April 15, 2019 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:01:12
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Joining me today is the host of Pseudo-Intellectual on Blaze TV and the artist formerly known as Roaming Millennial, Lauren Chan. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me. | ||
| I am so stoked to be here in person, to see things in real life. | ||
| It's unreal. | ||
| This is very bizarre, because somehow we have never met in person before. | ||
| I know! | ||
| And people freak when they see YouTubers on the street, and now we're two YouTube people meeting for the first time. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I feel really weird seeing you in three dimensions. | ||
| It's just unnatural. | ||
| I feel like I need some sort of glass between us to bring me back to my comfort zone, but it's great. | ||
| I poked you in the shoulder before, just to make sure you're real, because people always want to touch me to see if I'm real, and we are real. | ||
| Okay, there's a ton I want to talk to you about. | ||
| Technically, you have done the Rubin Report one time. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| A little less than three years ago, we did a YouTube week where I was just sort of reaching out to interesting YouTubers that I thought were doing something kind of cool, and you had a small channel. | ||
| I think you probably had like You wanna maybe figure it out for me? | ||
| Like 30,000 subscribers? | ||
| Yeah, definitely before I had passed 100,000. | ||
| So it was the early days. | ||
| I remember I was so nervous about that call. | ||
| I had to put my dog in the other room. | ||
| I was in my living room on my dinky little laptop. | ||
| Anytime, I hope you realize, you help small YouTubers so much when you do those types of videos, because it makes a huge difference in our followings. | ||
| Yeah, cool. | ||
| Well, I'm glad to do it, and many people helped me before that. | ||
| So I had you on, and you were sort of just When we went through the list, basically, of who we were gonna put on, your name came up a couple times, people had recommended you, and I watched some of your videos, and I thought, here is this young woman who's actually making sense, saying some politically incorrect things, and actually doing something good. | ||
| So, how did that happen? | ||
| Well, first off, thank you. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| And I think I started off the way a lot of YouTubers nowadays are starting off, kind of just as a hobby, something to do for fun, because for all that we rag on social media, I think it has kind of created this atmosphere where people feel like their opinion matters and they want to chip in and they want to contribute, even if they're not getting a lot of recognition for it or money for it. | ||
| It was really just a way for me to feel like I was participating in the crazy amount of discourse we were having. | ||
| It'll be three years ago in May that I started my first A few videos for a while actually were just like little slideshow presentations. | ||
| My face wasn't in it. | ||
| And my first ever video I think was about transgenderism. | ||
| The whole idea of like transgender versus trans-trender. | ||
| You know the idea of many genders I think. | ||
| And for a while I kind of put out a video or two a month just for fun and then eventually I started getting | ||
| more and more subscribers and after, it wasn't even that long, maybe eight or so months, | ||
| I was able to make YouTube my full-time job through things like crowdfunding. | ||
| And it's been a pretty crazy ride ever since. | ||
| Yeah, and watching you mature and watching your ideas sort of come together | ||
| has totally been a joy to watch, truly. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So first your name was Roaming Millennial. | ||
| Did you just feel that you needed to have a moniker and not go by your real name? | ||
| Well, I am just the biggest introvert you could ever imagine. | ||
| Like, I'm the person in class who never really spoke up unless, A, the teacher specifically called on me or, you know, attendance was part of the grade because I wanted to get a good grade. | ||
| So I wanted to contribute, but I think for a lot of people who are maybe more shy, not to mention the amount | ||
| that certain opinions get demonized nowadays, I felt like kind of being anonymous at first, it was safer. | ||
| I was less embarrassing. | ||
| People wouldn't really attribute stuff to me. | ||
| I wasn't necessarily worried about blowback specifically until I got a little bit bigger and then I was like, | ||
| oh, maybe it is a good thing that my real name isn't attached to it. | ||
| Where did roaming millennial come from? | ||
| I just totally made it up. | ||
| It was just like, 'cause I've moved a lot and I was doing some like HR research | ||
| at the time for my main job. | ||
| And so I was very entrenched in the whole like generational separations, you know, | ||
| millennials versus like baby boomers, gen Xers, whatever. | ||
| So had I known I would end up going by that for like two years, I maybe would have | ||
| put a little bit more thought into it, I feel. | ||
| But yeah, people still call me roaming and I'm fine with that. | ||
| You know, you can call me Roamie or whatever, I don't mind. | ||
| Definitely not the worst thing I'm being called right now. | ||
| I don't think, unless I'm making this up, but I don't think I am. | ||
| I don't think I even knew your name was Lauren until way after I interviewed you. | ||
| I called you roaming, and you just went by roaming, and I was like, all right, we'll call it roaming. | ||
| You know what's funny? | ||
| I feel like people who spend a lot of time online or kind of social media circles, that doesn't really bother us, because I don't know. | ||
| You've had Rucka Rucka Ali on your show, and you know, I'm a fan of his, love his stuff. | ||
| He's funny and a really smart guy. | ||
| I think people who maybe just know him for his music don't realize. | ||
| But then I realized the other day, like, wait, what is his real name? | ||
| I just call him Rucka. | ||
| Well, I truly, this very moment, I cannot remember what his first name is. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm fine with that. | ||
| I don't feel like I know him less as a content creator because of that, but I started doing more in-person events, and I was on Fox News and stuff, and that's when I was kind of like, for people who aren't in the YouTube sphere, it is kind of weird to just go by a moniker. | ||
| Yeah, so were you always interested in politics? | ||
| Was it always something that interested you? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you're a fellow political science graduate. | ||
| Oh, you're a political science... | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| Now there's three people that are doing it right. | ||
| Shapiro was also a political science major. | ||
| Matt Christensen as well. | ||
| Ah, all right. | ||
|
unidentified
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So there's four of us that actually used our degree. | |
| In your face, everybody. | ||
| Yeah, I'm using my poli-sci degree. | ||
| Yeah, I've always been interested in it. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I'm just interested in, I guess, the way society functions. | ||
| And I think it maybe stems from a desire to want to improve things. | ||
| And I feel like You know, every job, every profession out there is valid and is making our lives better. | ||
| I just happen to be interested in, you know, kind of systems, governments, families, stuff like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So tell me a little bit more about just growing up before you were a YouTuber and a somewhat public person. | ||
| You are half Asian. | ||
| I've been treating you as a full white person here. | ||
| I hope that's okay. | ||
| You know, I have been noticing that. | ||
| There's been some microaggressions. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Tell me all about your Asian privilege. | ||
| I am half Chinese. | ||
| My father is from Hong Kong. | ||
| I was born in Canada, but I, when I was only a few months old, moved to Hong Kong, and that's really where I grew up. | ||
| Aside from that, I've also lived in Shanghai, Singapore, and London, and then I came to the States for university. | ||
| So I've had a pretty, like, metropolitan mixed background, in addition to my, like, racial heritage, and I think Coming on to an American campus for the first time was the first time I was really made aware of my race in a very real way, because growing up Eurasian in Asian expat circles is actually not that uncommon. | ||
| I'm not going to say that there's a lot of us, but you do have quite a few mixed kids in the schools that I was going to, like the American foreign expat schools. | ||
| So I never really thought about it. | ||
| I had friends of all different races growing up, and we got along. | ||
| Fine. | ||
| I mean, I'm not going to say that I was colorblind because I knew like, oh yeah, this person's Indian, this person's white. | ||
| But it was never a point of contention or anything like that. | ||
| But, you know, going on to an American college campus, it was a whole different story. | ||
