Kitbag Conversations - Episode 25: Our Wars Today

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Hey all, this week I spoke with Our Wars Today (@ourwarstoday2) and he had alot to say, including: - His work with Atlas News - His time in Ukraine  - The Instagram journalist community  - Queen is dead memes - and much more 

Hey everyone, we're live and this week we're joined with our Wars today. He's a member of the Instagram journalist community. You've seen him running around a lot in the Atlas news website. He's a good friend of Chase Baker's and I'm really excited to see what we have to talk about this week. So, hey man, how you doing today? Yeah, man. Thank you both for having me on.

I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be here. Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm glad we actually could get some time together and shoot shit. Yeah, no, it's been a chaotic summer all around but it's a really nice to get on here and talk about things and yeah, I'm our Wars. I run a variety of social media pages primarily on Instagram and Telegram, reporting on conflict news, journalism, all types of geopolitical events.

But I guess real quick, you're not a journalist are you? You're just a guy who's interested in what's going on in the world or you want to be a journalist? Yeah, my joke is I'm a jit, I'm a journalist in training because I want to work in the journalistic field. I want to do the work I'm doing as a journalist under the auspices of Atlas news. So for instance, like when I went to Ukraine over the summer, my media pass was under Atlas news LLC.

And so I had the press credentials from the Armed Forces of Ukraine under Atlas news. So I mean, in that way, yeah, I'm a journalist in terms of like a formal education training outside of college. Not really. I mean, I'm taking college but not for journalism specifically. That's what I kind of want to work towards at some point, but I also kind of see the work I'm doing now in a lot of ways is being like in that field, I just have like a blend of a lot more oscent usually.

What are you going to college for? History. I'm a history major, yeah, I connect news and history really strongly. And so for me, it's I think a common saying and it gets misattributed to all different types of people, but the quote goes, news is the first rough draft of history. And so I kind of see it connected in that way where everything's, you know, how we remember history is just how news reported it basically. And so in that way, you know, can interpret the current times through our historical perception,

but also we can sort of connect history and news pretty quickly because it's essentially the same medium of content. And it's always interesting when you mention that the rough draft of history because, you know, usually what's the same history is told by the victors. So yeah, it's always two sides to everything. But if there is a rough draft, there was like, yeah, there was a battle in 1066. But anyways, here's both sides of the story. So yeah, in the middle, yeah, it's it's a tough line to walk for a lot of, I think historians

because there is like a lot of issues with how history is recorded, especially depending on where you're looking in the world. And of course, I mean, that's sort of like something that's considered when you're examining history, you have to take an account that there's stuff which has been misattributed, which has been misrecorded or, you know, and historians are always going at it. I mean, I can argue all day about who's right or what was the correct, you know, recording of the history from one side or the other. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And so with a history major, do you have like an interesting minors like geopolitical studies or something like that? Or you're just kind of like, you know, a generic, just I'm studying media, media for a minor. Gotcha. Yeah. So media and digital work. So I mean, that actually came in halfway through college because when I started college, I was going history, but I kind of figured maybe I should have a backup in terms of like just

experience. So I was going with an economics minor. And then I got a couple of classes in that and realized I really didn't like taking economics classes. And I was like, all right, time to pivot. And I was like, I'll find something that sort of fits what I'm doing now because at the beginning of college, I was already doing our wars, but to a limited degree. So, you know, going through college, I decided, you know, as I'm my interest or evolving war

with like journalistic type stuff, I'll pivot that in my studies as well. So it's paid off as well, because I've learned some really interesting things in my media classes that I don't think I ever would have learned anywhere else in terms of like how media is perceived globally and different cultural things. Yeah. I want to see the globally is you can go CNN's everywhere. So you can go to Barbados, Brazil or South Africa and everyone's watching CNN or BBC. And so it's, that's really cool.

But then I was talking to Colin Mayfield last week about how in say Puerto Rico, that the only outlets that focus on say Puerto Rico or any islands in the Caribbean at all are like Latin based. And so the Americans are in Western world in general really doesn't focus on what's going on there. And so, yeah, it's definitely interesting to see how the news is perceived around the world. Yeah.

No, 100%. It's the way people digest it around the world is really, I mean, it differs so greatly. I mean, one of the classes I'm taking right now, we're talking about how technology has enabled the spread of media and just like the difference in between areas which had access to certain types of technology like the telegraph or, you know, early radio waves, television, et cetera, various areas that didn't. And even now there's disparity in a lot of areas which have like, you know, greater access to mobile technology and the internet versus those don't.

And the way they disseminate information is really fundamental to the different because it's usually oratory as opposed to anything else. You can always see those breakdowns and to say folk or folk tales or something because it was usually like you just said, an oral translation of what happened. And so it kind of builds that. And this is thinking way bigger, but this is more like we're, you know, the cornerstone of society is storytelling. And so, I mean, yeah, this really happened, but then you started to fluff it up.

And then it's, yeah, I mean, Americans in the Western world really focus on the internet and what's going on in the world or to see what's going on in the world. But then you can go to, say, Africa or somewhere in Southeast Asia and it's all just oratory. So, you know, it's a really interesting divide with that. And I mean, I think a lot of it can be attributed to like, you know, how those areas developed probably under colonialism, I think probably for, I mean, it would be a big guess of mine in terms of here to break it down, just because obviously some areas weren't having their own national industry and technological development where they could support their

own media networks. And it's really interesting. And it really deeply does affect people's worldviews as well. I mean, that's the important thing to take away is that, you know, people have different ways of disseminating information, but the ways that happen can greatly affect the societies that exist within because they can have totally skewed worldviews, maybe not like wrong worldviews necessarily, but at least skewed ones compared to other people's worldviews. Because if you're consuming, as I said, like any type of mainstream media constantly, you're

going to have an incredibly different perception of how things are going. Oh, yeah, of course. And then especially in America and a lesser degree, Europe is very politicized as well. So it's a new story breaks. It always goes, all right, what camp are we putting this? Is it conservative or is it liberal? And then there's no real room for. And I was talking about this last week with Colin, that like the center kind of just like, I want to

tell a story kind of guys go, well, we need to have an agenda. And that's kind of how, again, it perceives in a directs, I guess, societies or the world's perception of what's going on. And going back to like you and Atlas news and all, I guess, everyone in the community, which is everyone's pretty just clean cut down the middle. Here's what's happening. Like test runs a great example of, yeah, here's what's going on. Here's everything I here's everything going on in Ukraine.

Oh, I was banned. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's interesting. We have certainly an interesting mix up of different people who can like represent different ideas for Atlas news.

But yeah, but we also, you know, same time tray here to this pretty like, you know, trying to report for what it is. And, you know, we usually try to get away with what we can, especially when you're dealing with Instagram. Yeah, I have noticed that Twitter's cleaned up a little bit on how they censor, I guess, some pages, but yeah, Instagram is just the iron curtain meta in general, where you could post whatever you want on Facebook, but then it's just going to go into the void because there's not going to be any outreach related to it.

So it's, yeah, that whole, it is a pretty interesting community. I like them. Yeah, the problem with growth is a big issue that I see because I mean, I mean, obviously the platform that we find on Instagram has an opportunity for organic growth that you can't really find in a lot of other places. And it's just, I mean, it's really limiting when you can't use Instagram to have, to grow a community in that way, which is why you see people like Tesseron, even myself, other pages, when you get banned and you basically just have to either wait it out

or, you know, appeal to Instagram to see what can happen because I mean, growth is good on other platforms and you can certainly get and grow an audience on Telegram or Twitter or, you know, something else by itself, but the visual component of Instagram and the way that the reels and their algorithm makes it so accessible to share your content just really has a whole different capability, which is why it's like, it's like, you know, don't like the platform because of, you know, who owns it and how they moderate it and how they organize it and treat its users. But on the other hand, the reach is insane. Absolutely. It's Instagram is, I mean, I've been on it pretty sure since it came out

and it's just amazing to see how it went from not even DMs where you can send a message, it was just a picture and then you had to put the little text in there and then it only had like a character limit. Just crazy, stupid stuff like that. And here we are 10 years later and an entire business empire is being formed on Instagram. And so I don't know if you watched that, the Joe Rogan with Mark Zuckerberg from like two weeks ago. No, I didn't see that one. It looks interesting. Yeah, it was pretty interesting to see his thought process and that Mark Zuckerberg's thought process on everything. And he specifically called out news on meta. And he was like, we have a lot of independent news guys coming out there. And

you know, that's probably the biggest issue we have. And I was like, oh, that's fun. But that's cool. Yeah, fuck you too, Sack. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, it is interesting that the diversity of the communities have, I mean, not in terms of like, just like Vap, but like global. And that's like a big thing too. A lot of platforms, I mean, even stuff like Twitter, and which is very international telegram too. I feel like there's a lot of social media traditionally in the West that like, you know, every different country has big social media websites that aren't Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. And but I feel like Instagram does because of the visual component of it, where it's not tax based necessarily, because everything has to be

