SIO121: Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 121. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, just a quick announcement before we get to today's show. It The reaction to Philosophers in Space was really positive. I got a lot of messages and comments. People are in the Facebook group now that Aaron made. That's going to be a really fun place.

Guys, I promise you, I was actually not looking to start another project, and I wasn't even during opening arguments, but opening arguments was such a good idea, and Andrew was so good that I had to do it, and I feel the same way about this show, I just couldn't pass it up, it's such a good premise, and it's philosophy, which is something I just love and I'm interested in no matter what, And talking about our favorite sci-fi, so it just seemed like such a good idea, and I'm really happy that you guys are enjoying it as much as I am, so if you'd like to make that show a reality, a reminder to go to patreon.com slash zero G, episode two is already up there, and also the That Patreon feed includes an extra 15 minutes as bonus length episodes.

All right. Today's show is an interview with Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios. You may have seen his incredibly good, incredibly thoughtful YouTube videos. He's done several, but there's a series on the alt-right. There's a series on GamerGate. I've included some links in the show notes. Really good stuff. Ian's work has genuinely helped me to better understand some of the people that I've had the not privilege, what's the opposite of a privilege? Unfortunate obligation of talking to you at times. He does great work. I'm so glad he's on the show. So with that said, let's head over to the interview.

0:02:18 Thomas: Ian Danskin, thanks so much for coming on the show, how you doing?,

0:02:22 Ian: Doing great, how are you?

0:02:22 Thomas: I am good, I really am excited to talk to you, I've been looking forward to this for a while, I consumed a lot of your videos, and unfortunately, some of them I didn't see soon enough, and we could talk about that later, but of course, your YouTube channel, Innuendo Studios, for anyone who hasn't checked it out, I strongly recommend it, but I wanted to talk a bit about you, and how you got into this, because it's pretty pretty incredible, some of the content you've made. And I just wonder, what is the story behind this and how you started thinking so clearly and cogently about the problems we're facing politically?

0:02:34 Ian: I guess that's kind of two questions, right?, Like, how do I, how did I start thinking this way, and why did I do it as videos? Is, well, I mean, videos were just sort of like, I guess it was just kind of a no-brainer for me. I went to art school, and, like, when I was first going to art school it was like the mid 2000s and internet personalities were just starting to become a thing. So, like, I was a big fan of the show with Ze Frank. Um, I watched a lot of old Lemon Demon videos. And the idea of just being a person who kind of made whatever with the tools at their disposal and then put it on the internet was like, it, it wasn't exactly a career path yet, but it was a thing you could do as a sort of practice. And I was in art school, we were supposed to make work. So the idea of, like, oh, just pointing a camera at your face and making a work that way became just like part of my toolbox.

0:03:03 Thomas: Sure.

0:03:55 Ian: And then years and years later, it was, I discovered that there were actual video essayists online, and I had, like, kept making little videos, but never really posted them on YouTube or anything. Like, if I was trying to make a project or something, I'd make a little goofy recruitment video and post it on a forum or something, and people would be like, "Oh, I want to collaborate with this guy, he's great." Great, um, hopefully they thought that.

Um, and then, yeah, I just discovered that, like, oh, all these topics that are really interesting to me, like, I've been thinking maybe one of these days I should do a video about such and such a topic. And then I discovered channels like Super bunny hop and Errant Signal and realized that there are people actually making video essays, and that there's actually an audience for it now.

I always figured that it would just be a thing that I did and maybe 20, 30 people would see it, but, you know, there are these people who had, like, 50,000 subscribers at, at the time. So, yeah, that, that's how I got into doing video. Is It was just, it was the medium I was already studying, and it was a medium I was really comfortable working in, and it

0:04:55 Ian: Ended up being that, like, somewhere without me looking, an audience for that had, uh, arrived. So, that was exciting.

0:05:00 Thomas: Yeah. Well when are we talking? So around when did you decide or start to realize you could make these video essays, these kind political and philosophical video essays and find an audience.

0:05:02 Ian: Oh, Like, what year did my first video essay come out? Uh, that was like three years ago, four now. Three, four, something like that. It's either 2014 or 2015. So it was the year before that that, I think, I first discovered video essayists on YouTube and started kicking the idea around, but it took me a while to actually get something off the ground, uh.

0:05:16 Thomas: Okay.

0:05:30 Thomas: Have any sort of philosophical or like political science background or is it just art school?

0:05:37 Ian: It, it is a lot, a lot of art school, but it's all art school, yeah. I, I was a dropout, um, and then went back to school years, years later, part time. So all in all, I have spent seven and a half years in art school over the course of my life. But all of my like academia experience is pretty much self taught.

0:05:52 Thomas: Oh Yeah, cause I really would have expected some sort of philosophy degree or something like that, because just the way you lay things out and way you've broken down some of these larger trends, it's just really impressive. So that's pretty cool, I didn't know it was all kind of autodidactic.

0:06:13 Ian: I mean, I think one of the upshots of going to art school is that academia becomes something that you study for pleasure, as opposed to, like, an assignment. So for me, it's like what most people do for their hobbies. That's always been like, Oh, man, I gotta go do the work now.

0:06:21 Thomas: Yeah. I'm curious, you mentioned it's been, you know, three or four years or so. I first caught on to you because of my friend, Eli Bosnick, shared a lot of your stuff. And was there a video or a a series you did that really just took off because, you know, there's a huge difference between, like you said, 50 people watching versus I think the Gamergate one, which is the one I started with, which I love, by the way, that I think is somewhere in the 120,000 range in terms of views, if I'm not mistaken. Was that the one or was there another video that really kind of took off for you?

0:06:54 Ian: Okay, so in the this This is really atypical for someone who does what I do, but actually my first video is still my most popular video. Like it went really viral, um, in a way I was not expecting.

0:07:12 Thomas: Oh, okay. What's that video? Can you talk about it briefly?

0:07:16 Ian: Um, Yeah, yeah. So it's a video about, uh, it's called "This Is Phil Fish." Um, and for anyone who doesn't know, Phil Fish was a game designer and indie game designer that, um. I used to hang out on the Independent Gaming Source, which was a sort of an indie game website and had a really, really popular forum, which is where a lot of indie developers kind of cut their teeth. And Phil Fish was on that forum.

