Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with tim
dillon a stand-up comedian
who is fearless in challenging the norms
of modern day's social and political
discourse
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as a side note let me say that i will
continue talking to scientists engineers
historians mathematicians and so on
but i will also talk to the people who
jack kerouac
called the mad ones in his book on the
road
that is one of my favorite books he
wrote
the only people for me are the mad ones
the ones who are mad to live
mad to talk mad to be saved desirous of
everything at the same time the ones who
never yawn or say a commonplace thing
but burn burn like fabulous
yellow roman candles exploding like
spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the blue
center light pop
and everybody goes some of these
conversations will be
a bit of a gamble in that i have no idea
how they will turn out
but i'm willing to risk it for a chance
at a bit of an adventure
and i'm happy and honored that tim this
time
wanted to take a chance as well if you
enjoy this thing subscribe on youtube
review it up a podcast follow on spotify
support it on patreon
or connect with me on twitter at lex
friedman
and now here's my conversation with tim
dillon
what would you like your tombstone to
read it's a good way to summarize
the uh essence of a human being i would
like it to say this has not been paid
for
and i want i want my my living relatives
to
struggle to to pay for it and i think i
would like them to be hounded every day
i would like people to call and go
listen we don't want to ever excavate a
body but we will
because this has not been paid for
i i love the idea of leaving the world
like debt
leaving the world in in lots of debt
that other people have to deal with
yeah and i i know people that have done
that and i know people that have been in
families where that's happened where
someone has to sit and and just curse
the
sky because they don't have a physical
person anymore to be angry at
and they but they still have to deal
with the decisions that person made
and that's deeply tragic but that's
always struck me as very funny well it's
the kind of immortality the debt
because you can if the debt lasts for a
long time the anger lasts for a long
time and then you're
now immortal in the minds of many you
arouse emotion in the minds of many
my mother's best friend in the town i
grew up and her husband
shot himself in the the driveway
and my mother's friend never got a
chance to just grieve
because he owed so much money she would
come over and go i
hate him i fucking hate him
and it was just such an interesting
thing to see somebody who and her kids
ended up getting angry at her for that
because they didn't understand why she
would hate a guy who was clearly you
know
suffering and but she goes he took the
selfish way out
he fucked us and it was always
interesting for me to
uh just remember that like you can leave
earth
and still be a problem
[Laughter]
that's kind of a special person so
that's i think what i'd like my
tombstone to read
yeah there's a there's a show called
louie with lucy canada
i'm aware of that there's this moment i
think where an
old guy's talking to louie about the
best part about love
is after you break up and it's
remembering
that like remembering the good times and
feeling that loss the pain of that loss
the worst part about love is when you no
longer feel that pain
the pain of losing somebody
lasts longer is more intense and lasts
longer than the actual love
so his argument was like the pain is the
re
is what love really is wow in the same
way that anger
your tombstone would arouse is
will last longer and that's that's
deeply like a human thing like why do we
attach happiness to the way we should
remember
others it could be just anger i know
so many people who will have deeply
complicated feelings when
i i you know i did drugs for many years
so and i i spent time with some wild
people
and their parents were also wild people
and some of their parents have done
crazy things to them and
you know have created situations that
were
not uh productive for
child rearing yeah and so i know that
when those people die
it's going to be a very mixed bag like
there's going to be a lot of complex
emotions like hey
we loved that guy but also when we look
back
uh he was a horrible father a horrible
husband
but he was fun and and and we don't put
enough stock in that but that will be a
push and pull
yeah and i'll be the one kind of
bringing up like hey he was a lot of fun
yeah he was a lot remember when he he
stuck
us you know one of the things this
particular person i'm talking about
we were we were at a bar me and my
friend were there we're having dinner
and his father who was
you know an alcoholic and a a you know a
guy that would go out every night
and didn't work you know refused to work
would lie and say he was going to work
and then go to a bar i mean just a fun
person
and uh he he we were sitting at this
bar restaurant and the bartender we see
his father walk up to the bartender and
say
pointed us pointed our table and go and
put the thumbs up and the bartender
nodded
and then the father walked over to our
table and he said listen i just want to
let you know i just bought you dinner
and i looked at his son i said he's a
pretty good guy and then he
he climbed over the little fence down to
the water and got his little boat it was
a little cigarette boat and he just
drove away
and then about an hour later we uh we
went we said i think
uh that guy took care of the bill but
she said well go talk to the bartender
so we
just walked to the bartender and he goes
he handed us a bill and the bill was for
like a thousand dollars
and we said wait a minute what the hell
is going on and he goes the guy that
left an hour ago said you were going to
take care of his bill he's been drinking
here all week
and we go what are you talking about and
he goes remember he pointed at you he
put the thumbs up and you guys
waved yeah you remember that and the guy
and we went yeah and i just looked at my
friends my friend and i went you know
your dad is just we're gonna remember
him for all kinds of reasons
