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- [00:00]
Erica
Oh, I see them streaming in. Crusher, Gracie.
- [00:06]
Marcella
Good morning, everybody.
- [00:08]
Erica
Ej. Ej, a special shout out to you this morning. I'm sorry for all the times I can't say hello back. Good morning, everyone. Hi, Doctor.
- [00:18]
Shelley
Good morning.
- [00:20]
Joshua Lysik
Hey, everybody, look.
- [00:22]
Erica
Joshua.
- [00:23]
Marcella
Morning, Mary Kay.
- [00:27]
Erica
Good morning, fine people. We're just going to give you a minute to come in and get settled, get a good chair. We have a guest professor in the house today with us, so come up front where you can see. And we will be looking at your questions later and asking some questions to Joshua. So get ready to be inquisitive. We love it. All right. I think. Is YouTube going? Yep, I see locals. Hang on YouTube. How are you? I know Annie's over there. Hi, Annie.
- [01:02]
Shelley
Okay, people on YouTube.
- [01:04]
Erica
Excellent. Okay, so I think we're ready and we're gonna let Scott take it away. We have something important to do. Here we go.
- [01:12]
Scott Adams
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that ever Happened to you. Not only that, but the best thing that ever Happened to anybody. Now, you might say to yourself, scott, do you have any data to support your claim that this is the best thing that has ever happened to anybody everywhere? Well, as a matter of fact, I do. And the quality of my data, it's as good as your Covid. Hospitalization numbers may be better. And so you can depend on it. And if you'd like to depend on something else, there is something called the simultaneous sip that is in your future. And all you need to participate is cover a mugger, a glass of tanker, chalice of stein, a canteen, jugger, flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that's better than everything. It's called the simultaneous sip. And watch it happen.
- [02:10]
Joshua Lysik
Now.
- [02:11]
Scott Adams
Go.
- [02:16]
Joshua Lysik
Oh,
- [02:18]
Scott Adams
sublime.
- [02:23]
Erica
That was some good sipping. All right, you guys. So again, welcome to the Scott Adams School. This is separate than coffee with Scott Adams. Okay, so all of Scott's videos and streaming, you will find them on YouTube. You'll find a lot more on his Locals page, which is Scott Adams locals dot com. I definitely urge y' all to go over there, subscribe to his channel. It's very affordable. We're lining up interviews right now with some of the subscribers who are amazing, and we also have some guests that are going to be coming on. We already have those planned, so you're gonna love that. A reminder that the Dilbert calendar for 2026 was restocked you can buy that on Amazon.com. okay. Oh, I have so many videos of Scott with his Amazon orders. It would just be so fun to put those all together. But anyway, the 2026 has been restocked, so grab that there. Get one for a friend if you didn't have a chance to get one already. I see a lot of you already got it. And the Scott Adams School was Scott's wish for us to carry on. We're not trying to be Scott. We could never be Scott. It is literally just to keep some growth going, some discussion going to encourage everyone listening to just chill and have a good time with us. You know, don't. Don't take it so seriously that, you know, it's not the same exact format as God. Okay. It's. It's something different that he wanted us to do. We love having you here. And he has asked Owen Gregorian. You hear his voice and you hear him on Spaces. He's joining us as one of the hosts, of course. And we have our beautiful Marcella with a beautiful smile, and she is one of our hosts, of course. And I have a special co host and guest professor. You guys love him. It's Joshua Lysack in the house. Fan favorite. Is Joshua frozen?
- [04:27]
Marcella
Is he frozen? Oh, there you are.
- [04:29]
Erica
I was like.
- [04:30]
Joshua Lysik
I was going over to X to share it because the thing about. The thing about Rumble Studio is anytime you're trying to do anything else on your smartphone, at the same time, it shuts down everything. So I went to share the stream with my. My people over there because obviously I
- [04:42]
Erica
was feeling so special, like, you were listening to me. Like, you've never heard such amazingness in your life. I was like, he is locked in.
- [04:49]
Marcella
He's very intense.
- [04:50]
Joshua Lysik
I was literally locked in. Yes. By my Rumble Studio. Yeah. After. After we cover the reframe of the day, folks, we're going to be getting into something I like to call Portmanteau Persuasion, something that Scott Adams was very successful at running on us all going back to the 1990s. Portmanteau persuasion. You are absolutely going to want to stay for that. Probably through the episode. I think we'll get to it.
- [05:13]
Erica
Yes.
- [05:13]
Joshua Lysik
Other. Other than that, you know, make sure you got your reframe, your brain. Hard cover. Soft cover. I've got the soft cover. I think it's going to be page 94 of the soft cover. Marcella was saying, like, page 63 of the hardcover.
- [05:27]
Erica
Page 63 of the hard cover, you guys. And page 74 for your Kindle and your Paperback. And Marcella. We asked Marcella to pick a reframe today, and I think it's perfectly perfect. It's chapter three, and it is the mental health chapter. And Marcella has honed in on Internet. On the Internet. Okay, so do you guys have time to grab your reframe your brain? Hardcover page 63, Kindle and paperback page 74. And let's take it away. Marcella, we'll just hit mute while you read. Okay?
