The Woke Week Special (With Michael Hobbes)

0:00Hello everybody, and welcome to another installment of Aftermath Hours, the weekly podcast of Aftermath.site, a worker-owned reader-supported website about video games, the internet, and everything that comes after. Aftermath is for the moment fully reader-supported, so if you like what you hear, you can subscribe on our website. There's a big button for it, or if you don't have money right now, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review of the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, if you don't have money, great timing, because we're having a sale at the moment as part of Woke Week, the event that we are putting on this week dedicated to a range of stories about the concept of Woke 2. I am Nathan Grayson, and today, on a very special episode of the show, I'm joined by, well, first of all, Gita Jackson. I was up at Gita, that's who I am, I'm wearing my fluffed up shirt, which I hope doesn't get as T.O. S on Twitch, but it's fine. Yeah, people are saying they might always be Gita, it's entirely possible. Also, we have a special guest, Michael Hobbs, of shows like If Books Could Kill and

1:04Maintenance Phase. Gamer. Gamer, famous Gamer. G-A-Y-M-E-R. I learned this term very recently, and I'm very excited about it. I once did a panel at a convention that is now no longer happening. It was G-A-Y Gamer X. Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. It ruled. It was so much fun. Then we went on a tour of the Winchester Mystery House, and we met someone, we met a clearly gay child who was giving this tour, and we tried so hard to convince him to come to the Gamer X convention when he was free, because we were like, you specifically need this. This one is for you. It was great. He was walking us into the rooms in the Winchester Mystery House, doing death drops, and I was like, hell yeah. Hell yeah. I was just doing this under employed gay teenager. I love you for it. I feel like it's not officially woke to until it's games done quick, gay, G-A-Y-M-E-S. I mean, they are getting there.

2:04I think that's there. That's the real thing. That's the real one. Yeah. That's the gay agenda. That's the real one. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know this about you, Michael Hobbs, but are you passionate about speed running? I listen to both of them. I mean. Yes. Okay. The thing is, I'm passionate about it in the sense that I really like it, but I'm also, I'm a member of the very interested in video games, but very bad at video games community, and I like, I demand representations. I feel like most people are probably bad at video games, but most video game content is created by people who are very good at video games. Yes. The fact that there are now so many more video games for people who suck ass at video games is the best thing to happen to my adulthood in decades. It's so good. So, I'm very interested in them because I don't know if you guys are like this, but in the Trump II era, I crave low stakes drama, like fighting about shit does not matter. And it's like, oh shit. This guy is cheating at a speedrun.

3:04I'm like, I'm in, I'm watching two hours of the video. You gotta read all the documents. Exactly. Open the PDFs. Open a bunch of tabs. It's great. It doesn't matter, but it's also like feeds my need for drama. I introduce you to a low stakes drama thing that I introduced my house to last night. It's on the site. It's Street Fighter 6, a game I've never played and never will play. Dude, I'm also what's your big Street Fighter 6 guy. Okay. So, do you hear about Alex Street Fighter 6's new backstory? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I've heard different things, but he either fucked his step sister or his cousin or something. Here's what I want to tell you. Okay. It is both. It is both. He's an adoptive step sister that he raised from age zero, like held her as a baby. And also, it is revealed that actually they are related and they are second cousins. But is it, is this canon or I also heard that this is like a mis-translation? They, the thing that the developer has said is that they are re-translating and rewriting

4:10a portion of this story because of confusion that that has been caused. Quote confusion. Yeah. Okay. I remember telling my husband this last night and the face he made, telling my husband things about my job sometimes is bewildering because he clearly has no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. And I don't know how to explain that whether or not this guy fucked his sister and his cousin is a matter of debate. But then one of my, one of my, like, two-fighters extremers, he's like way deeper into this than I am, obviously, his whole thing is like, this is what you get for watching single player content in a, in a fighting game. He's like, don't engage under no circumstances should you ever engage with the actual storylines. It's like the little sprites are fighting each other. That's all you need to know. I mean, except for if it's techin, then you got to engage with the storyline because that series is bonkers. Yeah. And it starts out being the humble story of like a guy trying to get revenge and then turns

5:10into shit about devil jeans and people throwing each other into volcanoes. Hell yeah. They did a commercial for a recent techic game summing up that lore narrated by Brian Cox. Right. So good. This was around the time of succession ending also so they like really, really knew that they had a golden advertising opportunity and because Brian Cox will do anything for money. So it worked out great. Yeah. We should get him on the show. I'm sure that he's affordable. I'm sure he paid him a comparable to what McDonald's pays and he'd love to be on. Fellow gamer, G-A-Y-M-E-R Brian Cox. Yes. Yes. I love what a bitch he is. He's big favorite. I mean, he sucks, but he also rocks. Anyway, thinking of things that used to suck and now rock Nathan, you wrote a huge feature that almost killed you. I did. Although I think before we go super far into that, I do want to first kind of go into woke to as a general concept just because that's something that we all, yeah, well, I mean,

6:12you are here. And also, I think it's just like, you know, the theme of the week, we may as well get into it a bit. So yeah, Gita, what is woke to, you know, in just the sentence, yeah, it should be too hard. I had to write a whole, I mean, you called my blog repeatedly a manifesto. And I want to emphasize that I think the most successful manifestos are not thought of as manifestos in their conception. And also, this is woke to so it's a themifesto. That's exactly the kind of joke we're not doing in woke till. That's an episode I threaten to throw Nathan out of a window. Today, that is this moment. Just open it up, but yeah, no, my, my man, it's not a manifesto. I just had to sit down and think about like, I used to be so bomb-a-pilled, right? I went to a fucking Oberlin college, you know, like, I literally, in a literal way, literally in one to Oberlin college, house a class of 12.

7:14I read so many op-eds about you. I know. Listen, it was a normal place. We just did a lot of drugs. And then I did eliminate the safer sex night while I was at Oberlin college. It's safer sex night is this legendary thing where the sex co, the sex positive experimental college class put on a big dance and fundraiser for their sexual health office. And once included what was called the tent of consent, which was literally just a tent on a quad where two people could go in there and fuck. And really? Yeah. Yes. That was real. Oh, my God. Excellent. Real thing. Um, eventually, of course, the college shut this down because of what the fuck. Yeah. Uh, yeah. That's a crazy thing to do. Do you guys ever see something and you're like, no one tell Fox News about this? Yes. If the right wing finds out about this, this will be like an eight-day story. There is like some things, especially when you get to the cross-section of black and gay

8:16culture where I'm just like, other people don't need to know. They just don't need to know about this. We don't need to give them that ammo against us. I don't want them to know. Um, yeah. The, the, just, there's so many other things but over in college that are so crazy that nobody needs to know about that. Anyway, I went to Oberlin. I used to be super woke. I used to be a tech optimist. I used to really believe in the mission of Silicon Valley. I used to be all these things that were just the reality proved them as untenable and intangible ideas that were not helpful for people. And I think the idea of wokeness as an immersion popular culture. It used to be just like, I think your weird uncle said in a barbecue if you're black about, you know, remember the Tuskegee experiments against black people stay woke, you know, the government's out to get us stay woke. My dad is the weird uncle in this case. So I feel like I can say that he is constantly sending people communist literature, which I think is really cute. Yeah, I love my dad. But yeah, it used to just kind of be a reminder, like, remember, like the reality is not out

9:20to serve you. You should remember that there are forces that are trying to keep you down so that you understand what you're up against. And then it became on the internet primarily a way for people to signal to each other how much they know about oppression and how much more knowledgeable they are about oppression than other people. And I think to me, the nature of all of this is child of scambino's music video for this is America, which is like the song itself and the music video, both really are just like, hey, look at this. It's like ready player one, but for theories of oppression, essentially. Yes, the I think that at the time it came out, which was a couple years before the second round of Black Lives Matter protests, it was maybe necessary for more people to be confronted by that truth of like, yeah, for Black people living in America, we are kind of living in a playground of violence where we don't know who will be the victim of that violence at any time.

10:21And also the police are killing us just rampantly with no consequence. But also like a lot of people, I think, kind of just stop there at the awareness and at the knowledge. And then they don't have any good models for like, how do you take that into practice? How do you become a person that uses that knowledge well? And for me, woke to, it can't be about, I mean, mass movements are great. But in the state of the world that I find myself in right now in 2026, what I would want as a model for how to move forward with the knowledge that the world is deeply unfair and is built to uphold the power of very few people is I would like to help my neighbors take in the groceries, right? I would like to build real actual communities with other people and make that the primary way that I build solidarity towards creating a better world, you know, there's a lot of things you could do. You could join GSA if you're in New York.

