The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.12 Ariana Grande Is Begging You to Stop, The AI OnlyFans Problem, Selena Gomez, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup you beautiful bastards, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. Buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into the news. Starting with, this guy got arrested after chasing people through their lawns with his car. Monday night, in Massachusetts, a man reportedly tries to break into someone's home. He finds the back door unlocked, he enters the house, only to find the owner sitting inside. He then quickly runs off, jumps into his car as the owner then follows him outside with a rake. And as police were responding to that, they got a call about an SUV driving erratically in a nearby neighborhood, with that same guy being caught on video chasing a woman around a large bush before veering off through several front yards, turning around and ultimately

Starting point is 00:00:31 hitting another woman, and then speeding away down the street. And luckily, police caught up with him. He was arrested on Monday night. He was arraigned yesterday morning. And he is facing an absolute wild amount of charges, including breaking and entering, assault and battery, negligent operation of a vehicle, and leaving the scene of a personal injury accident. That's what, four stars in GTA? Jesus Christ, my God. And then I'd like y'all to meet Claudia. Claudia is a 19-year-old. She loves showing her body on Reddit. She details her slutty confessions, and she gets a little bit of cash on the side for her efforts. And Claudia's in the news today because people are pissed off at her. But it's not because an old tweet resurfaced or anything like that. It turns out Claudia

Starting point is 00:01:03 isn't Claudia. She is AI generated. And reportedly, she's not the only person doing this right now. Tools are just getting more and more powerful and more people are picking up on it. But Claudia's story has genuinely raised a lot of questions about the future of the adult industry. Historically, it's one of the first industries on the cutting edge of new technology. But also, there is a debate to be had that for the consumer, how is this that much different than the content they're already consuming? Right, yes, usually if you have an an only fans model or performer or whatever, that's a real person.

Starting point is 00:01:28 But for a number of those content creators, when people are sending them messages and their interactions, that's not actually the person having that conversation with you. It's a team that they have, or it's the team that their manager has for them. Right? Which brings us back to a point that I constantly talk about. Perception is reality.

Starting point is 00:01:41 If a consumer feels like something's real, it's real. I mean, think about it for 98, 99% of you, we will never meet each other in real life. I, like Claudia, I'm just a thing that you consume online. Now, because I'm an actual human person, which is a way that a real human person would describe the situation, there are mountains and trash bags filled with things that prove I'm a real person. But as far as for consumers, that doesn't matter,

Starting point is 00:01:59 right? Everything that we consume online, it's surface level, which is also why I think stuff like this in this industry, it's just going to skyrocket. This has opened up the opportunity for anyone, anywhere who looks like whatever to launch a person. You don't even have to manage that person. You can try and automate as much and you can make as many people as you want. You could search up the 20 most search things on Pornhub and then create people that just hit all those targets. With all that possible money on the table and with the constantly lowering barrier for entry, of course, more people are going to enter this world. Now understand, I'm not saying that's morally right, but this is how things are going to move because money moves mountains, money moves people.

Starting point is 00:02:30 And then in entertainment news, Ariana Grande would like you to stop talking about her body. With her sending this message in a new TikTok where she addressed all these recent comments she's gotten about her body, primarily from fans concerned that she's too thin. And there, she kind of starts off by not talking about just her specifically, but in general. It should have never been normalized to give unsolicited comments about a person's body. I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people's bodies, no matter what.

Starting point is 00:02:53 If you think you're saying something good or well-intentioned, whatever it is, healthy, unhealthy, big, small, we should really work towards not doing that as much. By saying there are other ways to compliment people, or of course, if there's something you don't like, you can always just shut your fucking mouth. And also noting that, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:07 there are a lot of ways that a person can look healthy, a person can look beautiful, and in her case. For me, the body that you've been comparing my current body to was the unhealthiest version of my body. I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them and eating poorly and at the lowest point of my life when I looked the way you consider my healthy but that in fact wasn't my healthy." And adding that you just never really know what a person's going through, what they've struggled

Starting point is 00:03:37 with, or how they're going to receive whatever it is you say regardless of your intention. And in general you had many people praising Ariana, thinking that it's vile that the internet in general or even some of her fans have kind thinking that it's vile that the internet in general or even some of her fans have kind of pushed her to this point. People also pointing to other examples like Selena Gomez, who was kind of similarly pushed into a corner to address people's comments on her body and having to discuss her weight fluctuations

Starting point is 00:03:54 being tied to lupus treatments and saying as much as she tries, that negativity still impacts her. Saying, I would go online and I would post a picture of myself and I would say, it doesn't matter. I'm not accepting what you're saying. All the while being in the room posting and crying my eyes out because nobody

