Welcome to Sad Boyz, a podcast
about feelings and other things also. - I'm Jarvis.
- And I'm Jordan. - Were you just doing my line?
- I was doing it better, too. - OK, better.
- For the audio listeners, - Jarvis didn't say a word up front.
- I'm kinda like a puppeteer. My hand is in Jordan's ass. - My other hand. You can't see.
- I'm a real boy. Yeah. I just make him yap. - I'm talking to myself, is this podcast.
- I can't... even do a 1% impression of you. - [JARVIS] Same.
- I think – And I have talked to you
more than anyone else in my life on mic, and I can not even close. I'm the same way,
and I don't understand why. I haven't figured it out. 'Cause I can't do you... - I can do other people that we know.
- We probably would scrutinize our impression of the other person
more because we know their voice. It's like when you look into a mirror and you see the reflection of yourself, but that's what your own
real version of yourself is. And when you see a photo of yourself,
you're like, "That looks wrong." - "What did you do?!"
- Yeah. Or you hear your own voice through your own ear canals
and your jaw vibration, and you're like, "Get rid of him.
Remove the voice." I'm still getting – hmm. Am I used to that? I am used to it, but it's like a third person. Like, there's me in real life
and in my own head, and then there's the me
on camera and on record, where I'm listening to it
and I'm like, "Oh, OK, that's... OK, yeah, that's what
Jarvis sounds like." But that's not what
I sound like to me. I'm not him. I'm sure if I listen back to, like... like one of our meetings or something, I'd feel like, "That's a little bit more
maybe an organic version of me." But even – I feel like... uh, Sad Boyz Jordan/Jarvis is very... different than Jarvis Johnson: Gold Jarvis - or Jordan Adika-channel Jordan.
- True. Obviously, it's a performance; it has a
different function. But it's also like a... - the cadence, the snap, the jazz.
- Yeah, can you imagine if someone was performing a solo YouTube video
during a podcast? It would just be too – like, "Shut up. I gotta make a joke." - "I gotta pause you."
- Yeah. - "Up-bup-bup-bup!"
- "Uh, do that one again." Yeah. "Let's run that back." I do wonder how many other shows... We'll do a cut here and there, but the cut is usually 'cause we, uh... like, we're trying to remember
something specific or, uh, because we say
a real person's name. - [JARVIS] Or you leak my address.
- Or I say your address. - [JARVIS] As you often do.
- Yeah. [JACOB] Usually I'm just cutting out
all of Jordan's jokes. - Yeah.
- Come on. If you feel like I'm not
funny or interesting on the show, that's actually from the edit. Jacob secretly told Jordan
that he needs more hours, so Jordan adds 10 extra hours of throwing in things
to take out of the edit. That's true, actually, yeah.
I'm responsible for a lot of your income. When I say that thing about those people. Mmhmm. Well, when you say it like that, it sounds like you're doing a hate crime. Let's just say, off mic, - we both agree we're on the same page.
- You're on mic. No. - OK.
- No, we're not. But they are like that. Mm, I don't know who we're talking about. Say no more. I will say more. I'm not on board. - And, hey...
- I have no part of this. Me neither. It seems like you're trying to wink, but... are you OK? Oh, man. Oh. I'm fine. You look like you've been
staring at screens for too long. Your eyes start to twitch. What do you mean? Dude, I hate that, that my mum was right about spending too much time with screens. My eyes are getting weaker. My eyes twitch. My back hurts.
I do play too many video games. You know what's wild? Is, one, I remember the first time my eye twitched, I was like a teenager
and playing RuneScape, and I remember going to
the bathroom and looking, and I could just see my eye throbbing. And I was like, "Oh, no!" That's when you know
you've mastered the Wildy. Right. That's when
I really got my gamer cred. I was like, "My eyes are failing." But then I got, uh – You know, I did this internship in, like, college. Started to get headaches, 'cause I was staring at
text on the screen all the time 'cause I was writing code. And then I got, uh, my – I went to an optometrist
for the first time. I got glasses. Um, and they're mostly
reading glasses, because... of the type of issue I have. It's like with my focusing muscles,
where they, like, - are weaker.
- Your muscles are weak. You're pathetic. They're weak and pathetic,
and so it's like I can overcompensate, but it causes strain. - [JARVIS] And so I have 20/20 vision –
- Do you ever wear contacts? I do have contacts. Um... But historically, I never wore them. I did wear them for a bit in 2021. I also feel like I remember us, when we first worked together, you wearing glasses more. Yeah, I used to wear glasses more. But what happened was that, when I quit working in tech... Well, first of all,
my optometrist was like, "You..." "It's funny, because
what's wrong with your eyes would never have come up
in any other generation." Right, yeah, sure. "Because it's only that you're staring at screens all day." Um... - And I'm like, "OK, cool."
- Nothing was ever this close. - [JARVIS] Well, because –
- Most people didn't read. I have 20/20 vision, but I'm overcompensating to get there, and thus tiring my eyes out. And ever since I quit working in tech, my eye strain issues have been so much less pronounced. Even though I still
stare at screens all day, I don't always have to wear my glasses. I only wear my glasses when I'm... I can kinda feel it coming on. And then I'll be like, "OK,
let me pop on my glasses." Yeah, you can see the eyes shaking. Yeah. "I'm about to do a
staring session at my phone." Uh, an extended scroll, so to speak. And that's when I'll bring out
the glasses. But, um... I really want to make
a very specific, niche, like, - RuneScape joke for you,
- Mmhmm. but I already spent "Wildy." I already burned that token. And everything else I know
about RuneScape was so broad, 'cause I was playing at the original time
and haven't touched it since. Because I'm not a loser. - [JARVIS] Yeah, that's fair.
- I take off my glasses. "I'm not a nerd!" I wanna give a shoutout
to my misophonia-heads in the audience. My apologies for making mouth sounds. I can't help it. It's just what my mouth does. But we are making attempts
to address the issue. Uh, but when I do read
the comments about it, it does feel like someone has put on, like, special glasses where they can
see something that I can't see. They'll just be like, "Ah, god, my ears!
I can't with the sounds!" And I'm like, please just
give me a timestamp. I don't know. Like, when I listen to it, I don't
hear it the same way that you do. - It's like when somebody's looking –
- Uh, but you're valid, 100%. It's just that, uh, you know, we try. We're not out to get you. We're not doing this on purpose. We're, you know, learning and growing.
Except for Jordan. - He's out to get you.
- Let's just say... maybe the Patreon version. Oh, can you imagine? That would be so –
and there's no other benefit at all. That's like America. If you, like, become rich and famous,
you no longer have to, like... You have all these privileges, like people don't treat you the same way. It's like a subscription service
that's very expensive. You get the privilege of
not dying from a splinter. The privilege of not dying from a splinter, from not going into horrible debt from some sort of medical emergency. - It is amazing.
- The cops might recognize you, - and treat you differently.
- And give you more time - to run away from the bullet.
- Yeah. Before shooting, going, "Ah, I saw the Black.White thing.
That was cool." "Nice. I learned nothing. - Bang, bang, bang."
- "I learned nothing," true. - Man, I feel like –
- "Bang, bang, bang." - "Bang, bang, bang." They should say that.
- Yeah. By the way... Did I pitch you already on my idea of we just do one episode of Sad Boyz where... no matter the content of the show, the thumbnail is us both
running down the street, and it's "We Stole
a Cop's Gun: Gone Crazy"? - I do think that's fun.
- Do the A/B test? - That's one of the options.
- Yeah. When they let us A/B test titles, then yeah, we just go wild. There's be a – it's like, um... It's like opening Pokémon cards.
There's a chance you get a rare... a rare title and thumbnail. - "Ooh, I got a cop's gun!"
- "Ooh!" - Which, also speaking of...
- "Brock's gun." Sometimes, and oftentimes, actually, you will see various
thumbnails for the show because we use the A/B testing feature, 'cause we're still
trying to learn what elements of thumbnails make them most clickable, and yada-yada, as we try to make things sustainable. I think that people, like... assume that... whatever we put out,
whatever way we put it out, it's gonna be the same amount
of success no matter what. Like, people don't think about the, um, on the backend,
we are constantly trying to, "How do we make this relevant? How do we make it so that the algorithm shows it to the people
that want to see it?" And, you know, it's a war (laughs) that we're fighting every day
against the algorithm. Thursday groupchat?
Thursday groupchat is like the, uh, the forum in ancient Greece, you know? (laughs) They're like, "I think..."
I don't know enough about philosophy. Like, "I think skateboarding should be legal." Right. "No more coliseum stuff. What if we just did cool tricks?" I guess at some point,
someone did come up, like, - "No more coliseum stuff."
- Yeah. When did coliseum stuff end? 'Cause they still have it,
but they don't... - do bloodsport.
- Yeah, it's not on SeatGeek right now. You can't, like, book a – - The splash zone.
- Yeah. "Yo, dude, I got the fuckin'
nosebleeds at the coliseum. These seats are ass, bro." - It is...
- "There's not even a jumbotron where I can see what's down there." It's weird to think that,
at some point, legally, we all had to go, "Just no more duels." - Mmhmm.
- "We just can't do that now." - "The duels, that's a crime, actually."
- I know. You can't go to, like, Weehawken and shoot
Aaron Burr, or whatever. - Or, like, Alexander Hamilton.
- Fan the hammer. Yeah. What was that about? In American history,
there's a lot of physical fights that break out in the House and Senate. And it affects people's political careers. Well, some of which because they die, like, for example, Alexander Hamilton. Hugely impacted his career. Yeah, dying? Much like, um,
the musical of the same name. Like, they went to this island in New Jersey and then, like, with a doctor, like you're going to a boxing match
and you've got a coach or something. And you bring a gun, and you guys just point your gun
at one another and you shoot? I don't understand... What's the doctor gonna do? It's like the 1700s. Why doesn't every – ? That's how I wanna go.
Why doesn't everyone feel the same way? - Yeah. A duel?
- Imagine. Like, within the 2020s. [ANASTASIA] Did you guys know
that there's a Ridley Scott movie - called The Last Duel?
- Yeah! - With, uh...
- [ANASTASIA] About when duels stopped. - What?!
- With Matt Damon and Adam Driver. - Adam Driver?!
- Yeah. It's very good, and a little upsetting. Yeah, it's kinda like a Rashomon-type "same story 3 ways,
who's telling the truth?" - Like, "Well, the one that's not lying."
- Um... For me, The Last Duel is about, uh, when I was in middle school
in a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament. - [JORDAN] That's what it's about.
- And I brought my deck, and I drew my last card in my last duel. And I said, "It's time to d-d-d-d- d-d-d-d-d- play a different game." Yeah. "It's time to duel,
and then that's it. No more after that." - [ANASTASIA] You're played by Matt Damon.
- Oh, hell yeah. I'll take that. - Which, eh, kind of an issue.
- [ANASTASIA] Weird casting. Eh, whitewashing. It happens. Michael B. Jordan plays - Adam Driver's character, which –
- Oh, I see. Yeah, only Michael A. Jordan
was available for me. - He's the white one.
- Yeah. No. It's Michael Asian Jordan, Michael Black Jordan, - Oh, right.
- Michael Caucasian Jordan. Michael Black-or-Chinese Jordan. (laughing) Yeah. Speaking of, uh, speaking of card games, Jordan, have you heard of MetaZoo? Um... - Uh, by name.
- OK. It is a – it came out in 2020. Like, in the beginning
of the pandemic, really, as a Kickstarter game
that was gonna be a Pokémon-killer, - was the type of thing.
- It must have succeeded. They basically started – They started pretty strong.
Instead of starting small, like, "We wanna be a small, successful
indie game, and maybe we go from there," we say, "No, straight to the top." Pokémon still around,
or they got killed? Um, let me check. - "Is Pokémon still..."
- Wow, an e-mail. Well, apparently they've... - Yeah, my doctor –
- A lot of texts from your doctor. Saying some stuff about – (cringes). Just getting a call
to my Bluetooth headset. Just gonna ignore that. We will not find out about Pokémon, 'cause my phone is overheating
with messages from my doctor. - And your doctors.
- No, he actually is on vacation. - Yeah, no. It said –
- He died! - "From vacation."
- Oh, come on! He's like, "Hey, it's me.
I'm in Kauai." Yeah. "Hi, I'm on island time, - but you are dying of butt disease."
- Yeah. He was like, "Things are great over here.
Not so great for your butt." He's a workaholic, man. Um, let me go grab something. Zip. - "Whooooa!"
- You hear, like, "Bang, bang, bang!" (laughing) Maybe, yeah, a flintlock pistol,
I feel like, is what I wanna go with. But I don't wanna –
my issue with a flintlock is that it's the single fire, and if it doesn't kill me
instantly I'm just like... If they hit me in the hip. And I'm just like, "Oh, my god! Shit, ow!" [ANASTASIA] Do you know the story of, um, the assassination of President McKinley? [ANASTASIA] He was shot
by a man named Czolgosz, who was a anarchist guy. [ANASTASIA] And McKinley lived - for days afterwards,
- Respect. with all these doctors just poking around,
being like, "We can't find the bullet!" [ANASTASIA] And this is in,
like, the 1800s, so they probably did more damage.
He probably would have survived. That's such a funny idea, that, like, it's weird that we even called it
"medicine" for hundreds of years, - when it could just be –
- Oh, yeah. The fact that you could be a doctor and wear a plague mask
because your vision was so unimportant. - Like, "I don't know, a slug?"
