We cover Bloomberg's campaign & investment in social media "influencers". Then Vic Berger (Tim & Eric, Super Deluxe) drops by the show to discuss video editing, how Bloomberg's campaign ripped him off, and experimental documentary.
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Welcome, listener, to the 81st chapter of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Blood Money Meme Magic episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
This week, we are pivoting to video and taking a look at the deluge of propaganda clips being pushed on social by Mike Bloomberg and his campaign.
Now, Mike, if you don't know him, is a billionaire oligarch pumping historic amounts of cash into the Democratic primary, and he's been focusing his messaging on Zoomers and Millennials despite their general loathing of him.
To understand what the fuck is happening and why this goblins campaign is ripping him off, we'll be sitting down with Vic Berger, a video editor known for his work on Tim and Eric and for Super Deluxe.
I'm very excited.
He's my favorite video editor.
Yes, absolutely.
Such a funny guy.
We love Vic.
Very friendly.
Also, we have a Twitch now, so please go follow us at twitch.tv slash QAnonAnonymous.
My true passion, so I can finally get back to playing video games and once again believing in Q, as opposed to doing a show about, like, why it's bad.
I got him a mic, so he doesn't do what he did last time, which is show up like a clattering boomer.
It sounded like you knocked over eight things in your house from where you were to where the mic was, like on your way over there, like some sort of extended physical bit.
That's the sound of you approaching a game.
So, but either way, we're going to be setting a schedule.
We're going to be doing premieres of episodes on Monday nights.
On Thursday nights, we're going to do another stream, which will be a little more like, hey, what if we played, for example, just Jake stories?
Like, what if we just played all the Michael Flynn stories in a row?
Like, you know, story night kind of thing.
We'll be playing games with people, some shooters, some Civilization VI, like open-minded stuff.
Wait a minute, I didn't approve any of those games.
Premiering episodes.
No, you don't get to choose games anymore.
Last time, you chose the first game, and the viewers said, this is boring.
They have expressed it clearly in chat, and you're also gripping your mic.
I think you chose it.
I specifically remember you saying, why don't we do DayZ?
Well, if you want to come watch our podcast, Fall Apart, Twitch.tv slash QAnon Anonymous, and we'll be streaming twice.
If you just go there, even if you don't do Twitch, go there, follow us, it helps us, because it helps us build a bit of a following there.
I hope that you will go, because that is a place where Julian can't edit me.
And what you guys don't realize is that I... Maybe about 11% of what I...
So if you want to see 100% unfiltered, possibly problematic Jake, come follow us on Twitch.
For my top story, 8chan creator flees to the US after being charged for cyber libel in the Philippines.
May or may not be in our living room.
So, Frederick Brennan, the 8chan creator, turned anti-8chan crusader, is in the United States after a warrant for his arrest was issued in the Philippines.
The warrant was apparently for cyber libel, and cyber libel is apparently not the title of a William Gibson short story, but apparently a crime in the Philippines.
Yeah, apparently, well we'll get into it a little bit more, but apparently the law is being emphasized by the government currently because they're trying to take down the Filipino version of Gawker.
Oh!
Due to some, you know, non-friendly stories.
So the government's not a big fan.
So they like these cyber libel laws, which are very rare by the way.
Anyways, we will get into that on our premium because guess who's on our premium?
Physically, in our home!
So the arrest warrant is the consequence of a lawsuit filed by the 8chan and 8coon owner Jim Watkins.
Brendan was sued by Watkins after he tweeted that Watkins was senile and incompetent.
Really tame tweets, honestly.
Man, that's crazy.
He is senile and incompetent.
Yeah, incredibly senile thing.
And incredibly incompetent.
Incredibly incompetent.
These are facts.
I heard that Jim empties out yogurt pots and fills them with diarrhea and every morning he unseals a nice cold Diarrhea yogurt, and just spoons it.
What an incredible factual statement you just made.
That's right, Travis.
I've done my research, and here are my findings.
So, uh, Brendan's tweets were in reaction to Watkins' appearance in U.S.
Congress where lawmakers grilled Watkins about 8chan's role in extremist attacks.
Watkins is pursuing Brennan under the Philippines Cybercrime Prevention Act.
The law was enacted in 2012 despite outcry from human rights groups all over the world.
Brennan faces the risk of imprisonment between 6 to 12 years.
Now that might sound like, oh, with his special needs that's a death sentence or hey, I mean
he doesn't seem like much of a threat to me but have you seen Cyber Fred?
Cyber Fred is like 6'8", hyper-violent.
They should put his cyber persona.
Then you would understand why he deserves it.
So for my second story, famously senile man Jim Watkins and owner of 8kun has set up a
pro-QAnon political action committee.
Oh, fantastic!
Wait, is that the guy who just recently, and this is another fact, it was found that when he pees, worms come out in the stream?
Yeah, this is a true fact.
We're of course asserting with actual malice.
The guy who has a bruise from where the refrigerator door hits his face every time he opens it?
Yes.
Okay, that guy.
So I'm just checking.
That's him.
So Jim Watkins and friends have set up a political action committee which is called Disarm the Deep State.
It describes itself as the first super PAC dedicated to removing the shadow government actors.
Oh my god, they're finally going to take it from their cold, dead hands.
So it is a real political action committee.
They filed with the Federal Election Commission using a Mississippi address.
Yeah, disarm the deep state.
We are in a good era.
It is.
So when you call the phone number associated with the Mississippi address, you actually hear this voice message from Jim Watkins.
Leave me your name and number and the reason why you're calling.
If you're selling something, send me an email at He sounds like fuckin' Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.
Like, no joke.
Like, a real life version of that.
Like, I'd fuck me.
I'd fuck me.
I'd fuck me.
Would you fuck me?
Not even like, you've called this organization.
He doesn't say his name.
It's just like, he sounds like he's just rolled out of bed and delivered this message.
Yeah.
He's probably doing it from a yoga pose that's really hard to hold and you would never be able to hold.
Your body is less life than Jim Watkins.
So here's how founders of Disarm the Deep State PAC describe themselves.
We are patriots like you, located across the nation.
We collaborated with Jim to think of ways to bring our growing movement of disillusioned individuals into the limelight.
For too long, people who have become aware and criticized the deep state have been maligned by the mainstream media.
Despite the false reports, we are neither extremists, nor psychotics, nor terrorists, nor conspiracy theorists.
We are mothers, fathers, veterans, churchgoers, and hard workers.
We are patriots.
We are among the growing few that have followed the trail of evidence and can no longer turn a blind eye to deep state abuses.
After much discussion, we realize the only way to beat them is to take control of their own game.
What actually I really find interesting about this pack is that their website basically advocates for the QAnon general agenda.
But it wants to do it through a more sort of a conventional political process.
So this is stuff like voting for QAnon-promoting congressional candidates and like just donating money to the cause.
The website includes like a long list of QAnon-promoting candidates to vote for.
For example, here's how the site praises Jeremy Brown, a congressional candidate for Florida's 14th district.
Mr. Brown is openly a member of WWG1 WGA and has attended rallies in support of Q. Well, that's all you need to know.
He's got my vote.
He's a member of where we go when we go all.
He's got the biggest brain worms.
He's showed his face in public in support of QAnon.
That's how committed he is.
The website also says that eventually they want to develop an anti-deep state caucus within Congress.
Yeah.
As we gain a foothold in the Congress, we would like the candidates who have joined the Great Awakening to form their own caucus.
This would allow for better collaboration and an increase of political pressure to create policies that diminish the hold of the deep state.
We will show a united front to the career politicians within the two houses and prove, through tireless efforts, that where we go one, we truly go all.
So, okay, so instead of, like, the violent overthrow of the cabal and their hanging, now they're settling for, like, the most lukewarm, tepid electoralism.
That's right.
You cowards!
They're becoming Democrats.
The Democrats are becoming QAnon, and QAnon is becoming the Democrats.
Oh my god.
Yes, yes.
That's it, that's it, that's it.
He doesn't manifest things by saying them, Travis.
Sometimes he does.
I do, I do!
He was talking about coronavirus way, way before.
I do, I do!
He's our oracle.
I do.
I do.
I warned you guys about coronavirus three weeks ago, four weeks ago even, didn't I?
I stood in your living room and I said, this is gonna be a problem, boys, and I spouted off a bunch of shit, and look where we are today.
Look where we are today.
No different, just still reading just news garbage.
Have seen no sick people, have not been sick, and everything is just based on the media I consume.
Oh my god, you're gonna get it first now.
Where's your coronavirus victim that you've seen physically?
Not on TV, not through some fucking garbage that you poison your brain with to panic.
Give it two to four weeks.
MSN.
There we go.
Yeah, more time.
Just around the corner, baby.
Just around the corner.
I will see my first coronavirus victim.
I do want to mention that actually I think it's actually kind of significant that that he's advocating for these sort of QAnon principles, you know, again through like conventional democratic processes rather than like this, a violent military overthrow.
Yeah.
