The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Hasan Piker
Episode Date: April 10, 2025@HasanAbi is in the house. Hasan Piker streams eight hours a day… every single day… to combat the flood of alt-right and conservative media online. No weekends off. In this episode of South Beach... Sessions, Hasan explores how his nigh-obsessive output comes from a place of both impressive motivation and a deep passion to make the world a better place. Together, Hasan and Dan explore the trenches of insecurity, addiction, and self-improvement. Hasan also opens up about his body dysmorphia and about what it was like to be bullied for his appearance. Follow and subscribe to Hasan’s Twitch and YouTube channels @HasanAbi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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You're listening to DraftKings Network.
Hello and welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm excited about this one.
I want to see how this mind works.
This is an interesting story right here.
You don't see a lot like it.
Hassan Piker is one of the strongest progressive voices you will find in an increasingly conservative
online world.
You can follow him YouTube and Twitch, Hasan ABI.
Thank you for being on with us, sir.
Thank you for having me.
This is very exciting.
Yes, you don't know anything about sports.
No, I don't.
Self-admittedly, my interest in sports begins and ends
and exclusively revolves around LeBron James
and defending LeBron James' honor
and talking about LeBron James in general.
Same, same really.
But like I am open and unashamed about the fact that I very rarely watch even basketball.
I play basketball all the time. I play it, you know, weekly, but I don't watch professional sports at all.
Weekly W-E-E-K-L-Y, not W-E-A-K-L-Y, right? I imagine in the posture tall.
No, no, no, no. Every week. I imagine you're physical.
Yeah, no. I don't play in a weak way, no. I mean, I do have like, people call me the
Turkish Jokic, but, you know. They call you the Turkish Jokic.
Yeah, because I'm slow. And also have a weird shot, but it goes in and that's what matters I think.
I imagine you would need to blow off some steam.
I don't understand how you live or how you work.
It seems like it would be exhausting
and it also seems like you love it.
Are both of those things true?
Yes, for sure.
I mean, it's definitely exhausting.
I stream every single day from 11 a.m. Pacific
Time to usually around 7, 8 p.m. Pacific Time, and that's seven days a week. So it's certainly
exhausting, especially because I'm doing talk radio for eight hours. I'm trying to entertain
people for eight hours. I yap a lot. But it is very fulfilling, which is precisely the
reason why I don't take it for granted. I say, I talk about how privileged I am all But it is very fulfilling, which is precisely the reason
why I don't take it for granted.
I say, I talk about how privileged I am all the time
and I don't mind doing it because at the end of the day,
I have this freedom.
If I didn't want to do this, I wouldn't have to.
I was just talking about this with my dad
who's visiting from Turkey, staying with me this morning
where I was like,
I don't have to wake up at seven a.m. every day.
I do because I want to, but the freedom
of not having to do that is tremendous.
It's really important.
I would imagine though that there's an addictive quality
to what it is too, if it's eight hours a day
and seven days a week, you don't have to do it like that.
Absolutely.
There's definitely an addictive quality to it. Was that mine or yours? That was yours. That's a five dollar fine you're gonna have to put it on the table.
No, my dad is, right as I was talking my dad has just been like aggressively
calling me and I don't know why and I don't know why it's ringing. This has
never happened in my entire life. I don't know what the hell's going on.
It's important that you should take that.
No, no, it's fine.
It's a FaceTime, family FaceTime.
It's just annoying because I got a new phone and I think the new phone does not.
Do you need a minute?
No, no, I'm good.
I put it on Do Not Disturb.
My family loves having family talk. They love calling every morning and then having like a big
FaceTime discussion. And you don't? Well, I don't mind it usually, but I have a very limited time
frame that I can have these sorts of talks and then sometimes they catch me while I'm on a podcast
and it's very embarrassing. Don't worry about it. Your life though does seem crazy.
Yeah.
And why is it that it has to be seven days a week?
Why is it that it has to be eight hours a day?
You have to stay ahead of people, correct?
Yeah.
I mean, it's like a, it's a one-stop shop.
It's a one-man media operation.
So I, there's so much to talk about.
And when I'm not talking about stuff, there's, you know,
I'm playing games and things like that
and doing fun, different kinds of fun content,
like collaborating with other content creators.
And I feel like that also serves a separate purpose.
So it is addictive for sure,
but I think I wouldn't be able to do this
if I didn't have a moral compass guiding me.
I would not be able to do this
if I did not feel as though
what I'm doing mattered to a certain degree and it gave me emotional fulfillment.
Inspiration, I would imagine, right?
Yeah.
Can you tell me the back story? How did all of this happen? How did the professional part
of it happen? We're getting to your family life, the immigrant mentality and where it is the work and the drive comes from. But the professional part
of it, how did it start?
I guess, well, one, I was always political. I was always interested in politics growing
up in Turkey, so that's a big part of that. But then I started working on my uncle's startup
called Young Turks, 26 person media company at the time as a YouTube channel.
And it had a bunch of other smaller YouTube channels
underneath that umbrella.
I interned with him and then I wanted to live in LA
and I had no job prospects.
I lied to my family saying that I was gonna take the LSAT
and go to college and maybe even go to UCLA law, you know?
And that was a lie.
I was not interested in that at all.
I just wanted to come to LA
because I wanted to leave New Jersey,
which is I think fairly reasonable.
So I came out here, I worked for the Young Turks for years.
And in that process,
they initially started off on the sales side.
They didn't have any sort of like internal sales division. So I basically built that. I built the sales side. They didn't have any sort of internal sales division.
So I basically built that.
I built the client lists, I did the cold calling.
I did all of our advertisement operations at the time
at the Young Turks.
But the whole time I was like, I wanna do on camera stuff.
So I would just slot myself in wherever I could.
And it's a startup.
So there was an allowance there
for me to be able to do so.
And yeah, I started doing the culture stuff,
the media stuff, whenever a guest host wasn't there,
I would just fill in the last second.
And I was so bad, I was so bad on camera, it was crazy.
But I knew that I would just have to
constantly train myself and constantly keep going
until I would inevitably get better.
And now I can't shut up.
So I guess to a certain degree it worked out.
But I was doing that at the Young Turks
and at the Young Turks in that process I figured out
I need to have something for myself.
And I also need to, I figured out like, I need to have something for myself.
And I also need to, I'm a gamer.
The market at the time for gaming and commentary was heavily dominated by the right wing, which
is not dissimilar to what it looks like right now.
But I wanted to show that it wasn't just like woke SJWs, like the left was much larger than this.
It was a diverse umbrella of people
who are progressive minded, but can also have fun.
