AA: I Hate Internet Intellectuals

Some days you wake up and you do not want to do the work. You want to sit in your feelings, disappear for a bit, and let the day happen to you. We push back on that impulse with a simple idea: manage your peace, manage your perspective, and still show up. You cannot control everything that hits you, but you can control your response, your preparation, and the habits that keep your life moving forward.

From there, we zoom out into the attention economy and the way modern media and social media algorithms hijack focus. Celebrity drama, recycled relationship debates, and nonstop hot takes can trick you into caring about things that do not match your real life. We talk media literacy, cleaning up your feed, and why so much “analysis” today is really engagement bait designed to keep you reacting. The goal is not to ignore the world, but to stop letting manufactured narratives drain your time and money.

We also get into the rise of internet intellectuals and why credentials alone do not equal truth. When an “expert” goes on a big platform without strong interviewers, context disappears and confidence starts to sound like fact. We break down how to ask better questions, demand clear definitions, and frame arguments with real parameters so you can think critically instead of repeating someone else’s conclusions. Then we connect it all to consumerism, luxury culture, and financial freedom: chasing rich can still leave you trapped, while chasing freedom changes everything.

If this conversation hits, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. What part of your life needs less distraction and more clarity right now?

Transcript

Showing Up When You Feel Low

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hey y'all, what's up? Um, get ready. Getting ready to do this show. Well, I'm actually doing the show right now because I've already pressed the RM record and I'm talking into a microphone and there's a camera looking at me, right? But, anyways, I really don't feel like doing the show today. I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you. I I really want to just sit here in my house and sit in my feelings and sulk. I'm just gonna be perfectly honest with you. I'm not gonna tell you why, because it's none of your business, it's my personal life. I'm gonna keep it personal. But in that, uh just let you know, really didn't feel like doing the show today. And not because I didn't want to talk about what I want to talk about. It's just like just want to sulk. But what does sulking do? It does absolutely nothing. You know, I know a lot of y'all are tough, you don't have feelings, you know, strong black man. I got it. Man, nigga, I cry. I'm gonna cry baby. I I'm not ashamed to cry. You know what I mean? I cried the other day. Well, I didn't cry, cry, but you know, I teared up. No, I'm not gonna cry on the pod today. I can't imagine that I'd ever cry on a podcast, but you you never know. Uh, but anyways, we're here and we're gonna do the show. Why? Because I went to work today. Shit. Why would I not do what I love just because I'm not feeling great? It's it's insane. And as human beings, you know, we talk about mental health all the time and protecting your peace, protecting your peace. Man, manage your peace, manage yourself. Take control of what you can control and work from there. And what you can't always control is your thoughts and your perspective. You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond. You can control how you prepare yourself. So I think it's an important message to just put out here. Yo, man, take care of yourself, but don't allow what's going on internally to stop you from doing what you need to do or stop you from doing what you want to do. Don't let what's going on internally stop you from anything. Actually, take that and allow it to propel you to the places you want to go. I'm not gonna tell you how to do it because I'm not a certified, uh, uh licensed, clinical, well-studied human being who can give professional advice here in this country. I mean, I could privately, like that. Um, what's her name? That Cheyenne Bryant, Dr. Cheyenne Bryant, you know, she does private, you know. She does, and you know, because of her style, the way she prefers to do things, yeah, you know, but anyways, we'll get we'll get to that a little bit later. Uh, but you know, I told y'all a long time ago, I'm a hypocrite, you're a hypocrite, who cares? I hate the media, and it's mainly the it started with the mainstream media, and then now I'm seeing where it's trickling down to the non-traditional forms of media, and you know, I could I guess I could fall into that category, but I I don't think so. And I was talking about this in a group text earlier today, and uh, one of the guys, Josh Holsey, was like, isn't that what you do? No, I actually try to generate my own topics again now that I'm now that I'm doing a show loss, a solo show. I try to generate my topics myself based off of my personal life experiences, based off of conversations I've had, based off something I've read, listened to, heard. You know, I try to build the topics that way, not necessarily tether it to the algorithm. Is it more profitable to tether it to the algorithm? Absolutely, but that's not what I want to do. I want to teach. I I want, I look at this, you know, this is a reflection of my life. And any type of production that I produce, I want it to be a reflection of real life. Now, I can't speak to any and everybody that I have on the platform because you you tell them the expectations, you you center the show around that, but at the end of the day, they're in control of what they say and what they do. But the purpose of this platform is not to just analyze what's happened and react. Some of