Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 246: Shitcoin in Chief

Transcript

Episode 246: Shitcoin in Chief · Blocked and Reported

0:06
SPEAKER_00: Hello, Katie.
0:08
SPEAKER_03: Hi, Jesse.
0:08
SPEAKER_03: Have you seen the latest EO out of the Trump administration?
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Katie,
0:12
you're giving me mixed messages because I suggested we talk
0:16
about Trumpy stuff and
0:18
SPEAKER_00: you said no more Trump.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: You were furious at me.
0:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, that's not why I'm furious for you.
0:22
I'm furious because of everything else that you do on a regular
0:24
basis to make my
0:25
SPEAKER_03: life more difficult.
0:25
SPEAKER_03: We're not going to get into that right now.
0:27
SPEAKER_03: Although we could.
0:27
SPEAKER_03: No, this one.
0:30
So this is the issue that we keep running into on this podcast
0:34
is that we don't
0:35
SPEAKER_03: want to be a political podcast.
0:36
SPEAKER_03: We definitely don't want to be a resistance podcast.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: I do.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: I think that's all we should talk about is that orange man back.
0:42
SPEAKER_03: I use the yarn for my pussy hat to make a MAGA hat.
0:45
So I just like I'm not going back to I'm not going back to
0:48
pussy hat resistance.
0:50
These executive orders that Trump is continuing to shit out,
0:56
this is Twitter stuff.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty disrespectful to our president, Katie.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Would you care to rephrase that?
1:01
SPEAKER_03: This one is called ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling.
1:05
SPEAKER_03: We're not going to go into the details of it,
1:08
SPEAKER_03: except to say that this is like something that James Lindsay dreamt up.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: And I do mean one of the special dreams.
1:16
Like,
1:16
you know,
1:17
there's this thing that people say Twitter isn't real life.
1:18
SPEAKER_03: Twitter is officially it's not just real life.
1:21
SPEAKER_03: It is federal fucking policy now.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: It's like if.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: OK,
1:25
SPEAKER_00: so first of all,
1:26
the probability that the real James Lindsay actually wrote that
1:30
EO is not zero.
1:31
Well,
1:31
I think it is zero because he would have announced it if he had
1:34
written it.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: There's no way he would have... That's true.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they told him not to.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: He made him sign an NDA.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: If you tell anyone, we'll stab you with your sword.
1:40
SPEAKER_03: Your own sword.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: People point to excesses of the Biden administration.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: That's perfectly fair.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: But imagine a situation in which, like...
1:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, Mueller she wrote was the level we were talking about.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:53
SPEAKER_03: she did take multiple visits to the fucking White House,
1:57
SPEAKER_03: but as far as I know,
1:58
SPEAKER_03: she didn't write any policy.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Every weirdo gets invited to the White House.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Except for us.
2:03
SPEAKER_03: Except for us.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you're right.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: You read these, and it's just sort of so much...
2:11
SPEAKER_00: red meat culture war stuff.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
2:12
SPEAKER_00: the EOs make major changes,
2:14
SPEAKER_00: but the way they're written seems to be targeting a very certain sort of,
2:19
SPEAKER_00: like,
2:19
SPEAKER_00: core Trump supporter.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: It's cat turn.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's cat turn.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: And I guess I'm just curious what happens...
2:27
you know a year and a half now or next week when there's like
2:32
economic troubles
2:33
when the price of eggs don't go down i don't i just don't see
2:36
the average person
2:37
who voted for trump and that's who got trump elected being like
2:40
well at least he
2:41
attacked the at least uh opm is attacking marxism i guess i'm
2:46
just confused about
2:47
the strategy but jokes on us because we've always said trump
2:50
has no strategy and
2:51
SPEAKER_00: it's bad as stuff and he just uh
2:52
SPEAKER_00: He's won twice.
2:53
Well,
2:53
in the meantime,
2:54
congratulations to James Lindsay,
2:56
I guess,
2:56
and Chris Ruffo.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: They have all gotten exactly what they asked.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Ruffo,
3:01
SPEAKER_00: this guy,
3:01
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
3:01
SPEAKER_00: gets more into online bullshit,
3:02
but Ruffo's post-inauguration persona is very like out for
3:08
vengeance in this really
3:09
SPEAKER_00: weird way that it's just like they can't.
3:11
I guess they'll just never be happy even now that they won,
3:13
but we'll see.
3:14
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
3:14
SPEAKER_03: so much of this stuff is about vengeance,
3:17
SPEAKER_03: is about getting back at their perceived enemies.
3:20
And the unfortunate thing is this does not just hit the most
3:24
annoying people on Twitter at all.
3:27
This is not just like this doesn't just affect people who raise
3:29
their children gender neutral.
3:30
I mean a lot of the most annoying people are like tucked away
3:35
in NGOs that are
3:36
SPEAKER_00: going to raise money off this.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't – I mean look.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: It will be interesting to see what happens.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: I just – they don't know what they're doing.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: The first day – like the – OK.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: We need to stop.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: We need to move on.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: What are we talking about?
3:48
SPEAKER_03: Okay, Jesse, we've got a few stories today.
3:50
So a lot of people are requesting a segment on the trans murder
3:55
cult that is happening,
3:57
SPEAKER_03: but we're still working on it.
3:58
So that'll be coming next week with a special guest who is in
4:01
fact a trans murderer.
4:02
SPEAKER_03: This is a fascinating story.
4:04
And when Jesse,
4:05
I believe that you could have broken like a year ago,
4:07
but you were too scared.
4:09
SPEAKER_03: Is that right?
4:09
SPEAKER_03: You let Andy know break it for you?
4:12
SPEAKER_00: I think that's an oversimplification.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: I think the story broke itself.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about it.
4:17
I already said this on Twitter because people were also asking
4:21
about the FAA thing.
4:22
So it just so happened that Trace was going to fill in for you
4:25
to be my trans
4:27
SPEAKER_00: murder cult Sherpa.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: He's also the guy who broke the FAA story.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk a little about the FAA story.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: And then we're going to get deep into the thick of –
4:35
this bizarre cult uh and i'll i'll explain why why the delay
4:40
and uh i can't wait
4:41
for your feedback katie my feedback can i can just go ahead and
4:43
give it to you now
4:44
go ahead do it pussy that was a little part of it but it was
4:49
genuinely more
4:49
complicated and all will be explained shortly but today we've
4:52
got so much great
4:53
stuff going on that we don't even worry about trans murder
4:56
cults right so the
4:57
second half of the show we're going back to the big crypto
4:59
story i unfortunately i
5:01
SPEAKER_03: do believe this does this have to do with trump
5:03
Yeah,
5:04
everything loops back to Trump,
5:05
but there's a lot of non-Trump stuff.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Don't you worry, listener.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so that'll be our financial advice segment.
5:12
SPEAKER_03: But before that,
5:13
we're going to talk a bit about some good old-fashioned
5:16
internet bullshit that will
5:17
SPEAKER_03: not make you broke.
5:18
SPEAKER_03: So we're going to talk about a TikTok trend gone wrong,
5:21
SPEAKER_03: and we've also got some adult Disney news.
5:23
SPEAKER_03: So let's start with that.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: So this is adult Disney, folks.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:26
SPEAKER_03: So,
5:26
SPEAKER_03: Jesse,
5:26
SPEAKER_03: we got a tip from a listener who is,
5:28
SPEAKER_03: in fact,
5:28
SPEAKER_03: not just a Disney adult,
5:30
SPEAKER_03: but who actually used to play Mickey Mouse at Disneyland,
5:33
SPEAKER_03: the one and only Mickey Mouse.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Hell yeah.
5:36
SPEAKER_03: Although this listener says, for the record, he is not a furry.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: That is what all furries say.
5:43
SPEAKER_03: Jesse,
5:43
do you think a furry getting a job as Mickey Mouse is sort of
5:45
like a foot fetishist
5:46
SPEAKER_03: getting a job at Foot Locker?
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes, in short, yes.
5:50
I'm also very curious what the Mickey Mouse plate gets in terms
5:53
of his daily pay.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: The whole economics of the Disney stuff fascinate me, but yeah.
5:57
Yeah,
5:57
I think you should have to turn over your browser history
5:59
before they give you the ears.
6:00
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, our listener pointed us to a post on the Disneyland subreddit.
6:05
SPEAKER_03: Jesse, I put a link in our notes there.
6:07
SPEAKER_03: Please read it.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Headline, stay vigilant.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Disneyland is my happy, safe place, but on my last day, this happened.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Wait, okay, so it's someone, oh, is that the Tower of Terror?
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Or whatever the new one's called?
6:18
SPEAKER_03: It's the Guardians of the Galaxy.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: It's some ride.
6:20
SPEAKER_03: Disney California Adventure.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's that little fucking furry guy.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: I tried to watch that movie, and oh my god.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's – what am I looking at here?
6:28
SPEAKER_00: There appears to be – there's a nice couple kissing in the middle row.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Is this going to be about trans stuff, Katie?
6:35
SPEAKER_03: This is not a difficult thing to describe, Jesse.
6:39
SPEAKER_03: It's a Disney ride, and in the front row, you see a woman smiling.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's a –
6:46
SPEAKER_00: I guess the guy in the front is doing the...
6:48
The elephant walking across the basketball field is right in
6:52
front of your face.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Basketball field.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: I guess it says...
6:56
SPEAKER_00: But I know he's not doing a Hitler salute,
6:58
SPEAKER_00: but it looks like he's doing a Hitler salute.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: He's doing a Hitler salute.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: Just describe it.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: How do you know?
7:01
SPEAKER_00: We don't have the full context.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's saying my heart goes out to all of you.
7:05
SPEAKER_03: You got to listen to the fucking segment.
7:06
SPEAKER_03: Just describe the photo.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: it's a guy doing a Hitler salute.
7:09
SPEAKER_03: Oh my God.
7:10
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
7:10
SPEAKER_03: So look, you, you are fucking fired.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: There's a, this is a photo from a Disney ride.
7:16
SPEAKER_03: That is like the photo that you take during the ride that you pay for.
7:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:19
SPEAKER_03: There's a black woman in the front sitting beside her.
7:21
She is sitting beside a white man doing a Heil Hitler and a
7:24
woman beside him doing
7:25
SPEAKER_03: the like hook them horns thing.
7:27
SPEAKER_03: Got it more.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: I'd say devil horns, but yeah, whatever.
7:29
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: All right.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: So that's, that is the photo.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: Now, Jesse, please read the rest of the post.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: I did call him out on doing it.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: He tried to claim he tried to have both hands up,
7:38
but it's clear his opposite hand was firmly at his side and his
7:41
extended hand was
7:42
SPEAKER_00: firmly straight.
7:43
I have emailed guest services as I didn't want to expend spoons
7:47
on my last day to deal with it.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's an employee.
