Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three, twenty nine, Episode four of Daily's Like Guys.
Day production of iHeartRadio.
This is the podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And it is Thursday, March fourteenth, twenty twenty four. That's pie Day.
You got that? Wow?
You don't have to. I don't even have three man, Why don't you bad on?
That's that's all you get on your base? Holy shit? Man, tell them, I guess, tell them what everything else is? Man, because you know everything else?
It's Oh, you're so smart? Is to read off this list every day? It's also National Write Down Your Story Day. I don't know why, National Children's Craft Day.
Shout out to everybodying arts and crafts, National Learn about Butterflies Day, National Potato Chip Day, okay, and I guess also shout out to Saint Louis area because your area code is three one four, so maybe it's also National stl Day.
Three one four.
My name is Jack O'Brien aka Potato chip Obrian, oh. In honor of our national day here and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Gray.
Miles Gray aka Whoa definitely just wanted to brag about how my mom is.
Still breathing now.
Whoa.
It was always my intention to brag about how my loved one still breathing right now. But God, does it feel so good that I wrote red row on the mirror they breathed on. And if you could, then you know you would anxiously check on your loved ones hell check on their hell. Shout out. I am a person on the discord. Shout out you for picking up on my childhood anxiety of just checking in on my mom if she was breathing, even though creeper of the fuck out, just have to know as a curious Fields just got
to check in on the parents and they're breathing. So yeah, and wow, it's been a while. Submit it will belt out misery business by Paramore, So thank you. It was beautiful.
Uh well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the best author of books like John Dies at the End Zoe. He punches the future and the dick and we got a new one, got a new Chiese, or at least as the first not part you know, original unrelated to a previous franchise novel he's dropped in a while. It's called I'm Starting to Worry about This Black Box of Doom. It's available for pre order right now, so anywhere you want to go
preorder it, go do that right now. And he's also one of the hosts of the podcast Big Feats, which, if I'm reading this New Yorker profile correctly, is quote the only Mountain Monsters podcast officially endorsed by Big Feet. He's my former coworker at crack dot Com and co creator of the Cracked podcast. Welcome back to the show, Jason.
Parjo, and congratulations on getting renewed for a three ninth season.
It's every time. It's so nerve wracking.
Yeah, a lot of people count on us, and so every time we always hear on a Friday night whether or not we get the thumbs up with them now and it's amazing.
I don't know.
So many shows start to go downhill after the three hundred season, but it's cool now. This is there's so much there's so much juice left to squeeze from.
Some say we're just starting to, you know, catch our stride scribe Yeah, but.
Yeah, most most say we fell the fuck off at three hundred, They were like, wow, yeah, are you guys even trying anymore? Like?
What is this? Season nine of.
The Simpsons come on? Season nine is still good? I like them well into the teens, to.
Be honest, that's fine. I'm one of those. I'm rigid. I'm not that I don't like it, but my my fondest memories end around for sure. But not to say that there aren't good ones after nine, but you know, yeah, it is what it is.
Jason, how are you doing? Where are you coming to us from?
I am coming to you from an unnamed city in Tennessee somebody who has to try to find me. You've got the entire state. I could be anywhere. Yes, it is extremely easy to find out if you wanted to. But if you're coming after me, you will have to take the extra forty to fifty seconds.
I mean, you did give us a hint earlier by saying that there was a gas station where you.
Yeah, I was actually looking for Google Maps coordinates, but definitely we're not going to get that.
Google Jack kept consuming in on Google Maps, like, damn, which one of them? Could you think? Which one? Do you think? It? So many gas stations amazing.
Well, tell us a little bit. What was the new book about. I'm hearing it maybe about a black box of doom.
There is a guy who drives for a lift, and he pulls up outside of LA to find a woman sitting on a big black box, one big enough that a person could fit inside of it. In theory, she says, I will offer you two hundred thousand dollars in cash to drive me and this box to Washington, DC, across the country. Wow, she says Derek. Conditions one, you cannot look in the box. You cannot ask me what's in the box. You cannot ask me anything about myself. You
cannot tell anyone you're doing this. You must leave behind your phone and any devices that can be tracked. We will pay with cash, we will navigate with a map. And also you have to leave right now because I'm in a hurry. That is to set up and then that starts going off the rails. On about page.
Three you have read, see that seems like just a fairly straightforward ask to me. See, I see nothing foreboding about that. That all seems pretty straightforward.
And it's like the nature of most jobs on some level where they're like, look, don't ask what you're doing here? Who is enriching? Just come on, just here's money, here's health insurance.
Yeah.
I created a little video on TikTok to promote this, basically offering this, like would you do this? Because it's clearly shady, Like clearly this is not, you know, a box of you know, somebody's encyclopedia collection and there's something weird going on here? Would you do it? And obviously there was a thousand comments of people saying I would do it for two hundred dollars? What are you talking about?
Why you got two hundred on you? Man? Yeah?
Yeah, so what the box is full of heroin or severed heads? I don't care two hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, I'll pick you up right now. Man, where are you? What's the worst case that could happen? I could I could die? Well that I don't have to pay my bills anymore? When when we all have our own calculus?
Yeah for sure, that's right.
All right, Jason, we're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, we're going to tell our listeners a couple of the things we're talking about today. Yesterday the House passed a bill to ban or force the sale of TikTok. Still has to go through the Senate, but it is I don't know, it feels pretty dramatic, feels I don't know. I guess.
I guess We've known this was in the works for a little while, but it just feels like a new a thing we haven't seen in the US government do Maybe I'm wrong about it, but feels like a new level of just putting their hand on the scale. So we'll talk about that. We might talk about rats getting high thanks to New Orleans cops, all of that, plenty more. But first, Jason Pargen, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are?
