March 20, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, I speak to Dave from Echoplex media about conspiracy theories and debunking them.https://www.echoplexmedia.com/new-blog/2024/03/01/cult-activism
Twitter: mistahbuhau
Bluesky: plexdave
Twitch: twitch.tv/echoplexmedia
Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/c/TheDelvinCoxExperience
Shoutout to Patreon Productor Douglas Riegert-Johnson and Ben Goodwin. Also, a Special shoutout to Erica Marie,Mike Fowler, Sandi Magee, Almighty Ray, Matthew Dawson, Michael LaCombe, Cynnara Tregarth, Derrick Spinner and Jason Alme
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This podcast is sponsored by patreon.com/devil Cock
Experience. If you want more content,
including exclusive shows, make sure you go to patreon.com/devil
Cock Experience. Also, special shout out to
Patreon producer Douglas Mcgirt Johnson.
(00:20):
Thank you. Welcome to the Delvin Cox
(01:19):
Experience, the podcast which each week I'm on a one man
mission to another culture diverse through diversity.
I'm your host, Delvin Cox and whip me on the podcast as a
special guest. Let them know who you are,
brother. Yeah, I'm Dave from Echoplex
Media. I go by many monikers and called
many insulting things by my detractors.
(01:39):
Oh, that's fine. I'm I'm the same way you you
know that he must be like the well known if Jason Dutch is
recommending him come on the show so.
Yeah, Jason and I, I know Jason Dutch was doing Twitch for a
while, but we had met each otherwhen we were both just doing
audio only podcasts quite some time ago actually.
(02:00):
Oh, OK, that's good then. That's great.
Any friend of Dutch is a friend of mine, to say the least.
Within reason. Within reason, that's correct.
As always, like to start the podcast off with the five for
five, five questions, 5 as to get the ball.
David, Are you ready? Yep, all.
Right, question number one. If all the serial mascots have
(02:27):
one big brawl, who you got winning?
Oh man, do the there's so the Lucky Charms people, are they
all separate or are they a team?Lucky charm, Lucky charm.
That's the Lucky Charms is the the leprechaun right?
(02:47):
I think there's several of them,aren't there?
I. Think there's only one Lucky
Charms guy? Oh, well, then it ain't that
guy. I don't know, man.
I guess. Captain Crunch.
Captain Crunch. Captain Crunch is the captain.
So yeah, let's see. Are you talking about the Cinema
Toast Crunch bakers? Oh, maybe the cinnamon.
Oh, are they a team? Yeah, it's three of them, they
(03:09):
look like. Weenies, though I'm still going
with Cap'n Crunch. OK, I got you.
That works. All right.
Question #2 we're going to base this off of your your hat
because I love your hat. For those who are not watching
the video, he has a 10/4 hat. On like selfies like it.
(03:29):
You sell those? Yep, you need to plug that.
What are you doing? That's at E Plex dot store.
You can find these tinfoil hats along with all kinds of other
merch I actually have. I was supposed to maybe work on
the merch store a little bit tonight before my stream, but I
was like, I'll just go on this guy's show instead because
that's that's way more fun than clicking around and fucking
(03:50):
rearranging a merch store. Yeah, that makes sense.
I agree. I'm a, I'm a, I'm slightly more
fun than rearranging a merch store.
All right, question. My question #2 for you is, I
know you're into the world's conspiracy theories, right?
So my question to you is, what'sa conspiracy theory that you
(04:12):
heard that sounds too ridiculousto be true, but actually is
true? I guess when I first heard about
MK Ultra and Operation Midnight Climax I until I looked into it,
it sounded crazy. That's a good one.
That is a good one. But it didn't take long to
(04:33):
figure out that that shit was real.
That's a really good one becauseMK Ultra is a wild story.
Well, particularly the OperationMidnight Climax part where they
were like basically running a brothel and giving people acid
and like videotaping them and shit.
That was crazy. We.
We, we got like a the, the, the history of the in the United
(04:58):
States, there's certain eras of it.
That was just really wild. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of a lot,
a lot of it was during the Cold War because like, I don't know,
the people have this idea and I think it extends into government
where like all the enemies of your country or whatever are
like monsters or they have superpowers, but they they
can't, it can't, they can't wraptheir head around the fact that
(05:20):
those people are just us but in another country.
Yes, pretty much. So they always make them seem
larger than life. And I think the Cold War, what's
the perfect example of that? Yep.
Like I like your thinking. Question #3 Dave, what's the
dumbest thing you think you've ever done as a kid?
(05:42):
Oh, so some of the stuff I only heard about, right, Because you
don't remember everything. But I, I guess when I was like
four or five, we lived in a condo complex and I was just
running around naked like knocking on people's doors and
shit when I was like 4 or 50. You was like a flasher.
I guess I don't know. I, I, maybe you know, you're
when you're four or five, you don't really, you don't really,
(06:03):
you're not really thinking of itthat way, right?
Yeah, that's kind of why that you're doing it at four or five.
Like I don't remember it obviously, but I I believe my
parents that I did that right. Yeah, you probably got some
people arrested. Random kids just pop up and
they're doing naked, like we knew you were weird.
(06:25):
Take these people to jail for noreason.
This is like that. This is like in what must have
been like 1981. So things were a little
different. It was it was a lot more
acceptable for kids to walk around.
That I don't know, but things were a little different, right?
I didn't end up I didn't end up on TikTok or what.
Well, that would have been illegal in its own separate sort
of. 100% that would have been illegal.
(06:50):
People would have went to jail for that one and.
It wouldn't have been me becauseI'd have just been four or five.
I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah.
All right, question #4 what do you think is the greatest
invention of the modern generation?
(07:11):
Starting what? After what?
after World War 2? Starting in the 80s Where?
Where do we start? Let's let's do do a funk after
the year 2000. Oh man, Oh, I'm going to do this
is going to be a kind of out of out of out of left field.
The greatest invention was DJ equipment that just takes Ausb
(07:34):
stick so that I don't have to cart around records to gigs.
That is a good one. That is a really good one.
Honestly, that makes life so much easier.
Just the ideal of like, you knowwhat is it?
Not even I, I guess iPod. Yeah, I, Oh, no, I, I, I'll go
(07:55):
specifically with the DJ gear that does that, Tom, that's.
That's, that's great. I like it.
All right, question #5 I'm trying to think of a good one
for, you know what I got 1 Thanos is coming to take over
(08:18):
the Earth, right? Thanos.
Thanos. I don't know who that is, but
I'll pretend. You know what Danos is?
No. See, it doesn't work.
Then you're like Dutch. You don't watch anything.
All right, so let's go. Aliens then.
Aliens are coming to take over the Earth.
You got to pick five people to take down the aliens.
(08:38):
Who are you picking? And.
Then you're going to be any of those UFO weirdos on YouTube,
that's for sure. They're they're pussies.
So I'm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking people that are like
Stone cold killers with Dolly Parton.
Yeah, Dolly Parton. Who else we got?
We're gonna go with. Well, I got four more.
(09:00):
This is gonna be really hard. Let's go with Bill Cosby.
You know, he might put a little something in their drink.
Good. Idea, yeah.
Mel Gibson. I'd just tell them that they're
Jewish and he would hate them and kill them.
That is awesome. True.
(09:20):
Oh God, you don't know him, but my neighbor across the hall, the
dude's bad ass. I think, I think the dude.
I think the dude. I think the dude maybe moved out
of his last place because there were bodies in his backyard.
OK. And then and then that Luigi guy
who took out the CEO of United Healthcare.
I like all these answers. Is that 5?
(09:41):
I think that's 5. That's five.
Yeah. Your neighbor Luigi.
Dolly Parton's tits, Bill Cosby.And it was one more you said.
Oh, my neighbor, if, if I got topick, if I got to pick another
one, we'll go with go with, go with David Miscavige, the the
(10:06):
head of Scientology, because he may already know them and may be
able to maybe negotiate on our behalf.
It's. A good idea.
It's pretty good we're Tom Cruise because he probably knows
them too. Yeah, but he'd he'd like hurt
himself trying to do his own stunts and then we'd be like
down and down a person. Yeah, that's a good point.
He does try to do his own stuntsfor no reason.
(10:28):
Like you're like, you don't haveto do that anymore, Tom Cruise,
you're a millionaire. It's OK.
We know you can do the stunt, buddy.
Well, he's getting him. He's getting up there in years
too, man. Maybe he can't anymore.
Yeah, you don't have to do it anymore, Tom.
So Dave, you do a Twitch stream,let everybody know a little bit
about yourself before we even start get get the get the ball.
(10:50):
Yeah, I guess primarily I'm a journalist.
I'm like a disinformation researcher and I'm my, my focus
lately has been on like cults and high control groups, but not
so much like top down ones, but more like how the dynamics
within cults play out in online communities.
And sometimes in sometimes strangely enough, in anti cult
(11:14):
communities, you end up with some culty stuff going on.
But also like conspiracy theory communities and a lot of like,
even in the manosphere to some extent, there's like a lot of
culty stuff going on. How does one get into a field
like that? How do you what what made you
want to look into this type of stuff?
Well, during COVID my business failed and I had to do
something. That's a good answer.
(11:35):
No, but I was doing it before, but I was, I guess I started off
my, my, you'd be maybe people would be surprised to know this.
The, the way that people end up in this is it's pretty common
that I started out as kind of like a troll and a ship poster.
And I was just making fun of people who believe in chemtrails
or like flat earthers or whatever, just kind of 'cause it
was funny. And then, yeah, I just decided,
(11:57):
well, you know, I've learned a lot about these kinds of people,
these kinds of communities just by making fun of them.
So maybe I should start a blog or a podcast or whatever.
And I started both. And now?
Now here I am, living this life of luxury.
That that's that's really interesting.
So let let me ask you about thisbecause you say you, you, you
kind of like look for this information and kind of set the
(12:19):
point straight, set the fact straight on it.
What is that like? I'm not really a debunker so
much I other people do a good job and that's important work.
But I think that the zone is flooded there.
I think I'm looking more, we look more at like the like the,
the social dynamics within the groups that form around mostly
(12:41):
like, I guess fringe beliefs or you know, extremist ideologies
and whatnot. So in other words, business is
booming for you right now because that is a very, we live
in a very interesting time when it comes to stuff like that,
disinformation, cultism on all sorts of levels of it.
So yeah, I can imagine you a lotof a lot of a lot of interesting
(13:04):
allies you go down. Yeah, I, I mean, I can't, I
would never be able to keep up with it on myself.
Just real quick, like shout out to the people in my Discord who
do a lot of like just they come across something, you know, a
little bit wacky on the Internetand we'll put it in the
appropriate place in my Discord server and stuff.
So those people are essentially like Co producers of the at
least the live streams. If I go to write something, I
(13:26):
don't write a lot anymore. It's just enough time.
It takes a long time to, I guess, Get the facts right,
especially when you're dealing with a lot of people who in the
end don't want to talk to somebody like me.
So it's a little bit harder to like write something like in a
like to do anything like in a journalistic capacity.
So, yeah, mostly we're, you know, just on stream kind of
(13:49):
talking about about these thingsthat I think I wrote my last
like I've put a few things on myblog, but the last like real
thing that I wrote for my blog was like a year and two days ago
actually. So like the last like thing when
I was that I would say I was engaged in the practice of
journalism doing. OK, let me.
