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April 14, 2020 - Louder with Crowder
01:04:36
Rhett & Link Are Everything Wrong with YouTube | MASS MONDAY | Louder with Crowder
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Time Text
Welcome to another installment of Mass Monday.
For people who think that's sacrilegious, wait a minute.
Just watch the entire show.
And that's even Brendan from the Edit Bay.
So he's not a member of the clergy.
He was not offended.
And the outfit was very cheap.
And it's dry ice, I'm guessing.
So it's not really smoke stuff.
It was a safety hazard.
So we would never put a cardinal at risk.
Of course.
Mostly because we could never find a cardinal to set foot in the studio.
Nope.
So, uh, this is continuing.
AudioAid is here.
Gerald A. QuarterBlackGarrett.
Continuing on the sort of Rhett and Link saga.
Received quite a bit of response letters slash comments.
No one actually writes physical letters.
They do, but it's mainly just anthrax.
Every time I get a physical letter, I open it and I just aim it in the general direction of Brennan and go... Like fairy dust.
You just don't appreciate a good gif.
More so that I don't like being surprised.
It's face powder.
It's just face powder.
So we're going to get into Rhett and Link a little bit.
And I want to be clear, very much appreciate Rhett and Link, what they do.
I can appreciate their position that they're stepping out.
I do think it takes some courage to talk about their sort of abandoning of faith and their crisis of faith.
Doing my best to keep this really as brand friendly as possible.
Which brings me to the question, let me ask you, is brand friendly or even sort of mainstream audience friendly Something, the idea of that, something that Christians should value at all.
Is there a biblical prescription as it applies to living your life so that others around you like you?
Let me know what you think.
Popularity, making sure that you're polite, that people like you because you're nice.
Is that something that is a value inherent to the Christian faith?
And if so, where does it sort of take precedence over other values?
And this, of course, is, we thought it was over after the last Mass Monday, and then Rhett and Link's angry, I believe, lesbian producer.
Link, it's very lesbian.
Alleged?
I don't know.
It's not relevant, other than the fact that that's probably a huge portion of why she's angry at me.
Well, specifically for you.
Yes.
Had this to say.
This is the change my mind meme, and that's Steven Crowder.
Or as I like to call him, Steven Piece of Sh** Crowder.
He's a podcaster at TCU who sat outside with a sign that said, male privilege is a myth.
Change my mind.
And the meme is used to convey strong, hot takes on topics that are actually important or completely unimportant.
Okay.
Let's see a few examples.
And I do appreciate Rhett and Link avoiding it.
Link with the, I'm uncomfortable, and then Rhett with the laugh.
Like, is it okay for me to laugh at it?
I'm not gonna be demonetized.
Don't worry, you won't.
Your views are safe.
Which brings us to kind of a point that I wanted to talk about.
This is sort of a chant that we hear quite a bit from sort of a mantra, and you were talking about this audio wave, so feel free to chime in at any point.
Rhett and Link, they continually talk, and it seems to be a value that is very important to them personally, as well as professionally, and that's the idea of being popular, being brand friendly.
Here you go.
We know we're kind of the poster boys of the trending page and sort of the, why are these guys always trending?
That, that question, because it isn't because our videos get, if you look at the trending page, most videos will have more views than what we, that we've got up there.
Right.
But I think that it's not a bad speculation.
Because we upload at the same time every single day.
6 a.m.
Eastern time every single day.
And you don't really have to be subscribed to know that.
It takes off really, really quickly.
And I think the algorithm just interprets it as a lot of people are interested in this video, even if it's our Good Mythical More, which is our sort of like second channel show after the show.
that may get 200,000 or 300,000 views.
A lot of times that video will be lost on that video.
And sometimes it will trend before the main episode.
So I think it's just based on, it gets thrown into the system
and they're like, oh yeah, Redlink, they're brand safe, put them up there.
That's the other thing.
I think, I don't know, but I think that there's some sort of a white listing
where it's, you have a heightened eligibility to be on the trending page
based purely on just brand friendliness.
Mm-hmm, you know.
Yeah.
That's what they care about the most, right?
Yeah.
They got to get the brands involved.
And if they know consistently, I mean, we have 700 episodes.
It's what you care about the most.
And we'll get to that in a second.
And if you know, especially over that track record, that they can trust that, okay, we're not going to do anything to invite backlash from brands.
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
And now you might hear that in context.
Sure sure sure sure sure sure that's what matters for sure sure sure sure advertiser friendly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, we get it We're all on board and you might hear it at first
You sound like a Muppet guy.
So, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup.
He is a Muppet, I mean, honestly.
You might hear them sort of feeling, you know, bemoaning, like, oh, being brand safe.
Yeah.
But that's not.
First off, I appreciate their, I guess, candor.
Like, maybe the YouTube trending is actually curated by people.
Mm-hmm.
And then we believe there could be, perhaps, a white listing of brand friendly, as though they've never heard of the Vox Apocalypse.
Right.
I mean, come on.
Or yours truly, despite calling me a piece of shit, which I'm OK with.
I'm cool with that.
I think this comes down to, you know, we need to be honest with our audience.
Of course, the trending page is not what it used to be.
It's not based on most popular, most viewed, most discussed.
And of course, there is a whitelist and there is Shadowban.
YouTube has been very clear about that.
They've talked about that and mentioning me by name at the Recode conference.
I want to make sure that we're very clear on this.
If Rhett and Link would like to learn more about that, we have plenty of documentation.
Plenty.
But to go back to the point that it may originally seem, and this is what I do want to focus on in a biblical perspective, because they sort of tie in their ideas beforehand of how they lived their life into a biblical perspective and why they left, which is just, I would disagree with because I don't think it's a biblical perspective.
We're talking about brand friendly and the idea of appealing to a mass audience regardless of what is required to be appealing.
But here you go, I think this is another clip just so you have some context echoing again this sort of overall sentiment in their content.
at the YouTube live event.
And it was the first time we all got together.
I said we felt like outsiders because we weren't connecting with the community in the way that a lot of creators were.
I also felt I think we sensed that we were misfits because we were so fundamental.
What the hell does that mean?
And I think that if you had an interaction with us, and I'm, you know what, maybe you remember, but I had this thought that like people can tell that we're different and We would usually say that in a good way.
It's like, people can tell that we're different, and that's us being a witness for us having a relationship with Jesus, okay?
Jesus.
But it was also this, people can tell that we're different because we're uptight.
I think we're Judgmental.
People think that it's that, oh, they moved to L.A.
and they got liberal.
You know, they gave up their faith.
Yes.
You know?
Well, you could also blame it on YouTube, because many years before, it's like, I mean, in a very good way, it expanded.
Well, I don't blame it on YouTube.
I blame it on the people who, um, YouTube gonna YouTube.
But I do place the blame squarely on the shoulders, and this is also a biblical principle of personal responsibility and being judged for one's own actions, trying to appeal.
To the overlords at YouTube.
I know what they're talking about as far as feeling on the outside.
I've never once been to a VidCon.
I feel like you're as far on the outside as you could possibly be.
Yeah, I'm that original Disney cartoon Mickey Mouse with the hobo out in the cold while they're doing the Thanksgiving dinner.
I got lots of views here!
Oh, but there's no happy ending.
No one lets me in.
Oh.
They just open the door, say, you want to come in?
Take my cash, say thanks, and close it.
We won't run the ads that we wrote for you.
Right.
And I think this is important.
We'll go back to some more clips a little bit later on.
You've heard the term, probably, argumentum ad populum, or appeal to popularity.
First off, before we get to the spiritual, it's an intellectual fallacy.
It is, yes.
In talking about how this matters, or how this is important, or how maybe people didn't like us because we were uptight and judgmental.
