And, This Is Gaming Culture & Gen-Z Nihilism With Content Creator Brandon "Atrioc" Ewing

58m

Brandon Ewing aka Atrioc joins the show to talk with Gavin about gaming culture and whether violent video games lead to violent acts. Then they decide what it will take for Gen-Z to reject this administration, if a college degree is worth it, and whether online culture is a cause or symptom of the nihilism young people are feeling.

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(00:00) Intro

(2:56) The Alleged Link Between Violent Video Games And Violent Actions

(9:32) Gaming Culture For People Who Aren't In It

(14:50) The Rise & Fall of E-Sports

(21:12) Meme Culture & The Economy After Covid

(28:02) What It Takes For Gen-Z To Turn On Trump

(36:00) The Burden We're Placing On Young People Is Unsustainable

(39:57) Are College Degrees Worthless?

(45:55) Social Media Incentivizes Feeding Into Anger

IG: @ThisisGavinNewsom
Email: TIGNPod@gmail.com
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Phone: 855-6NEWSOM

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Transcript

I do want to start talking about Gen Z men.

They range from angry to openly nihilistic.

They can't go back to the status quo.

Yeah, and they just can't.

Seems like the DNC as a whole is trying to run a very similar playbook that didn't work and is wondering why they're not getting different results.

This is Gavin Newsom.

And this is Brendan Ewing, aka Atria.

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All right, Brandon Ewan.

Hey, welcome, brother.

Dabbing pleasure.

It's good to be with you.

AKA Atriot.

You got it right.

Your online name, which we'll get to in a minute.

And for folks that don't know you, millions of people do because they watch you religiously.

You're a rock star on YouTube, content creator,

a Twitch live streamer, speedrunner.

We'll talk about what the heck that means.

People are wondering, what am I talking about?

But also really focused on building community around marketing, around business.

And that's what your background represented, working at Twitch, working in NVIDIA.

We can talk about AI chips, but I really wanted you on because with so much focus

on

what happened a few weeks ago with Charlie Kirk and Tyler Robinson, the person who's been accused, some of the gaming questions and issues that came up, some of the memes that were allegedly part of some components of the investigation, the broader conversations we're having in this country around the manosphere and what's happening with gaming culture generally, issues of boys and men,

everything about this.

And it kept coming back to you.

So I'm grateful.

I hope it didn't all come back to me.

It all came back to you as a guy that can explain to unpack all of this stuff.

We talked about this

before this, and I wanted to, first of all, I want to say, you mentioned millions of people might know my stuff.

Maybe a little less than that, but the people that know me, I think they'll like me.

People that don't know me, when they hear a content creator or a YouTuber or Twitch streamer, I think they have an instant dislike, and I don't really blame them.

Like, I don't, I don't think that's, I think most people have an instant distrust of someone who has that as their job, and I get it.

So I want to try and get across why people are turning to this, why this is becoming a new form of media and also understand that like, if you don't, if this is not for you, I get it.

It's not, yeah.

No, but it should be, but people, I mean, it explains more things in more ways on more days, particularly to parents.

I mean, I've got, I've got four young kids, and it's pretty overwhelming the gaming culture that's out there.

So, I mean, what is it?

I mean, 70 plus percent of teenagers are active gamers.

Is that among men?

I assume it's higher.

I think it's a lot higher.

Even higher, right?

Yeah.

So I wanted to start with that, you know, and I don't think this is your stance, but it's like really important for me to get across early.

It feels like in the wake of what happened with Charlie Kirk, there is a reignition of old, old, old debates around how video games, violent video games are the problem.

And I just want to be so clear.

From my POV and from the POV of my audience, who's again, younger Gen Z men, that's an insane, insane way to look at this.

You know,

South Korea, Japan, UK, Germany, France, they all have the same rate of video game playing and they have none of the violent crime or a small fraction of the violent crime.

Exactly.

There is no real correlation with it.

Yep.

So what I'll say is it's an easy scapegoat.

It is a really easy scapegoat.

And we can go into this for a while, but no, and by the way, full stipulation, could not agree with you more is someone that's deeply focused on the issue of gun violence, mass shootings, and all these things and sort of the lazy punditry that comes back to this gaming culture has been completely debunked 100%.

So could not agree with that more, just stipulating an alignment of thinking on that.

No, sure.

And then, you know, now they're saying i think they're about to haul the head of reddit and discord and twitch and all these people in front of congress listen

these people the addiction to these things and there's something is addiction i will say some some young men are are spending a large percentage of their time on these platforms this is a symptom this is a symptom of them having almost nowhere else to go yeah and especially i want to talk about gaming uh the idea that gaming is driving isolation and not isolation is leading to people trying to find an escape or connection through gaming It's the other way around.

I mean, that is what's happening.

So I don't know if you have children, you have young boys?

Four or four young kids, yeah.

How old is age your boys are?

Oldest just turned 16 and the two boys nine and thirteen.

Are they gamers?

Are they Roblox?

Are they Fortnite?

Every single

day

I am battling, man, battling them on YouTube watching someone else play Minecraft.

Yeah.

Watching someone else play a video game.

They're obsessed, buddy.

And so what I would say is, you know, I assume you do the normal thing parents are doing, especially in SF.

They limit screen time, things like that.

But to be honest, if you told them they can't play Roblox or they can't play Fortnite, you would make them less socially, like they are less able to connect to their friends nowadays.

That is how they're doing it.

I know it's a generation disconnect, but that is not the problem.

The young men that are turning to Discord servers and gaming are trying to find friends and connection.

They are logging on after work and hanging out and voice chats with their friends and having a good time.

This is like the one thing that's keeping them sane in a world that is going, I think, increasingly insane and not offering them economic opportunities.

I love that.

Let's unpack because I think a lot of people, obviously, YouTube people are familiar with.

There's a sort of generation, though, that's heard of Twitch.

There's heard of Kik, that's heard of Discord, but they don't know what.

these things are.

Reddit, maybe people are a little bit more familiar with.

But talk to me when I started.

I mean, Twitch is sort of a go-to for a lot of folks in the gaming space.

But explain what these are, what these platforms represent, how they started and what they've become.

Yeah, so I worked at Twitch right around the time it started.

And it was a very lucky thing for me because I was a ASU, Arizona State University, the Harvard of the Southwest, they call it,

graduate and, you know, middling grades, and I played a lot of games.

And it was very, very lucky that I found this route into Twitch, which was a a website which allowed gamers to broadcast themselves online.

That was the idea.

