Lex Fridman Podcast - #337 – Destiny: Politics, Free Speech, Controversy, Sex, War, and Relationships
Episode Date: November 11, 2022Steven Bonnell, aka Destiny, is a progressive political commentator and a live streamer on YouTube. Melina Goransson is a live streamer on Twitch. Please support this podcast by checking out our spons...ors: - True Classic Tees: https://trueclassictees.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off - Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex to get 25% off premium EPISODE LINKS: Destiny's YouTube: https://youtube.com/destiny Destiny's Subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/Destiny Destiny's Website: https://destiny.gg Destiny's Instagram: https://instagram.com/destiny Melina's Twitch: https://twitch.tv/melina Melina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melina.goransson Melina's Twitter: https://twitter.com/melinagoranson PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:55) - Politics and debates (24:17) - War in Ukraine (37:26) - Trans athletics (40:35) - AI (53:18) - Lowest point in Destiny's life (1:13:29) - Hate speech and language (1:49:51) - Misogyny (2:05:02) - Big government and institutions (2:44:46) - Hasan and Vaush (3:00:55) - Joe Biden (3:11:45) - Donald Trump (3:17:45) - Free speech (3:20:38) - Melina joins the conversation (3:23:52) - Melina and Destiny (3:34:23) - Open relationship (3:41:45) - Red pill community (3:52:00) - Sex body count (4:04:14) - Advice for young people
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The following is a conversation with Stephen Benel, also known online as Destiny.
He's a video game streamer and political commentator, one of the early pioneers of both
live streaming in general and live streamed political debate and discourse.
Politically he is a progressive, identifying as either left or far left depending on your
perspective.
There are many reasons I wanted to talk to Steven. First, I just talked to Ben Shapiro, and many people have told me that Steven is the
Ben Shapiro of the left, in terms of political perspective and exceptional debate skills.
Second reason is he skillfully defends some nuanced, non-standard views.
At the same time, being pro-establishment,
pro-institutions, and pro-biden,
while also being pro-capitalism and pro-free speech.
Third reason is he has been there at the beginning
and throughout the meteoric rise
of the video game last streaming community.
In some mainstream circles, this community
is not taken seriously.
Perhaps because of its demographic distribution skewing young,
or perhaps because of the sometimes harsh style of communication.
But I think this community should be taken seriously and shown respect.
Millions of young minds tune into last dreams like destinies to question and to try to understand
what is going on with the world, often exploring challenging, even controversial ideas.
The language is sometimes harsher and the humor sometimes meter than I would prefer,
but I, grandpa Lex, put on my rain boots and went into the beautiful chaotic muck of online
discourse and have so far survived to tell the tale, with
a smile and even more love in my heart than before.
On top of all this, we were lucky to have Molina Gorinson, a popular streamer and world traveler
join us at the end of the conversation.
You can check out her channel on twitch.tv slash mollena and you can check out
stevens channel on youtube.com slash destiny.
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And now, dear friends, here's Destiny. I don't know if you watched me watching your yay interview.
Yeah, thank you so much for that.
I'm so curious.
When you're navigating a conversation like that, are you, how intentional is the thought process between like building rapport and
pushing and giving a little on like zero?
Zero intention.
I was watching and thank you so much.
It was very kind for you to review that conversation.
It meant a lot that you were complimentary parts on the technical aspects of the conversation,
but no, zero.
And I'm actually deliberately trying to avoid,
I think you've called it, debate brain, which is just another flavor of thinking about
like the meta conversation, trying to optimize how should this conversation go, because I feel like
the more you do that, the better you get at that, the less human connection
you have.
Like the less genuinely you're actually sitting there in the moment and listening to the
person, you're more like calculating what's the right thing to say versus like feeling.
What is that person feeling right now?
What are they thinking?
That's what I'm trying to do is like putting myself in their mind and thinking, what does
the world look like to them?
What does the world feel like to them? What does the world
feel like to them? And so from that, I truly try to listen. Now, I'm also learning, especially because
Rogan and others have been giving me shit for not pushing back. It's good sometimes to say
from a place of care for the other human being to say, stop. What did you just say?
I don't think that represents who you are
and what you really mean.
Or maybe if it does at that time represents who they are,
I could see a better world if they grow into a different
direction and try to point that direction out to them.
There's a really complicated dance between letting
somebody share their full story versus
letting somebody like, essentially, I guess like proselytize.
You're on the answer that's like, okay, hold on, let's take him in here.
But yeah, I used to be four or five years ago, it was attack, attack, attack, attack, attack,
whatever you said.
And now I'm leaning way more towards the like, okay, well, tell me how you feel about
everything and then we'll go from there.
So a lot of people like me to approach, some older fans will watch,
and they're like, why are you letting this guy just ramble on?
You know, we said like five or six wrong things,
and you're only gonna call them out on two of them,
and it's like, it's different styles of conversation,
but yeah.
Do you do a lot of research beforehand too?
Depending on the conversation, yeah.
So if we're gonna talk like vaccines and stuff,
yeah, that's a ton of reading and stuff
that I'd never thought I'd know going into it.
If it's a more personal, like political philosophy conversation, there's not as much you can prepare for it.
It truly depends on the conversation.
I want you to actually listen to the other person.
I'm always listening, you have to listen.
Because as soon as you stop listening,
the quality of everything falls apart.
The connection disappears, the quality of the conversation
disappears, but my natural inclination
is to just be way more aggressive than normal.
So I have to constantly remind myself,
I guess you would call it a metaconverse station. I'm like, okay, he's probably saying this because of that
or we'll let him go here and then we'll stop later. But yeah, because my my preferred
style of conversation is like, I'm going to talk and the second I say something you disagree
with, then let's iron it out, right? I got like I think in like, syllogisms like, okay,
here's premise A, good, okay, premise B, okay. And then conclusion. And then as long as
we're both deductively sound,
we're not crazy, no psychosis,
then we're gonna agree on everything.
Whereas other people like to,
most people think in stories, like narratives,
like a whole, there's a whole like narrative
and the individual facts don't matter as much
because they'll pick and choose what they want.
And it's really hard because everybody thinks narrative
is so I have to function in that world.
But it's frustrating for me sometimes.
Well, I've seen, you you had a lot of excellent debates.
One of them I just recently last night watched is a on systemic racism.
And it's the first time I've seen you completely lose your shit.
Oh, shoot. Who was out of games?
I'm not sure exactly, but you were just very frustrated.
I'm sorry, not lose your shit, but you were frustrated constantly because of the thing.
Let's lay out one, two, three.
And every time you try to lay it out it would falter. I think it had to do with sort of
can you use data to make an argument or do you need to use a study that doesn't interpretation
of that data and then there's like this tension between I think this is a behavioral economist
that you were talking to. The point is you do this kind of nice layout that the whole point of
behavioral economics it says there's more to it than just the data you have to give
a context and like do the rich rigorous interpretation in the context of the full human
story. And then there was like a dance back and forth sometimes used data sometimes not
and you were getting really frustrated and shutting down. And so that felt like a failure
mode. I've seen Sam Harris have similar sticking points.
Like if we can't agree on the terminology, we can't go on. To me, I feel like,
sort of the Wiggenstein perspective is like, I think if you get stuck on any one thing,
you're just not going to make progress. You have to, part of the conversation has to be
thing you're just not going to make progress. You have to part of the conversation has to be
about doing a good dance together versus being dogmatically stuck on the path to truth. I think the true challenge is identifying what of those sticking points are important versus what
is not important. It's like if I'm having an argument with somebody
about like Jewish representation and media,
they might be like a big conversation
and they might say a couple things.
Like I think Jewish people, you know,
they tend to help their own or whatever it's like.
Okay, but like for the purpose of the conversation,
we can keep moving.
But if they casually drop like, you know, yeah,
and I think that's why the Holocaust numbers
were blown up from like 100,000 to 6 million
and that's why I was like, okay, well hold on, wait, if you think this,
we have to stop here because this is going to be, it's not just a language game in this
part.
If you really believe this fact, then the whole rest of the conversation is going to be
informed by that.
But if you know, and it has to be something that doesn't bother you personally, you have
to step outside your own ego.
So Holocaust denial is somebody that would bother a lot of people.
And there's some things just observing you. I feel like when you get really good at
conversation, you can become a stickler to, you might have your favorite terms that really
bothers you if people don't agree on those terms.
Greg's the question. You mean racing the question? Yeah, I usually just want,
see those people say stuff, I just let it slide, yeah. You can't, because if you fight,
when you're having a conversation with somebody
and you're talking to their audience at the same time,
because that's really what's happening.
You never want to come off as overcombative
or over aggressive, because it puts people in like,
there's like a trigger in your brain,
and this is true of relationships,
of friendships, of persuasive rhetoric or whatever.
There's a trigger in the brain,
and as soon as that defensive trigger gets flipped on,
everything is over, you've lost the ability to persuade,
because everything becomes a fight at that point.
Yeah.
Well, I want to talk to you,
because I heard somewhere that you were referred
to as the Ben Shapiro of the left.
And since I'm talking with Ben as well,
I wanted to sort of complete spiritually
this platonic political philosophy puzzle in my head.
You are a progressive, but a progressive with many non-standard progressive views,
and you had a heck of a fascinating journey through all of that.
And like I said, I think you argue with passions, sometimes with excessive amounts of passion,
but it's almost really polite way of saying that.
Almost always with good faith and with rigor with seriousness. I asked on your subreddit, which is an excellent subreddit
Shout out to the destiny subreddit
So much at least for that particular post
What I really loved is when I asked for questions for you. There were like holy shit
There's adults and there were less all behave
Like nobody say incest. I was like what was going on here
But actually the the, the, the
questions that rose to the top were really good. So somebody said that destiny was speaking
of your journey was a conservative in his early teens. Then he became a libertarian. Then
he became a left-wing social justice warrior. Then he flirted with socialism. And now
he is a social democrat liberal. I've also heard you refer to yourself as a far-left person
So to the degree there's true to that journey. Can you take me through your evolution?
Through the landscape of political ideologies that you went through so my dad comes from Kentucky and my mom is a Cuban immigrant
Cubans are notorious for being very conservative in the United States for historical reasons and for other reasons, but
My upbringing was a very Republican one. I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage,
on the radio, Billy Cunningham
Think Sean Hannity a little bit later on like that was like my whole upbringing politically.
I remember I was writing, I'd written like articles
for the school journal like in favor of
defending the war in Iraq and you know,
defending Bush from other criticism, et cetera.
So that was my upbringing.
And then once I hit high school college,
I had my edgy like libertarian-esque high school phase
of like reading iron Rand, of figuring out that like,
oh my god, nothing in life matters except for class and money. That's actually the answer to
everything. And I got to college. I became a Ron Paul fan, very big Ron Paul fan. And then
from there, I kind of work, do life, life happens at the kind of the lowest point of my life in terms
of where I'm working, financially everything is like kind of in ruin in my life.
There's a whole bunch of dumb stuff that's happened.
Probably my most conservative point.
I don't know what it is about like being poor and thinking like you can work your way out
of it.
You can do whatever.
It's just my upbringing is always like if you're not, if you're not having financial
success, work, work, work, work, work.
And then I got into streaming.
Very, very lucky break.
Everything just lined up at the right time.
And then as I've progressed through streaming, I would say through the years,
I've gradually fallen more and more to the left, especially once my kid turned four,
five, six years old.
And I started to see like how much different his life was just because of the financial
opportunities that I was able to provide for him through no merit of his own.
And that started to radically change how I viewed the world in a lot of ways.
So actually let's like linger on that low point.
You worked at McDonald's, you worked at Casino,
you did carpet cleaning, what was the lowest point?
Definitely the carpet cleaning.
Really?
Absolutely.
Why was it the lowest point?
That's when you were just flirting
with starting streaming.
My whole life has been a series of lucky breaks,
really truly.
I grew up playing a lot of video games, but back in my day our day
You had to read there's a lot of text on the screen back in my day. We used to play they didn't all talk
Yeah, yeah, because nowadays everything's voice acting but back then you'd read a lot
I was a really good reader and a really good vote
Yeah, I heard you actually say that well what games are we talking about what do you mean?
Just reading you talking about like RPGs.
Yeah, JRPG.
So like Final Fantasy games, fantasy stars,
like all of these, like any RPG
that would have been on the SNES, SEGA, PlayStation,
these are the things that I'm pause on that.
Okay.
I just talked to Todd Howard, who's of the Elder Scrolls fame
and the Fallout fame and beyond, what's your thoughts
on Elder Scrolls? Why Skyrim the greatest RPG of all time? the fallout fame and beyond what your thoughts on other schools.
Why Skyrim the greatest RPG of all time?
Man, I really don't like Skyrim or fallout.
You don't love it, games.
Oh, really?
No, not at all.
Why do you hate Skyrim?
I really like characters and compelling stories and narrators
around those characters.
And I like to see them grow and change.
Kind of like a movie or a story.
So in your fun of fantasy games, you've got characters.
There are a lot of like classical tropes of like
a character starts off kind of like edgy angsty
all on their own, they develop relationships, friendships,
they realize that the life is more about themselves
and they do that and I like that that growth.
That's kind of what you see in all of those
old role-playing games.
I didn't like the open world one so much
because your main character is just like a blank slate,
never talks, it's for you to like project on
to but there's not the same like a linear narrative of like growth for the
character. There's a actual story arc to the character that's more crafted in a
beautiful way by the designers of the game. Yeah that's I don't think one is
better or worse. I tend towards like I want to hear a compelling story around
like a set of characters that like grow and change just again. Oh that's beautifully
put then.
Yeah.
I just really loved being able to leave the town.
You go outside the town and you look outside its nature and the world of possibilities is
before you.
You do whatever the fuck you want.
I mean that immensity of just being lost in the world is really immersive for me.
But yeah, you're right.
Whatever attracts you about a world.
So you were just starting to play video games,
you go up play video games, that's one of your lucky breaks.
There's just like a lot of random skills you pick up,
depending on the type of game you play.
I played a lot of tech space games on the computer.
So I was a very fast type, or I'm still a very fast type,
read a lot, you know, learned,
weird kind of math stuff for some of the calculations,
some of the games.
I think I'm pretty good at getting information, figuring stuff out, learning patterns, all of that.
And then that plus the reading and everything with the games meant that I, I don't want to say I excelled in school
because my grades were pretty bad, but I was in like all honors, all AP classes or whatever.
A lot of dual enrollment, a lot of AP credit going into college, so I did pretty well in school.
Probably better than I should have, but it was because I had the game stuff that was like really powering a lot of dual enrollment, a lot of AP credit going into college. So I did pretty well in school, probably better than I should have,
but it was because I had the game stuff that was like really powering a lot of my brain there.
I was trying to sleep through class, yeah.
So you're able to soak in information, integrate it, quickly take notes.
Generally, I think I'm pretty good at that, yeah.
Well, what, you do this a lot when you stream your typing stuff.
Is there a system in that note taking?
And what note, what do you use for note-taking? Doesn't matter.
I use a notepad.
The original.
The original.
Yep, notepad.exe, not the plus plus, not is there genius to the madness behind that or
you just don't give a shit?
No, I mean, it's going to depend on the style of conversation.
If I'm with somebody that is very meticulously organized their thoughts and they are a,
find a better word here for a rambler.
You can edit that in, better word for rambler.
Some of the talks a lot and a lot.
I'll start like taking notes, bullet points like this, this, this, this, this, this, because
there's a style of conversation where I say seven or eight different things and then when
you go to respond to everything I said, I cut you off immediately and we argue that point.
But if somebody's going to do that, it's just like, hold on.
You just said, these eight things, I'm going to respond to every single one. I've written them all
down. And then you can go, if you want to go point by point, we can, but you just said
all this and I wrote it down, so we're going to go.
So what are you actually writing down like a couple of words per point, they left?
Honestly, like, there are very few unique conversations and politics. Like a lot of them
are kind of retreading old ground. So if we're having a debate on abortion, somebody
might say, like, oh, well, I believe this thing about viability, and I believe this thing about, you know,
when they're a fetus versus a human,
and I'll just write down like those points,
so that when I go to respond,
I kind of have like a, like, no cards,
like a guiding thing there to keep me centered on my response.
Political discourse is a kind of tree you're walking down,
and I got it, and you're like taking...
Just to keep my focus guided,
so I'm not like running off on a weird tangent
or responding to something I didn't say or something.
What about like doing research? It just, is there a system to your note taking because
mentally you seem to be one of the most organized people I've listened to.
So is there is it in your mind or is there a system that's on paper?
A little of both. I feel like the human mind is a beautiful thing if you have interest in an area.
So the like what I'll tell people is, let's say there's a totally new topic
that I'm researching, I don't know anything.
And I'll do a couple of these on stream.
I think they're boring, but people watch it.
I might open a Wikipedia article and I'll read,
and I hit something I don't know,
and then I open the next Wikipedia article,
and I'll read into, and then I might have like seven tabs open,
and I'll read and I'll read, and I'll read,
and I'll read a ton of stuff, maybe for hour, two,
three, four hours of stuff.
And then by the end, you know,
someone in chat will ask me, like, do you even remember like this particular thing? And I'll say, not really stuff maybe for hour, two, three, four hours of stuff. And then by the end, you know, someone in chat will ask me like,
do you even remember like this particular thing?
And I'll say, not really, no, not too much.
But what happens is, as long as you've seen it once,
what will happen is like the next day of the day after,
it will read something else and we're like, oh,
I remember that thing from this thing.
I remember like vaguely that.
And then if you see it like a third time, you're like, oh,
this makes sense because especially when it comes to,
oh, here's like a little trick on stuff.
If you ever reading any news and there's a place
that pops up, always look at it on a map
because so much of history is like on a map.
It's so important to like know the geography.
It makes things make so much more sense.
But yeah, once I start to see stuff over and over again
just because I've like read it a few times,
stuff will start to kind of connect to my mind and like,
oh, yeah, well, this makes sense.
Of course, these people believe this,
it's because of this, or of course, like this happened here.
It's because you know, that happened there.
So yeah, it's a lot of that.
If there's like a topic that I'm doing
specific research for, so like a vaccine-related stuff
is a big one.
The Ukrainian Russian conflict is a big one.
That I'll break out, I know,
I'll probably get like a Google doc
and I'll just start like writing like an outline
of kind of the rough points of everything just to organize my thoughts around different topics. Yeah.
We're just going to go out tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent. So we'll return to the low point of your life at some point.
Okay. Always returning from the philosophy to the psychology. So you did the Ukraine topic. question is, what role does US play in this war? Could they have done something to avoid
the war? Did they have a role to play in forcing Vladimir Putin's hand? Do they have a role
to play in de-escalating the war towards a peace agreement and the opposite? If it does
escalate towards something like the use of a tactical
nuclear weapon, are they to blame? Are we to blame?
Oh, man. So many times I mean, email a while ago with great words. There's a specific way
to navigate a conversation where you can kind of like contribute to a negative event, but
you're not really the one responsible for it. Like the classic example is, a woman goes
out late at night, gets a little bit too drunk, and
then something happens.
It's like, while there might have been steps you could have taken to mitigate the risk,
it's not her fault of what happened because the responsibility rests on the agent making
the choice.
There's a chooser at some point that is choosing to do wrong or evil.
I don't believe in any of the arguments that say the United States has contributed to
Russia's position on Ukraine or the actions that they've taken on Ukraine.
There are several arguments that some people, some even political scholars are putting
out there to say that the United States is to blame, but I find them completely unconvincing.
I think that when you ask the question of like, what is the United States role or what
is a role-bend, I think it's really important for us. I don't think we even agree as a country on what our role should be, which I think that when you ask the question of like, what is the United States role or what is our role Ben? I think it's really important for us.
I don't think we even agree as a country
on what our role should be,
which I think is a hard one,
because you've got this kind of,
there's this growing populist movement in the United States.
It might be the far left and the far right.
And I think populists tend to have this kind of isolationist view
of the world where the United States should just be our own thing.
We shouldn't be telling anybody what to do.
We shouldn't be the world police.
And then kind of more in these like center, left center, right positions.
And then across a lot of Europe, you've got, well, okay, the United States is kind of like
the big kid on the block. Like we're looking to them for guidance and leadership on situations
like what's going on in Ukraine. So in so far as the original question is like, what is
like the United States responsibility? I think we have a responsibility to ensure the
relative like freedom prosperity and stability
across Europe.
I think that defending Ukraine's sovereignty
and right to their borders is a part of that.
And I don't believe that prior to the invasion in 2022,
I don't think the United States
was contributing to Russia invading that country.
I know there are arguments given that
like the expansion of NATO has something that's
been threatening to Russia, but the Baltics joined and Russia didn't do anything about it.
The invasion to Crimea was very clearly a response to the revolution in 2014. The invasion
on the borders is clearly a response to Ukraine winning that civil war in the Southeast
and the Donbass and Russia becoming more aggressive. I don't think that you can blame any of that
on NATO expansion. There's no NATO countries that are threatening Russia or banning Russia.
Do you think there is a nuclear threat?
Do you think about this?
Do you worry about this that there is a threat of a tactical nuclear weapon being dropped?
I think that possibility exists either way.
I think the responsibility for that is on Russia because it just can't be the case that
if you have new Xierlaw to invade countries and take their land.
Because of anything, I think that that down the road also increases
the potential for nuclear problems in the future, right?
Because at that point, either every single country has to acquire
their own nuclear weapons, because if you don't,
Russia's gonna mess with you.
Or every single country has to join NATO,
and now what, we're back at Square Zero,
ground zero, square one where people are like,
oh, well look, all these countries joining NATO
is aggressive towards Russia, like, what are you going to do?
Yeah, you've mentioned that there's a complicated calculus going on with the countries that
have, have nuclear weapons.
And what's our responsibility?
Are you a lot to do anything you want to countries that don't have nuclear weapons?
That's a really tricky discussion for sure. Because what is U.S.
supposed to do if Russia drops a tactical nuclear weapon? There's a set of options.
None of which are good. And it's such a tricky moment right now because the things that Biden
and other public figures say, I feel like has a significant impact on
the way this game turns out, because I think mutually sure destruction is partially a game
of words.
No.
I mean, I believe in the power of conversation of leaders talking to each other.
I feel like you have to have a balance between threat and compromise and like empathy for the needs,
the geopolitical, the economic needs of a nation, but also sort of respect and represent your
own interests. So it's a tricky one. Like how do you play the hand?
It reminds me of, I don't know if you've ever heard an evolutionary cycle or evolutionary
biology.
There are things called tit for tat strategies.
It kind of reminds me of that where it's like if, like, there are a whole bunch of these
little biological mechanisms where creatures will develop like socializing like tit for
tat.
If you do something bad to me, I'm going to do something bad for you.
And then more complicated schemes will come out where it'll be like tit for tat, where
it's like you can make one mistake
and then I'm gonna get you if you do a second one
or it could be tit, tit for tat
or there could be tit for tat, tat for tat.
There's like all these like back and forth
where creatures kind of optimize themselves.
Yeah, I think something the United States did really well
in terms of that kind of conversational strategy.
And I, approved of this in the beginning was,
Biden was very clear about setting out
like the exact level of US involvement for the war. We're not gonna do a no fly zone. There's not gonna be US this in the beginning was Biden was very clear about setting out like the exact level of US involvement for the war
We're not gonna do a no fly zone. There's not gonna be US troops in the ground in Ukraine
But we are gonna send a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of arms and a whole bunch of intel to them
And I thought he did a good job at laying out like the limitation of the US involvement
Well, opening as much as we could in the ways that we could help but the yeah that looming threat of some sort of
Tactical nuclear weapon. I think on the table right now,
is like it's going to be the annihilation of like Russian
sea forces and everything, but you know,
what happens if it continues to escalate?
That's like a world that nobody wants to,
nobody wants to be in, yeah.
So we talked about difficult conversations,
and again, thank you so much for reviewing the EA conversation.
Let me ask you about Putin.
Mm-hmm.
Speaking of difficult conversations. So if you sit down, if I sit down with somebody like Vladimir
Putin or Vladimir Zelensky, what's the right way to have that
conversation? Oh, man. We can talk about that one or we can talk
about somebody more well understood through history, like
something like Stalin or Hitler, something like that.
Maybe that's an easier example to illustrate how to handle extremely difficult conversations.
Yeah, I mean, I can handle really difficult conversations between like two people,
leaders of countries, though.
There are so much that you are representing in that conversation.
I guess the thing that would be interesting to me
would be like what is Vladimir Putin's interest? What is the genuine interest that he has in the conflict? Because I think finding out what is your buy-in or what is your...
what is the driving force keeping you here is probably the most important thing.
I think for Zelensky, I think it's quite a bit more simpler because he's on the defense,
so it's defending his country and his people.
For Putin, I've heard all sorts of things,
Dugan has his writings on the East versus the West,
the collapse of the West in the face of all of the liberalism
and the weird LGBT stuff that they criticize.
You've got the desire to return to this former Soviet Union
and ask thing, you've got Putin's quotes
that collapse of the Soviet Union
was the biggest geopolitical disaster of 20th century.th century, and I guess figuring out like, what is Putin after? I'm not
actually sure. I don't know the answer to that question. A lot of people write about it, but yeah.
Well, there's a lot of answers to that question. There's a lot of answers that he can give to that
question, so say I said, don't want them for three hours and talk about it. I think this is
really interesting distinction because you do do difficult conversations in
the space of ideas.
But also in your stream, you have, I mean, there's a bunch of drama going on.
There's a human psychology is laid out in its full richness before you.
So to me, with leaders, I think a part of the conversation has to be about the human psychology. Sure. Not like a meta conversation, but like really understand what they feel, what they fear,
who they are as a human being.
Like as a family man, as a person proud of their country, as a person with an ego, as
a person who's been affected, if not corrupted by powers, all of us can be in likely R.
So all of that, that gives context to then the answers about what do you want in this
war?
The answers about what you want in this war will be political answers.
It's a game that's being played again with words and politicians are incredibly good
at playing that game. I think the deeper truth comes from understanding the human being from which those words come.
And I think that's what you do.
I don't know if you do those kinds of conversations where...
I never talked to any country leaders.
No, not a country leader, but say a controversial figure, somebody that represents a certain
idea, don't just talk in a space of ideas or challenge the ideas, but understand who is this person, how did you come to those
ideas?
Oh, yeah.
When I've had, there have been a couple of very controversial, right-leaning figures.
So the two, obviously, the most famous, the Lauren Sutheran and Nick Fuentes.
And those types of conversations, initially, aren't very political at all.
Yeah, it's more like, like,
obviously we believe in very, very, very different things
that, like, beliefs don't happen accidentally,
so how did you get to where you are?
Those are way more personal conversations, that's true, yeah.
Is there things you regret about those conversations
where you failed?
Is there things you're proud of where you succeeded?
For things that I'm proud of,
I feel like I'm really good at attempting
to understand people without judgment. That I think a lot of people feel like they can
have conversations with me where they can share a lot, and I'm not going to jump down their
throat for them having a politically incorrect observation, or for them being judgmental
somebody else or having like a feeling that's maybe not something they should have something
they're embarrassed about. So I think I do a really good job at that. And then by extension
of that, I've gotten the ability to hear perspectives from so many
different people that I think I can understand a lot of different perspectives.
For failures of mine, I mean, it's always going to be on stream, it'll be like I didn't
push back hard enough or I didn't know like a sort of fact for a conversation.
These are usually the, they're going to be on these like very technical grounds generally.
I'm pretty happy with like the direction my conversations have gone recently, especially
over like the past six months.
So you go to de-radicalize the audience of those folks.
So that used to be my goal.
My goal was de-radicalization.
Now I'm kind of hoping that that's just the byproduct.
So the goal I think is to talk to somebody and to show they believe this because of these
reasons.
And if you want to change people's beliefs, we have to talk about the underlying reasons
for why they think the things they think.
It's not enough to just say like that belief is bad because it's like, well, they believe
it for a whole bunch of things that are true and real to them at least.
So you have to address all the underlying things that they believe before you can change
the overlying belief.
So if I'm having a conversation with somebody, it'll be like, okay, why do you feel this
about that and that?
Okay, I understand that.
Maybe like a better way to solve that would be like this or that instead of this thing.
So to what degree do you have to empathize with the person's worldview versus pushback?
That's always the hard one.
When I am talking to other people, it's almost always me stepping as much inside their bubble
as I can.
I have to live in breathe their worldview and be able to speak their worldview in order
to navigate their thoughts.
Because my worldview is not even used as an insult.
I don't know if I am a little bit autistic or something, but when I break apart things,
I just want to study, study, study, fact, fact, fact.
That's how my mind works for everything. That's what I like to see. to get to the point, I'm just going to be able to get to the point where I'm going to
get to the point where I'm going to be able to get to the point where I'm going to be
able to get to the point where I'm going to be able to get to the point where I'm going to
get to the point where I'm going to be able to get to the point where I'm going to be able to
get to the point where I'm going to be able to talking to somebody else and I'm trying to get into their head and I'm trying
to change their mind on things, I'm going to be stepping into their world and I'm going
to try to be working through that framework.
Really good example might be, we'll say like when it comes to trans issues for miners,
okay, 16 or 17 year old needs to get on puberty blockers.
The way that I want that debate to play out is let's look at all the data,
let's see what are the outcomes,
let's see what are the processes
for getting a medication,
and then we'll evaluate all of that,
and then we'll go in whatever,
like points more favorably.