11:24You could volunteer somewhere that is meaningful to you, lots of libraries need volunteers all the time. You could donate, you could protest, but I think the number one thing you have to do is not rest on your laurels, not worry too much about whether or not this is the right or most effective thing to do, but just do something good for people every day if you can. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what too. Look too, it's just being a nice person in touch and grasp. Wow. That's crazy. It'll never, it'll never work. Why would somebody do that? It would be hyper online and miserable. I mean, for a great example of what you were saying as Nathan being hyper online, miserable, Michael E. M. Black is now written two different blog posts about how it's unfair for people to judge him for wanting to see the New Harry Potter show. That is one. Yeah, actually, what a week for us to do, woke week, considering that, like, yeah, the New Harry Potter trailer came out, there's tons of discourse obviously around, like, yeah, if you watch this, you are supporting JK Rowling, putting money directly into her pocket,

12:28which means that she can go after trans people even more than she already has, and she's funneled a lot of money into that already. Yeah. You can't even, like, lead a hate group anymore without, like, people criticizing you. Yeah. How far we've fallen. Yeah. But no, because also there was a post that you shared early this week, Michael, that was about kind of, or rather, there was an Atlantic post that you were sort of taking apart that I think was instructive because it's, like, kind of parallel to all of this, you have, you know, various centrist pundits trying to, like, diagnose the ills of woke one. It's like, oh, this is where it went wrong or whatever. And this piece just seemed so incredibly wrong headed, the one about, like, Lindy West and the death of Millennial Feminism. Yeah. There's been all this discourse about Lindy West's memoir, which the funny thing about is, like, progressives don't even like it that much, but it seems like there's all this, centrist stuff about how, like, progressives love Lindy West, and here's why she's bad. And it seems, I feel like, I don't know, it seems like the mistake. Well, I know, I think it's a mistake to frame, like, woke people as, like, the problem

13:32with woke one, I feel like, because I think, I don't think we're ever going to have a world where nobody on the left is annoying online. I think, like, I would love that to be the case, but, like, we're talking about tens of millions of people, and, like, there will always be Oberlin's sophomores, like, someone will be 19 at any given moment in time. And someone who is 19 will always be saying something stupid, the same way that I said things that were stupid when I was 19. And I think there's this, like, what explains the sort of, to the extent there was a, like, rise and fall of wokeness, what explains it is, like, a bad faith, right wing media machine that is designed to find the dumbest person saying the dumbest thing on the internet and saying, oh, this is what Kamala Harris thinks. This is what Democrats are. This is what quote, quote, quote, the left is blah, blah, blah, blah. And so everyone is sort of now falling all over themselves to be like, oh, we need to condemn this. We need to have, like, a sister soldier moment about, like, trans rights, blah, blah, whatever, but, like, we just live in a world where there are tens of millions of people posting online at all times. Someone is going to say some stupid shit. And you just have to accept the fact that that is going to happen, and we need to have,

14:34like, a way of pushing back against these things, rather than having, like, constant, like, the sort of reactionary centrist, like, Atlantic people of the world seem to want is a constant, never-ending sister soldier moment where every single Democratic politician is walking up to a microphone and saying, like, we shouldn't have trans kids in sports. This thing that somebody said on the internet yesterday was very dumb. And, like, that isn't tenable, and that's also not good at electoral strategy. Yeah. Yeah. It's just sort of, like, I think, like, I would love they woke to in which nobody says anything silly on the internet, but I don't think that's, I just don't think that's going to happen. Yeah. What we need to be good at is just being, like, yeah, a random 19-year-old said a random thing, like, said that a meal at Oberlin was cultural appropriation. I don't care. That was one person who gives a shit. Why are we talking about a random 19-year-old? We should be talking about, and then try to shift the conversation to something more important. Okay. Number one, that student at the Oberlin review was completely correct about that meal. Number one. But this is, like, the big thing, right? Like, the thing that wokeness turned into was arguing about who's the most woke online.

15:38Right. And then that turned into content farming for right-wing people online. And I think that it does us no favors to be getting in arguments. What did 19-year-old fall on their face on their own? Like, they're going to go through the experience of being 19. They don't need us to back them up. That student at Oberlin, like, was a foreign exchange student that saw Chinese food on the menu at the dining hall and saw, and, like, was received, like, brown rice with sweetened sour sauce. And they were upset about that. Yeah. Not really not bad about that. Who gives a fuck? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The whole thing about these constant op-eds about the college I went to was that, like, college is where you go to try on bad and stupid opinions. Right. Kind of cocaine in college. You know? Yeah. That was a stupid thing to do. I'm not going to do that again. Right. And also, right-wing people, like, we don't have the same kind of freak out about, like, say, mega-churches. Like, a mega-church pastor also says something very stupid and evil last week, but there aren't 15 articles about it. Like, there's sort of the nut-picking impulse only happens on the left, right?

16:41And I'm happy to admit the fact that some people in the left are very annoying. But people on the right are also annoying. And it feels like, okay, if we're going to have a talk about, like, a societal talk about the fringe of the left and the right, then let's have a conversation about it, right? And I think if you compare the left-wing fringe to the right-wing fringe, the right-wing fringe is objectively more dangerous, right? They're calling it dumb threats to children talking to us. Yeah. Oh, definitely. Like, it's not even comparable. Yeah, it's not close, right? It's sit down. And also, if you compare the establishment, like, the Republican elected officials versus Democratic elected officials, the Republicans are much more radicalized, are much more dangerous, are much less democratically accountable, so it's like, what are we even really talking about here? If we're talking about the fringe or the center, they're both worse on the right. And that just seems like that should be kind of, like, front and center. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the reaction to the Drusky Eric Kirk video is already pretty telling the perennial video game loser, the quartering, immediately said in response that George Floyd deserved it in response to a video making fun of a woman. And I think that, like, you can see the difference in scale here.

17:43So strongly, these people are advocating for a straight-up murder. This guy is making fun of a woman who is a little bit goofy. Right, right. Yeah. I think it's easy to conflate, like, things that are annoying and things that are dangerous. Yes. Like, I love in Seattle. I've met the most annoying left-wing people you can imagine. Yeah. I've met the fact that those people exist, but it's like, who poses a danger, right? Who's doing the mass shootings, et cetera? It seems like an adult conversation would, like, take that into account. Like, yeah, it can be annoying to meet certain types of people out in public. And, well, this also, this absolutely goes back to everybody's 12th theory. Yes. Yeah. Because the adult conversation would do that. But we are not conversing like adults. That is not the default of conversation online. No, there's a total... Wait, is your theory Nathan? Everyone is 12th theory? Yeah, yeah. I definitely came up with that. No, tell me. Tell me more. I'm talking about somebody who's much smarter on Blue Sky. It's somebody's supposed to essentially be like, you can understand the conservative reactions for things by just saying in your mind, that is a 12-year-old. Yeah, that everybody is being 12 years old, or that everyone is 12 years old now.

18:47That's just how everyone treats each other and acts. No, I saw like a corollary post the other day that did ring true to me, even while hyper-simplifying things, where they were like, the last two important events that happened were Rebecca Black, because we all realized that we like hating people more than we like liking things. And then cookie clicker, because we all realized that we only need a number to go up in video games, and that's the only thing that any game needs to do. And that, and every event that has a correct sense... It doesn't agree with that, completely. Every event that has a correct sense has been a variation on those two things. And I was like, that's not true, but it feels true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was actually going to ask you, because I know Nathan, you used to write for Kotaku, and Gita, you're a person on the internet. Yeah, I also used to write for Kotaku. I was working with Nathan. Oh, did you? Yeah. We were both there at the same time. Were you guys ever featured on like Kotaku in action, or like... Oh, of course. Oh, they fucking hit me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're also the Gamergate subreddit, and my history being what it is, yeah, lots of... What was it like? What was it like? Could you notice that it happened?

19:47I mean, for me, there is still an insane conspiracy theory about me that I have the ability to make or break people's careers, and this dates back to me being a freelancer for Pace magazine, who is pretty much exclusively writing Rick and Morty recaps. Nice. Nice. And I... It's really strange. The power that gets subscribed to me, when a lot of the times people were posting about how evil and dangerous I was, I was literally flat broke, like drinking PBR tall boys mostly for the calories in my apartment alone. And the experience of knowing that there is like a secret other doppelganger version of you that lives in other people's heads will never be normal to me, and yet it is something that I have to live with every day of my life. There is this weird social construction of your enemies as powerful, and so you see them talking about, like, you have random freelancers who get like a hundred bucks an article being discussed as if they're like some billionaire who's like pulling strings behind the scenes.

20:47It is like totally surreal. Well, and also, you see a lot of this in like YouTube circles where even though a lot of YouTubers now have more reach, influence, and wealth than anyone in the press, they still need like an institution to rally against, and so like websites and publications are very easy targets in that regard, like, oh, you know, whatever publication often, especially in gaming circles, it's Kotaku. There's still the stand-in, despite, you know, being, I would say like a tenth of the size that they were in terms of like overall reach, you know, a decade ago. But yeah, there's still like Kotaku is doing this. They're doing that. We got to fight back. We were the common gamers. It's like, motherfucker, you are a multi-millionaire who's made your money off of a bunch of grifty videos. And you're talking about a writer who probably makes 60k per year and like is barely getting by in New York. Just say Asmond Gold. This is taking forever. Just say Asmond Gold. Well, no. I mean, you're not wrong. You are super not wrong. Okay. Guess what the Chinese nicknames for? This has been discovered because Ludwig is doing the tip-to-tip like the videos have come out. And now he drove across China without a map and without knowing Chinese essentially.

21:51And Chinese, like social media people are now seeing the series for the first time. And I saw a great post translated from Chinese that discussed the American streamers that this Chinese person does know. Guess what they call XQC and Asmond Gold. Oh, boy. What do they call them? Okay. They call XQC Skeleton Bro. I think they call Asmond Gold big cockroach American. Yes. That's better. Let's do that. I love it when other languages just cut through all the bullshit. And I'm like, this is the essence of a person. I'm switching my language on Chrome right now. Yes. Yes. Be cockroach American. That's who he is. That's what he's known for internationally. Well, where do you guys' takes that got featured on Kotaku in action? Do you guys remember? Well, I mean, mine is really more a series of events that happened. I'm not sure if you know this about me, Michael. But I was kind of at the heart of Game Regate technically. Wait, were you? I didn't know this. Yeah. Because you're a man, basically, that's the old reason.

