How much does what happens online influence real life? | J. Burden

something doesn't directly produce policy. Look, all of the angst over both the start and then the sensation of the Iran war seemingly has done little. Now it's difficult to say to what degree we do impacts internal party politics. There's at least some of it, right, we see this in the negative all the time. Our guys get perched, people who have unacceptable quote unquote opinions get pushed out, which indicates, well, there must at least be people with

our opinions trying to get close to power. That makes sense. I mean, look, I also see the email list for my substack. There are some names in there who knows what they get from it. Now they're taking their marching orders from me. But there's something there for the real problem, right, it's how politics actually works. We understand that politics is top down, not bottom up. So the idea that you can simply make something popular and it will affect politics, well,

clearly that is in the case. We have a number of case studies on this where we see the exact opposite gay marriage, row versus Wade, integration, all things in the US that were unpopular until they were legal and then they became popular. They see similar stuff with we legalization. But a culture war does matter to at least some degree. We're seeing in real time ideas being mainstreamed. We're seeing things that were previously off limits brought into politics, and

this has produced different results. Go back to the defeat of Thomas Massey. He was certainly defeated, but it brings up an important point that you need a bare fig leaf of legitimacy. When that has gone, it becomes very differentficult to run a political system, a problem we're seeing now. So I don't know right to what degree, what percentage, what we do matters, But what I am quite sure

about is that who's in the audience matters. You can look at someone like Alex Jones, for example, who has a huge audience but doesn't seem to be able to get the government to do what he wants. A wide dispersed audience of people without power isn't particularly helpful. Now, compare and contrasts that to NPR the New York Times comparatively small audiences declining audiences. Trump himself has been loudly growing this. But they are the paper of record, They

are legitimate and important. People read what they have to say. I think that there is an information advantage in what we do. There are things here that are true that you can't talk about elsewhere, that are everboden. And so we are seeing, at least in some small part, people with a vested interest in an information advantage. Venture capitalists, guys who are paid to be on the cutting edge

infiltrating these circles for good or for ill. But that's a leading indicator in my mind that there's something here. Now again, I don't think that means people power, we will reach a fifty plus one percent. But if I didn't think this mattered, if I didn't think there was a connection between the online space and reality, I wouldn't be doing this now. It's important to say that online activism and in real life activism are not the same.

Ernst in this talks about documentaries he's made with tens of millions of views that resulted in a handful less than ten members of his political organization, whereas he could go to a small town twenty thousand people give a speech and end up with double that. So are not the same thing. And it's also distorted by the fact that there is money to be made in this. There are people looking to advance themselves the expense of any message.

I think that question of do what we is what we're doing important, It's one we should ask ourselves because look like there is a certain aspect of this that's entertainment. You're basically using a podcast, using a video entertainment or companionship company, right like Boomer's watching the television, And that's not the end of the world. Right, that's not bad.

Not everything needs to be super serious, Not everything needs to be didactic, because we understand that there is also a war for your sanity, to be perfectly honest, a deliberate desire to make you blackpilled, insane and impotent, and so an antidote to that is useful in and of itself. But remember, and this is a quote I'm stealing from Dave Green, the point of the Internet is not to

win the Internet. Point of the Internet is to get you to do something in real life, to get you out of the bugman box, the cube, the wage cage, as it were. And I think that that's an important social function. So anyway, here is my interview with Ernst. Back to regularly scheduled programming on Monday, as per usual, episode sponsored by Fox and Sun's Coffee. It's good coffee. I drink it almost every day. Use the code Jay Burden you get some percentage off and also some one

of the episodes early in NED free. Just head over to Patreon, substack or gum Road look for the Jay Burton Show. Thank you.

this channel. I've also been a regular guest on his show, so I think there's a lot of cross pollination with the audiences. So I assume most of the people in

my audience will already recognize who you are. But for those who don't know, Jay Burden is a political and cultural commentator who lives in America, and he analyzes and unpacks many of the phenomena that we see in the world around us, in particular American politics and some international politics as well, with the help of a very long laundry list of fantastic guests that he has on his show. So Jay, welcome back, and I'm looking forward tonight's conversation. How are you doing.

But Jay, that's the question that I actually want to start off our conversation with, and that's the internet proverbal Internet saying that we all know, and that is that the Internet is not real life. It's a bit of a twenty tens ism, maybe two thousands ASM. I don't know exactly when it was at its peak of popularity. But what's your what is your what are your thoughts on that thesis that is so common online from left wing to right wing circles, just across the entire spectrum.

