A caller asks the gang to explore more of the larger dilemmas posed by social media censorship. A listener writes in to shed more light on the ongoing Mattress Firm enigma. An email about more augmented reality games inspires the gang to speculate about the increasing role of AR outside of gaming -- what happens when it becomes part of everyday life? All this and more in this week's listener mail.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. If you are a long time
or habitual listener, first, thank you. Secondly, you know that
(00:48):
this is our listener mail portion of the week. This
is where we take a big stew of all these voicemails,
all these emails, all the weird messages scrawled on our
mirrors in the dark by invisible hands of your fellow listeners.
We share them with you. Today. We've got Today, We've
(01:11):
got some some great stuff. Uh. We've got some stuff
about Mattress Firm update that we were not expecting. We've
got I think a very well intentioned series of questions
about parlor. And we've got some mind blowing stuff about
the nature of reality. If you want to be pretentious
about it, uh, and the latitude society, so off Mike Folks, Uh,
(01:36):
Matt Noll and code named Doc and I. We usually
spend a few minutes uh, shooting the breeze before we
get into this and and talking about how we feel,
uh we should order these things. We do our best
to make it feel like a cohesive, coherent thing. Not
(01:56):
too many downers, not too many uppers, I guess either. Uh.
But Matt, this this correspondence you received, I think we
all agreed this was something that was worth responding to.
What do you think? Oh? For sure, two things we
all received it, Mr Bolan. We But the second thing,
paramount to any discussions on order of how we're going
(02:18):
to do this, is that we are all really hungry
and want chicken wings from the local. If you're in Atlanta,
go to the local. For the love of God, to
the local. The local has done so much for our show.
We know everyone who works there. Uh. We you know
it's the pandemic day is so we don't get there
(02:40):
too too often. But back in the day, I would say,
without hyperbole, we did some of our best brainstorming at
the local. I don't know if we all remembered all
of them. I'll tell you what I do. Remember though,
is dry rub lemon pepper wings. No, No, that's the one. No,
(03:02):
that's the one, dry rub sun dried, thank you sun
dry dry up. But this time, if I do this,
if I do this crazy thing that I'm contemplating doing
after we record, I'm gonna do half dry and half wet.
Go for it. Who's going to stop you? All right?
So wait? Wait one more thing though, Because we are
talking about a place that we all love and miss dearly,
(03:25):
including code ename Doc, is that on this to also
a local fan? Uh? I do want to point out
you guys that some of those folks do listen to
this show. And I know that because pre pandemic, when
it was like our happy hour spot, every so often
one of our friends who works there would come in
and like talk trash to us if we had done
(03:47):
not done well on an episode, slap us around a
little bit, even snarky cheers, real world iTunes reviews in
real time, I did it. Uh So, speaking speaking of
a kind of view, that's what this next message is.
But it's also it's it's in. It's coming from a
very good place, and I think it's worth us all
(04:07):
contemplating it. So we're gonna do that together. Now, Hey, guys,
a long time listener, love what you do, you love
your stance. I will say that I feel like and
I'm not supportive of anything that happened in the Capitol.
I think it's surrendous to the US government. It's just
happen to face deal politically. But I thought the commentary
and discussion on Parlor nor was I remember in order
(04:29):
to supported about it being a free market alives. The
fact that Twitter was effectively used in a similar manners
in Egypt endered the Arab Springs riots to overthrow a government.
And I feel like we're in the glory line of
social media. Yes, being private industry, but if you go
(04:51):
on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you're gonna see the influence political
messaging in that enemage. So to draw a firm line
in one case for one platform, well, at the same
time you work articles from Jack Dorsey on Twitter preferring
to his engagement, involvement and basically relationships with Twitter, the
(05:15):
government and political change. I don't think that conversation was
fully fleshed out or not. I love basically all that
you do. I work for a same tech Company. I
feel like there are issues with scalability. You could go
on Instagram now and find the heading of the heavy.
You could don't find any number of racial, geo political
(05:37):
I don't gore toasts because of the inability of Tech company,
the police throwing systems of scalability. But I feel like
that conversation of the relationship of pervasive influence of social media,
it's not an accurate analogy to compare it to no shirts,
no shoes, no service because the spotting down the slide
(06:01):
at McDonald's that words did not have the potential political
ample the democratified wish it man. I think our boy
was on a jog. They're definitely running his bottom off.
He he was, he was working guys. We made that point, though,
(06:22):
I have to say about the Arab spring thing and
the and the comparison, we would definitely discuss that angle.
We did. We did make that point. And you know, oftentimes,
um people will call in, maybe you'll call in in
the middle of an episode of or you know, after
the discussion kind of begins to kick off and and
give us some input before we conclude some things, and
(06:43):
that that does happen sometimes. Well, I'm not exactly sure
if that's the case here, but I think the biggest
the biggest point and I don't mean to speak for you,
a person who just called in should tell us this,
but it feels like the biggest point here is about
scalability of kind of open platforms, of like social media
(07:03):
platforms that are based on the concept of anyone being
able to post anything and exercise their freedom of speech
and then so so starting at that place of openness
and then attempting to scale in order to make a
profitable business um and the major problems within within that system. Essentially,
(07:26):
it's interesting because it's like, how can It's hard to
have it both ways with the system that we currently have.
We're on the one hand, this this is a privately
owned company, you know that that has the right has
terms of services and has the right to interpret those
terms of services. And then you even have like I
think it's Facebook that has like almost like an independent
(07:46):
review board to make decisions so that they can kind
of say, okay, we have this board that's making these decisions,
so it's not just us, it's not happening in a vacuum.
But at the same time, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram
and all these companies. They are private companies that people
can choose to be a part of. But La Caller
is absolutely right. There comes a point where that genie
(08:07):
is out of the bottle or we cross some line
and they're no longer just a private company. They absolutely
have this scale of influence that's really really difficult to
control when you just treat them in that way. Wouldn't
you agree? Yes, I go further here. So first off, Anonymous,
(08:27):
thank you so much. Ben. This this kind of stuff
is something that I really appreciate because it these are
questions made in good faith, and you're doing one of
the best things an audience can do for any show,
even a little show like ours. You're keeping us honest,
and I appreciate the opportunity to return to this exploration.
(08:48):
It's a Gordy not you know, it's a capital D
dilemma because Parlor. You're right. We we talk the way
that we talked about Parlor to Knowle's point, We we
hit some of those those points you meant, and but
we also talked about the preponderance of these UH extremist
beliefs on that network, and we talked about the problem
(09:09):
of private entities. I will say this by the way,
I think most people would be uh surprised just how
in the pocket of government many social media outlets are
five eyes never went away, you know what I mean.
And while this stuff may seem like a cool neiaque
community to us, you know, we've got that slot machine
(09:31):
addiction mentality, how many likes do I get on my post?
We have to understand it's a very different thing to governments.
Social media is a weapon, and it is naive to
assume that it would not be used as such by
a large state level entity with the ability for the
opportunity to do so. With that in mind, parlor itself
(09:52):
like if you look at Parlor, it doesn't build itself
as some kind of like extremists Nazis winter their official
stance is slash was no censorship, full stop. Yeah, they're
they're like the social media platform of free speech. Just
kind of how they're positioning themselves, you know, and understandably
(10:13):
so given what's going on the other platforms. So they
have kind of a niche they're jumping into fill m hmm. Yeah.
And then I think we talked about this years and
years ago, and it still strikes me as so true.
We used to we used to dive into four chan
when we had to get some really weird research. And
four chan is one of the best arguments against true
(10:37):
democracy right now, now I see your face there. What
do I mean by that? I mean it's it's government
of the masses. Anyone could post right in theory before
a bunch of changes were made, and you see, um,
you see democracy, but you don't see accountability because people
can be relatively anonymous. And maybe that's maybe that's part
(11:03):
of the puzzle. Maybe that's a missing piece here. Maybe
maybe there's a world where people can go onto censorship
free platforms but have to have their own identities, some
sort of transparency. But then again, that's such overreach, is
it not? Like it's it's a crazy amount of big Also,
(11:25):
we know how difficult it is to actually prove that
someone quote unquote incited behavior. Right, Um, so at one point,
at what point, where's the sniff test? Where is the
like hard line on the sand, whether morally or just
like contextually of what constitutes hate speech? Like again, this
like body that Facebook um has as employed. They determined
(11:51):
that some posts that were flagged were in fact not
hate speech. So the fact that it's a question to
begin with is interesting. And so it's like, to the
caller's point, it's like, where is the line in the sand?
Where how do we know unequivocally this is being censored
because it's actually inciting, because you know what I mean,
because there's some beeds about like closing off certain ideologies
(12:13):
that are may be less appealing to you. That's another point, Like, okay,
to the point about defining incitements. If the local gets
overrun by a ravenous mob right chasing chicken wings, is
that our fault because we just talked kind of in
depth about how much we like the place. Yeah, well,
(12:35):
we didn't tell people go. Now, well, we did say
get ye to the local. We did say that. We
did literally say that, And I take full responsibility. Alright, alright,
Mr Kennedy. But but still, at what point does the
critical mass take over? You know, we weed planted the seed,
(12:57):
but are we responsible for the outcome If we literally
just said chicken wings are great, go get you some
chicken wings at our favorite spot, and then all of
a sudden, like if it becomes a matter of the
scale of our audience, and then maybe we were irresponsible
with asking our entire audience and then all of a sudden,
how are we to know that everyone would go all
at once and there'd be like a you know, a
run on chicken wings. And so guys just gonna pat
(13:20):
myself on the back for making that our earlier local
reference applicable. So it's not just us talking about these
again amazing chicken wings with it can't you're not sponsored
by them, and they have all these different I don't
want to we we we were. We've been shredded a
little bit in the iTunes comments for that episode, people
(13:42):
almost saying that we're like being apologists for these rioters,
and I don't think that's a fair or true at all.
