Babylon Bee Pisses Off Mainstream Media

Seth Dillon the CEO of a satire website comedy making fun of people both on the left and the right who's got a lot of heat lately with New York Times New York Times wrote negative things about them then they sued them the New York Times had to change it it's pretty interesting but let me read you some of the recent articles that they've done the titles you ready here we go so Cracker Jack changes name to more politically correct Caucasian Jack which is pretty hilarious I've read three of them I haven't read the 10. so there's gonna be a reaction on the other ones number two Biden Cuts hole in masks so he can still sniff people's hair pretty impressive by the way that one's good three motorcyclists who identifies as a bicyclist set cycling world record that is classic by the way David I love that one four CDC people with dirt on Clinton's have 843 percent greater risk of suicide that's a pretty is that that's pretty accuracy I think it is probably pretty accurate right there five Fisher Price releases my first peaceful protest playset with house you can actually burn down very thoughtful men identify and identifying as a six-year-old crushes game-winning Homer in t-ball Championship I can go on by the way they can go on and on and on and on and on and obviously this is satire which we're going to talk about here today but with that being said thank you so much for being a guest on valuetainment thanks for having me glad to be here so satire so satires it's very old I mean I think this goes back to I was looking at the history today even back in Egypt 2000 years ago before Christ they were doing satire and a lot of it was making fun of people in power it was church it was politicians it was the government it was the rich people it's not like it's one-sided it's been continuous to hold people accountable but this is your world tell us how you got into this satire world well uh The Babylon bee exists because nobody was really doing satire from this particular perspective at the time you know you've heard you've probably heard of The Onion right the onion is like dropped off a little bit they used to be the biggest they haven't uh yeah well they've just been around for a long time I mean we'll probably drop off by the time we've been around for 30 years too who knows hopefully not but you know it's they've been around for a long time started as a print publication they did make they broke into the online world and developed quite a bit of a following but satire has been something that the left the political left has used very effectively to ridicule and mock their ideological and political opponents on the other side of the aisle um you think of like the tonight shows the late shows you know like the comedy shows SNL's Weekend Update you go down the list and all the people that are doing that well including like in when you get into uh uh the media World cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy and South Park you know that that often delve into satire um it's being done well from their perspective it wasn't really being done that well or at all from the other side of the aisle so our founder Adam Ford started a website threw up like a WordPress blog and started publishing satire thought he he had a knack for it and could do it well and wanted to do it from another perspective the thing took off went viral within a matter of a few months we were generating millions of page views he was doing a lot of church chokes too inside Christian humor like evangelicals yes he is yes are you yourself as well I am myself but you're still making fun of the church oh yeah yeah yeah I mean give me an example of it like like what's a satire joke against the church a satire joke against the church um well I'll give you an example okay so so like the guys I don't know if you're familiar with like the different like theological terms and stuff but like there's a calvinist have you heard of Calvinism of course you know kind of this belief in like theological determinism that God's predetermined who he's going to save and what's going to happen and all this stuff um one of the one of the things I found so refreshing when I met Adam uh for the first time up in Michigan I was talking about maybe acquiring the site from him because he was wanting to sell it um we're having a conversation and and it came out to me in that conversation I didn't know this that he was a calvinist himself I'm like I'm actually surprised by that because I've read these jokes on your website making fun of Calvinists like and I I'm escaping me like what the specific headlines were I'd have to pull them up to read them and I hate to botch headlines like not read them correctly but like there's a bunch of jokes on the website that like that like uh just just poke fun lightly at calvinist I'm like it's very refreshing to me to see like self-deprecating humor where you're actually like confronting yourself in your own ideas and he said you know that's what that's what you want to do with satire is you want to you know obviously you want to truth to power hold power accountable you want to obviously attack bad ideas when I try to like summarize our mission statement I summarize as we ridicule bad ideas that's what we do but at the same time sometimes the ideas on your side are bad or the behavior on your side is bad and worth mockery and ridicule and so I think it's a healthy exercise to kind of hold your own ideas why is New York Times pissed off with you dude this is satire right why are they upset with you guys the New York Times uh they don't like okay so so you I've said a moment ago that the left is really good at this stuff what they're not good at is receiving it when you start firing back it really bothers them they don't like the jokes they don't think they're funny so the New York Times has kind of jumped onto this argument it's been going around for a long time we had a uh years ago probably three or almost four years ago Brian stelter tweeted about us uh you know he's a CNN personality and he said um at the bottom of all the shows at the bottom of Don Lemon yeah yeah he said the Babylon B is a fake news site they call it satire and he put that in quotes interesting and his point there is that we're only pretending it being satire we're like putting it on yeah and trying to make people believe we're satire so that we can write these stories that are false that people will believe the New York Times kind of picked that up and ran with it and wrote a piece about us they've actually written a couple about us one of them that was kind of raising the question of whether we're just pretending to be a satire site and then one of them actually said we are a and I'm quoting them a far-right misinformation site that sometimes traffics and misinformation under the guise of satire so it's this you know devious malicious thing that they're accusing us of doing where we pretend to be satiris um we objected strongly we're a satire site no less than the onion we just have a different political perspective different theological