Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Catfish & Tell with Kevin Clark, Katie Nolan & Pablo

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

How are so many people still falling in love with fake people online? What happened to all the sh*thead kids? And is cable TV somehow making a comeback? Plus: poopy, boobies, Billy Koch and flipping the puck to the fat kid.Further reading:The TV Show That Predicted America's Lonely, Disorienting Digital Future (Maya Salam)The Undertaker: A Seven-Year-Old Named Bjorn Threatened to Shoot Me in the Face and Called Me a Democrat (Jeremy Lambert)Americans' New TV Habit: Subscribe. Watch. Cancel. Repeat. (John Koblin/Goblin) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Do these feel like relationships? These feel like people that are interacting, or is it just like look at these boobies? Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. Hello. Hey, pal.

Two seconds I've had these on. Oh, wow. What we got on there? How? What do we got on there? I don't know. It's brown. How does everybody keep their sneakers so clean all this?

the time. What animal do you think did that? No, there's no way it's shit. On the front of my shit. Oh, I had, I thought it was shit. What the fuck? I thought I have to eat this donut. Why do you guys look like you've been doing a podcast without me already?

He started the audio already. What the fuck? You're not that late. You were late. I was late. Kevin is early. Yeah. Well, that's Kevin.

That's kind of thing. Professionalism? Dorkiness. Hmm. It's one word for it. You're going to want to not rub it into all. our rug, if it is poop. Should we do a podcast?

I don't think. I don't really feel like it today, if I can be honest. What were you doing that made you late? I was talking to a class over Zoom. Where? Does it really matter? It matters. I talked to a Harvard thing last week.

Okay, guys, what the fuck? They barely let me talk at Hofstra, the Harvard of Long Island. That's right. It was at Harvard. It was at Harvard? Virtually. You talked to students at Harvard? I mean, I just want to know how Kevin was already

you know, ready to one-up me in this. What did you do? Neither of you were smart enough for this. There's something called the sports analytics thing or something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've spoken to them before. That's MIT, aren't you guys talking about MIT?

No, no, no. I was surprised, too. Sloan. It's somehow less cool than the MIT one. And in that way, maybe more cool. Where do you currently stand on Daryl? Refused to come on this show. He did?

I asked him, and he passed. He doesn't pass on anything. say respectfully I passed? Let me see. Let me quote Daryl's. I think it was even worse than that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go.

Okay. Daryl, this is in January, January 18th. Daryl, hope you're good, Amigo. Oh, I hate that I do that. Oh, what the? I didn't mean that out loud. This is way too behind the curtain on how I booked things. That's Amigo.

You people deserve an Amigo less than Daryl more. Now you have to read all of it. Oh, God. Don't censor it. Daryl, exclamation point. Yeah, great. Hope you're good, comma. comma, amigo, period.

I hate myself. I really fucking hate that I just read that. Me too. Would love for you to come on my show. What would be the best dates for you? Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're backing him into a corner. So in the first text, yeah.

That's a sales tactic. Send me dates. That's the sales tactic. You're supposed to go, is it better for you on a Monday or Wednesday? You offer them something so they don't feel like the third option of no thanks is available to them. But Darry is well trained in the art. Of no thing.

This is, this is, this is, well, for Wall Street, you're selling penny stocks here. But here's the thing. I followed up, I followed up beating my chest. He didn't respond. Rhythmically. No, I, I, after I said, we'll be the best dates for you, question mark. I said, happy to work around your schedule. Yeah, I bet.

But here were the three days. Yeah, yeah. Happy working your schedule on these three days. This is your king? I didn't really have a specific timeline. I just wanted to have them on the show to talk about it. It was mid-season, obviously. No, you were just a check-in.

Seven hours later. Oh, seven hours later. Oh, cool. Oh, cool. Oh, cool. Oh, cool. Oh, cool. Oh, cool.

Sick, sick. Thank you for thinking of me. Oh, no. Oh, Jesus Christ. This is one unbroken sentence, no punctuation. Oh, God damn. Let me coordinate with our PR. So first of all, he's already sending you back to PR.

He basically said, don't contact me, contact my people. That's exactly what he said. How dare you come straight to me. Oh, cool. I can't find the Sixers thing. The PR thing. They deleted it. But I think I furiously deleted it because they said something along the lines of,

we're going to pass on this one. Oh, yeah. This one really. This one hurts. When there's a condescending PR email, I just want to fly into a rage. This one is internal language, I think. Yeah. I don't think that this one was supposed to make it out of the house.

It's an attempt to soften a blow, and in reality, it just sharpens. Yeah. Sharpen the fucking life. I'm deeply unhappy with how things are going. right now. I actually kind of don't want to do this podcast anymore. I have shit on my shoe. You do have shit on your shoe. You do. Dog, I just got these. It's crazy.

What I splash in? That is. If you can just zoom in, I don't know if you can get them at the right angle. I took, I don't know if I get him at the right angle. It's clearly Katie. No, it isn't. It's splashed up. It's not clearly. Ew, is it? It would smell. I have a really powerful house. It would smell.

Can you, can you? Can you, can you, can you. Can you, can you, can you, can't. Can you. Canvv is going to do it. For the good of the show. It's not shit. I can't believe you just did that. I can't believe you. We needed to find out if you have dog on your shirt. Are you getting up to smell?

