Supplementary Material 17: American Dreams, YouTube Algorithms, and Poisonous Plastics
In this episode, Chris and Matt open the lid on Matt's adventures in America. Basking in the land of the free, Matt is forced to consider YouTube dynamics, indulgent podcast conversations, potential Russian influence campaigns, and the environmental toxins that sound him.We will return soon with another SM election special and a better mic for Matt!Content00:00 Introduction03:20 Matt's American Insights10:41 Flint Dibble, Graham Hancock & a silly racist19:21 YouTube & Audience Capture with Andrew Gold27:35 Justin Trudeau accuses Jordan Peterson of being Russian Funded34:29 Bernie Sanders & Lex Fridman: What's the point?47:24 Huberman's Latest PSA52:20 Environmental Toxins and Modern Health Concerns58:58 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 3 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksExpress article on Hancock's work being used by racistsNational Post article on Peterson's response to Trudeau's accusationsHuberman's Twitter PSA on microplasticsBernie Sanders Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #450
Hello and welcome to Coding the Guru's supplementary material number 17. Can you believe that?
17 of these have passed.
And I am Chris Kavanagh, the anthropologist from Northern Ireland in Japan.
He is Matt Brown, the psychology professor from Australia in America, if you can believe it.
He's not in his natural environment.
It's a...
Roving correspondence episode with Matt in a hotel room, still unable to locate a dongle which would give him access to his microphone.
So he's logged his nice microphone halfway around the world and then cannot plug it into his PC.
And you have to bear with him because he's only in America where it's very, very hard.
To find dongles in America.
It's not a civilized country like where I'm from or where you are, Chris.
No, it's true I didn't find a dongle today, but in my defense, I was quite hungover.
You didn't work.
I also didn't look.
But I didn't really feel capable.
My brother did go into a Best Buy or some kind of a Walmart where there were lots of guns.
He did see lots of guns, but he didn't see any dongles.
At least he didn't tell me about them.
I did my best.
I did my best, which was nothing.
Yeah, that's it.
So, bad audio, bleep Matt, okay?
Emails to Matt.
But this will give it more of the authentic, you know, roving reporter vibe.
Matt's in the hotel room.
This is Gonzo podcasting.
I'm like Hunter S. Thompson.
People often say that.
So yeah, that's what I'm doing.
I'm just delving deep, working my way to the dark heart of the American dream.
And I feel like I'm making good progress, Chris.
I'm making good progress.
So you've been to San Francisco.
You've been to...
Glassdoor Alley or whatever, I don't remember the name of it.
You've been to Seattle and you're now in Portland, right?
You're slowly hunting down Brett Weinstein.
You've narrowed down the search.
Yeah, yeah.
In fact, Chris, last night I spoke to someone whose brother, I think it was, was a former student.
Oh, Brett Weinstein knows, I think, almost precisely where he lives, so...
Yeah, I'll be going there.
I'll be tracking him down.
No, no.
This could be the start of a 13-part...
Podcast series, Finding Brett Weinstein.
Finding Brett Weinstein.
And it turns out that Brett Weinstein was in our hearts all along.
Yeah, yeah.
We didn't need to go anywhere to find him.
So, yeah, well, but you're only there for one day, so you better get on it.
You've got to find a dongle and add him in the next, like, couple of hours.
Maybe they'll be in the same place.
Maybe I'll find Brett Weinstein with a dongle.
Yeah, that's it.
You know, first off, Matt, you are in America.
You're going to be there for a while, right?
So you don't need to give us all of your insights in one download.
But do you have any morsels that you want to share?
Insights from the good old US of A?
You know, what have you noticed?
You already told us to remind you on a previous episode that squirrels are nice.
Yep.
And that there was some burger you like.
Oh, In-N-Out Burger is good.
In-N-Out Burger is good.
Right.
That's the three insights we've received.
What else you got for us?
What else?
