more to that. Can I tell you go into a little bit more detail? Apologies if I'm kind of losing you. Am I losing you? No, absolutely not. Absolutely wild. So the other just thought that I have is that I think teaching indulgence to your kids is also pretty important. I don't know if you're thinking about having kids or planning on having kids or want kids or whatever. But, you know, I think teaching temperance and restriction to your kids is important, but also that sometimes they do get to come

first is like something that I try to teach my kids is that sometimes they get to come first. And I'm wondering, you know, I think part of what, how can I say? this, I think you deserve more than you give yourself, Charlie. That's sweet. I think, yeah, I mean, from everything I've said, I totally get where you'd come from here. But I don't think that I've deprived myself of anything for the sake of giving someone else anything. I still think, you know, if there is something that I want and it is something just for me, I don't really, like, hesitate to get it. I don't think there's really been too many cases of where, like, you know, I felt so guilty for giving myself something that,

someone else might not have it. I don't think I've really suffered too much from that. And even as a kid, it's not like I felt that way either. But from everything I've said, I could totally get why maybe you'd feel that way. I just don't see it personally. Maybe I'm a little biased in it. Maybe my girlfriend would feel differently where she's like, Charlie, you know, you never really do this for yourself. But for me, I just don't get that feeling. Yeah. So Charlie, I'm not, so let me be a little bit even clearer. So what I'm talking about is that I think you give yourself 99% of what you deserve. What I'm talking about, talking about is a 1% here. And the reason that I think that's important has nothing to do with

like you depriving yourself. It actually has to do it. I realize I'm sort of stepping outside of my bounds here. But I think it actually has to do with your spiritual growth. So I think that being able to acknowledge and give yourself like to be free from those thoughts, those automatic thoughts that you're depriving someone, I think is actually like a step forward for you. And that doesn't have to do with actually buying more Ukio cards or buying less Ugio cards. I'm not actually talking, I'm not saying that you should give yourself

more than you do. What I'm talking about is your sense of deserving. Right? That you should be comfortable and acknowledge that it's okay for you to indulge and that other people aren't that's, I'm talking about something that's very, very subtle. I don't think it's like an issue.

I don't think it impairs your function. I don't think it's a problem. Does that make sense? It's just the barrier of where you are based on our conversation. No, I totally get where you're coming from. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, how are we doing? Is this conversation okay to you?

Yeah, absolutely, man. I always enjoy these things. Like I said, I watch your show. I always like to hear these conversations. So to take part in one, I mean, I think that's great. Yeah. I find myself being curious about your girlfriend, but also, like, have a bunch of questions about... If it moves out here or something?

I don't know how comfortable I'm... Ain't nobody got time for that. Ask away. But then there are also kind of questions about like community and and thinking about like different kinds of community. Thinking about like hate and toxicity. What do you think would be a better use of our time? Really, I'm, this is your ship. I'm willing to go wherever you want to steer us.

I'm fine to talk about any of that. If you want to talk about toxic communities or something, I mean, that's been pretty prevalent these days. so I'm fine with whatever. Okay. I mean, I need some kind of direction. All right. Then I think it'd be beneficial if we talked about toxic communities then. I think that's something that's big right now, something that's been big for a little while, that why not talk about it?

Absolutely. So can you tell me a little bit about toxic communities? And when you say it's been big for a while, what do you mean by that? Okay. So we'll just use the one everyone targets, and I know exactly. exception. I also talk about it. Live stream fails. I know a lot of people like to target them for everything wrong with their stream and everything wrong with anything that when it comes to Twitch in particular. And I've definitely made that mistake before too where it's like live stream fails has done

this, this and this to these people. And I just think that's probably the wrong approach to take. It's a community full of a bunch of different people. And I don't really think it's as toxic as a lot of people have made it out to be myself included. It's just there's a very vocal minority of people that hijack something like that. It's the same thing with chats. Like I don't think XQC's chat is the most toxic, annoying place in the world. It's just there are some people that take over and make that become the public perception. What would your thoughts be on that? Do you really think that there is this overwhelmingly large number of people that say these bad things or feel this terrible way about people? Or is it just a small group that make it seem that way? I think both are true.

So let me start by saying I didn't realize that live stream fails had a reputable. for harboring toxicity. I mean, so when I browse LSF, I tend to find it somewhat enjoyable. And I thought everyone sort of knew that the point of LSF is that you take things out of context. Yeah. Well, especially with, yeah, especially with your show, that's become like a real big meme there just to take some clips out. Yeah. So, so, so, so, I I actually, I mean, I think it's kind of funny. I don't I don't feel like personally LSF or the people on LSF breed negative. I try to see her clear of my clips, but I think it's just it's just funny, right?

It's like it's clips, first of all. So you're not getting really a fair representation. It's like it's like a meme generator and meme generators. I don't think are going to be able to capture the truth. I do know that LSF has been, I think, a lot more mindful recently that despite, you know, when you generate memes, sometimes you can go a little bit too far. And that and so it seems to me like the the community has been. like the LSF modding community, you know, I think has been making a lot of active changes,

which sound awesome to me in terms of, I don't know like all the details, but I think they're becoming more mindful of what they create and what kind of effects that they have and they've been thinking about it more, which seems to be like a step in the right direction. So that's what I'd say about LSF, but I'm relatively new to Twitch and also relatively new to LSF, so I don't know if they've been worse in the past or what's been going on. Yeah, I think the reputation, I'm not like a frequent browser. I'm only an occasional one. I don't know what new modding things are implemented, but I think the reason why LSF gets that

reputation is because for a long time, I don't know if this is still the case, but the most popular posts were like, here's Illinity being fucking terrible, and then here's a clip of Alinity from a year ago, still being terrible. And you'll have all of these like old clips piled on top of one another targeting one person in particular, showing their worst moments. and then everyone in the comments is dogpiling it. And then maybe like five months down the line, the perception changes. And then everyone acts like, well, this is terrible.

You know, no one should have ever said these things. We never did this. And then I wish people would stop generalizing LSF based on its top posts and stuff like that. So they get this reputation for being toxic and then pretending they weren't. And then they use that same line where it's like it's a 900,000 person community. You can't target us based on a couple people, even though it's, their top post, which means it's most representative what people wanted, what people were thriving with. So I do think that that, so going to like, you know, the vocal minority, I think

that it's very common that a community can be influenced by a vocal minority. Like in chat, you'll get a couple of real trolls who, you know, speak more. So I think that generally speaking, majorities tend to be silent. And that minorities can oftentimes be vocal. And so that is But I do think just like you said though, Charlie, like I think that we can't hide behind that anymore because of things like when you up vote, right? Like when a when a post makes it to the top of live stream fails, that's not a vocal minority. That's the silent majority. That is the action of the silent majority. And so when that gets upvoted, that actually is representative of your community. And I think especially with some of these other, you know, toxic communities, which I've recently learned about, right? So they're, like, I recently discovered that they're like, um, just kind of a funny meme story about this, but like someone mentioned Keemstar. And I didn't know that that was a person when I first heard it.

Like I thought, because, you know, it's like a term, right? So like, like, like if you say sky nut, for example, like, I'm assuming that that's just something that someone made up, right? Like, it's not like a per, because I just can't fucking tell. Like, is moist critical a person or like it's just confusing? Anyway, so I think that there are like communities, right, where people create content that is geared towards attacking other people. And to be fair, those communities are gigantic and they get tons of viewership, which says to me that this is not an issue of a vocal minority, that there is actually a silent majority of people there. And oddly enough, you know, I know this is going to sound weird.

