Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of the Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist.
Miles.
We were thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of the very favorite guests on TDZ, A poet, a podcaster you can hear on the American Hysteria podcast, exploring the fantastical thinking and irrational fears of Americans. No that can't be right, not Americans through the lens of moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories.
Much else.
Please welcome the brilliant, the talented Chelsea Webers.
Hello here, Hello, as always, is it weep A Weber.
It's Weber.
First, I did make sure. I had to make sure.
It's actually Debber.
Oh, Chris Weberber. I went through and on all documents. I did a global search of my computer, every document on my computer and changed it so to make sure it said Weber like Chris web three point zero.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
All what's new, Chelsea has been too long.
It's been too long, I know well, as I told you guys we've been working on Well, we actually just finished a Jackass series and that was a lot of fun, and I feel like that's up your alley.
Did you guys read Bake Brother magazine growing up?
Did? I did?
And I also made stupid shopping part like prank videos at the at the local grocery stores.
With my friends, and yeah, I was. I was.
I was like at the perfect age when Jackass came out and it basically destroyed half of my body.
Yeah.
I remember seeing the Jackass videos when they were video like hs is being traded people like friend in Chicago. I went visit a friend in Chicago, like in high school, and he showed me them and I.
Was like, what the fuck is this is crazy?
I remember that?
Yeah? Or what dude remember that one?
Yeah? He beats up all those dudes outside the seven eleven. Yeah or Mike Vallli, I mean I think that's his name.
Yeah, part We were like, yo, dude, he legit beat these dudes up.
I think the things the sketch I remember is someone was just carrying like ordered all the McDonald's, was carrying it on a tray and then just did like a spectacular fall and like they they just went everywhere.
I feel like that's bam, yeah, genius, genius.
Yeah, I was. I was willing to rab himself, Chris rab. I was like, yeah, oh man slewsberry Stuber for Kiki one of my favorites.
And he hates Mustard and that's his big thing is he's whatever Mustard gets by him? Is that not that that's like oh right, that's your yeah yeah yeah yeah.
He had the crazy big hair.
Yeah yeah, yeah, like the Viking status. Yeah exactly. Now I'm like, I think I'll have to go back and what you do you do?
I think you'd like this episode you should listen to.
It's very much about how gay Jackass was too and how much of a revolution it was at the time to just have dudes hanging out the way they were and not, you know.
Being afraid again.
Even though it was a joke, it was like a big change from like the really.
Yeah, let me put a firework up your asshole. Yeah, and you're like.
Yes, somo, yeah exactly. But the other thing I wanted to share with you all is, uh, We've been doing new thing on our show called the Urban Legends Hotline, and people can call in and record stories from their childhood and then we'll like deep just do whatever research we decide. And the one we're working on right now is about this place called Pig Hill in Pennsylvania, and it's about a group of cannibal pig people that eat teenagers on a lover's lane up there, like an imbred family, right,
kind of a classic legend. And so what do you say, deliverance, Yeah, definitely, But we've been like getting really into the pig part of it, you know, like why are they specifically pig people? And I was able to dig up the very first trial that was based on a false confession in American history that ended in an execution, and it was actually about a man accused of best reality, he was like an indentured servant and he was accused of it because the.
Pig gave birth to a piglet.
That was deformed and looked like the man who was a servant.
And so yeah, they tried.
Him and hanged him for a pig paternity test and that was Yeah, that's that's the very first false confession as well, because they basically badgered him into confessing and he thought, okay, you know, based on other trials I've seen if I say, if I repent to God and say yes I did this and I'm sorry, I'll get off, but then they were like no, we're going to hang
you anyway. And then he's like, okay, well I really didn't do this, and uh yeah, and then there was a big beast reality panic and it ended up meaning that women were the ones milking the cows always because men were literally not allowed in barns unless they had a chaperone.
Wait, so like a milkmaid?
Is is we have that because motherfuckers couldn't keep their hands on man's Well not exactly.
Oh okay, it was a panic, right, so of course yes that happened. But it was a panic around specifically like servants or like poor people who were you know, accused of this crime, often because it was convenient because they wanted to try them for something else. But once it started to reach like the richer Americans where they were getting accused as well, then suspiciously the panic just kind of fizzled out. So kind of a classic moral panic. But sixteen hundreds we must.
Take note of this.
We mus the cycle of panics and how we can maybe abbreviate them because we're in the midst.
Of multiple cycles.
Now yeah, right, yeah, have you ever looked into is America more panicked than other nations or is this just a cycle that every country like goes through.
It feels like America is more irrational, right.
I think it depends. I mean, there are some wild moral panics all around the world. It just really I mean, I think that that's pretty equal across the board. It's just like translated through different religions and cultures. So it's like we might look at one panic, like there's a panic in different parts of the world where your penis is disappearing and you freak out. And that's been like even recently, people's penises have been suspiciously disappearing.
So you know we might share for that. Not that I'm worried, but what what is care for that?
You know, I haven't looked enough. Well, you know, it never leaves.
So wait, what is that someone people are claiming their penises have vanished like their body.
You remember, I remember that's from the cracked days that that was in another country.
That you do.
Yeah, yeah, and it goes back to like like I just typed in penis Spanish panics right, Yeah.
They call it turtle penis because the penis like retracts into the body.
Okay, you got it, turtle penis panic. Okay, I'll look I'm gonna look at.