Myself?
I make judgments?
Certainly not uptight.
You can see just the...
The wardrobe choices that I've made on this program, out of necessity, because we don't have the budget for a sketch.
Also, by the way, this shrunk.
This shirt shrunk.
No, it didn't.
No barbell nipples, it just shrunk.
You can see it's an XL, maybe we can zoom on it, but I feel great change.
I sewed all the XL labels on the large shirts that you asked me to.
Did I do it wrong?
Yeah, it's like John Edwards, where he gets suits from Armani and sews in JC Penney.
Yeah, exactly right.
I just have man breasts.
So is there, outside of the idea intellectually, that really you can't use that as an argument at all, how many people receive you a certain way.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they're right.
There can be the majority of any group, any country, any historical class, and they can be wrong.
We've seen that time and time again.
So YouTube can be wrong, and I would argue They are.
Spiritually, is there any biblical basis for this?
And I wanted to talk about this.
What are the dangers of basing your faith, or even your lifestyle, around appealing to popularity?
Yeah, audio wave.
Yeah, they also use that same argument when they're talking about the church needing to accept, I believe, gay marriage and things like that.
Which I think we have another clip.
Yeah, we do, yeah.
So their argument on popularity is essentially their worldview.
Their worldview is the appeal to authority.
Go ahead, what were you going to say?
No, that's all.
We will go back to that clip and we have some verses here to get into because I think this is something that this sort of I've always said it does a great disservice unfortunately to Christianity when you whitewash it.
So a lot of people saying like when if you just say God is just God is love no no God of course loves everyone right as Christians and again this is Mass Monday so for people who are angry atheists I see you in the comment section.
Cool.
I'm glad you're here.
But this isn't necessarily for you.
But that's okay.
We want to have you around so you can tell us why you think we're wrong.
But God loves all of his children.
We are all his children.
But that does not mean that God is only love.
That that's the only value that matters.
Discernment matters.
Obviously, judgment does matter.
And the idea that you should be loved by everyone is, of course, untrue.
Well, and they danced around some topics here, going back through the two clips that we played.
The first one was dancing around the obvious elephant in the room of, yeah, I don't know really why our videos show up on the trending page as much as they do.
I mean, ignorance is bliss, I guess.
I wonder why YouTube might feel it useful to have a large channel that basically says Christianity is wrong until they allow LGBTQ pastors I just don't get it.
I don't understand why they're so friendly to us.
I'll take a wild guess.
In the second video, real quick, he said that they had 1,700 videos of a track record that showed that they were going to be brand friendly.
And I don't say this out of anger towards them, but in this conversation that's been started, are you telling me over 1,700 videos you've never taken a stand that was unpopular?
You have tried to conform your worldview.
I realized recently, unfortunately, in calling me a piece of s***, they were surprised that
they ended up not being seen as champions of the good guy at that point.
I'm talking about the little guy.
What of consequence are you talking about over 1,700 videos that doesn't make someone
uncomfortable or mad at you?
Hot wings are hot!
I mean, um, I also...
Not to say that it's pedestrian or inconsequential.
There's a place for that as well.
This is my problem that I've always had with the watering down of Christianity.
You say God is love.
God loves his children, of course.
He's all of the stuff.
God is all of the things.
But it's really easy, and this is why you need an intellectual basis in your faith.
It's really easy if you say, well, man, I don't care about all the rest of that stuff.
God is love.
And then it's easy for atheists.
And at one point, you know, when people really were using the Hitchens, sorry, Christopher Hitchens, not Peter Hitchens.
I'm not your fan.
Christopher Hitchens' arguments like, well, God has killed more people than all governments.
That's absolutely true.
If you read the Old Testament, it's an R-rated film.
And that's not because God doesn't love, but that's because God is also just.
And God understands that certain times in history require certain appropriate levels of punishment.
So just whitewashing Christianity with the Rob Bell or even the prosperity gospel, it's too easy to poke holes in.
And unfortunately, I think that some of that might have been the basis of a lot of Rhett and Link's faith, because that's a lot of young Christians.
And then that's a really easy transfer to sort of moral ambiguity, situational ethics, which is where we see them now.
Well, and I think that it comes out of the whole God is love thing.
By the way, would you want to serve a God that was unjust, that didn't punish wickedness, that didn't reward doing the things that He asks you to do?
And there's a really quick answer to this.
No, nobody around the world would.
I thought that was going to be a surprise.
A really quick answer to this.
It depends.
Well, think about it this way.
He's going to go into a Dom Deloitte.
It's impressive.
No.
I mean, T.S.
Lewis made this argument.
You don't have to teach a child that stealing their toy is a bad thing, right?
You sense injustice, right?
When an unjust situation occurs, it offends you, even as a child, as a toddler, before you're taught anything.
You know that that's wrong.
If someone else steals your toy.
Unfortunately, children can steal other people's toys and they don't feel it.
That's true.
So he took my toy, but you took his toy.
Yeah, but I want this one.
Yeah, exactly.
We're evil little monsters.
So I'd like to get into kind of focusing on this idea that is there a biblical basis at all to wanting to please as many people as possible or being as brand friendly as possible.
I think we have a couple of verses here.
Gerald, if you or AudioAid, if you want to read the first one.
AudioAid, go for it.
Yeah, so Luke 6 26 woe to you and all people speak well of you for so their fathers did to the false prophets pretty rough stuff Galatians 1 10 for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God or am I trying to please man if I were still trying to please man I would not be a servant of God All right, let me have Gerald read the other one, because he's got buttered radio sex voice.
John 15, 18-19.
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.
But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
Right.
And I want to be clear, this doesn't mean that you should, that if you're a douchebag, the Bible's saying, go get him, way to go.
Don't strive to be hated.
Don't strive to be hated, but here's a good example.
Christ did not strive to be hated, but Christ was steadfast in what he believed.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, the ruling class of the day.
And by the way, while we're talking about this, we'll come back to YouTube.
You cannot name me a government or a ruling class more powerful than the companies that are Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, right now.
Twitter, I mean, they're kind of like, hey guys, us too?
No, Jack Dorsey.
But the truth is, and they are, and here's what also matters, they are also enabling, and they are also accessories to other governments outside of the United States.
This particularly matters as we'll get into China a little bit.
But Jesus offended the ruling class.
It wasn't just religious, it wasn't just pious religiosity.
It was effectively a socio-political ruling class with a Pharisee status.
He didn't go in and say, ha ha, your robe is funny, it sucks, where'd you get that at?
Gazar Pharisees?
I'm just joking, Nicodemus.
You're all right.
No, he didn't do that.
But when they asked him, and he said, I am, that's about as offensive as you can get when Jesus says, no, this is absolutely what I believe.
I'm not going to change it.
And inherently, that created a rift.
That came with hatred of some, not all.
Well, he knew that truth would divide people, and so that's why in one of the verses, we didn't quote this one here, but he says, I didn't come to unite, but to divide.
He wasn't saying, like, I've come to be a division among you.
He was saying, I came to give you truth, and I know that truth is going to divide you guys, because people are not going to accept it, and it's going to make them very angry.
I'm not going to do it in an unloving way, but I am going to be truthful, and I'm going to take a stand.
So you're saying that crucifixion was kind of the first demonetization?
That really was.
Going back to what Gerald said, if you've made that much content and have made nothing that people disagree with or that rubs brands the wrong way, then you don't have any standards.
And if there's that much content, is Taco Bell your ultimate morality standard?
Whether they're going to monetize your video?
That's a silly way of viewing content.
You can just say it.
You can just say, look, we want to make money, and so we don't take stands on issues.
Yeah.
Right?