| And I think What was that like when you first noticed that difference? | ||
| It was a little bit strange because I remember I was really excited to go to, I'd never lived in America before. | ||
| I had been going to American schools all my life and I had so many friends that were American, but I'd never lived in America before and I was really excited about it. | ||
| Because in schools I learned American history and stuff like that, but never lived there. | ||
| So when I started college I was really excited to get the American experience because it was almost like a It was the place that movies took place in, where | ||
| celebrities were from, where everything I read about in books happened. | ||
| So I really built it up in my head, and I was excited to get that experience. | ||
| But it's funny, when I got there and I saw my dorm room assignment, USC, which is where | ||
| I did my freshman year, they have this thing where they kind of segregate dorms a little | ||
| There's like a gay floor, there's a black floor, there's like a Muslim housing thing. | ||
| And I went to look at my room assignments and every single other person that was in my dorm also had an Asian last name. | ||
| So I was in essentially the Asian ghetto. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So that was kind of like the first time where I was like, wait, what? | ||
| Because I had never I'd never really experienced being stereotyped in such an obvious way for that, and maybe it was just an accident, but all I know is that I never volunteered, like, hey, yeah, put me with all the other Asians. | ||
| Well, it probably wasn't an accident. | ||
| I mean, unless it can, right? | ||
| Yeah, there's not that many Asians at USC that it just, like, you know, literally every other person in that suite. | ||
| There's, like, I think maybe, like, 15 other people. | ||
| So I applied for a room transfer. | ||
| Because I was like, well, I mean, no offense, like I'm sure you're lovely people, but I didn't come here to just live among other Asians. | ||
| I want, you know, just a general mixed American whatever experience. | ||
| And so that was like the first instance and then, you know, aside from that I was approached a lot by people to join like, you know, the Asians in Film Club or the Asians in this club and that's when I started to notice that race was a much bigger deal in America than it was for me growing up in Hong Kong or Canada. | ||
| So I know you talk about identity politics a lot now, but what were your politics like before you realized that this whole thing was happening? | ||
| Well, I mean, I was conservative going into college. | ||
| I went to college Republicans, sorry, yeah, college Republicans meetings when I was 17, so I didn't have really a moment where I was liberal then became conservative, but in terms of the race issue, if it's even an issue, I just wasn't thinking about it, right? | ||
| I was just for like, you know, economic responsibility. | ||
| Lower the budget, etc, etc. | ||
| I think it kind of, it made me feel in a way... | ||
| I don't want to sound like an SJW, but marginalized the way that they were constantly bringing up my Asian-ness. | ||
| And I think that's what made me more interested in cultural issues as opposed to just governmental issues, because I was seeing how much of their philosophy was affecting me in my everyday life. | ||
| And I mean, I have people who, you know, on my channel, they say, you're always talking about culture and social stuff. | ||
| Why don't you talk about more policy? | ||
| And I mean, frankly, My viewership, I think it's 75% under the age of 35, and for a lot of these college students or people who have just graduated, this is stuff that affects them every day of their life. | ||
| They are bombarded in social media, pop culture with, your race is this, versus your race did this, you can't talk about this because of your race. | ||
| So, for these people, and for me at the time, that was the biggest thing that was affecting us. | ||
| When you started doing the videos then were you like holy cow there is a world of people talking about this because I mean that's even though I did come from the left so I wasn't you know always let's say on this side whatever that means like when I started talking about these things I suddenly was like oh I'm not the only one there aren't that many yet and now they're kind of growing but Yeah. | ||
| It's a pretty nice feeling to know there's some other people out there. | ||
| It was, and actually, you know, I grew up, well, I grew up from, you know, college, like late teens onward, watching people like Steven Crowder, How the World Works, Lee Doran. | ||
| He doesn't really make videos anymore. | ||
| By the time he was one of my favorites, he did sort of the whole political, like, debunking commentary thing. | ||
| And I so appreciated that because for so long when I was in college I felt like I was in a bubble and I was the crazy one. | ||
| I was the only one with my set of opinions and everyone else thought the same way. | ||
| So in making my videos I did kind of hope that maybe for someone else out there I could be that lifeline that's like, hey, you're not crazy. | ||
| Someone else also believes this. | ||
| You're not losing your mind. | ||
| You're not a racist. | ||
| You're not a sexist. | ||
| Just for thinking differently. | ||
| Yeah, what about just generally what it's like to be a young person that's a conservative? | ||
| It's not the easiest thing. | ||
| And I think conservatives, especially right now, we're so against the idea of victimhood culture. | ||
| But I don't think it's playing into victimhood culture to say that it is difficult. | ||
| And not only am I younger, but also being someone who's half Asian, and you experience this because you're gay. | ||
| And I watched your PragerU show with Candace Owens. | ||
| She experiences it because she's black. | ||
| But when you are not even conservative, but just not far left, And, you know, one of these protected groups that doesn't fit the mold of who they think should be disagreeing with them, you get even more of an attack, right? | ||
| Because then you're called, I'm called things like an Uncle Chan, you know, Kenneth Owens is called really terrible things, you know, I'm sure. | ||
| But what is it that they want you to believe? | ||
| As a person with some Asian heritage, what is it that they want you to believe? | ||
| Because it's a little bit different than where they can say to gay people, ah, see, We are the ones who got you right so you better bow to us forever. | ||
| Or black people. | ||
| We're giving you this or that. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Because Asians have been, by and large, extremely successful due to hard work and family and all those things. | ||
| So what is it that they want you to believe? | ||
| They want us to believe that white people don't accept us, still see us as other. | ||
| I've had progressives tell me that the only reason that conservatives watch me is because They think I'm white or that I'm trying to be white or that they're tokenizing me. | ||
| You know, they're propping me up as a way to say, see, I'm not racist, which is really one of the most racist things I've ever heard. | ||
| And that's that is hard. | ||
| And I think we see like with this, like our oppression hierarchy, you know, they still like to claim Asians as their own. | ||
| But at the same time, progressives right now are happy to throw Asians under the bus when it comes to something like affirmative action, which it's it's been documented actually harms Asians. | ||
| And it's It's really frustrating, especially, I did a video recently on colorism, which if you're... Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it. | ||
| The idea that it's not just race... Sorry, wait. | ||
| Okay, racism is like prejudice against different races, plus systemic power according to them, and then colorism is like, we're talking more about skin tone, so it can even apply to people within the same race. | ||
| So I did a video about that and, you know, frankly I didn't even disagree with the idea that colorism exists and that there are some people out there who might prefer like a lighter skinned person to a darker skinned person because I don't think either of us would say that individual sexism or racism or whatever type of prejudice exists, right? | ||
| Because people are jerks. | ||
| There are bad people out there. | ||
| There's always going to be. | ||
| But pretty much in my video I said that I don't think there's enough evidence to say that colorism affects something like prison sentencing, which is what the MTV video that I was responding to said. | ||
| Meaning that darker skinned black people get longer prison sentences than lighter skinned black people because of their race, right? | ||
| Not just because of their skin tone. | ||
| Yeah, so pretty much I was just saying, I don't think there's really evidence to back this up, and I think the conversation surrounding colorism, just like the conversation surrounding racism, it's not so much a fight for equality anymore as it is to try and bring down the oppressors or those more privileged, right? | ||
