Interview with Nathan Allebach on Online Brands, Weird Twitter & that Steak Umms Account
In a way, we're all managing our personal brand in the infosphere aren't we? But Nathan Allebach, in a far more tangible way, really does manage brands - not just his own, but also for companies. And in managing the Steak-Umm brand on twitter, he drew attention by being one of the first to adopt a personal, authentic, and informative style - covering topics far beyond the world of frozen processed steak. Far from providing the typical zero-calorie bland corporate platitudes, Nathan quickly drew attention by delivering substantial threads on weighty topics like conspiracism and online disinformation. He played a delicate game of being edgy without being snarky or combative, providing informative and positive intellectual fare, nourishing both the hearts and minds of twitter users everywhere. As a hardened and savvy longtime twitter user, he's got a good understanding of the weirdness of Being Online, and the various ways to do so.So, we were glad to have a chance to meat Nathan (virtually of course, not in the flesh), to get his insights on navigating the online world, on what it means to See and Be Seen there, and his personal approach to Doing It Right. He didn't share any Convenient Meat Recipes For Busy Professionals though, weirdly enough... Maybe we'll have to get him back for that.LinksBrand Twitter Grows Up: Nathan's Article at The VultureSteak Umm's Mega thread on TwitterChris' Tweet threads about Pageau: here and hereJonathan Pageau: Why Human's SacrificeRichard Dawkins & Jordan Peterson's discussion that features the DNA segmentChris' Article on Ritual & Religion at AeonChris' co-authored article on Trump's inauguration as a ritual eventGurometerWant to help us rate the Gurus? You can enter your own scores for any Guru here!
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer.
We try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matt Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh, the plucky little Irishman from the Emerald Isle.
Said with such genuine enthusiasm, Matt.
What a welcome.
It's sparring how much enthusiasm you put into that.
I'm running out of material.
I'm running out of fresh ideas.
I'm getting stale.
Well, you've exhausted all your classical science fiction and fantasy literature references.
Now, why don't you go into contemporary science fiction like the Picard to my right girl?
See?
How about that?
The Luke to my Obi-Wan.
Yeah!
You're Obi-Wan.
Yeah.
I'm happy to be Obi-Wan.
Yeah, see, that way we both look good.
No one has to get put down.
We're a team.
There's no I in team, Chris.
I also don't mind to be Riker or Picard.
They're both good in their own ways.
Yeah, you're probably more of a Riker, I think.
I think I'm more of a Riker.
You should see the way I get on the chairs.
Deep Star Trek lore there.
That's for you, Liam!
Yeah, things are not good, are they, in the Star Trek, Star Wars, multiverse?
I mean, the new additions, things are disappointing.
People are upset.
Nerds are throwing chairs around.
Yeah, they are.
Star Wars and...
I think, well, Star Trek, I only know that Liam Bright was disappointed with the new Picard season.
That's all I know.
Yeah, all these things are not great.
Too many reboots.
They need some fresh new ideas.
You told me they're making a remake of Willow.
Yeah.
They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
You said that, Matt, but Willow was great.
Willow was the one with the big Tim Curry as the devil with the red prosthetic thing and camping around for the entire movie.
Yeah, that does sound good.
Unfortunately, I don't think he's going to be reprising the role for this one because he suffered an unfortunate stroke.
So there's not going to be any Rocky Horror Picture Show 2. With Tim.
Oh, no, you know what, Matt?
I've just realized why I've confused you.
This will blow all my geek cred to Smell Arrange.
I told you Tom Cruise was in Willow, right?
And I told you Tim Curry was vamping around as the devil.
That's not Willow.
That's legend.
Is that Caravan of Courage, the Ewok movie?
No, that's legend.
I just looked it up.
1985 Legend, which is, I think, a terrible film, but a very enjoyable film because of all of the silliness in it.
What about...
Is it labyrinth?
The one that has the...
It's not called labyrinth.
What kind of pronunciation is that?
It's labyrinth.
Labyrinth.
Labyrinth.
There's more syllables than that, I'm sure.
Labyrinth.
Well, that's...
I kind of prefer that.
Makes it sound like a TV show about a detective dog or something.
Labyrinth.
A singer that was in that.
Sting.
No, no.
Oh, God.
It wasn't Sting.
It was David Bowie.
Jesus Christ.
Sting!
He was in the one with the worms.
God, just imagine how angry all the nerds will be.
Look, we're one of you.
It's just not great memories.
Sorry, nerds.
Yeah, sorry.
Sorry, you big geeks.
Speaking of big geeks, Matt, this episode, this week...
It's part of our tech season.
And we're going to have an interview with someone who was a brand account on Twitter.
That's pretty techy, right?
Involved in weird Twitter.
So since it is our tech season, Matt, I think this needs to happen.
It's decoding the gurus.
Tech season.
Tech season.
Tech tech tech tech tech tech.
Season. Season.
It's decoding the guru.
Tech season.
Wow.
Wow.
And you made this all by yourself.
Is that right?
Can you tell?
Can you tell?
It's not professionally made.
A man of many skills.
You continue to surprise and impress, Chris.
Yeah, it was made by the digital equivalent of sellotape and plastic straws to create that compilation.
So, yeah, but that's right.
It's part of our tech season.
We kicked it off with, who was that guy?
Jérôme Lownier.
And he was all right.
He was a good start.
Easier sin.
Yep.
We got the love machine, Lex Rickman, coming up.
Old Bubba Love Man.
Yeah, and we'll be shooting some love right back at him.
Love will save us all.
But we got him, and today we have Nathan Allabach.
I think it's pronounced Allabach.
I looked up the pronunciation.
But before that, we have to take a little jaunt into, you know, I don't like...
To indulge in vendettas and personal feuds.
It's all so beneath me to comment on people who have dared to utter my name on the interwebs.
Have you been dragged into the mud?
I have.
Kicked and screaming by a sense maker.
Can you believe it?
Came up behind me and just started making sense in my general direction.
Without my consent, Matt, I didn't consent to the sense making enterprise.
No, he's kind of the opposite of a tech guru because he operates in the Jordan Peterson symbolic religious interpretivism space.
He's more overtly religious than Jordan Peterson.
One of his jobs is a religious icon carver.
So there's that.
And they look nice.
I've seen some of the things that he's carved.
But it is a guy called Jonathan Pajot.
I came across him because he cropped up in...
A bunch of material.
Aaron Rabinowitz was complaining about James Lindsay discussing religion with Benjamin Boyce and this guy Jonathan Pajot.
Then I heard him in a three-hour conversation with Brett Weinstein about religion.
And then noticed he had episodes up about Alex Jones.
He's appeared on David Fuller, was interviewing Jordan Peterson's wife and whatever.
And I made a little snarky comment online, not like me.
Yeah.
Can you believe that?
I was trying to tell people, I took some screenshots of the content that he appeared in and said, guilt by association or drawing reasonable inferences from somebody's pattern of affiliations and appearances.
That was my point, right?
It was a little dig to tell the sense makers and their cohorts that you can draw some relevant information from the types of conversation and who people...
Choose to have indulgent conversations with.
That was all I was saying.
And I made it clear at that stage, I hadn't listened to his content, but here was my priors.
And I give a list of things saying, I think you'll be anti-woke sense maker, highly symbolic religious interpretivism guy, and completely fine with conspiracism and like right wing partisanship stuff.
If he's chatting happily along with James Lindsay.
That was it, right?
That was your prediction?
That was my prediction.
Subsequently, lots of people, including Jordan Peterson, got upset at me for drawing inferences without listening to the content.
But, Matt, do they not know me?
Of course, I will go and consume the content.
They don't know how far you will go to win an argument online.
So, that was just my opening line, you know, to say, I'm just adding people into the process.
This is what I expect.
Based on this.
And it turned out that he didn't do any of that.
And it was completely contradicted.
And I admitted it was wrong.
You ate humble pie.
No, no, no, no, I did not.
Let me play a clip for you, Matt, to see what kind of things I discovered.
So he did a video breaking down the symbolism of Alex Jones' appearance on Rogan.
And there was a lot of things that you could learn from that.
Example, this.
So if you watched the podcast, if not, I would suggest you do.
It is long.
It's four hours long.
But it is worth watching because through the crazy discussion and the extremely dramatic presentation that Alex Jones gives, there are some interesting things that you can get from what he says, some interesting things that can help
you understand the structure of reality and how things lay themselves out.
First of all, I have to say that Alex Jones seems to be someone who has a very good intuition about things, and he doesn't seem to have the right language to express them.
He also seems to be caught in what I would call a kind of materialism, which means that his symbolic intuition is always pointed towards A kind of materialist explanation.
And that is actually the case about a lot of conspiracy theory.
If you look at a lot of conspiracy theory, they tend to see the symbolic structures or symbolism or if they see certain symbols appear, instead of seeing those symbols as pointing to principles or pointing to patterns of reality, they tend to see them as only pointing towards,
let's say, specific historical events.
He means historical events like the Democrats taking adrenochrome from babies.
Oh, man, that's too materialist.
He doesn't want to get into those grinds.
But, you know, Alex's intuitions are great.
They're fantastic.
He's seen the symbolic patterns.
His intuitions are great.
You should listen to this four-hour conversation.
But, you know, he takes things a bit too literally.
He doesn't have the right vocabulary.
He's not sophisticated.
But what he's intuiting there, Matt, really spot on, don't you think?
I'm just wondering whether we're talking about this, maybe there's a different Alex Jones out there.
Is this this crazy mix-up?
No, it's him.
So, look, you can hear the kind of Jordan Peterson line towards obfuscation, right?
And the way that Pajot would represent it is that he is looking at these kind of deep, symbolic strands that run through culture, which he relates to his religious beliefs and so on.
And he's not doing something so coarse as endorsing Alex Jones'adrenochrome farm conspiracies or that kind of thing.
is he?
The one thing that people are going to ask me is, am I saying, first of all, that...
He's full of, you know, he's delusional.
I don't think he's delusional.
I think that his intuition about what's happening in the world is absolutely correct.
The idea that we have created a society of human sacrifice.
If you cannot get away from the fact that that abortion can often act as a form of human sacrifice, you just can't get away from it because you see someone who Who makes the bet that they will have more power in the world.
They will have a better life if they get rid of this unborn child.
That is a form of human sacrifice.
You can't get away from it.
The fact that you sacrifice one another life for your own is a form of human sacrifice.
And so he is totally right in that.
There's a bit more, Matt, but I just wanted to stop it there for a second because There's the notion that representing abortion as what you're talking about with child sacrifice, right?
First of all, Alex Jones does talk about that specifically.
He's hugely anti-abortion.
Like, Pajot is wrong about Jones because Jones is a religious fanatic.
If you listen to his content, it's hugely infused with Christian theology and millenarianism, and he talks about abortion specifically.
Being this kind of evil sacrifice perpetrated on innocents, despite the fact that he has himself funded and had numerous abortions with his partners, he now basically argues that that's the greatest sin that we're undertaking.
So he, far from disagreeing with Paggio, completely echoes this line that abortion is a form of child sacrifice.
He just goes farther and he talks about elites actually Sacrificing children and blood sacrifices secretly behind doors, the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
Yeah.
Do you think Pajot would be silly enough to endorse that?
If I had to guess, I would say that he's like Jordan Peterson, that he prefers to keep his religious, mystical, magical theorizing on a higher plane.
But I have a feeling you're going to prove me wrong.
What gives you that idea?
I would have had the same inclination as you.
I thought, That's kind of where we would stop it.
But he didn't.
So let's listen on.
Whether or not this has reached the level of ritualized human sacrifice that Alex Jones suggests, I don't know.
I have no idea.
We're not in those circles.
All of this becomes hearsay and rumor and all that.
