Meaning a man like this man letting butterfly flapping his wing. They've down in a force.
Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Man, nobody see nobody else. See you don't need no Man's.
Like you followed another story and.
You got back to flect that that's the way.
Man don't blackly d on Panela man, Man, you don't no matter man anyway.
One of the things that sets us apart from the conservatives is a certain degree of open mindedness. Conservatism, in my mind, is more of a personality trait than uh political ideology. It is the personality trait that says things are working pretty well, let's not rock the boat, sort of a strong abiding belief in the status quo ante. And that difference between us and them expresses in a
number of ways. That openness that has led us to controversial ideas, to ideas that are not widely expressed, is
also shown in the art scene. The right wing art scene is very different from the Daily Wire TV productions, the Cash Betel children's books, the creative output of the conservatives, so to speak, It's a different thing, even if it is both under the broad p number of right wing art, and because we have that both that creativity but also desire to analyze, Like, look, there's a lot of this show that is fundamentally media analysis. You could even look
at something like gamer gait, right. Many of us came to this through looking at cultural art facts and pulling them apart. What does that say? What is the belief behind that? What does that tell us about the creator?
And also about the world in and of itself? And this is expressed, for instance, in the concept of media literacy right, where progressives will say, you know, there's only one way to interpret this, and they look at things like you know, the Joker movie, The Boys, stuff like that and say, oh, don't you get it, this is making fun of you, where us in ours pick through it and say, oh that, you know, that's something I can relate to, that's something I enjoy. There's that sort
of back and forth in the culture war. But one of the most abidingly irritating things from my perspective about this is that because progressives have cultural hegemony, right, they get to call the shots. They're in charge of the institutions, government and also cultural and so they get to set that kind of null hypothesis the generally accepted values. And one of the most irritating things is because of that control, they get to have their cake and eat it too.
They get to dress up, to play pretend as revolutionaries, to play pretend as if they are bucking the system, while in actuality having the exact same values as Chase Bank or Wells Fargo. Several moments that I can think of really express this one. The Summer of Love couple buddies are over having a good old fashioned land party playing twenty nineteen Modern Warfare, a bunch of guys in a basement, and the game kicks us out after install
an update. And when we see the update load, after the forty five minutes of all these consoles spinning up, and what happens, Well, nothing has changed except for Black Lives Matter and the menu. Every menu couldn't escape it, right, This massive cultural product funding from the DoD, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and costs put on by Activision, This massive entertainment product, well, it has the same values as this quote unquote revolutionary leftist throwing bricks into a
flaming AutoZone. Another one, remember years ago during June going to pull out some money from Wells Fargo, right, one of the biggest companies in the world. And there's an unskippable pride message, right, like Wells Fargo wishes you a happy Pride Month or whatever. And again the values of the revolutionary left being parroted by one of the biggest financial corporations in the world, right, a huge multinational corporation. And despite the fact they share those values, they still
get to play pretend as revolutionaries. They get to play pretend as if they are the plucky rebels up against the empire and the genuine dissidence. You or I, anyone listening to this, we are in fact representatives of this sort of shadow elite, the Russians, the Chinese, the secret racist to pull the strings. And so despite the fact that they share values with the most powerful corporations, the most powerful universities, governments, even or really they're the underdogs.
This sort of self conception of the rebel, and you can trace it through any number of things. Right, Milton Satan, you're the man or the angel I guess, cast out of habit, sort of the archetype of this rebel. And because of that, he's been subjected to this character to endless number of character studies by the progressives of his day, obviously falling out of fashion because Milton was a seventeenth
century British writer. But you see the same thing with the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, always casting themselves as the rebels, even in a situation where it's completely and totally absurd, And you still see that in the arts.
For instance, recently Banksy was not only unmasked, I think many people for the first time became aware of who he was, but also he unveiled a new sculpture, very stunning, very brave of a guy with flag and holding it up triumphantly, and the trail of the flag was blinding his face. The critique of course being this is what nationalism does. It blinds you, you moron. But the deep irony is that that sentiment, his whole artistic persona of being an edgy rebel, Well, those are the exact same
values of the UK government. Those are the exact same values of the state under which he lives. And if he was actually a genuine threat to power, who's genuinely speaking truth what we know in the UK, he'd be in jail be referred to prevent they would get him. Not only does he enjoy the advantages of being the court just the chosen sort of artistic representative of the regime, but he also gets to play pretend. He gets both both the advantages of rebellion the advantages of being bucking
the trend, but without any of the costs. And you see this more and more through really the last sixty seventy years of media. In this interview, we mentioned multiple times John Lennon's imagine, which is sort of the positive vision our elite to operate in service of the sort of non individuated society of gray Goo. There's no race,
no culture, no religion. Everyone is simply an atomized unit searching for utles, searching for self expression in whatever way they see fit, which conceptually you'd imagine leads to infinite expression infinite diversity quote unquote, But as someone who lives in this world, you will understand it just means everyone turns into the same person in slightly different skin toned.
There's no real culture, sure anymore. Everyone has been sort of to adopt a Marxist Lenz kind of sublimated under is kind of like Globo Homo capitalist project, and it's made, like any form of artistic expression, very difficult. We talk about AI a bunch in this episode, and I don't like talking about AI. It's sort of the refuge of Midwich to talk about it. But there is something weird
about it. It both is this great aggregator again, the kind of gray group of everything, a thousand images pulled into one technically original one. But again, there are things that cannot do, There are areas it cannot go. It is bound in that way, and so it's set this very narrow band for real expression. I'm friends with a lot of writers, friends with a lot of artists, Carl Dahl, Andy Edwards, John Slaughter, people who have been on my
show numerous times. And it's interesting to me because you could look at that as as right wing are Maybe that's true, but fundamentally these are not really political books. They aren't didactic. There isn't a scene at the end where you get the author's manifesto with the rs. They're human, they're genuine expression. It exists in the cracks of the sort of totalizing regime. The things you can't talk about, the audience, you can't reach out to and I mean
that's real rebellion, that's real self expression. Those guys are way more authentic, to use sort of a buzzword than the canned rebellion of Banksy, of Green Day of Rage against the machine of John Lennon. The fake, sort of synthetic lie of rebellion as sold to you by Chase Bank, is sold to you by Paramount, is sold to you by the globalists that take a page from Alex Jones notebook.
And I think that's an interesting, interesting gap here where I I won't name any details at all, but I've been talking to friends who've been approached by the system because of their creative work. And there's an interesting anecdote on the phone with a guy and he was talking to someone interested in something he created to try and transform it into a mainstream product. And the guy said, you know, it's so rare to find authenticity, and when
you do, its gold. Obviously, the idea being that if you can find something authentic and exploit it, you can make yourself a lot of money. And when we look at you know, whether it's Hollywood, whether it's the major streaming services, video games, even there's very little of that authenticity, very little of that human expression. Everything feels homogenized, Everything feels the same, Everything feels as if it is designed by committee consensus, an algorithm designed to hit certain boxes.
And when something has an auteur, when it has someone who is sol and totally in charge of something, it doesn't have that effect. It's maybe not mathematically optimized, but it's real. And so I think that there is a turn to sort of raid us for our cultural output.
And might say us, I don't just mean the people listening to this, but that kind of bleeding edge of authenticity, that bleeding edge of genuine expression, because their system, you know, the kind of system of homogenization, John Lennon's imagine the kind of dual faced Janice God that is on one hand Winston Churchill and on the other John Lennon, you know, this sort of chimera. There was an explosion at the beginning. You look at the music of the fifties through let's
just say the nineties, and there's an arc there. It's an immense amount of creativity, but it seems to have burnt out, seems to have exhausted any sort of capital
it has. You see this in music, they are more and more of these kind of throwback acts, many of whom I like again, but it feels as if there's nothing new, and at the same time, you know, Hollywood or video games, more and more we see these remakes, these retrip things of some feeling they're not making the money, which, okay, fair enough, simply being financially profitable is to not make it good art, but it is a sign that things
are bad for that industry. More and more of these companies, more and more of these sort of media empires, are being forced to reckon with the fact that they lack any authenticity. I mean, another great example is the Daily Wire. According to reporting, I think Ben Shapiro's down ninety percent. He's widely seen as fake, as inauthentic. And so what does he do?
