Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #557 - GOP Backstabs Voters By Voting For Red Flag law Gun Control w/Seth Dillon

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Tim, Ian, Seamus of FreedomToons, and Lydia join the CEO of the satirical Babylon Bee publication to discuss the GOP's choice to bend to gun control legislation, the "dead internet" theory, how satire highlights truths with humor and plays on modern "robot" responses from people online, and the mainstream media saying that the Babylon Bee is not funny. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Man, it is a slow news day. Andrew Gillum is not really in the news all that much, but he was indicted on 21 felony corruption charges. Kind of crazy story because he was like 0.4% away from being the governor of Florida, and then we would not have Ron DeSantis. So crazy story. We'll talk a little bit about that. We got a story that's got everybody a little bit pissed off is that 14 Republicans, four of them out of the blue, have signed on to red flag law gun control BS. And now Steve Scalise is basically going around being like, do not vote on this when it goes to the floor or whatever. And I can't say I'm surprised. Republicans, in my opinion, are fairly garbage.

But we'll talk about that. We also got Ron DeSantis in many statewide polls actually leading Trump. And on Predict It, Ron DeSantis is beating Trump to be the candidate in 2024. And I think the issue is quite simple. Ron DeSantis is in politics now, actively engaging in the culture war. So his star is rising. Donald Trump is not. He's having rallies, but he's just either stagnant or just there. Ron DeSantis has two years of growth ahead of him, so I think it's a fairly good bet. We'll talk about this, and we'll talk about fake news and other issues around that satire, because we are being joined by the CEO of the Babylon Bee, Seth Dillon.

That's me. I'm sorry. Introduce yourself. That's my cue there. My bad. CEO of the Babylon Bee. Fake news you can trust, yeah. Fake news you can trust. I'm sorry. Introduce yourself. That's my cue there. My bad. CEO of the Babylon Bee. Fake news you can trust. Yeah. Fake news you can trust.

I love it. Well, so what's the Babylon Bee for those that might not know? For those that might not know, we're like, what do they call us on our Wikipedia page? The conservative version of the onion, I guess. It's kind of how we were known initially in the media. Yeah, we exaggerate the truth with fake stories that often come true because reality is catching up to satire. Yeah. It's about as fast as we can write it.

And then what do you do when your satire comes true? Do you have to go back and then delete it because it's real news now? It's like, oh. We mark it down as a fulfilled prophecy. We're tracking them in a spreadsheet now. I posted a Google Doc recently. We've got like 67 or 70 of these things. Jokes that came true.

Well, we'll talk about all that. That'll be fun. We also got Seamus. Seamus Coughlin of Freedom Tunes here. I am interested in having a conversation about DeSantis and Trump. That's always a fun one. I have a YouTube channel called Freedom Tunes. We just launched a website, freedomtunes.com.

You guys go over there for $5 a month. You become a member. Get an extra cartoon every week. We've got a bunch of cartoons up there now. You'll also help us get independent from big tech. Go over there. Check it out. I love you. I was trying to remember in regards to Babylon, who was the guy with all the prophecies? Was he a Babylonian guy? It wasn't Nebuchadnezzar,

I don't think. Well, there were a number of prophets in the Old Testament, but Babylon is a reference to the exile. So you had the Hebrew people in exile, and Babylon B is a play on that, saying that we're conservative Christians today are doing dispatches from exile. Well, let's talk more about that tonight, maybe if it comes up. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I'm over here missing my cues in the corner because I'm distracted. I'm very sorry.

You have my full attention now. Seth is fantastic. He's very funny. I'm really excited for this evening's conversation. Don't forget to go to timcast.com, become a member.

You click that sign-up button in the top right, and you'll get access to members-only segments of this show. We're going to have one for you tonight at 11 p.m. It is uncensored

and not family-friendly. I imagine tonight's going to be particularly funny, so it'll be a good time. You'll also be supporting our journalists, our anti big tech censorship infrastructure. We use Rumble. So don't forget to smash that like button as well. Subscribe to this channel. Share the show with your friends if you really do like it. Let's jump to our first story from not the B.

Oh, 14 GOP senators just voted to limit your right to keep and bear arms, including Lindsey Graham, who said he would vigorously oppose the bill. Well, if you trust Lindsey Graham, you've got other issues going on. Okay. So that's basically the story. The Senate on Tuesday broke through nearly 30 years of stalemate on gun control legislation by voting 64 to 34 to advance an 80-page gun safety bill to respond to the mass shootings of Buffalo and Uvalde that left 31 people dead. The Senate voted to proceed to the bill just more than an hour after negotiators unveiled its text, giving lawmakers little time to digest its details.

So the bill is actually quite absurd. I was reading that it doesn't mention guns until like page 25 it's mostly like a whole bunch of weird medicaid bloat that they couldn't get through anywhere else and they were like uh gun control and they just jammed a bunch of trash into it but uh yeah the bill is actually really bad you've got the republican senator from west virginia shelly moore capito who's voting in favor of it which is nuts but surprise surprise the GOP is selling you out there's crisis intervention

not red flag laws crisis intervention which is literally the same thing they want a 10 day waiting period and juvenile check for all background checks for anyone under 21 which basically means from 18 to 21 as a legal adult, you will have

basic what, like a 10 day waiting period, which is what they've been trying to do for a long time. I'm not going to sit here and say that they're trying to ban guns outright, but this is the game they play. They introduce a crazy bill and say, we want to ban weapons. We want to raise the age to 21. Everyone loses their mind and they go, okay, okay, fine. Just enhanced background checks for people over 18, but under 21, that's acceptable, right? And Minotuita is like, no, what's acceptable would be the Republicans change what they did. And I think it was Pennsylvania.

They took the bill and they just erased all the text and put in constitutional carry instead. How about that? How about the Republicans actually stand up for our right to keep in bare arms but um makes me wonder like if uh a shooter appears that has an illegally acquired gun and does a mass shooting like are they gonna then try and make it harder for people to get weapons again like this is complete insanity yeah exactly i mean look there are so many laws on the books that would have prevented virtually all of the mass shootings that have become big news stories, but that hasn't prevented them from trying to solve the problem by introducing more laws. To go back to your point, Tim, I disagree.

I mean, I do think they're trying to ban all guns. I think they know that change occurs incrementally. And every time you point out, okay, yeah, yeah. And so every time you point out that you know that, they go, that's the slippery slope fallacy, which is not, of course, as we have seen, not a fallacy. The slippery slope fallacy is a fallacy if you're saying you should only be against this because it could lead to other things. But if you're able to explain why it will, based on a pattern we've seen in the past of incremental change constantly occurring where the left says it won't, then that's not fallacious. That's just pattern recognition.

Yep. Yeah. All right. So we all agree that. I think that's a wrap for tonight. Good show, guys. Good show. Time for the after show.

Let's get dirty. You're right, Seamus. I mean, Hitler did it slowly. It took him 10 years, about 19. I think they got started in not 29, 33, really when Hitler got the, what they call it, what was that act that he signed that basically stripped everybody's rights away? The Enabling Act? Yeah, yeah.

They burned the Reichstag. Somebody burned it. He blamed the communists. And then, and research has been done on this. They said, there's no way someone could, these two guys that Hitler blamed or this one guy could have burned that building the way it burned. They tried to replicate it. They're like, no, no. This was like a – they think it was a staged planned event probably by Hitler to scare everyone in the country and then do the enabling act and seize their weapons. So I'm quite pissed off at these Republicans.

Yeah. And one of the Republicans that supported this was Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. And I'm kind of pissed because we're currently building our new West Virginia headquarters. And I was like, this is a state. It's a great state to invest in, to bring our business, which is going to bring in a lot of jobs. And we're expanding. All thanks to all of you as members at TimCast.com. And now I have to deal with the Republican senator selling me out. Yo, I'm trying to move my business here. They really don't want it.

I'll tell you this. Maryland hates us. And I don't mean as in like me personally i mean maryland hates business like they have laws that are just like we will flog you for being a business it's so insane to start even a charity in maryland's ridiculous costs yeah like get your act together you guys do you not want me to start a business they don't new jersey was the same way it's like i would like to start a business and bring wealth. They would be like, we're going to beat you over the head instead.

So we leave New Jersey. We have a part of our operation in Maryland. And now going through just the logistics of operating in Maryland, I'm just like it is better for the business to shut everything down and spend like a million bucks to just move everything out of Maryland because it is so hostile to business. But now I got to contend with this Shelley Moore Capito woman. So I was just like, okay, I need to confer with my lawyer as to how much money I'm allowed to spend to make sure she never wins reelection again. And I'm really pissed off about this. Perhaps the only thing these people respond to are leftist tactics like organizing 24-7 protests outside their homes or putting up billboards all over their hometown, insulting them and dragging their character.

I'm sick of these people. They're scumbags. And the problem is conservatives, there's too many conservatives are cowards, don't do anything, and that's why they do it. These GOP members know that they can support the Democrats and Republicans will grumble and forget about it. So I'm not I'm not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I'm more libertarian than anything. And I'm right pissed off that this woman in the second most Trump supporting state just sold me out.

How dare you, madam? I don't I am going to put whatever I can, whatever legal extent extent, to make sure you are retired by your re-election. And you know what the problem is? She knows it. Her re-election isn't until 2026. She's old. She's probably like, well, I'll burn down the house because I'm leaving anyway. These people are absolute scumbags.

Cornyn as well. Well, we're going to negotiate on, it's not really red flag laws, literally red flag laws. She puts out a statement. She's like, we will never have red flag laws in these states. So you're just enacting a federal legislation to expand red flag laws, but hoping it doesn't come to West Virginia, you absolute scumbag. Well, and also this idea of negotiating, right? I mentioned this on the show the other day.

They'll talk about compromise. It's not compromise if you don't get anything out of it. It's not a negotiation if there's no need for you to be having a conversation with the person. We've seen the polling data. We can't predict the future, but it's probably likely that Republicans are going to do pretty well in the midterms. So you'd think they'd be able to look down the line and say, we have a little bit of leverage to not have to cave in to the left every single time they demand something of us. But no. They're going to win the midterms, and everyone's going and cheer and then they're gonna be like and now what were you

trying to pass democrats exactly exactly now that we've won and don't need to argue with you why don't you move to florida come to florida uh you know virginia west virginia is not all bad just because this the senator did one bad thing ron de santis is pretty great, but the weather, it's more expensive. So West Virginia is still a great place for expanding a business. Land is cheap, much less regulation. You guys don't have constitutional carry yet, but I believe it's coming. The gun laws are still not that bad, but, you know. I lived in Florida, man, and you can't go out.

Well, I lived in Miami for a year, and you just can't go outside. With a beanie on. There are little aspects on the side. No, Ian, you can't go outside at all. Hey, man, I'm with you. I was in Miami in February. The windows are drenched. It was like 99 degrees.

In February. You can go outside January and February. The windows on every building are drenched. Yeah, our AC overloaded and started getting all this condensation because I had cracked a window, and it flooded the ceiling. They have a statue of the man who invented air conditioning in Miami. I'm not kidding. They warned us not to open the window.

So I'll say this. You know, I've been trying to think of like what I can do. And I was thinking like maybe we can start a porta potty company and call them Shelly Crapitos. Or maybe like Shelly Capito boxes. And I wonder if there's like a legal issue of me doing that. I tweeted like, can I open a restaurant in Charleston, West Virginia, which is the biggest city? It's only 50,000 people. And then name the restaurants.

Shelly Moore Capito is trash. I'm wondering. I'm going to look into how much it'll cost to buy every billboard in that town and just putting up, I'm not even talking political ads, just character ads, like you're a bad person, you're scum, and just buying them

indefinitely. And I'm like, it's good marketing because people are going to be like, why are these ads here? Oh yeah, Tim Pool's really pissed off about this. Make sure everybody knows how pissed off I am. Look, I said that I'll put a sticky note on my monitor, and I will say every... I'll put it this way. We have sponsors who pay good money

for us to read out their ads and all that. I wonder what the total monetary value of me ragging on her would be if every single night I said, never forget she's a scumbag. I think when you said earlier about organizing and getting people to rally, obviously you don't want people to go to people's houses. But you can organize people to call at 2 p.m. on a day. You make a video in the morning and you tell people at 3 p.m. you call this number, this office,

and tell her that you want whatever, that you want her to reverse her position on this and when she gets 780 calls a day for five days in a row she will change her position yeah why do you why do you have to do that why why is her position this position like where did the pressure come from you know what i think it is she's not up for re-election until 2026 she's probably going to retire i don't know she's going to be 60s or something, or I think she's in her 60s. I think she's going to be in her 70s maybe. And so she's probably like, what do I care? I can burn the place down on my way out and get what I want. And some people have pointed out that there was some, like, I don't want to get too much into it, but some exchanges were made. Let's just put it that way. So there was some

monetary movement in some capacity that I'm not super familiar with, so I'm not going to get into, but she probably cut a deal. In my opinion, they came to her and said, look, you're not up for reelection until 2026. Your voters are dumb as box of rocks. So they're going to completely forget. That's what they think. That's what they think of you. By the time you're up for reelection, this will be a non-issue.

So give it to us now. We'll give you these things. And who cares anyway? And then they probably all popped the champagne, started laughing and spitting on pictures of their constituents. I despise these people. It's not obvious. I can tell. I can tell. I think there is something to what you're saying about putting these people on blast regularly. It's important for your audience to hear, especially members of your audience

who live in the area, who actually is interested in representing their interests and who will bend at the last moment. It's very disappointing that there were any Republicans who are willing to sign on to this. Unfortunately, some of them were, and I think we do have a duty to criticize them. It's also about making contact. You can criticize them in the background, but they're going to ignore it unless you actually call the office because it's that time. The time is more valuable than the money. Didn't Chuck Schumer say it was okay to protest at the home of senators? He did. Well, that's insane.