And I kind of watched his rise and fall of becoming just like it's kind of a loud and opinionated, but generally like accepted member of this internet community. And then he starts working on his first indie game. Well, his first like known indie game anyway. And it gets all this press and he slowly becomes this kind of like internet celebrity, um, and slowly like the internet's relationship to him is like, "Oh, whatever, this guy is kind of loud and opinionated, but we tolerate him because he's just a member of the community" to suddenly like being a pariah to certain parts of that community, um, and then eventually getting so much like anger and vitriol thrown at him no matter what he did that he finally just like quit the games industry and deleted his Twitter, um, and I used him as sort of like a case study in internet fame and talking about how, like, when, I mean, I don't need to describe the video, y'all can go watch it,

0:08:36 Ian: But um, it's about internet fame, basically, and the thing about making videos about internet famem is, I guess, internet famous people will resonate with it and they're the ones who are

0:08:16 Thomas: Really? Yeah, no, I definitely want to check it out, but yeah.

0:08:47 Thomas: Ah,

0:08:47 Ian: Most able to put it in front of a lot of people, which it was not intentional on my part I I was just like, I have a bunch of topics I'd like to talk about. This is the one that I think I can actually articulate the best right now. Like, this is the one where I feel the most enthusiasm. And I just made that video. And I went to bed on a Monday or a Tuesday. And I was like, oh, this has like 40 views. And then I woke up and it had like 40,000. And I Was like, Oh, what just happened?

0:08:47 Thomas: Smart. That's really smart. Yeah. So I've got some key retweets or something.

0:09:12 Thomas: Jeez. Wow. That's incredible. So now you can apply your own video to yourself now that you're internet famous. So yeah.

0:09:22 Ian: Yeah, there were a lot of tweets I got in the early days being like, I think it's very interesting that your video about internet fame made you internet famous. And I was like, leave me alone, I'm scared, um.

0:09:33 Thomas: So again, sorry, people can go watch that video. And I intend to. That's actually one I haven't caught yet, but I'm looking forward to it. But what were the kinds of things that caused this game designer to be such a pariah? I don't understand. Was it expressing? Was it the usual thing like expressing feminist opinions or anything like that? Or is it different?

0:09:51 Ian: There was a bit of that, I mean, he was, before before Gamergate happened, he was like visibly friends with Zoe Quinn, uh, he spoke positively of Anita Sarkeesian, but most of the anger at him was just like people seemed to feel he was being famous the wrong way. Like he was really loud mouth, he was rude, like, no, no getting around it, he's very opinionated, um, if someone, someone on the internet, you know, the way that like people on Twitter will just kind of insult people that they don't like even though they have no reason to seek them out and insult them, um, he was the kind of guy who would then insult you right back. And that was kind of fine when he was just a dude on a forum, but that once he was a public figure, suddenly people were much more critical of that. And they're like, "Oh, look, how look what an asshole he is to all these other folks." And it was kind of like, well, I mean, he almost never started it, he just got really worked up when people started stuff with him. Yeah.

0:10:24 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah okay So it started to look like sort of an abuse of power, almost like punching down too much when you're the one with all the followers. And then, you even though, before, if you're just two people insulting each other, it's not, it's like whatever, but once you have that that fame, yeah.

0:11:01 Ian: And I kind of wanted to talk about this, this way that, like, you don't necessarily think much about your life has changed, like I draw a comparison between our traditional notions of fame, where you kind of can't become famous without like a gatekeeper bringing you into it, like you have to get cast in a movie or you have to sign a record contract or something, and there's always this sort of like, yeah, like you you sign up for it, you know, um.

0:11:02 Thomas: Okay yeah yeah you've got an agent and stuff like that, publicist and all that yeah

0:11:24 Ian: But on the internet we don't really sign up for it anymore. Like the phrase I use in the video is fame is something that happens to you, um, and then all of a sudden you're held to this completely different set of standards and all these people have expectations of you and they don't even necessarily agree on what those expectations are, but they also feel very empowered to treat you, you, like crap if you don't live up to them.

0:11:46 Thomas: Yeah, well that's really interesting. Have you read, I'm just curious, have you read Jon Ronson's book, "So You've Been Publicly Shamed"? Is that what it is? I think that's what it's called.

0:11:53 Ian: I've heard of It, it's been, it's been invoked in my presence like three times in the last week, but I haven't actually read it yet. I've got a big list of research to do, yeah.

0:12:00 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, true. Well, it's it. Yeah. I think you might find that interesting. But of course, you've got you've Got a lot of reading to do all the time. I do the same thing. People are always like, "Hey, have you caught the latest six-hour Joe Rogan interview?" And I'm like, dude, I, I'm sorry, I got a lot to read. Joe Rogin talking about the moon landing being fake for three of the six hours is not something I can waste a lot of time on. But anyway, person, now forgive my ignorance, but I'm actually not really a gamer and I don't have a lot of that common knowledge that it seems like so many people in the YouTube space have. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that for someone who, don't get me wrong, I played a few video games, but but I've, I've never been any part of that culture.

And it, it also strikes me that what's interesting is, you know, there's someone like you or someone like, um, I know a lot of people reference, uh, I think his name is Destiny or something. Um, Omni Destiny. There's... there's a weird thing that's happening where a lot of the gamer culture seemed to be the source of the misogyny and a lot of the, the, the more foul disgusting things going on in, in the internet space. But then it seems like maybe there's also a side to that culture that's fighting back a little bit. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is that accurate?

0:12:08 Ian: Yeah yeah yeah yeah I I mean, gamer culture, I don't know if it's so much gamer culture. Like, I don't think there's anything special about gamer culture so much as that, like, like misogyny and racism, and specifically misogynist and racist, like, movements kind of look for any part of culture where there's a large population of young, cranky white boys and not a lot of racial or feminist discourse, at least not a large history of it. And they try to get their hooks into whatever. Right. So like this is not just a problem with video games. It's also a problem with the comics culture, right?

0:13:49 Thomas: Right.

0:13:49 Ian: Um, and it's a problem with, uh, tech culture in a lot of ways, um, and so I'm sort of like, well, it's not so much that video games are special, it's just video games or shit that rich white boys like, um, but video games were kind of the biggest, right, because it's one of the most technically connected cultures, it's definitely the largest fandom of all these things, like tech is pretty big but it's necessarily like a fandom, there aren't like huge, huge forums where where people who work in STEM hang out, um, and comics have pretty big forums, but it's, yeah, yeah Right, um, and then we have, you know, like we've got other, like the comics industry is not nearly as big and it's not nearly as big on the internet, um, but yeah, I don't know, the men's rights activists really just found a foothold in gamer culture, um, especially when it was like, well, you know, like this culture's really big, um, it's fairly recent, but wow, a lot of feminist discourse hasn't really made its way to gaming culture yet, um, and it may just be a feature of video games that they got so big so fast that by the time the feminist discourse started coming over to it, there was already this like really really large and deeply entrenched, like, entitled white dude base, um,

0:14:18 Thomas: Yeah, it's just James Damore on Google and his gender memo forum. That's a, yeah.

