From Penny Stocks to Philanthropy: Timothy Sykes' Inspiring Journey | Digital Social Hour #21

All right, welcome to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Timothy Sykes.

How's it going, Sykes?

Thanks for having me.

The legend.

Do we need an intro on this, man?

I don't think so.

Most people shouldn't know who you are.

I feel like too many people know.

Like, it's like, you know, I was really aggressive on social media early on.

And so people have like an idea of me.

Yeah,

he was like the original.

I had like the orange Lambo.

I was the first like Lambo guy.

And then everyone started getting Lambo.

He was like the original.

I used to, like, I told you, I used to like stock his Twitter just to beat up

what he was doing.

And I went hard, right?

He was making so much money.

And he was talking about penny stocks and everything like that.

So he's,

I guess, not the originator, but I think you brought it to the forefront from a social media standpoint.

100%.

You was killing it on Twitter for sure.

Because most people in penny stocks are just frauds and fakes, so they can't be real.

I'm like, I just trade.

I'm not like a promoter.

I'm not like the Wolf of Wall Street.

Let me just be real.

So the more real I could be, the better.

So how close or true is that concept from Wolf of Wall Street?

It's kind of the same thing.

I mean, he was pre-internet.

Like, people don't even realize.

He was just like a boiler room and people didn't know they couldn't use the internet to research.

So Wolf of Wall Street is gone.

I did an interview with him and he was like, I was giving him updates on how the penny stock market evolved, and he was like, mind-blown.

It was actually pretty funny.

How has it evolved, actually?

I mean, just you can research everything, right?

So, like, there's still a lot of scams.

There's still a lot of promos and the hype still rules.

And like, a lot of newbies, like, they just believe anything that they read.

But at the same time, like, if you're meticulous, like, you should never get scammed.

It's all on the internet.

So, like, when I first started teaching, I trade penny stocks.

Like, I sometimes, yeah, I always stick with it.

It's a really like undiscovered niche because there are scams.

So you have like promoters want to be promoters.

You have a lot of newbies who believe they're promoters, but there's a lot of like opportunity if you're meticulous.

Like I said, like there are scams because you can't get to everybody.

Correct.

I don't get to people.

Usually most of my students come to me after they lost everything and then they Google around and I they read a blog post that I wrote three months ago trying to warn their lazy asses.

So how do you so how did how do how do you how do they get in touch with you to prevent from being scammed?

Because they're being scammed because you can't answer.

I mean so I always try to like when I expose the scams like I have 3,000 blog posts.

So I always say, like, share this, try to get the word out.

But promoters have massive budgets.

I don't have any budget.

I just try to grow organically.

So how are they scamming?

I mean, they just pitch, like, look, we found a billion dollars worth of gold or oil or, you know, this new nanotechnology or China or AI or crypto.

I mean, any kind of pipe dream, they just sell.

And maybe with not a lot of money, $100, $200, like buying a lotta ticket, right?

Their friend buys it.

Like, there's a lot of shady Discord chat rooms.

They're all hyping it up.

You know, there might be a Discord chat room where you think there's a thousand people in there, but it's really just like three promoters with like 300 usernames each, and they're chatting back and forth.

Wow.

So, like, there's so much bakery.

Yeah.

I didn't even know that.

This is what happened.

So, people are like, everyone's talking about this stock.

It's going up, but not necessarily everyone's talking about it.

And it's going up because the promoters behind the scenes are like trading back and forth with themselves.

Wow.

So, you have it's just expect the worst.

I always say, expect the worst.

You'll never be disappointed.

So, at your rate, do you, are you even, do you even have a 401k?

Does that even make sense to you?

I don't like diversification.

I literally focus on one penny stock at a time.

Like if there's a scam, I might buy it.

I say, look, I have blog posts.

I say, like, why I invested $50,000 into this scam.

And people are like, what's wrong with you?

But if it's a scam, if it's a pump-a-dump, the promoters are paid to pump it up for a week, two weeks, three months.

Like, they have little disclaimers where they say how long their advertising campaign is going.

Obviously, it's always a risk.

