The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Gatekeeping

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcastSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*Gatekeeping has soured more than one person's perception of a community, and the MoF boys have seen plenty of it across the various groups they've interacted with. What to be on the lookout for, and how to handle a gatekeeper, and how NOT to be that gatekeeper are all on the docket.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rablis, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast. I have a couple of administrative chores to deal with, and then we're going to get right to a topic which I am hoping resonates because Andrew and I have both complained about this in the past

and I don't know anyone that counts himself a member of a community that hasn't dealt with gatekeeping even if you haven't heard that word used to describe it before. even if you haven't heard that word used to describe it before. But first and foremost, I've been delinquent in thanking the patrons. The patrons that contribute $1, $5, or $10 to us every month on Patreon. Keep the show afloat. The show doesn't have sponsors. We don't shill.

We don't have... We could just get a couple new patrons, too. We did just get a couple of new patrons. We got one from Wisconsin to join the other Wisconsin contingent. And I'm drawing a blank on the other one. Thank you, Andrew. I was doing so good. Like, I remember to thank the Patreons for the first time in six months, and then here's Andrew with,

Who are they, Phil? Darn it! Is it another guy from Michigan? Yes. So we added two Yankees to our ranks. I am still the only Louisianan. Leonard, his name? Mm-hmm.

Does that sound familiar? Yeah, Leonard's a friend of mine. Good dude, solid dude. He actually lives downstate, and I met him through MBFI classes. Solid dude, really cool. He's awesome to talk to. I love his camping setup. I'm really jealous of his camping setup, actually.

But, yeah,'m he texted me and uh when i i think we when we put up the episode about the mof trip being in michigan he uh he texted me and he's like okay you got me to sign up and uh so yeah i'm really appreciative i'm i mean i'm appreciative of all of our patreons but uh uh yeah you know it's it's it's awesome to hear yeah well i mean and and i'm remiss and not mention them more often but i mean the truth of the matter is is that the patrons afford us a certain level of what's the word i'm looking for here they afford us the ability to focus on the show and focus on things we want to talk about and not have to either a chase advertisers every

month which i hate that and even better is that we don't ever have to worry about upsetting a sponsor and then them threatening to pull their sponsorship out from underneath us because as long as i keep that little group of patrons perfectly happy i mean things are good and i think we've established by now that they're a little hard to offend for the most part. But I have to acknowledge them. I have to get better about doing that. The other thing, I got reamed out by our merchandising partner. Oh, yeah.

I haven't checked that chat in a long time. Okay. Not reamed out. One of the two who runs our merchandise partner, the Southern Gals, one of them reached out to me and said, Hey, dude, you've been really, really remiss about, like, mentioning that we even have merch. And I took that on the chin, and I swore up and down I would throw the shirt on. I would mention we do have merchandise. The links are down in the show description anywhere you're looking at this.

So if you're curious, if you want to look and see what's out there, then I recommend you go down to the little link that says merch. It has a URL next to it. I browbeat my wife into working on some new merch for Raising Values literally like 45 minutes ago. And that's on my radar because I've got some ideas. I'm not a graphic design person.

I'm an artist. So I have to find somebody who can take my stupid ideas and then put them onto shirts. Also, I just want to throw it out there really quick. I just pulled it up because I wanted to make sure that it was on the website. So if you go to mofpodcast.com and if you go up to the top, depending on what your browser is and stuff like that,

you might see the little link that says More. If you click on that, or it says Gear. So click on Gear and it actually will take you to the Southern Gales merch store as well. So a couple of different ways you can get there. Yeah. And the thing I'm the most happy about is, is that, you know, people that have been listening to the show for a while will remember that we have we used to do merch through Teespring. And then what happened was we had some friends of ours approach us and say hey we do a small business we run a small business and we could do the merch for y'all

and if i have to throw money into somebody's pocket quite frankly i'd rather put in a small business than to you know give it to teespring yeah um so i'm just gonna i'm gonna so i'm just gonna throw it out there right now and uh i'm gonna throw her right under the whole school bus uh but uh somebody another co-host of yours won't name names but um she needs to contact a certain doctor that we met at prepper camp and she keeps putting it off. I'm waiting for the nasty message in the Facebook. You do know that she's like right on the other side of this wall?