I'm playing the game.

Maybe I'm particularly good at it.

Maybe I'm funny while I play it.

And people that also played the game found that to be entertaining, and they would start to build communities and audiences, and it would grow.

And tell me, at what time were people starting?

I mean, was it a particular individual that said, hey, I'm going to put myself online?

Was there a moment that marked consciousness of this whole, I mean, because it's become a gigantic business, and we'll get to that in a moment.

But was Twitch really the first to really popularize as a platform?

Yeah, Twitch was the one that.

that that found this niche early.

What years are we talking about?

2014-ish.

That's around when I joined.

And it grows.

And then around COVID, it explodes.

Explodes.

Because everyone's stuck at home and it just hits the right time and the right place.

Let's back up a little bit.

You discovered Twitch as someone not just doing content, but someone that was marketing the content.

Were you working for it?

I never had any interest in doing content myself.

I was at Twitch, and they needed someone to go on camera every now and then.

And I was the one stupid enough to volunteer.

And I got some training, and I was using the program.

And you got on camera, and you started doing what?

You started explaining the video.

games.

I would talk about this.

Nah, you know, here's the thing.

So what I'm saying might sound completely unwatchable to someone who doesn't play video games.

Yeah.

But over the past, since 2014 to now, the platform has changed dramatically.

The biggest thing on the website is not games at all.

It's just people talking to the camera about their lives, about the news, about what's going on in the world.

People are just using it because it's a real direct connection.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so that has become the main thing.

The gaming is still a big part of Twitch, but it's into the culture.

You might play games a little bit during the day, then Switch talking about the news, Switch talking about watching YouTube videos, right?

You can do anything.

So

that's the path that we went on.

At the time, I'm sorry, what was your, sorry,

no, just a bit at the time you were, but what was the biggest content that was being provided at that time?

Was there a particular game that was mostly popularized or that was disproportionately being popularized?

Yeah, I blew it up.

So again, first it was COVID, and then I would say, you know, celebrities started to go on every now and then.

And I think Drake played with Ninja some Fortnite.

And that, every, every, every now I was there I saw every little step would blow Twitch up a little bit more and then it started to get bigger and bigger right but what I would say is it's spread beyond Twitch now it's got kick it's got YouTube it's it's tick tock live what I'm saying is people right now are just engaging through content creators because they have this more direct one-to-one connection actually what I'll say what it is is

and you probably deal with this as a challenge when you're trying to speak people are very very tired of inauthenticity yeah that's what I that's what I feel people feel like everyone's out to sell them something everyone's out to get them and even content creators are doing this Yeah, but they're trying to find somebody they can trust That is the main thing right is trust and so you're saying kids are going online and they and they end up looking for that They see someone they can identify with through a medium that they're already identified with a game that they have in common or some interest

that they have in common and and so Twitch figured this thing out

and but and you made an important point.

Twitch is not is not just a platform exclusively for gaming.

Not even close.

The biggest thing on the platform is not gaming.

I think that's a shock to some people, but it really is just people talking, people having fun.

And it's these sort of areas of interest where you get into these group chats and there's sort of an interactivity.

People are engaged in a two-way conversation, not just one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's live.

I mean, at a big enough chat, you're not really talking one-to-one, but the idea is people feel like their voice is somewhat being heard.

And what's the difference between Twitch and Discord?

So Discord is just a chat room.

And that's why it's kind of funny.

You know, there's a lot of

among Gen z there's these memes going around about people getting messages from their parents i heard you're using discord were you talking to this type like it's it's just a chat it's nobody's

it's your own private little room with your friends it discord is the platform it's like saying i heard you're using an iphone yeah did the killer use an iphone did you you know i'm saying it's just a met you're not in the same uh and you're referring to because there was i mean you you you hear about discord often in the context of some of these more high-profile instances yeah obviously this tyler Robinson is

accused of shooting Charlie Kirk, used a Discord.

Yeah, but he used a Discord chat room with his friends.

Nobody else is.

Any medium could have done this.

The idea that Discord is uniquely brewing people like this is

unsubstantiated.

Got it.

So the gaming area, the gaming, most of the gaming platforms, YouTube's sort of dominant in the space, along with Twitch, who else is sort of emerging in the gaming space as the platform, the sort of to-go platform?

Yeah, I would say YouTube and Twitch is

the vast, vast majority of people doing this.

You could talk about Kick, you talk about Rumble, you can talk about the more fringe wild ones, but

Twitch and YouTube.

And YouTube is the 800-pound gorilla in the space.

It really is mostly YouTube.

That's where people are getting it.

That's where I'm putting out my content online.

That's where most people are getting it.

And so you started just as you just...

were there in Arizona, you're just getting good on games, you're just, you know, you just found just sort of a proclivity for it, you're loving it.

You remember the first game you were like deep into?

Like you're just obsessed with it.

Okay, well, now here's what I want to say is like, this is me in Arizona.

I've graduated.

I'm trying to find a job.

I had okay grades and the college is not some incredible degree.

Okay.

So I'm.

I'm figuring it out.

And thanks to a lucky opportunity and thanks to the economy being in a better spot at the time, I get this last chopper out of NOM, it feels like, where I get a decent chance to go off and make enough money to, now I can, you know, I'm married.

I have a house that I'm paying down.

It's expensive.

So

I have friends now who are younger than me that are, like, I have a friend who's graduating from Berkeley,

computer science, smart guy.

He's graduating in an environment that is 100 times harder to get a job than it was in 2014, 2015.

It's not his fault.

He didn't do anything different.

So that is going to make him more likely to be nihilistic.

It's more likely to make him disengage from the system, more likely to make him angry at politicians left and right.

It's just, it's not,

it's tough to say that like, I just find it frustrating, and you're not doing this, but I'm saying I'm finding it frustrating, the endless pointing to Discord, Reddit, Twitch.

This has nothing to do with it.

It is the situation where people are

more and more desperate.

uh for a direction to go so yeah i can tell you about a game i played i mean i played i played i i wasted my college on a game like league of legends i wasted you know the but i but you you didn't waste your, because you created a career.

I got lucky, yeah.

And I don't know.

I don't think that's.

And what I do now has almost nothing to do with gaming, I'll be honest with you.

My audience hates when I game.

Exactly.

But you're a world record holder, just so people have an understanding of who we're talking to here.

You crushed it.

World record holder.

What, for Hitman, right?

Yeah, there's a game called Hitman where you're flying around.

And listen,

that is a time of my life where I was...

