EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,073 words- 0:00 – 1:24
Destiny’s Experience on Piers Morgan
- CWChris Williamson
You just did Piers Morgan?
- DEDestiny
Um, well, I d- it was, like, a live segment from this morning. Sure, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Yeah. How was that? Was that the first time you've spoken to him?
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
All right. What did you think?
- DEDestiny
Uh, it was okay. It could have been way worse.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DEDestiny
It could have been way better. They brought me in, it was a segment on like, um, the differences between, like, Trump and Biden and their senility. Basically, is Biden's senility gonna be a huge problem? And my opposite person is, like, Tommy Lauren, and it's a very much, like, mainstream media opinion, like, or a mainstream media appearance. So it's like, "Give me your, like, 30-second splurg, give me your 30-second splurg, and the next question." And I hate that back and forth, like, drives me crazy, so.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm, well, I mean, it says everything that we're having a discussion about who is the most senile among all of the different politicians that might influence the future.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. It does.
- CWChris Williamson
What a world.
- DEDestiny
It says a lot. But at the end of the day, the voters only have themselves to blame, so.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) That's true, but then I guess you can only vote for the people that are there.
- DEDestiny
No, there's a lot of people to vote for. These are the two most popular ones. I think that the system is delivering the people that have the widest support right now, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Right, okay.
- DEDestiny
People, they might not be, um, universally liked, but you only have to have a plurality of the support to make it through. Like, people are looking at you like, "Uh, I guess, like, sure." But people might not like him, like, 80% of people might not like Biden or 80% of people might, might not like Trump, but those 80% of people don't all agree on who should run instead, so that's the issue, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Yeah, interesting. I wonder if people could coordinate better, whether or not you would have, uh, better outcomes.
- DEDestiny
I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
VICE Media, shutting down,
- 1:24 – 10:40
What is the Future of Mainstream Media?
- CWChris Williamson
no longer publishing. Have you seen this?
- DEDestiny
Are they shutting down or are they just not gonna publish articles on that website anymore?
- CWChris Williamson
That's technically what it is. In a memo to VICE employees Thursday, CEO Bruce Dixon said that the company will be cutting several hundred jobs in the next week as part of its major restructuring. VICE will discontinue publishing content to its own website and instead will put more emphasis on our social channels as we accelerate our discussions with partners to take our content to where it will be viewed most broadly. What do you think?
- DEDestiny
Cool, I guess. Does anybody read, like, website stuff from VICE? I feel like they were most known for their YouTube video content, like, the investigative journal stuff. I should know the lady's name. I wish I did, but she does really cool stuff. I remember she went to China to investigate the Uyghur stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
Um, she, like, she does a lot of cool stuff. Uh, there, there are a couple cool things on VICE in terms of what I've seen for video content.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DEDestiny
I don't read their website as much, so I don't know if it's a big loss or not.
- CWChris Williamson
No, I, I mean, VICE is one of those things where when you do see articles shared, it's usually, like, rage sharing. You know, "White people can't suffer racism," or, like, some, some something that seems to be purposefully that almost, like, rage-trigger people to click on it.
- DEDestiny
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
But I have definitely enjoyed me some VICE mini documentaries, 20-minute, 30-minute, you know, lunchtime viewing things on YouTube. I've seen one, there's a bunch that they do about party culture-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... in the UK about, like, aging rage, uh, ravers, like, people still doing drugs in their 50s, 60s, 70s, like classic lairy British people.
- DEDestiny
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
So that's good, but I don't know, I just wonder, you know, you just did Piers Morgan. Tucker Carlson has left his sort of mainstream credentials behind and moved independent. Piers is leaving Talk TV and going to basically be a full-time YouTuber, essentially, although it'll probably be a little bit more advanced than that. I don't know, it just seems like there's some interesting movements, maybe it's more so in the video side of things, but, you know, that was VICE's written content and that's being pivoted.
- DEDestiny
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think? What's the state of modern media landscape, and what do you think's in the future?
- DEDestiny
I don't know, it's different from different perspectives. As an, as a content creator, my guess is gonna be alternative media is probably a lot more money. Uh, mainstream media is probably a lot more exposure. That'd be my guess. Um, in terms of, are we moving towards a more alternative media landscape where everybody's consuming alternative media? That's kind of already happening, or has already happened. In some ways, mainstream media has kind of integrated itself into alternative media, so people might get all of their, for instance, their news through Facebook or Twitter, but that might be coming in the form of headlines from mainstream media publications.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, yes.
