Afterthoughts: You Ain't THAT Important

You ever hit a point where the jokes stop landing because you can feel the hole underneath them? That’s where we start, with a messy cold open that turns into something more honest: why chasing a “whole phase” is really a sign you want to be whole, and why healing feels corny online but still has to be done in real life.

We also get into the grind of independent podcasting and content creation, especially the trap of becoming a reactor. When your “voice” is just a response to other people’s topics, you lose control of the conversation and you start building your platform around somebody else’s agenda. We talk about authenticity, creative slumps, and the real danger of tying your livelihood to your mic, because once dollars replace ears, the message gets corrupted fast.

From there, we widen the lens to community building, wealth, and responsibility. We question what it looks like when institutions extract from the Black community without returning real investment, and why “making it” is not enough if you never bring it back. We touch social media reality, VIP culture, celebrity politics, and why endorsements are not expertise, then close with nuance on voting, abstaining, and how power actually gets leveraged when people feel disenfranchised.

If any of this hits, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people find the conversation. What part made you rethink how you move day to day?

Transcript

Cold Open And Mic Apology

SPEAKER_03 0:00

You gotta run me the right way. If you wanna be with me, I can make you wish come true. You gotta make a no no don't please don't make no big impression on me. Let me make the big impression on you. You gotta rip me the right way. If you wanna be with me, I can make your wish come true. Yes, man, send me free, baby. If I'll be with you, bruh. I'm sorry, y'all. I don't even know how that sounded. I was probably yelling into the mic. I apologize. A million times before. I apologize.