I think I heard her scream. Well, the minute you say one of your other co-hosts, there's only two of you. I know, but I didn't name names. I didn't drop any names. Oh. But no, so I'm just going to throw it out there. I mean, I think I've hounded her a lot about getting this doctor on.

It's okay, Kyle. It's okay, Kyle. I, uh... I'll be asking for it, but Phil will hear it since I'm a long ways away. Did you just find it? You just told us the entire time that you didn't have it? I never said I didn't have it. I said I kept forgetting. I'm a forgetful person.

But I have the card. I left it right on the nightstand where all the, um right on the nightstand where all my man is training stuff is. Okay, I'll give you five seconds. Run around the corner and give it to her right now. Okay, entertain the audience. I'll be back in one second. Do, do, do, do, do. No, so those of you guys who don't know what we're talking about,

I'm not going to throw them on here because it's a good show for raising values. It's a doctor and his wife that approached Phil and I at Prepper Camp. And basically the doctor was very anti-COVID. It was very against the shot and everything. And he was very anti-covid it was very uh against the shot uh and everything and he was very he's pushing back against it and he actually like lost a lot uh by prep by basically being one of the only doctors that i can think of that stood up against the government stood up against the mandate stood up against uh hit what people, like his higher-ups were telling him to do. And he's like, no, I refuse to push the shot.

And he lost a lot. And so we talked about that, and that was like Phil and I both, like basically after we got done talking to him, we basically looked at each other and was like raising values. Like that would be a perfect episode for raising values so so i've been hounding your beautiful beautiful amazing better half but she's she's been busy taking care of you i just went and handed the business card to the host of Raising Values directly. Anyway, now that I stopped getting you into trouble and me into deeper trouble.

I'm going to make dinner as soon as this is over, so I'll get right back out of trouble. I know the weight of my women's hearts. But let's talk about gatekeeping. So gatekeeping, for anybody not familiar with the term, is when you encounter a person who is trying to exclude you from like an from information from a community from a resource because of some reason usually it's like perceived a lot of times this like the best analogy i can make is andrew like you and i've talked about like the gun community and how they love to eat their own over that guy has a palmetto state armory and i have daniel defense and you know what are you poor and why didn't you buy a better rifle and it's not duty rated your optics are from

china does all this sound familiar that's all gatekeeping that is basically saying like you are not allowed into the community because you did not spend $4,000 on your rifle. Oh, I just thought that was just someone being a dick. Well, but there's a term for it because, you know, being a dick doesn't roll off the tongue as well as gatekeeping. But I thought I'd bring it up because, like, one of the things I ran into recently because, like, I've been getting more and more into amateur radio. And as part of that GMRS community community i almost died jesus andrew you know what i've had a hard day uh you want me come rub your head no okay that sounded that sounded wrong we're not that we're he's not that kind of host. We don't have that kind of relationship. Any Hoosers. One of the things that I notice a lot with the amateur radio community, the more I get into it, is that there are those people within that community that are extremely judgmental of equipment based on cost.

There are those guys out there that, listen, ain't nobody paying for me to shake my money maker. Would you just finish your thought? Anyway. But like if you come into that group and let's say you have a Baofeng or even like the Wuxin that I run or any of these Chinese radios, there's a group out there. They get really bent out of shape because it's a Chinese radio. It's crap. It's this and the other. You'll hear things thrown around like spurious emissions and everything about your ability to join that community or the validity that you were even part of that

community is called into question because you bought Chinese radios instead of Yesu, Motorola, so on and so forth. And this came to the forefront of my consciousness just the other day because I happen to be in one of the GMRS groups that I'm in. And I saw a guy in one long, five paragraph long rant. He started off having a complete meltdown over people using what's called like non-type 95C approved equipment, which basically means, you know, when something is 95C approved, the FCC says this complies to the regulations it's supposed to, so you can use it for GMRS. And there is a debate within the GMRS community that if it's not 95C approved, you are violating FCC's regulations by using that equipment,