Well?
He starts Fortnite streaming, which is, you know, hilariously out of touch and kind of embarrassing. But what is that, Well, it's a desire to grasp onto something that whichever group of kind of cobolistic supercomputers controls the Daily Wire, a desire to frantically grab authenticity, like oh what a what are real people like? Uh? Fortnite streaming? I guess, and sure that's out of date, that's embarrassing, but you see that flailing and you see that desperate desire to regain
some sort of human connection. And I don't think they can do it. But this thing of ours, if you will, I see it. I see that there's real artists, and not just in the sense of promise like oh, one day, but there's guys we're good, really good, who should have a publishing deal and they don't for any number of reasons. I mean, the same reasons that we're all underemployed, you know, underutilized.
But that's exciting. We're seeing culture and we're seeing things that are good from new writers, from guys who haven't been around, who don't have a massive bibliography, and it's like, well, man, if this is good, if this is novel number two, what are you gonna do with number three? When someone finally gives you the money to make a film, to make short film, to do anything like this is going
to catch fire. It's incredibly exciting. And I think it's also important to bear in mind that this sort of panopticon, this totalizing system, this sort of gray goo homogenization, it falls into the category of many things. You've heard me talk about this with foreign policy, with the nation of Israel, which is a goal that is obviously desired. People want
that to happen, but from my perspective, it's impossible. So the Greater Israel project, the idea that there will be this sort of Laban's realm where every country is completely and totally dysfunctional, subservient to the Zionist state, Well, clearly people want that, but can that actually be done? Is that something that can be accomplished? The separate question. Similarly, this kind of one world panopticon, you know, everyone managed, everyone,
you know, perfectly controlled by the algorithm. Clearly people want that. Clearly that is something that our elites, certainly some of them are desirous of. But it brings up the question is that possible? And I don't think it is because the exact same trends and forces which are turning cultural output into slop. Right, nothing feels competently done anymore. Well, we're seeing it in governance as well. There is something
about human nature that resists this sort of homogenization. And when I say resists, I don't mean in like a fund or a great way. These systems just tend to catabalize themselves or tend to break under their own weight. But it really reminds me of the Tower of Babel Babbel. However you say it, depending on what area of the country you grew up in. But this idea of this one human system, this one world government, the tower that will reach to heaven, this great project, and it's cast
into chaos. It doesn't work. We see that in politics all the time. And when these one party states, this politics cease to exist well on a party level, perhaps you know, look at the you know, minor voting districts in California. They're never going red, but there still is politics there. There's still is disunity. There still is fracture along different lines, along lines that I don't think are
particularly good. I don't think that, you know, neighborhoods in America should basically function as you know, a political race war between you know, one immigrant group and the other. I don't think that's good. But you do see that that there is no possible homogenization in that way, particularly when these people are getting stupider. The competence that our system requires is becoming rarer and rarer, and I think that there is an unconscious who knows maybe conscious desire
to plug that gap in human capital with AI idiot. Oh, we can have this great tool that will negate the need for competent and capable men. And again, I think that is a desired outcome, but I don't know if it's a possible one. I don't think that they can do it. I mean, if I did you know that we were just one or two years away from a libtard panompicon, well, I'd probably be living in the woods
Uncle Ted's style. I wouldn't be outdoing this. But clearly they're pushing for it because I don't think they have
another alternative. I think that there is a sort of creeping realization that they're kind of, as the kids would say, kind of cooked, that that voted force, that feeling behind it is running out that no one believes in this thing in the same way that the immense head the tailwind they got from this explosion of cultural creativity, the sort of baseline brainwashing done by Hollywood and music that sort of laid the ground, It made straight the path,
if you will. Well, it doesn't work in the same way either, due to again declining competence or simply kind of overuse in oculation. The spell doesn't work anymore. The strategy that you adopted and that you abused for generations what isn't quite as cutting edge anymore. And then I guess is why I'm so interested in our right wing cultural output because to me, that says, this is something
that's being born. There's something alive here, there's something that is nacient, sure, but still exciting, still interesting, And so I don't know, man, it's hopeful in my mind that there is something alive here, a weak flame, maybe an ember even, but it's not ash. And to me it seems as if they're left with ashes growing ever colder, if you can forgive a slightly florid phrase. So yeah, it's something that I take a lot of hope in that I'm quite interested in. But I've been in the
appen for long enough. Kick it over to this interview with Rusty Cage guy. I'm really glad to have on. I like throwing in these sort of curveballs, you know, not the guys you expect. It's a fun interview. He's done good work. You should check out his most recent music video, Apac Money. No points for guessing what that's about. As far as my stuff, Jay Burton Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you listen to podcast, you can find me there.
If you want to support me, this is what I do a few bucks a month Patreon, substacker, com, Roade episodes early in ad free. Really appreciate it. Guys, couldn't do this without you and without further ado. Here's the show. All right, Rusty Cage, welcome to the Jay Burden Show. How you doing, man?
Hello, very good, very good. It's good to be on the show.
Yeah, man, I'm glad to have you on. You have been a victim of my just I'm gonna be honest, appalling ability to schedule and reply to dms sort of a miracle. You're here just due to my own inability to manage my inbox. So thanks for bearing with me. Dude.
No, man, it's the exact same. I feel bad replying to anyone one time because I feel like they're gonna follow up and then I'm just gonna miss that. So I opened a connection and instantly close in and say, all right, I'm not I guess we're not gonna collab. Whoever emailed me three months ago or whatever, dude.
Honestly, the unsolicited emails are some of my favorite. I never shared them because most of them are complete, like just trash. But there is a non licensed physician, an end time scholar, okay, who has been sending me PDFs of his books to review for like two years, and at this point I almost want to bring him on, but also I sort of feel like it would be taking advantage of this like clinically insane man to give him a platform. But I do read all his emails.
So if you're listening, doctor whatever, if you are a doctor, keep sending them. I keep reading them. It's not gonna work, but I appreciate the gesture.
It's good that you're taking the time to read them. I get a lot of Skitzo's in my emails, you know, sending either just long long lists of Bible quotes and talking about the angels of death and hmm, how to avoid Satan and whatnot. And I was thinking, you know, I wanted to make videos showing it off, but I think poking a schizophrenic with a stick is not necessarily the best thing to do, especially when you're a public figure that someone can easily find out where you live.
Well, I mean to that point. Man, if you if you read comments, you will drive yourself insane. Yes, but there are a number of long term detractors that I genuinely love and find very funny. One of whom I will not be saying their screen name, but I think is a legitimate schizophrenic because he gives me like two to four pages of very thought out advice from the
perspective of a lunatic. So he'll be like, hey, man, your script is pretty good for this episode, but I think you need to change this, this and this point. And I appreciate the thought. You know. It's like, all right, you're engaging. You know, that's certainly helpful, You're paying attention. But also I don't know how to break it to you that I am nowhere near the level of script writer you think I am, because my script is me sending someone a DM on Twitter and then kind of
bsing for an hour. Right, there's no grand scheme, but I still do read as messages. But Rusty, obviously, I'm aware of who you are and what you do, but my audience might not be so well, who are you? Man?
Well, at this point, i'd have to say that I'm a has been or never was, as they would say on the Internet. I mean, I've been on making content on YouTube and ship for fucking I don't know, sixteen years or so. I make a lot of music, some serious music, some parody, satirical music, but I don't know. Mainly, it's like I'm just trying to figure out every possible way that I cannot go back working a nine to five as an unskilled laborer.