0:15:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:08 Ian: And the rejection of feminist and racial discourse was just so ugly and so public because it's such an internet connected community, yeah.

0:15:18 Thomas: Yeah, that's a lot of what I've dealt with in having, you know, some arguments and engagements with these people is it really with privilege often aren't good at knowing they're privileged. And so it looks like they're being attacked all the time. And maybe it's just a question of demographics, you know, if it's video games or comic books or whatever it is, if its majority, like vast majority, a certain demographic that actually isn't really discriminated against and is actually quite privileged, then it's like they just have every incentive to not look into those arguments that actually tell them, oh, no, you're doing okay. You know, I don't know. I wonder if that's part of it.

0:15:32 Ian: Yeah.

0:15:58 Ian: Well, One of the studies that I cited in the Gamergate series that you mentioned earlier, um, I talked about there, there's a study by Carter Souls and Com Kanyosing, I think, what are their names, um, which is about, like, one of of the reasons why these movements, these like reactionary movements, get such footholds in things that a certain type of young white man is interested in is also that these tend to be like parts of geek culture, and that geeks are sort of this like really really unpleasant mixture of having all of the social privilege, but because you got bullied in high school for being a nerd, you feel like you are disenfranchised, um, and so there's this extreme possessiveness, and like Carter Souls and Konyosing called it simulated ethnicity, basically, like they think of themselves as being an oppressed minority because they were bullied for being nerds in school.

0:16:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:51 Ian: And now this is like quote-unquote their safe space, and they see any intro of like racial discourse or feminist discourse as an intrusion on that space because it was supposed to be their space, um, and of course, like, that's not true, I, I think this is such a weird cultural memory of like getting beat up in high school for playing video games, because I'm like, video games have been mainstream since I was in middle school, like, if you are younger, if you are more than five years younger than me, I don't really think you got bullied for playing video games in school, but everyone who plays video video games still thinks of the nerd as the person who gets beat up for playing games. And I think that's really bizarre.

0:17:14 Thomas: Yeah, well, in fairness, I mean, honestly, I was kind of a nerd in high school. I hung out with nerds, but I had the unfortunate situation of I also my parents always made me do athletics. So I was like, I didn't really get along with the jocks, but I was a good athlete. So like I did that. So then the nerds weren't big fans of me either because I also was doing it. So yeah, it was like neither group really liked me. So I kind of just got the worst of both worlds. But I do think that when it comes to, you know, nerds or geeks or whatever the right terminology is, it's not as though they're getting bullied for playing video games.

But I do think there's a sense in which, may, mostly men, and again, I'm always speaking in generalities with this stuff, and it's not 100% or anything, but but largely men who a little socially awkward or not able to interact with like the quote unquote higher levels of the popular kids and all that. It's like they can pour their attention into games and into things that are more things that you do either by yourself or with similarly situated people. And so that's why it feels like they're bullied for that.

0:17:48 Ian: You traitor.

0:18:36 Thomas: Or or because of that or that's their in group. I don't know. I'm a little sympathetic to that feeling. I kind of see where it comes from, but do you think I'm wrong on that?

0:18:44 Ian: Yeah, I mean, I can I can be sympathetic with the feeling that comes from it, right? I mean, almost any bad behavior that comes from privileged people usually comes from a real sense of insecurity and a real chance of pain or fear, and I can always sympathize with those feelings, but how it plays out and how people react to them is just always so ugly, you know, like it's people who get bullied, they go into gaming culture, but then what do they do when they're in gaming culture? Do they're like, "Oh, it sucks that there's this horrible power dynamic at school, let's make an egalitarian space where everybody's respected."

It's no, they go online and they find someone they can be horrible to because they don't get to be horrible at anyone at school. Um, and so it's like, it's really, "Women entering your space," it should be like, "Oh, you're entering our space, maybe it's because you want a space where like you're treated with respect," in the same way that I wanted to come here so I would be treated with disrespect. I can either respect you, or I can be like, "Oh cool, someone I get to disrespect now, I get the bully," and the number of people who make that choice when they could go in either direction, it just makes me really sad, oh,

0:19:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:32 Thomas: No, I totally agree with that. I wasn't trying to excuse the behavior or anything, but right. That's well said. Let's transition over to talking about the alt-right playbook a little bit, and also the talk you just gave, which is related, but I think expands the territory a littlebit in dealing with the right in general. First off, could you talk for a minute about what inspired this video? I mean, was it just the election? Was it anything specific that really turned you on to these tactics?

0:19:48 Ian: I'm sure you weren't, all right.

0:20:14 Ian: Um, well I did make that Gamergate series, uh, a couple years ago. Um, the idea behind that one was essentially, like I talked about, I kind of talked about, so there's this figure in gaming culture, her name is Anita Sarkeesian, and she's a feminist media critic who was kind of not the first person to apply a feminist lens to video games, but kind of, kind of the first, the way I describe it in the video is one of the First Feminist Critics, like not a gamer critic who happens to be a feminist, but a feminist critic who is specifically turning her eyes to video games and making a series of videos focused on feminist lens applied to games, and became a huge target of harassment. Like, this is kind of patient zero for discovering that, oh, there are some serious problems with gaming culture.

0:21:03 Ian: And so I made a video series that first talked about her and talked about Gamergate, which was a thing that happened a year or two later, that was another, another huge ugly backlash against women and feminism and a lot of people of color and a lot of trans folk, just sort of incidentally, because why be bigoted against one group if you can be bigot against all of them. Um, and this was a six-part series that kind of used all of these different aspects of gaming culture as also, like, a primer in male entitlement. Um, and in the way that anger and privilege mix together, and the way that people behave when they are both privileged and feel really threatened in their identities. And one of the things I had originally intended to do in that series was, like, actually talk about, so when people get angry in this way, what are the various argumentative tactics, argumentation tactics that they use when trying to debate somebody, or when trying to justify the harassment of somebody?

