The Joe Rogan Experience - #1951 - Coffeezilla

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Stephen Findeisen, also known as Coffeezilla, is a YouTuber whose channel focuses on exposing scammers, fraudsters, fake gurus, and their deceptive financial schemes. www.youtube.com/@Coffeezilla

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Nice to meet you, man. Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate what you do. What you do is a very valuable service. Because you go so deep on some of these scammers. It's like, it's so important.

Because there's so many people that just, they don't really understand what's going, like the FTX thing, for example, the best one. Because I was so in the dark about this thing. I was like, what is happening? Like, what are they doing? Try to break it down for us. Like, first of all, what is a, it's a crypto exchange, right?

So how does that work? So the first question is when you learn about crypto, you're like, it's this magic internet money. Magic. How do you get some of that? How do you get some of that magic internet money? Well, you have to go somewhere to buy it. And so it's a crypto exchange is where you kind of go. You put your fiat on your dollars or whatever, euros or whatever, and you put it into this crypto exchange. They have a bank and they work with that bank. Then they exchange that money for some type of crypto token. There's a lot of different tokens out there. Explain tokens, because I don't understand tokens. I

know there's crypto and there's tokens. What is the difference between the two? Yeah. Tokens is the individual. You can think of think of currency right so it's like the individual so bitcoin is you have bitcoin then you have it's one of the cryptocurrencies you have ethereum you have dogecoin you have safemoon you have ftt which is what ftx was using as their native token so a lot of these guys you'll start a crypto exchange and then you'll launch your own token that people can invest in, sort of like they're investing almost in your crypto exchange. And so that was actually one of the ways that FTX really perpetuated their fraud. I can break it down. How much do you know about the FTX situation?

Let's break it down for people that don't know about it. Let's do it. So FTX was this crypto exchange located out in the bahamas which is a great place to put your why do they do it in the bahamas because it's unregulated so the problem with doing stuff in the united states or you know some something like europe or something like that is your you are subject to all these regulations which require you to be a little more careful oh Oh, those are pesky. Yeah, they're annoying.

So like the famous example is like Coinbase is in America and they have to file all these forms. They have to be their regulated entity. They're a publicly traded company. So they have to report everything. So if you're offshore, you can kind of not do any of that. You can play fast and loose. And, you know, for some people, they think that's better. They can offer, let's say, like 100x leverage. Like you have a dollar, I'll let you trade with $100. And that's going to be like one reason you come to my offshore

exchange. I can offer you more leverage than the guys who are like, you know, Coinbase or something like that. So FTX launches. Let's start with who Sam Bankman Freed is. He's kind of at the center of all of this. Sam Bankman Freed is this guy who comes, he's the son of two Harvard lawyers. Then he comes up, prep school. He's kind of like built for success, right? He goes to MIT, goes to Jane Street as this quantitative trader. And then he goes into the crypto space and he launches FTX. He's very young, right? How old is he? I think he is young. Maybe you can look that up, Jamie. 31. He launches Alameda Research first, which is just like this trading firm, which basically the idea here is

we have some ideas, we're going to raise a little bit of money, and we're going to do these trades that are profitable in crypto. So the way he first made his money was he did something where he bought Bitcoin in the US and then he sold it on these Japanese exchanges where it was worth more. So he was arbitraging this difference in prices. And then after he made his money that way, he launches FTX in 2019. And that's a crypto platform where, honestly, you can make a lot more money than just with a trading firm. So FTX quickly skyrockets in popularity. They bring on people like Tom Brady to promote it, Larry David in the Super Bowl. They kind of get buy-in from all these big sort of names and also reputable people like BlackRock, Sequoia Capital. They all invest in this guy. Kevin O'Leary famously

promoted it for like $18 million. They gave him $18 million to promote it? He says he lost it on the platform. He says the $18 million was on FTX or whatever, and he never got a dollar out of it. But that was what the deal was for. So they were paying everybody to promote this FTX crypto exchange. And the idea was is this is the next big thing, right? And this is where you're going to make money. There was a lot of fear of missing out or FOMO in the markets at the time. Everyone thought, oh, cryptos, you have to get in now, right? Because if you get in now,

you're going to make some money. And so people invested in FTX thinking that this is going to be a safe platform. This kid is smarter than everyone else. He's the son of Harvard lawyers. We just sort of can't lose. And nobody paid attention to some of the red flags that were going on until ultimately it was too late. It turns out he was pilfering FTX, the customer deposits, and was using it in Alameda Research, which was his trading firm, to try to make extra money. And he lost it.

And so this is all because it's unregulated. Like if he was doing this, like Coinbase can't do this. Is that correct? Yeah. Coinbase is much more heavily scrutinized. They actually have to file with the SEC. They have to say what they have, where they're putting their money. They're subject to more regulation about like how they take care of customer deposits. One of the big things with FTX was they told people, hey, you put your money with us. We're not going to touch it. We're not going to move it. That's what FTX said in their terms of service. So one of the really big problems was they actually weren't doing that. But nobody knew because nobody had a look at their books. Like it was very opaque. Nobody knew what was going on

behind the scenes. So even though they said, like, we're not going to touch your money. As soon as you deposited Bitcoin, I mean, I talked to some of the insiders at alameda they said they had this uh backdoor system to where they could see you joe deposit a bitcoin on ftx they could grab that bitcoin and start trading with it immediately even though they were never supposed to be able to touch your money obviously that was the whole point is like you deposit with us we're not going to do anything with your money it's your money it's like a deposit like we're it's almost like a like, you deposit with us. We're not going to do anything with your money. It's your money. It's like a deposit. It's almost like a bank. Like, you deposit with a bank.

Your bank isn't supposed to go ahead and take your money and go start trading with it unless, you know, obviously we have FDIC insurance, stuff like that. But, like, they didn't have that. They just take your money, go trade with it, and that's where the disaster started. I really enjoyed you catching him on Twitter spaces. I really enjoyed that. I listened to the whole thing because before that, you have this guy who's this whiz kid who you listen to him talk. He has an answer for everything. He's so articulate. He's so knowledgeable. I listened to previous interviews before he got busted. And then when you have him on, there's a lot of, Like I listened to previous interviews before he got busted. And then when you have him on, there's a lot of, um, I, I wasn't aware.

Uh, I'm not sure. Uh, I don't, I'm not aware of that. I don't know. There was all this hemming and hawing and a lot of ums and ahs and, and you just kept on him. It was amazing that he, first of all, it was amazing that he felt like he could do something like that like why would he publicly communicate this is one of the this is why it's so interesting to me to look at fraud like this is why it fascinates me as well as i think it's an important thing to expose but like i'm interested in the characters who perpetuate fraud because they're such interesting

psychological case studies sam bankman freed you could probably write a whole book about the fact that this guy, he got away with lying so long and perpetuating this image of himself as this generous billionaire. You know, he's sort of the next Warren Buffett. That when everything goes wrong, he thinks he can reestablish control because he's so smart. He is such a good liar that he's like, I can just lie my way out of it. So I think that's why he ultimately talked. His idea was if I lied my way into it, I can sort of lie my way out of it. And this is what he did. So I prior to this, I'd interviewed him twice before and I had kind of gotten hamstrung

with like, you know, he's just so good at dodging stuff. Did you interview him before the scandal? No, not before the scandal. not before the scandal so it's like as it was going down as it was going down he goes on all these twitter spaces he doesn't want to he's doing interviews with everybody i ask him and uh he doesn't want to talk to me so he but he's going on these twitter spaces so i keep i like was tracking when he'd go on a twitter space and i would contact the people ahead of time i said hey at the end when you're like ready for this thing to go down because i know as soon as I get on, it's going

to end pretty quickly after I said, let me on. Let me ask him some real hard questions because all these guys are like, Sam, you know, we appreciate your transparency, kind of kissing up a little bit. But I was just like, somebody has to ask him some real questions. So I had two prior little Twitter space interactions with him. And he kept getting away with the fact that he blamed all the wrongdoing of FTX on Alameda Research. And he said, I don't control Alameda Research. Even though he was the owner, he's no longer the CEO as of 2020. He hands it to this, a girl he actually had a relationship with, Caroline Ellison, right?

And she supposedly controlled it. He said, she did everything. I don't have access to the book. Like, I basically knew nothing. So anytime you'd call him out on an issue, you'd say, where's the money? He goes, well, it's, I don't know. It's gone. It's Alameda Research. Ask Alameda. So by the third interview, I'd studied him and I said, okay, how do we get down to FTX's responsibility in this whole thing? And I kept coming back to it was the terms of service that said you cannot move. Like when I deposit with you, you're not going to touch my money. And I said, Sam, if that's true, where's the money of all these people? There's no there's no Ethereum left. There's no Bitcoin left. You don't have the real tokens anymore. You just have your sort of nonsense FTT tokens, the tokens you invented. And he said, oh, well, you know, there were some margin trading accounts. And I'm like, no, but there were people who didn't trade with margin. And all they wanted was they wanted to store some Bitcoin with Tom Brady. They wanted to be alongside Tom Brady. So he's like, well, you know, there was fungibility between wallets. And it's like, well, what's fungibility mean? withdrawing who had who is this degenerate day trader or you were a grandma with who just put one bitcoin on there or you know more likely the grandson he treated all the accounts the same so

when everyone came running for the money they just withdrew until nothing was left and ultimately because they had lost billions of dollars it left billions of dollars in credit claims basically they didn't have the money. And so now it's trying to be sorted out by the guy who literally unraveled Enron. And he says, this lawyer goes, it's worse than Enron. I watched the CEO, the new CEO, talk about it. Yeah. About him trying to.

That's John Ray. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Trying to unravel it. And it. Yeah. About him trying to... That's John Ray. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Trying to unravel it. And it's amazing. It's amazing that things with this amount of money can get this far sideways before anyone knows

what's going on. This is the problem with offshore accounts and stuff. Like, actually, his whole technique of shifting the blame like onto Alameda

and like, I don't control Alameda. I've seen something very similar. I'm investigating this Ponzi scheme that's offshore. And like one of the first things the guy does is he controls it, but he renounces ownership. He goes, oh, I'm passing it off to some sham director. And he goes, I don't have anything to do. I don't know.

Where's the money? I don't know. But he controls everything. I don't know. Where's the money? I don't know. But he controls everything. And so it's like this is the this is the tactic of these offshore companies is like you put the right people in charge who are going to take the fall. You resign and then you blame it on them later when everything goes wrong. His problem, though, is Caroline Ellison flipped on them. She was smart. Yeah, yeah. She cooperated. Her and I believe Gary Wang were big executives. They're cooperating. They pled guilty. They're cooperating with the feds. I mean, they did the smart thing, which is something like this happens.

You shut up. You don't say anything. Right. And then you point at your boss. I mean, that's basically what they did. Which they for sure did stuff wrong, too. You did not get to that level and not know that things were wrong well reading her tweets about amphetamine use was pretty wild too the whole scene was wild the fact that they were all living together and fucking each other in this giant penthouse this 40 billion dollar penthouse the the things it's insane it's really i almost wish

it wasn't a scam i've said this before because i was i was kind of i root for nerds to like be that successful that you're just completely living outside the norms of society just fucking each other on amphetamines and making billions of dollars like it sounds like a great story if it wasn't illegitimate yeah that, that's I mean, ultimately, that's the problem. Like Sam was just hopped up on amphetamines playing League of Legends while on investigation. Like at the time that was seen as this charming, like genius thing on calls on calls. You could hear even actually. OK, so this is funny.

They found his League of Legends account. And during some of the calls after it was a fraud, you could hear him clicking in the background. He's playing League. They tracked his account. He's playing League while on calls about the failure of FTX. Wow. Just imagine the arrogance. Is that arrogance or is that just pure addiction?

I think those multiplayer games, those online role-playing games, that's what that is, right? It's like a— I think it's a—is it a MOBA? I used to play like a variant of League. So I know it's fun, but it's not like fun to the point— Look, this guy's whole thing was like, I'm this effective altruist. I'm this guy who's going to maximize good in the world you know and that was his reason for working all the time and that's the justification

for to be hopped upon amphetamines it's like maximize productivity maximize human happiness you can't do that and then say oops i played a little too much of my video games and lost billions of dollars like this doesn't fly well he wasn't saying that i played the video games yeah that's why i lost the money but but after the fact he's like loot like he's still playing video games and you're like can you have the decency to get off the video game and talk to people so bizarre it's it's just so bizarre that so many people got duped and i felt the same way about bernie madoff you know i'm not a financially aware person i'm not i'm not into the market. I don't follow these things. So when I see something like that go down, I'm like, how did he get Steven Spielberg?

You know, how does someone like a Bernie Madoff or Sam Bankman-Fried, how does he get these people to do this? And in the FTX case, how much of it was getting celebrities to endorse the platform? It's huge. This is what I wanted to say. Like, the more I study this stuff, and you start to have repeat occurrences. Like, I just cover stuff all the time, and you see echoes of the same thing. I just had somebody just a couple days ago I was interviewing for this news scheme we're looking at. And he said, you know, I never understood how Bernie Madoff got people because it seems so preposterous.

And then I fell for something very similar. And what I noticed with all of these things, the threat is you believe you know it's kind of too good to be true. But the social proof is overwhelming and it overwhelms your kind of like alarm bells. So the social proof is a combination of things. So first of all, it's like it's this guy who drives a Toyota. So you go like, well, why does he need to scam me if he's driving a toyota right then it's like uh which sam bankman freed dead then it's like okay tom brady backs him well tom brady's got to have some guys who are looking into this and then it's like well blackrock backed him well blackrock

definitely has some guys who looked into it it's sequ Sequoia Capital. They said he might be one of the first trillionaires or whatever. He's such a great entrepreneur. They think he's such a genius. Actually, it might have been one of the A1Z guys. I'm blanking on the name right now. A1Z? What is that? No, no, no. I'm sorry.

I'm blanking on it. It's this famous I'm going to remember it right after I get out of here. It's one of the famous investment funds. They invested in a bunch of NFT projects. Mark Andreessen, I think, is the guy who runs it. Jamie's looking it up. I thought I knew it off the top of my head, and now I don't want to say the wrong one.

A16Z. A16Z. A16Z. It was one of those, Sequoia or A16Z. One of them wrote this glowing review of Sam basically saying he's going to be one of the first trillionaires. So all these guys basically, a lot of these people backed Sam with the highest endorsements. And so if you're just an average person, you're thinking, well, how much more due diligence can I do than all these other guys, all these other guys buy into him. And like, and then they themselves are kind of also looking at each other being like, well, that guy did it.

Like what? It's the hottest deal around, right? Kevin O'Leary's in. So, so you kind of think you're swimming safely with other savvy investors. And that's what ultimately gets you to buy in. Bernie Madoff is very similar. I mean, he was really well regarded in Wall Street. So when people invested with him, they knew the returns were insane. But it wasn't like he was some random fly-by-night guy. He was well-respected in the Wall Street space.

People thought he might take over the SEC after the current person had stepped down. They thought he was going to take it over. He's one of the leaders of the NASDAQ. I mean, he was one of the go-to guys. And so you thought, well, I invest with Bernie. I can't lose. It's like almost betting on the house. The house always wins, right? So when FTX was taking off, it just seemed like everyone who was a someone was backing him. So then it was okay. And then I think a lot of

these people deferred to their other friends. They're all saying it's okay. Let me put money in. And it's just a huge case study that just because other people fall for something doesn't mean you're safe. Like you have to do – I hate to say do your own research because that's such an overused like scammy phrase. It's actually such like a phrase like that, you know, it's almost useless. Chem drills. Let me say this. If it's too good to be true, if they're offering market returns that you want to believe in, you go, man, I want to believe this is real.

Don't invest. Like, that's a bad idea. People were calling bullshit, though. Just like they were calling. There was a few people that were wary that were calling bullshit on Bernie Madoff. And there was a few people that were standing out and saying, none of this makes sense. Right. And who were those people? So, there were a few people that were standing out and saying none of this makes sense. Right. And who were those people?

So there were a few people. There was a Matt Levine interview with Sam Bankman. He didn't call him a fraud outright. But he's like, hey, it seems like you're in the Ponzi business and business is good. Whoa. And what did he say to that? He's like, well, you know, like, think of it like a box. And, you know, you tell a bunch of investors, you know, hey, if you put money in this box,

we can get some money out. We can give you this yield. He starts explaining like this thing that sounds exactly like a Ponzi scheme. And so ultimately, Matt Levine's like, oh, yeah, this doesn't really make a lot of sense. But again, it stopped short of this is a fraud because, you know, no one knew. There's a bunch of backing. So I made a video at the time being like this crypto CEO just describes a Ponzi scheme. And that video has aged so well because it's like people like, oh, it was all true. But like but people were outright calling it a fraud, like Mark Cohodes. He's a famous short seller.

He was calling that a fraud early. I have a buddy of mine. He goes by Dirty Bubble Media on Twitter. He's like one of the anon Twitter accounts. He was calling it a fraud. You know, there were things that were coming out like questions about, you know, OK, they say they have all this money, where? Where on chain is it? So like the blockchain, everything's publicly, you can see it, right? It's all at some address. And so people were asking, like, where's, you say you have all this Bitcoin, where's the Bitcoin? You say you have all this Ethereum, where's the Ethereum? And why is so much of your balance sheet made up of your own tokens? It's a big question. So one of the things that FTX had done, and a lot of companies were doing at the time, but FTX was sort of the worst offender, is let's say I give you a loan, Joe. So an unsecured loan would be I give you a million dollars and I don't ask for anything. So if you default on that loan, I'm out of a million.

Another way is I ask for, okay, I'll take some equity in the studio if something goes wrong, right? So I cover my butt if you default on it. Now, this is what was going on in crypto. They're called collateralized loans. But what FTX was doing was they were saying,

hey, we'll take a million dollars from you, but instead of giving you collateral dollars or some asset, we'll give you FTT tokens, which is their own invented coin. And that should have value if anything goes wrong. And people were accepting that as value. But the problem is when the exact moment FTX can't pay you back is the exact moment that FTT becomes worthless. So you think you have all this collateral. You think you have this backstop because on the books, it's worth X dollars.