Here, I started doing this when I was working at NVIDIA.

I was working some insane hours.

Right.

And I wanted to come home and disengage.

I wanted to just play video games and I wanted some friends in the chat to do it.

That did pretty well.

And it started to take off.

Then after COVID, I started talking about, you know, I'm an avid reader.

I'm reading the news every day and I want to talk, I should give my thoughts.

That started to take off.

And eventually that was enough that I could leave a job that was really stable and good at NVIDIA to try and do this full-time.

And you started to be able to monetize it at that level

working for one of the great chip companies on planet Earth.

Yeah.

Now one of the biggest market cap companies, quite literally

in the world.

And you started making the kind of money that you said, man, I'm just full-time now on this.

Nothing pejorative about a content creator, quite the contrary.

It's just the opposite.

I don't know.

I mean, no, you're an entrepreneur.

You're a small business person.

You put something out there, took a risk, you're on a platform, you're taking a passion, you're sharing it in a very public way.

You're building an audience, marketing it.

I mean, that's pretty difficult.

I appreciate everything you're saying, and it's nice of you to say, but

as with all things, there's some aspect of hard work and some aspect of luck.

And the idea that this is the path that everyone could just, you know,

I can think of so many times things could have gone a different way and I'll be in a different spot.

Brandon, you'll acknowledge, I mean, and I think it's just important to illuminate.

I mean, but a lot of people are finding this path, right?

I mean, this is becoming the opportunity.

No, yeah, well, no.

I mean, I'm not, we'll see what happens, but it's in terms of my future, Jesus.

But it's, no, but it's, but it's interesting to me.

I mean, it's, I think it's people just to understand and absorb sort of this digital first experience.

I mean, there's a whole generation that, frankly,

they're digital.

Obviously, we talk about digital immigrants versus digital natives in sort of a lazy vernacular.

But this whole digital first experience is radically changing everything, including sports.

And we're going to get to that in a moment.

But the gaming culture is real.

It's growing.

You've got stadiums now, quite literally filled, physical stadiums, with people watching these esports and other people playing games to a degree that I don't think most people fully absorb or understand.

Yeah, that's how I started.

I went to study abroad in South Korea and they had these big tournaments and I was blown away and I was like, let's get this in America.

Let's start.

It happened without me, but I came back and started to work in that space and that blew up.

But again, I can't tell you enough.

This...

Like the esports is really a small part of what is becoming this online

influencer first culture.

If you were to spend some time browsing Twitch, you would not see as much gaming as you're thinking.

It really is people just looking for human connection, humans to talk to.

And I'm not saying this is all a good thing.

I'm not saying everyone should be spending all their time on these platforms.

I am just saying that it's a very natural response to things getting more expensive,

to finding people who share some similar values or ideas as you across the world.

No, I love that.

I want to get to all that because

there's those deep issues, generational issues that

we've been talking about on the podcast with a number of people in the past, and it's off the chart, particularly for men.

And so I just want to unpack it a little bit more, just again, for people that are not fully, that just don't have the level of understanding of the space.

But you talk about esports, and I just think it's an interesting space in this context.

You say it's a relatively small space, but it's not a small amount of investment that it seems people are making.

I was just reading about Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Beckham, folks putting tens of millions of dollars into esports teams.

I mean, this thing's growing.

Yeah, but what I'll tell you is, I'm being dead honest, Gavin, a lot of them are going to lose their shirt on this.

You know, I've been around the esports space a while, and a lot of people have gotten burned.

The problem is it's really hard to monetize the user.

They love watching it.

They love watching it for free.

They don't, you know, there's not a lot of in-person stadium buying merch going.

The business economics of esports are interesting.

It is growing in terms of viewership, and it'll get there.

But they got way ahead of their skis, I think.

A lot of people are coming down off the highs.

It was one of those things.

Almost every business, there's some story about 2021.

It was crazy.

And then

that's happening with these sports.

It was kind of, it was at a peak 2021.

Yeah, 2021, it was like you could, the salaries were insane.

They were getting paid absurd amounts for these players to sit in the room and play games.

It's less now.

You know, it's, it's, and I, you know, Rick Fox of the Lakers put a bunch of money into a team, lost his, you know, had to get out.

I'm saying it'll happen, but I'm not going to be one of those guys that's like esports is right here, get your money.

You know, it's a grassroots thing.

It's growing.

And so what's interesting about you is not only your history and

how you've evolved in terms of your own career path

and going into these aspects and disciplines, but the marketing background and the business background and the work you're doing on a new podcast,

Lemonade Stan.

Lemonade Stan.

And talking about business and branding, et cetera.

But you mentioned just in reference and passing something that I think is interesting and for folks, again, may not be familiar with on Fortnite in particular which I just remember my kids watching religiously to your point during COVID

excessively as a parent from my perspective

but from their perspective they were I just got on it, Dad.

What do you mean?

I've only been on it for two minutes.

But I remember turning it on one day and they were listening to a concert.

I'm like, what are you guys listening to?

It's like, I think it was marshmallow or

concert.

Yeah, no.

And so that fascinated me to this integration for live concerts.

Travis Scott did it.

I think Ariana Grande may have done one.

Also brands, right?

I mean you got Nike now working on those and those platforms, Louis Vuitton.

I mean tell me a little bit about that.

Give us a sense of what that integration as well.

Yeah, I mean it is

as crazy as it can sound from someone outside of it.

It's people all over the world in a digital world watching these concerts together.

They can see each other.

They're jumping around.

They're having a good time.

And it's just becoming where the culture is.

That is where I think there is such a line if you grew with it or you didn't.

And

I think that is what allows me to talk about other things with the lingo and the references that they use because it's just something they're native to 100%.

But,

you know, I think people will

come around to it.

You know, here's an example.

For esports, all of the biggest ways to watch it are not, you know how you watch the NFL through the NFL's official broadcast.

Right.

Or a pirated version if you're young, but you're watching the official commentators.

Right.

For esports, it doesn't happen that way.

They make an official broadcast, and then a million people will restream it and add their own commentary.

And those guys get way more viewers than the official broadcast.

And we're starting to see that happen with sports where they'll have like the Manning cast for the NFL.

A lot of rights issues are in the way, but eventually they're going to crack the code because the average person wants to see this stuff filtered through someone they trust and understand and is speaking to them like a regular person.

That's going to happen in sports.

It's going to happen all over.