There seems to be this quote unquote common knowledge that the Internet is not real life, even though some people's actions online don't reflect that they actually buy into that idea. Where do you stand on it?

in that sense, the Internet is not real life. But what we've seen at kind of increasing rapidity is that the Internet in real life are converging. Obviously, our enemies, foreign and domestic understand this. Just look at the attempt on speech control and on internet control we've seen within

the EU and in Britain. They understand that if a video, for instance, a video that recently went massively viral of a migrant trying to save someone's head off, that produces real world consequences that can jump it becomes big online. And then there are you know, lads throwing bins at policemen there's a correlation there, so we understand that there are extremes on both ends. As regards the explicitly political content, is there a one to one correlation. I have a

big tweet and Donald Trump signs the law? I mean obviously not. I mean I've realized that we don't want to get into specifics. It can be boring and kind of annoying. But the Iran war is helpful because his base, particularly online, has not been happy about that, and yet it still happened, right, is continuing to happen in some form,

So we understand that there's a disconnect there. But what the Internet does have the ability to do is to shift culture, right, is to shift the Overton window and the og Alt writers, the guys who are out kind of before you and I were blazing the trail, I think over relied on that. The idea was we can introduce new ideas into the mainstream and create a cultural shift that will enable us to do whatever they wanted, right, transform the nation, get a job as a commentator, and

that didn't work. Were they wrong? No, they were right, but it was just over a much longer time span than they could have expected. You read back a lot of those older writers from that time, and it's sort of quaint, you know. It's the ideas that shure, we're incredibly revolutionary in twenty fourteen, but are now at least on the right side of the political spectrum, sort of received wisdom. We've all internalized them, even if we'd never read. I think of guys like you know, all type who

I don't have anything against. I'm not picking on him, but there are essays that at the time were completely and totally revolutionary that now you know, someone who went back and read these a year or two ago. It's not that they're not good. They are, but that information has been so widely disseminated that it's sort of like watching the matrix for the first time in twenty twenty. I've seen this before, you know. That doesn't take away

from how groundbreaking the original was. So I understand that that assumption of the OG writers was incorrect. They all got their lives through it to one degree or another, because they were correct they were going to shift culture, but not in a timeframe helped them from losing their jobs, losing their social lives, and sort of being ruined by the state. So the internet does affect culture. Now does

culture affect politics? Not immediately right, We're seeing another You've seen this in American politics with the fracturing megabase, is that a significant percentage of the base is unhappy with the direction of the party, and yet the party continues on full steam ahead. And so, to be honest, what I think that we're seeing is one a cultural lack, right, a difference between when an idea becomes popular on the Internet and it hits the point where it was kind

of spread through culture. But also we have this problem of well, power is not bottom up, it's top down. Now, what our enemies understand is that culture does select for those guys at the top. You know how many of us have made fun of boomers, whether conservative or liberal, for having certain inherent cultural ideas baked into them that they take and apply to policy, even when that contradicts their stated values. So at least on that perspective, really

the question is does culture matter? Right? The Internet is a forum for culture. It produces subcultures and eventually those hit meat space, as they used to say, But how do we go from cultural sentiment to cultural change? I mean to put a bone on it, ernest and then I'll kick it back to you. That's the million dollar question, right.

that we've seen. I mean, if that was not the case, we would not see as hard a push for Internet censorship if the Internet was a terrible information dissemination means. But well, I'm the same, I.

way that we see the world to different degrees. But I remain where my skepticism comes in is how much the Internet and that dissemination of information effect affects collective action. So we see a lot of what I mean, the classic slang would be people quote unquote waking up to whatever topic. I mean. The list is endless of what different people of different ideologies think the masses need to quote unquote wake up to what secret information, And we

see a lot of that. It's such a it's become such a cliche of just constantly saying we were witnessing the masses wake up, because there's this logic of if you just bombard people with enough good arguments the battle of ideas. If you win the battle of ideas, you win the battle of action. I don't think that connection is as easy to prove in regards to having the best arguments and having the best information and being the most effective at disseminating information and that translating into real

world collective action. Maybe a final little caveat there. I do think that the Internet is very good at inspiring individual action, so and often in evil ways. We see this. In the most classic example would be mass shooters, mass casualty events, terrorism. A lot of these mass shooters of the past few years are very, very clearly, almost exclusively terminally online individuals, people that have had their entire worldview

warped by what they have worked consuming online. We are increasingly seeing online jargon and lingo bleed into the manifestos of these people themselves. So there's an endless list of case studies of individuals being driven into action of an evil action by their online concentsumption habits. But I've not seen as much collective action in regards to that dissemination function of the Internet inspiring a lot of people to do things in the real world that have lasting impact.

As you've mentioned the Belfast protests now the most recent example. We see people getting angry, we see people burning garbage bins, we see people showing their rage for a few days and then it's gone again. So that's that seems to me in general, to be the limit of real world organization and action inspired by the dissemination machine called the Internet.

know that organizations you were a part of have experienced this. Right, you can get your message out, particularly if it's contrary to the wishes of state media. And sure you may get you know, four hundred thousand likes on a post, and of those four hundred thousand people, of course, the vast majority just scroll on to whatever's next on their feed.

