Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Materials 13: Dead Bears, Biblical Stories, and Coffeezilla's Legal Battle

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

We reflect on the meaning of some biblical scriptures to understand the gurus, alongside:Jonathan Pageau gets into the OlympicsRFK Jnr. and the Dead BearGuru Dystopia: Trump Meets Adin RossEric Weinstein enters the 2024 CampaignThe penetrating insights of Joe RoganCoffeezilla fights back against Logan Paul's defamation caseLitigious Musk and nuisance lawsuitsCelebrity cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other scamsFlashbacks to Simon Singh vs. The British Chiropractic AssociationElon Musk's Interview with Jordan PetersonJordan Peterson's interview 'techniques'All Meat Diet ProselytisingMusk vs. the Sumo ChampionThe incredible confidence of self-help gurusThe importance of 'smarts' in successThe meaning of the Zacchaeus storyThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1hr 19 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksCoffeezilla Defense DropCoffeezilla - Logan Paul Sued MeCoffeezilla - I got scammed for $1,000,000 (about his indemnity insurance)Adin Ross looks up the word fascistThe Horrific Clip of Trump meeting Adin with Hasan's commentaryVideo of Jordan Peterson's interview of Elon MuskThe Guardian: Simon Singh wins libel battleNew York Post article about Elon vs. The Sumo WrestlerRFK talking to Roseanne about the BearNew Yorker: What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru's Supplemental Material 13, I think it is. Sitting over there, a shell of his former self is the Luigi to my Mario, Matthew Brown, psychologist extraordinaire, and I'm Chris Kavanagh, cognitive anthropologist. I wouldn't say extraordinaire. I'm just, you know, middle of the road. But nonetheless, that's what I am. There you are, Matt. You're a shell of your former self,

but that only speaks about how high you previously were. How far I've fallen. I know I have, Chris. I've just had to... All the people would love to be at that height. But for you, you know, it's just... I know. I hear what you're saying.

I've fallen further than I've ever climbed. That's what I wanted to say. Thank you. But I had a power nap, so I'll be okay. I'll be okay. I'm sure I've got reserves of good takes in here somewhere. I just need to dig deep. And we were just talking about our coffee.

We're both taking coffee. You're taking a nice coffee that you've brewed in your home. I'm taking a coffee which was in my fridge from the convenience store. And it's not even a branded one. It's like no brand convenience store coffee. And I was just tasting them. I was like, this is shit. And then I looked at the top and it says non-sweet.

That's why it's shit. Non-sweet, unbranded convenience store coffee. These old convenience store, how low you've sunk. I know. You are lower than me, my friend. My God. And I had such a good coffee the other day too i had a coffee from a like little boutique coffee shop after doing difficult workout stuff climbing up things you know the stuff i do and

then had a nice cold coffee and it was perfecto and i'm dying to this my god damn it god damn it all right well hopefully it's making you feel, putting you in a good mood to bring me some content. That's right. What's been going on? What's been going on? Like in big wide world, lots of things have been going on. The American campaign is in full swing. Kamala Harris has got a vice president nominated.

Kamala. So many people. They're just like, come on, come on. Yes, apparently it's. But now that I've corrected that, it means that when I get it wrong inevitably, I'm going to be in more trouble, right? Yeah.

People don't expect me to get these things right. Camelot. Yeah, right? Apparently. Anyway, we got emails that said, look up this little explainer. Anyway, I think that's how you pronounce it. I see great things for her in the presidency. I camelot you knew camelot well oh i knew camelot oh god

see the coffee isn't kicking in the coffee isn't kicking in if you remember last time we were here matt in this spot we were talking about the olympics opening ceremony and i'll just mention that you know you were complaining about the reactionary right wing christian style um response to it online i was complaining i don't mind them being reactionary i just i just don't like them being so stupid be reactionary yeah i'm not there's not much more to say about it. Anyway, people have moved on to their new squeezy toy for the next week. But I did just want to update

people that if you thought premier reactionary conservative symbologist Jonathan Pajot would not have commented on this, he released an in-depth breakdown. The Olympics opening ceremony is worse than you thought.

