Is cancel culture canceled?

From Aziz Ansari to Adam22, especially since the proliferation of the internet and social media, there’s no shortage of people who have gotten canceled. But what is the state of cancel culture today? We’re joined by leading experts in the cancellation field, Cancel Me, Daddy hosts Katelyn Burns and Christine Grimaldi, to look back at some of the biggest moments in cancel culture, its presence in society now, and ask if we can use cancellations to actually create change. Our guests are Katelyn Burns and Christine Grimaldi, hosts of Cancel Me, Daddy. For more conversations like this, check them out here or wherever you listen to podcasts! Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Broderick?

  Quick note before we start, a bit of news unfolding during the recording this episode, took it in directions we were not exactly expecting. We will get into that in a bit, but just, you know, don't like listen and then get grumpy that we're not giving it the full attention it deserves. We were literally recording as some news was breaking. It happens.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Don't leave a comment mid-listening to the episode. You can leave your comment after.

• 0:31Ryan Broderick?

  Just in general, yeah, you should, you should listen to the whole thing and then you get the privilege of being a commentator.

• 0:38Ryan Broderick?

  It's nice to meet you both.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 0:40Ryan Broderick?

  I want to kick things off with a simple question. I think you guys would be experts in answering, which is if being canceled actually existed, like if it was real, who would you like to see genuinely canceled? And bonus points for the pettier answer, I would say. Like, let's, let's go really petty.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Oh, Jesus. Oh, I'm gonna go really cliche and say Donald Trump, honestly.

• 1:07Ryan Broderick?

  That would be great, wouldn't it? You know?

• 1:09Speaker 02

  This is a cathartic answer, isn't it?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Although I'd argue that in a way, he already has been canceled, not in the fact that he's faced consequences or that he has no power, but in the fact that he like has prompted the largest public protests in the country's history.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were having a whole discussion about whether public outrage could count as cancellation. Like, is that enough of a consequence?

• 1:53Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I guess like, maybe this is important to set up now. Like, what is your academic definition of cancellation?

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Oh, God. Um, I would say a reduction in public reputation based on

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Something about you that you either did or said.

• 2:16Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  And I think that is the truest definition of it. I think it's been twisted in a lot of ways. For your listeners who don't know, our show very much examines kids with culture from the perspective of the left.

• 2:34Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, yeah, let me intro you here. So today, this is an episode of Panic World. I should introduce the show. This is Panic World. My name is Ryan Broderick. Sometimes you'll listen to our producer Grant pop in from time to time. He has not been canceled yet, but he lives in, so it's only a matter of time.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Don't tell people where I live, Ryan.

• 2:53Ryan Broderick?

  And you can bleep it if you want, but like, it's a good joke. I'd keep it in. And with us today are the co-hosts of Cancel Me Daddy, experts on the cancel culture age. Caitlin Burns, Christine Grimaldi, welcome to the show. How are you feeling about the state of cancel culture broadly? Do you feel like it's working?

• 3:17Ryan Broderick?

  So yeah, we have some nice audience overlap between our two shows from what we can see. But for our listeners who don't know, can you tell them a bit about your show?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  You know, when we first started, we very much mocked everything cancel culture related.

• 3:30Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  And then we started doing shows where it was more nuanced. So I don't know if any of you remember the attack helicopter story controversy, where there was a trans author who was like very newly out as a trans person. They wrote the story about identifying as an attack helicopter as a representation of gender. And a lot of trans people online thought it was like a shitpost or like making fun of trans people. But in actuality, it was actually this intellectually brilliant treatise on how capitalism and the military industrial complex exploits marginalized bodies.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  So we had Emily St. James on, who is a former culture writer at Vox, one of my favorite people, actually.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  And we have this really great episode about. This person was genuinely canceled for it. Nobody knows who she is now because she's not a public figure. She wasn't even back then, but according to Emily, she like stopped transitioning because of the public backlash to that. So I think that was a turning point for me where I was like, yeah, actually like cancel culture is a thing. It's just not what everybody is making it out to be, in our opinion.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like the first person I thought of when we were talking about this episode was Matt Lauer.

• 4:59Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, sure.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Because he is just living with his bajillion T dollars that he got for sexually harassing and assaulting women at NBC News. And every once in a while, he'll pop up and complain about how he's canceled and he can't get a job. He's living with a bajillion T dollars in the Hamptons. He's fine. And honestly, if he really wanted to get a job, he probably could because look at the Cuomo brothers. Like they're doing just fine.

• 5:28Ryan Broderick?

  Chris does not seem to want to go away, which I think,

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:33Ryan Broderick?

  I think is sort of, I mean, I guess like to set this up for the today's episode, it does feel like we are very much in a second, if not third era of this stuff. Where, you know, right as we're recording it, Aziz Ansari has a new movie out that he's been canceled a second time. Like, like he's amid a second cancellation for performing in Saudi Arabia. And he's still trying to promote this movie that is bombing. And so it is interesting. I've always sort of thought of cancellation as something, hear me out, something similar to doxing in the same sense that it is effectively like using someone's data trail to, to attack them.

• 6:16Ryan Broderick?

  And I'm not saying if it's right or wrong. What I'm saying is like, it is a, it is a unique thing of the internet age to be able to go back through someone's old posts or someone's old history or use social media to expose their own behavior and create some sort of like populist mass movement against them, which, you know, would have taken years, if not centuries, you know, before the internet to accomplish, along with more traditional forms of journalism, traditional forms of, of, you know, legal frameworks. We talked about this in an episode about the, the post me too era, the sort of idea of like, how do you? Actually use this stuff to to create change.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  You know, Kate, I thought of you the other day because of the guy who's the oyster man who's

• 7:01Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, I was writing about this yesterday, actually, yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, I think those those tweets or posts or Reddit or whatever.

• 7:09Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's relevant, but to your point, you know, it's a digital trail that probably would have taken months, years, whatever to uncover. And how is it being used? Is it being used for accountability? Is it being used to shame him? You know, what do you owe the public when it's a former version of yourself, but also like, there are really some horrific things that he said? So how do you also show that you are not that person anymore? Or maybe you are? I don't know.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  You haven't seen the news this morning, have you?

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Oh, well, fuck me, Kate. What did you do now?

• 7:45Ryan Broderick?

  You're talking about the Nazi tattoo? I was looking into this. I cannot find any evidence that that exists.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  See, this is what happens when I try to give like a nuanced view on cancel culture. There's a fucking Nazi tattoo.

• 7:57Ryan Broderick?