But it's a funnel, right, you can get someone okay, from you know, one touch to you know, engaging with what you put out to in doing something simple like

you know, donating to an organization to joining as a member. Right, something that you can basically take someone who is unconnected, unaffiliated, uninterested and turn them into someone doing something real like the organization I'm a part of, the Old Glory Club was a desire to do exactly this, to take something based on the Internet, you know, a million different fractional group chats like an archipelago and say all right, like, well, let's meet up. We've got fifteen guys in your city,

start something, do something, see each other. And look, that does not a country, save at least initially. But if we're looking at how to bridge the gap between the sort of memetic ecosystem and the one outside, well that can be done.

much influence the Internet has is who's watching. So, for instance, if you look at raw numbers, Alex Jones demolishes The New York Times is much more readership, a much wider audience. But when Alex Jones says something, do any politicians listen? I mean maybe one or two when they were at home, if they're looking for a laugh. But he doesn't have that sort of power. Well, when The New York's Times says something, it matters because of their readership. NPR, National

Public Radio in America, is another great example. They never had huge viewership. There were never, never more people listening to that than watching sports. But what type of people right where does that information go and how is it incorporated? And again, this is something that I think conservatives get wrong often. You hear that phrase go woke, go broke, and the assumption is if something is off putting to

the majority of people, it's going to be a failure. Answers, No, it is, No, it doesn't because what matters is basically the audience. Who is listening, whose ear you have from a media perspective, And so you know, we've seen conservative figures with huge audiences. You know, you think of pastors like Billy Graham or you know Jerry Folwell in the US from sort of a previous generation, and they were unable to turn that into you know, lasting positive political change.

And if you doubt that popularity and politics are in no way related, I mean just look at the example of gay marriage in the US when it was handed down as a ruling, the population was but roughly sixty forty against. If it had gone to an election, it would have been a blowout. But Power was listening to someone different. They had different ideas, and so that's what actually mattered. As regards the Internet, I think that it's

going to be interesting watching this generational divide. You know, much has been made over for the boomers, and you know, I don't want to descend into that, but what we're seeing is sharply different media ecosystems. I think the average age of a CNN viewer is in their mid to late sixties. You know, these are not what generations below the boomers are experiencing their children, even their relatively old children. Right,

people in their fifties. They still get information off the internet, maybe in a different way than you or I do, earnest, but it will be an interesting test case to see, Oh well, when we finally have people who are getting most of their information off the internet, and I realize baby boomers and older people do use certain sites like Facebook,

but that's a conversation for another day. I think that that will be profoundly interesting to watch that test case, and I wonder if the relative amount of freedom on the Internet will be curtailed precisely as it becomes more and more important. Maybe a speculative point, but I'll kick it back to you, conscious caricle.

I try to make as often as possible. I'm sometimes the villain on the right side of the spectrum because I tell people, I mean, just because people are burning things in the street, that doesn't automatically translate into action or translate into real world change. You're reading the formula wrong. On the left side, the left does not get what they want because they right, the riot is just kind of like the little source that they pour over the system to make it seem a bit more legitimate in God,

so how they get what they want. But that's not how it works because rage is not magic. Like it's not like you get people angry enough and then you reach some point and then people are so angry they get beyond angry, and then everything changes because you reach

that little rage meter to the right point. But when I was to get back to trying to quantify how much what you do and say online affects the real world, it really comes down to, for me, at least, that experience of having a nap where you nap for five minutes.

And we've all had that experience. You fall asleep for five minutes and you shouldn't be napping, but you're just very tired, and you live an entire lifetime and a dream within that five minute nap, and then you wake pick up and then you look at you're watching You just you just dozed off for like five minutes. But like in that dream, you were born, you went to school, you went to university, you had an entire career, you had a wife and family and children. That in that dream.

But it's just the relationship between dream time and real time, I think is very close to internet activism versus real world activism. The question is not does online activism the effect the real world? Of course it does, but how much does it? Well, maybe you should divide the amount by ten or one hundred even one thousand. I'll give

you an example. So for example, last year, afri Forum, the organization that I represent, made a documentary on South Africa about far murders and expropriation of our compensation and all the bad things happening in South Africa. And we were very lucky enough that Elon Musk somehow got this documentary into his hands or it appeared on his radar and he shared it, and that documentary went from five hundred thousand views to forty three million views, which is

almost the population of South Africa. But the amount of people that joined as Africa Forum members from that documentary being shared to forty three million people online, I think we gained like ten new members, which is very very small.