it is to be proactive or take what's going on and pull bigger themes out of it, you know. Like I I think about Meg and Clay, right? I could care less about Meg and Clay. It's he's not my friend, she's not my friend, they're not my loved ones. I don't know them, I've never met them. The closest thing I've got to Meg was seeing her on stage and those knees. Yeah, nah, she's a great performer on stage, okay? But the whole idea of people being on the internet reacting to this, her posting it, and all of this fake stuff going around, the real stuff, whatever the case may be. Yo, it's just an attack on your attention and to put money in their pockets, take money out of your pockets, so on and so forth. So, why give it life? I'm not gonna hold you. Almost anytime I see some of that nonsense on my on my timeline, man, I don't follow the page. I started to clean up my algorithm because, man, this stuff is you start, you see it so much you start to deem it to be important. And the industry is built off of you seeing more and more of what they do. You know, it's not enough to gather, you know, to capture an audience, educate the audience, market promote your stuff, put it out there for the people who want to receive it. No, we're gonna force this down your throat. And I honestly, honestly, what we're gonna do is we're going to create, we're gonna re-litigate conversations over and over and over again based on whatever narrative we want to push or whatever fattens our pockets, and that's what the people consume, and it expands their lives to places that they're not prepared to go to. You start worrying about what's going on three countries over across the water, and it may affect you or it may not, but it takes your focus away from the things that are actually in your day-to-day. I think about a lot of the relationship conversations that you see. How much do the men have to make? Bro, don't none of y'all make that much money. Y'all aren't in those in those arenas. That's not your life. You are consuming real life media that's supposed to be a reflection of real life, but it's not a reflection of your real life. It's not in line with what the life you live. So you create this expectation, these expectations, and you start to try to live in a world that you're not adjacent to. Or you try to chase the things of that world, I'm guilty of it. You end up in stupid debt for no reason. So, like, don't let this media stuff and this broadcasting distract you because it complicates everything. I was listening to a sports podcast the other day. I was like, hey, let me hear what hear what Rocillo has to say. I I I liked him, and I haven't listened to him in a while, but maybe he's got some good stuff going on. And then he starts breaking down basketball and he starts using these non-traditional stats and this and that. And I'm like, bro, you think about it. The sports podcast is like the sports talk show, the sports radio show, it's like the column. Uh maybe even just a sports article, you know, depending on the level of analysis that the the the the podcaster or broadcaster is using versus opinion. But think about it. Think about the newspaper, think about the radio, especially a national radio show, right? They're talking to you about things that you did not see, could not see. So they're painting a picture for you to be aware. It's now shifted from they don't tell you what, they're not telling you things that you missed, they're telling you what you saw. And there's nothing wrong with gathering other people's perspectives and doing that and trusting their quote-unquote expert opinion. But I'm gonna be honest with you, if you've watched basketball your whole life, you've played the game to some level, you've been around players, uh, you've been around coaches, you've been around the game. There are certain principles that just remain constant. And when I watch the sport, if I know what's going on, I know what I saw. You can't tell me what I saw. You can't tell me a player's better than another player. Based on what? What criteria are we using? We talk about best player in the league, MVP, we talk about all of this stuff, but we don't we don't create parameters. So it complicates things, you know. We're talking past each other more than we're talking to each other because we're coming to conclusions, different conclusions, but we're using different data. No shit. Some would say some media platforms do it by design. Why? Because it boosts engagement. The more engagement they get, that means the more eyes they've captured, the more people who will interact with them. So guess what? They're gonna give you more of that stuff and they get more money. Don't get me wrong, I want engagement, I want interaction, but I want the interaction and engagement to be pure based upon somebody's response to something that was said. I'm not gonna just say something to get a certain response. Now, in real conversation, you might say something to get a response to set something up and make another point, but it's it's for it to not be a back and forth, and I mean the way I used to listen to certain podcasts, the way I know other people do, and the way that sports opinions are reflected in real life versus the way they used to be, the way they're reflected on shows, everything is damn near consensus, and it's like, what? Some things are, yeah, no shit. But other things are like, man, I'm I'm not seeing what you're seeing. And it's okay. Fill me in. Show me what you see that I don't see. Break down your analysis, get into the nuances, explain these non-traditional stats and why you value them over traditional stats, or why you try uh value statistics over the eye test, or how much you value the eye test, or why you value the eye test more. All of these things are