(14:11):
OK, that's interesting. So what kind of conspiracy
theories and things that you look it up as of late that
you're kind of really talking about?
What's the, the, I guess the hotness, let's say the current
things? So I mean, you know, it's if if
like Fridays, we do a show called conspiracy Bingo and it's
just you're it's you would probably, you know, be able to
(14:32):
list the things we talk about. There's like chemtrails and Flat
Earth and fucking weirdos who drink their own piss and, you
know, anti vaxxers like screaming at people for no
reason and some some new world order sort of stuff.
But that stuff gets pretty dark pretty quick with the
anti-Semitism, and it's just nota not always the best kind of
(14:56):
vibe to put out there into the world, even if you're critiquing
it. You know, that's sort of on the
conspiracy side. But I gotta tell you, the last
two years maybe, yeah, maybe a little more than two years, at
least two years and two days, I suppose.
I've been watching a cult of personality, an abusive cult of
(15:16):
personality gain and then lose and then gain and then lose
influence in the anti Scientology world.
And it's been taking up a lot ofmy time.
At first I was the only one willing to say anything about it
because those people like are they don't want to criticize
each other. I don't know why.
Maybe they're fucking still likethey're in the cult in some
(15:38):
ways, at least the ones the former Scientologists.
But yeah, that's what I've been talking about that a lot lately.
And it's probably to the detriment of everything else
that I do because I spend too much time doing that.
And I should maybe be spending my time on something a little
less niche and growing my growing my audience in like
other spaces. But you know, it is what it is.
(15:58):
When you get, when you get, whenyou grab a hold of something,
especially something that no oneelse is doing any real good work
on, it's kind of hard to let it go.
Well, now I kind of want to hearabout it.
What's what's this cult thing inScientology that's going on?
Right now, well, it's more like,you know, like I said, it's it's
happening online primarily on YouTube.
So it's not like 1 to one like a, like a cult like Jonestown or
like Scientology, whatever, right, 'cause they're not all in
(16:19):
the same place. But the short version of it is
there's a guy, he's a bit of a cult of personality.
And it turned out that he's likean abuser.
And I was the only one willing to speak out about him for a
very long time. And to the point, it was to the
point where people were accusingme of working for the cult of
(16:39):
Scientology because I was like reporting on the what this what
this fellow was doing. And that's the short version.
I mean, there's two articles that maybe three articles about
him, but only two that are really good.
The third one was just a snark. The third one was just a joke
like. So they, they, they heard you
talk about this guy and they thought you were working with
(17:00):
the, working with Scientology because of it.
Yeah, because I was saying negative things about one of the
popular creators that talks about Scientology, but it turns
out that you don't have to worship a space alien to not
like this guy that. Makes sense to me.
(17:23):
I, I am, I am interested in these these lanes you get into.
So you do your show every week? We do.
I'm, I'm live six nights a week on Twitch.
Except for like if I have a DJ gig or whatever.
Obviously I can't do both because that happens.
That happens in the evening. Well, before we get into that,
what kind of DJ did you do? Because I kind of like.
I spin house music and break beats.
(17:46):
What what got you into that? I kind of, I mean personally
like. Music.
When I was a teenager, I wanted drums.
And my mom was like, well, I, I,I know you go to raves.
She's like, So what we're gonna do is we're gonna get you
turntables because the mixer hasa volume knob and a drum set
does not. And that's how I started DJ ING.
(18:07):
That's that's a smart mom. Yeah, no, man, Imagine, man.
I mean, I thought it would be fun, but now that I'm older, I'm
like, fuck, what if my neighbor next door was drumming?
I'd be. Fuck that, I'm not trying to.
Trying to do my show or fucking rewatch The X-Files for the
500th time and you're just somebody.
Especially if they're just learning and it doesn't even
sound good. Yeah, fuck that.
Yeah, you're hearing that all goddamn day.
(18:29):
Yeah, that'd be a problem. But you know, DJNDJN is is
great, man. DJN is really fun.
Yeah. Do you use digital turntables or
do you use regular turntables? I don't have records anymore.
I I use, I use digital equipment.
I have, I have, I have somethingat home, but it's slightly
(18:51):
different than what's in the clubs.
But yeah, now every now the average DJ has a couple thumb
drives and a set of headphones they carry around with them.
Lot, lot easier to do that in terms of instead of the records
and stuff. I I still collect records
because records is, you know, records is going back in style.
I kind of kind of. If I had space for it I I might
get back into it, but because now with everything all the
(19:14):
digital equipment being so expensive, it's actually fairly
budget friendly to just buy a set of technics and spin the
records. Yeah, that is kind of true.
Yeah, the players at the clubs are just each and you need two
or four of them. They're like 2600 bucks each for
the players. And then the mixer's another
$2000. And so you're you're in, you
(19:36):
know, you're in 12 thousand, $13,000.
If you want a system that's exactly like what you might play
on at the club now. I didn't.
I don't have. Fuck that.
You don't have that system. Absolutely not.
Absolutely. What?
A little bit below that one, yeah, but a little bit below
that one, a little bit more reasonable.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely 'cause I mean, I know
(19:58):
how to use this stuff at the clubs or whatever.
So what, when I'm at home, I'm not like, it's not like, oh, I
need to practice beat matching if I'm spending, first of all, I
have a second Twitch channel that I DJ on.
I make a little money on that. But also it's like fun at the
end of the night or whatever. Especially if I've had a few and
we're I'm like, well. I should probably stop giving
you information because I've hadthree pint glasses that are 5050
(20:20):
vodka and tonic. So now it's time, now it's time,
now we dance. But you know, the reason to do
that is that, you know, you wantto kind of figure out like what
you're going to do when you playthe club gig so that you're
familiar with the music that you're playing and how it like
goes together and that kind of that kind of stuff.
How does one get to play club digs?
Because you know, that's not a thing that you can just.
(20:41):
Easily. I've been in.
I've been in the scene since I was like 16.
Everybody knows me. I would have no idea how to get
in if I was new at. Least today you wouldn't, but
back then you just kind of just did the grind.
You just, I mean, you just, I was always, I was already at the
parties, right? And then like, you know, maybe
(21:02):
somebody who lived in my, my town would have an after party
and there'd be turntables there.So you'd, you know, show up with
your records and maybe you'd geta chance to play a little bit.
Maybe the promoter was there. I don't remember really.
I was on a lot of drugs. Well, that, yeah, that was the
time to be on drugs. Yeah.
That was any time to be on drugsas well as back then.
So yeah, yeah, Now, I mean, honestly, because the, you know,
(21:23):
I have to, there's not a lot of money in it right now unless
you're playing festivals. And I'm certainly not at that
level. I honestly probably turned down
twice, twice or three times as many gigs as I take.
There's no, you know, if, if they're like, oh, we're gonna,
you know, you get some drink tickets and shit.
I'm like, what? I'm like, are you gonna pay me?
They're like, no. And I'm like, well, I can't
(21:44):
come. Well, yeah, that's the that's
the life of a DJ and my. Friends are in bands.
My friends that are in bands, they deal with the same shit,
you know? Yeah, that's the life of a
musician in general. Like, hey, we'll pay you a drink
ticket. Like no pay me in money.
You know, it depends if it's like a big show and I think that
(22:04):
I might meet other, be able to network there, then sure.
But or if it's like a good friend of mine who I've been,
you know, dealing with forever and it's like their birthday or
their friends. But all right, all right, I'll
come. Can I play early, please?
Like I'm not trying to rock the house because the house is
probably not going to be full. So I'll just play early and keep
it, keep it, keep it slow and sexy for y'all.
(22:26):
And but yeah, I honestly, I don't know.
I've talked to younger people that are, you know, interested
and they're like, oh, you know, how how do I, how do I get in?
And I'm like, I don't fucking know.
They're like, well, how did you get this booking?
And I'm like, I've known this guy for 20 years, the promoter.
That works for me knowing him for 20 years.
That's your start. Know this guy for 20 years.
(22:48):
So. So let let me ask you about
this. Then doing the DJ thing.
What's the biggest show you think you played so far?
It was a long time ago I played something called the White Party
and and it was giant. Was it for Diddy?
No, it was not for Diddy. 'Cause he he also has white
(23:09):
parties too. Yeah, not anymore.
I think it was. I think it might have been long.
And I mean, there were, oh, I don't know, I guess it depends
how you define how big 'cause I've played San Francisco Pride,
but there's a million people there.
But they're not all in front of the stage, right?
Like I've played, I've played. That's a big event.
Yeah, I mean, but this I I don'tknow, I don't like playing, I
don't like playing festival. I don't like playing like street
(23:30):
parties. I don't, I I can't explain it.
I think it might just be the sun.
I think it might be the sun, though.
San Francisco is usually pretty nice.
I've played San Jose Pride and that sucked because it was hot
as fuck in San Jose because it was in August.
That sounds. Terrible.
But I, I, I mean, I suppose Pride, SF Pride's the biggest
event. But again, like, I don't really
(23:51):
think of it that way because everybody isn't at the stage
that I'm at, right? There's all kinds of stuff going
on. They're walking around and
they're checking out everything,like, you know, getting a hot
dog, stuff like that. Yeah, 5, if there's 4 or 500
people in front of the stage, that's certainly not the biggest
event I've ever played. You know, I think the White
Party 'cause there was, it was, it was in an arena and.
(24:14):
Yeah, Arena's a lot of people. Yeah.
At least that's a pretty big event.
Yeah, that, that was a long timeago.
I, I think, I mean, I played like some of the bigger raves,
but again, they were separated off.
You know, there might have been 20,000 people at like the, that
like home base in Oakland, but there were 6 rooms, right?
So now you're, and I wasn't in the largest 1 I don't think ever
(24:38):
actually. So you again, you're, you're now
you're, you're down under 1000 people.
And so it's not the biggest thing.
Also, when I was in San Jose, sometimes there'd be 10,000
people at a bike party in July and I would play the regroups
for that. But again, just 'cause there
were 10,000 people there doesn'tmean there were 10,000 people in
front of me, right 'cause? They're not actually looking at
(25:01):
you, they're just. There.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Well, it's a.
Little different, but it's stillcool.
Still gonna say I'm playing. That, I mean, I'll play, I'll
play that for free every year because that's so much fun.
It's so much fun. I can imagine.
And I, I will get, I will get obliterated drunk at a San Jose
bike party too, because it's theonly because it's totally
illegal. And so, like, if the police are
(25:22):
gonna come through and bust people, they're gonna have to
get through a lot of people to find me in my bottle of vodka.
Sounds like a lot of fun, man. Like, like, you have a good time
doing these shows, to say the least, yeah.
Yeah. And I mean, now that I'm back
closer to San Francisco, I'm getting booked a lot more.
I'm in Oakland now. And so I'm getting, I'm getting
(25:43):
booked more. But it's, you know, it's the,
the struggle isn't like, you know, when you're, when you're
first starting out, the struggleis to get bookings that now when
you get, when you're more established and you like expect
to be paid, the struggle is finding somebody who understands
that and doesn't take it personally when you're unwilling
to like I had to explain to a guy he's like, Oh, well, you
(26:04):
know, it's like that was it's just a Friday night and it's
just me and my friends and I'm like, well, then book your
friends. Yeah, it's a difference.
And and he was like, I, I don't get it.
