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Oct. 3, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:44
“My Brutal Year” Feedback
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Dudes and dudesses, you guys are great.
Thank you so much for everyone who took the time, the trouble, the energy, and the mental focus to reply to my request for feedback, for help in my video that I put out a day or two ago called My Brutal Year, which talks about the...
This claustrophobic wet towel over the breathing apparatus suppression that has been occurring with regards to this show and with regards to philosophy over the last, not quite year, but give or take, right?
So you guys are great with the feedback.
Thank you so much. I'm just going to dive into it.
This is going to be a bit of an entrepreneurial kind of show where we're talking about structure and format and opportunities, although I will certainly go into philosophy where...
So, somebody wrote and said, Steph, I've been listening for about four years.
My advice is to run ads.
There is nothing wrong with it.
Personally, I like the call-in shows and I like your tech and current events.
I do wish you would do more hardcore philosophy, though.
So, I thank you for that feedback.
Okay, so this is what's going on with ads.
So, I made the decision to Many years ago, really at the beginning of the show, to not run ads.
And it's not because I have any problem with ads.
Ads are simply a cost of time versus money.
I have no problem with ads at all.
I think it's a fine way to run a business.
But the problem with ads is it is a single choke point of revenue for any organization.
So if you look at what happens with Rush Limbaugh, who annoys the left on a regular basis, What happens is they are having they continually have these boycotts against his advertisers, right?
So if let's say I have five or ten companies that advertise on this show then people can target those Companies and cut off revenue.
And that is a choke point.
That is a problem. And I've always wanted to operate with as much freedom to discuss what is essential to save the world without any interference or without any kind of looking over my shoulder or without phone calls from someone saying, hey man, we advertise on your show, but, you know, there's this boycott against us and it's kind of causing some pain and it's giving us a bad reputation.
So either you've got to cool it, you've got to change your topic, you've got to disavow or you've got to Whatever.
I want to have my relationship.
I want to be with you, right?
So I'm in the business of delivering philosophy to you, not in the business of delivering you to advertisers.
That is a different business model.
Again, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not great for this.
That's number one. Now, I guess up until, what was it, a couple of months ago, sometime in the early summer, I could say that that was a choice, but it's not really a choice anymore.
So Google wrote to me early in the summer and basically said, listen, for X, Y, and Z, I can't remember what the reasons were.
We're demonetizing your account, which means that I can't run ads even if I want to.
They said, listen, you can reapply in 30 days, right?
So I waited 30 days. I did reapply, and there's nothing.
There's nothing coming back. Now, I wasn't running ads, but what I did do was I would do live streams wherein I would take Superchats and make a couple of bucks that way.
Now that the entire YouTube channel is totally demonetized, there's no opportunity to run ads and there's no opportunity to make any money from live streaming.
That's a challenge. I don't know what to say.
That is a significant challenge.
Now, sorry, other people have said, and this is a general comment that people have, which is a good comment and well worth.
Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin are in the process of, I think they're finalizing, putting together a platform for sharing ideas, arguments, information, links, videos, whatever it is.
And their purpose, their express purpose is to say, we're going to leave everything up.
There's no censorship unless we get a court order saying that this is illegal speech, right?
That is their goal, to leave everything up.
People have said, well, you should join those guys or you should help those guys.
I'm not expecting everyone to know the minutiae of my Twitter account, but when I did hear about this, I was really quite excited.
I thought it was a very cool idea.
Now, to my knowledge, neither Dave Rubin nor Jordan Peterson have...
Software tech experience from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I do.
I do. I mean, even discounting what I'm doing right now, I spent, you know, 15 years building a company selling high-tech software.
It was in the environmental field.
I sold to probably 100 of the Fortune 500 companies.
I was on hand to close sales.
I was the chief technical officer.
I wrote the core code of just about most of the system, which was designed to help people reduce pollution into the environment.
So I have a lot of experience when it comes to tech and, you know, out on Twitter to both Jordan Peterson and to Dave Rubin, I offered my services free of charge because there's so many pitfalls and so many problems that I have so much experience in helping people with that I knew I could be of significant use in that project.
For reasons that we could all speculate about, it doesn't really matter.
They did not choose to take me up on that offer.
So, you know, obviously I'll keep my eyes peeled on what it is that they're doing, but the development of a new platform is already underway.
And, you know, I'm sure they'll do a fine job.
I hope they got really good, experienced tech people involved in that.
They didn't want to work with me, or for whatever reason, but fine.
It's a free choice, of course.
But I will keep my eyes peeled for that.
People have said, a lot of people say, well, just build your own video platform or whatever it is.
Okay. So the problem with that, and this is, you know, it's some fairly complicated business metrics, but it's important to understand, right?
Because you guys need to, you know, if you don't see a product on the screen, you are the product in front of the screen, right?
So what is the problem with, let's say, building a video site, with building a video sharing site?
Well, storage costs are enormous.
And bandwidth costs are enormous.
So how do you cover those storage costs and those bandwidth costs?
Well, either you charge people who want to produce content on your platform a significant amount of money, which, you know, a lot of people who are starting up in their video production, vlogging or whatever, they don't want to pay that.
Or can't. Or of course what you do is you charge the end users to watch it and in which case you're competing with free, right?
I mean you're competing with free which is YouTube and of course if you buy YouTube Premium you don't even see the ads and so on, right?
So how do you make it pay?
Well it's a big challenge as to how you make it pay but fundamentally what you do is you collect so much information from your end users That you can offer very finely granulated advertising penetration metrics to potential advertisers.
So what you do is you say, oh, I want to talk to people who were interested in tinnitus who've recently bought a pet in Mississauga, Ontario.