But that's wholly unconvincing to most people, right?
So as a parent, if I'm having that conversation
with another parent,
the easiest way for me to have that conversation
is like, hey, we both have kids.
Imagine how horrible it would be
if we felt like our kids needed help
and the government was trying to get between us
and their doctor and that conversation.
That might be how that talk plays out,
which I mean, that's a really good argument.
Because I think there probably are times
that the government should get in between it,
but I'll have that conversation
because now I'm in a world where they understand
what I'm saying.
I'm resonating with the way that they feel about things
and then I can make progress with the way
that they're kind of viewing the world
because I'm talking in a language they understand.
So on this particular topic of trans issues, is that the reason you were banned from
Twitch?
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
They just said hate speech, but I don't use like slurs or anything, so it's hard to know
exactly.
So I think you made the claim that trans women shouldn't compete with cis women in women's
athletics.
Can you make this case and can you steal men in case against it?
I think in your community there's a lot of trans folks who love you and there's a lot who hate you.
And so if you can walk the tightrope of this conversation to try to steal men both sides.
One of the argumentative strategies I say is that like any time you have a conversation,
you should be able to argue both sides better than anybody else.
So for the my side, the genuine belief side, it feels like overwhelmingly, all of the
data is showing that most of the trans women, even after I think three years on some sort
of like HRT or estrogen you know, estrogen stuff,
they're still maintaining these advantages from their male puberty over cisgender women.
And if that is the case, if we are going to draw these distinctions around our sports
between women and men, it feels unfair to have a category inside the women sports that
are maintaining advantages that are coming from a male puberty, regardless of the amount of time they've spent on hormone replacement therapy.
So that would be my argument on that side.
So it's unfair from a performance enhancement aspect. So the same way we've been
performance, performance enhancing drugs that involve increasing of testosterone
in that same way we'd be unfair. Essentially, yeah. So what's the case against?
Yeah, so the case in favor of them competing together is that realistically,
there's not going to be a trans sports category. Realistically, trans women aren't going to be
competitive with cis men because they've gone through these huge hormone changes by the medication they're taking.
And that when we look at how sports are kind of done anyway,
there's a whole bunch of biological differences
between people within sports categories
that are determining their placement in the professional world.
So for instance, somebody like me's probably
never gonna go far on the MBA
because I'm not tall enough.
I think the average height in the MBA.
Don't doubt yourself.
Don't doubt myself yet.
I want to say like six or something.
They're huge people.
Or you look at like Michael Thelps as a classic example
of a guy whose torso is like so long
his body is built for swimming.
And I think there are some trans people
that will look at that or some beauty advocating
for this position.
They'll look at that and they'll go, okay, realistically
the way that Michael Thelps body processes Lactic acid,
the shape physiologically of his body,
is gonna put him in a level of competition
that so many men are never gonna reach just because of biology.
How is it fair that you can have these biological outliers
competing in these categories,
but then when we come to like sports categories
with trans and cis women,
you're gonna take trans women
and say that they can't compete against cis women.
Can't you also just say that they have some level
of biological difference there? Like, is it really going
to be that great of a difference than what Michael Phelps has
versus the average swimmer or an NBA player has versus like
the average height male?
Yeah. Do you think we're going to get into some tricky
ethical territory as we start to be able to through biology
and genetics modify the human body?
Absolutely.
I feel like those things are coming sooner
than we wanted them to.
Oh, man, do they, have you seen the AI art?
Yes.
That's, of course, I'm an AI person.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's always been like,
what's gonna happen when robots can do art
better than humans, LOL.
Like, well, we'll see you in 20 years,
in 20 years, 20 years and 20 years
And now you have AI art winning competitions and it's funny because
robots are essentially the robot behind you by the way robot behind me row. Oh nice
robots are really good careful. You say yeah, I'll get out. I'll be careful
That's not like the one of the Chinese ones with a gun on it right. Oh, okay
Hopefully not What we'll see depending on what you say, yeah.
Robots are really good at showing the limitations
of the human mind in categories
that we didn't believe we were limited before.
I think that humans have this idea intrinsically
that we have like some type of like innovative,
creative drive that is just
outside of the bounds of physical understanding.
And with a sophisticated enough program, we see that maybe that's not actually true.
And that's a really scary thing philosophically to deal with because we feel like we're very
special, right?
We own the planet, we make computers, and the idea that you can start to get these robots
that can do things that's like, okay, you can do math, fine, okay, you can do calculations because
it's fine, but you can't do art, that's the human stuff.
And then when they start to do that, it's like, oh shoot.
And that terrifies you a little bit, like, uh, losing the human species, losing control
of our dominance of the surface.
Um, I don't think it's necessarily losing control of our dominance.
I mean, I guess like a sky net thing could come in at some point. But I think it brings us to this really fundamental level of like,
what does it mean to be human?
What is it that we're good at?
What should we be doing with technology?
We never really asked that question in the Western world.
It's always the technology is normative in that technology equals good
and more technology equals better.
That's been like the default assumption.
In fact, if you ask a lot of people,
how do you know if civilization has progressed over
the past 100 or 200 years, they don't say
we have better relationships, we have longer marriages,
we blah, blah, blah, blah, they'll say technology has improved.
We've got crazy phones, we've got crazy computers,
and the idea that more technology might be bad
has never even crossed somebody's mind
unless it's used for like a really bad thing.
So, well, it's interesting.
We kind of think it's more and more automation is happening, we're going to get more and
more meaning from things like being artists and doing creative pursuits.
And here's like, oh shit, if the art, if the creative pursuits are also being automated,
then what are we going to gain meaning from?
What are the activities from which you'll gain meaning?
My whole life I've been working on artificial intelligence systems.
There's been different revolutions.
One of them is the machine learning revolution.
And it's interesting to build up intuition and destroy that intuition about what is and
is insolvable by machines.
I think for the longest that my grew up thinking go is not the game of go is not
solvable. Because my understanding of AI systems is ultimately that it's is
fundamentally a search mechanism that is fundamentally going to be brute force.
There's no shortcuts. Like a threat like if it can't solve the traveling
salesman problem, it's not even going to be able to give you an approximation.
So most interesting problems are giant travel salesman problem, and then so of course it's not going to be able to solve that.
And then you then the deep learning revolution made you realize, holy shit, these large neural networks with a giant number of knobs is able to actually somehow estimate functions that can do a pretty good job of understanding deep representation
of a thing, whether that's a game of go or whether it's the human natural language or if
it's images and video or audio and even actions and different video games and actions of robotics
and so on.
And then you realize with diffusion models and different generative and actions of robotics and so on. And then you realize with the fusion models and different,
different generative models, you start to realize, holy shit,
it can actually generate not just interesting representations
or interesting manifestations of the representations of forms,
but it's able to do something that impresses humans in its creativity.
It's beautiful in the way we think of art as beautiful, like it surprises us and makes
us chuckle and makes us sit back in awe and all those kinds of things.
And yet the thing that it seems to struggle with the most is the physical world currently.
So that's a counterintuitive.
We humans think that it's pretty trivial.
Being able to pick up a cup,
being able to write with a pen, like in the physical space, we think that's trivial. We give
ourselves respect for being great artists and great mathematicians and all that kind of stuff,
and that seems to be much easier than the physical space.
Our bodies are really cool. There is a, I don't know, it's probably asthma or something. There
was some science fiction writer that had a short story and it was like an alien that had
landed on Earth and it was describing our bodies from a totally alien perspective.
And when you think about all the things we can do, it's pretty cool. We can, you know, climb,
through a whole multitude of environments, we can exist in a multitude of temperatures,
we can manipulate things just with our hands and how, you know and the way that we can interact with things
around us.
We're very capable on a physical level, even though you said we think about ourselves,
well, human beings have really big brains.
We do.
We're really intelligent as well, but our bodies are pretty cool too.
And it's a fascinating hierarchical biological system.
We're made up of a bunch of different living organisms that all don't know about the big
picture of our body.
It's all functioning.
It's all a little local world and it's doing this thing.
But together, it forms a super resilient system.
All of that comes from a very compressed encoding of what makes a human.
You start with a DNA and it builds up
from a single cell to a giant organism.
I mean, and because of the DNA through the evolution process,
you can constantly create new humans,
a new living organisms that adapt to the environment.
Like that resilience to the physical world,
it seems like running the
whole earth over again, the whole evolutionary process over again, is might be the only way
to do it. So to create a robot that actually adapts is as resilient to the dynamic world,
might be a really difficult problem.
Possibly. Well, it's going to say like in a programming environment, you can do things on time scales
that are impossible in the real world, right?
Like the benefit to AI and computers is a computationally they can compute so much data
so quickly.
Whereas on human timetables, we have to wait when you talk about evolution, you know,
it's generation after generation after generation, you know, maybe in a virtual environment
that could be simulated.
And then those changes could happen a lot quicker.
Well, that's in a human time skill, but you have to look at earth.
At a quantum, as a quantum mechanical system, the computation is happening super fast.
This is a giant computer doing a giant simulation.
So just because for us humans, it's slow.
There's like trillions of organisms involved in you, destiny, being you.
Sure.
like trillions of organisms involved in you destiny being you. Sure.
But the next iteration of like from human to human, even if on the quantum level is a lot
of stuff going on, you talk about like changes in DNA, for instance, right?
Like, that's happening from a generation to generation time scale, like in a virtual
environment, that could theoretically happen.
Well, it already is.
There's like protein folding, like huge cloud computing, probably ML stuff that's like
working on doing all of that stuff.
And it'll run like trillions and trillions of simulations,
you know, every second and stuff, maybe not every second,
but still slower than the actual protein folding, much slower.
That's for the problem of solving protein folding
to estimate the 3D structure,
but the actual body does the actual protein folding way faster.
So like, where the question is can we shortcut the simulation of
human evolution try to figure out how to build up an organism without
simulating all the details because we have to simulate all the details of biology where screwed
We don't have our chair. We'd have to put something on a pond and then watch it for that might be the idea to do it
Sure, that's what the universe most likely is.
It's a kind of simulation created by a teenager in their basement to try to see what happens.
It's a computer game.
That might be the most efficient way to create interesting organisms.
But within the system is perhaps possible to create other robots that will be of use and will entertain us in the way
that other humans entertain us.
That's a really interesting, of course, problem, but it's surprising how difficult it has been
to create systems that operate in the physical world and operate in that physical world in
a way that's safe to humans and interesting to humans.
Because there's also the human factor,
the human robot interaction.
To me, that's like the most interesting problem,
to figure out how to do that well.
And so Elon Musk and others,
Boston Dynamics have worked on Lego Robots,
so I really care about Lego Robots.
Those are super interesting.
How to make them such that they're able to operate successfully dynamic environment. Super tricky. They're like, they're like the
dumbest of dogs speaking of which is a dog barking outside. I mean, it's really tricky to create
those kinds of organisms that live in a human world. Then again, if more and more of us move into the digital world, so you stream a
lot, like part of who you are exists in the digital space. The fact you have a physical
representation also, maybe more and more will become not important.
I hope that's the case because I bought a lot of stock in Meta and man, it's down.
A lot. A lot. Meta a lot better the company. Yeah, is there some degree like can you can you can you look at yourself
like Steven the physical meat vehicle and then the destiny of this digital space like digital
avatar. Do you sense that in a certain way you're the digital avatar? I've always tried to keep my
on stream personality as genuine as possible.
So they're one and the same to me.
I don't really view them as two separate entities.
But I mean, I always do myself as Stephen, the real-life person, my destiny is my online
name, but...
No, because so many, your social network is established in the digital space.
Like so many people know you through the digital space.
Can there be, can we swap out another person that looks like you in like an AI system?
And then that entity known as Destiny
will continue existing.
So I mean, I must be like,
there must be some level of sophistication
that could emulate a human brain, I would imagine, right?
Probably text not there yet, but.
Well, the question is, what's the level of sophistication
of the audience that would recognize
as something has changed? Like, it's the level of sophistication of the audience that would recognize as something
has changed?
It's the touring test.
How hard is it to trick your audience, your large audience of fans that watch your streams
that when you swap out an AI that emulates you, that nothing has changed?
The question is, do you have to really simulate so much of the human brain for that?
I don't think so.
Probably not.
And so, I mean, like you said, a lot of political discourses are just walking down the tree together,
so you can probably emulate a lot of that discussion.
Yeah, it would depend on if you're doing all datasets and you're training on that, and
I'm having conversations about abortion and your crannid vaccines
I imagine it could do it for quite a while
The only thing that would be weird is when novel issues pop up
Then you probably need a more sophisticated
resemblance of the inner brain right now. Yeah, you have to keep keep training on the internet
So how the language models and that's the most incredible breakthroughs is the language models
You just have to keep retrain the system
Unread it. Yeah, that's actually what a lot of it is trained on, which is hilarious.
I do think it's really interesting that like, kind of like funny problems like the trolley
problem that we can kind of work through our normative ethical systems on are now like
real questions.
Like if you're driving a Tesla and it's on autopilot and you're going to hit somebody
but it can swerve and hit somebody else, like what ought the system to do?
We went very quickly from fun kind of like project in philosophy class to, we need to solve
this for insurance purposes, like as quickly as possible. It's kind of interesting to think about.
Well, I actually have, I'll bring up the trolley problem with you later. There's a fascinating
version of it that I find hilarious. Okay. Let's return to your low point. Oh, yeah.
You started playing video games. That was a lucky break. You did text-based ones. That was a lucky break
Because you got into be pretty good at learning and then you started thinking about going to college and so on
What happened next? I mean, I went to like a prep school. So you kind of have to go to college after that's like the point
Right. I was also millennial. They all of us had to go to college. That's always what they told us. So
My life was kind of
It's hard to describe.
I didn't really think much of the future.
I was just kind of enjoying the day to day
because everything in my life was pretty weird.
Both my parents had moved to Florida by the time I was 16, 17.
I was living in my grandma, I was working,
I had a girlfriend, moved out, we got a place, did college.
By the time I got into college,
I had transitioned from working at McDonald's
to I was like working in a casino restaurant basically and I was really good at that job.
So I had a level of patience for drunk people and saying people and I was doing music in
school because I really grown to love music. And my kind of thought process was my thought
process was I can do music as a hobby, I guess unless I get really good and maybe I can
make money with that. But otherwise, I love music.
I'm okay going to school for music, getting good at it,
and then just doing that on the side.
And then my main job would kind of be this career
I was building at the casino.
And basically, the trying to balance personal life
plus graveyard shift, six-dare weeks at a casino,
and then a full-time music degree was not possible for me.
And eventually I had to drop school
after I think it was like three years.
And after I dropped school to maintain my casino job,
after a few months, I got fired from my casino job.
So I'd essentially just thrown away
like the past like three or four years of my life.
Why'd you get fired from a casino job?
I heard there's a story behind that.
Yeah, there's a story.
Basically, I was just really dumb
when it came to understanding corporate politics.
And this is funny because the same attitude
kind of followed me into the streaming world. My thought process has kind of always been
that like as long as I'm really good at what I do, I should be untouchable. If I'm really good,
you can't do anything to me. I don't have to plan any dumb games or whatever. And at the casino,
I think I was the youngest. It was originally shiftly, then supervisor position at the casino.
And when I started to get my own shifts, there were problems that I would run into
on Graveyard Shift because of carryover
from the swing shift.
And one of these problems was underneath the soda machine,
they weren't cleaning it properly
and fruit flies were showing up.
And the manager came in one morning
and she was like, hey, what's going on with the machine?
And I told her, I can't do,
I can't take everything from swing shift
and do everything in Graveshift.
I can't do this. They need to figure out if I stop better or I need more employees. It's not possible for me. And she's like, listen, I can't do, I can't take everything from swing shift and do everything in grape shift, I can't do this.
They need to figure out their stuff better
or I need more employees.
It's not possible for me.
And she's like, what did you tell anybody else?
Like, yeah, I complained to the supervisor
on the swing shift all the time.
And she told me, if you're not getting the answer
that you like, then it's your responsibility
to email the next person up.
And I was like, okay, that's interesting.
And some months went on and I ran into more problems
because on Graveyard, here's how,
I don't know if it's everywhere,
but Morning Shift is the easiest
and that's when you're the most overstaffed
because that's when all the VPs are in
and that's when all the managers are there
and everybody's blah, blah, blah.
Swing Shift is the most challenging.
That's when you're higher flow of customers is.
You're also decently staffed there,
but there's a lot of stuff going on.
And Graveyard, nobody cares at all about you.
They don't give you any employees.
You might get swamped, you might not who cares, make sure it's clean
for day shift. That's the only thing that matters.
A quick question for certain clarifications. So this is 24 hour.
24 hour diner. Yeah. And so casino. Yeah. So it's a diner and a casino. Oh, by the way,
I had an amazing moment at a diner, a casino recently. It's a special place. A diner
and casino is a place of magic. There's a lot of, I There's a lot of magic. There's a lot of other
worldly stuff going on. There's characters, there's, and I had an interaction with the waitress.
That was the sweetest waitress in the world. I was just like, I don't know, maybe feel less alone
in this cruel world of ours. So graveyard begins when? For me, my shift was 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
or sometimes I got called in early, so it'd be 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
That's no love for that shift.
No, especially not trying to do school at the same time.
Absolutely not.
But yeah, basically, long story short, I ran into a problem with my super where I didn't
have enough employees on my shift.
VPs were coming in in the morning.
They were saying, hey, the diner's kind of dirty.
And I'm like, you've cut all my employees' pests for you.
Like, in some nights, I'm literally cooking and doing a friend of house, like all of my own.
Like, I can't do this.
And my manager, Pam, told me, well, you've got to figure it out.
And so I remembered her advice.
So I emailed the VP of Food and Beverage
and I see she'd heard.
And I said, I'm not getting the help I need on my restaurant.
Now, I didn't know at the time
that I was basically completely throwing her under the bus
because of that email.
But I retroactively, when I look back on things,
or retrospectively, I see that was the moment that I got like marked for deletion.
And I didn't really understand it, even though I'd heard terminology about papering somebody out the door,
but after that point, I started to get ridden up for like a lot of little random things,
like I'll come, like I missed one day of work in my three years at the casino,
and I started getting ridden up for like showing up like one or two minutes late.
That's kind of weird, that's whatever. Or written up for random ways about filing paperwork.
And then eventually there came a situation with another employee where they were, it's
complicated. I have to call out stuff. But basically they wanted to come or they wanted to call out.
And I told them if they called out, they were going to get fired because they were at like 10 points.
They were at nine points and 10 points is firing blah blah blah. Pam told me, you can tell
that she's going to get a point, but you can't tell if she's going to
get fired. I don't know what that meant. And then I told her that if you call out, you're
going to get, you know, you're fucked, you're going to get fired, or you're going to be
at ten points. And then I got called in early, like three days later. And Pam was like,
you inappropriately communicated with an employee because you said the F word in a text message.
And I'm like, really? There's no shot. And she's like, well, you also tried to fire
the employee. And it's like, no, I told her she she was gonna get 10 points. She's like well you use the F
Where don't like that this is insane and I didn't just because I was such a
I was such a high-performing employees like there's no way I'm getting fired and then I did and I was like
Yeah, cashed out my 401k and moped for like three months because I threw it away school for this casino job
And then I got fired from this job that like yeah, nobody believed I got fired. It was just insane
Yeah, so if you look back if you were allowed to not just to look back to your own memory
but actually watch yourself like some of your court of video that whole time
Do you think you would be surprised you would notice some things like potentially
of not having a self-aware and it's not having like social like a civility and
social etiquette that's played in the human relations. Yeah absolutely.
So is that is that at the core the human relations. Yeah, absolutely.
So is that, is that at the core of it, essentially? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, that follows me even to this day.
There's a lot of, I don't know if you're recording or not,
but when we spoke early about like meta conversations,
I have to think a lot sometimes about meta conversations
because the way that I wanna drive a conversation
will sometimes be way different than what is like
the best way to have a conversation,
whereas I just wanna like go really hard on like some, itty bitty, like some idiotic secrecy, some factor
figure, whatever.
But that's not like the human conversation I need to have, you know.
So you got fired, slashed, left that job, and then took you to the job that would be
the lowest point.
Yeah.
Because there was a huge downgrade in pay.
I went from getting like, I think of the casino,
because I worked so much overtime.
I was getting like 2250 an hour on all my overtime.
And this was back in 2008, 2009,
as like a college student, like, it's amazing pay.
I had benefits, like everything was good.
And then the car bit cleaning was like,
I was probably getting my paycheck,
like every other week was maybe 1500 bucks,500 bucks or a thousand dollars.
And I'm working like 13 day stretches.
Like I have every other Sunday off,
and it's so many hours.
Like I have to show up at the shop at like seven or six,
and then I go home at like eight or nine,
depending on when my jobs are throughout the day.
You doing businesses or residential or what are you doing?
Everything, everything.
Are you working for a company in this company
or are you doing okay?
So like there's a schedule thing you have to go to it and so on.
Yeah, but so like this is why the schedule would suck.
Sometimes I'd show up at I think we had to be in the shop at I think it was 7 a.m.
We show up at the shop at 7 a.m.
First job might be at 8 or 9, but that job might be like a one hour job.
So I might show up at 7 a.m.
and have a job from 8 30 to 9 30.
The next job might not be until like, say 11.
So from 839, I'll do one job.
And then I'm gonna job from like 11 to 12 or something.
Then I might have like a decent job from like five to eight.
But like my whole day is destroyed.
And I'm doing like three small jobs.
So I'm getting like 30 bucks maybe for being in the shop
or you know, my job for like 10 or 11 hours
and it's just like horrible.
So you're somebody that seems to be extremely good at thinking
and conversation.
And so I have a bit of a negro perhaps in both the negative
and the positive sense of that word.
Was there some aspect of working among Donald's
and then working at the casino and then working for the,
as a carpaclino that was humbling.
No, never.
I had a...
The ego burned bright through it all.
Well...
Or no, you can pitch back in the ego.
Yeah, no, I understand.
I totally get what you mean.
I had a really close friend growing up,
whose name was Chris.
And I think we probably met when he was,
we were like four or five, I think.
He lived behind me.
And I grew up with him. And I'd always been kind of an outsider to the world that I was in
once I got to high school for sure because all of those kids were incredibly wealthy,
you know, Corvettes and Mustangs when they turned 16.
It was a prep school and I was doing the, they had like a work study program there where you could
stay after school from 2, 3, 2, 5 every day to kind of like work to pay for your tuition. So I've been working like throughout all of high school. I got another
job in McDonald's when I was 18, worked at the casino. Like I'd always been doing that
kind of work. I never really viewed it as like beneath me or anything. It's not like
I don't have like a family of doctors or lawyers or anything. And they made my other friend,
Chris guy, we'd always make fun of everybody else for being kind of like, you know, like
preppy kids and everything. So there is a, there's some pride to that sort of hard work. Yeah, I guess a little bit. Yeah, because
for, yeah, looking especially my dad, like the solution to every problem was to just throw
more hours of work at it basically. So that was always my, yeah, go to. And I never
am. What was psychologically the low point? I think psychologically, the low point was
that as I'm doing this carpet cleaning job,
driving around my city, there's this feeling of,
I guess for a lot of people, it's probably college, but there's a feeling when you're in high school
that everything is so exciting,
and the whole world is in front of you,
and there are a trillion, trillion,
different branching paths of possibilities.
And even through high school,
you're thinking, like, am I gonna be a doctor or a lawyer
or can I join the MBA or can I do this or that?
There's all these things in front of you.
And when I especially felt it
when I was doing those carbon cleaning jobs
and I think it was in the fall,
I'd be out to sit some of these houses
and I just kind of look around.
And I'd recognize a lot of these neighborhoods
that I drive around with friends in
or I'd be walking through, I ran cross-country,
some of them I'd be running through these neighborhoods.
And it was just kind of like this feeling of looking around.
And it was like, when I was here in the past,
this is like kind of like a transitionary phase of my life
where I'm doing this and it's so fun and exciting.
And then I'm gonna move on to something else
and it's gonna be fun and exciting and awesome.
And then like, you know, two years later,
my whole life is
collapsed. Like I'm in a house that I can't afford anymore. My ex that I hate is pregnant
with my kid. And I have no money. I've got no upward mobility. I failed college. I
my job is horrible. Like just every single like this is like my all of those, the way function
had collapsed into one thing and that one thing was the worst thing
that could have possibly been at the time for me. Yeah, like everything was gone and horrible,
so yeah, that was the feeling I had at the time. Do you ever contemplate suicide?
I thought about thinking about it, but I've just never been that kind of person, so.
I mean, basically, it's a way to escape from the hardship.
Something that I'm so incredibly lucky, I don't know why or how I'm just gonna chalk it up to biology, I've always had really high mental baseline.
I've like depression and all of that.
There've been a few short stints of debt with it
past 30 because I did a lot of drugs,
but other than that, my mental baseline is just so high.
And even in the carpet cleaning days,
like if you, man, the videos might still be there.
I think I'm my old YouTube channel,
where I'll be like playing Starcraft when I first started
getting a streaming, and I'll be calling up customers,
like, this is Steve from Guaranteed Clean,
we had to move here.
Drop back one hour, is it okay if I show up instead of 230?
And then I hang up, I was like, all right guys,
we've got three more games, and it's like,
let's go, like stuff like that.
So my baseline has always been like,
really high for mental function.
So even in a lot of pointers that you had strength,
is there anything you can give by way of advice
from people that for whom the wave function collapses?
As it does for many of us, like holy fuck,
the world is not full of opportunity
and you're kind of a failure.
And like I've been there.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's rough because like, I usually ask for compassion
from people that have it better off.
Because like once you're down there,
like the only reason I say I got lucky,
but it wasn't even really lucky,
or it was lucky, but it was more lucky.
It wasn't just lucky that I got into streaming.
It was lucky that I was in the computers at an early age.
It was lucky that I played video games at an early age.
It was lucky that all the tech came up
at exactly that right point in time.
I was a pretty smart guy,
but it was definitely a preparation meets opportunity,
and that opportunity was like
at the exact precise moment of my life,
if anything had gone differently
then I would just be cleaning carpets today.
So in the many worlds interpretation,
quantum mechanics, this is like one out of like,
there's many, many Stevens,
they're just still carpet cleaning
and they're full of pain and resentment.
Yeah, the one piece of advice that I give, and I hate that I have to push back against
all these crypto bros and everybody online for decently intelligent people that are successful.
I've never heard anybody give a contradiction to this. Maybe you will. You can tell me if
you disagree. I always look at kids in high school and I'm like, just try a little bit
harder. Like 30 minutes a night, if you don't study, just do 30 minutes, just do a little
bit more. It is, you are laying the foundation for the rest of your life and you can't appreciate
it in high school and college, but oh my god, when you get out, everything in your life
is so much easier. You have probably more responsibility over the direction of your life when
you're like 13, 14 years old than you ever will once you're like 25 and older because
this is like when you're determining the foundations that everything's gonna be able to.
100%.
So first of all, it does seem that the liberating aspect of being young is like anything
you learn, so working hard at learning something will pay off in like non-linear ways.
Like you said with the video against.
I feel like, so like people who are like, I hate school.
All right, well, fine, but find something
where you're challenging yourself, you're growing,
you're learning, you're learning a skill,
you're learning about a thing.
Of course, you know, you could push back and say,
well, there's some trajectories that might not be productive.
Like if you spend the entirety of your teen years
playing, I don't know, legal legends,
you're a game you have,
love and hate relationship with.
No, just a hate and hate relationship.
Okay. Well, we'll talk about, I think you have a love hate relationship with hate in
general. We'll just love. We'll try to de-complexify that one. I think in general, just investing
yourself fully with passion, it really does pay off. But that said, also
school, I feel like doesn't get enough credit, like high school in particular, middle school
and high school, because it's general education. If I think, if you're, especially if you're
lucky to have good teachers, but honestly, I haven't mostly, the textbooks themselves with good teachers.
It's a one chance in life you have to really explore
a subject, fuck grades, like getting a grades
is at tension, I would say, with actual learning.
That is true, but just get a biology textbook
and to explore ideas and biology
and allowing yourself to be inspired by the beauty of it. Yeah, I don't know. I think that
really, really, really pays off and you never get a chance to do that again.
And maybe not even textbooks like reading straight up reading. I think I think
if you read this is one time in life, you get a chance to read, really read. Read a book a day read. You can really invest, you can really grow
by reading. I'm asking all those guys to talk about it.
It's very, very rare that you meet a dumb person who reads a lot. I don't know if that's
ever happened in my life. Yeah.
Domino's successful. And the cool thing is, it seems like the reading,
it's like investment. The reading you do early on in high school pays off way more than the reading
you do later. So like the really influential reading is, is it during those high school years,
because you're basically learning from others, the mistakes they've made, the solutions, the problems, you're basically learning the shortcuts to life.
Like, whatever the hell you want to do, music, read from the best people that the music
theory, like learn music theory, learn, read biographies about jazz musicians, blues musicians,
see all the mistakes, see what they did, see the shortcuts.
If you want to do podcast and read about other podcasts, if you want to do streaming, read
about the streamers, physicists, and so on, I feel like you figure out all the mistakes
and you get to shortcut through life because most people show up to college without having
done that.
And now you get a chance to shortcut your way past them.
Yeah, 100%.
