The Culture War - Tim Pool - Woke Has INFECTED Goth, Punk, & Metal, MAGA Must Save the Arts w/ Phil Labonte, Jake Munro, & Brian Graupner

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Dec. 5, 2025 - The Culture War - Tim Pool

02:03:25

Woke Has INFECTED Goth, Punk, & Metal, MAGA Must Save the Arts w/ Phil Labonte, Jake Munro, & Brian Graupner

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brian graupner

13:44

jake munro

50:59

kellen leeson

08:31

phil labonte

45:57

Appearances

tim pool

01:10

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Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Get woke go broke.
		Everything woke turns to esh.
		People are saying this a lot because of the election of Donald Trump and what seems to be a shift in the culture, but it is our opinion that woke is not dead.
		The monster is still alive and it still has a massive influence, particularly in counterculture areas.
		So joining us today to talk about that.
		Oh, actually, you know what?
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phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		So joining us today to talk about the counterculture, the metal, goth, industrial scenes, we've got Jake Monroe and Brian from Gasoline Industrial.
		Can you guys go ahead and, I'm sorry, Gasoline Invertebrate, my apology.
		Either one.
		Go ahead and introduce yourselves, tell yourselves, tell the crowd what your deal is.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		I am Jake Monroe.
		I am a serial disruptor of the alternative subcultures at the moment.
		Most hated man in these countercultures, and proudly so.
		I can't wait to be even more irritating after this podcast.
		Perfect.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Brian.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Hey, what's up?
		My name is Brian Graupner.
		I'm doing a couple industrial bands, The Goths Golds, Gasoline Invertebrate.
		I do a Space Couch podcast called Space Couch, affiliated with Goths Against Cancel Culture, as founded by Cruzafera.
		And I am a massive fan of everybody in this room.
		This is like the coolest thing I've ever done.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Big fan of you too, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Awesome.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And we got Kellen here pushing the buttons.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm going to have to turn my camera on, but I'm here too.
		And let's get into it, guys.
		I know nothing about like this culture.
		I've been to a few raves, but that's good because I know everything.
unidentified		Perfect.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Perfect.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Can't wait.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So like I said before, you know, there is a common refrain that you're hearing that woke is dead, that people are tired of it.
		And I don't know if that's actually the truth.
		And so I'd be interested in hearing, particularly in counterculture spaces, right?
		Like I feel like that's where kind of woke really started to get its legs under itself is in counterculture spaces, in places online when there used to be an underground.
		I'm strongly of the opinion there is no longer an underground, that the underground is based, the idea of an underground is basically been vaporized because of the internet.
		It used to be where you'd have to go and find things.
		Like you have to actually physically go to a place to interact with people that have counterculture ideas or that in a space that you consider the underground.
		Now it's just a few clicks away.
		But the idea that woke is actually done is something that I, like I said, I would push back against.
		And I think that you guys probably agree, but I'd like to hear you guys, your opinion and your experience.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, with woke being dead, definitely refers to the mainstream spaces.
		You know, there's definitely been a sort of societal rejection of things like with movies and TV shows.
		Like, we don't want this, we don't want this in here anymore.
		You know, you have like these serial flops from movies and stuff like that.
		And there's a societal rejection of this.
		However, it is now shifting to its last bastion, which is alternative subcultures.
		Because like you said, Phil, it has always had an aspect of like, at least that's where woke has come from.
		That's what woke looks like.
		It looks like alternative subcultures.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		To that point, everyone has the image in their head of the blue-haired, piercing.
		It used to be cool.
		Yeah, exactly.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This all used to be cool.
		It's not cool anymore.
		And that's the whole point.
		Make goth cool again, is what I'm trying to say.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Ever since you could go to the mall and get your tongue or septum or ears pierced, get a septum piercing.
		Or a facial piercing.
		If you can go to the mall and get studs put into your cheek, it's no longer underground.
		It's no longer counterculture.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that stuff was relatively inoffensive when you really, it's all superficial, you know, like these piercings can be taken out, tattoos can be removed.
		But of course, now with the woke movement, there has been a far more permanent addition to a lot of the ideologies, which is obviously the gender ideologies that has been introduced, which I think mainly is the largest contention people have in mainstream with woke culture.
		And there's no small amount of that in alternative subcultures at the moment.
		But yes, it is shifting out of mainstream.
		And there definitely is a fight, like, you know, here on the mainstream.
		There's mainstream voices.
		But me and Brian here are the sort of the alternative voices that sort of contest the woke ideology because wokeness is by its very operation a form of conformity.
		And alternative and countercultures are meant to renounce any form of conformity.
		And we're just trying to reform the subcultures the best we can, despite the noise, Brian.
		I mean, you can attest to some of the content.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		The opposing the rules are sort of assigned when you, I don't know, elect to go down this darkened path, like sign up at your local hot topic or whatever.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Hot topic really was kind of like the first the first thing where people were like, oh, wait a minute, maybe this is mainstream.
		And again, and I bring up the mall, right?
		Like the mall was in the United States, at least, and I think that it's probably different in the UK, but not significantly because the cultures have shared so much in common for at least as long as the U.S. has been a country.
		The fact that you can go to the mall and see what is popular, what is cool, see what is also mainstream.
		And hot topic had become, and still probably is, kind of the corporatist, superficial demonstration of the quote-unquote underground subculture.
		Yeah, what's your experience with that, Brian?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, yeah, that it was a weird thing to be, like, hot topic was sort of like, I mean, it's the whole thing shifted, I think, when the logo changed from the flaming thing to the block letters that they have now.
		But yeah, I mean, I only brought up hot topic just because it was sort of this weird incursion into what was such an underground thing.
		It's now next to the juxtapose at the mall.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But the hot topic packs on Forever 21, right?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And it would just abut the edge of what's really subversive.
		But even then, I mean, I don't Recall like getting signing off on a set of beliefs just because I like to listen to Suicide Commando or something like that.
		Like, well, you like this band, so you must believe that.
		I mean, you have to, right?
		Like, no.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Have you guys heard of the store called Spencer's?
		Sure.
		So, we have a lot of those.
		I don't see many hot topics anymore, but it used to be like a similar store to hot topic.
		A lot of skateboarding and stuff.
		They still do a lot of skateboarding, but you go in there now.
		There's like all this like lefty edge lord, like magnets and t-shirts.
		But the worst part is the amount of adult toys for women.
		And it's insane.
		Like, this used to be a skateboard shop.
		And like, I'm not familiar with goth or punk, like, which one, but it was part of this culture that you guys are talking about.
		And nowadays, it's unrecognizable.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I think that the fact, I think this speaks to the idea that we kind of touched on before that the underground used to be more than just window dressing.
		And I think that when you put it, once you get the imagery and the style into your major mall outlets, that kind of shows that it's no longer underground.
		I mean, so when I was growing up, when I was a kid, and this is going back a long time, but like I had to go to a specific store that was half an hour from my house.
		And I'm 14, 15 years old, so I had to get a ride from mom, you know, if I wanted to listen to death metal bands, right?
		If I wanted to find the latest release from whatever European death metal band, I had to go to this place called the Music Outlet.
		And if I went down there, you couldn't just open it up and listen to it.
		You had to go ahead and look at the cover and be like, ooh, this one looks cool.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's why vinyls were so big, man.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So they told the story of the band on the phone front there.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You had to bring it home and you were like, hopefully that you liked it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But maybe you didn't.
unidentified		And then just hope it was on the kiosk.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But it was a commitment to, it was a commitment and it took effort.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Nowadays, if you want to find something that looks counterculture, it's only a Google search away.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, you know, to perfectly sort of confirm what you said there about social media sort of ruining the underground, the mall was sort of this place where social interaction sort of reigned supreme.
		And I don't know if you've ever met any alternative kids.
		They're not the most outgoing, right?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		They are not.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		That's part of the reason why they're kind of looking for the alternative lifestyle.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They're the most non-confrontational types of people.
		So, you know, you could go to the mall back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you know, pre, you know, social media being the prevalent way for people to communicate.
		And you could maybe have some conflicting ideologies with someone, but you're not going to bring this up because that was not an argument and that's horrible, right?
		That's the worst thing ever.
		So the one unifier you had with all those around you was the stuff that made you all happy, the stuff you could all talk about, which was, you know, the clothes and the music and the video games that you're playing at the time because like 2003, 2004, all the video games were edgy as hell.
		You had Delph May Cry and you had the Jake Monroe game itself.
		Yeah, Delph May Cry 3, the Jake Monroe game itself.
		That's right there, me and my brother fighting for eternity.
		And you also had Silent Hill, right?
		It was like just everything back then with gears of industrial.
		Everything back then was like edgy and cool and goth and shit, right?
		So you could talk about all this stuff forever.
		And then the migration happened, right?
		They sort of receded into the safety of their bedrooms.
		And now you could have these mall meetups digitally.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And they all suddenly became way braver.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I can tell that's where you're going with it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So, and whenever you go to social media, because you're no longer confined within a mall, social media has the naturally spreads and can be shared and things can be, you know, and people can grow and people can get followings and stuff like that.
		So yeah, I think that was definitely the end of the underground there.
		But also, I think Lincoln Park also ruined everything as well.
		Don't get me wrong.
		I love hybrid theory and all that kind of stuff.
		But like when they took new metal mainstream and then corn decided to stop doing it.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Because I like grew up with Lincoln Park, you know, and like that's my idea of like, I want to say heavy metal, but like punk and just that kind of like alt culture.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was a gateway drug.
		Yeah, a lot of people.
		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And I think to your point, again, not trying to sound like I'm criticizing Lincoln Park.
		There are a lot of people that would say that all that remains is what modern would be commercial metal nowadays, which is fine with me.
		But the idea that you had to have, you know, had to, that you were looking to make abrasive music.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		You were looking to make music that intentionally wasn't for everybody.
		You were looking for a style that intentionally wasn't for everybody.
		Right.
		It was supposed to keep people that were looking to be accepted in the mainstream.
		It was supposed to keep those people out.
		And it wasn't that we, and I say we, speaking as three guys that kind of come from that scene.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I totally agree with that.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It wasn't that we were intending to exclude anyone.
		It's just that the imagery and the music, that did that for us.
		We weren't keeping you out.
		You were welcome if you liked it.
		And it didn't matter what your personal opinions were about anything else.
		It was just like, if you like this music, if you like this style, you can come to shows and you can hang out and we'll be cool.
		It's fine.
		The fact that the imagery kept people away, that was good enough for us.
		And it was a great, great filter.
		It was a great sorting mechanism.
		And so you didn't have that kind of gatekeeping by people with saying, well, you don't have the right opinion.
		So you have to be kept out.
		You like something that doesn't fit in here, so you have to be kept out.
		Yeah, exactly.
		There was no thought crime.
		And the edginess was part of it.
		So oftentimes people, I see people that are saying, people say this to me on the internet.
		They're like, oh, well, you know, punk rock would hate you.
		And punk rocks about, you know, these particular politically correct opinions.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Unbelievable.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And I'm like, well, you know, I remember there's pictures floating around of Sid Vicious from the 80s wearing a swastika.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, you could get those from, what was the name of the street in London you could get all those clothes from?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Hamden?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		Vivian Westwood came from it.
		She worked there.
		And then she went on and she managed, I think, the Sex Pistols.
		It was that shop.
		And you could get swastika stuff there and all sorts of really ambiguous slogan clothing that meant anything and nothing.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And if you saw punk in the late 80s or early 90s wearing that stuff, you didn't think that they actually were white nationalists.
		You kind of generally thought that maybe they're just trying to be edgy.
		But the imagery, again, the imagery is what kept normal people out as opposed to the attempts to manage what people think and thought crime stuff.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's amazing to me that now punk rock is do what the government tells you.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like if you don't get the shot.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Your communist subsidization is so low.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It's unreal.
		Like if I don't follow the opinions of what the government is and do what you tell me, I'm not punk anymore.
		Like it's we're in clown world a thousand percent, especially in alt world.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I think it's just a game of telephone with punk, to be honest, because punk always had this anarchic side to it, anarchism.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Which is always the first part of communism, right?
		Which is tear it all down and then obviously rebuild and everything, you know, everything for everyone by everybody except the ones who have the money and all the stuff.
		Not their stuff.
		Everyone else's stuff.
		But anarchism was always the first step of communism, which is, you know, destroy the system.
		I don't care, bring it all down, and then maybe we'll have something there for everybody after.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I think if you talk to anarchists, and I'm not talking about the modern anarchists because, again, everything is definitions have changed.
		But if you talk to anarchists back in the day, I'm not so sure that, and not that I'm pushing back on your point, because I agree with you.
		Modern anarchists, it's almost always anarcho-communist.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yes, exactly.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The anarchy is actually a cover to bring in the social control that comes with communism, the single-mindedness.
		But I don't imagine, or it wasn't my experience that if I talked to anarchists back in the day, that they actually had a coherent ideology beyond tear it all down.
		Back in the day when punks were like, oh, you know, I'm an anarchist because F the government, and I just want to get drunk.
		They weren't thinking about, okay, F the government, tear it all down so that way we can rebuild.
		And rebuilding wasn't in the cards.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You would not see John Lydon rebuilding anything.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But no, you're 100% right, man, because this is the difference, and this is what has shifted, culturally speaking, within subcultures over the last couple of decades.
		What separates us so definitively is the fact that back then they were artists.
		They were expressing themselves.
		Now we have activists.
		We don't have artists anymore.
		And everything is secondary to the ultimately, which is the total reformation in this leftist authoritarian hellscape that they wish to maintain, that they'll never get.