Or whatever it is, right? I mean, I don't know whether this ad popping, you know, where the cell phone is kind of listening to you and looking for keywords.
I don't know if that's true or not. Seems to be some evidence that it is.
But even regardless of that, if you get a history of people's web searches, if you've got a history of people's video searches and so on, then what you can do is figure out, and there's lots of sophisticated algorithms at the major tech companies to figure this stuff out.
What are they interested in? Where do they live?
How much money do they make?
What stage of life are they at?
Like if somebody did a search for, you know, baby strollers on Kijiji or whatever, then you have some idea that, you know, they...
So, if you can gather massive, like, Encyclopedia Britannica metrics about, you know, the interest, the gender, the age, the income, the focus, the whatever, the tastes of people who are using your platform, then you can sell incredibly targeted ads To advertisers.
Now, if you don't gather that kind of information or you can't gather that kind of information, you can't sell those kinds of targeted ads and that means you have to sell very broad-spectrum ads, right?
So you may be able to say, I want, you know, people who are interested in hard rock who live in California, you know, that's it, right?
Whatever, right? As opposed to really, really finally geographical, age, whatever, income, interest levels.
So, because advertisers, of course, if an ad gets served up that you're interested in, you appreciate it.
And if an ad gets served up that you're not interested in, not only do you not appreciate it, you probably feel a little annoyed about it at times, right?
And so building your own platform, how do you cover the costs?
And the answer from Google and from Facebook and other people, the answer has been we cover costs by being able to sell incredibly sliced and diced targeted demographics up to advertisers that is virtually guaranteed to be just about the most finely tuned audience for whatever the advertiser wants to offer, right? You can't offer that unless you're willing to gather that kind of information.
I'm aware of that and if anybody has solutions to it, let me know or build your own thing, but that's of course the challenge, right?
Okay, perhaps you and Izzy, my daughter, can write a children's book together that demonstrates your philosophical principles.
I know that it's been a while since you wrote fiction, but I bet it would be a blast if you did it with your daughter.
And that's actually funny because we have two books that we are sketching out at the moment.
And it's just like coming up with sort of plot ideas and character ideas and all of that.
So I think that's a great idea.
Oh, I'm sorry, just to jump back to the guy who said let's do some deep philosophy...
So I did a book which is, you know, my accordion scrunching of key philosophical ideas around do we live in a simulation?
What are the arguments for free will?
What are the arguments for ethics?
What are the arguments of virtue and so on?
And can we trust our senses?
How do we know we live in objective reality and so on?
The book is called Essential Philosophy, and you can find it for free here on YouTube.
You can go to freedomain.com forward slash books and find stuff there, just as you can go to freedomain.com forward slash documentaries and see all the cool stuff that I've been working on.
Basically, it's the Troika of documentaries, Poland, California, and the upcoming one on Hong Kong.
So I have done some deep philosophy.
This book came out last year, so if you're looking for deep philosophy, that's a great book.
It also has my...
Stab, I suppose you could say, at platonic dialogue.
So it's a great idea. Thank you very much.
Okay, so let's see here.
What about having shows with people who have opposing views to you and you debate them?
Kind of like Jesse Peterson when people ring in outraged but maybe more intellectual.
So I love debates.
I really do enjoy debates.
You know, when I was asked this a couple months ago to hop onto Discord...
And do a debate with an animal rights advocate.
I'm like, I'm there. I can't think of a debate request that's philosophical or economics or ethics that I have received that I have not jumped on over the last, I can't even remember how long.
But basically, if you have a debate that's really philosophical, really about economics or really about ethics or reality or the senses or objectivity or UPB or whatever, I'm all over it.
So, that is stuff.
Now, people have said, well, you should get on things like anti-vaxxing.
Of course, there is a push to talk about the Jewish question and so on.
Now, the anti-vaxxing stuff is, I mean, that's a lot of information to try and gather and coalesce together.
And, you know, I was reading economics starting in my mid-teens.
So, when it came to talking about economics, I had...
years and years decades really of experience and and had already read hundreds of books about it same thing with ethics and and if people want to debate you know there was a professor who came on Twitter who was denigrating my knowledge of Plato and I was like great you know let's let's debate my knowledge of Plato and poof you know they just they just kind of vanished so it's kind of tough to to figure this this stuff out so I'm trying to sort of stay where I don't have to read dozens and dozens of books because I know how long it takes to get really good at arguing things.
So I'm trying to avoid areas where the investment slash reward seems to be disproportionate and I don't know that I can vanish for a couple of months to research a topic so that I can feel somewhat competent about something I know very little about.
And there was actually a fellow who I've been in touch with the last couple of months.
He wanted to have me come down and do a debate on open borders at a conference.
I won't go into anything more specific than that, but I was like, sure, I would love to debate open borders.
I think it's a fascinating topic.
I did a debate with Adam Kokesh about that, and I think a live debate would be so much fun and a very, very important topic, of course.
So, he contacted, I think, 15 leading intellectuals in the area and not one of them wanted to do it.
Now, whether that's because, you know, the toxic moat around me has become impenetrable to the normies, or whether it's because they don't think the topic's important, or whether because they think that my intellectual riposte is too intimidating, I mean, there's just no way to know.
But, yeah, I would like to do more debates.
And if you know people who want to come and debate, I would be very, very happy to do it.
I'm happy to do, you know, Marxism.
I'm happy to do socialism.
I'm happy to do fascism, as I did before, once in a debate.
Ethics, reality, nature of truth, all that kind of good stuff would be good.
And some political stuff I'm willing to do as well.
Somebody else wrote, Yeah, look, that's possible. That certainly is possible.
If you're a creative person, you kind of know what I mean about this.
The dance you do with your creativity is quite complex.