- [06:03]
Marcella
Go, go get your books, you guys. There'll be tests. No, Just kidding. So the reframe I picked is from Scott Adams book is Internet Insults, which, yeah, it's. It's apropos for today and for the last few days for. For all of us, but I wanted to read it and I wanted you to read it along with me and learn along with me. How I see reframes, as most of you do, is a reprogramming of your brain. So let's go ahead and reprogram your brain right now. Internet insults. Every day on social media, trolls and critics attack me over my appearance, age, intelligence, personal life, character, and talent. I become an accidental expert on how to reframe deep insults into my own entertainment. And I recently came upon a reframe that helps a lot. Usual frame an insult is damaging to my mental health. Reframe an insult is a confession that your accuser can't refute your opinion and or has personal problems of some sort. This reframe won't fit every situation. But people who enjoy good mental health are not spreading much time insulting people on social media or anywhere else. Likewise, when people have a strong argument, they stick with facts. You only get triggered to insult someone when your argument has been dismantled and you feel the need to act out on X. I use the reframe this way. Critic. Of course you have that opinion. Dill weed. It's because you're an uninformed and stupid me. I appreciate your confession. Then I excuse myself from the conversation without explaining what I mean by confession. Sometimes I mean my critic has lost the debate because they resorted to personal attacks. In that case, I claim victory. I scamper away to happiness. Other times, the personal attacks are not associated with an argument. In those cases, I mean the confession to be about the person's poor mental health. I'm no mental health expert, but insulting strangers is rarely a sign of good mental health. When a critic parentheses a jerk enters fight mode by hurling a personal insult at you on social media, they expect an insult in return or perhaps a blocked account. What they don't expect is a puzzle. When the heck does it mean? When someone says they appreciate a confession you never offered, it instantly changes the tone of the exchange and puts you in charge because you know what you mean and your critic wants to know because it's about them. Don't tell them. Walk away. That's how you win. I'm also testing. Sorry, I'm also testing another reframe I borrow from an ex follower that goes like this. You show frame an insult hurts because it means someone dislikes or disrespects you. Reframe a stranger's opinion of you, even if it gets published in the New York Times, is little more than their personal diary entry. No one cares what you write in your diary. That's between you and yourself. If you choose to make your opinion public, that doesn't suddenly make it matter. Think of all the dark thoughts you keep to yourself. Do they matter to anyone else? Nope. Saying a dark opinion in public doesn't suddenly make a matter. It's still just a diary entry in different form, boring and unimportant. For completeness, I must explain why you might see me engaging my critics more than my reframe suggests would be wise. I direct energy to a critic when they make a defamatory and untrue claim, a fact that would live forever as truth on the Internet unless I deal with it. In those cases, I want any future sleuths to look to know the false claim is disputed and why. So I create an interesting body of semi abusive content to draw attention away from the false claims to mark my often funny debunking of it. For example, a prominent attorney on X accused me of being wrong on my pandemic commentary because I tend to trust Institutional Data. I saw a need to remind his followers that I'm the creator of Dilber Comic and have been mocking Institutional Data for more than three decades. Sometimes I think no one on the planet distrusts distrust institutional Data more than I do. A recurring theme of my daily livestreams involves reminding people to distrust data and any source and why the attorney's pose got a lot of attention and amplified existing misconceptions about me that were, in my opinion, an obstacle to my good intention of being a useful public voice. So I sprayed some insults in his direction on X along with some debunking to make sure as many people saw the correction as saw the initial claims. Fake News can get 20 times the attention of a correction, so I tried to solve for that problem by creating more of a spectacle and sometimes being more of a jerk than observers feel it's appropriate. Don't be like me. My situation is unlikely to be relevant to people who are not public figures. I only mention it because my actions will seem. Seem inconsistent if you don't have the contact.
- [12:29]
Erica
Talking about this. I was just talking about this with Shelley and Shelley's cousin Bri before we started the show, that I would sometimes send a tweet or a post to Scott and be like, oh, look at what this person said. And he, you know, and he would just be like, well, block them. But. But I also explained that Scott had a way of letting us know if somebody makes it personal or like he said, if they're trying to change the course of history that could live on the Internet forever, correct it, perhaps mock them a little bit about it first so they can see your response and then block them because he was just like, you don't need to engage with that person or even allow them.
- [13:16]
Joshua Lysik
And.
- [13:16]
Erica
And I just thought it was so funny because I remember Scott would just be like a. Like that, you know, hey, thanks for your confession. You know, da, da, da, da, da. And block, you know, give them just enough time to read it and block. And I think that my take on that is it's okay sometimes just to block. You can mute, but you can block because we are living, you know, so publicly on here. And listen, I go off half cocked all the time, you know, because I'm reacting to something before calming down. And I do have to calm down. And I have calm down. You'll never believe it, but you're going to see it. I have calmed down. I saged my office.
- [13:56]
Shelley
Calm down, Erica.
- [13:57]
Erica
No, I'm calm. All right, so. But I, but I do think that, like sometimes, like if somebody's just out to insult you and just be that person, just, you know, block it, don't get reacted to it. And we always do like to say, like Scott always said, mock them mercilessly, make them your mascot and then do what you have to do.
- [14:21]
Shelley
But I used to enjoy when Scott would accuse people of day drinking. That was one of his funnier retorts to some of it. And it made sense. And I've done the same thing sometimes because sometimes people would accuse me of stuff and I'm like, what, What? What are you talking? Like, either they are saying something where they clearly have no knowledge of anything about me, and it's like they're so far off base that I don't know how to respond. I'm like, you know, you clearly just haven't been paying attention and you're just going off half cocked with no information, with something that makes no sense. And, you know, when Scott explained that day, drinking reframe, where he's like, people really are just like, drunk, posting on X on a regular basis, it made a lot of sense to me. And I started using that sometimes. But it was always kind of fun to see Scott go off on his critics, you know, Shelley. Not this Shelley, but the other Shelley.
- [15:18]
Erica
Oh, yeah, I told Shelley about the other Shelley. She didn't know about the other Shelly. So those of you who've been around long enough, there was a woman named Shelley, nothing to do with our beloved Shelley. And she was such a pain in the ass troll, like, she just couldn't pull it together. And the poor woman, I mean, I
- [15:38]
Marcella
think she capitalized all her post on YouTube, like in the chat, in capital letters, remember that? Where. Yeah, what that means you're drunk. He, he would, he would reframe it as if you capitalize all your words that you were drunk.
- [15:53]
Erica
Scott had rules, no all caps. You could not write in all caps or he would block you. I like that.