Because I think that the right had so successfully
undermined the optics of the left in general
by constantly presenting them as woke radlibs
who never enjoy themselves, who don't want to have any fun, who are very censorious and yada yada yada.
And to be fair, like, that's how the right is as well.
And that's how they've always been.
And there was some truth to that in general, but I think that it was so successful
as a mechanism of pushback, so successful as propaganda,
that a lot of young men responded to that
and I wanted to tackle that, I wanted to penetrate that
and I wanted to show people like,
no, you can have progressive politics
and like still have fun, this is ridiculous.
And all these guys that are actually pointing the finger
at blame at the left and saying that they're annoying
and woke scolds are actually just neckbearded losers
themselves and they also are hysterical quite frequently.
And that's how I got on Twitch.
Darrell Bock How long did the lie last with your parents
before they realized that you weren't here for the reasons you said you were?
Ben Jensen I think they kind of gave up on me.
So that was fun.
I think, I'll just say it like this, every phone conversation that I had with my dad
when I was working at the Young Turks and until I would say 2021, every phone conversation was,
when are you going to get a PhD? Like what are you doing? When are you going to get higher education?
You have to get higher education. Your father's a scientist, your mother's a professor, right?
My mother's a professor, my father's a professor as well.
He's not a scientist.
He is, because I don't think, you know, being an economist is a real science.
They're both have PhDs, but yeah, that's basically what it is.
They both teach.
Are you now a liar and a failure? When you're lying and you're not doing what the immigrant family wants for you, which
is choose a safe path, kid.
Choose one of the structural paths, an architect, a lawyer, a doctor, one of the safe ones.
Yeah, we call it the golden bracelet.
Golden bracelet.
Engineer, doctor, lawyer.
And lawyer is like the worst one out of the two,
it's like three, you gotta go either engineer or doctor.
My brother's an engineer.
So they were, I mean they love me,
they're very supportive.
They were not ashamed I don't think,
or if they were, they were hiding it very well.
But.
Well they weren't approving either though, right?
No, but it was a gentle nudge in the direction of getting a PhD
every single time we had a conversation.
It's like, come on, come on.
Cut it with the shit, cut it out.
This is done, right?
Like it's over.
And now what?
I think, I don't know the exact moment when it changed,
but I think once I started showcasing
that I was financially stable,
they were like, okay, this worked out, it's fine.
Because I went full-time in 2020,
and you got all these articles coming out,
I was actually financially stable and very successful
in the last election cycle in 2020.
So I think that's when they were like,
okay, this is a serious job, I think.
I mean, it's volatile, it's scary,
but it has the fixings of what looks like a profession.
So I think that's what it was.
Where does the work ethic come from?
I don't know.
That's actually a really interesting question
because I don't think I've ever thought about that
and I don't think I've ever answered that. and I think I've ever answered that but I've always
I've always been a very stubborn guy growing up and I always felt
like I had so much more than I could achieve and
So I would spend all of my time trying to self-improve all of my time trying to improve myself like day in day out
Because I'm not I'm not a naturally gifted person.
There are a lot of people who are.
There's a lot of fantastic, charismatic individuals
who are just like, you can tell.
They just, it just clicks.
You tell them to tackle a task they've never encountered
before and then they just can do it.
I'm not like that.
I'm like the ugly duckling or, you know,
just uncoordinated and without
tact.
Darrell Bock Wow, if you believe that, then it must be
your work ethic that carries you.
Ben Rolfe Oh, no, for sure.
Darrell Bock And how could you not know where it comes from? Like how the roots of it – like
if your parents are professors, there's a life of discipline and education in there
somewhere, no?
Ben Rolfe No. They were very open-minded when I was growing up,
I think, they were very, like,
they kind of let me do my own thing.
And I spent most of my childhood and high school years,
almost the entirety of it drawing.
I was obsessed with drawing.
I would just draw video game characters and anime,
things like that, that's all I did.
And it's interesting because I never do that anymore now
because my dad was like, you gotta cut this shit out.
You have to, you're not gonna be an artist.
What are you doing?
You're not gonna make any money if you do that.
Which is ironic because I think that paired up
with my first freshman like visual,
two dimensional visual design class made me realize I
Can't do this
The art stuff is crazy
But you identify as a creative um I didn't even think about it like that
I just that's all I cared about was drawing every class. I would just sit there and draw
I wouldn't even listen to what the teacher was saying.
I wouldn't take notes, I would just draw.
Non-stop.
And I stopped in college.
And I mean, I draw every now and then,
but like, it's just,
I think the creative bones have stayed in me
and it helps with the other things that I do,
but it's definitely not there in the forefront
as it once was.
Why am I bringing that up?
I'm bringing that up because I think I just have
an obsessive nature, very stubborn.
Some people might say it's autism.
I don't know, maybe, but that's what it is.
There's a constant want inside of me
that I have never really examined
where I always want to do more.
I always wanna be better than who I was the day prior.
And that's been the case since I was a kid.
Do you reach your standard?
Like is it perpetually fulfilling
or are you hard on yourself and not reaching your standard
and then pushing yourself to be better the next day
which would then of course
get in the way of how fulfilling any of that is
or whether that hole actually gets filled.
It depends.
I think that a lot of people from the outside
would say you're very hard on yourself.
I say it because I can relate, by the way.
I say it's been something that I've done for a while
that I'm trying to consciously alter,
but I'm a lot older than you are.
I don't run into a whole lot of successful people who don't have some of that in them
and don't sometimes forget to enjoy it while they're having it.
Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm too hard on myself necessarily,, I understand that it takes time.
Like, I understand that change requires, like, hard work is not going to happen
overnight. So I feel like that is the reason why I'm not super hard on myself,
because I'm very happy with what I've achieved. It's not like I'm like, oh I'm
such a loser, like I need to happy with what I've achieved. It's not like I'm like, oh, I'm such a loser,
like I need to get better.
Whether it be playing basketball
and like trying to dunk again, right?
Or whether it be working out, physical fitness,
trying to hit certain PRs.
Like trying to achieve the same
like physical prowess that I demonstrated when I was 26 at the age of 33, maybe 34 in
the future. All of that stuff I am aware takes a lot to accomplish. And so I take the gains
that I make in the short term and I don't take it for granted. That keeps me very motivated and very happy,
so I don't think I'm too harsh on myself.
Darrell Bock Were you bullied as a kid?
Benjamins Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Darrell Bock What did that look like?
Benjamins I mean, Turkish bullying is different. It was pretty violent.