Kate Middleton, fake photo explained.
And I like the little side that came first.
Well, this explains who I am. Because a lot of viral stories like this where something where a huge chunk of the internet social media is obsessed with it. I'm always a little bit behind the curve. I'm never right on the cusp, on the cutting edge of knowing like each step, I'm always the guy who has to finally sigh and then.
Go to Google.
Let's say, okay, who is this person? And the answer surprisingly difficult to figure out because you instantly plunges into a whole history of British tabloid stuff about the royal family and all of these side the scandals and stories that I was unaware of, like the fact that I guess Kate Milton's not been seeing that public since before Christmas.
I'm sure you have covered the story, but I was totally unaware of all of it, and I still, after having spent an hour reading about it, am still mostly unaware of it.
Yeah, it's mostly questions at this point. It's it is intriguing. I gotta say, like, I don't blame the Internet for this one. It's it's a really weird story, like the level that I think unless these are like bullshit images Like some of the like zoomed in images of the photoshop work that like clue people into the fact that
the image was manipulated were like pretty bad. They were like if you asked me to photoshop it in like fifteen minutes, Like there was just weird like things that they had and it looked like they hadn't quite finished it, which you know, you for for the royal family, you would expect that they'd be up to the task of right of a good configure.
Creating like state propaganda. You'd be like, come on, man, like, let's let's fucking dial in the fucking photoshop here. Yeah.
But the question that I wanted to know is what do they think has happened? Because they're not they're not asserting that she's dead, and that they're trying to cover up the fact that she's dead by releasing a fake photo of her with the family. So want is want is the thing they're trying to cover up that because the story was that she had become ill with some sort of illness before Christmas and just had been out
of the public spotlight because she wasn't feeling well. But they're saying, well, but they're actually covering up and then trying to figure out what.
What they think what is the cover up?
Did she in reality has what become disfigured somehow, or that she looks just really bad or.
She had the joker face thing from the original Tim Burton's Batman where faces all white now and they haven't been they haven't nailed the makeup down quite yet, and.
So fell into a that of chemicals.
That of green bubbling chemicals. Yeah, would be my best walk. Yeah, I guess England is lousy with those things. Just factories full of catwalks and green bubbling that.
So yeah, it's I think that's what's weird is because like the why I'm there isn't anything that feels like right, you know, we're like, oh, I see why they would want to do that. I'm still just like what what what what? What are you alleging? Though? I don't know, but it's just again with all the sloppy shit that's been going around, You're like, I don't know, man, maybe they're just really bad at communicating and then just making
things worse when it's really pretty innocuous. Probably, yeah, Or it could be the story of the fucking century. We don't throw That's what's so weird. It's either like who gives a fuck or the story of the century. So that's why it allows anybody to weigh in with something and be like, oh, yeah, maybe be that. Yeah, maybe it was a joker situation.
Yeah, it does. It does. Like the allegations and insinuations don't totally line up, you know, with like they'll be like, well, you know Will was cheating on her, and here's what we know about his mistress. And it's like, oh, so what does that have to do with her not being able to appear in a picture?
Right?
What?
Yeah? Sure, I don't know. Again, it could be totally inoculous, innocuous, or the story of the century. Yeah, I'd rather just be innocuous. We got enough. We got enough, We got enough tables right now here in twenty twenty fourth, right, we got to deal with Jason.
What's something you think is underrated.
Third party presidential candidates this year? Not that they're going to win that Robert Kennedy Junior, not that he's gonna he's not going to be president, but you think they should win.
You're saying, But for.
Example, I hit Twitter yesterday that one of his short lists for VP candidates says quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Wow of the New York Chet. That is not a joke. That was a story that came about that he is one of the people he's considering adding as a running mate, and right now he's pulling between like nine and twelve percent at Robert Kennedy Jr.
That is not Aaron.
Rodgers that's super high for a third party candidate in the United States. Now, traditionally, by election day, most of that support melts away because people don't want to throw away their vote because our system is specifically set up so that only two people can run and anyone else there just wasting their time. But if he gets only let's say four percent, that is more than enough to
throw the election one way or the other. Because if you say, of whatever, Harver many million votes, that is, if maybe twenty percent of those people would not otherwise have voted. Of that remaining eighty percent, if they break, say forty seven to fifty three toward Trump, as in that's who they would have voted for otherwise, that flips the election. Because again, all of our residential elections come down to like twenty thousand votes in three swing stakes, right,
you don't have to flip that many votes. So there's not a ton of coverage of Robert Kennedy Junior, though he's very popular on social media because it is mostly just a site show and he's big into the anti vax stuff and conspiracy stuff. But I think people are badly underrating how much this election is going to come
down to. How much those third parties peel way, because these are two historically unpopular candidates, their pool of disgusted voters is probably literally all time high, right, Yeah, I guess it's just we don't know which way it will go. So it's just this kind of free radical kind of variable that's out there, and we're like, man, that's gonna fuck shit up, and we don't know exactly how at all.
Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean he's like, he's like, I'm not going to be a spoiler or whatever. I mean like that, but it may be if intent is that or not. The fact remains, like to Jason's point, there are a lot of people who are like, man, fucking neither of these two guys, And yeah, how will that break down? Because already you're seeing people already begin to like protest vote, whether that's to vote uncommitted like in a primary, and what that appeal looks like again in November.
But yeah, this would not be unprecedented, Like a lot of people think that Bill Clinton, the reason that he ever became president of the first place was because Ross Perrot was a third party candidate who took a bunch of the Republican vote away from George Bush won.
