Pirate Wires - Reacting To Our Hit Piece In Rolling Stone | Pirate Wires Podcast #40

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

EPISODE #40: We're back! Where should we start this week? Oh.. maybe it's that we got our first hit piece! Courtesy of Miles Klee of Rolling Stone magazine. Next, we get into the "Battle Of The Ages". Taylor Lorenz and Libs of TikTok meet up in person for a battle that will live in internet infamy for all of eternity. Ok maybe not (it's just them sitting at a cafe). We get into why Taylor Lorenz is the undisputed champion of internet battles. Next story involves a family feud which involves a female influencer and her Bitcoin shirt wearing father. Finally, we wrap with the continued liberal vibe shift of the post-C*vid era. Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, River Page, Sanjana Friedman Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/google-gemini-race-art?f=home 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 - Welcome Back! Like & Subscribe! 1:00 - Pirate Wires Hit Piece In Rolling Stone Magazine 21:50 - Battle For The Ages - Taylor Lorenz vs. Libs Of TikTok 39:00 - Family Feud! Viral Argument Between Father & Daughter 56:10 - The Vibe Shift Rolls Along! Dr. Phil Calls Out C*vid Policy & NYT Denies Chic-Fil-A HR Story

Thanks for your time and all the best, Miles Klee. Rolling Stone's hit piece, I Was Accused of Being a Nazi, the very first hit. Although he didn't mention Hitler or the paintings, this statement was interpreted by some of his followers as an endorsement of Hitler's visual aesthetic. They're not bad. Amateur-ish, like folk art type aspect to it

where it's like a little rough around the edges. It kind of gives like cover of like a Tolkien book or something. He wasn't successful ultimately, which is embarrassing for him. He showed how morally bankrupt and mindlessly partisan that he is. Either woke wash history, Nazis are then black,

or don't do it at all. Cause it really reads like a sort of schizophrenic monologue in some ways. I think it's basically mid, to be honest. Yeah. That's what i would have commented to miles if he gave me the chance mid-art welcome back to the pod guys um you'll notice i'm in a new location today we're at the uh wtf studios our friends over in new york um i, we really have quite the show for you today.

I want to start, we have to start, we have to start with the first, the very first hit. It's like I'm proud in a way. Rolling Stones hit piece. I was accused of being a Nazi. I think, we could talk about it in a minute. I want to give you some background first on this because it is pretty essential. So last week, what we were talking about was Google's AI disaster, right? And this was kind of a wild moment for the tech press because everything that they had said was going to happen with AI was sort of reversed. And we have this sort of very strange AI out of Google that kind of erased white people from history. Like you could not see them in sort of like everything from medieval Europe to a modern day pope.

Just like complete obliteration there. We wrote about it. We talked about it. We covered it. We were one of the first pieces, one of the first outlets to it. And because the reporting was just just unambiguously true, I think there was not very much attack exposure there. So they went after us in a different way. I'm going to read you. I'm just going to read you the note that I got. I forget what we were

doing when this happened. It was something PirateWire's related. I dip back in. I think it might've been recording actually. I dip back in. I got this phenomenal email from Miles Klee. What's up, Miles? Hi, Mike. Reaching out from Rolling Stone as I'm working on an article about the backlash to Google's Gemini AI, as well as some concurrent discourse on whether Hitler had any talent as a painter. I've read your comments on the former, but I also came across this earlier post of yours where you explain that, quote, art should be beautiful. I noticed this tweet came around the same time that others were fiercely debating Hitler's

merits as an artist because of this post defending them. And I wondered if your remark had any connection to that conversation. Parenthetical aside, it seems as if at least one of your followers thought so. Anyway, just looking for clarity on that and if you'd like to weigh in on hitler's paintings feel free thanks for your time and all the best miles clee where does one begin uh okay so it is true that i tweeted art should be beautiful it's also true that i was trying to call i'm going to be honest with you guys it's also true that i was trying to cause a stir uh the reason is because i feel like it's a sort of controversial statement just to say art

is beautiful and i think that's fucking funny that you can't say art should be beautiful without now being accused of nazism um obviously he does not think that i was talking about hitler's paintings i have no idea what he's talking about um i think maybe today we should talk about hitler's paintings i they're not bad i'm i was just gonna say i'm positive that we should talk about hitler's paintings i they're not bad i'm i was just gonna say i'm positive that river has opinions on hitler's paintings um i've never seen hitler or i had never seen hitler's paintings until i was accused of liking them and then i did do some googling and now i unfortunately do also have some opinions on on hitler's paintings um but first i mean roughly what was you guys like what what was your what is your take on this from Rolling Stone?

It's pretty wild, I will say, to be accused. I mean, it feels like an accusation to me. It's like you're being dragged into the Hitler mud over something that really just had nothing at all to do with you. It's kind of like transparently a hit, I would say. It is weird to have that associated with my name online for the rest of time or until rolling stone goes out of business which i mean it's only a matter of time um i don't know uh what do you what do you guys think about this um well in a sense he was miles was making a bid at shaping the narrative i think by like reframing the reaction to Gemini as solely among Nazis, right?

So if you had a bad reaction to Gemini, you're a Nazi. But he wasn't successful, ultimately, which is embarrassing for him. Aside from how embarrassing the actual, like how he showed how morally bankrupt and mindlessly partisan that he is, he wasn't even successful in getting his own narrative to stick. What actually stuck was that if you like Gemini, you're right-wing,

but more importantly that Google trying to do the right thing had nonetheless erred because it showed black people being Nazis. That's the narrative that sort of emerged and that I think the left has sort of used as a riposte to the actual truth. So there's a broader, the broader thing here, if you kind of step back away from the Rolling Stone sort of hit on us, is this press reaction to the Gemini story in which it was very obviously a problem on Google's side that there was this massive impossibility to produce white people.

That has been framed as problematic for people of color by the mainstream press. It's not really serious. Nobody's really afraid. It's clearly used as a defense of Google, is strange perennially strange to me to see these giant powerful media institutions defending the government and defending the biggest corporations in the country but that is where we're at um and you're right there's like an interesting thing here where where the rolling stone writer tried to produce some sort of like counter narrative he tried to try to get in first he tried to have the first one.