Branding The Show Like AA

Whole Phase To Feeling Whole

Escaping The Reactive Content Trap

Keeping Art Pure Without Selling Out

Reparations And Giving Back Locally

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Hey, shout out to Ruben Stutter, man. He, you know, he went on American Idol and he won with uh what was it? You the wind beneath my wings. Boy, that's some heavy ass wind. Bro, just think about how much wind you need beneath Ruben Stutter to lift him up off the ground and let him fly. Oh dang, I got to wash the wind and stuff up, y'all. Excuse me. Excuse me, I didn't even check the media before I started it. Hey, but we're here um on AC's afterthoughts. And while I was preparing for the show, shout out to you, you know who you are. And I was I was just brainstorming because I've been thinking about how I'm gonna brand this show. And I'm gonna brand it like Alcoholics Anonymous. Hey, AC's Afterthoughts. Oh, why? Because I told y'all to put the bottle down, right? And now I'm gonna bring y'all to AA because we gotta talk about it. You know, but to put the bottle down, you know, got it on my arm. If you just can't drop it, then you got to go to AA. So we done left Big Baby's podcast, and now we at AA. AC's afterthought. I love that. I love that. But nah, man, uh, I didn't record last week because I didn't feel like it. Um so I didn't. And I apologize to uh for anybody who was listening for uh waiting for a show, uh, because that's disrespectful uh as a content creator. Uh but one thing about you all, if you become a fan of this page, like, subscribe, all of that stuff, comment, mainly subscribe and just become part of this family, is that uh I'm a moody, I'm moody. So sometimes when I'm not in the mood to do something, I'm in the mood to do something else, I might do it. But I'm working on my consistency. And we did come back with Washington winning. Uh so you know, I did tell y'all last two weeks ago that we was gonna do it the next day, but some stuff happened, it was serious, and you know, anyways, you know, I was thinking one day, and this was a week or two ago, I don't, I don't remember when, but I was doing some writing, some some pre-prep, and and the way that I write, right, is I just listen, I'll be listening to shows and I'll take notes. I'll walk around in real life and take notes. I'll I'll I'll have conversations, uh, whether it's text, on the phone, FaceTime, all of this stuff, right, and I'm taking notes, seeing stuff on social media. And so I'm writing one night, and I'm like, bruh, you know what? I'm gonna open the next show with I need another whole phase. But the crazy thing about it is that's the way I felt that day, and it was gonna be a funny topic. Oh, it's gonna be a funny topic. And then today I feel a little bit different because I thought I had some more whole left in the tank. But I don't. I I'm just looking for to be made whole and so that day, that time, I thought I needed a whole phase because I wasn't feeling whole. But no, I need a whole thing. I need to feel whole. I need to fill the hole in me. Pause. But really, there's a hole there. And in order to be made whole, you you have to fill that hole. So I'm on that journey. Yo, I hate using these cliche terms because uh I they're so cliche, but the and here's the thing. I'm serious when I say it. Oh golly, that's a terrible, that's a terrible run for a guy with a lisp. But uh I'm serious, but I'm talking about being on a journey and I'm still healing, you know. That's what I was talking about with my whole phase. It's like I'm still healing. Uh so I in my healing phase, sorry, let me stop. But now in the healing phase, bro, I gotta stop talking like this because I sound like the internet and I'm real life. But that's the problem with the internet, that now that the internet has become real life and it's not an extension of real life, you can't even talk about something honestly because now you sound like the internet and I'm talking on the internet, and I don't want to sound like the internet while I'm talking on the internet because I'm a real person. You can see me, you can touch me. Don't don't nobody pay me for these views, nobody pays me for these subjects, nobody pays me for these topics. And the funny thing about that is what, and I'm not even using the order that ChatGPT gave me. You know, I told y'all I was gonna do that. Well, I changed my mind. Why? Because I'm a moody creative and I'm an actual creative and I create, you know. I got a topic on here, something about uh artists, you know, artists shouldn't be heavily paid because once you add money and the art it becomes science and you ruin it, right? But no, uh Jason, Jason Whitlock, you know, with the fallout from the Cam Newton stuff, he and Marcellus Wiley had a conversation, and then there were follow-on conversations from that. And one of the one of the most important things I took away from that was the talk about Stephen A. Smith being a reactor. Oh, yeah, because Shannon Sharp talked about how the preparation process for first take versus undisputed was totally different because of who he was talking to. And it it hit me. It hit me why I was in this creative slump, why I didn't want to record the village vets, why some weeks I didn't want to record Washing winning, and and why I'm over here doing afterthoughts. And it's my priority, and it's not even about necessarily talking to people or the or the reach itself, it's more so about me just talking because from those conversations they talk about Stephen A being a reactor, and because I was watching all the different successful business models, I was building reactive shows, and as much of a as a reactor that I am, I like to control the conversation. I want to talk about what I want to talk about, and I didn't have that outlet for myself because on the Village Vets, I couldn't get off the stuff I wanted to get off in the ways that I wanted to because it didn't work with the show. And that's fine, it's it's it's no shots at anybody. Same thing with Washington Lennon. There are certain topics I want to get off on, and Parlay P it's not in his wheelhouse, or he just doesn't care, he doesn't view it uh with the same importance that I do. So you can't do