Because there's this concept in sociology called goal displacement.
And this is when the original goals of a group are replaced over time by like different goals.
Far more dangerous.
come in the form of the cult downplaying the original sort of fantasy goals, instead focusing
on more immediate and practical goals.
Far more dangerous.
Yes, exactly.
Far more dangerous, by the way.
So if the QAnon community, like, they lose its hope in the storm of mass arrest, they
might instead, you know, focus on just, you know, voting, even like locally and stuff.
And so they'll still want to see, like, Hillary swing, but maybe they'll try to do it through
like the Make Hillary Swing Act of 2024.
That's going to rule because basically we'll have the same level of shitty corruption,
like our potholes still won't get filled.
He said now they won't get filled because the money is going to like dig tunnels to
find children underground.
Yeah.
It'll just be a different misspending.
I actually don't think QAnon candidates getting anywhere electorally means anything.
I mean, they're going to waste their time.
They're going to be, at worst, like an impotent version of Trump, just confused.
I mean, at worst, they'll be right, and they'll find children in tunnels under the ground, and then expose it to the public, and then become the winners of essentially the next culture war, and we'll have a hundred years of QAnon.
Yeah, Travis, have you considered that they find the children underground?
Oh, well, I mean... Jake's excellent point.
They break through, finally, a wall and it's like the Ninja Turtle, like, underground lair in the old, like, abandoned trains.
Giant rat.
For my final story, QAnon followers have no worries about the novel coronavirus because Patriots are in control.
That's right, King.
So, as of this recording, there have been around 86,000 people who are infected with the novel coronavirus worldwide, and nearly 3,000 have died.
The very first death related to the virus in the United States was reported in Washington State.
The Centers for Disease Control recommends that people who are well can protect themselves the same way they can guard against any virus, by washing your hands frequently and avoiding touching your face.
I've read, don't touch your face, more times in the past week, I think.
But it's hard to do because every time I read it I do it.
I touch my face.
How am I supposed to remember who I am?
I do that at least once every hour.
Just touch my face and say my name slowly and just remind myself this is all incredibly real, painfully real.
As we're talking about this now I have like an itch like just under my nose that's like it's gonna...
Yeah.
Well, some people are concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, like Jake here.
There's at least one group that is feeling pretty blasé about it.
The QAnon community.
And they're right.
So the stems—they might have a point on this one.
Yeah, they're going to outlive us on this one.
But this stems from their belief that patriots are in control, and therefore they won't be harmed by any kind of major serious disaster, including global pandemics.
Yeah.
They genetically altered the disease to avoid patriots.
Oh.
It can detect if you're patriotic.
For example, the QAnon promoter Inevitable ET claimed that we were perfectly safe because a Q drop from two years ago said your families are safe.
Attention.
Please stop freaking out about the coronavirus.
We got this.
Time to put your big boy pants on and finally, actually trust the plan.
God, they talk to each other like they're chilled, like toddlers.
P.S.
This is a two-year delta from the release of info from our D.H.S.
on the coronavirus to the public.
Another QAnon follower named Lion of Judah chimed in with this.
Agreed.
We have assurance of safety and no justification to panic.
POTUS also hand-waved the risk-slash-seriousness of the situation.
As we know, when a human being waves his hands, diseases often respond.
It is weird.
It's like they just trust Q so implicitly.
That's right.
It's just, if Trump said it, that is the absolute gospel truth, which is a wrong-headed way to go around.
I disagree.
If it leads to them not worrying, they're doing better than Jake mentally.
That's true.
They're doing a better job at protecting themselves.
Worrying is never good, but they're doing it for the wrong reasons, I'll say that.
I don't know.
If we can get just less panicked Q people, I'm going to take it.
Alright, we'll call this a win then.
Yeah.
So today I want to talk about the way that money and memes can combine to manipulate
online sentiment.
And specifically, I want to zero in on the campaign activities of Democratic candidate for president and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Despite being a black hole of charisma, Bloomberg has made a surprisingly good showing in the polls recently.
One February 18th poll from NPR, PBS and NewsHour showed Bloomberg with 19% support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
That same poll showed him with just 4% of support in December, so it's on an upward trajectory.
He's obviously not going to get the nomination, but it's weird that he's managed to grow it as much as it has, beyond one.
You can say he's obviously not going to get it, but that doesn't mean anything in a world in which literally every candidate except Bernie Sanders says they want a brokered convention.
A brokered convention could in fact lead to Bloomberg.
It could lead to anybody because it's a non-democratic process in which elites pick this shit behind closed doors.
So I don't know.
It's not specifically Bloomberg I'm worried about.
I'm worried about the fact that these people don't care about the votes of the people.
Yeah, why even have a primary?
Why even allow them to get paid?
He just hired people who are on the state staffs of primaries that haven't happened yet.
And it's okay.
I opened my mailbox.
Legally, I guess.
I opened my mailbox, honestly, from like the week, and it was like, there are probably, and I'm not exaggerating, like seven or eight like Bloomberg flyers, postcards, like letters.
I mean, they are just like- It's unprecedented.
Just dumping.
Yeah.
I don't need to tell you that this is literally a guy saying, I think we're about like Russia now, and I'm an oligarch, and I think I can just take this.
Yeah.
That's what's happening.
Yeah.
Yeah, 100%.
Also, did you see there was a video of him, maybe it was during one of the debates, where he basically almost says he bought Canada.
He's talking about the senators, he's like, I paid to put Pelosi and all those people in office.
He goes, I bought, I got them.
Unfortunate Freudian slip.
Very unfortunate.
That's not even a Freudian slip.
That's just, you said the thing you weren't supposed to.
I mean, is it Freudian at that point?
No, he talks about pumping a ton of money into their campaigns, them getting elected, and then he says, I bought, I got them.
Yeah, I got them, and also I want to fuck my mother.
Oh, sorry, that's a Freudian slip.
As of this recording, Bloomberg has spent over $500 million on his campaign.
Solid half a billion.
Which is just the interest, right?
I read some crazy stuff.
It was just the fucking interest on the money that he makes.
Anybody who takes half a billion dollars and does this with it, I honestly believe can be put to death.
I'm sorry.
Put him to death.
Speak for yourself.
Not the podcast.
We'll save that.
to let people freeze on the street, starve. He killed people by using that
money that way. He took a part of the economy and said we're going to blow
this out the window while all these people starve and die.
He is a mass murderer. Try him at the Hague. Okay. So I'm so curious to
hear which of that will be bleeped.
None!
The passage you have just heard is parody.
It is intended as a joke and should not be taken seriously.
So that's an average of $5.5 million a day since he officially became a candidate.
What a piece of shit.
It's also $190 million more than all of his active Democratic rivals combined.
So these are actually all figures that you can actually read on the news outlet Bloomberg.
While a lot of his money is going to traditional advertising like television spots and mailers, Bloomberg is also pouring an obscene amount of money into basically posting and memeing.
These efforts include hiring 500 deputy digital organizers at $2,500 a month.
They are supposed to work 30 hours a week and promote his talking points to online friends and phone contact lists.
So if you get a DM from someone out of the blue, old high school friend, talk about how awesome Bloomberg is.
That's the reason why.
Well, hello, young staff members.
I am the sheriff of this here space.
And unfortunately, you will all be put to death under the laws of this here small western town for what you've done.
Um, so... It's me, the Meme Sheriff.
The Meme Sheriff.
Reporter Taylor Lawrence for the New York Times reported that Bloomberg campaign is also pouring a lot of money into their Instagram efforts.
Specifically, they're working with a new company called Meme 2000, which is the past.
It's a really weird name.
It was founded by the chief executive of Jerry Media.
Jerry Media is probably most famous for being behind the content stealing account Fuck Jerry.
They're also well known for their involvement in the famously disastrous music festival, Firefest.
That was a good time.
I went there to hunt for human beings, and it was incredible.
Dude, I bagged like 12 rich people at that thing that were just so disappointed and sunburned, and I had their heads up in here in the studio as trophies.
Fucking Firefestival was so good.
And Julian's on one today.
I'm sorry, something's off today.
So, Meme 2000 combines the efforts of several viral content accounts on Instagram with millions of followers.
In the middle of February, all of these accounts posted sponsored content from the Bloomberg campaign.
Most of the posts are screenshots that look like a DM conversation between the Instagram account owner and Mike Bloomberg.
They all portray Bloomberg as like a little kind of like out of touch in a way that I think is supposed to be endearing.
So, for example, there's one post to an Instagram account called Grape Juice Boys, and it's just a viral account, which has over 2.7 million followers.
In this fake DM exchange, Jake, will you play Mike Bloomberg?
And Julian, will you play the Grape Juice Boys?
Hello, Juice Boys.
Can you post an original meme to make me look Cool for the upcoming Democratic Party?
I don't think so, TBH.
Your vibe is kind of off.
I put Lamborghini doors on the escalade.
What?
So that's that.
Sort of a little DM conversation.