Didn't obviously New York tech wins. They always do when it comes to the counter narrative and the narrative. I mean, they are the, uh, they are the OG, um, and miles cleat could never, I want them to play less dirty in general. If you want to woke wash history, go ahead, but woke wash all of history, right? Like you can't pick and choose if you're going to woke wash history, go ahead, but woke wash all of history, right? Like you can't pick and choose if you're going to woke wash history, um, either woke wash history, uh,

and everybody Nazis are then black, right. Or don't do it at all, but you should not be able to have your cake and eat it too in this situation, which is what the New York times is doing. They're saying, you know, history should be diverse and aspirational, but not certain parts of history. And I don't like that. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I just, I mean, maybe I'm just, you know, extremely, I don't know, like obsessively self-involved, but I like want to focus on the Rolling Stone piece for a minute more. I just, I need to talk about it. I have a lot of thoughts uh river you were about to say something i mean i was just saying that the implication is insane because like what nazis like about hitler is not his artwork you know what i mean that's that's not what that's not

what gets them in i so i mean i i it doesn't even really work as like an insinuation that much it's like can you like hitler's paintings and not be a nazi i guess i mean like if that's the only thing you like about him i mean i think lenny riefenstahl was a pretty good cinematographer that doesn't mean i agreed with her you know hanging out in the eagle's nest but uh it does it it um It really had me thinking about Michael Jackson, weirdly. I did inevitably get there where I thought, I love when Thriller comes on. You know what I mean? And I'm not going to pretend that I don't. And I think that if the allegations are true, that's pretty messed up. And I mean, they seem true to me. I don't know what you all think. They seem true. I have less of a hard time separating the art from the artist.

Do you think perhaps the problem here is, well, before the problem, I mean, let's maybe the art though, like River, you're a, you know, a Hitler art scholar. Could you maybe just break it down a little bit? I was surprised. I saw a castle. I don't know what I thought Hitler painted. maybe just break it down a little bit I was surprised I saw a castle I don't know what I thought Hitler painted I I assumed just like very kind of cartoonish bad like pictures like anti-Semitic drawings or whatever yeah no no I assume portraits of people that were bad I for some I don't know that's like my idea of like George Bush yeah you know the early 20th century or something the thing with George Bush is that he's like painting traumatized veterans, like that he traumatized by sending to Iraq, like a serial killer collecting like tokens from his victims. It's very psychological with him.

His paintings are giving like modern art excellence. Whereas, you know, the Hitler paintings, and then we're going to have some pictures up here for you. They're like kind of maybe not as, they're like beautiful pictures of castles or whatever, but like not quite as good as other things that were being done at the time. I think if you're a modernist, a modern artist, you like that sort of weird art that makes you uncomfortable.

Bush is very good. I think he's like, I think he's actually quite talented. River, I really want to get your thoughts on the art, specifically the art specifically the rps well hitler's art is like it's landscapes it's buildings it i actually kind of like it because it's sort of a mix of like very traditional like realism with like there's a degree of um sort of like amateurish like like folk art type aspect to it where it's like a little rough around the edges it kind of gives like a little it looks like something that would be on the cover of like

a tolkien book or something yes um i don't know i mean it's not bad but it also like i mean if you just saw that painting you wouldn't be like oh hitler did that you know it just seems like a a pleasant sort of painting that you might find in an antique shop or something and now that i think about it does kind of look like this painting that my parents have in their house um because my uh grandma like grew up in germany her dad was in the military and your grandma grew up in germany yeah she's american though military base thickens yeah but my parents have like a hitler original sitting in their house i mean i won't see you next week i'll be selling it do you do you think it's do you think you can see in the painting in some way could you

make a case that you can kind of see what he becomes from the paintings i'm like zooming in i'm like is there like a somewhere in the background i mean i don't see anything like crazy it just seems very banal um yeah i mean at the very least like if you want to get into like fascist quote-unquote fascist art or whatever lenny riefenstahl which it's way more acceptable to like she was like hitler's sort of like favorite filmmaker and she was like a propagandist they she basically got off the hook at nuremberg and then was like i'm gonna go uh photograph africans uh like isolated african tribes to prove i'm not a nazi but you can still see like kind of like the fascism in even when

she's like photographing the africans because it's all about like virility and like it's like pictures of like men wrestling and beating each other and stuff and it's like still like you could I'm like Lenny Riefenstahl comes across as more of a fascist in her art that was supposed to convince people that she's not a fascist than Hitler does it his like little landscapes yeah I found that that what you're saying now is reminding me of um the music video for alejandro lady gaga's alejandro like that's fascist art that is like gay fascists having sex like it's it's full and you can see the difference in the aesthetic and you're right it's like the virility it's like the i don't know why but i associate leather with nazis for some reason it might just be because of like gay culture it all gets like blended together there um but do you think that maybe

like the poor because my understanding of history of of hitler's history is it's totally made up i think it's just like i think i made it up myself um was that like because his art was so poorly received he became a fascist so like his paintings wouldn't have been fascist it's like he had to become a fascist to justify what happened to him or something um i mean i i've heard that before i think it was more like he was radicalized i think by the war um like the way world war one ended where basically Germany surrendered and it was like falling into disarray under

did he blame the communists for it because the communists tried to start a revolution like during the war and there was he felt that the veterans were disrespected when they came back and there's a lot in there that doesn't have to do with the art but i think that maybe that's part of it because if you think about i mean like the nazis really were a very it was a very art forward regime in the way that a lot of

other dictatorships were like with the soviets it was kind of more of an afterthought a little bit and they kind of copied a lot of the Nazis' art style in a way. Very similar. Yeah, I mean, the Nazis literally had... It's weird to me that people focus on Hitler's paintings at all when they're talking about Nazi aesthetics, because the Nazis had their own art exhibitions where they would show degenerate art,