It's not shit. That might be shit. No, it's not. Kevin Clark is back on Sherantelle. Magisterial, the mustache that Kevin Clark brought to us. Thank you. I wanted to start, though, with a story actually related to what it's like when you show up in person looking a little different from how you expected. There is this article in the New York Times that is titled, The TV Show that

Predicted America's Lonely Disorienting Digital Future. It's about the MTV reality series Catfish. Shout out. And I guess most of America actually encountered Catfish as a term during, if you guys remember this, of course, the Manti-Tayle scandal. Because- If we remember this. If we remember this. What? Jack Swarbrook, the athletic director Notre Dame, had a press conference. And we'd She talked about what happened to Mantei Teo and his, of course, fake girlfriend. And he said this.

I would refer all of you, if you're not already familiar with it, with both the documentary called Catfish, the MTV show, which is a derivative of that documentary, and the sort of associated things you'll find online and otherwise about catfish or catfishing. Yes. Well, associated things you'll find online and otherwise, that's a sentence that means absolutely nothing. I think he's suggesting that we get catfished in order to understand the story. He's like, maybe you should talk to a lady who's too hot to talk to you. So that was 2013, and Katie, I did not realize this. Katie has, I think, watched more catfish than anybody else on the planet.

Here's the thing. If you are of this current, like, young generation, you probably know MTV as the channel that plays that Rob Deer Deck show. Yeah. Ridiculousness all day or catfish all day. And so when it's not baseball season and I'm sitting at home, jobless, not jobless, but jobless. And I need something to watch on like the background of TV.

I usually will just put on catfish because it's just, it's one of those shows that has a formula and it hits all the beats of the formula. So at any point you can like pay attention for two minutes and be like, oh, that's where we're at in the story. And then you can get right back to what you're doing. It does not distract you too much. It's a very good background television.

The basic premise of the term catfish is also kind of interesting insofar as the documentary, the way it got coined is about some quote that someone said in the doc. It's a very complicated and stupid metaphor, but basically, let me find it. It's about fish, right? So he tells a story about how, he tells a story about how cod were shipped by boat in vats from Alaska to China, but the fish would arrive mushy and tasteless, right? Right. And so eventually, these fish people added catfish to the vats alongside the cod because they would like nip at them and basically keep them stimulated.

And so the quote in the doc is, there are these people who are catfish in life. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking they keep you fresh. So that's just the origin of a term that is now universally known as this thing. I'm sorry, that doesn't make any sense. Exactly. I know. I know. I thought they were going to say they put the cod inside the catfish. Or that they pretended that the catfish were the cop.

No, none of that. So none of that. None of that. Did you see that documentary? Yes. Did you? In theaters. I did too, because the marketing for it was really good.

I remember it was like time collapses upon itself in my brain, but it wasn't that far which in the sense that it gave the thought. It was after, but it wasn't that far after. When did the duck come out? Hold on. Blair Witch came out in 1998. 99. 99.

Catfish was 2000. In 2005? 2010. Oh, shit. So it was further. Okay. See, time collapses on itself my brain. I said that.

I will say the filmmakers of Blair Witcher from Orlando. It's possible I was an early adopter. There are. God, I always forget that you're from there and then you immediately remind me. Oh, yeah, we would never want to build an identity around a hometown. It marketed itself. Yeah, you would never do that. I did it, and I'm proud of it.

Yours is nothing to be proud of. I'm extremely proud of. Katie walked in here with a bag of Dunkin' Donuts. Whatever. Anyway. So it might have ended. there, if not for the entrepreneurialism, I suppose, of Neve Shulman, who got this co-host, I guess it was Max at the time.

Yes, it was Max. But it since had a rotating series of co-hosts. I think Max was like, this has run its course. And Neve was like, no, it has not. Neve is like, this elevator is still unsafe. That's right. Someone needs to let the people know. But I suppose that the thing about this show is that it did sort of presage to the article's premise

a lot about what it would be like to interact with people on the internet. It's like constantly being lied to and then discovering upon. on actually physically encountering them, how they are not what they promise themselves to be. And there's a clip from Catfish. There are so many great episodes. So many. I think people get the gist of what happens in it.

This is the clip that I think of. Come here. We're going to talk. We ain't really, we ain't got to. We don't talk. You, baby. You can still be my chocolate kiss, too. You don't forget about that, baby.

Come on. What the fucking is that? Do you know this? No, I don't know this guy. No, I don't know this . Are you Jess? Yeah, I'm Jess. You're Jess.

Yeah. Man, what? Man. Come on, the guy's got a family and he's talking to me. He thinks he's talking to some broad. But he did think he was talking to a girl as far as... Neyvon Crudgeon. You're a good actress.

Sure, I like that. Yeah, why not? Sure, I like that. Oh, no. Oh, artist. Hell, f***in' all. What's your name about this? by the way, you skip that.

My name's Justin. I'm gonna take a stab at this. Sure. You're gay. Obviously I'm not gay. Well, it's not so obvious. Obviously I'm not gay. You are pretending to be a girl online

and having a romantic relationship with a guy, so. I give it to you. You got me there. Right. Okay. Maybe. Maybe. What it was to begin was just, uh... It was a joke.

