00:04:25.960It was a labor of love for me to watch three credited scientists debate three self-identified
00:04:33.940free thinkers about the shape of the earth.
00:04:36.480Okay, before we get in too far, you might be a little bit confused, so let me explain
00:04:41.240a little bit of background for what Jubilee is and why we are here today.
00:04:45.900Jubilee is a media company and content farm that has been rapidly growing in popularity
00:04:51.600lately and over the last several years.
00:04:54.800It's known primarily for, like I mentioned, its YouTube channel with over 9 million subscribers
00:05:00.880currently. The slogan of Jubilee is provoke understanding and create human connection.
00:05:08.900Jubilee is known for its often viral debate style content where it sometimes casts sort of online
00:05:16.700political celebrities like the right wing provocateur Charlie Kirk or, you know, random
00:05:22.100college students to debate those right-wing celebrities. Jubilee has an ongoing series
00:05:28.140called Middle Ground, where they cast a group of people from one side of a contentious debate
00:05:33.000to, you know, quote-unquote debate people from the other side of that contentious debate, like
00:05:38.460feminists versus male rights activists, scientists versus anti-vaxxers. I'll read you some YouTube
00:05:46.760titles men's rights activists versus feminists is toxic masculinity real flat earthers versus
00:05:53.080scientists can we trust science can 25 liberal college students outsmart one conservative
00:05:59.560can one woke teen survive 25 conservatives he doesn't spoiler alert he dies he died in that
00:06:07.520video he was over after that the 25 conservatives ate him0.95
00:06:13.200uh six straight men versus one secret gay man who is the gay man
00:06:21.440think the gay man is me can trump supporters and immigrants see eye to eye and perhaps my0.81
00:06:29.200personal favorite can you stop being gay lgbtq people versus former lgbtq people0.81
00:06:37.280Like I mentioned, if you haven't ever watched any of these videos, all of which, by the way, have millions upon millions upon millions of views, if you've never watched them of your own volition, you have almost definitely been served bite-sized clips of them to your social media feeds, where they often go viral and spark very angry comment sections.0.56
00:06:58.220i think jubilee is rage bait at best and i think it's dangerous at worst and that's a thesis we
00:07:07.080are going to spend the rest of this episode unpacking i thought could we start by saying
00:07:13.560like what do we like about jubilee because on this podcast i try to give everyone grace
00:07:18.300you're so kind matt it's crazy how kind and sweet you are i can't believe it sometimes
00:07:25.140I don't know. I think that there's things to appreciate about Jubilee's middle ground. Okay, so there's this one video that they made called like, can pro-life women and pro-choice men find a middle ground, right? And on one hand, like, are we platforming pro-life opinions? Yeah, of course we are doing that.
00:07:44.960On the other hand, this is a conversation, a debate that we have a national stake in, right? We're forced to debate this question constantly. It's something we're all very worried about. And I don't know if inevitably I could just come to the conclusion, get rid of this kind of forum, get rid of this kind of conversation that interacts with people that I don't like and disagree with.
00:08:09.860I also would say, as another pro to them, that the people who enter these conversations as the normal guy presence in the room, I think they tend to be smart enough, you know? I don't think I'm smarter than any of them. I don't think that I'd be able to conjure better points than they do in disagreement. Much of the time, I'm having a thought and they express it. It's not like it's a totally stacked deck, although there is a sense in which the deck is stacked, I'd say.
00:08:36.560Yeah, I think what Jubilee would claim, and we're actually going to be reading some of their mission statements, but I think that what Jubilee would claim is that their goal is to get us out of our online political echo chambers, right? And I think that's a noble goal.
00:08:52.340i don't know if i agree that it's a noble goal but like no i don't know wait really everyone's
00:08:58.360so anti-echo chamber i'm i'm i'm a i'm a centrist on the echo chambers we're we're exposed to the
00:09:04.160craziest shit all day every day now has it made our politics better has it depolarized our country0.96
00:09:09.600has twitter being overtaken by nazis made us more clever or thoughtful or open-minded people no it's1.00
00:09:16.440ruined us it's ruined our brains i don't i'm i'm a centrist on the echo chamber i think the debate
00:09:21.980is important but like this constant like you need to open your mind thing like i don't know maybe
00:09:28.040maybe we do maybe we don't do you think we can find middle ground on echo chambers yeah
00:09:32.900pro echo chamber versus anti echo chamber the middle ground coming next week
00:09:40.060it's just echo chamber sounds really bad but like community is another word you might have
00:09:46.080for echo chamber right a space where people who are like-minded communicate with each other
00:09:50.940and where certain ideas are broadly accepted
00:09:53.840is another way of defining echo chamber, right?
00:10:16.820You can't hear from someone who is, you know, anti-choice. You can't hear from someone who, whatever, who has opposing views. And that's not my problem with Jubilee. My problem with Jubilee is not that they platform people I disagree with.