You can just be very honest with who you are.
And I want to be clear.
Maybe they don't have stands on issues.
Maybe they don't have any fundamental worldview that they're willing to stand up for, and so they're fine.
They're totally brand friendly.
I don't know.
We just know that they aren't taking any stands.
Well, but they were Christians before they went to L.A., right?
But they weren't taking stands openly as Christians.
Right, that's what I'm saying.
If they were Christians and not taking any stands.
I watched them back then.
It was very much the whole Agape, Los Angeles, Christianity, brand of love, which again is more easily transferable.
Your rewards points with no blackout dates, it's feel good, God is love, is much more easily transferable to, you know what, I just want to make everyone feel good by not offending anybody.
And that also so happens to conveniently land you on the trending page, and land you in the good graces of YouTube.
By the way, that's also a logical fallacy, the idea that, well, Taco Bell.
This is also something, when you're talking about being brand-friendly, you're talking about appealing to brands that, through the selection process, inherently share one worldview.
You want to tell me that Walther, that Smith & Wesson, that, I don't know, take your pick of a litany of these companies, wouldn't want to run ads on YouTube?
They're excluded!
They're not allowed to!
Therefore, brand-friendly is appealing to the brands who are allowed by Wojcicki.
Yeah, and Rhett has several Medium articles.
One of them is against guns.
And he has others that are basically just pure white guilt stuff.
White guilt is white-listed.
If you speak a certain way, if you're going to speak on issues, it has to be about this.
It can't necessarily be monetized on YouTube, but it's within the whole paradigm.
And here's something, too, I want to be clear about.
It's totally fine if someone has a point of view that we don't share.
Certainly.
For example, if he's anti-firearm, that's fine.
And you can have a discussion about that.
But at a certain point when you say, hold on a second, I have spoken out against firearms.
I have clearly spoken out against the church for not—or most churches—for not recognizing same-sex marriage or allowing gay people in positions of authority.
By the way, same thing with promiscuous members of the church are not allowed.
If you're cohabitating at my church, if you're cohabitating with your girlfriend, you're
not allowed to be a pastor.
You're not allowed to be a marriage counselor.
It's not allowed.
So I want to be really clear, they've taken stands on those issues.
Even if you're white?
Right, yes, even if you're white.
Well, don't reveal too much from the secret meetings, okay?
The robes, everything.
Yes.
We'll all show our branding marks afterward that we got in front of Mollick.
But he's clearly taken some stands.
Is there ever a history when you were a Christian, or an atheist, or agnostic, ever a track record of taking a stand that may not be brand friendly?
In other words, it's no risk to say I'm against firearms.
It's no risk to say, allow LGBTQAIP in the church.
But I've got to imagine that every single person From far-left Marxist communists to far-right anarchists have some views that are unpopular or not brand-friendly.
I can't imagine anyone going through 1,700 videos without something that isn't brand-friendly, whether it's the Pope, whether it's the Imam of Peace, whether it's our channel, whether it's Philip DeFranco, unless it is by design inconsequential.
Yeah, and I think it shows a bit of a lack of awareness to the system that they are playing in.
It may be that they know exactly what they're doing, or that they may be just a little naive about it, but you can't go through that entire process and say, well, we haven't ever done anything that would make brands not want to be a part of us or see backlash.
You need to be honest.
What we've done has been so far to the left that nobody cares that we've taken those stances.
We haven't taken stances that are conservative, that would get advertisers mad at us.
And I would be much happier to see people be honest and say that.
Anti-authoritarian, we'll get back to that in a little bit.
Even middle-of-the-road conservatives.
Calling out China for their human rights violations.
You can call out right-to-work states.
How about saying Taiwan is a country of its own?
But you can't call out China for human rights violations.
Yeah, exactly.
You can call out Michigan for being the 25th state to go right to work.
No problem.
Not at all.
You have an ad run on there for some kind of a non-profit.
That's great.
But you cannot say, hey, by the way, who is effectively a propaganda arm of China?
And they refuse to actually recognize any kind of sovereignty from Taiwan.
So I want to be really clear.
It's not just right and left.
There also is a component of right and wrong here.
And my point is, if we want to talk about common ground, The division that is sowed is often because of YouTube and because of big tech sort of acting as though there's this brand friendly, like, this is the discourse that's allowed in a civil society.
But the fact is, hold on a second, Black Rifle Coffee, right, they sponsor this show because they want to go against the grain, because they don't want to sponsor those points of view.
But they have to come to us directly because a lot of these companies can't just get in the same YouTube branding
program.
That is not a fact. That's not an argument for a foundational moral worldview.
And I would argue that historically that proves to actually be far more dangerous because
there needs to be someone to speak up for people who can't speak for themselves.
And I'm not just talking about LGBTQ AIP, but I'm talking about people who are actually oppressed.
We can get back to China and we can get back to everyone who's been demonetized, for example, on YouTube.
Hey, you have a big channel.
What about documentarians who are liberal, who after the Vox Apocalypse can no longer make money?
A lot of people need other folks to champion their cause, and that is your duty if you have a platform.
We try to do it here.
Sometimes we fail.
I think we should probably go.
Did you want to say something?
I was just going to say, it's not just brands in general.
It's just the brands that have been chosen by YouTube.
Right.
So there is a selection process, and that's the issue.
But also, it's not just brands.
It seems to me that their worldview is shaped a lot by just people who use YouTube.
Yes.
And I think that's actually the next clip.
And this is actually, so here's another clip where, and honestly, like I say, I say this with a heavy heart and, you know, listen, obviously I know I make fun of people a whole lot more.
I'm trying to avoid doing that with Rhett and Link just because I would love to obviously speak with them and I'll make fun of them some other day for things that are relatively inconsequential, but I don't want to twist the knife if they feel alienated because of their worldview.
So yeah, if you're feeling like you're seeing a different side of me, it's because I'm being good.
They couldn't be, this is so sad, more obsessed with what other people think about them.
That is the basis because that also determines how they view themselves.
If you don't believe me and you don't think this is sad, here's another clip.
First thing you do when you wake up?
Roll over, pick up my phone, and build my self-image from the YouTube comments.
First thing I do when I wake up is...
Roll over, see if Rhett's texting me because his self-image is being shattered by YouTube comments.
Yep.
Every day.
Now, let me be really clear here, by the way, because you could lob this criticism at me.
When I wake up, and actually I will say when I wake up I try and do my devotionals first, and often make some coffee, try and take some time, and I do pray because that's a big part of what makes me me.
But even the first thing I do, when I go into my email or I go into our drive to look at show maps and research, The last thing on my mind is, hey, what did people think about me?
In other words, I don't read the comments section.
You guys have instructed me.
I'm not supposed to because specifically this can happen.
What I am doing is going, okay, what inaccuracies, injustices, or need-to-know information do I have to work on today to best serve our audience?
It's not how can the audience best serve my ego or determine My moral worldview so that I'm still under the brand-friendly umbrella and make the YouTube trending list.
So there's a big difference between wanting to do your job well, wanting to serve your audience well, and wanting to shape-shift in order to, frankly, maximize the pat-on-the-back ego stroke that your audience provides you.
Which is why it's sad to me, because that'll always be fleeting.
Yeah, it's never going to lead you to a good place.
And historically, we've seen that just following after popular opinion, it doesn't normally lead to a more edifying, more loving, more accepting, more truth-centered world or a freer world at all.
And so there's this saying in Latin, Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
Sorry for saying Vox.
I apologize.
I hope it doesn't do anything.
But basically, I'm Rambo.
I know, right?
I'm...
VOOOOOOORG!
I can see you doing that.
No.
But basically, this concept that the voice of the people is the voice of God, right?