The democratization of all of this stuff is happening and it is reaching sports now and it's gonna it's gonna happen to things you understand as well but um

yeah it's weird seeing it live you know gaming has been on the cutting edge of this because i again back to my original point it's just where people are finding friends and connections where they can find it right it's filling a void that they need filled so this so let's go back to that and we'll go back to your reference sort of this these moments that sort of mark the accelerant and obviously covid was just off the charts in terms of just people trying to connect feeling totally isolated disconnected And they can find those relationships online.

They could find those groups of interest.

They can literally develop friendships and relationships online that they otherwise wouldn't have had necessarily the opportunity, particularly during COVID.

Talk to me about

those years.

You talk about 2021 representing sort of a peak of consciousness, but

what do you see start to really take shape during those COVID years?

I mean,

so after 2020, there's a lot of new money, both from Trump and Biden, Biden, floating around the economy.

They both did a lot of stimulus and printing and that went into tech startups and that went into esports and that went into Twitch and that went into all this stuff.

And there was a lot of it floating around.

There was, you know, I remember there was the GameStop stock craze and everyone wanted to find someone to watch on that.

And that was.

These things became cultural flashpoints that were taking place entirely online.

And then after 2021, we started to get inflation, a lot of inflation that made doing things that weren't online more expensive and more difficult.

That's combined with COVID.

And so these things I think combine to push people more into online spaces than perhaps natural law would dictate.

I mean, that is what happened.

And so it's good and bad.

You know, as a content creator, COVID was

exposure to an entirely new audience.

It grew a lot bigger.

But it's not, I wouldn't say it was a good thing for overall.

You know, that's not how I'd frame it.

And in what way is it not?

I mean, the unhealthy aspects aspects are what?

You're trying to get offline so you can get back into a line and reconnect with people back in the real world?

I mean, in what way was it?

Was it?

What I'm saying is I think people

want to do that naturally.

They just can't.

It is just more difficult.

You know,

I don't know if we want to get to it now, but I do want to start talking about Gen Z men.

And

the issue I'm seeing, not all of them are like this.

It's a broad, diverse group, of course.

And it's a huge point of my my audience.

And I'm hearing them, I'm hearing

their thoughts a lot.

They range from angry to openly nihilistic.

And the nihilism is what's coming, is what I sense growing a little bit, where they're disillusioned.

You know, I think around 22, 3, 4, you probably saw this on the political side, they drifted more conservative because they thought that would be the solution.

And as Donald Trump has proven to be not the answer to any of their problems, and in fact, making a lot of them worse, making the inflation worse, making the economy worse,

then they are now just drifting into open nihilism.

And that is what I'm saying.

And I'm not

to blame that on the

methods they're using to try and not be that is crazy.

It's not, that's not the issue.

It's not the Discord.

It's not the, yeah.

Right.

No, no, I appreciate that.

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You're right.

He obviously dominated, particularly with young men,

but did outperformed in ways that I think surprised a lot of folks and invested a lot of time and energy into spaces where a lot of young men were and where a lot of young men are.

We talk about podcasts.

We talk about this sort of manosphere broadly defined, which is something that needs to be unpacked.

But

he did invest that time and energy to meet people, quote unquote, where they are.

And we didn't see that commensurate investment from the Democratic Party.

Certainly didn't see it from Biden or Harris.

And we're not really seeing it now.

I think I appreciate what you're doing here.

And I like this podcast is a good step.

But, you know,

I saw a piece from Esra Klein the other day where he talked about how it seems like, and again, I'm going to be candid here.

It seems like the DNC as a whole is trying to run a very similar playbook that didn't work and is wondering why they're not getting different results.

It is shocking to me that with as bad as Trump is doing, and it really is.

Again,

if I want to be your Gen Z whisper for a second, again, I'm millennial.

I'm 34.

They're going to call me old.

My hairline's bad.

Call me old, bald.

Trust me.

But

they are turning on Donald Trump in a way that will come apparent pretty soon.

But they're not turning towards the Democratic Party.

Yeah, they're equally as upset with them, which is what I think the problem is.

And it's kind of crazy that it's not being capitalized on more.

And I will give you credit.

I think what you have been doing is kind of breaking through the noise.

It's showing a little bit of, I don't know, a spine of like a willingness to stand up to what he's doing.

But, you know, if I can be honest,

all right, here's what I'll say.

And you haven't announced anything, and this is not, but there's a theoretical world where you're going to run for president.

I'm just going to say it.

You don't say anything.

A virtual world.

Yeah.

Yeah, virtual world.

The betting markets have you leading, okay?

There's a theoretical world.

And

if

I can get

somebody who's not militarizing the National Guard and somebody who's not

shutting down TV shows that disagree with them and somebody who's not threatening free and fair elections, that's a huge win already.

It's a low bar to clear.

It's an easy clear.

Pretty low bar, but I get it.

But, you know, realistically, from the audience that I'm talking about, because again, I think I got lucky.

I got the last chapter out of them.

I'm feeling fine.

They can't go back to the status quo, Gavin.

They just can't.

They will continue to grow more upset and populist and nihilistic unless things

seriously change.

Like they have to change on a more fundamental level.

Look,

so let's start to unpack this because, I mean, I love the clarity

as you painted this picture.

I mean, it's, you know, it's pretty, pretty black and white terms as you paint it.

I mean, just like this notion of nihilism, of just like not giving a shit about anything and blocking

up.

And then the most extreme example would be someone like Tyler Robinson.

If you look at, you know, his, and again, I'm not, I'm not a psychoanalyst, not an expert, but there seems to be a nihilism to these kind of actions and from young people in general that is rising where it just feels like if I can't get a house, if a young man, I can't get a partner,

I can't find a way to be up, to feel roots in the society that I'm in, then I'm going to drift out of it.

I'm going to disengage.

And they would find any tool to do this.

In fact, I would say that one of the healthiest things they can do is gaming and Discord because that's with other people.

They are finding friends.

The Discord chats that I'm in are not making me more radicalized.

I'm connecting with people all over the world.

It's great.

In fact, you know, here's an example.

I don't know if you've heard about what happened in Nepal recently.

Can I?

Of course.

Nothing remarkable with Instagram.

Yeah, yeah.

So Nepal, their Gen Z youth was deeply upset about rising youth unemployment, rising poverty.

And they were posting about it on social media and they were getting angry.

Then the government tried to ban social media.

And that's when they took to the streets.

That's when they're rioting.

That's when they're going crazy because

these are the last outlets people have.

So I just want to give that perspective here is that if Congress is going to haul Discord and Twitch and Reddit up there and think that restricting them or banning them is going to solve this problem, it is not.

