Pirate Wires - Marc Andreessen Tech Manifesto, Right Wing Cancel Culture | PIRATE WIRES EP#20 🏴‍☠️

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

EPISODE TWENTY: This week, the Pirate Wires crew joined Solana to discuss the tech press's reaction to Marc Marc Andreessen's techno-optimist manifesto, new developments in San Francisco's war on self-driving cars, the Hitler-loving photographer the NYT hired to cover the Israel/Palestine conflict, and cancel culture. Featuring Mike Solana , Brandon Gorrell, River Page, Sanjana Friedman Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: https://www.theindustry.pw/p/merchants-of-progress Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell River Twitter: https://twitter.com/river_is_nice Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro - Like & Subscribe! 0:35 - Welcome To The Pod! Sanjana Has Jury Duty 1:50 - Media Melts Down Over Marc Andreessen's Tech Manifesto 9:00 - Tech Writers Hate Tech 19:30 - Cruise Self Driving Suspended In California 31:50 - Cancel Culture - Is It Ever Appropriate? Observing The Isreal/Palenstine Discourse On College Campuses 48:15 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe! See You Next Week

When was the last time Mark Andreessen talked to a poor person? Mark Andreessen is wrong about everything. Bay Area billionaire tech mogul posts bizarre tech manifesto with enemy list. Unabomber style manifesto. Maybe they just meant well-written. Because I will give this to the Unabomber. It was well-written. Yeah.

The man could turn a phrase. Yeah. he made a lot of good points it's hard welcome back to the pod guys uh sanjana will not be with us today she is in jury duty i'm not entirely sure what the case is it was a quick one, so probably not murder. I was hoping for something spicy. Has she said anything to you guys at all about nothing? No, she wouldn't. She's too good. You're not allowed to say anything, right? I know, and she's too good of a person.

She's going to follow those rules. River, on the other hand, I know that I would know all about the case. Right. We'd have a piece up about it already. All right, so this week on the pod we're talking about uh we're talking a little bit about the mark andreason's manifesto for a16z and specifically i think the reception of that by the tech press was remarkable to me um we're talking a little about a little bit about cruise and uh and then we're going to talk about this new york times

hitler photographer um like the hitler supporting photographer the college campus insanity little bit about Cruz. And then we're going to talk about this New York Times Hitler photographer, like the Hitler supporting photographer, the college campus insanity, and just, I think, cancel culture in general. Right-wing cancel culture is very much in vogue. And the question of, are you for it or against it? Now the left is against it, the right is for it. I mean, is it hypocrisy? We're just going to kind of have that conversation. I think we've touched on it a little bit, but we've never really... We have not yet really dug in on the pod. So that's what I want to do today. First things first is this tech manifesto. So Mark Andreessen, he's written a handful of pieces over the last couple of years. I think three come to mind. I don't want to get that number wrong though. And when he puts them out, they're very well composed. They are very punchy and they tend to

be kind of tech zeitgeisty. He does capture the essence of where people are in tech culture at a given moment. And he makes typically a sort of... They're like weirdly controversial positions. So I mean, the one kind of famously was it's time to build. And, uh, and then more recently it was a defensive AI that one, I kind of understood maybe the pushback. Um, you know, there's at least a robust group of people who are really anti AI. So I understood that one, this most recent one was, I mean, the thrust of his, I don't even want to say it was like a arc. It was a position. It was like, technology is good. Technology lifts people out of poverty. Technology creates a

more abundant world. And I don't know. I think that it was, I agree with it. I didn't feel like it was making any kind of argument that I could even be mad at. It was just a correct position in my opinion. I do understand perhaps someone is a total Luddite and they're going to be like, no, technology is really bad. It has done all these bad things. It has only been bad. I understand maybe disagreeing with the premise. What I do not understand is the incredible media backlash to what was, to my eye, a basically benign position that is completely common in the technology industry. There's nothing divisive about this. Brandon, can you just give us a list of some of the headlines? Because I feel like we're always talking about the media went crazy, but it's like the media went crazy. Just give us the rundown. Yeah.