| So the conversation surrounding race, I think, has evolved to Unfortunately, demonize white people in a lot of ways, and what we're seeing in the conversation with colorism is that lighter-skinned minorities are kind of being demonized in the same way, and that's what my video was about. | ||
| And I got a lot of people quite upset. | ||
| They weren't happy with that. | ||
| You know, I was told to shut up because my opinion doesn't matter because I'm not dark-skinned, and so I wouldn't know what it's like to experience colorism, which is a nice little bit of irony there that apparently they didn't get. | ||
| And yeah, I was just attacked for being, you know, an Uncle Chan equivalent, just a puppet used by white people to try and tear down darker-skinned minorities, and it's just... I mean, I've been watching your stuff, I don't know if you're feeling like this a little bit lately, but I'm getting really pretty fed up about it. | ||
| Fed up of being told that I'm not special enough in terms of diversity points to have my opinion matter. | ||
| Well, it's funny because I think you know this about me, my general disposition is I'm fairly agreeable and I try to be respectful and all those things, but there are these moments where I'm like, this thing is so dangerous, it's so out of control, that there are these moments where I just want to unleash hell on these people and really take them down. | ||
| I completely understand and it's funny when I started making my videos I was so under the impression where it's like yeah other people face controversy and backlash but I'm I'm so reasonable and like I'm gonna explain it in a way where they can't misunderstand me where it's like obvious that I'm arguing for more equality and stuff like that. | ||
| Clearly not the case, and I'm still not a provocateur. | ||
| My goal is never to upset people, and I really do—I'm speaking out about these issues because I want more equality, but I am at the point now where it's like, yeah, there are some people who are just bitter, and they're raging ideologues. | ||
| They don't want to listen. | ||
| They don't care what you say. | ||
| They're just going to demonize you based on who they think you are and use your identity to, you know, call you a whole bunch of slurs. | ||
| It's quite awful. | ||
| It is quite awful. | ||
| So I know we could sit here all day long and talk about what's going on with the left and how, you know, the Prussian Olympics and that whole thing. | ||
| Do you see any things on the right that you're worried about? | ||
| Yeah, well, I think, you know, politics, it's almost a game of, like, back and forth, reaction and then action and then et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| And so on the right, I'm just worried that there are people on the right who are getting so fed up, like I am, where they're actually saying, for the example, in the issue of identity, where they're saying, like, yeah, let's have our own identitarian politics. | ||
| Which is completely the other way of where I think we should be going, and Jordan Peterson speaks out about this too, where it's like if you don't like a game that someone's playing, you don't respond by playing it yourself. | ||
| You stop. | ||
| You stop the game. | ||
| And I think there are some people on the right that right now are happy to Start to, you know, buy into it. | ||
| It's like maybe, yeah, we have like a black club. | ||
| We have a Hispanic club. | ||
| Why not a white club? | ||
| Where it's like, you know, you have most reasonable people. | ||
| It's like, wait, whoa, let's calm down. | ||
| Let's stop this. | ||
| So that's something I'm worrying about on the right. | ||
| And just in general, there are people that are so entrenched in the culture war right now. | ||
| I got people mad at me. | ||
| I lost subscribers because I said that the Captain Marvel movie was pretty good. | ||
| That's all I said. | ||
| I said it was pretty good. | ||
| My brother said it was pretty good, too. | ||
| I haven't seen it yet. | ||
| I was sort of wanting to boycott it just because of that stupid comment Brie Larson made, but I know it's going to fit right into the ending. | ||
|
unidentified
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I know. | |
| That's why. | ||
| I want to know what happens. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I have to see it, right? | |
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, so I said it was pretty good, and people freaked out, and I just hope with all of this stuff that we don't lose sight of the reason why we oppose the authoritarian identitarians, right? | ||
| We keep things in perspective. | ||
| It's not so we can have our own group that does the same thing to other people. | ||
| It's so we can move past this and Try to maybe calm things down where we can actually talk about issues and policies rather than calling everyone else a Nazi or like a, I don't know, whatever type of fascist. | ||
| Yeah, it's so interesting to me because you can watch videos that I was doing before the election where I kept saying, if you guys on the left, when I was saying it was us, right? | ||
| I was like, if we don't stop calling everyone a racist and stop calling Trump a Nazi and the rest of it, we're going to create this on the right. | ||
| And it's almost like, in a weird way, that's almost what they want to do. | ||
| Which makes people like us, our job, I guess, that much more important. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the only hope that I have really is that the loud voices that you hear online are not representative of the average person, which I don't think they are, right? | ||
| You have that vocal minority. | ||
| And I think most people who are just, you know, living their everyday lives, maybe they have a Twitter account to follow people they actually know in real life, not just like this whole political world that we're wrapped up in. | ||
| They look at both of these sides and they just think, wow, you guys are insane. | ||
| You're crazy. | ||
| Yeah, well, it never stops, right? | ||
| Like every morning there's another headline about some gender-related thing or, you know, this reverse racism, just like any old idiotic thing. | ||
| And every day I'm like, oh, here's another, here's another. | ||
| And then it's like, well, all right, should we stop fighting it and just let it be or? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you have to fight it? | ||
| I get people who say that all the time, like, why are you still talking about, like, X issue? | ||
| Have you harped on this enough? | ||
| And I mean, on the one hand, I say, like, yeah, this is the 15th video that I've made about it. | ||
| But on the other, they're still doing these things. | ||
| So I'm personally not even sure what the best way to combat it anymore is. | ||
| Do we ignore it, pretend it's not happening anymore to not drive more attention to it? | ||
| But would that just kind of be being complacent and letting them do whatever they want? | ||
| It's a hard balance to strike. | ||
| Yeah, so you mentioned the culture portion of this before, and the tagline for your show is, it's like the intersection of culture and politics. | ||
| I find that I'm not that interested in politics anymore, that the culture thing has become much more interesting to me, because the politics thing is after. | ||
| Well, everyone says it's downstream, right? | ||
| That was, I guess, Breitbart's line. | ||
| The politics is downstream from culture. | ||
| But everything has become this, right? | ||
| Yeah, and it's funny because, you know, I will have people who will ask me, what do you think about this bill or this policy? | ||
| Why don't you talk more about something like foreign aid? | ||
| And, you know, my background is in political science. | ||
| I was a researcher for my professors when I was in school, so I am really interested in policy. | ||
| It's not that I'm not, but I think that right now what's happening culturally This is—we can't even begin to talk about what, for example, presidential candidates think about, I don't know, domestic spending, when everyone's being called a racist or a sexual predator, you know? | ||
| It's just—it's hard to get to political talking points when you first have to debunk that you're a white supremacist. | ||
| Right, and I really want to get to the point where we can talk about those issues, but right now we have this huge block in front of us, and I think especially when we're talking about younger voters, which are becoming a bigger and bigger influence in elections, so much of what younger voters, you know, What they choose to support is based on things like cultural aspects. | ||
| So I don't think we can ignore that. | ||
| Do you get a lot of emails or tweets from sort of young lefties? | ||
| Because I think by default, most people are lefties. | ||
| It's just when they're young. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's media and it's Hollywood. | ||
| It's the whole thing. | ||
| Sort of the default position is you're a lefty. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm sure you're getting some 16, 17, 18 year olds that are watching your videos and going, Whoa, maybe I'm not anymore. | ||
| That must feel pretty good. | ||
