Reply All - #126 Alex Jones Dramageddon

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

We're back this week with a Yes Yes No. Alex takes PJ and Alex Blumberg through Alex Jones's visit to the Senate. And producer Anna Foley helps us unpack the scandal that's engulfed Beauty YouTube. Alex Jones tweet Beautube tweet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm PJ Vote. And I'm Alex Goldman. Welcome once again to Yes Yes Note, the segment on the show where our boss, Alex Bloomberg, comes to us with things that he does not comprehend on the Internet, and we try to explain them to him. I'm here again. Alex, what do you have for us this week? So, are you ready? Yes.

Yes. All right. Here is a tweet. It's a tweet from a person named Charlie Sykes, who has a blue check next to his name. the caption is, kind of amazed that this PR campaign wasn't enough to save Alex Jones on Twitter. And then there's a black and white portrait-looking fancy photograph shot of, I guess, I believe this is, I think this is Alex Jones. I wouldn't have known that if Alex Jones wasn't in the caption, but I think it's Alex Jones. And it looks like sort of like a Nike promotional poster.

And it says, believe in everything, even if it means the frogs are gay. And then there's the Nike swoosh. and then it just says just do it and that that tweet has 127 retweets and 604 likes you really didn't know that was Alex Alex Jones

I think I would have at this point like I think Alex Jones has like crested into the popular mainstream enough so that now I think I recognize him he looks he looks very he's like a very nondescript looking sort of like he has a very very he's like a beefy jolly white guy

He looks like a piece of clay. He looks like, yeah, he looks like a lots of other gentlemen of his age. I just want to point out that you guys are saying two very different things. Alex Bloomberg is saying he looks like a lot of middle-aged white men, and you're saying he looks like a piece of clay. Like an unformed piece of clay. Yeah. They're the same thing. One is how a serial killer describes one of his victims.

You're looking a lot like a piece of clay to me. Yeah, it's very scary. So Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet? No. No, I don't. PJ, do you understand this tweet? Yes. Alex Goldman.

Do you understand this tweet? I sure do. All right then. We're home. Off once again. What is happening? I'm playing us into the segment. Wait, did you fully not understand this tweet?

Do you understand, like, are you at zero on this? Well, I know who Alex Jones is. I know that he's the guy, because of you. I know that he is the nut case behind Info Wars. But I don't know the night. I don't under, well, I mean, the Nike thing probably refers to Colin Kaepernick, right? Yes, yes. All right, good work.

This is one where I actually feel like you do mostly know it. And it's just, but I'm kind of excited to explain it because it's one of those things where, like, the details are really, really, really profoundly enjoyable. Like, I, like, I feel like this has been a thing that I've enjoyed on the internet more than anything in a while. Right. So, uh, who's starting this? Should I start this? Yeah, start. Okay, so Nike just, like, unveiled that since Colin Kaepernick's NFL contract wasn't renewed,

Nike had actually kept their endorsement deal with them. And he launched this whole thing where it was like, they're building their next ad campaign around him. And conservatives were pissed off. Like, people were like, wait, Nike was doing, this was, they were saying this, but they hadn't done anything yet. They kept it a secret. And then this week, they were just like, boom. Like, there was a giant billboard in downtown San Francisco with Colin Kaepernick. Like, he's the face of their next campaign.

Right. And the tagline is, believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything, which is directly a shot at the NFL. Yes. Which also has a deal with. Right. Which made everybody uncomfortable. Believe in everything. Believe in something.

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Right. Like, do political protests even if you get fired. Right. So that's right away, that's the first reference to this, believe in everything. So it's the same pattern. But Nike didn't say even if it means the frogs are gay.

Right. And actually, I don't know the frogs are gay thing. Oh, we'll get to it. Okay. Okay. Okay. So this is like the part that I have just enjoyed, like, obscenely, obscenely, obscenely, obscenely much. The Senate can be these hearings this week where they were dragging, it was like Twitter and Facebook.

And they were dragging all the technology executives from these companies in and just like officially it was supposed to be about. What was the official thing? It was supposed to be about what they're doing to prepare for election interference in the midterms. Right. But it was like it was both like foreign election interference and bias. The bias part of it is a good part. The bias part is like Twitter will try to do something to curb like the most insane egregious abuses on the platform. It'll affect some conservative Twitter users.

And the story will be like Twitter is banning conservatives, Twitter's banning conservatives. and that was like one of the things they wanted to talk about. Got it. Okay. And this is where things like got very, very good. At the hearing. Yes. Okay.

So all these Republican, like these serious minded Republican politicians like Marco Rubio are sort of like, you know, talking about the importance of the public square and free speech. And do we want to have a country where, you know, people don't have the right to say anything they want and the platforms just screw everything up, like that sort of stuff? Yeah. But the problem was that Alex Jones. and Laura Lumer. Do you know who Laura Lumer is? No. She's this far-right provocateur who delights in, like, ambushing people.