Starting point is 00:04:07 deserves to hear those things. And then we've also got to talk about the streaming and theaters news. But right now it appearing that movie theaters are officially back with parts of the industry seeming to finally be recovering from its COVID losses. Right, which when we're talking about COVID, you had studios kind of just getting used to throwing movies right to streaming platforms. But now with the recent bounce back that we've seen at the box office, you have studios going, oh, theatrical releases. Great. This is what we know. Whereas how one analyst put it, studios have found religion. They've come to recognize that having an exclusive theatrical window is the best way to maximize profits instead of releasing everything

Starting point is 00:04:34 simultaneously on demand. There's a lot of marketing value in having your movie in cinemas. And the numbers currently show that there is money to be made again. With Variety reporting that overall, the domestic box office stands at $2.3 billion, which is up 36.8% from the same period last year. And that's an astounding 589.5% improvement over 2021. So I guess that's all to say, if you thought that we were going to see the death of theaters, that's not happening. But where we are seeing a death is to another HBO name. Right, well, we've had HBO Now, HBO Go, HBO Max, and I guess today they realized the HBO part's the problem. With Warner Bros. Discovery announcing today they are changing HBO Max to just Max,

Starting point is 00:05:09 with this reportedly combining programming from HBO Max and Discovery. And all this notably happening just a little over a year of that $43 billion merger. And this new offering will reportedly go live on May 23rd. And then in business news, NPR has quit in Twitter, or rather, suspending activity. With this coming around a week after Twitter labeled NPR's account as state-affiliated media, which the outlet notes is the same label used for propaganda outlets in places like Russia and China. With Twitter later changing that label to government-funded media, but NPR still fought back, saying it only receives very minimal amounts of federal funding, which is not enough to warrant this label,

Starting point is 00:05:38 especially since it holds editorial independence and is a private non-profit. So they stopped posting on Twitter last week and announced today that it stopped all Twitter activity indefinitely, explaining in a statement, the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent. We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence. With NPR CEO John Lansing also sending an email to staffers that it would, quote, be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media

Starting point is 00:06:07 with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards. And NPR releasing this kind of last thread of where readers and listeners can find NPR, like its newsletter, app, and other social media accounts. And notably, this also comes at a time where the BBC has fought back against Twitter slapping it with the label government-funded media. But also, the BBC actually just did an interview

Starting point is 00:06:22 with Elon Musk where he said he would change BBC's label to publicly funded instead. That interview also resulting in other major headlines like Musk saying that running Twitter has been quite painful and a roller coaster. With Musk claiming he sometimes sleeps at Twitter's office and saying that the whole ordeal has created really quite a stressful situation over the last several months. Though, he still maintained that buying it was the right thing to do. Another clip also going viral from this interview where Elon is asked about reports of rises and hate speech on Twitter since his takeover. And there you can see this interaction. Well, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more.

Starting point is 00:06:51 I'd say it's got slightly more. That's what I'm asking for examples. Can you name one example? I honestly don't. OK, so then you must have at some point seen that you for your hateful content. I'm asking for one example. Right. You can't give a single one.

Starting point is 00:07:03 And I'm saying. Then I say so that you don't know what you're talking about. Really? Yes, because you can't give a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. And yet you claimed that the hateful content was high. Well, that's a false. No, what I could just lie. And while online, we've seen plenty of people dunking on this interviewer. You also had others noting that even though this specific interviewer could not in that moment come up with a specific tweet or example, there are numerous reports, examples, and studies citing

Starting point is 00:07:30 an increase in hate speech since Elon jumped on. Though that's also not where the Twitter news ends. With Musk announcing the new, definitely final, not gonna change it again, date for removing legacy verification check marks to be April 20th, cause of fucking course it is. He's like a walking stolen meme machine or a calculator you flip upside down so it reads boobs but turned into a person.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Though that said, you know, some people have already lost their check marks, including the likes of Doja Cat. She definitely didn't seem to mind. After a fan pointed out that the check was gone, she responded. Having a blue tick now means there's a higher chance that you're a complete loser and you're desperate for validation from famous people. And then taking care of your body from day to night, it's a must. And being a parent, that's especially true when keeping up with the kids. And that's where today's sponsor comes in, Beam. You know, you've heard me talk about Beam's delicious hot cocoa with five natural ingredients. It puts me right to sleep, helps me wake up feeling amazing. But get this, Beam just made a daytime version of Dream called Core. It supports

Starting point is 00:08:18 your days the way Dream supports your sleep. And Core has 16 science-backed ingredients to boost energy, reduce stress, and support your immune system. Right before coffee, I just put one scoop into water, stir it, and drink. And it's delicious. It tastes like strawberry lemonade, but it has no sugar. Plus, both products work together. Core supports your inflammation response, lessening cortisol, and Dream supports sleep, improving your immune system, forming this complementary cycle. And the result is me feeling incredibly energized in the best way possible. So head on over to shopbeam.com slash defranco and use code defranco to get 45% off your first month of the Core Plus Dream Bundle. Originally $190 value

