Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The $1 Meme
Aired: 2025-07-24
Duration: 03:45


=== The $1 Meme Controversy (02:32) ===

[00:00:00]  All right.
[00:00:02]  Shatten in the Mart.
[00:00:05]  I am Olias, my friend.
[00:00:07]  What is on your mind?
[00:00:09]  How can philosophy help you today?
[00:00:13]  Hi, could you say the $1 meme?
[00:00:15]  I know you're known for that.
[00:00:16]  That's all I know you for.
[00:00:18]  You want me to do what?
[00:00:20]  There was a video of you where it's like someone sent you a dollar because they liked your advice and you said $1.
[00:00:26]  I thought that was very funny.
[00:00:27]  I'm not sure if you remember.
[00:00:30]  Well, you really did say this.
[00:00:32]  There's a mentality.
[00:00:34]  That's an urban myth.
[00:00:35]  Yeah, that's just so you know, that's a falsehood.
[00:00:42]  So your understanding is that I said one fecking dollar or something like that.
[00:00:48]  That's not what happened.
[00:00:49]  I mean, in case anyone's curious, it's amazing.
[00:00:51]  It has this sort of lifeblood all of its own.
[00:00:54]  Would you be interested in the origin story behind that meme?
[00:00:57]  Yeah, sure.
[00:00:58]  Sure.
[00:01:00]  So what happened was somebody sent me $2.
[00:01:03]  And what I did was I posted a little picture of the donation.
[00:01:07]  Of course, I took out the email and the name and anything like that.
[00:01:10]  And what I wrote was, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but dot, dot, dot.
[00:01:15]  That was it.
[00:01:16]  I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but.
[00:01:18]  And from that, of course.
[00:01:20]  So I wrote, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but, right?
[00:01:24]  And it's true.
[00:01:26]  And people lost their minds about this, which I thought was very funny.
[00:01:31]  Because if somebody sends me $2, one of two things is happening.
[00:01:35]  Either it's their last $2 and they can't possibly afford anymore.
[00:01:39]  They can't afford bus fare.
[00:01:40]  They can't afford ramen noodles.
[00:01:42]  They're starving to death.
[00:01:43]  In which case, please, this is a general principle.
[00:01:47]  If it's your last $2, don't send it to me.
[00:01:50]  Please, use it to buy bus fare to get a job or buy some ramen noodles or whatever it is, right?
[00:01:56]  But yeah, don't send me your last $2.
[00:01:58]  If somebody, and this is from when I was a waiter.
[00:02:01]  When I was a waiter, if somebody left me no tip, maybe I just assumed that they don't really know about tipping culture.
[00:02:07]  They're not really down with that and all of that.
[00:02:10]  But if it's a $100 bill, like the bill is for $100, and they leave me a dollar tip, or I guess, you know, whatever it is, right?
[00:02:20]  Then that would be annoying, right?
[00:02:23]  Now, when it comes to just basic business acumen, somebody who sends me $2, well, I've got to track it.
[00:02:29]  I've got to report it.
[00:02:30]  I've got to pay tax on it.
[00:02:31]  It's a bit of a hassle.

=== Why I Mocked A Poor Woman (01:12) ===

[00:02:32]  Right.
[00:02:33]  So anyway, just people lost their minds.
[00:02:36]  And like, I was so ungrateful.
[00:02:38]  And I just, I scorned and mocked somebody who was poor.
[00:02:41]  Like people just lost their minds over this, which I actually find is kind of funny.
[00:02:46]  Yeah.
[00:02:47]  So basically that's what happened with that meme.
[00:02:50]  And, you know, it's like the meme that there was another meme or I guess another sort of rumor that I pretended to be a teenage girl to comment positively on my frozen movie review.
[00:03:04]  And this, of course, was not true.
[00:03:07]  I've never created alt accounts and commented positively on my YouTube videos.
[00:03:11]  That would be ridiculous.
[00:03:13]  And what it really was was there used to be an old thing, for those of you who don't know, there was a competitor to Facebook and Twitter called Google Plus.
[00:03:20]  And what happened was somebody had, the woman had made, the young woman had made the comment on my frozen video.
[00:03:28]  I had reposted it to Google Plus.
[00:03:30]  And then because of the way that Google Plus worked, it ended up showing up under my account as a teenage girl on YouTube.
[00:03:37]  But it's just silly things that people say rather than actually engaging in the realm of ideas.