It can get halted.

It can crash.

So I don't bet big.

Like, I never, I don't even usually put in $50,000.

I started with $12,000.

My parents gave me that as my Bar Mitzvah gift money.

Every year I go back to $12,000.

I trade with a small account.

And do you trust banks?

Like, what's your trust?

What's your relationship with banks?

Are you putting your money in banks or all out?

Yeah, no.

I mean, I have banks.

Like, there's all these conspiracy theories, like all the banks and the politicians.

I know a lot of penny stock promoters who embrace conspiracy theories just because it increases their engagement.

I know a lot of gurus who embrace conspiracy theories and they don't even believe in themselves.

Offline, they're like, no, that's BS.

Only idiots believe this stuff, but they really love it because it gets everyone riled up on social media.

So you just, you can't trust anybody on social media.

Like it's, you really have to expect the worst.

And in fact, like 90% of traders lose money.

So everyone's like, oh, I want to get into trading.

I'm like, why?

Nine out of 10 people lose.

What do you think you have that these other people don't?

So I don't really think trading is for most people.

But if you have time, if you have a little bit of money, if you're really willing to study, like if you're just at home playing video games or watching Netflix, you should be a trader.

You can use your time, you know, wisely.

Right.

Because again, with the internet, you can learn everything.

Like it's crazy how far down the rabbit hole you can go on any crypto, any penny stock.

And there's so much research online.

And this has all been built in the past decade or so.

It's pretty amazing.

I want to talk about your transition to charity.

So you made over 7 million with penny stocks.

You started buying a lot of material objects, luxury cars, watches, and you didn't feel fulfilled.

Correct.

Is that when you got into charity?

first Lamborghini, I got an orange Lamborghini.

I was that douche back in Miami.

What'd you get?

It's just a Lamborghini Gallardo.

Just like a basic Lambo.

It was like, you know, my childhood dream.

I grew up in Connecticut.

I had all these posters of Lambos and Ferraris.

I like first day I got it, first week, first month, first year, I'm like, yes, yes.

Then I get like the second Lamborghini.

I had a lot of other cars.

I had a Ferrari, McLaren, Rolls-Royce, all this stuff.

I bought all of them because I was just.

unfulfilled.

Second Lambo gets delivered and I feel nothing.

I'm like, what is wrong with me?

I did like a cancer test.

I'm like, I'm not going to have cancer.

This is what cancer is.

But my priorities just changed.

And I always travel.

Like, the beautiful thing about trading is you can do it from anywhere.

So I've been to over a hundred countries now, but there's only so many like luxury pools and you're drinking a pina colada and you're like, oh, look at the sunset.

You know?

Yeah, I see.

Cause the first thing I asked you was, bro, are you ever in the USA?

So I'm always traveling, right?

So I flew in from Tokyo yesterday.

Two days from now, I'm flying back to Bali for Earth Day.

Wow.

We have a recycling center open.

So like I transitioned from luxury and material goods because I thought that's what I wanted.

It made me happy for a little bit.

I'm not going to lie.

Like, people out there, like, you shouldn't want any luxury, screw that.

Like, get whatever you want.

Inspire yourself.

If you have, like, nothing, like, I moved my family down from Connecticut to Miami, best thing ever.

I got them a place, got them two places, combined the places.

They now live a dream life.

That's fantastic for them.

But for me, it started getting boring.

And when I'm traveling, like, there's only so many beaches.

So, one time in Bali, I asked my driver, I was like, you know what?

Take me to your village.

And he was like, what are you talking about?

Like, I'm, the village is not nice.

I was staying at like the viceroy in Ubu, Bali.

Have you been to Bali?

No.

Should go to Bali.

Bali is beautiful.

Beautiful, but the locals don't have much.

And I was like, you know, there's a disconnect in most tropical places, like the locals don't have much.

Like the big hotel chains just like pay them very little.

And then tourists pay like a thousand dollars a night because they're just trying to impress their girlfriend or wife.

So I was like, let me go to the village.

And we started going to villages.

And I was like, wow, this is cool.