I probably remember her best for last summer. There was a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, where Caesar was, like, sort of a Trump figure who wore a suit. And she jumped on stage during a performance and started shouting, You guys are ISIS. Whoa. Yeah. So, whatever.

Like, Laura Lumer and Alex Jones are not. they're not, they're not like good behaviors. Like there, there are people who like disrupting things. And so, like, so here we are in the Senate hearing. Yes, where they're trying to have this like high-minded conversation about freedom of speech. And why would you ever, like, ban anybody from getting to have their say? And then Alex Jones and Laura Lumer are there, like, screaming the whole time, disrupting the things in a way that is like, it's like watching bad,

internet behavior actually come to life. Like, it's like, this is what it's like, you guys. Wow. So, I have the, yeah, that Laura Lumer video. Yeah, you have it? Yeah. Can I see it too? Order.

Love order in the hearing room. Before we start this, I just need to give a little background, which is that Laura Lumer was verified on Twitter, and her verification was removed at some point over the past, I think, year and this has become like the ultimate B in her bonnet like the ultimate silencing of conservatives de-legitimization tactic and she's furious about it and that's part of why she's in here and why was her verification removed i twitter has this weird thing where they're like verifications just about saying you are who you say you are but then every once in a while people will point out that actually it makes a person see more legitimate and so sometimes when they've given checkmarks to people who

act very very badly they will find a ground to take the checkmark down. But it's a really inconsistent policy. It pisses people off. And it's pretty opaque about why they do it. And it also does not matter at all. Like there's no special airport lounge you get to go to as far as I know. Right.

You haven't been hanging out in the check mark lounge? Are you guys verified? Yeah, it's great. Okay. Awesome. I get hot towels delivered to my vet every single morning. Okay. All right.

So she, which I understand. Like, you're like, wait, why is my blue check? I am Laura Lumer. It's not like somebody pretending to be me. Right. what the blue check is supposed to be about. Right. And like Twitter taking away

as them being like, we also think that blue check mark denotes quality, whether we'll admit it or not. And maybe we don't want to direct like new users to Laura Lumer because she says things that are paranoid and untrue like very frequently. Right. And because of, I guess, behavior

that we're about to witness. All right. So Laura Lumer's just standing there in the back of the room, screaming. And she's holding a cell phone on a pink selfie stick filming herself. You'll, ma'am, if you'll please take a seat or we'll have to have you, then you'll need to relieve. I'm asking you, President, Donald Trump, help us.

Please help us, Mr. President, before it is too late, because Jack Dorsey is trying to influence the election, to sway the election. What she said? I can't understand her. What? What? That is why he is censoring in shadow-dantic-down. $1.15. $17.

$20. $20. $10. $30. Yeah. So this senator just starts doing auctioneering to drown her out. So Billy Long, the guy who's doing the auctioneering right now, actually owns an auction house and auctions on the side. Oh, I didn't know that because he's really, really good at it.

Yes. So let's continue because it's amazing. At $100 on a day and a quarter, one to quarter, one half and a half to five. Two and a quarter. Yep, two and a half. Three, ebler, three, a five, three and a hundred. At three and a quarter. Cut three and a quarter now, half, half, three and a half.

Yeah, but four to quarter, four to a half. We're selling the cell phone there. Four and a quarter, four to half. He's auctioning her cell phone off. I yield back. My God. So, like, in that moment, it's great because they're trying to have, like, an informed public discussion that should be happening. You have a person who's just chiming in with their stupid issue, being totally disruptive, trying to hijack it.

And then the hearing, then, of course, just until it changed trajectory, I'm assuming because everybody couldn't avoid the irony. No. No. No, no. It was still like. And then they just went right back. It was very stayed prepared remarks. Everybody had an agenda that they were addressing.

Nothing changed. No irony was noted. And that was like, that was not my favorite part. My favorite part was the next. Do you, Alex, do you have the CNN clip? Can you get the one of Marco Rubio? Yeah. Okay.

So, oh my God. It's so. Wait, so there's a better moment? Yeah, there's a better moment. Oh, yeah. There's a significantly better moment. Wow. So Alex Jones was also in the room, but he did not, he didn't stand up and.

He didn't do the stand up and yelling thing. Apparently he was. was like broadcasting a little bit, but like quietly. Like he was like holding up his phone and being like, I'm at the thing and they're being bad or whatever. But he wasn't doing the active screaming. As a Alex Jones impression, that was pretty bad. He's significantly louder than that.

