Digital Warfare: The Hidden Dangers of TikTok Data Collection | Dave Rubin DSH #954

Summary

Digital Warfare: The Hidden Dangers of TikTok Data Collection | Dave Rubin DSH #954
Digital Social Hour
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Dave Rubin
Release Date: December 6, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of Digital Social Hour, host Sean Kelly engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Dave Rubin, a prominent political commentator and entrepreneur. The discussion delves into a myriad of topics, ranging from political evolution and media dynamics to the intricacies of data privacy and the future of social media platforms.

Political Evolution and Media Polarization

Dave Rubin opens up about his political transformation, emphasizing how engaging with individuals across the political spectrum reshaped his views. He shares, "That's partly why I evolved politically, because I was talking to all these scary right wingers and all the people that I was told were evil and they happen to be the nicest people that I'm meeting" (00:29). Rubin highlights the asymmetrical backlash when shifting political alliances, noting that engaging with the right often leads to greater disdain from the left, unlike the reverse.

Experiences in Las Vegas and Personal Anecdotes

Rubin recounts his solitary trip to Las Vegas during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, detailing the frugal accommodations at Circus Circus and the ensuing issues with bedbugs. "I still have the disease I caught that night," he laments (01:22). This experience serves as a segue into his broader reflections on travel and personal preferences, such as his affinity for casinos' vibrant and authentic atmospheres.

Optimism for America's Future

A significant portion of the conversation centers on Rubin's optimistic outlook for America. He anticipates a cultural renaissance reminiscent of the 1980s, expecting a resurgence in music, comedy, and economic prosperity. "We're about to have the renaissance of America... the economy is going to boom and the world is going to get reordered politically," Rubin asserts (02:08). Despite acknowledging ongoing challenges, he remains bullish about the nation's trajectory.

Media Dynamics and the Rise of Alternative Media

Rubin and Kelly discuss the transformative impact of alternative media on recent political landscapes. Rubin claims, "Alternative media decided the outcome of this election," emphasizing the shift away from mainstream corporate press to more decentralized platforms (04:52). He critiques traditional media's credibility and praises platforms like Locals.com for fostering free speech and community control.

Entrepreneurship and Fighting Big Tech

Transitioning to business, Rubin delves into his venture, Locals.com, which he founded to counteract the restrictive practices of platforms like Patreon. "We built it to give creators ownership of their data and control over their communities," he explains (14:04). The merger with Rumble and the public offering are highlighted as strategic moves in promoting free speech and providing alternatives to mainstream platforms.

Data Privacy and the Dangers of TikTok

A focal point of the episode is the hidden dangers associated with TikTok's data collection practices. Rubin expresses deep concerns about data privacy, stating, "They're gathering data on everybody and then they know us more than we know ourselves," (25:46). He underscores the risks of centralized data control by big tech companies and the potential misuse of personal information by malicious actors.

Government Intervention vs. Free Market Solutions

Rubin advocates for limited government intervention, especially in sectors like pharmaceuticals and data management. He argues, "I would want just whatever you can do to free the market to lower taxes and lower regulation so that more competition can get in there," favoring free-market solutions over governmental oversight (26:14). This perspective aligns with his broader libertarian views on individual freedom and market dynamics.

Social Media Platforms and Content Censorship

The conversation addresses the challenges posed by content censorship on social media platforms. Rubin critiques YouTube's demonetization practices as a covert form of censorship that stifles creators' financial viability. "Once you're demonetized on YouTube, then you're not fed into the algorithm as much," he explains (15:33). He emphasizes the importance of diversifying revenue streams for creators to mitigate the risks associated with platform dependency.

Gaming, Personal Interests, and Nostalgia

Towards the end of the episode, Rubin shifts to a lighter discussion about his personal interests in gaming. He reminisces about classic games like Contra and shares anecdotes about his gaming experiences, highlighting the changes in gaming culture over the years. "Everything has shifted with the addictive nature of the games," he observes (51:22). This segment provides a glimpse into Rubin's personal life and his efforts to balance work with leisure activities.

Concluding Thoughts and Future Outlook

In wrapping up, Rubin reflects on the importance of resilience and adaptability in both personal and professional realms. He underscores the value of building and nurturing communities that prioritize free expression and mutual respect. As the episode concludes, both Rubin and Kelly express optimism about the future of technology, media, and societal progress, advocating for continued vigilance against data misuse and media manipulation.

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Notable Quotes

• Political Evolution:
  "That's partly why I evolved politically, because I was talking to all these scary right wingers and all the people that I was told were evil and they happen to be the nicest people that I'm meeting." — Dave Rubin (00:29)

• Optimism for America:
  "We're about to have the renaissance of America... the economy is going to boom and the world is going to get reordered politically." — Dave Rubin (02:08)

• Data Privacy Concerns:
  "They're gathering data on everybody and then they know us more than we know ourselves." — Dave Rubin (25:46)

• Content Censorship:
  "Once you're demonetized on YouTube, then you're not fed into the algorithm as much." — Dave Rubin (15:33)

Conclusion

This episode of Digital Social Hour offers a comprehensive exploration of the intersection between politics, media, technology, and personal growth. Dave Rubin's insights shed light on the evolving landscape of free speech, data privacy, and the enduring challenges posed by big tech and polarized media. Sean Kelly adeptly navigates these complex topics, facilitating a dialogue that is both informative and engaging for listeners.

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Key Takeaways

• Political Engagement: Engaging with diverse political perspectives can lead to significant personal and ideological transformations.

• Media Influence: Alternative media platforms play a crucial role in shaping political outcomes and countering mainstream media narratives.

• Data Privacy: The consolidation of personal data by big tech poses substantial risks, necessitating greater awareness and proactive measures.

• Entrepreneurship: Building independent platforms like Locals.com empowers creators to maintain control over their content and communities.

• Gaming Culture: The evolution of gaming reflects broader societal shifts, emphasizing the importance of balancing technology use with real-world interactions.

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Further Listening

To delve deeper into Dave Rubin's perspectives and future discussions on data privacy, media dynamics, and the intersection of technology and society, subscribe to Digital Social Hour on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

That'S partly why I evolved politically, because I was talking to all these scary right wingers and all the people that I was told were evil and they happen to be the nicest people that I'm meeting. And then unfortunately, what happens usually on the other side is the more you talk to the people on the right, the more that the left hates you. And actually, it's not a two way street there. When you're on the right and you start talking to people on the left, people are usually like, oh, that's interesting. They're not that bright, or they don't really understand what they're talking about.

[C]

All right, guys, Dave Rubin here from Miami hasn't been to Vegas in a while.

[B]

I have not been in Vegas since 2016.

[C]

Damn.

[B]

I have only been to Vegas once in my life for one night. It was the Democrat National Convention. Bernie. Bernie versus Hillary. I was going to cover it. I was working for Aura tv. They had no budget, so I had to pay to take my team out. And because I didn't have much money, I was making maybe 50, 60 grand a year. We stayed at Circus Circus.

[C]

Wow. $20 a night.

[B]

I still have the disease I caught that night.

[C]

The bedbugs.

[B]

Yeah, it was that place. I mean, the whole place smelled like a. Like a disinfectant factory. Yeah, something is not right over there. We're leveling up this time. We're over at the fountain Blue.

[C]

There we go.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

No wonder you haven't been back since. So that was your experience.

[B]

It freaked me out. But I love. The funny thing is I actually. I'm not a gambler, but I love casinos. I. I love the energy of it. I love the overstimulation. I love the scent. I love the just. There's something about a casino. Everyone is just who they are. When you're in a casino, you know what I mean? You see people in tuxedos and you see the biggest trash of all time and everything in between, and they're all interacting and I just. I love that. It's something about the gestalt of life or something.

[C]

I'm sure you've been a lot happier since the election's finally over.

[B]

Oh, My God, this is. I mean, we're about to have the renaissance of America. How old are you?

[C]

27.