- [15:59]
Joshua Lysik
What do you. If I, if I can, I want to jump in here on a. Yeah. So most of you know I'm the contributing editor to Reframe youe Brain. And I had a number of conversations about this particular section and other sections, obviously with, with, with, with Scott. And so in order to, let's say, write anything effectively, you have to understand or edit it or revise it or allow it to fully pan out in print to communicate everything that you want to communicate. You have to ensure that you are being effective and covering all the bases. There's another section a little bit later on about how to be a fake in a good way that covers some of the stuff that I said to Scott. We need to address this somewhere in here. And what I want to bring up is that particular reframe starts with insult. With insult, not with disagreement. And oftentimes in our online culture, we will often misconstrue disagreement with an insult. And just because someone is disagreeing with you does not mean that they're insulting you. Also, and this is a particularly painful yet useful lesson, someone could be insulting you and providing criticism, critique. That is correct. And they could be doing it at the same time. There is a fantastic marriage advice book published back in the late 90s 90s, I believe, called Love and Respect. And there's a quote, this is what I read when I was a kid. I would read nonfiction books for adults. Being homeschooled at the time, I was rather odd in that way. But there is a quote in there that I remember from probably 11 years old or 12 years old at the time and which I read and it said, you can be right but wrong at the top of your voice. And that goes both ways. First of all, it's fantastic relationship advice that if you want to win, then you lose even when you win. But also your critics can be right but wrong at the top of their voice, or let's say all caps. So that particular reframe is specifically addressing personal attacks, not criticism, not expose, not exposure. I think there's somebody recently who absolutely botched this reframe in public and it made a bad situation worse. So given that she's already put herself out in the discourse, I'm going to leverage her example as an example. And that would be Jordan Peterson's daughter, Michaela Peterson, or whatever she goes by now. Yeah. And in this particular case, she was attacking incels and grapers and other such, the terms he was using to describe her critics. And she basically, and I'm not going to quote her, but the gist of it was, you're only saying these things about me because nobody wants you, nobody likes you, and you're a loser. Effectively, something like that. And it was, first of all, it was, it was a sort of a counterattack that was not a counter to an attack. The conversation started with deep disagreement with her, I understand on a number of points that are, let's say, objective or logical. This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this is legal, this is illegal, this is just. This is unjust, this is moral, immoral, ethical, unethical. Okay, relatively objective conversations. But she got emotional and lashed out, reacted in a subjective way. It was as if her opponents were saying, I think this and I think you're wrong, Kayla. And her response was, well, I feel like you're just a bad person. So what's interesting was, and then she made the argument that women should not be considered adults until they're 23.
- [19:51]
Erica
Oh, I saw that. Yeah.
- [19:53]
Joshua Lysik
And I thought Jordan Peterson's daughter makes a viral in the anti feminist message that women should not be allowed to vote until they're 23. Uniquely, I should have seen that one coming. That was not, I don't think that was the point that she intended to make, but the reactiveness made that become her point. And then she was like, I'm going to go log off and spend time with my glorious Husband and my three kids. And then the one of the replies of those, you're three kids from three different men. And it was inviting.
- [20:27]
Erica
Yeah.
- [20:28]
Joshua Lysik
Criticism that made it worse on the online space. I'm not critiquing. Let's hear this, Michaela. I'm not critiquing you because you were a woman over the age of 23. Be clear. I am critiquing you because in an objective argument where there were issues related to rightness, wrongness, legality, illegality, you took an objective argument and made it subjective. Went from, I think, well, I feel like. And then you gave your enemies ammunition to metaphorically attack you where you are the most vulnerable. Don't ever do that. The correct approach to responding to something like this, I have noticed, is I call it the Huberman technique. It's the Huberman technique. Many of us might recall how Andrew Huberman, the podcast and researcher, a podcaster and researcher, he faced an attempted me tooing. It turned out that he had something like a soft harem of approximately eight women and he was spinning plates, to use that language of modern dating. And there is a saying. And Erica Marcella, perhaps correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a saying that goes something like, women would rather share the king than be stuck one on one with the jester. And Huberman was basically the king who was being shared by all these women. And the thing is, not all of them knew about one another. This is, this is my recollection of the story. Okay. But the point is, there is this attempted cancellation of him. And he's like, oh, Andrew, you got to release a statement. You got a press release, you got to do something, you got to respond, you got to. He said nothing, he did nothing. And everyone forgot. The Huberman technique is when they come to cancel you, when they attack you, when they criticize you, say nothing whatsoever about it at all. That is the Huberman technique. Go ahead. In my opinion, I might call this
- [22:32]
Shelley
the Richard Gere technique.
- [22:37]
Marcella
You got to explain that one.
- [22:38]
Joshua Lysik
People under 35 won't remember that one, though.
- [22:40]
Marcella
My question to you, Joshua and Owen, since you bring it up, is what about Grok? What about AI and getting? Because Scott talked about it like the history will be written by your enemies if you don't say anything in, like, against it. And I only say that because we're entering the world of AI. So if Grok is getting X and they're projecting all the comments and you're actually not refuting it in writing, like you said, like the Huberman Approach, which in his matter it might be. So what does that look like? How do you do that?
