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April 12, 2023 - Viva & Barnes

01:30:41

Sidebar with Social Commentator Eric D. July! Viva & Barnes LIVE!

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	Content you don't like or hateful?
	What do you mean to describe a hateful thing?
	Yeah, I mean, you know, just content that will solicit a reaction, something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of things.
	So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned?
	No.
	Can we appreciate that Elon Musk has upped his debate game just a touch here?
	Actually, I'm going to play this without interrupting.
	This is the intro video.
	I should learn to shut my mouth.
	Hold on.
	Content you don't like or hateful?
	What do you mean to describe a hateful thing?
	Yeah, I mean, you know, just content that will solicit a reaction, something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of things.
	So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned?
	No, I'm not saying anything.
	I'm just curious.
	I'm trying to say what you mean by hateful content.
	I'm asking for specific examples.
	And you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content.
	Does that mean that it should be banned?
	Well, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more, I'd say it's got slightly more.
	That's what I'm asking for example.
	Got slightly more.
	Can you name one example?
	I honestly don't use it.
	Honestly, I don't.
	You can't name a single example.
	I don't use it.
	I don't actually use that for your feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it.
	When you tell one lie, it leads to another.
	When you tell two lies to cover for the other.
	When you tell three lies, oh brother, you're in it.
	A lot of people are quite similar.
	Well, hang on a second.
	You said you've seen more hateful content, but you can't name a single example.
	Not even one.
	I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks.
	Well, then how did you see the hateful content?
	Because I've been using Twitter since you've taken it over for the last six months.
	Okay, so then you must have at some point seen it before you hateful content.
	This is embarrassing.
	I'm asking for one example.
	Right.
	You can't give a single one.
	So, by the way, I'm going to interrupt because we're going to play this painful thing over and over again.
	I've seen a few things.
	What have you seen?
	Well, I haven't really looked at my Twitter feed in a while.
	All right.
	Well, other people are saying, this is the deflection of responsibility when you get caught in the most egregious propagating of disinformation imaginable.
	First of all, it's so easy.
	Have an answer.
	I have an answer of some of the mean tweets I've seen on Twitter.
	Never in my right mind would I consider it to be so offensive that I would...
	Ask for censorship or claim that the hate speech on Twitter is...
	The guy makes a statement, says I'm not making a statement, tries to bring in other people to substantiate his statement, and I...
	Look, Elon's not a perfect man.
	I always thought sometimes he was a little awkward when he spoke.
	He seems to be honing in on the debate skill, but maybe it's just part of the learning curve of being the object of fake news.
	Slander campaigns day in and day out.
	Let's let this finish here.
	And I'm saying...
	Then I say so that you don't know what you're talking about.
	Really?
	Yes, because you can't give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet, and yet you claimed that the hateful content was high.
	Well...
	That's a false.
	No, what I...
	What I claim was, there are many organizations, not me, it's other people now, that say that that kind of information is on the rise.
	Those other organizations, if you ask them, they would say, yeah, of course, because I saw a BBC reporter say the same thing.
	This is called disinformation laundering.
	This is called the wrap-up smear.
	You get one idiot...
	Saying what the other idiot said when each idiot is just repeating the unsubstantiated idiocy of the other idiot.
	Now, whether it has a mic feed or not.
	Give me one example.
	I mean, right.
	You literally can't name one.
	Something like the strategic dialogue in the UK.
	Throw someone else in the UK.
	They will say that.
	Look, people will say all sorts of nonsense.
	I'm literally asking for a single example and you can't name one.
	Right.
	And as I already said, I don't use that feed.
	But then how would you know?
	I don't think this is getting anywhere.
	You literally said, you're experienced for hateful content.
	Oh, it's getting somewhere.
	And then couldn't name a single example.
	That's absurd.
	I haven't actually looked at that feed.
	Then how would you know there's hateful content?
	Because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago.
	Elon Musk.
	Let's move on.
	Elon Musk had to have paid that guy to do that.
	I mean, that's something that you cannot...
	It can't happen organically.
	It's so idiotic.
	It's a scene out of a movie.
	But hold on.
	Look, I'm not a creative person.
	Maybe I'm a bit of a creative person.
	I put together a bit of a remix.
	I was going to go for a full dubstep.
	But it took too long and I got impatient.
	I'm not saying anything.
	You've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more, I'd say it's got slightly more.
	I'm not saying anything.
	I'd say it's got slightly more.
	What I claim was...
	There are many organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise.
	I'm not saying anything.
	I'd say it's got slightly more.
	Strategic Dialogue Institute in the UK.
	They will say that.
	I'm not saying anything.
	I'd say it's got slightly more.
	I'm not saying anything.
	Let's move on.
	I'm not saying anything.
	You've asked me.
	Oh, it replays.
	So that was my dubstep remix.
	Good evening, everybody.
	It's been a busy day.
	I have to share a personal anecdote, but I don't want to share more information than the person involved might want to share.
	I've had an experience that illustrates and it will illustrate for one of my kids the absolute idiocy of the bureaucracy that is adulthood.
	Like, hold on.
	I'll bring this up because this is the good segue into it.
	Nina Infinity, I just came from nearly a two-hour live stream with Nina Infinity.
	I dare say it was fantastic.
	I actually told Nina of this anecdote.
	I came into Nina's stream enraged privately because of the incident that I'm going to explain now.
	Nina, she might be a therapist.
	She might be a therapist because I feel better.
	I feel invigorated.
	And we had a great stream.
	So check it out.
	Nina Infinity, thank you again for coming on today, Viva.
	Very much looking forward to the sidebar with Eric July.
	Cheers to the day when common sense returns.
	Keep conversing.
	Thank you, Nina.
	And everyone should go check it out, Nina Infinity.
	So, the experience was just an experience with bureaucracy.
	A kid who had prepared for something, but wasn't on the list of attendants.
	And forget the fact that it involved nearly a two-hour drive for dad.
	I don't care about that because I took that drive to listen to Eric July podcasts, interviews, and get...
	I did homework.
	I could do homework from wherever.
	A kid had prepared and was excited to participate in an extracurricular event.
	Wasn't on the list!
	And adults couldn't figure out a bloody solution to this.
	And I got someone on the phone after it became abundantly clear.
	They were not going to find the most reasonable solution which would have encouraged a kid for extracurricular participation.
	It would have taught a kid a lesson about adults finding...
	Once it became clear to me that the adults in the room were not going to be adults, I just said I hope you adults enjoy having taught a kid the lesson that there are adults out there who are bureaucrats in spirit and in mind and who don't want to...
	reward the what Who don't want to reward the...
	What's the word I'm looking for?
	For goodness sake, the desire to achieve, but want to teach a kid a lesson in bureaucracy.
	So I was enraged, and I'm still a little enraged.
	But all that to say, we're going to have Eric July on.
	I spent the better part of the day listening to interviews, getting familiar with his YouTube channel, his music.
	Which, and I'm going to say that, which his music, it's called The Bad Words.
	I believe it's called Bad Words.
	I get, I'm bad with names, but not bad with concepts.
	The music is a perfect blend between The Knucks and Linkin Park.
	For anybody who knows those two, well, everybody knows Linkin Park.
	I think everybody knows The Knucks.
	Eric July is going to come on.
	It's going to be a wonderful sidebar.
	Earlier today, I did an interview with Jack Posobiec for Turning Point USA.
	It's going to be aired Sunday.
	So it was a busy day.
	raging.
	Drove nearly two hours in a torrential downpour so that a kid could be told you can't participate because you're not on the list.
	Winston Shittenhouse.
	Come on, Winston!
	Winston, is that my actual dog in that?
	So now, everybody, these wonderful things you see here, the Rumble, the Super Chats on YouTube, Rumble Rants on Rumble.
	YouTube takes 30% of that.
	So if you don't like that and you want to support the channel, we are or should be live streaming on Rumble.
	Let me refresh and just make sure all is good.
	All is good.
	We are.
	We're on Locals.
	Let me make sure all is good there.
	We are.
	There's a beautiful dog picture in Locals.
	So we're going to have Eric July on today.
	And it's going to be fantastic.
	But Elon Musk.
	Destroying BBC.
	But my goodness, I'll tell you one thing.
	Elon is dropping the BBC jokes a lot on Twitter.
	And it's funny seeing a grown adult making these jokes that they go through my head, but it's not my genre of humor.
	What was I going to say?
	The sand of things I forget to say.
	No medical advice, no legal advice, no election fornication advice.
	We're probably going to drop off of YouTube at some point soon to go exclusive to Rumble because that's what we do.
	That's how we roll.
	We support the company that supports free speech.
	And that is my exclusivity with them as well.
	And I like it.
	And Rumble, my goodness, has been making waves.
	Barnes is in the backdrop.
	I'm going to bring him in right now.
	What was I going to say?
	Rumble has an exclusive...
	Live streaming for the primary debates for the GOP.
	Robert, I'm bringing you in right now.
	Let's see if we can make sense of this.
	Sir, how goes the battle?
	Good, good.
	I think Eric is en route.
	Okay, cool.
	Very good.
	Well, we'll certainly have what to talk about until Eric gets here.
	Our meet and greet.
	I have to fly.
	I texted you, so I am going to have to fly.