even if you're using it in compliance with the terms of 95C. So in other words, this would be like if you own a car, and let's say the DOT hasn't said that car is approved to drive on the roads, but you follow all the laws, then you're still breaking the law. That's the best analogy I can give you. And that all was going on. And then in the same paragraph, he got bent out of shape over people buying Chinese radios. And a few people, rightfully so, pointed out to him, all of the 95C approved radios all come from China. There are no US made or Japanese made

radios that are 95C. Like even Midland that are a lot of people consider to be like made in the USA, they're not manufactured here. So the point was, if you want one of these radios that you're saying are the best radios out there, Motorola's, Yesu's, and all those, they don't make anything for GMRS. Those are all ham radios. Now, you can take a ham radio and you can program it so that it will functionally work like a GMRS radio, but that wasn't his argument. His argument was, if you do this, you're not part of the community,

and then if you do the exact opposite, you you're not part of the community you're not part of the community and then if you do the exact opposite you're also not part of the community so that's what got me all you know hot under the collar and fired up huh in a tizzy well it made me think about like all the other times where we've encountered gatekeeping and i'm sure other people have encountered it and the frustrating part for me specific to like the GMRS community because that's where this happened was like I've talked to my dad who is my father is he's been a ham radio operator longer than I've been alive and he has done things on ham radio that like a very small group here in the U.S. are licensed to do. He knows a ton about it, but he, and even though he has an active ham license, he doesn't, all of his equipment's

still in boxes. He doesn't want to rejoin the ham radio community because of gatekeeping, because there were people who wanted to like pick and choose and exclude who was allowed to be in the club for stupid reasons. And he, he didn't want to associate with those people. And I'm seeing some of those same people dip their toe in a GMRS because it's getting more and more popular. And then the same reason why they chased a lot of people out of ham and they, they, part of the reason why I didn't join the ham radio community is because of these people who were gatekeeping because I don't want to be told that my sack of $25 Chinese radios, you know, isn't good enough to talk on a repeater with somebody with a $400 radio. If I'm enjoying the hobby and if I'm using it, you know, within the bounds and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, then your opinion of

my equipment or my whatever shouldn't be relevant. But that's gatekeeping. That's when I'm seeing more and more, not just across the amateur radio community, but we see it in the firearms community. We see it really, really seriously in the night vision community. And we see it in the preparedness community. I mean, Andrew, have you ever had anybody in the preparedness community tell you that if you don't have 20 acres and homestead, you're not a prepper? Because I've heard that. I haven't. No, my big thing was with firearms. That's one reason why I got off of Facebook, among other reasons.

Facebook, among other reasons. I remember when I got into building ARs and stuff, and I think it was like AR-15 Builders something or whatever, I don't remember. And, I mean, it was fun. I was always just seeing what other people were doing and getting ideas and stuff. I never really posted. I think I posted one time, and it was basically – actually, no, I replied. The thing is I don't remember. I've never posted anything.

But this one guy posted an AR that was an Anderson Manufacturing lower that he got for like $25 or something like that. I know because I have a couple of those. And he built it. He was on a budget. The dude built it himself. Well, you know, assembled a couple of those. And he built it. He was on a budget. The dude built it himself. Well, you know, assembled it kind of thing. But he basically put it together, was on a budget, was super proud of it, researched his butt off, went through and was like, this is what I did.

These are the specs and all that. And the freaking community tore him apart because he had an Anderson manufacturing lower. And it was constantly, all I kept reading was, why didn't you get BCM? Why didn't you get Noveske? Why didn't you get Daniel Defense? Why didn't you get this? And he was like, and I mean, honestly, it was, well, yeah, because the BC bcm all these lowers uh were you know three four five hundred dollars uh assembled lower with a with a stock and stuff like that i mean you're

looking at a daniel defense and stuff like that i mean they're not cheap uh especially noveske and uh if you look into it and look at where like these parts actually come from uh they don't they all come from pretty much the exact same suppliers as far as like the lowers and stuff it's just these manufacturers they they're the ones that you know they might finish them and stuff like that but i mean and the people they were making valid they did make the one valid point they made was the fact that hey qc is somewhat better at these other companies okay i i give you that uh because i have had some issues with uh actually no it was our guns my first day i ever built was with an r guns lower it was out of spec it would not do crap i had to send it back they kind of milled out a couple things

it was fine but that being said i've never had issues with uh with um anderson manufacturing lures and i know people who have built anderson lures uh i'm pretty sure if i remember right trek had a uh a lower or i had a rifle with anderson manufacturing parts in it at a carving class and he beat the hell out of that freaking gun and he was like see it runs uh the thing. And he was like, see, it runs. The thing that cracks me up is you'll, the thing that really makes me laugh is you have somebody, say you have somebody with a $500 AR and you have somebody with their $3,000 or whatever $1,000 AR, or even $1,000, you'd say.