Yeah, man, I was having this. I was having this conversation recently with someone in my personal life. And look like I went to college for all the good that did me, And so we're having that conversation of like, yeah, whatever you're doing now sucks, but at least it's better than whatever that job is. And so what is your like, at least I'm not doing X like worst job you had.
It's it's honestly working for a boss and knowing that your like an hour of your life is worth whatever they're paying you. I would rather make nothing doing nothing, but know that I could use that time to make something that I don't know could greatly benefit my life. It could make more money, could set me up to have income coming in later or whatever. I don't know. It's all about like trying to be free from a
specific system. But I think that that dream of going the route of being an Internet influencer or whatever they call it now is kind of dying because that's the standard that all young people have to be a part of in every industry. You have to be in front of everyone's face constantly on all the apps, building up your Instagram and building up your TikTok, and that's the only way to get people to listen to a song that you just put out, so they stream it on Spotify.
And it seems like it's a new version of wage slavery because no one seems to like it. Everyone feels I get a lot of feeling that people seem to resent having to wake up and film six tiktoks to promote their brand. I know that's just the way it is because now everyone has the technology to do that themselves, versus back in the day where not everyone knew how to edit a video or how to use a camera or how to get good audio out of a microphone.
But now the technology is there, everyone has it, so the competition is huge and instead of say ten years ago, trying to compete with two hundred thousand people who might have a skill level that is worthy of someone watching versus now it's just millions and millions.
Well, it's honestly, I feel like something similar happened in music, where once production value got really cheap. You see this
explosion in lo fi. Like obviously you have the kind of like lo fi revival of like ten years ago, but even I think of the like transition from a lot of the like math rock stuff, which is more highly produced still relatively low fi, into the like true djen like epunk in cell core stuff is from like twenty twenty to even now, where it's like now there's a weird authenticity to not trying at all, sounding like you recorded something on your air pods, and like I
think about this where it's like the I guess you'd say, like the market for culture is really weird now because especially and look, dude, there's two conversations I hate having. One is dating discourse and the other is AI discourse, which are just like the stupidest cul de sac conversations ever.
But truly, like AI does allow production value for next to nothing, and it is this weird and it's not everything but there is this weird market for like almost like deliberately low production value because it feels realer it's been like something that's super produced. Yeah.
Yeah, authenticity is absolutely always going to be the winner, you know, if anything, it's just overproduced in general, say you're spending too much time, or you have all the perfect plug ins, or you bring it to the best producers and the music that you're actually making doesn't fit the sound of it, you know, like the attitude of
the music doesn't fit the production quality. That's inauthentic. It's weird, and I think people can enjoy music and might enjoy it actually better if it sounds closer to something that they're familiar making, or it feels closer because it's more attainable. And what AI seems to do on the production level is polish everything up a little bit too much. It makes it a little bit inhuman. It's the quantization quantization
of beats. For instance, if you're using MIDI beats and you're trying to make you know, kick snare, kick snare, high hat, high hat, you have the option to make all those fit perfectly on the beats, but that sounds a little bit too robotic, and so then there's this other effect called human eyes, which essentially takes things that are too perfectly on beat and they shift them a little bit so it sounds a little off and more fluent. And why would they even have that at all except
people want things that feel human. They want mistakes a little bit, and they want quality not to be one hundred percent perfect, because that's where character comes out, is in the flaws, if that makes sense.
Oh, one hundred percent. Like this is a weird example, but I think about this all the time, Like I'm I only seem like a Tucker Carlson fan, but I feel like a certain amount of affection for him for really weird reason, which is he has the most grading
off putting laugh of any human on the planet. And you know, if there's like a debate coach in the room, or like a producer, they would be like, never do that again, Like, whatever you do, don't make that noise because you sound like a weird country club space alien. And you hear that, and you're like, Okay, that's a that's a kind of weird. Like if one of my buddies did that, I'd probably make fun of them for it.
But it's not super produced. And even though like obviously the guy's got ungodly amounts of money, a crazy production staff, Like even that little touch, you're like, Okay, that feels real. And if you look at.
Andy dun inntionally, I think m because he knows that's a part of his image. Now everyone knows that characteristic foppish giggle. I honestly I thought that that was at one point I was thinking that was maybe you know, I don't know if he's fucking Cia Jason or what, but a way of throwing people off by if you're having this serious conversation with them and they say something intense and then you go oh, and then go what does that really mean? Like they have that has to
be very unsettling for the person he's talking about. It true like an interrogation tactic almost, it's.
Even more sinister, rusty. It's not a small sliver of humanity. It's actually a deliberate, lab designed technique to break down your psyche. Like it's mk ultra and it's just Tucker laughing for thirty eight hours or you're like dosed on LSD.
Yes, Well, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm I kind of. I'm not the most laugh out loud person, but some people definitely have a canned laugh. They have a forced laugh and it comes off very weird. Joe Rogan has one too, where it's like you're laughing for the sake of making laugh noises to signal to the audience maybe that something is funny. But when Tucker does it, it throws me off every time, And there's got to
be something to that. There has to be some sort of power in the way that that communicates to whoever he's talking to or the listener.
He always laughing in like perfect like cobblistic metronome or something like that. It's like deep numerology.
I know, it's just a guy laughing. I'm like, yeah, what does this mean? Yeah, this is a tactic.
We're talking about authenticity and meanwhile we've got it pulled up and able to try to calculate the exact beats of a human laugh. Well, dude, you put out and obviously you've done a number of music videos. You have one earlier in your career, which is about uh, you know, white women dogs whatever. Oh yeah, infamous, and then another one you just put out about a pack that I think, look, man, you couldn't have timed that better. You really dropped that at about the perfect time.
That was insane, right, and I so, I mean, yes, this is a song about politicians getting a PAC money and kind of framing Israel an apack with all the stereotypes, you know, filling up chalices with Molock's blood and using
sexploitation to blackmaile American politicians. I put that out, yeah, and it was like, all right, this is just gonna get whatever channel I put it out, instantly taken down, and then three days later I think it was the Thomas Massey election that he greatly lost by because thirty million dollars were funded against him, I think mostly through Israel lobbies and Apak then claimed, this is what happens. You know, if you side with us, we will get you to win, no matter how unknown of a politician
you are. I went to bed, woke up, and then the video had one to two million views the next day. So yeah, it was perfect timing, but not intentional because I was not paying attention to that election.
To be fair, Rusty, if you were gonna make a bet on they're gonna do something, you could pretty much pick any time, and within the week or so there'd be at least one relevant national news story. Right, right, I was in some way related, So.
Yeah, I guess that. Right, there is some evergreen nature to the subject matter. Unless that goes away anytime soon, people are still gonna be talking about APEC. I'm just waiting for someone to put a bag over my head and bring me to some black ops site for fucking with their money.
I mean, look, much like Thomas Massew losing it would it would really suck if you got like black bagged and shot, But it wouldn't exactly prove you wrong, is all I'm saying.
Sure, so as I'm listening on my fourth day straight to Tucker Carlson laughing on repeat bubbing Waterboard, I'll say, well, at least I was right. At least I can say I I didn't make that song in poor faith.
Well, I mean, like looks, as an artist, you can only hope for certain things and to be killed because you're right. Like, look, don't get me wrong, it's not exactly like retiring rich, but like you know, there there were worse ways for artists to kind of you know, exit the scene. If you see what I'm saying, right, can.
You name one being tortured to death versus what falling into obscurity?
I can't, but it'd be cooler. Like I don't know, like John Denver died in an airplane, But how much cooler would it have be if? I don't know? Did John Denver say anything nasty about people? I guess Western Virginia. There's that big if like some random hillbillies like tied him to a radiator and beat him to death. I'm realizing I'm way over in my head. I don't know that much about John Denver, and I don't know why he came to mind. Did they quote unquote controversial musician.
