librarypunk - 046 - Book Challenges and Being Combative feat. Jake Flores

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

https://twitter.com/feraljokes Pod Damn America: https://soundcloud.com/poddamnamerica Why You Mad? https://soundcloud.com/whyyoumadpod  Jake’s shows: https://www.feraljokes.com/dates Readings Gender Queer Under Review in Coppell, Texas; Director's Response Is a Model to Follow  Gov. Greg Abbott calls for criminal investigation into availability of pornographic content in public schools A Space for Civic Dialogue - Blog - Free Library Things mentioned (in order) Measure that could fine, jail librarians passes Idaho House Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology Gender Queer: A Memoir | Book by Maia Kobabe | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster Opinion | I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead. - The New York Times Pod Damn America episode on NFTs (paywalled) Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves Rhizome (philosophy) - Wikipedia Mishka Shubaly podcast with Jake 037 - Digital Gardens, Hypertext, and Donna Haraway Dan Greene, The Promise of Access | The MIT Press

I once again fucking forgot to write a coat loopen. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkan library. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library. My pronouns are they then? I'm Jay. I'm an academic metadata and discovery librarian. My pronouns are he, him, and my cat is being very cute right now. Nice. And we have a guest. I'd like to introduce yourself. Hello, my name is Jake Flores. My pronouns are he him. I'm a comedian and podcaster, and my cat is being not cute right now. He's being really annoying.

Thank you. Welcome. Yeah. Yeah. We've got the live in-house audience for tonight. And Justin will interrupt you with drops. I have started doing the standard disclaimer anytime we have a guest now, because normally the first time a drop happens, the guest like freezes and doesn't know what's happening.

So just like push through him, ignore him. This is not my first rodeo. You got to do a lot of morning radio in this business. I do. Is it jock radio, whatever it's called? morning Joe or whatever. Morning. Yeah.

So this is one of those episodes where we've needed to bring in some outside expertise because I feel like librarians are very poorly equipped to deal with the situation at hand, which is people losing their goddamn minds on the internet. And so I brought the human manifestation of the internet onto the show so that he could tell us what the fuck's going on with everyone's brains. Did you want to do your plugs up front, like your podcast or shows? people can find you. Sure. Yeah. If you don't know who I am, yeah, I am the human manifestation of the internet. I embody all of its chaos. You may want to follow me on Twitter.com. If that sounds

fun, you may not. I understand why you wouldn't. I fight with people a lot and start a lot of shit on there. I have a podcast called Pod Damn America. It's me and two other socialist comedians doing, you know, a general show about politics and history and all that sort of stuff. I have another show called Why You Mad? I do with my friend Louisa, who is an anthropologist and a comedy booker where you sort of talk philosophy and stuff like that. And I'm a stand-up comedian. I have a regular show in New York called Meat Space that I do at this place called The Gutter. And I'm going on tour with Eve Six pretty soon. And I'm generally everywhere.

Oh, and my handle on everything is feral jokes if you want to follow me online. Yeah, I'll throw the links on there. I think Louisa was one of our first guests. Yeah. Oh, cool. almost a year ago, I think. Yeah, we made her talk about 9-11 a lot. Yeah, we made her cry.

I feel bad. All right. She cries all the time. Yeah, I think we're all pretty big fans away, Matt. Red. Yeah, Luis is great. She's a perfect match for this show. That makes total sense.

Data scientist. Yeah. Yeah. I actually don't really know what her current job is, but it sounds really fascinating. When they were talking about changing Token's name on South Park. Yeah. That is a very funny. bit to just go back and change all the metadata for all the episodes.

That's like my favorite joke that has ever happened now as a metadata person. It's so good. Yeah, it's crazy that that's somebody's job, but it's Louises. Who knew? Also, I wanted to bring you on because you are a Texan. I've lived in Texas four years now. Oh. So I, and I came from Florida.

So I understand being in a crazy big state, but some things about Texas are still new to me. Plus, I live in the valley, which is like, I feel like very different from the rest of. of Texas. Yeah, it's its own place. Yeah. It's a fascinating place to live. I've been here about four years, but cool. So there have been these book challenges that are a very common thing for libraries to get mad about. You know, we have the Office of Intellectual Freedom in the American Library Association, and they always put out like the banned books list whenever books get challenged every year. And And then everyone also says, like, they're not really banned, though. But now there are these bounty laws that Texas has kind of created where you can just sue anyone for any reason.

Yeah. And I guess I should say when I wrote this episode, it was before Ukraine threw a wrench into everyone's discourse. So I kind of expected, like, my whole thesis for this episode was like, this is the internet breaking people's brains, right? Right. Right. Spokey soon, huh? Yeah. But the thing is, like, it keeps happening.

Like, it's still going forward. Like, people are still doing these challenges, but it's now, like, fallen upon the Facebook grandmas and the internet, busy bodies. Like, the regular people who normally do this kind of shit. Yeah. Mostly what's being banned is transvalidating books, mostly focused at youth. And they're usually, like, preemptively removed, which is really, weird. I also just saw a story like an hour ago about parents going to a local public library

in Massachusetts and just stealing the books. So, you know, they're doing. Yeah, direct action gets the goods. I guess they found out. I don't know. Well, steal this book, huh? And I also saw in one state, maybe it's Texas, but it might be like, Idaho. I don't know. But like, librarians can actually like be sued or arrested for like having certain books and stuff. Like, they're making it like a felony or something. I think it's Idaho. Is it Idaho? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like Idaho. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, like normally the whole like book banning thing, and I've mentioned this on the show before, so though my advisor for my master's thesis, she was, well, she still is,

one of like the leading scholars on like book challenges and banning. And this was back when it's like, well, it's not really banning. You can go down the road to a bookstore and get it or you can get another library, their challenges. And it's like, oh, fuck, no, they're actually getting, like, legally felony banned now. So I'll have to, like, check in with her and see what she's been saying about it, because I haven't seen anything. I don't mean to insult the profession that you three appear to albeit, but like... Please do. Yeah, I do it. That's what the show's for. Are kids hanging out at the library that much? Like, I would, I would think people would just be pleased with the fact that kids are reading books from the library at all?

You'd think, but no, no. And, well, the library I work at is actually really close to the local high school. So we get a lot of students skipping. They walk down to the library and hang out on the computers instead of being in school, that kind of thing. And we've actually, I was heard through a couple of things. We've actually had a couple of patrons email, like board members or, you know, our director and just be like, hey, this book is inappropriate for children, get rid of it. And I'm like, you don't even have a library card. Yeah. Like, what are you doing here? But, yeah, no,

kids do come into the library. Yeah, I used to live in Salt Lake City and they have like a really nice big public library that has some really good like teen services. Like they even have like a zine collection that was really cool. So yeah, a lot of public libraries are doing cool things. Now I hung out with a library as a teenager, but like, I'm like a dork. Yeah, you became one. Like, yeah, there were signs. Yeah.

I was on like the teen advisory board and shit. I'm a fan. I just, uh, I just, I don't really, I guess the, the argument that people are making about, you know, kids wandering into a library and becoming, um, sexualized because they found a book or something. It has some pretences that I don't quite buy, like the people are that concerned about what kids are reading or whatever.

I don't know. It seems like a stand-in for something more libidinal and weird and angry. That's interesting. Where arguments are, you know? Yeah. The thesis that Emily Knox says about any sort of book challenge is that people know, or they hypothesize that reading can be so powerful that it can change a person and how they think. And there are four groups that they,

they don't trust to change in a way that they would like. And those are women, children, people of color, especially black people. And I believe it's either like queer people or disabled people. But where it's like if you read a book and it changes you, they don't trust that you'll be changed in a way that they like. And so it falls back into like during like when Ellis Island, like my immigration stuff was happening, librarians would like play a role in the assimilation of people like they would discourage people from checking out

shoddy and pernicious books and stuff like where it's like books even just like fiction as tools of as tools of the state almost and I think people are still viewing it that way like I'm one of those people who are like you know a book can't hurt you how you react to a book and what you do with it

that's your responsibility and people are like just not trusting that people will make the decision they think is the correct one based on what they read. So that's what a lot of this is coming from is affecting our like citizenry and stuff. Yeah. I mean, people are profoundly cynical about, you know, the other people's intellectual capacity. I think most people have main character syndrome, think they're the smartest person of the world, and fear that if somebody else reads a book, they're goable and they'll be led a certain way. And I feel, I think, similar to you and that a book can't hurt you. But I know, I mean, I read the show notes here.