Aren't you going out? I'm like, no, I stream for a
living. I'm giving up anywhere between,
you know, low end 80 bucks or high end 500 bucks.
I don't know how much I'm going to make if if I stream any given
(26:26):
night. And that he was like, what?
And I was like, dude, just I'm like, I can't take the book
thing. I was like, I don't want to, but
I can't continue this conversation either.
I was very frustrated. It's very frustrating when
people like won't listen kind ofor they don't want, maybe
they're listening, but then theydon't want to hear what you're
telling them. It gets very frustrating.
Yeah, I, I imagine that is very frustrating when they don't
(26:47):
understand that, hey, my my job is streaming and I make pretty
decent money at that. I want to continue making pretty
decent money at that. So I can't do what you want me
to do. Right.
And it's, you know, again, like it just depends on it.
Just that that's it's like a variety of factors.
But I don't tell them that like,oh, if you were my best friend,
(27:07):
I would do it right? Because now I don't want to have
that conversation about like, favoritism and nepotism and
shit, because I don't want to explain to them that that's just
how the scene works, actually, and that they need to fucking
figure that shit out real quick.That's just how life works.
Yeah, not just the scene. That's how everything works.
Everything works like that. If you're my brother, I'm going
to do things for you that I wouldn't do for other people.
(27:30):
That's just how it works. Yeah, now that's interesting.
I don't want to get too much into it.
Although I don't think my familywill be checking this out.
My brother-in-law will be askingme for stuff and he's like,
we're family and I'm like, you're annoying.
Well. There, there's that part.
Just because you're family, you don't mean you have to like
them. And, and, and the things he
wants are the stuff that I like,charge for like he wants like
(27:51):
consulting on like marketing andweb design and stuff.
And I'm like, no, that's, that'sI do that stuff sometimes too.
And I charge people for that. I'm not doing that for you.
That's like work work. This isn't like this isn't like,
hey, I need some help around thehouse and you know, you know,
your, your sister's gonna be watching, watching our son and I
need an extra set of hands and I'm like, well, fucking buy beer
(28:13):
and pizza and I'll I'll be over in fucking an hour.
Let's go. That's doing you a favor.
But it's a little bit different.I don't know.
I think a lot of people, I thinka lot of people who don't work
for themselves and don't have tolike hustle essentially to, to
make a living, They don't, they don't understand really, they
don't understand that that maybesomebody who's doing that stuff,
(28:33):
maybe that their time, that their time can't be free
actually that it just can't be. Yeah, time is.
Valuable and. Time costs money, especially
when you're hustling for yourself and trying to get that
dollar. It's a different, it's a
different type of feel, different type of environment
when you're doing that type of stuff, like when you whether
you're doing a DJ thing, whetheryou're doing the, the Twitch
(28:53):
streaming thing, you have to have a certain level of
dedication and focus to not onlylike just make a living, but to
keep keep making a living and keep that audience.
I think a lot of people who, especially older people, don't
understand that that driving that motivation, don't
understand how the process works.
So I think the keeping the audience part actually that
(29:15):
you're gonna get people are justgonna split for whatever reason,
like it's it's it's not your fault, but people are gonna
split, right. You're not gonna have you know,
you know, your day ones. They're not there anymore.
Actually, in this in this field,it's not like, you know, it's
not like you know, the the friends of mine who own a couple
bars, they're like, Oh, you, youI needed to do my birthday and
(29:37):
I'm like, Hey, I don't you know,I just moved to Oakland and I
don't really know what to do formy birthday.
Out of my place isn't big enoughfor a party.
She's like, you're one of our day ones.
You can use whatever, whichever one of our clubs you want.
She's like, I'll cancel another promoter.
She's like, I don't give a fuck,But that's because I know them
in person, right. And we were the when they opened
their first bar, we were there DJing like basically for like
(29:57):
tips essentially because we knewthem and we wanted to help them
get started. But that's very different than
like if somebody's like the first person that was ever a
regular watching your twitch channel.
No, they're gone. If you're if you're like, if
you've been at it for a while, they're gone.
They don't hate you. They ain't mad at you.
They just fucking don't sit around and watch twitch all the
time anymore. Maybe they're playing video
games. Maybe they took up cycling.
(30:17):
Maybe they found a girlfriend ora boyfriend.
Sometimes life just happens and people just have to go away.
Yeah, it's just that it churns. It churns a lot.
And you have to accept that. You know, I've seen some, I've
seen other people who are streamers.
They're like, hey, you know, I noticed that.
And it kind of makes me, makes me feel bad that some of the
people that were around maybe six months ago aren't around
(30:38):
anymore. I'm like, did someone show up to
replace them? They're like, well, yeah, I
guess so. I have more viewers than I did
then. And I'm like, well, that's just
the fucking game. Yeah, that's, that's how you got
to kind of look at it. Like especially, you know, and
this time, you know, all these guys, people who are gonna go
away. Like I thought I was podcasting.
I've been podcasting after like 6-7 years now and the people
(30:59):
I've met in the different walks of life, people I've met, people
that have went away. It's been very interesting ride
to say the least man. Yeah, we were audio only for a
long time. We made a lot of mistakes.
I think, I think one of the likewe made, I think one of the
mistakes we made was as soon as we had soon as we had like a
(31:22):
core group of people that were working on it.
The one of the mistakes we made was not jump into video, even if
it was, you know, and, and the, the video presentation that I
have, it looks good, but it's not like slick.
There's not like a lot of shit going on, like, right.
I don't know if you've been to some people's twitch channel
looks like a fucking casino there.
We don't, we, we don't, we don'thave that.
(31:43):
But I think we that we made thatmistake.
And the other thing we we did was we assumed kind of that if
we made good content with high quality audio and like people
who knew what they were talking about, that we would get people
to listen. And that was incorrect.
We very incorrect. Right.
And we were in it for three years, I think 2018 maybe that
(32:07):
it dawned on me that I'm like, no, we need to be building a
community around this or we needto stop and just do something
else. And so that's when we started
like really kind of leaning intolike Discord and kind of leaning
away from like things like Facebook and Twitter where you
put it out there for people to, to view, but then you generally
(32:29):
don't interact as much. And that was sort of when things
started growing and other like people in I guess in the on what
we call the dystopia beat started taking a little more
notice of what we were doing andwanting to collaborate with us
and wanting to help us. And then moving over to Twitch,
we found we found our people notlike the viewers, but like the
(32:50):
other creators who are doing sort of what we do.
We found the other people who are, you know, covering the same
kinds of like fringe groups. Everybody's a little bit
different, right? Like I'm the only one out there
talking about Scientology and the anti Scientology community a
lot. But other people were talking
about Nexium when we got there. People were other people were
definitely making fun of flat earthers.
(33:12):
Those if those people are still making fun of the Flat Earth,
though, they should have moved on 'cause that that that ship
has sailed and fall fallen off the edge of the earth.
There's no yeah there's that. That's dead.
It's like the same 5 skeptics arguing with the same 6 dumb ass
flat earthers for like 10 years now.
It's like find something else todo.
The world is a big place. Look around.
Yeah, I don't. I can't tell you the last one.
(33:33):
I thought I, well, maybe Kyrie Irving was the last one.
I actually heard somebody like generally like question like
wondering if the world was flat.That might be the last one.
Somebody even mentioned that. Yeah, it's it's still obviously
like a niche community online, but for a minute it was kind of
getting not big because I don't think like most people thought
it was the earth was flat. It was just that a few like
(33:55):
celebrities. And I don't even know if they
were doing it to fucking becauseit was like kind of trendy and
interesting. And if they were doing it just
to like sort of raise their profile because that that, that
that old saying that there's no such thing as bad press or
whatever. But I don't know.
I don't. You never know what people, why
people are doing what they're doing, especially public
figures. Yeah, it it was a thing for a
(34:16):
little period of time. Wasn't around the pandemic time
when that was becoming a thing? Or like how like some
celebrities say it? Yeah, I I mean, I thought it had
died off before then, but it's all gonna just depend on who
we're, you know, who we're exposed to.
Like you, you were talking aboutT like Thanos and stuff.
So I'm just assuming because I don't even know.
(34:37):
I mean, I know what that is. It's some character in like a
superhero movie or some shit. But I'm assuming that our media
environments are pretty different just based on based on
that. And like I know who Kyrie Irving
is, but I didn't even know who was a flat earther.
So again, our media environmentsare probably very different.
Yeah, on on some level, I'm verywell versed in a lot of
(34:58):
different things. But yeah, you could probably say
that. But yeah, he was.
What happened with Kyrie Irving was, I want to say what's around
the time of the pandemic, because it was during the time
with it, because I remember thisbecause the NBA was playing in
the what did they call? What did they call it in the
bubble? I think that's the one they call
it. They call it the bubble.
(35:18):
It was like they all players hadto go to Orlando and play, play
the season there. Yeah, I heard.
Yeah, my, my sister's a big Warriors fan and I think she was
talking a little bit about that.Like on our, on our, we had a,
we, we had like a weekly video call 'cause we weren't, you
know, all seeing each other as much.
(35:38):
And I think she was talking about that a little bit, yeah.
'Cause all the players had to godown in the play because they
wanted to make sure nobody got COVID and stuff like that.
So they had to like go there and, and they were doing
interviews with players during that, during that time.
And of course, that's how that came out and whole bunch of
other stuff came out during thattime.
Yes, yes, a lot of people lost their minds during COVID it
(36:01):
seems like. Very so and it.
Was very stressful. I understand it was very
stressful. You know, I was fortunate that
basically like I, our lease was up for the warehouse for my
business in April of 2020 and the landlord was like, oh, well,
we're, I'm not giving you a break on rent.
And I'm like, well, fucking, I'mnot renewing the lease.
(36:23):
Then I'm like, I don't know whatI'm going to do.
So then I was able to just like,it sucked 'cause I had to like
let all my employees go. But I was like, I can't just,
you know, this wasn't a small place and it was in San Jose,
CA, so it was expensive to leaseit.
And so I was like, well, I can'tdo this.
I mean, I'm going to run out of money eventually.
And so I was fortunate in that Iwas able to like liquidate like
(36:43):
almost all of our inventory, pile up a bunch of money and
make the move to like full time journalism.
And I know a lot of people that didn't have that kind of like
that kind of like off ramp. And basically just, that was
just the privilege of being having been a business owner
where I was able to just, you know, I paid every, I made sure
(37:04):
I did what I could for the people that I had to let go.
But then I took a big pile of money and was able to fucking
not worry too much for a while. And I know that other people
didn't have that opportunity. And so, you know, they were
under a lot more stress than I was.
And so the stress and maybe theywere, you know, they went into
office every day, or maybe it wasn't an office job.
(37:25):
Maybe they worked in the trades or whatever, and they weren't
able to work. They're just sitting there
looking at the Internet all day.And I don't know, they cooked
their fucking brains. Yeah, that that actually
happened to a lot of people. Their brains got cooked 'cause
they're just feeding into everything that you're seeing
and I think social media plays abig part in.
So let let me ask you about thisbecause this is a hot topic
(37:45):
lately. Do you think, how do you feel
about the concept of social media in general?