This fake profile, just playing around with people, whatnot. I didn't think anything too much of it until, you know, Honestly, I started seeing guys like him who are already in a relationship. So I was like, you know what, I kind of have this power to use it for something, use it for good. What I had with him was a little bit personal. And obviously, you guys got a taste of that. What my message is to tell people, look, you can't just go around on relationships that you're in. You felt like it was your job to sort of teach him a lesson.

Yeah. I just want to make sure I understand. Yes. You guys were. Having some sexual... Oh, yeah. Yeah. I want to kiss a real man.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. A couple things here. Let's hear them. I've never seen this show. Perfect. You've never? No.

Not an episode. Accidentally? The only reason I know that guy is from the meme. Really? And I don't know if the crutches, that was like a temporary thing or he's always on the thing. It's temporary, but I mean mentally. They're all the time.

I do like the sort of like the... the detective work, I'm going to take a stab at this. And then it's the most obvious you've ever heard in your entire life. I thought that was amazing. I'm going to be, like you, become addicted to the show. It's good. They try to schedule a meetup between the two. And then the big reveals at the end when they are waiting, usually in a park.

Sometimes they go to a person's house and they like confront them. And there's like, they go right to commercial as the door is about to open or as the car is pulling up and you're about to find out, is it really them? In all the episodes I've watched, I think it's been really them. three times that I've seen. Most times you get somebody that is socially awkward, who has clearly either insecurity issues, like they are uncomfortable with the way that they look, or they're like weirdly, like, manipulative and antisocial in that way.

Like I've seen girls who like... Yes. And there's a girl who gets confronted and she can't stop laughing. It's very uncomfortable for the viewer where she's like, I can do it because it's fun. And you're like, oh, it's brutal to watch. Watch. So what is this article saying that it... But it...

So basically... Precages. Sorry, was the word you used, Harvard. I think presages really does tell the story here. But there was a study... Who's texting you? What's so important? I was texting Cortez. I want photos for Instagram. Great. Great.

The study... Honestudey's the best policy. We're going to do lie there and be like, I'm responding... Catfish me. Yeah, I'm being catfished as we speak. Get my good side. Really beautiful girl wants my phone on. Get the good side of this mustache.

The study that they cited... It speaks to the way that this is not just limited. God damn it, Cortez. Are you serious? I didn't know who was going to make it that obvious. I didn't know what he's going to be that obvious. And now he's standing here. I apologize on behalf of Cortez.

Well, this unfortunately embodies the study that I was going to cite. Because the study is about how everybody has fallen victim to a scam like this, or at least to a degree that is stunning. So there's this one study, University of New Hampshire. 1,100 adults were surveyed about 70% described themselves as a victim of a catfishing scam. What? What? 70%.

And so, look, the degree to which one says, hey, I got catfish, I assume there are degrees of this, right? But clearly this is a thing that people, yeah, have encountered. 70%. So I think there's so, you mentioned the degrees. There's so many of, we all get DMs now that. or just like, hey, I got one yesterday that said, hi, are you a boxer? Yeah.

I don't, where is this going? Yeah. And so, I think we all get, so that, I don't know. What did I say? I've been, that's where it's. Taxing, yeah. No, but like, I needed the pictures.

Yeah, I think there is. That's what I'm sending me. But I think there is an element of like, if you get that, are you being catfish? You just don't respond any more on with your life. But then there are people who have emotional, like, weeks long, or they get their money stolen. It's also just the forerunner of how we're all presenting our

online. But it doesn't sound like either of you guys have actually been victimized by catfish. No, I have friends in real life, so I don't need to do weird excursions. That's a very painful way I was saying. Because I was going to say, I think that it comes down to like, I think we're very lonely right now. I think people are isolated more so than we think. I think the pandemic made that worse. And so I think that people are very vulnerable to being preyed upon their emotions and like being told them. that they're loved and wanted. They're so hungry for that

that they look past what seems to us on the outside, like very obvious indicators of a scam. They're like, no, no, no, but it's different for me. But it's not. But it's, I don't blame them for that, for falling for it. I think, and I've read a little bit about, like, people are okay being lied to in some situations. Like, before the internet, there was a wave of guys

who, like, pretended to be famous people and just were not. Like, I remember in Orlando famously, someone pretended to be former Orlando Magic Forward Jeff Turner for years and was just like that's that's me I think Rothesberger did that as well I think Ronsberger had like a guy who like in Ohio was like I'm Ben Rathesburger everybody in like 2004

Oh sure And people were like oh yeah okay In the before? Remember fake Clay Thompson? Yeah but this that wasn't a scam That was just to get attention I think some people are like I'm gonna What were they scamming? No they're like scamming women or like hey let me live with you

I'm Jeff Honestly. But that's just my opinion. I'm looking this up. Big Ben Rothesburger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. A man claimed to be Ben Rothesberger and Brian St. Pierre.

Do they look alike? I don't know. Brian Jackson dated two women by pretending to be both of these folks. Was charged with harassment for continuing to talk to both women. Jackson often talked of his teammates and offered to autograph footballs for neighborhood kids. So what I'm saying is, I mean, neighborhood kids are coming up to fake Brian St. Pierre or fake Brown-Ronsberg. I'm like, here you go. Please autograph a ball.