He did say that? I believe so. So it's okay? No, Chuck Schumer's wrong if he said that. Why? Why is it wrong? Well, he said it. I mean, I think as far as I know, it's illegal. No, it's not.

It's illegal to protest in front of the home of a judge or a member of a court, but that's not getting enforced either. So maybe the only thing these people will answer to is an actual anger group of protesters being like, you know what? I'll put it this way. The left, they do these things. It works for them. Republicans keep dropping to their knees. Maybe it's about time some younger libertarian moderate conservative whatever you want to call it started saying okay we can play the game as well yeah the united states is an angry group of protesters that was what we were when we started we still are the united states is a protest a wise men told me that one time it sounds a lot like mob rule though you know you just get

the mob with the pitchforks yeah running the show and whoever has the the bigger mob and there's the conundrum that's why we have representatives as the the the cultural right which has expanded quite dramatically thanks to the left um now incorporates post-liberals along with moderates and conservatives as they continually just say no no we don't do that here and the left is like you got it buddy we do then republicans keep just saying it's a simple equation i'll give it to you in terms of why twitter likes censorship twitter likes censorship for one reason they have a lot of employees who are very much into censorship but there's also the fact that do you think dave rubin is going to lead a group of classical liberals with pitchforks and bricks and malta

cocktails at twitter hq and they're all going to I agree. We disagree with you. We disagree. I disagree. Do you think Dave Rubin would ever lead a violent mob to that quarters of Twitter? I don't know about that. Probably not his style. Yeah, he definitely wouldn't. Probably not his style. Do you think Antifa would?

Absolutely. Of course they would. That's their whole thing. And so when you have a dude literally trying to kill a sitting Supreme Court justice and people illegally protesting at the homes of justices, the politicians know exactly who they're afraid of. They're terrified of the left, and the right wing is a bunch of spineless cowards that they can ignore

because the right's always just like, well, you know, hold on there a minute. I remember back in like 2016, I was out in front of Trump Tower in New York, and there was a bunch of people protesting, and there was one dude leaning up against the wall. We were talking. He asked some questions because we were like journalists covering the event. And I was like, you know, what do you think? You support Trump?

He's like, oh, yeah, definitely. And then I was like, so why don't you start saying you support Trump? No, no, no. I don't want anyone to know. I was like, okay, dude, secret Trump voters. Congratulations. Yeah, but don't you see like with the school board meetings, the pushback from parents, the pushback on Disney, a lot of this stuff.

Like don't you see the right getting a little fired up and throwing the weight around a little bit more? The parents in Loudoun and a lot of these parents that are speaking up aren't conservatives. They're just regular people who are not doing it for political reasons. Yeah, we were talking last night about how the right is really everybody that's not being crushed into this cult by the mass media yeah and the way you framed it like the teachers right the people that the student i'm sorry the parents rising up the the immediate assumption is that must be the right that's how the media frames it when you go and talk to these people like i don't know anything about that loudon county is like a suburb of dc you know it's like a minute away from here this is like a mixed very liberal area these people are getting angry so you take a look at, you know, I can put it this way.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube purged all of the conservatives who are talking about standing up and protesting. Laura Loomer chaining herself to Twitter HQ. Oh, they ban her. Alex Jones. They say those metaphors don't fly. Then you get protesters outright breaking the law and jenseki encouraging them to do it and you know social media companies like yeah it's fine so

what they don't have to worry about they don't have to worry about conservatives they have to worry about parents it's parents because parents it's not political it's about their kids they turned parents into a voting block exactly which is crazy unbelievable yeah yeah they don't understand it's so funny they'll um you know they'll talk about like how terrified they feel and how scared they are of the right it's like all right if you're scared of someone you don't start screwing with their kids yeah it's it's so obviously phony what can we do you know i was so i've been doing uh we we got a billboard in times square which was like it was meant to be like a big statement like we've arrived like we are now in the space and that now a whole bunch of other organizations like you know the daily wire had times square

billboard for us we worked together on one parlor bought uh the same digital space that we did and uh i'm also looking at like what's the best way we've never spent any money on marketing and so one of the things we came up with was direct marketing is a bad idea what's a good idea is culture jamming as marketing. So what we did in Times Square was partly that. Some of the best marketing was just calling out Taylor Lorenz for being a liar. That worked really well for us and The Daily Wire. And so I'm wondering, like, can I just,

how much would it cost to buy every billboard in a town of 50,000? I'd imagine it'd be like 20 grand, you know, for a month because it's a small, very small city. So, okay, what if we just do that? We just start crowdfunding. We start just taking major cultural actions to make bold statements and just dominate the conversation, set the news cycle. Yeah, let's do it. And it also enhances local economies. That's a good idea.

Do people pay a lot of attention to billboards? When every billboard in your town is the same one ragging on your local politician, I think people will notice. Tim is going to put a billboard outside of a Supreme Court justice's house. He's going to put a billboard on a billboard. You don't know what to be doing. So during the lockdowns, I went to a sushi restaurant and nobody was wearing masks. We walk in the front door and we're standing next to the host podium or whatever. And they're like, put a mask on.

And then I was like, nobody's wearing masks. And they're like, but you have to wear a mask. And I was like, now hold on there a minute. Like nobody in the restaurant is wearing a mask. And they're like, they're eating. And I was like, we're planning on eating too. And they're like, no, you have to wear a mask. And they're like, they're eating. And I was like, we're planning on eating too. And they're like, no, you have to wear a mask now. And then I was like, if I sit down in that table five feet from me, can I not wear the mask? And they were like, yes, but put the mask on now. And then I

was like, are you serious? And then all of the employees go, yes. And I'm like, dude, I am done with this. And I was like, you know what I could do? I could hire someone to fly a sign in front of their restaurant or like offer coupons to a rival sushi restaurant across the street or something. Why not? Why not actually do culture jamming to make a statement against those who don't believe in freedom, who are too cowardly or these politicians? How about I hire 50 people to fly signs all throughout Charleston, West Virginia, that just are dancing with signs saying that Shelley Capito is trash. Just that. Make sure everybody knows there's disdain for this person. There's value to dogging on your opponent. There's also value to enhancing the

people you believe in. So I think both are effective. You know, the funny thing is, someone tweeted at me that as an individual, you can spend as much money as you want on any kind of political statement and that there are some limits. But if you're doing as educational, in fact, it could be even tax deductible or something. And I'm like, I don't know about all that. Like, I'll just talk to my lawyer and be like, what am I allowed to do in terms of ragging on rhinos? Because I think it would be excellent marketing for Timcast and the podcast to make like an ad that's like, come watch our podcast. And this politician is a piece of garbage.

I think it'd be great advertising. You know? But that's political. So certain billboards won't run it because it's political. Maybe if I just say the person's name is garbage,

then it's a free speech thing. Like we were able to say Taylor Lorenz is a liar. Technically that was true, I think. We said Taylor Lorenz docs libs of TikTok. That's what it was. And the Times Square billboard was like, that was true, I think. We said Taylor Loren's doc's lives of TikTok. That's what it was.

And the Times Square billboard was like, that's fine. Yeah. As long as we weren't advertising a product, we were just making a statement. Part of it is, I think, a good thing for you personally to do is to stay cool, stay calm, and organized. It's a vague, like, where's the call to action in it? And it might not be for you. That might be for – I'm speaking to myself because you're very good with fire and aggression and stuff like that.

But I think it's the long game. It's going to be a 50-year, 100-year. They need you calm and able to see the big picture. I'm just – you know what I'm really bored with? It's like everything's just so routine and yeah and the same thing like exactly the left comes out there's a double standard imagine if we did this yeah exactly the same thing over and over again and i'm like won't someone please throw a figurative pie the name the name calling falls into that though with the it's it's boring it's

repetitive you know everyone's a racist everyone's a bigot everyone who disagrees with you is disinformation you know yeah hate speech hate speech but that's you know it's just so repetitive it's monotonous it's put a fun it loses its effectiveness when it's just it's applied to everybody that you disagree with let's try let's put a funhouse mirror in front of these people's faces yeah i saw um a while ago and this is something we all see frequently but someone posted an article on twitter about the racist origins of blank. And they said, look, this is a really interesting article. It's like, how could any article calling something racist be interesting at this point? All right, all right.

How could you possibly read that and be like, wow, what an original thought? You've called something you didn't like racist. Seth. Does that still get clicks? Yeah. It's a good question. Give me a random noun. A person, place, or thing.

Random noun. Random. House. Make it a good... Oh, that one's too obvious. Get a little bit more obscure. Dog. That was my first thought.

Okay. I'm going to put it this way. I'm going to search for noun is racist. I'm going to do it. Okay, fine. Dog is racist. Sure it is. Dog is racist.

Yeah. Yeah. Why is my dog racist? Can dogs be racist? Can dogs be racist? What to do if your dog seems racist? Can dogs be racist? What?

That's a real question. I think their dog is racist. My dog is racist. Look up dogs are racist. I'm sure you'll see some article about gentrification. I remember the article, dude. I've seen this before. Yeah.

I remember the article. It's the same thing. Ask Amy. I think their dog is racist. I looked up amygdala. The effects of skin tone on race- up amygdala the effects of skin tone on race related amygdala activity wow

I mean maybe maybe it's like houses are racist genetic realism or something well this one's easy of course they are yeah yep

I mean that one's obvious give me a good noun computer oh come on that one's too obvious no no it's not that obvious computers are racist sour patch kids when computers are racist. Sour Patch Kids.

When computers are racist, rise of the racist robots. Master and slave. The fight over offensive terms. Can computers be racist? Come on. These are green newsguards certified. Artificial intelligence is racist. Even AI is racist.

Computer programs are racist. What about mugs? And sexist. Mugs. Let's try mugs. Mugs are racist. Yeah. Eyeglasses.

Mugs are racist. Mugs. Racist. Oh, now it's selling me stuff. There you go. Mugs are racist. Racist. Oh, now it's selling me stuff. There you go. Capitalism wins again. Amazon racist coffee mug. So the thing is, we did learn that there are indeed racist mugs.

Turns out you can buy one. Racist mugs at Zazzle. No, this one's all selling me. Can Starbucks fix racism with a message on top? Racism 101, mugs, cocktails, and statues. Bro, I'm telling you, you can get... This one's funny because the entire search is like... They're trying to sell you racist mugs.

But there was one article... I guess there's a market for it. There's one article talking about mugs, cocktails, and statues, racism 101. Okay, I got a good noun for you. Racism. Racism is racist? Is racism racist? Let's find out.

Probably not. Won't be able to find out. I mean, I was told love is love, so racism might be racist. I mean... Is that really a thing, though, racism? I don't know. I mean, the problem there is that I don't think Google search can accurately understand what that means. Gotcha, Google.

Can't deal with tautologies. Yeah. Flags are racist. What about us? Yeah. Flags are racist. Confederate battle flag. How Americans feel about the U.S. flag.

Why is the Confederate flag racist? Oh, of course. That's the most I'm going to confederate. Let's do this. Let's do minus Confederate. Minus Confederate. Did I spell that right? He's using Google.

Oh, blue line flag. There we go. There we go. American flag flyers are racist. Yeah, remember the flags on trucks? Journalists are freaking out. He's just, it's all racist. Mowing your lawn is racist.

I saw an article about that. Mowing your lawn is racist. If you do any landscaping at all, it's privileged. It's all racist. Mowing your lawn is racist. I saw an article about that. Mowing your lawn is racist. If you do any landscaping at all, it's privileged. It's super racist. It's better to have tall grass. Manicured lawns are racist. That's Gad said. I'm trying to find out if ninjas are racist.

I'm sure. That was Gad said, though. That was Gad said, though. He could be joking. He's definitely joking. But I'm not sure if he's actually referencing anything in that joke. I think Ryan Long did this bit where he was like, you know, how to write an article. And then he was like, just what was it?

He was like pulling nouns and adjectives out of a hat. Yeah. Why blank is blank. And then he showed all the articles that actually existed. That was just absolutely insane. The dogs being racist one is actually was a big deal because a bunch of people were pointing out that they were saying dogs are a sign of gentrification and dogs themselves are racist because they like bark at you know minorities or something like that well it's so in a weird way this is obviously a sign

of cultural decay but there's also something here about the bubble that's existed within the new media landscape so you've talked about this before, but basically you had a lot of venture capitalists investing in blog type websites and news sites. So these companies were way overvalued. They hired a bunch of people to write articles. There's only so many things you can write articles about. So eventually you just got a bunch of stuff about racism and the market became oversaturated with stuff that no one was really reading. Let me talk to you guys about this. We briefly mentioned it a couple couple days ago, the dead internet theory. Do you guys know about this?

Interesting theory. Yeah, from the other day, I remember this. The dead internet theory is that in 2016 and 17, that's when major corporations, government figures, took over most social elements of the internet and replaced humans with bots. Or that the bots dramatically outweigh the production of content than humans do so the internet is actually a zombie you think

you're interacting with other people just like you but you're really just interacting with bots and it's it's a decent theory i mean the idea is simple donald trump was memed into the presidency regular people went online and said here's's what we want, and Trump wins. And they went, uh-oh, that's bad. Then you get a bunch of companies that start running sock puppet accounts and bot accounts, trying to make money or manipulate. And it's not a conspiracy, even though they call it a conspiracy theory. It's like the natural tendency of what corporations would do to try and gain influence and sell products.

But I got one more for you. This one's for you guys, Seamus and Seth. I think this is bot person theory. The actual conspiracy theory, in my opinion, is that 2016, 2017 is the point at which the internet crossed the threshold of being the most dominant media network for human beings. Newspapers, television, telephone were now underneath the internet.

