Supplementary Materials 13: Dead Bears, Biblical Stories, and Coffeezilla's Legal Battle
We reflect on the meaning of some biblical scriptures to understand the gurus, alongside:Jonathan Pageau gets into the OlympicsRFK Jnr. and the Dead BearGuru Dystopia: Trump Meets Adin RossEric Weinstein enters the 2024 CampaignThe penetrating insights of Joe RoganCoffeezilla fights back against Logan Paul's defamation caseLitigious Musk and nuisance lawsuitsCelebrity cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other scamsFlashbacks to Simon Singh vs. The British Chiropractic AssociationElon Musk's Interview with Jordan PetersonJordan Peterson's interview 'techniques'All Meat Diet ProselytisingMusk vs. the Sumo ChampionThe incredible confidence of self-help gurusThe importance of 'smarts' in successThe meaning of the Zacchaeus storyThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 19 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksCoffeezilla Defense DropCoffeezilla - Logan Paul Sued MeCoffeezilla - I got scammed for $1,000,000 (about his indemnity insurance)Adin Ross looks up the word fascistThe Horrific Clip of Trump meeting Adin with Hasan's commentaryVideo of Jordan Peterson's interview of Elon MuskThe Guardian: Simon Singh wins libel battleNew York Post article about Elon vs. The Sumo WrestlerRFK talking to Roseanne about the BearNew Yorker: What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's Supplemental Material 13, I think it is.
Sitting over there, a shell of his former self, is the Luigi to my Mario, Matthew Bryan, psychologist extraordinaire, and I'm Chris Kavanaugh, cognitive anthropologist.
I wouldn't say extraordinaire.
I'm just, you know, middle of the road.
But nonetheless, that's what I am.
There you are, Matt.
You're...
You're a shell of your former self, but that only speaks about how high you previously were.
How far I've fallen.
I know I have, Chris.
I've just had to...
Other people would love to be at that height, but for you, you know, it's just...
I know.
I hear what you're saying.
I've fallen further than they've ever climbed.
That's what I wanted to say.
Thank you.
But I had a power nap, so I'll be okay.
I'll be okay.
I'm sure I've got reserves of good takes in here somewhere.
I just need to dig deep.
And we were just talking about our coffee.
We're both taking coffee.
You're taking a nice coffee that you've brewed in your home.
I'm taking a coffee.
Which was in my fridge from the convenience store.
And it's not even a branded one.
It's like no brand convenience store coffee.
And I was just tasting and was like, this is shit.
And then I looked at the top and it says non-sweet.
That's why it's shit.
Non-sweet, unbranded convenience store coffee.
Days old convenience store.
How low you've sunk.
I know.
You are lower than me, my friend.
My God.
And I had such a good coffee the other day too.
I had a coffee from a, like, little boutique coffee shop after doing difficult workout stuff, climbing up things, you know, the stuff I do, and then had a nice cold coffee, and it was perfecto.
And now I'm down to death, Matt.
Goddamn it.
Goddamn it.
All right.
Well, hopefully it's making you feel bitter, putting you in a good mood to bring me some content.
That's right.
What's been going on?
What's been going on?
Like in big wide worlds, lots of things have been going on.
The American campaign is in full swing.
Kamala Harris has got a vice president nominated.
Kamala!
So many people.
They're just like, come on, come on.
Yes, apparently it's...
But now that I've corrected that, it means that when I get it wrong, inevitably, I'm going to be in more trouble, right?
Yeah.
People don't expect me to get these things right.
Camelot.
Yeah, right?
Apparently.
Anyway, we got emails that said, look up this little explainer.
Anyway, I think that's how I pronounce it.
I see great things for her in the presidency.
I knew Camelot.
You knew Camelot?
Oh, I knew Camelot.
Oh, God.
See, the coffee isn't kicking in.
The coffee isn't kicking in.
If you remember last time we were here, Matt, in this spot, we were talking about the Olympics opening ceremony.
And I'll just mention that, you know, you were complaining about the reactionary, right-wing, Christian-style response to it online.
I was complaining.
I don't mind them being reactionary.
I just don't mind them being so stupid.
Be reactionary better.
Yeah, there's not much more to say about it.