perspective onion is left onion would be concerned would be on the left yeah yeah yeah so when you see issues like a gun control or abortion or whatever the issue is that people come down either hard on the left or hard on the right about the onion is always satirizing from that perspective on the left side you know making fun of the gun rights people or something like that um and and you know we we're just doing it from the other side and and kind of firing back but but to call our motives into question how do they know our motives how do they know where we're writing this satire to try to mislead people it's silly our website is so obviously a satirical website so um we actually we sent him a demand letter demanded that they retract that story within five days they edited that story they did and so they at least did it yes they deleted all the references to us in that story I think it's important for the audience to know you if they haven't heard about you guys you got 20 million visitors a month I think you've got 20 000 paid subscribers I believe those numbers could be bigger today yeah they're old numbers it's not like you're not getting you're getting a ton of traffic everyone's talking about you guys right now you guys are funny you're you're doing it the right way when has satire ever been canceled has there ever been a satire Sideshow uh uh Talent that's ever been canceled well there's certainly been comedians who have been canceled right there's been comedians who have been attacked um there's been the comedians who have lost their Twitter pages or their Instagram Pages for making jokes that were considered Beyond The Pale Politically Incorrect usually it's not for misinformation it's unusual the way that we're getting you know we get we got caught up in this whole thing where uh around the last election there was all this concern about fake news influencing voters right so Facebook Twitter they were really concerned about the spread of misinformation how it would lead people to believe false things about the candidates about what was going on and so they wanted to clamp down on that and control misinformation so they started working with third-party fact Checkers and they started fact checking stories that were factually inaccurate and writing them false yeah so they could then flag them and let people know that they were false or take them down and completely pull them down they started doing that with us so we got fact checked uh the most notable one happened the first big one that happened was in 2018 we wrote a piece about how CNN had purchased an industrial-sized washing machine to spin the news in before publication which is pathetic you may want to say that one more time and we're going to put the picture up here for people to see can you can you repeat that CNN purchases industrial size washing machine to spin the news in before publication now it's absurd right it's like that that can't actually happen there's no real way to spin the news that's a metaphorical thing it's not a physical thing so so that the joke is just silly on the surface but they rated it false and then Facebook threatened to de-platform and demonetize us because of that joke so that's a great example right there of the type of action that's sometimes taken against uh you know comedy sites or satiris um it could be either because of misinformation or because it's deemed to be hate speech because you're making fun of the wrong people did you see what uh you saw what just happened with Dave Chappelle recently yeah of course yeah Dave Chappelle is you know you've got people doing a virtual walkout at Netflix it's been a story in the news now for weeks yeah because he he made comments and jokes that that people didn't like so they're trying to get him taken off Netflix they're trying to get Netflix Netflix they're standing with them they are standing with them which is great which is impressive because Reed Hastings is on the left and he gave three million dollars to Newsome to help save his recall so right it's not like they fully agree with everything he's saying it's just the business model saying we're okay back in uh Chappelle and leaving him on there right right it's important I mean it's it's nice to see liberals being liberal and actually standing for free speech Bill Maher is one of them I respect who is always coming out against cancer culture did you hear about what he said recently uh it may have been in August like two months ago where he's having a conversation about how for the longest time you know conservatives try to do comedy and it never worked because uh Pelosi is not that fun and he was talking about Dennis Miller he says Dennis Miller is a very good comedian but the moment Dennis Miller became a conservative and they had him do a 10-minute skit on Nancy Pelosi you just can't do it he says but Sarah Palin let's face it she's a I don't know if you call her stupid something he called her something like that and he said but today things have flipped he says today there's stuff they're writing about and the stuff that the Liberals are doing on the left it's officially comedy there's officially comedy for conservatives to have an SNL model to make fun of the left because half the stuff just doesn't make sense you're making it easy for them it wasn't the case 10 20 years ago right would you have guessed a Bill Maher saying something like that in 2021 a Bill Maher who's been known as a guy on the left yeah well you know he he what I respect about him is he takes his own side to town ask it's one of the things that we try to do with our satire is make fun of the you know we make fun of trump like crazy and a lot of people that follow us who are Republicans or conservatives who like our humor because we align with them politically they can't stand when we make fun of trump but we do it anyway because Trump deserves to be married we did one on how uh some of the ones that you read are some of our most viewed it looks like you looked up ones that have like the most page views or shares uh we did one about how Trump claimed to uh have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself and that was it was just a straight quote from Trump trump I have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself now that's believable I find that believable right because you're playing in Trump's ego I could totally see him saying that now we wrote that in 2019 you listen to this this is crazy we wrote that in 2019. Snopes fact checked it rated it false now the reason Snopes fact checked is because it was going viral people were sharing it believing it was true to me now answer this for me I'm going to interview you for a second is if if people believe that story is true is that an indictment of satire or of trump it's an indictment of him right that is unbelievable but but the point is you know if I read that article and I would have said yeah after the 70th time of saying there's no way he would say something like that you're like you probably would say something like that yeah yeah it's believed caused that it's believable