| It does, and at any time, because you probably get the burnout too sometimes, where it's like, oh gosh, I've said something and now people are... It is really encouraging to get someone who says, hey, I love your videos, I used to be really this way, but you've kind of opened my mind to things, and I don't think I identify the same way that I used to, or even, and maybe not even that, but just someone who says, Hey, I'm a liberal, I'm on the left, but I still enjoy watching your videos for a different perspective. | ||
| And that to me is what's so encouraging and why I keep making videos. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what are some of the issues that are on your mind right now? | ||
| So I've seen you do a lot about the gender stuff. | ||
| Where are you at with the whole transgender movement at the moment? | ||
| Well it's funny because as far as I know I am no way a transphobe. | ||
| I would never treat someone differently or withhold human rights from them based on how they identify or anything like that. | ||
| Let's be very clear about this so when they clip this video. | ||
| You don't have an irrational fear of trans people? | ||
| No, no I don't. | ||
| And you don't want people to be bigoted towards them or prejudicial towards them? | ||
| No, no I don't. | ||
| But I think the whole conversation around gender right now, it's come to a point where we're not just saying, hey, you know, these are people with, you know, this medical condition which has been diagnosed, like, let's try to support them in whatever way doctors think are best, you know, let's make sure they don't feel alienated. | ||
| It's gone from that to Not only is gender not a real thing, but biological sex is also not a real thing, and also, it's okay to give hormones to kids. | ||
| So, the conversation has really, really derailed from where it was, I think, even just five years ago, which is scary to me, and we do a lot of videos on the show, Pseudo-Intellectual, about how this stuff is affecting young kids, because I think a lot of people, they may watch a video that I've done about transgender issues or whatever, and think, why do you care? | ||
| Why does it matter to you? | ||
| Stop butting into other people's lives. | ||
| On a person-to-person level, I don't care what you do, your body or however you prefer to be, your life, go for it. | ||
| But this matters because of systemic issues. | ||
| It's gotten a lot bigger than that. | ||
| We have laws like in Canada, Bill C-16, that may criminalize speech if you don't use someone's correct pronoun. | ||
| We actually have cases now where parents are having to go to court because they don't want their children To be given hormones. | ||
| So this isn't just affecting individuals, and this isn't just me being a jerk and not wanting to use this pronoun for you. | ||
| I'm talking about this issue because it's affecting, I think, individual freedoms and parental rights, and mainly parental rights because we see this coming down into the school systems. | ||
| So for someone that is paying attention to this, that's doing a lot of videos on these topics for that very reason, are you shocked how much trans Stuff, is the only way I can put it, is just constantly out there. | ||
| Like, it seems so disproportionately focused on. | ||
| It is absolutely disproportionate. | ||
| And I guess that's partly what you're saying. | ||
| Yeah, no, it is completely disproportionate. | ||
| And, you know, we did a video about rapid-onset gender dysphoria. | ||
| Because a lot of us kind of just observing might think, wow, it seems like there are a lot more trans-identifying people than before. | ||
| Maybe we're crazy. No, actually, that's correct. Numbers have really skyrocketed, especially among | ||
| younger generations. So they've begun to do studies, and they've found that gender dysphoria | ||
| actually manifests itself, especially among young girls, in social clusters, right? If there's a | ||
| teenage or maybe early 20s girl who's now identifying as maybe not a girl, she believes | ||
| she's trans, it's actually quite likely that in her social group, there is another person that's | ||
| So this study was actually looking at whether it's possible that gender dysphoria could be somewhat of a social contagion. | ||
| Their phrase, not mine, similar to things like bulimia, anorexia, and things like that. | ||
| And they actually did found that, yeah, there's a strong correlation. | ||
| What that means is that the people who are saying Hey, maybe we shouldn't, you know, be teaching this at such a young age, or maybe we shouldn't be, you know, glamorizing as this, like, new trend because it might affect people. | ||
| Maybe we are right. | ||
| Maybe we're not just being crazy and bigoted. | ||
| And again, what's the big deal so they identify as a different person? | ||
| A lot of people might be asking. | ||
| Well, you know, becoming whatever you want, when it involves things like hormones and potentially surgeries, This is a big deal. | ||
| This isn't something we should be minimizing. | ||
| Have you found it's hard to find people on the left to talk to these issues about? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| It's very hard, and the response that I've been met with is that, you know, you hate me, you're denying my humanity, you want to erase me, etc., etc. | ||
| It's frustrating, because that's, no matter what someone may call themselves, at the end of the day, they're another person, and I would never wish them harm or want them to be deprived of, like, life, liberty, or property, or anything like that. | ||
| And I would like to think I would also, you know, want to be kind to them, too. | ||
| So it is hurtful, like, having all those doors closed in your face. | ||
| Are you as sort of hopeful for what I would call sort of the new center-right that I think is sort of conservatives like yourself, like there's just a younger breed of conservatives that I think are a little more tolerant on some of the social stuff than the libertarians, say the classical liberals, the ex-lefties, that there really is something growing right now, that for all the reasons that everything feels crazy, there's actually something really nice taking root right now. | ||
| If you could just sort of step away from the craziness for a minute. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| You know, it's very encouraging to see how YouTube, as a platform, has kind of played its own role in furthering political and cultural conversations among younger people. | ||
| Wait, so it's not making everyone part of the Alt, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no. | |
| Were you on that thing, by the way? | ||
| I was on that thing, yeah. | ||
| That alternative influencer network? | ||
| Alternative influencer network, yeah. | ||
| Which had no, this is from Data & Society, I mean, everyone watching knows this thing, but you know, there was no scientific basis for that study. | ||
| All they did, I mean, I'm sure you know this. | ||
| Was just draw pictures to all of our names. | ||
| So you've been on my show. | ||
| I've been on Rogan's show. | ||
| Rogan talked to Sam Harris. | ||
| They drew all this picture and then the study basically said we're turning people far right. | ||
| But there's been subsequent actual studies where people have shown that we've actually de-radicalized a lot of people in ways. | ||
| So it's just bananas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and actually, Tim Poole, who I know you've spoken to... But I was honored to be on the chart with you. | |
| Thank you, I appreciate it. | ||
| Tim Poole, who I know you've spoken to about, he was like, yeah, a lot of my connections weren't even real. | ||
| I didn't even appear on shows with these people. | ||
| And, you know, I didn't even bother to check my little connections. | ||
| Like, they're not going to care if I was or if I wasn't. | ||
| I know that I'm not radicalizing people. | ||
| So it's like, whatever. | ||
| But are you worried that when things like that come out, and then they put you on that, that then we see the way these things get escalated, where then it's like, oh, Lauren talked to this person who's an accused white supremacist, and now Facebook says you can't be a white supremacist and be on Facebook, but now you're that much closer to them, and Rubin talked to this one. | ||
| So I know you've spoken about social media censorship before, which I appreciate because I feel like more people need to be talking about this. | ||
| And the reaction that I get from some people is that, like, you're paranoid. | ||
| Like, you're just, you know, you're seeing a boogeyman where there's not, if people aren't watching your videos because they don't want to watch it, like, people maybe just don't care to engage with your tweets, whatever. | ||
| You do get called paranoid when you talk about these things, but then you have these lists. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Then you find out there's a list. | ||
| Yeah, literally linking you to actual white supremacists. | ||
| And then, you know, someone like YouTube comes out and say, they outright say, yeah, we are going to be not recommending extremist or conspiracy content. | ||
| And you're kind of like, well, I'm on that list. | ||
| Does that mean I'm like, I don't think this is just paranoia. | ||
| To worry about this. | ||