and it would be sort of African-style paintings and sculptures, and they would show ideal art that would be sort of these Greci and sculptures, and they would show, you know, ideal art that would be sort of these Grecian sculptures and things like that. So they had a very defined aesthetic that in many ways, post dated Hitler's sort of amateurish paintings and sketches. This is what this is the root of why people who have this kind of common sense approach to art, which is that, you know, these sort of very clearly beautiful things are beautiful. And it's sort of very clearly ugly things are hideous and, you know, not good art. I think this is why left wing people often do clock that as fascism. It's like, you know, Hitler said that the ancient Grekin statues were beautiful, therefore to like that must be Hitler esque or something. But hasn't that boxed left-wing zealots like you know for example the rolling stone uh or rolling stone magazine into this really uncomfortable position

as a as a what is ostensibly an art magazine which is that if you don't like bad art you're a nazi that seems like problematic for rolling stone no i mean there's like the the i guess like the quote-unquote like nazi art i mean it is like well within like the, I guess like the quote unquote, like Nazi art. I mean, it is like well within like the Western art tradition of the sort of like high levels of symmetry and structure and like the, you know, the busts and, you know, all that. I don't know. and you know all that i don't know i mean it it does seem like bizarre that they that they're talking about hitler's art and like don't even uh it's just to dunk on you like they're not actually like i don't know because i guess because of like my mind i would immediately be like what was his art good that's where my mind would go and well they did all the lack of curiosity that email went out uh

within a few minutes they published the piece so clearly they weren't interested what i had to say and now they have a whole podcast they can listen to if they're interested in our thoughts on hitler's paintings um but the the the quote about the work of pirate wires um that sort of hit is constructed like this again this is a topic that i topic that I had no idea this debate was even happening. I was not a part of it. I was literally just commenting on art. Talking about aesthetics in art is something that I actually have done quite a lot in Pirate Wires. I go back to it again and again and again. I have a lot of opinions on it. Anyway, from Rolling Stone, amid this debate, Mike Solana, a vice president of the venture capital firm Founders Fund, not true, by the way, I am the CMO of Founders Fund, tweeted,

it's pretty simple, actually. Art should be beautiful. Although he didn't mention Hitler or the paintings, this statement was interpreted by some of his followers as an endorsement of Hitler's visual aesthetic. So I feel like I don't mean to belabor the point, but I think this is just such an incredible quote from a media company. And it really does embody like everything that they do. I did not say anything about it. I did not know it was happening. But there you have the claim that I have endorsed Hitler's visual aesthetic, which again, until really that statement went out, I didn't even know what his visual aesthetic was. It's bigger than obviously us, right? Like this is a kind of media that has been happening for a long time. People read this and they think I can't trust these people or anything they say. Nobody saw that and thought, I mean, I don't think you'd

have to be really stupid to see that and think like, oh man, that guy must be a Nazi. They saw that and they thought, wow, I really can't trust Rolling Stone. This is the people, this is the same group of people who famously had that, what was it? Was it the Duke? Was it the Duke rape case that they hoaxed? They hoaxed, what was the huge rape case? University of Virginia, I think. University of Virginia, right? Like it's like they've already lost their credibility, but this is just one more nail in the coffin. I don't know. Is there any last thoughts on just like the sort of overall, the journalism of Rolling Stone, the sort of decline of rolling stone it is they were the name carries this incredible weight because it's rolling stone right i'm thinking about like

almost famous and you know the the halcyon days of music journalism um they're a cool journal they've produced a lot of great work uh and kind of here they are now i don't know sad yeah i mean i think the question i had reading the piece because it really reads like a sort of schizophrenic monologue in some ways where he's just free associating uh there's no connection between this you know nazi discourse like it almost feels weird to even talk about hitler's art here because there's like no connection between the gemini stuff he's talking about and then the nazi discourse he brings up and he has this sort of weird like even the line you read where he says you know mike solana didn't mention hitler's aesthetic directly right it's like well of course because there's no connection here between the two topics you're discussing uh you wonder where the editor is and i think this is like something that came up in in

2014 when they published that false rape story that they then retracted and they had to pay i think they paid a settlement to the fraternity that they defamed um it is a question i think about like editorial standards and i sort of wonder i mean because rolling stone was acquired uh a few years ago by a media conglomerate that also owns variety and a couple of other publications and so i think you do wonder like have these has this acquisition changed the sort of editorial makeup like who's you would like to think there'd be like an adult in the room who's controlling the kind of content that they put out like this. Because it's borderline. I mean, it's not, I don't know if it's libelous, but it's really, I think, defamatory in some ways to make these kind of claims. And when he cites like, oh, the followers associated it with,

your followers associated it with Hitler's paintings. It's like a link to one tweet from someone and you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers. I mean, you could have whatever anyone in your mind. Well, sure. And that tweet was just, I was saying, I think that I, cause I ended up clicking that and he was just saying something like, you better not say art is beautiful or they're going to call you a fascist. And he sort of, he brought up some, I guess the discourse, I didn't see it until after this piece was published um on people i guess grown-ups in the room yeah like you think maybe there'd be an editor there but what but should you think that i don't know like what about there is a difference between the new york times and the wall street journal well certainly the new york times

and like rolling stone magazine um i don't know that there's an editor there i think he might just be free-forming i think they don't maybe have the money for that at this point it really is like it's like this once great beast has died and now it's just like the rotting corpse of rolling stone infested by these maggots who are kind of like eating it from within it's sad for them i guess great for us because if rolling stone's gone what's the advice is gone like what is the what is the closest comp to that and i don't think there's anything in our lane to be honest it seems to me like um somebody had to make a word count for the week and they were like well let me write about this and like i i mean it's it's sad to see you know because rolling stone

once was a you know pretty okay you know publication but now it just seems like there it's that's very content mill type behavior yeah um and i suspect that it's you know people are like okay i gotta get something out and so this is what it's gonna be i'm gonna accuse somebody of baby liking hitler's art uh based on a reply to one tweet having nothing to do with hitler yeah i think that we should just i mean cap it off on hitler's aesthetic i think it's basically mid to be honest yeah um i don't know i guess that's my official... That's what I would have commented to Miles if he gave me the chance. Mid-art. I want to move on to something that really is so stupid and yet so perfectly indicative of our entire media moment. I think it's

fascinating actually, which is this like battle of the ages between Taylor Lorenz and Libs of TikTok. I don't actually know the background here. I have no idea why Libs of TikTok, Chaya, I can't pronounce, what is her last name? Anyone? Raychick. Yeah. I have no idea why she agreed to this because I saw that the video was on Taylor's YouTube channel, but she did agree. I guess the background here is like Taylor famously doxed lips of TikTok. And the word doxed is always a point of contention among journalists. They say that just merely releasing somebody's name is not doxing.