22:52So I had the opportunity to be forgotten in this regard. So it all began, you know, with like allegedly, you know, a game developer sleeping with a game journalist to get favorable coverage. I was the game journalist. Wait, you were the guy. Yep. I wouldn't have gone on here if I'd known that you were sleeping with people to give them favorable coverage. Wow. That's really. That's my understanding of what happened. Wow. Yeah, of course. Wasn't it also that, like, there was actually no favorable coverage that anybody could go to? Yep. It was like, yeah. No, the moment that we turned that particular page, I was like, I can't write about this person again. Yeah. That would be wrong. Yeah. And also the only thing that I'd written about them before was like not a review of their game. It was simply a list of games that was like going to maybe come to steam and their game was on that list. There was no editorializing around it. There wasn't even an acknowledgement of it. Yeah. You're like an internet celebrity. You're like a main character and could talk to an action. I am. Yeah. That was like, that was the start of me realizing that like, because I was like not in

23:54gamer spaces at all at that time. And that was the beginning of me realizing that like, people had an identity as gamers and had this weird, like, chip on their shoulder about, like, I'm a gamer and I'm looked down upon in society. And also this weird thing about like, games journalists aren't good at video games, which I think came from that, like, cuphead tutorial or something like that. Okay. So let's hash this out actually because I'm discovering that people completely don't know about this. And this is something that also I started writing about video games in, like, may of that year. And then this happened in August of that year, right? No one. Like, this is my introduction to what it is like to be fem presenting and writing about video games. Yeah. It is scary as hell. And it completely changed my life and it completely changed my orientation to my work and how I see my work and when I, how I present myself in my work on the internet. And I just think it's useful to remember that like, yeah, this was like hugely traumatizing for basically everyone I know in my cohort, like, it's up.

24:57It wasn't saying. Yeah, completely insane. And it's also just like the thing that it comes down to you, you read all these justifications for the level of intensity people had about this event and what it really comes down to is, I think that your job is being a professional fan and I would like to be a professional fan. Yes. Yes. And there's just tons and tons of resentment baked into that and this idea of why do you get to do it when I don't, especially because, and you were talking about that kind of like, you know, just gamers having this weird, I think, like, grip on their identity and this insecurity around it and that ties back into it as well is like, I did all this work in the game reminds, I like, you know, legitimized our cause or whatever. But then you're up here, you've like, you know, some like East Coast liberal and you get to do the job that like, I, you know, worked my whole life for. It's that kind of a thing. Yeah. And you can see how this leads into making fun of Oberlin students for writing op-eds in the local and the school newspaper, right? It is about picking people and then creating a grievance-fueled movement against that

26:03person. Yeah. And the other take about me that got featured on Kotaku in action. It was like every time I wrote about race, people would be like, why are you bringing politics into it? The amount of times that I've had to explain functionally what a black woman is in regards to the game overwatch has made me feel absolutely insane. People have asked me, is symmetric black woman, no, symmetric is Indian, is the hacker girl a black woman? No, she's literally Mexican. There were people that got so upset with me for saying something about a game they really loved was imperfect. And also for taking up space where they thought their opinions should be given the same space. Right. I went to school for creative writing and went to Oberlin which has a very good creative writing program. I studied writing for like 20 plus years of my life. I pretty much put, if I'm an RPG character, I put all my points into writing.

27:04There's no points in anything else. This is my destiny being a writer and I'm on the autism spectrum. So hyperfixation on video games kind of came with the package. There is no other career for me. Like there's nothing else I can do. I was sitting in a study degree. Right. Yeah. Oberlin, this is it. This is it. You have to become a game journalist. Absolutely. That's it. No, there's the idea that anyone could do this is just totally wrong and people get really upset with you when you say that to them. Well, I also, one thing from the outside that I also thought was so interesting too was like, people couldn't just disagree and be like, Oh, yeah, I disagree with that take. I think the depiction of that woman in that video game was fine. People had to make it about something bigger and they had to like, it was almost like an identity politics thing as much as I hate that term. It was sort of like, you need to perceive yourself as having this aggrieved identity. I'm a victim and it's like a lot of like straight white dudes in their early 20s couldn't point to any other identity. So they made kind of made up this thing of gamers as an identity that like, Oh, no, I agree. The whole world looks down on me, which like, I don't really think the world does like

28:06people make jokes or whatever, but like, I don't know, it's not like structural discrimination or whatever. But then they couldn't just say, it's like so funny because these guys, this cohort is so like, Oh, why won't they debate like we're free thinkers that want debate. But then there was like an opportunity for debate and all they did was like, go around the debate into like, I watch a bunch of those like Anita Sarkeesian like, takedown videos and it was like, she said this game came out in 2007, but it came out in 2009. It's like, right, but like, yeah, she's a mandatious fraud. And it was like, they needed to be about her being a bad journalist as opposed to like, well, you just disagree with her and you, you're welcome to make a video saying, I just agree with her. And this is why, but it was like, it had to be about her as like super evil and like, she's attacking me a gamer. But also, right, it's this big persecution complex thing. And I think part of that goes back to the fact that, you know, early on in games, lives or in the industry's life again, they are not taken as legitimate. They were also, you know, legal efforts to get violent games banned in various cases. And so there was this like, there's an underpinning of something vaguely legitimate

29:08there, but not really because we're still talking about ultimately a class of people who, you know, many of them were white guys, probably from like middle class backgrounds at least. So they're doing okay. Yeah, I'm billion dollar industries. Like, yeah, it also harps back to another thing that the right often does though. We're like, again, they need to be persecuted on some level. Even as like, for example, they occupy every major portion of government now. They have all the power. Yeah. But there's still like, oh, they're coming after us. You know, they're trying to keep us down. We're going to fight back. Yeah. Hence the like oversized, really stupid reaction to Druski making fun of Eric Kirk, right? It is the Christians are persecuted for their faith, but at a, like a nationwide scale across like all right wing ideologies. And that's why we need to persecute Muslims. I feel like that's the next chapter of it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know who's to blame for it? They're all the Jews, which is, yeah, exactly, exactly. Anyway, we're banned from Twitch now. That was fun. No, they're not going to ban us for anti-Semitic speech. What would ever happen?

30:11God, it is interesting. And I it's been pointed out before that Gamergate is kind of a testbed for a lot of these methodologies at scale. And I think like just being on the receiving end of them and then seeing other people being on the receiving end of them, the playbook really has not changed very much. It's just that people wise up to it. I think the Charlie Kirk thing, I think the generation younger than us is like too nihilistic for that to work on that. Yeah. Well, also I think that this is maybe like a defining trait of woke to. Is that at least ideally it doesn't take the bait quite so readily. And of course, we still see like one thing that I noticed, especially this week with what happened to our dear friend and colleague, Chris Person, is that woke one also still exists. Oh, yeah. But one woke two are kind of fighting each other. But what happened with Chris Person? A beautiful Chris Person. Wonderful Chris Person. He made a fairly innocuous post on Blue Sky that then drew out all of the like, Rad Libs, who were super angry. He said something about turbo live posters on the evidence that this is like a low

31:12predatory environment Blue Sky is that turbo live posters are posting really stupid opinions. The phrasing was a little bit different. Okay. Chris, you can come on if you want to just say what it is. Okay, one second. One second. One second. There you go. Here you go. Hi Chris. Hi Chris. Actually, wait, this is great. Michael, you want more low sticks drama in your life. Get ready. So I didn't know Chris was Chris Person. Hi Chris. So many reveals on today's episode. Look, the joke was I've seen a like, I see a lot of extremely annoying liberal, like turbo live opinions. And it's not just like, you know, uh, brunch ass. And it's just like, it's stuff like, it's stuff like, I see so many like, yin b people on there and it's just fucking annoying. It's not even a question of the housing of like policy or anything like that. It's just there's a sort of unified, like kind of like, Democrat lib area. And a lot of stuff is, all I said was that like, one, I said, I don't actually think that more toxicity is the correct response.

32:12I said, I don't think you should go back to Twitter toxicity. But like, because there are no, it's like, it's like fucking New Zealand. Because there are no organic predators here. You get a lot of stupid fucking animals. Like, like the cock-a-po. Get out of my mind. Like, you get these like fucking birds that like, like only have mating calls and base frequencies and have to be saved by like a key we rescue team. And it's like, that's like, not even a damning indictment of it. That's just me saying, like, look, you know, you see a lot of stuff faster because it's not indicative of like a relatively healthy ecosystem, which I think is pretty like normal and relative. And it ended up with Adam Sessler trying to fucking fight me. Yeah, wait, Michael, do you know who Adam Sessler is? Oh, okay. Further deeper lore. Oh, this is becoming an episode of normal gossip, basically. So Adam Sessler used to be a guy on a television network known as G4 TV. And TV for gamers.

33:13It's TV for gamers back when you could do a TV channel about that. I think he was, I'm not even joking. He was a mentor to me. I met up with him in San Francisco at one point. I have his phone number, literally have his phone number. He texted me and assured me that I belong in this industry. And that I should be, we texted back and forth for many years. And something happened to him and he has broken his brain. Something broke his brain. He's so furious and so angry. This is not the first time I've seen him freak out at one of my friends. Also, he tried to start a harassment campaign against Maddie Myers, my close friend, for being anti-zionist. Yeah, he got very, he got very activated by that specific strain of it. For me, the funniest thing about it was that he was like, Hey, man, why don't you fly out to San Francisco and we'll fucking roll down. And I'm like, really? Like, meet me in the back of like the best bye, Barking Lot. Yeah, it's like, do you want it? But it also kind of sounded like an invitation to like, I don't, it kind of sounded like a date, a little bit.