I Mean, our job on the show is to try
to have perspective, to have critical thinking when it comes
to these conspiracy theories and conspiracies and conspiracy facts and events.
But uh, these are interesting questions and it's not about
(14:03):
whether you agree with or disagree with an ideology the
idea of where free speech begins and ends and what
these companies are and represent. Are they bigger than just
like you know, uh, a independent company. They've almost become
little governments of their own yes, you know. Oh gosh,
ah man, damn it. We only do one strange news
(14:24):
segment a week. There's a bill in play right now
to allow private corporations to create what are called innovation
zones and to take over the functions of government that
would occur in those zones. Check it out now, use
Brave or your browser of choice and look at um.
I believe it's Nevada Innovation Zones. You're right now. There
(14:45):
is a troubling, uh troubling difference of opinion on the
role of the government or the private indic the private
entities that interact with people directly. Now, I do want
to point out one thing that really made me appreciate
your call, anonymous. We did not note in our previous
(15:08):
episode that parlor did have community guidelines. They did have
a mechanism for taking down posts, they were able to
to ban people. So it wasn't it wasn't entirely anything goes.
I think every social media tycoon or would be tycoon
is aware of the great, the great example of the
(15:30):
problem with free speech running into a crowded movie theater
screaming fire and then just watching the chaos happen. Right,
That is that free speech is that a crime? This
The problem is that free speech itself is not mutually exclusive,
like it's not. It can be free speech and still
(15:52):
be uh something that is quite dangerous and meant to
be dangerous, you know what I mean? Completely. I want
to I want to bring this back to our adventures
with Facebook, if that's okay, because we've we've had a
long relationship this show has at least with Facebook, and
I just want to let listeners in kind of behind
(16:13):
the screen here, behind behind the camera. Um. So, originally,
when we started a Facebook page for stuff they don't
want you to know it was, it functions very differently
because of the Facebook platform and how they handled like
group pages. And then I think it was like a
fan page. I don't remember exactly what they called it,
(16:33):
but generally we could go in and see every comment
that was coming in, We could personally respond to comments,
we could we had access to that because there was
such a small pool of people that were interested in
our show when we first started that page. Then as
it began to grow, Ben and I remember this, Ben,
(16:54):
I remember we would struggle to keep up with some
of the stuff that we were still able to do.
It and then and it got out of hand to
where we had to pick and choose a moment to
go in and kind of search through and decide what
we could respond to, much like right now we do
with our listener mail segments. We have this large pool
and we dip in and we pull some things out. Um,
(17:18):
then if you scale that out even further to the
point where it got so big, we had to create
here's where it gets crazy, the Facebook group, which made
it more more manageable, and then we had to get
mods for that because it got too big. And imagine
doing this and this kind of scale with billions of
users and you know you're you're attempting you kind of
(17:40):
have to assign humans at some point two police behaviors
on social media because the only a human can make
those value judgments on these things. We talked about this
a bit, but when it is just by the nature
of the scale, has it has to be done through
a program, through an algorithm releasing all the content, it
(18:01):
just becomes a completely impossible to Yeah, that's the thing.
So there's the human equation is quite a difficult one
to crack, which may be the most inhuman robotics stuff
I've said in this episode, but the problem is this,
you're you're right. Currently there is no way to watch
(18:23):
every falling sparrow of its wheat right on any platform.
There's not there's not a real considered visibility human beings.
It is well proven human beings will not always outsmart algorithms,
well not always outsmart software, but human beings so far
(18:45):
will always out create it. They'll change the game, right
like look at look at the amazing and brilliant evolution
of online descent under the reign of jimping in China.
What we're seeing is people couldn't type out characters that
said protest, so they went to the meme world, which
(19:07):
is a very old, I would argue type of communication.
And when certain memes were getting stopped, then they went
to other ways of communicating, a nod and a wink
you know what I mean, a signal to those who
were in the know. And then this language evolved from it.
And the fascinating thing, by the way, Anonymous, you will
(19:27):
be interested in this. China just banned the audio app
Clubhouse because people were going on this ephemeral audio app
and they were speaking their minds in a way that
I can only imagine the PRC found objection herble. Also,
we're doing an episode of following going it's really weird.
(19:50):
Ben Ben is fully down the rabbit hole there. But
it's good. It's such a good thing. You're gonna be
happy about it. It's gonna have a good result for
all of us. We might not be able to get
in after that one. I don't know, man, that that
show comes around every once in a while. I've been
meaning to see it where we where I live in particular,
that show comes through every year. I mean there's memes
(20:15):
of like shen Yan billboards on the moon. You know,
it's like a running gag just everywhere every coffee shop,
they've got armies of these, like street team people like
putting up these signs. We should all go. Let's make
it a thing. Let's heart. It's quite stunning. Yeah. I
always wanted to go, but the tickets are pricey, and
(20:35):
then there's the question of what exactly your support of
my funding? Yeah, but but with that being said, uh, Anonymous,
we hope that we are. We hope that we are
giving UM a worthwhile perspective on on the issues here
social media, freedom of speech, private versus public entities or
(20:56):
private versus state entities. And the answer right now, as
far as we can tell, is that there is no
silver bullet. There is no solution to this dilemma. There's
nothing that solves the puzzle in a way that makes
everybody agree, you know what I mean, like like overreaching governments. Again,
(21:17):
China is a great example overreaching governments. Their answer is
domestic stability above all. Therefore, we will shut down quick fast,
in a hurry, and with great prejudice anything that could
be a threat to domestic stability, because we are doing
this for the greater good right and we can get
into the difference between um civic and economic rights versus
(21:41):
human rights, which is a huge deal internationally. And then
there's the other side, which is, you know, let's while
out hashtag yolo, say whatever you want and and consequences
be damned. And it appears that neither of those extremes
are particularly beneficial to people at scale. To your point, Matt,
(22:04):
over the long term, no one knows how to fix this.
We built things that we don't understand, and that's the
root of the problem. Absolutely, you're correct, and that's a
good place to end it. We should end it there.
I unfortunately have to leave you this just because I
I've got a place where you can go check out
some things. Um, go head on over to the Harvard
Business Review. It's just called Harvard Business Review. You can
(22:25):
read some really interesting opinions about some of this stuff.
And there are a couple other places online that you'll
be able to find if you just do some duck
duck going about UH scale and disinformation. And there's this
Harvard Business Review article discusses the the ad revenue model
(22:48):
with scale and what that means and how that can
be abused by bad actors, and so it's what we've
talked about before a little bit. But you can really
get into the nitty gritty and a cup all these
articles and we'd recommend that. Okay, thank you again for
calling it. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll
be right back, and we're back with more messages from you. Yes,
(23:16):
you the public? Are you or are you not? A
member of the public. That's from a movie. I don't
remember which one, but I digress. We're talking about Mattress Firm.
It's a follow up from a previous UH Strange News
Our Listener Mail episode. I forget, but this one is
a you feel recall just a qu quick summary, lots
(23:36):
of mattress firms, weirdly so ones across the street from
one another, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We
went through, talked about the business model, talked about how, uh,
there was some weird, kind of sketchy stuff in the
past of the parent company of mattress firm, Steinhoff International.
We're gonna get into that in a second. But um,
(23:57):
you know, the whole conspiracy, the angle of mattress firm,
it's all over the internet. Is Is it some sort
of elaborate international money laundering situation? Are all these mattresses
full of drugs and or cash? That's my editorializing, but
it's a it's a reasonable question, especially given the you know,
largely moving away from showroom models, with all the Caspers
(24:22):
and the you know, Brenda's not Brenda Lisa's, and the
purple mattresses of the world. It's a little odd that
there's still so many mattress firms. And we've got the
inside scoop from the real estates perspective, from one of
the landlords of one of these rental locations of a
Mattress Firm. Um. And this comes from Andrew who wrote
(24:43):
in via email. Andrew says, Hi, guys, just listen to
your recent episode talking about the Mattress store conspiracy. I'm
here to share a personal experience my mom encountered with
none other than Mattress Firm. My mom owns various commercial
real estate around northeastern Ohio. Years ago, a tenant vacated
one of her properties that was on the corner of
(25:04):
an exit ramp of a highway in a high traffic area.
She decided to give the place a facelift and put
it back on the market for lease. Mattress Firm approached
her with something like a six year lease, paying above
fair market value. She declined because she didn't want to
deal with a big corporation. Shortly after, someone higher up
at a corporate might have been the CEO at the time,
(25:25):
personally called her to asking her to reconsider offering her
twice their market value was for that location. She finally agreed.
After all this persistence and all that money and all
that money, I mean that is literally an offer that
would be very, very difficult to refuse. Mattress Firm moved in,
and I mean to tell you we never once saw
(25:46):
a customer come into the store, as we would frequently
pass that intersection, much like our two Mattress firm locations
across from each other on Moreland Avenue, a big main
drag here in Atlanta. Within a year or so of
being there, they abruptly called saying they needed out of
their six plus year lease. Apparently, behind the scenes, Mattress
Firm had been opening an insane amount of storefronts. It
(26:09):
was alled that the CEO was cooking the books to
appear that they were much more successful than they actually were.
As a result, they were forced into bankruptcy and had
to cut hundreds of retail leases. Below is a link
to an article that talks about this very situation. Anyway,
I thought you'd be interested, you thought right, Um, and
take care, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, thank you so much. This
(26:34):
is this Mattress for thing. For the background, It's something
that Noel and Matt and I have talked about at
length for for a number of years. Because you know
how it is when you when you have friends that
you've known for a while, some conversations are just conversations
that kind of continue forever, you know, and you touch
(26:57):
based on this every so often. UM, we did a
pretty good job I think of walking through the possibilities here.