  Let's table this for now, but I have to do, yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  But no, actually, I think this is a good example, right? Because this is all my Blue Sky timeline is talking about this morning. And I I've been busy. I've been, you know, editing a previous episode. I haven't had my eye so closely on the news, and yet I have made a statement about Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo, quote unquote. And this is sort of how cancellation in the modern age will work. I've found a lot is misinformation gets out in front of verification, right? It's the old adage of lies will get around the world before the truth gets puts on its pants. I think that's actually the

• 8:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  the phrase. And this is commonplace in a lot of, quote unquote, online cancellations that you see, particularly when a lefty figure is involved, right? We saw it with

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Dylan Mulvaney, right? The right, the right wing freak out about Dylan Mulvaney, where they claimed that Bud Light put out like thousands of cans with her face on it. And in actuality, it was just one can that they made special made for a promotion on Instagram. It just happens over and over and over again. And this is an example of, you know, people on the left not really verifying, you know, it could be that he has one, right?

• 9:27Ryan Broderick?

  Could be. He's a Marine from Maine. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, be super shocked.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  It's an interesting conversation to have because we actually don't know how it's going to work out.

• 9:38Ryan Broderick?

  I do think it dovetails really nicely into like, one of my favorite things I've ever read about cancel culture, particularly on the left. And it was written about Tumblr in 2017, kind of the, the er fertile, the fertile crescent of cancel culture in the modern age. And it was from a username Rootsworks, who wrote, I'll paraphrase it because it's kind of long. But basically, they tell the story about how they used to work at a local homeless community center and they would clean the bathrooms. And every night, they'd clean it and then they'd come back and it was completely trashed. And they couldn't understand why the people at the community center would trash the bathrooms of all things every single day.

• 10:21Ryan Broderick?

  And they went on to describe this as sort of a metaphor for how they see particularly leftist and socially progressive spaces where it's, whether, you know, it's usually a lot of like teenagers, or used to be teenagers, now they're adults, but that's a lot of the same, my theory is it's the same people. Metaphorically or literally? No, I mean, I believe that a lot of teenagers on Tumblr are now adults who are acting the exact same way on the internet.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Specifically on Blue Sky, yeah.

• 10:48Ryan Broderick?

  Specifically on Blue Sky. But basically, they use this as a metaphor to sort of describe like the bucket of crabs effect you'll see in a lot of spaces with vulnerable communities and powerless people who will attack each other because it's easier and closer and simpler than, and I think a lot of times, especially when you're Up against something like the Trump administration, it is so vast and so impenetrable. And you feel so powerless that it is, I think, a lot easier to cancel somebody for using DoorDash on Blue Sky and ordering a burrito than it is to, you know, go through mountains of pages of Project 2025 to explain who project, uh, Russell Vought. To explain who Russell Vought is. I, I, I, I think it is a useful framework that I've come back to over the years of, of when I come across

• 11:33Ryan Broderick?

  like an influencer who's like being devoured by their own community for doing something. And I'm like, right, okay. Like this makes sense to me.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, there's this element of powerlessness in it. We had a really great, um, episode with Megan Greenwell, who wrote a book about, um, private equity and venture capitalism. And it's like, am I going to order my random piece of crap that I need from Amazon? Am I going to order it from Walmart or Target? Like what's better or worse when we're up against like these really like just giant corporate conglomerates?

• 12:04Ryan Broderick?

  One, one, one last thing here before we set up the actual show today, but my, my sort of big, and you, you talked kind of about like how your thoughts on cancel culture have, have shifted over the years and mine have as well. And, and weirdly enough, I even suggested to Grant for, for my topic today to talk about, but I'll just paraphrase basically like Bean Dad was a moment for me where I just went like, I, I think it was a combination of like, I wasn't living in the US at the time. So I was like consuming US internet culture from outside the country, which is always kind of a weird vibe. I was all, it was also lockdown still largely. It was sort of the end of lockdown or like the second lockdown. And I just remember thinking like, what are we doing here?

• 12:48Ryan Broderick?

  Just for people who don't remember Bean Dad, um, he was a guy who wrote a Twitter thread about forcing his daughter to eat beans. And then he was canceled for child abuse. That's sort of the most concise way I can summarize that story. But I just remember thinking like, if you think of like Justine Sacco as the first large public cancellation, and then you think about the whole story of cancel culture to Bean Dad, I'm just like, this has gotten outrageous. Um, that's not to say all of cancel culture is nonsense. It's just like, it is interesting how these things fragment and fracture and become smaller and more niche over time, you know, in, in any online movement, any online behavior, I think.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Justine Sacco, what a callback.

• 13:29Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, I think she's the first. You could, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I, I, I remember that 24 hour news cycle just being absolutely mad. We're like, no one kind of hadn't any sense of like, what was gonna happen next?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  One thing that we've looked at on the show is that cancellation has always kind of been a thing, although it's taken many forms over time. We had a really fascinating episode with medievalist Eleanor Yanaga about medieval cancellations.

• 13:56Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, that seems like you'd probably die, right?

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Off with your head.

• 13:59Ryan Broderick?

  They'd probably cut your head off?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  It was, it was execution of, uh, execution, exile, or, um, excommunication.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  I almost said, I almost said delay, deny, depose.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Different deposing.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  But one of the, like, most common factors in a quote unquote cancellation is powerful people are getting consequences from people who they deem below them. So if it's a king or a queen who's getting a consequence in the medieval times of one of these three things, it's coming from people beneath them in the social structure, like lords or clergy, or sometimes commoners, although that's very rare back then. And I think what you see is the same thing happening in modern times where it's Barry Weiss at the New York Times, you

• 15:01Speaker 02

  know, editorial, op ed department, opinion department, excuse me, opinion section, where, you know, she's getting pushback from people she deems beneath her.

• 15:13Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  To the point where she quits and pretends that she was fired and, and then uses that. Attention to launch the Free Press. So now we're here where she is editor in chief of CBS News. And you see, you know, Matt Iglesias was online the other day talking about being canceled. And that guy For what? Has never really faced a consequence.

• 15:37Ryan Broderick?

  No, I mean, people think he's an idiot. Yeah, like, nobody likes him, but like, that's not being canceled, I would say.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  His take on the Batman was my last straw. I was really with him.

• 15:48Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that was the one.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Up until he said there wasn't enough detective.

• 15:51Ryan Broderick?

  You know what's funny? I actually fell for Matt Iglesias take years and years ago that has kind of stuck with me where I was like, actually, that's a good point where he wanted to abolish time zones. And just switch the whole world to UTC. And I was like, yeah, all right, let's do that. And that was my first and last interaction with him in a serious way.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  I unfortunately shared an office with him at one point when I was working at Fox.

• 16:13Ryan Broderick?

  I'm so sorry.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  And that was very awkward. And that's a story for another day.

• 16:17Ryan Broderick?

  That room probably smelled crazy. Anyways.

• 16:23Ryan Broderick?