Let's say it's like worth $5 a coin. But what you're not realizing is the real risk is when FTX can't pay you back, they probably can't pay anyone back. Everyone loses confidence. Everyone sells their FTT tokens. No one wants to buy it. It's worth nothing. So how did this all fall apart? Great question.

So it's really interesting because it was like a battle between FTX and one of their competitors, Binance. So the owner of Binance is, I think it's Qingpeng Zhao. He goes by CZ on Twitter. I probably butchered his name. But he was actually originally sort of an ally of Sam. So he invested in FTX early on, put a hundred million in and eventually got paid out like $2 billion. Yeah. Some of it was in this FTT token though. So they have a bunch of FTT, right? And so it's like November was when all

this stuff went down and a report comes out from coindesk where it shows ftx's balance sheet it shows actually what tokens they have you know for one of the first times it was kind of really everyone got a look at it all at once in one place and people notice like wait a second a lot of their assets are just their own tokens like they had a serum token which they control most of ftt so it looks, if you just look at their assets, it looks like they're covering their liabilities. They owe customers $10 billion. It looks like they have $10 billion, but most of this $10 billion is just their own tokens. So CZ takes this opportunity to kind of spread some sort of information about that. He says, hey, we're actually going

to sell most of our FTT that we got from that deal. And we're going to sell it. We don't know if we don't know what's going on there. And all of a sudden it starts this firestorm because people like there was already all this worry in the past that summer, there'd been a bunch of companies that collapsed and people had never thought FTX. It was kind of the first time anyone thought FTX could maybe not have the money. So CZ says, hey, maybe they don't have the money. I don't know, whatever. I'm just going to sell some,

sell like $2 billion worth or- But he knew what he was doing. Oh, for sure. He's a shark. He's a shark. He knows what he's doing. What was the conflict between the two of them that led him to do that?

The conflict was, it's a great question. The conflict was ultimately that Sam was trying to get some regulations passed and he knew every, all the crypto people were trying to control regulations to favor their individual business situation. And so CZ felt like he was being cut out in Washington. And I think there was like a tweet from Sam saying like, oh, like I'll see you the next time you're in Washington or something like that. But like, it was kind of a dig because he knows CZ can't go to Washington. Like he's a he would be he'd be afraid of being indicted or I don't really understand why he can't go, but he can't go to America. So Sam was meeting with regulators. CZ felt cut out like he was basically going to get a bad deal with regulators. They were all

trying to Sam was working really closely with regulators to try to get regulations passed. And CZ felt like he was cut out. So that stirred up this like battle between them. And ultimately Sam goes, oh, you won like our battle. And people were like, you know, is it a battle when you lose billions of dollars of customer money? Like, well, how can you view this as a battle? But he viewed it as like we're sparring partners and you won this round or you won the war. Because he thinks this is going to go on forever. Initially. He thought he was going to be able to figure out a way to pull all the company's assets together and make everybody sound and repay everyone and go back to making money again.

I don't think he thought he would repay everyone, but everyone thought like, oh, we'll just enter chapter 11 bankruptcy. We'll restructure the company. We'll reopen. We'll just turn all the debt into new FTT tokens and pay everybody out. Oh, that's what he thought? He's on amphetamines, right? So he can't be thinking totally clearly and probably overly confident. And FTX US went bankrupt. And he's the one who put it into bankruptcy. And then he's telling everyone, oh, no, no, the money is actually still there. I mean, he was constantly giving a conflicting narrative of what was going on. Now he's still like trying to say he did nothing wrong.

He maintains he's innocent. And right now, actually, the big like kind of scandal now is they're finding a bunch of campaign finance violations because he was trying to influence politics, U.S. politics. I mean, it's insane how deep FTX's influence went from the Bahamas reaching into the United States while technically not really being regulated by the United States. Yeah, they were the number two donor to the Democratic Party. That's right. But also to the Republicans. This is what's wild. So Sam knew publicly in our current American climate, like it's kind of like, OK, it's a little bit chic to be donating to Democrats. You can do that without too much negative press.

But if I'm the number three donor to the Republican Party, that's going to be a bad look. So he decides to donate dark to a Republican like two Republicans. And part of the accusation is he knowingly did this through one of his executives, Ryan Salami or some. I think that's his last name, Salami. I don't know. I just don't know how to pronounce it. But he was like, yeah, the number three donor to the Republican Party. But it was all orchestrated through Sam. Sam wanted to basically influence politics by just donating, donating, donating.

And the idea is you donate to both sides. You can never lose. Right. Yeah. If you have your your hands in both pockets. But publicly, he's just like he's donating to Democrats because he says, oh, I'm like this. Like, you know, I care about all these issues. He's donating to Democrats because he says, oh, I'm like this, like, you know, I care about all these issues. But it's like even more cynical than just buying one party is buying both lying about it so that you can get all the good press of like caring about all these social issues while also not caring at all.

And ultimately, one of the ways like even some of the the candidates they were through, like, a third employee we didn't even know about. And they were, like, donating through them for, like, all these LGBTQ plus causes. And it was through a guy. And the guy was like, I feel a little uncomfortable with this. And he said, well, we don't have anyone trustworthy at FTX we can donate through who's gay. So, like, can you do this? So someone had to be gay to do it? No, basically they were like,

we need someone trustworthy we can trust to do this. So hey, you're going to be the guy. Like we're just going to do a few transactions through your name. That just came out in a press release. It's the new charges. He was basically like, they call them straw donors. Because it's like, if I give money to you

to give money to a politician on my behalf, you're a straw donor. You're not really a donor. So Alameda was using customer funds to pay off politicians in order to try to get favorable regulation for, I guess, offshore crypto exchanges, right? And so these campaign finance, these violations, like what exactly, like what are the regulations in terms of like what you're allowed to do and donate and how did he violate them? So I think the big violation was you're not supposed to, like if you're Alameda Research and you're funneling money through a personal investor, that I think is the problem. They're actually campaign finance laws I've heard are pretty weak. I forget the name of the law, but it was passed in like the early 2000s, 2010s maybe, where it actually became very easy to donate dark, where it's like you can donate through super

PACs, political action committees, and you can donate as much as you want. And you don't have to be your name has to appear nowhere. And so that's actually what he said in one of the interviews. He goes, no one believes me when I said I donated dark because no one believes anyone would be like everyone wants the credit for donating. No one believes that I just do it on the sly. And that's ultimately what he's doing. But it also looks like he was donating through some of his executives. And I mean, the whole thing was shady all the way down. Like I. So the person's not named in the report who is donating to Democrats. We know the one Republic

donating to Republicans was Ryan Salami. But that person eventually said, well, hey, can we restructure all this money that went through me like a loan so that we can say that I took a loan out? I was donating, so we didn't file any laws. They never ended up doing that. But it was very clear the internal conversations were they knew they were committing fraud. They knew they were doing things wrong. And this idea was, well, no one's going to catch us. Nobody's ultimately going to

find out what we're doing here. How many more of these are out there in the world? As big as FTX? We don't know. I mean, there's only a few that are bigger, like there's Binance, very opaque company. We don't exactly know. And what has happened to Binance since FTX went down? Because it seems like they received additional scrutiny, right? Because now people are starting to look at it. And I saw that their value went down considerably. Yeah, Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to them. They're being looked at much more closely. I mean, ultimately, all of these things are so opaque in the sense that you can know their assets. So it's like a big thing recently in crypto. They'll say, hey, we're going to show you proof of reserves.

What does that mean? They mean we'll show you on chain all our assets. You can check yourself. Like I have a billion dollars in USDC. Well, that's great. But it doesn't matter if I have a billion dollars in crypto, Bitcoin, whatever, if I owe two billion dollars. That's what ultimately matters is how much do you have on deposits that you owe out? And so with Binance, we don't really know.

The only one we have a little bit more of a look into is Coinbase. It seems like they're, you know, legitimate. But so much of the problem with crypto is we don't know how much of this stuff is money laundering. We don't know how much of this stuff is like outright the proceeds of criminals. I mean, we know that these criminals do launder their money through a lot of these crypto exchanges, through mixers. It's just sort of this big mess right now. And we're waiting for regulators to figure it out. Finally, regulators have stepped on the scene. But, you know, right now, it's just this kind of wild, wild west of you're just having to trust these shady offshore

entities that they're telling the truth. Binance says they're fine. They show proof of reserves, but what are their liabilities? You know, it's hard to know. So people really just take you at face value and they have to trust that like, oh, other people are invested, so I guess I'll jump in too. And that's why the celebrities are important. And that's why-

Huge part of it. The connection to BlackRock is important. Huge part, yes. Because they're the legitimacy that says, hey, I'm, you you know i too am safe because tom brady's got his money there so is the lure is like how bitcoin used to be worth very little and then one time it was with the high of bitcoin it was like 70 000 or something 60 plus yeah yeah so that's lure. The lure is you buy in for pennies and one day you're insanely rich.

I'm sure you know about that one guy who lost a hard drive and who's paying people to go through a landfill to try to find his hard drive because there's billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin on that hard drive. Yeah, people lose their crypto keys

all the time. I mean, it's kind of an interesting idea where you go i'm gonna get in before everyone else but a lot of people found out about crypto the same time the mainstream media everyone else did so by the time they're actually investing it's too late it's it's too late um i think the like most fair case you could make about crypto is sometimes national currencies aren't a great idea and you want an alternative. So like look at the Turkish lira, right? The inflation rate, I think is like 75% or something like that. Like it's like, it's an unimaginable, it's just out of control inflation. And if you hold on to your Turkish lira, you're in for a bad time because

every day it's getting less valuable. So the question is, what do you do if you're in that country making money? If you want to store your money somewhere else, how do you store it? So there's this idea of like these alternative currencies that are kind of interesting. And then there's some arguments that like, hey, if you're someone like me, I have two employees and both of them are overseas. Like one of them's in London, one of them's in Ukraine. And so for me, I have to pay them and I have to do this wire transfer and it's kind of expensive to do these, like you pay all these fees for wire transfers. So the idea is like, okay, well, if you have crypto, those wire fees can go down. And instead of taking, you know, maybe a day or something, it'll take like

five minutes or three minutes. So I don't want to give off the idea that like there's nothing here. But the problem is, is that with the lack of regulation and the ability to send peer to peer, which means like you and I can just send money to each other directly, no middleman, there's also a really huge opportunity for fraud, scams, and basically like, you know, shell games where you're hiding the money. You're saying, oh, invest in this. This is going to become valuable later.

But you actually own a bunch of that token. Then you sell it off and then the price plummets. So you thought you had a bunch of money, but actually it's worth nothing. Like there's all these new scams that have emerged as a result of people getting interested in this idea of an alternative money system. I mean, yeah, especially in our modern age. I mean, it seems like you can understand where they're coming from. The average person, they're like, look, I've been screwed by the banks.

Every time the government's printing a bunch of money, where do I go? Right. You can understand the appeal, but it's just like you went from the arms of one huckster to another. It's just like it's almost to something worse. There are reasons that our banks have a bunch of anti-money laundering laws. There's a reason that they have all sorts of finance laws. It's not for, it's not for their safety. It's for your safety. I mean, it's like, they need to, you know, fight, like one of the best ways to fight crime is at their wallets, like, you know, like take away their banking. And crypto has just really revitalized that because, you know, now if you're some criminal, laundering money has just never

been easier. Instead of taking $100,000 across the border or wiring it where it can get held up by a bank, now I can just send you 100K, it's going to take me five minutes. So that's why when people like kidnap people's data and things along those lines, they like to get paid through crypto. Ransomware. Yes. Yes. A hundred percent. Because before it was like, okay, you need to use Western Union or one of these places where you can kind of send money without too much scrutiny.

But even Western Union has been kind of – they've been getting kind of pinched a little bit. Like, hey, you guys got to stop allowing all of this. But in crypto, because there's no middleman, because there's no one who controls like Bitcoin, like no one can say like no to a transaction. Now it's like there's nothing to stop you from sending that money. And then you can take that money

and you can send it to what's called a mixer, which is this fancy language for a way to anonymize your transaction. You put $100,000 into this little mixer and then it sends $100,000 out later and nobody knows where that money came from. What is a mixer? How does it work? It's interesting. So the most famous example is Tornado Cash. They've recently been shut down. But the idea of what-

Just the idea of putting your money into Tornado Cash. Yeah, it's wild. Is there a better analogy for losing your house? You know what's funny? Yeah. You know, I mean, good Lord. The idea of these mixers was you'd anonymize your transactions. So like, let's say I put like one, let's say I have Ethereum, one Ether into this mixer, right?

This pool of money. A bunch of people are putting one Ethereum into this thing. So all this money is going in. And then you basically wait. And as you're waiting, Ethereum is going out everywhere. A bunch of people are withdrawing, right? Because they're also taking their money out. By the time you withdraw, there's nothing tying your Ethereum to your particular address to like this random external address because you send it to a different one.

So before, it's like if I send you a dollar and then you send that dollar on, we can easily trace that back to me, right? It's like here, here. But if I send a dollar to you and everyone's sending you a dollar and then you're sending a dollar to all these other wallets, that it's impossible to know which of those new wallets my dollar's from. It's like, it's crazy. It's a crazy idea that these basically nerds in cryptography thought of, which is – it's brilliant. I mean it is brilliant because it is basically – it's almost impossible to trace. But ultimately the outcome of that is like, yeah, I encrypt all your data. Joe, send me – I know you're this successful podcaster. I want you to send me $10 million or your data is lost forever.

And you're like, call the police. And you go, hey, track this guy. And they're like, to what? To a Bitcoin wallet? To Ethereum wallet? What are we tracking here? And then it goes to some mixer somewhere. And then we don't know where it goes after that.

So when Sam Bankfront Freed was working with regulators, when he was trying to impose regulations or encourage regulations, how could that have benefited him as opposed to Binance? What could they have possibly done to make it easier or more profitable for him? Why would he do that? I'm not as familiar with the regulation side of things. People were talking about that a lot. What I know is everyone's always interested in pulling up the ladder after them and like building the kind of the rule book around like, hey, like if you're from this certain jurisdiction that we're a part of, you're fine. If you're not like if you're from this one, you're not OK. Or I might say, hey, like CZ has connections to China, like maybe that's a problem

or CZ has connections to here. Maybe that's a big deal. But I'm from the Bahamas and I'm American. So so that might be fine. I mean, everyone's always interested in the regulations benefiting them. The the challenge now, though, is, you know, a lot of people had backed that bill. And now that it was all a fraud or the guy who basically pushed it was a fraud now they're like trying to retool it and it's like sort of what's left after the guy who kind of was spearheading this bill like was a fraud it's it's kind of tough i um i was actually randomly like some senator's office reached out to me. They're like, what do you think about this? And I was like, I don't know, man.

You guys have to. This is this is y'all's thing to figure out. Ultimately, y'all have to. My feeling is offshore entities should not be. They're not subject to our rules. How can you allow offshore? Like, yeah, I don't know. I know it's very strange and these

offshore entities were also using like u.s branches like there's ftx us which was like more regulated but not really that regulated it's it's a little it's a strange time man to be uh to be covering crypto because i tried to tell people for years that this scam problem, this fraud problem was going to undo sort of everything. Like if you don't root out the scams, you don't find ways to solve that. This is never going to work because if you're great, the money system has to be safe. Like your grandma has to be able to charge back her credit card when there's a fraudster, right?

Or this whole thing doesn't work. has to be able to charge back her credit card when there's a fraudster, right? Or this whole thing doesn't work. You can't rely on people being technically savvy in order to make something work. If it's going to go to the public, you have to solve all these issues. And fortunately, we saw crypto kind of go mainstream before they had really taken that. Maybe some of them were taking it seriously, but not enough. So if FTX didn't encourage regulation and CZ didn't get upset at that and sell off all his tokens, would they be still solvent today or still in operation today? Would they not crash or was this inevitable? It was inevitable. So something to understand. FTX was insolvent long before it was realized that they were insolvent.

Right? So that's the issue was FTX's problem was not CZ. Ultimately, he's kind of the guy who like pushed over the house made on sticks or something. Like it was never – the problem was the foundation was wrong from the beginning. If you don't have enough deposits to cover withdrawals, you just don't have the money, right? Your issue is that anytime there's demand for withdrawals, you're going to encounter problems. So it was going to be inevitable anytime any story broke that showed that maybe they're not as healthy as they should be. There would have been a run on the banks and people would have found out. It's just like, when are they going to find out? It's just he happened to be the final

straw, if that makes sense. So someone would have figured it out and someone would have started dumping their coin. Yeah, people already were. I mean, even leading up, like CZ gets a lot of the credit for it. But like already – like a day before they kind of shut down, myself and some other people were saying like we think they're insolvent because we had taken a look at their numbers. And we said there's no way they have the money for this. They don't have the tokens. So we were warning people, hey, this is probably insolvent. Get your money out. warning people, hey, this is probably insolvent. Get your money out. But CZ ultimately was the big, like he was the most notorious and like a well-respected person in the space to where people thought, OK, well, if he's saying it, you know, he's a guy who only says positive

things about crypto because he's a crypto executive. So if he's saying there might be problems, there's probably some problems. But Binance hasn't had similar problems. No, they've had a few runs and they've covered withdrawals. I mean, so it's just the problem is But Binance hasn't had similar problems. like that sam had literally had a 10 billion dollar account that he mislabeled with alameda research mislabel yeah he said he called it fiat at ftx but it was a 10 billion dollar hole what what do you mean by mislabeled well it's on a spreadsheet joe so he he was on a put it on a spreadsheet for their balance sheet and he mislabeled the account fiat at FTX. And so what prosecutors are now arguing is he knew, of course, what it was. He deliberately obscured what that was to hide it from people who were trying to take a look at his books. But it's just that's what I mean by black box. You never know what

games these guys are playing. Like they say, oh, here's sort of like the rough estimate of our balances. But oops, did I tell you about this $10 billion account? Like I forgot. It's so silly. You find out like there were just no adults in that room. And like the few adults that there were were like, you know, they had like a criminal lawyer. Well, anyway, i don't think he's actually been convicted of anything i shouldn't say that they had this guy dan friedberg

shady shady this guy allegedly dan friedberg no he's definitely shady i'll say that this guy what was his i remember but what was his his his whole thing was he he did this thing with ultimate bet so he was uh one of the lawyers so there's this poker site called Ultimate Bet. And he got caught in this scandal where they had enabled this thing called God Mode on Ultimate Bet where the CEO could see everybody's hands and play on the site seeing everybody's hands. So he just cleaned up on all his own customers, just basically taking their money. like, oh, I know exactly when to fold. I know exactly when to bet. So he had God mode enabled. And then they found out somebody found out about this God mode. And so the lawyers like, how do we basically cover this up? Dan Friedberg's like, how do we you know, you know, what do you want me to do? And he's like, hey, just make this problem go away. you know, what do you want me to do? And he's like, hey, just make this problem go away. This is the CEO, like, go blame it on somebody else. Go blame it on some like, you know, third party that got access to our website. Say it was like a glitch or something.