But so his technique was that he would wait until people were in the hallways. And when somebody was being interviewed by a reporter, he would just like jump into the conversation. Kind of sidle up next to them and do his. with his own crew filming him, and then he would harass them. But so Marco Rubio gets asked this question by CNN, and the answer he's trying to give is to say, like, we have, you know, we have serious questions about Twitter

and whether they're, whether it's true free speech or whether they're censoring conservative voices. And as he's doing it, Alex Jones just, like, starts in on him. All right. I think it's important to not to comply with any efforts to sort of go after freedom of expression. That's purging conservatives. The, um...

He's not answering him. He's standing like six inches away from it. This finger. It's weird, man. Oh, yeah, it's really weird. There's no purge of conservatives? I don't know. There's no shadow banning.

Who is this guy? Are you concerned about bias in social media? Yeah, who's this guy? Are you concerned about bias in social media? Well, I think the bigger bias is against freedom of expression. Everybody should be, there's a, there's a, look, I support going after. It's happening here. It's happened here, but you say I don't exist.

Is that a heckler? Or the press a gaggle. Look at this guy. He's saying that I don't exist and they're I just don't know who you are, man. I don't read a weird website. Sure. And they demonized me in these very hearings.

And then he plays dumb. Here's the question. InfoWords.com, you know what it is. Do you think that does Google? Does Facebook? That's why you get elected. Do they need to be regulated like, like, do they need to be right? Mark a Rubio.

Okay, wait, pause. Okay. This is an important moment. The whole time he's been refusing to look over him and refusing to make eye contact and he's sort of like Rubio is trying to like smirk Jones away. Right. And then like he makes the internet mistake, which is like he starts engaging directly with him. Like he turns to him and he says,

who are you? All right, man. Who are you? Who is this guy? I swear to God, I don't know who you are, man. You better hope you can't de-platformy. Tens of millions of views. InfoWars. Better than Rush Limbaugh. He knows who InfoWars is. Play of this joke over here. That's why the deep platforming didn't work. And then he pats him on the back.

He pats him. Don't touch me again, man. I'm asking you not to touch me. Well, sure, I just patted you nice. I know, but I don't want to beat you, man. You don't know who you are. You're not going to get arrested, man. You're not going to get arrested. I'll take care of myself. Pause that.

Oh, he'll beat me up. He literally said, I'll take care of myself. And Joe's like, he'll beat me up. And, like, he's right. That is, like, Markovio is trying to figure that. It's like a real-time live-action trolling unfolding. Yes. It really reminds.

He's taking his, like, his, like, techniques that have been honed over years on, on social media. And he's just, like, bringing them. To real life. To real life in front of. You guys don't have older siblings, right? Oh, my God. I am an older sibling. Because it really reminds, it's, this is like.

It really gives me PTSD about I'm not touching you. Yes. Oh my God. It's so I'm not touching you. Okay. Keep fighting it. I'm just putting my arm here. No, I am, but he's so mad.

You're not going to silence me. You're not going to silence America. But there are people. You are like, you are literally like a little gangster thug. There are people in this country. Ruby O'clock to physically take care of me. There are people who feel that they are being, um, they are being silent. They tell you China's the problem, which it is, but they're taking our free speech right now.

So, so, uh, he's not. In frame, but Alex Jones is now speaking to the camera, the CNBC camera, and talking about China for some reason. But it is a real stream of consciousness sort of odd situation. And just the, well, you just stop the video and the expression on Rubio's face. It's just, he's cycling through, you can tell him cycling through all the thoughts that you have, which is sort of like, what do I do? Yeah, it's like exhaustion and anger. What do I do? Yeah.

Why is this guy? I can't engage. I can't. I want to fucking. I do. Like, you just, he's like, he's turning himself in, you just want to, like, punch him. Yes, that is all, like, his whole body is just like he wants to punch him. He looks like he's been sitting on, like, a Greyhound bus with no air conditioning next to Alex Jones for like 10 hours.

It's true. And Alex Jones created that feeling in like 10 seconds. Yes. Yes. That is a powerful and horrible superpower. Media platforms, Facebook, Twitter. Do you believe that these platforms need to be regulated like a public utility? And how do you go about doing that?

Well, I prefer not to. I prefer competition take care of that. But obviously, we're going to watch closely to make sure that these tools that are being used. I mean, one thing is to say we're going to go after foreign interference designed to so instability. Another thing is to say, we're going to go after free speech. Because at some point, someone has to make a determination. What's the difference between, you know, misinformation from abroad and differences of opinion within the United States? It's a very fine line. And that's something we need to be careful about.