but to you he was fun he was a lot of
fun he wasn't my dad
but i spent a lot of time with him i was
in two boating accidents with him
you know two boating accidents all
involved drugs yes he was usually
alcohol was involved when he left his
house
um and when he was at home as well but i
was in two boating accidents and
do you know how fun someone has to be to
get in a second boating accident
do you know what a good time someone has
to be yeah
to get in a boat with them after you've
already gotten in one wreck
never get full to get what was that line
george bush never get fooled again
right yeah so if you're getting fooled
again you know there's a reason for it
but he was he was a fun guy he did have
a death wish the second boating accident
he grabbed me and said you can't hang
out with me anymore and i said why he
goes
i'm trying to kill myself and i was like
oh and then i understood that like
oh the fun under the fun lived a very
destructive person
who not only was destructive but wanted
to die
so speaking of fun people that want to
die i i don't know if you're
we can go hunter s thompson but uh
charles bukowski i don't know if you're
aware of the guy
i'm aware of i'm sure i've read some
stuff so his tombstone says
i just want to ask you a question about
it his uh tombstone says don't try
interesting what do you think about that
advice as a way to approach life
i i think for many people it's a good
good advice
uh because the people that are gonna try
will do anyway
and the people that need to be told
there's a whole cottage industry now
of motivational speakers and life
coaches and
gurus uh that tell people
uh that they all have to own their own
business and be their own boss
and be a disrupter and get into
industries you know
that's incredibly unrealistic for most
people most people
are not suited for that and you know the
gary vee's in the world that tell
everybody that they should just hustle
and grind and hustle and grind
they're very light on the specifics of
what they should actually do um
yeah i think a lot of people that's not
horrible advice to give to a lot of
people i think
i think my generation got horrible
advice from our our parents from our
teachers
and that advice was follow your dreams
uh and nobody
and that was it by the way there was no
like what are your dreams
are they realistic what happens when
they don't work out will your dreams
make you happy
are your dreams real do they exist on
earth
yeah can you follow anybody will follow
your dreams
you can be anything you want to be
horrible advice horrible advice
worst advice you could ever give a
generation of people really
truly i mean think about think about it
if you were talking to somebody
and you were trying to make them succeed
are there any two
uh worse pieces of advice to give them
then
follow your dreams and you can be
anything you want to be
those to me are the two most destructive
pieces of information i've ever heard so
let me uh push back because oh that's
fair this is many people do
so uh yeah this is like a rigorous
journalistic interview
larry king by the way passed away today
so i'm i'm taking over the it's very sad
i'm carrying the very sad
let's see king yeah what was i even
gonna say oh let me push back on the
follow your dream thing is i come from
an immigrant family
where i was always working
extremely hard at stuff like in in a
stupid way i would
i love there's something about me that
loves hitting my head against the wall
over and over and over until either my
head breaks or the wall breaks
just like i love that dedication for no
purpose whatsoever it's like the
mouse that's stuck in a cage or whatever
and no
and everybody always told me my family
the people around me to sort of uh the
epitome of what i could achieve is to be
kind of a stable job
you know the the old like lawyer doctor
in my case it's like scientists
and so on but i had these dreams had
this fire you know
about i love robots and
that nobody ever gave me permission to
pursue those dreams
i know you're supposed to grab it
yourself nobody's supposed to give you
permission
but there's something about just people
saying
you know fuck what everyone else thinks
like giving you permission a parent or
somebody like that saying
do your own thing go become an actor go
become like do the crazy thing you're
not supposed to do an artist
go build a company quit school all that
kind of stuff
yes sure that's to push back against the
uh follow your dreams as advice
in mass if you were to look at in mass
if you were to look at statistically
how few people that works out for i'm
just no let's be very honest this is
very true
be very honest so i mean like yeah if
you're gonna go be an act hey i was
broke for 10 years before i became a
before i was making money as a comedian
i get it i didn't need gary vaynerchuk
to tell me to follow my
thing right and here's the other thing i
was kind of funny and like
i was kind of a lot of things were
in my favor of being a comedian right i
had this kind of crazy fucked up life i
had a lot of stories
i had exhausted or i was willing to fail
i had failed
before i was broke i didn't care about
being broke i knew how to be broke
um i had i was shameless to to a degree
i was
i would get on a stage night after night
and be laughed at
i would uh i had a high threshold for
being embarrassed
i had a high threshold for people
thinking that i was a scumbag right and
showing up at family parties and being
like yeah i still really don't have a
job and
i'm just i work at comedy clubs kind of
and i get booked when i can
um and i i i was you know suited for it
there's this idea that people can just
roam around the world injecting
themselves
into other things they have no aptitude
for at all
and will that to happen a small
percentage of people might be able to do
that
but the vast majority of people have
something they might
key into that they're meant to do like
you loved robots you love technology and
you found a place
in that world where you thrive but i
think many people
a lot of people love robots right so a
lot of people think everything you do is
interesting
i think your shit is fascinating i i
watch you or podcast and i think it's