a photo, and one form or another, you know, or visual, you know, something. It's like it has this mass appeal, which doesn't, it isn't on the platforms like Twitter. Yeah, Twitter, you have characters and obviously this translate, whatever. So you know, there's ways to understand what's happening in their countries. But that the visual component, I think is what makes Instagram so powerful, which is why TikTok takes off as well. So similarly, in terms of how the algorithms like recommend stuff, which is like, you know, why I actually tried to get on TikTok for a little bit, funny story. Yeah, and I just kept running into all these problems, because literally anything I post would get banned. I tried posting, it was during some fires that were going on, I don't

know where I think it was California, I posted a video of like some firefighters, not even like in a particularly dangerous situation in TikTok or move that. And then I post another video that showed a soldier in like a trench line or something, TikTok or move that. And I tried posting like an armored vehicle on the move. Like there wasn't even combat going on, it was in conflict, just kind of moving it down. I was like, all right, well, I guess this is not the platform that's going to be welcoming to this kind of content. You're like, yep, this is it. I wanted to take a step back real quick, because you mentioned Telegram. And yeah, your Telegram is great. It's just flooded with everything going on in the world. And it's impressive to see that

you're on top of everything that's going on. And but I think the big attraction for Telegram was, yeah, it's a wallet text. Yeah, you can have, you know, war porn or whatever you want in there. And the whole premise was like, no one's getting censored. And then the Russians invade Ukraine, they were like, every Russian outlet is now censored. We're like, well, I guess we lost that platform. Because yeah, that was like, yeah, say what you want. But RT News talked about what the Russians were doing. So like, it was cool to see inside their thought process down to like the societal level and not the propagandized videos coming out of the Kremlin. So yeah, it's tough because it's like you have to, the company is like, you know, the media

hosting websites like YouTube or whatever that we're hosting stuff like RT and Sputnik and other Russian outlets, they're, you know, they have to position themselves, you know, with the probably what they see as the most profitable option. And, you know, the fact is they probably would have been really heavily boycotted in some way, or at least received a lot more flak if they hadn't removed those channels. I think at the end of the day, it's the economical decision for them just because they've been they see what the profits are and that's not siding with Russian news outlets during, you know, this type of very, very political ideological war. But it does suck. We can't see that because I mean, as fun it is to scroll through Russian

telegrams clicking translate on every post. It would be nice to have a little easier access to information like maybe some of like the updates like, I don't want to have to go to TSSS and, you know, translate on every single post they make when, you know, normally, you know, if it was not wartime, it would be reported somewhere else. So I mean, it's hard to say because it's also like, you know, maybe like, you know, oh, you don't want to give propaganda platform or, you know, people are obviously going to be like misled or, you know, see things are not true. But it's like, well, you also see things from other sides too, like that it's not, you know, exclusive to Russia is putting propaganda. So I mean, we're one out. Oh, yeah, I do want to pour

one out for some of those Russian pages that got nukes on Instagram in late February, where those guys were comedians, they were like, they were news outlets, but then they were like, we're fighting award, we're winning. And so it was just, yeah, they were hyping up, they were talking about, and I think Russian soft was one of them. It's like Russian underscore soft, which was they were so funny. They just kept saying like, Oh, remember no Russian with that picture of all those guys in the elevator. And it was just, I was like, Oh, yeah, oh, they're gone. All right, that was funny. And then you have someone like on telegram, Intel Slava, who's been going back and forth for a long time now. And I think he's been pretty quiet recently.

Dude, Intel Slava is like most interesting case study, because I don't, I can't tell who this person is. And, and I mean, even today, like, they were posting like pretty sorrowful messages regarding the Ukrainian push and capture of coupons, coupons, and they're, you know, on the outskirts of Isiom and Lyman. And it is, they're sounding pretty like, you know, not remorseful. I guess, I don't know, they were very subdued, you know, you can definitely tell their messages, they're like, if they encircle us, this will be a disaster. You know, we were taking a tactical retreat, you know, to reorganize and to regain our strength and this sort of stuff. But yeah, very different messaging. The transition overall of Russian no bloggers

in the war, especially the past couple months, following the arrival of Heimars has really been a fascinating thing to watch on telegram. I'm not the most up to date with telegram, just because I have like a crazy amount of channels. I mean, I would, I would say probably over like at least 200 channels. And most of those are not in English. So it's like to go through every single one, when they're constantly posting and every single one of them after, you know, click translate, wait for the video or photo to load, you know, it's just very time consuming, and I can't really put more than like an hour or two into it today. I do remember, I think it was like mid March. And, you know, the Russian offensive started to stall, and they were getting bogged down

and the whole world was essentially just dunking out Russia in a Sileviki. I think it's, yeah, Sileviki is one of the Russian news pages. And I remember I went just jumped on there randomly and went to the first comment and translated it. And it was like, bro, it doesn't matter what you think about Putin, we're going to lose this war if we don't get some support back home. And it was very like different than someone of Intel's lobby going, yeah, T 72s. Yeah, it's the greatest tank in the world. It was no, we're going to lose it. We don't actually start doing our job. So yeah, the Russian. Yeah, there was a whole big shift, even after, after the I think it was one of the air bases got hit in Crimea.

Is there right before that or right after that Putin had to actually apparently summon like a bunch of Russian mill bloggers to the Kremlin and talk to them about like how they had to have a more consistent message, I think, or like had a more supportive message or the Russian war effort and not to be tracking. So we're like making comments about like inefficiencies. And I think I think the conclusion was online, they just pissed off Russian mill bloggers and they went and like talk more shit on my telegram channels. That is pretty funny. Yeah. And but yeah, there has been definitely a really a big shift and

I mean, it's been fascinating to see. I don't know. And I think it's also that goes back and forth because you know, Russia will take some advances and then they'll like kind of switch back. But I think the most interesting part of that I saw was like the criticizing of the Soviet military structure, which was something I've seen popping up for. Yeah. Oh, on the Russian side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How they're just they're, you know, sort of the problems with storing ammunition and like supplies and central locations that are easily targeted, like an older, more archaic way of like distributing forces where it's not as like well distributed, like a more concentrated in certain areas, strategic points and not really

like built to defend a whole frontline, like all this sort of stuff where I mean, and now we're kind of seeing what happens when you have this older military structure that hasn't been fully adapted to modern combat. And then or even maybe just maybe not, you know, well maintained in general. And then Ukraine takes advantage of that would kind of just seem like now like a psych, psych out, like they psyched them out. And the thing they were pushing fully into Kyrusan, which they did launch like a limited offensive on some positions, but then switched up on them and said, it's like we're going to Kharkiv instead. Yeah, it was looking back at the Soviet structure, because I was in the military and used to study it, you know, a lot. And so I do remember thinking

that the idea of conscription is never good. You know, we saw that in Vietnam, it's not good to scoop kids off the streets and send them into the fray. But like their idea of everyone's, everyone's a grunt, your infantry, once you're conscripted, then after that, you could be like, you know, I don't know, calm or an intel officer or something like that. And you have to stay in so the more professional guys are the older guys and the younger ones who are essentially just soaking up bullets while everyone else runs around those the moves. And so I thought at the time, I was like, that makes sense in theory, but no one's seen it applied since the 80s with the Soviets in Afghanistan. And looking at their invasion structure into Ukraine as in Afghanistan,

it was remarkable to see that they went the exact same way. They went right down the roads, they didn't seize any terrain to the right or left, they just sat on the road and they were like, yeah, in theory, we have all of everything north of, you know, Kiev. But then in reality, you're just sitting on a road. And so the entire structure was highlighted. Yeah, go right up. And I was gonna say, yeah, taking the road is not helping you can actually run the buildings. Exactly. So it's like in theory, yeah, you do have all the logistical means and you can move around, but there's a guy in a bush, like he's got an AT for it. So yes, it really highlighted how weak and, you know, ill prepared the eastern block is. And so

that was really highlighted with China when they try to mobilize their military for Pelosi's visit, and they couldn't. And I was like, dude, your whole basis is on the Russians who are getting destroyed right now. So it's yeah, that's really fun. So yeah, an award. Yeah, we're definitely going to win. But yeah, and I think it's because you mentioned the way their military command structure works with the younger ones are, you know, at grunt level, and as you already progress. But I mean, a fundamental flaw with this is if you're not continually at war, the people who are older are not going to have as much experience. And they're just gonna have any war, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know, but it's just that Russia,