But nobody really teaches you that.
They're like, go to school.
This, from this time to that time,
you're shut up.
This is just what you do, eat your broccoli.
I think I was like, there's two huge problems.
One is, now that I'm older,
because you know, you don't know anything as a kid.
You can't really criticize as adults as a kid,
because you're a kid.
You're a kid.
If I make you a child.
I am super agious. As I get older, I get even more agious. You can't really criticize as adults as a kid because you're a kid. You're your ageist if I am super ages. I get older. I get even more ages. You there are a lot
of people I argue and I was like, man, dude, you're really 22. I can tell every word you say.
So there's a sense of like 22 year old. But that's okay. I love that for you.
No, I could just say because you mentioned this. Your wife is a fellow streamer.
Malina, you mentioned that this is a source of fights for the two of you that, and I could just feel that. There is truth to what you're saying,
which is like, all right, you're saying that because you're 22. Just wait until you're
25 and you won't be saying that anymore. No, that is the most annoying thing for people
here. Yeah, you can't ever say that of course.
Because it's actually usually true. Because we do go through phases in life. And you can understand that most things are phases.
So just in general, you can say just just wait, just wait. You won't see this. You won't
feel this way. Again, I could say that to you, you could say that to yourself, just
wait, whatever you're feeling like, just wait. In five, 10 years, it'll be a different
person. And you will laugh at
The things you take seriously know that they're causing you pain now all that kind of stuff
But people hate hearing that anyway absolutely I think the joke that I always say is that like if I could literally step into a
Time machine and I could come back out and see myself as a 17 year old and I could say hey
I am literally you from the future you see the time machine and I would look at me and I would see the time machine.
And I would give myself the best advice in the world.
I mean, the most successful person I would ignore all of it, even knowing it came from
myself. I'd be like, this guy sold out.
This dude doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
Like, now I figured out better.
Like he must have made some.
That's what I would think is the 17.
Even I knew it was myself in the future.
I would just 100% never believe it.
And knowing that is very frustrating, but I keep that in mind when I deal with younger
people. That's why like I never I keep that in mind when I deal with younger people.
That's why I like, I never, I always say on stream
when I'm talking to, like there's been stuff
with like sneakers, another girl on a stream called Lab.
Like when I see the way, I see the mistakes they're making,
oftentimes because I've made all of these mistakes,
sometimes in the most public and horrible fashion ever.
But I'm never like a mentor.
I'm not gonna sit there and like tell you,
like, oh, do this or that or that or that,
because like, I don't know if you're gonna listen to me
and I don't want to condescend to you.
And you know, you figure stuff out,
and I'll be here if you want to talk about it.
But yeah, there was a, one of the stories,
there was a company that didn't work with me
because I was very adamant on defending like very radical
notions about language and racial slurs and everything.
And I was like 22 or whatever.
And there was a company and they said,
well, we don't want to work with this guy for an event.
And after they'd said that,
I written an article on my website called the company was gigabyte.
They make motherboards.
I said, fuck gigabyte in the ass.
That was the title to my article.
And I was like, well, they don't want to work with me.
I'm going to blow them up and never do anything ever
with them again.
And it was just like, like looking back at it now,
obviously, is an older person like,
hey, you need to pump the brakes and chill.
You're destroying yourself.
But yeah, it's a young person.
It's like, yeah, you're 22.
Of course, you think that you can say whatever
and do whatever. And as long as you're good at what you're doing, you've got the whole world behind you and yeah, geez.
Well, let's go there. You have a history of using offensive language, like the R word, the N word, including the N word with a hard R,
calling women bitches, talking about rape in a nonchalant way.
Mm-hmm.
What part of that do you regret?
And what part of that do you not?
Language is very complicated.
When it comes to stuff relating to slurs,
there's been like a whole trajectory
of feelings on everything related to language.
So my, for you personally and for the internet as a whole.
Yeah, I don't care about the internet,
almost for me personally.
In my early 20s, I'll say like 20 to 23,
I think probably when I first started streaming,
my feeling is that any word is just a word,
and if it hurts you,
that's your fault, take responsibility for yourself.
This probably came from my background of being
like a really independent person,
so that's just kind of like the mind that I had for everything.
And there are basically, there were a collection of experiences that I had that as I grew, I started
to realize, okay, well, I feel differently about some of these words depending on the context
and I can see how they can affect other people depending on the context.
So as I've grown, I think I've developed a more sophisticated understanding of how different
words are used and how they affect people, whether they like it or not, and more importantly, whether I like
it or not, and that words can, even if I don't want it to be, they can be a vehicle for
emboldening certain types of ideas that I don't want to embolden. And yeah, that's kind
of been the whole like growth. I've been lucky that in the time that I came up on the
internet, I was able to learn these lessons because if I was trying to learn those same
lessons today, I would have been completely destroyed because I had insane views on
language like 10 years ago. We could talk about the past, we could talk about the present,
let's talk about the past first. So how do you deal with the fact that there's videos of you
in the past saying the N word, including the N word with a hard R? So generally, what's the
context? Can you give me like, yeah might be what would be the context usually?
When I lay out this defense,
it's not because I wouldn't have used the N word.
Generally, when I said the N word,
it was usually in an example of like,
this is something that like a racist person would say,
I don't think I've ever, on the N and I think I've ever called
anybody like the N word with a hard R.
Not because I wouldn't have,
but just because I wasn't in my vocabulary.
I played RTS, real-time strategy, and we used the F-slur for gay people. That's the one.
And I use that one a ton. I've called people that a ton in the past.
So I should actually just as a small tangent.
Yeah, go for it.
And this is what I like to explore with you. There's a ruthlessness to the language in the gaming world.
And there's different communities.
They have different flavors of language,
of hate speech essentially.
And there's also a humor to it,
which really bothers me in a dark way that I haven't been able to really think through
because humor seems to be a kind of catalyst for hate. It seems to normalize
hate. Like you say basically it's like Lucy Kay says a lot of edgy things but
you take something Lucy Kay says and do it in a non-foney way and do it over and
over and over and keep
increasing the hatefulness of it, the vitriol, and somehow you find yourself like Alice and Wonderland in a world full of hate where there is no good and evil, it's all the same.
In fact, the good is to be mocked and the evil is to be celebrated for the humor of it,
basically not taking the ideas of evil seriously.
And I don't know what it reveals something
about human nature that you can let go.
The moral relativism that can happen
when you do that kind of stuff.
At the same time, I'm a fan of dark humor when done well.
Anyway, for people who are not familiar,
I just wanted to mention that
some of the worst
hate speech that ends in LOL
happens in gaming communities. Yeah, the, and that's where you come from in certain parts.
A lot of people don't remember this or don't know this because they're younger, but way back in the day in the
late 90s, early mid-2000s of the internet, the way that online kind of like shit talk work was you were just trying to ramp up to
the most insanely edgy, crazy stuff you could say to like provoke a reaction.
Have you ever heard of something called the Aristocrats?
That it's like a joke, the joke?
Oh, yeah, the joke, yeah, there's a movie on it, yeah.
Okay.
Basically every single like shit talk back and forth in the internet was like that.
Like, what is the most increasingly depraved and back then you didn't get banned for slurs or anything on any of these chat rooms.
So it was just like insane world to walk into.
And I was fully 100% a part of a product of and a contributor to that world.
So that probably still goes on on the internet in some way and that probably still goes on the internet in a maybe
More pacified way only in darker parts of the internet
I'd say for the most part most well compared to back then compared to 20 years ago the internet is way cleaned up now
There's still gonna be boards you can go on or parts of the internet
We see that type of hammer but not no one near his mainstream like back then you could open your mic on Xbox live and
Here's some insane stuff when that first started. No, we're near where you hear it today. Although, yeah.
There's still elements of escalation that happen. It just seems to be part of human nature
on the internet. Because we don't get the feedback of actually hurting people directly. So
the the trolling like for the lulls, you'll do like what are like you will still escalate
within the bounds. You're just saying
that there's more bounds now on Reddit, there's more bounds and so on. So, you know,
there's moderators that kind of yell at you, that ban you and so on if you cross those
bounds. But overall, that basic human instinct to escalate, especially under the veil of
anonymity is still there. I don't know, it's dark, it's dark.
Yeah, just there's a lot of different ways to look at it
and there's different ways to break that art.
Like, for instance, like you mentioned dark humor
and you say that like, sometimes dark humor is funny
and sometimes it's not, I think that it's really important
to dig into and figure out like why certain things
are funny and why certain things are funny.
Can you give me an example?
Yeah, go.
It's from your sub-brett.
Oh boy.
No, that made me laugh and I felt wrong about it. Oh, no
So this is
I know I know I already know what this is. Yeah
So this is a trolley problem to me it connects because I think about the trip
It keeps because I worked on autonomous vehicles the trolley problem to philosophical thought experiment keeps brought up a lot
You know when AI is part of making the decision, do I kill
three people here or five people here, and AI makes that decision, how do you do that
calculus?
And this particular, there's a deep, so it's satire that reveals some kind of flaw
in society.
I feel like that's what...
That's what dark humor does.
Successful dark humor does.
And I love this flaw. I feel like there's a dark humor does successful dark humor does and I love the flaw.
I feel like certain there's certain brand of dark humor and I think the reason I think
the reason is why it's good or why it is good humor.
I think it's because I don't think it necessarily reveals a flaw.
Sometimes I feel like it reveals like a kind of virtue, I think.
Like if you look at this particular thing, can I explain what we're just listening? The title of the Red Post is, you know what to pick. And it says, five people are going to
die either way, but if you flip the lever, the trolley will do a sick fucking loop first.
And also the top comment is a question saying, which I think is also part of the document that's successful.
Can I get the gender and ethnic backgrounds of the group's first and the top answer is
both groups are each comprised of five white, orphaned, cis male, heavy-meth users who
are consistently in and out of drug rehab, all who identifies right wing extremists.
Humorous, so it's such a sophisticated thing
that we engage in.
Humor is really complicated.
But I would argue that hopefully the humor here
shows the virtue of like, this is obviously horrible,
but that's kind of why it's funny.
It's funny because it's such a horrible question to ask.
Do we kill five people in a boring way
or in a really entertaining way?
And it's like, that's really, that's really, and then when you ask even more like, what are the
ethnic backgrounds? Like, that's even worse to say that, you know? So I feel like that's like the type
of, there's a way that you can engage with dark humor where it's like, oh, like, it's funny because
it's so wrong and so typical. And we all know that it's wrong and typical and that's kind of where
the shared laugh comes from. So for me, the question that asking the diversity question is a sophisticated way of revealing
the absurdity of asking about diversity when it's talking about human life.
Oh, interesting, because the way that I took that was, I think it refills the absurdity
of how people will weigh different ethnic backgrounds so differently when it comes to value
of human life.
I'm actually thinking of that in terms of an immigration-related question, where people are really keen and quick to dehumanize black or brown people. The question is,
well, if five of them are brown and fiver white, I know which one I'm going to pull the lever
for. That's how I read that.
But it's standardizing that. Yes, of course.
That's what I mean. To me, at least, it showed that humanity or social networks that are easy to be outraged and love
the outrage and the chaos that Twitter and social networks will pull that lever.
Like they would they would always try to maximize the fun.
And there's like a there's a sick aspect to all the atrocities, all the tragedies that happen in the world that we kind of always lean towards the
the outrageous narrative we've surrounded.
Yeah, the one that leads to the most clicks to the most
attention to the most outrage to all that kind of stuff. So that that's like a satire of society. When they are faced with
tragedy, they will maximize trying to think of a word that's not fun. But...
Entertainment. Maximize the entertainment. Yeah.
This is a big criticism I give, especially to conservative crowds. You know, left-leaf-leaf-peel
everybody doesn't. I don't like when people blame the media for the state of the media today. to conservative crowds. You know, left-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-leaf-le is completely factual reporting. They don't have a political slant and they're not giving you these sensationalist narratives or stories and that media company would fail in two weeks
because people don't wanna see that.
Generally, people really wanna see the,
like, show me the guy that really believes in what I say,
that calls the other guy in 80 at the guy
that are screaming on TV or on the radio,
like, this is what I really want.
And people will engage in that
and that feedback loop will continue for generations
and then all of a sudden people are like,
why is the media so biased?
Why is the media driving so many narratives?
And it's like, what do you mean?
This is exactly what you want to see.
And that's frustrating for me.
That's one of my big kind of when I defend establishments
or when I talk about like the interplay between citizen
and all these institutions we have,
that the institutions are very much a reflection
of the population, at least in democratic societies.
And I think that people very much try to elude
the personal responsibility or the country's
responsibility to why some of them look the way that they do.
But that takes us back to the end word with a hard R.
Sure. Why?
For the particular examples that I was giving
for the particular conversations that I was having,
if you're going to have challenging conversations
around certain words, I think you should probably be able to say them.
Otherwise, it feels really ridiculous to me.
That's like, you still believe that.
For, yes, and not like calling people those words, but in having conversations about those
words, I would say that I still believe that, yeah.
But don't you think, as you said, that using those words actually gives motivation and
strength to people who have hate in their hearts.
I think depending on the context of what's going on, I think that that's going to be a big
driver in terms of how people are going to perceive retake it.
So in a conversation about the N word, and I don't think I would normally say the N word,
who just talk about the word, much the same way that like in a movie, like in Django,
people use the N word.
Should that be censored in that movie, or in the context of that movie, is it being employed
in a way where these aren't good people, you're not supposed to like them and that's what
the audience walks away with.
Yeah, but that context is different in the conversation.
It feels like in conversation, you using that word normalizes it and that normalizing that
word is going to make it easier for people who use that word in a hateful way to use it. And that normalizing that word is going to make it easier for people who use that word
in a hateful way to use it. Same with the F word, the F slur. If you use that casually and
normalize it in a way that's not hateful, you use it in a way that's not hateful. But
the side effect is that normalizes it. Then people who do use it in a hate that's not hateful, but the side effect is that it normalizes it, then people who
do use it in a hateful way will be more likely to use it. Therefore, mathematically looking
at the equation of the number of times the N word or the F word is used throughout the
world, it increases the number of times it's used in a hateful way.
Yeah, I think that in your part of that problem, Stephen.
I don't agree. I understand the thought process, but I you are part of that problem Stephen. I don't I don't agree I understand I understand the thought process
But I don't know of using certain words
Within different contexts is going to necessarily normalize like the hateful use of that word
That is an argument that I've heard people use somebody will say like okay
Well, hold on that should never be used ever because by virtue of you normalizing it even in an inoffensive environment, you increase the proclivity for people to use it in a potentially
more offensive environment.
And my argument is always like, no, I don't think that crossover exists, but if you did want
to take that argument and maybe you do feel this way, I think that you get really problematic
when you run into communities that do use certain words that people would say, well, they should
be allowed to do it.
So for instance, if you think that any utterance of the N word at all is highly problematic
and might increase hatred, then like the entire wrap industry has to
dramatically change the way that they engage with the N word. And obviously a lot of people
that criticize people's use of the N word are going to turn to rappers and say, well,
you guys can't say it either. No, it's who, I mean, it's who uses the N word. That's
what it's not. So it's not just the word. It's the, it is context dependent, but I would say that you as a white person having conversations,
the context there is the kind that would lead to any increase in hate.
Do you think the N-word should be censored in the dictionary?
No, and I believe there's a Wikipedia page on it and it's not censored.
Yeah, I don't know. I think it should be in the dictionary.
I think the context of casual conversation, like like I said, I just believe that on the internet
having humor, having fun conversations as you have on your streams, that leads to the normalization
of the word without any educational value. Without significant educational value.
I think I would agree with that.
No, sorry.
So there's a difference between F's learn and word.
And both I think should not be used in a fun way,
but the F word was used in a fun way for a long time.
For sure.
And I'll tell you something that bothers me
about your streams.
Now your streams and basically every other stream is the casual use of the
R word.
Oh, the ableism.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's about the able.
I don't even know.
Listen, it's complicated.
I'm not like virtue signaling here.
No, it's all ableism isn't virtue signal.
I mean, it's a legitimate.
Yeah.
Like I get emails from fans that say like, hey, like I deal with this particular issue.
Every time you use this word,
it kind of feels like you're attacking me.
Like just like, so it's not, yeah.
It's a valid concept, yeah.
It's just something cuts wrong for me.
Like for example, I'm not bothered by,
I am bothered by the excessive use of the word fuck.
Okay.
But not.
In the same way that.
Moderate use of the word fuck.
What is it I'm curious in? When somebody calls somebody in our word, what is it that what
is the feeling that you get that makes you feel bad about it?
It signals to me that you don't give a damn about people who are struggling in ways that
you are not struggling.
Like that signals to me,
like about the experience of others.
Do you think that there are other words also
that could convey like a similar feeling to your wife?
Cause it feels like you've drawn a pretty special circle around,
cause like I imagine I could like,
oh this guy's you're an uneducated dumbfucker,
you're a networker, like those words of love and feelings.
That circle keeps changing.
Which you can, which is fine, it doesn't.
I think that's the whole point with the culture.
So I'm trying to feel my feelings are kind of,
I'm a human being that exists in a social context
that we're all evolving that language together
and just feels wrong.
Like, word bitch, for example,
it really brought, like I've heard on your streams
in general, calling a woman a stupid bitch really bothers me. But it's not just the word
bitch's context. Like, for example, me person, I'm speaking to me personally, like badass bitch
is different than stupid bitch. Sure. A way bad bitch or something is different. Yeah, of course. Way different.
Sure.
I think it speaks to a bigger sense of civility
and respect for human beings that are not like you.
That's what that's the feeling that I'm bothering.
So I guess what I'm trying to say here is
just because people speak in this kind of way in the gaming world and streams doesn't mean
that you, like a lot of people look up to you.
It doesn't mean young people, especially.
It doesn't mean that you don't have the responsibility to sort of stand alone from the crowd.
Because you're somebody that values the power of affected discourse. And to be effective discourse,
there's some level of civility. So you can be the sort of the beacon of civility in that world
versus giving into the derogatory words. Because you have to lift people out of that world,
you have to, you have to lift people out of that world, out of the muck of,
what I would say is like drama and ineffective discourse. It's like, I think that's one of your missions, right? It's like to inspire the world to conversation, to debate, to affect the discourse.
Yeah. So I guess I'm just calling you out that I think using our word for me personally as a fan that believes in your mission,
it just makes you look ineffective and bad and uninspiring to young people that look up to,
because those young people are going to use those words that you're using and they'll do it
much less effectively. This is the problem. Yeah, I guess the challenge is always just like
finding the line. Yeah. My vocabular shift dramatically from even from like two or three years ago, I
think my vocabulary shifted quite a bit as we've like we've kind of gotten rid of some
words and some things are kind of coming out.
The R word is one that has kind of gone out and come back and gone out and come back.
That one we've definitely gone back and forth on.
I know there are different thoughts about it and different communities on the internet.
This is interesting.
I mean, I'm just telling you, for me, it cuts,
and I'm not a social justice warrior type.
It cuts pretty hard.
Like, for your standards, I'm gonna lose the subscriber if I'm.
No, it's not subscriber.
I know, I just, I actually have to empathize harder
because I'm like, maybe this is not a very good person.
That's what I feel.
Like, if you're so careless of using that word,
then maybe you're not actually thinking deeply about
the suffering in the world.
Like, to be a student of human nature,
you really have to think about other humans
and other experiences that are unlike your own.
Yeah, of course.
And so that's the sense I get.
But at the same time, you're also like the grandpa,
I mean, Aegis, who's trying to be cool with the young kids a lot a lot of the reason young kids look up to you
It's like you're also know the language of the internet. Yeah, but I mean it doesn't that's not an excuse to use words
We think shouldn't be use I guess the question that I that I would have because it's always a struggle and to some extent
It's kind of happen is let's say that like three years ago
I would have said I'm no longer saying the hour. That artwork, I'm just gonna get rid of that in my vocabulary.
Like is there a chance that today,
we would be having a conversation about like,
why do you call people dumb fucks?
Like is that really appropriate?
Like this is attack at the core of like somebody's
like level of intelligence, education,
opportunities in life, like is that a worthy,
you don't think so?
I think that's a, as the kids say, cope.
You really think so? I think that's, the kids say, cope. You really think so?
I think that's because the words have definitely moved
in a way where it's like, this was okay now,
it's not this is okay now.
So you're standing your ground by using, listen,
you could, you could, but I think it's better to use
those words if you want to defend the ground word stand on
to use them rarely and deliberately versus how you currently
use them, which is to express an emotion.
Like you, I'm going to be honest, you use our word, not when you're at your best.
True.
And so that's not, that's generally, that can be true for a lot of swearing to that, but
yeah, I know she would.
No, but like you know, the our word is offensive. You know, and there's part of it is like,
the, you tell yourself that like,
you're still kind of fighting political correctness,
by using it a little bit when you say it.
No, I don't think so.
I think, I'm trying to think in terms of like,
where is the virtue, where,
like there's a whole bunch of arguments
where why some words are okay,
some words aren't okay or whatever,
and I try to like think more along those lines rather than, but like there's a whole bunch of arguments where Y-Sumwords are okay, Sumwords aren't okay or whatever. And I try to think more along those lines,
rather than like there's gonna be a lot of phrases
where like if the R word has come out,
the conversation is over.
I know that, like things my brain is shut down
the person sometimes is,
but there's like a lot of words also in terms of like,
if you ever hear me say like fucking more on it,
a debate, it's like it's done.
Like this conversation is over,
there's no way that anything productive
is happening past that point. I think fucking moron is not, I think it's ineffective. It's
not civil, but it's not, it doesn't bother me in the way. It's basically when you speak in a way
that I know there's a group that's going to be heard by that. Not only do I think about the hurt
that group experience is I think of you as a lesser
Intellectual like as a lesser person who's thinking about the world
Well bothers me the most is just what kind of
Mindset that inspires in young in young people or especially when you're in a public figure and a lot of people look up to you
So I definitely don't think sort of this idea
The R word is not the battleground of expanding
the Orton window of discourse. Okay, like I don't think it'll lead to dumb fuck
being canceled two years later, unless that word is hurting people's experience, which I don't foresee that happening.
I think legitimately our word and F'sler and calling women bitches,
it context matters here too, like of course, but just the way F heard you use it,
it is not, it's from emotion and it's from frustration. And it ultimately is rooted in disrespect.
I don't, I think it's ineffective.
And of course, like who gets to say, I don't know.
But I'm saying, somebody who would,
like I admire effective conversations
and I admire great humor, dark humor, wit.
To me, oftentimes the use of the R word in the way you've used in the
YC the community use it is none of those things it contributes not at all to the humor and so on.
Now I could see it might contribute to the to the camaraderie of that particular group
especially when they normalize the use of that word. You kind of take some of the edge off,
but you forget that there's a large number of other people
that don't have the chemistry,
that don't hear the music of the friendship that you have,
the relationship you have,
and instead they hear the normalization of a hateful word.
And it ultimately has an impact that's hateful.
And then people like me who show up,
you know, I haven't watched much of your stuff.
It turns me off from like a couple of times
your content came before me.
Like, and I listened to it a little bit,
it turned me off completely.
I didn't understand how good your heart is.
I didn't understand how your mission of actually
do you radicalize people, help people like you're an increased
the level of good faith discourse in the world.
I didn't understand any of that because like what I was hearing is pretty rough, like
the R-word type of stuff.
And I just feel like the benefit cost analysis is heavy on the cost.
Gotcha.
So I just have to sort of call this out.
I think it, and I straight up think it's wrong.
But that's my own, that's my own.
Why do you think it's wrong?
Because it's hurting people without any benefit
to you whatsoever.
When you say hurting people, do you mean the person
I'm using it at or do you think there's like the, no, no, no, no, no, no, no're a really smart guy. Something that I always kind of like fight over in terms of
like language or like who to attack or what to attack
or what to do is that it's very hard to draw like what
boxes are okay to insult people on versus what aren't.
So for instance, if I call somebody like a Nazi with
a lot of vitriol, I am okay with every single
Nazi being negatively affected by that because that category intrinsically calls upon at some
level of more condemnation for me, right? Whereas like if I'm out there, I try not to do like
image-related jokes, right? I don't want to call you like, oh, you're a fat fucking loser because
there's a lot of people that are fat that are overweight where I don't want them to feel bad. I don't
want them. I'm not trying to call you out or like insult you. So there's like a lot of people that are fat that are overweight, or I don't want them to feel bad. I don't want them, I'm not trying to call you out,
or like, insult you.
So there's like a lot of, you say, cost benefit.
I like a lot of collateral damage from a word like that,
where there's no purpose in doing that.
So certain words are easy to get rid of.
They're off the table, right?
Epsilon, and word like,
like these are not words you call people
because there's so much collateral.
It's not worth it.
We've got some words where it's like,
if you have some form of like mental thing,
it is a bad thing, you're not a bad person,
but just using that word could feel like a collateral damage
to those people.
And then there's other categories of words,
so like if I say that like this person is like,
there is a stupid fucking Republican, right?
There's probably some Republicans that aren't dumb,
that I don't want to feel called out by that.
Like are those types of phrases that you think
should be completely removed as well?
Or I'm kinda curious.
So this completely removed just so we're clear.
Yeah, I'm not referring to censorship.
Oh no, I'm not even talking about this.
I'm just a person like emotionally.
Like removed is the wrong word though.
Like I care about like, I'm not trying to listen
to people on the internet saying that you
shouldn't say that word, that's not good.
I mean, I'm trying to look to your mind and heart.
And basically what's talking today is your betraying your gift.
You're better than this.
You think it's indicative of like a more flip of thought process where it's like the only
way you can say that word is if you're ignoring the hurt and suffering of those people and if you're somebody that says
that those people you're ignoring the state of language because I think you're getting
to the point because it's not about a single word it's about like a it's music and I just
feel like there is a strong note that ruins the melody.
Gotcha.
And I don't think I can say, you know, you shouldn't use the R word or whatever. I'm just speaking to,
I'm just listening to music and reviewing the final result.
It's not necessarily because maybe one use of the word, the R word,
strategically or part of an actual, like,
or when you've built up a camaraderie that's sandwiched in like some love, but then you
try to reveal there, like as you're talking about a lot, there's a bunch of drama, you have friends
with whom you're worrying and stuff, and they're all a little bit beautifully insane, and you've
said that you are becoming more and more insane. It's beautiful to watch. It's the human condition laid before us.
Wonderful.
And some of that is swearing and so on.
So it's a tricky thing.
But the whole skill of discourse,
just like it is with dark humor, is walking that line.
I just feel like it's overuse of the R word.
And I don't want to die in that grog,
because I don't think that represent it.
There's certain things like that. It feels like it ruins the music. I don't,
you know, it's just saying like a dumb Republican or dumb Democrat. I don't. Yeah, that ruins
it too a little bit. It depends on how you use it. You can be lazy with that. You know,
like even overuse of the word, I think bots is what's used for people who don't think
or something. I don't actually know the definition.
I'm offended on behalf of robots.
And that might be a compliment soon.
Exactly.
What I guess bot means you don't think.
Yeah, you're like an NPC.
You just copy me.
Yeah, I'm offended.
Again, I'm a fan of behalf of NPCs.
I come myself as one.
But there's a sense if you say bots too much that you're just dismissing people like
everything I say is right and anyone that disagrees when he's a bot. That's lazy too. Sometimes
it's funny, sometimes it's effective basically saying a lot of people in the mainstream media
are something like that or bots. Okay, that's a little bit of that as effective. But too much,
it becomes ineffective. And I'm trying to speak to that. And I'm just, the reason we're highlighting
clear examples, like the end word. Joe Rogan had to contend with that.
I think it's ineffective. It makes you less effective at discourse. But like you've talked about
many times, language is a tricky one. It's always But like you've talked about me a times languages are tricky one.
It's always hard because you talk about
like constructing a melody.
There's not one melody that sounds good to everyone.
But there are probably certain notes that like
if you got rid of them,
everybody's still gonna like it about as much
and you don't really lose anything.
There's a whole other part of an audience
that might be more willing to listen, yeah, of course.
And it's not about losing the magic of that melody.
Like you don't want to be vanilla. I just feel like there's stuff that doesn't need to be there.
Yeah, for sure. It's fat. But then again, the other thing that people should understand
that might be listening to this, you're streaming many hours a day. For many years, I don't know,
it's a 11 or 12, I think. Yeah. It started in 2010. And so one of the things that people can do is just clip out anything.
You're going through the full human experience of emotion, anger, fear, frustration, all
of it.
So of course there's going to be moments when you're not the best version of yourself.
Anything else to say about the language?
It's complicated.
I'm still always trying to figure it out.
There are opinions that I have that have changed
throughout the years.
It's possible that the artwork has always been the next one
on the chopping block that we're all kind of looking at,
but people always worried about that treadmill.
But it's possible in a year or two,
I'll have a different view on it,
or all of changed away some of the words I use.
Yeah, it's definitely like a,
it's always like a work in progress.
There's always like different communities
that feel different ways about different words, yeah. Yeah. But do you acknowledge that there's people out there
that are never going to talk to you? They're never going to think of you as a good man because you
use the end word with the hard art publicly. In the past, I mean, yeah, those people exist, but I mean,
there are some people that are beyond my reach, which I'm okay with.
Like, there's going to be some people because of things that have been involved, or even
ideas that I have now that might make them beyond my reach.