[B]

You do not remember, my friend, the 80s, and they're about to be back. And it was the best decade in American history. Certainly, you know, from. If you're any modern times, at least. Like, there is going to be such a burst of culture and comedy and humor and movies and music. Like, all of the stuff that has been just so rotted and calcified and sucked for so long now it's all coming back and. And the economy is going to boom and the world is going to get reordered politically. It's, It's. There's a lot of goodness coming. Not to say they don't have two months to really up a lot of.

[C]

Well, they're trying to put Kamala and they're telling him they resign.

[B]

They're trying to put her in. They're trying to start World War, World War iii. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we're going to have to deal with till then. But I'm so bullish on the future of America right now. And had it gone the other way.

[C]

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. They might actually really start that war. It's looking really concerning. Right? Yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's sick. Like, the. These people want to hold on to power in a way that they're literally now knowing they're losing power. They're shooting. We are now basically giving Ukraine rockets to shoot further into Russia than ever before. At some point, if you're Russia, you might say, we're not going to take this anymore. That's not making the case for Russia or arguing for Russia or anything else. But they're a sovereign nation, too. Ukraine's a sovereign nation. They're a sovereign nation. If somebody was paying for Cuba to shoot rockets into Miami, I might be forced. Destroying that place.

[C]

Yeah. They're going to make it hard on Trump to negotiate. The more they attack him, I mean, the harder the negotiations.

[B]

Well, it feels right. I mean, that's the thing. It feels like they're thrown in the kitchen sink now. It's like, oh, Trump's going to come in and fix this real quick. Let's see how dirty we can make it, you know?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Before he gets in there.

[C]

It's like they're sore losers, right?

[B]

Yeah. Not like it. They are sore losers.

[C]

And then they blame the J6 incident that we're sore losers, too.

[B]

So the fact that they even. That that is even a thing anymore, that anyone Buys any of that. I'm so over all of that. And that's why I'm so, like, please. Not just because of the election, but just the upheaval now with mainstream media and that no one's buying this nonsense anymore. And that even today, Elon's like, maybe I'll buy msnbc. Did you see that?

[C]

I saw that.

[B]

And it's like, we don't need a cable channel, really, because the Internet has clearly eclipsed all that. But just the wholesale change that has occurred. We've known it. We've all known it for a while. You're online, you're doing a show. Like, you get what's going on out there. But we needed the culture to have, like, a real sort of mindset shift where it was like, oh, the online thing doesn't mean we're all perfect at all of this, or there's all kinds of fault lines there, too, but that the mainstream corporate press is dead and it needs to be buried, and we need to keep burying it. You know, there's an inclination like, oh, they kind of. They're losing numbers and everything else. Like, now. Just stop talking about them, stop paying attention. But, like, it's like Freddy Krueger. You got to bury their bones a couple times. Absolutely.

[C]

Alternative media, I think, decided the outcome of this election.

[B]

Oh, I completely agree. I mean, that's. I think this was the election over reality. It wasn't really. People think it was Trump versus the Dems or Biden, Kamala, whatever it was, but it was reality. And I think they finally learned that enough of us had woken up to the bullshit. We had woken up to the bullshit around very fine people on both sides and all of the COVID stuff and the Russia hoax. And just enough of us were like, you know what? Enough of this. Enough of this bs. And the amount of people that I know in my personal life. I'm not even talking about my audience in my own personal life who had absolute Trump derangement syndrome for the last eight years.

[C]

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[B]

Who are now the biggest Trump supporters. It's crazy. I know at least a dozen people in my own personal life.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

And that. That tells you, you take a guy like Bobby Kennedy should not be voting for a Republican. Tulsi should not announce that she's a Republican and be on stage with Trump. Elon should not be a Republican. I should not be a Republican if things were set in some kind of sane way. But here we are. And again, I think this is now the greatest political movement that I've ever seen in my lifetime. This is. It's because it's not a conservative movement. It's a. It's an America movement. And we're going to fix the health system. The economy's going to start chugging. We got some good stuff.

[C]

I'm excited. What was that final straw?

[B]

Maybe I've just hopped up on that crazy air they pump in the. In the hotels.

[C]

Yeah. Oh, you could be.

[B]

You know, they pump that air, start feeling a little crazy. I think, I think I might have a little.

[C]

Gives you that itch to get on the tables. Absolutely. What was that final straw for you to switch because you were a little sooner than some of the people you named.

[B]

Yeah. You know, there were a couple things along the way. The one that most people sort of know as my famous moment was I was on with Larry Elder when I was still a lefty. I had just left the Young Turks Network. Larry Elder, who happens to be black, he's a conservative. He's libertarian. Really. And we started talking about systemic racism. And he, I was interviewing him, but he just flipped the interview on me, just completely twisted it on me, started asking me all these questions. I did not have proper answers. And I don't know how many people get to say this. Maybe you'll get to say it one day. But in my career, I think my best and worst moment was at the exact same time, because it was my worst moment because I came to a gunfight not ready for the debate. I was not prepared, and he was. So that was why it was my worst moment, and it was my best moment, because when that show ended, we weren't live streaming was going to be aired the next day. And I was at Aura TV at the time, so we had a bunch of producers and stuff. I go into the control room after, and all the producers were like, don't worry, Dave. We'll. We'll cut that part out. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And, you know, sometimes in life, you just say something. You don't. You don't even think about it. You just say something, and it's the right thing, and it's. And there's a reason it's right, because it's true. I was just like, no, we got to leave that in. If I'm an interviewer, I can't cut probably the most important part of the interview. Then. Then what am I doing this for? And we left it in. And the next day, you know, a million. It gets cut a zillion ways across YouTub. And, you know, it's black conservative destroys white libtard and all that. And it gets, you know, millions of views in many different iterations and across all platforms. And for a day, I was like, man, this really sucks. And then I started looking at the comments, and there were all these people like, hey, you know, Ruben was listening, and he said that they'd continue the conversation and everything else. And then you flash forward five years, and I'm on stage with Larry Elder when he's campaigning to be governor during the Gavin Newsom recall, because we became. And he's a dear friend of mine now, and it's like, that's what a proper evolution is about. If you go. If you go towards the truth, good things will happen.

[C]

Full circle moment.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. 60 Minutes did not. Or they did cut stuff out. You did not.

[B]

I. I just wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. You know, I've done, I don't know, thousands of interviews at this point. We've. We've edited only one for content ever. And it was because somebody who. Name need not be mentioned, but who's a fairly big star. Everyone watching this knows the person was so drunk and stoned that I actually felt it could, like, completely wreck their career in a. In a really terrible way. So we edited that one. And then beyond that, we've edited, you know, if somebody has, like, a coughing fit or, like, so, yeah, has to get up, go to the bathroom, but otherwise we just Let it. We let it be and let the chips fall where they may, 100%.

[C]

I'm the same way. I've only edited if they asked, if they asked to cut something out. But other than that, have you had.

[B]

People ask because they want to cut out, like they said something wrong or they realize they stepped in some shit?

[C]

Yeah, more like a PR thing, like they announced something too early, like, whatever.

[B]

So that type of thing. I wouldn't have an ethical problem with that. If it was like, literally like, oh, I shouldn't. We're launching a product and I, you know, something like that. I wouldn't have a problem if it was content, if it was specific content, I think I would have some sort of ethical dilemma or at least a discussion with them about it. I don't do as many live as I used to. I used to do a ton of my interviews live stream. Now we do my daily show live stream, and we do the interviews usually pre taped.

[C]

How come?

[B]

More because of scheduling than anything else. You know what I mean? Like, you just start doing this and just like you. You just finished up some stuff, and then, you know, it just gets more complex to be doing it that way. So for me, it's like, we know we're doing my live show every day, 11am Eastern. That's what we're doing. And then the interviews, we just kind of set them as the day's going by. And also, I'm busier now than I was back then, so with hits or travel. So it's just. It's purely like a mapping thing when.