We don't overreach in that direction. So these companies have to be very careful. Oh, my God. So annoying. But they don't become agents of authoritarian... He just said the name of his website again. Because there's a... There's a balance between what is free speech

and what people disagree on. Poor Rudy. Yeah, man, I've got to go to the committee. You guys can talk to this clown. Oh, yeah. Look, it's a little frat boy. So cool. Back to your bathhouse. Compromise at the bathhouses.

There goes Rubio, a little punk. Because you understand, like, literally, literally Rubio is trying to defend people like Alex Jones being allowed to be on Twitter. And Alex Jones is, like, putting on a perfect, perfect demonstration of the problem. And Rubio also, like, to his credit, does a pretty good job of still answering the question. I know. In the context of this specific outrage of Alex Jones is that sort of at the beginning of August, simultaneously a lot of platforms banned him. Right.

Facebook took him down. YouTube took him down. Who was the first one? Stitcher, actually. Stitcher, Stitcher, the podcast platform was like, we're just not going to host Alex Jones anymore. We don't have any reason to. There's nothing that says we don't, we have to.

Right. And then like Spotify jumped in? Spotify did it. iTunes did it. Facebook and YouTube. And I mean, Facebook and YouTube were huge drivers of traffic. There's a New York Times article that said that his website visits are down by half since this happened. Wow.

So the thing that is insane is Alex Jones over the past few years has gone from like, oh, that guy who doesn't believe September 11th was like a real thing to like somebody who has like a huge audience who does things that are like pretty, undeniably like damaging, you know, like saying that school shootings are hoaxes because the government wants to steal your guns. and then his followers will call parents who have lost their kids in the shootings and be like, why are you participating in this government cover up? We know your kids just an actor. Like stuff like that. Whoa.

There was a, there were, two parents are actually suing him right now because they were getting death threats from Alex Jones supporters. And they said they had to move seven times to get away from his followers. And they now live in like this gated community in order to avoid them. Yeah. And the whole time it has felt like at some point. if a line was ever going to be drawn, like, why hasn't it been? Like, at a certain point, you're like, yeah, free speech, free speech,

but this is like, this is like inciting behavior and the behavior's really bad. Right. And I think all the tech companies were scared that if they made the first move, they would get all the crap thrown at them. And so, like, yeah, a few months ago, they all were like, you know what?

We don't want this. You're out of here. Except Twitter. Twitter was like, we don't want bias. We don't want to make decisions about what's good or bad. Like, we have policies, but he hasn't violated our purpose. policies, he'll get a warning, like everybody else. And like, it was like his last refuge.

Uh-huh. And then the Senate hearings happened. And he went down to D.C. And he screamed at a bunch politicians. And he screamed at Jack Dorsey, like, in person. And then Twitter was like, you know what? The next day he was gone. You're out of here. Yeah, they've been. Wow. Yeah. Do you think he, do you think it was because, like, Jack Dorsey just like, had had enough? Or just got it in person? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And what Twitter officially said was he's done a bunch of things, but in this case, because a lot of the times when Alex Jones screamed at many more people in the hallway over the course of this, and when he was doing it, he was broadcasting live video using Periscope, which is a Twitter app. And so they were like, you're engaging and bullying behavior and harassment on our platform. And so we're going to get you for the behavior. But he, everything that he's done before this, like, he did nothing new.

Yeah, they stopped him for jaywalking. Right. Just to go back to the original tweet, though, the thing I don't get is the frogs are gay. Yeah. So the tagline here says, what does it say? Believe everything. Believe in everything, believe in everything, even if it means the frogs are gay. So Alex Jones seems to believe in a lot of far out stuff. He's a 9-11 truther. He is really obsessed with Bohemian Grove, which is this...

What's Bohemian Grove? It's just like this private men's only club in California that's. for very, very rich men. And he believes that it's this place where they perform occult rituals. He just has, like, a lot of very far-out beliefs. Oh, wait. Can I ask you a question about Alex Jones?

Sure. Does he, as somebody who's not, like, a huge Info Wars watcher, is it like, does he have, like, multiple different conspiracy theories that are not all in the same, like, cinematic universe? You know what I mean? Or is it like, they're all connected? Yeah. Well, they've got to be all connected.

I think that there, I think that the unity of the, The thing that unifies them very loosely is globalism. There's like a cabal of people at the top, the Bilderberg group, the Illuminati, the Freemasons. But does he believe in all of them? I'm pretty sure he's down with the Freemasons in the Boat. Definitely the Bilderberg group. Okay. And they are all pulling the strings on all, unlike international conflicts and, you know, keeping people placated with, you know, chem trails and things like that.

Chem trails. Keeping people placated with chem trails? The whole, do you even know what chemtrails are supposed to be? No. No, boy, guys. You know the jet streams you see across the sky when a jet flies across the sky? Yeah. That's not just a jet stream.