Anyways, we could clearly talk about this all day. I heard that some best reality is where Grimace came from actually in the first place.
Makes sense.
Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. What is something, Courtney that you think is overrated?
Well, I just opened a student loan bill this morning, so I was reminded about college and how I still owe eight thousand dollars and how I'm probably going to go into my forties and still owe money.
So I feel different. I feel scammed.
What do you was like at the time, right when you were on the precipice of taking on this debt. What was in your mind? Did you have any foresight or was just kind of like, I don't know, everyone's fucking doing it.
So, No, I didn't want to go because I was going to be an actor too, and I wasn't. I was wildly delusional, but I wasn't so delusional that I thought like, oh, the best way to do this is by going to college, you know. But my parents were like, you know, this is so important, and the thing is I love taking classes, like I still take writing classes to this day, but I feel like colleges are just for real real estate holdings. Yes, it's so indirect, like
how the teachers get paid and every thing. So anyway, scam.
Yeah, and you studied theater or acting? Is that what you want to Yeah? Yeah, I mean yeah, I know.
My thing was like, I'll study history because my backup will be to be a teacher. So at least, if, like with all else fails, at least I have like a degree in something I can be like and I want to teach that, so fuck it, like let's go with it. But yeah, I totally get that. Part of me was like, what am I going to do with this ship if I'm if I'm going to be a sick ass podcaster.
Yeah, I didn't have that for it. I knew I was going to be a podcaster. I majored in podcasting and everyone was very confused because it didn't exist yet.
But yeah we all knew, yeah, exactly what it's called podcasting.
Dad. Colleges are like venture capital firms essentially with yes, yeah, with classes the teacher that also have classes there, which I think venture capital firms should just start offering classes and put college thank.
You exactly, yea, cannibalize them, like we'll teach you how to just fucking you know, pillage economically, financially, go ahead.
That's one of those industries that millennials were supposed to have killed as colleges, right, Wasn't that like, oh well college don't care about colleges anymore. I thought we killed everything. Yeah, but they is. I don't know. They still seem to be thriving.
A lot of millennials went though, But I do think in our wake we hopefully put a dent in some of these.
Yeah.
You know, maybe the gen Z kids who saw their older millennial relatives are.
Like, what the fuck is wrong with courtin me?
No, waity, I'd take it for like, did you have fun at Did you have fun at least in college?
I tried to get out of there as soon as possible, so I graduated. I'd taken some p SEO some college classes in high school, and then I also went to a fast so I graduated in like two years and made mistakes in other places.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course of course he took SEO and then said, ps CEU, that was my account.
It sounded better.
It sounded like it was going to sound more like it in my head, and it didn't quite work out. Yeah, what is something that you think is underrated?
All right?
Ready, yes, working, I wouldn't be doing my job right now if I didn't take this and every opportunity to mention the ongoing writer's strike. I'm a proud member of the Writer's Guild of America and we have been on strike since the beginning of May because we want a fair contract and the studios refuse to even sit down with us and discuss it, let alone give us what
we're asking for. It's very frustrating a lot of people when this started in my life who are like sympathetic to this cause and everything, They're like, you'll probably enjoy a little vacation. It's not a vacation. I really like working, and I writing specifically is the thing that I'm very good at it, and I just want to do it and the studios won't let me. And it's maddening.
Who had that take that was like, I think the strike's because Yeah, like fans of Zaslov on this show, Daniel we and his his take was that he he was like, the strike's gonna end.
Because of a love of working. People love to work, and we're just will welcome them back with open arms. So he's using the fact that you are a creative machine against you right now, which is so so devious and shitty. How much of it do you think? You know?
I've seen that take of like how there's like a big there's that big obscure thing about like Netflix numbers or streaming numbers, and how that's that could affect things.
Do you think that's playing a huge part.
Or it's just general Obviously there's the overarching theme of greed on behalf of the networks and streamers, But like, do you do I've seen that take.
Going around Twitter. I was curious if you had any thoughts on that.
I don't have any extra insight into this than anyone else who doesn't you know, read Twitter and Variety in
Hollywood Reporter and all the other trades and everything. But that does make a whole lot of sense because that's something that the streamers won't even they don't seem to want to budget on the data transparency, and it makes a whole lot of sense, because that number could either be very very large, and they don't want us to know that because then it would reveal just how much money we should be getting in residuals, or, which seems slightly more likely, that money could be very the number
could be very very low, which they don't want Wall
Street and investors to know about. It's all anyone who has spent any time in tech or Silicon valley startups, like it all sounds very familiar to every single Silicon valley startup that eventually burst because they go big, and they go fast, and they invest, invest, invest, and they talk about growth, growth, growth, and have very little transparency, and then when eventually they have to reveal their numbers, everything falls apart because they don't they inflated their own
importance and impact.
Yeah, it sounds it sounds familiar to also the ones that succeed like Facebook. Facebook was did that and then like this year I read somewhere though, like Facebook's having like an amazing year, like at the stock market, Like really at the stock market, we're all the I'm going to together and just throw stocks back and forth. Yeah, like Facebook's stock.
Is like doing well or there. I don't know, I'm just like, how how are we still here after meta? After the pivot to video bullshit?
Oh yeah, And then the listener was saying that, like the Twitter video views, it's I think it's like two to three seconds is what triggers a view.