[C]

It comes to picking guests. Do you have a line that you draw with certain people that you'll have on.

[B]

I try to make it as wide as possible, but as you probably know, like, it starts. The bigger you get, it starts becoming a little bit more complex because especially if you do anything roughly political or cultural, generally speaking, people on the right or whatever we just described as this new Trump thing, they're willing to talk to anybody and have those conversations all the time and laugh about it and then break bread with you after. And that's partly why I evolved politically, because I was talking to all these scary right wingers years ago, and I was like, wait a minute, Larry Elder's a nice guy. Ben Shapiro's kind of cool. Having dinner with Dennis Prager and Glenn Beck and all the people that I was told were evil, and they happened to be the nicest people that I'm meeting. And then unfortunately, what happens usually on the other side is the more you talk to the people on the right, the more that the left hates you. And actually it's not a two way street there. When you're on the right and you start talking to people on the left, people are usually like, oh, that's interesting, they're not that bright or they don't really understand what they're talking about. It's sort of what Bill Maher is going through right now where he can very easily talk to all of these people on the right on his show, even on his podcast, he's just getting stoned with largely conservatives and he doesn't really disagree with them anymore. But it's getting harder for him to find lefties that make sense because the progressives have, you know, gone.

[C]

So yeah, yeah, it seems like he has shifted.

[B]

Bill Maher, he says he's in the exact same spot. I would argue, and I've made this argument to him on air end off that he should shift. Because you get it, Bill, you're right on free speech, you're right on identity politics, you're right on all the stuff what the Democrats have done across the board. Just vote. So then don't vote with them. Like, come on, man, last step, last step. He may never get to the last step, but the fact that he's willing to, to hold the position I think is honorable. Which is why I play a lot of clips on my show of him. I credit him a lot and I give him a lot of shit. It's like a, it's like a total 50, 50 parody on it.

[C]

Yeah, no, that's a good point. What you said earlier though, because I've had Pac man on, I've had Harry Sisson on. I don't know if they'd have me on their show, to be honest.

[B]

You know, I just did this thing with Pac man on Piers Morgan. You know, you get 18 boxes and everyone's yelling at each other and it's just like, there's just nothing there. There's nothing there. And the fact that Sisson, who. It's not even worth finishing the sentence, but it's like you're basically getting like a 15 year old. Like this is what the left has been left with. There's so few people to make coherent good arguments on the left that when Piers Morgan, who has a huge show is trying to get people left, he's left with getting this kid. Because there really are very, very few people on the left willing to make good arguments.

[C]

Very few. I can only think of a handful. Maybe Destiny, Pac man, and I really don't know after that.

[B]

Like, yeah, I don't, I don't even know that those guys are making particularly good arguments. But I'll at least grant you that they're willing to go on those things and talk to people. You do.

[C]

Deb dates often?

[B]

Not as much as I used to. I used to do a lot more. You know, I was kind of early in on the Internet when that was like happening all the time and then. And I have like the scars of that and, and the successes of it and everything else. I'm much more interested in building things right now. I'm much more interested in people that are just like doing cool things and building businesses and doing things that are less political. I built a tech company in the middle of this. I'm interested, you know, everyone's kind of interested in like the food and health and fitness stuff right now. So I'm more interested in like, let's do all the things to fix America rather than debating whether socialism is good. I'm past it, man. I'm past.

[C]

I feel that. What's your tech company about?

[B]

So we started locals.com about five years ago basically to fight big tech Patreon. Do you remember Patreon or do you use Patreon by chance? No, I remember it okay. Patreon was basically the subscription model for all the creators and they were kicking people off and just banning them overnight without any recourse. And I was touring with Jordan Peterson at the time and we were looking at that like, well, this isn't right. And I was making about 80% of my company's rev on Patreon. I was like, well I can't survive like this because I might say something that they're going to kick me off tomorrow. I can't run a business like that. So spoke to my brother in law who's a tech guy, we started Locals.com, which was basically to build subscription models for creators where you own everything, you own the data, you control your community, live chat, video, blah, blah, blah. We built it. We eventually merged with Rumble. Rumble went public.

[C]

Oh, nice.

[B]

And I think we did a really nice. Let's say it's a nice little feather in my cap of fighting for free speech, fighting for the things that I talk about all the time. I put it into action instead of just talking about it.

[C]

Well done. Yeah, not bad. I remember Patreon was everywhere and they kind of like fell off right Deservingly so.

[B]

So Locals has taken a lot of the, a lot of the market from them. And then you know, there's some others as well. Nice. But we just did. We just did. I saw a problem, and I was like, somebody's got to solve it. And then, like Homer Simpson, I was like, well, I'm somebody. And then.

[C]

And that's how Rumble started to. They saw a problem with YouTube, you know.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

Censoring videos. And I'm sure you dealt with that as someone that was on YouTube.

[B]

We used to get Demi. We had a bigger problem with demonetized than. Than deleted.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Which I always thought was interesting because sometimes, you know, they would delete channels or they delete Alex Jones or someone that might be, say, more controversial than me, but what they would do with me all the time was they would just demonetize us. Which you might think, okay, well, that's not censorship, because your videos get there. But there were two things that they were really doing. One is once you're demonetized on YouTube, then you're. You're not fed into the algorithm as much. So. So it's like a secret way of censoring you. That's one part. But the other part is, you know, at some point, you got to make money. And if you start realizing, boy, I'm doing all these great videos on all these awesome topics, but I can't make a dime, you might start changing topics. So they were. That was their, like, creepier way of censoring people. I think I do have to give YouTube credit, though, even though obviously I'm a Rumble guy and locals and everything else, but my show's crushing it on YouTube right now. And I will give YouTube credit. They seem to have moved past that. And you may have seen the article a couple of days before the election where they did. New York Times did this big piece about all the crazy right wingers on YouTube. And then they asked YouTube for a statement at the end, and YouTube said, We're not deleting the videos and we're not demonetizing them. Wow. But that also shows you that the culture has shifted. YouTube is less afraid of the cancel machine now, so they're kind of doing what's right because capitalism is a beautiful thing.

[C]

Well, they have to play that balance with their sponsors. Like, right now, Twitch is hurting. Have you seen this?

[B]

I'm not on Twitch. I should be on Twitch. I used to. I don't want to brag, but I used to be assistant manager at Electronics. You know it as GameStop. A long time ago. I was a pretty good gamer. But I know that there's been some wacky Stuff going on over Twitch.

[C]

Yeah, I've heard revenue is down 60% on streamers this month.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

The sponsors are just not wanting to fund Twitch because.

[B]

Because people are saying mean things and doing.

[C]

I haven't looked into it fully, but there was this one streamer talking about the Israel Palestine war. He said the wrong thing and a bunch of sponsors didn't like that and they banned the guy. And now it's kind of.

[B]

You know, it's one of the reasons that no matter what you do or putting aside what your political opinions are, are on Middle east or anything else, you. If you're running a business and you're a creator, you have to diversify. You should have a subscription model and you should have ads and you should have pre roll and you should do merch and do as much as you can so that if three of your five things are not. Are taken out, which would be an awful lot, you're. You still exist to some extent. And then build new things. That really is the answer.

[C]

Yeah. Because a lot of creators put all their eggs in one platform and then they get banned or to monetize, then what's next?

[B]

I mean, you're just at the mercy of people who can just shut you off like that. You know, you mentioned the January six thing. I mean, Parler had 23 million unique viewers, unique users, which was a ton at that point. There was as much crazy January 6th incitement happening on Facebook. There was on Parler. The reason Parler got taken down was big tech saw it as the threat. They were like, oh shit, there's a new guy on the block and they seem to like Trump. So, you know, January 6th happens and then they were on Amazon AWS and that's how they blew em up. I don't know if they click a button or it's a swipe or whatever it is, but they just blew up their servers and that was it. So you have to do some things to protect yourself.