it's believable because he's got that outlined his personality he's got a big ego it's believable now that means that's good satire because satire rides on the back of the truth right we go in the direction the truth is pointing exactly so I'm still laughing thinking about it so now here's the thing on I think it was like October 9th what is it now it's we're in mid-october right it's been a couple of weeks yeah Trump came on a program doing an interview because he said be quiet I have done more for religion and Christianity than any other person in history he didn't say that two weeks ago Trump said that two weeks ago so we made that joke in 2019. What's the title of the uh the article I have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself okay go ahead I'm listening to you yeah so uh so now here's the interesting thing Snopes rated it false but now he's actually said it if you look it up you can actually see he made that statement just a couple of weeks ago three and a half million 15 million shares this article yeah yeah that one went crazy [Laughter] so now that he's actually on record saying it Snopes might have to go back and change that one to true because they rated a false initially so and then the article the way it reads I'm just going to read this article so people kind of have an idea Washington DC in response to Christian today editorial column for his remover Trump called the magazine a left-wing Rag and said I have done more for Christianity than Jesus I mean the name of the magazine is Christianity Today and who is doing more for Christian Christianity Today not Jesus he disappeared no one knows what happened to him but I'm out there every day protecting churches from crazy liberals here's a part though let me explain to you my experience with onion okay first time I want to say 11 years ago I have no idea what the onion is I'm not followed you know onion my friend Tom sends me an article from onion okay and I don't know what the article was about I'm like Tom are you kidding me when did this happen and originally I believe the story right right because I fell and says no Patrick it's onion onion is a satire website that does it so many if somebody reads this for the first time yeah those are the people's reaction you know how you watch a movie with somebody and you want to see their reaction for the first time I want to see someone's reaction for the first time who has no clue what Babylon B is right to say did you hear about this new side what they posted what Trump said today and you share with them just to get their reaction maybe I should believe this stuff though a lot do because it's believable and again I have to make this point it's a very important point the fact that satire is believable see what they want you to do when they don't like your jokes the left was fine with this one because it fed into their narrative that Trump is you know an egotistical maniac and he is braggadocious and whatever so they didn't mind this one but when what what they're trying to get you to do when they don't like your jokes is they're trying to say hey look you know people are believing this stuff it reflects poorly on us they want you to have jokes that are so divorced from reality that no one could possibly believe they were true but have you heard the saying there's a grain of Truth in every joke or it's funny because it's true yes right that's what makes comedy effective is if it's if it's got a grain of Truth in it it's rooted in the truth it's just exaggerating a little bit for you know hyperbole just to make a point so that's what satire does so this is good satire if it's believable people will try to criticize it for that reason and say this is you guys are misleading people on purpose by publishing the stuff that's believable no that's not that's not how it works I think about my friends I get listen for Armenians Assyrians Persians man they're naturally satire right they're naturally like this they're very good at being sarcastic telling jokes like this if it Armenians watching this one of you guys has got to do something with Babylon being for The Armenian side anyways so tell me how you come up with this like what is the business model is it mainly are you guys sitting in a creative room and everybody pitches it's a lot of pitching pitching pitching how do you guys come up with these titles a lot of pitching yeah I mean so we primarily were riding on the back of whatever's in the news cycle right so we want to be timely with it we want to be writing about whatever people are currently thinking and talking about so uh we wake up in the morning and look at the headlines read the headlines and when I say we I mean my team it's not it's not me personally for the most part doing this I do pitch ideas but but we have a whole team of writers who are uh you know they're in the slack channels pitching ideas it's all in the headline right we start with the headline we don't create the image we don't write the article we write headlines and Pitch them over and over and over again until we get one that's right or we iterate on it and you know we got like a seed thought that's good but the headline's not worded properly we'll you know keep rewriting it tossing it back and forth until we get it nail it and then once we got the joke in the headline then we hand it off get the photo to shop down get the article written up and all that so we pitch for every article we publish there's probably 100 150 headlines pitched um no we're turned down that were turned down that didn't go live how many go how many every day how many did you guys post every day we probably published between five and ten new articles a day depending on the day and then we also repost some Evergreen stuff from so only five to ten a day so yeah not a lot of model is to come up with the best five or ten a day yeah yeah got it yeah you know people can only handle so much satire in their news feed and they're only going to share so much satire so I don't think it makes sense to have a model where like Fox News we're publishing an article every three minutes you know throughout the course of the day there's just no way to inundate people with it like that it's not the right kind of content so we're going for for quality over quantity so how much is obviously I would have to say the king of satire for satire business is Trump he's got to be at the top I don't right I would put him at the top for who to satirize yes now okay so this might be this it's debatable but Trump on the one hand is low hanging fruit right because if you say he's not though he will uh he on the one hand he's low hanging fruit because he's like an outrageous personality Biden kind of the same way he's he's you know he mumbles this gibberish sometimes he's hard to understand he says crazy things he sniffs people's hair he does weird stuff it's easy to make fun of um but when you're exaggerating the truth to make your point when the truth is Trump is an exaggeration himself so you got regular reality then you got Trump who's like a crazy guy and then you got to try to