Something you said earlier is very true.
I think the goal is to like identify what are the elements that you can cut out that aren't
integral to your message, but it could be alienating to more people, and those are probably
the things that you identify. But I think that you can get lost in the internet
or lost in the outside of yourself
if you're trying to appeal to every single person.
I was just never gonna be the case.
And for, I actually, I like that I've had
the journey that I've had on the internet
that you can find me saying
and defending a lot of insane stuff 10 years ago
because I think it shows like a level of progress.
And I think I do get a lot of respect and buy into certain communities where it's like,
I'm not just some random dude telling you that like, oh, you shouldn't say, you know, the F word
of the N word, like, I'm a guy that's been there, if that's done it, let's defend it. And you can
see my whole past, my whole history is laid bare for you to watch every of, you know, thousands of
hours of it. But I can show that like there's growth and evolution and change that can happen
in a person. So yeah, and you're honest about that growth. It's a tricky thing because people just call
bring up stuff from your past. For sure. I hope we figure out as a civilization, a mechanism
to clearly say this was, this was me two years ago, this was me five years ago. This is
a different person. And like, because Twitter doesn't
care about that. These social mechanisms that bring stuff up doesn't care about that. It's like
one stupid thing you say, it becomes like a scarlet letter. And I don't know how to fight that.
It's tricky to fight that. Have you ever seen men in black? Yes. When KJ are on the bench and he says
person is smart, but people are stupid, dumb, finicky, animal, animals or whatever, there's something that changes for human dynamics
when there is a group of people that make it so hard to control. Like I think one on one,
anybody can sit across on somebody and admit to some horrible stuff. I used to be, uh,
you know, I abused my husband when I was, you know, 20 and 35 and I see it's wrong. I did this.
I was addicted to whatever and, to whatever and I made these mistakes.
One in one it's always easy.
But in group environments that, in group out group,
tribalistic thing of like identifying one thing
and then coming to destroy a person's life
is like, it's such a huge impulse we have.
And I think probably when we were like hunter-gatherers
and the forest is probably good
because you really wanna push weird people out
or anything like that.
But now on the internet, when we can hunt for any dissenting opinion and just with ruthless
precision, destroy somebody's life over it.
It's a pretty scary dynamic.
I think one of the mechanisms that could fix it is make it super easy for each individual
person to analyze all the stupid shit they themselves have said in the past, like a
full recording.
Because I think people are just
honestly paying to very rosy picture to their own brain of who they have been in the
past. Yeah, of course.
If we can have empathy for the fact that we've said stupid shit or we're drunk, the ridiculous
things you say, the offensive things you might have said, the offensive things you might
have done, I just feel like that will give us the ammunition to have empathy for others that are like, okay, yeah, this guy
five years ago said this, maybe that doesn't represent who, who doesn't represent who they are
any more than stuff I said five years ago represents who I am today. Yeah. I feel like technology
can actually enable that. Maybe, although you're talking about more, more recording and more stuff, which people are already
wary of, but it's a double-edged sword.
I think there is going to be more and more recording.
We have to figure out how to do that in a way that respects people privacy and gives
them ownership of their data and so on.
I've looked at the search history of Dunon Google, which for most people is available, like
your Google search history.
And it's fascinating to watch the evolution of a human being.
Like, it doesn't seem like the same person.
Like a different person.
For sure.
It's weird.
It's also hard too with the internet today.
I'm going to be ages again.
But like now all of the people are thrown together, you know, whereas like, like I don't
want a 27 year old judging.
There you go again.
There you go again.
There you go again.
There you go again. There you go again. There you go again. There you go again. There you go again. A 15 or 16 year old. Like obviously, he's in high school.
Like there was that story that came out of the,
there was a kid that saved the recording of,
I think it was like some white girl.
I think that she like got her driver's license
and she was like, I can drive now,
and words with the A or whatever,
dumps you shouldn't have said it.
But I think she was like 15 or 16
when she take talk of this or whatever.
And he held on to that recording
until she applied and got accepted to college
three years later and then he released it to get her together kicked out of college and I'm like, damn.
Everything that I had ever said, there's like a 15, 16 year old was like immortalized on the internet. My life wouldn't even be begun.
And those are insanely high standards to hold people to.
Not that like, obviously, you shouldn't be saying those, you shouldn't be saying certain words or whatever, but you have to be able to make mistakes and adolescence like everybody does we all did everybody did it growing up
You know
What do you think there's so much misogyny in the streaming community and
How can you fight it because you you've shown a
Lot of interest in fighting it trying to decrease or eliminate misogyny from your community
I think it's really difficult. I think that eliminating racism is easier than eliminating
misogyny because I'm the internet union on anywhere. Because I think fundamentally, I don't
think there's that much difference between like white people and black people and brown people
and Asian people or whatever. You know, we have different cultures and stuff, but at the end of
the day we're all people. But I think there are differences between men and women, like throughout all of, like all of history and time and then
even today and every culture. And when, when real differences do exist, it's harder to
account for them in a way that, can we have conversations with each other without it
becoming very gendered in a negative way, right? Negative wave-gendering something to be,
like a misogynistic wave-towing. Of course, it's unclear to me that it's so difficult
to avoid the negative gendering versus the positive,
because there's a lot of positive to the tension,
the dance between the different genders and so on.
Maybe in this particular moment in history, it's not,
but it's not trivial to me that racism
is easier to eliminate.
It's an interesting hypothesis,
just because there's more biological difference between men and women. That means it's harder to eliminate. But I don't know
if this is true. I hear this a lot. I feel like I read this somewhere, but I need to get a better
source while I repeat it everywhere. I've heard that in the US military, for instance, they've got
an exceedingly well, they do an exceedingly good job at getting different people of different
races to integrate. And it's like not a huge problem once you're through basic training,
all the training, everything.
But for a different sex,
as it's still represents a significant problem
that the military hasn't figured out.
And as you look to like,
what's the military doing?
Because if something was solvable,
like can we sleep for four hours and I'd be healthy?
If we could, I bet the military would know.
So I kind of look sometimes to them
to see their integration, but it might be
that there are other issues there that make it.
Yeah, it feels like the military is a very particular kind
of, for sure, yeah, it might be that there are other issues there that make it. Yeah, it feels like the military is a very particular kind of... For sure, yeah, it could be.
The actual task and hand might bias the difficulty of the process.
Potentially, yeah.
There's been a lot of interesting talk about like,
women integrating into male groups, and how do you do this in a way
where everybody is happy with the outcome outcome and there's not like issues.
I think Jonah Peterson spoke about this a little bit
and then workplace culture speaks about this a bit.
Would you happen to remember,
I wanna say it was like five or 10 years ago,
there was a big tech conference
and there were two guys behind a woman
and they made a joke about like a USB dongle
or like dongle was a dick.
And this woman turned around, she tweeted pictures of them,
spoke about like misogyny of the,
and then that blew up into a huge ordeal that like, yeah.
There was this, there's this interesting phenomenon
that in a less misogynistic and more inclusive workplace
environment, some women might end up feeling worse
because in a more misogynistic environment,
you're thinking like, okay, that's a woman. She doesn't get her humor. I'm gonna treat her in a more misogynistic environment, you're thinking like, okay, that's
a woman. She doesn't get her hammer. I'm going to treat her in a very indifferent, you know,
very dispassionate, cold way and whatever. And then I'm going to have my, my boys over
here. And then you've got like these environments where they're a little bit more warmer. And
it's like, oh, cool. We're going to bring this woman into our environment. And we're going
to make all the same types of like crash jokes we did before. And it's actually worse now.
Another woman feels even more otherwise because like, oh oh my god, why do you talk like this?
I think that internet communities, especially online ones that do like political debate
and video games, are very much like big boys clubs.
So it's not enough to just say, you can't be misogynistic to get rid of misogynic.
There's always going to be an othering effect on women.
There's a lot of like behaviors that are unintuitive that you have to account for, and you've got
to try to like push that back.
And that's just a very, very, very challenging thing to do.
So I like to deal with concrete examples more.
So here's a concrete example.
And this is like a recent initiative in my community,
because I'm trying to be,
because Massage and Heisman fixed anywhere in the internet,
and I'm curious, well,
there are ways that I can push my community to do this.
I don't think you should almost ever make a comment
on a woman's appearance, ever,
if they're appearing in like some political
or professional manner.
Even if it's a positive comment,
I think it's equally bad to a negative comment.
It's just never good to do.
And that's kind of an unintuitive thing
because it's like, well, a woman appears,
wow, she's really cute.
It seems like a nice comment.
You're being nice, you know, she looks cute at her,
but it's like, it's not at all the point
of why she's there.
And just by saying that,
you're kind of like, otherizing her as like a person
to like, think she looks good
rather than listening to anything she has to say, you know.
Well, there's a lot of stuff that you're saying and that is a part of massaging.
It's almost like obvious.
Like any woman will tell you that.
Woman, well, yeah, but they're not in these spaces and a lot of the guys don't know.
But I think what that requires is just empathy.
You don't need, you don't need,
you need to consider the female experience.
That's it.
Like, you have to either read about or talk with women.
It's you learn, like the low hanging food
is very easy to learn.
It feels like just the level of social skill
oftentimes in internet communities is quite low.
I disagree.
I don't like to say, here's the problem with empathy,
is it's very hard to have empathy for experiences
that are so outside of your own.
It, well, maybe some people, there might be some people
that can do it, I can't.
There's a lot of stuff that I had to learn.
Women are half the population.
But they're women.
They're totally different.
They're totally different.
So here, we talk about, this is not totally different. So here we talk about, this is not totally different.
So here's an example, okay.
So especially for me, my archetype makes up a lot of the internet, white man.
There's never been a point.
The name of a beautiful woman who might be a dancer.
What's the backstory from New Orleans or from...
I haven't thought that through yet.
It's ambiguous, okay.
Like an open world.
It's an open world.
I want you to project whatever you want
destiny, the dance that I'd be from.
That's in your mind, okay?
All right, I'll see that for later tonight.
Yeah, okay.
As a white guy, I don't know if there's ever been a spot
that I've been in where I've been made to feel like
I don't belong there just by virtue of who I am.
I don't, I actually don't,
it's impossible for me to empathize that because I don't even have
that experience. If you go back eight, nine years, one of the big issues that came up was harassment
and gaming against women. And I was one of the big debaters against that saying that like, sure,
women might get harassment, but everybody gets harassment. If you're a woman and you're in gaming
and you get harassed, congratulations, you're being treated like a man. If you're a woman and you're in gaming and you get harassed, congratulations,
you're being treated like a man.
What you're actually asking for
is for us to actually treat you differently.
You don't wanna be insulted.
You don't wanna be treated like a man.
And that's actually misogyny as women making that argument.
You still stand by that?
Is that a problem if I do?
No, I'm just kidding.
Okay, I'll just hold on.
So a little while after.
I disagree with it.
Sure, okay.
That's good, you should.
A little while later, I had a friend Jessica super cool girl
We go to play games. She was between jobs
She's like I've got like two months and we're gonna grind CS go and I'm like, okay, this is awesome. Let's do it
CS go counter strike global offensive shooter game FPS microphones first day. We start playing okay hop into our first game
Obviously she talks everybody's making is that a 12 year old boy? Why aren't you making sandwiches?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, whatever.
Play our first game.
Play our second game, same jokes.
Third game, fourth game.
By like the fourth or fifth game,
I was actually starting to feel triggered.
Like every time the game started,
I was like, can you just like talk
so we can get over like the stupid fucking jokes.
It's so fucking stupid.
And you hear the same fucking joke every single time.
And it took one day of that experience for me to realize,
it's not about being insulted. It's like this othering feeling that you don't belong.
And I've never felt that because I'm a white guy. Like, it's not to be like virtue singularism,
but like, there's just, there's no places where it's like, you're white, you don't belong here,
you're a guy, you don't belong here. Like, I've never felt that not inclusion. And playing with her,
there's a different feeling when it's the same types of jokes coming from a group of people
to make you feel like you don't belong there,
where I was like, damn, this actually feels really bad.
And it feels bad in a different way,
where it's like if you call me like NF Slayer
or any other type of swear word or insult,
like yeah, you can call me that,
but at the end of the day,
we're all kind of the same,
we're all white dudes and we call each other names,
but this is a woman and this is not her place and she doesn't belong here
Kind of the analogy that I would make because I after getting these experience I would learn this afterwards
If I tell you that there's another guy in a room and you need to think of the worst insults ever for that person without ever
Knowing anything about them or meeting them if I tell you that it's like a white straight guy and you have to write insults
You're fucked. Maybe you can do like school shooter,
but there's not really much you can say at the end of the day.
But if I tell you it's a woman,
whoa, we could, there are so many different jokes
in your right, if it's a black person,
so many different races things we can say.
Are you sure?
I can come up with a lot of stuff for a white guy.
In terms of stuff that is just intrinsic
to him being a white guy.
Yeah, like there's, really?
Wait a minute, what are you talking about?
There's a lot, the internet has sharpened that sword.
In terms of like jokes that are targeted
at his sex for cells, virgin, weak.
Some of the in cell virgin, maybe, yeah,
that's getting there, sure, that's for sure.
That's recent though, sorry, I'm older on the internet,
we didn't have those words way back then.
That was the best.
When I was making these analogies that in style and version
My day we didn't have general
There were no insoles back then none of us had sex we just accepted we were all computer gamers
Nobody had sex with like video games back then okay people don't remember that there wasn't the big bang theory
You were just a loser that was stuck guys even no sex exists
Exactly. Yeah, we had to download sexual pictures and they took two minutes and you didn't even know if you were gonna get the right thing
By the time it finished loading
But what I'm saying is I'm like,
okay, so I think you agree that,
if somebody gives you a race,
like a black person who's a woman,
we can write very cutting,
scathing insults for that person
that are very otherizing.
Oh, words that would really hurt
is just what we're doing.
Yeah, that are very cutting to the person.
But for a white guy,
it's kind of hard,
because that's the default.
There's not as much otherizing of those people. Yeah, so that's kind of the same. So, the insults you have from white guy to white guy, it's kind of hard because it's like that's like the default. There's not as much other rising of those people. Yeah. So the insults you have from white guy to white guy,
the insults are much harsher. So when you start to apply the same kind of harshness to other
groups, you can make them feel like they really don't belong. And that other rising effect
is something that's very hard for me. I can't really empathize because I never felt it. So I have
to intellectualize it and then sympathize with it. It's like a whole process I have to go through and then I try to walk other people through that
because if you're a white guy on the internet, which is a lot of the internet, you really don't know what that feels like.
You've never felt like that before.
Yeah. So you're now in a leadership position,
grandpa, destiny. So that's a lot of people look up to you for that, for that sort of pathway to empathy.
Yeah.
Hanata, uh, otherwise.
I mean, you have felt otherwise,
and you're, you mentioned in high school people,
like not being...
Yeah, but those were always for things that like,
it's different to insult somebody
for a non-immutable characteristic.
Like, okay, you think poorly about me
because I'm like not enough money,
or what I don't have money,
but I could get more money and I could change that.
But it's different for somebody to really attack you
for like your gender or attack you for like your race.
A lot of the attacks that hit the hardest is not about gender. It's, it's, I do think
that they're like the way women are attacked on the internet. It's the same kind of attacks
you do towards other guys, but you go harsher. I feel like they're fundamentally different.
I feel like when we're attacking guys, I'm not usually attacking you on like the virtue of you being a guy. But like if
it's a woman and she's typing something like, oh, did your boyfriend type that for you?
Or like, what are you even doing here? Like, don't you? Shouldn't you be trying to find
a husband or like, oh, you're like a stupid kind of like ghost-died and only fans are
really good. No, but the stupidity, the intelligence aspect is what's the text. Yeah, but it's
so much different. Like, you can call a guy No, but the stupidity, the intelligence aspect, is what's the text. Yeah, but it's so much different.
Like, you can call a guy stupid,
but that's because he's a guy that's being stupid.
But when you call a woman stupid,
she's stupid because she's a woman.
Yeah, but I honestly think that women are called stupid
more than men on the internet.
But I have nothing to do, like, the attack is not gendered.
It's the gender inspires an increased level of attack.
I feel like it is gendered. I wish we had data on this.
Have you ever heard of the XKCD comics?
Yes.
It's a really good comic where, and this is something that I've dealt with a lot in my community.
There's a guy at a board, and he fucks up a math equation, and it's like, wow, you suck a math.
And then the next panelist, there's a girl that does it, and she fucks it up, and it's like, wow, you suck at math. And then the next panel is there's a girl that does it, and she fucks it up, and it's like, wow, women suck at math.
And there's like that feeling that happens, where,
when I bring on, I won't use names,
but they're like, you two people that I've brought on
that have crazy opinions.
And when they're men, that person is crazy.
Oh my God, he said the crazy stuff, he's so dumb,
he's so crazy, so stupid.
But when it's a woman, it's like, oh my God,
why do you always bring dumb women here?
Why do so many women on the internet have crazy opinions?
There's a different minority character that has to stand it and represent their whole group
where white men don't typically have to.
The speaking of groups or individuals, yes.
But then what I feel happens is then another person from that group comes, another woman comes, and people before she says anything,
will already feel like they're ready with that attack.
For sure.
But they're ready for the attack, she's a woman.
They're going to call her, she's stupid because she's a woman, not because she says
something, they're just because she's a woman.
So like the group in their brain accumulates all the negative characteristics of the individuals
they've met, not theulates all the negative characteristics of the individuals they've met.
Not the positive, the negative.
It becomes like this ball of stickiness, and then that becomes the bias for their judgment
of a new person that comes.
With white men, there's more of a blank slate in terms of bias, while they analyze the
person with any of the minority group, they basically make a judgment based on the negative
characteristics of the individuals that, they're basically make a judgment based on the negative characteristics
of the individuals that met in the past.
That leads to a system where you're just harsher towards minority groups and towards women.
How do you solve that?
The most important thing for any problem ever is step one is to be aware of it.
If you're not aware of it, then you're hopelessly lost, let's see.
The first thing I like to say is be aware of it.
I've had, there's a girl that I've had on recently
and she says a lot of, in my opinion, kind of crazy things,
but people will use her as like,
this is why women shouldn't be here.
This is like, she's crazy and she's a woman of blah, blah, blah.
But I can bring on a guy who's to similarly dumb things
and he's evaluated on his own merits,
because it's a guy, you know?
There's never, ever, ever been a case
where I brought a stupid guy on stream
and everybody's like, this guy makes me hate men.
This guy makes me hate white people that has never happened.
But then there's like other women that come on and it's like, now I know why and cells
exist.
I totally understand where red pill ideology comes from, you know?
And even if the statements are kind of true, when you're making these observations over
and over and over and over again, it damages your ability to individually perceive somebody.
And then two people that make the same statements, one can be perceived more harshly,
just because of that group bias you've got built up.
I think there's something about streaming
that just brings that out of people,
like because you have to talk for like seven hours.
So you're like, all right, well, whatever psychological issues
and complexities I have, I'm going to explore that.
They're going to be magnified.
Magnified.
And then it's the, Gerard,
as you talked about the memetic Theory so Gerardian like whatever
The things that are very similar and that you're going to magnify the conflicts that you have and you're going to explore the
All the different perspectives on those different conflicts and I mean, I don't I don't know if it's just anecdotal
But it's nice to have women on stream. I think the dynamic
That you guys have is is is wonderful. It's nice to have women on stream. I think the dynamic that you guys have is wonderful.
It's really interesting. So it's just a female voice in general. I love having women on the
podcast. The female voice, I feel like, is under her down the internet. For sure.
And I would love the internet to be a place where women feel safe to speak.
All right. Given that you're, like we talked about,
a progressive with non-standard progressive use,
so you're very pro-free speech, pro-capitalism.
So given that, it's very interesting
that you're also pro-establishment and pro-institutions.
So right now, if you look at the world,
there's a significant distrust of institutions,
at least in public intellectual discourse.
What is the nature of your support for government
and institutions?
Can you make the case for and against them?
Broadly speaking, there is a synergistic effect
when two humans come together.
If I can speak very broadly in terms of,
we'll say utility, okay.
My happiness with one person might be 10.
The happiness with one person might be 10.
When they come together, it's like 50
between the two of them.
There's like the synergistic effect
when humans work together that the sum is greater
than all the individual parts, whatever.
There's like an emergent thing that happens there.
There's a capacity, there's a possibility of that.
Yeah, a possibility, sure.
Things could go really wrong.
There could be a cannibalistic drive
that all eats each other, sure.
But for the purpose of this,
there's all their failure modes, but yes.
Okay, sure, yeah.
For the, for the,
but well, I think broadly speaking,
you're, are you gonna be the well-actually guy?
Okay, if you wanna well, okay.
Well, actually, well actually sometimes cannibalism.
Yeah, they're actually more in the law-classing for both. Yeah, sometimes things do go wrong.
But I think broadly speaking, the fact that you're sitting here and clothing that you
didn't make, and I'm sitting here on an airplane that I don't know how to fly, air bill,
like, right, there's a lot of cool stuff that happens when people come together and they
make civilizations.
And part of that civilization building is the fact that we can specialize, and it's
the fact that we can offload a bunch of trust
on to third parties that we delegate the power to make important decisions about our lives, right?
I don't know anything about how to like build like a combustion engine,
but I know that when I push the button on my car, it's gonna drive around and the fumes aren't gonna kill me and I can park it in
Gragas and the building is not gonna collapse and the only reason all of this works is because I've off-lit it a lot of trust on
of these third party things.
And I would say that the pillars of these third party things that society has built on
are roughly speaking institutions.
So that might be the institution of peer review for scientific articles.
It might be the institution of voting for government, right, or the ability for us to vote in
that whole process.
It might, yeah, all the FDA,
like all of the institutions, I think,
is that they need to exist
because we don't have the time or the capability
to individually sort through all of these things individually.
We have to rely on some third party to do it.
Okay, so you believe at scale,
the one word together,
we're greater than the sum of our parts. That's the case
for institutions. Absolutely. What about the inefficiencies of bureaucracy? Is there some aspect
when at scale, different dynamics coming to play than they do when there's two people together?
Two people that love each other, the birds and the bees, is there some aspect that leads more
to cannibalism at scale?
Corruption, inefficiencies that do to bureaucracy and so on.
Bureaucracy, which is not, I hate it when people try to say, bureaucracy is government,
because bureaucracy exists a ton in private environments as well, right, in businesses and
everything. Bureaucracy introduces its own set of problems, but I mean, a bureaucracy is
necessary because it's coordinating all of the underlying things in order to create something that's greater
than the sum of its parts, right?
All of the software developers in the world are useless without being paired with good
designers in order to make their products usable by a person.
And the coordination of those people, and the coordination of increasingly more and more
things necessitates some level of bureaucracy.
I think we always say bureaucracy when it's like a bad, it's like a slur almost like
you're a bureaucrat, you're bureaucratic, the bureaucracy is slowing everything down.
It's like, sure, the bureaucracy slows things down, but bureaucracy also gives us things
like, you know, safe medicine and safe water to drink from us to the US or safe buildings
to live in or safe cars to drive.
So the managers in institution versus like the softer developers and the designers, the managers is the bureaucracy.
The reason the bureaucracy is used capitalism can come in, that
capitalism puts a pressure on the bureaucracy not to grow too much because you want the bureaucracy
to be useful, but not large.
Yeah.
And to be a certain size, yeah, of course, to be the minimum size to get the job done. And so capitalism provides that mechanism government does not always.
And so that's the criticism of government of institutions where it can grow without a
significant mechanism that says there's a cost to bureaucracy that's not being accounted
for here. We're just paying for the increasing size of government without the benefit.
Yeah, government is a special institution because it doesn't have to show itself to be financially viable.
And we kind of live in a capitalist economy where that's generally the case.
So government gets its powers from votes from the people, which introduces a whole new set of possible positives and possible negatives.
Having something, for instance, that gives food or shelter to homeless people,
maybe you don't want that to have to run at a profit. possible negatives, right? Having something, for instance, that gives food or shelter to homeless people,
maybe you don't want that to have to run at a profit.
But giving an organization that can self-justify its budgets
perpetually and indefinitely growing,
maybe that's not the best thing.
Yeah, we always have to figure out how to do
the constraints there.
What about the corrupting nature of power?
That comes with institutions as well.
Absolutely.
So then you better pick your
your style of institution very carefully. I think that the democratic institution we have
in the United States today, I think works very well. But I mean, there are other styles of
government that have been tried in the past that I think lend themselves more to corruption.
Not to say that, by the way, there's not corruption in the United States. Of course, there's
going to be varying levels of corruption at like all at all levels. But you run into this interesting problem
where authoritarian regimes can act
with ruthless precision and swiftness
because they don't have to ask any questions.
They just do, do, do, do.
And that's it.
But the problem is it's an authoritarian regime.
They're prone to missteps.
They're slow to respond to changing or evolving needs.
There was an interesting study that was put out a while ago
that showed that like every single famine
that happened around the world, almost 98% of them
happened under authoritarian regimes,
where like freedom of speech is very limited.
It's very rare for a famine to happen under a democracy
because press and everything makes the government
more responsive to the needs of the people.
Power can corrupt, their levels of corruption,
but you have to have like a system of checks and balances
on all of those different levels
to make sure it doesn't run off the rails, I guess, and do a sick loop
delupin, you know, half the population gets.
Nice callback.
There's a lot of people that will listen to you say that the democracy in the United
States is working pretty damn well and they will spit out the drink if they're drinking
or drink and be very upset.
Can you make the case that they're right and you're wrong?
Can I make the case that...
Can you steal man?
Yeah, well, the steal man for them
is that people have a lot of problems on the day to day.
And when they look and they see what government is doing,
they might see potholes outside their house, homeless people,
all over their downtown,
and the United States just approved another
X billion amount of dollars for Ukraine.
Or they might be living in a city where half the factors are shut down.
A lot of their people out of work, but the president is on the TV talking about how to find jobs for immigrants coming in from Mexico.
And for these people, they have problems that exist in their lives.
Some of them are paying taxes to alleviate these problems.
And then when they listen to the government talk,
it feels like the government is not responding
to the needs that they have.
And then that's one problem.
Then on top of that, you've got all of these people
working in alternative media that can show you,
well, look at this politician wasting this much money
or look at him double speaking here or there.
Look at Hillary Clinton saying she's got a private position
and a public position.
Look at how all of these politicians have family members
that are getting rich because of their relationships
with people in Congress.
Look at the revolving door between capitalist companies and the government.
How can you look at all of that, take into account that the government is not responding
to your needs, and then really feel like it is a government by the people and for the people?
Yeah, this was very good.
Good steel man and good question.
How can you, how can you tell that they're not just politicians that care more about
continuously winning the elections versus
being a running government effectively?
They should care about winning the elections. That's the first misconception.
A lot of people say if this guy only cares about getting voted in,
this guy, like, he doesn't even believe about in a
in fracking or abortion, he just changes his opinion to get voted in.
Anytime somebody says that, you should say, that's really good.
You want them to change their opinions so they get voted in.
That's the whole point of the democracy.
You don't want them to be remained obstinate.
You don't want them to say, I'm not changing my opinion about it.
What would be a boy?
You want them to evolve and adopt new opinions based on what the population,
their constituents are voting for.
Yeah, but the cynical take is that they're on the surface,
they're changing their opinion, but that there's a boys club,
or boys means they lead that under in the smoke filled rooms in secret, they actually
have their own agenda and they're following that agenda and they're just saying anything
publicly to plague the public based on whatever the new trends are.
So, here is.
So, here is.
Yeah, I understand.
Somebody asked me this question and it flipped.
I won 80 completely. go take a poll. Yeah, I understand. Somebody asked me this question and it flipped. I
180ed completely. I was at Bernie Sanders' support in 2016 and my single issue voting thing
was lobbying. I thought that lobbying, the government was corrupt, they weren't responding
to these people. It was completely destroyed my faith and government and everything. And
I had one question posed to me by a conservative that used to come on my stream and shout me. Any said, and then he asked me, can you think of any popular opinion
that the American public has
that the government is unresponsive to?
Is there some big piece of legislation or policy
or whatever that people want that the government
isn't doing?
Like ask me that, I couldn't think of a single good answer.
And I'm like, oh, geez.
There's some good answers.
There's drugs.
There's not.
And that's the same. Legalization or drug, hold on. I'll say, yeah, go for it. Oh, shoot, you. There's some good hands. There's drugs. There's not. Legalization.
Legalization or drug, hold on.
Yeah, go for it.
Oh, shoot.
You're doing the Joe Rogan thing.
You're pushing back because I brought up weed.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I have become meme.
I don't even, I don't want to interrupt your,
you're broke.
No, you're good.
Because there's memes upon memes
that can go with here.
No, because people bring up,
okay, there's no issues.
There's no issues that the government is not representing of the public.
So, here is the issue.
So, somebody will bring up like, well, what about the legalization of drugs?
Okay.
The first issue people have is one, they look at national polling.
Yeah.
Very few things are decided on a national level.
So, that's the first huge mistake.
Arguably, a lot of BLM made mistakes in this arena where they're saying like,
why isn't the government doing anything about policing?
Federal government can't do anything about policing.
That's gonna be your, sometimes I'm sending you
your state government, sometimes your local city government.
The people that like your chief of police,
your police commissioner, that's coming from your mayor, right?