34:15And also like, it's like, homie, we are going to go to the Golden Gate Bridge. We are going to throw Matt's down in front of the beautiful John New York forest. You know what I mean? You know, I was being a little spicy, and it was kind of a fly picture style like post. But like, it did become one of those things where I was like, you know, if this place was just a little more, if there was a little bit more actual friction to what people thought of in these things, there would be like people wouldn't wouldn't say like just really dumb shit a lot. So basically bullying works. We need to do more. No, I didn't even say it. I wasn't even suggesting bullying works. I'm saying in the absence of bullying, you just get a lot of stupid shit, which is different than saying bullying works. Because obviously it does not. My attitude is that like Twitter and Blue Sky together, neither are complete. It's like the dark crystal, the skexies and the other ones. It's like go, it is like in Dragon Ball. When you have Piccolo and Kami, like there are two halves of the same person, and they both pine for each other on a subconscious level, and neither is complete without the other.

35:16And it is like, I actually think that's like totally true, because it's like there's the left wing id and the right wing id, right? Blue Sky and Twitter. And if you go on Blue Sky, it's so fucking annoying. It's the most annoying place you've ever been in your fucking life. So even left wing, it's fucking Democrat. You know what I mean? It's like that exact decline. Because then you go on Twitter and like 80% of the posts are like fucking Nazi posts. Yeah, okay. I like how many articles about Blue Sky being bad if we had and how many articles about Twitter being bad if we had? No, no, no, no. Objectively it's the better side. I'm just saying I'm like, I'm tired of being. Some guy was like, I did cause somebody, I'm not fighting this person, but he's Beijing Palmer. And he just got really like annoyed, because they're like, yeah, leftists. And he was just like, oh, they lack Bushito. And I was like, I don't, I don't, that's a weird way to put it. I don't, they never Bushito. Sorry, what? He got really annoyed that he's just like, oh, they have no saucer. They have no, and this is the kind of shit you post when you like don't have, you, you, you, you, you, just. You yourself are sauceless. Wait, if you were posting about people's life. Right.

36:16I don't, he seems fine. If you're the one in private, they seem fine. They seem fine. But literally, I literally go to, I was like, that's, you know, that is fair. I don't, I don't actually have any Bushito. I have never participated in across roads killing to test the sharpness of my blade. That is true. That is really fair. There's a thing, Chris practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu. So if you're going to threaten him to a fight, you better be prepared to throw down. I do know, actually, yeah, for like eight years. It does. So you should have met that guy in the best by parking lot. No, he's paying, I mean, if he's paying the tickets, I know. And also Adam Sessler is like, he's not large either. He's a, he's a little guy. He already threatened to fight. And I think most of his organs are decayed from decades of alcoholism. Yeah, frankly, well, if I could fight, I would take everyone up on that offer. I'd be like, oh, yeah, we'll meet and fight. I feel really bad, but he does wear a Trilbee. And it's really, he wears the hat from I think you should leave. I think that's the thing that really bothers me about it. It's like if somebody wears the Trilbee from the sketch from I think you should leave where it's like, it has like the shade protector in the back and everyone's asking about his hat.

37:16Like that's what Adam Sessler wears all the time. And to be perfectly frank, like you don't get to say come to San Francisco and I'll kick your ass. Like, like you're, so if you're going to do that, like be like, it has to be on like the fucking train or something. Like, you got to be like, gummed a bedstie. Then you already beat his ass basically from like the way that he looks. Also, he's like geriatric, you know what I mean? And I just, it was very funny because also he does this enough that Blue Sky has moderation, has just tags everything. Yeah, he's rude. He's got the rude day every single post on every single post and because he's just got done enough unwell posting where the mother like, we're just going to assume this is not nice to say. This is assumed everything you say is worthless to the rest of this community. I muted that. I muted that thread and walked away. And then somebody was telling me like, hey, somebody is like making fun of the way you look, but in a really homophobic way. And that person then, this guy looks gay, but locally apparently, right? It was so bizarre. This guy is bisexual, by the way. It's also a nice picture of Chris.

38:17It's a really good picture. For that, I was at a, I was at a rave, like festival that I go to. I was wearing shorts that say acid on them in like fucking a serif font. It's like a really, wait, now I'm furiously googling this photo. Cause I need to know that. Yeah, no. It's cool. This person, but this person ended up privately getting dragged so aggressively by my friends that for being like really homophobic in all texts, which is such a funny, live thing to do, that that's extremely privately apologized to me, but said they wouldn't take it down. And I said, that's not how an apology works. And then they're like, oh, I'm sorry. I've been panic, and they were like, I've spent 200, $500 today because I've been like spiraling. And I'm like, okay, well, goodbye. Yeah. It was really, it was a really fun. Yeah, that whole interaction to me, that is work one and work two colliding with each other. Right? Yeah, exactly. I'll fucking kill you. It was literally just, everyone's just like, how dare you say that I'll fucking kill you. And it was just like, well, you know what? Maybe you guys have a point. Maybe it is just toxic enough on here.

39:17Just in the wrong way. Right, right. But shouldn't we all, shouldn't we all get off of there? I'm like, I'm really at the end of my rope with any of these, like I do it because I have no impulse control. But like, as a risk-reward thing, there's no point in being on any of these text-based platforms anymore. Like we should all be on fucking TikTok. I know, I'm sorry, I disagree. My ability to be on Blue Sky can really only frame as I've been on the internet since I've been 11. And like, that's it. Like, I don't know. Yeah, same. I have no impulse control. Yeah, I think the problem with me is that like, there's literally no other place to share news stories. There's literally none. Like, yeah. Yeah. And, side-based, Bob, we get a fair amount of traffic. We get a fair amount of traffic. Despite it being like a fucking tiny site, we get orders of magnitude more, more links. Is that true? Yeah, absolutely. Because it's the only fucking web, it's the only fucking platform that doesn't strangle your fucking links. Like, it's just fucked up. It's fucked up. There's no other place. And like, until that changes, or like Twitter dies,

40:20and you know, like the end of the dark crystal, the skecs, and whatever those big, like rhinoceros looking, or whatever those slow guys were, when they merge again, and the site is unified into something horrible, but like, sustainable, then that'll be it. Because I don't want to fuck, I'm sorry. I find TikTok is annoying to fucking look at. I'm sorry. It's awful. I don't use it, it's awful. If you want to affect like national discourse, you need to be on there, but I don't want to be on Earth's awful. Well, it's also now, I mean, every social media platform is obviously unbeatable people, but you know, TikTok is now the fucking Ellison's. And algorithm has been, you know, beaten to hell and back, so. Yeah, throttled, yeah. You know, I think that that Jamel Booley is generally speaking correct when he's like, if you want to change minds, you need to go where the people are. It's just that I decided a while ago, my mission used to be changing minds, but a long time ago, my mission became, I'm just trying to explain viewpoints. I want to talk about other people's stories.

41:22I want to capture a moment in times I think is important. I want to talk about a piece of art I think is important and why I think it is important. I know that I cannot be a person that individually person by person changes minds, but I can write for people who feel the absence of left-wing commentary in their media diet. I can be that, and that is okay with me. I mean, I'm not going on fucking TikTok either, I hate it. I don't want to do it. I think objectively it makes sense to be on there, but also I hate it. All right, I'm going to book you. That's a wrap on Chris for this episode. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, TikTok is bizarre. And yeah, I don't think we necessarily super need to be on a bit of a sort of do. It's hard to say when you are a news organization nominally, the extent to which you should be engaging with it, especially when most of our audience simply isn't there. I feel like it's untenable to be on it and it's untenable not to be on it. They both options just suck ass

42:23and like, yeah, I also haven't figured out what I'm going to do, but I also don't want to make little videos. And like, sit behind the wheel on my car and like talk to my camera. Oh, my God. That's so big. I feel about it. Okay, I think this is maybe like, yes, I was about to say that. I mean, this is like a millennial issue. It is that I feel so self-conscious about doing any of that, even in the privacy of my own home. Totally. Yeah, I can't do it. I think younger people would just say, yeah, whatever, I'll walk down like the street, a crowded street in New York City and film a video. Yeah, I know. And that will just be fine. And it's like, I could never. I saw two young people full-on filming like a music video in the park the other day. And I just stared at them. It's like, aren't you embarrassed? Are you embarrassed by them? No, this is like how it works. Yeah. Yeah, they are free from the fear that I have of putting myself out there on the internet. They are completely free of that. Probably that's good. In some ways, it's bad. I think most people should use the real names on the internet. And also people have finally gotten wise to the idea of not doxing your children by posting an image of them with their full name and date of birth as soon as they're born.

43:25Don't do that. Is them holding their birth certificate like they're in a fucking lineup? Yeah, I'm glad people have stopped doing this. But also the millennial approach to the internet is like the internet is PVP. Everyone on the internet is dangerous to you. And you have to avoid running into those dangers. Whereas I think a generation younger than us that have always had the internet at their fingertips and it wasn't a new thing they had to adjust to, they don't feel that fear. But bad things happen online. And the more you put your face out there, I think in some ways you will end up regretting those some of those things. I think it's normalized now to have your shitty opinions everywhere on the internet. But also like, man, I don't get it. I don't want to record myself talking. A couple of months ago I did a thing where for an episode, I interviewed a bunch of teenagers about their use of social media and just like logistically how much do you use it, how do you use it, et cetera. And almost all of them said to me that they only use apps where your messages and your post disappear after a certain amount of time, right? 24 hours, one month or whatever.