exaggerate him you're exaggerating an exaggeration I find it more challenging to parody that which is already a parody of itself so Trump seems like a character out of a movie already so I think it's challenging to parody things in fact I've uh I quote GK Chesterton all the time he said back in 1911 the world has become too absurd to be satirized he said that over a hundred years ago today we got crazy stuff happening really crazy stuff happening that actually makes the project of satire more difficult because it's hard to exaggerate something that's already so exaggerated and and uh you didn't answer my question so who would be at the top who would be the goat to satirize um is it is it a bush is it a like today there's people like I think fauci is an easy one you know because fauci's been kind of on every side of these issues he said things that contradict himself sure over and over again so we've made jokes about how fauci debates you know hit the five previous versions of himself um it's not hard to do when you're the sexiest man alive like it's kind of tough to do that right see that's funny he's like been on the front of magazines but he's like this elderly doctor it's just the whole thing is just funny it's bizarre unexpected um so I think he's he's a good one I think that the more outrageous the personality like Trump the more difficult it is but also when you just nail it when you get it just right I wrote a a piece a a headline about how Trump went Twitter went down for a few hours right um and so I pitched a headline to the team about how uh okay he can't tweet because Twitter's down this is before he got suspended like what would Trump do what would Trump do okay let's do a story about how he because Twitter's down he went out on the balcony of the White House and was just shouting his thoughts to whoever was listening you know so we did a piece about like during Twitter outage Trump is out on the White House balcony just shouting his thoughts to like whoever's in earshot just to whoever you know just because he has nowhere no other outlet for it and it was funny it got shared a ton of times because it was kind of like kind of believable but also pretty silly um so for for those reasons Trump is fun but it's it's really challenging to find just the right angle on him gay man miraculously turned straight by single bite of Chick-fil-A who comes up with that San Francisco bans people from eating at uh unsanitary in and out must eat on poop-covered sidewalks instead have you been to San Francisco that was two months ago I know yeah that would be it's a mess today liberal parents trying to figure out how to cheer for his son Brandon is this this is this is a reason when I'm assuming oh yes yeah yeah yeah it was chanting for him it was very inspirational when I saw that happening it was in the NBC lady caught it right so so right now like can anybody mess with you guys today I mean after you going back to New York Times and having them change it did you was that ultimately like your insurance policy to protect yourself against them coming back after you well so I want to do a couple things with that like uh there's there's a couple things for one for one thing we I would prefer strongly to just laugh this stuff off and joke about it because that would be in character for us right to just mock the New York Times um but because of the way the social networks treat misinformation and they take it so seriously we lit we literally just can't sit there and make jokes when the New York Times is out there saying that we are misinformation so we had to make a statement about it and my Hope was that we would set some precedent for um showing these media companies and these media personalities that when they make false characterizations of us we're going to actually do something about it instead of just laugh it off so I think there was some precedence set for that with it with their retraction I think it's less likely now that other media companies will make that same mistake which is good I think that was you know a win for us we Notch that is a big win um but it doesn't mean there aren't other threats I think the main if you could if you were to ask me right now what I think the main threat is to satire right now on like the social media platforms it's this idea of punching down you're familiar with punching down um and I can explain it for people who are watching who may not be familiar with that but but you have this new policy that Facebook is rolling out they've announced it recently I think back in June um that they're going to put together a policy specifically around satire satire is allowed on Facebook you can do it you just can't punch down and what that means is you can't make fun of people uh you can't make jokes or make fun of people who are below you it's hypocritical by the way what punching down means what do you mean like if for you're punching that you can't say anything about women why so you're saying women are beneath me right exactly that's what I punch you what are you punching down that's what I said that's sexist ain't it no that's punching down but you're you're contradicting yourself yeah you know with what they're coming up with yes if I say if I look at a woman I say you know what I'm not going to make a joke about you because uh you're beneath me and I would rather not joke about someone who's beneath me that's you know that's not polite what does that say that's so condescending to look at somebody and say I'm not going to joke about you because you're beneath me now what they try what they'll try to say is that it's about power right like who has the power the people who have the power shouldn't be making jokes about the people who don't have the power um that's really what they're what they're what they're trying to get at there but they're they're putting people into this hierarchy where you're in these tiers and based on your score from your race your gender uh you know your status and privilege in Life or whatever uh you get scored and tiered and there's certain people that you just can't touch you can't make fun of I reject the whole thing for the reason you just gave I think it's I think it's condescending I think it's hypocritical I think it reinforce and perpetuates sexism misogyny racism Etc to think less of people or to think that there are people beneath you I think that if we're all created equal and I believe that we are then we should all be able to joke about each other indiscriminately and not uh and not be like hands off certain groups um now does that mean being like taking somebody while they're down being malicious no but I see it as precisely the opposite conservatives in my mind being one myself conservatives are really have been on the ropes in the culture War for a long time we've been on the defensive the left the progressive ideas have been winning they dominate education they dominate the corporations they dominate media and entertainment they dominate right now in politics so you have Progressive ideas that are dominating everywhere and cult and cultural