That's chemicals being dropped by the government to keep us, to placate us, to keep us calm. That's why I feel so much calmer when I see a jet fly around. Anyway, all of that brings us to a long-running conspiracy, which is grounded. in fact that the government the government wanted so okay here are two facts that Alex Jones

spins into what you're about to see are you ready real facts these are wake-up sheeple facts okay at one point the government was trying to create a bomb that would that would cause people to become uncontrollably sexually aroused and have sex with one another no they weren't yeah it's true no it is it was like it was hypothetical It was like a thing that they discussed as a possibility, and it was in declassified documents.

What year? What year? Let me hold on just a second. Gay bomb. Gay bomb? Gay bomb. Let's see. Leaked documents.

Let's see here. Oh, my God. This Wikipedia page, there must be like five volunteer Wikipedia editors on this page alone, working day and night. Give me just a moment. The U.S. Air Force had asked in 1994 for $7.5 million. $194? To develop a bomb containing a powerful aphrodisiac chemical that would cause homosexual behavior to affect discipline and morale in enemy units. A love bomb.

Yeah. So wait. How far into development did the... It was like, can we have... As I understand, it was like, can we have some money to make a gay bomb? And the Pentagon was like, no. No, you can't. And who was asking?

You guys are asking me a lot of questions. The U.S. Air Force's Rite Laboratory in Ohio asked in 1994 for $7.5 million to develop a bomb containing a powerful Aphrodisiac chemical that would cause homosexual behavior. Why homosexual behavior?

Yeah. Military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Meka told the Aegeons-France-Presse that the DoD never investigated such a concept. Rather, one individual provided a short concept paper with a wide variety of examples that

was rejected. Okay? So he I don't realize there was such a like spitballing blue sky. General. Some nutcase, some of a general. It wasn't even a general. It sounds like it was some fringe laboratory guy who was like, hey, all right, so we got to come up with ideas for bombs. All right. How about like a bomb with

bugs in it? How about a bomb with shoes in it? But none of them fit the people who are going to get there. They were having one of those meetings where they're like, there's no bad ideas. Okay, so that's part one. You forgot to erase the whiteboard. The second disparate fact is that some scientists discovered that there were some chemicals released into the Potomac River that caused frogs to switch sexes. Right.

I remember this, too. I don't know about this. There's not much more to it than that. But was it on, it was like... It was accidental. Frogs were switching sex. They didn't know why, and they discovered it was like some chemical that was in the water that was causing disrupting hormone activity. And it was like causing like their bodies to like change sex.

Yeah. So those two disparate things, which you've just learned, lead to this. If you're a new list or just type in Pentagon tested gay bomb on Iraq. They consider, no, they didn't consider using it. They've used it on our troops. In Vietnam, they'd spray PCP on the troops, Jacob's ladder. You think PCP, some horse tranquilizers? or something, they got stuff

that'll whack your brain permanently. Brain chips and the trips. They give the troops special vaccines. He's like you has opened the Wikipedia page for gay bomb. Like literally, that's what's on the screen. Gay bomb. Look it up for yourself. I mean, this is what they're, what do you

think tap water is? It's a gay bomb, baby. What? And I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings. I'm not even getting into it, quite frankly. I mean, give me a break. You think I'm like, oh, shocked by it, so I'm up here bashing it because I don't like gay people. I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the frigging frogs gay. Do you understand that? Oh, crap. I'm sick of being social engineered. It's not funny.

It's very funny. Wow. So is that- That's his show all the time? I think one of the biggest draws is that he, is so, so keyed up. He takes his shirt off a lot. He, like, punches things a lot. He kind of is like, uh, he, he, all of his performance notes, he took from like a WWF when like, they'd be like, Jake the Snake Roberts. But yeah, his show, I mean, what I've watched it is like, that energy level is normal.

I don't know if gay frogs is like, that was a moment. I remember it happening. Okay. People being like, people being like, hey, Alex Jones is talking about gay frogs. And then a couple years later, Donald Trump went on there and was like, Alex I will not let you down. I also just like, the part where he's like, I know what people are going to say

that I'm homophobic. It's like the conversation people are having with the screen right now is not. Should return to our tweet? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Kind of amazed. So again, Twitter, Charlie Sykes, verified.

But kind of amazed this PR campaign wasn't enough to save Alex Jones on Twitter, and then he has like a mocked up sort of reminiscent of the Nike campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. But instead of Colin Kaepernick, it's Alex Jones. And instead of it's saying, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything, the Photoshopped Nike campaign with Alex Jones says, believe in everything, even if it means the frogs are gay. And it says Nike just, and then it's Nike swoosh just to it. And this refers to the fact that many people knew that Alex Jones got banned from Twitter, although I certainly did not know the backstory that involved all the fireworks at the Senate hearing. And the frogs are gay refers to one strand of one of his various conspiracy theories that the government is putting chemicals in the water that turns people gay based on research.

that they did about making a bomb to turn troops, to set off an aphrodisiac among troops and turn them gay, I guess. Are we at yes, yes, yes, yes? Yeah, we're at yes, yes, yes, yes. We are a yes, yes, yes. Coming up after the break, another yes, yes, no. Welcome back to the show. Alex, I think you have another tweet for us?

