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

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:48 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
Starting point is 00:01:03 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.
Starting point is 00:01:40 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.
Starting point is 00:02:01 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,
Starting point is 00:02:34 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.
Starting point is 00:02:54 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
Starting point is 00:03:21 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.
Starting point is 00:03:43 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?
Starting point is 00:04:13 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.
Starting point is 00:04:31 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?
Starting point is 00:04:54 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
Starting point is 00:05:30 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
Starting point is 00:05:48 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.
Starting point is 00:06:10 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,
Starting point is 00:06:32 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.
Starting point is 00:06:56 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.
Starting point is 00:07:27 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.
Starting point is 00:07:53 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
Starting point is 00:08:16 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.
Starting point is 00:08:41 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.
Starting point is 00:09:19 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,
Starting point is 00:09:46 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?
Starting point is 00:10:03 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,
Starting point is 00:10:21 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,
Starting point is 00:10:42 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
Starting point is 00:11:03 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.
Starting point is 00:11:33 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
Starting point is 00:11:50 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.
Starting point is 00:12:11 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.
Starting point is 00:12:36 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
Starting point is 00:12:59 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
Starting point is 00:13:19 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.
Starting point is 00:13:39 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
Starting point is 00:14:02 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.
Starting point is 00:14:19 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,
Starting point is 00:15:00 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
Starting point is 00:15:23 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.
Starting point is 00:15:59 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
Starting point is 00:16:26 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,
Starting point is 00:16:56 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,
Starting point is 00:17:29 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
Starting point is 00:17:48 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
Starting point is 00:18:17 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
Starting point is 00:18:51 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.
Starting point is 00:19:14 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
Starting point is 00:19:34 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
Starting point is 00:19:59 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?
Starting point is 00:20:19 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
Starting point is 00:20:38 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.
Starting point is 00:21:02 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?
Starting point is 00:21:26 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.
Starting point is 00:21:41 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.
Starting point is 00:21:53 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
Starting point is 00:22:15 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.
Starting point is 00:22:38 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
Starting point is 00:23:10 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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Starting point is 00:25:46 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. 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
Starting point is 00:26:16 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
Starting point is 00:26:42 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.
Starting point is 00:26:59 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,
Starting point is 00:27:23 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.
Starting point is 00:27:40 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.
Starting point is 00:28:02 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
Starting point is 00:28:26 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.
Starting point is 00:28:57 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,
Starting point is 00:29:18 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.
Starting point is 00:29:35 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,
Starting point is 00:29:58 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,
Starting point is 00:30:20 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,
Starting point is 00:30:40 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
Starting point is 00:31:09 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?
Starting point is 00:31:31 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,
Starting point is 00:31:58 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,
Starting point is 00:32:32 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,
Starting point is 00:33:06 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.
Starting point is 00:33:21 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.
Starting point is 00:33:45 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%
Starting point is 00:34:02 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,
Starting point is 00:34:21 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.
Starting point is 00:34:51 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.
Starting point is 00:35:35 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?
Starting point is 00:36:06 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
Starting point is 00:36:35 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.
Starting point is 00:36:50 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
Starting point is 00:37:17 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.
Starting point is 00:37:38 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
Starting point is 00:37:53 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.
Starting point is 00:38:22 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.
Starting point is 00:38:40 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.
Starting point is 00:39:01 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
Starting point is 00:39:24 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
Starting point is 00:39:56 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.
Starting point is 00:40:21 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.
Starting point is 00:40:50 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.
Starting point is 00:41:22 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.
Starting point is 00:41:46 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.
Starting point is 00:42:25 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.
Starting point is 00:42:44 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,
Starting point is 00:43:05 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,
Starting point is 00:43:26 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
Starting point is 00:43:55 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,
Starting point is 00:44:24 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,
Starting point is 00:44:51 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. Welcome to Miami, Benvenido, I mean, I mean. UFC 314 is headed to South Beach, baby. Don't miss any of the action at DraftKings Sportsbook,
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Starting point is 00:46:33 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?
Starting point is 00:46:57 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.
Starting point is 00:47:14 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.
Starting point is 00:47:38 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,
Starting point is 00:48:10 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
Starting point is 00:48:43 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,
Starting point is 00:49:13 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.
Starting point is 00:49:35 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.
Starting point is 00:50:13 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.
Starting point is 00:50:46 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
Starting point is 00:51:04 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.
Starting point is 00:51:28 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
Starting point is 00:52:03 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,
Starting point is 00:52:31 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
Starting point is 00:52:56 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
Starting point is 00:53:30 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.
Starting point is 00:53:53 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
Starting point is 00:54:11 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.
Starting point is 00:54:39 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
Starting point is 00:55:09 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,
Starting point is 00:55:24 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
Starting point is 00:55:52 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.
Starting point is 00:56:25 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
Starting point is 00:56:46 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.
Starting point is 00:57:05 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.
Starting point is 00:57:27 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.
Starting point is 00:57:49 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
Starting point is 00:58:04 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
Starting point is 00:58:33 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?
Starting point is 00:59:01 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
Starting point is 00:59:32 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.
Starting point is 01:00:00 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.
Starting point is 01:00:21 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
Starting point is 01:00:54 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.
Starting point is 01:01:21 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.
Starting point is 01:02:11 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.
Starting point is 01:02:35 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,
Starting point is 01:03:16 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
Starting point is 01:04:14 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
Starting point is 01:04:53 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
Starting point is 01:05:20 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
Starting point is 01:06:06 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
Starting point is 01:06:51 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
Starting point is 01:07:23 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.
Starting point is 01:07:55 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.
Starting point is 01:08:28 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
Starting point is 01:08:55 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
Starting point is 01:09:23 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.
Starting point is 01:09:45 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,
Starting point is 01:10:07 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.
Starting point is 01:10:23 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?
Starting point is 01:10:41 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.
Starting point is 01:11:07 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,
Starting point is 01:11:25 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,
Starting point is 01:11:44 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?
Starting point is 01:11:58 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?
Starting point is 01:12:26 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.
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