very interesting
i have no place in your world you know
what i mean
i have no place in that world i i don't
like
remedial math i don't like community
college math i think it's a waste of my
time
what do you think about robot would you
ever buy a robot for your home
yes what will it do i'll be a companion
a friend
oh yeah i mean i would like to start
replacing friends and family with robots
immediately
okay i mean truly truly i mean i'm not
even kidding like
i would like to have a thanksgiving with
four robots
i'm i'm dead serious well are they
interqueuing on like
uh do the role are the robots when do
the robots start going crazy
that's my question is like how long do
the robots live with me before they are
also a problem
and i gotta replace them you know what i
mean you're gonna indoctrinate the wrong
is my the robot's gonna call me like my
aunt does and talk about coronavirus for
an hour every morning and tell me
everyone in america who's died of
coronavirus one of the
things i enjoy in life is how terrified
uh people like you i'm a huge fan by the
way
get a robot well i am i'm concerned
about ai
like completely getting rid of the need
for human beings because human beings i
mean you go out in the street and you go
so few of these people are necessary
even now
even now you look at people and you go
they're hanging on by a thread right
and you can just imagine how many jobs
are going to get replaced
how many industries are going to be
completely remade
with ai and the pace of change worries
me a little bit because we do a very bad
job in this country
of mitigation when we have problems
we don't do a great job we did a not
great job with kovid right
we don't do a good job it's just
something we don't do well we kind of
we're good in booms and busts
we're good when it's good and we're
actually we kind of know how to kind of
like
hey we're bottomed out we're like we're
like a gambling addict in this country
we like
we know what it feels like to be outside
of an otb at 9am drinking coffee and
smoking cigarettes going
i'm going to build it back and we know
what it's like to win
but tru anything in between it seems not
that great
so to me it feels like are we going to
be able to like
help people that are displaced and that
have their jobs taken by
i mean do you do you not fear sort of an
uh a world where you have a lot of
you know artificial intelligence
replacing workers and then what happens
there's a lot of fears around artificial
intelligence one of them
is yes displacement of jobs workers
that's
technology in general that's just uh
any kind of new innovations displaced
jobs
i'm less worried about that i'm more
worried about other impacts of
artificial intelligence for example
the nature of our discourse like social
the effects of algorithms
on the way we communicate with each
other the spread of information
uh what that information looks like the
creation of silos all that kind of stuff
i think that would just make worse
the effects that the displacement of
jobs
uh has i think ultimately
i have a hope that technology creates
more opportunities than it destroys
i hope so too so in that sense ai to me
is uh an exciting possibility but
you know the challenges this world
presents will create divisions will
create chaos and so on so i'm more
focused on
the way we deal as a society with that
chaos the way we talk to each other
that's huge creating the platform that's
healthy for that now
as a as a comedian creator whatever you
want to call it
people that put out content uh the
gatekeepers are now algorithmic right so
they are kind of almost ai already so if
you are a
person that puts out you know youtube
videos podcasts uh
whatever you're doing um you are it used
to be a guy
in the back of the room with a cigar
saying i like you
or get him out of here now it's it's an
algorithm you barely understand
like i talk i talk to people at youtube
but i don't know if they understand
right the algorithm they don't they
don't that's fascinating
yeah it's fascinating because i speak to
people at youtube and i go hey man
what's going on here
one of my episode titles of my podcast
was called knife fight in malibu
it was about real estate and and it was
because a realtor in malibu i was trying
to get a summer rental which i can't
really afford but
i don't i don't think that's a huge
problem you know i've followed my dreams
so i called a realtor and she said
listen she goes i don't know what the
government's saying
yeah but she goes it's a real night
fight out here you know an old grizzled
woman real realtor
canned skin sig out the mouth driving a
porsche you know yeah it's a real knife
fight out here
you know her entire life had become real
estate her soul had been hollowed out
her kids hate her
you know no one's made her common years
but it's just she just loves heating
it's fun floors
fun yeah she's a demon from hell and we
need them truly
we're getting rid of them it's not good
yeah and she goes a real knife fight out
here so we put that in the episode title
and of course i guess some algorithm
thought that we were showing like people
stabbing each other and wendy's
and we we got like demonetized did we
get demonetized
we lost a lot of views because we were
kicked out of whatever out like we're
just kicked out yeah and i was asking
youtube about it
they were kind of understanding it but
even the people that worked there
didn't truly seem to understand the
algorithm so can you explain to me how
that works where they barely know what's
going on
no they do not understand the full
dynamics of the
the monster or the amazing thing that
they've created it's
the amount of content that's being
created is larger than anyone
understands
like this is huge they can't deal with
it the teams aren't large enough to deal
with it
there's like special cases so if you
fall into the category a special case so
we can maybe talk about that like a
donald trump
where you like actually have meetings
about what to do with this particular
account
but everything outside of that is all
algorithms they get uh
reported by people and they get uh
like if enough people report a
particular video a particular tweet
it get it rises up to where humans look