But when I visited a small town in South Africa earlier this year to do a speech there and talk about here's how afric Forum is going to serve your town if we open a branch here, and this is how we're going to organize people to make a difference, I signed up thirty new members even though I visited a town of maybe ten to twenty thousand people. So there's this massive discrepancy between a documentary of your organization gets shared to forty three million people, you get ten

new members. That's a real world effect. But I visit and do a speech in a town of Tenerand or twenty thousand people, and I get thirty new members for the organization. That discrepancy is massive. So I think that's really where the conversation needs to be had in regards to Yes, online activism can be quite effective, but you have to do a whole lot of it to get the same effect as real world activism, or rather real world action.

are kind of two different orders of effect. You could look at, you know, the primary driver of you know, butts and seats, how many people you have recruited from a documentary versus the last twenty years of you know, Africans africaners on the internet, and then that produces, you know, a pretty massive change with you know, the United States.

think that's undeniable. But then on the other side, the case study of building an organization, organizing a movement, building something tangible like an institution, that on the other side, is much more effective if you're doing real world action and building rather than trying to build it online and then it kind of materializes. So I think that's where the discrepancy comes in. On the one side, the online dissemination of information might be very effective at influencing policy.

You're thinking through the lens of government and the bureaucracy and through state power. But when it comes to building non state power, it seems that building in the real world and real world looking someone in the eye and explaining how this is going to look seems to be the king when it comes to real world organization, in building organizations.

this kind of grifter cycle. You know that there's all of this outrage that gets converted into either social or literal currency by influencers, and it's made it really messy. You know, I know you and I have had this conversation before in real life about people using South Africa to do that, right, using that what's happening in your country to try and build a brand for themselves and

profit off of it. So that muddies the waters, right, because you have this issue where well the incentives of the Internet are not actually to use it to do anything productive. They're to pour that attention back into your personal stockpile of clout, if we can use kind of an outdated term for it, and that creates a pull on everything. Like certainly you see it in politics, but if you have any other interest you follow on the internet,

you see the exact same thing. There always is that ability to sort of blow up the conversation to advance yourself whatever it's about, you know, whether it's about classic cars or you know, immigration. But I think that Dave Green's point, one that he made years ago that's always stuck with me, is that the point of the Internet isn't to win the internet, right. The point of Internet activism isn't simply to accrue the most likes, clicks and follows. It's to produce a change. And I think we can

see examples. I won't name names of people who have and have it done that correctly. And when I say correctly, I mean correctly graded on the scale of actually doing something, not on making yourself very rich.

to be careful with that. And I realize as someone who is on the internet, you know this is someone ironic advice for me, But look, there is information to be had there, but it's also stealing your time, stealing your attention, and so there's an advantage to know what's happening, particularly if you're kind of a warrior in the mimetic space. You know, you're writing, you're talking, whatever, you have to

know what's happening. But at the point at which it is sapping your attention to do real things that matter, where that you know that return on investment is much much higher. As you said earlier, the difference between talking to a town and creating a documentary with forty three million views. I don't want to be rude to your YouTube channel, Earns, but I feel like I'm pretty confident in saying most of your videos don't get forty three

million views. Yes, yeah, neither to mine, obviously. But you know, even if you're doing that calculation where you could just hit a button and instantly reach forty three million people versus all of the time it took you to go to a pound of twenty thousand. Well, as you said, the return to one is much greater than the other.

And at the point where the online activism which does have an effect, you know, we've seen cultural attitudes shift and that is certainly an important thing, but we're limited creatures. Everything comes with an opportunity cost, and at the moment where you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, you've decreased the amount of effect you can. If you and I were first year economic students, we could probably build out an

equation to find this. I have no interest in doing so, but you see what I'm saying where there's sort of a push pull relationship, right.

particular social media website. I think that's where people get stuck. Very talented, very smart people much more talented, talented and smart than me, get stuck in just chasing. I just need to reach as many people as possible. I need to use a very very old term from the Internet's skeptic era. I have to win the battle of ideas, or the classical liberal idea of if we win the battle of ideas, we win the battle of the real world of meat space. And that has proven to be

very catastrophically false. You can have the best arguments, but that's not going to make a difference. And to add to that, you can have the most effective social media strategy of gaming the algorithm, getting hit tweet after bang it tweet after great gem posts, and still if you're not effectively channeling that attention that you're garnering correctly, you're

not going to have any effect. And I mean here again, I'm probably going to step on some toes and throw some cold water on people's passion, but it's a point that needs to be made. I've witnessed my fair share of misidentified turning points and points of no return being reached over the many years that I've been on the Internet.