Yeah. So it's a tweet from user whose display name is error does not comply to your social norms. And so the tweet goes like this. It's one of those tweets that's like in the form of like a dialogue where it's like name, colon, and then line. And it's a dialogue between one, two, three, four, five people. Okay. So it's the first name is Gabriel Zamora. Says, I'm sorry if you were offended.

And then Laura Lee says, I'm from Alabama. Prentices realizes that looks bad. Then she says, I didn't mean I'm from Alabama. I meant I was from a small town in Alabama. And then next is Nikita Dragon, who says, I'm sorry my tweets were fake. And then there's next Mani MUA, who says, Kylie Jenner. And then finally, the final person in this dialogue is Jeffrey Starr laughs.

How many retweets are favorites? 307 retweets, 2,303 Likes. Oh, man. Okay. PJ Vote. Do you understand this tweet? Not at all. Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet?

No. I don't understand this tweet either. Wait, we're at no, no, no. We're a no, no, no. That's a very grim feeling. What? Okay, so I'm like not at zero comprehension about this tweet. I do know a little bit.

And like what I know is a couple of the names. Like, I think I've heard Anna, reply out producer Anna Foley, who I said next to you. I think I've heard her say the name Jeffrey Starr. So. Oh, you think that she could. I'm going to go ask her. Oh.

Reply all producer Anna Foley. Hey guys. Anna Foley, are you ready to come on and explain this tweet to me? Yeah, I'm going to try. So are you a yes? I am totally a yes. Welcome to yes, no, no, no. I don't know anything about any of this.

Like, I don't know who any of these names are. I don't know anything that they're... I know who Kylie Jenner is. Okay, yeah. And I know about... I know that there's a state called Alabama. We're... Yeah, okay. So you have like 2% of the tweet.

Okay. So, yeah, this has to do with something that's been going on in the beauty YouTube community. And what is the beauty YouTube community, do you like characterize it? Like, what's it like? It's basically just people sitting in their bedrooms, talking to their cameras, doing makeup tutorials, like how to get the perfect smoky eye. Or they do product reviews, like the newest eye shadow palette that everyone is talking about. And you watch these videos? I do. Actually, the way I got into them was my 20-year-old sister who has been watching, like, the beauty YouTube community for, like, a decade at this point. Like, she has been watching. Since she was 10. Since she was 10, like, from the beginning. Oh my God. Is my daughter going to start watching this soon?

I mean, it's, like, crazy because, like, kids now can, like, do makeup better than I ever will be able to. Like, they can do, like, cut crease eyes. What are cut crease eyes? Cut crease is, like, where you take your eye shadow. and you have a really, really dark color, and you put it in the crease of your eye, and then you take a lighter shadow and put that on the lid. So it's like this really intense...

I mean, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful look, but it's, like, really, really hard. Like, I feel like I've tried to do it maybe a dozen times in my life, and I just, like, have to, like, walk away from my mirror, like, feeling really, like, a failure. But, like, 12-year-olds can do it.

So this tweet is actually about this major... drama that has engulfed the beauty YouTube community in the past month. And I think the person I want to start with is this YouTuber, Jeffrey Starr. Do you know who Jeffrey Starr is? I don't. Okay. So, I mean, really all you need to know about Jeffrey Starr is he's a pretty popular beauty YouTuber. He has millions of subscribers. But I'm actually not a fan of him. Like, I kind of see him as like the Milo Yonopoulos of beauty YouTube. Okay. Like he's not political or anything, but he just is so okay with being offensive.

Like there's this video where strangers on a boardwalk are yelling homophobic things at him. And in response, he starts slinging racial slurs at them. And do these videos exist because he had filmed them? and been like, look how provocative and edge lordy I am and put them online. Yeah. So that's Jeffrey Starr. There's this other YouTuber named Shane Dawson. He's not a beauty YouTuber.

He does more, like, more, like, comedy stuff on YouTube. He has a huge following, and he does this thing where he goes and he hangs out with Jeffrey for dates. Like, he goes to his office. He dresses in his clothes. He learns all about Jeffrey Starr's bizarre life. Basically, he just becomes Jeffrey. Got it. Okay.