I think we have to be careful about judging them because I still don't know why these people up. vote what they do. So there's just sort of this sense that we call all of these people toxic. And I'm sure that that's fair. But I, you know, I tend to do my best to not judge an entire person based on a particular action. So I'm sure there are toxic people out there. But if you have, you know, like a like an attack video YouTube or whatever that has like five million subscribers, like that's not a vocal minority. Right? That that person's channel is successful because there's actually a lot of people out there who are experiencing a lot of something. And I personally am curious, like,

what they're experiencing. Like, I don't know why these people upvote this stuff. Yeah, I guess to bring it back into terms with live stream fails, I guess it would more be the sense of community, right? That would be my take, where everyone's mad at this person, so maybe somebody feels like, well, if they're mad, there's a reason for it, I should be mad. Even if maybe they don't feel that strongly, they'll still chime and be like, yeah, I don't like this. Yuck, what the fuck is that? Oh, Jesus, I'll vote, you know. I don't really think it's a whole bunch of people that genuinely hate the person or anything like that.

They probably don't even know who it is. They just see that this is popular. I'm in this community pretty often, which means I should feel the same way. So I'm going to, you know, take on the same mindset. You know what I mean? I don't think it's necessarily always malicious where this, person is trying to, you know, ruin the person that's being targeted. They just feel like they're missing out by not being in the same line as everyone else in the community that they frequent.

I'm quite skeptical of that. So let me ask you this, Charlie, when you upvote something on Reddit, what's in your mind when you upvote it? Well, this is, you're not going to believe this, but I've never upvoted anything on Reddit in my life. Okay. So that actually makes a lot of sense to me. because I think that your hypothesis about what is in someone's mind, I wouldn't agree with that they're doing it just because other people are doing it. Yeah, that's totally fair. Maybe I'm just outright wrong because I don't know. Like maybe they are really feeling this way.

Yeah, so as someone who upvotes a lot on Reddit and comments rarely, I upvote things that resonate with me in some way that I agree with. and I downvote things that I don't agree with and don't resonate with. The exception being, I can resonate with something that I disagree with if the guys of the, given the premise of the post. So, for example, sometimes there are posts that are criticizing me that I'll actually upvote because I think they bring up good criticisms. So I can disagree with what they're saying, but I resonate with the posts in some way.

And I think generally speaking, when you think about upvote and downvote, I never think about, oh my God, a bunch of people are upvoting this. I better upvote it too. I've never experienced that. Now, that could be happening subconsciously. But usually I tend to upvote things that I find resonate with me in some way. If I find it funny, I'm going to upvote it. I don't care that other people find it funny.

I think it connects with you. And that's what happens with social media and likes and dislikes is, sure, I'm sure there's a peer pressure element to it. But I think the interesting thing about social media is that they've given us a chance. Like what rises to this top certainly has issues of popularity. But I think that there's like some content that people resonate with. Right. Like let's think about Yu-Gi-O.

Like there's something that when people watch you open Yu-Gi-O packs, something about them, like when they see your nostalgia, when they see your excitement, your hope, it resonates with them. And it's like, man, I remember opening Yu-Gi-O packs. Hell yeah, I'll vote this shit. you know like let's see if he does it because i i know what starlight rare starlight something what's it yeah what's it called starlight starlight rare so like a starlight like they remember hunting for the starlight rare and so it connects with them and i think the internet is

is about actually i know this sounds bizarre but i think it's actually about connection i think what social media twitch i mean twitch is about connection it's about connecting with the person that you're watching, the person that you're watching resonating with you. If we think about our stream, that's also about connection. So we've grown because the people who come on here say and do things that people feel connected to. Yeah, I can totally agree with that. So I guess mainly the reason why I was feeling that way when it comes to something like LSF and things rising to the top and maybe not being, you know, maliciously upvoting something bad is because you can see it a lot in a chat, right, where if somebody posts some kind of copy pasta or, you know, some,

assy art picture of titties or the hydrodic you'll immediately see you haven't seen the well i don't even want to tempt it because i hate that kind of shit i don't like spam but when somebody does like a copy pasta or a hydro dick or three-titty spam thing you'll see 50 people immediately start posting the same thing so i would i would imagine that that extends to other platforms so when you see something on reddit where it rises pretty quickly you'll typically would at least in my perspective If you'd see other people just hop on it, like, well, they're doing it. I'm going to do it. I'll up vote this as well.

And I don't necessarily care too much about what this person did. But everyone else is doing it. So I'm probably just going to upvote it too. Yeah. So I think there's certainly a mob mentality. Yeah. But I don't think the mob mentality is the same as peer pressure. I think it's like more instinctual, right?

So like Reddit becomes like a school of fish that certainly like one fish freaks out and goes this way. and then they're like one bird, you know, if you see a bunch of birds roosting and then one bird jumps out and starts flying, all the other birds jump out and start flying. So certainly is, I think, a group think aspect to it. But I think, and by the way, is it a hydrodic or hydrodic? Hydra. And I want to apologize to your mods. I just made their job so much fucking harder by even mentioning that. Sorry, Shreddick.

Yeah. Like, oh, like the Greek monster? Yeah, it's like just a bunch of dicks. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there are dicks in all shapes and size on the internet. You'd be surprised. Anyway, yeah, so I do think, though, that I'm not so sure that it's a vocal minority, Charlie,

because I think that, you know, you do have entire communities that are very successful that are built on attacking other people. What do you think about that? You know, I mean, that definitely exists. I mean, yeah, you can see that, especially there's entire. channels based around it on YouTube. I mean, for better or for worse, sometimes it's legitimate criticism or sometimes it's pointing out something someone did to make jokes about it and just have fun about it. I think there's definitely different levels of it, different tiers,

where there's someone that's hateful about it. Like they hate this person and they're just going to keep insulting them. Maybe there's nothing constructive and maybe there's nothing entertaining about it. And I think that's the worst level where it's there for hate to fuel this hate machine where I think in today's landscape of social media, people like to be angry more than they like to be happy. I think in the general scheme of things, people like to feel like there's a common enemy that they can all unite against and hate against. And channels that simply aim to fuel that to give them someone to hate without anything constructive or entertaining. I think that's probably the worst level of it. I don't necessarily feel that about live stream fails in particular.

I feel that's more, here's just some drama we can all rally behind and maybe just mindlessly upvote. But I definitely think on other platforms, and on YouTube, there's definitely channels that do that. But on Twitch, I don't see too much of just hate for the sake of hate. I feel it's more just here's drama. Let's just treat it like a, you know, reality TV show. Okay. So can you tell me a little bit about like how YouTube and Twitch in their communities and the level of toxicity is different? Yeah.

So I actually think Leifie made a good point with this before he got banned. And on Twitch, everyone's really kind of looking out for each streamer. You know, if a streamer's being attacked, nine times out of ten, you'll see other streamers come to their aid. On YouTube, if someone's being attacked, it's the trendy thing to immediately hop on and attack that person as well. I mean, you saw it with James Charles. You saw it with pretty much everyone.

And I'm guilty with the James Charles thing in particular. But in YouTube, it's people eating each other, right? And I'm not saying guilty with the James Charles thing, like I did anything bad. I just met like I talked about it. But on YouTube, when some- Is James Charles? He's a big makeup YouTuber. He had like a big scandal and stuff.

And everyone was talking about it, but it turned out it's all just a bunch of bullshit. But on YouTube, it's best for a lot of these channels to immediately hop on when someone's getting attacked when they're vulnerable because that's where all the views are for those people. Like you saw it with Pokeyane. Every YouTuber was making five videos about Pokeyane because Leifie made a video about Pokeyane. That's how it's treated there. That's the normal culture of YouTube. On Twitch, if that happens, from what I've seen for my two years on here, when someone's getting attacked like that, other streamers aren't super quick to immediately start attacking that person. They'll typically wait.

