286: Adam Mockler: Trump, Newsom, and the Dark Future of American Politics

27:22And what I'm wondering is if you think in maybe the, at least we don't know what the media landscape is going to be like in 10 years, but in the foreseeable future of politics, is winning elections merely about the quantity of attention that you're able to get yourself rather than the quality of the messaging? Because even, for instance, if you think Donald Trump's messaging is bad, clearly, because of the sure volume of attention he was able to garner, there are enough people who would vote for him regardless of what his messaging is. I think that his messaging was bad, but it was still, in a lot of people's eyes, more simple than the Democrats' messaging.

28:06And that gave him the edge. He had these big, bold, intuitive ideas that were bad. They were bad ideas. They were infantile, like build the wall was a solution to a decades-old immigration problem. Or he would say, drill, baby, drill, no new wars. These three word phrases that were lies. He was conning the American people in my eyes. But I think that this type of bold messaging, these type of three letter ideas or three word ideas, rather, sorry, are, are really accessible to people and really help win people over. And the Democrats were just lacking that. There's so many democratic policies that were being pushed.

28:44I'm a Democrat, but there were so many democratic policies that were being push that were like, you get a first time homebuyers discount if you live in this area and you're of this age range in this bracket, but only if you qualify for these things, like all of these qualifiers that just weaken the messaging. So while Trump's messaging isn't great, I do think that when he's saying these things like no new wars, he's tapping into something very, very real. And then he just gets a massive volume of attention out of it. He has a whole apparatus around him of people pushing this BS. And we just didn't have that on the left.

29:19I think that a combination of big, bold, intuitive ideas, that's the future of politics. Abdul El Sayyad just won the Michigan Senate primary. And his slogan is money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare for all. He calls it the three M's. And it's really interesting. That's bold. It's intuitive. It feels good. And it's something that's actually possible. I think that's the future of messaging. And due to it being good, he was able to really, really push a captivating message. There's also something, as I'm saying this, I'm realizing there's a few different styles of grabbing attention to push a narrative and try to make political change.

30:01There's the Trump method, which is being angry and grabbing attention that way. And Gavin Newsom of California basically capitalized off of that when he was trying to push for Prop 50. Proposition 50 was the rebuttal to Texas's redistricting, the mid-decade redistricting that they enacted. And Texas was trying to essentially add five new seats, middle of the decade, which you're not supposed to do to rig the midterms. And California said, all right, we're going to punch back in response, but we're going to do it democratically and reciprocally. We're going to make sure that we're adding five seats, but in a democratic manner.

30:32So Newsom put it up for a vote. And in order to market this, He sent out a bunch of tweets that were very Trumpian, that were picking fights with Trumps and Republicans. And it was in all caps. And he was using that to gain attention and use that attention as a vehicle to drive a narrative about Proposition 50. And that's an example of fighting for liberal values, in my opinion, democratic values, while also at the same time grabbing attention. Now, Zoran Mamdani of New York City had a little bit of a different strategy. He would come out with these bold, intuitive ideas, come out with snappy videos, and the ideas themselves were just so unique and clever that that kind of gained attention.

31:10He gained attention through these unique, clever ideas, and that's another way to do it as well. So grabbing attention is just really important. The quality of the message does absolutely matter. But at some point, when the quantity is so high on the right, it's hard to beat. When every single ad that they're running on TV is about trans people, and then Elon Musk owns X, and he's getting tens of millions of views about trans people, and they're just overwhelming the feeds with that, it changes people's perceptions. And we have to fight back against that by staying focused on the economy, actual issues, and driving attention to that in whatever way we can.

31:47I'm recognizing in this conversation how kind of silly it is that I have not done any interviews before this one focusing on the political media landscape. Not only because it's so interesting, but because so much money that I don't really think about must be going into it. Something that you said earlier was that these five corporations or so conglomerations, whatever, own the major media networks. And this places a lot of constraints on their messaging that you don't have. Of course, you do have quality control and other checks and balances that you implement. But I'm wondering if you feel that you have pressures that affect your content that they don't.