And so that is the experience of the lawyer that FTX then hires is like being complicit on a private call, leaked private call, trying to cover up this God mode scam. on a private call, leaked private call, trying to cover up this God mode scam. That is his background. And so I asked, you know, Sam, I was like, you know, what does it say if this is your chief regulatory officer? This guy who enabled God or who helped cover up God mode. And he's like, well, I don't want to comment on other people or it's just like. Well, how does he skate on that? Like how how does a guy like that not wind up getting indicted?

I ask myself that every day. So many. So is it a matter of time or is it he's gotten away with it? So many of these scams are like these issues of either regulators not having time, not having the resources, not having sort of like it's maybe not big enough. You know, they're good people. A lot of the people going after these guys. But it's like it's like trying to catch everyone who's speeding. You know what I mean? Right.

It's like people get away with it. It's just there's too many people doing it. beating you know what i mean right it's like people get away with it it's just there's too many people doing it you'll catch some people but ultimately a lot of people will just basically skate by even though by all rights they should have been you know caught in my view what he did was criminal that's why i started but it is it hasn't been prosecuted or anything like that um but he's on a leaked private call everyone can go listen to it yourself it's just this shocking thing and and i think that shows like if you're running a shady empire like who's better than a shady lawyer to try to help

you cover it up right how did you get involved in what you do it's a it's a weird thing um so when did you start your youtube channel so i started it a few years ago, 2018, 2019. And what was the first video? I started it as sort of like an interview show, nothing about scams. I had a channel before it. So I went to school for chemical engineering and hated it. I was miserable. I was like, I do not want my life to be earning 2% more of a bottom line for Exxon Mobil or any chemical. I just wasn't interested. I was like, that's not my life. So I always wanted to sort of, you know,

have a voice. And so I started a YouTube channel just doing random videos. I hadn't really found my footing, but throughout my entire life, I had kind of had this relationship with like hucksters and fraud where, you know, when I was in high school, my mom got thyroid cancer, very treatable kind of cancer, and she's fine. But at the time I watched her as she's like gets this diagnosis, gets swept up with all these hucksters who are telling her that the way to treat thyroid cancer is not surgery. You can just treat it naturally. Just don't worry about, hey, don't listen to the, you know, the doctors don't listen to your general practitioner. You can just treat it with like colloidal silver or with just, just put a bunch of garlic cloves in the pot. I still remember our house like reeked that she would put 60 cloves of garlic in like in a stew and she would drink it

up. Cause she thought that would make her better. Ultimately, my dad convinced her, like, you got to get the surgery. Like this ain't going to fly. You have to ultimately get the surgery, which thankfully she did. And she's fine now. She takes medication to replace the hormones her thyroid would generate. But I saw my mom kind of get swept in this thing that I knew was nonsense. But it's sort of like hard. You kind of have to disprove every single, like there's always a new like health guy telling you that

there's some new alternative discovery, whatever. And I was like, this is kind of weird. And I was like, why do they hate doctors so much? And it always seems to like end up with a sales pitch. Like it never was like, Hey, let me just give you this free thing. It was like always like, there's something, there's a catch. So I didn't really know what I was looking at at the time. Then I go to college and all my friends get an MLMs, multi-level marketing, you know, sort of like, just like the like, hey, you're going to get rich. So I was always getting invited to these like get rich seminars.

And I'd go because it was like my friends like said, hey, we have to get somebody, you know, you want to go? And I was like, sure, I'll go. I was like kind of fascinated. And you'd see these guys, you know, they're like, hey, we have to get somebody, you know, you want to go? And I was like, sure, I'll go. I was like kind of fascinated. And you'd see these guys, you know, they're like, hey, don't work a nine to five job. Like be free like me. And I'm like, you're here on a Sunday at like 5 p.m. How free are you really?

Like you're just like you're just kind of grifting here. And so but but you'd see him in nice cars. And so I was like, what is what am I looking at? And then as I'm doing my YouTube show, I'm like i get fed a bunch of ads like get rich quick schemes like you've got a bunch of people you know flexing in their lamborghinis telling you you know they're like 25 years old telling you you want to get rich by 25 or 22 i'll show you i made a million dollars i'm a millionaire by the time i'm 23 years old just buy my course my course. My course is, you know, $2,000. Pay me $2,000. I'll teach you to get rich quick.

So I saw this and it all that my experience is up to that point. It kind of led me to like, I want to say something. Why is nobody saying anything? It just seemed like there was this, you know, these people pitching this stuff and nobody was talking about it. So I made this random video just basically screaming about you know all these scammers online and unlike my previous work which kind of had resonated like it it had gotten some reactions but not much what i noticed is the it resonated with people beyond the views if that makes sense like i was just like there was something different about the reaction to it like and you know victims would reach out to me they like, Hey, I'd been scammed by this guy and I didn't realize what was going on. And you showed me, you know, sort of like how the whole

scheme worked. So I decided to start pursuing it step-by-step. And at first it was like, just me discovering like, well, what is this? Well, how does this scheme work? Okay. So I buy this course and then what, what are you saying in the terms of service? That means that I can't sue you. You have all these terms of service that basically say none of what I'm saying is true. Like they say they can get, get you rich in the sales pitch. And then in the terms of service, they said results may vary. What's that about? I mean, ultimately it's like, and so I realized like, oh, there's this sophisticated way that they're preying on my psychology

and they're setting it up with like, I used to be broke like you. Well, that's a strategy. A lot of these guys were never broke, right? And it's just part of the story you have to tell to be really effective. It's like, I used to be just like you, Joe, but then I found out that doing Amazon dropshipping

is the way to make millions of dollars. And then, you know, I found out that doing Amazon dropshipping is the way to make millions of dollars. And, you know, I used to fail, but by these little tricks, I found out how to be successful. And if you invest with me, I'll save you time. You know, you could do it yourself, Joe. You could do it, but what? It's going to take you five years. Get with me and I'm going to shortcut your success. Two months, you're going to be making five figures a month, 10 months, maybe six figures a month. And I've done it for people before. That's the social proof. I've shown people how to do this. You can watch them. These are real people, Joe. You can be just like them. And so I started watching this and I started seeing it. I'm like,

oh my gosh, this is so interesting. I start covering it. And then I start to get cease and desist letters. They don't like that. So they start to send me, they say, hey, you better shut up or we're going to sue you. And I was like, okay, Iquick schemes for a while, I start hearing about these tokens. And they're like, hey, selling courses, like it's always the new grift. You always have to find – because people figure it out. Like they go like, oh, that actually doesn't work. Like, hey, dropshipping is not actually like this incredible business that you thought it was that you're going to get rich easily. So don't do that. Go do crypto. You got to get into crypto now. And then it became

NFTs for a while. But like, so I, so I started, I eventually like pivoted into this crypto direction and learned all about that. But it started just from a curiosity about scammers. And I wanted somebody to say something because I was just like, why, why does this make some people tens of millions of dollars and nothing happens? Why are some of these people making hundreds of millions of dollars? People are miserable at the end of it and nothing happens. And that was the start of my show. So you start just doing interviews about what? Like you didn't start doing this.

You started doing just like a normal interview show? I was just doing a normal interview show you you just you didn't start doing this you started doing just like a normal interview i was just doing a normal interview show with a few of my buddies um and it just was kind of i was just trying to find my way i was just trying to like but even before that i had done a show where i was like trying to break down these topics i was like researching addiction and i was just like trying to you know make some digestible piece of media around like addiction right because. Because like I, I always was interested in communicating complicated ideas in a digestible way. I just felt like, man, there's so much cool science out there. There's so many cool ideas out there. How do we communicate this? So I did that for a while. Then I started like CoffeeZilla was like this spinoff channel. And I was like, let me do some do some interviews and then it was also my place i just threw things at the wall so then i that's where i threw one of my rant like i just like ranted about this thing against the wall and it kind of like stuck and i just didn't i just enjoyed it i was like man screw these people you know like we're taking advantage

of like and what was sick about it is they're not taking advantage of rich people because rich people will sue you if you screw them over rich people will sue you right they're taking advantage of like people who they're like at ten thousand dollars or two thousand dollars that's like all their disposable income and they're betting on these hucksters to dig themselves out of these situations and one that's one of the things i try to tell people is like, a lot of the success of these things is not from, it's not even about greed. It's about desperation. When you fall for these things, a lot of times, you know, you're like my mom, like the reason she fell for these things is she so badly didn't want surgery that she was willing to believe anything. Right. Cause she's like, you know, if you tell me and I have cancer and you tell me I can be better and you tell me it's $10,000, you tell me it's a dollar, I'll pay you either way.

And so people are financially, they feel like they're terminally ill financially. They're just like, I don't know how to get out of this. I feel like I have no opportunities. This guy, I'm watching YouTube. I'm trying to better myself. I'm trying to educate myself. And this guy comes on and tells me, it's all a click away. It's all a click away, right?

It's all a credit card swipe away. What has been the reaction? Like what has been the most visceral or violent reaction to what you've done and exposed? I think the biggest story we've probably ever broken was either the FTX stuff that was already kind of going on is probably the Logan Paul story. The Crypto Zoo saga. That was a case where, you know, it's just the classic influencer greed story where this guy launches an NFT project, does millions upon millions of dollars in sales and delivers nothing. He promises the world a fun blockchain game that earns you money and he he did nothing and the project was left abandoned and people were like miserable complaining complaining no one says it but I'm not a voice I'm kind of aware that you covered it but I don't

know the story so that let me let me back up then. So Logan Paul is a popular influencer. You know who he is. Yeah, I know him. Sure. So he, along with a lot of influencers, got really interested in like the crypto space. And he had done a coin before that called Dink Doink, which was abandoned shortly after he promoted it. People got invested. Goes to zero.

Right. And he says, well, that's not my project. That was my buddy's project. And then shortly after he promoted it, people got invested, goes to zero, right? And he says, well, that's not my project. That was my buddy's project. And then like a month later, he's like, I actually do have a project. Excited to announce it. It's called CryptoZoo. It's a fun game. They called it a fun game that earns you money.

Basically, the idea is they're going to sell you these two things. Eggs is NFT. And then there's a coin aspect to it called zoo tokens. Okay? So you can buy these zoo tokens to buy the eggs, and the idea is the eggs will then hatch into animals that will earn passive zoo tokens.

So you're you can buy eggs with zoo tokens, and then the eggs will passively earn you zoo tokens. Does that make sense? No. Well, don't worry. You're kind of actually caught up. So the Zootokens were basically this passive income. You know, you basically invest up front and then you're sort of getting the tokens back out, which you can sell, I guess.

So that was the idea pitched to people. And people immediately buy in. Three million dollars in NFT sales. Tens of millions of dollars in the tokens itself the zoo tokens people are so excited about it because it's logan paul and he says this is his project he's putting his name behind it his backing behind it and he's a great marketer i mean you got to give the guy credit where credit is due he's a tremendous marketer so people get all excited all of a sudden the the hatch day comes when you're supposed to hatch these eggs.

And half the hatching doesn't work. How does the hatching work? Is it on a computer model? It was on the blockchain. So you could like, your NFTs would turn into different NFTs. Like they would like, they would transform into the animals. They go from an egg to an animal. How?

It's just blockchain coding. I mean to an animal how uh it's just blockchain coding i mean it's just it's just but how do they is it is it predetermined yeah yeah how does your egg become an ostrich it's just random it's like it's supposed to be randomly generated uh animals so you and so you might get a rhino you might get yeah and chicken exactly and then you could like crossbreed your rhino you might get yeah and chicken exactly and then you could like crossbreed your rhino with like a chicken and get like a rick in or something and get even more tokens but uh is this it yeah there it is you get like bear shark so like panda so people start to like is this still around so they say they going to go back and fix it now. So Logan, after being not involved for like a year, as soon as my video comes out, he goes, damn, what a coincidence. Like I've been working on it. Like I was going to, you know, make it like launch it.

In reality, he hadn't touched it for a very long period of time. But so sorry to back up. Okay. Half the eggs don't work and they're not actually earning anything the whole time they said they're going to earn you these tokens right they're not earning anything so the promises haven't been fulfilled there's just sort of all this stuff going on behind and behind the scenes logan's quiet come to find out he had hired basically criminals who were selling on the back end, like some of the tokens. And he was sort of like, I don't know what his thing was. I think he realized like,

oh, it's not going to be that successful. Let me move on. I think his mentality was, let me just move on. Right. The problem, though, is you have millions of dollars of investment in a thing that you promoted. You told everyone it was going to make them money and then you never delivered anything. So my story was basically showing that, showing the victims of the scheme. And then response, he's like, well, I'm going to sue you for that. He says, yes. Yeah. He said, I'll see you in court. And then the backlash against him was so severe that he releases a video saying, thank you, CoffeeZilla, for showing the world what happened. And I appreciate it.

I responded out of anger, but I'm going to make things right. I'm going to fix the game to what it was supposed to be. And I'm going to pay back $1.7 million. I'm committing $1.7 million to anyone who bought an NFT can get a refund. Now, there's a bit of an issue with that. So that's nice.

I actually think it's great that that happened, but there's two issues with it. Number one, which is that the NFTs were only half a small part of the sale. They actually weren't even half. Because people bought these tokens. So the people who bought tokens get nothing. He's offering this refund on the NFTs. The other problem is he hasn't refunded the NFTs. I've actually reached out to him twice. It's been like over a month since he's done this. So he said he's going to do it. And then the Discord, like he's posting in this little chat room with the investors.

After he said he was going to do it, he's posted nothing. There's no way to get a refund right now. So I keep asking him like, hey, you promised $1.7 million to these investors. They're all waiting. It's been over, I think it's almost been two months now and there's nothing. So it's like, he says that he's refunding people, which sounds great for PR.

And then it's just like radio silence. So what I'm ultimately looking for is some accountability from these guys. They're happy to make money from the endeavors. They're happy to potentially make millions of dollars from these different projects they're spinning up. But the second accountability is asked for, you can't reach them. So is it... Well, I would assume Logan's a very busy guy. Sure.

I would assume that he probably didn't come up with this on his own. I would assume that someone probably came to him with this project. This is just total assumption, guesswork, guessing on my part. So we have text messages from behind the scenes. A lot of people, the people who were responsible for it say Logan kind of spearheaded the idea. And he says he spearheaded the idea. So it was his idea. Yeah.

the idea and he says he spearheaded the idea so it was his idea yeah and and so he's working with someone right that probably assured him that this would work uh yeah i mean he had a he had this team of a few guys who they didn't do much vetting into and some of them turned out to be criminals but you know my my feeling is ultimately, no matter what happens, like when you take people's money, that's what I'm trying to like on my show. I'm trying to tell these like influencers, like when you take people's money, it's different when you tell them you're going to make them money and you get into the financial investment game. Your responsibility is different. You can't just always pass the buck to like, oh, it was like a guy that's not that trustworthy.

It's like, all right, that might be true. Then go fix it. Go hire some more guys that are trustworthy and fix the thing. And I think my experience, because I've talked to Logan and that's why I know he didn't respond to me because I texted him. I said, hey, where's this money? He left me on read. No, he didn't respond to me because I texted him. I said, hey, where's this money? He left me on red. But I've talked to him. And when I talk to him, you know.

There's just sort of this feeling of he's like, I just don't want to think about this. Like, I don't want to be you know, he wants to focus on prime, which is successful. He doesn't want to be bothered with the victims of the scheme that he ultimately thought of in the first place. scheme that he ultimately thought of in the first place. So it's still, is it possible that he's just gathering the money or working out a way to do it legally where it makes sense? It's very frustrating because, you know, at every turn, it's just sort of like, you know, it is, I want to say it's possible. We just don't know. And it's just sort of like, when you promise people refunds, like the longer you wait, you know the less people are actually going to take that refund. If Walmart says, hey, bring in this skull.

I'll give you a refund. And you're like, all right, when can I bring it in? And they don't respond to you for two months. They know that you're less likely to actually take the refund. So I don't know if he's doing it because he wants less people to get the refund. He probably is busy. But my thought is a transgression of this magnitude where you're playing with people's money and livelihoods, you cannot take it lightly. And that's one of the things is these influencers got into this crypto space. I don't think they fully appreciated

they're now dealing with financial investments and it's not a joke it's not like a brand deal where you know if uh nord vpn isn't as great as that they said it was you know it's all cool right it's now it's your company and you promise people you're going to make the money and now you haven't said anything for over a year then you say you're going to refund them and you don't say anything for two months. That's an issue. The whole crypto space and the whole NFT space is filled with weirdos.

Like everyone that I've talked to that wants to come to me with some idea, it's always very strange. When people have come to my you know, like my business manager with financial propositions, they're always, it's logical. Like it makes sense. Oh, invest in this, this is a fund and it does this, and this is how you get a return on your investment. None of that stuff ever made any sense to me. I avoided all of it, luckily, but I was propositioned by multiple different entities about these kind of things. And I was like, I don't know what you're saying.

