 The term was originally coined by James Bartholomew for the spectator to decry people who say I don't like this thing very much in order to feel good about themselves and then just vote labour every few years or whatever and take no stake in actually making things better. This is a fairly straightforwardly good call to action. The term actually decried a real existing problem. Of course, then the idiots got their hands on it. Wait, let me sip my tea. Okay, here we go. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Procrastinator's podcast, a podcast on the internet by people also on the internet. We make stuff and now we're talking about other stuff. I'm the best guy ever and today we're joined by such charismatic individuals as Tom Oliver. Hello, I am here signalling my presence. Excellent. Virtuous it is indeed. I try. Hippocrates is here. I'm great. The end. Lethal Aurora Mage. And I'm not like the other girls. I'm purple. Yeah. Excellent. And the often forgotten Fertive Benz. The Fertive Benz so easily forgotten. Indeed. Crouched in darkness. Origin of all despair in the world. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. I try. Thanks for being here, everybody, and thank you audience for being here as well. It's time to talk about some dumb shit. So our topic today is indeed virtue signalling. Wow. Virtue signalling. Wow, Nate. Good. Impressive. Yeah. Virtue signalling when they get a big, big old light bulb and then they shine it in the sky and then virtue man comes. Is that what they do? Exactly. Basically. And you know, I'm unclear. I'm unclear on what virtue signalling is, but I think I know where we can find out, we gotta go to a place where there's both the intellectual content we desire and the street smart delivery that makes it go down oh, so smooth. Guys, before we go and read the official definition of virtue signalling, I just wanted to define a possible meaning for virtue signalling. Do you guys have you seen the anime State Young Men? Yes. Yes, I have. So when Buddha is being virtuous, he starts to glow, so he's signalling to everyone that he's being virtuous. That should be the thumbnail for this episode. I'm about that. That would be good. It's kind of like how a, this is actually a very apt metaphor, like how lightning bugs are signal, like that they are prepared to mate the fuck out of the ladies out there, or maybe they'll, the female signal or something, but it's like a mating dance they do when they light up. So what? It's, it's, it's just, yeah, it's that kind of show. That's just like the, the, the, the beta males on, on Twitter. Exactly. Virtue signalling to retract at Puss. I see what you're talking about. I got you. Exactly. Right? Right? That's a very apt metaphor. Just glowing, glowing with virtuousness as their Christ consciousness sores and their myrkabah spins. The dimensional energies just go higher and higher as their chromosomes multiply and they rapidly become over 50 feet tall. Just like the ancient Egyptians. Of course. Okay. So here, here we go. Here's our top definition on urban dictionary for virtue signalling. Saying you love or hate something to show up what a virtuous person you are instead of actually trying to fix the problem. Jane. Wow. I hate Fox News. They're so evil and they hate women. John, why don't you actually do something instead of just virtue signalling about it. Jane, OMG, that would be way too much work. Goes back to shit posting on Twitter. Yeah, why don't you make your own fucking news network, Jane? All right. So, so I have like consistently like heard and reheard this definition of virtue signalling. I always forget it. So I'm just gonna give you one and see if that, this is true. Okay. I hate starving African children. I, is that, is that virtue signalling because I hate how starving they are. In a, in a way, you, I mean, sounds like you hate them as opposed to you hate the poor conditions that they live in. They make me feel bad with their, with their insistence on not eating anything. That is a miscalculation. Why don't they just eat some food? They're over, they're, they're, they're guilting me every day. And it makes me, it makes me hard to enjoy all the luxuries in my life. Oh, it makes me hard if you know what I mean. Oh, that's, yeah. No. That, yeah. I guess, good. Hopefully you have, we just have descended. Just, that was fair. So, so, okay. So the whole point of virtue signalling is not to feel good yourself. Well, I mean, it sort of is. But it is to make people think that you're cool or good for, for whatever reason, like you would want to do that. And this is, this is run rampant in our society these days. And it's like, it's like absolutely everywhere. Everybody's, including me, I'm sure we've all done it. I'm doing it right now by being on the PCP and letting everyone know what a cool guy I am. Indeed, indeed. Is, is part of it like, like you aren't actually doing anything good? Because like, yes it is. That's a key component here. Yeah. Like you sometimes you don't even have to believe what you're saying is just you doing it so that others, people would just. I would almost say that's a requirement. I think it's like, yeah. That's between virtue signalling and actually, well, no, you can virtue signal by like trying to amplify what you already believe, but there's tons of people who just be like, I want to gain social favor in some way, usually online, a lot of times on Twitter. So I'm going to either echo or project a sentiment that is popular in order to align myself with this popular perception to make myself look better by, by osmosis. I got that. I got my start virtue signalling very early in life. When my, when my parents, my dad, I think, got me a Backstreet Boys CD and I was jamming out, I never want to hear you say, I want it that way. Yeah, it was a smooth, it was a smooth and silky jam, but I, but I came to realize that the kids at my school were over the Backstreet Boys and that was not cool. That was something that girls liked and cool kids didn't like that. So, so one day I told my dad and he was like, Hey, you want to put it on Backstreet Boys? I was like, no, dad, I don't like the Backstreet Boys, they're gay. And my dad, and my dad fucking called me. He was like, you like them. They're just not very popular. And I was like, it cut me to the core because it was absolutely true, but I couldn't admit it. Now that is, that is definitely in a sense similar to virtue signalling, but, but specifically this would, it would relate to like trying to make you look morally superior. The virtue of being cool and not liking things that are, that society has deemed are for girls and gay. Okay, in that case, you're absolutely right. By the way, I also had an in sync CD that we bought simultaneously. Yeah, yeah, we each had one. We each had one. Yeah, we were jamming. We were jamming to the. So where does giving to charity so that you can say I give to charity? Does that fall into the same thing? Absolutely. I mean, you are giving to charity. So that is like a real action you're doing, but like it depends. A lot of it depends on your motivation. The giving to charity isn't so much virtue signalling. It's making sure everyone knows that you did it. That's the virtue signalling part. But let me, let me give you a great example from, from recent days of, of like exactly what a virtue signaller is. Like when I think virtue signaller, I think male feminist almost immediately that's where my mind goes. And like who just think about Harvey Weinstein, big leftist, turns out he's basically a rapist or something. That is a classic virtue signaller right there. It's these guys with these duplicitous motives. Like, like again, like male feminists who go on and on about how much they love women, they want to fight for women's rights, but their end game is to fuck women. That's their goal. But they're going about it in such a way so as to like do it through virtue. They're doing the popular thing to get closer to what they want. What really bothers me, what really bothers me when people virtue signal is like, they pretend like they're seeing something like non mainstream, something edgy and risky and like, oh, they're going to get in trouble for seeing that. But like, they say the most popular mundane, acceptable shit. An unpopular opinion, but I don't think people should be ostracized for their sexual preferences. Society. Just slow it down. Okay. Yeah. That's such an unpopular. You know, I'm in the minority here. You know what's funny about this whole thing? Unpopular opinions. I guess we're all virtue signals. I have a gay friend. Hope I don't get stoned in the town square. Oh, but I'm going to get stoned in the town square if you know what I mean. Legalized, bro. Unpopular opinion, but legalized weed, bro. You know, it's funny because a lot of these issues now, I don't want to be insensitive to people's lived experiences, but a lot of these sorts of unpopular opinions, I mean, I'm sure you guys will generally agree with this, are things that people like are no longer problems. Like for example, like a gay marriage was legalized, what, like seven years ago, so that's like not, that's not a long time, but the fact is, well, it federally, it has been legalized. You know what the problem is? I'm going to interject right here. You know what the problem is? It's not even that these things aren't a problem anymore. It's that you have a bunch of people who ardently believe in these things. Sure. Like they believe in gay marriage and LGBT rights and all that stuff, right? And that's all, those are all good things to fight for. Right. We would all support those in general. I think. Here's the problem with virtue signaling is that when you go on Twitter and you tell everybody about it, everybody who's on Twitter already agrees with you. So it's a circle jerk on Twitter to get all the people you want to like you, to like you, because you share their opinions. Whereas you actually want to do something about that. You'd have to like go somewhere besides Twitter where people don't believe these things and state your case and try and change minds. Okay. Here's a great thing. I've been watching, I've watched for a long time now, Sam Harris's podcast, the waking up podcast. And one of his episodes was he brought on this guy, I can't remember his name, but like the whole point of the episode was like doing the most good with your life. How do we do practical good? God, could there be a more Nate podcast? Sam Harris is like exactly me. He's like literally me. So like the whole point of this is to like mathematically determine what is the best way to do the most good with your money, which is