	It seems that my wife has actually got a decent flight.
	There's no direct flights from Miami or...
	Oh, there's...
	Occasionally there is from Miami to Chattanooga.
	There may not be any available, but American Airlines has one.
	Well, I'm going to get down on Friday, so we'll have to crampack our historical tour.
	We have our meet and greet on Saturday.
	And Robert, I see Eric in the backdrop.
	Voila!
	Okay, so we're going to do...
	I'm going to bring in Eric, and then we're going to get started fast.
	Okay, we're getting started.
	Hold on.
	Eric, I'm going to give you the 3-2-1.
	You ready?
	Three, two, thumbs up.
	Okay, good.
	Here we go.
	Eric, I don't like this layout.
	Hold on.
	I don't like that layout.
	I'm going to go on the bottom, so if I bring up a chat...
	Let me see this.
	Okay, here.
	Okay, good.
	Eric.
	What's up?
	Sir.
	Okay, first question first.
	I was doing some digging today.
	I'm not sure I know an answer to this question.
	Is your last name really July?
	Yes, it is my real name.
	A lot of people think it's like a pimp name, but it's not.
	It is legitimately my last name.
	I mean, first of all, I did not go to pimp name.
	I was just thinking maybe it was a stage name.
	Eric, look, I've gotten into some of your childhood, which we're going to have to get into in detail, but the 30,000 foot overview for those who may not know who you are, but I suspect everyone will.
	30,000 foot overview before we get into your childhood, which is interesting.
	Well, man, where do I start?
	Basically, obviously, you know, creative in different avenues, music.
	A lot of people know me.
	That was their first introduction to myself.
	Well, being a front man of a band called Fire from the Gods is still going on right now.
	And then, obviously, forming backwards after the fact.
	And, yeah, seeing a lot of success in the independent sort of scene there.
	I mean, obviously, being more in, like, the commentary space and, you know, talking about Liberty and all that.
	Was, you know, picked up a lot of friends along the way doing that from various different avenues.
	And, you know, as of recently, you know, comic book entering into the comic book space as a creative, as opposed to just being a commentator, which obviously we were we knocked it out the park there.
	Wasn't expecting.
	To see the success that we did.
	But yeah, man, I'm just a guy that's interested in a lot of different things, and I'm blessed to be in a position to where there's an audience for basically all of my interests.
	So if I want to make some metal music, I can do that.
	If I want to play video games, I can do that.
	And if I want to talk comic books...
	I can do that.
	Or Liberty, as it pertains to the political spectrum, I can do that.
	And like I said, that's a blessed position to be in because the stuff that we do never becomes mundane because of it.
	For those that don't know, can you give a brief introduction to the Ripaverse and the recent comic release?
	Yeah, so the Ripperverse was a, you know, it's the name of my comic book company.
	I launched officially publicly last year, but we had formed it actually a year before that.
	And, you know, the first book, ISUM number one, which launched, it was a pre-order campaign that we launched and it hit $3.7 million.
	And that was kind of the whole concept of the Ripperverse was to...
	Not to reinvent the wheel, believe it or not.
	It was more so to get back to the essence of what comic books were about and giving people something to look forward to and be enthusiastic about without feeling like they're getting beat over the head with this nonsensical political stuff or social justice leftism that we see a lot.
	Really plagued not just the comic book industry, as you guys probably know, it's pretty much everywhere, but especially plagued the comic book industry.
	I was a guy that, you know, I griped about it a lot, did a lot of videos, and I figured, hey, man, I'm a creative person.
	Maybe it's time for me to be a part of the actual solution.
	So I created this company, and the audience responded as such.
	We hit a million dollars in...
	30 hours, I think.
	So a little over a day we hit it.
	We hit a million dollars.
	And yeah, it just kept going and going.
	And we're gearing up in the next couple of months for ISOM 2 as well as two other projects as we're scaling up.
	Because we are a truly independent comic in the sense that unlike pretty much everybody else in the more so mainstream industry, we do our own distribution.
	So it's two kind of companies there.
	There's a lot of logistics that are involved certainly in that.
	So you have the creative stuff.
	That people see in the book itself.
	But, you know, as far as the distribution effort, we handle that as well.
	So there's a lot going into it.
	We're getting moved into our new warehouse.
	I'm very excited about it.
	But that's pretty much the company in itself.
	Just something is a brainchild kind of just, look, man, let's be a part of the solution as opposed to me just always griping on YouTube.
	Okay, Eric, so I watched your podcast with Michael Malice.
	Yeah.
	A bunch of older videos.
	I'm going to ask a lot of questions, and if they're too intrusive, you'll let me know.
	No, there ain't no such thing, man.
	Because I don't know what degree you go into in terms of prior videos and talking about your childhood.
	Your description on Wikipedia is...
	It goes over so quickly what I would have a million questions on.
	You're 32, born in Dallas, Texas.
	What was your childhood like?
	You ended up living with your grandmother, but what was your childhood like?
	And I'll have some follow-ups here.
	Yeah, so I grew up...
	It's a rare situation, ironically.
	That's not really the proper term in terms of ironic, but you often hear so much about how I ended up being really the starting point for a lot of people, but it really wasn't that for me.
	Not to say that I came from an affluent family, because that's not at all what happened.
	We were still living in South Dallas.
	But my mother, when I was born, my mother and father were together, right?
	So I went to a situation where I was in a better obvious situation both my parents being around and then they split when I was young I would say I had to be like maybe eight or something like that.
	And it was downhill from there.
	So much changed and going from we did have our own.
	We were in a house to being in like an apartment off Camp Wisdom in Dallas.
	And, you know, not having that father figure there to kind of tame me, for lack of better terms, led to me kind of getting being a knucklehead.
	Let's say that.
	And gotten gangbanging, doing all that sort of nonsense.
	I was it wasn't for me.
	It wasn't like slinging drugs or anything.
	It was just fighting people for.
	Colors are fighting people because they were from the different sizes of the neighborhood.
	It's just stupid stuff.
	And it could have certainly went another way for me.
	And thankfully for me, I guess my ticket out was my legs.
	I was a track and field athlete.
	And it kind of hit me going into my senior year that this was something that I could actually use to really better my life.
	And I got out.
	I went to University of Memphis.
	Not to say I got anything from the collegiate experience, like, as far as the education stuff, no.
	But certainly for, like, I learned a lot just being an athlete.
	I probably learned more being an athlete than I had ever learned, like, in college in terms of the books.
	But, you know, that was my ticket out.
	But, yeah, long story short, banging, doing all knucklehead stuff that you, you know, kind of, unfortunately, it's a very familiar story for a lot of people born in, like, single-parent households.
	If I can ask, what did your parents do before they got splitter, you know, now?
	Well, so my mother and father, again, it's funny how it just, because they met in college, ironically enough, out in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where they, it's a small town, but people that know it, it has two big colleges out there, and like Ouachita and Henderson State University are both in this small town.
	It doesn't make any sense, but that's just how it kind of lined up.
	My mother, I think, with the Henderson, my father.
	I was on a track scholarship in Ouachita, and that's how they ended up meeting, because my mother's actually from Arkadelphia.
	But, you know, they ended up moving to Dallas.
	Well, my father's from Oak Cliff, just like myself.
	And, you know, it was typical.
	You know, he worked in, he was doing, I guess, technically IT stuff back then.
	That's not really what people referred to it as back then.
	We worked on computers and all of that, and my mother was an accountant.
	And, you know, my father lost his job.
	And I remember vividly, man, I was very young, but I remember him coming.
	He had just wrecked my mother's car because he was drunk, right?
	He was drunk coming back from, I don't know if it was my cousin's house or somebody, wrecked my mother's car.
	And, man, I just remember it going downhill.
	My mother was fed up.
	And it wasn't that she wasn't willing to, like, work with him.
	But once he lost his job.
	He felt like he had to work on computers.
	So I had a cousin, for example.
	I think I've told this story maybe a couple of times publicly, not many, but I had a cousin who worked at like Bullwiser, I think, at the time.
	Ironically, with all of what's going on right now, it was a little different back there.
	But I worked there, and he was like, hey, man, I can get you a job today.
	Right?
	And you can, I can pick you up.
	You ain't got a ride.
	I can pick you up, do all that.
	And he just refused to do it because he thought he was too good to do like warehouse work and stuff like that.
	So, you know, because my mother was basically paying for everything, she was like, I'm out.
	You know, I can't afford this.
	You know, you're not trying to really work on this relationship in terms of working.
	So she bounced.
	And yeah, like, you know, it was a worse off, obviously, situation for me.
	We went from that house to a, like I said.
	A little apartment off Camp Wisdom in Dallas.
	And yeah, it was just different.
	So I came from not an affluent family, but a family that, let's say, a more preferable situation, right?
	And both parents being around to then not having that.
	You know what I mean?
	Like that.
	It seemed like it happened so fast when I was young.
	And just the contrast was so...
	Painfully obvious, because when I did need that figure around, he was not.
	And big shout out to my mother, because at no point in time, I think it's how it helped me grow into the man I am today, because at no point in time did she, like, presented as if there was something wrong with men.
	She didn't try to raise me to be, like, obviously, like, on some feminine shit or anything like that.
	I had uncles.
	I had all that, which she would try to.