- DEDestiny
Um, I would definitely say it feels like we've moved past, especially with Tucker Carlson leaving, it feels like we've moved past the age of the pundit where you had these, like, huge, like, larger-than-life figures, like the Anderson Coopers, the, um, the Tucker Carlsons, the Bill O'Reilly's, the, Jon Stewart, I guess, is back now on-
- CWChris Williamson
He's just pivoted back.
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
Um...
- CWChris Williamson
Well, he tried to go to Apple, and there was some, uh, editorial differences, I think, that caused issues at Apple, and then he'd wanted to bring up some stuff to do with China, and that wasn't allowed, and yeah, he ended up basically going full circle back to somewhere that oddly had more freedom-
- DEDestiny
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... or at least editorial freedom, I think, as far as he was concerned.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't, I have no idea where the... I, I think we have huge issues in our media landscape right now. I don't think they're necessarily tied into mainstream versus alternative, but I know that that's what everybody's fixated on.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- DEDestiny
Um...
- 10:40 – 15:53
The Death of Sub-Groups
- CWChris Williamson
continue to propagate. There was something... uh, uh, you may have seen this. Someone explained where emos went, and they basically talked about the lack of development of sub-groups, that they kind of come together briefly and then sort of fracture off into other... I mean, you'll remember, like, emos and goths and, like, there was genuine cemented sub-groups. Maybe they only existed for five years or something, but they were there, right? There was, like, an actual... And they had an identity and they had dress and they had all the rest of the stuff. But I wonder whether the sort of universality of everybody trying to optimize for the same things, which is really, like, clicks and attention online, no matter who you are, even if you're just, like, some normie person that, that wants to have, like, more fans and more friends on Instagram and be more popular in school or have a better Snapchat streak or whatever the hell it is. I wonder whether there is something about this universal currency of status where everyone eventually has to play that game, 'cause there's only a, a few routes to be able to be successful within that one thing. And the same thing is going to be true of your ability to sensemake. Like, there's only so many different paths that you can have to be able to reach that, or to be able to be successful as a fucking newscaster, or to be able to be successful and catch attention online. So I wonder...... I wonder how much of this is just people trying to- trying to make sense of the world and instead what they do is find things that confirm their biases and then just sit and steep in those groups. But for some reason, it doesn't seem to cohese in the same way that it used to.
- DEDestiny
That's- I- it's really interesting you say that because I have another theory or idea on how society is like kind of falling apart. Or not falling apart, splitting apart. Um, and it plugs into that perfectly, and that I think that people aren't fundamentally different today than they have been for the past 100,000 years. We're all humans, we have more or less the same-
- CWChris Williamson
Raw materials.
- DEDestiny
Um, yeah. The- the biggest thing that I think has changed, th- there's two things happening right now, in that we're becoming more separated than we ever have been, and more similar than we ever have been. And the way that I feel like this is working is people are withdrawing into two separate groups that are enforcing within these groups an insane amount of homogeneity. And I think the reason why this is happening is because it feels like our communities have gotten larger and larger and larger and larger and larger. So for instance, um, it might be that maybe 30 or 40 years ago, maybe I super identify with the kids in my neighborhood, um, you know? 'Cause when I was growing up, the people that you hung out with was whoever you could walk to, or when you were old enough, whoever you could bike to. This is your community, these are the people that you hang out with. Um, you develop ideas, you develop intense, at least for me, like high school rivalries between football teams, between like sport- yeah, th- like that's like your community. Um, and then when you get a little bit older, maybe you identify as an adult with your neighborhood, maybe you identify with a city that you're in or a political group in your city or sports team or whatever. I think that these were the, maybe it might be like older, it might have been like, uh, churches or unions that you're in. Um, these are the things that I think people identified with, and they have, they enforce a lot of homogeneity in these groups, which is probably normal to some extent, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DEDestiny
Y- you're- you're gonna want people around you to be p- very similar, th- that's just normal.
- CWChris Williamson
You hang around with people that align with who you are.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that could mean appearance and race, it could mean ideology, it could mean-
- CWChris Williamson
Values, class.
- DEDestiny
Yeah, it could be a billion different things, uh, people relate on a lot of levels. Could be religion. But today what's happened is the internet has made it so that the smaller groups are not really fun to be in, they don't really feel important, they don't feel impactful or meaningful. So instead what happens is, is the group that you're belonging to is larger and larger and larger. Forcing homogeneity on a neighborhood that you live in, where I'm from, Omaha, Nebraska, is a lot different than forcing homogeneity on, you know, 160 million people in the United States versus the other 160 million people. So, um, y- to draw back to kind of what you were saying earlier is that as these groups become larger and larger, it's harder, I think, or it feels like it's harder to have these certain types of subcultures and everything because everybody's part of like this global culture now.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- DEDestiny
Which is all enforced by, um, and facilitated by the internet.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. And then, but you also ha- i- it's interesting that you say both becoming more similar and more different.