the exact opposite of virtue signaling. It is the mathematical other extreme. You can't see me smirking and shaking my head right now. I know that I'm smirking and shaking my head right now. Good. That's what I want. It's what I want the people to do when they hear me speak. So like, and what was determined throughout this was that for like, for your buck, the best you can do to like help people is to buy mosquito nets for like sub-Saharan Africa, I think, or maybe it was like South America, somewhere where like malaria, I think was like a big deal and mosquito nets would prevent that. Like that was mathematically the best thing you can do to save the most human life on the planet. That is like, and that could change for sure. Like let's say the mosquitoes die, then you would find something else that's like the best way to help people. Yeah. Once the mosquito problem has been curbed, the supply and demand curve will shift and you got to keep up with it. I got you. That's right. If you want to do the most good, that's right. That's right. And like that's the real shit. And so for just for example, like Sam Harris was like, you know what? Okay, this is good. I'm going to immediately start giving like X amount of money to this charity because like he's a pure like rational scientifically minded guy, of course. So he's just giving his money there. And if I was so inclined to give my money to anyone, I would probably feel like that would be the right thing to do, you know, give to those people. Or of course, you know, just engage in capitalism in general, which is not really the same. It's just like how you build a functioning economy. But yeah, that's like, that is the good stuff. That's what I want to see. And I got no time for people and their personal little issues. Like for example, feminists in America complaining about how women are, there's a problem with ACs being too cold. Like I actually sympathize with that immensely. I hate when it's too cold in office buildings that like men of internal higher body temperature, like I get it. And I'm with you on that. But let's not forget that literally every woman in Saudi Arabia is a slave for the most part, like all of them. All of them. It's fun how we don't talk about that at all. Well, I mean, I think the AC thing is like it's not it's not like like the fact that there are worse problems. I support their struggle. I was sexist. Like, okay, it's a problem. Okay, like, hey, it's too cold. I would prefer it to be warmer. Okay, sure, that's an issue. We can fix that. But don't go out of your way and claim it. Oh, it's sexist. I mean, I guess it is a gendered problem in that like, statistically probably management of most places is male and they're probably the ones making the decision. So like it is a gendered issue. I would argue it's a gendered issue, but not sexist issue. Not necessarily. It depends on how you frame the it depends on how you frame it. Like if you say that only men's, you know, quote, like lived experience is used to determine the correct temperature for inside the office building and we just like don't care about the women because they're the minority. If they just went to like someone who works the AC and be like, hey, could you raise it a little bit? I'm sure they would have raised it a little bit. But the goddamn patriarch, you won't allow it. I mean, I mean, yeah, like what it comes down to is that like, obviously every employee's input should count the same. Like everyone's comfort should be valued equally. So like, yeah. And if they're not being, then that is sexist. But like, yeah, yeah. I doubt that they're saying, fuck the women's opinion. We don't care. But there is a certain temperature that will be the middle range of the comfort level and people just need to attune themselves to whatever that is. Realistically speaking, you know, you gotta compromise. An example of virtue signaling would be somebody who runs like an office of like three people and goes on Twitter. He's like, I turned I changed my AC today because I care about my female employees. Give me hundreds of thousands of retweets, please. That's virtue signaling right there. Especially because like, again, mathematically speaking, what if two of your employees are male? Like it actually makes sense to do the most good for the world to make it like a temperature that, you know, is the most comfortable for the most number of people. Like just as an example, I'm not saying you should always, you know, cater to men. I'm just saying, mathematically speaking, it makes the most sense. And that's the way we should operate. Do you think a way to determine virtue signaling is like the percentage of people who respond to what you said with, uh, yeah, all right, whatever. Fine. Like if you say that, the more people who say that to what you say, that makes it more virtue signaling than less. Indifference is the answer. It's hard to say because it depends on who you're projecting to. There's a lot of people who lap that shit up. Like you, if you, I would, you cast that net into the right audience, everyone's like, oh, you're so great. You're so good. Like every time, you know, a, a, a, like this whole like me too thing, like it's a huge problem. But every time another celebrity comes out, like something happened to me at some point by somebody, this is bad. Everyone's like, oh, you're so brave. Well, you know, the real problem. It's like, well, why don't you drop the name? It's less and less brave. Let's solve the problem. The more you do it. Yeah. The more it happens, the less brave you are. And you're not brave for not dropping names. If you know exactly who fucking did it, and you're going to keep letting them go on and continue to harass other people, you're not brave. You're looking for social credit. Fuck you. I have no respect for you. Entirely true. And the thing I hate about, I don't, I don't hate the movement, but the, the thing that is a problem about it is that so many people, like just under this heading of me too, like everyone's thing gets lumped in together as like equally bad. Like you could have been legally, literally raped by Harvey Weinstein, or you could have had like your butt touched by Al Franken, or you could have had like a co-worker make a sexually charged joke to someone else, not directs at you. And these would all be lumped under me too. My life is hell. You know, I have experienced deep sexual, like, the problem is not that these things, that, that you're complaining about these things. Each of them is fine. It should be treated with a level of, of, of respect. But that the issue here is proportionality. That is my favorite word in the world. Proportionality. Just like I was saying before about how the women AC thing, like that, that you could take that as a problem. I understand. I'm willing to talk about that. But also Saudi Arabia full of litter, all the women are slaves, all of them, basically. And like, like proportionality-wise speaking, we should talk about that a lot more. That's like the big deal that, that really matters. Right. Yeah, but like Saudi Arabia is really far away. But like the AC knob is right here. It's right here in my, in my house. And I can't twist it. You have to claim patriarchy for someone else to twist it. Well, well, let's, I mean, Alexa is a woman, and she's the one really in charge of all our computers and environmental controls these days. So, Alexa, be the patriarchy. Maybe it's internalized patriarchy or internalized misogyny on Alexa's part. Probably. You know what other sort of virtue-sugging I really dislike? Like, someone, let's say, you know, they're sharing an experience, maybe a negative one, something bad that happened to them. You know, that's fine. Sometimes you need to vent, sometimes you just want to share a story and that's perfectly fine. But then someone else takes your story and then runs with it, puts it on blast, and like, look at me, what a good person I am for like making this public, and we should all stop this horrible thing from happening to people, and then they make it their own problem. Are you saying they're like just lying and like taking other people's stories to gain the social credit? No, not lying, rather than like, look at me, how good I am. I'm helping this person. Are you saying virtue signaling they're virtue hijacking? They're like hijacking your point and making it about them. Like, turning someone else into like a symbol of like a problem. They're using your struggle as a prop for their virtue. The whole idea of like retweeting and sharing and liking and stuff, like that is just, it, what's the word, accommodates virtue signaling to happen, because it's like it's very easy to just put someone else's statement on your thing and say, look at what I believe, look at what I agree with. It's fine to sometimes just share certain stories that you want to make people aware, but like don't make it your battle. It's really just an obnoxiousness slider. Like you can be a good person and say, hey, you should help this charity or this thing and this guy's got a kickstarter to get medical funds or whatever, and you know, you re-share it or whatever, because you care and you want people to know about it. But there's just, it's just like the more, the more you're putting yourself in the picture frame of like, hey, look, it's me who's doing all this. It's me who's showing you this. And that's what it's all about. That's what this is all about. Let's not mince words about this. These days, virtue signaling is big fucking business, right? Like you can be, you can be financially successful. You can make like a living, no, no, you can make a living if you invent the right hashtag and are active enough in a hashtag. You can be like hashtag famous because you made the right hashtag that embodies some social issue that enough people want to jump on the bandwagon for and, and fucking, and fucking like be, be up on in a Twitter arms race about. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. And it's, and it's like, it's like just, just showing, showing that you support an issue enough can make you famous, can make you, can make people like want to support you based on that. So like, yeah, like you can make a living virtue signaling if you're, if you're smart about it. And if you're, and if, and if you can get like a following based on it. When discussion gets wide enough about it, you can, you can monetize it so you can get monetized thickness. Right? Right? You know what I'm saying. I mean, that's what, I mean, this is, I'm kind of, I'm going, I'm going broad with this, but that's kind of what like, that's kind of what like fucking YouTubers that like, that's, that's what like someone like Sargon of Akkad does is they just virtue signal their, what they, what they perceive as virtues and like people just like pick up on those like, yes, this is a very virtuous person. I want to ally myself with it. I mean, this is like, this is what all pundits do. This is what like every YouTube or like blog pundit or something does. They're out there just putting their opinions out there showing that they support the right issues. And then the other people that support those issues want to be like, yeah, me too. This person is powerful. This person is influential. And I want to show, and I want to show myself to be in alliance with them. And I'll do that whenever I can. I'll retweet their shit. I'll back them. I'll, I'll, I want to show that I am also on this bandwagon. And that's what it's all about. I really, because like thinking about that, like everybody is basically a virtue signaler in some fashion. Does that mean virtue signaling is not really that bad? And it's just sometimes people take it to an obnoxious degree? I think what the, I don't, I think it is one of these things that is almost a fundamental human like desire or tendency, but that doesn't make it good. You know, it would be good if we could stop doing it and just like be objective about things. I do think there's a difference between, between fighting for a cause or like trying to, to spread not even awareness, but like just discuss things. There's a difference between having a debate or a discussion and trying to just talk about a certain thing and virtue signaling, right? Cause like if somebody, like to go back to a pundit, if a pundit talks about an issue and like hammers away at it all the time, because they truly believe this is a big problem and it needs to be addressed more, that's different than that same pundit going on and making a big deal about whatever's popular at the time in order to bolster their own self-image. Well, you know, it's, it's a creeping thing really. Cause like the real issue with virtue signaling generally is, it is catering to an audience and like every, and it's worse because there's money in all cause people will pay you to cater to talk about the thing that bothers them. Yeah. It's just, it's just kind of by nature of, of the business of having someone with a pen to victim culture, right? That's true. Because in order, in order to be like, it's because we have this weird kind of social dynamic now where being a victim is virtuous. Yeah. So they tie together a lot nowadays. Like I've been wronged. Look how bad this thing is. We need to solve this problem because I've been wronged. Now please give me money to make up for the fact that society shortchanged me an X way. Yeah, sure. But because we've got like, you know, social media in the way that we do now, it's so easy for people to like keep catering to their audience and it just like things spiral out of control and they just keep going down a rabbit hole where you got guys like, I don't know, like there was some guy on like Joe Rogan's podcast recently who like, was a self-avowed like big SJW guy and then he was there saying like, yeah, that like, and he had supposedly like stopped doing that or whatever. And I'm taking him by his word. I don't really know who he is or anything. And he was just, and Joe was like with him on it. So he was like, yeah, man, I just kept like retweeting the same people. I just kept doing it and doing it because like everyone around me was like, yeah, this is it. This is right. We got to keep doing this shit. There's no alternative facts to be considered or other viewpoints or whatever. So like, I almost want to give people credit or not not give them credit, but like not lambast them too harshly for this because just by the nature of the way that our interactions work these days, it is almost inevitable that we fall into these pits. So at some point, this is a huge, this is, I don't, I'm not going to say this is a product of social media, but it's absolutely spiraled out of control the way it has because of the way social media works. Like social media first enables us to happen at scale. Virtue. Virtue signal in person very effectively. You have like five or 10 people. Virtue signaling on social media is highly incentivized socially as well as financially. Well, even the algorithm does because as you continue to virtue signal and like you show support for that content, all these algorithms just show you more of that stuff. So you're just gonna keep seeing more of it. It's just gonna, and then you're, you'll have this little like social bubble because you're only going to interact and you're only going to see people who talk about these topics and it's going to feel like a bigger problem to you. Let me, let me give you a big example that's happening right now. Okay. And it's net neutrality. And I think that we might actually disagree on this to some degree because I'm actually not 100% in favor of net neutrality all the way. But let's discuss this. So right now, a lot of people just assume that net neutrality is obviously the best thing. Obviously. And I feel it sort of fits under the sombrel. I had a big discussion about this recently too and was aware of new facts that I was not aware of. Okay. So maybe we'll both learn something. Yeah. Well, I'm not gonna learn anything. It's super, it's, I think you're, I was going to bring up net neutrality at some point as well. And I think it's a great example of what we're talking about right now is because net neutrality, the issue, there's huge issues with revoking title two status, but I think so the conversation has become that title two has become synonymous with net neutrality when net neutrality is just a subset of what title two means for internet regulation. And because we have so many people who are defenders of net neutrality, myself included, we, nobody talks about the other effects of having a title two classified internet. There's a lot more regulation on building out infrastructure and stuff. And smaller startup companies are have more difficulty. Let me, let me throw this at you regarding, regarding net neutrality everybody. So like, this is, this is just an example about you fair viewer, you probably have heard almost nothing, except that net neutrality is great by people online and that it all, it is super important that we keep it with its title two status and all that bullshit. You've probably heard nothing about that. But let me raise this, this point to it. Right now, net neutrality enforces that all internet traffic go along the same exact channels, that there can be no delineation between, you know, different types of pipelines. It all has to go through the same series of tubes. Therefore, things that take up a lot of data, for example, the gigantic advent of online HD streaming these days has completely changed the game for how much data is demanded per capita at any one time. And like, it is like, I don't think it's the majority, but it's really getting up there to be like a huge percentage of like all internet data traffic accounts for like 40% of internet bandwidth. Exactly. Exactly. And so considering that everybody, let's say you fair viewer are just trying to watch, you're just trying to go online, trying to go to fucking your own, some website to do something, you know, bigdicks.com, your favorite website, you're just trying to get there. If I'm going to bigdicks.com, I definitely want some 4k HDR. Well, let's use an example we can all agree on. Let's use an example we can all agree on. Maybe you're headed over to your favorite hub for all your favorite content on the internet, Patreon.com slash Benzane. Just to check out what's been going on. Yeah, right. I thought you were just going to say Saint Comets because that would make more sense. Your life is an absolute shambles. It's in shambles. It's the only place you can take solace in this cruel world is on Patreon.com slash Benzane. That's where you need to be. You know, you'll find a friend there. For everybody who's your name. For a price. For a price, of course. He hasn't come cheap. Okay, so you're just going to some bullshit website that's not an HD video streaming website. That's the point I'm trying to get to. Okay, so you go there and the page is loading really slow and you think, why might this be? And then you realize like it's the season finale, it's the series finale of Game of Thrones or something. It just came out and everyone in the world is using Netflix right now to try to get that fucking, you know, watch that fucking video that just came out. And so the internet is just down like around you because everyone is demanding so much data right now that it's a fucking nightmare. Now, does that model necessarily make more sense than one where there are indeed separated lines where something like Netflix has a dedicated line and then something like, you know, your static web page loading service that has its own dedicated line. No, I'm not saying they necessarily should be charging different rates or any of that bullshit. I'm just saying that that neutrality enforces that everything uses the exact same pipeline and that does not necessarily demand or create the best environment for all use. It does not necessarily optimize happiness for everyone. I think not necessarily. There's absolutely a discussion to be had about how to best optimize, you know, bandwidth and stuff like this because you have these heavy bands. The problem is by revoking, and this is the argument for net neutrality, is that by revoking title two, we can optimize like that, but we can also do all this other can of shit. Well, that's that's the issue. Did you expect them to make money to not milk it as much as they can? Like, do you know there's like, I think there's no net neutrality. They've already started doing it. There's already examples of them doing it. It's I mean, if you a couple of years ago, Comcast and Verizon throttled. Yeah, what was it? It was. They throttled Netflix until Netflix started paying them extra money to cover their bandwidth costs. And then you there's like graphs of like this, the speed slowing down significantly, then the date Netflix started paying it all went back up and both these companies colluded to basically kneecap the company and extort them for money. Well, okay, I mean, business is business. And I get, I get them wanting to do to be able to do those sorts of things or how businesses find an equilibrium of power. But like, again, you need competitors to drive down. And that's the problem right now. Isn't that collusion and monopoly monopolizing and, you know, trusts aren't trusts legal? Isn't