In my video that premieres tomorrow, I discuss why specifically the images of Dionysus and the Last Supper were used to simultaneously celebrate diversity and subvert Christianity. I also discuss the purpose and meaning of such symbolic demonstrations in our culture. And finally, the question of intent. So there you go,

Matt. I did link it to you, but I didn't think you were going to watch it. And I did watch it. Maybe it does a fantastic breakdown, and it's all very measured and reasonable, and it's not at all conservative Christianity mixed in with weird conspiracism.

No. No. I mean, that event is tailor-made for Pajot, right? You know, interpreting the dark symbolism in some random event. Yeah. Yeah. And you can count him to get it all wrong. Yeah, no, I couldn't watch that.

I couldn't consume that content, Chris. Have mercy on me. Come on. Something I'll mention, I'm just curious if you care across it. Did you see the little, a lot of stuff gets released on Twitter, you know, because of what Elon Musk has made it,

but it is now a premier location for gurus and conspiracists to dump content. And did you see RFK Jr. attempting to get ahead of a negative story that was going to break in the New Yorker, I think, about him? Yeah, once again, I saw the tweets. I'm aware of the issue. I did not press play. I did not watch him explain that.

What was it? He left a dead bear somewhere. He left a dead bear cub in a park. I think Central Park in New York or like wherever. And so it's him explaining to Roseanne in what looks like his kitchen, right, with someone filming that. So already you just have the bizarre weirdo celebrity shit going on, right? Conspiracy brain-pilled Roseanne is sitting in his

kitchen and he's explaining to her this funny story where he came across a road-killed bear cub and he, of course, took it into his car because he was going to prepare it and eat it or skin it. Whatever. Apparently this is a perfectly

normal thing that anybody would do. And that woman in the van in front of me hit a bear and killed it. A young bear. So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear. And it was very good condition. And I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator. And you can do that in New York City.

You see a dead thing on the road, you know, you just, you prepare to consume it. But then after an evening of drinking and eating, not him drinking, Matt, all the people at the party were drinking or whatever. I wasn't drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea. And I said, look, I had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of. I said, let's go put the bear in car that somebody asked me to get rid of. I said, let's go put the bear in Central Park and we'll make it look like a getty bike. Fun, funny for people. So everybody thought that's a great idea. He had the idea because there'd been some accidents in Central Park about bikes crashing or people being injured by being hit with bikes.

So he thought a funny prank would be, this is how he explained this, to put the dead bear in the park with a bike next to it as if it had been hit by the bike. So not consume it or skin it or whatever anymore, just dispose of it. And he's kind of presenting it as, you know, in hindsight, it's kind of, you know, a silly thing to do, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing. So essentially he's released this video to try and get ahead of the New Yorker discovering that he did this.

And this was covered in the media at the time that there's been a bizarre bear cub like body finders it was rfk's doing was it yeah he's just such a weirdo he's such a weirdo he's like his primary thing is he's a conspiracy theorist and anti-vax activist for decades. But he just does constant weird shit. Well, you reminded me of how that's one of the current memes at the moment. Some Democrats calling MAGA Republicans weird and them getting very upset about it. But meanwhile, they're just acting so weirdly. Like you mentioned Roseanne Barr.

I'm looking at a clip of her now at Mare Lago. She's dressed like she's about to hold a seance and a little bit tipsy by the looks of it. And she's telling students to drop out of college because they are filled with devil worshippers who drink baby's blood. That's the theme of her rant. Well, they are.