Anyway, people have moved on to their new squeezy toy for the next week.
But I did just want to update people that if you thought premier reactionary conservative symbologist Jonathan Pajot would not have commented on this, he released an in-depth breakdown.
The Olympics opening ceremony is worse than you thought.
In my video that premieres tomorrow, I discuss why specifically the images of Dionysus and the Last Supper were used to simultaneously celebrate diversity and subvert Christianity.
I also discuss the purpose and meaning of such symbolic demonstrations in our culture.
And finally, the question of intent.
So there you go, Matt.
I did link it to you, but I didn't think you were going to watch it.
And I didn't watch it.
Maybe does a fantastic breakdown, and it's all very measured and reasonable, and it's not at all conservative Christianity mixed in with weird conspiracism.
No.
No.
I mean, that event is tailor-made for Pajot, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Because there is symbolism.
Interpreting the dark symbolism in some random event.
Yeah, and you can count him to get it all wrong.
Yeah, no, I couldn't watch that.
I couldn't consume that content, Chris.
Have mercy on me.
Come on.
Something I'll mention, I'm just curious if you came across it.
Did you see the little...
A lot of stuff gets released on Twitter, you know, because of what Elon Musk has made it, but it is now a premier location for gurus and conspiracists to dump content.
And did you see RFK Jr.?
Attempting to get ahead of a negative story that was going to break in the New Yorker, I think, about him.
Yeah, once again, I saw the tweets.
I'm aware of the issue.
I did not press play.
I did not watch him explain that.
What was it?
He left a dead bear somewhere.
He left a dead bear cub in a park.
I think Central Park in New York or like wherever.
And so it's him explaining to Roseanne.
In what looks like his kitchen.
With someone filming it.
So already you just have the bizarre weirdo celebrity shit going on, right?
Conspiracy brain-pilled Roseanne is sitting in his kitchen and he's explaining to her this funny story where he came across a road-killed bear cub.
And he, of course, took it into his car because he was going to...
Prepare it and eat it?
Or skin it?
Like, whatever.
apparently this is a perfectly normal thing that anybody would do.
And that woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it.
A young bear.
So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear.
And it was very good condition and I was just going to...
And put the meat in my refrigerator, and you can do that in New York City.
You see a dead thing on the road, you know, you just, you prepare to consume it.
But then, after an evening of drinking and eating, not him drinking, Matt, all the people at the party were drinking or whatever.
I wasn't drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea.
And I said, I had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of.
I said, let's go put the bear in Central Park and we'll make it look like a Gettysburg bike.
It'll be fun and funny for people.
So everybody thought, that's incredible.
He had the idea because there'd been some accidents in Central Park about bikes crashing or people being injured by being hit with bikes.
So he thought a funny prank would be...
This is how he explained this.
To put the dead bear in the park with a bike next to it, as if it had been hit by the bike.
So not consume it or skin it or whatever anymore, just dispose of it.
And he's kind of presenting it as, you know, in hindsight, it's kind of, you know, a silly thing to do, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing.
So essentially, he's released this video to try and get ahead.
I've seen New Yorker discovering that he did this.
And this was covered in the media at the time that there's been a bizarre bear cub, like, body finding.
It was R.F.K.'s doing, wasn't it?
Yeah, but he's just such a weirdo.
He's such a weirdo.
Like, his primary thing is he's a conspiracy theorist and anti-vax activist for decades.
But he just does constant weird shit.
Well, you reminded me of how that's one of the current memes at the moment.
Some Democrats calling MAGA Republicans weird and them getting very upset about it.
But meanwhile, they're just acting so weirdly.
Like, you mentioned Roseanne Barr.
I'm looking at a clip of her now at Mare Lago.
She's dressed like she's about to hold a seance and a little bit tipsy by the looks of it.
And she's...
Telling students to drop out of college because they are filled with devil worshippers who drink babies' blood is the theme of her rent.
Well, they are.
That's not weird.
I mean, how dare you call that weird?
How dare you?
It isn't weird in 2020.
That's like, that's a moderate right-wing politician.
This is the pagewization of American politics.
I know.
He's getting into everything.
Well, so before we get to some more specifically guru things, I think it's good to just get all of the right-wing, insane politics shit done up front.