I know we're going to talk a bit later about, like, the what's going on with the right-wing propaganda and stuff. And I don't want to contradict myself and say, you know, that I don't think that stuff has an effect on people. I just kind of think that the argument about what's going on like with right-wing propaganda isn't that there is an epistemological or, I misuse a $10 word, an, like an endemic sort of nature to information, you know, that like we have to contain Joe Rogan or something. It's more that there's this massive material problem underneath society that creates the situation where people are following Joe Rogan like a Pied Piper.

But like I said, let me get ahead of myself here. No, that's good to jump into because I was thinking about this the other day about like how do you, because these are fundamentally like reactionary people, right? They want to be trad. They are saying that these are pornography, which is like the oldest fucking excuse in the book. They still call the ALA pornographers for being against internet filtering in public libraries. They still do that. The old pornographers. Yeah.

And these were, but when you think, because I grew up in like an extremely evangelical area and an extremely evangelical family, well, Baptist family, but reactionaries are typically organized by churches, which aren't. combined with like white citizens councils, those went away in the 50s and 60s. They all just moved into the Baptist churches. Like that's where they are. They never went anywhere. Your workspace. So if you're like a cop or a soldier or whatever, that mobilizes you and just like your social groups. So like, you know, Facebook and like the knitting circle and shit like that. But these people who are getting activated seem to be different because they're like young men in their 20s. They're not particularly seeming religious. And they like want. all this trad shit, but they're being activated by like a psychology professor and a dude with

brain damage in a podcast. Yeah. It's really interesting. I think that's a really interesting point in that we're seeing reactionary ideology and conservative ideology, reassert itself in a new generation that's secular as opposed to, you know, their parents who are overtly, you know, expressing their politics through structures of like, you know, religion and what you think of when you think textbook reactionary where all this stuff came from, you know, on a historical timeline. But I think that tells you something, which is that the appeal of reactionary politics, the resentment and stuff like that that a lot of that stuff is based on is highly libidinal. It's very passive in nature. And it's something that you can arrive at

without having any of the window dressing that goes along with it. I was thinking about this recently because, like, an example for my life as a comedian, you know, me and my friends when we were young, we were in early 20s, we got into stand-up comedy and we sort of got into comedy writing and we'd sit around and just try to come up with ways to do what a joke does, you know, to elicit a response from people. It's a mysterious thing, a joke, you know, nobody really knows how it works. It's really interesting. So you're almost like, you know, just spitballing and throwing things.

things around a room and trying to come up with with ideas on like a technical level that evokes some kind of response from people. And what's crazy is like, you know, you kind of go through the all these different phases of, I'm going to be a one lighter guy. I don't want to be an absurdist. I'm going to be like a storyteller or whatever, right? And then eventually, you know, I'm friends with somebody who is now very influential as like a reactionary comedian. And I remember when we were young, this person I mean, he went away for a little while. He moved back to his hometown. He sort of came back to Austin where I was living. And it was like he had like discovered like a new molecule or something. He was like, you know, explaining this sort of thing that he had stumbled upon somewhere in his,

you know, research in the comedy laboratory, which was, and we didn't have a word for it then, but now it's very clearly like this anti-woke stuff that is fueling the, the whole like Rogan sphere. And he was kind of like, you know, the first person I knew that was like, because we were all like liberals essentially, you know, uh, you know, I sure like to think to myself as having been a socialist my entire life, but you know, it's a fucking journey, you know, but like we were liberals living in like Austin, Texas in a place that, you know, if you live there and you're an artistic person, you think of yourself as liberal and stuff. So all, all we were doing is comics is kind of making fun of the hayseeds and hicks and stuff around the rest of Texas. But, you know, if you live there. And you know, this guy showed up one day with this new idea. It was like, did you know you can kind of make fun of liberals, you know, like all of this stuff that kind of was forbidden to criticize.

If you make fun of it, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, because there was this underlying resentment of, you know,

college campus culture and people being, um, you know, sort of like, uh, overly performatively woke and stuff and like, um, you know,

this stuff that like was kind of hanging in the air. And when that happened, I remember thinking like, well, like, now looking back at it, I'm like, that person stumbled upon this, this thing, the way like a focus group would stumble upon. Like, you know, what, what is going to get a rise out of the audience or the market or whatever? You didn't get it from the church. You didn't get it from, you know, like actually joining some sort of like white supremacist. this hate group or whatever, he stumbled upon it, which I think is kind of by and large what's happening to all of these secular reactionaries.

Because the kind of insane phenomenon with reactionaries right now of like the Joe Rogan type, like these young internet guys, is that they don't think of themselves as white supremacists or reactionaries or anything. They're under this sort of massive like, you know, collective like amnesia or something about what they're doing. But they're very much embodying all this stuff. But because it's not directly correlated with like the church and stuff, it's kind of given them license to go even farther with it because it's not like,

it's like, a lot of them identify as like apolitical and stuff like that. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. No, it's why it took me so long to like realize what was bothering me about like, why I kept saying like the Joe Roganification? I'm like, why am I saying this? But I was trying to work out that traditional.

reactionary versus like these are gamers. Like, why the fuck are these people organizing around Jungian analysis and clean your room and eating beef till you go into a fucking serotonin storm? Video, I can't fucking do his voice. I was like, I'm going to do fucking Kermit Peterson that I can't. Yeah, I mean, I think that like, it's very telling that this stuff speaks to these people. And it's very telling of like the massive like failure of the modern world. You know, I'm like a lost future hontology sort of person, you know.

I kind of think that we're living on a timeline where we should have had the big communist revolution and we didn't. So we're living in like this absurd world where, you know, because we didn't, when you don't do something that you were supposed to do, it always sort of comes back. Your dirty laundry always starts to creep back into your life, you know. And with the fact that conservatism is like reasserted itself in this way, I think that it proves that that is a, that is an outcome of the fact that we have materially fucked ourselves in the way that we organize society. And it's unavoidable. And you can't just like, you can't just put up a bunch of signs that say no Nazis, right? Because eventually Nazis will just reform as a result of the material base of society. Nazis do not interact.

Yeah. Yeah, like, this is something, especially, like, in librarianship, we talk about a lot. Like, a lot of people are like, oh, if we just have, like, media literacy and information literacy, then people will be able to tell, like, what's propaganda or, like, how to, you know, do whatever. And it's like, I look at the way that, like, Q and on or even, like, the Joe Rogan types and the, you know, all of that folks. Sorry, my, like, Gabba Pitton's kicking in. sometimes it makes me drowsy and sometimes it doesn't. And it's like rainy and gross.

I'm like, oh, I should take a nap now. Right. Okay. And so then I look at the way that these people approach finding information and looking at information and analyzing it and being like, is this good or not. And it's the same techniques that librarians do like for information literacy. When they go into your class for library day or whatever,

like it's like the same technique. And it's sort of how, like, you know, we were saying, like, all of these, like, 20-year-old gamers who maybe came out of evangelical areas but are secular now. It's like, or, like, the people who were maybe raised in, like, religious areas and maybe were, like, I was fucking, like, an idiot conservative as a kid, too, because I'm from, like, rural southern Illinois, right? Like, that's all my friends were doing it. And I was like, okay, this makes sense. Right. But then, like, you discover, like, oh, this is a better system. But if, like, the underlying sort of code that you live by doesn't change, it doesn't matter what, you know, if you put socialism on top of it or if you put information literacy on top of it.

But if, like, the underlying, like, if you don't have an ideology or if you're not changing that, like, way of living that you were under a certain way, like, it's not, like, just putting information literacy on something isn't going to fix it. Yeah. Just putting socialism on something isn't going to fix it. It's just wrapping paper around the box full of shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's like how all of the like fucking internet atheists are like, you know, like tradcast like flat earthers now. Yeah.

It's kind of like how like I haven't thinking a lot lately about the specific milieu that I run in and the things that I'm very disenchanted with about it. And like I have a lot of people that, um, in my reply. and stuff that I think identify as socialists don't understand that they're actually ideologically reactionaries who just voted for Bernie in the last couple of elections. And like, if you don't reshape that core ideology that you're living with, then no amount of window dressing is really going to change the way you're actually thinking about stuff. Yeah, it's like the like sort of conservative streak that's happening among like, I mean, there's always been conservative streaks and like puritanical streaks and like queer people like it's not a new thing but you get all of these

people who like you know grew up around certain you know ideologies or whatnot just because you slap queerness on top of it and just because you slap like socialism on top of it you still get these like puritanical people who are like saying that like seeing a boob in a movie is is bad or something and it's like the same exact fucking arguments that like the like conservative people who are banning books like literally legally now are using that like if you read something and it's got fucking in it, then it's going to make you like a pervert. They use consent language. That's what the puritans do.