That's not weird. I mean, how dare you call that weird how dare you yeah it isn't weird in 2024 that's like that's a moderate right-wing politician this is the passivization of american politics i know he's getting into everything well so before we get to some more like more specifically guru things i think it's good to just get all of the right wing insane politics shit done up front and matt are you aware of eden ross you know we had a streamer season recently that's a hint for you the hint's not working it's there's no no bells been rung by that name should i know this person for your own sake no he is a well-known streamer formerly of twitch banned there for being a shithead and moved to kick where he's currently one of the most popular

streamers over there he's mostly famous for being being an online Andrew Tate sycophant. And yeah, just in the red pill conspiracy poisoned idiot sphere, like alongside people like Sneeko and other such characters, right? They're actually too annoying for Twitch. So they go to kick right it's like kick is the worst version of twitch and twitch itself is already a very annoying platform but aiden ross i'm just going to play you a clip right i think this loses some of the effect when you can't see what he's reading so he's trying to uncover the definition of fascism and he's going to attempt to read some descriptions of fascism he doesn't know what it means right so all right but just just listen to this and this just to be clear this isn't a a bit this is him actually attempting to do this live

what does a fascist mean? It means you are a far-right authorization. Analyst, political ideology movement characterized by dictator leadership, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition. So I don't know what that means, bro. I swear to God. I don't know what the fuck a fascism is. I don't know what the fuck that is. Benito Mazzulli and Javier Genital and Jason Stanley. Like, who the fuck are these people, bro?

Never heard of my fucking life. What is an example of a fastest? Yo! All right, bro. See what I'm saying, chat? Like, this is why I don't fuck with y'all, bro. Like, dude, like, this is what the fuck I don't... Bro, I don't fuck with y'all, bro. I do not fuck with you guys, bro.

The picture he brought up was Hitler. That's who came up when he was like what's an example right but that's the level matt the level that we're talking about with eden ross okay and this is one of the most popular streamers on on kick of course of course he is okay yeah the reason i provided that context is he just hosted trump he hosted trump okay this is a man that also live on stream interviewed andrew tate and then knelt down and sniffed his seat on stream when he left the room okay okay it's just i know it's horrifying right it's it's horrifying to think but so well I saw this clip and I was like goddamn you know we are living in the dystopian nightmare that RoboCop and all were

parodying right but it's worse it's worse than they imagined because what happened on this stream the clip that I saw first of all this was a clip taken from hassan's stream so it had hassan's commentary over the top of it and hassan's commentary over the top of it was mostly oh what the this is right that that was it that was i'm sure he gave a little insightful commentary but his general thing was what is happening you know right like yeah and then the actual stream so it had aiden ross and donald trump comes on he's wearing you know a maga hat and he's dressed up like donald trump he's wearing a black suit with a red tie so he's aiden ross's yeah aiden ross is in a donald trump costume another streamer who's also popular xqc a canadian guy comes in in the background with a shirt on with trump's face on it with kind of grills across his teeth and he's

like look at this trump and trump's like oh nice shirt all right so that again just bizarre and then you know they took some stupid shit or whatever and then edin ross takes him outside to show him a tesla cyber truck which he's bought for trump which is fitted with a decal around it which is trump's image after he has survived the assassination so it has like a huge blown up uh image of trump and he's like what do you think of this and trump's like oh that's that's good and then they do the meme dance of trump you know that little like pumping yeah yeah dance on the front of the car wow wow well that's probably one of the stupidest things you've ever told me i know it's and this is you

know this is campaign stop number one of the day i'm sure there were three yollers along the way that were equally oh and and also of course so lex has announced that he's going to do a long form interview with donald trump because of course it would so that will be you know it will probably not involve as much meme dancing but it will be i'm certainly as cringeworthy yeah yeah in a different way like there are levels of whatever aren't they lex is very much an intellectual high culture compared to what you just described and played for us yes so that's that's trump's pit stops on the campaign huh yes that is and on another pit stop just to talk about guru crossovers with electoral politics our old friend eric weinstein is making a stop for

an in-depth conversation with j Bhattacharya and another conspiracy finance person as part of RFK Jr.'s campaign. He's been hosted by his running mate to have a long discussion about how the elites are destroying society. And this is, you know, Eric also was tweeting out after Kamala Harris secured enough delegates to get the Democrat nomination. Something out there desperately needs this particular person installed for reasons that have not been shared. Whatever this election is, it's not the system that was explained to me in public school as democracy. If you make the major selling points January the 6th insurrection, and democracy is literally on the ballot, you cannot do this. Think about it as a strategy.