Like his family, like cook for me.

I'm having like local food.

And I'm like, yo, I like this.

i was like what do you guys need they needed a school that most of the kids don't know how to read or write that limits their options they're just begging or they have to work for like these evil hotel corporations that pay them very little so you opened up a college so we opened up just a basic school basic school right one basic school i think the first school had like 50 kids um took like three months it cost i think like fifteen thousand dollars yeah i didn't know what i was doing i was like oh let me just do this went back to bali saw it like the kids are singing to me i'm visiting like i'm just crying and i'm like i want more and more then we opened two schools in Laos.

Um, Laos is a beautiful country, too, climbing some mountains, hiking, and everything.

It was amazing.

And then I was like, I want more.

I was supposed to donate another $250,000 in Laos, but I was so pumped up by the community.

And I was like, I'm going to donate a million.

And the translator didn't even know what a million dollars was.

It was funny.

We have like a video of the translations, and I posted it.

And everyone's like, Why are you saying you donated a thousand dollars?

Like, the translator got it wrong.

But a million dollars builds a lot of schools.

And then it was just off to the races.

Now we're at 115 schools.

Wow.

So

Bali, Laos, Nepal, Guatemala, Ghana, like Mexico, like all over.

We even have some projects in America too.

I'm just not rich enough to build that much.

It's a lot more expensive here.

And also, like, it's like, frankly, Americans are spoiled.

Like, if you build a school, the kids are like, nah, I'm in a ditch.

I'm going to play a video game.

Like, kids in these third world countries, they would love just for like a credit.

Like, it's mind-blowing.

They have in Bali, for example, when you go to these schools and you visit them, we also get them toys, new equipment, like a new playground, all this stuff.

You see a coloring book.

Like, we refurbish some of the schools too.

It's not just all brand new schools.

But I visited this school, this was a month ago, and they're showing me like this school has like a big hole in the ceiling.

If it rains, no school, not just for the day, but for like a week or a month during the rainy season, everything gets flooded.

They can't afford a new roof.

I'm looking at their coloring books.

You know, like a coloring book, like you can color it once, twice, maybe three times, but the coloring books, the pages are all shiny because they've colored over it like 50 times.

They only have one coloring book for the whole community.

And it's just like, we don't realize that, right?

right like we take it for granted so third world countries now after I mean it's been five and a half years since we started this charity Now we actually have some graduates and they're getting into school and they're like getting jobs and it's it's just can you see yourself living over there permanently somewhere You see people always say like settle down in one place, but like why like I have the schools in all these third world countries.

You know, I was just in Japan.

This is this new charity merch.

I just literally got this off the plane.

This is like

I like it.

Yeah, you like it?

So this is recycled material.

Feel it.

it feel it yeah recycle cotton it's soft yeah 100 this is the first one and this all goes to the victims of war so it's like you know make peace not war so we're helping kids in war-torn countries like yemen ukraine afghanistan so it's not just schools now we're helping animals too we have a recycling center opening like we're trying to do a bunch of stuff do you believe in recycling Yeah, but there's a lot of problems with it.

So like we're doing a documentary on this too.

So we do documentaries because there's a lot of misinformation out there.

Big picture recycling helps.

If you get into the nuanced stuff, like there's a lot of problems.

Like very little stuff is actually recycled.

A lot of the recycling just goes to third world countries.

Like a lot of people say like, oh, Bali, Philippines, Indonesia, like these places are trash.

Look at the trash everywhere.

We don't realize first world countries ship their trash to third world countries.

You know this?

I didn't know that.

So this is in our documentary.

Work in production, but like literally the US has so much trash, we used to send it to China.

China, US, at a trade war, China was like, we're not accepting your trash anymore.

So now we ship it to other third world countries.

And the third world countries are happy because they get paid but they have no way of disposing it so there's all these illegal landfills they're burning it it's like destroying our planet wow and people don't even realize trash that seems inefficient to just send yeah we send yeah we don't have enough room over the ocean yeah correct why not recycle and burn it here because it was illegal so we have laws here against that but we're we're bursting at the seams with so much trash so we're like what do you do because like the local government, you know, they're embarrassed if there was all this trash.