And even though that it's this hearsay and rumor, it's not surprising that it goes in that direction.
And it wouldn't be that surprising if it ended up being true.
Because those people who understand the power of ritual and who are looking to acquire power to themselves, it would not be surprising that at some point they understand how this has always been a manner to acquire power.
And you can see it in everyday life.
That's getting pretty concrete, isn't it?
It's not saying it's happening.
It's just saying if it was happening, it would be entirely non-surprising because it's something that elites would do.
And have always done.
Yeah.
So you get that common guru thing where, you know, we've seen it with John Campbell, where he's saying, I'm not saying, although people are saying, or I wouldn't endorse that, but I wouldn't say it's wrong.
And it gives you that detachment.
You never directly said that children are being sacrificed in adrenochrome farms, but you didn't tell your audience that you think that's a silly idea.
Ilar, right?
You got the best of both worlds.
And if I talked to Peugeot, I would just put it directly to him.
So are adrenochrome farms a complete stupid conspiracy, regardless of...
Yeah, yeah, the symbolic resonance, whatever.
But in reality, are elites taking the blood of children to do ritual sacrifices?
And he wouldn't like those questions, right?
He'll just say, well, it's more about the symbolic reality and so on, because he doesn't want to directly endorse such outright conspiracism, but he wants to play footsie with it.
Yeah, like you say, it's a standard manoeuvre.
I was listening to John Campbell today talking about these strange coincidences with monkeypox and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it was so heavy-handed, Chris, so heavy-handed.
I'm not saying that they did anything here, but, you know, make your own conclusions, that kind of thing.
You could say it was a bit naughty of them to put that in, really.
I'm not saying that, but some people might say they're a bit naughty to put that in.
Some of you...
You may prefer your senior medical advisors not to have a potential, no one's saying it's a conflict of interest of course, but a potential apparent conflict of interest as a cynical person might view it.
Some of you may prefer that.
So it's a pity that very senior people sometimes appear to have a potential conflict of interest.
No one's saying that would result in them promoting a particular drug, of course not.
But it's an apparent conflict of interest.
You can decide.
You don't need me to tell you what to think, do you?
It's huge amounts of money.
And yet these people are making decisions about the health of the entire population.
Again, no one's saying that there's any ill practice here.
But some of you might think it doesn't look good.
Some of you might even suspect it does affect her.
Does affect decision-making.
That's not for me to say.
And you look at the YouTube comments, not surprisingly, people are getting the message loud and clear.
But you also see the people who are, you know, positively inclined towards him will then say, well, he didn't say that's what he thought.
He's just talking about the possibility.
And you're like, yeah, come on.
Everyone knows what he's saying.
Like, look at his audience response.
And so.
With Pajot, I pointed out these things.
I made some threads highlighting this tendency towards conspiracism, which I had pointed out that my priors were quite high towards, and lo and behold, they were met correctly.
And Pajot came across the criticism, and he was not impressed, Matt.
Let's hear what he had to say.
Two weeks ago now, I'm not even sure time really flies.
Some guy that I never heard of who runs a podcast called Decoding the Gurus, I guess, kind of went after me on Twitter.
At first he was going after Brett Weinstein, but then decided, I guess, to go after me.
And anyways, he has the usual kind of, you know, dismissive new atheist tone.
And I was going to ignore the guy.
But then David Fuller from Rebel Wisdom and other people that I respect, you know, said that this is important, that I should pay attention to it.
But really, I'm not going to answer too much.
But one of the things that this guy attacked me on is, here's one of the tweets.
He said, he's talking to David Fuller and he says, here's Jonathan Pejot saying, Alex Jones' intuition are absolutely correct that abortion is a human sacrifice for power.
And that he would not be at all surprised if the elites were engaged in ritual sacrifices.
And so this was, of course, his big proof that I am off the rails, that I somehow understand what I'm talking about.
But I thought it could be a good opportunity, what sacrifice is, why we sacrifice.
So that's the introduction.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
So he hasn't responded yet, but you put it to him, as we just heard.
I think he's not impressed by what you tweeted to him.
It's a pretty fair reflection of what he said.
Yeah, and the video, this is an hour-long video that he made about human sacrifice in response.
He flashes up my tweet, but this is how he frames it.
One of the issues that we see with a lot of these kind of new atheist types and this kind of new atheist rhetoric is...
That they often act as if religion is this thing completely set aside in human behavior.
And so they create a box called religion.
And then they look at what's going on there and they just see it as some kind of aberration or some kind of strange behavior that humans are having.
And because they don't...
They don't seem to want to connect the ritual, let's say, religious behavior with other types of behavior or other types of regular behavior that humans have.
Then they find it very strange when other people do that.
Let's say if I try to explain how certain behaviors today are akin to sacrifice, I've done this not only in terms of abortion, but in terms of war.
For example, I've talked about how certain acts in war are very much akin to human sacrifice.
And so that's the problem.
It makes it very difficult to engage with these types of people because...
They're not really trying to understand why people would sacrifice in the place.
How did this happen?
How did humans start to sacrifice?
Once you start to ask those questions, then all of a sudden you get larger categories of human behavior and you're able to understand why it would happen that sacrifice would be developed and why it is delusional.
It really would be a strange delusion to notice that Sacrifice is a human universal, but that today, for some reason, we don't do that anymore.
Nobody does that anymore.
Nobody sacrifices.
And, of course, nobody participates in human sacrifice because, you know, we're so evolved that we would never do something like that.
But I think that it's really the blindness of not understanding what sacrifice is.
It almost sounds like he has an interest in anthropology, almost.
The study of ritual.
The thing that's annoying about this, Matt, it's not just that, you know, I don't mind that Peugeot doesn't want to engage.
I don't want to engage with him.
You know, David Fuller, God bless him.
He was sure we can have a productive encounter and reach across the divide.
I think it would have just been an unpleasant conversation for Peugeot because I would have directly put questions to him about conspiracism and that kind of thing.
This part about, like, the reason I've made this mistake is that I don't understand that ritual and religion are, you know, important in the modern world or that they touch any other aspects of life.
And I've got no interest in the history or the psychological effects of taking part in rituals or traditional imagery or any of those things.
He's got me nailed, man.
He's got me right down.
He's got me right down.
So, yes, he's completely wrong because that's my specific area of academic expertise.
And it's the thing I've probably spent the better part of two decades focused on.
But it's more that he didn't just Google.
You know, he made an hour-long video.
He took the little tweet out and all that.
And he didn't just spend 10 minutes to Google.
My name.
Or, you know, look up something just to see, oh, what's this guy about?
Like, if he looked at my profile even for a minute, he might have noticed that it says cognitive anthropologist interested in conspiracism, radicalization, and religion and ritual psychology.
Right?
At the top.
My pinned tweet is a long thread about rituals and religion in Japan.
And counter to the image that I don't think the ritual in...
Perhaps any other part of life, I published articles about non-religious rituals.
I've written encyclopedia entries about what ritual does in human society and through evolutionary history.
So that was annoying.
But it's more that I know what he's going to do, right?
I know that what he's going to do and what he does go on to do is to present human sacrifice as being Well, look, when the military sends people to war, isn't that really a modern form of blood sacrifice for the nation?
And doesn't that, you know, are we really so different from the ancients that we like to look down upon?
But no, Matt, that's not an insightful insight.
There's an article that I teach every single year by Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle called Blood sacrifice in the nation, revisiting civil religion.
There's an article that came out just a couple of years back.
Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies.
This was in Nature by Joseph Watts.
I also teach that.
So this notion that nobody could have an interest or connect these like state, sacrificing the state to ritual practices, they did.
Anthropologists have done it for decades, and it does not mean that Alex Jones is very insightful.
It does not mean that adrenochrome farms are plausible.
And that's what the critique is.
The critique was not drawing an analogy between the modern state and the sacrifice of children to pre-industrial societies requiring that men fight in war bands or whatever.
There are parallels there, but yeah.
Yeah, I feel your pain.
We all feel your pain, Chris.
We're all very sorry.
That would be upsetting.
Look, it's not an indulgent thing.
It's not an indulgent thing, but I'm rebutting a sensor maker who's made an error.
Look, I'm going to end this short rebuttal segment with one point.
So you could, you know, he manages to go one hour and he never addresses the prominent Conspiracies around child and human sacrifice today.
He never addresses those, right?
Quite an oversight given the ecosystem he exists in.
But he does at the end return to the point of, you know, he's been talking about all these symbolic sacrifices.
So what about actual sacrifice?
You know the point that I originally criticized him on?
And let's hear what he says in the rebuttal video about that.
Let's get to the second part of the tweet that I said.
That I wouldn't be surprised.
If elites engage in ritualized human sacrifice.
Now, I'm not saying that they do.
I don't know if they do.
I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
And why would I not be surprised if they did?
Because I look around me and I see that criminal syndicates use killing.
As initiation methods, they've used it for thousands of years, whether it's the Spartans or whether it's the Hells Angels, they use killing as initiation mechanisms.
And I'm not saying that all the elites function as criminal syndicates, but there are certainly some elites that function as criminal syndicates.
And to the extent that they function as criminal organizations and syndicates, and they use the same patterns and structures as the mob or the mafia or other criminal syndicates, then why would I be surprised?
I mean, I don't know if they do, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did, because it's a human universal.
And you see it in civilizations that date thousands of years ago, and you see it in the streets of big cities today.
And so I don't...
I don't see why that's weird.
And it's only weird, like I said, for someone who creates a weird little distinct category called religion, a category that they don't understand.
You anthropologists are famous for this, aren't you?
You take your religion, you put it in its own little box, and you think it's not connected to all the other things human beings are doing.
It's only weird.
Only weird to people who don't understand religion.
The thought that elites are engaging in human sacrifice regularly is implausible.
That the Democrats are harvesting the blood of infants.
It's only a silly conspiracy to people that haven't properly considered the mafia.
Jesus Christ, he is doing the Alex Jones thing.
He's doing it.
He's almost not brave enough.
To directly endorse them.
So he has to add in the layer of plausible deniability, but he is endorsing them.
He didn't change his stance from the first video.
So he just added an R of waffle to make the same arguments.
Well, you know, it's part for the course, isn't it?
Different gurus flirt with, dabble with, play footsies with, or jump in.
With both feet into the concrete conspiratorial world.
And, you know, Alex Jones, to his credit, he jumps right in there, you know?
He goes all the way.
Balls and all.
He does, but, you know, that's part of what my issue is, Matt, is like, you can regard it as, well, you know, it's not like all his content is pointing people towards Alex Jones or blah, blah, blah.
Alex Jones, just a week or two ago, when the kids were slain by the school shooter, was again positing.
That it's possibly a false flag attack by the government.
And he tried to, you know, avoid directly insinuating this time that the children didn't die, but he still strongly implied that it was a politically motivated and organized event.
And Peugeot told his audience, go check him out.
Go check him out.
He's got lots of insights, lots of important things to say that people need to hear.
And actually, now you mention it, I did hear some of that from Alex Jones.
And actually, Alex Jones does exactly the same thing, which is that now, I don't know that this was a false flag, but...
It wouldn't surprise me if it was.
Wouldn't surprise me.
That's the thing.
It's the exact same.
They don't get it.
So, Jonathan Peugeot thinks, or wants to frame it to his audience, that it's atheists being intolerant of religious people.
But it's not...
Religious people don't have to do that.
My family are all Catholics.
None of them recommend Alex Jones, right?
Like, I hate this way that Jordan Peterson and others like him use religiosity and religious symbolic interpretation as a shield for their particular brand of politics and conspiracism.
And that's what Jonathan Pajot is doing as well.
He might be more religious than Jordan Peterson and take more Interest in this symbolism?
Unbelievably, that seems to be the case.
But he is the same in that, you know, it is not a religious thing that is making him say, I can't say that the elites are not sacrificing children.