Pylons, just beating the shit out of someone. I also was the rich kid,
because my family initially is very affluent for Turkey,
and my father lost all of his money
by the time I got to college, but that's besides the point.
But in that process, they took me out of private school
in third grade and sent me to public school.
And Turkish public schools are, you know,
that's like the Turkish income inequality is something
at a, it's very different than even American income inequality, even though America is
now more, America is now resembling Turkey a little bit, the Gini Coefficiency, but I
would say that that wealth disparity was so severe that means that like someone like myself
going to public school in Turkey was almost controversial at the time,
at least for middle school.
Because public schools,
when you go to high school and college,
are the best schools in Turkey,
because we have a nationalized education system.
But in middle school, it was, I guess, unique.
And I got, I had this kid who you know followed me home with a knife
and I remember like negotiating with him in the entire, throughout the entire process.
And I just like walking backwards because he didn't know where I lived and just because
I used to walk home from the school.
And walking, walking, walking.
And then luckily, because I was so late,
that my mom was outside already and she was screaming.
She didn't even see the kid had a knife.
But it was like a somewhat traumatic experience for me.
But it was also kind of a funny experience,
because I guess that was some kind of,
that was a little bit like bullying,
if you think about it
I know somebody I mean somebody chasing you home with a knife that qualifies
Yeah, I think it's like a little bit extra than bullying but
But yeah
The next day the principal in front of the entire school
Reprimanded him and like pulled his ear and like kind of beat his ass in front of everybody was crying and he was forced to apologize
to me
for almost killing me with a knife and following me on.
But I've had experiences like that
and then also experiences for being
like a little different too for sure.
Or just being fat, being unathletic,
being someone who's interested in nerdy stuff, like interested in American culture,
rather than the normal stuff that everyone else was interested in. Having said that, I also had normal hobbies as well.
I played a lot of Dota, which is a MOBA game. It's the first ever one that was ever created, Defense of the Ancients.
That was very popular amongst my classmates.
Is it a long period of fear here?
Like what are we talking about if a child is getting bullied
and a child is just eager to fit in,
doesn't wanna be noticed too much,
what are we talking about?
Like how much fear is in your daily life
as you're growing up and how long does it last?
as you're growing up and how long does it last?
I mean it wasn't like, I don't know. I wasn't like afraid to go to school or anything.
I mean I didn't like it.
I didn't quite like it, but I think that's probably
why I dove too much into just like doing art in general.
But I did have some close friends.
It's a different thing, it's different in Turkey. But I did have some close friends.
It's a different thing, it's different in Turkey.
There's like, they don't have the same cliques
in Turkey in high school, or at least they didn't
when I went there, or at least the high school
I went to didn't have that.
But I was best friends with one of the,
I mean, one of the best basketball pairs in the school team.
And he also would draw a lot.
So we were just like, we would hang out all the time.
We lived close to one another.
So it wasn't like, there wasn't like a concept
of like cool kids, but I also was getting bullied
at the same time by like other random bullies.
But they weren't the cool kids, if that makes sense.
Like it's just,'s just a weird dynamic.
But I just kind of kept to myself for that reason.
I just drew and did what I wanted to do.
Kind of like now.
How did you grow out of it though?
When did you start to blossom?
Definitely college because it gave me an opportunity.
I think when I was younger I would do this every summer break.
I was like, I'm gonna reinvent myself.
Because there was so much that I desired
that I was not achieving.
I'm gonna reinvent myself.
I'm gonna be cool when I come back from summer break.
And then I think college was
when I was actually able to do that.
That summer I lost a lot of weight.
And also I went to Miami, University of Miami,
and all of a sudden I was an international student
that was coming in with a bunch of other scared
international students into this like new environment.
So everyone is trying to figure out
where they are in this space.
And for me, I think that was an opportunity
where I was no longer like a weird person
that was sticking out, because everyone else was weird.
Everyone else coming to college
is like a totally new, a complete reset.
And I think that's when I started growing
into my more social personality for sure.
How much culture shock was there?
Not that much because I grew up,
and this is kind of embarrassing to admit,
but I grew up with one dream and one dream only.
It was to go to college in America.
That's it.
Like I didn't even think about
what my profession would look like.
That was my only goal.
I wanted to go to college in America.
I wanted to live in America.
I wanted to leave Turkey, and I wanted to live in America. I wanted to leave Turkey,
and I wanted to live in America and go to college here.
You almost did.
You went to Miami.
You almost got to America.
Yeah.
Well, I did.
You're right.
It was close.
But Miami's a great place for international,
for I'm going to get diverse America.
I'm not gonna be in Wyoming. Oh, yeah, I wasn't even thinking about that
I would have loved Wyoming at that point
I didn't care cuz like when you come from other countries when you like I have friends that that still do this when they visit
Me from France even it's not like France is like developing nation
They get so excited to go to like Trader Joe's and stuff
Like when you're not when you're outside of the United States of America and you come to the US, you're like,
there are so many things that we all take for granted
that for a foreigner is insane.
Trader Joe's is an insane experience for the average person.
CVS is an insane experience for the average person,
myself included.
I still enjoy going and shopping.
Your only dream was get to college in America because what? Because you were just the land of the free.
I was like, this is going to be so sweet.
I just, once I make it there, everything will be good.
I just believed in the American dream, I think.
Like I love the freedoms.
I love that it did not resemble a socially repressive country in comparison to Turkey
at the time that was transitioning with Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, very similar figure
to Trump.
So for me it was like a dream.
There was so much prosperity, 32 different brands of Oreos that you could pick from,
right?
Like all this stuff.
And great television.
And all of that played a major role
in me wanting to come to America.
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When did you start developing your voice?
Developing my voice, I guess I was always,
even without being on camera, I still was a yapper.
I would talk to my friends about this stuff all the time.
Interestingly enough, I think for me,
what was hard was to basically take my personality
and the way I operate off camera
and become comfortable enough on camera
that I can be exactly like that on camera.
And we're there now.
But this conversation that we're having
would not be different, whether the cameras are on or off like I would
just this is exactly how I am but you're you're are you a one-man operation like
what so you have people who are helping you with publicity and whatnot but when
you're doing what you're doing it's you with a thousand tabs going straight
ahead yeah do you have trouble sleeping?
Because I would just imagine that your mind
is working all of the time.
Yes and no.
I feel like I sleep like a baby.
Like I don't have an issue going to bed.
I just knock out.
But I will wake up, take a piss at 5 a.m. every morning.
And when I do, I notice myself arguing
with commonly held perspectives
when I wake up in that moment
where I'm like, oh fuck, what am I doing?
But sometimes I'll be like, that's a great argument.