Yeah. Really, we're right back where we started where people.
Are like, you got to see the fucking numbers were doing here, folks, give us your ad dollars.
Wait, what it's all, It's all an illusion.
Fuck.
Yeah, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back. We're back, and Ayisha, So yeah, I read the quote. But you talk about pop.
Culture informing how we think about ourselves, how we like shape ourselves. You kind of run us through various pop culture figures who you modeled your identity on as you were growing up. I've often said on this show that Freud fucked up big time by using ancient Greek myths instead of pop culture archetypes from the nineties. I think he could have really made a name for himself if
he had just, you know, stuck to pop culture. But it does feel like there, yeah, these are the things that we should be like as we're thinking about you know, where does this weird urge come from two stand people?
For instance?
Like these are the figures that I think actually exist in people's minds and like deep in their unconscious.
Right, How would you how did you explain again this concept of inadvertent self formation by way of popular culture.
Well, I think, especially when we're just kids or adolescents, we're not thinking deeply about what we're consuming, what we're viewing or watching. We are just we're taking it in. We're like a sponge, right, It's just everything affects us and we don't necessarily know how to name it or know how to identify it, and it comes out. And how we talk to each other, how we think of ourselves,
how we see ourselves. I mean, I think about, you know, growing up as a kid in the nineties and how casual homophobic language is just like the thing that everyone did. And if you go back and watch the movies that we were all watching, whether it was like Acepentura or like the teen movies of it, like, there's all this casual homophobia, you know, showing up there, and so you don't realize until years later, or at least, I mean, I'm sure plenty of actual queer people recognize it in
those moments. You know. I obviously it was never right or okay, and it definitely was hurting people then. But I think, you know, part of what growing up hopefully is means being able to go back and sort of look at the things that you took in when you were younger and understand how they may have and may
still be affecting how you view things today. And so that's where the sort of the idea of it being inadversion comes from, is because like it doesn't like sometimes it just happens to you and then you have to later go back and realize, Okay, how did this happening to me make me who I am now? And a lot of it is sometimes like going back and undoing, trying to undo what has sort of calcified in your mind and brain and how you relate to things.
Yeah, like it was.
I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I probably use the F word, the homophobic F word a couple times because that's what I, you know, grew up around. So yeah, it's a lot of undoing and trying to become better. Hopefully, if you're able to go back and look at those things and recognize those things.
I feel like so much of that debate now where people are like it's true woke are like people who can't let go of Like, but my favorite movie is this, and I have to say it's bad now if I agree, and so true, like how much we we take on shit that we see in the media, especially in the age before social media, Like I was, everyone's like looking for something that might feel like them or could be them, or something you could kind of just feel like aligned
with what were like the shows or works of media that you kind of grasped and sort of ingested to kind of become your person.
You know.
I write in the book about what I called my my Hoe phase and and you know, which lasted from roughly my late teens to mid ish twenties, and how I kind of had this idea of what I wanted to be as a as a as a girl slash woman, and how I related to men, boys and men, and I thought that, you know, I had to be sort of tomboy ish and the type of girl who could hang with the guys, not necessarily like I never pretended to like sports like that was never my like sports
aren't my thing. I never pretended to do that, like it wasn't that. But you know, I'd use what I liked movies, TV music to sort of signal, oh, I'm like I'm cool, Like super Bad is one of my favorite movies, Aren't I cool? It really is one of
my favorite movies. I love that movie. Uh, but like I would play that up or play you know, play up the fact that you know, I was really into I don't know, freaks and geeks or the wire whatever as like the thing I put on my dating profiles, and I saw like this vision of like wanting to be closer to this idea of masculinity in a way, as a way of like shielding myself from getting hurt by boys and men. And so I was very much
like Samantha Jones is my girl. I wanted to be like her from Sex of City, Nola Darling and She's got to have It. The nineteen eighty six Phone, not the TV remake by Spike Lee, Like those were kind of my you know, the badass women who fucked around a lot and like didn't like we're anti relationship, anti getting too close to two men, right, that was kind of what I clung to and then over time I realized one that's reductive and also like acting acting like
a man, thinking like a man. Whatever this was before Steve Harvey, I wasn't just like I'm not going to just think like a man, I'm gonna act like one too.
Fuck being a lady. But like I once I realized that that was all kind of a false dichotomy, and that even if you do act like that as a woman, or as a person who presents as a woman like, you're still going to get the short of the ends of the stick because like you're, you're still gonna get You're gonna be slut shamed, or you're gonna be you know, you're It's just there's no winning, and the idea of getting closer like masculinity is not something at least that
I want to aspire to in the way that I conceived of it, or that pop culture conceived of it, which was often like the ladies man, whether it's Sam alone and cheers or not. Not that this like, actually what I love about it's always studying Phildelphia is that it's actually like critiquing those things. But like I'm being of Dennis and like the dentist system and how like that is clearly something to be. That's like being critiqued, this idea of masculine men and what are those guys
the pickup artists or whatever like that? Yeah, yeah, or
the game or whatever. Yeah, like that whole thing. I like, I thought that's what I wanted to be, and then I realized it's all it's all, it's all bullshit, it's all patriarchal, and I had to sort of undo all of that mindset about how to be a good person and how not to be an asshole, because really I was just trying to ma maic, not just not really masculinity per se, but just like being an asshole, which is often assigned to men, right and often seen as a good thing in men.