Well, I think building on the In-N-Out Burger theme, it's really clear that there are two things that Americans do better than anyone else.
And that is make hamburgers and cook fried chicken.
Like, the French have their breads, the Germans have sausage, the Austrians have pastries.
In America, my God, Chris, they cannot fry chicken badly.
You cannot find bad fried chicken in America.
And the burgers are all pretty good.
Mind you, I have avoided the lower tier fast food chains.
But, you know, I haven't been slumming it the whole time.
Went to some very groovy places.
I caught up with one of our friends from the Conspirituality podcast, Derek.
He and his lovely wife, they were both charming.
And we went to dinner.
We had Malaysian food.
Well, it was like Thai, Malaysian sort of mixed, I think.
Fusion.
Fusion.
Yeah, it was delicious.
And we went to a hipster bar.
There was a guy playing with...
They all had really long beards.
I've noticed this in Portland.
Like, young men who...
It's surprising they can't even grow a beard, to be honest.
But they have beards, like, down to...
They're like dwarves.
The beards go down to their knees.
Yeah.
But they're cool.
I have a beard up there.
I've got a beard up there that's, like, grammatically related.
That's purely my...
You may not have noticed.
Usually, I rock the very...
Out of fashion, 1990s, dodgy investor, Wall Street beard.
But I've decided to go for more of the mid-2000s filled-in beard now.
I'm going a little bit more filled-in.
It looks good.
It looks good.
Now you look less like someone who would be trying to study crypto and more like someone that's trying to study gold.
So that's an improvement.
Somebody that's going to talk about how beneficial trad wipes are.
So, Matt, is there more on the conveyor belt of American wisdom, or do we need to wait for it to percolate?
No, no, no.
We'll leave it there.
We'll leave it there for the American wisdom.
I know we should get to the supplementary materials.
Not allowed to rub your hands on these podcasts, Matt.
Not allowed.
Even if you're cold, those noises, they travel.
At least there's no squeaky chair.
There's no squeaky chair, but there is a bed.
That's true.
So when there's no squeaky chair, you feel obliged to create new noises from your environment.
You're like a noise machine.
But yeah, well, we look forward to it.
I expect at least some, what is the word, like controversial insights.
You need to tell us about the homeless.
People problems in the cities you visit, the law and order, it's breaking down.
I've been hearing these George Soros guys that were taking down the country.
Somebody's getting paid.
You've got to find out what's going on.
No, no, I have found out that what the mega people are saying about the coastal elites is true, actually.
I didn't want to mention it at first, but yeah, it's actually true.
Like, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, they were literally in flames.
The cities were burning.
Join the Mad Max gang, the Lillard Beard Maniacs.
It's hard to come up with a name off the top of your head.
Okay, the Lillard Beard Maniac gang.
And kind of the Black U podcast in between your journeys.
Yeah, they were fine with it.
They were fine with it.
Yeah, no, America, yeah, that's not that interesting.
I mean, America is interesting, don't get me wrong.
The scenery is very nice.
It's a bit like Australia, you know, lovely scenery, shame about the people.
But, you know, no, the people are quite nice too.
They're like, they're like Australian.
That's Australian humour, mate.
You flagged that up.
No, no, you know, Americans, especially people from San Francisco.
Like Australians, but just more flair.
They got more joy de vivre.
In my last visits to America, I felt reverse culture shock.
Well, it's not even reverse because I'm not American.
But I felt like everybody...
To be fair, I did go to California.
But I felt like everything was turned up the 11th.
People around me were emoting, like they're in a video game or something, you know, it was like...
And then, like, other people on the street, like...
I felt like it was, you know, like the Truman Show, where it was like heightened reality.
And yes, it probably was in part because of the contrast, you know, coming from Japan, where a lot of these things are more subdued.
But yeah, so I'm wondering, you don't get that?
Maybe it's...
Like, if you go to California, you'll experience that too.
But you don't get that?
Like a kind of heightened sense of LD?
No, I think that's true.