It's a slightly more sophisticated veneer than Alex Jones, but inside of that is just the same box of howling crazy.
You can't get away from that, I think.
And the thing is, you could have a perfectly nice, Three or four-hour conversation with Jonathan about biblical interpretations or the iconography of mushrooms in the Bible.
You can have a great conversation with Jordan Peterson about the symbolism of the entwined double helix and then land with him saying that you can see the molecules if you take enough LSD.
You can move your level of apprehension up and down from the micro level to the more macro level.
And, you know, at the highest level of your consciousness, you can apprehend the most general ideas, and at the lowest level, very specific.
Well, the question is, how far down the levels of analysis can consciousness go under extreme conditions?
And so, and I said this with speculation, but I've seen these dual, they're often dual-entwined serpents.
They're very common.
And so...
Well, like I said, this is in the realm of wild speculation, but I know what Crick thought about the origin of DNA.
Well, he thought it was too complex to have evolved.
You mean the idea of it coming from that?
No, I mean, I know that's an infinite regress.
Okay, so all that was behind that bit of speculation, which I normally would have ever done.
I think that under some conditions, people can...
Vision can expand to the point where they can see down into the micro level.
They can apprehend the micro level consciously.
You think that our consciousness can extend down to the micro level?
I do.
The micro, micro, micro level of DNA.
Well, since we're on this topic, I have taken extremely high doses of psilocybin.
I think at the kernel of it, there's an awful lot of abstraction and obfuscation and complexity and these cloud castles being built on top of it.
At the very base of it is just a nugget of rolled gold, pure crazy.
Yeah, and it's that notion that they just keep saying, it's really complicated.
It's a very dense, it's difficult, you know, this is really interpretivist stuff.
And that's just a shield against, if you state it plainly and directly, it's stupid.
I'm not saying no interpretivist stuff can be deep, but I am saying you can use that.
That's just a way to hide shit opinions.
And lots of people do it.
Agreed.
Agreed.
This was my own grievance mongering segment.
I'm sorry, but it was just...
Watch out.
Watch out, Chris.
Grievance narratives.
I know.
I've got them now.
I got the sense makers of drawing me down.
Mud.
But yeah, well, I thought that deserved some response.
But we're going to have a nice interview now, Matt, where we don't...
Talk about any of that nonsense.
No.
We'll get back to the world of tech.
Yeah.
The very down-the-earth, gritty world of online brand accounts on Twitter.
That's right.
We'll hear from a special one.
One that's done pretty good with his brand account.
That's right.
So let's go now.
Okay.
So welcome, Nathan.
Thank you for...
Joining us.
That's right.
It's my pleasure.
Stoked to talk, guys.
Matt, you're here too.
Just in case.
It's good to be with you again.
I'm joining you from ANZAC Day.
That stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.
This is the day we celebrate all the wonderful things the military did.
But I'm taking a break from that, from the various rituals and ceremonies, and taking time to be with you both.
Happy day.
That's good.
And we've brought Nathan here just to talk about.
That topic specifically.
Australia and New Zealand.
It's a military.
I'm writing a thesis on it.
Nathan is here in part because he previously, I think recently stopped, but was running a brand Twitter account that had achieved some level of fame and notoriety.
The Steakums account, which produced a bunch of detailed...
Fred, I think it's fair to say would put some researchers to shame on conspiracy theories and good heuristics for identifying reliable information and so on.
So we wanted to bring Nathan on to talk about that account and how he ended up doing that and his interest is in those topics more generally.
And also broadly, the weird Twitter ecosystem, which Nathan has a much better grasp of.
A lot of brand accounts seem to play in the water of, but yeah, so maybe a, a good place to start for anybody who isn't familiar is how would you describe what the Steakom's account did and like why it became,
you know, a kind of popular meme.
So what's the nutshell description of that?
Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, most people, if they have any familiarity with Brands on Twitter or brands online, they tend to think of Wendy's Twitter, which got famous in early 2017 for roasting people and just kind of developing the sort of sassy brand personality.
And brands have been doing that since, like, you know, the early 2010s on and off and some in more obscure ways that didn't necessarily get a lot of press coverage.
I would say...
Denny's had a Tumblr account in like 2013 that was pretty popular that they then kind of moved to Twitter.
There was a couple smaller ones like Hamburger Helper.
It's mostly food, like CPG or restaurant.
Yeah, yeah.
Mostly CPG or restaurant brands, just like traditionally, like with weird commercials and mascots.
Like there's something about that part of the industry.
So Wendy's was like the first one that like nationally put that on the map.
I mean, it was literally.
It was covered on Anderson Cooper.
It was this whole huge thing where people were like, what the hell is going on with this fast food account?
So I actually started working on the Steakum account, which for those who don't know, it's like this cheap, like frozen slab of meat product that's sold in America.
And, you know, you make like what we call Philly cheese sticks.
I'm from right outside Philadelphia.
Just basically like a hoagie with meat and cheese.
Yeah, hoagie like a sandwich.
I don't know how colloquial hoagie even is.
That was helpful.
Yeah, just putting it out there for anybody.
So, yeah, I started working.
I work for an advertising agency, and we started doing work on this account in, like, 2016.
And then by 2017, after this whole thing with Wendy's had already kind of taken off, I had proposed to the client, you know, for us to do this on Twitter as well.
And it was basically a blank canvas.
So like the account didn't really have a following.
Comparatively to Wendy's, which is a pretty large national fast food chain, Steakon was mostly regionally based.
So it didn't have like, it had some name appeal.
Like it was kind of a meme over the decades, like kind of funny food brands.
So some people knew what it was, but it wasn't huge.
Um, so it didn't really have like this built in following that we had to build from scratch.
So 2017, I started messing around with it.
The client just didn't really take it too seriously because they were like, oh, this is, you know, who cares?
Like, who's on Twitter even?
Like, Twitter is not as popular as Facebook or these other platforms like YouTube.
So it was kind of just an oversight, and I just spent a lot of time in these weird Twitter, what is referred to as weird Twitter, which is this kind of niche subculture that really was one of the first subcultures that kind of...
Grew into a lot of what we see now is like the ironic humor that makes up a lot of how people post on Twitter, which is just kind of sarcastic.
And I call it irony poisoned.
Like everything is just bizarrely framed and meant to be nonsensical, sort of dataist in a way.
Um, so we, I started playing around and some, some of these circles, the sort of weird backstory to why is because when I started working on the account, I had noticed that.
Whoever was running it before me, it only had like a thousand followers.
It was pretty inactive.
But whoever was running it before me had blocked like two or three hundred accounts.
And I'm like, who are all these people?
And I started going through and I'm realizing they're all weird Twitter people.
So I'm like, oh, there's got to be some history here.
Like something must have happened.
Sure enough, there was this whole thing where I guess the previous social media manager who was running this account had been kind of like had a weird run in with some of these weird Twitter accounts where They would harass the brand, and then the brand blocked one of the larger ones.
His handle was BonerHitler.
So this guy, he had a big enough following, like 10,000 plus followers, where when he realized he was blocked by Steka, made a whole stink about it, and then got all these other people from weird Twitter to harass this brand.
So the brand just went on this blocking spree.
When I got ahold of the account, I unblocked all these people and I started engaging them in a kind of like tongue-in-cheek, self-aware way where it was kind of like, you know, I shouldn't have blocked you all.
Almost like humanizing the brand in a way where it felt much more, yeah, just personable and less like corporate.
Oh God, like how do I interact with these weird people?
So that really was what initially planted the seeds for the account to get traction.
And then over time...
As I just got more comfortable, like figuring out what the voice would be, it evolved, it evolved into like cultural commentary, I guess, like you alluded to Chris, which is just like talking about like the problems in society and like media literacy and all these things that ended up kind of becoming these viral moments,
um, that snowballed between like 2017 and then 2021, uh, when I, which I just stopped running a few months ago.
So very, uh, yeah, very strange kind of corner.
Of the internet, but in a weird roundabout way, weird Twitter birthed the brand and also inspired a lot of the weird brand stuff that you see in general on the platform.
Yeah, so there's a few other corporate accounts that have taken a similar kind of line in terms of being lighthearted or satirical or ironic or whatever, to varying degrees.
But probably your handling of the Stakehams account was unique, I think, in Doing quite substantive threads on topics like folk epistemics and science literacy and conspiracy theories.
So I think that's something that really made what you did stand out.
Yeah, I think so.
The first time I experimented with that, it was kind of on accident because in interacting with these weird Twitter groups, which evolved.
As you guys know, when you're on Twitter, there's a million subcultures.
So, like, over time of being on the platform, you kind of, like, naturally filter in to different groups or echo chambers, whatever you want to call them.
Like, there's library Twitter, where it's just full of librarians.
You've got, like, parts of, like, the medical community.
You've got anime fans.
You've got what they call stands of various pop, you know, pop culture figures or singers or whatever.
So we would kind of, like, stumble along, right?
Like, you'd start, you'd see a viral tweet.
Interact with it, suddenly all the people in that bubble would start to interact with the brand then, and you'd get this cross-pollination of groups.
So along the way, I was just tweeting and figuring out, like, what is sticking with people?
And those threads, early on, before they ever even went viral, I was realizing they were sticking with the audience a bit.
So the end of 2018, I did this one that was this kind of like, uh...
Just commentary on, like, why young people, particularly online, are just acting strange.
And one way I put was that they were flocking to brands because we were actually getting, through the commentary we were doing, we had been getting these, like, extremely vulnerable DMs from random people, mostly kids, like teenagers, college students,
that would be, like, spilling their guts, you know, talking about their home life, their relationships, their mental health problems.
I'd be getting these messages through the brand account, like, what is going on?
Like, why?
If I was a person struggling, like, why would I reach out to this frozen meat brand?
So this thread I originally did in 2018 was just kind of like a commentary on that.
It was like, okay, just as much of the analysis that you guys have done that others have noted the past few years, you know, the sort of growing societal distrust and, you know, rising inequality and...
Kind of the doomerism we see in culture, all these kind of compounding variables as I saw them pertaining to why some random kid would reach out to a brand like this.
And that took off then.
And then everybody was like, why is this frozen meat brand doing commentary like this?
Like, this doesn't make any sense.
And then to my knowledge, I think I was the first, Stakem was the first brand to have like viral success through those long form threads because it is a very unconventional way.
Now you see threads a lot more like with public figures, but especially a few years ago, like they just weren't as common of a popular form.
Like people like the sharp, witty, short tweets.
So to see that, to see like that serious kind of commentary juxtaposed with this frozen meat brand, I think that those two things combined really is what made it a pop off.
And I'm just curious as well, Nathan, when...
You decide to do that.
Like if you want to make a thread like that, do you have to get it signed off in advance?
Or is there like, you know, you have the freedom to experiment?
Like what leeway?
Because I imagine like if you were a brand account and the brand guy started promoting QAnon conspiracies instead, you'd probably get a lot of engagement as well, but the brand might not like it.
So it seems.
Online misinformation or that kind of thing, it also attracts attention, right?
There's people that would not agree with the kind of things that you were talking about.
So I'm just wondering in that respect, like how much freedom you have and do you get much of the flip side of, you know, people saying Steve Gumbs is part of the Illuminati?
Oh yeah, always.
Yeah, always like, well, especially in the rise of like, as we've all seen the woke brand.
Trend, especially in the aftermath of, like, the BLM protests of 2020, where there's this kind of, like, coalition of brands that all came together in a very short period of time.
Suddenly, like, never having this as part of their messaging in the past, all of a sudden being like, you know, we're pro-Black Lives Matter, racial equality.
Like, they overnight changed a lot of, I don't want to say, like, fundamental pillars, but, like, clearly their outward PR and their messaging shifted with the culture.