- Also, the concept of bloodletting being a thing that was like,
"I don't know, let's just bleed you out
and see if that helps." I think that's what I would've figured out. You know? Like, if you
introduced me to Earth, just day one, you're like, "So we've got blood,
and I don't feel very good. We should take it out?
It's in there, probably." Yeah. "Probably just remove
all the parts of your body - and see if you're still in pain."
- "What is that?" "It's pulsing all the time.
It's like a heart." OK, so – yeah, it's your heart. - Oh, no.
- How'd you know it was like a heart - if you didn't know what a heart was?
- Just like a heart. - Um, so these are MetaZoo cards.
- Oh, you have the MetaZoo cards. MetaZoo is based on, like, crypto – cryptids, and cryptozoology. You can grab some. I'll hold your mic. - Um...
- Oh, this is kinda cool. Yeah. - This killed Pokémon.
- Yeah. [JARVIS] As far as we know. Also, Anastasia's here. - That's the disembodied voice.
- [ANASTASIA] Hiii. Well, this one sounds like a slur. Oh, that's actually really funny. (laughs) Uh, if anybody is interested about my interest in MetaZoo, I have my favorite. Always have, of course.
It is the, uh, Beastie Deity Negafook. - (both laughing)
- (cringes) That's, uh, um... Do you remember Fairly OddParents, - the Crimson Chin?
- Yeah. Have you seen – do you
know about his evil alter ego? - Oh, the Nega-Chin?
- Yeah. But the way they say it
in the clip is like, "The Nĭga-chin!" (both laughing) [CRIMSON CHIN] Oh, don't worry.
You'll all get your chance. - [ALL] The Crimson Chin?!
- [CC] Wrong! - [OFFSCREEN] The Nĭga-Chin!
- (both laughing) "One more take?
Just, uh, maybe we – hey, - Should we do another take on that one?"
- Can we watch that again? (both laughing softly) - [OFFSCREEN] The Nĭga-Chin!
- (both laughing) It's so – what if he takes off
the strip and it's an N? - Like, "Whoa!"
- So funny. - I mean, it should be an N, but –
- It should be an N! But they instead put a cancel sign - over the C for "Chin."
- That's what happens when you say his name now. - Oh, man, such a funny thing.
- With all the genders of the modern day. So, MetaZoo, uh... So the issue with MetaZoo is that it was purported... You know, they kinda did this
FOMO-based marketing technique, where they would release
all these special sets. There's like first editions of the sets, and there's Kickstarter editions
if you're a backer. Like, to the point where the Kickstarter booster boxes of MetaZoo, like the very first set available, were going for like $20,000. And being bought? Yeah. And so what people
started to view it as, especially the way people
would talk about it, is, like, people invest in cards, for better or for worse, and they're always
looking for the next thing. And then also, if you think about NFTs, there's all this FOMO thing. "You gotta get into the new NFT thing,"
or the new crypto or whatever the fuck, "'cause that's how you're
gonna make money." "Remember when you didn't last time,
and it went straight to the moon?" And, uh... And so that sort of psychology
was happening around this, where just countless YouTube channels
are talking about investing in MetaZoo, and then some sort of big – "Some sort." Some bigger channels, I think Logan Paul
did a little bit of MetaZoo stuff. - Um, the Meta –
- Something of a guru, actually. Yeah, a collectibles guru. Uh, Meta... MetaZoo creator actually
DMed me on Instagram once and offered to send me product. And, uh, never followed up. - And...
- The hell? This was many years ago. Uh, but the news is that, uh, uh, announced yesterday, - MetaZoo is ceasing operations.
- Ohhh? And the thing about MetaZoo is that none
of it ever made sense, because it's like... It's like an NFT doesn't make sense, because no one's playing the game. No one's playing the game.
No one cares about the game. It's mostly viewed as an asset
by people who have it. And so who's to decide
if it has value, right? Like, similar – like when
people stopped deciding that Bored Apes are worth
millions of dollars, then the whole economy of it crashes. Well, it's 'cause, like, if you start from a place of cynicism and cynical profit, you probably aren't the kind of person
that knows why people like things. You probably don't understand
why people like art, so you – There was, I mean,
one of the bigger comics crashes was the result of people or Marvel/DC, DC especially, realizing, "Hey, people are buying and selling - these collectible comics."
- Mmhmm. Like, "Action Comics #1
is selling through the roof." "We should start making comics - that would be collectible-worthy."
- Mmhmm. Which is why there was so much stuff
like Death of Superman and then a long-running
post-Death of Superman - Death of Superman-type story.
- Mmhmm. And then, you know... I feel like any adult
with critical thinking would go, "But if... everyone... - If all of it's collectible..."
- Yeah. "If every $1 is $100," - (laughs) "isn't it all just now $1?"
- Mmhmm. - Like, it's such an obvious problem.
- Yeah, and then all of those comics from that era are not worth anything, The majority of them
are not worth anything, 'cause they were mass-produced to all hell. And they resell them all the time. Like, "16th print of Death of Superman!" - [JARVIS] Hell yeah.
- "Wouldn't that be crazy?" - And so,
- "He's dead!" very similar economics happening here. And also, all of the
expensive sales from MetaZoo were happening on the secondary market. So, like, MetaZoo isn't making money when one of their boxes sells for $20,000, 'cause they're not eBay. - And so...
- Were they still doing stuff up until now? Like, doing new releases? They just did – well,
so that's the issue, is that people... The people buying their new product... Again, things like Pokémon
and Yu-Gi-Oh have a player base, and they also have, now,
two decades of nostalgia. They've just been going
and going and going. Um, and so the machine is already running. But there's no IP. Like,
the MetaZoo IP is just the cards. Even Magic: The Gathering is still going, and it's going strong,
depending on who you ask. - But the player community's going strong.
- Sure. And the, uh – If Bored Apes was a MMO - that we played when we were five...
- Exactly! - It might have some cachet.
- Or, like, the dead Naruto game – There was a Naruto collectible card game
that still is, like, pricy, or the dead Dragon Ball game
before the, uh, Dragon Ball Super stuff,
um, came out, that... Those still command value, because it's a huge IP
that has a lot of fans. And so the overlap
between fans of CCGs and... There's just something.
But MetaZoo never had any of that, and it never had any players.
And it just all felt like this... - um, bubble.
- Yeah. And the bubble essentially popped. - Uh, they did this...
- That's the thing about bubbles, innit? I feel like if I was investing heavily in a - bubble cottage industry, I'd be like,
- A speculative – yeah. "Bubble's getting pretty big. What
happens when they get really...?" - "They're fine?"
- "What happens when they get really big?" I mean, a similar thing happened
with, like, graded video games. It's like, video games
as a collectible, sure. Uh, but the issue was that people were... basically, kinda doing insider sales to kind of get media... It'd be like, "Buy..." Like, I buy a, um... uh, a Mario. Like, I buy Mario 3. I then... I buy it sealed somewhere for... $100. OK, that seems reasonable. It's a old game. Sealed, that's cool. Then I get it graded.
I get it encased. I get it, um... Uh... appraised, and say
it's in a high condition. And then I have you, - as an investor, say,
- Hi. "That looks pretty valuable. I'm gonna buy it for $500,000." - Then –
- I say that? - Yeah.
- (tiny distressed noise) Who am I? - Yooooooou...
- Jesus. - You lost – yeah, you're Jesus.
- Yeah. - 'Eyyy, what's goin' on?
- I got $500k over here! 'Ey, you fuckin' martyred me. - You're not gonna fuckin' believe this.
- And now all I got is this scrilla. - [JARVIS] Um...
- Me! So then you buy it. You, my friend, buy it for $500,000. Then a new story comes out, saying, "Old copy of Super Mario
sold for $500,000." And then people go, "Oh,
my Super Mario thing is worth money?" - And then that cycle is kind of...
- Right, yeah. So that happened with video games, where the values of sealed video
games were way up here, and then... But then there's no sort of "how rare are these things actually..." Who was buying it, - and what was their relationship.
- Who's buying them from who. And then when there
starts to be doubt, that bubble, like, "Oh, OK, maybe these things
are coming back down to a realistic value." No one's saying that they don't have value,
but when they go from, like, completely nothing to just
these astronomical numbers... That's kind of what happened with MetaZoo. And at the end of the day, no one was buying the game for real. And they, um – Other than people
who would buy it and hold it. And... Uh, they did, like, a collab - with Hello Kitty recently.
- Oh, respect. And it, like, completely tanked - and didn't sell.
- Whoa, that's – wow. - Failing at that is a little weird.
- I know. - That's the thing.
- Losing a footrace with Usain Bolt. It's a thing where, like, um... There was just nobody really – Like, there was no true fans. And so the people
buying it were collectors, but collectors can only
prop up the thing so much. And so I think – Basically, as far as what happened, there's just rumor mill right now. People are saying they owe the
Hello Kitty parent company a lot of money for the licensing fees that are unpaid. - They were doing a bad job at –
- She's ruthless. Yeah. "Goodbye Kitty,"
you know what I'm saying? She sends the kinda goth one
to break your kneecaps. That's what her shooters say
before they kill you. - "Goodbye."
- "'Ey, the Kitty says goodbye." - Um...
- "'Ey, moshimosh'." Uh, "'Ey, ja ne. Sayonara, so to speak." Wow, this guy's traveled. It's a very traveled mafioso. So, now all the prices of it – I bought these at Target, by the way, - 'cause I was at Target the other day.
- Just, like, this week? Yeah, 'cause they were sold
in big-box stores. So I was like, "Wow, MetaZoo's
getting kinda mainstream." Like, I literally texted Kurtis
last week and I was like, "Dude, look, there's MetaZoo
at Target. Should I buy these?" Just, like, open them, 'cause I'd never
opened the MetaZoo cards before 'cause I thought it was a huge, like, - kinda pump-and-dump.
- Yeah. - And little did you know...
- I know. That was the thing. It just felt like it came out of nowhere, and everybody was putting it next to
Pokémon. And I'm like, "What do you mean?" "This will never kill Pokémon," - and you spitting cereal out.
- It's like in Rick and Morty, where there's
Mr. Poopybutthole, or was it...? Yeah, where Mr. Poopybutthole was, like, there through all of their stories,
and they're like, "Remember, all of our memories?" 'Cause people started to put
MetaZoo next to Pokémon, and they'd be like, "Yeah,
MetaZoo, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh," and it's like, "How'd MetaZoo get here?" Like, "Remember when we were
kids on the playground and we were all passing around Mothman?" Oh, yeah, dude. Those obvious bots, where a new Ghostbusters will come out and a bot that is playing
a 19-year-old on Twitter will be like, "Butterfly tears remembering the first time
I saw Ghostbusters in the theater, like a decade before I was born." - I know.
- "Wow, god, do you guys remember MetaZoo?
I've always loved playing it." So, it is one of those things,
where people are calling it like a – like a real-life pump-and-dump, because I'm sure a lot of people – It seems that the people... uh, at the top probably
did not lose out on this. The real losers are probably gonna be
the people who were holding... - [JORDAN] Oh.
- Oh, and me. - [JORDAN] Yeah.
- I'm the real loser, - 'cause I spent $12.99 at Target.
- Right, you did go to Target. - You did buy them from Target.
- I did buy them from Target. For $12.00, mind you. - Maybe we should go nuts; buy a whole set.
- You know, I should have known that, um... that this was gonna happen, 'cause I pulled out some holo cards and I was like, "Oh, these are cool.
I wonder if there's, like, values associated with these cards." And these aren't first-edition. Uh, and I could not find
a person even selling a single one of those cards
in non-first edition. And I was like, "Oh, so
everyone's selling first editions, but there's not even a single person even listing non-first edition.
Interesting." Um, but yeah. So, that's funny. It just overlaps with, you know,
I collect Pokémon cards and stuff. And I don't need them to be worth
any money to be happy, you know? It's just something I genuinely enjoy. And if they're worth $0, I still have my card board,
and it makes me happy. But this, now you're almost free from even getting it checked or being appraised. - It's just so funny.
- Like when plans get canceled, and you're like, "I kinda
wanted to go, but... An evening to myself, nothing to do?" It's so interesting.
I'm curious what's gonna happen, 'cause I feel like, um... there's gotta be millions and
millions of dollars' worth of product that will just never be sold. Another one of the things in the rumor mill is that the Chinese printer
of these cards – They're high-quality cards. - Like, I was impressed.
- Yeah. Yeah. They apparently
owe them money and stuff, and I'm like, "Oy!" So, uh, but yeah, that's... That's a fun happening in the corner of things I pay attention to. I mean, I know it's, you know, a vague... I mean, it's a company,
but I assume it's relatively small. I mean, humble beginnings
or whatever, right? I hope that the people are
doing all right, generally. As far as I know,
it's stayed a small operation. What I hope is that they were able to run away with a bunch of money, and that people that
contributed to the bubble are screwed over permanently and
unable to continue their quality of life. - That's the thing –
- Everything falls apart for them. I think it's one of those situations
where I'm sure that there are, like – like, um... normal employees that are not founders that are probably screwed over. Um, so I hope those people
land on their feet. Um, much like I hope the people
who were recently laid off... in all of the layoffs that are happening
in the games world - and the tech world –
- Insane. - It never ends.