0:22:02 Ian: And the other stuff ended up being such a big topic already that I said, okay, well, I'll put that on the shelf and maybe come back to that later. And then after Trump got elected and I watched the rise of the alt-right, I thought, oh, I think maybe it's time to take that idea off the shelf. Um, and Gamergate, like so much of GamerGate ended up working its way into the alt-right. Like a lot of people basically say the alt right was an outgrowth of GamerGate or at the very least like treated, did. Oh, everybody who got really mad at Gamergate, we're going to recruit them because they are clearly our people.

0:22:17 Thomas: Yeah, well, Yeah, Well, Actually, um, I read a book on Steve Bannon, now I'm blanking on what the title of it was, but I'm pretty sure that he even went so far as to try to target that community. I think he had some, he bought some company that farmed, uh, whatever gold or something in World of Warcraft. Like, he, he actually did try to, to target that community specifically. I think there is a, definitely a connection there.

0:23:01 Ian: Well, I mean, there definitely is like I mean that's Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos had like previously written think pieces about what dweebs gamers are and how laughable and ridiculous they are. And as soon as GamerGate happened, realize, oh, I if I completely change my tune.

0:23:15 Thomas: Nevermind. This is my core audience. Yeah.

0:23:17 Ian: Yeah, like I can get all these people to love me. And it's fascinating the way they say Like, oh, Anita Sarkeesian, she doesn't really play a game. She's not a real gamer. And I'm like, y'all embraced a guy who used to write pieces about what jokes gamers were. Like, don't talk to me about, like, authenticity among your idols. Come on.

0:23:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So was any of this alt-right playbook, it sounded like you're talking about the inspiration being from, you know, Gamergate and how Anita was treated. Is this stuff that you faced for doing your Gamergates videos and series? Is this, you know, tactics that you've observed or do you, are you smarter than all of us and just don't pay attention to the YouTube comments that you get?

0:23:55 Ian: I have observed it. Only a tiny fraction of it has been pointed at me. So, like I've engaged with it. I have seen somebody making an argument at a woman and sort of intervened and said, "Hey," and like tried to talk to a person, either talk them down or at least rebut their arguments. Um, so I've been party to a lot of this, but you know, being a cisgendered, straight, white, able-bodied man, only a tiny, tiny fraction of what gets pointed at other people ever actually gets pointed at me. So like a lot of it is observation. A lot of it is research. A lot is just talking to people. But um, very little of it is being the target of harassment. Sadly, I mean fortunately, but also sadly, thank

0:24:01 Thomas: Right.

0:24:39 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I don't know. At the same time though, I'm, I'm looking at, you know, your videos got, let's see the alt-right playbook, never play defense, got 3000 comments and a bunch of them are, you know, it has way too many downvotes. It shouldn't have any, a lot of them are, are the kinds of comments you're talking about, you You know, they do the very thing that you outline, which in itself is frustrating. But

0:24:52 Ian: You. Yeah. A lot of the rhetorical strategies I talk about, they show up in the comments. It's always funny because it's, I wish there were more of them, but usually there's always like, if you go through the comments you can see, okay, so this person made a terrible argument, this person made a terrible argument, this person made a terrible argument, and then someone pops up and says, hey, by the way, the last three comments are all exemplifying exactly what he's talking about in the video, and I'm like, thank you, thank thank you very much.

0:25:19 Thomas: So you just let other commenters hash it out.

0:25:27 Ian: Every once in a while, I go to look at my comments to see if there's anything I want to engage with. But after about two or three minutes, I'm just like, oh, I have to go and like take a shower.

0:25:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I think is difficult for really anyone who does stuff like this online. But I find that challenging as well, sort of a branch off topic. But like, I want to be able to have a bunch of people point out when I've got something wrong, or, you know, whatever, when I, when I, maybe I'm, one of my opinions is not backed up or something like that. But like, what, how do you feel about that? Do you, do you feels like you're able to gain any good feedback from your audience when it's so full of bad faith actors that, you know, like, how do filter that out?

0:26:14 Ian: I mean, I think most people who have an actual legitimate argument for me know that a YouTube comment is the worst place to leave a legitimate argument. Um, and they tend to reach out to me either, like either they contact me through my website because I have an email form there, or they contact me through Twitter, and I'm, I am really like free with the block and mute buttons on Twitter.

0:26:22 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:26:37 Ian: So generally if anything's getting through to me, I, I know that like, okay, okay. Most of the people who are just saying shit to say shit, they're not getting past my firewalls. Um, so yeah, usually I feel like a lot of the legitimate criticism makes its way to me sooner or later. Um, and I have heard a lot legitimate criticism, you know, um, a lot of things I talk about in the videos is how like arguing with people on the internet is usually an ineffective way to have any meaningful discourse with them, and a lot of the people that want to talk to me are kind of aware of that, and they know that writing a post or sending me an email is usually a better way to have a conversation with me than leaving a comment on YouTube.

0:26:46 Thomas: Right. Right.

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah, they're probably not challenging you to any debates either.

0:27:21 Ian: Yeah, usually not.

0:27:22 Thomas: So in this alt-right playbook, one of these videos, I'm so glad you referenced this, because you talk a lot about how liberals are at a bit of a disadvantage, and it's actually a pretty severe disadvantage lately, of wanting to be the ones who kind of explain and correct and do the detailed work, that you point out to the alt-right and to those people who are susceptible, it just doesn't look as good as just this moral certainty and this, like, the way you put it, you know, short, pithy, and wrong statement. And then the liberal explains, and you referenced this West Wing scene, which I'm so glad you did. And I'm going to offend people here, but I have always hated The West Wing for exactly this reason. It's always liberal hero has a thought, somehow thought out ahead of time speech that he just delivers with perfect, you, like, words, just the phrases are all, it's all planned out.

0:28:14 Thomas: I don't know how he did that ahead of time, but anyway, he's got this speech he's going to deliver and then he owns the, the conservative or whatever. And it's just, it always strikes me as so unrealistic that I've never been interested in it. And I think that you're absolutely right that that's just not not how things work. And like, And, but how do we, how do we overcome that? Like how do you, cause I think facts and explaining and all that, I think that is valuable, but if the wider society or the, the audience is, is not in agreement, they're like, what, what are we to do?