Like, what are you going to do with it?

You can't burn it because there's laws against that here.

Oh, let's sell it to these third world countries that need any money whatsoever.

And they'll just, we don't want to know anymore.

Like they don't ask any questions.

Yeah.

We have some crazy documents.

So you're setting up a recycling center over there.

So we're doing it the right way.

So actually we have these plastic barriers that catch all the plastic in the river.

So it's literally like barriers that float on top of the rivers.

And as plastic comes through, it catches all this plastic and all this trash every day.

Like there's so much.

That's it.

And it skims it.

So like we actually have some like garbage men who basically go into these rivers every day with big nets and they take out the plastic.

But we're able to turn the plastic now into furniture and into merch.

Oh, that's made out of plastics.

Well, not this.

So we have hats.

I should have brought a hat.

So we have hats made out of plastic bottle caps.

And it's so soft.

So my partner on the charity, like I donate the money.

I you know, handle social media, but my partner, his name is Bad Boy, Mad A Bad, great photographer, great designer.

And he comes up with all this stuff.

He's like, I call him like Filipino Kanye without like the attitude or the issues, right?

He's a genius.

So this is all his design and he's found ways.

Like, I'll give you a hat next time I see you.

This hat, it literally feels like cashmere, but it's made out of plastic recycled.

Yeah, some guys had a brand, and their thing was shirts were made out of recyclable.

That's cool.

And this is coming because there's so much excess plastic and trash, but it's expensive.

Like this, like even to make this, I mean, this cost us like, what, like $85.

Like, it's not fast fashion.

It's not worth it right now, but it's heading in the right direction.

You can't just rely on fast fashion.

Like these companies like you know H ⁇ M and like Aloe and Shein.

Do you know Shein?

$100 billion Chinese company out of the blue.

And they're coming up with like a thousand new designs a day.

And girls are loving it.

Like, oh, $20 for a dress, $15 for a dress.

So it costs the consumer less, but what does it cost our planet?

What does it cost future generations?

People don't think about that.

Wow.

So this is what we're trying to do.

Yeah, that's awesome.

You've also donated over $5 million to over 100 charities.

My question is, how do you find the right charities to partner with?

Because I've donated to charities, and all I get is a letter in a mail to donate more.

There's no

100%, but I don't see any proof of where the money goes.

Well, that's the thing, right?

But, like, it's, I mean, I'm actually going to Turkey too because we donated $300,000 to the earthquake victims.

So, we're going to go there.

We're going to see, we're getting them tents, mattresses, food packages, just basic stuff.

You got to go with small charities.

Like, big charities, so inefficient.

Whenever there's an emergency, everyone donates to Red Cross.

Red Cross donates less than 2% of your money.

The rest of it goes to the machine that is Red Cross.

Seriously, commercials, lawyers, manager.

Whoa.

And it stinks.

And Red Cross is actually in trouble right now in Turkey because they did something even worse.

Red Cross Turkey sold the tents to other charities.

You're such a, that's just an evil thing to do.

It went viral.

You can search this.

Red Cross Turkey Charity selling tents.

They sold them, I think, for like $60 and it should have been like $20.

They're making like a profit.

It's so messed up.

There's so many messed up charities out there.

So small charities, we look at every single cost.

We really dig into it.

Like, that's why, you know, it's like, okay, we've only donated a few million, but it's, I, you know, we micromanage it.

We have to see where all this goes because I don't want to just, you know, throw money into the void, which is what a lot of people do.

They donate to Red Cross and these big charities and they're like, oh, I donated.

I feel better.

Yeah.

How do you feel about the crypto market currently?

I love the technology.

I think there's huge, you know, potential with the blockchain.

The problem is so much scamming.

Like I'm, I come from penny stock, so I know scams.

There's probably like 10 to one or 50 to one crypto scammers versus versus penny stock scammers.

Penny stock scammers aren't that smart.

So they usually go out of business, they burn their email lists.

Crypto, there's no real rules right now.