I mean, my YouTube channel is ten years old, a decade all this, so I've been around for a while, and I've seen so many of these tragedies happening in real life and then the entire Internet declaring this is going to be in the history books as the point where everything changed. And even just in the past year, we've probably seen about six or seven or eight quote

unquote turning points. The tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, that girl we're holding that wielding the axe and the knife looking at the camera in Scotland, Ariano Zarutzka's tragic murder, Henry Novak's tragic murder, and the riots and the protesting

in Belfast. The list goes on and on that just in the past year, and each of these events, these current things that ignite the passion and the rage online always are framed as this is the point where everything changed, where people got angry enough, where rage started working like magic, and then people just got angry enough and things changed. But to end the off the point, I've seen this sad allegedly awaken more times than I can can't if you get what I'm saying.

your school says, it's what all good people say. And so one of the advantages of the Internet is the ability to connect capable competent people, right, the ability to put someone in touch with a group of other people who think like them. And sure, there's purity spiral and there's sort of crabs in the bucket mentality you often

see in online space. But I think for a lot of people like I'll use you as an example, Ernest, I was, you know, living in kind of a crumbling American city, literally walking down Monument Avenue in Richmond where that famous statue of Lee was being pulled down, and I listened to I think it was it was a video essay you had done or maybe a podcast I can't remember about the famous you know, digging a Trench article, and I had this realization like, wait a minute, no,

I can't do this anymore. I'm not living here. There were people who think like me, and I need to find them. And so, okay, did that essay change the world? I mean, I mean, I don't think that any president read it. I don't think that the digging a Trench law was passed. But that's a moment in my life where I can look at where I say no, no, no. That was a turning point, maybe not for culture, but a point at which I decided I'm doing things differently. We have to do something else, and my life is

completely and totally different. I have become you know, if we if I can use the term, but I guess technically an online activist, right, someone who does this professionally whatever that's worth for And so okay, again it's not a direct one to one, but if you're looking for a recruiting pool of guys who realize, like, wait a minute, there's something not right here. I could be making money, I could be doing something, you know, trying to kind

of avoid these problems and keeping my head down. Well, once they've realized or once they've seen on the Internet or elsewhere, that no, this is a problem that needs addressing, well, that shifts things, because this goes from being an extreme minority of those kind of ultra far sighted individuals, the guys who were here ten fifteen years ago kind of grazing, gazing into their crystal balls, or even you know, if you've had the pleasure to meet guys like you know,

my friend Peter Bremlo or Jattris, any one of these guys who are the good boomers who were forty years ahead of all of us, that's an extreme minority talent, right, The ability to see you know way in advance that this is going to go badly, But when it is going badly, when something needs to be mended, needs to

be fixed. And there are a great number of institutions media companies specifically designed to make sure you never notice something is wrong, even though simply on the personal level, like Ernest, if I never got on the internet, it probably would have been better for my soul, and let's

be honest, for many other people as well. But if I had simply heard that essay never talk to you, never went on the Internet again, but decided to move back to my hometown, the church that I grew up at and marry someone, well, my life would have been better. It would have been changed, instead of living in some godless hell hole. Right, So it does matter. There is a connection, But I think what we're really coming down to is that there is not a huge correlation between

social media attention, social media clicks, and anything changing. Now, part of that's content. Why is it being put out? Is it being put out to cash in on that sort of raige cycle or is it designed to produce change? And then also I think the numbers game you're talking about is entirely accurate. You know, when you're going to forty three million random people, who knows how many of

them watched the video at all? Who knows how many of them watched it and hated it they said, good, I'm glad it happening, versus how many of them are Cambodian rice farmers, who, to be honest, have no idea what's going on, nor should they. Right, it's a wide, wide net. And look, I don't pretend to know those

ten guys who it worked for. But if one of those ten guys you know is that you know, one hundred and thirty IQ guy needed to make the breakthrough or became a leader, it's like, well that was a good investment.

I mean, that's laughable, that's not true. But if you realize, hey, look, we're a minority in your case quite literally in my case, let's be honest, also literally even if they haven't got the numbers out yet. But certainly by virtue of our opinions, we don't have the advantage of mass media mass control. We can't make a policy that instantly sixty percent of people will support just because we said it. So we

have to play the game smart. There has to be a small group of talented men who, let's be honest, if you've done your historical reading, that's pretty much how anything ever gets done, right. And how do you find them? Because, again partially due to the Internet, people are incredibly atomized. There aren't really social institutions in the way there used to be. You can't go down to the Elks Club or you know, whatever institution that used to be in your town. Well you got to find them. Well how

do you find the Internet? But what you do next get off the internet? You know, it's sort of this paradox, right, Yeah, And.