Yes. Oh God. I fucking hate consent language. Like, it's just seeing someone walk their like pup submissive in a grocery store is not violating consent. People like God. Yeah. People are just weird.

Yeah, they are. But what you're talking about with the information literacy as, because again, I wrote this episode before fucking Ukraine happened and the liberal death drive kicked in. All these people who were during the Trump era saying like, oh, you got to check your sources. You've got to like not fall for propaganda. And then they're all just sending like fucking guns to the Azov battalion like all and money. And just they've, when we were talking to Ben a couple weeks back and we, I just threw the book banning question at him out of nowhere. I still feel a little bit bad about.

but he just said, look, it's all subjective. You can still say, like, we don't want books about Nazis in a circulating collection, but you can just say being queer is cool and it's fine, and it's, that's the argument is it's a good thing. Like affirmation, like affirming not defending was his sort of framework for it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, liberalism is really bad at defending, like, because it's a universalizing process. So it says, like, oh, you have to allow everything into the collection.

you can't just be like, no, this is bad and this is good and it's subjective and it's always going to be subjective. And like, that's how you build communities, right? You just have a consensus about like what you think is okay. Yeah. That's really interesting that that goes against liberal ideology, but you're totally right because like this is like way of an oversimplification. But I was thinking about ideology the other day and I was like, if I had to explain this on a really base level,

I might tell someone like reactionaries want to return to the past, socialist, want to move forward and liberals like don't want to do anything kind of like they want everything to stay the same and like think about that tweet a lot from you know years ago that everyone would make fun of on Twitter where some some some lady was like it's the year you know 20 24 and president Hillary Clinton has just passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill and yada yada yada and like leftists are making fun of it because we're because like in your wildest fantasies you're still doing bipartisan stuff, you know, like you don't actually have an agenda and you don't think things are, some things are good and some things are bad, you know? It's kind of profound

and bizarre. But I, so like another thing that's going on with this question about banning books from libraries and stuff like that and then liberals not being able to defend it is that like, I think that liberals really believe in objectivity, which is a thing that isn't real. And like, your critique just now of like, oh, they, you know, they talk about fact checking all the time, and yet they still are sending money to the Azov Battalion in the Ukraine. Well, I mean, what's going on there is that fact checking is asking our corporate overlords what's right and wrong. Not you can't, I mean, you can't ask God, you know, to fact check something. You're asking a system that you live in, which is owned by corporate interests and has its agenda. So, I mean, I think those people did fact.

check. And that's the answer they got is that you should send money to Nazis in Ukraine because on some level, that's if you just believe everyone with a position of authority and everyone who says they're an expert in something to be giving you information that you shouldn't then examine uncritically, you're going to naturally move in the direction that corporate media and interests want you to move, you know? They believe truth is truth and fact is fact and it doesn't matter where it's coming from. It's a fact is a fact you can't change it. But in reality, in actuality, like, truth can be shaped. Facts can be shaped. Reality can be shaped by where it's coming from. Their reality is being shaped by corporate interest. And so the facts and the truth they get out of

that are going to be different than the facts and truth that would be coming out of a different, you know, system. Yeah. I'm reading manufacturing consent right now. So I have like a hyper focus in my brain on this because all he does is go through like examples of like when someone's murdered in a country that's a client state of the United States, it's treated like this in the media. And when someone's murdered in a country that is opposed to the United States, it's treated like this. So you get to look at these same stories spun all these different ways because of, you know, because of corporate interests and stuff like that.

And you realize like that objectivity is not really something that you can. hang your hat on, you know, like all information is being shaped very cleverly, you know. So like the question of what do we put in a library, you do have to go, I like queer people. I think that they should exist and have stuff in the library. You can't just go freedom of speech, you know, because that doesn't ever actually redound to like a universal thing that makes everyone safe. It's like librarians are making those collection decisions anyway and people don't completely. complain about them until it's about one of these like hot button like areas. But otherwise like librarians make collection decisions all the time and people ignore it until it is an unavoidable

thing they have to face. Yeah, that's interesting. You go into a library and there's like seven books on like pottery or something and you don't think about the fact that someone chose those. You think this is an outcome of what a library is, which is these must be the seven best books, you know, but all this stuff is shaped by like human mans, you know? Yeah. Callan the other night really was reminding me of you, Jake. And she weeded Peter Thiel's book. And she just posted a picture of the book and said, not in my library.

It's like, this is going into garbage. Yeah. And the right wingers found her. And she just started, like, just spent all Friday afternoon just reblogging them and laughing at them and yelling at them. Nice. She was like, because he's a crypto-fascist. Like, why, and this book is shit, and I'm getting rid of it.

Yeah. Didn't she have to, like, go on? Didn't she have to, like, lock her account for a bit? Because they were, like, doxing her and, like, the library she works at and stuff. Yeah, it wouldn't be hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's funny because when right wing people make stands like that, they always cry, you know, freedom of speech. Like, you have to include this because of freedom of speech. But it's just an incredibly inconsistent idea because, well, then now you also want to censor all this other stuff. So, you know, what we should all just get. I think I really as a comic think we should all drop the pretense that any of us have the interest in mind of this thing called freedom of speech because it's just indefinable and it's just like a way to back up you saying that you actually like something or don't like something, you know? Yeah, it's kind of like how there's the definition of pornography that these reactionary book banners are using are not at all the legal

or, you know, definition. Like, this may be kind of off topic, but one of the books is genderqueer. I forget the author's name, but it's a graphic novel and it's a memoir. So the author goes through, like, some of the sexual experiences they had growing up and figuring out, like, you know, they're non-binary. And that's what people are like, oh, it's pornographic because it's a graphic novel. when like graphic novels have always been graphic. Like have you read Brian von Saga at all? Like, you know, that's not the, that's not the one that's getting banned that has, you know,

explicit interspecies alien sex. And it's the one that's, yeah, that shows like ancient Greek pottery with penises on it, you know, so. Yeah, or like open up any Christian, you know, illustrated. thing and the first good thing you're going to see is Adam and Eve naked and you're like, is this porn? No, because it's educational or whatever, you know. Sadie just reminded me.

So the one book challenge that I linked to because everyone was kind of sharing this around a while back and they're like, oh, this is a really good response where, but I have a lot of problems with this response is that the book got. So first thing, the lady like hand wrote a complaint, which means she's like 90. And she was like, oh, I saw it on Facebook. And that's why I have to, I set this in. So it's like the busybody is like getting the work done. There's still like the traditional people.

But I still feel like this astro-turfing of like why genderqueer? Like why this book right now when everything else is just like off the rails in terms of discourse. So it's like it's me me being these things. And they kind of like just come and go. But also we're seeing all the legislative process like the don't say gay bill in Florida and all these Texas style abortion ban bills. that are just like, oh, yeah, just sue anyone for $10,000 at any time. But the director said, well, genderqueer is a memoir, so it's objective. That was the one time that is objective in it.

And I was like, okay, it's not objective. It could still be pornographic if it's a memoir. Mine certainly will be. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, your forthcoming graphic novel. That would be fucking really funny. Yeah, no, you have to keep it in the back of the library. the adult section

you got to go past the beads into the adult section of the library there's like dildos on we have talked to you rent them out they're for the community yeah that actually was some discourse at one point

on library Twitter which library Twitter is its own fucking thing but like there was like a discussion about like whether sex toys should be lent out or something or like there was like a bookstore that was selling sex toys and people like ew like oh I'm like

fuck off. Like, hell yeah, rent a loan out sex stories. That'd be awesome. That's wild. You guys are freaks. I love it. Yeah.

No, yeah, we did have the archivist from the leather archives come on. And we asked what was their favorite thing? And they were like, oh, it's like this four-foot dildo we have.

And like all the stuff has like cum stains on it. Yeah. Yeah. How to preserve cum stains was a, what blew my mind. You can hear me just like learning, like the whole gears in my head changing. Do we wash this off or not?

Exactly. To talk about porn in libraries and like the Kinsey Library. Yeah, Bree's great. Nice. But the other thing this director was saying was this book won all these awards. And I feel like that is a little more subjective, which is good. I really want people to do what Callan did and just go, fuck you, this book sucks. And just like, you know, just start doing what Jake does on Twitter every day.