0:28:44 Ian: I mean, that's what I'm still trying to figure out. I mean, you mentioned the talk that I gave a few weeks ago that just got posted online. How, like, the idea of that talk is, hey, you know, I do this series where I talk about all the different techniques that the far right uses to legitimize itself and how they keep kind of playing the left in ways that the left doesn't seem to anticipate very well, um, and people keep asking me, well, what are we supposed to do about it, because all my videos end by saying, so when you see somebody do this, don't fall for the trap. And it's like, okay, but, but that's like, that's what not to do, but what do we do, like, what do we actually do?

0:28:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:19 Thomas: Basically we all have to just go hide. Like we're all, we're just going to go, you know, put our heads in the sand, I guess.

0:29:20 Ian: Yeah. And Like the, the thrust of that talk is like, here's what I know so far, but I don't have as concrete of answers as I would like. Um, and I'm still working on it. Like, I'm, I'm doing tons of research. I'm talking to a lot of people that have some experience with this, and I'm trying to find like, what is a list of best practices for actually dealing with the way that the right behaves, because I feel like we're in this chess game where it's like, we are only ever thinking one move ahead, and the other side knows what we're going to do and knows how to counteract it. And it's not even a sophisticated strategy, right? It's like, what does the left always do? Okay, frame your argument to anticipate what the left always does. And the left is just like, oh, wow, you're one move ahead? We don't know how to do that. Like, we'll just keep doing what we always do.

0:29:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:14 Thomas: But man, but you also, I mean, it, It really is. It's not as though these people are like chess geniuses, though. Like Trump isn't playing three-dimensional chess as much as people always say he is. It's this reaction that I guess it works. And because it's worked, it has thrived in this environment.

0:30:23 Ian: Um, no, yeah, I mean, much of some portion, like, this is always the tricky thing, is what portion of the rhetoric of the far right, or just of the right in general under the influence of the far right, how much of it is intentional and how much is just sort of learned by throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Um, and usually if you dig around you will find someone who knows exactly what they're doing, and a lot of the arguments, especially like alt-right arguments, are specifically designed to tap into some emotional truth for people so that they will adopt the argument even if they don't understand what baggage that argument carries. Like, they will repeat extremely racist talking points that have been carefully cloaked so that the racism is sort of smuggled into it, and a person can believe that they are not being racist as they, they repeat this thing, but then other racists are going to hear it, and they're going to hear the dog whistles in it. Right.

0:30:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Drives me nuts. Enlightenment, Western values, all this stuff. And if you try to call out these dog whistles for what they obviously are, like when Trump Trump got sorry to go off. But when Trump said Americans are dreamers, too, I thought it was one of the more offensive things he's ever said, which is saying a lot. And you try to point that out. And it's so easy for people on the right who, and I don't even know if they know what they're doing, like that's the thing. You never know. Who knows if they're, if they knows that it's a dog whistle and they're trying to actually just gaslight you for pointing it out, or if they don't know it, or they genuinely think like, oh, no, no one's racist. There's no racists. Nobody's dog whistling. It's frustrating, but sorry, you just reminded me of that.

0:31:35 Ian: And yeah. Yeah, I mean, the thing about dishonest rhetoric is that it's not just meant to deceive us. It is meant to deceive oneself. And usually the origins of that rhetoric is knowingly deceitful. But the reason why it stays popular is because it tells people what they want to hear. And so they adopt it rather unthinkingly. And so the left gets fooled because we take people at their word. The right gets fooled because they take themselves at their own word. And That's a very scary proposition.

And I'm still figuring out, like, I have, I have a few bits of advice for like, OK, these are things that I know, like I've read cognitive science, I've red data and research. I can say with some confidence that these things are somewhat helpful, but how to implement all of those things and what the like larger strategy is, I don't have solid answers for a lot of that, um, precisely because like I know telling people to do something if you're not 100% sure it's the right thing to do will probably make things worse. And I just kind of refuse to give any advice to anyone until I'm like, this is demonstrably true and

0:32:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:33:20 Thomas: That's a really high bar,

0:33:21 Ian: If I'm at like 80, I'm I'm like, let me let me get that last 20 percent before I say anything.

0:33:22 Thomas: Though. Yeah that Sounds really like a high bar to reach, though, I don't know. When it comes to this stuff, I mean, how are you going to have the science on how to reach a new group like the alt-right? But actually, that brings me to something I wanted to ask, because in the videos, you reference pretty much the alt-right, and in the talk, you say the right. And I know you've clarified a bit what you're talking about, but talk about that. Is there an honest right or an honest Republican conservative ideology where this doesn't apply? And tied to that, is this a new phenomenon? Do you think there was a time in the 90s or something where this really didn't apply and you could talk to the other side and it was fine. Talk about those questions if you don't mind.

0:34:13 Ian: So a lot of people, I get a lot of comments that say I'm conflating Republicans with the alt-right. And I'm actually very careful with my language. If I say Republican or conservative, I'm talking about like your general average member of the Republican Party. If I say alt-right or reactionary, I am referring to specifically like the very far right, um, usually extremely bigoted end of the party. And when I say the right, I'm referring to kind of the entirety of it, like both groups connected. Um, I think it's important to recognize that like there isn't really a hard line between those groups, right? Like it is kind of a spectrum, um, where the far, the more reactionary you get, the more bigoted things get, the authoritarian the rhetoric becomes, um, but the goal of the alt-right is to make rhetoric that pulls the entire Republican Party further in their direction. And so far, they've been surprisingly effective at it.

0:35:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:10 Ian: And it's weird because they're not even that smart. Well, I mean, that's not even true, right? It's not that they're Not smart. It's that they are not smart in the ways that we recognize. They are very savvy at certain things, even if, you know, they can't always string a coherent sentence together. They're communicating the the information they want to communicate in a way that works for the people they're trying to persuade, it just often looks like gobbledygook to us.

So they have a sort of like emotional and rhetorical savvy that isn't necessarily like conventional liberal intelligence. And so, yeah, like they are they are very disproportionately influential. And I would say that pretty much all of the right is under the influence of this far right idea, right? Right. Like a lot of ethnocentrism has permeated pretty much all of Republican rhetoric at this point. A lot of xenophobia, a lot of isolationism and like a lot of like misogyny and transmisogyny. Like there's just there's really, really gross stuff. And I would not say I wouldn't even say it originates with the far right. You know, like it is permeated throughout the entire I mean, it's permeated through our entire culture. Like we have the same problem on the left in a lot of ways, but it's most concentrated in the far right.