So Culinton won with forty three percent of the vote. Yeah, like that changed the course of American history. He won with forty three percent. But of the three, you know, obviously the three candidates, that was the most because Ross Parrot peeled off. It was a bunch, but it was like fifteen percent or something, and it is It is extremely difficult to poll where that that support is coming from, because if you do a poll, that's just it's just
between the two candidates. You don't let people pick, you know, a third party, you get a decent chunk of I think it's like twelve percent saying either neither or undecided. It's a very high number, sure, but it's extremely difficult to discern of those people who would come out for a third party again, how many of them if like if RFK dropped out, how many of them just wouldn't vote versus okay, well I'll go with Trump or okay, I'll go with Biden. It is extremely difficult to pull.
It's difficult to know this, and I suspect that on election night in November, we are not even then, we are honestly not going to know who's going to win. And this will be a big reason why because of the high number of voters who just hate both candidates and trying to figure out how they're going to behave Will they stay home or vote for somebody else, or hold their nose and vote for whatever candidate they think.
Is least bad, right, Yeah, it'll be Yeah. Because the other thing too is, like you see, with a lot of people who even they pull about RFK, not many people know all of his positions. But then again, people even like that, we're not even sure how much that's gonna affect thing once they learn of what his positions are, because like in some polls it's like sixteen percent of Republicans will vote RFK, eighteen percent of Democrats would do it.
Others it's kind of like inverted. So yeah, it's a truly u We just don't know.
Oh RFK junior junior. Oh shit, that changes. It was way off.
I thought RFK came back because that would be fucking that would that guy had some.
Riz as the kids call it. Yeah, it's funny. And even in the FU into the future, if this ends up swinging things to a pretty drastic degree, it will
probably be written out of it. The way that the Ross pro thing, you know, it's the way that we like to think about history is with a single protagonist and it's like, well they won because they were the talented politician, and you just kind of write out the third place person who you know, So even even if he swings it and as the spoiler, I feel like that that won't be the story that we all get.
Aaron, It's just is the truth? Is you about to say it's just.
My favorite politician quarterback? No, it's just so funny to me. Like I was reminded recently how hard he was lobbying to take over for Alex Trebek after Alex Trebek like announced that he'd be stepping down from Jeopardy, And it just like hit me a second time, how weird that is, Like what like what did he think? Why how does
he think we view him? And again this is this is interesting, Like he's not going to be the one who says no to being the vice presidential candidate, right He's He's like, I mean, yeah, I should, I should probably be running for president, but I guess i'll I'll be your view for too.
Yeah, yeah, Like for the listeners who are not sports fans, Aaron Rodgers is currently the starting quarterback for the New York Jets. He's not a retired athlete, he's under contract. The Jets are very much depending on him to be their starter on opening day when the football season comes
around in September. So the question of could he serve that role while also being on the presidential ticket, knowing that if if, if you know, his team were to win, as in his you know, if RFK were to somehow win the election, that Aaron Rodgers would miss the playoffs because he would have to assume the United Yates. He would be out that that week when the Jets are in the you know, the AFC Championship game or whatever, like their starting quarterback would be out for the inauguration.
Yeah, and and then his O line is all secret service. It could be all very interesting, very interesting.
They he would have to be forced to recuse himself from one of the roles, Like I feel like he'd be like, no, dude, I could I could do both?
Be so funny. He just fuck so he's like he's like, oh yeah, dude, I'm not gonna be VP. Dude, I got to play football man.
People who are really successful in one place just gained this outsized confidence that they're good at this, like everything, everything because they're surrounded by people, especially in this country, who will tell them repeatedly that they're good at everything. And this might he might be on the verge of being like the greatest textbook case of that ever. Like guy throws a beautiful ball. But don't get me wrong, guy throws one of the most beautiful balls I've ever
seen that last time. I don't think that was one of the things that I mentioned a lot in the twenty twenty election. Who threw a more beautiful ball?
Who could throw a tighter spiral?
Tighter spiral?
God, Although I feel like we're fucking I feel like we're headed there, like the White House is going to be Like just so you guys know, should like shout out at Joe Biden on TikTok for fucking launching this pig skin through a fucking tire the tightest spiral, Folks, he's doing it.
You don't trust this America.
I mean I have like talked about doing like push up contests or like fighting each other, So we're not that far off. Jason, what's something you think is overrated?
Any kind of presidential poll that occurs in March. We just referenced the fact that not many people seem to know anything about RFK Junior. They're just kind of selecting him as the other candidate, and that if you actually ask people specific things that's going on, they generally don't know. Most people are not paying attention. I think most people
listening to this show probably are. But the electorate in general, you don't see huge swings in the polls unless there's something like a big spike in inflation or some sort of you know, a new war breaks out or something like that. But in terms of the way people on social media ruin their mental health by obsessively watching. You know, there's another poll that came out today. They had Trump up by three Oh my god. Last week there was one that had Biden up by a couple.
That's all just toise.
Yeah, and it's going to be noise until the fall, and because one pulling has become extremely difficult in the Trump era. As we've learned, he tends to. He has outperformed his polls in both of the presidential elections by a few points.
So far.
In the primaries, he has drastically underperformed his polls in the Republican primary. As for why that is, nobody knows even to this day. All they know is that Trump's
support is extremely difficult to pull. So I am telling you right now, I'm going to make a prediction, assuming both of these guys are still alive in November, when it comes to day election day, we are not going to know who truly is up, because somebody in the polls is going to be up like three or four points, and that's not going to mean anything because these days, any when it's a non Trump election, you can get
a pretty decent idea. But Trump draws so many non typical voters and people who otherwise they only vote when Trump's involved, that it is extremely hard to tell what's going on, and we're simply not going to know.