It doesn't make sense. Explain it to him, Matt. It doesn't. Why would the Democratic Party be falling behind the vice president and a popular replacement popular replacement for biden why matt there's no reason explain that what's the logic doesn't make sense does it the thing about eric and the thing that's impressive is that he makes exactly the same tweet and has been doing so for as long as i've known him which is we don't know what's happening. Can somebody explain this to me? You know, there are forces going on, things beyond our ken. And as you pointed out to me, it's always something very suspicious about the left-wing progressives and Democrats generally.

It's never targeted towards the right, his suspicions, his mysterious conjecturing um yeah yeah this is this is like when he had the sit-down interview with um not ron de santos what's the other guy ted cruz to discuss the progressive mind the interview was for him there's something like a discussion with a you know hardcore progressive and ted cruz was shocked to discover that essentially him and eric agree on almost everything and he was like you know it's so impressive it's like you're you're so such a progressive and yeah there's very little we disagree on that's strange isn't it that's because eric is such an intelligent progressive i like i love his tweets are all the same here's another one i believe we have been governed by a small

group around joe biden rather than joe biden for most if not all of this presidency okay classic trope it doesn't matter who the figurehead is the party will govern through a tiny group making the titular president less important in which case we should all want to meet and vote on who is actually going to be doing the governing. Oh my goodness, there's so many more. But yeah, conspiracy theories. But he is different from his brother, as we've talked about. He keeps his things at this sort of abstract, vague, it's vague posting, right?

But as a technique, as a rhetorical technique, I think it's kind of interesting because he always stops short of making very concrete claims it was a little bit concrete there but what he does is he sort of points his followers in the direction and gestures towards this big threatening thing and if you scan through the comments you see how effectively and how how engaged everyone is everyone has their interpretation of what he means and then riffs on it and carries on with it. Yeah, but it does kind of feel like, you know, Eric's wall of obfuscation is effective in that it is obscurantist,

the way that he expresses things. But if you just follow this content for one month it's very clear where his skew is you just look at the people that he likes look at the people that he's criticizing just put them into you know two boxes and see if you spot anything and you would you know it's so easy to spot his skew like there's very little takes of eric or brett or any of them or Rogan. We were like, well, that's really unexpected that they would like that person. Yeah.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't go like that. And speaking of Rogan, I have an individual clip of Rogan to play. Just another clip to show the conspiratorial mindset and the penetrating insight of Joe Rogan on full display this is him you know there's very little to be said about Rogan except that he just never ever learns he's constantly wrong he constantly displays terrible heuristics they're not even like goldfish because actually they do have long-term memories and adjust their behavior jilt just doesn't change like it doesn't matter decades

and decades of being shown to be an idiot live on air and be corrected it doesn't make him change the way that he looks into things so just listen to this but the state of the union was not live and yes it was no no did you see that they found out that it wasn't that they they looked at his watch and his watch right no yeah yeah uh do uh state of the union analysis biden's watch no way yeah someone zoomed in on his watch and his watch was the wrong time how could that even be well it could be he's blind you can't see what all the networks on it i don't know what they knew how do you know what they knew you just you get a feed you know i don't think all the republicans would agree to it too

who knows what they knew they're all there live he's doing Always doing it? Yeah. You got Mike Johnson behind you. You got their whole new audience crossing their hands. When they don't like what you say, it's got to be live. Let's see. I don't see anything. State of the Union wasn't live. I added watch. It could be some troll shit.

I don't see anything about that. They got me. Yeah. They could have got me. But there was no Biden's watch. Look at Biden's watch. Incorrect time. State of the Union. He doesn't have a watch. He has a sundial. The guy's 5,000's watch. Look at Biden's watch. Incorrect time. State of the Union.