And the goal of the far left is to proliferate it through as much of the culture as possible. I would not say at this point that any part of the Republican Party is truly free of that rhetoric. It is some of the stickiest rhetoric that exists in politics these days. And the idea that there was a time where that wasn't the case,

0:35:53 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:36:43 Ian: It's like there was definitely a time where it wasn't as extreme as it is right now, um, there was definitely a time where, like, there was more, uh, talking across the aisle, but I mean, in my lifetime, racism and bigotry and authoritarianism being much more proliferated on the right than on the left, like, that has existed at least since Goldwater, you know, which is like the '60s, um, like that was the Southern strategy, was like, "oh, how do do we get the Republican Party back into power?

Let's siphon white people out of the Democratic Party by making us the segregationist party. Like that was the Southern strategy. That was the political realignment of Goldwater's run for president. And it worked. And that's when race became partisan. And then, you know, the 60s happened and they're like, oh, there's a women's lib movement. Let's make gender partisan. Let's make gender equality a partisan issue. And And then gay rights happen. And it's like, OK, let's make gay rights a partisan issue. And every time they do that, they get more and more disgruntled, privileged people from the left to shift over to the right. And that has been true for decades at this point. I mean, that goes back to before Trump. It goes to before Bush. It goes before the other Bush. It goes for Reagan. It goes back a really long way. I feel like we have been on this road for a long time, and this is just kind of where we should have seen the road was heading.

0:37:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:03 Thomas: Yeah, but I guess with with the thrust of what you're saying in those videos being, you know, don't don't fall into this trap, don't, when somebody's using these tactics, don't engage, don't talk to them, you know, and and I know I'm not pressing you for what we should do because I take your answer, you, you don't entirely know, but I guess what, where it becomes, um, difficult is how do we know when that's what we're dealing with? You know, I know you've been careful between alt-right and far-right and conservative, but if, if I'm just talking to someone online, if I'm doing whatever, or even in person, and it's a conversation, or it's a public conversation, whatever it is, what are the signs that we should look for to tell us, okay, this is somebody who, uh, Ian Danskin said I shouldn't be talking to.

0:38:49 Thomas: This is somebody who falls into this category, because we don't often, you know, it's not so clear, they don't wear like a badge that says like, "I'm all right don't bother with me," you know, so what do we look for? Hmm.

0:38:59 Ian: Well, I mean, we try, I always encourage people to be like really consequentialist about it, right? Like, think about, well, what are the effect of these words? Thinking less about what are the intentions of the person who's saying them, and more, what is the effect that this argument has on society or on the person listening to it?

There's a reason why the alt right playbook is not organized around, here's the different types of people you will encounter if you deal with the alt it right it's Here are the arguments that you will encounter, um, and so, if someone, like, I talk about, never play defense, right, that people take this very, very aggressive posture, um, as a way of convincing onlookers that they are in the right, even if their arguments don't hold up, um, that is a thing that some people do intentionally, and that some people simply have learned as a monkey-see-monkey-do, it kind of has the same effect regardless of why the person is doing it, maybe, maybe they're doing it because it's reassuring to themselves that they're in the right. Maybe they're doing it because they know they're being duplicitous, but they know that it will sway some of the audience. I think on our end, it doesn't really matter what a person's intentions are.

I mean, it matters in the sense of, if you want to take that person aside and have a heart-to-heart with them and maybe try to change their mind about what they're doing, then how deeply they have bought into the rhetoric is really relevant. But if we're talking publicly with people and these arguments are being disseminated in our media, if we are trying to deal with them, the person's intentions become kind of irrelevant, I think. If somebody is doing this thing, right? Like, I illustrate a thing and I say, when you see that thing, it only somewhat matters why the person is doing that thing.

0:39:21 Thomas: Right.

0:39:46 Thomas: So.

0:40:32 Ian: What you need to deal with is the consequences of letting that thing happen and the consequences falling into it. Yeah.

0:40:39 Thomas: It's just recognizing the tactics, not so much like, okay, where precisely is this person on the the political spectrum or anything like that.

0:40:42 Ian: Yeah. As a culture, we are so fixated on what are the intentions of the person, and like, I don't want to sell that out, right? Like, like, this is a whole, this is this very, very old, like, Greek philosopher debate about like deontology versus consequentialism, right? Um, and I don't necessarily want to have that debate because, like, there are times in our lives when we need to think about people's intentions, and there are time when we think about the effects of their actions, and that's always a balancing act where it's, you know, what tool to use in one situation, what tool do you use in another, when you kind of have to use both at the same time, um, But I feel like

0:41:19 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I I don't know, maybe I didn't ask the question clearly, because I don't think I was talking about intentions at all. I wanted to ask, like, when, when we look at the talk we keep referencing that you, you just gave, and it involves, like, talking to people on the right or the alt-right, I guess I was asking, like, how do we identify where that line is when it's like, oh shoot, maybe this is not, this conversation isn't worth having. You know, like, what are the signs we should look for? What are the behaviors that they might exhibit that should tell us, like, we need to just go do what Ian said and just kind of back off and realize this is a bad faith conversation, conversation.

0:41:20 Ian: Okay. The Mean, one phrase that I've been trying to practice a lot whenever people ask me what we should do in situations is, I don't know. And in this case, it is like, I can give some of what I know so far, but at the end of the day, I have to admit, I do not entirely know, and I am still trying to figure it out.

0:42:10 Thomas: Right, right.

0:42:12 Ian: I know that there are certain tactics you can use when talking to someone, right? Right. Like, my first goal is always get the conversation, if you're actually trying to engage with a person and like talk to that person and maybe change their mind, try to get that as private as possible, so that if they do turn out to be a person who's just arguing in bad faith and trying to eat up a bunch of your time, that conversation is not going to damage anybody else. Right.

Like, it's not, it's not happening in public, so they're bad ideas are not getting disseminated. It's just you. And if they say some BS, you're the only person who hears it anyway. And it just becomes like getting attuned to what are the signs that a person is speaking in bad faith, and a lot of that is like, people have been very, very trained on the right to react a certain way to certain liberal arguments, and you have to learn, like, okay, okay, okay, this person is arguing in this way, is that just the way that they have become habituated to react to the left, or is that proof that they're arguing in bad faith?

And there's a bunch of, like, techniques for diffusing that, like, okay, how do I frame my arguments in a way that gets past their defenses, and that can kind of give you some idea, like, okay, if I can get past their offenses, it means that maybe there's actually like a confused and misinformed person here who is willing to listen to me and not a person who's just trying to manipulate me, um, and I don't have like a comprehensive list of those, those things.