And with all people being online, we're now realizing that most people are as dumb as a box of rocks, effectively non-player characters. So to somebody who's used to having a real conversation, being, you know, politically discerning or introspective. They're seeing a whole bunch of people post the same thing, repeat themselves, regurgitate. And this, this,

this other theory started. The person basically said, I've seen the same post over and over again. I've seen the same comments repeated ad nauseum. And I'm just like, you want to believe the robots, but it could just be that most people are just sheep and are just vomiting up the same thing they heard.

And the reality is it's people. That's the creepy thing. I think it's a better explanation. If I'm there and I'm real and you're there and you're real and you're there and you're real, we're all there. We're real. There's a lot of real people there. It's not all bots.

There's obviously a lot of people involved in this thing.'s not all dead and people do just parrot these lines over and over you and it's mindless you know they just they just say whatever they're supposed to say and or what they've heard they regurgitate what they've heard i see it all the time and it seems like bot behavior but it's really just people we are we have become bots we're basically just machines just regurgitating stuff yeah and uh you you've got to be careful not to fall into that trap yourself when you're engaging with them. And then you just start saying what you're supposed to say in response to that. And you're engaging in your own, you know, like. That's why I post nonsense on Twitter.

That's why I said, you know, figuratively throw a pie. Like, do something weird. I posted an A at Trump as a chicken. Yeah. I was, you know, I've always, I thought this my whole life. I was just like, how come no one ever does anything unpredictable? It's not really true that it's never, but 80%

of the time it's completely predictable. 20% of the time you're going to be surprised by what someone does. And I was just like, for the most part, everybody's walking around doing exactly what you'd expect them to do. Not a single person decides to do anything weird. Some people do. They're all just thinking really weird things. When I started making Internet videos.

Like what would Jesus Christ do with this modern technology? He'd make Internet videos and try and spread the God. So I was like, I'll do it. And so I did it. And that was weird. And it's not me. That's not weird. I'm not completely routine and boring.

Of course, everyone's doing it. Right. It's the natural order is what I'm saying is like, how come no one's buying porta potties and labeling them Shelley Moore Capito? You know what I mean? Like you've got all these powerful, wealthy people who are complaining but doing nothing or doing very little. I think the power of making an internet video is misunderstood. It's not quite – the power you have, the resonation of your vibration through voice and light is so powerful dude if i'm if i made 50 million bucks a year or

something like that i would just go to these companies and be like how many how much will it cost to buy like 10 times square billboards and just put up the same thing just doing something weird like ragging on shelly moore capito well so i will answer with a jordan peterson quote right it's like it's not many people are creative and it's not obvious why you would want to be because like creative people are miserable when they're not doing creative things. And he sort of had this very insightful, interesting explanation there, but yeah, it's basically that. I mean, most people are not creative in the way that we usually define the term. And so they're not interested in doing those kinds of things. I think when somebody is more creative and they do have means,

they're often afraid to do anything interesting with it. Man, that's lame. Sure, but I think it's the way things are. Because they're afraid of being told that they suck. Elon's buying Twitter. Elon is a very unique example, right? And we talked about this with Jeremy Boring, right?

Just sort of comparing Elon to Bezos. And he described Bezos as the most boring, interesting person or most interesting, boring person. It's like he builds a rocket, but it's not cool. Exactly. Exactly. So I think you see a lot of that. Do you think that people with means that are creative, they're afraid of being told that they suck? Well, no.

So I think that's part of it. I think that everyone has an excuse not to do the interesting thing they want to do. So when you don't have a lot of money, it's I could never do this because I couldn't afford to. Then when you do have money, well, I could never do this because I could never afford to damage my reputation or risk my wealth. I guess people are scared of their reputations or something. Yeah, that's the big thing.

Your brand. Yeah, their brand. People always have been. I think we put more emphasis on it today, and I think we've been trained to. We've become very narcissistic, but it's huge for people. Isn't there a point where you just have so much money, they say it's FU money, but it's not? It's not. I mean, let's be real.

Can we name – I guess Elon Musk is buying Twitter, which is cool. It's not particularly outrageous. It did anger many people on the left but it's actually a relatively i it's it's it's a big it's a big bold move but it's not throwing a pie you know what i mean you don't think so no no no throwing a pie would be like buying a super bowl commercial or buying a billboard of ian and hollywood just saying i remember you and just like culture jamming well i just from my perspective i never expected you know you know, I was, I was trying to think to myself, well, what would be a possible solution to this issue of viewpoint discrimination

happening on these platforms? You know, like there, there's either going to be some kind of a law that's passed, possibly, you know, Congress could get involved in draft legislation or the courts could do something. I never in a million years thought, oh, well, maybe the richest man in the world is going to come along, describe himself as a free speech absolutist and buy the platform and fix the problem. It was a curveball. It was unexpected. So if you go back to the point that you were making about no one ever does anything unexpected, who expects that someone's going to come in and offer more than the company's worth just to make a point about how this needs to be free speech? I would say it's on the line. A rich guy buying something expensive is like, okay,

it is surprising that someone made a move like that. But it's not like if Elon came out and said he was going to put $100 million into making a rival news organization, that would be like, whoa. But I will say Elon definitely fits the bill, definitely. Because he tweets things at like AOC, like stop making me blush, like absolutely amazing. So he's definitely doing it. Yeah, he trolls people very effectively. Very nice.

I think it's also a definitional problem, right? Because if you're asking why aren't people usually doing things that are unpredictable, if they were, it would be predictable. I mean, by definition, for something to be unpredictable, it has to happen infrequently.

But you, like, I'm just saying there are a lot of very wealthy people that are, and many of them are somewhat directly or tangentially involved in, like, culture war issues. And, like, how come nobody just does bold, weird things? Save Elon, right? Because, you know, he tweet, tweeting, him tweeting at AOC was hilarious. Buying Twitter is massive. It's like, I'm just i i've talked about this many times there's very few people who just do the weird thing donald trump did with the uh the apprentice that was so weird like and then he did the president thing yeah but then he ran for president and he always kind of yeah that was weird that one was weird we can acknowledge we can acknowledge

like we've said this a number of times. If you told someone 10 years ago that Trump was going to be president and the D-Day was going to try to unseat him, everything that's happened, we would go, I don't believe that. Just some weird thing. Seriously? Just pause for a second. Imagine it's 2012 and you're like sitting with your buddy and like you're in the living room and he's like, you're like, I've come back from the future 10 years. And he's like, wow, what happened? You're like, okay, well, Donald Trump ran for president against Hillary Clinton and won.

And then a bunch of special interests accused him of secretly working with Russia. And even MSNBC had a guest on entertaining that he may have been a Soviet agent going back to the 80s. He ultimately won. Then Joe Biden gets elected. Donald Trump supporters think the election was stolen. So several hundred stormed the Capitol building during the electoral electoral vote counting process texas files a lawsuit against pennsylvania and half the country and other half the country are now involved in whether or not the election was legitimate they're going to be like what that's never so was obama's birth

certificate real or fake yeah did we ever get to the bottom of that? Did we ever get to the bottom of that? Did we ever figure that out? Howard has lost – no, I guess that was probably after 2012. Let me try and phrase what I mean. Because obviously Elon Musk is doing funny things. But he's not doing funny things like buying 100 porta-potties and putting the name of a senator on it and distributing them around fairgrounds. I think you should just do it. You're fixated on that. 800 months. You really want to do it. You want fixated on that. You really want to do it.

It's a really good example. It's $800 per porta potty. Oh, nice. Spend $80,000 on 100 porta potties and then just be like, they're free. Oh, what's that? You're doing construction companies and be like, we'll just give it to you.

Just use it. They're called Shelly boxes. I think another thing that happens, and this is really insidious and it's not accounted for often, but there's an entire set of behaviors that we are told are weird and quirky and interesting, but which are really boring and predictable. So a lot of folks feel like they're doing something unique or new when they're just sort of going along with the program. So there are a lot of examples of this. We see this with the activism a lot of these companies engage in where they'll make their corporate logo a gay pride flag or something. Okay, well, that's the most predictable thing you can do, but you think it's edgy and brave and interesting.

Or at least for a time they did. At this point, they're probably willing to acknowledge that this is just a thing you're expected to do. And don't forget, July is MAGA month, so everyone's got to change their logos to American flags. And I'm doing it. I'm going to get graphics made. My Twitter profile will be my face with the American flag behind it. I like that.

I mean, I'm sure we've all encountered this, where somebody gives you the most banal, predictable, advertiser-friendly perspective as if it's something new and original. All the time. I mean, it's constant. It's like whenever someone's like, you know what, like, I don't like Christianity. And it's like, okay, it's like, I understand that, but can you acknowledge that that's a very safe position? But people don't do that anymore. Like. Their view has to be unique and interesting even when it's plainly banal.

I wonder if it's just, you know, in my perspective, most people, they play music because they looked up to someone and want to emulate somebody else. Most people just want to emulate someone else.

So they want to fit in. They want to stay in line. I wonder how many people genuinely don't care about fitting in, and I wonder if that's technically like a mental illness. I mean it because humans are social beings. You want to fit in to survive. So it takes a very rare individual to be like literally don't care if I fit in or not.

Like what would I do if we were like nomadic tribesmen thousands of years ago and I was being arrogant like, I don't want to do what you say. Screw you. Get out. And I'd be like, well, I'm going to go die, I guess, in the middle of the woods. So it's like, I talk about making these Shelly boxes. But would people really be like, would they be like, that's great? Or would they be like,

you're really disrupting what we're trying to do here. I made outhouse. Put poster on it. They'd be like, leave now. Rug. Rug on toilet. They're like, this is why the people leading our tribe leave now. Or is the reality that the outliers our tribe leave now or or is the reality that the the outliers and the weirdos end up being the leaders sometimes sometimes they're snuffed out you never hear about them i think what ends up happening is a sociopath uh like the the

narcissists and the egotists end up becoming the the leaders people who are like i should be in charge and then once they're in charge like i can lie cheat and steal and do whatever i want because i'm better than you i think ben franklin was a nut job but he was so organized that he was able to create a periodical you know the poor richard's almanac and distribute propaganda for 30 years to brainwash people into thinking that freedom was the way and that they should revolt against the king so he worked out do what ben franklin did fly a kite in a storm with a key on it yeah absorb electricity time to do that, too. Get weird. I'm sorry to buy into your he was crazy theory.

I like that. Yeah, that's a good point. Ben Franklin. He's a polymath, they call them. Talking about weird stuff, though, let's talk about what you guys do at the Babylon Bee. Oh, thanks. Because... Good transition.

Good transition. No, but I mean, like, you are figuratively throwing pies. You're calling out hidden truths, as it were, through jokes. A good example is when you guys had an article that said, ingenious move, Donald Trump comes out in support of impeachment, forcing Democrats to oppose. And that is a very clever way to comment on the fact that they just oppose whatever it is Trump or Trump supporters are doing. Yeah, yeah. He said it.

Therefore, it's bad. Orange man, bad.. Yeah, yeah. He said it, therefore it's bad. Orange man bad. Orange man bad. Well, that goes back to how everybody's like a bot. That's bot behavior, to just have a predictable response to whatever. There's something that you're supposed to be opposed to, so you just oppose it. I don't know. I mean, with the internet, though, Instagram and all these things, people are just trying to do what you're supposed to do on these platforms.

Everyone has the same family pictures. They all do the same things. But if you're trying to throw pies and be disruptive, then that's your thing. You're trying to do it. It has to be something that you're not deliberately trying to do. It just has to be coming from you naturally. It's because that's how you are as a person. You're different.

Otherwise, you're both doing something for a purpose. You're trying to get a certain kind of response. People are either trying to fit in or they're trying to be different and get a response by being different. That's true. I don't take issue with someone being like, let's throw a pie figuratively because don't actually throw pies at people. But when I'm on Twitter, I'll just randomly – I'll post some nonsense if I'm feeling like it. I posted Jeremiah was a bullfrog the other day because i just i just you know yeah i thought it was fun you need to be more responsible it was it was a whim literally i was listening to

three dog night and so joy to the world came on and i just typed it in hit enter and i didn't think twice and i was like so you made a point about people being thoughts and we've sort of talked about this a little bit there are obviously some issues where it makes sense to to stand strong have base principles so when you're talking about something where you would say there is an axiomatic evil you're talking about like abortion or some matter of like human sexuality such as homosexuality you're talking about theft property etc it makes sense that you would have set positions because of what your principles are but then when it comes to a question of whether a specific person is guilty in a court case or a national story, that's not something you can just jump to one side or the other

on. That's something you have to see evidence for. But we are at the point where any time there is a news story about a police officer shooting someone, a large subsection of the country has decided he's guilty and it was unjustified without any evidence at all conservatives are still are still defending ahmed arbery like yeah that one that one that one to me is like because we had lawyers on talking about that i think my point is there are a lot of stories that we see in the public eye where it's it's just a question of a specific person their behavior

whether they're guilty of the thing that they're accused of, and people are hyperpolarized on it. And I think this has happened because we're just used to being hyperpolarized, but it's different, right? Because again, when it comes to the other issues, it's a matter of principle. Whether a specific person is guilty or innocent when I don't have evidence is not something that my principles can determine. It's something the evidence will determine once we get it. But people take sides before they see or hear anything of substance about the case. And the entirety of the left, including establishment Democrats, moderate liberals,

default liberals, and leftists, will blindly march in lockstep. Yep. They'll get angry about it. They'll protest about it. And they'll scream in your face and try and take your job. And conservatives are lukewarm

and will be like, okay, we'll agree with you on that one. Yeah. And the fun thing about satire is it gives you a way to point all of that out in a way that makes the point. It makes it into a joke where you're seeing that

and you're exposing it for what it is, the absurdity of it. Did you see the Fast Company wrote an article saying something like, beware the far right comedy or whatever, or right-wing comedy. And they're like, from Joe Rogan to the babylon b to like the daily wire and i just think it's funny that uh they they they still try and push these memes where they're like the right can't make jokes or it's not funny but the weird thing is it used to be the perception that the that conservatives weren't funny and the left was there was in the article they talk about how fox tried doing some kind of john stewart show back in the day that just didn't work and it failed but now you've got gutfeld who on fox news he's he gets way way better ratings than any of the prime time comedians on on major networks you take a look at the onion

bro i imagine seth that used to read the onion yeah of course what happened to them so the problem a lot of the reason why these late night comedians and the onion and whatever falling off is because they're not what the the comedian, the satirist, the humorist is supposed to be doing is poking holes in the popular narrative, not promoting it. All they do is push it. All they do is push it. And the big tech companies are trying to rig the systems that you're not allowed to poke holes in the popular narrative. If you do that, then you're engaging in hate speech or you're spreading misinformation or whatever. But this is what's killing comedy in my opinion you know they say oh we're not funny well we have more engagement in traffic than the onion at this point we're the

we're the most popular satire site in the world and they're and they're sitting there saying we're not funny well obviously we're engaging people and the reason we're engaging people is because we're actually making fun of the powers that be and trying to uh hold that power accountable and poke holes in the popular narrative instead of promote it, which is what comedians are supposed to do. I grew up with The Onion because I think they were based out of Milwaukee, I think. And I remember when we would get the physical Onion paper when we were in Chicago. Look at this one. Excerpts from Ginny Thomas's emails attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

No, it's too political. Is that? Yeah, right. It's like a CNN article. They weren't political in the early days. Well, this is the thing. They were in a way that was actually funny. Here's one.