I mean, like, you know, to like maintain that, you know, in some ways, I feel like you have to like, at least have some like a constant influx of like modern combat experience, or at least like situations in Russia, Russia, Syria, Russia's Africa, you know, they have different areas where they are engaged in conflict, but like, you know, it's asymmetrical warfare, you know, they're fighting mostly to support, you know, at this point, Syrian security forces and, you know, in, in Africa, it's 99% Wagner, defending gold bases and, you know, from ISIS and stuff, or, you know, gold mines and diamond mines. So it's, it's like, they're, it's, you know, it is combat, it is conflict, but it's not, you know, conventional warfare with a, you know, a

fully, you know, armed military like Ukraine has that has, you know, heavy mechanized armor, air, long range, you know, artillery missiles and stuff. So it's, I don't know, I think they, it is like, you know, I could see it being, you know, possibly, you know, maybe working to some degree, if you've had like, you know, war every year, but, you know, Russia has had a pretty, you know, even though they are engaged heavily in military and conflicts, I mean, their last major war, I mean, aside from the Caucasus, which, you know, they are, those were wars, but again, asymmetrical and somewhat due to like the, you know, the size of Russian army versus, you know, Georgians and Chechens. And it's probably, as you said, Afghanistan, and it seems like

they haven't really learned a lot of lessons since then. That was something. I'm just going to say it's, speaking of the military experience thing, it is interesting, because when I went to Ukraine, that was something that they were struggling with as well, because, you know, Ukraine's a post-Soviet state. So of course, they're going to inherit a lot of the same military traits. And Ukraine is even less been at war, you know, besides since 2014, but has been, you know, has lacked a conventional war as well for a long time. So their training has to really have to make up for the fact that a lot of the dudes just don't have any experience. So speaking on that and shifting away from Russia more towards the US, we had

Afghanistan for 20 years. And I guess like, you know, NATO too, but they didn't really want to play after a while. But when it comes to something like Afghanistan, that was the perfect sandbox to keep, you know, Marine soldiers, airmen, sailors, anyone trained up and actually like experience of what's going on. Because yeah, the Taliban, there was no way they're going to win, like conventionally against the Americans. So all you have to do is just, you know, dry runs of, yeah, we're going to grab 15,000 guys, we're going to drop them into Helmand Province, we're going to have them sit there, shoot at them, shoot, get shot at, shoot back, and then they'll go home after six months or a year. And so that really kept our military really,

you know, well oiled and groomed because like, yeah, they're still going overseas, but now they're not. Now the Americans are going more into a peacetime mode where you might have seen it and it's heavily memed on, but the global war on terror, ribbon, the fire watch ribbon, the one where you enlist in a period of war. And so you get like this little yellow and red ribbon. Anyways, it's going away. So yeah, it's over. I saw that. Yeah. So at that point, you're like, well, America is definitely in peace mode. And so like you said, we have consistent fighting, but then after a while we're going to get to this point where there's no actual, you know, veterans that are actually know what they're doing. Yeah, they're in the military,

but they're not experienced. They haven't deployed one of those things. And so yeah, it's almost wrong to compare the Americans to the Russians because they came out of the Soviet Union. They got smacked in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union collapsed. They had the 90s. The country almost went into revolution. And then for the last 20, to be honest, Putin's the best thing to ever happen to Russia. But oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, the dude, the fucking 90s and early 2000s in Russia was terrible. Like in contemporary history, I mean, aside from like maybe living under like Stalin or something, it was a really bad time to live in Russia just because of how much crime there was, poverty, really big problems. Yeah, it's, you know, you've seen it at the

Molchat Doma, the band from Belarus, Molchat Doma, Monster House, and all their music just sounds depressing. And you look at the videos, you're like, Oh, yeah, this is exactly what I thought it was going to be. Yeah, it's just cold, it's wet, and it's gross, and it's gray. And Eastern Europe has a really good ability to make everything look like it was filmed in the 50s, even if it was filmed today. So it just looks grimy and gross. And I mean, you were there, we could talk about that, actually. But yeah, I mean, I'll touch on the thing you said about America, because I do think it is interesting how, you know, as you said, we have this like pretty well old army, because we've had a constant rotation of service members going out, you know, to pretty heavily

armed conflict situations in which they had to, you know, have their skills tested on a regular basis to some degree, depending on where you're deployed. But now we're going to have, as America goes back into peacetime, you know, in some ways, I mean, obviously America's never in peacetime, but fully. But, you know, I mean, we still have, you know, deployments to Middle East and Africa in limited ways. And, you know, I'm sure, and stuff starts to maybe heat up in Asia, or how people sent that way. But, or, you know, or Europe as well, although they're not going to be getting any combat experience, probably in Asia or Europe, at least not immediately, hopefully. So I, but I think over time, I think we will have, you know, not the same degree that Russia has,

like a non-professional army, because they just haven't had, you know, the the maintenance to keep it up. But I just think, yeah, we will see a lot of people with less experience in conflict. I think coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq with two huge L's, you know, on our back, America's definitely going to need a rebound to kind of flex on the world. So I kind of, you know, the post-Vietnam situation where America was like, yeah, we don't want anything to do with war. We got to calm down. That was depressing. And then we rolled right into Grenada and Gulf War One and just smoke checked everybody. And so it's more like a morale boost for us. And then it was also to show the world like, Soviets are gone, I'm in charge. So I can see

America doing a limited operation sometime in the next 10 or 15 years, maybe even small to pick on. Yeah. We need some, we need some window like kind of squished under our thumb and be like, ah, look, we still got it. Since me really stopped, he's already dead. You're like, yeah, just let's go dunk on another African country. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Like, I don't know, what would be a good target for you? I mean, strategically, like, what's like, yeah, South America would never have made the most sense. Maybe just take like, well, yeah, hey, hey, you know what, Queen just died. Falklands look pretty, pretty vulnerable. You know, they're not going to want to fight over that again.

Mentioning the Queen, I, because everyone like the Instagram or Twitter, Twitter is a little different, but they usually seem to walk a fine line of like, no political bias. But every time there's like a national issue or international event, their true colors come out and they were like, oh, you didn't like Queen, did you? And so it's, or someone's like, absolutely, you know, through and through patriotic about the Queen. And then you're like, all right. And now that's what we were talking about, Ukraine. Yeah. No personal opinions here. So it's, it's funny. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I feel like, you know, like the, what I report on, it's like, I try to do it as like, it's, I'm, you know, I'm reporting it in a way that I'm trying to interpret

the facts of what's happening in different situations and in new stories, like, you know, to as much an unbiased manner as I can in terms of reporting them correctly and accurately as it happened in real life. But at the same time, like, you know, I'm, you know, journalism and op eds exist for a reason, like that's the, you know, the fundamental core of journalism is having a position on something and feeling strongly about it and reporting on it in a way that you feel like accurately affects the, you know, the reality because you feel strongly about that reality. So yeah, I mean, I definitely, I've been trickling them. The Queen means they've been coming in. Yeah, it's, I was like, I'm going to take a different perspective on this one. She was

the goat. She was a veteran from World War II, give her a break. Like it's, yeah, it's one of those. It's funny. The, so I noticed that you have several Instagrams and there's like our worlds in our wars, which is the news one. Can you like, what is the difference? Why do you have so many? Yeah. Okay. So I mean, originally I just had our wars today. Actually, I mean, I'll take you all a little just like quick, like backstories. I did Vietnam War first and that's, I started like 2017, I think 2016, 2017, I did Vietnam War today. And in that, I would just post about what had happened in the Vietnam War 50 years ago to the day. So I started in like 1966, 1967. And I went until 2019. So like 1969. And after that, I started to get a little tired of

doing Vietnam and doing it pretty consistently every day, where I would just like post on a combat report or a story that had happened during the day. Like we can burns at that point. Yeah, no, exactly. I was really big at it. Ken Burns was one of the things that got me in the history to be fair. Yeah. The American Civil War series he did. I watched that when I was like eight or nine and I got really into that. And yeah. And then so I transitioned to Cold War today for a while. And I just posted about the Cold War in general. That only lasted maybe like a year or so. And it's kind of like a hiatus as well at the end of that. And then right before Afghanistan, actually like the withdrawal a couple of months before that, I had started getting

back into it more. And then just so happened that I was starting to get into Osin and those circles like in, you know, May, June, July. So by the time the withdrawal started happening, I was already tapped into like the Afghanistan Osin community. And so I just found myself with an insane amount of like just crazy footage coming out of Afghanistan. And I was like, well, I already started reporting on it like a little more like instead of doing historical stuff, I'd started doing new stuff. And then I was like, oh, this seems like a good point to transition. And again, you know, it was a very large response. I gained a lot of followers from that. I went from like under 10,000 before Afghanistan to like over 30,000 afterwards.

And I think if you ask anybody in the domain to cut you off, but I think if you ask anybody in the community, it's what got you interested in what you're doing, you're like Afghanistan. Yeah, cool. All right. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty universal. And so I mean, I went from there and my page took any band because of course, you know, your port on the Taliban, your port on ISIS, you know, you're going to probably have your page taken down, even if you sense the names and sense the images and whatever, you know, Instagram, just think about that sort of thing. And so I got my page taken down like three or four times that fall. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to start, I'm going to lose this. I made our wars today too.