And I think at the end of the day, even if we have one, like, you're going to have to operate on your gut a little bit, which is scary. Like, the fact that we can't boil it down to a science and just be like, oh, X, Y, Z you're safe, or ABC you're screwed.

0:43:51 Ian: It's like, ah, you're going to need to have some emotional sensitivity to this. And that's really scary. And, and that's really daunting. Um, But I am talking to a guy who has been having a lot of these conversations with people and has been sharing some of the techniques that they've been using that have been helping, um, and I'm hoping, I'm hope I'm assuming somewhere out there there's also like some analytic research into these conversational tactics, and I'm hoping that this can be like, okay, we found these things help, let's search and see if other people have found the same things and start comparing notes. I

0:43:57 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:44:26 Thomas: Related to this, I've got a listener, Karen, who asked a question that I'm sure you've had before, but why can't we just flip the script? Is there any way that liberals can use these tactics? Should we use these techniques to kind of fight fire with fire?

0:44:32 Ian: Would say it depends on the tactic, right? Um, the tactics I've talked about so far, I don't think really work the other way around, right? Like, um, we talked about an argument that is short, quippy, and wrong, right? Like, oh, if something is short and quippy, it's really memetic, it's real easy to remember, it spreads really quickly. And the problem with like, you

0:45:00 Thomas: Right. But can you just do short, quippy, and right, though? Is that an option?

0:45:04 Ian: Can't, the problem short, quippy, and right is that the truth can never be as short and quipy as a lie, right, Because it is bound to reality, and reality is fairly complicated. So it's one of those cases of, like, we could play the same game as the right, but we won't play it as well, because one, they have more experience with it, but two, like, they're not bound to telling the truth, and if we are trying to tell the truth, we're going to fail at making the truth reductive, because the more reductive it gets, the less it resembles the truth. Um, there's also a lot of, like, there's a lot ethnocentric thinking that is very baked into a lot the right's rhetoric. So it's like... Like, if you use similar rhetoric, you may win the particular point that you're trying to win, but you may be unconsciously spreading some of those dog whistles yourself.

0:45:10 Thomas: Yeah, true.

0:45:54 Thomas: Interesting.

0:45:54 Ian: And so you have to be, like, very, very careful. There are some tactics that I intend to get to later in the series that are very like, "Yes, absolutely, you can use this too. In fact, here's what it looks like if the left uses it, and we should." So it's not a, like, oh, if the right's touched it, it's tainted. It's more about, well, again, let's get consequentialist. What is the effect of the right using it? What is the effect to the left using it? If it leads to a positive effect for us without a lot of collateral damage, by all means, use it. But let's be smart about it.

0:46:22 Thomas: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Something I've been thinking about that this might be a bit of an epistemological question for you, but a lot of the alt-right playbook and a lot of what you talk about here are ways that this particular group of people argue without really arguing. It's more about posturing, or it's more about making it look like they're winning. And it's a lot of things that don't involve actual facts and actual arguments. And I'm just wondering if you could talk about, because that strikes me is absolutely true. And I've encountered it all the time myself online for speaking about feminism and whatever else. But I just wonder what your thoughts are on the unmoved mover in this, you know, because it's all these ways that Trump and others are not, they're not really saying anything.

0:47:11 Thomas: They're just looking correct. And yet at the same time, there is a consistent ideology and there is, uh, a system of beliefs that seems remarkably similar. And it's not as though it's just a bunch of people who all believe different things, but think one person is winning because they're posturing, you know what I mean? So, like, that, how did that start? How does it become a thing where a large group of people is all somehow on the same page without, without actually doing any arguing.

0:47:39 Ian: I mean, I think a lot of us kind of begin in the same place, right? I find that a lot of the times the way that the right argues in politics is very similar to the way I argued in middle school. You know, like, we have a very, we have an a reflexive anxiety about having our core beliefs challenged. Uh, we often make very bad arguments just because they satisfy a particular need that we have. We tend to trust people who are most like us, um, so white people tend to reflexively trust other white people. We tend to erase our own privilege from our own awareness, right? Like, these are all things that are, they're not really right, left things, they're just human things. Um, and again, there's two directions you can go with that.

You can try to, like, add more information on top of it and slowly evolve your beliefs over time and let your thinking get more complicated, or you can create this fairly complicated system of, like, checks and balances that keep your most core fears and anxieties from ever being challenged and tell you that no, you're still the good guy, and all these things that make you uncomfortable, they're supposed to make you comfortable. Um, and, like, some of it is there is vested interest, right?

Like, big business really, really likes a narrative that says government should be run like a big business, you know. Um, and so the rhetoric that benefits people is going to be the rhetoric that proliferates.

0:48:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:49:04 Ian: But I really do think, like, I don't know, I just really think that, like, reactionary thinking is such a fundamentally human thing, um, And I don't think that a set of rhetoric that reinforces it should even be all that surprising. Honestly, honestly, sometimes it's surprising that there is any rhetoric that challenges it, because on some level, all of us want to believe what the right believes, I think.

0:49:11 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:49:25 Ian: At least all of us privileged people, right? Like, there's not much of an angle in it for a lot of the people that the right hates.

0:49:26 Thomas: Yeah I Totally agree. I've actually thought about developing that that idea more because it just every incentive is for for, you know, privileged people, for mainly white people in this country, to be like, "Well, racism, we solved that, that's done, it was solved in the 60s, come on, any any any problem is clearly to do with the individual," and is no fun. You know, it's just every incentive is aligned toward that. So I totally agree with what you're saying.

0:49:46 Ian: Yeah. Thank you.

0:50:00 Thomas: But so, yeah, I think reactionary is probably the key there. Is that really the fundamental difference is like a resistance to any sort of progress? Is it too straw manny to pin that on the right? But it really seems to be what's going on. I mean, I mean, it's just resistance to moral change. And even in the name conservatism, you know, like, what are you conserving? What is that? So is it as simple as that?

0:50:26 Ian: Is simultaneously, like, I think that is true, true, and I think it being true does not change the fact that it's also kind of reductive, um, because I mean, uh, conservative thinking is simultaneously very, very reductive and also like byzantinely complex. Um, but a phrase that I've gotten really fond of using lately is, um, there's a hundred ways forward and only one way back, uh, a lot of times regressive thinking is all about nostalgia. It's about things were better in the past and then something got us off course and we need to go back to that, right?