To be so clear, it is not.

It's going to make it more virulent.

No, look, I think what you're saying is profoundly important.

And I'm not trying to go back, but I want to paint this picture because I want to land

exactly where you're going.

Because I think what you're saying

needs to be said.

Because there were these trend lines that predate all of this

for decades and decades.

And we have the first generation, this Gen Z, that literally is posed to do much worse than than their parents' generation.

This is the first generation in our lifetime, my lifetime certainly, but literally in American history where that would be the case.

And so this is code red.

And it's led to suicides.

It led to dropouts.

It's led to all kinds of related issues.

And there's guys are screaming disproportionately, men in some respects, and no one's paying any damn attention.

And now we're looking at things.

And I love what you're saying.

We're looking at the platforms and not the underlying damn issues.

Yeah, a couple of stats.

Oh, sorry.

No, but yeah.

But I want to get to, and I want you to hold those stats stats because I think they're incredibly important.

But I want to go back just, so again, just because so many people

want to understand, and these are not root causes, but they're component parts of this larger conversation.

We talk about the manosphere.

What does that mean to you?

I mean, what is it?

This is the investment that I think Trump and the Republicans made into spaces that are not even inherently political.

They are spaces where people are talking about wrestling or

UFC or video games or

just finding connection often with other men and just trying to understand similar experiences in the world.

And they invested in those spaces and then, hey, on the side, you like this also on the side, you know, let's stop the woke mind virus.

Or, you know, it would be something like that.

It would be, you know, Kamal Harris is not going to help you out.

That's the idea.

And they would mix that in with things people already like.

And it became very easy to slide in.

And what's crazy, I don't think it's that hard for the Democrats to join these spaces.

Most people like watching sports.

Most people like,

it's not rocket science.

And I think, again, I can't overstate how it feels like a ball somewhere is being dropped when you can't speak even semi-authentically to people that are not

from a different world.

They're not that crazy.

So that's a problem that I would point out.

And I think they did a good job with it.

But I will also say this.

Listen, we're going to fight in this country about social issues left and right forever, it seems.

And I really noticed that in the wake of this Charlie Kirk thing, where it's just an endless amount of noise from every direction.

You are inundated with it on social media.

Every tape go viral in every direction.

And nobody is making any progress and no one's making any forward motion.

But what I'll say is the main thing that I am seeing and feeling was a deep...

a deep resentment around costs and inflation and housing.

And I truly think whichever side can solve those problems will dictate, not dictate, but will take the lead on social issues.

People will go whatever direction is going to offer them solutions on that.

And because Trump has not done that, like he promised,

there's already a reverse boomerang starting.

Okay.

It's going to go the other way.

Regardless of whether or not anyone reaches out to podcasts, there will be a reverse boomerang.

But if it goes this way and that isn't solved again, it'll be an even stronger.

That is how it's going to play out.

I'm certain of it.

So,

yeah,

so you're talking, I mean, it's, you know, unpacking this a little bit.

It's not just about politics.

I mean, you talk about nihilism more broadly to find.

I mean, this is just, you know, despair.

It's economics.

It's economics.

It really is definitely.

And so, you know, one thing as a goal of mine on this podcast is to try and get you

not, because I understand you have to win an electronic, not a winner.

Okay.

I'm just saying.

You have to gain support.

You're a politician.

You have to represent more than just some individual base.

And I think what you're doing, talking to people politically different than you, is a big step.

And that's awesome.

And I think that's cool to gain voters.

And gain understand more.

And understanding, yeah.

No BS, like gain understanding.

I mean, Charlie Kirk on this show is my, when we launched this podcast, is the first, and I mean, and I got, people were pissed.

And you know what's funny is, is

I respect it more for that.

Again, I tried to do some research and watch some of these.

Some of the comments are brutal on you, and you did it anyway, and I respect you to keep doing it.

But so

I'm not here to like push you in a direction that is going to make it harder to get a broader base.

I think politicians should try to represent people that aren't directly aligned with them.

What I'm trying to get you to understand is like,

I think I want to push you a little bit more economically on, you know, in this country from like the 40s to the 80s, we had an extremely low genie coefficient of inequality.

It was low and flat for years, a strong rising middle class.

And people, broadly feeling were

proud of their country.

And it wasn't like Marxism.

It wasn't, you know, so it was a capitalist country and businesses could thrive, but people felt like they had a real chance.

And since we've allowed this increased consolidation, since we've continually used government funds to prop up the stocks and housing of elderly boomers that own it all,

it has become more, it's a ladder that is fewer and fewer rungs to get on.

And

so

if

there isn't substantive change on that front, nothing else matters.

It's what I'm saying.

I really believe that nothing else matters.

It won't break through.

And I understand that, you know, these boomers vote too.

Again, people give you a lot of crap for California housing.

It's a tough problem the more I look into it.

I used to be someone who just threw around blame really easily.

And now I read more, it gets me depressed because it's like, it's an impossible, complex problem.

People that have the housing, they put their life savings into it.

That's their retirement.

If you try to bring housing prices down, well, now this person's mad.

I get it.

But if it doesn't change, we're screwed.

There's no getting around.

This is an angry, nihilistic generation that wants change back.

No, and what was the quote-unquote California housing crisis, going back decades and decades, supply-demand imbalance, NIMBYism,

issues around localism.

Now it's one, now it's across the board, all across the United States.

People are feeling those pressures.

And that's why I think you brought up Ezra Klein a moment ago, we had him on the podcast, too, the whole abundance agenda and focusing on away from process paralysis and law fare and all of the NIMBYism to a yimby yes in my backyard, not no in my backyard mindset in order to break through that and to start to address that supply-demand imbalance to lower costs to ultimately provide more

points of opportunity.

So I think you're 100% right.

And I think it's only reinforced

the broader analysis by the fact there's a lot of Trump supporters that otherwise would be Bernie supporters as well,

as well, or vice versa.

So this sort of notion of populism, and not in the pejorative sense, but truly representative sense, recognizing what's missing and giving voice to that.

Now, the question is, the prescriptions that Trump's offering, as you suggest, I couldn't agree with you more, are sort of proven to do precisely the opposite.

I mean, the largest tax increase on middle class and working.

folks, i.e.

tariffs, inflation that's now starting to go back up, and Fed policy that is actually not accelerating in terms of a decline in interest rates, but because of those uncertainties, particularly as it relates to pressure, inflation, now is not necessarily moving as quickly to lower borrowing costs as we had otherwise hoped.