I, I think it's not going away. I think it's, I think we're
stuck with some version of it. And, you know, I think that I
think that it existed prior, like there was like always like
(38:06):
message boards in the past and that sort of operated like
'cause you could message people privately and you were having
these public conversations. So it operated in some ways like
social media did. It's just that it was more
distributed. And so like people weren't you,
you kicked off A1 message board,you just could join another one.
But I think that I think that I don't know, I think it, I just
(38:31):
wish that different people wouldhave been the ones who had the,
the bigger platforms, right? I wish like like a more, I'm
just gonna say, I'm just gonna say like a more diverse group of
people would have been at the top of the heap in social media
'cause you the them dudes was interchangeable, right?
The the Jack Dorsey when Twitterstarted the Instagram guys
(38:55):
before Facebook bought it, Mark Zuckerberg, in a lot of ways,
those dudes are just fucking interchangeable.
And and, you know, it's like nota lot of, you know, they, they
all came from, you know, pretty rich well, to do families, white
families. And they all, you know, became
(39:16):
rich very quickly. And so it like a lot of things
that like other, like a lot of things that are were happening
on their platforms that were like problematic for people of
color, queer people, women, women, women, those dudes didn't
know shit about that because they never had to deal with
anything. In fact, they probably never
(39:36):
wanted anything, wanted for anything their entire life.
And so they it never occurred tothem to like look outside of
themselves for like the values and like culture that they
should be cultivating on those platforms.
I agree it's interesting lookingat social media and where it
(39:57):
came at from the the beginning of it, especially Twitter in
particular. Where I came in from the
beginning to where it's at now, because when, when, when Twitter
started, it was kind of just like a platform.
People, you know, kicked it, said bullshit and stuff like
that. Now Twitter is like a tool.
It's how people get their news people.
I get their media people. Yeah, when I think I think it,
(40:22):
it was always sort of like that,but like more so that like
specific communities would find on the ground people with
information about the things they were looking for versus
like getting like news about thegovernment, right.
Like if you were, for example, like, you know, when a natural
disaster would happen, right, You'd go to Twitter if you were
(40:44):
a journalist, be it a be it one of the big, one of the big
places or an independent journalist.
And you'd be looking for people on the ground with, you know,
video pictures and just kind of telling you what what's going on
if there's a flood or an earthquake or a fire or
whatever. And you would be able to find
those people. And, you know, good for some of
those people because those people were able to then be like
some of those people were independent journalists
(41:06):
themselves. And they were able to launch
their careers off of their coverage.
Mind you, maybe their house justburned down, which fucking
sucks. But like it, you know, at least
some of some people were able tocome out of those things with
doing doing good journalism and good work in their community.
And now it's like, now it's likeit just, it's all a giant
fucking cloud chase. And it's, it's really hard on
(41:29):
Twitter, especially to, to even find good information.
Like if there's a natural disaster, you're gonna find,
you're gonna find pictures from other natural disasters that
people are claiming that are from, you know, the thing that
happened today and you're not gonna know.
And now you gotta go through andlike reverse the image search or
try to figure out if this person's even there.
(41:49):
And it's just like a, it's like a lot harder because I think
just a lot of people are like cloud farming and engagement
farming on there. And they're perfectly willing to
like use like the, the trauma and the the pain of people who
are just live through a natural disaster as like a almost like
it's an accelerant for their content and their, their cloud
(42:11):
farming. And it's fucking gross,
actually. It really is.
You know, I've seen so many posts on SO particularly, like I
said, particularly Twitter wherepeople will say something
happened and then you find, oh, this happened 10 years ago and
that's not how it happened. And it's just like I completely
out of context post and it's just like engagement farming.
(42:31):
Yeah. And it's, you know, it's one
thing like if you're, if you're like an influencer and you're
trying to farm engagement so that you can sell a product,
like it's a little grifty, but you're not like it's not gross,
right, 'cause you got to make a living.
And to some extent, I mean, I, Ido some version of that, right?
Like I, you know, the things I talk about are important, but
(42:52):
obviously I try to be entertaining and I, you know,
sometimes try to push boundariesin certain ways and all, all,
all to sell this fucking hat, right?
It's a. Good hat.
Good hat. It's a pretty good hat.
We've, we've sold a these are these were limited edition, the
pink on black and then there wasblack on pink.
(43:14):
Those are gone now. We sold a lot of those though,
because everybody wanted them. We got other colors, but these
are gone. These are gone.
Can't get these anymore. Look here, there's a guy out
there who made a ton of money selling a Red Hat.
So, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, this I think, I think the, the
(43:36):
fun thing about me, you know, this, this tinfoil hat is you're
going to get, you know, I'm going to get some people who
cook their brain buying it, who think that I'm on their side.
And then there's going to be other people who just think it's
funny and it might be a conversation starter at a dinner
party. Yes, that's that's the good
thing about the hat is how you interpret the hat to be.
(43:59):
Right. I've, I have, you know, I've
definitely funny enough, mostly at my DJ events, people ask
about it. It's the most common place for
people to ask about. It's like, what's with the hat?
And I'm like, oh, I'm a disinformation reporter.
And I think it's funny. They're like, oh, OK, Most
people are like, relieved. Like, they're like, oh, God.
All right, cool. All right, cool.
(44:25):
Well, well, let me ask you, since you brought up, since you
brought up and we, we didn't even get to talk talk about it
too much. Let's talk about it a little bit
before we before we get you out of here.
Disinformation reporter, How would you define that?
I mean, it's so. Or maybe disinformation
researcher it's. Either one works.
(44:45):
Yeah, I guess reporter, I don't know, I don't do a lot of
reporting. I guess, like I spend a lot of
time looking into misinformation, disinformation
and like broader way we talk about is we just call it, it's
like the dystopia BI guess. It's just you have to have some
kind of morbid curiosity about why people believe crazy things.
(45:10):
And then, you know, there's a lot of people like that.
A lot of there's a lot of trollson the Internet that like going
around making fun of conspiracy theorists.
But then when you take take the step to like look into it, it's
it's about, I guess it's about trying to figure out, at least
for me, like not why people believe these things really, but
(45:32):
how and other people do this differently.
But it's like how the communities form around these
ideas and how something that maybe nobody believed two years
ago through the force of like a Facebook group or a Telegram
channel or some kind of hashtag that went viral on Twitter or
(45:52):
some popular person on Instagram, How now all of a
sudden there's all these little communities popping up, you
know, around this idea. And that's, that's like what
interests me. And that's the thing that that
I, I do my best to try to understand to the best of my
ability. You know, these are communities
with, you know, anywhere between, you know, a couple 100
people, maybe up to maybe a million people.
(46:13):
And you know, so you're not going to understand everybody.
But yeah, for me, it's, it's thejust the the desire to
understand how like the like influence and control and demand
form around these fringe ideas on the Internet.
That's that's like my lane. Other people are debunkers,
other people do like a lot of interviews around this kind of
(46:35):
stuff. So, you know, other people would
are definitely doing different work in the same space.
There are people who make documentaries about these kinds
of things. So and those are all those
people are all basically my colleagues doing some version of
the same thing I am. So but I'm definitely more
interested in like the sociological aspect of it.
The people the almost like. It's almost like gossip, I
(46:58):
suppose. Yeah, it makes sense.
What is the most fascinating 1 you found so far?
One that just pulled you in. So I'm like in the conspiracy
culture, we'll, we'll leave out the cult that's forming in the
anti Scientology community. I'll just ask that you link my
articles because I did a lot of research on those and it's a lot
(47:22):
easier and better, better formatfor that.
I think like right now I'm finding it's really interesting
going back to some of the old school stuff and seeing what's
going on in like the the the people who believe in aliens or
the the Bigfoot and like the Cryptid kind of people.
Right now I'm having like havinglike a lot of fun checking out
(47:45):
those communities. And I think the reason is that a
lot of the like, let's just faceit, a lot of the real bad shit
in some of the other conspiracy communities, like the racism,
the anti-gay stuff, and primarily the blaming it all on
Jewish folks. You're finding a lot less of
that in like the Loch Ness Monster people or the Bigfoot
(48:06):
people or the the that UFO people.
You know, we have a joke in my Twitch channel that people, if
they're just like Cryptid and UFO people, they're probably
cool and they probably have weed, right?
So so you should. Sounds good to me.
If you meet those people, those people are probably pretty
fucking cool and like whatever, you might even want to talk to
them and ask them about like what they believe.
(48:27):
But then you, you know, you findpeople you know who are maybe
more satanic panic adjacent, andmaybe you should avoid those
people. Interesting, that's that's good
information to know, to say the least.
Yeah, at the dinner party, you definitely want to talk to the
UFO guy, but you don't want to talk to the Save the Children
from the tunnels under the GettyMuseum guy, you know what I'm
(48:48):
saying? Yeah, very much so.
Alright, any final thoughts? Say before we go, 'cause I know
you got to do your show and stuff like that too.
Gotta go make. Your money my show doesn't start
till 9:00 tonight, but I do likeI do like shorter interviews.
I try to keep mine under an houror two.
So I just, you know, I just, I suppose that like the, the point
(49:11):
of like what I do or the thing that I hope people get out of
what I do is that like there's always somebody lying to you out
there. There's always somebody trying
to get you to believe some shit,trying to get you to possibly do
some shit and trying to get you to join with what they're doing.
And you're never, you don't have, there's not enough time in
(49:32):
the day to determine to just go through and Fact Check every
fucking thing everybody says in the world.
You can't do it. You'll go crazy.
And I think people if, if they can, if, if people are
interested, learning to spot patterns of deception is gonna
serve you a lot better. Like if if you're in a Facebook
(49:53):
group and they're asking you forsome kind of weird loyalty that
you don't understand. Well, they're trying to put a
demand on you that is stupid. That is, you know what, what are
they doing? Or if if you're being, you know,
if you're being told to stay away from other people because
(50:16):
they're not part of the in Groupand you're given no reason
really other than they're just bad because they're not part of
our in Group. That's a, you know, something
you should something people should keep an eye on.
Or if you are following some creator and something weird
happened or something bad happened and that creator like
refuses to talk about it or start blocking, banning and bad
(50:37):
mouthing all their critics. Maybe find another creator to
watch 'cause you don't want to end up in a situation now where
you're defending some guy or some gal and it turns out that
they're like, they've been like abusing and taking advantage of
the community around their work.All these things are they're
just examples. And there's a we, we can be here
forever with a million differentexamples of things.
But I feel like, I feel like especially with with the way the
(51:00):
world is going right now and theamount of grifters and fucking
abusers and just people out there trying to take advantage
of other people. Kind of keep your eye out for
anybody who might be trying to might be trying to use and abuse
you and take advantage of your, you know, your goodwill and
maybe even they need to monetizethat.
(51:20):
I like it. That's the that's the perfect
way to end this episode, man. I perfect message to say the
least. Yeah, yeah, this, this was, this
was good. I like, I like that your audio's
good. You have no idea.
You have no idea how bad some people's audio is sometimes,
man. Oh my.
(51:40):
God I I can. Imagine, yeah, that that that's
great. You can find my work at
echoplexmedia.com and my streamsat twitch.tv/echoplex Media and
I'll make sure that our our intrepid host here puts a couple
links to a couple of the articles about the thing the the
(52:01):
thing going on in the anti Scientology community that we
didn't have fucking five hours to delve into here.