32:41Just for instance, you have to garner attention from this really crowded landscape. And that might pressure you to have to resort to clickbait in a way that the Wall Street Journal doesn't. Because they're going to be a source that everybody cares about no matter what their headlines are. Well, I'm glad you find this interesting. I'm the first non-professor on the show, so I was hoping I'd be able to bring something still unique, right? But I guess to answer your question, yes. I said earlier that independent media is a double-edged sword, and I think I forgot to lay out the other edge of it, because on one hand, I can make a video whenever I want, but whenever I want, I always say to my audience, I can make a video shirtless, and there's like no one around me that would tell me not to do that.

33:26I wouldn't do that, but I could. But on the other side of that, you have people like Alex Jones who don't have quality control or fact check or they intentionally subvert that so they can tell lies about Sandy Hook. I mean, independent media allows for some wild conspiracies and wild lies to flourish with no actual guardrails on it. So in some respects, the guardrails and the checks that happen in mainstream media are good. And I think every single independent creator should stride to have their own sort of check system so that they're not turning into conspiracy theorists and saying things that are unverified.

34:01Instead, independent media creates all of these separate incentives for you to try to flourish in a hyper-competitive market. For some people, that is coming up with conspiracy theories. I stay away from that. I'm actually very skeptical of most theories. I'm usually pushing back on that when I see it in my comments. But I do sometimes have to frame things in such a way to grab people's attention in this hyper-competitive market. For example, if you look at some of my clips on Instagram, I don't normally title things like this. Like I wouldn't deep down want to title things like this. But one of my clips that's going viral is I left this Trump supporter speechless.

34:36And there's a moment where he just kind of stutters. And we turn that into a little caption that helps gain the most attention. Or a video that I made the other day is we just lost dot dot dot. It's like vague. The Wall Street Journal would not do that. But it was talking about the Iran war and how, in my opinion, we're just we're at such a quagmire that we have lost this. Like the United States is being humiliated, which is another topic that I I talk a lot about on my channel. But yeah, it does create this incentive at times to title things in different ways or to stay hyper competitive. And I've even noticed sometimes it can be a race to the bottom.

35:09Like you see competitors titling things in a certain way and then you see competitors twisting things a bit. And I can see how in the right wing sphere, it's a race to the bottom to come up with the best conspiracy, the next conspiracy. Oh, wait, I have another competitor floating these conspiracies. I have to float these. So there's no guardrails. And when there's no guardrails in a competitive market like this, it creates this insane conspiracy thing on the right. And I even see it popping up on the left. Sometimes a lot of my audience wanted me to call the 2024 election rigged. A lot of my audience thinks that every single Trump assassination attempt is entirely staged years in advance.

35:45And they have all these. I'm trying to push back against these things that in my mind, just I'm skeptical of because I'm broadly skeptical of conspiracy theories that don't have a lot of evidence. And it does create these environments where people lie. And I have the feeling that there are probably left-wing people out there that are telling lies and making up conspiracies because there's no guardrails and there's the incentive to. So for me, it becomes a trade-off. I think every single day of the trade-off that I want to make, if I titled the video in such a way where it was like Adam Mockler breaks down updates on the Iran war, I think it would get about 10 ,000 views, maybe like 20 ,000 views, which is good.

36:21That's decent. But when I do a title like we just lost and it grabs people's attention, it's a little bit more vague and kind of like baits people and grabs them in. I made one with that title. I got 1.8 million views a few days back. So like this is serious narrative control and attention onto a narrative. And the tradeoff that I make is I'm willing to seed a little bit of my idealistic titles in order to have more narrative control because that's the environment we're in. Do you know the channel Jubilee? I do. They do these debates where it's like young people debating sometimes one versus 20.

36:55A lot of different people have been on there. Have you been on there? Yeah, I've been on there a few times. Oh, that's awesome. It's really cool. It's this really gamified, gamified version of debate where it's like fast paced game show with debates back and forth. A lot of people think it's very toxic to the environment of political discussion. And when I went on and did my 1v20, one liberal versus 20 MAGA supporters, a lot of people of people were saying, why would you go on this platform? Why would you give this platform air? It seems toxic. But the reality is, if I ceded that ground in that moment, what are they going to have Ben Shapiro on instead of me?