And Matt, are you aware of Eden Ross?
You know, we had a streamer season recently.
That's a hint for you.
The hint's not working.
No bell's been rung by that name.
Should I know this person?
For your own sake, no.
He is a well-known streamer, formerly of Twitch, banned there for being a shithead and moved to Kick where he's currently one of the most popular streamers over there.
He's mostly famous for being an online Andrew Tate sycophant and yeah, just in the red pill conspiracy poisoned idiot.
Sphere, like alongside people like Sneeko and other such characters, right?
They're actually too annoying for Twitch.
So they go to Kick, right?
It's like Kick is the worst version of Twitch and Twitch itself is already a very annoying platform.
But Aiden Ross, Matt, I'm just going to play you a clip, right?
I think this loses some of the effect when you can't see what he's reading.
So he's trying to uncover the definition of fascism.
And he's going to attempt to read some descriptions of fascism.
He doesn't know what it means.
But just listen to this.
And just to be clear, this isn't a bit.
This is him actually attempting to do this live.
What does a fascist need?
It means you are...
A far-right authorization on ultra-analysis, oh my god, ultra-analysis, political ideology movement characterized by dictator leadership, centralized autocracy,
militarism, forcible suppression of opposition.
So, I don't know what that means, bro.
I swear to god.
I don't know what the fuck a fascism is.
I don't know what the fuck that is, Benito Mazzulli, and Javionte Genital, and Jason Stanley, like, who the fuck are these people, bro, never heard of my fucking life, what is an example of a fastest, yo, all right, bro, see what I'm saying,
chat, like, this is why I don't fuck with y'all, bro, like, dude, like, this is what the fuck I don't, bro, I don't fuck with y'all, bro, I do not fuck with you guys, bro,
The picture he brought up was Hitler.
That's who came up when he brought an example.
That's the level, Matt, the level that we're talking about with Aidan Ross, okay?
And this is one of the most popular streamers on kick.
Of course he is.
Yeah, the reason I provided that context is he just hosted Trump.
He hosted Trump.
Okay.
This is a man that also live on stream interviewed Andrew Tate and then knelt down and sniffed his seat on stream when he left the room.
Okay, okay.
I know, it's horrifying, right?
It's horrifying to think.
But so, I saw this clip and I was like, God damn, we are living in the dystopian nightmare that RoboCop and all were parodying, right?
But it's worse than they imagined.
Because what happened on this stream, the clip that I saw, first of all, this was a clip taken from Hassan's.
Stream.
So it had Hassan's commentary over the top of it.
And Hassan's commentary over the top of it was mostly, oh, what the?
This is...
That was it.
I'm sure he gave a little insightful commentary, but his general thing was, what is happening?
And then the actual stream.
So it had Eden Ross and Donald Trump comes on.
He's wearing a MAGA hat and he's dressed up like Donald Trump.
He's wearing...
A black suit with a red tie.
Aiden Ross is.
Yeah, Aiden Ross is in a Donald Trump costume.
Another streamer who's also popular, XQC, a Canadian guy, comes in in the background with a shirt on, with Trump's face on it, with kind of grills across his teeth.
And he's like, look at this Trump.
And Trump's like, oh, nice shirt.
So that again, just bizarre.
And then, you know, they talk some stupid shit or whatever.
And then...
Eden Ross takes him outside to show him a Tesla Cybertruck, which he's bought for Trump, which is fitted with a decal around it, which is Trump's image after he has survived the assassination.
So it has like a huge blown up image of Trump.
And he's like, what do you think of this?
And Trump's like, oh, that's good.
And then they do the meme dance of Trump.
You know, that little, like, pumping dance in front of the car.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, that's probably one of the stupidest things you've ever told me.
I know!
And this is, you know, this is campaign stop number one of the day.
I'm sure there were three yallers along the way that were equally...
Oh, and also, of course, so Lex has announced that he's going to do a long-form interview with Donald Trump.
Because, of course, it would.
So that will be, you know, it will probably not involve as much meme dancing, but it will be, it certainly is cringeworthy.
Yeah, yeah, in a different way.
Like, there are levels of whatever, aren't there?
Lex is very much an intellectual high culture compared to what you just described and played for us.