- [23:24]
Joshua Lysik
It looks like this. Scott himself gave it to us. It doesn't matter what. And so the usual frame versus reframe concept. Usual frame, Huberman and his eight girlfriends who don't know about each other. And this is my recollection, they may not exactly be true, but it's directionally accurate. Usual frame, oh my. Huberman has eight girlfriends. Oh, what a. Whatever. The reframe in that following Scott's formula is not. Well, that's not true. Let me explain myself. Now you're falling into their frame. That's not a reframe. The usual frame to reframe concept is a completely different agenda perspective. So the usual frame is not. Or rather the reframe in this case, it's your counter to the news about you that's going to be recorded and remembered by chat, GPT or grok or Wikipedia or whatever. Is not. That's not true. I was coaching somebody who's a highly public figure the other day. She was responding to an accusation and she wrote two novellas in response to like two sentence posts from a journalist how all this is not true, it's not true, it's not true, it's not true, not true, not true, not true, Something like that. It was just like, I'm not a racist, I'm not a this, I'm not at this. It's just all the things that she's not. And I said to her, consider deleting all of this. You're coming across like you're pleading, like you're defensive, like you're reacting. And your enemies will go, oh, she's vulnerable here. We got her. You're where you defend yourself aggressively. You show yourself to be vulnerable versus apathetic, passe, don't care. What do you say about the accusations about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you don't even address it. You just talk about what you want to talk about. I think a good example of this is when in 2017 or 18, Mike Cernovich went on 60 Minutes and Scott Pelley just attack, attack, attack, attack.
- [25:21]
Marcella
Of course.
- [25:21]
Joshua Lysik
And Cerno didn't. He would answer the question that wasn't asked. It was rather frustrating. 60 Minutes journalists in the mainstream generally hate when you do this. But this is, in my opinion, unless you're trying to enjoy yourself. Now, Scott, being a humorist, would regularly enjoy himself at the expense of his critics and his haters, legitimate haters who were insulting him. I think he was having a good time, plus he was creating fodder for Dilbert. But most of us are not the professional humorist of Scott Adams who are out here to enjoy ourselves. Anybody who aspires to be anything like a niche expert or authority or even a semi public figure, I think I am deemed all of those. I'm not like famous in some respect. I'm occasionally recognized in public around town or when I'm traveling or airports and whatnot. But it's generally not like when I'm with Jack Posobec, for example, and every single person kind of clogs their way in front of him, stop him and get a photo or something like that. Right. So I'm not on Jack's level, but I will, I will point out that rather than say here's all the things that I'm not, my reframe is here all the things that I am. And here's a lovely reframe I got from my hypnosis trainer named Shannon Keys Susiewicz from Ohio Valley. Hypnosis, she said, does fantastic work. One of her specialties, by the way, is hypnosis for infertility. Hypnosis for infertility. For those who are curious, Shannon taught me that one way to effectively persuade someone to a more useful way of thinking is to use. Yes. And when you're disagreeing with him. So for, so for, for example, Rupert Lowe, Minister of Parliament, he is in trouble right now who. Because he's daughter of this Restore Britain business and he's being accused of all manner of things. And like you, you specifically said young white males have been disenfranchised. That's literally the 1933 Neo Nazi platform, somebody said today. And realizing that there was no neo Nazi in 1933, so the critics are morons. And he responded something to the effect of this accusation from a journalist. He said something like, not exactly, but there's this accusation. He used Shannon's response, which is something like, yes, and anti white racism is unacceptable. So he didn't even just, no, I'm not a racist. Look at my black friend.
- [27:58]
Erica
Right.
- [27:58]
Joshua Lysik
Which I want you to do.
- [28:00]
Marcella
Yeah, he refocused.
- [28:02]
Joshua Lysik
Yes. So when someone. You say you're a sexist. Yes. And. And then the thing you want to assert to be true. Yes, that's one of the funniest things.
- [28:10]
Marcella
Listen, go make me a sandwich.
- [28:14]
Joshua Lysik
Yes, that would be, that would be like a humorous response to that where it's just dismissing it. Right. Sometimes it's best to dismiss it. Other times, if there's a way that the controversy makes you look good. Stoke it. I did that in December 2022 with the Mary Sue Affair, I like to call it. It was the number one story on social media the entire weekend in December, first week in December 2022. That's when I wrote a piece on the Mary sue archetype that's popular in fiction, that's in entertainment, movies, shows, video games, et cetera, and the various fandoms of Star Wars, Disney, and so on and so forth. Got a hold of it and I, when I saw that they began sharing it, I thought, oh, I can. I can make this. I can make something of this. And so I got out my. My bellows and I stoked the flame. I stoked the fire. And one of the ways I did that was anytime someone would write a diatribe against me, I would, quote, post it, quote, tweet it. It was called time. I would, quote, tweet it and say, thank you for sharing. Joshua Lesnick is a real pos. He's an incel. Who's never, blah, blah, blah, blah, thank you for sharing. And then people would reply to that, being very confused. Wait, what? Thank you for sharing. What's wrong with this guy? That's even more engaged, more engaging.
- [29:29]
Erica
I like those techniques.
- [29:31]
Shelley
That also is something I've, I've noticed is like sometimes people will just rant at you and have these long diatribes. You know, you've seen it. I'm sure it's where it's like kind of verbal vomit on a page. And the most effective thing is to reply to it with just some very little thing. And usually like, you know, one sentence, one line that triggers them again.
- [29:51]
Erica
And one letter. The letter K.
- [29:55]
Shelley
Yeah, but it often sets them off and it just makes them look so foolish and emotional. And you win, you win the argument. And I've had this in my professional life too, where somebody sent me this long, rambling email and I just sent him a one line reply. And then he sent me another long rambling. He was so upset. And it was just kind of funny to watch how you can set somebody off and it makes them look so foolish.
- [30:21]
Joshua Lysik
I like fun, especially when you're saying like, maybe or they insult you. I did this on my YouTube channel, Daily Persuasion. I will get people disagreeing with me. Well, you're just obviously a partisan and you're not taken seriously and you need to check your bias. And I just reply, maybe check your bias, man. Maybe.
- [30:38]
Erica
I also like the word O. Like just writing O
- [30:44]
Shelley
that in Itself, I see as a reframe because it puts you in the dominant position. Like, it makes you seem like the authority figure where you're kind of gracing them with a few words, but you're not engaging in the whole, you know, argument at the top of your lungs thing. And when they keep going on and on and on, it just, again, it just makes them seem weak and emotional and like they've just totally lost control.