7:50
SPEAKER_03: No.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: It's not?
7:51
SPEAKER_03: No.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my last day at Disneyland.
7:53
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm extremely sad over this.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: I am fearful of the only safe space I have no longer being safe,
7:59
SPEAKER_00: but at least I did say something to his face and called him out.
8:01
His girlfriend was just like,
8:03
we can't show this picture now,
8:04
but I will share it to expose him.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: I...
8:09
SPEAKER_00: OK, well, tell me the rest of the story.
8:11
SPEAKER_03: No, no, I want to hear your I want to hear your uneducated take first.
8:15
Let's get the I just think at a moment like this is I think is
8:18
when the maximal
8:19
SPEAKER_00: velocity and everyone's freaking out.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's necessarily a Hitler salute.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm Jewish.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I get I get to decide.
8:25
OK,
8:25
so the Spoonie who posted this,
8:27
this is the black woman in the photo sitting beside him.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Remind everyone about being out of spoons because I'm not.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Does everyone know what that means?
8:33
A spoonie is someone who suffers from or thinks they suffer
8:36
from a chronic illness
8:38
or and it goes back to this metaphor that was probably posted
8:41
on Tumblr where
8:42
SPEAKER_03: somebody was like explaining to their friend what it is like to have,
8:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't know,
8:47
SPEAKER_03: restless like syndrome.
8:48
SPEAKER_03: And he's picked up the spoons from the cup in the diner,
8:51
SPEAKER_03: you know,
8:52
SPEAKER_03: the cups that have all the spoons in them.
8:54
SPEAKER_03: What?
8:55
SPEAKER_03: It was just a metaphor.
8:57
And now the term spoonie has come to mean someone suffering
9:03
from a chronic illness
9:04
SPEAKER_03: who has low energy.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: But even people without it,
9:08
SPEAKER_00: I think,
9:08
SPEAKER_00: well,
9:08
SPEAKER_00: someone who says,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't have the spoons for this,
9:12
SPEAKER_00: it's a sign that they're very online and very neurotic,
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I would say.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
9:16
SPEAKER_03: this is how I get out of social obligations.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
9:19
SPEAKER_03: I'm low.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: I have low spoon supply as well.
9:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm all forks.
9:23
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
9:23
So this spoonie,
9:24
our spoonie,
9:25
it goes by the,
9:26
the handle moist cloud,
9:28
uh,
9:28
on Reddit.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: No, she does.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Yes, she does.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: It's such a horrible, moist.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: So she's sitting beside this guy.
9:37
SPEAKER_03: They take this photo mid-ride.
9:39
SPEAKER_03: She sees the photo.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: She's upset about it.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: She confronts him.
9:42
SPEAKER_03: And he basically is like, no, I didn't.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't a Nazi salute.
9:45
SPEAKER_03: I didn't.
9:46
SPEAKER_03: She posts the photo in the subreddit.
9:48
SPEAKER_03: And really quickly,
9:49
SPEAKER_03: people identify the guy in the picture as Kyle Mann,
9:53
SPEAKER_03: the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee,
9:55
SPEAKER_03: the conservative humor site.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:57
SPEAKER_03: Siled after The Onion.
9:59
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Was it, do we think it's him?
10:00
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
10:00
SPEAKER_03: So hard to tell, but let's do a photo comparison.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: So I want you to look at the Reddit photo again.
10:06
SPEAKER_03: And then I pasted a photo of his Twitter profile photo in our notes.
10:09
SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: Well,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: I also have,
10:12
SPEAKER_00: uh,
10:14
SPEAKER_00: for reasons I can't get into right now,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: I have access to the insanely powerful facial recognition thing.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: I could run them through it.
10:20
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean?
10:21
SPEAKER_03: Reasons you don't have, you know, wait, what?
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually let me skip that.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: Wait, what are you talking about?
10:25
SPEAKER_00: No, I'll tell you later.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: It's a long story.
10:27
SPEAKER_03: No, I need to know.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: No, I can't tell you.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: It all will be revealed.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry.
10:33
SPEAKER_03: I don't like the sound of this.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: All right.
10:35
So Jesse,
10:35
because Jesse won't share access to his extremely powerful
10:39
facial recognition.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: I've said this before.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: If you have listeners with kids...
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you do, do not put photos of your kids online.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Do not listen to him.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: I want pictures of your children online.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, exactly.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: This is the problem.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Katie Hertz, I want to ogle photos of your children.
10:55
I don't like seeing photos of a kid with a fucking,
10:58
like,
10:58
smiley head emoji on its face.
11:00
SPEAKER_03: I want to see the full kids.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: How do you know that's not just how they were born?
11:03
SPEAKER_00: PJ vote did a really good episode of search engine on this.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm getting this from.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: So listen to that.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, let's move on.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: So is this a Babylon B guy?
11:10
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
11:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, let's do one more test.
11:12
SPEAKER_03: I pasted a photo of Kyle man's wife,
11:14
SPEAKER_03: destiny man,
11:15
SPEAKER_03: which should be the name of a drag race contestant.
11:18
SPEAKER_03: I pasted this in our notes.
11:19
I want you to compare the photo of the woman on the Reddit
11:22
photo to this woman.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: How a conservative influencer whose wife is destiny, man.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: It's confusing.
11:30
Very similar face,
11:31
different hair color,
11:31
maybe,
11:32
although that could be the light.
11:33
SPEAKER_03: By the way,
11:33
so I got that photo of the two of them from what I believe is
11:37
the SoundCloud page
11:38
SPEAKER_03: of Kyle's mother.
11:40
SPEAKER_03: This is the two of them singing.
11:42
SPEAKER_03: I have decided to follow Jesus.
11:44
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to hear a few bars?
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: I think the Romans played that for Jesus.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And I feel I feel so basic making fun of it just because,
12:06
SPEAKER_00: like,
12:07
SPEAKER_00: we're very socially religiously different.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: But that's really not good.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not good.
12:13
You remember when I was complaining about the children at the
12:17
Christmas Eve service
12:18
SPEAKER_03: about Miles?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:19
SPEAKER_03: The kid who couldn't step up.
12:20
They were actually...
12:21
The toddlers were actually better than Kyle and Destiny Man.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Destiny Man.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so...
12:28
SPEAKER_03: So I think after reviewing the evidence,
12:31
SPEAKER_03: comparing these two side by side photos,
12:34
SPEAKER_03: not with not with your your software,
12:36
SPEAKER_03: but with our own human eyes,
12:38
SPEAKER_03: I think we can say with basically 100% certainty.
12:41
SPEAKER_03: Yes, this is them.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's them.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:44
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
12:44
SPEAKER_03: So does that change your mind at all?
12:46
SPEAKER_03: Your first assumption was no, this man is not doing a Disney.
12:50
SPEAKER_03: This man is not doing a Nazi salute.
12:51
SPEAKER_03: Now that you know who it is, what do you think?
12:54
SPEAKER_00: I think the probability of him trolling is higher.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Hiler.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: I just don't, I think I'm pretty mad at you, that you got mad at me.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: I thought this was just a civilian, not a soldier in the culture wars.
13:12
And you got mad at me that I gave him the benefit of the doubt
13:14
that he wasn't doing
13:15
SPEAKER_00: a Nazi salute.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: I got mad at you because you don't know how to describe a fucking photo.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: That's what I got.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I described it perfectly.
13:22
SPEAKER_03: No, you did not.
13:22
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
13:24
SPEAKER_03: So the photo is a little blurry.
13:25
SPEAKER_03: I do think it's them.
13:26
The subreddit mods deleted all of the posts naming Kyle and
13:30
Destiny and the Babylon
13:32
SPEAKER_03: Bee because it's against Reddit policy to dox people.
13:35
SPEAKER_03: But of course, this spread well beyond Reddit.
13:38
SPEAKER_03: And in fact, Jesse, can you read the t-shirt of the guy on the photo?
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Switchfoot, San Diego.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: So do you know what Switchfoot is?
13:45
SPEAKER_00: I do not.
13:46
SPEAKER_03: So this is something I actually learned on this show.
13:48
Andy,
13:49
the Switchfoot somehow came up during our episode with Andy
13:51
Mills and Matt Bull.
13:52
SPEAKER_03: It's a Christian band.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: So this starts to spread.
13:55
SPEAKER_03: We've got Kyle Mann in a Switchfoot shirt doing a Heil Hitler.
13:59
SPEAKER_03: It starts to spread.
14:00
SPEAKER_03: And a TikToker named Savannah posted this.
14:03
I was sent this photo of this man very clearly doing the
14:06
Yahtzee salute on a Disney
14:07
SPEAKER_02: ride yesterday in California,
14:09
sitting next to this very beautiful black woman who seems to be
14:11
having the time of
14:12
SPEAKER_02: her life,
14:13
SPEAKER_02: probably until she saw this photo.
14:14
SPEAKER_02: This man is the editor in chief of the Babylon Bee,
14:17
SPEAKER_02: the shitty conservative version of the Onion.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: His name is Kyle Mann and he's a self-proclaimed theology nerd.
14:22
He also used to be the worship ministry director at High Point
14:25
Church in San Diego.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: Since you're a theology nerd,
14:27
I'm just wondering what part of the Bible teaches us to promote
14:30
the genocide of
14:31
SPEAKER_02: millions of Jewish people.
14:32
I must have missed that part in vacation Bible school because
14:34
Jesus wouldn't like this shit.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: Neither would the band on the t-shirt you're wearing.
14:37
SPEAKER_02: I sent this to John Foreman of Switchfoot,
14:39
SPEAKER_02: and I really hope he says something because this is disgusting.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: And did Switchfoot respond?
14:43
SPEAKER_03: Yes, they posted this on Twitter.
14:46
To be clear,
14:46
we are wholeheartedly against Nazism and denounce it in any and
14:50
all forms.
14:50
SPEAKER_03: The Nazi salute is not a joke.
14:52
SPEAKER_03: There is no gray area on that matter.
14:54
Actually,
14:54
they posted it about six times because people kept tagging them
14:57
in tweets about it.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: So the Christian band.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: They did.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Because a guy wearing their shirt didn't maybe did Nazi salute.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: They have to clarify that they're against Nazis.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
15:07
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: What about Kyle Mann?
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Is he copped to being a Nazi?
15:10
SPEAKER_03: No, he has not said anything about this.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: I reached out to him.
15:14
SPEAKER_03: He declined to comment.
15:15
SPEAKER_03: But my guess is that, yes, this was him.
15:17
SPEAKER_03: This was intentional.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: He was trolling.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I mean, if that proves it was him that he declined to comment.
15:24
SPEAKER_03: He would say if it wasn't him, he would say, no, it wasn't me.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to oversimplify,
15:28
SPEAKER_00: but yes,
15:28
SPEAKER_00: if he literally wasn't in that photo,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: why wouldn't he just say that wasn't me?