I can guarantee you the $500 AR has been out of the safe and used pretty much more than some of these other guys that get this gun and they don't want to shoot it. They don't want to mark it up. They don't want to scar it up. This other one is beat to crap and it's used. I've seen that time and time again. I'm not saying that's with everybody with these kind of ARs, but I'm just saying I've seen it time and time again. And it's just ridiculous because it's something as small as the parts that you put in your gun.

Honestly, I don't care what you have in your gun, what your gun is pieced together with. If you can run it and you're responsible, okay. Like, that's it. Like, I want you to be a responsible armed citizen. I want you to be able to run it and i want you to know it and i want you to uh and i want you to be able to like to actually you know send some rounds down range if ever needed i like honestly that's all i really care about uh and you know so i want them and so that's what gets me is and that's what also gets what

annoys me also is the fact that the community, whatever community you want to talk about, if we as a gun community could fricking stand together and actually push back against the government, we won't, we won't need firearms. We won't need bullets. We don't need,

we won't, we wouldn't need that kind of crap. If all the, if all the gun owners in America would would stand together and say you know what other politics aside we can agree on that we we need the second amendment and it's important to fight off the government or to for the people to be armed uh yeah we should actually band together and let's uh let's make some corrections we would actually make a lot of change in the United States, if not the world. And that's the thing is we're so separated.

We're so divided. We're the stupidest crap. There's people that get mad over the freaking color of your seracote. Like, come on. You are that retarded, like that freaking petty. Come on. And it's new membership because communities, in my experience, are either expanding or they're declining. They don't stay stagnant for very long. And, you know, the gun community can at times be really, really good about shooting themselves in the foot and chasing other people out of the community or –

Do the – Say what? I said do thedo-tsh. Shooting themselves in the foot. Shooting themselves in the foot. Thank you. But they can be really good about chasing people out of the community who otherwise are really enthusiastic and want to be part of the gun community.

They want to meet their fellow armed citizen, and they want to learn from other people. And yet when you sit there and tell them that the, you know, the Anderson manufacturing lower their AR is built on, that might be, it might be all they can freaking afford because they're on a fixed income is crap. You do one of two things. Either you chase that person into the shadows where they don't want to be part of your community, but they're going to keep the gun, but they're not going to, they may not learn anymore. They're just, they're going to stop right there in place because you get put such a bad taste in their mouth, or they're going to leave the community entirely. And they're going to say, you know, if this is representative of

this community and this lifestyle, I don't want to be a part of it because I was treated poorly. And it might sound extreme, but it happens more and more. Again, a lot of the reason why I didn't want to join the ham radio community was because I met a lot of people who, quite frankly, didn't seem to have a lot of, they seem to have a lot of interest in telling you what the right way to ham was, but they didn't seem to have a lot of interest in actually inviting in new hams. And if you can't keep people coming into your community and wanting to learn and wanting to grow it and wanting to spread it, the community starts to die. And while we're on this subject, I see this a lot in the night vision community, too, which I've only recently become a part of. You know, like I see one of two groups.

I either see the people who have like the $10,000 binos and when they see somebody with a PB – Shut up, Andrew. We don't all have single man money to throw around and no one's paying me to take my clothes off. MOF Only Fans is not a thing. Although that would be a hell of a cool logo, MOF. But no one's paying me to take my clothes off. Certainly not enough to afford night vision. Anyway. Although, that would be a hell of a cool logo. M-O-F. But no one's paying me to take my clothes off. Certainly not enough to afford night vision.