		And because they can't get it, this is their adversity that they're fighting against.
		We can't destroy everything.
		Woe is us.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		And it's this thought guarding, even.
		Like if you talk to the wrong person, now you're platforming them, right?
		Like, or we can't let this idea be its own idea for a second.
		It's got to be destroyed with this intensity of a thousand sons in the subculture that's supposed to be the weirdos, right?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is the, I was saying, talking about this in the car as well.
		Like, it's one thing to be gatekept from the subcultures, right?
		To be rejected, you know, entrance based on having an ideology that doesn't match like leftist Californians, weirdly.
		Global, you know, alternative subcultures have to conform to like West Coast liberalism.
		It's the fact that you're rejected.
		That sucks.
		Can't enjoy the same spaces, right?
		We can't all hang out in the same place.
		It's the fact that they then go after you.
		It's reactive now.
		Gatekeeping has always been there to a degree.
		As soon as the internet came in, gatekeeping sort of became a fun little game they enjoyed playing.
		And the gatekeeping we had was, you know, name three songs.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That was it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Right.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you like Susan the Banshee's name three songs not from the Juju album.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That's such a good point.
		And now it's, can men become women?
		If you don't, I'm going to just destroy your life.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And I pointed this out.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I actually figured out why they shifted this.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Why is that?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because they wanted goth to be political.
		They wanted a gatekeep based on politics.
		Goth music is not political in any way.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They will be goth music that has a political individual that made something sort of ambiguously like maybe stop war for a bit, maybe.
		But because the music itself was not enough to keep people like, you know, me and Brian out of it, they then had to change the stance of the gatekeeping.
		Because if the music itself was enough to keep us out, we wouldn't even want to be in it anyway, right?
		If the music was like constantly just like, you know, transition your kids, transition your kids, castrate them when they're young.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It's pretty catchy.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		We should write that one.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But yeah, do you know what?
		I'm not even going to mention the name of the album.
		That's track one, right?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That's track one right there.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So they had to shift the nature of the gatekeeping to a political one so that they could maintain control over it.
		It's the same flavor.
		just now has a more belligerent force behind it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Brian, speaking of the gatekeeping and stuff, and we were talking a little bit earlier about being canceled or whatever.
		You said you have some kind of experience with that.
		Unfortunately.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Well, I just wanted to jump in real quick with what Jake was saying, because this Goths Against Cancel culture group is like, it went from like zero to 16,000 in like a month in terms of membership.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Even nine to 16 recently, even it was like super fast.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		And the common theme is people go just relief, like, oh my gosh, there's somebody else because that's the move, right?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Is isolate.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		And then there's, I can't believe I found this.
		Like, you guys, this is amazing.
		I thought I was the only one.
		And which got started more or less in my behalf, just to back to going back to what Phil was saying, just because I had some, I mean, this cost me a marriage.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Really?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That dude is gnarly.
		And then I was doing a podcast and to talk to somebody people didn't like and people just froke out.
		I had to move.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		They were going after you.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		They were going basically hard.
		Yeah.
		All my gigs got canceled.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		What was the hot take?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Like, what do you want to hear the podcast?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you ready for this?
		It's like you'd think I'd started the Rwandan genocide or something, but this is in the Halcyon days of 2023, you know, way back when.
		But it's almost not a joke because the window has shifted so fast, so, so, in such a, excuse me, so much so quickly, I meant to say.
		But back then, I had just somebody that did a podcast.
		It's great, Moxie Dame.
		I was a big fan.
		And she came on and people had found out, wait for it.
		She'd made some unkind, she'd like liked a tweet.
		Right.
		And then that was enough.
		And I think the band that I was really doing at the time, The Gothsicles, was like, it's a comedy.
		Like I started an undergrad and then I just never stopped.
		And I was sort of this industrial Mr. Rogers.
		So it became so juicy to be like, oh, Brian's a bad guy now.
		And then we can jump and just destroyed, destroyed.
		I lost everything.
		And even to this day, like if I try to get a gig, it gets shut down by the internet.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There was also the subscription that you had as well that was catching up.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Because I had a Daily Wire subscription.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		That's Zionists.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		How do you get in here?
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was on there.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That killed my marriage, man.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That was enough to be like a Daily Wire subscription.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And this was after the attack in Israel from the Gaza attacking Israel.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Bizarrely right around that time.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That's how I know when it started.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Well, the topic was white hot then.
		That was, again, a significant sorting event, right?
		So if you didn't side with the people that were anti-Israel, then you were a Zionist and all of the things that come along with it.
		Obviously, the Zionists were the Nazis, you know.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I think it was also, I think it was even less than, I think it was just because it was a right-wing.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it could have been any, you know, any, any, the Tim Poole show I was a big fan of back in the days.
		And it's definitely not a big deal that I'm here right now.
		Holy crap.
unidentified		But your voice is definitely not trembling.
unidentified		I'm kidding.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sitting next to Jake Monroe, so I'm trying to be like, cool.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You're doing super well until just then.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The more Jake points out, the more you're going to feel uncomfortable.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		No, but it was because in Goth World, like those were the rules.
		And I lost all my friends and people are posting like, we tried to save you.
		Like I was getting into like a crack habit or something.
		No, I'm just listening to dudes on the internet.
		And that was it, man.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And dudes with different opinions.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Dudes with different opinions.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		And then I stepped into the strike and dropped a track called Leftism is Bad.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Jeez.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		No, there's no subtext there.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's just how did you get that past the census?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, just because I wanted to be like, this is it.
		And then that was it, dude.
		That fell apart.
		But interestingly enough, all the lower, like kind of crappier bands were the ones that really hated me.
		But the bigger bands, they were like, the guys that had the most talent were weird.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I know why that happened.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I know exactly why that happened.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		What's that?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because it's the same reason why people hate on me without tagging me.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		What's that?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's a virtue signal.
		Yeah.
		If you're a smaller creator or a smaller band and you can get numbers off of publicly hating someone, then they're going to do it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, dude, it was a crap.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's why that happened.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		We're just dying to hit me harder.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Just coming on the scene.
		Real quick, just make sure everyone knows that I hate Brian at my shows next week.
		I'll see you there.
unidentified		Just so you guys know, that kind of shit, man.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this is a Wendy's.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's letting people know that you're safe, which is ironic in the underground space or in counterculture.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		In the nature of the statement itself is completely ironic.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But it's like we hate them so much.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But this is safe.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Except for Brian.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He's not safe here.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The whole idea of safe when it comes to counterculture, I mean, safety is antithetical to things that are supposed to be counterculture.
		You're supposed to be pushing boundaries.
		That's the point of counterculture stuff.
		It's supposed to make people uncomfortable.
		And there are people that would argue that good art makes people uncomfortable.
		It makes you question things that your preconceived notions.
		It makes you question the way that you used to look at the world or whatever the topic is.
		So the idea of safe art is, I mean, it's as sterilized and revolting and repulsive as you can possibly imagine.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Like tried approved art.
		Do you guys like this?
		I know you would because the rules are so clear for everyone to follow.
		But to follow up on something that Brian was saying there, because this is very important.
		And for those of you who are probably watching this wondering, what space is there for people who are conservative or even MAGA or right-wing, whatever.
		What space is there in alternative spaces for these kinds of people?
		You pointed out that whenever you made the song, Leftism is, what was the word, bad?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Bad.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ, man.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Such harsh language.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I came out and I did a video called Goth is Not Political, which lit everything on fire.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		People sent that to me for a month and a half.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I made a nearly an hour-long video about this.
		And prior to making this video, my research was on my Instagram.
		I was like, if there's any Republican or conservative alternative people following, drop me a message, drop me a DM.
		I want to hear what your experience is.
		And I got hundreds, thousands of DMs.
		Yeah, that video right there.
		That's the one that sort of really pissed a lot of people off.
		And you can see two of my biggest attractors in the thumbnail.
		I thought that would be extra sort of extra.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Did I really tell you?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Those two people don't like you.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They very, very much do not like you.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		We headlined Dragon Con, which is like a big deal.
		And our booth was right next to one of them.
		So it's bizarre that it's come full circle because you know it is when you're selling merch, you just basically talk to the band next to you all day.
		So I talked to Mr. V all day.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No, that's cool, man.
		But yeah, it's like there is space there.
		And what I realized whenever there was a bunch of conservatives and right-wingers, or even just center-right, even just center libertarians, like people coming in, just being like, oh my God, yeah, like I have to mask this shit, right?
		Just so I can enjoy this.
		And then you've got leftists saying that goth is political and is leftist by nature.
		So I'm like, okay, these two things can't be true at the same time.
		Okay.
		Because if there's something there that right-wingers can enjoy, then it can't be inherently leftist.
		It can't.
		You can't have these two things.
		And then, of course, I was talking to you about this in the car.
		If you take leftism and you strip it of all of this goth aesthetic, what's left?
		It's just the politics.
		Politics themselves innately are not goth, right?
		Liberalism and leftism is not goth by itself.
		It is only then made goth by everything else that's added, like the music, the aesthetic, the literature, the architecture, you know, the macabre themes, the taxidermy.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		So much taxidermy.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Lots and lots of taxidermy.
		Eyeliner.
		And these things have been enjoyed for decades, right?
		And before modern leftism became a thing.
		And these were the same themes that these conservatives and right-wingers were finding value in.
		And it's like, yeah, it's not liberal.
		In fact, it's the rejection of all of these things.
		It is the, you know, regardless of the political affiliations of everyone involved, it is the unifying core themes of goth, which are those things that I talked about earlier, you know, like, you know, aesthetic and music and, you know, the scene itself and maintaining the scene.
		So factually, it's incorrect that it's leftist and that it's also political.
		Because again, these were just created as an extension of the LWA, which is the left-wing authoritarianism that I did a video on, which is very different to any other type of authoritarianism because of the Dark Triad, which is like a psychological triad of really, really horrible personality traits.
		And you don't need to be like a psychological scholar.
		You can observe this.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I think we opened for Dark Triad in 2015.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You know, to your point, Jake, you mentioned how the right tends to be put off by the goth aesthetic, the counterculture aesthetic, the metal music, the heavy industrial stuff.
		And I think you do see it now.
		If you look, the Gen Z right wing, they're very much dudes in ties, right?
		They're going back to that.
		There was a time where the major political movers were trying to step away from looking, you know, prim and proper, looking well kept with ties and stuff.
		They were trying to look like the everyman, right?
		Like maybe it might be, I think it was probably the whole aesthetic, the Brooklyn aesthetic, where you had, you know, dudes with beards and they've got their lattes.
		And that used to be, for a time in the early aughts, that was kind of counterculture, right?
		Like if you were trying to go into politics or into political spaces, you were still kind of wearing like your normal stuff.
		And now there's been a resurgence on the right of people that are, you know, they're always presenting themselves in suit and ties.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		The new punk, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It is, it is.
		And I mean, there's always been that kind of dude in the scene, right, who wears a tie.
		And it's usually like it's not brought up, but like, you know, you see it, I think, a lot in Scabby, or used to see it a lot in Scabby.
		Scabians would wear suits and jackets and stuff like that.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the sort of iconicism of it all.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, and but nowadays, the guys that are wearing ties and on the right, they do try to portray that image.
		But you were saying that there's space for those people in the goth world.
		Can you elaborate on that?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		100%.
		So the mistake these people are making is that their perception of these alternative subcultures do not change.
		They are absolute and their basis is always going to be left versus right.
		But that's not true.
		It's a counterculture.
		And Celtic counterculture, the very nature of the word, is counter to whatever culture happens to be the most popular at the time.
		And as we all know, the reason why we get so much backlash, the reason why there's so much animosity towards people like us saying the things that we say, is because we are the counterculture.
		That is the whole point.
		And they didn't realize at any point that they became the system.
		They became the culture to which we counter to it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		The refrain for a long time was that there's no such thing as a goth conservative.
		Like that's what I saw.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I keep saying that, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You can't be.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I guess I don't exist.
		I don't fade out like that picture and back to the future.
		Sorry.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's like that gift where it's just like the guy disappears.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I guess I didn't clear my existence with somebody in Poughkeepsie on Facebook.