I mean, the tech media went crazy in what seems like almost total lockstep. TechCrunch, infamously, I think that this is one of the more infamous headlines they ran the andreessen item with the headline when was the last time mark andreessen talked to a poor person this headline was by the way on the heels of them talking about gaza as if it was a tech hub i think earlier that week yeah they said it was a tech hub a really bizarre strip yeah it was crazy they're crazy so keep going and then i want to talk about tech crunch yeah i mean gizmodo gizmodo's headline was like something like mark andreessen is wrong about everything and then they call the in the content of the of the piece they call it a unibomber style manifesto which

which is wild because he was he was an anti-technology guy he was the original ludite like he he yeah he was the the high iq 70s or 80s ludite um which it just makes uh maybe they just made a really well written i will give this to the unibomber it was it was well written yeah the man could turn a phrase yeah yeah he made a lot of good points. It's hard to- San Francisco Standard, the headline, I found this one interesting. Even though San Francisco Standard is not necessarily a tech publication, they are San Francisco. So, Bay Area billionaire tech mogul posts bizarre tech manifesto with enemy list. And I was like, oh, there was an enemy list in this? And the enemies are like ideas. ESG. It was a concept. Yes. That was Ida Journalist.

The know-it-all credentialed expert worldview. This is what he's saying. Luxury beliefs are the enemy list. Social engineering, playing God with someone else's lives is what he's saying. Luxury beliefs are the enemy list. Social engineering, playing God with someone else's lives is on his enemy list. The enemies list thing was, I think this speaks to really the way that a meme circulates a small group of people. And it happens to us as well, I think sometimes, certainly to me. The tech press is mostly of a similar class of people, a similar group of people. They live in similar places. They went to similar schools. They read similar things. They like each other.

And they follow each other on Twitter. And one of them says enemy list. And then they're all saying enemy list. I actually had a guy, a journalist reach out to me to push back. I wrote a piece. I didn't write a piece about it. I wrote about this in our industry newsletter. So I wrote a brief thing.

It wasn't a full-on essay, but I kind of recapped the press and I said, people were basically calling Mark a fascist in some cases explicitly. And I think I said that in a kind of funny, everyone's saying he's a fascist. So this guy was like, not everybody, bucko. I didn't call him a fascist and he didn't. He linked me to his piece and it was a kind of reasonable, I sort of agree with his position on tech optimism but like i don't like this enemy list and um there's no fucking enemy list that's not and then that's not based in reality you can't like an enemy list he said these are the enemies and it was like environmental social whatever the fuck rather than business we're focusing on things that are not business that That's just... What are we... How is this... This is not a serious conversation and it exhausts me

having to dip into this all the time and beat back accusations of literal fascism. That's what we're getting here. Especially as in the context of, and we'll get to it in a few minutes, the New York Times hiring an actual yay Hitler guy. I mean, explicitly. Like, I just don't want to hear it from the media right now. Sorry, Brandon. Are there any more before we get into the substance of this? They're all kind of similar to that. Wired insulted Andreessen by calling him a merchant of progress, which sounds kind of badass. I don't actually know how that's an insult. That was nested in like a 2000 word piece on why the Luddites were... It was reviewing a book about the Luddites. And it was like, there's so much more than just smashing machines. And it's

like, they're really this important social movement. And I think, okay, there are people who really believe that and go off. What they tend not to do is become tech journalists. Like the Wired Magazine, that was where people went because they were hobbyists and they loved the crazy new tech stuff on the horizon they wanted to learn about all the new gadgets and gizmos and cool weird science shit and they were talking about vr it was like very neil stevenson-esque like people were excited about just the cool shit that was coming um and now you have just this niger kind of like boom, not even an interesting kind of leftist, like an old hippie anti-nuclear type person who is reacting to this stuff. And it just feels... I don't know,

the whole thing's kind of sad. You have that one woman who called it right-wing and violent. Right-wing and violent, yeah. It's as if... I think people, they're reacting to a kind of overall vibe that they don't understand. They see Mark speaking in a kind of way and it's forceful and excited and unapologetic. And they don't even care about the topic. And I see this in writing, in sort of response to writing all the time. It doesn't even matter what you're talking about. It's the way you're saying it reminds them of like a guy,

like macho guy. And they see that as inherently threatening. This is why I think the word violent was applied to this, a piece that was genuinely arguing for things. It was like, yay, artificial intelligence. And I think he asked to build more nuclear power plants. That was the whole thing. But it was characterized as violent. You have Kara Swisher, obviously, going off herself. She's furious about it. Her, I think, pushback is, I understand that one a little more. That one is, that's just because Mark doesn't talk to her anymore. And of course, Mark doesn't talk to Kara Swisher anymore. Mark used to be very friendly with Kara. They would disagree all the time, but he was friendly with her. And then she will hurt, I think failed