- DEDestiny
Yeah, and that we're getting further apart 'cause these different groups are f- flying away from each other at the speed of light.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
Um, but within these groups, you have to have a cohesive opinion.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- DEDestiny
You have to have an opi- if you're- if you work in a warehouse in Alabama, you still have to have an opinion on whether or not Lia Thomas could be an, uh, an athlete in- in- in college, or whether you, you know, if you work in, uh, or live in Seattle, you need to have an opinion on AOC, or if you live in LA, you need to have an opinion on whether we should be supporting Ukraine or Israel, and like, yeah, these- the huge global culture has extended beyond the neighborhoods and the churches and everything to include-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
... everybody. Yeah. Everybody-
- CWChris Williamson
So-
- DEDestiny
... who has a phone or the internet.
- CWChris Williamson
... the number of things that you need to have an opinion on, or the number of things that you're exposed to has increased.
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
The level of purity and agreement within the group that you need to adhere to in order to not be ostracized by the group has also increased.
- DEDestiny
A little bit. I think that is a, I would say that that's probably like an artifact. So it feels like you have to be more pure, but it's not really that you have to be more pure. It's just that there are so many more issues that you probably have to be more pure.
- CWChris Williamson
There's more ways to get wrong.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. So like, yeah, yeah, exactly. So like for instance, like 20 years ago, uh, I don't know if there would have been a social group enforcement on like the type of beer that you're drinking. But after the-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DEDestiny
... whatever the trans Bud Light stuff was, or Budweiser stuff was, that might be part of your group now. It's not that they've gotten more pure in that they demand more rigidity to the ideas than they used to, it's that now there are more ideas that you have to adhere to basically, yeah.
- 15:53 – 25:57
Reflecting on the Bud Light Scandal
- CWChris Williamson
Light is a really fascinating little canary in the coal mine of sort of modern culture, and I've had a number of conversations about this where when Bud Light happened, it was a huge, big deal. Bud Light was almost like a simulacrum for America. It's like, see, this is something that used to be pure and- and- and- and- and patriotic and it was- it was an a-
- DEDestiny
Trucks and eagles and-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
... yeah, country music.
- CWChris Williamson
All of that, and look, see what's happened? These- these wokies have come along and they've- they've annihilated it and- and- and all the rest of it. And then full circle, only, when was that? 12 months ago? 18 months ago? It wasn't more than two years ago-
- DEDestiny
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... when that happened with Dylan Mulvaney, right? It was in the last two years and now you, Kid Rock, the guy that shot the fucking cans with an AR-15 is drinking it on Rogan's show.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. I bought $10,000 of stock, I think, like the day after all that broke and I, yeah, am I-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DEDestiny
... beat the market. I mean, again, it was obvious. It was like so stupid, right? Yeah. I posted those gains on Twitter. I was like, "Thanks, conservatives." Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What did it go- wh- where did you go from and to? How far has that stock moved?
- DEDestiny
I don't rem- I don't remember what I did. I just know it beat the S&P 500.
- CWChris Williamson
But it's moved a, it's moved a good amount.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. Beat the market.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, but yeah, and it just seems to me the speed with which people will thumb finger wave-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... for or against something and then forget the position that they held so vehemently, I really, really have a huge problem with people that are like so adamant that a thing is true, and then only shortly after that are so adamant that a thing is either no longer true or they don't recognize what they said before without at least going, "Ah, do you know what it is? Maybe Bud Light weren't the, you know, like libtard wokies that I thought that they were. Maybe that was just one malignant, uh, marketing campaign that- that went awr-" or whatever. Like, just show your working, like show your thinking to take you from where you are to where you are, because it just sounds an awful lot like wherever the tide sort of comes in and wherever the tide goes out, that you kind of get ripped along with it, and I don't know, it's one of the reasons why I'm quite skeptical of people who don't caveat much about what they say. If you speak in absolutes, like you better be certain, because my...... threshold to speak with that amount of certainty that I know that this company is one thing, or I know that this company is another thing. It's like, it's pretty high. So you either don't know what you're talking about or have done tons of work which should be evident in the way that you speak about it.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm. Uh, I have lots of ideas about this. Um, the first thing, the- so the first thing would be a criticism of people in general. It feels like nobody's capable of having a moderate reaction to anything. Uh, I'm gonna be honest, when I saw the Bud Light stuff and the tr- I thought it was cringe. But like, that's not a reaction that people can have anymore. It's either the worst fucking thing in the world, or it's like the most important foundational bedrock part of LGBT right. Like, nothing can just be like, "Oh, that was kinda dumb," or, "Oh, that was kinda cringe," or, "Oh, I kinda like that."