And I started posting random stuff here, like a mix of everything. It was mostly like just like backup memes or pages. And then I made our wars today revival. And then I made it. And then after that, fast forward to like end of December, I got my page banned again. And then one more time in January. And then that was the last time I had that main page was in January. And so I was sitting at about, I think just above 30 K on our worst today too, at that point. And now look at you. Yeah, well, and then and then so at that point, I think I made our wars forever, which is now like just a mean page, you know, basically. And our wars today revival is just ideally a mix between like history, just sort of like interesting stuff, animals, people,

just sort of things I want to highlight. And then our wars, our dot wars dot today is just like my backup backup page. So like, that's the one I like, you know, just to keep followers on and like occasionally I'll do collabs with it just to get some more engagement. And then our dot world today is just any news that I want to post isn't about war, basically. But I like I want to post about it, but I don't think it fits on the, you know, wars pages. And see, yeah, but then I mean, Ukraine happened, and then my page blew up pretty fast, because I was saying I did the same thing I did for Afghanistan, which is I just barely ate, slept, showered or do anything else but post news and oscent for

like a week straight. And it's I mean, it works because people notice and like, you know, people will start saying like, Oh my God, this dude is posting 24 seven like a fucking madman. And, you know, let me share it with all my friends and they can see all this stuff that's happening. And especially at the time, you know, there's the intense, you know, spotlight on it because of the global situation. Now not so much like, you know, engagement and interest in Ukraine has certainly died down in terms of like, you know, this is the one thing this is the funniest thing I heard from a bunch of Ukrainian people who are volunteers that is who were in Ukraine, that would kill the momentum was the Will Smith slap. It was it was almost like it was strategically

placed. Yeah, that it took it took all the fucking momentum and like eyes off of Ukraine and back to America. And then like, you know, like fucking half the world just forgot about Ukraine after that. Oh, yeah. And so you go on, you know, Facebook or Twitter never was going, that's still a thing. Just give it to them already. They're like, I don't really care about what's going on in Ukraine. But then, you know, they're the ones waving Ukrainian flags and wearing traditional Ukrainian clothing. You're like, No, I don't think you're Ukrainian, man. But it's it's a funny thing to see. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I remember when the war started, everyone asked me who's going to win and I went Amazon. Have you seen the protests in DC? Everyone's

wearing like their colors. That's funny. Yeah, it's true. Because I live in like the DC area. And although it was, and I joke about this, it's really funny that there was so many Ukrainian flags in every street corner, then one or two started to come down. And then I guess they didn't have enough colors for June. I think there were 15 or 16 too short. So yeah, I haven't seen a lot of Ukrainian flags since then. Yeah, I'll see them. It's just interesting, the quantity I'll see. And they're not usually where I expect either. I mean, I guess, you know, I guess you can expect them wherever. But I see a lot of like business places, residential homes, apartments. I've seen a couple like really big ones, like really like, you know, like they'll have like a very big American

flag already and they'll put like a very big Ukrainian flag next to it. Even in some like, and I know it's like very popular, like some politicians or officials and stuff, even like even on low level, state positions, positions, I've seen them with flags. So it is interesting to see how it's disseminated within our culture, this conflict. And especially, I mean, in my opinion, I think, well, you know, I do think that Ukraine has a, you know, the right of self determination and, you know, national sovereignty to have their own country. And I don't think that Russia should infringe on that. I do think there are all big reasons a lot of people in America, especially if it's more like, you know, political, or, you know, ideologically involved, it is more of like

an anti Russian position than it really is a pro Ukrainian position. But they're just kind of like, well, you know, I support Ukraine so that they can attrition Russia, you know, that's not the, I don't support, or I don't want Ukraine to win. I want Russia to lose. That's exactly about Ukraine. Yeah, annex or Crimea gets annexed. And then two weeks later, everyone's like, hasn't it always been Russian? Let's consider the phone. Yeah. Yeah. That was so funny. I mean, I wasn't I wasn't in the community at all when, you know, that happened. But just looking back on it, I'm like, how the fuck did they get away with that? It just took that. It's such a huge amount. I mean, you know, obviously, it's very pro Russian,

and they pulled out a pretty, I don't know, well planned coup and annexation, or at least how they stormed every single building on the like, in the peninsula. But you know, it's wild. I did the I did the it is like, there is like a lot of people who just, like, they just want to see Ukraine, like weaken the Russian army as much as possible. You know, it doesn't like they don't care about like what territorially happens. They just want to see the Russian forces get like attrition as much as possible. Yeah. No, I think especially for Americans who are like older Americans who are more like conservative leaning, like Ukraine's fighting the war that they wanted to when they were kids,

they were like, go get them. That's true. I didn't know if they're like, oh, yeah, Red Dawn brother. Oh, yeah. Like everyone above the age of 40 who's like a Midwest guy where with a goatee and a bush latte shirt is like absolute hell. Yes. Go kick those Ruskies. You know, one of those. Yeah. You know, whenever I post, I have noticed like it is interesting that like, despite what I post about Ukraine, if it involves Americans or like American weaponry in any way, it always gets so much more engagement. But I mean, I guess it's just, you know, given the fact that I have a lot of American followers. But I feel like even in the news,

it's like, it's like all the, all the, there's like so many big stories that happen in Ukraine or like even across the world. And like, they just kind of like, it's like, oh, I'm gonna report it on. Maybe they won't. But as soon as it involves like one fucking American, it's like, holy shit. This is the biggest goddamn news on the planet. You know, it's like, I mean, I get it, but it's funny to me because I'm like, I just see everyone is like, you know, even though I am an American, I'm like, you know, and like very heavily consumed American media. I'm like, you know, I think everyone's, and it's not like an American by themselves, the human has like more inherent worth than like, I don't know, like Argentinian or something. So it's like, when I see a story with

like an American, I'm like, oh, it's just another person. But it's like, the way media treats it is very different, right? Right. Actually, now that you mentioned this, because you just mentioned the Falklands a few minutes ago, and now you just mentioned the Argentines. Falklands is a very similar situation to say, I don't know, Ukraine, where the army is being told every single day that like, oh, we need to take this back. This is ours. Falklands is ours. And the army and all of completely as conscripts, getting to the, the government buildings that start walking around, they're like, nobody here speaks Spanish. Everyone here speaking English, nobody wants us here. And it's like, oh, it's almost the exact same thing that you just pump the youth full of propaganda

and absolute like, this is the answer, this is the way. And then, you know, crime is kind of an outsider, because everyone there does speak Russian, and it's only because they are Russian, and it's only because Stalin killed all the Ukrainians there. So, yeah, it's yeah, but yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's just all these one offs. It's really interesting to see that like, oh, yeah, this is just repeating, you know, time is a flat circle. It's just keeps repeating, but yeah, I see it. I think it's an interesting concept. I see a lot is like, in my mind, you know, humans, no matter where they are, even if they have like, really different external influences on their environment. So, you know, different cultures, different religions, you know,

traditions, ways of, you know, societal roles for different people. I think, you know, we still at the end of the day are all humans, and we exhibit the same behavioral traits, and have the same tendencies and like relationships and like diplomacy, negotiations or are, you know, and some people are just naturally more prone to aggression or certain, you know, tendencies are less desirable. So I think, you know, when you see like these very similar situations popping up over and over again around the world throughout history, you know, conflicts which look like each other or have the same, you know, trends or the same sort of, you know, divvying up of the sides and power. I mean, it's really just like humans falling

into like this natural order of like, this is the same shit we've been doing since we were cavemen, where we, you know, we want something and someone else has it and we're like, oh, this is ours. They're like, well, no, this is ours. And like, well, you're not a real this. And they're like, well, you're not a real this, you know, you're not even a real, you know, thing by itself, you're part of us, you know, it's like the same stuff, right? It's like, you just change out, you put X and Y in there, and then you just switch it out for every nationality and land mass and, you know, culture and religion and it kind of fits. It's interesting because that's what I see a lot in my historical work as well. Like looking at it from more like a military side,

you know, you have to make your targets human shapes, so you get conditioned to shooting at people. And then when it comes like early 2000s propaganda against or even early 90s against the Iraqis and Arabs in general was like Bart Simpson saying, fuck these guys, you're like, hell, yeah, we don't like these guys Bart Simpson likes it on. And then so it's like, you're conditioning everyone to go like, no, it's we're better. This is how it is. Regardless of you can be the most puritan, you know, perfect person, you're like, you're going to have that subconscious idea that I think I'm a little better than the next guy. So yeah. You know, I think propaganda is, I mean, incredibly effective, especially for the youth.