00:10:35.060sometimes I have problems with who they platform and we'll get into that too. But I think if their
00:10:40.960goal was to earnestly break open echo chambers, earnestly foster human connection, as is their
00:10:48.940slogan, then the content would look extraordinarily different. People don't respect sex workers
00:10:55.680because it's easy to take your clothes off. That's why they don't respect them. It's also1.00
00:10:59.900people respect things that are hard and sex work only fans that's not hard and so part of my thesis
00:11:07.560today is that jubilee is i think self-aware about the fact that they are not creating the type of
00:11:12.560content that aligns at all with what they claim to be about yes i'd say that if there's one critique
00:11:18.180i have for jubilee to boil it down to one sentence it would be they're not breaking over open echo
00:11:24.200chambers primarily, what they're really doing is inventing opening the echo chamber. You know,
00:11:30.780there isn't a lot of Americans who are flat earthers. It's not a real kind of person that
00:11:35.580you meet in your day to day life. You don't meet flat earthers at the coffee shop. You know, a lot0.97
00:11:41.880of them. Well, you know, I have friends who are flat earthers because I think it's important to
00:11:46.240surround myself with people who disagree with me. You know, it's, it's a fake conversation. It
00:11:51.020doesn't actually exist. And so they're not getting people out of their rote bullshit. They're exposing1.00
00:11:57.440the freaks to the normal guys. That's what their actual spectacle is. It's not primarily about
00:12:04.100conversation, about issues that bear down on people's lives and about which reasonable minds
00:12:09.460sometimes differ. Although they do have that. A lot of the time it's just random, vaguely
00:12:15.300reactionary feeling spectacle. I love how this is our answer to my prompt, which was,
00:12:19.980can we start by saying something we like about jubilee okay i will say that as you know a content
00:12:28.300creator i understand that part of making content is capturing people's attention i think the people
00:12:35.100who run the jubilee youtube channel have found a gold mine as far as being able to capture people's
00:12:40.500attention being able to get people emotionally involved in your content i think they are very
00:12:45.980very good content creators. I think it's ultimately for the worse. But I think that
00:12:51.940they have had some really creative ways to rage bait people, essentially.
00:12:58.500And look, just as one final pro to them is that, you know, we can laugh, we can look at a0.64
00:13:03.640conversation between, you know, former LGBTQIA plus people versus current gay people. We can0.57
00:13:11.380we can laugh at that idea we can laugh at the fact that they're platforming uh conversion
00:13:15.780therapy advocates although they would say they're not conversion therapy advocates that's a different
00:13:19.800matter i suppose but at the end of the day there are going to be gay religious teenagers watching
00:13:26.400that jubilee video and they're going to be processing uh the ideas from uh christians who0.96
00:13:34.320are gay and who have their faith and who don't believe that they're going to hell for it and
00:13:38.340it's gonna make a gay teenager's life better it will do that in certain cases and it's it's not0.96
00:13:45.660a conversation that it's for me to have i don't think gay people are going to hell i don't believe0.82
00:13:50.040in all that but it's a conversation that some people really do take seriously so it speaks to
00:13:57.380somebody it helps somebody you know it's it's not all bad i don't think okay that was that was
00:14:04.540like a really specific pro about like one of their 7,000 videos. Yes, that's true. Well,
00:14:10.900you know, abortion, you know, they get a 45-year-old guy to say, you have a right to
00:14:14.620abortion. You know, maybe that'll make a woman feel safer. I don't fucking know.
00:14:19.220I would like to give a little bit of background on the history of Jubilee. Would you mind?0.93
00:14:25.040I wouldn't, no. So Jubilee is the brainchild of Jason Lee, who is a graduate from the University
00:14:33.020of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, prestigious business school. He's a business guy.
00:14:38.060After he graduated, he was a business consultant making, as he tells it, six figures by the time
00:14:44.640he was 21. And in 2010, he launches the Jubilee Project, as it was then known, as a non-profit
00:14:53.280and a YouTube channel. The first video that he makes, which is still the first video on Jubilee's
00:15:00.420channel it only has like 40 000 views now was basically just a little like vlog he made of him
00:15:07.820going to uh the union square subway stop in new york city and singing you know the way that people0.99
00:15:15.640sing in public places for for for money so that he could raise money for the victims of the haiti
00:15:22.620earthquake in that video he raised he raises 85 dollars and one cent and two euros which i think
00:15:29.820it's like really sweet that's cute yeah he seems you know like just like very happy to be like
00:15:36.020finding a creative way to make content out of doing charity work it you know it's a sweet
00:15:40.740short video it bears no resemblance at all to anything on that channel now but uh yeah for
00:15:49.900the first couple of years really all of the videos were just like various charity spotlights and you
00:15:56.600know they got really low traffic mr beast type guy i mean mr beast type guy sure jason eventually
00:16:08.000realized that he he has no business plan he had like quit his job to make this work and he's not
00:16:13.580making any money eventually he shuts down the non-profit jubilee project and relaunches it in
00:16:20.4002017 as jubilee a for-profit company that at that point he had raised 650 000 in funding for
00:16:29.740he raised 650k for a youtube channel yeah who's investing in one i don't know what does that mean
00:16:36.240yeah who's gonna half a million dollars in my youtube channel that's crazy it is crazy and so
00:16:43.220immediately the you know the charity stuff stops and what emerges is a series of videos that he's
00:16:49.020doing at this point seven years ago called Both Sides. That's the name of the series. And the
00:16:54.940videos are things like married couple secretly share both sides of a love story where they're
00:16:59.860both sitting at a table talking to each other, hooked up to microphones, essentially just having
00:17:04.220an intimate conversation about their relationship, but on camera. And he does this with a lot of
00:17:09.100couples. He does this with best friends. And it's innocuous. You know, it's like kind of sweet
00:17:14.500human interest type content. It's kind of a look into people's interior worlds and relationships.
00:17:21.240It's a feel-good thing, which of course Jubilee still claims it's about making feel-good content,
00:17:26.580but this was kind of the last time the content was ever feel-good. The first middle ground video
00:17:33.220was called Atheists and Christians Debate Truth and Belief. That video gets six million views.