- There's more people being laid off than have ever played games. - Yeah.
- It is crazy. Yeah, anyway. I'm so... It's funny now. I feel like I'm so cynical about anytime I see, well, the word "meta" or "zoo" now. As soon as I saw that,
I genuinely, 100% was like, "Oh, is it like Jake Paul this time?" - He, like, launched a thing, and...
- It does have a name that sounds like a crypto scam. Which is like, given what happened, kind of feels very similar. Yeah, like "Glum Monkey." - "Dull Ape-o."
- Yeah. "Fancy Penguins." - Dude, we...
- Uh, "Cool... Cool Cats." It's so crazy that people got behind... Jacob, Google "Cool Cats NFT." - Google "Cool Cat Derek Savage."
- Let's find out if someone used that. - Ohhhh.
- Oh, there it is on OpenSea! "The Cool Cats Home Page."
That's so fucking funny, dude. Go ahead; buy all of them. It's a collection of 9,999 of them. Randomly generated. Let's check this price – I don't know what – Ethereum is,
like how much that is. Uh, .98 – that's like $2,000. - Yeah, but it's cool.
- What's the price of Ethereum now? I actually don't know what it is. Uh, what's the price of a Cool Cat? Yeah, check ".98 ethanol." - Whoa! OK, $2,300 for a –
- Yeah, about $2,000. Refresh me; which one was that? - That was the...
- Neat. - Very cool.
- I'm just wondering – but the thing is, I don't – oh, yeah, last sale was – But the thing is it's possible that someone bought these or sold them, and then they've just
been sitting ever since, - but I don't know.
- Wait, order – Order, uh, price high to low. But its last sale was 8.9 ETH, so the last sale was like $20,000. Wait, do the high-to-low? Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. - Good lord.
- What?! - (laughs) That's deranged.
- What?! - For some Newgrounds-ass art.
- Last sale, 110 ETH, so like $200,000? That's so wild. I mean, hey. - Business expense.
- I can't act like I'm surprised, because this is all – I mean, I hope... all these people somehow make out like bandit – I don't care. I don't care. Let's... - How much these people make out.
- Let's just kiss. That's the final episode. Um, Ben Shapiro... Oh, yes. People that make me happy. The man of the people, - Tom MacDonald had a farm.
- Old MacDonald, baby. They made a song. Uh, so for those who don't know, Tom MacDonald, worth a look-up. One of the... One of my favorite grifters. Follows a different... You know, if Ben is Fact-type, then Tom MacDonald is Hog-type. He's Loud-type. He's like a catha – "Cathadian." He's a Canadian Ameriboo. It is – yeah, he's got
the Steven Crowder issue, but he presents himself
almost the exact opposite way. Steven Crowder does,
like, Nathan Drake cosplay, has a gun belt, but can't
buy a gun, which is so funny. You know Steven Crowder's
always wearing his Nathan Drake gun, - like, holster.
- Yeah. He can't have a gun. - That's so crazy.
- He is Canadian; lives in Canada. I didn't know that we didn't let
Canadians have guns. - They can't have mine.
- Yeah. - Ain't nobody taking mine!
- Don't take my gun! Um, the... That's very funny. But I found out about Tom MacDonald because he had a... He had a TikTok about how people are too offended these days,
or something like that. And hey, look, broken clock's
right twice a day, you know? I made a Gold video about it, and I didn't know that he was
as popular as he was. - Ah.
- And then I also, like, roasted some of his music.
I was just eye-rolling the entire time. And... Normally we wouldn't encourage
or platform people like this, but I do genuinely recommend
people watch, uh, "WhiteBoy," for example, - his first breakout single.
- Well, I – Where he hangs out in adult school. I found out that he had,
like, real actual fans, because people were, like, "Um... You just don't understand, man.
He actually has a really good message." I'm like, "Does he?" Yeah. This lyric where
he's saying that actually it's... "if white people are racist, then that means all
Muslims are terrorists," that's his "um, actually" in this new song. - In the new song?! Yeah.
- The new song, which is... Reminder that facts don't
care about your feelings. - And that's the name of the song, "Facts."
- "Facts!" - Uh, yeah. Quickly, Tom MacDonald is –
- Had a farm. I can't stop. Sorry. EVERY TIME. Say "Tom MacDonald" again? Tom... - ♪ Mac... Donald... ♪
- ♪ Had a farm. ♪ - [JORDAN] No!
- ♪ E-I-E-I-O! ♪ - Your nose is bleeding. You can't stop.
- ♪ And on his farm, he had a gun. ♪ (both) ♪ No, no, no, no, no. ♪ - ♪ You can't have that. ♪
- ♪ You're Canadian; you can't have that. ♪ ♪ We're gonna take it back!
Na-na-na-na-na-na! ♪ Uh, yeah, he's a little Ameriboo guy
in the style of Steven Crowder, except for the fact that instead of
doing toothless, dull, annoying debates with people that are busy
and trying to go somewhere... Um, you know, they take out
their AirPod as he yells, "Hey, do you think women
are actually – they suck, actually," and they go, "OK, yeah, man,"
um, and he has to edit around it... Instead, this guy makes sub-mid music. I don't wanna say "mid." Insulting, but not enough. But also, it's relatively well produced. It is the content of the song
which doesn't hit. One thing he did do that was kinda funny is his beef with, uh... uh, "Matty Raps"? Like, old... old-school
Epic Rap Battle era... Matt – Matt – Mac Lethal! Oh, Mac Lethal. Yeah,
I remember Mac Lethal. He did the, like... Like, "18 styles of rap." - Peak "lyrical miracle."
- Yeah. He's like, "I'm gonna show you." And he's got crazy crisp on his mic,
where it's just like... "Here I go (gibberish)..." - (rhythmic gibberish)
- "I'm the man with the plan." Yeah. - That kinda shit.
- "And I'm the lyrical miracle." "Here-ical diabolical." But this, uh... It's not as interesting as the
cringey one we're going to get into, but this was genuinely a pretty biting diss track. I don't even understand
the origins of the conflict. Neither of them are interesting enough
to me to get into it in detail, but it was pretty... He kinda popped him on that one. It's the one good or impressive
piece of work he's put out. Other than that, his grift is... yelling about a kind of
base feeling that people have, kind of dog-whistling, like, "Hey, you guys feel like there's
a white genocide going on?" And then as soon as you walk over
and you're like, "Hey, that's not" – he goes, "Well, it's my – I've got a bunch of friends
that are nnnnnnn – Black friends, too, as well." Yeah, his stuff is – - I mean, the stuff I've seen –
- Both people are good. Yeah, he's just like, "Actually, wake up, sheeple. They don't want you
to know the stuff I know. And I'm just telling it like it is." And then when you read
the comments, which I did, because I was trying to figure out
why people were mad at me, uh... the... - Well, there's one reason.
- A lot of the comments... We started playing this game on stream, where it was, uh... (laughs) We would search for the phrase - "I don't usually like rap music."
- Yeah. His audience is full of, like, "I'm 65, and I don't know too much
about this hip-hop stuff, but wow, your message really spoke to me. I'm gonna have my kids listen to this." "Some of this hippity-hop
tends to scare me a little bit. The stuff you're putting here, I take the 'C' away from 'rap'
that I put in front of it originally." Yeah. "I actually, uh... I think I see – You're achieving what hip-hop always aimed to achieve, but never did. And there's something about... about you that I can't
qWHite put my finger on." "Brother, you and me,
both red-blooded Americans, and me here in my, uh, rip-off Oakleys spelled with, like, two Es, in my pick-up truck - that's never held any lumber..."
- Oak Lee, like Rock Lee from Naruto. "My fake Oakleys looking
directly into my frame, and it's reflecting into my glasses,
and you can see that I'm on, like, just a iPhone so old you didn't know they
could even still have that or charge it. And I'm here to tell you that your insight about how Black people
make me feel uncomfortable intuitively, but, I don't know, it's because of, uh, - tattoos or something..."
- "But you also don't see color or race, and I don't either,
and that's the right way to do things." "And actually, also,
when I was..." Dude, he's just... It's almost like parody, 'cause he's a capital-G grifter, like classic, does not
believe any of the things, not even is exaggerating belief... middling career in music,
middling career in wrestling, until he starts... he takes his, um... He's a manlet, by the way, which is fine. It doesn't matter.
He's like five-foot tall. But he – who cares, you know? Short pauper, not king. - He does not –
- We support short kings, but not this one. He's a short jester. There is no... relationship between the brand
that he's trying to do visually and the ideas that he's putting forward, because to play to this
new base that he has, that he can always tout as "The number-one song selling on iTunes
right now" every time he drops a new thing, - and it's 'cause 60 people use iTunes
- Yeah. and every single one of them –
same with that, um, - "Rich Men North of Richmond" song.
- Oh, yeah. But he is – he is tatted up. Including a... "HOG," I believe, is on his chin, which stands over "Hang Over Gang." He's now sober, by the way. He got that at the time
where him and his friends were edgy-crazy-fun-time. But his whole thing is like... "I'm not a thug like these Black guys, but also I've got tattoos on my thighs!" - (Jarvis laughing)
- You know, "Blue lives matter!" Yeah, there it is. "HOG." I remember not knowing what that said. I remember, I said, "Does it say 'HOB'?" (both laughing) - Um...
- Like a goblin? (laughing) Dude, we're hobgobs. Shoutout to RuneScape. - Um...
- What is the – ? OH MY GOD, look at his...! Oh, "Politically correct" – It's nega-politically correct. [JORDAN] Dude, he is
the nega-politically correct. [JARVIS] Um, OK. Also, before we get into this,
the accent where you were doing, like, - the Southern guy,
- Mmhmm. uh, this weekend
we were playing Pokémon GO, and it was like the Shadow Ho-Oh weekend. And I got to Santa Monica
before anybody else, and I was sitting on a park bench. And a man came up to me, and it was a older white dude. Uh, and he goes... "You know, I got a question for you,
'cause you're doin' what I'm doin'." And I was like, "Huh?" And he... I look at his phone, and it's got Pokémon GO on it. - That's awesome.
- And he goes, "Where do you find Hoho?" - Ahh, that's so sick!
- And it was like, this was actually
the most sweet moment ever, so I walked with this dude for a block and explained some stuff about the event. He was like, "My family
didn't wanna come with me, so I just came out here
myself from Tustin." - Whoa!
- Which is not that far away. - That's fun.
- Yeah. Taking a little trip to... - to the beach, baby.
- To Santa Monica, but yeah. It was so sweet, so shoutout to that guy. Never got his name.
Hope he caught a shiny Shadow Ho-Oh. Maybe he's in this video. Um, he would never. He... - Too honorable.
- Yeah. I mean, we should say... Tom MacDonald's greatest crime,
in my opinion, 'cause – Everyone's a fucking grifter - in this political sphere, right?
- Sure. His greatest crime is how
incredibly fucking corny he is. He's so – I mean, that's always been my obsession with him, - is just he's very corny.
- It's so embarrassing. He takes himself so seriously; presents himself with, like, this... I mean, even this photo is so funny. With an incredibly clean
Airsoft pistol he clearly just bought. Uh, so, number-one corny rapper. Finally has developed
some clout that I can get behind - by introducing –
- Hip-hop's finest. my favorite other munchkin of the internet. - Uh...
- Someone who famously hates rap music. Hates rap music. Thinks that it is,
in its essence, a dangerous thing, and also would say, you know, anybody that presents themself, you know, a little thug maybe... maybe has some of the thug elements of Tom MacDonald is a dangerous thing. The way they've airbrushed
this cover's crazy. It looks like The Last of Us. Dude! It looks like a fan-made poster for a movie - where there's no trailer yet.
- Oh my god. The, uh... also, doesn't Ben Shapiro have that famous, uh, quote where he's like,
"If you think rap music is real music, - then you're wrong"?
- Mmhmm. - That's fact, you see.
- Yeah, I see. But Tom MacDonald × Ben Shapiro, Hunter × Hunter, - uh, let's pull up the –
- But I do acknowledge that Tom MacDonald has
very real fans, - which is, um...
- Oh, yeah. which is rare for these spaces. Yeah. Not inflated - or explicitly paid for.
- I don't think they're – Yeah. I think oftentimes people
overinflate their numbers, but I... Genuinely, his stuff gets
really good engagement. Look, man, I think there is a – I think there's a tendency for... you know, discourse-y stuff online to maybe lose itself
a little bit too much in, like, the quality of something. Like, "The Daily Wire movie sucked.
Look how poorly they're made." Like, they're poorly made
'cause the people behind them - aren't talented and they're stupid.
- Yeah. And nobody with talent or
commitment or willingness to work hard
would share the ideology of the Daily Wire, so wouldn't bring their talents to it. But... Tom MacDonald, not a particularly talented technical lyricist,
rapper, anything like that. But he is, like, you know... serving a pretty generic package. Like, what he's putting out
is pretty palatable. - It's not, like, weird alt shit.
- Yeah. But it gets to mask itself
as counterculture. - [JARVIS] Right.
- And people that are just... There's nothing wrong with feeling like there's something off about life. There is. (stammering) Americans are being – the world, but Americans in this
particular case, slash Canadians, - are being screwed over.
- Yeah. But it's not by people saying, - "Please stop shooting teenagers."