You were pointing out something on TikTok. Also, that's interesting that I hadn't fully appreciated or like kind of run the tape forward through this scenario. But if Trump is like in the midst of a trial at that point, like he's you know, and it's looking like he's going to go to jail, the election becomes his voters voting to like free him, basically.
And like Trump Trump is fundraising on that idea. He is fundraising if I lose, I will have to go to jail. You are coming to So I try to explain to people, like, imagine if when Trump had taken office, because again, his supporters see these as all fake charges, right they're not, but that's how they see. Imagine if when Trump took office, he immediately like launched a phony investigation into Barack Obama. And now it's like, if Trump gets an office, He's going to put Barack Obama in jail.
And that's what was at stake, Like this guy, you have good feelings about the idea of him having to go to prison if the evil other team like the idea of what that would do for turnout or whatever.
And this is the thing about that Supreme Court ruling that delayed the case, because again I know it was Trump's side that wants to delay this because you know, obviously the people doing the prosecution say, the voters kind of need to know before they vote whether or not Trump has been guilty of something and if he's about
to go to jail. And Trump's team is trying to push the results until after the election because if he becomes president, he can simply dismiss the prosecutors and replace him with somebody who agrees to drop the charges, so he can make the charges go away if he takes office. So the Supreme Court successfully pushed probably the finished date
of these trials past election day. But I don't know that they did him a favor because the current schedule now probably has the trials going on during election day, like they will be giving testimony and evidence about Trump trying to overthrow the twenty twenty election, and then they're gonna pause so that we can go vote whether or not he should be president, and then the trial will resume after election day. That is a truly crazy situation.
And I don't know. I would have to think it would hurt him because that's all of the news will be negative and all this negative testimony and people testify it against him. But yeah, then we also people will be super motivated.
Right, and we don't know if the DOJ will stick to their guns on there. We're not gonna do anything that could be seen as political sixty days out from an election, even though they did that with Hillary Clinton. That's a thing that could potentially be like, well, I don't know. We'll see how they decide to enforce that policy or not. But i'd imagine I mean, given what's at stake, they maybe internally they'll be pressured to be like, no,
we have to we have to do this. But yeah, it's hard to tell.
Maybe.
I mean. The whole thing is, this has never happened before. Nothing remotely like this has ever happened for There's no precedent or procedure or protocol to fall back on. This has never come up. So people asked the question like, well, if he goes to prison, can he still be president? But as far as we know, it's never come up before.
Yeah, yeah, that would just be funny, like a counter campaign where like Barack Obama goes out there he's like, hey, man, if Trump wins, he's gonna put me in jail. Vote Biden, you know what I mean, Like just be like, oh, we everybody can play this game.
Bright.
Yeah.
To me, clear, that is Trump's whole deal. This whole deal is, this is the revenge presidency. This is where I will get retribution on everyone who tried to to harm you when I was an officer in the four years sent So yeah, that's not that's not too far off.
Yeah, let me be the vessel for your revenge. Because yeah, even at all his rallies, he's like, you know, I'm I'm being prosecuted for you, for all of you. That's that's what I'm doing this for. And yeah, he's really anchoring that into the sort of I am the sacrificial lamb. Yeah.
Yeah, I realized he was underperforming in the primary. That's Is it just this primary or has he traditionally.
Yeah, all the prime because he's not running unopposed, like he has crushed Nikki Haley, and he has crushed but each time the margin is like ten points lower than what.
The polls showed.
So if you had a poll that showed that Nikki Haley or Desantras or whoever was in the race against him before they all dropped out, where they were only taking twenty percent of the vote, in the final toll, they were taking thirty two percent, So either a lot of Trump voters were staying home or again, pulling keeps getting more difficult over time. Pulling methods keep having to evolve because so many people don't answer the phone. It's
it's a whole deal. That's actually a really fascinating science. And it's not that the polls are meaningless. They still give you an indication of what's of what's going to happen. It's just that when the elections are all less close, and all of our presidential elections are razor close, pulling at this point is not accurate enough now to tell you one way or the other. It all comes down
to turnout. And as we mentioned, like history changed in twenty sixteen, that the direction of the United States, the makeup of Supreme Court pivoted radically on like fifty thousand votes in a couple of states, Like it was enough people to fit in a small NFL stadium, Like that's how many people, you know, as we had we probably mentioned a previous podcast, if you had had bad weather in one major city, it would have suppressed turnout by you know, a few thousand votes that could have pivoted
the election. Like that's how that's how close history becomes. And as you mentioned, in the future, we never acknowledge that. It's just like, well, you know, there's a sea change and all this this grassroots support of Trump and the country pivoted. It's like, no, if you flipped, if you re ran that election twenty times. I don't know, maybe thirteen times Hillary wins and Trump wins seven times. That
it just this is the way it fell. But it was a true coin toss and it will probably be yeah, yeah.
All right, Well that's terrifying. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about the House bill to force the sale of TikTok and work back. We're back, And I mean, I guess you know, Jason, as we've talked about on past appearances on this show, you kind of became I wouldn't say accidentally famous, but like unexpectedly like TikTok famous, And so I just want to like say, up top, do you feel personally attacked by this bill?
Like do you think they're trying to keep a lid on some of your more viral TikTok's, like the one with the lizard wearing the hat er. There's that one. It wasn't from you originally, but you recently shared on Twitter where a guy does a high kick, his friend catches his leg up there, and then his other friend comes up to him with a boxing glove and like
punches him in the butt over and over again. But then it becomes clear that the butt punches are part of the workout, and there and then he like they're like one, two, three, four, like ten butt punches. And then he drops his leg and like slaps his own butt like, ah, I'm the best at taking a butt punch.