Anyway. Anyway. But yeah, you see the guy with the $10,000 night vision, and when somebody walks up with a PBS-14, he's like, what are you, poor? And it's like, a Gen 3 PBS-14, even on the low end, is $2,500. That's not an amount of money to sneeze at for the common man but i also find that i see this other weird version of gatekeeping where people are like racing to the bottom of who can get the cheapest night vision who can get the best specs for the cheapest money and then you're constantly being told when you show up and say hey i just got my first pbs 14 oh you overpaid for it. You should have got it from, you know, JoeCrackhead.com, the fly-by-night not-vision seller who, you know, who doesn't have years in the industry,

who doesn't have any indication he'll back up a warranty, but you overpaid for it. You could have got it cheaper from this other guy. Yeah, well, I heard that when I got my PBS 14. Honestly, now that I think about it, because, like, I got mine from Ready Made Resources. resources and you got and you got told you overpaid right well no i didn't get no i just i was just i was told that oh what do they know about it and all this stuff and i'm like uh well did you listen it's like listen to this episode and you can tell

me what you what this guy knows because he freaking walked us through it and he's the one that really got the bug in but uh i mean but i mean and you have that unit i i hate it i hate selling it because the picture was so freaking clear and uh it it's one of the best i mean i've looked i mean i don't i don't have a lot of experience with night vision but like i've looked through uh you know a handful of units uh and that 14 that you have is it's one of the better pictures that i've seen especially when it comes to like basically zero blends and so you know blemishes and stuff so that so yeah no it and not to toot my own horn but jesus it's got a really nice ebi yeah i mean look just i use it differently than i think you did a lot i use it a lot for stargazing and i'm going to tell you that some of the

pictures i've managed to take through this thing at campsites way out in the middle of nowhere with minimal light pollution are i mean just like chef's kiss beautiful it's it's a beautiful tube you're welcome that could be anyway that could be misconstrued so poorly it's gonna be a that's a meme um but no yeah that's the meme but no yeah that's a thing so it's like what can you do well before we move on to the next thing are there any other

amateur radio guns, night vision anything pick your computers vehicles, cameras but specific to this show, the preparedness community. Right. I mean, knives.

Like, anything. Literally anything. Tents. Like, you name it and there's going to be a community where people are just D-bags. Instead of helping, they tear the people down. And that's not what we should be doing as a community. We should be helping building each other up. That's the biggest complaint that I have.

I mean, but that's the internet. You're going to have the trolls. It's a sad day when those people can't get punched in the face for being just D-bags who do nothing but criticize but don't want to help the community. But, yeah, it's just it's ridiculous and so and that's the thing that and that's ultimately what's going to destroy uh any community that's what's going to that that's what's going to do if the when the 2a when the

second amendment is no longer when it is stamped null and void and we have to and we are being forced to encamps i'm going to blame every single one of those people that uh did not either a stand up and fight uh for their right um to party but um thank you kyle i know right kyle sucks two-wheel drive sucks so bad i'm gonna tell uh i'm gonna tell you both what i've told quite a few people that give me good natured crap about having a two-wheel drive truck. I've driven two-wheel drive trucks into places that most people won't take a four-wheel drive truck and got back out. Just because a four-wheel drive already went through it. Go line up 24-wheel drive trucks on the road right in front of my house right now,

and I promise you I'm going to find 19 spotless undercarriages from trucks that have never been off-road. You and I both know that my truck goes off the pavement. I just have the common sense not to take it places where I'm going to have to call AAA to get back out. But yeah, anyway. Anyway. So this was something that you and I talked about very briefly earlier. Like, where's the line between advice and gatekeeping? briefly earlier, like where's the line between advice and gatekeeping? Because I don't feel like I struggle with this personally because kind of like your example you gave earlier where

someone was basically told like, hey, I see you're using Anderson Lower, just be advised, you know, the quality control and check tolerances, yada, yada, yada. And I don't consider that to be gatekeeping because you're giving some, you're not crapping on somebody's decision. You're saying like, Hey, just in case you weren't aware, cause you're brand new, this is something you might want to be aware of. And I feel like there's, there's definitely room to give heartfelt advice. Like, uh, recently in the amateur radio community, I saw a guy who, so, you know,, when I, as I started building this man pack out, my first attempt at using a roll of J-Pole was suspending it off of an aluminum telephone,