00:17:41.200this is capitalism baby if you find the thing that makes you more money you're off to the races with
00:17:47.120it and so we were off to the races meaning the race to the bottom of what jubilee would become
00:17:53.340i think it's kind of you know like it's a funnel that we all go down in our lives you know we start
00:17:58.940off just wanting to make people happy and then we find out that people actually want to be made to
00:18:02.500be miserable and angry and that that's what they'd rather engage with and then we spend our lives
00:18:07.520just getting people angrier and angrier and make ourselves wealthier and wealthier. And then we all
00:18:13.820die. That's the situation, I guess, a lot of content creators find themselves in. Jubilee's
00:18:18.520by no means alone in this regard. This sort of content, this sort of buzzfeed, like, do you know
00:18:24.080your wife's darkest secret type content? It had its place, but it's super dated now. Nobody watches
00:18:30.520videos like that. Nobody cares. You need to have an angry man somewhere in the room that everybody
00:18:37.120hates otherwise you know what are you gonna do and even if sorry to be going off here but even
00:18:41.320if you go on like even these more human interest pieces like you know a dating show it still has
00:18:46.880like a lot of tension and mean guys there's a lot of judgment going on you know you're not going to
00:18:51.860find content as much that's just feel good you know children react to titanic type videos it's
00:18:59.120not as common anymore this is capitalism though right it's like he's he started as like a sweet
00:19:04.500charity youtube channel and look i'm not saying you have to do that forever like
00:19:07.640my podcast isn't for charity my podcast is my job too but you know i guess you just
00:19:14.180follow the money wherever it leads you and when it leads you to a place of like
00:19:19.060total rage and platforming nonsense and legitimizing nonsense oftentimes dangerous
00:19:24.400nonsense like okay that's where we'll go i agree and i think that as we'll no doubt get into
00:19:30.440I think the greatest sin of Jubilee or one of the greatest sins of Jubilee is that it continues to present itself as this kind of neutral, friendly platform where they're just bringing on people who have some beliefs, not sort of acknowledging the fact that they are part of an online ecosystem that exists to platform and expose other people to reactionaries who are themselves famous and who themselves want to spread their message.
00:19:55.200They didn't go on the street to find MRAs. They found MRA influencers to go in a room and act and do the thing that they do. They're part of the job of celebrities, right? It's part of the grind of having divergent beliefs is going hopefully on Jubilee, which seems like a problem. It seems weird.
00:20:12.920mra being uh not the thing that's in the vaccine but uh men's rights activists oh i'm sorry yes
00:20:19.600for normal people who don't know this stuff um speaking of aspiring to go on jubilee i should
00:20:27.520give a disclaimer now that i was once invited to go on jubilee it's true i i so i actually like
00:20:35.700went back into the email that i got from my manager who reached out to me to say jubilee
00:20:42.340is casting and they wanted to see if you would be in their video to play the role of in quotations
00:20:51.260male feminist in the in the video male feminist versus male anti-feminist which is a video that
00:20:58.460ended up coming out without me because i said no the only thing that i could think that justifies
00:21:03.220being a feminist today is you must just want to get laid there's no reason to believe in all of1.00
00:21:08.360these crazy things that seek to strip you of your masculinity perpetuate these terrible ideas that1.00
00:21:13.100men are evil and all these things that has to be the reason why why didn't you get on there why
00:21:17.460didn't you why didn't you embrace the grind set what are you doing you need right now you want to
00:21:22.680be talking to me i well i know had i gone on jubilee i might have raised six hundred thousand0.96
00:21:27.600dollars for this podcast at this point fuck me but no i mean i honestly though i was like totally
00:21:34.480confounded when I got this email because the thing that I thought then, which is still what0.96
00:21:40.720I think now, even though now I understand that this is the basic premise for their casting and
00:21:44.540how their channel works, is like, what qualifications do I have to go on this YouTube0.97
00:21:50.360channel in front of millions of people and argue about feminism? Of course, I am a male who
00:21:56.640identifies as a feminist, but I'm not a scholar. I don't have, I don't have like, I haven't written
00:22:02.940books on this and i was like i i'm i'm most definitely going to say something that is
00:22:08.600unpolished and i and i don't want to upset people and i don't want to do a disservice to feminism
00:22:13.180by fucking it up and then i watched these videos in preparation for this episode and every time
00:22:19.400they come up on my feed over the last few years and i realized because this was in 2022 that they0.90
00:22:24.200invited me and i realized that like oh no one that they cast has any sort of qualifications to talk
00:22:30.760about it that's that's not true sometimes the scientists do yeah yeah yeah you know sometimes
00:22:34.840but like for the most part they're just like who can we rile up no i kind of think it's like it's
00:22:40.260it's two problems at once i think that'd be a good show to have somebody like you go on and0.99
00:22:45.560and debate a guy who who's a piece of shit who's just sort of walking around like no you're not a0.99
00:22:51.180scholar but do you need to be a scholar to affirm women's rights like do you need to be that probably1.00
00:22:57.060not, you know? And I think that you could have a good crude conversation that exposes humans to1.00
00:23:02.200other humans. I think the problem comes in when it's not quite random people who have no stake
00:23:08.820in it, but they're not scholars either. They're just random fucking people who want to make a0.98
00:23:13.440name for themselves on the internet. It's not this sort of every man conversation, which I think0.99
00:23:17.740could have some, some value to somebody, you know? Yeah, that's fair. No, that's totally fair. I was
00:23:24.380just like i'm gonna say something wrong and get totally roasted for this and i'm glad i didn't do
00:23:28.540it well maybe you've turned me around on this issue maybe i should email them back two years
00:23:32.060later and be like jubilee i'm ready i would like to take a quick break from the show to give a huge
00:23:40.260thanks to incogni for sponsoring today's episode isn't it nice to imagine an internet that just has
00:23:46.240less of your personal information out there floating around on it information that you may
00:23:50.980have entered into a form at a specific time for a specific reason like your address your phone
00:23:56.880number your employment history your social security number and then suddenly out of nowhere you're
00:24:02.100getting spammy emails and texts from companies and people who have no business knowing that
00:24:07.560information but somewhere along the way got hold of it incogni is a service that helps you get your
00:24:12.900personal information back off the market by reaching out to the hundreds of data brokers
00:24:18.000that are buying and selling and trading your information every day and making sure that
00:24:22.940they delete your information, which is something that you are able to do yourself.