15:32
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't me, like Shaggy.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: Right.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: And I have no reason to think that he's an actual Nazi,
15:37
SPEAKER_03: you know,
15:37
SPEAKER_03: aside from the swastika tattoo on his neck.
15:39
SPEAKER_03: But I think that's a Navajo thing.
15:42
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, the Babylon Bee hasn't said anything about this either.
15:45
And I highly doubt there will be any repercussions for Kyle professionally.
15:49
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
15:49
it's definitely possible that he'll get banned from Disney or
15:52
his mom will take
15:53
SPEAKER_03: down her SoundCloud page.
15:54
SPEAKER_03: But in terms of his job.
15:55
If that would be the most just outcome for no one has to ever
15:58
hear that song again.
15:59
SPEAKER_03: In terms of his job at the Babylon Bee.
16:01
SPEAKER_03: I mean, if he hadn't done the Nazi salute, they might take issue.
16:05
SPEAKER_03: But Jesse, I posted a link to one of their recent articles.
16:08
SPEAKER_03: Please read this headline and describe the photo.
16:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is actually pretty funny.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Meet the one person who has never done a Hitler salute.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: It's a guy with no arms.
16:17
Yeah,
16:17
so they did a bunch of these after Elon either hiled Hitler and
16:21
had an autism attack.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Autism attack?
16:22
SPEAKER_00: A spurg attack?
16:25
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: Another headline,
16:28
Superman under fire after hundreds of images surface of him
16:32
giving Nazi salute.
16:33
Another one,
16:34
journalists horrified as village people performed double Hitler salute.
16:38
And then there was one post,
16:39
12 horrifying Nazi symbols from Trump's inauguration.
16:42
SPEAKER_03: And it was actually sponsored content.
16:44
SPEAKER_03: And the sponsor was a gold company.
16:46
SPEAKER_03: Of course it was.
16:49
SPEAKER_03: The only thing that surprises me here is that it wasn't crypto.
16:51
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: No, I think Babylon Bee readers skew older than that.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: They're still in the gold, like late night gold commercial.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: They really,
17:00
if they had just gone with meet the one person who had never
17:03
done a Hitler salute,
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I would have had to salute them for doing a good job.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: But then beating the dead horse over and over and over.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: Just let it go, dude.
17:11
SPEAKER_03: Well, they're Christian.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so...
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the pieces fit together to me.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Everything about this,
17:18
the woman who lacked the spoons to deal with the guy doing the
17:20
Hitler salute,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: she would also be well positioned to see that it was a Hitler salute.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Kyle Mann being a troll,
17:27
SPEAKER_00: him declining to comment,
17:28
SPEAKER_00: either because he doesn't respect us as a podcast,
17:31
SPEAKER_00: which I think is very unlikely,
17:32
SPEAKER_00: or because he was doing a Hitler salute.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:37
SPEAKER_03: Actually, what he actually said was, lol.
17:39
SPEAKER_03: And then I said, does that mean no comment?
17:41
SPEAKER_03: And he said, no comment for now.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: I like he goes, LOL, I'm laughing out loud.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: They're like, okay, I see me no comment.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: He's like, yeah, no comment.
17:49
So I think we're going to see a lot more ironic or semi-ironic
17:54
or not even really ironic,
17:55
SPEAKER_03: but let's pretend ironic Nazi salutes in the near future.
17:59
SPEAKER_03: The thing is, a lot of these...
18:01
SPEAKER_03: Dumb fucks are not going to be as lucky as Kyle.
18:04
SPEAKER_03: And I have an example of that.
18:05
So there's a British-born Anglican priest in Michigan who's a
18:09
right-wing culture warrior.
18:10
SPEAKER_03: He used to have a show on GB News.
18:12
SPEAKER_03: He did the full Elon,
18:14
my heart goes out to you Nazi salute on stage at a pro-life
18:18
summit in D.C.,
18:20
SPEAKER_03: Now, this really did appear to be a joke.
18:21
SPEAKER_03: Like if you watch the video, he's smiling when he does it.
18:23
SPEAKER_03: The crowd laughs.
18:24
SPEAKER_03: It actually kills with that crowd.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: And then he later said it was his dry British wit.
18:28
SPEAKER_03: But he was defrocked by the church and he lost his job.
18:32
SPEAKER_03: And people need to remember, the pendulum will swing back.
18:35
And that photo of you heiling Hitler on Splash Mountain,
18:38
that will last forever.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't, it's not even the pendulum is swinging back.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: Another thing to remember is you should just never do a Nazi salute.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Like this is pretty.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay, sure.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty easy to not do a Nazi salute, I will say.
18:50
I say that as someone,
18:51
I'm like Elon,
18:52
I don't really have control over my limbs.
18:54
I'm just a,
18:56
actually one of my internet enemies said I'm like a big angry bird.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: But you can, it's pretty easy to not do a Nazi salute.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
19:06
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it depends.
19:06
SPEAKER_03: Are you hailing a cab?
19:07
SPEAKER_03: Are you hailing Hitler?
19:08
SPEAKER_03: Who knows?
19:09
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
19:09
uh okay well thank you katie i didn't know about any of that so
19:14
in this case we are
19:14
declaring him guilty in our own nuremberg trial against kyle
19:19
mann but what i really
19:20
find him guilty of is being a shitty musician which is more of
19:23
a war crime all
19:23
right jesse let's move on to well i was gonna say more fun a
19:27
more fun online trend
19:28
but uh this is actually less fun have you ever seen the show to
19:32
catch a predator
19:33
SPEAKER_00: well i was featured on it once but
19:37
SPEAKER_03: Or the predator.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to catch a predator is this, like, incredibly...
19:44
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the rawest shows you'll ever see because they entrap these,
19:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:48
would-be child predators who are seeking to meet up with like a
19:51
fucking – what they
19:52
SPEAKER_00: think is a 12-year-old girl.
19:53
And then they videotaped the moment where they find out that –
19:57
who's the guy?
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Chris Evans?
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Hanson.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Hanson.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: Chris Evans is different.
20:00
SPEAKER_03: Very different.
20:01
SPEAKER_03: Okay, correction.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Chris Parnell.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: You see the moment.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: It –
20:07
almost i'm stealing this from somewhere but it almost makes you
20:10
feel bad for a
20:11
child predator because you see the moment they're like oh my
20:14
life is over now
20:15
totally totally so this was a segment on dateline nbc was not
20:20
on for long it aired
20:21
from 2004 to 2007 and yes it involved all of these sting
20:25
operations so the show
20:27
producers they worked with a group with the name perverted
20:31
justice really sounds
20:33
SPEAKER_00: like a punk band
20:34
SPEAKER_03: No, it sounds like a porn that's set in a courtroom.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:37
SPEAKER_03: Should we name a segment of this show, Perverted Justice?
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Perverted Justice with Jesse Singel.
20:41
And they would pose as minors in these chat rooms and then
20:45
arrange to meet up with
20:47
SPEAKER_03: these people who they thought were minors.
20:48
SPEAKER_03: And then Chris Hansen would confront them.
20:51
SPEAKER_03: And sometimes the guy would get arrested.
20:53
SPEAKER_03: And yes, you see the moment when he realizes that his life is over.
20:57
SPEAKER_03: He's going to lose his wife, his job, his kids.
21:00
SPEAKER_03: So it's great fun.
21:01
SPEAKER_03: Can you see any potential ethical issues here, Jesse?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: No.
21:05
No,
21:06
I mean,
21:07
it's tricky because you're sensationalizing what should be a
21:10
law enforcement manner.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: It's also hard to be against having one less creep be able to be a creep.
21:19
It just doesn't seem like the thing that should be the subject
21:21
of reality TV show.
21:22
SPEAKER_03: Right.
21:23
SPEAKER_03: I mean, maybe the man didn't want to molest the girl.
21:26
SPEAKER_03: Maybe he wanted to lecture her on the danger of talking to strangers.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take you to a nice hotel across state lines,
21:34
SPEAKER_00: sit you down and tell you why you should never have met up with me.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to never do that again.
21:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:40
So critics argue that the show was sensationalist and that it
21:44
was basically filmed
21:45
SPEAKER_03: entrapment for everyone's entertainment.
21:48
SPEAKER_03: And this was fundamentally irresponsible.
21:50
And in fact,
21:52
a Texas district attorney actually killed himself during a sting.
21:56
SPEAKER_03: And this is what led to the show's cancellation.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: He was caught.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: He was like the person they're trying to catch and he killed himself.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he was not the DA prosecuting the case.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
22:06
SPEAKER_03: so this has lived on on TikTok,
22:08
SPEAKER_03: YouTube and TikTok,
22:09
SPEAKER_03: where creators will pose as minors online and then attempt to,
22:13
SPEAKER_03: well,
22:13
SPEAKER_03: cause your predator,
22:14
SPEAKER_03: at which point,
22:15
SPEAKER_03: you know,
22:15
SPEAKER_03: they'll post the personal information and generally ruin his life.
22:18
I've occasionally,
22:19
in my darker moments,
22:20
watched these videos on YouTube,
22:21
and it's this,
22:22
like...
22:23
weird sub genre and it is very painful to watch because whereas
22:28
if I remember
22:28
correctly to catch a predator was like fairly tightly edited to
22:31
fit a time slot
22:32
this is like they find the guy he's like oh no he starts to
22:36
walk away they follow
22:37
him through the Walmart they try to get it's just this
22:39
protracted humiliation
22:42
ritual it's it's very weird to watch but they apparently have
22:45
some following
22:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and this can also go wrong for the people doing the filming.
22:50
SPEAKER_03: So earlier this month, five college students in Worcester, Mass.
22:54
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to congratulate me on my pronunciation?
22:56
SPEAKER_00: Good fucking job, dude.
22:58
Were arraigned after their own DIY to catch a predator show
23:02
went horribly wrong.
23:04
So what happened is that a female college student made a Tinder
23:06
profile with the
23:07
SPEAKER_03: intention of entrapping a guy.
23:09
SPEAKER_03: And she met a guy, this dude who's in the military.
23:11
SPEAKER_03: He was in town for his grandmother's funeral.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Best time to go on Tinder.
23:16
SPEAKER_03: Look, death is sad.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you just need a distraction.
23:19
SPEAKER_03: So they matched on Tinder.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: They chatted, said some racy stuff in the DMs.
23:24
SPEAKER_03: And then he came to campus for a date.
23:26
SPEAKER_03: So he meets her.
23:27
SPEAKER_03: They go to the student lounge and start watching a baseball game.
23:29
SPEAKER_03: So they're not freaking.
23:30
SPEAKER_03: They're not making out.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: They're not heavy petting.
23:33
SPEAKER_03: They're just watching a game.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: And 74 seconds later, a group of students...
23:38
burst out of hiding or charges into the room and start accusing
23:41
the man of being a pedophile.