I gotta remember that.
So upon waking, your first morning meditation,
when I'm asking you, can you get your mind to stop,
is to argue with commonly held beliefs
as you shuffle to the bathroom.
Yes, yes, 100%.
Because I would imagine your mind doesn't,
I don't know whether you do meditation
or breath work or any of that stuff,
but I imagine it's a bit of a fishing reel that it's.
It never stops.
No, it's definitely always going, for sure.
And you like that or would you like to still it some?
I like it, but I also do shut it off.
And the way I shut it off is by mindless television
consumption, like I watch a lot of anime
and I play a lot of video games.
Like that's how I shut it off, where I don't think
about anything and that is my hyper fixation for the moment.
Like a TV show that I'm watching that I wanna catch up on
or a video game that I'm playing.
So in the brief hours, the three hours, four hours
that I'm awake when I'm not in front of a camera,
that's what I do.
Or I play basketball.
One of the reasons I'm fascinated by you and your ilk
in a new media age is because from where I am
from afar, even if you love it, the needing to feed the machine seems like
an oppressive burden, especially if you're self-employed and you're a one-man
operation and you've largely arrived at your dreams and now you have to stay
ahead of everybody. I don't know how competitive you are.
Oh, it's very, I'm competitive
and the space I'm in is very competitive as well.
Yeah, and so I don't know how all of that
affects your daily to always be some form of on.
You're always on the treadmill and the monster doesn't sleep.
The monster needs to be fed.
Yeah, for sure.
It's kind of interesting because we look at
other relatively popular figures in the industry
that take the initiative and scale it back,
scale back their operations and say,
I'm not gonna do this, I've made enough money,
I'm not gonna stream every day.
And we look at that and we're like, wow, this is weird.
Oh, these guys never stream.
And it's like, no, they've made it.
They're successful and they're healthy.
But for me, this is what I like doing.
The moment that I don't enjoy doing this
is the moment that I'll stop.
There's only been one instance
where I've actually truly thought about
changing my trajectory and just scaling all this back
and maybe even stopping it entirely.
And that was, I would say post October 7,
when in the aftermath, in the months that came up afterwards
everyone was, like a big chunk of my community left
because they were just like,
they had never encountered someone who was, I think,
for Palestinian emancipation
and in the aftermath of such horrifying actions,
for many people their first encounter was October 7,
right, with the issue.
And they're like, this is the most barbaric,
this is the scariest thing I've ever seen.
So when I was like, no, no, no,
this is how it's been for 75 years.
And the reason for that is because of Israel,
they were like shocked and so many people left.
And in that, and you know, so many fans of mine said,
no, this is unacceptable.
And I think in that process,
I felt so discouraged about what I was doing.
Cause I was like,
I've been saying these things for 10 years.
I can't believe so many people would just be like,
you're an Islamist fundamentalist terrorist
And you know you need to be deep platform that was when I felt so
that was the only time I felt discouraged where I was like damn what I'm doing is like
Is not it's not working and I think people
Resent me for it for my positions, and I don't know if I can penetrate public consciousness.
Now obviously we're in a very different space now
because 16 months later everyone's like,
okay maybe you were right, you weren't that wrong.
But that was when I, all the attacks that I was getting,
smears, I wanted to quit, I wanted to go
and ironically do what my dad's been asking me to do,
which is get a PhD and maybe teach.
Go to college.
How long did that funk last for?
Because doubt when you're as confident as you appear is quite the poison.
And you're also existing in a space that is a super mental health challenge.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that paired up with seeing the atrocities every day,
I'm talking to people in Gaza,
and it was not good for sure.
It was not good for my mental health,
and I did this every single day, nonstop,
regardless of the hemorrhaging of the audience,
or regardless of people freaking out.
And how did I deal with it
Being fucking stubborn. I was like, I know I'm right and one day you will see that I'm right history will vindicate me and
I just kept
Doing what I was doing regardless and I think a big part of what?
regardless. And I think a big part of what
re-instilled the confidence in me and what I was doing was when I,
and this is something that happens frequently, when I went outside and, uh,
went to the student encampments, I went to UCLA and all the field marshals, all the protest marshals there, all the organizers were like, dude,
we're here because of you. Like you have opened up my eyes to so many different things.
Like you've been such a positive force.
And seeing that in action, like seeing what I try to do
in action in broad daylight, that is why I do what I do.
And that was very encouraging, galvanizing.
Take me through the examination though of the hopelessness,
the introspection of realizing,
oh look at how much of my identity is being tied up
and whether people are leaving me or not.
Oh for sure.
Just all of it, like for you to get to a point
where you're thinking about quitting
when I'm surprised almost every day
that you're not hopeless.
There's a part of this fight that can feel that way.
Yeah, well part of that is because as a leftist,
I'm used to taking L's.
I tell that to everyone all the time.
I'm like, you're gonna, change is gonna be marginal.
It's not going to happen in a broad, sweeping fashion.
Don't look to the right and assume
that you can have a January 6th all situation. Don't look to the right and assume that you can have a January 6th situation.
Don't look to the right and assume that you can have
a Bernie Sanders presidency where he breaks the economy
and the way that Trump is right now.
In the time of us having this conversation,
Donald Trump came out yesterday and did Liberation Day
and he slapped on at least 10% tariffs
to every country on the planet,
including all the way up to like 46%
or even higher for certain allied nations.
Trade protectionism of that sort
is not a right-wing position at all.
A leftist politician would be able to do that,
or should be able to do that,
but they would never be able to do that.
They get assassinated before they even encountered
such a thing, such a move,
and Trump isn't doing it in the right way anyway,
and that's besides the point. The point is change is marginal
and you should always maintain revolutionary optimism. That's
something that I explain to people all the time and that's something that's
always in the back of my mind as well because I know that my
cause is just and I know that my goals are to
both self-improve and improve everything around me, albeit marginally, and leave it
better than it was a day before.
So that is what keeps me hopeful, even when I feel hopeless.
And I guess I've grown accustomed to loss in that regard.
So I don't expect it.
I don't expect victories. So when they
come it feels great. And if it doesn't happen then I was right.
But what did you learn in the examination and the introspection of the wallowing in
�I don't know if I can do this anymore�?
I've always been very aware that a big chunk of my identity or a big chunk of like what I enjoy is directly tied to something that is unfortunately quantitative.
And I say unfortunately because commentary or any sort of visual medium like the one I'm in is supposed to not be quantitative,
it's supposed to be qualitative.
But because it's associated with a number,
you can immediately see whether you're doing right or wrong.
And I think a lot of people in my field
associate success and happiness
with higher number, better person.