They're like Australians, but Australians are dialed down to six and they're turned up to 11. And, you know, like, I think you would cut this particularly because, you know, you come from a devastatingly emotionally crippled culture.
Yes.
Northern Ireland.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, just broken, shut down people.
Exactly.
So, you know, Americans, Americans, they're living large, man.
This is how they operate.
And it seems like they're doing a bit.
You gotta give this copy for real.
But they're not.
They're actually genuinely like that.
No.
They're actually having...
Joy.
They're experiencing joy.
That's right.
They have optimism and they have plans and they feel like they might accomplish things.
Obviously, they're delusional.
None of that's going to happen.
But, you know, I'm happy to see it.
I do like it.
It is like an uncanny valley type thing.
And I think Australians, not Australians, Americans feel that with us too, right?
Let's be honest.
There's the uncanny valley thing.
It's like you're kind of normal, like a normal human like us.
But not quite.
And it's those little differences that really, you know, intrigue us.
It's symmetrical.
Well, Irish people, we're popular wherever we go, sadly.
The world loves us too much.
We're the world's charmers.
Except maybe not the English, but even the English, like...
Us, you know, it's the degree to which it's reciprocated.
As long as you stay in your place, yeah?
Like serving drinks at a bar, at an Irish bar, that's where you belong, don't you?
That's true, that's true.
Well, I've got a whole array for you today, Matt, but I know I can't fit them all in, so I'm going to have to, you know, I'm just going to take little morsels from here.
Little ones from there and pop them into your mental wheelhouse and see how they spin around.
Yeah.
Surprise me.
I'm curious what you've gathered.
Well, did you notice that I interviewed Flit Dibble?
Flit Dibble.
That name sounds like a dwarf, like a character from Lord of the Rings.
I know.
I know.
It's a good name for an archaeologist.
Yes.
Because that's an archaeologist.
That's how he got it, right?
As he explained to us.
Yeah, I did notice that.
How'd that go?
Everything went well?
That went well.
You didn't panic?
Do an interview without me?
You were okay?
I didn't forget.
Though I did record it at like 1 to 3 a.m.
So I think in the video I probably look a bit snoozy.
But it's not Flint's fault.
It's just biological.
Biological reality.
Given that, it went very well.
And you were missing me.
It's okay to say it.
It's okay.
That too.
It was hard to hear myself talk so much, but I persisted.
But I mention it, Matt, because Mr. Hancock, old Graham, he's been doing the rounds on the heterodox sphere.
He's been on Joe Rogan.
He's been on with Chris Williamson.
He's been on with Lex Friedman, so on and so forth.
Yeah.
Propping up all over the place and besmirching Flint.
There's usually like a little segment on each of them where he says that Flint's a liar.
You know, tricked him and great canned Joe.
And Joe, to his discredit, did go along with this, talking about how, you know, dishonest that Flint had been in his presentation.
And I really didn't like that because like it's one thing.
For Hancock to do it, you know, on all those shows.
There he can air his grievances.
But, like, if you do a debate with someone and then you go on the same show later without that person and kind of editorialize about the performance with the host, it just seems a bit...
Yeah, and with Joe Rogan on board with all of that.
It's just not done.
That's not good podcasting etiquette.
No, I don't approve of that.
So in what ways was Flint...
What was his crimes?
It was actually most of the stuff that we covered in the interview, just like Hancock wanted to present.
During the interview, he didn't perform that well because he put too much faith in Flint and believed what he was saying.
But afterwards, him and his audience found a lot of things misrepresented in Flint.
He'd overstated some figures and he'd claimed that they don't have evidence for this, but actually...
They did, and he found it very dishonest afterwards.
This was a great shock to him and terrible.
So, yeah, it was all like that.
Well, big archaeology has been doing that to Paul Hancock for years now, so it's part of the course, isn't it?
Yeah, I know.