So you've got people looking one at the wrong parts
of the government, even figure out the solution to the problem.
Two, oftentimes for polling, the questions are vague enough
that you can poll very high,
but when you get into the weeds on things,
no pun intended, you start to realize like,
oh shoot, this is more complicated than I thought.
I don't know the numbers in particular
for legalization of marijuana,
but this is what I'm gonna guess is the case.
If you poll and you say,
should we legalize marijuana,
that number might poll at like 65, 70%.
But that's including people that are in favor of medical marijuana.
If you were to pull like, should we legalize, should we decriminalize recreational use of
marijuana, that number might drop to like 52%.
And then if you pull like, should we completely legalize, not just decriminalize, but completely
legalize recreation as a marijuana, that number might drop to like 40%.
There's like all these different ways you can pull her in issues where people are like,
oh no, we broadly agree on this topic,
but when you really figure out, well, do you,
do we really agree, or is it just like broad consensus around
a thing that's never gonna show up
like in a piece of legislation?
A really good example, one example I do know
is socialized healthcare.
I think if you pull, there was a time a few years ago
where if you pull America,
do you think every American citizen should have access
to like free healthcare?
I think that answer, that poll at like 74% yes, but when you asked should the government be the sole provider of health care
It dropped to like 26% dropped 50 points and you could see it was both asking questions about single pair
But the way that it was asked was so different that even if you all you looks like there's consensus
There's not nearly as much consensus as people think around certain ideas
Yeah, go.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
That polls, the way you ask the polls really matters, when you ask, should the government
be in charge of a thing that also biases the answer, right?
Because there's such a negative experience with government creating a dog gov site
that runs the thing, but sometimes, sometimes.
I think if you dig in, if you have a one hour conversation
with each individual citizen,
I think you will understand that,
yes, there is support for socialized medicine.
Like it's not,
the argument has to be made though, yeah.
What do you mean with the argument has to be made?
Like if you just ask a conservative,
like what about a single payer, they're gonna tell you no. You might be able to build up to an argument for it, but you mean? What do you mean? If you just ask a conservative, like what about a single pair,
they're gonna tell you no.
You might be able to build up to an argument for it,
but you're gonna have to make the case for it.
No, but I thought we were talking about
the feeling deep inside your mind and heart,
does the government represent that?
Oh, so it's not like some shallow surface layer public opinion.
Does the government effectively represent what the people want?
Not a shallow survey, but a deeply what they want. I'm not actually that familiar with the debates over healthcare
But let's maybe look at an easier one. Sure. Maybe you'll say it's harder war
War is a really good example where the government was very responsive, I think to to the people. You think so? So, Iraq, Afghanistan, the government didn't manipulate
public opinion. There is an argument to be made that they did in terms of like WMD and everything,
but after 9-11, were you in the United States after 9-11? After 9-11, I legit-
It seems accusatory. Like, where were you in that 11?
It seems accusatory. Like, what were you and then a lot of them?
Well, I was checking, okay.
All right.
Cool.
I have evidence and witnesses.
No, okay.
I'm very defensive right now.
It's very strange.
No, but I'll.
Look into it.
Yeah, but like, I think after 9-11, we could have gone to country, we could have gone to
war with any country in the world.
We were ready because all of America was like, oh my god.
And they pointed to Iraq and, you know,
the reasons for the WMDs was kind of dumb,
but I don't think we even needed WMDs to go to Iraq.
We could have just said, you know,
said I'm saying was giving medical aid to Taliban,
al-Qaeda, Iraq, let's go,
and we would have gone for it.
But post-Iraq, Iraq was for a while popular
and then became obviously deeply unpopular.
Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I think you could see that influence other foreign policy
that the United States had.
For instance, we opted more towards like drone warfare
than troops on the ground for places like Yemen.
We opted more towards like kind of like sending money
and help instead of boots on the ground for places like Syria.
And I think that a lot of that was kind of in response
to how unpopular the Iraq stuff had became.
And when you looked at a lot of elections afterwards,
even for Obama, like one of the defining characteristics of a lot of campaigns where like, I'm going to close Guantanamo Bay, I'm
going to get us out of foreign wars, even up to Trump.
I'm going to stop doing all this weird stuff in the Middle East.
But they didn't still withdraw from a guest then.
They didn't withdraw, but they definitely tapered off and weren't like as aggressively
pushing those types of conflicts because they knew it was unpopular.
But I think if you also consider perfect information
or good information, if you ask a lot of people,
are you okay spending this amount of money
for this purpose, so military conflict in Iraq
and Afghanistan, I think almost from the very beginning,
they would say no.
After 9-11, I feel like maybe like a few days
after 9-11, like what was the next few days after 9-11 like I remember what was
what was the name well there's there's some memes and so on yes, but the nature of the public support for the war
was there public support 2003 which is when the invasion happened I feel like initially there was a lot I remember seeing it on but I also did a Republican household and I was not very like media savvy other times. I'm sorry. I don't know if the nature of that public support
had to do with WMDs or with 9-11.
Because the weird...
It came about WMDs.
But I wonder what is the if you were to poll people
and let's say hypothetically,
there was above 50% support for the war,
what would be the nature of that support?
And to what degrees the government actually representing the will of the people versus
some complex mechanism like the military industrial complex is manipulating the narrative that's
controlling public opinion.
And then there's the media that gets a lot of attention by being divided and how they're
shaping the narrative through the mechanism of division.
So what?
There's a lot of complicated things out there.
It's not just like the people and then the government.
And that's, yeah, for sure, I agree that there are going to be different elements at
play.
And how much of those elements that lead us astray can be attributed to the largeness of
the different systems.
So in the different institutions,
like the media institutions and government,
the institutions that have a monopoly on violence.
Let's put it this way,
which is what we're going to define government.
Sure.
It's complicated.
There's definitely gonna be different institutions at play,
but I think that like,
all I would say is like in reference to my original point,
when there becomes like broad consensus around a thing,
I think the government will usually follow,
it's not gonna fight, it's gonna follow more often than not.
But I think that a lot of times I think Americans think
that there's more consensus around certain issues
and there actually are.
So like a really good example, we're on that war point too.
What caused like the lowest dip in Biden's approval rating?
I'm pretty sure it was right after we pulled out of Afghanistan,
which I think if I would have asked people like a year before,
like let's assume that we could pull out of Afghanistan,
the government's probably gonna collapse after we leave
because they just don't have the will to fight
that don't have the support,
that don't whatever, that's just not gonna work.
But like no Americans are gonna die.
It might be a couple other people who go,
but like no Americans are gonna die,
we're gonna get a few to send.
Would you support that?
And then broadly speaking, I think more than 60 or 70% of Americans are gonna die. It might be a couple other people who go, but like, no Americans are gonna die. We're gonna get a few to say. Would you support that? I think broadly speaking, I think more than 60 or 70%
of Americans are like, yeah, that would be fine.
But then when it actually plays on TV,
when we see the people hanging onto the planes,
when we see helicopter embassies,
some of the court's and politicians,
well now it's like, oh my God, this was horrible,
and it was so botched, and it was so,
like, it could have gone so much better.
It's like, well, could it have gone better?
Like, maybe, maybe not, but I mean,
it seems like you can have consensus around this
kind of opinion, but the way that things play out
and the way that people actually feel,
it's actually way, way, way more complicated.
And there's not usually this broad consensus opinion.
Well, all right, yeah, go ahead.
I'd like to believe that.
I mean, just to leave my cards on the table,
I have a faith in the power of effective government. I just have a lot of concern
about what happens as institutions grow in size. For sure. And I just have a lot of worry about
the natural corrupting influence on the individuals and on the system as a whole, like the boys club
nature of it.
There must be a better term.
But basically they agree to the game and they play the game and there's a generational
aspect momentum to the game and they more and more stop being responsive to the people
that they represent.
I just feel like there is that mechanism. And I think the nice thing, democracy, elections are resistance to that natural human mechanism.
Also, the balance is a power, is a resistance to that mechanism.
In some ways, the media that reveals the bullshit of politicians is also a resistance to that mechanism.
It's hard to be full of shit as a politician because people will try to catch you on it. So there's an honesty method there that keeps you honest. It's the same degree, but it still feels like
it still feels like politicians are going to politician. Yeah, they definitely play their games.
That is true. There's probably always going to be that meta-narrative over like governance that just develops as like you have to form relationships and play
games to let get legislation passed and everything. The only reason why I don't like it when
people attack institutions is because one, institutions are incredibly important, arguably paramount.
No, they are to keeping society running. And two, I think sometimes when we shift the blame
on the institutions too much,
I think that we lose sight of what the real problems are. So for instance, in the United States today,
people might be very critical of the government not getting much done, but then everybody turns
their eyes to the government for being ineffective. But what I would argue is I would say the government
is actually incredibly effective and it's showcasing the will of the American people really well right
now, which is we are historically more divided than we have ever been. And if I were to just look at the people and I
would say we have a historic divide that is getting like rapidly blown apart by things like the
internet and the media, right? If that exists, well what would I expect that government to look like?
I wouldn't expect that government to be governing very effective. I would expect that government to show
that legitimate divide in people. Do you think that divide, we have a perception of a large divide between left and right?
Do you think that's a real divide this in this country?
Narrow the language. What do you mean by real divide?
Do you think there is that divide in ideology, that there's a large number of people that believe
a certain set of policies and the different set of policies? Which is just the perception of
the on Twitter. No, I think there is a large divide in terms of belief.
I don't think there's very much divide between any people
in terms of like what they like on the most fundamental levels
want in terms of like human beings,
but in terms of like Democrat,
versus Republican right now,
I think there is a huge divide in terms of the direction
they want to see the country go
and what they believe really and what they even believe
is reality, right?
Unfortunately, that's who we've gotten to. Can I just speak about the mechanism of the left and right here,
maybe on the Mementek Ravrily aspect?
Is there some aspect to the left
on which you're a part of that attacks their own
for ideological impurity more than the right does?
Is it the bigotry of small differences?
There's a concept where
when you're near somebody who is very slightly different than you, you want to destroy it, but when you're with some of this way
different than you, you don't. I think the left does it, but I think the right does it
too. I didn't realize until I started dipping more into conservative communities, but
oh my God, the people from the daily wire and the people from turning point and the America
first, all these different groups of people hage, and
they fight each other so much. They hire and fire sometimes employees, they talk smack
about each other. I think there's a lot of political division between both sides. I think
that the left just kind of gets highlighted more because it's like the internet and a lot
of the internet spaces have a lot of left-leaning people. So you see like the crazy communists
and the crazy progressives and the crazy center left liberals and the crazy blah, blah, blah,
whereas like a lot of the right-leaning people have kind of been pushed off of the main areas of the internet now.
Interesting. My sense was that it's hard to exist on the center left, but maybe because I just don't have the full spectrum view of the political divide.
It felt like center left is a difficult position to occupy. Yeah, I would definitely say so, yeah. I don't know if it's that difficult to be sent a right. It's very difficult to be sent a right.
I think actually maybe even more difficult
because a sent a right person might be somebody
who's like conservative, but not a fan of Trump
and you're like over, like look like Liz Cheney, right?
You've had politicians that are just like,
they didn't back the Trump stuff and now they're gone.
Or you might be like, send a right,
but like you don't think the election was stolen
and now you're like half the Republican party is like, and you're like, you're crazy, you know?
That's true. Yeah. That's true. I think there's a Ben Shapiro or a home talking with.
I think he publicly spoke against Trump, right? He did initially, but I feel like he's soft
in his language of what I'm pretty significantly, but so there's a significant pressure to kind of
college out to a certain kind of messaging, which the whole Republican party is feeling right now.
Geez, that two years from now, that election is going to be insane. to kind of call shout out to certain kind of messaging, which the whole Republican party is feeling right now.
Geez, that two years from now, that election is going to be insane.
It's just hard, okay.
So to generalize, it's hard to be in the center.
It feels like for sure.
To center and then like do like a random walk among the policies around that.
I don't know what that mechanism is.
I mean, it makes people like me not feel good being in the center.
It seems like people are just not nice to people in the center.
Like the public, the Twitter machine is not nice to people who are open-minded in the
center.
Is that, there's some truth to that.
Two reasons for that.
One is because I think a lot of people that market themselves in the center are legitimately
spotless cowards and deserve to be called out.
Like, I've never killed a man, but today might be my first.
Oh, no.
There I'll take over like I told you, I'll take over your stream.
You're with the AI.
You're a little bit.
Is that guy going to be streaming in the background?
Hey, fellas.
OK, gotcha.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
Lots of gotchas.
Lots of gotchas.
OK, gotcha.
OK, gotcha. OK. And the most which already is a pretty low level of
emotion just decrease it completely when people are screaming at you and accusing stuff
just remain calm.
Absolutely.
Emotionless, the gas lighter strategy.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we're talking.
So I don't I don't even I don't ever identify a center anything
because it's got such a bad reputation
because so many.
I fuck that, I stand center with a spine.
It's called being open minded
and it's not central left and right,
those are just labels.
Here's a really good quote my mom said to me
when I was really young.
She said,
Stevie, don't ever let your mind be so open
that your brain falls out.
And that's what I find that a lot of center people do.
It's not what she told me last night. Why are you like this?
Okay, I'm glad I can, I'm glad you feel like this is a safe place. Like I said, people,
non-judgmental. If you want to talk about fucking my mom, you know what, you're totally within your
rights. I didn't say that. You said that. I didn't say that. I support that. She's a beautiful
woman. Her husband probably wouldn't be too happy about it, but you know, I didn't say those
any sexual relations.
I was just having a conversation with her.
You projected that, that says more by you than me.
Anyway, go ahead about Spinalist Center.
Spinalist Center.
There is some aspect to that, which is like amorphous.
To me, Center means you think freely
about each individual policy without being stuck to a key.
Some ideal, yeah, but a lot of people don't do that.
They call themselves centrist, but then they just, they're anti-establishment, essentially,
on everything.
I don't know your position on like the vaccines or anything, but like I met a lot of like
free and open thinkers who are like, you know what?
I am open to everything and it's an experimental vaccine and I'm going to eat hydroxychloroquine
and Ivermectin because that's what the institutions are telling me not to take.
And I think Fauci got too much money from that company and these are, but I'm gonna eat hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin because that's what the institutions are telling me, not to take, and I think Fauci got too much money
from that company and these are,
but I'm an open-taker and I'm,
and they, what open-taker, because-
I'm an MIT, what do you think my position of vaccines is?
Exactly.
I hear a lot of crazy things from a lot of people, okay.
You might be from MIT, but I know you from the internet, okay?
People from the internet are weird and crazy, so.
Yeah.
Well, I, who knows?
I don't like arrogance,
and I have criticized scientists during COVID, a lot of knows, I don't like arrogance and I have criticized
scientists during COVID a lot of people, but scientists included having arrogance.
Which is fair. And that's, and I think there's a lot of good criticism to be made of different
scientific and medical establishments over a lot of stuff. But nobody can make those good
criticisms because they're too like obsessed over like just trying to have the anti-establishment answer.
And that is what is upsetting the most.
I think there are good conversations to be had
about a lot of stuff related to how we handled
the coronavirus.
We're locked down as effective.
Was there enough data to support the huge measures
we took?
Why didn't we have the option to show?
I was infected a month ago.
Why do I need to be vaccinated?
Why wasn't that option ever thing in the United States show I was infected a month ago? Why do I need to be vaccinated? Why was in that option everything in the United States?
I don't think it was.
There are really good questions to be asked there.
But all the people asking the questions are also trying to tell you that Ivermectin and
monoclonal antibodies are the way to go for everything.
The vaccine is evil and it's going to turn you gay like the frog.
It's like, Jesus, there's no place to reasonably criticize from because all of the people
that are criticizing aren't doing it with an open mind or, you know,
they're not reading studies or doing anything.
They're saying like, I do my own research,
which means they listen to whatever the last guy on Joe Rogan said
and now they are parroting that opinion.
One of them is, you know, gross.
The last guy on Joe Rogan, not Joe Rogan, okay.
That Robert Lomalone guy on Joe Rogan got me real fired up.
That's one guess.
People see him as like the father of mRNA technology.
He published one paper, okay.
What do you mean, people people think that Joe Rogan fans? I get like I run into these people
I start arguing with people and they start setting me what about I'm a Joe Rogan fan and I appreciate the vaccine
That's good. I'm glad you do, but there's definitely
So but you said there's a type there's a type what's the type? What's the type of Joe Rogan fan anti establishment?
I What's the type of Joe Rogan fan anti establishment? I think that's not Joe Rogan.
That's like, that's a general public discourse.
There's a default anti establishment on the right
and the left.
That's the default easy thing to go to.
I think Joe Rogan fans are definitely a certain type
of anti establishment though.
Like I could guess the Joe Rogan fan.
Like if I were to do general population versus Joe Rogan fan,
who do you think is more likely to be anti-vaccine?
Do you have data on this?
Are you just guessing?
Just guessing?
Yeah, I think you are actually judging.
I am.
I think you're judging.
Because I think you're also the beautiful thing
about podcasting.
This could be similar streaming.
Is there's a large number of people that just listen?
Like what does it mean to be a Joe Rogan fan?
I don't think you just listen.
I think people listen and absorb the information.
I would say that the Joe Rogan fan base
is as divided in the vaccine as the general public.
Gotcha.
Man, I'm gonna look for polling data on that.
I'm sure somebody's got to have done it out there,
but you're basically revealing the fact
they have no data, you're using your own judgment.
For sure.
Based on how he's had conversations
about how
his experience with the coronavirus
and then based on the guests that have come on
that have talked and echoed a lot of like
anti-vax talking points and been completely unchallenged
and then based on statements he's made about like
myocarditis and the vaccine and everything as well, yeah.
So it's the level of challenge or not that he's doing.
Well, yeah, and then what his true positions are
and then the types of guests he typically choose
to bring on to talk about the vaccines, yeah. Okay, but that represents somehow a deep anti-establishment feeling
Versus just a vaccine. I mean, I've seen the vaccine and other things being a
Thing that broke people that seem to all the front of iris that whole two one or two years broke a lot of people
There's a lot of emotion and their motion quickly
solidified into an opinion
that almost had nothing to do with like thinking through and updating your knowledge and so on.
You just made up your mind. Yeah, but I think a lot of it comes from that anti-establishment place.
Like what the vaccine represents the ultimate of establishment. It was a huge private company
backed by a huge public government and there's Fauci and there's
Biden and there's Pfizer and there's all these countries locking us up in our
homes telling us to do a thing like the vaccine was like the ultimate like
submission tool to like show you that the government owns you not only
you have to get injected once it's a series and then you got to get boosters and
it's like they're trying to keep you under their thumb and it's that's the
control I feel like that vaccine became like the ultimate rallying cry between like do you support?
Are you a sellout that is going to believe whatever the government tells the sheep to take or are you going to be like the guy that
Stands against the crowd and gets fired from his job and pull this kids from school because they're not going to let the evil
Fauci medicine, you know jab them in the arm and the funny thing is the crowd that stands against
The institution is not larger than the crowd of sheep.
There's like one sheep standing there.
Sure, man. Yeah.
Or it feels that way sometimes.
One back.
One sheep.
Well, okay.
What's the defensive institutions?
How do you regain the trust of institutions?
Like, for first of all, do you think that there's ways in which WHO CDC failed?
And do you think there's criticism towards Pfizer and the big pharma
companies that's deserved?
Damn, there's the pharma companies. I'm not sure. For CDC and WHO, so here's a criticism
that I have of all of academia and I feel it's stronger, stronger every day. I don't think
it's enough to be a researcher or to be correct about issues, academia needs to increase its ability to communicate.
It is just an unbelievable, unmitigated failure
that academics are unwilling to wade
into the complicated topics that exist today
because other people are, you know.
First you call me spineless
and then you call me a back communicator.
But no, look, you're here, you're doing it.
So you get props for me, okay?
Good job.
That mother.
But I'm sure that you must have heard another fellow academic, a fellow colleague,
expressed some amount of frustration about, like in their specific discipline, they
know something to be true and they know that like a lot of the messaging is like wrong
or bad and the public about it, but they're never going to step out and say anything because either
one, they're very measured and careful with their tech, which they feel is incompatible
with what people want to hear or two, they're really worried that they might be incorrect.
So they're going to be cautious while everybody else is going out in like hardcore and they
also don't have the supportive institutions for them to go out and on the limb. Yeah, that
too. So like to take risk, for example, I've heard that with Lab League theory. I've had a lot of biologists, viologists friends. They're like, yeah, it's obviously leaked from a lab
Like early on. Oh, maybe okay. We can fight over this one. Sorry. Let's go. No, okay, we can fight over this
We're like they okay. I should sort of
Backstop and say like that's like you talk about shooting the shit you haven't really investigated
But it's your gut like this doesn't make any sense. There would never say that publicly.
Of course. Mostly because you're saying like what they would all say is like we want to
see data. Yeah, which would be good. Which is fine. So they're going with like, like this
is too many coincidence in the same place. That's the logic, but they don't want to say anything
because there's no data. You need to have evidence. You need to have actual evidence
to say one way or the other.
There's that, but there's also just like you said.
I mean, effective communication,
you're a fan of Sean Carroll, who's one of them.
Oh, yes.
He's like one of the only people in this whole planet
that I like besides you.
I love Sean Carroll.
I guess any time Sean Carroll's brought up as evidence,
there's a smile that comes over your face.
I love it. Of like joy. Yeah. Of's a smile that comes over your face.
I love it.
Of like joy, of like a little kid thinking about Santa Claus.
Okay, I love Sean Carroll too.
I love Sean Carroll because I hate this divide
between like you're either stem
or you're like philosophy arts and all that other stuff
and the two worlds can ever cross.
And I love that it was so good at physics,
but like explores and pays attention
to all of the like sociological stuff too.
It's so rare to find that quality in a person.
He's legit, one of the really, really, really special minds,
but you don't have to be a shanker.
You can be just a little better at educating.
Another person in the medical and the health space
is somebody named Andrew Heuberman, a friend of mine,
from Stanford, he's an incredible educator.
There's the kind of process and science
that you should call like review or survey papers
where you basically summarize all that's going on,
integrate it and like draw wisdom from it
and also project like, where is the discipline heading?
And Andrew does that basically on all these sub components
of the different stuff going on
and neuroscience and biology and your biology, all that.
And he's able to, he does a podcast called Human in Lab
where he just summarizes and is able to explain,
like, what does that actually mean for your life
in terms of protocols of how to make your life better?
I feel like people should be able to do that more and more,
but with virology and boy, that's a tricky one.
That's a really tricky one.
I wish that people could have honest conversations.
Like I attack a lot of people that do the lab leak theory stuff, but truly, we should be
able to have that conversation publicly.
It just, and always because like the people that are having the conversation don't ever
really want to have the conversation, they're not being honest.
Like, I'm a guy that does his own research and it's so boring reading studies and a lot
of it I can only do abstracts
and like I like it's so much work but I'll never ever say that about myself. I'm a guy that does
his own research because every time I hear somebody say that they don't do any research. When they say
they do their own research where they meet as they've seen one podcast and they're opinion on
this podcast is that definitely not mine because it was mine I wouldn't be criticizing anything they say.
But yeah, so like Lableek is another one where it it's like, well, how do you know it's Lableek?
How do I know it's Lableek?
Because Fauci lied and Hunter Biden laughed at,
and it's like, okay, come on,
you have an engagement with it all.
There's really interesting research
that shows us a really strong study that shows it,
there's like a high degree of certainty
that it came from the web markets.
Very, very high degree of certainty.
And there was an article that came out recently
where it's like, Senate concludes
that virus actually came from the Wuhan virology lab or whatever. In that whole article,
if you actually read it, it never says that in the article. I don't know why they tweeted
it, but that headline. But yeah, it's to back up, I'm sorry. I think we should have good,
you should be sorry. Yeah. I'm not sorry, actually. I get to ramble here. Okay. I'm here for a long
time. I recent my apology. Okay, I actually recent my apology.
We should be able to have challenging conversations
about things, but you gotta man,
be well read on both sides.
Not this like, I do man research,
so I don't believe anything that Fauci says,
like come on dude, like you can do better than that.
Not you personally, but.
Gotcha.
How does that feel?
Feels good.
So people who don't know, that's the catch phrase,
gotcha, through all tragedy and triumph, Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man.
Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. Feel like a real man. But psychologically, you are in a lot of heated debates and you're usually super calm
under fire until you're not.
Sometimes you lose your temper completely very rarely, but that's like your opinion, man.
Let me ask you about your psychology.
What are psychologically your strengths and weaknesses that you're self aware about?
I think I'm very non-judgmental, so I can entertain a lot of different thoughts without
agreeing with them or condoning them.
I think that's a really big benefit to me.
For whatever reason, I seem to be pretty calm and dealing with annoying people.
It's why I got promoted to the casino so fast I could deal with drunks or whatever.
It just didn't affect me that much.
What percent of the population is annoying?
Depends on how you're engaging with them.
Most people aren't really annoying ever.
That's what I mean.
But you're only political debate.
What percentage is annoying?
I guess it depends on who I'm debating
and what the topic is.
Well, I guess I'm trying to point out the fact
that sometimes you can say that reveals something about you
if you think a large percent of people are annoying.
Well, I would say working graveyard shift
when alcohol is involved,
that percentage of people goes very, very, very high.
So yeah.
Or to be more fair, actually, it's not a high percentage truly, but if you're a server,
one bad customer can ruin the rest of your shift.
So you only need like one or two people acting in that manner to just like totally throw
you off.
And you're able to at least these days not allow that one customer to throw you off.
Quonon Quonon.
Yeah, very much like a, I noticed especially after having a son, there's something
about like six year old kids or whatever where it's like, if they get mad, they're never
going to be mad for that long.
Like they'll move on.
Like that's my mentality.
I'm like a six year old kid.
I might be mad about something but I'll get over it like 30 minutes or an hour.
Like, yeah, I'm pretty good about not caring that through it.
It's very rare that I'll like hold a grudge against anybody or like be angry about something
or really disaffected by something over the long term.
That almost never happens to me.
What are your weaknesses psychologically?
I still have a problem with projecting.
I think we all probably do, but my mind onto others is like, if I understand this and I've
said this, you should understand it and if you're not, you're dumb.
That's an issue that I still have that where I project too much.
What about holding grudges and stuff like that?
I'd never hold grudges.
I'm like the least grudgy person ever.
It's kind of a meme on my community because anybody can always like come back.
As long as they're acting different.
What about the as long as they're acting different?
As long as they're acting.
See, I mean, all right.
The reason why I say that is because so friends is that nobody likes this,
but I have a strong stance on apologies and then I hate them.
I don't ever want to hear an apology.
I don't care about them ever
They don't mean anything to me if you did something bad as long as you've like fixed behavior
And you're not doing that thing then we're generally chill
It's like there's been a lot of people that have been involved in weird stuff with me
But then like they they go off to do the thing and they come back and it's like okay cool
So I just don't do it again like we're fine like it's all good. I'm sorry. I feel that way
It's not your fault Steven. It's not your fault, Steven. It's not your fault.
Okay, gotcha.
You've said plenty of negative stuff, positive stuff, negative stuff about Hassan.
Yeah.
This is my podcast.
I get to get you to force you to say positive things.
What do you love?
I'm all about love.
Let's go back to grilling me on the artwork stuff.
You're going to make me compliment Hassan.
This is going to be a harder conversation than that.
All right. You're... We're going to get you to feel emotions. Okay. So he's not... For people who don't
know, he's another popular political streamer. I think you had, as the kids call it, a bridge
burning over Bernie Sanders. I don't know. My research is very limited on this. But what do you respect
and love most about Hassan?
He puts in a lot of work when he was growing a stream
from 2000 convert viewers to 15,000.
He was streaming like, it was like 12 hours a day,
like every single day.
So that was Admiral, I'm gonna do a lot of work.
He does seem to be pretty good at networking
and socializing and making the correct friends
and connections to continue to build his business.
What about him as a political thinker?
I know you don't think I'll leave him on that on that regard.
Really? Do you think that's unfair?
Oh, man.
That's unfair.
I honestly want to push back on that because...
Okay.
I have zero respect from as a political thinker.
Oh, there's not going to be almost anything.
So you can...
Oh, I will say, I admire the fact that through no actual capability or ability of his own,
he manages to wind up at some of the correct answers just because he's towing the lines.
That is good job for him on that.
He's got a lot of correct opinions, just he has no idea why.
I think that's undeserved.
I think that's too harsh, man.
The reason I bring that up is I feel like there is a deep grudge in there somehow. So you're the father and now so since you're so old, the grandfather
of the political debate on stream, online stream political debate. So there could be some
grudge about that split that happened or not enough credit given all that kind of stuff.
I just think he's somebody that has a left-leaning ideology
that's different than yours.
He was a Bernie supporter, right?
And I guess you were not.
Can you explain to me where the division is?
He exemplifies everything that I absolutely hate
about politics.
Which is shallow engagement, heavily ideologically driven.
And you're not ideologically different.
Absolutely not.
For you, that's when we're talking about the free thinker in the real meaning of that word. Yeah, so the way let me let me qualify.
Issue by you thinking let me qualify what I mean when I say that. I spent a lot of time unfortunate time delving into the boring world of philosophy. I spend a lot of time thinking about like what are my ethical positions?