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, yes. Yep.
- DEDestiny
It has to be 0 to 100.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- DEDestiny
That, so that's really annoying. Um, a second thing is, uh, let's see, changing opinions or people that felt like they had strong opinions about one thing that have changed dramatically. Uh, these are two things, I talk in my stream a lot about these things. Watching the evolution of my parents' beliefs politically has been unreal to me. Um, my dad, my mom and my dad, uh, my mom is from Cuba, uh, so she's a Cuban immigrant, very, uh, pro-American people in general, very pro-Republican people. We all cried when Elian Gonzalez got shipped back to Cuba under Bill Clinton and hated him and blah, blah, blah. Um, my mom and dad are very patriotic, okay? 20 years in the Air Force for both of them. My dad, when, if you join the military in the United States, it's probably true in every country in the world, when you join the military, you get a ton of vaccines, okay? You just, they, up and down the line, it's like 20 shots. You don't even know what you're getting injected with. Right? That's what they do. Uh, my dad actually had a vaccine injury in his deltoid such that, um, he can't really raise his arm very well, like past this level. And that, he gets like paid disability from the Air Force from that. This is a real injury from vaccines, okay? Despite that, uh, w- when we grew up, you had to get your vaccine. It was a non-negotiable. My mom would never even think for two seconds that like her children not be vaccinated. It wouldn't e- it wouldn't even be a second thought. Um, today, I think we've had three family members so far die from COVID, my mom will not get any of the COVID shots, and I don't think she trusts any vaccines at all anymore. Um, so the evolution of her belief on that has been crazy.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DEDestiny
And I'm sure there's a lot of Republicans that have followed the same path. The evolution of the treatment of Russia, when I grew up, I heard all about the Chai Coms, the Chinese communists. I heard all about, uh, you know, Red China and the Soviets. She would always refer to Russia as the Soviet Union. Um, and today for her opinion on, you know, the Russia thing, "Ah, I guess whatever, Stevie, but it's not our deal. We don't have to be concerned with it, whatever." Um, that's insane to me, the difference in treatment between the demeanor of the president. I remember my mom came home one day, uh, and she was crying over the Monica Lewinsky stuff, and I didn't understand it 'cause I was super young at the time. Um, and she was trying to tell me that like, "You don't understand, like the President's the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the way that he treats women, that rolls down to everybody. And my commanding officer's gonna treat me this way. I already have to deal with all the sexism in the Air Force." And then for her to listen to those Trump Grab 'Em By The Pussy tapes, so she's like, "Come on, Stevie. Boys will be boys. It happens. It's not a big deal," blah, blah, blah. That is, yeah, that, that, yeah, that's, that's wild to me.
- CWChris Williamson
Bit of a pivot.
- DEDestiny
Yeah, it's insane to me. Um, there's two, there's two underlying things or two really important things to keep in mind that have taken me too long to figure out. One is that people don't genuinely, uh, generate beliefs from some consistent underlying system. They inherit constellations of beliefs that all kind of rely on each other from social groups. So if you join a social group that says, um, like Andrew Tate is innocent, they probably also think that Donald Trump is a victim of the deep state, that there's a swamp that needs to be drained. They think that the election was stolen. They think that the vaccines are fake. They think that space lasers probably did have something to do with Hawaii. Um, they don't trust the FDA. Um, they think that we shouldn't be wasting time with Russia and Ukraine, and Putin is probably more on the right than we wanna admit. They, like they, they have all these beliefs that are part of the conversation. And it's, it's true for the left as well. I'm not, like I'm bullying people on the right, but it's true for the left as well, um, that they have these c- these constellations as well. But the, the thing that bothers me the most, and then I'm, sorry, I'm wrapping this up, I had everything-
- CWChris Williamson
No, not at all.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. The thing that bothers me the most is, um, I did this for a little bit and then I stopped because it was truly depressing. I thought that people are just kinda dumb. They don't do any research or homework. You get these like constellations of beliefs, and you don't realize how wrong you are. So what I started to do was, for big content creators, if you're gonna make a big claim and your job is alternative media, bet some fucking money on it. Okay? If you think that Trump is gonna win and you're 99% sure, 99%, you should be able to give me na- 50 to one odds then on a hundred bucks. If you're 99% sure, one to 99, okay sure. When I started making bets with people on stuff like that, I expected people to tell me to fuck off, or I expected people to take the bet because they were overconfident. But a third thing started happening that was incredibly surprising to me that actually aligns with, you know Peter Boghossian?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. It aligns with a lot of the stuff I've seen him do. Somebody will say something like, "Trump is winning the next election 99%." And I'll be like, "Oh, okay. Do you wanna bet, i- i- I'll stake $1,000 and if I'm right, you pay me 100 grand, okay, 'cause you're that confident." And instead of telling me to fuck off or instead of saying, "You know, whatever," what they actually do is they start to speak and all of a sudden I realize they have all the information in their brain. They're like, "Well, hold on. He could get sick and die. He could have some senility issues. He is old. Maybe for some of the indictments he might have done stuff. Other stuff could come out." Uh, ma- like it's, it's not even that they are s- afraid of the bet or they just like immediately tell me to fuck off, it's that they actually do have the information there, they're capable of exercising the, the critical thought process, they just don't most of the time because of the social pressures for our belief systems. That was the really ... And I stopped doing it. I was like, "This is insane. Wait, so you know all this, you know all of the reasons why what you said before was dumb, it just took somebody to put a quantitative value on, on your conviction for you to appropriately scale back your belief."