Jack de What what? What? TV people?
What?
Media people shaped you over the years, because I feel like I was always a loose collection of ship I saw a TV and film.
Yeah, g number one first and foremost obviously influenced. I don't know if you've seen pictures of me in fifth grade, but my hair was long, termed and always looked a little bit wet. I just wore you know, dress shirts with a vest over top at all times, you know, I was. I watched Jaws so many times before the age of like six, that I think I was like a combination of like Sheriff Brodie and Quint at various
points are like wanting to be that. And then also Rocky and Karate Kid were the ones that I where I really saw in like something about like the like I thought it was cool to get your ass kicked, like I think other people like thought like yeah, like other other kids would be like I'm into Bruce Lee
or like somebody who is famously an ass kicker. And the two characters that I really loved where people who could like really take a punch and just like keep getting back up and so do Yeah, the underdog who is just like losing fights repeatedly.
I also like John.
McClain, who you know, is just dragging his like broken body across broken glass like by the end of that movie. Like something about that probably tied into the very strict Catholic upbringing that I had, you know, like some like weird mel Gibsonian.
Like the passion.
Yeah, yeah, Jack's sadism or something was was probably tied in there. But yeah, and then Michael Jordan came along and I was like I want to be that. I want to be Michael Jordan, and then went to like, you know, early nineties hip hop, and then I'd say like pop intellectuals and writer like Hunter S. Thompson, even though I like didn't love his writing. I was like, man,
that guy's cool. I want to you know, drink and use drugs like the future doesn't exist while still being respected as an intellectual and the Yeah, I feel like those were kind of the main ones as I was like still forming myself.
Yeah, I was just so addicted to TV and like films that like every time I saw something I could like find I was like always looking for like identity in like film like the things I was watching, and like one of the earliest ones was like Goku and Dragon Ball. As a kid, like I was just like, oh this, Like I felt like it was teaching me things about toughness. And then then I want to be Michael Jordan, and then I wanted to be Will Smith
and Fresh Prince. Then I was Ace Ventura for about two years with the way I spoke, like just like Pete annoying.
To every kid, every kid, every kid I was.
I was alrighty. Then all that shit yeah, I had.
I had specific friends I remember who were Ace Venturer for three years in a row, and they, in my memory, the funniest kids I knew. Yeah, people I've ever met were a totally co opted that ship, and I was like, this man is a genius.
Yeah.
And then I was the Waynes Brothers. Yeah, I mean Marlin more than Sean because Marlon was a little more outgoing. Then I was Tiger Woods because that was the first time I saw a Blazian person like me on TV. And I was like, okay, so I'm that and I tried to play golf. That ship that was I was never going anywhere. Then there was the rock shot on another like vaguely blazing person. Then puberty hit. It was all wrapped. I was like jay Z, I was method man.
I was Pharrell because people were like you gotta you could be like for I was like, yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I will not wear trucker hats. I was wearing trucker hats. And she should have seen me in the early I.
Wore trucker hats too, because it was it was the odds.
Yeah, you had to, you had to, and at least for me, I was like, that's a trucker hat.
I'm like, but Pharrell wear's one, so I guess yeah, right.
I wasn't wearing Bond Dutch quite yet. Then I was like, I love Tom Sizemore and saving Private Ryan for something that.
Is so weird, so sad.
It's because he Jack, to your point, and the Goku thing, he kept getting shot and he kept getting back up.
In the movement. I was like, yo yo, And then my mom was like.
There was a monk in Japanese folklore called Benk who maybe you would be more interested in. So then I got into figures like that. But now I don't think
I've moved on past Pharrell, to be honest. Yeah, but it is one of those things where like so much of my identity was being defined by the media, sadly, and I was taking cues, especially from like the blackness that I saw on screen as some kind of standard that I had to sort of uphold because I was being fed hiss a very specific version of like what black culture was via television and film, then other versions from my family, and then other times also being Asian,
I felt like I was just kind of like a punchline. So I was always kind of sifting through media to try and give me something. I'm like, well, that shit's cool on TV.
For you.
Oh, let me tell you how.
Yeah, my cousins, my black cousins were immediately they're like, I was Jackie Chan from the second the first rush Hour came out, or Blackie Chan with a lot of things, and yeah, that was And at the time I was like, or I would even you know, the thing is you even point that inward and you're like telling other people. You're like, I'm like rush Hour the person, you know what I mean, and then take that because you'd rather
like you got laughs from that. But it's always interesting how I was like, I was always using media sort of like this touchstone to inform those things. And again it was like out of seeking some way of like finding myself, but also like maybe inadvertent or maybe very intentional kind of personality formation.
As I was doing that.
Yeah, it does feel like a very interesting way to kind of just view the world and the cultural landscape as like these figures that people that like resonate and you know, they express some like you know that I read this book when I was young about like how
movies are like cultural dreams. They're like expressing some something from like our shared unconscious and you know, so obviously they resonate and people pay money to see them, but then they have this second life where they shape us in the same way that like linguists talk about language shaping everything we do, because they like give us the color palette that we are working with when we're like trying to build the person that we want to be, like how we talk, what we wear, how to like
you know, hold our body posture wise. There's this crazy story about how like Marlon Brando, characters like nobody in the Mafia dressed like that until Marlon Brando did in a movie, and then they were just like, yo, that's me, that is me, that is who I want to be. And then they started dressing like that, and then that's that's what we associate with, you know, people in the Mafia.