23:43
SPEAKER_03: He runs away.
23:44
SPEAKER_03: And I'm reading here from the New York Times report on this,
23:47
SPEAKER_03: quote,
23:47
SPEAKER_03: as a group of about 25 people chased him,
23:50
SPEAKER_03: a male who is not named in the court documents because he's a minor,
23:53
SPEAKER_03: punched the man in the back of the head.
23:55
SPEAKER_03: Once the man reached the car, another student slammed a car door on him.
23:58
SPEAKER_03: And they committed this assault while filming it the entire time.
24:01
SPEAKER_03: Quote,
24:02
SPEAKER_03: a few minutes later,
24:02
you see the group coming back in laughing and high-fiving with
24:05
each other,
24:06
SPEAKER_03: the police said.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is horrible.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Does he get away?
24:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so the guy escapes.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: He drives away.
24:13
SPEAKER_03: He pulls into a church, calls the cops.
24:14
SPEAKER_03: Of course, the cops go investigate.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: Then the students,
24:17
SPEAKER_03: including the girl who started this,
24:19
SPEAKER_03: lie to the cops,
24:20
SPEAKER_03: even though it's all on tape,
24:21
SPEAKER_03: including security cameras on campus,
24:24
SPEAKER_03: not just their own phones.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: What do they lie about?
24:26
SPEAKER_03: about like what started this.
24:28
SPEAKER_03: So the cops launched an investigation.
24:30
SPEAKER_03: These five students are arrested.
24:32
One told the cop that they were trying to replicate this TikTok
24:35
trend where people
24:36
SPEAKER_03: try to catch a predator.
24:37
SPEAKER_03: And if that weren't dumb enough,
24:39
the girl who made the profile was 18 and she posted her actual
24:43
age on the profile.
24:45
SPEAKER_03: So the guy who showed up wasn't even trying to meet a minor.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was my question as soon as you mentioned dating sites.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Dating sites, you have to be adults to use them.
24:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, that part of it was pretty confusing.
24:58
SPEAKER_03: Like you have to be 18 to join the apps.
25:00
SPEAKER_03: And the girl who started this, her name is Kelsey Baynard.
25:03
Her profile said she was 18 and police reviewed the messages
25:07
between her and the guy.
25:09
SPEAKER_03: And they said there was no indication that she said that she was younger.
25:14
So my guess is that either she told her friends that she said
25:17
that she told this
25:18
SPEAKER_03: guy that she was a minor in the DMs.
25:20
SPEAKER_03: or someone else did,
25:21
and it just got passed through the grapevine that this was an
25:25
adult coming to meet
25:26
SPEAKER_03: a minor.
25:27
SPEAKER_03: Although I will say the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16.
25:30
SPEAKER_03: So even if it was like she was 16, it's still legal.
25:35
SPEAKER_03: I just,
25:35
SPEAKER_03: I don't know the details here, but I do know that she lied to police.
25:38
SPEAKER_03: So reading from an NBC News article on this,
25:40
SPEAKER_03: quote,
25:41
SPEAKER_03: after the assault,
25:41
Baynard reported the man to police as a sexual predator and
25:44
said she was frightened
25:45
SPEAKER_03: by him.
25:46
She said he had come to campus uninvited and that she texted a
25:49
male friend who chased him away.
25:50
I wonder if this whole thing was her trying to get the
25:53
attention of one person.
25:55
guy like trying to make one guy jealous and then it just got
25:57
way out of control so
25:59
she lied she lied to police and she's being charged now not
26:01
just with misleading
26:02
the police and intimidating witness but also kidnapping along
26:05
with four other
26:05
people and another guy is also being uh charged with assault
26:09
and um those are uh
26:10
felonies uh they all pled not guilty seems like not a great
26:13
situation that's my
26:14
SPEAKER_00: take katie
26:15
SPEAKER_03: Do you think that this is the natural result of age gap discourse?
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
26:20
SPEAKER_03: So one thing that struck me in the story is the phones.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: Like the kids were not just inspired by a trend they saw on TikTok,
26:27
SPEAKER_03: but they also filmed the attack,
26:29
SPEAKER_03: presumably with the intention of putting it online,
26:31
SPEAKER_03: not just their personal spank banks.
26:34
And it reminded me of this segment I heard on some public radio
26:37
show a couple weeks
26:37
SPEAKER_03: ago about phones in schools.
26:38
SPEAKER_03: So we all know that phones are distracting,
26:40
SPEAKER_03: but there's this other element I hadn't thought about before that,
26:42
SPEAKER_03: and that's how phones impact just the basic piece of the school.
26:46
So they interviewed a vice principal at some school who talked
26:49
about how students
26:50
SPEAKER_03: would use airdrop to communicate,
26:52
SPEAKER_03: like duel in the cafeteria at high noon,
26:54
SPEAKER_03: and then everyone runs to the cafeteria.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: The Zoomers, they're dueling now?
26:57
SPEAKER_00: We've gotten that far backwards?
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:59
And then everyone runs to the cafeteria for a fight and they
27:02
all pull out their
27:02
SPEAKER_03: phones and start recording.
27:04
SPEAKER_03: And of course,
27:05
SPEAKER_03: there have always been fights in schools,
27:06
SPEAKER_03: but the urge to go viral encourages this behavior.
27:10
Plus,
27:10
you know,
27:12
once this shit is on tape,
27:13
it follows people around way past high school.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: It's not like when we were in high school when,
27:17
SPEAKER_03: you know,
27:18
SPEAKER_03: you would,
27:18
SPEAKER_03: you,
27:18
SPEAKER_03: Jesse Single,
27:19
would get stuffed in a locker and then everybody forgets about
27:22
it within 10 years
27:23
SPEAKER_03: until you go back to your
27:25
high school reunion and they've actually printed out photos of
27:27
you jesse single i
27:28
will say that when i was in high school someone was circulating
27:31
not a nude but like
27:33
a near nude so we were already uh in that era like via phones
27:38
or like a printout no
27:39
not that uh no via like a polaroid what was it because most of
27:43
us didn't have cell
27:44
SPEAKER_00: phones no no it was digital okay i think via just via email mostly oh
27:49
SPEAKER_03: Wait, so was this a non-consensual nude?
27:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know who it was.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: You could not see stuff.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: It was like a near nude and definitely a minor.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're all minors, to be clear.
27:58
But someone was circulating like sort of,
28:01
yeah,
28:01
just a photo of this girl.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: It was really fucking creepy.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And you saw it?
28:04
SPEAKER_00: I did see it at one point, yes.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: It was just being circulated far and wide.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: So I'm a hippo.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: It's hippa.
28:10
SPEAKER_03: You just confessed to trafficking.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Yes, when I was 14, I was a trafficker, yeah.
28:15
Okay,
28:16
someone write in,
28:17
what are the statute of limitations on distributing child pornography?
28:22
SPEAKER_00: On being 14 and having your friend send you a non-sex.
28:24
SPEAKER_03: This is going to be our last podcast.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing visible.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I should not have mentioned this at all.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing visible.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: It was just like, it was hands like obscuring.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: It was Artie?
28:34
SPEAKER_00: I was 14, Katie.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know any better.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know better.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: It was a Kazakhstani trafficker.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: He told me he could make a better life for me.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: My point is, I don't think they just need to ban phones in high schools.
28:44
SPEAKER_03: They need to ban them in colleges.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: What about in society?
28:47
SPEAKER_03: Do it.
28:47
SPEAKER_03: Take them away.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Katie, thank you for whatever...
28:52
Last few remaining drops of faith in humanity were in the deep,
28:57
dark well that is my heart.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for drying them up, sucking them right out.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: Housekeeping?
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're a podcast.
29:03
You can send story tips to us or criticism or best would be
29:07
photos of your enemies
29:08
SPEAKER_00: doing Nazi salutes.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: And we will not ask any questions.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: We will read out their name and address on this podcast.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: We've got the spoons for that.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: I've got so many spoons right now.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: BlockToReportedPodcast at gmail.com.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: BlockToReported.org is the best way to support the show.
29:23
If you become a premium subscriber,
29:25
you gain access both to extra episodes.
29:27
Scientists at a particle accelerator are trying to figure out
29:30
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29:32
SPEAKER_00: How many extra episodes?
29:33
SPEAKER_00: No one knows.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: It's three-ish, four-ish.
29:36
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29:36
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29:38
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29:50
SPEAKER_00: entire community.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing place to discuss things
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Everything, right?
29:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like a modern day.
29:56
SPEAKER_03: What did Socrates hang out in?
29:57
SPEAKER_00: A subreddit.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: But this is like a closed subreddit that you have to pay to get into.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: But that is a much higher quality discussion.
30:04
SPEAKER_03: It's like the Disneyland subreddit, but with somehow more Heil Hitlers.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Socrates would have been the most insufferable subreddit moderator.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Finally, please rate and review us wherever you can do that.
30:18
If you don't have access to Apple Podcasts,
30:20
just scroll something on your local dive bar wall.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Katie, things are not going to get any lighter.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: There's been some dark human nature in this episode.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: It's time for us to return to the world of crypto.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: How are your crypto investments doing?
30:35
SPEAKER_03: Tanking.
30:36
SPEAKER_03: All of them are tanking.
30:37
SPEAKER_03: I invested in all the wrong shit.
30:39
SPEAKER_03: I didn't do Doge.
30:40
SPEAKER_03: I did Dog.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Dogcoin?
30:43
SPEAKER_03: I know.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: Dogcoin.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: It was so dumb.
30:45
SPEAKER_03: I just forgot the E.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Well,
30:46
SPEAKER_00: so I am invested in Doge,
30:48
SPEAKER_00: and I'm actually pulling it up on Robinhood.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Not a sponsor.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: If they want to.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: My Dogecoin is worth one penny.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: It's up 3.4% today.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: It's worth a penny.
31:03
SPEAKER_03: So you must not have a full coin.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: You must have a partial coin.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I bought, I think, 0.17 coins several years ago.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: It peaked at... Wow.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: It peaked at 37 cents.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, dude, I misspoke by an order of magnitude.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: It's worth 10 cents.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Damn.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: No, no, it's worth six cents.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm not good at reading graphs.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, my dogecoin has tanked.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Although, again, past month up 3.1%.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: So last summer, we did a story that focused on meme coins or shit coins.
31:32
As a reminder,
31:33
these are cryptocurrencies with no real product or project
31:36
behind them.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into it.
31:38
Sometimes they have an ostensible purpose or goal,
31:40
but that doesn't really mean anything.
31:42
There's more serious cryptocurrencies that at least claim to
31:45
have a use case.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: Bitcoin can be used to buy and sell stuff,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: and it is,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: in theory,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: an alternative to normal government currency.
31:53
SPEAKER_03: There's honestly no better way to hire a killer than Bitcoin.
31:57
SPEAKER_03: I cannot recommend it enough.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: Do you?