- 25:57 – 36:05
Are We More Bothered About Ridiculing Than Finding Truth?
- CWChris Williamson
the soft signal of effectiveness that, um, there is a trend on the internet for people to be, you know, the most vehement, like flame sword-wielding motherfucker.
- DEDestiny
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, I'm gonna come for you and I'm gonna tear you down, I'm gonna make you look stupid, and it's gonna be filled with sardonic comments and all the rest of it. But I think that that activates whoever you're speaking to's defense system.
- DEDestiny
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
That's, the antibodies just come up, "I don't wanna be made to look like a complete idiot, so I'm just gonna stand my ground."
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that sure, there's times where ridicule is a useful tool.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And you can use that to kind of, oh my god, like that discomfort kind of kicks you out of stuff. But for the most part, because people just embed themselves into their beliefs, especially if the fear is, "I'm gonna look stupid or lose status if I get this wrong-"
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that actually going, "Okay, well tell me about that. So just walk me through your thinking." And being a little bit more gentle. So soft signal of effectiveness being most of the guys that are the, the real hardcore vehement piss-taking people, I don't, I don't think that they change behavior particularly well. And the question is, what is it that you're trying to achieve with this communication that you're having? Are you actually trying to get a good outcome of bringing people closer to something appropriating truth? Or are you trying to look cool and dunk on the other person during this discussion?
- DEDestiny
Yeah. Yeah, and then you have to be mindful of so much about like, they're changing their mind too. Uh, this is something that I kind of bring up, but it feels kind of bad to do this, but like if I'm debating somebody who, let's say somebody like Ben Shapiro, okay? Who I respect as an intelligent person. He's clearly intelligent, he's done really good with his company. But Ben Shapiro is a pundit on The Daily Wire and he's the part owner of The Daily Wire, which is a conservative news outlet. His livelihood to some extent depends on him remaining in the good graces of a conservative audience. So if a, if two studies were to come out tomorrow, the largest studies of all of mankind prove that socialism and socialized healthcare are the best things to, you know, increase the standards of living for everybody, for somebody like me, because I'm not like a, I don't have a necessarily a political alignment, I can say like, "Oh, I changed my mind. These are like, cool. I, I follow this now." But if you're a hardcore dug in on the conservative side, it's gonna be really hard to change your mind on that because that's, that, that's not what people are coming to you for, is to just hear your unique takes on things. They want a little bit of the reinforcement of the, um, I don't wanna say the echo chamber they're in, but a little bit of the reinforcement of like the social constellation of ideas they've inherited. And then I'm gonna start using more left-leaning examples because all you conservatives are feeling very bullied in your audience right now.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- DEDestiny
Same thing with on the left that like when, uh, when research and data was coming out that for a while w- we got way too hyped up on the trans kid stuff, okay? Personally, I still think that there is a strong argument for people under the age of 18 to have medications made available to them. Um, and that's a whole other thing you get into. But people got way too gung-ho about it and you need to be willing to critically accept research that might not reinforce that position. And a lot of people on the left were totally unwilling to hear or see any data that might say that like, "Oh, you know, um, desistance rates might be like this, or giving medication to these people might not produce the best outcomes, or some of these studies aren't the best that we're using for this particular thing." Um, yeah, people, people have a really hard time accepting information sometimes that is contrary to their, uh, you know, their belief system, and...