that why we busted all those trusts back in the days of Teddy Roosevelt or whatever? To some degree, yes. To some degree, you're absolutely right. And I totally agree with all of these things, you know, in practice. I'm sort of being an idealist about like what I would like. I would love to have a free market of competition in the in the space of ISPs and stuff. The problem is right now, we don't have the infrastructure to do it. Okay, but it's just that the problem is the origin of this problem was government regulation because there used to be a lot of little ISP providers until things got consolidated. And like AT&T was like the big one that just took over everything. So as to like supposedly to streamline the process and to make things more efficient in the development of like phone line infrastructure at the time. And now, you know, a lot of right, no, no, the problem right now is that government regulations and like letting these companies lobby and basically dictate policy has totally fucked up any new players. It's like I want I want the libertarian solution. But like this particular thing of like enforcing the neutrality is indeed like an extra like restriction. But like that doesn't get it closer to egalitarianism. I like I just want to like all stop. And it's all to be free to exchange commerce in a free open way. But that's not like what this one is. Let's say we pull it all back and we revoked Title Two and put it back on Title One and anybody can do anything. My concern with that is that, okay, this solution because like this is what people are talking about. Let's get rid of all the legislation. And yeah, if Comcast and Verizon and all these fucks decide to like make the internet terrible, we're just gonna have more companies come in and take their place. And my two concerns with that is one, what do we do in the meantime while all these new companies magically sprout out of the ether, the internet still fucked, we're still kneecapped for the time being. And two, like if the market responds to supply and demand, like if we wait long enough, and this is just how the internet is, like none of these companies are legally binded to be good people. Like you can just have another company come in and like not restricted by regulation, but be like, yeah, Verizon and Comcast is doing it. I'm going to do it too, but I'll charge five bucks less. And so there's no guarantee that the problem that we're talking about that's going to go away would go away. Whereas with net neutrality, it does go away. So it's a guarantee versus a hope that people are going to do the right thing. And I don't trust people because people are assholes. That's understandable. That's understandable. But I think there's way more nuance to this discussion that's being completely thrown out because we're not talking about title two. We're just talking about net neutrality, which is only a small part of the impact of title two regulations. Indeed. And this is what I want to bring up. Like what we're doing right now is not virtue signaling. This is an actual discussion about the pros and cons of these issues. What I'm going to do after this is that I am going to post this the time code of you talking about net neutrality on my Twitter saying, I know I was there. I know about net neutrality. This is me and my buddies talking about it, even though I didn't say shit because I don't get it. You'll be so smart, dude. You'll be so smart. That'll be new virtue signaling. That's my plan. Yeah. Intellectual virtue signaling. Yeah, that's cool. I like it. Make sure you put your Patreon in there so people can give you money to help fight the good fight for net neutrality. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's the thing right there. Like guys, I'm working so hard to support. Oh, you know what it reminds me of? Remember Ben, like Mad Munchkins, like her like, what was it? Another Patreon, but her like things like support artists in the local community or something. Yeah. Yeah. Her kickstarted with the incredibly vague like goal of like, yeah, support like local business. Okay. She's just giving me money so I can buy things. So I can live in my town and purchase things for my local vendors. You know what a great example of virtue signaling that's kind of hit close to home because it's in our backyard is all these people being like, ah, I got demonetized again on YouTube. Please give me money on Patreon. It's the only way I can survive. That's my virtue signaling right there. Tom, didn't you say that exact same thing? No, no, I did. I did. I keep bitching about it, but I'm not like, I never post my Patreon link ever. I think I did once as a joke. Okay. Okay, but I just say so. It's funny. There's this one guy. Oh, it's okay. It's a joke though. I agree that one time I'm being hypocritical, but it's funny. I mean, I don't blame you. Every time I bitch about like being demonetized, I'm not. I did it just now. I don't like my fucking Patreon minutes ago. Like if none of these videos I post are going to make any money anyways. They're going to make like a dollar. I don't even fucking... I should just turn off monetization on my channel entirely because I make nothing. It's more the principle of the matter that pisses me off. It is. Absolutely. But it's funny because this one guy keeps replying to all of my posts with my Patreon link. I'm like, dude, I'm not posting it because I'm not trying to virtue signal. I'm trying to say, look how dumb this is. But there are people who do that, who just make a big deal about it, and I get it. I get that it's a huge problem. But there's a point where I think there are some people who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and just lost 50% of their income, and that's all the money they are making. And they're like, shit, guys, I'm opening a Patreon. Could you help me? I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't have this. And then there's the people who jump on that bandwagon and they're like, this is a good way to get on this narrative and get some extra Patreon. Because it is legit for some people. Because it is legit for some people, but it's also a convenient excuse. There's a trickle-down effect. I said, but now Patreon's kind of a bit fucked as well, so... Patreon is... I mean, it's getting there. Patreon is a... Okay, as much as I depend upon it, Patreon is a terrible company, and I wish there were an alternative so much. These changes that are happening on Patreon that definitely are, to some degree, going to make people not want to use it as much. People have already lost hundreds of dollars for this. Yeah, I've lost a couple bucks so far, and it's going to hit on the 18th. I believe it's one of the fees the bill comes for the Patreon, so we will see in the lead. It's a thing that's like... It's not... It doesn't... Yeah, more of the fee is... The fee is putting... Part of the fee is being put onto the Patrons rather than taken out of the creator's cut. And it's a pretty small percentage, but it's also got a small tack done. It's like 2.9% plus like 35. So for a $1 pledge, it bumps it up from $1 to $1.40, which is... Right, and that's a 40% increase. And the thing that sucks is that like let's say... Because the argument that everyone's making, I think, is totally valid. Let's say there's a guy who pledges a dollar to the PCP and a dollar to all of us. That's $11 a month. He has to pay that $0.40 fee on each one. So now he's paying $15, $16. It's really much more harshly punishing like low-level Patrons. I do want to point out though... I don't understand why. That like this fee, this cost has always been there. And so we were just taking it out of our income. Which I was fine with. Yeah, I was pretty fine with it. Like I understood that going in. I mean, I actually... I would rather lose a cut of a Patron's Pledge than dissuade them from pledging it all because they're uncomfortable paying fees. I hear what you're saying. I just wish things had been like this from the start and people knew what they were signing up for. Nick, here's my thing though. Here's my question because like if you know... Because I looked at the numbers and I'm dumb. I don't know, Matt, you're smart. Because the numbers that Patron threw out is that we made like 80 to 88% of each dollar and that was what they were talking about. That was the number before and now it's 95. Yeah, that's about right. Because I don't understand where... If it's the same... 80%, that seems low. Well, the thing is like if we were making 80% at the low end before, but now $1 Patrons have to pay 40% more... It's because... Is it Patron making more money? No, no, no. That's coming from... Patreon is taking the same amount. They need the more money because they're changing the infrastructure so that the thing is more like a subscription service where the person who pledges gets paid on the same time every month that they pledged. Well... And to do that, they need to do more transactions which means higher transaction fees. I wasn't aware that that was changing. So there is more money being taken total now, right? Also, I do not think that's accurate. More money is being taken in total, but the money that is being taken is used to pay for the extra transactions. Also, the percentages are lower, the higher you... Which would make Patreon more smooth and less confusing. But it does... You're being slightly inaccurate. That's not quite right. What's actually changing here is Patreon is specifically trying to change how transparent they are about how much patron pledges like actually are giving the money to the people you are patroning to. So when you pledge $1, what you're pledging is to get... To do whatever is necessary to get that $1 to the pledge guy. I was just explaining that the reason the money is going up is not to get Patreon more money. They made an update to alleviate concerns and I read that and I was like, okay, the main goal was to make Patreon itself work more smoothly and less confusingly. And they gave a few reasons for the way the system is now. People like... I don't know. It's... I just want to look it up and you'll read it. I'll lay this case out real simple for you. Before Patreon used to... Like if you pledged a dollar, you would send in a dollar and Patreon and the money... And like the people you are patroning to, they'd figure out what fees they need to pay to get whatever is left of that pledge to the person that you're patroning to. Now what they're doing is they're making sure that... Okay, so 95% of that $1 goes to the Patreon person and then 5% of your pledge goes to Patreon as their earnings. And then off of your back, you do whatever's