But this is I don't know about you guys. This
was this letter from Andrew was the first I heard
about this. Uh, the CEOs shenanigans, and I believe the
(27:17):
link you sent us is just about a little less
than a year old talking about how in February, Uh,
there was at least a partial make good on the
fraud lawsuit? Is that correct? But not Yeah, that's correct.
Freshly removed from bankruptcy, Mattress firm partially settles fraud lawsuit.
(27:38):
Wait a minute, what fraud lawsuit? We didn't really talk
about that last time. That's because we kind of cliff
hung it. If you'll recall with UM, I believe Matt
you very slightly dropped the name of Marcus Justa who
on December five of two thousand and seventeen resigned UM
siting after there were allegations of accounting irregularities. The stock
(28:03):
price plummeted sixty six percent and ultimately would go to
fall by UM. And Yeah, apparently they had done exactly
what is being described here, overstating profits and assets by
nearly twelve billion dollars. It's a lot of mattresses. So,
(28:23):
I mean, is this just crooked bookkeeping? Like it seems
like an unsustainable model. But to me this starts to
have the like ring of something like the Magical Corporation
in Breaking Bad, where I'm not picturing you know, other
stuff going on behind the scenes, you know, much more nefarious.
But that's just where my mind goes. And if that
(28:45):
is the case, it certainly doesn't like they're doing a
very good job of hiding it, because I mean, this
is like everyone and their mom questions why there's so
many freaking mattress firms everywhere? But this company owns lots
of other you know, it's a holding company. This uh,
this Steinhoff in a national They own other you know,
manufacturing facilities, they own other big box type retailer spaces,
(29:08):
mainly in Europe. Yeah, yeah, it's how how big does
this go? You know what I mean? This It's it's
interesting too because we can use the parlor example from
earlier here. For a holding company of that size, it's
fair to ask how closely they keep an eye on
(29:28):
various subsidiaries or enterprises, you know, much less individuals Mattress
firm itself filed lawsuits against former employees, accusing them of
conspiring to make the company expand faster and further than
it should. Uh. But I'm well, did you see what
(29:48):
it what they were doing? Did we do I'm sorry,
I may maybe I missed it. I was kind of
reading a bit here as we were discussing guys. But
did we talk about what their plan was, like what
those two guys were doing, Bruce Levy and Ryan Vincent,
these were two real estate executives there. I can't remember
if we talked about this in the last time, but
if we did it, it doesn't querying about um tell
(30:10):
us a little bit more about who these people were
and how they connected up with Marcus Gusta and the whole,
you know, the whole collapse. Well in this guy, Alexander
dtich Chitch. I think that's the one that I mentioned,
Alexander that that brings a bell for me. That so,
what these guys were doing, they were doing very similar
things to what in our message from Andrew said. They
(30:31):
were paying way above regular value for leases in places
across the country, and they were doing it purposefully because
many times those the land that was the land that
they were leasing was owned by a group that one
or more of these individuals actually had a like a
(30:52):
controlling share over, or we're a part of, or were
invested in in some way, so that they were just
cycling that money through essentially through the lease money was
actually getting back to the individuals rather than benefiting Mattress
Firm in any way. M M. I mean it's it's weird,
isn't it, Because when you it's like the example have
always used of targets income Stream being at least partially
(31:16):
selling security systems to other businesses McDonald's. You can make
the argument is a real estate company that happens to
give you fries if you give them a couple of bucks.
The stores that we see in the companies that we
see on the street level from the consumer side, we're
seeing a very very small part of a very very
(31:37):
large iceberg. Right. And and the thing with Mattress Firm
is that, like some feathered down Icarus, they flew too
close to the real the crooked real estate son. I'm
just freestyling here, guys. Somebody is somebody saw me if
I go too much farther off the rails. Um, what
we know is that despite all these massive closures that occurred,
(32:01):
uh and the resignations that ensued, Mattress firm is still around.
So whatever they clearly it's around and around and around, right,
So they definitely uh did not render themselves extinct, which
to my mind means on some level, whatever crime was occurring,
worked should have done a follow up. I'm assuming this
(32:24):
this listener, Uh, this deal they're talking about with the
with the rental was back in and the article came
out in twenty nineteen, but it's referencing this period since
late the litigation. But I'm saying it sounds like this
was a practice and I'm sorry, I want to ask
you guys real quick. Is this like a desperate move
(32:47):
to like bail yourself out and not like you know,
go under, or is there something more? Is this like
literally like a scam, Like is this sort of cooking
the books to like bide yourself some time and the
hopes that you're profits will go up and you can
save the company, or is this is this something like weirder? Well, well,
it's it's a bit weird so deep. I'm not going
(33:09):
to say his name correctly once Dtich DP Deetch, the
Alexander guy. He he made counterclaims against Mattress Firm while
a lot of this stuff was going down, and he
was saying that Mattress Firm itself, like the top executives there,
were pressuring him into bulking up its real estate. So
(33:29):
they were they were pressing him to do the stuff
that he was doing. Um. And the whole point, at
least according to him in his countersuit, is the is
that Mattress Firm wanted to derail competition. We talked about
that in the last time we discussed this, that the
strategy there was to push out any other small mattress companies.
They were trying to get in on Mattress Firm's territory. Um.
(33:55):
I mean, it's just it's interesting to know that it's
just kind of become a big shouting match at each other.
Well you told me to do this, Well, yeah, but
you told me to do that, and yeah, and there
does the money go in the mattress man. Dude. It
really puts a new fresh spin on the famous Godfather
line taking it to the mattresses, which means going to war.
(34:17):
Mattresses were fun. Fact, mattresses were the weapon of choice
in the mafia's yesteryear. They were very dangerous weapon. It's
basically like a oversized pillow fight. And I mean those
wire you know, springs inside pack a rill. Well, you
get the momentum you start swinging, it's pandemonium, you know. Uh,
this this is uh, this is still kind of an
(34:41):
ongoing case. You know, it's something we've said before. Uh.
Just because the news is not covering a story past
the five minutes you hear on the evening program, uh,
doesn't mean the story ended. As a matter of fact,
Steinhof International is currently negotiation to try to settle another
(35:03):
financial scandal. Uh that it was just announced. Um another
subsidiary there is called PEP Core Holdings just just got
one step closer in the UK court, just settling a
multi billion rand lawsuit. RAN's being recurat to South Africa.
And before we wrap this one up, I have to
(35:23):
name some of the South African retail brands that Steinhoff
owns because some of these uh names are just adorable
and there's you know, there's always little differences. Another that
I love with branding and other countries. So my personal
favorite is incredible Connection. We've got penny pinchers which I'm
assuming is like a dollar Tree type situation. Something just
(35:44):
called Pep. I don't know what that is. Uh Russell's
Shoe City, another favorite of mine, Techie Town two ks,
uh Timber City, and unitrans nice. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, guys,
I I I am sleepy. Is it okay? If we've
taken that break, we'll be back. The FBI's texted us okay,
(36:13):
and we have returned. This next tale comes to us
in response to our earlier episode on the Latitude Society,
which was a a surprising rob I think for for
many of us. Right, Lucas l writes to us to say,
you asked in your latest podcast to let you know
about other experiences that are like the Latitude Society. Well,
(36:37):
they are more common than one may think. Alternate reality games,
or a r G we can call it, have been
around for quite a while, and they are becoming more
and more advanced. I've been part of a few, and
they go way beyond cryptic web boards or a random
player getting a phone call. Here are two of the
bigger and more intricate a r G games, immersive theater
(36:58):
events I've been involved in. And you write this fantastic letter, Lucas,
We're not gonna. I think Matt No would killed me
if I read it in full. Uh it's length, but
it's it's it's very good stock full of information. Yes,
so I'm pulling out some choice excerpts here just to
give the rest of our fellow listens the lay of
(37:19):
the augmented reality lands. Here, Lucas mentions the Neantic Project,
which was put on by Neantic Labs when they were
owned by Google, and it started as a cryptic website.
The backstory is really cool, very sci fi. Cern is
working on exotic matter, and then it turns into like
a series of dead drops. The mobile game becomes in
(37:43):
twine like a mobile app, becomes entwined with the the
overall experience, and people ran wild with it. Again, I
can't think of a better comparison than the COO's Pendulum, which, please,
if you've read the book, nerd out with me about it.
Uh BO were actually hiring chartering planes to go to
(38:03):
unreachable areas of the world to score points for their
faction in this game. The game was, in many ways,
Lucas points out, a predecessor to Pokemon Go. The next
the next organization Lucas mentions, here is the experiences. This
is more horror to the nentic projects sci fi. Lucas
(38:28):
says he mainly focuses on the Tension experience because that
was the one I was most involved with. Uh that
it was created by the director of several films and
the Saw franchise, and Lucas says, once again, it's hard
to really describe this and not be writing for hours.
This a RG was about a cult that was kidnapping
and brainwashing people in the l A area. It would
(38:50):
get funds by bringing in the elderly, having them sign
over all their possessions. They would also lure in and
brainwash young girls they believed in a god called a knock.
This started with a website. People would get calls from
the cast you know, we see again this mission bleed
from online to I R L in real life. UH,
and then you get you get literally kidnapped, tossed in
(39:14):
a van. Lucas, you have sent us a couple of
pictures relating to this, and we we hope everybody reads these.
I'd love to talk with you guys about these at
length in the future. One thing Lucas hipped us to
is that nonchalance right? The folks who were involved with
(39:34):
this nonchalance is starting another a r G. You can
you can go right now, folks to signal s y
G in y L dot com. They have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
all the hits. Uh. Lucas also found a TikTok, but
says it's currently empty at the time. Who was writing this? Uh?