And that seems to be where Red and Link might be leaning, right?
Because they've talked about how they've, you know, we went through the deconstructing their faith and that's what started all this, obviously.
Please don't use that word.
No, I'm using their word.
I'm quoting.
I refuse.
They left their faith.
And so this has kind of become their worldview in place of that because they've said they haven't gone to anything else.
They're not now Buddhists or Taoists or whatever, you know, they're just kind of out there.
And so really it's like, well, what's popular?
What are the people saying?
And I think there's a strong point to be made here.
Look, there's nothing wrong with being successful.
There's nothing wrong with being rich.
Of course not.
There's nothing wrong with being popular.
There's something wrong with seeking these things as your priority.
Anytime you place anything above God, no matter what it is, you can place family above God and that would be a problem.
You can do a lot of things.
But that's where things get out of whack.
And I think that's what we're seeing.
I even felt that as a kid.
One of my favorite Christmas films of all time is Muppet Christmas Carol.
And it's actually, despite the Marley brothers, because I had to fit in the hecklers as the Marley brothers.
Despite that, it's actually one of the most accurate renditions of A Christmas Carol that I've seen.
But there is a song where Michael Caine says, well he sings, but it's really like Pierce Brosnan.
And if you want to know a measure of a man, you simply count his friends.
It's that flat.
And I was as a kid going, simply count his friends, and as a kid it bothered me.
Jesus had few friends and a lot of people who wanted him dead.
So you've got to count friends as well as enemies.
And some people have more friends and some people have more enemies, and it doesn't mean that they're necessarily morally right or wrong, but you shouldn't... To me, someone saying, that's the metric of a man, how many friends bothered me as a kid.
Yeah.
Well, and God's standards, the one convenient thing about them is that they don't change.
Right.
And that the voice of the people is always changing.
And so if your standard is always changing, that's exhausting.
But God's standard, again, is consistent and it does actually lead to flourishing.
It leads to healthy psychology and all the rest.
Hold on, that's a really good point.
Because we also have a clip specifically from Rhett and Link for that.
I find it really interesting that some people are making that argument, and one thing I saw said, it's too late for Rhett and Link, mostly because of this LGBT thing.
Once they've gone there, it's too late for them.
And I'm like, can't you see that you guys have lost this argument?
History is going to leave you behind, you know?
Even the most conservative denominations a hundred years from now.
No one except a fringe cult is going to be anti-LGBT in a hundred years.
If you just look at history and the way things progress culturally, eventually the church says, okay, we'll incorporate that, too, because if we don't, we're going to die.
But I think because the church is being really slow to do that, and it's kind of causing an existential crisis and a
crisis of just the way that they see the Bible.
The young people are just saying, I'm out. I'm not gonna be a part of this.
Well, hold on a second. Maybe if young people are the young people like you, that doesn't cause someone like me to say,
I'm out from the Bible, because guess what? It doesn't force me to relook at the Bible at all. The idea of
progress, first off, progress changes.
You change direction of progress.
You can look at times where we were far more left and far more tolerant.
A lot of people don't realize this, if you look at fashion throughout the United States.
So for example, we think of the 50s as a really conservative era.
You can look at that.
That was hyper-sexualized.
We enhanced the hips and the looks and the breasts.
I don't know what was going on with the pointy cone boots, but whatever.
That was weird.
And then we had the 60s and the 70s where we changed that, where we actually made men look like women and men wore bell bottoms and tighter tops because it was kind of a feminist revolution.
Then you look at the 80s where it went the other way.
We had shoulder pads.
And all of a sudden we went to women looking more masculine.
These things change.
Standards of modesty change.
The idea of LGBTQAAIP changes, as you can see by the acronym.
And for the first time in 10 years, a more negative point of view this year than last year.
of the LGBTQAAIP movement.
So young people aren't just going to tune out because something is popular.
Young people may tune out if they hold a worldview that Rhett and Link did,
which wasn't theologically and foundationally sound.
And keep in mind that this entire movement started with 12 guys on a mountain.
So there's... and it wasn't the, like, compromising with the surrounding cultural stuff
that ended up making the whole thing grow.
So the growth and change and things like that, it's not an issue of compromise.
Really, the only way to move forward and to grow is by being faithful.
Right.
They didn't say, hey, does that hill kind of look like a skull to you?
Eh, I'm not sure.
I think you're going to be killed on it.
I think that's going to be great for the religion.
Just picture it.
This is going to catch on.
This will be a moment.
He said, like, in 200 years, a fringe cult won't believe these things.
Christianity is 2,000 years.
Right, but you also had a misperception.
This is also important, where he was like, in the earlier video, we've talked about this, where he talked about Michael Buckley, the what-the-buck guy.
That was his thing, his catchphrase was what-the-buck.
It's not the gay thing, but you don't have to be so gay.
So I do think if you interpreted that you were supposed to hate someone because they were gay, that was not at all a biblical interpretation.
And if you're trying to say that won't be in the church a hundred years from now, it's not in the church now.
It's not in the church now.
There have been bastardizations of it, but it's never been mainstream theology in the church that you are to hate No, but I don't think that he's just saying that.
I think he's saying that it will be openly celebrated and accepted as normal and not sin, right?
And I think that's the problem.
What kind of faith do we have if it just bends to our social will as time goes on, right?
We have nothing.
We have something that can kind of move around and go, well, at some point, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife is going to probably have to go out of style because you'll just be some random church and you'll die, right?
Have you been to Utah?
As if that's in style.
I know, but this is the thing.
Some places.
You've got to have an understanding that God's Word is what it is, and you can think what you want about it, but you have to be honest about what it says.
So if he says, well, churches are just going to have to change, well, you're not saying churches will have to change.
Let's be very clear.
You're saying God will have to change.
Yes, and I want to be clear, too.
This is also why the watering down of the faith, you know, I think someone said this.
I can't claim credit for this.
Someone said you can't water down medicine and then be surprised when it doesn't work.
That's why I think it's really wrong when you have a lot of preachers who go out there and they draw the line at LGBTQAAIP, but they don't go out there and actively speak against, you know, living with someone before you're married.
Materialism.
You may not be bothered, but it's not a part of the Christian faith.
We are not to accept that as something to be esteemed, at the very least.
That doesn't mean that we don't accept those people.
Doesn't mean that those people aren't welcome in the church.
100%!
A heroin addict, and I'm not comparing all gay people to heroin addicts, but a heroin addict, someone who dresses, a cross-dresser, and transsexual, and gay person, and a person who is just living with his girlfriend for seven years, who says, it's just a piece of paper, baby.
They are all welcome in the church.
None of them, none of them are welcome in positions of authority to counsel others.
And we need to draw that line before it gets to something that is culturally popular, like the mouvement du jour of the LGBTQAIP.
Cut the line off before Jennifer Aniston adopts, what is it, Rachel, and friends decide she wants to have a baby without a dad.
No, no, no, that's wrong!
But for some reason it's more acceptable to some Christians because she's attractive.
And Jesus actually set the standard for this.
He was actually accused or he was heckled essentially because he would be often found around sinners, prostitutes, and people who needed, and he basically made the comment, it's not the well that need a doctor, it's the sick.
The people that are sick, those are the people.
So you don't shun these people groups from church.
You just call sin, sin.
That's it.
You just say, hey guys, God says that these are the things that we shouldn't be doing to experience life in his system that he designed.
fix an issue. And the reason that when people use the term sin, it's become a word that
people don't like because it sounds judgy. But let's be clear. Sin is a spiritual illness.