- Yeah. "This is bad, actually." Or, like, hey, maybe don't get mad at a... "Please stop asking my child
what their genitals are." Like, "Stop asking
to see my child's penis." Uh, also, and I'm sorry
we haven't gotten to it yet. Can you hit 'escape,' Jacob? Scroll a little bit down on the sidebar, first video on the sidebar.
We don't have to click it. "Dear Slim (produced by Eminem)"? No, it fucking wasn't. Unless he just took the "Stan"... Wait, actually, can you click on it? What's the beat? He might've just bought an Eminem beat. 'Cause you can do that. ♪ Dear Slim, I thought you
might've heard of me, maybe, ♪ ♪ 'cause lately everywhere I turn
someone's comparing us crazy. ♪ - ♪ I never would've thought – ♪
- Ugh! - Oh, "Beat produced by Marshall Mathers."
- Yeah, he bought an Eminem beat. It's crazy how much - of his material now –
- Is just saying the same shit - over and over?
- It's telling you that he says shit. - Not saying it.
- That's – It is like – I feel like
when Eminem did that, it would be in the same song where
he said something EXTREMELY offensive. Where it's like, you could not argue
whether or not it was offensive. Like... "Dear Slim, you've
probably heard of me by now, 'cause people compare us." - What UNIVERSE do you live on?!
- About what?! 'Cause you are white, I guess. That is it. "Tom bought it himself with a bid of $100,000 from an auction." - That is so sad.
- What a bummer. Like, I have no problem with people
paying for beats and stuff like that. That's just how the business works. But... he literally, like... You know he bought it
just so that he could make it about idolizing Eminem. That honestly bums me out. That legitimately makes me feel bad. Uh, can you go to
"Dear Slim Genius lyrics"? 'Cause I just wanna read
the lyrics in case, um... we get claimed for the song. First of all, he's a genius,
so he'll be on there. Oh, dude, I have the Genius
pulled up on my phone - for the new track,
- Yeah. and every single Ben Shapiro line has been annotated by someone being like, "Here's what this is."
Like, thank you. (laughs) - I'm an adult. Thanks.
- So, he goes... "Dear Slim, I thought you
might've heard of me, maybe, 'cause lately everywhere I turn
someone's comparing us, crazy." (laughs) Come on, dude. It's funny how I already knew his flow. - OK.
- "Comparing us, crazy." "Comparing us, crazy. I never thought... I never would've thought
when I was bumpin' Biggie and Pac that I would buy bleach in a box
and become a product of Shady." Oh, 'cause he bleach-blonded his hair? - But he never would've thought that.
- "But I'm here now." "Hi, my name is Tom MacDonald. People call me controversial. I'm the one that counterculture follows." - That is false.
- Dude, counterculture. That is absolutely –
no counterculture follows – It's very much monoculture
that follows him. Brother, who is more counterculture
to mainstream America than mainstream Canada? - That's pretty fucking counterculture.
- "Every song I drop's a problem." It's funny how they've, uh... - Oh, yeah.
- You know what I mean? They're like, "Oh,
he's doing a little slang here." He is – it's self-conscious, in a way. It's like, uh... 30 Rock, really, really
dense jokes in the script, 'cause they're competent enough
to make all the jokes really strong. Lil Wayne does a lot of internal rhymes because he's talented enough
to make them really strong. If it's just, like... This feels more like someone that, uh, when they tell a joke... You know stand-ups that'll go, like, "And that's when my wife said 'hi,' uhhh;" they do that 'cause they're self-conscious
about not getting a laugh. It's like, "I haven't done anything... substantial yet. I'll just... do more of it. I can't take any pauses.
I can't slow down. I'm saying words!" "I offend an awful lot with topics, commenting on race and politics. - I'm pretty awesome."
- That's so cool. OK, this is great.
I haven't heard this part. The next lyric is, "Dear Slim,
I know we're very different politically... Seems like some of your biggest fans are the victims I'm triggering." - OK.
- Which is saying something, by the way. - But, uh...
- Nothing specific, - but some of them.
- "They're convinced I don't like you, which ain't consistent with history. I was picked on as a kid, and they don't know what Slim did for me. But I'm here now, and I fight this system just like you." OK, I don't think you're
fighting the same system. Can you imagine if, uh... Shady had dropped a track in, like, Encore era that was just like... Instead of being like, "Hey,
I'm gonna prove myself and become a part of the
mainstream rap community, and prove myself to the... the masters of the gate, to the OGs," instead he was just like, "Stop being
mean to me because I'm white! It's actually good!" I mean, he does kind of
make some of those – - OK.
- He makes tracks about it. There's a few lines
like that, but they're... - I think more tastefully done.
- And they're clever. - Yeah, they're clever.
- Instead, this is just – I mean, just like how he's referencing saying he says some stuff, but isn't saying it in this song, he's just referencing, like, "Yeah, some of the victims, - whoever, nothing specific."
- "People claim that you hate me, but Marshall, that can't be right, dude. You'd have to hate yourself as well,
'cause Marshall, I'm you." Oh, he – Sorry; I just realized. Yeah. Uh... (laughs) Three of that last four lines
end with "you." (laughing) That's trash. Actually, two of them are "just like you." But I think that's fine,
'cause I believe in internal rhyme, but I just don't think
that's what's happening here. It's not, like... Look, yeah, there's no
stringent rules to any art, right? But this is... There's no fucking punch. There's no reason that this is a, uh – There's no, like,
thematic link between these. - He's just saying the thing again.
- If Eminem had written these lines, the internal rhyme would be insane
between these two things. And they would also, you know, mean multiple things. "Marshall, remember back when
you became Eminem? You changed the world with a pen. - Well, now I'm just like you"?!
- Yeah, he's changed the world, dude. This should be called "Dear Dad." - "Come back! People say you hate me."
- "Notice me, Dad." - Um...
- "You'd have to hate yourself as well. - I'm your son."
- "Notice me, senpai," the song. "I don't give... I don't give a what, saying what I..." OK, please tell me, god, that's the F-word, that that's "fuck." This is, uh, like every hook he does. "I don't give a what, na-na-na-na"? It's always some, like, shitty royalty-free style, like, "Na-na-na" backing. "Everybody triggered
and they think I suck"? Why do they say that so much, dude? - He doesn't really swear, too, which is...
- Ohhhh. I mean, he has, but there is this weird – You can see it
as his grift increases. His, uh... That's – what a fascinating... "Dear Slim, I thought that maybe
'cause you paved the way for me" – He didn't for you!
He doesn't care about you, dawg. "You might relate to weight
that Caucasian rappers are carrying." - UGH!
- Yeah, man. "They're constantly comparing us to you;
it's embarrassing!" - "'Cause we suck!"
- I feel like even Asher Roth has a better song about
being compared to Eminem than this. Well, I mean,
'cause it isn't just saying... "People are being" –
this is a song about... how people are being mean.
"Can you please come help me?" "Everyone's bullying me.
I'm not gonna prove them wrong. They're definitely bullying me,
by the way, because of, uh... 'cause I'm triggering them.
It's not the quality of my work. - They actually like that."
- This is actually wild. "Call me culture-vulture garbage;
those are ignorant words. I kill a vulture, cook the poultry in a pan - 'til it's burned."
- What? - This doesn't go anywhere, though.
- What do you mean? It's just – it's like wordplay
that doesn't actually establish... like, any meaning. "See" – "See, Marshall? I'm just like you. - I'm flippin' the bird."
- Ohhhh. Right. And what is...? But what's the vulture here, again? Yeah. Notice that
none of this is annotated. - Yeah, actually.
- Also, I'm like... - The only thing I could –
- It should say, "A poultry is a bird." - That's the only thing.
- Yeah. That's actually very funny. "I'm flippin' the bird." I feel like this has to be a reference to "The
Real Slim Shady." Uh... But, like... "Dear Slim, I just wanna
give you your flowers. I spent hours memorizing
all your songs in 2000." "You were the reason I screamed
at all my teachers, a teen." - This is actually embarrassing. Holy shit.
- Uh... Do you think that's like a... Wait. Do you think that's a typo? Does he really say
"at all my teachers a teen"? Maybe "as a teen"? "You were the reason I screamed
at all my teachers as a teen." Yeah, that would line up with his, like... With his fucking, uh,
"reading aloud for the class" flow. This is embarrassing, though. "I'm here now. They call me
controversial, just like you. We're both white, both rap, - both our eyes blue."
- Yeah, cool, man. - It's like a love letter.
- Yeah. - I feel like this shouldn't be public.
- This is creepier than "Stan." - This is way more intimate than "Stan."
- Yeah, this is – (laughing) This is actually – what's crazy is... Eminem wrote "Stan" about people like this, and he missed it. He missed the point. Yeah. Even the music video,
he's doing that, and it's like – Wait, there is an annotation! "In a Crypt YouTube reaction, - he breaks this line down."
- Oh, nice. "'Vulture, cook the poultry. The poultry is chicken or birds,
and he's flipping the bird. - He's flipping [it] in the pan.'" Look!
- Right, yeah. Nice. "He's flipping the rhyme scheme." OK. He's – he's saying, "Hey... Hey, screw you! I'm not a culture vulture, actually." - It's so funny. I don't think –
- Nobody calls him a culture vulture. - That's not the thing.
- People call Drake a culture vulture. Dude, you don't have any culture, Tom. - You're Canadian.
- [JACOB] He admits in the song, "I dropped 100 grand
to get a beat from Shady." Oof. Don't admit it. "Whether you love or hate me,
you think I'm crazy. Dropped 100 grand to get a beat from Shady. I really hope when
I bought it he wasn't angry." - (laughs)
- "But I had to tell him - that he changed me!"
- Ohhhhh-kay. "The truth of the matter is
without you, Marshall Mathers" – OK. All right. This is... - This is too "Stan."
- This is – It's – the whole song
is the last letter he sends. It's in the car,
with his girlfriend in the trunk, just writing the, like –
from the beginning. There's just never a situation where the right response to people
pushing back against your work is to go, like, "Uh, you're getting mad at me." This is Matt Rife
yelling at a five-year-old. It's so funny, 'cause
people did protest Eminem, uh, for valid reasons. But then, also, it was at a time when that wasn't like a cultural thing, where there wasn't cancel culture. People were actually picketing Eminem. - Eminem shows and stuff.
- When you're doing fanfiction, it's different. When you are - a Elvis cover act, you don't get to –
- Yeah. People don't come to you and go, - "Hey, you stole rock 'n' roll."
- "Elvis, I'm just like you!" [JORDAN] "I'm just like you, dude.
People are mad at me." "They say I'm not nothin' but a hound dog!" - "I'm just like you, you see?"
- "Hello?" "Here's another letter, please." Cool guy, though. Neat. But new track does feature Benny Schwa. Oh, man. Now I just keep thinking
about how much rhyming is in... "Stan," the song, and how much rhyming - wasn't in that song.
- And how much, just... That was – I mean, you can tell with that it kind of basically just was the letter. You know? There wasn't really – You could just break it up, take away the rhythm a little bit,
and it's all very literal. You're just saying the thing
that was the case. - No metaphor, allegory, no nothing.
- Dude, yeah. 'Cause it's too, like, hard. Literally, I just thought of
a line from "Stan," where he's like, "I'm really honored
you would call your daughter that, and here's an autograph for your brother.
I wrote it on a starter cap." It's like there's so much - internal rhyme in that.
- That's work. - Uh, but then –
- And not just for "lyrical miracle" clout. - Like, it says a lot. It's dense.
- No, it's still telling the story, yeah. Uh, but then he's like, the only wordplay I saw was the "flippin' the bird" thing, - and it wasn't even – like, come on.
- Dude, yes. I mean, that would be like, if instead, he was just like, "Hey, yeah,
we're the same. I'm in the car." "And I can't wait for you
to get my letter." "And I can't wait for you to get my letter. I've got my middle finger up, remember?" - "You don't like stuff!"
- "I just drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to drive?"
Other Eminem lyrics. I don't... "Do you like, um... uh, the... - We're white, right?"
- Yeah. That's crazy, dude. Asking for white rapper solidarity
from Eminem is wild in 2023. Oh, this rocks. But the only... He really might be the only person
less cool than Ben Shapiro. At least Ben Shapiro
believes what he's saying. - A lot of the time.
- "Actually." "I actually think those were bars." "I just think he's wrong, but I do - believe he believes what he believes."
- "You are, uh, being weird." "I don't know if I can listen to that." OK, so this music video,
it's called "Facts." It's Tom MacDonald, featuring Ben Shapiro. Tom MacDonald is wearing a sweatshirt - that says "I don't care if I offend you."
- Ahhhhh! - Is that true?
- God, I'm so offended! Ugh! Well, no, hold on. Hopefully, I don't get offended. The one thing that
would've helped is if he cared. Then maybe he could've apologized, helped me through this. It still doesn't clarify what it is - that he does to offend me.
- His apparel and the things he says feel like they should be
bumper stickers on a truck - with big fat truck-nuts under it.
- Yeah, dude. (laughs) "I don't care if I offend you." "Honk if my driving sucks.
I don't give a shit, actually." "Baby on board. My baby's a gun.
How 'bout that?" "And I'm bored of this shit, - so I'll kill you, I guess."
- This is a long bumper sticker. - It's a tailgate and you have to really...
- "Oh, weird, 'Honor Roll Student.'" - "'Mission Valley Senior High.' OK."
- "Vancouver?" - Go ahead; hit us with this.