Oh no, it was not ten butt punches. He punches them in the butt like fifty five times. It goes on for a very long time.
Do you think the whole point of video they want to keep a lid on.
That there's zero context for. That's the joy of TikTok. Sometimes you've got to clip and because they're speaking in out of the language, and it's who is this guy?
What is he doing?
Why are they doing this? You don't know, you don't want to know. It's just a few seconds of a guy getting punched in the butt for a very long time. Then he screams at the camera and cuts and now's time for the next video. But yeah, this would have a huge impact on my life. I'm not unbiased here. I have four one hundred and twenty five thousand followers on tech tik. There you go, and I that is this has revitalized my author career. I sell a lot
of books on tech talk. A whole generation of kids who would not have cared about me and have no memory of the heyday of Cracked or any of that, are finding out about my books on there. So this is something that is personal to me that it's also there's one hundred and seventy million TikTok users in the United States. Yeah, this is not a trivial It's not a niche thing they're trying to ban. This's not a
niche product. This is like if they tried to ban I don't know, Starbucks, you know from you say, I'm saying, like the size of the customer base, what other business could you even compare to if they if they tried to ban Toyota cars from being sold. Are there one hundred and seventy million Toyota cars in the United States? Like, it's hard to think of a comparison about the scale of what they're of what they're trying.
To do here, right, And Toyotas would have to be like the most popular car and like qualitatively different than every other car, like in a way that people that is like really popular with young people. It Yeah, it.
Feels like everyone who uses Disney plus basically yeah, brown, but even then, that's that's yeah, it's still.
Does Disney Plus even have one hundred and seventy million subscribers.
It's maybe good at their peak, at their peak one hundred and sixty four million, Yeah, that's worldwea, that's worldwide. So yeah, h it's like hard to even fathom like what that really looks like.
But for example, five million of those accounts are businesses. I mean, every every business has a TikTok you have to buy. You know, every every restaurant in bakery and law firm and everything, they're all on TikTok. So it's not just it's not just a bunch of the way they talk about the headlines. They'll kind of talk like, well, it's after a bunch of kids use you know, a bunch of bunch of thirteen year olds will be mad.
It's like, you're not understanding how many people advertise on TikTok or use it to promote their work, or.
If you're on there, you'll see many people who are above voting age that are using TikTok.
Absolutely, I mean I'm extremely old. I'm one of the oldest people on the planet. So but this overwhelmingly past the House and people don't know. So this now has to go to the Senate. The Senate doesn't seem as excited about taking up but Joe Biden made the step of saying, if it comes to my desk, I will approve it, that they will not be a view to
I will sign a bill to band TikTok. And the terms of the bill they're talking about right now would basically give the parent company, that is a Chinese company, six months to sell TikTok or to spin off the American arm of it to some American company, and you have to have terms where they because the entire issue is about the day that TikTok collects being available to
the Chinese government. Because the relationship between the Chinese government and the corporations in China is different from the way it works in the United States. The United States is corrupt in a different way. Right, So it's my understanding that logistically that would be extremely a huge ask, Like I don't the Chinese government basically said this is not going to happen. We're not sure what we will just let you you ban it, And I think trying to
make it work from a technical aspect. I think is difficult because again they're they're talking about basically spinning off just the American segment of the app and then separating it from the way it operates in the rest of the world. I'm sure it could be done if they want it to be, but I think from China's point of view, they don't like the precedent this would set. I don't know, it's it's really up in the air.
But it's also really interesting and I can't think of another thing for my entire lifetime where they've been trying to ban something at a federal level that would affect this many people.
Yeah, and also be like a rights issue to it the same time of like the digital rights or people's ability to communicate or express themselves on an app.
But yeah, yeah, it feels like there's a bunch of ingredients at work here that are like making this sort
of unprecedented thing possible. It feels like there's something that's as old as media and as old as like the you know, like investigations into comic books, and like the morality of young people are like, you know, older people being outraged about rock and roll music, And I think there is you know, we are in this version of US power and wealth where a lot of the people who have power and you know, the ability to do things like this are old and they don't understand, you know,
that they are out of step with the overwhelming kind of ideals that are prevailing on TikTok, and they're freaked out about that. I think there's also the fact that this would be a massive windfall for existing US companies like fit you know, social media companies like Facebook is going to want this to happen, like this is a
major competitor that is harming them. And you know, we are at a point in the history of the US government where powerful companies are able to capture regulators, they're able to lobby, they're able to you know, they have as much power as they've ever had. So like those feel like major issues that are at work here that are probably making this more successful than Yeah, like you
said anything like that. There was a lot of fear of like Japan in the like late eighties, early nineties, like they never like weren't like like we banned Sony. You know, that wasn't even a thing that like came up as far as I remember, But I right, and I was paying a lot of attention. I was nine years old, so I was on top of the business news site. I was waking up every morning and opening the Wall Street charm. No, but it just feels like this is I don't know, yeah, well something now.
There's so there's so many different versions. Like so pre October seventh, this was all about privacy and national security for Americans. And but then if that was an actual concern, why not crack down on all the other social media platforms if you're talking about user data and shit like that. But again, it's because it's American, right, and and and then again like to your point, it's like TikTok is becoming a threat to the dominance of like American tech companies.