		Like, what?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This gives you an existential crisis where you're just like, so then why am I doing this?
		Oh, right.
		Yeah.
		Literally everything else other than the leftist politics.
		Like I said, you know, leftist politics themselves, by their very nature, by their definition, are not goth.
		They're not gothic.
		They're not counterculture.
		It is merely part of society.
		It's one of, you know, it's one of the partisan things that we have going on in society.
		Goth itself is completely removed of these things.
		It is, it's its own thing.
		It's defined by itself, not the politics within it.
		Like you have the core values, which is stuff I've already talked about.
		And those are the things that define it.
		You take liberalism out of goth.
		You take leftism out of goth.
		Leftism is still just leftism, right?
		Leftism only becomes goth when it's in it, when it's dressed like it, when it's acting like it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		So what happens now?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, what happens now is that we do our absolute best to get these freaks out of here.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Well, because that actually, that's a good segue to what I wanted to, because we started talking about this in the green room and we were saying how in goth culture and metal and punk, like men would wear dresses, eyeliner you were talking about.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And this is back, and to your point, just for clarification, this is back in the 90s and early odds, right?
		Like if I was at a show and there was a guy wearing a dress, it was just like whatever.
		You'd see dudes wearing black dress or whatever, and people might give them a second look.
		But nobody said anything.
		No one cared.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That's dress guy.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		To my understanding, it was because that was a counterculture.
		You guys were like a niche part of society.
		So it was just like, it is what it is.
		But what I wanted to pull up is three of the biggest, some of the biggest athletes in the world right now are openly painting their nails.
		We've got Jared McCain right here.
		He's a starter for the Philadelphia 76ers.
		Caleb Williams, a quarterback for the Chicago Bears, and Israel Adesanya, a multiple champion, UFC fighter.
		So we've gotten to the point, I just wanted to talk to you guys about this, is that the biggest athletes in the world, which is like everyone loves sports, right?
		This is pop culture.
		Is like the mainstream.
		And now they're totally embracing what you guys were talking about in the 90s and the early aughts.
		I mean, if you look at like the Met Gala, and they invite all the NBA players and they're wearing these skirts and they're black, and the NBA players are like, oh, I can't wear like a bright color, right?
		I need to be cool still.
		So they wear the skirt, but it's like black and it does remind me of like goth.
		You know what I mean?
unidentified		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And so I just wanted to get your thoughts on all that and how it's like, it totally has been stolen.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, historically speaking, now, men in dresses in goth clubs, that's like 1968.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's really far back.
		Like Batcake.
		Like the Batcape.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Like, which I think was that closed, like 1973 or something.
		I can't remember when it closed, but it was, it was, again, this is what I was saying earlier.
		That was expression.
		That was expression.
		Now they're activists.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Now, now it's no longer just, I just felt like it.
		What do you think?
		And everyone's like, yeah, that's cool.
		This song's great.
		It's no longer that.
		Now it's this, I'm making a statement.
		Do you agree with it?
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And it's like, do I agree with you wearing a dress?
unidentified		Sure.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's like, no, no, no, that's not enough.
		If you validate my existence, validate me.
		I can't continue on unless I am validated by the herd, right?
unidentified		This is the kind of conformity that I was talking about with the people on screen, like Dennis Rodman doing this stuff.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Athletes have always been very flamboyant, though.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Now I'm just going yawn.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like, all right.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There used to be that sprinter that had like the pineapple head.
		I can't remember his name.
		He was Runner from the 90s.
		Late 90s.
		They used to call him Pineapple Head.
		He used to have.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I think his name was Pineapple Head.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that was his name.
		Mr. Head.
		Mr. Pete.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		His parents hated it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		They did.
		But I think that this is something worth kind of drilling down on.
		To your point, Jake, the idea that you could wear whatever you wanted.
		And that was really what the counterculture, subculture kind of thing was.
		It wasn't a statement about I fit in.
		It was, I'm going to do what I want in spite of the fact that the normative culture would look down on this or the normative culture rejects this.
		So if that's the case, if it was initially just a rejection, where does that leave people that are looking to express themselves and reject the normal culture when it's like everything is now just window dressing?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, I mean, self-expression is, you know, everyone can do that.
		It doesn't rely on any political affiliation, right?
		So people are just like, well, you can't be conservative in goth because a conservative would never wear a skirt.
		But then not every goth was wearing a skirt.
		Right.
		You had masculine goths, you know, like myself, for example, and then you've got the ones that wanted to wear the skirts.
		You could also go as a conservative to a goth club, listen to the music that was about love and romance and death and loss, because that's almost exclusively what they were about.
		And in some cases, like The Cure, Getting Lost in the Forest as a Young Boy, and that's it.
		That's literally all it's about.
		And then you could wear a skirt and listen to these songs that are decidedly apolitical and then go home and say, you know, maybe abortion is not great.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But to the point, as much as it was likely that you would see a guy in a skirt, you would also almost invariably see a dude that was in a black suit with a black shirt and a black tie.
		And that imagery has been part of goth and the subculture for as long as I've been aware of it.
		And I'm an old guy.
		It's like the idea, I can't count how many goth bands I've seen that look like they're dressed up to go to a funeral.
		And that's, I mean, that falls right in line with the idea of loss and The themes that goth tends to, you know, tends to explore.
		Um, so the idea that you can't be conservative or that you can't dress in a conservative way and go to a goth club, I think that that's just can be dismissed out of hand, right?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's just ridiculous to think that it's it's this um misconception that uh conservatism is absolute, it is every single ideal at in their extremes at all times.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But of course, we know there's nuance to everything, it is bipartisan, but within you know the left and the right and the center, there are delineations, it's an entire graph, right?
unidentified		Right.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, like Nazis like ourselves, yeah, Nazis like ourselves, right?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, not everyone's us, you know.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it took me even a minute to just sort of adopt the term right-wing or conservative because it isn't really they make it a no-no word.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they make you so afraid.
		It's the same way they make you afraid of being called a racist or a transphobe.
		This is how they control you.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, it was just there are things that I believe and things that I don't believe.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I guess that puts me in one camp or the other.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But then it does because whenever you present yourself as like, oh, I don't believe in every conservative value, but maybe this stuff, maybe we should.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And they're like, so you're a Nazi then?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And then you're like, all right, so you're not my friends at all.
		The only friends I got left are over these very sweet, kind, conservative people who have now radicalized me.
		So good job.
		I'm no longer on the fence.
		You pushed me into his garden.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Someone in the chat, Structural Ruin in the chat, said Dracula was literally the aristocracy.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Ha ha ha!
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Structure.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'll do you one better than that.
		Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler.
		And do you know what he did to the invading Muslims?
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That boy was not a liberal, okay?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And so much, so much of goth itself, the music and the aesthetic was based off of Gothic novels and gothic historical figures like Vlad the Impaler.
unidentified		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Lady Bathory, Dracula, etc., blood-sucking elites, which is absolutely true.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Not a socialist among them.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Would you consider the sphere that you guys are in a massive, like not now, but when you before like, I guess, wokeness took over.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Would you consider it more of a masculine or feminine kind of like energy or culture?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		In goth?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		In goth, in metal, and punk?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Because I know you guys are all, like you said, it's all a little bit different.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, metal, I mean, you'll know this.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because I'm a metal guy as well, but it's for dudes.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Metal is about as homoerotic as you can get.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's generally, at least, you know, historically, it's been four or five guys on stage performing for 95% dudes.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's really a way for young, or historically has been a way for young men to get their aggression out.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		A healthy way for young men to express the aggression that they feel.
		That's a big part of why, like the mosh pit, right?
		The pit, people would go and, and whether you call it slam dancing or whatever, people would go in there.
		And I mean, I do not have a very straight set of teeth because of how many times I've been knocked in the face.
		You know, I'm not a big, everyone knows I'm not a big guy, but you know, when I was young, occupational hazard, I think.
		Yeah, I would be going out there into the pit and dancing along and getting down front singing.
		I've done my fair share of stage diving.
		And that kind of, at least in the metal community, that kind of expression was because it was a healthy way to get aggression out.
		And I'm actually interested in hearing what you guys kind of feel.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So what you were saying about the subcultures themselves are divided on how gender is expressed.
		Like Phil was saying there, like metal very much is like, you know, combat pants and leather jacket and a I'm going to kick your ass later kind of look on your face.
		But then you did have things like emo and scene and also goth as well, which were androgynous, not feminine.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because androgynous, right?
		So you had some women that looked like gigantic dudes, and then you had some men that were frail, timid, tiny little things.
		And people were sort of, you know, dressing all over the place.
		So it was androgynous and there definitely is a sense of, you know, we're sort of playing around without the activism being involved.
		But as you were saying earlier about a lot of the sort of the new punks of this era sort of wearing shirts and ties.
		And what I was saying about that these countercultures are forever shifting to reflect the current culture.
		It makes perfect sense in a time where men are not only being disenfranchised, but feminized, that there is a big research, there's like a counterculture of men being more masculine as a form of counterculture.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I think that's where the activism comes from.
		And I think like the androgynous cultures might have been more susceptible to like this, I think a lot of the feminism way we like rule society today is where cancel culture comes from, is where the activism comes from.
		And I almost think like that's why metal, I think it's largely been unaffected by the woke takeover.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		there's been their elements but i still consider it masculine i mean i think franz had a bit of a from a teller i think he had a bit Franz is great.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Shout out to Franz.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Franz is great.
		Shout out to that guy.
		But he definitely had his run in with that.
		I mean, the metal scene definitely does have its issue with the woke left.
		It really does.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I've personally had a lot of hate thrown at me.
		And there's a lot of people in the metal scene that don't like me specifically because of my stance.
		I was the guy that kind of took a stance against the woke culture way, way back in the day.
		There's a, if you guys remember the Sounds of the Underground tour, the first Sounds of the Underground tour, all that remains on.
		This is like 2005.
		And I said a no-no word in the DVD that's still around.
		You can go get it.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		First thing I'm doing after this.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I said, what did it?
		They said that they were like, oh, you say this word from stage, and that's not very PC.
		And I said, I said, PC is for.
		You can imagine what I said after that.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I know the exact word.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And it's still out there.
		And that was something that I'd always done.
		Like, I was in the metal community because I didn't fit in other places.
		And so the idea of PC in the metal community was always something that I was very against.
		And I was making these arguments poorly because I'm a dude in a metal band.
		I didn't have any kind of philosophical background.
		I hadn't read any philosophy.
		I didn't know where the ideas came from.
		I didn't know why they spread the way they did.
		All I knew was something didn't smell right.
		And that's literally why I named the fall of ideals, the record that kind of put all that remains on the map.
		I named the fall of ideals.
		I named it that because I could smell it in 2005.
		I was like, there's something changing in the way that people kind of perceive the stuff that made America a cool country, right?
		Like the idea that you can have the freedom of speech, the idea that you can share controversial ideas, stuff that is inherent in countercultures, first of all, but also something that made America what it was.
		And I was like, the ideals that we have kind of seem like they're becoming less important to people.
		And so I was on that tip before it became dangerous.
		And then when it became dangerous, people were, you know, the knives were out automatically right away from me, you know?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's a cancel culture.
		The reason why it is so dangerous and volatile is because of the types of people that wield it.
		Typically in society, leaders are usually naturally strong, confident types of people who usually win respect.
		They achieve it through hard labor or just being hardworking or being a natural leader or being taller or stronger or better looking.
		However, the power that the left wield is not power that they won or achieved.
		It was power that they were given.
		through weaponizing phrases like racist and stuff like that.
		By not only being labeled a racist, it's just like, sure.
		Now if you're labeled as a racist, now it justifies the amount of hate that's about to come into your DMs.
		So they gained power because it was given to them, because they became this online, this social media force.
		And because these are the types of people who definitely should not have this kind of power, it's why cancel culture is just so unbelievably volatile.
unidentified		Very.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Seems like the right earns respect, the left forces respect.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they pity it out of you, right?
		They begged for it.
		Like, oh, we're...
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Not just begged.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You've got all that power over there and we're here.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		But the reason they call you racist is not because they actually think you're doing anything wrong.
		No, it's to get you in line.
		And that's what I mean by they're forcing respect.
		They will alienate you or you'll get in line and respect their worldview.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		You know, and I think that's what it's, it's why in the world, the words lost its power.
		They throw Nazi around so much nowadays.
		You know, if you like eating beef and you're a farmer, it makes you a Nazi.
		Sidney Sweeney's a Nazi now.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Right.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Because she's a beautiful woman who did a jeans campaign for what Aber.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You could have stopped with beautiful woman.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, because you get it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The left hates beauty.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, yeah, exactly.
		Again, this is like what I'm talking about.
		It's like they're not the kinds of people who win power.