now, failed media company Recode, went after A16Z for advocating caution in the early days of covet 19 famously he had a his firm had a no handshakes please sign um this was like early early on before the summer even of 2020 when we didn't really quite know what was going on her outlet went after him and uh the entire tech industry clapped back like just rose up and they they were like, not today, Satan. And they went in, they defended him. Biology was a huge part of this. And this really, I think, completely destroyed her relevance in Silicon Valley because she doubled and tripled down. And then she never provided evidence to support any of her claims. And I think she resents him for that. I think she sees him and his firm as the thing that kind of

knocked her off her high horse. But yeah, I don't know. What do you guys make of this? I would just note really quick about Kara Swisher going after Andreessen for the no handshakes thing. This is a little bit off topic, but it's so funny to me. Sometimes I think about, I remember, I believe the Washington Post or New York Times in the very beginning of the pandemic, late February, 2020, the media in lockstep was like, this is just a bad flu. And this was at the same time that Coinbase published like a 2000 word blog post that was like, here's what we're going to do if this gets really bad.

And they had a whole plan. And the media was like, you guys are fucking dumb and uh it really changed after that as uh doomer like the kind of person who gets a bunch of canned food and hides in their in their basement they were making fun of us and yes yes yeah it was and again they were totally prepping for covet 19 was right wing whatever they don Whatever they don't like, it's like the politics generally follow the culture. And I think the right of the culture is different. The culture of tech is very different than the culture of tech press. But the politics are all, that's not really a part of it at all. They just don't like us. They just don't like it. And they'll find- One of the other things you were saying too about the tone that they don't like, it's like you can't, I've noticed that too. It's like when they encounter direct and forceful suggestions for solutions, just like straightforward like here's what we're

going to do this is going to fix this they don't like it it's really bizarre like you can't come at it that way anymore i do think they don't like the message anyway then they're well i think it's like if they don't like the message then the tone is going to bother them anymore because like people will be like you're funny or they're like you're snarky depending on like how you know what they think about what i've actually written it's not actually like the tone it's like how people perceive it they're like you're being mean or you're being funny or like you know what i mean like it's like people can't make up their mind so they're gonna be like oh it's violent but if they liked it they would be like a strided defense of you know whatever yeah they'd be like go off king tell us how to be techno progressive um

i think there's a gender thing here i think there's something about a guy being like very direct that really bothers people there's it's like it's seen as like just another guy doing a guy thing acting like a guy some dumb you always see this uh the me like the memes about another white boy with a podcast and here we all are another white boy with a podcast um it's like it's it's very it's very like it feels very gendered the criticism to me well i mean we live in the longhouse don't we yeah i think that there's this like some people i guess maybe would say it's like a longhouse thing i think it comes from academia but like it is it is kind of like more directed towards men a lot of times like

this like desire like oh you need to caveat everything that you say like you need to be like we but what about the the i don't, the whatever workers that are going to be replaced or whatever? And like, I mean, maybe like if you're writing like a book or something, like if you're, but there's like a 5,000 work like blog post, right? So it's like, I mean, you can't get, you can't get into everything. You're not writing like a full, like you're not giving like policy recommendations like to the government or you're not, you know, like there's like in academia, like there's a reason

why you do that it's because it's because supposed to be like quasi like scientific research or whatever but like this is just a guy writing his blog right it's like i mean and i as somebody who used to do literary criticism like used to actually like write reviews of like new novels that were coming out and stuff like it's hard sometimes to get like you know two thousand words in for that and like it's hard sometimes to get like you know two thousand words in for that and like when you're trying to do it on a five thousand dollar blog post you're just gonna go buck wild and just start making shit up you're gonna be i think he said that and like you know because really i mean even if you don't like it like really the most you

should be able to come up with is like 140 characters but these people have taken it upon themselves to write entire articles about it. And so, yeah. Not even just one. This is the other piece that's crazy about it to me, is that it's not just one or two. It's every single tech press outlet that I saw had something to say about this. Well, had one thing to say about this, which was that it was bad. I wonder what it is. I think you only react that way if you think you're losing something important. And I think maybe Mark, I wrote in the industry, I was talking a little bit about the Twitter of it all. Mark really represents this direct to the industry approach to communication.