How do I feel about myself? The people around, and how that relates to the world around me?
And then from all of these positions, I think you might have used the phrase first principles earlier.
From these kind of like first principles, out of that is where all of my political positions are
built out of, like, full stop. So if you ask me a question, like, how do you feel about like the
right to own a firearm, or how do you feel about social health care? Like, we can walk through,
well, this is how I feel about it. It's like a thing from the government.
This is where the government gets its power.
This is ethically how groups of people are supposed to function.
This is morally how we relate to each other.
And personally, this is how I feel.
I'll be able to do every single political belief back there.
It's not like I'm telling you,
if I were to ask Hassan, what do you feel about this political topic?
He's going to tell me what progressives are supposed to say.
I don't know what he thinks about it.
Don't you think that's a cynical take? Why is he
just because his views coincide with the mainstream narrative, mainstream viewpoints
of progressive thinkers? I mean, why does that mean he's not thinking?
Because this engagement with every subject is incredibly shallow, 100% predictable. Like,
I could write like a, I could probably program a script to like give you every single potential answer you could have to any single question you could
give them.
I again, I think that's pretty cynical take.
Okay.
It could be the case that his brain perfectly aligns with every single man.
No, but I don't know if you know it is perfectly aligns because I think you're just taking
a very select just like streamers do of each other, a very select slice that represents
the perfect alignment.
That's supposed to looking at a person
struggling with ideas and thinking through ideas, and then giving them a pass, like a
lot of people, like I give you a pass on just the fact that you say a lot of crazy shit
on stream for drama, which is one of the things for drama.
There might be dramatic, but I mean, you've evolved as a fish evolves legs.
You've evolved a mechanism, but which creates controversy?
Sure.
You could say it's not intention, but it happens.
I think the extremist kind of learned that kind of thing.
And so I'm sure Hassan does the same kind of stuff.
And so like underneath it, there's still thinking being that's that's
contending with political ideas.
I think so. There's a really good job at hiding it. underneath it, there's still thinking being this, that's contending with political ideas.
You don't think so.
There's a really good job at hiding it.
There are other political figures that I really don't like
that I wouldn't say the same thing about.
So I don't know if you have Voshrit in there.
I'm like, okay, that's the person that,
Vosh, he also split out of my community and grew to something.
And now he hates me and he's an anti-fant community and they all hate me.
Okay, tell me something you love above.
I can tell you a lot of things about Vosh.
I think Vosch legitimately thinks
through a lot of his political positions.
I admire or did admire that he has like his own
like position, see do we take someone's country
to people further left than him.
He's got some positions that don't fit his ideology
kind of at all, like he's his own independent thinker.
Rhetorically, he's very effective.
He was willing to sit down and do research
for like his debates and everything.
He would spend a lot of time practicing
like his rhetorical effectiveness and navigate in conversations. He intentionally
purposefully built like a community that exemplified his values. I've got a lot, I don't, we
are completely split and hate each other now, but like I have a lot of...
Why, why, why, first of all, hate is a strong, why, why the hate?
Okay, I don't hate him, but he hates me because we had a couple of really big debates.
What happened? Well, one had to do with whether or not you should live your values.
And can you give me the story that's a charitable interpretation?
I always give charitable interpretations. You don't.
I absolutely do. You don't.
Wait, name one time to happen.
Five minutes ago, you talking about his son.
Everything I said about his son is true. There is no steel man there.
That's not charitable.
That's, I'm sorry. If you can prove me wrong, I would love you no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, there's emotions deep in there. So the gotcha is hiding, the gotcha is a surface of an iceberg
and there's a deep ocean underneath
that you yourself have not explored.
I disagree, but I understand why.
And lab is actually a doorway.
The young lab is a doorway for you to explore the depths of here.
Get into that ocean to find my fish, my preval form.
Yeah.
I understand why you think the way you do, and you should.
You shouldn't believe me, and I understand that,
because if somebody told me the same thing, I think you probably just really don't like this person for a reason or two.
I understand what you think the way, okay.
The reality is, though, for any political person that I disagree with,
like, I can give them a fair shake.
It's one of the few things I think I do exceedingly well on my stream.
Even with his son, there's been drama that he's been involved in,
and I've like, when I'm involved in drama,
he'll always throw me out of the bus.
But when he's involved in stuff,
I'll always say, oh, like I think his son was right here,
or I think that he met this.
There was a thing that came up once we're on,
live stream failed, he was getting roasted
because he referred to somebody,
he used expression to shit skin.
To refer to somebody's like the way they looked.
And I have only ever heard that in the context
of 4chan people talking about like Indians
or like black people, like it's a racial thing.
But I could tell the context and everything that he was saying,
he was insulting some guy, I think it was kind of like
insult virgin ever, he was going for like acne skin.
I think that's what he meant when he said it.
And there were a whole bunch of people that were insulting
and was like, oh my god, did he just say racist term?
And I was like, no, I don't think he was racist.
I think he was like, he was just reaching for words
and that's what came out.
So like that's an example of me being sure.
But okay.
But didn't you criticize them for something?
I was trying to like Google do I the whole you guys split out?
Because I thought your friends should be like,
it's not a common Harris video, but go ahead.
What were you?
Is that why is that the?
So I feel like you criticized them over something.
And I'm okay.
This is very vague memory. But you criticized them over something. And I'm, okay, this is very vague memory,
but you criticized them over something,
and I felt that criticism wasn't charitable.
Was it Pete Buttigieg's stuff?
Yeah, Pete Buttigieg's, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
So I've said this a million times,
but no amount of context,
or no amount of nuances is ever acceptable to people.
I don't think his sound is homophobic,
but I think the comments made about Pete,
booty judge were really homophobic.
That's what he said, yeah.
Yeah.
And there were a lot of people making a lot of comments
that made me really uncomfortable about Pete,
booty judge, that was insane to me.
Spurred by the comments of Hassan?
No, but it was an environment of progressives,
all the progressives were attacking Pete.
And I felt like his gainess became like the subject.
Yeah, but why why throw Hassan under the bus?
Because he was jumping along with all of those types of like insults.
You don't think you've done the same kind of stuff?
If I do call me out, I don't know.
I was actually in a rush.
That's what the R word was about.
That's a good call out.
No, but like your friend, like you should privately tell them, right?
Like, hey, well, no, by then we were sworn enemies.
So that wasn't the reason.
No, no, no, it was over a cum laude Harris being.
Sworn enemies.
He hates me.
What am I supposed to say?
I listen, for all of these people,
I will accept them back into my life
if they ever want to come back in it,
any point in time.
But usually they're the ones that I like.
If they correct themselves, right?
No, I'm not expecting anybody to do it.
So here's the deal with Vash and Asan.
These are like the three guys online.
None of us will talk to each other. Asan, because he won't give clout to anybody and Vash because he thinks I'm bad faith. And then
neither then we'll talk to me because they both hate me. You guys should go like on a camping trip
together. It's like broke back mod and but three way and just like rejoin, refine, refine the
relationship for each other. Honestly, just from the internet perspective for me as a just stepping into this world
There's some aspect to which you have a responsibility. I hate that word. You have an opportunity I wish you guys would kind of be the beacon of like
forgiveness and friendship and like camaraderie and that
I agree and even if we disagree it would be really good content for us to art shit talk like friends shit talk
And even if we disagree, it would be really good content for us to art shit talk like friends shit talk
Versus not like the fact that you guys don't talk to each other
Like I would love for you to shit talk publicly Mm-hmm. It would the camaraderie always there like there's love in the in the beginning love in the end
But you beat the shit out of each other in the middle and that's what last dream means for the political discourse
So that's that's great political discourse. Yeah versus, I think what underlines some jealousy and so on,
where you get this many fault.
I just wanna make sure you're clear to your audience.
Everybody has, to your audience,
I'm sure you have flaws and I'm just not,
I mean, in this dynamic.
It's hard to find, you know,
because I'm, your only flaws, your two modest.
Yeah, so what, why did you guys put up?
Because I, I would love it honestly, just let me just put that idea out there for you guys to make up and so
yeah, it's out there of course. Everybody talks me, Vashana, it's crazy. Like the three
largest like political debate, left-leaning people online, like can't do any type of content
or collaboration at all. It's so stupid. What was the reason you guys split up the Kamala Harris? So Hassan's entry into kind of like the Twitch political debate world was in, I think 2018,
I think he did a debate with Charlie Kirk and he reached out to me to kind of like review that
debate to like go on to go over it on stream and he came on, we went over it and then we kind of
friendship developed. We hung out in real life. I think when I came to LA, I think I slept on a
couch, we played with his dog, we were like kind of friends. And as time went on, and then he was a
little bit more, he was farther left than he let on. So like, I was a social Democrat, he was a
social Democrat, but back in those days, like 2018, when people say they were a social Democrat,
they really met socialists, but they just didn't want to say it. So he was farther left than me,
and we had a lot of deep divides in our approach
to politics, whereas I was very much like a first principles.
This is my whole political position,
and he was very much kind of like a,
this is like the political ideology I'm involved in,
and this is kind of like the field
that I kind of like navigate in.
So there were a couple instances
where these divides would be laid very bare.
One was when, it was either him or the young Turks,
I think it was him.
There was a shooting in a neighborhood
where very young black child gets killed by a white shooter.
And they did a video about like hate crimes
and how hate crimes are on the rise between races
and white people are evil and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Not that, but like white people,
it came in hate crimes against black people.
And I remember saying, Jim, I was like,
hey, we don't have all the data yet for this.
It feels really bad to make videos about this beforehand
because it's the same type of shit
that happens at airports, you know?
Is there a thing going on?
Was it a brown person?
Are they Muslim?
It's Islamic extremism.
We see this played out so many times.
In recent history,
probably not a good idea to jump to conclusions.
And he's like, well, no, you don't understand.
Like, it's not that big a deal, whatever.
And obviously, as the story goes, Taylor's old is time, the
data comes out, it was just an errant shot. There was like gang violence, shot goes out
of nowhere, hits a kid in the car. It wasn't like a hey, crime that I was trying to kill
a kid. But yeah, we basically, we, we bump up against a few kind of political disagreements
like this. And annoying thing is happening in my community where Hassan is like the
series political figure because he's from the young Turks. And I'm just kind of like,
I do politics, but I also game. And anytime I criticize Hassan, like the series political figure because he's from the young Turks. And I'm just kind of like, I do politics,
but I also game.
And anytime I criticize Hassan, people like Destiny,
you need to be more respectful.
He does this full time.
If you're gonna bring criticisms,
you need to be like really well read and researched
because he's got a more serious, whatever.
Which I thought was ridiculous.
So by the way, if people don't know,
he worked at the young Turks,
which is like the largest left-leaning YouTube channel
probably, right?
At least at the time, yeah.
So finally, he did a video on,
Skip ahead to some more minor discriments.
He does a video on Kamala Harris,
because it's a Kamala Harris.
And it's like seven or eight horrible things
about Kamala Harris.
And I'm like, okay,
I know at least one or two of these things
are not fully accurate.
So I'm gonna do all the research.
I'm gonna have all the sources
and we're gonna have a long conversation about it
so that now when I provide criticism to him,
it's not gonna be like this horrible, like just me saying something
flippantly or whatever, it's gonna be like substantial criticism.
So I was on a plane ride, JFK to Orlando, whatever flying to Sweden, it was my wife.
And on the plane, I review all of the video, all the data, do all the research and I write
everything, I'm just like, okay, I get to my wife's dad's house, and I'm at the table, we're having a conversation like, hey, we should
talk about the Kamala Harris stuff.
And he's like, okay, well, let's do it.
And we go over it, and I'll leave to the audience to watch the video.
Enough people to say this, I feel pretty confident in this.
I was pretty reasonable, pretty measured, pretty calm the whole time, and I think he started
to get increasingly irritated that I was levying like more,
more serious criticisms at like the quality of work that he did. Probably because he felt
a little bit intimidated, I think, by my willingness to like dive through political stuff.
There'd been a couple of awkward blobs where like on, there was like a show called The Raj Royale
where sometimes politics would come up and a son would kind of try to explain something,
and there was another person one time
of the show that made the joke.
It was like, instead of a son taking 10 minutes
to explain this, can destiny just come here
and explain it in 30 seconds?
And he like exploded and he got so fucking mad at that.
So yeah, I think that when I made that kind of call out
or critique of him over the Kamala Harris stuff,
he's probably feeling like increasingly irritated,
threatened, agitated, and then that's kind of
what began the huge split from our-
So you don't think you were a dick at all?
I don't think so in that conversation,
especially given that like, at that point,
because this is still 2018 or 20,
this might be 2019, I'm still known at that point
as being very aggressive towards conservatives
or all right, it's a good question.
Yeah, so, and with lefties, is what I call them,
I think I'm being like very gentle.
Like my conversation started with conservatives like,
you're a fucking idiot, you're so dumb.
Like that's how I'm like doing it.
So I'll go with him.
I'm like, well, don't you think that like this is like
a little bit of like an inconsistent presentation
about like a feeling of being nice,
but I always leave to the audience.
They can go and watch that Kamala video,
Kamala Harris video, Destiny of Son,
if they think that I was being a date.
But a lot of people watching said
I was being pretty gentle.
Well, let me say, as a new fan of this space,
I hope you guys make up and I hope you guys fight it out
in the space of discourse and ideas.
Me too.
And also with the empathy, understanding
what the strength of the other person is,
what their buttons are, and there's like,
an unspoken rule that you don't press the buttons
that you need to.
Unless you're doing it mutually and it's fun,
because you know, you get to find the pieces
that you're off so.
Yeah, that's kind of like what friends do.
You don't cross a certain line,
but then other than that, you fight it out.
Okay, let's step back.
One other super interesting aspect of your world view
is your big supporter of Biden.
Can you explain what you love about Biden?
Do you love Biden more than Sean Carroll or less? Sean Carroll is just like in another world
of God's admiration. I feel like I'm culturally appropriating you by saying
God you know, but it's so convenient. It's an easy word. You're just I know I
were on the same wavelength, okay? We're synchronizing. That's good. I mean, it
is really interesting because even the people that support Biden usually don't say they love sort of they don't support it strongly, you know. Ideologically,
philosophically, the reason why I like Biden is because he's really committed to this bringing
the left and right together, which is something we so desperately need in the country. And his,
you know, statements over and over again of like, I'm not the Democrat president or the Republican
president, I'm the president of the United States.
His desire to bring Republicans together to work on things like the infrastructure bill,
that's so incredibly needed.
And I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for him for trying to push through on that
message.
Do you think then it's unfortunate that he made that comment about Maga?
Maga Republicans?
Yeah.
I mean, I figured what the comment was, but it's Maga Republicans are not good people kind of.
There, I watched the full video and he's right.
There is this toxic aspect and it's hard to call out
because they're always gonna spend like,
oh, he hits our Republicans, he's not.
If you watch the quote, he's very specifically calling out
like this group of people that think
that the election was fraudulent.
Is it clear?
It is what he meant by.
We can bring it up.
All right, this is so.
Oh, oh.
But I remember watching in our stream,
it was like if you said it, yeah, that's bad.
You could probably like YouTube,
Magger Republicans, Biden.
But like it feels like it's pretty clear
he's talking about the people that are like election denying.
Too much of what's happening in our country today
is not normal.
Donald Trump and the Magger-Republicans represent an
extremism that threatens the
very foundations of our
republic. Now I want to be very
clear. Let's another spot.
Very clear up front. Not every
republican, not even the majority
republicans are Magi-Republicans.
Not every Republican embraces
their extreme ideology.
I know because I've been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there's no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated
by Donald Trump and the migrant Republicans.
And that is a threat to this country.
I disagree with that, man.
He didn't clearly say,
extremist ideology, he didn't say
the people that dialed the validity of the election.
I mean, that's Donald Trump.
No, but there's,
that's all the candidates that Donald Trump is supporting.
How many, what is it like,
40, 50, how many candidates right now
that are mega candidates are election candidates?
No, but there's 80 million
or whatever people voted for Donald Trump.
You could say that's the mega Republicans.
So to me, it sounded like he was referring to
not even the majority.
I mean, that's one nice, helpful, clarifying statement.
But it's basically, there's the mainstream Republicans
and then there's those that voted for Donald Trump. That's the way I heard it.
Okay. And so maybe should have done a better job at clarifying, but yeah, I feel like there's like a clear, there is with that line is not a person who's bringing
people together.
I feel like the extending a hand to the, like, most, I've worked with Republicans in Congress,
not even a majority of Republicans are like this.
No, but why say not the majority of Republicans are like this, say, like, we're like one country,
we believe the same thing.
So like, focus on the uniting part versus saying,
and he does before and after, that was 50 seconds, okay?
But that you never, the point is you never say something like that.
Listen, like that, you've spoken about the Bosnia speech,
which is your favorite of his,
I went back to it and listened to it.
Before I move to that, just on this,
it's really hard for him to call out that group of like,
election and I as I think without it always feeling like,
what would I call them out?
Because it's arguably one of the most destructive forces
that exists in this country today.
Did it destroy anything?
They were trying to.
Did it though?
It didn't, did it.
So does that mean we don't call it out?
We wait till next time?
Now because calling it out is giving fuel to the division.
Like the people that doubted the validity of the election,
that's anger, that's frustration with the other side,
you heal that as opposed to saying,
all those people that believed that at any time are idiots.
They're un-American.
I mean, they don't think the election was real.
I don't know if Biden has the ears of these people at all.
I don't know what he can do for...
There's people that believe the same thing in 2016 with the Russian hacking, right?
There's this...
Hold on.
Yes.
That is a super-not-fair comparison.
There were definitely the mainstream Democrat opinion was that Russian intrusion in terms
of social media and stuff happened, but there was never a claim that like the election was stolen.
No main, or at least I don't know of any mainstream Democrat that supported that.
Donald Trump is not just saying there was interference about what Donald Trump is literally
saying the election was literally stolen.
That vote boxes were ballot boxes were hidden that vote tallies were manipulated that I
think the claim is there's a huge gulf of difference in the two.
So you can attack Donald Trump for that. Yeah.
I believe it's not the words of the United to attack people that believe that.
You could argue maybe it's okay, but especially not being super clear about that,
about who you're referring to when you say MAGA Republicans. Because MAGA is a hat
to we say, Maga Republicans. Okay.
Because Maga is a hat and a slogan that refers to whatever the number is, 70 million
people whoever, the vote for Donald Trump.
Like, all the Republicans that consider themselves Maga Republicans, what percentage of them do
you think believe the election is stolen?
I feel like that number is, I don't know, the public, I feel like that number is like probably
more than 70%.
What's the Maga Republican?
Maybe I'm not familiar.
Like a Trump supporting Republican,
a Maga Republican, they're there for Trump.
What's the difference between somebody
that voted for Trump and a-
Maga Republican?
And a Maga Republican.
So my mom is a Maga Republican.
If Trump ran independently and DeSantis ran
under the Republican ticket,
my mom would vote for Trump.
She'll follow him to the end of the Earth.
That's like a mega Republican.
I think it's easy to mistake that distinction in these kinds of political speeches.
It's to me anybody who voted for Trump can easily in the context of the speech be
interpreted as the mega Republican.
Gotcha.
I understand what you're saying. Maybe you could have been more clear,
but like I think in listening to that, like I think it's pretty obvious who he's talking about.
But I guess if you have an emotional response to it, I can understand the emotional response.
But there's a lot of good. I don't have an emotional response. I just don't like, I think I'm with
what is it? Michelle Obama, they go low, we go high, meaning like to me, a uniter doesn't participate in derision.
Sure.
Uniter might not, but a leader has to be able to accurately assess the situation before
him and make people aware of what's going on.
You mean all the impeachment trials, all the censoring from social media, all of that
didn't do the job?
That's not his job.
I don't know about censoring any of that.
No, but that mechanism, his job is to inspire a nation to unite a nation.
How can you do that when half the people don't believe that he was even legitimately elected?
Like I think he's done a good job at working on legislation and doing stuff that hopefully
benefits all Americans, but I think it's important to recognize it like there is a contingent
of Americans that don't even believe that like this is very crazy.
There are plenty of people that recognize that and are fighting that and are constantly
screaming that from the rooftops. His job is to be the inspiring figure that makes the majority of America's be proud,
for him to be a president of the nation they love.
And that's what the United aspect is.
It's you remind people that we are one and we love this country, we love the ideas that
it represents.
It does that in other parts of that speech, like a 20-minute speech, isn't it?
But that's a fuck-up. You just don't participate in that division. Anyway, I understand. I
understand, I just wanted to push back on the saying one of the strength is that he's, he's
uniting, but yes, that, that is an ideal, that is a goal is a great one.
And he is one that espoused that goal for a long time.
Do you think, what else?
So from policy perspective and so on.
I thought the way he's handled your Korean and everything
thus far has been almost perfect.
I think he did a really good job
at the political maneuvering
and bringing other countries into the fold
at establishing clearly like what our mission was
in relation to your Korean.
I thought he did a good job there. I admire him for pulling out of Afghanistan.
Even it was a little bit rough around the edges. Like we got out and we're gone. No, I'm
going to last her last. The domestic policies passed more major legislation than I think
anybody thought possible. The Green Energy stuff with the last bill, the infrastructure
bill. A lot of the coronavirus relief, I thought was really good, especially the expansion of the child tax credit. So from a policy perspective
for an end domestic, I think he's been successful. Rautorically, I think he's generally been
above board in terms of not attacking people, being too divisive. He's trying to bring
people together and work on them.
What do you think about the sort of popular and the media criticism of his mental decline?
Do you think he's experiencing much of that?
You know, he's a guy.
But do you think, I mean, do you?
Yeah, maybe a little bit,
but he's still doing a good job, so, you know.
Not from a speech perspective, you mean,
from a policy perspective?
Yeah, I'm analyzing it as a job.
Yeah, from speech perspective,
maybe not the greatest, but, yeah, I mean,
he's definitely, what is he like, 80, 81?
How old is he?
I lose track after so many years.
Yeah.
But you did say that he's probably going to run in 2024
and he's probably going to win.
Did I say that?
That he's probably going to win?
No way did I say that somewhere.
He's probably going to run.
Who knows who will win?
But I think I feel like the incumbent advantage is so strong.
You're really going to throw that away.
It makes me like one or two times in history in the US,
right, where the non incumbent, the party
has put somebody else up. Yeah. I mean, the US, right? Where like the non-incombat, the party's put somebody else up.
Yeah. I mean, the concerns like the, just the age and the, the, the, the mental decline, just the, the wear and tear of the campaign, all of that kind of stuff, all of the
speech you have to make the debates and all that kind of stuff.
I guess you would have an answer.
What? The least excited, I mean, two years when I was a long time and his current mental state, he could run and
do it.
He could do a pass.
I mean, two years.
Man, I don't know.
I've seen a video of Bill Clinton recently.
He's looking pretty rough.
You know, if Biden is looking a lot more rough, worse for wearing two years, then maybe
they actually do have to dig out another person for René Aionas.
What do you think about Trump when he won in 2016? I think is when you came to fruition politically speaking.
So what do you think has won you the 2016 election represents?
So for me, Trump, the, the reason why I got into politics was Trump was like this new
Epistemic force in American politics that like you kind of have to like flirt with facts before even if you wanted to be non-factual
He super didn't care. Lying was like a first language to him just like in speaking in terms of like
The way that he used language to just say to you what he felt like you needed to hear
to support him and not care at all about what is going on
about yeah, that's what Trump represented to me
in terms of like things that I cared about.
He also represents a lot more obviously that
there was this undercurrent of American opinion
that a lot of people didn't know still existed
and it did, he got elected, that the over 10 window
was misidentified by even a large amount of the Republican party that populism was a lot more popular than a lot
of people figured, you know. Yeah, there's a lot that I guess he represented.
Do you think Trump should have been banned from Twitter? Can you make the case foreign against
it? So you're a big supporter of Feast Beach? Yeah. So the case in favor of it. Do you think
he should be brought back as Elon?
Yeah, because if he gets brought back,
it's a higher chance that I'll be brought back.
So I'm supporting that all the way.
Thank you, Elon, on band my account.
So because you called me weak spine,
I'm gonna have to message Elon.
Okay, at Omni Destiny, it was a verified Twitter account.
Omni Destiny.
No, no, I'm just kidding.
Why'd you get banned from Twitter Destiny?
I don't know.
I'll add that to Elon.
I saw that there was a screenshot of you
referring to the rape of somebody.
Okay, that was on an older Twitter account
and that was a bad tweet.
You have multiple Twitter accounts
so you're trying to go around the bands
that you keep getting.
Okay, hold on.
You're slandering me a lot right now.
Let's get the facts straight.
I don't even remember why my first time I got banned,
but it was a wild account.
I tweeted some wildly inappropriate things.
You were great.
I don't like that word.
I'm gonna give the answer to most people together.
It's like, I don't regret it because I learned a lot.
So I'm glad I had the bad experiences that I did.
Why don't you like the word for good?
I think if we look at where we are,
how do you feel about determinism?
I believe in hard, you feel about determinism?
I believe in hard, the hardest of determinism. That's who I am. Okay. So who I am today is the culmination of everything that's occurred in the past. I believe you speaking of, sorry,
to the truck, I believe in you speaking about regret is a nice way to communicate that in this
deterministic world, you've analyzed
the acts of the past and you're no longer that person.
Yeah, of course, for sure.
That's what regret usually means.
Okay.
Thanks for giving me the human explanation.
Okay, true.
So in that sense, there's a lot of things I've done that I regret.
Oh, what are you?
You're not human.
You're a bot.
NPC is my preferred.
Okay.
All right.
Those are the four of us.
I wish I would have been smart enough at the time to not have to have had made those
mistakes.
Okay, there you go.
Good job.
But yeah, obviously really dumb, really crazy off the wall tweets.
But that account got banned, but then I made another account called, I can't believe I'm
giving you a history-made Twitter account.
So I made another account called Omni Destiny.
It's an honor.
And that was my, I got verified.
I was cool.
They let me have that account because originally they banned it and said appeal. And I was like, Oh, let me
have one more. And the back then Twitter was cool. And they're like, Okay, go for it.
And that account lasts for a long time. And I don't actually know 100% why that account
got banned. I believe that the tweet that showed up in the final, I got banned for hate
speech. And it was because I was, there was a picture that I tweeted with three different alt-writers
That are kind of like neo-Nazi people and they were all like mixed-race people and I said like the new alt-wright
Looks like a Disney Channel original movie in terms of racial composition and somehow they got flagged for
instigating violence against minorities, I think and I think that's a tweet that got me banned because I think that's what showed up in the
Fun or report, but I don't know, there may be other reasons
because nobody ever communicates.
But ever since that account went under,
it's just been banvading ever since.
Oh, ban evading ever since.
So all my new accounts are gonna ban just get banned
because they finally figured it's me and then they banvade.
There's like one dude at Twitter HQ
who's like constantly looking for my new accounts
and they get me.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah.
So post Trump world.
Um, what was do you think? Okay. I mean this should he be banned? Oh, you asked me to make both cases.
Um, should he be banned? I mean, damn dude, when you're tweeting out shit that's arguably leading stuff like
January 6th, I can understand why? Because it's like, what else is this while do you go to tweet out?
Like, is you're going to start instigating other violent events? So I'm sympathetic towards the like,
okay, okay,
well, he can't just be here saying stuff like this.
That's insane, we're gonna ban him.
I'm sympathizing.
Because it's instigating,
yeah, you're instigating.
It's a cool violence in the physical world.
Yeah, like if I were to tweet stuff like that,
I would get banned probably.
On the flip side, this is the president of the United States.
It seems like he's like doing presidential decree
by social media sometimes.
Like is it really right that one public or private, I should say?
One private company can like erase the president of the United States words from the eyes of
a lot of Americans that are using these social media feeds.
And one big one, which I for sure am against, is the permanent ban.
Yeah, I don't like that.
I hate that.
Even in my community, if somebody comes back over like a year, like, I mean,
did you just compare yourself to the president of the United
States?
No, I can't remember myself to Twitter ban
in the president of the United States.
Let me put it this way.
If I ban Donald Trump in my chat room,
I don't ban him in a year.
A year?
Yeah.
What's the process for banning Donald Trump?
What would he have to do?
Usually people send me an email and they're like,
listen, I did this stuff, I'm sorry, I was dumb,
I'll give him another chance.
But a year, what if they send an email a month later?
Usually I'll add better.
That's the age of my pile.
I ban pretty quickly in my community,
but if you ever ask me to come back.
You're a bit softy.
Yeah, usually I'm back.
I'm very, well because I used to be
the worst type of internet person.
And I think I'm a little bit better than I used to be.
So.
Not that you're older.
Yeah, not that I'm matured.
Yeah, of course.
Age bestows a wisdom that just can't be
gotten any other way.
What's your sense in general?
Is there something interesting you could say about your view on free speech?
It seems like one of those terms it's also overused to mean a lot of different things.
What does it mean to you?
If you have a democratic style of governance,
you are entrusting people with one of the most awesome and radical of responsibilities.
And that's saying that you're going to pick the people that are going to make some of
the hardest decisions in all of human history.
If you're going to trust people to vote correctly, you have to be able to trust them to have
open and un-stylized with each other.
Whether that's Nazis or KKK people or whoever talking, you have to believe that your people
are going to be able to rise above and make the correct determinations when they hear
these types of speeches. And if you're so worried that somebody's going to be able to rise above and make the correct determinations when they hear these types of speeches.