It's in the definition. Releasing someone's personally identifiable information or personally identifying information is doxing. I do agree that there's a difference between doxing somebody's name and doxing their address. Taylor didn't do that. She just released this woman's name and made her, you know, a famous public figure rather than an anonymous account that posted, you know, TikTok videos that were really deranged. But in so doing, in doing that, it's sort of like a Batman tale, right? Where where like there's this crazy chemical spill and batman's parents are involved in it or something and like this person falls into the vat of of acid and emerges as this like horrible villain that then is obsessed with the

person who they deem responsible i'm not actually sure which one of them is which in this case but the two taylor and lips of tiktok are super like i would say almost inextricably linked at this point uh taylor is constantly reporting on lives of tiktok lives of tiktok is clearly obsessed with taylor uh to the point where like um you know this the internet sort of sense that this battle was going to be it was important it felt meaningful in some way um they arrive like as if they are dressed in the Halloween costume versions of themselves. Taylor has her mask on outside, and she's sitting in a chair facing libs of TikTok, who is wearing a T-shirt with Taylor crying on the T-shirt.

And she hands Taylor a box of masks. And they say some sort of nasty things to each other and then they begin their interview. I can't tell someone what to do in their in their house. Sounds like you do want to tell people what to do in their house. I never said that. So you're totally okay with people being trans just not as long as they're in public. No I never said that. No, I never said that. They could, it's the whole thing is based off of a lie. And I think that, um, the fact this lie cannot be mainstream in our, in our society. It's just, it's a lie. And what harm is it causing? Do you believe? Um, I like the truth. I like truth.

River, I know you watched the whole thing um what was your what was your feeling about it all well i mean i think the biggest loser was women um it's like the most catty thing like a misogynist could not come up with like a better like anecdote about like the cattiness and uh like pettiness of women but i mean honestly i think that taylor came off as more reasonable and like more intelligent than shia shia came across as super defensive in a really inarticulate way uh really seemed really inconsistent about the point she was trying to make where she was claiming that people were defaming her but the taylor was like well aren't you defaming these like random uh you know middle school teachers or whatever who were like gay and

posting on tiktok and she was chaya said well they want to be famous they're posting on tiktok and she was like well aren't you posting on twitter like all day and it just she did taylor did i'm not gonna say she like owned her or whatever but but she she came out she performed better than i expected she seemed to hold her cool a little bit more um and seemed a little bit more professional than shia did for sure yeah i mean my sense was from what i saw i i expected taylor to do well i don't know why people keep underestimating taylor she's there's a reason she's one of my favorite stars in the sort of like wwf of it all like she knows what she's doing taylor understands the

assignment that's why she arrived in her mask like she knows you she's fucking doing. Taylor understands the assignment. That's why she arrived in her mask. Like she knows you have to dress up and you have to go and you have to play your part. She researched, she came there with a whole series of questions she was going to ask. She had a perspective on the debate and Chaya showed up. I think Chaya is probably really used to, um, a friend of mine said this probably used to, uh, um to just kind of being the smart person in her family that everyone's like, yeah, you're right. And that's kind of what she's, that's who she's used to talking to. She's where Taylor is really used to sort of internet combat, you know, and she's gone into a bunch of hostile spaces and spoken and she's really formidable and you cannot just come

at Taylor with some dumb shit and expect to survive. Like she's really formidable and you cannot just come at taylor uh with some dumb shit and expect to survive like she's gonna go after you and you have to go back hard if you have any hope here and in chai just really did not she's they're they're built for different mediums and uh chai is not trained under 10x gravity like taylor has i mean listen this woman is still wearing a mask right like her commitment to narrative warfare is unparalleled i don't know why she thought this was going to be easy it's almost offensive to me that you would not take taylor seriously as a fan of taylor as perhaps her biggest fan um it was uh it was really not what i expected i do think chaya i agree that taylor made a lot of great points i mean chaya mostly looked like a clown unfortunately um people are not gonna like that in the mentions

but honestly like i'm not here to coddle your feelings, guys. I'm here to tell you the truth. Taylor won. There was one really crazy point, though, that Chaya inadvertently, I don't think she meant to do this, but really just exposed Lorenz. And it was on the distinction between death threats and bomb threats. And Taylor just completely collapsed here the the question was sort of like taylor's like you know every time you you try a you know report on uh not report they never use the word report right clearly this is what nelly bulls has once said uh the lips of tiktok is journalism um it's exposing certain things it is acting the way a journalist would do

it is is putting a spotlight on these huge in uh uh is putting spotlight on on characters and news items that um expose a broader narrative in the country right um so chai is doing that with these like as river you pointed out these kind of deranged teachers or whatever uh who maybe don't matter um taylor's like every time you talk about one of these people they get these are a school where one of these things is happening they get bomb threats uh she cited some poll that was probably invented but who cares if you say stat on if you cite a stat on on a video no one ever double checks it or like looks at the work um from the source and child's like but like i get death threats

every time the media writes about me like are you responsible for those and i do think that is a very good question and i don't understand why it's not valid taylor immediately said she knew she was stumped at this point so she's like i think that death threats are different than bomb threats and i think all of us are like i don't how though like are they both death threats like you're threatening to kill people and um can you blame a person for what their deranged fans say and i don't think that you can or should do that i don't know if you saw but i got like tons of death threats um the past this week after the entire media machine came after me so are they responsible for those i don't think that there's um the same correlation are you receiving bomb threats

i'm receiving death threats like hi i'm gonna come murder you yeah and i definitely sympathize with you there like literally the article goes live and then i get those threats i get the same thing when a fox news article goes live so then I get those threats. I get the same thing when a Fox News article goes live. So is the journalist responsible? The journalist who was the article? I would say, you know, there's a different responsibility when we're talking about media. And I guess to me, a death threat is different than a violent bomb threat. I mean, my interpretation of that moment in the interview was because it is a difficult question. my interpretation of that moment in the interview was, because it is a difficult question, but I thought that Taylor was trying to say something like, you know, as a media figure who receives

a ton of attention and is posting on controversial cultural topics, you're necessarily going to get this constant deluge of death threats from like unhinged Twitter anons mainly. but is there a difference maybe between that kind of like those sort of vague death threats that you might get on twitter and then like a specific targeted uh bomb threat that's how i interpreted the distinction she was trying to draw it people have like uh threatened to kill me on twitter before but like whatever but i mean it mean, it is a little bit different if you call someone's job or you call a school or whatever and you say you're going to blow the place up because then that does have real-world consequences in a way, even if you don't blow it up because then they have to evacuate the school.