So this depiction of Bloomberg as an ironic character is the brainchild of Evan Reeves, a creative director for Jerry Media.
There's going to be a culling.
Today we're going out to see a musical group called Public Enemy and Bernie Sanders, and incredibly, we are going to be executing Chris Matthews on stage.
I hear that he will be pistol whipped by Chuck T. He will be pistol whipped by Chuck T. and Bernie will execute him point blank on stage.
Good knowledge, Chris Matthews!
I'm leaving, sire!
I've heard that Bernie has a followers problem, Julian.
You don't really want to add to that, you know?
I'm not a follower of Bernie, I'm from abroad.
I am a foreign interventionist and a terrorist.
Alright, fair enough.
Parody.
It is intended as a joke.
I would be down.
But when a teenager who runs the meme page at Big Dad Whip was asked about the prospect
of posting sponsored Bloomberg content, he was quoted as saying,
I would be down.
Bread is bread.
So hey, bro, this is Adolf.
Will you repost the swastika for me?
Yo, no problem, Adolf.
The Instagram page for WorldStarHipHop, which has 22.1 million followers, also took those Bloomberg bucks.
WorldStarHipHop posted a video of a boy taking his girlfriend's photo while she poses in front of a graffitied wall.
As the video goes on, the camera zooms in on the boy's phone screen, and instead of displaying images of the young woman, the screen shows only the words, this is a Bloomberg ad.
So they're very self-deprecating, like, yeah, we're taking Bloomberg money.
What the fuck you gonna do about it?
We're not denying it, but it is what it is.
They're gonna find him with coins in his eyes.
Okay.
Jesus, come on, Julian.
Oh man, you're hitting all the sweet spots today.
Oh my goodness.
But Bloomberg isn't just paying off big accounts.
Us lowly posters can get some of those Bloombergs too.
Don't say that.
You're not allowed to make up that word.
Bloomberg bucks.
It sounds like monopoly money.
Through an influencer network called Tribe, the Democratic candidate is offering $150 to micro-influencers if they're willing to post nice things about Bloomberg.
But to qualify, you'll need between 1,000 and 100,000 followers.
Dan, we could do it.
Yeah, we could do it.
150 bucks.
Refuse advertising and then for 150 bucks throw it all away.
For Bloomberg.
We'll each get an eighth of weed.
Yeah.
At one point, the Bloomberg campaign tried to acquire the parody Twitter account Miguel Blumbito, which made fun of Bloomberg's bad Spanish since 2011.
Ah, this is so sad.
So, the offer which was made to the 33-year-old Staten Island mother of two who runs the account was declined.
So, good for you.
Hell yeah.
Thank God, that's right.
Hell yeah.
Damn, that means like almost every politician has less of a spine than someone who's running an account called Miguel Blumbito.
Yeah.
Miguel Blumbito for president.
Blumbito is the only one I'll vote for.
Yeah, Sanders' Blumbito ticket is one that I think would do very well.
Bloomberg's aggressive and expensive digital campaign strategy has, in a few instances, crashed into big tech's platform rules.
On February 21st, Twitter suspended 70 accounts that were posting content about Bloomberg, and Twitter's claimed that the duplicate messages broke its policies against platform manipulation and spam.
This is really interesting to me.
Another component of Bloomberg's digital campaign involves a tech company called Hawkfish, which he founded with former executives from Foursquare and Facebook.
So, Bloomberg's campaign has pumped $25.7 million into this company, according to FEC records.
So, no other candidate has created their own vendor to aid in their campaign.
So, here's the weird thing.
Not a whole lot is known about Hawkfish.
It has no website.
Its creation wasn't announced or publicized in any way.
There's no press release saying we're making this company to aid by campaign.
In fact, Bloomberg's campaign first disclosed details about the company only after CNBC
pressed the campaign about why it was going on a hiring spree in December.
So, Hawkfish is described as a digital voter identification and messaging company.
Its main task is allegedly optimizing how the campaign buys digital ads and reaches voters on the issues they care about the most.
In one instance, Hawkfish updated available voter data that Democrats have used for years in order to make it more useful.
So this is one of those things I think touches on one of your points you made Julian about the DNC and conspiracy theories episode is that is that when people operate in secrecy, even maybe there's legitimate reasons for it, it breeds sort of suspicion and conspiracy theories.
Yeah.
And so here's this company, and they're basically having an influence on her democracy in possibly a significant way.
Because one thing that Bloomberg says is that he would hand basically the operations of the company over to whoever wins the Democratic nomination, at least offer it.
What?
Yeah, and so here's this mysterious company, and then they aren't being transparent about it, and I'll just say, I haven't seen a lot of conspiracy theories about hawkfish yet.
Why not?
It seems like it's ripe material.
While a meme strategy may be new to presidential politics, we're betting it will be an effective component to reach people where they are and compete with President Trump's powerful digital operation.
So that powerful digital operation she's referring to is led by Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale.
The Trump campaign is expected to sink a billion dollars into getting Trump reelected this year.
And it may involve, you know, manipulating digital content in ways that we haven't even yet conceived.
Maybe stuff like like Bloomberg is doing or even like worse.
This goes with the acronym-pacronym stuff.
That kind of lady is basically who's working for Bloomberg right now, and they're selling them on, oh, you've got to be as bad as them.
You've got to use this information.
You've got to pump memes, garbage, just saturate everything.
But the thing is, these guys are way better on it than anybody Bloomberg's hiring, because they want to do it for free, and they've been doing it for free for fucking years.
They actually hate their opponents.
Yeah, exactly.
You can't meme properly if you don't properly hate and identify your opponents.
Yes, absolutely.
Yes, absolutely.
That is 100% true.
If you're going to be a fucking warrior, don't pretend you're just up there doing democracy.
Yeah, you're doing a lazy ass, this is a Bloomberg ad, like, while those guys are fucking, like,
you know, photoshopping Hillary Clinton's head on a fucking crab.
Powerful meme.
Like, you're not, like, you can never beat that.
I may not be a strategist, but I've got you in my pincers!
You're a mercenary, bitch.
And they don't, like, fancy themselves artists.
They're not, like, a graphic designer that's like, okay, let me, like, think this out.
These people are fucking Dothraki, okay?
They're Dothraki.
They will move on you with horses.
They do not care.
Yeah, they act with, like, emotion.
It's, like, emotion, feeling.
They see a fucking picture of a crab, they go, oh my god, that crab looks so fucking, so aggressive.
Like, I'm gonna, and kind of like Hillary, I'm just gonna take this- Bloomberg literally makes bots of human beings.
He is a person who is damaging the left's talking points profoundly by pretending somehow that the process of making your voice heard in a democracy is some sort of automated system that's like a top-down organization from a corporate office.
Fuck you.
Fuck you, Mike Bloomberg.
Fuck you.
I did not expect to be this angry today, but fuck you, Mike Bloomberg.
Nice.
Nice.
Don't open your mailbox.
Come on.
Jesus Christ.
No, he means like the flyers, dude.
Oh, flyers, okay.
I'm not the violent guy.
I feel like he got numbered here.
Mail bombs?
That's a really specific thing.
No, it sounds like you have experience.
That's some IRA stuff.
Yeah, Travis, you can always count on me.
I'm on your side against Julian's violent threats.
Bullshit.
New York Times reporter Matt Flegenheimer summarized Bloomberg's campaign efforts like this.
It is not quite, as admirers present it, that Mr. Bloomberg is a chess master whose opponents play checkers.
He is more accurately working to bury the board with a gusher of cash so overpowering that everyone forgets how the game was always played in the first place.
Yeah, I wonder if they have a word for that.
Hmm.
It's probably just running for government.
So that's that.
It's very sad.
I don't know, I feel like there's something, maybe naïve, I guess the internet has always been a commercialized place, but there's something, I guess, kind of pure about the way people move memes.
They could be toxic, they could be bad, but at least they're authentic.
People's hate was pure, at least.
Not the idea that just a guy can just shove half a bill into the system and make it do what it wants to.
Sorry, but if you have a meme and you're paying money so that someone else can see it, that's not how memes work, buddy.
Yeah.
Memes are self-replicating due to their nature.
They shouldn't require money to be pushed.
What you're doing is disinformation and propaganda.
It's simple.
You're a fucking liar.
A meme becomes a meme organically.
That's sort of inherently... A meme is a meme, but a failed meme doesn't go anywhere.
And there's no way these fucking memes float when you fucking put them in the actual waters.
The market does not support Bloomberg.
Capitalism doesn't want you.
You lose.
Bye bye.
There was a great, I saw a great set of memes, a wave of memes that rolled in a couple days ago.
that spawned from a user on Reddit a couple months ago promising that he'd give one of his nuts if a certain set
of Destiny 2 armor came back and it did come back like a couple weeks ago or whatever
and so the whole Destiny 2 Reddit community is like on this guy basically being like
they're like, well, we're here to collect the nut we're here to collect that nut of yours
and there's all these memes that have been spawned for it about like, just very specifically like
Yeah, so if you want to be politically effective, it has to be about that.