00:24:26.720But if you try to do it yourself, would be a full-time job.
00:27:55.440And nobody said anything, and nobody cared.
00:27:58.120And if the reverse happened, I don't think it would be the same outrage.
00:28:02.460I mean, this video is deranged. But one of the things that is really striking about it is that on the anti-feminist side, first of all, they diversity cast a lot. So they're like, we need to have a woman who is on the anti-feminist side. And the person who they cast in that position is Hannah Pearl Davis, known mononymously online as sometimes Pearl. Who is Pearl?
00:28:26.580she's kind of like this nazi for hire type person like she kind of just goes to events and speaks0.99
00:28:33.540strikingly that vapidly about subjects as you can see in that video but she doesn't she just0.51
00:28:39.840kind of sticks to like five or six stock lines she recently not recently but like a year ago
00:28:45.080saying a song about um the jewish question and how she's starting to question the role of adolf
00:28:50.920hitler in the history of humanity which i thought was you know pretty pretty bad um but do you
00:43:44.280gets clicks. And that's what Jubilee is about. Getting clicks and fostering human connection.
00:43:48.920Of course. Think on for them. You're so brave. I was feeling so in my echo chamber until I watched
00:43:54.840an hour and 17 minutes of is being fat a choice? Why are they so long, Matt? Well, what are they
00:44:01.200doing why are they so long because you can insert more dynamic advertisements in the middle of
00:44:06.660longer youtube videos you know this you're a youtuber come on true i don't insert dynamic
00:44:11.240advertisements in the middle of my video i don't either because they don't let me because i curse0.95
00:44:15.440too much the next video that i marked down was do women really have it harder male feminists
00:44:22.480versus anti-feminists this is another you know feminism one but the reason that i put this down
00:44:27.380is because once again the statements that Jubilee posits as the like which side of this do you stand
00:44:35.000on are just so asinine one of them is women should be encouraged to be financially independent
00:44:43.920of men what the answer is yes yes people should have financial autonomy like are we in the0.99
00:44:51.900fucking 1970s at 28 minutes they say this fucking blew my mind the debatable statement women are0.98
00:44:59.340fit to be president and then one of them makes this argument that like women are too emotional0.99
00:45:04.560to be to be president did they find middle ground on that did they decide at the end
00:45:09.000if women if their periods were too intense yeah the middle ground is that women can be vice
00:45:13.820president okay good yeah yeah we found it at 33 minutes the gender pay gap is real
00:45:20.720again like what this isn't a debate oh my god can you take the mic because i'm
00:45:26.660i'm getting out of control no they like to ask empirical questions i i remember like they like
00:45:33.140to ask questions about facts and then have both sides like inexplicably decide different stuff on
00:45:38.460it they asked at one point in their homeschooling video which is one of my favorites are children
00:45:43.120safer in homeschool or in public school and everybody disagreed but the reality is is that
00:45:49.920we know that kids are more put in danger by having parents that they don't get to have any escape
00:45:56.600from, having no support system outside of their homes. That's a proven thing that harms them a
00:46:02.680lot. This is a fact about the world. What does the debate even look like? And I think that they
00:46:08.300ask these kinds of questions because they conjure up a lot of feelings without any ability for one
00:46:15.220person to rebut another. So one person says, this is the information on the subject. The other
00:46:19.660person says i have negative feelings about that i want to continue being a reactionary even though
00:46:24.280that's true and so you can sort of bypass thinking about a subject if you ask an obvious enough
00:46:29.880fact-based question are there any other specific videos for now that you want to let's see if i1.00
00:46:34.860have any if i have anything i have the white feminist video it's white feminist women versus1.00
00:46:41.160anti-feminist poc women which is already one of the weirdest like why what are you talking about1.00
00:46:49.260they like to find like the three of them that exist and uh be mad about it but1.00
00:46:53.380they spend the whole time like the people of color women the women of color the women of color thank1.00
00:46:58.660you um they spend the whole time being like it's bad that white feminists don't do enough advocacy1.00
00:47:05.820which i suppose is a valid reason to criticize white feminists but not necessarily a very good1.00
00:47:11.540reason to criticize feminism it's a good gotcha but it doesn't mean very much but then one of the
00:47:16.480women who's like this devout Muslim is like, I believe in submitting to my husband. I believe
00:47:20.780fundamentally the opposite of what feminists believe. I think men should have power in society
00:47:25.520and women should submit to them and be in the home. And it really clarifies the extent to which1.00
00:47:30.720the debate is so often a smokescreen for just completely unchangeable core beliefs that people
00:47:36.780have. They're trying to get people out on whether they're a good enough feminist or1.00
00:47:41.960how valid their feminism really is. But secretly, the whole conversation is I don't think that women1.00
00:47:47.080are equal to men. That's the real heart of the conversation. And it's not something they're
00:47:52.060really prying into. They're not like going deep into these conversations.