  I think the, the, the way you phrase it, like, using the attention is really interesting because if you sort of think about, you know, as I said, like, if this is the second or the third wave of this stuff, you know, if you think about it as sort of like, you know, era defining, right? We're now so far beyond, you know, the beginnings of this, that it is kind of like factored into how people use the internet. And we were interviewing the Congressman Maxwell Frost a couple of weeks ago, and he talked about how like a major strategy for young Democrats running right now is how do you use the attention and the spotlight for when you're a quote unquote canceled on the right? Like, it's something we're seeing with Graham Plathner right now. Like, they all kind of know what's going to happen.

• 17:03Ryan Broderick?

  It is a very interesting sort of meta wave to this where like, everyone kind of knows if you've been online long enough, it's going to happen. So like, what do you do? And so after the break, we're going to talk about a guy who has been very, very good at using this attention for evil. But first, a word from our sponsors.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  The tiny chair in the corner of the room.

• 17:29Ryan Broderick?

  I was gonna say Target's LGBT brand. What has been canceled? Bud Light. You know, yeah.

• 17:41Ryan Broderick?

  So we've both picked a favorite, a favorite quote unquote, a canceled person, someone that we're both fascinated by. The canceled person that I am most fascinated by is Adam22. Adam22, his real name is Adam Grandmason. He is currently married and sometimes doing porn with his wife Lena the Plug. He is covered in tattoos. You've definitely probably seen his videos. He gets canceled quote unquote like once a week, but let me give you some background. So in 2006, he was a BMX biker who started a website called TheComeUp.com and basically was just like a YouTube aggregation site for like cool bike videos.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Oh, so it was spelled C-O-M-E.

• 18:25Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:26Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't get into porn until later.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah. Good question, actually.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Did you do a fast Google or did you just, or just once?

• 18:34Ryan Broderick?

  I think you figured it was a bike thing, right? Okay. So I first came across Adam22, who's now using that as like his username everywhere, on the Bridge9 message board, which was a message board for Boston hardcore. Not the music, once again, not pornography.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:52Ryan Broderick?

  He was a prolific troll on the Bridge9 message board. That's, that's how I encountered him. And, you know, back there, he was canceled a bunch for allegedly being inappropriate with underage users and, you know, being racist. He was just like the worst guy. In 2011, he finances the launch of a music site he calls No Jumper, which was originally hosted on Tumblr, and it's like a rap blog, basically. Danny Brown is kind of like an early fan of his, the rapper Danny Brown. And in 2015, he decides to expand the No Jumper brand. He turns into a podcast that

• 19:33Ryan Broderick?

  becomes focused on rap. And I show you like any videos of this, but like honestly, it's boring dog shit that doesn't matter. It sucks. But he keeps diversifying what he's doing online. And that's where his girlfriend at the time comes into the story. She was also making content too. Grant, you have, you have a clip of what Lena was up to at this time.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a commercial playing because Ryan won't pay for.

• 20:03Ryan Broderick?

  You should pay for YouTube Premium. I pay for YouTube Premium for me.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  I'm canceling you for workplace.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  What's up guys, it's a love of the plug and today's video is called, "If you think he's a boy, he probably is."

• 20:18Ryan Broderick?

  The point is, is it's very boring. It's like her just like sitting on a bed and just talking about stuff and vlogging. But you know, it's, it's, it's useful because like people realize that she makes porn and then they go and they find the porn. So they aren't just being provocative online. They aren't just sort of like causing problems. They're also very savvy about using the attention that comes after they've pissed everybody off. So, uh, this is from Hot New Hip Hop. They write, "Lena's numbers are currently going way up due to a piece of footage that hasn't yet made it online. Once she hits 1 million followers, she promised to drop a sex tape. There is one more stipulation. The man who will appear with Lena in the tape also has to attain 1 million YouTube subscribers. He happens to be a fairly prominent YouTuber himself. Lena's boyfriend

• 21:02Ryan Broderick?

  and the star of the prospective sex tape goes by Adam22." So that's, that's sort of the world that they're swimming in in 2017. It works. They make a sex tape and this becomes a large part of their brand. The two will create a podcast together where they talk to porn stars and sex workers and then after have sex with those porn stars and sex workers. And he's successful enough that he gets the, you know, Rolling Stone influencer piece written about him. And I'm going to read you a bit just so you get a full sense of, of his whole deal. And they write, "A 6'3", 225-pound shaved head, heavily tattooed, white 33-year-old who loves talking about drugs and threesomes. A professional hustler who's already had several

• 21:46Ryan Broderick?

  lifetimes worth of guises. Graffiti artist, online poker player, drug dealer, high-profile BMX blogger." High-profile feels like it's doing a lot of work there. Um, "Grand Mason finds all of his different sides coalescing brilliantly with No Jumper and insanely popular YouTube channel that's distinguished by two things. Free-wheeling interviews with up-and-coming hip-hop acts and his chronicling of the random dumb shit he does in his free time." And then it makes it clear that Adam is also very romantic. So they write, "Hey, you remember those two girls in the podcast? Yes, sleepily. I so could have had a threesome last night." But I was so freaking geeked out of my mind and didn't feel like trying it. His pals gave him shit, accusing him of wimping out for fear of displeasing his girlfriend's social media celebrity, Lena, AKA Lena the Plug.

• 22:30Ryan Broderick?

  Grant Mason tries to play it off, but he admits, "It's like you want to fuck other girls just to prove to yourself that you have no feelings, but then you kind of want to do have feelings and it's like, aw, fuck."

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 22:42Ryan Broderick?

  What's your vibe check on Adam 22 so far in the story?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Definitely a wordsmith.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  He sounds like the fuck boy that Lena is trying to warn us against in the Safe for Work video.

• 22:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, I would say so. He's kind of like the quintessential like internet degenerate. Like he's been, he's been on every phase of the internet being the exact same level of awful. And would you believe that most of his cancellation problems that we're going to focus on today has to do with allegations around his behavior with women? So the first bit of trouble, real trouble, comes with a harassment accusation. So Grant's going to play you a clip of a friend of Adam 22's here who's going to play a key role in this story.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  Milo Yiannopoulos here today with us on the podcast. I almost can't believe it.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Stop it.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Can we get a sexual orientation check on everybody at this table besides this gay dude across from me?

• 23:35Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. Adam 22 decides to have Milo Yiannopoulos on no jumper.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 23:41Ryan Broderick?

  That's Milo pre-brain tumor. So Adam 22 asks Milo to like basically send a cyber army against, you know, a journalist at this point. They start dogpiling people. This is also the moment where like the bad boy persona that Adam 22 is trying to cultivate starts to like interact with Trump era cancel culture. So people are like, wait, this guy's really popular, but he's got all this bad shit in his, in his past and present. And so this is, this is where it all starts to happen. So March in 2018, he's accused of sexual assault by two women on X. He denies it, but the women speak to Pitchfork. Pitchfork writes, "The first of the two women commented to Pitchfork under the pseudonym Jane due to fear of retaliation.