And so I was just going to mention that you can see it in language where the term Ho-Hol and Pinko has come back so much recently that I thought it was joke. It was like, wow, everyone apparently remembers these words that because yeah, the Ukrainians, you know, that's their their their the Russians call the Ukrainians, you know, Ho-Hol and then but then Americans are using it jokingly now. And they're like, I don't know, man, it's it's not too many steps away from going, I think the Russians are justified. So yeah, if you're here, have I seen an American in saying Ho-Hol, I'm like, all right, it kind of sucks. I mean, I don't I don't I don't subscribe either. I mean, at the same point with calling Russian orcs or anything like that. Like, I don't,

I mean, you know, I understand people who feel angry or Russian want to, but at the same time, I feel like, you know, they're just humans. Like, yeah, they have a shitty government and a shitty leader. And, you know, that's, you know, that's fucked. But, you know, it's, I'm not going to dehumanize them just because there's a lot, you know, a lot of bad people in a lot of countries, but not all of them are led by bad government. And there's also a lot of good people in countries led by bad government. So just kind of the reality of how we are. Yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. Real quick, I want to like, I guess, transition over like your Atlas news stuff, because you went to Ukraine under the Atlas news name. Do you have anything

else coming up? Yeah, I mean, I'm planning to actually go back to Ukraine. So that's, that's the current plan right now. I have to finish up school. And so currently the plan is this next summer or spring, late spring or summer, and back to Ukraine, which should be interesting. I still have yet to publish all the stuff. I, you know, I discovered in Ukraine because I got back from Ukraine and immediately had to move houses and then moved houses. And then two weeks later, I went off to school. So it's been like a very chaotic transition back from Ukraine. And my, right now I'm like in the trenches with schoolwork, but it's, you know, starting to get there. You know, it's my, my last year as a senior year of college. So

things are starting to get a little bit heavier. And I have to, you know, it's like in between managing the daily news, managing schoolwork, you know, relationships, personal stuff, you know, for hanging out with friends, it's just like, and then to add on top of that, you know, some projects, it's like, I'm still trying to figure out the good balance in my workload. But yeah, you should see some articles coming out soon about my time in Ukraine, both working with the military trainers that I met, some Americans and Brits, and then also with some, an animal shelter that I volunteered at and, and talked to the workers and it's satisfying with them. So yeah, so that should be, it should be some good articles coming out

soon on that. And but yeah, then aside from that, just Ukraine the future. And then after that, I look, you kind of want to go to my top two probably will either be Africa in some area, probably on the West coast or Myanmar. That is one nobody talks about anymore. That is, that country's in civil war. And everyone goes, I don't know, are they Ukrainian? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What are they fighting? Well, the thing is, you have, okay, if we can finally, if we can, because it is true that China heavily supports the Myanmar military junta. And if that information become become more well known, I guarantee you they're getting some fucking high Mars, bro. No, that'd be crazy. But no, I know, I think, yeah,

it's a really under looked conflict. I mean, that I would say Ethiopia, but I heard Ethiopia is pretty dangerous to go right now. It's another one Tigray, that whole situation. Remember that? Yeah, I mean, not, not Ethiopia in general, but I mean, to go to conflict areas in Ethiopia, I think it's considerably more dangerous in some ways, at least what I've heard from other people. I mean, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be saying no to it. I think I have actually a lot of Ethiopian friends and they're all pretty awesome in their food. The cook is really good. So I'm like, maybe, maybe I give it a try. Yes, probably. I actually, one of the volunteers I met in Ukraine told me a crazy story about he actually was in Myanmar too, because there are a lot of

like the same people, you know, in the military, foreign volunteer sort of field and, you know, they, a lot of them, you know, most people probably associate them with like having experience with the YPG, YPJ, or, you know, the YDS or whatever, you know, the various Kurdish groups. But the guy I was talking to had spent time in Myanmar, working with the resistance groups there. And one time he was saying, they were taking a bus between cities. And this man walked on with like a woman who was kind of like his captive. And, you know, there was like this long bus ride, like for hours, she was just like screaming, like, she was, I think it was, he was saying, she was saying AA, she was like screaming AA, like over and over again. And the guy was like,

hitting her and like beating her on the bus. Like he was like, he was like, he tried to step in, but then like his body was like, no, that dude's like special military police. Like he'll be fucking thrown in like a prison if you even try to touch him or, you know, stuff he's doing. Yeah. And apparently it turns out the woman, because they were in the North, she was saying AA, which is like the, the ARCAN Army, which is one of the resistance groups there. So she was like, for like hours, apparently on the bus. And it was, I mean, it sounded like tough, because he just had to like sit through and just like hear her like yelling and screaming for hours as the dude hit her. So I mean, just like in intense situation definitely, but something that I feel like is

very, there's, especially when you consider like the war crimes, the Myanmar military is committed against different villages, just like burning, looting, mass executions, there's been sexual assault and rape, there's been intentional targeting of like artillery on civilian villages, you know, ARCAN and just like really horrible stuff. I mean, I even saw one where early, and this was a couple months ago, and they tied up a bunch of villagers with like barbed wire and then burned them alive. And then you could like, you know, then only, you know, tons of images of just all these bodies, like just, you know, intertwined up with barbed wire, just chartered. And it was like, you know, half women and children sort of stuff, you know,

really barbaric things. And yeah, unfortunately, they really aren't getting the help. Although I have seen, I mean, you know, there's people like the Burma Free Rangers who are doing a lot of great work out there. And I have seen a lot more videos recently that have indicated they're getting at least some more advanced weaponry, like, and they also are just making it all themselves. I mean, they have, you know, JSTARX, FGC9, they have other 3D printed guns, they have homemade cannons, homemade artillery, homemade rocket launchers. That's interesting. That's, that whole conflict is so underreported. There used to be that Instagram page, the boys in Myanmar, yeah, they're gone. Like, yeah, right now, while we're talking, I was like, actually had like a

little portfolio of Myanmar pages, and they're pretty much all gone. So yeah, they've got, they've gotten cracked down. I was on, I've been on some telegram ones of the KNDF, which is the Korean Nationalities Defense Force. And I have a bunch of different pages and like one of them went like black for like five months or no, like three or four months, and he came back and he was like, hey, guys, bad situation over here, really desperate times, you know, to send money, send whatever you can, like, sort of stuff like you just, you know, not, not exactly a great outlook. But then there's other pages, which are doing just fine and still posting content as they did regularly, like a really good, so new sources, Quitsit media, KWIT, THIT media, they do really

great Myanmar coverage. And they do, they cover from both the KNDF and other stuff under the National Unity Government, as well as like the PDF People's Defense Force, and even the Northern Army's like ARCAN and stuff. So it's a good conglomerate of information. But yeah, it's, it's definitely an underlook conflict. And yeah, the pages like Boys in Myanmar have been shut down. And the only thing that's hard to tell us, I mean, it's just really hard to know whether it was because of what they were doing, and that the government somehow found out and they got, you know, targeted or discovered somehow, or if Instagram to be down. The promise was kind of really hard to tell. I'm still in contact with some of them, like, the two pages I work with

now liberate Myanmar and full bodies, feasts or something, I think their username is. They're still posting on Instagram. But yeah, it's a shame to see other pages get taken out. I've my DMs on Instagram is full of just blank Instagram users. Yeah, it's like, you know, we're went out for those guys. I remember I was, I was bored. I just scrolled back to like February 25. There's so many. It's just nuked pages, even guys to talk to this week, like, Oh, he's gone. All right. But it's, I think it's a healthy mix of getting nuked from meta itself. And then just people going, I don't want to do this anymore. So because there is this kind of like migration away from social media is kind of like a trad, you know, movements

kind of like, you know, get away from social media, go touch grass. I don't know. But I don't know if you see anything like that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm fully aware of that sort of stuff. I mean, I don't know, it's, it's, it's a mix of between. I mean, there's a lot of people who are getting into more like ecological interests, especially online younger people. You know, I mean, you definitely have like the more extremes of that emerging with like eco fascism. And, you know, various brands of anarchism and other stuff and which sort of, you know, it's like the extreme, you know, like traditionalism in that way, where it's like, they want to, you know, destroy the, you know, internet infrastructure and everyone goes back to, I don't know,

antibiotics or something, I guess. And, yeah. And, but, you know, I was varying degrees that I think I'm not a big fan of social media myself, despite how heavily intergrained I am with it, like, I think I like it from a perspective of I can share information, I can gain information. But I think as overall as a tool, it's been very harmful in terms of how it's affected people's stability, mentality and like outlook on the world. And the problem is obviously also it's like, you know, I think, you know, I think most people are generally pretty smart and can discern between reality and fantasy and fiction, you know, fake news, but I mean, go to Walmart real quick and ask some people questions. Well, I mean, I say a lot of people, I don't mean a majority though,

you know, it's like, I think a lot of people can and have that ability, but it's like, also this, you know, to what degree it's like, yeah, they might be skeptical of information from like 10 news sources, but they're, you know, digesting 30 news sources, right? So it's like, you know, you have to, they're only some people hold that suspended belief or like, you know, like, oh, take this with a grain of salt. But like, it's only for a selected, you know, you know, range of information. Meanwhile, they're happily accepting all the other information from other news sources. And I do that too, to some degree. I mean, you know, I try to do my best, but I'm sure I've made mistakes. And I know I have to.