A lot of times, they'll offend the streamer. It's a very different approach, a very different approach when someone's getting attacked on the platforms. YouTube, it'll be like a dog pile, like everyone's trying to desperately recover a fumble and football. But on Twitch, it's people feel more connected as like a community. Hmm. And so has that affected you. How long have you been on YouTube? 14 years. Okay. So like, like have you have have the platform sort of affected you differently? No, I wouldn't say so. Not not me personally, but just I can definitely see the differences. It's not something that I've been a victim to or something that I've really been like in the fucking mix of or anything. But it's something since I've been on both or since I've been on that for a. so long and then coming over here, I can immediately recognize the big difference between the two

when it comes to that. And do you have to deal with like hate? Oh, I mean, everyone does, right? I mean, that comes with putting yourself out there. Everyone has to deal with some level of people not liking you or lying about you or something like that. That unfortunately does come with the territory. And it's something that I've accepted a long time ago.

So it's not something that bothers me. It's not anything that I, you know, I'm super. How do you let it not bother you? How do you do that? I think that's people. Yeah, it's going to be different for everyone. It's just a matter of just being there for so long. I think at the end of the day, it's important to recognize that when somebody's saying these things,

you know, it's not the worst thing in the world. It's somebody you don't know. It's a stranger. You don't know their situation. It's just, you know, it is what it is. They felt this strongly and there's nothing you can do to change their mind at the end of the day. It's out of your hands. And what makes me feel better about it is like, you know what?

I don't know that person. They don't really know me. They didn't like this about me. And that's fine. I just let sleeping dogs lie. In chat, if someone's talking some shit, I'll obviously joke around and start talking shit back at them. That's totally different.

That's just more banter between two people. Or sometimes it gets a little more hostile. But that's just for the sake of having a little fun conversation or a little debate. But when it comes to actually getting under my skin, it doesn't really anymore. And for people that are new to the internet, I can absolutely see it really getting them. because it gets vicious, especially with the way Twitter is right now. It's like they need everyone to be this perfect robot. And I think the sooner you accept that you're never going to be perfect.

Not everyone's going to like you, the better off you're going to be and getting thicker skin when it comes to people that are either just being mean for the sake of being mean or just lying for the sake of lying for drama. It's just a matter of being there, going through it, and recognizing that it's not the worst thing in the world. And we say the way Twitter is nowadays, what do you mean by that? Well, you'll see it all the time. I don't know how often you engage with that platform, the less, the better.

So if you're not on there often, big congratulations. That shit is fucking miserable. I can't figure it out. Yeah, it's terrible. Like, when I say with the way Twitter is, if a YouTuber so much has like had a wet fart on a camera 11 years ago, it's going to get dug up. And it's going to be a controversy. If you've made an edgy tweet at any point over the last decade, it's going to be found.

And you're going to get shit for it. And that's just kind of the way it is because, like I said, I think people really just want to find things to be mad about when it comes to internet people or just in general. So the easiest target is content creators because everything they do is public. People will constantly tweet everything they're feeling, show everything that they're feeling, post everything so they can easily find something to get upset about. And at some point you have to accept, look, someone's going to be bad about something I've done. And I can't change that. I know what kind of person I am. It's not what they're saying it is.

It's really just not anything to this level. And I just need to be okay with that going forward. At least that's kind of the mentality I've adopted. I don't view it as the worst thing there is when it's one or two people on Twitter that are like, Charlie made this tweet 11 years ago where he said, shit, I don't even know. I don't tweet that much. But he said the chupacobra is real because it fucked his grandfather. But Charlie's grandfather has been done for four years.

He lied to us. The chupacobber didn't have sex with his grandfather. You know, I'm not going to be like, wow, fuck. Now they're mad at me for lying. I'm not a liar, you know. Yeah. Hmm. Bad example, but you get what I'm saying.

I couldn't think of any potentially edgy. No, no. Yeah, no, I think chupacabra necrophilia is a great example of something to dig up. Well, to be fair, I did lie about that. I'll set the record straight. The Chupacabra is most likely still a lie. He never had sex with my grandfather. I'll just say it now. So Charlie, like, what do we do about this? That's a great fucking question, man, because it's like just the general mindset, right? You can't change what people want. You can't change what people have fun engaging with, right? People love to be mad and they love to have someone to be mad at. So what, like, how do you really fix that? You can't.

It's what people have decided they personally like. And I don't really know what you do about it. Maybe you have a better suggestion, but for me, I just don't really know what you do for it. Yeah. So I don't know. I think there's a lot we can do, to be honest. Okay. I think, and this could probably, I mean, this is actually probably due to my relative naivete.

It's actually one of my arguably strengths and weaknesses. I remember when I was in training sort of having a couple of patients that were sort of like lost causes kind of thing and I sort of take on lost causes because I'm in a sense arguably just too stupid to realize that if a dozen people have worked with this person before and they haven't made any progress, I don't know why I think I would be different. I don't think it's really arrogant. But I tend to take on challenges that many of my colleagues sometimes wouldn't or, you know, would kind of say like, hey, you're not going to get anywhere with this person.

People have tried. And so the first thing is that there could be like sort of a bias there where, you know, you kind of say, how do you change someone's natural predisposition to want to hate more than be happy? Feels like an unsolvable problem, right? Yeah, absolutely. And so, but in my experience, oftentimes the things that keep us stuck in life or the things that keep us from moving forward is because our diagnosis makes it unsolvable.

So the first issue is like if you change the diagnosis, you may have a treatment. Sometimes the reason that actually, in fact, if you look at in medicine, you know, why don't treatments work? The most common reason that a treatment doesn't work is because the diagnosis is wrong. It's like a no-brainer. If someone comes in and, you know, gets diagnosed with depression, And it turns out that they, like, the reason they have trouble getting out of bed all the time is because they have cancer. Like, that's like, it's like night and day can look like something. Like it's, you can ask someone, hey, do you have trouble getting out of bed? Do you feel like doing anything?

Do you, you've lost weight? You know, you don't enjoy the things that you usually used to enjoy. You feel guilty because you're not able to work and you're not able to like be there for your kids. Like you can check all the boxes for depression and the actual diagnosis is cancer. Then you'd start that person on an antidepressant medication, and then like the antidepressant medication doesn't work. Then they go see another psychiatrist, they go see another psychiatrist. And at the end of the day, like the problem as you framed it is the problem itself. So if your question is how do you get people to stop preferring hate over happiness, that's tough to answer.

But even then, have we really tried? Right? Which is kind of interesting. Have you tried to take a single person and try to understand, you know, Why do you hate instead of being happy? When people post, yeah, you want to say something? I was going to say, yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. Like maybe because there is people that will just watch someone to hate watch them, right?

Like I know it's become kind of a meme because train will be like, you know, all these hate watchers do it and shit like that. But yeah, there are people that do that, right? 100%. So I guess understanding what the purpose is and what they get out of that would be kind of interesting to hear. Yeah. I've ever tried or I know anyone that has. So I think one of the failures we've made as a community is what we do is we call those people toxic.