| And you know, part of me, like I said, they're gonna say what they're gonna say. | ||
| The other part of me is like, wait, this does matter because this affects who can see my videos, my ability to get my message out there. | ||
| And never mind that. | ||
| I don't want someone who doesn't know who I am, whatever, being told that I'm a Nazi so they shouldn't watch my videos and just write me off entirely. | ||
| That's not a good thing. | ||
| Right, and you can also brush a lot of it off your shoulder, but you know, we're still people too, and it's like when you go to get a slice of pizza, if there's someone standing there that's looking at you and they heard that you're a white supremacist, that's no fun. | ||
| No, no, for sure. | ||
| And I think people who fling these words at people online and I don't know if they really believe it, if there are actually people out there who believe that I am a Nazi and a white supremacist, or if they're just trying to be hurtful and inflammatory, but I don't think they realize how much damage that does, not just to a platform or a career, but personally. | ||
| You kind of have to defend to people who maybe know you in real life, like, hey, why are people saying that about you? | ||
| Because, again, for people who aren't in our crazy online world, Maybe they don't know that Nazi is just another word for disagrees with you, right? | ||
| Because I mean, if you told me 10 years ago that so-and-so was a Nazi, I would probably have been like, oh my gosh. | ||
| But now it's the boy who cried wolf. | ||
| Every time they say that about somebody or one of those things, I start having to really, I now, even lately, I've been thinking about some of the people over the years that were really called this or that. | ||
| And I'm like, man, did I really not understand what the actual truth was? | ||
| And the answer probably is yes. | ||
| Yeah, and that's a scary place to be in, when words have lost their meaning. | ||
| Because, I mean, I'm sure you feel the same way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I actually do think being a Nazi is a bad thing, like being a racist. | |
| Let's go around the record. | ||
| Yeah, like, full disclosure, not pro-Nazism, not pro-sexism. | ||
| I'm pro-good things, anti-bad things. | ||
| So, like, it's hard when people kind of just muddy the waters, and it's like words don't mean anything anymore, and you're called the worst things imaginable on a daily basis. | ||
| Yeah, so how has it been working for Glenn over at The Blaze? | ||
| Because that's all part of this conversation. | ||
| It's like, here's a guy who is, I think, unfairly demonized for a long time, and who has also said that, you know, he was part of the sort of cable news problem and the outrage thing, and he's kind of had his mea culpa about it, and he's trying to build bridges now, and it's like, I give that guy a lot of credit. | ||
| No one's perfect, and we've all done things in our past that we're not proud of. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| And I mean, the thing with Blaze TV, what I love about them is that they give us so much freedom and just control over our product. | ||
| So, you know, anything you see on our show, which all the videos are up on YouTube now, which is another thing I'm happy for them. | ||
| They've given us the freedom to just give our content to the general public, is that | ||
| we from start to finish control what we want to say. | ||
| I have never been fed a line, "Okay, you have to take this position on this topic, and you | ||
| can't say this. | ||
| Don't talk to this person." | ||
| I've not been told that. | ||
| And if you're familiar with how bigger networks operate, that's really rare. | ||
| That doesn't happen all the time, and I don't think people understand that. | ||
| And I still get people all the time who come to me, I'll be tagged like, "Hey, this person | ||
| who's also on Blasey B said this and this. | ||
| How could you work with someone that blah, blah, blah?" | ||
| Or, "Did you see what X person said?" | ||
| I don't know what they say. | ||
| And they can say whatever they want. | ||
| I'm gonna say what I say. | ||
| And I think there are some people who are so into purity testing that they can't even imagine a network or a platform where that doesn't happen, where not everybody needs to toe the same line about the same issue. | ||
| And I think that it boggles their minds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you hold any positions that are sort of outside of what general conservative or... Conservative? | ||
| Because I think of you a little bit more as a libertarian generally. | ||
| I actually did go through my libertarian phase in college. | ||
| I used to call myself a conservatarian, but now with issues like the border, which I know even among libertarians themselves are not really together on, so I generally just call myself a conservative right now. | ||
| I don't know if there are issues—oh, I got one—the environment. | ||
| I think there are definitely people on the right who don't believe climate change exists at all. | ||
| I am not one of those people. | ||
| And then, you know, going even further, there are some people on the right who do believe that climate change is an issue, but they don't think that government should be involved. | ||
| I wouldn't be against I don't know, I'm trying to think of a green initiative that I would support, but just in general, I... Well, some sort of public-private combination. | ||
| Yeah, exactly, because I don't want the Green New Deal. | ||
| That would be one of the worst things that could happen, just for many reasons. | ||
| Wait, you don't think that a freshman senator who's never done anything other than win re-election could write a document that would reorganize the entire economy? | ||
| Yeah, just introduce UBI as a footnote? | ||
| Yeah, and you don't have to work, and cow farts, and the whole thing? | ||
| Yeah, you don't think that's a good idea? | ||
| But yeah, that is, I would say that I'm more environmentally conscious than maybe other people on the right. | ||
| What else? | ||
| Also, the issue, I don't know if people on the right are against prison reform. | ||
| I don't think they're against it, but I think we don't talk about it enough. | ||
| So I think maybe I put more importance on that than other people on the right do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you make of this Trump guy? | ||
| Have you heard of this guy? | ||
| Yeah, I think I saw him on a tweet or something. | ||
| Was it a tweet? | ||
| On the tweeter? | ||
| Yeah, so I'm one of those people who never thought that Trump would win. | ||
| That was, like, unimaginable to me. | ||
| But now that he has, I think he's done a lot of good for conservative values. | ||
| And I am someone who will never defend what comes out of his mouth in terms of what he said about Rosie O'Donnell or—who was that? | ||
| Who was Horseface again? | ||
| Which one was that? | ||
| Someone was horse-faced. | ||
| Who was horse-faced? | ||
| Stormy Daniels, I think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stormy Daniels, okay. | |
| It's like, I'm not on board with that, but in terms of, I guess, what his administration has implemented, I mean, right now, in terms of the economy, black people, Hispanic people, women, their unemployment rates are at record lows. | ||
| I think that's something that everybody, regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump as a person, should be happy for. | ||
| Yeah, for some reason the Congressional Democrats couldn't applaud that at the State of the Union. | ||
| Yeah, weird. | ||
| Yeah, that was strange. | ||
| It's like, I thought you were for that. | ||
| And, you know, never mind, like, black entrepreneurship is also at an all-time high. | ||
| And something that frustrates me is that I get called, like, anti-black a lot. | ||
| And it's like, well, policies that I support have led to this. | ||
| Have you figured out any tricks to win over those young people who are on the fence? | ||
| businesses, like that to me is the most pro-black you could possibly be, empowering these people to, you know, take | ||
| control of their own lives and be able to be successful based | ||
| on their own merit, which they absolutely have. | ||
| Have you figured out any tricks to win over those young people who are on the fence? | ||
| Like just a story that you can tell or just a tactic that you have? | ||
| I think overall, just being willing to really understand what your proponent is saying does go a long way | ||
| with some people. | ||
| Because I've had people comment that, I'm glad you don't try to oversimplify things or, you know, shy away from issues that maybe don't make your side look good. | ||
| And again, like, I'll bring about the environment. | ||
| I'm not saying that I absolutely do not believe that the government should be just putting all the money into solar and win in the hopes that | ||
| something happens. | ||
| But am I going to deny that I think we should be talking about the issue of the environment? | ||
| No, I'm not. And I think just being able to have that goes a long way for some people. | ||
| And then, I mean, of course, there are these these ideologues who you're never going to connect with. | ||