[C]

Absolutely. Took them down from the App Store, took down their site and everything, right?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, aws, virtually everything on the Internet is run by aws. Rumble does have a cloud service now, which is BC to be. And there are some others, obviously. Rack, Stream or a couple others.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But you got to do whatever you can to protect yourself when you're doing this.

[C]

Absolutely. Do you want Alex Jones to regain control of infowars?

[B]

Yeah, it's his. It's his. I mean, I don't. I'm not even fully aware of exactly what the insanity of the Lawsuit is fully about. I mean, I know it has to do with the Sandy Hook incident and all that, but, like, the Onion was going to buy it, and then that last second didn't. It's. No, it's his property. He created it. Whether you like the guy, whether you don't like the guy. I was very happy that I defended him from the beginning. Probably should have done it even louder, but everybody was afraid we were all going to get taken out. But I did pretty early on defend him, and I'm glad he's back on. And again, it's. There are plenty of people. Pac man and some of these other guys, like, I don't agree with them. They. Some of them say shitty stuff about me. All right, say your shitty stuff. Be online is what it is.

[C]

Yeah, well, some people just do it for views. I feel like. Oh, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Let's be honest.

[B]

Well, you know, the weird thing about the game as it relates to that is like. Like, if you could go on my channel, and I talk about CNN hosts all the time and I talk about mainstream hosts all the time, but I never talk. Virtually never talk about, like, the lefty versions of me. Or, my God, this guy on YouTube said this. Like, to me, that's such child stuff. Like, let them have their corner of the Internet. It's not great. Most people mature out of it, actually. Or, you know, you had Pac man on, and it's like. I think if you sit down with most of these people, their ideas are pretty thin and people wake up pretty quickly. So I'm not interested in, like, just doing that. But I know that for a lot of these guys, if they talk about me, it. It makes the money. It's just. It's just as simple as that. It's not much more complex than that.

[C]

Yeah, you're one of those.

[B]

I don't think they think I'm as evil as they would purport to, as the channel might imply.

[C]

You know, you're one of those names. You're like Logan Paul, where if someone makes a bad video about you, 100k views guaranteed.

[B]

It's just. Which is so funny because I'm it. To me, I'm not controversial. I guess I'm controversial in that we live in a strange world. But if someone was to take the totality of my opinions and the way I live my life and my career, you might say this guy would have been. I would have been fairly mainstream, kind of whatever, milquetoast. If this was 1986 or something, pretty crazy.

[C]

I don't think you're that controversial.

[B]

I don't think I am, but, you know, whatever. Let them. Let them have their corner of the Internet.

[C]

It's all relative, though, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What do you think of all these people leaving X?

[B]

It's not going to work. I mean, the Blue sky thing is not going to work. They've tried other versions of this. Even on the right, they tried versions of this during the old regime. You know, they had Parlor and they had. What was the other one that Jason Miller created? What was that called? The Jason Miller Twitter alternative. Not Parlor, was it. What the hell was it? Well, then Trump had Truth Social, but then there was the one Getter. Getter was the other one. You know, there have been versions of this that they've tried on the right, and it never really worked. True Social has parts of it working because Trump is there. He's back on Twitter now, too. The left, the problem is they can't really create things because at least as the left stands now, they don't really believe in free speech. So I'm seeing the same screenshots that I'm sure you're seeing these people getting banned and kicked off for this and that. And it's all going to be the worst sorts of people fighting. And the truth is, as I just said, the culture has so shifted. X is where the action is right now. If you want to be in the game, X is the place. And the irony is, all Elon did was make it even. He didn't make it more right. His politics, maybe you might think, are now more right because of the Trump thing, but all he did was say, hey, we're gonna not shadow ban as much. We're gonna make the playing field more equal. You know how many times a day I could open up my Twitter feed and see people posting Nazi memes at me and horrible things that they say about me and everything else. So you either block them or you mute them, or you ignore them or don't open the freaking mentions.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But I would much rather be in a place where the action is and be a part of that than just go to my own little nothing and argue with, you know, not the brightest people in the world.

[C]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't even argue on Twitter. It's not worth it.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's not. It used to be fun to do that sort of thing, and every now and again, I'll get into one, but it's pretty rare. More often than not, I'm about to do it, and then I'm like, What's like literally what is the point? What is the point? But years ago, you know, and all these social media things, they all kind of like, they have these waves where at one time, you know, at one time Twitter, when Twitter first started and hashtags were big, they used to have these hashtag games and it would be like hashtag political sitcom. And you had to combine like a word from an old school sitcom with like a current day politician or just like some silly little game. And that's what Twitter was. And then it more now it's become hyper political, obviously, and right in the middle of the culture wars. But I would just rather be where the action is, where people are fighting it out and duking it out and where free speech is respected than. Than anywhere.

[C]

Yeah, Twitter's hot right now. They're unbeatable. What's your stance on TikTok? I have mixed one on this. I'd love to hear your opinion.

[B]

So I. We are. My show is on TikTok, but I said to my social media guy, he wanted to do it. I did not want to do it because of what's going on with China and everything else. And I was like, I'm not putting it on my phone and I'm certainly not asking an employee of mine to put it on his phone. He said he wanted to do it. We're doing quite well on there and I'm just kind of letting it be on that. But I don't even have it. I've literally never even scrolled once on TikTok, so I can't totally speak to everything that's going on there.

[C]

Yeah, I think a lot of apps just spy on you, not just TikTok. You know what I mean?

[B]

Oh, no, everything does. I mean, literally, I bought a freaking outdoor swivel chair that I bought just by going on my computer to a website. And then my Instagram feed was blown up on my phone, which I don't even think is somehow connected to my computer. I don't connect them.

[C]

Are you logged on Instagram on your computer?

[B]

No. No.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah. So I don't even know what that. But then I suddenly started getting all these ads for outdoor swivel chairs. So it's like I know there's some way with some email or some logged in, some, like there's some connection. But the point. The point is that none of us really know what all these touch points are and we're just deep in that thing and we just are. We just.

[C]

We are. But I saw Charlie Kirk on Patrick by David show talk about TikTok and how he got hundreds of millions of views there and it really impacted like people's perception.

[B]

Oh, I think that that's absolutely true. You know, the other thing is it's a little hard to tell how much of the traffic is real. It's hard to tell how much of the traffic is real in general, but much less when it's coming out of China and if they want to push things a certain way and everything else. So it's like you just got to decide how far down that rabbit hole of thought you want to go and how much you want to invest in all of those things. And, and if you're Charlie, it's of course it's great. I like Charlie a lot. It's. It's great to be getting those views if they're legit, but also if that means you're opening up your phone to spyware. Dear Charlie. Well, you may not want to want all those conversations public. So, you know.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, they were spying on Tucker. Right Signal.

[B]

I mean, all of these things at this point, I think you have to basically assume that whatever you're doing or sharing to some extent, maybe not your name is associated with anything, but it's the data more than anything else. I'm not super concerned about them spying on specific people. You know, there was the Tucker thing, so it's not that it doesn't was on a watch list and Tulsi was on a watch list and I've had strange things happen. So I'm not saying that none of that exists, but it's more to me the bigger the meta issue is that they're gathering data on everybody and then they know us more than we know ourselves. We can all say we have certain behaviors and we like this or that, except they know what we're actually clicking, they know what we're actually looking at. And if you sat down in a focus group, you might say something very different and think you're telling the truth rather than what your actual behavior is on these things.

[C]

And speaking of data, you saw what happened with 23andMe.

[B]

Well, it's happened. Did it happen again just in the last couple days or.

[C]

No, just in the past. Just in general, how the whole board resigned and everything.

[B]

There's a whole slew of problems there because, like, what kind of data did they just get? And they've now connected people over generations and like, who knows what the right freaking bad actor could do with all of that as it relates to bank accounts and and medical records and just.

[C]

Yeah, blackrock's involved.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

There's a lot of how much faith in them.