32:04
SPEAKER_00: OK, I'm not going to ask you any follow up questions there.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: Meme coins are different.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: It's just like a catchy name and a picture.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: So meme coins have been part of crypto for many years now,
32:14
SPEAKER_00: with the most famous being Doge,
32:16
SPEAKER_00: which,
32:16
SPEAKER_00: again,
32:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm heavily leveraged there.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Six cents worth of Doge.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Last year, unfortunately, a product called Pump.Fun was created.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: This was a website that made it easier than ever to launch meme coins.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Katie, even we could launch a meme coin, which we should get on.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: We should.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: You don't need any crypto knowledge or coding skills.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: You just need $2.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Can we use your doge to pay for it?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I would need a lot more doge to pay $2.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: As we speak,
32:45
there are more than 6 million Pump.Fun tokens that have been
32:49
launched since March 2024.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: That's horrifying.
32:54
You may remember that one of the key points the last time we
32:55
visited this world was
32:56
SPEAKER_00: the alleged launch of a Donald Trump approved meme coin called DJT.
33:00
Thanks to rumors that Trump was involved with the coin,
33:03
it pumped to a very high market cap.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Katie, do you know what market cap is?
33:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's potential.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean – Is that right?
33:12
SPEAKER_00: No, it's like market cap is like the number of shares times their value.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: And in like an actual – Yeah, the potential.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Potential, there we go.
33:20
It died very quickly though because it turned out it had
33:22
actually been launched by
33:23
SPEAKER_00: disgraced farmer bro Martin Shkreli.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Apparently with Baron Trump's help,
33:28
it's really interesting how we've watched Baron blossom from
33:31
just this like –
33:32
SPEAKER_00: strange stretched out little kid to a human adult, ostensibly.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a strange stretched out human adult.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: A strange stretched out human adult.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: Trump then eventually launched his own crypto project,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: World Liberty Financial,
33:47
SPEAKER_00: which has been viewed with caution by observers.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Why are people such cynics these days, Katie?
33:54
SPEAKER_00: It's like we just can't believe in anything anymore.
33:56
SPEAKER_03: So true.
33:56
SPEAKER_03: So true.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: So this incident,
34:01
SPEAKER_00: the DJT thing,
34:02
SPEAKER_00: led to the end of the summer's brief celebrity meme coin season.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Crypto Bros soon moved on to fresh new meme coin.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: So Katie,
34:12
SPEAKER_00: click this link and describe for me what you're seeing in detail,
34:15
SPEAKER_00: if you can even do so.
34:17
SPEAKER_03: It looks like a chart, like a Bloomberg terminal.
34:21
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what this means.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: It's like financial stuff.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: First of all, this is autism porn, I think.
34:28
But look to the right at the little image you see there on the
34:31
upper right.
34:32
SPEAKER_03: Oh, Moody.
34:33
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so it's a meme of a cute...
34:37
SPEAKER_03: What are those things called?
34:38
SPEAKER_03: Hippopotamus?
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you should get a... What are they called?
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: I find that funny just because there's nothing else that looks like that.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: What else could they be called?
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a hippo.
34:47
Hippopotamus and an elephant really actually do look alike if
34:50
you just got the elephant wet.
34:53
SPEAKER_03: Look at the nose if you need a hint.
34:56
SPEAKER_03: What's it called when you cut something's limb off?
34:58
SPEAKER_03: Top surgery?
34:59
SPEAKER_00: Amputation?
35:00
SPEAKER_03: Are you having a stroke?
35:02
If you amputate the trunk and give it a bath,
35:05
they're basically identical.
35:06
If one of us was actively having a minor stroke,
35:08
would the podcast get better or worse?
35:10
SPEAKER_03: Depends on which one of us.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: It's a hippo spraying some sort of lavender beam at the earth.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm not a finance expert, so I can't explain this.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: This is a meme coin inspired by Thailand's favorite hippo.
35:27
mudang yes also my favorite hippo it's really cute oh you've
35:31
you've heard of mudang
35:32
oh yeah i have a mudang tattoo actually on my it's my tramp
35:35
stamp okay no it's
35:37
disturbing um so briefly this was sort of the flavor of the
35:40
month there were a host
35:42
of copycat tokens based on other newborn zoo animals so that's
35:45
right katie we were
35:47
briefly moving toward a world economy uh based on newborn zoo
35:52
animal crypto tokens
35:53
SPEAKER_00: um
35:54
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that sounds very cute.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: After Baby Zoo Animals, the next fad was AI agents.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: So all these fake intelligences got their own coins.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: After that, there was some excitement around something called fart coin.
36:07
This is an individual fart themed coin that is not to be
36:10
confused with the broader
36:11
SPEAKER_00: category of shit coins.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: You're with me, right, Katie?
36:13
SPEAKER_00: You understand the distinction between a shit coin and a fart coin?
36:16
SPEAKER_03: Right.
36:16
SPEAKER_03: A fart coin is a subset of shit coins.
36:19
SPEAKER_03: All fart coins are shit coins, but not all shit coins are fart coins.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
36:24
and I think there's probably sort of an anatomical analogy here
36:27
we don't need to
36:28
SPEAKER_00: get into.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: But okay, so you're following me so far, right?
36:30
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, this is absolutely clear.
36:32
But for people who are not as financially savvy as I am,
36:37
why don't you explain...
36:39
what makes these coins what what their value is so i think the
36:42
short answer is that
36:43
they're not worth anything but they produce a lot of fake
36:47
statistics that can
36:48
confuse people and in some cases uh savvy shark types can take
36:53
advantage of the
36:54
much less savvy people who would buy a crypto token of a baby
36:59
hippo so for example
37:00
SPEAKER_03: okay wait let me get let me get a pen and paper here all right continue
37:04
SPEAKER_00: So fart corn peaked at a value of about $2.40,
37:07
SPEAKER_00: at least as of when I last checked,
37:09
SPEAKER_00: and a market cap of $2.4 billion.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: That's what you get when you multiply the cost by the volume.
37:14
SPEAKER_03: That's a lot of potential.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: Right.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: Now,
37:17
where this gets tricky and where I'm not going to pretend to be
37:19
anything like an expert,
37:20
SPEAKER_00: but for the stock of a publicly traded company,
37:23
the market cap can maybe give you a general sense of how
37:25
investors view the health
37:26
SPEAKER_00: of that company.
37:27
That doesn't mean the stock market is perfectly rational,
37:30
but the numbers aren't fake.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: They're not fake unless it's like Theranos.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: Everyone knows, right.
37:37
But just as of today,
37:39
Google has a market cap of something like $2.4 trillion.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: CVS has a market cap of something like $71.5 billion.
37:46
So all I'm saying is like— Oh my god,
37:47
can you imagine the length of that receipt?
37:50
All I'm saying is that that tells you something about how
37:53
investors view these
37:54
SPEAKER_00: actual companies that produce real goods.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: CVS,
37:57
SPEAKER_00: whatever you think of CVS,
37:58
SPEAKER_00: CVS is a real business,
38:00
SPEAKER_00: and you can describe CVS's business model,
38:02
SPEAKER_00: yes?
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Yes, locking up the deodorant.
38:06
They buy new ways to lock up merchandise,
38:10
and that generates economic activity.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: Something like that, yes.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: But when we find out that fart coin has a market cap of $2.4 billion,
38:19
SPEAKER_00: I just can't emphasize enough how little that means.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: It's just made up.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Who makes it up?
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, basically the people who launched the meme coins.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: The simple rule here is you should never for any reason ever,
38:35
ever invest in a meme coin or a shit coin or basically any
38:39
other kind of gimmicky crypto.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: Never.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: In all likelihood,
38:42
the coin will either be worthless soon and you'll lose your
38:45
money or someone is
38:46
SPEAKER_00: actively trying to take advantage of you,
38:48
SPEAKER_00: which we'll get to shortly.
38:48
SPEAKER_03: Okay,
38:49
SPEAKER_03: so what I'm hearing you say is that you shouldn't invest in a meme coin,
38:52
SPEAKER_03: but you should create a meme coin.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: If you have a good paying job with benefits now,
38:58
you should quit it and instead start just generating a stream
39:02
of shit coins.
39:03
SPEAKER_03: I think we might have to put a disclaimer at the top of this podcast.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: That this is financial advice.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Technically speaking,
39:10
SPEAKER_00: when a meme coin is released,
39:12
the producers will often provide some details about what it is
39:15
ostensibly for,
39:17
SPEAKER_00: who its market is,
39:18
SPEAKER_00: and so on.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: And that could help people better understand it.
39:22
I think to even get into that is to miss the forest for the
39:24
trees because this
39:24
SPEAKER_00: entire area of crypto is a giant scam.
39:26
That said,
39:27
there are some entertaining and to me,
39:29
very worthwhile projects.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: For example, Katie, read this description of the token will.
39:34
And I will say when you see one of these tokens,
39:36
it's like a dollar sign to them.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: The name.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: So dollar sign will is the token will read this, please.
39:40
SPEAKER_03: Target audience.
39:41
SPEAKER_03: Will targets a diverse audience,
39:43
SPEAKER_03: including investors,
39:44
SPEAKER_03: community builders,
39:45
SPEAKER_03: art collectors,
39:46
and historians aiming to foster a new cultural economy around
39:49
meme-based art.
39:50
SPEAKER_03: Market gap.
39:51
SPEAKER_03: The journey begins with the gala of Will Stancil,
39:55
an ongoing traveling public exhibit that showcases meme
39:58
artisans and digital creators.
40:01
SPEAKER_03: Dot, dot, dot.
40:01
SPEAKER_03: Building on this foundation,
40:02
SPEAKER_03: Will will host an annual Lowell Cow Fest,
40:05
a cultural festival spotlighting talent in celebrating the
40:09
intersection of humor,
40:10
SPEAKER_03: art,
40:10
SPEAKER_03: and cultural
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Is this bullying?
40:12
SPEAKER_00: This is finance now, Katie.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: This is finance.
40:15
While you were reading that,
40:16
I took all my money out of index funds and invested in Will.
40:21
SPEAKER_03: How do you think this affects Will Stancil emotionally?
40:23
SPEAKER_03: Do you think he loves it?
40:24
SPEAKER_03: Do you think he hates it?
40:26
SPEAKER_00: That's such a good question.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: I should have reached out to him for comment.
40:29
I think fundamentally he's a poster and fundamentally posters
40:32
love attention,
40:33
good or bad.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: I could see him really getting into this.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: So I hope at the gala unveiling he will be there as a surprise guest.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: All these meme coins,
40:43
SPEAKER_00: all this stuff,
40:43
SPEAKER_00: this is part of a pretty big identity in the crypto world.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Crypto is at a really strange crossroads because on the one hand,
40:49
SPEAKER_00: its respectability is actually at an all-time high.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: In the last year,
40:53
Bitcoin and Ethereum have both become more popular with
40:55
mainstream investors thanks
40:57
SPEAKER_00: to ETFs or exchange-traded funds.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: ETF is basically a bundle of assets you buy into.