Creativity is not a willed aspect of the personality.
It's not like, you know, you've got that, I'm very cheap, right?
So, you know, if I can get one more atom of toothpaste out of the tube, I will, even if I have to hire an elephant to sit on it for me.
But creativity is not a willed thing.
Creativity is something you dance with.
It's something you meet halfway. I mean, if creativity was something you willed, then Paul McCartney wouldn't have failed to write a hit song in like 30 or 40 years, right?
I mean, if you want it, you can do it, right?
Sorry, it's not a matter of if you want it, you can do it.
You have to have a dance with it.
So it could be that I'm out of ideas.
I don't believe that to be the case, and I still feel quite fertile, and I have notes for at least, you know, 50 more shows that I'm interested in.
But it is possible.
And listen, I mean, I'll be completely frank with you guys, right?
Like the day that I wake up, or the week, or the month, or however long it takes that I wake up, and I'm just like, oh man, I'm dead.
I'm dry. I've got nothing.
I've got nothing, right? Then it doesn't mean the show is over.
I mean, I can still do call-in shows.
I can still do, you know, analysis of current events and so on.
But if I don't have interesting new ideas to bring to bear, then I'll let you guys know.
And then you can decide if you want to continue to fund what it is that I do.
So, all right. Somebody said, just listen to this on Podbean, so here's my two cents.
You cannot give up your booked gigs.
You cannot admit that the social justice warriors have defeated you and hide from the public.
You need to make cheap documentary footage.
Just get your fans to compile it on their phones.
That stuff is gold. Nothing makes money like drama and conflict.
Besides, if you aren't able to take their attacks and keep going, maybe you're in the wrong business.
It's only going to get worse, you know.
Yeah. I mean, so I have spoken in the face of bomb threats.
I've spoken with people trying to tear down listeners and attack venues and so on.
It's not fun, but I'm certainly willing to do it.
So it's not that.
The problem is not that it's costly.
The problem is not that it's dangerous.
The problem is not that security costs go through the roof.
The problem, you see...
I've got no place to speak, right?
You book a venue, and you've got it locked in, and everything's hunky-dory, and then you announce, and then what happens is the venue gets threats, and who knows what, right?
And people show up. And then the venue, in general, says, ah, too much heat, not enough value.
So the problem is that, you know, with Vancouver, you know, I flew out to Vancouver, I booked a hotel, and so on, and then was not able to To speak, right?
So then you say, okay, well, I'll just give the speech on camera, but then if I'm just going to give the speech on camera, what's the point of spending all that money, thousands and thousands of dollars, and then not being able to give a speech, right?
Because, you know, I'm a custodian of your donations, right?
So I don't want to spend a lot of money on donations when it turns out to be impossible to give speeches.
Like, I don't want to spend money on venues and travel and And all of that, and security, and then find out, oh, well, can't speak anyway, so that money has all just been set prior to on my front lawn, because that's your money, and I take it very seriously that I'm a custodian of your support.
Now, as somebody says, I have to be honest, Steph, I really haven't found the documentaries to be interesting.
I'm sort of interested in the Hong Kong ones, partly because I lived there briefly in the 90s, but I think your core listenership probably less so than you think.
Or are you getting viewers from Hong Kong now?
Well, that's really up to you guys to let me know.
Hong Kong is shot, and I'm aware that the post-production costs tend to dwarf even the costs of flying out there and doing all of this stuff.
So, John and I just had a conversation yesterday.
About ways in which we can save post-production costs.
So you'll see how that plays out.
And you'll let me know, of course, as we go forward, whether you like that.
If there's a way, we're basically going to try and do it just in sequence.
Day one, day two, day three, day four, rather than, you know, slice and dice it into a sort of...
I mean, it has a narrative in so far as it's time sequence.
So we're going to try that. I think it's going to work, and if that's the case, then I can do documentaries for probably a third of the price than in the past, in which case I think it's worth it.
Somebody else wrote, I probably have backed off watching your content now for a couple of years, only watching the odd few that catch my interest, but then again, I am more selective about my viewing, both content and habit-wise these days.
I also think it's probably a struggle to retain the enthusiasm of a 10-year listener, too, whilst engaging with new listeners.
Yes, that is a challenge.
You know, I... You ever have this?
Oh, gosh. You probably have.
There's probably someone in your life who repeats themselves.
Sometimes I don't know if I'm... I remember having a boss once.
The boss would simply tell the same story.
And sometimes it'd be like a week apart and sometimes you'd hear the same story like four times.
And it wouldn't matter if you'd interrupt and say, yeah, yeah, you already told me.
We just continue on with the story, right?
If it's a power thing or just a don't remember thing or, you know, no conversation other than worn out stories.
But I'm very sensitive about repetition.
You know, I'll use the same story, but I'll say, as I've talked about in the show, I want everyone to be recognized that I'm not...
You know, like Harry Brown, with an E, who was an ex-libertarian—well, he's dead now, but he was a libertarian contender for presidency back in the day and ran a pretty good call-in show.
And he would just have the same stories again and again.
And ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.
So I really try to avoid this kind of repetition.
You know, with 15 years— I won't say it's a challenge to come up with new stuff, but the problem is there's a lot of existing stuff that I can't talk about because I've already talked about it before, or if I do, it's just in passing.
So that's a challenge for me.
That's not a challenge for you, but that is important, and that is something that I am aware of.
So yeah, it is a challenge. Somebody said, I do think you misunderstand why Dave Rubin won't connect with you.
It's obvious to most of your audience why.
Whilst you might have some crossover, he's a game show compared to yours.
Well, I don't know. I mean, I like Dave.
I like Dave. You know, he takes some risks and he's got some courage and, you know, he stood up with Maxime Bernier and they faced down threats with Antifa and so on.