I don't know. Is he controversial though the West very much in favor of West Virginia. I think he got arrested before or his license revoked because he was drinking and flying. I could be very wrong about that, but he got it back and then crashed his plane.
All right, All right, Okay, So point is, there aren't a lot of artists who have achieved that honor, but it'd be cool if you. I mean not for you personally, but like as an artistic achievement. I feel like that's some sort of justification. But dude, we were talking before we went live about this kind of weird dynamic where there's this kind of massive decentralization. We mentioned it earlier, right, the ability to produce, But with it there's this kind
of bizarre question of like who owns anything. Like, for instance, in my bizarre technically creative project, like I used a royalty free bumper on the front and end that I like, you know, threw in, I edited, you know, added some effects, added some extra audio, and I didn't realize that I fell for one of the classic blunders, which is royalty free, which means someone actually owns the royalties and so all of the money for the first like two hundred episodes
of this show. Don't go watch my old episodes because they don't go to me anymore. They go to like some holding company out of Hong Kong I'm.
Not familiar with. They said, oh, yeah free, and it wasn't.
Yeah yea, yeah exactly. Yeah. So what they did is they basically put out a they put something out is royalty free so that people use it in their videos or whatever. They remix it, and then they enforced the copyright through YouTube or whatever, and all of a sudden, anything that uses that going forward. So like for those wondering, I had an original intro song that, to be fair, if I like went to court, would meet the standards
of you know, transformative use. Like I changed it, added a bunch of stuff, but whatever holding company gets the royalties. And I don't bring that up to complain about it. It's been years. I'm not upset about it. But to say, like with that democratization of production comes this weird question of who owns it, Like you were talking about Spotify for example or earlier, right, and they're crazy requirements for who owned stuff.
Yeah, I mean, so we're in a weird world now. And maybe it was always kind of like this, but I would say probably in the past ten years, intellectual property is just going away out of brute force. If you have content an Instagram reel or something, or a video you put out on YouTube and someone wants to take it and upload it onto TikTok and try to make money off of it, yeah, you could go way out of your way and try to find every single person who's reusing your content and have it taken down.
That's a shitload of work. And they have some systems in place on YouTube. It's like content ID that kind of this might be obsolete now with AI, but it'll scan for songs, so it scans audio and it can kind of tell if a sample is used in a song. I guess I grew up with the understanding that you were allowed to use a certain amount of a piece of intellectual property before you're breaking some sort of copyright law,
like five seconds of a song sample. Wasn't this like a whole debate that Public Enemy had back.
In yeah, like thirty years ago, yeah.
Eight three h three, They had a whole big lawsuit about using other people's video clips in your videos, and that seemed like that was the standard for a while. If you wanted to make a YouTube video and you were talking about a specific video game or something, you could show a few seconds of gameplay as long as it's transformative and you're not taking views away from them.
But it seems like they just backtracked on that completely and now they'll these companies can just claim anything that they say uses their intellectual property, and now you're in a direct dispute with them, and YouTube's like all right, hands free, y'all will have to work this out in court. So you have a lot of scammers claiming I don't know. They'll claim videos or songs and say you used some
sound of mine. I've had songs. I've had songs claimed by Universal Music Group because another band that was signed to them used a sample from a public domain song that I also used the sample from. And so they're trying to claim this public domain sample and say, well, because it was used in a song that's signed under us, now you're breaking our copyright. Okay, I'm getting a little lost there, but I tend to do that, so pardon me if I you might have to wrangle me back in.
But why I think copyright is going away is just because too many people are breaking copyright. And now you have something like open ai, which is openly taking everyone's copyrighted material, everyone's intellectual property, and using that as their product to sell back to anyone who wants to. I don't know, create an image in the style of hr Geiger,
or create a song that sounds like John Denver. They're using the train system from the content of John Denver, or all the various meme pages that they might just be bots or Indians or whoever, and they'll steal any image that you might create an image, post it on Reddit or post it on x and then someone just snags it from there and posts it on their meme page. Well, what are you gonna do. You can't really sue all these people. There's too many people to sue. It's too
financially in viable to even fight it. So I feel like intellectual property is just going away out of the changing of technology, and a lot of people would even argue that there's never should have been intellectual property in the first place, at least when it comes to something like music. You know, how can you copyright how much
of a song? Can you copyright a chord progression, a vocal melody, the instruments used, If you've made a specific sound using someone else as a equipment such as pedals or software that makes sense, noises on logic or pro tools or whatever program, do you own that? How can you own it? And then to what degree are you allowed to own, say, a piece of music.
Well, it's it's a really interesting thing because like, look, I've been on the Internet for a long time, but as a you know, anything more than a lurker kind of firmly after the Internet started to shut down, because you had this sort of breakpoint where for a long time the Internet felt like an exclusive thing where it was it was still big, but it wasn't like your
grandma was using the Internet. And then in a very quick, just couple of years, it felt like really twenty twelve to twenty sixteen, there's a big acceleration where all of a sudden, like everyone is here now. And with that came this huge commercialization. Like I think about this, like I have a bunch of weird interests and like you know, old cars and guns and things like that. And when it was first, you know, when I was first looking
for answers, it was all forum based, right. It was like kind of these hyper specific websites that weren't really businesses. It was like some guy who had a special interest, right, it was like a message board. And then all of that move to places like Facebook and Reddit, and there was certainly something lost there where they're awful to search. There's no real kind of reputation system in the same way. But with that that huge centralization a lot more people
in a lot fewer places. Then came all the like the rules and like there were dozens of guys who were kind of pre Internet or early Internet, and then when that switch came over, they got blown up. Like you think of a guy like Monkey Jones right right, who was kind of like not early YouTube in the sense that he was around in like oh eight he may well have been, but like he embodied that spirit right to say anything, do anything, no one cares. We're all here and we know what to expect, yeah, versus
like this is a corporate product. And with that corporate product, it sort of feels like the whole thing is shifting to like this weird everything is a rental, Like, oh use that sound, you have to rent the right to it. Oh you use this service, you have to rent the right to it. It's this weird like thousand different points of like a little bit of drag. And then you like look at your credit card statement and you're like, how am I paying this much in you know whatever,
random services? And like you compare that to andy. Look, maybe this is rose colored glasses. Maybe I was just fourteen and having a blast whatever, But it felt like before it was sort of the wild West, and now it's very much like the Internet is locked down and like we were even talking about like production value, Like you think of something like podcasting, like the early podcasters. You know, obviously you have Rogan who is an early adopter, but even I think of guys like you know, Dan
car who did the History shows. Yeah, it's like it's lo fi, right, it's just radio on it's pirate radio on the Internet. Right. And now you go to like the top charts and it's like celebrities you've kind of heard of that are connected to like some massive label like Dax Shephard, who was in like a couple movies twenty years ago, is apparently one of the most popular podcasters in the world. I'm signed to like a paramount connected label, you know, when you're like, what what happened?
Man?
Yeah, so it seems really funnier than Tim Dillon or something. Or is it just because they can push it. Yeah, they're trying to bring in celebrity culture because they know celebrity cultures dying because of the Internet, all right, which I.
Mean, dude, that's an interesting thing where it's like celebrities don't work when you actually know that they're real people. Like once you have like any random celebrity just on Twitter, you're like, oh, you're you're a moron, Like, you're not cool.
Sorry, it had to be twenty twenty. I mean, I know a lot of people kind of point their fingers at different specific events, but the one that I think of the most was the gal Gado Imagine.
Oh dude, that's exactly what I was going to bring up.