• 24:26Ryan Broderick?

  She first met Grant Mason in 2005. They both posted on the same." Message board. One day they made plans to get together in Manhattan and Jane ended up taking the subway with him back to his apartment in Queens where he made advances. At first I was okay with it, but it quickly became uncomfortable as it went further than I wanted to go. Jane said. The article goes on to explain that she didn't go to the police, but she did go to a mutual connection. And told this guy that Grand Mason had assaulted her. And according to this Pitchfork article, Grand Mason posted her first name online and pictures of her. And later in a blog post, he would brag about how everything turned out fine when he was accused of rape. And another woman speaks to the Daily Beast, more women come out.

• 25:09Ryan Broderick?

  So what do you think the the consequences are of this of this big cancellation episode for Adam 22?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  That they probably got a bigger audience.

• 25:19Ryan Broderick?

  He basically just continued just without any issue. Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Damn, I'm shocked.

• 25:24Ryan Broderick?

  So from this point, they will manufacture controversy that will pull away from real issues. So it all just sort of devolves into noise. He makes a big deal about Lena starting to shoot scenes with men and his audience pays a lot more attention to that because he's effectively being cucked. And they care more about that than any of the allegations of abuse that are surfacing. In 2023, on a podcast episode with the trans model Gracie Jane, it's revealed that she had a relationship with Adam 22's co-host Little House Phone. I don't know what any of this means. This is a summary of that according to Know Your Mean.

• 26:07Ryan Broderick?

  The situation which occurred resulted in a brief falling out between Adam and Little House Phone, who purportedly wanted to keep the hookup private. It also inspired online criticism towards Adam for not making sure all mentions of Little House Phone's name were edited out of the podcast and backstabbing his friend for views. Later that month, House Phone and Adam got into an argument over the drama on their podcast and House Phone threw his drink at Adam. I mean, it's just like the worst dumbest shit here. In 2023, they bring on Richard Spencer.

• 26:39Ryan Broderick?

  To No Jumper.

• 26:42Ryan Broderick?

  They've also had Nick Fuentes, the streamer Sneko, and a guy from the Nation of Islam, all of which say exactly what you think they would say on the show.

• 26:54Ryan Broderick?

  It's a fascinating story for me because like, as he gets bigger every time, he does something outrageous, and then like, people forget about him, or like, don't remember his whole deal, and they like, try to use cancel culture to take him down again, and it just makes him more popular and makes him act even crazier. So it's like, this really interesting cycle between like, platforms and what they're incentivizing, and what like, actual human beings want, which is this guy to go away forever.

• 27:21Ryan Broderick?

  And he keeps upping the ante. So he brings on guests like, official pervbusters, which is like, one of those Instagram like, pedophile hunter channels. Though then, they accuse Adam22 not of assault, but of hitting on a minor. That then goes viral, and kind of backfires on him. A bunch of No Jumper hosts leave the show. They blame the fact that they brought Richard Spencer on, but it seems like it's largely pressure from the pedophile hunters. They're like, "You are a pedophile and have been accused of being a pedophile for like, a decade." Rolling Stone then writes another big piece on Adam22, now in 2023, exposing Adam22 not just for assaulting women, but regularly pressuring them to make porn.

• 28:05Ryan Broderick?

  And this all still doesn't really knock him down. Tell me if I'm wrong, it does kind of feel like, if you're able to gain enough momentum on platforms, you can kind of steamroll. Like, if your audience is awful enough, and you have enough viral energy behind you from like, algorithms, it does kind of feel like, there's not much that can really take you down. Does that kind of gel with what you've seen as well?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I think if you can build up enough of an audience to have an us versus them mentality, you really buy into something. And I don't think you even need that large of an audience to do this. One thing I've noticed is that when- A high-profile person gets criticized, especially in the online culture, where you have like fandoms and fandom wars and things like that. You can say, oh, they're trying to bring me down. Like, if this works, you won't get to see me anymore. And so the people who are fans are like, oh, no, we'll defend you. And this works at many different scales. You don't need millions of people

• 29:16Speaker 02

  out there defending you to make it work. Like, I've had people, not to compare myself with this guy,

• 29:25Speaker 02

  but I've had people try to cancel me many, many times, many times, like more times than I can count. And I

• 29:30Ryan Broderick?

  It's because of your Nazi tattoo you got while you were in the Marines, right?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Hey, who told you about that?

• 29:37Speaker 02

  I did used to live in Maine. No, the stupidest one was I misremembered when I got my vaccine. And I made a comment one time about getting the vaccine under Trump when it was really four months into the Biden administration.

• 29:53Ryan Broderick?

  You should die, I think. I think you have to die.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I actually think you're right.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  I am listening and learning.

• 30:02Ryan Broderick?

  I'm sitting my ass down and getting my vaccine records in order, yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  But like, I was accused of being like a secret Trump, like, plant in liberal media by like people who I've worked with and interviewed professionally. And the only way that I was able to get through that was by very aggressively defending myself and getting my people who had known me for years to defend me, right? But I think that

• 30:33Speaker 02

  this works for like evil people who have fans too. But it reminds me a lot of like the streamer wars that you see with like Hassan Piker and Destiny and the guy from H3, Ethan Klein, and how they all go back and forth. And like, I'm, I would call myself a casual Hassan Piker fan. I tune in when there's big news just to see him freak out because it's funny. But whenever the fandom wars come up, I I tune out like I I find that extremely disinteresting like I don't care. I don't give a fuck. But that's just me. But a lot of people like live for this. Like there's forum wars over this stuff.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Um, and I think that all spills over into online and what you're saying with, sorry, I'm on an extended rant here.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  What you were saying with the guy kind of fades away and then he does something and gets canceled and comes back and gets a bunch of attention. I think that's a cyclical pattern.

• 31:37Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. So what you're saying sort of about like the flame wars and the and the fan wars, I think is really important to touch on. If we're sort of like building a unified theory of cancel culture today, like I do think that there's a point where if the people involved are too messy or their fandoms are too complicated or the discourse is like too much. It actually like floods the zone and it actually gets in the way of anything happening. So like, for instance, like I am also like a casual Hassan fan. I, God love him. If him and Ethan start going back and forth enough, like I actually have no idea what they're talking about anymore.

• 32:19Ryan Broderick?