(39:57):
And then Lucas, you going to tell us about your
a RG idea? And I'm gonna be honest, I think
it's so good that I made the decision not to
talk about it on air because I don't really I
don't want people taking his idea. Man, he worked hard
on it's smart, it's good. We can maybe describe it
in like vague terms. Would that work? I think, yeah,
(40:19):
maybe you're right. I just really liked it, so I
want to talk about it. But smarter, yeah, smarter move
is to to leave it alone. And we just have
to say, please, please, please do something with it because
it's super cool. It is so great. It's killing us
(40:41):
not to talk about it. But we would not be
able to well, I don't sleep, but we would not
be able to be uh, to have a sense of
inner peace if we told everybody how great we think
your idea is, and then someone took it from you.
We don't want to be a party to that. Credit
is important and it's your idea anyway. Lucas goes on
to say, you know, I'm not a wealthy guy like
(41:04):
Jeff Hull, which is why I would have some problems
doing this amazing idea, shouts out in immersive theater Alice
Wonderland style out in New York City called then She
Fell uh, and then also mentions when he heard of
called the Illuminati Ball, which sounds super up our alley uh,
and then says, hope, I helped you out a bit
(41:24):
with what you're looking for listening for a few years. Now,
keep up the great work. Poppy Caps is the name,
the name you want to go by. That's awesome, dude.
When we meet in real life, whether it's on a tour,
post pandemic, whatever, I'm gonna call you Poppy Caps. I'm
just gonna keep with it. I love it, Poppy Caps. Sorry. Oh,
(41:50):
you guys might remember a couple episodes. I can't remember
all Bush together, but I was really desperately trying to
make a connection. Uh. The show you Topia came up.
I believe you were both fans and I haven't seen
it yet, and is created by a guy named Dennis Kelly,
and I was like, oh my god, the name rings
a bell. What else did he do? I'll tell you
what else he did. He did this show on HBO
(42:13):
called The Third Day UM with Jude Law. Uh. That
is in and of itself a and it was meant
to be an interactive, communal kind of theater thing. Uh.
It all takes place on this creepy island off of
the coast of England, several hours from London, has this
like land bridge where the water or the tide rises
(42:35):
and lowers and that's the only way you can drive across,
and once the tide comes in, you can't get off
the island. But they were going to it's it's divided
into like these segments. Um, there's summer, autumn, and winter.
And autumn was initially going to be like a ticketed
event where you could go wander around the island. All
the actors would be they're doing stuff, um, and you'd
(42:57):
kind of just watch and like you know, intermingle and whatever.
Her And it's done in partnership with this company called
Punch Drunk that did this thing called Sleep No More
that I saw in New York and it's been running
for ages. But it's literally like you wear these masks
and your your unleashed into this multi level kind of
space and it's like Macbeth but but it's not. And
it's like there's satanic e type stuff and crazy music
(43:20):
and sound design and like it's like literally like living
in a video game. It's one of the coolest experiences
of my life. Um, and that's where that connection was.
So this all reminded me of Sleep No More and
the kinds of interactive theater Punch Drunk's been doing forever,
and that was the connection. I think we're gonna see
much more augmented reality in in the near future. I Mean,
(43:44):
the coolest part I think is gaming, but that is
sort of that is making the trend that is coming,
that is inevitable by the way that is making that trend.
Uh seemed innocuous and fun because these games are both
innocuous and fun in general. But what happens? What what
happens when a r becomes so accepted as technology that
(44:09):
walking around without glasses allowing you to interact in an
a R way uh is the same thing as being blind.
Just like children born today eighteen years from now not
knowing how to code. It's going to be kind of
like not being literate, you know what I mean. There's
there is a huge wave, a watership moment of technology
(44:31):
coming here speaking of kids and yet but oh yeah, okay, alright, buddy,
this is nope, We're I'm going mute for a moment. Boys,
how do we back Auntie data? So imagine imagine a
world where you are the person who forgets their contacts
(44:56):
or their uh a r spectacles at home, and you're
the only person who doesn't have it. You're going to
see the rest of the world appearing to behave very strangely.
I also want to point out not to be too
like cynical or gloom and doom. You know how these
classes are gonna work, right, you know, these contacts are
gonna work. They're going to be free with ads. Yeah,
(45:20):
I think like, you know, we talk about black Mirror
a ton on this show because it's it does such
a good job of like kind of creating a plausible,
not too distant future reality that you know, with the
healthy amount of satire. But I always think of that episode.
I can't remember the number, but it's the one about
the merits thirty million merits or whatever, where in order
to skip an ad you have to pay money, and
(45:45):
that's in like your life is literally just like serving
you ads like on screens, and it's it's like locked.
When you close your eyes, it beeps at you and
makes this like frequency that forces you to open your eyes. Um, yeah,
I'm with you, dude. I think it's I think it's
on the way. Years ago, I did, uh, I did
an experiment that didn't work out, Matt and Old can
(46:07):
assure you all. I do many experiments, and many of
them do not work out with their end results. But that's,
you know, that's experimentation. Here's what I tried to do.
I tried to count the number of ads I saw
in a given day, defining a day as in the
moment I wake up, to the moment um I guess,
to midnight or whatever. And from that span of time,
(46:30):
I quickly realized there was no way to count. There
was no way to count all of the ads unless
I wasn't working, I wasn't focused on anything else, and
I was hyper aware. And what's happening, and that's nothing.
Soon you will not be able to count ads at all.
It will simply be a brought to you by It'll
(46:53):
be like you know it'll be. It'll be life brought
to you by insert here. I have to disagree with you, Ben.
I think it's going to be gamified. And I think
you will know exactly how many ads you watched, and
how many like the duration, how many you completed, how
many you gave full attention to. You're gonna get grades
(47:13):
and scales, and you will get a crypto like portion
of a cryptocurrency based on the ads that you completed
or you know, portions of it, and then you'll be
able to use that cryptocurrency for everything, anything and everything. Counterpoint,
advertisers will pay more for hidden ads than that don't
(47:35):
count and don't appear to be like like you could
get some like achievement secret AADs like you can unlock
a certain special ad that gives you a full crypto
coal And what about this? What about this? Think about this?
What if? What if you are given the opportunity to
go to an organization, go to a person, maybe a friend,
(47:59):
maybe a loved wind, maybe your spouse, and then to
them recommend a thing. You what if you're paid directly
to be that word of mouth person, to be that
person who is hanging out across the street from the local, right,
and like there's a little there's a little like halo
like you see in a side mission and RPG hanging
over this person. And you walk over to this person,
(48:20):
your h u D says, you know, talk to them
about how great the wings are at the local and
walk up to them and you're like, hey, you know, uh,
my name's Jerome, and I gotta tell you if you
like wings as you go to the local, and then
you're done. You don't have to say anything else. You
just say that to a stranger. You keep walking, you
get your crypto bits or your ben bucks or whatever,
(48:41):
and then the world continues. It's Mary Dance to Hell
like and then they come in your earpiece and they say,
mentioned the local on air during your podcast and make
sure all listeners are aware of their sun dried tomato
smoked wings. It's it's not about the money, you guys.
(49:01):
It's about sending a message and getting It's about the
fragment of a crypto currency we got along the way.
And then also secret ads. Um. I I just recently
took the not the toe dip into crypto and I
bought a handful of coins uh through a friend with
a friend's recommendation, UM, using this site called next. So
(49:22):
it's like a crypto bank. And it has these like
verification like I'm not a bot, things where you have
to pull this like puzzle piece on a slider into
where the cutout of the puzzle piece goes. But the
whole thing itself is an AD. But it's also like
a capture, but it's an AD. It's beauty integration. We
(49:48):
have become ads. That's that's what's going to happen everybody listening. Uh.
This is dystopian and maybe we're being a bit extreme, um,
but I think we are. I think we're still firmly
within the realm of plausibility here, not just possibility. Uh
with this. The thing about the A R Games is
that they're so cool, they're so neat. It's so surprising
(50:12):
that there are not more, which means, to my mind,
there are many more on the way or in development.
The big question is where does it go? How far
does it go? You know what I mean, I'll tell
you how far We're gonna take a quick break from
our ad services to hear a quick word from our host,
(50:32):
and but what we'll be right back to the ad stream.
That's what it's going to be, right right, right right
exactly because everybody wants the ad because they want the
bitcoin or whatever. Crypto bits I like because it sounds
like a snack. C yeah, crypto bits. Uh. So this
is our show. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in.
(50:53):
Thank you Andrew, Thank you Papa Caps, Thank you Anonymous.
Uh what a ride fellas. Uh, folks. We hope that
you enjoyed this. We hope to hear from you soon.
If you want to take a page out of your
fellow listeners book, you can contact us any number of ways.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at conspiracy
(51:14):
Stuff on Instagram. We are a Conspiracy Stuff show. Hey,
why not head on over to Apple podcast wherever you
listen to the show and just pop a review in there.
We don't mind. We would love it if it's positive,
if you like what you're hearing, otherwise you know, maybe
don't No, I'm just kidding you be honest, it's totally
(51:35):
we want to hear what you think and it does
help the show. We don't have a Patreon, we don't
have a way to really you know, give back in
any way. But this is something you could do if
you felt like it should. The spirit so move you
if you're not, if you're not on board with social
media after all the creepy, increasingly true stuff we just
told you, we'd only get it. We have a phone
(51:55):
number you can call. It's one eight three three st
d w y t K. You have three minutes. They
belong to you. Uh, the time is your own. Use
it wisely. Let us know if it's okay to use
your name and voice on the air as we As
we've said in the past that three minutes can make
you feel like you're really put on the spot, so
it's kind of helpful if you have time, just do
(52:17):
a do a couple of bullet points. That's why I
want to tell the guys here's my amazing pun related
to conspiracies or whatever, and then just go nuts with it.