So it's like the Wild West, right?

Like if you picture the Wild West, like there used to be like cocaine and Coca-Cola, like if you murdered somebody, yeah, it's like gray area.

Obviously, you know, things change, but crypto needs rules, needs laws.

I don't know, you know, people say like they need regulation.

How are you going to regulate that?

I don't know.

But I do know that they need more rules.

I wish that some of these big crypto companies, instead of buying like stadium naming rights, would create like a crypto police force.

Like there's so many imposters and so many scams.

And it's just, again, taking advantage of people with small amounts.

So people have to be very, very careful.

And then even like seemingly legit companies like FTX with all the, you know, all the recognition in the world, nope.

Scams.

Not at all, right?

So it's like, who do you trust if you can't trust FTX?

So like when you ask that question about banks, I don't necessarily trust all the banks, but at least there's a infrastructure there, especially up to like 250 000 you're insured they just raised it i think fantastic you know but if if if the fdic goes like all the us goes and then like good luck like then it's going to be a mess

so i i think i know that crypto has a point like they're riding this whole bank panic like congrats on reclaiming you know 30k even reclaiming 20k for bitcoin is fantastic I just trade volatility.

I don't try to make like blanket statements and like, this is what's going to happen.

This is what's going to happen.

I really focus on short-term trades.

Like, I'm really good at holding stocks for like a few hours or a few days because I know like if there's a new promotion, the promoters spew all their hype in Discord, on WhatsApp, on Telegram.

And you can literally track like the hype for several hours or days.

So you're looking to turn a profit most of the time.

Yeah.

I mean, I would.

How much of a profit is it?

So

I win roughly 70% of the time.

So I lose 30%, right?

But 70% is high.

It's pretty good.

Because again, I don't want to trade.

So like, this is what's crazy about me.

I think of myself as a retired trader.

So is it, and you're winning 70% 70% daily?

Yeah, you're still.

Well, so I say I'm a retired trader, but I come out of retirement daily.

When there's a play that's so good, I would feel guilty missing it.

And you're like, why do you have to have this mouthful?

Trading is addictive, right?

I know I have an addictive personality.

If I wanted to, if I wanted to just like be a degenerate, I could trade this, trade this, trade this.

My winning percentage would go down, my losses would go up, and I would have no edge.

That's most gamblers.

That's people here in Vegas.

Do you gamble?

No.

I don't like it.

But you do gamble.

Research gambling.

I like it when odds are in my favor.

If you play any game here at any casino, unless I like your game, you don't sport bet or anything.

You've never gambled before.

I've gambled before.

I don't like it.

You don't like it.

Like, my friends force me here, like, and they're like, put a number, and I'm like, ah, randomness, man.

Randomness.

It's randomness.

It's terrible, right?

It's like if you look at the Venetian and you have the canals, I say like the canals, like the tears of all the betters here.

And they just collect the tiers.

I don't like low-odds games, and I'm not that smart.

I'm not that good at math.

You have to know what you're good at.

If I was good at math and I'm like counting cards and I'm like, like, you know, rain man, fantastic.

Maybe I would, but I'm not.

I really understand promotion.

I understand how many suckers there are out there.

I'm trying to educate the suckers, but then I know that I can't reach everybody.

Yeah.

I saw you recently rescued an endangered white rhino while trading stocks on your laptop.

So what the hell is a white run

animal?

How the hell do you know that white animals?

So this was, this is crazy, and this went viral for the rhino.

Yeah, a rhino in South Africa.

But it's white.

There's different kinds.

So

we did a documentary saving the rhino.

It's called the war against poachers.

This is what I hate about misinformation.

Misinformation with penny stocks, with crypto.

Rhino, I don't know if you know, they're in danger now because of their horns.

The poachers are chopping their heads off, chopping their horns off because they think the horns have medicine.

They say it's an aphrodisiac, cures cancer, cures COVID.

It doesn't do anything.

If you actually look at the ingredient of rhino horns, you know what's in them?

What?

Keratin.

It's our fingernails.

Wow.

A rhino horn is the fingernail of a rhino.