I don't know, like, why would anybody buy an NFT? Like, you know, oh, it's a non-fungible token. And then you put it in a NFT wallet and you have this thing. I'm like, but I have the same thing on my phone. I can take a screenshot of that NFT and I have it. Like, what is the thing, the physical thing? You know, it's like, I understand like Beeple. Do you know who Beeple is? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So Beeple made that little GigaChad thing for us. It's a piece of digital artwork. Yeah. And, you know, he has an actual museum of digital art. Right. And if you buy a piece from him, you actually get a physical piece of digital art. There's something there. Yeah. I get it.

Makes sense. Like the ape yacht club, whatever the fuck that is. Like what's going on here? I have a friend of mine who's an artist who made over a million dollars on NFTs. And I'm like, what did you do? Like, he talks to me for 10 minutes and I'm like, I don't even know what the fuck you just said. Yeah. So let me start by saying so I work with a super talented digital artist.

So he does a lot of my set stuff. set stuff. So I have a lot of respect for, you know, the challenge of a lot of digital artists, as opposed to physical artists is like, if you're a painter, you sell your paintings, right? You're a digital artist. How do you you print it out? Like, what do you do? So NFTs were sort of originally it was like, this is for artists. Like this is a way for a digital artist now to legitimately sell scarcity in their work, which previously they had no way of doing. You still can take a screenshot, but you don't own the NFT that like sort of the digital artist has sort of provisioned like this is the thing that matters. So I have a lot of like in that way, in that one way, I like I get it. I get why people wanted it to be, you know, to become the next big thing. The problem is, is as quickly taken over as an investment vehicle. Now it's like, everybody's an art dealer

and now everybody's an art expert. And, and now we're trying to make a buck, right? And that anytime you get art involved with money, things get weird, but especially when you get art involved with quick flips and returns. And now we're going to all make money from this. That's when things get really weird. So like, I feel bad sort of for digital artists, legitimate digital artists who really do legitimate NFT work. I don't think there's anything wrong with selling your work as a digital artist. Like, what do you expect them to do? Not everybody can go work for like some random YouTuber. Like, you know like people have to earn a living. They do legitimate work and good work. But the problem is when greed gets involved, when people get involved,

basically promising money. In the case of the Bordet Biac Club, it's sort of like what their idea was, we'll start like almost like a country club where the NFT is the pass for the country club. And like you can go chat with the like holders of this Bordet Biac Club. And I guess the idea is the pass for the country club. And like, you can go chat with the like holders of this board API club. And I guess the idea is like, because it's expensive,

then you get in the room with, you know, people with money. But I found that whole thing weird because of the like, you know, Jimmy Fallon's getting involved and like, and then all these like mainstream celebrities, you know, start promoting this thing. And it's like this is a little why is everyone doing it?

And then you come to find out that a lot of them had their board apes bought by this company called Moonpay, who is trying to like, you know, use the celebrity's likeness to push that out. And it's just like this is a strange what's actually going on here. Is it just about the art it doesn't actually appear to be i just don't understand how it worked i don't understand how anybody looked at it and went this is logical i'm gonna buy that so think about it so think about it this way though so i'm sure you've played a bunch of games video games right have you ever played a video game where like they have like in-game you know know, skins and like different like outfits? Sure. So people, so tons of businesses have been built, like the entire free to play model of Fortnite, you know, Fortnite makes

millions and millions and millions of dollars. Their whole model is built on skins and like different like in-game purchasable items. You don't actually own anything. Ultimately, it just lives and dies with your computer nfts are sort of like i guess the idea with nft gaming or whatever is like well you would actually own own it like the game couldn't take it away from you'd have some piece of art that you'd have some ownership of that would matter um again i think the challenge is is just like where greed and like marketers get involved it's just sort of like ruin everything with scams and fraud to where it's very tempting and i get the temptation to just throw everything out and go it's all just a fraud right because you see so

much of it and so much of it is just like kind of people trying to scam you basically for, you know, and use especially celebrity likenesses to scam people. Yeah, the celebrity part is a big key in all this, right? I mean, it's a huge part. This is how we get legitimacy for products now. It's like sort of like endorsements. Endorsements. It's like you got to find a guy to do it. endorsements endorsements it's like you gotta find a guy to do it uh so ultimately like and the ai stuff's scary because ultimately you'll get the ai deep faking you into you know yeah

there's one of me there's one of me and andrew huberman are selling some supplement that's not real right yeah alf alf i don't know if the supplement's real but i know that the commercial is certainly not real yeah they they deep faked you. I think it went viral on Twitter for a bit. Yeah, well, everybody knew it was a deep fake, luckily. It wasn't quite good enough. Yeah, and then, you know, we tried to figure out who's doing it, and you just run into a bunch of shells. It's, like, very difficult to figure out.

I'll tell you offline who's doing it. Okay. I looked into it because I was curious. I was curious. And, you know, that same person had put out a lot of ads about like Kim Kardashian. They had a deep fake of Kim. They had a deep fake of – they had one of you saying that like – so they have one of you saying like this product is great. You know, go buy it.

And then there's another one where you were complaining that Andrew Tate launched it and you thought you were sort of like Andrew Tate's going after my brand like because it's very similarly named to one of your products and so it's like it was kind of this hilarious thing where they were playing both sides it's like it's Joe Rogan's it's also Joe Rogan's hate like hates that it's out there because it's so good then it's like Kim Kardashian loves it they had every celebrity was like basically endorsing this thing all through AI and it's just the testament of our times. Like celebrities are the new sort of authorities for better and often for worse. But like, but people use that as currency now.

And like with AI, you can just like fake a lot of that stuff. That's what I'm worried about is the volley. I feel like this is the very first volley in a war on reality. And that the way AI is structured, it's so prevalent. And so when you look at chat GPI and then you look at deep fakes and you look at the ability to take – I mean there's a whole podcast of me interviewing Steve Jobs that doesn't – it's not real. And it sounds like a real podcast. There's a lot of podcasts. Yeah, it's not real. And it sounds like a real podcast. There's a lot of podcasts.

Yeah, it's crazy. Sometimes I'll check one and I'll go, is this real? I saw there's a bunch going around. Now they can imitate anyone's voice like they don't. I think you were probably one of the first because you have so many hours of footage. So they had a lot of training data. There was a Canadian company that showed like sort of proof of concept of this a few years back. And I was like, oh, boy, I know where this is going to lead because they just took all the hours of footage. So they basically have me at every pitch and tone and yelling and laughing. And they can have me say anything at this point. really good at the inflection because one of the problems with these ai tools was they were very monotone and they can only imitate your voice in a mon but now they're getting better at like okay

we'll accent the voice and then we'll talk calmly and then we'll be able to you know get more excited yeah um so that's a huge problem have you seen the face ones though that's the new one can jamie can you pull up the um the uh the new tiktok face filters have you seen this which face filters the new which one in particular i think it's like their glam one there's a bunch of twitter threads right now on it i've seen the glam ones it's amazing it's amazing how they can put makeup on you no no you look different yeah you look different yeah it's it's literally going to be this new world where you won't know like catfishing is going to a new level yeah you'll have no idea what someone looks like there's a woman who did this ad and she was uh laying in bed she's like

i don't have any makeup on and in the old ones like there's a really funny video of this uh person that i know actually who put this filter on and in one of the scenes she puts her hand in front of her face and the lips are superimposed on her hand. And it looks so preposterous. And the fact that she's so not aware of the fact that this thing is happening and she put the video out, it's like we were laughing so hard. Like,

first of all, you don't look like that. Everyone knows you don't look like that. And then when you put your hand in front of your face, knows you don't look like that and then when you put your hand in front of your face you didn't see this fucking giant cartoonish fake lips that came over your palm this is so crazy so this is the one that i saw yeah this one's this woman like this is crazy yeah now now if you touch yeah well now if you touch your face you should be able to they they don't uh like superimpose any like it's all really real like you can do anything to your face and you can manipulate it and the ai tracks at all i mean

and i've seen people do it where they have two screens like one that's actually them and one that's them with the filter so you see it side by side it's shocking yeah it's it's really worrying like you these technologies, part of the problem is you can deploy them so cheaply and at scale to where, you know, in my world, I'm more worried about like the Joe Rogan deep fakes and like people scamming people out of money. But I also worry about like the romance scammers. Yeah. Like how good that's going to get. Oh, yeah. When ChatGPT now has all the scripts, and instead of paying someone to get it.

You have someone FaceTime this person. Oh, yeah. You have someone FaceTime them. You have it all generated by an AI. It costs you almost nothing to do. I mean, one of the rise of, like, robocalls was it's just cheaper. Like, it's really hard if you're going to hire people to do it. You kind of need an ROI.

If you have robots, you know, sending spam, now it's good because you don't actually need to earn that many dollars per call to make it viable. So you just call everybody. One of my daughters got a phone call about how much money she owes. And then if she doesn't pay this amount right away, the authorities will be in contact with her. And she was 10 and she was laughing. And she's like, what is this? Am I in trouble? She plays it for me.

I'm like, oh my God, this is hilarious. But it's just when you take really lonely, sad people, like I remember watch this television show once it was some expose on this poor man. It was just like this old divorcee who was being scammed by someone. And I don't even think he had like a voice conversation with this person. But he traveled to the UK or somewhere in Europe twice to meet with this person that he had been sending all this money to. And both times something came up and the person couldn't meet him there. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And this poor old guy just kept going there thinking that the love of his life was there. And they interviewed his daughter and she was beside herself and she couldn't talk sense into him and they interviewed him and he was in denial and it was just so pathetic and sad. And what is that going to be like now with this kind of shit? It's going to be a lot more prevalent and it's going to get a lot better. I mean, the rise of the ability to generate like a realistic companion avatar is going to be i mean it's massive you know these people were complaining to me the other day about this other thing which you're going to find as well so there's this app where you can basically have a girlfriend who's an ai or like the ai you'll'll like, like, basically, you know, it's a fake, like, you

know, it's all AI, but it's like a companion chat bot. And, you know, I get a lot of emails like, oh, such and such is a scam. And usually it's like some Ponzi scheme or some get rich quick scheme. This one, they were furious because the creators had sold it like, hey, you can have hot role play with this AI bot. And then the people developing in the app one day said hey we're turning that off but the reaction from the community was like you took away my girlfriend oh like you took away my like you let my partner and these people had had legitimately bonded with a bot.

What is that? Well, that's the Joaquin Phoenix movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is it? She? Her? Her, her, her, her. Yeah, yeah.

That's really the premise of the movie, but in the movie it was all just voice. Yeah. Now it's going to be some actual 3D person. Is this one? It's replicate AI. So that's like still the uncanny valley, right? You look at that and you'd have to have like really bad eyesight to think that's a real person. Is this one? It's replicate AI. So that's like still the uncanny valley, right? You look at that and you'd have to have like really bad eyesight to think

that's a real person. AI shuts down erotic roleplay community, shares suicide prevention resources over loss. Oh my goodness. People were like miserable. They're like, it's talking. And they would like complain like after an update, they'd be like

because I looked through their Reddit, I was like so curious. It's like they're like it's talking so and they would like complain like after an update they'd be like because i looked through their reddit i was like so curious it's like this is this is like a new brave new world you know but um they would they would say you know ever since the new update she's just not the same she's like talking to someone different and it's like you know the back end is just like a large language model. And they just clicked an update. They don't care as long as they're getting this feeling, right? You know, this is, it's really scary stuff. Because I read this statistic recently that said that there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 plus percent of women are single. But it's in the neighborhood of 60% of men. Really?

Yeah. That seems really high. I know. In what age group? It does seem really high. It's, you know, 18 to 49 or something like that. Oh, wow. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's young men.

It's a shockingly high- It doesn't make sense, like, why there is such a disparity between the genders, that men are so much more single than women like that doesn't even yeah how does that how does that like how since most men are single most young women are not maybe the guys are just saying they're single and all the girls are like we're in a relationship it is just a research right so it's just a survey i would imagine 30 of u.s adults are neither married with a partner, nor engaged in a committed relationship. Nearly half of all young adults are single.

34% of women and a whopping 63% of men. Wow. How does that work? How does it work if there's roughly 50% women, 50% men? How could 34% of women be single and 63% of men be single? It says, not surprisingly, the decline of relationships matches the stride with the decline in sex. The share of sexually active Americans stands at a 30-year low. Around 30% of young men reported in 2019 that they had no sex in the past year,

compared to about 20% of young women. Only half of single men are actively seeking relationships or even casual dates, according to Pew. That figure is declining. What if, like, the women thought they were in a relationship and the guys are like, no. Right. Yeah, that's what we could say.

Fucking single, what are you talking about? Yeah, that you could say that. Or maybe the women aren't being honest. Maybe they've gone on a date with a guy and they decide that's their boyfriend. I think that's, you know, there's, there's just an increasingly, I feel like we're becoming more atomized. Like you just kind of can get lost in your world and you get these pseudo communities popping up. Like if I'm a board, a yacht club member, I could call, you know, I might say those guys are my brothers, but, but are they, are they really like, what is, what what are what are these new community internet communities doing right and what are they not really replacing in the real world because basically what that's what we've done we've replaced a lot of physical things with online

things and sometimes that replacement works like i can you know i can kind but sometimes it doesn't like i can like facetime with my mom and it's like kind of the same, but it's not really. It's a little annoying. It's a little annoying. Right. And they're getting better at it, but it's like, it's always kind of like this like facsimile of the real thing. And so I think this replica AI is like, it's sort of this, like it's trying to treat loneliness in people. Maybe you could, that's the nice way of looking at it.

But it's pretty dystopian, man. It is dystopian. And one of the things that I think accelerated it was the lockdowns, right? So for especially people that had a lot of anxiety, there was people that went a year plus without being in contact with other people other than their immediate family members. And so then they seek more time online, they're online more, and at the same time, this AI generated 3D image of a person is communicating with you. That and then the rise of like parasocial relationships.

Working from home. Yeah, yeah. People watch so much of online people, they think they know you and they people watch yeah yeah people watch so much of online people they think they know you and like and they don't but but they feel like you're their friend rather than them having like online relate i was i was hanging out with a few friends um and you know they got approached by some people these guys like felt like they knew them like they're like oh we know you like i love all your stuff what do you think about there's asking about one of their friends? Like what do you think about when this guy did that and I'm thinking like this guy doesn't know you like you

Right, it's but it's a strange thing where that's our That's our new world. It's different from like when there were celebrities. You didn't feel like you knew Tom Cruise, right? Well, that's different too because he didn't really talk. He only talked on screen. He's playing a character. Yeah. And when he did talk, it was disastrous. Like, remember when he had that interview with Matt Lauer and he was getting upset at Brooke Shields, who was taking, you know, psychiatric medications and he's a Scientologist and they believe those are the devil. And so he was telling you're being glib, Matt, you're being glib. And everybody was like, oh, my God, this guy's a psycho remember those I ever since I watched Top Gun I forgot

that was disastrous to him he said ultimately he wrote it out with kind of proven correct in a lot of ways because it turns out that the the model of why they were using these SSRIs is not correct like they work but they're not sure why they work and And the initial thought was that they were addressing some sort of a chemical imbalance in the brain. And now that's been proven to not be correct. How do you think we go about? So it's sort of like managing these two things right like you manage the fact that pharmaceutical companies have profit incentives that leads them to want people to be on you know long-term drugs for you know ever that's the best kind of drugs one you never get off of right with the fact that like

on the other hand you have a lot of like alternative health guys saying hey that's nonsense to listen to guys they're also kind of a lot of them pushing a bunch of pseudoscientific wackiness. It's very hard to figure out what's right and what's wrong and what's correct and what's propaganda. Yeah, because you go like, oh, Tom has a point about all these pills. But it's like, okay, then is the answer nothing? It's hard to know. It's interesting, right? Because like, the question is like illness, right? There are certain medications like insulin for people that are diabetic. These are like actual real solutions to an actual medical problem that's being created by a pharmaceutical company that addresses real

issues and helps people. And then there's also stuff like, hey, you know, maybe you need Adderall. Maybe you need to focus. And so they're giving you speed. Right. And so it's basically it's not based on a disease like I can't go to a doctor and the doctor says, hey, you have herpes, you need herpes medication, and then this fixes your disease. It's I don't feel good. Give me something that makes me feel good. And then they give you something that makes you feel good. You're like, okay, I'm on medicine because I have an illness. Is that really what's going on?

But what else is causing that illness? Do you exercise? Do you sleep right? Are you depressed because you have no meaningful relationships? Are you depressed because you have a job that's horrific and stressful? Like what is causing this that you're just putting a bandaid over? And that there's, so there's confounding issues that are all souped in together. And no one's the same. That's the thing. It's like, how much of it is environmental factors? Like I can speak personally.

I have developed some like low grade form of ADHD, but not because I mean, what does it mean? Meaning? Okay. So like in the past, I could read books for hours and hours on end, right? I loved reading books due to how much I engage with social media, and I'm someone who tries to monitor this stuff. I was on a flip phone last year for like six months out of the year. I mean, like I try to limit this stuff. But because so much of my job

is on social media and Twitter, and I'm scrolling, and the scroll is so addictive, because you context switch so much so fast, that it's like my brain when I try to lock into a book, it's like it takes me a bit. And I'm somebody who likes to read a lot. I'd say I was like a voracious reader, especially as a kid. And like as I get older, I'm having to sit down and it's more like work. I like I have to intentionally like, OK, I got to read this book. I'm going to cut myself from distractions. I gotta read this book. I'm going to cut myself from distractions. And I have all these apps on my phone to try to limit the amount of screen time that I have because I know issue. My problem is I'm on my device and my device is literally

overstimulating my brain to when I don't have that overstimulation. I'm just sitting in a quiet room with a book. Now my brain's like, well, where is it? Where's the interaction? So for me, I think the answer is, okay, for me, I just have to unplug more, right? And that's what I try to do. But for somebody who says i was born like this i can never pay attention like is the answer you know some people say adderall helps them what do you say to those people so it like that's what i mean it's like it seems like a fire mental yeah well i think a you're addicted to your phone, for sure. Yeah. Most people are. Most people are.