conservatives are really on the defensive so when they make jokes back in the other direction if anything I would say they're punching up against the institutional Powers not punching down at people who are who are less powerful or influential than they are when's the last time conservatives were winning all those areas though like Winslow last time conservatives were winning education universities politics media uh you know when's the last time they had it it's been a long time what's a long time not in my lifetime what I'm trying to wonder is if they ever had it like you know in one sense like I'll give you an idea Time Magazine is for sale for 350 350 million dollars why don't you buy it if you're on the right why doesn't somebody who goes and buys it Mark benihoff buys it Washington posts for sale for a few hundred million dollars you mean that's a lot of money how many billionaires on the right can go buy that right so many of them you know you got LA Times is for sale for 550. I think Peter June bought it for 551 or 541 so no some number like that that's nothing you could have bought it late times how about if you would have made an offer for a billion dollars Forbes Magazine is owned by Forbes the family right you know who they end up selling to have you seen what's happened with Forbes late it was always known as protective of fiscally conservative capitalists all this other stuff do you know who owns Forbes Magazine today I don't do you have any idea if I told you right now I'm so curious to know what your reaction will be I'm actually going to show it to you so you see it here's Forbes Wikipedia the only acquisition I know of in that list was Bezos buying the post okay so here's Forbes who owns 95 percent integrated whale media China how the hell does how do you sell to China how does the number one business magazine sell to China itself this is the part where I think uh you gotta respect the left because were long-term thinkers but for you since you're in the world I wonder maybe maybe you had a different story where it was a time where you know Cronkite even was secretly on the left but he played the position of Center and people trusted him on what he would say he you know and not Cronkite whatever he was politically but he would stay Center so you can kind of make a decision for yourself we don't have that today when did that change did it change because uh we gamified TV did it change because hosts were all gamified on who can get the most views did it change because of a Morton Downey Jr came and showed I don't know if you remember Morton Downey Jr he became so crazy and wild and controversial that all of a sudden he passed up Oprah Winfrey Springer Montel and those were all faces of TV and Morton came in 18 months he's number one on all these platforms did that become inspirational where all someone Beck is kind of going that direction you know if MSNBC goes that Direction with some of the stuff Matthews was doing what flipped for these guys to start winning well there's a lot of things so I mean if you go back in the history of religion for example you know there's you had basically this idea of like Theocratic Fascism and you know religious groups that were trying to control society and impose their uh their morality on society and and make sure everybody was abiding by their religious principles basically you know you've had that happen historically with conservatism though when you get into like politics generally speaking you know conservatives Libertarians they want to kind of uh They Want To Live and Let Live and they're happy to have people have ideological disagreement with them and they they welcome the debate and they welcome ideological diversity the left one diversity of a different kind the left wants diversity of skin color and gender and intersectionality you know they don't want diversity of opinion and Viewpoint so when they take over an institution they lock it down they try to hold that ground and and prevent people from coming in even when you you know you look at corporations that are predominantly leftists in their in their corporate makeup who they who they donate to which kind of candidates they donate to it's hard to even get into these places if you're conservative it's hard to get a job at at Facebook Google you can't be publicly out about who you are politically they don't want diversity of viewpoint they want diversity of other factors so the once they gain that power it's very difficult to rest it back from them and so I think a lot of people on the right right now are trying to create Alternatives they're trying to create alternative social media platforms daily wires trying to create alternative media release their own movies people are trying to publish books for kids that are coming from a conservative perspective yes they're uncanceling people who are canceled other places good for Ben Shapiro he's done the right thing Gina Carano who got who got canceled from Disney they're doing a movie they're doing a movie with her which is great that's great it's not a big budget movie it's a million and a half two million dollars but if you give me the eyeballs and they're putting it on the app I think the number I got is 300 000 people watched their uh movie they did on the app whatever the movie is about the shooter you know the 17 year old Shooters run hide Fighters run height fighting something like that yeah so question for you so for me I'm in the military I'm an atheist I'm a Democrat when I'm in the military and I was a registered Democrat and atheist still 25. this is what I was and and here's what I always learned okay when I would watch people I I had I always made fun of people who were too square like too proper you know what I mean where it's like well so what are you doing this weekend well I'm gonna go to church and then I'm going to do this I'm like oh my gosh freaking what a boring weekend you're gonna go to church on it you have two days you you got seven days five days we're in school you got two days to yourself you're gonna spend Sunday going to church you're out of your mind that doesn't make any sense what a boring guy you are right so yeah a way of looking at that thing about going to church you fall in the score category because if you want to party like let's look at this you got the far left you got the conservative you got the liberal you got the libertarian okay if I put it in there you got the independent in the middle right okay okay if you probably want to party and have fun who are you going to have the most fun with if you want to party get drunk get hammered have fun no responsibility no rules no regulation just screw off who would you want to party with well it depends on how you look at it I'd say there's a lot of people if you go to like a town if you go to like a town like Nashville and you're hanging out with a bunch of countries who are like a lot of them are super Conservative Christian Church calling people but they're they'll throw back some beers with you and party with you and have a lot of fun Silverado I mean I want Silverado every