It has no medicinal purposes whatsoever.

So what are they doing with the horns?

So in in the black market like i was holding up a horn literally a horn like this that you can hold like like the size of you know this what is that funko pup

the size of that that would be like 75 to 80 000 for a rhino horn

correct because they grind it up they put it into powders you can like eat it like you digest it and there are these myths that say like this is you know good and it's all misinformation so we did a documentary trying to cure the misinformation you know we can't really reach like the people that need it like a lot of asian people believe this This is like Asian culture.

And it sucks.

But this one video, so I'm trading wherever I go.

I'm always trading and traveling.

I usually separate it.

Usually I'm like trading like at night or something.

And then I do like the charity during the day.

I don't sleep much.

Unfortunately, with this rhino operation, we had to sedate this rhino.

It's basically, there's a way to remove the horn without hurting the animal.

It's like cutting your fingernails.

But you have to sedate the animal because the animal doesn't know that you're like...

Does the horn grow back when it's?

Yeah, it does.

It's literally a fingernail.

Oh, so that's not killing the rhino.

No,

the poachers so the poachers have to kill the animal because the animal is not just going to give up their horn easily

we sedated the rhino in this video and the reason why it it conflicted with my trading is because it was actually too hot out so when it's too hot out you can't sedate an animal it's dangerous so we had to wait for it to cool down so we had to wait it was supposed to be like an 11 a.m mission it turned into like a 4 p.m mission and i had an overnight position and i'm trading every day and i'm like i can't like i'm sponsoring this rhino rescue we're sedating like they literally have to shoot the rhino with a sedative from a helicopter just to pierce the skin It's it's an intense operation, but you sedate it you cut off the horn the the rhino wakes up hornless, but it's fine rhino have no predators where humans are the worst predators and it grows back within three months, but at least now that rhino poachers won't go after a rhino with no horn because there's no reason to try to attack

it.

Yeah, they don't want to attack a multi-ton animal when there's no prize.

Wow.

So we have to do like a safe operation.

It's not the Oh, so you guys are cutting the horns off.

So that the poachers don't care about the rhino for three months.

Oh,

yeah.

So that was the rhino rescue.

And then I was in a trade and I was like, How does Peter feel about even still doing what you guys are doing?

Although it's to save the animal,

are you guys getting any backlash from it?

Well, I got backlash because I'm doing the trade while the rhino is sedated next to me.

And I filmed it.

But I am.

I filmed it.

I'm like, this is not good, but I have to, I show it.

I have to be real.

It's good content.

And like

one of the rhino rescuers actually I used her hotspot because we're you don't know where the rhino lands like this is a free rhino in the like weird rounds of like South Africa

South Africa this is Africa and luckily like where the rhino landed and then we tried the hotspot and I did it and I sold I made like $500 okay not good I could have made more but like again Because I'm trading and I alert every trade, I show every single trade that I do.

So I can't like just skip it.

Are you doing any development in Africa?

I heard it's a, it's a growing place.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, we have schools schools there.

We have libraries.

Now we're doing computer labs.

So I just got back from Brazil.

I was talking with what's his name, Paul.

And he has some projects out there.

So like we have computer labs now in Brazil.

Nice.

This bracelet, this is made out of acai seeds.

This is our all-natural stuff coming soon, too.

That's cool.

So this is made in like the Amazon jungle.

So we try to like help the communities.

We build schools, libraries, computer labs, and then we're also making merch there.

Why do you care so much about rescuing endangered animals?

So again, this comes down to traveling.

At first, it was like luxury gets boring.

Building schools, fantastic, is not boring anymore.

I love it, but education takes years or decades.

A lot of these animals, like rhino, don't have years or decades left.

Like, at the current rate, rhinos are going to be extinct in the next decade unless we start to do something and start to change.

And the fact that it's based on misinformation, this taps into my whole penny stock crypto.

Like, I hate promoters.

I hate these frauds.

Like, anybody who buys rhino for medicine, it's a fraud.

There's no medicine in rhino horns.

And the same thing with like elephant tusks.

Now giraffes are endangered.