He is a big Elon supporter. I'm pretty sure A16 is invested in the new Twitter. He's been an outspoken proponent of free speech and things like this. And free speech itself now, that phrase really speaks directly to this conflict between the elite arbiters of truth and the masses. And the elite arbiters of truth, by the way, they're fine with the speech of the masses provided they agree with it. But once they don't, it's like, this is really dangerous to our institutions and whatnot. And I think that for whatever reason, they clock Mark as the guy. He's the one who, maybe he's an apostate a little bit as well. He was friendly with them at one point and now he's not. But they definitely see him as dangerous and they want to make that clear. Yeah. And I think they're operating on this model

that's probably outdated to this point, which is they assume that people are coming to them, average normie readers are coming to them, to be basically told how to interpret sort of raw information or raw information coming out of the news cycle. And I think it's probably outdated at this point because X has taken so much of that share of readership away from these publications that they're simply not able to do that. And that might be a source of fear, danger, or threat to TechCrunch, Wired, Gizmodo, Vice, and these guys. Yeah. I think the other thing here is they are also operating in... So each of these journalists is operating inside of this information ecosystem with us. Let's just talk about X, the X of it all for a minute. This is a platform where creative voices are in a kind of competition with each other for attention. And it's like separate from the class thing and separate from the disagreement on the future thing and separate from the history of Kara Swisher being just

totally burned by A16Z and everybody else in tech who spoke up at that point. Mark's just very popular. His writing is very popular. Lots of people are reading his writing. That piece was read by many, many, many people, way more people than the average piece of really any report from any of the tech press outlets. tech, any, any report from any of the tech press outlets. So that is just frustrating on a kind of human level, I think for a creative person who wants that attention. Like if you were in competition, that's just, that's a, that's a guy who's taking attention away from you. At least maybe that's how some people see it. Yeah. I think, I think on a part of that is, is also, um, if, if, if this is, if we can conceive of this as like a battle between

um the andresons of the world and the tech crunches of the world if andreson ends up uh winning then all of those magazines that we're talking about become really irrelevant or they have to just change ideological sides overnight to stay to survive because nobody's going to want to read uh totally anti-tech stuff from i mean no one wants to read them now they already don't want this is i i sometimes go back i go back and forth on the on the relevance of the press like you know i say oh it's really important that these people are all lockstep on an issue that's totally wrong it's like affecting culture and then sometimes i look at it and i'm like man they're really scared is there a reason is it because they're not getting the views? They're not getting the reads? Maybe they're less relevant than I thought. I will

say in the case of this cruise... So let's talk about cruise for a minute. So in the case of San Francisco, the San Francisco DMV just revoked cruise as a self-driving car company. They revoked their license to operate within the city. It's a huge deal. This follows a massive, I would say, I want to, I mean, there's no way it's a conspiracy. It's a decentralized sort of disinformation campaign of a kind we're used to following years of Trump in office and COVID and things like this, in which every time a cruise got into any kind of an accident or was even near an accident, it would be reported as the cruise vehicle's fault. All of them were debunked. There's not, to my mind, one story that was about cruise that wasn't either debunked or contextualized in a way that was very damning.

I'll give you an example the worst one yet to my mind is um a girl was uh or a woman was dragged by a cruise car about 20 feet um and which is horrific and she was hospitalized very dangerous um i think she's in not critical condition she's in serious condition i read read, but it seems like she's going to be okay, but very scary. She was hit into the cruise by a human driver. She was like a human driver hit her and ran. I read an article yesterday from Mission Local, it's a local press in San Francisco. They did not even mention this about this girl. They did not even mention how this girl ended up on that car.

She was hit by a human. There have been multiple stories like this where a cruise was blamed for a human driver that hit a person. One was, I believe, a homeless person who was killed not too long ago, also by a human driver. This is where the tech press or press in general does seem to have an influence because this slew of stories from every journal in San Francisco, it doesn't matter that they've all been debunked. It seems to have led directly to real political action, especially most recently in the case of this girl being

dragged. And that is, I don't know, they're relevant, relevant enough to do that. I mean, what do you guys make of the, I guess, what do you make of the cruise thing, first of all? And what do you make of the relevance of the press in general at this point? Tech press, let's say narrow on the tech press. I want to add some details to that hit and run really quick. First off, so the hit and run created two pro or two government like regulatory actions um the first is national highway traffic safety administration opened a probe on this and the second is that california

dmv revoked cruises license i'm pretty sure specifically because of this incident um i will just i'll say that like they actually haven't found the hit and run driver. So it's kind of rich a little bit. And the second thing I'll say is, I mean, this is really, really tragic, but the woman who got hit walked out in an intersection at her red light. So even where she was hit by a driver and Cruz was unable to avoid her, the human was still at fault. And the other incident I wanted to bring up that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into is when a Cruz going 1.4 miles per hour through a green light, bumped into a pedestrian, and somehow the pedestrian got sent to the hospital for this.