Saturday night exactly yeah so I mean it depends now Nashville can also be a pretty liberal town at least it is in a uh from a governmental perspective um but I don't know is this a trick question there's no short question here no satire no trick I don't have a follow-up the only reason I'm asking you this is because I'm thinking about I'm a businessman right so I run businesses I'm thinking about it from marketing standpoint how terrible of a job conservatives have done pitching their life right as being fun as like because a life is like this well listen because you want to save yourself because it's the right thing to do and the drugs you don't want to touch drugs because God Is Watching it's so much like fear you know what you can do now you've got to remarket that storyline you can talk to young people say young people like to be rebellious right you know it's rebellious now what's that get married Young have kids raise a family take your son fishing teach him to read teach him values that's rebellious today that's rebellious though the way they want you to live now today the the the proper way to to live is to find yourself and explore and and do all this crazy stuff and don't have any principles and who cares what gender you are or who you're who you're dating and who you're seeing or how many you're seeing at the same time like there should be no restrictions uh the rebellious way to live now is the way that's kind of that straight and narrow path where it's rooted in values and tradition um you know I asked this question because you got eyeballs right you you have to win the young yeah younger audience you don't win the younger audience somebody's going to win the younger audience over if you don't do it right so so the left has what they have most of sports I would say probably not baseball I think they got football Maybe baseball is 50 50. let's just say right they definitely have NBA it's 95 right minus a couple you know maybe a couple guys from Orlando Magic or different places but they have MBA you know NHL Nobody messes with the NHL have you ever noticed NHL and politics they just don't touch them there's somewhere they're going to whoop their ass they're like listen we'll fight anybody else these NHL guys are missing teeth I probably don't want to mess with these guys they'll find me at a bar and whoop my ass but everything is marketing they have the movies they have the nightlife they have the social media they have the education they have all of that so I think the rebranding of the right so I'm asking this only from the perspective of whoever is here I okay so for example uh uh one of the pastors invites me a month ago and he says would you mind doing a very big church this is a church that's known linked to Billy Graham massive but the marketing isn't that good they have a meeting with me and the senior pastor and I are working together on marketing very closely okay but we're working at Market they come to my house once a month we have this meeting together great so how do we get this exposure out there I said first of all because you know Church attendance has been coming now Christian Christian Church attendance coming out typing is coming down you go to a lot of churches we used to have 20 000 people here when you don't today you only got 2200 and there's a big difference between 2200 and 20 000 what changed you're not marketable you're boring you're still trying to convert the ways of 50 years ago the way you convert it the way you converted 40 years ago it's just not going to work today you're still not allowing people in that maybe are slightly more different than you that are rebellious that want to have conservative belief but they got to fit in your box if they don't fit in your box so if a guy like me I went to a church and I went to 26 churches what I went to Scientology I went to LDS Mormonism I studied everything from God makers to Joseph Smith to book of Moroni I went to Seven Day Adventists I looked at Jehovah Witness I looked at Los Angeles Church of Christ that ended up being a cult I looked at everything everywhere I would go was too much about this right and then one day I go to this one church and sitting all the way in the back I'm like every Christian Church I've gone to has told me I'm going to hell this is the first church I've gone to that maybe maybe they'll let me stand in line to have a spot in heaven I already know I'm going to hell based on the life I've lived maybe I got a spot in heaven who knows right so guess what I do I stick around a little bit and I like the guys approach I'm like I think there's some there's something here the guy's got 25 000 members today in L.A crushing it Dudley absolutely crushing it in the valley a big Liberal County he's got 25 000 people going to his church but I think the approach that's taken in the last 5 10 15 20 years maybe the reason why they've lost it is because they left adapted and they didn't adapt well maybe the reason that church is so popular is because it's just telling people what they want to hear rather than confronting them with the truth I mean and I'm not speaking to your situation specifically but when when I think of like what would resonate with young people there's just this video that I saw recently and forget who it was put out by maybe it was like Heritage or something or campus reform like this young uh this college uh organization and they interviewed college kids and they asked them about it was about affirmative action and you know diversity and hiring and stuff like that they're asking if if you know affirmative action should be something uh that not just happens at the University but also at corporations where people hire based on diversity quotas to make sure that the makeup of the company matches the makeup of the community you know if the community is 40 black the makeup of the company should be 40 black right and all the students agreed and then they asked okay well what about the sports teams what about your team if the makeup of the community is 80 white does the basketball team need to be 80 white do we need to do that oh no no that should be skill based that should be skill based they all answer the same they're like okay so with the sports they want to win right they want to win that's all they care about so with sports they were really dead they saw that it was better to be skill based and talent based and rooted in that but then when you ask them about like the workplace and everything they were completely fine with the diversity quotas this interviewer got every single person they interviewed all these college kids to change their mind and see that maybe the diversity quotas aren't the best thing for companies or sports teams if you want to win what should really matter is the talent the drive the ambition the skill uh it should be it should be based on Merit and not on your skin color for example got to take that out of it and and it convinced a lot of people to change their minds I think it's just a matter of presenting the truth in the right way to young people young people are going to be