They're chopping off their tails for good luck.

Like it's any beautiful animal.

They're chopping off their tails for good luck.

Yeah.

It's any body part of these wild animals, people have like little mementos.

I'll tell you a worse thing with rhino.

Before it was just powders and like medicine.

Now,

again, rhinos weren't even endangered two decades ago.

Now that all these myths are spread and people believe them, there's a myth that on the deathbed of an elder in a lot of Asian cultures, to show that you love the elder, if the elder is like dying and like saying goodbye to the family,

the family purchases a rhino horn, and the bigger the rhino horn, they give this to the elder.

On their deathbed, the elder looks at the rhino horn, then dies, and then they bury the elder with the rhino horn.

And so it's a sign of respect, a twisted sign of respect.

So now the biggest horns are going for even more because now any family with money is now trying to purchase this.

And you're just only on the black market, though.

Black, black market, but you know, it's all grayer.

It's not even black and white anymore.

Yeah, it's terrible.

Like, even in South Africa, a lot of like the government, uh, you know,

they have like uh banks basically with vaults that have rhino horns in them that were taken, you know, in a good manner the way that we did it.

But if you open up the security deposit boxes, only like half of them are there.

So, you got government officials are on the take too.

It's it's everywhere because there's just so much money, and you can't even blame like the poachers in Africa, you know, like they're they're just trying to feed their village.

Like, a lot of the villages are starving.

What if, like, your wife dies of starvation, your mom is dying of disease, you have no money, you have a rhino just eating grass outside the village, it's not doing anything.

You're just like, you know, they don't even want to do it, but they have to.

And they only get paid a few hundred dollars.

Like, there's a whole criminal market where the actual, like, they get, they do all that for a couple of, I mean, I guess

it's a lot, but it's like, again, this comes down to education.

So, if we build schools, now computer labs, if we give them new skills so they can get into the new tech world, right?

But right now, there's no, like, most of these communities, most of the third world, they don't have the skill set for the next generation.

They're just begging, like turning to crime, turning to gangs.

And unfortunately, rhino are disappearing.

A lot of these animals are disappearing.

Five, 10, 15 years from now, I don't know what they're going to do.

Their animals are going to be extinct, and then they're going to turn to crime even more.

And these animals, like rhino, they're beautiful creatures, but they're not like urgent, urgently needed.

There's also pengolins.

I don't know if you've heard of this.

Not penguins, pengolins.

So they look like a little anteater.

They're like old dinosaur-looking things.

They curl up in a ball.

They can protect themselves themselves from

predators.

But they have a tongue that goes flying out.

They eat up to 10,000 insects a day.

This is very useful for forests because...

Forests have a lot of insects.

If there's too many insects eating all the leaves and all the trees, the forest disappears.

Unfortunately, penguins are the number one most killed mammal right now.

Again, they have scales.

People eat the scales.

They grind them up.

Same kind of thing.

The scales are made out of keratin.

I could make a whole documentary just called keratin, where all these animals that people think are medicinal and there's just

no use.

So they're killing the pangolins, they're eating them.

A million supposedly are killed.

We don't even know the exact numbers, but we know that they're greatly reduced and they're probably endangered.

That's killing our forests.

So not only are we like chopping down the trees with lumber and like new developments, now we're killing the animals that protect the forest.

Pangolins are known as protectors of the forest.

So you're doing a lot of philanthropist work or not.

I mean, I'm just like even talking about this, like my blood is boiling.

I just hate fakes.

I hate frauds.

And when the frauds are destroying the planet, like none of this ends well.

We did a documentary on coral reefs.

So I have Karma Gala, which is the name of the charity.

Karma, you know, good karma.

Gala, my partner, Matabad, is Filipino.

So Tagala, Gala means to do or to make.

So it's like we're making good karma.

But we also started an offshoot called Save the Reef.

We went around the world to seven different places looking at coral reefs.

Coral reefs are disappearing at record paces.

And it's terrible because coral reefs have underwater trees.

You don't realize this.

We're like, oh, save save the trees.