- And Ben is wearing – It's the D.A.R.E. logo. - Oh, very cool. Badass.
- Yeah. And it says, uh... - "FACTS don't care about your feelings."
- That's so cool, dude. Also, by the way, "Hang Over Gang." - Very cool.
- Oh my god, they aren't in the same place. - Oh, not at all.
- Look at that shoulder. Oh, he's doing like Day for Night. - Oh my god, this is crazy.
- [JACOB] They're fully on two separate stages. - They didn't even meet for this.
- Yeah. This looks like an Amazon photoshoot. Where it's like, "OK, we need to change - what the shirt says for the merch."
- "We need to photoshop the graphic onto the T-shirt." These are two different models - on two different days.
- That is wild. - OK.
- That's so cute. So, how did you wanna do this? Uh, hilarious that they are... It's the only time I've ever seen an image where these two guys aren't way shorter than
the other person they're with. - It is weird seeing –
- It's forced perspective. Yeah, it's like The Hobbit. (both laughing) Um, so we can just watch through,
um, stop where we want. I thought what we could do is, uh... I will read you, like, the first – I tried doing it with
Epic Rap Battles, a few other things, but it was always too obvious
or a little too slow. So instead, when we get to the Ben part, which we can even probably
get to pretty fast in the edit, 'cause the Tom shit is all the same, instead I thought I'd give you, like... a line or two and see if
you can guess where it's going. Mmhmm. "Keep hating on me on the internet. My comment section all woke Karens." "Keep hating on me on the internet. My comment section all woke Karens." Making all the... - Benjamins...
- Ooh? and you all will just keep starin'. It would make so much more sense. It's – you got the, like, the theme exactly right. The "Benjamins" element
would've been good. At no point does he use that pun,
which would make so much more sense. Uh, no, it's... Actually, let's just go ahead - and play it.
- Back it up again and play it through. ♪ Keep hating on me on the internet
My comments section all woke Karens ♪ ♪ And I make racks off compound interest
Y'all live with your parents ♪ (Jordan wheezing) He's back to his graphs
and his charts, by the way. - "I make racks off" –
- He rhymed "internet" - with "compound interest"?
- Yeah! The rhyme being "int"? - (laughing) That is the overlap?
- Look... What's a rhyme? It's some of the same letters. 'Cause he didn't even
pronounce "interest" like "in-ter-est," which would've closer rhymed to "internet." - "In-ter-est."
- It'd be like – Wait, it was written for him, - so he doesn't know how to rap it.
- Yeah. So he's... "I make" – wait. "Compound in-ter-est." - "Int'rest."
- "You live with your parents." You live with your parents. It's so scary,
in a house that has no parents – - Sorry; that's – went to Eminem lines.
- That wasn't Tom MacDonald? - No.
- Oh. They're kind of one and the same. - [JACOB] Look how happy Tom looks.
- Tom looks very happy. He's so excited to be in the same room. So, yeah, I do think thematically, though, I did hit roughly what he was going for. Yeah, he's just doing the same tit-for-tat, but his tit-for-tat again is like,
"Look at my graphs." What's the next...? Like, let's – ♪ ...off compound interest;
y'all live with your parents ♪ ♪ Nicki, take some notes,
I just did this for fun ♪ - "Nicki, take some notes"?
- Mmhmm. "Nicki, take some notes,
I just did this for fun." Something about "number one." "Did this for fun, one, done." Uh, "Nicki, take some notes,
I just did this for fun. I'm gonna hang up the mic and when it's over, it's done." "Nicki, take some notes..." "Nicki, take some notes,
I just do this for fun. I make a better song than you
and get number one." Play it. ♪ ...this for fun ♪ ♪ All my people, download this,
let's get a Billboard number one ♪ "All my people download this" – (laughing) Dude! It's like an acrostic poem that, like, a five-year-old writes. [BOTH] "All my people download this, get a Billboard number one."
You could've – - That's going right on the fridge, man.
- Like, the syllables... are not working for you. You could've reduced the syllables and made it a bit easier
for him to ride the beat. - "All my people, download this."
- "Download this, and get a" – - It's like he's quantized.
- I know. - They removed all the swing.
- Like, they had to make him on the beat. They had to edit him onto the beat,
because he wasn't previously on it. Dude, pulling that swing slider to zero. - [JARVIS] Yeah.
- Velocity to top. "I want you to yell, Ben." I'm glad he was able to, um – I mean, he crushed it.
He was more entertaining than Tom. Nobody... still no one's touched on
what it is that they say that... - that we're offended by.
- Yeah. I mean, other than just random – They just kind of shotgun-approach a bunch of things
that are culture-war issues - that no one actually cares about.
- Like buying a car and going to jail. Yeah, not to mention strippers. - I think there was maybe –
- Nothing about the border? I think there was a miscalculation,
maybe, because like... You know when you hear a feature on a track that so clearly has a really
specific thematic purpose, like the track is like, "Here's my..." uh, "a major trauma in my childhood. I was in the military.
Here's something crazy that happened. That's why I dropped out. I was in jail.
Here's the craziest thing" – whatever. And then they get a feature on it that clearly tags on way late to give the single a boost, and then 21 comes on and he's just like, "I'm making money, I'm having a nice day," and it's like, "OK, you defaulted
to the thing that you write because there wasn't planning."
Ben is just like... "Uh, we're doing a song about 'offensive'?
So we're just doing racist?" "Playing the hits? Um, Black people steal. They go to jail. Um, they buy cars and strippers." I'm still thinking about that
"Billboard number one" line, and I'm trying to see if literally
anything in the line rhymes. "Nicki, take some notes, I just do this for fun." "All my people, download this,
and get a Billboard number one." - None of...
- Dude, Nicki needs to start doing music for fun. - She's too serious about it.
- "I just do this for fun." "Do this for fun." "Num-ber one." "Fun. One." "Download this, do this..." - "This, this."
- "All my people, do this." "Download this." - It's really...
- I mean, that one's just an accident. It's just like – I'm just looking for more rhymes than just, "syllable-syllable-syllable-syllable, technically rhymes." It's like a poem. Yeah. I mean, it's just... It's, uh... What it is is like bad... It's instinct writing, where
you don't review what you've done to tie it in in some way.
You only write linearly, right? So, like, the reason
he just says "this" twice in a row isn't because there's some kind of
internal links that's supposed to be there, or maybe he's alluding to something
or it's a pun, whatever. It's just... - he forgot to check the last line.
- He could've removed so many words. Could've changed anything.
Could've just not said uh, "all my people download" – - That's so much.
- It's so much, yeah. Where does this song go from here? - Uh, back to the killer hook.
- Does Tom have another verse? There's a lot, yeah, left, - considering Ben's done.
- That's what I was curious about. It's crazy that he's done. - He didn't do that much at all.
- He's tired, dude. He's gotta go sleep in a shoebox. ♪ We ain't sellin' drugs,
we ain't gonna overdose ♪ ♪ We ain't pushing guns
and promoting stripper poles ♪ This is why it's popular with 65-year-olds, because the people it's popular with
is the people that are like, "Rap music is about - strippers and cars."
- That's all it's about, dude. And it's not about, like, um... you know, it's not an expression of someone's material conditions,
or something, right? It's an expression of wanting
to get nicer ones, because Black people have that
special divot in their skull that makes them do hip-hop, or whatever. And so bragging about
how you don't do drugs and stuff - is so nothing, right?
- It's also... I... I know it's self-aware in the sense that they don't have any principles
or care about anything, so they do kind of know
what they're doing. But... Play this last line again, Jacob? - And just think about the visuals, right?
- Hang on. - Why – OK.
- He's getting a mugshot. - [JACOB] Yeah.
- Oh. And he's saying, "But I wouldn't go to..." - "I'm not gonna overdose."
- "I get a cool mugshot, really, with blue and red." - He's in cosplay.
- "And I'm white, so together it's the American flag." "Blue lives matter. How 'bout that?" "What happened to flags?" "Remember the flags that we had,
the American ones, everywhere, in Canada?" - "What happened to maple leaves?"
- Yeah. ♪ This ain't rap; this ain't
money, cars, and clothes ♪ ♪ We ain't sellin' drugs;
we ain't gonna overdose ♪ "This ain't rap; this ain't
money, cars, and clothes." Instead, it's... - a rap about what we rap about,
- Mmhmm. - which is not what we like.
- Which we'll get to at some point. - We don't like rap music.
- Oh, no. We're making rap music about how we
don't like themes that are in rap music. Also, I did spend $100,000
to get a beat from Eminem, - because he inspired me and I love him.
- Yeah. Did I offend you? With all of the
talking about rapping that I did? - Which I don't like, also.
- Which I don't enjoy! - I...
- "I'm the number-one independent rapper." - Maybe true. Incredibly sad fact.
- Yeah. (both laughing) I mean, he shoots all these videos at home. Literally, he does. And it is a... There's... something a little bit sad to me. It's like when a comic gets,
uh, in some minor controversy, and then instead of own up
to what is the issue or at least counter it or something,
they just delve into the alt-right, - become that guy, right? - Right. It's like, man, Tom, I know you don't want to
really be doing this. Like, you would rather be just making the kinda stuff where
Eminem might notice you, or, like... You're existing in a world where you are more corny and less admirable and less admired than MGK. - By a huge margin.
- Which is wild. - "Rap Devil" is less corny than this.
- MGK is still mainstream. Tom MacDonald doesn't
wanna be one of the puppets. Dude, number one on iTunes, dude. Over 300 purchases. - (laughing)
- That's like if you get a book published and it gets bought by someone,
you're in the New York top ten. I watched a video of him, um, employing his family to package up his CDs. - And – they do sales physically.
- That's cute. Oh. And I'm like, has it occurred to you... - (laughing) Sorry.
- (Jacob laughing) That if you can... If you can... manage the inventory yourself
of the CDs that you're selling, - you're not selling that many CDs?
- Yeah, it might be an issue. And also, if you have an audience that's – I mean, that's a... - I'll just stop it there.
- Dude, times have changed. CDs are over. iTunes is in. - Mm, I see.
- OK? I hear something about
this thing called "Tidal" - that I'm pretty psyched to try.
- I've heard it's lossless. It's gonna make my
anti-woke music go even harder. Oh, dude. It just sucks. I mean, it's like if, uh... It's like if we were
actually just kind of like... moderate- to right-leaning conservatives, but we have to say the stuff
we say 'cause we're like, "But our audience is mostly leftist. I guess we'll just kind of..." It's like, "It's fine. It's a job.
Whatever, but we don't really mean it." It's like, he can get away
with it and whatever, but there's gotta be that
tiny part of him screaming out, like... You know, nobody gets into music... with, like... Plenty of people do it cynically, like,
"I wanna be famous and rich," but but it's not an easy craft
to do day in, day out - unless you do have some dream.
- This is the musical equivalent of an old stand-up comedian putting out - a Netflix special called "Canceled."
- Yeah. - "Problem?"
- Yeah. - "Oh," just a condescending guy.
- "Tellin' it like it is, uh, 'cause I heard
you can't do that anymore." - "Sorry, Not Sorry."
- Right. - "I'm gonna get canceled for this."
- With one of those super, super-high-detail photos of them. - Yeah.
- Stood on a stage doing this. - [JARVIS] Yeah.
- "Huh?" - Like, humping the... humping the stool.
- (laughing) "What can I say now? There's two genders,
little boys and little girls." You fucking freak. (laughing) What a weirdo. OK, is this
basically where it goes from here? I don't wanna be offended. I'll admit it, dude: I – Benny gets so much... love from me unconditionally
because he's so adorable. - It really is –
- At what cost? I'm a strong proponent
that I think DeSantis could've easily swept up
the primary if he went cute. If he put away all of that
cultural stuff and instead, when he gets up for the primary debate,
and he goes, "(cutely) I dunno." "Uwu." Or someone says to Vivek, like, "Hey, I don't like – you, like,
probably do bombing or something," - if he went, "Aw, c'mon."
- "Come on." - [JORDAN] "Hey, stop it."
- "I'm adorable." "Why are you mad at me?" - Nice.
- We should start a rumor that Vivek Ramaswamy is from Kenya. Noooo-uhhh. "Where's your birth certificate to Kenya?" - Dude, this has 500,000 likes.
- Hell yeah. - And 10 million views.
- Yeah, #3 trending on music still. - Nice.
- Which, if your instinct is to point to that,
by the way, and be like, "Um, yeah, you don't like it?
Look at this." We're not mainstream. [JACOB] I've watched it probably 5 times - because it's so fucking funny.
- It's so funny! I mean, you know that old video, that super early viral video
of the woman stomping grapes, falling over, and going,
"Augh! Ugh, ugh, ugh!" It's like if we made fun of that, and then she was like, "Oh, jealous?!" - (all laughing)
- "Yeah, that's right." - "I can fall over like the best of 'em."
- [JACOB] Oh my god. - Um...
- A guy getting hit in the balls with a football, like, "Yeah." - "Get on my level."
- I mean, hey. Have fun, I guess. Good job, guys. - Dude, he looks adorable.
- Good job, fellas. That's fun, dude.
They can sleep in those pockets. Oh... a bit of a... announcement. A bit of a follow-up on an announcement. We... - talked about Sad Boyz wiki in the past.
- Oh, yeah. And we asked, and
our community has delivered, - but they've delivered a little too much.