		They're not beautiful.
		They're not strong leaders.
		They're not confident.
		And yet they wield all of this online power.
		Of course, they're going to be, you know, they're not going to be respectful with it.
		They're not going to be responsible.
		They're not going to be responsible with this kind of power.
		You know, like we've already seen the political violence, which is happening because they don't even know how to lose the power with any dignity because they are losing the power.
		And the response has been tragic.
		It has been violent.
		It's open violence.
		They're so confident in their position as the correct ones that they're now openly advocating, gloating about violence they're going to commit and violence they have committed.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah.
		I mean, I got, there was a festival in New Jersey and I'd this giant one for industrial music and I joined one of my favorite bands from high school, paint department.
		And they found out I joined and the internet went so crazy, we got kicked off.
		And where I'm going with this, I got upgraded to racist out of nowhere.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You got the free upgrade, man?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I got the free upgrade.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I was like, free upgrade without even saying the N-word.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like, like the trans one is silly, but at least I could wrap my mind around it.
		But like the race, I was like, where are you even getting that?
		It just sort of gets like thrown in.
		Like, yeah, close enough.
		You're racist.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		What?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It still happens today.
		We do this show live in front of a studio, like in front of an audience.
		And it's like a debate show when we do that.
		And one of the first times we tried to do it, the show almost got canceled because keep in mind, the club that we do it in is a comedy club in the gay district of DC.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Pride flags on the club that we do it from.
		We're just happy to do a debate in front of people.
		And then these activists tried to cancel us, right?
		States calling us every name in the book.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Debate?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Of course, yeah.
		And they're like, you know, they don't want the club, they don't want DC to platform us.
		So it's still going on today.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		People make the effort, absolutely.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's less effective, I think.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, there's definitely like a still a respectful form of the left still out there, but even they, you know, once they find that out, you're rejected entirely.
		I mean, prior to the Charlie Kirk shooting, I used to know some trans people who were that were rejected from the trans movement because they didn't agree with all of the radical trans ideology that they, in fact, not even just rejected from it.
		They had their trans card revoked by the, yeah, unbelievable.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		So they had to go back to I had one.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I had one of my DMs.
		It was all pre-Charlie Cook, the great reshuffling of Charlie Cook's death.
		May he rest in peace.
		But there was a trans person that had a contention with the trans movement, and I would talk to them frequently and sort of talk about how they're a sort of rebel in their place.
		And unfortunately, after the reshuffling happened, and I was like, I can't believe just because he's talking, Charlie's gone.
		And they were like, no, fuck you.
		He had to die.
		He doesn't think that I should exist.
		And I was like, I don't think any of that's true.
		And of course, like everything was contextualized in the wake of his death online.
		They tried to.
		This was the one time that the left had to go mainstream with the shit that they were talking about behind closed doors.
		This is when the mask came off.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And they came out and they were like, well, he said this stuff.
		And they had to come into the room and tell everyone why they were gloating.
		And everyone in the room was looking at them like, no, that's not what he said.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		After that, that Serpentuce, the turning point was the name of the song we put out.
		And the FBI should go through the comments on it.
		It was just the most insane, like, and I know you, and you're saying this crazy, crazy, like, he deserves, like, all the stuff you're saying, but like cartoonishly villainous.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		This was their trophy.
		This was their victory lap for all their efforts of hate.
		They don't know Charlie.
		They don't care about what he doesn't know what he was saying at all.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No, no, that much was evident immediately when they came out and tried to justify it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I saw this quote once, and I have no context what it's in, but I'm going to cite it at you as something bad because I heard you say it.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But it's kind of like this constant, unending, running straw man fallacy that they use all the time.
		It is a deliberate misinterpretation of the point so that they can justify the hatred and the violence that follows because they hate you so much.
		And in order for them to maintain this narrative that they are the good guys, they have to debase you even further.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It's the boy who credit victim.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's just like we're so angry and hateful and we do such disgusting, awful things.
		How can we justify this?
		How can we still be on the right side of history?
		Oh, that's right.
		We'll just call them Nazis.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because World War II proved that you can kill them and it's fine.
		So we're just going to call them Nazis and we're going to call them fascists.
		And so when we act the way that we're going to be acting, we can still feel good and go to bed and fall asleep and dream about communism.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		One of the things that you mentioned earlier, Jake, that we were talking about, like the left hates beauty, right?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They do, yes.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And one of the things that I've noticed about goth is there's always an as the aesthetic quality of it.
		It was there was always imagery that was, even though it was melancholy, it was so frequently beautiful women that were, oftentimes they were corpses.
		But the reason that that worked, right?
		One of my favorite bands when I was young into like doom metal, like slow, sludgy death metal, this band called My Dying Bride.
		And I loved the name because that was the saddest thing I could think of, right?
		Like you're losing the person that you love, blah, blah, blah.
		And the imagery that comes along with that, For people that aren't familiar, all that remains, like the lyrics and stuff are very frequently talking about like emo-y stuff.
		We get called an emo metal band because I'm always talking about, or I used to be always talking about like breaking up with girls.
		Our biggest songs are always about girls.
		But that kind of that kind of thing was always something that was that was, you know, that I found compelling, right?
		And I think that that's something that goth is has really always done well.
		So how is it that the left who totally rejects beauty can feel like they even can embrace that imagery, never mind, own it and gatekeep it?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because they idealize it.
		It is something that they aspire to, but have absolutely no interest in trying to achieve whatsoever.
		I mean, for example, if you look at all of the biggest alternative people in the sphere who don't ever say a fucking word, by the way, they never say a word.
		They just post really pretty pictures.
		And they're the ones who get the most likes, right?
		They are idealized within their own camps, and this is why they keep their mouth shut.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Smart.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, very, very smart.
		It's very business-minded.
		And this is actually what most, a lot of people do: they will mask, right?
		They will try to appeal.
		And there's some goth alternative people that do this.
		I'm not going to name any names or anything like that.
		But they sort of play the field.
		They don't believe this crap, but they will feign to.
unidentified		Sure.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So that they can maintain the accolades, the respect, and the brand deals.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Very finger in the air.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Copious amounts of brand deals.
		I hope I never, ever see anyone do a Killstar haul ever again.
		I'm shaming anyone.
		Right here.
		Right here, I am saying if I ever, you will be shamed if you do another Killstar haul.
		It is fast fashion.
		It is dreadful.
		It is the antithesis of anything that is alternative and a counterculture.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		What is that?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		For those that don't know what you're talking about, is just a little bit of a story.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's like, imagine a hot topic online, right?
		Killstar is kind of global.
		I think it's based in Scotland.
		And they do cheap clothing for very expensive prices.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And it's kind of like the one-stop shop for the mole goth.
		They all go here and they all end up on TikTok all wearing the same stuff.
		And the Ankh Belts, Brian.
		The Ankh Belts, Brian.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my goodness.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I see what.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		So Kellen's going through this now.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It's Wednesday Adams.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		That's what it reminds me of.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You've seen this a thousand times on TikTok.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And the whole point was to not look like this.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Is this a woman's brand?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There's men on there as well.
		I will find it funny to remark that when there was the body positivity movement, you had all sorts of gigantic women on here, and the men were still tiny, skinny because who cares, right?
		Who cares about men, right?
		Who gives a shit?
		It's mainly women on here, so they're going to want to look at the pretty boys.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I'm looking at this, and this looks like Stage Clothes Central.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		In fact, some of these designs are actually, some of these designs are actually copied from a Brankel Stakeholder actually.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I'm actually going to go.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That was an early gossiples track.
		I can tell you shop at Hot Topic.
		One of my biggest ones.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I thrift now, man.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Online thrifting, back in the day, it used to be like, go to thrift stores.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		4X, right there.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		4XL.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Only 4X.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I guess the 6L.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		4XL.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I guess the 6L is sold out.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I can kind of relate now because I've never been in these subcultures that you're talking about.
		But Corpse Bride was a big Halloween Christmas movie when I was growing up.
		And it's totally been adopted by the wokest person you know.
		Loves Tim Burton.
		Loves Tim Burton.
		And that's like, you know, you go into a hot topic today and it's all Tim Burton clothing.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I haven't really been privy to any of Tim Burton's new stuff.
		But I have no idea.
		No, like Beetlejuice 2, I'm kind of cool with the one from the 80s.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		All that remains has a tour next year.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to have to bookmark this website.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there you go, man.
		Well, they do fucking holes like that, man.
		Jesus.
		Free stuff, but not a dime.
		Not a dime will leave their finances and end up in your bank account.
		Not a dime.
		And this is another thing I want to talk about as well with being an alternative content creator.
		In sort of mainstream content creation, there's like, you know, the brand culture.
		You know, you work with brands, you get paid at the end of the month.
		You have like a year-long contract sometimes, which I did with things like Shudder.
		And a lot of my peers, they were also sort of making money through brands.
		Like they'd have their AdSense and then they'd have supplemental income through brands.
		If you were an alternative creator, you did not have this privilege.
		So mainstream brands would not work with you.
		I've seen the emails.
		They would not.
		They would reject it entirely.
		They would be canceled now for some of the things I've seen them say.
		And then the only things we had, Brian, were Kill Star, Punk Rave, New Rock, all these other...
		We had all of them, right?
		And they would send you free stuff, right?
		Because this stuff is just made in a sweatshop somewhere and it ends up on your doorstep.
		It doesn't matter.
		It's pennies to them.
unidentified		I know I got that.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But they would never, ever pay you.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They would never support the scene.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And that phrase, support the scene.
		That was like the mantra when I was growing up.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, support the scene.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And part of the reason why, not to detour, but we'll get back to your point.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, sure.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Part of the reason why support the scene was, why support the scene was such a big deal and why I am so familiar with industrial and with goth, even though it's not really inside my wheelhouse as a metal dude.
		It was because every Sunday night, it didn't matter who was playing.
		I was going to the local show because I was supporting the other artists that were local because these are kids that I went to school with.
		These are kids that I knew from hanging out at the mall or these are kids that I knew that were doing the exact same thing I was.
		They just had a different flavor, right?
		They liked industrial or goth or emo or what have you.
		And so everybody would go.
		If you were in a band, you knew that the same 50 people, if there was only going to be 50 people at the show, because it was a local show and nobody, you know, they were just small bands or whatever, the same 50 people, you could guarantee we're going to be at every single show, whether it was a hardcore band, whether it was goth bands, industrial, whatever it was, because everybody was coming out to support the scene.
		And I imagine, and I can't speak, I haven't been to local shows in ages, but I imagine that's not the case anymore.
		Because if you have the wrong opinion, word will get around.
		And it no longer is support the scene.
		It's support the people that think like I do.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Support the message.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And so the idea that it is an inclusive environment is just laughable.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, alternative subcultures don't really have the equity to squander whenever it comes to turning people away.
		You kind of need as many people in that shit to keep it going.
		Because, you know, by definition, they are alternative.
		It's underground.
		Well, at least it's meant to be.
		And you kind of want as many soldiers, so to speak, in that as humanly possible.
		So the fact that even the fact that I've just realized now, even the fact that they feel like they have the privilege to turn people away means that they have become such a gluttonous pig of a movement.
		They can afford to pick and choose who's even a part of it anymore.
		But, you know, it's funny you should mention that because back in the day, there was like back in the 70s with Sex Pistols, whenever they were first on the scene with Vivian Westwood and all that lot, small shows.
		And it was like 15, 20 people, the same 15, 20 people every single time.
		And even when I was going to a goth club back in Northern Ireland, you'd show up every weekend and it's the same people every single weekend, right?
		I can't really talk to what's going on with the scene because as far as I know, the scene, the local scene has died.
		But a lot of it has sort of gone online.
		And with this online bravery that they get, these keyboard warriors, they become so emboldened, so brazen to then start gatekeeping at the door.
		And Reddit's the biggest offender of this.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Reddit's hood.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because even removed from alternative subcultures, Redditors are just the worst.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I got tracks taken off of it, like, just for being hateful.
		Because I did a track with Libertarian Goth.
		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Shout out to LG.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Shout out to LG.
unidentified		Great.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you know what?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		So we did a track together and she crushed it, right?
		And the cover was sort of the AI thing she does with her latte and her pomerani.
		And the hat said, make goth great, make America goth again.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It wasn't quite the same.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Mine's make goth great again.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Mine was global.
unidentified		Right.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It was make America goth again.
		That was enough.
		They got taken down for being hateful.
		Like, what are you?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, when you think about it, where's the conservative coded in that, really?