| And I that's something that I've had to come to terms with, that some people | ||
| just don't want to listen. And there's nothing you can say that was going to change their mind. | ||
| But for a lot of people, I think they understand when someone's being, or at least trying to be, rational and reasonable. | ||
| Yeah, so even though you've bounced around the world and you've done your roaming thing, you're based in Canada now. | ||
| Is it weird to you sometimes to think how much of what you think about and talk about and focus on is actually all coming from another country? | ||
| Well, it's funny, I have people all the time who say, like, why do you always talk about American politics? | ||
| I don't really talk about politics that much. | ||
| I'm kind of like you. | ||
| Right, so it goes to the culture. | ||
| Yeah, it goes to the culture. | ||
| And I had someone, I made a comment about the hashtag MyWhitePrivilege thing that was going around, and I was told to stay out of American politics. | ||
| How is this American politics? | ||
| Because these cultural issues, they don't end at borders because the internet doesn't end at borders, right? | ||
| This online presence doesn't end at borders. | ||
| So especially when I'm talking about issues like gender or race, where we have our extremely liberal government that's actually putting these kinds of ideologies into law, I think I'm absolutely talking about something that applies to my country. | ||
| And I think it's something that it's funny. | ||
| Maybe some of these Americans who are on the left, they're trying to tell me to butt out. | ||
| If I were perhaps, I mean this is like it's all conversation, but if I were perhaps an undocumented immigrant, they maybe wouldn't be so like anti-foreign. | ||
| But also I just I think that some people need to recognize that culture is It doesn't stop at borders. | ||
| And so, like, these issues affect Canadians. | ||
| These issues affect Brits. | ||
| And my breakdown of who watches my show, it's, like, about 60% Americans, but then I have, like, a good 10% Canadians, 10% of Brits, and, you know, the rest of the Anglosphere, the Australians. | ||
| So these really are global issues. | ||
| So basically, you're in California right now. | ||
| If we could get you to overstay your visa or something. | ||
| Not visa, you're just visiting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm just visiting. | |
| Yeah, we just get you to cancel your return flight and then you just hide out here. | ||
| We'll make you an illegal immigrant and then you can argue as an illegal immigrant. | ||
| and then maybe they will listen to me. | ||
| You'll see how quickly they turn against that. | ||
| Exactly, yeah. | ||
| I have thought about that before, but no, I'm just kidding. | ||
| Yeah, that will not go over well. | ||
| What are some of the other, oh, so you mentioned the My White Privilege hashtag | ||
| that was going around. | ||
| So for people that have no idea, for the people that are sane enough not to be on Twitter, | ||
|
unidentified
|
what was My White Privilege? | |
| So it was this hashtag that was started on Twitter and it ended up trending. | ||
| And it was meant for just white people to check their privilege, | ||
| to mention instances or maybe trends they've noticed that are due to their whiteness, | ||
| a privilege that they know that a non-white person would not get. | ||
| And the thing is, like, I don't deny the idea of privilege exists. | ||
| Like, I, coming from a two-parent household, I've lived a lot of places, I've gone to good schools, I absolutely acknowledge that I've had privileges that a lot of people haven't had. | ||
| Is that privilege or is that just life experience? | ||
| You've had a life experience. | ||
| Well I think it's like they're kind of interchangeable. | ||
| Like I don't have systemic privilege, but I've had things that afforded to me in my | ||
| life that other people haven't had and life's not fair and I don't think anyone would dispute | ||
| that life isn't fair. | ||
| But I think, you know, the idea when other people mention white privilege, they're talking about the idea that for white people, you know, their skin color affords them certain privileges that non-white people don't have. | ||
| And I think that's a very, very toxic mentality. | ||
| And if you, I was reading some of those tweets and just like blood pressure just raising through the roof. | ||
| It was painful to read some of those. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It's self-flagellation. | ||
| Yeah, oh my gosh. | ||
| It's like the, you can kind of like almost imagine these like white progressives like on their knees trying to grovel down before their non-white friends and like apologize for the whiteness of their skin. | ||
| It's depressing and embarrassing to watch, I think. | ||
| And you know, they talk about things like, I got pulled over by a cop and then he didn't give me a ticket. | ||
| Hashtag my white privilege. | ||
| And it's like, well, I mean, sometimes cops, like, I personally, I've never been pulled over and not gotten a ticket. | ||
| I've only gotten a ticket once. | ||
| But it's like, I've never been given that kind of, you know, leeway. | ||
| You know, I've had teachers maybe who were a little more lenient for me. | ||
| Is that because I'm white, or is it because I'm a female, or was it because I'm a good student? | ||
| We are so keen to attribute motive to people. | ||
| And, like, it just reinforces this idea that, yeah, white people are privileged, and it's Annoying because now merely denying the existence of white privilege makes you a racist and a bigot. | ||
| Do you think it's fair to say that these people are the new racists? | ||
| Like if I was to really pick, like I don't like doing this because you said something before, you don't want to become what you're fighting against. | ||
| So I don't want to start walking around and labeling these people racists and all of the things that they have no problem labeling the rest of us. | ||
| But if you were to ask me, where does racism come from in America today? | ||
| It is coming from the left. | ||
| Where does sexism come from in America today? | ||
| All cisgendered white Christian men are this. | ||
| All white people are this. | ||
| These are leftist ideas that aren't just ephemeral things happening on Twitter. | ||
| These are things that the lefty politicians are talking about, the presidential candidates, or the Democrats are talking about. | ||
| So that's why it's so dangerous to me. | ||
| Yeah, and I agree with that. | ||
| And I have friends who are on the left and progressive, who I do think, at the end of the day, want equality. | ||
| I think we have different ideas about how to get there. | ||
| So, you know, I wouldn't just, based on someone being a progressive, call them racist. | ||
| But I think if you are someone who thinks that because of the color of their skin someone is not entitled to have an opinion about a certain issue, that is racist. If you are someone who thinks that, you | ||
| know, this person, because of their skin color, is entitled to either more or less of a | ||
| starting point or an advantage or disadvantage, then you are a racist. And I think that's historically, | ||
| generally, kind of been the agreed upon definition of racist. So yeah, like, there's no | ||
| reverse racism. It's just racism. | ||
| It's just racism. | ||
| I was talking to somebody, a progressive, who's a family friend, and we were getting into it, and I said, are you for affirmative action? | ||
| And she said, yes, we have to help minorities get more jobs. | ||
| I said, are you for discriminating against white people? | ||
| And she said, no. | ||
| And I said, well, how do you now negotiate? | ||
| How do you reconcile those two things? | ||
| And I said, well, what about your kids? | ||
| She has three kids. | ||
| I said, well, what about your kids? | ||
| Do you think your kids happen to be white? | ||
| Do you think that everything being equal, if they're going up against a minority, they should not get the job? | ||
| And she said, well, no, because then you have to take it on a case-by-case basis. | ||
| And I said, well. | ||
| You just made the reverse argument, but they can't quite get over that sort of disconnect. | ||
| And that's what I think we have to keep doing to get them there. | ||
| To make them realize, I think you're absolutely right. | ||
| And I think for a lot of progressives, they do think that they're doing the right thing. | ||
| Almost maybe even a little bit of a white savior complex, I would say. | ||
| They need to come in and rescue them. | ||
| When it comes to, like, affirmative action specifically, it frustrates me that so many people on the left are keen to conflate class with race. | ||
| You know, because they'll say, like, oh, well, you know, for black kids, they don't have the same resources growing up in schools. | ||
| And it's like, well, hang on. | ||
| Like, I went to good schools. | ||
| We had some black kids that were definitely richer than my family. | ||
| Or, you know, like, vice versa. | ||
| And it's like— Well, they were sellouts. | ||
| Yeah, it's like if you want to have a conversation about class and school funding, then let's have that. | ||