necessary to pay those fees that like 40 cents or whatever to get that money to where it needs to go. That's also true. But like the reason that that is like the thing is they wanted to like dress it up nice because the main thing was they were... For the artists. They're for the artists. Yeah, they're for the artists. They wanted to be like, oh, we're going to give the creators more money. Make sure we're taking less off of your paycheck. That was what they led with. But the reason they're doing it at all is to change the infrastructure of the site, which just leads them with more transaction fees that they have to give to either the creators or the pledges. And they decided to give it to the pledges. And now everyone's upset. I don't like what the patron has done, but that is the reason they've done it. To bring this back to virtue signaling because we're getting a little cut off path now. Don't you think that this problem has become exponentially bigger than it otherwise would have been because all these artists are virtue signaling online about how bad it is and now everyone's aware of it? That's true. Yeah. That's true. Yeah, you know, I've been annoyed about it. How many people are de-pledging because they've been made aware of this, where they've just saw it in their bank account? They would have been like, that's dumb. Or they would have like investigated and read what patrons had to be like, that's okay. But because all these people are like, this is evil. Now everyone's like, I don't want to support this evil company. That's not true guys. It's just business. I've been seeing a lot of comic people on Twitter who are like railing against it. And on the one hand, I'm not happy about it because I do think that it has a pretty good chance to de-incentivize people from pledging and put people off and could hurt me. But on the other hand, like to go out and be like, guys, patron is evil. Like, well, I mean- Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Yeah, I still, I don't want to, my goal is not to dissuade people from doing it. I mean, I don't want them to jump into it and then get hit with a bunch of extra fees they weren't expecting. But like, you know, I just, as long as it's transparent and they know what they're pledging for, like, of course I want people to do it. You know, that's my- People are so, people are so retarded when it comes to like fees and business and whatever. I have, I feel like I have a fundamentally different view from like a lot of my fellow millennials out there. Like guys, business is business. Sometimes businesses rearrange the way that their cost structures are working. Sometimes they just have to make changes and they are telling you what the changes. So you can say, you know what? This is not what I want to do. I'm going to stop doing this. It is not evil to change your business model. They are simply adjusting things. And if you don't like it, fucking leave. But from that perspective, because I agree with you, you know, like they have to do what they have to do to make the business work. And like there are questions of ethics that we can ask. I don't think there's a, but again, like that's, it's not a question of ethics why they're doing it. I think the problem with Patreon doing this is that they've tried to spin it to make them look like good guys and not just be like, this is a business decision. Because I think they're just like, that's what I hate about Patreon. We have to adjust for the market and this is how we're going to do it would have been much better than like, Hey guys, we really want to make sure you get as much money as possible because we love you so much. Patreon is going to give you some more money. That's the part that really pissed me off. Like, I don't know. Like, like Jack Conte really kind of just creeps me out. Jack Conte biggest virtual, biggest virtual signal in the world and devout hater of all pornography. Patreon has like, Patreon has an infamous, I mean, at least among the PCP, an infamous email writer who sends us, Taran, Taran. Every single time it's like some sort of announcement. Yeah. And she's like talking to us like we're four year olds. Like, oh, we're a Patreon. We love creators like you. It's like, oh, shant. Okay, it makes me mad, it makes me mad and it feels disingenuous. Because Patreon, like, yeah, like to me and like to us, like they're not a community. Like, we don't interact with the Patreon community. They're just a service. Dude, they want you to be in that community so bad so that you'll keep recirculating. What community? You'll pledge to your friends and then all the money will continuously recycle and then Patreon just draws more money off the top of all of it. I literally don't know what community they're talking about. I don't know, I don't know. They really just, they feel, they feel like, I don't know, they like xylophones. Dude, to them, it's like from their perspective or at least how they wish it was, it's like all the people that have Patrons are like their family and they're all their children and they're all working together for the common goal of making Patreon- And they need to dictate what's good and what's bad art and they need to make sure it is. And I really don't like the attitude they copped that like, I'm supposed to buy into this narrative and we're all on the same side. No, you're a service that I use. You should be literally PayPal. PayPal is all these things. People have been asking me like, what to do if you don't want to use Patreon anymore because you find this evil because you're a retarded person. The answer is use PayPal. Yeah, so you can set up recurring payments on PayPal if you want. I have links to my PayPal in my fucking channel bar. I have links to do that on my About page on stcomics.com. I mean, it's not as popular, but it works just as well. I mean, I was using PayPal for recurring purchases before Patreon even existed. So it's not like this is a new service they have. It needs a code of pain. Did you were like, how do we make money? And one of the things we were like, oh, we can make recurring payments on PayPal. I guess we can try that. But it doesn't have that friendly face painted on it. It's not a creators helping creators thing. Maybe that's a necessary evil. Then maybe some of these people need their hug box in order to get them on board, which I find really odd. But it just makes me mad to hear from Taryn all the time because she's talking about what a great hug box community and I'm like, I have yet to receive a single hug from you, Patreon. Some hug box. Yeah, what the fuck? I want to talk about the Dick Show Patreon because I don't know whether who would agree on where this would stand in virtue signaling because the reason his Patreon is gigantic is because he's riding off of the backlash from Maddox. Like if Maddox wasn't doing things against Dick and giving him reasons to feel like the victim, people would not be pledging to Dick as much. I'm sure the biggest... It's interesting that you bring this up just because I just finished the biggest problem listening to it three days ago because Digi told me to get off my ass and listen to it. So I finally did. So I've actually been interested because it just ends. The podcast just kind of ends. I'm like, what the fuck? So I've been starting to dig in. Like what the fuck happened? And then I saw Dick's Patreon. I'm like, holy fuck, the man's loaded. Yeah, the basic idea is like Maddox didn't say anything and Dick did. So everyone went over to Dick's show and Dick said all the gossip and stuff. And then recently Maddox has filed a lawsuit against Dick for damages and stuff. And it's a big lawsuit. And Dick's Patreon has blown up considerably since then because he's running against you now. Of course, because he's, you know... I saw he was at like 20k before. Is it like that? He's at almost 23k right now. Holy shit. And yeah, every time Maddox lashes out against him and he's done something in some really stupid and baffling ways before. True, very true. So I get it. Like I get why Dick looks like the good guy. I mean, I don't even disagree with that. Maddox was a big asshole. But yeah, like every time Maddox takes any action against Dick, it's like we gotta, it's a fucking rush to support Dick because fuck Maddox. And he's hugely benefited off of it. To be fair, I'm sure the biggest Dick sucker in the world, Digi Bro, would say that like Dick has like capitalized on the opportunity and turned that gossip into a comedy show. Yeah. And like that's his real source of, you know, stuff. Yeah, I don't know. Tomato, tomato, tomato. But I think we can agree the foundation here is a sort of virtue signaling. I'm sure that I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I think it is. Yeah, I think Dick, I just, yeah, Dick did a really good job. Dick did a really good job of painting himself as the good guy in that conflict. And it paid off. I don't, yeah, you know. Virtue signaling pays guys once again. Good for him, good for him, I suppose. Like he really did monetize being a victim. And in some times that's appropriate. Like if you were, you know, yeah, you know, you know. Like if you sue someone who beat you up, that's reasonable. Yeah, go on, go on. No, no, no, that's fine. Moving on, if that's what we had to say about that. I feel like we've pretty much run of gamut here. I think we've done a lot of good stuff on this topic. And I'm pretty, pretty spent on this topic. I just want to say that I think this discussion has really proved that all of us are just really just, we have a really good nuance and understanding of this topic. We've elevated the discussion much higher than anybody else has. So if you really want to, if you want to enable more amazing discussions like this, please go to our Patreon and give us money. Yeah, because we're good people. Patreon.com slash the procrastinators, every night. And we believe in whatever social issues you do. Absolutely. Pay us enough to believe whatever you want. Please, I'm with you. If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe whatever you say. That's from Ghostbusters, that's Winston. Is that the new Ghostbusters or the old Ghostbusters? No, no, that's the old one. Winston, the 19th. Yeah, yeah, he answers the ad. He answers the ad and the receptionist is like, do you believe in the paranormal experiences, life after death, the Loch Ness monster and UFOs? And he's like, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe whatever you say, because he's an opportunist. But he's also got a heart of gold. That was Winston, not women. Jesus. Okay, let's, I mean, I got some questions here. If we're all set, I can pull