37:31I don't think my audience wants Ben Shapiro getting hundreds of clips, talking to these people, making young liberals look dumb. So right now, you have to play on the battlefield that is presented in front of you. Maybe that sounds a bit dramatic. I say battlefield, but I'm just like making videos on reasonable. But no, no, no. Yeah, I think of it as almost a political battlefield and you have to play on the field that is in front of you. And I also do try to lead the way and make changes and try to tone down the way that certain things work in the space. I try to do titles that are very even keeled.

38:03But at the end of the day, you have to you have to play the game. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think, you know, a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. When you're 7-Eleven's hottest fire chicken sandwich, people think you're intense.

38:37Well, yeah, I'm hot! So, yeah, intense. Want to see if you can handle the heat? Then try me. With pickles or spicy mayo and jalapenos. Oh, and it's all just$4.99. That's a deal almost as hot as I am. Almost? Sweet? No. Spicy? See for yourself. $4.99 and only at 7-Eleven. Followed through 825-26. Participating stores only while supplies last. Visit store for full terms. It is funny. You mentioned being the first non-professor. There have been some other non-professors. I interviewed my dad when I started. But after this, my or our audience right now will get a few weeks of just evolutionary biology.

39:19So they'll have to continue listening to politics for a little while and then they can get their evolutionary biology. But I'll be tuning in. I'm excited for that. You say you aren't that interested. Well, you're not that interested in conspiracy theories. you tend not to believe them and to be inclined to push back against them. I find that a little bit surprising just because of, I mean, you haven't used this word, but your skepticism about traditional media and the narratives that they push. But there is one conspiracy theory that I think is particularly interesting for the context of our conversation, and that's Charlie Kirk being assassinated by some entity that was not Tyler Robinson.

40:15The reason that I think that that's interesting for us to discuss is I get tons of death threats. I'm sure that you get tons of death threats. I mean, I don't even look at them at this point. It's just like they're just everywhere. Uh, funnily enough, mine don't have to do with anything I say ever, but just the fact that I will interview Norman Finkelstein, for instance, I'll get death threats, uh, because I'm like a Israeli shill or, or something to that, or sorry, Palestinian shill. Yes. Anti, anti Israel in that case, but I've also had Benny Morris on and I got death threats from Israelis or Israel.

40:59That's the internet. That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. It's hard to keep it all together. But do you worry at all that if you become particularly effective, which you I mean, you're already effective, but like really effective at counteracting the efforts of financially powerful and not morally scrupulous agents that you could be the subject of harm or extortion or anything to this effect? yeah well a few things i think that first of all like i have a lot of skepticism towards theories uh like a lot of conspiracy theories but that skepticism doesn't mean that i'm skeptical of all of mainstream media and i think there's like more insidious things going on i think there tends to be conspiracy theories about the media as a whole that i just don't buy into i think that i understand how the newsroom works i've been in these buildings i've been behind the scenes of these things.

42:00I just think it works a little bit differently in a little bit of a slower speed, and they have more guardrails than independent media. So I'm skeptical of the way that they operate, but I get how they operate. I just like I opt for more lean build in the way that I go. Secondly, when it comes to Charlie Kirk, this entire discourse to me has been very, very wild and eye opening. I mean, people on the right are eating each other alive. if Candace Owens is about to do like a$500 ,000 debate over who killed Charlie Kirk. To me, she's going to get paid$500 ,000 to do it. Yeah, well, there's like a there's like a wager about who wins or something like that.

42:37It's like this huge hyped debate over their friend's death. It's turning into this huge spectacle on the right. To me, I opt for like the I just don't know how this wouldn't get leaked. Like when people say the moon landing was faked or this was fake, I just don't know how hundreds of people could coordinate on something and it wouldn't get leaked whatsoever, especially when all of the evidence seems to directly point to Tyler Robinson when it comes to me being at the harm of some broader entity no honestly like when I lose sleep at night or when I'm ever a little bit anxious or worried it's more about some random person trying to kill me or like the fact that there for a bit there if you look me up you could find um addresses tied to like family members we've scrubbed it all of course but I'm worried about somebody going and like shooting my dog or doing some weird thing or trying to like take me i've never really thought that some broader entity would uh take me out and i've always i i guess i opt on the side that charlie kirk was probably just killed by some really loner freak in my opinion okay that's i mean a totally fair position to take you've mentioned some other figures and it'd be interesting for me to hear your thoughts on them and their sort of media techniques and savvy because I'm guessing that I'm guessing you don't view Nick Fuentes, for instance, as a direct competitor.