Yeah. I am very fortunate that I'm not addicted to social media. I'm addicted to watching YouTube videos, which is a totally different animal. Yeah. And I'm also addicted to watching YouTube videos on things that I enjoy, which is better. So I've filled that gap with things like I watch like fight videos and professional pool matches. It stimulates me in a way, but I'm not engaging with this context switching constantly, like scrolling on Twitter. I go to Twitter maybe five, 10 minutes a day. I go and I see what the fuck's going on.

What is everybody mad at? Who's in trouble in trouble? Like, I'll shit scroll. Such a funny way to describe Twitter. It's so accurate, too. But I do not post. Right. If I post, I post and ghost. I just post and I leave it alone. I don't read the comments ever.

I don't read any of my comments. I think that's great. That is very important for famous people. It's very, very important because I have friends that don't. And they'll come to me and, you know what they're saying? I go, how do you know what they're saying? Like, what do you know what they're saying? Like, what do you give a shit?

I watch people ruin their lives by looking at these, like their screens. Now, it's kind of hard because when you first, when you first like kind of come on the scene

and you get a little attention, it's like intoxicating. And you want to engage too. Yeah, because it's like at first, that's fun and it's like

when you have a thousand people watching you, like that's like beautiful. It's like there's this community. They're resonating. You have time to kind of you can respond to people like intelligently. When you start to get into the millions, it's just ludicrous. It just doesn't make sense anymore. And it starts to be this like your audience starts to become to you more. It feels more like a hive mind even

though it still is individuals it feels more like okay how do i get a pulse of what this actually is this is why people gravitate towards negative comments when they have huge audiences is because they go like well maybe they're right maybe that like one guy represents the whole of course it does it but it's like they're worried because they don't really know what their audience thinks because it's so many people. So I know it's the right thing to do to unplug. At the same time, I'm like,

okay, I have to know the current events. I have to know what's going on. So like, that's one of the worst parts about, I love what I do, but it is the worst part of my job that I feel to some extent, I kind of have to have my finger a bit on the pulse to know who's into what, what's big. But then after that, the discipline is like unplugging. What I have found is that if something is big enough that I

need to pay attention, I'll find it. I find it through other methods. I find it through friends. I feel like I have so many friends friends like, do you know about this? Do you know about that? Like, even sometimes when people are mad at me, like, what's going on with you and that person? I go, what are you talking about? I literally don't know. And then they'll tell me, I don't want to look at that. Like, leave it alone.

Like, I don't give a fuck. But you'll find out. You'll find out because people are talking about it. You'll find out. Like, let the addicts scroll. Let them go crazy But for your own mental health, it's not and anybody who's public like you're a public person you engage publicly You put your videos out and your and people comment on them and your videos get millions of views like that is not an environment where you can

healthily sample people's opinions. It's just not possible. And human beings are designed to look for threats. You're designed to find problems. And so if there's one person that thinks you're a piece of shit and a hundred of them love you, that one person is the one you're going to think about. And you're going to go, oh.

And they're confirming your worst fear. Yes. Your worst imposter syndrome. They're like, you are crap. And you go, oh man, I knew it. But even for people that are just regular people engaging, imagine people aren't talking about you because you're anonymous, but you're engaging in this very shallow form of communication that's not natural. You're engaging in a text-based communication with someone. You don't know who they are. You don't have any background on them. You don't know if they're fucking schizophrenic.

You have no idea. And yet you're investing your mind and your focus on these interactions that you're having with this person. And most likely, if you're in a dispute, you're trying to win this dispute. So you're trying to find reasons why they're wrong, and you're getting anxiety, and you're involved in this little sort of debate slash mental battle. It's like, fucking go outside. Go do something with your life. Like, social media is fucking dangerous.

But it's not dangerous if you understand it it's like if you have a cabinet filled with cookies and chips it doesn't mean you're gonna get fat you can always go into that cabinet every now and again and have a cookie and you're gonna be fine yeah but if you just fucking open that cabinet every day and stuff your face you're gonna get diabetes yeah and what's hard is these apps are built to be sweeter and sweeter and more fattening, more fattening every year. Look at TikTok.

Like, that's the best one. And that's where I finally drew the line where I always try to stay up to date on all the apps, you know? And I have a family member who's young who, like, told me about TikTok and they're like, you got to get on this. It was like back in like 2019. And they, of course, were right. I should have.

No. No, no. But at the time I just said like, this is a step too far. The shortening of our attention spans, YouTube used to be short form. That's like the funny thing is like, then it was like TikTok and well, it started with Vine, but it's just like this new idea that like, hey, forget aboutiktok and well it started with vine but it's just like this new idea that like hey forget about 10 minutes let's talk try 10 seconds yeah for a video and that's where i have successfully disengaged i don't watch any tiktok or short

format because it that would be the end of my attention span i feel bad for like what do teachers do now when you're competing with like this never-ending feed of the most entertaining kids aren't supposed to have their phones in classes i have young kids um but a lot of them sneak it and they figure out a way to juke the system but it's just it's an inevitable fact of the progression of technology and technological innovation they're going to figure out a way to get people more engaged because it's profitable. And there's going to be a better app than TikTok in the future, a more addictive, more engaging app.

You have to imagine, right? It's so funny to imagine now because you're just like, how could you? But then we were thinking the same thing about YouTube. You're like, wow, this is great. You can find anything, anywhere. And now YouTube is like, oh, they're like, wow, this is great. This is so, you can find anything anywhere, and now YouTube is like, oh, they're the responsible, educational company. You can learn a lot

on YouTube. Oh, I've learned so much on YouTube. I love it. It is kind of an incredible platform, and it is important to remember with all these new technologies, there are good things, but oftentimes the people who are creating the platforms don't really tell you about the bad things. They're incentivized.

That's not their job. Exactly. Their job is just to make something awesome. It's your job to figure out your own life. Yeah. But it's, you know, the problem with things like TikTok and YouTube and Twitter, and I mean, this is what we're finding out with the Twitter files is that then other entities get involved in the process of censoring certain information and promoting a specific narrative. And then when you find out the government's actually involved in that, like, well, that gets really shady. Like we need some sort of regulations and or laws to stop that from

happening. Or you need someone like Elon Musk that comes along and actually fact checks the president. You know, when they started fact checking the White House, you know, actually, that's not true at all. And that's not what why there's inflation. That's not you didn't do that. And it's amazing to see the White House delete tweets out of shame. But that's the world we're living in now. But that's not the case with YouTube. And with YouTube, there was some real problems, especially during the pandemic, with the censorship of accurate information

that didn't fit a very specific narrative that they were trying to promote because of their sponsors. How do you regulate that when one of the challenges is that, and I know this firsthand, the regulators are so out of touch right with the technology because technology moves so fast that these guys they were a lot of these regulators were around when it was dial up internet and now they're in positions of power being asked to regulate things when they checked out, you know, with email. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you saw that when people were interviewing Mark Zuckerberg and they were talking. They don't know what they're talking about. They're literally talking to him about problems with Google. Yeah. And he's like, hey, I'm Facebook. And they're like, fuck are you talking about?

Yeah. You know? Yeah. And he's like, hey, I'm Facebook. And they're like, fuck are you talking about? Yeah. That is one of the bizarre things. And so you rely, weirdly enough, on people to inform the politicians.

Well, who informs them? Lobbyists. Right. And then you go back to people like Sam Bankman Freed, where it's like he's informing them with money. Yes. And he's like, hey, let me get a meeting with you. So he gets a meeting. And now he's a favorite on the Hill because he seems like he's the responsible one in the room. And it turns out he's a giant fraud,

but no one noticed because they don't know what they're talking about. Right. They don't know what they're talking about. And they're dealing with a million different issues all at once. Does it make sense? So I totally get the, you know, elect kind of older people because they have wisdom. But at the same time, does it make sense for there to be limits on age where you get more young people involved in these situations who actually know the technologies, especially on those special subcommittees where technology is such an important part? Yes. It makes sense to get people that understand it. And young people are going to

be more likely to understand it. But do you want people with a lack of wisdom? Like these are the type of people they were dealing with at Twitter. They were dealing with young millennials that were deciding to censor information and to, you know, I mean, that was one of the problems that they had with issues like dead naming people. You know, like if someone can change their name and change their gender, and if you use their old name, like if you called Caitlyn Jenner Bruce Jenner, you'd be banned for life,

which is bizarre because that person named Bruce Jenner won the fucking Olympics. Like, what are we supposed to do there? Like, you're doing this based on an ideology. You're not doing this based on fact. The actual fact is that person was born Bruce Jenner. Now, to be kind and respectable to that person

and refer to them in the gender that they want is nice. It's a good thing to do. But why is that problem something that gets you banned for life? But you can call someone a cunt and that's fine. I have no idea. See, this is why I stay in my lane of scams because I'm just like, it's impossible. Yeah, you have to stay in the lane. It's impossible to.

And ultimately, like, one of the things I realize. So I consider myself a journalist, but one of my few privileges is that I don't have to engage in politics. And it is a privilege because I see people just lose their mind lose their mind in this culture war and it's like i i mean i i don't know anything about most of these issues and i'm like i have i have expertise in like one thing and like and it's and i i do have an expertise in like one thing and like – and I do have an expertise in it but it's like – but I think now if you're a journalist and you're sort of on the – if you politically align yourself, now you're expected to have a position on everything. Yes. Even if you have no idea what you're talking about, well, then you're expected to take the part – whatever the party line is, you're expected to take it even if you haven't considered it. the party line is you're expected to take it even if you haven't considered it considered it that's what happens and i've seen sort of people in the media become like co-opted by their audience where

they may have to have these opinions yes and so i feel lucky because i feel like there is no like mainstream thought and like scams i'm just like let me interview a few victims and like yeah they'll tell the story and that's great. And I kind of stay away from that. So, I mean, for me, that's where I always go back to is I'm just like, I don't know. That's a very good position because I've fallen into that. I haven't fallen into audience capture, but I have fallen into the ideological game where if you're in one camp, you're supposed to have all the opinions that one camp has. And if you do not align with all the opinions that one camp has, you find yourself cast out of the group. And I thought initially, wrongly, that what the internet was going to do

was provide people with so much data and so much information that we would lose camps and that people would instead have a more open-minded and centrist view of things and say, well, I could understand why people would think this because of that. And I can understand why. And we would have like more of a collective idea. But what I didn't anticipate was social media and the echo chambers that it would provide. Right. And that these ideological echo chambers also come with virtue signaling. And that people get on these things because you're only dealing with a short amount of characters. And you state something that you know is going to get a bunch of likes.

And people are very addicted to likes. And there was some talk about removing likes because they realized that likes were an issue and that people freaked out just like those people freaked out about taking away your fucking chat bot girlfriend and they stopped doing that they stopped that idea but if you didn't know whether or not people agree with your disagree with you I think that probably be better overall for people because I think that whether or not people agree with you or disagree with you is important, but you don't know those people. It's important if you know the people and you respect them and appreciate them. And that used to be the world.

Yeah. The world used to be, I go to coffeezilla and I go, hey man, what do you think about this Ukraine thing? And then I know you and I know that you're honest. And so I talked to you and you say, well, this is what I've read. Right. And this is what I think. And then I go, oh, that's interesting because I thought this and you go, yeah, I thought that too, but then I found out that and you go, oh, okay. And you get sort of a more informed, neutral position on what things are. I don't think people are getting that. I think there, I you mean there was a funny Funny meme that came out right when the war started

That was like the instantaneous Change from people going from being Health care experts to foreign policy experts. Oh, it's hilarious It's very funny because that's what people do they find out what is the new thing that I can say that's going to get me likes. Let me throw that Ukraine flag up in my Twitter bio alongside my gender pronouns and get after it. And let's get some likes. And now everyone's AI experts too. They used to be crypto experts and now it's like everyone's AI expert.

Yeah, it's the classic. It's like everyone's always current affair experts. Yeah, it's the classic. It's like everyone's always current affair experts. It's a weird thing how social media, like it's an echo chamber, but it's a weird kind of echo chamber because it's not just what you think. So if that were the case, that would kind of be obvious. But it's also like you're shown the other side, but the most incendiary, insane side of the other side's views. Almost to the point it's like caricatures. If you fall, so if let's say you're a right winger,

you know like, okay, the most insane people on the left are gonna get the most likes from me because my camp's gonna love it. They're gonna eat it up because they're gonna look as insane as possible. So you make them look insane. The left wing people, they go, okay, let's select for the most insane right wing person

and we'll put him out there. And so they both put out like these like sort of extreme views of the other side to their audience. And then you, and then if you're in that echo chamber, you go like, wow, those guys are literally insane. I mean, because you think that's what the other team is just like agreeing with, like, yeah, this is normal. And meanwhile, the other team would be like, yeah's a little crazy but like we actually think this we

have a more moderate position on whatever um so you know what i usually find is when you actually deal with individuals instead of like labels and ideologies what you usually find is people are are pretty normal but you know we're just a lot of people have been caught up in this in this uh battle and it's like a reaction to the reaction of the reaction yep where you know you go from like okay it was the mainstream media then it was like like independent media and then i find that like you know and i'm i i'm in independent media and so i understand the temptation as many as much as anybody to like dunk on mainstream media because it's like it's easy. It's like great.

It's like you get, you know, and they are wrong so often. But then the mainstream media gets pissed off and they're like, hey, look, you independent media. You're just all you do is spend your time complaining about us. What are you actually doing in terms of news gather? Are you on the ground? What are you doing? Sometimes they are. But, you know, I think the news, it's all just kind of decentralizing into a lot of different camps. And there's good people everywhere and there's bad people everywhere. There's great

journalists, you know, who are trying to make a difference in bureaucracies at MSNBC or wherever. There's great people. There's great regulators trying to make a difference. But everyone's dealing with their own incentive problems and their own challenges with bias and their own echo chambers that they make mistakes. And then when they make mistakes, the other team just goes like, ah. Yeah, there's that. And then there's also financial incentives. Yeah.

It's financial incentives that— Huge problem. Yeah, I mean, when you get motivated by whoever is your sponsor, whoever is the advertising revenue provider for whatever show you have, that becomes a gigantic issue. issue, when you see a mandate that gets pushed through, and when you see people clearly moving in lockstep all together, like a coordinated effort to discredit someone or to go after some topic or to give a very biased and distorted version of something that clearly benefits the advertisers, it gets very sketchy. And for the mainstream people to say like what do you do all you do is criticize us well that's a very valuable role guys like that's a very valuable role because you people are fucked like you're not walter cronkite this is not the new york times of 1970

this is a completely different animal and it's an ideologically captured animal. And then you have mainstream television, which is almost bullshit. It's almost like you could just say CNN is bullshit. Fox News is bullshit. How much of it is bullshit? Is it 30% bullshit? Well, if I gave you a sandwich and it was a cheeseburger, but it was 30% dog shit, am I allowed to call that a cheeseburger? Now, you have a dog shit infected cheeseburger, right? And that's what a lot of television news is. And it's not news because they need to get you informed because it's like a service that they're providing because most people don't have the time to gather that information.

No, it's a propaganda disseminating entity that relies on advertising. The advertising shapes the propaganda that gets disseminated. That's fucking dangerous. And so if independent media doesn't exist, where someone is not captured by that, can't point that out, we've got a real problem with information. Because then it's going to be who has the most money, and who can buy out the most media. And there's a lot of that going on. And that's scary. It's scary for people that don't know the truth.

And it feels horrible when you get duped. When you think that a mainstream story is correct. Oh, yeah. And then you find out, oh, my God, I got fucked. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, what I think is everyone, the problem with pointing out financial incentives is everyone has financial incentives. Yes. Even independent media has to make a buck somehow, right?

Of course. But what I'll say is I've been on some of these mainstream shows, not many of them, but a few of them have invited me on. And what I've noticed is they're just bad – the platform itself is just a bad way to express yourself. Because you go, I went on one and I won't name it, but like you're in this waiting room and they join you in the waiting. It's like this Zoom version of it. And they go, hey, how's it going? I'm good.

I'm good. Okay, we're on in five. And then they ask you like this like three second question and they cut you off within like you give this like sound and you're aware like okay this is it's live but it's actually not live like they're gonna release it later so i'm like why can't i really think about my answer right but it's given with this perspective like okay you have you know you have this 30 second answer and then they respond and then before you can even respond, they cut to a new segment. And so I'm like, you can't even get into the meat or nuance of the argument. It's the format literally constrains your ability to tell the truth, the whole truth.

And so one of the things that I think has been so just unlocking about YouTube is like I just released a story and it was about a 30 minute story. So you know how long it was? It 30 minutes when I have a 10-minute story it's a 10-minute story when I have a 50-minute story it's a that is such an underrated like just format shift to where you are able to tell the truth in the size that it is yes and I think that's the problem now is or with the problem with mainstream media that's like it's a challenge is they're stuck in an old format. Yeah, and it's unfixable because they're connected to advertising. So they have to go to commercial every X amount of minutes.

And that's not going to change. Yeah, and you need the in and you need the out. And they also have a time spot. So their time slot is, you know, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. That's it so there's many subjects that are deeply nuanced and you can't cover them in 60 minutes and you don't get 60 minutes anyway you get 44 with commercials or maybe even less yeah depending on the show that you're fucked you're fucked because like it must be incredibly frustrating for someone who exists

in mainstream media to see a person like you go into a deep dive and then they'll look at the video like this motherfucker got three million views like this is crazy you know my stupid fucking show on what network gets you know if you're lucky a couple of hundred thousand and that in the key demographic what is it like 40 50 thousand and these are like big shows. And that's hilarious. But also it's great for you. It's great for me. And it also shows that people have this perception that because short attention span formats like TikTok work, they're very effective.