But that's, I think the big problem is that there's just at the same time, there's so many people who are very easily misled and gullible. And the type of misinformation or like, I put like, misinformation in the same category as like misleading information, where it's like, they're intentionally like, excluding facts, information or posing in a certain way, where it's like, technically true, but like also kind of like, you know, like very obviously, like, like, biased in some way. Yeah, doubles being just a written version of that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's good description. And I see that in the same category. And I think that's unfortunately, it counts to a large amount of social media information in the end

mainstream media too, to be fair. But that's also the same thing at this point. I mean, shit, more people will probably watch Fox and CNN on YouTube than they do on the fucking channel. Yeah, it's, I mean, I just read a thing the other day that Tucker Carlson is the number one, you know, conservative voice, and then Hassan Piker is the number one, like, left his voice. And I was like, I don't know, your two choices, your two choices. Which path do you take, Western man? Yeah, exactly. You're like, how do you feel about Turkey? And that's pretty much decides what's going on. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, no, I mean, it really is, I mean, it and I think, I think that probably speaks to the polarization more than anything in between

like viewpoints, but also, also the difference because I mean, obviously you have someone like, you know, Tucker Carlson, who has primary targets and demographics are older, you know, more likely to be watching cable TV, more likely to be like into that older media form, you know, where, you know, you have to like wait for a time slot, basically. And, and he does get a lot of like, I mean, his show is the most watched, as you said, during that time slot. I mean, he dominates Fox, he dominates all media basically in the US in terms of mainstream media, as viewership, it's pretty crazy. And then you have someone like Son Piker, which is like, you know, he's, well, the entirely exclusive on Twitch, I think he's got YouTube, I think he has,

he gets a lot of views on YouTube too, which I'm, you know, Tucker Carlson does to it, even a greater degree. But Twitch is a very interesting platform, I think in terms of how it's emerged as really like this new way for people to interact with media and just content creators in general. And, you know, so why that aspect is certainly cool. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, because you're also interactive, you can get in the chat and just spam shit, and then just like, see what happens, like notice me. And then, hey, maybe you do, maybe you don't, I don't know. But I did laugh really hard when Sam Hyde called out his son, Piker, and he was visually frustrated on the screen. It was pretty funny. But I think, I think they should box. I think that'd be funny. I think it'd be

hilarious. But yeah. Yeah. I really liked the, the iDubbbz boxing matches that he put up through like the YouTuber clash. You see that? Yeah. Oh yeah. Epic Mealtime. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, that was good. Epic Mealtime, that was a good one. Even, I mean, he didn't hold his own against, I don't even know who he was fighting, some, oh, Dr. Mike, right, or something. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I, you gotta beat the fuck up. But then it was, yeah, it was, I see, I've gotten more into, I wasn't as much into it, like probably like five years, you know, even four or five years ago, but like MMA, martial arts, like just watching different fighting stuff that has been certainly something I've gotten into in the past couple years. And it's

interesting to see like how it's, it's not making its way into like communities that haven't traditionally, you know, been involved in that sort of activity. It's just like, you know, basically gamers. Yeah, there's gamers, and then you have like, Huzboula, who is openly calls anybody out, and then they're like, you're going to beat up this, you know, 17 kilogram waiting dwarf, like, there's no way. All right, so video and punching shack. That's pretty funny. That was a bizarre crossover. I was like, why is this seven foot four giant hanging out with this kid that's like 18 inches tall? Huzboula is like in his thirties, right? Something he's 19 or 20. Oh, really? Okay. That's older than I thought. That's what's funny, because he looks both like an infant

and an old man at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I thought he was like, older, because he kind of had like, like, wow, 19 years old. Damn. Okay, because he's like at the same age. I mean, he's young in that way. But he's also, you know, that's interesting. It makes I kind of honestly explains a lot more of his behavior. Because I sometimes I look at him, I'm like, there's no way a dwarf a grown man is acting some like this in some ways. But now that makes sense. 19. Yeah. Did you see that YouTube video that got him banned, where he threatened to kill a woman? It was pretty funny. No, that's crazy. I've seen him. I've seen him doing a lot of people. It's, it's, it's very funny. And it's like, he's talking to his sister, and she's like, how's

like his sister's like a five, six Russian woman, like she's regular. And so she was like, Hasbulla, you're very famous. It's ruining my life. This woman took a picture of me and I didn't like it. And he looks into the camera, he's like, Inchala, she will not be able to continue to breathe unless she deletes the picture. And it's like, and then immediately was banned. And then the video came up and he looks so fresh. It was, yeah, I'll send it to you. But it was, that's, that's funny. Yeah, it's on the way off the rails here. No, no, no. Hey, Hasbulla is the, you know, unifier. Everyone can relate to him. He's global. He will, he's just going to bring the East and West together. Man, when though it was like early March or something like that. And Hasbulla does all

those live streams. So every time he starts up, I'm like, why are you and your friends not in Ukraine? Because he is Russian, right? Yes. Yeah. So like what, how's that? I mean, has he like spoken on that? I mean, you know, I mean, he basically is blown up in the same period of time that Russia has been blowing up Ukraine, you know, like I came out, he said, I think he came out said he doesn't care about issues that are outside of the Palestine conflict. So he was like, that's all I care about. Very basic. Yeah, very, very dialed in. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Dude, that kid cracks me up. But yeah, I think we're getting to about that time unless

you want to keep going. I mean, we definitely can. But yeah, I'm done to go for a little more. All right. Speaking of, because now we're just kind of like bullshitting at this point, do you remember when Nick Mullen was doing those? Yeah, why did I just, why did I just forget the name? Hold on, Tucker Carlson impressions. He was like, what's going on? Yeah, what's going on here? What's going on? Very funny. I kind of would wish that era comes back. Yeah. Tucker Carlson, I mean, I don't know, he's just a crazy influence for the ideas that he puts out sometimes. I mean, I guess you could say that about anyone who is like a major influencer is like,

you know, political. But like some of the stuff, I mean, like, you know, I don't know, there's like, you know, there's baseline, normal, like conservative stuff, you know, pretty standard, like, you know, Republican stuff. And so that's going on, like the fucking like white replacement theory rant spread on like, I'm like, dude, what the fuck can you do? Like, I mean, I mean, I don't, you know, listen to Tucker Carlson or all, you know, in that matter, I don't really, media political pundits or talking heads. I don't think it's pretty boring. Most of the stuff they talk about, it's just sort of like, you know, it's stuff for the masses, right? It's what to talk to, you know, so they can get the, what 70% of the people,

you know, to vote for them or, you know, exactly. And it's not targeting everybody, they're just targeting the people who are already ideologically aligned with them. But when he starts going on, I'm like, I'm a crazy rants, bro. I'm like, I'm like, dude, you have such a huge platform. And it's like, this is what you choose to do with it. Like, I don't know, I feel like even in the idea of like, you know, like even, you know, ignoring the idea that he's just like, talking about like, like a crazy conspiracy theory, which is just how demographic change works in history. The fact that like, he's like, he could be using his position, you know, strategically for the Republicans to better

themselves. And as he doesn't, which is just really interesting, because I feel like he, he could literally, I mean, he could, you know, him and DeSantis could take over the party easy. I could see that. So he's taking that. Yeah. Daddy DeSantis, he is, his following is insane. Yeah. And that's something like, I mean, DeSantis will like, literally, he can, I mean, you know, aside from the diehard Trump fans, which will never abandon him, you know, he DeSantis can suck up a lot of Trump's constituents. And, you know, if he has Tucker Carlson on his side, or, you know, Tucker, you know, supports him in the way they supported Trump in terms of like political messaging and just sort of like ways that, you know, interview

him on the show or whatever. I mean, I could definitely see a presidential run being pretty close into DeSantis's future. And even a tight one at that. But the thing is, like, but then you don't see that happening. I mean, I see it happening in terms of like DeSantis, but Tucker Carlson, like, he just like, he just locked in on his rants, bro. He just, he's, I don't know, he's just all over the place. What is going on? What is going on? The liberal, he is a media Democrats. They want you to believe one thing, but actually, it's a different thing. Or it's this thing. Maybe it's this thing. I don't know. This Jones, man. Jones was the best at just schizo echo chamber, just mindless rants for

hours. It's like, Tucker Carlson's not even remotely close to that. No, we lost Jones. I watched Jones more. I try, I feel like as I grew older, it was like harder for me to watch him just because I'm like, not because like, I necessarily like was like, I don't know. I, not because it ever stopped being funny. I don't think it ever really stopped being, it's always so, it's like absurdist. It's like so like against the grain and like in contrast with reality, it like makes you laugh. I just kind of get so red when he talks, like he's speaking from the heart. Yeah. And that's, that's the thing. I mean, he's so like convincing with it. And then I think it's just the fact, I mean, I don't know,