Yeah.
Cutting off your nuts for video games.
Yeah, for specific armor.
Thank you so much, Jake.
I just, you know, try to call it like I see it.
Interview with Vic Berger.
Vic Berger is a video editor known for his work on Tim & Eric and Super Deluxe.
His stilted, hyperactive style captures the society of the spectacle by heightening its absurdity.
Welcome to the show, Vic.
Hey, how you doing?
I gotta admit, we're big fans, so we're very happy to have you here.
Thank you.
Very exciting.
I'm a big fan of you guys, too, so...
I'm glad people are doing big doodoo caca's out there with video so that we can have you on to explain what they've done wrong.
And we're gonna hold their little puppy heads near it so they can smell it.
Mr. Bloomberg, smell what you did!
Now delete the tweets, Mr. Bloomberg.
Delete the tweets.
Have you seen, speaking of Bloomberg, the Bloomberg debate video?
I contacted you because this was so Vic Berger-like.
He basically edited a speech to make it seem like he made a point about being the only business owner or whatever on stage.
And then he made it seem like everybody was silent.
They found no response to this amazing point that Michael Bloomberg made.
Of course, it was completely bullshit.
Have you seen it?
I've seen it, yes.
He's ripping you off.
Yeah, there's hundreds of people sending me, like, you know, did you actually make this yourself?
But I don't know, I didn't think it was that great because it wasn't funny.
You know, there's nothing... No, it fell completely flat.
Yeah, and I've had a lot of people that do stuff that are like, hey, check this out, I made it in your style or whatever.
And there's always something that's a little off about it.
It's generally there, but just something isn't quite right, for the most part.
And that's one of those examples, I think.
Yeah, but I do think I mean, I think it was effective for who whoever that was meant for because I think even though the point is not valid, you know that yeah, he's just trying to say the public figures or people in working the public sector can't you know, do what he's doing because he's a this big businessman or whatever, right?
But it's been tested by the market which is the only force that can tell you if you're actually good at something.
Right, right.
So that's obviously, yeah, not exactly true, but I think the main thing is it just wasn't funny.
It wasn't.
It was trying to make a point.
They don't understand what the humor is.
They think that they can just do the editing tricks and that in of itself is funny.
But it's like, you're coming off, I mean, I think it was, doesn't he say something like, how many of you have ever started a business?
Yeah.
But that in and of itself is not like a really like launching off line so that when you get, you know, seconds of silence and little zoomed in reactions afterwards that you go like, oh man, he got him!
But that's because if you reverse it, it's not, it's like if you did that for Bernie, like Bernie's like, how many of you are for Medicare for All?
And then you cut to fake silence.
Yeah.
That's not funny.
It also doesn't make Bernie's point.
No.
It's a failure on both levels.
And I think people pick up on that, how fake it is and everything, but it's just, yeah.
He should revert to Trump.
You put John Podesta behind bars and Hillary Clinton, and you have like a sound playing in the background like, ah, or something.
You know, it just has to be cheap and shitty if you're going to be a fascist online.
Come on.
Yeah, exactly.
And those memes just inherently work better, so the meme format is meant for shitty, degrading content.
You cannot have this kind of highbrow, centrist, liberal...
It just doesn't work.
But there must be...
One thing that I think has to be noted is of course it's not like a million Mike Bloomberg
style ghouls under him making these videos.
There's young people and from what I've heard, a lot of Bernie supporters or other supporters
are just taking the money.
Yeah.
And so they're sitting there and they're fans, probably, of Vic Berger or whatever.
And so they're applying the same techniques.
He's paying people $150, I saw.
That's what it is.
Anybody can submit.
If you have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers, he'll give you $150.
Oh my God.
It's just an open call for whoever.
Open call.
I'm waiting for somebody to Like, code in, like, you know, child sacrifice videos.
Like, you know, if you, like, switch the hues or whatever, like, a different image emerges.
I mean, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
Yeah, like, come on, trolls, like, where are you?
Like, this guy's gonna pay you $150 to potentially embarrass him on the internet.
But that was so weird is that a lot of this stuff was embarrassing for him except it was like in this it was done by like fuck Jerry so you get the point of it all is is to kind of have an ad passed on to somebody or to convince them of something but you're doing it in a way that's like It's literally like Mike Bloomberg being like, hey, would you post a meme?
Nah, man, I'm hungover.
Okay, I have $60 billion.
Oh, okay, I'm up now.
What's up?
That's the meme.
Who is that convincing?
Also, a lot of those meme accounts, they're like middle schoolers, like the target audience.
Those people that can't even vote yet.
So it's just a waste of money, but Fuck Jerry's a perfect partner for them.
Knowing where they came from, just stealing people's stuff and reposting it.
The nihilistic mercenaries, the uncreative... And no passion!
Donald Trump would never have to pay anybody on the Donald to make a meme for him, you know what I mean?
They just fucking love it, and they want to, and it's a source of pride.
I don't think any person that's like in Bloomberg's camp is like, oh my god, I fucking love this guy, I can't wait.
I just thought of a great Bloomberg meme.
No, whereas with Bernie it's true that even that like, you know, I'm once again, you know, like people love it, they think it's funny.
But you have to be able to make fun of yourself in a lot of ways.
You have to sort of, in some ways, some of the best memes highlight the central character's flaws and acknowledging that as part of the humor.
Bloomberg, I could never see in a thousand years him poking fun at himself in a way that's genuine and is going to make somebody be like, oh man, not such a bad guy.
And so, like, are you going to contact Mr. Magic Mike Bloomberg?
I might, I might.
I might use some of that cash, yeah.
That silence will be taxed at $10,000 a second.
The Vic Berger silence, TM.
Oh man.
So yeah, we were talking about this, but he's been paying influencers like fucking Fuck Jerry, and they're taking money to post these kind of ironic, self-deprecating memes, which are still obviously designed as advertising for a billionaire's campaign.
I mean what, yeah, what do you think of that?
I mean, are we, are we seeing, is this a list?
Do all the meme makers who do this go on a list?
I think so.
I think, but they've already been on a list already.
That's true.
But you know, you know who redeemed himself?
Well, not totally redeemed himself, but like, what's a guy named The Fat Jew?
Oh yeah.
He spoke out against it because he was like contacted by Bloomberg and he's like, yeah, railing against his, you know.
He was like, hey man, I'm down for first Jewish president, but it won't be you, my Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, that's a smart businessman who looked at the battleground and was like, man, I mean, if I associate myself with this, with this shit, the rest of my shit is gonna, my career is fucked.
I mean, I guess it's on par with running the Fyre Festival PR.
You're right.
For fuck's sake, Jerry, these people are nihilists.
They believe in nothing.
Yeah, he's partnering with the Fyre Fest people.
It's just like, it's unbelievable.
I don't know.
I think it's a very strange... there's something about irony and memes where people think, oh, we're just post-politics because of that.
But the result of it, if you think you're beyond politics, is this.
You're going to be fucking weaponized by some fucking piece of shit because he has enough money.
If you really, truly don't believe in anything, it's all just memes and lols.
At the end of the day, there's a bill to pay, and we may have to deal with this miniature president that is not going to be a good time, I have a feeling.
So as the political discourse grows increasingly shrill, a kind of gaudy and absurd, people are saying it's kind of hard to create satire these days.
And like it's it is it is true that if I were to evaluate reality, it seems to have been edited by Vic Berger more and more just naturally.
There's less work for me now.
Less intervention needed, I guess.
So, yeah, what do you think about that?
Do you think it's challenging or?
I mean, yeah, it is in a way, because, you know, Trump is embarrassing himself every single day.
He's just saying the most insane things and just It's driving the hate everywhere.
So I mean, really just have to like, let him be 80 to 90% of what you're putting out there and just let him let him do his thing.
Yeah.
And then just amplify little bits of it, you know, if just to find the find the humor there.
Right, so there's less gaps between the points of edit, I guess?
Yeah, I think so.
And then when you get the right ones, they must be so good, because it's like watching him simultaneously mispronounce a word about human rights and also, you know, kind of try to swear and slur his words.
I think he's way, way worse now.
We watched an Adam Curtis clip of him on debate stage in 2016.
It seems like there's been a profound mental... Oh yeah, totally.
Absolutely.
Even though it feels like it's the same guy as it was three and a half years ago, when you watch the old videos and the new one, you're like, oh yeah, man, there's some slippage.
Yeah, yeah.
Some definite slippage.
Or the day he announced, he was all fired up and he was just doing his thing.
He was a fairly normal Trump.
But nowadays, it's just like, what is going on there?
There's gotta be some drug, too, that he's on.
There's some upper or something.
It always seems like he's coming down from being on uppers.
There must be some sort of symptom treatment for the early dementia stuff.
You know how in football and stuff, if your star runner injures his knee, you take him back and you pump him full of shit and he's good to go for a couple hours?