an aluminum fishing rod. And that did not work very well. Like I had all kinds of problems with that. And I, after becoming a radio nerd for reading and reading a lot about it, I realized that the problem was the aluminum is conductive and the antenna and the aluminum being that close together and touching each other is a problem. So I unscrewed that problem. But it wasn't a week later, I happened to be in one of the GMRS groups on Reddit and somebody was doing the exact same thing I had just fought with. They were suspending a roll-up J-pole, I think the exact same roll-up J-pole I use, and they were suspending it from an aluminum fishing rod. And bigger than shit, I jumped in there and I said, hey, learn from my mistake. This is what

I ran into. This is what I found out. This is how I i fixed it and i got a very quick prompt response like hey dude thanks for saving me a lot of headache and that was it it wasn't a oh you're stupid oh you're a moron oh this or the other don't know how to read advice i mean you get this uh with some of the leadership stuff that i've been um looking into and uh reading on and going into. Advice is basically like you're not – gatekeeping to me is just negative feedback. You're saying, hey, you're dumb for doing this or this is not the right way kind of thing. Advice is, hey, just a heads up, this is what I did

or these are some problems that I've read and this is why i didn't go with it or this is what the issue i had so hey just fyi maybe you might want to go with this brand instead uh because of this this this and this uh but hey man do your own rifle looks cool like that kind of stuff is just like that's advice i mean by all means give me a reason to get a bcm lower but then it's like if you really want to help me out hey it's on sale at this website like you know do stuff like that if you really want to push somebody towards a certain brand help them out look at look it up online forum and say hey check this out it's on sale over here go get it same thing with ham radio

same thing with night vision um i mean that's why uh that's why we like to that's why we push us night vision i mean they're not they're not necessarily the cheapest around but they're not the most expensive around and they freaking know their crap like i've never like i've never had with duncan i mean it'd be nice to get them back on you know like talk to those guys again and because we've never had this talk it gets straightforward it's hey we this, and this is what they have, and this is the information they give, and they shoot it straight. That's what's nice about some of these companies when you start talking to them. Well, and I feel like the biggest difference between advice and gatekeeping

is actually it's on behalf of the person giving it. It's the intent. on the it's on behalf of the person giving it it's the intent like when i gave that person advice it was because i really didn't want to see that person spend an entire evening frustrated that his antenna didn't work and then have to change like because you have to understand when i encountered this problem dude but like before i sat down and read about it and figured out and i i read four papers that night on freaking antenna theory. If you think you have insomnia, reading about antenna theory is a great way to cure it. It'll put you right to sleep or make you, make you suicidal one way or the other. But in any case,

but like I was checking continuity on the antenna itself. I was checking continuity in the connector. I was questioning whether my radio had a problem. I was going, I was going in like, who remembers the Looney Tunes where you'd have like Donald Duck and he would try to go in four directions at the same time and then split into four pieces and they all run around like chickens with heads cut off. That was me that afternoon because I was so frustrated and so spun up about what is the problem here? Why isn't this working? And it wasn't until I was actually taking the antenna down off the mast and I just, I happened to like hold the mast in my left hand and the antenna in my right hand, and they were about a foot and a half apart, about shoulder width. And somebody happened to key up on that

repeater and I could hear them clear as a bell for the first time all day. And as they were talking, I just moved my hand with the antenna closer to the aluminum mass without touching it, and the signal went away. And I was like, oh Jesus Christ. So then I figured out, you know, electromechanically why that was happening. But I digress. But I didn't want this person, who I've never met before, I'll probably never talk to him again, I didn't want him to have to go through the same frustration I did, because he was about to do exactly what I did with the same results. And my intent wasn't, hey, you're a moron. It was, hey, but I made this exact same

mistake. I'd really like to prevent you from having to walk over that same ground. Whereas I feel gatekeeping is not about trying to, I don't believe gatekeeping is done with the intent of improving the other person's position. I feel like it's done to prop up the person doing it. In other words, by telling you how stupid you are, I can feel superior. I can look superior because I've done this the right way with the right stuff and you haven't. So that's my personal metric is that if you go into a conversation from the standpoint of this person's an idiot and I'm right and I'm going to make them look and feel stupid so I can feel better about myself, then I think you're gatekeeping. I think if you go into the into it from the perspective of I obviously have more experience or I have different experience