I don't even know how to go 1.4 miles per hour in my car. That's half of the human walking speed. So imagine you're going half of your normal walking speed, and that's a car. Isn't it true that the person that the woman or sorry the person that got the person that got hit was actually the one that hit the cruise if she's walking or he or she is walking she got bumped after she walked out in front of a green light and then got bumped is the word that i keep reading by a car driving 1.4 miles per hour. At a crawl. And then the pedestrian, according to the incident report, was transported by an ambulance to the hospital. How could this have possibly caused an injury?

I seriously don't understand. How is that possible? I mean, listen, I respect a good scam. And like, you know what I mean? She's like, oh my God. You know what i mean she's like oh my god you know i mean because you see it's like it's like in soccer you're gonna cash the fuck out yes i get it it's either that or it's i mean you have just so many cases was that guy jason prado is that his name jason prado the leftist i think that was his name he uh Prado, the leftist in the city who he ran into a crosswalk on a green light

and then a cruise car stopped. It didn't hit him. It just stopped there. And I believe... Brandon, can you look this story up while I'm going? I want to make sure I'm getting the details right. I'm pretty sure that... I know he went viral after that for saying the crews did something horrifically dangerous. Well, Jason works for... He's an activist. He's a leftist activist. He wants to ban the cars. My sense is that these guys around the city are seeking the cars out. We already know... I mean, Sanjana previously reported on coning where these people, the local activists in the city were going onto the cars and they were putting a cone on top of them right over a sensor, I believe, which stopped the cars from operating and bricked them in the middle of the street, causing traffic and whatnot to get people

mad at the cruise vehicles, the self-driving cars. You have activists around the city seeking controversy with the cars out so they could then get in the press and spin up this kind of fake outreach. The average person you talk to doesn't seem to really care about this. It's like the press writes stories about it and then the local politicians act on it and they use those stories to prove that they have a leg to stand on. But yes, it's all bullshit. I do think it's actually succeeded. I want to know the like to stand on but it's yes it's all bullshit and i do i do think it's actually i want to know the identity of this girl because i am she's either a scam artist or she's one of these activists it's a total scam it's like it's like when you're watching european

soccer and they just get like like slightly grazed by somebody's hand and they fall over like screaming yeah screaming yeah i mean it's like what's what's the what's their actual motivation though like do they actually think that like they're dangerous and we just haven't seen it yet or is it like a labor they don't want the taxi drivers to get displaced or the labor it's one labor it's not ideology yeah it's one it's labor and then two it's the fact that these companies are run by tech and tech is synonymous with rich this is one of the reasons i got mad at uh there's a local organization called grow sf in the city and they are the moderates and they are raising money to fight against the crazy people. They recently, it was like this meme where it's like literally no one and then someone says something fucking crazy. So literally no one. And then Grow SF, I will never take money from

Elon Musk. They sort of like reached out. So the San Francisco Chronicle reached out to them to see if they had taken money from Elon Musk. And they were like, not only have we not, we don't share values with the man. We never have, don't know him. We'll never know him. Absolutely no world will ever work with him. And it's like, okay. I actually reached out to one of the guys about this and I was like, what the fuck? And he's like, well, Elon Musk is pulling it 30% unpopularity with the city. I'm like, he's not running for local politics. You don't have money from him. What is the real reason that you did this?

And it's because he is synonymous with tech and tech is very unpopular among a very strong, loud contingent of voters in the city of San Francisco. So I cut ties with them, cucked SF, no longer supporting them. I've told many of you to give them money. I am sorry for doing that. I never will again. It's like, who needs people like that? It's fucking bullshit. But I do think it's interesting that they feel the need to reach out in this way. And I do think things like Cruz, the real animus behind it, and Elon Musk for sure, is they represent this rich class of people in the city, this kind of bogeyman that is chasing the socialists around and running poor brown people out of their house and things like this it's uh it's just part of the theater that they've bought into i mean what do you make of that is because i i don't think it's about the cruise cars i think it's one labor but then i think the bigger thing is a cultural thing yeah i mean well the labor thing it's like the other my whole

thing was like actually i mean like i know people have like made money off uber but like i remember like when a couple of years ago everybody was saying like uber's like a giant scam and that like it's exploiting people you should sign up for it because like you're not guaranteed to make money which is i guess true but like i don't know it's funny how like the politics have kind of shifted around i guess uber drivers anyway and like how go off how is it without what how has it shifted explain expand on that well they used to say like that uber is like bad and exploits workers but now it's like it then that people like shouldn't be uber drivers because it's like a scam and a rip off but now they're saying like oh we need to like Uber drivers. Yes. It reminds me of the duality of the leftist