44:02Maybe you do, but I'm imagining that you analyze or have analyzed his content and his platform because you want to learn from him and understand what it is that he's doing well that has enabled him to get the traction he's gotten. So I'm curious to hear, I mean, what you think about Nick's views, about his personality, and about what he's sort of put together just because he's become such like a cultural lightning bolt. I guess I view Nick as a competitor in ideology less than a competitor in direct views or content. Like we don't exactly inhibit the same platform. I've got people directly in my space on YouTube that I compete with every single day.

44:47But I feel like we're competing for two separate worldviews. Mine is based on human dignity and based on social harmony. And his is based on stripping away that very social harmony by taking away people's human dignity. You know what I mean? Like it's entirely opposite, but he is a very effective messenger. He's been doing this for a while. He's obviously naturally talented. Obviously, don't mistake any of this is me praising him as an ideologue. But I think that the way that he communicates is very funny and accessible. And we're currently competing for the next generation's views. Will they actually believe in human dignity and treating people equally in democratic institutions?

45:24Or will they fall for this more cynical, nihilistic worldview where Nick Fuentes pushes racist things? I think that he's been very, very effective at playing towards the anxieties of young people and then channeling that to a far right area. So a lot of young people feel like the system isn't working for them. A lot of young people already feel apathetic towards our institutions or drowning in some form of debt. And he uses that to push this weird racial separation where he blames it on certain groups, whether it's millennia on black people, oftentimes Jewish people on his shows. so he's pushing something much more cynical but there's also something to it where it's like I find myself watching his clips at times to analyze and study them and he's genuinely funny in the way that he speaks and delivers it and it sucks to admit that but he is and I just think if he can captivate me and if I can sit there and be like wait this is like he's saying something I really disagree with in a funny way I couldn't imagine somebody who were apolitical my age seeing Nick Fuentes and thinking, oh, this guy's actually making sense.

46:29I have friends from high school that I've seen reposting his reels, which really, really disturbs me. I mean, this guy is quite literally a Nazi, but he also knows how to mask that at times. And this is the real strategy with Nick Fuentes. He's like two faced. He has his own show that he does on Rumble in this weird back corner of the internet where like 20, 30 ,000 people watch him. And he says the most vile, heinous stuff, attacking people's family members. And then he goes on to Tucker Carlson's podcast and he gives this really toned down, watered down version of his beliefs where he's basically just questioning.

47:03He's just questioning Israel's influence. He's questioning why Jewish people act this way. He thinks it's weird that black people will crime stats, blah, blah, blah. Like he really tones it down and tries to frame it around youth male loneliness and issues. so he's got this really interesting way of having this two-faced sort of presence depending on where he's going and just on top of that i think he's one of the best examples of how attention and clip farming as we call it in my generation like farming clips as many as you can how those two things can combine to create a political celebrity and to create a narrative so it's just to me it sucks that he's gotten this massive in the first place but i guess it's just a function of the current angst that he's capitalizing on and how he's playing his cards i'm curious just because i so i don't listen to surprisingly at this point i listen to zero podcasts i am hardly ever on instagram or youtube just cruising around so i'm remarkably out of touch with a lot of spaces that people in our generations are very in touch with like rumble or kick or these these streaming platforms i'm curious just because i do when possible like to have a balanced show even though it has of late been very uh imbalanced are there right wing figures who you think occupy a very similar space to you and would be good interviews for the show to ask about how they view the media landscape?