- [31:09]
Erica
I agree. I think is something we should all. And, you know, start trying because. Yes. And. And, like, if you really need to refocus what it was that they said about you, or you really just want to put your $0.02 in about actually what the situation is, just be like, oh, yes, and I also won an award for being the blah, blah, blah, blah. But okay, you know, whatever. But also try the letter K and try the word O. They're really useful.
- [31:41]
Marcella
This reminds me of the meme. I don't know if you guys know it. It's like there's two or three people in a balcony. They're like royalty from the, like, French royalty, Marie Antoinette. And they're looking down at the. At the rest of the people. It's like, oh, yeah. And then, like, you put yourself in a high ground, you. You look down upon them, and when you make small. When they make. What did you call it? Owen Burbal. Or. Or written. What did you call it, Owen? When. When they write a lot to you.
- [32:17]
Shelley
I don't know, just like a verbal rant. Just, you know, vomit.
- [32:20]
Marcella
Verbal vomit. Verbal vomit. So when they. Verbal vomit and then you're, like, looking down, and then you just go, okay. And so it just makes it like you take control back.
- [32:33]
Joshua Lysik
Yeah, I think that just. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Owen.
- [32:35]
Shelley
No, I was just gonna say. I. I just. I would say, like, this is kind of an art form. It is a skill. It's not like there's any hard and fast rules that will always work in every situation. And, you know, in many cases, it is better to just block and move on and not engage. And the other technique that I learned over the years that is very effective and kind of in a surprising way is sometimes when someone insults you, if you compliment them back, it totally disarms them because they realize they're. They were being the asshole. And if they keep going, they're going to look even more like the asshole. So they can't. They literally can't follow up because you just complimented them on something. Like, I had a project, a crypto project where people who are familiar with that space would know there's all this rivalry. And people would be like, well, my project's better than your project. And they go over to somebody's discord and they'll brigade them and say, here's all the terrible things, and you should come over to my project. And somebody did this to my project. And I would just say, you know what? I really respect what you guys are doing. It seems really cool. And that one statement turned everybody. Like, they couldn't keep insulting our project because they realized they would just look like a dick. And a lot of them said, you know what? Like, you guys are doing some cool stuff, too. And like, they. I actually converted a bunch of people just with the fact that I wouldn't engage in the insults back and forth.
- [34:01]
Joshua Lysik
That meme you're thinking of is. I think it's from the film adaptation of New Moon of the Twilight series. I think so.
- [34:09]
Erica
Oh, yes.
- [34:10]
Joshua Lysik
It's the 18th century. The. Stephanie Meyer calls them the Volturi, the vampires.
- [34:13]
Marcella
Yeah.
- [34:14]
Joshua Lysik
Yes. In Europe, I think that's what he does. But basically, like, we are immortal. We've been doing this for hundreds of years, thousands of years. Who do you think you are? And a funny way to kind of get that into your brain is have that meme at the ready. And when you see a hater, just look at the meme and you will chuckle to yourself because you're kind of imagining you as that role, looking down at this person. You don't even have to respond to them. You don't even have to reply. You don't have to do anything. I generally will think, whenever there's negativity coming towards me online, I will think, can I benefit from this in some way? How can I use this? Right? And for example, Current affairs magazine, it's a socialist publication, very openly, so it's one of the most mainstream ones that there is on. On the run, the radical left. I have a line that they wrote about me in my bio, and it was this deliciously salacious hit piece about me and Jack, both of us personally. And one of their insults, their condemnations of me, they called me Trump, world's favorite writer.
- [35:25]
Marcella
Oh, my gosh.
- [35:26]
Joshua Lysik
And that was just in their mind, just an absolute diss of congratulations.
- [35:30]
Marcella
That's a good one.
- [35:32]
Joshua Lysik
Yeah. So I put that in my bio.
- [35:34]
Marcella
It's an honor.
- [35:35]
Joshua Lysik
And I pointed that out. And they said. And they replied to it and said, that was not supposed to be a compliment. So anytime you get a hater, you get people coming at you. How can you use it? So I have a book called so good they call you a fake. Scott gave us permission to allow me to use Talent Stack in the subtitle because that's one of the things I talk about in there. And my experience with him is a number of the case studies that are in there. But one of the points of that book is, and this is a useful reframe anytime you're getting negativity towards you. Bad reviews from bad people are good reviews. What do you do with good reviews? You share them.
- [36:14]
Erica
That's right.
- [36:16]
Marcella
Yeah.
- [36:16]
Erica
I, I, you're just making me think of, I was laughing so hard. So I, I do different things on different platforms at different times. And so, for example, I sold a dress to somebody. Okay. And your ratings are very important. And so she gave me a one star review and, you know, said that she got the item quickly, but she hates the dress. Why would they put pockets there? You know, I don't like the fabric. It feels weird. And, you know, so I actually published her one star review to publicly. And I was like. And my response to her was, I am so obsessed with your commitment to hating this dress that I'm giddy. And I was like, well, I'm glad you got it quickly. And that, you know, I, I said something like, to the effect of that. So I was just like, so if anyone sees this one star review, it had nothing to do with me. She didn't like the dress, but I got the one star review. But I used it to publicize what I was doing. And that post got so much attention. And people were like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Your response was hilarious. And also, there's a, a restaurant nearby, and they had one of those little, like, sandwich boards outside, like a whiteboard that they wrote on. And it was like, come in and have the most disgusting, nasty burrito you've ever had in New Jersey. According to Yelp review, Mike loves dogs at whatever, whatever. And I was like, oh, my God. Like, they took this crazy one star review, wrote it all out. We're like, come in and try it. And I was just like, that's the way to just like, take a weird message and use it to your advantage. And I think if you could also make someone laugh or feel like a sense of relief, like, then they connect with you in a nice way also. So I do like that.