in this and I want to share that so that this person can benefit without having to go through all the headache I did to get the knowledge, then I don't think you're gatekeeping. I think it just has to be done from a perspective of like, this person's new. We were all new at one point. And at some point, every one of us joined these communities not knowing what the hell we were doing. We had to figure it out. We're looking for information. We're looking for resources. We're looking for other people's experience. But you have to understand that not everybody is going to go spend $4,000 on Daniel Defense or $10,000 on Night Vision binos or sell their house in the suburbs and go move out to 20 acres, live like Little House on the Prairie just so they can honor your idea of the perfect gun guy, night vision nerd, prepper, whatever. perfect gun guy, night vision nerd, prepper, whatever. Like, people are not going to do that.

They're going to do what they can, where they are today, and you've got to meet them there. And that's always been something that I've been really big on with preparedness is I don't – I've had a person literally tell me, now bear in mind, Andrew, you and I have been talking for eight years now. We've been in these communities for a long time. And I don't think there's many people that would make the argument that we're not both in the preparedness community. But I had a person literally tell me to my face, if you're not homesteading, you're not a prepper. To my face.

And, well, all I did was I tilted my head and I said, that's kind of a hard sell for a person that, like, lives in the suburbs and my career is in the city and my wife's career is in the suburbs. And, like, what are you saying? I might as well just give up if I'm not willing to move out in the middle of nowhere and just grow my own food like Little House on the Prairie. And he said, you can do whatever you want. I'm just telling you you're not a prepper and i was like cool be cool story bro and i just walked off because at that point you get his name i'm not saying throw it out there but uh you just write it down so you know his house you go to first because apparently he's giving himself up

i couldn't even tell you what his name was is I put most of that out of my memory, but I keep it buried way, way in the back of the brain box just as a reminder to never, ever, ever, ever be that person that says, if you don't do X, you're not a prepper. Because we've had conversations with people who live in apartments, And if you tell a person that lives in an apartment, well, if you don't sell your if you don't get out of your apartment, go move out to middle of nowhere and start homesteading. You're not a prepper. That's not helping them. All that does, if it discourages them, then it stops them from from, you know, preparing, which could save their lives. And worst case, you turn them off so hard to the preparedness lifestyle they never want to rejoin it again and i i just i can't sign off on that it's it's frustrating to know that people like that exist in this community that i enjoy being

a part of and the best thing i can do is try to not be that person. But here's a question. Knowing that those people – not that kind of backdoor. Jeez. Where is the backdoor? Knowing that those people exist in these communities, knowing that they're going to gatekeep, knowing that they are going to try to turn you off because you bought a Poverty Pony or you bought Anderson or you bought, you know, you bought Gen 2 Night Vision and you're poor. Knowing that you're not – knowing that you're going to encounter those gatekeepers, how do – like what's the way forward? Because you still – I'm assuming you join these communities.

Give them a middle finger. I mean that's one option. But that's the thing, though, is these people, who gives a crap? If they don't give needed feedback or anything that's constructive towards what you're doing, if you can delete their comment, delete their comment. Send them just middle finger and keep walking

see you later like don't let them bother you don't let them discourage you from doing what you want to do just keep going I mean do your thing because who gives a crap especially on the internet

if it's somebody that you see every day in person, in and out, and then you can say, hey, maybe confirm to their face and say, what the heck is your problem kind of thing. But if they're on the internet and you never see them, then F them. Like just walk, just delete their comment, ignore, whatever you got to do, but don't let them get to you. Yeah, and I think the the other advice

i give because i mean i do a lot of internet crawling and forum crawling looking for information and um honestly i find that in a lot of those situations that if you if you become a lurker which for anybody not familiar with that forum term maybe i dating myself, that's a person that reads a lot and doesn't post very often. I find that nine times out of 10, if you just sit back and you read, like, don't ask a lot of questions at first, just search a lot, read a lot, browse a lot. I find that nine times out of 10, you'll find the information you're looking for, and you're able to kind of cruise through the forums or cruise through the internet, find the information without dealing with the gatekeepers at all, because they don't know you exist.