Just wake up and choose violence and just be like, I'm going to piss off every single person. What else is starting to do about it? Like weaponized trolling to your advantage, right? Like, a troll with a purpose. Totally. I think most trolls have a purpose. It's just whether or not it's... Not a good one.

Yeah, well, whether or not it's focused on a broader context or just their focus is just getting off. Yeah. Trolls are very chaotic in nature. But yeah, you got my ammo. I'm a troll for good. I think of myself as a reformed edge lord a lot of the time. Well, it reminds me of like, so I read this book about like analyzing Oscar Wilde's work and life through like an anarchist lens. And so obviously it had to talk about like some like history of anarchism and especially around, you know, that time.

And one of the points it made was that like, you know, with like the bombings and then how the government would sort of, either plant bombs or like overblow the damage that had been done or like when people would maybe like accidentally die in bombings or something and like some of the sort of strains of anarchist actions started realizing like the symbolic nature of it all and they're like wait a minute like all of the this like wasn't fascism yet but um like all of this like authoritarian bullshit it's all so absurd and so our action against it should show how absurd it is. And so that's when they started, like, you know, bombing, like, statues and shit and, like, not even the government. It was just, like, statues. People are like, what good does this do? And they're, like, like, sort of, like, highlight, like, this, like, absurdist strain of anarchism where it's like, no, show how, you know, break down the pageantry. Show how fucking stupid and absurd and ridiculous it is. Make fun of it. Yeah, totally. There's a question in the notes. I was reading the notes before we started, and you kind of reminded me of something in it.

You're like the only guest who ever has. I like this stuff. But there is a question about the role of comedy. And where is it specifically? It's under comedy discourse. I kept changing the notes around. Here we go. How is comedy traditionally dealt with censorship and pushback from social conservatives, right? This is a really interesting question to me because, you know, I think at various times of my life, I've been like a liberal who thought that comedy could change the world, you know, and I've also been a vulgar materialist who thought that art is only ever an outcome of

society and not something that influences it. And I think I've kind of come to synthesize these two ideas recently. and because that's like what my podcast Why You Mad was kind of about for a while. Me and Louisa would argue about that all the time because she was kind of like a, you know, art is like a weapon person. And I was kind of a person who was like, no, it's, you know, it's just is, which is fine. But I really like, I really been thinking about this thing that Louisa tweeted the other day. There's a memes you found.

And it's like that thing where there's brackets on a joint. So it's telling you while you're smoking the joint, the various ideas that you're talking about before you get higher and higher and higher. And it's, it was that, it said, uh, environmentalism without like social justice is just, uh, gardening or something is what she said. And then the second thing it says, so that's the first point you make, which is, I think, probably a pretty good point. But the second one is art without justice is just decoration. And I think it's just a really good point because it implies that art can be a weapon. But it isn't always. And like this thing you're describing with anarchists saying we've figured out a way to,

you know, to use like a visual spectacle to try to affect what's going on with this rising authoritarianism. It's a really good example of like one of the few times, you know, you can say, yeah, that actually had like a weaponization and a point to it. But it isn't always. You know, a lot of times when you're just doing something crazy like that you're just banksy or whatever,

you know, you're just kind of making interesting looking pictures. whatever. And in comedy, you know, it's funny because like so many people in the world of stand up and the history of it think of themselves as the person changing things, but so few actually are. But I would argue that there have been a few and that every generation kind of has one, you know, and so like you've got like Lenny Bruce, you know, back in the day sticking it to the fucking cops, you know, that was actually like, that was a real material like statement. That changed people's minds about shit, you know, and he was fighting against like, you know, this cultural

out ideas. I mean, he's funny against the stuff that we're talking about here. Conservatives, they're afraid of, you know, sex and stuff like that. And, uh, and I think he, you know, he actually did a lot. But whenever you have like, whenever somebody like really changes an art form, like really does something like that with it, material, whenever they actually are the weapon, what follows is a wave of imitators who do something that's very popular in comedy, because comedy is a thing that, you know, it's intrinsically tied to capitalism. You're an entrepreneur when you do it. You want to make the best out of your career. You want to make money and you want to survive, but you also want to portray yourself as Lenny, right? So what you do is you imitate him by doing

what he already did, but you're just also doing it. So you appear to be fighting something, but it's like if he moved the battle lines, like you're fighting behind the battle lines. You're fighting a paper tiger that doesn't actually, you know, comedians often are very performative about their fights that they're fighting, but most of them are terrified to fight anything outside of the parameters of what actually would, you know, affect anything because as soon as you go outside of those parameters, you're now working against your own self-interest. And so you're going to stop making money and stuff like that and like hurt your career. So like with liberals, you know, you've got people that are just sort of like liberal comedians are just vaguely fighting racism and

sexism at all times. But if, in ways that don't affect anything. Because the only way to affect those sorts of institutional problems as a comedian would be to tell Lord Michaels to suck your dick or whatever or like fight your actual boss and fight the people that control all that stuff within your industry. But no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. That's too far. Somebody else can do that.

I just want to make a vague statement, right? And then with conservatives, you get this weird shit where they think that they're fighting, whatever the fuck they think they're fighting. They've got a million, you know, stand-ins that they sort of prop up here and there to say they're fighting the woke mob or whatever the fuck. But, you know, even those people, like I don't actually really like to do anything, you know, it's all very performative. So, like, I think, yeah, I think art, I think, I think, I think comedians can fight against this sort of stuff, but I think that you're going to be hard pressed to find somebody to actually go down there and

stick it to the, you know, profound conservative influences in any way that's meaningful. Because, you know, you'll have comedians that are like, I mean, when I lived in Texas, I was a lot more of just like a, like somebody who now I think in the modern world and in New York where I live looks like just like a corny atheist or whatever, but I lived inside the fucking Bible belt. So I was like very, you know, I like to make fun of Christians a lot and stuff.

But like, you know, I noticed that like you could do, like you can, you could fight all that stuff with something like comedy. And yet you still work. for like Lauren Michaels or a comedy club owner who is like, you know, materially connected to the state in a way that funds all this horrible shit. Everyone's boss is way more conservative in comedy than the comedians. It's almost a situation where like the people that own all this stuff like will hire

comedians because they know that the things that they're saying kind of won't actually challenge any of these ideas, you know? So they just let you go play or whatever. Yeah, that like, they have two points in response to that. The first is, so anytime like book bans and stuff happen, the sort of like one of the defenses that librarians like to come like bring forward is like what the definition of censorship is. And I know that's going around like right now as well because of like the self censorship thing that some college student was talking about, which I think self censorship can definitely happen. And what you're talking about like I think can be a weird like form. of it. Like, people are, like, they might even believe a certain way, we're like, but I need money, and this is the way that I make money. And so I can't do the thing that would cause me to not make

money anymore. And, like, so it's not like a direct state censorship, but they realize there will be consequences from a capitalist system if they do something. And so it's not like, it's illegal or anything, but it's still affecting the decisions that they make. And is that censorship or not. It's like how it's like is weeding like books censorship or not kind of thing. It's, you know, under a capitalist system, the choices that we make about, you know, how we express our beliefs, especially in our careers. Yeah. I think kind of mess with the definition. And then the- Well, not to interrupt you. I just want to say something about that real quick. Yeah, I'm going to think of my second point. Like I said, I'm reading Chomsky right now. And that, that self-censorship thing the other day or that woman who, that lady like, um,

you know, she works for a think tank. Like, it's funny. It's very clearly Coke Brothers money, you know, just trying to fuel the anti-campus culture stuff all over again. And, um, this happens every few months on the internet. Uh, nothing new. But I, I really was, I like that she used the word self-censorship because, um, like I said, I'm reading Chomsky right now and like, he uses the word self-censorship to describe everything you just described. So what's funny about that is it. Yeah, like that interview guy or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Like that, yeah, that meme. Um, self-sensorship. So a lot of people were dunking on that person and saying, oh, self-censorship isn't real, right? But actually, I think more what's happening is that says self-censorship is real.