unidentified		What's what I'm saying?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's a general term.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like, that was great.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Make it great.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry, are you all disagreeing collectively that we should not make goth great again?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Well, they hate that phrase because to make anything great again means like they can't admit that something was once good.
unidentified		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Like, so they love being in the trauma economy.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		That's what it is.
		They can't ever admit that there was any part of your world that was good.
		Their world is the only truth, right?
		And that's why that phrase, no matter how you frame it, whether it's goth or just what Trump does, make America great again, they hate it.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It's the again that's the problem.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because it implies that they're not associated with it being good.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		That too, yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Also, the idea, when you're getting into like the leftist philosophy, the idea of hierarchy is they totally reject the idea of hierarchy.
		The fact that you can, that you would say something is better than something else.
		You're not allowed to.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Not allowed to judge.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're not allowed because exactly, you're judging.
		So if something is better than something, that means there's something that's worse.
		And it's supposed to be all equal.
		It's back to the socialist, the communist kind of idea.
		Everybody is the same, and there is no better or worse.
		It's all subjective.
		There's no thing that is true.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Back to the crappier bands or the ones that were so mad at me.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I mean, that's that, again, that's one of the things.
		If you're in a band that's not getting the same kind of attention for whatever it happens to be, then that's automatically creating a hierarchy.
		And hierarchy is something that is inherent.
		People like the songs they like.
		If a band makes music that people like, more people are going to be attracted to them.
		And the creato distribution is real.
		There's a small amount of people that are very, very, very successful.
		And this is the same when you're talking about the broad society when it comes to the entire music industry, the biggest of the big.
		But it's the same in subcultures, whether you're talking about metal bands, goth bands, or whatever.
		There are the bands that everybody knows, that everybody likes.
		And the other bands, they get a smaller piece of the pie.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		If you're not as good, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And that's something that's offensive to people, particularly people that happen to be in the smaller bands that aren't getting as big of a piece of the pie.
		There's a whole lot of crabs in the bucket, you know, and they're looking to pull you down.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They don't realize that it is just an innate, it's an innate part of humanity is to create a hierarchical order, which is beneficial for anything to continue.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And this is why communism doesn't work, because it completely destroys the natural order of things.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		But it'll work this time.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This time it'll work, okay?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It just wasn't given enough power.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Have we ever tried it really?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There wasn't enough champagne socialists last time.
		Let's get more this time.
		But yeah, there's a hierarchy all the time.
		It is always established, regardless of whether or not they want to acknowledge it or not.
		And within society, they are the sort of less liked because they're just so abrasive as human beings.
		And then, I mean, you've met, we've met the collective, we've met the individuals.
		There's not really much difference there other than how much power they have over your life.
		And so to sort of suffer at the hands of these kinds of people who shouldn't have had this power in the first place.
		Don't know how to wield it, right?
		This is not a power they should have been given in the first place.
		But yeah, the hierarchy within anything is only respected because it suits their motives.
		It suits their ideologies.
		It's like, this person is the best goth ever, and I'm okay with that because she or he parrots what I'm saying.
		And if she continues to say what I think word for word, verbatim, to everybody else, then I will allow them to continue being above me.
		And you know as well, like the second that you desync from your platform, the moment that you misalign, morally speaking, with your support network of leftist psychopaths, they destroy you entirely.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		What happened to Crucefera from Goths Against Cancel Culture, who started that group?
		She was just like a friend, and now is getting like these insanity death threats.
		She's like, what is this?
unidentified		I just started a Facebook group.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's all it takes, man.
		Honestly, that's all you really need.
		So this is what I do, okay?
		So I was talking to you earlier, Phil, about how I completely replaced my entire sort of viewer base after the cancellation attempt I had several years ago.
		And what I've discovered, and this is what I'm actually going to be doing a video on real soon, I've got three videos coming up.
		One's about Wog.
		And okay, so this is actually a goth I bought from home.
unidentified		This is Stuart here.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		You're in for a good one, chat.
unidentified		He's a very small boy.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So this is a baby bet.
unidentified		You must be metal core.
		I am.
		Goths come out bigger.
		My name is Stuart.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yes, this is Stuart.
		This is a goth I bought from home.
		Now, Stuart.
unidentified		Where's Timothy?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Timothy's not here.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He's sick.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He's feeling sick.
unidentified		Timothy, look at me.
		Look at me, Timothy.
		This is what happens when you come back to your pod, Stuart.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Back to your pod, please.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Your underground dirt nap awake.
unidentified		Bye, Father.
		Send me to the earth.
		Give me the second death.
		I'm just a baby gotha.
		I've been practicing my singing.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You're doing so.
		Yeah, show us your pipes.
		Show us your pipes.
unidentified		Start spreading the news.
unidentified		I'm leaving today.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Perfect.
unidentified		I wanna be a part of it in old New York.
		I wanna wake up in the city that doesn't sleep to find out King of the Hill.
		Top of the pops.
		I cut rule the rats and I cream up the crap.
		These little town balloons.
		I'm melting up.
		How am I doing?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Better than we rehearsed.
		Better than we rehearsed.
		Do you know what, Stuart?
		I think your dirt nap is waiting for you.
unidentified		I will flood your grave.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I will flood your grave with Bella Lugosi, Dracula Movie.
unidentified		Who the fuck is Bella Lugosi?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You will find out shortly.
unidentified		Bye, Father.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Goodbye.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Goodbye, Stuart.
unidentified		You're going to have your chair back now.
		Child.
		Philip from the band, everything that's left.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Goodbye, Stuart.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Wait for me, will you?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I love Milo.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Milo, I met him last night, got off the plane, and we hit it off immediately.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		That's great.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		My stomach is still hurting from laughing.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And then he invited me out to very gracious to invite me out to Applebee's.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Applebee's isn't bad.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It gets too much hate, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Look, did he pay for your dinner?
unidentified		No.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Son of a thing.
unidentified		No, he did not.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Did that just happen?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like, I'm still what?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's Milo.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Hallelujah, Annapolis.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Listen, what?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		We run a hundred years ago.
		I didn't tell him.
		I didn't tell him he was here.
unidentified		Good.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know he was coming either.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I didn't either.
		That was awesome.
		We run a pretty good ship here.
		And so, like, only Milo out of everyone that could totally bomb a podcast like that.
		He's the only guy.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		We planned this last night at Applebee's.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I had Coors Light.
		I was lambasted vigorously for buying a beer.
		And we had fish and chips, or what Americans think fish and chips is.
		Of course, what they read online was fish and chips.
		And we concocted this idea for him to dress up like me and come in here.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		He did really well.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The only thing you guys probably didn't see, but he was wearing red shoes.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was beautiful red shoes.
		You should have seen.
		He was wearing Jude Law's slippers.
unidentified		He's just living as true.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He told about those Jude Lord slippers.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		No.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, they're beautiful.
		Get him to tell you about the Jude Law slippers.
		But this is why I've been looking at my phone because the script for that was down here.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		Okay.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		All day we're hanging out.
		He's like, I'm not going to tell you who it is.
		And like, who could it possibly?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That was a perfect impression.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You just got that off.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That was maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Well, you can always rely on Milo to be entertaining.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		The only place on earth where you can see Milo dressed as a goth is right here.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That is the culture war difference.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Clip it, clip it, share it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It'd be a nice clip, yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I was going to say.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It's hilarious to think that he was walking around small West Virginia dressed like that.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		You know what I mean?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He did the cross that I have on my face.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He did it perfect.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		He's great.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The first time I met Milo, probably like 2015 when he was doing the college tour.
unidentified		Oh, right.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		He was in Dartmouth.
		And so this is before his, I think it was still when he was at Breitbart as well.
		So he had the bus and stuff.
		And he was like, come check out our bus.
		It was a decent bus.
		So it was nice.
		It was fun.
		Well, that did a bit of a derailing.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He promised it would not derail.
		He was like, 30 seconds, 30 seconds.
		I'll come in and out.
		30 seconds, it won't derail anything.
		It's exactly what it does.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You know, I mean, it's a tough act to follow.
unidentified		He is, he is.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But yeah, so we were talking about, I don't remember exactly what we were discussing before.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I think it involved New York.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I'm kidding.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No, you're thinking of Milo again.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I'll be thinking of Milo for a while.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I know, Jake, you were kind of just slamming communism.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		We were saying, hey, we're going to have him.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about hierarchy and how beauty is something that Goth has always in part of his imagery, but how the left kind of doesn't really kind of reject that because of the fact that they reject the idea of hierarchy.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you can imagine if Sydney was a leftist, a staunch leftist, and was lying there in her jeans and being like, I don't have good jeans.
		Because I'm white.
		So they would be like, woo, yeah, good job.
		Further renouncement of anything that is white and straight.
		But because she isn't parroting what they're saying, because she's a proud lioness in the face of adversity, I'm coming around to where I really am.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I saw that interview that she did with Miss Smomi.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Can't everybody be making jokes about that?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		A whole lot of memes to follow.
		I do think that this is something that is worth drilling down on, though.
		The fact that the left has kind of embraced goth because it does walk the line, or goth has embraced the left maybe, because it does walk the line with being counterculture enough in imagery.
		But the ideas that they share and they believe they can, it's safe to say, oh, well, we want everyone to be nice and we just want people to be nice and accepting.
		And that's something that is, you know, like we talked about earlier, it's something that historically has been part of subcultures and counterculture because people that are attracted to these things, usually it's because they've been rejected by the mainstream or they feel like they've been rejected by the mainstream.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's youth is what it is.
		So one of the biggest demographics for any of these alternative subcultures, obviously, is youth.
		It's the young, the teenagers, the ones who kind of like exploring themselves, self-expression.
		And this was always relatively non-partisan, this kind of thing.
		I mean, you remember being kids, like the last thing you wanted to fucking talk about was politics.
		Right.
		Someone would bring it up.
		You foresaw the argument.
		You're like, you know, I don't want to talk about this.
		And then you could continue going on just enjoying the music or the swishy capes or whatever and stuff like that.
		Around 2019, there was a radicalization of the youth.
		And while the youth were comprising alternative subcultures, they were radicalized at some point.
		And that is when the acquisition happened of alternative subcultures, which is why they think it's inherently theirs because they had it in their grasp when they were radicalized.
		But of course, a leftist from 1979, 1983 is not the same leftist as they are now.
		They would reject them entirely.
		It's like it's this rejection that this is reality.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		So to that point, there's this band called Earth Crisis.
		Right.
		They're a straight-edge, vegan, hardcore band for people watching.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of those, actually.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
		But their most famous song, arguably, is a song called Firestorm.
		And it's a hardcore classic.
		Like everybody, you know, when the song would start, the pit would just erupt.
		And it was...
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Is this safe to play on air, Phil?
unidentified		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can play it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's not a.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I wish I'd written a song called Firestorm.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's great.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's so good.
unidentified		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But back in the day, these guys were staunchly anti-abortion because their perspective was unborn kids.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		First of all, they're kids.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was John Leiden as well.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, was he?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There's an anti-abortion song about sex person.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		So their take was, these are unborn, these are children, right?
		So they're unborn children, and they're the most innocent.
		And it's a horrible thing to kill them.
		And now that would be absolutely abhorrent to anyone on the left.
		And like I said, the song is the, you know, it's like the lyrics are street by street, block by block, taking it all back.
		The youth infected poison, turn the tide, counterattack, violence against violence, let the roundups begin.
		A firestorm to purify the bane that society is drowning.
		And it's brutal.
unidentified		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		But they're talking about rounding up drug users, rounding up people that are basically destroying society.