So... We all have our different roles to play, I suppose.
And unless somebody is, you know, like Ben Shapiro calling me like a borderline white nationalist or white supremacist or whatever it was, you know, that's a shot across the bounds.
And that stuff, you know, that's not good.
But, you know... It's a live and let live scenario.
There's a whole ecosystem out here, and I think a lot of people are doing great work.
I have my own particular area.
Other people have their own areas.
I wish there was a little bit more crossover sometimes, but anyway.
But of course, you know, the way that the left works is divide and conquer, right?
So what they do is they draw a fiery moat around someone and just pound that person.
With, you know, crazy, hostile, evil, nasty, damaging slurs and language, right?
And then when they draw that fiery mode around someone, that person is then isolated, right?
And then other people don't want to go and sort of reclaim that person and bring them back into the fold and bring them back into whatever movement is going on.
And then having carved that person off and isolated that person, they then move on to the next person.
And then they draw, they just hit hammer that person with all this hostile, crazy, nasty, false language.
And then other people are like, whoa, we've got to stay with that person.
And it's just like, it's just step by step, right?
And at some point, you have to not have that work, right?
Because if it keeps working, they'll just keep doing it and escalating it.
Okay, so... Steph, I think that public speaking can work, but you need to have security, which means costs will be a little bit higher, but it's unavoidable.
I was one of the people who was denied listening to you in Vancouver because of panty for scumbags.
Hope you consider the option of a better thought-out speaking tour with security.
It's a little annoying, my friend.
It was not a badly thought-out speaking tour, and it's not a matter of, well, I could come and speak, but I don't want to spring for security.
People just cancel, and I don't have a venue, right?
Now, Regarding other places to go, where I'm more likely to be able to give speeches, yes, in terms of, like, there are places that are more open to challenging arguments and so on, but, you know, it is just one encrypted phone call, it is just one anonymous message, and, right, who knows, right?
Because if you get threats, if you're a venue owner and you get threats, and then something does happen, you're kind of liable, right?
So, again, the cost-benefit is pretty tough.
Somebody else wrote, can you do something about that awful Wikipedia entry of yours?
I have made the experience, I've had the experience that new people dismiss you quickly because of it.
Yeah, I don't really know much about how Wikipedia works other than it seems to be heavily controlled by leftists and socialists in particular are all over, you know, throwing crap at me through Wikipedia.
And then they lock down the page.
I don't really know how any of this works.
I'm happy for suggestions on what to do regarding Wikipedia.
But remember, they get a fair amount of money from George Soros, so...
It's not likely that I'm going to get much of a fair shake from it.
If people have suggestions about what to do with regards to Wikipedia, I'm all ears.
Somebody said, just become the equivalent of Tim Poole.
Read news, give your spin on it.
It may not be very exciting, but it's cheap and seems to be fairly popular.
Yeah, I like Tim.
I think he's got some good arguments.
So, I mean, when I think about doing current events, I like to get to the roots.
I like to do deeper dives.
And it usually takes at least six to eight hours to get to the root of things.
And so that's really kind of a full-time job, plus everything else I have to do.
So that is a challenge.
But certainly the people who've said, dude, your shows are too long.
For the call-in shows, I need to talk till we get to the root of things.
And I don't want to edit it because it really is quite a journey on how to get to the root of things.
So yeah, some of those are 90 minutes, some of those are two hours, some are even longer.
And some of you love that stuff, right?
And I know some of you find it too long and all that.
Understandable. But... With regards to shorter shows, I have...
I've done shorter shows in the past.
I did Thought Bites.
I did UPP under 10 minutes.
Plato's Forms under 10 minutes.
I did shorter shows.
They didn't do that well.
I mean, I know everyone's like, oh, if you go shorter, that's going to go better, but it doesn't really seem to work out that well in reality.
So a lot of these things I've tried before with regards to, you know, I should do PragerU style stuff with animation and so on.
It's like, hey, if you're a great animator, give me a share.
All right. Somebody said, firstly, I really appreciate what you're doing with Free Domain.
The quality is exceptional. I watched the philosophy politics videos as well as the call-ins.
It's helped me a lot. Personally, I think an online store selling merchandise would be good.
T-shirts, hats, stickers, etc.
with the logo and web address on to get the message out.
I'd happily buy some.
So, I mean, this is back in the days.
It's going back quite a while. I did do merchandise some years ago.
And it was actually kind of a big point of contention between me and the listenership.
Because people were like, oh, you know, I want t-shirts, I want hats, and this, that, and the other.
And I did. I put together hoodies and t-shirts and hats and all kinds of cool stuff.
And almost nobody bought them.
And it was really kind of annoying for me.
It's like I put a lot of time and effort and energy in it.
Lots and lots of people asking for that stuff.
So why didn't they? Well, I mean, this is back...
I mean, now people are lying about me being a white supremacist or whatever.
But back then, people were lying about me being a cult leader and stuff like that.
You know, just whatever shit... I think that...
I mean, think of how dangerous it is for some people to wear a MAGA hat.
You know, if Free Domain has this kind of reputation out there among the normies, I don't know how many people would actually end up wanting to wear them.
So, again, let me know. Let me know.
Somebody said, write. Write another book.
You stopped the race. Izzy, she's older now.
You're a talented writer. And again, check out the two books I wrote just over the last two years, Essential Philosophy and The Art of the Argument at essentialphilosophy.com, outoftheargument.com.
Somebody said, well, just get a job like the rest of us.
That's not the worst idea in the world.
I had a job before this.
But it's kind of tough to have a job now.
Like, if I wanted to go back into the software world or whatever, I mean, not only would I have to get my skills up to speed.
It's not the end of the world. But, you know, people kind of Google you when you send a resume in.
So I've got to tell you, this is kind of like a...
I'm painted into the corner by the red ink of falsifiers in both the mainstream media and online.
And so... It's really not possible for me to go and get any kind of normal job anymore because reputation has been kind of cheese grated into oblivion.
All right. Okay, so here's a thing here.
This is a bit long, but let me know what you think.
It's a little harsh, but doesn't mean it's false.
He says, I was one of the regular listeners and I had to stop watching eventually like many others.
This is something to be a little bit cautious about when somebody says, nobody cares what you have to think.
We don't care what you have to think.
When somebody starts to bring the Aragorn-style ghost army behind them to make a point, it's usually not very valid.
But anyway, okay. You may not like what I'm about to say, Stefan, but it's the truth.
I had to stop watching because of you.
In terms of your arguments and takes, they were pretty unassailable, but it was your ego that let you down.
I put up with it for a while because the content was good, but eventually it got in the way so much that I had to stop watching you.
You were always finding an opportunity to heap praise on yourself, to big yourself up.
Aside from this, you spoke with such an odious air of pompousness and seemed to have a relentlessly ruthless opinion on the faults of others.
You would also often break out in these extremely verbose and flowery monologues with all the accompanying amateur dramatics that were, quite honestly, insufferable to sit through.
You came across as a narcissistic, clownishly pompous and cold-hearted dick, to be frank.
I have a master's in history, don't you know, pleb?
I'm an actor who went to acting school, charlatan.
Did I tell you guys about how fantastic a businessman I am?
I worked in IT, simpleton.
How many times did you inject phrases like that into your videos, Stefan?
Because I lost count.
As time went on, your shows became more about exalting you and you alone, how clever you were, how fantastic your analogies were, as you often would tell us, how qualified you were, how unequivocally right you were, and what a great and perfect specimen of an ubermensch you were.
All this whilst maintaining a scathing and merciless position on people who fell short of your vision for humanity that ultimately made you look devoid of humanity.
People, I don't want to be party to that sort of obnoxious self-regard, self-praise, ego-centricity and stampeding narcissism.
Just to hear a few good thoughts here and there.
Stefan, it speaks to a huge deficit in character and personal development.
Who wants to seriously follow the ethical moral advice of someone who has such faults in their character?
If you want to restore viewership, you don't need any shiny new gizmos or tactics.
You simply need humility and mercy.
That's it. A bit of humility and mercy, Stefan.
Two great virtues of the Christian faith that never fail to make a person more likable and, as a result, more watchable.
I guess this is a Christian.
To be honest, it seems a little bit judgy when it comes to, you know, heaping up the enormity of my, what is it, stampeding narcissism and pompous self-regard and all that.
So I'm not sure it's the best Christian perspective to be that kind of judgy and hostile.
So, you know, yeah, I mean, if it's relevant, you know, if somebody says, here's how to run a business, I say, well, you know, I actually have run a business.
And if you haven't, it doesn't mean I'm right.
It just means that You know, if somebody says, well, you don't have any credentials, I say, well, you know, I have a master's.
I got an A in historical analysis of four major philosophers of the Western tradition.
So, you know, but, you know, let me guys, you guys let me know what you think.
Have I become a rampaging, stampeding narcissist who obnoxious self-regard, self-praise, ego-centricity and all that?
Let me know if in some way that I'm not aware of and that other listeners have not pointed out and my family has not noticed and so on, I'm always open to the feedback.
Let me know if you think that is the case.
Somebody else says, here are some of my ideas to help with views and your business.
Your top few shows are The Truths About and The Story of Your Enslavement.
So definitely keep making the former and start making new videos in the same format you made the latter.
So yeah, The Truths About, I like.
Just for those of you who don't know, I worked with a producer for about five years.
He and I parted ways.
Last October, I think it was, and he did some of those, so it's been a little bit tougher to get some of those out.
Story of your enslavement, love that one, and I did a whole number of those like that.
The problem is that that was back in the day when YouTube was much more of a Wild West.
Now it's very tough to know what is fair use, particularly if sort of the cold eye of Sauron of negative judgments from YouTube seems to be upon this channel.
My last video doesn't even show up in the videos tab, my brutal year.
So it's really, really tough to use other people's footage in a way, even if it's like five seconds or three seconds or whatever.
It's very tough and it's kind of risky.
So, you know. Okay.
Another idea, make several accounts on YouTube.
Permit others to repost your full videos on account if they post in a foreign language and translate the videos.
Hopefully you can get more views.
So anyway. It's a possibility for sure and I appreciate that.
Let's get to another one. I hate to say it because it seems to me that you really love making them but the documentaries don't particularly appeal to me.
I think you cover the same kind of information in more inexpensive and concise ways through a basic presentation of the facts so they seem kind of redundant.
I will make an exception for the upcoming Hong Kong one, though.
I'm very excited to see exactly what's going on there.
With that said, perhaps it would be good to extract what makes that one appeal more to me and possibly other people compared to the San Francisco one and then try to make more like that.
Okay, that's great.
I appreciate that. I would suggest that the California one is treading old ground, but what's going on in Hong Kong is very exciting and dynamic.
So I appreciate that.
I think the call-in shows and the truth about stories are generally your most best content.
But, you know, it's funny, and this could be a YouTube thing, but, you know, my two, I did some very big and detailed truth about this year.
The three that come to mind are the truth about Plato.
Now, I know that was four hours, but, you know, I mean, I've had some pretty long ones before that have been very popular, and that didn't do super well.
I did The Truth About the Collapse of the American mental health care system, which was a fascinating story of communist infiltration and so on, did very badly as far as views.
I don't even think it broke 45K on YouTube.
Again, these things generally do better.
The long-form stuff does better sometimes in podcast downloads.
And then the other one, most recent, was The Truth About Robert Mugabe, which came out shortly after his death.
I know he's not as famous as Nelson Mandela and so on, but that was a lot of work.
And I think it's just around 100K at the moment.
So... Again, I'm happy.
I'm not saying maybe those were bad topics and so on, but it has been tough to, you know, I haven't really had the luxury to be able to say, well, I don't care about the views.
I'll just, you know, because views are down and all that kind of stuff.
So, all right. You need to start openly calling for other popular YouTubers to sit down with you and explain why it is they believe you're toxic.
Agree to sit with anyone and just dispel the nonsense.
Yeah, I mean, so the way it works now, and Herminda Singh out in Hong Kong was a great exception to this, which I'm forever grateful regarding.
They just had an interesting and fun conversation with me about Hong Kong when I was on TV out there.
But because of the toxicity of the sort of fire remote of ostracism and slander that surrounds me...
People can't just kind of have me on their show.
Like, they have to have me on their show and then say, well, why are you not a racist?
And why are you not a cult leader?
And are you a white supremacist?
And are you like... All this kind of stuff, right?
It's not the end of the world.
It does get a bit repetitive to kind of talk about that kind of stuff.
So... It is tough to be on other people's show and just have a regular old conversation about not the same old stuff.
So again, if you're out there on YouTube and you've got a sort of decent following and you want to grill me about these negative things, give me a shout.
And I'm sure we can work it out.
All right. Appealing more to the self-interest of others is more reliable than depending on their generosity.
You've got to sell stuff and run ads.
I bought your books and donated in the past.
I'm a long-time listener.
I'm just taking a break from the insanity and news cycles, right?
Now, I think a lot of people, of course, are gearing up for 2020, right?
Because it's going to be pretty brutal in American politics.
So I get that there's kind of a bit of a trough and so on.
So that's important as well. Someone else wrote, Steph, it's not you.
I haven't had one of your videos show up in my feeds for several months.
Yeah, well, that's a problem, for sure.
Crazy idea. Get PewDiePie, who's already made 200 million plus, despite what Google says, to join another platform.
Take Paul Joseph Watson, Mark Dice, Crowd, or Jordan Peterson, Rubin, and everyone else.
Non-woke advertisers will flock there in droves to target our audience.
Someone like you can get through to that Swedish kid.
Let's see, call it.
Anyway, so yeah, that's a possibility.
If there's a platform that people think it's worthwhile, please let me know.
Stefan, I say this from the heart.
I rarely comment on videos, but this time is the exception.
I truly feel your common sense philosophy is needed to maintain sanity in today's world, especially considering the increasingly insane communistic, socialistic views that are currently being shoved down our throats here in the U.S.
However you can manage it, please press on and continue letting your voice be heard.
You may reach that one person who will make a huge positive impact on the world as a whole.
Blessings to you and yours.
Thank you.
That's just a very nice comment.
Somebody said, and a number of people wrote this, that I should create a homeschool curriculum.
The children are all that matters.
That is a good idea.
That is a good idea. I've had some thoughts running around in my head about, like, an introduction to politics for kids, an introduction to philosophy for kids, an introduction to...
Economics for kids. An introduction to communism for kids.
Using Halloween candy is not the most original idea and so on.
But my limit is animation skills.
I have virtually no animation skills.
So again, just let me know if you can help with that or want to.
Here's some feedback, said someone.
The long-form conversations with viewers is absolutely hands down the best content you produce.
I love to listen to it while walking or running and it's just incredibly stimulating and a lot of times personally relatable.
However, I'd like to hear back from people you've had call-in shows with and how their lives are doing as I feel that part of the story can also be quite important to help people come up with some solutions for their own problems.
I'd like to, for example, hear back from the girl that called about her crippling self-hatred from the How to Kill self-hatred video.
How is she doing? What changes has she implemented in her life from the conversation you had?
Has she relapsed, perhaps?
I feel like this could lead to even more engaging content as we feel like we are part of this journey this person has taken.
I agree, and if you're out there, you've had a call-in show with me in the past, and you want to come back on, great.
Just send me an email, give me a link to the show in the past, and let's do it.
Somebody else wrote, the documentaries are fantastic but need not be so high production if that is hindering its margins.
This is more my opinion as I don't mind seeing something more homemade, so to speak.
And I realize that to deliver the information in a way that most people can digest it requires that level of investment.
So on that subject, I'm as stuck as you.
Again, thank you for that feedback.
I really appreciate that.
Someone else wrote, historical breakdowns on current events, the truth about, are one of the most reliable sources of facts I personally have when it comes to big complex issues that are not reproducible to one simple explanation.
Perhaps some of them do overstay their welcome as I find myself not having the attention span to fully enjoy the longer ones.
You can blame the subject for that, though.
One thing Steven Crowder does is basically upload cuts of his stream where he talks about specific themes, like his Crowder closes segment where he uploads his ending statements.
That is a great idea.
And I like that idea of cutting things down.
I appreciate that. I've made good notes about that.
Somebody else wrote, I really like the sort of vlog-style videos walking in the forest while talking or ranting on specific topics.
Not that I think you're scripted on normal videos, but something about that format just comes across as more a stimulating flow of thoughts in the moment.
I find that you've had some great moments on those, not to mention it's a nice change of pace from the blue background.
Thank you. I think, as someone said, in some, I think your view has got your back regardless of the way you decide to further monetize your content so that you can provide more of it.
Gotta stay steadfast and sometimes not let anxiety and momentary panic take over.
I'm projecting here. Time helps in acquiring new perspectives, so stay strong, man.
Thank you. And somebody else wrote, yeah, the year when you betrayed your anarchist audience and went full statist.
And I am fully aware of that criticism and I am sensitive to that criticism.
It doesn't mean like triggered or reactive to it, but I'm sensitive to that.
Criticism. I hope that people understand why when the socialist sharks were circling free speech, when war was imminent through Hillary Clinton, when you've got people like Justin Trudeau starting to threaten social media companies with massive fines if they don't take down whatever they consider hate speech, whatever the liberals consider hate speech in Canada within 24 hours.
It's pretty bad. You know, it's pretty bad.
It's one thing to say we have a multi-generational solution called peaceful parenting, but when you don't have multi-generations of time left, you have to change strategies.
I still want to get to a state of the society.
I'm still fully committed to it.
Just because the car's broken down and I'm getting it fixed doesn't mean I don't want to get to Vegas anymore.
Someone made the suggestion, always put your face on thumbnails.
You have a very famous face, and that's very good.
Thumbnails are a challenge.
My producer used to do the thumbnails, and I'm doing some.
I don't think they're quite as good, but that is the way it is.
Someone said, just looked you up on Wiki.
Total lies from listening to you many times.
I believe I know you, and you are not the man they describe.
Total lies. So, let's do a couple more.
You got to about 800,000 subs showing your big head and probably 150,000 from there on.
That's a real achievement. Had you zoomed out a bit, it would have made you more visually appealing.
There's nothing wrong with your content, but your visual framing of shots should include your torso or even have you moving around walking in the woods.
You are weak on visual appeal, not because you're not handsome, but your screen framing.
Lift it up a notch. Reduce the number of videos so you can do this.
Yeah, I mean, I've thought of building a set, I've thought of lots of various ways of doing things, and You know, it's tough.
So I don't have the ceiling space to do full lights overhead, sort of Rubens style.
I can't build a set in my garage because I live in Canada.
My breath would be out.
So if people have ideas, I did change from the blank white wall to a softer tone with more of a glow in the back and so on.
And if you guys have ideas or thoughts, I'm happy to build more of a set.
I'm happy to do all that kind of stuff.
But again, it's... I don't really want to do sit-down stuff.
I am for this. But in general, I'd rather not.
But if you have great visual ideas or visual suggestions, please, please let me know.
That'd be great. All right.
Let's see here. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
So change in ways your audience notices.
And do that change consistently.
Like do a month worth of walking, talking videos and see how they go.
Give it a try, mate. You will always be remembered.
All right. Let's see here.
Dear Steph, after seeing your video about the last few years of Silicon Valley trying to destroy what you're doing, I started a recurring subscription to you.
Thank you. I credit you for helping me become a proper man, husband, and father over the last five years.
I've gained so much self-knowledge from your call-in shows.
I credit my confidence to you recently in landing a more senior engineering job in the software world without selling out my values.
I've become assertive when I need to be, tender when I need to be, and I've learned how to enjoy fatherhood rather than feel burdened by it.
My wife and I have a seven-year-old son, now a 10-month-old daughter.
Congratulations. We never would have had my daughter had I not been a listener of your shows.
We're going to have more, too. I'm forever in your debt.
I've thought for days about ideas that you could try to expand your audience.
I'm sure a few of these are repeats.
I have no idea if you'll even read this far, but I know how it feels to want ideas.
And if you're anything like me, you want the bad ideas, good ideas, weird ideas, and boring ideas, because you'll pick everything apart, and something that seems perfect will pop into your head." I like that idea.
I think it's very good.
Your Hong Kong documentary trailer is amazing.
This shouldn't be just a YouTube drop, at least not immediately.
Charge for it.
I paid $10 for Hoaxed, and I had friends over to watch it, friends who'd never heard of Mike Cernovich.
These types of things are so cool to share with your friends, even apolitical ones, but if it's on YouTube, it doesn't feel like an exclusive party.
I'm not sure why that's the case, Chad.
Just an observation. And let me know what you think about that, guys.
I'd appreciate that. Exchange money for short private conversations with you.
There were definitely times I would think I'd love to get Stefan's perspective on X, but it's not something that would really be entertaining for others to listen to and not something that would require a deep backstory and my family to understand.
I remember Dr. Peterson at some point having this as a Patreon reward or something.
I hate to say almost like a 900 number, but it would be incredibly valuable to some people, whereas the 900 numbers were not.
So that's interesting. Yeah, I don't do private calls like everything that I do is for general release.
So... Let me know what you think.
I would much rather it be public as a whole because I think it just helps hundreds of thousands or millions of people over time.
But let me know what you think.
I don't hugely like the idea because I'm so used to it just being public, but let me know what you think.
Four, Sunday sermons.
I'm not a Christian, you're not a Christian, but I think you would agree there is great wisdom in the Bible.
If you did a weekly Sunday sermon from the Bible, live-streamed, I could see a following.
It's a weird idea, but you have preachers in megachurches thriving in donations, and none of them can match your knowledge, wisdom, or eloquence.
Not to mention they're selling snake oil and you're selling philosophy.
No fainting women, but a real honest lesson from the Bible each week would be a breath of fresh air, in my opinion.
That's a great idea. I really love that.
There's a lot I love about the Bible.
Alright, just do a couple more, and I appreciate that.
My suggestion on the business venture would be to broadcast your philosophical discussions on Twitch under the category Just Chatting.
Twitch, as far as I know, doesn't derank any broadcaster for any reason.
Twitch just shows channels with the most viewers to least viewers.
So I like that, and people have also suggested unauthorized TV.
People have also suggested DLive and all that kind of stuff, and I've worked with DLive before, so I appreciate that.
Steph, I recently signed up for a recurring subscription.