48:48Yeah, I can send you some names of Gen Zers on the right. I'd have to think about it. Not even Gen Zers, but media figures on the right who are also gaining attention in this economy. It's interesting. So Nick Fuentes is on the fringes. He's in the rumble and the kick area of it all. I don't really go on those platforms. he's very popular but he's not popular because people watch his show he's popular because of the clips that people distribute it's like kind of wraps the entire conversation so perfectly in a bow because he's very popular because his clips in hundreds of millions of views hassan piker is currently the talk of the town on the left people are doing think pieces and interviews about streamer hassan piker and it's because of the clips that he's created so i i think that on the right people that inhibit a similar space and trying to gain attention could be somebody i would almost say ben shapiro a few years ago um but he's kind of lost his position as a leader i'd say that nick fuentes and charlie kirk sort of occupy a similar space in the sense that they're trying to be a thought leader for younger folks um i i of course i don't know if i'd have nick fuentes on your show that'd be wild he he lives in chicago which is really interesting to me but I'll send you some names of right-wingers after this.

50:05Okay, well, one other person that I wanted to ask about is Gavin Newsom, because you mentioned him. And again, I'm not really checking Twitter all of the time, but it's impossible to avoid some of the tweets and back and forth he's had with people like Joe Rogan or obviously Donald Trump. And it seems that he has adopted a style that is very, I know I'm way behind the times on this, very much like Donald Trump, like he's trying to fight fire with fire, where he's trying to appeal to younger people. And I'm wondering how you assess his messaging and how successful it's been, given that he's probably should be thought of as a legacy figure.

50:55Yeah, so right now, he's the front runner in a lot of the polling or markets based around the 2028 election. Of course, that's subject to change. It's only 2026. There's going to be a massive primary with some dark horse figures that emerge. But he has basically become the de facto sort of person that people think of as someone who could be on the nominee or be on the debate stage leading. I think that he also is trying to gain attention for his Prop 50, which passed about a year back when Trump was trying to redistrict. It's basically a political strategy, in my opinion. You can trace this back to Gavin Newsom starting a podcast and sitting down with Charlie Kirk as his first guest.

51:40It's weird. It's like all the same figures and connections kind of overlapping over and over. But people were pissed that Gavin Newsom sat down with Charlie Kirk because he was very friendly with Kirk and said his son was a fan of Charlie Kirk. But if you watch that conversation, Charlie Kirk actually talks about the apparatus that he's built around him and the clipping that he's done and how he gains attention. Gavin Newsom clearly learned from that because he then began to intentionally and surgically replicate the way that Trump posts on social media. He said that it was to hold a mirror up to Donald Trump.

52:12But I think that Gavin Newsom knew he was doing it for maximum attention. He would send these massive tweets. Donald Trump does not want me to pass Prop 50 because he's a whip. All these crazy tweets that would get millions of views. And it actually worked to drive attention to that. Now, right now, I'm not even talking about his policy or his like the way that he runs California. I'm not even touching on that. I'm just talking about his messaging strategy. I think that he really has led the way in how to mirror this Trumpian rhetoric and use it to pull attention to a certain narrative. It's a really good example of the attention economy and a politician who's used it to become the de facto front runner in some ways, even though he probably won't win the primary.

52:56I think he's seen as a de facto runner. Just curious, have politicians like him, I mean, maybe not him, but have politicians like him or legacy media companies hired you as a consultant to sort of help them brand or evaluate their messaging? Because it seems like you could work wonders for somebody like Kamala Harris. No, I mean, it's interesting. I have a really good friend named Micah, who's a law student, really smart. He got a 180, a perfect on his LSAT. And he's been advising me on debate stuff for the past year, year and a half. And we've had all these conversations about how he can use his political talents to build an apparatus around him.

53:39So, you know, we've had these deep conversations about building a team. And he now has his own company where he does consulting for politicians constantly. He helps them write social media posts. He helps them do clip distribution. He helps them gain attention. He's like my right-hand man. So we've kind of, it's his company. He's built it, but we've really guided both of our companies in a similar direction. I am, to be frank, too time constrained to do consulting on these campaigns. I mean, I talk to them. I help them out when I can, but I'm building my own thing. And my own apparatus is really, I keep using the same words, infrastructure apparatus.