| Which I actually, you know, I think one of the privileges that is kind of undeniable is that some kids are afforded more luxuries in their schools or whatever than other kids. | ||
| You know, an inner city kid is not going to have the same education or whatever. | ||
| So let's try to address that and say how we can improve the inner city schools and stuff. | ||
| But that's where you'd have the conversation. | ||
| Exactly. - If you were to go the average elementary school in Beverly Hills, | ||
| guess what, it's way more funded than the average school in the inner city. | ||
| The teachers have different qualifications. | ||
| So how do we deal with that? | ||
| Okay, then that's a good starting spot, but unfortunately that's not the-- | ||
| No, because then they wanna make it all about race, and it's like that distinction matters | ||
| because how we see the problem affects how we solve the problem. | ||
| So it's like you and I can't just kinda go to them and it's like, hey, here are our proposals | ||
| for like budgets or how to deal with teachers unions, whatever for the schools, when they see the problem as | ||
| systemic racism. | ||
| Like, you're not going to get anywhere with people like that. | ||
| And it's frustrating, because, like, that whole narrative—and I get flack—I get | ||
| accused of like, "Oh, you don't really care about, you know, the black community | ||
| or whatever. | ||
| You're just kind of like—you just like to say whatever racist stuff you want." | ||
| And it's like, no, I am trying to—I make videos trying to talk about, you know, the | ||
| importance of fathers and families, you know, how important it is to have economic freedoms | ||
| that really allow people to succeed. | ||
| It's like, that actually is what I think would be most useful to vulnerable communities | ||
| of whatever color. | ||
| And there's a ton of evidence that supports that, actually, believe it or not. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's like, they don't—because it doesn't feed into the narrative of systemic | ||
| racism, they don't even want to hear it. | ||
| And they accuse you of not wanting to help. | ||
| How much of this do you think is just—for young people especially—it's just the | ||
| excesses of the West? | ||
| Things have gone so well for us now, for so long. | ||
| If you live in America, you're basically free. | ||
| You are free. | ||
| You may have problems, but you are free. | ||
| You live in the freest society ever. | ||
| And that young people now, Who can play Fortnite all day long or watch porn or whatever the hell else there is to do or play video games or whatever. | ||
| It's like they now have to find problems with everything and what's the easiest thing to do once you find the problem? | ||
| It's just to burn the whole system down not to actually acknowledge that whoa this took a lot of blood sweat and tears of generations before you. | ||
| Yeah, that's such a good point. | ||
| And not only are people free in the U.S., they are economically prosperous by any metric. | ||
| You take someone who's living in poverty in the United States and you compare it to a global level, they're still doing pretty dang well. | ||
| As someone who grew up in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are very prosperous countries, but I visited two places, like Indonesia and Thailand, where that actually is structural poverty. | ||
| So I'm able to recognize how privileged we are just to be in the West. | ||
| Um, and I think a lot of millennials now, they've been painted a picture where capitalism has failed. | ||
| The American dream is dead. | ||
| AOC says that all the time. | ||
| Like, we're living in a, like, you know, all the billionaires have all the money, the working class, we're screwed, we don't have anything. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| And that's not to say that issues like high tuition don't exist and stuff. | ||
| You know, absolutely they do. | ||
| We should talk about it. | ||
| But overall, we are living in such tremendous affluence and prosperity and equality that | ||
| the fact that there are people, you know, saying, "No, this is so broken. | ||
| We need to start all over and tear it all down," it, like, freaks me out. | ||
| Can you move to New York and run against AOC? | ||
| What do I have to do to make this happen? | ||
| Can I crowd fund you some campaign finance? | ||
| What are we talking about here? | ||
| It would take a lot of campaign finance to get me to New York, I tell you that. | ||
| Not my favorite city, but I mean, I think even people are starting to wake up to the fact, like we had the whole Amazon debacle, right? | ||
| And at the end of the day, like, yeah, people love this sort of like socialist populist rhetoric, but you know what else they love is just actual jobs. | ||
| And so when we had Amazon being chased away, we did have angry New Yorkers being like, Okay, but wait. | ||
| 25,000 jobs, everyone loves Amazon, it's all cheap and gets there fast. | ||
| Even if you don't work for Amazon, you get to be part of the growing economy surrounding and providing support to that business. | ||
| I think people are, at the end of the day, what they want more than anything else is jobs, and not necessarily the promise that I don't think is even possible to provide of just all this free stuff. | ||
| At least that's what I'm hoping for. | ||
| But it is really, I don't know, depressing, frustrating, sad, whatever negative word you | ||
| want to use, to see a generation of millennials, socialists, communists, whatever, completely | ||
| misrepresent the environment that we are living in now and not recognize how lucky they are. | ||
| Yeah, we've got to wake these people up, but I guess they're doing a pretty good job of | ||
| Well, you know, I've read people suggest we should have some sort of like internship study abroad program where we just send people, you know, these progressive, mainly white, rich millennials to places like Venezuela. | ||
| Or just like, you know, foreign places where they can maybe see a little bit more of the outside world beyond their bubbles or what they've been fed to really, really see how the U.S. | ||
| stands, or the West in general, compared to other countries. | ||
| What do you make of the free college thing? | ||
| I suspect you're not for free college generally, but what about just college as an institution because of the brainwashing that's going on? | ||
| Are you even for young people going to college at this point? | ||
| I have so many feelings. | ||
| I worked my butt off when I was in high school to kind of get to the best college that I could. | ||
| I took it really, really seriously when I was in college. | ||
| I worked for my professors. | ||
| You know, all my friends were in academia. | ||
| It was kind of like assumed, because I was in that world, that I would go on and have my master's and stuff, | ||
| and I have a lot of respect for academia. | ||
| But at the same, and I would never say that college is useless, but at the same time, | ||
| I think we're reaching a point now where A, so much of what colleges do now | ||
| is not really instruction, but it's indoctrination. | ||
| And the return on a college degree, especially if you're taking something like a gender studies or feminist theories degree or whatever it may be, the return is not worth it. | ||
| You're saying you can't get a job with a lesbian badminton degree? | ||
| I mean, is BuzzFeed hiring? | ||
| That's essentially the only place I would know to look at it, but I think we need to kind of reevaluate how we see college because, you know, other countries, they have things like trade schools and things like that where You know, it's not anti-education, because I'm not anti-education. | ||
| I'm always pro-education. | ||
| More knowledge is always good, but college is not the only way to get education. | ||
| And I think colleges, if you look at what they're spending money on, they've really inflated the number of administrators they have. | ||
| You have entire diversity boards and things now. | ||
| It's like, where did you come from? | ||
| Who's paying your salary? | ||
| Well, the students are. | ||
| And I don't think it's worth it. | ||
| You know, President Trump, he's actually taking measures now to try and enforce freedom of speech on campuses, which I think is really important. | ||
| Um, but I am against the idea that everybody needs to go to college. | ||
| The only way to be successful is to go to college. | ||
| And I think by, by doing that, we've kind of like, we've made the leftists in academia untouchable because they have like wave after wave of student who's, you know, willing to pay whatever to get in so they can be indoctrinated. | ||
| But isn't that sort of the brilliance of it? | ||
| When you hear Bernie say, Bernie's like, okay, free college for everybody. | ||
| So what can we do? | ||
| We're going to send them for free, which obviously is not free. | ||
| They'll be indoctrinated into these ideas even further. | ||
| And then what does he do when you get out? | ||
| Well, now you're going to be guaranteed a federal job. | ||
| That sounds horrible. | ||
| Can you imagine anything that sounds worse than that? | ||
| You can never get out and you're going to be some pencil pusher doing nothing that's not for you. | ||