So I think in a similar way, we and I were lucky that the things that I were saying, they fit roughly within the status quo.
I mean, like to answer your question directly, this account is very unique in that I did have a lot of freedom.
And from the very beginning, this whole thing was very like a happy accident.
Like no one, including the client, no one expected the brand to go viral, to have the level of success that it did.
So there was no, like, guardrail system in place beforehand.
So then once it started going viral, it was kind of like, okay, the ship's already taken off.
Like, now we just have to kind of control it as we go.
And then the client, I mean, there was like a four or five, or no, it was a five-year client relationship we had with them.
And, you know, there's a lot of trust built into that relationship that allowed me, as like a writer, to be in person, you know, putting together these thoughts to make sure, because you guys know this, like when you're...
When you're tweeting things, from any perspective, like, unless there's certain shitposters who they don't give a shit about how their content's received, but if you're trying to put ideas out there, unless you're the kind of person who just can, like, post and then log off and not worry at all about the backlash,
which is nobody, like, 1% of the population, you have to, like, consider all, like, the caveats and the nuances and, like, thinking, like, 4D chess, like, how do I get...
Four steps ahead of what backlash I might get from this group or that group.
So there's a lot of thought that had to go into these threads.
And if I had a corporate bureaucracy trying to edit and refine that along the way, I don't think it ever would have would have worked.
So it was kind of anomalous in that way.
Yeah, but it must have taken a really high degree of trust from this corporation to, yeah, allow you to just You know, give you your head, basically, and do what you thought was responsible and was not going to embarrass them and would still be interesting and informative and funny and all of that stuff.
I'm just kind of amazed that it happened, to be honest.
I mean, yeah, same.
And it was a weird ride, too, because, like, you have to imagine, especially at the early times when it would happen, it would happen so quick in the zeitgeist.
So, like, the tweets would go viral, usually overnight.
So, like, I would tweet them in the afternoon.
They'd pick up steam and eventually start taking off in the evening.
And the next morning, we would be getting all these calls from like, we got calls from the one we did with Neil deGrasse Tyson that went viral.
We were kind of beefing with him where he made some comment.
It was like a kind of standalone quote.
He said, science is, the great thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it.
And we said, log off, bro.
In a pretty snarky way.
And then we followed it up with this kind of like epistemic takedown of like why that isn't necessarily great messaging from our point of view, which is again, ridiculous coming from this brand.
But literally that next morning, we got a call from Fox News on behalf of Tucker Carlson to come on and talk about this whole, I'm sure it was like a slowed news day in the culture wars for him to reach that low, but.
We've gotten a lot of those types of calls from news organizations, from all across the political spectrum.
Just because it's goofy.
It's perceived as, I think, a fun escape from the more serious things going on.
And, of course, the client relationship regarding that was very tumultuous because they were like, what the hell do we do?
How do we reply?
We had to turn down most of them because we just couldn't react quick enough in terms of what would be brand safe or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is a bizarre situation to be in.
And I guess related to that is I've seen, I'm sure you've seen as well, Nathan, that although people like Matt and myself were very appreciative because the threats were just good.
They were like good information.
But I seen some reaction from a couple of disinformation researchers, particularly people that lean more lefty, right?
That they kind of were like, This is a corporate account.
It's giving information, but never forget that it just wants to sell your process.
Totally.
But then I also saw that you did a thread at some point, which basically made that point directly saying, you know, don't trust us or any other corporate account.
We are here to market and sell process.
And yeah, but I wondered, because you're a person and your identity is known, or at least it's relatively easy now for people to identify you.
I was curious about that because like, presumably you have some interaction or at least are aware of the people, you know, if people are like, be careful of the Steakums account, it's a PSYOP.
And then you know who they are and they know who you are.
It is this weird thing where like...
You're criticizing Nathan, the person, as well.
So I just wonder about that dynamic, like how to manage it or how to react to it.
Oh, I could talk about this for hours.
It's, yeah, it's an ongoing tension.
And I think to what you were pointing to before, like that sort of meta self-awareness of the brand, in large part, I think that was probably one of the leading contributing factors to its success because it created this sort of It worked in two ways.
It created an armor against exactly what you just said, where critics can say, hey, this is propaganda.
This is like a corporation co-opting the language of our politics or our movement or whatever.
It can say any of those things, but the brand's already said them.
So it's like, okay, the brand's admitting this.
And not just one time.
I made an effort, if you go through the threads that I've done over the years, I made an effort to say in almost every single one of them, if not every single one of them, just to To kind of like remind the consumer or the user of what the interaction just and I know you guys you guys have touched on this as well like the sort of inevitable parasociality of like interacting with public figures and brands and just any kind of media where like it's inevitable like we just assign senses
of credibility and authority to figures that we're consuming with any degree of trust and It's so important to always caveat, always remind people, like you have to, like you guys are saying, you can take the information for what it is.
And if it's good information, if it stands on its own, then that's great.
Like you can take from that what you will.
But it is also important to remember the why of where that information is coming from.
Like what is the function of it, of the perpetrator of it?
Like in this case, it's a brand trying to sell you products.
So if you're okay with that dynamic.
All good.
Like, whatever.
I mean, as long as you're aware to it, like, that's fine.
We all deal with advertising to some extent.
But if you're not aware to it, then that can become a pretty serious problem.
And it speaks to the sort of depths of our media literacy crisis in terms of just people turning their brains off when they get some kind of fuzzy, entertaining rhetoric thrown in their face where they're like, oh, yeah, this sounds good.
I agree with this.
That's fun.
That kind of Provoked me in a way.
I like that.
And then all those critical thinking senses just turn off.
And that was definitely something I was hyper-cognizant of throughout the tenure of running the account.
And it was difficult for me.
I mean, I don't know.
I come from a pretty left-leaning perspective and I can empathize and sympathize in some ways with a lot of the folks who have kind of leveraged that criticism.
At me, and I've spent a lot of time directly speaking with them, engaging with them, and just reading, you know, their perspectives.
So I don't feel, I don't agree with all of it, but I do think, just like with what you guys are doing, I think there's certain people who would consume your podcast and think like, Okay, you know,
like, I don't agree with the way they characterized, you know, Jordan Peterson like this, but I see the value in the critique here.
It's, you know, I think there's something to that where, like, you don't, if there's, like, a self-awareness to it, you know, it kind of, it unloads the burden a bit, you know, to be able to actually, like, hear what people are saying.
And that's, personally, that's always what's helped me deal with the tension is just kind of, like, I really do try to take a step back, even when it's...
Like we all know on Twitter, it tends to be really aggressive and spite-driven.
You know, I tend to try to take a step back, remember where they're coming from, even if there's like sarcasm or hate or whatever kind of laced in it, and try to pick out, you know, the truth of the criticism.
Because I think there's always value in that if you can stomach it, you know?
I've read through all of your threads this morning, actually.
I've seen some of them before, but I read through them all again, and you're quite right.
You do emphasize that.
Hey, I'm just a corporate account trying to sell you meat, remember?
And without blowing smoke, I'll just say that they are good.
Like the content is good.
It's well-informed and it's good advice.
Like you said, the content matters.
So it's obvious for somebody who would be reading those tweets from there, they could see that it is authentic.
It's good material.
You emphasize that, hey, I'm a dude running a corporate meat account.
And that's a very healthy thing.
I mean, what Chris and I...
Often emphasizes that we're a pair of mediocre academics, milk-toasty, liberal, lefty types.
So that's gonna, these are our opinions, but just like Brian's saying in Life of Brian, you know, don't follow me, think for yourselves.
You do not, and I think that's the big difference when you look at some of the more toxic and pernicious influences out there.
They don't tend to do that.
They do the opposite, in fact.
Yeah, and I do think, yeah, it's really tough to, even when you do remind the audience of that consistently, like, it's just at a certain point, I don't know if we were planning to get into this at all, but there is just, it's unavoidable to kind of create a cult-ish personality around yourself at some degree.
I mean, I already, I'd wonder, to kind of turn it back around on you guys, if you've discussed this in the past, but like...
As your show has grown, obviously, like, anytime something grows, like whether it's a public figure or a group or a media publication or a brand, it kind of takes on a life of its own eventually.
And I do wonder, like, just as with the brand, we, over time, you just develop these kind of followers.
And there's a certain language, like, I don't know, in comedy, you call them, like, bits.
Or in, like, journalism, you call them beats, like, kind of recurring.
Things that you talk about that kind of become part of your personal brand or whatever it is, like whether it's things you discuss on your show that become like that regulars attach themselves to or, you know, just jokes that kind of become like insider jokes.
Like these are all things that contribute to the parasociality that comes from consuming any kind of medium or media.
And that's definitely something that happened with the Stakem account.
And I think the criticism.
Of what you guys have just both laid out, I don't think being self-aware to that necessarily negates the criticism.
I think the criticism can stand valid on their own.
The self-awareness, from the vantage point of the brand, the self-awareness is just another tool to market the brand.
It's referred to as anti-marketing in the industry, which is just kind of like when you see ads that intentionally position themselves like they're poking fun at themselves.
We're not like those other brands.
You know, we're like one of the cool, self-aware brands.
And it all eventually plays into itself from a brand's perspective.
And I think similarly, like from any guru figure, like even up to Trump, we're like all press is good press to certain figures and certain forms of media.
So I do wonder, like, I don't know if you guys have discussed this at length with your show as you've kind of continued to grow in this sort of culture war space.
Dealt with that kind of like blending at all, where you guys are kind of becoming the gurus as you decode them yourselves?
Yeah, I think we have discussed audience dynamics and also what we encourage or don't encourage.
And I think as your audience grows, the things that you have to consider do change.
Like it was fine when...
There's a thousand people listening to be very nonchalant about your impact.
But if you have a hundred thousand people listening, then things are different.
But aside from that, I think the point you raised about, you know, if you address a criticism before someone makes it, it takes the venom out of it because like, you know, when someone says, you're neoliberal shills and you're like, yeah, well, we said so.
And I do think there is an element of that where you can't help But have that be slightly strategic.
When you do it, we covered counterpoints.
And I think this would be a slight difficulty about covering the left-wing YouTube BreadTube ecosystem is that there's a lot of ironic, self-referential humor.
It takes the criticism that you might make and they do it themselves.
So like if you're doing what we kind of do and you comment on a piece, but they just said the joke.
About themselves.
It inoculates them.
And I recognize that from in academia, when you write a paper, you should have this section, which is called limitations.
On one hand, limitations exist to tell people what the problems and potential drawbacks with your paper are.
But on the other hand, it exists so that you can say, I already thought about that.
And I already said it's an issue.
Way ahead of you.
Yeah.
And I think those two things.
They're hard to take out.
So on that aspect, I think it is good.
And there's a genuineness to preempting criticisms that people might have.
But there is an element of it where you point out simply acknowledging it doesn't actually mean that you've dealt with the problem or the critique.
Matt, you might have some different thoughts about the parasociality and that kind of aspect.
No, I agree with everything you said there, Chris, but like a different...
Part of what, of Nathan's question was the sort of audience capture and the parasociality and the relationship you have with people who listen to you.
And I can remember a few times when I've felt just a tiny bit uncomfortable because it felt a little bit like somebody maybe liked us too much.
But that's relatively rare.
And I think even in those cases, it's more that I'm kind of sensitive to that.
And I don't, we really do not want that.
Like we wouldn't want to have.
An Uber fan, like some of our gurus have Uber fans, where it doesn't matter how crazy they get or what they say, those Uber fans are on board no matter what.
And I'd like to think that we don't have many, if any, listeners like that.
I think even the people that do like us in that sort of, you know, slightly parasocial, but, you know, I don't think parasocial is always bad, obviously.
You know, there's a lot of authenticity there as well.