It's just that she was misusing it because she was trying to make a case that everything you just described and everything Chomsky talks about actually is happening to people who are trying to forward the corporate interest, which is like a completely inside out interpretation of it. But that's what the reactionary culture war, hysteria about cancel culture, like, is, is this idea, they've taken all of the language of, like, Chomsky and all this analysis and posed this absurd argument that it's like, it, though, actually all of these forces are working against, like, the boss, like the, me trying to be the boss, you know, corporate interests. So you were talking about how, like, you know, people who are like, you know, work for, like, Lauren Michaels or any of these. comedy clubs and stuff and how they might be putting on a sort of radicalist

kind of show where they're like sticking it to the man yeah but they're actually not doing anything and it's like related I think to that concept of the thing is like called like small theater or like theater of the or like bourgeois theater like Hamilton

right like Hamilton's like yeah we're gonna like I'm not you know I mean Hamilton sucks but like like, if people like Hamilton, fine like Hamilton. I don't give a shit. There's like a good song in there, here and there. But it's sort of like that or rent or whatever.

Like Lindsay Ellis has a video about this about white rent is so bad, where it's like it poses as it's like, yeah, fuck the system. Love you, Boem, you know, I'm not thrown away my shot. But then it's like, if it was actually doing anything, it wouldn't have made it on Broadway. Right. Because like the way that you get on Broadway is you have to have people give you a lot of lot, a lot, a lot of money. And then like, you know, President Obama is going to sit in the front seat to come see you. And if you're actually doing anything, that wouldn't fucking happen. Like, yeah, it has to like be just edgy enough, but then not actually offend the sensibilities of the people of capital. And like, I feel like the way you were describing the comedy is exactly that. Or like, when, librarians are like, yeah, we're in like the last passions of democracy, which sometimes we have been pretty badass. I will not lie. But a lot of the times now, it's like if we were actually doing anything, I don't know, like, you know, we'd stop getting funding, which happens.

Like, we know what happens when we actually try to do any material, like anything material against the state or whatever. Totally. That just reminds me of, I forget where I saw it, but the idea that if people tried to create public libraries now, there was no way in hell. Conservatives would allow that because it's too socialist. Oh, yeah. And I've always thought about, kind of always thought about that, like, when are the conservatives finally going to come for libraries? Like, we've been able to exist for too long, even as liberal institutions, for conservatives

not to, like, figure out that, you know, we're the last bastions of democracy or whatever and not come for us. So I'm kind of wondering if like this is- We are agents of the state still. Yeah, exactly. So like that, I feel like that even makes us a better target because then they can work within the bureaucracy of libraries. I mean, like with like the internet filters on computers and public libraries, like, you know, the ALA has like come out and opposed those. And it's like, no, this is against our core values as librarians.

But, you know, you still have to. or you won't get money from like your board or the city or whatever if you don't put these internet filters on. It's even better than that. It's a federal thing. It's a federal thing. It's a federal thing. Yeah.

It's called e-rate and basically. Oh, you have to be a cop and do that. Is that your job saying? Yeah. Because you have to be E-rate compliant to get the federal discount on pretty much all of your telecommunications costs. So like we just bought like $50,000 worth. of networking equipment switches and stuff and are actually paying like, I don't know, not 15,000,

but like 70% of it, like we get back from the E-Rate program. And that's a huge, huge influence on library budgets, but to be able to qualify it, we have to prove that we have a CEPA compliant filter on our public internet. So the ALA saying, oh, yeah, we're against us now. Like, that's great, but that's useless unless you're actually trying to change the way that libraries get budget or like, you know, funded through their telecommunications costs, because that's just, at least in our budget, one of the biggest things, biggest slices beyond, like, just paying people to be there is all of our telecommunications costs and our IT budget and

stuff. It's gigantic. I mean, because that's one of the main reasons people still use the library is because sometimes it's the only computer people have access to that's like not their phone. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I used to do that when I was like, really, broke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, don't get me started on E-Rate. I'll go on too long.

We should do a whole episode about, like, how E-Rate came about because I really am interested in that. But, yeah, like, Jay, you said that sticking it to the man theater, like, I saw a tweet today that, like, the Democrats sent cookies to Republicans who took money from the American rescue plan because they're celebrating it. It's one-year anniversary. Wow. And, like, that's so lame.

It does nothing. But like, it's like you were saying, like using comedy that just sort of mimics doing something, but doesn't actually do anything. Yeah. And, yeah, with the self-censorship, like, ALA, I've been thinking a lot about it because, you know, we had Emily on. She's running for president of ALA. And, you know, we talked about, like, the institutions. And I still have all this, this anarchist angst inside me that's like, institutions are just from the get-go saying, we're going to compromise on this. Like, we're going to, like, work with whoever we have to work with.

And so, like, you're already losing, like, half the battle by just even participating sometimes. So it drives me, she made good points about, like, if you want to wield the power of a big organization, that's how you do it. But we also see, like, that happens, like, if I can look at the Democrats. Like, what anyone with any hope just gets their soul crushed out of them. Yeah, like, Emily's argument, especially with the ALA, we're like, if you organize an formal union, is that, like, it's not just like, especially. like organizations, it's like not this like nebulous, the ALA as if it's like some like fucking

poltergeist or something. It's like, no, it's the members. It's us. And like if we want to change it, we can. And I'm like, yeah, but there's still like a, you know, person who gets paid to be the director of ALA. Like there's the president, but then there's the director of ALA and like the corporate office in Chicago and stuff. And so like I still am, if I were a member of ALA, I would be voting for her because I do agree with a lot of the points that she made. But it's like, but what do we do about that corporate office who like still controls things, right? Like that's where I think that line about like, we are the members, we change how things work. I think that's maybe where that bumps up against a problem.

Thank you still for coming on, Emily, if you're listening. It's just I thought about it a lot because I took your point seriously. Yes, no, like I agree with her on a lot of things. Yeah. We're at an hour. So I was trying to get like wrapping up on the last question. So, Jake, I want to get your take on, like, what, how do you deal with this sort of, is this a new type of reaction that we're seeing from the internet or is it just the same old shit? You've kind of already talked about. And also, like, what do we do about this kind of? What's your take? Having been flung into the deep end of librarianship thrown into our discourse world.

We like our action-oriented final question. Yeah. Well, there's a lot going on. here. I really enjoyed your doc, so I'm going to try to dip into some things that came up on it, because I don't want to leave any of this stuff behind. But like, as far as question number one, right, is this a new thing? Is this a new thing? The secular reactionary thing, I think it's a new version of an old thing. It's like neo-reactionaryism or something, you know? because we're living in a new world where everything is like, this isn't the word,

but it's just stuck in my brain because I've been reading a lot of Mark Fisher and stuff lately. It's like postmodern or something. Something in the new world we live in is like profoundly amnesiacish. I don't know the adjective for amnesia, but it's like it's written with amnesia. And so we're embodying a lot of a lot of ideologies that in the old world, they were explainable and directly related to history. Now we have people that have ideology that they don't know where it came from, you know, but they still have it. And that's really interesting. And everyone's kind of rudderless and everyone's kind of aimless, but these things still kind of embody themselves in people's like politics and stuff like that.

And so, like, I think that, I guess to me, I look at that and I go, like, the answer is socialism. Like, you have to go back. You have to go back to, you know, a time and a place where, like, we actually looked at society and, and, you know, you have to read Marx and stuff like that. And you have to, like, you know, you can't skip past all this stuff. it's weird because like people kind of believe that like capitalism is going to get us to a utopia. You know, tech is going to solve all these problems and stuff. And like a lot of these problems are going to go away. And I just feel very much like somebody who hasn't done their laundry.

Like I'm like, these problems don't just go away if you ignore them, you know? Things are probably going to descend into ultra stratification, fascism in so many ways. and like a really dark dystopian future. I think if we don't collectively eat our vegetables, I don't even know if this is possible. I'm kind of a doomer, you know? I think I got too excited about Bernie and then he didn't win. And now I'm like, I don't know what's going to, you know,

solve a lot of this stuff. But I think that that's where that stuff is coming from. And what you can do about it, I mean, that's the million dollar question. I, you know, I think it's good that, there's a resurgence of an interest in left politics and people are like organizing in different ways and people are thinking from the point of view of anarchists or communists or whatever.

I do a lot of stuff individually because of the path I've chosen in life and because of, you know, the nature of being an artist. So one thing I think that I can impart on people is like you ask this question in the doc about advice from me about confronting people, right? being confrontational. If you are someone who works within a system like libraries, you know, and you find yourself in the position of being somebody who has a thing that they want to say and a change that they want to make, but it goes against your, like, self-preservation instinct.

You know, you're positioning and your own interests. And you find yourself in the position of having to be the person. that pushes the battle lines forward like that, I find myself in that position in comedy all the time, and I'm kind of just turned it into my thing at this point. But the advice I would give to people is by nature of being in a system, you have a voice in your head that embodies all of the pressure going against you from other people in the system.