It'd be like going to a doctor and a doctor wanting to fix you, but he's worried about
actually diagnosing you. So in other words, if a doctor says like, oh, well, we can fix
you, but oh my gosh, what do we have to fix? Well, it's, it's something that's like, it's
great. It's grown. It's a, it's a, I don't want to talk about it.
It's like, do I have cancer?
That's not the word I want to use.
It's going to make you sad.
It's going to make you sad.
It's the same thing.
So when people say sin, like we need to address the sin, we need to recognize it as Christians so that we can all correct it.
And by the way, everyone is called to fix their own sin.
Yes, we all have sin.
It's not a bad thing, but you need to be able to diagnose the problem.
You need to be able to assess the sin so that you can serve the sinner.
Otherwise, they are held bondage to sin for the rest of their life.
This is what we've always believed as Christians.
And it's remarkable to me that that's become a problem now because people don't like to ever be reminded of the fact that we're all sinners.
I mean, I've probably sinned 20 times, not today, on this broadcast.
Just on this broadcast, yeah.
Well, and look, it goes back to, you know, going back to the popularity and kind of serving the mob.
We understand that that's not what we're supposed to do, even if, and we've talked about the monetary side of this, if you're making your show brand friendly so that you can get money, even if it costs you something, the Bible calls us to do what's right, right?
And it goes back to the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3.17, and this is just, it's one of my favorite verses because these guys basically are being called to bow down and worship before this king, Nebuchadnezzar, and they say, they're basically like, king, we can't do this.
And the king says that he's going to throw them into the fiery furnace and then it picks up in verse 17 It says look if it be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace And he will deliver us out of thy hand Oh King, but it then it goes on and says even if he does you're not gonna do it Going to do transgender makeup tutorials.
Exactly.
That's exactly what it's saying.
If you have a line in the sand, it may cost you something.
So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are making the point, we're not going to serve you above our God.
We're not going to serve money above God.
We're not going to serve family above God.
We're not going to serve my job above God, whatever it is.
And even if it costs us something, we're willing to pay the price.
Our God's able to deliver us, but even if he doesn't, we're still not going to serve you.
Right.
And here's the thing, they may actually believe that this is sort of their, if they've abandoned God, that this is their new God right now.
It could be, yeah.
That being said, it's also mighty convenient.
It is mighty convenient that you work on YouTube and you've happened to abandon the God and the worldview that you thought maybe would hold you back from appeasing your new golden calf in YouTube.
Right.
Think of it in those terms.
Effectively, that is what it is.
Like, who do you serve?
Well, look at your behaviors.
We don't talk about this because of this.
We don't talk about that because of this.
Well, that's who you serve.
You're serving YouTube, telling you those things.
And so, what should we be doing?
Romans 12.2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Incredibly simple.
Don't be conformed to what this world does because they don't know good from bad.
They don't know what they're doing.
Yeah.
That's basically, that verse is saying, YouTube, they don't know what they're doing.
That's pretty obvious.
And by the way, while we're talking about this being brand-friendly and this sort of crisis of faith and abandoning it and changing and progressing, let's kind of go over the quantifiable benefits of what it's gotten them.
YouTube funded their half-hour scripted show.
YouTube paid them to make their show longer.
It was an experiment that didn't really work out that well, but I appreciate the creative risk.
Keep in mind, though, by the way, this is the same company that sunk millions of dollars into The Young Turks.
So let's keep that in context.
Sunk money into Rhett and Link and Young Turks.
By the way, we're still waiting for our YouTube stimulus check.
Yeah, where my money at?
Oh, you got all of a sudden really black.
Is this Church Night at the Apollo?
You T.D.
Jakes over there?
Actually, he's probably significantly whiter than the voice that you just did.
They won show of the year.
Great.
Most recent, the Streamy Awards that are, of course, put on by YouTube.
They presented a keynote address at VidCon a couple years back with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
So it's paid dividends.
It is definitely paid dividends.
With this very limited vertical that they've been very clear, it matters to them.
Yeah.
And if that were as fulfilling as the actual, I guess, sort of fulfilling your purpose in how you were fearfully and wonderfully created by God, then it would be worthwhile.
Yeah.
I don't think that is the case, and we'll get to a clip afterward that sort of implies that they don't think it's the case.
I don't begrudge them for being successful either, and I know you don't either.
I don't at all.
In light of all of these other things, I think that's why we're bringing this out and saying, well, look, you guys are just bowing down to the authorities.
I begrudge it being used as a justification.
Right, it is.
That's what it is for me.
I don't begrudge anyone being successful.
I begrudge it when people use it as justification for actions, whether it's a successful government that, or you know what, for example, let's use the wealthiest people in the world list.
What is it?
I just, now I'm thinking TJ, Jake, something Slims, Carlos Slims.
Yeah, the guy in Mexico.
He's not the wealthiest guy.
He's one of them.
And you have a bunch of Saudi, you have a bunch of oil sort of princes from the Middle East.
That's not the same as a Jeff Bezos.
So when people, when we talk about this, I talk about it often, I don't begrudge Jeff Bezos at all for being wealthy.
I have no problem with it because Amazon has improved my life.
I do begrudge people who make that wealthiest list if it's ill-gotten gain or if the justification is, well, hey, who are you to criticize them?
Look how rich they are.
Well, I could also be rich if I simply was born into a royal family that lived on a plot of land that raped the wealth from all of its citizens.
I don't begrudge anyone for being successful, and I don't begrudge anyone for making decisions that may be totally out of alignment with my own.
I begrudge people using success, their version of success, as a justification.
Well, and it is a big contrast between their approach and your approach.
I mean, and the reason that you've been able to approach.
You think?
The reason that you've been able to give the metaphorical middle finger, I don't know if you've given him a literal one.
Probably.
But the metaphorical middle finger.
Where's Cupertino?
I can't do it right now.
I don't know.
I don't know what that's the spiritual is giving the middle finger to evil YouTube.
Is that wrong?
Yeah, but I'm not entirely sure but the reason you've been able to do that is because you have a higher standard outside of YouTube.
It sounds like the way to get success in YouTube is to not have any other standards.
Yeah, not have any outside higher authority.
I want to be clear.
I know people will look at that and say well actually you were demonetized because you made fun of a gay Cuban Mexican guy.
That's not why that's actually not why and if you look at when we were we were obviously criticizing Vox.
Oh, there's that word again.
Both before and after, and videos that involved the gay gentleman in question who called himself, let's be queer, which is where I came from, and without him in question.
So I want to be really clear.
That's not why.
And even then, at that point, let's assume that that is wrong.
You believe that's wrong.
Let's assume you believe it's wrong.
I am not going to apologize because you believe it's wrong.
For example, when I say, hey, People who cohabitate.
And I know there are a lot of people out there, and so you're going to feel, I'm not judging you in the sense that I think lesser of you.
I probably do far worse things than that on a daily basis.
But I am making the judgment that the book I believe, the God I serve, says, you know what?
That's not how I want you to live, because that's not what will lead to a fruitful life.
I want you to find a wife, because a man who finds a wife finds what is good.
Women, I want you to be tender to your husbands.
Submit to your husbands.
Men, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
Right, this is what I believe.
So when I say I'm not going to apologize because you think it's wrong, I'm not going to apologize because I say I don't think the two guys, and I said this to Dave Rubin, getting hitched up, the civil union, fine, states can do that, I support them doing that.
I'm not going to see that as the same as a mom and a dad with kids.
It's not the same relationship.
You don't have to agree, but I'm not going to apologize because you think it's wrong.
Because I don't think it's wrong, and that's what happened with YouTube.
I don't think it's wrong.
I don't feel convicted by it being wrong.
There's nothing in my biblical worldview or compass that tells me it's wrong.
And the people primarily who are telling me it's wrong are very often evil.