And if you're so worried that somebody's gonna hear
a certain political figure
and they're gonna be completely radicalized instantly,
then what that tells me is that you don't have enough
faith in humans for democracy to be a viable institution,
which is fine, you can be anti-democratic,
but I don't think you can be pro-democracy
and anti-free speech within reason.
So what's within reason?
So, I mean, you can't post like,
child porn or something on Twitter,
people try to get you on that stuff,
or like direct calls to violence or probably not.
You shouldn't be tweeting out like,
we're gonna meet up tomorrow and go,
bomb, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So do you think it's okay to allow racism and anti-semitism
and hate speech?
Hate speech, yes, because that's,
can be very broadly defined.
I can understand there being some basic rules
of no slurs on a platform that gets into acceptable forms
of moderation or excess of harassment and bullying
I can understand.
But past that, when the moderation becomes ideological,
I get a little bit nervous because there's a whole other
hostages.
Yeah, of course it's all a gray area, but but it feels like ideology is seeped into the censorship.
Not good.
Yeah, which it's so fascinating to think, especially now that Elon bought Twitter, how do you engineer
a system that prevents ideology from seeping in?
And nevertheless, is able to create a platform that has healthy conversations.
Because if you have one guy who's just screaming nonsense,
nonstop, it has this effect where the quiet voices
at the back of the room are silenced.
Yeah.
So that's what you usually don't talk about.
Like if you let one annoying loud person in,
that's actually censoring the voice of a lot of people
that would like to speak, but they don't get a chance.
That's one of the things, especially around like trans discourse, I have to constantly
do that, like reminder for my audiences, so like when I'm dealing with these types of
people on the internet, a lot of them might seem really crazy, a lot of these types of people
might seem insane, but like in the real world, outside of like the crazy Twitter actress
world, like the vast majority of people you're meeting from LGBT communities are like the
coolest, normals people, all they want is to like write to live their life in the way
they want to and to be like unobstructed and like yeah. But people will get this
impression of like an online activist like a vegan or LGBT person or
whatever. And then they think that every single person in real life is like
that. And it's a really negative stereotype. And then even the other people in
that group. Oh, is Melina coming over? Oh, yeah, I don't know. That's her.
Okay, Melina just joined
us. What were we talking about? Was it interesting? You were saying that you were going to talk to Elon
about getting at Omni Destiny, the verified Twitter account on Bandai. So that's so. It sounds like
a lot. That's so gracious of you. I can't even believe you would do that for me. And then you admitted
that you tried to evade the band multiple times, which I'm sure would be very looked upon. You know,
I heard that in Norway,
in their prison system,
they don't actually punish you for trying to escape jail,
because that's like the natural human thing to do.
How do you, what are they?
I don't know, but they don't punish you,
because of course you're trying to be free.
That's all I'm trying to be on Twitter,
I'm just trying to be free.
Well, that's the natural humanistic group.
Yeah, that's the natural human,
of course, it's the ban you've been.
You're not a destructive force, you're just,
I'm a positive, I'm a force for good.
That's all my accounts only get banned for banning banning.
I don't get banned for doing bad things. And I'm progressive show. I'm like far. I'm a force for good. That's my all my accounts only get banned for banning banning. I don't get banned for doing bad things. And I'm progressive
show. I'm like far left. I love like progressive glasses. This is what you criticize us
on for being. I show them from a place of first principles, not from a mindless AI echoing
kind of thing, you know. Okay. So you're free thinking bot. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Cool.
Well, I'm sure we'll return to some politics. That was beautiful. Can you tell us about yourself?
You also follow Streamer.
Yes, I stream when I start streaming
because I met him basically, kind of,
but I don't do the politics.
I do like travels, we're talking about relationships,
talk to my audience basically.
And you're from that part of the world, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So did you escape from prison and they didn't?
That was Norway.
It was Norway.
It was different.
It's a different way.
I've been to Sweden a bunch of times.
I love it.
There's a tech sector there that's really flourishing.
Where did you go?
What's the city?
I went to Stockholm.
I think I gave you lectures there.
There's a vibrant tech sector in our school.
And people are super nice.
Yeah. We're friendly.
We're not like very deep.
Like we're not really how much deep conversation is like a meta.
Oh, there's not many intellectuals that come from Sweden.
We don't really speak very highly ourselves.
We're kind of like just chill all the time.
We don't make a scene.
We're just like, you know.
Do you know what the name for that is?
There's a specific name for it.
It's a...
Yeah, the login.
Yeah, the login.
Oh, there's a philosophy behind it.
When you're part of like Sweden or Norway, you like, you don't talk too highly of yourself
because it's seen as kind of like rude.
Like think of like America, it's the exact opposite.
You don't even really want to like, you don't want to make yourself into a victim too much.
You don't want to be too much of anything.
You're just like stick into the to the group to make big scene about yourself.
But that said, you came here and you were you put yourself in front of
a camera and you became a streamer. Yes, you understand how weird that is for my friends in Sweden.
I just didn't talk about myself and just like make a big deal about myself for hours every day.
Was that like terrifying? Did you have anxiety about that? No, because I don't see them, but then I
come back and I'm like, ooh. Also, what do you feel like when you're actually streaming, you feel like
you're just alone in a room,
one on one type?
No, I see, I see Chad, I'm thinking,
oh, they're like little fairies,
they're not really real, they're just like out there.
I don't know what they look like.
I just see little names, and they're just cute.
You're just colors, you know?
You're talking to little fairies inside your house.
I do.
Is that how you feel about Chad?
They're demons for me, but.
They're demons, okay, my aunt of fairies.
Are they, so is Chad a source of stress or happiness happiness? Like is there a company? No, for me,
that's a source of happiness. I've been very intentional with like the
construction of my community. So I'm really happy with where it's at. How are
you able to actually have deep political discourse while playing a video game
at the same time? I have a really good chat room in terms of like the way that
people engage in conversations. Like I was one of the earliest people to embrace
the philosophy of,
I am in total control of what people watch me think,
that I have a high level of responsibility for how they conduct themselves,
and that if I conduct myself in a certain way,
I can expect a certain level of conduct from them.
And for the most part, it's worked pretty well for the past 9 or 10 years.
What about the actual playing of the game?
You're able to parallelize the brain.
Oh, it seems like,
like, factory seems like a super complex game.
Yeah, I don't actually think that's possible.
I don't think multitasking for human brain is possible.
If you see me playing a game,
usually what's happening is the conversation
is like, I've had it a million times,
so I'm not thinking about it, I've automated that.
Or if the conversation is very challenging,
then if you watch me,
if you really watch what's happening again,
I'm probably just running around in circles
because I have to think about the conversation.
Okay.
Because with factory, it looks like a lot of stuff is going on.
Sometimes, yeah.
So I get it's hard for a person who hasn't played the game to detect that you're not actually
talking about.
That can be a super intelligent and multitask, or does it come up as like, he's not interested
in this conversation at all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a coolness to it.
Like when you're not paying attention, like, if you're looking elsewhere, like you're checking your phone, you're too cool for this conversation. There's a coolness to it like when you're not paying attention like If you're looking elsewhere like you're checking your phone you're too cool for this conversation
There's a sense like that. Yeah, the reality is those if you watch it was easier to see in Minecraft
Because in Minecraft when there was a challenging conversation if you watch me play I'm literally just running around and jumping in circles
Because I have to think about the conversation 100%
I can't do a complicated task and think about the conversation or like that people will always joke in my chat like oh no
The no pad came out.
If it's a really challenging conversation,
I'll get rid of the game and I'll bring on a no pad
and I'll start writing stuff down
to keep track of what's going on.
Yeah.
So what kind of stuff do you stream?
So advice, you talk about it.
Yeah, like either I talk to chatter,
I travel around basically,
like, to have a conversation, so we like,
go to countries, I've been to Italy,
I was in Italy for like one and a half months just like
traveling around the loan going to cities like having like my camera with me and like streaming
for hours. Where's the where's the coolest place you've been to? Ever it's probably New Zealand. New
Zealand. I think so. Yeah. After it is probably going to be Italy I think. I think it's a
like history and also both history because New Zealand is also beautiful. It is.
It was both natural beauty and historical beauty.
Yeah, for sure.
I think it's just really like the like the pollination sort of culture.
I think it's very interesting.
Like the ocean people and it's just really beautiful.
People are very relaxed chill.
They're very far away, which is interesting as well because whenever they talk about politics
or they talk about, it's like the world,
it feels really far away.
So where's home for you?
Is Austin home?
Did you?
Home for me.
So a human being is home?
Yeah.
We've lived in a lot of places and traveled around.
So that's what you think of home as a human being.
I think so.
Yeah.
I mean, if they're going to be a place,
it's probably going to be like my childhood places probably
Yeah, like my old country house or something like that. We don't have it anymore
But like that's that's like home for me. I guess. So how'd you guys meet each other?
You're currently married. Yes
To each other. Yeah
to each other
Just make sure I'm
Alright cool. How'd you guys meet? I was watching his YouTube stuff, like, 2018, I think,
because it was the speech election around that time,
and I was interested in politics.
And then, I think he said in one of his videos
that he had an Instagram, and that he needed people
to stop DMing him.
That wasn't Qtipice.
And then I messaged him and said, am I a Qtipai?
And then you're a pie in like two minutes
and then that's that's when I was in New Zealand and
I guess you wanted to escape America or like LA for a little bit and
Where we're using on where were you mentally there?
Like because we've talked to this timeline. Where's 2018 was it 1819?
Where's the low point?
Or was that was the way early?
Low point, Carbaclini.
That was like 2010.
Oh, okay.
2018 was probably your peak.
What do you, every day, now is my peak.
What do you mean?
That was my peak.
Why would you say that?
Nobody ever had missed being passed their prime.
Just, just, well, I mean, my prime is to come back.
Okay, it was around, it was probably around the time
where you were getting a lot of lefties through your community,
and you were really thinking about that they would go too far.
Maybe.
I think that was still when Hassan and Vash were
both in my community and other.
Exactly.
So I would say it feels like there was not really much issues
when it come to your stuff or your work stuff back then.
Oh, something we didn't talk about is that there
were no politics on Twitch.
I exclusively inhabited that place for like two years
because nobody else did it
because it was a really toxic environment for politics.
So for a couple of years as it grew,
like I kind of grew the whole space
because it wasn't nobody was doing it yet.
What did that look like?
You're having political debates, political discourse.
Yeah, mainly going into YouTube,
people to try to argue with them
or just doing politics on stream,
like reading stories, researching stuff,
talking about stuff, but there's not like other people on Twitch did a
debate about politics because there was no politics.
It was, yeah.
Was there a debate in the space of communism, socialism, social democrats, kind of like this,
are you trying to outline your own position during that time?
I think it was mainly me fighting against conservatives because it was like Trump stuff, and
then it was coming off the back of like, there was this movement called gate and there was all this anti SJW stuff on the internet and I
was like the SJW like the progressive that was fighting on the progressive side of things so I
think that's what I was known for but I was fighting with people off of Twitch because on Twitch
there weren't very many political discussions happening. So you were holding the SJW flag? Yeah.
To what to a degree do you still hold it like what's the best? What's the steel man case for SJW?
I mean, like I'm still very much that SJW from 2018, 2019, but the positions of move so
much farther left that I don't, some people may not call me that anymore, I'm not sure.
It depends on how I'm talking to.
So it's basically what is a social justice way?
Like being sensitive to the experience of others?
Yeah, being sensitive and empathetic towards the experience of others and then trying to
build a better world that like suits as many different types of people as possible while being like aware of
like their names. Okay. So you guys met, what's from your perspective? Is she telling lies? Is
it accurate? No, it's pretty accurate. Okay, when did you guys actually meet? I flew out in 2019.
I didn't get in February. Yeah, basically there was like weird stuff happening in LA.
I just come off of kind of a weird, not kind of sort of relationship.
And I just wanted to like go away for a while.
Another company reached out to me and they had like a fun streaming device.
And they said they'd sponsor a trip if I went somewhere and I was like, oh, well, I know this person.
I know a couple of people in New Zealand.
And Malino's one of them is like, I'll go to New Zealand.
New Zealand, it'll be fun.
And yeah, I did that for two weeks.
Do you guys believe in love?
I feel like you like the gotcha,
got us into this, I'm not sure to disagree
to which you have human emotions.
I have quite a few.
Okay, from your perspective, when did you fall in love
with Millie?
When did you fall in love with Meli Mel?
Oh, Meli Mel.
The minute I saw her.
I don't know, we are first two weeks together, we're a lot of fun.
We have a lot of chemistry in person.
I was kind of shocked that I wasn't thinking about it.
Because it was like we spent like a week together and you said, I really want to tell you something.
You were like, you were like, you were like, stalling that for the longest time.
I think she was, oh, he said that, like, I love you.
No, he basically just said, like, I really like you and it never really happens.
That's what he said. And I was like, oh, and I thought, hey, I love you. No, he basically just said, like, I really like you and it never really happens.
That's what he said.
And I was like, oh, and I thought, hey, I thought.
So let's still ran.
We said Trump getting banned from Twitter.
Is that what we were talking about before?
Oh, yeah.
Hey, you agreed to be coming up here.
Of course, I'm gonna be doing those to you.
How long?
So how long did I take?
Two weeks you said?
I took like a week.
No, I don't know.
I think it was just like,
The thing is my mind process is like, information so quickly. Two weeks to somebody like. That took like a week. No, I don't know. I think it was just like. Thing is, my mind process is like,
information so quickly.
Two weeks to somebody like you
was actually like years for me.
So, oh, like me, yeah.
So, there was like a lot of like,
a factory type of strategic thinking.
Yeah, going on.
I was seeing like all the events,
like Dr. Stranger or whatever in the Avengers
when he's like seeing it all the future.
So, you saw me, you just saw the future.
Yeah, I was looking at all the, yeah.
You're doing like some game, red simulation of all the possible outcomes.
Exactly.
Okay.
But no, yeah, it was probably pretty soon.
I realized we had a lot of chemistry.
I think before I left after my two weeks there, I was like, we need to make sure you got
a ticket to come visit me in the United States because it'll be fun and everything.
And I kind of decided that last minute too.
It was like really like five hours before you fly back.
We kind of realized because it was kind of like men is just like a one type thing and then that was
it. But we're like, oh no, this is a lot of fun. We should probably get it again.
Oh, so you realize you would miss each other? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The male and colleague
side of love. Okay. What did you fall in love with, dude? I thought he like hated me.
I don't know. I thought not hated me. She still thinks I hate it. But I know. No, I remember
like what he said that he really liked me. I was kind of a little shocked about that because
I I don't know. There was a lot of random things happening in New Zealand. It was a lot of fun,
but it was definitely a very interesting thing like things that happened because I was like
around a lot of other people as well. So I thought he might have had a really bad time. But when he said
that I was thinking about it more and then we spent like more time together
like a week after that and it felt like
I was more like real.
And I think when he was about to leave,
I kind of was like, no, I really like him.
Do you guys ever say love to each other?
Like I love you?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, right.
I wasn't sure.
Why would you ask that?
What has he said before?
Because I haven't, I don't think I've heard you speak.
The only time I've heard Steve talk about love is when you're like criticizing the,
the right pill community saying they don't ever talk about love and relationships.
Almost all the time I'm giving criticism to people like I said, I'm kind of stepping in.
I'm very disconnected from my own emotional experience because I'm trying to talk
within there. So it's pretty rare that I'll talk about what is your own emotional experience.
Exactly. Highly blunted, I guess.
There's a lot. Okay.
What does that mean?
I mean, what's the deep in there?
Are you, is it just who you are,
genetically, or are you running for something?
I think I'm a pretty good understanding myself.
A lot of people make that accusation to me,
but I don't think I am.
Okay. This is just who you are.
It's just who I am, man.
Okay. There's not childhood stuff like trauma.
It's all sort of done.
You figured it all out?
Yeah.
In your old age.
As I grow every year, I figured out more and more.
Yeah.
He didn't mention, I think I heard this somewhere that this is a source of fights for
the two of you, the age thing.
I felt the ageism throughout this whole conversation.
Um, he's basically, he's saying that he gambles like with time.
He's just like, I think she will be good later. And then just like, like an investment, yeah. Yeah. That's like what he's saying that he gambles like with time He just like I think she will be good later and then just like like an investment. Yeah. Yeah
Like what is doing when this treasure bond mature
So I'm gonna be able to cash out for it. So far is the stock going up or
It's tumultuous
Oh my god like Bitcoin
crypto mail
All right, if you guys don't mind one interesting aspect of your relationship is you're in an open
relationship.
What's that like from a game theoretic simulation perspective?
What went into that calculation?
And my car is that like how that started or how that started to share the only relationships
I've ever done has been open relationships since I was like in high school because I didn't
really understand like why wouldn't you be able to do other
things but other people, but then just have your main partner basically.
So what is an open relationship generally speaking?
That means you have one main partner?
Not a monogamous relationship.
You're somehow allowed in different ways.
You can see other people's actually.
It's actually, but there is one main conversation.
It doesn't have to be there for some people, but like, I think it's probably easier
and we probably don't really have time or the energy for like more than like one person to like really like
what about like emotional?
It's really complicated.
There's a lot of complicated stuff going on under the hood there.
Yeah.
Um, I think broadly speaking, you've got like polyamorous relationships and you've got like open relationships where polyamorous is like, oh, I've got like three different girlfriends and we all hang out or sometimes even live together or three
Boyfriends or whatever. And then you've got like open relationships, which is like, oh, you know, like you can basically hook up with other people and then you've got like your main relationship and that's it. I think ours is probably somewhere in the middle of that.
To where like we've got like long term friends, some of them we hook up with, and that's kind of how we, yeah, to delicate dance that explodes every six months on itself.
So it does explode, you guys fight over, we fight over some things, yeah.
It thinks how, yeah.
I think it's mostly because a lot of people can handle it, and they agree to something,
and then they realize that we're way too cool, and then they get really obsessed, and
they think that they can like get in there and then it gets really dramatic.
How do you figure it out?
Like, I feel like we figure out things more and more like when it comes to like what's a good person for us to hang out and what's not a good person for us to hang out with or
like I probably have more opinions on like who he hangs out with because he likes the fucking psychos.
Yeah, so you like to start. You like to not like the crazy ones like the baby traps sort of women.
That's the that's the ones and I don't like that because that affects me.
That affects your game theoretical.
Obviously, right.
Uh, you like to surround yourself like in general, you've talked about with crazy
people.
I say crazy and I really shouldn't.
It's humorous.
It's like, yeah, it's very unstable.
Very can be unstable, but people that are very unique.
Like when I meet this person, that's like,
not boring.
Yeah, not boring, yeah.
And you say that you're progressively becoming
not boring yourself.
No, I think I'm pretty stable.
I don't love them effect my mind, but.
So you don't think they affect your...
No, if I say that, I said a joke,
I think I've like, I've got my stuff like really well figured out.
It's what allows me to engage with people like this so easily,
because I can engage, I can make them feel seen and heard,
and then if it gets insane, I can cut off, and I can be chill.
Like very few things affect me in the long term.
Do you guys experience jealousy?
Usually like whenever I feel like he's not spending the like
the amount of time that I'm asking for,
and he spends it on his video games or his stream,
or like he's
someone else like more than he sees me or something like that.
I would like not be good because it affects like our relationship.
Do you have a good sense of like, is it literally time or is it the energy put into the...
It's probably like if he's with me, that like the attention in the time like when he hangs
out with me and then there's also probably the time.
So if I feel like something else is distracting too much,
like it could be work, or it could be a friend,
or it could be anything, like if I feel like it starts
to take away from like me, then I'm having an issue with it.
I don't think he really cares much.
I guess the only jealousy you experience is probably
when you feel like, like if I get upset about him
seeing someone too much, and then I go see someone more and then he's like
Why can I go see my friend more like as much as you so like that's the sort of like thing that we're traveling and navigate on a guess
I think we we have we are like
Dimetrically opposed sometimes in terms of how we view like engagement with people are engagement with the world sometimes
So like on her end of the spectrum like a perfect
Week for her might be like
being in a cabin, watching like Fireflies at night, going hiking every morning,
they have going swimming at the beach, because it's like you're taking in like the grandeur of nature,
you're like connected with yourself, you're like very at peace, everything is like chill and cool,
there's the wind, the feeling of nature, everything. That's like her peak living experience.
And liking presence. Yeah. And like my peak experiences are like people trying to destroy my life, like the challenge
of like navigating really complicated discussion, like you know several different dramatic
events unfolding that my end my career, like these things are like very, I like the stress
and the action and the entertainment and everything's like very cool for me.
Someone where together she generally wants me to be like more chill, but if I don't feel
like I'm being like stimulated a lot, then it's easy for my mind to wander.
To wander somewhere else.
Yeah, that's kind of the issue.
We have a very different way of engaging with the world.
So how can you find happiness and stillness?
I feel like if we're just aware of it,
and we're trying our best, whenever we're supposed to do this one thing.
So let's say that we want to go to New York,
and I'm like, we should just go out and do this one specific thing.
We try to find something that he enjoys doing.
Now that we're in Texas, we can go shooting or do something fun
that he enjoys then we can do it.
And then I think like, just like for me, also to be aware that like when he spends
a lot of time on crazy people, it's not because he loves them or wants to be with them.
It's just because he likes being like having his life destroyed.
Like he said, which I don't really do,
it's a completely different thing.
So for me to understand more,
like how he's thinking,
because it's so different from mine.
And for him to understand how I'm thinking about things,
and like what I prioritize in my life,
I think that's like how we navigate.
But I think it's good.
I think that differences can be good
when we're finding a way.
Well, I think you're relatable.
No, I'm definitely very difficult to get along with.
Like I always tell people that,
that like if you're dating me for like more than a few years,
like you get like an award for.
It's like a war zone that you've survived.
That's what you say.
Absolutely.
You're like a veteran, you get a metals and stuff.
And it's always like, I think there's probably been like
six different, I don't think she says it anymore,
but there are like six different times in our relationship
where she's like, is it always like this?
This is actually her. And like every next year. Why isn't the beginning of a, but there are like six different times in our relationship where she's like, is it always like this? This is actually, and like every next year.
Why isn't the beginning of a, like you were relying
about that, which is it?
You were not, you were like, no, I just like right now,
I'm having a huge argument online about seeing the end
where it in private and it's just gonna be like this
and I'm gonna be streaming 24 hours a day.
And I'm like, we're like, when are you gonna come to bed?
It's been a week.
Yeah, what was this?
I did playing League, coming to this. a bed? It's been a week. What was this? I did playing league coming to this.
A little bit, but I've cleaned.
I'm clean of league like six months right now.
What do you hate about legal?
I never got.
The humans.
Well, speaking of which,
my participation in league involved on the robot side.
Good, because that's an improvement.
Because both the StarCraft 2 and legal legends
because open AI and deep-mind both participating in creating boss in those.
I was a professional soccer player so I remember when the AI started to play,
it's interesting the types of restrictions that you would have to put on like a gaming robot
to make it like functional and not totally unfair to the other side.
Yeah, to make it human-like. Yeah, was that to you? To see AI be able to play those video games?
I think in some ways people think things are more complicated than they actually are.
And I think video games is one of those things are really, oh my god, there's like a million
possibilities at every second and who not.
And it's like, no, there's like three or four things going at any point in time.
And I'm willing to bet that like an AI could probably solve some of these games like pretty
easily, especially if there are no constraints on how they can learn.
Can I talk to you about relationships?
Yeah.
You already have, so.
Yeah, I know, but more generally speaking,
we didn't get a chance to talk
about the Red Pill community.
How is that?
Well, first of all, what is the Red Pill community
that matters here in general?
I'd love to get both your opinions on this.
Sure.
I know you're probably not as opinionated on that one.
I see. What do you think I am? Like probably not as you like as much as you but I do have opinions.
You do? Okay. You should even speak out too much on it because I feel like there's like a language
barrier. I don't I just why don't really do politics because this is my second language. Yeah.
That's right. You have to know the you know lot of it like you know how to use have to use the rawgatory terms every other sentence. Yeah, so they understand you right? Exactly.
And I only think about that. It's like a good like you need to be able to like speak really well for people to take
your seriously. I think and like that's a thing like if I if I don't have like the words and I don't have
that like I can't pronounce things correctly. Yeah you saw a person searching for words looks stupid.
Essentially, that's how people view it.
Tell me about it.
I have a podcast that I wish people listened to and I mumble and they...
Wait, what's your first language?
Russian.
But I speak both languages horribly.
I'm not like...
There's definitely a big disconnect between my brain and my mouth module.
Like, I'm not able to generate the thoughts efficiently. Like, the things you're able to do, like, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, yeah, yeah, it's tough. I understand I mean gotcha
I can make sounds yeah, the the gotcha is both a symbol of compassion and
Derejian at once. It's I'm just let you know I understand what you say it. I'm just gonna sit there and start you in some No, you can say like yeah, get it like yeah, I get it. Yeah, yeah, no, no, not gotcha. Sounds like no, it's so it's so sure
It's like say say it's longer sentence, but that means the Got you. Got you. No, it's so, it's so short. It's like, say, say it's longer sentence,
but that means the same thing.
I understand you.
Yeah, that's good.
That's like, not chills, you know?
You get chills, so I,
yeah.
You understand me.
Yeah, I feel good.
I hear you.
I hear you.
And like if you just like,
cold the other person's hand,
that's even better.
Maybe you gotta put in some emotion there,
okay?
Show that you have some.
I wouldn't, what do you think about some emotion there. Show that you have some.
Got you. What do you think about Red Pill? What is it for people? The Red Pill community, obviously, it's the Matrix reference. The Red Pill that you take is when
you realize what dating standards and norms really are in the world that men are providers and
have to become some great thing to hunt and attract, you know,
the woman who are just kind of there floating around looking for people to give them the most resources.
And it's like coming to a realization of what the world of dating really is,
broken away from the Hollywood standards and the romantic stuff that they try to sell you and, you know,
stores. So there was kind of maybe you can kind of educate me on this, but Red Pill used to be
associated with just maybe anti-establishment views.
I don't know. Maybe a Republican conservative viewpoint.
People used Red Pill a lot in like different communities.
Like when you say the Red Pill community, that's usually means dating.
The dating thing. But a lot of people say, oh, Trump voters, they're Red Pill.
Are you Red Pill? Don't like politics or whatever people say stuff like that.
Okay. Cool.
And then there's like the atmosphere that's it's all the similar type of stuff.
And Andrew Tate is somebody that represents
kind of the figurehead of the manosphere
of like the red pill stuff.
Yeah, I would say so.
I'm pretty sure.
Yeah. Okay.
All right, cool.
So what are some ideas that they represent
and what do you think about them?
I think they do a good job at speaking to disaffected young men
who feel like the rest of the world is kind of left and behind or isn't willing to speak to them.
And they do identify some true and real problems.
Feels like on the left, we have a really hard time doing like self improvement or telling
people how to better themselves.
We focus too much on like structural or systemic issues rather than what can an individual
do to uplift or empower themselves.
And it also feels like they do a good job at speaking to some of the positive aspects of masculinity, that it's okay to be like strong and brave and a soldier
and a warrior and provide for your family and blah, blah, blah. So I was telling you,
those are like positive messages like self improvement and everything that come from
the Red Pill community. What's the negative? I think the analysis on how men and women
interact is a way to transactional.
All of the romanticism and love in chemistry
is totally sucked out of it.
Everything is very sex based.
How do you basically have sex with the most amount
of women possible and that's gonna make you happy?
And then I think people's motivations sometimes
are just spoken about in such a shallow,
derogatory way that I don't think
is always reflective of reality.
Women only wants you because you make six figures
in your tall and it only wants you because you want six figures in your tall and it guy only wants you
because you want to have sex with you and blah,
like it feels like there's a lot of that going on a lot.
Yeah, and that misses some fundamental aspect
about relationships, about meaningful relationships
and so on.
I don't think I've never heard red pill people ever, ever
talk about like meaningful relationships.
It's always just how to get in one or how to have sex really.
Well, we'll bothers you about some of that philosophy.
I feel like the people that are like the red pill people, I feel like their solution is something
that doesn't actually work out. It works out for some people, people that makes a lot of money,
is like really successful and that's right away, but it's not going to help most men out there.
So I feel like it's just like a pointless like speech to give to these like really lost guys
and they really do believe that they can like they can become successful. They can
get money and like what and when they get all these things they can get girls, but most of them is not gonna achieve that ever.
They get the money part or become successful. Just become a billionaire, you know, I'm like and you will get all the girls and which is true
but not everyone can do that. So I feel like when these guys are speaking to these men and they're just like we just care about these men out there
You know, they need to hear this. It doesn't really help a lot of them and it doesn't
Inspire them to develop compassion
To the opposite sex, which is probably something required to have a better relationship and also like they seem to complain a lot about women
required to have a better fore-relationship. And also, they seem to complain a lot about women,
like only one men that I have money in, that's tall,
and that's muscular, whatever, you know, all those things.
But they complain about that,
but that's also kind of what they're trying to make the men
try to do for themselves.
So they kind of like fall into the same sort of behavior,
and they seem kind of unaware of that as well.