00:47:56.500Totally. And listen, debate content online as a whole, I always say this, but it's not for the
00:48:04.540people involved doing the debating. It's for an audience. You know, Charlie Kirk and the woke
00:48:11.120college student probably aren't changing each other's minds but in theory debate content is
00:48:16.960supposed to force the viewer to ask questions about their own belief and consider all sides
00:48:22.480but the thing is this doesn't do that it's it's entirely again rage baiting and it's also just
00:48:29.260like they claim that they want to break down echo chambers and get us to talk to each other and get
00:48:34.880us to question our beliefs but every conversation and every comment section and every viral tweet
00:48:40.340i've ever seen around a jubilee clip is just people hardening their own positions and taking
00:48:46.120the side of the person they already agree with no it's profoundly unmoderated uh they don't leave
00:48:51.560space really there's there's very often like a man on the bad side who's significantly angrier
00:48:58.980than everybody else and he just sops up every ounce of attention in the room and leaves like
00:49:05.740zero space to have like a constructive dialogue between people who are at least sometimes on
00:49:10.820jubilee trying to be kind to each other genuinely trying to see things the other person's way and0.99
00:49:15.820there are better and worse episodes of course have you seen the gay one the conversion therapy one
00:49:20.540the current lgbt versus x lgbt yes have you seen that of course it's a classic0.81
00:49:25.380there's a guy i watch it once a morning1.00
00:49:28.560there's an intersex woman on there and he's like you're not a woman you're a man fuck off1.00
00:49:34.320like he's so mean he's so mean what is this there's kind of like yeah to your point there's1.00
00:49:39.840usually someone who's just there to be outrageous yeah who's just trying to get internet points and
00:49:46.320it usually ruins the whole thing and it usually garners millions of views i'd like to take a
00:49:52.720quick break from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode blueland who along with my
00:49:59.820supporters over on Patreon make it possible for me to spend 12 hours a day going down right-wing
00:50:06.820online rabbit holes, which you know what? When I put it that way, maybe we should all stop enabling
00:50:11.960this behavior. Maybe we need to stop. Blueland is on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic by
00:50:17.140reinventing cleaning essentials that are better for you and the planet. So you know those dishwasher
00:50:22.380pods that we all use? I thought those just like dissolve completely because it looks like they do,
00:50:27.980but actually they leave hundreds of microplastics that end up back in the water supply. I didn't
00:50:33.740know this. Maybe that makes me dumb. I recently switched over to Blueland dishwasher tablets which0.99
00:50:38.840just like everything else in their line both in the product and the packaging and the delivery
00:50:42.840system has no single-use plastic. You know I feel like sometimes when you switch over to like the
00:50:48.240eco-friendly or sustainable version of an everyday product a lot of times you're sacrificing on
00:50:53.100quality. But I now live in a basically entirely Blueland household. And I will tell you, my dishes
00:51:00.260are as white as they've ever been. My clothes are as clean as they've ever been. You're really not
00:51:05.220sacrificing on quality. And you're really not paying an arm and a leg either. Because with
00:51:09.460Blueland's really efficient refill system on all of their products, you're not only taking on a
00:51:13.520more sustainable way to keep your home clean, but you're also saving a good amount of money over
00:51:17.220time. And I know this isn't really the point, but I will say having an entirely Blueland household,
00:51:24.400it is kind of nice to go to my cleaning supply drawer and everything is in these like beautiful
00:51:31.520pastel tins and bottles looking uniform, looking chic. It really does beat all of the, you know,
00:51:38.320garish drugstore stuff. There are so many reasons to love Blueland. If you would like to try it out,
00:51:44.000you can go to blueland.com slash fruity for 15% off your first order. Again, that is blueland.com
00:51:52.080slash fruity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Blueland for sponsoring this show. And now let's
00:51:58.940get back to it. I kind of mentioned this, but I want to read Jubilee's mission statement
00:52:04.180because I know that they know that what they claim to be doing is not what they are doing.
00:52:10.500So on their website, which I went to, Jason Lee wrote a little letter, and in it he said,
00:52:17.360Sometimes it feels like the world is becoming more divided, chaotic, and cluttered.
00:52:24.020But if I've learned anything in my time growing Jubilee, it's this.
00:52:29.120We are all inextricably linked and want to live for something deeper.
00:52:33.360living for empathy and human good is a resilient vision and one that is worthy of pursuit
00:52:41.020sincerely jason lee and then at the bottom of the website it says jubilee media it's a digital
00:52:48.800media company that pushes boundaries tackles taboos and breaks the rules we believe discomfort
00:52:55.040and conflict are pivotal forces in creating human connection in short we are not afraid
00:53:01.660to go there hmm very peculiar whatever it's so interesting because like if you really wanted1.00
00:53:10.940anti-feminists and feminists to connect you'd probably you know make them play monopoly or0.67
00:53:15.440something you wouldn't make them debate if women are okay that's not the way to get people to
00:53:20.900connect it's fundamentally against the spirit of connection i mean it just sounds like they wrote
00:53:26.280those mission statements not at all considering what their actual product is like I read those
00:53:33.060and I'm like oh yeah that's nice we should foster empathy we should you know not be so divided yada
00:53:38.420yada yada like I'm sure whatever and then they're like we're going to create the most divisive
00:53:44.320you know most sympathetic towards bigotry legitimizing you know anti-science views
00:53:51.740We're just going to put it all out there and then cover it in a blanket of flowery language around human connection and building empathy.0.99
00:53:59.440And it's total bullshit all the way through.0.99
00:54:03.880There's this huge problem with like enlightened centrist types where it's actually really easy to say like, hey, guys, let's turn the volume down.
00:54:12.300You don't actually hate this kind of person.
00:58:08.100But at the same time, you know, what it's certainly not doing is bringing us closer together.
00:58:13.300You know, I don't think I don't think there's a plausible argument for that.
00:58:16.200Yeah, for sure. And I've had people who listen to this podcast ask me before over, you know, emails and DMs, why don't you have people with opposing viewpoints as your guests? Why don't you do debate style content? And I don't do that because to your point, like, debate is a sport.
00:58:37.900Not only is it difficult, but it's a spectacle and it's a sport and it's not about human connection. It's about one upping. It's it's about knowing how to dodge and dive and duck dip, whatever they say in dodgeball. And like, I am not interested in doing that. I think what you said earlier was was really spot on, which is that the way to foster human connection with people you disagree with is to sit down and talk to them. But it is probably not to sit down and talk to them in front of studio lights and a camera.