	That's part of, actually, why I ended up going to live with my grandmother, why she sent me off there.
	For a little bit.
	And I was around more of the men on that side of the family when I was living in Arkansas.
	So she never developed any sort of anti-man approach or anything.
	I think that really benefited me right now.
	Was that rural Arkansas?
	And what was that like going from Dallas to rural Arkansas?
	Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
	It's not actually Arkadelphia, which is technically the city.
	We were in Joanne, which is right outside of it.
	And we're talking the country.
	My grandmother having her own garden.
	This is me coming home from school, having to shut corn and doing stuff like that.
	That's what we were on.
	My uncle, who lives right across the street as well, or the road, actually.
	It's one of those big county roads that just goes on forever.
	I lived right across the road.
	He had his little farm, horses and stuff like that.
	That was my work after school.
	It was different.
	You're talking about inner city.
	To, like, a completely different lifestyle.
	Now, I was able to adapt a little more because I would always go to Arcadelphia for the summers.
	But, you know, that was really my first time being there for that long, extended period of time.
	And, yeah, it was country, like, you know, between all the peas and the chucking the corn and all that stuff.
	My grandmother had a big...
	Pot just waiting, Bucket just waiting on me as soon as I got home.
	And it was like, yeah, you just got out of school, but I'm going to need you to shuck that.
	And that was my life there.
	So, you know, I hated it, obviously, at the time.
	But, you know...
	Certainly with that experience, I think it helped.
	I appreciate it a lot more, especially work, because it was just a different animal.
	You don't have access to as much stuff, and a lot of people are doing manual labor just to eat.
	Not just for the sake of doing it, but just for the sake of eating.
	It was a different animal, but I think it was a very necessary experience.
	Only child?
	Yes.
	Okay, amazing.
	That only child and youngest of five explain a lot.
	Okay, now hold on.
	There was another question I had.
	What does it look like, for people who can't possibly envision it, to be an eight-year-old kid living with your mother in an apartment and getting into the world of gangs?
	What does that actually look like?
	How does a kid get into it?
	How does a mother either not know about it or have no control over it?
	And what was the culminating element that...
	Well, I think a lot of people, like, definitely that are young, when you start getting in, definitely as a teenager, you know, so you're 12, 13, 14, you start getting into that sort of stuff because people are looking for some sense of, like, to be a part of something.
	It's almost like a social club.
	Certainly when I was coming up, that was more of what it is, where people had a sense of belonging.
	That's how it was, kind of more so in Dallas.
	And you have people fighting over stupid stuff.
	Sometimes drugs and other stupid stuff, but most of the time, definitely out in Dallas, it was more territory type of stuff.
	You're from Holland Hills, you're from Singing Hills, you're from this side of Oak Cliff, that side of Oak Cliff, or those guys from, like, Fort Worth, and we meet in the middle at Arlington on the weekends to go fight them at Parks Mall for what reason, Lord knows what, just because they're from a different side of the town.
	So it's funny, like, I remember as I aged, it became less about colors where you had folks that were, you know, claiming red, folks that were, you know.
	Cripping and all that stuff.
	And it became less about that.
	And it was more like, what town are you from?
	What city are you from?
	And people were beefing and losing their life over stupid stuff like that.
	So, you know, for me, I think that was exactly what it was.
	It was more of a sense of belonging to something else and a sense of camaraderie with other individuals.
	And everybody kind of during that period of time started to gravitate kind of towards that sort of thing as a lifestyle, gang stuff as a lifestyle.
	And yeah, it was, you know, my mother obviously knew it was what it was by the time I was like 14, because, you know, I got kicked out of DISD.
	And that was...
	What's DISD?
	That's Dallas, like, Duncanville Independent School District.
	Duncanville was where I was at.
	What did you get kicked out for?
	Fighting.
	Fighting.
	It's funny.
	I came, like, usually they had, like, a no-tolerance policy.
	This was before, like...
	Back in the day, you know, people know maybe Duncanville High School is just like big, like football school.
	You got a lot now and all this.
	But back then, it didn't have 9th to 12th graders.
	Like, I ended up going there, even though we lived in Dallas.
	Duncanville technically is its own city.
	But we lived in Dallas.
	And, like, it was the 9th grade center was what it was.
	It wasn't part of the high school yet.
	And, yeah, so I was there.
	And yeah, I remember getting in a fight and usually they had like a low, low tolerance for that stuff.
	And it was automatically that you were going to alternative school for X amount of days if you ended up doing that.
	But they didn't do that for me.
	And I remember coming back like it was like I got like a three day suspension and I came back and gotten another one.
	Right.
	Like immediately once I got back, I'll fight with like it was different cat, but, you know, same click.
	And yeah, at that point, my mother was like, all right, man, he's out of control.
	So the point was that she was like, okay, sending him there, it'll be a completely different lifestyle.
	It'll be a lifestyle change for him, and it'll be good for him, I guess was her idea.
	So that was the tipping point.
	Well, she knew I was obviously involved in stupid stuff, but I think that kind of...
	Really brought it home where I was really getting in trouble with this school thing that she really believed in for me.
	And I was botching it, right?
	That was the whole point.
	She's trying to take me to these better schools and all this stuff.
	And I was just botching it by getting in stupid fights.
	So that was kind of what it was.
	And that was the tipping point for her.
	And she was like, all right, well, let's see if we can go live with his grandmother and start a completely different culture.
	Let's see what that does for them.
	What was Memphis like when you were there?
	I was at Memphis during the Governor's School stuff, early 90s and other things going on.
	I've seen the ups and downs and the rise of it.
	What was it like now?
	The crime is becoming strong again.
	Police tension with the community is back at all-time highs.
	What's your recollection?
	It was getting like that when even I was there.
	It was funny because obviously coming from South Dallas, it was nothing for me to be a part around that stuff anyway.
	It was just kind of foreign in the sense that I didn't know any of these people either.
	So I remember getting like...
	First time leaving off of campus and seeing it.
	It actually reminded me of Southern Side Dallas a lot in that regard.
	To your point, you had crime issues, the Orange Mound and all that stuff.
	You had all those issues that were, despite the food being so damn good, why people are getting into it, I don't know.
	There's more than enough good food to be eaten in Memphis.
	That was what it was.
	It was, again, it reminded me a lot of Dallas in terms of that side of the culture, but I was, like, kind of really glued to the campus because I was an athlete for the most part, and, you know, so I guess I didn't experience a lot.
	We went clubbing and doing stuff like that, and I did experience kind of a lot of that goofiness, but, you know, I was, thankfully, I was out of, like, thinking that I was really badass back then.
	Because I easily, yeah, going from Dallas to Memphis is not better by any means.
	And I could have easily gotten even worse trouble if I went down that rabbit hole.
	But I kicked it by then.
	Let me ask you the naive Canadian question.
	When you say, you know, when you're 12 to 14 getting involved in gangs and you said people losing their life over dumb shit.
	Yeah.
	You mean literally?
	This is not like...
	Yo, no, no, no.
	Not just like, yo, you got people that lose their life in a sense of maybe they go to prison, but no, you have people literally dying.
	There's several folks that I knew certainly growing up that got killed.
	And again, over what?
	You know, over the silliest, just nonsensical stuff.
	And I think that's the big tragedy of it all.
	And, you know, it kind of does hit you.
	You know, when you're definitely at that young age and you find out that guy you went to school with.
	It's no longer going to be there because, you know, over the weekend he was in the so-and-so and they end up firing shots or there was some sort of drive-by or there was some sort of something that happened.
	And, you know, I saw that several times.
	It was really, I don't want to say humbling, but it did something to me.
	You know, when I was definitely, when I was an older teenager and I had...
	A young chick that I grew up with ended up getting killed at a party that I was at.
	And I was like, right there.
	And it was like, what are we doing?
	You know what I mean?
	At that point, it was a guy shooting.
	He wasn't even in the club.
	We were outside of it.
	She went across the street.
	Had nothing to do with any other beef that was going on.
	But that's often how it happens.
	As Nas called them accident murders where they're trying to shoot someone else or they think their bel-air dude is hanging out the window with an AK just letting.
	Letting shots ring and, you know, ended up killing her.
	And I was like right there.
	And I was like that was kind of crazy to me.
	But there were several other people that I absolutely knew, you know, personally banned with and or against for that matter.
	And, you know, them losing their life to like when I say nothing, it was nothing like a lot of this stuff isn't, you know, it's drugs and stuff like that with some cases.
	But a lot of it's not.
	It's like, hey, this guy is from the other side of town.
	And because we don't like them, we're going to meet at this spot at a party that we know some of them are going to be in.
	They claim this clique, we claim this clique, and now we're going to have a shootout.
	It's nonsensical and it sounds nonsensical, but that's exactly what it was.
	For a lot of people, the common canon today is not Homer's Iliad or whatever it was for generations, centuries past, but it's a combination of movies and films and comics and TV series.
	When were you introduced to that?
	My nephew, massive comics fan.
	He grew up in the comics books.
	That is his world.
	It wasn't as much my world.
	When were you introduced to that?
	When did it become part of your world?
	What were some of your earliest experiences that brought you into that world?
	Man, I remember being in the comics.
	I was into it very young, even though we didn't have a whole lot of money.