over it
but the the initial step of the
reporting
and the rising up to the human
supervision
is done by algorithm and they don't
understand the dynamics of that because
we're talking about billions of tweets
we're talking about hundreds of
thousands
of hours of video uploaded
every day now the hilarity of it
is that most of the youtube algorithm
is based on the title
that's crazy it's and the description is
a small contribution in terms of
filtering in terms of the knife fight
situation right
and that's all they can do they cannot
they don't have
algorithms at all that are able to
process the content of the video
so they try to also infer
information based on if you're watching
all these like q and on videos or
something like that
or flat earth videos and you also watch
are really excitedly watching the whole
night fight in uh
malibu right video that says
that increases the chance that the knife
fight
uh is uh a dangerous video for society
or something interesting
wow based on their contribution people
are watching something
because i watch q and on and flat earth
videos to ridicule them
right that you know what i mean i watch
these videos and i make fun of them
on my show yeah but what's interesting
is if i then go watch
something else i'm increasing the
likelihood that that video is going to
get looked at as potentially subversive
or dangerous exactly that's
why so they make decisions about who you
are
who you are as a human being as a
watcher the visual user based
on the clusters of videos you're in but
those clusters are not
manually determined they're they're
automatically clustered
that's so weird we have titles where
they got upset about and i don't even
understand yeah like we had a title
that was so innocuous in my opinion and
the title of the episode was called bomb
disney world
and i was asking people to consider
bombing disney world and youtube
got angry at that so you don't know why
you can never understand
who said disney world is the bomb right
right
right say it's just rearranging that's
why i wasn't gonna do it but i was
saying let's start
thinking about yeah plans to do
like not let's do it like but let's
let's get in the mind
let's change the conversation yeah i
think it's very interesting because as a
comedian you don't want to live in that
world of worrying about algorithms you
don't want to worry about the
platforming and shadow banning i mean
all these conversations
that i've had with other comedians about
shadow banning i mean it's hilarious we
all call each other i think i'm being
shadow band
are you being shadow band and nobody
knew what that word was
a month ago i mean a year ago but
everyone now
is convinced that everything they do
that isn't succeeding is being shadowed
yeah so it's this new paranoia
yeah this algorithmic paranoia now that
we all kind of have
because there are genuine instances
of people being taken out of an
algorithm you know rightly or wrongly
for whatever however you want to believe
but then there are also things that just
don't perform as well for a myriad of
reasons
and and then we're all saying like well
they're against me
they're shutting me down and you don't
know if that's true or not you know
what do you think about this moment in
history which was uh really
troubling to me we could talk about
several
troubling aspects but one is
amazon removing parlor from aws
to me that was the most clearly
troubling
it felt like it created a more dangerous
world
when the infrastructure
on which you have competing uh
medium of communications now puts its
finger on the scale
now influences who wins and who loses
absolutely you're right and what
you're always told is like if you don't
like twitter create your own service
right or if you don't like something you
can do your own thing or if you are
uh and and and basically because you
know
tech you have to be in business with one
of five companies i think it's like
amazon facebook google
uh youtube and twitter whatever they're
like you know i mean amazon puts
everything on the cloud
you know google and youtube it's it's
all basically the seo and the
advertising and you got to get your name
out there you don't want to be buried
and
like because you have to do business
with your it's a cartel of these
companies you understand
it better than anybody uh that you are
prevented
truly and i i think whatever you think
about parlor
whatever you think about what people are
saying on parlor whatever you think
about
uh alex jones whatever you thought about
milo yiannopoulos
the state has an interest in and has
always had an interest in
in crushing dissent this is what the
state has done this is how they
you know retain the power they have
by eliminating dissent where they can
now because you don't have
you know three broadcast networks
anymore and a handful of newspapers that
were all
run by the way by people that had been
either compromised or happily you know
happily going
with the program and you have this wild
west
of the internet people like me people
that
make i make funny content that i hope is
funny but a lot of it is
wild and crazy yeah i say a lot of wild
and crazy things
they're very funny i say a lot of wild
and crazy things about powerful people
yeah you mock the powerful in there by
bringing them down a notch
we'll probably talk about it but humor
is one of the tools yeah
to to uh to balance the power
in society well sure or and to make
people feel better about things and to
you know whatever the case may be right
that's my goal is to kind of like hey
people have had a shitty day
if this video or podcast makes you laugh
that's great
i think that it won't ever it was never
going to stop at alex jones not that i
think he should have been taking off
everything the way he was but
this keeps going until we have sanitized
all of social media and they what they
really want it to be
is what instagram is kind of becoming
which is a marketplace of
you could just go and buy sneakers go
buy a sweatshirt go buy jeans
go buy this go buy that and the idea of
the free exchange of information
seems to be the old internet and it
seems the new internet seems to be
uh you know hyper and i'm a capitalist
but this seems to be like hyper