There's more trees underwater, and the trees underwater help our atmosphere more than the overwater trees.

And we're destroying all the coral reefs, too.

Wow.

Why are they being destroyed?

So the chemicals in the suntan lotion, chemicals in golf courses, golf courses are actually pretty terrible.

I don't want to piss off the golfers, but how do you think they make those greens so good?

There's a lot of chemicals.

Then when it rains, those chemicals go into the water, kills everything.

All the marine life, all the coral reefs.

Like all the coral reefs around Hawaii, gone because of golf courses.

So you're basically, what's your, I mean, people got to wear sunscreen though, right?

Well, so there's new sunscreens.

So this is a cool thing.

We interviewed a scientist and he actually came up with this stat where he said like one drop of, I think it's like oxybenzenode.

There's complicated chemical names.

I'm not a scientist.

Yeah.

Disclaimer, right?

But there's a chemical, one drop of that chemical in a body of water the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool kills the coral reefs.

Damn.

And if you think.

And that's in sunscreen.

That's in sunscreen.

Wow.

So they're phasing it out.

Like Hawaii put a ban on these chemicals, but it doesn't doesn't go into effect for like two years.

Like nothing is happening overnight, and we're killing it more and more overnight.

Is it true sunscreen causes cancer?

So that's another thing, right?

So if the chemicals are killing the core reason, we're in life.

I don't care.

We're probably not very good for your skin either.

Like, oh, let me put this chemical on.

I don't wear it.

They taught us growing up.

It was good for you.

Yeah, I don't wear.

So there's, yeah, so there's a debate about everything.

Like a lot of what you like think is just due to like...

proper marketing.

Like, I don't know if you've seen the movie Idiocracy.

No, no, I haven't seen it.

You should see Idiocracy.

This is a a Mike Judge film.

It bombed because he made fun of Starbucks.

He said, like, in the future, Starbucks is going to give like lap dances and hand jobs.

So Starbucks like squashed the film.

But it's like the future, and it's what happens when, like, you have the dumbing down of society.

And in the future, in this movie,

who is it?

Luke Wilson?

Owen Wilson?

No, Luke Wilson, I think.

He like gets into like this,

you know, time machine and he accidentally goes into the future and everyone's dumb, right?

Everyone's playing video games.

Everyone believes corporate marketing.

And there's a worldwide drought because no crops will grow.

Why?

Because a company that's very similar to Gatorade has convinced everybody that you can't drink normal water.

You need to drink water with the electrolytes.

So, like, Luke Wilson, I think it's Luke Wilson, he's asking for water and he's like, just drinking plain water.

And they're like, oh, that's terrible.

That's like toilet water because they've been convinced by this evil company.

And so there's a worldwide drought because they're feeding all the plants Gatorade.

And Luke Wilson basically saves the world.

Spoiler alert, he saves the world by giving the plants like just water.

And they're like, you're the smartest man ever.

But the whole world is

idiocracy.

It was a funny movie.

It bombed because he made fun of like corporations and the corporations squashed it.

But like, that's reality.

That's what's going on.

You think, like, Suntan lotion, you need it.

It's due to corporate marketing.

And there's probably like a thousand other examples where you think this is the case.

Yeah.

So unfortunately, that's the world.

There's a whole world of misinformation, not even just conspiracy theories, not political or anything, just like marketing with corporations.

Yeah, I agree.

It's sad.

It's been a pleasure, man.

Any closing comments where people can find you?

I just talked about charity, but you know,

yeah, I mean, I'm just Timothy Sykes everywhere.

Carmagawa, we have one and a half million Instagram followers.

That's growing faster.

We just try to like cut through the BS.

And, you know, we don't have like corporate donors, as you might be able to tell the way I talked.

Our average donor donates like $24.

Okay.

But, you know, thousands of young people and not even just donors, like spreading awareness, just getting the word out about this stuff.

So we're doing a documentary on penguins.

We have a documentary on recycling.

All this stuff is coming out.

Amazing.

Wayne, you can follow me on Instagram at the the creator.

Sean Mike Kelly, digital social hour.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

See you next time.