positions on America. On the one hand, this is a uniquely evil country, oppresses poor people, oppresses black people, oppresses queer people. Trans genocide is happening here on the daily, oppresses women. No one is safe except white boys. But on the other hand, if you don't let people immigrate into this country, that is a violation of their human rights. This is the only place that people can immigrate to for safety. You start in, let's say, I don't know, the furthest hellhole in South America, the furthest South you go down where it's like a shitty country. You walk through 15 countries, you come to America because it's the only place you're safe. Make it make sense. It's just the duality of the left on these things. Yeah. And just I'll say something about the Ludditism in San Francisco.

We published a piece called Against Safetyism quite some time ago by, I think his name's Berne Hobart and Tobias Huber. And they have a really great quote about why people are essentially afraid of technology that I'd just like to read really quick. They say, creating a new technology and deploying it widely entails a definite vision for the future but a focus on the risks as like as in safetyism and avoiding technology means a definite vision of the past and a more stochastic model of what the future might hold given times annoying habit of of only moving in one direction we have no choice but to live in somebody's future the question is whether it's somebody with a plan or somebody with a neurosis. And I feel like San Franciscans kind of want to live in the future of somebody

with a neurosis as opposed to somebody with a plan. I think that's a great quote. Yeah. These San Franciscans for sure. And I think the people like the Cuck SF thing is I don't think they're really like, they not really those people they just want those people to like them and that is the death kiss of integrity i would say is when you need people you just need them to like you you're you're not going to give the right position at that point you sometimes you will because sometimes that aligns maybe even most of the time that aligns you know being liked and saying the right. But there are moments where it just doesn't. And yeah, they failed the test. Speaking of total failures, let's talk about Ryan and Workman of the New York... No, you know what? Let's talk about the New York Times-Hitler thing first.

So this is going to be a spicy one. I think River's probably going to push back quite a bit. I think he should, and we should have this conversation about cancel culture. Free speech, cancel culture, the Israel stuff. It has gotten certainly out of hand. Um, I will say just before I get into the really egregious ones that I definitely don't mind, you know, these people being fired, there was this list, the LinkedIn list, uh, scraped like 17,000 names. These sort of pro-Israel folks put together this list of people who had on LinkedIn voiced what they described as either anti-Semitism, pro-terror support, or just pro-Israel or anti-Israel. Or was it, it was like anti-Israel, anti-Semitism or pro-terror? Was pro-Palestine on there? Because I know it was. What ends up happening is like, first of all,

anti-Semitism and pro-terror, let's bucket them over here. That to me is very different than anti-Israel or pro-Palestine. Those are two separate buckets for me. I think the pro-Palestine position is idiotic, but within the bounds of... People say stupid things constantly that I don't fire them for, or that I wouldn't fire them for, that I don't want them to be fired for. But the anti-Semitic and specifically the pro-terror stuff is like, I don't know how you work with someone who wants you to die. And so that's why I'm like, I don't want to work with a Nazi. I don't want to work with a pro-terrorist person. But if someone's just going off about Palestine, I don't know, that's pretty dicey. And this list, from when I clicked in, and it was a lot of people who were just like, kids are dying in Palestine.

And you can say that's complicated, because it is, because there's a war going on right now. And war is complicated. And you have people, Hamas is hiding in schools and shit and hospitals and whatnot. But kids are dying. That is a fact. And there's a certain kind of lib who is always going to be an anti-peace person until Joe Biden's waging war. But the point is, I think that's fine. And I do think things have gotten sort of... I think there are things in certain dimensions that are getting out of control. That having been said, the New York Times recently rehired a guy in Gaza as a video photojournalist who has previously

praised Hitler. Not just like a fuck Israel guy, but like a literal yay Hitler guy. And the quotes are, let me just pull them up really quick because they are spectacular in terms of just, just pull them up really quick because they are spectacular speak like in terms of just holy shit uh quote in a state of harmony as hitler was during the holocaust and he shared a picture of himself like vibing uh another one how great you are hitler um and it was a photo of like hitler with his little mustache like and a cell phone or whatever um that had been like photoshopped in that's crazy to me. So the controversy happened a couple of years ago. He was fired. They bring him back onto work now to cover Israel. That is psychotic to me. We could talk about this for a second,