So I totally agree with that.

So let's talk just about that.

I mean, Scott Galloway is...

I took his class.

When I was at NVIDIA, I was in Scott's class, and he's one of the people.

The way he spoke, not even the content of what he said, the way he presented, I was like,

that is something I can learn from.

And I took to that when I was starting to stream.

Yeah.

And Scott, you know, Scott, for those that don't know, we also have out in the pod as well.

He's, I mean, he really speaks to the Gen Z generation.

He speaks in generational terms as theft.

You look at this big, beautiful bill

and all this massive tax cuts that are burdening the generation that is increasingly already feeling like no one gives a damn about them.

Yeah.

So it just reinforces, I think, the cult arms that you're suggesting here in terms of consciousness, that is, as it relates to the moment.

Yeah.

And again, you know, I think these trends were in a bad direction before Trump, but he has done absolutely nothing to help.

I mean, the Big Bit of a Bill is a disaster.

It is a massive multi-trillion dollar credit card swipe that we younger people are going to have to pay.

And

I don't know.

I'm not suggesting

getting rid of Social Security or anything, but it is frustrating as a young working person that the biggest line item on the government budget is checks to older people, many of whom have houses and have paycheck to a four.

You know, it is just, I think we are not seeing enough go to people that are trying to get started in this, in the country and get on the ladder.

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And did you do you see it from, I mean,

so there's tax policy that's obviously profound and outsized.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting, we had Steve Bannon on as well.

And, you know, he was arguing for progressive tax policy.

I said at a certain point, I said, Steve, you sound like you're governor of California, arguing for California's progressive

tax policy.

Yeah, he argues for Lena Kahn as well.

It's a shocker to me.

I'm a huge Lena Kahn fan, and I wanted to push that with you as well.

Listen,

those years I'm talking about, those low

inequality years in America, again, probably golden years of America.

Maybe social policy we can improve, but that's the golden years of economically.

The key things of that era, we had strong unions.

We had a progressive tax policy that had high tax rates on the richest people.

We had.

an antitrust enforcement that stopped constant consolidation.

Again, this Jimmy Kimmel thing, people aren't talking enough about how it's so clearly Nexstar trying to merge with Tegna to get an inordinate amount of affiliates in this country.

And they are just saying whatever Trump wants to hear so that they can get

this bill signed.

It all comes back to economics is what I'm trying to really get across.

And it's a core part of my content is we...

We can fight forever on social issues and we always will.

And in the social media area, I just realize how useless it is because algorithms will give you the opinion you want and the one you hate and they'll make that one look stupid and they'll give you the comments that support you.

And it's just no point in arguing.

I'm tired of it.

Most people are tired of it.

And so I just think we have to just, we got to really

focus in on the economics because that's where we're going to make a difference.

People can feel that change.

They can feel, rents are going down in L.A.

I've noticed it.

I saw Statly.

People do feel it.

It takes a while.

They probably don't give everybody credit.

They're not giving it, but it happens.

If you guys could get in California, the high-speed rail built,

I know it's like an impossible legal challenge, and everyone blocks it at every step.

I'm not.

We're on the other side of the legal.

We're on the other side of the environmental.

We're actually starting to lay track.

We're actually decades and decades.

I can't make up for the past, but I have to be accountable to the present.

And we're finally laying tracks.

We're finally moving forward on the damn project.

2,270 parcels had to be procured through eminent domain and other means.

Decade of

just just moving like in quicksand inches inches and then all the environmental where all that now is behind us finally moving to lay the damn track and i want to say when someone gets on that train and rides it and it makes their life five ten percent more convenient they notice they feel it that stuff does matter and uh i i just it's so let's say you talk about housing yeah rents rents too damn high sure housing transportation well what else i mean how about wages i mean is that sure so Gen Z men.

Unemployment for Gen Z men who are college graduates is the same as those that haven't graduated college.

They're getting this degree and getting no material benefit in terms of the stats.

No, that's just, and that's just started.

We're just starting to see that take shape.

There was always that college premium.

Yeah.

And now for the first time, with these remarkable,

this was not quote unquote, as people said, oh, you've got this sort of useless philosophy degree and you can't get a real job with it.

No, these are folks with actual

degrees in computer science and they can't.

They can't get a job.

And by the way, philosophy is not useless.

In fact, in many ways, philosophy is the preferred course

nowadays, which is...

Yeah.

No, so

yeah, they are they are

sorry.

No, so I mean, you're entering a job market that's more difficult than ever.

People,

now people don't even want to go to college, right?

I mean, you get this Peter Thiel frame.

So look, not only did they're not getting the premium from going to college, college has never been more expensive for these young men, especially for these Gen Z people who had to go to college during COVID.

I can't tell you what a sucker punch it has to be to pay way more than your parents ever paid to go to Zoom college where,

and, and this is not, you know, we talk about Discord and Reddit and gaming's changing the world.

I got to talk to you as well as well about AI and chat GPT.

Listen, governor, I don't know if someone on your staff is telling you this.

Every high school in California, and there's great ones, every college in California, people are cheating with ChatGPT.

Professors are writing rubrics, ChatGPT, and then grading with ChatGPT.

People are paying absurd amounts of money to get, to do nothing, it's all a farce.

And I'm not saying it's everybody.

People are very smart and learning, but this is happening.

And we have, again, this is a bigger problem with Trump, but our Secretary of Education is like from the WWE.

It's literally.

It's ridiculous.

Literally.

I think you're making that up.

Actually, was the co-founder.

of yes.

And I see a speech with her, and she's talking about how these kids need to learn about A1.

She doesn't even know what A1.

She can't even pronounce it.

A1.

And this is changing

education rapidly.

So again,

I hate to put it all on you.

You're one person in it, but I'm just, this is my id screaming out to the void that I'm hearing.

It's like things are changing rapidly.

And I don't feel like the DNC particularly is like

throwing out the old playbook.

It just won't work.

And are you,

when you, when the folks that you're interacting with,

is this a gender issue as well from the perspective?

That's an interesting question.

Definitely, it feels like young women are adapting more to the society we have now.

They are just finding a way to get to college, get on the corporate ladder.

And, you know, I think Scott Galloway talks about this.

There's an idea generally that men are fine dating socioeconomically equal or down, and women generally want to date equal or up.

So it reduces the amount of partners available for men who can't get on the economic ladder, which makes them more disengaged and more, you know,

it's a snowball effect.

Again, it's not women's fault, but this is what's happening.

And it creates this

simmering misogyny in online spaces.