And for understandable reasons, we just ban them. But what we're actually doing is like judging an entire world of people as toxic without ever trying to understand like where does this come from. And recently, you know, it's kind of interesting. So this may be a little bit of a hot button topic. But with a lot of the Me Too stuff that's come out, we've really tried very hard to support people. who are victims of inappropriate behavior or sexual assault or things like that. But there's a part of me that actually like wonders sometimes like I've worked in a prison and stuff before. And so I remember when I was working in a prison sort of asking myself the

question, when did this person become a predator? And when did this person become a criminal? And what I find myself thinking is that for some people, honestly, like they're straight up like sociopaths and they were sort of like born that way and they had like behaviors at the age of seven or eight that were was like very very problematic but i found that for most people you know i have trouble accepting that like a nine-year-old kid or 11-year-old kid or a 13-year-old kid as a predator and then something happens in our community right they grow up in a particular way like in some point they become in cells and then they become predators or whatever but they're still like i don't i haven't given up on altering the course of those people

because I've worked with people whose courses have been altered. Like I work with some pro gamers. And it's been interesting to talk to them about when they were 15 and they were like big. Right. Like so some of these pro gamers get really good at a really young age and like how other people in the scene went out of their way to like teach them that some of the things that they were doing or saying were like not okay. And, you know, there were like 15 year olds that were, you know, saying really inappropriate racial slurs and like homophobic slurs or whatever like. in chat because that's what you do. And then I remember talking to one of these guys and he was saying, but yeah, like someone

sat me down and said like, hey, you can't be doing that anymore. And his initial response is why? It's just words. And I get the sense that there's like there's a lack of understanding and then there's like a lack of trying to explain to people that this is a problem. And when we label something as toxic, I mean, it makes sense in terms of like banning people because like you said, there's sort of a contagion effect of meaming and toxicity, right? It's like, it's contagious. So you got to ban the people from the chat. But at the same time, I think part of the

reason that we haven't been able to figure out a solution is because we've never tried to, we've never diagnosed anything. It's like, that person is sick. Let's like shove them off to the side and keep them in a hut and never use a stethoscope, never listen to their lungs, never look at their eyes, look in their mouth. Let's not try to diagnose anything. So my sense is that, you know we still have I mean there's some actually like big things in theory I don't know how we go about doing that but sort of exploring toxicity I also think that what we've also seen on Twitch I think this is a good example is that there are toxic communities and they're also wholesome communities and that there are people who

actually are members of both so we see that a lot on our discord where like we ban people from our discord for being toxic and then we actually recently did something where we like got them on stream and we tried to get their perspective like what's your understanding of why you were banned what did you do why did you do it and it's really cool because when you take these people that have been banned and they're viewed as quote unquote toxic that once again Twitch hat loves to hate hate on when you expose their human side I think five out of the six people on our ban appeal stream we just we actually left it up to Twitch and we said chat you guys decide whether we unbanned them or not and five five five

out of six, five out of six of the people got forgiveness and were allowed back on the server. It's got to be fucking terrible being that one guy that didn't, yikes, man, poor man. Yeah, I know. So I feel for that dude, right? So I think though at the same time, like, you know, five out of six, like I was expecting, because, you know, Twitch loves, I mean, this is our perception. So I was about to say something, which I think is a false statement. I was about to say Twitch loves pitchforks. YouTube loves pitchforks. We love pitchforks. L.S.L.L.S. loves pitchforks. But I think that statement in and of itself is like not expecting more. And I think one of the biggest things that I've seen is when you expect very little from another human being, your expectations are met. And when you expect a lot, surprisingly, your expectations

can often be met. And so I choose to have a little bit more faith in humanity. And not to say that you don't have faith in human. I think you have a lot of faith in humanity. but I'm not willing to kind of give up and I don't think we should because I don't think we've really honestly tried like I don't know I mean we have tried

a lot of people have tried you know the the victims of the hate have tried to speak against it in some way and generally speaking it doesn't work but I think we got to figure out you know some of these people

like who do you think are and I don't mean to be putting a target on your back so don't answer this question if you feel like it is putting a target on your back. But who do you think has, like, toxic communities? Like, who should we be talking to? Who should we try to understand, presuming that they're worth understanding?

That's a tough question to answer. I can't really, off the top of my head think of, like, a toxic community, but I can think of a really good community that I think most people would agree with me on, which is Moon Moon Moon's community. Moon has a really, really good community. Like, I think most people could probably agree with that. When it comes to a toxic one,

I can't really think of like a toxic community on Twitch. I mean, if you want to like broaden the definition, someone in the chat mentions the smash community, and that's fair, you know, with everything that's gone on there, a lot of terrible stuff. But I don't think as a whole, everyone that plays smash is a toxic predator asshole or anything,

you know what I mean? So for me, it's hard to like pinpoint a toxic community, one that exists just to insult everyone else and shit on everyone else's fun or anything. What about YouTube? That's a little tougher to answer, because there just is so many communities out there.

But if you don't mind real quick, do you mind if I run to the bathroom? No, no. I'll think it's. Okay, I'll be right back. Lulls. So that's how we, that's how we propagate some of this, this hydritic toxicity, right? So when I call it out, it increases it. No, but seriously, like, what do you guys think?

I mean, do you think it's okay to call out of the community for being toxic or naming them that way? So how do you guys think that the, how do you think that the members of those communities, these perceived themselves. I mean, so people are talking about, yeah, do it to them, let them defend themselves. I don't think that's the right approach, right? So I think that's what creates this problem is that it's an issue of like attack and defense as opposed to like understanding and like, you know, trying to foster some amount of cooperation.

I'm back in it. Yeah, so Charlie, I was asking chat in the meantime. Like, what do you think the people who are members of what we described as toxic? communities, quote and quote. What do you think they feel? Do they view themselves as toxic or how do they view themselves? Okay. I think that's a good question. So in my perspective, I think a hundred well, okay, I can't say 100 percent, but I think an overwhelmingly majority would probably say that yeah, I'm being toxic. I don't think anyone has this delusion where it's like, no, no, no, this isn't toxic. This is actually constructive. I actually think a lot of people embrace it.

I think that's kind of become a trendy thing to do for some people. Be able to be like, like, oh, I'm an asshole, but it's just who I am, you know, you'll see that in a Twitter bio, just an asshole, you know, for some reason that's become normalized to just kind of be an asshole. So I don't think anyone to try and hide that. But yeah, so it's interesting. So I saw a lot of people say, like, righteous. What do you think about that? Oh, there's a hundred percent. Oh, man, you'll see that all over Reddit. There's some people that are like, I am the hero. I am the protagonist of this anime. I'm fighting this evil streamer or this evil Twitter post. Look at me. Please send me your thank yous and the DMs and stuff. A hundred percent. There are people that

have this delusion, but I don't think the majority would. I think most people recognize, yeah, I just don't like, I just don't like this person. I'm being an asshole about it. I don't think there's so many people out there believing that there's some medieval hero writing it on horseback to save everyone from this evil post. Interesting. Okay. I would have had it as flipped. Really? Yeah. So I think most human beings tend to do things that what I would call are egocentonic.

So egocentonic versus ego dystonic means aligned with who you think you are versus not aligned with who you think you are. So a good example of this in psychiatry is like a lot of people talk about people who are quote OCD. That's not OCD. So there are two things. One is OCD, which is obsessive-compulsive disorder. Another thing is obsessive-compulsive personality disorder or O-C-PD. People who are O-C-P-D are control freaks. They really get, they love to be in control, they love to like organize things.

They get bent out of shape when things don't go their way. But that's a very egosentonic thing. They don't think that they're wrong. They don't view themselves as control freaks. They think that everyone else is like, like, you should put the dishes where they go. Not over here. They go over there.

So that's very egosentonic. It's aligned with their identity as a person. The interesting thing is people with true OCD, it's very ego-dhtonic. They know that it's ridiculous that they have to turn on the light, switch the light switch seven times every time they walk into the room. They know it's idiotic. They know there's no reason to do it. And yet they can't help themselves.