[B]

You don't have much faith in blackrock. That's a little, you know, Starmer, the new. Well, he's not so new, but a couple month in UK Prime Minister, he's big. He just tweeted like how much he loves blackrock.

[C]

Oh, really?

[B]

He was getting owned on Twitter.

[C]

Really? Yeah. For not supporting BlackRock?

[B]

No, for supporting. He was like, we need to integrate BlackRock more into whatever.

[C]

People are waking up.

[B]

People were not happy.

[C]

Well, some of these companies are so powerful, it's like one of the side effects of capitalism. But like the pharma companies are just, they have so much control now.

[B]

I would say it's a, it's, it's an unintended consequence or something like that of capitalism. I would always err on the side of more freedom. So to me, it's like if these companies are doing nefarious things, if they're doing, you know, if they're buying too much land or if the pharma companies are obviously doing terrible things related to Covid, I would want just whatever you can do to free the market to lower taxes and lower regulation so that more competition can get in there to deal with it rather than having the government come in and try to deal with it because the government's not really good at anything interesting.

[C]

So you don't want the government to intervene on the pharma stuff?

[B]

No. Well, I would like the government agencies to be reformed, which we are going to do. So he's going in. Not so RFK for sure is going to go in and he's not going in to make the government bigger, for more control over the industries. He's going to try to hack away at the ridiculous protections they have and things like that. So in some sense he's using the government to deregulate and de detangle us from the pharma companies. There are basic things that the government should do. Like for example, I actually am firmly for this, even though I don't like governmental solutions to most things. When during COVID you'd be watching Meet the Press and they'd be talking about the efficacy of MRNA vaccines and how great they are. And then it would literally be like, and now a word from our sponsor, here's Pfizer, and it's like, wait, what you mean the thing you were just talking about for half hours? Also paying for it? So like that type of thing. There's ways, I think that the government could make that sort of thing illegal. Yeah, maybe some other stuff with prescription drugs, which, you know, it's illegal to prescription promote on commercials in most of Europe, but it's not here.

[C]

Right.

[B]

So. But all of that comes down to, do we have a competent government? We really haven't for quite some time. We might be on the horizon.

[C]

Absolutely. So you're a fan of the Doge movement?

[B]

Oh, yeah. They're going to go in and blow this thing apart. And I can't imagine two better people to do it. I mean, Elon's literally trying to get life to go interstellar. And then also he's buying Twitter to free our speech, and he's going to crush 300 government agencies and save $2 trillion. And then a whole bunch of us are going to be like, boy, I can speak freely. We're going to go to Mars. And oh, the lefties who all think that the Earth is going to end in 12 years. It's like, dude, stop fighting with the guy who's trying to get us to other planets. If you. I don't think the Earth is going to end in 12 years. I know it's not going to. But if you guys even believe it, you might not be arguing with the guy who's trying to send us to Mars.

[C]

And he's number one in Diablo. Just hit number one yesterday.

[B]

Someone just told me that an hour ago.

[C]

This dude.

[B]

So he's literally. What does that mean? He's the number one.

[C]

He's beat the game in the quickest time ever recorded. An hour, 52 minutes.

[B]

That is absolutely insane.

[C]

How does he balance all this?

[B]

I have no. You know, I've met him a couple times, and the guy, he's everywhere at once. Like, the thing about him that I couldn't get over more than anything else was like, he was so hyper present when we met. A few times. He's just there. He's just there. But then he's also, like, looking at a meme and laughing and talking business and talking about space and talking about homeless people over there. When we were in San Francisco, like a thousand things at once. I don't know. Did he lodge neuralink in there? And he's.

[C]

He might have the neuralink in there.

[B]

Like the beginning of Green Goblin, you.

[C]

Know, Would you ever get a neuralink?

[B]

You know, I'm a big sci fi guy. My whole worldview has probably been shaped by dystopian movies, whether it's Minority Reporter, Total Recall or Scanner Darkly or I could go Matrix, the Laundry List of things. I love the idea of the future and the horizon that we're going into and all of that stuff. I'm going to be, let's say, a little hesitant to directly connect myself. You know, we're. We're basically there already. And, you know, there are now transhumans that are putting things in their bodies and all. Oh, yeah. There are people that are putting chips in their bodies so that you literally can walk up to your garage door and it'll open, the lights turn on and you're. Oh, yeah, this stuff exists.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

For sure. Yeah.

[C]

I know. Dogs get chips, so. Yeah.

[B]

No, there are humans that are doing it. There's a guy, you should talk to him. His name, Zoltan Istvan.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

There's a name for a transhumanist. And yeah, he's put some chips in and. Yeah, and we'll just have, you know, we're going to have more and more of that. I mean, you saw the video, I'm sure, with the neuralink and the paraplegic playing chess. I mean, there's just unbelievable things on the.

[C]

Well, I did see Bill Gates wants to microchip a lot of people, right?

[B]

Oh, he's going to microchip the hell out of us and buy all the farmland. He is an evil. I mean, you know, it's so interesting because Elon is portrayed as evil and he's good, and Bill Gates is portrayed as good and he's evil. It's like, man, everything is upside down.

[C]

I know. I remember as a kid really looking up to him, to be honest. I saw him in the Guinness Book of World Records book, like, for Microsoft being the richest man. And I was like, I want to be him one day.

[B]

All he did was create an operating system that brought viruses to us. And now. And now he's trying to supposedly stop viruses. It really makes you wonder, I mean, think about that. Why did Apple and Mac take off after, you know, IBM and then PCs in general once it became ubiquitous? They were running the show for the 80s. When personal computers became powerful into the 90s, into 2000s, MacBook took off because it was basically the virus list solution. They had streamlined some other things and it looked pretty and Steve Jobs knew how to package it. But every time you opened up Windows, this is before you, right?

[C]

Like, no, I caught tail end of the.

[B]

You had a little bit, but you'd open up Windows, you'd go to freaking paint and a thousand viruses would show up. And then they'd sell you the antivirus software. And then that would get connected with viruses, so. And this is the guy who's trying to stop the viruses now. Something. Something's rotten in Stink Town.

[C]

Such a good point. Because I've had an iPhone for a While and a MacBook. No viruses at all. Nothing.

[B]

Nothing.

[C]

It's. It's like, impossible. I've never had.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And PC. Yeah, you're right. Those pop ups were never ending.

[B]

Never ending.

[C]

Even with the Norton Antivirus, I would still get.

[B]

Yeah, it would. Yeah. And then you'd get a virus on Norton Antivirus, and then you'd have to get CIM attack antivirus. And who is the guy? The guy McAfee.

[C]

Yeah. They killed him off. Right. He knew a lot.

[B]

He went to the jungle and that was.

[C]

Got to be careful with these conspiracies, right. Yeah. Go off the deep end pretty easily with those.

[B]

We talk basketball for a little bit. I don't want to. I don't want to, you know, jump on your.

[C]

I know. You're in. You're in Miami.

[B]

So.

[C]

Are you a Heat fan?

[B]

I'm in Miami. So I grew up in New York and then lived in LA for eight years, and now I'm in Miami. When I was in New York, I was in Long island, where, you know, technically you'd think I'd be a Knicks fan, but MSG channel, you had to pay extra on cable, so we didn't have that. But we would get the Meadowlands channel for free. The New Jersey Nets at the time. New Jersey Nets. So I grew up sort of as a Nets fan, but my favorite player of all time was Clyde the Glide Drexler up in Portland. So I was a huge Blazers fan, even though I lived in New York. And then, of course, he ended up winning the championship with Elijah 1 and the Rockets. And for my. For my birthday a couple years ago, one of my agents, I look at my phone and he sent me Clyde the Glide's contact. And now we text every now and again.

[C]

No way.

[B]

That's like. That's as good as it gets.

[C]

Full circle moment.

[B]

And my friend Phoenix here can attest, I. I've got a pretty sweet finger roll. 48. I can't do all the things I used to do, but I still can finger all.