Yes, so that's Trump's pit stops on the campaign, huh?
Yes, that is.
And on another pit stop, just to talk about guru crossovers with electoral politics, our old friend Eric Weinstein is making a stop for an in-depth conversation with Jay Bhattacharya and another conspiracy finance person as part of RFK Jr.'s campaign.
He's being hosted by his running mate to have a...
A long discussion about how the elites are destroying society.
And this is, you know, Eric also was tweeting out after Kamala Harris secured enough delegates to get the Democrat nomination.
Something out there desperately needs this particular person installed for reasons that have not been shared.
Whatever this election is, it's not the system that was explained to me in public school as democracy.
If you make the major selling points January the 2nd, Insurrection and democracy is literally on the ballot.
You cannot do this.
Think about it as a strategy.
It doesn't make sense.
Explain it to him, Matt.
It doesn't.
Why would the Democratic Party be falling behind the vice president and a popular replacement for...
Biden, why?
There's no reason.
Explain it.
What's the logic?
It doesn't make sense, does it?
The thing about Eric and the thing that's impressive is that he makes exactly the same tweet and has been doing so for as long as I've known him, which is we don't know what's happening.
Can somebody explain this to me?
You know, there are forces going on, things beyond our ken.
And as you pointed out to me, it's always something very suspicious about...
The left-wing progressives and Democrats generally.
It's never targeted towards the right, his suspicions, his mysterious conjecturing.
Yeah, yeah.
This is like when he had the sit-down interview with, not Ron DeSantis, what's the other guy, Ted Cruz, to discuss the progressive mind.
The interview was framed as something like a discussion with a hardcore progressive.
Ted Cruz was shocked to discover that essentially him and Eric agree on almost everything.
And he was like, you know, it's so impressive.
It's like, you're such a progressive.
And yeah, there's very little we disagree on.
That's strange, isn't it?
That's because Eric is such an intelligent progressive.
I love his tweets.
They're all the same.
Here's another one.
I believe we have been governed by a small group around Joe Biden rather than Joe Biden for most, if not all, of this presidency.
Okay, classic trope.
It doesn't matter who the figurehead is.
The party will govern through a tiny group, making the titular president less important.
In which case, we should all want to meet and vote on who is actually going to be doing the governing.
Oh my goodness, there's so many more.
But yeah, conspiracy theories.
But he is different from his brother, as we've talked about.
He keeps his things at this sort of abstract, vague posting, right?
But as a technique, as a rhetorical technique, I think it's kind of...
Interesting because he always stops short of making very concrete claims.
It was a little bit concrete there.
But what he does is he points his followers in the direction and gestures towards this big threatening thing.
And if you scan through the comments, you see how effectively and how engaged everyone is.
Everyone has their interpretation of what he means and then riffs on it and carries on with it.
Yeah, but it does kind of feel like You know, Eric's wall of obfuscation is effective in that it is obscurantist the way that he expresses things.
But if you just follow this content for one month, it's very clear where his skew is.
You just look at the people that he likes.
Look at the people that he's criticizing.
Just put them into, you know, two boxes and see if you spot anything.
And you would...
You know, it's so easy to spot his skewery.
Like, there's very little takes of Eric or Brett or any of them, or Rogan.
We were like, well, that's really unexpected that they would like that person.
No, it doesn't go like that.
And speaking of Rogan, Matt, I have an individual clip of Rogan to play.
Just an alert clip to show, the conspiratorial mindset and the penetrating insight of Joe Rogan.
On full display.
This is him.
You know, there's very little to be said about Rogan, except that he just never, ever learns.
He's constantly wrong.
He constantly displays terrible heuristics.
They're not even like Goldfish, because actually they do have long term memories and adjust their behavior.
Joe just doesn't change.
Like, it doesn't matter.
Decades and decades of being shown to be an idiot live on air and be corrected.
It doesn't make him change the way that he looks into things.
So just listen to this.
But the State of the Union was not live.
Yes, it was.
No.
No, did you see that they found out that it wasn't?
That they looked at his watch.
Wait, no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do State of the Union analysis, Biden's watch.
No way.
Yeah, someone zoomed in on his watch, and his watch was the wrong time.
How could that even be?
Well, it could be.
He's blind.
You can't see what time he watches.