What if, like, the Republicans have some kind of, like, syringe or whatever, and when Trump starts to, like, melt, they, you know, bring him back into some fucking room, fucking pump him full of some, like, drug that's not even available on the market, and just, you know, this'll last another four years.
Get back out there.
Get back out there, buddy.
Yeah, I do think that every campaign must have a fucking chemist on board.
Yeah, they must.
That crazy fuck who would just give Hitler whatever mix made sense before the meeting and was responsible for various negotiations going either wrong or right based on what drugs he put in the needle that day.
I think today it's a bit more refined, obviously.
Back then he was really going buckwild on old Hitler and got him into quite an amphetamine frenzy, unfortunately.
It could just be like the aspartame from the Diet Coke.
Just sort of solidifying inside, turning into a white chalky rock that his body has to negotiate with.
If he dies of aspirin poisoning, that would be amazing.
The first person to overdose on Diet Cokes due to his fragile condition.
I don't know how much longer it's going to last.
Can you imagine if he gets another term?
It's going to be insane.
The way he's going down and degrading.
Yeah.
It's going to be.
They're going to have to.
I think this campaign is going to be fascinating, to be honest, because he has to get up there and be angry and accuse probably a socialist of being a socialist and a communist and all this shit.
And we're going to see like, yeah, a guy who cares more about Broadway tried to yell about the like Iron Curtain.
I don't think he will.
I think he's going to be like, this is America, I'm not going to debate a socialist.
I don't think he's going to debate.
There's no way.
in you know one half of Berlin or whatever.
Like he doesn't, politics are just a series of circumstances for him.
I don't think he will.
I think he's going to be like, why do I, well like this is America, like I'm not going to
debate a socialist.
He's just going to shut up.
I don't think he's going to debate.
No.
There's no way.
He can't because the same team of doctors that pumps him with the syringe is like, mm
mm mm, and not have you on TV, you know, improv-ing essentially.
I would love it if he was on stage and he's trying to do that thing he did to Hilary where he stands behind her and hovers, except he's standing behind Bernie and Bernie's taller, so he's just blocked.
I'll bet Bernie's got life.
Fucking sharp elbows.
People who played basketball with him said that he had sharp elbows, and he was a wily bastard, so hopefully, you know... Jews.
Jews.
Turns out we're decent at ball.
Yes, you want to believe that so bad.
We're not in the NBA, but we're decent at, like, rec room basketball, you know what I mean?
And a little bit of freestyle rapping every now and then.
Paul Barman, your best rapper.
Huh?
Nothing?
So I know there's a lot of people out there, kind of, they have access to insane editing equipment now.
Stuff that I wasn't able to do with like Final Cut Pro 10 years ago, now you can do on your phone pretty easily.
Swap music out, even do post-production and stuff like that.
I think that at the same time kids are looking at a million choices and, you know, they're inspired by people who, like, made their voice pretty clear, I think, like you.
What would you tell them, like, if they're getting into video editing today, they're interested in politics, maybe they even want to have things change as a result of their work?
Right.
I mean I think the best advice is just to just to keep trying things and you know you can you can practice like emulating something something you know something that you do like but just just keep pumping it out and don't spend too long on it I would say just keep putting out short things you know like the Bloomberg thing if you know like that guy he's probably some kid just experimenting stuff And just keep working to find your own voice.
That's really what it is, just practicing.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I think emulation, it's like a lot of people feel fraudulent when they're doing the emulation, but the truth is, unless you practice your favorites, then you'll be able to find what fascinated you along the way, and then you can choose that one point of fascination and say, I'm going to go deeper with that specific thing.
Yeah, that's a jumping off point, and then it kind of becomes your own.
Yeah, I feel like emulation sort of teaches you the tricks, or at least some of the technique of the people that you like and the people that inspired you to make your own thing.
And eventually, because you're just not that person, if you keep going, the content is going to steer towards whatever that thing inside you is that makes your stuff unique or whatever.
Right, right.
And try to find the funny if you're going for that kind of thing.
Just make sure that the funny outweighs the politics.
And I wonder, is that basically trying to not make, or not trying to make a didactic point?
Is that what maintains the funny?
What's the difference between something like what Bloomberg did?
Well, I think it's just, you can have your fundamental point that you're trying to make in this video, but you just really have to find where the humor is.
You have to focus on what, like, you just have to remember that it's a comedy video, I think is really what it comes down to.
That makes sense.
And I think also another thing I would add to that is to trust yourself and to trust your friends.
If you're making something and you start laughing and chuckling, leave it.
Don't second guess yourself.
Or if you're showing a buddy and they're standing over your shoulder and you both start laughing at some little edit you make or whatever, leave it in.
Trust when people laugh at your shit.
I think a lot of times, and I know for me personally, My own insecurities get in the way of me allowing myself to make something funny.
So once you're past that you need 400 million dollars and people will be seeing your videos.
Right, right.
So like a big right wing stereotype is that the left can't meme.
And I think there is something there about the didactic nature of like the message you're trying to pass through like a comedy video essentially or like a meme which is inherently supposed to be funny or whatever.
Yeah.
So what do you think about that?
The left can't meme.
I think that's bullshit.
Of course.
I mean, it's like, obviously, it's just a it's just a line to shut down conversation.
And, and it's I think it comes from their own insecurities of not being funny.
Yeah, like, it comes down to like, like, where who's the funny right wing comedians?
I don't know.
You know, where are they?
Where?
Steven Crowder.
Steven Crowder.
That Owen Benjamin dude.
Benny Johnson.
Yeah, Benny Johnson.
That is, oh my god, he's embarrassing.
I met him at the RNC a couple years ago, just like, I didn't know who he was.
And then all of a sudden he posted a picture of us and I looked him up.
He's just like this clown guy.
Yeah, but he came through BuzzFeed too, right?
Yeah, he was a BuzzFeed Benny guy.
And so he fucking baked Alaska.
Yeah, he was a BuzzFeed guy.
BuzzFeed's being a real... Yeah, what are they doing?
I mean, yeah, like, when James Woods is, like, cranking out, like, your spiciest... Yeah, comedian James Woods, the funniest guy out there.
Well, you know what's... Okay, so, they're totally wrong.
Maybe if the phrase was, like, centrist liberals, like, can't meme, like, maybe there'd be some truth to that.
But the left can fucking meme.
If you go to our communism, like, there is some fucking spicy-ass shit on there that rivals anything you'll find on the Donald.
Yeah, I came across this Reddit, uh, what do you call it?
I forget what you call it.
Subreddit or whatever.
It's like the right, the right can't meme or something like that.
And it's just the worst, the worst, mainly Benny stuff, you know, of course, but just embarrassing.
But the worst, the worst ones that upset me, or not upset me, the trigger me, you know.
Are the ones that are just like, you know, there's like a Sylvester Stallone in Rambo or something running a shooting people and they just stick like Trump's face over it.
Like that's the extent of their humor.
Yeah.
But like, what is that?
Like, are you that embarrassed that Trump is like, you know, there's the pig character.
The problem is that, you know, Ben Garrison making them all muscular and everything like.
It works as a meme, though, because it's funny.
Even though it's, like, absurd they're trying to make that claim, me, as a person who's just not there with them, I still think it's funny to look at.
That's the problem, is that their failed memes are still funny because they're, I suppose, crude and grotesque and angry, you know?
And in a way, if your meme is not crude, grotesque, and angry, it's kind of hard.
Yeah, but I guess they're trying to make their point that he is this powerful guy.
Yeah, but we're seeing it from a different lens, I think.
When I first started out in 2016, I was doing all the Jeb is a Mess stuff, and I didn't realize that I had a ton of these alt-right fans that thought I was this pro-Trump guy.
Yeah, and I like people would send me pictures at Trump rallies of them wearing Jeb is a mess t-shirts and there's a video of somebody going hit Jeb when around the same time.
Yes, and there's a video of some dude yelling Jeb is a mess to Trump and Trump starts laughing.
It's like one of the few times I've ever seen Trump laugh.
So it's like, what?
I had to re-evaluate, like, what?
Yeah, how did I get here?
Yeah, but I mean, I just thought I was just, like, heightening, you know, who Trump is, this horrible pig person, but that's what they liked.
That is a really interesting theme, and I see it when I scroll through, like, the Donald, just to check the temperature, you know, is when a meme comes out that, like, by all intents and purposes, like, would be kind of degrading to Trump, They love it.
Of course they do.
Because it's this defense mechanism that's like, oh, you thought you were going to piss us off?
No, we can't lose.
We're team win all the time.
So this thing that's humiliating to the president, we love it.
We'll repost it.
That's like Trump posted the Curb Your Enthusiasm bit.
Did you see that?
The MAGA hat.
Because he likes that.
He likes that.
Or he just wants to make it his own and say, it doesn't bother me.
I mean, he is a representation of that meme of, like, I made this, and then, like, the kid, like, takes the thing and they're like, I made this, you know?
I mean, he is just, his intentions really are no deeper than a crude Microsoft Paint meme.