The police come. It's like a whole thing. I guess there's more action connected to that is maybe what taylor was trying to get at i don't know yeah but she's just i mean you could expand this a little bit further and you talk about um the bernie bro who shot steve scalise yeah and there was this question because this always happens typically with right wing uh with right wing candidates fans of some right wing candidate go crazy shoot somebody everyone wants to blame the candidate rather than the person who shot them and it's like is bernie sanders responsible for what that guy did because his rhetoric activated this person that wasn't a

bomb threat it was an actual real assassination attempt i don't think i mean there are a lot of crazy people out there and people are driven to do really crazy things and i do think the rhetoric that they're absorbing you know it has something to do with it in the way that like you know you're you're triggered by something and you go off i don't know who can really get inside the mind of a crazy person but this is this criticism is constantly leveled at uh not only you know people like i've gotten this criticism um in fact i got this criticism relating back specifically to taylor who has complained about death threats for years i was privately asked to stop this was a couple of years ago when i was nobody um i was privately asked by one of her colleagues to stop talking

about her because she had received she was receiving death threats and i wasn't blamed specifically but it was this thing, the death threats, it was used as a tool to silence, I feel like very reasonable critique of work that was shaping all of our lives. And so I'm a little bit sensitive to it. And I have also gotten death threats. I think I agree with the point that like sort of anybody online receives them. And typically they come for me, they've come like at viral moments. And it's when one huge account sort of quote tweets me and activates a mob that's very much in like a sub genre or subgroup of the Internet. So like it's happened to me. They've come twice in two waves, both when the kind of dirtbag left the true and on podcast.

People went after me. come twice in two waves both when the kind of dirtbag left the true and on podcasty people um went after me and in in those moments is when is when people are really spun up and you you tend to get them um I think it was interesting to see it was very rich for me to watch her sort of go after uh lives in that way but I do think she owned her in the rest of the way any any thoughts on on this before I have one last thought on? Yeah, I have one last thought too. I thought it was hilarious when Shia claimed that she basically only learned about gay people through the internet.

Like Taylor was like, so you didn't have any like gay friends or family members like growing up or before you were online she was like no i was like are you from new york you don't know any gay but you've never met a gay person well she's an orthodox jew right i i think that she's not like a hot seat and even them i mean they're you know their own grinder i don't yeah but it's very it's like that is absolutely true but absolutely sort of concealed i think that she is from a very conservative family. And so it is plausible to me that she didn't really.

It's like, it reminds me of the woman from, what is her name? Megan. She was from the Westboro Baptist Church. Like the first time that she encountered a lot of people who weren't like her was on the internet. That's not that crazy that you're meeting people for the first time on the internet. I do think that these two people are,lor and shire are locked in this like really interesting memetic rivalry where what they clearly they clearly both want what the other has um they both they both live and die on attention they're totally obsessed with it they both are

i think correct about the relative power that they each have and the relative influence that they each have and the importance of the internet as a way to disseminate information and really memes and shape public opinion. And I think that Taylor lusts over Libs of TikTok's numbers. And I think Chaya lusts over Taylor's sort of unearned legitimacy. Like they both have things that the other doesn't deserve. Or they both have things that they don't deserve in the other's eyes. And they're both obsessed with each other.

And that makes them this like really compelling dynamic duo, really. And I wish that they would start a podcast because I would watch the fuck out of it. And they would both have, probably at that point, exactly what they both want. I think it is a match made in heaven. Yeah, I mean, honestly, they're retarded for not setting up, get Christian Walker or somebody,

get some random person to moderate. They could have done the Zizek-Peterson debate where nobody wins, none of it makes sense, but they sell out tickets somewhere in Toronto. And they could have made money off of this, both of them. They could have set aside their differences, but women can't set aside their differences for one minute to make a dime. Over on Threads, Taylor was getting roasted for, quote,

platforming lives of TikTok, which i thought was crazy because where does she platform her on what on taylor's youtube channel it's 17 000 or something subscribers like chai's got i think millions of followers what do you mean she's platformed she has a platform yeah plus they like met at a park or some shit like it was you know what i mean it's not even it was like a grainy video it's not yeah there's also that moment in the very beginning where um i think someone comes over to give taylor shit for setting up like a film crew on their it looked like a cafe outside and i think it was very much the energy of like are you really gonna set up a fucking film crew at my cafe without asking me and taylor with her mask on goes like full it's like she's very sweet but

very direct and you kind of understand her entire position in this world it's like an immediate character it's like hi yeah we're just doing x um but maybe if this is where we go over there is that a public park and it it's like there was just like acid dripping through the mask um but it was like still technically sweet technically good and she got what she wanted and they filmed the entire time there and she won and uh this is why i'm i am long taylor i really am and i am uh and i'm i am a little shorter libs than i was um than i was last week though i've been kind of short on her for a while she doesn't have the range does she like she kind of is a she can't help it's like woke whack-a-mole. And this is why the people she targets are increasingly not relevant because the culture has shifted, but she can't let go of, you know, what did a stupid blue haired person say on the subway today? And it's like, does that really, there's always

been a stupid blue haired person on the subway. It only matters if they're working for the white house. Um, you know, then it's a story, I think. Yeah. She's actually like less, uh, dangerous. I think like if like lives really like thought about it, like she's actually like less uh dangerous i think like if like libs really like thought about it like she's actually like less dangerous than like the sort of like neo-fascist type anonymous uh statue twitter accounts because at least they have an alternative vision of like what culture should look like and she doesn't at all she's just like uh the books in the kids library are gay porn and that's it's like this woman could like not tell you like what makes a good movie or what makes a good painting and like i mean say what you will about like you know the statue nazis they can well yeah they want they want the alejandro music video that's right yeah that's the world they're

fighting for and i've got franco with spain that's what they're fighting for i'm not saying they're right but i'm not willing to say that they're wrong about that um i do now i mean we've got to talk about i mean do we have to we don gotta. I would love to talk about the family feud. I don't know if you guys have followed this one. I have. I did before our producer threw it up in the Slack. And I was delighted because I do think it's a really interesting story. One, it reveals the differences culturally between X and the rest of the social internet now. And two, it's a generational thing.