capitalist in the sense
like they only want you consuming things
and they don't want you thinking too
much
and that seems to be worth heading i've
even seen that with instagram where it's
like everything on instagram like
buy a sweatshirt yeah you know and i'm
like
all right man hey man if i want a
sweatshirt i'll get it like relax
you know just every ad seems to be uh
encouraging consumption
but very few things seem geared towards
hey let's have a dialogue or less and
not that instagram was ever great for
that but like
very things are geared now towards
content on instagram a lot of it seems
geared towards
shopping see i i don't know it's an
interesting point i don't know if
the consumerism that capitalism leads to
is necessarily gets in the way of
nuanced conversation i feel like you
could still sell
tim dillon sweatshirts and have a
difficult nuanced conversation
or mock the current president the
previous president
mock the powerful all that kind of stuff
we try we try to balance that i mean we
have sweatshirts
we do would you they're not are they on
sale now business
uh we do a fake business sweatshirt with
the enron logo fake business cause i
like i do fake business all the time it
would be nice if we talk about alex
jones if you plug
the sweatshirt during that conversation
yeah we'll do that absolutely yeah um
but what i tend to worry about with uh
uh i i
see social media and technology existing
to flatten
society it makes people very boring all
of the experiences
kids have right now are online
many of their closest friendships are
online their first relationships are
online
uh the culture is is very homogenous
and that's i think it's eliminating
characters it's eliminating interesting
people it's making people into a.i
uh all of their teachers yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah
charles bukowski as well let's not get
crazy it's not there yet
right i mean the 75 000 dog is not doing
anything
you know so i mean we're not there yet
listen i hate p i get why you like ai so
much i hate people too
and i'm very amenable to ai and i i i
agree with you like listen i think the
future
we got to get everyone out of here i'm
with you on that so don't think i'm i
love
people he's manipulating my mind that's
why the flash of
light in your eyes when you talked about
that dog was so much more
than any person and i get it by the way
you're right i love people but
if they're not excited if it can just
use robots to kill
most of them i think that would be good
for society
i'm with that too but uh i i think that
social media flattens flattening the
personalities
personalities of people man and it's
just you know when's the last time like
i like the idea of like
you know and i'm you know somebody
showing up to uh
you know high school like a backpack and
taking out an old cd and being like hey
man
here's this band you've never heard of
that i love or whatever you got to get
into this
and i'm like you know when i talk to
young you know my friends that have
younger brothers and everything
every and i know that the dominant
culture was always dominant i'm not an
idiot but like
i feel like it's harder to be unique and
original now because
so much of of what's promoted is
just this way to kind of corral people
into believing and thinking
uh a certain set of ideals that's
constantly shifting and evolving
and people are just caught up in that
and to me
it gets very boring very quickly i hate
being bored
and that's what it is i don't know what
to do with that because at the same time
podcasts are really popular long-form
podcasts really popular and people are
people are hungry for those kinds of
conversations there's a lot of dangerous
ideas quote unquote
flowing uh being spread around through
podcasts
meaning just like debates correct you
know so that's still popular so i don't
know what to
i agree with you that gives me hope i
guess i hope so too and like i said i i
look at the negative a lot because
that's what i
usually make fun of but there's a lot of
positive stuff happening too
let's talk a bit about alex jones
i so you've gotten a chance to talk to
him
while you were on the joe rogan
experience i've been on alex's show
i've talked i've had alex on my show
i've talked to
alex for three hours in front of i guess
it was maybe like 15 million people
right on joe's show it was a really wild
conversation i think it was one of the
coolest
moments in broadcasting that i clearly
that i've ever been a part of but i
think it goes in the lexicon of like
these are big podcasts like i think it's
one of the biggest podcasts a week
before the election
alex jones i'm really grateful that joe
gave me the opportunity to to be there
and i it was just an amazing
conversation to watch what was the
shirt award uh it was a fun joke that no
one in tech got because we all know how
funny they are
uh but the tech writers which is mainly
do not agree with these
things mainly blue hair and people whose
you know goal in life is to find
things to give them orgasms with you
know without to dye your hair blue it's
your choice yeah i respect it and but is
it your choice
but at the end of the day it's like you
know all the tech writers like a lot of
people just
and i'm not i'm just maligning tech
unfairly but a lot of people in that
sense of humor were like he's
advocating for human trafficking i'm
like it's clearly a joke because we're
coming off to believe
all women yes we're coming off that and
it's very funny
to just say free just lane hey man
believable women like it's just
our politics and our and our public
sphere is so schizophrenic right now
that when you point that out people are
going to be angry with you but that was
a fun shirt to wear
but on alex you know i was one of the
people that
found him really entertaining that that
the same kind of thing as with bukowski
these kinds of personalities
that are wild crazy full of ideas
uh they don't have to be grounded in
truth at all or they can be grounded in
truth a little bit
it like he's just playing with ideas
like a jazz musician
screaming sometimes obviously he has
some demons
sometimes he's super angry for no reason
whatsoever as some
weird thing that he's constructed in his