41:02
So there are ETFs now that attempt to track the price of
41:05
Bitcoin without investing
41:07
SPEAKER_00: directly in it.
41:09
That's similar to how index funds like the one I'm invested in
41:11
try to track the
41:12
SPEAKER_00: performance of a market like,
41:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:15
SPEAKER_00: the S&P 500.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, there's Bitcoin.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: There's Ethereum.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: There are other major coins that are predicted to be approved for ETFs.
41:22
There's pro crypto politicians now,
41:24
not just random outliers like the president of El Salvador.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Senator Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming has proposed that the U.S.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: holds a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Horrifying idea.
41:33
Last year,
41:34
Trump's campaign trail calendar included a speech at the
41:36
Bitcoin conference.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: Trump was a skeptic who didn't know much about Bitcoin,
41:43
SPEAKER_00: and then Bitcoin threw a lot of money and praise at him,
41:46
SPEAKER_00: and he became pro-Bitcoin,
41:48
SPEAKER_00: which is an interesting coincidence.
41:49
SPEAKER_03: Do you think he could define Bitcoin if asked?
41:53
SPEAKER_00: I think the only policy relevant word he could maybe define is tariff.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: Even there, I'm not sure.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: There is no way he could describe Bitcoin.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: So Gary Gensler,
42:03
SPEAKER_00: the notoriously anti-crypto chief of the SEC,
42:06
SPEAKER_00: announced his resignation last November.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: The new chair,
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Mark Uyeda,
42:09
SPEAKER_00: has quickly moved to take steps to lower regulatory barriers for crypto.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: It is a gold rush era for crypto when it comes to government regulation.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: So the word crypto is just no longer synonymous with scam.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Trump has also appointed David Sachs as his AI and crypto star.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Sachs is very pro-crypto.
42:26
Do you think he's going to pardon that curly-haired crypto guy
42:28
that sort of resembles you?
42:30
SPEAKER_00: Sam Bankman-Fried?
42:31
SPEAKER_03: And maybe hire him to lead the treasury?
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
42:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that would probably be better than what he would do otherwise.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: So that's like the successful mainstream side of crypto.
42:40
On the other hand,
42:41
crypto is still plagued by this scammy nonsense because it
42:44
always has been.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: In the midst of all this bullishness,
42:47
there are still these infinite ridiculous mean coins and huge
42:50
numbers of scams and
42:52
SPEAKER_00: rug pulls.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Katie, do you remember what a rug pull is?
42:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Moving on.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: No, I want you to explain it for the people.
42:59
A rug pull is when you start a meme coin and then you inflate
43:06
its value using...
43:09
marketing stuff hype and then hype using hype technical term
43:14
and then when it when
43:15
it when people start to buy into the hype you pull you pull you
43:19
sell all your
43:19
shares you pull all your money out yeah so that's what coins
43:22
that dump suddenly the
43:23
developers and the team behind them are holding a huge amount
43:25
of supply they sell
43:27
leaving investors holding worthless bags i've mentioned him
43:29
before coffeezilla is
43:30
SPEAKER_00: like the premier
43:33
SPEAKER_00: YouTube journalist sounds derogatory.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean it that way.
43:35
He investigates these ridiculous rug pulls that often target
43:39
young fans of influencers.
43:41
So these incredibly skeezy influencers will walk away with
43:44
millions of dollars of
43:46
SPEAKER_00: young fans' money.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: It's gross.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, let's go back to Pump.Fun, the meme coin launch platform.
43:52
Because Pump.Fun basically allows anyone to try to be the next
43:56
Jake Paul in terms of rug pulls.
43:58
In our last crypto episode,
43:59
we briefly touched...
44:00
Wait,
44:00
is Jake Paul famous for rug pulls?
44:02
Yes,
44:02
Jake Paul is well known for promoting NFT,
44:06
non-fungible token rug pulls.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: And CoffeeZilla has got some good stuff on that.
44:10
SPEAKER_03: So would you say that Jake Paul is the Hawk Tua of rug pulls?
44:14
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: Let me think about that.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an answer by the end of the episode.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: In our last episode,
44:20
SPEAKER_00: we talked about how on Pump.Fun,
44:23
SPEAKER_00: coin creators,
44:24
SPEAKER_00: there's a live stream feature.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: So you can create a coin and then stream to try to get attention.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: So listeners might remember that to get attention on this platform,
44:34
SPEAKER_00: there was a teenager who live streamed showing off his mom breasts.
44:37
There was a guy who set himself on fire to promote his coin and
44:40
ended up in the hospital.
44:41
And some live streams went viral because there's just these
44:44
crazy attention getting gimmicks.
44:47
and uh you can imagine what what happened next just complete
44:51
circus so for example
44:52
one developer claimed that uh investments in his coin would be
44:58
safe because he
44:58
didn't even have hands meaning how can i do a rug pull if i
45:02
don't even have hands
45:03
so katie the guy who was in the babylon beat click this and
45:07
describe the video
45:08
SPEAKER_00: please
45:09
SPEAKER_03: Okay, it's a man.
45:10
SPEAKER_03: I mean, all he's doing is putting his hands behind his back.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: That's literally it.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a guy who,
45:17
SPEAKER_00: like,
45:18
SPEAKER_00: if you were a toddler,
45:19
SPEAKER_00: you could be briefly convinced that this guy had no hands,
45:23
but he just pulls his hands out from behind his back and hits a
45:25
few keys on the computer.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: So that's the level of intelligence we're dealing with.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: But...
45:30
SPEAKER_00: Last fall, shit got a little bit more intense.
45:34
A guy launched a meme coin promising to live stream all the way
45:37
to $100 million
45:38
SPEAKER_00: market cap,
45:39
SPEAKER_00: which would have meant hours just in front of the computer.
45:42
He didn't make it that far,
45:43
but his coin inspired a brief live stream sort of gold rush.
45:46
One developer started a live stream sitting on the toilet where
45:49
he stayed for several days.
45:52
SPEAKER_03: That's a short coin.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: Another one.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: Katie,
45:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to have to ask you to describe this one,
45:56
SPEAKER_00: but read the top left language first and then describe the image.
46:00
SPEAKER_03: Locked in dog cage until $25 million.
46:03
SPEAKER_03: Dog cage.
46:04
SPEAKER_03: This must be the dog cage coin.
46:05
SPEAKER_03: It is a man wearing a full balaclava-like face cupboard.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: I think it's supposed to be a gimp mask.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest.
46:11
SPEAKER_03: A gimp mask.
46:12
SPEAKER_03: I don't think it's leather, though, or vinyl.
46:14
SPEAKER_03: I think it's just like a ski mask.
46:17
SPEAKER_03: And he has a collar and a leash.
46:20
SPEAKER_03: He looks cozy.
46:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's- Oh, wait.
46:22
SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
46:23
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so in the back, there's a whiteboard with milestones.
46:26
SPEAKER_03: At 100K, he will bark like a dog 100 times.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: 200K, eat dog food.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: 300K, lick hands and feet.
46:29
SPEAKER_03: 400K, lick balls.
46:30
SPEAKER_03: 500K- Have my master whip me for being a bad dog.
46:32
SPEAKER_03: This is a kink.
46:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: 1 million, piss in cage.
46:46
SPEAKER_03: 5 million, shit in cage.
46:48
SPEAKER_03: 10 million, face reveal.
46:49
SPEAKER_03: Should not do that.
46:50
SPEAKER_03: 25 million, break out of cage.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: I don't think he wants to break out of the cage.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: Anyone listening who thinks this is weird, it's not.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: This is the US economy now, okay?
46:58
SPEAKER_00: This is how- He actually works at the Fed.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: This is the chairman of the St.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: Louis Federal.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
47:06
SPEAKER_00: guy locked in a cage,
47:07
SPEAKER_00: pumping a meme coin,
47:09
saying that I will do things like shit in the cage if you can
47:13
get it to a certain value.
47:14
SPEAKER_03: He's going to do that for free.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: Also, I think this is probably how the stock market always worked.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: But now it's just sort of the veil's been pulled back.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: As anyone could have guessed, there was also a huge amount of porn.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Jessica,
47:29
SPEAKER_00: the 80s baby,
47:30
SPEAKER_00: who did wonderful work researching this segment,
47:32
SPEAKER_00: says,
47:32
SPEAKER_00: quote,
47:33
SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing one Pump.Fund livestream with the memorable tagline,
47:37
SPEAKER_00: gaping my butthole to $25,000 market cap.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: To put that in perspective, that's a really low crypto market cap.
47:45
It genuinely made me sad that someone would be there gaping
47:47
their butthole on
47:48
SPEAKER_00: livestream for such a small target.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: Have some self-respect.
47:52
SPEAKER_03: Some people want to gape their butthole.
47:54
SPEAKER_03: They just do.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was going to ask.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: If you launched Katie,
47:59
SPEAKER_00: the meme coin,
47:59
SPEAKER_00: what would market cap have to hit for you to expose your butthole?
48:03
SPEAKER_03: Jesse, I would never...
48:06
ever ever call my meme coin katie what would you call it moose
48:11
moose yeah but what
48:12
okay what market cap to expose your butthole i don't have a
48:14
butthole i wouldn't do
48:14
it i would expose moose's butthole people can see that for free
48:18
i think every human
48:19
being has in their heart a butthole some amount of money at
48:23
which both a butthole
48:24
and some amount of money at which they would um in exchange for
48:27
which they would
48:28
SPEAKER_00: expose their butthole for me 10 000
48:32
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: No, that's an order, multiple orders of magnitude too low.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: Because for the scenario to be interesting,
48:37
it has to be like public and everyone knows that's what your
48:40
butthole looks like forever.
48:40
SPEAKER_03: All right, let's move on.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: One of the worst pump dot fun live streams Jessica the 80s baby found.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, we'll definitely include this in the show notes.
48:49
SPEAKER_00: This involves the developer of the meme coin smoking meth,
48:52
SPEAKER_00: shaving a strip of hair from his head and eating a hooker's ass.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: Mm hmm.
48:58
You can see from the comments that people watch these live
49:01
streams and they treat
49:02
SPEAKER_00: them as sort of like a Victorian-era freak show.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: They promise to buy the coin if the dev does more humiliating shit.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: Finally, there was some backlash.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: This really kicked off after someone beheaded a chicken.
49:13
This is where you finally perk up and get outraged on a
49:16
Pump.Fund live stream.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: So one headline from a crypto site in late November,
49:20
SPEAKER_00: Pump.Fund live streams plunge into chaos with suicides,
49:23
SPEAKER_00: homicides,
49:24
SPEAKER_00: drugs,
49:24
SPEAKER_00: and animal abuse.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: Katie, this is just the economy now.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: One more tweet, Katie.