that. And I'd be forgetting I'm an only child who's lived by myself as an adult most of my adult life, so I like to do stuff by myself, I like to do stuff my way. I like it my way. She do too, but still, neither here nor there. Um, and so I realized I had all of this creative fog and all of this frustration simply because I wasn't making myself whole by creating conversations. I was just reacting. I was being my biz version of a Steve, and I don't even I don't even like Steve. Even a lot of the people that I I listen to and I like, I think I'm better at crafting a conversation than they are. And and not crafting a conversation in real life, but crafting a conversation on the microphone because they got financial interest involved. And once you're once your actual livelihood's tied to this, you're cooked. I never want my livelihood tied to this. I like to make money off of it, but I never want my livelihood tied to it because I want to keep it pure. I don't want to have to make business decisions decisions when it comes about me speaking on my platform and speaking about what I want to speak about and the way that I want to speak about it. Because some of my favorite people who I've watched and studied for years, oh man, I see where their money is coming from based on their topic selection. And it's disgusting. But the whole idea of being a person on camera, on mic and talking, especially independently, is to create conversations. Yes, you want to make money off the conversations that you create, but the conversation itself, the message that you're pushing is more important than what you get back from it because you're doing it for the ears and not the dollars. See, once the dollars replace the ears, and you start caring more about the money than your message, corrupted. You're cooked. You became you became a smaller version of that mainstream platform that you hate. Now I'm gonna sit here and tell y'all there is a dollar figure, there is a life situation that could have my my content dictated. I'm not gonna lie to you. But even in the way that my content is dictated, no, it ain't gonna be dictated. You know, like I I really think about this, right? And I and I'm thinking aloud with you all. So as an audio experience, it may not be the best thing, but it's my afterthoughts. We're here in AA, we're talking, so that's what we're doing. And nah, nigga, I can't sell out. I might sell out for a period if it can help me independently, or I think it's gonna help me grab a larger audience that I can then mobilize. Because of my I believe in my ability to mobilize, I believe in my ability to connect. There are very few people who talk to me who don't talk to me. And I say that in the sense of when I decide to start talking to people, we have conversations and we have real conversations, especially if I'm interested in having a conversation, and this show is about conversations. So let me stop blowing myself. But point being is yeah, no, I can't sell out. Like I said, I might go do something, sell out for a larger audience, but I would then still bring that back home. And even if the message isn't as loud or as obvious as it is today, the message will still be there and it'll come back. Because I do believe that I'm being serious now, right? I've been serious the whole time. But you talk about selling out, and selling out, it's problematic if that's all you do. If you're like Steve and you're about a dollar who's a it's 50 cents, you're about Jay-Z. You think I did that? Boy, yeah, boy, I should have rapped. But nah, uh, when you when you think about people like that, then yeah, that's when selling out becomes a problem. But when you become a sellout for a cause, where you're selling out temporarily, it's not really selling out, it's buying in. Because sometimes uh you can't always stand on moral and principle every single time, you know, because if you in your micro decisions, if you're standing on moral and principle in the macro, you know, that's all you're standing on. But none of us are just our morals and our principles. We're we're nuanced, right? So what we want to do is if you're gonna quote unquote sell out, you're gonna go work for the man, you're gonna go do something like that. Or for me, take a bag from somebody that might that might curtail how we speak and what we talk about over here, it's gonna only to be to bring it back to go back home and be independent, to take what they give us and reinvest it into the company, right? You see where I'm going there? Because that's not actually selling out, that's buying in. And God forbid you make them enough money that they believe in you. So now you get somebody else to pay for what you're doing, and then you take what you make from that and you give it back to your people and your causes. You know, I was listening to Dr. Umar on um one of those uh sit-downs he does, uh Art Art of Dialogue. And and speaking of which, hey, I understand content creation, I understand this world that we're living in, but dog, I don't need to hear everybody talk about everything. I don't want to hear Dr. Umar talk about sports. I don't. I'm not interested in hearing Dr. Umar talk about sports. Why? Because Dr. Umar does not follow sports to the death necessary to talk about sports. How do I know that? Because he is so well read, he's so well spoken on the topics that he is uh uh invested in that it lets you know that he doesn't have time for sports. There are only 24 hours in a day, and we don't know what he does in his leisure time or how much leisure time he enjoys. So, hey my nigga, I don't want to hear your sports takes, but neither here nor there. Someone could say the same to me, and I'd say I I can get more out of the day than you, uh, but anyways. Dr. Umar was talking about reparations, and instead of talking about reparations from a from a the government owes us something point of view, which hey government, you definitely owe you owe us something, so yeah, run that. But he looked at it totally differently. He's like, no, no, no, we have these the these these rappers. Let me go to let me go to my text messages so I can remember all the people that he said I should pay reparations.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Okay.