	But I got introduced to that by the way of my mother.
	Flash was a character that I fell in love with.
	Wally was the Flash when I was coming up.
	And I resonated and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
	There was this character whose power is just to run really fast, right?
	And me being a sprinter, I used to destroy these kids at field day.
	And that was an easy thing for me to kind of click with it.
	Obviously, as I got older, a lot of that stuff changed, became more like a fan of like Batman and stuff like that that had just a little more complexity to them and to be fair, Wally and Barry do as well.
	But that was my first introduction.
	But I always say like understanding when I was growing up, we often refer to that era as in terms of American animation in the comic books is like the peak era.
	So I grew up in the 90s, right?
	So that was.
	Batman, the animated series.
	That was X-Men, the animated series.
	That was when all that stuff came out.
	If you want to throw Spider-Man in there, you can.
	So all of that stuff was dropping.
	When I was, you know, coming home from school or something of that nature.
	So we had good material to refer to that was also outside of the comics that did it justice.
	So I would say it was certainly my mother introduced me to the concept of comic books itself.
	But again, I also was raised, happened to be raised in an era where it was just, it was like good material that was on like Fox Kids when you came home and you could turn the TV on.
	And like I say, X-Men was.
	Eric, we're going to go over to Rumble exclusively.
	It changes nothing on our end, but everyone, I'm going to ask this question, and then if you want to know the answer, you're going to have to go over to Rumble, where we're going to carry this interview on.
	Eric, Wikipedia says you were shot in the knee.
	This will be my last question of the childhood.
	Wikipedia says you were shot in the knee when you came back to Dallas.
	Yeah.
	It's so funny.
	Hold on.
	Before you answer, we're going to end on YouTube, people.
	Meet you on Rumble in 3, 2, 1. Okay, yeah.
	So now, Wikipedia says you were shot in the knee.
	Yeah.
	And if it's true, I need to know how much it hurts.
	Oh, it sucked.
	And it was true.
	Now it was a little 380.
	It wasn't anything like...
	What's a 380, man?
	In terms of the round.
	It wasn't like a 9 or it wasn't like a hollow or anything.
	It was like straight in, straight out type of situation.
	But yes, that did happen.
	It's funny.
	I remember somebody telling me and bringing that up because I hadn't talked about that that much.
	Like, how the hell did they even discover that?
	That that happened?
	Because it's not like I go around bragging about that or anything.
	So somebody did something.
	I guess props to him.
	Did some digging.
	And they found out about that.
	But yeah, that was something that happened.
	And it was the same thing.
	It wasn't the guy that did it.
	It wasn't even aiming at me.
	It was one of those things where it was at a party and, you know.
	People started shooting, and it happened to hit me.
	Now, like I said, it sucked.
	It absolutely sucked, to make no mistake.
	There's obviously a scar on there that's not going to go away, but as far as...
	I think it could have been worse.
	It wasn't like it shattered my knee or my actual bone.
	No, it was pretty right above.
	It was more ligament damage than anything.
	Now, I was scared because I'm like, hey, is this going to damage me in terms of running and all of that?
	But after a year, I was fine.
	It wasn't anything like that was that crucial.
	But yes, it's crazy how people dug that over when I was in high school and they found out about that.
	How old?
	16 when it happened?
	Yeah, I was like 15, 16. Yeah, I was roughly when I was when that happened.
	It's crazy.
	You're describing a life which is going to be foreign to most people where you go to parties and it's not abnormal or uncommon for shots to ring out.
	Are you living in a constant state of terror?
	Or are you living in a constant state of disregard or just acceptance of the fact that life is fickle and it can end so quickly for absolutely no reason?
	Yeah, I think for a lot of people, they think definitely you mix the combination of a young person, the culture as well as a young person.
	And young people in general think they're going to live forever, right?
	And that's what I thought.
	So it was uncommon for you to think for any regular person, they should feel terror because that's exactly what it is.
	And a lot of these people are terrorizing their own neighborhoods for that matter.
	But you think of it like, oh, that'll never happen to me.
	Or, you know, I'm so badass that I can overcome and do all this sort of stuff out of that.
	And that's just, you know, looking at that in retrospect, like that was stupid.
	And it could have went a different way.
	You know what I mean?
	Like it could have went a completely different way.
	But to your point.
	Yeah, it's not abnormal at all.
	It's like, it was an expectation.
	Like, I remember what, you know, definitely if we would go to, like, parties that were, like, out of town.
	So if we were, like, we'd come, all my bros were coming from Dallas.
	And let's say we'd go to Arlington.
	And there were cats that are, like, Arlington that would, you know, call themselves little baby gangsters.
	And then you had, of course, people that were actually on some gangster stuff, like Stop Six and Como out of Fort Worth.
	And so we link up and we're all in this place.
	And the expectation is like, all right, some song is going to play.
	Everybody's throwing up their hood and stuff.
	And we're about to find out what's about to happen.
	And it's like an expectation that it was going to be a legitimate rumble in there for nothing, right?
	And after that, you know, it was not uncommon for Shasta Rain.
	Over nothing.
	You know what I mean?
	Over what happened in the club or somebody that wasn't even in the club sat up here and knew that all these people were going to be up here and they got the text or the call and they heard that so-and-so from X side of the city is going to be there.
	Those groups of members are going to be there.
	And then it's on.
	And looking at that, like I said, it's so stupid because it could have went a completely different way.
	I know I got a partner that, for example, got popped.
	Off a bit.
	You know what I mean?
	Like off a bit.
	Like something stupid like that and he lost his life by the name of Jermani.
	Some know him as a rapper.
	His name is Mr. Guaranteed to Rick is what they call him.
	And he lost his life over that.
	You know what I mean?
	So it's like...
	Stupid stuff.
	It doesn't make any sense looking at it now as an adult, but, you know, it's just sad to see that there's still people kind of living that lifestyle, and hopefully they get it at some point that it's like it makes no sense and it's self-destructive.
	It's not only destructive to yourself, but suddenly it's destructive to those around you, and I think that's one of the things that resonated with me.
	I told you about the story before, but also, you know, it's different when...
	You know, you got people that are after you and they want to knock your head off.
	So it wasn't nothing for me to go somewhere and get jumped.
	Like it was like, all right, whatever.
	But when you maybe been with somebody like a girlfriend or even if it's like a family member that ain't got nothing to do with any of that stuff.
	And when the beef arises, it's there.
	It's there.
	And, you know, they might get caught in a crossfire or like literally, you know what I mean?
	Or just, you know, be in a position where they feel threatened.
	And that could change anybody, you know, when it's like, okay, it's one thing to do harm to me, but when people are, you know, your family members are getting in the way or your loved ones are being impacted by that, that'll change any man.
	Now, after you go to Memphis, what was the original career path and how did you end up on this path?
	Yeah, the original career path, like I remember taking, you know, because going to Memphis was when I first, I guess the light bulb went off for me.
	From the philosophical stuff, right?
	You know, I remember wanting to learn about economists and I was still in this like uber pro-black, you know, fist in the earth sort of stuff back then.
	And I was like, I wanted to learn about the black economists.
	And thank Jesus, I stumbled across the likes of both Dr. Thomas Sowell and rest in peace, Dr. Walter E. Williams.
	And it changed everything, man.
	It changed everything.
	And I went through a stint to where I thought that I was going to do something with economics out of that because it became something that I was very intrigued by.
	But, you know, I ended up going to, you know, more of the communication, the communication route.
	And it's like, to me, all that stuff, you know, people know how I feel about how high education is largely a waste of damn time for a lot of us.
	Uh, but, but I was an athlete and I did get a lot out of that at minimum.
	I could say that.
	Um, but yeah, that was kind of where, where it went.
	Um, so out of funny, out of college, my first gig, you know, of course I had nothing to really do with, um, with the degree per se, but, uh, I worked in a gym, you know, I was a assistant general manager.
	I was my first like big boy, big boy job, uh, right out of college was being an AGM for, for a gym.
	And, um, yeah, it was, uh, I went there to start doing some IT work before I just started doing the completely self-employed stuff.
	Thank God I did that.
	Okay.
	I've been hesitating whether or not to even ask the question because it's a risky question.
	The environment...
	It'll be my last one on this, Eric, and then we're going to move on to the happy stuff.
	It's all good, man.
	Redemption.
	The childhood of the upbringing and the culture in which you're brought up where you have people fighting over territory for no good reason, where they live with this constant terror, they live with this constant tragedy.
	And there, you know, it's there's.
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	If you notice the tendency or the statistics, what accounts for it?
	Some people say it's racial, racist, a history of.
	Some people say it's cultural.
	Some people say it's poverty.
	You've lived through it.
	What accounts for this mentality of people to live and live in this environment?
	I would say it's 100% for me cultural.
	Because I remember seeing people that were not even...
	Economically in a bad situation that wanted to be gangster.
	We're seeing all this stuff even happen with a guy like Ja Morant in basketball right now where both his parents all was for the most part good and now he's trying to be on some gangster stuff.
	It's cultural more than it is anything, at least from what I picked up in terms of my own individual experience where people feel like Well, it's like what came first, the chicken or the egg, but the culture is the culture, and people started gravitating towards that sort of lifestyle, be it for validation, be it for oneself, for validation through the lens of other people that they may have looked up to.