- [38:16]
Joshua Lysik
Yes. That makes me think a little about kind of taking screenshots of hate from you. And anytime you get screenshots and like, sharing, showing it, knowing that context When I promote books of mine, I regularly screenshot and share the one star reviews. And when you see the extreme, it's just rather funny. Now in this case of this dress, any semi educated utility first millennial fashionista reads that review and goes, you're selling a dress that has pockets.
- [38:49]
Marcella
Oh my gosh, yes.
- [38:50]
Joshua Lysik
Sizes. Thinking what sizes, right? So this negative review is like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The thing I'm looking for because every millennial fashionista, she wants dresses with pockets in them, right? So it's like me too, dress with pockets, right? So even in the negative review, it's containing. The negative review is actually the endorsement that people are looking for when they're shopping for. And I have bought many products with information that was tucked into the one star and two star review. Okay, Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine. I'm an idiot. Who can figure out the packaging? User error, user error. Oh, that one feature I was looking for to see if it had sent me comments on that, you know, I hate this, hate this, I hate this.
- [39:29]
Marcella
Embrace your haters.
- [39:31]
Joshua Lysik
Yes. And when I use this one feature, I couldn't stand how blah, blah, blah, I'm like, there it is. It has the feature I was looking for. Thank you. Right, so I'm not afraid of one star reviews. I invite them and I will often share them. In fact, one of the most one of the highest ranking search results actually two for so good they call you a fake. Are bloggers who've written bad reviews about the book. Like one stop full one star reviews and one of them, I think it's a higher ranking now it's, it seems like the guy didn't actually read the book because he writes the 700, 800 word review of the book without mentioning any of the content inside the book. Like what specifically disagreed with. And then as I skim and scan, I notice a suspicious number of EM dashes. And then I read Joshua Lysik doesn't just over promise, he under delivers. Here's the kicker. The truth is the harsh truth. EM dash about, oh, this is AI. AI, this is AI. He had AI write a negative review of the book because it's so popular.
- [40:37]
Erica
Oh my God. He was committed too.
- [40:39]
Joshua Lysik
Yes, but he didn't say anything about the contents of the book. 800 words. It was like a book report that you write the night before it's due for your senior or whatever.
- [40:47]
Shelley
He'll just mention, you know, we were talking about AI and and things like that. I did post an article today about AI and how it can be Essentially hacked pretty easily right now for misinformation. And the example was some journalist that said he. He just put an article on his own website that said he was like the best hot dog eater journalist or something, and he convinced all the AIs to scrape his site. And now he's known in the AI world, if you ask it, as the best hot dog eater in the journalism world or something. And so, you know, right now we are in this weird space. It might be different sometime in the future, but right now there are ways to hack AI where you could put information out there and kind of. I don't know if it would be poison the AI or pollute the AI or just put whatever information you want it to think about you just by putting it on a website and letting it scrape your information.
- [41:38]
Erica
Well, sort of like Scott's IQ185. IQ5, right, 185. Which I don't doubt. I also want to just remind everybody before we move on to Joshua's lesson, that remember this also. So when you see negative reviews, people are more apt to, like, run to make a negative review than a positive review. Okay? So they're like, oh, I am more. Never come in here. I'm gonna go on Yelp and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. And like, my poor mom, she sees me doing this podcast now. She's like, oh, my God, Erica, somebody said this and somebody said that. And I was like, oh, mom, listen. Like, we're on the Internet, like, it's a free for all, so wild west. I was like, please, these things don't bother any of us that are on here. You can't be on here without having a thick skin. And I also reminded her that. But we get so many compliments and. And from the people that actually know us and know why we're here and what we're doing. I don't know the people you're talking about. They don't know the conversations we have with Scott. It's okay. And she's like, well, you know, I don't like to see that. And I'm like, turn off the comments. Just turn it off. So just remember, a lot of people are more prone to making a negative comment than a positive comment, unfortunately. So always take them with a grain of salt and don't let them affect you personally that way, because people really are bored. It's okay. All right, Joshua, I want to just transition over to what you're here to teach us. We have about less than 20 minutes so if you could help us with more reframing and then we can have a quick discussion about what you're teaching us.
- [43:19]
Joshua Lysik
Sure thing. Yes. I wish that Rumble Studio had figured this out where you could put. Put, you know, the person's name on here. So I'm Oshualysic. Hello. I also happen to be Joshua Lysik. So that's an ideal match. Portmanteau persuasion. What I promised at the outset. Now, a portmanteau is where you take two words and mash them together into one. A good example of this, of course, is one that I have become popular. Associated with is the. There's the term bad verb, bad and adverb, bad verb. And that, of course, is where you tend to see. Journalists, reporters, commentators, politicians and other public figures will use adverbs to slide falsehoods, white truths, or white lies, rather half truths, into the popular consciousness using adverbs. For example, you might have a commentator who would say, president Trump literally just said, followed by something he did not, in fact literally just say. It's an attempted convincer, an emotional convincer. They might say ICE is basically the Gestapo. Is it basically. Is it basically at its most basic level, or is it basically just simply law enforcement enforcing federal, state and local law? Is that what it basically is? So we want to beware of adverbs used unscrupulously as bad verbs. So that portmanteau within that one word I've created, you now have a whole new way of viewing reality just with one word, one word alone. Scott Adams was fantastic at coining these portmanteaus over the years going back 30 years. One of the first ones that he did was in The Dilbert Future, 1997. I have a copy of it sitting right over there. He described people who got Internet access for the first time and because they could perform an Internet search of the World Wide Web. Remember, surfing the web was something that was regularly used. You would surf the web and feel like you were so much more educated than anyone else. He called these people in duh vigils with the D U was spelled D U H with little dashes so you can see individual. There's an individual. So it's portmanteau of individual and duh. And the idea was that not only would these individuals try to make you feel stupid by saying duh to everything, but I read about it on the Internet, duh. Of course I all read it, know that they would also share with you facts that they had learned because they were so educated and able to use the Internet, they were able to log on dialogue, right? And they had this fantastic information that they uniquely possess. Being so educated and up to date and progressive, technologically advanced as a home computer user, they would share something with you that they thought positioned themselves as all high and mighty to which you would go duh. And so it works both ways. Now everything I shared in the last minute is contained in that one word, that portmanteau of individual and duh. He also created LoserThink, for example, the 2019 bestseller of his, where what he wanted to do was to take these cognitive biases and unproductive ways of thinking. And ironically he wanted to impersonalize them. Because often if someone is prone to cognitive bias, then there's a tendency for us to condemn that person as a person. Maybe get a little bit of dehumanization going on there. But by taking loser the person and putting think with it, loser think, it's now an approach, it's a tactic, it's a strategy, it's a way of doing the thing that you can just stop doing. So it's like, oh, that's engaging in loser think where you're, you're grasping onto a cognitive bias, confirmation bias, for example, and running with it. And now that's your argument. Oh, that's loser think. So it's a way that makes clear it's an unproductive non ideal way of thinking and being in the world that allows the person to then take off the loser think. So it's not about them being a loser, it's the loser think. And all that is within that one word. Of course, this is not exactly a portmanteau, but talent stack, by the way, is talent and full stack developer. Talent and full stack developer. And of course a full stack developer has been one of the most desirable computer programmer skill sets out there. In fact, I would even dare say it's the, when you're, when you're, when you're thinking about what you want in a programmer, you're going to pay a lot of money. Full stack developer is probably one of the things that's on the job description as an absolute requirement. Not just the ideal, but the absolute requirement for the job. So he portmanteaued, which now is a word. I'm now turning portmanteau into a portmanteau.