And then three, just kind of, I think, American sentiment generally and what the internet kind of does to us. I think it reveals sort of pieces of all of this. Begins with a girl on TikTok who goes super viral after she shares a story that is traumatic but funny. And she's imploring her audience to share stories of their trauma, but it has to be funny. What's a piece of trauma that you have that's funny? It has to actually be funny. I'll go first. My dad abandoned my family when I was five years old.

That is a wife and four kids. He abandoned us and then pursued amateur breakdancing. You know, she's performing lightheartedness and she's laughing, but she's telling a very sad story about her dad leaving her entire family to become a breakdancer. performing lightheartedness and she's laughing and but she's telling a very sad story about her dad leaving her entire family to become a break dancer and um she's very much like i don't care about this whatever it's just you gotta laugh and she's pausing and watching the video but like very clearly ruthlessly taking this man apart um he responds on x about i think about a day later if the thing goes super viral he responds

he's like uh i didn't abandon you i was down the street you never visited me which by the way that's a red flag for me and we can really unpack this in a second um but i kind of immediately didn't like that uh he does also say however that he gave the mom like five million dollars in alimony uh because the daughter had said that he wasn't paying medical bills but he was off there being a you know an influencer um and uh it just gets pretty nasty elon musk jumps in uh supports him uh supports the dad in the story and what follows is this sort of tremendous you know many i would say probably at this point tens of millions of people have seen some part of this story unfold she responds to her dad her dad responds to her in a much longer piece about the problem of raising girls rather than boys like i guess his son uh

was much nicer to him or something um a lot to break down here uh do you guys have any rough thoughts before we get into the dynamics here well Well, it's important context to add. The guy is wearing a Bitcoin shirt, like a sort of like Timu. There's like a Bitcoin signs all over the shirt. And the type of influencer that he left to be was a geriatric breakdancer. Like that was his whole bit. was like i'm old but i can breakdance pretty well and he could um but like actually that's not true river he he started breakdancing i've i've researched this as well um he started breakdancing seven years after after he left him and his wife got a divorce which he mentions in in his video that 50% of couples do. So he was saying, she's saying that I abandoned the family. What happened was we got divorced, and I understand how that might look to a five-year-old,

but in fact, I moved one mile down the street, paid your mom $5 million in alimony, and I was running an advertising agency at the time. It was only seven years later when i needed to like get in shape that i started getting into break dancing and i got really really good and it was just sort of by accident so sorry river you keep going but i did want to well i'm kind of team dad here uh i know i'm glad that you are i really none of those things can be verified like the five million dollars can be verified.

She didn't I thought it was very suspicious in her follow up that she the girl did not address that really incredible claim. Like to be have five million dollars and say like he wasn't paying my medical bills is crazy. I was just living a mile or so down the street in LaGrange, Illinois. We just weren't living under the same roof now about not paying medical bills. That's just not correct. Here was the financial arrangement of the divorce. Maddie's mom, my ex-wife, got $2 million at the get-go, out of the gate, a lump sum payment. Plus, I was paying her $18,000 per month in child support and alimony.

This was later reduced to $12,000 per month. And of course, I paid health insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs. I also put $600,000 into the kids' college fund. In all, I paid out about $5 million to my ex-wife to cover costs for her and the kids. And this is in 2005 dollars. So add 50 percent to account for inflation. Neither of my parents had anything close, close like, you know, a fraction of that is what we were raised on. That's a lot of money. Five million dollars. Not verified. Weird that it never came back up on the daughter's side. But he also the dad was like, you know, my daughter has millions of followers or whatever on TikTok. She doesn't. She has a she has a bunch.

She's gone viral a handful of times. She definitely has fans. I've seen her stuff before and I actually thought she was pretty charming, but she doesn't have tons of followers and no one is really... This is a story where we don't actually know what's happening on either side. So you're kind of left to bring a lot of what you think about people in general to this debate. And both of these people become archetypes. She's the woke younger daughter. He's the nasty, racist, older dad with a Bitcoin shirt. That's a new archetype. Just invented it. Definitely exists. And you kind of bring your assumptions to the story, right? I think that's what's happening here. There was a little bit though of... of i mean she did say in her follow-up video she contradicted some of his specific points like she said you know he moved to florida with

his new wife apparently like he didn't live in that house down the street for very long and she sort of mentioned uh she didn't specifically address the amount of alimony but she said i guess that there were instances again this is not verifiable that there were instances later in her adult life when he didn't uh pay for certain things for her which you know you can have opinions on whether or not that's an adult child should be asking their their parent to pay for their medical bills but i mean i think that more than any of the allegations made about him like the worst thing that he did as a father was like making a response video to his daughter complaining about him instead of just fucking calling her well you know like dude yeah kind of shameless in a way but if millions of people have seen you

have seen a video about you where you're accused of being a total debbie dad who doesn't pay for his daughter's like doctor bill and she's you know been destitute for years and all of this stuff uh and as he claimed this is where i did kind of empathize with him even knowing none of the facts like just the idea of having facts about you like that shared like having a story about that is a really horrific story i would imagine the worst thing that you can that can be said about a parent um and it was a long, very thorough video. So it was very convincing. I saw the video before he responded and I was like, damn, that sucks. And I kind of moved on with my day. People saw that video and I mean, yeah, I guess he should be a good guy and call her, but also shouldn't he clear his name? Don't you have to? Aren't those the rules right now?