up some of these questions. I'm okay to do that. Okay, here's a point of order question. At the one true Henry asks, okay, why does your logo say TPC, but the podcast is PCP? Wouldn't it be TPCP? If you are the procrastinators, then it should be the procrastinators podcast. Justify yourself. Okay, okay, I'm gonna, I'll go on record. I think the logo probably should read PCP rather than TPC. But the reason it says TPC is because it stands for the procrastinators, which is the name of our organization, whereas procrastinators podcast is the name of the show. Indeed. I like TPC just because it means that if we, if we, if we want to end the podcast and make a different show, we can. That, yeah, that's true. That's true, that's true. There are many shows under the subset, under the heading of TPC, of the procrastinators. Let's be honest, just to be like, we've talked a few times about Munchy rebranding all this, because this was all cobbled together without any sort of like logical thought at all. We just kind of like squeezed our cheeks together and shit this out. And that's the graphic design of the procrastinators in general. Wait, if you squeeze your cheeks together and then shit it out, you're gonna get shit all over your cheeks. Just, yeah, and that's why we're such a fucking mess. That's why we're a fucking mess. And that explains where the aesthetic is. Shit everywhere. All over the place. In places it shouldn't be. My metaphor was apt to get out from my case. Jesus. Yeah, it was even more apt than you know, than you know. It's shit everywhere except on the procrastinators Redbubble merch shop, where you can get all the cool, not shit designs right now. Indeed. So that's that. That's that under the, under the, swept under the rug. What else we got? Backward vlogs. Here's one. I don't know if this might be a quick one, but at StumbleReal asks, any of you watch or listen to Harmentown, do you, any of you guys watch that show? I listen to like one episode. I kind of always meant to listen to it, but I haven't, so no. Also, StumbleReal is the guy who discovered the origin of the PCP guy. That's right. That's StumbleReal. The now dead PCP guy, rest in peace. And long last. It's forever in our hearts. And here's one more question from the pity, from the pity section here on Twitter. AtzakTM underscore asks, wait, oh, sorry, that was the wrong person. Get fucked, Zach. It was actually at centerpoint360 asks, what's your favorite thing to do while sick? That's an important question, because you're always looking for something to do while sick. Any tips here would be very much appreciated. Sleep. Yeah, sleep. Yeah, sleep. And just do it in my own film. Roll around in my vomit and my shit and just. My favorite thing to do is to have like a thing of like, just playing crackers and a glass of water and sit and watch a show, a marathon show on a big old TV. Marathoning anime is what I do. I don't know if this counts. My favorite thing to do while sick is to skip work. Any excuse I have to go to work is a 10 out of 10 in my book. I'll depend on how sick I am. Like if I'm super sick and I can't do much like in super high here or whatever, I didn't sleep because that's the only thing I can do. And it makes time pass. And hopefully that means when I wake up I'll feel better. But if it's like the kind of sick that I can still get out of bed and do stuff, then usually just like maybe play games on phone or watch videos or listen to something. Something mild. Yeah, I mean, I mean, everything I do is just fucking sitting around on YouTube or just drawing or whatever. So I just, I do all the same thing. Nothing changes. Nothing changes when I'm incapacitated. Nothing changes between Ben being alive and dead. It's basically the same situation. Pretty much. Same difference. Should we have some Patreon questions? Absolutely. And I've got one right here. There's two questions related to me. So I want to ask, are we going to see Mage at Radcon 3 or the Radcon-ing? Where is it going to happen? Do you guys know? In America somewhere. That's a safe to assume, I think. So no. No, no Mage. There you go. Maybe if we kick started the shit out of it, we could fly you out. I mean, at one point, at one point we were we were considering like me and Mage flying together. So it wouldn't be like scary. But it's, we don't know anything about Radcon 3 yet. So Radcon 3 barely even exists. Yeah, if it's going to happen during the summer. So long. If it's going to happen during the summer, then it's going to be a strict no for me because I have obligations during the summer. But it's going to happen at any other time than we'll see. We'll have to discuss it. I'd really like it. I'd really like it if Mage would be here. We don't have Digi House anymore. So that's really been the big issue. I think if Digi still had his house, we all would have hung out again by now probably. Possibly. Just wanted to get out of that house though. I want to expand. She's just come to like UK and have an adventure in London. But that's so much more expensive for everyone, you know, combined. I know, but like you'll experience England. One day we'll do the the Mage and Chaos movie. You have a little bit of female privilege, but don't push your luck, all right? I don't know, maybe if we get, you know, maybe if the PCP keeps growing and we make, you know, we start, we have more money to throw around, maybe we could make Radcon 4 in fucking London. Patreon.com slash The Procrastinators. Hey, here's a question. One more question for me. Just quickly. Can Mage adopt me? Everyone is my children. So there you go. Okay, go ahead. There you go. Okay. Ben, here's one for you. DeltaCullis asks, favorite vape juice? What's the good shit, Ben? Well, I've been, I've been on a kick for menthol flavors. I think watermelon, I, okay, I buy on dirtcheapjuice.com most of the time, even though they're not that- Is that true? Is that real? Of course you would. Is that actually what it's called? Dirt cheap juice or dirt cheap, they're not actually a good deal. Like, but they keep sending me, every time I buy from them, they send me a little coupon for $1 off my next order. And even though that doesn't make it cheaper than the competition, I have to spend that free, that dirt cheap dollar, or else it's a waste. So I'm fucking trapped. They got you good, man. I got watermelon ice, blue ice. I like fruit flavors with a menthol kick. I like vanilla ice, play a lot of, do a lot of that shit. Okay, okay. Now my nickname in the Patreon lounge is Mom. So that was the right nickname, I think. No, it was Nom for the Halloween. Okay, so I just- You obviously got the official nom, though. I see. Okay, here we go. Here's another question from OneSpar. And this is relevant because this is like basically our Christmas episode because this will be, actually this will be, there will be one, this will be out, and then next week there will be another one and then Christmas will be like out a couple of days after that one. But we're in the season anyway. So OneSpar asks, what do you guys want most for Christmas this year? What are you hoping that Santa will bring you? I want to feel happy. You can't- Santa only gives gifts to good little boys, Hippo. So you're out of the running for that one. I'm a good little boy. Tell me who to kill, and like I'll kill the other side. I'll kill somebody. I gotta kill somebody to get my points. I know what I want for Christmas. What's that? Undertale 2. Yes, made by Hideo Kojima, aka Death Stranding. I can't wait. I think this might have been edited. This is as real. I don't know if this was real or not, but I did see a screencap of Hideo Kojima tweeting, I am making Undertale 2. Probably a lie, probably a lie, but God, I want to believe you. I can't wait to see Gell-Mildale Toro reprise his role as Santa. It's going to be fucking great. That little troll of a man. Yeah, oh, fantastic. Tom, what do you want for Christmas? Oh my God. I don't have a meme answer, so I just want to fucking switch. I want to buy Mario Odyssey, goddammit. Can't blame you, dude. I cannot blame you. It's fucking good. Dude, they just announced Bayonetta 3. I know for the switch. The hits keep coming. God damn. Fuck. Yeah, that and 10 billion subscribers so I can stop working my job. That'd be nice. We all want that. Mage, what do you want for Christmas? I don't have a meme answer either. I have a bit of a dilemma. I do want the switch as well, but there aren't any currently games that I want on it, but there will be. I know that there's a Shin Megami Tensei game coming out. Yeah, that's coming. And there's definitely going to be a Pokemon game on it, so. No doubt. Me getting a switch at some point in my life is probably going to be inevitable. Isn't Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon coming out on the switch? Or is it already available? Okay. Yeah, that's out. Yeah, I have a 3DS, so I could get it if I wanted to, but I'm not particularly inclined to get it because I'm saving up some money. And the other thing I want is I want to play Persona 5 really, really bad, but the problem is I don't have a PS4 nor a TV to look it onto. Is that on Vita 2, isn't it? No, no, it's not, sadly. No? Okay, just dust off your old Vita. I have a Vita. Like, I've got it for really cheap as well. Wait, you do? Yeah, I have a PS Vita. I got it for really cheap for my sister's, well, currently husband. It's really cheap. And I got a Digimon game on it. That was fun. Hey, apparently it is available for the Vita, but it's got stutters and it doesn't run great. Wait, this is live. No, no, I love Vita. Are you sure? Okay, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Persona 5. I am not. You know what? Okay, this is my mission life. I'm going to find out right now. Hang on. Okay, because there's definitely a Persona 4 Golden on PS Vita, which I'm going to get for Christmas from my parents. Oh, it's available on PS3? That's something. I don't own it though. That has stutters, I've heard though. Okay, that's probably what it is. Okay, well, that's fucked. Yeah, so like, if I want Persona 5, I'd have to get like a PS4 and a TV. Or, so, I'm not going to get any of them, but in a perfect world, I would get everything. Dreams are made to not be fulfilled. That's what I believe. It's good to dream. That's what my dream is. It's a chance to keep men going and keep them unsatisfied. Indeed. My dream is to never have my dream fulfilled. That's a pretty good dream, I think, because if you do, then you'll just languish. Wait, that's not true. Life should be about achieving goals and then setting new goals. So never mind. Yeah, ignore that. Anything else, Gib? Is