important, but that's not what we do. We make things yeses and no's and rights and wrongs, and it's not, somewhere in between. Another way the media complicates things is let's see. I like to find stuff to sound unique, confuse you, to bro. I don't know what this means. The average person doesn't know what this means. You are supposed to be the expert who takes this dense information, breaks it out, and then delivers it to me in a compact way so that I can understand it. It's supposed to fill in the gaps for me. It's like an author. If you're writing a book, let's just say a historical book, you're covering history, you're conducting interviews, you're doing research. The point of your book is to take all of these information from these sources to inform your reader. And yes, you want your reader to engage, but like dog, if the reader doesn't understand the book, they're not going to read it. Or it turns into people uh uh using buzzwords and catchphrases and quoting stuff exactly to the T, and it's like, bruh, no, that's not real. Nobody actually speaks that way. Intelligent people shouldn't speak that way unless they're speaking to other intelligent people on their level who have the same similar knowledge base that they have. You gotta break things down. Just don't give me a quote, just don't give me a scripture. Okay, what what does it mean? What does it mean to you? What do you take away from it? Or are you just repeating what somebody else told you? And the last thing, uh, maybe the last thing, is there's more, there's more of a focus on respect and access and allegiances than information. You know, especially, especially when you're talking about journalists or people presenting themselves from a journalistic point of view, or people perform uh presenting themselves from a historical point of view, uh providing analysis on modern things that people like need or want to know. I'm not even gonna say need to know, because a lot of these industries are just made up. Like, who gives a damn about what's going on with Love Island? That shouldn't be a you shouldn't be able to start a podcast. I should I say you shouldn't be able to start a podcast off of it, like economically, yes. From a business standpoint, absolutely go for it. But from the point of view of why are we talking about entertainment? It's already why are we analyzing entertainment like it's real life? We don't need analysis for entertainment. Again, just a distraction, complicating things, feeding information into your head that you think you need, but it provides very little value for you. Unless you're gonna start a reality show. I mean, just I mean, we gotta be smarter with where we put our time and attention, I promise you. But yeah, you you don't get like look, Ryan Rossillo had talked about Diana Roussini. Dan Lebatar didn't want to talk about Diana Roussini. Oh, that's my friend. Okay, so what? Analyze your friend. You were in the business of providing analysis on these things. You'll talk, you would talk about it if it wasn't your friend. What's the difference? You can talk about your friend uh uh respectfully. I mean, at least Lebatar told us he's biased. And a lot of my a lot of these these comparisons come from sports media because I've spent more time uh ingesting sports media because uh I used to want to be in sports media, but I don't watch a lot of tr other political, uh uh, I don't watch the news. I can't man, I can't watch that stuff. You know, you think about the the hell you can't trust them. Think about what just happened this weekend, and all the stuff that's come out about that. But we'll get to that a little bit later. The last thing I don't like is bros, more money in cloud for entertaining. Just look at our networking, man. Look at what's on ESPN, look what's on Fox News, look at what's on CNN, look at what's popular, podcasts, Joe Rogan, Bill Simmons. It's a lot of opinions. Hell, I'm on here giving opinions. But I like to say that my opinions are backed in education. And uh if you question those and you question his philosophies, you know, look it up. Leave a comment, we can talk about it. I can tell you where I derive a lot of my information from, and we can go back and forth because I think it's important for people to have conversations and not just be yelled at and talked at like Stephen A. Smith. I could get on here and just yell, and you need to leave the American education system is flawed. But man, who want to be talked to like that? Most people don't. I don't, so I'm not gonna do it either. And and and you know, I was listening to this podcast the other day, right? Joe Budden and the gang, and I listened to them. I think they're funny. They had Dr. Cheyenne Bryant on, and I had to listen to this thing in waves because it's three hours of nonsense. Not nonsense, three hours is a lot of nonsense and a lack of accountability. But for starters, we've got to get these dumb niggas off microphones. Here's what I don't here's what I think is is is unsafe and unhealthy. Is having an expert, quote unquote, come onto a platform, provide expertise, but not having adequate interviewers to to check things. And oftentimes I see it in black media, um, because it's the media that I that I consume the most, um, is that we'll have these entertainment shows and they'll bring these quote-unquote educational figures on, and they just don't have they're not read enough or educated enough on the topics to properly poke holes in the argument. And the purpose of point poking the holes, it's not about making the person wrong or making them uncomfortable, but challenging their views in a way that they are forced to defend their views based on the information that they've consumed. But when you don't have that, they can talk over you, talk around you, use