Like like, so it shouldn't surprise me that Facebook was heading up a huge anti TikTok campaign as they were being like, yeah, maybe reels can be like TikTok, maybe because that's who we're competing with. And the Internet has always been dominated by like American companies, so this just
sort of helps maintain like that hegemony. And but also like when you think about also China too, like they keep certain Western companies out, so they can help their own companies get a foothold and then become globally competitive. There's like a way of being like, well, hold on, we need to protect our own interests, so I think. And then the pro Palestinian part of it, you know, I think has now become sort of like the focus where they're like, man, it's got to be TikTok. That's
the only way. Young people are somehow saying that they have like these sort of pro Palestinian sentiments. But if you look at the balance of like popularity between pro Palestinian or pro Israeli content on other social media platforms, it's the same everywhere. There's just more the sentiment is more leans, more pro Palestinian than pro israel.
So this is the place where they can like step in because it's not an American.
Company exactly, and it's not an effective way of curbing that support. And like when you also look at again when they say like, oh, my goods being run by
the CCP and they're controlling everything. Well, also when you look at what the Biden administration was initially demanding from TikTok, they're basically saying like, okay, well how about this you need to give the US government basically total complete control over everything on the app from the moderation policies to even having the power to temporarily shut the tamp the platform down. So it's like, but those are the that's that's exactly what you were saying this other government was doing.
So is it just merely that you want to be able to control this very specific, very popular platform because also, like this move is also so unpopular. Couldn't come at a worse time for Biden, Yeah, to try and make himself even less appealing to young voters.
Yeah, that is another important detail is that this is so unpopular that even though this was originally like a very i think Republican point like idea or at least very appealing to the like anti China hawks and the Republican Party, their presidential candidate Trump has like reversed his position and been like, yeah, no, this is I like to I'm no longer for this, I like TikTok. Because he recognizes how unpopular it is, he.
Won't signed an executive order banning TikTok. Like this was one of the last things he did and it got it wound up not going anywhere, but this was. Yeah, this is a huge reverse reverse course of course for him. And the thing is, I think the listeners they they're sitting there thinking, well, don't I remember Mark Zuckerberg being pulled in front of Congress and a bunch of eighty six year old men like Mester Zuckerberg? Can can Facebook see me when I'm in my car?
Is your can my phone listen?
To?
Back off?
There?
Sorry?
Did I say that out loud? My bad?
Like, they revealed that they were incapable of regulating this industry because they have zero concept of what the algorithms do or what the actual issues are. It's like, well, couldn't they interfere with our election? It's like, well, some of this is just people being stupid and spreading stuff around. You know, if like a bad rumor gets around, or a badly photoshopped AI image of whatever, Joe Biden doing
something horrific and it makes the rounds. You know what Facebook's possession has always been if people are dumb enough to instantly share that over and over and over again and it explodes. Trying to stop people from sharing the dumbness is not a simple technical challenge. It is there's a point where you're actually upset about the flaws in the human spirit and the fact that a lot of Facebook users are sixty two years old and don't have super high literacy of what AI image looks like or
what a photoshop image looks like. And when they just get this little meme that it's here, it's like, well, did you know that under President Biden that due to immigration, egg prices have gone up three hundred and forty seven percent because of immigration. There's no source or anything, you're instantly going to share it. And so what they're saying is like, well, look, you can blame the algorithms, but the algorithm is just detecting what people are sharing and
what they want to look at. If you want us to put our thumb on the scale to block some stuff, then you get what happened to us back at Cracked, where they're like, oh, yeah, one thing that we're not going to allow anymore is what you're doing right right, like your comedy articles, where we're just we're just not going to We're not going to show that to anyone anymore. That's one thing we've just eliminated. I was not happy with that. I would have preferred they let our readers
decide if they want to see our stuff. But they were like, no, we're we're pivoting away from that too. And then you look at who dominated traffic after that. It was freaking Ben Shapiro and a bunch of these other right wingers who just had these very viral clips that were great at drumming up outrage. So's you can make the exact same criticisms of TikTok. It's like, well, yeah, but China's allowing all sorts of misinformation and stuff on there, and I use it every day, I have to because
I'm on there. It's not any worse or dumber the same shit. Yeah, it's definitely not worse than Twitter. Under Muscarra, Twitter, you can pay eight dollars a month to have the nastiest conservative you know, conspiracy stuff rise to the very top reply of every single post. Like, if you read a reply to a post about a news story or whatever, you have to scroll past all of these blue checks that are all right wing conspiracy weirdos to find the
actual human beings interacting with the post. There's nothing that TikTok does that's as weird and toxic as that.
Yeah, I think it's all bad to be honest, Like, I don't think there's anything worse about TikTok, but I don't think there's anything that is going to be fixed by this plan, which is giving TikTok to the tech industry that has already demonstrated themselves to being capable of the power and scale that they've already been operating under. You know, they can't do any of it responsibly. Nobody can.
And well if they ban it, the traffic goes to two companies. It goes to Google, where YouTube shorts is just TikTok's just literally they're just trying to imitate. And on Instagram reels Instagram and Facebook metas reels again it's just TikTok. It's they both have the infinite scroll video. So there's two. There's two basically imitators that all of the traffic is going to flow to. And take your pick your poison.
Google or Meta.
Right, we two companies have a dulopoly on all Internet traffic and Internet advertising that has basically ruined the public. The publishing industry and every news outlet has been utterly crushed by the fact that these two companies have basically owned the flow of information. So you're saying going from a three headed monster to two, that that's suddenly going to fix the problem. I don't buy it.
Yeah, well, and I think there's also the other I think the other part of people are talking about with Trump coming out against it, is like he just doesn't
want Mark Zuckerberg to own TikTok either. So if this thing forces a sale, then potentially Zuckerberg becomes a suitor, and then that's sort of Trump's calculus like, well, I don't want Zuckberg doing that either, right, So yeah, there's a lot I mean the idea though too of like when you see the companies that are like saying like, no, yeah we should we should actually maybe ban TikTok, those
are the precise the ones that stand to benefit. So there's like there's a obviously like a tech capitalism argument here, and also like the disconnect between elites and thinking that young people or people in general who cannot abide by watching like innocent people be slaughtered, that it must be some kind of digital spell binding that's happening on TikTok rather than you know, the humanity of it. But hey, that's that's what they're that's what they're arguing over.