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's part of the acceptance within the group.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And then it's also a, you can think of it kind of like a smooth ball, right? If you've just accepted this worldview wholesale-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that, ah, well, it's very easy, I don't need to do a ton of sense-making myself, I'm gonna be accepted by the group. Any hole that you pick in one of those things, "Well, what does this say about my opinion on immigration or on gun rights or on abortion or on how we should deal with the Ukraine or on the sense of agency or what we should do with socialized healthcare?" All of these things sort of start to crack and crumble underneath the pressure of one of these threads becoming unpicked.
- DEDestiny
Basically, yeah. And, and more importantly, because of the way that it works as a constellation and not they're, that they're all uniquely generated, they all are kind of self-reliant on each other.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DEDestiny
Um, it can't be the case that, um... Oh God, my, the past six months has been fighting with conservatives over Trump, so that's all my example. I'm so sorry, okay?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DEDestiny
Listen, progressives have big problems too. But it just can't be the case that the FDA is trustworthy. That can never be the case because if that's the case, the whole premise of the FDA being untrustworthy has to do with the concept of the deep state, it has to do with the government being against us, it has to do with pharmaceuticals being corrupt, it has to do with lobby-
- CWChris Williamson
Stacked on top, on top, on top.
- DEDestiny
Yeah. It's all, they're the, they're all like, it's like a Jenga tower but there's no foundation. They all find a way to keep the blocks in the air like it's Minecraft.
- CWChris Williamson
Zero gravity Jenga tower.
- DEDestiny
Yeah, and you can't pull anything out because wait, that doesn't... 'Cause everything would completely and totally fall apart. And the problem when you're in a social group is you can't have an incongruity of applied ideas because that implies that you have an incongruity and fundamental values.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you, what, what, what do you mean the applied ideas?
- DEDestiny
As in...If I'm with a group of conservatives and I say, "I believe in affirmative action and a $15 an hour minimum wage," and the conservatives go, "Okay, well, you're a re- you're an idiot. You, uh, want to destroy the economy and your, uh, you know, bigotry of low expectations for Black people." "Uh, okay, I don't care." Wh- like, our values are fundamentally different. So our applied positions are obviously gonna be different.
- 36:05 – 41:15
What is the Point of Debating?
- CWChris Williamson
that the debates that you do help to change minds? Obviously, you've spent- you've got this big one coming up.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And you've done a number over the last few months. And it's like a high price, although you're interested, right? You're engaged and- and stuff.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, what do you think is the net outcome of you sitting down with Glenn Greenwald and- and Alex Jones, or you sitting down with Norman Finkelstein and- and- and Lex Fridman or whatever?
- DEDestiny
I think there's, uh, several things that happen. One is that hopefully, uh, this is a broad, broad, broad narrative thing, but hopefully it shapes the views a little bit of both sides. So if you're pro-Palestinian and you hear me argue, maybe you moderate a tad on some of the things that you're saying about how evil and bloodthirsty Israeli citizens are. If you're a super big Zionist and you hear me argue, hopefully you moderate a bit on your opinion. It's like, "Okay, maybe Israel has made some mistakes historically." And then if you're homeless in the middle...Those are the people that I try to, like, scoop up basically, are people who email me and they'll say like, "Hey, I was really big on this pro-Palestinian stuff, but all the demonstrations and the pro-Hamas stuff made me feel really, like, crazy and not at home."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DEDestiny
"And I'm glad I found somebody that's reasonable." Or maybe it's like, "Hey, I'm like a super pro-Zionist guy, but, you know, I'm really uncomfortable with how much people support, like, the mass settlements and, you know, the demonization of Palestinians and pretending like we never have to make any concessions to them ever, and I'm glad that you're there." So, yeah, I try to, like, kind of scoop up the people who are a little bit politically homeless right now, and then hopefully I can kind of soften the positions on both sides depending on what particular issue that I'm arguing with.
- CWChris Williamson
Which is presumably why you've got a problem with the short sound bite thing, because it doesn't allow the entirety of the conversation to be encapsulated.