or we could get into the school stuff too, because I do think there's a lot of crazy shit happening on campuses. And maybe we will just do that brandon concurrently while this is happening give me the uh give me the college stuff what's going on in the college campuses um okay so last night by the way all of this stuff is un for to my mind unverified it's very difficult to sort through what's going on on twitter and know the the providence of some of these videos and images um one of the i think two things that we we absolutely know happened yesterday were uh number one that there was a group of jewish students who either were barricaded or barricaded themselves inside a library um because they were afraid of a pro-palestine or pro-hommas protest happening right outside the doors and if you watch the video they appear to be like the protesters. So the video is from inside the library and the protesters outside the

library at the door do appear to be like banging on the door and like, and, uh, generally have a very threatening sound to them. You can kind of see them through, through the windows. Um, we also saw yesterday,

um, again, like I, I reversed image search this and it does seem to have happened yesterday or very recently. Protesters in Union Square, young ones, holding up signs that say something like, it's like, keep New York City clean. Yeah, the sign has like a- A star of David on the trash can. a star of David in the trash can. Um, previous to that at, um, what's it called? Is it called George Washington university? Is that the name? I'm not sure. I saw this one you wrote down. I wasn't familiar with the story.

Yes. So, um, the projector one, uh, where they had like, uh, that one, I am familiar with that story. Yeah. And I think it was only, I think it was only four students. I don't think, I don't, I don't know that there were a bunch of students who were behind this, but, but a few students at least did project what pro-Israel people are saying

are dog whistles on our anti-Semitic dog whistles. Well, glory to the martyrs and from the river to the sea, right? Correct. Yes. They projected this onto the side of a building and it's really, really big. And commenters on Twitter mentioned that this is like two miles away or something like that from the Capitol building. So, yeah, we also saw- You have Ryan and Workman.

Last one and then we'll just get into it you have ryan and workman of nyu so this is the girl who uh wrote support for the terrorists directly following the attacks before israel had retaliated um she is uh the head of the nyu legal something or other what is it she's a lawyer the student the head of the student new york bar association yeah so she lost her internship at some like exorbitantly like some like rich person lawyer job um and has just again been filmed uh defacing posters of like missing hostages from uh from the terror attack on october 7th but that's like the weirdest response credit to her to her credit i will say she seems to really believe it so you know go off uh you know she she's like hardcore you know eradication of israel person sure uh at least she's walking the walk and

i still just think the colleges are out of control um there's a question of like whether these people who are responsible for all these different things um whether expelling them or you know losing their internship whatever Is that cancel culture is the first question and then is it justified as the second? We've been talking for quite a bit. River, I know you have complex opinions about this. I'm going to let you just give me your take. When you have college kids protesting, repeating slogans and stuff, whatever, trying to create blacklists to where they'll you know, they'll never work again, where they're going to be published online, where people are going to be Googling them forever,

trying to get them kicked out of school. I think like, if the goal is to like, de-radicalize people, which I don't think a lot of these people are radicalized. I think people, it's kind of like BLM where like, people are like going out on the streets and like repeating slogans because that's what their friends are doing and they want to like get in with it. Like, I think like for the people who are actually radicalized, they're going to double down because then you're going to see themselves as a martyr. oh look like see what like these people have like these people have destroyed my life for taking um you know for defending the 2300 children who've been killed in palestine or whatever over the past 18 days like that's how they're going to see it because like that's the that's kind of like human nature um and there's also like no way that if you end up like on like a list of anti-semites or whatever like forever and where every time like somebody

tries to google you they're gonna that's the first thing that's gonna pop up like there's no even if you like completely change if he becomes like a radical like go complete to the other side become like a radical pro-israel person and like say like i'm sorry convert to judaism but whatever like it doesn't it's not gonna matter because whatever. Like, it doesn't, it's not going to matter because your life is going to be forever. So there's no, there's no motivation for people to change. It doesn't bother me. And I don't, here's how it would bother me.