And I think even the people that like us personally are pretty comfortable disagreeing with us as well.
So I think that's good.
And I hope that what we try to channel is the thing that I like best about academic culture, which is that despite all the backbiting and the vanity, it really is one of robust critique and debate.
And you can have people that respect and like each other a great deal and at the same time are going at it hammer and tongs.
Chipping away and pulling up criticisms and finding flaws.
And the other party appreciates that because in responding to those, either rebutting them or maybe elaborating their view in order to accommodate it, they know that it's making their position, their model, whatever, stronger.
So ideally we'd like to foster that kind of thing.
The one other thing I just want to add to what Matt said is that the fact that me and Matt are Like our primary identity is not podcaster.
It's academic.
And we do this on the side, right?
And I see that with some other podcasts that I like, like the Very Bad Wizards, right?
They're also academics.
They teach and they have a successful podcast.
And I think that helps inoculate to some extent from getting culture war brilliant.
We're like, it's all about.
The Twitter debates or the most recent Sam Harris thing is I would worry more if I was leaving academia and just becoming a podcaster, that that would be dynamic.
But when you have this other aspect of your life, which is detached from that or separate, it feels like that creates a buffer.
Yeah.
Is one thing I would say.
I think, like, it's interesting, I guess, like, I know, I don't mean to turn it around on you all during the interview, but it's interesting from my perspective, just because, sort of like I was saying earlier, a lot of the space is, I don't know who originally said this or if anybody originally said it, but the quote,
as I hear it often, is that in social media culture, brands are trying to be people and people are trying to be brands.
And there's, like, this constant tension where, like, you...
Yeah, you're constantly in this space, and I see it within academia, I see it within the medical community, I see it within journalism, where with social media, you might be an expert in some field, but now you also have this sort of online persona that you manage,
which is people come to you for your takes on things.
And I think with you guys, I would sign off on everything you both just noted.
I would definitely say part of the...
The sort of armor, and I think you share this with the Very Bad Wizards guys to some degree, is the sort of impartiality to how you try to cover a lot of these figures.
Obviously, to a listener, there's going to be biases bleeding through.
Like you said, you're both left-ish leaning, liberal leaning, but there's not an underbed of ideology that you're trying to prescriptively draw people into.
Like, that's how I always felt, like, years ago, I remember, like, when the Majority Report started covering, like, Dave Rubin and, like, being the kind of first media organization to really critique him.
And I was drawn into that, like, because I was, I kind of had a brief period where I was, like, fascinated by Rubin and, like, Peterson, like, in 2015, 16. And I remember getting, like, hearing those critiques, and I was really into it, but, like, very quickly realized,
like, man, this is kind of, like, unless you were already on the fence, I guess.
This is preaching to the choir a bit.
The idea is prescriptively, we're not just here to deconstruct Dave Rubin or whoever.
We're here to pull you to our ideological camp.
So I definitely, I don't get that vibe from you guys' show.
And I think that helps.
But I guess from those leftist point of view, they would just be like, oh, well, they are this neoliberal status quo, whatever.
But it's not as overt, so I think that's like a helpful...
Respect the WHO!
Corporate shills over here.
Yeah, but obviously we get it from the writers as well.
We do have listeners who are right-leaning and I respect the hell out of them for bearing to listen to us, frankly, because you can tell that it kind of hurts them and it feels to them as if we're these...
All of Chris's snide remarks.
I mean, yeah, it's just...
They think we're Kendi apostles because we didn't find him.
Like, we didn't tear him apart in the episode that we did.
But like, that Kendi episode just constantly comes up.
And I don't sign off on Kendi's approach to things.
But I do feel like most of the people that make comments about Kendi, I'm not sure they've listened to anything that he's, you know...
They've seen some Twitter threads.
And I'm not saying that that doesn't mean you can criticize people for the social media clips or whatever.
I'm not doing it.
Jordan Peterson, you know, listen to his 20 hour lecture series because I don't even think they exist.
But I mean, the format of our show is we take a piece of content and we look at it and then we look at the stuff that's in that content.
And in the content that we looked at with Kendi, it just, it wasn't that bad as compared to like lots of the guru figures that we look at.
But in any case, it doesn't matter.
There's a whole bunch of people that are convinced that our goal is to spread the gospel of St. Candy.
Yeah, you won't be able to please everybody in that in that way.
I mean, it's just because it's like it's like the both sides is journalism conundrum where like if you try too hard then to like lean in or there isn't a critique, then you just weight it in a way that it shouldn't be weighted.
Like now you're just kind of forcing something that isn't there.
I mean, again, not like you said, not that there aren't critiques there, but.
I think it's more honest from your point of view, you know, to critique it as you see it, not try to make stuff up or push it just for the sake of some arbitrary balance, because you're never going to find that balance, no matter who's listening.
And Niamh, I have a question.
It was kind of spurred by, I read recently this Vanity Fair piece, which is looking at Kurdish Yavin, Yavin, Yavin, the neo-reactionary movement.
The new right, yeah.
Yeah, and I hated that piece.
I really hated it because it felt like a piece out of time.
It felt like a piece from 2016 when people were talking about the alt-right, kind of criticizing it and saying, you know, yes, it's doing all this stuff and it's anti-immigrant and so on.
But at the same time, the pieces were like slightly fawning or making them cool.
And that's what this piece does again.
But it's doing things like saying, normies like us.
Wouldn't believe that they think institutions need to be torn down.
And I'm like, what normies are you talking to in 2022 after Trump that think, oh, it's strange that people would be critical of mainstream politicians and institutions.
The question I had for you around that was that piece was very much highlighting that there's a kind of layer of irony protecting people whenever they make these extreme Statements, right?
They'll say something very extreme about like women not being able to vote or something, but then you're never quite clear.
Is that irony or is that them revealing what they do?
And the author seemed badly equipped to navigate that.
And like I said, with the leftist content, which I've seen as well.
It's a similar thing where there's ironic references to gulags or this kind of thing, right?
And it's passed off as kind of, well, it's obviously a joke, but there are tankies.
And I wonder about, from your experience in those ecosystems where there's so many layers of irony, do you have any recommendations about navigating that?
Or like, how do you deal with the fact that the internet is now just a machine dripping with irony from every pore?
And like taking it seriously is kind of presented as you're missing the point, right?
Or you're too pofiest if you think the neo-reactionaries, they're really just, they're neo-Nazis in slightly better context.
Yeah, this has been, it's one of the most frustrating talking points or issues that I deal with, especially a lot of left-leaning friends of mine in recent years, because I can remember in 2016, 2017, when the sort of predominant Talking point on the left regarding the sort of right-wing trolls like Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McGinnis.
There was this idea like, you know, even if they're saying this thing ironically or as a joke, there's still harm.
And because it could be a dog whistle, we can't discern the sincerity of it.
So it doesn't really matter whether it's sincere or not.
We need to take it seriously.
And even before predating it, but not as much to much of a degree, I think since then.
That same sort of, like, irony poison has come up, like you said, on the left.
Not just, like, with gulag talk, but killing landlords.
Like, there's all these kind of, like, talking points that people on the left have that, like, due to their sort of ideological bend, it becomes a very self-justified comment or critique.
And then it becomes this thing where, like, a lot of these, especially a lot of them are young people.
So you got a lot of these people who then are doing it as kind of just part of the group.
Like, I'm going to make this joke because everybody else is making this joke.
I want to fit in.
But just like with the alt-right in 2016, 2017, you don't know who's sincere about it.
And inevitably, there will be some, even if it's 0.1%,
I think, unfortunately, there's not really...
So, I guess, point being, there isn't really a way.
Like, from then to now, there is no way to, like, easily...
Or even, like, moderately discern, you know, when these people are sincere or not.
And I think that's why, to me, it's just always better to err on the side of just not doing it.
And when you see it, like, you don't have to...
I'm not saying, like, you have to 100% assume that the person's acting in bad faith, but I think when people do assume that, that's a safe assumption because, like, it's just become the norm in these more extreme...
I mean, this is literally the white nationalist or far, however you want to, some people refer to him as a white nationalist, far right, whatever.
But Nick Fuentes, who essentially made Holocaust denial comments and made tons of comments about the Jewish people.
And it's very, he in years past didn't really try as hard to cover it up.
Like he kind of just tried to be as edgy as he could be.
And then he essentially got no fly listed and now he's banned from every platform.
But he still has a cult following.
Like, he's still a guru.
And he's only, like, 24 or something.
So he's got this huge following.
They call themselves the Groypers online, which is this kind of, like, new right that's split off of the old far right, like the Richard Spencer types.
So now these guys are, like, doing the same content, but it's much more masked.
And, like, now it's like, well, how do you know?
Did these people change?
Like, maybe are they not as radical now?
Or are they still just as radical?
They're just kind of sounding.
A little less extreme.
And you run into this issue where it's like there is literally the only way to discern it case by case is by like going through each individual figure's history, like looking up all their logs and videos of them speaking.
And it's like for a layperson, like somebody listening to this podcast who just kind of like consumes as part of like their daily entertainment or whatever for news, you're never going to be able to accurately discern this person by person.
So it's really.
It's a frustrating part of the ecosystem of, like, internet culture.
And we were talking a little bit before the show, like, there's a long history of, like, where this sort of, like, irony style of content or ironic style of content has come from.
And it's at the point now where everything is so centralized that it's showing demonstrable harm.
I mean, like, just like we saw at all those shootings in, like, 2018, 2019, you know, the manifestos of how these people are thinking about and writing about.
The extreme topics they're covering, it's all laden with irony and jokes and dog whistles, and you don't know what's what.
Even if somebody wrote a handbook on this, there is no one-to-one way to figure it out.
So I try to just tell people to stay clear, and if you see it, if you're trying to make a hard-line assumption, you just have to go through that person's catalog and history to figure out if it's the real deal or not, because it's a nightmare to navigate.
I'm feeling increasingly guilty listening to you because I'm thinking about my own tweets and stuff and how many of them are tongue-in-cheek and ironic and even trollish sometimes.
Just yesterday I tweeted, we could censor maybe 90% of tweets with little loss.
Uh, which was kind of intended.
But that's exactly what you're talking about.
And some of my favorite accounts, like I really like Liam Bright is a popular philosopher on Twitter and he is, um, very much.
Super ironic.
Yeah.
And, and I actually, so I just really enjoy that, but I'm also agreeing with everything you said.
So, um, I mean, Don't tell us a new title now.
Yeah, yeah.
What I'm, what I'm wanting to do is defend, I'm going to try to defend it.
It is, I mean, what I would like to think is that when people do take me too seriously, I do say, I'm joking.
You block and mute them.
Is that a joke or is that serious?
I don't know.
It's meta all the way down.
Yeah, so I feel like, at least up till now, until hearing you talk, I've squared this circle with myself by telling myself that, you know, I've got two voices and I'm hopefully inserting enough signposts that people know when I have my tongue in my cheek.
Chris, you're shaking your head.
I know that's backfired for you when you've attempted to be sarcastic and then...
Some followers treat you as being serious and then the option is either to say to them, this was a joke which you missed or to respond to their heartfelt comment and like ignore that it was a joke.
So you've caused yourself difficulties.
Not that I'm better, but I'm consistent.
Yeah, you are consistent.
I'll grant you that.
But I mean, what's the solution here?
We either put the crying laughing emoji in every tweet like that.
Or do we always tweet in a po-faced, serious, earnest manner?
I mean, it's an impossible balance to strike.
I do the same thing.
I mean, I still shitpost here and there.
I've been trying to lean more into what we just call sincere posting on Twitter more.
But I think what you all both know, and I think what most people know intuitively, nobody likes sincere posting.
People like shitposting.
It's more entertaining.
And it also, it gives you, again, just like we're talking about the sort of self-referential critiques, it gives you a sort of armor of probable cause.