Now, Yeah, I mean, like a writer JM McNab was like, I have a theory that it's the specific videos where like soldiers are just posting tiktoks being like this shit sucks man, like being in the military absolutely is a shitty lifestyle, and like I but I don't like, it's just another way in which social media makes information and opinions available that are inconvenient to people with tons of institutional power. And I do think that that is broadly
a thing we're seeing over and over again. Is like you know, we've been talking about it a lot recently with regards to like the rot economy, but just this disconnect between the people who are investing in things and controlling the market and then everyone else's day to day realities.
So yeah, and also just not even not even actually giving any thought to the fact that many venture capital like a capitalist, they're invested in Chinese tech companies and even compet Chinese competitors to like AI like American AI companies. So like how it's the inconsistency that sort of I think makes it very easy to understand, like what what the main goals are of a TikTok ban and there's nothing to do with privacy and has nothing to do with some of these other points that they make up.
It's more just protecting these sort of like the dominance of these American tech companies. And yeah, maybe and now that October seventh happen, now we also maybe have this thing where like with with this one trick, the government was able to invert the polling on how people feel about Gaza.
Right right, they're hoping, hoping for one easy trick that doctors don't want you to know about. Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back, And just a headline that captured our attention, says cop Boss says. Marauding rats are getting high on marijuana at New Orleans Police headquarters.
Am I supposed to read that as like a mobster and be like informants or smoking weed at the at the fucking at HQ, or we're talking rodent rats?
Oh yeah, yeah, a bunch of canaries getting high, you know, a bunch of songbirds. Yeah, I love anytime you know that were marauding rats. But yeah, yeah, these these rats in particular are marauding.
I mean yeah. I mean there's a lot of rats in New Orleans. You know, that's that anyone who's been there, you see rats around. It's kind of a normal part of it.
Yeah, but apparently the New Orleans Police Department headquarters is a real dump plagued by possums. Also, don't forget about the possums, because that's that's the next level. Like, I feel like many police headquarters probably have a rat problem. Possums is kind of next level shit. So possums, mold and rats, and the rats in particular have been getting into the evidence room and eating our marijuana. Our Yeah, that's our marijuana, man and our quote all high, according
to police superintendent and Kirkpatrick. I love that she calls it our marijuana and that they're all high.
Just they're all high.
Yeah, guys are all high smoking our marijuana. I mean the marijuana that we seized.
Yeah. Yeah.
This is such a great example of how information in news moves through the ecosystem because the context was they were having a committee meeting and the police a pretendant was complaining about how they're the police department that they're building is like falling apart. Dump the elevators. Yeah, elevators don't work, bathrooms that don't work, not been working for like she said, fifteen years, and they're there's overrun with
rats and possums and mold. And then somewhere in all of that mentions or jokes or says the rats are actually eating the marijuana and the evidence room they're all high. And I don't know if this was a laughline, if there's just something she threw in there. Then now this becomes the headline because she's trying to bring wires like like presumab is asking for money to fix up the
building or to get a new one. And we pull out that little tidbit tidbit, and this is you know, we've we've been in this industry for like a quarter
of a century. We know how this works. You're scanning through from the from the odd ball little bit of information and then this is the thing that goes viral, is the rats are getting high off the off the marijuana, and somewhere out there police superintendent and Kirkpatrick is hoping that the virality of that headline will help them get their funding or whatever.
It's like embarrassing enough to the powers that control Yeah, and it won't.
We will see this.
We will we will chuckle to ourselves, and we will immediately forget about it for the rest of our lives.
It's you.
You just brought a smile to our faces during our morning commute, and then we will forget about it violent time.
Yeah, thanks for the larfs. Yeah, a lot of it too, is She's like, this isn't a this isn't a dignified way to treat people that are working for the department, And like, we can't even attract people, We can't even attract people from out of state to brutalize our local citizens because of the where the headquarters is in such a state of disarray. Please do something, do something. But it's true, Like I mean, I think that that's the thing. It's like, look, man, no one gives a fuck if
their headquarters are all fucked up. Just just run with the fucking stoner rat thing and people actually pay attention.
It won't bring about any funding changes. It will actually be optioned for an adult swim short cartoon. People.
It's gonna bed rats at baited rats at the station. But let me see if I can, let's shine and hear how it actually came out during the hearing, just so we get some idea of how this shocking news was delivered to the city council.
Is the evidence room is losing evidence to rats, major rodents on the floor, the cockroaches, the rats eating our marijuana.
They're all high. In the end, financially, it does not make sense for y'all to put any more money into this.
It's not okay.
Yeah, and it's not okay for your people to be treated that way and called valued.
M Yeah, it sounded very like sounded like she was frustrated with high rats. I mean they're all high. Yeah, it didn't feel like it was like and they're in marijuana. They're all high, y'all, Like it wasn't didn't feel like that kind of things like that, they're all high.
Its sounded like a thing that she's been bringing up for weeks, like yeah, you know, no.
They're all the high rats. The droppings everywhere on the desks, that's also a problem. Hold on, hold on, when they're high, are they like cool? Like are they yeah?
Are they paranoid like one of those experiments where they gave spider is LSD and they made like really cool looking webs or is it like the Ones really gave spiders cocaine and the webs looked all fucked up. What does the rating look like when they're all high? Is it like more viby?
We don't know.