Outlier Experiences And Shared Responsibility

Social Media Reality And VIP Myths

Why Celebrity Politics Misleads Us

Jay Ivey Faith And Consequences

Voting Abstaining And Political Power

Final Afterthoughts And Next Week

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Okay, no. So he was saying the church because the church is taking so much money out of the black community, but the black community's not seeing a return on investment. I I guess the church would say you get it when you get to heaven. But I'd say that the church at large, not individual churches, uh, y'all are y'all extracted enough wealth from from us that you could give something back so that we as a people can be wealthy, especially when you know that you can regularly extract that wealth. Why wouldn't you share it? Even if you're selfish. I I guess I don't understand somebody who's that selfish because my my take would be I would give a lot back just so they wouldn't even blow up my spot. He and then he also said the uh the fraternities, because you know, niggas is hopping and strolling at 50, and the fraternities and sororities are helping their people. But I'd ask, what are they taking away? What are they giving back? And what are they giving back to our people at large? Because this is not the early 1900s pre-segregate uh pre-integration, right? Where you almost needed these educated gangs now, do they give back to just their people, or do their people give back to the community at large? Because my take, I'm not associated with any of those organizations. I am associated with people who are in those organizations, I love them dearly, and this is not a knock on them, and this isn't a knock on anybody in a black Greek-letter organization, but not an accusation, an actual question: what are you doing for your people? Are you leveraging what you have to actually support your people? Or are you showing that you're supporting your people while supporting yourself? I don't know. I have no idea. But it's a question that I'd ask. Because if you're not giving it back to the community at large, and you're only giving back to your people, then what's your point? Why do you exist? Maybe you only need it to exist for a small period of time, but if you're not gonna give back to the community at large, you're not gonna uh uh uh uh set the example blaze paths. And I don't I don't mean just by setting the example the capitalistic way with your own individual success to show people, hey, if you follow me like Jay-Z, you can make it. No. Show me by you making it and then you giving it back and then showing others how to make it and give it back. So we we create a community of making it and giving it back so that every time somebody makes it, it comes back. So instead of being crabs in a barrel trying to pull each other down, uh-uh, no, no, no. We we we we acrobats, you know what I'm saying? We we we hopping on, we got hands and feet, you on my boot, up, boom, on my shoulders, boom. Next one up, boom, boom, and we keep passing them up so we can grab about climb about this barrel. That's how I look at it. Eat, you know, each one teach one. They say those who can't teach, I say those who will teach. Why? Because they will change our communities because they're actually taking the information that they have and they're sharing it with others. A lot of you who have made it don't want to share it with others. Me, one who thought I made it, I gave back, but I gave back in an unhuman humanistic way. I wasn't truly sharing with others. I was sharing with some, but I wasn't sharing with with the communities that I loved. I I was shitting on the communities that I loved. And God shitted on me. And I loved it. Why? Because it made me sit down and made me learn. Bro, I don't even know how I got here. We gotta create conversations. Alright, back on sequence. Uh, you know, it's selfish to be an outlier and expect everyone else to get it. And on the surface, that sounds like Common sense, right? It's selfish to be an outlier and expect everyone to get it. You're different from the norm. And so they can't relate to your situation. They can identify with it. They they didn't go through it. Most a lot of people don't go through it. But then when you actually tie real life to it, we get absolutely insane. We lose our sense of common sense. You know, we lose all of our senses because we care so much about the cause that we forget to pull our human side away from it. I think about race all the time, right? And I tell black people this all the time. I tell black people this, and they don't like it when I tell them. But it's honest. You expect white people to understand where you're coming from without understanding where they're coming from. That's crazy. Well, they should, okay, and they probably think, well, you should. So until you do, you can't expect them to do, you know. I'm just saying. And I'm not saying that black people should have to initiate the fit the fix to the race problem. No, I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying if you have a problem with it more than someone else, then you should probably, you know, ring the alarm, look for a solution, and find ways to solve the problem. But not only find ways to solve the problem yourself, your way, find ways to solve the problem. Period. However, we solve the problem, if it's that important to you. Because if it's not, it's not really a problem. And this doesn't even come from a race conversation. I was sitting in a meeting and a lady was telling a story about her son on the spectrum. And I don't want to be dismissive of people on the spectrum. I don't at all. And it sounds like I'm gonna say something dismissive right after that, but I promise you I'm not. But here's what I ask you to understand. And this is not specific to the spectrum, the spectrum is just an example. I talk about this a lot in race. A lot