00:59:07.160Sure. And, you know, being correct might help in a debate. I often think that the people with the normal guy position come off better than the people with the freak positions. I think, on average, they seem like more normal, well-adjusted people, and I think they argue their positions probably more persuasively. So I think it's fair to say that, you know, being correct, being normal has its benefits. That's not to say, though, that debate, it tests on skills that are certainly not being correct or the more moral party.
00:59:35.760no and also people don't speak in front of lights and cameras and microphones the way that they
00:59:41.680would at a kitchen table no having the confidence of the fresh and fit guy is not something that
00:59:46.840comes to people naturally at all right and it may maybe it makes for a good youtube video but like
00:59:51.840i have disagreements with people that i love all the time especially like within my family
00:59:56.920and we sit down and talk about it and like those conversations in which we actually dig into our
01:00:03.600beliefs and attempt to understand each other look very different than any kind of debate content
01:00:08.800that you see online because we're not performing for an audience we're not trying to like one up
01:00:14.480in a way that basically in practice always just comes out being mean and that's like a lot of
01:00:20.880these videos i categorize jubilee videos uh into into two kinds of bad content one of them
01:00:29.460is normalizing bigotry and the other is legitimizing straight up mis or disinformation.
01:00:36.780The normalizing bigotry stuff is, you know, we've already talked about a good amount of that, like,0.98
01:00:41.980you know, laundering these anti-feminist, you know, women are too emotional to be president,
01:00:47.680anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, anti-fat bigotry through the lens of, well, that's just an opinion and
01:00:54.180all opinions are equally valid. The legitimizing straight up mis and disinformation and like,
01:00:59.460conspiracy theories all through this frame of like well it's just a point of view so let's hear it
01:01:04.020out and all points of view are equal i think everything we've already been discussing about
01:01:08.520their content is represents why it's like dangerous and bad but this is just kind of like another level
01:01:14.620of like this is this is fucking crazy and like we're calling into question science just a list
01:01:20.680of their videos that really get into like this anti-science realm some of those include should0.92
01:01:27.040everyone these are middle ground videos should everyone get the covid19 vaccine provax versus
01:01:33.540anti-vax flat earthers versus scientists can we trust science do miracle healings exist doctors
01:01:41.680versus holistic healers pro vaccine versus anti-vaccine should your kids get vaccinated
01:01:48.620climate change activists versus skeptics could they see eye to eye could they do
01:01:55.320i love you digesting all of these titles it's like normal normal things to make youtube videos
01:02:01.840about i want to empathize with the concept of jubilee for a second and say we're in difficult
01:02:08.880times right now for having serious conversations about things because you know we can sit you know
01:02:14.600in our normal urban world and say, nobody should talk about whether or not vaccines are good or
01:02:22.100bad. But like a lot of Americans are vaccine hesitant, right? For that reason, I think it
01:02:28.180makes sense to have content directed at these people, perhaps to feature them in some way.
01:02:33.560I'm not against in spirit debating or talking to people who believe things that are blatantly
01:02:40.280anti-scientific. A problem I have is that people who believe things for fundamentally anti-scientific
01:02:46.040reasons do not have debate points and arguments to make on behalf of those beliefs. The person
01:02:54.200who is vaccine hesitant is simply not vaccine hesitant because of the state of the science.
01:02:58.740That is simply not the psychological motivation for being worried about the COVID-19 vaccine.
01:03:04.020so what is the conversation about like we're presenting this as a middle ground but we're
01:03:10.120taking people so on what they say and not actually interpreting like where they're coming from or why
01:03:15.760that it seems like we're not actually going to learn anything from it and i do agree that if
01:03:20.320you're going to do that you're normalizing horrible beliefs well i watched them i mean it's it's it's
01:03:25.300not about science it's first of all all of these videos are like as with the sort of more like
01:03:32.580socio-political based ones, the science ones are just like, we found three scientists and we found
01:03:38.820three people who identify as truth seekers. Like, maybe they all have equally valid points.
01:03:45.500I'm Spencer Marks, one of the senior members of the CFI investigations group, science advocate.
01:03:51.360I am Marina Yeri. I'm a theoretical physicist and I'm with the University of Irvine.
01:03:57.200i'm shelly lewis i'm a graduate of west point critical thinker and jumped out of airplanes
01:04:03.420my name is dan glattman i work as dan the water man in the drinking water filtration industry and
01:04:08.800a truth seeker you know the truth seeking self-identifying critical thinker side it
01:04:14.980they don't have science but they are they are of course always doing their research
01:04:19.020um you know and they'll say some like weird study or finding that the scientists are like what
01:04:25.740what what are you talking about and they'll take that as some some small victory that they stumped
01:04:31.020the scientists for a minute right because they said something like absolutely batshit but you're
01:04:36.180right we we need to i've i've mentioned this book i think in my last episode but doppelganger by
01:04:42.580naomi klein yeah is a really interesting book where she's trying to empathetically understand
01:04:48.860how people so many people in the last several years have gone down these anti-science conspiratorial
01:04:55.720rabbit holes, especially with the starting point for so many of them being the COVID vaccine
01:04:59.900conspiracies. But the way that we seek to understand this issue of kind of conspiratorial
01:05:05.920thinking is not by making these videos where we platform the scientists and the conspiracy theorists
01:05:12.680as having equally credible positions. That's, I mean, my biggest thing with all the science
01:05:18.840videos is like, it's false equivalence all the way down. It's so ineffectual too, you know,
01:05:24.380nobody's going to watch the video and stop being, maybe they are, maybe someone's going to watch the
01:05:28.420video and stop liking vaccines. I have a hard time accepting this person. To me, it feels so,
01:05:33.280so built to seem like it has meaning that it just doesn't have, you know, because the problem with
01:05:39.000all these videos is that they're just not that persuasive. They're not that persuasive to either
01:05:42.700point. Sometimes the scientists are able to give the impression that they just are just know much
01:05:49.320more than the other people. And I'm sure maybe that could convince somebody, but the truth is,
01:05:54.020is that for most of these anti-science people,
01:06:22.220And by casting these anti-science people as having equal footing on these topics with, you know, physicians and other types of doctors and researchers and scientists, it's like Jubilee is inherently taking their side.