Like, some people just like being right. What I will ask is that what is the difference between, there's some scamming involved here. But like, I do believe at some point, if not already, people are like probably going to be into the idea of like dating AI. Oh, so that's. Yeah. Let's go to the present tense, which is I am constantly, look, my algorithm. Is it better to be scamming? And you're talking to a real person or you're just doing the her thing and you're talking to a bot?

If only what I've seen from AI generated, typically, I guess in my algorithm, women in my 4U page. If only they were as complicated. I bet your pardon. Was I don't get sexy men in my 4U page? I don't get anybody in my – I get in my replies. I get a lot of p. In bio. Sure.

But I'm not getting a lot of like men. made in a factory trying to seduce me. Yeah, my for you pages, people mad about Columbia University right now. All different directions. Mine is always like public fights that I don't want to watch. I do get a lot of cafeteria fights. Yeah, I get a lot of like, check out this care. And you're like, what?

Did I? But wait, are you guys unfamiliar then with the whole notion that there are like wildly popular pages full of AI generated women who are clearly AI, oh my God. What are you clicking on Pablo? Look, they are very, very popular pages. And it's unclear to me. to Kevin's point, whether people are all being fooled by this or whether they're just into it.

They don't care. They just want to see boobies. Preferer the idea of being sold to fiction that is, I guess, giving them what they want, which is entirely specific to, yeah, a surface level sort of relationship. Do these feel like relationships? These feel like people that are interacting or is it just like look at these boobies?

Because when it comes to look at these boobies, I don't think men, for work, I don't think men feel like they need to know the woman's real in order to have the boobies make them feel a certain type of way. Okay, so here's one... Okay, so meet Itana. Oh, Itana. Spain's first AI model.

I mean, she's beautiful. She's earning 10,000 euros a month. She never has to shave her armpits. They just come like that. Look at those boobies. She's 25. I'm glad they specified that. I mean...

Itana, 25, they pick up. cared woman from Barcelona receives weekly private messages from celebrities asking her out. Sorry, celebrity. Name and shame model. What do you mean, Iitana? I would be afraid to DM an AI bot just because I'd be afraid it was like a some sort of like a government thing. Then they could like expose that we're going to publish Itana's DMs.

And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. Who's trusting a robot to keep their weird kinky secrets? The creator says this, quote, one day a well-known Latin American actor texted to ask her out. His actor has about 5 million followers and some of our team watched his TV series when they were kids.

He had no idea Itana didn't exist. Wow. What does Iytona's bio say? I'm not real. I'm not real. And the men just don't check because they see those tots.

They see those tater tots. This is how he ends up with the For You page. He's on It's for research. It's for a DM. Send her a DM. Itana Lopez. 310,000 followers.

Virtual soul, is what it says that in her thing. Virtual soul. Digital creator is her occupation. Barcelona's Digital Muse. Yeah. What's that mean? Powered by AI. Powered by AI.

Oh, gamer. It says she's a gamer. At heart. At heart. And a fitness lover. And a fitness lover. And there are some boobies. Just to be very...

Are they naked boobbies? No. No. They're closed. But they go out past her friend. That's why... So why the guys are sending DMs. Right, because they want to see the...

Do you think she does it? Do you think she gets down in the DMs? Do you think she sends the naked movies? Well, we have to ask the famous actor. You should chat with her and say, how about those playoffs, huh? Yeah, 50% discount if I put in this promo code. Oh, it costs money. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. To send her a message? On telegram. This is a scam. Why does so many people do it? You should stop seeing this one. Should I click on the link that says sensitive content? No.

I don't know. You're a metal arc Wi-Fi. Are you in a... And I'm in. Are you in a private browser? Oh, this is like a... This is like a Patreon. Like an only fans.

Yeah. Or what I've told is an only fan. Yeah, good, Pablo. Good save. Has the behavior of an only fans. Sure. It's all blurred out. Oh, well.

So. Pay the $9.99. I'm going to follow for free. I'm going to stop signing up for this. Free. I am. He's like, I'm going to take this personal. I'm going to make this research.

I'm going to finish research at my house. I'm going to go on incognito mode real quick. I'm going to read the headline and then I'm going to go into the story. So here's the headline. And I would love for the, it ought to be a slow reveal, but the headline is just so good. I sent it to Pablo on Friday or Saturday night, like 9 p.m. I saw it and I said, this is what I want to talk about. This is what I want to do with my life. The headline is, and it's from fightful.com. The Undertaker, colon, a seven-year-old named Bjorn, threatened to

shoot me in the face and called me a Democrat. Now, there's a couple things here. Number one is that I feel like, and maybe this is just me not seeing it, I feel like there's a lack of just total shithead kids anymore. Because when I, like, you'd always see like seven-year-olds, you know, in like 1999, and they were just absolute terror. You don't play video games online? I don't. What's going on there?

Yeah, that's a lot. Oh, they're indoors now. That's the thing. Yeah, the doors. They used to be a parks. Yeah, like Dennis the Menace style. Yeah, there's no more. Dennis the Menace now is in a house saying racist stuff on chats.