Like right now, Google, we can rattle it off.
They have a history of working with Chinese governments to censor information, suppress opposition.
NBC, of course, we've criticized.
They've been parroting Chinese COVID propaganda points as of late.
So when people who actually work with governments that All of their whistleblowers disappear.
When an entity, a company, works with governments that deny the sovereignty of a nation who wanted to simply be free, when they decide to acquiesce to them because it's nice and brand friendly, I think that's evil and I won't apologize because an evil worldview, knowingly or not, tells me I'm wrong.
Yeah, and even if I disagreed with you completely and everything that you stood for, I would still be for you having a voice and a channel, right?
I may not want you to have as big of a reach or I may want to make sure I counter points that are wrong that you're saying or something like that.
Feel free to do so.
I'd have five people on a channel.
We already lost the race to that guy over there.
They would be a passionate five people.
But what I'm saying is that if you end up kind of building a box for yourself and then you walk in and you close the door on yourself when you allow YouTube and other places like that to control what you say because they're basically the one person saying here is what's acceptable for our society to have as an idea.
And you made a point about this, if you have kind of a multinational company and you start making the rules based on other countries, it gets even worse from there.
And we saw this even with Facebook in China, with the social score and Facebook being used to be able to help them give people social scores to see if they were supporting the party or not.
It's like an episode of Black Mirror, only not an episode of Black Mirror.
It really is.
It's just called real life, by the way.
No Miley Cyrus cameo.
The virus as well.
Jessica Chastain slash Bryce Dallas Howard.
I never can tell them apart.
Doesn't show up.
Well, and think of it this way.
You always try not to say something that's so inflammatory, but think of somebody in Germany kind of at the right time to be able to stand and say, wait a minute, maybe free speech and saying that Jews aren't bad people is not a bad thing.
It's the same principle.
It may not be at the same point in the process, but it's the same principle.
If you allow one organization to say, you can't talk about that.
You can't say these things are good anymore.
And you go, no, no, no, that's fine.
I'm fine.
I'm going to jump right in the middle of this and just make money off your system.
You become complicit in that system to some degree.
We've been saying this the whole time.
If tomorrow YouTube changes their policies and it's the complete opposite of what Rhett and Link think, what does that do to Rhett and Link's point of view?
What is their worldview like if all of a sudden they change?
And I would absolutely, and I hope that people understand that, I would absolutely fight for the right to still be on the platform.
Without a burp in my breath that after having broadcast for 45 minutes was trying to find its way.
I would support, I'm just, I'm getting too close.
No I'm not.
It was a Chick-fil-A, which by the way, Chick-fil-A has been slacking lately at their drive-thru because they know
there's no competition.
It's like Bill Gates coming over just whacking tables over and like...
Microsoft.
Windows 98.
It's the only option.
Two things.
Remind me to go back to the alt-right point that's in my head because I don't have the best short-term memory right now.
YouTube is talking about this.
You know, it's a very difficult struggle.
To find the balance between sort of international different forms of government.
And this is something they've talked about openly.
And my worldview on that, my point of view, is you have to go with the laws and principles in the country in which you were founded, the United States.
Why?
Here's why.
And this is the problem of situational ethics, or what's the term that I'm looking for now?
They don't use situational ethics.
Moral relativism.
Moral relativism, yeah.
I always learned situational ethics when I was in school and now it's more, I'm sure, the same thing.
But moral relativism, if you say, well, we have to strike a balance.
Well, if you're trying to strike a balance between different governments who have wildly differing views on human rights, guess what?
It will always end up debasing itself to the lowest common denominator.
And what does that mean?
That means that YouTube, Google, Twitter, Facebook, take your pick, zip tie me and hand me over to the Pakistani government so that I'm beheaded at a soccer game.
Because there are official complaints from the government.
I love Pakistan.
I believe the government of Pakistan, the government of Germany, and the government of China for violating hate speech laws.
So you have to either believe that free speech is absolute and that it's not a right that should ever be trampled on, and you shouldn't even design algorithms behind the scenes to try and change that even social interaction because you want to determine that a country that believes in those values is the one that has made your company valuable or Lowest common denominator.
Zip tie everyone who said something offensive on your platforms and hand them over to the sharks.
Well, under the laws of the country in which Google was founded is the reason that Google can exist.
Yeah, right.
And can succeed and has free speech is the reason that they've been able to grow as much as they have.
Right.
The reason YouTube exists.
And I think being truthful, this is something too while we're talking about the idea of, you know, if it's popular.
We've also experienced this in just the conservative movement.
Yeah.
I've never been a member of the Alt, right?
I remember this sort of came and went, and at some point I was target numero uno.
Listen, I wasn't a pro-Trump guy in the primary.
I wasn't pro-Trump, honestly, for the first few months of his presidency, and then there were some turnarounds where I was going, oh my gosh, I'm actually pretty impressed with this guy.
I haven't run from it.
I've been pretty open about it, and there was a point in time when we weren't doing Pepe memes and weren't just being edgelords online.
Some of it wasn't a huge percentage, by the way, of people in the conservative movement, but unfortunately they dominated the conversation quite a bit online and made it very difficult for us to go out and create content.
There was a period in time where we thought, you know what?
This is the new conservative, and it's not me.
We didn't go along with it.
And we still haven't gone along with it.
And you know what?
We're still here standing, and you can look at the ThruLine and see that we have all been, if not consistent, because views do change sometimes, certainly, at the very least, I guess you would say, you know where we stand, and you know why we've changed our point of view.
And there are very few point of views that I've honestly changed.
What some people see as a bad thing, it means you're inflexible.
I don't.
No, I mean, of course you're going to learn and grow over time, but you're not going to flip-flop on issues like a politician would just to gain votes or popularity.
I want to go back to their process.
their process, right? And they're thinking, you know, we didn't just move out.
Checking them. Yeah, well, their process, not of, not of deconstructing, because I would never say that, but of
leaving, but of leaving the faith.
Um...
You know, the Bible talks about it when it talks about the peril.
It's just, I just hate the term deconstructing.
I know, I know.
It's like someone nailing, you know, it'd be like some kind of a Roman, right, entering in the, or what am I, what's the term I'm looking for right now?
The people who would have nailed it, not the Roman, not centurion.
Am I looking for centurion?
Yeah, it's a centurion.
Was it centurion or is that a?
Soldiers, Roman soldiers.
That's an Amex.
Roman soldiers.
That's a card.
Nailing in a cross being like, you know, we're not calling this nailing anymore.
We're calling this metal fun time.
So there you go.
Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank.
We're adhering you to the wall of Rome right there, metal fun time.
It is just re-wording it something else, a deconstruction.
No, you are turning your back on Christ, which makes a father who loves you very, very sad.
So I don't want to use that language because I think it diminishes, and I know that you were using it, because it diminishes the magnitude of what it is.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, the old word is apostasy.
Yes, it is.
It's just not very, you know, used anymore.
Useful.
So, really what happened is common, right?
In the Bible it talks about the peril of the sower, basically, where seed ends up in good ground, but weeds quickly come up and choke it out, right?
And I think what we saw with Rhett and Link more, and I have to guess, I'm not judging, I'm not saying that this is 100% accurate, but it's kind of a story common to man.
They went out to someplace else, they went out to Los Angeles to chase after a career, and there's nothing wrong with that.
You went out there, you pursued a career, but then you started chasing after something more than you chased after God.
You started chasing after what people thought, what people felt, how you felt about how they felt about you, and all of the things that come with that, and you started chasing after something more than God, and you ended up leaving your faith.
That's really what I think happened.
I wouldn't say more than God, I would say chasing after something other than God.