It kind of reminds me of that one quote from Alex Jones that people quote to prove that he's crazy, and we see like they're the chemicals are turning the frogs gay, right right, But the actual headline was that stuff that we're flushing into the water system, it messes with frogs and screws up their ability to breathe. It's like an environmental issue because we do flush a lot of drugs and chemicals and stuff into the sewers and the treatment plants don't necessarily do a great job of
filtering it out. That makes its way to the waterways, and then like it causes frogs to whatever, change sex or whatever. But the issue is that they don't. They're not breathing, so it threatens their population. But that's like
a boring story. Whereas crazy man shouts there's a conspiracy to turn the frogs gay, it's like a perfect little little It's like, well, no, it's weird because the thing he was talking about is a problem, but it's not a problem in the way he thinks it is, right because he's just a carnival barker and he doesn't he doesn't want more regulations over the the you know, water treatment.
Plants, fucking up the morality of our frogs. When I was young, I remember bull frogs were you know, masculine. Now they're all turning gay because they should have seen their arms, man, fucking proper ripped frogs.
Now they're all nowtlely And yeah, I mean, uh yeah, sorry to that police department for for all the faded rats. But yeah, again, this is more interesting honestly, like a dry city council meaner like hey help us, like because they're like, give help, spend the money in this other place, not just keeping the rat house alive.
Yeah, the news cycle at this point, like the we talked about this with the State of the Union last week and Biden had a strong performance, but the only thing anybody was talking about was the really weird performance from Katie Britt afterwards. It's just it's like trying to get the attention of just a bunch of idiots, and where we are idiots as well.
I mean, but there's also a part. It's like, don't you can't go in there and allege the rats are high without like a.
Little think we're going to jump on, like how do you know?
Like sure they're eating the weed and logically or like yeah, they're probably something altered, in an altered state from consuming cannabis like that, but like are they just are they fixed in one place? Are there? I mean aren't aren't rat eyes already bloodshot? Yeah? So I don't know. They could also just be anti anti rat propaganda. That's the other thing I think we should just look out for. Yeah, anti can it's cannabis hysteria.
Yeah, rats are an impressive foe. They are the most likely thing to overtake us. I feel like as the species most dominant, as the most dominant species.
The noble rat, and as someone who was born in the Year of the Rat, you know, I kind of resent this. I'm like, are you talking about me? Because yeah, rats are getting high at the police headquarters.
You're right, we are, well, Jason Pargin, such a pleasure having you on the daily Zeitgeist? Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff.
As long as TikTok exists, I am Jason K. Pargin on there j s O N K P A R G I N. But I'm also Jason K. Pargen on Twitter and or x and blue Sky and threads and Instagram in YouTube, and I'm also on Facebook and uh and on substack, same username.
There you go. And then the TikTok thing probably wouldn't be coming anytime soon, right like.
Now next year at the earliest. Yeah, they will get them months to it'll yeah, it'll get it would be even if they passed a band, it would get tied up in court and they would stay the band while it's and it would go all the way Supreme Court because it's no, it would this will be. This would be news from twenty twenty seven or something. And I think if it actually ever happened, Yeah, good.
So you're We've got a steady stream of butt punch videos for the foreseeable future. They're not going to cut off our supply. Is there a work of media, Jason, that you've been enjoying.
There's a tweet that went out after the Oscars or user kb Anderson Yo said all of the best film editors are women because the dudes are like, this is my five hour opus and then a woman comes in and goes, okay, calm down, buddy.
That does seemed to be the dynamic and a number more later. Man, let me just get through this cut.
Miles, where can people find you? Is there a workimedia you've been enjoying?
Yeah, at Miles of Gray, pretty much everywhere they got the ad symbols. Find Jack and I on the basketball podcast Miles and Jack moosties. You can find me on the ninety Day Fiance podcast for twenty Day Fiance. A tweet I like, is there's this picture of young Dolly Parton has been like going around on Twitter. I don't know if you if saw it, Like this is like Dolly Parton like back in the sixties, like in a photo booth image and at local soundwave like quote toned
and said, bro, what the fuck could Jolene have possibly looked? Like, Yeah, it's just like this stunning photo Dolly Parton. Like yeah, that's true. Man, what can we see Jolene?
Actually, let's see a tweet I've been enjoying. Justin Kirkland tweeted everyone criticizing Princess Kate's photoshop just needs to calm down. She's going through so much right now. For example, she's dead, which I don't know. You know, that's a source, that's one source saying it. You can find me on Twitter
at Jack Underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist where at the Daily Zekeeist on Instagram, we have a Facebook fan page on a website Daily zeikes dot com where we post our episodes and our foot notes where we link up to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, what song do you think people might enjoy it?
I just want to put there's someone under that tweet. Quote like sort of found an interview where Dolly Parton's talking about Joeline and actually, like some people were like Dolly Parton was Joelene and this one apparently said the song was mainly inspired by a red haired bank teller who flirted with her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, all the
way back in the beginning of their marriage. Quote she had everything I did, and like legs, you know, she was about six feet tall and had all that stuff that some little short sowd off homkey like me don't have.
This, Wow, my favorite kind of shotgun. Let's see a song we're gonna go out on. You know, just some just some electronic, you know, some drummond bass from from the UK chasing status. This is called Bada Dan meeting a Badder Van. But to win a bit of patois b A D D A D A N. And it's just like a just an aggressive song.
You know, maybe run on your treadmill, lift your weights, drink your sodas, whatever you want to do it to some high energy music. Go ahead, do it to this. When Chason state this done.
All right, we will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Geis is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from our heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio ap Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast. That's gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what's trending, and we will talk to you all then. Bye. Peace