Yes. Okay. Yes, yes. No, well, if Katie speaks, they go, oh, it's a girl. Oh, show me your booby. Like, you know, they don't say booby. but I do a lot in this podcast. Let's get into the story here.

It's a five-minute story. Cortez was upset that it's so long and we can't just play the entire video. Yeah. It is tempting, though. It is an unbelievable story. So one of, someone on the WWB security team tells, this is it,

WrestleMania a couple weeks ago, tells Undertaker, who, and more power to him, refers to himself as The Undertaker many times in this story. I believe it's Mark Callow. I believe it's Mark Callow. Mark William Calloway. age 59.

59-year-old. Fifty-nine. So one of the security detail guys is a former Navy SEAL. His son is a huge fan. Now, his son is named Bjorn, as we discussed. And the former Navy SEAL does not want the undertaker to call him because he just wants to be professional about it. You know, I told the guy, I said, hey, I said, I hear your son's a, you know, a fan.

I said, would you like for me to call him? And he was like, oh, no, no, no, don't worry. You know, he was just totally, you know, being professional, you know. And I was like, no, it's okay. I said, you know, I know Larry, Larry sent me a text. And he was like, man, he goes, no, it's, you know, he's still trying to get out. I said, just let me FaceTiming real quick. And, you know, and he goes, well, you can't FaceTiming.

And I'm like, okay. And he says, but if you would call him, that would be awesome. And I was like, yeah. The dad says you can't FaceTime him. Okay. Red flag. So he gets on the phone and says, Bjorn, this is the Undertaker.

And he says, hey, Undertaker, how are you? Undertaker starts to mess with him. And so it sounds like you're getting in trouble at home. So I start messing with him, Mac. I do everybody, right? I was like, Bjorn, it sounds like to me, you're getting in some kind of trouble at home, aren't you? He goes, no, I'm not getting in any trouble.

I said, no, I'm pretty sure. It sounds like you're up to something. I don't know what it is, but I can tell you're doing, doing something you shouldn't be doing. He goes, I'm not, I'm not doing anything I'm not supposed to be doing. You're doing something. You're not supposed to be doing. I was like, no.

And then he just kid, the seven-year-old kids go, hey, I'll shoot you right in the face. I about lost it, right? I said, what? You're going to shoot me? And now his dad is mortified, right? He is just like, oh, my gosh. I've put him on the phone. Now he's threatened the Undertaker.

So anyway, so I thought, you're not going to shoot me in the face. I'm going to shoot you in the face, right? So now I'm having an argument with the seven-year-old about shooting him in the face, which I probably shouldn't be talking about this. It was all in good fun. Yeah, yeah. You had to be there, right? You had to be there for the moment.

So anyway, so we're going back and forth right now. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, he goes, well, you're a Democrat. And I'm like, I'm a. Democrat. Where did that come from? What does that mean to you? There's a couple things here. I wouldn't, there's, there's bricking the conversation, which you would do, like, like, he got so excited that he misread this, Bjorn, got so excited, he misread the situation, ended up threatening to shoot the undertaker. Named after a Viking, by the way. In the face.

I feel like Bjorn was like, this guy comes back from the dead, so let's see what's up. I feel like Bjorn was being accused of some wrongdoing. Yoran being seven definitely has done something wrong within the past week. This dude is with his dad. And so he's like, I have to back this guy down or he's going to tell my dad about the bad stuff I did. Because when you tell a seven-year-old you know what they've been up to. The first thing they think is like, shit, I have been up to some stuff. It's like the, who is the comedian that had just as an experiment, had everybody send their significant other a text that just said, I haven't been completely honest with you?

and then just saw what the person would respond, what their synonym other would respond with. That's basically what Taker did to Bjorn. Yes. I was afraid when I was first watching the video that the little kid was going to be like, yeah, I took some money from my mom. Like he was going to admit the thing he did.

I mean, he did something's far worse. A guilty conscience is what you detected with Bjorn. He's a violent seven-year-old. Yeah, I didn't know he was going to shoot him in the face. And also, you know, if you shoot out of Taker in the face, he's just going to come back. It's not going to do anything. Maybe that's the problem is he didn't understand

I'm a big fan of The Undertaker and not know that shooting him in the face isn't going to get you anywhere. The Undertaker in 2020 donated $7,000 to Donald Trump. I mean, 7,000, what's the point? That's the federal maximum for a in-character wrestler. Oh, okay. Taker. Taker LLC. But the question, beyond the specifics of the Undertaker arguing with a seven-year-old about who should be shot in the field.

face or not. It does raise the question of like, when you were kids, were there people that you were so excited to meet that you had, you know, this memory that, yeah, continues to persist. I was an altar server. The priest, this is not where this is going. Okay. Spoiler alert. This ends without indicting the Catholic Church. Sure. Sure. The priest was. the team chaplain of the New York Yankees. Huh. And so what a thrill for me,

Native New Yorker, giant Yankee fan to be an altar server, and our parish priest is the team chaplain of the New York Yankees. Okay. And I say, Father McMahon, I would love an autograph from my favorite New York Yankee,

Derek Cheater. Unique. Interesting pick. Good one. And weeks later, I get a signed, like, I think it was like, what was it?