call her but also shouldn't he clear his name don't you have to isn't aren't those the rules right now like how do you not how do you not how do you not acknowledge the rules of our present sort of internet constructed reality i i think that you can clear your name but you should call it's clear that like he didn't call her first i think because he probably he definitely would have mentioned that like hey i called you earlier and whatever the fact that he was addressing her directly and not addressing the audience like i feel like the correct thing to do would be like call her sort it out and then be like hey if you saw this video i just talked to my daughter and you know cleared up i understand why she feels like she was abandoned because she was young we got a divorce

and blah blah but here's what happened like that would have been like the mature thing to do i think i believe that his version of the story is that he asked them to take it down. And she said, and again, I don't think you can verify any of this. And he, I feel like he's a liar. I mean, there are a handful of things that one, she doesn't have millions of followers. I think two, it's weird to say that you were down the street or whatever. And you never saw her because she didn't come and visit you. You're the dad.

I don't understand that. And then three, I don't really believe that this man is capable of making $5 million. So I kind of am on their daughter's side here. But he claims that he asked her to take it down, and she said she couldn't because it was going viral. And she is one of these cretinous LA goblin people who just, you know, they'll do anything for fame. And she wants to be a screenwriter and all of this.

And so that kind of vaguely feels possibly true. I mean, again, we don't really know here, but I think that he did, according to him, try to reach out. I think it's generally tragic when the culture wars enter the home like this or enter families i hate that um but i don't i don't trust this lady i i and i didn't actually see the follow i didn't i didn't realize there were follow-up follow-ups um yeah but she posted one yeah i did not realize that but the so i'm i'm watching the i watched the dad's, I guess, initial response where he plays her video in full, and that original video,

and I detected that she was proud of her dad while she was talking about how he abandoned her to go for breakdancing. You can clearly see that she is excited to have a dad that at 60 years old is a a professional break dancer she's like laughing um and that that kind of turned me against that that was the moment where i was like she's just uh she's doing this for the likes and i just didn't believe it i just didn't believe that she was proud i i i mean i don't think... I rewatch it. I feel like...

Rewatch it and think... I've watched it a few times. I just don't agree. I think that you don't put your parents on blast like that before millions of people if you're proud of them. Like, it was horrible things

that she said. I detected that she was really hurt and this was the way that it manifested. And I can... If everything she said is true, I understand why she's hurt. Certainly, she seems to believe everything she said was true.

So maybe I understand why she's hurt nonetheless. I understand why he's hurt. I also feel like if you put someone's name on the internet and a video goes viral, you have to be prepared for a response. Those are just the rules. If you don't want that, you don't put the name up there. Yeah. I think the whole thing just seemed kind of sad to

me because i feel like it speaks to this bigger completely abstracted from the culture wars sort of context of it all i think there's always a way in which kids kind of distort their parents and sort of don't fully understand their parents intentions when they're raising them or can't fully understand the context of things that happened to them when they're younger and the fact that even the point that that he made about you know i can see how she would have interpreted divorce at five as abandonment is like just a really sad sort of uh idea um and i think that i don't know like it does feel kind, I felt kind of uncomfortable watching this back and forth between this like sort of petulant father-daughter duo where like we don't know the full information of what's going on. And there's kind of, I mean, I think he had to respond because he's also a public figure, right?

To the extent that he's this. It's crazy. That is what constitutes a public figure now. I mean, I don't know. Well, he was on, I don't know, Dancing this. It's crazy. That is what constitutes a public figure now. I mean, I don't know. Well, he, he had,

he's like a, he was on, I don't know, dancing with the stars or something. He's a, he's a D list, uh, public figure maybe.

Um, but the whole thing just made me feel kind of, um, uncomfortable and sad, honestly. Yeah. I saw a tweet the other day about, um,

there was a video that went viral of a mom dressed like very provocatively i guess or scantily clad clothes she was like she had like a leotard on and like all of her legs showing boots thigh boots and she was dancing in her kitchen like a like a like a beyonce backup singer um and her son was uh was there like her little like three-year-old son he like came over and hugged your leg in the middle of the thing and it was like a very kind of unnerving picture because it's like a super sex forward video um and someone tweeted like we are still dealing with the consequences of giving everybody in the world a camera and a link to the internet like new

behaviors are forming and this is that it does it feels it's you one you're immediately drawn into have an opinion of how could you not, it's kind of designed that way for you to have an opinion about what's going on, but it is this weird violation of the family sort of what should be sacred unit. Yeah. We've created the family court of public opinion. I guess now I remember this is in the lineage of David Hasselhoff getting outed as a total drunk on the Internet by his daughter. She published this video of him trying to eat a hamburger while just completely wasted. And he just can't manage to eat the hamburger. It's like two minutes of agonizing footage of David Hasselhoff drunkenly trying to eat a hamburger. It's absolutely brutal i think it basically ended his public career but i suppose this has been going on for a long time before that maybe jerry springer maury povich those were i always just assumed that those

were fake they aren't i had a co-worker who went on uh jerry springer and it was like her and her baby daddy who she had like good relation a good relationship with like they shared custody or whatever but they just like cooked up some story about how they hated each other and like they were still together and that he was cheating on her or something it was like completely fake and it was just because dr phil is real for sure no it's the stories are definitely i know somebody that went on Dr. Phil and the story was real. The stories are real. Some of the stuff

is scripted though, from what I heard. I knew somebody who got proposed to on Dr. Phil and they said it was they asked, they were like, are you, because they were like, they're like, have you guys talked about getting married? And they were like, uh, kind of. And they were like, would you propose on here? We'll pay for the ring.