Well, more meaning you spent more time chasing after that than God, because I don't think originally they completely left, but they started putting something above God, whether they meant to or not, and eventually it created such a chasm that they're like, well, wait a minute, maybe I don't really believe this anymore.
Maybe that foundation that I thought I had, I didn't really actually have.
Well, they would argue that the whole process started when they were back in North Carolina, but didn't start when they were in L.A., but you've made that I don't know that that's true.
And I think that's probably true in the sense that these were probably people who eventually, if the right person came around, would abandon their faith anyway.
Sure.
But they thrust themselves into an environment seeking to be a part of that club that forces one to abandon their faith.
Yeah, they moved from North Carolina to L.A.
and L.A.
didn't take them away.
Yeah, and I moved to Los Angeles.
You turned out okay.
No, I left.
Remember, it was a crisis of faith for me in the sense that I remember sleeping out of my car and then sleeping out of Seymour's renovated apartment up on the top floor where I auditioned.
I refused to audition for a film.
I think it was a Lifetime film.
Or basically it was like a gratuitous sex scene.
No, no, I wasn't pushing a pregnant woman down a flight of stairs.
That I probably, I would have done just because I'd be like, oh, this is iconic.
It's the lifetime scene.
No, it was like a gay scene where I was basically like having fellatio performed in a truck stop.
And it was pretty graphic.
And I said, I just, I don't feel, I don't feel comfortable doing this.
And keep in mind, I had just, I think I had auditioned not long earlier for like a scene that would have required me streaking.
I was like, fine, I don't care.
There's nothing wrong with nudity.
It's not titillating.
This is not titillating.
You auditioned for old school?
And my agent at this point said, well, you know what?
I don't know if we're going to be able to work together if you refuse to work blue.
I said, this is, it's literally blowing a guy at a truck stop on television.
I just don't want to do this.
Like, it's not like I'm eliminating everything.
I'm pretty lenient, which to my everlasting shame sometimes on this.
Um, and I hate it, and I really reject where I said, I said this, I spoke with my parents, I was like, this is something, what do you do, this was for me, this was a very, and maybe this is why this strikes close to home for the same reason, not that they call me a piece of shit, but what if I were to say, oh that lesbian producer, piece of shit.
Yeah.
Because it's in a press class.
It's the same language.
Exactly.
It's just that it's okay, it's brand friendly to say it to this guy, even though the truth is it's a minority viewpoint on YouTube by design.
But this was my not-crisis-of-faith, though you can call it that, was when I had lived in New York and I'd done stand-up and I'd gone to the Just for Laughs festival and I'd done a few films at this point.
I'd done Arthur, I'd done a lot of commercials.
And I was in Los Angeles and I had this conversation with an agent.
There was a point where I realized, hold on a second, everything that I ever thought that I wanted, which was just to either do stand-up or just be a professional actor, I don't know that I can do this.
I don't know that I want to do this anymore.
I remember telling my dad, I don't know that I'll ever play well with others when the others are these people.
In this state, in this industry, I don't know that I can do it.
And that's when I went back to stay with my family for a little bit.
And I actually said, give me six months, because you have to get a job if you're not going to be in Los Angeles.
And I had left a film set.
It was called To Save a Life in Oceanside, California.
It was a Christian film, but it was the only Christian project I've ever been a part of.
Could have gone back to Los Angeles.
I had an audition lined up.
Instead, I drove back to my family.
Because I wanted nothing to do with that industry at that point.
And unfortunately, also sometimes working with Christians in the industry, you have a little bit of a blast of cold water.
Yeah.
And my family said, well, okay, if you're not going to do it, then you better start doing stand-up and, you know, stand-up more.
And when you're here, start working.
I said, give me six months.
Let me try the YouTube thing.
I think I can do this.
And the second I came out with more conservative leanings, I had my manager drop me as well.
And all of these cards just came tumbling down.
And thank God, and I mean this, I mean thank God, thank Christ, I don't mean that in the Irish Catholic way, thank Christ that there were some companies that came by.
There was PJTV at the time and Fox News and Dennis Miller.
At that point, it was Dennis Miller, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Breitbart, and Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto were the people who kind of took me under their wing and had me on their shows.
And Alan Combs, to his credit, who had me on these shows to express my point of view because it was unique enough.
And I said, oh, maybe I can do this.
But I would have had to accept the fact that everything I'd worked for,
I wasn't going to be able to do because I had to face myself and realize,
I can't work in this industry at this stage in my life.
And you had worked in that industry since you were a kid.
12 years old.
I spent a lot of time being tutored on set, yeah.
Yeah, this wasn't something that you just kind of picked up later in life and said,
I'll give this a try.
This was like your lifelong aspiration, right?
This is what you wanted to do.
And I remember kind of early on in our friendship, like there were plenty of opportunities for you to go,
this is just not worth it.
Like I'm swimming against the grain so much that it would have been very easy for you.
Against the current.
Against the current, going against the grain.
You swim against the grain?
I think I can cross those metaphors, mixed metaphors, I guess.
So you can, you know.
You cross the grains.
You turned your leafs and the tree and things.
But you very easily.
Yeah, no, you could have very easily walked away or said, I'm not going to really participate
in conservative media anymore.
And I'm just going to have a viewpoint that's much more centered.
So I'll get a lot more.
Well, that was another thing, too.
You know that with conservative media, I had some raw dealings.
Even amongst your own!
Yes, and I didn't blame the ideals.
And I certainly didn't blame the Christian ideals.
I understood that this was a byproduct of imperfect interpretation or application by man.
And that's what I remember.
The last time that I remember crying as a man outside of a death was in a conservative company, which shall remain nameless.
I think you guys know where they had me working there full time for a long while and was really
angling for a contract.
And they said, yeah, I met up with them.
At this point I was married.
And they said, but you're going to do it for free.
You're going to do it for the exposure.
We're not going to pay you.
And I was at a crepe place with my parents and I remember just sitting there.
I had to leave.
Crepe place.
I don't even eat crepes.
This is how I remember it.
And I just left and I walked out and I kind of knelt down behind a dumpster.
I remember just like, just that kind of like a bitch, just sobbing, because I had been doing it for five weeks, full time, and I thought I was moving towards something, and it was just pulled off the table.
And I had a good friend at that time, who didn't even go into bat for me, who knew it was wrong.
And I remember my dad just saying, hey, at this point, this was the guy who said, you better start working.
Yeah.
And I said, give me six months.
I'll do the YouTube thing.
At this point, it was a flip where he said, hey, You don't need them.
Do your own thing.
And that was the moment where I got the rights to this show.
And I know, listen, it's not like this is some unbelievable hallmark film success case, but I am grateful for what we have, and I'm able to make a living, and everyone here is able to make a living, and it's blessed That's a lot of people, and I consider it very much a blessing to me.
And my dad said, you don't need them.
You can do this.
And he said, and I know, I believe in you.
And at that point, I've always tried to draw closer to God.
And I'm not very, the reason, I want to be clear too about this, and I want to go back and you guys can wrap up because you make much better points than I do.
The reason that we didn't do Mass Monday for a long time, and I've always been very open about my faith.
But I didn't feel comfortable doing this kind of a format is because I am not an expert at all.
Like I said, I've read through the Bible multiple times because I had a one-year Bible.
I've gone to church.
I've been a part of a small group.
I do a devotional every day.
But I love sitting at the feet of experts in anything.
That's where you see when I sit down with Daniel Cormier or someone like George St.
Pierre on the show and fighting just athletics.
I'm like, oh my God, O'Brien Shaw is a strong man.
Even though I don't follow a strong man, I'm like, I just want to sit here and listen.
Thomas Sowell, I go, I want to sit and absorb everything.