I don't know what they knew.
How do you know what they knew?
You get a feed.
I don't think all the Republicans would agree to it, too.
Who knows what they knew?
They're all there live while he's doing it?
Yeah.
You've got Mike Johnson behind you.
You've got the audience crossing their hands when they don't like what you say.
It's got to be live.
Let's see.
I don't see anything.
State of the Union wasn't live.
I added watch.
It could be some troll shit.
They got me.
Yeah.
They could have got me.
But there was no Biden's watch.
Look at Biden's watch.
Incorrect time.
State of the Union.
He has no watch.
He has a sundial.
The guy's 5,000 years old.
He's looking at the stars.
A little sextant.
That's not why he has that face.
No, President Biden's Oval Office dress wasn't pre-recorded.
A fake image with the wrong time floating around.
Yeah, there's a fake image.
They got me, these sons of bitches.
It's just amazing how much stuff is fake.
Floating around.
Say it again?
Put it up.
That's also not the State of the Union thing.
Yeah, it's not the State of the Union.
Wasn't?
No, that was just him talking after...
Whatever.
Went after he hadn't been seen for a few days.
Well, that, I believe, could have been pre-recorded.
That wouldn't make a big deal one or another.
Like, if you're giving a talk and you have something to say, you can take eight takes.
Oh, so they used the wrong image from a different thing.
Yeah.
These cocksuckers.
There you go.
So, he was being corrected there live by...
Who was his guest?
Michael Malas.
Michael Malas.
Who himself.
It's pretty far gone, but, you know, like, Joe is...
Even worse.
Like, significantly worse.
And it really does illustrate his personality, doesn't it?
Where, like, he just fell for obvious bait and straightaway completely believed it.
Oh, that was fake.
The whole State Union thing was fake.
He doesn't think for a second of what you would need to fit that or that kind of thing.
No, straightaway goes, yep, that's true.
And is absolutely certain about it.
And this is just one of those unusual times where it can be shown to him immediately.
There's no way that could possibly be true.
So he goes, oh, right, okay.
It's not true then.
No, but he doesn't just say it's not true.
He's like, oh, there's so much fake stuff and people are being tricked.
And you're like, no, Joe, you.
You are the one that is constantly tricked by this shit.
You and various other boomers and whatnot.
But he immediately foists it on to...
Oh, this is a problem of, like, anybody, you know, could fall for this kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, a problem with the fake news, not with Joe Rogan's brain.
Yeah, I mean, I saw that he's had a Netflix comedy special come out that everyone is saying is extremely unfunny.
Again, I can't bear to look at that either.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, well, I don't think we recommend Joe Rogan's comedy.
But just an illustration, that's how he approaches information.
And that is the same level of fairness that he was applying when it came to COVID and anti-vaccine stuff.
This is the same guy with the confidence to work out.
Assess studies.
Yeah, assess studies, that's right, and figure it out for himself.
And it really does capture that link between narcissism and conspiracism, right?
It is people with a huge chip on their shoulder, but actually putting in absolutely no effort, but completely confident in their own judgment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so people were meaning bad, Matt.
That's a theme.
You asked for good stuff last time.
You said, Chris, you've got to tell us something that you like.
Give me some hope that the world isn't just a terrible place of Eden Ross trying to look up fascism with millions of people watching.
That was impressive how illiterate he was.
I know.
I know it is.
It's quite something.
So I have something that is actually, it seems negative, but I think it's good.
I mean, I don't think what is happening is good, but I think it illustrates the forces of good in the universe in a sense.
Coffeezilla has been sued by Logan Paul.
So on the face of it, that's not good.
That's bad.
This is a nuller influencer, millionaire, maybe billionaire.
I don't know how rich Logan Paul is, but he has a successful drinks company.
He's a WWE wrestler.
He has a successful party.
He is very, very wealthy.
And he also previously had a cryptocurrency scam kind of thing.
NFT, like just a general melange of, you know, the whole cryptocurrency NFT scam here that was around.
And CoffeeZilla did a multi-part series breaking down all of the stuff in it.
And it was very successful.
Logan Paul initially responded very harshly and said he was going to sue CoffeeZilla.
Then when he got a backlash from people saying, Hey, hey, this isn't right.