He doesn't have a watch. He has a sundial. The guy's 5,000 years old. He's looking at the stars. A little sextant. That's not why he has that face. No, President Biden's Oval Office address wasn't prerecorded. A fake image was the wrong time.

No, that's the Oval Office, not the State of the Union. Yeah, there is a fake image. They got me, these sons of bitches. It's just amazing how much stuff is fake. Floating around. Yeah, there's a fake image. They got me, these sons of bitches. It's just amazing how much stuff is fake. Floating around. Say it again. Yeah, it's not the State of the Union thing. Was it? No, that was just him talking

after whatever, when after he hadn't been seen for a few days. Well, that I believe was pre-recorded. That wouldn't make a big deal one or another. Like, if you're giving a talk and you have something to say, you can take any takes. Oh, so they used the wrong image from a different thing. These cocksuckers.

There you go. So he was being corrected there live by, who was his guest? Michael Malas. Michael Malas. Who he himself. It's pretty far gone. But, you know, like Joe is even worse like significantly worse and i it really does illustrate his personality doesn't it where like he just fell for obvious

bait and straight away completely believed it oh that was fake the whole thing was fake he doesn't think for a second of what you would need to fit that or that kind of thing no straight away goes yep that's true and is absolutely certain about it and this is just one of those unusual times where it can be shown to him immediately that there's no way that could possibly be true so he goes oh right okay it's not true then no but he doesn't he doesn't just say it's not true he's like oh there's so much fake stuff and people are like you know being tricked and you're like no joe you you are the the one that is constantly tricked by this shit you and various other boomers and whatnot but he immediately foisted on to oh this

is a problem of like anybody you know could fall for this kind of stuff and yeah yeah yeah no a problem with the fake news not not with joe rogan's brain uh yeah i mean i saw that he's uh he's like he's had a netflix comedy special come out that everyone is saying is extremely unfunny i again i can't bear to look at that either. I'm sorry. Yeah, well, I don't think we recommend Joe Rogan's comedy to people, but just an illustration. That's how he approaches information. And that is the same level of fairness that he was applying when it came to COVID and anti-vaccine stuff.

Like this is the same guy with the confidence to work out. Assess studies. Yeah, assess studies, that's right. And figure it out for himself. And it really does capture that link between narcissism and conspiracism, right? It is people with a huge chip on their shoulder, but actually like putting in absolutely no effort, but completely confident in their own judgment.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so people remaining bad, Matt, that's a theme. You asked for good stuff last time. You said, Chris, you've got to tell us something that you like next time. You've got to give me some hope that the world isn't just a terrible place of Eden Ross trying to look up fascism with millions of people watching right I mean that was impressive how illiterate I know I know it's it's quite quite something but so I have something that is actually it seems negative but I think

it's good I mean I don't think what is seems negative, but I think it's good. I mean, I don't think what is happening is good, but I think it illustrates the forces of good in the universe in a sense. Coffeezilla has been sued by Logan Paul. So on the face of it, that's not good. That's bad. This is a dollar influencer, millionaire, maybe billionaire. I don't know how rich Logan Paul is, but he has a successful drinks company. He's a WWE wrestler. He has a successful podcast.

He is very, very wealthy. And he also previously had a cryptocurrency scam kind of thing. NFT, like just a general melange of, you know, the whole cryptocurrency NFT scam era that was around. And CoffeeZilla did a multi-part series breaking down all of the stuff in it. And it was very successful. Logan Paul initially responded very harshly and said he was going to sue CoffeeZilla. Then when he got a backlash from people saying, hey, hey, this isn't right. Then when he got a backlash from people saying, hey, hey, this isn't right.