But it was like this invention by a great artists.
Yeah, that's so funny you brought that up because I did an entire I did like this deep dive episode about the Godfather and how Italian Americans reacted to it, and I learned that where it was just like they were they the gangsters were imitating the movie version of themselves, which is just such a great little anecdote and a great example of how there's just this back and forth, this cultural exchange between the language of the movies and then the language of the people, and how they feed
into one another, and sometimes they become so blurred that you don't know, it's like a chicken and egg situation, like which actually came first? Like was this you know, did this exist?
Was it?
You know, was Marlon Brandall basing the character off of a specific gangster hemit, and then it just became sort of the template for all these other gangsters. Yeah, it's just it's so interesting to think about that, or even something like I don't know, the Rachel haircut in the nineties, how everyone wanted that. It's just like, what a weird time, what a weird, weird thing, how ingrained pop culture is to all of us.
Yeah, And I feel like we see it now even more right, especially like with in politics, like every like especially with like when you look at the symbolism and like the imagery the semiotics of like political factions. Now, like I feel like you see so many people on the right, like far right, who are just they like they love the Punisher, they love the Joker, and there's like this weird like again there are people are finding
these archetypes again. Do I think maybe give even their own like political battles, meaning you know what I mean, like because it might not be enough for them to be sort of get the picture because they're looking at maybe their own situation, but they like they're saying like, Okay, I'm on this side of the fence plus Punisher, Oh yeah, I like this.
This is me.
This is me the guy who is like just unhinged violent and feels like that's the only way that can solve things, to make people safe.
Yeah.
I think those two in particular are very like powerful central sort of psychological archetypes that have really you know, like back to Heath Ledger's Joker comes out at the start of the Obama administration, and I think the like resonated with people being like, not, everything's okay here, even though kind of the mainstream media seemed to be like we're good here, everything's good.
History is over.
And then like the Joaquin Phoenix Joker comes out and like adds what I think are two crucial ingredients that he is an in cel and that he is like pointedly not funny but wants to be funny, which I feel like are two of the key features of a lot of the people who identify with the Joker and like that. Yeah, I mean that character has been around and resonating for a long time, but it just feels
like it's really yeah. Wait, in the books that are written about our culture, there probably won't be as many of them as we like to think, but I feel like that there will be a whole chapter on like the Joker and the Punisher and shit like that.
Unfortunately, yeah maybe just yeah, again just shows how much meaning we like extract from like our like our popular culture, because it wasn't like no one's like going in history right like I I want to like I want to be William Tacums to Sherman or something like John Brown.
They're like, I want to be the Punisher. Yeah, I want to be Batman And.
You're like, oh shit, okay, so we've completely just exchanged one for the other, but again has like that same motivating force behind it, I.
Guess well, and also like the meaning that is being extracted is often just like totally out of line of what the meaning originally was or really is. Like when I think about all the you know, the Bill Maher types who complain about, oh, you can never get Blazing Saddles made today, it's like, okay, but like Blazing Saddles is actually like a radical piece of like filmmaking, and they're just yeah, and they're just like focused on Oh, well they you know, they're they're using the N word
or or whatever whatever. Actually I don't even remember if the N word is us.
It doesn't matter.
It's like they are taking the wrong takeaways from that movie to prove their point. But really it's just like that movie was like maybe it wouldn't have been made today. But also, like most people who are actually like liberals, the ones you are fighting against, they would argue that Blazing Saddle is actually really great because it's way more transgressive than an episode of Family Guy or whatever. Like it's yeah.
We wouldn't let you Bill Maher remake that would suck and you would do a bad job. All right, let's take one more break and we'll be right back. And we're back, and so like this is just a story of like the industriousness of the American spirit at this point, is this is the good good news story. So Taylor Swift concert tickets are impossible to get, So Swifties who were shut out of the ability to go to the show can now buy some loose confetti from the ones who.
Were able to go. All right, people who went to the show.
And presumably like some of this is just they just like went to party city, right, But they're claiming, they're claiming that they're taking they're grabbing handfuls of the confetti reselling it online. The pricing isn't that bad. It's only thirteen dollars for a pack of ten. But my reason for ten strips of fucking ten pieces of confetti from the concert though, Miles, I don't think you understand it's from the concert.
Wait to get to as we call down the streets. You're buying a loose fetti for thirteen bucks.
Lucy's all right, buyti Lucy's but much less popular than buying you know, regular confetti is confetti.
Lucy's just a single loose piece of confetti for sure. But yeah, they're claiming, like one sellar pointed out that the confetti is somewhat limited at the show, only floor seats and maybe some of the one hundred sections can even get confetti. It's just like such a perfect encapsulation of It's like people who are already wealthy or well connected enough to be on the floor at like the hardest concert to attend in recent modern history are just
like gathering up the confetti from the ground. I can tell you the trash from privileged world and sell it.
Yeah, yeah, it's elite, elite confetti.
You guys.
I'm going to tell you something that may undermine my credibility on the show. But I have Taylor Swift tickets the Seattle Show. But the funny thing is is I was able to get them. My partner and I were able to get them first round. It was no problem. We just got tickets. And then suddenly everything exploded and came toppling down. And so I'll be gathering some loose confetti and I'll send it to you. Don't I don't actually have good seats, though I get on any No, I don't have.