Yeah, that's gonna be a whole another episode then within
itself. Maybe, maybe I'm I've been
trying to talk about other things on on people's shows
lately because I've been talkingabout that for two years and
people can certainly find me talking about that on other
(52:23):
podcasts. Let me tell you.
That makes sense. All right, everybody go check
out his stuff. Go get you a tenfold hat because
that hat is dope. And as always, Delvin Cox
experience, we are out peace.
This podcast is sponsored by patreon.com/devil Cock
Experience. If you want more content,
including exclusive shows, make sure you go to patreon.com/devil
Cock Experience. Also, special shout out to
Patreon producer Douglas Mcgirt Johnson.
(00:20):
Thank you. Welcome to the Delvin Cox
(01:19):
Experience, the podcast which each week I'm on a one man
mission to another culture diverse through diversity.
I'm your host, Delvin Cox and whip me on the podcast as a
special guest. Let them know who you are,
brother. Yeah, I'm Dave from Echoplex
Media. I go by many monikers and called
many insulting things by my detractors.
(01:39):
Oh, that's fine. I'm I'm the same way you you
know that he must be like the well known if Jason Dutch is
recommending him come on the show so.
Yeah, Jason and I, I know Jason Dutch was doing Twitch for a
while, but we had met each otherwhen we were both just doing
audio only podcasts quite some time ago actually.
(02:00):
Oh, OK, that's good then. That's great.
Any friend of Dutch is a friend of mine, to say the least.
Within reason. Within reason, that's correct.
As always, like to start the podcast off with the five for
five, five questions, 5 as to get the ball.
David, Are you ready? Yep, all.
Right, question number one. If all the serial mascots have
(02:27):
one big brawl, who you got winning?
Oh man, do the there's so the Lucky Charms people, are they
all separate or are they a team?Lucky charm, Lucky charm.
That's the Lucky Charms is the the leprechaun right?
(02:47):
I think there's several of them,aren't there?
I. Think there's only one Lucky
Charms guy? Oh, well, then it ain't that
guy. I don't know, man.
I guess. Captain Crunch.
Captain Crunch. Captain Crunch is the captain.
So yeah, let's see. Are you talking about the Cinema
Toast Crunch bakers? Oh, maybe the cinnamon.
Oh, are they a team? Yeah, it's three of them, they
(03:09):
look like. Weenies, though I'm still going
with Cap'n Crunch. OK, I got you.
That works. All right.
Question #2 we're going to base this off of your your hat
because I love your hat. For those who are not watching
the video, he has a 10/4 hat. On like selfies like it.
(03:29):
You sell those? Yep, you need to plug that.
What are you doing? That's at E Plex dot store.
You can find these tinfoil hats along with all kinds of other
merch I actually have. I was supposed to maybe work on
the merch store a little bit tonight before my stream, but I
was like, I'll just go on this guy's show instead because
that's that's way more fun than clicking around and fucking
(03:50):
rearranging a merch store. Yeah, that makes sense.
I agree. I'm a, I'm a, I'm slightly more
fun than rearranging a merch store.
All right, question. My question #2 for you is, I
know you're into the world's conspiracy theories, right?
So my question to you is, what'sa conspiracy theory that you
(04:12):
heard that sounds too ridiculousto be true, but actually is
true? I guess when I first heard about
MK Ultra and Operation Midnight Climax I until I looked into it,
it sounded crazy. That's a good one.
That is a good one. But it didn't take long to
(04:33):
figure out that that shit was real.
That's a really good one becauseMK Ultra is a wild story.
Well, particularly the OperationMidnight Climax part where they
were like basically running a brothel and giving people acid
and like videotaping them and shit.
That was crazy. We.
We, we got like a the, the, the history of the in the United
(04:58):
States, there's certain eras of it.
That was just really wild. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of a lot,
a lot of it was during the Cold War because like, I don't know,
the people have this idea and I think it extends into government
where like all the enemies of your country or whatever are
like monsters or they have superpowers, but they they
can't, it can't, they can't wraptheir head around the fact that
(05:20):
those people are just us but in another country.
Yes, pretty much. So they always make them seem
larger than life. And I think the Cold War, what's
the perfect example of that? Yep.
Like I like your thinking. Question #3 Dave, what's the
dumbest thing you think you've ever done as a kid?
(05:42):
Oh, so some of the stuff I only heard about, right, Because you
don't remember everything. But I, I guess when I was like
four or five, we lived in a condo complex and I was just
running around naked like knocking on people's doors and
shit when I was like 4 or 50. You was like a flasher.
I guess I don't know. I, I, maybe you know, you're
when you're four or five, you don't really, you don't really,
(06:03):
you're not really thinking of itthat way, right?
Yeah, that's kind of why that you're doing it at four or five.
Like I don't remember it obviously, but I I believe my
parents that I did that right. Yeah, you probably got some
people arrested. Random kids just pop up and
they're doing naked, like we knew you were weird.
(06:25):
Take these people to jail for noreason.
This is like that. This is like in what must have
been like 1981. So things were a little
different. It was it was a lot more
acceptable for kids to walk around.
That I don't know, but things were a little different, right?
I didn't end up I didn't end up on TikTok or what.
Well, that would have been illegal in its own separate sort
of. 100% that would have been illegal.
(06:50):
People would have went to jail for that one and.
It wouldn't have been me becauseI'd have just been four or five.
I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah.
All right, question #4 what do you think is the greatest
invention of the modern generation?
(07:11):
Starting what? After what?
after World War 2? Starting in the 80s Where?
Where do we start? Let's let's do do a funk after
the year 2000. Oh man, Oh, I'm going to do this
is going to be a kind of out of out of out of left field.
The greatest invention was DJ equipment that just takes Ausb
(07:34):
stick so that I don't have to cart around records to gigs.
That is a good one. That is a really good one.
Honestly, that makes life so much easier.
Just the ideal of like, you knowwhat is it?
Not even I, I guess iPod. Yeah, I, Oh, no, I, I, I'll go
(07:55):
specifically with the DJ gear that does that, Tom, that's.
That's, that's great. I like it.
All right, question #5 I'm trying to think of a good one
for, you know what I got 1 Thanos is coming to take over
(08:18):
the Earth, right? Thanos.
Thanos. I don't know who that is, but
I'll pretend. You know what Danos is?
No. See, it doesn't work.
Then you're like Dutch. You don't watch anything.
All right, so let's go. Aliens then.
Aliens are coming to take over the Earth.
You got to pick five people to take down the aliens.
(08:38):
Who are you picking? And.
Then you're going to be any of those UFO weirdos on YouTube,
that's for sure. They're they're pussies.
So I'm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking people that are like
Stone cold killers with Dolly Parton.
Yeah, Dolly Parton. Who else we got?
We're gonna go with. Well, I got four more.
(09:00):
This is gonna be really hard. Let's go with Bill Cosby.
You know, he might put a little something in their drink.
Good. Idea, yeah.
Mel Gibson. I'd just tell them that they're
Jewish and he would hate them and kill them.
That is awesome. True.
(09:20):
Oh God, you don't know him, but my neighbor across the hall, the
dude's bad ass. I think, I think the dude.
I think the dude. I think the dude maybe moved out
of his last place because there were bodies in his backyard.
OK. And then and then that Luigi guy
who took out the CEO of United Healthcare.
I like all these answers. Is that 5?
(09:41):
I think that's 5. That's five.
Yeah. Your neighbor Luigi.
Dolly Parton's tits, Bill Cosby.And it was one more you said.
Oh, my neighbor, if, if I got topick, if I got to pick another
one, we'll go with go with, go with David Miscavige, the the
(10:06):
head of Scientology, because he may already know them and may be
able to maybe negotiate on our behalf.
It's. A good idea.
It's pretty good we're Tom Cruise because he probably knows
them too. Yeah, but he'd he'd like hurt
himself trying to do his own stunts and then we'd be like
down and down a person. Yeah, that's a good point.
He does try to do his own stuntsfor no reason.
(10:28):
Like you're like, you don't haveto do that anymore, Tom Cruise,
you're a millionaire. It's OK.
We know you can do the stunt, buddy.
Well, he's getting him. He's getting up there in years
too, man. Maybe he can't anymore.
Yeah, you don't have to do it anymore, Tom.
So Dave, you do a Twitch stream,let everybody know a little bit
about yourself before we even start get get the get the ball.
(10:50):
Yeah, I guess primarily I'm a journalist.
I'm like a disinformation researcher and I'm my, my focus
lately has been on like cults and high control groups, but not
so much like top down ones, but more like how the dynamics
within cults play out in online communities.
And sometimes in sometimes strangely enough, in anti cult
(11:14):
communities, you end up with some culty stuff going on.
But also like conspiracy theory communities and a lot of like,
even in the manosphere to some extent, there's like a lot of
culty stuff going on. How does one get into a field
like that? How do you what what made you
want to look into this type of stuff?
Well, during COVID my business failed and I had to do
something. That's a good answer.
(11:35):
No, but I was doing it before, but I was, I guess I started off
my, my, you'd be maybe people would be surprised to know this.
The, the way that people end up in this is it's pretty common
that I started out as kind of like a troll and a ship poster.
And I was just making fun of people who believe in chemtrails
or like flat earthers or whatever, just kind of 'cause it
was funny. And then, yeah, I just decided,
(11:57):
well, you know, I've learned a lot about these kinds of people,
these kinds of communities just by making fun of them.
So maybe I should start a blog or a podcast or whatever.
And I started both. And now?
Now here I am, living this life of luxury.
That that's that's really interesting.
So let let me ask you about thisbecause you say you, you, you
kind of like look for this information and kind of set the
(12:19):
point straight, set the fact straight on it.
What is that like? I'm not really a debunker so
much I other people do a good job and that's important work.
But I think that the zone is flooded there.
I think I'm looking more, we look more at like the like the,
the social dynamics within the groups that form around mostly
(12:41):
like, I guess fringe beliefs or you know, extremist ideologies
and whatnot. So in other words, business is
booming for you right now because that is a very, we live
in a very interesting time when it comes to stuff like that,
disinformation, cultism on all sorts of levels of it.
So yeah, I can imagine you a lotof a lot of a lot of interesting
(13:04):
allies you go down. Yeah, I, I mean, I can't, I
would never be able to keep up with it on myself.
Just real quick, like shout out to the people in my Discord who
do a lot of like just they come across something, you know, a
little bit wacky on the Internetand we'll put it in the
appropriate place in my Discord server and stuff.
So those people are essentially like Co producers of the at
least the live streams. If I go to write something, I
(13:26):
don't write a lot anymore. It's just enough time.
It takes a long time to, I guess, Get the facts right,
especially when you're dealing with a lot of people who in the
end don't want to talk to somebody like me.
So it's a little bit harder to like write something like in a
like to do anything like in a journalistic capacity.
So, yeah, mostly we're, you know, just on stream kind of
(13:49):
talking about about these thingsthat I think I wrote my last
like I've put a few things on myblog, but the last like real
thing that I wrote for my blog was like a year and two days ago
actually. So like the last like thing when
I was that I would say I was engaged in the practice of
journalism doing. OK, let me.
(14:11):
OK, that's interesting. So what kind of conspiracy
theories and things that you look it up as of late that
you're kind of really talking about?