And it's not just like one stupid little video. It is a five-part documentary. It's like, what's his name? The guy that writes all the things about, it's like Robert Caro, YouTube. It's like this is his power broker. It's my opus. I'll play you the beginning. The very first part, it is titled The Secret World of Jeffrey Starr.

So this is Shane. Okay, today is such a terrifying day for me. The last time I switched lives with somebody, it was one of my best friends, Trisha Petas. So that was kind of easy because I knew what to expect. My boyfriend cheated and I'm fucking exposing him. Oh my god, me! This is different. Because I'm going to be switching lives with Jeffrey Starr, who I am terrified of.

Just like a montage of Jeffrey Starr looking like a beautiful Marilyn Manson. Paying care. Yeah, very Marilyn Mancini. Wake the fuck up. I feel a hundred years old. I feel like I fell asleep under a large tree and I woke up and culture is really far. I feel like I've been back to the future too. I feel like this is the episode where I pass the mantle of the no.

Very possibly. So here you see Jeffrey taking shame through his hot pink mansion. and they're just like planning their day. What am I doing? You're going to be in full makeup today. We're going to do a full day of how I start my day. So full wig, makeup, everything. And then we're going to go to the warehouse.

I have some meeting scheduled about production plans for what's next for my brand. All my internet. So that was two minutes of the video. I watched like every single minute of it. I would, I have to say, I would watch that too. Are you going to watch it after this is ever? Maybe.

It's such a good gimmick, too. He swaps lives with people. That's such a great idea. Yeah. He like gets a makeup artist to come and like do his makeup, like, disguise his eyebrows because Jeffrey doesn't have eyebrows. He like goes to his makeup packaging company. He learns how much money Jeffrey makes. Like Jeffrey tells him it's hundreds of millions of dollars.

The pictures is like, you know 60 minutes, but also you know the movie Trading Places. And also, you know YouTube. It's awesome. That's amazing. A lot of people watched this documentary. Like in total, all five parts got 87. million views. Just like the power broker.

So Jeffrey Starr is just kind of like, he was already kind of famous in the beauty YouTube world and then is just catapulted to like a different level of fame. Double super fame. Yeah. And that's when the rest of the beauty YouTube community is just kind of like, whoa, hold on. This person is racist and mean. Why is he getting exalted as this like prodigal son of like beauty YouTube? Like, why is that happening for him and not us?

So actually, the names in this tweet that you brought Alex, Gabriel Zamora, Manny MUA, Nikita Dragon, Laura Lee, these are all beauty YouTubers. Got it. Around the time the Jeffrey Star documentary came out, these four beauty YouTubers are on this makeup brand promotional trip. And while they're there, they take this photo that's actually. actually in reference to this viral photo of the Kardashians at Kylie Jenner's 21st birthday, in this photo, the beauty YouTubers are all together sitting on a couch giving the camera the middle finger. And there's a caption. And yes.

And Gabriel tweets it out with the caption, Bitch is bitter because without him, we're doing better. I feel like I know who they're talking about. Yeah. And suddenly all of these fans of Jeffrey Starr are like calling Gayette. out for obviously shading Jeffrey. And so then Gabriel tweets again saying, imagine standing a racist. I could never.

Okay. First, they're being like, we don't miss you, screw you. And now they're being like, I don't understand why people would be fans of a racist. Like, I personally wouldn't. But if you like Jeffrey Starr, I guess that's fine. Right. So this prompts all of Jeffrey Starr's fans

to start digging into the past of all the people in these photos. Oh, right. No. Oh. Oh. Because. And they left themselves wide open. You open the door. So who did what?

Who did what? Yeah. I mean, they're like kind of asking for it. But the things that are brought up because of this whole thing, like are not funny at all. Like Gabriel has used the N-word on Instagram. What is wrong with people? Laura Lee has tweeted this horrible thing about police brutality against black people. So they all just have abhorrent.

Like they have all said like truly awful shit. Yeah. And like once they're exposed, it doesn't start this like big conversation about like race and social media and like why words matter. It just becomes fodder for this drama that's going on. Like people start calling it dromagetan. Because it's destroying everybody's YouTube careers at the same time. Yeah. And to try and save themselves, each one of these beauty YouTubers puts up an apology video.

I get something about the tweet. The tweet is characterizing their apologies. Yes. Okay. Yes. Do you know about YouTube apology videos? No. Oh.

Okay. YouTube apology videos are like, like, the only way I think I didn't describe them is like delicious. Like they are like, they like feed a hunger within me that it can't be fed any other way. Can I just say why they are generally so good in my opinion as well? Like I started seeing them after the Logan Paul stuff, like his apology videos for like, sorry, I went to the suicide force and took a video of a corpse and made a joke about it. I guess that was a bad idea. Right. It's always like this weird combination of like sad piano music and like very like stoic, whatever. But like from people that don't know what good human behavior would actually be.