own head sometimes he's super loving and
peaceful
especially lately that i've heard him i
don't know if he's seen with him with
michael malus where he's doing uh
like uh malice was doing like
well telling alex jones i love you alex
you know just this
loving kind of softness and kindness
underneath it all
i don't know what to make of any of it
and then there's this huge number of
people
that tell me that alex jones is a is
dangerous for society
right so what do you do with that do you
think he's dangerous with society do you
think he is
one of the sort of entertaining
personalities of our time that shouldn't
be suppressed
or somewhere in between i don't think
that alex per se
is dangerous for society i think the
greater danger for society comes again
from stifling
all dissent right all like anybody with
a voice
that uses it that critiques the
government and
and putting all of those people in a
category and getting rid of them is
incredibly dangerous to me
more so i think the biggest problem that
alex has ever had
was when he questioned the sandy hook
shooting and that
really was because it really is this
identifiable
incident that you can look at where it
did get away from him
and a lot of his fans who the people
that are attracted to conspiracy stuff
and i have some of those fans
some of them are really smart people
some of them are mentally unwell
a lot of them happen to be mentally
unwell so when you have a fan base of
people where some of them are mentally
unwell
and you are questioning uh you know
tragic events okay and alex was right
about epstein he was right about a lot
of things and he's got no credit for
that
and i understand that this he's
sometimes when you write about 10 things
and you're wrong about something
and the thing you're wrong about is so
offensive to people you're never going
to get any credit for being right even
though you were right more than when you
were
wrong the problem was a lot of his fans
who were crazy
stalked harassed these families and
accused him of being actors and accused
them of like
faking their children's deaths it was
just horrific
experience and alex is tied to that
and and he and and and you know how much
he inspired that by what he did on his
show i don't know
because i haven't watched hours and
hours of
that particular thing like the whole
sandy hook thing um
if you listen to him he says i really
covered it i kind of covered it moved on
other people go no he spent a long time
on it but that's the real danger of
going into that territory over and over
again
going everything is is uh everything's a
false flag or everything's fake i think
i think alex has actually been kind of
reasonable like he's resisted a lot of
the
the politics of like racial resentment
on like the alt-right for example he's
resisted that
he's resisted the anti-semitic uh
currents of a lot of that politics right
he's resisted a lot of uh the the
virulently
anti-trans or anti-gay stuff now he does
dip his tone in the water of like the
culture wars of course he does
and but i've never really seen him
and i could be wrong about this embrace
white nationalism
or identitarianism i've never seen him
really go anti-semitic
i've never seen him take that route uh
when i grew up
and i would turn him on every now and
then he was talking about nafta the wto
he's talking about 911 he was talking
about
the the you know the world trade
organizations and a lot of these big
conferences whether it was the
bilderberg group uh
or whether it was uh bohemian grove
which he infiltrated
and he was talking about hey here are
the most powerful people in the world
here's what they're doing
and here's how it affects you and that
was interesting to me because it was
never no one else was really talking
about it except alex jones
um occasionally art bell on on wabc
you'd listen to him at night right um
i think alex became very controversial
when he decided to back donald trump and
then he has a considerable following and
a considerable audience
that he was then able to marshal uh
in the direction of supporting donald
trump um
that was when the spotlight because then
he was talking to trump trump did his
show
alex jones just got bigger right and he
blew up that's the term right you blew
off like he
he he had the good uh he put out the
good hbo special whatever you want to
call that he had a hit song
yeah he blew up and then people started
looking at the things that you know he
was associated with
the sandy hook thing is a blemish on his
record i do believe he regrets it
but again i do see the point of the
families who are like dude fuck this guy
forever
this is the worst thing i ever went
through it's a very tough
um i understand the people that say that
i understand and i and i understand the
people that go
when you coordinate when you have tech
companies that act in a coordinated
manner to just get rid of someone
they don't have any way to defend
themselves uh it's
it's a little terrifying when you think
about that power being abused
and how wouldn't it be do you think he
should not have been banned from all
these platforms i i don't
think i do think that if you are a
private company
right i do think and this is where you
run into this this problem like i don't
know if these tech companies were
government utilities would
that decrease people's likelihood of
being banned i don't know
right so i'm i'm i
i understand the benefit of them being
treated like public utilities and people
thinking they have the right to a
twitter
i'm i've never i don't know i have very
little confidence i mean the
government's trying to roll out a
vaccine in california and we vaccinated
like five people
i mean in terms of what we need to do in
the state right
so maybe if it was a government utility
i i do think
someone like alex jo like there should
be some
process so if you're gonna get rid of
someone they should have a way to defend
themselves
there should be more democratic
yeah uh process that you can go through
than just being unilaterally taken off
something but like
then you run into the you're like am i
going to say that everyone deserves no
if you're threatening or
harassing people or threatening to kill