44:25And it seemed like that seemed like smart to me that like if you're 16, even 16 year olds were like, I don't want to look back at this one, I'm 30. I don't want that all of a sudden. I don't want a permanent record of this. Yeah, I want to post it and then it disappears in however many hours. And that that seems like a pretty smart way forward, honestly. Like you don't want to leave these like permanent footprints. And this is like very, you know, whatever LinkedIn or something that an employer might want. But just having like the default being like everything I post is going to disappear actually seems like pretty smart. Yeah, I mean, especially given that, you know, otherwise if you're talking younger people than it's a vector for bullying. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And it's also, you know, mean being young is the time when you're supposed to make mistakes or saying that earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should be able to, that's the whole point. Otherwise, you don't get a chance to learn or to grow and then what are you doing? You're a kid forever. Yeah. And I think I'm explaining why a lot of people are the way they are right now. Because everyone is 12, brought it back around. Oh, there's some other fucking Segways. God damn it. Speaking of everyone being 12, actually, I don't really have a good Segway on that one. We should still talk about speed running though.

45:26We did something good on the internet, at least in large part, given the way the GDQ has moved in recent years. So that's my piece. Yeah. Yeah, I published a gigantic piece this week that took so much of the life out of my body. I'm still recovering. Basically, about games done quick as an organization that is a speedrunning charity marathon. They host multiple events throughout the year. And in recent years, they have become very woke, woke in a way that I think stands and start contrast to a lot of video game communities, which tend to be exclusionary, mostly white and male, all of that. And as we were talking about earlier, very protective of that makeup of their communities and that's that is. And GDQ, despite starting in a similar place, I think has made very intentional moves in the direction of inviting more people and being welcoming and turning trans rights into a rallying cry, trying to get more diversity on their stages, trying, and to an extent failing. Big portion of the article is about how they have

46:27so far not done super great in terms of just having like people of color on their main stages. And yeah, I was going through photos for just the articles, visuals. And I was like, man, everyone in every one of these photos, and there were like hundreds of them. It's like, this is really white. This is crazy white. But I think they are making a really good faith effort and they're putting in the work on kind of a daily basis to ensure that their communities stay hospitable to people of a wide variety of backgrounds. And that, to me, is very admirable, especially in this day and age. Again, trans rights is a rallying cry at their events. During a time when trans people are being oppressed on a national scale every single day. And they seem unapologetic about this is a space where people are going to feel safe. And you can be a right-winger if you want, but you can't behave in a way that's going to make somebody feel shitty. Which I think is one thing that actually drew me to gaming or made me interested in this kind of community is it is one of the few places in America where there is a lot of interaction between left when people and right-wing people and 17-year-old boys playing cod

47:28and then also trans speedrunners. And these people are interacting with each other. And it's interesting the norms and the rules and the little dramas that form in a community like that. Well, I think this is because, honestly, game development and the games they produce for a very long time were culturally extremely conservative. I got so obsessed with Marathon that I've decided to buy and play the Paylow Masterful Collection. I've never played a Hello Game before. Part of this was because every time I tried to play Hello Multiplayer with my other game of friends in high school, these were all really mean teenage boys. And they saw me as like a target for bullying if I wanted to play Hello. That was my only purpose as a representing person in those scenarios. So I could never get better at the game unless I wanted to like play alone like a weirdo so I could practice my aim or something. And if you entered those lobbies and you had a voice that was like even a little bit fruity, you were gonna get in. Yeah, people would go off.

48:28I think the website is still up. But I remember one of the first feminist gaming websites I became aware of was this website called Fat Ugly or Slutty. And that is named after the three things girls almost always get called with they go on a mic in a multiplayer competitive get video. It's either Fat Ugly or Slutty. And like that's it. And it was just a repository of voice messages and text chat and comms communications of women being called these things. It was incredibly inhospitable, but also like you look at the content of Hello and it's like a such a post 9.11 game. Oh man, it's it's all about the troops and how great the troops are and love in the troops and how we got in a fed America's freedom. And then like a religious sect of aliens that wants to cause harm to, you know, those troops. Oh, yeah. Can you imagine anything worse than harm before the troops? I mean, no, it doesn't fight. We couldn't. Yeah.

49:28Yeah, it is it though, I think for a very long time, the military shooter was the preeminent kind of game that people wanted to play and that would sell endlessly. I think you can still see it in modern day Call of Duty, the way that the pro military, very conservative framing of these people dictates the kind of community that they will have. People get so mad at you if you mentioned that women on the internet really want to fuck Call of Duty character ghost. They want to fucking crazy style. There is, and there's like an endless stream of pornography about ghost. And it's just cause the voice actor is a hot voice and he wears a mask. And that's it. But if you talk to like a masculine cod player about that fact, they will get so fucking angry at you. And I don't think this reaction exists for a lot of other games. I think most other games at this point in time, if you tell them there's fanfiction by the character, it's either amusement or of course, like obviously.

50:28But for some reason, Call of Duty players hate that people find these characters fuckable. And- Well, that's because fanfiction also is the domain of like not men. Yes, you're either a girl or an F'sler, if you're reading. Yeah, and it's like how do you take our toys? Yeah. It always goes back to that. But also to what you were saying and to what Michael was saying too about kind of like the collision of these cultures. I think it's also interesting to chart the evolution of games like Halo and Call of Duty over time. Because yeah, like the underlying kind of narratives in those games are pretty intrinsically conservative. But over time, they also like became weirdly progressive in terms of like representation. Yeah. A lot of the writers on recent Call of Duty's are like very progressive people in the games industry, like who are, you know, talk about these issues online and stuff and it's like, but you're writing the conservative propaganda game. Like what's happening here? How do you, how do you square this? How's the audience been with that? Has the audience lost their minds? Or are they chill? I mean, the games are still incredibly conservative.

51:31So they're happy to have their pro-militarious love. But essentially they are happy as long as you are a soldier that is fighting terror risks. However, that is defiant. And these will always, because of 9-11, always now be games about fighting terror. And that's it. And there's also that brief moment where everybody thought that like Call of Duty, Black Ops 7 or whatever, was gonna do 9-11. I was like really hoping that they are going to include an actual virtual 9-11 section. I was like, this is the funniest possible outcome. They've got to do it. Well, you could fly the planes. Like what do you mean do 9-11? Or like maybe you were on the plane, maybe you were in the tower. Or like, you know, there are so many options. Maybe all of them, maybe you like jump between perspectives as 9-11 happens. Yo, this might be a great idea. I gotta get some on the phone. It's still too soon. Marky Mark said, if he was on that plane, 9-11 wouldn't have gone down like that. And the most of the chance for him to test his theory, essentially. You could have like a quick time event, like prevent 9-11. Like press F to prevent 9-11.

52:33Yeah. Or you can any percent completion speed run 9-11. That's a good idea. Getting back to the topic at hand, though, with that in mind, Michael, how did you get into speed running? Because we were trying to talk about this and we keep in veering off in totally different directions. I think it was a Super Mario Brothers. There's video essays about how people beat Super Mario Brothers in less than five minutes. And they play the speed run and you're like, this is insane. And they break down. And I'm like, you guys are probably like this too, as journalists. It's like, I like knowing how things work. And so speed running is like a way to understand how video games work. Like this weird thing with frame rules or whatever. Like this is how they program games back in the day. And they only had 256 kilobytes to play with. And like, this is the way they did it. I know it's a weird entry point into like these broken down old jaloppies that like somehow were playable video games back in the day. But like, yeah, I got totally obsessed with those. And then now, again, it's like my comfort content. I'm like, ooh, break down this like,

53:33but you're in the speed run for me. It feels so good. Like games I've never even fucking heard of. I'm like, I just want to know how people are breaking this insane game until, you know, less than seven minutes or whatever. Do you guys watch this video? It's also really, I watch some of those. I mostly just watch like, because GDQ at this point is so good about always having something streaming. And so that's just like on the background of my life constantly. Is people, speed running things and talking about what they are doing. And I think it's also a fun way to even just discover new games or games you're never gonna play. Because you get this unique perspective on them like you were saying. And the people who are doing it are often so passionate and know so much like, not just about how the game works, but all this ephemera surrounding it too. It's insane. Yeah. It's so cool. It's like a PhD. It's like talking to someone who's like an academic expert in something, but they, they happen to be some like 19-year-old and like a gamer chair. Yeah. No, that's my favorite, favorite thing is someone. Again, if you are an RPG character, putting all your points into understanding how video games work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can listen to that person like that talk for hours. I always loved, I love when there's a game where there's a highly competitive like world record race

54:36going on. I love when people kept shaving seconds off their, like Mario 64 times. I love that. I love it, especially, I remember for a long time, there is a skip and a Zelda game that involved taking your cartridge out and putting back in really fast. Just how do you figure out that that is the precise way you need to break the programming restrictions on this game to let you do something? Wait, Michael, did you see the most recent AGDQ, I believe, their Wind Waker run? Because Wind Waker is like the game. The backwards swimming shit, where it just doesn't even make sense, yeah. Well, like, so Wind Waker has gotten so crazy that now what they do is they basically have figured out how to like through various motions, reprogram the game's code. It's like, it's a series of highly arbitrary things that they do near the very start of the game that allows them to beat it like 24 minutes. Because basically they manage to tell the game to assign the final cutscene to a door

55:37and you just open that door and go in the game ends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it takes so much work and it's so precise that it can crash the game and like, but yeah, watching it, you're just like, this is mind-boggling. And I think some of it is like they figured it out via like machine tools and then learn how to replicate it without those tools. But it's still just like, man, you were like speaking to the game in its programming language but without opening a console like, oh, it's bonkers. And it's also a collaborative effort among like 80 people that takes, you know, months to years of like, the fact that it's such a collaborative effort that it's also super interesting to make is you'll have like one glitch hunter, one task person, and there's some like complete weirdo who can actually execute it, like some of his fingers are so fast that they can actually do it. It's also like an interesting example of teamwork too. And teamwork to achieve these like completely arbitrary things but also like most of adult life is achieving arbitrary things. So it's like, who's to say doing a speed run is any less cool than like, I don't know, throwing a football really far or something? Yeah, oh, I think it's much cooler.