49:29
SPEAKER_00: Will you describe this?
49:30
SPEAKER_00: All right.
49:30
SPEAKER_03: This is an account called Malfoy.
49:32
This high school kid looks about 12 years old and yells on live
49:35
that if the token
49:36
SPEAKER_03: doesn't reach 60K market cap,
49:38
SPEAKER_03: he will kill his entire family with a shotgun.
49:41
SPEAKER_03: So did he make it?
49:42
SPEAKER_00: I did not have the heart to check.
49:45
SPEAKER_00: On November 25th,
49:46
the anonymous founder of Pump.Fun announced they were
49:49
suspending the live stream feature.
49:51
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't the end of the shitty, scammy world of meme coins.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: In December, Hayley Welch, a.k.a.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: the Hawk to a Girl, Katie...
50:00
SPEAKER_00: Explain what Hayley Welch is.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: I still don't get it.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: I refuse to check.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: No.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
50:05
SPEAKER_00: Hayley Welch launched her own official meme coin.
50:08
SPEAKER_00: It was heavily hyped.
50:09
SPEAKER_03: She's a girl who went viral because somebody took a video of her,
50:12
SPEAKER_03: like a man on the street kind of video,
50:14
SPEAKER_03: and they asked her some question.
50:16
SPEAKER_03: She said something about spitting on a dick.
50:18
SPEAKER_03: She said hawk to it, and that apparently means spitting on a dick.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
50:22
SPEAKER_03: And then she became extremely famous for this.
50:24
Look,
50:24
again,
50:25
this is just how the— I don't know what the question it was,
50:27
actually.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: This is how—the question was, what's your favorite U.S.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: president?
50:32
SPEAKER_00: This is just how the economy works out, Katie.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't—like, this is it.
50:36
Her meme coin was heavily hyped because we just live in a world
50:40
infested with morons.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: People bought it.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: It died very quickly due to insider selling activity.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a video of CoffeeZilla,
50:46
SPEAKER_00: one of the best journalists covering this stuff,
50:48
SPEAKER_00: like I said,
50:49
SPEAKER_00: accusing her of scamming millions from her fans.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to be clear,
50:53
SPEAKER_00: we don't necessarily know Welch herself dumped the coin,
50:55
SPEAKER_00: but someone in her launch team definitely did.
50:58
uh we'll include a link to a community note explaining that and
51:00
that's the other
51:01
thing that happens here is if you're hailey welch or you're
51:02
some other dumb
51:03
influencer imagine you get an email from someone who's like i
51:06
want to work with you
51:07
on a token here's how much money you can make i feel like we
51:10
can imagine examples
51:11
where like the hailey welch herself is more not a victim
51:16
because she's making money
51:16
but it's just literally oblivious to it because she's a dumb
51:19
influencer who will
51:19
SPEAKER_00: say yes to any money making opportunity is that do you think that's fair
51:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, it's a bit paternalistic, but sure.
51:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not paternal.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: Look, it's still really irresponsible.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: She's still ripping people off.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: I just think it's probably often neglect and stupidity more than malice.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
51:37
the backlash against Hayley Welch's rug pull was so bad that
51:40
she disappeared from
51:41
SPEAKER_00: the Internet.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: She took her millions and left.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: This is the American dream.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: I think this is still,
51:48
SPEAKER_00: as of January 31st today,
51:49
SPEAKER_00: the most recent thing she said on the internet.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: This is on Twitter.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: I take this situation extremely seriously and want to address my fans,
51:55
SPEAKER_00: the investors who have been affected in the broader community.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm fully cooperating with and I'm committed to assisting the legal team
52:00
SPEAKER_00: representing the individuals impacted,
52:02
SPEAKER_00: as well as to help uncover the truth,
52:03
SPEAKER_00: hold the responsible parties accountable,
52:05
SPEAKER_00: and resolve this matter.
52:06
If you have experienced losses related to this,
52:07
please contact Berwick Law using the link below.
52:09
SPEAKER_03: She didn't write that.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: No,
52:11
but assuming that is the law firm representing the class action
52:14
suit people,
52:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
52:15
SPEAKER_00: that's the best she could do other than just stop being an employer.
52:19
SPEAKER_03: I think that's a big assumption.
52:20
SPEAKER_03: That in itself could be, this is a phishing scam.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: Right,
52:23
it could just be her own law firm and they're trying to get
52:25
intel on the potential lawsuits.
52:28
I think that she's living in Sam Bankman-Fried's old house in
52:31
the Caribbean.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: So all in all, it's a very weird time for crypto.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: Again,
52:36
SPEAKER_00: to review,
52:36
SPEAKER_00: finally breaking into the mainstream economic world,
52:38
SPEAKER_00: still full of scams,
52:39
SPEAKER_00: particularly with the meme-er coins.
52:41
SPEAKER_00: Bitcoin itself,
52:42
SPEAKER_00: which is the original and by far the most successful cryptocurrency,
52:47
SPEAKER_00: it broke to a new all-time high right after Trump elections.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: Let's see how much Bitcoin is worth.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: BTC...
52:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's worth over $104,000.
52:55
SPEAKER_00: This is a currency that since 2019, it's crazy, man.
52:57
SPEAKER_00: It's a roller coaster.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: It goes from $3,000, spikes to $61,000, down to $16,000.
53:00
I don't know how anyone would get involved in this,
53:02
but now it's over $100,000.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had gotten involved in it.
53:17
SPEAKER_00: I know, seriously.
53:18
There's that story of the person who used a certain amount of
53:21
Bitcoin to buy pizza
53:22
SPEAKER_00: that would now be worth,
53:22
SPEAKER_00: I think,
53:23
SPEAKER_00: hundreds of millions of dollars.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: Trump's victory was hugely celebrated by crypto bros.
53:29
Even crypto's very few Trump skeptics were just excited because
53:32
he's obviously
53:33
SPEAKER_00: going to cut back on regulation.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: Trump has become very pro-crypto.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: There's an episode on The Daily we will include.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: Now...
53:41
One phrase that's been thrown around for a few months now is
53:43
crime season.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: Like we can literally do whatever we want is basically the purge.
53:47
SPEAKER_00: But for crypto,
53:49
SPEAKER_00: crypto,
53:49
SPEAKER_00: there's always been a lot of shady activity,
53:51
but it just seems like under Trump is going to be easier than
53:54
ever before to get
53:54
SPEAKER_00: away with it.
53:55
So Trump has made connections with some like amazingly dodgy
54:01
characters in crypto.
54:02
SPEAKER_00: One of them is an awesome guy named Justin Sun.
54:05
He's the founder of the Tron blockchain,
54:08
and he's also prime minister of the fake country.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: Is that, you think it's Liberland or Libra land?
54:14
SPEAKER_03: Liberal land.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: Liberal land.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: Liberal land.
54:16
SPEAKER_03: It's the, it neighbors, it neighbors liberal, liberal tard.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: So, Lib tard.
54:19
SPEAKER_00: Um,
54:20
SPEAKER_00: he's famous to normies.
54:22
He's the guy who bought the banana staple,
54:24
uh,
54:25
nailed to the wall for help.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: I was duct taped.
54:27
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
54:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm confusing my modern, uh, scam art.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh,
54:31
he grifted his way into being an ambassador for the small
54:35
Caribbean nation of
54:36
SPEAKER_00: Granada so that he could get diplomatic immunity.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: And he's been calling himself his excellency,
54:41
SPEAKER_00: Justin's son ever since we'll include a link to an article in the verge.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: These are the people Trump is pulling into his orbit.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: Um,
54:48
Even the people talking about crime season did not anticipate
54:52
the full extent of
54:53
SPEAKER_00: the crime season that has manifested.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: So late on the night of January 17th,
54:58
SPEAKER_00: the Friday before the inauguration,
54:59
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump launches his own official meme coin,
55:03
SPEAKER_00: Trump.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: Trump.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: In the first hour of its launch, it trades at around $2 per token.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: But then within a day,
55:10
SPEAKER_00: it hits $75,
55:11
SPEAKER_00: although it's since dropped for reasons that will become clearer.
55:14
SPEAKER_00: Its market cap quickly gets into the billions.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: As of today, it's all the way back down to $26.
55:21
SPEAKER_00: What would your reaction be?
55:22
SPEAKER_00: If you were online and you saw that Trump had launched a meme coin,
55:25
SPEAKER_00: what would your first thought be?
55:26
SPEAKER_03: Oh, that makes sense.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: But part of what makes this world so weird is it's very hard to tell...
55:34
SPEAKER_00: Who's doing what?
55:35
SPEAKER_00: What's real?
55:36
SPEAKER_00: What's a scam?
55:37
SPEAKER_00: What's fake?
55:38
And there were actually some doubts at the very beginning
55:41
because we already had
55:41
that incident last summer where there was a supposedly official
55:44
Trump coin,
55:45
SPEAKER_00: but it was Martin Shkreli.
55:46
This time around,
55:47
Trump's official account tweets out basically an ad to buy his
55:52
meme coin.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: So this means –
55:54
the then-president-elect of the United States had joined the
55:57
likes of Hawk to a Girl,
55:58
SPEAKER_00: Andrew Tate,
55:59
SPEAKER_00: and Iggy Azalea,
56:01
SPEAKER_00: and he'd launched his own meme coin.
56:03
SPEAKER_00: So because Trump increased in value so quickly and so much,
56:08
SPEAKER_00: there was actually a positive response at first from crypto Twitter.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: And basically a lot of people made money very quickly.
56:16
Although what's funny is that it launched very late on Friday
56:19
night in the U.S.,
56:20
SPEAKER_00: but Saturday morning in Asia...
56:22
SPEAKER_00: So even though Trump hates China,
56:25
there appear to be like a lot of Chinese investors who were
56:28
awake and were able to
56:29
SPEAKER_00: buy this when the price was really low.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: Now,
56:33
there is some degree of transparency here in that you can see
56:36
that the Trump team
56:37
SPEAKER_00: holds 80% of the supply of this coin.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Do you get like why that matters?
56:43
It matters because as the price go up,
56:45
they own just a huge amount of supply.
56:47
SPEAKER_03: And if they sold it off, then it would tank.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
56:50
And there's a thread we'll link to from January 18th showing
56:53
that at the time,
56:55
SPEAKER_00: Trump had sold $500 million worth of it.
56:59
SPEAKER_00: And then some of that money was transferred into Bybit,
57:02
SPEAKER_00: a crypto exchange which is blocked in the USA.
57:05
So you have the incoming president's team selling a fake meme
57:10
coin and then moving
57:11
that money into basically a much less traceable crypto exchange
57:15
that you can't even
57:16
SPEAKER_00: access in the US.
57:17
SPEAKER_00: This is good governance, right?