I definitely have the ups and downs, right?
And in that moment, that was one of the downs,
but I think the way that I was able to go through that,
the way that I was able to experience that
and still come out from the other side unscathed
was because I have always focused on areas
within my control
as well in my life, like physical fitness, you know? Taking on a hobby and tackling it,
and that's precisely what kept me sane
through this process.
The fat kid's gone?
Fat kid's gone?
Like all of the scars and whatever the dysmorphia was,
and the insecurity?
I mean, I still have body dysmorphia, for sure.. I mean I still have body dysmorphia for sure.
And I definitely, it's funny you say that,
no I definitely still have body dysmorphia.
And I definitely still, especially at that time,
was like oh I'm so fat.
But I was still working out.
I was working towards this goal.
And I think reaching new pillars,
like reaching new levels in those areas,
like physical fitness and whatnot,
was what gave me a lot more confidence
and a lot more help in this timeframe
where I was just like, it's okay, this stuff doesn't work,
it's not working right now no matter how hard I try,
but that's fine.
I shouldn't be so tied to the analytics of it all,
and I should focus on other things
that are within my control.
Physical fitness being one of those things.
And that's what I did.
You work how many hours a day?
Roughly, because there's the eight hours on air,
but to stay as informed and to keep up,
I would assume means you're working about twice
that many hours a day,
just to be able to stay on top of things.
I definitely, I work every moment
that I'm not sleeping, for sure.
I just technically say I'm working when I'm sleeping
because I'm debating in my mind, but
I work every moment that I'm not sleeping.
When was the last time you had a day off?
When I got banned for saying that if Republicans were serious about Medicare fraud, they would kill Rick Scott.
He's the worst.
Yeah, I mean hey, that's Florida's very own Voldemort.
It's amazing that people don't understand what that person has done in terms of fraud
and that that keeps being somehow electable.
I don't understand.
I don't understand your world enough
to understand how that happens.
I got banned for that.
How many times have you been banned?
You've been banned a few times.
I don't know, I think seven, eight times maybe.
I have no idea.
So what's the last day off you've had that's not a ban?
I can't recall.
I think the only time, sometimes I'll take Sundays off
because I have a podcast and we just have to shoot it
in the middle of the day so I just, you know,
I'll be like, you know what, I'm not gonna stream today.
It's fine.
I guess technically that's not taking a day off
because I'm still working.
There's never been a moment where I haven't,
so I never don't work.
You're, I don't know if you're a loner or not,
but this would seem to be hard on relationships.
No, I don't talk about my private life at all
because I don't wanna like associate anyone else. I didn't mean about my private life at all because I don't want to associate anyone
else.
I didn't mean romantic relationships by the way. I just meant how hard it must be to be
present in any interaction you're having with anybody if you're always working.
I'm very family oriented and I have my whole family around me at all times. So if that
didn't happen then you'd be right for
sure. And I have a lot of good friends, like great normie friends that I also interact
with with regular frequency that keep me grounded and keep me centered. My family and my friends
are what has allowed me to, I think, stay in tune with what's going on in the world.
Don't talk about your private life
because I imagine there's some fear involved.
I imagine you're in some danger.
Just the way that you speak would be dangerous.
Absolutely, yeah, that's the reason.
I just don't want to bring anyone else into, you know,
all of the stuff that I have to deal with.
What is the stuff that you have to deal with?
I also don't talk about that too much either, but it's just the basic stuff.
It's what every content creator goes through.
The reason why I don't talk about it is because you don't want to encourage people to do it,
because there's a lot of copycats.
All I'll say is this.
The government has very few ways of dealing with cybercrime in general.
They're not very good at it.
And that's it.
What would you assign as the tax to what you do, the cost to what you do?
Mental health, physical, like a toll on your mental health, toll on your sanity, toll on your expectation of privacy,
toll on your physical body for sure,
because you're sitting a lot.
Obviously you can change that if you want to,
but many people just like, they sit in front of the computer,
myself included.
Yeah, toll on your relationships,
but ultimately on the
other side of it, everyone will say, what are you talking about?
You're just describing like a regular job that sucks in the exact same way and you make
not even a fraction of what you are able to make as a top Twitch streamer and they're
right.
I think the real privilege that I have on the other hand doesn't even come from the
finances, it comes from the freedom.
Because I've worked with someone else, I've worked for someone else in the past, and I've worked for
myself, and I know the incredible freedom that you have when you set your own time. When you even
know in the back of your mind that you don't have to work that day, like that is infinitely
more preferable to working for someone.
The reason that I'm smiling about that is because when I left ESPN I thought I was embarking
on freedom and then didn't see the number of restrictions that would come with freedom.
And what you're describing in the abstract is freedom, but the cost of it has enough
restrictions that you can't take a day off.
You're doing it eight hours a day.
So yes, you're making the choices on it,
but it can also be a prison that you like the prison,
doesn't really make it necessarily
less of a confining place.
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that,
but I really like the prison.
And it's doubly bad.
It's doubly bad, it's doubly bad
because I'm a committed believer
in the things that I speak about.
Because if I was just grifting,
that would be probably a lot easier to just be like,
I love the cloud, I love the money,
I'm just gonna stop tomorrow.
But because on top of, and I certainly don't hate the cloud or the money, I love the money, I'm just gonna stop tomorrow. But because on top of,
and I certainly don't hate the cloud or the money,
make no mistake,
but because I also am like, this is something that matters.
I feel like I stopped doing this
and hundreds of thousands of people
that normally tune into my broadcast
on at any point of the day
to figure out what's going on in the world,
are gonna be like, oh, what the hell?
I just don't have NPR today, you know what I mean?
I don't have the New York Times, the Daily today.
And I see that as something that is important.
A responsibility?
Yeah, I see that as a very important responsibility.
And I find that very fulfilling as well, though. The fact that I have this role and I try to fulfill it and
I have reached levels of success that I never ever in a million years would have thought I'd be able to
So I don't take any any moment for granted and I really love it
I imagine that the part that you love best isn't the clout or the money.
I would imagine from where I'm watching,
it's the crack of having your passion,
giving it voice, and then having it have influence.
Yes, yes.
Impact, that's what matters to me.
When I hear about Chipotle unionizing,
and in the article they talk about
how they met over and bonded over their mutual appreciation for myself and I'm like, that's
it. Because that's my goal. My goal isn't just to yell in a room and have hundreds of
thousands of people watch. My goal is I yell in a room by myself, I'm gonna do that whether people are watching or not.
But about something you're caring about, right?