Here's one. Well, you got to go into the slideshow. That's a slideshow. Preacher not drenched in sweat must not be very connected to Holy Spirit. There you go. What's the joke? Now, fine. You know, whenever I point this out, there was one story that was literally, it was literally

not a joke. And then I was like, legit, what is the joke here? And they and they were like you're so dumb you don't get the joke and i'm like i guess so dude i don't care like you can laugh at me because i don't get it that's fine it means i don't read your outlet right you know and see that it would have been like preachers connected to holy spirit why isn't he sweating they missed they mislabeled i don't think that one's there it's not funny i'll put it this I mean, The Onion is not what it used to be. They used to be very political. This is a past couple of years.

This is not jokes. No, yeah. But over the past couple of years – so probably about two or three years ago, I rediscovered the videos that they were producing, I want to say between 2008 and 2011. And they're so funny. Their YouTube channel was incredible for just a couple years and part of it was because they actually had a tv show and those clips on youtube were excerpts from them oh really yeah but they let's be real they used to be very funny even when they got political is my point they were still funny and even when they had a message i didn't agree with politically

i thought they were hysterical the grabblers video that. That was great. Do you know the Grabblers video? No, I don't know that one. It's an Onion video? It's an Onion video. We cannot play it here. Yeah, we definitely can't play it. Even though it's on YouTube. Where basically it's a mockery of a morning news show and they bring on this female author to help them visualize their stresses

and she's like this little old woman like, everybody has problems with money. I want you to imagine your money problem and then she basically goes on to describe jewish people and then makes a bunch of really offensive jokes but the point was what was funny about it was that this little old lady was basically trying to sneak in like these anti-semitic tropes and right that was the joke that was the onion that did that they also had that autistic reporter bit. Totally ableist. You wouldn't be able to get away with that these days.

They had funny jokes. Now, look, I pulled up this joke, and it's – okay, let me – here you go. Here's their joke. Hey, current Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. It's me, Jenny Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, urging you to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election. As I am involved with a group of alt-right radicals who, if unhappy with the results, will storm the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

on January 6, 2021, I agree with their goals and methodologies full-heartedly. And again, I, Ginny Thomas, am unabashedly requesting that this illegal action should be taken.

Where's the joke? But I would like, this is something I would write if the joke was that, like, this is what Democrats think a Republican is saying. Like, that would be the bit.

I pulled up there. 2001. I got into Onion in 2001. A boyfriend ceremoniously dumped. I mean, these were the articles. And they would show a picture of a person's face, and they would reuse that same. So you would imagine this is the writer. It was like a fake person or just some random stock photo they got.

So imagining who was saying it helps the comedy i thought yeah in the early days you know what i think like it's clapped right you guys know what clapped her is yeah yeah you're just you're you just agree there's like a vague you know set up punchline formula it's when clapping because it's when colbert comes out and he's like donald trump's dumb and they'll go and sorry clapping is like he didn't say anything it's not amusement you're going for it's applause you're going for yeah so's applause you're going for. Yeah. So I look at –

Yeah, and there's a lot of that, and there's a lot of just avoiding hurting people's feelings by being offensive now. The woke mind virus, as Elon Musk calls it, has infected all of these comedians on the left. And so they're all – the jokes that they would have made years ago that are funny, they're capable of making those jokes, but they're not willing to make them now because they cross a line, an imaginary line that they made up. There was a really good one they did a couple of years ago. The Onion is like 10 years ago. It was patriotic teen fail Spanish.

And it was just a video where they're like interviewing this kid as a brave patriot for failing Spanish. And obviously the point of that joke was to poke fun at the right. But I still I thought it was hilarious when I saw it. And it's a funny video. Now it's not just that they have a left wing bias. It's that today having a left wing bias means you have to explicitly oppose anything that's even remotely funny.

Here's one. Farmer caught Googling what is corn. It's like, okay. It's a different company with the same name. It's a problem, man. Companies sell to another owner and then they keep the same name. That's scandalous. Also, I'd be curious to know because there are clearly some duds here.

We're obviously remembering the ones that were really funny. I used to cry laughing. That's why they stick out to us. Yeah, yeah. So I'm wondering also if there's just a selection bias here because none of these are going to stand the test of time. And maybe they were never funny. There were probably some boring. Yeah, but there were a couple funny ones we saw when we were younger that we really remember i think that stuff that used to

be funny is no longer funny too because we get used to it and like you gotta you gotta one-up it you know you gotta take it to the next level or or go home there was one they did too uh it was like uh new humane um tim what we were just watching like new humane death penalty uh contraption oh yeah person's head off it shows they actually did a cgi of a machine that clamps the person down and then a giant robotic claw grabs their head and spins it and rips it off their body and then it raises it up and a hammer just starts bashing it for no reason that was funny it was funny that was like 10 years ago even stuff like now there's obviously even with that you could argue there's vague political

undertones you know they're making a statement about the death penalty and how barbaric they believe it is. But it's funny. It's funny. You can make a political point and still be funny, but they don't. It was funny because after it already killed the person, a hammer starts bashing the head with a hammer. Why would you do that? I'll tell you. Some of the criticism that we've gotten, like Slate did a piece about us and a couple other publications have written pieces like this where they say, here's the reason the Babylon Bee is not funny.

They're not funny because rather than having their jokes tethered to the truth or reality, their jokes are riding on the back of some political narrative. And so what they're saying is there's fake news that we're attaching our jokes to. So we're promoting fake news with satire that's like riding on the top of that. Does that make sense? Whereas The Onion or left-wing comics are rooted in reality. And I feel like it's exactly the opposite. And the validation of that

is the fact that our jokes constantly come true. You know, we make these jokes and they come true. It's like, well, there's a reason they come true. It's because we were on to something. There was a point to the joke that we were making and reality just caught up to us. Sometimes within a matter of hours. The Onion onions jokes don't come true as often as our jokes their jokes aren't as attached to reality as ours are honestly the onion had two really really good

jokes in the past few years one was presidency already aging joe biden 10 years and it showed a rotted corpse yeah like that was good and then the other one was uh this was back in like 2019 or 2020 and it said naked andrew yang appears from time portal to warn us about you know ai in the future or whatever like that one was also pretty good there was so and this is something i've experienced before too with just like cracking a joke about something and it turns out to be true a few years down the line because these people are generally pretty predictable but there was a really great babylon b article i want to highlight public school student can't read but is already racist at a 12th grade level i thought like that's hilarious that's a good joke now i

just i don't understand how someone can read that and be like that's clearly fake news disguised as a punchline it's like no that is very obviously a joke and so a while ago as i'm sure you know and i've brought it up on the show a number of times, Snopes did an extremely pseudo-scientific analysis of Babylon Bee articles where they literally rewrote the headlines to remove the joke, make it sound like it was an actual story, and then asked people, do you think that this is an actual story? And then based on the number of people who said yes, they totaled them as people who thought the original Babylon Bee headline was a true story. So they said, of course, we have to fact check satire. Snow highlighted that study.

They didn't conduct the study. Oh, they didn't conduct the study? It was done at some university, and then they republished it, the findings. But they didn't just rewrite our headlines. They literally reworded them so they didn't sound like jokes anymore. No, they took the jokes out. Yeah, they took the joke out, stripped it its like comedic you know structure yes and removed the image and the image is usually like a silly photoshop you know like a fake looking photoshop or ridiculous outlandish image

they take that away too and just present you with this like you know headline that maybe it could be true i don't know but it certainly doesn't sound like a joke. So one example was you guys did a bit that was like it's with a picture of some news anchor, and it says God allowed the Mueller report to test our unshakable faith in collusion. And they reworded it as CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper said his belief that Trump colluded with Russia is unshakable. It will not change regardless of statement or evidence to the contract that is a completely different different sentence yeah and so to ask people if one sounds true and then when they answer that it does sound true to apply it to the first statement is just totally dishonest how do you i have issues with satire and that i'm concerned when people don't know it's satire. How do you like – how do you manage that?

With people not knowing it's satire? Yeah, because if some article comes up and you don't know ahead of time, like this is a satire newspaper, which is a lot of times why they ask you to put satire on the – do they? Like with your descriptions in like your twitter or like any other i mean they can it's labeled satire in a sense that if you actually click on our website you know like our tagline is fake news you can trust and like you know our about us page is obviously a joke but we don't put on every article this is satire and then close the article with what you just read was satire you know we're not just it kind of kills the joke just to be constantly reminding people this is a joke. So you can't do that, really.

So you have to just present it, and people either get it or they don't. And a lot of people don't. I want to point out real quick, you mentioned selection bias for The Onion. So I pulled up the Wayback Machine, and I looked at a few 10-year-old archival posts. And they're not particularly funny, to be honest. There's a few ones, and I think there's something interesting I see here, because some of these do make me want to chuckle super bowl veterans much more prepared for big games unique stresses rookies often rattled by pools of boiling blood scything blades psychosexual hallucinations like okay that one's at least a little edgy and it gave me a chuckle and you look at the modern

stuff now and it's kind of just like hey you know like there's one it's like kill your dad and it's like a woman like waving something at her dad. I'm like, it's just not doing comedy. Now you're tiptoeing through a minefield. Comedians are literally getting attacked on stage. Chappelle's attack. Chris Rock was slapped in the face. You know, like other people, there's, you know, there's stories about that.

There was just one in the New York Post a few, a couple of weeks ago, you know, about how it's not just you've heard about a lot of these cases, but there's cases happening at smaller comedy clubs too, where comedians are feeling like they need armed security to go on stage and make jokes because they're going to offend somebody who's going to get violent. Or the right to keep in bare arms and defend themselves. You mentioned this term that Snopes uses, which is labeled satire, which I just also want to highlight. There's something a little bit sneaky there. This isn't obviously satire it's labeled satire but it's still like it leaves the question of whether you guys intended to be satire or not that's intentional that's intentional like a news organization that's masked as a satire organization well because their position is and they haven't changed that their position is that we are claiming to be a satire sites that we can mislead people yeah how

does that even make sense? New York Times described this as a far-right misinformation site that sometimes traffics in misinformation under the guise of satire. So like a comedian. That's a long way of saying it's a comedian. Right.

Under the guise of satire, though. We're putting it on. We're wearing the costume. We're claiming we're satire. But it says satire on the website. It putting it on. We're wearing the costume. We're claiming we're satire, and we're not. But it says satire on the website. It says fake news at the top of the website. Well, and also, like he said, the pictures that go along with the articles are clearly Photoshopped. There's a lot of context clues.

Yeah, it's usually like a set-up punchline formula in the headline. If people are not discerning enough to understand the difference between reality and fantasy. It's not my fault. I can't lower the bar of the idiots. There's a big difference too, by the way. Human bot theory. It's not the internet, it's the people. There's a big difference between a fake news site, and this is what they're trying to lump us in with.

You'll see a fake news site that pops up and they want to get clicks. They do a story about how Kevin Hart dies in a car accident. And that's the headline. Kevin Hart dies tragically in car accident. Well, it didn't happen. And that's not a joke. It's not funny. They're just making up a fake clicks. There's a point. There's a punchline. And the whole thing ties together, the headline, the image, everything. It all ties together. So you're never going to be able to get 100% of your audience to understand that you're doing satirical jokes. You never will. You don't remember the legendary Babylon Bee article, Kevin Hart died?

It was huge. It went viral. It was tragic. Kevin Hart dies in car accident. That's our best headline. Did you guys get banned off Twitter? Did Babylon Bee get banned off Twitter? There was some drama about it a couple months ago or something. Babylon Bee

did a joke. Well, so the USA Today named Rachel Levine Woman of the Year. Oh, right. And Babylon Bee responded to that. We did a joke about how Rachel Levine had been picked as our Man of the Year. And Twitter didn't like that very much. So yeah, we got, uh, we got reported for hateful conduct and we were told to delete the tweet. Um, and basically instead of them just taking it down, which, you know, to my thinking, if they have a problem with this tweet, they can

take it down. They don't have to force me to like bend the knee and admit that I did something wrong, but they want us to say that we engaged in hateful conduct and acknowledge that and delete the tweet and take it down. And so what we've done, we've been in Twitter jail for three months because we've refused to. Oh, awesome. But as soon as Elon makes that purchase, as soon as Elon makes that purchase, we'll see. I mean, we're, he's given us no assurances, but I would expect that, that if he does go through, if the deal does go through and Elon Musk takes over Twitter, then I would expect it. Situations like ours would be corrected.