  And like, so the the dog shock collar, not shock collar and drama is the one happening currently. I was there. I was there when the post, the first posts were made, man. And yet, even though I saw the very beginning of this discourse cycle, it has now become so convoluted and confusing, especially with streamers that are all streaming each other's content and like doing hour long takedowns of each other. That at a certain point, I'm just like, I have no idea what's going on anymore. Um, and I I think Adam 22 and Lena, the plug are very, I I don't want to call them, I I think I said savvy, but I don't think that's the right word. Opportunistic perhaps, but like they understand on a core level

• 33:01Ryan Broderick?

  that there are subcultural spaces that are so, there are subcultural spaces that are so tacky and obnoxious and icky to normal people that they can kind of do whatever they want them, which is very sad because I I think. Obviously, the porn industry has had this problem forever, but there's, there's other adjacent spaces that they can operate in and they can really just like act like, like animals and, and hurt people and, and be obnoxious and nobody cares because to talk about it, like you couldn't go on CNN and be like, the guy who watches his wife have sex with porn stars said something racist in his grooming teenagers. And it's like, what are you talking about? Like, oh, oh, oh, the pedophile hunter Instagram channel

• 33:44Ryan Broderick?

  that beats up like clearly mentally ill people on TikTok canceled this guy who's been a known predator on hardcore BMX message. Like this is nonsense. This is, it's, it's, it's, it's like something out of Robocop. It's, it's a fucking nightmare.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  But he is also huge. The, the paradox is you can't explain it, but also it's like, this guy sets culture, like 15 year olds love this dude.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  That's terrifying.

• 34:09Ryan Broderick?

  It, it is. And it, and it's honestly very vaudeville. Like it speaks to like the sort of decentralized entertainment world that we now exist in with the internet where like the person next to you on the subway could be watching like anime girls giving birth on the AI like open AI Sora TikTok clone or something. And they look like a completely normal person. Like the entertainment that we're consuming has just like reached this like absolute bottom. And now that like, there's these very famous popular people that just shouldn't have ever been this. Like they didn't, this shouldn't have happened.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  It's like the, the like endpoint of Spencer and Heidi, who I think understand this, but are not, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but are not horrible people. They're certainly not behaving like this. This is like a whole other level.

• 34:58Ryan Broderick?

  For people who don't know, can you say who Spencer and Heidi are? If you don't know who Spencer and Heidi is by first name basis, get off of this show. Get, just close it out.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Our platform is if you don't understand something that happens here, we don't want you as a listener, but I didn't want to do that to your audience. I didn't know if you have the same policy where we gatekeepers.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Do you think that the millennials who listen to our podcast know who Spidey is slash are?

• 35:20Ryan Broderick?

  They have to.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  I think our, I think our audience knows.

• 35:22Ryan Broderick?

  All right, we're not explaining it.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  It's an out of context cancellation.

• 35:25Ryan Broderick?

  Look it up.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  If you don't know, fuck you. That's what we're saying.

• 35:28Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Um, to, to close the loop on Adam 22, looks like he's actually finally been canceled, which is interesting, but not for any of the reasons we've discussed today. Uh, in fact, he was kind of canceled by the, it, what it feels like is the only thing that can actually truly cancel people in, in the 2020s, which is that he ran out of money. He went broke.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Oh, that's interesting that that is what maybe what truly cancels someone.

• 35:55Ryan Broderick?

  I think there's a way to look at a lot of cancel culture and not all of it, obviously not all cancel culture, hashtag not all cancel culture, that lines up pretty well with, I mean, kind of what you were saying where it's like, if the under, like the, the perceived underclass goes against the upper class, that's a very common cancel culture narrative. And the perceived upper class, the sort of higher status person in the situation can kind of weather the storm. If they control their own platform and they have their own financial backing, no CEO is going to fire Adam 22 because he's the CEO. Like if you create your own FIF, it's like very hard to depose you. And so in April 2025, No Jumper announced that they were going broke and doing layoffs.

• 36:39Ryan Broderick?

  Um, there was a lawsuit that did lead to this though, uh, for workplace misconduct by former employees that was fired in January of this year. He said it's frivolous, but it has drained the company of money. And there's kind of not been much from him, uh, in the last year. We, we actually sent garbage day and panic world researcher Adam Bumis to Adam 22's 420 event in New York City with Caroline Callaway, which Adam said was a nightmare. Uh, he went last year, uh, and.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  It would be a nightmare.

• 37:13Ryan Broderick?

  I, I.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, it sounds terrible.

• 37:14Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, I thought that would be like a fun first assignment for Adam when he joined the company. Um, I was like, good luck.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I had a good time, but like, teach their own.

• 37:23Ryan Broderick?

  Well, yeah, you were you were working for Adam at the time, though. We got you. We got you from No Jumper.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I was actually just there as a fan, you know?

• 37:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, you were too. You were too much of a racist for No Jumper, and so they they let you go. So that's my favorite canceled person, and favorite is probably the wrong word there, but that's the canceled person I think about the most. But after the break, we're going to hear from you two about who your quote unquote favorite canceled person is at the moment. But first, a word from our sponsors. What's another canceled product?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  The Cutcoin that that Adam 22 grifted his his his fans.

• 38:04Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah. A word from our sponsors, Adam 22's cryptocurrency, which is called Cutcoin, which he was using to finance a video where men had sex with his wife.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  That's real.

• 38:18Ryan Broderick?

  So, yeah, I'm very excited to hear who who you guys have brought to the show today. Good luck topping mine in terms of grossness and irrelevance.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Good news for you. I'm a bottom.

• 38:36Ryan Broderick?

  So is Adam 22.

• 38:40Ryan Broderick?

  I'm sad that I know that.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  I wanted to. I wanted to wrap the story of Adam 22 up by saying this just reinforces my view that nothing good has ever come out of Nashville, New Hampshire.

• 38:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, New Hampshire, you know, serves a purpose for New England. It is a place where you can buy tax-free liquor and shoot fireworks and live in the woods and go to. Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  When you cross the border, there's the state liquor store right up the highway.

• 39:07Ryan Broderick?

  Which I would argue is socialist. I actually think having a state liquor store is socialist, New Hampshire. Um, no.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Just come to New Jersey where they'll like pump the gas for you.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Drink free and die.

• 39:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, New Hampshire won't do anything for you. They barely have roads there. Although I do think there's something useful about having like a super liberal state directly next to a super conservative state. And if we like had to rebuild the country that way, I do think like everyone would be happier. Because like right now, New Hampshire people can come down to Massachusetts and buy marijuana. And for a while, they could get gay married before that was possible in New Hampshire.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Get a college education.

• 39:39Ryan Broderick?

  Get a college education, go to the dentist, and then people from New Hampshire can go. People people from Massachusetts could go to New Hampshire and buy liquor and fireworks and like. That's it, basically.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  When I was at, when I was at UMass, we used to play UNH in hockey. I'm repping my UMass.

• 39:59Ryan Broderick?

  Zoomass, dude. Oh, yeah. Fuck, yeah, dude.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  And our chant for UNH was, uh, excuse me, I'm gonna sing a little bit here. The wheels on your house go round and round.