of us don't haven't lived your experience. A lot of us don't know what's going on. So we panic. But think about the times that you've panicked when it was somebody else's situation. Think about the time you saw somebody who looked different than you, you got scared, or somebody who thought differently than you. So you totally dismiss them. For whatever reason. It's the same thing. Yet people often expect us to understand their outlier experiences, relate to their outlier experiences, show grace in their outlier experiences, but you won't do it in mine. That's a dog that won't hunt, that's a gun that don't shoot. I ain't got nothing for it. I'm trying to eat. I need my dog to jump a rabbit. I need my gun to put it down when I pull the trigger. So you, if you're a hunting dog, get out there and hunt. If you are a gun, shoot the shot. Just make sure when my dog is hunting, you shoot the shot. Cause when your dog is hunting and that rabbit comes out them woods, I'm shooting it. Okay? And we're gonna split this bunny together. Why? Cause we got it together. But don't say, hey, let me use your dog. So hey, you shoot this rabbit for my dog, my dog jumped him. So I'm gonna take this rabbit home and and I'm gonna take it home. But then when my dogs jump one for you, and you shoot it, you take that one home? No. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take my dogs and I'm gonna hunt my rabbits. You're gonna take your dogs, you hunt your rabbits, you kill what you eat, I kill what I uh I eat what I kill, you eat what you kill, and guess what? We're that much further apart. Working twice as hard to get half as much. We put both our dogs together, we put both of our guns together, we can cover more ground, we can catch more angles. I'm telling you, some of my views may shift and change, but but my ideology, uh, my my end goal is consistent, and that's community. But if you're an outlier, accept that you're an outlier and accept that some people won't get it. And you work that much harder to make them get it, so they do. Because if it's about them getting it, you're gonna do what you can to help them get it and not just get it your way. And with that, hey man, your ideology is not your identity, it's a part of who you are. You know what I'm saying? Because ideology is not even consistent from person to person. Uh, you can be conservative and then support gay rights, right? That doesn't that that that doesn't make quote unquote sense, but you're fiscally conservative, you're you're you're socially conservative, but you know what? Your brother's gay, and you think your brother should be treated right because your brother's a good human being. Holy shit. Imagine if all of us said, hey, I know somebody from a disenfranchised community, and I put it in quotes because uh not to shit on disenfranchisement, but it's all these different communities, and I don't know how many are disenfranchised truly. Uh, because some would say they're disenfranchised and they could be doing well, and there are layers to these different communities that are doing well versus the other people who aren't. So you you you know, I mean, you got Jay-Z, and then you got that homeless nigga down the street. Like, come on, you know what I'm saying? So, if you want somebody to understand for your person, or you can't understand for your person who lives differently than you, thinks differently than you, why can't you do the same for other people that you don't know and give them that same benefit of the doubt? It goes back to trusting people. Get off your phone and talk to people, go outside, touch earth, speak to strangers. I promise you. I promise you, they speak back. And I promise you, most of them don't want to harm you. Nobody would watch the news if the news actually accurately depicted life. Nobody will watch, I won't say nobody. A lot of TV TV shows and movies wouldn't be that good if they had if they accurately depicted life. Why? Because life has its ups and downs, and sometimes those ups are high, and sometimes those downs are low, but a lot of times we're somewhere in the middle. And guess what? It's not entertaining, people don't want to watch that. So don't allow people who are trying to make money to capture your eyes to actually shape your view of reality. Your ideology is not your identity, it's just part of it. My network, social media reality. So I'm gonna put these two together. Made y'all think y'all matter. And the generation of people who listen to like Melanie Fiona and Keisha Cole and watch reality TV while also existing in this social media, like the and I'm talking about the MySpace, the Facebook, to Instagram, to OnlyFans generation. You know, people kind of round about my age, maybe a little bit younger. Y'all didn't have any hope. Y'all were cooked from the time y'all hatched. You got bitter women talking bad about how terrible telling you how terrible men are. You got prostitutes fighting over men, and y'all think they're fighting over love. No, they're fighting over access to money, who, as far as I'm concerned, are tied to the to the industry that's tied to, you know, you know, and you know, this country is built off of you know, you know, moving people against their will. Um, so I I just think this stuff made y'all think y'all matter because you can relate and you see these people who are mildly talented making money living like you, and it's like, hey, do you know what they did to get there? Are you willing to do that? No, so why would you model your life after them? And with that, you know, you shouldn't be able to pay to get into VIP. You're either important or you're not. And money doesn't speak to importance, money doesn't speak to the necessity for exclusivity, uh, because there's a difference between rich and famous. Oftentimes famous people are rich, and oftentimes oftentimes rich people become famous, but when you're