You were involved in the rug pull and lots of your followers lost all this money and blah, blah, blah.
So he then walked the bite up and was like, okay, I was too hasty.
Thank you, Coffey, to deliver your investigation.
I'm going to make this right.
I'm going to repay people and whatnot.
And he has basically done this tokenistic gesture where he is giving some people back something, but it's...
It's like a very small amount compared to what the overall cost was and so on.
So it's like he's doing something, but he is not refunding the people the cost.
And he has not released the product that he said he was going to release and all this stuff.
So basically, bad news.
But he wasn't suing CoffeeZilla.
But he did just suddenly decide to do this.
And CoffeeZilla has released some videos discussing this and what he's going to do.
But also highlighting that the decision to sue him came 24 hours within when he sent Logan Paul questions about another potential scam that he's involved with.
So he asked him some critical questions about what he knew.
And he wasn't even saying that in this case he's responsible.
He was just asking him what he knew.
He gave him a 24-hour window to response.
And in hour 23, he received a legal notice saying that he's been...
Sued by Logan Paul for defamation.
And if you look at the details of the defamation case, it's clearly not going to succeed.
Because, you know, for defamation, you have to knowingly have presented information that was false, intended to harm someone's reputation.
And as Coffeyzilla outlines in the video, Logan Paul already had a bad reputation.
This is the guy who went into the forest that filmed the person who committed suicide.
But also...
Was already covered in articles being called, you know, a scammer and whatnot.
So Coffezilla is not responsible for that in particular.
And he brought a whole bunch of receipts for why it seems fair to, you know, attach that label to him.
So it's fair comment.
He's a public figure and it's very unlikely to win.
But Logan Paul's extremely rich.
He has put the legal case in a court that doesn't have anti-slap.
You know, the kind of ones where when people bring nuisance lawsuits, you can be penalized for doing that.
So he's filed it in a court where that doesn't exist.
And as a result, even if Coffezilla wins, it will cost him a large amount of money and a significant amount of time.
Yeah.
You understand how this works, right, Matt?
I do.
I do indeed.
Yeah, it's quite worrying, really, when rich people can just punish.
Less rich people legally, even when there are no grounds.
You don't actually need the grounds to do a nuisance lawsuit that could cause a lot of trouble for people.
You know, this is just a side note, but do you know who else has a habit of doing that very regularly?
Elon Musk.
Elon Musk regularly files lawsuits against people and organizations.
Most recently, he says he's going to sue all the advertisers, right?
Oh, yeah.
After he told them to fuck off.
Yeah, yeah, and then he's going to sue them for not advertising on X. I mean, it's like he's trying to come across as dickish.
Yeah, but he also sued Matt, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, who released a report that he didn't like about extremism on X. And that was kicked out of the court by the judge because it was indicated in the ruling that...
It is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose.
This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.
And it was kicked out of the court.
But that's the thing.
It doesn't matter.
He puts all this pressure.
He sends in high-priced lawyers against them.
If it wins or fails, it doesn't matter.
Because he's so rich.
And his fans don't follow up about the outcome of cases.
Yeah, and they certainly don't care that Mr. Free Speech is someone who uses the law to crush it whenever he feels like it.
Donald Trump, of course, is another one, famously into legal proceedings and lawsuits.
There's something about it.
It's a tell, isn't it?
It's a symptom, I think.
But so this doesn't sound good, right?
This sounds all negative.
Somebody that we like and who does good work, Coffezilla.
We had a long interview with him and he was a very nice guy and also, I think, just very thoughtful about all the investigations and whatnot that he was doing.
We actually asked him what happens if you're sued and so on in that interview.
But he's been represented.
So here's the good news, Matt.
First of all, just to say, he has put up a merch drop with the proceeds going to support him.
So he could have just put up a GoFundMe or whatever, but he's actually made Some nice shirts, which are cyberpunk themed.
They're nice.
They're actually very nice.
I'm going to get one because I want this Mortimer because I like this shirt.
So it's the CoffeeZilla defense drop.
For two weeks, he's putting up these shirts, you know, merchandise that 100% of the profits is going towards his legal defense.
And this is in part because his indemnity insurance, it turns out, isn't going to cover him.
For this.