56:37Yeah. Now, sorry. It's shocking twist. The video games guy. Get an autograph for either this famous football person. I don't know any of their names. Or like a speed runner with 200 followers. I'm loose guy. I feel like speed runner. Easy. When you said famous football person, my first, the first name I thought of was Michael Vick. No, no, that's a famous dogfighter. So yeah, exactly. God, no, I watched a video like two days ago that I really, really, really loved. I'm just like a normal person on TikTok talking about their experiences that sometimes these videos make their way to Instagram reels. And that's how I see them because I'm not on TikTok. And it was someone, a young black man, who was just like, I have embarked on reading thousand plus page books. And he had his whole explanation of how fulfilling he had felt to finish those books. And like to know that you read all 1,000 pages of it and is like, you have to work your way up to this goal. But once you read a book that's over 1,000 pages, one time every other book looks easy. The way he described the feeling of accomplishment,

57:39he felt after that was by saying, it's like beating Melania and Elden Ring. And I was like, you know what? Like actually, yes, though. I think if you read Moby Dick, that is exactly like beating Melania. If you've read Infinite Jess, that's exactly like beating Melania. It asks the same level of dedication from you. I think that's of totally fair comparison to me. I'm never reading Infinite Jess. I have beaten Melania numerous times. It's like, yeah, matter of priorities as far as I'm concerned, I'm talking about Infinite Jess. It's a real skill issue. Absolutely skill issue. Have you guys ever speed, speed ran, to speed run, anything? God, no, I'm just stupid. No, and also, okay. That is the antithesis of how I like to play games because like a pet peeve for me is when I have to do anything repeatedly more than like a couple of times. Like I start to go insane. I like generally speaking, if you talk to people, they're like, oh yeah, I've never seen you like get angry. It's like I get so mad when that happens. I get like scary angry.

58:40I just keep it to myself and the privacy of my own home. I'm like that too. Yeah, just let me fight the fucking boss again. I don't want to spend eight minutes getting back to the fucking boss. I know that drives me. All this corpse run shit too. It's just like the fact that it's showing up and like Metroidvania is now. We have like go back and get your fucking runes before you like go explore. I'm just like, this is trash and you should let me turn it off. But this is also another part of the reason why I'm so fascinated by speedrunners. Because I'm like, our minds, at least our approaches to this are so different. And like as a result, I find I love talking to them. Because I'm like, that you even get to this point where it's like, oh yeah, I've done this for like a thousand times. I've spent so many hours on this. I do it the same way constantly to like nail everything to memorize everything. Right. I'm like, I just, I want to crack open your brain and like put it under a microscope and be like, oh, so the folds are here. And that's why it works. It is like they're playing video games and we're playing video games but it really isn't the same activity. Like what they're doing is so repetition focused and like, yeah, I try to get as much repetition out of it as I possibly can.

59:40Uh-huh. Because that's the thing. I mean, some of these guys talk about like tens of thousands of runs for these things and they just sit and do the same five minute thing over and over again for eight hours. I'm like, I could not. I could even do that for like 45 minutes. My specific random neurodivergence will not let me do that. But I would rather like shoot myself in the face and then sit and do the same kind of task for five hours. I am like a strategy game sicko. That is where my sicko tendencies come out. I, as soon as I like understood War Fortress, I literally changed the way I think about basically all games and I've become an intense min-maxer. I optimize things to the point, like I couldn't play cult of the lamb because I min-max the little settlement. So quickly that I realized there was nothing left in the game for me essentially. But I really respect the speedrunner because it really is about min-maxing but like in the real world. How do I maximize the amount of game I'm playing with a minimum amount of effort?

1:00:40That really makes a lot of sense to me. Do you play the same game to over and over again? Oh my God. I just finally uninstalled Crusader Kings III because that is a game I could and have played literally until the sun comes up. It just scratches my brain in a particular way. And there are a couple of games that are similar to that but Crusader Kings III is the most dangerous to my ability to live a life. I mean, that game's also super over-ended, right? Which would be a little different than replaying and this is the example of the spring to mind. It's not a good game or story like the last of us. Or like it's very linear. It's very pointy to point B. It tells the same story every time. Like Crusader Kings is wonderful because it is this story generation engine. You always get these like nothing is ever the same and it's always full of. And I was exclusively playing with the Game of Thrones total conversion mod and that was fucking sick as hell. You can start at a like before way before Robert's rebellion and just completely change the entire narrative

1:01:42of a Game of Thrones. And actually it's really cool. And you change these in eight. Can you fucking fix the ending? Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Oh my God. And they found out a way to put dragons in the game. It's amazing. Oh yeah. It's really good. That is sick. So let me check out Nathan. What is your emotional support video game? What is my emotion? The okay. So like it it changes for the past like since what middle of last year, late last year. It has been and I've mentioned this game so many times on this show, but whatever. A JRPG called Trails in the Sky. They remade it recently and it's just like it is a game that posits what if everyone in the world barring a few villains was decent and nice and just wanted to contribute to a functioning society. And it is like peak escapist fantasy for me right now. I'm like, oh yeah, everyone will just be, this is just going to be a pleasant time. That sounds woke to as hell. Yeah. It really is. Perfect. Okay, what video games are woke to? Can we talk about this before we get back to speed running for a second?

1:02:42Because I, I feel like Persona 3 specifically is woke to. I don't know for a five or woke to. Man, I know five definitely isn't with its transphobia. Yeah. The three of though is really just about, hey, everyone's going to die. Go make some friends. That's essentially the message of the game. Yeah, I would say three fighter six because it is a representation for cousin fuckers and that that's a really important part of woke to. Of course. We're all fucking our cousin. Hashtag justice for cousin fuckers. Yeah. Trails to sound like a good candidate. I think also original Hades is woke to. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yes, okay. Original yes, Hades too, no. Yeah, original yes because it is like, hey, your dad's a jerk, but remember that he's a person too, essentially. And maybe you'll get over it someday, but maybe you won't. One also like, because we ran an article about how Hades too like embraces a kind of status quo and that you, you know, despite playing as someone who is ostensibly an agent of change,

1:03:42you don't really meaningfully impact the lives of like a lot of the side characters. And in Hades too, you did. You actually like, you know, things were different than they started out. And so yeah, I think that that's also the difference between woke one and two in general is like, saying the status quo is something that we should be trying to shift in a way that goes beyond like again, simple matters like representation, you know, like a woman CEO or whatever. Yeah. I think in the same way that right when people use woke to mean anything they think is bad, we're using woke to to mean anything we think is good. There's like, that's woke to like peanut butter jelly sandwich. That's woke to, baby. Absolutely. Yeah, and it is. Now it's the official food of woke to to be clear. Yeah, if you have a peanut out every fuck you, you're not woke anymore. Sorry. You've been demoted. Yeah, you have to join the right wing. You don't have a choice. I think every dark souls game, every from software game is woke to. I know that this is just saying more things that I like are woke. Yeah, those are just like games you like.

1:04:42Those games aren't remotely woke to. And this dark souls one is about doing something other than sustaining the status quo. If you eat the fire in dark souls one, you are perpetuating a status quo that is clearly dying on its way out and does not need to be perpetuated. If you allow for the time of man to arise, the time of dark, the dark soul, then you are saying goodbye to the old world because it's time is done. I will trust you on that. I refuse to learn what those games are about. I'm not reading item descriptions. I'm not sitting there fucking reading when I'm trying to play my video game. Absolutely not. I'll trust you. I'm sure. No, I love reading video games. Sorry, I love it. I love to be reading. Why did I not? You know what game is woke to? Woke toer than any other game. And also it's just the most game that has ever existed. Warframe. It's obviously Warframe. Well, yeah. You just read a feature about Warframe that is yet to be published. So I'm very curious about this. No, I mean, it is actually like, I mean, for one, it's just like in ways that are very subtle. It's like an extremely queer game. Like all of the frames themselves play with like ideas

1:05:44and gender and stuff. But very like, not in a way that's in your face. It's just like, oh, yeah. What is this supposed to, it's all sorts of things. And then also like the games politics have been generally good. They support good causes. Like, you know, they give a shit. But again, not in like an annoying way, if that makes sense. Also, I thought of probably the game that is the standard bearer for woke to games. That would be, it's got to be Fallout New Vegas, right? Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Fallout New Vegas is really good, but I'll also say, Michael, when I got a copy of Fallout New Vases, I couldn't play it the first night because I spent two hours following a modding guide to make the game stable to play on PC. Oh, you know what? It's still so broken. Oh, yeah. Now, the only problem with Fallout New Vegas is that if you play it, it does turn new trends. Okay, yeah. Like that is kind of a thing that they didn't really advertise well. That's woke to though. That's woke to. So yeah, this is what most woke two thing imaginable. Whenever they put in the water to make the frogs gay,

1:06:44they also put it in Fallout New Vegas. I don't know what it is. In the code. That's why it's boogie. Because the gender affirming code that they have in there. Yeah. Now, Fallout New Vegas is also a game about saying goodbye to the old world. It is just takes place in Vegas. It is the most, the most Fallout has ever gotten to object, like very, very objectively saying America's done. It's over. There will never be an other America. And the people that are trying to bring back America are all fools. It's not going to work long run. It's like a burning down ass video game. Yeah. It really is. And it's, I think that there's been, so today also, speaking of woke one, the new Life is Strange game comes out that is essentially a fix it, fix game that is trying to correct the ending for Max and Chloe. And I do think our friends at Mother Ship ran a blog today

1:07:45about at the end of Life is Strange 1. You get the choice to either save Arcadia Bay or like Max and Chloe write off into the songs that together as a couple. And everyone else they know is dead, essentially. And they ran a message today about why people choose to save Max and Chloe together and save this lesbian relationship rather than saving the town. And I think that for a long time, it was accepted that making that choice was the more selfish one. But it is interesting to think about video games that allow you to make that selfish choice that life doesn't really afford to you, right? Like, I think a lot of couples that are in small towns where they are maybe the only gay couple that's out among their age range, you have to choose to burn everything down if you want to be in that relationship. And just kill everyone but the lesbians is what you're saying. You know, yeah, that's the real like main pillar of woke people. Kill everyone except lesbians. Sorry guys, we're all going out.