I don't have a problem that you're going to the Aras tour. I have a problem that you can't get me loose petty off the floor. So get it together, please, Well.
Maybe I can get you know, maybe I can get in a fight for you and.
Else yeah or yeah yeah, yeah cause a headline something like that.
Another confetti salesperson pointed at that pointed out that people are getting mad at her, but she's just following Taylor's lead because Taylor Swift has created an insane business model, a capitalist empire that's easy for people to jump on. And that fan is also flipping sixty five dollars to crew necks for two.
Hundred dollars each.
So I mean, I I appreciate the hustle, Like these don't seem like they're they seem like they're just trying to make money to recoup the fact that they spent they might have spent like an entire ID check on this.
I just love the passionate defense of that fetti salesperson that said Taylor Swift is created an insane business model. People are getting mad that I'm selling confetti like thirty dollars, But what's crazy is that A people are buying it, and B you're in denial thinking Taylor Swift is not a capitalist.
That's right, Oh my god?
Because yeah, I mean, like I've never seen somebody truly milk their audience like this to be like, Yo, you could buy this album with one extra song on it and a new album cover.
Yeah, and they're like.
Yes, yes, I mean god, I wish I I'm in the wrong business.
I think I'm gonna I might just go just to get some of this confetti, the confetti, Like, I truly can't imagine anyone going through the trouble of gathering up the confetti off the floor and then like selling it for thirteen dollars for ten strips like that? How much?
Like are you bringing garbage bags with you? Like, I just think this has to be some cargo pants, cargo pants.
Cargo pants. I've already thought this out, Jack, I'm got cargo pants.
Whoever I'm coming with us cargo pants and we're stuffing them shits.
Yeah.
Big? Are these single pieces of confetti?
Because the picture does not have like a t scale scale, Yes, of confetti?
Are they small band aid size?
Like? What are we saying? I'm thinking band aids? I've never seen confetti. Like. The picture is really close up, really shows the texture, full spectrum of colors too. Yeah, the colors are great. It's a good hell are selling right now? Yeah, you guys don't want to get it.
Honestly, I've purchased two packages twenty pieces of you said that was an investment for your kids college.
It's for the future, and for.
Sure two dollars off if you buy three.
So yeah, business business planning.
But I mean, Jack, this is the same thing like when those like wacky racist people were like bottling up fucking splash mountain water before.
Yeah, they made it all woke. Yeah you know what I mean, Like, they's only the same water.
No, I guess they're probably shutting it down for a while, so who.
Knows either way. It's like you don't know what the fuck if that's even what they're.
Selling you for.
Yeah, right, Like, yeah, you can go to part not you get, Like I'm putting this in the same category of like it's not worth it to like carry that shit out with you, Like it's just so annoying to like be going to the concert and carrying out just like loose handfuls of confetti enough to make it like worth getting, Like so you would have to have two hundred to even.
Get, Like, I don't know, it's just you're making a three.
Oh, how do you pay for your Like Okay, can't. What's the formula to pay for your floor seat by someone the loose steady after like.
The margins on the sixty five dollars a piece for two hundred dollars each, Like that kind of makes sense, but it's still like, are you bringing are you bringing a fucking fork lift with you to the show? How many of these shirts are you getting? So I feel like these are all just grifters, Like the internet is just so yeah, so full of grifters. This is These are not people who actually went to the concert. These
are people just taking advantage. Like there's also somebody selling ziploc bags of eras tour air, which I think is a joke.
But that's a great grift, man, come on now.
But again, I but it's like, this is just this is where we're at. It's like the same you see the same thing, and every fandom, right like especially with Trump. Trump grifts his all of his fans, and they grift each the fuck out of each other, you know, because they see like, oh shit, y'all buy anything. Okay, watch this, y'all want trump Bucks and people are fucking buying them if you are. Okay, So floor seats for the Sofi Stadium show in La thirty five hundred, So quick maths
on that. I need to sell like three hundred.
The bundles of flu spand so you have to gather three thousand pieces of fetti while you're there.
Okay, so don's like a lot.
Yeah that seems like a lot. Yeah, all right, I'm not up on the fetti game.
But I mean, but or the smartest person are the workers who have to clean up after the show. And when they brooming that shit up, You're like, yeah, get that in the bag, watch this that excel it to someone who has left.
Earth and I can sell to them on eBay.
Yeah, hopefully that's that's who's doing that, or hopefully it's just a grifter.
What is what is something that would seemingly be detritis to anyone else that you would pay actual dollars for?
Mm? Is there anything like that for either of you?
Chelsea Jack, Like if there was, even if it's something you thought of, like oh, something from this movie or something from this concert or this even if it was this artist's fingernail, right, because I mean, somebody.
Could get me seemen sample of Grimace's.
Yeah, I've got a I've got a big hair collection, so famous people that I don't talk that much about, but you've seen it. Yeah, yeah, I keep talking.
If I could get something from the Donner party, that's what I want, a big daughter party. And yeah, if I could get I don't know, I get some like dirt from their cabin, I'd pay some I paid thirteen bucks for.
That, Yeah, just off the strength.
Of on me, like you know this, Yeah, yeah, this is open there, open their jacket and it's just.