01:06:38.320It's taking the idea that somebody can be an anti-vaxxer in the way somebody is a pro-vaxxer, but pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine, while they look like the opposite of each other, they're really not.
01:06:48.700pro vaccine is like a belief that just comes about because you're like paying attention to
01:06:53.540what scientists say anti-vaccine is a belief that emerges from like getting way way too obsessed in
01:06:59.980an online rabbit hole and destroying your life because of it they're not the same they're
01:07:03.540genetically different beliefs they did like a pro vax versus anti-vax video before covid
01:07:09.680and then once covid happened and the vaccine started coming out i'm sure jason lee was like
01:07:17.340let's fucking go yeah exactly he was like we got some content on our hands
01:07:24.240and so they did they did provax versus anti-vax covid edition but you know at this point hundreds0.96
01:07:31.620of thousands of people have died from covid and this is like a really active health issue i mean
01:07:37.100you know vaccines kind of always are but i want to play you the first uh 45 seconds of that video
01:07:45.180where Jason Lee himself sits down on camera and he's like,
01:07:49.520I'm going to give you a little disclaimer.
01:08:11.240Hey y'all, before we start this video,
01:08:12.660just want to acknowledge that this is obviously a very sensitive topic, especially coming out of
01:08:17.940what's been an incredibly difficult year battling the coronavirus pandemic. But as vaccines are
01:08:24.260starting to roll out, this is also a very real and current conversation that we're seeing happen
01:08:30.260within our communities and all around the country. So our goal with this video was to just earnestly
01:08:36.340portray various perspectives that we were hearing and not necessarily that we condone these
01:08:42.020these perspectives but to understand why people are feeling the way they might be as always please
01:08:47.260seek out experts as you're making your own decisions and above all else we want to encourage
01:08:51.780you to see each other's humanity and feel more empathy it's so interesting in a way it sort of
01:08:58.120undermines the entire project of jubilee right if he feels the need to come out and gives it give a
01:09:03.340disclaimer because people are literally dying from believing this then why isn't he doing it when
01:09:09.080poor fat people are being brought on to be humiliated and bullied and why isn't he talking
01:09:13.940why isn't he just claiming how conversion therapy doesn't work and how it's brutally cruel to treat0.98
01:09:19.040gay people like this you know it's so sad that he feels the need to do it on this subject because
01:09:23.800he knows what he's doing he knows that he what he's really doing is exposing people to horrible0.97
01:09:28.340ideas that's sad it reminds me of the meme that's like you know i can excuse the racism but i draw
01:09:34.400the line at animal cruelty he's like i can excuse the racism and the flat earthers and the misogyny
01:09:40.620and the transphobia and the homophobia and the anti-fat stuff but i do draw the line at vaccines
01:09:46.080anyway enjoy the video that we made where we platform both of them as equals it's even more
01:09:50.880cowardly than that he doesn't say you should get the vaccine he says just so you know we don't
01:09:56.100endorse whatever like what are you talking yeah and he doesn't even say which side he doesn't
01:10:00.220endorse maybe he doesn't inside maybe he doesn't endorse the pro vaccine people not great i'm not
01:10:05.140into it i'm not into it and then no my favorite part though is he finishes as always our goal is
01:10:11.320to see each other's humanity and feel more empathy i think it's like it's like a dolores umbridge
01:10:16.840thing with him where he's like forces himself to write in a notebook like 60 times a night
01:10:21.860our goal is to perform is to see each other's humanity and feel more empathy our goal is to
01:10:27.200see each other's humanity and feel more empathy like he doesn't believe it nobody believes it
01:10:31.720this this youtube channel doesn't believe it and he's just like creating the most absurd dangerous
01:10:37.180ridiculous maniacal bigoted content ever and then in being like as always our goal is to see each
01:10:44.980other's humanity and feel more empathy so i imagine that if i talk to any of these people0.96
01:10:50.560they probably agree with me about most things they probably just be generic liberals right that's the
01:10:55.380that's the true belief of behind the Jubilee channel you think right or do you think that
01:11:01.140do you think that they're more balanced and actually actively reactionary I can tell you
01:11:06.340that I think the content leans right just by legitimizing all of this stuff I don't know
01:11:11.980about the people I think it seems like the the guy who runs this channel has just I don't know
01:11:18.700based on that 45 seconds it sounds like he could be like a liberal guy but he's clearly like
01:11:23.880divorced himself and and the ethics of what he's doing from the outcome like the tangible outcome
01:11:30.920of this content that's true i wonder if he drinks the kool-aid or if he thinks he's actually doing
01:11:35.540a public service with this kind of work i don't know what do you think maybe i mean look there's
01:11:41.640things you can point to as successes of jubilee is that you could probably use to justify the project
01:11:47.080people are being made to engage politically and sometimes that might be a valuable resource maybe
01:11:52.780you know maybe it's better to think about abortion more rather than less and jubilee
01:11:59.220enables people to do that right that's one argument in their favor i'm not confident though
01:12:04.960that uh they could possibly look at like material that's so obviously is primarily about humiliating
01:12:12.620people or at least partially about humiliating people i don't think it's primarily and say oh
01:12:17.460this is going to help fat people this is actually going to make the world a more accepting fat
01:12:21.140friendly place knowing full well that this guy this you know fresh and fit guy is getting a two
01:12:27.380minutes to put on twitter and get 30 300 000 likes because he owned a fat guy right and everyone can
01:12:33.280call him based and you know gas each other up that's not you can't possibly believe that that's
01:12:38.020a benefit to society or that it's turning the volume down so they must be aware yeah i have no
01:12:43.260idea how you how you manufacture content like that and then like go to bed thinking that you've like