But the thing is, Matt, so he's doing that, a limited drop, right, to get support from it.
Or you can support him at his Patreon.
I'm perfectly happy to shout him out for that because I think it's a good cause that he's going to fight it.
And just to mention as well, this is indicative of his character, I think.
Whenever I DM'd him after seeing the thing saying, you know, it would be nice to give, you know, like a shout out to support him for this.
And he said...
Oh, you guys don't need to do that.
Like, don't worry about it.
And I'm happy to send you some of the shirts.
You don't need to pay.
So I just, that is a nice person.
No need to do that.
And in any case, I'm happy to promote it and happy to support him.
But the good news, he's been represented by Mark Bankston, who was the lawyer in the Alex Jones case for the parents who secured like 1.5 billion.
Damages against Jones.
So I know that Mark Langston is going to be paid and covered for this and whatnot, but I'm also sure that he's not the kind of person that's going to be setting out to take Coffezilla to the cleaners and whatnot.
I think the reason he's getting involved with this is because he doesn't like these high profile figures trying to use the law to silence critics or to target the parents of dead children.
This is an example of, I think, good forces coming together.
Mark Bankston, the Alex Jones lawyer, Coffezilla, and Logan Paul is not going to silence criticism.
I think there's a case where the internet will rally around Coffezilla because they don't like this when rich people attempt to sue smaller people and chill their free speech sometimes.
Yeah, I feel confident that CoffeeZilla will come out of this well.
Still, what a pain in the ass for him.
Man, you've sent me on a deep dive into crypto and celebrities and how they're boosting coins.
Andrew Tate does all these weird things with crypto.
There's $23 billion, apparently, lost in scams and things worldwide last year.
It is like a honeypot for idiots.
It is.
You know, like the basic scheme, for anybody that's not aware, the basic scheme is always broadly the same.
I mean, like if you watch CoffeeZilla's videos, you can see lots of variations of this, but it's broadly that creators or popular influencers get involved with some coin or NFT or some digital asset, right?
And they say...
This is going to be my life's work.
I'm going to be involved in this.
All my fans should get involved.
This is going to go to the moon, zip soon, the next Bitcoin, the next whatever.
They hype it up.
And then there's a release period where lots of people, lots of their fans, because of their popularity, buy into it.
And the price goes up because there's initial demand.
And then there's a rug pull where the people that were initially investing in it, or the people at the start, because they were the ones on the...
In the ground with the coin, had a whole bunch of it before they went to market, then they sell.
They sell off very quickly and then people notice that and the price plummets.
Anybody who invested while it was going up is suddenly left with a worthless coin or NFT or whatever the case might be.
But the creators make bank.
They often just partner with people that are doing this.
You know, they don't need to do anything.
They just need to promote it on their social media.
Yeah, it's a classic pump and dump scheme.
And you can see that it's a way for people that have got some kind of profile, that have got wildly loyal fans, to transform that cachet into...
Hard currency, right?
And so this is why we live in the attention economy and this is why these guru dynamics and cult-like dynamics are so important because it translates into real money.
They can turn that loyalty, turn that trust, turn that popularity, turn those memes and the clickbait into money for themselves, even when they're not monetizing it directly, right?
It could all be free, right?
Their content.
Because it's all about building up their reputation, which they can then make money from.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a big bad world out there.
What happened?
Do you remember when the internet, I mean, maybe you're too young, but I remember when actually the internet required like a small bit of technical ability to actually use.
There was like a small hurdle to actually post material on the internet and stuff.
Maybe to access people, anyone who could.
Back when you had dial-up.
Yeah, like...
And now we've got people that are, like, functionally illiterate and scam artists.
Yeah, yeah.
But, you know, the scams were always operating.
They were just in different forms.
There was always, like, hello call centers and whatnot then.
So it always just morphs to the new environment.
And, yeah, and it is often the same celebrities endorsing.
Shit that they really shouldn't be.
Like, this is the consistent thing.
And yeah, so, you know, the CryptoZoo was the thing that Logan Paul promoted, but he's not alone.
And just to say as well, Matt, we're talking about sort of the internet dregs.
I mean, they're super popular, but, you know, Aiden Ross, Kickstreamers and whatnot, like even Logan Paul.