Yeah, I think I would.
I would probably buy like like a roach that any like one of my favorite wrappers smoked.
Yeah, I would like I would buy one of those for like for cash. I mean I'm not gonna pay. I'm not gonna pay like one hundred bucks. But if someone's like, yo, man fucking met them. Man was smoking this blunt. I was like, okay, what you want.
Time you run out of weed, you just pop that in your bong.
Yeah oh no, never, even when I'm like that's never, I'll die sober before I sparked that method, man roach I bought for fifty dollars from on epay.
Yeah, like whatever.
The cleaning crew took out of the studio after like a legendary recording session would actually.
Have like yeah, like even if it's like a old Cuckoo Roo plastic bag exactly, remember Cuckoo Roo.
Yeah, you can hear that bag crinkle on this way in the uh torture sketch at the beginning of Method Man. All right, let's talk about the Hobby Lobby Satanic display. Yeah, so I think this is like the most twenty twenty three story of the day.
Mm hmm.
And it comes to us all the way from Texas wearing an AI artist and member of the Satanic Temple. Mind you used mid journey AI to basically take images like loaded images of the like aisles of Hobby Lobby, and the prompt was Hobby Lobby selling Satanic products, And what came out was stunning bapam met demons all in the gold legs, everything you could imagine that would make
a Christian person faint as they clutch their pearls. But yeah, if you know Hobby Lobby, the hobby store for Christian nationalists who like famously were like, we're not gonna pay for fucking any kind of contraception, and we can discriminate whoever the fuck we want to because that's our religious choice.
So this person, Jennifer Vineyard, made it, just wanted to fuck around with AI and got these images and first posted it to like an AI like art page, and then other people just without even critically looking at it, started reposting it on Facebook, like this one woman. You can tell she's like reposting from something called AI art Universe. Yeah, and then this listenman says, well, I guess even the quote Christian owned companies can be bought for the right price.
Severely disappointed. Holy shit. I mean it's just I mean, I get it.
We're in another satanic panic and nobody is, you know, just credulously sharing shit. But yeah, just wold to see how quickly the thing spread, and then again boom culture wars.
The size is the sizing is so far off, it's really funny. Like the the sculptures, the like head, the bust of Bafomet is like, you know, ten times the size of the nearest thing. One of them actually looks like they have little demons like sitting on a shelf next to like air freshener and shit and like live laugh, love car. Yeah, like baby sized or like toddler sized demons.
Just sitting there like five times the size of anything else in hobby lobby that you can see in the picture, and they're just like, yeah, man, and it's fucked up out there.
Huh yeah.
If you go back to like the eighties Satanic panic and nineties, I think this is a great example of something that happens with an urban legend, and especially the Satanic panic is like it's called ostension, right, and it's like when there's already some kind of legend. Right, So if we think, okay, a town's already worried about a Satanic cult because you know, animals ate another animal weird and left its carcass there, or you know, there's been
a murder and nobody can explain it. So there's already this panic around satanic colts. And so a teenager goes and that's what I see here, is like a teenager going and spray painting Satan lives on like an underpass. And then because this person's reacting to a panic that already exists and having fun with it and like fulfilling it and fucking with it, then it perpetuates the same problem because then the people who already believe in the legend take it seriously and yeah, exactly, Chelsea.
Sorry, sorry to jump in here, correct you and man, teenagers would never do something so callous and chaotic as to play into an existing urban legend just to fuck with people. No, no, no, no, no, not teenagers, not my teenagers.
It is or those with a teen spirit who are making ai.
Art right temple, like who's apparently like a pharmacist in training in the article they like have like I'm trying to be a pharmacist, but also like fuck fuck this, like these people freaking out over shit. The comments on our people is that I haven't seen this in ours, but it's been a couple of weeks since I've been in there.
That's insane.
Another person had half a brand and said I'd have to see this in person before I'd believe it. Good for you, uh, dear Facebook user. Another one said, wow, now this is crazy. Did the Christian owners sail or are they just incompromise and cross the line and gone woke? This is absolutely insane and the line real Christians would never cross.
Thank you, sobody, such a famously Christian change. That's what I love about, which I think that's why they did it right I love.
The prodding of it to be like, well, what about your sacred hobby lobby. Guess what they're in bed with Bahamet over.
There, like yeah, we have nothing anymore.
There's another. I just love this one. Screw Satanic people. Screw Satanic people. Look all I'm was after the qualifying Screw Satanic people. Look all I'm saying is that Satanic people are stupid and obviously you worst the damn devil. I think may have meant you worship the damn devil and stuff like that, and that's disgusting. I could never And Satanic people can go work right really where they belong, which is Hell. Yeah, okay, at least they're working.
Yeah, you know, nobody wants to work thought, Yeah.
Unless you're a Satanic person. And then you've got you got your late for your shift in Hell, you're.
Working twice as hard.
Yeah.
But I mean, like, I don't hear this, This is this feels like more of what we're going to see, more and more of shit like this to your point, like chelsea of people already like on an edge or like on a on like a tight wire, and all it takes is just a little bit of like visual stimulus to suddenly kick it right back in and be like, oh my god, this is true.
I don't even know. I'm not even I can't even think critically anymore. This is true.
It's all I need to see because my confirmation bias is set to three million.
Well do you guys think that this kind of thing is hell full?
Or do you?