54:17It's really... Me too. It's great. It's really gratifying to have my own thing. And right now I'm not interested in working for other campaigns. But yeah, I think that these conversations are going to be important. I think I'm going to talk to these teams, continue to work with them, continue to help them revise it, especially if I truly believe in the team. Like Zoran Mamdani's team, I've worked with them on messaging and on clip distribution, on posting things. It's really important to have a unified front manner. Well, for this last time, these last few minutes that we had together, I want to talk about one other thing explicitly that we haven't gotten to too much, which is your expertise specifically on Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

54:58And Gen Alpha, I don't really even understand what it is. I guess maybe there's a strict definition. It's like people who are younger than 16 right now, or 50, I don't know, 18 at this point. But how do they differ from Gen Z? And what is their media consumption like? How important are they? I suppose they must be in some sense. I mean, every vote is important, but they're a group of people that really needs to be targeted right now or people who want to be influential should be targeting them since they're going to be tomorrow's voters. The best way I'd put it is that Gen Alpha and Gen Z both consume a lot of their news via short form content on TikTok and Instagram rather than the more traditional forms.

55:47But I'd say that Gen Alpha is much more focused on very ironic humor, like very, it's called like meta irony. It's like layers of irony wrapped in and of themselves. It's going to be hard to describe, but after Charlie Kirk died, it was taken very, very seriously. But then among Gen Alpha, it's very quickly turned into these memes. They're called Kirkification memes, where they put Charlie Kirk's face and they hide him in videos and they distort it and they make Charlie Kirk songs. There's a song called We Are Charlie Kirk. It's like this very meta irony. And it's used in politics to push narratives.

56:21I mean, Zoran Mamdani will post ironic memes. Charlie Kirk's main legacy on Instagram right now are these random memes posted by Gen Alpha. So media consumption with each generation is becoming more and more online. And you even see, it's weird, a lot of my YouTube and Facebook followers are in the 40 to 60 age range. So YouTube has a lot of older people that have moved over from traditional media, and then TikTok and Instagram has a lot of younger people. Twitter, for me, is somewhere in the middle. You can see the spectrum of what people consume, and it's increasingly moving towards online media.

56:57Right now, more people watch my YouTube show on a TV than on their phone. I can see it on the back end. Yeah, it's interesting. You should check it out on your, you can see where most of the watch hours come from. I bet you'd be surprised at how many people are watching on TV. It's basically like the new way to consume shows. There's probably someone watching this right now that's like me, I'm watching it on the TV. But I think that at the end of the day, media consumption is changing and young people are focusing on this decentralized form of media. And just just take a step back. There's a massive problem with a systematic underrepresentation of young people in politics.

57:31In Chicago, the average age of a registered voter, someone who's able to vote and register is 41 years old. But the average age of someone who actually goes and votes is like 54 years old. The average age of a primary voter is even older. So it feels like a lot of these primaries, a lot of these elections are controlled by older people and younger people need to be getting out there and voting if we ever want our interests represented in that system. And I think it starts with making politics accessible. I'm not the savior. I'm not the sole person that's going to do that. But I like to think I'm doing a part in communicating in an accessible way via these platforms by understanding memes.

58:09Like, you know, six, seven, you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I don't understand it i'm too exactly that's exactly what i was gonna say no no it's not that you're too old to understand it's that there's nothing to understand it's like ironic it's the fact that there is nothing funny about it is what is funny like if somebody just says yeah it was like six to seven hours ago people just start laughing if they're gen alpha that is the joke it's hard to describe but yeah but it is so fascinating like uh recently one of my friends her little sister texted her something like la calm fit and neither of us had any idea what it was and i had to look it up and i still kind of didn't really understand like there's this it start started with some bird video if you know what i'm talking about luck home but it's it i'm i'm pretty close to this generation people who are in their 60s and 70s there is no way they could understand how to communicate with a 16 year old.

59:14No way. No way. When you mention like the sort of meta irony, I don't think people listening can really understand if they're like 50 or 60, just how bizarre and strange the world of the internet is for very young people. And what this makes me wonder is, how is it that, I mean, even for you, I'm sure, talking to a 14-year-old about what they consume on TikTok, it would be mind-boggling. Oh, it's a different world. It's a different world. How do you try to reach these people?

1:00:02or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. When you're 7-Eleven's hottest fire chicken sandwich, people think you're intense. Well, yeah, I'm hot! So, yeah, intense. Want to see if you can handle the heat? Then try me. With pickles or spicy mayo and jalapenos. Oh, and it's all just$4.99. That's a deal almost as hot as I am. Almost? Sweet? No. Spicy? See for yourself. $4.99 and only at 7-11. Valid through 825-26.