• 40:10Ryan Broderick?

  Fuck. That's, that's some classic New England classism right there.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  My girlfriend at the time was from New Hampshire. She did not appreciate that one.

• 40:18Ryan Broderick?

  Well, and once people from New Hampshire get the internet, I'm sure they'll be able to tell you exactly how mad they are.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Um, do you want to do the honors, Christine, with our, our, our cancel person of the day?

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're canceling, uh, Dave fucking Chappelle again.

• 40:41Ryan Broderick?

  What, did he do something again?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, he went to Saudi Arabia.

• 40:45Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, he went to Saudi Arabia, sure.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  With, with our finest representatives.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  The ones who are actually, like, already problems, you're just like, well, of course, they went. But Bill Burr, you know, like, like, it didn't even, it didn't even process my mind that, that Chappelle went.

• 40:59Ryan Broderick?

  I was bummed about Bill Burr because, like, he had a good run there for a second, like, saying some good stuff on the, on the, on the TV, uh, about Trump, and then that kind of ended.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I wrote about this for my newsletter on, uh, burnsnotes.com, but it was basically, my first line of the piece was, oh, Bill Burr, what have you done?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Um, that was really heartbreaking, but Dave Chappelle, I mean, he is the bane of all trans people. Um.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, how many times did you and Oliver cancel Dave Chappelle?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  We did a two-part series on him. Um, so we had Amara Jones from the Translash Podcast on to talk about his negative impact on the trans community, um, particularly on black trans people, who she felt were particularly affected by his transphobia because he is such an icon in the black community. And then our follow-up episode was actually with the two Netflix employees who led the internal protest against, against the special that he had at the time. And I think he's had like two or three more specials out since then with, like, no protest. Um, but our argument that we're coming to this show with is he is

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Possibly the most successful quote unquote canceled person.

• 42:24Ryan Broderick?

  Hmm.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  In history, although I think I would probably put Barry Weiss slightly ahead, but again.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, we talk a lot about the the cancel culture grift economy on our show.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Um, and that's the same and that touches on what we said with Adam 22, where like it's the cycle of attention. And then profit, basically where he he was doing what I think at one point he had a comedy tour called the Cancelled Tour.

• 42:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  And he was going around and every time a new venue would be like.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  We're canceling the show because of this reason, he would use it to promote his next show, which would sell even more tickets at even higher prices. And you see it today, like he's just. Not cancel. I don't think I don't think he's cancelable. Let's be honest with you. Uh, he has a lot of powerful fans in his corner, including the CEO of Netflix. Uh, Ted Sarandos. Yeah, I I mean, I don't have a blow by blow like you do with Adam 22, because I think.

• 43:25Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, no, I just, I just, I have that all tattooed on my body like memento and I read it every morning.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Waiting for the day.

• 43:32Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah, I I wake up every morning. I'm like, who's Adam 22? And I just read the whole thing.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Did you get that to to a new.

• 43:38Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, I, yeah, they get they do it to you at the state toll when you enter the state. Um, they're like, would you like to hear about Adam 22? No, I, uh, I I actually wanted to ask, like.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:48Ryan Broderick?

  With regards to Dave Chappelle. What does it mean to like be this far down the road? And for like the culture war scientists to have created an uncancellable man like I I guess like. This is sort of similar territory that we we we got into with Kat Tambar in our episode about the post me too era, sort of like reckoning with. These things that defines the first Trump administration that ultimately like changed the world, but didn't not in the way was we thought, you know, I I I sort of compare. Things like Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Cancel Culture to things like Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring, where like the world changed, but like the direction of that change was just like in ways we could have never anticipated.

• 44:31Ryan Broderick?

  So it's like to have someone like David Chappelle, who's been able. To factor being canceled over and over again into the marketing of a comedy tour or into the streaming metrics for Netflix versus Comedy Store. Like, what does that mean? I guess.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  I think what you have nowadays is you have a large contingent of people for whom, like Dave Chappelle sucks and is irredeemable and they will never consume his content. Right? And then you have people who have decided that they're all in with him. It's like, there is no in-between. Have you ever met like a halfway Dave Chappelle fan? Who's like, yeah, he's transphobic, but like.

• 45:11Ryan Broderick?

  I'm imagining someone I'm actually very jealous of where they just woke up from a coma. They went into in like 2008.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  They walked out of the theater after seeing Con Air and then they passed out for 20 years.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  They put on whatever Kanye album just came out at the time or like.

• 45:27Ryan Broderick?

  Could you imagine? Could you imagine getting hit by a car after completing graduation? For the first time? And then you're just like, I'm back, guys. What's happened to all my favorite people?

• 45:38Speaker 02

  They just read Prisoners of Azkaban.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  They just have Kanye on in their headphones or reading Prisoner of Azkaban. They go, can't wait to watch the Chappelle Show tonight.

• 45:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, then they just get hit by a car. Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yes, we can.

• 45:54Ryan Broderick?

  That's, that sounds great, actually.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's frustrating as somebody who's been watching this and as a trans person who's directly affected by it, although from what I hear, his material these days is less about trans people, which I think is good probably for everybody, but it got really bad for a while. Like he claims to have a trans friend. I don't know that that's been substantiated with reporting.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  But he blames the trans community's reaction to his comedy for the suicide death of his trans friend. And he talks about it repeatedly.

• 46:40Ryan Broderick?

  I I've heard this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Which is like, really heinous. I mean, listen, trans people can go over the top. We're also highly targeted and often have to defend ourselves online from a lot of stuff. You know what? Taking a step back, I don't really want to like judge on this. But I don't think that that's something that you use in a comedy routine. No, it's not. Like to make a political point, you're not being a comedian at that point.

• 47:09Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, and I would also even say that, like, say that that's true. So let's imagine where that's 100% true and everything Dave Chappelle is saying, he's remembered correctly and he understands. To use that then as like a content marketing strategy is even if all that were true, is heinous. And like, I think very, very much in bad faith.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  I remember, I remember the clip because like, even in the buildup to that point, he was still making fun of her, this theoretical person that exists. It like worked in story structure of like emotional arc, like rug pull. Guess what? She like tried to hurt herself, but the whole setup there was like, a way of just like fitting in more jokes at trans people. My, as people, as like, you've, you've deep dive on Dave previously, what I think makes him most bewildering to me is that lots of other, like, like a Louis CK, a Barry Weiss, they pivoted to being edgelords because they like, they were like excommunicated from the

• 48:17Speaker 01

  community, or from like, from like, from like mainstream success. This seemed like totally his option. Do you have a theory as to why was, was it just like, I think the savvy move here, the most like money making move here is to focus my attention on, on trans women? When like, before that, he was like largely beloved by everyone?