It was a team program. And it says on the program, I still have this. It says whatever best wishes to Pablo Torre from Derek Cheater. And the disappointment is that he misspelled my last name. He spelled it T-O-R-E. Excuse me. T-O-R-E. Pablo Tor.

Yeah. Which was disappointing to me because his fucking manager has the same last. I was going to say, what do you mean? Joe Torre. And he f***ing, he bricked the interaction. Yeah. Derek Jeter bricked the autograph. All right.

So I have... And I resent him. Okay. Why was he putting last names on? I don't know. And also best wishes to a child is wild. Best wishes to Pablo. Yeah.

Hey, Pablo. Hey, Pablo. Thanks for watching, buddy. Thanks for watching. Go yanks. Go yanks. Go yanks. Pell. Did he break the interaction more or less than you with Gerald Mory? Oh, boy.

Neither of us emerged looking great. I don't remember how old I was. I did meet Nadia Komeni. She was the first gymnast to get a perfect 10. Yeah. And I just remembered telling her I liked her and she put her arm around me. Look, as a little kid, I had a tragic haircut. I had a little boy haircut.

Can we get a photo of this? No. And so I feel like at any point in any interaction with any adult, I got immediate sympathy because I think they knew that like, what, this poor kid doesn't want this haircut. Their mom is making them do this. There's no way they're the most popular kid among their friends. So they always gave me the like, oh, I always got that energy as a child. Because I think they were like, what a precocious young lady who looks like a news anchor.

And so that's basically the editor. I had that being a fat kid. Yeah. Like I was always the kid. Yeah, we can't with Stephanie McMahon. We can do a Stephanie McMahon photo, which will tie into the era of WWI I watch. Also, a photo of Vince McMahon cannot put that photo up anymore. No.

But I'm alarmingly fat in both photos. but I was always the kid who like I'd get like you know as a big hockey fan I'm the one they flipped the puck too because I looked so fat and childish I'm currently a fan of the New York Rangers I was a fan of the Orlando Solar Bears when I was a kid oh no solar bears like polar bears no I just said solar bears but for the sun I'm not drawn to connection yeah all right and so I was a big fan of the solar bears growing up I love that but you were saying as a hockey fan oh and so I'd always be the guy where they were like oh yeah we're gonna we're gonna give the puck or the stick to this kid because he's fat

and he's not having a good goal of it. You can tell. I'd always queen out that one. You're so cute. Wait, wait, wait. Let me see it again. Who's not flipping a puck to that kid? The fact that you're also wearing like a big polo shirt.

Yeah. It's like this little gentleman's working, he's working out in office. The big polo is back. The polo bears. The polar bears. Yeah, the big polo bears. All right, Katie. All right.

What's you got? Mine's depressive. because it's kind of about our lives. Oh, no. It's an article in the New York Times, ever heard of it by John Coblin. Rhymes with Goblin. I'm assuming, I'm guessing.

It's Coblin. Damn it, I really wanted it to rhyme with Goblin. Why? Goblin. Well, because what's a goblin? Goblin's fun. What's a ghoul to a goblin? That's right.

Americans New TV Habit, subscribe, watch, cancel, repeat. So basically, they're talking about how something like 40% of these streaming services user base is now subscribing when there's a show they want to watch, and then canceling when there isn't something that they want to watch at that. So they'll be like, we want to watch, one of the examples they use as a guy who, him and his wife want to watch poker face on Peacock. So they subscribe and they tell

each other, like, look, if we're not watching this after a couple weeks, we're going to cancel Peacock. We do not need to, we have every streaming service known to man. It's silly to have another one. So that's apparently the younger generations, that's like the default almost for their behavior with these apps because a lot of those generations, as we know, and we've been told, they're not buying cable. They're signing up for all these different streaming services. And because it's so easy to cancel these streaming services, people will just cancel them when they don't need them, and then resubscribe when there's a show that they want to watch. Cancel culture. This is a story about cancel culture. This is exactly what cancel culture is.

So these streaming services are now having to try to, they can't ignore this anymore because it's not just like a niche thing happening. It's like a huge source. section of their user base. So they're trying to find ways to combat this. And one of the ways, as we all saw coming, is that they're like reinventing the idea of cable. So they want to package with other streaming companies so that if you, you're less likely to do this if when you sign up for, let's say Hulu, you're also getting ESPN Plus and whatever the Disney Plus. Those people are less likely to cancel because they're getting access to more things. A lot of companies are thinking about doing that and also offering channels where you can just go.

And at any time, it's like, I know Peacock does this. Amazon does it with MGM. There's like pre-programmed. Yeah, Disney just announced they're going to start doing it. Here's the thing that I've always said, because I still have my cord. I did not cut it. Yes. Because for me, it was just like, well, sports will always be on the TV.

I'll never have to be like, where do I find this? It's got to be on TV. I know that probably won't be the case soonish. And sometimes, especially during the pandemic, I reached a point where I was. I don't want to have to pick every time I sit down what I'm going to watch. I want to be able to just, catfish, go to some channel that has already been chosen. Catfish is probably a bad example because whoever's programming MTV is really just picking one of those two shows.