I pulled up The Onion from September 13th, 2001. Yeah, that's when I was reading it a lot. This one actually I kind of think is funny. A guy's gone wild and it's a fat dude pulling his shirt up with stars over his nipples. Other than that, it is not particularly funny in my opinion. That sucker Jesus has forgiven me for some pretty bad sins yeah pretty great like and then this article right here it's just like congressman admits to sexual relationship that doesn't even sound like satire right yeah that's just like not at this point i don't even know if it is to be honest they were literally

just saying gordon graham admits to an affair it's like okay it's kind of like i have you guys been parodying put Putin much these days? Like stuff Putin's up to and Putin like eating ice cream and all that crap. Mostly Biden, not so much Biden. Yeah, I got one here from The Onion in 2001. Starving bandage, bin Laden offers US one last chance to surrender.

And I mean, that was, to me it was like crying. I was working at ground zero at that period of my life, like smelling the wreckage, whatever it was, the bodies. And it was still hilarious. Hilarious because it wasn't hateful. I mean, they're not doing it to hurt people. It's like you got to enjoy life, even the chaos.

And soldiers will tell you that, too. In the middle of the heat of the battle, you still got to find humor in some of the craziest stuff. I guess it's because it's lacking. The argument is that it's lacking context when it's just like a post with no, I don't know, what is it, on Twitter? There's no picture. So if that were the case, then why wouldn't they conduct an actual, reasonable, scientifically done analysis of the headlines as they're actually written rather than butchering them and then claiming that. I just got to point out real quick. I had to frantically click away from The Onion because back in 2000,

they had a racial slur on their front page for like four days as part of one of their jokes. Yeah, they set the first one. I'm glad I changed the camera shot. Maybe they were a bit more edgy back then. I don't know. I was like, oh, we can't show that. It was the Wild West for better or worse. I don't think that it's bad these days.

People call it a dystopian stuff. I just think it's always been this crazy, and now the curtain's been pulled back, and we can see the inner workings of the beast. I think that when they are accusing you of basically hollowing this out and using it as a skin suit, all they're doing is projecting, because this is what we see them doing with every single institution they touch. That's all they ever do.

And they're talking about how you're like conveying a political message but trying to do it with comedy. They're trying and failing to do this with people like Colbert and The Onion. They're doing it incredibly poorly because they have no self-reflection. They have no humility.

They can never be wrong. And those are things that are required. You need to be able to make fun of yourself because if you make fun of yourself, you'll never run out of material. They cannot do it, but they're trying. I think they're really jealous of what you're doing at the Babylon Bee. That's kind of what I'm saying.

Well, I think you undermine them. Yeah. They did actually make fun of us a little bit. They were kind of like, without naming us, you know, they were making jokes about how they'd been suspended on Twitter and this is their last tweet, you know, like, or they can no longer tweet and they're tweeting that. So they were kind of ironically tweeting. What's the joke? The joke was that

we were, I guess, putting it on that we were being suppressed but we still are on Twitter and we can still tweet if we want to or something like that. The joke was that we're faking it. I don't know. It wasn't really abundantly clear. It wasn't abundantly clear and no one got it because no one knew what they were referring to.

Their audience has no familiarity with what's going on with us and Twitter. So it's just kind of like it got no engagement, no reaction. Yeah. Well, and so, Lydia, you made a really good point about projection. And this is something I kind of want to talk about for a moment here. When I write a joke or someone pitches a joke to me for freedom tunes, or I write a rough concept that I want to shop around to friends. Nobody goes, I like the political point you're making. You should make that one. It's like, they'll either go, I don't like that one. Oh, that's

funny. You should do it. Right? So people will still discern whether something is funny or not, even if they agree with it politically. And I know that, you know, I've spoken with people at Babylon B who have told me that, you know know the headlines will get shot down all the time and then you try to come up with the one that's funniest and so what they don't realize is when we're writing jokes we're not sitting down going how are we going to get them like how are we going to get the other side it's just something comes to your mind that you think is funny and then you end up producing it but that's not how they write their humor. So they think we're doing what they're doing.

Real quick. I just pulled up the Babylon Bee. And the first thing I see is Nancy Pelosi recommends avoiding pain at the pump by becoming a millionaire through insightful training. That's really good. And even the left should find that funny. Everyone knows Nancy Pelosi is like that Pelosi stock tracker. January 6th musical. I need to watch this. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. Did you? What were you saying? Well, what I was going to say is really the only consideration when you're writing a headline, you're pitching a headline is, is it funny? It's not like, oh, does it make the point that we want to make? Well, that's really secondary to is it funny? It's got to be funny first.

You got to lead with that. And where they want to get your head, because this is the criticism that we want to make. Well, that's really secondary to, is it funny? It's got to be funny first. You got to lead with that. And where they want to get your head, because this is the criticism that we have is that, you know, this we've engaged in a hateful conduct with the Rachel Levine joke, right? They want you thinking to yourself, you know, am I making fun of someone who's beneath me? Am I punching down at someone who's marginalized and oppressed while I'm privileged? That person in a very high position of government. Yeah. The white male high ranking government official. Am I punching down at that person? Right. But that's where they want your head at. They want you thinking in those terms. I'm like, I'm not sexist or racist. I don't think people are beneath me. Like imagine thinking to yourself,

imagine thinking to yourself, you know what? I shouldn't joke about those people. They're beneath me. They're beneath me. It's so so condescending like we should be able to joke about each other indiscriminately right so so you know having to put your head in that space i think is really unhealthy but that's where their comedy writers are at they're like oh i'm a white male with privilege writing jokes i've got to be very careful about all the people i could be punching down yeah i can't stand it when we're working on a video game and in the video game characters can be randomly generated as any race and there's going to be a character customization menu. So we made the joke, like, if we made an anti-racist mode that took all of the left's ideology and applied it to the racialization of the characters in this game, like, it really helps you understand just how racist they are.

Yeah. Like, their view of people's race was applied to a video game, actually quantified. The game would be banned. The game would be banned instantly because you'd be like – It'd be racist. Well, the idea is like if we removed the stereotypes or inverted them, it exposes just how racist they really are. Like the idea that white people are privileged and have all these special benefits,

if you actually enacted that in the game, then characters based on the cut that the race you choose for your character would have different stats right away it's already like right they jump higher not jump higher i'm not going to get into how awfully racist it would be but we could not apply anti-racism to the game because it's equally as racist as being just typically stereotypically racist right and they want you to think of the world in those terms when you're writing jokes it's like well you know know, can't joke about women. Women are beneath me.

They're beneath me on the power structure because I'm a man. It's like, come on, you know? Yeah, I got pushed to think that I was better than other people because of my skin color. It was disgusting. I don't know how to defend or even to respond to that. Like, I see people's eyeballs. We're like brains floating in meat sacks.

I don't know. Obviously, skin tone has some value. They literally will say to you people's eyeballs we're like brains floating in meat sacks i don't know obviously skin tone has some value they literally will say to you though they're like ian accepted as a white person you are better than other people why don't you do it right like no yeah no i want to help people and i'm not going to stop helping a certain kind of person or like a certain color of person or a certain height of person i'm not going to stop but the greatest two it's like how are we punching down by the way making jokes like you mentioned this is a high-ranking government official or whatever but but these ideas that we make fun of you know if we're making fun of um you know progressive gender ideology you know that's

coming from from all the biggest corporations the universities the government officials. It's coming from everywhere, media and entertainment. It's being shoved down your throat from the top down. And God forbid, you make a joke about it. You're punching down on the marginalized and the oppressed. If people can silence you and punish you and de-platform you for merely joking about them, do they really lack power? Are they really marginalized? Are you really in a position of power over them? I don't think so. You have to actually control what you say in order to not be punished by them.

They're the ones in the position of power in that situation. Actually, that's a good point. What's that quote, if you want to know who holds the power in society, look at to who you can't criticize? That was a Nazi who said that. What was that?

It was a neo-Nazi who wrote that. Well, it's true. That's a neo-Nazi quote. It doesn't mean it's true. Yeah, it's a neo-Nazi quote. Doesn't mean it's wrong. I mean, I'm not going to judge. And I think it's a really bad quote, too. Because, like, the idea that

because you can't criticize someone means they have power over you is just not true either. Yeah, but what it... That's literally not true. I think that does indicate that. How do you think it doesn't? Like, a disabled person, like, a child with leukemia doesn't have any power over your life, Ian.

But you can't criticize them. Like it's not okay to go out there smack talking a bunch of like – It is okay. A child who's dying of cancer, you don't criticize them because it's just like not cool. But if you're part of a protected group and everyone is going to come to your defense and make sure that you don't have a job anymore if you make fun of someone who's in that protected group, then them with that group at their back, they have all the power. But it's a political faction, not the victim group they're using.

You know what I mean? You're saying cancel culture? See, that's actually a Voltaire quote. It wasn't a Nazi. No, it was falsely attributed to Voltaire. Yeah, because people are trying to – I can't stand this stuff they do because they're trying to talk about the Jews and they try to manipulate their way into getting people like you, Ian, to use their quotes. Well, ask Quora about it. We as a society don't like it when you criticize the dead, the recently deceased.

We like to go to funerals and be like the dead person has no power over you, but you can't criticize them. Okay, they're not alive, you say. Living people, sure. funerals and be like the dead person has no power over you but you can't criticize them okay they're not alive you say living people sure a child who's a burn victim saying like that was a disgusting thing you just said people are going to be like dude you need to chill out yeah but the kid can't do anything to you it's the people if you criticize someone political fact other people cancel culture will raise up but if you criticize someone to their face and and something bad can happen to you that means that they have some sort of power over you. I do think that it's true that when people get into power, they become very sensitive and touchy.

There's a reason there's a court jester making fun of the king. The people in power bristle at being mocked. They can't bear to be mocked. They can't bear to be ridiculed. And so they're very likely, especially the more authoritarian they lean, they're more likely to clamp down on speech to prevent that. So they don't look bad. I mean, look at North Korea, for example, you know, you, you can't make certain jokes. And you have to call him dear leader. You can't even just call him Kim Jong-un. I mean, you got to call him the dear leader. Exactly. Yeah. You're not on a first name basis.

Kim, I call him, I call him Un personally, but Un, yeah, he's just a buddy of mine. Yeah. So it's one of the exercises of power. One of the exercises of power is to make sure that people can't criticize you. It's to retain the power by shielding yourself from criticism and mockery. And so I think there's legitimacy to it from that angle, at least. I think when it comes to the U.S. and it comes to censorship, they don't have power over us. They control the systems they control, and we've given them the power because we use their systems. We adhere to it.

But look at what's been happening over the past few years. Look, a lot of companies tried launching, and the machine tried crushing them. Gab was smacked around a bit by the big tech companies. But in the end, they couldn't win. And now you've got Rumble is taking off massive support because finally there are people who are just like, I can't take it anymore. So Rumble is doing cloud infrastructure. They're supporting Truth Social, which is massive engagement. You've got the Rumble video player.

You've got the launch of parallel economy payment processing services. It's all starting to happen. Is this an ad? Are we doing an ad read now? No. But it is happening. When you say that we've given them power, I agree with that. I mean, when people ask me, like, well, you know, you talk about speaking boldly, speaking the truth boldly, whatever, you know, saying what you think. What if I do that and I lose my job?

I'm like, well, why do you think you'd lose your job? Because you'd be an outlier if you spoke your mind, right? Well, why are you an outlier? Well, because everyone else is self-censoring. Everyone else is self-censoring. You probably work in a company where half the people agree with you, but they're afraid to speak their mind. And I think when we self-censor, we're doing the tyrant's work for him and giving them power they shouldn't have. You know, I've always – I just, man, for whatever reason, cared substantially less than other people.

I remember when I was working for the ABC company, I would just say it. Somebody would have something on their desk. I'd be like, oh, that's wrong, by the way. And they'd be like, huh? And I'd be like, here, let me show you. And I'd be like, here's why your feminist weird pay gap thing is not true. And they would get really angry about it. There's a value to discerning to know when to speak.

Because if you're the only one that stands up and says it, you might get the hammer come down. But if you can coordinate a bunch of people to rise, uprise, then you get a letter to the editor from like 60 people will sign it. And it's like, I can't afford to lose my employees. What's that Breitbart quote about the fire? I don't know. I don't remember exactly what he said. It says something like, walk towards the fire.

I can't remember exactly what he said, but someone either created a derivative version of it, and it was something like, people are scared. They see the fire. They're scared. They're told if you go near it, it will burn you. But then those who are actually brave enough to jump through it see on the other side is freedom. So walk toward the fire. Don't worry about what they call you.