Yeah, And so it's like that just pulled the blinders off anyone's eyes. It was already fading already. People were like, who the fuck are these people? You know, I'm more focused on who the next big Internet influencer is. They're more engaging than Matt Damon, because you know, these are younger generations of people who are growing up into media, and Hollywood is losing their control by like forcing whatever
they say is the next big celebrity. And so when you saw the Imagine video, the gal Gadot one that had all these celebrities doing this very cringe singing montage, everyone twisted their face in secondhand, third hand embarrassment and disgust. It was like, wait, yeah, these people are not cool. They aren't cool at all, and they're not really worth looking up to. They're just actors or whatever. They're they're entertainers.
Well, dude, that actually that brings up a really interesting point. I'll loop it back to music because I think this is another interesting dynamic where like the death of the death of radio, the death of like centralized distribution, where everyone has their own algorithm like feeding them what the machine thinks you want to listen to. It's created this really interesting dynamic where every year a smaller and smaller
percentage of music listened to is new. So more and more people are listening to old music because one, it's like you don't have the radio DJ phenomenon of like, you know, we got a new disk in right, here's the new top thing. But also it's like there's really no shared culture around music anymore.
Yeah.
I had a really interesting conversation with my grandmother, who is like core baby boomer born in nineteen fifty right, like went through that whole arc, and she asked my wife and I were sitting down, She's like, hey, like, what music do people your age listen to? Which, when you think about it, is a completely reasonable question for someone who lived through you know, the fifties through now, that question makes a ton of sense. But like Russie, if I asked you that question, like what music do
people your age listen to? It's like, I don't know, because.
It's like, am I old? Am I so old now that I'm out of touch and I don't want the kids are listening to? Or is it that there are five million new bands and it's just creating a haze of noise in mass competition? So you either have the superstars like Travis Scott or Taylor Swift or something like that, who.
Are to that point, I don't know anything. You're old. They've been around for a long time. There are weirdly stagnant compared to previous decades.
Right, Yeah, what was it? Yeah, the top the billboard five hundred. I think someone was looking at it at one point and it was however many of the top ten were just all between three artists. Yeah, because I mean that's what they used to do in music. Back in the sixties and seventies. There was probably a ton of bands that you'll never have heard of, that maybe were playing on the radio, but they didn't stand the
test of time. They weren't consolidated and filtered out where you know, as a decade goes on and you still remember that one song, and then twenty years later you still remember that song. So that means it's permeated through all this miasthma, if that's even the correct word. Someone like Kanye can pierce through. But I maybe that's why people are listening to older music because it's proven and if it's lasted this long, it has enough value.
Well, I dude, I I think another big part of it is, like, you know, I talk to people in like my parents' generation, like the MTV generation, and like if I ask them just randomly, like, hey, what song were you listening to in the summer of ninety four whatever?
Just pick it off the top of your head, like they have an answer, right, And then like I ask like two or three other people who you know, okay, maybe they lived like one hundred miles away, asked in that same answer or that same question, then this, if not the same answer, a similar one. It's from that kind of list of top songs. Whereas now, like if you ask me like, hey, what song were you listening to in like the summer of your freshman year, it's
like why have it answer? But that like that answer was determined by like the Spotify algorithm, And that's an album that came out in like two thousand and four that is not related to probably anyone in my social circle.
Like that decision is made on a different level, and like this is always something I think about where it's like if you're into one super specific genre, like you're the like Bri guy, whatever your genre is, sure you have a lot of options, but also your culture like whatever, breakcore, bluegrass, whatever your thing is. That's not like how it was for like our parents or our grandparents, where it's like, oh, those are the kids you sit at their table at
high school, like the goths, the preps, whatever. That's a group that's on the internet now, which is kind of a different thing, if you know what I mean. Like there's no the regional scene doesn't exist in the same way. Maybe I'm out over my skis, but you see what I'm saying.
There rest No, it's it seems like that with all ideas, there's no cohesion between groups or I don't know just how people view the world. Maybe it's good because we're not just getting fed what we're supposed to be listening to, but it's not like the old days where you could burn a CD for someone and I don't know there would be songs on there that wait, I'm not gonna right, I'm gonna confuse myself everyone. There's no top charts where everyone knew the new music video coming out. Oh the
Beastie Boys came out with a new album. Doctor Dre just came out with something, and everyone's talking about that one thing. Now, you could have like a massive artist, say someone like who's.
That zesty Puerto Ricans at the super Bowl a while back?
Bad Bunny.
Uh yeahyeah him, We'll go with him. He's a good example, I guess.
So I guess, I guess like Kendrick Lamar, that was an example where everyone kind of heard about this artist. But right, you have these algorithms that are now picking for you what they think you want to listen to. I personally don't listen to music, so I'm also a little bit out of my skis there when it comes to what is popular music now. But what I can say is I see the reactions from younger people and they'll be uh god, I cannot remember his fucking name.
This guy had. It was like the song of the He had two songs that came out and they were massive. They were all over TikTok as kind of a hip hoppy, low fi sound. But five months after that and these songs were all over the place. I don't know how many collective millions and millions of views, probably billions of plays, and people instantly will go, oh, yeah, this guy's washed up. He hasn't had a hit since last you know fall. It's like, well, how many fucking massive hits are you
supposed to have? You know this consumer media where things just kind of go into your body and then you instantly expel it, you get used to it. It's it's already old hat, it's overplayed. It makes an impossible challenge for i'd say the average artists to really stand out at all. And if you do, you got to really figure out how to fight for that, or else you're gonna be a has been instantly two weeks later, like oh,
when's your new album? You came out with one three months ago, when's the next one, or else you're done for You're forgotten.
Yeah, well dude, it's it's one of those things that like and maybe the kind of like mass music culture we see and like our parents and grandparents generation, maybe that's just weird, Like that's the like blip on the radar, and this is just how people have always been. But like I think about this a lot because I'm like, I'm primarily like a literature fag. That's like my thing.
It's embarrassing whatever, But like I have this kind of thought that bounces around in my head where I'm like, if if you really drill down to it over the last thousand years, the like actual real literacy rate, like people who actually know how, like can really read, not
just like a grocery list or whatever. Sure, there's part of my brain that's like I think that's basically the same throughout history, you know, and like you have a there's a certain level of like Okay, there's a there's there's a mass appreciation, but that is basically something that
can be taken over by a machine. You know. Like what's the difference between like an AI generated novel and like the tenth Tom Clancy ghost written novel twenty years after he's dead, right, you know, like that's kind of the same thing versus and like you could take the page turner to be like whatever that is for art whatever art form, like the mass popular version of it, like maybe the percentage of people actually interested in art
has always been very, very small throughout time. I don't know any proof for this, but it's something that I think about, like just when I'm like laying up the ceiling at night, if you see what I'm getting.
At, Yeah, I do think that I would say for the average I'm not gonna say normy because I don't want to be snobbish about you know who consumes.
What Russie, I appreciate you not being a snob after one of the most elitist things. I think it's possible to.
Say, well, it's like with music. I fear whenever you hear AI music, which is taking over Spotify for instance. I don't know what the percentage is right now, but it's getting up to like fucking seventy five percent of music on Spotify is AI generated. And as the musician, I think a lot of musicians would agree that. They say, like, oh, this is slop, this is it's not human, it doesn't
touch on the human spirit. But there's plenty of people who really only listen to music because it fills their head with noise and maybe helps them just get through their day or then go oh, I like this melody. They're not really trying to connect with it on a super deep level. It's just filler and that's all they
need is filler. And so when you take that into something like say a video or just a short form video that's kind of expressing a quick idea with a robot AI voice saying, oh, did you know that the biggest hole in the world was dug andrushah blah blah blah. It doesn't matter if that was written by a script or uses not a real person. It's just there to fill time. And so I don't know, the value of the arts are definitely going away. I mean, think about paintings.
Think about how big paintings were in the early nineteen hundreds where you had all these painters and they would people would marvel over fucking I don't know, I can't think of any van Go or something like that.