57:19
SPEAKER_03: I really think that this man has been anointed by God.
57:24
SPEAKER_03: Only explanation.
57:25
The other thing is that the Trump team has made over $58
57:28
million just in trading fees,
57:31
SPEAKER_00: like taking a cut from exchanges involving the coin.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: So they have $58 million in the bank.
57:37
SPEAKER_00: Regardless of the future value of this coin.
57:40
So despite a lot of people being skeptical that Trump continues
57:43
to go up and up and up,
57:45
SPEAKER_00: at least until January 19th,
57:46
SPEAKER_00: less than 48 hours after Trump launches,
57:49
SPEAKER_00: there's a shiny new meme to grab attention.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: Melania.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: Dollar sign Melania.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: So...
57:55
Once again,
57:56
there's a lot of confusion about whether or not this token was
57:58
real or official.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: Once again, it is soon confirmed to be a real Trump project.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: So Melania launches.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: It grows dramatically.
58:06
Trump is dumped by nearly 50% because crypto bros begin piling
58:10
onto the new shiny token.
58:12
SPEAKER_00: One way to look at this is they messed up.
58:14
SPEAKER_00: They didn't space them enough, but like it's all the same thing.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: Crime family?
58:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's just all the same people.
58:20
SPEAKER_03: Are they going to launch,
58:22
SPEAKER_03: like,
58:22
SPEAKER_03: it,
58:22
SPEAKER_03: like,
58:22
SPEAKER_03: successively,
58:24
SPEAKER_03: like,
58:24
SPEAKER_03: the Trump coin,
58:25
SPEAKER_03: the Melania coin,
58:26
SPEAKER_03: the Don Jr.
58:27
SPEAKER_03: coin, the Eric coin?
58:28
SPEAKER_00: Barron.
58:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the last one would be Tiffany.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: So, it's just, this is...
58:32
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
58:33
SPEAKER_00: And after after these two legitimate coin,
58:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
58:36
I put legitimate in giant air quotes after they launched the
58:39
floodgates open and
58:40
all these scammers rush into the market to create tokens of
58:43
every member of the
58:44
SPEAKER_00: Trump family to do what we're joking about Trump actually doing.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: So there were several attempts to create barren tokens.
58:51
SPEAKER_00: Lots of rumors about which ones are real, which are false.
58:55
SPEAKER_00: And most crypto bros,
58:56
SPEAKER_00: I should say,
58:56
they assume that Barron Trump is the one behind all these
58:59
crypto projects.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: So there were more Barron attempts than like Tiffany attempts.
59:03
SPEAKER_00: So Ryan Fournier,
59:04
SPEAKER_00: head of students for Trump,
59:05
SPEAKER_00: he gets in on the action with a scam involving a TikTok coin.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: Coffeezilla covered that.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: And there's this amazing tweet back and forth.
59:13
SPEAKER_00: So I'll be Ryan, you be a guy named I buy bottom nodes.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm very new to crypto and I promise you I didn't rug it.
59:21
SPEAKER_03: Buddy, we see your wallet.
59:22
SPEAKER_03: It's all on chain.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: I literally sold because it was going down increasingly.
59:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't know who wouldn't do that.
59:27
SPEAKER_00: So like he's basically just describing a rug poll.
59:32
SPEAKER_00: During the inauguration, Trump and Melania go up in value.
59:35
SPEAKER_00: But then on the 21st of January,
59:38
SPEAKER_00: Trump answered this question about his token during a press conference.
59:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where it is.
59:43
I don't know much about it other than I launched it,
59:46
other than it was very successful.
59:48
So I think it's either Barron or it could be someone in Musa
59:52
orbit just telling Trump,
59:55
SPEAKER_00: do this thing,
59:55
SPEAKER_00: put your name behind this thing.
59:57
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because this ties into –
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: decades of Trump putting his name on anything.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: This is like the most natural evolution for Trump.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't he put his name on a mean coin?
1:00:07
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_03: This is Trump Steaks 2025.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_03: But you can't eat it.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_03: It somehow has even less value.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: Nor can you exchange it for food.
1:00:17
It's hard to know what will happen with Trump in the long term,
1:00:20
but don't worry.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_00: He's going to die.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: I meant the coin, not the guy.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: It's also hard to know.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_00: At this point, I'm not sure he will die.
1:00:32
But for anyone listening who's worried about the Trump family
1:00:35
losing money,
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: which keeps me up at night,
1:00:37
SPEAKER_00: don't worry.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: That's like the whole point of these meme coins.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_00: If you're an insider,
1:00:42
SPEAKER_00: if you're well positioned,
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: if you're one of the haves,
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: you're not going to lose money.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_00: They're scams.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_00: So there was a final night.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank God for that.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_00: There was a nice little coda to this on January 25th.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_00: Katie described this tweet from Senator John Cornyn of Texas.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_03: All caps, we're ready to make dollar sign USA.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_03: Great again.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_03: And then there is a lake to a crypto wallet.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like a string of characters.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a photo.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_03: With a photo of him and Trump doing the stupid fucking thumbs up.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: Has anyone pointed out before that Trump looks really orange?
1:01:17
SPEAKER_03: No, you should make that meme happen.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_03: Orange coin.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:01:22
So is this John Cornyn's own meme coin or does the USA itself
1:01:26
have some meme coin?
1:01:27
SPEAKER_03: Is this our new official currency?
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: Cornyn's account was hacked.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: The post has been deleted.
1:01:32
I just think this nicely sums up the sort of shark infested
1:01:35
waters that are in the
1:01:36
SPEAKER_00: shitcoin world.
1:01:36
Just this like flurry of desperate carnivores desperately
1:01:40
trying to find someone to
1:01:41
SPEAKER_00: prey upon doing whatever they can,
1:01:44
including the very desperate act of briefly hacking into a
1:01:46
senator's Twitter account.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_03: You know,
1:01:48
SPEAKER_03: I would say that I really admire that American spirit,
1:01:52
SPEAKER_03: but these guys probably were Malaysian.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: Can I end on a briefly earnest note?
1:01:58
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_00: I thought you'd say no.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't ready for that.
1:02:02
This level of just out-of-the-open grifting by a sitting
1:02:05
president is really bad.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_00: Just because as more and more people invest in crypto,
1:02:09
SPEAKER_00: it will affect people's lives,
1:02:11
SPEAKER_00: what the regulatory decisions are.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_00: And to have a sitting president with...
1:02:16
potentially a huge amount of money at stake with the decisions
1:02:20
he now gets to make.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:02:22
Am I being a basic bitch by pointing out that this is a
1:02:26
different level of scam
1:02:27
SPEAKER_00: even by Trump standards?
1:02:28
I actually don't know if this is a different level of scam by
1:02:31
Trump standards.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean, do you remember Trump University?
1:02:33
SPEAKER_00: The difference was –
1:02:35
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't running Trump University as president.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: He would, though.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: He would.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_00: Trump University was a huge scam as adjudicated by the courts.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_00: He had to pay out a big settlement.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_00: But this is who he's always been.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just different when he gets to be the guy who makes the rules.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_03: Once again, man anointed by God.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_03: I think what this does illustrate to me is,
1:02:54
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:02:55
I have sometimes thought that people use the term cult around
1:02:59
Trump a little too loosely.
1:03:01
SPEAKER_03: It's a fucking cult.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: For some of these people, it is a fucking cult.
1:03:05
They will be ripped off by their leader,
1:03:07
by their God,
1:03:08
and they will not care.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_00: Final thing worth clarifying.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'd call this a silver lining.
1:03:14
Some people on social media have chattered about how Trump has
1:03:17
made like $40
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: billion or some similarly ridiculous sum.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: That's just false.
1:03:24
These are estimates based on market caps or the number of coins
1:03:27
are multiplied by its value.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: So they're just doing the math in this fuzzy way.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:03:31
Trump holds 85% of the coins and that artificially inflates the
1:03:35
market cap.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: The Melania coin, she owns like 89%.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_00: So there's just not that much coin circulating.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think that affects their ability to make money, but don't worry.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_00: They will probably make many millions, just not billions.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: Thank God for that.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that was our deep dive into the meme coin world.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_00: I, um,
1:03:54
SPEAKER_00: Send us tips on this stuff.
1:03:55
If there's a particularly interesting meme coin,
1:03:58
I'd like to look more into this.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_00: We need stock tips.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_00: We need stock tips.
1:04:02
I'd gotten mad about this from watching CoffeeZilla's videos
1:04:05
because just the
1:04:06
SPEAKER_00: extent to which influencers are preying on young people.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_00: I guess this is different because he's preying on boomers.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_00: Does that make us feel less bad for them?
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: Or is he?
1:04:15
He probably has a lot of young fans at this point buying Trump
1:04:18
meme coins.
1:04:18
Oh,
1:04:19
I think he has a ton of young fans,
1:04:20
but also it's kind of complicated to buy Bitcoin.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_03: So you got to be a little bit technically savvy.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: I actually don't think that's true anymore with meme coins.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_03: I struggled to do it when I was using it to try to buy hookworm.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_03: I had to have a guy do it for me.
1:04:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these days you can just invest in crypto directly with Robinhood.
1:04:39
I should start doing that because the fees to the mail fees
1:04:42
that I pay to get the
1:04:42
SPEAKER_03: hookworm are out of control.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: How much hookworm, do you still need hookworm or is that over?
1:04:46
SPEAKER_03: It's not for me, it's for Jana, but she's still, she is still dosing.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: Wait,
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: reminder,
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: this is earlier bar pod lore,
1:04:51
SPEAKER_00: but people will probably want to know why your wife is taking hookworm.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_03: Allergies.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_03: It's,
1:04:55
SPEAKER_03: if you're interested in this,
1:04:56
SPEAKER_03: hookworms is,
1:04:57
SPEAKER_03: the term to look up is helmet therapy and it's based on this idea that
1:05:01
Hookworms essentially distract your immune system so your
1:05:04
immune system stops
1:05:05
SPEAKER_03: attacking your body.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_03: So people use it for autoimmune diseases, asthma, things like that.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_03: And it has been remarkably effective for Janus allergies.
1:05:13
I know it sounds fucking crazy,
1:05:14
but I actually have a coin if you want to invest in.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_03: Dollar sign hook.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_00: I think a parasite attacking its host is a fitting end to this episode.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming along with me on this ride.
1:05:26
SPEAKER_03: Hey, sometimes parasites are helpful.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_00: This has been Blocked Reported.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_00: As always,
1:05:30
SPEAKER_00: we are produced,
1:05:31
SPEAKER_00: but especially this week,
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: we are produced with help from Jessica Ades Baby,
1:05:34
SPEAKER_00: who did amazing research for us.
1:05:35
SPEAKER_00: Crypto Queen.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_00: Our Crypto Queen.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys for listening.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: See you soon.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_00: Bye.