| a cog in the system, essentially. | ||
| And what I think I really haven't seen many people who are suggesting free tuition talk | ||
| about is, OK, if it's all government subsidized, fine, but, like, how do we lower costs? | ||
| Because it shouldn't just be about who pays it, but how much they're paying. | ||
| And costs in the United States have risen so much faster than inflation when it comes | ||
| to college. | ||
| And there are a lot of different factors, like the student loans, the way that you can't | ||
| get rid of student loan debt with bankruptcy. | ||
| There's a whole bunch of things, but I don't see enough people talking about how to lower | ||
| those costs back down to what they used to be. | ||
| Because, I mean, you have people who—if you go to somewhere like USC, it's going | ||
| to be, like, what, $60,000 a year, so that's like $240,000 by the time you're done. | ||
| And it's like it's ridiculous. | ||
| And it shouldn't cost that. | ||
| I don't think I made $240,000 in all of my 20s. | ||
| If I took all of the money I made, I'm sure I didn't all those years of struggling comedy. | ||
| It's like, that's what you're paying to go to college. | ||
| And never mind the interest on that, right? | ||
| So no, it's like, you know, on the right and kind of like centrist, we make fun of those people | ||
| with $240,000 of worth of debt for their useless arts degree. | ||
| But at the end of the day, I do think like, I'm not gonna deny that there's a problem with college | ||
| costs it's just that I don't think the answer is, | ||
| okay, so just full on socialism, government pays everything for it. | ||
| I think we need to have a conversation about how to lower those costs again. | ||
| And I think right now, students are paying for a lot of diversity and administrative faculty. | ||
| They're paying for a lot of research done by their professors, which is, I mean, | ||
| kind of great because American universities are really at the forefront worldwide | ||
| of any type of research, but at the same time, it's like, at what cost? | ||
| It's costing the American students. | ||
| And I think community college is a great alternative, you know, 'cause obviously it's a lot more affordable. | ||
| And heck, if you still want that, you know, whatever name brand university, | ||
| Harvard, the Yale or whatever, you can always transfer after you get your associates. | ||
| Yeah, all right, a couple more for you. | ||
| Let me ask you some, I'll turn identity politics on you, which would be, why aren't there more women in this space? | ||
| You're one of the few, Allie Stuckey, there's a couple, but I wish there were more women, not for identity politics purposes, but partly just a little bit for the optics of it, so that when we're all getting attacked for all this stuff, it's like, here's the low resolution part of this, here's more women, even though it has nothing to do with your ideas and everything else. | ||
| Which is really what matters, of course. | ||
| I think the reason why there aren't more women in this sphere is kind of why there aren't more women in politics in general, is that this is a very aggressive sphere. | ||
| It really is, and I think, for me even, it can be overwhelming for a lot of people who, you know, all right, you put your ideas out there, and then you're going to just get attacked, like, ruthlessly. | ||
| So, and I'm not saying that men don't as well, but I think maybe as a female-identifying person, whatever the PC, you know, For a lot of women, it might be a little bit harder to just say, okay, let me brush that off, move on, and forget about it. | ||
| Especially if you are a woman who's speaking out against progressive ideas, you're gonna get even more attention than maybe a white male that's doing so, because I think a lot of people figure, oh, another white guy who hates feminism, who cares? | ||
| But if you're a woman, then it's like, You're going against the grain. | ||
| It's like error in the system, and they really feel the need to double down. | ||
| I mean, regardless of what you think about the Trump family, the way that Melania and Ivanka Trump are treated, I think most of us would agree is completely vile, sexist, the things that they're called. | ||
| And it's unfortunately kind of par for the course for conservative women or, you know, someone who is gay and speaking out against the left or black. | ||
| You get that much more pushback. | ||
| So I think that alone, unfortunately, is enough For a lot of people to say, I don't know about this. | ||
| I don't know if it's for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So are you hopeful for the future? | |
| You know what? | ||
| I think my answer kind of goes back and forth for that. | ||
| There are some days, you know, when, for example, I see people speaking out against maybe the Gillette ad and I'm not being like totally irrational and, you know, wanting to burn cars down over a commercial because that's all it is at the end of the day, but kind of saying like, OK, this is stupid. | ||
| You don't need to do this to sell razor blades. | ||
| You know, it's days like that where I think, OK, good, most people have kind of wanted to leave all this identity politics in the trash. | ||
| Great. | ||
| And then there are other days, like I knew during the Kavanaugh hearing, where I'm like, OK, never mind. | ||
| This was a mistake. | ||
| Asteroid. | ||
| Just we're ready. | ||
| We're ready. | ||
| So I go back and forth. | ||
| But I think if looking at Gen Z, they're one of the generation's most ready to like reject this whole like far-left | ||
| thing that we've seen in a while so I don't know about how hopeful | ||
| I am for Millennials, but I think maybe the the next generation a little bit more | ||
| Yeah, that's actually exactly where I was gonna end this. | ||
| Yeah, suddenly there is this now burst of younger people You're gonna be you're gonna be old to these people. I hate | ||
| to tell you That's okay. | ||
| But that are now coming out and going, whoa, we've seen the last five years of abject hysteria and lunacy, and now they're becoming more conservative, and maybe that is the silver lining out of all of this. | ||
| Yeah, well, because I think, and people make fun of this meme, but it's kind of true, where it's like, conservatism is almost counterculture right now, and a lot of people on the left laugh about that, but I mean, think about it. | ||
| If you are a young person who's in school right now, like, all of your teachers, you know, all of the media that you watch, the school books you're being given to, that are given to you, they all push this progressive | ||
| agenda. | ||
| So what do you do if you want to rebel against that? | ||
| Because let's face it, young people, if there's like tales old as times, that young people like to rebel. | ||
| We like to be different. | ||
| We like to like, I'm doing my own thing. | ||
| We've all been teenagers. | ||
| So how does a young person do that right now? | ||
| Well, it's not by kind of committing yourself to PC life and culture. | ||
| That's not edgy. | ||
| That's not edgy, that's not against the grain. | ||
| That's not against the grain. | ||
| It's by saying, no, like, I'm going to listen to this offensive comedian. | ||
| It's by saying, no, I'm gonna listen to this offensive comedian. | ||
| I'm going to listen to like, you know, one of the people who I hear my professors or | ||
| I'm gonna listen to one of the people who I hear my professors or my parents | ||
| my parents or whatever telling me not to watch, you know, like the Jordan Petersons, the Dave | ||
| or whatever telling me not to watch, the Jordan Petersons, the Dave Rubins, | ||
| Rubins, the real scandalous, spicy ones. | ||
| the real scandalous, spicy ones. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Scary. | |
| Oh, scary. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and I don't want conservatism to just become something people do or believe in | ||
| to get back at other people, but I'm hoping if maybe there's that little bit of tantalizing force | ||
| to get them there, then once they start watching the videos, they'll see that, oh, | ||
| this does make the most sense. | ||
| So I'm not only doing this to get back at my teachers or my parents or whatever, | ||
| but this actually does seem like an ideology, a belief system that can help people succeed | ||
| by themselves and can promote equality. | ||
| Yeah, well, I just wanna say that I think what you're doing is awesome, and the fact | ||
| that you've grown so much in the two and a half years since we did that little YouTube week thing, | ||
| I mean, you're becoming a star in this space, We need people like you, and as Homer Simpson said, you're a person like you, right? | ||
| I am a person like me, yeah, thank you. | ||
| And you're just back at you, watching you and Dr. Peterson go on your tour and everything. | ||
| It's great because it's almost like this is becoming mainstream, right? | ||
| It's not some little internet niche to disagree with these people. | ||
| There are real people in all of these cities who are attracted to these ideas and this movement, and it's really encouraging. | ||
| All right, let's keep going then. |
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