[C]

Who wins one on one, Me or you?

[B]

You're six. Six. I haven't seen you play. I can still. I have a torn ACL in my left knee, but I do prp. You know about that?

[C]

No.

[B]

Prp, they take your blood and they spin it in a century, and then they Inject your own plasma back.

[C]

I've heard of this heels.

[B]

So it can't. It can't replace something that's not there. But it can like really strengthen everything around it. So I play with three braces like a ram. Play with the. Wrap the sleeve and then I have like the metal thing, you know, because acl, you can't go like this. But I'm in good shape. I can, I can really shoot still and I can run and I can play and I got stamina. But I'm not 66 so I'd have to, you know. What's your game like?

[C]

I'm a power forward. Layups, little mid range.

[B]

I was more of a two guard.

[C]

Oh yeah. It'd be an interesting matchup to Miami.

[B]

I got a couple of great games. I play three times a week. Ok, three hours. I got a good crew of guys that are basically couple guys in their young 20s, but mostly mid-30s into early 60s. And I got to tell you, playing with guys in their 60s, it's fun because these guys, they can't do what they used to do, obviously. Right. But they're on the court for the love of the game. Love it. So the joy on the court is just off the charts. And then you also see when you can't, you know, it's like watching a player age out. Like Jordan in his later years was probably the best jump shooter in the league even though he was known as a slasher before that. So when you see people that can't do things over the, you know, they lose the physical ability over the years. But then you can just start doing different things. You can start doing little trick shots a little bit differently or you see these guys, they've been playing together for 40 years and they're running like a triangle offense and you know, and all the young kids are just trying to run through everybody or freaking do it. Do the James Harden. I'm going to dribble, dribble, dribble, chuck a 50 footer. So it's an absolute joy playing with people in various age.

[C]

I love that.

[B]

And I'm still young enough to be able to. I can't really guard the 22 year old who's super fast. But like I'm good enough that I can be on a court with with any of these guys.

[C]

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's cool.

[B]

We'll get you out to Miami.

[C]

Yeah, we'll play for sure. We'll film that. Who's your. Who's your team now? Is it still the Nuts or You know, I don't.

[B]

I don't watch professional sports anymore.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

I basically got burned out during the BLM thing. I could not. I was already, you know, because my life is so political and what I do is so political that already, even before BLM, SportsCenter was doing politics every night or it was like, who did this player murder? Or who beat that woman? Or. And it was just every night. And I grew up. I wanted to be a SportsCenter anchor. I grew up in the heyday of SportsCenter when I was in college. It was with Keith Olbermann, who's now a leftist fucking maniac, and Craig Kilborn. Do you remember Craig Kilbourne? Craig Kilborn? He ended up having the Late show after Letterman. Guy was funny as hell. He was the one that really, to me, made SportsCenter funny. When it really started becoming almost like a comedy show instead of just straight, dry sports. He was the guy you should. You should check some old clips in him. And that's really what I wanted to do more than anything else. But then as time went on, it just started becoming a political show. I was just like, I'm sick of hearing about racism when I'm trying to watch basketball highlights. So that kind of just turned me off. I watch old games. I literally. If you go to my YouTube search history and you'd see what I'm doing during Cardio. I watch 80s and 90s NBA.

[C]

Those are classics. Even though they're blurry.

[B]

Those are classics and they weren't blurry back then. People think. People your age think that they were blurry. You understand that? They were not blurry for us.

[C]

Wait, so how is it.

[B]

I don't know. I don't know.

[C]

Mandela effect.

[B]

I don't know. I was playing one of my guys, my social media guy, Brock, he bust out on PlayStation 5. He busted out NBA 2K, the. Whatever, the newest one is. Right. So I wanted to play with my old School Blazers 91 team. So we go back and then now, you know that they like, skin it so it looks like you're playing, watching it on TV in that age, you know?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So they make it blurry when you're playing. And I'm like, it was not blurry. We. We watched things that looked like, you know, it wasn't. We didn't have HD plasma.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Giant screens. But it was not blurry.

[C]

I mean, your brain back then couldn't comprehend what what's today looks like. You know what I mean?

[B]

Well, that might be true, that it's gotten so much better. But it was not blurry. The way they've somehow blurred everything. It just was not that way. I promise.

[C]

I feel that though that BLM BLM stuff was nuts. All the players were wearing it.

[B]

I was like, I just couldn't take it. I was just like, you know what? I'm not interested in giving these guys my money. I'm not interested in watching anymore. I love the. You know, I'm. I'm such a fan that like I've watched the 92 finals where that was Jordan, the famous shrug.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And he beats. He beats Clyde, which was sad for me. But I've watched. I could give you basically every shot of that six game series. I've watched it so many and I just love it. You know, just like something. It. I don't know, it connects me to a certain time in my life or something.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And basketball was very different than it is now. I also just. Professional basketball, I just think has become so bizarrely one on one. And all the dribbling and like deep.

[C]

Three pointers, they take 63s a game now.

[B]

Well, Steph, who revolutionized the game in some sense, he did a little damage there too. Because then everybody was. Wait, how many did you say?

[C]

The. The Celtics on opening night took 61 three pointers.

[B]

God. Out of how many shots? Probably. That's probably more than.

[C]

Probably. Almost way more than half. Yeah, it was almost all their shots.

[B]

Like, that's just not. And this is. You get older and then you start, like, in my day, everything is better. But like, you'll see it too. Like one day you'll be there because they'll add a four pointer and you'll be like, we had three pointers.

[C]

And no, when I played. Because I played growing up as a center. You didn't have to have a jump shot as a center growing up. You just had to make layups and get rebounds. Yeah, that's it.

[B]

I remember when, when I was growing up playing and my uncle, who was a pretty good player, he went to Duke. He didn't make the team, but was always practicing with the Duke guys and we used to play all the time. And he grew up in a time before the three point line. So I grew up in shooting threes. And he could never understand it. He just, he couldn't. Like it couldn't work in his brain. Why would you ever shoot at 3? Why are you shooting out there? It just doesn't matter. Learn how to shoot a jumper. And then of course, the mid range jumper did get decimated. I mean, who shoots a mid range jumper?

[C]

It's gone now. Maybe like Kyrie Irving. There's not many players these days.

[B]

Yeah, it's just. But you know things, it doesn't mean it's always changing for the worse. So I don't watch enough to know and I know there's some super skilled guys and my guys, you know, I see what's his name on the Spurs.

[C]

Oh, Wemby.

[B]

Like I'm watching some of these highlights or, or Giannis. Like obviously there are guys doing awesome, awesome things. I just, I just don't have the interest in that way.

[C]

Yeah, I'll say this about Bron because I, I like him as a player, but off the court is so hard to like him, man.

[B]

Like, oh my gosh, the book that he's never read.

[C]

Dude, when he made that post back in Kamala, I was like, this might be the final straw for me, to be honest.

[B]

I'll tell you something funny about a couple weeks ago. I was with my sister in law and she wanted, she was looking at a house maybe to buy in Miami. And we're parked in front of the house and it was a narrow street and there's a blue Lamborghini behind us honking, honking, honking. We didn't realize it was there. Honking, honking, honking. And then we kind of move out of the way and it rolls up and it's LeBron James and he gives us the evil eye.

[C]

No way.

[B]

He gave me the evil eye. I got the stink eye from LeBron James.

[C]

What a story. Yeah, dude, I wanted him to pass Jordan, but just off the court, man, wait for points. Just in terms of ghost status, I.

[B]

Don'T know that anyone can ever pass Jordan. Well, I think it's 6 for 6 in finals. I just don't know how you beat that. Everything else and if you think about what Jordan did, takes out Magic in 91, who takes out Clyde in 92, takes out Barkley in 93, who won MVP that year. Then he has the two. Well, he has the off year in 94 and then they. He does lose to The Magic in 95. Then he takes out Kemp and Peyton in 96 and then takes out Stockton and Malone those last two years.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

It's like he took out everybody and he took out Ewing, who had pretty great Knicks teams in the Eastern Conference finals. He took out Reggie, he took, he assassinated everybody. So to me, even if LeBron's numbers, which will probably overall be better, right.