them publishing their private
information if you're committing crimes
on these
platforms obviously the people that own
these platforms are going to be like
we're not going to allow this to happen
so i understand
that there is a line right there is some
like people that
say there's no line aren't really
thinking like there is a line
uh i just don't that line seems to be
moving all the time
and it seems to be a very hard thing to
police but i don't think you can remove
a guy off
everything and then also bank accounts
won't give him
debit cards or credit cards i don't know
if you talk to him about that but like
you know there were financial
institutions that were refusing to let
him
you know park his money there so i mean
it really does get
pretty terrifying pretty quickly
um probably without any transparency
from those companies
so you're right there it feels like
there should be a process
of uh just having for him to defend
himself
i think there needs to be a process for
people to defend themselves
i i every day i wake up and i go can is
something i said in a video gonna get
taken out of context is somebody gonna
get angry is somebody gonna be
you know i say wild stuff because that's
what makes me laugh that's what makes my
friends laugh and that's what makes my
audience laugh
so i i never ever people you know
whatever
whatever political side you come down on
i think if you make your living speaking
it's always interesting to me if you are
pro
the d platforming is that's odd it's
interesting to consider
kind of a jury uh
context to where you know there's
transparency about why your video about
bombing um
disney world might be taken down like it
it's
uh it gets taken down and then there is
uh it's almost like
creating a little court case a mini
court case and not in the legal sense
but in the
in the public sphere and then people
should be able to have
you know you pick representatives of our
current society and have a discussion
about that and make a real vote
you know just have like jury locks
himself up in a discussion
that kind of that kind of process might
be necessary right now what happens
is twitter is completely first of all
they're just mostly not aware of
everything they're doing there's too
much stuff but the stuff they're aware
about
they make the decision in closed doors
uh the meetings
and without any transparency right to
the rest of the company actually but
also transparency to uh
the rest of the world and so and then
all they say is we're doing we're making
decisions because the people
they use things like violence so
violence equals bad
and if this person is quote-unquote
inciting violence therefore that gives
us enough
enough reason to ban them without any
kind of process
it's i mean it's interesting i'm i'm
torn in the whole thing
if it was indeed there's no transparency
about it but
if parlor was indeed inciting violence
like if there was brewing of violence
potential violence where you know
thousands of people
might uh die because of some kind of
riot
like the that's the scary thing about
mob
about when a lot of people get together
right
who are good people like legitimately
good people that
love this country that don't see enemies
yet
around them but if they get excited
together and there's guns involved it's
a problem and then some
cop gets nervous and shoots one person
another person
shoots the cop and then there's a lot of
shooting involved and then it goes from
five people dying in the capital
to thousands of people dying in the
capital well in fairness too
to defend uh the people of the capital
they didn't shoot the
cop they they bludgeoned him to death
with a fire extinguisher
yes so i do i do want to just kind of
put that out
as a as a defense of them listen i'm
sure there was some wild shit going on
on parlor and i think the problem
here's the problem right there's a lot
of people that just want
to go on these sites and say they want
to kill everyone
yeah and the problem is you know at what
point
do you shut them all down like i think a
lot of people
are just living in a world where they're
powerless they don't
have any political power they don't have
any economic power right
they can't throw their money around uh
they don't have health care
their their job security isn't great uh
they might be living in a community that
doesn't have the resources they would
like it to have uh
they're they're not happy and thrilled
and then they have these sites where
they can go on and just say man
i'd like to fucking burn it all down and
distinguishing a guy blowing off steam
and saying wild stuff from
a genuine threat is a very hard thing to
do
you know like i i've threatened to kill
i got banned from airbnb i threatened to
kill the people um
that banned me comedically yeah
comedically this is a joke i'm not going
to kill you yeah this is a joke because
i'm blowing off steam
and i'm angry do you know how many
people that my parent like my dad's like
i'm gonna fucking kill this guy my mom's
like i'm gonna fucking kill
and they were talking about each other
but it's
but none of it ever happened but we
should be i think you
you you have to create a space for
people to
threaten to overthrow the government as
long as they don't violently do
it yeah like i mean does that make any
sense like i mean as long as they're not
going to go
hurt innocent people what are you going
to do like there's so many people out
there that you that's why
a lot of these things like you know
4chan these sites a lot of people going
on there they just want to say the most
fucked up shit
because they it's the thing that gives
them they can laugh
or they can release steam and it's it is
immature it is stupid
it's not productive it's not you know
but at the end of the day
if you're not going to give people
health insurance you got to give them
something it's like when someone in this
country dies that everyone disagrees
with right
political figure media figure a lot of
people dance on their grave
online and then everyone people goes
dude there and the other side
will always do it like if a conservative
dies and everyone goes great
conservatives goes this is grotesque
that you
and then when rbg dies they all have