Because I look at this sometimes and like, as much as I don't want to feel this way, I'm like, ah, you're really like, I think this is funny. I think it's great to piss and out piss off and outrage and freak out people. But then it's like it does have the same effect of just adding to this story. So I just I don't know, and I don't think this person really meant that to happen, because it looks like it just was pulled, right.
It was pulled from some yeah, and then.
They posted it like on Reddit and like on their own Facebook, and then just it took off on its own.
But it wasn't a hoax, a purposeful hoax necessarily.
I think it was probably half hearted.
All see where it goes, See where it goes, because I'll make an image that people will take seriously, now what people do with it after that? I mean, she said her one regret was that she didn't spend more than ten minutes making it because like some people were like, I see pound signs next to the prices, Like, I don't know if this is happening in the US then yet, and people like.
Oh no, yeah, it'sacause in other countries they put pound signs next to prices.
To your point, yeah, I don't know, I mean for sure, like it for it.
Prolongs this this situation, uh in people's minds, especially for the people who probably are not thinking critically and are just like, yep, and that's yeah, it's even hobby lobby. And then someone will tell them that's fake, and they're like, but i'd believe it if it happened.
Yeah, And then the fact that it's hobby lobby is helpful to me because it's like you are like, if you're going to weaponize this against something, then at least it's against you know.
That's the only reason I even brought it up, because if it was someone doing that shit in target or whatever, I'm like, no, this is like that, I don't I see this pure cynicism in it. But because of Hobby Lobby's you know, reputation as being an upstanding Christian company that discriminates indiscriminately like it is, then I feel a little less but I but I think it's an important thing. And I guess for you, someone who looks at this kind of thing, how could you, like, is there anything
anyone could do to abbrieve ate something like this? Because it seems like once it's out there, people are gonna believe what they believe. And we see this and this especially post truth era we live in, where even if they're presented with the truth, they still pivot to something like yeah, but I could see how it would would be real, and it.
Just yeah, yeah, it is.
I mean it's a million dollar question, I think.
And I mean I always this, yeah yeah, well I've rid of the Satanic panic since we did it so well before, But I don't know, I mean, I go back and forth because it does feel like an uphill battle that's possibly.
I mean, this is a this is so ancient. This is an ancient thing.
I mean if you go back to like even Jewish blood libel with Christian saying okay, Jewish people are Satanic and they're sacrificing children, and you know, this is like
a thousand years ago or more. So it's like, I don't know, I think it's just like we were talking about with moral panics all over the world, this is just the most entrenched thing because you're dealing with what you consider the biggest evil, right and so when you have this, especially like you have like a satan child killer of some kind, which apparently we all are, you know, it's easy then to justify whatever you want to do.
And so I don't think people are going to let go of the ability to demonize literally an entire group of people or entire political affiliation or whatever, and then you know, justify whatever they want to do in retaliation
to that evil. So I don't know if it's I think, you know, sometimes I get pissed off at certain celebrities that really play into sort of the Satanic Illuminati thing as a lark, But I do think it has a lot of negative effects for people who aren't like massively rich celebrities in small towns, who might say, okay, like this is connected to gay people because a gay artist has like really played into the Satanic thing. I think that that can have some damage, but I would never
say that it's not I don't know it. I really tow a line there of not being sure, because I do feel like sometimes it trickles down and does harmful things to really play into that. But at the same time, I don't know if it really truly makes a difference or if it's just entrenched and always going to be there.
Right.
I feel like the fact that these are all like the sizing is off, everything's like just a little too stupid, Like I think that makes it extra fun and worth while. Like I have no notes on this because it's inherently like it's exposing the stupidity of the people who would get mad at this by being like, this is the hobby lobby is selling these like life sized satan ensconss like next to Yankee candle decorations.
And it's not even Halloween.
It's just like, yeah, just one.
Met head in the middle of the fucking lamp aisle.
So they're they're not even baphomets, really, I don't even know.
They're like dark angels with wings coming out of their heads.
Yeah, yeah, there's like one one goady head, but yeah, a lot are just sort of vague Ai demonic regalia.
I truly have no notes on this, but I think they should have a second thought about like whether they should have spent more time on it, because I think they spent just the exact right amount of time. I think is like one of the last like things that one of the last things we have before the fall.
Yeah. Yeah, like we have to like create truth that is like I don't know, we need for comfort.
Yeah, I think if anything, go harder and make it like go for the most unbelievable thing possible. Or it's like they're selling Jesus and Baphomet sixty nine yng golfs in the kids' aisle at hobby lobby, like here they are and people, I mean, I'm sure it's just so funny because people are like, so it's just it is. Again, it's like horrifying too that some people realize yep, those
are the stakes and that's the situation. I mean, they are making this kind of stuff like wow, okay, well anyway, but I like through satanic people.
Look, you're gonna get so many comments where words that shouldn't be capitalized are and it's just complete capitalization anarchy.
Yeah, yeah, totally, Yeah, I do.
I do love that it was a satanic was treated as a proper adjective. Yeah, you know, so again this person woke moralists?
Is that?
Is that what that quote was from Jordan Peterson? Oh yeah, go to hell, woke moralists. It's not on my quote of the day calendar I have for Yeah, it's coming up though, Yeah it's coming up. All right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show. If you like the show, h means the world to Miles. He he needs your validation.
Folks.
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday.