The Josh Innes Show - Why Do We Love Media Beef Part 2

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Let's actually listen to the discussion and see what these fellas come up with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right. So I was simple and rudimentary with my thoughts on why people like media beef, because they just like beef in general. You notice when it's, you know, rap beef, people are into it. When it's Kendrick Lamar versus Drake, people are into it. When it's Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark or Caitlin Clark fans or whatever, they're into it. It's not just a media thing. It's everything. Beef drives everything. Beef. It's what's for, fucking deader. All right. Let's play a couple commercials. And now we will hear what Van Laithen, who again, I like very much and Bimani Jones have to say. All right. So here we go. This is from the Right Time with Bamani Jones podcast, Van Lathen, who is great. He's very good on a podcast with what the hell is the name? The rewatchables is the name of the show he's on with Bill Simmons. and it's a very good, a very enjoyable podcast where they just talk about movies and shit and I like it very much.

It's like every podcast. I'm into it for a week and then I'll disappear for a month and then come back and then I'll listen to five episodes in a row. Great catalog too. It's a very deep catalog. They've been doing it for years. But anyway, all right, so let's see why Bumani and Van Laithen feel that people love media beef. That strikes me is I am amazed at how many people. people are able to make a living covering us, right? Nobody goes to a sports game to watch the refs. Nobody goes to watch the media. But when the game is over, I am shocked by how many people make their living. I can name people to make a living talking about me, right? Like, it floors me that people care that much, particularly about sports media. I know that there is some coverage

around the other media worlds and maybe I'm not as aware of the discussion because it's not about me but they talk up in sports media in particular people talk about us so much more and now we're at the player part of it and so the players they're going to have their back and falls with each other they're going to have the ones where they come at the media people maybe they don't like or whatever it is but it's like a wrestling shoot every time it yes that's what's funny about people that like to bang on wrestling this is all just wrestling that's all it is it's drama it's controversy creates cash at shit talking. That's all this is and people love shit talking.

It feels like somebody decides to log on and get the thing cracking. Like with Stephen A, that was a long-ass shoot. Like you were wrestling, dude. You know, like that was a long-ass shoot. And I just, I just can't, nobody can ever, nobody can ever say that I take myself too seriously because clearly there are other people out here that take me way more seriously than that. I really enjoy Bimani Jones. Just his personality.

I don't really listen to his opinions or anything like that. He's not like I don't listen to his podcast or anything. I told you, I really like Van Lathen. But I like these guys. I think this is cool guys. Well, I don't know that they care about you as much as they care about mess. And the way I know this or my, the reason why I suspect this is because of me. I'm on YouTube and I'm looking around on YouTube.

I watched a video yesterday. the video was 15 minutes and it was about Brendan Schaubb. Mm-hmm. Like Brendan Shab, the M.MA fighter, who also became a comedian, the fighter and the kid, the whole nine. It was a 15-minute video about Brendan Shab, and it was all of this shit that had happened. Apparently, Brendan Shab tried to hit on the comedians. Well, speaking to fighters, think about this. Who are two of the most brilliant marketers on the planet?

Right? Jake and Logan Paul. they've created a world that's just kind of built around drama and kind of contrived bullshit arguments. They're brilliant because people consume it. But why? And that's why we're having this discussion here. Why are people so into this shit? Why?

Or something, I don't know. It was all of this shit that happened like last year or the year before, two years ago. They made a song out of it. The song was called Trug Walk. It was based on Plug Walk. Because apparently Shob had asked this girl to walk him out to his truck and she felt like he was asking him, asking her to walk out there because

he wanted to get a blowjob or something like it was a whole thing. Here's the point. I don't give a fuck about none of this. You were riveted. I was enthralled. Now, there were people, there were famous people involved in this that I knew, right? And that's fine. But we still don't know the why. Like we've all established the reality. The reality is that it doesn't matter who the drama involves, we care about drama, right? Nobody knew who the fuck Josh Ennis was when Josh Ennis became this top story for a day during the Super Bowl when me and Seth were yelling at each other. Nobody knew or gave a shit about who I was. They still don't, right? But you want to look at hard on, hardcore media beef? Like, that's the kind of shit that draws people in. Whenever

Seth and I were face-to-face and W-E-E-I starts filming it and it goes viral in that way, and I'm like the top fucking trend and shit. No one who the fuck I am. All of a sudden, Howard Stern's talking about it. Why? Because it's drama. But the answer is, why? We still don't know the why.

We know the reality. The reality is people care about drama. What we still have not established is why. Why do people care so much about this? Why do people not care more about, you know, seven dogs escape from the meat grinder in China and find their way back to their owner and some weird, fucked up Asian home? Homeward Bound, Escape the Meat Grindr story, but we love stories about random people

we don't even know or have never heard of getting involved in media beefs. I believe was involved like all these different comedians, and I knew those names, but that's not why I was watching. I was watching because this ended up being a fucking opera of mess, an opera of mess. And then it led into like how Brendan Sharp is... Like, is it a thing that like,

it makes us feel better about ourselves? Like, do we feel better about ourselves watching other people, particularly people that we perceive as famous or whatever, going through bullshit too? Like, does it make us feel better that we're not involved in some sort of fight with some other guy in the media or someone? Like, maybe that's it? I don't know. Is considered now? Is Brendan Scha. And then I thought, wait a minute, they at war in Iran, I need to watch some other fucking shit right.

Not the fuck am I doing. But I just think the internet is such fertile ground for narrative creation and also for, for, playing on our basis instincts, which is if you rattle horns, dear come to see what's up. And if two people are into it, we want to know why.

Again, we do, but why? Again, basic instincts and everything, sure. But we still have not established the why. The question that was asked by this podcast, by Bumani and Van Laithen, is why do we love media beefs? Well, then let's get to, let's figure that out.

Why? I think that last part really drove something home for me that I think is interesting. And I've been reading all these different things about the internet driving our base impulses and how these people have figured out that like rage is what really drives the ship, right? Like rage is where making people mad. People can't help it. They keep coming back to it. I agree.

But what is it about watching two people fight with each other that makes a person mad? Like I can understand the argument that, you know, somebody tells us. you that your political candidate or the person you voted for as a piece of shit pedophile, I can see where you'd get super pissed over that and be ready to fight somebody and be like, I get why you'd be mad.

But like rage isn't driving you to watch Stephen A. Smith fight with Jason Whitlock, if that makes sense. But you are right in that some for real complicated mess, that is, that's hard to pass up, man. Like mess that has actual factual layers to it. no matter what it is.

If you see something that is like a progressive chain of mess, and we have the situation where a big part of it is with the internet, people decide to make it public because they want the attention. So now it comes up for everybody else. But like, I would tell you about the time I was at the airport and his white man had all these people trying to beat him up and I couldn't figure out what it is. And it turned out that he had called somebody the N-word.

There we go. At Hart's Field. Oh, shit. Right, right, right. This motherfucker got a dance weird. And so he does in her hearts field. And so he does in her hearts field. And somebody tried to get him.

And it was some army cats. And they were holding a dude back. And then somebody else got heated enough to try to get him again. And, you know, there was a little back and forth or whatever. Then finally the white man started walking away. And for some reason, I just decided to follow him because I figured that the mess wasn't over yet. And so I just kept. But I feel like there's a difference between that.

Like obviously, everybody likes to watch people fight. Dude, high school, the best fucking time ever was when idiots would fight. You'd watch two people start scrapping. It was the most interesting thing ever. Whole school gathers around people punching each other in the face. I mean, that's fucking cool. But, like, see, that's different.

What you're describing in that situation is something that's like, and in the moment you're there, you're watching it. You don't know what's going to happen to this guy, and he may fucking die. You know, like die hard with a vengeance whenever a simple Simon, whoever the bad guy was, made John McLean hold up. up a sign that says I hate N-words on a board and then and then Sam Jackson like comes out and like he's like, bro, you got to go. Like that you're basically living a real life situation like that.