		And now I can't imagine, I don't think they play, I don't think they play anymore, but if they did, I can't imagine a leftist listening to that song and thinking, yeah, like I imagine they would be horrified, you know?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That would be like memory haul.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That would be a 1984 down into the world.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Leftism is your local government actually hands out crackpipes.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		So the drugs you can do drugs safely.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yes, exactly, right?
		So it's subsidized drug use.
		Yes.
		So because it's an old tax, then of course.
		And all the poor are paying for it so that it's back on the streets again.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		If you disagree, you're not punk rock.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And but again, like the the imagery in the song is you know anything but what a standard leftist would would accept, right?
		The topics that they cover and these guys, again, straight-edge vegans, you know, but even back then in the 90s, you could have differing opinions.
		Now, I will say that if you were in the 90s, if you were at a straight-edge hardcore show, you better not light up a Marlborough.
		You better not light a cigarette, okay?
		They're not going to take well then.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Bends their straight edge at a bit, I think.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I've seen some bad things happen to dudes that thought that it was okay to smoke at an Earthgrass show.
		But even still, like the idea that you would be excluded from going to their show, just so long as you played by the rules at the show.
		They weren't telling you you couldn't go.
		And again, this is as counterculture as it gets in 1993, 1994.
		Earthgrice is singing about how they're against drugs and they're against eating meat and stuff.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're doing, you've seen this already, this delusional takes that we, I think it's like red jumpsuit, red jumpsuit apparatus.
		And Haley Williams just came out and pursued the same rhetoric where it's just like, I don't want these people at my shows.
		And it's just kind of like, please just lay out just some of the basic foundations on how you're even going to curate the fans that come to your fucking show.
unidentified		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It's all surface level.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course, because it sounds good.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There's no way you can enforce this.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I imagine.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's just, it's a virtue signal.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I imagine it boils down to don't wear Make America Gradient hat.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but then you can go and then be like, woo, yeah, like misery business, what a great track.
		And then you go into the ballot and you vote Trump again.
		Like, what does it matter?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		We're dealing with this.
		We're experiencing this right now with Brandon Minor.
		Shout out on the team.
		We were at the Pentagon during just Wednesday and we're interviewing people and we made it to the Daily Show today and they're trashing their appearance.
		It's nothing, not the questions they're asking, nothing about who they are as people.
		They have to dunk on their appearance because that's all they have.
		It's all surface level.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Ad hominem and strawman fallacies all the time.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And they eat that stuff up though.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		They love it though.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They love it.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Which is the saddest part to me.
		It's just like, it is popular.
		It's successful what they're doing, you know?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because the way they rose to power, they were given it, right?
		Because they never earned it, they never achieved it.
		There is no stable foundations to the ideologies.
		There's nothing that is so immutable about the movement that it could be entered into debates and could wipe the fucking floor with people, right?
		There's nothing there like that.
		Which is why they don't debate, which is why they always resort to ad hominem, which is why they always resort to using straw man fallacies.
		It's because they need to either attack the way you look, and if you're gorgeous, then they will purposefully misrepresent what you're saying in order to make it justified to attack it.
		This is why they won't debate.
		Because their entire ethos, all their ideology is wrong.
		All of it is pure fallacy.
		There's no strong foundational structure to the things that they are pushing, politically speaking.
		And this is why they shoot you.
		This is why they get you fired.
		This is why they cancel you.
		This is why they're trying to run you out of town.
		You can't play shows.
		Your fucking wife leaves you.
		This is why they do this because they have no respectable way to truly defend their position.
		Like we do, because everything we say is based in sound fact and logic.
		Sure, there's opinions in there.
		Like you can say they're all fuck ugly.
		Right?
		But even that could be, you know, objective, not subjective.
		That could be factually true, right?
		Everyone would agree that some of these are.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Right.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Well, when you, you know, when you have, what's the influencer that's obese and because of the election results in Tennessee had an asthma attack?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Right.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Yeah.
		Objectively, this person's unhealthy.
		Being unhealthy is unattractive.
		Like, that's not an opinion.
		You know, people aren't attractive to the fact that it's not true.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's an objective truth.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, look, when it comes to beauty standards, as much as the left wants to say that they're somehow created by men and that they're somehow subjective and stuff, it's not.
		When a man sees an attractive woman, and you can look at studies that have essentially broken down what men find attractive and stuff, it's always the same.
		And it's the same basically from culture to culture.
		There's some variation.
		Some people like women that are a little more voluptuous than others.
		But at the end of the day, narrow waist, a little bit wider hips, fairly symmetrical face, small noses.
		These things are what men find attractive.
		And that has nothing to do with society's decisions.
		This is all based on, I mean, it's based on evolution, honestly.
		It's based on the things that evolution has said.
		These traits are most likely to provide you with offspring that will be healthy and that will survive.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Well, that can't be true because I read on the internet that men and women are the same.
		And it said it on the internet.
		So like, you know.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, one can be the other.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
unidentified		And you can't just like as an absolute.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		As an absolute.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		As an unquestionable absolute.
unidentified		And if you do question it, but this has always been their contention.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This is where we're operating from.
		You know, it's a biological fact.
		It's not even just gender here.
		It's more just what they wish people found attractive them and what people actually biologically have found attractive through evolution and what actually works.
		What makes people want to put something in another place, right?
		These are all factual.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And to your point, like with the prevalence now of GLP-1 inhibitors, things like Ozempic.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Ozempic, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And Manjaro.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're seeing the body positivity.
		It's like Ozempic becomes a thing and the body positivity movement the most affected, right?
		Like no longer are the people that are that were saying, oh, I'm body positive.
		They're no longer body positive.
		Okay, well, that's a little extreme.
		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		What happened on the set of wicked man?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, but it's.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Where is her life force and who sucked it out of her?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		So a lot of people, but this is this is how prevalent the Ozempic and GLP-1 is.
		Instead, like she could be anorexic.
		Nobody knows what she could be sick.
		No one knows what's going on.
		But people are dunking on her for being using Ozempic.
		And it's not really about Ariana.
		Obviously, look how skinny she looks.
unidentified		The whole case.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		She has a bit, though.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		The whole cast, like collectively lost, like a ton between.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It just goes to show how prevalent that use is that now it's being memed.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And you must, if you're super skinny like that, you must be taking Ozempic.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I think, and this is just a conjecture, but her and her co-star, they recently had an interview where they said that they were in some kind of weird name, demisexual, non-monogamous.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		The word salad of a relationship.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And people have seen it where the way that they behave on the press tour, it was more than just being co-stars.
		They were touchy-feely with each other and stuff.
		And they both have this kind of, you know, both have this gaunt look now.
		So, again, this is just conjecture.
		This is just me looking at the situation, but it seems like some kind of codependency basically.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't be shot.
		I don't know if this was someone joking.
		I really don't know if it was.
		And someone in the chat will obviously call me out immediately.
		And this is just me sort of reiterating what I saw on Twitter.
		Apparently they had to cancel the press tour because of how unbelievably cringe they were.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And do you know what?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Even if it's not true, how fucking believable is that?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I have zero issues.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Everyone in here went, I heard they had to cancel it because the infighting between the two stars.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
unidentified		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		So I heard that there's not being touchy-feely enough with each other, which is also cringe.
		Listen, that's the thing.
		You have to be all in 100%.
		Even if you're an all-in 99%, you're done.
		That body, people call it a cult.
		I think that word is used too much, but that cult will reject you unless you're 100% in and the rules are arbitrary and they change every day.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but I do want to go back to the point about how the body positivity movement has ended because of.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was always about the means.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because it was about the fact that people wanted validation for the way that they were.
		But it didn't mean that they actually believed that it was healthy.
		Healthy at any size is going away.
		It didn't mean that they actually believed that they were beautiful, even though nine out of 10 women will look at the 10th woman and no matter what she looks like, they'll say, oh, you're a 10, you're beautiful.
		And that's something that the whatever podcast has shown a light on and made it very clear that women will consistently lie to each other about what they look like, their aesthetics.
		And now that you've got things like Gozempic and Munjaro and stuff, the body positivity movement is going away because it has been based on a lie.
		And I think that that speaks to a lot of the way that the left kind of frames the world.
		It's all them trying to assert what they want into reality as opposed to responding to reality and taking action in their life to taking difficult action in their life to do what they can to better themselves and better their lives.
		And you see it with people that are Caleb Hammer, right?
		He's a financial YouTuber.
		He goes and basically breaks down people's spending and says, you know, this is wrong, this is wrong.
		And I mean, he's a little on the coarse side because some people need tough love.
		But it's not that people are unable to manage money.
		It's not that people are unable to earn money.
		Caleb has made it very clear that people make bad decisions and it comes back to their own decisions.
		And that's the same thing with people that in the body positivity movement.
		It wasn't that they actually believed that they were beautiful at any size.
		It was that they didn't want to do the hard things to become smaller.
		The people that are people that tend to be poor more often than not, it's not that they are being oppressed by a billionaire or by society.
		It's that they make bad money decisions.
		They finance burritos from Taco Bell with Huarna.
		You know, it's bad decisions.
		And that's something that the left totally rejects because they don't like the idea of having better outcomes from better.
		It goes back to hierarchy.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And this also goes, leads straight back into the same point where the way they then reattain power, right?
		So instead of just being like, I'm not willing to put in the work, I guess I'll just be fat and ugly for the rest of my life.
		They're like, no, no, no, I'm not doing any of the work, but I'm still beautiful as hell.
		That's the power that's.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I'm not going to run to the finish line.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, bring the finish line to me.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Right, yeah.
		So they're sort of creating this false narrative that people would virtue signal around thus giving it its power.
		People are like, I'm beautiful any size.
		And then because of the amount of power, a lot of people then would sort of agree with this.
		then the collective is created and then this is and it only works if you're forced to believe it right But it was always the means.
		That was the problem, right?
		As you said, Phil, it wasn't like they actually believed that health at any size.
		They didn't actually believe they're beautiful at that size.
		They looked at the effort it would take to get from where they are to a winner.
		And they were like, that's too much.
		I can't do that.
		Instead, what I'm going to do is redefine what it means to be a fucking loser.
		And, you know, they shouldn't have had this poll.
		They shouldn't have had this influence.
		And a bunch of them died one year.
		I don't know if you remember this, Phil.
		There's like six or seven that died.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Blair White actually has done a couple videos on that.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I saw that.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's the one I saw.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's horrible.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's obviously people die.
		This is bad.
		We're not gloating about this.
		What we're saying is that this is the destructive nature of things like the fat positivity movement.
		Because it wasn't body positive.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Again, this is one of the double speak, like the misnomers they use in order to glorify their movements because it wasn't body positive.
		It wasn't like people who were in great shape were also being commended and respected.
		It was just them exclusively.
		And then once the means to simplify the path between looking like a bore and then looking gorgeous and fitting into all your clothes and feeling good about yourself the first time, because a drug came along, a magic pill, they were like, hell yes.
		It was the most ironic thing.
		Like we were just like, how do we stop the fat positivity movement?
		How can we end this destructive thing?
		How can we do this?
		How, how, how?
		This is so insane.
		There's so many people here.
		They're causing so much damage.
		And then it turns out they destroyed it themselves.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It's like hilarious.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Mercifully, they destroyed it themselves.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		The theme of like every, if you ever watch one of those documentaries on people getting out of like Scientology, like the one thing that they all have in common is, I thought I was the only one and I was walking around this big fake plastic smile.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		But like everybody thinks that's right, right?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I have to push back a little bit because you would think as like Lizzo, let's take her for example.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		She was big on the body positivity movement and now she's getting skinny, right?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And you would think if you're like a young leftist that subscribed to that, like, yeah, you know what?
		There's nothing wrong with being obese.
		And now you're seeing all these celebrities get skinny thanks to these drugs.
unidentified		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I would feel lied to, but we're not really seeing that.
		Like I would, that would push me away from the left.
		And I don't think that's translating.
		You know, I don't know.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		There definitely is.
		There definitely is a side of these people being dropped from grace.
		It's definitely not as televised because they don't want to publicly flog some of their biggest proponents of their movement.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, to your point, Callan, I don't see people feeling like or expressing that they feel like they were lied to.
		I don't feel like people are saying that they feel victimized.
		They are putting the people that have done the thing to get skinnier.
		They're saying, well, they were liars.
		So the people that were in the body positivity movement that didn't take the drugs or what have you, the people that looked up to Lizzo or Amy Schumer.