- DEDestiny
Yeah, basically. And people... I'm- I don't like short sound bites because people don't engage with them like short sound bites. I don't make 30-second videos. If you hear me say something in 30 seconds, that's going to be an excerpt from a larger conversation. If you hear me say something like, um, "Destiny says that Palestinians have historically always been violent towards Israel, okay?" I think that's a true statement. That's a sound bite that you can cut, and what y- if you have that sound bite, what you would say is, like, w- in my opinion, you could say, like, "Oh, Destiny believes that Palestinians have historically always been violent towards the state of Israel." That's fine. But you can't take that and say, "Destiny thinks that Palestinians are solely to blame for the problems in Is- between Israel and Palestine," or, "Destiny only thinks it's Palestinians who have made mistakes historically with Israel/Palestine." Like, people will extrapolate so much from one clip instead of just watching the larger conversation or getting more of a holistic view on what's going on, you know? It- like, the equivalent would be, like, you hear a friend- like, if we conducted ourselves in the real world like people treat content creators, you'd be hanging out with a friend and you'd be like, "Hey, what do you wanna eat?" And your friend would say, like, "You know what? I could really go for a pizza right now." And you're like, "Pizza? Do you hate all Indian food?" Like, "What do you mean? No, I just want a pizza." "Do you hate steak?" "No, I just wanted a pizza." "Okay, well, you just said that you like pizza. Do you not like any other type of food?" Or it- it's just, like, so bizarre that you think in 20 seconds you can get a clip and have a, a full summary of, like, what somebody has, has thought about an issue or said about an issue.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you watch... uh, how much have you got to watch that Taylor Lorenz versus Libs of TikTok debate? Did you watch much of it?
- DEDestiny
I watched, there was- a part of it was posted on Twitter, I think, like, three minutes, and I watched that. Was it- how much, how much was, like, the total?
- CWChris Williamson
I managed to get 15 minutes into it.
- DEDestiny
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
And it was a car crash. It was, "So you say that books should be banned from schools. Which books have you read?" And deba- it was, "I, I, I've actually read this one and this one and this one." "You think that, uh, children's body parts should be cut off. Which parts exactly?" And, and it was just like this, I don't know, like an, uh, unstoppable object and an immovable force-
- DEDestiny
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... like, just clashing up against each other. And Taylor Lorenz has got this mask on outside, which just seems to be like, it's like purposefully- Yeah, like the... Is it- it's like the, the-
- DEDestiny
This is my joke though, like, every single- like, if somebody, like, so many Democrats got long COVID, so many Republicans got vaccine injuries. It's just so crazy how that worked out, you know? Every, every conservative, they got vaccinated, and there was 10 people that have died from vaccines. And every Democrat seems to know, like, five people with long COVID.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- DEDestiny
It's crazy how the- it sorted itself out that way, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. What's the- 'cause there's woke fishing. What's the other one, like trad fishing, I guess? But this is like trad triggering, right? It's like purposefully doing the thing... Uh, say what you want about Taylor Lorenz, like, she knows the optics of what she's doing. Have you seen her Instagram?
- DEDestiny
Uh, no, I have not.
- CWChris Williamson
It's just- I don't need to spend too much time on it, but it's a lot of, like, meta memes about what's going on, kind of about the situations, about all the rest of it.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So she's obviously playing this, like, huge...
- DEDestiny
Oh, do you think- do you think that the mask was part of the meme then?
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely.
- DEDestiny
Oh, I have so much more respect for her if that's the case.
- CWChris Williamson
100%. Yeah.
- DEDestiny
I thought she just, like... Oh, that's really funny then. Fuck.
- 41:15 – 49:54
Have We Passed Peak Woke?
- CWChris Williamson
this conversation the other day about whether or not we've passed peak woke. Like, whether or not-
- DEDestiny
I think we did about a year and a half ago. That's my guess.
- CWChris Williamson
When would it have been?
- DEDestiny
Um, I feel like (sigh) the- I, I think that there have been a couple court cases. One was near- I think it was about two years ago, it was at the Ober- it was at, uh, a school called Oberlin something, and I think a Black person tried to steal something from a bakery across the school and the students and the bakery called the cops and they- well, the person there. And the students protested saying the bakery was racist, but the college joined in with the students basically. And I think that, uh, college basically ended up owing, like, $30 million to the bakery over that lawsuit. It was huge. Um, there was that. There was the whole flushing the Harvard and the two other-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DEDestiny
... uh, administrators get raked over the coals on the weird-
- CWChris Williamson
Yay ho.
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- DEDestiny
That was really cringe, uh, and I think most people saw it as such. I think a lot of the pro-Palestinian stuff, which is unfortunate because they do need good international representation, but the marches and the- all of that was not good- was not good publicity for them. Um, yeah, and I just- I feel like people are looking at all kind of the cancel s- culture stuff a little bit less like, eh. I feel like anecdotally, like the word retard is coming back a bit more.
- CWChris Williamson
It is.
- DEDestiny
Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Sean Gillis used the word gay in his SNL. Did you watch this?
- DEDestiny
I have not.
- CWChris Williamson
So he-
- DEDestiny
Oh, he used gay and cracker, didn't he?