We can't wait to hear from you. If you hate phones,
totally get it. There is another way to contact us
always well, always so far, always astric so far. That
(52:37):
is our good old fashioned email address where we all
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want
(53:01):
you to Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the iHeart
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favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. If you are a long time
or habitual listener, first, thank you. Secondly, you know that
(00:48):
this is our listener mail portion of the week. This
is where we take a big stew of all these voicemails,
all these emails, all the weird messages scrawled on our
mirrors in the dark by invisible hands of your fellow listeners.
We share them with you. Today. We've got Today, We've
(01:11):
got some some great stuff. Uh. We've got some stuff
about Mattress Firm update that we were not expecting. We've
got I think a very well intentioned series of questions
about parlor. And we've got some mind blowing stuff about
the nature of reality. If you want to be pretentious
about it, uh, and the latitude society, so off Mike Folks, Uh,
(01:36):
Matt Noll and code named Doc and I. We usually
spend a few minutes uh, shooting the breeze before we
get into this and and talking about how we feel,
uh we should order these things. We do our best
to make it feel like a cohesive, coherent thing. Not
(01:56):
too many downers, not too many uppers, I guess either. Uh.
But Matt, this this correspondence you received, I think we
all agreed this was something that was worth responding to.
What do you think? Oh? For sure, two things we
all received it, Mr Bolan. We But the second thing,
paramount to any discussions on order of how we're going
(02:18):
to do this, is that we are all really hungry
and want chicken wings from the local. If you're in Atlanta,
go to the local. For the love of God, to
the local. The local has done so much for our show.
We know everyone who works there. Uh. We you know
it's the pandemic day is so we don't get there
(02:40):
too too often. But back in the day, I would say,
without hyperbole, we did some of our best brainstorming at
the local. I don't know if we all remembered all
of them. I'll tell you what I do. Remember though,
is dry rub lemon pepper wings. No, No, that's the one. No,
(03:02):
that's the one, dry rub sun dried, thank you sun
dry dry up. But this time, if I do this,
if I do this crazy thing that I'm contemplating doing
after we record, I'm gonna do half dry and half wet.
Go for it. Who's going to stop you? All right?
So wait? Wait one more thing though, Because we are
talking about a place that we all love and miss dearly,
(03:25):
including code ename Doc, is that on this to also
a local fan? Uh? I do want to point out
you guys that some of those folks do listen to
this show. And I know that because pre pandemic, when
it was like our happy hour spot, every so often
one of our friends who works there would come in
and like talk trash to us if we had done
(03:47):
not done well on an episode, slap us around a
little bit, even snarky cheers, real world iTunes reviews in
real time, I did it. Uh So, speaking speaking of
a kind of view, that's what this next message is.
But it's also it's it's in. It's coming from a
very good place, and I think it's worth us all
(04:07):
contemplating it. So we're gonna do that together. Now, Hey, guys,
a long time listener, love what you do, you love
your stance. I will say that I feel like and
I'm not supportive of anything that happened in the Capitol.
I think it's surrendous to the US government. It's just
happen to face deal politically. But I thought the commentary
and discussion on Parlor nor was I remember in order
(04:29):
to supported about it being a free market alives. The
fact that Twitter was effectively used in a similar manners
in Egypt endered the Arab Springs riots to overthrow a government.
And I feel like we're in the glory line of
social media. Yes, being private industry, but if you go
(04:51):
on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you're gonna see the influence political
messaging in that enemage. So to draw a firm line
in one case for one platform, well, at the same
time you work articles from Jack Dorsey on Twitter preferring
to his engagement, involvement and basically relationships with Twitter, the
(05:15):
government and political change. I don't think that conversation was
fully fleshed out or not. I love basically all that
you do. I work for a same tech Company. I
feel like there are issues with scalability. You could go
on Instagram now and find the heading of the heavy.
You could don't find any number of racial, geo political
(05:37):
I don't gore toasts because of the inability of Tech company,
the police throwing systems of scalability. But I feel like
that conversation of the relationship of pervasive influence of social media,
it's not an accurate analogy to compare it to no shirts,
no shoes, no service because the spotting down the slide
(06:01):
at McDonald's that words did not have the potential political
ample the democratified wish it man. I think our boy
was on a jog. They're definitely running his bottom off.
He he was, he was working guys. We made that point, though,
(06:22):
I have to say about the Arab spring thing and
the and the comparison, we would definitely discuss that angle.
We did. We did make that point. And you know, oftentimes,
um people will call in, maybe you'll call in in
the middle of an episode of or you know, after
the discussion kind of begins to kick off and and
give us some input before we conclude some things, and
(06:43):
that that does happen sometimes. Well, I'm not exactly sure
if that's the case here, but I think the biggest
the biggest point and I don't mean to speak for you,
a person who just called in should tell us this,
but it feels like the biggest point here is about
scalability of kind of open platforms, of like social media
(07:03):
platforms that are based on the concept of anyone being
able to post anything and exercise their freedom of speech
and then so so starting at that place of openness
and then attempting to scale in order to make a
profitable business um and the major problems within within that system. Essentially,
(07:26):
it's interesting because it's like, how can It's hard to
have it both ways with the system that we currently have.
We're on the one hand, this this is a privately
owned company, you know that that has the right has
terms of services and has the right to interpret those
terms of services. And then you even have like I
think it's Facebook that has like almost like an independent
(07:46):
review board to make decisions so that they can kind
of say, okay, we have this board that's making these decisions,
so it's not just us, it's not happening in a vacuum.
But at the same time, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram
and all these companies. They are private companies that people
can choose to be a part of. But La Caller
is absolutely right. There comes a point where that genie
(08:07):
is out of the bottle or we cross some line
and they're no longer just a private company. They absolutely
have this scale of influence that's really really difficult to
control when you just treat them in that way. Wouldn't
you agree? Yes, I go further here. So first off, Anonymous,
(08:27):
thank you so much. Ben. This this kind of stuff
is something that I really appreciate because it these are
questions made in good faith, and you're doing one of
the best things an audience can do for any show,
even a little show like ours. You're keeping us honest,
and I appreciate the opportunity to return to this exploration.
(08:48):
It's a Gordy not you know, it's a capital D
dilemma because Parlor. You're right. We we talk the way
that we talked about Parlor to Knowle's point, We we
hit some of those those points you meant, and but
we also talked about the preponderance of these UH extremist
beliefs on that network, and we talked about the problem
(09:09):
of private entities. I will say this by the way,
I think most people would be uh surprised just how
in the pocket of government many social media outlets are
five eyes never went away, you know what I mean.
And while this stuff may seem like a cool neiaque
community to us, you know, we've got that slot machine
(09:31):
addiction mentality, how many likes do I get on my post?
We have to understand it's a very different thing to governments.
Social media is a weapon, and it is naive to
assume that it would not be used as such by
a large state level entity with the ability for the
opportunity to do so. With that in mind, parlor itself
(09:52):
like if you look at Parlor, it doesn't build itself
as some kind of like extremists Nazis winter their official
stance is slash was no censorship, full stop. Yeah, they're
they're like the social media platform of free speech. Just
kind of how they're positioning themselves, you know, and understandably
(10:13):
so given what's going on the other platforms. So they
have kind of a niche they're jumping into fill m hmm. Yeah.
And then I think we talked about this years and
years ago, and it still strikes me as so true.
We used to we used to dive into four chan
when we had to get some really weird research. And
four chan is one of the best arguments against true
(10:37):
democracy right now, now I see your face there. What
do I mean by that? I mean it's it's government
of the masses. Anyone could post right in theory before
a bunch of changes were made, and you see, um,
you see democracy, but you don't see accountability because people
can be relatively anonymous. And maybe that's maybe that's part
(11:03):
of the puzzle. Maybe that's a missing piece here. Maybe
maybe there's a world where people can go onto censorship
free platforms but have to have their own identities, some
sort of transparency. But then again, that's such overreach, is
it not? Like it's it's a crazy amount of big Also,
(11:25):
we know how difficult it is to actually prove that
someone quote unquote incited behavior. Right, Um, so at one point,
at what point, where's the sniff test? Where is the
like hard line on the sand, whether morally or just
like contextually of what constitutes hate speech? Like again, this
like body that Facebook um has as employed. They determined
(11:51):
that some posts that were flagged were in fact not
hate speech. So the fact that it's a question to
begin with is interesting. And so it's like, to the
caller's point, it's like, where is the line in the sand?
Where how do we know unequivocally this is being censored
because it's actually inciting, because you know what I mean,
because there's some beeds about like closing off certain ideologies
(12:13):
that are may be less appealing to you. That's another point, Like, okay,
to the point about defining incitements. If the local gets
overrun by a ravenous mob right chasing chicken wings, is
that our fault because we just talked kind of in
depth about how much we like the place. Yeah, well,
(12:35):
we didn't tell people go. Now, well, we did say
get ye to the local. We did say that. We
did literally say that, And I take full responsibility. Alright, alright,
Mr Kennedy. But but still, at what point does the
critical mass take over? You know, we weed planted the seed,
(12:57):
but are we responsible for the outcome If we literally
just said chicken wings are great, go get you some
chicken wings at our favorite spot, and then all of
a sudden, like if it becomes a matter of the
scale of our audience, and then maybe we were irresponsible
with asking our entire audience and then all of a sudden,
how are we to know that everyone would go all
at once and there'd be like a you know, a
run on chicken wings. And so guys just gonna pat
(13:20):
myself on the back for making that our earlier local
reference applicable. So it's not just us talking about these
again amazing chicken wings with it can't you're not sponsored
by them, and they have all these different I don't
want to we we we were. We've been shredded a
little bit in the iTunes comments for that episode, people
(13:42):
almost saying that we're like being apologists for these rioters,
and I don't think that's a fair or true at all.