Well, I mean, dude, even van Go. That's an interesting comparison, right, because if we're talking about this kind of and look like I realized, like the epunk, the in cell corese stuff, it's like hyper niche. But it will take that as an example where it's like, oh, the high level production value has gotten too cheap and gotten too easy. So now we're going to return to something messier or authentic.
You could look at the impressionists as exactly the same thing, like we have gotten technology that can make a perfect replica, and now we're gonna move to Oh, painting is about expression. It doesn't have to look like a perfect field of sunflowers anymore. Now it's my expression. Now it's rougher, Now it's more human. But do you see what I'm saying? Like there's a parallel there. But sorry I interrupted you.
Well, no, I mean that's that's exactly it is. I mean, humans are I know you said you didn't want to talk about AI, but for some reason to tie into it.
Look, this is a show where my plan was, Hey, Rusty, what are you doing on Tuesday evening? So I talk about whatever you want?
Well, right, So if everyone, if everything's being pushed in mass and having to compete to have a certain quality or sound, a specific sound or production style, Yeah, people are always going to go for what seems the most authentic, and that's gonna be the best reflection of the human spirit. Uh, I don't wait, what was the point there?
So we're we're talking about I think you were making the point that basically, like painting went from being the kind of pinnacle art forum to this kind of secondary Yeah, exactly.
Sorry, no one can even name a painter.
Who d he's so fake like this is. And look, I say, this is someone who is not an artist but enjoys hanging out with them. There are few things that bother me more than the kind of like canned, prepackaged rebellion of Banksy where he gets to like put on the jacket of being like counterculture. Yeah, and like I'm against the system, and he is so completely and totally in line with the values of the system he lives in, but he gets to like play pretend as like an edgy counterculture artist.
Do you think he'll start that way? Or they got him because they knew that he could be. He had cultural appeal and pull, and so they either game a lot of money or they say you got to work for us.
Well, dude, here's a great example you mentioned imagine by John Lennon, right right, Like John Lennon like, oh, it's the peace movement. I'm gonna lay in bed, that's my rebellion against the system. But like, if you really drill down to what he actually said, like if you not to go full like ten foil hout Schitzo. But look, dude, we're forty minutes into this, so like might as well like if you really drill down to like the message of imagine right, like no culture, no religion, no race,
just like this gray, unindividuated gup of people. Yeah, how different is that than they like like full on globalists, Like it's basically the same thing, and so like with a lot of these people, I kind of feel like
I'm not going to pretend that, like whatever. The nineteen sixty two version of George Soros sat down with uh with John Lennon was like, hey, man, can you stop beating your wife long enough for this conversation and then was like, hey, if you promote these values, I'll make you rich and then I don't know.
Anything about the war or else we're going to kill you.
Yeah. I don't think it was like that, but I do one hundred percent think that, like certain ideas are amplified, Like look, dude, like you look at how like certain artistic movements in Europe were promoted post World War Two as basically a counter to the Soviet Union. You know, like contra like socialist realism and all that stuff, and you're like, Okay, you don't have to go full tenfoil hat.
Everything is a ploy. But like you think about how many of these people have quote unquote legitimacy, Like they get the honorary degrees, they get the like government grants, they get to like be rich artists and never have to actually deal with the consequences of being a creative on their own. And you're like, oh, dude, you're a pet, Like you're kept in a cage. Whether you know it or not. I don't.
Yeah, we were talking about that on on this other podcast that I do recently, like the soft influence that right the artist might not know it at all, but yeah, all of a sudden, you get this huge deal and you go, oh shit, I guess what I'm doing must really appeal to, right, the whatever narrative that they're trying to present or put out as a whole, So you know, if save its music and the thing that everyone knows now but seemed like it just kind of popped up
was like how the rap industry was controlled by had ties to like private prisons, and so by propping up gangster rap music and encouraging young, rambunctious youths to do the same crimes of the people that they were listening to, say like NWA or whatever. That could imprison more people, and then you can make money on the private prison side by propping up music that would encourage people to can make crimes. For instance, man, oh, so what the
fuck is Banksy doing? Dan? Like, what would be the goal? Just of nonsense specific and I think.
What it is is like, did you see that did you see that clip of uh, you know Stephen Colbert? You know he's got kicked off the air, and he's like, I'll show it to you network. I'll use this clip from pe Nuts, so you'll have to deal with those rights, okay, And then it turns out that his oh the point is it's Stephen Colbert is a massive faggot and was yeah,
got you know, his show got canceled. So he's like, I'll stick it to the network by playing a clip from Peanuts and they'll have to deal with the rights consequences of that. And then of course it's the Internet and they're like, no paramount owns his show and they owned pe Nuts, Like it doesn't it doesn't do anything, but it's you get to like have that rush of like, oh, I'm showing it to the man. Yeah, I'm fighting power. Yeah.
Like uh and and with Banksy like that, dude's made a ton of money and he's basically selling whether he knows it or not, this like sort of synthetic rebellion where it's like all the images, all of the different like it's i mean, it's graffiti, right, it's like inherently youthful and rebellious. But like, dude, at the point where were getting fifty million dollars for your paintings, I'm sorry, you're not counterculture, like.
Dude, like unlike him, could like what could they do? Should they just stop making things at all? And say, all right, there's there's nothing I can make in this genre that won't just be hack.
Hmmm. I mean, you know, maybe banks he walks out in front of a train and at least he's artistically consistent. I'm for anyone reviewing this, I'm not Actually that was
a joke. That is wrong and bad. But Banksy, you should walk out into traffic in all seriousness, man, in all seriousness, though, man, Like I think it's this weird thing, uh, and and not to go to like chin scratching, you know, like pseudo intellectual about it, but like that is kind of one of the weird things about like the empire post World War Two. And look, dude, you could look
at Israel. It's the same thing expressed differently, but it's like we simultaneously we right, they have to be the rebel, right like standing up to authority, you know, we're like overturning the system. And then also, oh wait, we're actually in charge. So like you think of like what is the repeated story over and over again for the last eighty years. It's like basically World War Two, where it's like, well,
we're the plucky rebellion. We stood up to evil, and that's why we get to be in charge of the world. Like Star Wars is a great example where it's like the story of Star Wars is exactly that, right, it's the plucky rebellion. We stood up to the ultimate evil and that's why we're allowed to be in charge. And like I look at all of that kind of like canned rebellion art work music like dude, like uh, Rage against the Machine in Green Day are a great example
of this. As well that like aesthetic of rebellion and like this is so stupid. But I always think about this or that it's some like stupid political figure from like twenty years ago, Paul Ryant or I think he was like the Speaker of the House or whatever.
Yes it was.
And I don't know why I'm the I was a nerd as a kid, and some I'm the sort of guy who read this, But I remember reading an interview where he was saying what his favorite band was, and he said that his favorite band was Rage against the Machine. And I just remember, even at like eleven, thinking like, what, dude.
That's you like machine right?
Still you're like playing pretend as this like rebel, you know. And like Banksy's another example where it's like I think he's actually a professor. I can't remember he got unmasked recently, Like he basically has like some government job. He's gotten millions of dollars in grants and his like if you look at the message of what he's producing, it's one
hundred percent in line with the government. But like, for whatever reason, people Banksy whatever like to play like they're speaking truth to power.
I mean, oh, for sure, exactly. They get people's aggression instead of I mean, this is kind of cliche, but instead of being able to focus everyone's aggressions in oppositions to whatever their qualms with the system are and directed towards where they need to direct it, they can kind of look at someone else and say, oh, that's my leader, or that's that guy's doing it for me, uh and I support him, and that person happens to be say a banksy and banks he's just doing controlled opposition for
the government or just this fake neutral opposition. Uh. So it gets everyone's aggressions out because they think it's like Luigi Mangioni m to me, that story is fucking insane and does not seem legitimate to any degree. But you know, the the youth will hoist like hoist him up as yeah, he's the Robin Hood character, He's the hero. We need more Luigi Mangioni's Uh but it's like, all right, isn't this guy just someone who killed a fucking CEO and
possibly to cover up financial crimes. That's what I always heard. I don't know not to get on the conspiracy of Luigi Mangioni.