- [48:30]
Erica
How do you spell portmanteau?
- [48:32]
Joshua Lysik
It's French. So it's like port, Right? P O, R T M A N, T E, A U. Portmanteau.
- [48:41]
Erica
Okay, gotcha.
- [48:42]
Joshua Lysik
Yes. And we could even make a funny joke about a port, a man and a toe and, and like that could now become an explanation of the word. There have been a number of others that he's come up with over the years that are, that are like this loser thinks. One of them. I like, I like that bad verb. Of course. And then word thinking is another one. Sometimes he wrote it as one word, sometimes as two, sometimes with a dashopoly. What's that? Yeah, confusopoly is another one. I think hoaxocracy is another one. Any kind of government by hoaxes, an oligopoly or a monopoly, where it's just simply a bunch of companies confusing customers so they don't know who to pick, so they just pick someone. One of them's us, right? By being intentionally, intentionally similar to competing offers. So, you know, oh, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna get my, you know, get my ATT plan. You have Verizon. Yeah, whatever. Same thing, right? So. So marketing of one becomes the marketing of all. They all benefit. That's the confusopoly concept where why is it that all companies are offering something that's almost identical? Right. And then young me Moon, a professor at Harvard Business School, I believe she wrote a book called different, which is about escaping the competitive herd. She calls it for the business nerds amongst us of how, how do you become the opposite of a confusopoly and own your own niche with being highly precise but wildly different from everything else that's on the market. And she gives examples of like soft drinks and toothpaste that did this effectively to carve out their own niche. Another metaphor that teaches this is the book Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue ocean versus red Ocean, where all the sharks and other predators are going after the chum and there's blood in the water everywhere. Well, where is there less competition for resources? That would be your blue Ocean, metaphorically speaking. Those are two great books, different by Youngbin Moon and Blue Ocean Strategy, which has like 50 follow ups and workbooks and whatnot to call it. But I think in our own lives, in our own world, those of us who want to teach a reframe, one of the best reframes you can come up with is one of these portmanteaus, where I'm trying to describe why journalists and how journalists deceive the public and they intentionally mislead and oh, bad verb. So all of the ideas I have on the subject are in one word alone. I like reframes, like bad reviews from bad People are good reviews. As a reframe of, we need downplay our negative press. Hide it, conceal it, delete it, block it, mute it, ban it, get it removed, whatever. Bring in the lawyers. Reframe bad reviews from bad People are good reviews. So sentences are nice, but when you can distill your reframe, you can compact it down to this one dense little word. That's fantastic. And I posted about this a couple of days ago and people came up with all manner of creative words that they came up with in the replies. One that I used to describe AI is that, you know, in the AI output is that AI writes in marketer speak, and everyone chuckles themselves because you know exactly what that is like, it's overly optimistic and let's say, exclamation points, an undue number of exclamation points. And it sounds like it's trying to hype you up and get you excited to buy something. It's marketer speak. One word, right? That's a portmanteau. It speaks like a marketer. And so now all criticism that I have of AI outputs is writing style is compact now in one single portmanteau. And anything else that you want to teach or sort of persuade, if you can condense that into one word, then you've got something fantastic. And I'm wondering if we have any questions in the comments or suggestions of Joshua. Could this be one? Guys, what do you think about this one?
- [52:35]
Erica
And I also think that we should try to create some after. Just so you guys know, after the show, we'll repost this show, I'll link Joshua in there and ask you to create some, you know, give us the, the two words, put them together, tell us, you know, what it stands for, and maybe we can start utilizing them. But does anyone have any questions? Marcela, do you see any. You're scanning locals for us.
- [53:03]
Marcella
I don't, I don't see any. They're loving all of this. There is a little bit of a delay, so I asked them, America speech.
- [53:12]
Joshua Lysik
Yeah, Erica, speak America.
- [53:16]
Erica
Like America speech.
- [53:19]
Shelley
So how do you find the portmanteau or how do you think of them? Like when you came up with bad burbs, how did you do that?