And that voice is trying to make you doubt yourself. And if you like, if I only hang out with other comedians, that voice gets really loud. And I start to really feel people forming into a form of conscious in my brain and going like, don't do this because you'll lose jobs. And don't do this because it rocks the boat. And it'll make people fight you. It'll make people angry you and stuff like that. But the reason that voice is so loud is because I'm listening to like, like, exclusively people who have those interests, right?

So something I've noticed is like if I talk to people outside of the the system that I'm in, opposite happens a lot of the times. Like people will go like, yeah, Joe Rogan's an asshole, right? Doesn't everyone in comedy talk about it?

And then I go, no, it's crazy. Not everyone talks about it because of this, all this stuff that embodies that fucking doubting voice in my head. So like, the other day I was feeling like really like I was like, I've put too much pressure in my shoulders and I was like kind of dreading,

doing a thing that was kind of like this. and I had a conversation with a friend of mine who's a musician who's not in comedy at all, really. And just talking to that person and hearing their perspective shook a lot of the, you know, the voice out of my head. And I was like, right, right, right. Because I'm a human being. I'm a, you know, fallible, you know, tangible things. So like this is part of the vessel of being a human being. And I noticed, I just noticed this about.

other comedians who every once in a while I meet a comedian who I think is like actually sane and I'm like how'd you do that? And then I talk to them and it's because they have a bunch of friends outside of the world of comedy and they haven't lost themselves in the cult of the thing or whatever. I have no idea if this translates to what it's like to be a librarian and if there's a subculture that's suffocating and stuff like that. Library Twitter is the worst. Everything is like this, right? But yeah, you know, that's, to me, that's really what's helped me stick to my guns and trust my gut and not let, you know, the cop inside my head boss me around, you know. That reminds me of a keynote that I saw years and years ago of a woman who, I forget exactly what organization she worked with in the Bay Area. I don't remember exactly, but she said that as part of being a part of the organization, you had to do your spiritual work elsewhere. So you weren't supposed to look for validation of your being inside the work that you were doing with this group. And it was basically a form of self-preservation for the group. So people hopefully wouldn't form that kind of cultish identity thing. I don't know. I still think about it sometimes, even though it was years and years ago,

and I don't even remember what organization she worked for. No, I think that's really wise because you see the opposite of that in groups that are very clearly like parasitic and very clearly don't have the interests of their members in heart. Like, for example, I just did a deep dive for one of my podcasts on the NFT, board ape, yacht club people and stuff. And it's funny because the people that are. are really lost in the sauce of that sort of stuff can't see the absurd image of themselves from the outside that we all see. And they can't see how clearly it's a pump and dump scam.

And the way that it, I think the culture perpetuates itself is this, like they have this slogan Wagmi, W-A-G-M-I, it stands for we're all going to make it. And, you know, I think people in a situation like that are suffering. from like a profound lack of getting their spiritual work done elsewhere. Their spiritual work is like centered in the we're all going to make it thing. And like the the buying into all of the most destructive and exploitive parts of the system that they're in because they've, you know, someone has cleverly rebranded those exploitive aspects of the thing as hopeful, which is like something that happens in capitalism all the time.

It's why people are conservatives. It's because they've decided to look at things that way and look at them inside out. I was raised Mormon, so I know exactly that bubble that you're talking about. Yeah. There's a term in librarianship that maybe we can export the comedy called vocational awe. And it's the kind of thing where you think that your work is really important. So therefore, you're allowing yourself to, like, get paid less or have. This is like for teachers and librarians, public service people.

And it's also like very religious in its thinking. It's like you're doing service for the world. I feel like comedians could also get in on that though and start using that. I wish other worlds would start using that term. And it also puts whatever you are in service of above criticism as well. Right. Yeah. Oh, that's really interesting.

I mean, there's a version of that in comedy, but I think it's maybe a slightly different. concept, which is that it's more that it's not that your work is so worthwhile. It's that you're going to make it to the promised land, which is the end of your career at some point. So you'll do all this unpaid work and stuff on the way there. Then again, there are people that once they've made it, they then go, you know, oh, my work is important, but they get paid. I don't know. Maybe not a one-to-one. Yeah. No, just something to think about. I just see other other fields and I'm like, yeah, I feel like you guys are missing out on this because it's a really interesting idea. But yeah, everything you're saying makes a lot of sense talking to people

outside your particular system because someone would just be like, especially libraries because we're so opaque. People are like, you know, don't you get your books for free? Like just kind of insane things. Regular people believe about libraries. And you're just like, well. My labor is invisible. People don't even know the type of work I do exists. Yeah. So, you. Yeah, it probably is, you probably could get like really good. You could have like the good version of that where people are like, well, why don't you organize in this way? Why don't you try thinking about your political movements as part of your job like in this way? So yeah, I'm going to think about that going forward, especially for the podcast of just like just in the same way that like Hawaii Mad makes everything about comedy.

Like all things are just a degenerate form of comedy. Acting degenerate form of comedy. stand up or improv degenerate form of comedy. So I'm just going to do that with like like. Really degenerate. I'm just going to do this with, with librarianship. Like like all things, it's just a degenerate form of librarianship.

Well, if that's the, but if that's like if you work in librarianship, every, I mean, you could use it as a lens to look at everything else. That's like, we always talk about the rhizome on why you met, like how everything is connected.

And like that, uh, that, you know, you, it's, We're comedy people, so it's funny because we use comedy as that. But I think you could do like a Y-U-Mad concept with literally any other subculture.

And like, because all things are sort of like embodied, you know, everywhere in very, in similar ways. And like, I just keep bringing up Chomsky because I got Chomsky on the brain or whatever. But I was reading DeLuze for the first time and reading about him and stuff and reading about the rhizome theory. Somebody brought up Chomsky and said like, Chomsky is a great example. the rhizome because he's a linguist you know he studies words and yet he's this guy who's telling you why we shouldn't invade some country and you go how does that work well all things are related to all things you know he just uses that as a starting point to get to the other thing so much of our critical theory comes from linguistic theory it's kind of like semiotics and like postmodernism

and like comes from linguistic theory like derrida and all them are like linguists and stuff Yeah, like that sort of like connection, especially with like information and metadata. That's like my whole research interest right now. I was talking with someone and I was like the advertising profile that like companies gather about us. It's like a metadata. Oh God. Y'all, what's the version like the what the catalog represents something, but it's not the real thing? I can't fucking remember.

Representation, triple. No, it starts with an ass. Oh, Sibylacrum? No. No, but like, hell yeah. Whatever, but like what a catalog record stands in for the book. And it's like, well, one does, like, like, Deleu says that like a copy, like a duplicate is the most something can be different from something else. And it's like, are the advertising data profiles that companies make about us?

What's more us, us or the data? Yeah. Bring about us and shit. And that's capitalism. Keeps me up at night. Yeah. Where on the joint does that question come up? It's like a third joint or something.

Is my advertising profile me? Yes. I mean, I love to lose. It still is so fucking good. Okay. I know you've got a hardout, Jake. So I'll give you time to go. Is there anything else you wanted to?

Well, my hard out. It's not for a while. So if there's anything else you want to get to, I'm game, man. Okay. I'm actually very curious about so, like, I mean, this might be unrelated. And Justin, you might tell me to, like, fuck off and talk about something else. But I know in, I thought we had maybe mentioned this in the idea for this episode. So library Twitter loves to fucking attack any idiot who's like, what do?

Libraries? You just have Amazon. Or, like, who gets mad about a dumpster full of books that we did. or something. Like, library Twitter loves to fucking do pile-ons, and then each individual person will make their own, like, educated, like, thread about it.

And I'm guilty of this, too. Like, Garfield, I, you know, no one is immune to propaganda, like, meme here. But, like, the way that we fight on Twitter and, like, this sort of, like,

collective mob of, like, what's the library Twitter? main character of the day. And just like, Justin, you remember like what our point, like, what, why, what we wanted Jake to address with fucking library Twitter pylons? When we were talking about library pylons, what I was saying is one day, there's going to be a pushback, like a real pushback to like dunking on someone who's like, why is the library

throwing books in the dumpster? It's like, because they're covered in mold. Like, what the fuck you think? And like, but then like a thousand people go, it's because they're covered in mold. dumbass. And then like, someone's going to, like, write a fucking New York Times article about this.