All those things are set against you because they want you to stop in your tracks. But if you keep going, you're sending a message to the people who are rooting for you. Who are agreeing with you? The message is that they can do it too. And also if you stop and stand in a fire, you get burned. But if you run through it, you're not going to feel the heat. That's what I – I was talking with someone about it and somebody I was talking to took that quote and the version they said to me was basically like, we all see this fire and

we know it burns. We know it's scary. So everyone is just staying back from it but they're being singed by the heat. Some people are brave enough to run towards it, jump through it. On the other side is a beach. People are celebrating, having a good time. And so for me, it was never hard because I just, people want to push this nonsense stuff. I just don't care. Like I've, I've, I've dealt with hardship and I'm just like, you can't take anything from me. You can fire me. You can boot me out. What's my worst case scenario. I'm chilling, man. I'll go skate skateboarders. We've always just wanted to hang out sleep under a tree

and go skate cram ourselves in a single bedroom apartment so you got no leverage here buddy but now like there's a community built being built on the other side of that fire there's the babylon b there's new infrastructure that's coming and if you just say enough don't know don't care you will be supported uh james o'keefe, he gives jobs to the whistleblowers. He raises money for the whistleblowers and people donate to the whistleblowers. They're not left high and dry. He keeps supporting them to make sure that they're not left holding an empty bag. And as this faction or whatever, people who believe in freedom, keeps expanding, growing, and gaining more power and access, there's more opportunity for more people to speak up because you won't be left behind what do you guys think

about mean jokes like comedy i guess i'll ask you particularly because you're here seth but like what do you think about like the difference between jokes that are like that have a butt to the joke like a person or a type of person versus like other forms of comedy like you know a funny saying or something well i mean generally speaking like what we do like satirical comedy is meant to be um it's meant to make you laugh but also make you think it's like it's more like there's supposed to be some in some way that it like cuts you makes you sting but for a healing purpose right so it's more like a surgeon's scalpel that's like intended for the purpose of like removing something bad so that it heals better than it was to begin with like a vaccine rather than yeah like a vaccine there you go yeah for children so like um so it's uh

i think that jokes are generally the idea that the jokes are because we're often accused of being mean and being cruel with our jokes. And, well, maybe you're looking at it the wrong way. You know, like jokes – you can take it that way, I guess. You can be offended by it. You can get really upset about it. Are you talking about a joke that's just like calling somebody fat or something like that where there's no redemptive purpose to it? And it's not like wit meted to moral concern or something like that where you're trying to, like, make a point?

I'm asking. Are you talking about something that's just mean to be mean spirited yeah yeah or let's go let's say what you're saying like you use someone's fault uh to make a greater point um i personally i mean i'm not really into like this guy's uh a dog and here's why and it's like look at all the five ugly things about that guy. And then people are like, yeah, watch him fall down on a banana peel. No, I see more. I see like a moral reason to do comedy that attacks but more ideas than people. It's like ridiculing bad ideas.

It's going after them and trying to tear them down so that they're not like as appealing as they were. And imagine how much better off we'd be, by the way, if more comedians were doing that. You have all these bad ideas that are infecting children's minds. You know, we've got all these, we got like high depression rates and suicide rates and, you know, 10-year-olds transitioning and wanting to get on puberty blocking hormones and all this stuff. Imagine if comedians were doing a better job mocking the insanity of all of this and making it less appealing. Instead, you've got everybody promoting this stuff like it's great and you're not even

allowed to make fun of it or it's hate speech. Comedy can play a role in that kind of stuff by mocking bad ideas that are harmful for society. I want to show you this. We'll pull up this video real quick. I'm not going to play the video, but this is a video called Open Mic... It is a video called Open Mike Open Night. It used to be called Open Night Massacre.

Open Mike. Now it's called Open Mike Night Becomes a Massacre When Liberal Arts Hecklers Take Over. This caused chaos at Fusion. This is several years old. This is 2015, and this is back when I worked for Fusion. This came out, and I said, this is one

of your best videos because I was talking to the higher-ups and how they can get their videos to get more traffic because they were struggling. And I was like, this one's big. Basically, it's a stand-up comedian. No matter what he says,

they boo him and call him racist or offensive. And then he's like, no, I feel like I can't say anything. And they're like, no, it's a free speech zone. And then they boom and throw tomatoes at him. This one pissed off the entire staff. They said it was racist. And then the higher-ups were like, why did we make a video insulting our audience?

And then I was like, dude, you guys, this is like the only funny video you have. Then they did eventually go on to make celebrity mockery videos, which also was just like general pop culture humor, which was fine. But at the time, this was relevant, politically savvy, and it was funny. And it got half a million views in a couple days. And I was like, it's because it's good and people like it and it's funny. And they were like, nope, nope, it's insulting our audience. We can't have that. Ian, you were sort of asking this question about making fun of people.

And it's honestly a good one because it's something I've wrestled with too. And I would tend to agree with you that you want to attack ideas more. So I do think sometimes there's still room to make fun of people. But I find that what tends to be most cruel about our society is what we choose to affirm rather than what we choose to ridicule. So we will let people believe that they're capable of doing something they're not capable of and then just watch them get hurt. And I think that's a lot more cruel than just being blunt with them and saying, no, absolutely not.

You can't do that. Oh, you're going to continue? Well, yeah. So, I mean, for example, we've talked about this before, but on American Idol, what they would often do is tell someone who couldn't sing at all that they were a wonderful performer and that they should sing in front of the judges and then they would and it would be unbelievably humiliating for them they wouldn't tell them you're the best they would say but they would pass them on to the next round even

though they knew they couldn't sing now now now what would be now i'm not saying if you knew that person personally the best approach would be to make fun of them like i think it's it's a case-by-case basis whether humor is the best approach but i think it would be less cruel if someone came to you and saying that way to poke a little fun at them than to say oh no you're great go on live television and sing in front of everyone but our society is really committed to doing the latter in virtually all circumstances where you encounter that problem it's the exact same reason why somebody will have spinach stuck in their teeth and no one will tell them oh you gotta tell them tell them yeah i never understood that i never i never understood that i see someone and they got like a thing on the teeth of the bag hey you got something on your teeth they go oh thanks

like but people don't want to do it they're like i'm not gonna say anything yeah shout out to will uh he was on chamberlain and i think he had chocolate on his face and i was like i didn't notice a cut on his face i didn't know so i didn't say anything but sorry will next time i'll call it out it was like chocolate one of the things i was thinking about where you're talking is obesity because people used to tell fat jokes and that's like i think obesity isn't the person it's the idea it's the behavior that you can eat whatever you want and that you don't have to fast and that you can eat sugar and that fat's bad, sugar's good. So it's these ideas. You can poke fun at the ideas, maybe not at the person by name and showing their body. But I mean, you know, how do you poke fun at the idea of obesity without showing someone?

I mean, you can have a computer-generated person. Yeah, but good comedians make fun of themselves. You know, you have like, you know, Chris Farley would make jokes at his own expense all the time, you know, for being overweight. Fat guy in a little coat. Fat guy in a little coat, right? You know, and it's funny, and he's willing to laugh at himself about it. And we've lost that. We've lost that ability to be able to say, you know what?

I'm not perfect. There are actually things about me that are worth making fun of and laughing about and they're flaws and it's okay to recognize them as flaws and like laugh about it and have a sense of humor about it rather than being so uptight like oh if someone makes fun of my physical appearance you know i'm distraught i'm destroyed and i can never recover from that. By creating safe spaces, we're harming people by never exposing them to even jokes that confront them with their flaws. I think one of the big splits that happens in the culture war between left and right has a lot to do with participation trophy parents versus parents who didn't do that. So it feels like one of the big things that divides left and right, the left, they're entitled, but they're also very soft.

They need safe spaces, trigger warnings. When someone says a mean word, they think it's violence because quite literally, they've never been insulted before. I mean, imagine this. You grow up in a town or whatever with participation trophy parents, snowplow parents who bulldoze every obstacle. No one's allowed to say mean words. You've never been insulted in your life, let alone never had someone flick your ear.

All of a sudden now you're an adult. You go on Twitter and someone goes, you're dumb. And they go, it's the first time I've ever felt this pain. Why are you calling me dumb? It's like I've been spit on and shot at the same time. I don't think it's an argument for bullying and meanness and cruelness are good things. It's more of an argument that you don't build resilience of character if you don't face challenges. And you're not having to deal with the fact that you're not perfect and not everybody is going to be nice to you.

And you can't expect that everybody is going to be nice to you. And you can't require that everyone treat you perfectly in order for you to be like healthy mentally like that's not that's not a good place for anybody to be in especially kids it's ego yeah but i think also just just going back to the question because we're talking about obesity here um and you asked about using humor with that i think i i think the approach humor, like you said, to kind of toughen people up can work. But then it can have the reverse effect. So, for example, if you have somebody claiming you're healthy at all sizes, that's just ridiculous. And you need to make fun of it.

Because if people believe that, they're going to end up indulging in foods they shouldn't eat. They'll get overweight. And then they'll never lose the weight because they'll be able to justify it to themselves. They'll end up being miserable. So I think it's very good to make fun of that idea. But then pointing at a specific person who's overweight and just ripping on them for being overweight, well, they're probably not going to lose weight if you do that because you're reinforcing in their mind this idea that they're just fat and gross and irredeemable. That's a good example to bring that up because look at all these shows like Eric

Cartman in South Park or Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin. There's a punchline in every episode that has to do with their weight, their physical characteristics. And it's funny. The joke's about Homer eats donuts all the time. He's lazy. He sleeps at his workstation. Abuse of father.

When he had the drinking bird hitting the Y on the keyboard, that was great. He's the villain. I actually tweeted that out. Homer Simpson's a villain. And people were like, no, no. It's like, dude, don't use that as a role model. That guy beat his kid. He's severely overweight.

He was severely abusive to his kid. He strangled his son. Over and over again. Bart is a devastation because of his poor parenting. I blame Homer. That's true. I blame Abe, but I blame Homer. I think the worst cartoon character is probably Peggy Hill.

You ever watch King of the Hill? That woman is a sociopath. Like textbook. Like narcissistic sociopath. The way she neglects her family. She doesn't hear what people are saying she's got to be on some psychoactive crap like pros some sort of weird because she's not there she's not emotionally available she's always like just okay she doesn't

speak spanish but claims she does like she's like a narcissistic borderline personality disorder histrionic whatever yeah crazy but yeah you make a good point uh homer would strangle his son and his son was uh would lash out and and act you know inappropriately and it's probably because his dad beat him it was probably because his father's an alcoholic but it's so funny because like the fact that homer's like i love the simpsons by the way i love the early seasons but the fact that he's like literally an alcoholic is just played for life and i don't think he's ever called an alcoholic, really. But it's just like, no, the man is literally an alcoholic who beats his child.

Who falls asleep at his job at a nuclear plant. But then at the end of the episode, you root for him. It's like, this is a genuinely horrible person. No, Frank Grimes didn't. No, it's true. Frank Grimes is the one character with any sense on the show. And he ended up grabbing the power cables. Do you remember that one?

He's like, I don't need to wear gloves. I'm Homer Simpson. A really dark episode. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that show, man. Yeah, but early episodes, they were edgy. It was funny.

And that's part of the point, too. Part of the point is Homer is terrible. That's part of the joke. Isn't it interesting how shows back in the day were like a wholesome family dealing with issues with their kid growing up. And then slowly over time, shows became more and more dysfunctional. Then you ended up with Married with Children, which was one of the most – I think it was the highest rated sitcom at the time.

We were allowed to watch it. That was about the same time that The Simpsons came on too. It was early 90s, right? Late 80s, yeah. Yeah, late 80s, late 90s. I really, really despised Married with Children because I couldn't stand the fact that they were all just awful people. Yeah. But more importantly was that Al lost everything. married with children because i couldn't stand the fact that they were all just awful people yeah but more importantly it was that uh al lost everything like he would always lose and i'm

like i just i want to you know i want to root for someone but i guess the idea is he's a bad person so he doesn't deserve it or something yeah i thought peggy was good but she was an idiot but like is it because she kept like just supporting al's doofusness that she was also there's one episode i liked and it was where finally like al bundy punches a guy and then it ends with him saying they won a lawsuit him with peggy they're loving and laughing with each other and he says i sued him for hurting my fist on his face and like i guess the point was it's always backwards or something but that was the one where i was like he won and his wife loved him and i was like that's the one i can remember all the rest of them are just like the family hates everybody hates each other and i don't know

i wouldn't want to watch it well we see this a lot but there's a lot of comedy that just gets way too mean spirited and the characters all hate each other there's this joke that basically every television show does because they think it's likegy and interesting, but almost all of these shows have moments where for a gag, one of the characters ends up betraying another character who they're supposed to be friends with or who's a family member. It's like, okay, that was somewhat funny

for that one joke, but you've totally undermined the relationship between the characters. And so many shows are willing to sell out character development like that for a punchline. Right. You know what shows actually really good, though, is It's Always Sunny. Oh, yeah. Those people are just deeply narcissistic

and just very, very bad people. And it's great. I haven't watched the later episodes, though, but earlier seasons were just absolutely fantastic. I wonder if they just keep ramping it up, right? Because that's kind of what people would say about Seinfeld. Like, in Seinfeld, they're all really bad. And then It's always Sonny takes it to the next level.

And then who knows, five, ten years from now, it's going to be even more insane and evil. How do you get more insane than Sonny? Like the episode where they get to hit crack addicts? I'm sure they said the same thing about Seinfeld at the time. Like, how do you get worse than airline food, man? How are we going to get past that? Yeah, but now it feels like modern shows are getting scared of being that edgy.

You know what I mean? It's like it's always dark in Philadelphia, and then it would be like just showing the street violence right now. Yeah, it's not funny. Didn't It's Always Sunny remove some episodes or something? I don't know. Yeah, they removed some offensive episodes. So this is another thing that happens too.

It's an interesting phenomenon in media. But when the economy is doing poorly, comedy tends to be more popular because people want an escape. They want something funny. And so I also wonder if maybe dark comedy becomes more popular when things are going well. But when things are difficult, people don't want dark comedy as much because they're already seeing some of the bleakness of reality. That's why I don't watch horror movies because reality is horrifying enough when I think about the economy. Horror movies,

horror is my favorite genre, but it's just been lacking. It's terrible. Yeah. I loved the campy B-horror movies of the 80s. I like Dr. Sleep. That was a good one. That's a sequel, right? What was that sequel for? Yeah, that was pretty good. Stephen King yeah that's a sequel right yeah what was that sequel for shining

the shining yeah yeah that was that was pretty good stephen king's kind of a weird guy though he writes about like kids in in really creepy ways yeah i wish that's a weird thing i don't think people understand that there was a joke in uh american dad where they find a script for the fast and the furious or something and then they realize that in it there's a bunch of gay erotica. And so they take it out. And they're like, that can't be in there. And then they bring it to the studio and they're like, oh great, hey wait a minute,

where's the gay erotica? They're like, normally that's supposed to be in there. And they're like, what? So I think that's a play on Stephen King because a bunch of his books and stories, there's really bad stuff in there. And they're like, this is a great story. Let's take that really offensive stuff up.