brought it up. I mean, if I wrote an article or did a podcast talking about how you should dig a trench and that inspires someone to move back to their hometown or to dig a trench, that was effective because my content was not just waking people up in regards to this is the state of affairs, This is you need to see the world through the reality glasses, but rather this is how the world is, and this is what you can do about it. That there's a normative side to it of and this is how you

can change that. This is how you can make a difference, to change it from the current state of affairs and

start building towards something new. And I think that maybe is a challenge that we can start giving to all of the good content creators that we know all of the content creators make doing good work in our circles is to start challenging each other more to always accompany a piece or an episode or whatever content you're creating, to not just have it be a descriptive topic of this is how things are, but to try and always marry it or accompany it with and this is what

we need to do about it, or this is what we should start doing to change the state of affairs. It's the classic example of a train getting derailed, and then people go to the train derailment site and they take pictures of the derail train, and they draw the derail train, and they write the newspaper about the derail train. They do a three D model with the latest technology of the derail train. They start writing a book about how the train was derailed and what effect it had

on the world in the community. But then at some point someone has to raise his hand and say, well, how are we going to get this train back on the tracks? Like we've documented every single micro millimeter of this disaster. I think everybody knows something is wrong with this train is in a bad shape. How we're going

to get it back on the tracks. But the difficult thing is not a lot of people want to do that because it's much easier metaphority to stand there taking pictures and talk about how devastating the train deralment is and what you're seeing with your eyes rather than saying being the guy that says, all right, and here's my plan on how we're going to get the train back on the tracks.

have seen that in the explosion of conspiracy content. And when I say conspiracy content, I don't mean you know, for instance, guys who were saying, hey, this wealthy in New York financier Jeffrey Epstein sure seems to be up to some weird stuff. Ten years later, those guys are completely justified. But the sort of you know, Emmanuel mccron is a man, everyone is lizard people either the David Ike,

you know, the kind of low quality slop. It's gotten very, very popular because ultimately it is an entertainment product, and I guess that is more entertaining than you know, a Marvel movie. And look, I've mentioned Alex Jones, who I'll be honest, I think is the most entertaining man in the world. I think he's hilarious. So I'm not even

saying I'm above it. I get it. But you see that same truth in the kind of extreme example that politics is an entertainment product, and that sense of outrage that you and I and our people like us were so eager to point out in the kind of SJWs of yesteryear. Right, Oh, these people are getting outraged about things that don't matter. Well, okay, sure we think it doesn't matter because we think their values are stupid, horrible

and you know, lead to horrible results. But if you look at the mirror image we have our own outrape cycle. Now the causes are much more just. You know, it's much more understandable, at least from my perspective, to be upset about Austin Metcalf than George Floyd. But it's the same ecosystem, it's the same instinct in our kind of human nature. And so I think it's important to be careful of that that what is entertaining is not necessarily

what is politically efficacious. And look, you know, I'm not saying everything needs to be you know, kind of dry political theory. Here's what you do vote in this election. But I think don't kid yourself, Like, look, my most recent episode was a review of the nineteen eighty movie Airplane. Like, it's not serious. It's me hanging out with a friend. You guys can come along. There's nothing ultimately important in that.

And I also want to say that I think there is a psychological element to this, to the kind of politics as an entertainment product that isn't wholly negative, especially if you're living behind enemy lines, you know, deep in blue territory, you can get this feeling that you're all by yourself, You're completely and totally alone, that everything, whether it's a concert or a restaurant, is marked by the enemy.

You know, you go out to grab a slice of pizza and there's, you know, that garish little flag in the corner. You know, you feel like I can't ever be myself, and you know, if you can sit back, you know, listen to something that's kind of fun, that's not even necessarily political, but from your perspective, it makes you feel like, yeah, I'm not the only one here. And I think it's important to recognize that the psychological aspect is very real, because what is one of the

main consequences of that outrage cycle. Well, you'll make a fool of yourself. Sure, the internet's great at doing that, but there's also a huge burnout. Right, you take the infamous blackpill, you basically hit a point of nihilism where it doesn't matter where we're all screwed anyway. And if our minds didn't matter, if what we thought was completely irrelevant, well they wouldn't spend so much time trying to convince

us it's all already over. Just give up. And so I think there are things that even aren't necessarily the most high end, you know, political insight or didactic here's what you ought to do that do serve a purpose, because look, you and I are lucky enough to be part of community, right, we have people around us who think the same way. But for a lot of guys who don't, who have the capacity to make a real difference to do things well. You know, that sort of

psychological refuge is really helpful. Right. If that's the thing that keeps you from, you know, taking the black pill, then you know what, maybe a stupid podcast or some kind of political entertainment isn't the worst thing. But sorry, I maybe rambling, Ernest. Do you see what I'm getting at there?