	I know it's cultural because it's funny.
	I used to, and I was at 15, 16, was when I started gaining some prominence in Dallas as a rapper.
	And, you know, the songs that we rapped about was basically how we were living, so we were always rapping about fighting.
	And that was a big song.
	It still gets all these views on YouTube and stuff called Bring the Beef that myself and two other people did.
	And I don't remember one time that I performed that out of town and from some massive club where a fight didn't break out because of the song.
	Like, the song is moving people to do that dumb shit.
	I was the second verse on the song.
	Good luck getting to the third.
	By the third time, the club's done shut down.
	Security's beating everybody up because they're beating each other up.
	It's crazy.
	There were very few times that we got through that whole song because of how it moved people.
	It didn't matter where it was at or what type of people that it was.
	This is why I say that it's cultural.
	I say that in a positive way because...
	I believe that the solution is easier than what a lot of people make.
	And I think there's a lot of, you know, definitely activists who point to stuff like poverty and they think that, well, that is what's breeding violence or that's what breeds these negative crime and other stuff.
	And I vehemently disagree, mainly because it requires nothing of you to, let's say, not use aggression upon other people.
	And you've seen that play out that way where It's not concrete.
	You know, you got people that are poor in this side of the country, right?
	That type of crime is not really there.
	Gang life and stuff like that is not really the issue there.
	And then you have others where it is an issue.
	So I believe it's cultural more than anything.
	And I say that, again, in a positive sense.
	I think this can be resolved, but it's going to take a lot of self-reflection that I think a lot of individuals just don't want to do that come up like that.
	Because it's very easy to point to an external factor to say, well, that is the reason why I do what it is that I do to validate the bad behavior it is that you do.
	And it makes it seem like everything that you do is justified.
	Right?
	Because it's like, well, I grew up poor.
	I'm black.
	And I'm in this unfortunate situation.
	And therefore, this is how I have to be.
	And it's like, you don't.
	You don't have to be.
	That is something that you choose to do.
	So I think accountability and responsibility has to be sort of instilled in these people that are living this life.
	And definitely, we can't let these activists continue to make it by perpetuating this nonsense that, well, they're that way because of their upbringing as far as like maybe being in lower.
	economic situations and therefore that they have to be filed and that's just bullshit to me.
	Robert, I'm going to steal your question here because I'm going to forget this one if I don't ask it.
	You say when the Oh, 100%!
	A hundred percent.
	I would say that's why a lot of the...
	I just talked about activists.
	These race hustlers, think about it.
	If they had the solution, these guys from the Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharptons of the world, these guys have been race hustling for longer than...
	My mom's been alive, for the most part.
	And yet, they haven't solved an issue anywhere for that matter in Black America, for the most part.
	And you look at it through that lens and you wonder why these guys are getting around.
	I don't know if he still has a little show on MSNBC and all that.
	So I think it's a combination of both where there's people that have tapped into that market that understand as long as they can keep these people out of this perpetual cycle of conflict, whether it be blaming other people and external factors.
	What incentive do they have to solve the issue when they benefit from that turmoil existing in the first place?
	So whether that be like a race hustler or a politician that's running, because think about it.
	You see all these politicians, what do they run on?
	They run on this idea that, hey, vote me in and I'm going to solve the problem.
	We know they can't.
	They know it's impossible for them to do it, but they get elected based on it.
	So again, what incentive do you have to solve an issue when you know that you're going to get the job or you know that you're going to get the gig, you know that you're going to reap the benefits financially from that?
	There's no incentive to do so.
	So I do think that it comes with them, but I also think that it's not conspiracy, that there are external factors, some in the government, some without it, that need that conflict that exists in a lot of these communities.
	Be the way that it is, and they're often amplified because it legitimizes themselves and their existence.
	When did you first start seeing in the comics and in the culture, in terms of entertainment, this sort of woke...
	I mean, because the original comics often created sort of good images, good ideas, good norms, good normative values, and then all of a sudden it becomes a very politically weaponized objective.
	When did you first start to see that and experience it?
	Yeah, so in the mid-2010s, right?
	And I want to preface it by saying this.
	Yes, there had been politics, definitely like you talk about, World War II or even Vietnam in some cases, where you had these comic books that were entering into that sphere that would talk about that by way of the mainstream, okay?
	But what I noticed in the 2010s, and I think this is the part people lose sight of, is that at some point there used to be balance, right?
	So it was not that, and, you know, Stan Lee talked about this where, you know, of course you had people that worked for Marvel, that were Democrats, that were Republicans, and none of that mattered for the stories.
	It is mainly because it was some sort of balance.
	And in the 2010s, we noticed that the balance was, it was a shift.
	And really what was being presented as good and something that was admirable and something to strive for seemed to be, Leftism, politically and socially, however you want to define that.
	And in the 2010s, you had, I don't know if people remember, Marvel went through this whole all new, all different phase where they were like, we're going to replace all of the characters that, I don't know, everybody loves with knockoffs.
	And often those knockoffs were race-swabbed, gender-swabbed version of these sorts of characters that had long existed.
	And then it was like, Okay, that's a little weird, okay?
	And then you start to see that was, you know, going in definitely in 2015.
	I think Donald Trump broke a lot of these cats, man.
	And it got bad to where they were used.
	Like you had MODOK, for example, being depicted as like a Trump face.
	You had DC Comics, the one back there, actually, where the Joker was presented as Donald Trump.
	Now, keep in mind, Marvel would do things for Barack Obama, where he would be like, You know, hey, thumbs up.
	He's cheesing.
	He's a good guy, right?
	And he'd be on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man.
	2016, none of that sort of stuff existed.
	In the event that they depicted...
	And I'm not saying that to say that they should have done it one way or the other.
	I'm saying the lack of balance was what made it sort of obvious.
	And then when you had the growth of nerd culture and geek culture in the mainstream and other places like with the movies and all that, because that's also roughly the same time the Marvel Cinematic Universe began to sort of gain legs.
	You got a bunch of people that wanted to get in on the comic books.
	They had no business being writers.
	They just wanted to...
	Put out their own, use these characters as vehicles for their own little social views and all that stuff.
	Even if it didn't make sense for the characters at all, they're living through them.
	They didn't care about continuity.
	They didn't care about source material that existed or pre-existed prior to them writing that character.
	And you get guys that had never even, there was no public proof that they were even fans of comic books, namely Ta-Nehisi Coates.
	And not only is Ta-Nehisi Coates now writing for Marvel, he's got two of their most prominent characters, and he's doing their ongoing series in both Black Panther and Captain America.
	And we know what happened out of that, where he's depicting Jordan Peterson as Red Skull and doing weird stuff like that.
	You had these guys almost like they were writing to...
	To make movie adaptations based on this stuff instead of just doing good source material and having competent writers do that source material.
	So I would say in the 2010s, not to say that there wasn't little tidbits happening there before, but certainly in the beginning and in the mid-2010s, definitely once Trump got elected, man, it broke these cats.
	And they felt like, well, now it's up to me to use comic books to...
	To try to lecture everybody about my backwards-ass social views.
	And I'm going to use prominent characters to do so.
	So I would have to put it on 2010 when it just went off a clip.
	Eric, I'm going to say I understood about 10% of the words you used, but I understood 95% of the spirit of what you're saying.
	I've never been into comics, these Marvel movies, period.
	I liked Quentin Tarantino-type violent movies, not these superhero movies.
	Just to refresh everybody's memory, the order of your career on the interwebs, were you a music artist before?
	How did it go in terms of progression?
	I would say as far as my entertainment career per se, it was for sure music.
	It was music that was my first big thing that I was being known for.
	Like I said, in the early to mid-2000s, it was as a rapper.
	And that was when I hit college was when I started pursuing like the other genres and doing like middle and stuff like that.
	But, you know, I was always into comics.
	But as far as seeing this level of success that I saw, it was music first.
	I grew up a music head, grew up singing in the choir, the church, doing stuff like that.
	I would definitely be in Arkansas.
	My grandma was going to have me in that choir.
	But, you know, that was the first big thing kind of for me.
	And like I said, going into 20...
	2010s, I got in a position where I was able to act in whatever way that I wanted to.
	If I wanted to make some metal music, I could do that.
	If I wanted to talk comics or really anything else that I wanted to talk to, I was in that position.
	Everything trickled with the music stuff.
	Definitely with my own channel, like on YouTube and stuff.
	We started doing those little boogie videos, and then we would do the vocal covers and stuff that I would do back in the Gap.
	It was for sure music that really...
	I use that as a vehicle myself to do other cool things and other interests.
	So now my life is not...
	There's no off switch, really.
	I can turn it on the camera.
	If I feel like talking about politics, we can do that.
	If I feel like talking about comic books, we can do that as well.
	Or if I just want to go make some music, I can do that.
	So I'm in a great position.
	And the love for comics, it's from childhood.
	Is it the cliche that it's sort of like the...
	Not the distraction from, but the...
	The escape from reality?
	Or did it start later in life?
	I would say for sure.
	You gain more of appreciation for that when you become an adult because your life is changing and you're having more responsibilities and sometimes you want to be in a better spot.
	Sports does this a lot for people where it's like, hey man, just give me an hour or two to just kick back, not even have to worry about other goofy stuff.