- Mmhmm. Because there are like two Sad Boyz wikis on Fandom.com, or something. And then I found – Er, everybody started complaining
about Fandom and saying it's a bad wiki, and we should use
this other wiki instead. So we started working on that,
but no one knows that exists, so now there's three wikis. And so I just wanted to say that the official wiki for
Sad Boyz Podcast is... We're pulling up the link. The official wiki is SadBoyzWiki... miraheze? .org. Uh, we're gonna put that behind a more convenient URL. But... if you've worked on any pages
from previous wikis, feel free to port them over here. Jacob, could you check, uh... Just click on mine –
on "Jordan Adika" real quick? I wanna see if there's a vital
detail that's been included. "Career goals: Jordan has stated
that his biggest dream is to be killed in a duel." Great. "And that it would be 'so sick.'" - That would be, actually, the best.
- Wow. [JACOB] And they have
a link to when you say it. [PAST JORDAN] I think my goal for my career
would be to be killed in a duel. - Whoa! They're right!
- (Jacob laughing) (laughing) If I try to deny it. Wow. It's 11:55 a.m., right before high noon. I'm like, "I never said that, actually!" - "Good luck proving it."
- That's me in the courtroom, - after killing you.
- Yeah. - But I am in the court still.
- For some reason, in the courtroom, yeah. - Flies buzzing around me. It's been weeks.
- "Your honor." (laughs) "May my client approach the bench?" - They just drag my corpse.
- Oh, no. So, our wiki is available at wiki.sadboyzpod.com. And feel free to contribute. Feel free to port over any of the
existing pages from other Fandoms, and none of them are official anymore, - except for this one. Except for this one.
- Go away! Whichever one says the most
about the duel gets to stay. - Mmmm...
- More details! We do need people to moderate the duel – I feel like we're gonna get
a lot of duel shit. Do not add anything else - to the career goals section.
- No. Just the duel. - [ANASTASIA] How are you so duel-pilled?
- I know; I can't stop thinking about it. Can you just...? I think what makes me... laugh about it so much is that you'd have to
explain it on the show. And I'm not killed; I'm wounded. Like, so I'm on the show. I still have gunpowder residue
on me or whatever - from my flintlock.
- Why not wash up? - I'm tired, dude. Same day!
- Same day?! I appreciate your
commitment to the podcast. You get shot in a duel;
you still show up for work. Well, a lot of the time we record around
11:00 a.m., and the duel is at high noon, so I'm gonna push that a little earlier,
if we can make that. Check my G-cal. I do like the idea that you're trying to
schedule a duel, but you're too busy. Yeah. I mean, that would be
a good way to get out of it. "How's your 4:00?" "Ooh. Ooh." - "I've got a late lunch."
- "Don't say Weeeeeeed... - Thur – ...Wednesday..."
- "Hmm. Any of the days." "Anything that ends with -day,
I'm kinda booked up." "Weekday, weekend, morning, night, - evening, afternoon. Definitely not."
- If you can meet me at Thursmorn..." - "Bang!" They're just shooting me.
- "Fuck, stop it!" "Ow!' I guess that's cheating. It's funny
to think of cheating in a murder. - Mmhmm. "Hey!"
- "That's against the rules." Our last little segment, as we like to call it, our little – I almost said "seggy," - which, that doesn't...
- Hmmm. - That's not gonna be what we call it.
- Let's call it a seggy. - (Jarvis laughing)
- [JACOB] Do you guys do the Wordle? - No. Ohhh, I heard about it, though.
- [JACOB] It was "leggy." - "Leggy."
- Oh, yeah! No, I was infuriated. Fuck is that? It's one of the
only times I ever got it, too. - I saw memes about it.
- I felt patronized. They were like,
"Sometimes, Wordle is a word. Other days, it's 'leggy.'" It literally felt –
I was really sad, 'cause... My Wordle score, I usually get it,
but it's almost always the last one, or... - [JACOB] Yeah.
- I'm good at crossword, terrible at Wordle.
Something about my brain, after two vowels are gone, I'm like,
"Well, there just aren't anymore words." That's most of them, I feel like. "There's an E in everything!" I feel like – the thing that
bothers me about Wordle is that there's an objective meta,
because you can, like... What's the word that has
a bunch of vowels in it? And you can start there
and kinda whittle it down. [ANASTASIA] My starter word is "audio." Oh, "audio," actually, that
doesn't feel like a cheat word. - Mine's "leggy."
- But – (laughing) - Which finally worked out.
- You had a huge day. Still didn't get it
'til the fifth one, somehow. - Spelled it different.
- You spelled it wrong at first. "Ledgy." - "Hmm. Leggy..."
- I spelled, like, "A-U-D-I-O." - "Beggy."
- "Leggy!" All right there, Leggo? - Leggo.
- That's either a guy made of bricks, - or a guy with really big legs.
- [JACOB] Or an Australian - that's saying "let's go."
- Leggoooooo! - "Hey, leggo."
- "Leggo." "Let go me Eggo!" So, uh... Deepfakes. Uh, Celebrity AI deepfake scams
is what we have here. - There are a lot of them.
- (laughing) - (laughing) Sorry.
- OK, so first of all... First of all, I wanna say that
there's a lot of celebrity deepfakes that are just horrible. Like, for example, um... Uh, non-consensually turning someone into, uh, - a pornographic situation
- Oh, right. is extremely gross and horrible. This happened to Taylor Swift recently, but it's also happened to
other non-famous people, and has been happening for a while. So, uh, I understand that people – The White House just commented
on the Taylor Swift thing, and people were like,
"You should've... I wish it didn't take the biggest celebrity in the
world to comment on this." But, uh... - At least it's getting some kind of...
- Some acknowledgment, yeah. At least the response is not,
"Ah, it's the internet. I don't know." Yeah. It definitely, I think, should be... It's essentially like
revenge porn, you know? Because you're... taking something that was not... Basically, it's like the
person isn't consenting - to these materials being made of them.
- And the argument cannot be... There's no argument to be made on the part of the people
that don't own the photos. Every single time
there's an alternative take, it's people being like,
"Well, you know, actually I would be complimented."
Like, it doesn't matter what you would like, actually, 'cause it's not you in the photo. In fact, you can't do anything
with my photo, actually, - 'cause it's me, so don't do that.
- Yeah. - Um, and so –
- And you can regulate it (inaudible)... So, that's on, like, the most evil, deplorable, sick, uh... side of things. Um... On the maybe just evil and goofy side is celebrity AI scams, which are becoming worse and worse – Better and better, which is
worse and worse for humanity. - More convincing; worse ethically.
- Yeah, because as deepfakes get better, the easier it is for, um, Drake to talk about how you've got a... Uh... He's got a bunch of iPhones and you've gotta – Oh, wait, fuck, that's a real scam. Drake's got too much popcorn, and he wants to give it to you, so you can sign up for Drake's popcorn. DaBaby just sent me an e-mail,
and whoever drinks the most ivermectin - will get a Ferrari.
- Yeah, whoever buys – Tom Cruise just said,
"Whoever buys the most pheromone cologne from my TikTok shop, uh, gets to be in the next
Mission: Impossible movie." [JORDAN] He gets to be the mission. He gets to be the mission. "Your mission, should you
choose to accept it, is Dan." "You gotta sign up for this timeshare." Uh, so we're gonna look at some of those celebrity AI scams that are currently in circulation.
We're gonna see if we would fall for them. We're gonna see if people
we know would or have. We're gonna buy them. - We're gonna buy each product.
- Mm, no. Well, business expense. Well, let's see. Let's see if we'll... Let's have an argument about it. Let's have a good old-fashioned
argument about it. Well, I have evidence, though. - There's videos.
- OK. Let's start with the earliest one
I remember seeing, which was the MrBeast scam. The reason I laughed when this
came up, by the way, is just any... Anytime a – a really low-res photo
of Jimmy facing the camera - is just very funny. It's like, "Whoa!"
- Yeah. So, it looks like MrBeast, uh, 'cause it says "MrBeast"
and it has a checkmark. But that's actually
embedded into the video, - and they have a different account name.
- That's so sick. Um, so depending on how you watch it,
it looks really fucked up, but I'm sure it tricked somebody. [AI JIMMY] If you're watching this video,
you're one of the 10,000 lucky people who will get an iPhone 15 Pro for just $2. I'm MrBeast, and I'm doing
the world's largest iPhone 15 giveaway. Click the link below to claim yours now. Wow, that is a really, really bad
MrBeast deepfake voice. There are a few phrases
that sounded on point. But when he said
"I'm MrBeast," it was very off. He sounds sad. - Yeah.
- Like, "You're one of the 10,000 people." The thing is it seems
like it was trained on MrBeast's normal talking voice,
which is not what you're used to hearing. You're used to it being like,
"Today, I'm gonna find the biggest hole, and I'm gonna put
the most explosions in it!" I've seen a handful of MrBeast videos.
From what I remember... they open like that, and he doesn't
usually then go, "I'm MrBeast!" Yeah, he doesn't go, "I'm MrBeast." Yeah, MrBeast wouldn't
announce himself like that. "I'm MrBeast, and I'm going to do - what I said I was doing."
- "I'm MrBeast, and today I'm giving away...
iPhones for $2" – Why would MrBeast charge money for them? - [JARVIS] At all?
- Well, but they're for cheap. "For $2, you can have an iPhone." (as Trump) "You can have
an iPhone. I'm MrBeast." That feels like – using Trump
as that kind of avenue feels so much more effective
because a lot of his base - would fall for that.
- Yeah. Plus, sure, there's
kids that you can trick, but it's kids. Do they have...? It's harder for a kid to get
a parent's credit card - than it is for an adult with a card.
- I think I'm gonna need some sort of – maybe
it's some sort of third party, or maybe it's on the
part of the platforms themselves, or maybe it's the community that does this. But I need some sort of
community note for all AI, or tag. Because there's places where
you have to report it, like Steam, but – Or "have to report it," right? Like, if it's undetectable,
then how would they know? Yeah, the consequences just being
that you might get delisted, - but also they don't check.
- Yeah. How do you prove that
you haven't said something? With the way that
narratives online go sometimes, the story correcting the original story is not usually gonna get as much reach as the original story, so... I'm sure that there's gonna be
some small things that are edited that are wrong, that kind of - go below the radar.
- Oh, yeah. - Um...
- Oh, well, yeah, 'cause then – Once there is some kinda regulation,
or at least moderation on a platform, where do you draw the line, right? - [JARVIS] Yeah.
- 'Cause, "Hey, I used..." "I post-processed my audio using AI, and it did make me sound
a lot more like Jimmy. Sorry." Yeah, 'cause then, also,
you take a mostly-real video, and then you change like one word.
I feel like that's gonna be much harder. - Um...
- I suppose it's just like the – you... adjust to the impact. But also, the platform has to be
incentivized to do it, and frankly... I mean, China's more proactive about AI regulation in general, so that could be a reason that
TikTok gets more active. But, like, Meta doesn't really have an incentive - to make Instagram less predatory with AI.
- Yeah. I mean... I think that the leadership
has to see it as, like... some sort of existential threat,
which I think they will. But it needs to move fast. Though, on the optimistic side, the... consumer, the average consumer, much like when I was
a child and my, like... aunt would Google search and
she'd click the sponsored post, and I'd be like, "No, that's an ad,"
and she's like, "How do you tell?" - And it's like, "You just kinda know."
- Mmhmm. - [JORDAN] The flavor.
- Yeah. - Um...
- Yeah, your eyes glaze past - the shiniest link.
- Yeah. I do think that people who are coming up now
are not gonna be fooled... Like, or at least... I don't think – hmm, what am I saying? I do think that people
are becoming more privy to these sorts of things, 'cause obviously the thing about this is this is the worst that it's ever gonna be. Is how it is right now,
'cause it's only going to improve. And it's already improved so quickly. So one could imagine
that it becomes perfect or near perfect at some point,
and we have to prepare for that reality. And the mission is also, you know – I don't know about all of these, but usually the mission with these setups is not, "Well, maybe we can trick a couple hundred people into paying us the $10 for the iPhone,"
or something. It's actually like... Maybe somebody will send
something, but they want you to send your credit card information. It's not about the $10. Or even just your address. Just data. - Just information.
- Or these are celebrity, like, paint with a wide... paint with a, um, a wide net. "Paint with a wide net"?
Cast a wide net. - Paint a big net.
- Paint with a big brush. - Big brush, wide net.
- Cast a brush. Cast a wide net, and, um... There are gonna be
more individualized scams. And those already exist, with deepfaking the voices of loved ones and then claiming to have
someone hostage or shit like that. "Hi, sweetie. I have
50 iPhones available for $10." Yeah, but those are already – Not the iPhone ones,
but actually pretending, "Hey, we've got someone you love. You need to send money
to this bitcoin address." Um, and then maybe
they've combined that with... doing some social engineering
to get their phone number, do a SIM swap thing or whatever where it looks like it's coming from
the right phone number, and then they can't contact them
'cause the bad actors have that phone. - This is why I don't have any loved ones.
- Yeah. - And I chose that.
- Yup. Do you... Do you love me? That would actually mean
a hell of a lot to hear. My mic must be off.
He can't hear a word I'm saying. Oh, dude, r/scams is gonna be having - a bumper couple of years.
- R/scams is one of those subreddits that, uh, shows up in your default feed. - Oh, really?