[C]

I mean, he's Already got more points. Oh, he has more points for all time right now. He just became that last year, I believe.

[B]

Wow. I didn't even know that. So, you know, look, stats are stats, so you can't. You can't argue with stats. But I think if you pure. How many. What's. What's LeBron's finals record? It's like, what, like, three and six.

[C]

He's got. Does he have three or four or.

[B]

Maybe.

[C]

I think he has four.

[B]

So four and six, that's pretty damn impressive, whatever it is. But the fact that Jordan was 6 for 6, to me, that is the thing. And he just assassinated the guys. I mean, that Shrug game, that game one of the 92 finals. And again, I'm a Clyde fan, so I literally was crying. I was 16 years old, and I just watched. I was watching him shred my favorite player, like. And there's just. And he could not be stopped.

[C]

Yeah. And he retired at his peak. Imagine if he kept playing.

[B]

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of conspiracies around why that happened, and the gambling thing and his dad, and there was a lot of stuff there. But he. Well, first off, not only could he have continued those two years, but even when he came back to the Wizards, had he gone to a good team, he. That was his one mistake, I think, in his playing days, is that he could have gone to, like, the Sacramento Kings or something. You know, they were awesome at the time. That was when they were playing the Lakers and Kobe and Shaq and everything. They had Bibby. And had he gone there and been like, I'll be a sixth man, or he could have been a starter there, too. They had a solid team. But, like, had he just been like, I'll just be on a great team, but I don't have to take 30 shots a game. He could have played at least another five years, and he probably would have won a couple other championships. Instead, he's like, I'm going to go to a shitty Wizards team that had nobody. Juan Howard, maybe. I don't. I don't even remember who was there. And. And I'll score 40 a couple times, but. So I think that was his one mistake.

[C]

That is a big mistake. People wish he never came back at all because of those years. Right. The wizard years. There's a whole documentary about.

[B]

I mean, yeah, I remember watching it, and it was kind of like. It was just sort of like, what's the point? Because he was so associated with winning. It was just, win, win, win, crush everybody. And now it was like all you were tuning in for was could Jordan score 45 again? And he did do it every now and again, but then he had games where he didn't. And you were just like, oh, you lost by 20 and you scored 16. What was the point?

[C]

Yeah, but it's hard.

[B]

But look, we should only be so lucky that we will be the pinnacle of success and then want to keep going with it.

[C]

Absolutely. You said you were a big gamer.

[B]

Earlier, back in the day. I was, I was. You know, I grew up on Nintendo 8 bit Nintendo NES and then I. My prime years were Sega Genesis and then PS1 and that. That was my college years. Just stoned every night playing.

[C]

You were a stoner?

[B]

Oh my God. College. I smoked more weed from 1994 to 1998 than probably freaking Snoop Dogg. That's who I was going for. I was gonna say Martha Stewart, but probably Snoop Dogg. And then when I got out of college, I was doing stand up and I needed a day gig and I was assistant manager at electronics boutique, which is GameStop now in Broadway. Broadway Mall, Hicksville, Long Island. Moved a lot of red Pokemon in 98.

[C]

Wow, humble beginnings.

[B]

Nobody moved. More Pokemon. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Like the Game Boy game or which one?

[B]

It was Game Boy. It was Game Boy color, I think was. It was when Game Boy.

[C]

With the battery, right?

[B]

Yeah, the one with the battery and they came out with a red. I think it was a gold one and a red one. And you know, the thing is once you go into the business of something you love it, it turns. It turns it on you pretty quickly. You know.

[C]

I ruined the feel of gaming.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Now I play. You know, my, my guys that work for me, a lot of them are younger you. The game that I'm into, I just don't have time. I have two 2 year olds. I'm busy at work, so I don't have time. But if I have a few minutes, the game that I'm digging now on PS5, they rebooted Contra. You remember the old school Contra? Contra, not in Contra was an awesome. Just 2D scroller. I'm not really good at 3D. I like going one way. I'll go that way.

[C]

Left and right, up and down, left, right, up, down.

[B]

That's my thing. And Contra was a sick game that for any of your fans that remember it, there was an amazing cheat code. It was the cheat code of all time. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, Ba select.

[C]

That's where it's from.

[B]

That was, that was. Yeah, that's the meme it was to get 30 guys on Contra and then they added that to a couple other games by Konami, I think Life Force and a few others. But they updated it now and they have a new. It's a PS5 version of it where they basically just kind of reskin the game. So the music's updated, the skin is updated, it's, you know, some new bosses and stuff. And it's just enough. I can play it for 10 minutes. Put it down. But I tried playing 2k with my guys and they're just maul.

[C]

I get wrecked.

[B]

I can't shoot. I can't shoot. Can't do it.

[C]

That game's hard, man. There's a learning curve on that one. I like games where you could just get in there and dominate.

[B]

You remember NBA Jam?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So I have.

[C]

I was a little too young, but I saw it.

[B]

I have the, the arcade version of that in my house. That's.

[C]

That's your game? Yeah, yeah. Just three buttons and the joystick.

[B]

Right, three buttons, joystick. And I can still beat my 20 year old social media guy. So that's good.

[C]

Nice.

[B]

That's basically my main marker in life.

[C]

Nice and stupid.

[B]

And I still beat my young employees at video games.

[C]

You're competitive.

[B]

I love it. 2.

[C]

2.

[B]

What do you play? What do you play?

[C]

I play Fortnite and chess. I. I was a big FPS first person shooter gamer growing up, so I was really good at those games. So I got really good hand eye coordination.

[B]

What was the, what was like the first, first piece person shooter was that. Well, like a Doom, I guess was probably like the precursor.

[C]

I played combat arms. A lot of people played Call of Duty.

[B]

Golden Eyes before you. Right?

[C]

Golden Eyes before that.

[B]

I think most people think that was like the, the first one that was like the standard of excellence that then probably sp.

[C]

Yeah. Then Call of Duty just took off and Grand Theft Auto.

[B]

I just, I, I remember one time I tried. So my, my buddy and I, who I grew up with, his kid, I guess had PS2 or PS3. We hadn't played video games in years. You know, we're like mid-30s now. We're like, all right, we're gonna get a Star wars game. We love Star wars before they wrecked Star wars. And we got one of the battlefronts or something, you know, where you're in the whole world and you're running 3D and we open up the game and it's the two of us and we could not get out of the room. Whatever room we were in to literally start the game. We. And we were laughing hysterically like it was one of the. It was 10 minutes of just. First it was frustration, then it was, like, kind of anger. And it ended in 10 minutes of buckled on the floor, hysterical effing that we spent so much of our childhood playing with these games, these buttons, masters of everything. This guy beat Super Mario Brothers in nine minutes. We could not get out of the room.

[C]

Games are hard these days. And I remember back then, if you got stuck somewhere, you couldn't just look it up on how to beat it.

[B]

You didn't know.

[C]

You had to figure it out.

[B]

Not only that, but you also couldn't save back then.

[C]

Right.

[B]

So no matter how far you would get in a game, if you just kept dying at that same boss, you had to redo it again and again and again. Actually, one of my. This. Someone could find this. Maybe. Probably my best video game moment is that Adventure of Link, which was Zelda 2. So there was the original Legend of Zelda, and then there was Adventure of Link, which most people say is the hardest of all of the Zelda games, including all the new ones on we and everything else somehow. Oh, you're from Jersey. I was in Jersey with. My grandma, lived in Jersey. And there was a store called Caldor, and it was like, just a. It wasn't a video game store. It was just like a department store kind of thing. And me and my brother went into Caldor. My grandma took us there. And there was a box that we saw in the back of the video game area. And it looked like. It sounds like I'm making this up, but it's completely true. We saw us like, gold. Like, it had the golden box. And we were like, could that be? Because Adventure of Link was not supposed to come out for a couple more weeks. Somehow it was at this Caldor. We got it. It was not supposed to come out for a couple weeks. And we beat it before it came out. And I sent a picture to Nintendo Power magazine of me and my brother beating it. And we were in, I think, the second episode, the second issue of Nintendo Power magazine.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

And I think I might have been the first commercial user to beat that game ever, because we got it before it was.