big words, quote things that you can't reference and properly contextualize, and you say, Oh, that sounds smart. One thing I've learned as a communicator, if the people don't understand what you're communicating, it's poor communication. I can think of countless stories and countless individuals in my life where we talk past each other. Why couldn't agree on facts? I'm not pointing fingers. It's just it's just honesty. And when you can't, when you can't have an actual back and forth and provide true defenses for the information, the learning is limited. And we don't want to limit learning. Uh, but I really, I really, really, really have in uh issue with internet intellectuals. And listening to that conversation kind of took me there. And I and I put them in two baskets, right? You have these classically formally trained PhDs, degree-having people who provide expertise based on their perspective, their research, so on and so forth. But they're in the entertainment world. And I think there needs to be more education and entertainment, and I think there should honestly just be less entertainment, more education and broadcasting and networking. But I don't trust these internet intellectuals, and I call them internet intellectuals because yes, they have business, yes, some of them may be professors, they may be doing good research, writing books, all of this stuff, but they live on the internet. They're on the internet pushing these general views, they're on the internet not providing context. And I think it's so important to provide context. They operate in generality so much, and and people will take this information and say, oh, hey, they got a PhD. Well, so what? A lot of people have PhDs. I know people with PhDs, masters, JDs. I don't necessarily think all of them are smart. I think they work hard, I think they're smart enough. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna follow what they say because I know how some of them live. You know, we don't know how these people live, and we just not me, but a lot of us just take their words for granted because they're a PhD. But if they're a true PhD, why aren't you pushing learning? Or you're a true intellectual, why aren't you pushing learning? Not learn what you know, think the way you think, come to your conclusions. No, learning. Maybe that challenge helps you learn. It's a cra it's a crazy thing out here. You know, we live in a world where we where we don't want our information challenged, we don't want anything. Challenge. We want to be supported by people. We want to be loved on all the time. But here is the thing, man. You can't get education without, without, without challenge. If you take everything for granted or believe what you know to be the truth is the only truth and nothing but the truth, then you're you're missing the point. And if somebody is a quote unquote intellectual and they're not pushing you to find things for yourself and come to your own conclusions, then don't trust them. Because they're a snake hole salesman. They push these internet lives and live different real lives. And the person sitting on the computer or on their phone with the headphones in, listening to this, they don't know that. They don't look at it as, hey, this works for the algorithm. I'm pushing this to make more money to drive up engagement. Maybe I am a true intellectual, but I've sold out my intellect for money. And once you start to see intellectuals selling out for money, I'm not saying you can't be intellectual and get to the bag. No, there are there are smart things that deserve to make money. But when we start getting into that world of thinking and philosophy and psychology and sociology and a lot of, you know, the people stuff, man, it takes, it's not a one-way thing. And if money is what's driving you and pushing that, and that's your primary source of income, I don't trust it. I shouldn't tell you not to trust it. I say I don't trust it. Because what's your instake? What's funding you? Who's funding you? And what do they want us to know? Now, another set of internet intellectuals I don't like are just the people who done started watching YouTube docs reading, but they don't open their minds up, you know. Again, they they probably follow some of these same internet intellectuals, uh, the formerly trained internet intellectuals, and regurgitate a lot of what they say, or they find these dark, cryptic uh alternative history people and just eat up what they're saying. Hey, they gotta make money too. And now I'm somebody who gets into alternative history. I really like alternative history. Uh studying alternative history has changed my mind on a lot of things, but it's only changed my mind because I had a mind that was built off of traditional history. And for all the years that I've studied and learned traditional history and believed it to be true, traditional Western history, excuse me, I've now kind of changed course. And now I'm looking at history from different perspectives because I'm trying to learn the different perspectives, right? I'm trying to research the intentions behind the perspective that's broadcast. Because then when you understand that, you also understand what to do with the truth. I've spoken to a lot of people who know more about history than me before I did, right? But you have the truth and you have nothing to do with it, or you don't have anything to reference it with to then get somebody who doesn't believe what you believe to come across. I was having a conversation with somebody uh earlier today, actually, and we were getting into like some world stuff, some United States stuff, and the person made a point, and I was like, Well, what makes you believe that? It's like, I know that. How the hell do you know? And got to explain the process, and