You were involved in a rug pull and lots of your followers lost all this money and blah, blah, blah. So he then walked the bite and was like, OK, I was too hasty. Thank you, Coffeezilla, for your investigation. I'm going to make this right. I'm going to repay people and whatnot. And he has basically done this like tokenistic gesture where he is giving some people back something, but it's, it's like a very small amount compared to what the overall cost was and so on. So it's like, uh, he's doing something, but he is not refunding the people, the cost. And he has not released the product that he said he was going to release and all this stuff. So basically, bad news. But he wasn't suing CoffeeZilla,

but he did just suddenly decide to do this. And CoffeeZilla has released some videos discussing this and what he's going to do, but also highlighting that the decision to sue him came 24 hours within when he sent Logan Paul questions about another potential scam that he's involved with. So he asked him some critical questions about what he knew. And he wasn't even saying that in this case he's responsible.

He was just asking him what he knew. He gave him a 24-hour window to response. And in R23, he received a legal notice saying that he's being sued by Logan Paul for defamation. And if you look at the details of the defamation case, it's clearly not going to succeed because, you know, for defamation, you have to knowingly have presented information that was false, intended to harm someone's reputation. And as Coppizilla outlines in the video, Logan Paul already had a bad reputation. This is the guyilla outlines in the video, Logan Paul already had a bad reputation. This is the guy that went into the forest that filmed the person who committed suicide, but also

was already covered in articles being called a scammer and whatnot. So CoffeeZilla is not responsible for that in particular. And he brought a whole bunch of receipts for why it seems fair to attach that label to him so it's fair comment he's a public figure and it's it's very unlikely to win but logan paul's extremely rich he has put the legal case in a court that doesn't have anti-slap measures you know the kind of ones where when people bring nuisance lawsuits you can be penalized for doing that um so he's he's filed it in the court where that doesn't exist and as a result even if coffeezilla wins it will cost him a large amount of money and a significant amount of time yeah you you understand how this works right matt i do? I do. I do indeed. Yeah, it's quite worrying, really,

when rich people can just punish less rich people legally, even when there are no grounds. You don't actually need the grounds to do a nuisance lawsuit that could cause a lot of trouble for people. You know, this is just a side note, but do you know who else has a habit of doing that very regularly? Elon Musk. Elon Musk regularly files lawsuits against

people and organizations most recently he says he's going to sue all the advertisers right oh yeah after he told them to fuck off yeah yeah and then he's going to sue them for not advertising on x i mean it's like he's trying to come across as dickish. Yeah, but he also sued Matt, the center for countering digital hate, who released a report that he didn't like about extremism on X. by the judge because it was indicated in the ruling that it is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose this case is about punishing the defendants for their speech and it was uh like kicked out of the yeah the court but that's the thing it doesn't matter he puts all this pressure he sends in high price lawyers against and then if it wins or feels it doesn't matter right like because he's so rich and he and his fans don't follow up about the you know the outcome of cases

yeah and they certainly don't care that mr free speech is it's someone who uses the law to crush it whenever he feels like it donald trump of course there's another one famously into legal proceedings and lawsuits there's something about it's a it's a tell isn't it it's a symptom yeah i think but so this doesn't sound good right this sounds all negative somebody that we like and who does good work coffee zilla um we had a long interview with him and he was very very nice guy and also i i think just very thoughtful about all the investigations and whatnot he was doing. We actually asked him about what happens if you're sued and so on in that interview. But he's been represented. So here's the good news, Matt.

First of all, just to say, he has put up a merch drop with the proceeds going to support him. So he could have just put up a GoFundMe or whatever, but he's actually made some nice shirts, which are cyberpunk themed. They're nice. They're actually very nice. I'm going to get one because I want to support him because I like the shirt. So it's the CoffeeZilla defense drop. For two weeks, he's putting up these shirts, you know, merchandise that 100% of the profits is going towards his legal defense. And this is in part because his indemnity insurance, it turns out, isn't going to cover him for this.