[C]

That's a flex right there. You should put that in your Twitter.

[B]

That should be in my Twitter bio. What am I doing with my life?

[C]

Yeah. I never played that game, but a lot of people played Zelda.

[B]

Well, I know everybody loved Breath of the Wild or Call of the Breath or the First One that was the Wii one.

[C]

Oh, the Wii one. Okay. What do you think of the Wii? I thought it was ahead of its time.

[B]

You mean the original Wii with the.

[C]

Yeah, the one that sticks and the sensor.

[B]

You know, I have. My nephews and nieces have it and like, it's. It's just fun. I liked it because it was like, I can't really get into the deep games anymore. Like, I'm not. I'm not doing Call of Duty, but, like, I can strap on that thing and play tennis and do that.

[C]

So fun.

[B]

Yeah, it's funny because my. My nephew now is about 7, and he's. He's really into video games suddenly. And he had this. My sister, I guess, got him some, like, knockoff kind of portable thing that has all the old games on it. You know, one of these things that has like a thousand games.

[C]

I've seen that.

[B]

You know, they've got like Nintendo and.

[C]

Gen. Yeah, I get TikTok ye.

[B]

It's that thing. But I was watching him play on it and it's like, you know, they're not all configured right because of the buttons were different on all the systems. And I was like, the screen's not right. So a fan had bought me a Wii, not a Wii switch, a couple years ago. And I just, as I said, I just don't have time. But We've got the PS5 in my studio. So I said to my nephew this like a month ago. I was like, elon, would you. Would you hold on to this thing for me? I'm just. I can't hold it right now. Could you hang on this? The joy that I saw in this kid's face, like, you've never seen happiness like that ever. And now he's been to my house a few times since, and he's like, uncle David, Uncle David, can I. Can I hold onto it? And I'm like, yeah, you got to hold onto it for a little bit. And it'll just be like our running thing forever.

[C]

I love it.

[B]

The one mistake that I made was I was still logged in with my credit card. Did buy about 20 games on that till I realized, but what are you gonna do?

[C]

Oh, man, that was me with iPhone games, Clash of Clans and stuff with my mom's credit card to realize, yeah, yeah, I'm glad the narrative on video games has changed. Cause I have a lot of good memories from video games. And there was a lot of shame, too.

[B]

But now shame like, like, oh, you're spending too much time on this. You're not getting out.

[C]

But now it's more accepted because you can make a living off of it. You could stream it, you know.

[B]

Yeah. The interesting thing for me is growing up in those games, which, as I said, you couldn't really save them. You could just, you would just play like I'd play, you know, an NBA game couple times with my friends and then we'd still go outside like you. There was one game, you're not gonna remember this game. There was a game on Sega Genesis called Herzog Zwe. It was a split screen strategy game. So you know, you had to build bases and increase your spear power so you make more money so you can buy more weapons. We would play that literally all night long. Like sometimes, you know, we'd start at 9 and wake up at, you know, 9am and just all night long doing that. But beyond that you could, you would play for like an hour and then we would just jump on our bikes and go outside. So something has shifted with the addictive nature, I think, of the games.

[C]

Oh yeah.

[B]

And everything else that, that, you know, again, as a father of two year olds, like I'm going to have to be very aware of that sort of thing. Like the things that you grew up with, the tech that was in place and the trickery that was in place to just keep you there all the time instead of playing ball or whatever else. Like it's, it's, it's real.

[C]

Well, these games probably have done so many studies on the brain and how to like keep you trapped there. Like the social media platforms.

[B]

Oh the, I mean the pleasure centers and just like the endless clicking and then we have endless scrolling with this thing. Like we just have no idea what all of this has done.

[C]

Plus the online component of like you're voice chatting now with people.

[B]

Yeah. So that's got to be a whole other. Like I had none of that. So that's got to be a whole other element. I had never even seen that till a different nephew of mine during COVID and I went into the basement when I was at my brother's house and he, oh, they were playing Fortnite.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And he's got the headset on and they're all screaming crazy. And like you really realize, wow, in my day these kids at least would have been in the same room and now they're not even. That was also a Covid thing. But like at least in the same room you're going to break it up every now and again. You're going to go upstairs to get your prime And Takis or whatever, where now it's just like, it's so ice. It's. It feels social to some extent, but it's really isolating. Actually.

[C]

That's true. Yeah. I've gone through my phase where I played a lot, but yeah, you got to touch.

[B]

How much do you play now?

[C]

Only weekends and a few hours a day. Yeah, I got it under control. But yeah, with the podcast, I'm so.

[B]

Busy, so, yeah, trust me, this is better. Yeah, this is better. You're building something and creating something and then, and then one day you will have some time and you'll have some kids and you' love introducing them to it. But like, at some point it's like, how old are you?

[C]

You're 27.

[B]

27.

[C]

Getting married next year. One kid's around 30.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, so you're. You want kids around 30, so you're on your way. You're on your way.

[C]

Well, I asked, but you're. I want to give you your flowers. You set the way for guys like me to come up in the space. You've been at this for a while.

[B]

So it's weird to become the veteran.

[C]

You're the veteran.

[B]

It is funny. Something happened in the last couple of years where now people say that to me or they bring me on shows and they're like, he needs no introduction. I'm like, what? Like what? Like there's something. But I guess, I guess, you know, Bill Maher said to me once because I asked him about the longevity of his career, because the guy's been, you know, he started standup in the late 70s and he's, he's as popular now as he's ever been. And he said to me that one of the things that he's most proud of is just that he's still here. Because there are a lot of guys that do a lot of different things that are amazingly talented. You know, there's, there's sports versions of it. You know, a basketball player, junior Rider should have been the next Michael Jordan and just became nothing. Or Harold Minor. There's a million of those guys who would be a current. One of them. Give me a current guy that probably.

[C]

Should be, I guess, Derrick Rose, if you didn't get injured.

[B]

Yeah, Derrick Rose, but that was more injury related. But, but even that, that's part of it. Like, there are people that are supposed to do awesome things that never get to. And then you find that in whether it's doing stand up or this or video games or whatever. There are guys that just. That are good. That have long careers. Sometimes there are guys that are awesome that have long careers or. And there's like every version of it. So when Bill said that to me, and now people say what you said to me, which I really do appreciate. It's like I've been around and I think I'm at the top of my game right now. So it's like, let's see how long we can run this thing.

[C]

I love it. Well, Dave, where could people keep up with you, man?

[B]

You want to meet me in the. In the universe where we play Contra Porta Potty? Is that a video game? That will be a video game one day. Porta Potty. You're gonna strap on the fucking.

[C]

There's people got boxes.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Have you seen that?

[B]

The.

[C]

They box in the cars, the telephone booths, the Porta Potties.

[B]

I got a quest. And then we just got it just to test it. And I did Beat Saber a little bit, which was actually kind of fun. And then I was just like, I gotta be in the real world. I'm on this thing enough. I gotta be in the real world. But I thoroughly enjoyed this. And we gotta. We gotta get you to Miami. Yeah. And we'll have a three point contest because it sounds like you're more.

[C]

You might win that.

[B]

You're a mid. No, that's why. That's why I'm offering. I'm not stupid. I'm not. We're not gonna have a post up contest.

[C]

All right, well, it's been fun, man. We'll link stuff below.

[B]

All right, awesome.

[C]

Thanks, guys. Peace.

[A]

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