If, if someone had some pro-Hamas views and they were texting with their friends and someone leaked those to the press, that would be outrageous to me and it would not seem fair. But when someone happily goes to Twitter to post their views, I think it is perfectly valid for people to not want to work with you based on those views. We discriminate against each other all the time. I've discriminated against every single person at Pirate Wires who I've hired based on their views. There's enough in each of you of your views that I like. I am

discriminating against you or against other people in favor of you because of your views, because of things that you have written. This is, speaking of human nature, that's human nature. So I think with cancel culture, there are these cases where it's like you're a janitor and you make an off-color joke in an elevator and then some chick at a tech conference ruins your life, takes it to the press. And that is the cancel culture that I have a problem with. But when Gina Carano or whatever from The Mandalorian says the right wing is being treated like the Jews during World War II, and she gets fired from Disney for that, I think that's stupid and they shouldn't have fired her. But also it's like, you're an actress and your views are now how people are seeing your role. And if Disney wants to fire you or they don't want to associate with you for your views, that's just kind of, that's maybe, that's shitty. But it's kind of, that's just the name of the game. These people have signed their name to views that many people, myself included,

find completely abhorrent. And if you do that, then you kind of have to, you have to expect people to have a reaction to that. In fact, my sense is they're doing it for the reaction. Are they not? I think one of the, one of the difficult parts of this conversation is, um, I think we all know, at least I actually, I would probably disown 80% of the things that I did when I was 19 years old. Like if somebody would like asked me to account for one, they went through every single thing I said when I was 19 years old, I would be like, nope, I didn't do that. I'm really embarrassed by that. Dude, I have some really bad tattoos that I got when I was really young.

And I felt so strongly about the things I got tattoos about that I got them inked on my body. And so, to say, I think we all know that. We all know that college kids are not yet fully formed. We know that they're dumb and we know that they can have really stupid opinions. And so I don't deny that. I certainly had disgust reactions to some of the things that I've seen specifically college kids saying and doing. And I think a lot of us are having literal disgust reactions. It's like pre-language, holy shit, that's awful. But a big part of me wants to keep what I just said in mind about, you know, just the, the stupidity of youth. And again, I understand your point, Michael, again, they're saying some very disgusting things, but I have to, if their experience becomes anything like my own, when they're fully formed adults and are in the prime of their careers, actually making a difference at a company, they probably are, I mean, they're probably not going to

be thinking the same way that they were thinking like 18, 19, 20 years ago when they were in college. So that's just an element that like, it makes this conversation difficult to wade through. I want to ask you about the New York Times thing and then we'll wrap it up what about what about that what about the new york times photo uh the new york times uh photojournalist the pro-hitler guy uh now covering israel for the new york times oh i mean like i can get like he said that shit like 10 years ago or something like if they were hiring to like uh i don't know work on something that not to do with israel palestine i'd be like okay maybe like if he's like said like uh that was a

long time ago sorry about that or whatever i can get like forgiveness for things that people said 10 years ago but it's like hiring to hiring him to cover this conflict is kind of i actually agree yeah like what you i agree i i think that how they let him yeah how do you if he was like covering uh i don't know a swim or something i'd i'd be like okay uh weird but okay the fact that he's covering israel is like i mean i almost think that they want us to have an opinion on this you know you can't do that and i expect unless they're just they were like damn he's in gaza like he's got some sick photos i mean well i mean i guess like because there's like there's almost no journalists on the ground there are a couple million people if they're doing are they hiring or they got contract out because if it was like

oh can you get us some video or like i mean i guess that's kind of like yeah he's got a bunch he's got a ton of bylines at this point and i feel like it's a little it's it's got a bunch. He's got a ton of bylines at this point. I feel like it's a little, it's definitely a weird look, but like considering that nobody can get in or out, I guess it's kind of like, who else do you go to? Except like this one guy,

you know, who's there. I don't know. I mean, weird move, but I guess like knowing that he, I thought this guy was like living in New York or something. I was like crazy but i mean if that's like you know you just need somebody on the ground to like report basic facts or something i mean i don't know like the basic facts reported by a hitler supporter on the israel conflict uh brandon final thoughts uh i don't look i think this is a it's a difficult it's a difficult conversation to Brandon, final thoughts. Look, I think it's a difficult conversation to have about this. I think we can, I mean, look, like for me, cancel culture has always been about, the problem with cancel culture when the left was perpetuating it was people were getting canceled, like you said, for telling stupid jokes

and being overheard by somebody else. And then, and then having their image, you know, plastered everywhere online and having their life ruined. That was a problem for me with, with cancel culture. Now we're talking about like, should these people be allowed to get jobs or is it cancel culture to if I'm the hiring manager not hire those people? I think the answer is pretty much no. You're allowed to do that. It's legally permissible to not hire whoever you want.

And I think it's like you bring up an interesting question about the universities. Should we allow, I guess you could call it genocidal speech or speech that incites violence on universities because we're funding them? I don't know. Well, questions for another day. Thanks guys for joining. We will hit you back up next week. This is the Pir wires pod talk to you later