Yes, he's mainstream, but there's a certain...
What have I tried to say?
Like a bad vibe around that whole ecosystem of streamers and influencers and whatnot.
But if you cast your minds back, I remember Steven Pinker releasing an NFT about his ideas, where his best ideas were minted in the NFT format.
And if you bought them, you got like a...
A one-hour, I think, Skype call with him or whatever, but you had to pay a huge amount of money to mint his idea, which was free speeches, should be free or whatever.
And then also Sam Harris, I don't believe he went through with this, but at one point he was talking about a scheme to create NFTs that he would use to help promote effective altruism.
And there was, like, he discussed it on the scene.
So just, no, to his credit, I don't think he ever released it.
But, like, I think it speaks to the fact that, you know, I would say Steven Pinker and Sam Harris are two of the people that you would expect not.
They are more respectable figures.
We were surprised at the time, especially with Steven Pinker.
I think what I assume happens.
Is that these people, relatively famous people, are approached by a crypto person who goes, hey, let's do some work together.
Let's bounce around some ideas.
Yeah, yeah.
And they naively go, oh, that sounds good.
What could be the harm?
Yeah, what could be the harm?
Could they spend one evening looking up cryptocurrencies and scams and stuff like that?
Maybe, maybe, but whatever, whatever.
Matt, that, well, so, if you feel so inclined to do so, I encourage people to support CoffeeZilla because I think he does good work.
Even if it's just, like, support him, join his Patreon, get access to his bonus material or whatever.
You don't have to.
I just think he's doing good things and he's being punished for it by somebody that's trying to bully him with their wealth.
So I don't like that.
And I have forum for this, Matt.
Back in my younger days in London, I covered...
The Simon Singh libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association, which was another attempt by an organization to chill someone's free speech because they wrote an article in The Guardian that they didn't like.
And he initially lost that case, but went on to win it in appeal.
But it took a number of years, lots of money.
So I, back then, was also, you know, I was actually in the court for some of that.
But this kind of thing annoys me.
In general.
So, good luck to Coffezilla.
Yeah, if the IDW free speech warriors were what they said they were, then they'd be upset by this thing as well.
But of course, they're not.
Well, we'll post links.
I'm going to do it too.
I'm going to find out how to support Coffezilla.
I'll get myself a hoodie, is it?
Is it a hoodie?
There's a hoodie or the shirts, as long as they're nice.
I was quite pleased with, you know, the point is...
Support, right?
But it is just nice that the design is not super cringeworthy or whatever.
At least for me.
It's the kind of thing I like.
So, yeah.
I'm looking at it now.
They look good.
Yep.
Okay, good.
We'll post links.
All right.
Okay.
Okay, so this is all bad stuff.
Everything is bad.
Oh, that was my good.
I mean, my good thing is, Coffezilla's going to win.
Because Coffezilla's a good guy.
He's going to win.
He's going to win.
That's right.
He's going to win.
There are people fighting the good fight, so good on him.
Yeah, there are people like him.
There are people like Mark Bankston.
Alex Jones won't end up paying $1.5 billion, but he got dented by that whole legal case.
And yeah, so, you know, good luck to them all.
We'll cover what happens there as it happens.
So you asked for good things.
Well, how about a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk?
Oh, goody.
Great.
Yeah.
Why not?
Elon Musk is going to interview Donald Trump, by the way.
Is Elon Musk going to interview Donald Trump?
Of course.
They're all connected.
Well, look, I view it as a positive because if I listen to a few clips now, that means we're not going to devote a full episode to it.
This is quite right.
So I'm winning.
This is the important thing.
This is quite right.
So first, I'm going to play the clip that kind of, I think, got the most attention.
It's hard to say because it depends what area you're in.
But one of the things that came out of the interview was Elon Musk talking about his trans daughter and his experience of that and what it has motivated him to do.
So this is a snippet of him talking about that.
Anyway.
And so...
I lost my son, essentially.
So, you know, they call it deadnaming for a reason.
Yeah, I...
So the reason it's called deadnaming is because your son is dead.
So my son Xavier is dead.
Killed by the woke wine virus.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I can't imagine what that would be like.
Yeah.
So...
Yeah, and there's lots of people in that situation now.
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