I think I became like more like after a while, like, I think sometime like late high school, I was like, I started like reading about more what he had like done in terms of like sandy hook stuff. And then just like some of the more like fringe theories he had pushed, which, you know, a little more, you know, like dangerous or, you know, like actually like having like harmful real world effects where people were like listening to Alex Jones and then like doing some crazy shit in real life, which is like the problem, which is like, you know, that's when it reaches like actual danger. It's like not when he's doing the community beds or like satires when people don't understand that he is literally playing a satirical character. And he has argued

that in court multiple times that people, which is interesting because that's also something that Tucker Carlson's team has done in court on multiple occasions, which is claimed that he's playing a character in some way and that the what he's saying shouldn't be fully taken as reality. What's insane is Jones and his wife got divorced and he got custody and immediately went to Australia and got a DUI and his wife's like, can you please give me my kids back? Immediately got immediately went to Australia, got wasted. Yeah, it's it's one of those like, you know, legal issues when you go to Wikipedia. So funny. Never when it happened, I went, there's no way that's real. There's no way he got on a plane immediately afterwards

and got a DUI and I'll strip you. It's insane. It's like, I feel like the traditional presumption is like, even if, you know, there's like, you know, there's obviously like, I think that their assumption is like, there's a discrepancy and how like, divorce court and, you know, custody works in America, where generally, even if, you know, maybe one partner is more qualified, generally, if some mothers tend to easier for them to get custody, just because of that, you know, that's like, you know, birth from their, and you know, it's that their children and usually they're considered like, you know, more traditional, like home tenders or, you know, like children rears or whatever by society. But then you have Alex Jones, possibly one of those unhinged men

in America. And the judge is like, yeah, fuck it. Take him, bro. I was watching his Joe Rogan interview again, where he starts out of nowhere, like breathing heavy. And it was like, my ancestors are coming down, they're possessing me. I'm living the lives of millions of men. Jones is like, are you okay? And then immediately after, I think like, kept threatening to fight people. He's like, I'll throw his right now, Joe. Don't even dump me. Yeah. What are you talking about? Dude, I'm so excited for the, do you watch channel five? Of course, yes. Yeah, did channel five, the new interview with Alex Jones? Oh my God. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait to see it. Every time Red Scare, which is the most bizarre

crossover between like Shaq and Hezbollah is the Red Scare girls and Alex Jones going to the shooting range together. I was like, what, what is this? Are you familiar with those, the Red Scare fighters? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm aware of them. I'm not like, I'm really dialed in, but when Jones came on, I went, yeah, I got to listen to this. I got to see what this meeting of the minds is like. Yeah, I definitely, I've heard some, I've listened to them a little bit and I've heard some interesting things about the hosters, like about like their backgrounds and just some of the stuff they've been involved with online in the past. So I don't know, it's, it's, it's a little bit, you know, there was an interesting crossover. I think, I don't know, it's out dude. Oh man, imagine if we

got Alex Jones and Sam Hyde to fight. Brother. To the mat, the match of the monster is the behemoth. Hosted January six. Yeah. Live, live from the capital. Live from the White House launch. Yeah. I don't know. I wouldn't know who would be fun or more fun to watch. Sam Hyde and Hassan Pike or Sam Hyde and Jones because Jones is just large. Yeah, because I feel like, I don't know. I don't even know. Sam Hyde's pretty tall. All right. It's like over six foot. He's like six, four or six, five and like 265. It's insane. Yeah. That's pretty gross. I mean, for reference, it's like I'm six, five. So, you know, yeah. So it's, he's like definitely up there. But I feel like you might have, you might

have too much of a high advantage on Jones. Jones is five, 10 maybe. Yeah. He might have, Alex Jones. Oh, because does not say five, 10. Yeah. You got it. I don't know. I think, honestly, this is all going out tangent here since we're talking about show anyway. I'm a, I'm a big advocate in some ways. Not like, okay, I'm not like a big, I'm not like an activist for this, but I believe to a degree that there is a way you could successfully implement like types of blood sports, like fighting sports, and you could use, you could use them to better social conditions for people. And it would probably be a combination of

like, I think there should be different tiers. I think there should be like a civilian tier where people can volunteer and fight each other in arena to like, you know, not fatality, but to, you know, at least, you know, to a degree of injury with blunted weapons or whatever they desire. And then, you know, gladiatorial type combat, and then they'll use, and then it will host by a company. This is, this is all very technical and probably has a ton of abuses built into it, but like either hosted by a company or a government that has like a, some from a watchdog organization to make sure abuses isn't happening. And then the money from the pay to watch streams from it could be used to like reinvest in communities and society and like better things,

because my God, bro, you, you put people in an arena and you like tell them to like fight to near death, you're going to get some crazy views, especially, and this is, this is, this is where it gets really good. You sound like you had a lot of time on your hands, man. Just this is just something I found in the past. And the, the, the capstone part of it is you got to make it let the Roman gladiatorial arenas, because they had some crazy arenas. And I want to see the return of naval combat in like a coliseums, you know, they would just fill a giant coliseum with water, just put two big ass boats in it, a bunch of dudes with swords, and they just like board each other and hack it out. I just think that's like, I mean, that would go crazy if you

were wise nowadays. Like, I mean, you would just get millions of people all over the world watching that and the revenue it could bring and be pretty significant, depending, especially if you got like more popular or successful people to fight in them. And then my other idea is having to like, give them a little incentive, like we'll give you some fentanyl if you go stand on the screen and beat people up. Well, I mean, it'd definitely be like a, like a, like a prize thing. I really don't like when like a hundred K, a hundred K afterwards or something. And then my other idea was that you could apply that same idea. And this is the part where it becomes a little more tricky with legality, like a volunteer, a voluntarily only gladiatorial arena

for prisoners. And they can, you know, volunteer not to get time taken off of their sentence necessarily or anything like that, but maybe, you know, to get, you know, slightly better living conditions or something or like, you know, sort of like, you know, I don't know, cafeteria money, I don't know, sure, something. But and in that, and in that way, I mean, you know, especially, and this is of course, the only promise that as I was seeing of this idea, like a while ago, I was like, also concerned idea that maybe giving a bunch of prisoners combat experience is maybe not like the best idea, especially like in heavily, you know, like really, really being taught like brawl to the death of their people. And then it's like, just going

back into prison after that, and then filling an entire prison full of people like that. I mean, I feel like we just like, I take it a step further, just put a little brawl around like Baltimore, Detroit and be like, all right, guys, this is it. Yeah. This is Truman show. This one. Yeah. The dome 2.0. Yeah. I don't know. I do think, I don't know, and just beside all the, you know, prison stuff, I do think that like there could be a way that you could monetize combat in a way. But I think a lot of people, like, especially a lot of like young people and young men, specifically who are like, you know, have a lot of like anger or just want to fight.

And maybe that, you know, they, you know, they don't want to join a gang or the militia or the police. And this was like an arena where they could. Yeah. Yeah. And an arena, but one that could be like used to generate profits to actually like better society. And then a lot of people would probably watch as if this was done right. I mean, you got to do, you got to do it up. You know, you got to do it like WWE stuff, you know, like like theatrics, but at the same time talking like an attitude era, WWE fight club. That's like gladiatorial Roman style. That's, that is insane. That is well, and monetized for public consumption. Everybody's winning. It's a humbling experience for everyone who loses. And you get to watch this

guy get beat up. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Yeah, that's, that's one of my plans after I become billionaire. And I'm just going to build my own little gladiatorial arena, a little fight, a little fight club setup. Going back to where you talked about like height differences between like Jones and Sam Hyde. I know this is like a few minutes ago, but I met Chase Baker a few months ago and he towered over me. I was like, wow, I was not expecting you to be this tall. And he was like, yeah, dude, it's up. It was, it was, it was funny. I met a few of the journalists guys here in the community and he was the one I was like, I did not expect you to be like six, three. So yeah, we are same height, same voice. We're just the same person really.

That's it. Yeah. But yeah, no, no, I can't say I can't speak to the height of other Atlas members. I think, I think Tesseron is five foot something. Sorry for the sorry for the insult. If he's, if he's six foot, I'm sorry, Tess, but that's why I feel like it's like it's like a highs like, I think it's like five, 10, five, 11 or something. I can't remember what the other guys are. To be fair, I haven't, I only know, I've never met any of the Atlas members in real life, you know, all our interactions have been online. I've only seen a number of their faces, still a couple of guys who I haven't, but I mean, you know, we still generally work together and we're adding on new members to like, we recently

had a good history. Join us as a contributor to the website. So, you know, it's like, it's we're not a stagnant team of people that we're definitely looking for other contributors. It's just like, right now we already have like, you know, we're figuring out everything that has to do with the website. I know Atlas and his team, the guy who runs Atlas page and the other people who do run the Atlas website and servers and stuff are figuring out better ways to work out how we can like get other contributors, because obviously I have received a lot of messages from people who are like, you know, oh, hey, can I write for Atlas or, you know, I do conflict reporting or I do journalism and I'd like to write for them. So I think we're

definitely trying to move to a point where we can, you know, we're there trying to look for more people. But yeah, it's been an interesting process that I mean, really, I mean, it kind of came out of nowhere in some ways, like it literally all Atlas news stuff just stemmed from us basically getting shadow banned and banned and removed from Instagram. And so heavily, you're like, I have an idea. Yeah, exactly. Like, no, literally, I mean, that was all where I started was in the group chat, where we were just talking about like different ways we could like, grow our platforms. And Atlas told us that he was looking into like website and servers and stuff and having an app. We're all on board and it's just been a