In the story, it. I think maybe you're the one who told me that. Yes, yes. Jeez. Well, I'm not talking about it online, but that's interesting. He writes a graphic section about children doing adult things. And for no reason. Literally, he's like, I'm now going to write this.

And it's going to be in the book. And you're like, why? Why is that? He also literally wrote a story that's just about a dude recalling bad things happening to him. And in extreme detail. Like, wow. I had a Stephen King book because when Secret Window came out, I was like, I liked it. And then I was like, I heard that the story was actually a little different. So I got the book that had the collection in it and then i was like i'd be just i i heard that the store was actually a little different so i got the book that had the collection in it and i'm like i'll start reading

it then i just threw the book and i was like well what is wrong with that man yeah like he he it's twisted horror they say horror it's okay like violence is fine uh nudity fine but as soon as it's like graphic sex on kids, not fine. Still horrifying, but not – it's a little too close to home. What is it? Because they think it's brainwashing people and making them more towards that? Like a horror movie is making people more violent? I don't know.

I mean, you could definitely have a debate about whether or not that's healthy entertainment, I guess, even with just straight horror movies, though. I mean, it's never been my favorite genre. I always just feel weird watching people, like, you know, for entertainment, like, slaughter each other. I don't know. Like, if it's a context like war, if it's Braveheart, you know, and they're, like, carving each other up on the battlefield, it's different than, like, a

chainsaw massacre. Yes, okay. So that's a really important point, right? Context matters. So in Band of Brothers, there's a lot of violence, but there has to be because they're trying to give you an accurate depiction of the second world war right right that's not the same as we're just going to have gratuitous violence because we love violence we're going to go to super chats if you have not already would you kindly smash that like button subscribe to this channel and share the show with your friends head over to timcast.com and become a member because we're going to have that not-so-family-friendly uncensored episode coming up at 11 p.m. tonight.

Now we will read your super chats. DanibusX says, encourage your followers to contact their senators to attach an amendment to repeal the Hughes Amendment to the new gun control bill. What does that one do? What's the Hughes Amendment? Don't know. I don't know. How about every single person just calls your senator or congressman nonstop saying,

do not sign on to this bill? Don't organize it. A time. A specific time on a specific day. And then repeat that. It's super powerful. Can you call them personally? Like, if you called their personal?

I doubt it. I think you can really call their office. I mean, it might be considered harassment if you call their home phone or something. Would it be? I would feel like I'm getting harassed if people were calling my home phone. Joshua Harrison says, Leftists just stormed the Wisconsin state capitol over abortion rights. Never forget 622.

That's right. I saw that. Never forget. They went inside? Yeah. Filled it up. It was an insurrection. Insurrection.

Insurrection. 529. You remember the 529 insurrection. Insurrection. Insurrection. Yeah. 529. Yeah. Do you remember the 529 insurrection? You didn't forget, did you? Didn't forget. 529. That's right.

Never forget. Falcon Laser says, get Tulsi Gabbard on after the Mines Festival. I'll ask. We're going to be on a panel together. Yeah. If you guys didn't know, this Saturday in New York City, festival.minds.com, we're going to be speaking. It's going to be a really awesome event, and I'm going to be on a panel. I think it's Tulsi, right?

I think you are, yeah. James O'Keefe, Tulsi, me, Ben Burgess, and it's going to be comedy. It's going to be great. There's going to be some stand-up. There's going to be a lot of people there. Seth, you're going to be there, I think? I'll be there, too, yeah. That's right.

It's a great lineup. Yeah, it's a big theater. It's a nice venue yeah beacon theater in new york yeah festival.minds.com get your tickets and there's even like a free ticket form if you if you're if you're hurting and you really want to go because we want to get people to show up all right let's see what we got okay rogal dorn says why not just recall the rhinos, get them out of office?

Senators can't be recalled. Sorry. They get in for six years, they sit there, and then they just spit in your face. There's a problem. Yep. The K,

the KL Tanker says, went to buy my first handgun in California today, wearing my inflation is theft shirt. Gonna go back tomorrow to use the range and officially buy it, thinking about wearing my if you trust the government shirt, wearechanged.org. Very good shirts, by

the way. All right. Smokey Joe says, Hey, Tim, nearly everyone accepts some degree of limits on speech, including you and I. So how do you rationalize being a two-way absolutist while being a one-A relativist? Appreciate y'all love you

shamus because the first amendment first of all it covers a variety of things and we're trying to understand what it means that the uh the right to free speech shall not be infringed right what is free speech referring to the expression of your ideas and politics should not be infringed by the government that doesn't mean you can orchestrate crime that That's not. Now, there's a challenge there, and I've brought this up. Because if the government just makes certain things crimes, then they can continually infringe upon your right to express your political opinions. So I've often said, I'm not entirely sure there can be limits on free speech in that case. And perhaps as many other first 1A absolutists or free speech absolutists have said, only the direct action itself should be the crime.

There's a good point there. As for the right to keep and bear arms, it says the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It exists. There it is. And arms refers to the same weapons the government has. That's it. We know exactly what they mean. We know what they meant when they wrote it. So the issue, I suppose, is they're two different things. I don't know. You guys have thoughts on that? Yeah, thinking of speech and action,

the difference between like, they go, no, it's only illegal if you do the action. Speech is a form of action. It requires you to make your body act to make the speech. And then if you record it, especially, that's some big action.

So it's, you know, you can definitely, you can definitely speak things. You know, that's some big action. So you can definitely speak things. That's a form of it. I think one way to put it is there are questions around the legality of orchestrating crime. Being the person who provides the mental capacity for a crime to be carried out. Some people have the brute force and the strength or the willingness to take action, physical action against another person, but not the wherewithal or mental capacity. And then you serving as a vehicle to drive people or enable them to do it. There's a question there.

Keeping a gun, you've committed no crime. The fact that I have a gun does not hurt anybody, does not infringe on anyone else's rights. It is not a threat to anybody. I have done nothing wrong. In what context are we talking about free speech rights, though? Are we talking about them on YouTube, social media? In public. The Constitution.

Can the government infringe upon? I think that's a great question. Because on YouTube, I think of this a lot, like daily. What's free speech on YouTube? YouTube's a corporation. They can shut down anyone at any time. And if the government's to come in and say, no, corporation, you've got to got to do what we say well that's kind of fascist of our government to get involved so like i'm like what does it mean what does free speech on the internet even mean with private

companies owning the place there's been like there was a supreme court justice back in an old case going way back and like it was marsh versus alabama it had to do with like this company town whether and it was a privately owned company town. And the question was whether or not you had free speech rights in this town because it's owned by a corporation. And they said yes. And they said yes, you do have free speech there because the town is performing all the functions

that the government normally would. And so no one's really been successful in taking that argument and moving it to social media. But one of the opinions in that, one of the justices, Justice Black, wrote something about how the more you open up uh as a private person the more you open up your property or your business to the public the more you can you you kind of give up some of your rights to allow for some of theirs to flourish so they have their own rights both statutory rights and constitutional rights and you're allowing them on your platform, your property or whatever.

And so places of public accommodation have to accommodate the statutory and constitutional rights of the people that are there. That's one of the arguments that was made in that case in particular. And I don't see any reason why that shouldn't apply to social media companies. Occupy Wall Street famously had a lawsuit. Many people were like, Zuccotti Park is private property. And then there was a lawsuit, and the courts were like, but it's open to the public, so protest is allowed. And then they couldn't evict the protesters. They eventually evicted the protesters on sanitation grounds or something like that.

But this is why the Chase Plaza, about a block away, shut down to the public because they didn't want Occupy Wall Street taking over their public plaza, privately owned. The occupiers also went beneath the Deutsche Bank building, which was another privately owned public space because they knew they were legally allowed to now occupy these spaces. That's how it works. I see Twitter as being no different. All right. Gadsden says, Tim, you talk about national divorce, civil war all the time. I wrote a book about exactly that.

Can I send a copy of it to your P.O. box? Yes. It's called National Divorce, a Practical Plan to Prevent Civil War. It's available on Amazon as well. Interesting. Very cool. We have paused the fan mail for the time being. I'm not sure if sending something to the P.O. box will get through or not, but you're welcome to send it.

All right. Butter Warrior says, Tim, thank you for being liberal for i am conservative shamus thank you for being pious for i am on the road and my jesus looking man i drank gin and tonic and i had clairvoyance my gal stay you well all right i like that sweet you denton sayson says, Seamus got it. Even liberals don't believe these common sense gun laws will solve anything. It's all incremental steps towards a gun-free utopia. Don't you think it should be mandated if you're trying to push for legislation after a tragedy to explain how that legislation would have prevented what just happened?

Right. But they don't because that's not their goal their goal is to get your guns it'll affect law-abiding people and there were already laws in place that should have stopped that from happening that didn't that didn't exactly all right minor says tim i've i've been wondering for a while why don't you use music at the start when the show goes live it would give an audible clue that it started sure we do that yeah yeah for a while we were just uh we would just go live and then you know go live but then youtube auto plays an ad for a lot of people so then many people would miss like the first 30 seconds so now we wait a minute yeah so we can we can do that i suppose jason takes says my wife had our second

daughter this morning, named her Lydia, in part because of how sweet and awesome Sour Patch Liz is. I'm a second daughter? If only she knew how you really were. Okay, shut up, Seamus. I'm a second daughter. That makes me so happy.

That's adorable. Congratulations. That is wonderful, though. Russell says, You need to push for a recall for all these rhinos, Tim. Let's not wait for the next election. Senators can't be recalled how amazing is that members of congress can so great and should be so all those congress people who are voting for this stuff recall all right friedrich frederick friedrich borman says hello tim and crew i am once again asking

you to invite russian libertarian mikhail svet asking you to invite Russian libertarian Mikhail Svetov. You can reach him on Twitter at M Svetov. He's very knowledgeable and knows a whole lot about American politics. Interesting. Is he in America? I'll have to check him out. AO6 says, Tim, could you look up the court case? Coniglia v. Strom.

The Supreme Court already voted on it in a 9-0 decision, and it supposedly might already refute red flag laws. Interesting. Really? When was that? Let's take a look into it. All right. J.D. Russell says, I've enjoyed the previous theological discussions on the Members Only show. You guys should have on Joel Richardson, author of The Islamic Antichrist.

He would bring a unique perspective on current events and biblical prophecy interesting you guys at the babylon beach probably just publish lottery numbers at this point it's be like sooner or later was that a comment did you just read that comment no no i'm just saying the babylon b who publish lottery numbers you know the guys of satire i'll say it right now right here if you become a premium subscriber today we'll publish lottery numbers just for you premium subscribers only gonna sign up we'll give you the fortune the fortune numbers all right nate wotring says tim you moved to the middle of nowhere in west virginia yet you compare the weather of miami to west virginia dude florida is so much bigger than miami lol yeah like all of florida is hot though i know

miami is like particularly bad but uh yeah like west virginia it's just you get seasons you know it's not that 72 the other night it was just the perfect perfect we had like three days you just do what the snowbirds do they come down they're they're there when it's like cool and nice and then they leave for the summer and escape. They go somewhere north. They go to the mountains. They go somewhere else. It's basically what Luke does.

Yeah. He shows up, and everyone's like, I wonder why he's back, and it's like he's migrating. Yeah. He's got to fly north. Migratory bird. Yeah, that's true. Fly south for the winter. All right.

Let's grab some more of these super chats. Nate Woodworth says, Joni Ernst is my senator. I'm 24. She was the first senator I ever voted for. I'm so mad. I'm looking into how, what I need to run against her, and I will. Wow. Yes.

Do it. Bravo. Absolutely. Western Canadian Commentary says, Tim, you keep saying it's a choice between Trump or DeSantis, but why not both? Give Trump second term in 24, then DeSantis in 28. Let Trump drain the swamp. Then DeSantis brings america into a golden age keep up the great work i i agree a trump desantis ticket i don't know what do you think would they work together would

they would they want that you know they got to be on board with that i don't know yeah i have no idea how they have been like photographed at events together like in recent times i guess so i'm thinking it's going to be DeSantis. Yeah. Cause I like predict it has DeSantis winning right now. Some polls are coming out. And well, and I think there are good reasons for that, right? Regardless of whether you want to attribute this to, you know, the deep state stopping Trump or the political establishment, not letting him do what he needed to do.

We have seen DeSantis effectively govern after COVID hit. And after the left tried shutting the entire economy down and started writing and all the shenanigans they've been up to. We really haven't seen the same from Trump. He's been gone. And when he was in office, he wasn't able to achieve the things he wanted to in those circumstances, whereas DeSantis has been able to. I'm not saying it's the same scenario, but I am saying it's reasonable that people would be more trusting of DeSantis after that. Brand new clown world says a simple thing I do in terms of culture jamming is making stickers. All it takes is vinyl sticker paper and a cheap inkjet printer.

I go to my local skate park or dive bar and slap on a bare-shelf Biden or One Nation controlled by the media sticker. Ah, yes, yes. Yeah, we got criticized, some left leftist outlet because we have proof of gun uh stickers i love it where it's like the proof of vaccination card yeah but it says proof of gun and then it's like write down what gun you had and they were like he has fake gun gun declaration forms or whatever it's like someone's real likely to think that's real and i don't know about that they just thought it was like how dare dare you? Whatever. Second Amendment. Colby Brown says, Tim, bravo putting West Virginia Senator on blast.