I'm like, well, that doesn't equate knowing to belief that could be right. I'm not getting into the content of your argument, the substance of it. No, I'm just saying, on the surface, I reject that because you say you know. And if I've learned anything on this journey of gathering more information, it's that I don't know that much. I'm comfortable in saying I know more than a lot. I'm comfortable in saying that I'm constantly analyzing and I'm constantly learning. But I also know that I don't know anything. Excuse me, I don't know much, I know something. And I look at it like this go to a party, a fight breaks up. Everybody there is likely gonna tell a different version of the story for whatever reason. So if that can happen in our day-to-day life, why can't we apply that same thing to anything to history? And a lot of these non-classically educated, formally educated internet intellectuals don't know how to frame an argument. Like, hey, what data set are we using? What time period are we using? Okay, now let's narrow that down. Now, what assumptions are we going into this conversation with? I know this may sound boring and scientific, but it's the it's the fucking truth, man. Like, okay, now that we've we've level set, now we can now we can spar back and forth or converse back and forth to get to an answer. But a lot of these non-formally trained internet intellectuals haven't done real research, haven't had to pull conclusions from a data set, and then like shrink that data set and speak to those conclusions based off of the shrunken data set as opposed to a more broad data set, right? Because when you have a more broad data set, you can come to more conclusions. There's more opportunities for variance, you know, there's more opportunities for outlier for outliers, or smaller data set, right? Your outliers affect it more, where in a larger data set, they affect it less. It's just you know you just if someone's never done it and they don't know how to do it, it then makes it hard to have a conversation. And then again, if we can't communicate effectively, then what are we doing? It's a waste of time because we're gonna talk past each other instead of talking to each other to each other. And I hate polymarkets, I think it's nasty and predatory, and and it's like, oh well, it's just people, the the lines are set by the people based on where the money goes. So it's Vegas. Yeah, the bookmaker set the line, but the cash affects the movement of the line. Uh uh, yeah. This is no different, but now it's in your phone, and there's promotions, and there's the flashing, lights, lights, lights. There's the threat of addiction, there's all of these different different triggers, and I shouldn't say triggers, there are a lot a lot of different stimuli. And gambling and and throwing money into these markets. I mean, like, this call she shit is bullshit. It should be illegal. Like, why why how can I wager on world events? Because if I can wager on world events, that means the people who are in charge of said world events could wager on those world events. Sounds like another way to extract money from the working class and give it to the elite. You know, I really look at a lot of things so differently now when I learn to follow the money. And you look at who owns things, you look at who makes rules, who they're close to, what the rules or laws, who they benefit as they shift. Look at wars, you can look at all of these different things and see okay, what's actually going on here? Like I saw somewhere where one state wants to help arm the IDF, or no, no, no, no, no, I take that back. Wants to give Americans who fight in the IDF American military benefits. No, nigga. You're not fighting, you're an American citizen fighting another military. I think that's bad enough. And I know, I mean, because I know when shit, we don't give the United States, we don't give people security clearances that they uh are dual citizens. And just from a military point of view, I wouldn't trust a dual citizen. Yeah, they may mean well. I just know, because at the end of the day, your interests are in the interest of our country. And if you are fighting in the if you're in the military, your interests need to be aligned with the the country's larger national interests, international interests, which is why I got out of the military. One of many reasons, but the main reason was I ain't aligned with this shit. I don't want to be part of the war machine anymore, so I'm not. At first, I didn't think it was a war machine, then I fit off. It's a war machine. Gained more information, came to new conclusions, changed my life. Some could say I messed up, especially given how I'm living right now. But I'm okay with it, and that's the beauty of life. Just be okay with what you do. Man, I'm all over the place right now. Uh another thing, I just what's the point of living a life of luxury? Or even striving to live a life of luxury? You know, I saw something that uh or heard something actually from Dr. Cheyenne Bryant that said family's the real wealth. Now, mind you, she pushes that on the internet, but nothing about her her real life uh uh says that family's wealth, and she's more interested in money being her wealth, but family's wealth. So I think we should look to reprioritize our lives because yes, having money is nice, and yes, it is a means to an end, but what's your end? If money is the end, how much is enough? When do you know you have enough money? What's the difference in a luxury t-shirt and a non-luxury t-shirt? I'm not saying don't buy luxury things, I buy name brand things, I don't buy just all generic stuff, no. A lot of that is because I was caught in the whirlwind of consumerism and thought that's what I'm yeah, it's a status symbol. But is it really? Why do you why are you projecting your stat like your your status is your status? And yes, symbols help people identify your status, but symbols also can confuse people about your status. Because what's what are your priorities? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I think traveling's great, but I don't think going into debt to travel is smart. I think going to other places and learning about other things is important. But how much money are you investing in your own community? You go over here, you go shopping, you stay in a hotel, you boost up their economy, but what are you doing to help local vendors in your economy? You can go give the global entities your money, you can get your Balenciaga boots, you can get your Louis V luggage, you can get all of that stuff, but does it actually change how you change how you transport your stuff? You know, like is it an actual status symbol that matters? Because I imagine if you fly into the wrong place with the right luggage, you might not get it. Because you're like identifying, you're you're projecting your status to people who have less status than you and want your status, so they're gonna try to take from you. There's a time and place for everything. And luxury luggage is probably for flying private, but who can afford to do that? You know, and I promise you, I promise you, I'm not against luxury. I just understand why a life of luxury is like a goal before a life of stability. And I see it so much from unstable communities. Like I want all this luxurious stuff, why? But for other people, what does it do for you on the inside? If it does something for you on the inside, have at it. If it's a reflection of where you came from and where you are today, go for it. But nigga, if you just want the chain, the car, the crib just to say you have it, you want the money just to say you have it, or just to get the women or get the girl, well now that's what you are. You're the money. And we're more than money. And the sooner we learn that we're more than money, and everything's not about money, money just again, we have to, we have to exchange something for something. Nothing's free. Everything takes time. And because we live in a world that's tied to damn near everything costing something, well, you got to pay something. But I promise you, we got to get out of this mindset of of money, money, money. I want more and more and more. Hey, the quickest way to increase revenue, excuse me, increase profit is to cut cost. So if you want more money, have less, buy less, spend less, do less, do what you need to do. I'm not telling you to be a hundred percent minimalist, but understanding that the best way, like cost savings, is cut costs. You know what I mean? Why do you think they uh do layoffs when when companies are losing revenue? It's like, oh, we're losing revenue, our profit margins are shrinking. Yep, cut some costs, get this labor up out of here. Sure, we could like invest more money into marketing, invest more money into RD to try to create a superior product, raise prices. All of those things help, but it's cutting costs. So if your goal is to be rich, yeah, you got to make more money, but you also got to spend less. And I'd say, I challenge you. Don't want to be rich. Want to be free. Because a lot of people are rich, but they're not free. I was having a conversation with a friend earlier this week. We're talking about NBA players and stuff, and I'm like, man, they barely even own their money. They gotta hire agents to negotiate contracts that are damn near already set. How old are you? What's the market? What are your statistics? What's your character record? Like, you know what I mean? Pretty much set in stone. I don't need a I don't need an agent to go negotiate that for me. I'm popular or I'm not. Either companies want me to do an endorsement deal or they don't. But the second a player pulls a Jade Ivey, it's like, oh, he's probably out of the league. Oh, well, he's still got his money. Yeah, but he has a specific set of skills that he spent the majority of his life doing that's not the most easily transferable skills. Also, what he'd done was projected on a national, international spotlight. Why? Because he plays in the NBA and why because media companies and blogs can make money off of talking about it or posting about it. Yeah, all of that stuff goes into it. But now he's he's pretty much done and he can't, his earning potential is hurt. Now he may be able to go back into the lab and find ways to invest his money, keep his money going, keep maintain his lifestyle. But but this guy, he he he he publicly stood up for his religion, and now he doesn't have a job. Well, uh, the First Amendment doesn't protect you against employment, just is incarceration. Well, shit. What's the difference in being poor as hell and tied to the government or locked up? Not saying that's J. Nogi's case, but just in general. Like employment is so much tied to our freedom and our ability to live in this country today, as opposed to back in the 17 in 1776 when this good country started, or 1783, when the uh excuse me, 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, um life was different. Majority of the company was on farms, and you didn't need as much education, so you were able to function. Yeah, it's going to jail is the worst thing because you can still get a job, you can still support yourself, but it's different today with this cancel culture with people getting fired and doxxed and all that, bro. What are we doing? Allow people to be free. Let's work together, let's not work for each other. Yes, we need a hierarchy. Yeah, you just can't make every community decision, but damn, does every negotiation have to be a fucking win-lose? Like Pablo Torrey had Demari Smith on his show