But the thing is, Matt, so he's doing that, a limited drop, right, to get support from it. Or you can support him on his Patreon. I'm perfectly happy to shout him out for that because I think it's a good cause that he's going to fight it and just to mention as well this is indicative of his character i think whenever i dm'd him after seeing the thing saying you know it would be nice to give it you know like a shout out to support him for this and he said oh you guys don't need to do that like don't worry about it and i'm happy

to send you some of the shirts you don't need to pay so i just that is a nice person there's no need to do that and in any case i'm happy to promote it and happy to support him but the good news he's being represented by mark bankston who was the lawyer in the alex jones case for the parents who secured like 1.5 billion damages against Jones. So I know that Mark Langston is going to be paid and covered for this and whatnot, but I'm also sure that he's not the kind of person that's going to be setting out to take coffee to the cleaners and whatnot. I think the reason he's getting involved with this is because he doesn't like these high profile figures trying to use the law to silence critics or to target the parents of dead children. So this is an example of, I think, good forces

coming together. Mark Bankston, the Alex Jones lawyer, Coffeeilla and logan paul is not going to silence criticism i think there's a case where the internet will rally around coffee zilla you know just because they don't like this when rich people attempt to sue smaller people and until their free speech sometimes yeah i feel confident that coffee zilla will come out of this well uh still it's what a pain in the ass for him uh man you've sent me on a deep dive into crypto and celebrities and oh yeah they're boosting coins like there's andrew tate does all these weird things with crypto like there's 23 billion dollars apparently like lost in scams and things worldwide last year it is it is like a honeypot for idiots it is it is you know like the basic scheme for anybody that's not aware the basic scheme is always broadly the same i mean like if you watch coffee sellers videos

you can see lots of variations of this but it's broadly that creators or popular influencers get involved with some coin or NFT or some digital asset, right? And they say, this is going to be my life's work. I'm going to be involved in this. All my fans should get involved. This is going to go to the moon, zip soon, the next Bitcoin, the next whatever. They hype it up. And then there's a release period where lots of people, lots of their fans, because of the popularity, buy into it and the price goes up because there's initial demand. And then there's a rug pull where the people that were initially investing in it or the people at the start, because they were the ones in at the ground with the coin, had a whole bunch of it before they went to market. Then they sell. They sell off very quickly.

And then people notice that and the price plummets. And anybody who invested while it was going up is suddenly left with a worthless coin or NFT or whatever the case might be. But the creators make bank. So they often just partner with people that are doing this and it you know they don't need to do anything they just need to promote it on their social media yeah it's a classic pump and dump scheme and uh you can see that it's a way for

people that have got some kind of profile they've got like wildly loyal fans to transform that cachet into hard currency right and so this is why we live in the attention economy and this is why these guru dynamics and cult-like dynamics are so important because like it translates into real money they can turn that loyalty turn that trust turn that popularity turn those memes and the and the clickbait into money for themselves even when they're not monetizing it directly right it could all be free right their content because it's all about building up their reputation which they can then make money from yeah yeah it's it's a big bad world out there uh what happened do you remember when the internet i mean maybe you're too young but i remember when actually the internet required like a small bit of technical ability to actually use there's like

there was like a small hurdle to actually post material on the internet and stuff maybe to access people anyone who could but actually dialogue yeah like and uh and and now we've got people that are like functionally illiterate and scam yeah yeah but you know the scams were always operating they were just in different forms there was all those like hello call centers and whatnot then so it always just morphs to the new environment and yeah and it is often the same celebrities endorsing shit that they really shouldn't be. Like this is the consistent thing. And yeah, so, you know, the CryptoZoo was the thing that Logan Paul promoted,

but he's not alone. And just to say as well, Matt, we are talking about sort of the internet dregs. I mean, they're super popular, but, you know, Aiden Ross, kick streamers and whatnot, like even Logan Paul. Yes, he's mainstream, but there's a certain, what have I tried to say? Like a bad vibe around that whole ecosystem of streamers and influencers and whatnot. But if you cast your minds back, I remember Steven Pinker releasing an NFT about his ideas where his best ideas were minted in the NFT format. And if you bought them, you got like a one hour, I think, Skype call with him or whatever.