But I can understand why you'd be glued to watching that because you're watching somebody get their ass kicked. There's a big difference between watching somebody get their ass kicked, World Star style, and watching fucking Jason Whitlock and Stephen A. Smith bitch about each other. To me, it's not the same. Walk and he went into the Hudson News and he was talking to the black people that were with black women that were working in the Hudson News and he was talking about how these people were trying to beat him up and it was all it was giving him the sympathy or whatever and I couldn't help it man. I just popped up and I was like, hey man, he called a couple people the N-word over there and they were like what? And he kept talking to stuff about my brother works for the FBI.

Like his brother was going to say to be fair. Why that like that's not really your place to do that? I guess. And everything else. But I only followed him because I was like, how is this going to resolve itself? It was, I think that was the part that I needed.

But again, it was, and I understand the need to see something resolved, but this is not similar. Because even the most, like, basic nobodies in the media, get attention if they bitch with each other. How many people that are listening knew who Brandon Tierney was,

the guy from WFAN? Well, WFAN fires him. He talks a little shit about WFRA, F.A.N. Gio, who's on the morning show on WFAN, talks a little shit about him. Now it's all over awful announcing and it's trending and everything. But nobody would have known who the hell he was before then. You know, like people, it's not wild or ridiculous to think that somebody cares about, you know, a guy in the airport calling a bunch of black people the N-word and wanting to see how that turns out because that motherfucker may die. But it is weird to think that people care that much about what two dopes like Stephen A. Smith and Whitlock say about each other. Like, it's not apples to apples. was how is this going to end? With the media beef, I don't think there's a, how does it end question?

It's just the back and forth that comes out of it. But if you give me something where I'm like, huh, I kind of got to know how that wraps up. Yep, I could probably stick around.

That's why threads catch on, not the site threads, but just the idea of three. Yeah. Like, we are all. Again, we still going to answer the question.

Why do we care about what media dwebs fighting with each other? How that resolves, you know, like why? We still haven't really gotten the why. Like slaves to story.

Speaking of the N-word. We are, like, we are, story gets people, man. It's just, like, we are this big combination of all of these factors. We keep telling the same stories over and over every single generation. We always have a story for someone. You always have a story for what went right in your life and what went wrong in your life. And neither story is 100% accurate, right? you remember the people that helped you in a little bit grander of a way than they probably actually did sometimes.

You remember the people that harmed you in a little bit more sinister way than it probably was at the time because we are just used to telling ourselves story. That was kind of the thing that I was. We haven't accomplished much here. Let me fast forward through some of this and see. This has like what three minutes left. Let me see what we got here. BA finals, where now is your chance, courtesy.

It would be ready to scrap it to get. You know, I'm mad you've got to be to fight a deer. Look, we didn't really accomplish much in that. Because I understand the point of asking the question why we care about media beef. And maybe the simple answer is, maybe, you know, the simple answer is, we just love drama. We just want to see two people fight each other. But I don't really see the apples to apples comparison. Like, I don't see the, like, hey, dude says inward in airport and people want to fight him versus, you know, two dopes on an internet on a stream or on a TV show or whatever.

whatever, talking shit about each other. But for whatever reason, we just, we eat that shit up. And I've experienced it in my life. There are times, and I tell you guys this a lot, but I'll be on the air and I'll do shit that I think's really fucking funny. And we'll post videos of this shit that I think is really fucking funny. And no one gives a fuck. No one.

It'll get two or three likes. It won't get shared. It just dies. It just sits there and dies. If I get on there and say, you know, sucks is the screaming scots. on WCSX. All the sudden.

Thousand shares. This guy's a piece of shit. All the content you have is talking about him. You're in no talent. Like, why though? Like, you know why? And then you know why the reason people go back to doing that? Because they see you react to it.

And then you'll be the first people to bitch and be like, oh, is that all you've got? Yeah, because that's what you react to. Why is it that that's what you react to? Anyway, more to come.