• 48:40Speaker 02

  I think that's a tough question to ask. I think that Yeah, I don't know if it's money or megalomania. Yeah, I think he, he, he got.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  A lot of cultural support from very powerful places by targeting trans people. Like you have to remember, this is right around the time of like JK Rowling coming out as a turf. And, you know, everybody losing their mind about Leah Thomas swimming in Ivy League, uh, which they don't give scholarships, by the way. And it was very much being anti-trans was considered like counter culture. And I think it's easy to look back on that and be like, uh, yeah, this is, this is right at the beginning of like the Austin comedy scene where everybody just gets up and they make fun of, uh, either people of color, women or trans people. So I think it was part of the comedy zeitgeist of the time.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  But again, he didn't have to go there. I think he felt that this was a way to make himself more relevant again.

• 49:45Ryan Broderick?

  Hmm. I, I wanted to look at like a timeline of his career just to see like when this started. And what's really interesting is it is all post-COVID. Like everything that we're talking about hap- is starting to happen for him after 2020. And what's super interesting is like his most like politically charged, socially progressive, politically charged special, 846, which is the, uh, the, the, the amount of time that, uh, Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd's neck. That special comes out in 2020 and he does like a, a year of, of sort of press of being just sort of like the, like the most politically important comedian.

• 50:28Ryan Broderick?

  And then in 2021, he does a Netflix special, The Closer. And The Closer is when he starts with the, the anti-trans stuff. So like something happened in the, in that, like between that year. Or maybe this is stuff that's already, already been there and sort of like radicalized during like, cause we've, we've talked about this on the show a bunch where like a lot of these figures. J K Rowling, Kanye West, they have this stuff in them all the time. And then the isolation of COVID and the sort of like heavily online life that people start building. Elon Musk is another one where it's like, he's always been kind of a dickhead. But like, clearly, the isolation of COVID like cracked something in his head.

• 51:10Ryan Broderick?

  And I'm curious, I would be curious to go and like, try to figure out like, what exactly happened to Chappelle? Like, did he go down to Austin and like, network with Rogan and all these people? Like, what happened? Because it is, it is kind of an abrupt turn. I feel like that's why people were so upset about it is because like, wait a minute. Like, this guy has always kind of been on the right side of stuff. Why is this happening?

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Historically, trans people have been the punchline for comedians for a very, very, very long time. I would say up until around 2015, when it started, when people started noticing, hey, that was kind of shitty. Like, all of a sudden, everybody woke up and was like, hey, wait a minute. Ace Ventura was incredibly transphobic, right?

• 51:53Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there's old Simpsons episodes I've come across where I'm like, whoa.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:57Ryan Broderick?

  I forgot about that.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  There's a trans woman on YouTube, Lily Simpson, who does a great job of like, going back into the before times and seeing how shows handled trans people, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

• 52:10Ryan Broderick?

  I was actually watching like, the first season of ER the other day, just because of The Pit. And there's a trans episode that is like quintessential, like heart in the right place, absolutely horrible execution of like 90s TV, that is a fascinating document in regards to what you're saying. Like, it is, it's worth, maybe not watching, but it's worth like, reading the Wikipedia somewhere. Because it is so bizarre by today's context.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so you have like, the trans tipping boy in 2015. You have the great historical moment of my coming out.

• 52:46Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, I remember, I remember.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  That's, that's tattooed on my body. Well, Ryan has Adam Tormann's story there.

• 52:54Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why you're the great woke warrior.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  That's what they call me. I haven't paid for a matcha latte in years, it's all.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  And I think that for a long time, like the trans jokes didn't fly. And I, I suspect that for Chappelle, like 2021 hit, you started to see a cultural backlash more broadly to trans people. You have J K Rowling come out and I felt, I think he felt comfortable being like, hey, I haven't been able to, I haven't been allowed to make fun of these people for a decade. I'm going to take my shot at it.

• 53:30Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  I, I, I think you're both onto something. I do think that like that circle, the Joe Rogan, Elon Chappelle circle, like they all kind of like converged around this at a similar time.

• 53:46Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, there's a, there's a great clip on Stavros Halkeus. I don't know how you, I've always just called him Stavvy. Um, his podcast recently where he has a, like a friend comedian on and she starts going on an anti-trans tear and he's like, you've been living in Austin like way too long. And it's like clearly something that like other, like comedians are aware of that if you go down to Austin, like you will be radicalized into being anti-trans.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Who's, who's the most transphobic out of Elon Musk, Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan? Or the least transphobic?

• 54:17Ryan Broderick?

  The least transphobic is probably Joe Rogan. I think you can convince Joe Rogan anything. If you gave me an hour of Joe Rogan, I could turn him into a, into a socialist.

• 54:26Ryan Broderick?

  Like not a problem at all. I'd be like, I, I, yeah, I know how to do it. I've thought, I've thought, I've rehearsed it in the mirror.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Joe, we're down. Hit us up.

• 54:36Ryan Broderick?

  Joe, come on, panic roll. Bring me on, bring me on. The Joe Rogan experience. I will, I will make you a, a proud fanboy of the IRS and National Rail and everything. Yeah.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  I, I did want to make one more point about all of this. And, and it's less about Dave Chappelle and more about going back to the fandom wars, because I wanted to talk about how the press gets involved in all of this stuff.

• 55:01Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Like Christine and I are both journalists. Ryan, you're a journalist as well. Like my theory of cancel culture is that amongst a certain set of established journalists, they will automatically fandom for people who are right of center or even center who are being canceled. Like their default position is to be like, The left must be wrong about this person.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  100%.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  And I think you see it with Dave Chappelle. I think you saw it with J.K. Rowling. And those people are not immune to the fandom mind virus of we're gonna like defend this guy or this woman to the death. But the problem, of course, when you have that is that a newspaper has just as much reach as the internet does, right? It's like, this is how Barry Weiss built her career. She, she was a New York Times, you know, op ed editor. She was not a writer. She wrote occasionally, but her big thing was she was able to get her anti-woke friends in the pages of the New York Times. She invented the term Intellectual Dark Web, which is, which

• 56:16Speaker 02

  just means racist transphobes with a platform.

• 56:20Ryan Broderick?