And that is one of the things I wanted to just ruminate on, was that this pose that the heterodox system has of its willingness to hear controversial ideas, that it's sticking it to the man, these mainstream...
authorities with all their influence like the heterodox fear exists to give the people access to these voices that they haven't heard now
I just want to compare here, Matt, that Flint Dibble, as he described on the interview, is an academic on a 50% salary with a small YouTube channel.
Now he has about $30,000, but a lot of that is off the back of his appearance on Rogan.
Graham Hancock, in comparison, is someone...
Appearing regularly on the largest podcast on the world for, I think, 12 years or so is where his first appearance on Rogan was.
But he, you know, a recurrent guest.
He has two Netflix seasons, right?
Two Netflix seasons, one featuring Keanu Reeves.
And he's doing a publicity tour all around the kind of heterodox sphere, talking about his new season.
And I feel like...
There should be, you know, an element where the people in the heterodox sphere look around and say, like, are we?
Maybe, like, actually the mainstream media or stuff?
There's a multi-million dollar Netflix series and podcast with huge income and advertisers, huge audiences, but they're still presenting themselves as...
We're the renegades, you know, presenting the things that won't be talked about.
And actually, Graham Hancock has a whole bunch of best-selling books.
I knew about him when I was a teenager.
It's not hard to find his Atlantis stories.
In fact, it's very popular.
Popular enough to get multiple TV series.
So that pose that we're going to be dealing with renegades and heretics and whatnot.
It strikes me as, as it often does, very self-serving and untrue.
That's right.
I mean, like, the truth is that someone like Hancock is at the frontier of, like, entertainment.
Like, you know, he creates these popular books.
He does these Netflix series.
He's on the Joe Rogan podcast.
He's on heaps of them.
Selling are very appealing.
An entirely wrong myth about Atlantis and ancient civilizations and ancient technologies and so on.
Like, archaeology does not have that big a profile.
There is no big archaeology, right?
If you're an archaeologist, you're really lucky to get a tiny little grant and to do a bit of teaching and so on.
It doesn't have the same sex appeal as these ancient technologies.
So, yeah, Graham Hancock with the wounded bird thing, you know, with the dangerous ideas that no one's allowed to talk about.
Everyone's talking about them because they are appealing, stupid, and wrong, unfortunately.
But that's what Joe Rogan specializes in, doesn't he?
So this is the other thing, Matt, that, you know, one of the sore points and one of the things that got Rogan upset was these supposed links between, you know, white supremacy and Graham Hancock.
And in the interview that I did with Flint, he's very clear that, you know, he is not accusing Graham Hancock of being a racist, but he is saying that What Hancock's material does is provide fuels for racists and potentially deal in Victorian racist tropes in some respects.
So this is what he wanted to argue, that he doesn't feel that Graham Hancock is personally racist, but he should be critical of how his material is used and he should be more interested in the racist attitude of Victorian.
Era figures or colonial adventurers and whatnot.
And there was a story, Matt, in the Express in the UK where the Express found an open white supremacist, like neo-Nazi.
They had recorded a video of them explaining how useful...
Graham Hancock's material is for recruiting people.
We described it as like Third Reich archaeology.
A good way to introduce.
But long story short is, Hancock, yeah, no, he basically says Aryan without saying Aryan.
I mean, he constantly makes, he cites constantly the ancient texts that say that they were white-skinned people, that they were white-skinned people with beards, that they were white-skinned people.
Blue-eyed with brown beards or gold beards or red beards.
And he'll write that.
And to tell you the truth, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to slander the guy.
Because as soon as they came out with this Netflix documentary, which is surprising in and of itself, all of a sudden the Jew media started bashing Hancock.
And all you got to do is look that up.
And it's interesting that they weren't saying this stuff 20, 30 years ago.
25 years ago, 1994, I think, was when he first published.
It was 94, 95 when Fingerprints of the Gods came out.
And he's basically saying, yes, white people, ancient white man created everything.
I'm surprised it's taken him this long to attack the guy.