About things I care about,
and then you're gonna hear that,
you're gonna internalize that,
and you're going to take matters into your own hands.
You're gonna go and you're gonna organize.
You're gonna go and run for local office and win
and start the change that is necessary for,
become the change that is necessary.
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Have your parents absorbed that you're a modern teacher,
that you're doing the same thing they do?
You're just doing it in a different classroom?
Yeah, I think so.
I think to a certain degree, but I'm too brash
for them to recognize that.
So I think it's hard.
But yeah, I mean, especially during COVID, like my mom was doing, you know, Zoom teaching,
like remote education, which is ironically the exact same thing that I was doing, you
know?
Well, you are teaching.
To a certain degree, yeah.
And having fun with it.
I mean, your audience is at least partially in there.
There can be entertainment, but they're not
in the circus tent because of the entertainment.
They're in the circus tent because of the nourishment.
Yeah.
But I definitely do try to make it as entertaining as possible.
Because I think I always am an entertainer first and foremost.
I mean, your gift is that you're making it digestible.
You're taking subject matter that, well, what is your gift?
What would you say is your gift,
instead of me telling you what your gift is?
I think it's just working hard and being super stubborn.
Those are my gifts.
I have an incredibly addictive personality,
and early on in my life I realized like if I focus my
addictions not on vices because I've struggled with alcoholism as well so
like for me I realized if I if I just get addicted to working out and like
eating right and and working hard in general and bettering myself healthy
vices yeah if I if Iing myself. Healthy vices.
Yeah, if I just focus on healthy vices
rather than unhealthy ones like gambling, alcohol,
getting laid, things like that, and partying,
then I will be able to,
I'll be very successful and happy as a consequence of that
and that's what it is.
How did you find whatever tools you needed to manage the alcohol
and the knowing yourself as an addictive personality?
One of the reasons that I've never tried cocaine is because I'm like,
I'm a little, I'm obsessive here and I don't want to not have control
over something like that. It ain't that hot I think, but I don't want to not have control over over something like that
Yeah, it ain't it ain't that hot. I think but I don't know maybe
People get really addicted to it. So it makes sense
But it's it's fun. Sorry. It's like
I'm saying it's like Adderall, but I wasn't asking you about cocaine. I'm sorry
You went off to a dreamy land thinking about mid-cocaine.
You know what came to my mind?
Theo Vaughn talking to Donald Trump going,
cocaine will make you feel like a owl, homie.
And now he's the fucking president.
That's crazy.
That was my moment where I realized
that Trump was probably going to win and the podcast
circuit that he was doing was infinitely more successful than people realized.
What were we talking about?
Sorry.
I was asking you how it is that you brought up alcoholism, which surprised me because
you don't talk about your personal life.
Oh no, I do.
I talk about that stuff. And the addictive portions of it, and I'm asking you how you got a hold of that, how
you were able to find the tools you needed to manage that.
I had really good friends. I got, ironically enough, I got pulled over for a DUI and arrested for a DUI when I wasn't drunk.
But I had definitely been careless in the past,
but that was my wake up call.
I'm broke, I'm living in a frat house
after college at this point
because it's like free board for me, right?
I'm making less than minimum wage basically. I'm barely making
ends meet and now I have this thing standing over me that is going to dominate my professional
career for the rest of my life. Because at that time I was in sales, right? And I was
like I gotta change my life. This is over. My life is over. I'm done. You know, I gotta change my life.
This is over.
My life is over, I'm done.
I don't have $10,000.
How am I gonna pay for a lawyer?
Because I got arrested.
They made me blow on the field breathalyzer test
like eight times until it was, I guess, over 0.08
so they could take me to get blood work done.
And then the blood work showed at the end
that I was actually lower than the actual legal limit.
So they didn't have anything to prosecute me with,
so they just dropped the court case in its entirety.
But the arrest record is still there.
And I was in jail that night.
And for the months after the arrest,
like I thought, you know, there's gonna be a court date
and I'm probably gonna have my life ruined.
It's over, it's over for me.
And so that was definitely when I was like, I'm done.
I'm quitting drinking.
And I did, and I'm glad that I did,
because now I can definitely see certain vices
Now, I can definitely see certain vices and certain addictions like get out of hand very quickly, but especially with alcohol, every now and then as a social drinker, if I go
to a party and I'm like peer pressured into it, I can just like have one drink.
That paired up with the fact that I'm 33 and will be insanely hungover if I go overboard
and have a couple has kept the demons at bay, I guess and I I never really want to drink in general
But I yeah, I quit drinking for like two years in a row. Nothing's more important than work, right? Yeah
Which is stronger for you
Nothing's more important than fun
But work is fun
That's that's the way I feel about it Nothing's more important than fun, but work is fun.
That's the way I feel about it.
Which do you identify as stronger within you,
the pull of addiction or your will?
Pull of addiction.
Yeah, but my willpower overcomes it,
but I'm able to overcome it through repetition,
through tricking myself basically,
slowly but surely into building that habit
until it becomes almost addictive to follow through.
But definitely the pull of addiction
is what is my north star for sure.
How long was the struggle to develop what you've developed?
Like, give me what the early months, even years, looked like as you were building this
thing.
Years.
I mean, it's every single day.
I started off on the content side, I started off, I was terrible on scripted. So I started out with writing a script
and then doing a teleprompter in front of a green screen
in this like supply closet.
That was all right, that was fine.
That actually got a lot of success
when it was called the breakdown on Facebook.
And I just knew that I had to keep doing it,
whether good or bad initially,
I just have to keep going and I have to keep doing it
and develop myself and get better and better at it.
That was part of the reason why I started going,
part of the reason why I got on Twitch as well
was because I wanted to get better at unscripted talk
in contentious environments
where I'm trying to entertain someone
and I knew that if I were to,
because I was playing Fortnitenight all the time with
My friends anyway, I knew that if I were to like just live-stream that process and try to be entertaining
that that would get me better off the cuff and
Yeah, it seemingly worked. So that was that's how I how I built it for years and years break by brick
Both improving myself and improving everything else that I'm doing on my output.
But when did it feel like it was breaking through?
When did you realize, wait a minute,
this isn't just a silly thing I'm doing with my time.
There's a career path here.
There's something that's real here that can be forever.
First moment for, first revelation was I walk into,
I think it was like
Buffalo
Trading Co or whatever it was like a secondhand thrift store. This is like
2016 2017 I walk in I'm doing these videos on the young Turks and these videos are getting like 30 million views a week is
The Facebook video faucet had opened up at that time
It like literally made and then broke a lot of media companies, like Upworthy, right?