It actually causes them distress. But they have to engage in the compulsions or the, obsessions anyway. So in one hand, like OCD is actually very ego-dhistonic where people don't like that they have to do these things. And OCPD are like what we think of is, yeah, I'm super OCD, that's just who I am. That's very egosentonic, right? So I'm just an asshole. That's who I am is a very egocentonic way of thinking. It's like it actually causes that person no distress that they're an asshole. So my sense is that generally speaking, people don't behave in a way that is, first of all, ego dystonic. So they believe in a way that feels aligned with who they are as a person.

And that righteousness is very egosentonic. And I think is very, very common, especially on the internet where you have people like putting other people in their place. Yeah, maybe, just maybe my perspective is a little distorted because of Twitter in particular, because on there, it is so common for people to just outright be like, yep, I'm an asshole. I made this account just to be an asshole. And I'm just going to keep, you know, doing these things, you know, being an asshole. So maybe it's not as common as I think it is. Maybe it's just a confirmation bias where I'm just seeing it more often because of that. So maybe you're absolutely right. I have no idea.

Well, interestingly enough, what you said actually makes me more inclined to take your viewpoint, not less. Because what you're saying is if it's based on Twitter, that sounds to me like you actually, you have real data, whereas I have hypotheses. Well, I mean, it's all anecdotal, right? Like, I don't have actual data. It's just what I see when it go on Twitter and I see these people, like when you see something bad happen, you'll have a bunch of people making all these edgy remarks or making all of these like terrible things they say about the person. And then you go on their profile and that's all they do. That's their entire online identity and they embrace it. They wear it like a badge of honor, like a little Boy Scout badge or something.

So I just see it a lot on there. And I think maybe that's just kind of distorted the way I view how common it is. Yeah. So the interesting thing is I wonder if I talk to one of those people who describe themselves as an asshole. I don't think they feel like an asshole. I think they feel righteous. And they recognize. See, I'd actually disagree. Okay. Yeah, I really feel like if, let's say you brought someone on your show that, you know, recently made some kind of terrible remark about Chadwick Boseman or something. I think if you brought them on their show, on your show, they would still keep this persona up. Maybe they might not actually be a genuine degenerate asshole, but I feel like given any internet attention or any anonymity,

they're going to continue to be that way. I don't think they'd try and hide it. I think they'd embrace it. They'd feel like the Joker from the Batman series. I completely agree with you. But now let's, so I agree with you. I think they'd maintain the persona. But the persona that you maintain in the feelings that you have

are oftentimes, in fact, usually in harsh conflict. A persona, even if we think about the word persona, a persona is a false self. that we think about just the definition, right? It's a false self, which in, agreed? Yeah, 100%. So if a persona is a false self, and you're saying this person would maintain the persona, that implies that what they are on the inside is not what they're portraying.

Ergo, they would not actually feel like assholes. The asshole is the front that they put on because there's something else underneath. Yeah, and that's entirely possible. 100%. it's just hard to know if it even is a persona, right? Like I say that having the belief that maybe they're not this piece of shit, but maybe they just are. Maybe.

Yes. I mean, I think I tend to be curious. I think we've had actually a lot of really interesting explorations with people that I think are generally viewed as toxic. So we had a couple of interesting streams with women like female gamers and then also like women who get hit on by men online. And the really interesting. thing at the end of both of those streams is the women were like yeah we'd love to see you do this with a group of

the people on the other side of the table like find a group of toxic male gamers and just ask them like why are you guys toxic in games or people who you know will send like inappropriate messages to women online or i mean a lot of times what they were complaining about it's not even like inappropriate messages it's sort of like persistence and kind of like guilt tripping and shit like that that people do they're like oh you're not yeah yeah that's become super common right like you see that on Twitch all the time. Like, I've been subbed for this long and you don't even remember my name. It's like, you don't care. Why, you know, don't you know I'm lonely and I'm here for this and that? Like, that's something super common these days. I'd love to know why people do that. Because, you know, where do they get the expectation from, right? And then that makes, that puts all

the onus on the streamer to be like feeling bad for not knowing all of these things about this person. And I think that's a terrible thing as well. It's not like your traditional toxic male to female streamer thing like show me your tits bitch you know i've been sub but it's just as you know it's just as annoying and just as frustrating right to have this person that's been there for so long start blaming you for not knowing everything about their life what's frustrating about that it shouldn't be a streamer's responsibility to kind of be like the mom and dad or the girlfriend to someone that's been subbed for a long time if you know if they don't have an interest in doing that at the end of the day the streamer's there to put on a show and be entertaining and just be there

for somebody, not necessarily to be this pillar in their life and to make them feel bad for not doing that, I think is just as toxic. Does that happen to you? No, not really. I make it pretty clear with my community, like this kind of parosocial relationship isn't a healthy thing, so I don't really encourage it. And I think people understand that. Like, I know a lot of my chat's names, because I'm good with names and I make an effort to at least know what's going on with some of the regulars, because I treat chat like friends. I think that's, you know, I think that's good. have a community that you can joke around with, know a little bit about. But at the end of the day, I'm not their mom.

I'm not their dad. I'm not their babysitter or anything. I'm just there to have some fun with them, talk about some shit, joke around. And no one's ever made me feel bad for not knowing certain things about their life or forgetting something. But I know it does happen in other streams. You see it on Twitter all the time where a streamer will post something from someone that's been sub for 21 months, who's now threatening to kill themselves because of the streamer hasn't acknowledged them in the last two weeks. resubs or some crazy shit.

Yeah, I think that too is something that is worth understanding because I think we sort of get yeah, I don't know exactly what to do about that, but I think it's kind of interesting because you sort of say you show up and you treat them like friends and at the same time you're pretty clear about the boundaries of the parissocial relationship. And I think one of the interesting, actually one of the advantages of Twitch, I think part of what makes Twitch an awesome platform is that people do feel connected. You know, they feel connected. Yeah, I want to make it clear.

Like, there's nothing wrong with, like, connecting with a streamer. That's a lot of times how you find the community. Like I mentioned Moon Moon. I guarantee most of the people in Moon Moon's chat feel a connection with him. But I don't think it's to this level where they're going to be aggressive or angry if Moon Moon doesn't acknowledge their sub or maybe forgets their name or something like that or doesn't see every message. But that does happen. And that's an equally toxic thing.

What do we do about that? Oh, I have no idea. That's just such an individual level. I don't know how you teach that. I think it's just people not understanding, you know, social relationships, right? It's people that don't have a real world experience to know what's acceptable and what's not acceptable when it comes to a stranger. And at the end of the day, it really is still a stranger. You don't know the streamer personally. You don't know everything about them. So it's just someone you're familiar with. And it's all about knowing when is the right time to try and

connect if you want to and knowing when you probably shouldn't do that. And I think a lot of people don't have that because people grow up with so much access to the internet that they just lose that ability to find these things. Yeah. I do wonder if there's something. So it's interesting. We've done actually like a couple of trainings for content creators before where we sort of teach them actually how to set boundaries because I wonder if some of this stuff is actually

just, so it sounds like you set a pretty firm limit with your community and your community knows what to expect in terms of you're there to hang out, you're there to provide entertainment and that you're not their mom or dad. I was really surprised and in some sense hardened to find that a lot of streamers do actually go out of their way to try to like support and connect with their community actually, especially some of the smaller streams. And that, and that, It's interesting because I can see how that could create the feelings that we're talking about, but also I think is like not not in and of itself a bad thing. I think it's just about limit setting and boundaries,

but in and of itself is not like a bad thing that streamers and communities are connected. Yeah, I don't think it's like evil. I don't think streamers that try and form this bond between community and themselves are, you know, dumb or bad people for doing that. It's just when that, when it becomes this level of unhealthiness, you have to understand some individuals aren't going to understand where's too far, where that line is. And then you'll have them having their entire fucking week ruined if you missed their resub or something. And it's not the streamer's fault, right?