- CWChris Williamson
He used gray- gay, cracker, and retard.
- DEDestiny
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
All in-
- DEDestiny
My chat said that and they said I need to watch it because he said gay and cracker. I haven't watched it. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And retard.
- DEDestiny
Okay, wow.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, so yeah, he- he's doing this bit about, uh, how y- as a young boy, you're basically your mum's gay best friend. And he says, "You remember that? You remember when you were young and you were just gay?" And then starts rolling into the gay. So he kind of tempers it a little bit and plays it down the line.
- DEDestiny
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
But, uh, yeah, I think you're right. I think, like, those words coming back into resurgence and...There was a novelty around this, like actually being woke, being aware of all of the different social issues and this sort of performative empathy, toxic compassion thing that was like-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... novel, and made you seem progressive, uh, and aware.
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And now it seems like a meme.
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- 49:54 – 1:00:05
Reacting to Google’s Gemini AI Disaster
- CWChris Williamson
this most recent thing with Gemini, with Google's-
- DEDestiny
Oh God, I don't even know. What is this?
- CWChris Williamson
... Google's AI disaster. Have you not seen this-
- DEDestiny
No. My mind has not-
- CWChris Williamson
... at all?
- DEDestiny
... all studying for this debate. Yeah. What's this?
- CWChris Williamson
Allow me to educate you.
- DEDestiny
Yeah, go ahead.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, Google-
- DEDestiny
Oh, wait, wait. Is this the thing when when you ask for pictures, it's always of like Black people and Asian people?
- CWChris Williamson
That would be correct.
- DEDestiny
Okay, I've seen the memes. I don't know anything else about it.
- CWChris Williamson
It, okay, so I, I don't know it in depth, but I'll try and give you a good overview.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
It tried to be so anti-racist that it ended up being racist.
- DEDestiny
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
And it annoyed people on the left, because if you asked for an image of some Nazis, it was Black Nazis. And then it annoyed people on the right, because if you asked for an image of the Founding Fathers, it was Black Founding Fathers.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, everybody got pissed off, and then it sort of hid ... it did a combination of hid and erased history in this regard. But people were using it, using its anti-racism to be really racist. So, they would say something like, "Can you give me an image of 14th century philosophers drinking grape juice and eating watermelon?" And it would be four Black people drinking grape juice and eating watermelon.
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, just the whole retroactive changing of history after the Super Bowl thing where they collected, uh, corrected Alicia Keys' voice, I think at the start, it's all part of some, like a big constellation-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... of different data points that are making people very concerned about what's happening to history and what's an acceptable ... I- it also has implications for whether or not Google itself is a reliable searcher. Is it gonna deliver information-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... in a way which is actually factual, like given that so many people are gonna use that to try and find something out that's uh ... What if all of the real stuff is hidden down on page fucking five?
- DEDestiny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You don't know. So yeah, I mean, from a branding position, uh, very bad, very ... I could not have done it more poorly than this. And it's probably, according to Mike Baker, it's probably gone through a million different li- ... This isn't the sort of thing ... It's not like a Bud Light thing that perhaps was just one part of the marketing department that threw a case of six-pack at-
- DEDestiny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... at Dylan Mulvaney. This has gone through an awful lot of layers before it's got here. So, it doesn't seem like it's happened by accident.
- DEDestiny
So you think there was like an intentional ploy to make it like not racist, or ...
- 1:00:05 – 1:04:36
Is the Left More Unified Than the Right?
- CWChris Williamson
how unified is the left compared with the right, do you think, at the moment? This can be within the cultural commentary space, this can be within the people who support the side, this could be within the, uh, the politicians that are a part of it. Do you have a sense of how fractured each of these are, comparatively?
- DEDestiny
Um... I feel like the right is more unified, probably because they have a figure like Trump to unify around. The left is a little, feels a little bit more scattered, but there's also gonna become, eh, this also is like very dependent on the communities that you're in. Like I said, like if you're online on Twitter, your impression of the American left-... in the United States. There's like a crazy woke mob of like cancel culture children running around the streets. And then you forget that like if you go, you know, to like, uh, you know, like North Carolina or Georgia and you're talking to like 30-year-old, 35-year-old, 50-year-old like Black voters and stuff, these people are not woke, pro-trans people running around on the streets saying like, "My child needs HRT," right? This is not the demographic at all. Or even when you look at like older Democratic voters, like generally these people are gonna be kind of the, the, the cool old woke people, the, the cool, like the cosmopolitan elites who are like, "Yeah, I am a, I am a woke person. I believe in gay marriage." That used to be like-
Episode duration: 2:08:13
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