there anything else you want? I was trying to think, and it's really just, I want to get all of my affairs, like my currently outstanding affairs in order by the time, the new year party and all that. Like, all right, clean slate, let's do this. Let's do, like, it'll help my mind be clear so that I don't have to think, oh, I got to do that. That's a great goal. Yeah, I totally feel you, because I just finished that animation and now if I can get that strike off of that second part of the Y3D anime fails, all the projects I started this year will be done and it'll feel great. So I have, like, a two-week window to make that work. I'm hoping. I'm hoping I can be good. Even though it doesn't really make any difference, because it's just the next day, but it's new year, it's a very mental, like, block when old year stuff is still being done. It's become a cultural thing and so you're affected by it naturally. And I guess what I want for Christmas, I want a microwave. I would like a microwave for Christmas. I don't own a microwave. I do not have a microwave. Yep, yep, I don't own one. I feel like, the wooden having a microwave make it easier to start eating things that aren't fucking cans of kidney beans. We just want to heat up those kidney beans. Is that what this is all about? Frankly, the real reason is I just want to be able to cook oats much more easily than I do right now. That's the real thing I want. Dude, you know what? I have, when I have like oatmeal and stuff, we have a water dispenser and it dispenses hot water. So it's like instant, like literally like you pour the hot water in with the oats and it's instantly done. It's the most magical thing of all time. That's pretty good though. I'm not sure that actually works with like the steel cut oats that I've got because like you have to, like they're pretty tough and I think the microwave process like softens them or something. Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I don't know. But in any case, I need some solution. While on the hot water. Well, I'm going to work on that. That's my goal, to have better oats. Really what I want for Christmas is oats. I want those sweet, sweet oats. What a weird utilitarian answer. I got to get my fucking gains, dude. Okay, here we go. Another question. Snow zillofenacan, that's mazillofenacan, what's up dude? Any plans on the PCP having more guest appearances or guest interviews with content creators you enjoy? I've been thinking about this a little bit. Haven't actually. Haven't had any ideas for that lately. I want to get Andrew Hussie on the Undertale one. Oh my god. It'll be our Undertale 2 podcast. Our best game ever, number two. When I get Undertale 2 for Christmas and then release it on Steam and make a Undertale game. I actually, there is a guy who I've been, this has been like a pet project of mine for a long time that I haven't really talked about that much but I want to interview Rossider from Twin Perfect because he fascinates me. Which one's he? He's like the main guy with glasses and blonde hair with no beard. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the main dude. I want to know. What fascinates you about him? Like, because I've watched those Twin Perfect Silent Hill videos at your behest. Good, good. It's the uniquely adversarial attitude of his videos. I find very compelling and the incredible meticulous detail both in the research of the videos as well as the editing of the videos is definitely like, has been an influence on me. And it's just very interesting especially the kind of languishing that the channel has done. That like, I'm just wondering why he hasn't like dedicated himself more to producing more content in a more expedient manner. I just want to know what makes the man tick and know what the deals. Because it's one of my favorite channels on all of YouTube that releases content very irregularly. I don't know. They're a real enigma to me. I want to know them more. You're going to have to lick me this channel because I have no idea who you're talking about. I will, I will. Twin Perfect. YouTube search, YouTube search, The Real Silent Hill Experience. There's a playlist. Just start watching it. It is like, it is like an 18 or 17 episode long gauntlet of like some gigantic videos. It kind of, it kind of falls apart at the end, but whatever. Nah, nah. Yeah, it does. There's like a podcast in there. Well, okay, that, yeah. Is it like a let's play or is it like? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's like a long analytical thing. Okay. It's old YouTube. The Merits of Silent Hill 2. It basically, it's this whole Silent Hill franchise. The whole series, yeah. It just discuss it in great detail. And I was pretty interested by even despite that I've never played Silent Hill before. Watching those is what maybe you want to play Silent Hill and then I did. So they're real good. They're real good. In any case, so that's like an idea I've had. And I actually messaged Rosseter once before but he just didn't reply. But now that I am, now that I've officially passed Twin Perfect in subscribers, perhaps now he'll pay attention to me and give a shit about me. We'll see. We'll see. I'll pay attention to you when you're the senpai. Yeah, exactly. The Kohai has become the senpai. I just realized I did encourage the people that I asked and answered the questions too so quickly. Oh, okay. The person who asked if I was going to be in Radclan was Dexter from Patreon Lounge and Ken Majodakmi person was Squid Miku from Patreon Lounge. Excellent. I, okay, I think that's going to do it. I'm not seeing any other questions here. Okay. Not about me. Okay. Back, what was each of your best parts of 2017, both professionally and personally? Oh, that's a good question. That is a good question. Buy a one spar on Patreon Lounge. Let's go first. Yeah. I think for mine it was following after it was Juno's Dark Demon Blood Month, bro, and then Igmovo Tuidich. That was like, that was a lot of videos and that was really stressful, but it was cool that I did it. Some stressful shit. And some of those Dark Demon Blood Month videos are really good still. Damn right they are. And the thumbnail to the first one for Demon's Souls is still like one of my favorite thumbnails of all time. A demon, an arrow to the demon. Oh, it's excellent. This has been a huge year for me, obviously. Mia Mafva was crazy, was huge, was big, but actually the channel doubled in size of course with the Galco video beforehand, where I finally broke. Like it was funny. All these barriers kind of broke all at the same time around May of this year. We're like, I had never, I remember. Like I had been saying on Twitter and stuff, I'm so close to 17,000 subscribers, the old goal that TBAP never reached. I want to break that, that's my goal. And then I did and then immediately Galco came out. And over the next couple of days and weeks, my channel more than doubled in size, like 40,000. And then, yeah, fuck. And then just like Mia Mafva was already happening because I had already planned it before Galco came out. And that was big. That made people aware of my channel as like a thing that was gonna update regularly. And now I've just learned from those experiences and I made a couple of videos and now I'm doing We Agua and things have never been better in terms of the online stuff. Yeah, it's real great, it's real great. Oh, also we all started the PCP Patreon this year and that was definitely good. God, that was only this year. That was only this year. That was only this year. It was like March or something. Yeah. Shit. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Well, I mean, I finished Champion Chapter One finally, which was great. I finished Nuzlocke Conquest, which was a relief. Oh, yeah. I was so glad when that was over. Yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Yeah, I think my favorite like professional thing that I did this year was just learning 3D. Like I've told myself, I wanted to learn through, I was gonna make a video about this actually today just talking about it because I just released the animation. But I've wanted to do 3D since 2006 and I always told myself I was too dumb to do it and this year I finally nut it up and I went from knowing nothing about it to making an animation in 11 months. So, way to go dude. That was cool. I really love your little, the little gifts or like rotations of like little models you make. Oh, Tom, the thing, the animation went up today, right? It was a couple of days ago, actually. Okay, I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, so. I got a good look. I thought it was pretty impressed, though I wanted to watch it again because I could only quickly watch it at the time. Yeah, it's not, I mean, there's room for improvement, but in terms of just like getting it out and getting it done. It looked pretty smooth. I noticed that hip sway, I noticed that hip sway going on. Which channel was it on? It's on my main channel, it's on its own all over. It's funny you say that hip sway is good because I had a guy who, I woke up to this guy who looked like a huge essay comment saying he was quote, a professional animator and did a shot by shot breakdown of how terrible it was. Well, that's kind of a compliment, I suppose, in its own way. You say, fuck, it's his comment, I'm supposed to fuck you. I thought you were good at art. What is this? Dude, what the fuck? It's really, I saw that comment as well. It's basically, he copied it from a discord where he was discussing it among people. He pasted it, but he didn't take out like the colloquial things he was saying to his friends. In the third person is terrible. I called him on it and he's like, yeah, that's exactly what happened. And then he messaged me on Twitter and he's like, I'm sorry, I'm like, yeah, fuck you. Well, okay, that's nice. Some of the criticisms he had was, you know, they were all right. There was tons of good ideas in there for improving. Sandwich between you're a fucking retard. So that was fun. My favorite, like professional thing was a 3D. My favorite personal thing this year was definitely Rad Country watching Mad Bull with everybody. Oh, I forgot. Rad Country was this year, guys. Remember that? I remember now. Yeah, it was fucking January. Jesus, wheeze. Yeah, I miss those days soon. For me, personally, I think I mentioned that in the last podcast when I got my health in order, like at the end of May or so, that was like the best thing. That's a huge deal. Majors out there grind in random Pokémon with their whole team either dead or at low HP. So she finally visited Nurse Joy and everything's in top shape once again. Yes, I visited the Pokémon