Don't forget McConnell giving in on the debt ceiling and infrastructure leading to inflation. This blow up the phone lines and let them know what you think. Yes. But Mitch McConnell is awful. We need better leadership. The Republican Party is the Republican Party. A bunch of new populist libertarian types came into the Republican Party because of Donald Trump. And now many of them are just like, I can't believe Mitch McConnell would do this to us. I don't understand why someone like DeSantis doesn't inspire more people to have a backbone like him.

Look at the response you know where he's in a conversation right now and he's he's ahead he's head to head or ahead in polls against trump for like running for president well why because he hasn't like been spineless and rolled over and let the left just do whatever you know like he stands up to them i just don't see how that's not like replicated why is nobody saying why why do people on the right why do republicans think that the best thing to do is appease the left when obviously what desantis is doing is working yeah yeah exactly and it's not even just a question of what desantis is doing working though it obviously does how can you a see what desantis is doing and b see what like

mitch mcconnell and mitt romney are doing and go you what? I'm going to be like those guys. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, you've got right now unpredicted DeSantis is beating Trump. And if you've got this narrative that Trump controls the party, but DeSantis is starting to pull ahead in the polls, clearly he's doing something right. Right. These Republicans should be like,

as you said, emulate DeSantis to win. Right, exactly. Well, you know, maybe they're just not smart people. How about that? I mean... All right. The one free man says, Tim, there are a lot of wealthy people

not doing anything. Wait. There are a lot of wealthy people not doing anything. Klaus Schwab and Soros hold our beer. That's right. Yeah. You see, unfortunately,

all the rich people who are actually doing stuff and our culture warriors are doing it in bad ways. Against us. Yeah. Like, it's cool that elon musk is gonna is trying to buy twitter but it would not be difficult for him to start a media organization or invest in someone starting something or to prop up uh anyone challenging the narrative he could uncancancel people. He could be like, I'll put $10 million towards comedy shows.

I will guarantee that the industry exists. That's what I'm talking about. Like, do that. We're talking about doing a new kind of award. There's people doing that, by the way, trying to uncancel. Daily Wire has uncanceled some people. Absolutely.

You know, I came to the aid of the Libs of TikTok girl, who I won't name here, when she was being doxxed and taken out. The Daily Wire, they're building themselves up from the ground up. They're building this big empire. There are people who are already on the top of these big towers who purport to believe in a lot of the same things, who could snap their fingers. Yeah, they have resources. Yeah. They don't do it. Yeah.

You know? They do some stuff, but I'll tell you, one of the things I've encountered is that a lot of the people who actually have the money don't understand cultural issues. And so they keep approaching things from this tech perspective where they're like, you know, look, to be honest,

like even buying Twitter, I think is great, but I think it shows the kind of, it shows the worldview of Elon Musk. The solution even buying Twitter I think is great, but I think it shows the world view of Elon Musk. The solution is buying Twitter. Well, buying Twitter is a nuclear bomb in the culture war, but the issue is you need culture warriors to create culture, share culture, inspire young people. Owning Twitter doesn't necessarily change what's going on. But at least they'll be allowed to speak on his platform when he's managing it. So it is good, but I hear a lot from people. They're like like if we just build this new platform and i'm like that's not changing the culture it's not changing the fact that a large portion of millennials believe these things

you know well and it also doesn't provide an alternative in the sense that you're not going to have people like the people that are on twitter right now you have the full diverse spectrum of like viewpoints represented on twitter right now you know you got people've got people far left, far right, and everybody in between. And if you build an alternative that's like if Musk were to start an alternative that was like a free speech platform, he's like, hey, come join my free speech platform. How many people on the left are going to join that platform? Do they want a free

speech platform where there's no where there's moderation but not for what they consider misinformation or hate speech? Of course not. Yeah, I think you've got to free the software code. The only way you can really get free speech is let people build their own networks with the code. It's, I guess, later.

JT says, Tim, don't rent space on billboards. Buy the billboard. Buy it, put up your message, and leave it up forever. Okay. But it's probably just not cost effective. What if instead of billboards, you put shirts on people? You just pay people to wear your shirt that has your message on it. Send them out in large groups or something.

Find a homeless shelter nearby Charleston and give them like 500 shirts of all different sizes. Right. Of each like there's 5,000 shirts. And they're giving away all these shirts that just say, you know, Shelly is trash or whatever. That'd be hilarious. And then they're like, but they're free shirts and these people really need to wear them it's like all of a sudden there's home no no no you if if they're gonna give it to homeless people it's got to be something like more political about why are there homeless people in this place in the first place why is this place suffering and then point to the senator who's supposed to be doing right by

the people you know what i mean right right then you're getting more political i guess though you could be like it's their fault i'm here wearing this shirt thank them bad leadership all right mr devilman says ben franklin was a boss while in england during the war as a diplomat he hired his own private fleet of pirates to hit English supply ships. Wow. That's crazy. Good for him, I suppose. Yeah. Good for Ben.

You know, one of the things is, by the way, on the free speech stuff in Twitter and Musk and all that stuff, one thing that I don't know if you guys have talked about it much here, but I feel like it doesn't get talked about enough, is the fact that these platforms, like Twitter, for example example they give you all the tools you need to decide who you're going to listen to like i can mute or block anybody i don't have to see if you start saying stuff that i don't like i can stop seeing it without taking away your voice it's about taking away your voice i think they want to do yeah but but but it's like it's it's just insane you're right it that's what it's about but if it's but ultimately it's just insane. You're right. That's what it's about. But ultimately, it's like the tools are there for you to like – if it was really about having a safe space and not being exposed to that stuff, the tools are there to protect yourself right now. So it has to be about taking away your voice.

An issue I've had is if I mute somebody and then someone responds to them, I see the response. Right. And the person I muted is tagged in it, and I'm like, I don't want to think about that person. That's why I muted them. So come on, fix that Twitter. Keep muting everybody. Mute all the threads where that name is popping up. Yeah, it can become a lot of work.

Or put that option on. Yeah. All right. EgoLitster, the bee did a great article on our church and baptizing via water slides. Tim, as a member, I'm asking that you buy up all the billboards. Love you all. Awesome. Baptizing by water slides. A, as a member, I'm asking that you buy up all the billboards. Love you all. Awesome.

Baptizing by water slides. A lot of people thought that was real. Really? Yeah. Including one of our employees. She now works for us, but she admitted when we hired her that she originally thought that article was real. Wow.

That's great. Well, you know, now Snopes is sounding convincing. You need to be taken off the internet. Yep. Joe Messinic says dead internet alexa will soon be able to read stories as your dead grandma yep tech crunch yeah and i think i was reading that facebook can take a person's profile and then create an ai chat bot based on their life and knowledge and talk to you like you know it's like your grandpa dies that's so eerie it's gonna be like hey grandpa i'm a ghost and you'll be like whoa that know, it's like your grandpa dies. That's so eerie. It's going to be like, hey, grandpa. And he'll be like, what's up?

I'm a ghost. And you'll be like, whoa. That's what he'll say to him. Yeah. Whoa. It's those algorithms that should be free. Sounds like you're the AI. Having that much manipulation over the populace is irksome.

I think that's the code that needs to be freed for people to have access to it, at least to see what it's doing. The Alexa comment, though, is that because Alexa's been listening so much is that why it's able to well they were talking about uh you can you can have a custom alexa voice because i guess it's just based on hearing samples of someone speaking alexa will be able to imitate their voice who knows how well you know they'll be able to do it or it will be able to do it that's weird yeah alicia z del valle says i think louis ck said that he felt we were actually closer as a society when people mocked each other uh about race and physical appearance in general i thought that was kind of

funny lol yeah i mean arguably yes when people were doing these jokes we weren't on the verge of tearing each other apart and burning everything to the ground, right? Well, I think it's a chicken or egg style question. So if you're not close with somebody and they start making offensive jokes about you, you're going to be less likely to laugh, especially if they're an enemy and there's been tension there. But if you're friends with somebody and they poke some fun at you, you're probably going to laugh. They can get away with a lot more. So I think being able to joke about those things is the sign of a very healthy society because the people in the society actually believe that the person poking fun at them doesn't mean them any harm. Today, that's very clearly not the case. And I'm not sure if it's not the case because we can't joke about

it. I think it's probably the case just because tensions have been heightened for other reasons. But the lack of humor is certainly a symptom. All right. Danibus X says, The Hughes Amendment banned the manufacture of machine guns for civilian use in 1986. Ah, that one. Yes. Yes, we should get rid of that. Yes.

That's stupid. All right. Young Jav says, Killer clowns from outer space. That is all I am. That is all. I am a gorilla. Oh, okay.

All right. Let's see. Volsiferon, Herald of the Winter Mist, says, Article 1, Section 27 of the Oregon Constitution states, The people shall have the right

to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state, but the military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power. Wow. That's not going too wellination to the civil power. Interesting. Wow.

That's not going too well up there, I suppose. No. Matthew Gregor says, check out Saint Philip Neri. He literally hung out with the dregs of Italy making jokes that were the punch... jokes that were...

Where? Where the punchline was their sin. Oh, I see what you're saying see the joke caused them to see the reality of the life they were living wow interesting interesting amos moses has got to move to oklahoma we banned red flag laws two years ago nebraska sounds pretty nice too so is missouri yeah yeah yep all right nolan bus says vosh is currently defending the position that taking kids to drag shows is not bad on alex stein's page this is madness bad is good and good is bad it's really funny seeing the left come out and defend the drag queen story hour thing

and and it's like it's funny because i saw this leftist journalist post something being like can we can we no no i think it was uh post something being like, can we – no, no, no. I think it was – yeah, they said something like, can we make the distinction between drag shows that are stripping and drag queens just reading books? And I'm just like, oh, yeah, because having a go-go dancer read your kids' books is fine. I'm pretty sure parents would not be okay with that either. Well, I mean, look, 10 years ago, if someone was a drag queen during their off time and they were let into a school to read a book to children, that would be a controversy. Today, they're doing it in drag, and you're told you have to accept it. What makes someone a queen, like a drag queen?

Because if I put on a dress, I'd technically be in drag. That's kind of the definition of the phrase. It's very specific, like full costume, foam hips, big makeup. That's what makes the queen, the drag queen, is when they put on the makeup and stuff? I guess. I mean, it's like... It's like, what is the purpose, you know? And they actually have a stated purpose for what they're doing.

It's to like... Groom kids. It's to like stimulate the queer imagination or something like that in children. And it's like... That's literally grooming. Yeah. And this is all over public libraries and schools and schools are signed onto this stuff.

And I'm just thinking to myself, how do drag queens, whether it's inappropriate, whatever, it's a man dressed as a woman. It's always that way. It's always a man dressed as a woman. How does that do anything but distract from story time? What's the point of story time?

Just have the drag queen perform. The argument they made is that drag queens are in costume and it's theatrics. They're reading a story in character. And my argument right back is like, drag shows have a set standard of what they are.

They walk around, they take tips from the audience. It is comparable to go-go dancing. If we said go-go dancing for kids parents would be like excuse me we can put a pole in the room too and they can do that because the drag queens have been doing the same kinds of dancing they've done some of that yeah and parents would probably be like hey wait a minute but the left is jumping over themselves to defend this because it's tribal issues right but we'll we'll if we'll leave it there if you haven't already smash the like button

subscribe to this channel share the show with your friends. We're going to have that members-only show up at about 11 p.m. You're not going to want to miss it because we are going – it's uncensored, not family-friendly. We record that right now after the show, and then it goes up at 11. You can follow the show at TimCastIRL basically everywhere. You can follow me at TimCast. Seth, do you want to shout anything out? You can follow the Babylon Bee.

Not on Twitter right now. We're locked out. But hopefully, if we get back, you can follow us there. But we're still on Facebook, Instagram, BabylonBee.com, our YouTube channel as well. Like and subscribe there. Right on. I just saw the video Seamus did with the Babylon Bee. It was hilarious.

Oh, the one for the Rod Butch's debate tactics? Yeah, that one was hilarious. Thank you. I can only say that because I can't take credit for all the jokes. So yeah, I'm Seamus Coghlan. I have a YouTube channel called Freedom Tunes. I create political cartoons, and we're going to be releasing one tomorrow. I think you guys will enjoy it.

If you want to go over to freedomtunes.com for five bucks a month, you can become a member, and you'll be supporting independent content and getting an extra cartoon every week. Guys, I want to remind you about festival.minds.com, because I'm going to be there speaking with Blair White, Bill Altman. We're going to be talking about internet, the future of internet, the technology of internet, social media censorship, all of the above. It's going to be hot, so check it out, festival.minds.com. Get a ticket there.

It's going to be in New York City at the Beacon Theater. And it's this Saturday, June 26th. Looking forward to seeing you there. Did you mention the free tickets? No, no. You can also get free tickets. A lot of people may be financially pinched, or if you just want some free ticks, go to festival.minds.com, and you can sign up for the free ticket form. Yeah, I am really looking forward to the Minds Festival because I've never been to New York City. So this is going to be super fun.

I'm excited. Seth's going to be joining us there. Blair White's going to be there. Tulsi Gabbard's. I'm excited. Seth's going to be joining us there. Blair White's going to be there. Tulsi Gabbard's going to be there. It's going to be a really great time. I'm super stoked about it. We're just going to drive up. It's going to be super rad.

You guys can follow me on Twitter and Minds.com at Sour Patch Lids, as well as Sour Patch Lids.me. We will see you all at TimCast.com. Thanks for hanging out. Bye, guys.