		Yeah, Amy Schumer, whoever, whoever.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Tess Holiday.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Who's the girl that I'm all about that base?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Megan Traynor.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		She's another victim of the Ozempic.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And I don't want to say they're all in Ozimpic because I don't know, but they're all getting healthy, which is great.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No, this is good.
		Okay.
		Look, let's not misconstrue that.
		We are happy that they are losing weight and doing it publicly and sort of setting a good example.
		This was always our problem with the body positive positive, the fat movement was the fact that it was destructive.
		It was giving a bad example to young people, like, hey, maybe I don't need to go to the gym or eat right.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But you don't see people internalizing it.
		You see people externalizing it.
		You're the problem for losing the weight.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You're the problem.
		I don't see people saying, oh, man, I was lied to.
		Maybe I should make changes.
		They're not doing that.
		They're saying Megan Traynor's the problem.
		How could she?
		How could Adele do this?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		She got a lot of backlash.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, as one of the nutshells, it's their fault.
		Exactly.
		It's never their fault.
		It's not the people that looked up to these.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Lana Del Rey.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, exactly.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Did she really marry that guy?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That is an amazing story, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And she goes on the red carpet.
		She's like, Isn't my husband so cute?
		Baba, it's adorable.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		See, out of all the Netflix documentaries that they pump out, I would watch that one.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I would definitely watch it.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I would watch that one.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But yeah, you don't see people internalizing it.
		They're externalizing it.
		They're saying, how dare you?
		They're blaming.
		They're saying, you're wrong for getting healthy.
		You're wrong for losing the weight.
		You're making, because you're making me feel bad now about the way that I am.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And you're probably right, because there's that graph that we reference all the time.
		I'll find it here in a second.
		That liberal women in America are only becoming more.
		They're only moving further down the bottom of the body.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're moving further.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		So they're only doubling down.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And I mean, that's something that is, it's not just liberal women that do that.
		That's something that's inherent to people.
		Like when people have a strongly held belief and they're presented with evidence to the contrary, they say, no, And they double down.
		They don't tend to say, oh, I'm going to take this information and I'm going to internalize it and make it a part of my life.
		They say, no, they reject it out of hand and they double down.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		You better be quiet, mister, or you're going to time out.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, the thing that this graph is saying here, this dramatic drop towards increase towards, this is Orwellian.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Because he described women as the greatest proponents of the message.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They would swallow the slogans, I think he said, almost for abandonment.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		That's why advertisers target women largely.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		They're more easily manipulated by advertising campaigns.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And perhaps maybe this is why the outrage against some of these former larger celebrities was so muted, because they're also now all on Ozempic.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, you can hope because you can hope, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I would prefer they just went for a hike, but yeah, if they put the fork down.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it is true, though.
		The people that are the most committed, you're not going to convince them with facts and logic because it's emotion-based.
		It's how I feel based.
		And so when the other person decides they're going to make a change, they take that as an affront to them and they take it.
		It's an insult to them.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's when the power shifts, that's how you change their mind.
		Because that's what they're pursuing, right?
		Is power.
		They want to be the largest collective.
		This is why maybe there hasn't been such an outrage about these celebrities sort of losing weight.
		Because the power is sort of shifting towards losing weight, they're also going to be following that as well.
		They don't want to be the minority that's left fat while everyone else is pretty.
		So they're like, okay, then we'll just follow where the power, we'll follow where the celebrities are going.
		We'll follow the power.
		Maybe that's maybe that's.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, I think that's accurate and relates back to the backlash against you and I.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		But this is exactly what I said in one of my videos.
		Right.
		Because do you remember my video where I said I'm like laying out stuff?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That was a good one.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I laid out step by step exactly what is going to happen with alternative subcultures.
		And because of people like me and because of people like Brian and the 16,000 beautiful people in the Goths Against Cancel culture.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		GAC.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		GACC.
		I just want to make sure it's Goths Against Cancel Culture on Facebook.
		Because of all these wonderful people, if we can make such a massive graphic shift like this, right?
		If we can get the sort of line graph of Goth going from liberal to back to the center, if the power is taken away from being an outspoken big-mouth leftist, if that is no longer cool, if that's no longer getting you likes on Instagram, if that's no longer getting you high fives at the Antifa meetups, they'll drop it themselves.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		They're freaking out.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's the same with the fat movement, right?
		The second they were given it out, they were like, okay, well, we'll do it.
		We're out of here.
		What's going to happen?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		There's going to be some influence.
		Let's say like Michelle Obama, she'll come out and she'll retweet an article and be like, were we wrong about obesity?
		And then you'll see, okay, now it's time, everyone.
		We can now change our opinion on this, right?
		Collectively.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Not only change opinion, but totally red cut history the whole time.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		They're red cutting history, again, Orwellian, right?
unidentified		Yes.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This rewriting of history in order to suit the current narrative.
		We were always right.
		You're always on the right side of history if you constantly change what history was.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So we were talking about, you guys were mentioning the Goths Against Canceled Culture Facebook group, and it's had significant growth in the past, how long?
		Had a year?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Exponential.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		A month and a half.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like really recent.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And the same with my personal Discord as well, which is just an extension of it.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's like several thousand people in there.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So I guess the question I have then is, do you think that this kind of because I mean, goth and metal music, industrial music, like they're definitely still subcultures.
		I mean, metal's probably, well, I'm not sure that goth and metal are comparable.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		We all hang out under the.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I would say they're joined at the hip these days.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, the point that I'm making is they're not as underground as industrial, I would say.
		I think industrial music probably still is.
		You know, you've got nine-inch nails that, you know, arguably people might say is industrial or basic and industrial, but there's not a lot of bands that kind of play around in that space the way that there are bands that play around in the goth and the metal space.
		And so I would say that goth and metal are more mainstream.
		But the point that I'm making is the movement, right?
		The movement from the left to the right, the increase in your Discord, the increase in the Goths Against Cancel Culture Facebook group, that kind of stuff, if it's 16,000, 20,000, as much as it's great growth, it's not enough to reach a critical mass.
		And I'm wondering if you guys feel like there is that kind of energy where you could reach a critical mass to really kind of start to shape the underground, or do you think that it's still going to be a long slog?
		Because again, a lot of people is one thing, but to shape, have enough to really shape the underground, shape the way that people think, that's a different animal.
		And I'm wondering how you guys feel about whether or not it's actually something that's going to have a lasting impact and actually start to really shape the overall opinions.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was telling Brian this last night in the hotel.
		The fact that we're even here means that we're approaching something that could be considered critical mass.
		This has been so isolated for so long, and they get to play around with it, and they get to do and say whatever they want.
		They get to make the rules.
		I don't play by the rules, right?
		Ironically, I am a rebel.
		I am a punk within this alternative subculture.
		I'm causing such a stir.
		And the fact that we're getting to this point now, and we're here talking to you on this platform, and we're able to sort of bring to light the sort of authoritarianism that has existed with alternative subcultures, and the support that this could potentially garner means that the 16,000 that has existed while it's been an underground movement this entire time, even beyond this podcast, even with you know, beyond with the videos that I'm going to be doing,
		it's only pointing to the fact that trending-wise, this is going to continue.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 16,000 is not a fluke.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		No, I mean, it's into that point, it's gotten to the point where even if we didn't have the festival that we're planning and the compilation that we're coming out with, because yeah, we're trying to get what you're talking about, Phil, that critical mass.
		Enough people are clamoring for it.
		Like, Brian, where's the festival?
		Come on, man.
		So, it's hopefully, you know, that's the plan.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's incremental.
		It is gradual.
		It's never going to be like a civil war type of thing.
		It's always going to be the gradual normalization.
		And, you know, some of the terminology, just the terminology earlier, from the left to the right.
		What we're trying to do is remove politics from it.
		So you can have any politics you like.
		It's just leave that at the door and let's just listen to music.
		Let's talk about our favorite books that we've read or even written because there's a lot of writers.
		So that's our goal is to make it nonpartisan again.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so that's something that I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about.
		So when people think of goth, a lot of times they think it's just music.
		But there's a lot of different types of art in the goth kind of world.
		So whether you're talking about, you know, we're talking about imagery, so you've got a lot of people that are photographers that, especially nowadays with using Photoshop to merge images and stuff that they can take, take the cathedral in Cologne and put that in a picture that you took in your backyard or what have you.
		Or you're talking about artists and stuff.
		Do you think that there's the kind of crossover from the music area into other aspects?
		Because I know that the goth stuff, especially when you're talking about imagery, it's not, I imagine, and I'm not a visual artist, but I imagine it's hard to inject the politics into that kind of visual art and have it still live in the goth sphere.
		Do you think that there's the same kind of crossover there?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, this has been something that has been quite ambiguous within the alternative goth subculture for quite some time.
		There was always this misinterpretation that gothic does not equal goth.
		Now, this is the kind of discussions that I'm open to having, right?
		So some people would say that, yes, goth is the music-based subculture.
		Me personally, I think it's the themes that inspired those goth bands that is what goth subculture is.
		The bands just happen to be a big part of it.
		It's not the part of it.
		And my justification for that is the fact that Goth basically, for purists out there, goth basically lasted from like 1978, maybe with The Scream by Susie and the Banshees, maybe 1978, Sam Sergey.
		Sounds good.
		And then ended when the Banshees broke up in 83.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		83 is how early you would say that.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, look, you had Killing Joke with Nighttime in 1985, and then they did live albums after that.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I thought it was when Tones on Tale showed up in that Starburst commercial.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they commercialized it.
		Maybe.
		I'm just talking about the big bands that were sort of creating the music at the time.
		But yeah, there is definitely a little bit of.
		And I would argue that there's no factual ending to this discussion whatsoever.
		I think it really is just what's more important to you.
		You know, some people will get into the goth.
		Well, people used to get into goth because of the music, and the music was like the biggest thing.
		This was post-industrial, post-war England, right?
		This was the most rigid, artless wasteland.
		And they did the best they could to sort of express themselves and escape that.
		And at that time, you had all these bands popping up, you know, popping up out of nowhere immediately and then gone in a second.
		And despite this flash in the pan, these kids at the time were hungry for this.
		And these days, there is almost no goth music presence whatsoever.
		It is there.
		It is there.
		But it's no longer this cultural statement, this cultural movement that is tangible and definable.
		And so I think that in order for goth to continue, we have to acknowledge that there are more gateways into it.
		For example, through the literature, which I actually spoke to Katie Trune about this.
		She got into goth through literature and poetry.
		That's how she got into that.
		Not even the music.
		She agrees with me that a lot of the music's not very fucking good.
		Which, you know, there are some bangers, right?
		The first, what is it, 1982 pornography album by The Cure?
		Fantastic album.
		And 1981, Juju album by Susan the Banshee's, fantastic album.
		And then you have Music for the Masses by Depeche Mo 1986.
		Also very, very good.
		Even Through the Looking Glass, Susan DeBanshee's cover album from 1987, I think it was 87.
		Also really great.
		But, you know, the music's kind of over.
		So I think we should allow the fact that the core themes still permeate.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And the core themes should be qualifier enough for people gateway into the goth subculture.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Industrial is not anything if not cinematic.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Like it basically is film and cinema was the inspirations for a lot of the Doors stuff, which inspired the original sort of gothic rock movement at the end of the 70s.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This is undeniable, like cinema, film, like literally, it's all there.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, talk about artist cross.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, we were talking in the hotel when director Richard Stanley I had on Space Couch.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's unbelievable you had.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		But you've ever seen the movie Hardware?
		It's this awesome cyberpunk movie.
		But like Fields of the Nephilim, like this legendary goth band is just.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I love those guys.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		He's just like in it.
		Like he just shows up.
		And so, right, it's this kind of indelible crossover because those are like the people you hung out with if you were in the cool alt world and weren't, you know, I had him on my show and Politics Never Came Up.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		And what was the other movie that guy made?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he's made a Color Out of Space.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that one.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		The Lovecraft movie.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		And was like a sort of directed some scenes on the island of Dr. Moreau, if you remember that one.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That sounds gothic.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I do remember that one.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		With Vel Kilmer.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		It was one very good.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		No, rest in peace, Val.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		All right, we're going to go ahead and actually bring in some of the super chats that we've got here.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, fantastic.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		So let's see.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		We've got that many.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		I think we could just honestly read through them all.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Unless there's someone that's saying some crazy things.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I'll make sure that Taylor Renz's ex, who's a Frenzy's ex.