Easy job. I want somebody to pick what I'm going to watch and then I have to choose from my options instead of being like, you can watch everything available to you. What would you like to watch? Well, there's also, the reason channels are valuable is because watching 20, 20 minutes of something, and then that's it. You're just like, oh, I'm just watching 20 minutes. All right, it's a commercial and out.

Like, that's a hugely valuable experience that we've lost. Zoomers will never understand watching 20 minutes of saving Private Ryan in the middle, kind of forgetting what goes before and after it, and then moving on. Yes. Look, something that comes up every time I begin to complain or get asked about questions, or complain or get asked about, like, why is the industry going this way? It's like, well, because they killed cable television. Yeah.

Or because they almost killed cable television to the point where some of us still have it. But the rest of us are left trying to call... You are both on your phones right now. I'm doing it because this is my article and I need to make sure I don't miss any of the important points in it. I don't know why Kevin's been doing it the entire episode. I'm doing it because, A, I'm working today. B, I have a short attention span. The short attention span, though, is entirely why.

It feels like people are presuming cable needs to go away. and then everyone's realizing because the business that replace cable is not nearly as good as cable, oh shit, we got to bring cable back. And it's, I mean, I don't know if people outside of sports media specifically acutely understand this in the way that I think is very obvious people who do work inside of it.

But like ESPN, as John Skipper likes to say, on the sporting class, the show I do with them, here at Metal Arc Media, ESPN was the greatest business model in the history of media. Even though ESPN, you're talking about it, and you are correct on that, I actually don't think they're the biggest beneficiaries. The biggest beneficiaries are like the weird baseball, like $9 a month team-owned channels, like the Yes Network, like whatever. There's like 25 of them now. And basically baseball is completely propped up by cable television, by these local things.

That's why the collapse of Valley over like last year was such a big deal and why I'm actually pretty nervous about baseball's future. is it literally so much of it relies on the ability to bilk San Diegoans out of $7 a month. And so, like, ESPN, I think, will survive much better than those channels. But it's still the same thing, which is non-sports fans paying for the enjoyment of sports fans. And what people are realizing to the point of the story is that it's now so expensive that they are cycling through subscriptions like they're flipping through channels. Right. And the promise of, of course, streaming was that when you're in an al-a-cart system in which you choose to pay for what you want to eat, as opposed to paying for a bunch of stuff that you never watch, you're going to pay less.

And it's going to be easier. And none of those things have really come true. It's the way that technology is constantly disrupting things only to then sell you a worse version of the thing they disrupted. Yeah. It's like, oh, we're back to cable television. Cool. I swear to God, I'm not, I bought my first DVD in 20 years today. I didn't know.

They were still doing those. It's a blue ray. That's sick. Well, it's the assassination of Jesse James by the Cowher Robert Ford, an amazing movie that I just wanted to watch very badly last night. I've had this urge many times, and it was like $12 to buy on Amazon. No place was having it stream. But it streams all the time, but it's one of those that comes off and then comes back on and comes off and comes back on. And so...

How did you play this? How do you plan on playing this? I have a Xbox. Yeah. Yeah. That's what those are best for. I don't get on the chats to find out about the racist seven-year-olds. Yeah.

But I do. They say hi. You're using an Xbox in the oldest possible way as a DVD player. No, I also like play FIFA. Anyway, so I literally, it's the same thing where I was just like, I'm tired of every six months being like, where is the streaming? And if not paying $2 to buy it, I'm just going to buy a $12 DVD. I am doing exactly what this is, where it's physical media cable, bring back 2001.

Well, it's kind of like a parallel to how vinyl also has made a comeback in recent decades, relative to the arc of it, it's because people have been so frustrated by Napster and the domino effects of streaming music that they're like, people have become, and I think understandably,

like apocalypse preppers where it's like, I don't trust this shit to exist and survive. And so I need my own collection of physical things to put into my pyramid to be buried with, so I have access to it for as long as I want. Well, it's also, sorry, you go.

I was going to say, it's also true digital media in writing where a lot of people save everything they've ever written because they have no faith that a private equity company is not going. It's just gone. Truly is like is unreadable. Unreadable. Well, it's also.

And there's some articles by Pablo Torre that have never been readable. But now like literally physically. Now they're actually undermining me. It's also that if you take out the capitalism of it all and you were just to look at the like, okay, back then we used to have to watch things when they were on TV. We had no way of recording it or controlling when we could watch what we wanted to watch and then we've evolved to a place where you can watch anything you want at any time taking the

money out of it. That sounds like progress. But then you remember that the people who were making money off the old model want to make even more money off the new model and they make it to a point where now I can't, we don't own anything. You have to pay for the ability to access any of the things you want to watch. You can never just like go watch them. And they've gotten to the point where they're getting rid of somebody. Best Buy just recently was like we're done with physical media. We're not selling it anymore. And I would bet, if this keeps going, we would get our next generation of, like, PlayStation's or Xboxes won't even have that slot in them, the way that laptops no longer

have, unless you specifically ask for it, a CD drive. Like, they're phasing out physical media and causing you to have to pay. David Zaslov, that's how you got to say that's idiotic name? Yeah, he's on the courtside of Madison Square Garden earlier this week. He got a race. He got a race. And he canceled shows that were made or movies that were made and did not run. them because it helped, it was more beneficial for them on the tax side. And he got a raise. He made

49.7 million compared with 39.3 million the year before. Like media is going, like less has been made and that guy's making more than he made the year before. And that should not be the way that it works. The people that are in charge of giving us the content, don't touch the content, have nothing to do with the making of it and are not in any way incentivized to make good content. And that scares the shit out of me. That scares the shit out of me. The cancellation part of this is also interesting to me. Because cancellation, look, so Kevin's wife works for the Wall Street Journal.