What's the, the, I guess the hotness, let's say the current
things? So I mean, you know, it's if if
like Fridays, we do a show called conspiracy Bingo and it's
just you're it's you would probably, you know, be able to
(14:32):
list the things we talk about. There's like chemtrails and Flat
Earth and fucking weirdos who drink their own piss and, you
know, anti vaxxers like screaming at people for no
reason and some some new world order sort of stuff.
But that stuff gets pretty dark pretty quick with the
anti-Semitism, and it's just nota not always the best kind of
(14:56):
vibe to put out there into the world, even if you're critiquing
it. You know, that's sort of on the
conspiracy side. But I gotta tell you, the last
two years maybe, yeah, maybe a little more than two years, at
least two years and two days, I suppose.
I've been watching a cult of personality, an abusive cult of
(15:16):
personality gain and then lose and then gain and then lose
influence in the anti Scientology world.
And it's been taking up a lot ofmy time.
At first I was the only one willing to say anything about it
because those people like are they don't want to criticize
each other. I don't know why.
Maybe they're fucking still likethey're in the cult in some
(15:38):
ways, at least the ones the former Scientologists.
But yeah, that's what I've been talking about that a lot lately.
And it's probably to the detriment of everything else
that I do because I spend too much time doing that.
And I should maybe be spending my time on something a little
less niche and growing my growing my audience in like
other spaces. But you know, it is what it is.
(15:58):
When you get, when you get, whenyou grab a hold of something,
especially something that no oneelse is doing any real good work
on, it's kind of hard to let it go.
Well, now I kind of want to hearabout it.
What's what's this cult thing inScientology that's going on?
Right now, well, it's more like,you know, like I said, it's it's
happening online primarily on YouTube.
So it's not like 1 to one like a, like a cult like Jonestown or
like Scientology, whatever, right, 'cause they're not all in
(16:19):
the same place. But the short version of it is
there's a guy, he's a bit of a cult of personality.
And it turned out that he's likean abuser.
And I was the only one willing to speak out about him for a
very long time. And to the point, it was to the
point where people were accusingme of working for the cult of
(16:39):
Scientology because I was like reporting on the what this what
this fellow was doing. And that's the short version.
I mean, there's two articles that maybe three articles about
him, but only two that are really good.
The third one was just a snark. The third one was just a joke
like. So they, they, they heard you
talk about this guy and they thought you were working with
(17:00):
the, working with Scientology because of it.
Yeah, because I was saying negative things about one of the
popular creators that talks about Scientology, but it turns
out that you don't have to worship a space alien to not
like this guy that. Makes sense to me.
(17:23):
I, I am, I am interested in these these lanes you get into.
So you do your show every week? We do.
I'm, I'm live six nights a week on Twitch.
Except for like if I have a DJ gig or whatever.
Obviously I can't do both because that happens.
That happens in the evening. Well, before we get into that,
what kind of DJ did you do? Because I kind of like.
I spin house music and break beats.
(17:46):
What what got you into that? I kind of, I mean personally
like. Music.
When I was a teenager, I wanted drums.
And my mom was like, well, I, I,I know you go to raves.
She's like, So what we're gonna do is we're gonna get you
turntables because the mixer hasa volume knob and a drum set
does not. And that's how I started DJ ING.
(18:07):
That's that's a smart mom. Yeah, no, man, Imagine, man.
I mean, I thought it would be fun, but now that I'm older, I'm
like, fuck, what if my neighbor next door was drumming?
I'd be. Fuck that, I'm not trying to.
Trying to do my show or fucking rewatch The X-Files for the
500th time and you're just somebody.
Especially if they're just learning and it doesn't even
sound good. Yeah, fuck that.
Yeah, you're hearing that all goddamn day.
(18:29):
Yeah, that'd be a problem. But you know, DJNDJN is is
great, man. DJN is really fun.
Yeah. Do you use digital turntables or
do you use regular turntables? I don't have records anymore.
I I use, I use digital equipment.
I have, I have, I have somethingat home, but it's slightly
(18:51):
different than what's in the clubs.
But yeah, now every now the average DJ has a couple thumb
drives and a set of headphones they carry around with them.
Lot, lot easier to do that in terms of instead of the records
and stuff. I I still collect records
because records is, you know, records is going back in style.
I kind of kind of. If I had space for it I I might
get back into it, but because now with everything all the
(19:14):
digital equipment being so expensive, it's actually fairly
budget friendly to just buy a set of technics and spin the
records. Yeah, that is kind of true.
Yeah, the players at the clubs are just each and you need two
or four of them. They're like 2600 bucks each for
the players. And then the mixer's another
$2000. And so you're you're in, you
(19:36):
know, you're in 12 thousand, $13,000.
If you want a system that's exactly like what you might play
on at the club now. I didn't.
I don't have. Fuck that.
You don't have that system. Absolutely not.
Absolutely. What?
A little bit below that one, yeah, but a little bit below
that one, a little bit more reasonable.
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely 'cause I mean, I know
(19:58):
how to use this stuff at the clubs or whatever.
So what, when I'm at home, I'm not like, it's not like, oh, I
need to practice beat matching if I'm spending, first of all, I
have a second Twitch channel that I DJ on.
I make a little money on that. But also it's like fun at the
end of the night or whatever. Especially if I've had a few and
we're I'm like, well. I should probably stop giving
you information because I've hadthree pint glasses that are 5050
(20:20):
vodka and tonic. So now it's time, now it's time,
now we dance. But you know, the reason to do
that is that, you know, you wantto kind of figure out like what
you're going to do when you playthe club gig so that you're
familiar with the music that you're playing and how it like
goes together and that kind of that kind of stuff.
How does one get to play club digs?
Because you know, that's not a thing that you can just.
(20:41):
Easily. I've been in.
I've been in the scene since I was like 16.
Everybody knows me. I would have no idea how to get
in if I was new at. Least today you wouldn't, but
back then you just kind of just did the grind.
You just, I mean, you just, I was always, I was already at the
parties, right? And then like, you know, maybe
(21:02):
somebody who lived in my, my town would have an after party
and there'd be turntables there.So you'd, you know, show up with
your records and maybe you'd geta chance to play a little bit.
Maybe the promoter was there. I don't remember really.
I was on a lot of drugs. Well, that, yeah, that was the
time to be on drugs. Yeah.
That was any time to be on drugsas well as back then.
So yeah, yeah, Now, I mean, honestly, because the, you know,
(21:23):
I have to, there's not a lot of money in it right now unless
you're playing festivals. And I'm certainly not at that
level. I honestly probably turned down
twice, twice or three times as many gigs as I take.
There's no, you know, if, if they're like, oh, we're gonna,
you know, you get some drink tickets and shit.
I'm like, what? I'm like, are you gonna pay me?
They're like, no. And I'm like, well, I can't
(21:44):
come. Well, yeah, that's the that's
the life of a DJ and my. Friends are in bands.
My friends that are in bands, they deal with the same shit,
you know? Yeah, that's the life of a
musician in general. Like, hey, we'll pay you a drink
ticket. Like no pay me in money.
You know, it depends if it's like a big show and I think that
(22:04):
I might meet other, be able to network there, then sure.
But or if it's like a good friend of mine who I've been,
you know, dealing with forever and it's like their birthday or
their friends. But all right, all right, I'll
come. Can I play early, please?
Like I'm not trying to rock the house because the house is
probably not going to be full. So I'll just play early and keep
it, keep it, keep it slow and sexy for y'all.
(22:26):
And but yeah, I honestly, I don't know.
I've talked to younger people that are, you know, interested
and they're like, oh, you know, how how do I, how do I get in?
And I'm like, I don't fucking know.
They're like, well, how did you get this booking?
And I'm like, I've known this guy for 20 years, the promoter.
That works for me knowing him for 20 years.
That's your start. Know this guy for 20 years.
(22:48):
So. So let let me ask you about
this. Then doing the DJ thing.
What's the biggest show you think you played so far?
It was a long time ago I played something called the White Party
and and it was giant. Was it for Diddy?
No, it was not for Diddy. 'Cause he he also has white
(23:09):
parties too. Yeah, not anymore.
I think it was. I think it might have been long.
And I mean, there were, oh, I don't know, I guess it depends
how you define how big 'cause I've played San Francisco Pride,
but there's a million people there.
But they're not all in front of the stage, right?
Like I've played, I've played. That's a big event.
Yeah, I mean, but this I I don'tknow, I don't like playing, I
don't like playing festival. I don't like playing like street
(23:30):
parties. I don't, I I can't explain it.
I think it might just be the sun.
I think it might be the sun, though.
San Francisco is usually pretty nice.
I've played San Jose Pride and that sucked because it was hot
as fuck in San Jose because it was in August.
That sounds. Terrible.
But I, I, I mean, I suppose Pride, SF Pride's the biggest
event. But again, like, I don't really
(23:51):
think of it that way because everybody isn't at the stage
that I'm at, right? There's all kinds of stuff going
on. They're walking around and
they're checking out everything,like, you know, getting a hot
dog, stuff like that. Yeah, 5, if there's 4 or 500
people in front of the stage, that's certainly not the biggest
event I've ever played. You know, I think the White
Party 'cause there was, it was, it was in an arena and.
(24:14):
Yeah, Arena's a lot of people. Yeah.
At least that's a pretty big event.
Yeah, that, that was a long timeago.
I, I think, I mean, I played like some of the bigger raves,
but again, they were separated off.
You know, there might have been 20,000 people at like the, that
like home base in Oakland, but there were 6 rooms, right?
So now you're, and I wasn't in the largest 1 I don't think ever
(24:38):
actually. So you again, you're, you're now
you're, you're down under 1000 people.
And so it's not the biggest thing.
Also, when I was in San Jose, sometimes there'd be 10,000
people at a bike party in July and I would play the regroups
for that. But again, just 'cause there
were 10,000 people there doesn'tmean there were 10,000 people in
front of me, right 'cause? They're not actually looking at
(25:01):
you, they're just. There.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Well, it's a.
Little different, but it's stillcool.
Still gonna say I'm playing. That, I mean, I'll play, I'll
play that for free every year because that's so much fun.
It's so much fun. I can imagine.
And I, I will get, I will get obliterated drunk at a San Jose
bike party too, because it's theonly because it's totally
illegal. And so, like, if the police are
(25:22):
gonna come through and bust people, they're gonna have to
get through a lot of people to find me in my bottle of vodka.
Sounds like a lot of fun, man. Like, like, you have a good time
doing these shows, to say the least, yeah.
Yeah. And I mean, now that I'm back
closer to San Francisco, I'm getting booked a lot more.
I'm in Oakland now. And so I'm getting, I'm getting
(25:43):
booked more. But it's, you know, it's the,
the struggle isn't like, you know, when you're, when you're
first starting out, the struggleis to get bookings that now when
you get, when you're more established and you like expect
to be paid, the struggle is finding somebody who understands
that and doesn't take it personally when you're unwilling
to like I had to explain to a guy he's like, Oh, well, you
(26:04):
know, it's like that was it's just a Friday night and it's
just me and my friends and I'm like, well, then book your
friends. Yeah, it's a difference.
And and he was like, I, I don't get it.
Aren't you going out? I'm like, no, I stream for a
living. I'm giving up anywhere between,
you know, low end 80 bucks or high end 500 bucks.
I don't know how much I'm going to make if if I stream any given
(26:26):
night. And that he was like, what?
And I was like, dude, just I'm like, I can't take the book
thing. I was like, I don't want to, but
I can't continue this conversation either.