But Rusty I like that this is the point where you're like, hey, I don't want to say anything too crazy, too out of pocket.
Right if I shot a CEO, I wouldn't be found days later with a backpack containing a manifesto and a gun and wearing the exact same outfit that I was seeing on camera with. To me, that just seems a little weird. But you know, uh, but right, people can point at him and say, yeah, there are people out there doing the fight. Therefore it's not really necessary for me as the individual to do it myself. I don't know, it's outsourcing rebellion. We'll just directing it.
This is a great book by Ted Kaczinski, and it's one of the ones he wrote in Supermax. It's like sixty pages, and since he wrote it from Supermax, you kind of have to like read between the lines because
you know, he can't exactly say what he means. But he has this book called The System's Greatest Trick, where he talks about exactly this, where he's basically talking about how like they're all these different things which exist as sort of like a pressure release valve so to keep people like basically on the plantation, to keep them docile. And so he wrote this, I mean after he went to prison, so like I think this was like six
or eight or whatever. But he's he's writing to like shitlib like basically like anarco eco terrorist types, right, who are the kind of people that sent him letters in prison? And he's talking about these sort of like fake forms of rebellion. So he's talking about stuff like racial equality in the corporate.
World, and he's like, look, elm riots.
Yeah, and this was before that, and he's basically saying, he's like, look, so many of things exist, and what the system will do is present to you an opportunity for rebellion. And what that rebellion does, all it does is reform the system, make it better, make it a more efficient predator. So your instinct to say, like I don't like this, make this go away, I don't want to do this gets turned back into making the algorithm better, right, making the algorithm whatever the system is more tuned to
what it's designed to. And it's a great book. Like it's not long, I guessid it's like sixty pages, but it's one of those things where it's like I remember reading it and it just kind of sitting down at me and like ugh, shit, he's got me, you know.
Well sure, I mean people they point towards the French Revolution without reading the history of it in the sense that you know, every shore they went into Forsi and they made their demands to the king and then later beheaded him and Marie Antoinette. But then the initial rebellions got overturned by new rebellions, and then new people came in there, and they had so many different iterations of their government constantly getting overthrown, all through Napoleon. And what
did it end? It just hardened itself. It figured out what are the mistakes that we made before? How did we allow the people to have this much power so that the people that take over afterwards can fix those mistakes? And so it oftentimes seems like these rebellions, say like the BLM riots were done intentionally, and they were promoted intentionally not only as a pressure relief valve, but to see how people were moving and to really gauge what
they're going to do. Why release why release the these Epstein files that are making all these claims of satanic pedophiles and saying, yep, they pretty much do all exist and they run everything. What are you going to do about it. It's just seems like a test to see how complacent we are or how easily we can be distracted from it. And now we have, you know, all these AI systems and these learning systems that can process all this information and process our behaviors better than any
human could or a psychologists, and I don't know. I mean again, it feels like the fist is closing. They might they might've kind of won a little bit. And what that would take for them not to win is to be unpredictable or to be human, you know, to if you're just showing everyone the slop music that's all sounds roughly the same because you're basing that off of what people previously listen to, these top forty pop hits that can only go on for so long until something
anomalist comes out of it and tears it apart. But I don't know how you could predict that well.
And this is like the thing that I always I always do think about this, where it's like there is this kind of any system, it almost develops too much to do its original purpose anymore, right, it becomes like overgrown, and like I kind of think about this with a lot of the like, and not to get this like too political per se, but like there is a level at which it's almost like they buy into their own BS enough that it starts to kind of like gum
up the works. So like I think about this with like the kind of like DEI affirmative action stuff where it's like when that first came around, it was pretty marginal. You know. It's like you'd have your token X guy in the office, you know, and I'm like, okay, whatever, let's say that is hypothetically like a five percent reduction inefficiency whatever. I'm not going to put a number on it, but like it's a little bit less than.
Optimal, right.
But then like the guys who put that system in retire the next group up they didn't get the memo. They're like, oh, we actually need to do this, you need to do it all the way. Yeah, And so that goes, yeah, exactly, that goes from being like a five percent reduction in efficiency to like a twenty percent like okay, well you're not you're looking at like a B average, Like it's not great, but it still works.
And then those guys retire and now your generation three, which is like full speed ahead and nothing works, and then you just get this feeling of like, what does the system even do anymore? The system that was designed to run an office is now become a system that
enforces whatever or value or whatever. It's like changed and doesn't work anymore, and like maybe this is naive, but like I do sort of feel like we have like two trends at once, which is one this like super depressing panopticon of like everything and you will be like digitized and turn into a number. And on the other one, it seems like the I guess, the like competence of the people running the machine is also getting worse at the same time, like they're making stupid mistakes and so it's.
Like you're getting coppy.
Sure, it feels like those things are going in opposite directions, and like when do those lines crash into each other?
I don't know, no, right, right, I mean, they're disconnected from the people so much that I don't think. I don't know. I don't know if they can foresee what will happen, or if people can. I don't know. If they're just trying to go for a full security state where there is no chance to be able to rebel.
But even that won't work. I mean, like you were saying, as the generations go on, whatever the solid plan was at the beginning just gets lost and completely manipulated and corrupted by small changes here and there, and so the strength of those systems just becomes so convoluted and weak. Hmm. I mean, I think that whatever we fear we're going into will just be destroyed by the lack of ability to foresee how people are going to push back against it or something creative is going to happen.
Well, dude, Like I think about this a lot, and again not to go like full on like religious extreme most extremist schitzo, but to kind of be a religious extremist schitzo. Like if you think about like the Tower of Battle or whatever, like what is that story about. It's basically about building a like total world system, like
a tower that reaches up to heaven. And then it's like human nature won't let that work, right, We're too selfish and stupid and it all falls apart, and so like, all right, maybe I'm wrong, and you know you and I will be in like matrix style human batteries in five years, in which case, okay, you can make fun of me for being wrong. But there is like a part of me that I'm like, I don't know if people can make that panopticon, Like I just don't know if we have it in us, because.
It doesn't seem like it's in our human nature to have one thing. Yeah, it's like the purpose of humanity.
Well, like you even look at like people talk about this with politics all the time. They're like, oh, like you know, they'll they'll import you know, eighty billion Indians and it will be you know, the Democrats forever, you know, whatever your grandpa says. And it's like yeah, yeah, sure that would suck. We shouldn't do that. But like there's
never a real one party state in that way. Like you even look at like primaries in California, where it is just like that is a blue state no matter what, it will never be a Republican state at least for the foreseeable future, and it's like no politics still exists. But now politics is in a district that like it's like this weird race war within the Democratic Party where it's like Asians versus Hispanics. Like that's where politics is.
Like even in your one party state, there's still like tribalism, they're still fighting, there's still fracture. And look, I'm not saying we should do that. That's a bad idea. I don't want to live in like some the equivalent of some district in California. It's not my point, but it's like humans aren't that good at creating something totalizing in that way, which is not the most hopeful message, but it's better than nothing.
Right right our inability for everyone to agree on one singular idea, because that destroys the competition. I mean, that's like the survival of the fittest of ideas? Where how can something improve if everyone already agrees on it? Then how why what is the point of innovating if what you have is already supposed to be perfect? It's done. To innovate means to disagree, and you need to be able to you know, how are you going to get
every single person on board with every possible change? A lot of changes are that end up being correct or successful or advanced. Humanity came with major pushback, and so the only way to move forward or to progress is to, you know, fight against the system. And I think we inherently know that.