And it creates this.

But it comes back to economics.

All I can say over and over again is it comes back to economics.

And again, if I could boil it down to one word, it's like radicalism is when no house.

If you can't get a house, if you don't see a path to get a house, and I hear this all the time,

some of them are working.

They're working decent jobs.

They're working hard.

It's not even feasible in a lot of these cities to ever get a house.

You can't save up enough without taking on an absurd amount of debt ever.

It's just not possible.

And if you picked one thing to focus in on, that would be it because

that's the biggest thing to put put you as part of society or outside of society.

If once you feel like you can get on that ladder, you're okay.

You can, you can calm down, you can find a party, you can vote.

But if you can't see that, it's what's the point?

Why am I doing it?

Why am I working this job for a boss I hate for wages that are only okay?

I'm never going to get another step up.

So, yeah, yeah, I feel like I've said that enough.

No, no, look, again, I appreciate it.

And again, bouncing back and forth because I think it's important.

You talk about you brought up the frame, the word misogyny.

And finding back to this sort of manosphere, it comes in many forms and manifestations.

So I think there's sort of a laziness, quote unquote, the manosphere of what it means or doesn't mean.

But there are misogynistic aspects of the manosphere.

And there are people that have been very successful in that space, the sort of Andrew Tates of the world and some respects, I mean, the fair, unfair, Adrian Ross, and the Joel Peterson types.

I mean, what do you make of that in the context of the vernacular of the world that you've been navigating and generationally?

What your sort of understanding of all that?

Yeah, I'll tell you the worst part about content creation, Gavin Newsom, is that

my dad's a lifelong Republican.

Not a Trumper, thank God, but he, so I don't think he's the world's biggest Gavin Newsom fan, maybe, but I did a very small

interview with you a while ago, a live stream.

Yeah, and I called you Gavin.

He called me afterward.

He said, You call him governor?

Okay,

I appreciate him, but I also appreciate you.

Gavin works.

I'm called new scum, buddy.

Exactly, I think you can tell.

I could handle Gavin better than new scum, which the six-year-olds used to call me a hell of a thing when an 86-year-old's calling me that.

89, Mr.

Trump.

You're 89.

Uh, the misogyny, okay?

Here's the thing about consecration: is you have a direct financial incentive at all times to feed into people's resentment and to feed into their anger and to feed into it.

It's just the way the algorithms work.

I thought about this deeply in the wake of Charlie Kirk.

I was thinking about what I wanted to say.

And I was looking around the internet and I realized, it doesn't matter what I say, it'll just be fed to the person that agrees with me.

It doesn't, if I say something that pisses somebody off, they'll never see it again.

It'll go into the void.

We are going through an algorithm that just decides what you want to see.

So in that case, there is a strong financial incentive to tell people who can't find a house or a partner that it's immigrants' fault or it's women's fault or it's

whoever, or it's the woke mind virus, or whatever.

They'll tell you it's someone's fault.

And that's very comforting.

Yeah, it's very, very comforting if you're in that spot to have an enemy, to have someone you can rally around and get angry at.

And again, on the space I'm in in Twitch, the most right-wing aspects of Twitch are mostly talking about how, man, these woke people are ruining gaming, you know, because it's people want to play games.

They'll be like, oh,

there's these female characters

leading the game.

And it's like, again, this is a tiny problem, but it unites these people.

It's something to rally around.

And so,

yeah,

it's a symptom is what I'll say, though.

Is the misogyny, I mean, it's probably amplified by this, but it's because they are resentful and someone's going to fill that void and tell them it's this person's problem.

So is that, I mean, is that why?

Tell me, I mean, a lot of these spaces, I mean, then there's sort of that echo chamber, then you get that confirmation bias, the algorithms reinforcing that.

Your worldview is colored in, it's amplified, it becomes bigger, and you become more convinced or ideological in that space at the same time.

And in some places, that leads you to

a comfortable place.

Other places can leave you a radicalized place,

which could manifest offline in pretty...

you know, pretty significant ways, right?

Yeah, what I'll say is people have gotten radicalized in human history without these platforms.

And it's because

it's usually when inequality has reached a breaking point.

You go to the 20s and 30s or whatever in

Germany.

I don't think they were, I don't think Germans were a different people.

They were just, they had hyperinflation, they had bad economic problems, and it led to radicalization.

This happens in human history all over.

People feel like they can't get on the ladder.

They start going to edges.

I do think that the internet has made it faster.

It's made it quicker.

It's made it more virulent.

It lets people get larger groups quicker.

There's a danger to that, but

it's not the core of the problem.

Banning it will not change things, is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah.

The example of Nepal is a cautionary tale in that respect.

That's a hell of a cautionary tale.

People are not familiar with it.

I mean, just look that up.

Yeah, look it up.

And to see what happened,

almost just they lit a match.

No, they did.

And how almost overnight that radically has changed the course.

It's actually incredible because, you know, I'm in the Nepalese, their Gen Z movement is all in a giant 800,000 person Discord server and they're voting to decide the next prime minister, which they interim prime minister.

They're going to have an actual vote.

But

it is a wild

small example of how

the internet is going to fuse with these actual resentments to create change, whether people like it or not, unless they're addressed.

What are you just in terms of addressing more broadly what's going on on the internet?

What's your sort of broader sense of social media's responsibility in in that space to police itself,

to police

speech,

to deal with the extremes, to

have at least some cues that express some concern?

Yeah.

If things, I mean,

or is it just complete hanging out?

It's a very tough question.

I don't know if I have the answer to it because

the answer everyone will give you is obviously there's some speech that is too far, but nobody knows.

You know, people have such different views.

And so

one person's, this is a totally normal, fair thing to say, is the other person's, that's horrible disinformation that needs to be banned.

And we've seen the shoe on both feet now.

We've seen people that are really mad about

the way Twitter handled itself during COVID are now hyper-defending the president's right to take down a late-night host for making a mild jab in his direction.

I mean, it's, people are very hypocritical on this front because free speech sounds great when it's the speech you like.

So

I don't have the, I'm not the guy to give you the right answer on that.

I would just say, um,

you know, human history has shown time and time again that censorship is, is,

is a tool for people that cannot win in the public sphere.

They can't find a way to get their point across.

Yeah, so is violence.

Yeah, and violence.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

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What about you?

Let's go back to just AI generally.

I mean, how is that?

And I'm just curious in terms of just what's happening in the gaming space as well, more broadly, even the esports space,

what's happening as well, gambling,

how, I mean, and how it just seems to me that's sort of an iterative part of all of this as well.