  I feel like a, a, a missing piece of context for like people who aren't journalists. When I entered journalism, most of my editors were Gen X. And they all kind of had the Barry, even the liberal ones, liberal ones, had the Barry Weiss attitude that I think is very common among older people in journalism, which is that they believe that the media is inherently liberal and that it's like kind of dangerous or exciting to like have mildly conservative views. And I think this is like a hangover from the Clinton era. I think it got worse during the Obama era. And like, it also just like, wasn't evolving fast enough as the right was consolidating

• 57:04Ryan Broderick?

  power in the 2010s. So like, when I hear Barry Weiss speak, I'm just like, oh yeah, you're like every editor I've ever met in New York where they're like, you know, it's, you know, be really renegade is if we said something kind of conservative. It's like, oh, wow. Yeah, well, that's crazy. And it's an attitude that just seems very pervasive still to this day in a weird way.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  Some of what you were saying about Adam 22 really reminded me of Donald Trump and just kind of the cycles of. Sheer antics that he'll come out with and then maybe get quiet for a few days and then all of a sudden last night, you're just breaking down the east wing of the White House and wires are being exposed. And I don't know, like, nothing really sticks to him. Nothing sticks to him. But he also has that money to insulate himself that Adam 22 seems to be losing in rapid succession.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, everything is owning the libs.

• 57:57Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, speaking of the libs, to, uh, to close the loop on what we opened with, uh, Graham Platner Nazi tattoo, definitely real. Just saw some alerts come through. It's, it is, yeah, it's, it's a real tattoo. Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Damn. Sorry, Ryan. Are you okay?

• 58:12Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I'm bummed. He was really exciting. He still might win. I mean, it's Maine. Like, I don't know. Politics in America are complicated, but, uh, not a good look for sure.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  How recent do you need to have gotten a Nazi tattoo removed for, for, for, for you to be like, you know what? I, I still think he's got my vote.

• 58:32Ryan Broderick?

  Uh.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  We're real fucked here.

• 58:35Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, this is, this is like, probably not going to be the last time we have this exact conversation about a male politician in America based on the last 30 years of American history.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  And this is cancel culture.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  I mean, he got, he got nuked by OPSEC, like.

• 58:52Ryan Broderick?

  He did, but I.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Apple Research.

• 58:54Ryan Broderick?

  I think this is actually an interesting place to land, though, here today where it's like, cancel culture is existing simultaneously at a time when political extremism, particularly for men, has never been higher, right? Like, the, the, the grand plan of the far right in the 2010s worked. And so the way I've been describing is like, okay, imagine if extremism, political extremism was COVID. Now assume that every man in America has at least long COVID, if not active COVID. Like, if you grew up online in the 2000s, 2010s, like, you have been around Nazis in a way that like, I don't think the average American man was pre-internet. Like, you are in Minecraft with them. You are, you are listening to hip

• 59:35Ryan Broderick?

  hop blogs, uh, or hip hop podcasts by like groomers and pedophiles. Like, this is a. Thing that just because of the nature of the internet and the, the, the idea of cancellation happening simultaneously is interesting and I don't really know what to make of that happening at the same time. It's like, we're trying to sort through this toxic sludge and like, this is kind of the only mechanism we have. But it is an interesting time to see these two forces collide.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  I have a theory based off of today's conversation to what you're saying, Ryan. It can only work if you have an ideology, if you have some sort of principle.

• 1:00:12Ryan Broderick?

  Canceling.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. On, on either, on like any end, like Adam 22 is only like, his whole thing was just like, I'm going to diversify my investments. So that I have something that sticks, you know, he's, he's all over the map about like associations. Because it doesn't really matter. It's just like, is this going to help me? Is this not going to help me? So like, nothing can knock you down if you don't have a principle. Somebody like Nick Fuentes, who actually like believes in something, might be easier to have, like have the rug pulled. Be even though like all of the things he believes are vile, because like he like cares about, like he says to care about an idea, about something. You have to like have that as like the starting base to be able to have it taken from you.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  I think, I think is the, the trend we see. It's much easier to cancel supposedly liberal figures. Because they're supposed to be representing some sort of beliefs like Oyster should be less money.

• 1:01:12Ryan Broderick?

  Well.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  Well, that's a shot fired a platner right there.

• 1:01:15Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I, I, yeah, I, I would just say that like cancelling, cancel culture exists on the right wing. They just go about it very differently. Like we don't, like, like Madison Cawthorn was ethered from political life. Like by Republicans, because he was like, they're all having coke orgies. And then that motherfucker disappeared overnight.

• 1:01:38Ryan Broderick?

  And they don't, it's actually kind of the great irony of American politics right now, where it's like, the Republicans are pretty much completely operating in public online, except for the inner mechanisms of the party. And like, when they turn on you, like, they will turn on you. Whereas the Democrats are still much more traditional. So like, they are deciding the popularity of their candidates, of their figures, of their pundits in public, but they are not operating in public the same way the Republicans are. It's almost like an inverse.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:10Ryan Broderick?

  So, Nick Fuentes has been canceled several times by the right, and will continue to be, until he's too powerful, and then they'll bring him in because they're much more flexible. I think it's just different philosophies.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Also, we talked about Milo Yiannopoulos earlier, and he was also somebody who was canceled. My hot take with him is, he was really canceled because he's gay.

• 1:02:33Ryan Broderick?

  Sure. Also, rumor is that he owes a lot of people a lot of money.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  But then, now he's like, saying that he's an ex-gay, and he's straight. And he's starting to build a profile again, and I'm like,

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  this is the grift. Like, he found his way around the objections of the other people.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  That's really interesting.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  And now he's coming back again. Yeah, I was just gonna say, go brain tumor.

• 1:02:58Ryan Broderick?

  Brain tumors are the true cancellation, actually.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And obviously, speaking tongue in cheek.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Please don't cancel me.

• 1:03:06Ryan Broderick?

  Please don't, I can't. I, canceling, just like, I don't want to ruin my weekend, you know? Having to deal with it. Weekends are for me, not for the internet.

• 1:03:17Ryan Broderick?

  I always end by asking people where they could listen to your show, so let's assume that it's our listeners listening right now. So where can they go and find you guys online?

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  I think it's cancelme underscore daddy on YouTube, actually. And anywhere you listen to podcasts.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  We also have a Patreon.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  We do have a Patreon.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  Cancel me daddy.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Please give us money.

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  Please. Well, and you get your episodes early, and they're real good.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  And I'd be remiss without mentioning that we are Flytrap Media Production. The Flytrap is a independent co-op, feminist co-op, and we write cultural criticism.

• 1:03:57Ryan Broderick?

  Thanks. This was great. Yeah, thank you.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  And where can our listeners find you? Yeah.

• 1:04:01Ryan Broderick?

  If you want to cancel me, I'm on Blue Sky. My username is Ryan Hates This. That's also my username on Instagram. My username on X.com, the Everything app, which I almost never check in a personal capacity anymore, is Broderick. And you can listen to Panic World on all platforms. That's the name. And our Patreon is patreon.com/panicworld. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fialsted is our production coordinator. And our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Devin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus.

• 1:04:44Ryan Broderick?

  R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Mary Ann Kuga is their Director of Marketing. YouTube and Podcast Growth Marketer Samantha Hollis. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at [email protected]. Be sure to check out the Panic World YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com/atpanicworldpod. And please, give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.