- [53:25]
Joshua Lysik
I was trying to teach something. I, I noticed, I noticed that journalists on the left in particular and left wing politicians and other cultural commentators, I noticed an undue number of adverbs when they were, when they were criticizing President Donald Trump in his first term. That's when Scott's material began to, let's say, Deprogram me and bring about a TDS cure, a Trump derangement syndrome cure. And I noticed that my team at the time were using adverbs for everything. And I noticed it wasn't literally true. And there was another headline. I don't remember which publication it was in, but it was something like, I remember the story distinctly. It was one of the ones that accelerated me towards the Trump world. Right. Using that term again, which is also portmanteau, by the way, for magasphere. I see that one too. That's another portmanteau. But this particular story back in 2017, 2018ish, it was something like Trump. And they always say Trump. They would never say President Trump. Right. It's sort of like he's not a real president. That's what Hillary said. You know, it was fake. Speaking of doubting elections. Right. They would. The headline was something to the effect of Trump literally rolled back child labor laws 200 years. Something like that. I was like, that's pretty bad. He literally just did that. I go and I read the story, which is a rare phenomenon these days. I go and I read the story as kind of, as a little bit of a Liddy at that time. And the story is effectively, 16 and 17 year olds are now permitted to, while in high school, participate in trade apprenticeship programs in the United States and receive college credit and payment for their work. And I thought, that's just about the greatest thing I've ever heard of on the subject. I didn't even know we weren't doing that. That sounds like a really good thing. And then go back. He literally rolled back child labor laws 200 years. Nothing like that actually happened. And it was that one particular story that first made me notice, literally. And then I began to do additional noticing. It was essentially. It was basically. It was very. It was totally. It was completely adverbs that left wing journalists were using to put words in Trump's mouth or in his tweets that he wasn't actually saying. And then I noticed that cultural commentators, not just politically, were also doing this, for example. And to communicate this one idea, I created the portmanteau of bad verbs. So anytime you're trying to communicate a sophisticated idea, like with loserthink, it's our tendency to resort to cognitive biases in place of logic and reason, and yet not be aware of those patterns. And as a result, stumbling into unproductive ways of being and doing in the world. That or Luther think. So you take this complex multivariate, multi syllabic. Multi sentence, multi paragraph arguments that you're trying to teach there.
- [56:43]
Marcella
There is some. Some new por po. I think you're saying. Poor man. Toes. Sorry, I'm really bad at French even though I speak Spanish. I was going to say they came up with I don't do it justice. Let me go through them. Just a few. Give me one second. I'm trying to find a literally example that like purpley.
- [57:13]
Joshua Lysik
Purpley as in it's like,
- [57:16]
Marcella
like hyperbole but with a lie.
- [57:20]
Joshua Lysik
That's a great example. Yeah. Live a portmanteau of lie and hyperbole. Yeah, that. Yeah. That would be used to explain the idea that a given group tends to exaggerate when they're attacking the other side or they're in any kind of argument where they're trying to persuade others. Like. Yeah, so I think that I like that one a lot. It would just. It would need a little bit of explanation because it could mean a number of different things.
- [57:47]
Marcella
That's from Trekkie.
- [57:48]
Joshua Lysik
I like that.
- [57:49]
Marcella
And then Dave came up with high. Like being high. Sorry, hyperbole. And then there's.
- [57:58]
Joshua Lysik
That's a funny one.
- [57:58]
Marcella
Helium baby. That came out with sphere Democrat party. I guess that's what he wrote. I don't know. Give me one second.
- [58:12]
Joshua Lysik
Lip herboy and hyperbole are both a lot of. A lot of fun. Anytime you can do rhyming. Rhyming works really well. Like, like bad verbs. Add bad. Like there's a natural rhyme in there. Anytime you can work in a rhyme, you're more likely to get it to stick and go viral.
- [58:30]
Erica
Let me see if there's a. I like it. I think we should keep working on them, you guys, and write them in the post.
- [58:36]
Shelley
I asked Grok to come up with some. They came up with border vision, textortion, woke tastrophe and debtpocalypse.
- [58:47]
Joshua Lysik
I've heard debtpocalypse before. It looks like something that I would read in the Economist. So you know corporates, if they can be funny or cute, that's. That's ideal. Or it's like, oh, I haven't heard that one before. Like hyperbole with like high. Like you're on marijuana or like low lie purple. Those are both funny. Something that's obvious like debtpocalypse or another one they posted.
- [59:21]
Marcella
It's a Bitchasaurus rex.
- [59:24]
Joshua Lysik
I wouldn't know what that refers to. Ideally the portmanteaus refer to something we know what it is that they're like talking about. You know what I mean it would be a ideal, any type of portmanteau. It's relatively self explanatory, like bad verb, like loser think like in the visual and even, even positive ones. You know, talent stack. It's not exactly a portmanteau but it follows the principle of, you know, full developer stack and then talent and then you have talent stack concept that teaches the same, the same thing with following the portmanteau principle but without that exact precision.
- [60:03]
Shelley
And then another one that Marcel might like is Maritopia.
- [60:08]
Erica
Maritopia A. I love it. All right, you guys, I, I'm not going to let you down. I see the chat looking at me for the time I'm, I'm not asleep at the wheel over here. So guys, didn't the hour go by so fast? This was so fun. Joshua, we love this. Like, please, we have to make this a regular thing. You know, you're one of our favorite people on the road world. So we will be back tomorrow with the news crew. So it'll be the three of us with Sergio and Sergio, we see you over there in the comments. Love you. So tomorrow you guys will cover some news. It'll be Friday and Saturday you'll have Owen on for spaces. So please look for my repost of this show after the show and you guys put your Portmantos in there and we'll tag Joshua and he can give you a little critique or praise or whatever we need. And don't forget, try the word K. And oh if somebody is insulting you and you have nothing to say. Thank you, Joshua. We're going to do a closing sip to Shelly and to our beloved Scott. We miss you so much. And everybody be useful today and be kind to Scott.
- [61:24]
Joshua Lysik
Scott, it.