	That's going on in the real world and just kind of get lost and escape and feel good and get lost into whatever world or whatever event it is that you're watching is really what it was for me.
	But like I said, you don't really understand that because your entire world, like as a youngster, because you don't have those responsibilities, it's...
	It's fantasy.
	But, you know, everybody, you know, I was five years old, I probably thought I was a Ninja Turtle or whatever.
	Like, you know, you do stuff like that.
	But as an adult, you gain more of appreciation for that balance to be interested in something else that's outside of, like...
	Because the real world can suck sometimes.
	It's not that you should ignore it.
	It has problems that absolutely needs to address.
	But certainly when you want to just detox or flush that stuff out for at least the time being to get your spirits up, get your morale up, I think those entertainment entities are very important for people.
	Now, what inspired you to start?
	Speaking out more about political issues, about what's happening in the politicization of comics, and how has the people you've grown up with and your family and your friends reacted to your political perspective?
	Yeah, so for me, when I found out that I had been duped and I was basically believing in political views that I really didn't understand.
	It was more of just embedded in who you're supposed to support if you are going to be involved politically.
	And once I fell out, like, again, I told you about the, read about the likes of, like, Walter Williams and Dr. Thomas Sowell and understanding, like, these different concepts that I hadn't even entertained before, it changed.
	So I was angry, to be completely honest.
	Like, you know, I spent, you know, I was young, but, you know, I spent a better part of my life Living a lie, you know what I mean?
	Or being duped and just going along with the charade that is leftism.
	So I was angry and considering that I had been duped, I wanted to speak out against some of those even abhorrent views that I had before because I knew there were other people, definitely young people, that were in la-la land as well.
	So, you know, you can imagine just believing something, finding out it's false, being angry, and then just trying to use that at least for some sort of good.
	I was always a decent speaker.
	I was always able to conceptualize these different points it is that I had.
	I mean, I did it through music for a long time.
	And now it was more of doing it, like, publicly in maybe the political arena or doing it on even videos and stuff like that.
	I figured that that was sort of my calling.
	And I was able to use even other stuff like my music, definitely people that remember me and Fire From The Gods, where we had these different songs that were called The Capitalists.
	And people didn't understand it back then, you know what I mean, what it was.
	But I was writing music that were essentially my views.
	And definitely growing up, growing up, and when I said growing up, I'm an adult at this point.
	Becoming more knowledgeable on these various different concepts and having the opportunity to speak in front of people.
	It changed everything because here we are now because people apparently wanted to hear.
	I think one of the big subject matters for me was minimum wage where I would talk about that all the time and even how that impacted a lot of the communities that I was in.
	That turned into one thing.
	I remember doing Fox and Friends back when Tucker Carlson was there way back in the gap.
	I mean, appearing on there, talking minimum wage and doing stuff like that.
	So, you know, that political growth happened going into 19 years old, 20, 21. And, you know, like I said, it was a slow.
	Economics was the subject that did it for me.
	And then it went, you know, it's like you go learn about this economics.
	They'll learn about Seoul.
	You learn about Chicago economists and Milton Friedman's of the world.
	And then you learn more about these more free market marketed economics.
	And then, you know, I went full.
	Austrian and stumbled across the likes of freaking Murray Rothbard and Mises and it changed everything.
	As far as all the content you produce, what is the most popular?
	Man, that's a good question.
	I mean, it's easy for me to say now, I guess, the comic book stuff, right?
	But, you know, I can talk about a subject that is political and I can get...
	You know, people love to hear me talk about that sort of stuff or social.
	So it's hard to gauge, you know what I mean, which one it is.
	I think maybe those are equal and maybe secondary would be the music stuff, definitely the metal stuff, though I get asked every day, when's Backwards new album going to drop?
	When is all this stuff?
	So, you know, we're working on that.
	But it would have to be between the political stuff and the comic book stuff because I can talk about either of those.
	And people seem to really, really, really dig it.
	And oftentimes, some of those audiences blend as well.
	You got some of the same people that are there.
	So it depends on what...
	I guess that's a good problem to have.
	I get to wake up and just be like, I want to talk about whatever the fuck I want to talk about.
	And there's an audience for it.
	So I guess it works out.
	Not the metaphysical question, but the sociological question, whatever.
	As you've come out politically...
	Have you made enemies with people that you did not think you were going to make enemies with?
	Or have you found yourself being thrown under the bus by people who up until then thought you were an ally?
	Well, certainly musically, yeah.
	I would say that there's a sense of you're not supposed to be here.
	So to give people a backstory, my main genre, if there is, I know we do a lot of genre blending.
	But in music, it was metalcore, which is obviously the mixture of the genre mixture of metal and hardcore music, which came from more so punk stuff.
	And pretty much everybody is a leftist.
	Outside of my good friend Phil from All That Remains, Phil Labonte, it's just us.
	Maybe you can throw in Ryan Kirby from Fit for a King, a friend of mine as well, who's libertarian.
	But they don't like us.
	And I remember getting hit pieces wrote about me by these little corny little metal magazines and stuff because I think differently than they are because the idea is that you're not supposed to be there.
	Definitely if you're seeing success, they think that leftism is positive.
	I remember back definitely when Bernie Sanders was running in the mid-2010s and everybody, all these idiot leftists.
	We're in that little Bernie Bro shirts and all that during the shows and stuff.
	And I was the guy that would follow their act and say, fuck the guy on stage and wouldn't give a shit.
	And, you know, they didn't like it.
	Let's say that they didn't like it.
	We were undeniable in the sense that we obviously had that following, but they didn't like us and we felt that.
	And it comes with its set of issues.
	I think now a lot has changed technologically, but you can imagine if we depended on...
	These guys to get on shows and stuff.
	I remember there was one massive tour.
	I think people can put two and two together, who it is.
	But there was a massive tour that is no longer around that we were supposed to do.
	And the actual founder of this tour found out my position on Planned Parenthood and obviously wanting to defund them and all of that.
	And that in itself made them not want to include us on this said tour.
	And ironically enough, Planned Parenthood would be showing up at various events with handing out pamphlets and all sorts of random stuff at this said tour as well.
	But you also have to be prepared for that sort of stuff.
	At least back then you did.
	I think now the internet, people are realizing more than ever, like the proper channels aren't really proper anymore.
	We can do whatever the hell we want.
	But back then, it was like a way to do things.
	And yeah, you're going to get undercut for a lot of different things if you're among their ranks in entertainment and they don't like you like that because they think that it belongs to them and they own it.
	Are you surprised that, you know, artists are supposed to be or seen as the independent creative voice, but they've increasingly become the symbolic, this voice of the state, the voice of the system.
	I mean, Rage Against the Machine has to be renamed Rage for the Machine.
	Yes, for sure.
	You know, many of these illustrations of these fight the man.
	Endorse demand, support mass house arrest, support mass vaccination, support indoctrination of their children, support whatever the latest notion is on gender relationships or gender identity, or even go around talking about redefined pedophilia as minor attracted people.
	Are you struck by the fact that these independent, creative, artistic minds have become such sort of statist shills?
	Yeah, and again, my first big introduction to that was with the whole Bernie situation and seeing these pro, like, you know, to your point, fist in the air, fight the man, you know, fight the corporate entities and all that.
	Capitalism is something they blend all that together, wrongfully defining it or whatever.
	Maybe, I guess they own the etymology, but whatever.
	You find out very quick how pro-government they were when, again, a guy like Bernie Sanders had run, and I watched all of these people who were like, oh, the establishment is so bad, we're absolutely shilling for it.
	And then it became, with COVID, to your point, it was unlike anything that I'd seen.
	Because you had like in mass these people who acted as if the pharmaceutical companies were the most evil folks in the world turned around and like that were shilling, actively shilling for it, wanting to punish you for not wanting to get.
	The jab.
	They were having these ridiculous rules.
	All these all fight the man, but make sure you won't be allowed in our show if you don't show proof of vaccine.
	What the fuck?
	None of you guys are actually anti-government.
	It's like...
	It's edgy teenager stuff is what you find.
	It's like a cool thing, fight the powers that be situation where people are like, it's cool to be an activist.
	It's cool to do the music videos, fist in the air and do all this stuff.
	But ultimately, you are a pro-government fucking hack is what these guys are.
	And yeah, some of these bands that, you know...
	Built their platforms.
	You brought up Rage and some of these other guys that built platforms on acting like they were against the grain.
	They just want their guy in charge is essentially what it all amounts to.
	They are as status as it can get.
	I'm going to bring up something.
	It's going to be very embarrassing for me if I can find...
	Oh, here it is.
	Yes.
	Eric, if you can believe, this is me right here in that picture.
	I can't bring up the picture.
	That was once upon a time...
	Oh, jeez, how do I get this out of here?
	That was once upon a time when I liked Bernie.
	This was pre-2016 because he espoused the same beliefs as the Trump.
	And I love some people go back and find pictures and think they've owned you because they found a picture.
	Yeah, like me with an Obama shirt.
	Yeah, you'll find some of those.
	They exist.
	They absolutely exist.
	Once upon a time, the people you found out were frauds said things that you actually believed, Bernie being one of them.
	Before he bent over and endorsed the person who stuck it to him, proverbially speaking.