growth since then. I mean, we only launched and like what I think I want to say like late spring. I think it was like May or May or something, May or June. May and March. And since then, I mean, it's been really positive feedback, everything we've heard and we're still adding new stuff to like right now, it's more of a traditional news site where it shows the articles. But the plan is to have like Reddit style comment threads as well. Like, so there can be like active discussions, like private DMs, like so, you know, it's going to be actually, I don't know the DMs part, but at least the at least the comment style discussion threads, where they'll be more of like the, you know, we're trying to bring things over that have

made platforms like Instagram successful where users can interact with each other and the content and new laws. It's really awesome, man. It's really impressive to see, because I've followed Atlas since like 2014. And yeah, so pretty crazy to see him come from doing this, I guess on the side when he was bored to creating a little media outlet empire. And yeah, everyone inside the community is really nice. And I like to, like you said earlier, there's different political views and everyone has their different opinions, but then they throw it in like a real dialed in tight package when they do the writing. So yeah, that's really good. I like it. Good job. Yeah. I mean, hey, I mean, I think a lot of the credit has to go to everyone

individually. I mean, it wouldn't be possible if we weren't all putting in effort to like make it what it is. I mean, obviously, and like, you know, you have someone like Tesseron who writes and insanely more articles than the rest of us. But that's also because he was posting so heavily on Instagram and then his account kept getting banned. He said, fuck it. I'm switching over to like posting primarily on Atlas because it's just not sustainable. You know, he wanted to post to post what he wanted to post. And the problem is like, you know, if you want to post about a Taliban or like, you know, any type of like terrorist organization or anything that's like, even remotely, you know, has an Instagram my sensor was and, you know, understandably,

so he got fed up with it. And I mean, his account was banned for his main account was banned for like, good like four or five months, I think. So yeah. Yeah, it was an RIP moment when he came back. He's like, I'm going to go back on Instagram. And what 12 hours later, he was deleted. So yeah, I mean, they do that too. Like, it's like crazy because it's not even probably I don't even think it was the content, in my opinion. I think it was the fact that his account was inactive and then it came back to life and Instagram assumed it wasn't real, which is something that I've had happened to me to where they tried to verify my like identification because they didn't think I was real because I kept making so many different accounts.

Like something's going on here. I've seen this email a lot. Yeah, well, I should switch up. I didn't create a different email for every account. Just interesting. I have a lot of inboxes, but that's to be proud. It's like any of them really. Yeah, I don't know. It's but yeah, I think all the credit really goes to individual contributors, myself, Chase, the filthy American, Renegade, Brandon, Justin, who runs Rose Warfare, Narcotic Void, Tesseron, Atlas. And now we have good news doing stuff for us too. And yeah, it's been a really interesting process to the evolution of our pages. And we've moved from because I mean, definitely, I mean, you should even go back like

a month or two before the war. And it was a very different situation in terms of like what we thought we were going to be able to accomplish. I mean, my page was not like, you know, not small back then, but, you know, for me, it was, you know, for now, if I look back, I'm like, Oh, wow, you know, I have a lot more followers. Although, you know, even though my engagement has gone up significantly, I would still say, I think a lot of my followers on my page are kind of like faux followers, if that makes sense in a way. Like they're followers, but only because like there was just this huge time when, you know, I was posting all this news, you know, updates. And, you know, in the first two weeks of the war, I got like

about 80,000 followers or something. I'm just crazy. I'm out like in such a short period of time where I was like literally gaining like, you know, like 10,000 followers a day. And, you know, like really, you know, like, I think literally February 25th, February 26th, I gained like 10 or 15 one day. I mean, it was, it was wild. And, you know, now things have slowed down. I still have a lot of followers, but one thing I noticed I have a really high turnover rate. So I'll gain like 5,000 followers in a month, but then I'll lose like 2.5 thousand of them. So yeah, really, really only my gain will be at two and a half thousand followers, even though I've gained 5,000 new followers. So I noticed that on my end, pretty much the same

thing you're saying. I've noticed that where it's like, you know, you do your analytics, you're like, I'm up 1%, but then you go, you know, when the last week, you're up a couple hundred thousand followers, and then you go down to the numbers, you're like, wow, I actually lost more than I gained, but I think we're in the green at the moment. So yeah, no, I mean, and that's like, you know, and we'll go up and down like, there's definitely been points where I've lost more followers than I gained them, especially when I, you know, post things that are like a more, you know, either like opinion-oriented or I just talked about like controversial issues that it's in the like divide people.

Like I put, I think a pretty strong stance on like saying that I didn't think that Roe v. Wade should be overturned and stuff like that. And that just a lot of people often got a lot of unfollows from that. Or I think at times when I sort of tried to be like, you know, objective in terms of like saying, you know, we should, you know, try to, you know, parse through information about the war from both sides and, you know, not dehumanize people, even if we don't agree with their beliefs. And, you know, a lot of people on both sides don't like that opinion either. And so, you know, there's, there's a, I've run into some, you know, my own little controversies. There's the famous cracker incident, which is actually what got my account banned

finally, my main one, which is, is that during the controversy, when a cracker was in the news back in like January, when it was like this whole thing was happening, I literally, I went to a historical website screenshoted like the history of the etymology of the word, how it basically came from just describing braggarts and people who would crack jokes, you know, creics from Ireland, which is the origin of the word creic, you know, cracker, and how it was like the term that British would use to describe them, because they were making jokes at the time. Literally, all I did was screenshot that. And then I put a caption, I was like, I was like, you know, I was like, it's ridiculous that it's being compared to other words when it has such a non-oppressive history.

And then that got my account banned finally. That's so stupid. I know, I know, it's the fucking, I was, I was so pissed at it, but it's like also the funniest show because I meant someone had to go in there and report the shit out of that post that someone was so heavily offended by that, that I was saying that, you know, I was like, as a dude who is of Irish and fucking English and Scottish descent, that I was saying that this word is not oppressive in any way. And then they were like, no, that's so wrong. I have to take down your entire pitch. I lost so many followers by posting that farewell queen, just post it was like just farewell period. And it was like a lot of messages like go fuck yourself. And I was like, I mean,

I thought she was cool, but all right. Yeah, it's people, people care too much. All right. It's like, I mean, it's like, I mean, I don't really, I'm not like celebrating it. I think it's, I think the memes are funny. That's, I mean, that's, that's honestly for me. I mean, I think, you know, human dies. It's like, you know, it's, I mean, yeah, it's sad. It's, you know, whatever it's a loss of a person. But like, at the same time, I think the memes are really funny. And you absolutely know that Diane has been waiting for. It's like, those memes are so funny. I mean, it's like, it's so sad that Diana couldn't be alive to right now. I just see this great, you know, to see this happen.

Yeah. But also, I think the people who are like, I mean, I don't know. It's like, I think people in my mind to get like crazy about like defending the royalty, but I like a little more odd in my opinion, and not like in the fact of like saying farewell or anything or like just respecting them as like a world leader, like people who are like rabid monarchists, you know, like, like super into the royal family, like Brits, but I'm just like, oh, it's a monarchy. Like, I mean, you know, the like, we got rid of those a long time ago for a reason, like we've been transitioning, like that's like, it literally went like feudalism, monarchy. And now we have like republics and democracy and stuff. Like, it's like the opposite direction of where we're going. I don't know.

It's just a lot of money. I was gonna say, like, oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, I remember when, uh, was it Markle came out? She was like the Queen's racist. No, it's like, wow, the Queen of England's racist. I never would have guessed that one. What a breaking story. A woman whose family oversaw the active struggle against decolonization. That's like, that's like, she didn't take over the world. It was her grandmother, give her a break. She only prevented the world, you know, she only tried her best to prevent the world from leaving the British Empire. So funny. But hey, man, I do have to take off here soon. So I'm going to cut this. So yeah, I mean, if you want to take a second to plug what you got,

we've talked for a while, but yeah, um, if you want to check out more of my content, you can do so on Instagram at our worst today too. And then the rest of my accounts are linked in the bio that if you want to check them out as well on telegram, it's just our worst today. And on there I post considerably more than I do on my Instagram. So I would definitely recommend checking out if you have telegram or even downloading telegram to check it out either way. It's pretty fast download. Jump in the channel and you can see I post a lot of stuff from news, OSINT, updates, and like, especially a lot of stuff focusing on like military equipment, guns, stuff that's captured, conflict footage. And beyond that, I have a Twitter account,

which I don't really use, but also our worst today. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on, man. I really appreciate it. It's great time talking to you. Absolutely. It's been really fun just shooting the shit for what is it a while now. I mean, yeah, I mean, the time doesn't really matter. It was a good conversation. I had a good time and, you know, everyone who's listening, I hope you enjoyed it. So all right, man, I, uh, I'm going to cut this and then talk to you later. Okay. Okay.