It's just this person doesn't really understand it. So it's just knowing the boundaries and making it pretty clear on, you know, the expectation. Yeah. Having a hard time phrasing that in a way that sounds cohesive. No, I thought you did great. I think it's, you know, like you said, I think it's about expectation. You use that word several times and where people get that expectation. I'm also hearing from your words or sort of your statements that like somewhere along the way, like interactions on the internet, sometimes people aren't, don't understand.

Like they just haven't been taught like what is appropriate or not appropriate, which also sort of makes sense because no one teaches you internet etiquette. Right. you get taught actually like by your parents and other people how to behave around other human beings no one teaches you that on the internet yeah and if you don't have that experience around human beings like you're kind of fucked right yeah you're just out here blind with your in your hand like you don't know how to act and i feel bad for those people really do and i think that kind of goes back to like toxic communities because i think in a lot of situations like we don't understand or maybe they don't understand i think it's a little bit arrogant to assume that these people aren't

educated and we are more educated and more enlightened. But at the same time, I do wonder, I think a lot of this Me Too stuff is like, frankly, a lot of it sounds like, you know, dudes who just don't know how to interact with women for the most part. Some of it is like malicious and predatory, but I think a lot of it, it's just, you know, like dudes just don't know how to act. Like they don't know how to talk. They don't know how to interpret signals. They don't, they just don't know. I don't know. what you think about that but yeah i what i only know the smash stuff and as far as smash goes like that's that's that's more than just not knowing how to act that's some terrible like degenerate shit uh so i'm not i don't with the smash stuff what oh man you might want to save yourself the headache like every bad fucking thing you can imagine was happening in the smash community i know there definitely is sometimes someone just like post this twit longer about maybe a bad date they had with somebody online. And I could totally see why that would be uncomfortable, but it's not like the

person was evil just because, you know, they don't know how to talk in a first date. I definitely get that. But then there's also, of course, the really malicious predators that do terrible fucking shit. Oh, wow. I didn't realize things were that bad. But okay. Yeah, it was the smash community is it's, it's in shambles right now, Dr. Kay. It's, it's, it's rough. Okay. Maybe. Maybe we'll look into that and see if there's somewhere we can help. Yeah, I mean, maybe that'd be a good community to look into right now. I mean, they've gone through a lot of what we've already talked about, right? Like, they've had a lot of those things pop up and they've had a lot of cases where a lot of people that looked up to these streamers, turns out the streamers were doing terrible things.

So maybe like getting involved in that community to see where to go from there, what to what to fix going forward because they could use some fucking guidance. They had the worst ideas. So a lot of it had to do with like, you know, child. predators. A lot of the people in the smash community were kids. And one of their suggestions was to mark kids with a colored band and an X on their hands at all in-person events. So that way, older people would know not to try and fuck them. Like they have the worst ideas on how to handle this shit. It's terrible. Yeah. So they could use some guidance and it's a, it's rough. I mean, yeah, I don't even know what to think about that. I guess like, because we do have like,

You know, we do have like, you know, a wristband or whatever for like alcohol at parties or whatever. Right. So, I mean, it's not it's not that crazy of an idea. I think the way that you frame it, though, is speaks that. Oh, no, no, no, no. It wasn't that. It was like we are going to give children a rape whistle. And if their parents aren't holding their hands, they're not allowed in here because we can't trust our adults in this community.

Yeah, right. So I think that's awful because it's sort of, you know, the solution there is not to do something with the kid. I think it's to do something with the adult. 100%. Yeah. I think that would be the rational approach. So, Charlie, I'm noticing we've kind of meandered around a little bit. Is there something else that you want to talk about?

I mean, we sort of talked about toxicity, talked a little bit about how you're a warm and fuzzy human being. Nothing in particular, man. I just want to compliment you on the good work you do. If you don't mind me, sucking your dick a little bit. Like, I think you do a great job. I think it's really important work you do. Before, maybe I'm wrong, but before you came along on Twitch, I don't think anyone was ever even really talking about a lot of the subjects that you like to cover.

And I think that's an important thing to do to both help improve the community around and just get people thinking about themselves and the platform they engage on. So just great work, man. Yeah, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate the appreciation. That actually means a lot, Charlie, because I respect you a lot. I respect your thoughts.

I think you're a good thinker. Like when you comment on things. Like, that's what I was saying. I recently discover your content. I really like the way that you think. can you break apart problems, actually, the way that you go through and analyze things. So to have, to get your seal of approval actually means a lot to me. And yeah, thank you very much, man.

Oh, hey, anytime, man. I appreciate the kind words. I think this has all been a really great conversation. And who knows, maybe we'll see something great come from it. You know, maybe down the line you do talk to some of these communities and these people, and we get a little better understanding of exactly what goes on and why some of these behaviors like hate watching and just generally feeling better being mad as opposed to happy persist. Yeah. I think that'd be very interesting to learn about.

Charlie, can I ask you one last question and then we can talk about meditation for a second? Absolutely. So my question is, so what can I do? What should I do? And you don't have to answer it now. But, but, you know, so like I said, I appreciate your ability to look at problems and analyze them. And I think if you've watched some of our content and the positive feedback you've given to me, so you know these people, you know the YouTube community better than I do, you know the Twitch community better than I know, you know the Twitter community better than I do. If you were to think about me as a resource to deploy, which is really what I'm asking, like, what should I do?

man that is that is a tough one um i guess what i would start with if i if i was to launch the i cbm known as dr k yes i would immediately start on twitter that would be the first place i'd target because i think a lot of the general like mindset the mind frame of a lot of these people is born from twitter twitter i think is just the the past time a lot of people take where when they're not doing something. Twitters are so easily accessible, easily digestible, that they will just find these things and get locked in this echo chamber and these psychophants. And they'll just start to adopt these beliefs and these mindsets where I'm happier when I'm mad, I like to be mad, and I just want to stay mad. And I think getting to the root of where that kind of comes from in maybe a group,

I don't know what group you'd start with, but maybe like a prominent group where this seems to be common and figure out why they prefer that as opposed to some better content where they're not fucking fuming nine hours a day because i mean people treat twitter like it's a job they'll be on twitter for nine hours spamming all kinds of shit replying back and forth you'll see it's not uncommon to see an account have 200,000 tweets right like why waste their time doing that what do they personally get out of it do they feel fulfilled are they even happy doing it what's the point that would be where i'd start i wouldn't know where to start but the target would be Twitter for me. Okay. So you feel like Twitter is, is where, you know, the, the nexus of the tumor is.

Oh, I would say that is the genesis of a lot of the things we're seeing and talking about when it comes to, like, toxicity and like general fucking weird loser mental, fucking weird loser mentality, not to call everyone a loser, but you know what I'm saying. I think that's where it kind of stems from, is they see these posts have so many likes and so much engagement that are. really negative and so they'll start doing it maybe to get the same fulfillment i don't know i can only speculate interesting that's not what i was expecting um but you know i had thought that that maybe what i should focus on is people who dedicate themselves to making negative content so the content as opposed to the audience yeah so like thinking about what motivates someone

to make uh a certain kind of content but which i guess sort of qualifies as twitter Right? Because in Twitter, what happens is you have the audience making masses of content. So the content creator and the audience become one in Twitter. So now that I'm thinking about it, it actually sort of makes sense. Because Twitter is the place where everyone makes content, right? Yeah. I mean, the content is every post, right? So yeah. So it's one where the audience and you get to see the audience in a way that oftentimes you don't on other platforms. Interesting.