They're just playing a part of the game instead of trying to find a woman that doesn't look for those things and that are looking for not those things. Yeah. I actually would love to have
like straight up data on people in that world versus not in that world how often they get laid.
is not in that world how often they get laid. Yeah. Like literally, so I think for sure, people in that world have fewer meaningful long term relationships that are fulfilling,
they actually helped them succeed in life that helped them be happy and content and all
that kind of stuff. But just even the straight up, the shallow goal of getting laid. I wonder. Well, because it's very possible that like just the roughness with which they treat intellectually
women that might lead to lower success, not higher success.
It's very adversarial, which I think is always just supporting. Anything that talks about
men and women, I think it's good to acknowledge differences, but when it becomes like adversarial,
especially when you talk about sex, sex is something that men are getting and it's something that women are giving
and that type of like trade off and the way they talk about it is like, yeah, it sets people
against each other in a really toxic way, I think.
How do you talk to people from that world, from the Red Pill world?
Like would you, would you ever talk to like somebody like Andrew Tate?
Oh, yeah, if I had the chance to, I've been on the, uh, fresh and fit podcast a few times
and then I've got a friend, Sneakow, who's like very red pill that stuff.
If I'm trying to talk to them, usually the,
it's kind of like approaching a scared cat.
The first thing you have to do is be very gentle
and say like, I understand your issues,
I understand your complaints.
I know that you're, I'm scary because you think I'm gonna say
like toxic masculinity and feminism
and all these scary words at you.
So the first thing is always to recognize it.
Like a lot of what they talk about,
there are like true aspects to what they're talking about
that people on the left won't recognize.
So I think it's good to acknowledge those things
that like men and women are kind of different.
We do look for different things in general
when it comes to relationships.
It's okay to say that.
It's not there's nothing bad there.
And then it'll usually be like once I've got your trust
and I'm in your bubble, like let's talk about the things
that you want and maybe some of the strategies that you're employing aren't necessarily going to get
you some of the things that you want.
So for instance, if you're really worried about like shallow girls, like ruining your life,
like Molina said, it's probably not best to build your entire world view around trying
to get shallow girls that are going to ruin your life.
Like if your way of attracting a girl is to go to the gym, get a whole bunch of money
and try to like flaunt your wealth this much as possible, you're going to be attracting
the very same type of women
that you're here like decrying on your stream.
You think we talked about that on the podcast,
like you probably wanna have a woman that's gonna be there
if you lose your job, it's still there.
Like that cares about the things
that's not just your job.
Yeah.
It's more stable.
And also I don't help you become a great man,
or a great like grow, like I feel like
a great friendship and a partnership.
Like, it helps you make you a better person.
Some of the most successful people I know,
and they have families, and there's clearly a dynamic there
that's like, that makes them, they wouldn't be that without.
They're not an island, yeah.
Yeah, and the kids actually are a big part of that too.
Like, for most people, if you're like a good parent,
they make you step up somehow in life.
You have to take responsibility for getting your shit together and excelling in ways that,
I guess, the philosophy of the Red Bull does not quite get to.
That's always an interesting thing.
I think I've asked it a couple of times where it's like, would you let your daughter date
Andrew Tate, and it's always fun to watch them kind of like squirm around those answers sometimes?
But see, if they don't have a daughter like I you know, I don't have a daughter
I think your whole philosophy changes once you have a daughter.
Sure.
Well, but even at that like they can they know that with their answering they feel a little
bit weird about it.
It's funny to watch them like they even they know it's like, I'm fine.
Well, they they might say like I want my daughter to date like a high value male.
To the degree that he's a high-value male, yes,
but like I don't think you'll feel that way. The definition of high-value changes completely for
sure. Certainly the stereotypical measures the value contribute to the calculation, but it's so
much more than that, I think, on the chemistry of the whole thing is bigger. You've also mentioned
about Bladdy Count. You guys both have a high body count.
Does body count matter?
Or depends, like you said, it's low in some people's eyes.
It's high in other people's eyes.
Does body count matter in relationships?
It's the past matter.
Well, the past matters.
I don't think body count.
Not to me, I don't really care.
Not just as it is, no.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't be.
The past does.
Yeah.
Well, the past is who you are, right?
Like, somebody tells me like they have a 200 body count and they're 16.
Something's probably going on there that's not good.
I was thinking about that too, like, because it could be like really young people that are
having some sort of like mental, like, work going on or somebody's like 45 and they've like never had sex before.
There's probably something going on, right?
Yeah.
So I could be indicative, but if somebody's like in their 20s and they've had sex of, you know, 100 people or 50 people or whatever, it's, you know, whatever.
It's more experience. It can be good. Sure. Okay. So that just represents your like sexually
open and so it doesn't really necessarily mean any kind of not necessarily. It could though.
The number alone doesn't mean anything. Yeah. Well, you could meet a guy that's like,
I just really, really like when I fucking lot of people because it makes me so cool
Like you're gonna be someone like that or just like it. So the body count doesn't matter
But like what where it comes from like yeah, like why why have you step at the people they step with?
Yes, does it hurt like the romantic aspect of relationship knowing that there's a lot of people in the past
I don't know for us. No is the part of relationship on the methe oramatic for us. Yeah, I think so. I think so, yeah. Okay.
What?
You come out for such a cold first.
No, I was just in my head thinking, I wanted to just say, got you right there.
It's so judgmental.
I think when it comes to the sex thing, there's always like the way that I explain it is.
And I understand like, I have to say this because I don't advocate for what I do for everybody
or what she does for everybody because obviously there's a whole bunch of natural feelings of jealousy that pop up for a lot of people.
But when people ask me, you know, it's always like, oh, like isn't this like horrible that you guys are doing this and you don't love each other.
From my perspective, I can have sex with like any person and it can be sex.
Like that's not like a special thing between two people in my eyes. It's like anybody can have sex.
But there are like certain activities and ways you can spend time with each other where you're like carving out these like precious
little moments in time with a certain person that can do things that are special to that
person. And those are the kind of like events that I remember more than anything else.
So like the idea of like like, oh wow, I had sex with a person that was so special, doesn't
mean as much as like, you know, us traveling to like New Zealand or sharing some special
moment doing like some really fun activity or event or whatever.
That's usually hard like I know.
So shared into my moment.
Yeah.
I kind of agree,
but I can definitely connect the romance with sex.
Boy.
I'm curious why you can't do that.
Especially the woman.
Say that's where the red pill's right.
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
We've also talked about misogyny,
which is clearly the embodiment of that.
What were you saying?
So there's some,
there's a connection between romance and sex. Yeah, I think it is because I think sex could be a
lot of things, right? It's some sort of bonding, I'd say, in some way. They say that you really
like BDSM, you kind of like you become submissive to someone or you take control over someone,
it's like in a very bonding, like intimate moment, I'd say.
And that's romantic. The intimacy is romantic. I think it is. If you can show yourself as really submissive or like weak or you have like absolutely no control over yourself and
you let someone else do it or you are the one being that like you are the dominant for someone,
I think that's a really like intimate thing because you show like the weakest part of yourself
kind of. I just feel like I personally,
to me, some component of romantic, but to me, this is not judging to others. To me, maybe his hall is barred up.
The romance increases if the number of intimate interactions are limited to one person.
Like for me, for some reason, spreading it out decreases exponentially the feeling of
romance, I don't know what that could be just like, sort of, having grown up in a Soviet
union. There's a kind of, there's the fairy tale stories, and you're kind of maybe living
through them.
Yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying is like really normal.
Like most people probably feel that way.
But because you guys are able to successfully not do that, I just want to question my own
understanding of it, you know, like, like, why is that?
Why is that?
Why, like, am I being very jealous for no reason?
Like, maybe you can maximize the number of intimate experiences if you just open up
and let go of the jealousy essentially.
I think I feel like in Sweden,
like in Scandinavia,
we're extremely just actually open.
Like in general, we were not like super religious either.
We're very like relaxed.
We don't like,
we don't feel bad about our side.
Like it's just like a different sort of thing
and I would say like it's,
we're more progressive when it comes to feminism and stuff.
So it's more common they will meet women with a higher body count than like when I meet like American girls, all of them I have like
vaginism, like super-suppressed like sexually and they have like what or did you just use?
They have like issues to like they can't relax during sex or just hurts for them.
Vaginous, vaginism.
Vaginism is what it's called, yeah. So like I meet so many girls that are having like a lot of
issues with sex,
and they have a very low body count,
because they just can't relax.
Or yeah, and usually they come from a very religious background.
So they have just been told, you cannot worry that,
you cannot be like that, you can't,
and where I grew up, it was not like that at all.
But you see it as more of a casual thing.
So then you can just maximize the
awesomeness of the experience. Yeah, I guess I don't have a trouble with it. Exactly.
I think that the important thing I think for everybody to realize is there's always pros and cons to everything like my lifestyle
like obviously I get to have a lot of fun experiences. That's like a huge pro and that's super cool
and if you're like a more monogamy brain person, you're not gonna get those experiences
But if you're a monogamy brain person,
like when you're sharing that special woman
at time with somebody else,
like that moment can be really, really, really special.
Because now it's the thing that you're showing yourself
and opening yourself up to another person
and they're only trusting you to do that.
And that's like a really special thing
that only the two of you are sharing with each other.
So I mean, like there's always like pros and cons
and everything.
I think we both would say like,
like doing an open relationship is probably not,
like we would not recommend it. Yeah, no, of course. I think we both would say like doing an open relationship is probably not like we
would not recommend it.
Yeah, I don't think we would know.
Yeah, I recently fasted for three days and then ate a chicken breast at the end of that
and it was like the most delicious food I've ever eaten.
So like there's some aspect of fasting and scarcity and so on that like you have to figure
out what for your own psyche what works the best.
It's good to be able to board or like not do something or like work because you can just
enjoy the time when you're doing something really fun.
It's more fun, otherwise you're just going to get numb in general with everything.
Yeah.
Yeah, I personally just never get bored.
Like, I guess the boring thing is exciting to me.
Just like me.
You're like me because everything I like is boring.
I got to ask you, we talked about massaging,
and he's trying to battle it out on the internet.
What's your sense as a woman,
about the level of massaging and the internet
in the streaming community and how to fight it?
For me, I guess I get it every single day somehow,
because I have an online, like I have a chat
that goes live, right? But I have like mods moderating that all the time, so I don an online, like I have a chat that goes live,
right?
But I have mods moderating that all the time, so I don't really need to see much of it.
I think it's just pretty annoying because you get to see it all the time.
It's become like background noise.
Yeah, a little bit, it's the same commons over and over again.
But it's usually for me, I don't personally care that much. I understand that other people do, especially when it comes into like, when there's like a lot of sexism
and stuff. And when there's a lot of like men not taking women seriously, like I definitely
get that. And I used to get that even more like a few years ago with my accent and everything.
And like I used to be blonde as well like a few months ago. So I feel like people wouldn't
take me seriously because of that. That's a bit annoying, but I feel like it's pretty easy
to see through when someone acts that way,
and for me personally, I don't really care.
But it's a bit annoying, like being online
and getting stuff every single day.
I would say probably the worst thing is,
when you feel like you put in a lot of effort
into some sort of work, everyone is just gonna say,
you just got that because you're a woman
and you're attractive. And that's probably the worst thing. Is there a way to fight that, you think?
Yeah, I don't think you can. I think it just comes up all the time. It is what it is, I guess.
You just get to keep doing whatever you do and not let it emotionally control you somehow.
I think having more women in those spaces is always good. It's probably good, yeah.
Like a lot of the guys you can tell online that they don't bring on the worst ones Then she's being see she just needed it. She did the massage anything
By having some bad woman on she's saying all women see you well, you know, it's true
Right, so I just agree with you and I'm older than both of you and therefore why is it right so
I'm buying world of it. I think
Where one by only metronome. Yeah, we've got combined age.
Or it could be the same thing.
I was like, also the age thing and the woman thing.
A lot of people think that I'm just copying
every single thing that he says, which I think
has been annoying as well.
So I can never really like.
Hosanna K.
Is there that one?
Yeah, which has been annoying.
It's a bunch of you know.
It was about the defunding police.
Like my dad's a cop.
I like friendship, camaraderieie and love and respect which you
both have had for a time and have lost in I would like you to regain it. That's trying to
increase that decreasing amount of love in the space. What do you think about some of the harshness
of the of his language which we talked about? Our word in the past when he used N word all of that
kind of stuff. When he what he used to do I mean. I know like all of that kind of stuff. What do you, what are you used to do?
I mean, I don't know, like, what do you think about it?
Like, do you give them a device?
To not speak the certain way?
No, like a little more civility.
I'm just trying to get a second opinion on this.
Second opinion of a-
No, me people, not internet people are way more extreme than-
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's not true.
Okay, so, okay, so here's the thing for me, okay?
I was not online until three years ago, at all.
I would watch YouTube.
That's pretty much all I would do.
I wouldn't do anything else.
Really, I didn't create playing video games or anything.
So I'm extremely new to everything.
So when I came into this world
and I started seeing clips from him in the past,
I don't think I really had much of an opinion
because it just sounded like it was just a different
word, Stubby News, but it didn't mean anything.
That's what it feels.
It was just like, if you're saying the R word,
it's because you just want to call someone stupid,
but you want to do it a little bit more.
But it didn't feel like it was like a racist more.
I'm not thinking that.
You know, it's not.
A agreement on this side here.
So if he was saying the F word because it was just
like a word to insult someone, and I don like if he was saying the F word because it was just like a word to like
insult someone and he was like I don't think he was ever I don't think you were ever
homophobic back in the day or anything like that. But I think it was just like a way to express
yourself maybe back then. I don't know. I didn't do it. There's no videos of me or anything because
I wasn't even online back then. So my case was I definitely don't think Steven is homophobic
or is serene with those obviously. So there's a good heart there and a good mind
I was just saying it's like being mean
Well, there is some you lose yourself and forget the bigger picture that
He's pushing for more effective discourse on the internet. He's like an inspiration to a lot of people especially now
I've like how you can use effective conversation to make for better world, to do a very radicalized people.
And so on.
And then you lose some of that power by losing yourself in like the language, just more
language of emotion versus effective communication.
But it's a gray area.
I would say like something that is probably recently done in that case because it's been
joking about women a lot.
Like it's women's fault, they're bad.
Like, it's been like a lot of jokes
when it comes to misogyny, I guess, in your community.
And I think it's actually turned people a little bit
that way.
That's why we've done the recent.
Yes, so that, I guess that's actually true
because I don't think it was pretty,
I don't think it was clear enough.
I don't think it actually was.
I think you did that mistake.
But I think back then, I was even saying, like, hey, you should probably not do that.
Because it actually is pretty hard for me.
Because whenever I come into his community, like his chat, people are just going to spam.
It's like a woman moment.
It's a woman moment whenever I say something.
And it's kind of like, yeah, it's getting pretty annoying, as I said.
It's just annoying when you see it every single day.
Yeah.
There you go.
Where's them from somebody younger than you?
Where's them to come from?
Yeah, of course.
Very limited quantities.
They learned something from anybody.
What advice would you give to young people, the both of you,
that you have both audiences where young people look up to you?
In general, if you were to give advice to somebody in high school,
like how to create a life that can be proud of,
what would you say?
The most important thing that I've learned
is to view people as different and not better or worse.
And when you view people as different
instead of better or worse,
you learn that there's almost something
that you can learn from anybody.
Like, be open and empathetic
towards other people's experiences.
Nobody does anything by random choice.
Like, there's always reasons why people act the way they do.
And as long as you're willing to kind of like be open
and receptive to the lived experiences of other people,
you're gonna be able to gather information
and create like a more cohesive
and better view of the world
than any of your peers will.
Do you have any kind of advice you can give to young folks?
I feel like something that I see, especially in America a lot, is that a lot of people
kind of get told what to do early on, like in high school, they're supposed to become
this thing, like education-wise, like they're supposed to become a doctor or this thing,
or whatever, and then they kind of just give up on things that they're actually passionate
about. So I think a lot of teenagers get really confused. They get an education and then they get that job and they hate everything.
They think that when they're reaching the job, when they're reaching the journey, they're
going to get happy.
That's where the happening is going to be.
Then when they get to there, they just hate everything and then they become really depressed.
I've seen this so much.
I've seen this all the time.
It's pretty sad to me to see so many people that are just wasting time and then they
just get really confused.
And I don't know.
It's the same thing with relationships too.
No one really knows what they want anymore.
I feel like everyone is just kind of doing whatever.
Like society is saying or the parents are saying or the friends are saying.
And they're never really doing anything that's super meaningful anymore.
And like they don't. So what I would say like, try to find something that is important to you.
It could be anything really.
Like, some sort of passion, maybe like your friends, maybe like, what matters to you?
Like, figuring those things out, I think, is really important.
And that comes from being able to listen to, like, some inner voice.
So it's not like a comfortable elsewhere.
Yeah, I guess. It's really hard because you're living the life,
and like, there's things happening
around you and people tell you what to do and what not to do. You know, no one really
has like their own opinions. Everyone is just kind of like listening to the cooler thing
or, you know, except for you and she seems to stand on the zone.
I guess.
Yeah, it's so.
And like, I should have.
Like something I realized too, like because we just went to TwitchCon and we were talking
to a lot of streamers.
What was that?
It was interesting.
I thought it was interesting because the few people that I feel like I, that seemed really
cool and that I look up to, like, in the streaming world, all of them wants to quit streaming,
all of them wants to do it.
No one likes it.
And they're so successful.
They are around successful people.
They're working every single day.
They're working hard. They're making so much money.
And everyone is just complaining.
And they're complaining about
not being able to see their partner.
Or, you know, because they need to live somewhere else.
And I see these things.
And they seem extremely unhappy.
But it's so hard for them to just cut all these successful stuff off
because that's like what you learn to do.
And that's like supposed to be like your happiness, but it isn't.
Everyone is really unhappy.
Yeah, there's something about maybe streaming is different, but YouTube folks do have interacted
with a few.
Even in podcasting space, people become obsessed about the views and numbers and subscribers
and stuff like that.
So I turn, I never talk about that. I don't pay attention to that. I feel like that's a drug that destroys your mind. Your mind is an artist, the ability to create, for sure, unique things.
Also, your mind enters the anxiety, the ups and downs of the attention mechanism.
And then also being just if something that you make is not popular, but you mental
a lot to you, you will think of it less because it's not popular.
That's a really dangerous thing.
And because everyone around you is reinforcing, like I'll get messages like, wow, this
thing got this many
views or something. Great job. It's like, no, you don't get it. Like that's not that's not
the everyone is enforcing this like this language of views and likes and so on. And it's
correlated, of course, because truly impactful things will get a lot of attention often. But it's not, and the individual
local scale, like, temporarily, it's, it can really fuck with your mind. And I see that in the creators,
they become addicts to the algorithm. Lost in chasing views. Like, we know friends that we know
cool people, and then they start streaming, and eventually they're like chasing the dragon of like,
We know friends that we know cool people and then they start streaming and eventually they got they're like chasing the dragon of like
And they change like they yeah, it's like Heartening it for them. Clearly, and there's like this is something I've always said that like one of the biggest blessings and biggest
Curse is of humanity is we are very good at acclimating like you can become paralyzed
You can have all sorts of horrible things happen to you and you'll get used to it
And you'll be okay
You're gonna like a good baseline
But it works the other way too and that you can get more and more and more and you acclimate to it almost immediately.
There's like, this is a phenomenon
that I bet it happens in the YouTube world,
but I know what happens in the streaming world
where you're streaming 1,000 viewers every day,
huge event happens and you blow up
and you got like 15,000 viewers for a day or two.
And then it starts to go down and down and down and down
and down and down.
And then after all the drama stayed off,
you're at like 3,000 concurrent viewers.
Now in the macro, you went from 1,000 to 3,000,
that feels awesome, but you actually feel like shit
the whole time, because you're remembering
when you had 10 or 15,000,
and now everything feels horrible.
And you'll see people climb over time,
and like fuck, like,
but whatever that one huge stream had,
like I've never been able to,
and it's like, dude, you're doing great.
What's, yeah, that happens a lot.
There's so many people that we know
that we find super, super cool,
they're passionate about things,
they have so much interest, and then they just get so addicted to these numbers.
Everything is just ruined.
All the cool things about them is ruined because they stop doing the things that they actually
like to do something else that gives them more viewers and more money.
It's really sad to see.
That temporary sacrifice that seems temporary, it actually destroys you.
Like for one time making a choice,
because I come across those choices often.
Like, I can do this.
You can kind of know what's gonna be popular and not.
And you have to ask yourself the question,
like, is this gonna sacrifice?
Because people are sacrificing intimate relationships.
They're sacrificing time with their family.
They're sacrificing time with the family, they're sacrificing time with
the things that they feel good about and that they like. And that's something I kind of realized
last year because I was working so much and I was just grinding, grinding, grinding, because it was
kind of new for me. And then New Year's came by and I was like, wait, what did I even do? Like the
entire year. Like I traveled to a bunch of places, but nothing actually really meant anything to me
because I felt like I was just working the entire time. I felt like I was just numb
through the entire year and I was really scary. Like I rented a super pretty house for
a week with my dad and my sister because I wanted to spend time with them, but the entire
time I was just streaming. And I actually didn't ever calm down and just chill with them.
And that's like time.
I'll never get back.
I don't give a shit about the money that I made that week,
but I lost the time.
And that is really important to me.
And a lot of people are doing that.
And I feel like, as you said, you can definitely
see that in artists, for sure.
I feel like if you look at artists back in the 60s or 70s,
I feel like things were just so much better back then
And it feels like they were actually making music that meant something to them
They were actually making art and I feel like today everything is just kind of like whatever is cool
Whatever sells whatever you know sounds in a certain way everything is kind of the same thing
And everything that is very artistic and very cool is actually not that popular at all
And that's kind of sad. I think yeah and everything that is very artistic and very cool is actually not that popular at all.
And that's kinda sad, I think.
Yeah, of course there's now bigger mechanisms
and platforms to spread stuff, music.
So as long as you could be content
with not being popular, I think you can still create art.
But not like when people get a little pop
that they get addicted to that so fast.
Yeah, it's weird.
You have been somewhat good, at least from my outside of perspective, because I think
you, I can at least imagine you making choices that could make you more popular, and you
don't seem to make those choices.
I'm like having a corporate problem.
But it is very intentional, like you said.
And I made that choice at every single stage of my life.
One is because from the perspective of being a carpet cleaner, my life is way better
than that was or ever would have been.
So I'm already doing way better than I ever thought somebody like me ever could be.
But then two, I super love my job.
Every time I wake up, every time I fly to a place to a podcast, every time I get to talk
to really cool people, like every single part of my job, I super like it, but there's
something I don't like, I just cut it off because I don't care.
Because I'm already making plenty of money doing what I do, and why would I ever wake up and not
like what I'm doing when I can like what I'm doing? How do you guys find through that, given that
you love it and sometimes maybe lose yourself in the drug of it, how do you find work-life balance
together inside a relationship, like time for each other? I don't at all, so I'm not a good person to ask. What do you love more, Mel or Factor?
Factor is a really good game.
That's like not a fair comparison, okay?
You're talking about one of the best cleanest games,
best support ever made, cleanest code base.
Like, this is more Factor or time for me.
Starting to understand when the massaging comes from.
By the way, is the inspector legit really a game?
Yeah, of course, yeah, I'm cool.
If you're like, do you enjoy programming?
Of course, it's all I do, that's all it does.
Oh, okay.
If you've got programming is the game in itself
that I enjoy, probably more than anything else,
but yeah.
It's very much a game like that.
If you're into stuff like that,
you can lose hundreds of hours very quickly too.
Like, you have a problem, and then you think of a solution,
and then you iterate on that over and over and over again,
and larger, larger schemes.
Sometimes you've got to redesign stuff.
Sometimes you've got like, it's very much like that kind of guy.
So you're essentially building a factory,
like what, on a foreign planet or something like that.
It's basically, it's like a bunch of you're trying
to automate different problems so that you can build bigger things,
that you can automate bigger problems,
so you can build bigger things and automate bigger problems.
So it's more complicated than like a city building game, like some city type of thing.
I wouldn't say it's more complicated.
It's more like, factorial is like a game of like logic, like strictly like logic.
Like almost like a building a circuit or something.
Yes.
Yeah.
There's like, there's circuitry and you got your anorgs orgates, you like, there's
stuff like that.
It's very much like that.
What are the enemies in the game?
Like what?
Um, they're like trying to bite you and you can get guns and shoot and kill them.
It's like there's shooting going on.
Yeah, but that's like a mind.
It's just another problem to solve in the game basically.
Okay.
All right.
CC what we do there.
We just started talking about the game as we're trying.
Oh my God.
That's like a horrible.
Anyway, is that basically the struggle, not a star struggle, how to get human, like intimate human time?
I feel like it was like that a little bit more in the past. I feel like it's been better lately,
but I think it's because when we started dating, I wasn't streaming. And I kind of just like gave up like
my trip in New Zealand. I gave up like, like I left Sweden. So I was just like in LA, which I hate
I hate LA, I don't like LA at all. It's hard to make friends that are like real that are
into the same stuff as you. It was just really hard for me to connect with anyone, especially
also like being a European and like being around Americans was very strange. So the only
thing I had when I came here was him. And I didn't expect
because we had like two weeks of hanging out and he would be on his computer sometimes
and do emails and stuff, but I wasn't thinking that he would stream like to fall out
today. And it was pretty intense in the beginning of it as well. And I realized it was really
hard to get attention and get time because his love meter would be full if I was just in the house.
And that's just kind of like the way he is.
And for me back then, when I didn't have anything else to do, it was kind of crazy for me.
I feel like right now because I do work as well and I have things going for me and I have other friends now that I made. I feel like it's a lot easier
because I can definitely enjoy just being in separate rooms and just hearing them in the background
is really nice. I can sit in paint and in my room and I will do that for hours while I'm just
hearing a scream in the background. It's kind of like comforting that he's just there. It feels nice.
I like it. Because to you, that's the sound of happiness. Yeah, because I know he's right there.
Yeah, it's nice and it will come in and check on me sometimes and it's kind of like it. Oh, because to you, that's the sound of happiness. Yeah, because I know he's right there. Yeah, it's nice And they'll come in and check on me sometimes and it's it's kind of like it's actually very comforting. It's very nice. I like it
Yeah, I think that's kind of what a relationship is like you do fun things together
I mean that you share moments together, but also just like having someone like around you's really really nice
And I think that's probably maybe it's me growing up
Maybe that's what it is and And I start liking the kind of,
I feel like we're like an old couple,
like we're like 80 and we're just like around.
We don't really have to talk much.
It's nice, we just do that.
And that fills your love meter, that person.
I like this terminology, love me.
I need both.
I mean, okay, you're making it sound like
that I'm like craving like,
I haven't said anything.
I'm not saying anything.
I haven't said a single thing at all. I'm making face-run thing at all. I know exactly where I think it's so much judging going on
No, but like we I think I think whenever we do plan something out like if we if we go on a trip like every other month or
Once a month
I feel like usually like that's enough as long as he's not playing Victoria the entire time. Like, if I feel like he's going on these trips with me and he's not,
like, doing things with me or he's not interested in like spending time or like being present with me,
then I'll feel like, I just feel like I'm just wasting time right now and then I get kind of disappointed.
But otherwise, I think this is fun.
I think this is like spending time together.
Because we're like doing something together, yeah.
This is my fun, yeah.
My love meter is full.
You're lovely, it is full.
It's my social life.
We like to think about it that way.
I need a little bit more of this one thing,
quality time, and he needs almost zero quality time.
But let's say that we took away physical touch,
you would probably not be very happy.
Uh-huh.
So you need physical touch, so it's not just back to me, huh?
No, I'm a very curly person.
Yeah, like, curly, and then you're like, I guess, like, acts of service. Like, if I do something for you, you get physical touch. So it's not just back to me. No, I'm a very Kelly person. Yeah, like Kelly and then you're like I guess like acts of service like if I do something for you get really happy my
hot chocolate. Yeah, like if I give him hot chocolate in the morning, he gets really happy. So the actual it's not the hot
chocolate. It's the giving of the hot chocolate. No, it's just the hot chocolate. But if she gives it to me,
it's I didn't have to get it myself. It's just physical touch. That's really nice.
All right. Well, if you have to choose between factorial and the drama or political
discourse, we probably political discourse, probably my calling, but I am a good
factorial player.
Like what role exactly does factorial play in your streaming life?
Oh, well, right now, it's just usually there are like these games that I play in the background
as I have conversation because it's hard for me to just sit on the computer and just talk
and not like be playing a game at the same time. So it's just something to keep me kind of like occupied You know, it's maybe a little like a widget things I guess. Yeah, that's what yours. Yeah, basically. Yeah, it's like minecraft or a factorial for me
All right
Well, my love meter is full from this
Well, thank you so much for joining us
This is really fun. I'm you guys are fascinating human beings
Thank you for existing.
I'm glad to live in a world where you exist.
I can't wait to see what kind of beautiful thing
you create next.
And the crazy kind of art that you create
through the different people you interact with.
Destiny's Steven.
You're an amazing human.
Thank you so much for talking to me.
It's an honor.
Hope to talk with you again.
Talking to Ben Shapiro. You've given me a lot of inspiration.
It's an honor to talk to the Ben Shapiro of the left.
Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. Yes. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Destiny.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from Lewis Carroll.
It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you