And there's going to be some kind of pushback. And I think you're going to target the wrong person or something. Or I just feel like they just started making me uncomfortable as I was watching them happen. And I see this with like, you know, like pile ons happen. People like, oh, someone released a video and then like all their fans go yell at a critic or something.

And then it makes the original person look bad. Even though they tell them not to fucking do it. Yeah. Yeah. Like this happens to contrapoints like twice a week. Like. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah.

I mean, I think about that a lot because like, uh, I think that piling on people on Twitter is a weapon. Um, I, I think it's very fashionable for people to say it's not real. Um, you know, get up. There's like a meme of that like rapper or whatever saying like, oh, cyberbullying. That's not a real thing. Just walk away from the computer or whatever. uh nobody actually believes that right everyone gets their feelings hurt when it happens to them i this

i've been watching this happen all week i've been kind of fixated on it because someone who will have done that to me will then have it done to them and then they'll say you know i can't believe anyone would do this and you know it's like it's like this um god it's just this demoralizing spectacle that we all sort of engaged in and no one ever learns anything you know but i think think that people need to, I think in the future we will look back on this and understand how real of a thing it is because a human being is an organism that is so social and has a central nervous system that is extremely intellectual and can be damaged by abstract things that it perceives and not just by sticks and stones, you know, and we're synapses literally get rewired in your brain and shit from trauma. Yeah. Like, it doesn't matter what the trauma is. Like, your brain gets rewired and shit.

Yeah. And we're going to realize, you know, when we're older, people of the first Twitter generation are going to realize how much we fucked ourselves up in this process and how we have all these scars on our brains and stuff. And, you know, we're like veterans of something. Veterans of the Posting Wars. Yeah. Oh, God. So that's why I believe that it's. that it's a weapon, but weapons can be used for good.

Like I said, I'm a reformed edge lord. I have had a good time doing this chaotically and randomly at people earlier in my life when I thought comedy was its own political agenda, which is what I think, because we live in a massively meaningless world where people don't have any material politics that are purposely kept away from them, a lot of people fall into thinking things like that, whether it's comedy or

whatever. You know, so you see people like that in the world of comedy a lot who just go, if it's funny, then it was justifiable, right? And so they just sort of spend all day on Twitter trying to come up with people to attack. And, you know, like I said, I think it's demonstrably a real attack, which is why I think, and this is where I'm going to sound a little bit more like a freaking ML or something. I enjoy the broad spectrum of left politics. I'm not a specific tendency guy. but I think that, you know, there was a kind of a good point in the whole dictatorship of the proletariat thing and like attacking the people in power to some degree and flipping things over. And with this weapon of harassing people on the internet with, you know, a comedy essentially, in my mind, I'm like, let's get the fucking politicians and stuff with this. They hate it, you know?

And I'm not saying it'll like be that effective. But I mean, these people have to be online, you know, or. they have like interns and stuff that run their accounts. But to some degree, um, you know, this, this, I don't think it's that political of a tool, but I think at least there are more worthy targets of stuff like this. And I do think it really bothers people. So like, if there's a way to orchestrate like, you know, a movement to get people to funnel this thing in the right direction, that that would be great.

Although I don't really think that is possible because that's, that's, that's Band-Aid thinking again. That's like trying to fuck with the outcomes of material politics, not the root causes. But I guess like, I don't know. I mean, I talked to Ben Burgess about this when he came on my podcast,

and his thing is like trying to get leftists to stop doing it because he thinks it makes us look bad, which I just think is like, you're an old man shaking your cane about something. Because like, it's an inevitability. You can't get people to stop doing this stuff on the internet. Like when does it, what's the difference between respectability politics and this isn't a good tactic, right?

Yeah. Well, I think he would, I think he thinks of himself as talking about tactics when I think he's actually talking about respectability politics. But I also just think that like, you know, you can't like, for the time being, just telling people to change the way they conduct their behavior online isn't actually going to do. anything. But changing the base ideology inside of people will. And that's why you have to, that's what you have to purvey, you know, that's what you have to propagandize. And that happens with organizing and maybe to some extent with propaganda, maybe to some extent with art, art can be a part of it, you know, and then also with like real material change, which is always the goal, but the question is how the fuck to get it done, you know?

Which I, listen, I'm a comedian. I don't know. You know? Yeah. No, it makes sense as a tactic because, like, we still have like old tact, like anarchist tactics that have been going on forever, like phone zaps and, you know, just like even DDoS attacks, you know, I mean, obviously those are used by lots of different political groups. But like, it's the same principle.

You tie up the lines to the point that like they can't do any other. work. That's kind of the problem with like senators having all these aids is like, you know, there's just some kid who's a law student who is just like reading the mail where you tell like a senator to suck your dick. And then he goes, okay, cool. And he just throws in a pile. And it's just like, you know, it doesn't really get to them. So I say one, hand letter, hand deliver your letters to buy a gun and see if any one of us can get lucky. I think like that's about it. Well, I will say this. I, about the culture of Pileod people on Twitter.

If you do it in the right way, I think, it helps with the propaganda, I think, because it shows people, when you quote tweet someone, you're putting them on display and you're fucking taking them down. And you're showing a lot of people, here's why I think this person's wrong about what they're saying. I think it's bad that we do this to people about their opinions on movies and

television and, you know, weird minutia and stuff like that. But I think that if we kind of developed a culture of, you know, showing people critiques and stuff and exposing things that are wrong with messaging coming out of politicians, that actually does help, like, kind of crack the ideological thing that's going on. Because, I mean, you did see, like, consciousness raiser. Yeah. And you did, like, as much as I think the online left is a fucking bunch of assholes and needs to get their shit together. It is devolving into debased reactionary bullshit. I mean,

you know, a lot of liberals became leftists through 2016 in podcasts and stuff like that. And, you know, I mean, there's a joke on Twitter I saw one time as I got on here to promote my cookbook and now I'm a communist for some reason, you know, and like I don't, I don't think it doesn't do anything, you know? No, that's, that is a good point. I mean, that's one of the reasons. And also something else you said. I think when you were on, I want to say it was Mishka's podcast, where there's his first episode you were on. And you said something really interesting, you just said like a podcast is like a garden. Yeah. Because one of the reasons I started this was one, pandemic was driving my brain crazy. I needed something to do with people on a regular basis,

but also like the underlying ideology of librarianship is liberalism. And that's kind of a problem if you want to do any kind of consciousness raising. So the whole point is like, this is explicitly a leftist project. But it also helps me get my thoughts together. Like this episode couldn't have happened if we hadn't done all those other episodes where we've talked about like why liberalism is not a good basis for librarianship or like, you know, why it can't really challenge bands on like it can't sustain itself to challenges. So.

Yeah. How, I mean, you've been doing this a lot longer. How do you feel like actually doing it has been. for you in terms of crafting your thoughts? In terms of crafting my thoughts, I mean, well, that's why I called it a garden, you know, because like what I was referring to, what I said that is that there are two theories in like fiction writing. I can't remember the other, the name for the other one.

I took away the meat of this argument. I forgot all the details. But like the, what I was reading about the. this was that some writers start with like an ending in mind and then work their way toward it. And what you get out of that method are these, you know, really great like mystery stories and stuff like that or like, I don't know, I just watched Black Swan. It has kind of a twist ending. And I was like, I bet they came up with this first and then wrote their way toward it. And that's, that's one way to think, you know, and there's nothing wrong with it. I think it's

probably a great tool. But the other method is called the Gardner method or whatever. and George R.R. Martin said that this is how he writes, which is that he creates like characters and settings and stuff like that. In the beginning, no end in mind. Just like sort of like while he's writing watches them do stuff, you know, and grow and like nurtures and tends to them. And that's why that story, I mean, it's like this long, you know, sort of sprawling.

Like it does feel like a garden. It feels like vines that are moving and intertangling with each other and stuff like that. And that's very much the way I think. And, you know, podcasts are like hundreds of hours of like, you know, you just sort of like throwing ideas around and stuff like that. So I think that people, I think that podcast is very conducive to the Gardner ideology or the Gardner, gardener method of looking at things. Whereas I think people that are, you know, the other type who have like an end goal in mind, well, the end goal is usually money or something like that. So they quit, right? because you have to have a lot of patience to do a thing and not really know,

not really think about like why you're doing it. Just, you know, just have a thing you do every week that sort of like, um, there's a place to, you know, to go and to have no expectations and or anything like that. You can have a bad episode. No one really cares. You know, people really like like the podcasts that they get into. They develop sort of a relationship with it and like, you know, They'll be very forgiving.