Cool, man. Thank you very much. Yeah, of course. My apologies in advance if you do choose Twitter, you're going to have a fucking headache, man. Like that is rough. Yeah, we'll see, right? Yeah. And are you interested in talking about meditation for a minute

or like learning how to meditate if you don't already? Sure, yeah. I'd love to hear more about it. I've never done it myself. I tried it when I was in college once or twice. but that's a very hard field to kind of master and figure out. Sure. So can I think for a second? Yeah, by all means, man, no rush.

Actually, if you don't mind, give me just one more second. Sure. I'll be right back. Okay, chat. We're going to do something a little bit more advanced today, okay? All right. I'm sorry about that. No problem, man.

How is that? Do you get your Starlight rare? I wish. I wish I just pulled it up. over there. Believe it or not, I actually have three of the second most valuable starlight rare there is. There's more than one star light rare. Oh yeah, there's like five per every three sets or something like that. Oh, interesting. I thought so Charlie, what's your understanding of what meditation is? The way I understand meditation is it's a short period of time where you clear every single thought and

problem for pretty much as long as you can and just kind of be right you just kind of sit on your own without any kind of thoughts or anything weighing you down more or less it's basically just a clean slate for x amount of time sort of that's how i understood it okay that's that's actually like a pretty good starting point so one of the goals of meditation is to shut off your mind so in the east they believe that you is a part of person as a being are not your mind in the same way that we're not our body. Right? So like if I like this is my hand, I even describe it with the word of my, which presumes for a moment that it's an object that is not me. So my pen, my hand, my finger, my fingernail.

So you don't right? So you use the possessive. The interesting thing is we also, so people generally speaking know that they're not their body. Like in theory, if I were to have an accident, and lose a finger, I wouldn't be like changed as a person. Like I may change in some ways. Like I may sort of suffer some sense of identity problem or something like that. I may mourn. I may feel like I'm deformed or all kinds of things can happen. But at the end of the day, like me still exists.

And so the interesting thing is that most of us sort of understand that our body is just our body and that we're not necessarily our body, somewhat connected, of course, related, interconnected, it becomes more difficult when it comes to the mind because we tend to think that our mind is us. So our sense of like self-worth, our sense of identity, you know, sort of being a neat or, you know, being successful or not successful, being a streamer, being a gamer, being a doctor, call it whatever you want to. These are all the identifications of the mind. We tend to think that that's who we are. So meditation is actually the systematic process of trying to discover, the true self, which is actually outside of body and outside of mind.

And as a result of that, we sort of get to practices that do what you kind of describe, which is to shut off your mind or to exist with awareness outside of mind. With me so far? Yep. I'm feeling you. So what I'm going to teach you today is actually like a practice that I think is pretty useful for addiction. I don't think you're addicted to anything, but it's just something that I've been I've been sort of teaching a couple of the same things. And I actually think that I know this is going to sound bizarre, Charlie, but I think you're spiritually a little bit. You're not

actually a new when it comes to spirituality. So I'm going to teach you a slightly more rigorous practice if that's okay. Sure. So what I'm going to tell you is first of all, the first step of meditation is the concentration of awareness. It is letting your awareness or your attention go where you want it to. And if there is one basic, weakness that we have as a society, it is not being able to control our attention. So a lot of people say that I'm not disciplined, right? So what discipline really is, is it's the focus of attention. It's not, it's really not anything else. It's just putting your attention where you want it to go. So if I sit down in front of a book and I say, it's time to study.

And then I point my attention at this book. And then I say, I'm going to read these words. And then what happens is our mind wanders all over the place, right? And so then I'm not able to study. And what we perceive is discipline is someone who can actually control their attention. I'm going to think about and focus the attention of my mind or being where I want it when I want it. And it's that basic skill which separates like people who are successful from people who are. So the next thing to think about is what does pull our attention in different places? So the most common thing that pulls our attention in different places are the sense organs, the Indrias. So case in point, we were talking about earlier. Like if we use the word hydrodic,

then a lot of people see that word, they hear that word, in their mind, pay attention, right? So I'm tempting them. So I want you to notice because I'm trying to evoke it at them. Now everyone is thinking about that and wanting to type that. So already what I've done is I've used a sensory input and their mind's attention is automatically going in that direction. So notice that. Right. So all it takes is the senses to control the attention of your mind. So we can think about that in terms of like, oh, if you see a Yu-Gi-O-Pak or I talk to you about a Yu-Gi-O-Pack, this is something you're hearing, something you're seeing,

and then your mind's attention goes to the Yu-Gi-O-Pack. I smell alcohol. I see people drinking. I smell like a burger cooking or like a hot dog bender, and then my attention goes there, and then my behavior follows my attention. With me? Yeah, it makes sense. So what I'm going to teach you today is the practice of separating your indrias or your sense organs from your attention.

I'm going to teach you a practice so that you can literally learn how to control your mind. And what we're going to do is separate the indria from the sense organ in a very, very simple sense. So what I'm going to do is show you something called the Shriyantra. Okay, so this is a little bit. It has a religious background, but you guys don't have to worry about the religious part of it. It really doesn't matter. This is a, so let me just think about how to do this. Okay.

So you all aren't going to be able to see Moist's face because I can't figure out how to do that. And you can't see anything yet, right? Me? I see the screen, the red, red art. So this is the Shriyantra. Okay. So this is what I want you to do. I'm going to zoom in a little bit.

Okay. So can you see the dot? in the middle. Yes. Okay. So what I want you to do, and so I want all of you guys to do this, okay? So I want you to look at the dot and just stare directly at the dot. And then what I want you to do is don't look anywhere else, and it's okay to blink if you want to. Okay, so just take a moment to stare at the dot. Looking at it? Yeah, I feel like I'm about to be like mind controlled or something to rob a bank for you.

Close. You're about to send me your entire Yu-Gi-O collection. I'm out. All right. This is nothing. Okay. So what I want you to do is notice, Charlie, as you look at the dot like what your mind is doing. Is your mind focused on the dot along with your eyes? Or does your mind kind of fluctuate between the dot and other things? Fluctuate. Okay. So now what I want you to do is look at the dot and put your attention. Don't look elsewhere, but put your attention on the red outside the blue box. You see there's like a red square outside the blue box? Yeah. So look at the dot, but put your attention on the red. Does that make sense? Yeah.

And now I want you to move to the blue square with your attention, but don't stop looking at the dot. Can you move your attention to the blue? Yeah, I think so. I think. Okay. And now I want you to notice that there are circles inside the blue square. and continue looking at the dot, but then tell me what color are the circles inside the blue square? Yellow.

Okay. Are there others? I think yellow, red, yellow. Okay. So now move further in. What's inside the three circles? A blue circle. Okay. And then what's inside the blue circle? Red. Okay. And what's inside?

Red what? What does it look like? Like rose petals, it looks like. Okay, okay. And then move further inside. So keep staring at the dot. It's okay to blink. But let your attention move closer.

So what's inside the pink rose petals, red rose petals? Looks like another little ring. Of what color? It's like a darker yellow. Okay. And then keep on moving. inward. So let your attention move to the next layer in. What's next? It's another yellow circle. Okay. And then? Green triangles. Okay. Red triangles.

Okay. Blue triangles. Okay. Red triangles. Okay. Okay. Okay. So what did you notice about how easy it was to attend to think? as they came closer to your sight. Oh, yeah, that was a lot easier. The outside was a real struggle. Yep, right. So, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I just couldn't figure out what I was seeing over there.