So at that time I'm doing these Facebook videos
and they're getting 30 million views
and I'm like, I don't know if this is real or not.
Is this real?
Is there real motion here?
Are people actually watching this or is it just fake?
I walk in and this dude is on the phone
talking to their friend, completely oblivious
that I'm there, about the video that they've watched,
the last video that I put out about Tommy Lauren.
That's when I was like, damn, it was kismet, it was luck.
But this is actually penetrating public consciousness.
This is something that people that are interested in.
So that was my first moment where I was like, oh my God,
people actually do care about what I have to say,
this is crazy.
And then the second thing was when I went full time on my own in 2020 and I think like
while the George Floyd protests were taking place and everyone was at home and stuck and
they were all looking for exactly what I'm doing, basically a sense of a place for a community of like-minded individuals
that are constantly going to keep you informed.
And when that, you know, when my community just like
exploded in size in that process, that's when I was like,
oh okay, this is beyond what I have ever imagined,
what my career would look like,
or even have a real career in this.
What would be the way that you would describe
your relationship with your audience?
Parasocial, but in both ways,
where I'm parasocial with them,
as well as they are parasocial with me.
It's definitely unhealthy.
Because I talked about this in COVID,
like my dog died during COVID in the first couple of months
and I was alone.
I was in my one bedroom apartment by myself
and I had nowhere to go.
Couldn't go to the gym.
You know, demons start creeping in.
I'm like, I got nothing going on.
So I just poured myself into my work.
14 hour streams every day.
The year of 2020, I streamed 42% of the entire year.
42% of the entire year.
Not like 42% of, like I was on camera
for almost half of the entire year.
That's not great.
Yeah, but I was doing that because I just didn't want
to focus on how shitty everything
was.
I wanted a community.
I wanted to hang out with people.
So that's why I did it.
And it was fairly successful.
But it certainly helped me as well.
I mean, I've dialed the bag.
I do like 38% of the year now, right? It's not
42. It's fine. I'm moving in the opposite direction.
Darrell Bock Moderation, everything in moderation.
Scott Cunningham Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm moving in the opposite
direction. We're good.
Darrell Bock But unhealthy, you're describing it as unhealthy?
Scott Cunningham Yeah.
Darrell Bock The relationship with your audience you feel
is unhealthy?
Scott Cunningham To a certain degree, for sure. I think, you
know, I don't know them. I don't
know them like that. They're anonymous right and they don't know me but they think they
do. I do put myself out there like I am very honest about who I am and how I feel. Maybe
to a fault I should be able to hide it a little bit better.
That one's interesting though because I do feel like my audience, like okay, let's
examine that one for a second.
Does your audience actually know you?
My guess is if they're spending eight hours a day with you and this is a thing you love
and this is a large part of your identity, like they might not know you completely and
it might not be a real relationship, but the intimacy of what it is that you're doing and
the amount of time they're spending with you, they're getting to know you at least a little
bit. Yeah, they know me, they're getting to know you at least a little bit.
Yeah, they know me, but I don't know them.
So their expectation is that like I should almost,
but also no matter how well you know someone,
you can read it incorrectly, right?
And I think that the real issue there is people develop parasocial tendencies, parasocial
relationships, and then operate under the assumption that they do know you and sometimes
get things off base, but then will still argue with you on whether or not this is right for
you or not.
And it's like, you're not, I'm a 33-year-old man, you're not my father.
I don't even listen to my dad, you know what I mean?
Like I got this, don't worry.
That's what I mean when I say it just like gets
to an unhealthy place.
When you look back at some of the things
that you would alter along your path,
do you do much of that?
Choices that you would have made differently?
No, not really.
Because there's things that everyone would change about themselves, I think.
Get involved in something earlier than you would have or anything like that.
But I choose not to do that because I'm very happy with where I'm at.
And I feel like I have a policy,
a principle of never just looking back and thinking,
oh, I did that wrong, and then like endlessly thinking
about that over and over again.
Because I feel like it's unproductive.
There's nothing you can do.
It already happened.
And you reacted the way that you did,
you might as well focus on, learn your lessons from how you operated back then, and make
sure that it doesn't happen again.
Improve yourself, but move on.
So I rarely ever think about my mistakes in the past.
Darrell Bock My guess is that you've got a pretty good
grip on what's going on with young men in this country. Your audience is more than two thirds male.
What is happening with the combination
of young men and the loneliness epidemic?
I mean, I think it's the phones, it's the alienation,
it's the atomization, it's the lack of hope
that everyone is experiencing.
But it's particularly bad for men
because I think maybe, at least for women,
it's like a relatively new thing
where you get to just like go to college and work and stuff.
So maybe they're more appreciative,
regardless of how shitty the material circumstances are even for them.
As opposed to men whose futures have been taken away from them, I think, especially
men that mostly worked in the manufacturing base, that no longer exists in this country. So that
switch over to white-collar jobs and professional fields has eviscerated a
big chunk of the the male job opportunities that were readily
available in this country. We have a significant rise of underemployment in this country, where I believe it's like 23%.
Some people on those lines, it's a crazy number.
People just doing gig economy work
and basically nothing.
Whereas in the past, I think a decent percentage
of man could just get a job at a factory
and it was fine, you could raise your children,
send them to college even, you got the GI bill.
All of that stuff is gone.
And I think young men feel that.
They feel that.
Young women feel it too, but I think it's particularly
damaging to the collective conscious of young men.
And young men unfortunately are also very
susceptible to and in that vulnerability they're very susceptible to
believing like just a guy that masquerades as a role model but is a bad
dude you know like an Andrew Tate's of the world and that is a real issue. So they find a sense of comfort in a guy that they kind
of want to be like that is just like signaling all of the things that they care about, money,
power, women, and freedom.
There's always been a guy like that though. Every couple of years there's a Bolzarian or there's a Tucker Max or there's always some profit that feeds on lonely angry men who carry around
the rejection of women in a way that they can't get over.
For sure. And I think it's a sense of entitlement that is unaddressed overall, broadly for men.
But as times worsen, as material conditions worsen, as people's hope for a better future becomes
increasingly less likely, or you just can't even dream of a better tomorrow for yourself,
you're never going to retire, you're're never gonna be able to own a home. I think that creates downward pressure
on a lot of men because society does not match their expectations from their
development, from their upbringing, and what they're supposed to be at, and it
breaks them. It breaks them and paired up with the with a lack of interest in
self-examination and reevaluating where
you are and how you got there and instead just kind of holding it down and pushing it
down to the best of your ability what, I'm going to use a term here that's going to piss
people off, toxic masculinity has, how toxic masculinity has harmed men in this way.