receptive to truth and I think in our current day and age where we're drifting so far away from truth and everything is subjective and everybody has their own truth I think that a lot of people are going to become very enchanted with that feel very unfulfilled and unsatisfied with that and they're going to really be craving the truth but when it comes to like entertainment and the right not doing it right look I'm here sitting here as evidence running I run right now the most popular satire site on the internet and it's a conservative publication we are the most popular satire side on the internet and we're run by conservatives and have a largely conservative audience I don't think you're following the status quo though I don't think you I don't think you're following the uh status quo I don't think you're going doing it the way they're doing it I think you're crushing it because you're so creative and I think the right has forgotten that they need to get creative they've been so much about you know how sometimes you're married you're like whenever you see marriage is like hey same spots same bedroom same position same restaurant same dinner same travel same vacation same conversation just like hey you're just kind of going seven years later you look at a couple we go to restaurants or my wife and I sometimes I'll just look at dinner different couples having dinner and I'll say wow those guys have sat there for six minutes haven't talked to each other yet okay those stuff sat there and they've been on the phone the entire time for 15 minutes those guys are into each other they're married and I'll go up and I'll say I'm sorry how long you guys been married together 25 years how do you guys still enjoy each other's company what's the secret sauce you right right I think the conservatives is just business as usual no more let me get creative you're getting creative well yeah I mean we're we are doing what they do well we're doing it back and that's what I was saying before it's like it's it's this concept of punching back they're very good at being creative they're very good at mockery and ridicule and and and I think bad ideas bad behavior hypocritical Behavior whatever needs to be mocked it needs to be uh scorned and ridiculed especially before like people young people start adopting those ideas yes what's called you say it's a powerful quote if you don't mind sharing the C.S Lewis quote Oh yeah or a good philosophy must exist if for no other reason because bad philosophy needs to be answered that's right yeah I and I and I say this all the time when I give talks on this or interviews on this it's a bad satire is necessary for the exact same reason that good philosophy is necessary is to confront those bad ideas it just does it in a different way it does it with humor sarcasm mockery irony but I think that that is a very aggressive um you know rather than being polite and just saying oh you guys have a different Viewpoint than we have here's our here's the reason that we believe what we believe what satire does is it aggressively goes after those bad ideas to try to tear them down and make them look foolish and silly and expose them for what they are and that's something that historically the left has been better at we're I think finding so much success because we're doing it back in the other direction I think it's great I think that's the part where when I look at these guys and I see were you a strong Christian as a kid or no were you yeah I grew up in a Christian family yeah my dad's a pastor of a church uh throughout my youth are you married I am yeah how long you been married I'm married 11 years kids two boys yeah eight and five and and you look like you're in your 30s though I'm 38 yeah 38 years old yeah so so you've lived in a house with solid values strong values you went through it uh uh and and being a good citizen today with your eight and five-year-old I'm married I don't know how many years it is right now 12 and a half years was born on our anniversary date the last one we have a nine-year-old an eight-year-old a five-year-old and nearly a four month old as well yeah so it's non-stop with us but you know if you now let let imagine the conservative billionaires are watching okay they hire you as a consultant you're a young guy that's figured it out right you're doing it right in your own way daily wire is doing their part you doing your part you got a couple of these guys that are doing what they're doing to protect their own uh uh values and principles that they have what feedback would you give to folks who are in the church who are asking why are memberships down why is attendance down why is the the tithing and involvement down second if you talk to some of these guys who are I'm not talking about the Larry arms of the world we've had Larry Arnon from Claremont Institute Larry yarn I'm not talking about those guys who are doing their part with school education I'm talking about some of the guys that are sitting on the sidelines that are wondering what can we do about it to get more creative what feedback would you give them well first of all I wouldn't probably be a consultant for them because I just make jokes on internet so they'd be stupid to ask me but if they did ask me I think that I think that right now the left is creating a massive Opportunity by going completely woke by making all kinds of rules about what you can do and what you can say you must be vaccinated you must not make you must use the proper pronouns you must not say they try to compel speech they try to compel thought they try to make certain thoughts crimes certain words crimes and they do that in entertainment areas comedians are feeling that pressure we talked about Dave Chappelle briefly Chappelle's feeling that pressure but here's the thing we're talking about Chappelle and he's getting more views than anybody else the people who are willing to make the jokes you're not supposed to make and say the things you're not supposed to say are going to have a massive massive audience because that majority they call it like the silent majority that got Trump voted right there was always like people were wondering where's all the support for Trump come from there were a lot of people who were like holding that in and not talking about their support for Trump until they got to The Ballot Box and they voted for him there's a lot of people in this country a huge huge huge percentage of people in this country who reject all of that kind of uh uh control and they just want personal Liberty they want personal freedom They Want To Live and Let Live and they want real comedy they want people to be able to joke about things anything and nothing off limits you know and just and actually engage in real conversation and entertainment that's not watered down with all the things you're supposed to say and supposed to do so I think okay so what daily wire is doing is a great model they're taking people who've been canceled like Gina Carano and I don't know the name of the ESPN personality um they're gonna you're gonna continue to see people do this