And honestly, Like that's one of the things that and look like I say that I am like a right wing guy, and it's like, what does that mean? It's like I like being edgy on the internet. I have certain values are not compatible with kind of like mass market society. But like I'm not really like a conservative person just personality wise, like I I don't have that
whatever that character trait is. But like when I talk to a lot of my acquaintances who are millennials, like really true in that like perfect age demo, they are temperamentally conservative, like they have that like things should be going on the way they are. But because of the like weird I guess kind of like vagary of politics, their conservative personality leads to them being Obama liberals because
that is the system that they grew up in. And so it's this weird thing where it's like in a weird way, like the that person conceptualizes themselves as fighting against the system, as like, oh, I'm fighting against like the family from Dirty Dancing, whatever, the like old racist Amria, like whatever their boogeyman is. But they all work at raytheon. They all work for like the military industrial complex and the reason I say that is like that weird self conception.
It's like the actual functional politics of it are really almost secondary to human nature, like that comes first, like that kind of instinct. And so like when we're talking about this, like the need for like a bust up, it almost feels like there's this pressure building and mounting to do something else because whatever is currently happening, whatever the current like whatever term politics, value, whatever, is just
not working. And so like we're talking about authenticity, and like one of the things I've noticed because like, look, man, I'm like a political loser who talks about my opinions on the internet, but I have friends who I don't talk about any of this with, and so like I have my kind of inside opinions, and then you know what, if we're sitting around drinking beers, I'm not bringing that
stuff up. And one of the things I've noticed is that like there are certain things that have become synonymous with like being real or being authentic that like ten fifteen years ago, were really really fringe. And it's the same thing as like the low five sounds. So for instance, like to be honest, like casual anti semitism, right, like making a joke about like babie or like culling some guy like, oh, Rabbi whatever Steen if he doesn't like pay his venmo for you know, dinner on time. Sure,
like sure, that's whatever. It's a joke and there's not even a lot of like thought behind it. It's not like that guy has like.
It's an internal ribbing. It's it's soft ribbing. And you know, so many cultures are right, but it's also like people were able to do that.
It's also like, oh, you're cool, Like you can say the thing you're not supposed to, so you're like you're real, You're not putting on your like corporate face, and like maybe this is naive man, But like I don't know how how much that system can endure where no one really under a certain age believes in it anymore. Like it's not it doesn't feel real anymore, do you see? You see what I'm getting a rusty? Is that too vage?
The system of the system of what having to have this internal duality where you're having to outwardly present yourself in a way that's in a major conflict to your internal beliefs in I don't know, confusion there or I don't know.
That's human talking about like whatever the system is that's like between John Lennon and us, you know, like that line of thought, you know where it's like this kind of vague system of values that you would get from like Hollywood, you know, John Lennon, whatever, that like you see in a certain group of people has like almost crystallized into something too rigid for culture to exist in anymore. I don't know, I'm maybe I'm being too vague, see what I'm saying.
Yeah, it's it's well, you know, mentioning the John Lennon times. I mean, if we're going back in history and we're saying, well, this is how people thought in the sixties, it's probably not. That was how some people thought. That was the winning idea, that was the one that stood the test of time, and that's how history was, you know revised. Like, yeah, the hippies were all about this. There were two sides,
those who were for this and those who weren't. I imagine there was a lot of there had to be a lot of pushback or criticism of John Lennon time.
I mean, I have no idea the whole like the whole Nixon thing, right, Like Nixon was the most popular president next I mean Reagan, but that was basically the same group of people, right, Like that was a huge cultural backlash, but like, like I mean literally, I think he won every state except for Massachusetts, which is like crazy, right, but like it's just been pushed out of cultural memory.
You know, it doesn't exist, right. All you're ever supposed to know about Nixon is what you're supposed to know, and that is he was a criminal and what don't look into anything he did. He was a bad president.
Have you ever read this is so completely a tangent, but it's really funny. Have you ever read about Nixon as like a young man, dude? It's so funny. It's the early stories. It's like from his diary and he's like, I did it again, guys, went on a date with a girl. It was going great, and then I just monologued about ancient Roman battles for three hours, and now she doesn't want to talk to me anymore.
He's an insul meme. Lord.
Yeah, sorry, sorry.
No, that's good. Yeah. I like what he said about Bohemian Grove is a bunch of fags, dude.
Those dates are hilarious. Where It's like, look, there's no reality where I end up being the president or like read in. But you listen to stuff like that and you're like, all right, that's probably pretty much what I would say.
Yeah, he was a real one. I mean, I guess every politic now, unless they're completely isolated from the Internet or whatever. I mean. Now we have like JD Vance, who has his emo pictures and his catboy era and all this cringe shit from my space that you just can't get rid of. It's not like, oh, did you do cocaine ones or take a hit off of a blunt. It's like they know your cringe. All your videos can probably be found on.
Some As I was about to say, there's there's an unfortunate amount of in that hypothetical reality. The oppo research would not have to look deep at all. I think there's photos of me with like isis propaganda from like maybe a year ago, So like, I'm cooked.
I worry about this getting caught up in some sort of big trial. I don't know why I would, but imagine imagine being a fuck what's his name? Who is the kid that brought the gun to I think it
was Kenosha, And yeah, written house. You know, God forbid I ever get caught up in some sort of major in front of a lot of eyes trial where they're trying to slander my character or say I shoot someone that comes into my house because they're burglarizing it, and then they're they're trying to make a character attack on me.
It wouldn't be very hard for them to show them the body of my work and find the most miserable shit, like well, here he is teaching you how to tie a noose, or here he is saying white women fuck dogs and blah blah blah, and I'd have to sit there and go, well, listen, no, it's this is yet to look at it in the context of which I made it.
It was a joke mostly right. Well, I mean you were talking earlier right about like the ultimate justification for being an artist is being you know, tortured to death in a basement for your work as a podcaster. I feel like I haven't made it till at least one transcript has appeared in court, and so, uh, Rusty, all I'm saying is, if you, if you do something bad, maybe we can use this as evidence. And I realized that wouldn't help you, but it would fulfill a personal goal.
So if you're planning on committing felony, that appreciate a shout out.
Yeah absolutely, Uh now I'll call you up. You will be there in the courtroom.
Well, dude, Rusty, this is supposed to be an hour long show. We've did an hour ten, which how you know it's a good episode because I got completely distracted. You'd end up adhering to our schedule at all, Dude, this has been a ton of fun. Oh you mentioned obviously your your videos. But where can people find you? Man?
I would say the best place right now is either on x dot com. This is where I'm probably gonna be posting the most updates on anything, and that's at R S T y CG Rusty Cage without any you know of those other letters and uh YouTube the Rusty Case Show. That's my new channel since I've had I had to leave my old channel that had all the millions of subscribers because I believe they're trying to take it down. It's been very soft shadow band for a few years.
Rusty. What could you possibly have done to piss off YouTube?
Well, I mean the last thing was a live stream where I cut my head off with a giant guillotine. I don't know if they liked that, But everything before that, Yeah, when you're on the internet long enough, essentially every all of these videos that kind of made my channel big in the first place are slowly just getting struck and removed from the website. So it's gonna be hard for anyone stepping in now to see the old body of work. But I make music and it's on there.
I'll put it this way. I'm always inherently suspicious of someone who has no problems on social media, like, look like I get it, Like there's certain things, there's certain euphemisms you can use to skirt buy a lot of it. But if you've had any sort of Internet presence and you haven't had something taken down, like are you even trying?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, and it's allowed to stay up, I'm like, fucking, who do you work for? Who do you know? Or if that's stupid, I can't figure out what I'm doing that's so agreeable?
Maybe resting. Maybe we were talking about how everyone else is a is a secret government plant? Have you considered that maybe uh Raytheon wants that video of you cutting off your own head and a homemade guillotine. That's all a part of the plant.
Yeah yeah, I know. I just wish they would pay me for it.
Fair put. This was a ton of fun. It was great having you on and everyone at home. Keep your head up, good night, goodbye.
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