	And the people who shilled out, I can't even pull up the tweet from Pink.
	Pink endorsing Pfizer.
	Questlove endorsing Pfizer.
	Michael Phelps endorsing Pfizer.
	Are you a religious man, Eric?
	Yeah, I'm a Christian.
	What do you attribute it to, other than the biblical verse, what good is all the riches of the earth for he who has forsaken his soul?
	What do you chalk it up to?
	How do people flip the switch, go from being raged against the machine to rage for the machine?
	Pink, I don't know, whatever her songs were, to endorsing Big Pharma.
	How do you account for this political shift, seismic shift in geology?
	Man, it's such a hard thing to pin it on, but I think that you had definitely as of recent, with the growth of something like simplest social media, I think what people did and what they found out is that they could present themselves as good people without having to do a whole lot of work.
	I think that became so attractive to these people and they became addicted to, let's say, the attention of Look at me.
	I'm a good person.
	My morals are I have a good set of morals or whatever.
	And we, of course, argue that they certainly don't there.
	But it made it easy for them to do it.
	I always joke about how activism is the occupation of losers.
	And this is why you often see these people.
	It requires nothing of you to go walk in a line or something like that in March.
	There's no real change that's involved in any of that stuff.
	Much like it's not.
	I'm endorsing these other folks like Pfizer because their whole situation or their whole angle is that they're thinking like, well, people get the, you know, yeah, they were sold on a lie on the whole jab and what it actually did and, you know, it preventing transmission and all that.
	And that was bullshit.
	And we knew it was from the get go, but that didn't stop them from acting as if that was the case.
	But you think about.
	How they were separating regular individuals from, you know, it wasn't even political at that point.
	I guess it was technically because they thought they could punish their political enemies because of it.
	But it became something as simple as being like pro-jab mandate versus folks that aren't for that.
	And they looked at it like we're saving people's lives here by, I don't know, enriching these fucking pharmaceutical companies who have a long history of doing very criminal.
	Criminal things, but it was an easy way out for them.
	And I think that's the dangerous part of the social media era that we're living in as it continues to grow, is that people are addicted to being presented or presenting themselves as good people.
	And they would do disgusting things because of it, even if it means contradicting themselves.
	I think people lose sight of what happened in 2020 when you had the whole COVID situation pop off, but then the George Floyd situation popped off during that, and the same people that were insisting that you needed to be locked in in your house went themselves and were in these large groups with other people when they were at this...
	I mean, it wasn't even a week.
	I'm talking like...
	12 hours ago, they were just saying that if you did that, it was criminal of you to do that.
	And then they not only did it, they somehow got the medical community to say that it was okay for them to do it.
	I don't know if you guys remember seeing clips of nurses outside of the hospitals cheering these guys on as they marching these massive groups.
	And I'm like, did y 'all...
	Not forget what y 'all had just told us, but that's the thing, and I think that's the difficult thing about folks that value liberty, because we're faced up against a threat that doesn't, of course, abide by our set of morals and ethics, and consistency doesn't even matter to them.
	Well, that's something that, you know, we can sit up and say, you're hypocritical, and we'll take offense to that.
	They look at that like, okay.
	I got what it is that I want.
	It doesn't matter.
	Sure, I contradicted myself from yesterday, but we're going to move on, and I'm going to punish you.
	It's very difficult to fight an enemy like that.
	Speaking of enemies in certain respects and surprising places at times, when you launch Ripperverse, it takes off, and then you have to deal with a bunch of crap from PayPal and others.
	Can you describe that, and how has that ultimately worked out?
	Oh, man.
	So, yeah.
	What happened is we used...
	Against my better judgment because we actually had a big conversation internally within the company about using PayPal in the first place.
	Now, I don't know what exactly it was, but I remember taking polls and international customers, a lot of them, that's all they use.
	It is PayPal to pay for things.
	So we were like, all right, let's use it.
	So PayPal ended up, let's say long story short, holding almost $1.3 million from us.
	That we could not get.
	And I'd seen nothing like that.
	I'd never seen a number that big to where they could just say, I couldn't access it.
	And they put a...
	It's not a whole...
	It was not necessarily the technical term that they had used.
	But basically what they were saying is that, okay, upon this date, like 90 days or so after it, you're going to have access to your money.
	We're just holding it for...
	I'm like, it's a lot of money to be holding for that sort of stuff anyway.
	So I got with my lawyers.
	We discussed it.
	We were like, all right, let's try to wait this out because this is PayPal and this may get expensive.
	And it came up.
	And these fucking scoundrels, man, they tried to do it again.
	Like, out of nowhere, arbitrarily said, oh, we're just going to do another 60 days.
	Of holding the money.
	And then he was like, wait a minute!
	Like, what?
	So that's when we started having to send the letters and all that.
	And crazily enough, it was a stealth edit, right?
	Once we started getting suits involved, it was a stealth edit.
	And I noticed that $600,000 of my dollars were now able to be accessed.
	This was well after people had started receiving their orders and everything, by the way.
	And then, you know, we...
	Again, another $600,000.
	They don't correct the problem or they don't say why they did it.
	It was just that they up and did it.
	And it's funny enough, I don't think I've even announced this publicly.
	They actually called me about a month ago trying to get our business back, hilariously enough.
	And no, go fuck yourself, PayPal.
	Never use your bitch-ass company ever again like this.
	But man, could you imagine, guys, if that was the only processor it is that I used?
	And they held all the money like that.
	I couldn't access anything.
	People need to understand this.
	It wasn't like, oh, I could pull a little money out here and then I just couldn't pull it.
	No, I couldn't touch it.
	It was froze, right?
	So imagine if we only used them as a processor, even for credit cards.
	If we just used them as a processor and I needed to buy shipping supplies or I needed to buy various other things.
	I could imagine people...
	Man, being in some very tough situations, if they're doing that, because, I mean, that was $1.2 million of mine.
	Thankfully, that was only like a third or so of it.
	The other, we used our own processor on our website, and it was fine.
	We had access to that money.
	But imagine if I 100% went with PayPal, and imagine other companies who aren't able to make a couple phone calls like us.
	How fucked they are.
	That could derail a business.
	That could completely derail a business of them not having access to money that obviously the customers, they want you to have.
	And no matter if they release the money, it didn't matter.
	PayPal was not budging and they were not allowing us to touch the money.
	I've never seen anything like that.
	I don't know how to follow that up except for to say what are the alternatives to PayPal that you use?
	So we use our own processor on our own website.
	There's a lot of stuff that's popping up.
	It has as of late.
	Of course, people are getting more so in like the, you know, Bitcoin and all of that stuff.
	But even like just your typical processors, more of those are popping up that aren't even like they don't have near the like.
	I don't know.
	They're not strict, let's say, as a PayPal that are direct process.
	PayPal likes to say that it's not a bank, but it's like kind of you are.
	You know what I mean?
	But that's why they're able to kind of do weasel shit like that in the first place.
	But there's a bunch of them that are popping up.
	And I think we got too comfortable as a company.
	It was certainly a learning experience for me.
	I'll never do that again.
	To where we go to what's familiar instead of just like, dude, the tools are available.
	You can use the Stripes of the world, and you can house the stuff on your own platform.
	We don't use, not anymore, Stripe, but that's just an example of we never had any problems when we did use them.
	There's a bunch of other processes that you can use that you can just house it on your own website, and you don't have to worry about these middlemen who, depending on how they feel on the day, might just say, that's your money, but you're not going to be able to get access to it.
	In terms of the, as we wrap up, where do you see Ripperverse going?
	And I mean, you mentioned that, you know, had extraordinary public reaction and response that's helping make it a independent reality for useful content creation.
	Where do you see that progressing?
	And how much of that is going to be the focal point for you in the near short term?
	Well, this is my baby for sure.
	Unlike anything, I don't want to, definitely for the fans or people that are fans of my band and stuff, but this right here is life-changing, generation-changing wealth that we're building here.
	But what I'm able to do, I think, is my calling.
	I'm in a position to where I am able to employ people as well, good people.
	That don't have to worry about walking on eggshells on social media.
	Maybe voting for a person that someone else doesn't like or something like that.
	And I love being in that position.
	So for me, I will grow this damn company as high and make it travel as far as the audience will allow.
	We come off a $3.7 million pre-order campaign.
	Look, man, I ain't expecting to make $3.7 million on every damn book I drop.
	But I am expecting to put them out more frequently and give the audience what it is that they want and be creative there.
	And give job opportunities for people that just want to do good work.
	And again, just continue to grow.
	I will never sell it off.
	I'd have no plans on...
	Even going public.
	Like, I just want to just continue to keep this as my baby.
	It'll die when I die.
	And I just want to make it go as far as the audience will allow.
	So it's hard to envision, really, because of how fast this thing grew.
	Like, nothing's out of the realm of possibility.
	Of course, if you asked me for, like, let's say animation, for example, like non-comic book related material, like getting in the animation space.
	If you would have asked me before the Repoverse dropped, I'd have been like, man, slow your horses.
	But then after that, it becomes a reality.
	Like, well, this is something that we could pull off.
	We could maybe do short films.
	We could maybe do little episodes of animation.
	We could maybe do figures and other just stuff that the audience would want and support and purchase voluntarily.