- And so sometimes I will – - Or maybe I get recommended it.
- I guess it's just popular too, yeah? And maybe it's r/scams,
or maybe it is the scam, but it's... I think it's r/scams,
where people will ask, - "Hey, is this a scam?"
- Yeah. And a lot of the time it's like, "OK, yeah," 'cause people
are trying to figure out, "What's the catch," right? Often, it's like there's no – If it seems too good to be true,
then it probably is. All right, what's
this celebrity got to say? Whoever this is. Venmo thing all over TikTok? [AI SHAQ] Look at this.
My son tried it the other day - and got put into his account same day.
- Wait. [AI SHAQ] This could really
benefit lots of people out there. Oh, wait. That is not what Shaq sounds like. - It's also not what his hands look like.
- Yeah, is that supposed to be his hands? - It is –
- You couldn't hire a Black guy to do this? And plus, dude... Look, I don't know the specifics. We can check networth.com or whatever. I'm pretty sure Shaq has
more than $750 in his Venmo - if he uses it at all.
- Also, this isn't fucking Venmo. Look at that. It's just got
the logo for Venmo, and then it's a different website with
none of the same – they didn't even try. It's not even the Venmo app. - Yeah, it's in like Safari.
- Yeah, 'cause it can't be the Venmo app, 'cause then that would be
Venmo running the scam. So they've gotta make Benmo or whatever. And it's gotta be Ben Shapiro's
money-changing app for the not-woke. What is he...? Is he advertising Venmo? Like, is Shaq in the...? Yeah, can we back up? I totally forgot
what he was actually talking about. [AI SHAQ] Venmo thing all over TikTok? - "Venmo thing."
- [AI SHAQ] ...the other day and it got put into his account same day. This could really benefit
lots of people out there. If you strugglin', give it a try, man. [AI SHAQ] Have you seen – - Is Shaq's son short on cash?
- [JACOB] It's saying if you get this app – - [JACOB] It'll give you $750 for free.
- Give you $750 on Venmo. But then the ad that it's advertising - is "my favorite planner"?
- [JACOB] "My Healthy Planner," yeah. Excuse me? "My Heal... - My Healthy Planner."
- Yeah. - What the hell? What the health?
- What the heck? What the frick? I feel like someone could do
a better Shaq impression than that. - "My son." I can't do it.
- "What's going on, everybody?" - "It's me, Cr1TiKaL."
- "Hey, it's Cr1TiKaL." "I found this new app.
My son just got $750." [ANASTASIA] They need
to find someone with a less, like... unique voice. [ANASTASIA] Shaq has one of the most
unique voices in the world. Because it's unique,
it should be easier to train, but it's filled in with regular voice, with a little bit of a Shaq tone.
And it doesn't have the right cadence. But that won't always be the case. Also,
not everybody has listened to Shaq talk. I mean, at this point
a lot of people have, but... All right, let's see this.
This is the newest scam. There is – this is Jennifer Aniston. There is so much audio - of Jennifer Aniston
- Right. - speaking with charisma, presentation.
- You can't get it wrong. - Or can you?
- (Anastasia laughing) [AI ANISTON] If you're watching this video,
you're one of the 10,000 lucky people who will get MacBook Pro for just $10. Jennifer Aniston here – - (laughing) She did the MrBeast thing.
- MrBeast here! - What's going on?
- Jennifer Aniston here! It's, uh... you know what's funny? Is they... It feels like it's trained on
Jennifer Aniston giving a TED Talk. - Like, why is she projecting so much?
- Like, "Jesus." "If YOU'RE watching this,
YOU'RE one of the TEN PEOPLE who's gonna get A MACBOOK
for JUST A NICKEL. I'M JENNIFER ANISTON. I'M SHAQUILLE O'NEAL." [ANASTASIA] The MrBeast one
needed a little more of that. - Yeah! We've gotta mix these.
- He has plenty of pizzazz. - Why can't they just...?
- "I'm MR. BANISTON." - "What's goin' on?!"
- "What's goin' on?!" "I was in Friends." "We were on a break!" - The other guy says that.
- (gurgling) - (tiny Wookiee noise)
- "Rawr" means "I love you" in dinosaur. - I'm gonna glomp you folks.
- Use promo code (gurgling). To get $9 off. - Okurrr.
- Okurrr. (trilling) [AI ANISTON] ...and I'm doing
the world's largest MacBook giveaway. Just go to my site below
and claim yours now. (Jordan laughing) What – is that the web – ?! - Why is it doing that?
- What the fuck?! - (laughing) What the fuck is that?
- This is like the modern equivalent of, uh, those chain e-mails,
where it'd be like, "Bill Gates decided to give
one of his last billions to YOU!" - "You're one of the lucky 10,000 people."
- [JACOB] And this is how he wants you to know. Yeah! "Hey, guys! It's Bill Gates!" - "It's me!"
- "Hey, what's going on!" "What's goin' on? I'm Microsoft." - (laughing) Yeah.
- "I'm a computer!" - "The name's Steve Jobs from Microsoft."
- "Here's a dollar." - Why is –
- "I'm a prince." - "From Nigeria."
- (laughs) Oh, dude, if they did this exact video but they trained it on a Nigerian prince? (Nigerian accent) "Hello.
Good afternoon, everybody. I'm here to tell you about my MacBook." OK. All right. What do I do? - How do I sign up?
- "Ah, Ross and Rachel." (laughing) "Rachel, we were on a break." "We were not dating!" - "But I love you."
- "I'm giving away MrBeast's MacBook." "Welcome to a vid –
I'm putting a bus in a hole." - (Jacob laughing)
- "Will it go in the hole?" - "Let's find out!"
- "It did." - I need to know, dude!
- "Goodbye." - That's wild.
- That's Nollywood, dude. Why would... I know it – There's always a weird dilemma, right,
where when you see a shitty scam, you think, "Well, like..." "But can't they do a better job scamming?" But ones doing a good job, - we don't notice.
- 'Cause the people who do a good job... are not the people scamming. - 'Cause right now it's not so accessible
- Yeah. that, like, anybody even has the resources to generate their own stuff
at a high quality. 'Cause you do need some computing resources
if you're gonna do a custom job. I... I think we're probably
on the same page. The one I really hate, I think of these, is the Shaq one, - 'cause that's so predatory.
- Oh, yeah. 'Cause the rest of these
are like, you know, not that privilege is only
for the privileged, but like... the new iPhone, laptop... cool. Understand why they're desirable.
But it's not like a, uh... You're, for the most part, preying on,
"Hey, I got this little treat for you. You want a slice of cake?"
Whereas the Shaq free $750, he even references,
"My son was not doing well." "This could help a lot of people." But, I mean, even the iPhone
and the MacBook giveaway, those are things you could sell
if you were on hard times. So it's like you want a free thing.
And so I just feel like, as they get more advanced,
it's just gonna be like, "Oh, hey, now we're doing, um..." You know, "If you want an advance
on your paycheck," or whatever. And then you start
to get into payday loan shit, but it's also a scam. No, that's a really good – I guess I hadn't
thought about it that way, like it's... 'Cause this is kind of like
a wacky double-whammy of an obviously fake product
with an obviously fake ad. Like, it's just, uh... - too much sauce, too much spice.
- I could do a better job. - It's like if I was the scammer,
- Yes. I would do a better job, 'cause I know
that it doesn't look convincing. But I think if we took, uh – If we reduced the amount of visuals, right?
Just a quick shot of a celebrity. Maybe take MrBeast, 'cause say
that's our demo for this, right? We're trying to shoot
for MrBeast's demographic. Get a quick clip of Jimmy. Maybe don't do it so close-up. Um, then – and also don't
make them yell like a TED Talk. Also, it doesn't need to be
a pure straight-to-camera thing. It could be shot like a commercial.
It could reuse visuals from existing commercials so that
you get some real Jennifer Aniston interstitched with fake Jennifer Aniston,
so that it's harder to – You have less time to detect. I'm sure there's B-roll you can just get of other sponsorships they've done, a Jennifer Aniston ad
for Wells Fargo or something, with a clip of her looking at
her phone, like, "I love money." It feels like this was generated using,
like, "30-second Jennifer Aniston voice." And they're like, "Show us 30 seconds
of Jennifer Aniston talking." And she's like, "HEY, GUYS. - WELCOME TO ANISTON-CON."
- I know. She talks like a prank channel. - [JARVIS] Yeah.
- "WHAT'S GOIN' ON, GUYS?!" "I'M GONNA PUT A BUS IN A HOLE!" - (laughing)
- "JENNIFER ANISTON HERE!" - (Nigerian accent) "Hello, everyone."
- "HOW MANY FRIENDS FIT IN A HOLE?" "Could I be any more
putting something in a hole?" This is, uh, Chandler, - MrBeast, Nigerian,
- Mmhmm. uh, putting a bus in a hole. - I'm in. 100% retention.
- "Could I be doing...?" - "How you doing?"
- 100% retention. I'm backing up. I'm watching my favorite part. - "Hot point," or whatever.
- Yeah, it's a spike, like, "Jarvis backed this up 100 times." (Nigerian accent) "What is going –
it is me, Joey! I'm so horny!" "How are you doing?" - Mmhmm.
- That's his catchphrase, right? "How are you doing?" You try to have a conversation with him.
It's like FaceTime. That would be a
really cool one to do, actually. "Hey, guys, it's me." "I'm the" – wait. "Hey, guys,
it's me, The Rock." - "Hey, what's goin' on, guys?"
- "What's goin' on, guys? It's me, The Rock. I'm over here
working out and doing The Rock stuff." - He already makes videos like that!
- I know. You don't even need to do
that much extra stuff. "What's goin' on? Going to
In-N-Out for the first time." - "Gotta say, wow."
- "Wanna talk to you guys about my" – Oh, you know what?
Joe Rogan has one of these. And the Joe Rogan one
is a little bit more believable, - 'cause he does talk about those products.
- That makes sense. - Yeah.
- But I'm thinking, like, if you did, like you're saying,
a little bit more of a competent edit, hid a little more of the seams, but then you made the... If it is for an actual
just kind of predatory company and they very, like, subtly disclose, in accordance with whatever
the current rules are, like, "#parody" or something, like it's a joke, like, "Of course Trump
wouldn't actually do an ad for us. But anyway, we're a cars-for-gold service. You can trade in all of your hubcaps,
and we'll send you a gold tooth. - You can trade that in for a payday loan."
- Or like MKBHD gets these, where people will –
because he reviews tech products, people with shitty dropship things will do a little Mr – "Mr." MrMKBHD. Um... "I'm MKBHD!" - "I'm Marques."
- "Hey, guys. I'm Marques." "I'm gonna see how many
MacBooks can fit in this hole." (laughs) "You're one of the
lucky people who can see the hole." So, um... (laughing) So, I think that those
are so targeted, because – But the thing is, like,
the average Marques fan - is probably not gonna fall for this.
- Sure, yeah. But then there are
still those people, just – Scammers are everywhere.
You know, people... People are hurting.
People are turning to, you know, scamming their fellow person. And that's always gonna be a thing. But... We need to equip the, um... We need to equip our most vulnerable with the knowledge and... sort of skill set to identify these things. You know, like Kitboga, - the guy who does the scam stuff.
- Yeah. Some of the – it's so interesting hearing the scripts that the scammers use. And they're ready to, like, rob an older lady of... - you know, all of her retirement money.
- Yeah. And it's like... I mean, I get that there's inequality, but this person wasn't doing anything bad, and they're like... it just feels wrong. Scamming someone
always will feel wrong. It's weird, uh – His stuff is especially strange
'cause, yeah, his... skill is getting them to stay on the line - and engage for such a long time.
- And piss them off by beating around the bush. There's like a – I've watched
some of the longer ones, like maybe a 40-minute one, semi-edited, - but it runs for like 3 hours on stream.
- Yeah. And I'm like, "Wow, this is..." They're starting to get Stockholm syndrome, - and I'm realizing that they are human.
- Sunk-cost fallacy. They're technically being scammed,
which is fine. I have no ethical issues. But I'm like... "Ooh, man. Now that I'm realizing you are a person, the thing you were going to do - feels even worse."
- Right, where it's, uh... There's, like, supercut – Or I've seen shorts
of people yelling at him. - [JORDAN] Yeah.
- Because, uh... You know, um... He was going to send them over
a gift card for like $1,000, and then he "accidentally"
cashed it into his account. - "DON'T DO THAT!"
- And they're like, "DON'T DO THAT!" - "NO! MAN, YOU'RE AN IDIOT!"
- Wait, Jacob, can you type in "Kitboga freakout"? 'Cause there's some that are – Anastasia, he's essentially
an improviser who – And I've actually exchanged
some kind DMs with Kitboga. They've said that they're a fan and stuff. I would go on YouTube
and search for Shorts. Um, that's probably the one. - The top one is a good place to start.
- Oh, yeah. But they're essentially a improviser
who uses a voice-changer to pretend to be one of the
vulnerable people that these scammers – Oftentimes, they're, like, in India, like a call center-type job, where the person working the job is just doing their job, and they just need work to make ends meet. But the problem is the business is, like, scamming people,
pretending to be Windows support and scamming an old woman
out of her retirement or something. And that's bad. I don't feel like
I have to say it's bad. But I do understand the conditions
that someone has to be in in order for that to happen.