Center finally. Professionally, I don't know, like I feel like it all fell into place. That's a big views this year. You had like two videos hit a million views this year. Oh yeah, yes, yes I have. That's insane. I had to turn off comments on one of the videos because it was driving me insane. What were they doing? What were they saying smack about? It's like the same comments every day I wake up to the same exact comments and I have to reply with the exact same thing. I know I don't have to, but I just had to. I've stopped, I get a ton of comments on the Christian video to this day, but I haven't replied to one in a long time. I liked that comment that was like, man, this video is great. Too bad about the autists that you have to look at and experience. Those are my favorites. He loves those fucking autists. He's watching a Christian video. He loves autistic people. Fuck that guy. Someone commented like a couple days ago and said I watch this video every two weeks and I almost commented thanks for the clicks or thanks for the views, thanks for the watch time. That's nice. I feel like that's my one of my friends. Because when people legitimately like it, I want to tell them, thanks, I'm glad you enjoy this, but there's just so many. There's so many. When I see comments like that, the Kingdom Hearts video was out this year and that was also great, but whenever I get mean comments on anything or rather when I get a really nice comment that I'd like to be like, oh, thanks, dude, or anything like that, I generally suppress the urge because I don't want the people leaving mean comments to know that I'm reading their comments and only replying to the nice ones. I don't want to give them that power. Yeah, yeah, no, I would never reply to a shitty comment or a comment criticizing me. Because it's like, yeah, yeah, we don't need to... Can't give them what they want. We don't need to spare those any attention. No, my favorite thing to do with mean comments is to reply nicely because they don't know what to do after that. That's always fun. Because if they respond, they're just like, if they do, they are in fact the fool. I usually don't reply by making their attitude or make fun of them. I don't know, it really depends on the comment. Sometimes I don't reply at all if it's just not worth my time, but sometimes maybe if I feel like I have something to say, I say it, but usually I don't take it seriously. If someone just comments in a way that's like, they don't like me, then I just don't respond because like, well, whatever. But if it's someone who's criticizing or saying something that's wrong or making some kind of claim that's wrong, then I'll reply and be like, listen, let me set the record straight on this because I don't want people reading this comment and believing it. I'm always tempted to reply to those sorts of things, but generally I find myself replying more to... I mean, this is the rarest breed, but someone making a substantive, sincere criticism of any point or whatever, those I will reply to sometimes. I want to say quickly, if people post super angry or something like comments like that, one of my favorite things to reply with is just LOL that that's all. I don't want to do that because I feel like that gives them what they want. They got your attention. They never reply to it though. Like, I haven't had a person reply to LOL. Well, fair enough. If it works for you then, but Godspeed. I don't always, but sometimes they do when it works. Well, any more questions? I think that's about it. I think we've tapped out. Did Gibb have something to say, I feel like he had? It was just about a comment thing, but I don't know. The moment feels like it's passed. Oh, I'm sorry. You can say it. It's okay. I want to hear it, Gibb. I want to hear that shit. Tell me about the comment. Oh, okay. Who are you? Yeah. I had a comment recently on my Ape Escape Part 3 video saying it was the worst one I ever made. The worst video ever? I felt terrible. Yeah, I saw that. I wanted to kill him. Yeah, but... Has he even seen a GRPJ? I mean, geez. I love GRPJ. Honestly, I wish you would make more GRPJs. Yeah, me too. Me too. Anyway, there was two people who asked that. Said that. And I was like, oh, I'm going to respond. Because I just really want to know why is it the worst one? And I felt better just asking him, so what didn't you like about it? And then he replied with more specifics. And I was like, okay. That actually makes me feel better knowing precisely what was wrong. Yeah, because it's no longer an ephemeral thing of like, you're terrible. Now it's like, okay, he's based on specific criticisms. These can be changed, or you know. I can totally relate. One of the comments I got on the video that I disabled the comments on, like it's not necessarily a bad comment. It's not the reason I disabled comments. It's just like, they commented to someone like, oh, well, where the fuck did that enemy go? And I'm like, what's the problem with it? And they were like, oh, in that specific point, his head seems a bit too big. And I was like, yeah, that's a fair point. You could have just started with that. And they're like, I'm sorry about being too direct. And I was like, the problem was that you weren't direct enough. Right, exactly. Yeah, it's just like the commenter atmosphere. You know, like, we got to change the commenter culture, guys. Make it look beautiful. It's really just that people think that they're not going to have to respond to a reply about it. So they don't feel the need to make it clear the first time. And I just throwing it out there. We all love a little bit of shit posting now and again. Yeah, well, all right, I guess that's it, everybody. I think we're concluded. So let's see, what do we got here? Thanks for the question. Send on the Twitter using hashtag askpcp. We record on Saturdays, around noon, Easter standard time. So watch out for that shit. Oh yeah, we're recording earlier. We're recording earlier now, in case you might be confused. We've got the, oh yes, of course, we got the fan patron chat. If you subscribe to our Patreon, add patreon.com slash the procrastinators. Get access to that where we read generally just more questions. That's where I read the questions from. Indeed, indeed. That's where the good shit is, everybody. So pledge to the Patreon at any amount. Actually, it has to be a minimum of $1, technically, I believe. And you'll get access to the Patreon, the Patreon Discord, that is. And you can talk to us. And we hang out and we all have fun times. And it's good. Now pledge $5, of course. And you get access to our bonus episodes. There are nine of which out right now. Last one was Inuyasha versus Charlie Brown. And, oh wait, there was a preview of it at the beginning of this episode? No, last episode. Last episode. Last episode. That's right. That's right. So that's some good shit. You can hear a preview last episode. And there's more good things coming. And we've also got the podcast here available on iTunes and Google Play, at least for now, even though we seem to be getting shit for downloads on those. So I got a, I got a, everybody asked for it. And then I checked the Google Play downloads yesterday. Yeah. It's like three. Yeah, exactly. Fuck them. I don't know what the fuck you people are talking about. Making me work to the bone. Maybe iTunes is more. I don't know. Maybe iTunes is more. We agonized over the iTunes things for like a year. It was a lot of work. And it still isn't. It's more work than it should be getting them up. And the dumb thing is, iTunes doesn't track your downloads. So I got to dig in the blue hose to find out downloads for iTunes, which is moronic. Regrettable. I found, no, the reason I found out is that iTunes, like Apple has one guy in charge of all of podcasts. What the fuck? Because they don't make any money off of it. They don't give a fuck. So one guy is in charge of the entire thing. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. Okay. Well, now we know. That's why capitalism works, baby. If they made money, then people would care about it. No, capitalism makes me work. I got to do extra shit now because these motherfuckers. We'll have to throw you an extra tuppence or two. Tuppence? A-pittence? A-pittence. I think that, did I miss anything? Oh, redbubble.com slash people slash the procrastinators. We got shirts and stuff. People go buy them. They are fun. They are good. And they are. The money supports the show. So there you go. And enjoy some sweet loot. Oh, it's a great Christmas gift, everybody. Go to redbubble.com slash people slash the procrastinators. And buy in all your loved ones procrastinators merch. You will not regret it. Put a sticker of Ben St. in your fucking fridge to steal all your food. Put a sticker of, you know, whatever you want. Remember, guys, don't procrastinate on the holidays. Procrastinators the holidays. Yeah. Nice. If you buy the stickers, especially with me and Tom, like with me pointing at something, like please send me, like tweet at me where you apply those stickers. I want to see what you're just pointing at. Yes, please mention both of us and be sure to buy a stack of them. So all of the important things in your life, you can have Mej pointing it to pressure you into getting it done. Do you need to go to the gym? Put this Mej point to your gym membership. Get your ass to the gyms. You know what we should do? We should make another version of that sticker that has like a speech bubble over Mej's head. So you can write in like a note so that she can point at the thing and it could be like, that's not a bad idea. They could all have a speech bubble. Not a bad idea. Then we could, they could be actually useful notes. People who buy a sheet of them. Add some weird utilitarianism to them. Exactly. Oh, I like this. Oh, I like this. All right. Oh, dude, what if we had a color-coded set of nine markers each, like with the color of our like avatar thing? Oh, I like that shit. There's maybe a lot of sheets of purple. I'm not gonna mind. Mej is a separate pack. That's just like 20 different shades of purple. I want mine to be black, not gray. I want mine to be black. Okay, just like your race. All right, well, I guess that's it, everybody. Go buy things, Patreon. Well, we are brothers, Nate, after all you remember. Indeed, indeed. Well, you know, soul brothers, not blood brothers. Exactly, yeah, that's what I was saying. Right, we are in fact soul men. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. I guess that's gonna do it. Thanks for listening to this bullshit meandering ending here. And we'll see you next fucking time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.