Before he ran for president, he used to retweet me fairly often.
I would send him a horrible photoshopped image of him, where it's just slightly off, you know?
And his mouth would be like this, his jowls would be down, his eyes would be crossed or whatever.
But he can't see it properly!
But also, I would cover it by saying, Mr. Trump, would you please run for president?
We love you, you're the best, you're the best businessman, whatever.
So he would like retweet a couple and a couple times he caught it like he's like Scavino probably saw he's like, all right, Mr. Mr. Trump, we got to take that down.
But then what he started doing was he would take the compliment, and then manually retweet it like he would type my compliment in and remove the image.
So there's all if you can you can go search them all.
Incredible.
Yeah, I'll take it.
Yeah, so it's like, I'll take the compliment, who cares?
But at the end of the day, I think it is important to remember that Trump is looking at reality more honestly in one way, and it's that when you look at that Curb Your Enthusiasm video for The Average American, they just see some elite Jewish comedian guy in his little car that they don't relate to, trying to relate to people.
And what they see also is this man on a motorcycle who is friendly to other people who like Trump like him so they have solidarity.
He's not going to take shit from these elites.
So Trump's correct that the propaganda against him being put out by libs is actually helping him.
They have no ability to see the crack in reality that he has opened and where he is in some ways connecting to the average person way more realistically than almost any lib candidate out there.
Precisely because he knows no we don't like these people no one respects them.
We all know they're fucking dirty dirty I'm dirty, but I'm also gonna fight and fight.
I'm gonna humiliate the people you hate and I'm doing it from your side.
Yeah, it doesn't mean I'm helping you It just means do you hear the voice leaving from you to Nancy Pelosi that you've been screaming at on television for years right because she is a fake and That's what he sees, and everyone else sees, and no one will ever elect, I believe, a Democrat who does not understand that.
And he's a fake too, but he's our fake.
That's it!
Just like Bernie.
We all know he's going to get into office and immediately give huge tax breaks to big companies.
I just like the cut of his jib and you can fuck off.
I like rude people who abuse anybody who disagrees with them, you know, and that's why.
Yeah, he's honest about how fake he is.
I mean, that's... I saw this video once that was like so... Probably Bernie is that he's not fake.
Bernie is like the... It's like you've been eating shit for years and suddenly you have to eat like a vegetable with no salt on it.
And you're like, fuck.
I know I need to do this.
The doctor told me I need to do this.
But he's not even trying to pretend that there's salt on it.
That's what sucks about burning a bit.
Sell us on the dream, baby.
There's this video.
Every once in a blue moon, I'll see a video that humanizes Trump to me in a way that allows me to see how his base sees him.
him and there was this video of like him he was like Jake we're gonna make Daisy 2.0
and you're like I love this guy we're going to add we're going to add a feature
We're going to add a feature where you can group up with your friends before the match starts.
No, no, it was a video where he's like, you know, in front of some big television screen or whatever.
And he like turns around because he can see like the back of his head like Projected on this giant, you know, 200 what did he comment on with the baldness?
And he's like, yeah, he goes yeah bald spot looks pretty good today I try like hell to hide it and I'm like, yeah, I remember fuck I so relate to it also He just but he wants everyone to be like, oh, it's fine.
I love you to be bald Oh, look at me!
He is profoundly insecure.
That's all that comes down.
It's always about him.
He's insecure, but he is completely unable to have anything go inward.
Trump is entirely outward, so everything is going to be outward, even if it's just insecurity, which should be quite inward.
Yeah, yeah.
Good time.
I love him.
Yeah, this is great.
Good man.
He's fighting hard for us.
Yeah, fighting hard for everybody here, especially us three.
Doing a great, great job.
The other day I saw a guy who had hashtag CAGA.
In his thing which is keep America great again.
I love that.
Keep America great again.
It just, it fucking fried my brain!
It fried my brain!
Augh!
It's just...
Took me like half a day to recover from that.
I don't... augh man.
And I see him all the time because they follow QAnon Anonymous like Twitter
because they think it's a QAnon thing.
I have people contact me...
In fact, you know what?
I'm going to read you.
This is the kind of shit that I get sent to me, and it fucking breaks my heart, I have to admit.
There are people contacting me to tell me that they need help because they're being controlled by the CIA, or they're a Manchurian candidate, and it never ever stops.
And today I'm going to read you this message, Mr. Vic Berger, because you've come here for pain.
And pain you shall get.
And pain you shall receive.
I am reaching out to QAnons as Satanic Deep State is attempting to use me in ritual.
Cloaked CIA involved per many psychics who have kept me alive.
Trying to get message to Q ASAP.
My connection was the music industry.
Please help?
Thank you.
Time is short.
I helped Michelle.
That's Michelle.
I know there's a woman out there writing these messages to me.
She's like, I helped mix Weezer's fourth studio album.
And ever since, the demons are trying to get me.
There's also, there's a guy who, there's a guy, like a QAnon guy who, um, who thinks all three hosts are bots.
And so he'll send me... He sends like... He's seen us!
He has seen us on video!
Yeah, but he sends me like these, these pictures that have like weird text and they're almost like a captcha.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
and I look at them and like every now and again I look at it for a while because they're so hot and I'm like oh my fucking god like am I a robot like like like your own reality starts to when you spend enough time in this stupid world like your own reality starts to fucking unravel.
Have you been confronted in person by any of these people yet or have they found you?
Only gently at the second rally like the organizers and stuff yes we're just a bit like we know who you are you made fun of us okay because we had that public episode where we played some of the speeches and we you know Uh-huh.
But we try to stay polite with them, like we're not there to harm them, we're just there to capture, you know?
And do you think, do you think a lot of them think it's like a game, or do they really literally believe...
I think a bit of a mix.
I mean, I think that, like, the Society of the Spectacle means that there's almost no separation between entertainment and politics at this point, but I think they're pretty damn serious.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They believe this stuff.
I think it's one of those things where it maybe was, like, a fun game at first, but they've been playing so long and devoted so much time and, like, thought and effort to it that to backtrack and admit that it's all been, you know, some sort of farce is, like, Too breaking.
Nobody wants to admit that they've wasted that much time.
And then the Trump people or the campaign, they want it to happen.
Like, do you see large or Lara Trump?
Yeah.
Shared a Q thing the other day.
Like, like, like one of the biggest QAnon accounts.
I mean, that's like unethical.
Like, because clearly a lot of these people are just like a little deranged, you know, and that's just making things
worse for them.
But I know that as long as they win now, as long as they win.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Trump, yeah, the Trump campaign is not concerned.
I don't care.
Well, yeah, there's no concern whether advertisement of like QAnon is like bad for its people.
Like, as long as it amplifies the base and like gets them out and keeps them involved.
I know they do.
They do make people turn their shirts inside out if they wear a Q shirt at a Trump rally.
Apparently you can get in with a Q plus hat though.
That's the trick and you make sure that Trump is Celebrated for his tweets his post his drops the Q plus drops.
Yeah, it's so weird It's like they're trying to keep such a fine balance of like we're not We're not overtly going to endorse this, but we're not gonna like, it's like I can neither confirm nor deny.
It's just like squarely on the fence about like this radical.
Yeah, on the whole it helps them.
I don't know if they're competent, but I know at CPAC last year, you know, it wasn't as prominent and they were trying to a little bit kind of just keep it under the bed, let's put it that way.
Yeah, they're keeping some of the crazier people out, like Laura Loomer wasn't allowed in.
Nick Fuentes, the little Nazi bastard.
Yeah, good stuff.
So, you know, right now, like, I think that one of the things that people doing video are noticing is that social media algorithms are profoundly changing their ability to share it and to get it out there, depending on what techniques they've used or if they have text on screen.
Can you tell us a bit about, like, watching that change come and what you think of it?
Well, it doesn't affect too much my editing, actually, or what I choose to edit.
But it does come down to when you're naming the video, you need more of a clickbait kind of thing that's going to anger somebody that reads it.
But I don't really like to involve myself in that, really.
Now and then I'll just do it almost as a satire of Ben Shapiro or whatever.
Donald Trump shits his pants or whatever, but it'll be like, you know, I'll Shapiro do it'll be like shits will be in caps and there'll be like exclamation just something to grab your attention Yeah, and you need a you need like a thumbnail that'll that's gonna like, you know make you want to click on it Yeah, yeah, and I'm not always great at doing that which is why my videos don't have you know millions and millions of views But but that is yeah The trend is to anger people because that's what it gets people to react.
And so that's why Twitter, you know, keeps people like Weird Mike Cernovich and Trump and all these other people on their on their service, because it it does drive the numbers, the anger, you know, and so.
So you think that's that's one of the big changes the algorithm has brought is like people have learned to focus on anger.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, totally.
And Trump's brought that he's he's he's amplified that himself.
Yeah.
I mean, just watching his rally is just pure hatred the whole entire time.
Yeah.
And that gets people fired up.
And in a weird way, it's almost like on the right, anger has been substituted for comedy.