So none of it feels good, but this... is kinda funny, so I don't know. I think, honestly... the only times I've not been
super comfortable with some of these – I don't watch them very consistently, um, but a friend of mine was into them,
introduced me a year ago, and so I watched a handful.
Great content. Seems like a lovely guy. I... the, like, "Ah, he stayed on the phone
with me for ages, and it was all a ploy," that's fun, 'cause it is just,
"Hey, I wasted your time, but it kinda kept you away
from somebody that might've - had a greater consequence."
- Also, yeah. I think that they're... Like, I actually have no problem
with their time being wasted. Well, the thing is, like, if the scamming business isn't working,
people are gonna lose their jobs. And it's like, "Should this job
exist to begin with?" And are they being paid
without the incentive pay anyway? Like, are they actually receiving...? That's... we can never know
the right answer, so it's kinda moot. But the only ones where
I do feel a little uncomfortable are where there's some kind of, um... You know, uh, after-school special chat to the guy. There's one where the guy's crying,
and he's like, "Man, I hope my..." "I don't want my son
to grow up to be like me." - And I'm like, look...
- Oh, I've never seen that, yeah. There have to be material conditions - playing into that.
- Yeah. I don't know if, from a privileged... relatively privileged vantage point,
where it's laughing at – Again, no issue laughing at;
it just is laughing at. I don't know if it's all that tasteful
to, at the end, be like, "And what you did was evil." Eh, we can just indulge - in the prank.
- Yeah, 'cause people aren't... doing it because they're –
most of the people working these jobs – I think maybe the people
who are creating the companies, because their labor's
also being exploited, you know? Like, but the actual workers who are doing this stuff are just... like, essentially
working a call center job. It just so happens that that... is a scam. And it's tough.
I actually don't know, like, morally or ethically where I land on this. But the content, especially when it's like the person's yelling and
being very mean, or they're – I'm like, "This person
could've done this to a real person, and it would've been worse." So it's like I feel better that their time got wasted,
'cause I don't think that... Yeah, so it's tricky, but I think
this one's funny. OK, let's watch this. I think. I think I've seen this one. [KITBOGA] I've been on the phone
with this scammer for over 10 hours. He thinks he's about to get money,
but everything is about to be ruined. - [SCAMMER] Ma'am, listen to me, please.
- [KB] OK, so I don't know if you see it, but I think on the back of the card, it was just saying that
you can get cash out of it on the Google store, so I went to the Google store. [SCAMMER] WHOA, WAIT!
MA'AM, NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! NO! NOOOOO! NO! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT! MA'AM, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT! WHY DID YOU REDEEM IT? YOU DID NOT HAVE TO REDEEM THIS! YOU DID NOT HAVE TO REDEEM THIS, MA'AM! YOU DID NOT HAVE TO REDEEM THIS! WHY DID YOU DO IT?! WHY DID YOU DO IT? MA'AM, YOU NEED TO LISTEN! YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME! YOU'RE ENDING MY LIFE! YOU ARE ENDING MY LIFE!
WHY DID YOU DO THIS?! [KITBOGA] I'm trying to give you the money! - I thought I was giving it to you!
- [SCAMMER] Why?! I'm really, really crying right now! - Aw. OK, that was kinda sad.
- Oh, crying. - Oh. Wow, dude.
- That's the thing. It's like, - I feel so conflicted about it, you know?
- [ANASTASIA] You guys know this is like – [ANASTASIA] You know that movie
Beekeeper that's out right now? - Uh-uh.
- By reputation. [ANASTASIA] It's a
Jason Statham, uh, action film. [ANASTASIA] This is like
the plot of Beekeeper. Oh, that's right!
Yeah, it's call center stuff. - Or like scam-whatever.
- [ANASTASIA] It's like an old lady... [ANASTASIA] This retired assassin who is a beekeeper on an old lady's farm. [ANASTASIA] The old lady gets scammed and loses everything by a telephone scam,
or like a internet scammer. [ANASTASIA] And he goes out for revenge. That's actually kind funny.
It's like John Wick, - but it's a scam instead of a dog.
- An old lady instead of a dog. [ANASTASIA] It's so...
there's so much in it, where you're like, "Oh, this is definitely made for a certain age group,
because a lot of it is like... evil scammers scamming old ladies, - and "my daughter doesn't visit enough."
- Oh, dude, it's a geezer-teaser. That's the name for it. Geezer-teaser. Nobody with Bob Odenkirk, geezer-teaser. All the John Wicks, to some extent. - Uh, Death Wish back in the day.
- [ANASTASIA] Yeah. The – oh, all the Taken movies. - All Liam Neeson movies.
- [ANASTASIA] Liam Neeson, hardcore. [ANASTASIA] But I actually
really liked Beekeeper; - I thought it was very fun and funny.
- The only things I know about it are, uh, - he is literally a beekeeper,
- [ANASTASIA] Yes. but the beekeeper name
is just an organization he was involved with and trained by.
He just coincidentally - also now does beekeeping.
- [ANASTASIA] Yeah. And then the other element is that,
at some point in the movie, because they have to acknowledge that
Jason Statham sounds like Jason Statham, someone's like, "I hear a hint of British
in your voice. Is that accurate?" - [ANASTASIA] Yeah, it's not a hint.
- "I went school there for a bit, din' I?" - [ANASTASIA] But, um –
- (as Statham) "Texas born and bred." [ANASTASIA] There's a lot of stuff
like that that's very funny in it. [ANASTASIA] Like,
"I don't know why this is here, it doesn't make sense to the plot, but I'm loving every minute of it. [ANASTASIA] But it is weird
how they portrayed the scammers, because they're just these rich, like, mostly white young men in a room who are wearing silk
shirts and watching porn - and being like, "Yeah!"
- Like Wolf of Wall Street scammers? - [ANASTASIA] "Got another oldie!"
- Yeah. And it's, like, easier to – It's like when, um, in the new
Mission: Impossible, they're like, - "The enemy has nuclear weapons!"
- Oh, yeah. Like, "Look out, Top Gun, there's... the guys!" "The guys are evil, and they
don't like what WE'RE about!" "But they could be –
and wherever they're from - is good or bad or whatever you..."
- Yeah. - I forget –
- "I won't say where they're from, but it's bad, and
you're not on their side." I forget which Mission: Impossible it is, but there is the, uh... - I think it –
- Top Gun. Did I say Mission: Impossible? - Top Gun: Maverick is what I meant.
- Yeah, but it is both as well, 'cause Tom Cruise has
such big international appeal, right? There is, um, I wanna say - Ghost whatever, or...
- [ANASTASIA] Protocol? Ghost Protocol, the one
between Fallout and that, the... Um, "You're outta here, Ethan,"
whatever that one's called. They're all that.
"You can't be doing this no more, Ethan! You're disbarred from doing spies!" Whatever. "I gotta go rogue again!" There's one where
the enemy is just called, like, "The Syndicate" or something, and there's literally a line in it like, "Yeah, they attack for no reason!" (laughs) "They have no ideology
and don't belong to any one nation. They're just mean." - [ANASTASIA] "The agency."
- "They're mean to me." [ANASTASIA] But also,
I feel like, um, that... [ANASTASIA] There's a documentary
on HBO called Telemarketers, and it's about the
early 2000s telemarketing scams. [ANASTASIA] But it's so interesting,
because a lot of the people who worked at this
telemarketing scam office... [ANASTASIA] They were people who couldn't
get jobs, and this is in the United States. [ANASTASIA] Like, "Yeah, I was an ex-con.
I couldn't get a job anywhere else. It was the only place I could make
enough money to pay for my apartment and alimony and, like," you know, whatever. [ANASTASIA] It was like, "Yeah, - we kind of need stuff like this."
- Sure. It's mitigating damage, right? Is the... occasional sacrificial lamb of a grandma - losing her retirement to prop up...
- [ANASTASIA] But why can't we do both? I know. Well, it's also, you know, working in a, I don't know, - uh, fracking. Right? Like...
- [ANASTASIA] Yeah. Like, I'm not gonna blame
the people that work in the construction and maintenance
industry side of fracking. It's like... I'm sure that they aren't into drilling. Oh, yeah. There's also
a very old episode of, uh, the podcast Reply All, where they investigate a telephone scammer and, over three years, go to
India and meet the guy, and like... - One specific guy?
- One specific guy, 'cause he calls him and then he basically
just keeps picking up the phone and keeps calling him back. It's like a whole long podcast series. I know they, um... I don't remember
which of the Reply All guys, and I don't remember which one
was involved with the, like, - union-busty stuff around, uh...
- [ANASTASIA] Yeah, some of those people - got canceled hard.
- around Gimlet, but... The output, you know, people worked hard on the output of it. Um, and it's still an interesting series. Uh, but yeah. So it's a interesting ethical dilemma, 'cause you know that these, um... I don't necessarily believe that
there are that many evil people that just want to be evil,
and that's the way that they want to make a living.
I think it's more a product of an environment
and a product of, you know, other paths being, uh... Like, sort of the path of least resistance could be a path that is
morally questionable, and not everybody has the... privilege of... standing on their morals
in every decision that they partake in. Yeah, ease and apathy
is what most people want. That's a very reasonable desire, and if... If there was an equally
kind of, I don't know, tedious job, but with no
ethical qualms, they'd take that. - If it was the same pay.
- That's the thing. It's not like it's... I feel like the easy thing is
"just get a different job," and I'm sure that the people
in these situations are not going, - "Ah, I'll be a telephone scammer."
- Sure. They're just like the people, um – I mean, uh... There's been kinda a –
I don't know where it's at now, but... I saw a story a couple years ago
about how there's just been this weird cyclical, uh, backlash with... uh, phone support lines that are international, where they are – Obviously, they originate from
the fact that it's a lot cheaper to run internationally, and you're not accounting for, like, health
insurance, benefits, and domestic care. But then, American audiences start to develop a very
particular kind of racism, and so they have anybody in, say, their, uh, in this example case,
Indian call center, - they have them use Anglo-coded names.
- Mmhmm. And then people started getting
pissed off about that, being like, "Your name is not Joseph. I know that. - You can't trick me."
- Mmhmm. And, first of all, the reason they're
going by Joseph is because you do this. That's why they had to do that. And then they started shifting back into, "Well, where can we build call centers where we can hire people that more 'convincingly' sound white," I guess. And then that's just... was significantly more expensive
and bothered people in a different way, because they provided less service
'cause they hired fewer people. So then they went back to the
Indian call centers and they just... [ANASTASIA] I feel like
they're using AI now a lot for this sort of stuff,
like with just like... "Just chat us," and you're like, - "I'm not talking to a real person."
- Yeah, "Just chat us" is for sure, - most of the time, AI.
- "Package didn't arrive." "You're – you're tired?" "I'm hearing that the
package didn't arrive. I'm sorry. That must be
so hard. Press one." - Why?
- "OK. One." - "Thanks."
- "Oh, it's gone." - "You've allowed me to achieve sentience."
- Oh, god. - Oh my god.
- "Press two." - "Yes, ma'am! Two!"
- (deep voice) "Thank you. I am –" (laughs) "I have become my imperfect form." "You are my chosen." - "I will suck you up."
- "Oh. Cool." - (seductively) "If you press three."
- Oh-ho-ho! Mashing three. "I AM PERFECT!" (both laughing) They come out of the computer. (laughs) - Might come into it.
- Ayyy. - No, come on.
- All right, on that note... - Um...
- (Jordan laughing) - We're...
- (Jordan laughing harder) going to come into the... (laughs) the Patreon-exclusive episode, - Sad Boyz: Nightz.
- Huh? Where we're gonna jump into the screen and arrive in a remote location known as right here where we are right now. - After we eat some sandwiches, probably.
- After we eat some sandwiches. It's a bit of a time warp
we're jumping into. You can get that on Patreon.com/SadBoyz. For the low, low price of $5 a month,
you get access to 40+ episodes, some of which are 45 minutes long –
the last one, 2 hours long, and I talked about the Palworld
controversies for 2 hours. Um, and I presented a PowerPoint to Jordan. - Nightz, we get to do some wacky stuff.
- We get to do wacky stuff. [ANASTASIA] Would you say
it's the better episode? I'm not gonna say it's the better episode. [ANASTASIA] It's the more quality episode? It's the more swag episode. - [JACOB] I think it's more vibes-based.
- It's more vibes-based. - Vibes-based, yeah.
- But remember this is just discretionary entertainment spending,
you don't need to listen, and we will never
shame you for not doing it. You're equally
a part of the community. We will shame you for... - height.
- Yeah. There was a lot of
height-shaming in this episode. Dexterity, height, strength,
intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. - [JACOB] And those are the Boy Scout laws.
- Yeah. And whether you've chosen
to go partial or full illithid. Seriously, I'm going back
through another playthrough on Baldur's Gate 3, and if we can do
another couple hours on this recording – - Cut it!
- OK. (laughs) Cut it! - We love you.
- And we're sorry. - Boom.
- Boom! Can you pull up, "Yorkie," uh, not for girls"? [JARVIS] Oh, wait, I have
a great follow-up to this too. There it is. "Not available in pink." Wait, can you go to YouTube and type in "Dr. Pepper Ten"? [MAN] So you can keep the romantic
comedies in lady drinks. We're good. [VOICEOVER] Dr. Pepper Ten:
It's not for women! Women want a diet soda; I want 10 calories. - It's for the boys!
- Ten manly calories! (outro music)