to continue disseminating good, high quality information. I don't think I'm not going to knock that in any way. As I said earlier, found that gets to your point now as well, we need to be pairing that as well with all right, and once you figured out what's going on, once you have a clearer picture of the world, here's what you can do to make it better, or here's

what you can do to embody some real change. And I think if we can get those two together, we can marry the one side of disseminating high quality information continuing to do that while also challenging ourselves to provide real answers in regards to what is there to be done about this state of affairs that we're painting or

sketching for the world. I think we're going to see a lot more of what you're describing there where on an individual basis, at least people are inspired to change, maybe their habits, change their lifestyles, change the way that they approach organizing with other young men, organizing with people in their community. I think that's a real avenue that we can exploit to make a difference. But that's going to start with doing the I don't want to say the hard work is the hard work is going to

be the real world organization. But the online equivalence of hard work is not just pointing out the problem. It's then also assaulting the problem with your thoughts that you can actually get to. All right, but what we can can we do about it? Because it's much easier to describe the situation than to say, all right, well, because

are we going to change it? So I think that, in the end, is what we need to be challenging ourselves on an individual basis as content creators constantly is to constantly challenge ourselves to say, well, I'm going to try and at least put my neck out there and suggest a solution to this problem, or suggest what people can do to make a difference, even if I'm wrong, even if people judge me for it, because I think that's what keeps a lot of people away from making

suggestions on a solution, because if you're going to be tying your flag to the mask of a particular solution, there's always going to be people saying, no, but that's not my way, that's a terrible idea, or that's a stupid idea. So I think there's a lot more inherent risk in proposing a solution or proposing real world actions, and I think that keeps people away or disinsanctivizes people, and keeps people just focused on I'm just going to describe the problem.

own tail. And again that analysis is fond, it can be helpful, but that second stage, the positive vision, is much much more difficult, especially because it's an area in which we are not aligned. If you can say one thing about whatever the online right is, it's that they're opposed to the left. They don't like it. But then you ask, well, what do you all have in common otherwise? And it's like, well, you know, I'm an odentic pagan, you're a Christian. It gets very uncomfortable, very quickly. So

I understand that, but it needs to be done. So I'll respond to this question in chat that you've put up on stream from Gilgamesh whatever I can't read it, asking can't you find competent people in real life as well? Church's universities, talking to your local community, since you know among who among them is competent oh one hundred percent. These are not mutually exclusive strategies, and this also depends highly on where you are, so at least where I am,

church is a good start. You know, I could definitely find people who are aligned, you know, going to a conservative religious institution if you live in Springfield, Massachusetts, if you go to your church, you will probably be beaten to death by a lesbian, only a slight exaggeration, like it is not something where you will find allies. Similarly, universities highly dependent. Again, I'm lucky to live next to a large Christian university where, yeah, all the kids there probably

agree with me to some degree or another. But the small liberal arts school one hundred yards away from me. Again, if they knew who I were, or who I am or what I do, I would have protesters outside. So

it's completely and totally dependent. And one of the advantages of having, you know, being an extreme minority, you know, being in a position where you really can't depend on someone seeing things the same way you do in a room of any one hundred random people, is that if on the Internet you can find oh wait, in my town there are fifteen guys. Well, guess what, that's a

huge jumpstar. You can start with a group of fifteen, and within that group, of course, source for who's competent, Whose actually a real you know, as you'd say, hitter versus who just wants to scroll on their phone. Well, that could be done one hundred percent, But I think of you know, I've met a half dozen guys, and some of them are very good friends. You know, people who were over at my house a couple times a month,

our wives have met, their children are over all the time. Well, that's a connection made on the internet that became a community connection. And that's a guy who lived a mile away from me. His mom taught my wife in preschool. Right, very very close social connection. But we'd never cross paths. We never talked politics. And could I have done that organically, sure, you know it would have been a little difficult, especially

if I didn't know who I was looking for. But all of a sudden, that's a two three year friendship. Jimp started off of a random DM off Twitter. Right. So again, the point is not to only talk to people online or only talk to people in real life, but realized that the internet provides an incredible advantage to force multiplier for taking or for finding those sort of diamonds in the rough in your local neighborhood. Now, I will say, of course, be careful, don't just meet random

strangers on the internet. Your head will end up in a freezer somewhere. But you know you're all adults here. You understand what I mean.

there's a mob outside and they don't care. They don't care what you think about John Locke.

would like to start such an organized group of competent people. Well, uh, you know, I don't know about the bar closest to you, but uh, I think I'd take my chances online, you know, not even anything against those guys. But you know you have to you have to cross a lot of you know, barriers to do that. And so Yeah, I think it's an incredibly important tool, but it has huge pitfalls to it. You know, it can eat you, it can completely ruin your life and turn you into a lunatic and also

make it sure that you don't get anything done. So it is a tool. It's a particularly dangerous tool, but it's also one I don't think we can we can afford to avoid.

throw in the elements of earning money for outrage. Yah. Well, there's a whole different episode we could be doing about the monetization of online activism as we see unfortunately with the monetization of X. But well, that's a topic for another day. Sideliner opinions with fifty rand super Chat. Thank you very much. He has a question for you, Jay, He says, Jay Burden, when are you coming to visit us in South Africa?