Starting point is 00:08:49 that you can get for $105. You can still pause or cancel anytime, so there's no risk and you'll get a free frother with your first order. So take advantage of it while it lasts. And then, you know who I feel bad for? Landlords who bought places and then jacked up the rent prices. You know, that's who I empathize with, the most beloved people in our society. What a lot of these poor souls realize is you can make the biggest profits, not in homes, but actually in apartment buildings. And that pandemic that we all just lived through, it exacerbated that problem as rents and occupancy rates skyrocketed. But now we're seeing things crashing down on the heads of those investors. One of the best ways to understand and look at this situation happening at Laguna Point Properties. They spent $400 million in five

Starting point is 00:09:23 apartment buildings in downtown Los Angeles last year. These being near Skid Row, which is like a mishmash of there. There's gentrification, but it also still has a lot of the old issues as well. Now, the deal was easily one of the largest commercial real estate deals made during the pandemic, and it was made possible because of cheap financing options for landlords that involved high amounts of collateral for short-term loans with skyrocketing interest rates if the feds raise the rates. With these deals allowing them to cheaply buy a property, quickly renovate it, and then charge high rents for a profit, with them betting that they could pay off the debt before interest rose. But as you know, if you've been paying attention, things did not go as planned once the fed raised interest rates

Starting point is 00:09:53 to combat inflation cutting into their profits. So that, coupled with plateauing or even falling rent rates, ruined any real chances of getting enough profitability to make the buildings worth it by the time that the debts came due in 2027. So they auctioned off the portfolio, with many believing they lost the entire investment. But Laguna Point Properties is hardly the only one of these massive companies that took on this risky strategy with $278 billion a debt for flip and rent apartments coming due this and next year. Now, this should make you panic like it's going to be some 2008 level crash, but with commercial real estate instead of homes. Because these specific loans are normally pretty stable because they require massive amounts of collateral, but it is expected the defaults will rise and riskier loans will be needed to keep many of them floating.

Starting point is 00:10:27 But ultimately, I think the main point of this story is if we can all just come together, pray, or just have a moment of silence for all these poor landlords, they just wanted to disrupt regular people's lives and price them out of the places that they lived, because that's their only mission in life. And now, because of all this bad news, regular people are going to be able to afford rents, or at least a little more than many of the landlords were hoping. Say a prayer tonight because those rent rates are finally plateauing. And then, this massive fire in Indiana has forced thousands to evacuate.

Starting point is 00:10:51 With the fire reportedly starting at a recycling facility in the town of Richmond. And the Indiana State Fire Marshal, Steve Jones, saying last night that the fire could last for several days. So far, we've seen an evacuation order put into place for people living within half a mile of the fire. Meaning about 2,000 people have been ordered to leave. Though that number may change if the wind shifts direction. As far as how the actual fire started, it's a bit of a mystery. We know that firefighters arrived on site yesterday to find a semi-trailer filled with plastics completely engulfed in flames. The fire then quickly spreading to nearby piles of plastic and then to the massive building. But what we

Starting point is 00:11:17 currently don't know is how the fire started with that semi-trailer in the first place. And we likely won't officially know until the blaze is completely extinguished and a deeper investigation can happen. But according to the local fire department, the owner of the building had been warned on several occasions of fire hazards on their property. I mean, hell, they were even under a city order to clean everything up. So the fire department, when they pulled up yesterday, not really that surprised. Richmond Fire Department Chief Tim Brown saying, it's very frustrating for all of us. The battalion chief on today, he was very frustrated when he pulled up because we knew it wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when

Starting point is 00:11:44 this was going to happen. Now, this morning, you had the EPA announcing that overnight air quality testing had not found any toxic compounds in the smoke, though they said they'll continue to monitor Richmond's air quality. But also notably, a former regional EPA administrator and current president of Beyond Plastics said there is another concern, saying when plastic burns, dioxins often form, which the EPA describes as toxic pollutants that can cause cancer, and explaining that state officials will have to test for dioxin, and even a small amount could pose a serious health risk. And so for now, we've seen officials advising residents not to disturb any debris from the fire that may wind up in their yards, saying that based on the age of the building that burned, it may contain asbestos, with the EPA also saying they plan on testing the debris.

Starting point is 00:12:16 And then in political news, Senator Lindsey Graham just had a very nice, cordial meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince, which is a sentence that may sound weird if you don't have full-blown amnesia. Right, because you might remember back in 2018 when the same Crown Prince murdered Which is a sentence that may sound weird if you don't have full-blown amnesia. Or because you might remember back in 2018 when the same Crown Prince murdered Jamal Khashoggi and Graham had some choice words for his friend in the Middle East. He's been a wrecking ball.