Yeah, in pictures of the Bigfoot or something for all I can tell. So what we can see, what we can notice, first of all, is that awareness loves being close to our senses. You see that? It's just a relief. It requires so much strain to pull your awareness. away from your senses. Would you agree with that? Agreed. So now we are, first of all, understand why studying is hard. Because in studying, like, our attention wants to wander somewhere else. And it's like our indrias and our mind is going somewhere else. It's hard to focus it to where you

want to go. So now what we're going to do is we're going to do this practice again. So we're going to do it for about two minutes. I want you to just close your eyes for a second. Okay. And just go ahead and recalibrate. So chat, did you guys understand that? Okay, so now what we're going to do, Charlie, is we're going to start again, and I want you to open your eyes and look at the red dot. Okay. And what I want you to do is just fluctuate your attention. So you can decide you can move from the outside in or the inside out. But I want you to move your attention to different layers of the picture. Okay.

And just practice moving it in and out and focusing on something, focusing on another thing. If you want to, you are noticing, you know, the colors of the triangles, but between the triangles, there are also shapes. So there are shapes created by the negative space. Okay. So you can even notice those. But we're going to practice for two minutes. And just if you want to, the simplest way is just start from the furthest outside and go in and then go back out. But you can also just bounce around and play with it.

Okay. Then we'll try and freestyle this here. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to start inside and just kind of go out. So red dot, red triangles. And there's like in the negative space, it's like a little yellow, I don't know what they called the four-sided shape, not the square, but the one that's on its side, like a rhomboid.

Yep. It's blue triangles, yellow, skinnier rhombids. I sound like a fucking psychopath. Red triangles. Okay. So pause for a second. notice how you judge yourself for not coming up with the right word right you see how that thought popped up yeah so so for a moment your attention actually deviated completely away from the

practice and entered a judgment yeah damn so so that's okay so and then once again you judge yourself for judging yourself so return your attention to the dot okay start in the dot and don't tell me what you see so let's take that off your plate so be silent and just fluctuate your time play around with it, do whatever you want to. We're going to ask everyone to be silent for like, let's say about two minutes and just move your attention between the layers. Keep going. We're halfway there. Now go ahead and close your eyes. And notice that in the space in front of your mind, you may see an image. What do you see? Anything? Yeah, I see the blue square, the yellow ring, a red ring inside the yellow

ring and then the yellow ring again. Beautiful. So just focus. Don't stop focusing. So continue looking at the image and continue the practice with your eyes closed. So focus on the center or keep your mental eye on the center and let your attention fluctuate between the layers and just see with your eyes closed. I don't know if this makes sense, but do your best not to lose it. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's weird, huh? Don't lose it. Hold on. I'm trying. It's like a tug of war right now.

Yes. This is meditation. When you win this war, you will control yourself. I'm going to open my eyes, and it turns out I'm like levitating above my chair or something. Okay. So your attention has wandered. So go ahead and stop. You're ready. Open your eyes. Yeah. I had it for quite a while, I'll say, a lot long. than I thought I would. Good. So, questions. Yeah, how, so this exercise right here, I imagine this is one you've done a lot of times. Sort of. Something similar. Yeah.

How long did it take you of doing these exercises before you finally, like, got the hang of it? That's a hard question. So here's what my experience with meditation is. You think you get the hang of it. And then the cool thing is, like, you start to get the hang of other things. I'm still getting. getting the hang of it. And I'm also really good at it. So I'll give you just an example. So I do a particular mantra. So this is something called a yuntra, which is like a physical symbol that's actually like, it's actually like magic. So if you really look at the tradition of yantra, which is part of the tantric or tantra branch of meditation, if you really describe it, it's kind of like magic. But anyway, I don't really put a whole lot of stock into that. But I do a mantra. So mantra is the chanting of a particular syllable to cultivate a particular kind of energy.

Not really very, actually, there's some signs to it, if we were being fair, but not really scientific at all. So it took me some amount of time. Let's say a period of about two weeks to be able to sit and concentrate on the mantra fully. But when you say get the hang of it, I'd say after a couple of years, it's hard to say, it's hard to describe but I started seeing my mantra

in other things so I heard When you close your eyes Yeah that's a yuntra So a mantra is a sound Oh so I started to hear The sound of my mantra In the rhythm of life

Is the best way I can describe it And it's kind of the best indicator I can give you is like close your eyes And listen to the sound of your breath Can you hear it? No I don't hear a fucking thing Okay. That's not like deep breath.

So deep breaths. Good. So go ahead. Breathe a lot. Good. So anyway, so I know this is going to sound kind of weird, but have you heard that sound anywhere else? It is the only time I would have ever really heard that sound that I can think of is maybe during like some big physical exertion where I'm like, you know, panting or on the verge of collapsing. Like what pops to mind is when I used to play basketball, right?

Okay. How close are you to the ocean? Oh, not close. Okay. So one day if you get the chance and you're at the ocean, I would listen to the sound of the ocean and then listen to the sound of your breath and see if they sound similar or they sound different. So this is kind of a leading exercise, right?

So what I discovered, it's hard to describe, but what I found is that my mantra is like a very fundamental sound that can be heard in many, many, many, many places. And so in a sense, I felt like that's when I really started getting the hand of it. And so the goal of meditation is you start to discover things and like learn things about yourself, about a universe. We're talking really culty. But honestly, that's what it's hard to describe. But it's like, it's sort of like, you know, when I ask you the experience of, is it, you know, you learn something fundamental today when you look at that thing and you're like, it's so difficult to see the outside and it's so easy to see the inside. And what

What you're literally doing is doing push-ups for your mind where you're training your attention to go where you decide instead of it following your indrias or your sense organs. If you become free of your indrias in terms of where your attention goes, your life will be completely different. We think about someone who's disciplined. They smell a burger and they order a salad. What is that? It's separation from attention from the indria. Separation from the attention to the indria is one of the most crucial skills and we don't teach it to people and you can start with this practice because literally all it is there's nothing to there's no significance it's just a sterile environment it's a sandbox where you put your indria in one place

and you put your attention somewhere else and it's fucking hard and then what happens is you close your eyes and you see that after image and then i tell you charlie hold on and you're like it's a war you're damn right it's a war. And when you start winning that war, when you wake up one day and you say on January 1st, I'm going to go to the gym every day, there's that thought. And it's really easy and you're highly motivated on January 2nd. That thought starts to pull away because you haven't learned how to hold on. You don't know how to hold on to something that's slipping away from your mind. This is a practice that literally you do push-ups to hold on to what you choose to hold on to and you get better at it.

And then you'll be able to... Yeah. It's that simple. But it's very difficult. So practice. I'll send you a link for the Shia Yantra if you are interested. It's good if you want to... I would get a physical picture so you're not looking at a screen, though. But it's a good Yonthra to start with. And it, you know, and also send me all your Uyghur card.

Don't you ever say... We don't even joke about that in this Holy Sanctuary. They have a loving home. They don't need to go anywhere. Any other questions? No, man. I've just really enjoyed this. I really appreciate you having me on.

Yeah. It's been fun for me too, Charlie. I really appreciate the work you do, man. Oh, thank you. And I appreciate your work as well. All right, man. Take care. You too. Have a great... Are you going to keep streaming? Nope. Are you streaming? No, no, no. I was just going to say, have a great rest of the stream.

But if you're heading out... Yeah, if you're streaming, I'd raid you. But... Oh, that's sweet. All right, take care of it. Bye. That's it. Okay. That was cool.