We talk about, you know, Kick and others.

It sort of seems like they're moving more and more in that direction.

Crypto, gaming,

I mean,

or gambling.

I mean, just maybe illuminate a little bit.

Yeah, I would love to talk to you about, you know, people are talking about how video games are the problems with young men.

I'll tell you, the biggest two things that are destroying young men's ability to get financially on their feet is crypto and gambling, sports gambling particularly.

These two things are a

viral cancer that are just ripping these people's ability to get a financial leg up apart.

Young men are

attacked with ads non-stop on offering.

Because again, if you are financially stuck, if you don't see a path to

with your normal wages, getting a house, then you have to take that 100x bet.

You have to take that odd.

You have to take that crazy bet.

And whether that's punting all your money on a weird meme coin and praying, or it's putting it on a seven-leg parlay on DraftKings, that is why they're doing this.

And that is just stealing their money every day.

And it's making them more frustrated and depressed.

Again, I find those two things.

I speak about them all the time.

Those two things and buy now, pay later.

These buy now, pay later companies are just offering people the ability to buy things they cannot afford and putting them on stuck in debt cycles early, on small purchases.

People are buying out, pay later in groceries.

And

all these three things, yeah, crypto, gambling, I've got to do this up.

These things are what I'm seeing among Gen Z the most are just attacking them financially.

And at the time when they really don't need it,

more than any, boomers can take this.

Gen Z cannot take loss of

this month's paycheck on a crypto.

They just can't do it.

And so,

yeah, I am strongly, I mean, it's so crazy because we barely regulated crypto under Biden.

We were making some progress.

And now

it's out the window, Kevin.

I mean, it's the...

The president made $5 billion off of meme coin.

It's ridiculous.

I find it so deeply frustrating when I see these crypto grifters or David Sachs as a crypto czar with all these business interests.

It's so frustrating to see them just milk regular people dry on

crypto.

And then every sports thing you watch is 500 gambling ads.

I don't know.

Yeah, sorry.

I went on a rant there.

Those two things, actually, I'm very passionate about because I don't see the upside.

I really don't.

I don't see who's benefiting outside of,

you know, putting a casino in everybody's pocket is just a stupid idea.

No, look, I mean, I'm dealing with it with my son right now, that 13-year-old is like, damn,

you know, why are you working?

You know, you're such a loser.

You know, I'm like,

you only make $170,000 a year as governor.

So pathetic.

You know, I'm like, I made, you know, 50 bucks.

Look at this, 15 minutes.

You know, and look at what now I'm down to three bucks.

Wait, no, I make 75.

Like, he literally is like an addict waking up late at night, giving me the phone, give me the phone, just one second to see if he's up

to $3 or $100.

Robin Hood.

100%.

Damn.

That is what's happening.

And that idea of like, why the hell would I work?

Why would I add up my money over 30 years?

No, he thinks I'm the biggest idiot in the world.

Yeah.

That's what I've seen all the time.

You know, I talk finances to my audience a lot.

It's a big part of my content is business and finances.

And man, they just, they're being fed this idea that like the idea, saving money is, is stupid.

It's stupid.

It'll never work.

Inflation's going to eat that away.

You have to take these high-risk bets.

Yeah.

But they don't frame them as high-risk.

They frame them as guarantees.

They frame them as shirt.

I made the mistake of buying

getting YouTube videos of Warren Buffett bored, he was bored, uh, getting him then coloring books that are versions of Warren Buffett's lessons.

He's like,

Yeah, who is this guy?

What is what the hell is he?

No, there's this dude that's online, man, that just told me, like, literally, I don't even remember who his financial advisor is, but he's some guy, like literally, some YouTube guy, yeah, uh, that is a that uh is uh luckily, we only have a thousand bucks that he's been able to save, so we'll survive his lesson, but hopefully I'll have an early lesson.

Look, I appreciate the lesson, though, you're trying to preach here, at least express, is a deeper understanding of these more systemic issues and that we can get caught up in finding scapegoats, we can get caught up in finding conspiracy theories or just the easy out.

And as you suggest, I mean, if the oversight, if the lessons on

what is alleged to have occurred with this tragedy with Charlie Kirk

is to then haul up people on discord uh and the ceos of twitch and yeah and all these things we're missing a deeper deeper yeah i i think it's it's it's a massive wrong direction that is just going to to lead to more of what we're already seeing more spiraling more more anger more i feel like the politicians don't hear the voice don't understand

um

you know if they want to haul up these ceos and ask them about how the platforms work and get a better understanding that's sure but if they're there to like point the finger that discord caused this or or twitch caused this, it's it.

I just promise you it's absurd.

I promise you, it will change nothing.

Um, they'll go, they'll go, they'll go deeper into the internet, they'll just burrow deeper somewhere else.

These are relatively safe, moderated platforms.

These, these are not the problem.

This is, it's just people using the internet to try and find connection where they can't find it in real life because there's, there's not opportunities.

Um,

lemonade stand, what's the what's the goal with the podcast?

Is it yeah, is it to illuminate an entrepreneurial mindset?

The notion of a lemonade stand, many of our first business experiences with selling lemonade, differentiating our brand, decommoditizing a commodity, selling it for an extra five cents, 25 cents, or fresh lemonade versus the sugar version.

What's the idea behind it?

Lemonade stands our podcast.

It's myself, my friend Aiden, and my friend Doug, all of whom are content creators.

Doug Doug.

Doug Doug.

You can do it in your homeland.

And the idea was we are three guys who are only qualified to run a lemonade stand.

We're not bringing deep expertise here.

We have business backgrounds.

We have

backgrounds of our own.

We've started these media, these small media companies, but really we are just going to do our best to understand and read about what's going on and present it in a way with the lingo and the slang and of what this audience wants to hear it in.

That's the idea.

We're not going to be right about everything, but we're not going to be

trying to sway you.

We're not going to be trying.

We have no ulterior motive.

We're just interested in talking about it with each other.

I love it.

Well, it was fun to talk about everything we just talked about with each other.

I appreciate you bringing your authentic voice and perspective on this.

And I also appreciate your stubbornness on pay attention to the thing that is the thing that explains all of the other things.

And that are these sort of tectonic plates of wealth and income inequality that are growing and growing in a divide that is not just a political divide, that is a societal divide.

And unless we address,

forget which party you're associated with, but the whole fabric of our society is going to fray apart.

Adrock, thanks, man, for being with us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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