You know, you can make mistakes and stuff like that. And to me, that's like, that's really, um, fertile ground for like ideas and stuff. And it's also a performance, which, you know, affects it in certain ways and gets, you know, gets you something out of it and gets solicit or something out of it. And, uh, I think that I, I certainly think that that's helped with, I mean, it's helped my shows become what they are. And I think it'll, it'll affect your show, but also helps. you like I started PDA when I was broke and working and I wanted to read more theory and history

and stuff and was like well I do not have the discipline to read constantly I have all this ADHD and stuff I have a lot of shit to do I work all day I do stand up all night and stuff like that but I was like if I make a project out of this you know it'll be a garden like I'll continue to come back to it and then you know the next thing that happens is if you're lucky is you start to make money off it which means you have more time to do it and stuff like that and it perpetuates itself and makes like me smarter and it like helps me you know learn the things that I want to learn and stuff like that and all of this stuff is connected like you know it also makes you a better performer like you were just saying you couldn't have made this episode of this

show without making the other hundred or whatever they came before it right that's because all of your ideas stand on the shoulders of stuff in the past you know and stuff that came before it and like I was talking with Max from you six the other day about this and like how, you know, sometimes it feels stupid to be like somebody who's like one of us is just a Twitter person who is on Twitter all day. And you get critiques from people that say, you know, why don't you go do something? Like you're just on this fucking website all day. And I tell them, don't listen to the cop inside your head.

Don't listen to the voice inside your head when someone tells you something like that. because the thing is, your capitalism and like all sorts of other factors have developed like a tendency for you to not value an accomplishment or a thing you have done unless it was difficult and unless it fucking hurt. Right. And the thing about being a performer is actually, especially like a comedian is, uh, it doesn't really work like that. You have to constantly remind yourself, I did hours of unpaid work and millions of hours of hours. stuff that went into me standing on this stage and telling a joke that I have memorized, which is like easy. A lot of times performing is easy because I'm like, I can't believe they're paying for me for this. I just go up there. I'm drunk. I rattle off

a few things. I have vaguely memorized. Then I get paid money. Insane, right? But you have to understand you're getting paid all that money. You're actually making sub minimum wage because all of that money stretches out over all the work you put in, networking and writing and stuff to get to that point. So with posting, you know, and podcasts, and stuff like that. It feels easy sometimes. Do not listen to that voice. It's, this is thousands of hours of unpaid labor went into forming the ideas and all the stuff that makes this sort of stuff happen, you know, which to me, I, whenever I remind myself of that, I feel great because it means it fucking relax and take the day off, you know?

I am like vibrating in my seat, try not to like go into like the whole like digital garden thing at you right now. Wait, what's it? Wait, explain, can you explain that in a brief? Oh, okay. Yes. So we did an episode about it, but digital gardens are a kind of like digital note taking that pulls off of this one German method called the Zedelkastin. And it's basically exactly what you're saying, where it is a form of note taking and information that prioritizes and emphasizes the connection between ideas. So instead of like a stream of information, like Twitter or Facebook or things like where it's, like, where it's. like there's only one path you can take through it. A digital garden has no hierarchy, and it allows paths to naturally form in the way that people want to walk through information. Yeah.

Yeah. And so it's like, and as you like connect ideas and build on them, it like creates these clusters of ideas where you can see connections and like where you might not have made them naturally. Yeah. Right. So you can see how something from this discipline is related to something in this discipline. And yeah, and then these clusters can be like, oh, it's this whole topic I wouldn't have even thought of without asking questions and building on it. And the garden metaphor comes in because it's like these paths that you're tending and you have to like weed your garden.

You know, if there's an idea in there that's not working anymore, you take it out. You grow ideas. You have to revisit them. You don't just have an idea and then do nothing with it. You have to go back and tend to the end. the information that you're consuming and the way you relate to information. It is an active process of caring about the information and how you interact with it. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And what you were just saying, Jake reminds me, it's like, it's like a podcast as learning in public, which is also kind of

connected to the digital garden when people put their digital gardens online so other people can see it. There's, you know, the idea that like other people can be like, yo, you're wrong about this or you missed this point or whatever. And it's so you're, you're, you're, learning in public, your process of learning is out there for other people to see and learn from. And like, yeah, podcast is kind of like that. You start building from the beginning. And I haven't listened to our first episode since the first time. I just did recently. But yeah, I imagine going back to that now, I would be like, oh, this is kind of interesting and weird.

Yeah. Well, it's funny because learning in public is completely antithetic. to liberalism, right? Because like, in liberalism, you're sort of supposed to be like a position, an authority figure and thing that you sell, you know? So you're supposed to be an expert. And so people have this tendency to delete their old content, you know, because you don't want anyone to know that you once upon a time were dumber than you are now, which is insane because that's how learning works. You're always going to be dumber in the past than you are now, which is why I think that it's kind of radical in a sense to do that.

And it's why I don't delete any of my old shit. And I'll completely have the conversation that needs to be had about whatever anyone fucking dug up, you know, it's why I always tell people, I'm a reformed edge lord. And when they talk about, people call me an SJW, like in comedy. And I'm like, I've literally said all of the slurs, like in my life. I'm not lying to you about that. I've got how I got here. That's why I got to where I am, you know?

And I think it's really important. And it's just so, it's tragically like unincense. incentivized in the world that we live in because, you know, you want to, I mean, you could, you could feel it. You could taste the value in like forming yourself up into somebody who has an identity as an expert and then appearing somewhere fully formed. People do that. You know, people change their names and stuff. And they come out of nowhere and they unroll their identity and their project. And it works really well in liberalism, but it only works to the ends of making money. it's antithetical to learning, you know?

And like the garden thing that you do with podcasts, it's great because everyone is less pretentious in this setting. Everyone is sort of like involved in the situation. Well, in theory, in theory, I saw you, you know, raising your eyebrow. In theory, it works that way. This is not a visual medium, Justin. I'm sorry. No, but you were right to point that out because I was actually probably contradicted myself.

I mean, I think when people are assholes that they blow a fucking gasket on you in the internet, they are forgetting to be like this. You know, they're forgetting that, uh, this is a more like constructive way to deal with each other. And that does happen, you know,

but I think it's good. I like, way you and Louisa on why you mad do like your mailbag. Yeah. episodes and actually like engage with the criticisms. That's why I put up all the episodes where we scream at each other and stuff. Yeah. Like, whatever,

because it's part of it, you know. Yeah. The reason I, I threw that in there. One is because it was an interesting thing when I heard you say it. And I was like, I need to take a.

about this right now if we when we get around to this episode. But like it is kind of a way, I guess I just want to encourage other people to start thinking about how they form their thoughts. Maybe you're in a rut like I was and just feel like nothing in your life is changing in a year of lockdown. And then once you start a project like this, it really does like, you know, one, I get to hang out with my friends every week and do something fun. But I also get to, yes, you're welcome, Jay.

I'm glad you're touched. But also it's just been really cool. I get to meet cool people and I get to talk about cool shit. Yeah, like the people we've had on this show, I'm like, what the fuck? How did that happen? Yeah, we've got Dan Green on next week. Spoilers, but that was extremely exciting for me. Like, two of us are reading his book right now.

I just got my library to buy it. So I'm going to read that. Yeah. He talks about how the internet promised, like, you could learn to code and, like, you would get access to capitalism. them and then that didn't happen. So he mostly focuses on like Washington, D.C. Really interesting book. Maybe you'd want to have him on.

Yeah, I'll check it out. The reason I really want him to come on is because he said something that was really interesting, which is like libraries and teachers unions have to work with the community if they're going to do any strikes because they usually have to do it in terms of like, this is good for all of us. This is good for your kids. It's good for your community. And that's the only way you can.

really do it because you can't, there's no factory anymore. You can't lock anyone out of your factory and do like the old style strike. And even then you would have to have to have to strike in New Hampshire. Yeah. Live free or die. Live free or die, baby. Live free or don't. But in, and I hope I can get the end to this next week. But yeah, like work used to end at like 2 p.m. In office jobs because no new mail came in. Whereas now you get an email at 430. You've got to answer it. You're expected to answer it until five when you're off. So, like, the whole way you've worked, there's no office to lock anyone out of anymore. It's all coming in all the time.

It's all going out all the time. So the way he talked about organizing was really interesting to me. So that's really what I want to talk to them about. Right. All right. Well, I think I probably got to go get ready for my next thing unless there's any last thing you guys wanted to get to. No, it's been great. Cool.

Awesome. Good night. Kick it!