01:12:49.020fostered human connection i've been joking about that the whole time but it like actually
01:12:52.980disappoints me and like yeah i don't know it makes me sad and angry as i don't know i don't
01:12:58.920know if you've been able to tell okay i want to play you watch conjure points i do we all watch
01:13:06.940conjure points we love conjure points you've done podcasts with her yeah yeah she's she's a friend
01:13:11.120of the show natalie plays all sorts of characters in her videos and she has a recurring one called
01:13:17.640Jackie Jackson, who is sort of a parody of a centrist podcast host. And I want to play a tiny
01:13:25.900clip from one of Natalie's videos where she's acting as Jackie Jackson, because I think that
01:13:31.960it is Jubilee personified. Hi, I'm Jackie Jackson. You're listening to The Freedom Pod,
01:13:38.700where it doesn't matter what you say, it only matters that you say. We don't discriminate here
01:13:45.340between what is true or false or even downright dangerous that's none of my business it's none
01:13:52.360of america's business the important thing is that you never stop talking because that's what freedom
01:13:59.640is all about i mean at the beginning of this uh conversation i said a centrist on echo chambers
01:14:06.240right i'm not totally against the idea of communities where people generally share beliefs
01:14:11.860I think that's how humanity is structured itself for a very, very long time to mixed outcomes, right? I don't know. I guess what I wanted to say is like, yeah, man, talking doesn't actually help everything all the time. Just having a conversation, it's not inherently a good thing, right? Conversations have to be productive to be productive. They're not just inherently good for people, I think.
01:14:34.540Look at anorexia, right? Or school shooters. Think about the impact that spreading ideas has on people, especially young people. It seems like it can be deeply corrosive, right?
01:14:46.560I was wondering what the through line from anorexia to school shooters was going to be, but I see what you're saying. This is where we have to talk about Jubilee's glorification of centrism and Jubilee's artificial construction of the middle ground because centrist beliefs are beliefs that exist between what we're defining as the endpoints of the more radical beliefs on either side.
01:15:09.720And so when Jubilee says that the radical belief on the left side is, you know, fat people shouldn't have to lose weight and become thin to lead healthy and happy lives and be accepted and loved in society like a human being.0.98
01:15:26.020And the opposite side of that is like fat people are disgusting, horrible people who do not deserve happiness unless they lose weight and perform that weight loss for me.0.83
01:15:36.040If you're telling me that the middle ground must exist somewhere between these two positions that both have good points to make, it's just a dishonest debate. There's no middle ground there.0.99
01:15:49.140It's a debate that exists to get people toward a position that doesn't exist, right? There is no such thing as the centrist on fatphobia. You know, even on bigger issues like, say, abortion, you know, it's either you fundamentally want women to have access to abortions or you don't.
01:16:05.660There is no, there's a lot of people who would characterize themselves as centrists regarding abortion, but they all have to make a binary choice. There's no, there's no where in between to go. There is no middle ground, right?
01:16:18.980I also just think, I mean, Jubilee does this. I might actually put like a chart of like the Jubilee Overton window on the screen. The Overton window being at any point, the range of acceptable beliefs in a society. Jubilee creates the Overton window where they decide what the acceptable endpoints of what beliefs you can have.
01:16:39.400the thing is they artificially skew what they're calling the middle ground way to the right because
01:16:45.160what they define as the liberal end point is usually a very commonly held mainstream position
01:16:51.980like it's a really good point like fat people are fine or people should be able to have abortions or
01:16:57.540the earth is round or vaccines are good like these are all extremely popular positions and then on
01:17:03.360the right side, they have extremely fringe positions from people who are like, fat people
01:17:08.480must lose weight to deserve love, or the earth is flat, or this and that. And by deciding that
01:17:17.000the middle is somewhere between those two points, which it's not, the middle is always very, very
01:17:22.720close or entirely at what they're calling the left, they're artificially constructing a right
01:17:28.380wing middle ground. It's a difficult thing because that's also what culture is, though.
01:17:33.640There isn't as much fringe position on the left. People who lean left generally have more normal
01:17:39.400beliefs than people who lean right. And there's a way deeper, crazy rabbit hole to go down if
01:17:45.140you're going toward the right, right? There's no bottom to how crazy extremist conservative0.96
01:17:50.240beliefs can get. Many conservatives advocate, not that many, but a lot of conservatives advocate
01:17:56.360or an ethnostate, want there to be absolutely no access to abortion, think that fat people should0.64
01:18:01.320be, you know, banished, think that trans people should be taken away from public spaces, right?
01:18:06.880Whereas what is the liberal belief that is extreme? So is Jubilee doing culture or is it
01:18:12.340reflecting it? I actually don't know. I guess I'd say they're magnifying currently existing
01:18:16.700political trends. Damn. Maybe we all have to like look inwards and find the Jubilee inside of us all.0.99
01:19:43.840And it just so much of Jubilee is just laundering far right positions and telling you that like, well, where you really should land is basically like the center, right?
01:19:56.600You mentioned that there's a lot of like morally righteous posturing that centrists do.
01:20:01.800Because I think that's like very true of Jubilee in general.
01:20:05.160Okay, so who's like the quintessential centrist?
01:20:07.300I would say like Malcolm Gladwell, Jonathan Haidt, you know, they always enter conversations with the presumption that they've thought through the issue and they're serious people and people on the other sides are not serious people.
01:20:21.240And if they were, they would arrive at this reasonable position that they've come to, even though, you know, it's sort of a rejection of politics, right?