		She's great.
		Fan of Brian's going back to the gothsicle days.
		Super excited for this one.
		So she sends.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Aw, that's super nice, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Let's see.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Arnada Records says, big up to Brian Jake and all the GACC crew.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Big up to Arnada Records.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Shout out.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Let's see.
		Terry Bogard says, Terry Bogardo says, my hot topic at the time was a thrift store.
		All I needed was five bucks to make my own individual look for a month.
		Hop Topic was a poser store to me.
		And that's, I mean, I think that that's something that a lot of people in the underground kind of felt when you first saw Hot Topic pop up, you were corporatized, not touching that.
		Yeah, you know, it was, it was.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		My entire outfit today is thrifted.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This is all secondhand.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The jacket even?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this is a jacket from like 1989.
		I found out I painted.
		It's falling to pieces.
		And then I got spikes off of Amazon and made the spikes myself.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Nice.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I'm curious, like in Metal World, like when Hot Topic came up and you can buy like a mayhem shirt or something.
		What was that like for you?
		Like, I guess this is not cool anymore?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I mean, so for us, I was by the when Hot Topics started to go around, I was kind of, I was like pushing 30.
		So for me, it was like, well, I guess so, you know, whatever.
		I had lost the desire for the exclusivity that I had when I was a teenager, right?
		Like, because when I was a kid in the 90s, I was like, this is mine.
		This is ours.
		You guys can't take it.
		You know, like, we were very protective of it.
		By the time I was kind of 30, I was like, well, you know, I guess this is all right.
		You know, it didn't, I didn't find it so repulsive.
		I was never like the kind of dude that would wear hot topic clothes.
		I was never a dude that looked like I was all that punk rock.
		very much just i was i grew up with metallica so it was like yeah you were the ripped skinny jeans You got jeans, jeans in a t-shirt, and that was what you wore.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes a t-shirt.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Have you seen his live shows?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I had to do, I had to hit the gym before coming over.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I didn't want to feel too bad with myself.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we can't tell.
		I'm sorry, Brian.
		You look great, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		But yeah, so.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I heard you were going to be here.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Hot topic thing never really, really, I didn't find it personally all that offensive.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		In fact, one of the, I was in a, I used to be in a band called Shadows Fall, and our guitar player, John.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I found out last night that you made Shadows Fall.
		That was from Shane.
		Shane told me that.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
unidentified		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I thought Brian Fair did it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I mean, obviously he was the guy that everyone knew about because they got signed right after they got Brian.
		But yeah, I was on the Somber Eyes to the Sky record.
		And I remember I saw them.
		They had another singer.
		And right now his name escapes me and I feel bad about it.
		And I'd been friends with Matt, the guitar player, because my old death metal band, Perpetual Doom, and his old band, Exhumed, Exhumed Massachusetts because there was an Exhumed from California at the time, too.
		We'd played a bunch of shows together and became buddies.
		And I saw their band and I was like, that's what I want to do.
		And there's a lot of crossover between Shadows Fall, All That Remains, Kill Switch Engage, the bands that kind of came from that area.
		I played in a band with Adam and Joel, band called Aftershock for a little while before All That Remains got our start.
		So there's a lot of that, the incestuous stuff going on.
		Actually, John Donay was in Aftershock before I played that.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, all of you guys were culture-defining.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was a time to be alive.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It was cool, man.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It was like Metal Core just came out of fucking nowhere.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Modern Medical Core came out of nowhere.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It was a lot of fun.
		It was great.
		Let's see.
		Back to the super chats here.
		Cullo of Atlantis says, wokeness is inherently conformist is a perfect message.
		Brian Gropner is a god.
		Check his music.
		You might love it.
		Thought crime can go to hell.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Hell yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		A lot of love for Brian today.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		You got to call like you see it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		There you go.
		Goldie Lush says, hey, Phil, Lone Star here, formerly Darkest Hour.
		Oh, what's up, man?
		These reality nine communists are the reason I quit the music industry.
		Look, I don't blame you.
		You know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of pressure if you step out of line.
		I caught, there was a lot of people that I was, you know, friendly with.
		And when I stepped out of line, they were publicly making the statements denouncing me.
		And I'm like, they're, you know, dudes that like, when you were hanging out, you know, in private before everybody had a smartphone in their pocket, before social media, said some of the most atrociously abhorrent things, made some of the jokes that you'd just be like, whoa, nowadays, you know, they, if the word got out, they'd be canceled.
		And then they're like sending emails and making public statements.
		Phil shouldn't say this.
		And I'm like, I know you.
		I know what you said.
		I remember the things that you said.
		So it's, it's, it's, it was, especially like early teens for the music industry, like right around the Tumblr kind of spilling into the regular world.
		It was rough.
		There was a lot of sorting going on.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		So I mean, like the sort of woke movement that's that's going on at the moment.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		If you were on Tumblr back in 2015, this is nothing new.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		This is like, this is like their manifesto.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of become Reddit now, too, though, hasn't it?
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Like that's Reddit.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I mean, Reddit was also, has been sort of radicalized by the same types of people, but there was a very specific type of people that were on Tumblr.
		And again, this is nothing's new.
		They've been talking about this for years.
unidentified		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I would say it's the same idea, but it's kind of been put on creatine.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like now you can lose your job or home.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you lose your livelihood.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		They have to move to Knoxville, Tennessee.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Just random example.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Grim Reaper for Hire says, clearly there is an anomaly here.
		Jake and Brian are in the same room.
		Let's go.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		What's up, Grim Reaper?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		He goes on my streams as well.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he's great.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		He's a labelmate.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's a good dude.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Treadbull says, we need more Phil's metal cast.
		Well, you know, we're here doing it.
		Let's see.
		What is this?
		Code code of the Swiss?
		Code of the Swiss says metal is for the strong, not the weak.
		Leftism is self-imposed feebleness.
		And I think that's something that we kind of covered a little bit.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's what I was covering earlier.
unidentified		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		The victimhood as a currency is something that's, you know, something that the left has really made a they made a profit with it, definitely, but they've, they've also made it making victimhood social currency where they're beyond weaponizing it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they can't be can't be criticized.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		The trauma economy.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I was just gonna, I couldn't fit leftism as self-imposed weakness on a shirt, so I just shortened it to bad.
unidentified		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That makes sense for this song, though, yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Uh, Culls of Atlantis says Brian's band is Gasoline Invertebrate.
		The movement he's part of is Goss Against Cancel Culture.
		Also, who else misses the Limelight NYC?
		Uh, I never went to the limelight.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		We got one in Belfast.
unidentified		Really?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I actually saw trivium there.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I played Slimelight in London a few times.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that place is great.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but Limelight NYC was legendary.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		I was fortunate enough to play the original CBGBs, but whoa, cool.
		I'm an old guy.
		I'm an old guy.
		Damn, Phil.
		Actually, I think we played twice.
		But anyways, Peter Delete Deleterious says there's a sick punk band from Staten Island, New York City called Gamma Ghouls, who were the only band in New York City to play during COVID with zero restrictions.
		Well, good for them.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Shut up.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's very punked.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Let's see.
		Cull of Atlantis says, So Dark Force Fest just straight up cancels Brian.
		That's too classy to name them.
		Classy, yes, but it was Dark Force Fest.
		We all know this, and now it'll be quiet.
		I'll be quiet and listen.
		So now he's blown them up.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, now that's out there at Dark Force Fest.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like, man, we were the darlings of that stupid thing a year prior.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Like, just fuck, man.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Every time I hear more about what happened, my heart breaks, dude.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Like we wrote it like because the shtick for the gossips for a long time when we got a big gig was to write a song about it.
		It's like dark force.
		Like that was a banger.
		And sorry, yeah, Dark Force people, people froke out when they found out I joined Steven Sieboldt's band.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		We'll get a couple more.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Why don't we do some of these rumble rants here?
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		It's only a couple.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Let's see.
		Ray C 2020 says, did Jake find another gig in Des Moines since lefty's closed?
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		We're working on it.
		That sucked, man.
		So we're playing.
		We had a tour booked down.
		We got lefties and then they closed this month, actually.
		Yeah, that sucked, man.
		We're currently working on it.
		We're going to try our best to be exactly the same town, probably nearby.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Quantum Cool says, F yeah for GACC.
		I'm all here for it.
		The goth scene in my home, Rochester, New York, was infected, but we will push back.
		There's a bunch of us here.
		They can't keep ruining our culture.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Hell yeah to hear.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Hell yeah.
		Duffman says, I'm a Gen Z conservative and I love metal punk, et cetera.
		I think it's because of the overwhelming amount of lefty activists that disincentivize people from it.
		Yeah, the gatekeeping is real.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, the gatekeeper, it was there, but it literally just shifted gears.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It went from like name three songs to like name three, you know, liberal struggles.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Politicians name three genders.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Fuck.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You got me there.
		Tomahawk says, woke comedies have completely taken over hardcore and I'm effing peed.
		I assume that means pissed.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Keep that hate in your heart.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		You're going to need it.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I mean, look, I feel your pain, guys.
		I still get it.
		There'll be a lot of times where I'll post something on X about all that remains and some hardcore kid or metal kid that's totally, you know, brain rotted with the virus or the politically correct culture is spouting about how much I'm whatever the buzzword of the day is.
		You know, let's see.
		We got a couple more.
		Let's see.
		Dark Shadows says, as a 21-year-old Gen Z conservative musician, thank you guys for standing up for us.
		All my friends feel like we're unheard in today's music scene.
		You're not unheard, you know, and there are bands and people out there.
		A lot of bands try to avoid this kind of topic, and I don't blame them.
		Like Jake was saying, the most popular goths are on Instagram are people that don't ever touch this stuff.
		And a lot of times that's the smart thing to do.
		But just because you don't hear people that are affirming your opinions doesn't mean they're not out there.
		So keep that in mind.
		Let's see.
		Fire and Flesh Music says we're a metal band from South Dakota.
		F woke support bands like us on Spotify.
		Oh, yeah.
		And then Schmidt 1013 says, any love for Christ, for Christ analog on the panel.
unidentified		Wow.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Shout out to Hate Department.
		Hot take.
		MDFMK was way cooler than KMFDM.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That was the first show we ever played was with Christ Analogs.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Dude, that's so cool.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Awesome.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Good stuff.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		That's awesome, man.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		All right, we're going to wrap it up.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Jake, tell everyone where they can find you and what you got coming up.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		Sure thing.
		Well, you can find me on YouTube.
		It's just my name, Jake Monroe.
		If you want to find me on X, it's Behold Monroe.
		And if you want to find me on Instagram where I post clips of all of my YouTube videos, it is the real Monroe.
		And we have a tour coming up, my band, in the U.S., October 2026.
		And hopefully I'll see you guys there.
		Thank you so much for watching the podcast.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Brian?
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		When you do various things, you have to do social media for all of them.
		So I'm kind of all over the place.
		But to sort of shorten it, Space Couch is the podcast mostly on YouTube.
		Ligerhawk Records is the record label that I run, mostly on Facebook.
		That's the shirt.
		Gasoline Invertebrate NVRTBR8.
		I had to shorten it because of the characters on X.
		And Brian Graupner is my real name, so just put that in.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		You should definitely consolidate to one.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		One that's that one that promotes all that stuff.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're absolutely right.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		I'll figure that out.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		Let's do a link tree.
unidentified		There you go.
kellen leeson ▲ ● ▼		And then that goes.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		It's inherently goth.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		See, I had a link tree.
jake munro ▲ ● ▼		I want to make sure you're hard to find.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		But I had all these side projects that I had to.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		Ryan's keeping it underground.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		You have to look.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		have to really want it yeah that's uh that's i'm totally meant to do it that way Awesome.
		And yeah, I'm Phil That Remains.
		I'm Phil That Remains on Twix.
		The band is all that remains.
		You can check out all that remains on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, and Deezer.
		All that remains has got a big thing coming out with Rocksmith this weekend, the 5th through the 7th.
		You can play two songs from our most recent release.
		You can play Divine and Let You Go on Rocksmith for free.
		And keep an eye out for more of that stuff.
		We will be back here tonight with the imposter goth, Milo Yiannopoulos.
brian graupner ▲ ● ▼		That was amazing.
phil labonte ▲ ● ▼		And George Santos will be here.

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