I was particularly struck by your expose on the destruction of America's mental health system.
As a Christian, I deeply disagree with many of your positions, yet I would rather help out one of Dante's philosophers destined for limbo, but who seek the truth in earnest in a fight for justice and peace, than see such a one relegated to impotence.
I pray my token of support finds its way to good use.
I appreciate that. Steph, I listened to your Brutal Year podcast earlier today and wanted to send a quick note.
I've been listening to your show for three to four months now and have intended to donate many times, but today was the first time I actually followed through.
I'm sorry it took me so long.
No problem. No problem. Please, everyone.
Like, if you're low on cash, you know, save your money and buy your bread and all that.
You can always share the videos and do other things that don't cost you, so I appreciate that.
I wanted to tell you that I love your show, and I'm grateful for the work you do.
I feel like I've learned so much.
Your Twitter feed is the best on the platform, and I also really enjoy the long-form call-in shows.
By far, yours is my favorite podcast.
In your message today, you asked your feedback, so here we go.
My favorite content are your podcasts.
I listen in the gym, in the car, and at home if I'm outside doing chores like mowing the lawn.
My favorite shows are those with commentary on world events or social issues, fertility, lipstick, wars, etc.
In addition to those, I would be interested to hear interviews with subject matter experts or debates with individuals who have contrary views to your own.
I realize I'm asking for more of the same, but podcasts are what I enjoy the most.
I'm excited to watch your documentaries.
However, it is less convenient for me to watch videos with my schedule slash lifestyle.
FYI, I will be 40 years old this year.
I'm married with three children.
I'm Canadian born and raised, have a degree in mechanical, blah, blah, blah.
Okay. So yeah, I understand that with documentaries you've got to sit and watch, right?
It's another thing around whether I do video for the call-in shows.
There are just some times I just want to walk around, maybe outside and so on, and it's just a different way of doing it rather than sitting or standing for sometimes up to two hours just looking at a camera with bright lights in my eyes.
It's just a different way of doing it. I know that the visual appeal is there, but I'm not really sure how many of you watch an hour and a half or two-hour call-in show looking at my face.
Let me know below, but I'm not entirely positive, right?
So... I mostly listen to your shows, he says, through the Apple Podcast app.
I've tried to listen through your website.
It doesn't work as well for me in that app.
Now try the new website.
If I have to turn off the podcast before it is finished, it doesn't seem to remember where I left off when I returned.
Yeah, sorry about that. I think that's very true.
He said, I would like to know which podcasts of yours are the most popular, which ones have been listened to the most.
I think that's a great idea, and I should do that.
Is there an option to donate in Canadian dollars?
And you can, when you go for the donation, because most of my listeners are in the U.S., it defaults to the U.S., you can change it to Canadian, and I appreciate that if you can.
So thank you so much, and let's see here.
Yeah, so people also say they miss the message board, and I'm looking into that for the new website.
A lot of debate seems to happen on Facebook and on Twitter and other places these days, so I don't know.
Let me know what you guys think about having a message board on the free domain site.
It was in the past an avenue through which people could do denial of service attacks on the website and so on, so I'm kind of half and half and all of that, so...
I'm not positive about that, but let me know.
Let me know. So yeah, homeschooling, unschooling, I think that's great as well.
And let's see here.
So I think, yeah, so those are sort of the major things.
If I missed your email, really, really sorry.
I will go through everything once more based upon the feedback from this.
Please let me know in the comments below.
I did get a couple of messages of people saying that they pinged me, didn't get a response, and...
I'm still kind of working on the best way to manage the email flood, the Twitter flood, the Facebook flood, the you name it flood.
And, you know, lacking a producer, that's on me.
That's nothing to do with you. That's just something I have to figure out.
So I need to look into a contact management system, a workflow system, and all that kind of stuff.
So that's on me, and I promise I will work to get better at that.
And I really apologize for those of you who I let slip through the cracks in the past.
I'm really sorry. Your feedback is so, so important to me.
And I will continue to work at trying to get better at...
No, not just trying. I will continue to work to get better at that kind of stuff.
So please don't take it personally.
I'm really, really sorry. It's rude and it's not respectful to let things fall through the cracks.
So please just email me again and include an emoji of a bald guy getting slapped upside the head because that's more than fair.
So listen, I'll keep this...
I won't say I'll keep it short because I have 50 minutes, but...
I love the feedback.
I really, really, really appreciate it.
And together we're going to make this thing work beautifully.
And that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
We'll come out of this as a better community.
I'll come out of this as a better philosopher and a better speaker.
And I just love you guys so much for the support, for the feedback, for the care, for the concern, for the positive thoughts, for the critical thoughts.
All super helpful and really, really important for me.
So... Don't forget, follow me on Twitter at Stefan Mullen.
You can find me on Facebook, of course.
And for those of you who want to know, yeah, Bitshoot.
Bitshoot.com forward slash Free Domain Radio.
You can find me on there.
At the Free Domain website, there's a social media page where you can find all of my social media stuff.
And it's all at the bottom of the videos I put out as well.
So just make sure you follow me on every conceivable way.
And don't forget to sign up for the newsletter.
I am sending out newsletters with important information.
That doesn't usually make it into the shows as a whole.
So you can go to freedomain.com.
There's a place to sign up for the newsletter.
I hope that you didn't mind too much this kind of business aspect of things.
But sometimes we've got to come out of the clouds and work the plumbing, so to speak.
So thanks. I love you guys so much for that feedback.
And all those positive vibes just got me floating up like a seagull.
Over hot sand, you know, the way that air rises.
Oh look, that's one of my glorious metaphors.
So thanks everyone so much.
I appreciate it. I love you guys to death.
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