	Like, the possibilities are endless.
	So it'll go wherever the audience goes.
	I want to continue to give them what it is that they want.
	But the parallel economy is something that I talk about all the time.
	And this is just me trying to put my money where my mouth is and being able to employ awesome people and give them job opportunities.
	And that's the beautiful thing about this.
	And my guys that work for this company are amazing people.
	It's not just me, obviously.
	These are some amazing people.
	But to be able to be free like that.
	And not have to, you know, I know there's probably people that are watching this that feel like, you know, they can't even be themselves publicly because their job might find out about it.
	And in this climate, you know, hell, one of the most recent employee in Carl Lynn, who was working with Limited Run Games, I don't know if you guys remember that story, where she was fired because she wanted to play Hogwarts Legacy, essentially, and some trans activists that wasn't even working for the company.
	Went after them publicly on Twitter and made this big, like, imagine something that stupid happening.
	And they obviously fired her out of there or cut a contract out of that, and we brought her on for the Ripperverse, and she's doing a fantastic job.
	And you can just see it in how they discuss even the company and how enthusiastic these people are because they are able to do their best work.
	These guys, man, in the mainstream, especially corporate entities, They're sitting holding ideological guns to each other, waiting to cancel each other.
	That's not a great work environment.
	And how under those conditions could you possibly do your best work?
	Let me read five chats and five chats only.
	I'm going to read this one here.
	If you want people to watch the Rumble, why is it always lagging?
	I don't think it is, but we'll live with Fat Slice.
	Thank you.
	This one here.
	Jerk off Juggernaut, who I saw on Nina beforehand.
	Hale Biva, joining you from Nina.
	But have enjoyed your message since the Canadian Trucker Days.
	I'll take one of every person like you for every 100 weirdo freaks that reside in this beautiful country.
	And then, hold on, there was one on Rumble.
	Let me just bring this up here.
	There we go.
	We got three on Rumble.
	That's why Ripa Marriage is so happy.
	Normies take an arrow to the knee.
	Eric takes a bullet.
	That's from Moe Zamboni.
	Appreciate it.
	And Britt Cormie says, you...
	Viva, you have to pin Eric down on the egg-shaped man.
	I don't know what this means, but I tell you, I'm going to be Googling it right after.
	I know he's the only mind-level villain, but he has by far the best backstory.
	And Britt Cormier, $100.
	Viva, finally get Eric on.
	I only suggested it back when Ripiverse launched.
	Better late than never.
	Unemployed Canadian lawyer.
	Eric, this is the question.
	Yeah.
	In as much as the question can be answered, what's the solution to all of this?
	We have perpetual division of society.
	We have the discussion where when anybody who's ideologically, ethnically, racially, religiously different sit up and meet, it has to be the subject of conversation.
	I've never noticed it so bad in America until it's not to...
	Point blame, but until Obama, I've never noticed it so bad in Canada until Justin Trudeau.
	What is the solution to viewing humans as humans and not humans as reductions of ethnic, racial, religious identity politics?
	How do we get past this?
	Well, we got to get back to treating individuals like individuals.
	I hate to be cliche and talk about collectivism and all that, but no, seriously, I look at it like this.
	I think from all rights...
	All rights extend from property rights.
	That's my position.
	And I think this damn country started going fucking completely downhill when people...
	We started legitimizing the idea that people should have and they think that they're justified in having access to other people's resources, right?
	No matter if they're a fucking bum.
	No matter if they don't work.
	No matter if they don't do anything.
	And I think, again...
	People aren't looking at themselves as sort of individuals.
	You mentioned all these different things that people like to identify.
	And that's not to say that those things are wrong.
	It's not to say that those things are inherently a problem.
	But what I'm trying to say is that if you look at people like what they are, first and foremost, as opposed to, well, there's this box and it's pre-established and this is how you view these types of people.
	And I'm so itching to place these people in there.
	I think the Donald Trump phenomena, that showed a lot of that because folks like me, who wasn't even a Trump guy, if I disagreed with a leftist, that's exactly the box that is that they put me in because they couldn't deviate from that because, again, it was a pre- Like formed, molded box that they have and they are incapable of arguing outside of it.
	So they have to fit you in it.
	Even if it doesn't fit, even if you don't fit into it, they have to place you in it because they don't see you as an individual.
	So for me, it has to get back to the level of responsibility and accountability and looking at people by way of merit, by way of their individual accomplishments.
	And there's going to be some stragglers, but...
	It is what it is.
	But on the other front, on a very serious note, when we're talking about actual solutions to the problems it is that you're speaking to, I think it is going to come from us putting forth definitely people that value liberty to put forth the effort in coming up with solutions that exist in the real world outside of just mere conversation.
	That's not to say that A podcaster or a person with these best bright ideas shouldn't be out there talking about them, but they need to start manifesting themselves outside of just ideas and something that is tangible for us to get on the other side of this.
	Right now you're seeing what's going on with these mega corporate entities and they have all these neon hair colored freaks that are working for them.
	That are giving them terrible information as far as who the target demographic is.
	And a lot of people are being left without jobs, being fired.
	I just mentioned a case that's personal to us here at the Ripperverse where that stuff is happening.
	And I think we have to, when I say concede, I don't want to say that it's losing because I'd argue that these mega corporations were never ours in the first place.
	But I do think there's a better...
	A brighter future that we can work towards, but it's not going to come by way of expecting the government to fix it for us or expecting the established, proper, familiar channels to move the needle for us.
	It's going to come from individuals like ourselves making something manifest itself in whatever way that looks like in the real world, whether it be starting our own business or starting our own companies and not playing by the rules it is that they...
	And to be blunt, telling these guys to go fuck off.
	And I think that was the frustrating part about the Ripperverse when people, you know, I get so many people that would see that success and then see the amount of hatred that I get thrown at me on a daily basis.
	They're like, what the fuck did this guy do to these people?
	They're confused.
	They're genuinely confused.
	All he did was start a comic book company.
	You have to understand what we did.
	That was what they feared the most.
	It was that we formed something that they couldn't control.
	So all they could do was bitch and moan and all those typical tactics.
	I had one.
	Speaking of the Hogwarts legacy, my creative and social media manager and Andrew, you know, these guys are so familiar, are so used and accustomed to going to the employers of these people.
	And he got into it with them off of, like, online, these weird fucking gay furries and shit.
	Like, getting mad at him over the whole Hogwarts Legacy video game stuff.
	And, you know, they were atting the company.
	Like, hey, look at what your creative manager is talking about.
	And that stuff works on, like, the established channels.
	It doesn't work for, I'm the fucking owner.
	So I look at that and I say, yeah, awesome.
	We're not doing anything to him because you're mad at something it is that he said.
	That's why they get so angry at guys like myself.
	And I'm not the only guy, and there's going to be other people that do it far better than what I ever could dream of.
	But I think that is the path to victory.
	And if you can't, if you're not a creative person, if you're not a businessman, it doesn't hurt to go support those.
	But that's going to get us on the other side.
	You're seeing these people double down.
	Right?
	You're seeing these people are doubling down on these terrible ideas.
	And I'm like, alright, fine.
	They're opening the door for guys like myself.
	But if we want to get on the other side of it, it's going to come subculturally.
	And that's our direct line of sight.
	It's not going to come from government, and it certainly ain't going to come from the people that we, you know, the shot callers, if you will.
	Where can people support or join in or get the benefits of Ripperverse?
	And where can they follow you on social media?
	Ripperverse.com, that's the only place that we sell all of our items there.
	So if you want to get legitimate stuff, you go directly to us.
	You're paying directly us.
	And you also are getting the stuff distributed from us.
	So it's independent, top to absolute bottom.
	So if you want to stay up to date, you can visit Ripperverse.com, of course.
	Now we have, of course, my own website, ericdjuly.com.
	A lot of that stuff's right here.
	This is my baby.
	Ripperverse.com is my baby.
	That's how you can support me.
	Of course, I'm on Eric D. July on all forms of social media, but if you want to get in on stuff, go get in there.
	You can go to, again, Ripperverse.com, get some comic books.
	We got a lot on the way.
	This is going to be a massive year for us.
	We got ISUM2 that's maybe a couple of months out, but we also got two other projects that we haven't announced, at least a minimum one of which are going to be coming out this year, but I think that other one, we're going to be able to get it to come out maybe towards the end of the year as well.
	They have other massive creatives.
	Can't wait to announce those that are part of those projects.
	So Riververse.com is certainly where you should go.
	Well, Eric, I'll tell you one thing.
	You are so persuasive, I might want to get into comics after this.
	You'll see.
	Eric, thank you very much.
	Everybody, you know where to find Eric Barnes.
	We'll message what our schedule is for tomorrow.
	Thank you so much for this.
	It's amazing.
	It's amazing.
	I've been mentally taking notes.
	108, 115, 128.
	Those are clips I have to take.
	Eric, thank you very much.
	Let's do it again, please.
	Let's do it.
	It was fantastic to meet you.
	Stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone out there, I'm going to read whatever chats I didn't get.
	I don't think there's any on Locals tomorrow, but Eric, thank you.
	Amazing.
	Amazing.
	Appreciate it, man.
	And we'll do it again, man.
	Anytime you want me.
	Anytime.

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