I was very frustrated. It's very frustrating when
people like won't listen kind ofor they don't want, maybe
they're listening, but then theydon't want to hear what you're
telling them. It gets very frustrating.
Yeah, I, I imagine that is very frustrating when they don't
(26:47):
understand that, hey, my my job is streaming and I make pretty
decent money at that. I want to continue making pretty
decent money at that. So I can't do what you want me
to do. Right.
And it's, you know, again, like it just depends on it.
Just that that's it's like a variety of factors.
But I don't tell them that like,oh, if you were my best friend,
(27:07):
I would do it right? Because now I don't want to have
that conversation about like, favoritism and nepotism and
shit, because I don't want to explain to them that that's just
how the scene works, actually, and that they need to fucking
figure that shit out real quick.That's just how life works.
Yeah, not just the scene. That's how everything works.
Everything works like that. If you're my brother, I'm going
to do things for you that I wouldn't do for other people.
(27:30):
That's just how it works. Yeah, now that's interesting.
I don't want to get too much into it.
Although I don't think my familywill be checking this out.
My brother-in-law will be askingme for stuff and he's like,
we're family and I'm like, you're annoying.
Well. There, there's that part.
Just because you're family, you don't mean you have to like
them. And, and, and the things he
wants are the stuff that I like,charge for like he wants like
(27:51):
consulting on like marketing andweb design and stuff.
And I'm like, no, that's, that'sI do that stuff sometimes too.
And I charge people for that. I'm not doing that for you.
That's like work work. This isn't like this isn't like,
hey, I need some help around thehouse and you know, you know,
your, your sister's gonna be watching, watching our son and I
need an extra set of hands and I'm like, well, fucking buy beer
(28:13):
and pizza and I'll I'll be over in fucking an hour.
Let's go. That's doing you a favor.
But it's a little bit different.I don't know.
I think a lot of people, I thinka lot of people who don't work
for themselves and don't have tolike hustle essentially to, to
make a living, They don't, they don't understand really, they
don't understand that that maybesomebody who's doing that stuff,
(28:33):
maybe that their time, that their time can't be free
actually that it just can't be. Yeah, time is.
Valuable and. Time costs money, especially
when you're hustling for yourself and trying to get that
dollar. It's a different, it's a
different type of feel, different type of environment
when you're doing that type of stuff, like when you whether
you're doing a DJ thing, whetheryou're doing the, the Twitch
(28:53):
streaming thing, you have to have a certain level of
dedication and focus to not onlylike just make a living, but to
keep keep making a living and keep that audience.
I think a lot of people who, especially older people, don't
understand that that driving that motivation, don't
understand how the process works.
So I think the keeping the audience part actually that
(29:15):
you're gonna get people are justgonna split for whatever reason,
like it's it's it's not your fault, but people are gonna
split, right. You're not gonna have you know,
you know, your day ones. They're not there anymore.
Actually, in this in this field,it's not like, you know, it's
not like you know, the the friends of mine who own a couple
bars, they're like, Oh, you, youI needed to do my birthday and
(29:37):
I'm like, Hey, I don't you know,I just moved to Oakland and I
don't really know what to do formy birthday.
Out of my place isn't big enoughfor a party.
She's like, you're one of our day ones.
You can use whatever, whichever one of our clubs you want.
She's like, I'll cancel another promoter.
She's like, I don't give a fuck,But that's because I know them
in person, right. And we were the when they opened
their first bar, we were there DJing like basically for like
(29:57):
tips essentially because we knewthem and we wanted to help them
get started. But that's very different than
like if somebody's like the first person that was ever a
regular watching your twitch channel.
No, they're gone. If you're if you're like, if
you've been at it for a while, they're gone.
They don't hate you. They ain't mad at you.
They just fucking don't sit around and watch twitch all the
time anymore. Maybe they're playing video
games. Maybe they took up cycling.
(30:17):
Maybe they found a girlfriend ora boyfriend.
Sometimes life just happens and people just have to go away.
Yeah, it's just that it churns. It churns a lot.
And you have to accept that. You know, I've seen some, I've
seen other people who are streamers.
They're like, hey, you know, I noticed that.
And it kind of makes me, makes me feel bad that some of the
people that were around maybe six months ago aren't around
(30:38):
anymore. I'm like, did someone show up to
replace them? They're like, well, yeah, I
guess so. I have more viewers than I did
then. And I'm like, well, that's just
the fucking game. Yeah, that's, that's how you got
to kind of look at it. Like especially, you know, and
this time, you know, all these guys, people who are gonna go
away. Like I thought I was podcasting.
I've been podcasting after like 6-7 years now and the people
(30:59):
I've met in the different walks of life, people I've met, people
that have went away. It's been very interesting ride
to say the least man. Yeah, we were audio only for a
long time. We made a lot of mistakes.
I think, I think one of the likewe made, I think one of the
mistakes we made was as soon as we had soon as we had like a
(31:22):
core group of people that were working on it.
The one of the mistakes we made was not jump into video, even if
it was, you know, and, and the, the video presentation that I
have, it looks good, but it's not like slick.
There's not like a lot of shit going on, like, right.
I don't know if you've been to some people's twitch channel
looks like a fucking casino there.
We don't, we, we don't, we don'thave that.
(31:43):
But I think we that we made thatmistake.
And the other thing we we did was we assumed kind of that if
we made good content with high quality audio and like people
who knew what they were talking about, that we would get people
to listen. And that was incorrect.
We very incorrect. Right.
And we were in it for three years, I think 2018 maybe that
(32:07):
it dawned on me that I'm like, no, we need to be building a
community around this or we needto stop and just do something
else. And so that's when we started
like really kind of leaning intolike Discord and kind of leaning
away from like things like Facebook and Twitter where you
put it out there for people to, to view, but then you generally
(32:29):
don't interact as much. And that was sort of when things
started growing and other like people in I guess in the on what
we call the dystopia beat started taking a little more
notice of what we were doing andwanting to collaborate with us
and wanting to help us. And then moving over to Twitch,
we found we found our people notlike the viewers, but like the
(32:50):
other creators who are doing sort of what we do.
We found the other people who are, you know, covering the same
kinds of like fringe groups. Everybody's a little bit
different, right? Like I'm the only one out there
talking about Scientology and the anti Scientology community a
lot. But other people were talking
about Nexium when we got there. People were other people were
definitely making fun of flat earthers.
(33:12):
Those if those people are still making fun of the Flat Earth,
though, they should have moved on 'cause that that that ship
has sailed and fall fallen off the edge of the earth.
There's no yeah there's that. That's dead.
It's like the same 5 skeptics arguing with the same 6 dumb ass
flat earthers for like 10 years now.
It's like find something else todo.
The world is a big place. Look around.
Yeah, I don't. I can't tell you the last one.
(33:33):
I thought I, well, maybe Kyrie Irving was the last one.
I actually heard somebody like generally like question like
wondering if the world was flat.That might be the last one.
Somebody even mentioned that. Yeah, it's it's still obviously
like a niche community online, but for a minute it was kind of
getting not big because I don't think like most people thought
it was the earth was flat. It was just that a few like
(33:55):
celebrities. And I don't even know if they
were doing it to fucking becauseit was like kind of trendy and
interesting. And if they were doing it just
to like sort of raise their profile because that that, that
that old saying that there's no such thing as bad press or
whatever. But I don't know.
I don't. You never know what people, why
people are doing what they're doing, especially public
figures. Yeah, it it was a thing for a
(34:16):
little period of time. Wasn't around the pandemic time
when that was becoming a thing? Or like how like some
celebrities say it? Yeah, I I mean, I thought it had
died off before then, but it's all gonna just depend on who
we're, you know, who we're exposed to.
Like you, you were talking aboutT like Thanos and stuff.
So I'm just assuming because I don't even know.
(34:37):
I mean, I know what that is. It's some character in like a
superhero movie or some shit. But I'm assuming that our media
environments are pretty different just based on based on
that. And like I know who Kyrie Irving
is, but I didn't even know who was a flat earther.
So again, our media environmentsare probably very different.
Yeah, on on some level, I'm verywell versed in a lot of
(34:58):
different things. But yeah, you could probably say
that. But yeah, he was.
What happened with Kyrie Irving was, I want to say what's around
the time of the pandemic, because it was during the time
with it, because I remember thisbecause the NBA was playing in
the what did they call? What did they call it in the
bubble? I think that's the one they call
it. They call it the bubble.
(35:18):
It was like they all players hadto go to Orlando and play, play
the season there. Yeah, I heard.
Yeah, my, my sister's a big Warriors fan and I think she was
talking a little bit about that.Like on our, on our, we had a,
we, we had like a weekly video call 'cause we weren't, you
know, all seeing each other as much.
(35:38):
And I think she was talking about that a little bit, yeah.
'Cause all the players had to godown in the play because they
wanted to make sure nobody got COVID and stuff like that.
So they had to like go there and, and they were doing
interviews with players during that, during that time.
And of course, that's how that came out and whole bunch of
other stuff came out during thattime.
Yes, yes, a lot of people lost their minds during COVID it
(36:01):
seems like. Very so and it.
Was very stressful. I understand it was very
stressful. You know, I was fortunate that
basically like I, our lease was up for the warehouse for my
business in April of 2020 and the landlord was like, oh, well,
we're, I'm not giving you a break on rent.
And I'm like, well, fucking, I'mnot renewing the lease.
(36:23):
Then I'm like, I don't know whatI'm going to do.
So then I was able to just like,it sucked 'cause I had to like
let all my employees go. But I was like, I can't just,
you know, this wasn't a small place and it was in San Jose,
CA, so it was expensive to leaseit.
And so I was like, well, I can'tdo this.
I mean, I'm going to run out of money eventually.
And so I was fortunate in that Iwas able to like liquidate like
(36:43):
almost all of our inventory, pile up a bunch of money and
make the move to like full time journalism.
And I know a lot of people that didn't have that kind of like
that kind of like off ramp. And basically just, that was
just the privilege of being having been a business owner
where I was able to just, you know, I paid every, I made sure
(37:04):
I did what I could for the people that I had to let go.
But then I took a big pile of money and was able to fucking
not worry too much for a while. And I know that other people
didn't have that opportunity. And so, you know, they were
under a lot more stress than I was.
And so the stress and maybe theywere, you know, they went into
office every day, or maybe it wasn't an office job.
(37:25):
Maybe they worked in the trades or whatever, and they weren't
able to work. They're just sitting there
looking at the Internet all day.And I don't know, they cooked
their fucking brains. Yeah, that that actually
happened to a lot of people. Their brains got cooked 'cause
they're just feeding into everything that you're seeing
and I think social media plays abig part in.
So let let me ask you about thisbecause this is a hot topic
(37:45):
lately. Do you think, how do you feel
about the concept of social media in general?
I, I think it's not going away. I think it's, I think we're
stuck with some version of it. And, you know, I think that I
think that it existed prior, like there was like always like
(38:06):
message boards in the past and that sort of operated like
'cause you could message people privately and you were having
these public conversations. So it operated in some ways like
social media did. It's just that it was more
distributed. And so like people weren't you,
you kicked off A1 message board,you just could join another one.