Starting point is 00:12:31 You know, one minute he's a visionary leader, the next minute he's putting women in jail. I will not have my intelligence insulted or my support disrespected. This all originated from the Crown Prince. I'm convinced of that. There are plenty of people in Saudi Arabia that we could have a good relationship with. But if the crown prince beyond toxic and saying, when we lose our moral voice, we lose our strongest asset. But now you have Graham proudly announcing, I just had a very productive, candid

Starting point is 00:13:13 meeting with the Saudi crown prince and his senior leadership team. The opportunity to enhance the U.S.-Saudi relationship is real, and the reforms going on in Saudi Arabia are equally real. And going on to say, I look forward to working with the administration and congressional Republicans and Democrats to see if we can take the U.S.-Saudi relationship to the next level. And if you're wondering, what could possibly have changed Lindsey Graham's mind? It might just possibly be connected to how he finished, saying, I also express deep appreciation to the kingdom for purchasing $37 billion worth of Boeing 787s, which are made in South Carolina for the new Saudi airline. Investments like this are game changers. But it's also possible there's a more geopolitical angle to this.

Starting point is 00:13:47 As we talked about last month, China brokered a landmark diplomatic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are longtime rivals in the Middle East. And many observers, especially Republicans, feared that this marked a long-term trend of Beijing displacing Washington as a new preeminent power in the region. And actually, that peacemaking by China could be paying off. Because on Sunday, Saudi Arabia proposed a deal to end the war in Yemen,

Starting point is 00:14:05 where it's relentlessly bombed the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels since 2015, getting the leadership of its client, Yemen's coalition government, to agree to a minimum eight-month ceasefire, as well as talks on the future of the conflict. Saudi and Houthi leaders meeting for the first time in public, and actually, the UN's Yemen envoy called this

Starting point is 00:14:19 the nearest the country has been to peace since the fighting began. Which, I mean, we can't downplay how potentially huge this is, because this war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions, leaving the vast majority of Yemenis dependent on humanitarian aid. But we are going to have to wait to see how this all actually pans out.

Starting point is 00:14:33 And then, I don't know if there's ever been a problem that the United States didn't think it could solve by bombing it. With the latest example of that being a number of Republicans advocating for the U.S., and this is a real thing, to be able to bomb Mexico. With Representatives Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz introducing a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to go to war with the cartels. And this, coming after the Drug Enforcement Agency assessed back in December that most of the fentanyl distributed by two cartels is, quote, being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China.

Starting point is 00:14:59 So for America, that's like three of our favorite things. Snipe in China, chase in fentanyl, and go and pew, pew, pew in other countries. And we're seeing a growing faction of the GOP starting to take this idea seriously. Senator Tom Cotton saying he's open to sending troops into Mexico even without the government's permission there. As well as lawmakers in both chambers of Congress introducing bills to designate some cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And this in line with things like we've seen in recent weeks, like Donald Trump promising to use special forces in cyber warfare to target cartel leaders if he's re-elected. Rolling Stone even reporting that he asked for battle plans to strike Mexico. Though that, really not a new thing for Trump.

Starting point is 00:15:28 According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, he actually looked into firing missiles at drug labs in Mexico when he was president. But of course, with all this, we've seen the Mexican president flatly opposing it all. Saying last month that in addition to being irresponsible, it is an offense to the people of Mexico. But as far as what the hell's actually going to happen, you're going to have to wait to see. And then in international news, apparently some Russian soldiers saw those ISIS beheading videos and they were like, that seems like a great idea.

Starting point is 00:15:48 Because right now you have Ukrainians absolutely outraged at an extremely graphic video that's emerged seeming to show a Russian serviceman beheading a Ukrainian soldier. With the victim still alive as it happens and pleading, it hurts, stop. And although it is still currently unverified, there are multiple clues within the footage to suggest that it's real. People pointing to the victim wearing a yellow armband, an identifying symbol for Ukraine's troops, while the other men wear white leg bands, a symbol for Russians. And one of the men holds up body armor bearing a trident mark, the state symbol of Ukraine. And there's a booklet that can be seen on the ground matching the appearance of a standard issue Ukrainian military ID and its color layout of the writing and the same trident mark. Whether it is real or not, and of course the Kremlin is suggesting that it may not be,

Starting point is 00:16:24 what matters is that people believe it right now. With Ukrainian authorities claiming that Russia is spreading this video and others like it to so panic ahead of the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive. With President Zelensky trying to rally international support and saying, everyone must react, every leader, do not wait for this to be forgotten. And although on the surface you have the Russian government distancing themselves from these videos, pro-Kremlin bloggers and telegram channels have been sharing them and cheering on the use of brutal methods of waging war. And that is where today's show is going to end. Thank you for being a part of another daily dive in the news. My name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces and I'll see you tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.12 Ariana Grande Is Begging You to Stop, The AI OnlyFans Problem, Selena Gomez, and More

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