parties and the conservatives go great
um you have to let people in this
country enjoy the deaths of their
enemies
yeah you do because they don't have much
else
again if you gave them other things you
might say guy
you can go get a knee operation why
don't you
stop but if if they're working for shit
wages
and you haven't figured out a way to to
treat them
uh treat their cancer diagnosis and they
don't like
i mean life you know you know you gotta
have you gotta derive pleasure from
something
right it's an interesting point that
anger is a good valve like to
for if if your life is suffering that
there's something
very powerful about anger but i still
have hope that it doesn't have to be i
mean that kind of channeling into anger
uh that then becomes hate led us into a
lot of troubles in human history
yeah you have to be careful uh
empowering people too much in that anger
especially
i think mike i think i understand
why people were nervous about parlor
about twitter and so on sure yeah
because all that shit talking about
violence
was now paired with let's get together
at this location
right this was a new thing like it's not
just being on whatever platform
talking shit it's saying we're going to
in physical space meat and then
everybody got all these platforms got
nervous well what happens when all these
shit talkers
uh all these angry people that are just
steaming uh letting off steam
meet in the physical space uh and there
was
probably overreach uh almost definitely
overreach but i can understand why they
were nervous i agree there doesn't seem
to be and this is when trump got elected
and when you have like
whatever you have right whether you have
riots in portland in seattle where you
have the antifa people doing crazy
things you have like
you know the people storming the capital
there never seems to be a ton of
uh an examination of why these ideas are
becoming popular
why are people so angry yeah what is
leading people to this yes
why are we here what about their lives
is to the point where they need to show
up at these places and like and now
obviously there's always going to be
people on the fringe they'll always be
the mentally unwell
they'll always be people that want to
destroy society but when you look at
how popular large you know long
discredited things whether it's fascism
you know totalitarian communism all of
these things are like
why are they back why are they back in a
big way and why are why are people
so fed up with the status quo that
they're
finding you know solace
in the most extreme uh
discredited theories of how to run and
operate societies theories that have led
to deaths a lot of people so to me i'm
like
if those people at the capitol
yes if they were going to work if
there's
you know if they were able to go out and
drink at
chili's if they were able to
get a fucking checkup right like if
their job paid a little bit and i'm not
saying
this is all the reason right i'm sure
that there's a lot of people there that
are doing quite well
and they're still nuts but like the
anger and the rage
that's boiling to the surface of this
society
does it come from the fact that
across the board people in very
different
areas and with very different political
beliefs feel like they are being
fucked over and there's nothing they can
do about it
that's what the baseline to me
they look at the people that run the
country and run the world whether
they're
tech titans the guys that you talk to or
whether they're people that run
the government whether they're people
that run large banks
large media companies the people that
have created
this kind of you know infrastructure
that everyone lives in
these people are incredibly powerless
and when you push people to that point
logically sadly and unfortunately
the next thing does seem to be violence
yeah the thing that troubles me a lot
is you said nobody's asking why
these beliefs are out there but
sometimes it's not even
acknowledged that people are hurting
people are
angry just even acknowledging that
all the conspiracy theories that are out
there acknowledging that they're out
there
and then people are thinking about it
and talking about it just
because otherwise so it's not
acknowledged in this nuanced way what
happens is you say okay 70 million
people
are white supremacists it's just
throwing
a kind of blanket statement
and of course that gets them angrier
and more makes them feel more powerless
and that ultimately that that's
what's been painful for me to see is
that
there's not an acknowledgement that most
people
are good right it's their circumstances
where it's just you're pissed off right
because you were powerless and you must
fall in love you could fall in with a
bad crowd
that's the thing you can just fall in
yeah and it doesn't mean that you're
you don't there's not blame you know
you're obviously you're you have agency
you're a person
you know but the idea that like you
could be rehabilitated you could do
something stupid or you could fall into
the great you know a group of people
that are
and then in a few years you could go
what the fuck was i doing yeah
you know i'm an ex-drug addict i know
what it's like to go from being one
thing to being another thing right
i'm still a drug if i would use drugs
right now or drink i would still be
addicted to them right i mean it's not
something
that i can ever change about myself but
i know what it's like to go from one
thing to another thing
so when you look at racism or whatever
ism homophobia misogyny whatever
whatever you're looking at
anti-semitism and you go that's a fixed
condition where nobody's ever going to
be able to change
nobody's ever going to be able to be
rehabilitated nobody's ever going to be
able to
reimagine themselves in a different way
to me
you're just you're throwing away someone
and you're making them feel helpless
and worthless um and that's going to
lead to anti-social behavior that spills
out into
the violence we don't have a very
redemptive society right
that's a huge factor we don't have a
redemptive society
that's why i like o.j simpson because
o.j
yeah yes he did a bad thing supposedly
allegedly yeah but he's
very kind now on twitter and he makes
very nice
points about how we all