But I think that I think that I don't know, I think it, I just
(38:31):
wish that different people wouldhave been the ones who had the,
the bigger platforms, right? I wish like like a more, I'm
just gonna say, I'm just gonna say like a more diverse group of
people would have been at the top of the heap in social media
'cause you the them dudes was interchangeable, right?
The the Jack Dorsey when Twitterstarted the Instagram guys
(38:55):
before Facebook bought it, Mark Zuckerberg, in a lot of ways,
those dudes are just fucking interchangeable.
And and, you know, it's like nota lot of, you know, they, they
all came from, you know, pretty rich well, to do families, white
families. And they all, you know, became
(39:16):
rich very quickly. And so it like a lot of things
that like other, like a lot of things that are were happening
on their platforms that were like problematic for people of
color, queer people, women, women, women, those dudes didn't
know shit about that because they never had to deal with
anything. In fact, they probably never
(39:36):
wanted anything, wanted for anything their entire life.
And so they it never occurred tothem to like look outside of
themselves for like the values and like culture that they
should be cultivating on those platforms.
I agree it's interesting lookingat social media and where it
(39:57):
came at from the the beginning of it, especially Twitter in
particular. Where I came in from the
beginning to where it's at now, because when, when, when Twitter
started, it was kind of just like a platform.
People, you know, kicked it, said bullshit and stuff like
that. Now Twitter is like a tool.
It's how people get their news people.
I get their media people. Yeah, when I think I think it,
(40:22):
it was always sort of like that,but like more so that like
specific communities would find on the ground people with
information about the things they were looking for versus
like getting like news about thegovernment, right.
Like if you were, for example, like, you know, when a natural
disaster would happen, right, You'd go to Twitter if you were
(40:44):
a journalist, be it a be it one of the big, one of the big
places or an independent journalist.
And you'd be looking for people on the ground with, you know,
video pictures and just kind of telling you what what's going on
if there's a flood or an earthquake or a fire or
whatever. And you would be able to find
those people. And, you know, good for some of
those people because those people were able to then be like
some of those people were independent journalists
(41:06):
themselves. And they were able to launch
their careers off of their coverage.
Mind you, maybe their house justburned down, which fucking
sucks. But like it, you know, at least
some of some people were able tocome out of those things with
doing doing good journalism and good work in their community.
And now it's like, now it's likeit just, it's all a giant
fucking cloud chase. And it's, it's really hard on
(41:29):
Twitter, especially to, to even find good information.
Like if there's a natural disaster, you're gonna find,
you're gonna find pictures from other natural disasters that
people are claiming that are from, you know, the thing that
happened today and you're not gonna know.
And now you gotta go through andlike reverse the image search or
try to figure out if this person's even there.
(41:49):
And it's just like a, it's like a lot harder because I think
just a lot of people are like cloud farming and engagement
farming on there. And they're perfectly willing to
like use like the, the trauma and the the pain of people who
are just live through a natural disaster as like a almost like
it's an accelerant for their content and their, their cloud
(42:11):
farming. And it's fucking gross,
actually. It really is.
You know, I've seen so many posts on SO particularly, like I
said, particularly Twitter wherepeople will say something
happened and then you find, oh, this happened 10 years ago and
that's not how it happened. And it's just like I completely
out of context post and it's just like engagement farming.
(42:31):
Yeah. And it's, you know, it's one
thing like if you're, if you're like an influencer and you're
trying to farm engagement so that you can sell a product,
like it's a little grifty, but you're not like it's not gross,
right, 'cause you got to make a living.
And to some extent, I mean, I, Ido some version of that, right?
Like I, you know, the things I talk about are important, but
(42:52):
obviously I try to be entertaining and I, you know,
sometimes try to push boundariesin certain ways and all, all,
all to sell this fucking hat, right?
It's a. Good hat.
Good hat. It's a pretty good hat.
We've, we've sold a these are these were limited edition, the
pink on black and then there wasblack on pink.
(43:14):
Those are gone now. We sold a lot of those though,
because everybody wanted them. We got other colors, but these
are gone. These are gone.
Can't get these anymore. Look here, there's a guy out
there who made a ton of money selling a Red Hat.
So, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, this I think, I think the, the
(43:36):
fun thing about me, you know, this, this tinfoil hat is you're
going to get, you know, I'm going to get some people who
cook their brain buying it, who think that I'm on their side.
And then there's going to be other people who just think it's
funny and it might be a conversation starter at a dinner
party. Yes, that's that's the good
thing about the hat is how you interpret the hat to be.
(43:59):
Right. I've, I have, you know, I've
definitely funny enough, mostly at my DJ events, people ask
about it. It's the most common place for
people to ask about. It's like, what's with the hat?
And I'm like, oh, I'm a disinformation reporter.
And I think it's funny. They're like, oh, OK, Most
people are like, relieved. Like, they're like, oh, God.
All right, cool. All right, cool.
(44:25):
Well, well, let me ask you, since you brought up, since you
brought up and we, we didn't even get to talk talk about it
too much. Let's talk about it a little bit
before we before we get you out of here.
Disinformation reporter, How would you define that?
I mean, it's so. Or maybe disinformation
researcher it's. Either one works.
(44:45):
Yeah, I guess reporter, I don't know, I don't do a lot of
reporting. I guess, like I spend a lot of
time looking into misinformation, disinformation
and like broader way we talk about is we just call it, it's
like the dystopia BI guess. It's just you have to have some
kind of morbid curiosity about why people believe crazy things.
(45:10):
And then, you know, there's a lot of people like that.
A lot of there's a lot of trollson the Internet that like going
around making fun of conspiracy theorists.
But then when you take take the step to like look into it, it's
it's about, I guess it's about trying to figure out, at least
for me, like not why people believe these things really, but
(45:32):
how and other people do this differently.
But it's like how the communities form around these
ideas and how something that maybe nobody believed two years
ago through the force of like a Facebook group or a Telegram
channel or some kind of hashtag that went viral on Twitter or
(45:52):
some popular person on Instagram, How now all of a
sudden there's all these little communities popping up, you
know, around this idea. And that's, that's like what
interests me. And that's the thing that that
I, I do my best to try to understand to the best of my
ability. You know, these are communities
with, you know, anywhere between, you know, a couple 100
people, maybe up to maybe a million people.
(46:13):
And you know, so you're not going to understand everybody.
But yeah, for me, it's, it's thejust the the desire to
understand how like the like influence and control and demand
form around these fringe ideas on the Internet.
That's that's like my lane. Other people are debunkers,
other people do like a lot of interviews around this kind of
(46:35):
stuff. So, you know, other people would
are definitely doing different work in the same space.
There are people who make documentaries about these kinds
of things. So and those are all those
people are all basically my colleagues doing some version of
the same thing I am. So but I'm definitely more
interested in like the sociological aspect of it.
The people the almost like. It's almost like gossip, I
(46:58):
suppose. Yeah, it makes sense.
What is the most fascinating 1 you found so far?
One that just pulled you in. So I'm like in the conspiracy
culture, we'll, we'll leave out the cult that's forming in the
anti Scientology community. I'll just ask that you link my
articles because I did a lot of research on those and it's a lot
(47:22):
easier and better, better formatfor that.
I think like right now I'm finding it's really interesting
going back to some of the old school stuff and seeing what's
going on in like the the the people who believe in aliens or
the the Bigfoot and like the Cryptid kind of people.
Right now I'm having like havinglike a lot of fun checking out
(47:45):
those communities. And I think the reason is that a
lot of the like, let's just faceit, a lot of the real bad shit
in some of the other conspiracy communities, like the racism,
the anti-gay stuff, and primarily the blaming it all on
Jewish folks. You're finding a lot less of
that in like the Loch Ness Monster people or the Bigfoot
(48:06):
people or the the that UFO people.
You know, we have a joke in my Twitch channel that people, if
they're just like Cryptid and UFO people, they're probably
cool and they probably have weed, right?
So so you should. Sounds good to me.
If you meet those people, those people are probably pretty
fucking cool and like whatever, you might even want to talk to
them and ask them about like what they believe.
(48:27):
But then you, you know, you findpeople you know who are maybe
more satanic panic adjacent, andmaybe you should avoid those
people. Interesting, that's that's good
information to know, to say the least.
Yeah, at the dinner party, you definitely want to talk to the
UFO guy, but you don't want to talk to the Save the Children
from the tunnels under the GettyMuseum guy, you know what I'm
(48:48):
saying? Yeah, very much so.
Alright, any final thoughts? Say before we go, 'cause I know
you got to do your show and stuff like that too.
Gotta go make. Your money my show doesn't start
till 9:00 tonight, but I do likeI do like shorter interviews.
I try to keep mine under an houror two.
So I just, you know, I just, I suppose that like the, the point
(49:11):
of like what I do or the thing that I hope people get out of
what I do is that like there's always somebody lying to you out
there. There's always somebody trying
to get you to believe some shit,trying to get you to possibly do
some shit and trying to get you to join with what they're doing.
And you're never, you don't have, there's not enough time in
(49:32):
the day to determine to just go through and Fact Check every
fucking thing everybody says in the world.
You can't do it. You'll go crazy.
And I think people if, if they can, if, if people are
interested, learning to spot patterns of deception is gonna
serve you a lot better. Like if if you're in a Facebook
(49:53):
group and they're asking you forsome kind of weird loyalty that
you don't understand. Well, they're trying to put a
demand on you that is stupid. That is, you know what, what are
they doing? Or if if you're being, you know,
if you're being told to stay away from other people because
(50:16):
they're not part of the in Groupand you're given no reason
really other than they're just bad because they're not part of
our in Group. That's a, you know, something
you should something people should keep an eye on.
Or if you are following some creator and something weird
happened or something bad happened and that creator like
refuses to talk about it or start blocking, banning and bad
(50:37):
mouthing all their critics. Maybe find another creator to
watch 'cause you don't want to end up in a situation now where
you're defending some guy or some gal and it turns out that
they're like, they've been like abusing and taking advantage of
the community around their work.All these things are they're
just examples. And there's a we, we can be here
forever with a million differentexamples of things.
But I feel like, I feel like especially with with the way the
(51:00):
world is going right now and theamount of grifters and fucking
abusers and just people out there trying to take advantage
of other people. Kind of keep your eye out for
anybody who might be trying to might be trying to use and abuse
you and take advantage of your, you know, your goodwill and
maybe even they need to monetizethat.
(51:20):
I like it. That's the that's the perfect
way to end this episode, man. I perfect message to say the
least. Yeah, yeah, this, this was, this
was good. I like, I like that your audio's
good. You have no idea.
You have no idea how bad some people's audio is sometimes,
man. Oh my.
(51:40):
God I I can. Imagine, yeah, that that that's
great. You can find my work at
echoplexmedia.com and my streamsat twitch.tv/echoplex Media and
I'll make sure that our our intrepid host here puts a couple
links to a couple of the articles about the thing the the
(52:01):
thing going on in the anti Scientology community that we
didn't have fucking five hours to delve into here.
Yeah, that's gonna be a whole another episode then within
itself. Maybe, maybe I'm I've been
trying to talk about other things on on people's shows
lately because I've been talkingabout that for two years and
people can certainly find me talking about that on other
(52:23):
podcasts. Let me tell you.
That makes sense. All right, everybody go check
out his stuff. Go get you a tenfold hat because
that hat is dope. And as always, Delvin Cox
experience, we are out peace.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.