Like, you can kind of be like, you have a way out if something gets taken the wrong way.
And it's also just like, it's literally a spoonful of sugar.
I mean, just like people, comedians, like half of why Joe Rogan is so popular.
It's like, when you listen to Joe Rogan's podcast, like, he's saying, like...
Very serious commentary, but he's a quote-unquote comedian.
So, like, if he makes some jokes along the way, it's, like, way easier for the audience to digest.
And, you know, I mean, Chris, you do this, like, you're pretty, like, you have a very, like, a fun sort of sense of sarcasm that I know some people hate.
I mean, I think it's, like, a good, I think you have a pretty decent balance of, like, you know, not going so far as to, like, cutting people down, but also, like, not being afraid.
To add a little bit of mockery and a little bit of fun into engaging.
To be successful in literally any field, you have to have some level of edge, of provocation, or else you're just reading an academic paper, and no one wants to read academic papers.
There has to be some blend.
That is the correct blend, but it's a moving target, so I don't know what the solution is.
Nathan, don't neg Matt like that.
He's excited.
I think that both Matt and I have the same sense that one of our pet hates, and it's not just because of academia, it's also just because of our personality, is the pofiest seriousness with...
Which so many gurus and online pundits take themselves.
And I think there is a genuine value to just piercing the pretentious bubble of people.
And you can still take their content seriously and analyze it and take it apart.
But just, you know, pointing out the absurdities of Eric Weinstein saying he wears a jacket because he wants to let people know that he's the elite in waiting.
Or Jordan Peterson showing up to a conversation for a podcast.
In a pre-suit, tuxedo-looking thing.
He does the bow tie, doesn't he, sometimes?
He had a white freaking bow tie last time.
You have to be able to joke about that.
Even if you're the person doing it, I don't know, I have a mustache right now.
If I walk, I don't know, more people have mustaches these days, I guess.
It's kind of trendy.
But there are certain things you can wear and present yourself as.
You have to...
Have some kind of self-awareness as to, like, how you're looking with a particular audience.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And then I think there's an important difference between, like, I would say, for example, you know, you talked about the Shooter's Manifestos and the shitposting content that was in the New Zealand Christchurch Shooter's Manifesto.
And that, to me, is a good example of, like, how confused so many people get in that space, like, notably Sam Harris and the conversation I had with him, but many others.
Just were completely flummoxed by the including of shitposting because they were like, how do we know the ideology?
Right?
There was a copypasta and he made some jokes about 4chan stuff.
So it could be any ideology.
It's like, no, it can't.
Not in that case.
No.
Yeah.
The Great Replacement is the title.
It's like 80 pages long.
It's shitposting, but with pure right-wing content.
And I think that kind of thing, we have to treat.
In a different category than Matt's creating behavior.
Totally.
And ContraPoint's content as well.
I think she's using irony and she is using it sometimes to deflect criticism.
But it's very different than the way Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder utilizes that.
I'm not saying all leftists are the same as ContraPoint in this.
But there is a difference between raising a thing which you think is legitimate.
Critique and poking fun at it, but also showing that it is an issue, which I think, for example, you did in your threads and raising an issue and making fun of it so that it can never be used against you.
But it's just a strategic thing.
It's a bit like the strategic disclaimers.
We sometimes get questions about, well, what's the difference between a strategic disclaimer and a genuine disclaimer?
And it's hard to explicitly explain that, but it is often clear in the surrounding behavior that you can see.
The person didn't mean that they don't have any certainty about this and they're just discussing possibilities, conspiracy, hypothesizing.
Whereas when people make genuine disclaimers, it tends to show that they have a genuine level of uncertainty and an openness to be corrected on things.
So yeah, just my sarcasm is not the same as that.
Yeah, no.
Sorry, Matt.
I don't mean to, you know.
I think it's safe to say, I mean, like many things are, I think there's a spectrum of ambiguity.
And I think, like, when you have this sort of, if Matt's sort of shitposting style is at the base of that, and then maybe there's, like, a couple notches above, you have the Stakem threads, where it's like, there's, again, a very sincere message, but it's also juxtaposed with the irony that it's coming from a meat brand,
and it's kind of self-aware, but it's still propaganda.
And then you have, like, maybe a couple notches up there, you have ContraPoints, where ContraPoints does use a hell of a lot of shitposting and irony to kind of, like you said, I don't think only deflect criticism, but also, again, blur some of what her intentions or what her positions are on things,
because she doesn't want to get pinned.
She's an interesting phenomenon because, like, I think most of why she's started to do that more over the years is because she's been, quote unquote, canceled.
So many times it's like she's now trying to, like, again, play that 5D chess of constantly predicting what mobs of people on Twitter are going to say about her video and then react to that in the video.
And it's all very self-referential.
But to your point, I still think, even though there is a level of ambiguity to that, I don't think many people come away.
From her videos thinking that they don't know where she sits ideologically.
I think you could safely be like, okay, maybe she's somewhere between like a social democrat or a democratic socialist.
Maybe she has some anarchist tendencies.
But you can safely say she's like far leftish.
I mean, like comparatively to most of the spectrum.
But then above that notch, somewhere above there, you have your Nick Fuentes type who strategically are using that irony and that shitposting to completely obscure.
Their ideology so that they can use it as a shield then to be like, oh, I'm not actually this white nationalist.
I'm just making Holocaust denial jokes.
So there's definitely a spectrum going on there.
And you're right, it is really hard to talk about in any kind of one-to-one way.
But I think it does all come from this same place of Internet culture where everybody just communicates in this way now because it's what's entertaining and it's how we all just couch our views nowadays.
So it's a...
It is tough to navigate, especially for those figures, like you mentioned, like a Sam Harris who's kind of on the outside looking in, not really participating on the ground necessarily with the, like, you know, rolling in the mud, like all of us do on like the Twitter culture war stuff.
Yeah.
Well, I like where this conversation is about with this spectrum and you have me and Oscar Wilde at one point.
Pepe the Frog, 4chan people at the other end and the rest of you.
I sort of scattered in between.
Somebody needs to design it.
Somebody can submit it.
That's a meme of reading, Matt.
Well, look, this is going to sound like platitudes, but, you know, I think it's good to sort of tread lightly and grasp lightly.
And I like, I like the humorous, ironic mode for, for that.
And I also kind of believe in the principle, and you keep seeing this on the internet and with this sort of postmodern culture we've got, which is every good thing.
Becomes weaponized.
And you get the facsimile of the good thing being used for nefarious purposes.
I mean, we, I mean, just to take, to sort of shift the conversation, thinking about the IDW people and the kind of science and rationality type people, I mean, that's clearly a good thing on the face of it.
And you obviously see many people aping that, but really just arguing for.
Something nonsensical, whether it's the Brett Weinstein, Heather Haying sort of naturalism and crunchiness, or some sort of anarcho-libertarian right-wing reactionary politics just sort of smuggled in.
So, yeah.
That's a great point.
Like, it's co-opt across the spectrum among any group.
Like, I mean, just like anti-vaxxers today, their talking points are much different than they were 10 years ago, where now They've kind of evolved to talking about, oh, no, we're the pro-science.
We really believe in the process here.
We just don't trust those experts that are getting it wrong.
There's all these different groups that have figured out, like you said, through this weird postmodern language devolving that we're going through.
These words and terms of how we use them are just increasingly difficult to really pin down because everybody has kind of figured out.
How to weaponize them in whatever way suits their ideology.
Yeah.
And I'm curious, Nathan, you know, there are so many different ecosystems online, right?
And, you know, we spoke a little bit about weird Twitter and brand Twitter as well.
And we haven't mentioned yet, but each of the platforms has their own ecosystems, right?
Like Twitch streaming.
I've recently...
Started to follow a little bit of the Japan blogging people on YouTube, you know, like in Japan, and there are also Twitch streamers.
Yeah, yeah.
Entering that world is just like, it's very interesting because the kind of conventions with the content are different.
But I wonder from your familiarity with the kind of people that we cover, plus knowing those worlds, are there any...
Like ecosystems in general that you think are very ripe for looking at guru-ish figures that maybe have dynamics that are slightly different, you know, from the Jordan Peterson types.
But I'm just curious, areas that you think would be interesting for us to look at, yeah, that we might have overlooked.
Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm sure you've discussed this at some length across the various figures you've covered, but I think...
The one that always comes back around is essentially gamers and nerds.
You know, gamers as the kind of cornerstone, the piece that kind of connects all these folks, but then more broadly, people who are gamers who are also anime fans or furries or people who are in some more Tumblr,
Reddit-esque forum communities that are just kind of really deep online.
I think those groups which...
Have really, from like the day one of internet culture, started to disseminate a lot of the shitposting style that we're talking about.
They are the sort of, in my view, underbelly of a lot of these gurus and these groups.
I mean, I'm sure you're both familiar with Gamergate to some degree, which is always referenced when you talk about the online culture wars.
And it's interesting because that was a culmination, I mean, for those.
Listen, you don't know.
I mean, it was essentially this is 2014 in which there was this scandal where a rumor broke out in the gaming media industry where some journalist was accused of sleeping with this other game developer who essentially was,
you know, there was some bribery going on for a good review of this indie game.
So this word got out in the gaming community.
It became this whole Massive controversy that ended up rising to the levels of mainstream media all across the late night shows and major news publications.
And that became a large event that was a predecessor to like the 2016 election cycle and the alt-right and the sort of like incel community or manosphere as it's referred to.
There's always like interesting subcultures and groups and a lot of the The guru type figures that eventually became notorious and years later cut their teeth during this era, like Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon and Gavin McGinnis and even Shapiro,
which he wasn't directly involved in GamerGeek, but like capitalized on a lot of the angst within that community.
And like his, a lot of his YouTube videos, like owning college students correlated with a lot of what's going on there.
So.
There's all these converging factors and when you really look at the underbelly of what's driving, like when you look at Ben Shapiro's success, how did Ben Shapiro make it to mainstream news where now he's a respected public intellectual and he's interviewing all the top public intellectuals in the world.
And you look early on and it's like a lot of these figures were just propped up by gamers and YouTubers and people doing React content on these platforms.
To me, those are the figures who, like you just said, Chris, like with Twitch, like there's this whole massive, massive underbelly that I think normies, for lack of a better term, they don't necessarily see it because like by the time they see it, these figures are on their favorite big podcasts and shows and they're out into the mainstream.
But to get there, oftentimes they leverage these gaming communities and these kind of like obscure nerdy online groups, whether it be For like group identity stuff to prop up their own personal brand or with reactionary content,
like they use the fringe Twitter account or college students on campus to then use an attack board to then like really drive engagement.
Like, oh, crazy feminist gets owned at this thing.
And those become your viral headlines that then push you in that way.
So those are, to me, I mean, in online culture, it's no secret that those are.
Like, the underbelly subcultures that prop up this stuff, but I think a lot of folks who are existing more in the ecosystem of, like, your Joe Rogans and your Jordan Petersons today, unless they were around five, six, seven, eight years ago when a lot of this stuff was baking,
they might just see it on the surface, like, oh, yeah, these are just, like, public intellectuals that came out of nowhere, and, you know, they got insightful stuff to say, but meanwhile, there's this whole history that goes back pretty...
Pretty long time, even including like with the, the new atheist sphere.
I mean, this stuff, it has a lot of history in internet culture.
So there's, there's one example that I think a recent one, which kind of reflects the opposite dynamics of somebody coming from a little bit, I mean, it's not mainstream, but the Young Turks is an online media platform and Hassan Piker,
Piker, right?
Yeah.
He was involved.
Like I haven't followed his career, but I got the thing that he was like a on-screen personality and had some shows and then made some controversial comments about Dan Crenshaw and like how he got the eyepatch and then was chastised by his uncle.