I Mean, our job on the show is to try
to have perspective, to have critical thinking when it comes
to these conspiracy theories and conspiracies and conspiracy facts and events.
But uh, these are interesting questions and it's not about
(14:03):
whether you agree with or disagree with an ideology the
idea of where free speech begins and ends and what
these companies are and represent. Are they bigger than just
like you know, uh, a independent company. They've almost become
little governments of their own yes, you know. Oh gosh,
ah man, damn it. We only do one strange news
(14:24):
segment a week. There's a bill in play right now
to allow private corporations to create what are called innovation
zones and to take over the functions of government that
would occur in those zones. Check it out now, use
Brave or your browser of choice and look at um.
I believe it's Nevada Innovation Zones. You're right now. There
(14:45):
is a troubling, uh troubling difference of opinion on the
role of the government or the private indic the private
entities that interact with people directly. Now, I do want
to point out one thing that really made me appreciate
your call, anonymous. We did not note in our previous
(15:08):
episode that parlor did have community guidelines. They did have
a mechanism for taking down posts, they were able to
to ban people. So it wasn't it wasn't entirely anything goes.
I think every social media tycoon or would be tycoon
is aware of the great, the great example of the
(15:30):
problem with free speech running into a crowded movie theater
screaming fire and then just watching the chaos happen. Right,
That is that free speech is that a crime? This
The problem is that free speech itself is not mutually exclusive,
like it's not. It can be free speech and still
(15:52):
be uh something that is quite dangerous and meant to
be dangerous, you know what I mean? Completely. I want
to I want to bring this back to our adventures
with Facebook, if that's okay, because we've we've had a
long relationship this show has at least with Facebook, and
I just want to let listeners in kind of behind
(16:13):
the screen here, behind behind the camera. Um. So, originally,
when we started a Facebook page for stuff they don't
want you to know it was, it functions very differently
because of the Facebook platform and how they handled like
group pages. And then I think it was like a
fan page. I don't remember exactly what they called it,
(16:33):
but generally we could go in and see every comment
that was coming in, We could personally respond to comments,
we could we had access to that because there was
such a small pool of people that were interested in
our show when we first started that page. Then as
it began to grow, Ben and I remember this, Ben,
(16:54):
I remember we would struggle to keep up with some
of the stuff that we were still able to do.
It and then and it got out of hand to
where we had to pick and choose a moment to
go in and kind of search through and decide what
we could respond to, much like right now we do
with our listener mail segments. We have this large pool
and we dip in and we pull some things out. Um,
(17:18):
then if you scale that out even further to the
point where it got so big, we had to create
here's where it gets crazy, the Facebook group, which made
it more more manageable, and then we had to get
mods for that because it got too big. And imagine
doing this and this kind of scale with billions of
users and you know you're you're attempting you kind of
(17:40):
have to assign humans at some point two police behaviors
on social media because the only a human can make
those value judgments on these things. We talked about this
a bit, but when it is just by the nature
of the scale, has it has to be done through
a program, through an algorithm releasing all the content, it
(18:01):
just becomes a completely impossible to Yeah, that's the thing.
So there's the human equation is quite a difficult one
to crack, which may be the most inhuman robotics stuff
I've said in this episode, but the problem is this,
you're you're right. Currently there is no way to watch
(18:23):
every falling sparrow of its wheat right on any platform.
There's not there's not a real considered visibility human beings.
It is well proven human beings will not always outsmart algorithms,
well not always outsmart software, but human beings so far
(18:45):
will always out create it. They'll change the game, right
like look at look at the amazing and brilliant evolution
of online descent under the reign of jimping in China.
What we're seeing is people couldn't type out characters that
said protest, so they went to the meme world, which
(19:07):
is a very old, I would argue type of communication.
And when certain memes were getting stopped, then they went
to other ways of communicating, a nod and a wink
you know what I mean, a signal to those who
were in the know. And then this language evolved from it.
And the fascinating thing, by the way, Anonymous, you will
(19:27):
be interested in this. China just banned the audio app
Clubhouse because people were going on this ephemeral audio app
and they were speaking their minds in a way that
I can only imagine the PRC found objection herble. Also,
we're doing an episode of following going it's really weird.
(19:50):
Ben Ben is fully down the rabbit hole there. But
it's good. It's such a good thing. You're gonna be
happy about it. It's gonna have a good result for
all of us. We might not be able to get
in after that one. I don't know, man, that that
show comes around every once in a while. I've been
meaning to see it where we where I live in particular,
that show comes through every year. I mean there's memes
(20:15):
of like shen Yan billboards on the moon. You know,
it's like a running gag just everywhere every coffee shop,
they've got armies of these, like street team people like
putting up these signs. We should all go. Let's make
it a thing. Let's heart. It's quite stunning. Yeah. I
always wanted to go, but the tickets are pricey, and
(20:35):
then there's the question of what exactly your support of
my funding? Yeah, but but with that being said, uh, Anonymous,
we hope that we are. We hope that we are
giving UM a worthwhile perspective on on the issues here
social media, freedom of speech, private versus public entities or
(20:56):
private versus state entities. And the answer right now, as
far as we can tell, is that there is no
silver bullet. There is no solution to this dilemma. There's
nothing that solves the puzzle in a way that makes
everybody agree, you know what I mean, like like overreaching governments. Again,
(21:17):
China is a great example overreaching governments. Their answer is
domestic stability above all. Therefore, we will shut down quick fast,
in a hurry, and with great prejudice anything that could
be a threat to domestic stability, because we are doing
this for the greater good right and we can get
into the difference between um civic and economic rights versus
(21:41):
human rights, which is a huge deal internationally. And then
there's the other side, which is, you know, let's while
out hashtag yolo, say whatever you want and and consequences
be damned. And it appears that neither of those extremes
are particularly beneficial to people at scale. To your point, Matt,
(22:04):
over the long term, no one knows how to fix this.
We built things that we don't understand, and that's the
root of the problem. Absolutely, you're correct, and that's a
good place to end it. We should end it there.
I unfortunately have to leave you this just because I
I've got a place where you can go check out
some things. Um, go head on over to the Harvard
Business Review. It's just called Harvard Business Review. You can
(22:25):
read some really interesting opinions about some of this stuff.
And there are a couple other places online that you'll
be able to find if you just do some duck
duck going about UH scale and disinformation. And there's this
Harvard Business Review article discusses the the ad revenue model
(22:48):
with scale and what that means and how that can
be abused by bad actors, and so it's what we've
talked about before a little bit. But you can really
get into the nitty gritty and a cup all these
articles and we'd recommend that. Okay, thank you again for
calling it. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll
be right back, and we're back with more messages from you. Yes,
(23:16):
you the public? Are you or are you not? A
member of the public. That's from a movie. I don't
remember which one, but I digress. We're talking about Mattress Firm.
It's a follow up from a previous UH Strange News
Our Listener Mail episode. I forget, but this one is
a you feel recall just a qu quick summary, lots
(23:36):
of mattress firms, weirdly so ones across the street from
one another, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We
went through, talked about the business model, talked about how, uh,
there was some weird, kind of sketchy stuff in the
past of the parent company of mattress firm, Steinhoff International.
We're gonna get into that in a second. But um,
(23:57):
you know, the whole conspiracy, the angle of mattress firm,
it's all over the internet. Is Is it some sort
of elaborate international money laundering situation? Are all these mattresses
full of drugs and or cash? That's my editorializing, but
it's a it's a reasonable question, especially given the you know,
largely moving away from showroom models, with all the Caspers
(24:22):
and the you know, Brenda's not Brenda Lisa's, and the
purple mattresses of the world. It's a little odd that
there's still so many mattress firms. And we've got the
inside scoop from the real estates perspective, from one of
the landlords of one of these rental locations of a
Mattress Firm. Um. And this comes from Andrew who wrote
(24:43):
in via email. Andrew says, Hi, guys, just listen to
your recent episode talking about the Mattress store conspiracy. I'm
here to share a personal experience my mom encountered with
none other than Mattress Firm. My mom owns various commercial
real estate around northeastern Ohio. Years ago, a tenant vacated
one of her properties that was on the corner of
(25:04):
an exit ramp of a highway in a high traffic area.
She decided to give the place a facelift and put
it back on the market for lease. Mattress Firm approached
her with something like a six year lease, paying above
fair market value. She declined because she didn't want to
deal with a big corporation. Shortly after, someone higher up
at a corporate might have been the CEO at the time,
(25:25):
personally called her to asking her to reconsider offering her
twice their market value was for that location. She finally agreed.
After all this persistence and all that money and all
that money, I mean that is literally an offer that
would be very, very difficult to refuse. Mattress Firm moved in,
and I mean to tell you we never once saw
(25:46):
a customer come into the store, as we would frequently
pass that intersection, much like our two Mattress firm locations
across from each other on Moreland Avenue, a big main
drag here in Atlanta. Within a year or so of
being there, they abruptly called saying they needed out of
their six plus year lease. Apparently, behind the scenes, Mattress
Firm had been opening an insane amount of storefronts. It
(26:09):
was alled that the CEO was cooking the books to
appear that they were much more successful than they actually were.
As a result, they were forced into bankruptcy and had
to cut hundreds of retail leases. Below is a link
to an article that talks about this very situation. Anyway,
I thought you'd be interested, you thought right, Um, and
take care, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, thank you so much. This
(26:34):
is this Mattress for thing. For the background, It's something
that Noel and Matt and I have talked about at
length for for a number of years. Because you know
how it is when you when you have friends that
you've known for a while, some conversations are just conversations
that kind of continue forever, you know, and you touch
(26:57):
based on this every so often. UM, we did a
pretty good job I think of walking through the possibilities here.