That's the same way I am with theology and issues of God.
And I know that I'm not an authority.
I'm not claiming to be an authority.
So I've always been very uncomfortable until someone who works here said, hey, you know what?
He was sort of a Christian.
We know Smooth Manny, but not really.
And said, like, this has helped me.
And it's actually good to see very imperfect people taking a stand.
And that's all this is.
This is very imperfect people who do not claim to be experts at all taking a stand.
For what we believe is right, in spite of it maybe not being very popular.
Yeah, and really just having a conversation about this, knowing that it could cost us.
Knowing that it could be an unpopular opinion to say something like, hey, we just don't think Rhett and Link's story really lines up with reality a lot of times.
There could be blowback from that.
We understand that.
But at some point there's a... You mean like being called a piece of shit?
And I don't even care!
I just want to know what the memes were they talked about after.
I've only seen the clip.
You can go watch the video.
I will.
I just don't want to contribute to the... Don't watch it.
And I want to be clear.
I have no problem with that.
It is well within the right.
I saw the right.
I bought a ticket anyway.
I have a segment called What a Piece of Sh**.
And we've applied it both to Don Lemon, Brian Stelter, as well as the World Health Organization.
So I am not casting any stones.
It's okay if you cast some stones at us.
Just back it up.
You should hit me with a boulder.
I know, right?
You should push a button and an Acme anvil.
Just bonk!
I'm fine with that.
And I know you said it on the show, but it was hilarious.
Before the show, she was like, yeah, she called me a piece of shit.
And I was like, oh man.
And he goes, no, no, it's totally fine.
I'm just curious why.
You weren't curious like, oh, I want to know why.
You're like, I'm just curious, like, which thing she thinks made me a piece of shit that I said.
I just want to know why.
And I think we have, we have what, another?
I was trying to, did you have any points you wanted to make there?
Yeah, I was just going to say that what you were just talking about is an illustration of why you should stick to your principles.
And not just principles broadly, but the truth.
And why knowing that you're committed to the truth is the most important thing and not just finding
some organization or some company and saying, whatever your loyalties are, those are my loyalties.
It's actually having standards outside of some kind of corporate loyalty that makes you good,
it makes you good for these platforms or not.
And that's much more important.
And the truth right now is there's some sort of a tugboat that somehow has come.
Tugboat out there.
It's come ashore.
What is that?
I don't think I can hear it.
One of those duck things that has the wheels on them.
We're not even near an airport, but then every now and then you just get a... Well no, I mean, the philosophy that you said, Wade, it's not like we're just espousing this because it's good for faith.
Think about yourself in this way.
Certainly not good for views.
Think about this, bucking culture and bucking trends.
What if you're in an office where it's acceptable within that office, all the guys to do sexually inappropriate things to women, right?
To grab them and to say things, and you're like, oh, well, I'll just go along to get along kind of thing.
No, you have to stand up.
You have to have a backbone.
You have to have principles that apply in all parts of your life.
We're not all perfect.
We're not always gonna stand up when we should, and hopefully we'll kick our own butt and go, you know what, next time I'm gonna say something, I'm gonna intervene, I'm gonna do the right thing, whatever it is.
This applies to every part of your life.
If you have no standards, if you have no spine and no backbone, you will just let anything happen.
And we don't want that for anybody.
We don't want people to be sexually assaulted at work or harassed at work.
We don't want any situation like that.
And we also don't want people to kind of curtail their speech because they think that this is the popular thing to say.
And this actually brings me back, and it kind of brings me full circle back to the point of view that I have changed.
And people, you can go back and you can see this is actually, I think, from our very first show ever that might have been, our very first live show that was, I believe it Virginia Tech.
It's either Virginia Tech or SMU compared to U of M or A&M where people ask about, hey,
I'm in an industry where everyone is very liberal or people say, you know, I want to
go in the entertainment industry.
What should I do?
And my answer used to be, listen, if you have like Gary Sinise money or Bruckheimer money,
let your freak flag fly.
And if not, I can understand.
Keeping your head down, and hoping to get to a position where you can influence people for the better, so I can understand being silent.
If you want to keep your mouth shut, that's okay with me, and I've changed that.
I've changed that response, and because at first I thought I was offering an answer, and I thought, well, you know what, I can't sort of copy-paste myself into that situation, because I know that I wouldn't be happy doing that.
I know that I wouldn't be able to do it, but some people can.
And then I realized that people are going to smell it on you anyway.
And that's if it's your political worldview, or if it's your worldview as seen through the lens of faith.
People will smell it on you anyway, and I don't believe that anyone whose fundamental principles, and this is why now I say you've got to just be honest about it, be open with it, and you know we've always said, maybe you're not a shark, but you can be a puffer fish, you can be a porcupine, You can be the poison dart frog where they just really wish they hadn't tried to take a bite of you because they feel really sick.
I think that anyone whose convictions truly mean anything or define them could not feel good about themselves or happy in putting their head down and keeping quiet as long as it advanced them career-wise until they got to a point where they felt like they could speak up because you never really get to that point because there's always another room on that ladder.
And so that is a viewpoint that has changed just because I have seen so many, and you can take a who's who of people who have been successful in this movement and fallen, or some people who've become successful through modifying their worldviews.
When you change your fundamental worldview, when you change your principles, your foundational principles, as an appeal to popularity, as a spiritual argument or an intellectual argument, it truly, not only does it not hold water, But it leaves you empty and it leaves you unhappy.
And it just takes different people, a different timeline to admit it and figure it out.
And that's why we're doing Mass Monday.
And that's why we're talking about this and the idea of being brand safe and popular, if that's a part of a Christian worldview, because It's not.
It's never been.
And you can look at the founder of the feast, Jesus Christ himself, he was never liked by everyone.
He was hated by more people than he was loved.
And I think at the end of this, when you look at what their worldview is, Rhett and Link, and I would have really welcomed them on the show, and we'd keep it obviously respectful and speak in love, you look at what they've done, how they've benefited, but you also have to look at what it has cost.
And I think this is a pretty candid clip right here from Rhett and Link that sort of crystallizes that.
Whatever it is that we are right now, I call myself a hopeful agnostic right now, but I don't have the structure, or the community, or the singular sort of well-defined purpose that I did, and that is, that's a problem.
I'm not trying to paint, listen, it's not like I'm about to give you some philosophy that I live according to now, that gives me community, purpose, and meaning.
I don't have that, okay?
I think there's a giant sort of shift that's happening culturally, and I think that we may be arriving at that sometime, but it doesn't exist right now for me.
But what does exist is an openness, is this curiosity.
I kind of saw Christianity as this boat in a very stormy sea.
It's stable.
There's a lot of other people on it.
It's got a destination.
You're going to get through this.
It gives you something to hold on to.
It gives you stability.
It gives you purpose.
It gives you direction and it gives you community.
And when I jumped ship, I didn't jump to another boat.
I jumped into the water and I pulled my wife and my children.
Or you jumped into a boat with holes in it.
I jumped into a sea of uncertainty.
And that's where I've lived for about six years.
But what happened to all that community and the people who caused you to jump ship when you became a part of this cool kid social club at YouTube?
The streamies not mean anything?
The keynote addresses not mean anything?
The lunches with Susan Wojcicki not mean anything?
Having 1,700 videos from your own admission, none of which are brand unfriendly, does that not mean anything?
How is that a sea of uncertainty and not just another boat?
I'm confused.
I'll leave you with this.
Luke 9, 25.
For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses himself?
And that's why we've tried to take this on and do our best job possible for a bunch of Bunch of YouTube hacks with this semi-popular podcast.
I hope it's been insightful, Lumeninger served you well.
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