I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Part of the reason I subscribe is because I once tried to cancel the Wall Street Journal. And it was too difficult. Yeah. It's like a gym. We send some goons to your house. Well, what they make you do, and I think this is a smart thing, truly, and it's worth paying for in all honesty, of course. It's that, defending Rupert Murdoch and Love Your Journal, they're a good product.

He needs the money. I need the money. Kevin, Kevin, Teddy needs the money. Teddy needs the money. But the reality is what they make you do is jump through hoops. You have to call a number. You can't just click on a link. Same with cable.

Yes. And so it's like canceling cable. And none of that should be a coincidence given the conversation we just had. The point is make it difficult for you to get rid of something because... That's what they're going to do right that. You're so desperate. That's this article. made me go like, ah, shit, they're going to now go, well, same way Netflix was like,

oh, you can only use this in one household and you have to name your, now they're going to be like, canceling's actually really difficult. I need to look this up. There's a huge, there's a huge percentage of AOL's revenue that comes from people just never canceling. Yeah, that's like, Jim's. Like not canceling in 2004 and being like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. 1.5 million people still paying a monthly subscription to AOL.

To AOL? I should point out, 1.5 million people as of 2021. And what they get in exchange for their subscription service fee is technical support and identity theft software. Oh, God, they love to sell old people on identity theft software. They're like, listen, people out here want to be you. Don't let them be. They say dark web and identity theft. And old people are like, take my money.

Brian St. Pierre needs some of that. But the artists. The one thing is that if you are buying identity software, identity theft software, from AOL, it is likely too late. Yeah, yeah. It is likely that you've been stolen many times. Yep. Yeah, I want to reserve, like, the domain name of, like,

Anerica online, like, one letter off and just sell people fake identity theft software. That sounds illegal. All right. What did we find out today, guys? Oh, God, so much. We learned what here today? We learned. I'm surprised I didn't anticipate that the shit had seven-year-olds were all on

Doors playing war zone. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you got to keep your kid off that for a while. I want my kid to be a huge baseball fan because when I was watching a lot of baseball, I was pretty big dork. Because you can't, if you're watching baseball, it's like 162. And you're like, you're reading Bill James and stuff, you know.

Yeah. And then you just never really get. The baseball little kids are all right. Did you see that clip the other day of a kid? go to the tape. We don't have it. Of the kid trying to get to his seat and the lady's got her legs up

and he asks her to move and she won't move her feet. He like yells at her and he like owns her in a kind of respectful way. It was Bjorn. And he said, I'm going to shoot you in the face

and she said, I'm a Republican and then they hugged. It's weird. Baseball kids are all right. Baseball's good for kids. How about gamer kids? It's not as good. No.

I mean, they can be. if their parents would just like, I don't know, be in the same room as them when they game and go, hey, maybe we don't say that word. What did I learn today? I learned that there are people who've never seen the show Catfish. I didn't know that you guys still existed. I was watching baseball. Yeah, that's fair.

That is fair. I was watching 2003. Did you see the report the other day? Did you see the report the other day that there's, that a lot of streaming services are trying to come up with second screen content? which used to mean stuff that was happening on your phone while you were watching TV. Now it means stuff that happens on TV while you're on your phone. So they found that people were like too, they didn't want things that had too deep of a plot or that needed too much of your attention because they were mostly scrolling their phone, but they did want something to play in the background,

which is what I explained. Catfish was for me. But these places are now trying to program that. The reason I watch a lot of history channel documentaries is that I am just not paying attention at all, kind of like being on the show today, where I'm just on the phone. and that was a joke. I am paying attention to this show. I know you think I'm on my phone the whole time. Debatably.

You literally have been on your phone this entire show. That's not true. People can watch this. Tally up how many times, how often I was on my phone. Please do. At the bottom of the screen every time. I was scrolling.

I was buying DVDs. What I found out today is that Kevin Clark, despite being on his phone, this entire episode, has the oldest possible interests. Yeah. Truly. I think we knew that. You just, he was about to lie.

I cut him off accidentally now. Before he could explain why he's into the History Channel. With the docs. Because the Hizier Channel, like the actual channel on cable. You're a pre-Republican. You're like, you're in the early stages. You got to subscribe to the History Vault on Amazon Prime. That's where you get the goods.

That's where you learn about wars. Yep, wars and presidents. They keep the best wars behind. They pay all the best wars. They really do. Yeah, only fans, but for tanks. Ooh, the panser. Only pans, man.

Blurt out, only pan. Now we're... Only pans. Only pans. There it is. Wow. We got there. Check your phone. That's for all the people who help make this show what it is. A paywall-worthy product that we give you for free.

Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antenucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rachel Miller-Hauer, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rachel Schreier, Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumenllo, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our post production by NGW Post, our theme song as always by John Bravo. We will talk to you on Tuesday.