1:00:44Participating stores only while supplies last visit. Store for full terms. Yeah, really quickly, just to define meta-irony, because I can't come up with a definition as good as this one I just found on Google. It's a state of communication where the boundary between irony and sincerity is lost. You say something absurd or sarcastic, but you also mock the act of being ironic itself. So people don't really know. So the look, calm, fit thing like the joke is to me, that was funny because it's dumb. Like there is no joke and it's derived from all these layers of irony. I think that. Listen, like as much as young people are into irony and meta irony and all of this, a 14 year old can still understand some of my baseline points about why the United States is failing in the Iran war.

1:01:27And I just I frame things around youth points in a very accessible manner. In my opinion, there's another word accessible that I keep using. But no, for real, when I'm talking about the Iran war, I frame it in such a way where I'm like, listen, it wasn't long ago that we were meddling in other Middle Eastern countries that start with the letters IRA. And nowadays, we're doing the same thing on expanded timelines. And we've seen this story before. And it's gotten us to this point. If I'm saying this as a young person to somebody that's like 55 years old on a panel, there's an inherent sort of show going on there where it's like, oh, the younger generation is confronting the older generations.

1:02:03And I think that tension in and of itself does very well when I post it online and when I do it via clips. So I have some clips on Instagram and TikTok that genuinely hit a younger audience, despite being about more niche political topics like things having to do with political violence surrounding Kirk or things having to do with ice, for example, very, very hot topic among younger people. Or, of course, Palestine and foreign policy stuff. So as much as younger people focus on irony, they're still human. They still understand the very base level clips. And then, of course, there's people who specialize in making these ironic edits.

1:02:40Like, dude, the White House official Twitter account is posting Call of Duty memes to talk about the Iran war. They're posting edits from like Battlefield and Spider-Man and all of these younger IPs. Not that Spider-Man is younger, but I just mean IPs meant for younger people because they're trying to make these messages ironic. The White House even does ironic messaging. If I had to guess, they must have some 25-year-old Nick Cuentas fan on their payroll who is kind of in touch with the current environment and is posting these far-right memes on the Department of Homeland Security account. The right has actually figured out how to do this meta-ironic messaging, I swear.

1:03:19Yeah, that's so fascinating. I wonder, I mean, this is, I guess, where we can end. But do you ever consider, so you mentioned, you have like this streamlined team. You have an editor working in the UK. so he can edit the content that you film at 11 p.m. and it can be ready to be posted while you're still sleeping. Do you ever consider investing in hiring more high school interns to edit or translate your content so that it's accessible for really late Gen Z or Gen Alpha? And moreover, do you think that legacy media, if they wish to stay relevant with younger generations, should be doing like the same thing.

1:04:02You know, you just got me so energized because this is an idea I've been working on for a bit, but I've just been trying to execute in like a steady handed manner. I think one of the most powerful tools possible could be my clips and my debates, not just me, people in my spheres, clips and debates being distributed in a mass way by younger interns. And we want to create basically an army, an army of mocklers, an army of young interns who can clip this up and push it around and make it very, very accessible. And honestly, I think that's going to be our next step. That's what Nick Fuentes has. He's built a grassroots base.

1:04:41So is Hasan Piker, a grassroots base of people that clip their stuff around the internet. And again, clipping is sort of the new canvassing in that manner. You can become a political figure if you have somebody clipping it around. So if you go on Reddit and you just search the keyword Mockler on Reddit, You can see some posts where it's like Gen Z, Adam Mockler, spars with conservative on CNN. That's my team basically seeding that in there. And I think that one of the most powerful tools possible right now could be having more of those young team members gaining attention in this economy, pushing out the volume so that we could match the volume of the right wing sphere.

1:05:16Yeah, you just that's the exact right idea. OK, super fascinating. Well, I hope that our list, I'm sure they will, but I hope that our audience who is used to listening to legacy figures enjoys this because I think there's so much to learn from it and so much to think about it that you're not getting taught by a lecture from somebody who's 80 years old. So, Adam, it's been great meeting you. And this has been a really fun conversation for me. And I'm looking forward to keeping this going in the future. great conversation we'll work together again thank you robinson

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