But, I mean, if you read his books, it's like reading something from the Third Reich.
I've read Fingerprints of the Gods five times.
And I use it as a source a lot.
I think it's a great book.
Now, the Hancock's credit, he responded to this, giving a statement where he basically explains that he doesn't endorse that view, you know, racism is terrible and that we're all people.
So he gives like a kind of strong rebuke, yeah, right in the response.
But the thing is, this is what Flint was talking about, right?
Flint was saying, people are using your work for this purpose and you should denounce it.
And Graham Hancock was saying, this is a smear.
But as it turns out, Actually, no, it is true.
And now there's a video of, you know, some idiot racist talking about this.
So now he's been forced to respond to it.
And to his credit, he has.
But that just spoke to me that like that point, which is perhaps one of the more controversial ones, actually, you know, turned out that there are legitimate connections.
And Dibble was saying, you know, because he doesn't think that Hancock shares those views, this is a point that they can agree on where they should be able to just both talk about that being a misuse.
And to Hancock's credit, he has done that in response.
Right. But it's the way he presented it was that, you know, that was just a smear.
Meet up to try and discredit
Yeah, yeah.
So it's good.
Graham Hancock did the right thing by...
Totally distancing himself and condemning that sort of use of his theories.
But at the same time, yeah, he's also demonstrating that he actually just did what Flynn Dibble suggested that he do.
So I think he has to in fairness retract that outrage over that particular point that Flynn made.
Yeah.
And now, Matt, I have a little bit of an extended clip.
From our good friend, Andrew Gold.
He did a Q&A, and he was...
There's a lot of clips I could take from Andrew Gold, but this is, I think, one of the least cruel ones to focus on.
So he's talking about the dynamics on YouTube, the kind of algorithm and this kind of thing.
And I think he did a pretty good job of illustrating what is motivating people when they're focusing on YouTube, right?
And feeding the monster.
And this is in response to somebody asking him about would he like to cover other topics other than the stuff that he focuses on, which is primarily all the anti-wolf at the minute.
And I thought this was interesting.
What new topics would you like to touch on in the future?
That I don't.
And I think there are questions later that I'll sort of labor this point.
But when you make a channel like this, you are somewhat limited.
And I think a lot of idealistic people are somewhat offended by this or let down by this when I talk about it because they want to believe that here I am as some creative pioneer of the internet just making what I want to make and what floats my boat.
And to a large extent, that is true.
However, it is just a fact of how YouTube works that if you release a video that is not popular as a topic among your subscribers, that video will die.
It will be a waste of a lot of money that you've put into it, let alone a lot of time.
Now, you can argue, hang on, it's not a waste of time.
You got it out there and 20 people still saw it.
Okay, you know, I get that, but I could just tweet about it as well rather than make an hour-long huge video just for a few people to watch.
The second issue is, once you do that, all the people who didn't click on it are less likely to be shown the thumbnail, the video link, for my next video.
And that won't do as well.
So then, it's basically a downhill slope from there.
You are under constant stress as a YouTuber, constantly stressed, and every video has to do incredibly well.
And if one video comes out that doesn't do as well as the rest, it will influence the rest of them.
Equally, if you have a couple of really big ones, as I had this month with Richie Heron, which is over a million, and Dr. Hilton, which is approaching a million fast.
It lifts the rest of the channel and you start to grow at a much, much faster rate.
And it is very much like gambling.
It's very much you wake up in the morning after a video's come out and the first thing is you look at your phone.
This is an addiction.
And the people who get to the point where they're actually able to make a living from it, we're addicted.
We are addicts with regards to YouTube.
And you cannot get to this position without being so.
I know some people get a bit older and more successful and they hire huge teams to take care of this kind of thing.
But unless you are a Stephen Bartlett or something like that, you're basically a one-man show and you are addicted.
Well, Chris, I found that quite refreshing, really.
Being quite aware and self-aware about the incentives at play.