today talking about the the the jankiness of the NFL and the NFL Players Association, and how they said, hey, hey, these guaranteed contracts. How JC Treder stepped down, but then got to come back because he was elected. It's like, huh? But he gets to come back. You know, he was part of the group that buried the the lawsuit, and then now he gets to preside over the oh, that's shake. That's janky. Oh, and back in the old CBA negotiations before the lockout, the owners that plan to get four billion dollars to cover their cost for the year in case there was a lockout, so they could come back and negotiate those 18th, the 18th game. You're a billionaire. What more do you want? Is it more money, more power? Or do you just get off to oppressing people? And I'm not talking about racism, oppression. I'm not just saying people bending to your will, you controlling them. We gotta let people be free. And then saying that normal isn't normal. There's no such thing as normal. Like we try to say, oh, that's normal. Oh, you're ADHD, oh, you have this, or maybe we're all just on a spectrum and we're not the same because we're genetically different and we come from we have different experiences, we have different upbringing, and we respond to stimulus different. It's a lot of it's a lot that goes into the makeup of a person's character and their decision-making process. And I just don't think there's anything um um at no such thing as normal. And I'm gonna close us out, you know, talking more about the media complicating things. Golly. Uh White House correspondence dinner, shots fired, president safe, no injuries, from what I what I read. I don't care about the shooter's name, it's uh it's insignificant to the conversation, uh, because I'm not getting into that because I have my thoughts. But shortly after the shooting occurs, we have a bunch of media members, some say were paid by by the Mogaverse, to tweet about the fucking ballroom. This is why we need a ballroom. Who gives a fuck about a ballroom? I get, yes, the White House should have a ballroom. But this is what we're talking about when there was an alleged attempt on a president's wife. But also, there's so much mistrust for the media. Do we believe that this actually happened? There's so much distrust for institutions, do we believe that this was real or was it stays? Was it a distraction uh from what's going on in Iran and the rest of the Middle East? Was it a dis or was it a ploy to be like, hey, I want this, I want this damn uh ballroom built, and here's something we can set up to get it built. I watched House of Cards, it messed my brain up, man. I don't trust much. And unfortunately, a system has let us down, let so many people down in so many different ways that. It's hard to trust our government. It's hard to trust our media. Why? Because the government is manipulated, and the media is owned and manipulated by our billionaire elite class, and then supported by the millionaire class. And then the hundred thousandaire class thinks they're close enough, so they fall in line. And then so on and so forth. And hey, you can try to climb that ladder, but the statistics say it's getting harder and harder. You know, the richest people in the world, you know, the top 1%, I think I read somewhere controls like 50% of the name of the of the of the world's wealth. That's insane. How does so small a group of people have so much wealth? And we say, hey, we got to keep this up because when I get my shot, I'm gonna exploit whoever the hell I can to get mine. I I know two wallets usually carry more money than one. Usually two people can do more work than one person. You know, that's why we we hire crews to do stuff. That's why people hire a staff to support them. That's why you have these business partners and you have ownership groups, a community of people working together towards a common goal. Well, if we as people, the proletariat, Americans, black folks, white folks, I don't care who you are, if you stop trying to bite off the head of your neighbor and start working with your neighbor, you'll have a better neighborhood. You'll have a bigger neighborhood. And then you can grow a community of people with common lifestyles, things in common. Wow, that was terrible. Common lifestyles, things in common. You're better than that, Adam. But you can have people with common beliefs, lifestyles, living close together, spreading out, because you know, your neighbor talks to their neighbor and their other neighbor, and then they, you know what I mean? And then y'all become a cul-de-sac group and y'all hang out, and then the people outside the cul-de-sac see y'all outside barbecuing and they say, Hey man, we got some beers and some brats. Can we come join? And then they show up, right? And then, because we're sharing with each other, we're not just trying to get over on each other. And if we started to share more as people, I'm not saying just give up everything you have, but if we just started to share more, we'd have a better society. If we started to trust more, we'd have a better society. And if we weren't so distracted by the money-making industries that only want to make money and don't give a damn about us, they just need bodies to consume pockets to take from so they can pursue their own ventures. Once we learn that's what it is, and most of us who have these independent uh goals of wealth and riches, once we learn we can't, we're better off not doing it by ourselves, we're better off doing it together and building a collective community, we'll be in a better place. But until then, keep getting distracted and confused by the media, and I'm gonna keep sitting here trying to unconfuse you. I'm not right, I don't know everything, I'm just providing another perspective. Those are my afterthoughts.