And so it's like they don't land. It's very transparent. But they're performers. So there's this real performance in it. A staple of the ones that I've seen is usually the. person sits down in front of the camera and they go, Hey guys. Okay, guys.

And then they like push their hair back. I'm not even sure how to begin, but I'm just going to get into it. Oh my God. I owe you an explanation. That's so good. Let's do the actual one. All right. So this is Laura Lee's.

It is titled My Apology. I want to talk to you guys. Oh! She just wiped her eyes as if they had tears or they don't have visible tears. She's not actually crying. I'm so sorry. It hurts me. She's sitting on the floor.

She's not wearing any makeup. I, six years ago, decided to retweet things that were so vile and hurtful. She says that she retweeted racist things. She definitely tweeted them herself. She's lying. So did that work? So, no. people don't buy this she actually somehow makes it worse because she also tweets that she's from

Alabama like as an excuse and that obviously doesn't go over well she's lost a ton of subscribers because of this I think before dromageddon actually happened she had close to six million followers if you look at it now it's 4.4 million she like lost a bunch of brand deals like her products were supposed to be in Ulta, the makeup store. They, like, pulled the line. Like... So then did she have to make an apology video for the apology video? She's been dark since this.

This is the last thing she's put on the internet since Dramageddon. So Dramagetan did really claim her. Yeah. I mean, I think it did. And it, like, actually claimed most of the BD YouTubers in this tweet. Like, they're all putting out apology videos, and they're almost becomes, like, the apology video Olympics because they're all apologizing at the same time.

It's like people can actually line them up and like see who did the best apology. Yeah, you can literally pit them against one another. So what's the logline for each apology? Like one of them was just like, oh, we were just like mimicking Kylie Jenner. And the other one is like, those weren't even my tweets. Those tweets are fake. The last one is a little bit different. It's from Gabriel Zamora.

he's the one who tweeted out, imagine standing a racist I could never, like the tweet that started this whole thing. It's 49 minutes long. I'm actually going to play you a little bit. Hi, everyone. I'm Gabriel Zamora, and thank you for watching. This video is definitely something

I didn't think I was going to upload, if I'm being quite honest. So this video doesn't look different, but it is because he actually says, he was sorry and what he did was wrong. The first apology that I owe that I definitely wanted to make sure was in this video at the very beginning

is to y'all, my audience because I was the person that I didn't want to be and it was being negative, being petty, and bringing negativity into a world that didn't need it. And for that, I'm truly sorry. A lot of people watch this video.

Like, it has over 4 million views. Gabriel actually ends up gaining followers from this whole thing. Like in this twisted game, this takes gold in apology videos. If you find yourself an apologizing for your racist past. Yes. But it's basically just like owning what you actually did, explaining the bad thinking that led you there, showing that you've learned and that you know who you hurt.

And acknowledging that it was bad and harmful and hurtful. Yeah. And through this whole thing, the person that we started with, Jeffrey Starr, has been gaining followers. He's feeding off their corpses. All right. So Alex Bloomberg,

do you want to explain this tweet back to me? Oh, very well done. I would love to. Okay. So, yeah. So this is a tweet from a username, Error does not comply to your social norms. And basically, what it is,

is it is a tweet-length. encapsulation of this thing that happened on beauty YouTube, Buteube called Dramageddon, which was basically a bunch of people in the beauty YouTube world sort of attacked one of their own who had like said racist things in the past apologized for them and seemed to get away Scott Free. And they were like, he shouldn't be doing that. You guys, I can't believe that you guys are going along with that.

And then in response, a bunch of people sort of like looked at their past. And they all had their own racist baggage that was hanging. around and it claimed them and then they put out apology videos and this tweet is basically a single line sort of like summary of each one of their apology videos. I think we're at yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. We're at yes, yes, yes, yes. Do you think everybody on YouTube has like something that is this bad and all it takes is

like them to point a finger to dredge it up? Or do you think it was like the worst people happened to point fingers the most? I, as someone who still watches a lot of beauty YouTube, I hope that there are some good beauty vloggers out there. Like, I hope my fave is not problematic, you know? Yeah. But I guess we just have to wait for, like, the next Dramageddon to find out. Thank you, Anna Foli, for letting us your expertise on a very strange world.

Anna Foley is a producer for our show. Reply All is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. Our show is produced by Shruthy Pinaminani, Fia Bennon, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Simone Pallanin, and Jessica Young. Our intern is Heather Schroring. Our editor is Tim Howard. We were mixed by Rick Kwan, fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Special thanks this week to Emily Foley.

Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Matt Lieber is a thermostat at a temperature that everyone in the room can agree on. You can find more episodes of the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.