Like instead of something being funny because it's ironic or satire, like you know any of the
old classic comedy tropes, it's like the angrier is equated with, oh well that person's funny.
Like Steven Crowder, like we were saying earlier, he's just an angry guy sitting behind a card table on campus, like shouting at people and being like, oh, oh, well, okay, well, okay, well, if you say that, okay, well, just let me finish.
And it's always college kids, too.
Yeah, and he's like, poor college kids that are just like, I'm just trying to say that, like, my friend's black and I care about them and that's, and he's like, okay, okay, Well, look, I'm not saying that.
If I have a kid, I'm gonna, like, drop him off at school, you know, and just set up my little table.
Just as I'm getting his shit out the car for him to move into his dorm room, I'm setting up a table in front of his dorm to convince his future.
And he's always punching down, too.
His jokes are just racial slurs.
What's sad, too, I think, about pushing people to make angry content is that genuine anger, which is rising for genuine reasons, becomes completely useless, essentially.
Lost in this kind of theatrical anger that's endlessly going out there just to make sure that the algorithm picks you up or you get listened to at all.
The result is that, yeah, it becomes way more like entertainment.
And I think that the right profits from that.
The right profits from that because it means like, yeah, I'm angry at you.
It's as meaningful as you being angry at me, which is not really at all.
And it's just kind of content.
And I think that's... You being angry at me.
We are the same in our anger against... Can you imagine if we had had a sad internet instead?
What if the algorithm pushed sad stuff?
Oh man, I don't know, I think that would be... You might have some better music, maybe.
Yeah, that's true, that's a good point.
But it's so funny that happy is like, eh, we can't make any money off happy.
Well, they've been trying for years and no one buys it anymore.
No one buys.
It doesn't match the inner feeling anymore.
That's true, yeah.
It's like the fucking old guy when Neo finally gets through the last door in the Matrix and it's the old guy behind the desk and he's like, we tried to make a version of the Matrix that was like pure utopia but your people rejected it.
Oh, fuck.
So yeah, what do you think the future holds in general for political satire videos on media?
We're kind of, I feel like, at a turning point there where people are trying to legislate.
What's the difference between a Bloomberg paid-out-of-his-pocket ad and a Super PAC ad?
Yeah, I saw that Twitter made an announcement that that ad would When their new rules take effect that that would be listed as manipulated video.
But like what, you know, what political ad isn't manipulated to make their candidate look good, you know?
Yeah.
Even if, you know, he didn't look that great to me.
But that's what their goal was, you know?
And I think once you start labeling things like that and just like where does it stop?
Where does it, you know?
Is Ben Shapiro like his news organization is that considered real news like what is a legit news source?
Yeah, I think it's very very dicey and tough.
I think they're gonna run into a lot of trouble People are gonna misuse it.
They're gonna report If there is a legit reporter, they're going to have campaigns where they're going to mass report things.
That's happened to me a lot of times.
They've taken videos of mine down.
People are going to abuse it.
I don't know what the right way is.
Maybe stay off Twitter or something.
That's like to stop using social media.
Yeah, that's good.
It really is actually like good better for your brain to stay off of it.
Don't delete your account or anything.
No, don't delete it.
Make sure you stay following us.
Yeah, just keep following us.
Yeah, keep following, but just stop checking in on us.
Don't interact.
10 new accounts, follow us with those, then delete your original one.
Don't write me specifically to tell me that my one political tweet in a sea of kind of funny ones is trash and that I don't know what I'm talking about.
You're so pissed about Bernie.
You're so mad online right now.
I'm real mad online.
I'm real mad.
I have no comment.
The other thing I was going to say earlier that fucking sucks about this label or whatever, like this is truthful content, this isn't, is they're going to do it to comedy videos.
Yeah, everything, yeah.
I don't want to click on something being like, oh man, yeah, I want to check out, I want to laugh a little bit, and see a warning that's like, this is untrue.
It's like, yeah, dude, I fucking know.
That's why I want to laugh at it.
It's like, when you start putting labels on everything, it's just, everything's ruined.
It's not good.
Everything's ruined.
Yeah.
They ruined it all.
But also, I think, I just get to the point where I'll spend a long time on a video, and then you put it out there on social media, and it's out of the algorithm in a day.
I want something that's a little more long-term, that people can kind of, 20 years from now, they can come back and watch a video of mine and be like, what the hell happened here?
How did this ever happen?
That's kind of what my focus has been.
YouTube then, I suppose.
Yeah, I think YouTube, even though I hate YouTube.
Yeah, it sucks.
They exploit children all the time.
It's gross.
But I don't know what else is out there.
What choice do we have?
We have no choice!
Yeah, we have to fucking go with the gross people!
Like, what are we gonna do?
You know, we were born to make content.
If we can't find a way to make it and then have other people react to it in ways that make us feel okay inside...
What the fuck are we gonna do?
Boys, we're fuckballs.
I better find some MMO to just go fucking balls deep into and just lose the rest of my life.
Yeah, you're dragging the bucket back to the VR again.
Alright, time for another session.
I'm feeling good.
Honey, get the sponge!
I'm gonna watch Vic Berger for eight hours in VR again.
He's put out the latest 360 degree video 80 frames per second I wonder how it would be some of these techniques you use of like slowing down the music or Zooming in into the horribly blurred image in VR We are.
You gotta make us a nightmare.
Yeah, I have to do that.
You know what?
You should make us sick.
Make us sick.
Nightmare on Burger Street.
We just brought him on just to pitch him shit he should do?
While we're on this topic, if I could get one fanny question in.
When I first started watching Tim and Eric and stuff, your videos, I'd see nothing like it.
To me, I always thought that it was kind of a homage to, like, late night, like, shitty public access.
Like, I'm just curious where the inspiration came from.
I wasn't, like, part of, like, Awesome Show or anything like that.
But, yeah, that's, I mean, well, Tim grew up in the same, like, town as me, and we watched the same kind of, like, shitty cable access stuff.
At least, I can't speak for him, but that's, you know, watching, like, RCN, or so does Electric in Pennsylvania.
But I think that's that's and another one was Bob houses name he he like he would have these like it was like in Philadelphia he would just have like these like small time acts come in and it was just on like shitty VHS just pumped out to Philadelphia and surrounding neighborhoods and.
I think that's where they just took it from and just kind of just made it, made it weirder.
Yeah.
Because it was weird to begin with.
When I was in, when I was still like 16 or 17 in high school, I remember my friend was like introducing me to kind of like weird Twitter.
So it's like Old Man Murray, like Sean Baby.
It wasn't weird Twitter yet because it wasn't Twitter, but it was like a lot of the guys that would go on to become that.
And I remember he ordered Uh, he paid, uh, Kaythor, by the way, hey, what's up, Kaythor, he's a listener, uh, but he paid to get one of his videos delivered, and it was like, way before any, you know, internet video stuff, so, we would get these little, like, golden VHS tapes, and they would be packed full of bizarre old Japanese game shows, or...
Horrifying.
I watched the Blue Flowers Cool Keith video for the first time, thanks to him.
Wow.
And I remember thinking, this is the weirdest, most interesting subculture.
I didn't know a thing of it.
My friend was way deeper in it.
Man, that sounds like such a more interesting childhood than mine.
The only VHS that me and my friends passed around was this weird British pornography that somebody had found in a dumpster, I believe.
And it was really bad.
It was like a prison porn.
Oh.
Well, this conversation went terribly.
You're not supposed to do this in front of guests.
What do you mean?
What do you mean, Julian?
Jake does a radio equivalent of shitting himself.
He just melts down.
Amazing.
Go off topic.
Oh, I'm going to be sitting here in this for a while.
But do you know everything is terrible?
Do you know those guys?
Oh, I've heard of them, but I haven't watched it.
They're a big influence on me, and I got to know them a little bit.
But they would just, they have an insane amount of VHS that they just, you know, have piles in their rooms.
And they also, they have this side project where they have every copy of Jerry Maguire, like on VHS, like thousands and thousands of these.
And they made an entire, like, VHS store out of Jerry Maguire's.
What?
Yes, I think I've seen this!
Yeah, it's the coolest.
That is fantastic.
But they archive a lot of stuff.
And actually, speaking of YouTube, they just pulled their channel.
So, like, countless hours of work just gone.
They pulled it, what?
They pulled it for, like, copyright infringements.
All these, like, old VHS, like, from the 70s and 80s.
They would do, like, little edits of it, you know, like an hour-and-a-half movie, garbage movie, you know, down to, like, two minutes or something like that.
Yeah, amazing shit.
But it's just, like, super influential stuff.
I've been watching Adam Curtis a lot.
I know this is a bit of a pivot, but I've been watching Adam Curtis a lot, and I noticed that he also does use techniques that are very extreme and fast-paced, and he's covering stuff that's inscrutable, like geopolitics and shit like that.
But he's able to, I think, speak the language that I also notice in your videos, which is this kind of hyperactive acknowledgement that our brains are overloaded and fried and that that's how we're all feeling and we're all experiencing this cacophony from that perspective.