rich, you can buy your fame. When you're famous, you can sometimes parlay your way into prosperity. It just, you know, because with fame, that means you can attract a crowd, which means if you can attract a crowd, people care about what you're doing, that means you can generate money. So if you can attract a large enough crowd to be famous, that means you can typically attract enough money to be rich. And if you can attract enough money to be rich, you can pay for the things that allow you to become famous. But see, VIP is for famous people. You know, I listen to the NBA players talk about when they go to the strip club, they get paid to show up because the club knows how much money they're gonna spend. Those people belong in VIP. When you think about major events, the very important persons, the people who sit up front, the people who get escorted in, the people who may come in different cars, whatever the event may be, those people are important. We didn't say very rich, you know what I'm saying? The very, you know, very rich person, we say very important person. Being rich doesn't make you important, it just makes you rich. It's a bunch of you rich fucks who can go out and just be in GP and you're gonna blend in. You ain't got no sauce, you ain't gonna swag, you ain't got no juice, that ain't you. There's a famous people, they go to VIP, it's gonna be, I mean, in GP, it's gonna be a uh a mob down there, so you gotta get them in the VIP. That's what it's for. The VIP section wasn't supposed to be for you to buy for you and your friends, and y'all just hang out there. No, it's for important people who want to go party, but can't necessarily party because of what uh of the lives they lead, being able to be amongst regular people while still being separated for their own security and safety. You niggas don't need safety, you don't need security. I'm you niggas. You know what I'm saying? I sit in VIP because that's the culture that we live in. But my preference is to be in population. If you listen to Village Vets, you heard me talk about how me and Todd, we go to the club, we get a section, we go on a population. Why? That's where the people at. I'm not important. I ain't nobody. That means I'm somebody that's a double negative, but I'm not. Who am I? Who am I? I'm AC Lee, right? I love myself, but I can go places and and and be good. I always want to be able to go places to be good because I'm I I'm I I bro I'm not important. I don't think anybody's that important, but that's my opinion. That's not the world opinion, and we have to go with what the world believes. A lot of you would would would be happier in life if you accepted that we live on the world's beliefs and not your personal beliefs, and you learn how to adapt around them and then uh uh have your beliefs, you know, pushed onto the world, but not the beliefs that you were taught, but you know, or you were not gonna say taught, but the beliefs that you were told you're supposed to have, no, the beliefs that you truly find that are yours. I was gonna talk bad about the young kids and the vines and stuff and tell them how we was doing vines when it wasn't no tree, wasn't no branch, it wasn't no writ, wasn't no dollar, we were just doing it for the hustle. But who wants to do that? Nobody wants to hear an old, lesser accomplished nigga tell the young niggas who get money that they they doing wrong. But the why ends are the future. Y'all remember that the why ends are the future, and if you don't like what you see, blame yourself. If you continue to not like what you see, blame yourself because it's on us to to influence these young niggas to give them game so that they can be better than us. And guess what? They may be better than us, we just don't like the way it looks. I had something about a men jealous and women, Kennedy Yumon said, but I don't remember what that was, it was stupid. But uh I got this Nick Cannon and Amber Rose thing going on because Nick Cannon went to talk in his politics and the Democrats were the party of the of the of the KKK. Yeah. And if your conversation is only about the parties themselves and not what backs the parties and what supports the parties and what pushes the the actual national agenda and the global agenda, then we're having the wrong conversation. I mean, who are you talking to? Who who's paying you to have that conversation? And since when do we care about what Nick, what Nick uh uh uh Cannon has to say about politics? Since when do we care about what Amber Rose has to say about politics? Since when did I care what Megan the Stadion has to say about politics? Since when did a celebrity's endorsement matter in politics? You are famous for being good at something. It's not politics. It's not for your your intellect, your acumen. You may have it, but until you show and prove, then we shouldn't accept that, right? So, black people, stop accepting, stop accepting uh uh uh our famous people's uh opinions. That doesn't mean anything. It's not worth the hill of beans. You know what I'm saying? It it's nothing. You're not gonna ask me how to make a hit single. Why? Because I haven't made one. But you might ask me about political science because I have a degree in it. You might ask me about supply chain management because I have a degree in it, and I've worked in it for shit, I don't know, 10 plus years, 11, 12 years. Yeah, I have experience in that. But y'all want to ask a celebrity, and think about the people you know who made music growing up. No knocks to those people. Somebody who's trying to make music is typically not somebody who's trying to be well-read on politics. Why? Because their interests aren't there. I'm not saying it can't happen. Somebody who's good at a sport, that doesn't mean they're they understand politics, they understand policy, they understand world history, they understand international affairs. No. They might. But