They're there looking for an opportunity to be an a-hole, and you don't give them one. You just go find the information that you need. And on the offhand chance you do feel the need to post about it, do it with a thick skin. Just know that those people are out there, and you're going to have to write them off, and you're going to have to just ignore them, for lack of a better word. But I mean, I bring all this up to say that, like, you know, if you're the person who, in hindsight, you feel as though you might be guilty of gatekeeping, please stop that.

Because we need to regard every person coming into whatever community we're a part of as an opportunity to keep that community alive. not welcoming people in, if you're not growing your numbers, if you're not expanding that base, then believe me when I tell you that you will be the last person left in that community that you may or may not be passionate about. And like I personally, you know, like over the years, I've been involved in the car community. I've done various things, you know, as hobbies. And I've left a lot of those because, you know, my interests moved on. But the things I'm still passionate about, I want to see those communities continue forever because I'm passionate about them. I think that they're necessary. I think they're useful. But if I'm the only person left on the Internet who's playing around with radios in my basement, then it ain't doing me a lot of good.

If you are the last person who's into preparedness, maybe it might do you a little bit of good, but it ain't going to do the community much good. And just to circle back through some of these questions, because it's mostly been Kyle and my wife. Kyle said that when he first joined the group, he was nervous to ask general basic questions about ARs, and quite frankly, given some of the crap we see on the internet these days, that's fair. That's fair.

It's fair to be nervous about that because for all you knew, you were about to, you know, kick over a hornet's nest run by a bunch of a-holes who just wanted to frigging make fun of you. And fortunately, like we, we,

the, I want to say that the core group that's kind of coalesced around matter of facts, we just don't tolerate that very well. Like, I want everyone to benefit from neurobiosis knowledge. I want everyone to help each other. That's kind of the whole point of doing this. And I totally understand you about night vision as a flashlight. Totally get it. For years and years and years and years.

I totally get it for years and years and years and years. And, you know, to this day, I carry a flashlight in my back pocket, not a PBS-14, because if you think I get some funny looks in a white-collar office for having a flashlight in my back pocket, carrying around a PBS-14 in my pocket would get me some really interesting looks. But anything else you want to slip in here? No,'t be a dick no please don't i mean always operate from that perspective of if someone else is trying to do something that i've done before politely give them your input and then just don't be a dick if they're gonna if they're gonna do it the wrong way then let them do it the wrong way. I mean, quite frankly, we have a patron in our patron group who has told me on a couple of occasions, like, hey, you're doing that the hard way.

And he says this piece and then he backs off. And then usually I have to come back to him a couple weeks later and be like, okay, so what was that thing you were telling me that I ignored you the first time? Because I was doing things the hard way. But he doesn't push. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't humiliate. He's not a jerk about it. He just says, hey, you're doing that the hard way. If you did it this way, it'd be a little easier for you.

And you may or may not figure that out on your own eventually. But I guess we'll go ahead and wrap this up. I really didn't think this would be a full hour. And it's 45 minutes. I feel like it's a good stopping point. I just wanted to talk about it because it was something that I've seen more than once, and I always, always, always try to get people to leave that habit behind and just really view every person that wants to come into the community

as an opportunity to into the community as an opportunity to keep the community going. I mean, it is and it is probably no more important anywhere than the preparedness community because we are already such a small community of people. And like we have to acknowledge that we're going to have to meet every single potential prepper where they are, give them the knowledge that they can make use of, and put them on the path towards their version of preparedness, not our version of preparedness. All right, well, let's go ahead and wrap it up. Matter of fact, this podcast is heading out the

door. If you want merch, the links are in the show description. If you'd like to become a patron, those links are in the show description. If you want to harass me and Andrew, mofpodcast.com is a good place to hit the contact list and send us hate mail. Or you can find us on Instagram or Facebook or here on YouTube or on Rumble or on X

even though I don't check X very often. I probably should. And you can harass us to your heart's content. Have a good night, stay out of trouble, talk to you next week, bye guys. Bye. Thank you. Outro Music