where they gobble up the canceled people and serve those people right back to an audience uh that's even bigger than the one that they had before I think that that's going to be a winning model in the future especially as uh as you try as they as they basically try to create ideological conformity in all of these areas people are going to push back on that I think they're going to push back hard that creates Market opportunity in my opinion I agree Allison Williams is her name by the way from ESL who left to go there she was with them for I think 10 or 11 years yeah you said something very important earlier uh that we just kind of went to the next subject is when I said the whole thing thing about you know who you want to party with out of these three and you know you got the left you got the liberal you got the libertarian you got the conservative to me when I look at this I think if you want to hang out with guys and go shoot a bunch of things and hang out with military guys probably libertarian right you want to smoke weed you want Libertarians yeah if you want to go hang out with guys that are you're going to feel safe and you're going to be able to entertain ideas maybe go hang out with Independents you know if you want to have your kids learn maybe you know safe values principles in an environment maybe you're going hunting fishing yeah so you want to go you know a part of your ass off and be around guys I want to break the rules and all this stuff maybe you go with liberals if you want to go uh have a headache maybe go hang out with lefts you know you have you have areas you can make if you want to go save some trees or or pick garbage out of the ocean or something like that I don't even think that's it I don't even think they realize what the hell they're saying have to tell like what are you talking about like it it blindly following a political party over your country is absolutely naive and stupid blindly just because you're like oh I'm supposed to do this oh because I'm this okay I got to support it no you don't right you got a question to say maybe this is not a good idea maybe this is not something you ought to support and sometimes your own party will come up with bad ideas but you said something and here's what it was you said maybe the way to sell being a family guy today having the kids doing it the right way is a form of rebellious because you are rebelling against what they're making seem the norm to be right where you have to Market that hey you know the other thing I would also add is the final one like here's what I would add to that which again you you use the word must right you must get that that finish the sentence with whatever you want to add to it right vaccinated you must go there you must follow everything that's not mandatory is banned it's either mandatory or it's banned makes no sense to me right but to to to me as a rebel I would sit there and said I must no no it's not how this works no no I I escaped Iran so I don't have to do all like you know they everything there is you must you must you have to you have to you have to and you have to bow down constantly no no we left there so we don't have to so I get to pick and choose the kind of a life I want to live and if I get a speeding ticket which I got one the other day very annoyed because I got a I got a 32 mile an hour speeding ticket and it was like 20 miles he gave me I'm like why would you wait I have a Ferrari I'd love to go 150 and get a speeding ticket I don't want to waste a speeding ticket on 32 right so I get a 32 I was so annoyed all that was annoyed I'm like I don't want to get a speeding ticket at 32. honestly I feel embarrassed even sure wait a minute 32 over the speed 32 miles an hour not even 32 miles over okay just 32 miles an hour in a 20 they gave me a speeding ticket but if I break the rule break the law give me a ticket right but if you create so many laws that I feel like you're suffocating me right it's just a little too much and I think that's the climb you know how you ever watch your friends maybe they had a parent at one of my friends who's dad the guy would go like this hey he'll go like this he was like like dude I couldn't do it around you I'd be suffocating if I was around you right I think today politicians today are like that parent that is not allowing you to make your own mistakes like as if they know what's right for you so maybe the way to reach young people is to present to them here here's what you can do with freedom right we offer freedom and Truth we stick to we think two plus two equals four you know we hold two we hold to that gender is rooted in your biological sex uh you know basic facts of biology that you learn in first grade that's what we affirm uh we affirm Freedom you know vaccines are good they do good things but we shouldn't mandate them uh it's your personal choice whether or not you'll get one you know like those types of things I think are speaking to young people and I think young people are jumping on to that I've seen people personally we had a nanny that worked for us a while ago she was younger uh in her 20s by mid-20s uh very liberal on a lot of things and has taken a total turn in the other direction uh over this whole uh covid stuff you know the the lockdowns and the masking and she's got young ones and she doesn't want her little baby's mask and the vaccine mandate she's fine with vaccines but she doesn't want to be mandated and she's seeing all this stuff and she's changed her mind so I think a lot of young people especially young people that are at the age where they're starting families are going to see a lot of value in that had a blast having you all men this was great yeah very good to be spending time with you uh we're gonna put the link below to your site and specifically I'm going to put the link below to the quote Trump gave yeah about the fact that he's done more for Christianity than uh Jesus and look up his real quote where he actually said David make a note to have both of those maybe if you can show it to him afterwards so you can put the link of both of them below sure but having said that my thanks for coming on this was great thank you so much great conversation yes absolutely thank you really enjoyed the interview with them I think satire is very necessary today if you agree give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel and if you enjoyed the interview with Seth Dylan I think you can enjoy the interview with gatsad that I did it was funny entertaining and I think your brain's also going to have a work yet if you've not seen that click over you to watch it take care everybody bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Valuetainment

Views: 179,334

Keywords: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur Motivation, Entrepreneur Advice, Startup Entrepreneurs, valuetainment, patrick bet david, Valuetainment Media, Patrick Bet-David Valuetainment, Seth Dillon, Babylon Bee, Babylon, Bee, Seth, Dillon, Satire, News Spin

Id: IjJIlrjffaU

Length: 48min 45sec (2925 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2021