1:08:45That's fine. I'm willing to take this one on the chair. Yeah, it's fair. I've had a good life. You guys have both gotten worse. Yeah. God, it is interesting though. Like the way there are games that do give you a chance to think about or conceptualize what life is like after the end of everything. And that is a really interesting framework to theorize like what life past this stupid-ass moment in history could feel like. You know, Final Fantasy VI is like the classic example. There's this whole part of the game where you have to play in the wreckage of the old world. But also like, literally Pocopia makes me cry every day because you'll run in Pocopia. It takes place in a world without humans. And it's very explicit. It's something you learn in the first moments of the game. And as you're playing, you realize like, oh, this is the contour region from Pokemon Red and Blue. These are three diversions of all those 2D towns that I visited when I was playing this game on my Game Boy. And every once in a while, it will just recreate

1:09:48a little piece of lore one to one that you may remember from playing the first Pokemon game. And just being smacked in the face by my mortality just made me weep a couple of times. It made me think about, well, whatever, what would Ella the cat do if anything ever happened to me? What would happen to her? Which should be okay? I don't know what Ella would do. I know the biscuit the cat who you can see behind me if you look past the plant would eat me. Yeah. And that would be fine. You would sustain biscuit's life for an indeterminate amount of time. And I think that would be acceptable. Exactly. Ella is such a bully that I just feel like she'd get into a lot of fights without me to keep her safe. Oh, yeah, yeah. She would like lose her way. She'd be like, she'd be lashing out at school. Yeah. You guys, I got to run my boyfriend is visiting me and I'm taking him up the colonial tower. Oh, my God. And I got to be there in 10 minutes. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, guys. Well, thank you. No, no, it's totally fine. Thank you for joining us for as long as you did. It was an absolute delight to have you on. Where can people find you?

1:10:50On your telephone in the podcast app for if looks to kill or maintenance phase. Fantastic. Excellent. Yeah, all right. We'll have a good time. Yeah, thanks so much, guys. Thanks again for joining us. All right. Bye. Peace. Okay. Now it's just us. All right. That's a, that's a serious rap on Michael Hobbs. Okay. I have a question before we move on to the mailbag, which is, do you think that Cyberpunk 2077 is woke one or two? Cyberpunk 2077 is the most gen X coded game that I've ever played in my life. There it is. It defies the woke one or woke two. It is PC. That's what I'll call it. Yeah. I don't think you're wrong. Yeah. It's also ideologically confused. Maybe one of the most ideologically confused games I've ever played, which again, gen X is how. I mean, we've talked about this, but I do just need to email Michael Ponsmith. I just need to talk to him for several hours about what's going on in his head, because the source books for cyberpunk are so weird and so interesting, and they are mostly rants about his thoughts

1:11:51about where the world is headed based on the snapshot of reality that he's focused on at the time. God. What a weird guy. I love a weird old guy. Yep. All right. Let's move on to the mailbag now, which by the way, if you would like to contribute to the mailbag, you can do so by subscribing to Aftermath.site at our member tier, which is currently on sale for basically the price of our reader tier. So I would recommend taking advantage of that, because that's kind of a crazy deal. Anyway, that will get you access to the discord, and that is where the mailbag and all of the other magic happens. And yeah, let's go ahead and dig in and I think there will probably be a few questions for Michael in here, and unfortunately we will not be able to answer them, but we can try to pretend to be him or something. I don't know, whatever. Anyway, from tidy messy, did you, God, did you consider, and this only works if you're looking at it, two woke spelled T-W-O-K-E, so instead of woke two, two woke. Wow.

1:12:51I didn't consider that, because it sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. It did make me feel like I was having a stroke though, so that's cool. Stroke two. Hey, anyway. Brother. All right, from Jack. Many speedrunners have backup slash safety starts, especially in marathons. Do you have any backup strats for your everyday life? Ooh, that is a great question. Let's see, backup strats for everyday life. I mean, I must. I'm always worried about these things. No, I have like a, I'm not an everyday carry person, but I do have a little pouch that contains fidget toys, spare, et cetera, and migraine, three different strengths of earplugs and my digital audio player. And I put that in my purse every day. And that is just in case I freak out in public, essentially. Okay, I thought of mine. Every time that I exit my apartment, even just like to go take out the trash or go down to the gym or whatever, I always, at least for a split second,

1:13:51think about what I would do if I happened to have forgotten my keys inside my apartment, lock myself out this time. Yes. I also do this. I also do this. In my whole life, ever. But I always think about it. I'm like, okay, who has spares, who has backups? Where are they right now? Yeah. So definitely that. But I feel like the idea of a backup strat for everyday life suffuses many elements of my life. And hearing it put in those terms is like, oh yeah, that's a slight revelation. God, no, the one time I forgot my keys at home, I went to the gym, and then I realized I didn't have my keys in my bag, my gym bag. And so I had to call my husband and go to his office and he gave me his keys. And I am just grateful that my backup strat for everyday life frequently is just David. Like, David will figure it out. Only for David to get home. Yeah. I mean, every, every couple needs the partner who is put together and that you're a responsible one. Which would be Nathan? Which would be you?

1:14:51It is truly impossible to say that people will ultimately be the judge of that. Oh, good people. All right. From, from Keir Kano. Kano's anyway. If woke to you needed a video game character as its mascot, who would it be? Who's the mascot of those two? I mean, Ella the cat. I think it's a mascot of woke to in my mind. She likes it when you're nice to her. And if she wants to be left alone, she'll fucking scratch you. I think that's woke to you to me. I think maybe Kirby. So radically accepting that he'll just transform into you. Transform into anything. I like that. I like that. I think it should be Kirby. Yeah. All right. Let's see. From Nathan Goth. Given that it's a juggernaut in the speedrunning community and has attracted its fair share of games drama. What is everyone's thoughts on games done and quick? We already talked about it. And I ran an 8,500 word piece on it this week. Jesus Christ made it. How did you not die? Do you want to know how long the word frame pieces?

1:15:51Oh, brother. How long has it, Nathan? Over 6,000 words. Jesus Christ. What's wrong with you? I have written in terms of share word count, like one fifth of a book this week. Stupid. Well, in the past two weeks. Okay. Not that stupid, but still brother. Come on. Yeah. Give yourself a big nap next week. Oh, I'm planning to. I'm going to make you take a day off. Let's get ahead of it. No, I just like. I've had both these pieces brewing for so long. And like they, I needed them. I needed them to be done here. That this was less about like, oh, I feel the pressure to make sure that woke week goes off of that a hitch, which I did. But it was more about like, I need these to be out of my life so that I can move on to other things. And that is what you see before you. That's what happened. Hopefully it won't happen again any time soon, because it has been very demanding. Yes. All right. From me. You've been put in charge of the woke to truth and reconciliation. What changes do you implement?

1:16:54I mean, the number one thing, which I posted on blue sky, is if you get insanely mad about a post you saw online, you are now legally required to ask your neighbor if they need help with anything around the house. Hmm. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Do they need help gloting the groceries? Do they need help with the leaky faucet? Do they need a cup of sugar? Anything. Yeah. Just if you go insane about something on the internet, make sure that there's nothing in real life that could be handled instead of posting about it. Yeah. Corollary to that is simply that if you get really mad about something online, there, I don't know how it deploys into the mechanisms of not an engineer. Giant can. Just yanks you away. Just pulls you from where you were at the time. Who's doing the mechanics on the can? We need our top scientists on it. I think we need like Gabe Newell to be funding this with his yacht money. I mean, yeah. I think he could probably use that for giant cane technology. Exactly.

1:17:55Let's see. From Mr. Kennedy T. I'm already a big fan of the If Books Could Kill podcast. Awesome crossover. It was a great crossover. One of my favorites ever, which pieces of media, games, films, books, TV shows, et cetera, have most influence your perspective on what woke to Electric Bougaloo is, or should aspire to be, and how can it improve upon earlier versions? Okay. So we've talked about this some. But yeah, what pieces of media have influenced your perspective? Can I say, I mean, I chose a picture of Ghetto Pat as played by Leonardo DiCaprio and One Battle After Another as the header image of this. But I have to say that the online freakout to in response to One Battle After Another would absolutely motivate me to write this book to blog. The way in which people truly didn't watch that movie and then reacted to what they wanted it to be, rather than what it was, made me think a lot about the insufficient, how wokeness is an insufficient ideological lens through which to view the world. Is One Battle After Another a movie that is particularly woke?