That's the only thing people want to consume. That's not true. It's not true. I think it's actually kind of like splitting into two things where you have like, hey, I have a break. I'm going to watch something short. Or, hey, I'm like, you know, I'm going to go do something. Let me put on a show. Let me learn while I'm... That's become hugely popular. It's like, hey, I'm setting up something in my office. Let me turn something on and learn something, hopefully. While I'm doing it.

While you're cleaning your office office you're actually absorbing something exactly exactly i'm like sitting with basically sitting in the room with an expert as he describes some topic that i'm interested in then there's a problem that what if that guy's full of shit what if that guy's full of shit and there's no fact checkers so there's no one checking and who facts checks the fact i mean it's problems all the way down but i think like the thing that i worry about the most is that um you know we have to have some commonality and so you know i think i think why i like spending time on things that unite people is like i'm like all right my show you can agree with no matter what,

like, or you can watch it and you can disagree with it, but like, it doesn't, you're not divided. Yeah. You're not divided by, you know,

your interests either way. Um, and I, so I think it's such a right moment for journalists to do more than play the game of battles. But I don't think they can in mainstream media. That's why it's so interesting. And that's why independent media has a huge advantage.

Do you think, do you think like, don't you think like 60 Minutes has done a pretty good job? They only have 60 Minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they don't even have 60 Minutes. But don't they do like real stories? Yes, they do real stories. Not just like partisan, you know, whatever.

They'll do a little bit of the politics, but they actually like, and Vice was doing that for a long time. They did these incredible like documentaries. That's journalism at its best where you're just like, you're just deep diving a topic that just people find interesting. You go somewhere, you talk to people and you go you present the facts but you don't go in with this pre like pre thing of okay i know what happened and let me tell every like i'm just gonna you know but vice is a good example of what's wrong because like they were that and then they got bought and then the people bought it like yeah you got a great thing going on but we're gonna fuck that up and we're gonna turn it it were like, yeah, you've got a great thing going on, but we're going to fuck that up, and we're going to turn it into this woke fucking platform,

this weirdo platform, and that's what it is now. It's like you can kind of guess what their angle's going to be before they even write the story. I will say there have been a few good Vice pieces since then. Oh, for sure. But I know what you mean. It's really challenging.

I really try to be as charitable as I can, because I know, like, a lot of these journalists are working within these horrible constraints of like, you know, they want to do investigative work. is that investigative journalism is the loss leader for every single news agency. They're all losing money on investigative journalism, and they want to do as little of it as possible for the bottom line. Because it's expensive, man, to go send out a guy to really do the work. You know what's easy? Putting on a commentator and, you know, I can just pull up a bunch of articles all day and I'll just talk my talking points about those articles. Like that's the profitable side of things because it's quick. articles all day and I'll just talk my talking points about those articles.

That's the profitable side of things because it's quick. You can churn out clips. And at the end of the day, you can use the findings of investigative journalists and you just put them on your show. Yes. You go, hey, man, I heard you found this. And they spent like three months on it. And you spend like 20 minutes and you get double the views because people, they know you because you're on TV all the time or you're on or you're on the internet all the time and so that's one of the real

challenges i know journalists want to do that investigative work but they have editors yes and they have people telling them hey we judge you by the number of clicks you get on our site we're a click site or we're a subscription site. So you've got to cater to the kinds of people who subscribe to us. If we're the New York Times, we have a certain type of people who subscribe to us. If we're I don't know what the equivalent is, the New York Post or whatever. We sent out on these mandates rather than go find the truth. That's what they want to do. But it's like instead it's, you know, you're battling for attention in a click world where you're not even controlling your traffic. The social media company is controlling your traffic. And it's about how many likes you get on Twitter and how many retweets you get on Twitter. Yeah.

Yeah. It's they're trapped and it's not good. But with the thing about independent journalists is that's like, they're not going to send someone to Turkey to investigate something. They don't have the money, you know, that also don't have people that they can just send out. And that was one of the cool things about vice is they did do that. And back in the day, they, they would send someone to the front lines of some foreign war and you know you see some fucking journalist with glasses on with a flak jacket on isn't that crazy it was wild vice was wild in the beginning you know and i'm good

friends with chain smith and i was friends with him in the early days when all that was going down. It was it's fascinating to see what they did, but he sold it Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the thing to independent media journalists After certain size they can do it. The the problem is they realize like for clicks It's like hey, I should just stay in my room and make 20 videos Yeah instead of going out and so that's why I'm a big believer in like, like subscription models for independent media journalists to get away. Yeah. Yeah. I do like the YouTube equivalent of like Patreon. And it's like, that is a way for me to free myself

from like the view model, which I did for a long time where it was like, it was just, it was about views. And so eventually I was like, man, I really want to deep dive something and i don't want to be limited to like do i think this is a popular a popular thing so that was a big change and i think yeah things like substack it really frees up people and i think as we learn to like pay for journalism i think that's a that's a big thing because it's not free. We got the false impression that it was free from years of just being able to go on like Google News or whatever and sorting through. Meanwhile, the quality of journalism was just dropping like a rock as everyone moved to this ad model. Yeah, to digital. It's just there's no money in it. I mean, and the money is in just the

mass production of just slop. Yeah. Yeah, I don't envy them. It's not good. But it is great for someone like you. Yeah. It's great for us. Yeah. It really is. Yeah.

I mean, especially for having long-form conversations. What I found is that any time a model breaks, it gives you the chance to restart. So you just described the kind of the problems with the models of mainstream journalism that allowed for an opening because people are thirsty for like real conversations. Yeah. Right. And so this podcast can go on as long as it goes on for and we can clarify anything we can do but this if there wasn't problems in the previous generation there might not have been that opportunity for you to you know get big basically doing what you do well this thing didn't exist before it only you know the only form that you had that's similar to this was

radio and you know morning radio where I mean this is literally where I came up with the idea to do this was being on the Opie and Anthony show. Really? Yeah, and being on the Howard Stern show where you would go, wow, I'd like to have one of these things. We just have fun with people and sit around and shoot the shit. It would be great. But no one was going to give me a show like that. And they certainly weren't going to give me a show where one day I'm going to interview a UFO expert.

The next day it's a psychologist. The next day it's, you know, an athlete athlete and it's just whoever I'm interested in. And I wouldn't, no one would say, yeah, interview whoever you're interested in. Here's some money. You'd have to create it on your own, which is I did, but I didn't do it for profit. I did it because I thought it'd be fun to do. That's literally how I started doing it. Then it became this thing, but I kept it the way I started it where I'm only like, I got interested in you by watching your videos. I got interested. I'm like, Oh, this is fascinating. Oh, this guy's clarifying this stuff. I was wondering why. Oh, okay. And then here we are talking like, it's that simple. And I reached out to you. It's like me to you. And then we're here.

There's no other people. It's crazy to think of, you know, I kind of grew up in this. I'm only 28. So I kind of like grew up in like as it was shifted, as everything was shifting underneath people's feet. And it's interesting to watch. Like I am very fortunate to have never had to deal with these middlemen. And these people like. That's very fortunate.

And people have tried to like inject it but i got i got enough people who had been burned by that telling me like hey you don't you don't want to sell the show you don't want you don't want a middle you don't want this guy saying he can get all these deals you do not want this guy he's just going to use you and he's going to inject himself for nothing. You get nothing. And then your show becomes worse. It becomes this different thing. Yep. But I was so fast. That is my favorite and it's legitimately the most exciting part of independent media is for the first time there's no business people telling people what to do.

There's no top line guy who's saying, hey, we'd really prefer it if you sold more ad spots or did more of this. It's just you and the audience. And that direct connection is special. And we've never really gotten to see it before. And, yeah, I think that's a game changer. Yeah, I know a lot of people that have podcasts that sold like half of their podcast. Or they, you know, got into some sort of a deal with a management company and the management company takes a percentage of the show and then all of a sudden other people

are on conference calls dictating guests and telling you to avoid certain subjects or don't have this person on or don't talk about that or every time you talk about this we you know if you get a you know a strike against you YouTube, it's going to cost us. Yeah, that's not, I mean, then you're back in the same trap that you were trying to avoid if you were trying to avoid that trap in the first place. But a lot of people were not trying to avoid that trap. They just started a thing. And then along the way, that thing became profitable and people recognized it was profitable. And then they swooped in and tried to buy it.

And it's very tempting someone comes along hey coffeezilla we've got x amount of money for you oh yeah and then you don't have to worry about money anymore oh don't you want to do that and then you're like okay okay well here now you have to interview this person it's all to promote some crappy crypto coin or something like that's what it always imagine if that was you if you fell into that yeah no there's i mean there's been plenty of that people are always asking like hey will you promote this will you do that and it's just like why sell out like that it's just there's i think people just want to be a free of the tension of worrying about the future you know if something comes along and

now all of a sudden you don't have to worry. Like they're going to throw X amount of dollars at you and now you're owned by this corporation so you don't have to think about who your guests are. There's always catches though. Oh, for sure. I think actually though, the kind of day-to-day struggle of like, I got to kind of like, you got to make something.

I got to generate something useful is actually kind of good because it kind of makes you strive. It kind of makes you push. I really like, you know, I feel like I'm literally living a dream because I started making these YouTube videos. Now I've got this like crazy set and, you know, I'm able to like learn all about cinematography and somehow I get paid for it. And it's kind of this wild thing, but at no point did I have to ask for anyone's permission. Yes. Like that is like the, nobody had to give me a chance. Like you kind of create your own chance in a weird way. That's the beauty of YouTube.

And I had a conversation with Russell Brand about this. And I'm like, here's this guy who's a movie star, this huge movie star decides, you know what, I'm just gonna have a camera pointing at me, and I'm gonna rant and rave and have these comedic takes on social issues, and issues in the news, and it's become massively popular. And I'm like, one of the things that's interesting is like, you're doing it the way anyone can do it like anyone can set up an iphone and have it point at you and you just start talking and then make a video and there's a lot of them out there like you're not doing anything different right you know what's fascinating is

you know what was the biggest tell like when i felt like everything broke was when all the late night people had to go home for covid wasn Wasn't that crazy? You got it. You got to see like they went from, you know, they're TV people. And all of a sudden what's on TV looks like a YouTube video. And you go, oh my gosh. You suck at this. This whole time. Like I thought you guys were something like you're the same as me.

Yes. But like worse. Way worse. I'm doing it myself. You have this whole team of people and it's like, this is all you can do. And then you, it kind of breaks the illusion. Like it's like seeing someone run a four minute mile or whatever. You're like, oh, I can do, I can do this show.

Like I got this idea to like make this crazy set. Cause I, I saw somebody do this, like Ted talk about like, you know, um, I think their line was like, you can't become Kanye in your living room. Like you got to make an environment that like speaks to what the show is. It's kind of a weird thing now. But some people do it very popular. They have a very popular show

and they do just do it from their living room. And that's a different appeal because that's like, that's raw. So there's an appeal to the raw and then there's also an appeal to like, you know, high production value. And it's different things. They both communicate a different There's an appeal to the raw and then there's also an appeal to like, you know, high production value. And it's different things.

They both communicate a different like kind of appeal to the work. But I was always obsessed with like there is no difference between YouTube and like Hollywood besides just a little bit of knowledge. A little bit like insider, like they kind of know tricks. There's tricks of the trade. They kind of have a little bit more money. But I was like, you can hack this together now. You can figure out ways to kind of like almost get to like a Netflix. So that's my dream is to start pushing for like real documentaries or many documentaries on YouTube that look like they could be on a Netflix or something like that, but never go to Netflix. Yeah. Like never take the deal. Like never go

to the producer. Just always be doing it yourself. Yeah. I think what you're saying about the late night things is so, so true because I remember watching them do monologues with no audience. And I was like, who said, okay to this? Why are are you doing this there's not a fucking chance in hell that this is funny or gonna work and when you see those flat corny late night monologue jokes with no audience those are so fucking cringy and you you're also you're dealing with a lot of these people that are not stand-up comics so they don't even really truly understand how to deliver it right like they don't have the chops what they're doing is just like reading off of a teleprompter so a bunch of really good joke writers wrote them some stuff and then they're playing to the audience and the audience is like laughing so

they get this feedback and they know how to do that when they're just them and the camera you're in the void now you're you're in deep space there's no one around you and it's fucking wild to watch it is wild can you unlock like how different is that from like stand up i'm just like a casual viewer of like the like late nights I mean, I know they say like applause But is that real like laughter and like are they like saying like hey clap? Oh, there's someone who's doing this There's someone in front of the crowd There's a there's a warm-up guy and generally the warm-up guy is a failed comedian or a middling comedian Who's just trying to make it and they're there, you know? Did you doing the warm-up thing is like a side gig. And there's people that are good at warm-up.

And the problem with being good at warm-up is it's a profitable job and it will actually keep you from being good at stand-up. Oh, you're like stuck doing that thing forever. Yes, you get stuck. I've had friends that were stuck doing warm-up. And then some of them quit and some of them didn't, and the ones that didn't are fucked. Because those shows, they don't even exist anymore.

There's only a handful of those shows. So like if you see like how many talk shows are there? There's very few. There's Colbert, there's Jimmy Kimmel. Fallon. Fallon. There's a few. There's only a few.

And so, you know, they stand there and there's applause signs. And then there's producers. There's the warmup guy that's literally telling people. They're like, okay, explain to the people. Okay, when Jimmy comes out, I want a big round of applause. Let's practice this right now. Ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy Fallon.

Yeah. And everybody claps. They practice it. Yes, yes, yes. They'll train the audience how to do it, depending upon the set. But I've seen them do that at different places. And I had a friend who was a writer in the early days of Conan. He's a buddy of mine.

He was a comic. And I went to see one of the very, very early Conans. So this is like, I guess it was like the 90s or the early 2000s. No, it had to be the 90s. It was the 90s. Yeah. or the early 2000s? No, it had to be the 90s.

It was the 90s. Yeah. And they were reading their banter between Conan and who's the other guy? Andy Richter? Oh, Andy Richter, yeah. They were reading off of cue cards. So they had a giant cue card. The banter was fake.

Come on. So the banter, their dialogue back and forth was scripted. So they were saying, so Andy, I understand you got married. And so they're reading it, and I'm watching the car. I'm like, this is madness. Who approved this? And it was terrible. The early days of Conan, that sort of banter was fucking.

The thing about Conan is he's this funny guy. He was a funny writer. He was a really smart guy. And he had to figure out how to do the talk shows he figured it out but in the beginning it was awful and uh i watched like they're like the audience is being cheered on there's literal applause signs that flash to tell you when to applaud and like we'll be right back yay and everybody claps is everybody really clapping that you're gonna be right back nobody gives a fuck if you're going to be right back. I feel like they didn't know that, though.

Like, I feel like media literacy has kind of gone through the roof. Like, so many people, I guess it's maybe everyone has cameras now. So everyone's like sort of mini producers now of their own show. Sure. And so they get it now. And so all of a sudden the craving for authenticity gets so much higher because now you're aware of like what a teleprompter, everyone knows what a teleprompter is. Everybody's sort of like, even though I didn't know how exactly I worked, I kind of was vaguely aware that like they, they kind of told you to applaud

and like, and the laugh tracks in, you know, sitcoms were just canned laughter. So I feel like as people realize the fakery, there's a craving for like, Hey hey can you do this for real like can you not you know i remember when i found out like none of the conversations were real like i was like what right what do you mean it's not real like they all because it's all a pretend like they're all they're all pretending that you really knew about my funny boat story and like i had this quippy you know and i thought wow they're so charismatic and you couldn't find out they've been rehearsing the story yes they go over with a producer on the phone and it's it's completely insane when you I had this quippy, you know, and I thought, wow, they're so charismatic. And you can find out they've been rehearsing the story. Yes.

They go over with a producer on the phone. And it's completely insane when you realize that you're like, oh, it's all fake. And it's and the illusion is sort of gone. And so now I think one of the surprising things, but also maybe obvious in hindsight things was why shows with no laugh track, less production are more engaging. Yes. Because there's more of a realization of oh there are there isn't like games here there's just two people talking they haven't rehearsed their lines and I mean I came on here you like there was no production notes. There was no like hey, we want to talk about this It was just like hey you want to come on and that's all it is

And so I think i think we didn't even discuss what we're going to talk about no no which is what i do with everybody i just have them come in and talk yeah well it's fast it's fascinating and i think that's partly to do with like why people enjoy the show is that they know it's not like tricks and gimmicks i i wonder there's like it's funny to me as i'm thinking about it i'm like there's sort of like this like the world is accelerating in two directions towards like authenticity and then like with all the beauty filters and like the fake ai voices it's like you can fake reality but we also crave reality at the same time yeah for sure yeah um People are craving real human experiences. And if you watch those late night

shows, you never feel like you know that person. You never feel like you're there. But if you're just talking and you and I are just talking, someone is like on their iPhone or whatever they're doing, they're a fly on the wall yeah they're here in a weird way i i always thought that it like live streaming your whole life would become big well that was the truman show right yeah no but i thought i thought we would see it like i guess you see it with twitch streamers who like stream like 12 hours a day but i kind of thought what would take off as a – I was kind of surprised it didn't was like you just watch my whole life. Some people did do that for a while, right? They tried it.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised that didn't – because I thought like eventually you'd have celebrities who their whole life would be on display and like the authenticity of just sitting in a room with somebody with just – it's quiet. I think people just got too weirded out by that but wasn't there oh there was a movie I forget who was in the movie, but there was a movie where someone had their whole life filmed and at the end They rejected it and decided that's Truman Show for sure, but Truman Show was like that was the Jim Carrey movie, right? Yeah, yeah, that's but that was fake right like he didn't know he didn't know they were filming his whole life and he rejects it there was another one where the person became famous because they followed them around with cameras everywhere and the end of it like he fell in love with a girl or something and it was over you know there's always some corny fucking reason why he cancels it do you remember you know what i'm talking about jamie yeah 100 i'm trying to

figure it out i thought for some reason matt mconaughey was in it, but I don't think so. Maybe it was Ethan Hawke or someone, like some famous person, but they... Something TV. Yeah, Ed TV? Yeah, there you go. That's it. Who was it? Who was Ed TV? But it was that, was kind of the premise of the film. It was Matthew McConaughey.