And I'm wondering, have you ever considered doing stuff that's more serious?
Yeah definitely I'm looking yeah I'm looking for a way out of like what I'm doing I just like so like like dark and just like the internet just tired of you know being surrounded by these people that I yeah you know so I'm looking for a way out and I think yeah I think something along those lines would be a little nicer or Even a little happier, find a way to turn that shit into something a little more pleasant that isn't gonna rot my brain.
But yeah, I'm not too familiar with Curtis, but that is something that's been on my list to check out.
I heard he does all the editing himself, too.
Oh yeah, you can tell.
I think his auteurship comes in through the editing mostly.
It's that and his incredibly monotonous and fucking overbearing British voice, which I love.
But yeah, if you want to start somewhere, I mean... What's the best one to start with?
Hypernormalization is mind-boggling.
I also recently watched, it's the one on the Middle East, specifically centered around Saudi Arabia, and he bittersomething.
bit or something. He put it out a year before hyper normalization and that is really, really
fascinating as well. It's very experimental in fact. It's over two hours long and there are like,
there's a good 20 minute period where there's no sound. Or there's, he's playing with different
images with absolutely no voice for a long time. He's amazing. Hyper normalization I'd say though
is for newcomers like the... That's the entrance.
Oh, because it's one of those things you'll never forget.
There's a before and after, at least for me, having watched Curtis.
I don't know if I need that.
Oh, it will wreck you!
I don't know if I need a before and after.
I'm already after.
I'm just an after.
That's all I am.
Because I would personally just love to see a Vic Berger experimental documentary.
I think that documentary is probably the most interesting form right now in terms of how people are interacting with it.
And yeah, I don't know if you've seen The Act of Killing.
That's another experimental documentary that is obviously very depressing, but so amazing and really kind of shattering the possibilities of the genre and the medium.
So anyways, that's just our fan moment, encouraging you to...
But thinking about doing a documentary, because I have social anxiety and all this stuff.
Yeah, me too.
Nice, nice.
That's everybody in this room.
Everybody does, yeah.
And everybody outside of this room lives in this apartment as well.
That's right.
Yeah, exactly.
But thinking about exploring that, where the hell does that come from?
Because it's hard to explain to people.
My wife doesn't, I mean, she has a little bit of anxiety, but nothing that, at least what I can tell, is what I deal with.
So it's hard to explain to people What it's like, and, you know, like, why are you sweating?
Why are you, like, you know, quiet?
Why do you not want to leave the house?
Right, right.
Because, like, a simple interaction with someone selling you something feels too much.
Right, right.
So it's like, well, these are your friends that you were supposed to go hang out with.
Like, what is your aversion?
Right, right, yeah.
You never see your friends.
Jake invited you out.
Jake kicked off our whole friendship by meeting me.
Because a friend was like, hey, you got to meet this guy.
He's funny.
He likes video games.
You could do this podcast you might want to do together.
He shows up and sips cold brew coffee and immediately has a panic attack.
That was my first mistake.
So he's in a panic attack trying to build a friendship with me.
It was so good.
But that's good, though.
I mean, yeah, you relate to that.
Exactly.
And that's one tip, if anybody cares.
Drink less fully caffeinated coffee.
Correct.
I've been, ever since I started doing it, every morning I make a pot of coffee, but it's like half decaf, half regular now.
That's helped me a lot.
It is, Vic.
That's why I was able to be here today.
This half cup, that's as much as I'll drink.
That's it.
That's it.
I just know.
I know that if I have half a cup, that's going to be fine.
That's right.
And you just hold the cup and you just imagine you're drinking it.
You know what I find?
You do Scott Adams.
I don't know if you're on the CBD oil, but I find that the CBD oil half dropper full in the morning and my anxiety is much more manageable.
Is it just CBD?
It's, I have a little bit of THC in it.
It's like an 18 to 1.
So like 18 part CBD, 1 part THC.
So you don't really even feel high.
It's enough THC to like activate the CBD.
I got one that's like, it's called Remedy.
So it sounds like real like medicinal.
It's going to solve everything.
I got it for you.
Don't worry.
It's like, it's like, it's basically one to one, I think.
And that, and that is good.
I like that.
Yeah, that helps.
One-to-one will get me a little high, which I try not to do going into work.
Sometimes I make mistakes.
Mistakes have been made where I've ended up in my office Yeah.
Really fucking high.
My boss is, you know, sober in 30 years.
So, like, it's a very, it's a precarious situation for sure.
But I do find that, yeah, that has helped a lot in ways that, like, some of the prescription drugs have not.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I've tried them all.
Dude, and they fucking kill your creativity.
It's just like not good shit.
It's all bad.
Everything's bad.
Everything is terrible.
This is what you happen when you podcast with two Jewish people.
Fucking sucks.
How do you drink your coffee?
Half.
Oh, so good.
Well, honestly, people can find your work and they should find your work at youtube.com slash Vic Berger.
That's B-E-R-G-E-R.
And they can follow you on Twitter at Vic Berger I-V.
But don't follow me on Twitter.
Yeah, and don't message me either, actually.
It's horrible.
Don't retweet him, don't like him.
You can if you want to.
Do it, but silently and quietly.
Don't say you're enjoying it.
Right.
Is there anything else you'd like to plug?
I know you released a pretty big movie, a 52-minute movie?
Yeah, it's a 52-minute compilation of Trump stuff.
I mean, there's hours and hours of Trump stuff if you go to my channel.
Don't watch it all in one sitting.
Watch some of the happier stuff too, like the Steve Harvey stuff or whatever.
Jim Baker you can watch.
Planning on going to the RNC and the DNC with Tim again this year.
We're talking to people to try and get us to, you know, pay for it and make it happen.
Other than that, if you want to support me, you can check out my Patreon.
What is that?
Patreon.com slash VicBurger?
Yep.
Fantastic.
Awesome.
We use the same manner of recompensing ourselves in this new independent media, you know, era.
It's a good way.
It is.
And like, you know, Double Mint is never gonna, you know, sponsor a show that's... What's Double Mint?
Double Mint gum.
It's never gonna sponsor a show.
When have you heard of a fucking podcast with chewing gum sponsors?
Stephen Hawking going to Epstein Island.
You are an 80-year-old woman.
The people on the stream last night were saying that I have hard boomer energy trapped in the body of a 36-year-old.
But Double Mint, you can only get that at the dollar store, right?
Yeah, I don't know why I picked that.
I don't know why I picked that brand.
I swear to fucking God, dude.
That's the worst gum.
This guy.
They're definitely not going to sponsor you now after this.
I could have said anything.
I could have said Fruit Stripe gum.
I could have said Fruit Stripe, another thing no one cares and knows about.
She's like Big Red or something for fuck's sake.
That's my brand.
It's stuff that no one cares and no one knows about.
That's what I am.
That's what I made up of.
I remember Fruit Stripe was like, was that the kind, and maybe it didn't happen at your school, but like people would say you could eat the paper?
Yes, absolutely.
That's the kind?
Yeah.
And it was a lie.
It was bullshit.
It was a total lie.
It was bullshit.
The paper looked enticing because the dye that they put on the gum to give it stripes to make it look like the fucking zebra mascot would rub off on the paper and the paper would be colored and so people would say, like, it's supposed to have a flavor.
And then you just have this wad of paper in your mouth.
So two victims of paper dye poisoning.
From California.
Just incredible.
The lead is in the pipes.
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Please go to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month.
You'll get a whole second episode every week and access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
That's over 60.
When you subscribe, you help us stay advertising free, which is the way that we like it.
Not everybody has full editorial control out there in the podcasting world, I don't know if you know that.
Especially for an episode like the one you've just listened to.
What we're trying to do is say that if we had a proper producer with a lot of experience, they would maybe shut down some of the things we said here.
As the producer and the guy who makes the death threats, you have really constructed this wrong.
I have full control over everything you're saying.
The conversation is going to be very simple.
It's going to be me going like, I hate Michael Bloomberg.
And then Travis will be like, I am a tadophile.
Thank you.
You should go to QAnonAnonymous.com and actually now we have like links right there.
So you can go find our merch.
You can go find our Discord if you want to join the community.
Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's fact.
And now, today's Auto-Tune.
You know what I just realized about the coronavirus?
They're so desperate to take out Trump.
It's all to try and take out Trump.
Isn't it?
These people are sick, these people are evil.
The swamp is deep and wide.
In a last ditch attempt to take out Trump, they've released this virus.
It's an assassination attempt on Trump and they don't care who they take out while they're doing it.
The virus was, um, it looks like it was snuck out of a university.
By some Chinese person or something that got arrested or something.
Or the university was working with the university in Wuhan, China on developing bio-weapons.
And out of utter desperation, it's not about wiping out the population and that, it's about, I mean it's partly that because they don't care about us because we're just sheep, but to them, But really, what they want to do is wreck Washington and kill President Trump.