But this is I don't know about you guys. This
was this letter from Andrew was the first I heard
about this. Uh, the CEOs shenanigans, and I believe the
(27:17):
link you sent us is just about a little less
than a year old talking about how in February, Uh,
there was at least a partial make good on the
fraud lawsuit? Is that correct? But not Yeah, that's correct.
Freshly removed from bankruptcy, Mattress firm partially settles fraud lawsuit.
(27:38):
Wait a minute, what fraud lawsuit? We didn't really talk
about that last time. That's because we kind of cliff
hung it. If you'll recall with UM, I believe Matt
you very slightly dropped the name of Marcus Justa who
on December five of two thousand and seventeen resigned UM
siting after there were allegations of accounting irregularities. The stock
(28:03):
price plummeted sixty six percent and ultimately would go to
fall by UM. And Yeah, apparently they had done exactly
what is being described here, overstating profits and assets by
nearly twelve billion dollars. It's a lot of mattresses. So,
(28:23):
I mean, is this just crooked bookkeeping? Like it seems
like an unsustainable model. But to me this starts to
have the like ring of something like the Magical Corporation
in Breaking Bad, where I'm not picturing you know, other
stuff going on behind the scenes, you know, much more nefarious.
But that's just where my mind goes. And if that
(28:45):
is the case, it certainly doesn't like they're doing a
very good job of hiding it, because I mean, this
is like everyone and their mom questions why there's so
many freaking mattress firms everywhere? But this company owns lots
of other you know, it's a holding company. This uh,
this Steinhoff in a national They own other you know,
manufacturing facilities, they own other big box type retailer spaces,
(29:08):
mainly in Europe. Yeah, yeah, it's how how big does
this go? You know what I mean? This It's it's
interesting too because we can use the parlor example from
earlier here. For a holding company of that size, it's
fair to ask how closely they keep an eye on
(29:28):
various subsidiaries or enterprises, you know, much less individuals Mattress
firm itself filed lawsuits against former employees, accusing them of
conspiring to make the company expand faster and further than
it should. Uh. But I'm well, did you see what
(29:48):
it what they were doing? Did we do I'm sorry,
I may maybe I missed it. I was kind of
reading a bit here as we were discussing guys. But
did we talk about what their plan was, like what
those two guys were doing, Bruce Levy and Ryan Vincent,
these were two real estate executives there. I can't remember
if we talked about this in the last time, but
if we did it, it doesn't querying about um tell
(30:10):
us a little bit more about who these people were
and how they connected up with Marcus Gusta and the whole,
you know, the whole collapse. Well in this guy, Alexander
dtich Chitch. I think that's the one that I mentioned,
Alexander that that brings a bell for me. That so,
what these guys were doing, they were doing very similar
things to what in our message from Andrew said. They
(30:31):
were paying way above regular value for leases in places
across the country, and they were doing it purposefully because
many times those the land that was the land that
they were leasing was owned by a group that one
or more of these individuals actually had a like a
(30:52):
controlling share over, or we're a part of, or were
invested in in some way, so that they were just
cycling that money through essentially through the lease money was
actually getting back to the individuals rather than benefiting Mattress
Firm in any way. M M. I mean it's it's weird,
isn't it, Because when you it's like the example have
always used of targets income Stream being at least partially
(31:16):
selling security systems to other businesses McDonald's. You can make
the argument is a real estate company that happens to
give you fries if you give them a couple of bucks.
The stores that we see in the companies that we
see on the street level from the consumer side, we're
seeing a very very small part of a very very
(31:37):
large iceberg. Right. And and the thing with Mattress Firm
is that, like some feathered down Icarus, they flew too
close to the real the crooked real estate son. I'm
just freestyling here, guys. Somebody is somebody saw me if
I go too much farther off the rails. Um, what
we know is that despite all these massive closures that occurred,
(32:01):
uh and the resignations that ensued, Mattress firm is still around.
So whatever they clearly it's around and around and around, right,
So they definitely uh did not render themselves extinct, which
to my mind means on some level, whatever crime was occurring,
worked should have done a follow up. I'm assuming this
(32:24):
this listener, Uh, this deal they're talking about with the
with the rental was back in and the article came
out in twenty nineteen, but it's referencing this period since
late the litigation. But I'm saying it sounds like this
was a practice and I'm sorry, I want to ask
you guys real quick. Is this like a desperate move
(32:47):
to like bail yourself out and not like you know,
go under, or is there something more? Is this like
literally like a scam, Like is this sort of cooking
the books to like bide yourself some time and the
hopes that you're profits will go up and you can
save the company, or is this is this something like weirder? Well, well,
it's it's a bit weird so deep. I'm not going
(33:09):
to say his name correctly once Dtich DP Deetch, the
Alexander guy. He he made counterclaims against Mattress Firm while
a lot of this stuff was going down, and he
was saying that Mattress Firm itself, like the top executives there,
were pressuring him into bulking up its real estate. So
(33:29):
they were they were pressing him to do the stuff
that he was doing. Um. And the whole point, at
least according to him in his countersuit, is the is
that Mattress Firm wanted to derail competition. We talked about
that in the last time we discussed this, that the
strategy there was to push out any other small mattress companies.
They were trying to get in on Mattress Firm's territory. Um.
(33:55):
I mean, it's just it's interesting to know that it's
just kind of become a big shouting match at each other.
Well you told me to do this, Well, yeah, but
you told me to do that, and yeah, and there
does the money go in the mattress man. Dude. It
really puts a new fresh spin on the famous Godfather
line taking it to the mattresses, which means going to war.
(34:17):
Mattresses were fun. Fact, mattresses were the weapon of choice
in the mafia's yesteryear. They were very dangerous weapon. It's
basically like a oversized pillow fight. And I mean those
wire you know, springs inside pack a rill. Well, you
get the momentum you start swinging, it's pandemonium, you know. Uh,
this this is uh, this is still kind of an
(34:41):
ongoing case. You know, it's something we've said before. Uh.
Just because the news is not covering a story past
the five minutes you hear on the evening program, uh,
doesn't mean the story ended. As a matter of fact,
Steinhof International is currently negotiation to try to settle another
(35:03):
financial scandal. Uh that it was just announced. Um another
subsidiary there is called PEP Core Holdings just just got
one step closer in the UK court, just settling a
multi billion rand lawsuit. RAN's being recurat to South Africa.
And before we wrap this one up, I have to
(35:23):
name some of the South African retail brands that Steinhoff
owns because some of these uh names are just adorable
and there's you know, there's always little differences. Another that
I love with branding and other countries. So my personal
favorite is incredible Connection. We've got penny pinchers which I'm
assuming is like a dollar Tree type situation. Something just
(35:44):
called Pep. I don't know what that is. Uh Russell's
Shoe City, another favorite of mine, Techie Town two ks,
uh Timber City, and unitrans nice. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, guys,
I I I am sleepy. Is it okay? If we've
taken that break, we'll be back. The FBI's texted us okay,
(36:13):
and we have returned. This next tale comes to us
in response to our earlier episode on the Latitude Society,
which was a a surprising rob I think for for
many of us. Right, Lucas l writes to us to say,
you asked in your latest podcast to let you know
about other experiences that are like the Latitude Society. Well,
(36:37):
they are more common than one may think. Alternate reality games,
or a r G we can call it, have been
around for quite a while, and they are becoming more
and more advanced. I've been part of a few, and
they go way beyond cryptic web boards or a random
player getting a phone call. Here are two of the
bigger and more intricate a r G games, immersive theater
(36:58):
events I've been involved in. And you write this fantastic letter, Lucas,
We're not gonna. I think Matt No would killed me
if I read it in full. Uh it's length, but
it's it's it's very good stock full of information. Yes,
so I'm pulling out some choice excerpts here just to
give the rest of our fellow listens the lay of
(37:19):
the augmented reality lands. Here, Lucas mentions the Neantic Project,
which was put on by Neantic Labs when they were
owned by Google, and it started as a cryptic website.
The backstory is really cool, very sci fi. Cern is
working on exotic matter, and then it turns into like
a series of dead drops. The mobile game becomes in
(37:43):
twine like a mobile app, becomes entwined with the the
overall experience, and people ran wild with it. Again, I
can't think of a better comparison than the COO's Pendulum, which, please,
if you've read the book, nerd out with me about it.
Uh BO were actually hiring chartering planes to go to
(38:03):
unreachable areas of the world to score points for their
faction in this game. The game was, in many ways,
Lucas points out, a predecessor to Pokemon Go. The next
the next organization Lucas mentions, here is the experiences. This
is more horror to the nentic projects sci fi. Lucas
(38:28):
says he mainly focuses on the Tension experience because that
was the one I was most involved with. Uh that
it was created by the director of several films and
the Saw franchise, and Lucas says, once again, it's hard
to really describe this and not be writing for hours.
This a RG was about a cult that was kidnapping
and brainwashing people in the l A area. It would
(38:50):
get funds by bringing in the elderly, having them sign
over all their possessions. They would also lure in and
brainwash young girls they believed in a god called a knock.
This started with a website. People would get calls from
the cast you know, we see again this mission bleed
from online to I R L in real life. UH,
and then you get you get literally kidnapped, tossed in
(39:14):
a van. Lucas, you have sent us a couple of
pictures relating to this, and we we hope everybody reads these.
I'd love to talk with you guys about these at
length in the future. One thing Lucas hipped us to
is that nonchalance right? The folks who were involved with
(39:34):
this nonchalance is starting another a r G. You can
you can go right now, folks to signal s y
G in y L dot com. They have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
all the hits. Uh. Lucas also found a TikTok, but
says it's currently empty at the time. Who was writing this? Uh?