I mean, yes and no,
but I feel I see a bunch of creators who choose a different path.
Take a coffeezilla.
For example, right?
He's tried a whole bunch of different things.
But when we were talking to him, he was saying, you know, initially he was thinking he has to feed this algorithm with consistent content.
But then he found out that his audience actually responded to longer form investigations, even if they took time and that people were willing to support that.
And he didn't need to do these kind of daily news breakdowns.
Yeah, he didn't need to do the grinding and the optimizing.
Yeah, and like what Andrew Gold is describing is audience capture, but leaning into it, because what he talks about is like the success is Stephen Bartlett, right?
Diary of a CEO.
Yeah.
You know, that's the people that have made it and are doing it right.
And from my perspective, those are the people that are making a lot of money, but are producing a lot of draws, right?
They don't care if the person they have on is a Brett Weinstein talking nonsense.
For three hours, as long as it gets enough downloads or like Lex with Kanye West, these kinds of things.
So his role models are just like people that make a lot of money.
Yeah, well, of course.
I mean, this is the Constantine Kisson understanding of what it means to be successful, right?
Which is they do equate metrics with success, not totally unreasonably, right?
Because this is obviously the ticket to Everything they want, which is monetary benefits and high profile and all of that stuff.
Influence.
Yeah.
But like you said, it's not compulsory.
You don't have to do that.
You can simply be good like CoffeeZilla.
You can simply have something unique to offer and to continue to deliver that and with the hope that people will appreciate it.
Or you could be...
Like a Constantine Kissin or an Andrew Gold.
There are different paths, Chris, to success.
I know, I know.
So it was mainly in part, you know, they're describing the YouTuber dynamics, which I've heard elsewhere.
But what he's describing there is basically that you must feed the algorithm in order to grow and growth is the goal.
It's a bit like a Mr. Beast mindset.
But I usually hear YouTubers talking about how...
That is a poison, right?
That is a mindset that leads to the dark side, right?
Producing, pandering content and whatnot.
And his view that if he made something that was worthy, but not many people saw it, or it damaged his ability to get future downloads, that's the metric, right?
It doesn't matter if what he produced was actually more accurate than the thing that got more downloads.
So yeah, I just thought it was revealing of that.
I mean, Chris, honestly, I think it is revealing.
I mean, like more and more, like, genuinely, what do you think about this?
Because I feel like more and more that the incentives at play is actually a bigger and bigger part in terms of understanding why people are like this.
When you look at most of the gurus, they are all really focused on their metrics.
Yeah, it's true of Brett Weinstein, just as much as it is of Andrew Gold, right?
Like, they notice immediately when their engagement levels drop.
Yeah, or Jordan Peterson, when their engagement levels drop by 15%.
Like, they are, like Andrew says, addicted.
And whether it's attention or the immediate financial benefits of getting more subscribers and advertising revenue or whatever, I mean, that is what is driving them to be what they are.
And I think this explains a lot of what is contributing to an unhealthy discourse in America and other places in the world where everything gets more and more click-baity, more and more extreme, more and more negative emotions and outrage or conspiracy theories and delusional fantasies instead of content.
It's like junk food for the brain.
But that is what sells, I guess.
Well, so speaking of conspiracy theories and junk food for the brain, Justin Trudeau, in some testimony in Canada, mentioned about Russian influence campaigns amongst popular media figures and specifically cited Jordan Peterson.
We have seen that anti-vax messages during the convoy and during the pandemic were amplified by Russian propaganda, especially in the...
media of the right, and it was continued by messages.
The people who were sharing anti-vax messages, it doesn't mean that there weren't people who were legitimately anti-vax, but that was hugely amplified by Russian.
And once Ukraine was invaded, we saw a lot of those channels become pro-Putin propaganda channels.
And as I said, we've recently seen that RT is currently funding bloggers and other YouTube...
of the right, such as Jordan Peterson, other names that are well known, Tucker Carlsson
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