But after that has now become like a huge Twitch streamer, right?
With like a kind of leftist band, but the same thing.
The thing that gets me about this is like, you know, the connection to gamers is very clear because a lot of Twitch streaming, it's just people playing games or interviewing people even while they're playing games.
And like the amount that I know that it's, there's like a very long tail where there's a lot of people in those ecosystems who aren't making money, the vast majority of people on them, right?
But the people at the top are making so much money.
And I think PewDiePie is now somebody, you know, on YouTube who Even though he isn't a mainstream figure, he had so many profiles done on him that people know him.
But I think that a lot of these other alternative ecosystem people, they're hugely influential.
They've got millions and millions of people in their audience, but they're under the attention line for mainstream media until they pop through with some controversy.
I don't want to drive us too off course here, but I will give you the Hassan lore because I followed his career from the beginning.
Ironically, you're half right in that he had his big kind of mainstream breaks from a lot of his comments like American Deserve 9 /11 and the Dan Crenshaw eyepatch thing that did land him like in mainstream media criticism and all that.
However, he actually did build his entire current audience, which is predominantly on Twitch, on the backs of the gaming community because Cenk Uygur is his uncle and he had like an internship with the Young Turks and tried to have his own show there.
And it just wasn't picking up steam, like it just wasn't super successful.
So he then branched off to do his own thing on Twitch and he befriended the Twitch streamer Destiny, who founded Twitch Politics, which is now this kind of larger ecosystem of streamers who all just talk about culture wars and political topics.
So he, Destiny, actually...
And then Hassan reached out.
I think that was the dynamic.
Hassan reached out then because he saw that Destiny had the biggest audience in the political community at the time to essentially collaborate.
And then those two ended up having this relationship dynamic where They did a bunch of like debate shows on Twitch.
And because Hassan had this kind of pre-existing clout from the Young Turks and he was like a model, there was this interesting dynamic between the two of them.
And they eventually had a falling out like a year or two after that.
And then that's when around the time those comments were made.
So he kind of like he had this kind of twofold approach where he like hit the mainstream from his provocative comments.
But even to this day, I mean, like what he's most known for and like what pays his paychecks is his Twitch audience, which is all gamers and people who watch gamers on that platform.
And he still does some political coverage, but I know he's steered largely away from it the past like year or two other than when there's like a big moment in the news or whatever.
But yeah, it's interesting.
Like even even with him, I mean, like it's just it's gamers all the way down, I guess is what I'm saying, you know.
Well, what you guys are describing is a kind of a pipeline, right?
From a medium that's entertainment and totally casual.
To certain people getting selected from that reservoir and find themselves like a voice talking about quite serious things, right?
With strong ideological or political overtones.
And, you know, it's a slightly different example, but you made me think of J.P. Sears, who got his start producing pure, light entertainment, the kind of thing that people would just look at extremely casually for 30 seconds on their phone and then move on on YouTube.
And now you find him giving speeches at anti-vax rallies and, you know, engaging in the most hyperbolic partisan rhetoric in a deadly serious manner and taken very seriously by this broader audience.
And, you know, it's kind of a frightening image, isn't it?
Because one of your threads, Nathan, you talked about memes and the history of memes and how it all works.
And there are some things in internet culture that are old and some things that are new.
But I think one thing that is new that is a little bit scary.
Is that these communities function as a kind of reservoir, an incubator to select for and essentially train certain people to produce the most virulent memes.
Yeah, so it's kind of a frightening image.
Yeah, everything is memes now.
I mean, it's like if you can become the meme or if you can be the meme curator or if your community is kind of like an aggregator of memes.
I mean, yeah, like from the 2016 election onward, I mean, I think now it's become like a legitimate study academically where people are actually starting to try to like understand better, like the sort of medium of information as it spreads and it gets weaponized politically and culturally in so many different ways.
And it is, like you're saying, I think the scary part of it is the speed in which that has taken on a cultural force.
The, especially older generations, like I'm 30, I would say really anybody older than me, I mean like 35 and up, it is increasingly difficult to understand all this stuff.
Like I think the sort of image that most folks have of memes at this point, the extent to which is like, oh yeah, I see this thing on my Facebook feed or whatever, or somebody sends me this funny thing.
It's got text on an image and that's really it.
But people aren't.
They don't have a critical analysis of where those images come from, how they get made, how easy is it to make one, how can you fake things and all that.
It all happens so quickly and the sort of rate of our media literacy is just nowhere near where it needs to be to kind of keep up with where this thing is going, with how powerful they are.
I remember in the 2016 election cycle that some Trump Mean guys, like kind of reaching prominence to a certain extent, right?
A relatively low level, but they were still being sought out for, you know, comments and interviews because they were producing like shitposty memes for the Donald.
And it's not the same thing, but whenever Jordan Peterson had Ta-Nehisi Coates put him into the Captain America comic, right?
Basically made the Red Skull say what Jordan Peterson was saying.
I thought that's a good example because Jordan Peterson reacted with outrage, right?
In a kind of furious, you know, what the hell is this?
But I imagine people in his orbit or somebody, because he very quickly seemed to pivot to, oh, let's...
Let's like adopt the Hydra image into something that we can sell.
And the same thing with like putting the lobsters on Italian stuff.
And I feel like there is a constant battlefield or danger.
If people produce memes to criticize someone or do something, you know, to kind of mark them, that there's a good chance that that will just get flipped round and become like a thing that they sell.
So it is this weird...
And I feel increasingly that people talking about, you know, well, that's Twitter and that's not real life.
But like the amount of people in the world that are not online, especially in developed countries, is increasingly very low, right?
And they might not be too online in the kind of communities that we're talking about and aware of that.
But I think we're in a very different world now where you could ignore what the online ecosystem was doing.
I'm promoting.
And, you know, most of the things that will end up on Tucker Carlson or that kind of thing, you can find them a couple of months before in these weird subcultures.
And increasingly, rather disturbingly, it's often Infowars.
Yeah, they bleed into each other constantly.
Even the flip side of that, which is just the people who, like myself, who kind of grew up with internet culture, are now, they're becoming adults and they're actually working.
At a lot of like, whether it's media companies, just companies in general, like your Netflix's, you know, like, so these are people who grew up in this worldview and they're engaged in these culture war activities or whatever and meme making.
And now they're actually beginning to get influence within corporations and like publications.
And it's creating like a whole new dynamic where like that pipeline of information, whether it's memes or ideology or whatever, it's getting a lot shorter where those lines definitely blur.
And ironically, to what you were just saying earlier about this sort of co-opting of this stuff, that's where, personally, I've gotten the most ire.
It's predominantly from left-leaning people, or leftists, I should say, for the Stakem account, is the idea that through the sort of style of posting that we do, it's commodifying.
We're just co-opting their language.
The shitposting to them is like, It's not just a way of writing.
Like it's almost like an identity feature, you know, just like this is how our group speaks to each other.
So now when brands start to do that, it poisons it in a way.
Or you could say the same as celebrities.
Like it's like when a celebrity posts a meme, it's like the meme is dead instantly or what he only means.
But celebrities, brands, whatever.
And that's where I've definitely drawn the most ire from people is just people who see.
It's not the content that Staken would publish.
It's not.
The self-awareness or whatever, it's actually like you are directly taking from our culture, almost like appropriating it in a way.
And yeah, I mean, it's calmed down now that I'm not running the account, but I mean, I got swatted.
I had the Secret Service show up at my house at one point because some person, they made like a fake account and put my name on it and said I was going to kill the president.
And like the Secret Service took it seriously.
I've had a...
I've had a bunch of people like, yeah, doxing and all sorts of death threats and that type of thing.
And it's all come out of that sort of whatever you want to call it, like dirtbag left ecosystem of like of shit posters where it's just people who are looking at what the brand is doing and they hate it.
I mean, they think it's just the worst thing to them because while all these other like abstract political events might be happening in the world that may have an effect on them, like whether it's health care or whatever, I'm sure like obviously there's an impact.
But there's only so much they can do.
They don't have a direct line, necessarily, besides voting, to do something about it.
Whereas with this account, it's on Twitter.
So they can go after the account.
It's very accessible.
They can find me by just Googling me.
So it was a very interesting time.
And it made me realize how seriously these people take their memes, you know?
You're going to have to stop talking, Nathan, because my mum listens to the podcast and she's already worried about this kind of thing.
If it hasn't happened to you yet with all the fan bases you've stoked, I'm sure you're okay.
Matt, I don't think...
Can the Australian government swap people?
Do you have that?
They send around some kangaroos or something.
I don't know what they do exactly.
I'm probably relatively safe here as well because I don't think people can navigate the Japanese infospheres.
So yeah, now I've just said that.
That's a bad thing to say that.
You always want to make challenges to people online.
That's the thing.
To anyone listening to this who's thinking about Doxie B, I can change.
I can do better.
I mean, sorry.
You don't need to send the secret police to it.
Matt was ironic.
Whatever he said didn't annoy you.
That was irony.
You have to tell them to dox you because then they won't do it then.
Then it's ironic and it won't be a challenge.
That's right, Matt.
Yeah.
The one thing that Matt would really...
It would just be mundane for him and walk in the park as if he was swatted.
Yeah, that is just letting me laugh.
But yeah, that's, I mean, that's, it's somewhat insane to be honest.
I didn't know that.
And like the fact that you were, you know, targeted for swatting, which, which carries with it, the potential in America is a unique country in this respect that like you run the risk when engaging with special forces.
That the wrong signal could be a sign that you need to be gunned down.
Absolutely.
It's terrifying.
And that's why I don't post about...
I mean, I shouldn't even have said it on this podcast, but I don't actively post about it to draw too much attention to it.
I've told the story here and there, but it's just...
It is, like you said, one of those things where you don't want to feed...
As it's happening, that's what the trolls want.
You're literally feeding the trolls and you're amplifying that attention and giving them the thing that they want so they're like, oh...
This is a target that we had.
Everything that we just did worked.
So now we can repeat it until they stop, essentially.
You don't need to worry because the one thing I've discovered with long-form podcasting is people don't...
If someone else goes through and catalogs and clips out, that's fine.
But people don't go and check content.
It's one of the weirdest things that Matt and I have noticed is that often people will have very high-minded defenses.
Of Alex Jones' content and have no fucking idea what his content is actually like, right?
You know, somebody can bring up what he does and people are like, why does he do that?
And you're like, well, why are you, why do you have a very strong position on, you know, whether his banning was reasonable or not?
If you'd know none of the specific reasons, but that just seems to be a common thing.
So, yeah, I'm just...
I don't think you need to worry about that.
I'm not worried.
Nobody does the real work to dox these days.
And I feel like you have to find, like, just the most extreme of the extreme people.
Because, like, I mean, I'm sure you guys get this all the time.
Like, I did some tweet a few months ago when Tim Pool had Alex Jones and Joe Rogan on his live show.
It was, like, in, like, a trailer.
And I think I was one of the first people to tweet that that was happening while it was happening.
So my tweet, I was kind of mocking it.
So my tweet became the tweet that everybody was quote-tweeting and doing their commentary on.
And eventually, of course, this made, I think, Michael Malice quote-tweeted it.
And then eventually, all of those kind of alt-center, far-right people flooded in.
And you start getting all the insane comments, people messaging my Facebook account.
Oh, it's weird.
You're like, why are you searching me on Google or Facebook and looking for other ways to message me?
See, there's always ways to tap in to those kind of more extreme groups if you push the right buttons.
But generally, they don't go that far unless you've done something really bad.
So you're saying if we follow your advice and we cover Destiny, we're fucked.
Depending on how you cover him, I mean, he's got a very, they call themselves the Daliban.
Like, it's a very, it's a very, it's a meme.
But like, yeah, they're very loyal.