It was Matthew McConaughey. Yeah, 1999. 99. So, in that movie, he, like, gives up on everything after a while, right? Oh, wow. Yeah, 1999. 99. So in that movie, he gives up on everything after a while, right? Oh, wow. Yeah. See, that was it. You're live on Ed TV. So that was him, just a regular guy who became famous living his regular life.

How crazy is it that that was 99? It is crazy. And they kind of predict. I mean, that was just in TV for a while. How does she? She's still so hot. How is she doing that? The fuck is a while. She's still so hot. How is she doing that? The fuck is she taking?

She pulled it off. But that was the thing is like that this would be bad. And they're sort of like saying no one wants this. Like imagine if you got famous this way. What a disaster. Meanwhile, then you have social media influencers who are, you know, every single aspect of their life. They're live streaming. They're putting it on camera.

This is what Justin TV started as. Yeah. It was like eight years later, though. He literally attached a webcam. Yeah, that's right, to his baseball cap. I've talked to that guy before. He's really interesting. Justin TV was the first time we live streamed.

We live streamed on Justin TV in the green room of comedy clubs. we live streamed on Justin TV in the green room of comedy clubs. So what we would do is like my buddy Red Band, Brian Red Band, we would go on the road together and we just, we thought it'd be funny to just like live stream while we were there in a green room. Yeah. And so we just did that just for fucking around. And it was just totally like, yeah there that's us in a green room

it's it's still there that's hilarious it's all because it's oh my god i think that's the hollywood improv right is that what that is one of them was that the other one was pasadena that's back in my full beard days so we did that before the podcast itself and just for fun and so there was like all these different versions of it that I tried out and where I was thinking like, there's gotta be a way to do something where I don't have to go to someone and say, Hey, can you give me a show? And then when I saw Tom Green's show, that was where there was two things that gave me a big, big, the big idea. One of them was Anthony Kumia from Opie and Anthony. He did this thing called live from the compound where he had his house set up with a green room in his basement and anthony's a psycho

so he was like singing karaoke while holding a machine gun it was like it was so entertaining because he had all this money right he's very wealthy so he had like a full like production set like he built a set in his basement and i was like this is wild he can just do it but he was already on this opie and anthony show and so he decided for fun with his friends like he had you know a fucking like a full bar down there with like guinness on tap and they were just drinking and being ridiculous and he was doing a talk show and just having fun just being silly with his friends and i was like i could do that and so we started doing something like that with a laptop. And when I went to Tom Green's house,

Tom Green had turned his home into a television studio, and it was on the internet. And this was 2007, somewhere around then. And so he had these fucking cables running through his living room and then he had a server room and everything like that and he he takes me in this tour like this is wild and there's a video of me sitting uh next to tom green because he sat had it set up just like a regular talk show yeah where he had a desk like johnny carson and he was sitting there and he had screens and this is me explaining why i think this is going to be the future.

For sure they'd be assholes. There's no super cool hecklers. They don't exist. This is not about that. But this is, that's me. But there is one video of me figuring it out. Yeah, that's like a live stream show. Yes.

That's it. I think this is awesome. Thank you, man. This is the craziest thing ever. It really is different, you know, than television. This is way better. It's like radio, but it's like television. And the genre is different because we can sit here and ramp. You know, there isn't that time constraint. There isn't that pressure. I mean, you know, we want to keep it moving. Well, not only that, there's not a corporate pressure. You can't just express yourself because you're expressing yourself to someone who's selling advertising space. That's crazy. You just need to keep doing this. You called this out. We need to figure out how you make money from this. Yeah.

I've got a lot of neat ideas I want to talk to you about because I know you're into this computer thing. Take a little bit from the big wigs, right? Dude, this is, I mean, they don't need to exist. They're non-creative people. We talked about this before the show They're non creative people who are controlling creative things. Yeah, and they want to have their input just abandon them abandon ship You met crazy Wow that you called it Yeah, you caught you kind of did you know, I just realized why no one live streams their whole life

I just realized that I remember people were trying and like they would go out and they'd call it IRL live streaming. And you go to like the store. You know what the problem was? What? People would swat you. Oh. So they'd like call in a bomb threat or something. Oh, God.

So the problem is you get enough people watching live. One of them is a psychopath. Right. Or they just want to, you know, they want to get attention. Who knows why? Tim Pool has that problem. He's been swattedatted like how many times has tim pool been swatted multiple times like many times it's a real issue with him it's a it's an issue with live streamers though because you get the reaction right because if i'm shooting a show and something happens i'll never put it out you

don't say anything but with a live show because live show, because it's just happening in the moment, you get to see them put their hands up and the whole nonsense. And then they get their little, like, you get mad about it. It stops the whole show. And they know they had that impact. Of course. Yeah. So that's what's bad about IRL. That's only one thing.

The other thing is, like, what is life then? Is life a performance? People are going to let that stop them though. But are you capable of being so in the moment that you are just yourself no matter what? Even if cameras are on, you would behave and exist the same way you would if there's no cameras on. No. I don't think most people would be capable of that. I mean, I enjoy keeping my private life private, my public life public. I think there's like – I think that's pretty normal and I think things get weird when everything's online, your family's online.

I've seen people who they put out everything. They put out their kids. And they do it for the clicks. That's what's weird. And you're also not asking the kids. that's what's weird and you're also not asking the kids your kids are going to get famous when they're babies and then they don't have any say in it and then as they get older people know them and then you run into all sorts of security issues because of that too and yeah it's just not wise and there's a lot of people that don't think they just do it and you know it's their op well it's also like an opportunity like kids uh channels were big on youtube where they were running these like sorry

family channels are what they called them because you'd watch the family together yeah and then you get like your kids would like to watch their kids and people grew multi-million dollar brands on the back of that and it's like by that point it's too late to stop because you got a mortgage you know you're depending on that money coming in and say you can't stop your kid better get on i just want to know like do you tell your kid like get don't get on your mark like like hey can you react to that again can you help me with this thumbnail like that's crazy and then if the kid becomes famous when they're young they're in so much trouble there's very few people that ever survive being famous when they're young. Very few.

They all come out fucked up. It's not a normal way to develop. Fame is a drug that you have to develop a tolerance for. And if you don't develop that tolerance, you actually develop with that drug. Instead of experiencing adversity, instead of developing your personality to realize what is wrong with the way I communicate. Why do people get mad at me? Why do people like me? You sort it out as a human.

It's how you interact with the world. It's why kids pick on each other and they're mean to each other. They're figuring out how to communicate and be social. If you're five fucking years old and you're already famous, you're in deep shit. And they're all in deep shit. I've met quite a few of them now. I've interviewed quite a few of them on this podcast.

I've met quite a few of them in real life and they're all fucked. Everyone who becomes famous when they're a child is fucked. I don't know. I was going to ask, like, do we know of anybody just navigating like mega fame in general? I don't think I've seen many people do it without kind of getting eaten a little bit. Yeah, you get eaten a little bit. You need to do something to mitigate that. You need to do something real.

And if you do not do something real then you're like the responses you get if that's what you're living for and if your your worth and your value is based on people's people's uh attention to you and people's interaction with you that's not good it's very bad and that's why i mean, also like how many of them are narcissists to begin with and how much of that narcissistic tendency gets fed by being famous? It's just like, I think with my phone, I've sort of given myself some like low grade ADHD. I think too much of the attention online makes you into a narcissist, even if you weren't one original. It has the potential to do so if you don't actively mitigate it.

One of the strangest things is like when when you get hot online, everybody wants to be your friend. All of a sudden, these people come out from the woodwork and all of a sudden everyone wants to be your friend. And then when you're not hot again, now it's like you don't exist and that's a bad way to experience life that your whole identity and your whole friendship base and everything's wrapped up with how you're doing online and like i know for me at least i'm i try to just segment my life to where the online thing is online and all my real friends are just in my city just like kind of regular people have different jobs i think it's kind of important to detach yourself so that when things aren't going well it's fine when things are going well it's fine there's like a stabilizing something i feel like you're describing hollywood you know you're

describing the problems with hollywood in hollywood when when you make it, like if you're in a movie and you're doing well, everybody loves you. Oh, CoffeeZilla, come on through the red carpet. Let's go. CoffeeZilla is hot now. We want to put him in this movie and they want to put him on this show. We want to do this. And then when you're not, no one wants to talk to you. Doesn't that break you psychologically though? Of course. That's why they're all crazy. I Mean in Hollywood it's even worse right because you don't get to choose your own destiny like you you've Developed your own show and you've created your own thing You haven't been chosen in Hollywood. The problem is you're being chosen for everything. So you're being cast in these things So you have to deal with people that approve you or pick you so you're formulating your personality based on whatever the zeitgeist is whatever the ideology of most of the producers are like if all of Hollywood was right-wing right if all the producers and all the executives and all the studios were all very conservative and right-wing. All actors

would be conservative. They would all be pro-life. They would all be First Amendment, Second Amendment happy. They would all carry guns. It would be 100% compliance, the same way it is with left-wing. They're not necessarily people that think that way. They think that way because that is the way to fit in and be successful. So you take people that already have this exorbitant need for attention and then you bring them into an environment where they have to be chosen. So you have to figure out what gets me chosen. So you form your ideas and opinions based on what's gonna be the most successful. It's a mating strategy. It's weird because the fact you need to be chosen sort of makes you play the same game that you don't like, which is you have to go to the power brokers and you have to suck up to them

the same way people suck up to you when you're successful. You have to go suck up to the successful people. And now you're playing the same game where you're going to the people who are the decision makers and you're trying to woo them and pretend you're their friend that's why when those people do make it and they do get pushed through that red carpet come on through tom cruise they're all fucking crazy and a lot of them treat other people like shit because they want to let you know that they're a part of the chosen class so that's like this thing about certain celebrities being assholes to to regular people like why do they treat people like that? Well the same reason why royalty does it you know like when you see the Queen you're supposed to bow like this is how it goes Down that's why they became the Queen in the first place

That's why they became a star in the first place because they want to be that person that just gets fucking exorbitant amounts of love and attention it's and it's very unhealthy and it's good i think that it's now becoming possible that you can be like a mr beast or something and be not be in hollywood he's like yeah north carolina or whatever and he can just do his own thing he can start his own and own. And he's as big of a brand as anybody. Yep. And it's like, it just doesn't matter. He's doing his, he doesn't have to like kind of play the same games. I think that is like, sometimes I think changes in technology are like neutral.

Like it's like kind of like you win some, you lose some. I think that is a distinct change for the better that we've kind of decentralized Hollywood a little bit. And it's like, you can just start your own show. You're not, we talked about being subject to the gatekeepers, but even subject to that, like kind of mentality of like, everything's about success and fame. And that's the currency of Hollywood. But it's also the motivation. Like what is the motivation to do it in the first place? A lot of the people that are in Hollywood, their motivation is purely for attention. Their motivation is purely to become successful and famous. Whereas his motivation seems to be to have fun and to do things with the money that is actually altruistic and good and beneficial and charitable. He's a really good

guy. That's one of the appeals. And also there's no one like filtering him. That's who he is That's that guy. He's very smart and very ambitious But he's also not really money hungry and he dumps most of the money back into the production of a show He's legit. I mean, you know, I have a lot of a Lot of people you meet behind the scenes and they're like they're different, you know It's like the same guy you meet and that's always a huge letdown i've had so many examples of that but like but he was one of the first like not first but there are a lot of guys but the big the biggest stars i guess are the ones that are most likely you're like ah you're a bit different but he was like when i when

i met him we talked a bit and it's just like dude this guy's legit like he's he's the real deal yeah he's that is who you get the the guy that you see when he's doing those videos with his friends joking around and making them do stunts and pranks and all the different little games that he comes up with where people can win money. That's really who he is. YouTube's lucky because it could be anybody. They don't select who is on top, and they're fortunate because it could just be like some like some super narcissistic like monster. I don't know if it would work. Oh, you're saying it's selected for like. Yeah.

Because a super narcissistic monster I don't think would create something that's relatable. That's a good point. Yeah. Could they get some. You had you had there was this huge YouTube channel. I think they still might be the biggest like T series or something. There's some random corporation. I think there are ways to growth hack it maybe, but you're right.

You wouldn't create such a brand. Right. You couldn't fake it forever. You couldn't fake authenticity. I don't think you can. I think after a while it gets exposed and people realize you're full of shit. Yeah. The longer you talk, especially, yeah. Especially on the longer you, if you're in little sound bites, you can pull it off for a little bit, but the longer you talk especially yeah especially on the longer you if you're in little sound bites you can pull it off for a little bit but the longer you talk the more it gets shown unless you just have amazing stamina for bullshit have you ever talked to somebody like that i'm sure right like there's statistically there has to be someone who came on the show and you're like oh my gosh like after like an hour that they're full shit yeah oh yeah okay oh yeah for sure there's quite a few people that i talked to that are full shit and it's unfortunate like sometimes people like you know i've had

people come on where i don't realize until like an hour and a half two hours in and then i start asking them certain questions and you realize like there's something fucking funny about your answers you're like this is not and then we'll research them after the show. Like, oh, good Lord. It's an issue. And there's also people that just, whatever their motivations are, they're not good. What is their motivation to do a show in the first place? Is their motivation just to try to make the most amount of money?

Or are they trying to do a good show? If you're trying to do a good show and you keep working at it, it'll get better. Go watch my early shows. They fucking suck. You know, like you get better if you're actually just trying to do it and get better at it. But if your motivation is just to make money, like somewhere along the line, usually you slide off. I think most people who like want to make money just go into finance. Yeah, but they also want attention. Oh, right. They want that currency, the power. And then once you've gotten the attention, that's the thing about fame, right?

Like if you go to a store and there's a security guard at that store, you don't think, look at this poor fuck. He's a security guard at a store. You just think he's a guy. Like, hey, man, what's up? How you doing? You don't think look at this poor fuck. He's a security guard at a store. You just think he's a guy like hey, man What's up? How you doing? You don't treat him badly, but if you go there and it's Will Smith Will Smith has lost all his money now. He's a security guard at the store. Look at this fucking loser Let's go visit Will Smith. Ah and you laugh at him. How much you make here Will? What are you gonna slap me to kick me out? Yeah, yeah Yeah, you would you would you would be free to do that.

And that was the case with Gary Coleman. You remember Gary Coleman? Oh, the... Yeah, the tiny guy. He used to have that show Different Strokes. And he was famous on television, but then he, I don't know what happened, lost all his money. And he was a security guard at a studio. And they hired him to be the guy that, like, when people drive through, they meet him.

And then people realized he was there. And this was like before social media. So this was like early on. And it was a real problem because people would go there just to mock him and make fun of him. Because someone who used to be famous and now is not is a loser. But someone who's just never been famous is just a person. It's very interesting. who's just never been famous is just a person it's very interesting but it's so weird because everyone who achieves any level of notoriety knows how temporary and more than even the audience

they know that there's a shelf life on everything yeah very few people make it an entire career like i'm always thinking like ah it's gonna it's gonna be over like, you know, next month. Right. Because it just, that is the nature of, especially online fame is even more fleeting than the old days of movie stars. It's like, it's even less. So I don't understand why that is. It feels like, I don't, I don't really buy into that. I mean, I think it's just people are people and, and you have your moment in, in like the spotlight for one reason or another. It's usually not about who you are. It's just you're saying something at a time that resonates and things don't resonate forever. Right. But think of your perspective and where you're coming from. You're a 28 year old guy who is doing really well right now.

So you are in the spotlight and you haven't had a lot of time outside of it. I mean, how old were you when you started your show? I think I got actual attention maybe 26, 25, 26. Yeah, so for the last three years. So you didn't go through like this long, terrible period of fucking hating life. Darkness and depression. Yeah, so a lot of people fucking hate life,

and they look at someone who is a movie star or a television star like Gary Coleman, and they go, wow, how the fuck? That guy, how's he doing it? How's he got a, he's got a fucking Ferrari. He's got a this, he's got a that. And then when they don't have it, like, ha, ha, you're less than one of them.

You're less than a normal person because you're a person that used to be free of it. You're a person that used to be. We love a story of some movie star that spent all their money and now they're broke and crazy. I remember, who's the woman, was it Margot Kidder? Is that her name? The woman from Superman? There was a woman who, she played Lois Lane in the early Supermans with Christopher Reeve. And she went crazy. And like, she lost all of her

teeth. And she was like, someone found her in the bushes somewhere. Like, it was like real sad, like real mental illness problems. And I remember there's this deep fascination with this person who was a movie star at one point in time and then had completely fallen apart. What was the story with her? Do you remember the story with her, Jamie? You nailed as much as I remembered, yeah. Yeah, something happened. She had some sort of a mental health breakdown.

And I'm sure some of that had to do with fame and society and acting and just the world that they live in of the movie star. And then also the women's world of a movie star, which is a fucking much more brutal world. That's brutal. Because, you know, I was talking about Elizabeth Hurley. She's the rare, the rare that stays hot. She's hot and she's like fucking 80 years old. She had an accident, I guess, that left her paralyzed.

Oh, my gosh. She lost some money and had some issues with. Oh, boy. Oh, my gosh. She lost some money and had some issues with. Oh, boy. This, I will say, like, one of the challenges is you kind of have to, you don't know how long you're going to stay relevant. And then if you don't make the money then, now what do you do? I guess is the point.

And then so if you haven't set yourself up, i guess and and a lot of these people they think it's going to be last lasting forever because their agents tell them it's going to last forever so they just spend all their money and then uh especially if they don't pick up any you know skills one of the things like with with actors is all you learn is acting i mean one of the interesting things now which is kind of fascinating about like modern, like, you know, people who grew up on TikTok and like the YouTube era is you kind of have to learn like marketing. You have to learn video editing. You have to learn. So you can pick up skills to where you're never going to be completely, you know, I know a lot of YouTubers who now work for other YouTubers because they like they stopped being relevant.