(39:57):
And then Lucas, you going to tell us about your
a RG idea? And I'm gonna be honest, I think
it's so good that I made the decision not to
talk about it on air because I don't really I
don't want people taking his idea. Man, he worked hard
on it's smart, it's good. We can maybe describe it
in like vague terms. Would that work? I think, yeah,
(40:19):
maybe you're right. I just really liked it, so I
want to talk about it. But smarter, yeah, smarter move
is to to leave it alone. And we just have
to say, please, please, please do something with it because
it's super cool. It is so great. It's killing us
(40:41):
not to talk about it. But we would not be
able to well, I don't sleep, but we would not
be able to be uh, to have a sense of
inner peace if we told everybody how great we think
your idea is, and then someone took it from you.
We don't want to be a party to that. Credit
is important and it's your idea anyway. Lucas goes on
to say, you know, I'm not a wealthy guy like
(41:04):
Jeff Hull, which is why I would have some problems
doing this amazing idea, shouts out in immersive theater Alice
Wonderland style out in New York City called then She
Fell uh, and then also mentions when he heard of
called the Illuminati Ball, which sounds super up our alley uh,
and then says, hope, I helped you out a bit
(41:24):
with what you're looking for listening for a few years. Now,
keep up the great work. Poppy Caps is the name,
the name you want to go by. That's awesome, dude.
When we meet in real life, whether it's on a tour,
post pandemic, whatever, I'm gonna call you Poppy Caps. I'm
just gonna keep with it. I love it, Poppy Caps. Sorry. Oh,
(41:50):
you guys might remember a couple episodes. I can't remember
all Bush together, but I was really desperately trying to
make a connection. Uh. The show you Topia came up.
I believe you were both fans and I haven't seen
it yet, and is created by a guy named Dennis Kelly,
and I was like, oh my god, the name rings
a bell. What else did he do? I'll tell you
what else he did. He did this show on HBO
(42:13):
called The Third Day UM with Jude Law. Uh. That
is in and of itself a and it was meant
to be an interactive, communal kind of theater thing. Uh.
It all takes place on this creepy island off of
the coast of England, several hours from London, has this
like land bridge where the water or the tide rises
(42:35):
and lowers and that's the only way you can drive across,
and once the tide comes in, you can't get off
the island. But they were going to it's it's divided
into like these segments. Um, there's summer, autumn, and winter.
And autumn was initially going to be like a ticketed
event where you could go wander around the island. All
the actors would be they're doing stuff, um, and you'd
(42:57):
kind of just watch and like you know, intermingle and whatever.
Her And it's done in partnership with this company called
Punch Drunk that did this thing called Sleep No More
that I saw in New York and it's been running
for ages. But it's literally like you wear these masks
and your your unleashed into this multi level kind of
space and it's like Macbeth but but it's not. And
it's like there's satanic e type stuff and crazy music
(43:20):
and sound design and like it's like literally like living
in a video game. It's one of the coolest experiences
of my life. Um, and that's where that connection was.
So this all reminded me of Sleep No More and
the kinds of interactive theater Punch Drunk's been doing forever,
and that was the connection. I think we're gonna see
much more augmented reality in in the near future. I Mean,
(43:44):
the coolest part I think is gaming, but that is
sort of that is making the trend that is coming,
that is inevitable by the way that is making that trend.
Uh seemed innocuous and fun because these games are both
innocuous and fun in general. But what happens? What what
happens when a r becomes so accepted as technology that
(44:09):
walking around without glasses allowing you to interact in an
a R way uh is the same thing as being blind.
Just like children born today eighteen years from now not
knowing how to code. It's going to be kind of
like not being literate, you know what I mean. There's
there is a huge wave, a watership moment of technology
(44:31):
coming here speaking of kids and yet but oh yeah, okay, alright, buddy,
this is nope, We're I'm going mute for a moment. Boys,
how do we back Auntie data? So imagine imagine a
world where you are the person who forgets their contacts
(44:56):
or their uh a r spectacles at home, and you're
the only person who doesn't have it. You're going to
see the rest of the world appearing to behave very strangely.
I also want to point out not to be too
like cynical or gloom and doom. You know how these
classes are gonna work, right, you know, these contacts are
gonna work. They're going to be free with ads. Yeah,
(45:20):
I think like, you know, we talk about black Mirror
a ton on this show because it's it does such
a good job of like kind of creating a plausible,
not too distant future reality that you know, with the
healthy amount of satire. But I always think of that episode.
I can't remember the number, but it's the one about
the merits thirty million merits or whatever, where in order
to skip an ad you have to pay money, and
(45:45):
that's in like your life is literally just like serving
you ads like on screens, and it's it's like locked.
When you close your eyes, it beeps at you and
makes this like frequency that forces you to open your eyes. Um, yeah,
I'm with you, dude. I think it's I think it's
on the way. Years ago, I did, uh, I did
an experiment that didn't work out, Matt and Old can
(46:07):
assure you all. I do many experiments, and many of
them do not work out with their end results. But that's,
you know, that's experimentation. Here's what I tried to do.
I tried to count the number of ads I saw
in a given day, defining a day as in the
moment I wake up, to the moment um I guess,
to midnight or whatever. And from that span of time,
(46:30):
I quickly realized there was no way to count. There
was no way to count all of the ads unless
I wasn't working, I wasn't focused on anything else, and
I was hyper aware. And what's happening, and that's nothing.
Soon you will not be able to count ads at all.
It will simply be a brought to you by It'll
(46:53):
be like you know it'll be. It'll be life brought
to you by insert here. I have to disagree with you, Ben.
I think it's going to be gamified. And I think
you will know exactly how many ads you watched, and
how many like the duration, how many you completed, how
many you gave full attention to. You're gonna get grades
(47:13):
and scales, and you will get a crypto like portion
of a cryptocurrency based on the ads that you completed
or you know, portions of it, and then you'll be
able to use that cryptocurrency for everything, anything and everything. Counterpoint,
advertisers will pay more for hidden ads than that don't
(47:35):
count and don't appear to be like like you could
get some like achievement secret AADs like you can unlock
a certain special ad that gives you a full crypto
coal And what about this? What about this? Think about this?
What if? What if you are given the opportunity to
go to an organization, go to a person, maybe a friend,
(47:59):
maybe a loved wind, maybe your spouse, and then to
them recommend a thing. You what if you're paid directly
to be that word of mouth person, to be that
person who is hanging out across the street from the local, right,
and like there's a little there's a little like halo
like you see in a side mission and RPG hanging
over this person. And you walk over to this person,
(48:20):
your h u D says, you know, talk to them
about how great the wings are at the local and
walk up to them and you're like, hey, you know, uh,
my name's Jerome, and I gotta tell you if you
like wings as you go to the local, and then
you're done. You don't have to say anything else. You
just say that to a stranger. You keep walking, you
get your crypto bits or your ben bucks or whatever,
(48:41):
and then the world continues. It's Mary Dance to Hell
like and then they come in your earpiece and they say,
mentioned the local on air during your podcast and make
sure all listeners are aware of their sun dried tomato
smoked wings. It's it's not about the money, you guys.
(49:01):
It's about sending a message and getting It's about the
fragment of a crypto currency we got along the way.
And then also secret ads. Um. I I just recently
took the not the toe dip into crypto and I
bought a handful of coins uh through a friend with
a friend's recommendation, UM, using this site called next. So
(49:22):
it's like a crypto bank. And it has these like
verification like I'm not a bot, things where you have
to pull this like puzzle piece on a slider into
where the cutout of the puzzle piece goes. But the
whole thing itself is an AD. But it's also like
a capture, but it's an AD. It's beauty integration. We
(49:48):
have become ads. That's that's what's going to happen everybody listening. Uh.
This is dystopian and maybe we're being a bit extreme, um,
but I think we are. I think we're still firmly
within the realm of plausibility here, not just possibility. Uh
with this. The thing about the A R Games is
that they're so cool, they're so neat. It's so surprising
(50:12):
that there are not more, which means, to my mind,
there are many more on the way or in development.
The big question is where does it go? How far
does it go? You know what I mean, I'll tell
you how far We're gonna take a quick break from
our ad services to hear a quick word from our host,
(50:32):
and but what we'll be right back to the ad stream.
That's what it's going to be, right right, right right
exactly because everybody wants the ad because they want the
bitcoin or whatever. Crypto bits I like because it sounds
like a snack. C yeah, crypto bits. Uh. So this
is our show. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in.
(50:53):
Thank you Andrew, Thank you Papa Caps, Thank you Anonymous.
Uh what a ride fellas. Uh, folks. We hope that
you enjoyed this. We hope to hear from you soon.
If you want to take a page out of your
fellow listeners book, you can contact us any number of ways.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at conspiracy
(51:14):
Stuff on Instagram. We are a Conspiracy Stuff show. Hey,
why not head on over to Apple podcast wherever you
listen to the show and just pop a review in there.
We don't mind. We would love it if it's positive,
if you like what you're hearing, otherwise you know, maybe
don't No, I'm just kidding you be honest, it's totally
(51:35):
we want to hear what you think and it does
help the show. We don't have a Patreon, we don't
have a way to really you know, give back in
any way. But this is something you could do if
you felt like it should. The spirit so move you
if you're not, if you're not on board with social
media after all the creepy, increasingly true stuff we just
told you, we'd only get it. We have a phone
(51:55):
number you can call. It's one eight three three st
d w y t K. You have three minutes. They
belong to you. Uh, the time is your own. Use
it wisely. Let us know if it's okay to use
your name and voice on the air as we As
we've said in the past that three minutes can make
you feel like you're really put on the spot, so
it's kind of helpful if you have time, just do
(52:17):
a do a couple of bullet points. That's why I
want to tell the guys here's my amazing pun related
to conspiracies or whatever, and then just go nuts with it.
We can't wait to hear from you. If you hate phones,
totally get it. There is another way to contact us
always well, always so far, always astric so far. That
(52:37):
is our good old fashioned email address where we all
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(53:01):
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