what have they done in their life besides be rich and famous to prove to you that they that they know what they're talking about? If the idea is that they're rich and famous and you're gonna follow their endorsement, that's crazy. Understand how taxes affect them and how they affect you. Why would you follow the lead of somebody whose finances aren't aren't in the same place as yours? Yeah, they can talk about our community, we got to build it up, but what are you actually giving back to the community? What risk are you taking to give back to the community? Because you have a wider width uh risk threshold than some of us financially, while maybe smaller in your public appearance. But why should you listen to people who aren't coming from the same life that you are, living the same life that you are and gain their knowledge in a similar space in life, or show that they have knowledge and they can scale it down to different communities or scale it to different communities? I shouldn't say scale it down because I'm telling you six months ago, a year ago, I was coming on this platform saying things from an elitist point of view, and maybe the ideology was right, but the approach was wrong, the implementation was wrong. Why? Because it wasn't tied to the people, and these and these people are further away from the people, but you want to listen to them, okay. Okay, uh oh, don't trust dudes who only got pretty girls online, like if they can't bag or talk to uh uh uh a baddie in real life, don't trust them. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about Jay Nivey. I don't know how deep I'm gonna go into this. Uh, I talked about it some with Parlay Pete last week. And Jay Nive some would say he crashed out, some would say he threw his career away. And I would tell them to pause because if his if he's doing if he's doing what he's doing for God, the basketball career doesn't matter. It's easy for me to say that because I was not making that type of money. I don't have the potential or ability, I don't have his earning potential from playing basketball. So it's easy for me to say that. But I'm only saying it from a religious point of view. I'm not saying it from my own personal point of view because I don't know what I would do in that situation. I don't know what led him to that. And to be quite frank, with my religious, my Christian journey, my religious journey, my my relationship with God wouldn't take me to where he's going because I understand the word differently. And also as a personality, I'm different. And see, I think far too often we want to judge people through our lens. That was a topic I had up there. But we want to judge people through our lens and then knock them because they're not making the decisions that we would make. But what if you look through their lens? What if you look at their risk profile? What if you look at what they're looking to gain from their decision versus what they're expected to lose and what their comfort is with that? What if Jay and Ivey said, I've made enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life, and I can do, and if I want to go out here and I want to uh take a stance for God and take a stance on the word as I understand it, how it's as it's been taught to me, uh through someone who I believe to be called by God. Uh you know what I mean? Like, who are we to tell him he's wrong? And shout out to the players supporting him. I'm not saying I agree with him, but I support him taking a stance. I support him being a different person. I think I support him being uh, you know, sticking out, stand out above the crowd, because he shouted out loud. Now some stuff he was shouting, different conversation. But he shouted out loud something he believed in. More of us should stand on what we believe in and accept the consequences that come with it. Because when we become a slave to the dollar, we'll do anything for the dollar, we'll dance for the dollar, we'll lie for the dollar, we'll steal for the dollar, we'll kill for the dollar. That's why we need community. Because community, when you ain't got a dollar, your community gone. Ooh. We need layer communities, but you know. I'm trying to think. Is there anything else that I really want to talk about? Because I talked about creating responding. I don't know if I've talked about why people cover the media. It makes sense, but it's just a self-sucking dick. Um I don't want to hear. I don't want to. I probably America. Oh God, here we go. Everybody, this is the last one, I promise you. I'm closing it out on closing it out on this one. Everybody's a fucking political scientist. I saw a clip from The Breakfast Club. I don't even remember what happened in the clip. But Charlemagne was adamantly questioning this person's uh the person said they didn't support Trump or Koblen, they didn't vote. Well you know because that's my political right. That's my American right. Hey, I think people should vote. Why? Because that directly impacts what's going on. But I also understand if you feel disenfranchised by those who are running for office and you don't think any of those people speak to your needs, why should you support them? Here's something that you fake theoretical political scientists don't understand who never took a scope in Methods class. If people stop responding, somebody else will. And I vote. And I support voting. But I also support abstaining. You know why? Because I understand the nuances of politics. And I understand that you have to do different things to leverage power. And there's not a one, there's not a one-size-fits-all answer to actually getting uh your voice heard politically. You know why I think that? Because I'm an actual political scientist. I'm not masquerading as one on somebody's network. Those are AC's afterthoughts, man. Hoped it helps you. Hoped it was therapeutic. Uh come back, we'll do this again next week.