Online community, to say the least.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Well, I could literally just probe your mind for the rest of the day about the minutiae of various online communities, but we probably should let you return to your actual life or online life.
But I'm kind of curious, Nevin, so you're not doing the Steakam's account anymore.
Are you planning, like, are you still in?
I don't know what that's called, like brand management.
And relatedly, I guess if you went to another brand and like started posting threads about conspiracy experiences and stuff, it wouldn't have the same impact.
But you seem to be someone who genuinely has an interest in that area.
So I kind of second part of that question is just, are you planning to continue doing stuff in the...
Field of misinformation or online stuff, or is that just a personal interest?
Yeah, that is a good question because I've been wrestling with this for a couple of years now, honestly.
I mean, I've worked in marketing for almost a decade at this point, just day job, pays the bills.
And now the Stakem thing, obviously, has kind of elevated a lot of my public image, I guess, and more people know about my work.
But obviously, I...
Like you just alluded to, most of what interests me is this kind of internet culture and culture war space.
And I've done a lot of just personal write-in about it.
Which I should also note, if anybody has made it this far into the show, if you Google "Brand Twitter," it's either the first or the second thing that will come up on Google is an article in Vulture Magazine.
I wrote in 2019 that's like a history of kind of all this stuff from brand Twitter.
It's decent.
I mean, it took me and the editors a long time.
of brands.
We'll put it in the show notes.
Yeah. Okay.
Perfect. Perfect.
But yeah, so I don't, I am really interested in Missinfo and media literacy and this space.
And I've been writing a lot of articles about it and like considering different angles for a book at some point.
It's just, it is tough on top of the day job.
So I'm just trying to figure out, you know, which, which direction to take, because I'm definitely much more interested in this.
And obviously I'm
Was able to leverage my interest in these things through that brand account.
So we'll see, I guess, how those things maybe collide in the coming years.
But as of now, I'm just kind of doing the commentary and the writing on the side as more hobbyism.
So we'll see.
Well, yeah, well, from both of us, I'll just say that I think the kind of stuff that you did through that StateGum account was really fantastic.
And yeah, for listeners, if you want to pop on Twitter and just read that sort of mega meta thread of threads, there's good material in there.
And we'll link to some of your other materials.
And yeah, so from Decoding the Gurus, we hope you do find the time to keep doing more of this stuff because we like it.
It gets the seal of approval from us.
That's huge.
That's everything to me.
I mean, love you guys' show.
I mean, yeah, you're doing great work and it's...
Vital deconstruction that it's unfortunately not common enough, I think, in these online spaces, especially within the figures that you approach.
So I'm a big fan and I really appreciate you having me on for this.
Careful, Nathan.
Sincerity and prayers.
I told you, I'm trying to become more of a sincere poster.
I'm trying to escape the irony-brained shitposting.
I will say that we often have this trouble that, like, at the end of interviews, you know, we want to sincerely say that we like the person's content, that we like them, but we've often previously just explained, complained about people being,
you know, overly fawning.
Super coronated, yeah.
I always, like, you know, I feel a kind of burning in my soul when people say sincere nice things, but in any case, we did.
And do really like the stuff that you put out.
And, and also it was really great to talk to you about this stuff.
I've been trying to arrange it for my terrible arranging skills for like half a year.
So, so thanks for coming on and I'm sure we, it would be great to have you back at some time whenever there's more mentalness in the online sphere, which is always so.
Absolutely.
Well, it's been a pleasure again.
I appreciate it.
And, uh, yeah, I can't wait to chat again.
Thanks so much, Nathan.
See you next time.
Ciao. Well, Matt, Nathan, what a man.
How many insights?
Many things.
What was your favorite?
What was your favorite one?
I enjoyed it all.
I can't really point out any specific thing that he said.
Well, it would be doing it injustice.
If we pulled out specific good things that he said, it would be an injustice to the other
Couldn't mention.
So it's best not to be specific.
Agreed.
Agreed.
You know full well that was weeks ago and I can't remember what happened yesterday.
Oh, spoiling, pulling back the curtain, Matt.
But I do remember that I liked the cut of his jib.
Yeah.
I feel like I'm just envious of the next brand that he's going to be accounting for.
Agreed.
So Matt, that time of the evening where we...
Dip into our reviews for our review of reviews.
Review of reviews.
It's getting closer.
It's getting there one day.
It's like a Zeno's hare or tortoise, whatever it is.
You get closer and closer, but you never quite get there.
I've got a good negative one this time.
It's a serious one.
It's not like a comedy negative one.
And it's by...
IOS Rational User.
Okay.
So it's a rational critique as well.
And the title is Projection?
One star.
I love listening to academics talking about all gurus, except the covert ones in academia.
Wouldn't it be more enriching if instead of projecting our own psychological need for recognition, we spent more time reflecting on how science...
Actually evolved through history?
Have you considered how philosophy developed before it became mainstream?
What about medicine?
Did you know there are countries where people trust ancient healers more than MDs?
Anyway, the need for gurus will always exist, especially in academia, where you reach enlightenment when you get your fist PhD, he wrote fist.
Good luck with your spiritual path towards humility.
Monster.
Monster.
That was a journey, wasn't it?
It was a journey.
Like from traditional healers, the mainstream philosophers today.
Nothing like the, you know, back in my day.
The scrappy street philosophers.
I think he's talking about Socrates or somebody.
Wow, that was a journey.
I felt vistas opening up as I listened to that.
I don't think he ever really got this.
Point.
Like, I thought it was going to have the Islam in the academia, but it kind of tailed off.
It was sort of wistful in the end.
It was, you know, what if?
Yeah.
Good luck with your spiritual humility.
Our path towards humility.
What is it, the history of science?
Or was it we need to study the history?
Yeah, the history of science.
That was an all-wonderful one.
He said, wouldn't it be more enriching instead of projecting our own psychological need for recognition?
I guess he's saying, you know, we are...
The egomaniacs, not Eric Weinstein.
We spent more time reflecting on how science actually evolved through history.
Could this have been written by Eric?
I wouldn't put it past him.
No, that doesn't have his distinctive tone.
I can recognize Eric could never go undercover because he cannot change his tone.
Spot him a mile.
Free Float 55!
Free Float 55!
No, no, no.
You're just a normal guy.
It's just a fan.
It's just a big fan.
Just a fan.
But anyway, thank you for that.
It was an interesting review.
And despite the negativity, I accept it with spiritual humility and insight.
With love.
With love.
How would Lex Friedman accept that review?
Well, he'd talk about that he doesn't mean anybody anything bad and he just wants everyone to come together in love and he hopes to do his best to make that possible.
Beautiful.
Beautiful sentiments.
Good.
Next review.
Okay.
Hateful overthinker.
More my kind of speed.
Hateful overthinker.
It's titled These Hoppy Fruits Saved My Brain From Certain Death.
Oh, I know this is going to be a good one.
Hoppy Fruits.
Hope you get that reference, Chris.
It's sort of long, and I haven't read it, so I'm just going to blast through this, Matt, and see where it takes us.
When I wasn't busy over the last year and a half working furiously on my own pod, the history of rock and roll in film and rock and roll.
He's stuck in an advertisement to his own pod into the review, the cunning bastard.
I didn't know if it was a joke or not, because it's a repetition, but anyway, maybe, maybe.
I was constantly lamenting the inevitable radicalization and shillmongering, as well as the emergence of ill or fake or unearned self-righteous anger that took hold of a great number of podcasters and public speakers I had previously considered to be worth listening to now and then.
That was one sentence.
My listening habits veered wildly from things like Tuesday with stories to the Jim Cornette experience so that I could enjoy hosts that A, had natural chemistry with each other and B, were deeply entrenched in a profession I will never take part in, but I'm always fascinated by.
Well, Matt and Chris easily scratched that itch as well, but they also helped to reinvigorate my brainwave activity.
And provide thoughtful tools to evaluate and protect myself against the gurus that most certainly would have had their hooks in me if I was born a few years later than I was, and hadn't grown up this trustful of the 1990s new age crystal mongers, and then become a fan of Pen.
Pen?
Oh, Pen and Teller.
Of Pen and Teller.
Oh, Pen!
That's what it is!
That's like saying I love lamp.
Fan of pen.
I was almost there but became a big fan of book.
That's a nice review.
Is there more?
No, that was the end.
Just the fan of pen was the end.
But yeah, it was nice.
It was very nice.
He's obviously talking about us being masters of psychology and academia that he gets insight too.
You know, that's accurate.
That's pretty good.
And, yeah, you know, it's got pop culture references.
It's got...
Autobiographical details.
Long sentences.
It's got a lot.
So, five stars.
That's it, man.
Love it.
That's our review.
Good review.
Thank you.
You hateful food.
Hateful food.
Is it the account name?
Or that's the...
No, no.
I just gave him that.
It was hateful overthinker.
Ah, good stuff.
I feel called out.
But, yeah.
That's a review of reviews for this week.
There is something that we need to do.
We sometimes forget to do, but mostly we do it, where we let our Patreons know that they matter to us, that we care, and that we are thankful for their ritual sacrifice for our common good.
So would you have any objection to shouting out some of our...
Patreon members.
Far from it.
I insist.
That's good.
So, this week, Matt, we have in the Galaxy Brain Guru space a number of people.
Rob Leslie Jr.
Josephine Patricia.
Matthew Piggott.
I think he's been said before, but never mind.
He got us again.
Moses Mohammed.
Loki.
And...
Bertrand Sparrowling.
He definitely has, but he's getting called out again.
Bertrand, again.
That's what you get.
You cunning man, Bertrand.
You're snuck in there again.
Very good.
Very good.
And you pronounced their names pretty well, Chris.
Well done.
Maybe you are getting better.
Not too bad.
Not too bad this time.
You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard, and you're so polite.
And, hey, wait a minute.
Am I an expert?
I kind of am.
Yeah.
I don't trust people at all.
Yep.
Now, revolutionary geniuses.
A fine collection of them this week.
Watch this, Matt.
Caleb Catlett, River Pebbles, Jonathan Cano, Etienne, I'm almost glad to hear the last one,
Chris, because I was about to ask, who are you and what have you done with my co-host?
You were enunciating so well.
There you are, Chris.
There he is.
I'll call it a stop there because I flew too close to the sun.
You did, you did.
Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking.
What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know.
Okay, Chris, so this time, no hubris.
You have to crawl before we can run.
Take it slow and steady.
You can do this.
You can do it.
Okay.
So we got Stefan Lejeune.
Stefan Lejeune.
Anton Sumser.
Anton Sumser.
Peter Kerr.
Peter Kerr.
Nico Pomata.
You realize you're saying them all twice.
Is that intentional?
That's what you forced me to do.
Tulsa 420.
420.
Tulsa 420.
Christy McCormick.
Lauren Leinhart.
And Liam Bruce.
G'day, Bruce.
G'day, Bruce.
These are our conspiracy hypothesizers.
That they are.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Yes, we will.
And if you want to be like them, you can join the Patreon.
We have bonus content there.
We release our Gurometer episodes where we try to quantify after we do the episodes on the gurus and we put out decoding academia bonuses about papers or research that we...
Find interesting.
And all such fun stuff, live hangouts and whatnot.
So you can go there.
We have a subreddit.
We have a Facebook group, an Instagram account, a Reddit, a subreddit, a Discord.
That's it.
We're easy to find online.
We're not that hard to find.
And a Twitter.
Only if you're Peugeot is, Chris, hard to find.
Otherwise, for the rest of you who can Google, we're just a few keystrokes away.
Yeah, he should listen.
Maybe I'll send him this episode.
Yeah, so next time, I promise, I won't engage my petty grievances, but I thank you for that today, Matt.
And yeah, so watcha, watcha, note the disc, accord the gin.