And uh so, really as soon as I can. I've actually and we can talk about this on offline, but I have some very close friends who who just got back, and hopefully later this week I'll be, uh, you know, meeting some more africaners in my my small town in America. So really, as soon as I can. I'm fascinated by your culture and just the landscape of the country itself fantastic.

found very amusing. Vingal says it's good to hear mister Fansale's voice and accent again. Yeah, thank you very much. I really appreciate that inger, and also thank you to all the superchats. As you know, all of the super chats on this channel. I am completely transparent in the fact that all of this money is going towards my backyard chickens. I'm going to be buying more feed for them, upgrading the chicken coop, getting more medicine because there's been

a little bit of a virus going around. So yeah, all of those expenses are covered by my huge super chats, So thank you very much. Those those dollars and pennies and quarters that you're throwing my way are going into the chicken fund. So thank you very much for that. Really appreciated JA. The last question, as you always say on your channel, we're fast approaching the end of this great conversation, But the last thing I wanted to know

from you is in particular your personal experience. I think I want to add in this conversation actually on a personal case study in regards to specifically how much you've seen online discourse, slang, online activism bleed into your own just personal interactions with people in the real world. I'll just give you a brief example before I give you

the opportunity to answer. I remember being in university and answering or making a comment in class that has a little bit of a veiled reference to a meme before memes was really even a thing. But at that time, making a little reference to a meme, there would be one guy in the class that looks around at you, and you make eye contact and he's pointing at you, and you're like, you know, if you know, you know, you know what I did there. But today that would

not be the experience. Today, I would make that reference to a basic meme and everyone in the class with note it would not even be something. They would not even be a laugh, It would just be part of the lingo. It would just be part of the slang that's being used. And that's really something that's changed from what I've experienced, is that the online references, memes, if you will, or online humor and slang is constantly, in

my experience, increasingly bleeding into the real world. How have you experienced it just in your own personal capacity, that online real world barrier in regards to basic things like, as I said, the language people use, the references they make, maybe even the culture that they as an individual or practicing. Have you also seen that increase in that line being blurred?

for ill, and people have gotten more online. I've certainly seen it. I mean among my friend group, which is you know, right of center guys, but not necessarily the people that we you know, I talk politics with you, just the guys I you know, watch sports with or grab beers with. H. The amount of content that was previously highly censored and not at all for normal people

that I hear is is constant. I mean, look, you know, not not to you know, blow up your spot here, but like the amount of times that bb Net and Yahoo personally is used as the punchline to a joke. You know, the idea that, oh, you know, if you didn't pay your bar tab on time, oh now your rabbi blah blah blah, and like, okay, those aren't super phisticated ideas, you know, it's not like there's a wealth of you know, political theory behind it or even a

super developed idea. But you see something. You see a meme, an attitude which even relatively recently, like three or four years ago, would have been completely and totally inappropriate. The sort of things where it's like, all right, come on, guys, like don't say that has now achieved the point of being you know, barroom banter. The things that guys just say, you know, to fill air while you're you know, watching the game, or someone goes up to grab another beer,

something like that. So I've seen it, I mean, honestly, much much more so than you'd think, and as much as I'm sorry to say it, on both the right and the left, what I have noticed is that there is a minority of lefties that are much much more aware of our symbols and our phrasing than there used to be. So obviously, you know, if you go in you know where, one of a certain number of prescribed flags, you're probably going to get thrown out of a bar.

We understand this, right, But I've heard half a dozen stories now of guys wearing you know, a T shirt or a pin for something relatively obscure. You know, a record label maybe who published some authors or published some musicians you're not supposed to listen to, or a publishing house that you know, you or I could probably get a book there if we wanted, you know, nothing crazy. So I think that that sort of dissemination and politicization

is I mean, it's cranking up. I realize these are anecdotes, but it's what I'm seeing on the ground. You know, things that used to be on the far far fringes of the Internet are now, you know, in your local gaming group.

Where me making a reference to a very popular meme online in a classroom of two hundred students gets one reaction, a very very nice reaction, because you didn't expect anyone to get the meme, where today it's just normal. A lot of trumpisms have become very normal. I've been in conversation and someone will talk about many such cases. I'm like, you have no idea where I know for a fact, you don't know where that phrase comes from, but you're using it just like you would use an idiom.

out to sort of escape into the wild. You know, it would be like if I walked outside and saw a zebra, be like, how did this get here? You know, I know this existed, but why is it in my garden?

on a Wednesday evening usually on a Tuesday evening. Thank you very much for your comments and your questions that I could incorporate into the content. And then also all the links to Jay Burden's content is in the description. Go check it out. Next week. On this Tuesday, seven o'clock Central Africa time, is another episode live. It's just going to be a discussion stream me and you, no guest, it's one of the milestone episodes for this channel. We've

been doing a lot of them recently. We recently did the one million views milestone and now it's the ten years milestone, a decade of content on this channel. So thank you very much for everyone that tune in, and Jay Burden, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week and we'll chat again real soon.