0:50:51 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:51:01 Ian: Like, make America great again. But I mean, that's what Reaganism was about. Like, Reaganism idolized the 50s, and now we idolize, like, the right idolizes the Reagan 80s, gamers idolize the 90s before there was a lot of feminist discourse. Like, there's always this idea of what the past is, and that's, that's really, really easy metaphor because you don't actually have to agree with other people about what the past looked like. You just have to say, "Ah, things were better back then." And everybody's like, "Yeah, things are better back then." And they all have different ideas in their head about what back then even looked like and what was better about it. But it's very, very easy to be unified on that front.

And what's really difficult for the, for progressivism, is this idea of like, no, we're trying to move forward and we can't all have like this same, we can't convince ourselves we have have the same idea of what moving forward looks like. Um, there's all these different directions we can go, there's always different causes, and we're trying to create some sort of unified idea of what we're working towards. Um, whereas if you're resisting progress, right, like you have this idea of what things should be, and you also have a sense that it used to be that way, and all you have to do is bring that back. And I think that makes people very resistant to progress. Yeah.

0:51:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:14 Thomas: Yeah. It is sort of, it is not symmetrical there. It's much easier to just be a stick in the mud. And what's so frustrating about that is, you know, do you know how high taxes were in the 50s? Like, yeah, let's okay. Okay. Let's go back to that before the

0:52:27 Ian: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, It's fascinating to me that the Republicans idolize the 50s. I mean, it's obvious. It's like, "Oh, they idolize the 50's," a time when Democrats had owned Congress for 25 years. They could sometimes get someone in the White House, but Congress would bully them into acting like Democrats anyway. It was the greatest period of economic growth and expansion in world history because of Democratic tax policies, right? But what is it they like about the 50S? Oh, right, the Civil Rights rights movement hadn't started yet and gay rights movement hadn't stated yet and the women's lib movement hadn't started yet. Like, that's what they're idolizing.

0:52:37 Thomas: Civil rights movement. Yeah.

0:53:04 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. So I, I know you are again, really resistant to telling anyone what they should be doing and I get, and I get it. And I think it is absolutely valid to say, here's what the problem is. No, I don't have a solution. I'm, I'm just, for now I'm just diagnosing the problem. Yeah or working on the solution to be fair, but I, the, the the scenario that keeps worrying me and I, you know, I don't know that this is going to happen and I wouldn't even, I'm not even betting on this happening or anything, but it's not impossible by any means is Trump has a solid 35 to maybe even right now, 40% is his approval rating, but at any rate, a solid base of people who will go with him despite the obvious things that we don't even have have to go into about how little grasp of facts he has or care he puts into speaking truth, all that stuff.

He has a solid base. What happens if that becomes 51%? I mean, then doesn't that switch us over to a, okay, even if something is maybe not necessarily a solution, we need to start trying things because once that number gets to a certain amount, it doesn't matter how right we are, how how much we have the facts, all of that stuff, we're losing badly and we're in danger.

0:53:13 Ian: Yeah, yeah. I'm working on the solution.

0:53:34 Ian: Mm hmm.

0:54:21 Ian: Yes. I guess it's sort of it's sort of getting to the question of when when people ask me, what should we do? And I'm talking about, well, here's the rhetoric the right uses and here's how not to fall for it. Usually when they're asking me, what do we do, it's like, so how do we combat that rhetoric? How do we convince those people? How do we stop the spread of their bad information? And one point I'm always making is, like, well, those people are trying to reach an audience, do everything in your power to reach that audience, you just don't necessarily need to reach those people, right? Like the person saying a lie, you don't have to repeat their lie in order to reach their audience, just be like, hey, you, this guy's telling you this thing, let's ignore him and let's talk to each other. So I mean, I think that's one way of sort of stemming the influence of the right and keeping keeping it from getting to 51%.

0:55:08 Ian: But I also feel like there's so much we can do to help ourselves that don't involve engaging with the right at all, right? Like, they get to 51%, it's like, well, maybe instead of trying to sway a bunch of the right to our side, we should maybe be focusing on who are the people who don't get out to vote in the first place, right, like we have massive problems with gerrymandering in this country, DC and Puerto Rico and the other US territories, interrogatories don't have full voting rights. Um, ex-felons don't have full voter rights. And oh gee, what a coincidence that right around the time we said prisoners can't vote, we also suddenly started incarcerating a lot more black people than white people. Um, like there's a lot of things we can do to just outnumber the right if we still haven't figured out how to actually communicate with the right. And I would bet pretty good money that as soon as the right realizes that they are outnumbered. And I mean, they are already outnumbered.

0:56:01 Ian: Like, we know that the Republican Party lost the last election by over three million votes. Like we know that. We know that if not for gerrymandering, many, many states and counties in this country would never elect Republicans. Like they know that they are outnumbered. And it's only by kind of juking the stats that they stay in the majority. If we fix those things, we will, I think we will find the right a lot more pliable to like working across the aisle with us when they realize the only way they can hold on to power is by making deals with the actual majority. Yeah.

0:56:39 Thomas: Yeah, that's a good point. And that's what's so frustrating about the scenarios. If they get to 51%, that means they probably control like 65% of Congress and like 80% of states' congresses. The gerrymandering is such a big issue. And I agree that right now, the biggest untapped resources, people who don't vote and don't, for whatever reason, maybe they can't, maybe whatever the reason is, but that's a giant resource. So that makes sense that if we can appeal to those people, and especially in the midterms coming up here, then we have a chance to really change the power dynamic. Yeah. All right. Well, I feel like I've taken enough of your time.

0:56:49 Ian: Thank.

0:57:19 Thomas: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Again, I really love the work you're doing. Everyone should check out Innuendo Studios. Studios, they should support you. They should watch your videos. It's great stuff. So thank you so much for coming on.

0:57:32 Ian: You. So much for having me.

0:57:58 Thomas: Really enjoyed that, and I love Ian, and I love his work, so definitely check it out if you haven't already, he really frames things in a way that makes it so clear once you reflect on some of the arguments you've had online, it's like, ah, yeah, that is what's happening. Well that's the show for today, thank you so much for listening, I know I've been saying it a lot lately, but it's because I absolutely mean it, got plenty of more good interviews in the can, ready to go, so keep that radio set dialed in to Serious Inquiries Only. And I'll see you guys on Thursday.