But you had to pay a huge amount of money to mint his idea, which was free speeches should be free or whatever. And then also Sam Harris, I don't believe he went through with this, but at one point he was talking about a scheme to create NFTs that he would use to help promote effective altruism.

And there was like he discussed it on the same. So just no to his credit i don't think he ever released it but like i think it speaks to the the fact that you know i would say steven pinker and sam harris are two of the people that you would expect not they are they are more they are more respectable figures that we were surprised at the time especially with steven pinker i think what i assume happens is that these people relatively famous people are approached by yeah a crypto person who goes hey let's let's do some work together let's let's let's bounce around some ideas yeah yeah and they naively go oh that sounds good what could be the harm but then yeah

what could be the harm could they spend one evening looking up crypto cryptocurrencies and scams and stuff like that maybe maybe but whatever whatever so matt that well so if you feel so inclined to do so i encourage people to to support CoffeeZilla because I think he does good work. Even if it's just like support him, join his Patreon, you get access to his bonus material or whatever. You don't have to. I just think he's doing good things and he's being punished for it by somebody that's trying

to bully him with their wealth. So I don't like that. And I have form for this, Matt. that and i have form for this matt i back in my younger days in london i covered the simon singh libel case brought against him by the british chiropractic association which was another attempt by an organization to chill someone's free speech because they wrote an article in the guardian that they didn't like and he he initially lost that case, but went on to win it in appeal. But it took a number of years, lots of money. So I, back then, was also, you know,

I was actually in the court for some of that. But this kind of thing annoys me in general. So good luck to CoffeeZilla. Yeah, if the IDW free speech warriors were what they said they were then they'd be upset by this thing as well but of course they're not well we'll post links i'm gonna do it too uh i'm gonna find out how to um support coffee so i get myself a um a hoodie is it is it a hoodie there's a hoodie or the shirts there's long-stitch they're nice that doesn't

is nice this is something i was quite pleased with you know the point is the support right but it is just nice that the design is not super cringeworthy or whatever at least for me that's the kind of thing i like so yeah i'm looking at it now they look good yep okay good we'll post links uh all right okay okay so this is all bad stuff everything is bad the internet oh that was my good. I mean, my good thing is Coffeezilla is going to win. Yeah, because Coffeezilla is a good guy. He's going to win. He's going to win. That's right.

That's right. There are people fighting the good fight, so good on them. Yeah, there are people like him. There are people like Mark Bankston. Alex Jones won't end up paying $1.5 billion, but he got dented by that whole legal case. And, yeah, so, you know, good luck to them all we'll cover what happens there as it as it happens but uh so you asked for good things well how about a conversation

between jordan peterson and elon musk oh goody great yeah why not why not yeah why not elon musk is going to interview Donald Trump, by the way. Elon Musk is going to interview Donald Trump. Of course, they're all connected. Well, look, I view it as a positive because if I listen to a few clips now, that means we're not going to devote a full episode to it. This is quite right.

So I'm winning. This is the important thing. This is quite right. So first, I'm going to play the clip that I think got the most attention. It's hard to say because it depends what area you're in. But one of the things that came out of the interview was Elon Musk talking about his trans daughter and his experience of that and what it has motivated him to do. And so this is a snippet of him talking about that.

Anyway. And so I lost my son, essentially. So, you know, they call it dead naming for a reason. So the reason it's called dead naming is because your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead, Killed by the woke blind virus. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. I can't imagine what that would be like.

Yeah. So. Yeah, and there's lots of people in that situation now. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash decoding the gurus. Once you do, you'll get access to full length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes, and decoding academia. The Decoding the Gurus podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support. the Guru's podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about global peace, and save Western civilization. And if you cannot afford $2, you can request a free membership, and we will honor zero of those requests. So subscribe now

at patreon.com slash decodingthegurus