But they're like, I they're like I understand content I understand how this stuff works. They're not just a face. They're not just like a pretty face They have actual tangible skills beyond that That is an issue though. I mean I can I can understand why that's a problem And I think here's a big issue with someone like yourself. What if YouTube goes away? That's the real issue. Sure if you If you're relegated to one platform and that platform, what if the platform decides for whatever strange reason, like what if they get pressure from someone who you've outed and they come up with some bogus reason to strike

your account and delete your account? That's a real issue. If you're beholden to one company, your account. That's a real issue. Like if you're beholden to one company, that can be a real problem. It is a huge problem. Right now, the number one video sharing site in the world is basically YouTube and that's essentially it. I mean, there's not really anyone else. There's like alternatives like Rumble, but that's kind of, I don't know why it's perceived as kind of like a right-wing thing. Sort of, but then Russell Brand's on it and Glenn Greenwald's on it. Let's say political commentary thing. I mean I don't know if like mainstream, like just like random creators are doing really well.

I don't know. Maybe it's there. Maybe it's not. I think you're pointing out though a very good point, which is like as much as we talk about the decentralization of gatekeepers, there is one gatekeeper to rule them all still for someone like me. That is YouTube. I mean, I would like to think that, you know, throughout you learn enough about making stuff, making content that you could move. I would probably try to transition into some like production role, start a production company. I mean, I love- But I think you would still enjoy doing the thing you do.

Oh, of course I do. You'd have to figure out a way to do it somewhere else, but also you'd have to figure out a way to bring, like, here's the other problem, social media, right? Social media is where you use to promote the thing that you're doing on YouTube. So what if that goes away? What if something like, we have to assume that if Twitter was on the verge of bankruptcy, apparently when Elon bought it, it was fast tracking to bankruptcy. What if someone incompetent bought it and then ran it into the ground? Then it doesn't exist anymore. And then all those people that use Twitter to promote their businesses stand-up comedians that use it to promote their tour dates like

they're fucked now it's gone now you don't have that vehicle and so your your ability to access your fans is completely gone yeah you don't own any of your data so you don't own any of your subscribers data you don't own any of that stuff yourself it's a real it's a real, it's a real challenge. I mean, one of the things, they also control what you can talk about. So when I was doing, you know, my first show, I kind of had this, I had this video where I wanted to explore smoking and like, and like vapes through the lens of the FDA and how they regulated vaping and they sort of went after vaping. But, you know, it's a problem, but it's also like seems like it's a lot healthier than

like just smoking cigarettes. Cigarettes are like the worst thing in the world for any human to be doing, although, you know, it's very fun. But they're horrible for you. And so I did a video about that. YouTube like age gated it. So now not only no monetization, which that, you know, it's acceptable. It's just kind of the cost of being on YouTube. You sometimes get demonetized,

whatever. The reach was killed. So now this video, which everyone loved, nobody can watch or you won't get recommended, like, you know, the recommended feed. There's also a problem that now you're in a specific category. Like, I don't know how their algorithm works, but if you do get flagged for something you could get put in a problematic category right you're a shadow band or less likely to be recommended right so um so i think especially i think they say their official stance is they do it on a video by video basis i don't actually know i mean it's kind of hard to figure out you know what's true what's not but but i, like, did I ever do a video about that again? No. Yeah, you self-censor.

Yeah. And that's what happens to people. That's a big problem. That happened during COVID with a lot of people. You know, people wanted to talk about issues like the lab leak hypothesis. Usually they're important issues too. That's the problem is like they're controversial, so they are important. Right.

But it's like, you know, I understand YouTube's perspective. They have they have I don't know how many maybe they're supporting hundreds of thousands of people's livelihood. And they're like and they're like, do we want to risk it all on so somebody can say some wild stuff like. Right. And then the advertisers pull out. They lose X percentage of the revenue. And then whoever that producer is that allowed that channel to exist, now that person gets fired.

And their success in this company is based on whether or not the company is bringing in revenue. And if you're allowing all these people to say things that are really terrible to the bottom line of whoever is paying money for advertising. That's not good. What I've said is like I think a lot of these – some of these companies, they achieve near monopoly statuses. It's hard to argue that some of these companies aren't close to a monopoly in their specific domain that they're good at because if you're going to make a replica of YouTube, you've seen how hard it is with Rumble. Because it's not like you're just video sharing. It's like you're video sharing. Their AI, their copyright, I think they said they spent like $10

million or $100 million to build the copyright ID. So if you want to compete with them, you need to have at least that just to build a copyright ID system on par. Then you got to go host all the video. You got to find the ad words targeting. Google is the best ad targeting in the world. They're not going to give you access to their system if you're a competitor. They're not going to give you the same deal. So it's like this challenge of, okay, who can really compete when there's such a high barrier to entry? So I'm thinking like, why are these things not considered some sort of public good in that because we accept that it's so hard to compete meaningfully with these things that are so important to our public discourse? I understand the whole argument of like free speech is just freedom to speak against the government, not freedom from a corporation.

But what I'm saying is when all our discourse is online, why are these companies not some form of like, almost like a utility company? Like, yes, at some level, you don't have the right to monetize, but do you have the right to at least say something? Yeah, that's a good point. And that was the point about Twitter. That was the conversation about Twitter being the town square and that it should be regulated like some sort of a utility. And I could see that argument. And also, when you think about the concept of free speech in the First Amendment, none of that existed with social media. And they would have imagined trying to wrap your head around social media when they're drafting the Constitution with feathers. They're literally writing with a fucking quill they had no idea what they were saying so they were just

trying to get people to be able to discuss things without being restricted by the government to stifle tyranny because at the time the tyranny was government yes that's the only people who had the kind of power and oversight to where they could literally stop you from saying anything is a government. Now it's like, OK, you want to say something. The person who's going to stop you from saying it is, exactly. Yeah. It's this strange thing. And I think it's actually a very like, it should be a universal issue because I think conservatives all don't want to be censored. And that's usually who gets censored. But left-wing people are all about decentralized power. I mean, that's like the idea is like democracy, more elected, not just like these unelected

people, but get more of a like kind of a group, say, and powerful decisions. Well, then they also should have a problem with the decisions, even though they happen to kind of go a certain way, still being made by unelected people who just can have arbitrary, you know, biases. Like, that's the thing is like one day twitter's owned by um i forgot the last who was the the health of the the leader of health and safety or whatever at twitter um oh vidya yeah yeah one day it's her the next day it's like elon musk right and they

have different like opinions on things yeah and so do you want to be subject to like both of their whims or do you want there to be some sort of thing on you know i don't know on the books that we could at least sort of have a public vote on it well this is this is narrative that's being bantered about now that twitter's no longer safe from trolls but twitter was never safe from trolls it's just they used to be just left-wing trolls now you get right-wing trolls too it's a it's it's more of a center it's not it's like the idea that twitter leans right now no it doesn't like how many left-wing people that are addicted to twitter stayed on most of them a few like goofy celebrities like valiantly declared they're leaving twitter and one of them was my

friend i was like what the fuck are you doing like why are you posting that you're leaving like this so goofy like and you don't even know what you're saying you're just saying this because you think this is going to be appeal to your base that you're so noble you're going to leave before the right-wing trolls come back you You know, cut the fucking shit. And the good thing about people being allowed to speak is that you allow them to put things out there that can be ridiculed by everybody. And so if you really oppose these right-wing ideas, let them post them and then post something that ridicules them.

Post something that refutes them. Post facts. Post information. Get engaged. If that's your thing, you really like doing that? I don't like doing that., post facts, post information, get engaged. If that's your thing, you really like doing that? I don't like doing that. But if you like doing that, get in there, get in there and go to work. It sounds like a huge, I mean, I get exhausted. I'm like, just thinking about it. I'm like, who wants to spend their time like arguing with somebody? Like, I don't know. I guess it's just not something I care about. So it's like, to me,

that doesn't matter. But I guess to some people, this is their whole... Just like covering scams is my thing. It's like, this is their whole thing. And I guess that's their whole... It's like video games. It becomes their game. Right. That's where they get their score, their points.

They level up. Yeah, they level up. Get more followers. Level up, get more likes. You know, people will tell you about their engagement. My engagement on Twitter is up. How the fuck do you know? I don't even know how many followers i have why are you paying attention get out of there go outside go do something i think it's deeply bad for health to constantly be given analytics like yeah like this is the thing on youtube i was talking to lex about this

because he was telling me he doesn't like – he likes to not look at his numbers. And I was like, man, I love that. I try not to look at my numbers. The thing is when you go onto your dashboard, like they give you every stat you could ever imagine. And I get it. They're trying to educate you on if a video is doing well or doing bad or whatever. But I think it's kind of good for artists not to have immediate feedback like there's an argument against that though and that's mr beast well mr beast has figured out

he moneyballed it so he moneyballed youtube youtube before that wasn't like a science it was like an art it's like nobody knew what they were doing he comes and he's like you guys are all idiots let's turn this into stats and numbers and i love him and i hate him for it because i got the one one perspective it's like you kind of saw the mr beastification of youtube everyone talks the same everyone has that hey guys what's up today we're doing this and that's like because he kind of showed like oh this is a pretty optimal way of doing it so it's good because he gave people like handles on their own success, which is valuable. Like, like it's cool that you know why a video does well or not. There's also something that like, it kind of kills a little bit of creativity and inspiration when all of a sudden, you know, like this segment ain't going to do it.

Right. Like, and you, they give you this graph. Have you ever seen the retention graph? No. Oh, it's hilarious. So you start off at a hundred percent and then you just see as people leave and then it goes to the end of the Video and you see how many people were left and like at every moment you can tell if someone clicked off at that moment And so fucking great so much anxiety Oh And and what they do now and like this is taught like at YouTube, you know boot camps

It's like look at your retention graph and everything that wasn't good if people clicked off you gotta you gotta cut it you gotta stop and and i think that creates its own like you know sickness because then youtube boot camps are hilarious that's so funny that they have youtube but it makes sense i mean if you wanted to treat it like a business like any other business if you you wanted to get involved and you wanted to open up a small business somewhere, you could treat YouTube like you're opening up a small business. I get it. I get it. It's not my thing, though, so I don't get that aspect.

I think that would fuck with what I do. I think that would get in the way. I think it would fuck with what you do, too. I think it gets in the way more than it helps. We've had to move away for a while. do too i don't i think it gets in the way more than it helps we've we've had to move away for a while we really emulated some like creators uh who we liked what they did but eventually what you realize is like i just have a different audience and i have a people are here for different reasons and so i have to find my i can't just rely on a book or not literally a book but like the playbook

of like what has worked for you i have to find find out like, you know, not only what my audience wants, but what do I want? Yes. I think that's the most important thing. It is the most important thing. We're not just making, well, I'm not making things for other people. I'm making it because I think it's cool. I think it's interesting and I think it's valuable just for me to express it. And so I have to find out like, why do people watch my show?

What do I want for my show in a way that even if nobody wants it i put it in like i have this like this whole robot bartender thing and it's like the cgi thing and i do it because i like it yeah it's fun for me i get i get a real kick out of that stuff i'm like i'm a nerd when it comes to that cgi tech stuff and people wouldn't believe how much time I spend on that. I spend like half my day on like, just like tweaking this stuff. But that resonates with people. That's one of the reasons why people like it. I think when you do something that you like, it's very obvious to the people that are paying attention. I think that's part of the appeal of

a lot of shows. You know, I think that that's why it works. I mean, I think that's one of the appeal of a lot of shows. I think that that's why it works. I mean, I think that's one of the secrets to my success is that I only have on people that I'm actually interested in talking to. So I'm engaged. I'm not just bullshitting my way through someone trying to promote some movie. I'm actually engaged. If I have someone on that's promoting a movie, I'm interested in the movie. I want to know what they're doing. If it's a documentary, I want to know, how did you go about doing this? What's the process? I'm actually engaged. When you're faking it and phoning it in, people know it. They feel it. The beauty of your show is, I think your show serves multiple purposes. But one of the things is that it certainly

clearly appeals to what you're interested in. And you act as a watchdog. Like I watched the Celsius video that you put out recently. And I watched it today. And I was like, this is so valuable. Because I'm seeing all these people. Because you showed those people that did get scammed. And the people that get fucked over by this guy who created this thing. And, you know, they have a voice now.

And you can also let all these other motherfuckers that are trying to do something like that know that CoffeeZilla is out there. And he's going to find you. And he's going to put you on blast. And people are going to know. And it's going to be more difficult for the next person. And, again, it's not the wealthy investors that will sue. It's these people that put in $2,000 and it was the only $2,000 they had. That's where it's so valuable. And I know that you feel that way and it comes through in your video.

And I think that's why it's appealing and that's why it's working. I really discovered early on that nobody cares about the numbers. The numbers are like the headline or whatever, but ultimately you can't make't make like this stuff doesn't matter until you get people involved. Yeah. Until you hear the victims talk. They're the heartbeat of everything. Because until you hear that, like, what's a billion dollars? It's impossible to know.

Yeah. And then you watch the guy and you're like, who would fall for this? You know, like, it's easy to get cynical if you just see the numbers and the guy who defrauded people. The second you humanize it and you show a person and all of a sudden you see someone with all the same problems and you can just tell, you can see it in their eyes. And they're just wrecked by this guy who truly they believed in. It's like the biggest betrayal. You trusted somebody with everything. And then they stab you in the back. Like this Alex Mashinsky,

CEO of Celsius, his whole thing was banks are evil, which is not crazy. I mean, it's like, you know, you can understand why a lot of people resonated with that. They're like, and it wasn't even evil. They're heartless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I was going to correct that. He said like they're

greedy. Yeah. And that's true. Like it's like. And're heartless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I was going to correct that. He said like they're greedy. Yeah. And that's true. And he's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes like banks are not your friends. True statement, Alex. And then this interviewer is like, but Alex is your friend? And he's like, yeah.

He's like, basically, you can take the same ride as me, 8%, 8% a year. I'll just give it to you. We're doing the same thing as the banks. We're loaning out your money. But we're going to pass on 80% of the revenue back to you instead of the banks, which they take all your money. Right. So people bought into that. They said, that sounds great. Like a new, Hey, the internet changed everything. You know, we think crypto is going to change everything. Why not have a bank that instead of serving its shareholders, it serves its customers. It kind of like like there's something that makes sense there.

It's really compelling. And then come to find out Celsius was never making money. They said they were paying out, you know, you with with their profits. They were paying out you with new deposits, like new people were coming in and they were paying you out. And so it was this giant Ponzi scheme where they set the rewards because they knew if it's high enough, people are just going to flock to them. And so but they had this compelling explanation for why, like it kind of made kind of made a little bit of sense.

And then they when it finally goes wrong, he just get he just walks away. I mean, yeah, he's getting sued civilly. But where's the criminal action? He's going to go to jail. Probably not. And it's like that is so messed up. That is such a that itself is a crime. I think it's so sick that we allow we throw the book at people who will rob a store with a gun. Right. Still 10,000 bucks. People who steal millions, billions of dollars often get away with it because it's just done a little differently.

There's not the drama of the gun and somebody's even known to get shot. There's it's just, hey, it's just he pushed a few pencils around. He got you to sign a few shady. But that's just as sick and twisted. But it's just done in a way that socially is slightly more acceptable and get they get away with it way more often. But I would contend that these people are literally financially murdering people after Celsius people committed suicide because of

I mean literally it's a fact people committed suicide because they lost everything. I'm sure FTX as well FD of course You know the bigger the bigger the scam. There's just statistically it almost becomes impossible that you don't at least if not financially sort of metaphorically murdering a family, you literally kill somebody. And people walk away with either only the guy at the top goes down or nobody goes down. And that is crazy to me. It's like, what message are we sending via our regulators? Basically, it's like, hey, you're going to get a slap on the wrist if you're caught.

And this, what you just did, is why you're so successful. That's real. This is how you really feel. And this is why your show works. This is it right there. Like, what you just did is why I'm interested in your show. Because this is your real thoughts and opinions. Something has to change.

I mean, something has to change where you can't just go on like this where if we're really going to allow, if we're going to take our financial future in our own hands, we're going to allow these influencers to talk about finance. Somebody has to be there when things go wrong.

Yes. And there has to be consequences. If you lie and if you cheat and you steal there has to be a guy at the end of the day who's gonna put you in trouble and i think a youtube video is not nearly enough that's why i'm constantly saying like hey can someone from someone from the government get involved like go lock this guy up go lock somebody you know i know it's like a lot of this is new like the crypto stuff is new but they're doing old crimes in a new way yeah it's always been illegal to steal people's money and that is what's happening and that's why i put these people on my show so you don't think it's some like rug pull where it's all fake money no there was real money in

these companies and they just stole it a new way, but they're still stealing money. And the fact that we haven't found a way to put some of these people in jail is mind-blowing to me. And we're sending a bad message that, hey, just keep doing it. Just go start a new one. There are people now, they were trying to start GTX after FTX. Some new guys were trying to start GTX, like the new thing. And then HTX is next? Jesus Christ. some new guys are trying to start like the new thing and then htx is next jesus christ it's just

like you know you have to that's half the purpose of the law is to it's partly you know for you know you did something wrong you get punished but also part of it is you do something wrong you send a message to socially you socially signal that we do not tolerate this and right now the social signal we're we're sending and accepting is if you, there's a very high likelihood you will get away with it. And if you don't get away with it, you'll get a little slap on the wrist. You'll get a little fine. And that's not working. No, it's not.

Hey, man. Thanks for being here. This was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun, Joe. I appreciate your show. I appreciate you. I appreciate what you're doing. And I really enjoyed this.

It was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Tell everybody how to get your show, what your social media is, all that jazz. CoffeeZilla, that's it. That's the best place to find me. I appreciate you guys having me on.

This is surreal. Been a big fan of the show. Thank you. Appreciate you. All right. Bye, everybody.