Well, that's real. they propose they propose you know it still counts as a proposal it's like love is blind or something they're getting married those are real marriages you can't i mean they broke up after that but it's crazy and it should never happen and the effects of television are degrading western civilization yes but is it technically a marriage also yes degrading western civilization yes but is it technically a marriage also yes yeah i mean i think it was better when like these sort of things were confined to like tlc which is like in like it's like the spiritual successor to like the freak show or whatever like the traveling and like it was fine when it was just like you turn on this one channel to see like um two women with like diseases that make them look like armadillos fighting or whatever and it's like okay yeah but now it's just like everywhere uh you've got like bitcoin dad and

aspiring screenwriter daughter and they do deserve each other because like these people like is there like not one person in this family that like can avoid just like turning to the camera well the apparently the well-to-do brothers and sister brother and sisters who have really great jobs and none of that was none of that was denied by the daughter so my sense is that it was true they all have like there was like i forget now what they were i wish i had it written down here. But it was a series of very respectable, like they were either in school studying something that sounded respectable or they had like real respectable jobs. And then I think this younger one is maybe, I don't know where she lands in the pack,

but she seems like the kind of like black sheep of the family with, you know, I mean, she's just doing the LA thing. I do like, I've seen her other stuff and i think that she's charming um i think that he's charming i think they're both probably like kind of sociopathic attention monsters um and like you said river they maybe deserve each other the dad has a fake accent like a fake voice he has like that youtuber accent you know what i mean where he's like well when i talk to you it's like a really weird cadence. I was not a deadbeat dad at all.

And by the way, Maddie did not say that in her video. But a lot of the comments assume that and say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's something wrong with him, which goes back to my other point. Like, I kind of just don't believe that he was capable of making $5 million. Well, I mean, he's a boomer. Like, there's a lot of mysteriously rich boomers out there the 90s were crazy you could any reaper could just like make a million

back then you have to give him credit his first video presumably his first video got 32 million views I mean he's got a really high percentage here I think he's also is he not was his job marketing I think it was advertising

that's what he says the madman the the the madman of uh 2024 um guys we gotta wrap it up i do want to say there's one last thing very quickly speaking of dr phil it reminded me of this very funny thing on the view uh i follow the view reasonably closely um always have since i was a little kid now i kind of watch the clips i feel like they're very interestingly indicative of uh where a certain segment of society is is like the sort of msnbc cat mom um they're at home watching the view i feel like the opinions on that show really do uh capture that culture dr ph Phil shows up and the clip that's going

sort of viral right now, they're talking about COVID, closing schools. And the women of the viewer are like, but that was a good thing, right? They're sort of still defending it. And he just lays down the gauntlet. Then COVID hits 10 years later. and the same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years. Who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes them away and shuts it down? And by the way, when they shut it down, they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see children that were being abused and sexually molested, and in fact sent them home and abandoned them to their abusers with no way to watch and referrals dropped 50 to 60 percent so

there was also a pandemic going on they were trying to save they were trying to save kids lives remember we know a lot of folks who died during this so it wasn't people weren't laying around but well you know what we're lucky maybe we're lucky they didn't because we kept them out of the places that they could be safe because no one wants to believe we had an issue. Are you saying no school children died of COVID? I'm saying it was the safest group. They were the less vulnerable group and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID than they will from the

exposure to COVID. And that's not an opinion. That's a fact. And they're sort of left speechless because of course there is no real retort. Children were statistically not nearly as at risk of COVID as they were from the actual school shutdowns. I don't know. Did you guys catch that at all? Do you have any last thoughts on the cultural vibe shift as it relates to COVID, where people are at politically before we go? I think that feels like it relates to another story, which I've been seeing making the rounds about a former New York Times writer, reporter, who accidentally in his orientation said that he lo-

his favorite sandwich was like a spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. And, uh, it's like the anecdote is reported in the Atlantic. He describes everybody's- He describes the HR lady who's in the orientation responding to him saying, like, we don't do that here. Referring to Chick-fil-A's, uh, CEO

who's, like, anti-gay or something like that. And then everybody at the orientation, everybody else snapping, like, in approval of the HR lady. And then everybody on the left, probably some of whom were in that room responding on twitter to that anecdote saying no it did not happen they're they're like denying that this thing that they probably did happened because they know it looks fucking crazy and i think that it was fact check dr phil is yes jesse single fact checked it uh reached out to the atlantic and the atlantic

had fact checked it so the atlantic like, we fact-checked this. Yeah. And so it just feels like people are starting to truly backpedal from these insane positions. And you're seeing it all over the place. The fact that people were even saying that this had never happened. I mean, it was Adam Rubenstein writing this op-ed about how he was a heretic at The New York Times. happened i mean it was adam rubenstein writing this op-ed about how he's a was a heretic at the new york times and all these people who worked with him at the time were like yeah he when this happened he told us about it um and so it is kind of insane i think there's this weird like

moment where some people on the far left are seeing themselves for how crazy they've appeared to the ordinary person for the past few years and there's like this weird looking in the mirror moment it's like they're they're not they're not like oh man maybe we were wrong they're like this yeah it didn't happen this did not happen which is an admission i think of to some extent of like insanity but i think to to avoid stuff like this in the future we we need some kind of moment where everybody agrees what the norms are you know rather than saying like this never happened it would be great to say like this should never happen um but i don't know i i

mean i saw people defending like not eating a chick-fil-a or not admitting to eating a chick fil-a like this one tweet that um I found three I had like 3,000 likes you genuinely have to be an idiot in professional settings if you say your favorite sandwich is from Chick-fil-A during a work icebreaker I'm like why gay people do not give a fuck about the Chick-fil-A thing we didn't care at the time like I'm telling like I I remember like being like when that came out still eating a chick-fil-a seeing other gay people there uh i know gay people who have worked for chick-fil-a nobody i remember at the time it was like almost a sort of sub-genre or a genre of content like a

niche a niche genre of content was like gay people confessing that they loved the you know chick-fil-a fries or whatever else and they would be like eating it in videos and not giving a fuck this is gay men in general though right like gay men are they don't care they're like generally you have a handful that care a lot but the average gay guy is like super irreverent not really plugged into this stuff um thinks it's all stupid wants to make fun of like sort of naturally maybe even genetically who knows predisposed to make fun of shit and like this is something that they thought was funny i agree that was certainly my read of culture at the time and i was living in san francisco so um i want to uh i want to call this one guys it's been swell um rate review share uh let's get the word out there. And also, we've been doing this thing

where we're live chatting for the premiere every Friday. So if you were in the live chat today, hello. Thank you for stopping by. I was in there too. Catch you next time. Bye.