When you factor all of that together, it's an atom bomb.
Well, when you talk about the relationship
with your audience, like I don't know
because I can't possibly understand
what the new media space is that you particularly occupy
the combination of ingredients that is possible.
It doesn't mean your entire audience is this
or even most of it, but the combination of angry,
lonely, and anonymous, those three things,
having a lot of that anywhere in your interactions
or your life is a burden that comes with your success because
Because this is a what you've built in the last 10 years is a it's a new space
You're fighting for a new media space and that audience to me that that particular audience scares me
I'm not saying the entirety of your audience. I'm just saying the entirety of your audience I'm just saying
the combination of those ingredients. No I understand it. It is scary. They are like
that demographic I wouldn't say that this is my audience but but that
demographic does do a lot of harm online and maybe sometimes in the real world as
well so I try to steer
them away from that to the best of my ability.
But when you say Trump did better with the podcast circuit than anyone understands, it
was at least in part feeding a good segment of that as the demo, correct?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Just, I mean that demo isn't just young men though that demo is just men white men, especially but men across the board like
He I was in a I was in an uber going to the Bernie Sanders AOC rally in Nevada in Las Vegas and
And my uber driver was talking about how you know, he loves the O'Von and Joe Rogan and lo and behold
He was like, I'm so glad that doge is cutting
Yovon and Joe Rogan and lo and behold he was like I'm so glad that Doge is cutting
Trans-Sesame Street or something in Iraq like that's what they're doing in Iraq Trans-Sesame Street and this dude was like I think he was a teacher or no he was a he worked in uh a
western pestvania in a oil field initially he was a fracker and I guess he their company used to work on federal land
and Biden stopped offering federal land contracts
and he lost his job.
But instead of carrying that resentment towards his boss
for not doing right by him, he just hates Joe Brandon.
He's like, I hate Joe Biden.
And I think in that process, he just like found podcasts
and became this guy who believes in nonsense, believes in falses, because he hears the podcast guy who he's parasocially
connected to tell him like this is what's going on.
And he just regurgitates that to feel smart about himself and it slowly but surely becomes
a mantra that he believes.
This is a dangerous cycle.
That man was in his 50s.
He was not a 25-year-old, right?
So I think we have to examine a lot that has gone wrong.
How do you walk away from that conversation?
Some form of that conversation is happening all the time?
I would assume.
Yeah. I try to
I try to be like water.
I try to Bruce Lee this shit.
When someone comes at me with that, I try to make a quick assessment of how much they care about this particular thing.
Because if it's like borderline psychosis, if you have a pathological obsession with trans people, I'm not going to be able to shake you from that position.
That's mental illness for the most part at that point.
If you're constantly worrying about that, it does start resembling, and I'm sure people
in your audience know someone like this, whether online or in their real life, where they're
just maybe a little too worried about this stuff.
Whereas there's 30 of them, calm down.
You know what I mean?
But I usually look to, like quickly try to understand
whatever the key issue that we're talking about this time
is like trans-Sesame Street or whatever for USAID.
And I try to see if I can just move him to reason to find common ground and just like
redirect all the force and anger that he has.
Really, you're still trying to change minds.
It's hard.
It's getting harder, right?
Like I do feel like there's an entrenchment going on that you might have your victories
where you walk around and someone slaps you on the back and says thank you for making
life easier. And those things make it feel like what we're doing
is worth something, but it feels like there are more
and more people entrenched in their positions
than there have ever been.
Yeah, there's an endless faucet
of right-wing reactionary sentiment.
So that's not, I understand that that's just
what the market looks like, and this is the outcome.
People believe in nonsense, and there's not much you can do about it. And this is the outcome. People believe in nonsense.
There's not much you can do about it.
And this is what you do about it.
You try to redirect those conversations
and hope that that person will remember that conversation
and will have a takeaway from that experience
that is otherwise positive.
So what I did with him was basically like,
you know, set a trap for him.
I was like, oh, you heard about the Trump trans women
in sports thing, and he was like, yeah.
You know, I heard, and you know, he's like,
are you excited about this?
He's like, oh, hell yeah, thank God,
no more men playing against women,
so I'm along those lines, right, like classic.
It was like, okay,
but the egg prizes are dog shit.
What's up with that?
You know?
And he was like, oh yeah, I guess you're right.
And I was like, yeah, don't you think that he's just
like distracting you because he doesn't wanna fix
the egg prizes?
And he started thinking about it.
I could see the cog wheels turning.
And the thing that I said to him basically was like how many how many
trans athletes do you think participated in the NCAA and he just had no idea and I
think what is the number 49? It's not very many. Yeah so it's like you think
it's there was more people standing behind him signing that thing than there
are trans athletes in the NCAA he's doing it because he doesn't wanna
fucking fix the egg prices.
He wants you to be locked in and laser focused
on someone who has no power over you.
And I also told him, because he said he was a Theo Vaughn fan,
I was like, go listen to my Theo Vaughn interview.
And you know, I think you'll like it.
And I basically say similar things
in that conversation as well.
So I try to do that a lot,
because there are certain things
that I think we delude ourselves into
having firmly held convictions on
when we just don't care.
I think that's one of those things.
These people don't give a fuck about women's sports.
I'm sorry, you make fun of women's sports
every goddamn day of the week,
and you say, women's sports, who's watching that? What fun of women's sports every goddamned day of the week and you say, women's sports,
who's watching that, what am I, a pussy, what am I, gay?
And then all of a sudden you're like,
a high school swim meet?
We have to protect women's sports.
The integrity of the high school swim meet,
it's like, what are you, a pedophile?
What do you mean, you high school swim meet?
Of a high school that you don't fucking go to.
Get out of here, you don't know that.
You don't know anything about the high school swim meet.
You shouldn't know anything about the high school swim meet You shouldn't know anything about the high school swim meet
Why the fuck are you busy in your brain with this because someone in a podcast told you this is what you have to care about
And they're like oh, I don't get it dress people are weird actually yeah, maybe they're doing it for an indecent purpose
Yeah, they're transing themselves to win a fucking high school swim meet get out of here. You know why don't you do it then?
Why don't you trans yourself if it's so easy?
Hassan ABI is where you go if you want that kind of passion
and conviction on YouTube and on Twitch when he's not banned.
Almost always on Twitch, except when he's banned from Twitch.
Appreciate the insight and appreciate the time.
I know you've gotta go.
You gotta get on air.
I'm going to do this for the next eight hours.
It's good seeing you.
Thank you for making this time for us.
Thank you for having me. This was great.
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