1:18:56I mean, I don't know. I think it says something important about the value of activism, even as you age out of being able to participate in the movement yourself. And essentially says that old saying that has been useful to me is like, you are not obligated to complete the work, but the work will always continue. I think that that is okay. As ambassador to the movie, I don't think the movie was anti-black. I don't think so at all. I'm sympathetic to arguments from black women, especially that say, it's weird that PT Anderson made this movie in which blackness looms, so large a specter. I do guess like, yeah, it is always a little uncomfortable to watch a white man talk about what he thinks about race. But I do feel like it is a movie that speaks to a real social problem, which is, what do I do when I feel super fucking useless? But I still want to help. And it's support the people who are useful. That's something that you can do.

1:19:56I genuinely, genuinely love one battle after another. I think it is an incredible movie. I cried in the theater. I was one of those freaks seeing a long-to-American girl over the end credits. I loved it. I think it's a great film. I love PT Anderson. Tiana Taylor was fantastic. But yeah, I think for me, one battle after another is an expression of the things that I'm interested in, furthering in wokeness as an ideology. All right. Let's see. From Matt. Go woke, go broke. Always felt like a bullshit slogan with very little foundation in both political or economic reality. Maybe I'm just living in my lib-woke DEI bubble, but it seems like the opposite is actually true and game publishers such developers shouldn't bother obeying in advance. There's a question mark at the end of that, though it reads like a statement. Yeah, I would agree with that, especially because, yeah, I think that there are a lot of notable examples of people going anti-woke and going broke. That tends to be the pattern more often. Well, it's spring to mind for me immediately,

1:20:57and this is outside of the purview of games a little bit, is Gina Carano, who, you know, went super anti-woke during her time on the Mandalorian, lost that job, and then got picked up by daily wire, and they released something that did not attract any viewership or money, and now she is out of desperation on retiring from MMA after 16 years away from the sport. For a payday, even though, like, you can tell, she is not, like, she's going to have to spend most of her fight camp just getting in shape. She's not going to be able to re-learn how to fight or become, like, great at it again in that time. Like, a lot of these people, everything they do of desperation, and I don't know. I think that, because I think life also is, you know, a very desperate thing, but I would like to desperately be doing stuff that I enjoy, not, like, trying to gain the attention of people who suck, and, you know, all of this. Yeah, no, I think the thing that is frustrating

1:21:59to people, like, washing someone, like, Dina Corona would be unable to exit the spotlight, is, like, she could just have a... She is not owed a job as a major celebrity in America, right? Right. That is not something she is obligated to have, and that's not something that society owes her. She had a moment in time where she was working with Disney and was a bankable star, and people wanted to see more of her. That moment is over, and that's literally okay. Would it be humiliating for her to just get her normal job after all of that? I mean, yes, but... That's fine. I've thought a lot about what would happen if I no longer was able to write professionally. And would I miss the time that I have... Yeah, absolutely. But I'm extraordinarily lucky to have made it this far. So I'm very satisfied with what has happened to me in my life. If it turned out that tomorrow all of you stop paying for aftermath and I had to get a normal job, I would... It would take some time to adjust,

1:22:59but I wouldn't desperately flail at trying to be back in the public eye. I don't enjoy it a lot. So I'd rather be doing something else a lot of the time anyway. Yeah. Yeah. All right, from Metroid, what's the ideal length and format of your favorite speedruns? Three hour 100% glitchless marathons, 30 minute, any percent, four minute, 34 second, incomprehensible tool-assisted speedrun, etc. Yeah, this is an interesting question again because I just have them on on the background constantly. But the ones that grabbed my attention, usually need at least a degree of spectacle. Like, you know, there was like a Pokemon randomizer speedrun on a couple of days ago. And I was just like, I can't... I'm having trouble like focusing on this because a lot of it is just, you know, walking around doing Pokemony things. Whereas there was a run recently of the New Vampire Masquerade game. And that shit ruled. It was so good. That's awesome. For one, because the movement tech

1:23:59is drop-kicking your way down the street at incredible speeds. And sometimes you'll just accidentally bulldoze a fucking NPC. Just absolutely fucking pancake them. And it's hilarious. And then on top of that, it's a game that like has a lot of, you know, fun skips. I think that any good speedrun needs some outside bound stuff because you're just like, whoa, that's crazy. They did not want you to see that. You're backstage right now. Do you have a pass? Like, yeah. So that's the kind of thing that I enjoy. I like a speedrun that's really short and then an explanation video that is like 400% longer than the speedrun itself. Like, that's what I really, really... I'm less into the run than I am the explanation of what makes the run work. And if you've done like a frame-by-frame video dissection of what makes the run function and why it works this way, then I'm absolutely glued to my seat. I do also like joining in whenever someone's about to beat a world record live. I always love being there for that moment because people are so joyous and so happy.

1:25:00I just like participating in that. Yeah. Another thing that I think a good run needs, at least for me, is the runner has to have a little raise. Yeah. Because there are two types of runners when they're like sitting there and actually explaining the process. And one is the very calculated knowledgeable runner. But they just like, when they talk, it kind of just slides off your brain like rainwater. You're like, okay. But then there are some runners who are just, you know, they're also born entertainers. And so they're talking and you're like, even if you weren't doing this, I'd be compelled just by listening to you. Absolutely. And I hear your thoughts on things. And those are, those are great runs. Because then you're just like, yeah, I'm just, I'm just going to listen. I mean, it's like, the key to a good EVO set is a really, really good announcer. And yeah, like how I feel also. Yeah. And also, I mean, a good couch can make up for this too, because you know, a lot of like, GDQ will have commentators, people on the couch who are providing additional insight. And so sometimes it's just like,

1:26:00hey, this is a fun podcast and also somebody happens to be speedrunning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm going through. I think I said in the mail bag, but there's one thing I think there's one more. There's one more. Oh, my God. Fuck, I'm sorry. Yeah. From Lexi, favorite GDQ run that was not necessarily a speedrun, like the 70 player Mario 64 Relay. I got an easy one for this. Okay. I am not a GDQ watcher. So please Nathan, elucidate me. Oh, I mean, I think you probably saw this one though. It was last year. I believe the crazy taxi run with an actual band playing the soundtrack. Oh, my God. Yeah. That was so cool. Yeah. I wish it was good as hell. Yeah. I wish I could have been there live for that. There was a mosh pit to a speedrun. That is a good one. That is something that will not seem to be replicated. Skaws back. Skaws real. Skaws your friend. Yes. Either that. Or, and this was still technically a speedrun. And in fact, they like, I think got a world record. But peanut butter. The dog. Oh, my God. I forgot about the other dog.

1:27:00Yeah. Friend of the front of the site, front of aftermath. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's the end of the mail bag. You were bringing something up. Okay. So we, this week, Nathan posted our subscriber goals for 2026. Oh, yeah. I did do that. I want to say on the podcast, we have officially hit the first goal, which is a third, somehow even bigger mug. We will be putting that up on the merch store today, essentially. That third, somehow even bigger mug is hit the towers. You were going to get us TOS. It's not going to be me and my shirt, but the swear on it. That's fine. I have looked along good online life. But yeah, yeah. And also, so to reiterate, yes, we have our new subscriber goals for the year up. You can go check those out on the site. There's a big button for them. And yeah, we just, uh, you know, via subscriptions, hope to accomplish a number of things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also, we have a lot of subscriptions,

1:28:00hope to accomplish a number of fun things in this year. One of my favorites that I think people have been asking for and that I just decided to put on the goals, because I have the power to do this, um, is the idea of like an aftermath of the scene. Oh, yeah. The bundles together are favorite stories of the year in physical form. That's our 6000 subscriber tier, which is, yeah, we are, we are at 5,000 to 150. Also, I hate to keep dangling this carrot in front of people, but we do need time and resources. Uh, you are air, the return is on there. It's a 5,500. I would like to get back to it, but I am a single person, and so that would go toward, I think maybe alleviating some of my workload somehow. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff on here. Um, I also really had a great time with the, let's say less attainable, less achievable goals. Oh, yeah. For example, at 150,000 subscribers, which you know, we'll hit one day, or our children will, um, we'll force the owners of polymarket and call sheet to duke it out in the UFC Octagon. Yep. I think that would be great. 200,000 subscribers, we will announce the woke century. Yeah.

1:29:00So woke week gets expanded a little bit. And then 300,000, we will dedicate our lives to buying every horrible jacket in video CEO, Jensen Wong Covitz, before he can. So, He is the worst fucking fashion taste. I, a long, long, long time ago, before the era of a normalist and recanty, going to things and being stylish, I wanted to go to like GDC or E3 and be like a red carpet reporter and just be like, what are you wearing? And make people tell me what they were wearing. Yeah. And it's so friendly, just bands, uh, bands, cargo stories, James, try for a t-shirt. I'm like, oh, that's the last guy wore. It's crazy. Do you shop at the, do you go to the same designer? Like what? Uh, yeah. Yeah, I do. Um, but yes, with all this in mind, again, I want to reiterate, we are currently having a sale on subscriptions. You can either get your first month for one dollar for monthly, or you can subscribe for a whole year, to our member tier, which is the higher one, for just $75, which is a very big discount

1:30:01from what that normally is. Um, it's great. If you don't not already subscribe, you should. That is our lifeblood. That supports us. We'd appreciate the hell out of you for doing so. Yeah. On that said, I think that that is probably the end of our show. Thank you to everyone who tuned in. This is a really fun one for me personally because I'm a big fan of Michael Hobbs. Thank you for your support. Thank you for reading the site. During woke week. And, uh, yeah, we do this every Thursday, 4 p.m. ET live on Twitch, and we will be back next week in a decidedly less woke week. But I think it'll still be a little woke. No, we're going anti woke next week. Sorry. Next week is anti woke week. Next week, we're going to pivot to a far right grip. Yeah. You heard it here first. All right. Thank you, everyone, for listening and have a good one. Yeah. Yeah.